Monthly Archives: August 2014

Help Thou My Unbelief

27 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by in C.S. Lewis, Faith, Sacraments, Salvation, Thought for the Day

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Below is a very good insight from 'St. Jack'. By the way, I often say the prayer that he mentions, “Lord I believe, help Thou my unbelief.” In fact for several years now I have said it at the elevation of the Body and Blood of Christ during the Mass. (Update: after publishing this I realized there should be some clarification. I do not say this prayer in an audible voice. Instead, it is my own private devotion within the Mass.) Please don't misunderstand – it is not that I don't truly believe that it is our Lord's Body and Blood I hold in my hands – I pray it because I want my faith to be continually increased through the supernatural gift of grace we receive in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. And it has had an effect on me.

Don’t bother at all about that question of a person being ‘made a Christian’ by baptism. It is only the usual trouble about words being used in more than one sense. Thus we might say a man ‘became a soldier’ the moment that he joined the army. But his instructors might say six months later ‘I think we have made a soldier of him’. Both usages are quite definable, only one wants to know which is being used in a given sentence. The Bible itself gives us one short prayer which is suitable for all who are struggling with the beliefs and doctrines. It is: ‘Lord I believe, help Thou my unbelief.’ Would something of this sort be any good?: Almighty God, who art the Father of lights and who has promised by thy dear Son that all who do thy will shall know thy doctrine: [John 7:17] give me grace so to live that by daily obedience I daily increase in faith and in the understanding of thy Holy Word, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II

 

Advertisements

Do Unto Others…

26 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Catholic Obligations, Liturgy of the Hours, Loving our Neighbor, Saints

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

The quote below is from yesterday’s Office of Readings for the Memorial of St. Louis, King of France. (The rest can be found here.) This part in particular caught my attention because it seemed to me a very concise explanation of the ‘preferential option for the poor’ from the Church’s social teaching. After re-reading the section in the Catechism titled “Love for the Poor” (§2443-2449) my initial impression seems to be confirmed. If you are Catholic and not familiar with this teaching then you really should become acquainted with it because it is a substantial part of the teaching of the Church. In fact, reading the whole section concerning the seventh commandment (§2401-2463), “You should not steal,” will help greatly in your understanding of the ‘preferential option for the poor.’

There may be some Catholics, though, that are hesitant to learn about this part of our Catholic Faith due to the fact that most of the progressive (heretical) element within the Church comes from the ‘Social Justice’ crowd. (That being those who think that the only part of the Faith that matters is doing works of ‘social justice’ even to the extent of contradicting the clear teaching of the Church: for example the religious sisters who work as escorts for women coming into Planned Parenthood to have abortions.) But such people are not truly practicing the Faith. Jesus came to bring us life everlasting through His own Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension and bringing others to a saving knowledge of Him is our primary duty as Catholics. But, Jesus also stressed the need to care for the ‘poor’, which includes those who suffer from lack of money or some other form of poverty. And one of His most stark teachings on this is the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats where He says, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Therefore, we would do well to listen to the words of our Lord.

But in addition to the words of Christ, we must remember that God sends us saints to help re-direct our attention to and deepen our understanding of the Truths of the Faith. And even though he lived about 800 years ago I think St. Louis’ words can really help us in our own understanding of Catholic Social teaching.

Be compassionate towards the poor, the destitute and the afflicted; and, as far as lies in your power, help and console them. Give thanks to God for all the gifts he has bestowed upon you, so that you will become worthy of still greater gifts. Towards your subjects, act with such justice that you may steer a middle course, swerving neither to the right nor to the left, but lean more to the side of the poor man than of the rich until such time as you are certain about the truth. Do your utmost to ensure peace and justice for all your subjects but especially for clergy and religious.

From St. Louis’ spiritual testament to his son

From this I want to show that the ‘preferential option for the poor’ is not about having the State give them everything they want at the taxpayers’ expense. Instead, it is about caring for them as we would want to be cared for if we were in their situation. In short–and this is the most concise explanation of caring for the poor–remember the words of Jesus, “And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.”

What is Love?

25 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by in Love, Matrimony, Sacraments, Stratford Caldecott

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

How many of you, after reading the title of this post (and seeing the picture), immediately thought the following words:

Baby don't hurt, don't hurt me, no more.

I imagine there are at least some people (at least those close to my age) that did indeed have the above lyrics go through their minds, as it did mine. Even if you don't know who wrote this song you have probably heard it before somewhere, sometime. There is nothing really spectacular about the song–electronic music and lyrics that could have been written by a kindergartener–but nevertheless, it captured the minds of our lovesick society. The reason for this is not because of Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan on Saturday Night Live, but because our society truly wants to know: what is love?

You see, our modern society has little, if any, knowledge of what true love is. In our secularized and God-less society love has become 'whatever feels good.' But then, by pursuing only that which 'feels good', people get hurt along the way, which of course resulted in the above mentioned song being written in the first place. By this I do not want to appear to be condemning feelings or imply that they are not real. Feelings are real; in fact, they are strong truth tellers for us–but only in regards to things that are apparently good. But in order to understand what 'apparent goods' are we must contrast them with those goods which are authentic.

Apparent good – That which merely seems good; that which satisfies some appetite or desire sufficiently to become an object of choice. But it is not the true good because it is not morally right, since it does not conform to the purpose of man as a whole.

Authentic good – (A very good definition by St. John Paul II) – “Acting is morally good when the choices of freedom are in conformity with man's true good and thus express the voluntary ordering of the person towards his ultimate end: God himself, the supreme good in whom man finds his full and perfect happiness.” Veritatis Splendor, §72

The reason that we must differentiate between these two in order to understand that which is truly good is because in all our choices we are always seeking the 'good'. But a problem arises in that we can err in our understanding of whether or not the thing which we pursue is authentically good. St. Thomas Aquinas, along with Aristotle before him, said that “the good is what everyone desires.” The logical consequence to this statement that we must understand is that no one deliberately chooses that which is evil. In regards to this Fr. Robert O'Donnell has this to say in his book Hooked on Philosophy,

No agent, whether animal or human, chooses evil. Only the good can motivate an agent; only the good can act as a final cause. But sometimes an agent may think something to be good which is really evil.

And thus that which he refers to as evil is an 'apparent good' to the one who chooses it. To understand this we must remember that evil is a privation of some good. The best way to explain this is through an example from St. Augustine of Hippo,

For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present—namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshly substance,—the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is, privations of the good which we call health—are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else.

But this does not mean that evil doen't exist because we see evil all around us. What this does mean, though, is that evil is not a 'being'. To say that it is a 'being' would be to promote a dualistic understanding of the universe. To say that evil is a 'being' would be to say that good and evil have always co-existed. This is not what the Church teaches nor is it what anyone with common sense would believe. God and Satan are not two eternal but opposite beings. Instead, God is the good Creator of all things, which includes Satan. Satan, or Lucifer, was created by God as a good angel but Satan chose to turn his back on that good. Stratford Caldecott put it this way, “Though Lucifer is by nature part of the image of God's love, he refuses to assume the likeness of God's kenotic nature.” (The Radiance of Being, p.242) What this means is that even though Lucifer was created in the image of God's love (and to a greater or lesser extent so was everything else that is created) Lucifer rejected that image because it meant that he would have to give of himself to those that were lesser than he – it meant that he would have to imitate God – in short, it meant that he would have to love.

And this finally brings us back to the original question: what is love? Part of what is needed to truly understand love can be found above in reference to 'God's kenotic nature.' Kenosis is usually a reference to the 'self-emptying' of Christ referred to by St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians. But here the author uses it to express the love that exists within the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternally giving themselves completely to the other Persons within the Trinity. He explains this in the book much better than I have but that is the basic point. From this we can see that to love is to give oneself completely to the 'other'. And later in the book he gives a wonderful definition of what love is:

Love is that absolute freedom that binds itself absolutely.

The Radiance of Being, Stratford Caldecott, p.263

And an example of the love that personifies “the absolute freedom that binds itself absolutely” is the love between Christ and His Bride, the Church. Christ gave of Himself completely for the one He loves – the Church – and the Church in turn gives herself completely to Christ (although this won't be perfectly realized until the end of time, it is forshadowed in the perfection of the Blessed Virgin Mary who gave her perfect 'yes' to God's will for her life). And by analogy it is the love between husband and wife, who have bound themselves freely and absolutely through the Sacrament of Matrimony, which symbolizes for us the love between Christ and His Church. And from this we can see why people are so often hurt by 'love' in today's society. People pursue the apparent good of 'what feels good' without any intention of binding themselves to the 'other' in absolute freedom. To say it another way, those who are hurt in their pursuit of love have rejected the good that God intends for us and have replaced it with the lesser apparent good of temporary pleasure. But to do so will leave us, possibly eternally, dissatisfied.

Is Hell a ‘Good’ Thing?

21 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by in Eternal Life, Theodicy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

The main purpose of today's post is as a sort of note to myself for future reference. Due to the fact that part of what I am writing about is found (in English) only on the internet this seemed like the best place to make a note of it. But in addition to it being a note to myself, it is also interesting what the two people (Stratford Caldecott and Don Gabriele Amorth) have to say about hell.

In am nearing the end of Stratford Caldecott's wonderful book The Radiance of Being. Yesterday, I finished reading the chapter titled Time, Eternity, Hell. Basically this chapter has to do with how evil is possible even though God is all good, why mankind sins (and why the angels sinned), and the Christian teaching of eternal punishment in hell for those who reject God. Needless to say this is a difficult topic to tackle in one chapter. But like the rest of the book, the author had some very interesting insights that he deduced from his own reading of several other authors about the subject. While discussing something from the Catholic theologian von Balthasar he writes,

Hell is a Trinitarian event because everything that is created, hell not excepted, must have its archetype in the eternal Principle.

The Radiance of Being, p.246

Due to the fact that I do not understand the author's ideas well enough it would be very difficult for me to explain what he is trying to say here in the context of the rest of the chapter. But really what he 'means' in this passage (and the chapter) is not what I wanted to dispute. My dispute comes from his apparent presupposition that hell was created directly by God as a place of punishment.

Before moving on to what Don Gabriele Amorth has to say I will give my own understanding. I could not find anything in the Catechism stating whether or not God directly created hell. And (to me) it doesn't really make sense to say that He created hell because hell is not a good thing and we know that God, being all Good, only makes things that are good. In other words, only good can come from God. My understanding is that hell is the place, or non-place, from which God has withdrawn His presence completely so that it is not really a place that was 'created' at all.

But, on the other hand, nothing can exist without God willing it. Therefore, perhaps hell is a realm that was orginially created good by God, but then, like those who inhabit hell, it was twisted and perverted by sin. Then, after it was distorted by sin and the damned started to inhabit it, God removed Himself completely from that realm. Therefore, it is the 'place' for those who have definitively rejected God – a 'place' completely devoid of God or anything that is good.

This idea–that of complete separation from God–is supported by the Catechism in the few sections that it contains about hell. In §1033 it tells us, “This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called 'hell.'” In §1034 it quotes the words of our Lord from Matthew 25:41, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!” In §1035 it states that the “chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God.” And finally in §1861 we are told if mortal sin “is not redeemed by repentance and God's forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ's kingdom and the eternal death of hell.” But on the question of whether or not it was created by God–either directly as a place of punishment or something that was originally good and then twisted–the Catechism appears to be silent. (Unless I am overlooking something which is quite possible.)

Lastly, I want to quote what Don Gabriele Amorth has to say about the subject. But first a little information about Fr. Amorth–he is the chief exorcist of the Diocese of Rome and has been an exorcist for many years. The interview located here is where I found the following quote. (Here he is discussing the priest who trained him.)

Was Fr. Candido ironic even with the devil?

I want to tell you about one very important episode to help you understand a truth. You need to know that when there’s a case of diabolical possession, there is a dialogue between the exorcist and the devil. Satan is a great liar, but sometimes the Lord obliges him to tell the truth. Once Fr. Candido was liberating a person after many exorcisms and with his typical irony he told the devil: “Go away for the Lord has created a nice warm home for you, he has prepared a little house for you where you won’t suffer from the cold”. However, the devil interrupted him and replied: “You don’t know anything”.

What did he mean?

When the devil interrupts with a saying like this, it means that God has obliged him to tell the truth. And this time it was extremely important. The faithful often ask me: “But how is it possible that God created Hell, why did he think of a place of suffering?”. And so that time the devil responded to the provocations of Fr. Candido by revealing an important truth about Hell: “It was not Him, God, who created Hell! It was us. He hadn’t even thought of it!” Therefore in the plan of God’s creation the existence of Hell had not been contemplated. The demons created it! During exorcisms, I have also often asked the devil: “Did you create Hell?”. And his response has always been the same: “We all cooperated”.

This seems to shed some light on the subject with the exception that the Church teaches that the devil cannot create anything. Only God can create. Of course, in a certain sense man can 'create' things–artwork, poetry, literature, etc.–but only by using that which God has already created. And of course man can take those good things and twist them for evil purposes. And that seems to be the only explanation for what the devil says in the above quote: the demons took something that was good and 'redecorated' to their own hideous liking.

(There is one other possible explanation for hell which I mention here parenthetically. I suppose hell could be considered 'good' in the following way. God is completely good and God's justice is a part of what makes up the good of who He is. Punishment for the condemned is a part of justice (although I can't find anything in the Catechism to confirm this). Therefore, perhaps the punishment of hell is a good from God's point of view. Although, it is not a good I want to partake of.)

Loving your Neighbor as Yourself

19 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in C.S. Lewis, Loving our Neighbor, Mere Christianity, Thought for the Day

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. There is, indeed, one exception. If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of charity, but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his ‘gratitude’, you will probably be disappointed. (People are not fools: they have a very quick eye for anything like showing off, or patronage.) But whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less.

Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

Faith and Prayer

18 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by in Faith, Prayer, Sermons

≈ Leave a comment

Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity

17 August a.d. 2014

In order to better understand today’s Gospel reading, we must first see the context in which it is placed. Today’s Gospel is a contrast to what immediately precedes it in the fifteenth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel. Starting in the first verse, we have the Pharisees coming to Jesus and questioning Him saying, “Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” They came to Him with this question because they were trying to defend the Jewish religion. But, they had forgotten the most important point of being a Jew–the Jews were God’s Chosen People–the people who had received the promise of the coming Messiah. That is why Jesus comes right back at them by asking “why do you transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” He is trying to bring into their minds what is truly important and it is this interaction with the Pharisees that sets the stage for Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel.

The Catechism tells us that “certain Gentiles…recognized in Jesus the fundamental attributes of the messianic ‘Son of David,’ promised by God to Israel.” (CCC §439 n.38) And the Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel is one who is mentioned specifically in the Catechism. Even though it was the Jews, represented by the Pharisees in the first verse, who received the promise of the Messiah, they rejected Jesus. But, on the other hand, this Canaanite woman, a foreigner from a people who worshipped idols, recognized the Truth about who Jesus is, which is evidenced by the fact that she called Him “Lord, Son of David.” Referring to the title ‘Lord’ the Catechism states, “This title testifies to the respect and trust of those who approach (Jesus) for help and healing.” (CCC §448) And the title “Son of David” is a Messianic title. From this we see that the woman, even though she was not a Jew, understood who Jesus truly was better than the Jews themselves.

But since this woman understood who Jesus was, why did our Lord at first brush off her pleas for help by saying to His disciples, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”? And then, when she moved closer and knelt before Him, why did He utter the harsh words, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs”? There are at least two reasons that He did so.

The first reason that explains why Jesus was so harsh with the Canaanite woman is that it gave her an opportunity to demonstrate the magnitude of her faith. When Jesus left the Pharisees and entered into the district of Tyre and Sidon He already knew He would encounter this woman and what it is that she would say. But, if He had simply healed the woman’s daughter at her first request then she would not have had the opportunity to show her faith. Amongst many of His own people, Jesus did not find the faith that He was looking for and certainly this must have been disheartening to Him. Of this the Catechism states, “Jesus is as saddened by the ‘lack of faith’ of his own neighbors and the ‘little faith’ of his own disciples as he is struck with admiration at the great faith” of Gentiles such as the Roman centurion from the eighth chapter of St. Matthew and the Canaanite woman from today’s Gospel. (CCC §2610)

The second reason that our Lord is so harsh to the woman today is because the interaction He had with the woman gives us some very important lessons about prayer. If He had immediately granted her request we would not benefit from learning this lesson. The first thing we should notice is that in order to obtain from Christ what she wanted, she “came out” of her country. Remember that her country was full of idolatry and she had to turn her back on all of that in order to come to Jesus. In a similar manner, we too must turn our back on the world and its various idols of false desires when we come to Jesus in our prayer.

Next we are told “she came and knelt before him”, which is a sign that she was worshipping Him, with some translations even saying she worshipped Him. When we come to Jesus in prayer we must remember that He is God. After all, what would be the point in praying to Him if He was not God? And even though we may acknowledge His divinity with our minds, do our actions demonstrate our belief in Him as God? All too often we put ourselves as the center of our own little universe and relegate Christ to a periphery aspect of our lives. If we do this then why should He even acknowledge our prayers? Would He not rather ignore us as He first ignored the woman today? But she came to Him and knelt before Him showing that she, in fact, did recognize who He is and we must do the same in our own lives if our prayer to Him is to have any meaning whatsoever.

Lastly, the woman today shows us the importance of persistence in prayer. She cried out to Him once from a distance, then a second time she asked while kneeling before Him and a third time, even after being called a dog, she persisted. The number three is a number symbolic of perfection for Christians. For example, the Trinity of Persons within the Godhead is a sign of perfection for us. Therefore it is significant that the woman asks Jesus for help three times because this shows us she asked a perfect number of times: never giving up and never doubting­. And, it even suggests to us that the demonstration of her faith to our Lord was perfect. This of course is acknowledged by our Lord when He said to her, “O woman, great is your faith!”

It is this faith that our Lord desires to see within each and every one of us. It is too often that we give up in our prayers because we don’t readily receive that which we request from our Lord. And of course sometimes we do not receive because we are asking for that which would do us no good. But for the other times, when we are asking for something worthy, like the conversion of a family member, we can too easily give up when we don’t receive it immediately. When you are tempted to give up in your own prayers then you need to remember the woman today who did not give up, or call to mind saints like St. Monica, who had to pray for her son for almost two decades before he converted.

I think we need to view today’s Gospel as an example of what great faith can do. Jesus gave to the woman today an opportunity to demonstrate the greatness of her faith and I believe that He gives each one of us the same opportunity in our own lives. But, if we give up at the first indication of failure, then how can we ever come to have that same faith in our Lord. You see, faith is not just saying we believe in Jesus. It is a demonstration of our belief in Jesus. Jesus once posed the question, “when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (St. Luke 18:8) As followers of Christ, we should sincerely desire to demonstrate that faith He is looking for in our lives. And the Canaanite woman today gives us one of the best examples of how we can show Him our faith.

 

The (God-)Man in the Mirror

11 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by in Free Will, God's Will, Saints, Theosis

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

(Jesus Christ) is the brightness of eternal glory, the splendour of eternal light, the mirror without spot.

Look into that mirror daily, O queen and spouse of Jesus Christ, and ever study therein your countenance, that within and without you may adorn yourself with all manner of virtues, and clothe yourself with the flowers and garments that become the daughter and chaste spouse of the most high King. In that mirror are reflected poverty, holy humility and ineffable charity, as, with the grace of God, you may perceive.

From a letter of St. Clare to Blessed Agnes of Prague

In the above quote from St. Clare of Assisi we have an interesting analogy presented to us. Here she likens Christ to a mirror. I have seen analogies similar to this one, but only in reverse: that Christians are to be a mirror that reflects Christ back to the world. So, when I first read this from St. Clare I was a little puzzled at what she could mean. Then it occurred to me: what do we usually see in a mirror? The answer is ourselves. And yet to truly be a follower of Christ we cannot be turned in on ourselves in such a manner. And that is why she tells Blessed Agnes, as well as us, to “look into that mirror (that is Christ) daily.” It is through the daily acquiring of virtues that we must seek to become more conformed to the image of Christ.

But, we tend to fight against this idea of conforming to any image other than our own. In fact, too often we want the image of Christ to conform to our own idea of what He is supposed to look like. Sure, we want to become better people and be more Christ-like but we don't want it to be too hard and so we force Christ into the mold we have made for Him. We do this because we are scared that we will lose ourselves if we give ourselves over completely to Christ. And yet, that is what He has demanded of us. (“For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matt 16:25)

It is our own pride and willfulness that keeps us from conforming ourselves to Christ. But we must remember that God created our souls to be perfectly aligned with His own Divine Will and, therefore, if we hand our wills over to Him then it is impossible to lose ourselves. In fact, to hand ourselves over to God is the only way to become perfectly who we are and who God has always intended for us to be. It is only then that we will be able to look in the mirror and see ourselves transformed into the likeness of Christ.

 

Body, Soul, and Spirit

10 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by in Philosophy, Stratford Caldecott

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Most people understand that mankind consists of both a body and a soul. And very often the words spirit and soul are used interchangeably in this understanding of the makeup of mankind. But today I want to make you aware of a distinction between the meaning of the words soul and spirit, which can help us to understand better how we are made in the image of God.

There is within the Tradition of the Church an understanding that man is not just body, and soul; but body, soul, and spirit. This understanding stretches back at least to St. Paul as we see in the verse below.

May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 5:23, RSV-CE)

In the various writings of the saints there are some that have separated this into three separate 'parts'–body, soul, and spirit–(although to speak in such a way is misleading because man is a unified whole and not a compilation of parts) and some who separated man into body, and soul/spirit with the spirit being a deeper or more important part of the soul. Between these two options the Church seems to favor the latter. In §366 of the Catechism it refers to the soul as the “spiritual soul.” And in §367, when referring to St. Paul's passage above, it states that the “Church teaches that this distinction does not introduce a duality into the soul.”

This third aspect of our makeup–that of the spirit–is important because it helps us to understand ourselves as made in God's image. First of all, when we include spirit with the usual body and soul understanding, then we can see man made with a tripartite nature, which is analogous to God as a Trinity of persons. And from this, according to St. Teresa of the Cross, we can see “the human soul, body, and spirit corresponding to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit respectively. (The Radiance of Being, p.209) But more importantly for us, because we are all fallen and sinful, the inclusion of spirit with body and soul can help us to understand our sinful condition. This is explained below:

…the three parts of the human being explain the threefold concupiscence. They correspond to the three archetypal sins, since Eve took the fruit in Eden because it was (1) good for food, (2) a delight to the eye, and (3) desirable for wisdom–sins enveloping respectively body, soul, and spirit–that had to be overcome at their triple root by Christ in the wilderness and by divine grace operating in the Christian life through fasting, almsgiving, and prayer (and through chastity, poverty, and obedience in the religious state.)

The Radiance of Being, p.207, Stratford Caldecott

Married Love – ‘not merely a feeling’

06 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by in C.S. Lewis, Love, Mere Christianity, Thought for the Day

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

If the old fairy-tale ending ‘They lived happily ever after’ is taken to mean ‘They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married’, then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense—love as distinct from ‘being in love’—is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.

Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

What We ‘Will Be’

05 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Saints, Salvation, Stratford Caldecott, Theosis

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Yesterday was St. Jean Marie Vianney’s feast day. I had intended on posting this on his feast day but, as so often happens, other things got in the way. Below is part of a short biography – the rest of which can be found here.

St. Jean Marie Vianney (1786-1859) was born in a time of intense persecution of priests in revolutionary France. As a child, his parents helped to hide faithful priests and took their children to secret Masses in old barns and private homes. The young Jean Marie showed an extraordinary piety and love for the blessed Mother…Finally, at the age of 19, his father allowed him to study with a holy priest, Fr. Balley, who had survived the time of persecution. Yet, Jean Marie was already much older than his classmates and had great difficulty learning Latin. Later, after a brief and unsuccessful time in the seminary, he was allowed to complete his studies with his priest-mentor. Having failed twice in his examinations, he was finally allowed to take the examination in the supportive presence of Fr. Balley, and this time succeeded.

From the little that I know about St. Jean it appears that he knew early in his life what he was called to do – he knew he was to be a priest. Even though various circumstances kept him from pursuing the priesthood as early as he would have liked, he never gave up on God’s call for his life. And even through all the struggles he had in his studies and failing his examinations twice he still did not give up. When it appeared that everyone had given up on him, he did not give up on God’s call for his life.

But, in contrast to St. Jean Vianney’s life, let us consider the lives of those who do not hold fast to what God is calling them to do. I will explain what I mean by an example from my own experience. In a similar fashion to St. Jean, early in my own life I too felt called to some form of ministry within the Church. Although, I had no idea what that meant for my life because, at the time, I was Baptist and definitely did not feel called to be a Baptist ‘preacher’ (which is term we used instead of pastor). But because of this general sense of a vocation that I had, I assumed from an early age that I would one day go to seminary. And in preparation for seminary, once I entered my second year of college I started to study philosophy.

Now, when you are in college it is typical for people to ask you what you are studying. And whenever I was asked that question and responded, “Philosophy” I would commonly get responses like these: “What on earth are you going to do with that degree?” or “Can you make any money with a such a degree?” And even after I explained I was planning on going to seminary many people would still have a disapproving look on their face because of my choice of studies. Such are the dangers of pursuing what you feel called by God to do I suppose.

But eventually that whole mindset got to me – the pragmatic mindset that questions the value of the search for truth and the acquiring of knowledge simply because it has nothing practical to offer. This was part of the reason that I eventually stopped studying philosophy in college. (Although there were also other factors that led to my leaving the study of philosophy.)

Looking back at my life I can say that the point at which I stopped studying philosophy coincides with the point at which I started to lose the sense of a call from God; in other words, I lost my sense of purpose. This is evidenced by the fact that, after that point, I started little by little to lose any sense of direction in my life – I did not have any idea of what I was supposed to do or even of what I wanted to do. During this time I was just the same as the man who had been given one talent by his master but, instead of doing anything with it, he went and hid it in the ground. (Matthew 25:18) But of course we mustn’t hide our talent in the ground because we know what will happen to us if we do: we will be “cast…into the outer darkness (where) men will weep and gnash their teeth.” There is a question that may be asked, though: why is the punishment so harsh for not using the ‘talent’ that God gives you?

The answer to that question can be found in the following quote:

God creates in his eternity, where he already sees the intellectual creature as it ‘will be’ when it has arrived at deifying union with himself. Each moment of the intellectual creature’s actual journey to God is thus at once a new event and a deeper realization of what has always already been true.

The Radiance of Being p.174-5, by Stratford Caldecott

Christians know that God created mankind in His own image. We also know that God loves us. But we need to truly understand and believe these things, and the implications that come from them, if we are to understand the Parable of the Talents and the reason why we should not waste time as I did earlier in my life. We need to understand that God knows us and loves us as we ‘will be’ at the end of time – without all the sin and attachment to sin that we now suffer from. Yes, of course he loves us as we are right now, but how we are right now is not good enough! Jesus revealed to us the need to be perfect and that is what God expects from us. And in order to arrive at the destination of what we ‘will be’ at the end of time we must start our journey right now. Who we are here on this earth is intimately tied to who we ‘will be’ at the end of time. And our perfection then will reflect back to God something that no other creature will be able to duplicate. Out of His infinite love God desires for each of us to reach that perfection that already exists in His mind and that is why He is never satisfied with how far we progress here on this earth.

And it is that point that brings up a crucial difference between the life of St. Jean and my own life. St. Jean never ceased pursuing God’s plan for his life, although it may have been delayed by things out of his control. But I did leave God’s plan for my life behind, at least for a while. And I would imagine that there are many other people that have done the same thing in their own lives. And if that is the case for you as it was for me then bring to mind the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. In that parable there were many throughout the day that the owner of the vineyard noticed just standing around and doing nothing. And throughout the day the owner came back to these directionless and lazy people over and over again imploring them to go work: in other words, to put their talent to use. Some of them were like St. Jean – they immediately went out at the first part of the day when they were called. Others, like myself, were lazy and waited until much later. And why do we do that? Perhaps because we despair of ever being able to complete the task we have been assigned.

But just because we cannot reach that perfection that is expected of us here on this earth does not mean that we should just give up and wait around, doing nothing. The lessons we learn from the parables of the talents and the workers in the vineyard gives us proof. If we just sit on the sidelines of this life and don’t use that which God Himself has given to us then we are telling Him with our actions (or lack thereof) that we do not love Him. God created us to know and to love Him but we will never know or love Him unless we strive with our entire being to seek Him out. And our very being includes that special talent that God has given to each and every one of us. And from the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard we know that if we will heed the call of our Lord to go and work – to put to use that talent He has given us – then even if we do so at the end of the day we will receive our reward from Him.

In imitation of St. Jean Vianney, it would have been much better for me to immediately go into the vineyard and start doing the work God has called me to do. Nevertheless, I thank God that even though I gave up on Him during part of my life, He never gave up on me. There is so much time that I wasted, which I truly lament. And as a result of that wasted time there are things that I should have learned years ago that I am only just now discovering. But I let that loss spur me on to do right now what I can to fulfill that which God has called me to do. To do so is to begin to become what I ‘will be’ and in fact what I already am in the mind of God.