Musing on Two Feasts

Happy New Year !!! :o)

Today is, in fact, not one but two feasts. In the post-Vatican 2 calendar, it’s the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God. In the pre-Vatican 2 calendar (and hence, I guess, for those celebrating the TLM today) it’s the Feast of the Circumcision.

Reflecting on the truth that Mary is Mother of God (Theotokos) seems a good way of observing the octave of Christmas, as it reminds us that the Word of God was truly made flesh and was truly born as man (“anthropinated”, as St Athanasius puts it) of the Virgin Mary.

Reflecting on the historical event of the circumcision, which according to Jewish custom took place on the eighth day of a male infant’s life, is an equally good way of celebrating the Christmas octave.

One could say that the new feast is all about the truth that Jesus really is God – with the result that Mary really is properly titled “Mother of God” (as St Cyril of Alexandria said in the fifth century) and not just “Mother of Christ” (as his opponent Nestorius said).

And the older feast is all about the truth that, in giving birth to the incarnate Word and having him baptised and presented in the Temple, etc, Mary the Theotokos, who is herself “full of grace”, co-operates with him in bringing the old dispensation – the era of the Law of Moses – to its long-awaited climax and ushering in the new dispensation – the era of grace and of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

New Design

I've been tiring of my blog design for a while now, so thought I'd get a new one for Christmas / New Year (I've noticed one or two other bloggers have had the same idea).

Flannery O'Connor: Catholic Culture

Amy Welborn has put up a fascinating post about short book reviews written by Flannery O’Connor for diocesan newspapers.

The following extract particularly struck me:

Some of the most interesting parts of the book are hints thrown off in passing which show that attention to the study of archetypes could benefit the Church in some of the acute pastoral problems she faces today.

In discussing the prevalent lapse of Catholics brought up in Catholic homes and educated in Catholic schools, Fr. White observes that this is very likely a failure of our sacred images to sustain an adequate idea of what they are supposed to represent.

The images absorbed in childhood are retained by the soul throughout life. In medieval times, the child viewed the same images as his elders, and these were images adequate to the realities they stood for. He formed his images of the Lord from, for example, the stern and majestic Pantacrator, not from a smiling Jesus with a bleeding heart.

When childhood was over, the image was still valid and was able to hold up under the assaults to belief. Today the idea of religion of large numbers of Catholics remains trapped at the magical stage by static and superficial images which neither mind nor stomach can any longer take. (100 Soul and Psyche)

Writing before Vatican 2, Flannery O’Connor is lamenting a Catholic culture which has declined from the vigour of its patristic and mediaeval past to something altogether more sentimental and superficial – childish in the negative sense of the term.

Many of the proponents of reform in the first half of the 20th century shared this perception. In particular, the whole point of the liturgical movement was not to “modernize” but to rediscover the lost riches of patristic and mediaeval liturgical and devotional traditions.

Often acting in the name of these earlier proponents of reform, post-Vatican 2 reformers have gone the other way, rejecting the childish and sentimental pieties criticized by Flannery O’Connor in many of these reviews, but promoting in its place not the more substantial and robust faith of the patristic and mediaeval periods, but, rather, a liturgy (and accompanying theology) which have been “dumbed-down”, desacralised and stripped not only of sugary piety but also of mystery and wonder.

Poll Result

WHICH LANGUAGE WOULD YOU IDEALLY PREFER FOR MASS (ORDINARY OR EXTRAORDINARY FORM)?

Latin – 15

Douay-Rheims English – 7

ICEL English – 2

I’m assuming that those who voted for ICEL English were also voting for the Ordinary Form rather than for the Extraordinary Form rendered into contemporary English. I’m guessing that many of those who voted for Latin were in effect voting for the Extraordinary Form, but that need not necessarily have been the case. Those who voted for Douay-Rheims English could equally well have been voting for either the OF or the EF translated into elegant English. I don’t suppose for one moment that this poll is in any way whatsoever representative of how English-speaking Catholics think, though it’s a useful snapshot of the kind of people who stumble across my blog from time to time.

St John the Evangelist

Today is the Feast of St John the Evangelist. (In the Orthodox Church, St John is one of the three figures granted the title of “the Theologian”, the others being St Gregory Nazianzen [329-389] and St Symeon the New Theologian [949-1022].) 

My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him. (1 John 2:1-5)

St Fulgentius of Ruspe: St Stephen

The following is an extract from a sermon by Saint Fulgentius of Ruspe for the feast of St. Stephen which dates from around the year 500 AD, and which provides the patristic reading at Vigils for the Feast of St Stephen, Proto-Martyr (December 26^th).

And so the love that brought Christ from heaven to earth raised Stephen from earth to heaven. Shown first in the king, it later shone forth in his soldier. Love was Stephen’s weapon by which he gained every battle, and so won the crown signified by his name.

His love of God kept him from yielding to the ferocious mob; his love for his neighbor made him pray for those who were stoning him. Love inspired him to reprove those who erred, to make them amend; love led him to pray for those who stoned him, to save them from punishment.

Strengthened by the power of his love, he overcame the raging cruelty of Saul and won his persecutor on earth as his companion in heaven. In his holy and tireless love he longed to gain by prayer those whom he could not convert by admonition.

Longer extract available at The Crossroads Initiative.

Artwork: Saint Stephen, depicted by Carlo Crivelli in 1476 with three stones and the martyrs’ palm.

St Thomas Aquinas: Timing of the Incarnation

Why didn’t God become incarnate immediately after the fall? Why didn’t he deal with the problem of sin by becoming incarnate and establishing the means of grace (church and sacraments) right at the outset?

Here’s what St Thomas Aquinas as has to say in Summa Theologiae IIIa, q. 1, a. 5:

It was not fitting that God should become incarnate immediately after sin. First, on account of the manner of man’s sin, which was the result of pride. Hence man was to be liberated in such a manner that he might be humbled, and see how he stood in need of a deliverer.

Thus on the words in Galatians 3:19…a gloss says: “it was ordered with great wisdom that the Son of Man should not be sent immediately after man’s fall.

For, first of all, God left man under the natural law, with the freedom of his will, in order that he might know his natural strength.

And when he failed in it, he received the law, whereupon, by the fault not of the law but of his nature, the disease gained strength, so that having recognized his infirmity he might cry out for a physician, and beseech the aid of grace.”

St Leo the Great: Feast of the Nativity

Here’s a short extract from one of St Leo the Great’s sermons for the Feast of the Nativity (Sermon 21) which was the patristic reading at last night’s Vigils. For the full text, click here. Derya has posted up an extract from a later portion of the same sermon here.

Without detriment therefore to the properties of either substance which then came together in one person, majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality.

And for the paying off of the debt, belonging to our condition, inviolable nature was united with possible nature, and true God and true man were combined to form one Lord, so that, as suited the needs of our case, one and the same mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and rise again with the other….

…Such then beloved was the nativity which became the power of God and the wisdom of God even Christ, whereby he might be one with us in manhood and surpass us in Godhead. For unless he were true God, he would not bring us a remedy, unless he were true man, he would not give us an example.

Happy Christmas to all readers !!!

Labels

I would never describe myself as a “traditionalist Catholic”, but I’ve always felt that my understanding of Catholicism is much closer to that of the “trads” than it is to that of the “liberals”.

Increasingly, however, I find myself reading something that a trad has said on his (it’s usually a he) own blog or in someone else’s com box, and being so utterly appalled that I’m momentarily tempted to go to The Tablet’s website and take out an online subscription.

In the past, liberal Catholics have always brought out the traditionalist in me, but sometimes it can work the other way.

I completely understand why the wise people over at Laodicea say “Gonnae no call us trads? thanks.”

Even to those of us who are generally old-fashioned and orthodox in our approach to life and religion, “traditionalism” can appear pretty toxic at times, and the pronouncements of self-professed traditionalists frequently leave me feeling profoundly uneasy.

"If You Are Going To Be A Christian At All..."

Bl. Cyprian Tansi (O.S.C.O.) used to say “if you are going to be a Christian at all, you might as well live entirely for God”.

Is this true? Or is there something to be said for Christians “muddling through” – doing enough to get into Heaven (maybe via a long stint in Purgatory), but not exactly aiming for any kind of heroic sanctity?

Is what Bl. Cyprian (a Cistercian monk) says even realistic for laity and secular clergy?

Does what works for Trappists apply to the rest of us? And is it really possible to live the “little way” of St. Thérèse of Lisieux if one isn’t a Carmelite nun?

Indeed, if one does attempt to follow Bl. Cyprian or St. Thérèse while living in the world, will one have to sacrifice so much of what authentic “being in the world” means that one might as well be in a monastery or convent?

Is secular Catholicism essentially different from religious Catholicism (in the technical sense of those words)? Or is the difference only one of degrees? Or isn’t there any difference?

I have no answers to these questions.

[Bl. Cyprian was a monk of Mount St Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire. For more information, see here. There are some interesting blog posts about him on Roman Miscellany (Fr. Nicholas Schofield) and Father Mildew (Fr Michael Clifton). Fr Schofield provides an extract from his writings. Fr Clifton writes that “he was a direct contemporary of the awful Merton and the complete antidote to him” (!!!).]

 

Meme Omission

Inexplicably, and inexcusably, I forgot to include cats in my list of favourite things…

Here are some reasons why cats should be in the list:

“In the beginning God created man, but, seeing him so feeble, he gave him the cat” (Warren Eckstein)

“If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man but deteriorate the cat” (Mark Twain)

“There are two means of refuge from the misery of life – music and cats” (Albert Schweitzer)

“I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior” (Hippolyte Taine)

“How we behave towards cats here below determines our status in heaven” (Robert A. Heinlein)

(Quotations found at CatsInfo)

Favourite Things Meme

Madame Evangelista has tagged me with the “Favourite Things” meme. You name and explain six favourite things and then tag six others.

Blandings Castle. As in P.G. Wodehouse’s whimsical (and beautifully written) novels about Lord Emsworth, Galahad Threepwood, a long cast-list of dukes and duchesses, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, secretaries and chorus-girls, con-men, pig-men, and impostors of various kinds, in which true love always triumphs in the end. And then, of course, there’s the Empress of Blandings (Lord Emsworth’s prize-pig), who gets kidnapped on a regular basis.

The Champions League (formerly known as The European Cup). “The beautiful game” at its most beautiful. You have the great orchestras – Real Madrid, Ajax, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, AC Milan; the inspired virtuosi – Puskas and Di Stefano, Law and Best, Gullit and Van Basten; the brilliant conductors – Michels, Clough, Paisley, Sacchi, Capello, Mourinho. I can’t wait for the end of February and the start of the knock-out stages…

Jean Arthur movies (Jean Arthur is pictured above). She was unconventionally beautiful. She had a voice, simultaneously husky and honey-laden, to make men melt like butter. She was, apparently, a rather odd woman in real life, but that's par for the course with screen-icons, I guess. She co-starred opposite leading men Cary Grant (Only Angels Have Wings), Gary Cooper (Mr Deeds Goes To Town), James Stewart (Mr Smith Goes To Washington; You Can’t Take It With You), Charles Coburn (The Devil and Miss Jones), and Edward G. Robinson (The Whole Town’s Talking) when all were on their very best form, and yet I still remember those films for Jean Arthur rather than for the real stars.

Frasier. Once described as “the Mozart of situation comedies”. The plots are always clever, and often hilarious. The dialogue is brilliant. Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde-Pierce are sensational as Frasier and Niles. And Maris is the best “unseen character” in sitcom history.

Thomas Aquinas. When I read St Thomas, the world makes sense. Theology makes sense. Prayer makes sense. Catholicism makes sense. Life makes sense. I don’t agree with him on absolutely everything, and I understand (sort of) where David Tracy was coming from when he said of St Thomas that “to survive your enemies is a minor triumph; to survive your disciples a major one”. Even so, I’m in no doubt that as a theologian he's right at the top of the tree.

The Divine Office (The Liturgy of the Hours, for US readers). OK, some of the hymns are dire, the English translation of the psalms and other texts is often banal, the intercessions don’t really feel like they belong, and the post-Vatican 2 decision to scrap Prime (and, in the Roman Office, effectively reduce the three day-offices to one) was a mistake. Even so, it’s the only one of the six things I’ve listed I couldn’t imagine living without.

Now I have to work out who I can tag. I’m only comfortable tagging people with whom I’m on “exchanging blog posts and comments” terms, and since Madame Evangelista has already tagged Derya and Berenike with this, I may struggle to come up with six.

Lads' Rosaries

I was looking at the always excellent Mulier Fortis blog earlier this evening (one of my favourite Catholic blogs), and read a post entitled Rosary Meme, the instructions for which are “Post a picture of 3 of your most special and beautiful rosaries and tell us why they are special to you. Then pass it through to three of your fellow bloggers who will pick their three rosaries and so on”.

Looking at MF’s beautiful rosary photos, and thinking of others I’ve seen for sale on Catholic online stores, it occurred to me that a lot of rosaries tend to look, well, a little “feminine”… I guess that’s not entirely surprising. After all, how “manly” can a string of beads (however devotional) ever hope to be?

So is there such a thing as a “man’s rosary”? Indeed there is. A wonderful company called Catholic Supply of St Louis sells rosaries with beads in the shape of footballs (see above), baseballs, basketballs, American footballs, etc.

I do think they’re missing a trick, though. The football rosary pictured above is black and white, which would be fine for Newcastle supporters, but Sunderland fans wouldn’t be seen dead with a black-and-white rosary, and would undoubtedly require a red-and-white model.

Indeed, one could produce a rosary for every major club in Europe. Except, of course, for Glasgow Rangers – their fans are all staunch Protestants, and would regard any kind of rosary as a symbol of papistical wickedness.

Act of Succession Silliness

I’ve read in a couple pf places that the government is thinking of changing the Act of Succession so that the monarch can marry or even become a Catholic.

Hmmmmm. I can’t say that any Catholics to whom I’ve ever talked about it have lost a great deal of sleep over the Act of Succession.

Many are none too keen on the recent HFE legislation (with regard to which Labour, unlike the Conservatives and Lib Dems, refused to allow its MPs to vote according to conscience).

And many are none too keen on legislation which would require that schools offer sex-education to the under-6s.

But, as far as I’m aware, they aren’t exactly tearing their hair out over the fact that Kate Middleton can’t become a Catholic if she wants to marry Prince William.

Of course, a lot of working-class Catholic Labour voters, especially in their heartlands in the North West of England and in Scotland, have been alienated by the HFE legislation, and there seems to be growing evidence that in Scotland some of them are transferring their support from Labour to the SNP.

Is the Government really calculating that disaffected Catholic Labour voters are so lacking in any kind of moral depth that they’ll say to themselves “animal-human hybrids are OK as long as it’s theoretically possible for a future monarch to be a Catholic”?

One can’t help wondering whether politicians of all parties genuinely believe that religious people are as opportunistic and morally “flexible” as they themselves sometimes appear to be.

St Irenaeus of Lyons: The New Eve

St Irenaeus of Lyons (2nd Century AD) gives wonderful expression to the idea of Mary as the “New Eve”. The following text is taken from this Friday’s Office of Readings, but the key quotation from Genesis appears in today’s Old Testament reading at Mass (Feast of the Immaculate Conception).

The Lord, coming into his own creation in visible form, was sustained by his own creation which he himself sustains in being. His obedience on the tree of the cross reversed the disobedience at the tree in Eden; the good news of the truth announced by an angel to Mary, a virgin subject to a husband, undid the evil lie that seduced Eve, a virgin espoused to a husband.

As Eve was seduced by the word of an angel and so fled from God after disobeying his word, Mary in her turn was given the good news by the word of an angel, and bore God in obedience to his word. As Eve was seduced into disobedience to God, so Mary was persuaded into obedience to God; thus the Virgin Mary became the advocate of the virgin Eve.

Christ gathered all things into one, by gathering them into himself. He declared war against our enemy, crushed him who at the beginning had taken us captive in Adam, and trampled on his head, in accordance with God’s words to the serpent in Genesis: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall lie in wait for your head, and you shall lie in wait for his heel.

The one lying in wait for the serpent’s head is the one who was born in the likeness of Adam from the woman, the Virgin. This is the seed spoken of by Paul in the letter to the Galatians: The law of works was in force until the seed should come to whom the promise was made.

He shows this even more clearly in the same letter when he says: When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman. The enemy would not have been defeated fairly if his vanquisher had not been born of a woman, because it was through a woman that he had gained mastery over man in the beginning, and set himself up as man’s adversary.

That is why the Lord proclaims himself the Son of Man, the one who renews in himself that first man from whom the race born of woman was formed; as by a man’s defeat our race fell into the bondage of death, so by a man’s victory we were to rise again to life.

With acknowledgements to The Crossroad Initiative.

Artwork: The Immaculate Conception by Murillo, 1660, Museo del Prado, Spain.

Ambrose of Milan: "Tamar Is More Righteous Than I"

Were it not a Sunday, today would be the feast of St Ambrose of Milan (c. 337-397).

I came across this extract from one of Ambrose’s writings which is of relevance to the current penitential season. Ambrose is writing (in the form of a prayer to God) as a bishop considering the sins of his flock, but what he says could apply to all of us.

I imagine that different people will understand it in different ways, so I’ll spare you my own superfluous reading of what Ambrose has to say. For a fuller version of the same text, click here.

Grant that I may know how with inmost affection to mourn with those who sin; for this is a very great virtue….Grant that so often as the sin of any one who has fallen is made known to me I may suffer with him, and not chide him proudly, but mourn and weep, so that weeping over another I may mourn for myself, saying, “Tamar hath been more righteous than I” (Gen. 38:26).

Perchance a maiden may have fallen, deceived and hurried away by those occasions which are the sources of sins. Well, we who are older sin, too. In us, too, the law of this flesh wars against the law of our mind, and makes us captives of sin, so that we do what we would not. Her youth is an excuse for her, I now have none, for she ought to learn, we ought to teach. So that “Tamar hath been more righteous than I.”

We inveigh against some one’s covetousness, let us call to mind whether we ourselves have never done anything covetously; and if we have, since covetousness is the root of all evils, and is working in our bodies like a serpent secretly under the earth, let each of us say: “Tamar hath been more righteous than I.”

…Let us, then, not be ashamed to say that our fault is more serious than that of him whom we think we must reprove, for this is what Judah did who reprimanded Tamar, and remembering his own fault said: “Tamar is more righteous than I.”

In which saying there is a deep mystery and a moral precept; and therefore is his offence not reckoned to him, because he accused himself before he was accused by others.

John Damascene & Thomas Aquinas

Some explanations of (i) why God became incarnate in order to save us and (ii) how the process of salvations actually works can sound impossibly elaborate. Surely, one might ask, God could have dealt with the problem of sin in a much more straightforward manner.

St Thomas Aquinas makes it very clear that it wasn’t necessary for God to save us in this complicated way, but that it was the most fitting (Latin: conveniens) way of doing it.

Accordingly, at each step of the redemptive process (from the period immediately after the fall until now), everything that God has done has been arranged not only to make salvation available but to make it available in a way that is best suited (i) to our strengths and weaknesses and (ii) to our need to learn to know and love God.

Aquinas is heavily influenced in all that by today’s saint, John Damascene (c. 676-749) whose De Fide Orthodoxa represents a kind of summary and systematization of the teach of the Greek Fathers and was one of the main sources of Aquinas’s teaching in the incarnation and atonement.

You can read John Damasense’s answers to the questions (i) why God became incarnate in order to save us and (ii) how the process of salvations actually works in this passage from the De Fide Orthodoxa in which he furnishes a brilliant synopsis of Greek patristic teaching on salvation.

Aquinas draws on this passage when answering the question “was it necessary that God should become incarnate”, and (quoting Damascene) writes as follows:

It would seem most fitting that by visible things the invisible things of God should be made known; for to this end was the whole world made, as is clear from the word of the Apostle (Romans 1:20): “For the invisible things of God…are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made”.

But, as Damascene says, by the mystery of the incarnation are made known at once the goodness, the wisdom, the justice, and the power or might of God –
“his goodness, for he did not despise the weakness of his own handiwork;
his justice, since, on man’s defeat, he caused the tyrant to be overcome by none other than man, and yet he did not snatch men forcibly from death;
his wisdom, for he found a suitable discharge for a most heavy debt;
his power, or infinite might, for there is nothing greater than for God to become incarnate”.

St Francis Xavier: Theologians

It’s easy to forget that the Jesuits have not always been synonymous with heterodoxy and neo-marxist politics. (Alright, maybe that’s putting it a bit strongly, but you know what I mean…)

St Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Jesuits (whose feast it is today), is patron saint of the foreign missions. As someone who has for many years been involved one way or another in the world of academic theology, the following extract from his writings in today’s Office of Readings gave me pause for thought…

Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians. Again and again I have thought of going round the universities of Europe, especially Paris, and everywhere crying out like a madman, riveting the attention of those with more learning than charity: “What a tragedy: how many souls are being shut out of heaven and falling into hell, thanks to you!”

I wish they would work as hard at this as they do at their books, and so settle their account with God for their learning and the talents entrusted to them.

This thought would certainly stir most of them to meditate on spiritual realities, to listen actively to what God is saying to them. They would forget their own desires, their human affairs, and give themselves over entirely to God’s will and his choice. They would cry out with all their heart: “Lord, I am here! What do you want me to do? Send me anywhere you like - even to India”.

For a longer version, click here.

The Second Coming and the Mass

When we attend Mass or pray the Daily Office in Advent and look forward to the Second Coming, what do we actually mean? The Second Coming seems very remote, and the chances are it’s not going to happen until all of us are long gone.

Many Catholics probably regard reference to the Second Coming as something of a metaphor; the resurrection of the body isn’t a doctrine that gets preached about much nowadays.

I remember an Anglo-Catholic priest (who was more Catholic in his theology than most Catholic priests I’ve come across), saying that the Second Coming happens every time the bread and wine become the Body of Blood of Christ on the altar and we receive Him in holy communion.

That’s not to say that the Second Coming in the more obvious sense of the term isn’t to be understood literally. Rather, it’s to say that the Second Coming is something that has already been inaugurated with the Mass, and that will attain its final consummation in the literal Second Coming when the dead will be raised and the fullness of God’s Kingdom will be made manifest.

St Thomas Aquinas sees the Mass as referring back to Christ’s suffering and death (the merit and power of which are made truly present in the Eucharist), and as making present to us, here and now, the virtus (power) of the Christ’s saving passion – the climax (together with the resurrection and ascension) of his First Coming.

However, in addition to being the climax of the First Coming, the Mass is also the inaugural phase of the Second Coming. The culmination of the Second Coming lies in the future (firstly in our own deaths and personal judgment, and secondly in the general resurrection), but its beginning lies in the Mass, which is, so to speak, the Beginning of The End.

If we focus in the fact that the Second Coming to which we look forward in Advent has already begun, and that, far from being an unimaginable event in a distant future, it is a tangible reality here in the present, then Advent prayers for the coming of Christ take on a new sense of immediacy.

Advent Reading

Someone asked me today whether I’d read The Three Ages of the Interior Life by Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP (1877-1964).

I read bits of it years ago, but was not truly receptive to its wisdom at the time. Like many “conservative Catholics”, I’ve tended to buy into the idea that Garrigou-Lagrange was one of the “villains” of the theological culture-wars that took place within 1950s Catholicism, and that the proponents of the “nouvelle théologie” – Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Yves Congar and (more tangentially) Karl Rahner - were the heroes.

I’ve tried really hard to love these writers that conservative Catholics are supposed to love, and, yes, they do say a lot of good things, they do have a lot of positive and exciting insights, and, in the case of de Lubac, at least, they do sometimes write what almost amounts to a kind of theological poetry.

Returning afresh to Garrigou-Lagrange’s The Three Ages of the Interior Life, however (as I did earlier this evening), the relative superficiality of the nouvelle théologie is really quite cruelly exposed. (Just by comparison, that is; there's little or no polemic in The Three Ages.)

Garrigou-Lagrange is supposed to have said of the first draft of the young Karol Wojtyla’s Ph.D. thesis (which he directed) “writes much; says little”, and certainly that could be said of much of the nouvelle théologie.

It certainly couldn’t be said of The Three Ages of the Interior Life, though. (Well, the “writes much” part could, as the two volumes of The Three Ages come in at well over 1000 pages, but the “says little” certainly couldn’t.)

In addition to exposing the superficiality of much of the nouvelle théologie (which is itself vastly superior to most other modern Catholic theology and spirituality), The Three Ages of the Interior Life exposes the superficiality of the intellectual and spiritual life of the reader (well, it certainly does in my case…).

It’s one of those very rare books that brings you face to face with your own spiritual life, and demands that you make some pretty stark choices.

Berenike has just put the following quotation up on the Laodicea blog:
When you go to Communion
Jesus wants to give you so many graces.
Too bad some people come with a thimble
instead of a bushel basket.

Put simply, the message of The Three Ages of the Interior Life, is that we’re all called to go to communion with a bushel-basket, and that those enthusiastic Catholics who go perhaps not so much with a thimble as with a pint-pot need to re-examine themselves and come to a realization of the incredible riches of grace on which they’re missing out.

The Three Ages challenges you (me; one) to go with the bushel-basket, and gives some very clear guidance (built on rock-solid theological foundations) as to how to go about doing precisely that.

It’s stirring, challenging, and profoundly humbling stuff.