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Sacraments And Signification – Abbot Vonier

January 13, 2012

The Baptism of Christ by Giovanni BELLINI, 1500-02, Oil on canvas, Santa Corona, Vicenza, Italy. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it towards a more sensuous and coloristic style. Through the use of clear, slow-drying oil paints, Giovanni created deep, rich tints and detailed shadings. His sumptuous coloring and fluent, atmospheric landscapes had a great effect on the Venetian painting school, especially on his pupils Giorgione and Titian.

There is an excellent definition of the nature of the sacraments in Article Four of the Sixty-First Question of the Third Part of the Summa Theologica: “Sacraments are certain signs protesting that faith through which man is justified.” Such a definition makes the transition from the role of faith to the role of the sacraments a very natural and easy one. The power of the sacraments could never be dissociated from the power of faith; the two supernatural agencies move forward hand in hand. A sacrament is always an external sign witnessing to that more recondite quality of the soul, the faith that justifies man by bringing him into contact with Christ.

Two very important questions arise here: First, why should there be this external protestation of the faith? Second, to what extent shall we give to those signs a literal efficacy of signification? In the answer to the second question there lies all the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism; in fact, it may even be said, between Judaism and Christianity. In its many aspects this will be the main object of our study; but for the moment let its dwell on the first point, the radical oneness of the Catholic theory concerning the means of justification.

Faith and sacraments are indissolubly united; though faith may be called the older and more universal factor. The sacramental system is grafted on faith; it is essentially the executive of our faith; it is, shall we say, the reward of faith. Because of her faith the Church is granted those further powers of reaching Christ which make Christ not only the object of devout contemplation, but of physical possession; the sacramental reality is granted to those who have faith; such is the burden of Christ’s teaching in the sixth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel. He who does the work of God by believing in Him whom the Father has sent is the one to whom Christ will give His Flesh to eat and His Blood to drink. We may apply here that important principle of spiritual growth which Christ enunciates more than once: “To everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall abound, but from him that hath not, that also which he seemeth to have shall be taken away.”

Because of her generous faith the Church is given the abundant riches of the sacraments. What might appear at first sight to be the exception to the rule — that faith and the sacraments are indissolubly united — is only a more profound application of it; I refer to the practice of infant Baptism. Saint Thomas, following Saint Augustine, relies on the faith of the Church herself in order to keep intact the essential union of faith and the sacrament of faith.

“In the Church of the Savior the little ones believe through others, as through others they contract those sins which are washed out in Baptism”; these are the words of the earlier Father which the medieval Doctor expands into the following theological explanation: “The faith of one, nay of the whole Church, is of profit to the little one through the operation of the Holy Spirit, who makes the Church into one, and makes the one share the goods of the other.” There could hardly be a more unfair accusation brought against the Catholic Church than to say that by her uncompromising insistence on the sacramental life she diminishes the power of faith.

It is really the Puritan, rather than the Protestant in general, who is the enemy of the sacramental system taken in the wider aspect of that Thomistic definition in the previous post. For the Puritan, faith is not in need of any help or any adjuncts. Yet the reasons given by Catholic theologians for the presence in the Christian dispensation of these external signs of internal faith are chiefly psychological; man’s nature being what it is, sacraments are indispensable to a full life of faith.

Saint Thomas gives a threefold reason for the institution of the sacraments; but this threefold reason is really one — man’s psychology. However, the three factors are

firstly, the condition of man’s nature, being a composite of spirit and sense;
secondly, man’s estate, which is slavedom to material things and only to be remedied by the spiritual power inside the material thing;
thirdly, man’s activities, so prone to go astray in external interests, finding in the sacraments a true bodily exercise which works out for salvation.

Nothing would be easier than to develop this subject with all the fascinating means that psychological studies put at our disposal.

The sacramental life of the Church is based on a perfect understanding of man’s needs. Sacraments are through their very nature an extension of the Incarnation, a continuation of that mystery expressed in the words: “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” Is not the Son of God made Man, the Sacrament par excellence, the magnum sacramentum, the invisible made visible? “And evidently great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, was justified in the spirit, appeared unto angels, hath been preached unto the Gentiles, is believed in the world, is taken up in glory”

To say that a Sacrament is a protestation of the faith which is in us, is not a complete definition of the Christian sacrament; though it may be considered as adequate enough for a sacrament in its widest meaning. Even Saint Thomas never hesitates to give to some of the major rites of the Old Law the name of sacrament; always making it quite clear, however, that the power of those ancient observances never went beyond signifying the patriarchal faith, while the Christian sacrament has a much higher degree of signification, one indeed that has effectiveness associated with it. It would be quite mistaken, and very ungenerous, not to grant to the ancient rites instituted by God sacramental dignity of at least an inferior degree; they all were external signs of the faith in the coming redemption. They were tremendous helps to that faith, although in themselves they were not direct causes of grace.

Saint Thomas divides the life of mankind into four seasons — the state of innocence before the fall, the state of sin before Christ, the state of sin after Christ, and the state of bliss in heaven. No sacraments are necessary in the first and in the last state; sacraments are necessary to man in the two middle states. But it is in the “state of sin after Christ” that sacraments reach their perfection; the seven sacraments of the Christian dispensation are sacraments in the highest sense, because, besides signifying the grace which is the inheritance of faith, they also contain that grace and cause it.

An objector may find fault with the arrangement that God has given to man different sacraments before Christ and different sacraments after Christ. Does this not argue mutability in the divine will? The answer of Saint Thomas is a perfect synthesis of that broader view of the sacramental system which makes it as old as the world:

To the third objection let us reply that the father of the family is not said to be of changeable disposition because he gives different orders to his household according to the variety of seasons, and does not command the same work to be done in summer and in winter; so likewise there is not mutability in God’s ways because He institutes one set of sacraments after the coming of Christ and another in the time of the Old Law; for these latter were apt prefigurements of grace, while the former are manifest grace already present amongst us.

The Power of Sacramental Signification
It is the very essence of a sacrament to be a sign; it is its proper definition. “We now speak specifically of sacraments insofar as they imply the relationship of a sign.” Let us never deprive a sacrament, even the most excellent, of this constitutional property of signification. The orthodox realist in sacramental theology boldly proclaims his faith, I do not say in the symbolical nature of the sacrament, but in the demonstrative nature of the sacrament as a sign, or, if we like the word better, in its representative nature as a sign.

This power of signification inside the one and the same sacrament is not simple but complex, for the sacramental element performs its function in various ways, as well as signifying various realities; yet it has a certain definiteness, a clearly outlined circle of signification, which has been traced by the hand of God. It is the divine institution which is directly responsible for the choice of those signs which, in the words of Saint Thomas, are given us “for a more explicit signification of Christ’s grace, through which the human race is sanctified.” The angelic Doctor adds, with that true liberality of mind so characteristically his own, that this clear circumscribing of the sacramental signs does not in any way narrow the road of salvation, because the material things which are indispensable for the sacraments are commonly to be had, or may be procured with very little trouble.

Sacraments, then, are truly signs from heaven. In no other sphere of human transactions does the external sign become such an efficient messenger of the internal reality. There is in Article Three of the same Question a passage of Saint Thomas which may be called truly classical as stating the power of signification proper to the sacraments:

My answer is, that, as has been already said, the sacrament, properly so-called, is a thing ordained to signify our sanctification; in which three phases may be taken into consideration, namely: the cause of our sanctification, which is the passion of Christ; the essence of our sanctification, which consists in grace and virtue; and then the ultimate goal of our sanctification, which is eternal life. Now all these are signified by the sacraments. Therefore a sacrament is a commemorative sign of what has gone before, in this case the passion of Christ, a demonstrative sign of what is being effected in us through the passion of Christ, that is grace, and a prognostic sign, foretelling our future glory.

Every sacrament, then, has something to declare: it recalls the past, it is the voice of the present, it reveals the future. If the sacrament did not fulfill its function of sign proclaiming something which is not seen, it would not be a sacrament at all. It can embrace heaven and earth, time and eternity, because it is a sign; were it only a grace it would be no more than the gift of the present hour; but being a sign the whole history of the spiritual world is reflected in it: “For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink the chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord, until He come.” What Saint Paul says of the Eucharist about its showing forth a past event is true in other ways of every other sacrament. The passage we have transcribed from Saint Thomas refers to every one of the seven sacraments.

In order to elucidate this all-important role of signification in the sacraments we may make a comparison with the non-sacramental means of grace. If my heart be touched by God’s grace, such a divine action, excellent and wonderful though it be, is not a sign of anything else; it is essentially a spiritual fact of the present moment, and ends, as it were, in itself. It has no relationship of signification to anything else, whether past, present or future.

Such is not the case with the sacraments; through them it becomes possible to focus the distant past and future in the actual present; through them historic events of centuries ago are renewed, and we anticipate the future in a very real way. All this is possible only in virtue of the sacramental sign, which not only records the distant event, but, somewhat like the modern film, projects it upon the screen of the present.

O sacred Banquet, wherein Christ is received, the memory of His passion is recalled, the soul is filled with grace, and there is given to us a pledge of future glory.

This antiphon from the Office of Corpus Christi, when compared with the above text from the Summa, at once betrays its Thomistic origin. But although the Eucharist performs that function of transcendent representation in the spiritual order in a more excellent degree, all the other sacraments do the same in their several ways. All the sacraments enable us to step out of the present.

Much confusion of thought in the doctrine of the sacraments in general, and of the Eucharist in particular, would be spared us if we never let go of that elemental definition of the sacrament, that it is a sign. Whatever reality there is in a sacrament is deeply modified by this role of signification. Baptism, for instance, is not just any kind of cleansing of the soul; its cleansing power is in the burial and resurrection of Christ which is signified in the sacramental rite.

Know you not that all we who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in His death? For we are buried together with Him by baptism into death: that, as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection.

In this text of Saint Paul the elements of past, present and future in our baptismal conformation with Christ are strikingly verified.

The current definition of a sacrament as an external sign of internal grace would certainly be too narrow for Saint Thomas, if by “internal grace” we meant nothing but the actual transformation of the soul. This is, in fact, only one of the things signified. But if by “internal grace” we also mean the cause of grace — Christ’s passion, and the goal of grace — eternal life, then the definition is adequate. But to limit the sacramental power of signification to the present moment, to the transformation of soul which takes place when the sacrament is received, would be an unwarranted minimizing of the sacramental doctrine, and would leave much of our scriptural language unintelligible. How, for instance, could the Eucharist be a memorial of Christ if it were only a supernatural feeding of the soul?

When Our Lord said: “Do this for a commemoration of Me,” He gave the Eucharist an historic import which is not to be found in the spiritual raising up of the individual soul alone. A commemoration is essentially a sign, a monument, something related to a definite person or event of the past.

Saint Thomas lays it down as an axiom that a sacrament is always an object of the senses. A merely spiritual thing, an act of our intellect or will, could never fulfill that role of signification which is so essential to the sacrament. The sign, on the contrary, is an external manifestation of the process of thought and volition: Saint Thomas quotes from Saint Augustine a very succinct definition: “A sign is that which, besides the impression it makes on the senses, puts one in mind of something else.”

When I see the baptismal water poured on the head of the catechumen, and when I hear the words of the priest who does the christening, if I am a man of faith, my mind, roused by these external rites and signs, travels a long way. I go back to the Jordan, where Christ is being baptized; I go back to Calvary, where blood and water issue from the side of Christ; my mind leaps forward to that people who stand before the Throne of God in white robes which have been washed in the Blood of the Lamb; and, more audacious still, my mind gazes right into the innermost soul of the catechumen and distinguishes that soul from all non-baptized souls, through that spiritual seal which makes it a member of Christ. The sacramental sign is pregnant with all that spiritual vision of my faith. In the order of signs, of course, we include words as well as things; both are, in fact, objects of our senses, and the words are generally necessary to make more precise the signification of the thing. `A repetition of words, when words are added to the visible things in sacraments, is not superfluous, because one receives determination through the other.”

In a text already quoted Saint Thomas makes a clear-cut distinction between the two roads which lie before us, and which lead directly to the passion of Christ: the act of the soul, and the use of external things. The former is faith, the latter is the sacrament. Let us give this distinction its full value. The external things are as solid a road to Christ as the act of the soul. The sacramental signs, which are the external things alluded to by the Angelic Doctor, have become, in God’s Providence, a distinct supernatural world, as real as the supernatural world of graces given to the souls of men.

At the same time, those sacred signs differ radically from the acts of man’s soul performed under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They are visible, palpable realities, not breathings of the Spirit in the hearts of men. They are not mere aids to man’s memory; they are not just opportune reminders of the invisible. “If anyone says that sacraments have been instituted solely for the purpose of fostering faith, let him be anathema.” External things have been taken hold of by God as directly as men’s souls. Like this visible planet of ours, the supernatural world of salvation is divided into land and water. The graces of the Holy Spirit are the water; the external things, the sacraments, are the land.

Posted in Abbot Vonier, Sacraments | Tagged Faith and sacraments, Sacrament as a protestation of the faith, Sacramental Signification, Sacraments, Sacraments as an extension of the Incarnation, signs from heaven, What Sacraments Declare | Leave a Comment »

Faith And The Sacraments – Abbot Vonier

January 12, 2012

Carl Heinrich Bloch, Marriage At Cana

In 1865 Bloch was assigned to illustrate the life of Christ, in a series of 23 paintings for the King’s Praying Chamber in Frederiksborg Castle Chapel, Denmark. It would take Bloch almost fourteen years to complete the commission. The resulting paintings would define his career and would be complemented by eight altar pieces and an outstanding series of 78 etchings, influenced by Rembrandt’s depictions of Christ.

Following the premature death of his wife in 1886 he was left with the responsibility of his eight children. The grief and stress proved to be too much and he died of stomach cancer in 1890 at the age of 56. In addition to his Biblical art, Bloch was renowned as a genre and portrait painter and served under various positions at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

Bloch’s painting ‘Marriage At Cana’ (above) depicts the reaction of the servers as they realize the water has been transformed into wine. The figure of Christ looks on from a distance from his seat at the wedding table. The masterly use of lighting bathes Jesus and the wedding guests in bright daylight as one of the servers in the foreground points to the source of the miracle.
From The Bible Illustration Blog

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The Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist is a particular instance of the more universal question of the mode of our union with Christ. We take for granted the Incarnation and the Atonement on the Cross; we take for granted that the Son of God through His death has redeemed mankind in general and has satisfied for sin; we know that in Christ there is plentiful redemption; such things are for us unchallengeable and universal articles of belief which may be called God’s side of the matter, that aspect of truth which is turned heavenward.

But the universal truths thus enunciated leave untouched that other problem of our own individual share in the treasures of redemption — how do individual men come into contact with that great Christ who is our Redemption personified? There is evidently in the Christian doctrine of redemption an element so absolute that it stands by itself, quite independent of man’s benefit therefrom. Before it is at all possible to think of man’s enrichment through the grace of Christ’s redemption we have to assume that much greater result of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross which is aptly expressed in the term “Atonement,” by which is meant, not directly the benefit of man, but the benefit of God: that full restoration of what had been taken from God through man’s sin, His honor and glory. Christ’s act on the Cross has given back to the Father all that was ever taken away from Him by man, and the divine rights have been fully restored.

It is not an absurd hypothesis to think of Christ’s great act of atonement as having an exclusively divine side — that is to say, Christ could have died on the Cross with the exclusive purpose of giving back to the Father all the glory which He had lost through man’s transgression, without the human race being in any way the better for it. But this is merely an hypothesis, though a perfectly rational one.

Actually Catholic doctrine says that Christ’s sacrifice, besides being an atonement, was also a redemption — in other words, a buying back into spiritual liberty of the human race which had become the slave of evil. But even this aspect of Christ’s divine act, though a perfectly human one, is still too universal; salvation is primarily for mankind as a species; the entry of the individual into the redemptive plan remains to be effected.

The urgent problem is, how am I to be linked up effectively with that great mystery of Christ’s death? When shall I know that Christ is not only the Redeemer, but also my Redeemer? Mere membership with the human race does not link me up with Christ, though it be true that Christ died for the whole race. This membership is indeed a condition, sine qua non, of my becoming one day a member of Christ; but a member of Christ I shall not become unless some new realities be brought into play. These new realities which are the link between me and Christ are faith and the sacraments.

“The power of Christ’s passion,” says Saint Thomas, “is linked up with us through faith and through the sacraments. This, however, in different ways: for the linking up which is by faith takes place through an act of the soul, while the linking up which is by the sacraments takes place through the use of external things.”

It is a favorite idea with Saint Thomas, that faith is truly a contact with Christ, a real, psychological contact with Christ, which, if once established, may lead man into the innermost glories of Christ’s life. Without this contact of faith we are dead to Christ, the stream of His life passes us by without entering into us, as a rock in the midst of a river remains unaffected by the turbulent rush of waters. This contact of faith makes man susceptible to the influences of Christ; under normal conditions it will develop into the broader contacts of hope and charity; but it is the first grafting of man on Christ which underlies all other fruitfulness. Till faith be established the great redemption has not become our redemption; the riches of Christ are not ours in any true sense; we are members of the human race, but we are not members of Christ.

It does not belong to my subject to enter into a discussion as to the reasons why one man has faith while another is without faith; nor do I propose to lay down what is that minimum of faith which is indispensable in order to establish true contact between the soul and Christ.

It is sufficient for our purpose to know that a man who has faith has laid his hand on the salvation of Christ. It is the most universal way of coming into touch with the redemption of the Cross; it is a way of approach which is always open, in the past, in the present, in the future. Mary, the Mother of God, through her faith, entered into Christ’s passion in the very moment of time when it took place; Adam, in his very fall, plunged into it headlong; and it will be present to the last human generation through that wonderful act of the soul of which Saint Thomas speaks in the above text. Whether we say that Christ will suffer — passurus est — or whether we say that Christ has suffered — passus est — is quite immaterial to the immediateness of contact by faith. “As the ancient Fathers were saved through faith in the Christ to come, so are we saved through faith in the Christ who has already been born and has suffered.”

I feel that we are less habituated in our times to think of faith as a kind of psychic link between the soul and Christ; yet such is the traditional concept of that wonderful gift. Anyone who has faith is in the supernatural state, and therefore is directly in touch with Christ’s life, even though he be actually in a state of mortal sin.

The Council of Trent has taken great trouble to make clear this point of Catholic moral theology. A man ceases to be Christ’s solely through the sin of infidelity; he does not cease to be Christ’s through any other sin, however heinous. As long as his faith is a true faith he remains a member of Christ’s mystical Body, though there be grievous sores of mortal sin upon his soul. Through that faith, which nothing can kill except the sin of formal infidelity, he keeps so near to the mystery of Christ’s death on the Cross that his recovery from the wounds of sin, however grievous, is a normal process of supernatural life, not strictly miraculous. It is true that the faith of the believing Christian in the state of mortal sin is a fides informis, a faith devoid of the higher vitalities of charity, yet it is a real faith.

Unless we grasp that function of faith as the psychic link between Christ and the soul Catholicism becomes unintelligible. The Church would become, as it did in Lutheran theology, an adventitious association of the elect. But the Church is constituted primarily through faith, and her powers are meant for those who possess that supernatural responsiveness of soul. If we really believe that the Church possesses enough power to wipe away sin, we assume, as well, that sin is compatible with membership in Christ’s mystical Body.

Incorporation into Christ, according to Saint Thomas, has a threefold degree; the first is through faith, the second is through the charity of this life, the third is through the possession of heaven. It is true that the whole tendency of faith is towards charity, that ultimately faith without charity cannot save us; nonetheless, charity cannot exist in man without faith, while there may be true faith in man without actual charity.

All this goes to demonstrate that there is in faith an instrumental power, enabling man to open the door that leads to perfect union with Christ. We cannot speak of such instrumental power in charity, for charity is not a means towards the possession of God; it is, on the contrary, actual possession of God. Saint Thomas calls faith an indispensable endowment of the soul, because it is the beginning or principle of spiritual life.’

This peculiar position of faith in the spiritual order as a kind of tool of supreme excellence will be seen in a clearer light when we come to ask ourselves the question whether there be another kind of means for man to get at Christ’s redemptive life. Once more let it be emphasized that through the possession of charity we do not only contact Christ, we are actually in Christ. Charity is not an instrument, while faith has primarily an instrumental role. Now the sacraments are truly such another set of means for the attainment of that final object, to be united with Christ in charity.

The sacraments complete and render more efficacious that instrumentality of faith just spoken of: they do not supersede the instrumentality of faith, but they make it more real, if possible, and certainly more infallible in its effect. The relative position of faith and the sacraments in bringing about man’s justification through charity is an interesting theological question of which we shall have more to say by-and-by.

The sacraments are essentially sacraments of the faith, sacramenta fidei, as Saint Thomas invariably calls them; both faith and sacraments have that power of divine instrumentality which open to man the treasure-house of Christ’s redemption.

I cannot end this chapter without quoting from Saint Thomas a beautiful passage in which he describes God’s action, which he calls grace, keeping faith alive in the soul, even of the sinner:

Grace produces faith not only when faith begins to exist in the soul for the first time, but also while it habitually abides in the soul…. God brings about the justification of man in the same way as the sun produces light in the air. Grace, therefore, when it strikes with its rays the one who is already a believer is not less efficacious than when it comes for the first time to the unbeliever, because in both it is its proper effect to produce faith: in one case strengthening it and giving it increase, in the other case creating it as an entirely new thing.

The sun of divine grace once above the horizon sends forth its rays of faith into the minds of men, and nothing can resist their light except blind obstinacy and infidelity.

Posted in Abbot Vonier, Sacraments | Tagged atonement, fides informis, Grace, sacramenta fidei, Saint Thomas Aquinas | Leave a Comment »

Pope Benedict on the Epiphany

January 9, 2012

Dream of the Magi, Johann Christoph WEIGEL, Published 1695, Woodcut

The original document is here. Although Benedict is seemingly commenting on the nature of the Bishop’s calling, I couldn’t help but see the comments also apply to Saints as well (which means all of us). More and more as I enter my fourth year of PayingAttentiontotheSky (coming up in February), I’ve begun to see, however obscurely, that what I had intended to be the record of a conversion to Catholicism is not unlike a kind of preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A such, I have joined a long procession, bringing up the rear as it were, of that journey of the wise men from the East.

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The Epiphany is a feast of light. “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Isaiah 60:1). With these words of the prophet Isaiah, the Church describes the content of the feast. He who is the true light, and by whom we too are made to be light, has indeed come into the world. He gives us the power to become children of God (cf. John 1:9,12).

The journey of the wise men from the East is, for the liturgy, just the beginning of a great procession that continues throughout history. With the Magi, humanity’s pilgrimage to Jesus Christ begins – to the God who was born in a stable, who died on the Cross and who, having risen from the dead, remains with us always, until the consummation of the world (cf. Matthew 28:20). The Church reads this account from Matthew’s Gospel alongside the vision of the prophet Isaiah that we heard in the first reading: the journey of these men is just the beginning. Before them came the shepherds – simple souls, who dwelt closer to the God who became a child, and could more easily “go over” to him (Luke 2:15) and recognize him as Lord.

But now the wise of this world are also coming. Great and small, kings and slaves, men of all cultures and all peoples are coming. The men from the East are the first, followed by many more throughout the centuries. After the great vision of Isaiah, the reading from the Letter to the Ephesians expresses the same idea in sober and simple terms: the Gentiles share the same heritage (cf. Ephesians 3:6). Psalm 2 puts it like this: “I shall bequeath you the nations, put the ends of the earth in your possession” (v. 8).

The wise men from the East lead the way. They open up the path of the Gentiles to Christ. During this holy Mass, I will ordain two priests to the episcopate, I will consecrate them as shepherds of God’s people. According to the words of Jesus, part of a shepherd’s task is to go ahead of the flock (cf. John 10:4). So, allowing for all the differences in vocation and mission, we may well look to these figures, the first Gentiles to find the pathway to Christ, for indications concerning the task of bishops.

What kind of people were they? The experts tell us that they belonged to the great astronomical tradition that had developed in Mesopotamia over the centuries and continued to flourish. But this information of itself is not enough. No doubt there were many astronomers in ancient Babylon, but only these few set off to follow the star that they recognized as the star of the promise, pointing them along the path towards the true King and Saviour. They were, as we might say, men of science, but not simply in the sense that they were searching for a wide range of knowledge: they wanted something more.

They wanted to understand what being human is all about. They had doubtless heard of the prophecy of the Gentile prophet Balaam: “A star shall come forth out of Jacob and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel” (Numbers 24:17). They explored this promise. They were men with restless hearts, not satisfied with the superficial and the ordinary. They were men in search of the promise, in search of God. And they were watchful men, capable of reading God’s signs, his soft and penetrating language.

But they were also courageous, yet humble: we can imagine them having to endure a certain amount of mockery for setting off to find the King of the Jews, at the cost of so much effort. For them it mattered little what this or that person, what even influential and clever people thought and said about them. For them it was a question of truth itself, not human opinion. Hence they took upon themselves the sacrifices and the effort of a long and uncertain journey. Their humble courage was what enabled them to bend down before the child of poor people and to recognize in him the promised King, the one they had set out, on both their outward and their inward journey, to seek and to know.

Dear friends, how can we fail to recognize in all this certain essential elements of episcopal ministry? The bishop too must be a man of restless heart, not satisfied with the ordinary things of this world, but inwardly driven by his heart’s unrest to draw ever closer to God, to seek his face, to recognize him more and more, to be able to love him more and more. The bishop too must be a man of watchful heart, who recognizes the gentle language of God and understands how to distinguish truth from mere appearance. The bishop too must be filled with the courage of humility, not asking what prevailing opinion says about him, but following the criterion of God’s truth and taking his stand accordingly – “opportune – importune”. He must be able to go ahead and mark out the path. He must go ahead, in the footsteps of him who went ahead of us all because he is the true shepherd, the true star of the promise: Jesus Christ. And he must have the humility to bend down before the God who made himself so tangible and so simple that he contradicts our foolish pride in its reluctance to see God so close and so small. He must devote his life to adoration of the incarnate Son of God, which constantly points him towards the path.

The liturgy of episcopal ordination interprets the essential features of this ministry in eight questions addressed to the candidates, each beginning with the word “Vultis? – Do you want?” These questions direct the will and mark out the path to be followed. Here I shall briefly cite just a few of the most important words of this presentation, where we find explicit mention of the elements we have just considered in connection with the wise men of today’s feast. The bishops’ task is praedicare Evangelium Christi, it is custodire et dirigere, it is pauperibus se misericordes praebere, it is indesinenter orare.

Preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, going ahead and leading, guarding the sacred heritage of our faith, showing mercy and charity to the needy and the poor, thus mirroring God’s merciful love for us, and finally, praying without ceasing: these are the fundamental features of the episcopal ministry. Praying without ceasing means: never losing contact with God, letting ourselves be constantly touched by him in the depths of our hearts and, in this way, being penetrated by his light. Only someone who actually knows God can lead others to God. Only someone who leads people to God leads them along the path of life.

The restless heart of which we spoke earlier, echoing Saint Augustine, is the heart that is ultimately satisfied with nothing less than God, and in this way becomes a loving heart. Our heart is restless for God and remains so, even if every effort is made today, by means of most effective anaesthetizing methods, to deliver people from this unrest. But not only are we restless for God: God’s heart is restless for us. God is waiting for us. He is looking for us. He knows no rest either, until he finds us.

God’s heart is restless, and that is why he set out on the path towards us – to Bethlehem, to Calvary, from Jerusalem to Galilee and on to the very ends of the earth. God is restless for us, he looks out for people willing to “catch” his unrest, his passion for us, people who carry within them the searching of their own hearts and at the same time open themselves to be touched by God’s search for us. Dear friends, this was the task of the Apostles: to receive God’s unrest for man and then to bring God himself to man. And this is your task as successors of the Apostles: let yourselves be touched by God’s unrest, so that God’s longing for man may be fulfilled.

The wise men followed the star. Through the language of creation, they discovered the God of history. To be sure – the language of creation alone is not enough. Only God’s word, which we encounter in sacred Scripture, was able to mark out their path definitively. Creation and Scripture, reason and faith, must come together, so as to lead us forward to the living God.

There has been much discussion over what kind of star it was that the wise men were following. Some suggest a planetary constellation, or a supernova, that is to say one of those stars that is initially quite weak, in which an inner explosion releases a brilliant light for a certain time, or a comet, etc. This debate we may leave to the experts. The great star, the true supernova that leads us on, is Christ himself. He is as it were the explosion of God’s love, which causes the great white light of his heart to shine upon the world. And we may add: the wise men from the East, who feature in today’s Gospel, like all the saints, have themselves gradually become constellations of God that mark out the path. In all these people, being touched by God’s word has, as it were, released an explosion of light, through which God’s radiance shines upon our world and shows us the path.

The saints are stars of God, by whom we let ourselves be led to him for whom our whole being longs. Dear friends: you followed the star Jesus Christ when you said “yes” to the priesthood and to the episcopacy. And no doubt smaller stars have enlightened and helped you not to lose your way. In the litany of saints we call upon all these stars of God, that they may continue to shine upon you and show you the path. As you are ordained bishops, you too are called to be stars of God for men, leading them along the path towards the true light, towards Christ. So let us pray to all the saints at this hour, asking them that you may always live up to this mission you have received, to show God’s light to mankind.

Posted in Pope Benedict XVI | Tagged The Saints, the Epiphany, the Magi, essential elements of episcopal ministry, Preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, The restless heart | Leave a Comment »

On Lying in Bed – G. K. Chesterton

December 19, 2011

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the premises. I think myself that the thing might be managed with several pails of Aspinall and a broom. Only if one worked in a really sweeping and masterly way, and laid on the color in great washes, it might drip down again on one’s face in floods of rich and mingled color like some strange fairy rain; and that would have its disadvantages. I am afraid it would be necessary to stick to black and white in this form of artistic composition. To that purpose, indeed, the white ceiling would be of the greatest possible use; in fact, it is the only use I think of a white ceiling being put to.

But for the beautiful experiment of lying in bed I might never have discovered it. For years I have been looking for some blank spaces in a modern house to draw on. Paper is much too small for any really allegorical design; as Cyrano de Bergerac says, “Il me faut des géants.” But when I tried to find these fine clear spaces in the modern rooms such as we all live in I was continually disappointed. I found an endless pattern and complication of small objects hung like a curtain of fine links between me and my desire. I examined the walls; I found them to my surprise to be already covered with wallpaper, and I found the wallpaper to be already covered with uninteresting images, all bearing a ridiculous resemblance to each other. I could not understand why one arbitrary symbol (a symbol apparently entirely devoid of any religious or philosophical significance) should thus be sprinkled all over my nice walls like a sort of small-pox.

The Bible must be referring to wallpapers, I think, when it says, “Use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do.” I found the Turkey carpet a mass of unmeaning colors, rather like the Turkish Empire, or like the sweetmeat called Turkish Delight. I do not exactly know what Turkish Delight really is; but I suppose it is Macedonian Massacres. Everywhere that I went forlornly, with my pencil or my paint brush, I found that others had unaccountably been before me, spoiling the walls, the curtains, and the furniture with their childish and barbaric designs.

Nowhere did I find a really clear space for sketching until this occasion when I prolonged beyond the proper limit the process of lying on my back in bed. Then the light of that white heaven broke upon my vision, that breadth of mere white which is indeed almost the definition of Paradise, since it means purity and also means freedom. But alas! like all heavens, now that it is seen it is found to be unattainable; it looks more austere and more distant than the blue sky outside the window. For my proposal to paint on it with the bristly end of a broom has been discouraged — never mind by whom; by a person debarred from all political rights — and even my minor proposal to put the other end of the broom into the kitchen fire and turn it to charcoal has not been conceded.

Yet I am certain that it was from persons in my position that all the original inspiration came for covering the ceilings of palaces and cathedrals with a riot of fallen angels or victorious gods. I am sure that it was only because Michael Angelo was engaged in the ancient and honorable occupation of lying in bed that he ever realized how the roof of the Sistine Chapel might be made into an awful imitation of a divine drama that could only be acted in the heavens.

The tone now commonly taken toward the practice of lying in bed is hypocritical and unhealthy. Of all the marks of modernity that seem to mean a kind of decadence, there is none more menacing and dangerous than the exultation of very small and secondary matters of conduct at the expense of very great and primary ones, at the expense of eternal ties and tragic human morality. If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals. Thus it is considered more withering to accuse a man of bad taste than of bad ethics.

Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made essential and godliness is regarded as an offence. A playwright can attack the institution of marriage so long as he does not misrepresent the manners of society, and I have met Ibsenite pessimists who thought it wrong to take beer but right to take prussic acid. Especially this is so in matters of hygiene; notably such matters as lying in bed. Instead of being regarded, as it ought to be, as a matter of personal convenience and adjustment, it has come to be regarded by many as if it were a part of essential morals to get up early in the morning. It is upon the whole part of practical wisdom; but there is nothing good about it or bad about its opposite.

Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. It is the great peril of our society that all its mechanisms may grow more fixed while its spirit grows more fickle. A man’s minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly; but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon.

This alarming growth of good habits really means a too great emphasis on those virtues which mere custom can ensure, it means too little emphasis on those virtues which custom can never quite ensure, sudden and splendid virtues of inspired pity or of inspired candour. If ever that abrupt appeal is made to us we may fail. A man can get use to getting up at five o’clock in the morning. A man cannot very well get used to being burnt for his opinions; the first experiment is commonly fatal. Let us pay a little more attention to these possibilities of the heroic and unexpected. I dare say that when I get out of this bed I shall do some deed of an almost terrible virtue.

For those who study the great art of lying in bed there is one emphatic caution to be added. Even for those who can do their work in bed (like journalists), still more for those whose work cannot be done in bed (as, for example, the professional harpooners of whales), it is obvious that the indulgence must be very occasional. But that is not the caution I mean. The caution is this: if you do lie in bed, be sure you do it without any reason or justification at all. I do not speak, of course, of the seriously sick. But if a healthy man lies in bed, let him do it without a rag of excuse; then he will get up a healthy man. If he does it for some secondary hygienic reason, if he has some scientific explanation, he may get up a hypochondriac.

Posted in G. K. Chesterton, Reflections | Tagged Lying in bed, wallpaper | 2 Comments »

Death And The Ultimate Fulfillment Of Love – Dietrich von Hildebrand

December 12, 2011

Entombment of Christ Russian Icon Anonymous 15th Century

Let us suppose now that god has granted us the grace of seeing death primarily as the gateway to our eternal blissful union with Jesus, without, however, ignoring all the other aspects. There still remains for us the painful farewell we must bid to persons we deeply love — above all, to the one we love most of all.

Our love for the human persons whom God has given us in a special way continues to exist. It in no way diminishes as our love for Jesus increases, deepens, and becomes more ardent. On the contrary, the greater our love for Jesus, the more deeply are we able to love others in the genuine way that St. Augustine stressed when he spoke of loving others in God. [St. Augustine, Confessions, 4.9]

No love we have for any human person is irreconcilable with the unconditional love of our hearts for Jesus. No matter what kind of love is at stake (spousal, parental, filial, or the love proper to friendship) and no matter how great and deep is the love we have for human persons, so long as it is a love in God and not outside of God, it can grow and intensify along with our love for Jesus. Jesus, therefore, is not the rival or the competitor of beloved human persons.

Our great love for another person, if it is not an amare in Deo — that is, a love consciously and expressly embedded in our love of Jesus — can hinder our absolute devotion to Jesus. This happens when Jesus does not rule our relationship and the harmony of love we feel for each other is not rooted in Jesus. But even here, differences exist. Thus, the passionate response of a love borne only of human impulses is a greater hindrance than a response that maintains a noble spirituality amidst its ardor and that is sanctioned by the inner fiber of our being.

But if even this latter kind of love fails to be an amare in Deo, it, too, in its own way will be a hindrance. The intense love we have for a person who preoccupies us totally is, then, a rival to our absolute devotion to Jesus — and a grave hindrance.

The more we love Jesus, the greater and deeper is our love for specific persons. This latter love, although it is filled with caritas, loses none of its own particular character. Far from devaluing or minimizing our love for human persons, our love of Jesus causes these human loves to be even more themselves, even more brightly and deeply formed.

Love For Particular Persons Must Be Anchored In Jesus
I ask again the question which I posed before: given that death serves as a transition to our blissful union with Jesus, does not death yet continue to be something painful and distressing because it separates us from our loved ones, above all, from the one we love most? Will not our death bring about a twofold sorrow: our own suffering over being separated from those whom we love, and their great sorrow over losing us, even if only for a short time?

Yes, death continues to be painful and should remain so. But the deep sorrow of all concerned is transfigured through the light of Christ. A new dimension in our human relationship mysteriously emerges alongside the sorry realities of death (the disappearance of the dead person and the radical, although only temporary, rupture of our communion of love). Let us see why this is so.

All humans — and thus all those to whom we are especially tied by a great love are associated in a profound way with Jesus Christ. The very raison d’etre for humans is precisely their achievement of the Beatific Vision and their union with Jesus, and “in Him, through Him, and with Him,” with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

I have already pointed out that any deep human love, and most especially the exclusive love of married couples, must be anchored in Jesus if it is to be truly and fully itself. Any deep love not so anchored has come to a standstill.

Love has two innermost tendencies or intentions: union and benevolence, which can almost be spoken of as the genius of love. These can develop fully only when the lovers meet each other in Christ, only when their love is anchored in Jesus.

The Profoundest Love Union Is Possible Only In Jesus
The intention of union falls short of its complete goal unless it reaches into that deepest chamber of the loved one’s soul to which Christ alone has the key. Each soul’s relationship to Jesus resides in this most central and important chamber, this incomparably profound place in each human heart. For those who have not found Christ and who do not love Him reverently as the God-Man, this chamber remains empty. If we love such persons, we can never penetrate into this deepest region; we cannot achieve the deepest possible union with them. Despite all our longing for perfect union, we remain on the threshold of our beloved.

If, however, our beloved has found Jesus, then the eternally beloved Bridegroom of my soul dwells in her inmost soul, too. Our love can then be anchored in Jesus, and the ardent yearning we feel for deepest union with each other can now be realized — in Jesus, and in nothing else.

Only Jesus Can Give Our Beloved Ultimate Happiness
This applies analogously also to the intention of benevolence, whereby we desire the greatest happiness for our beloved and we wish to provide her all good things. In our loving embrace of her total being, an outspoken affirmation of her is included. But this is possible only if we understand that she has been created for Jesus and belongs to Him.

Only Jesus can bestow ultimate happiness on her and, what is more, eternal bliss. Every deep love anchored in Jesus necessarily includes, moreover, an inner gesture that would blissfully fulfill this being ordered toward God of each of the lovers. The lovers participate in this mysterious solidarity in a way that far exceeds mere knowledge, for it is accomplished in Jesus

This is the highest fulfillment of love’s intention of benevolence, of our burning desire to see eternal bliss as the lot of our Precious beloved. It is also a blissful participation on our part in the deepest meaning of her mysterious existence. We exprience this mutual achievement also as part of the high point of our intention of union, indeed as the final fulfillment of our love for her.

Thus, all the lines of life converge in Jesus, who is the king and center of all hearts. This fact consoles us when we must face sad absences and, especially, the cruel separation of death. This fact also plays a key role in every earthly love of ours which is anchored in Jesus.

In my book on love, I show how one important dimension of every love is the “face-to-face” mutual glance of love — the I-Thou relation between the partners. This glance will in no way be diminished when my love for another is anchored in Jesus.

Love Yearns For The Beloved’s Perfect Union With Jesus
My participation in her being ordered toward God does not negate or conceal our mutual surrender to each other. Direct unity in Jesus would never be perfect if my beloved’s participation in the final association with Jesus and love of Him were not proposed. From its significance in and of itself, the unity of convergence belongs also to the perfect direct unity of love in Jesus — as a participation in the most profound theme of my loved one and in spite of the deep, formal difference existing between unity of convergence and direct unity.

We deal here with two different dimensions of love. In the one, we exchange mutual glances of love in Jesus. In the other — impelled by love — I participate in the being ordered toward God of my beloved and she reciprocates by participating in my own being ordered toward God. We are thus united in an ultimate convergence — of interests, welfare, and destiny. Each shares with the other the perfect fulfillment of each one’s destiny: the loving union with Jesus and, through Him, with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Even so, I must emphasize again that this union rooted in convergence in no way conceals or erases the mutual frontal glance — the I-thou relation — of the lovers who love each other in Christ. In fact, the unity of convergence belongs also to the perfect frontal union in Jesus. The latter would never be perfect if it lacked my participation in my beloved’s ultimate being ordered toward God. The unity of convergence, therefore, has a double importance: in itself it represents my participation in the deepest theme of my beloved. Second, it forms part of the perfect I-thou unity of love in Jesus.

In a certain way, of course, my participation in the being ordered toward God of my beloved represents the crowning achievement of love, the last word of love, the final statement which I direct toward her. For this is the ultimate theme of her existence: something, moreover, willed by God and accomplished in and through Jesus. I am united with her in her destiny. And — great gift of God! — the convergence is reciprocated: she unites with me in the achievement of my ultimate goal.

This union is unique because it has to do with the most valid, most profound, and most characteristic reality, i.e., the question of the vocation and destiny of man, the original theme of humanity. This theme begins, indeed, on the natural plane but then goes far beyond into unapproachable and mysterious heights. St. Augustine says of the Beatific Vision: Ibi vacabimus et videbimus; videbimus et amabimus; amabimus et laudabimus. Ecce quod erit in fine sine fine. (“There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what shall be in the end without end.”) [The City of God]

This vision is simultaneously the most intimate and private and also the most open of all things (in the sense of a holy openness). It means first of all the most profound union between God and the individual soul, immersed, as it were, in secret and intimate delights. But it also signifies that which we ultimately have most in common with all other persons. It is thus the culmination both of our union with Jesus, in which everything else fades away, and of our most profound communion with all other persons. With respect to this latter, however, we must note that our oneness with those we love above all, with the one we love most of all — is again something distinct and unique. Quanto notiores, tanto cariores, says St. Augustine: “The better they are known, the dearer they become.” [St. Augustine, Epistola, 92.1]

As I have stressed above, my beloved and I are joined in looking at Jesus and rejoicing in Him in a way that does not cancel the direct and mutual glance of love between us. This rejoicing in unison is rather the culmination of our mutual love. The thou which each of us is to the other is not set aside; rather a sublime we is born out of the most profound I-thou relationship, fulfilling and completing the deepest theme of love.

As a result, when the hour of death strikes for one of us and we accomplish the decisive face-to-face meeting with Jesus in the communion of love which is the destiny and goal of us all, a truly new dimension of communion with our beloved is actualized. The sorrows of death, illuminated now by the ultimate reality of eternal light, are transfigured.

“Behold, The Bridegroom Cometh!”
The Christian view of death is wonderfully expressed by the words: “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh! Go forth to meet Him! [Matthew 25:6] We must attend now to what the last few words mean. Here we are at the hour of death, at the very moment of death. All our faculties fade and disappear.

Then the words are heard, summoning us to a spontaneous act of cooperation: our meeting with Jesus. What a wonderful, mysterious hurrying is urged on our soul — to hasten toward our Redeemer, our Bridegroom, our Lover! Here, indeed, is a victory over the dreadful natural aspect of death and a victory that we ourselves experience. The Christian view of death stands forth in all its glory, the fruit of a strong and deep faith, of an ardent, yearning, and impatient love, and a hope that is now victorious.

Our love for Jesus includes many different stages. We start with a reverent kind of love which wills to follow Jesus, animated by His words: “You are my friends if you do the things I command you.” [John 15:14] And it ends with the ardent surrender of our hearts to Jesus in a most intimate relationship: “My heart hath said to Thee, I have sought Thy face! Thy face, O Lord, I will seek: turn not away Thy face from me!” [Introit of the Mass for the Sunday after the Ascension: Tibi dixit cor meum, quaesivi vultum tuum; vultum tuum, Domine, requiram: ne avertas faciem tuam a me. (Cf. Psalms 26:8.)]

These heartfelt words express the high point of the intention of union. Our yearning for Jesus springs from a personal, intimate, ardent and profound love. It moves us to utter the following prayer:

In hora mortis meae voca me.
Et jube me venire ad te,
Ut cum sanctis tuis laudem te
In saecula saeculorum. [Conclusion of the medieval prayer, Anima Christi]

In the hour of my death call me
And bid me come to Thee,
That with the saints, I may praise Thee
Forever and ever! Amen.

Let us note the ardor and impatience in the request, “Bid me come to Thee!” Such overflowing and impatient love is the very soul of the glorious Christian view of death, causing our hearts to tremble in jubilation at the words: “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh! Go forth to meet Him!”

Posted in Dietrich von Hildebrand | Tagged death, Perfect Union With Jesus, The Ultimate Fulfillment Of Love | Leave a Comment »

Death As Our True Awakening – Dietrich von Hildebrand

December 9, 2011

Noel Coypel, The Resurrection Of Christ, 1700

These last few posts have come from von Hildebrand’s classic little book concerning death which was written shortly (completed in two weeks) before his own death when he was eighty-six years old. We are reminded that only through the darkness of death do we enter the light of eternal life. An eternal life offered by our faith in God, in the resurrection of the body, and in reunion through Christ with our beloved dead.

———————————————-

The supernatural view of death in a certain sense sees our earthly existence as a being asleep, and considers death to be the beginning of our awakening. Death begins a mode of existence for our personal being which has an intensity and awareness beyond our ability to imagine.

Death begins that incomprehensible bliss of eternal union with Jesus which is suggested by St. Thomas Aquinas in his hymn, Adoro Te Devote:

Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio,
Oro, fiat illud, quod tam sitio:
Lit, to revelata cernens facie,
Visu sim beatus tuae gloriae.

Jesus! Whom for the present veil’d I see,
What I so thirst for, O, vouchsafe to me:
That I may see Thy countenance unfolding,
And may be blest Thy glory in beholding.

Similarly, St. Teresa of Avila, in speaking of an advanced stage of mystical experience, compares its extraordinary ecstasy (which she describes as an elevation into Heaven) with death (that is to say, with the bliss we hope to attain after death).

The Transiency Of Life And The Rhythm Of Decay
Earlier, we witnessed a mysterious contradiction inherent in the natural aspect of death. We must return to this feature in examining the relationship existing between the fearful natural aspect of death and the supernatural aspect: on the one hand, we experience the transiency and impermanence of earthly things and, on the other, the hint or promise of an incomparably better world, a world of completion and fulfillment.

There is a bitter French adage which expresses the transiency of life and all earthly things, including the most touching and beautiful: “Tout lasse, tout casse, tout passe; it n’y a que le souvenir qui reste.” (“Everything declines, everything shatters, everything passes, and only memories remain.”) This is a grim truth, never to be minimized or forgotten. At the same time, however, the very earthly experiences which move us to repeat the adage carry with them the hint and the promise mentioned above.

I speak here of experiences involving all great values: sublime beauty, deep loves, and above all, the transcendent splendor of true morality. All these shine forth with a promise of intransiency — of permanence.

Goethe rightly says of the blissful glance of mutual love that it must be eternal; otherwise it would be nothing. ["Let this gaze,/ This pressure of my hands express to you/ What is ineffable:/ To give one's whole soul and feel/ An ecstasy that must endure forever!" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, trans. Walter Arndt, ed. Cyrus Hamlin (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976)]

The human heart has an ambivalent attitude toward change and permanence. On the one hand, we seem to require change. If we cling always to one and the same old thing, we become indifferent to its value. We long for change and we feel the attraction of what is new and unknown. On the other hand, we also experience the tragedy of impermanence. We see change as something deeply painful. We think that only a superficial person would look upon change as attractive or desirable. Change is life’s tragedy just as the bitter adage expresses it.

Complaints about change and impermanence often flow from sad experiences of life. How many lovers are there whose loved ones have proven unfaithful! How many serious promises have been broken by the fickleness of the human heart! How often does a change in circumstances cause something to lose its high value for us! How many good plans come to nothing; how many once promising conversions fail to be fulfilled!

We must see that many things are of their very nature unchangeable. In and of themselves, in their essence, values such as justice and kindliness cannot change; nor can the beauty of purity, the moving sublimity of trust and generosity. These bear within themselves the promise of an eternal existence which awaits us. Not only moral values but also the great beauty of art and nature, metaphysical truth, and, above all, love: all these are permanent in their nature and all point to a world beyond this earthly one.

But the bearers of these values can and do change. They are subject to the rhythm of inconstancy and decay. A good man can experience grave moral failure, can forfeit his virtue. A splendid landscape can be destroyed by natural forces or by industrial “progress.” A magnificent palace, a fine church, or a wonderful piece of sculpture can be destroyed. A painting of peerless beauty can go up in flames. This rhythm of decay permeates all the known world and is especially evident in the relentless rhythm of life and death which dominates all living creatures on earth.

Our Longing For Permanence
A similar rhythm often reaches into the human heart and causes to fade away those attitudes whose very essence and meaning are such that they should remain constant.

But this is not inevitably the case with all hearts. Decay and inconstancy do belong to the very nature of natural living things and render inevitable the rhythm of life and death and endless change. Not so with certain human hearts: some are constant. They embody attitudes whose essences point to eternity. They are faithful all life long. There are promises that are never broken and loves that last until the dying breath of the lovers, that exhibit a moving and absolute fidelity.

During our lifetime, therefore, two contrasting melodies sound in our ear: the song of impermanence and the song of eternal duration. They contradict each other only when one of them makes an all-encompassing claim. Reality presents us with some things impermanent by nature but also with other things that ought to endure. No doubt everything in life fades away. This is not tragic in itself even if the process of fading away contains so many mysteries of a metaphysical nature. But there are other things which, although they can fade away, can and ought to endure. Something is wrong when they fail to endure.

Here we touch on the most profound aspect of our personal being: here the fading away becomes something tragic. There lives deep within the human soul a longing for the continuance of the soul, for eternal life. We seldom focus explicitly on the boundless benefit of personal existence, but at times it comes vividly before our minds. Like the peal of an organ, it echoes through our entire life.

Part of the tragic aspect of our earthly life centers precisely on the fading away of attitudes which can and should be constant. I am thinking here of our fidelity to God and to the persons for whom God has planted a deep love within our heart: how often have we ourselves allowed these to become faint, if not to fade altogether away! So, too, we witness a similar infidelity in others. Attitudes within them which should have endured forever come tragically to an end.

Even though their earthly bearers are all too changeable, the permanent things (such as metaphysical truths, moral values, and other values which are eternal as such) announce a message that contradicts the naive aspect of our own death, the death of all other human beings, and particularly, the death of those we deeply love.

Death’s Meaning As A Punishment For Sin
The light of Christ effects a radical change in the totality of our earthly life and, especially, in death. It changes also the two songs — of transiency and permanence. In the light of divine Revelation, death, which often enough is linked with great physical suffering, is a punishment for Original Sin. [St. Augustine, The City of God, 13.7.] According to Christian teaching, in the Garden of Paradise there was to be no death, with all its terror, but rather a blessed, peaceful transition from the status viae to the status finalis — from pilgrimage to final goal.

Precisely because death is a punishment, it loses the note of meaninglessness that characterizes the fact that a lower element destroys something higher and much more precious. There is a deep meaning to suffering understood as a punishment from God: it reveals God’s basic attitude toward human guilt. Thus, out of the bleakness of the inevitable rhythm taking place apart from and beyond everything of value, death is inexplicably brought into the bright light of the great, basic contrast between good and evil.

Death’s Meaning As The Moment Of Our Judgment
The natural aspect of death undergoes a second change as a result of faith, a change even greater than its being seen as a punishment for sin. For after death comes the great decision about our eternal destiny. The need to die is now our common human destiny. It is the punishment for Adam’s sin.

Still more important, the judgment that awaits each of us after death decides whether or not we shall put on the festive garment of eternal, unbounded happiness. Did a given man die in the state of grace, in the basic attitude of knowing and loving God? Or did he sin against the light, reject God — and then die impenitent? The judgment of each individual leads either to eternal damnation or to eternal bliss. We therefore await it with both fear and hope.

From this perspective, death is not at all what it seems to be to a naive, natural consciousness. Death now sorts out what really matters. Now what matters is how we have lived our earthly life. What has deeply moved us here? What have we done here? What have we failed to do? The worthless things, of course, which appealed to us because of some pleasant feature, now sink into insignificance. This is especially true of all the worldly interests which smothered us in so many details.

The deep questions, however, remain. Did we give to God’s commandments the responses we should have given? Did we long to be transformed in Christ? Have we really tried to live according to this viewpoint? All such matters now take on a true, extraordinary, and profoundly valid significance.

Many of us fail to understand the importance our conduct has in God’s eyes. We don’t take ourselves (and our conduct) seriously. We deem anthropocentric the idea that our lives possess a moral and religious significance important to God. Indeed, we may allege it to be incompatible with God’s infinite majesty that He should even notice our conduct, much less be “bothered” with it.

But this is a fatal error, a blind, stupid attitude. St. Augustine exclaims that God is a Deus vivens et videns — “a living and a seeing God” [St. Augustine, Sermon 69.3] God is infinitely holy. According to St. John, “God is love.” [1 John 4:8] God takes humanity seriously, so much so that He attributes the highest significance to the question of moral good and evil. God, who knows everything, knows everything about each of us. We can conceal nothing from His perfect gaze.

Thus the Psalmist says, “Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy face? If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there; and if I descend into Hell, Thou art there also!” [Psalms 139:7-8] Christ has himself taught us that the very hairs on our head are numbered. [Luke 12:7]

God’s incomprehensible greatness is expressed by His taking seriously the humanity created in His image. This greatness finds, as it were, its highest expression in the absolute significance God attributes to the conduct of human beings. We are endowed with free will; we are confronted with the conflict between good and evil, with the axis of the spiritual universe. We must indeed tremble before God’s judgment as before something awesome and crucial.

But how dreadful would it be if there were no divine judgment, if God were indifferent to sin, indifferent to how we used our free will! Does not God’s judgment show forth His infinite love in the ultimate seriousness with which He regards the depths of our soul?

All these considerations show us that the light of Revelation affords us a view of death far different from the naive and natural view. Dying now is seen, not as a fearful and mysterious going down into nothingness, but as a door opening to the status finalis and to the fulfillment of our deepest longings. In Jesus, the mercy of God is illuminated for us. The Church prays, Deus, qui omnipotentiam team parcendo maxime et miserando manifestas! (“O God! Thy almighty power is made most evident in Thy mercy and compassion! ,) [Prayer in the Mass for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost]

In accord with this prayer, that aspect of death which sees it as the door to eternal bliss should outshine all other considerations.

All Christians must strive to succeed in the great task of having this victorious aspect of death outshine the natural aspect of death’s fearful inevitability. This latter view is a threat to death’s glorious mission to allow the marriage of the soul with the Bridegroom. As we strive to make our own this supernatural view of death, our constant prayer must be: “May God grant us this grace — to be led by death to the Bridegroom!“

Posted in Dietrich von Hildebrand | Tagged death, Dietrich von Hildebrand, The supernatural view of death, Death as a mode of existence, Adoro Te Devote, impermanence, eternal duration | Leave a Comment »

Christian Hope – Dietrich von Hildebrand

December 8, 2011

Andrei Rublev (c. 1360/70-1430), Christ in Majesty, 1408

We can recognize in the life off any given saint various periods: times of great aridity are followed by times of mystical grace. In a similar way, there are times when the thought of death causes our heart to tremble, such as when we think of the hour of judgment. At other times the thought of death brings with it an ardent longing of the eternal union in love with Jesus. Both attitudes can exist in simultaneously in the soul in such a way that the blissful aspect — which is deeply tied to hope — is dominant.

To grasp this, we must consider hope in general, and then come to understand its significance in the relationship of Christians to eternity.

First, we must distinguish hope from all apparently similar attitudes (such as expectation and desire) and then distinguish between the hope of a nonbeliever and that of a Christian. Finally, we must distinguish natural hope from supernatural hope, the latter being one of the three theological virtues.

The Nature Of Hope
Hope is one of those basic attitudes without which human life would be unendurable, even impossible. I refer here to an attitude adopted in certain situations when we are faced with the uncertain outcome of an undertaking. In such situations, we hope for a favorable outcome even if all reasonable calculations are against it. This is especially the case when we are threatened with a great misfortune or when we are gravely concerned over the serious illness of someone we love. Despite our slim chances of escaping the misfortune in the first instance or of recovery in the second, we still feel hope.

Whenever he feels hope, even an atheist — or at least someone who reckons himself an atheist — is counting on the intervention of an all-good, all-powerful Being. Hope can exist even when misfortune seems inevitable according to the normal rules of cause and effect.

Hope is one of those basic human attitudes in which we see our primordial link with God our undeniable metaphysical situation of creaturehood and our total dependence on God – win acceptance over all theories and opinions. We may speak and sometimes even think like an atheist, but in times of great danger we rely on the power and benevolence of God to save us. Our earthly life would be unendurable if we lacked this kind of hope — unless a deceptive form of optimism took its place.

Optimism Differs From Hope
The purely human form of optimism must be sharply distinguished even from the natural hope which we have been discussing. Optimists are like certain weighted toys: they always land on their feet when they fall down. People with hope, on the contrary, become more aware of things; their spirits rise when they break through the boundaries and limits in which they have enclosed themselves. A faint light rises to illumine everything taking place. Hope is a specifically spiritual attitude, an awakening in the face of great trials.

On the other hand, the human optimism that carries us through trials is based on a great illusion. It is not a spiritual attitude but a result of one’s temperament; it is blind to the metaphysical situation of mankind. People filled with genuine hope become more attractive by reason of that hope. Seeing them moves us, whereas those filled with a merely vital optimism (arising from their temperament) do not impress us at all. They definitely do not become more attractive but, rather, they cause in us a certain amount of amusement.

Through hope, persons become more objective; they tower over the subjective world around them. Through mere human optimism, they become subjective: they misinterpret reality and become victims of their own merely human tendencies and desires.

Christian Hope Includes A Value-Response To God
Natural hope, already something noble, takes on another characteristic for a Christian. Christian hope does not, like natural hope, merely presuppose silently and objectively the Providence of a loving God. It is based, above all, on a conscious, express response to a merciful God who has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ.

This supernatural hope is most closely tied to prayers of petition which we address to an almighty, infinitely good God. We beg God to grant us the happy outcome of an event of great concern to us, or we beg Him to prevent some awful misfortune.

In other words, hope always contains a value-response. Even though its formal object is what is objectively good for me, hope is also a response to God’s infinite goodness and to His loving-kindness.

Right here lies the decisive difference between hope and all wishing and expectation. There is no value-response in expectation. The certainty that something will happen is a purely theoretical response, somehow rooted in our knowledge. Wishing, too, though it may be an affective response, is yet not necessarily a value-response.

We may hope for some outcome which is not only a great benefit to ourselves but also associated with important values, with things which are good quite independent of any good bestowed on us. This is also the case with wishing: we may wish for the success of some important enterprise just because it is good, and not because it confers any benefit on us.

But in this present analysis of hope as a value-response, I am not concerned with what might be called the formal object of some response, whether hoping or wishing or willing. I refer rather to hope as a response to God’s loving-kindness. Like a prayer of petition, hope responds to the infinite goodness of God.

The value-response in hope is, therefore, unique, for it is not addressed to the value of some desired goal. It is addressed rather to God, the basis of hope, the Reality who makes hope meaningful and possible. Hope thus has quite a different relationship to value than the one we find in reverence, love, or adoration. The relationship in hope is our counting on the infinite loving-kindness and almighty power of God. We have confidence and faith in these divine attributes.

Christian Hope Is Directed To Our Union With Jesus
The theological virtue of hope is directed toward an eternal, blissful union with Jesus and — in and through Him — with God the Father. This supernatural hope deeply modifies a Christian believer’s view of death.

Eternal bliss is the highest objective benefit for a human being. This benefit presupposes an ultimate and ardent love of Christ and of God in and through Christ. The eternal, indestructible union of love with Jesus precisely constitutes the Beatific Vision, and it would not be beatific if we did not love God above all else.

Our hope of eternal bliss, therefore, presupposes the value-response of love for God. God himself desires this highest good for humanity and has intended us for it. If, through our own fault, we forfeit this good, this must be in God’s eyes, too, a great misfortune.

When our concerns center around earthly benefits or misfortunes — hopes for the greatest good thing or the prevention of the most dreadful kind of misfortune — our prayers should always end with the qualification, “Yet, not my will be done, O Lord, but Thine!”[Luke 22:42] Our hope that God may grant us the good thing or avert the misfortune is also the basis of the act whereby we surrender totally to God’s will.

When, however, our hope concerns our eternal salvation, it makes no sense to pray, “Lord, grant me eternal bliss; yet, let not my will be done, but Thine.” The point here is not that we are certain that we can pass safely though the judgment when we stand before God. We are in fact uncertain. It may be that we shall forfeit eternal union with God because of our sins. Yet this lack of certainty about our own salvation in no way is equivalent to praying, when it comes to our own salvation, “Not my will be done, O Lord, but Thine!”

We cannot doubt that God wants us to long for eternal bliss with all our heart. Not to do so would be a dreadful sin. Only through our sins — offenses against God can we forfeit our eternal bliss.

In this context we must see that the thought that we might renounce our own eternal salvation for the sake of someone else necessarily leads to an absurdity. When St. Paul exclaims that he is willing to be damned if this would effect the conversion and salvation of his blood-brothers, the Jews, we must see this as a moving expression of his love for them. But such a renunciation, taken literally, is strictly impossible.

There can be no trade-off here between some good for me which I renounce so as to procure some greater good for my brothers. At stake now is eternal salvation. The only way I can lose this, in contrast to any natural good, is through sin. It is absurd to imagine that God would “reward” with the eternal punishment of Hell the almost excessive generosity of a person who loves others with such unselfish devotion.

No, our hope of eternal salvation presupposes not only the loving value-response to God; it also presupposes an awareness of the infinite, objective value of our eternal beatitude which God wills, and which itself both presupposes and includes the glorification of God which takes place through us. We then can see that hope in our eternal beatitude differs from the hope directed toward all other beneficial goods for us. Moreover, we see its incomparable value because it is rooted in the highest, the most fundamental value-response: the love of God and the love of neighbor.

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The Death Of My Beloved Is The Greatest Of Sorrows — Dietrich von Hildebrand

December 7, 2011

Pope John Paul II greatly admired the work of von Hildebrand, remarking once to von Hildebrand’s widow, Alice von Hildebrand, “Your husband is one of the great ethicists of the twentieth century.” Pope Benedict XVI has a particular admiration and regard for Dietrich von Hildebrand, whom he already knew as a young priest in Munich. In fact, as young Fr. Ratzinger, he even served as an assistant pastor in the church of St. Georg in Munich, which von Hildebrand frequented in the 1950s and 1960s

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Compared to the death of my beloved, what are all other evils and sufferings of life? This vale of tears certainly has for us a vast number and variety of sorrows — from loss of sight and the serious pains that rack our body to imprisonment in a , concentration camp and the dreadful sufferings entailed by such a fate. But the loss of a beloved person follows a different course. It does not involve bodily sufferings, nor the loss of the obviously good things of life. No, the death of my beloved concerns an incredibly blissful, purely positive treasure. It marks the end of a natural spring of joy.

We touch here upon the sinister fate of all human beings: death, which hangs like the sword of Damocles over every human life. Each of us lives in umbra mortis, in the dread shadow of death. Compared to the death of someone I love, all other sufferings are merely incidental. Death threatens each of us essentially; no one is exempt. I am constantly aware that my beloved comes closer to death with each passing day. I know that death may snatch her away tomorrow.

Someone who has never known an ultimate love in this life who has never given his heart to another human who has loved him in return, knows nothing of the fundamental horror with which the death of a beloved person surrounds us.

Now lifeless in shape is my loved one’s body, which had been always included in my love (even in that non-marital form of love in which the intention of union does not aim at corporal union). Her body which formerly was filled with the nobility of her precious personality is now subject to a dreadful kind of decay and decomposition. Her soul has vanished into an unattainable distance and is radically cut off from us. My incomprehensible, puzzling dread of death remains in its natural aspect despite my conviction that her soul continues to exist.

St. Augustine speaks in a unique way in his Confessions of the night of suffering into which he was plunged by the death of his friend: “At this grief, my heart was utterly darkened; and whatever I beheld was death. My native country was a torment to me, and my father’s house a strange unhappiness; and whatever I had shared with him, wanting him, became a distracting torture. Mine eyes sought him everywhere, but he was not granted them; and I hated all places, for that they had not him; nor could they now tell me, `he is coming,’ as when he was alive and absent. I became a great riddle to myself, and I asked my soul why she was so sad and why she disquieted me sorely: but she knew not what to answer me.”[ St Augustine, Confessions]

Seeing death as a happy liberation from the prison of the body (an idea which Socrates defends. See Plato, Phaedo, 63E-69E) makes sense only for my own death, but never for the death of a dearly beloved person. When I mentally anticipate my own death ante mortem — before my death — I do not experience that bewildering loneliness, that heart-breaking contrast between the unimportant things that go on living and the bleak present, now that the light of my beloved has ceased to shine.

In the case of my own death, love retreats entirely into the background. But the death of my beloved overwhelms me post mortem — after her death. The joy I once knew in her living presence is replaced by the horror of separation, by the dread of death as the great enemy of love and human happiness.

Only Faith Affords Consolation When My Beloved Dies
For a person who loves deeply but knows only death’s natural aspect, even one day’s happiness is incomprehensible and, in fact, impossible if he has only a rational belief in the soul’s immortality to oppose to the frightful character of death. Only faith in God, in Christ, and in Christian Revelation can confront this natural viewpoint in a victorious way. The Preface for the Requiem Mass of the Tridentine Liturgy admirably states: “In the same Christ the hope of a blessed resurrection has dawned for us, bringing all who are under the certain, sad sentence of death the consoling promise of future immortality.“ [Ut, quos contristat certa moriendi conditio, eosdem consoletur futurae immortalitatis promissio ]

Even this faith, of course, is only a solace, a consolation: it does not take away the fearfulness of death. To be sure, the sting of death is removed but death is not thereby stripped of its character as a punishment. For all the promises of immortality, it yet remains a great misfortune to someone whom we deeply love and, less dramatically, to anyone we love in any way.

With profundity, Novalis writes about Christ:

Without you what would I have been?
What without you might I be?
A prey to fear and dread and sin,
I’d stand alone and nothing see.
For me no love would be secure,
The future but a dark abyss.
And if my sad heart could not endure,
To whom would I go? Whence my bliss?

The death of a dearly beloved person will once again be our theme when we view it, later on, from the supernatural standpoint expressed in the words: “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh! Go forth to meet Him!” [Matthew 25:6]

Fear Of Death May Not Lead To Understanding Of It
We all know, of course, that someday we shall die. But not many of us focus on this fact day after day. The majority of people are not very conscious of their inevitable death so long as they are in good health and so long as they are spared acute anxiety over certain medical symptoms which might indicate a fatal illness.

Any of us, of course, may have a heightened awareness of death when we find ourselves in great danger (during an air raid, for example, or as soldiers in battle, passengers on a sinking ship, or victims of a serious accident). But our awareness here is more concerned with the danger of death: its dominant characteristic is an instinctive fear of the danger as well as an instinctive strenuous effort to save ourselves, which often takes on a frankly animalistic aspect. In other words, this does not necessarily involve a completely conscious understanding of the phenomenon of death or lead us to a contemplative confrontation with it.

Some Men Remain Ever Conscious Of Death
There are, however, a few persons whose lives are pervaded by the consciousness that one day they will have to die. It is also true that in times of great danger to their lives — especially when they understand that they cannot escape death through their own efforts — a good number of men will confront death with sentiments of profound composure and look it directly in the eye.

Since we are now discussing the authentically natural aspect of death, we must pay particular attention to its meaning for those who live in genuine awareness of death. We must distinguish, in this respect, those who understand death’s relentless approach toward each of us from those who are alert to death because of an actually imminent danger of death rooted in a given situation.

Our metaphysical situation — as pilgrims in time with an all-too-mortal body is the basis for our consciousness that we shall have to die at some future time (and, normally, at a certain age). It is the basis also of our consciousness that at any moment death may claim us and carry us off, whatever our expectations. Thus “in the midst of life we are surrounded by death,”[ Eleventh-century response or antiphon: "Media in vita mortis sumus] and we sit “in the shadow of death.”[Luke 1:79]In these two expressions the entire dreadful quality of death confronts us.

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Augustine Of Hippo On Creation And Evolution — Alister McGrath

December 1, 2011

Augustine Of Hippo

Alister Edgar McGrath is an Anglican priest, theologian, and Christian apologist, currently Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at Kings College London and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture. He was previously Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxford, and was principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford until 2005.

McGrath is noted for his work in historical, systematic, and scientific theology, as well as his writings on apologetics and his opposition to antireligionism. He holds both a DPhil (in molecular biophysics) and an earned Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Oxford. He recently launched a website that features many of his articles and writings here.

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THE DARWIN CELEBRATIONS OF 2009 showcased many religious issues, one being how the great creation narratives of the Old Testament are to be interpreted.’ Many Christians assume that the church’s long tradition of faithful biblical exegesis has always treated the biblical creation accounts as straightforward historical accounts of how everything came into being. In fact, things are rather more interesting, and in this chapter we shall explore why.

I have already spoken several times of one of the most respected early Christian biblical scholars, Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Augustine interpreted Scripture a thousand years before the “Scientific Revolution” of our modern period and fifteen hundred years before Darwin’s Origin of Species. There is just no way Augustine can be considered to have “accommodated” or “compromised” his biblical interpretation in order to fit in new theories about the big bang or natural selection. He set out to interpret Scripture on its own terms, faithfully and carefully. In fact, he even criticized those who tried to adapt their biblical interpretation to the latest scientific theories. The important thing was to let Scripture speak for itself.

Augustine wrestled with Genesis 1-2 throughout his career. There are at least four points in his writings where he attempts to develop a detailed, systematic account of how these chapters are to be understood. Each is subtly different. Here I would like to consider The Literal Meaning of Genesis, which was written between 401 and 415. Augustine intended this to be a “literal” commentary (meaning “in the sense intended by the author”).

Augustine discerns the following themes in his reading of Scripture and weaves them together into his account of creation. God brought everything into existence in a single moment of creation. Yet the created order is not static. God endowed it with the capacity to develop. Augustine uses the image of a dormant seed to help his readers grasp this point.

God creates seeds, which will grow and develop at the right time. Using more technical language, Augustine asks his readers to think of the created order as containing divinely embedded causalities that emerge or evolve at a later stage. Yet Augustine has no time for any notion of random or arbitrary changes within creation. The development of God’s creation is always subject to God’s sovereign providence. The God who planted the seeds at the moment of creation also governs and directs the time and place of their growth.

Augustine argues that the first creation account (Genesis 1:1-2:3) cannot be interpreted in isolation but must be set alongside the second creation account (Genesis 2:4-25), as well as every other statement about the creation found in Scripture. For example, Augustine suggests that Psalm 33:6-9 speaks of an instantaneous creation of the world through God’s creative Word, while John 5:17 points to a God who is still active within creation. God created the world in an instant but continues to develop and mold it, even to the present day. This leads Augustine to suggest that the six days of creation are not to be understood chronologically. Rather, they are a way of categorizing God’s work of creation. They provide a framework for the classification of the elements of the created world so they may be better understood and appreciated.

Augustine was deeply concerned that biblical interpreters might get locked into reading the Bible according to the scientific assumptions of the age. This, of course, is what happened during the Copernican controversies of the late sixteenth century. Biblical interpreters, who already held that the sun revolved around the earth, read the Bible in the light of this controlling assumption. Unsurprisingly, the Bible was then held to support a geocentric view of the solar system. Some church leaders mistakenly interpreted challenges to this erroneous idea in the sixteenth century as a challenge to the authority of the Bible itself. It was not, of course. It was a challenge to one specific interpretation of the Bible — an interpretation, as it happened, in urgent need of review.

Augustine anticipated this point a millennium earlier. Certain biblical passages, he insisted, can legitimately be understood in different ways. The important thing is that these interpretations must not be wedded to prevailing scientific theories. Otherwise, the Bible becomes the prisoner of what was once believed to be scientifically true.

In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines our position, we too fall with it.

Augustine’s approach allowed theology to avoid becoming trapped in a prescientific worldview. It is important to appreciate that he faced significant cultural pressure to adapt his biblical interpretations to prevailing thinking. For example, many leading contemporary scientists of the late classical era regarded the Christian view of creation from nothing (ex nihilo) as utter nonsense. Claudius Galen (129-200), celebrity physician to the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, dismissed it as a logical and metaphysical absurdity. Augustine noted the resistance of his culture to this notion, but believed that the biblical texts required him to affirm it. It was an integral part of the web of Christian doctrine, a coherent set of interlocking ideas.

This doctrine of “creation from nothing” had some important implications. For example, Augustine argues that Scripture teaches that time is part of the created order. God created space and time together, so time must therefore be thought of as one of God’s creatures and servants. Time is an element of the created order; timelessness, on the other hand, is the essential feature of eternity.

So what was God doing before he created the universe? Augustine undermines the question by pointing out that God did not bring creation into being at a certain definite moment in time, because time did not exist prior to creation. For Augustine, eternity is a realm without space or time. Interestingly, this is precisely the state of affairs that many scientists believe existed before the big bang.

So what are the implications of this classic Christian interpretation of Genesis for the Darwin celebrations? One point is particularly obvious. Augustine’s exegesis of Genesis shows that a “faithful” or “authentic” interpretation of the biblical texts concerning creation does not necessarily demand a six-day period of creation. The opening chapter of Genesis must, Augustine argues, be set in context — initially, in the context of Genesis 2, and subsequently in the context of Scripture as a whole.

For Augustine the big question is this: what way of articulating the doctrine of creation makes sense of all the biblical statements on the matter and not simply the first chapter of Genesis? His own answer is hardly the last word on the matter. But it is an excellent starting point for reflection. Above all, it shows the importance of weaving the total witness of Scripture into a coherent doctrine of creation and not limiting this to Scripture’s first few dozen verses.

Augustine does not limit God’s creative action to the primordial act of origination. God is, he insists, still working within the world, directing its continuing development and unfolding its potential. There are two “moments” in the creation: a primary act of origination and a continuing process of providential guidance. Creation is thus not a completed past event. God is working even now, in the present, Augustine writes, sustaining and directing the unfolding of the “generations that he laid up in creation when it was first established.”

This twofold focus on the creation allows us to read Genesis in a way that affirms that God created everything from nothing, in an instant. However, it also helps us affirm that the universe has been created with an intended capacity to develop, under God’s sovereign guidance. Thus the primordial state of creation does not correspond to what we presently observe. For Augustine God created a universe that was deliberately designed to develop and evolve. The blueprint for that evolution is not arbitrary but is programmed into the very fabric of creation God’s providence superintends the continuing unfolding of the created order.

Earlier Christian writers noted how the first Genesis creation narrative speaks of the earth and the waters “bringing forth” living creatures. They concluded that this pointed to God’s endowing the natural order with a capacity to generate living things. Augustine takes this idea further: God created the world complete with a series of dormant powers, which were actualized at appropriate moments through divine providence. Augustine argues that Genesis 1:12 implies that the earth received the power or capacity to produce things by itself: “Scripture has stated that the earth brought forth the crops and the trees causally, in the sense that it received the power of bringing them forth.”

Where some might think of the creation as God’s insertion of new kinds of plants and animals ready-made into an already existing world, Augustine rejects this as inconsistent with the overall witness of Scripture. Rather, God must he thought of as creating in that very first moment the potencies for all the kinds of living things to come later, including humanity.

This means that the first creation account describes the instantaneous bringing into existence of primal matter, including causal resources for further development. The second account explores how these causal possibilities emerged and developed from the earth. Taken together, the two Genesis creation accounts declare that God made the world instantaneously, while envisioning that the various kinds of living things would make their appearance gradually over time — as they were intended to by their Creator.

The image of the “seed” implies that the original creation contained within it the potential for all the living kinds to subsequently emerge. This does not mean that God created the world incomplete or imperfect, in that “what God originally established in causes, he subsequently fulfilled in effects.” This process of development, Augustine declares, is governed by fundamental laws, which reflect the will of their Creator: “God has established fixed laws governing the production of kinds and qualities of beings, and bringing them out of concealment into full view.”

I must emphasize at this point that neither Augustine nor his age believed in the evolution of species. There were no reasons at that time for anyone to believe in this notion. Yet Augustine developed a theological framework that could accommodate this later scientific development, though his theological commitments would prevent him from accepting any idea of the development of the universe as a random or lawless process. For this reason Augustine would have opposed the strict Darwinian notion of random variations, insisting that God’s providence is deeply involved throughout, directing a process in manners and ways that lie beyond full human comprehension.

Let’s be clear about this: Augustine isn’t playing at being a scientist. Nor is he confusing science and theology. Augustine is not contradicting a scientific account of origins; rather, he is setting it within a theological scaffolding. Scientific analysis clarifies how cosmic development takes place; Augustine’s theological framework clarifies how God is involved in this development.

Augustine’s approach to creation is neither liberal nor accommodationist, but is deeply biblical, both in its substance and intentions. It needs to be taken into account when Christians reflect on the themes of creation and evolution. Sloganeering and grandstanding will not help us at all here. Examining the long Christian tradition of biblical exegesis will.

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The Transfiguration – Fr. Jean Corbon O.P.

November 25, 2011

An Apostle From the Transfiguration, Matthias Grünewald,1511

Christians are still too likely to misunderstand the Transfiguration and look upon it as just one miracle among others, a kind of apologetic proof. The feast celebrating it has likewise become indistinct to them, perhaps because it is the only one not to have a place in the chronological sequence of the Lord’s feasts. It is a commemoration of an event that occurred during his mortal life, but it is celebrated after Pentecost and in the bright light of summer (August 6). Yet this event, which upsets the logic that we see as governing time, is precisely the one that best brings home to us the eschatological condition of the body of Christ; it is an apocalyptic vision at the center of the Gospel.

The Synoptic writers deliberately make this “strange sight” the high point of the ministry of Jesus. [Mark 9:2-10; Matthew 17:1-9; Luke 9:28-36] The astonishment felt and the questions roused by the preceding theophanies “Who can this be?” “Who do you say I am?” — lead to this summit, and it is from here that the journey to the final Passover in Jerusalem begins. The miracles were anticipations of the energies of the risen Christ; the transfiguration is the theophany that reveals their meaning or, better, that already brings to pass what these energies will accomplish in our mortal flesh: our divinization.

The transfiguration is the historical and literary center of the Gospel by reason of its mysterious realism: the humanity of Jesus is the vital place where men become God. Christ is truly a man! But to be a man does not mean “being in a body”, as all the unrepentant dualisms imagine; according to biblical revelation, it means “being a body”, an organic and coherent whole. Because men are their bodies, they are also, like their God, related to other persons, the cosmos, time, and him who is communion in its fullest possible form.

Moreover, ever since the Word took flesh he has a “human” relationship, with all its dimensions, to the Father and to all other men: the fire of his light sets the entire bush aflame; the whole of his humanity is “anointed” with it; “in him, in bodily form, lives divinity in all its fullness” (Colossians 2:9), and to this Paul adds, “and in him you too find your own fulfillment” (Colossians 2:10).

What was it, then, that took place in this unexpected event? Why did the Incomprehensible One allow his “elusive beauty” to be glimpsed for a moment in the body of the Word? Two certainties can serve us as guides.

First, the change, or, to transliterate the Greek word, the “metamorphosis”, was not a change in Jesus. The Gospel text and the unanimous interpretation of the Fathers are clear: Christ “was transfigured, not by acquiring what he was not but by manifesting to his disciples what he in fact was; he opened their eyes and gave these blind men sight.” [Saint John Damascene, Second Homily on the Transfiguration (PG 96:564C)] The change is on the side of the disciples.
The second certainty confirms this point: the purpose of the transfiguration, like everything else in the economy that is revealed in the Bible, is the salvation of man. As in the burning bush, so here the Word “allows” the light of his divinity “to be seen” in his body, in order to communicate not knowledge but life and salvation; he reveals himself by giving himself, and he gives himself in order to transform us into himself.

But if it be permissible to take off the sandals of curiosity and inquisitive gnosis and draw near to the mystery, we may ask: Why did Jesus choose this particular moment, these two witnesses, and these three apostles? What was he, the Son — so passionately in love with the Father and so passionately concerned for us — experiencing in his heart? A few days before Peter had already been given an interior enlightenment and had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ of God. Jesus had then begun to lift the veil from the not far distant ending of his life: he had to suffer, be put to death, and be raised from the dead. It is between this first prediction and the second that he undertakes to ascend the mountain.

The reason for the transfiguration can be glimpsed, therefore, in what the evangelists do not say: having finished the instruction preparatory to his own Pasch, Jesus is determined to advance to its accomplishment. With the whole of his being, the whole of his “body”, he is committed to the loving will of the Father; he accepts that will without reservation. From now on, everything, up to and including the final struggle at which the same three disciples will be invited to be present, will be an expression of his unconditional “Yes” to the Father’s love.

We must certainly enter into this mystery of committed love if we are to understand that the transfiguration is not an impossible unveiling of the light of the Word to the eyes of the apostles, but rather a moment of intensity in which the entire being of Jesus is utterly united with the compassion of the Father. During these decisive days of his life he becomes transparent to the light of the love of the One who gives himself to men for their salvation. If, then, Jesus is transfigured, the reason is that the Father causes his own joy to flame out in him. The radiance of the light in the suffering body of Jesus is, as it were, the thrill experienced by the Father in response to the total self-giving of his only Son. This explains the voice that pierces through the cloud: “This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favor. Listen to him” (Matthew 17:5).

We can also understand the profound feelings of Moses and Elijah, for these two men who had sensed the closeness of the divine glory that was impatient to save man are now contemplating it in the body of the Son of Man. “I have indeed seen the misery of my people…. I have heard them crying for help…. I am well aware of their sufferings, and I have come down to rescue them” (Exodus 3:7-8); “Answer me, Yahweh, answer me…. I am full of jealous zeal for Yahweh Sabaoth, because the Israelites have abandoned your covenant” (1 Kings 18:37; 19:10).

All this is expressed now not by divine words or human words but by the Word himself in his humanity. No longer is there only promise and expectation, for the event has occurred; there is now present “the reality … the body of Christ” (Colossians 2:17). Moses and Elijah can leave the cave on Sinai without hiding their faces, for they have contemplated the source of light in the body of the Word.

The three disciples, for their part, are flooded for a few moments by that which it will be granted to them to receive, understand, and experience from Pentecost on, namely, the divinizing light that emanates from the body of Christ, the multiform energies of the Spirit who gives life. The thing that overwhelms them here is that “this man” is not only “God with men” but God-man; nothing can pass from God to man or from man to God except through his body.

Peter will bear witness in his Letters, as John does in all his writings, to the second of the two certainties I mentioned earlier: that participation in the life of the Father that pours out from the body of Christ is measured by the faith of the human recipient. The new element in the transfiguration consists in this light of faith that has given their bodily eyes the power to see. Thanks to this light, they “touch the Word of life” when they draw near to the body of Jesus.

Henceforth there is no longer any distance between matter and divinity, for in the body of Christ our flesh is in communion (without confusion or separation) with the Prince of life. The transfiguration of the Word gives a glimpse of the fullness of what the Word inaugurated in his Incarnation and manifested after his baptism by his miracles: namely, the truth that the body of the Lord Jesus is the sacrament that gives the life of God to men.

When our humanity consents without reserve to be united to the humanity of Jesus, it will share the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4); it will be divinized. Since the whole meaning of the economy of salvation is concentrated here, it is understandable that the liturgy should be the fulfillment of the economy. The divinization of men will come through sharing in the body of Christ.

Posted in Fr. Jean Corbon, Jesus | Tagged men are their bodies, The divinization of men, The transfiguration, theophany | Leave a Comment »

Paying Attention To The Sky

Archive for the ‘Great Men Of the Church’ Category

Sacraments And Signification – Abbot Vonier

Faith And The Sacraments – Abbot Vonier

Pope Benedict on the Epiphany

On Lying in Bed – G. K. Chesterton

Death And The Ultimate Fulfillment Of Love – Dietrich von Hildebrand

Death As Our True Awakening – Dietrich von Hildebrand

Christian Hope – Dietrich von Hildebrand

The Death Of My Beloved Is The Greatest Of Sorrows — Dietrich von Hildebrand

Augustine Of Hippo On Creation And Evolution — Alister McGrath

The Transfiguration – Fr. Jean Corbon O.P.

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