Knowledge and Wisdom

Interviews with sportsmen are usually eminently forgettable (the honourable exceptions being Jose Mourinho and Gordon Strachan), and rarely go beyond cliche and platitude, but here's Irish Rugby captain Brian O'Driscoll getting philosophical about knowledge, wisdom and tomatoes. I can just imagine Aquinas asking "Whether it belongs to Wisdom to put tomatoes in a fruit salad"...

Pope John XXIII on Penance

In preparation for Lent, here’s some good stuff from Pope John XXIII’s encyclical PAENITENTIAM AGERE, ENCYCLICAL OF POPE JOHN XXIII ON THE NEED FOR THE PRACTICE OF INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR PENANCE, JULY 1, 1962.

The encyclical was written in order to exhort Catholics to prepare for the forthcoming Vatican 2 with acts of penance. I’ve a feeling that John XXIII would have been utterly mortified to know that one of the fruits of his Council would be the near-abandonment of the practice of sacramental penance in many parts of Western Europe and North America.

1. Doing penance for one's sins is a first step towards obtaining forgiveness and winning eternal salvation. That is the clear and explicit teaching of Christ, and no one can fail to see how justified and how right the Catholic Church has always been in constantly insisting on this.

She is the spokesman for her divine Redeemer. No individual Christian can grow in perfection, nor can Christianity gain in vigor, except it be on the basis of penance.

28. Our first need is for internal repentance; the detestation, that is, of sin, and the determination to make amends for it. This is the repentance shown by those who make a good Confession, take part in the Eucharistic Sacrifice and receive Holy Communion.

The faithful should be specially encouraged to do this during the novena to the Holy Spirit, for external acts of penance are quite obviously useless unless accompanied by a clear conscience and the detestation of sin.

Hence Christ's severe warning: "Unless you repent you will all perish in the same manner." God forbid that any of Our sons and daughters succumb to this danger.

29. But the faithful must also be encouraged to do outward acts of penance, both to keep their bodies under the strict control of reason and faith, and to make amends for their own and other people's sins.

St. Paul was caught up to the third heaven—he reached the summit of holiness—and yet he had no hesitation in saying of himself "I chastise my body and bring it into subjection." On another occasion he said: "They who belong to Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires."

St. Augustine issued the same insistent warning: "It is not enough for a man to change his ways for the better and to give up the practice of evil, unless by painful penance, sorrowing humility, the sacrifice of a contrite heart and the giving of alms he makes amends to God for all that he has done wrong."

30. External penance includes particularly the acceptance from God in a spirit of resignation and trust of all life's sorrows and hardships and of everything that involves inconvenience and annoyance in the conscientious performance of the obligations of our daily life and work and the practice of Christian virtue.

Penance of this kind is in fact inescapable. Yet it serves not only to win God's mercy and forgiveness for our sins…but also sweetens, one might almost say, the bitterness of this mortal life of ours with the promise of its heavenly reward. For "the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that will be revealed in us."

Polycarp, Irenaeus and the Hermeneutic of Continuity

Today’s saint St Polycarp (ca. 69 – ca. 155) is a direct link between the Apostles and what we now regard as Catholic Theology.

Polycarp’s most famous pupil was St Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 202), who saw Polycarp as a direct link to the Apostles. Irenaeus sets great store by the fact that Polycarp had conversed with St John the Evangelist and with others who had seen Jesus, and that he had been converted by the Apostles before being consecrated as a Bishop and finally martyred.

The first real synthesis of Catholic theology is found in the Adversus Haereses of Irenaeus, who produced a theology of Tradition, a theology of Apostolicity, and a theology of the Atonement which lie at the heart of all subsequent Catholic theology.

For many (including those who have accepted the silly claims of The Da Vinci Code), the theology of the Church Fathers – of Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Cyril of Alexandria, Hilary, Ambrose and Augustine – marks a falling-away from the pure doctrine of the Apostolic Age under the influence of Hellenistic philosophy and ecclesiastical authoritarianism.

Against this point of view, the insistence by Irenaeus that his own teacher Polycarp was himself taught by the Apostles emphases the fundamental continuity between the teaching of the Apostles and that of Irenaeus himself, the “founder of Catholic theology”.

The same “hermeneutic of rupture” theologians who emphasize the alleged discontinuity between the pre-Vatican 2 Church and the post-Vatican 2 Church are also accustomed to affirm a radical discontinuity between the theology of the New Testament authors (and, indeed, of Jesus himself) and that of the Church Fathers.

The testimony of Irenaeus is that there is no such discontinuity, and, as the link between the Apostles and Irenaeus, the martyr Polycarp bears witness to the “hermeneutic of continuity” between Jesus, the Apostles, and Catholic theology.

Aquinas, Hope and the Epistle to the Hebrews

As Fred points out in the combox, one of the many intriguing features of the text from the Summa that I quoted yesterday is the idea of the “veil of hope”. Both in the sed contra and in the reply to the first objection Aquinas quotes Hebrews 6:19, so I thought it might be interesting to look at what he says about this verse in his Commentary on Hebrews.

Hebrews 6;19-20 reads as follows: We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.

Aquinas develops his understanding of Hope by bringing together the themes of the Ascension, the Priesthood of Christ, and hence (by implication) the Eucharist as an anticipation of and a participation in the heavenly liturgy.

Then when he says, we have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, he shows that faith will obtain that promise; and he makes use of a simile. For he compares hope to an anchor, which just as it secures ship in the sea, so hope secures the soul in God in this work, which is, as it were, a kind of sea: ‘So is this great sea, which stretches wide its arms’ (Ps. 103:25); hence, it is made of iron: ‘I know whom I have believed and I am certain’ (2 Tim. 1:12).

Also it should be firm, so that is it is not easily removed from the ship; thus a man should be held fast to that hope as an anchor and hope is that the anchor is fixed to a low place, but hope is fixed in the highest, namely, to God. For nothing in the present life is so firm that the soul could be secure and at rest; hence, it says in Gen. (8:8) that the dove found no place where her foot might rest.

And, therefore, he says that this hope should enter into the inner shrine behind the veil. For the Apostle understand the present condition of the Church by the holy things that were in the tabernacle; but by the holy of holies, which was separated from the saints by a veil, he understands the state of future glory.

Therefore, he wills that the anchor of our hope be fixed in that which is now veiled from our eyes: ‘The eye has not seen, O God, besides thee, what things you have prepared for them that wait for you’ (Is. 64:4); ‘How great is the multitude of your sweetness, O Lord, which you have hidden for them that fear you!’ (Ps. 30:20).

This, our forerunner, who has entered there, has fixed there; hence, it says in Jn (14:2): ‘I go to prepare a place for you.’ He shall go up that shall open the way before them’ (Mic. 2:13). Therefore, he says that Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf within the veil and has fixed our hope there, as it says in the collect of vigil and of Ascension day.

Yet because the high priest alone was permitted to enter within the veil (Lev 16), he says that Jesus has entered on our behalf, having become a high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. Notice how elegantly the Apostle returns to his main theme. For he had begun to speak of the priesthood and then digressed; but now he returns to it, as is obvious.

Artwork: Icon of the Ascension from the website of The Orthodox Church in America.

Aquinas on Hope

Berenike sent me a link to this Garrigou-Lagrange pic a few weeks ago. Fred’s post on Hope according to St Paul and Fr Giussani prompted me to re-read Aquinas on Hope, and “eternal life – you have it already (albeit imperfectly)” pretty much sums up what Aquinas has to say.

The Apostle says (Hebrews 6:19) that we have hope “which enters in”, i.e. makes us to enter…”within the veil”, i.e. into the happiness of heaven, according to the interpretation of a gloss on these words. Therefore the object of hope is eternal happiness.

The hope of which we speak now attains God by leaning on his help in order to obtain the hoped for good.

Now an effect must be proportionate to its cause. Wherefore the good which we ought to hope for from God properly and chiefly is the infinite good, which is proportionate to the power of our divine helper, since it belongs to an infinite power to lead anyone to an infinite good.

Such a good is eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of God himself. For we should hope from him for nothing less than himself, since his goodness, whereby he imparts good things to his creature, is no less than his essence.

Therefore the proper and principal object of hope is eternal happiness.

Eternal happiness does not enter into the heart of man perfectly, i.e. so that it be possible for a wayfarer to know its nature and quality. Yet, under the general notion of the perfect good, it is possible for it to be apprehended by a man, and it is in this way that the movement of hope towards it arises.

Hence the Apostle says pointedly that hope “enters in, even within the veil”, because that which we hope for is as yet veiled, so to speak.

(Summa Theologiae, IIaIIae, q. 17, a. 1 (sed contra, corpus, and ad 1).