Humility

Luke 14, 7-14

"When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not recline at table in the place of honor. A more distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him, and the host who invited both of you may approach you and say, 'Give your place to this man,' and then you would proceed with embarrassment to take the lowest place. Rather, when you are invited, to and take the lowest place so that when the host comes to you he may say, 'My friend, move up to a higher position."

The Real

1) The Center of Reality is the Word of God. It begins like this: "In aeternum, Domine, verbum tuum constitutum est in caelo... firmasti terram, et permanet". This refers to the solidity of the Word. It is solid, it is the true reality on which one must base one's life. Let us remember the words of Jesus who continues the words of this Psalm: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away". Humanly speaking, the word, my human word, is almost nothing in reality, a breath. As soon as it is pronounced it disappears. It seems to be nothing. But already the human word has incredible power. Words create history, words form thoughts, the thoughts that create the word. It is the word that forms history, reality.

Furthermore, the Word of God is the foundation of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realistic, we must rely upon this reality. We must change our idea that matter, solid things, things we can touch, are the more solid, the more certain reality. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the Lord speaks to us about the two possible foundations for building the house of one's life: sand and rock. The one who builds on sand builds only on visible and tangible things, on success, on career, on money. Apparently these are the true realities. But all this one day will pass away. We can see this now with the fall of large banks: this money disappears, it is nothing. And thus all things, which seem to be the true realities we can count on, are only realities of a secondary order. The one who builds his life on these realities, on matter, on success, on appearances, builds upon sand. Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality, it is as stable as the heavens and more than the heavens, it is reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is the one who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things. Realist is the one who builds his life on this foundation, which is permanent. Thus the first verses of the Psalm invite us to discover what reality is and how to find the foundation of our life, how to build life (B XVI, Oct 6. 2008).

2) The reality of man = to be hearer of the Word. The To Be of God the Son is to be Word spoken “by” the Father “for” others. Therefore, the fundamental anthropology consists in being receptive. Our Lady is that receptivity. She heard the Word of God and did it. She took the Word into herself and performed it. See: Ratzinger’s “Seek That Which Is Above” (pp. 100 ->), Redemptoris Mater: “Blessed is she who believes…” Also, “Blessed, rather, are those who hear the Word of God and do it” (Lk. 11, 28). Humility is the state of being habitually turned away from self in attention to another. The defining act of being turned away from self is being turned toward the Word of God. That turn is called “faith.” The result of that turn is the creation of a vacuum in which one experiences being nothing. It is at that point that one begins to incarnate the Word by deeds of giftedness from within and redemptive salvation begins, and one begins to become real.

Word that is not heard does not reveal. Revelation occurs only when the Word is received. As Ratzinger wrote: “Where there is no one to perceive ‘revelation,’ no re-vel – ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it.”[1] With the constant absorption with communication through gadgetry, there is no openness to the Word of God, and, therefore, no possibility of hearing It. The self is at the center of this constantly tangential state of communication – most of it visual, but when speaking or texting, the “autonomous” self is always doing something else in its persistent hankering for control. The technology places the Autonomous Self at the center in a lonely control. An ongoing degeneration is occurring in the person.

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[1] J. Ratzinger, “Milestones…” (1997) 108.

Fr. Francis Martin as of August 23, 2010: Prayer

Fr. Francis Martin: Speaks the Supernatural Word. Proclaims the Kingdom; Calls to Conversion.

Fr. Francis' condition has not changed much since the last posting. The combination of fatigue, fever, and excess lung fluid remains. His pneumonia is being treated, still, with three antibiotics. But because he is no longer heavily sedated, he was conscious for a while this morning and made eye contact. He tried to speak but could not. He nodded his head a little when asked if he wanted to hear todays' readings from Magnificat and when the rosary was said, his mouth moved occasionally as if he was saying it too. I thanked him (representing everyone whose lives he has impacted) for his love and ministry to the Lord and His people. I told him that so many people are praying for him and asking about him.

I had a medical consultation and learned that the hospital considers this a pivital week. He has been in critical condition and in the ICU for 19 days. I also found out that in my previous consultation (with a different doctor) the focus (of which I was unaware (language/translation?)) was on the more severely damaged heart ventricle, the left, which is pumping at 25% of capacity. The right ventricle was impacted by the heart attack also but overall Fr. Francis' heart is pumping at about 40% of total capacity. This is better, obviously, but he is still in critical condition. The doctor also raised concerns of possible circulatory problems.

Truth: Antiquity or Catholicity?

In his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Newman explained his dilemma thus: “The Anglican disputant took his stand upon Antiquity or Apostolicity, the Roman upon Catholicity. The Anglican said to the Roman: ‘There is but One Faith, the Ancient, and you have not kept to it:” the Roman retorted: ‘There is but One Church, the Catholic, and you are out of it.’ … The cause lay thus, Apostolicity versus Catholicity.”

John Jay Hughes wrote: “It is worth noting in passing that his standoff is replicated today in the dispute between the members of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and Catholics united with the Pope. The SSPX takes its stand upon the statements of 19th century Popes and Vatican I (with occasional side glances to the Council of Trent) and charges Catholics with having abandoned these immutable teachings at Vatican II. Catholics respond today as they did in Newman’s time: ‘There is but one Church, and you are out of it.”

Note that Newman also wrote: “In a higher world it is otherwise. But here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

The Catholic Church changes often in order to be catholic (universal) in the contingent flow of history. That change is the conversion of self to receive the revealing "I" of Christ into self. Christ becomes newly incarnate at each act of faith as self-gift. It is the constantly renewed action of becoming Mary as "hearer of theWord." The Church is like a surfer who is constantly changing in order to be in the same spot on the wave that is itself constantly moving and changing.

The key to the true Church is to be Christ. But as we shall see soon in the Council of Constantinople III (680-681) Christ is not simply three objective pieces - one divine Person and two natures of a jig-saw puzzle - that are somehow fitted together in Jesus Christ (as is solemnly taught in the Council of Chalcedon [451]). The human will of Jesus of Nazareth is the human will of the divine Person, Jesus the Christ, Son of the living God. That human willing is an action of the divine Person Himself. By Baptism as sacrament of faith, each person receives the whole Christ into himself and little by little begins to will as Christ willed, to love as Christ loved. He becomes more Christ act by act. One is baptized into the power of willing like Christ, and little by little, becomes "another Christ."

“All are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3, 23).

And so at each stage of history through Baptism, there is a universalization that is taking place. As each person becomes more and more Christ, more and more of the present historical reality is assumed into Christ, and thus becomes the Catholica. It will not be a successful archeology that will give us the true religion. It will the assimilation of the spermatikoi of Christ that is already there in the world. Case in point will be the case of “Modernity, or perhaps better put, the “Enlightenment.” Because of the dualism of thought and matter and the resulting idealism and relativism that issues into the loss of the absolute and truth, the temptation is to bypass the whole of it and return to the ancient. Ratzinger says No. Rather, he says, we must take up the whole of modern subjectivity and purify it with the faith. Modernity and the Enlightenment is a spermatikon that becomes the “I” of Christ as Revelation, Faith, Universal call to holiness in the secular world by work itself, the building of a global society and culture based on the “I” of Christ in marriage, sexuality, economics (Economy as “gift”) and politics. It has developed and matured as a heresy but awaits its redemption by one who is another Christ.

Consider what Newman wrote:

“Now, the phenomenon, admitted on all hands, is this: that great portion of what is generally received as Christian truth is in its rudiments or in its separate parts to be found in heathen philosophies and religions. For instance, the doctrine of a Trinity is found both in the East and in the West; so is the ceremony of washing; so is the rite of sacrifice. The doctrine of the Divine Word is Platonic; the doctrine of the Incarnation is Indian; of a divine kingdom is Judaic; of Angels and demons is Magian; the connection of sin with the body is Gnostic; celibacy is known to Bonze and Talapoin; a sacerdotal order is Egyptian; the idea of a new birth is Chinese and Eleusinian; belief in sacramental virtue is Pythagorean; and honors to the dead are a polytheism. Such is the general nature of the fact before us; Mr. Milman argues from it – ‘These things are in heathenism, therefore they are not Christian:” we, on the contrary, prefer to say, “These things are in Christianity, therefore they are not heathen.” That is, we prefer to say, and we think that Scripture bears us out in saying, that from the beginning the Moral Governor of the world has scattered the seeds of truth [spermatikoi] (my underline and parenthesis) far and wide over its extent; That these have variously taken root, and grown up as in the wilderness, wild plants indeed but living; and hence that, as the inferior animals have tokens of an immaterial principle in them, yet have not souls, so the philosophies and religions of men have their life in certain true ideas, though they are not directly divine. What man is amid the brute creation, such is the Church among the schools of the world; and as Adam gave names to the animals about him, so has the Church from the first looked round upon the earth, noting and visiting the doctrines she found there. She began in Chaldea, and then sojourned among the Canaanites, and went down into Egypt, and thence passed into Arabia, till she rested in her own land. Next she encountered the merchants of Tyre, and the wisdom of the East county, and the luxury of Sheba. Then she was carried away to Babylon, and wandered to the schools of Greece. And wherever she went, in trouble or in triumph, still she was a living spirit, the mind and voice of the Most High; “sitting in midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions;” claiming to herself what they said rightly, correcting their errors, supplying their defects, completing their beginnings, expanding their surmises, and thus gradually by means of them enlarging the range and refining the sense of her own teaching. So far then from her creed being of doubtful credit because it resembles foreign theologies, we even hold that one special way in which Providence has imparted divine knowledge to us has been by enabling her to draw and collect it together out of the world, and, in this sense, as in others, to “such the mild of the Gentiles and to such the breast of kings.”

How far in fact this process has gone is a question of history; and we believe it has before now been grossly exaggerated and misrepresented by those who, like Mr. Milman, have thought that it existence told against Catholic doctrine; but so little antecedent difficulty have we in the matter, that we could readily grant, unless it were a question of fact not of theory, that Balaam was an Eastern Mahol, or Moses was a scholar of the Egyptian hierophants. We are not distressed to be told that the doctrine of the angelic host came nor that the vision of a Mediator is in Philo, if in very deed he died for us on Calvary. Nor are we afraid to allow, that, even after his coming, the Church has been a treasure-house, giving forth things old and new, casting the gold of fresh tributaries into her refiner’s fire, or stamping upon her own, as time required it, a a deeper impress of her Master’s image.

The distinction between these two theories is broad and obvious. The advocates of the one imply that Revelation was a single, entire, solitary act, or nearly so, introducing a certain message; whereas we, who maintain the other, consider that Divine teaching has been in fact, what the analogy of nature would lead us to expect, “at sundry times and in divers manners,” various, complex, progressive, and supplemental of itself. We consider the Christian doctrine, when analyzed, to appear, like the human frame, “fearfully and wonderfully made;” but they think it some one tenet or certain principles given out at one time in their fullness, without gradual accretion before Christ’s coming or elucidation afterward. They cast off all that they also find in Pharisee or heathen; we conceive that the Church, like Aaron’s rod, devours the serpents of the magicians. They are ever junting for a fabulous primitive simplicity; we repose in Catholic fullness.”

Ratzinger the Professor: the influence of Cardinal Newman

We’re pleased to report on a new book by Gianni Valente, published in Italian, Ratzinger Professore: Gli anni dello studio e dell’insegnamento nel ricordo dei colleghi e degli allievi (1946-1977) (Milan: Edizioni San Paolo, s.r.l., 2008) [‘Ratzinger the Professor: the years of study and teaching as recalled by his colleagues and students’].

This book, by an well known Italian journalist, highlights Joseph Ratzinger’s academic history, from his seminary formation, teaching posts, and involvement in the Second Vatican Council, right up to his continuing links with the academic world as Cardinal and as Pope. Inevitably, John Henry Newman makes a significant appearance: it’s well known that Newman’s writings have been an important influence on Benedict XVI, and the book serves to emphasise some of the particular ways that the English theologian played a part in Ratzinger’s own theological development.

Alfred Läpple, Ratzinger’s Prefect of Studies at the seminary at Friesing in the post war years, had begun a dissertation on Newman’s theology of conscience before the war, a ‘pioneering theme’ at that time, Valente notes. Later, speaking at the 1990 conference on Newman in Rome, Ratzinger spoke of the passion that Läpple had aroused in him and his associates: ‘Newman’s teaching on conscience became an important foundation for theological personalism, which was drawing us all in its sway. … We had experienced the claim of a totalitarian party, which understood itself as the fulfilment of history and which negated the conscience of the individual. One of its leaders had said: “I have no conscience. My conscience is Adolf Hitler”. The appalling devastation of humanity that followed was before our eyes’ (p. 22). Valente suggests that Ratzinger’s drawing to Newman was part of his reaction against such ‘annihilation’ of conscience.

Läpple sheds his own light on the attraction which Newman exercised on both him and his students: Newman combined liberty with obedience. Läpple is quoted: ‘there was among us a great liberty in viewing and judging things. It was for this reason that Newman fascinated us so much. How could someone who had lived so freely as an Anglican have submitted himself to the Catholic doctrine on the primacy of the Church? For Newman it wasn’t acceptable to think that the Pope could be a limit on the freedom of the baptised’ (p. 28).

Later in the book, Läpple describes the intellectual links between Ratzinger and Gottleib Söhngen, one of the Professors of the future Cardinal in the theology faculty at Munich. Läpple writes that ‘for Ratzinger, as for Söhngen, God is not, in the end, a summum bonum that you can know, and demonstrate the existence of, through exact theological formulations. The mystery for him [Ratzinger] isn’t a meeting with an abstract definition, but with an ‘other’ who has loved us first, and who we can thank. For this reason we’d had a keen interest in the personalism of Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher who’d said that the best thing you can say about God is to thank him. And for the same reason we grew in our shared passion for Newman, who for his episcopal [sic.] motto had chosen Cor ad cor loquitur, ‘heart speaks to heart’ (p. 39).

Newman wrote: “I understood… that the exterior world, physical and historical, was but the manifestation to our senses of realities greater than itself. Nature was a parable, Scripture was an allegory, pagan literature, philosophy and mythologies, properly understood, were but a preparation for the Gospel. The Greek poets and sages were, in a sense, prophets.”

And now, Ratzinger as Benedict XVI, on October 6, 2008, pronounced the following breath-taking epistemological affirmation:

“(T)he Word of God is the foundation of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realistic, we must rely upon this reality. We must change our idea that matter, solid things, things we can touch, are the more solid, the more certain reality. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the Lord speaks to us about the two possible foundations for building the house of one's life: sand and rock. The one who builds on sand builds only on visible and tangible things, on success, on career, on money. Apparently these are the true realities. But all this one day will pass away. We can see this now with the fall of large banks: this money disappears, it is nothing. And thus all things, which seem to be the true realities we can count on, are only realities of a secondary order. The one who builds his life on these realities, on matter, on success, on appearances, builds upon sand. Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality, it is as stable as the heavens and more than the heavens, it is reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is the one who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things. Realist is the one who builds his life on this foundation, which is permanent. Thus the first verses of the Psalm invite us to discover what reality is and how to find the foundation of our life, how to build life.

Revelation and Faith as "Actions"

In the wake of a major feast of our Lady, like the Assumption, it is stunning to see the relation between the act of faith and the Incarnation. Both are actions, one by God, the other by our Lady – and therefore possible for us. Benedict XVI does an exegesis of the Creed: “Et Incarnatus Est” and remarks: “The drama of this sentence lies in the fact that it makes a statement, not about God’s eternal being, but about action, which on closer examination actually proves to be a statement about suffering, in the passive voice. The ‘ex Maria Virgin’ belongs to the statement about action, in which the three Divine Persons are involved, each in his own way. Indeed, the whole drama hands on just this thread. For without Mary, God’s entrance into history would not achieve its intended purpose. That is, the very thing that matters most in the Creed would be left unrealized – God’s being a God with us, and not only a God in and for himself. Thus, the woman who called herself lowly, that is, nameless (Lk. 1, 48), stands at the core of the profession of faith in the living God, and it is impossible to imagine it without her. She is an indispensable, central component of our faith in the living, acting God. The Word becomes flesh – the eternal Meaning grounding the universe [Sinngrund der Welt] enters into her. He does not merely regard her from the outside; he becomes himself an actor in her.”[1] (underline mine)

And here I offer Ratzinger’s understanding of Revelation as action (the Person of Christ) and the act of faith (the action of the receiving subject – the believer – becoming the Person of Christ by the action of self gift).[2] The point being that God continues to become incarnate in us when we perform the action of faith. This is done in the very exercise of ordinary, secular work in the world. This is an astounding reality to contemplate.

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[1] J. Ratzinger, “ ‘Et Incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto,’” Mary, The Church at the Source, Ignatius (2005) 82-83.

[2] Cf. “Milestones…” 108-109.

Alice in Wonderland 2010

The original world of Alice is English formalism ruled by empirical experience, and isolated individualism with no authentic relationships. Alice goes down the rabbit hole where she is in a different epistemological world where quantitative sizes and measurements are meaningless for the relationship between living beings, human and animal (who are personalized by virtue of their unique and distinct relationship to the human person). The animals are wonderful in their diversity and obvious creation to be at the service of the human person.

This epistemological horizon removes the inauthenticity of the one-sided empirical and formalized experience of the daily English fare of common life in England and discloses the good and the evil that exists beneath it. In the lower world, there are two sisters pretending to be Queen. One is very good, the other very evil, proud, vain and ugly (small body, large head, contemptuous personality, living for power to control all).

Ultimately, Alice freely enters the struggle between the real good and evil that is masked in the inauthenticity of the upper world of her previous consciousness, and unmasked here below. She loved and was loved down below, but must wake up and return to the upper consciousness. She does, whereupon she confronts the lie with the truth and quickly sets relationships right.

On this feast of the Assumption, one cannot help but think of Heaven as the Person of Christ Himself who has assumed the full humanity of the individual human nature of Jesus of Nazareth into His Person, and the act of faith of the Virgin who “heard the Word of God and did it” (Gospel of the Mass of the Assumption). Since faith is the action of hearing the Word of God and doing it, that hearing as a taking in renders the believer to be “alter Christus.” Having taken Christ into her persona and becoming her life and giving Him her entire humanity (whereupon He becomes flesh), Christ takes her into His Persona, which is Heaven.

The lower world is literally the upper world unmasked. The full humanity assumed by Christ is is infected with sin ("He made Him to be sin" [2 Cor. 5 21]) and is the lower world of the rabbit hole. But it is unmasked in Christ, and there is struggle which eventually becomes victory on the Cross and subsequent Resurrection.

These two epistemological horizons: 1) the semi-real sensible, experiential world disguising evil, and 2) the really real world of the “I” as transcending self in the act of faith, are marvelously portrayed and connected with the really real return of Alice to the secondary reality with a mission to render it authentic.

To accentuate the appositeness of the movie with regard to Benedict XVI’s theology of revelation and faith, consider once again his Address on the realism of the Word of God:

“The Word of God is the foundation of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realistic, we must rely upon this reality. We must change our idea that matter, solid things, things we can touch, are the more solid, the more certain reality. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the Lord speaks to us about the two possible foundations for building the house of one's life: sand and rock. The one who builds on sand builds only on visible and tangible things, on success, on career, on money. Apparently these are the true realities. But all this one day will pass away. We can see this now with the fall of large banks: this money disappears, it is nothing. And thus all things, which seem to be the true realities we can count on, are only realities of a secondary order. The one who builds his life on these realities, on matter, on success, on appearances, builds upon sand. Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality, it is as stable as the heavens and more than the heavens, it is reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is the one who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things. Realist is the one who builds his life on this foundation, which is permanent. Thus the first verses of the Psalm invite us to discover what reality is and how to find the foundation of our life, how to build life..[1].

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[1] Benedict XVI, Keynote Address at the Synod on The Word of God, October 6, 2008.

Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven

1) Where's Heaven? Here. Jesus Christ is Heaven. Benedict XVI wrote: "Jesus himself is what we call 'heaven;' heaven is not a place but a person, the person of him in whom God and man are forever and inseparably one. And we go to heaven and enter into heaven to the extent that we go to Jesus Christ and enter into him. In this sense, 'ascension into heaven' can be something that takes place in our everyday lives" (J. Ratzinger, "Dogma and Preaching" Franciscan Herald Press (1985) 63).

This means that our Lady is assumed into Christ.

2) How did this happen? She took the Son of God into herself. "She heard the Word of God and did it." Faith means to become one with the Person of Christ who is Revelation.

3) She did this so radically, that she became "blessed." Today's Gospel: Elizabeth pronounces: "Blessed is she who believed." That is, Assumed is she who believed.

4) You will be assumed into haven if you live the faith moment by moment in a burgeoning self-gift.

Then, to help, consider the congruence of the assumption of Joseph into heaven:

If our Lady is “Blessed” because she believed, that means that she was assumed into heaven because of her self-gift of faith at the Annunciation. But the faith of Mary is met by the faith of Joseph (John Paul II, “Redemptoris Custos”). Therefore, Joseph entered into the engendering of Jesus Christ as God-man in a way analogous to our Lady. Consider the remarks of John XXIII who was the pope who inserted the name of St. Joseph in the Roman Canon.

- Blessed Pope John XXIII,

Homily for the Canonization of St. Gregory Barbargio,
May 26, 1960

We could believe that Jesus’ love for his father on earth would be enough to raise him body and soul into Heaven, just as He did for Our Lady. Just as the Holy Family were a trinity on the earth, so too are they united in Heaven. Joseph retains his rightful position as Head of the Holy Family, Spouse of the Virgin and Guardian of the Redeemer. Many saints, such as St. Bernardino of Sienna and St. Francis de Sales, are in agreement that Jesus did indeed grant Joseph this grace. Since Jesus and Mary ascended into Heaven in the glory of body and soul, so too could we believe this in regards to St. Joseph. How many times, Joseph had picked up the Child Jesus who was both his son and Lord, kissing and embracing him. Would Jesus not remember this just man who cared so tenderly for him, who worked so hard to provide for him, who protected and honoured him more than any other man could? Yes, by granting him the sublime privilege of uniting his body and soul in a glorified state in the splendour of Heaven.

“How could we doubt that Our Lord raised
glorious St. Joseph up into Heaven, body and soul?
For he had the honour and grace of carrying Him so often in his blessed arms,
… St. Joseph is therefore in Heaven body and soul, without a doubt.”

- St. Francis de Sales
Sermon on St. Joseph

In the same way that Mary was assumed into Heaven, it is thought
that Jesus deigned to glorify Joseph on the day of the Resurrection.
In this way, all of the Holy Family – Jesus, Mary and Joseph –
who lived together on earth, would reign together in Heaven.

St. Francis de Sales

Sermon on St. Joseph

“How could we doubt that Our Lord raised glorious St. Joseph up into Heaven, body and soul? For he had the honour and grace of carrying Him so often in his blessed arms, …
St. Joseph is therefore in Heaven body and soul, without a doubt.”

St. Bernardino of Sienna

In the same way that Mary was assumed into Heaven, it is thought that Jesus deigned to glorify Joseph on the day of the Resurrection. In this way, all of the Holy Family – Jesus, Mary and Joseph – who lived together on earth, would reign together in Heaven.

Blessed Pope John XXIII,
Homily for the Canonization of St. Gregory Barbargio, May 26, 1960

“We name two intimate persons in (Christ’s) life, John the Baptist, the Precursor, and St. Joseph of Nazareth, his putative father and custodian. It corresponds to them — we can piously believe — the honour and the privilege of (Christ) allowing them to admirably accompany him (on the day of his Ascension) on the path to Heaven.”

1580 Anniversary of the Death of St. Augustine

Tomorrow is the 1580th anniversary of the death of St. Augustine. The Church celebrates the Feast of St. Augustine on August 28 each year.

It’s difficult in the extreme to outline all his accomplishments in a few sentences, but suffice it to say that he is perhaps the most influential theologian in history (after St. Paul), that our notions of history itself are largely Augustinian, that he framed the important concepts of original sin and just war, that he is considered the pre-eminent Doctor of the church, and authored the single most important work on history in The City of God, which he completed a few years before the Vandals laid siege on his own city of Hippo. Shortly after his death the Vandals returned and destroyed the entire city, except for Augustine’s cathedral and library, which was left untouched. His writings, including the world’s first autobiography (and the only one to tell the truth by calling it Confessions), could largely be said to pronounce the end of paganism and the triumph of Christianity, though one could be forgiven for thinking the opposite had occurred if one were looking solely at contemporary political events.

He influenced virtually every great theological thinker after him, including, most especially, St. Thomas Aquinas. Our present Pope Benedict XVI writes with an Augustinian perspective. The whole world has been influenced by St. Augustine, and, indeed, in his very life of conversion, penance, and faith, he has lived up to the words of British Cardinal Hume, who said that the life of St. Augustine proves that all saints have pasts and all sinners futures.

Best,
Bruce

Bruce FingerhutSt. Augustine's PressP.O. Box 2285, South Bend, IN 46680-228517917 Killington Way, South Bend, IN 46614-9773tel: (574) 291-3500; fax: (574) 291-3700www.staugustine.net

“I try to be a philosopher, but cheerfulness keeps breaking in.” – Dr. Johnson’s friend Oliver Edwards.

1580 Anniversary of the Death of St. Augustine

Tomorrow is the 1580th anniversary of the death of St. Augustine. The Church celebrates the Feast of St. Augustine on August 28 each year.

It’s difficult in the extreme to outline all his accomplishments in a few sentences, but suffice it to say that he is perhaps the most influential theologian in history (after St. Paul), that our notions of history itself are largely Augustinian, that he framed the important concepts of original sin and just war, that he is considered the pre-eminent Doctor of the church, and authored the single most important work on history in The City of God, which he completed a few years before the Vandals laid siege on his own city of Hippo. Shortly after his death the Vandals returned and destroyed the entire city, except for Augustine’s cathedral and library, which was left untouched. His writings, including the world’s first autobiography (and the only one to tell the truth by calling it Confessions), could largely be said to pronounce the end of paganism and the triumph of Christianity, though one could be forgiven for thinking the opposite had occurred if one were looking solely at contemporary political events.

He influenced virtually every great theological thinker after him, including, most especially, St. Thomas Aquinas. Our present Pope Benedict XVI writes with an Augustinian perspective. The whole world has been influenced by St. Augustine, and, indeed, in his very life of conversion, penance, and faith, he has lived up to the words of British Cardinal Hume, who said that the life of St. Augustine proves that all saints have pasts and all sinners futures.

Best, Bruce

Bruce Fingerhut
St. Augustine's Press
P.O. Box 2285, South Bend, IN 46680-228517917
Killington Way, South Bend, IN 46614-9773
tel: (574) 291-3500; fax: (574) 291-3700www.staugustine.net

“I try to be a philosopher, but cheerfulness keeps breaking in.” – Dr. Johnson’s friend Oliver Edwards.

1580 Anniversay of Death of St. Augustine

Tomorrow is the 1580th anniversary of the death of St. Augustine. The Church celebrates the Feast of St. Augustine on August 28 each year.

It’s difficult in the extreme to outline all his accomplishments in a few sentences, but suffice it to say that he is perhaps the most influential theologian in history (after St. Paul), that our notions of history itself are largely Augustinian, that he framed the important concepts of original sin and just war, that he is considered the pre-eminent Doctor of the church, and authored the single most important work on history in The City of God, which he completed a few years before the Vandals laid siege on his own city of Hippo. Shortly after his death the Vandals returned and destroyed the entire city, except for Augustine’s cathedral and library, which was left untouched. His writings, including the world’s first autobiography (and the only one to tell the truth by calling it Confessions), could largely be said to pronounce the end of paganism and the triumph of Christianity, though one could be forgiven for thinking the opposite had occurred if one were looking solely at contemporary political events.

He influenced virtually every great theological thinker after him, including, most especially, St. Thomas Aquinas. Our present Pope Benedict XVI writes with an Augustinian perspective. The whole world has been influenced by St. Augustine, and, indeed, in his very life of conversion, penance, and faith, he has lived up to the words of British Cardinal Hume, who said that the life of St. Augustine proves that all saints have pasts and all sinners futures.

Best,Bruce

Bruce FingerhutSt. Augustine's PressP.O. Box 2285, South Bend, IN 46680-228517917 Killington Way, South Bend, IN 46614-9773tel: (574) 291-3500; fax: (574) 291-3700www.staugustine.net

“I try to be a philosopher, but cheerfulness keeps breaking in.” – Dr. Johnson’s friend Oliver Edwards.

St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe (2010)

First Reading

“We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers… The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3, 14).

Gospel

“Jesus said to his disciples: ‘This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you” (Jn. 15, 13).

The Supreme Drama

“Finally the grisly selection is complete. Fritsch turns to Palitsch, the noncommissioned officer who likes to brag about the numbers he has shot at the execution wall by Block 11. Together the SS officers check the secretary’s list against the numbers on the condemned. As their German passion for accuracy occupies them, one of the victims is sobbing. `My wife and my children!’ It is Francis Gajowniczek. The SS ignore him.

“Suddenly, there is movement in the still ranks. A prisoner several rows back has broken out and is pushing his way toward the front. The SS guards watching this Block raise their automatic rifles, while the dogs at their heels tense for the order to spring. Fritsch and Palitsch too reach toward their holsters. The prisoner steps past the first row.

“It is Kolbe. His step is firm, his face peaceful. Angrily, the Block capo shouts at him to stop or be shot. Kolbe answers calmly, `I want to talk to the commander,’ and keeps on walking while the capo, oddly enough, neither shoots nor clubs him. Then, still at a respectful distance, Kolbe stops, his cap in his hands. Standing at attention like an officer of some sort himself, he looks Fritsch straight in the eye.

“ ‘Herr Commandant, I wish to make a request, please,’ he says politely in flawless German.

Survivors will later say it is a miracle that no one shoots him. Instead, Fritsch asks,

`What do you want?’

I want to die in place of this prisoner.’ And Kolbe points toward the sobbing Gajowniczek. He presents this audacious request without a stammer. Fritsch looks stupefied, irritated. Everyone notes how the German lord of life and death, suddenly nervous, actually steps back a pace.

The prisoner explains coolly, as if they were discussing some everyday matter, that the man over there has a family.

Prisoner in ranks are never allowed to speak. Gajowniczek says:
`I could only try to thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me – a stranger. Is this some dream or reality?...”[1]

Death and Obliteration“: Dust

After two weeks, “the prisoners were dying one after the other, and by this time only four were left, among them Father Kolbe, who was still conscious. The SS decided things were taking too long… One day they sent for the German criminal Bock from the hospital to give the prisoners injections of carbolic acid. After the needle prick in the vein of the left arm, you could follow the instant swelling as it moved up the arm toward the chest. When it reached the heart, the victim would fall dead. Between injection and death was a little more than ten seconds.

“Some of Kolbe’s friends were brash enough to request that his body not be burned, but buried. The request was denied. … Years earlier he had said, `I would like to be ground to dust for the Immaculate Virgin and have this dust be blown away by the wind all over the world.”[2]

John Paul II at Auschwitz

“From the helicopter pad on the outskirts of town, the Pope was driven to the gate of the Auschwitz concentration camp in limousine constantly pelted with flowers thrown by the half-million Poles lining the roadway. But this was neither the place nor the moment for smiles. John Paul walked through the wrought-iron entrance gate with its infamously cynical inscription, Arbeit Macht Frei [Work Makes you Free], and along the gravel paths separating the red-bricks barracks buildings until he came to Block 11. There, in the basement, in Cell 18, Maximilian Kolbe had died a martyr to charity. The Pope knelt in prayer, kissed the cement floor where Kolbe had lain in agony, and then left a bouquet of red-and-white flowers and an Easter candle brought from Rome. Outside Block 11 was the `Wall of Death,’ against which prisoners were executed by firing squad. Enroute to praying there with West German’s Cardinal Hermann Volk, the Pope met and embraced seventy eight-year-old Franciszek Gajowniczek, whose life Father Kolbe had saved by his self-sacrifice.”[3]

Canonization as Martyr

:
“Kolbe’s canonization was set for St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, October 10, 1982. But a question had arisen. Father Kolbe was widely regarded as a martyr, but was he a `martyr’ in the technical sense of the term – someone who had died because of odium fidei, `hatred of the faith’? He had not been arrested because of odium fidei, and witnesses to his self-sacrifice had testified that the Auschwitz commandant, Fritsch, had simply accepted Kolbe’s self-substitution for the condemned Franciszek Gajowniczek without evincing any particular satisfaction that he was killing a priest. The theologians and experts of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (the Vatican office that considers beatifications and canonizations) had argued that Kolbe, while undoubtedly a saint, was not a martyr in the traditional sense of the term….

“John Paul II appointed two special judges to consider the question from the theological and historical points of view. Their reports were then submitted to a special advisory commission. The majority of the commission concluded that Blessed Maximilian Kolbe’s self-sacrifice did not satisfy the traditional criteria for martyrdom, heroic as ti undoubtedly was. On the day of his canonization, it was unclear whether Kolbe would be given the accolade of a martyr, as many Poles, Germans, and others wished.
“October 10, 1982, a magnificent autumn morning, found a quarter of a million people in St. Peter’s Square, where they saw a great banner, a portrait of Father Kolbe, draped from the central loggia. Still, the question hung in the air: Would Kolbe be recognized as a martyr? The answer came when John Paul II processed out of the basilica and into the square wearing red vestments, the liturgical color of martyrs. He had overridden the counsel of his advisory commission, and in his homily he declared that `in virtue of my apostolic authority, I have decreed that Maximilian Mary Kolbe, who following his beatification was venerated as a confessor, will henceforth be venerated also as a martyr!’”[4]
And so as a young boy when Kolbe dreamed of asking our Lady “what was to become of me” she held out to him two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked him if he was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that he should persevere in purity and the red that I should become a martyr. He said that he would accept them both.” And so it was!
“We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers… The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3, 14).

The Assumption

As Kolbe is declared alive in supernatural/eternal life because he made the supreme gift of himself for love of another, so also our Lady was declared assumed into heaven body and soul because she had made the total gift of herself to the will of God at her vocation in the moment of the annunciation: “let it be done to me according to your word.” The gospel of the Mass of the feast recounts the visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth and the declaration of Elizabeth that John Paul II called “the truth of Mary:” “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” Notice that she is declared already “blessed” while on earth here and by the women in the crowd who shouted out in the presence of Christ: “Blessed is the womb that bore thee and the breasts that gave thee suck.” To which Jesus responded – precisely including his mother as the first: “Yeah, rather, blessed is she who hears the word of God and does it.”
Faith lived with the deed of engendering the Messiah, forming him for the whole of a life, living side by side with him in faith without sensible confirmation (the first miracle is to be at Cana) and finally, standing beneath the Cross. Because of this faith which is her self-gift in the totality of an ordinary secular life, Mary is declared physically assumed into heaven.
Ascetical consideration from The Way 584 paraphrased: Christ lives here and now as the quid divinum disguised in the ordinary and the humdrum events of secular life. He has not lost his power. What is needed is faith on our part. Supply that need by the deeds of the total gift of ourselves in work and family life, offering work, renewing that offering frequently, finishing what was once begun, and making acts of thanksgiving. We are walking the way of Mary and by that self-gift, we will engender Jesus Christ in ourselves and place him at the summit of all human activities by ourselves being “other Christs.”

Also, consider what St. Josemaria did on August 14, 1951 going to Loreto (recorded in this blog somewhere).



[1] Patricia Treece, “A Man for Others,” Harper and Row (1982) 169-171.
[2]) Ibid. 176
[3] George Weigel, “Witness to Hope,” Harper and Row, Cliffside Books (1999) 314-315.
[4] Ibid. 447.

Judge Vaughn Walker - Proposition 8

I like Ross Douthat’s [1]cutting through the misnomer of calling marriage “natural” as we have understood it in the West, when in reality it has really been divine or “supernatural” as a result of the Christian foundation of Europe and the West. The pre-Christian or non-Christian understanding of the word “natural” vis a vis matrimony has been polygamy not monogamy. The default mode of child-rearing is often communal, rather than two parents nurturing their biological children.

Douthat wrote: “Nor is lifelong heterosexual monogamy obviously natural in the way that most Americans understand the term. If ‘natural’ is defined to mean ‘congruent with our biological instincts,’ it’s arguably one of the more unnatural arrangements imaginable. In crudely Darwinian terms, it cuts against both the male impulse toward promiscuity and the female interest in mating with the highest-status male available.”

With this overturning of Proposition 8 in California in favor or gay marriage, we have reached a turning point. The United States – and with it Europe – has ceased to be a nation founded on the dignity and rights of the human person, not only as equal but as different as man and woman. It is now founded on individuals with whom relationality is accidental.

The wording of Judge Vaughn Walker in his conclusion goes: “To determine whether a right is fundamental under the Due Process Clause (14 Amendment), the court inquires into whether the right is rooted ‘in our nation’s history, legal traditions, and practices.” Of course, what is found in the history, tradition and practices of the United States from 1620 until the Constitution is a lived Christianity that exploded within the so-called “First Great Awakening” that propelled the nation to revolution with Great Britain, then the greatest power on earth at that time. All of that was engendered and dynamized by the experience and consciousness of a lived Christian faith. Consider the remark of John Adams that he wrote in Mary Wollstonecraft’s book “The French Revolution:” “If [the] empire of superstition and hypocrisy should be overthrown, happy indeed will it be for the world; but if all religion and all morality would be over-thrown with it, what advantage will be gained? The doctrine of human equality is founded entirely in the Christian doctrine what we are all children of the same Father, all accountable to Him for our conduct to one another, all equally bound to respect each other’s self love.”[2]

From another direction – enlightenment reason - the most celebrated historian of the American Revolution, Gordon S. Wood, searched for the source of the American Revolution that occurred “without an immediate oppression, without a cause depending so much on hasty feeling as theoretic reasoning.”[3] “As early as 1775 Edmund Burke had noted in the House of Commons that the colonists’ intensive study of law and politics had made them acutely inquisitive and sensitive about their liberties. Where the people of other countries had invoked principles only after they had endured ‘an actual grievance,’ the Americans, said Burke, were anticipating their grievances and resorting to principles even before they actually suffered. ‘They augur misgovernment at a distance and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.’”[4]

Having such sensitivity to personal rights both because of Christian faith and enlightenment reason (consider the universal acceptance of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” and “The Rights of Man”), one would suspect that the right to homosexual union would be in flower in the American consciousness. But such was not the case. Consider the question of the status of the homosexual in pre-Revolutionary America. “The Body of Liberties approved by the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1641 welcomed refugees seeking to escape "the Tiranny or oppression of their persecutors" or famines or wars. For several hundred years America was to serve as a haven for minorities threatened with religious or political persecution in other lands.

“What then did it offer the homosexual? Homosexuals in the original 13 colonies were universally subject to the death penalty, and that in earlier times, for a brief period in one colony, lesbians had been liable to the same punishment for relations with other women.”[5]

Don't misunderstand this. There is no advocacy here to kill homosexuals, but to probe how homosexuality stood in tandem with the emerging dignity and rights of the human person.The country was built on dignity and rights, but not on mere equality and homosexual rights.

What seems to be taking place now is reversal and decline in everything good and true that had taken place in the development of the body politic in the United States only now mouthing platitudes of dignity of persons with equal rights. The rhetoric of Judge Walker is equality, dignity and rights but the foundation of same as experienced and conscious in the history of the United States is muted.

This goes hand in hand with what Benedict XVI has been saying for his entire intellectual/theological life: that reason has been consistently dumbed down to positivistic technological reason. The West may have won the economic war with Communism, but not the ideological. He wrote: “The essential problem of our times, for Europe and for the world, is that although the fallacy of the communist economy has been recognized – so much so that former communists have unhesitatingly become economic liberals – the moral and religious question that it used to address has been almost totally repressed. The unresolved issue of Marxism lives on: the crumbling of man’s original uncertainties about God, himself, and the universe. The decline of a moral conscience grounded in absolute values is still our problem today. Left untreated, it could lead to the self-destruction of the European conscience [and the American], which we must begin[6] to consider as a real danger – above and beyond the decline predicted by Spengler.”

The real meaning of “natural” is Christian since Jesus Christ is the meaning of man. How could it be otherwise if God Himself has assumed a complete human nature, human will, human intellect, human body to His one divine Person? Jesus Christ is the meaning of man, and therefore He is the meaning of “natural.” Therefore, Ross Douthat recognizes that the presentation of marriage as we have known it in the West cannot be called “natural” without losing the argument. Either we understand that the meaning of man is Christ, and with that the meaning of marriage and sex, or we become trivialized in incoherence.

This, however, is not religious theocracy. As historically evident, it is exactly the opposite. It is precisely Christianity that demands the separation of the institutions of Church and State because the human person, as “another Christ,” must exercise the freedom of self-determination in order to be self-gift. Consequently, true Christian experience demands that Christianity not be imposed but freely accepted, one by one.

This was the precise content of the Third Temptation of Christ. “The struggle for the freedom of the Church, the struggle to avoid identifying Jesus’ Kingdom with any political structure, one that has to be fought century after century.”[7]

Notice that we cannot make a cogent defense of heterosexual marriage using a reason working with first order abstraction as in science. The best we can come up with is equality as the pro-gays, and the opposition to the heterosexuality always wins the argument on the terrain of equality, permanence, good citizenship, etc. As Benedict has said for the last 4 years, we need to “broaden reason.” He means that reason has to be “widened” by the experience of the self as gift, or relation, which is the act of faith. That is, if the self does not transcend self by making the gift in the act of faith, the lights don’t go on for reason. Reason needs to see the self as “being” – which takes place only in the act of going out of self to receive Revelation (which is the Person of Christ). Faith is an act of obedience. It is not a facultative act so much as an anthropological act of self-gift, self-transcendence. Faith is not reducible to concepts and propositions. It is not contained in a book. It is the self in a state of self-transcendence. If one does not go out in the act of faith, the being of the self is not illuminated (transfigured as Christ in prayer on the mount, Lk. 9, 28), and we fail to understand the meaning of person as relation, i.e. as male and female. The profile of the person is determined by “hearing the Word.” If the Word is not heard and lived, reason is not broadened and is dumbed down to positivistic and reductive myopia – which is the state of the present debate on homosexuality and gay marriage.

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[1] Ross Douthat, “The Marriage Ideal,” NYT op-ed Monday, August 9, 2010, A 19.

[2] David McCullough, “John Adams” Simon and Shuster (2001) 619.

[3] Gordon S. Wood, “The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, Norton (1969) 4.

[4] Ibid 5.

[5] Louis Crompton, “Homosexuality and the Death Penalty in Colonial America,” Journal of Homosexuality, University of Nebraska (Lincoln) 1976 277.

[6] J. Ratzinger, “Without Roots,” Basic Books, (2006) 73-74.

[7] Benedict XVI “Jesus of Nazareth,” Doubleday (2007) 40.