Category Archives: von Hildebrand

We are All Called

20 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by in Salvation, Transformation in Christ, von Hildebrand

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Today is my sixth anniversary of ordination to the priesthood. Interestingly, I came across the following quote in Transformation in Christ:

The question of whether I feel worthy to be called is beside the point; that God has called me is the one thing that matters.

Transformation in Christ, p. 168

Am I good enough or qualified enough to be a Catholic priest – nope. But as von Hildebrand has pointed out that is not the right question. The question for each and every one of us is this: what has God called me to do? First of all, He has called each and every one of us to salvation. This begins in Baptism and continues in a life lived in accordance with the teachings of Christ, which comes to us through the Holy Scriptures and the teachings of the Church.

But also we each have something specific to do in this life. Has God called all men to be priests? No, but He has called all people to something. Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman explains it best:

God has called me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission – I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for nothing. I shall do good, I shall do His work.

It seems to me that those who in this life do not know their mission simply haven't asked the question: what does God want me to do? They just go through life doing what they think 'has' to be done without thinking of the most important things – such as why are we here at all? God has called each of us to something, otherwise we wouldn't exist at all. I don't know what He has called you to do but I do know that He has called you. It is your job to find out.

Lemmings

11 Tuesday Aug 2015

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I have been told recently that lemmings don’t actually jump off cliffs to their certain doom. But the common misconception that they do fits with the point I want to make today. Even if lemmings do not throw themselves en masse off a cliff there is one species that does tend to do so: human beings. Let me explain what I mean by starting with a quote from von Hildebrand.

The behavior of unconscious persons is dictated by their nature. They tacitly identify themselves with whatever response their nature suggests to them. They have not yet discovered the possibility of emancipating themselves, by virute of their free personal center, from their nature; they make no use as yet of this primordial capacity inherent in the personal mode of being. Hence their responses to values, even when they happen to be adequate, will always have something accidental about them. Their attitudes lack that character of explicitness and full consciousness which is a prerequisite of meeting in a really apposite way the demand emdbodied in the values. For what the values claim of us is not assent pure and simple, an assent which might as well be a fortuitous efflux of our natural dispostions; it is a fully conscious, rational, and explicit assent, given by the free center of our personality. By such an answer alone does a personal being adequately honor the values and their call, which is addressed to each of us in sovereign majesty, irrespective of his individual dispositions.

Transformation in Christ, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Ignatius Press 2001, p. 62-3

The way he is using ‘unconscious person’ does not mean someone who is asleep or who has been knocked out. What he means is the same thing that I mean when I refer to human beings as lemmings. The actions of unconscious persons/lemmings are “dictated by their nature.” But here another clarification is needed, because when he says ‘nature’ I think we should understand him to mean our fallen nature. In other words, those who go through life as slaves to their various inclinations.

With this in mind we can understand what he means by saying, “Hence their responses to values, even when they happen to be adequate, will always have something accidental about them.” Values are those things which are good and, therefore, make a demand on us. The demand is of an action to be taken on our part in response to the good. For instance, if we see someone bleeding on the ground with a knife in his chest, then the good we are called to do is to try to save the person and call an ambulance. And it is not just a good deed we are called to do, but we should recognize the injured person as good. In fact, the good of the person is the main reason we should perform the good act of helping him.

But for the unconscious person/lemming, if his response happens to be adequate in a given situation, it is only accidental. Lemmings, like a school of fish, just follow along with the rest of the group: if the group makes a moral choice in a certain situation then so will they. But not because it is the right or moral thing to do, but because everyone else is doing it. And it is here that we can see how people behave like lemmings.

At one point in this country the prevailing current of thought would say that a particular belief or action is wrong; for instance, homosexual acts, pornography, abortion, contraception, and the list could go on and on. But now the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction on these issues and they are viewed as good. (As if that which is truly good could be arbitrary.) Why did this happen? Quite simply because too many people in our society act like lemmings. They don’t question the behavior of the group and just go along with the crowd – right off the cliff.

In order to correct this problem we are told by von Hildebrand that our decisions and actions need to be made with a “fully conscious, rational, and explicit assent, given by the free center of our personality.” In other words we shouldn’t just go along with the crowd. It is ironic, therefore, that that is how much of society view Catholics: as people who have just bought into a bunch of rules and regulations against what is happening in secular society. But this couldn’t be further from the truth for the real Catholic. A true Catholic follows the teachings of the Church not because everyone else is doing it but because of what it is: it is the teaching of Jesus Christ. After all, if Christ is who He said He is – God – then what He revealed to us must be true and good. And if it is true and good then it deserves our freely given and fully conscious adherence.

But I need to return to the main point and it is this – we are not lemmings and therefore we should stop acting like them. Yes, like lemmings we are creatures made by God but we, unlike them, were made in the image and likeness of God. We have rational souls and therefore have the ability to know right from wrong. As a result we should choose and do the good but not just because it is what a Catholic is supposed to do. To act in that manner would just make us lemmings in religious clothing. Instead, we choose and do the good because we recognize within it that which is true. We are drawn to the good and desire it because in it we see God.

 

The Reason that Bad Hymns are Bad

10 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by in Liturgy, Truth, von Hildebrand

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Having come into the Catholic Church after being an Anglican priest I was accustomed to a certain style of music: reverent, dignified and beautiful. Upon entering the Catholic Church I encountered another style of music that did not fit the mold with which I was familiar (and which I did not enjoy.) I tried for many years to tell myself that it was just a difference in taste – that for lifelong Catholics who had grown up with such hymns it was just as good as for them as the music I enjoyed was for me. At the same time, though, there has always been something in the back of my mind telling me that it was more to it than just a matter of taste. But, I could never put that uneasy feeling into words. Not until now, that is.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, it is within the last year that I discovered the writings of Dietrich von Hildebrand. In the current book of his that I am reading, The Heart, I am nearing the end. And it is there, in Chapter One of Part Three, that I have just read something that gives an explanation to the discomfort I have always had with many modern hymns. Up to this point the author has not mentioned music, but mentions it here at the end of the book in order to make a point.

To help in conveying his message in the quote below, it needs to be understood that this book is about human and divine affectivity: Part One is titled The Human Heart and Part Two is titled The Heart of Jesus. I have not finished it yet but the Third Part is titled The Human Heart Transformed and, I would imagine, gives us an idea of what his conclusion will be – that man's heart needs to be transformed and made like unto that of our Savior. But all too often we instead try to bring God down to our level, which does not lead to our transformation but instead, stagnation.

Against the true glory of the Sacred Heart, ‘in which shine forth all treasures of knowledge and wisdom,’ the grave distortion of many hymns becomes obvious. Both in word and in melody these songs not only completely miss the divine, transfigured quality of the Sacred Heart ‘in which dwells all the fullness of divinity,’ but they even present the Sacred Heart in the likeness of a mediocre, sentimental human heart…(If you cannot tell, the author abhors sentimentality because it is not a true response of the heart.)

…It is necessary to grasp the Sacred Heart in its true glory if the nature and depth of the devotion and its classical liturgical character are to be realized, and if we are to unmask the distortion and ungenuineness in many popular conceptions of this devotion which find their expression in certain hymns and art forms, and even some prayers.

It is interesting here that he mentions not only bad word selection in hymns but also brings up the tune itself. Certainly, there are many hymn tunes that I cannot tolerate because just hearing them sounds like what I call false sincerity or what von Hildebrand refers to as sentimentality. Although these tunes do not feel genuine I am not sure how you translate that feeling into a determination that “This hymn tune is appropriate for worship and that one is not.” The words, on the other hand, can easily be compared with the teachings of the Church to see if they are genuine or not. Next, after just a few more paragraphs, he shows why this can be so devastating to us spiritually.

…If we are to understand the transformation in Christ to which our hearts are called, our eyes must see the Sacred Heart of Jesus in its transfigured quality, as the epiphany of God.

The transformation of our ethos depends upon our having a true image of Christ and of his Sacred Heart. As long as we project our own mediocrity and pettiness into the Sacred Heart and nourish ourselves with this image, we remain imprisoned in that medocrity, instead of being transformed and elevated beyond ourselves. Here as in many other instances we are faced with the great danger of adapting the revelation to our narrow outlook, and of distorting it to such an extent that the challenge to be transformed is lost. Instead of grasping the true face of Christ and the challenge of being transformed, instead of letting ourselves be drawn upward by the love of the authentic God-Man, we miss the confrontation with the epiphany of God.

Wow!!! Of course we can substitute Sacred Heart of Jesus with any other divine attribute or understanding of the Church which modern hymns get wrong or, in the least, don’t get completely right. It also doesn’t stop just with the hymns but with any false teaching of what the Church believes. These distortions – these heresies, which is what they truly are – lead us away from the Truth! And if we are led away from the Truth we are being led away from God Himself. I don't know why I didn’t see this before.

What do you, the reader, think?

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Liturgy of the Hours, Pro-Life, Salvation, von Hildebrand

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God is seen by those who have the capacity to see him, provided that they keep the eyes of their mind open. All have eyes, but some have eyes that are shrouded in darkness, unable to see the light of the sun. Because the blind cannot see it, it does not follow that the sun does not shine. The blind must trace the cause back to themselves and their eyes. In the same way, you have eyes in your mind that are shrouded in darkness because of your sins and evil deeds.

Saint Theophilus of Antioch, bishop

From today's Office of Readings (at the Universalis website) comes the above quote from St. Theophilus. The part that really caught my attention is in bold print. The main point in the passage is whether or not all people can see God. He says that this depends on whether or not the individual has the eyes of his mind and ears of his heart open in order to perceive God. This calls to mind what our Lord had to say in Matthew 11, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Continue reading →

To forgive as we have been forgiven, part 2

16 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Repentance, Salvation, von Hildebrand

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On Tuesday I wrote in regards to the Gospel lesson for the day from Matthew 6, when our Lord taught His disciples the Pater Noster. My intention from the beginning was to include this part 2 with the original post, but the first post was getting long and I was running out of time. (Also to be noted, there was a typo in the original post that has been corrected in the last paragraph.)

What I want to discuss today in regards to forgiveness comes from von Hildebrand’s book The Heart, an Analysis of Human and Divine Affectivity. I am only about halfway through the book at this point but I would say that the main point is von Hildebrand's belief that the heart, as the center of affectivity, the will and the intellect should all work together within man. He is also trying to correct misunderstandings: people believe that the affective part of man shouldn’t be trusted because it is subjective and leads to sentimentality. He rebukes this misconception and shows how the affective sphere of man is necessary but must be used properly.

Continue reading →

It is finished…and yet only just begun.

13 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by in Transformation in Christ, von Hildebrand

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Finally, through what can only be described as a miracle, I have finished Transformation in Christ. I cannot remember exactly how long it has taken me but I would say it was 4-5 months. Of course, I did read it very slowly on purpose. There is too much in this book to read it quickly. Instead, it must be mulled over continually, which is what I tried to do. And as difficult as it is to take so much time reading such a long book (500 pages) the hard part has only just begun – applying what I have read to my life.

While after reading this book I do understand some about the thought of von Hildebrand, I am by no means an expert. Nor does reading this book qualify me as an expert in Catholic spirituality. But, it has greatly improved my knowledge of it. Our lives as Catholics is a continual process of becoming more like Christ – a goal we will not reach on this earth. But, at the same time, we do have a duty to continually strive towards that goal and that is what I hope, with God's help, to continue to do. And I think that the works of von Hildebrand will play a big part, especially Transformation in Christ, in my own transformation.

I have used Jesus' last words on the Cross in the title for this post. This was done for the obvious reason that I have finally completed this book. But, and more importantly, I have used our Lord's words because they are an indication of what we all must do to become like Christ – we must die. Dying to ourselves is a common theme in Transformation. If we are not willing to give up ourselves and our selfish desires then how can we ever love God and others as our Lord commanded? We must remember that through our Baptisms we have all participated in Christ's own death and Resurrection; and for the rest of our lives thereafter, we must live out that death by living our lives for Him.

In Statu Viae

03 Friday Jan 2014

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The phrase in statu viae is used often by von Hildebrand in Transformation in Christ (TC). I found this phrase described somewhere by St. Thomas Aquinas as “the condition of those who are working towards the Beatific Vision, but who have not as yet actually arrived at it.” Therefore, this state of life applies to everyone who is still alive on this earth. I suppose it also applies to the souls in Purgatory, having not yet attained the Beatific Vision, but their metaphysical reality (which is different than those of us who are still alive) isn't applicable to a discussion of TC.

This phrase is contrasted by von Hildebrand with another similar phrase status finales: being the point at which we achieve our desired end – everlasting life with God in Heaven. These two phrases first appear early on in the first chapter of TC under the section subtitled: Moral progress requires unqualified readiness to change. Below is a quote from the beginning of that section.

But the unreserved readiness to change, as here outlined, is not merely the condition for embarking on our journey towards our supernatural goal. It also constitutes the permanent basis for continual progress on our road. It is an attitude we must always preserve so long as we are in statu viae – until we have reached the safe harbor of the status finales, where there is no longer any task proposed to our will, and where our souls will rest unchangeably in the boundless bliss of communion with God. Should that readiness to change and that passionate will to surrender ever cease, we would no longer have the proper religious disposition. That unlimited readiness to change is not only necessary for the transformation in Christ: even as such, it represents the basic and relevant response to God.

With this in mind we can never content ourselves with just “going through the motions” of our Catholic Faith. You can go to Mass everyday of your life but if it brings you no closer to Christ then what is the use. Although, if you really did go to Mass everyday of your life I don't know how you could be completely unaffected and not come closer to Christ. Nevertheless, the important thing for us is to foster and maintain this “unreserved readiness to change” within ourselves as we progress towards our goal of eternal life with Christ. In fact, it is the means by which we will ultimately, with God's help, reach the status finales.

The Divinization of Man, part 2

02 Thursday Jan 2014

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This idea of the divinization of mankind may be a foreign idea to many. I don't think I heard about it until I started seminary. But a correct understanding of the divinization of mankind, which is a result of the Incarnation of God, and what we are to do with this correct understanding, is necessary if we are truly to be Christians. I say necessary because to be transformed into Christ is actually what being a follower of Christ is all about. The bulk of this post will be taken up with another wonderful excerpt from Transformation in Christ. This particular section is from the first chapter and is one of the most important sections in the entire book. It is necessary to grasp the meaning of what he says here, and its implications, in order to understand everything that follows in the rest of the book. This section is subtitled: Transformation in Christ requires unqualified readiness to change.

The full readiness to change – which might even better be termed readiness to become another man – is present in him only who, having heard the call 'Follow me' from the mouth of the Lord, follows Him as did the Apostles, 'leaving everything behind.' To do so, he is not required literally to relinquish everything in the sense of the evangelical counsels: this would be in answer to another, more particular call. He is merely required to relinquish his old self, the natural foundation, and all purely natural standards, and open himself entirely to Christ's action – comprehending and answering the call addressed to all Christians: 'Put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth.'

Readiness to change, taken in this sense, is the first prerequisite for the transformation in Christ. But, in addition thereto, more is needed: a glowing desire to become a new man in Christ; a passionate will to give oneself over to Christ. And this, again, presupposes a state of fluidity, as it were: that we should be like soft wax, ready to receive the imprint of the features of Christ. We must be deteremined not to entrench ourselves in our nature, not to maintain or assert ourselves, and above all, not to set up beforehand – however unconsciously – a framework of limiting or qualifying factors for the pervasive and re-creative light of Christ. Rather we must be filled with an unquenchable thirst for regeneration in all things. We must fully experience the bliss of flying into Christ's arms, who will transform us by His light beyond any measure we might ourselves intend. We must say as did St. Paul on the road to Damascus: 'Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?'

From this we should come to understand that Christ – God made Man – did not come and die for our sins so that we could merely become the best possible versions of ourselves we can be. No, He came so that we might become like Him.

The Divinization of Man

01 Wednesday Jan 2014

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Excerpt of a letter by St. Athanasius from today's Office of Readings (as found on the Universalis website).

By taking our nature and offering it in sacrifice, the Word was to destroy it completely and then invest it with his own nature, and so prompt the Apostle to say: This corruptible body must put on incorruption; this mortal body must put on immortality.

In addition to the above quote, St. Athanasius also wrote, “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” (On the Incarnation) And this last quote is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church along with many other similar quotes of other great saints throughout the ages. This is all in reference to the Church's belief in the divinization of man, which happens as a result of Incarnation of God. It is not my intent to pontificate about this lofty subject. Instead I am going to let von Hildebrand explain it.

Christ, the Messiah, is not merely the Redeemer who breaks apart the bond and cleanses us from sin. He is also the Dispenser of a new divine life which shall wholly transform us and turn us into new men: 'Put off the old man who is corrupted according to the desire of error, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth.' Though we receive this new life in Baptism as a free gift of God, it may not flourish unless we cooperate. 'Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new paste,' says St. Paul.

A strong desire must fill us to become different beings, to mortify our old selves and rearise as new men in Christ. This desire, this readiness to decrease so that 'He may grow in us,' is the first elementary precondition for the transformation in Christ. It is the primal gesture by which man reacts to the light of Christ that has reached his eyes: the original gesture directed to God. It is, in other words, the adequate consequence of our consciousness of being in need of redemption on the one hand, and our comprehension of being called by Christ on the other. Our surrender to Christ implies a readiness to let Him fully transform us, without setting any limit to the modification of our nature under His influence.

From Transformation in Christ