Joe Versus the Volcano

Chesterton on St Francis, love and asceticism

2011-10-04T14:30:00.003+01:00

From G.K. Chesterton's St Francis...

If ever that rarer sort of romantic love, which was the truth that sustained the Troubadours, falls out of fashion and is treated as fiction, we may see some such misunderstanding as that of the modern world about asceticism.

[...] Men will ask what selfish sort of woman it must have been who ruthlessly exacted tribute in the form of flowers, or what an avaricious creature she can have been to demand solid gold in the form of a ring; just as they ask what cruel kind of God can have demanded sacrifice and self-denial.

They will have lost the clue to all that lovers have meant by love; and will not understand that it was because the thing was not demanded that it was done.

But whether or no any such lesser things will throw a light on the greater, it is utterly useless to study a great thing like the Franciscan movement while remaining in the modern mood that murmurs against gloomy asceticism.

The whole point about St. Francis of Assisi is that he certainly was ascetical and he certainly was not gloomy.

As soon as ever he had been unhorsed by the glorious humiliation of his vision of dependence on the divine love, he flung himself into fasting and vigil exactly as he had flung himself furiously into battle.

He had wheeled his charger clean round, but there was no halt or check in the thundering impetuosity of his charge. There was nothing negative about it; it was not a regimen or a stoical simplicity of life.

It was not self-denial merely in the sense of self-control. It was as positive as a passion; it had all the air of being as positive as a pleasure. He devoured fasting as a man devours food. He plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold.

And it is precisely the positive and passionate quality of this part of his personality that is a challenge to the modern mind in the whole problem of the pursuit of pleasure.

Aquinas on today's Gospel

2011-09-29T18:34:00.003+01:00

In today’s gospel (Feast of St Michael, St Gabriel and St Raphael, Archangels) Jesus says to Nathanael: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man”.

St Thomas Aquinas has some interesting observation on this text in his Commentary on St John’s Gospel.

Firstly, drawing on St John Chrysostom, he presents the text as a proof of Christ’s divinity:

the Lord wishes to prove that he is the true Son of God, and God. For the peculiar task of angels is to minister and be subject: “Bless the Lord, all of you, his angels, his ministers, who do his will” (Ps 102:20). So when you see angels minister to me, you will be certain that I am the true Son of God. “When he leads his First-Begotten into the world, he says: ‘Let all the angels of God adore him’” (Heb 1:6).

Next he asks: when was it that the prophecy was fulfilled? - when it was that the apostles actually saw the vision of the open heaven and the ascending and descending angels?

When did the apostles see this? They saw it, I say, during the passion, when an angel stood by to comfort Christ (Lk 22:13); again, at the resurrection, when the apostles found two angels who were standing over the tomb. Again, at the ascension, when the angels said to the apostles: “Men of Galilee, why are you standing here looking up to heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven” (Acts 1:11 ).

Drawing on St Augustine, St Thomas presents the foreshadowing of these words of Jesus in the vision of Jacob’s ladder in Genesis:

According to Augustine, Christ is here revealing his divinity in a beautiful way. For it is recorded that Jacob dreamed of a ladder, standing on the ground, with “the angels of God ascending and descending on it” (Gn 28:16). Then Jacob arose and poured oil on a stone and said, “Truly, the Lord is in this place” (Gn 28:16).

Now that stone is Christ, whom the builders rejected; and the invisible oil of the Holy Spirit was poured on him. He is set up as a pillar, because he was to be the foundation of the Church: “No one can lay another foundation except that which has been laid” (1 Cor 3:11). The angels are ascending and descending inasmuch as they are ministering and serving before him.

Finally, he is unable to resist as comparison between angels and Dominicans (which is what he means by “preachers” preachers):

Or, the angels are, according to Augustine, the preachers of Christ: “Go, swift angels, to a nation rent and torn to pieces,” as it says in Isaiah (18:2). They ascend through contemplation, just as Paul had ascended even to the third heaven (2 Cor 12:2); and they descend by instructing their neighbor.

“On the Son of Man”, i.e., for the honor of Christ, because “what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:5). In order that they might ascend and descend, the heavens were opened, because heavenly graces must be given to preachers if they are to ascend and descend. “The heavens broke at the presence of God” (Ps 67:9); “1 saw the heavens open” (Rv 4:1 )

Evagrius on "Logismoi"

2011-09-20T18:14:00.004+01:00

I came across a useful introduction to Evagrius of Pontus – Evagrius the Solitary (345-359) – by Fr Hugh Feiss OSB on the website of the Monastery of the Ascension in Idaho.

The following extract deals with the question of logismoi – a concept fundamental to the ascetical life as understood in Greek-speaking theology, and introduced into the Latin-speaking West by (most noitably) John Cassian and Pope St Gregory the Great.

Fr Feiss explains that for Evagrius:

The ascetical life is a struggle, a war, against the enemies of the soul: the world, the flesh, and the devil. The devil can’t reach the intellect; he can only arouse images and illusions. The devil cannot prevail against people unless they let him. Temptation becomes stronger as one grows in the spiritual life.

So how does one wage this ongoing war against the world, the flesh, and the devil? Fr Feiss offers a very clear account of the Evagrian answer to this question:

One must guard the heart. Attention is the mother of prayer. The best method of repelling the evil logismoi is antirrhesis, countering a temptation with a scripture quotation as Jesus did when he was tempted in the desert. One can also invoke the name of Jesus. One must discern the source of thoughts.

Antony [St Antony the Great] said good visions give rise to joy unspeakable and to strength and calmness of thought; others bring apprehension, confusion, dejection, sloth, hatred, fear, and instability. Whatever is disquieting comes from the devil. Each person needs to examine his conscience and manifest his thoughts to a spiritual father.

The list of the eight kinds of logismoi which Evagrius provides is the basis for (though a little different from) St Gregory the Great’s list of seven deadly sins, and is summarised by Fr Feiss with helpful explanations – taking account of the fact that logismoi are categories of thought, characteristic expecially though by no means exclusively of monks living in the desert, rather than types of action or patterns of behaviour:

1 Gluttony. Anxiety about one’s health, leading to inordinate concern about food. When Evagrius’ own diet of uncooked foods made him sick, he switched to cooked food.

2 Fornication. Desire for imaginary bodies, as unreal as the sicknesses mentioned above. This vice like the preceding tries to seduce us from orderly moral regimen.

3 Greed. Futile planning for an unreal future.

4 Sadness, which often follows from indulging in foolish wants or not getting what we want.

5 Anger. Can ruin health and cause bad dreams. Rather than brooding on our wrongs, we should go out of our way to do good to the person who wronged us.

6 Acedia (melancholy; depression). Listlessness, weariness of heart, which tempts the monk to abandon his calling.

7 Vain glory: Vain glory is daydreaming about our greatness, holiness, etc.

8 Pride: supposing we can do anything without God.

Fr Feiss notes that, according to Evagrius,

these eight all arise from self-love. They all involve the wrong notion about God. They trap us into an unreal world centered on ourselves and lead to a false God. Thus they make impossible the pure prayer which is our supreme goal.

Bl Ralph Corby and Bl John Duckett

2011-09-07T09:18:00.002+01:00

According to the Roman Martyrology, today is the feast of two English beati – Fr Ralph Corby SJ and Fr John Duckett who was martyred at the hands of the Roundheads in 1644 during the English Civil War. Both were arrested while ministering in County Durham (in the North East of England), so they are of special significance for those of us who live in the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. Below are two short biographies taken from Wikipedia.

Ralph Corbie SJ (also Corby; Corbington) from the age of five spent his childhood in the north of England. Then going overseas he studied at Saint-Omer, Seville, and the English College, Valladolid; where he was ordained. Having become a Jesuit about 1626, he came to England about 1631 and laboured at Durham.

He was seized by the Parliamentarians at Hamsterley, 8 July 1644, when clothed in his Mass vestments, conveyed to London, and committed to Newgate Prison (22 July) with his friend John Duckett, a secular priest. At their trial (Old Bailey, 4 September), they both admitted their priesthood, were condemned to death, and executed at Tyburn, 7 September.

John Duckett (1603 Sedbergh – 7 September 1644 Tyburn) was born at Underwinder, in the parish of Sedbergh, in Yorkshire, in 1603, the son of the Protestants James Duckett and his wife Frances Girlington who had been married in the parish on March 19, 1600. The boy was baptized after a long delay on February 24, 1614.

The boy was educated at Sedbergh School and brought up a Protestant like his parents but was received into the Catholic Church by the priest Andrew North. At the age of about thirty he entered the English College, Douai, arriving on 1 March 1633 and was ordained a priest by the Archbishop of Cambrai in 1639 and was then sent to study for three years at the College of Arras in Paris.

He is said to have had an extraordinary gift of prayer, and as a student would spend whole nights in contemplation. After Paris it came time to embark on the English mission, but on his way he spent two months in retreat under the direction of his uncle, John Duckett, prior of the Charterhouse at Nieuport.

Once arrived in England around Christmas 1643, Duckett worked largely in the North and laboured for about a year in Durham. It was in the time of the Civil War and he was seized only a few months later, on 2 July 1644, near Wolsingham in the neighbourhood of Lanchester, County Durham, while on his way to baptize two children. Taken to Sunderland, he was examined by a Parliamentary Committee of sequestrators, and placed in irons.

He admitted he was a priest and so was to London with the Jesuit Ralph Corby, arrested about the same time near Newcastle-on-Tyne. They were both confined in Newgate, where they were the cause of crowds of Catholics gathering. On these and on others who encountered them they made an impression by their cheerfulness and sanctity. He was brought to trial on September 4, and given the inevitable and terrible sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering the day after. It was carried out at Tyburn in London on 7 September 1644.

Both priests were declared Blessed by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929.

Maximus the Confessor on the Lord's Prayer

2011-09-06T11:11:00.004+01:00

St Maximus the Confessor (c. 580-662) is the author of one of the most important Patristic interpretations of the Lord's Prayer, whose principal themes are set out in an essay by Protopresbyter Theodoros Zisis on the Orthodox Christian Information Center website.

Fr Zisis quotes Maximus to the effect that “The prayer includes petitions for everything that the divine Logos [i.e. the Word, the Son] effected through his self-emptying in the incarnation”, and explains that

from amongst these immeasurable blessings—immeasurable in multitude and magnitude—the Lord’s Prayer mystically sets forth seven of more general significance: 1) Theology, 2) Adoption, 3) Equality in honour with the Angels, 4) Sharing in Eternal Life, 5) The Restoration of Nature to its Natural State, 6) The Abolition of the Law of Sin, and 7) The Overthrowing of the Tyranny of the Evil One.

In the prayer’s first phrase, “Our Father, Who art in the heavens, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come”, Maximus discerns the first two blessings—Theology and Adoption. Fr Zisis notes that

Here, “theology” means, in a literal sense, Triadology, in other words, the teaching concerning the Holy Trinity, “that from this beginning we may be taught to revere, invoke, and worship the Trinity in unity.” The Holy Trinity is indeed proclaimed because although the Father alone is mentioned, mystically and anagogically the other two are implied in the words “name” and “kingdom”, “For the name of God the Father exists in substantial form in the Only-begotten Son. Again, the Kingdom of God exists in substantial form as the Holy Spirit.”

With regards to the second blessing—that of adoption— Fr Zisis writes that

We are all, then, children of God. We have the grace of adoption and call him “Father”, not because He created us, but because he has given us rebirth and regeneration by the saving work of His Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Through His labour we possess this adoption by grace. This spiritual adoption demands that we try to preserve in our life the characteristics of our Divine birth by grace. In our action, and not only in our words, we are to “hallow” His name, and thus be proven to be true children of God, glorifying Him, “who is by nature Son of the Father”, in all that we think and do.

So what does it mean to hallow the name of the Father?

The name of the Father is hallowed when we mortify the material desires and are purified of the corrupting passions, as “sanctification is the complete mortification and cessation of desire in the senses.” In this condition, manifestations of anger because anger is, by nature, kindled by sinful desire. When we mortify these desires, then the mania of anger ceases.

Understood in this way, the hallowing of the Father’s name prepares the way for the coming of the Spirit, which for Maximus is equivalent to the coming of the Holy Spirit. According to Fr Zisis:

The mortification of the sinful desires and the cessation of anger—that is, the sanctification of man—transform man into a temple; they create the proper conditions that he might be worthy to say “Thy Kingdom come” or, in other words, thy Holy Spirit come.

Maximus wishes to impress upon us that

we are only able to worthily invoke the coming of the Kingdom of God, of the Holy Spirit, when we have previously mortified the sinful desires, quelled our anger, and have become meek and humble, since God is only comforted with these. “It is fitting that, anger and desire repudiated, we should next invoke the rule of the kingdom of God the Father with the words “Thy Kingdom come”, that is “May the Holy Spirit come”; for having put away these things, we are now made into a temple of God through the Holy Spirit by the teaching and practice of gentleness.”

Maximus relates the petition for the coming of the Kingdom (that is, of the Holy Spirit) to Jesus’s promise in the beatitudes that the meek will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:4):

Christ’s calling of the meek and humble, and the assurance that these will inherit the earth, is realized in the perfection of the spiritual life. Saint Maximos says the we must spiritually understand “earth” to mean, “the resolution and strength of the inner stability, immovably rooted in goodness, that is possessed by gentle people,” which, accompanied by indelible joy, resembles the state of the angels.

This assimilation to the angels is how Maximus understands the petition “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”:

In this phrase Saint Maximos sees man becoming equal in honour to the angels, as asking for equality with the rational beings. In the fulfilment of God’s will on earth as it occurs in heaven, man imitates the angels. In the angels there exist no sinful desires, which paralyze the spiritual faculties with pleasure, nor anger, which is fiercely directed against brothers. We find only the natural leading of rational beings toward God and nothing else.

Maximus gives both a literal and spiritual interpretation to “Give us this day our daily bread”, though he clearly prefers the spiritual interpretation:

Saint Maximos understands the fourth of the seven blessings to be participation in the bread of life and incorruptibility. According to the anagogical interpretation the petitioner asks God for the bread of wisdom, which we were deprived of by the transgression of the first-created man....He writes that we ask spiritual bread from God in our prayer because we know that only one true pleasure exists. This pleasure is the attainment of divine blessings which God, by nature, bestows, but man safeguards according to his will and intention. On the other hand, the sole true pain is the loss of divine blessings; a loss prompted by the Devil but only made actual by man on account of his of his laziness through which he renounces the Divine.

Regarding “Forgive us our debts as we forgive out debtors”, Fr Zisis explains that, for Maximus,

Forgiveness of the sins of others not only contributes to the remission of our own sins by God, but principally to the evading of divisions and schisms, and the restoration of human nature which in this state, when it does not rebel and divide, accepts the divine condescension. God taught us to seek forgiveness...to purify us from the passions and to demonstrate that our disposition is vital to achieving the brotherly relationship among men under grace. In this petition for absolution, Saint Maximos sees the attainment of the fifth blessing; the restoration of nature culminating in the unity and harmony of all men.

The concluding petition, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One”, asks for “the abolition of the law of sin and the overthrowing of the tyranny of the Devil”. “Temptation” needs to be understood in a very precise sense:

Temptation is the law of sin, something unknown to creation initially....Temptation is understood as the voluntary predilection of the soul towards the passions, while evil is the implementation in practice of this impassioned predilection.

Freedom from temptation and deliverance from evil are dependent on forgiveness:

Forgiving the sins of other men and the setting aside every dislike and hatred is of great importance so that God might immediately hear our prayer and send a double grace and reward. The forgiveness of sins is not only protection and deliverance from sin, but also from the future attacks of the Devil. The past and the future are both dependent on present absolution.

Maximus concludes by summarizing the prayer in reverse order:

in order to be free from the Devil and to flee temptation, we must forgive the sins of others. In this struggle to expel the passions we have Christ as our ally, who with love unites and restores nature and moves us to love the bread of life. In living according to the Divine Will we are made like unto the angels, and then with the participation by the grace of the Holy Spirit He makes us “commune with the Divine nature”, He makes us children of God who are clothed by the worker of Grace, Christ, “From Him, through Him and in Him we have and always will have our being, our movement and our life.”

John Cassian: prayer without ceasing

2011-07-23T13:56:00.003+01:00

Today is the feast of St John Cassian (c. 360-435) - to whom we owe two extensive accounts (the Institutes and the Conferences) of the teaching of some of the great desert fathers. Cassian played a significant role in the establishment of monastic life in Gaul, and was an influence on both St Benedict and St Dominic. (The fact that it falls on the same day as that of St Bridget of Sweden means that, certainly in Europe, his memoria is generally not observed).

The following is an extract from his Conferences which discusses a theme central to monastic life - unceasing prayer.

And so for keeping up continual recollection of God this pious formula is to be ever set before you: “O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me” (Psalm 69:2).
For this verse has not unreasonably been picked out from the whole of Scripture for this purpose.

For it embraces all the feelings which can be implanted in human nature, and can be fitly and satisfactorily adapted to every condition, and all assaults.

Since it contains an invocation of God against every danger, it contains humble and pious confession, it contains the watchfulness of anxiety and continual fear, it contains the thought of one’s own weakness, confidence in the answer, and the assurance of a present and ever ready help.

For one who is constantly calling on his protector, is certain that He is always at hand.

[...] This thought in your heart may be to you a saving formula, and not only keep you unharmed by all attacks of devils, but also purify you from all faults and earthly stains, and lead you to that invisible and celestial contemplation, and carry you on to that ineffable glow of prayer, of which so few have any experience.

Let sleep come upon you still considering this verse, till having been moulded by the constant use of it, you grow accustomed to repeat it even in your sleep.

When you wake let it be the first thing to come into your mind, let it anticipate all your waking thoughts, let it when you rise from your bed send you down on your knees, and thence send you forth to all your work and business, and let it follow you about all day long.

This you should think about, according to the Lawgiver’s charge, “at home and walking forth on a journey” (Deut. 6:7), sleeping and waking.

This you should write on the threshold and door of your mouth, this you should place on the walls of your house and in the recesses of your heart so that when you fall on your knees in prayer this may be your chant as you kneel, and when you rise up from it to go forth to all the necessary business of life it may be your constant prayer as you stand.

John Cassian (c. 360-435): Conferences 10, 10.

I have assembled further extracts from Cassian's writings here on my other blog.

The Real Presence and Christ's healing power

2011-07-23T13:47:00.000+01:00

Elijah, Our Lady, and the Eucharist

2011-07-20T16:36:00.005+01:00

The Elijah narratives in the Book of Kings are rich in content which the Church has traditionally understood as prefiguring Our Lady and the Mass. Some of these are discussed in the following (very short) addresses produced by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.

Types of Our Lady: Mary and the Cloud of Elijah

Types of the Eucharist: Elijah's Hearth Cakes

Feast of the Prophet Elijah

2011-07-20T16:25:00.004+01:00

In the Carmelite calendar July 20th is the feast of the Prophet Elijah. I imagine that it is no coincidence that this falls within what used (presumably) to be the Octave of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

I'd be interested to know what the Carmelites have selected for the patristic reading in the Office of Readings. In the modern monastic office, the Elijah cycle occurs in week 17 of Ordinary Time (that is, next week), and includes the following commentary by St Chromatius of Aquileia (an Italian bishop who died early in the fifth century) on the episode of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath

Elijah was sent to a widow in the Sidonian village of Zarephath to give her food and save her from starving.

Let us consider how perfectly this woman prefigures the Church.

Before Elijah came to her, she and her children were suffering from hunger.

Undoubtedly she suffered also from the worst kind of hunger, because Christ the bread of life had not yet descended from heaven; the Word of God had not yet taken a body from the Virgin.

Listen to the Prophet’s saying: I shall send famine on the land; not hunger for bread or thirst for water, but for hearing the word of the Lord.

Any who suffer hunger for lack of the divine word do indeed risk dying of starvation.

There is a great difference between being deprived of earthly bread and being deprived of the divine word.

Lack of earthly bread can kill only the body, but lack of the divine word ruins the soul as well as killing the body.

Unsatisfied hunger for earthly bread removes us from this present life; but unsatisfied hunger for the divine word excludes us from eternal life.

Such was the peril faced by the Church before she received Christ, but when she received him she escaped the danger of everlasting death.

Before the coming of Christ, this woman did indeed have a little flour and oil, that is, the teaching of the Law and the Prophets, but that could not have saved her if the grace of Christ had not fulfilled the Law and the Prophets.

Hence the Lord’s saying in the Gospel: I have come not to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfil them.

The Law and the Prophets were powerless to save us from death, except through the Passion of Christ.

So it was that when the Church received Christ, flour, oil, and wood began to abound; flour signifying the bread of the word; oil the gift of divine mercy; and wood the mystery of the venerable Cross through which the heavenly rain is given to us.

For this is what Elijah says to the woman: You shall not lack flour or oil until the Lord brings rain upon the land.

Our Lord and Saviour brought us rain from heaven, that is, the teaching of the Gospel, and by it he refreshed human hearts, dry as a thirsty land, with the waters of eternal life.

Chromatius of Aquileia (d. 406/7): Sermon 25, 5-6 (SC 164:84-88); 3) from the Monastic Office of Vigils, Friday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time, Year I.

Devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel

2011-07-19T12:55:00.003+01:00

Following on from here and here, this is another thought-provoking homily on the Our Lady of Mount Carmel from the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate at Our Lady of Guadalupe Friary. This particular reflection focuses on the defining characteristics of devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel (whose feast was celebrated a few days ago on July 16th).

St Arsenius the Great

2011-07-19T12:05:00.006+01:00

Today is the feast of St Arsenius the Great, who was born in around 350 A.D. in Rome to a Christian, Roman senatorial family. He was made a deacon by Pope Damasus I who recommended him to Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I the Great as a tutor for his sons. After spending several years living in luxury in Constantinople with the imperial family, he retired to the desert to pursue a life of prayer, solitude and repentance. Known for his often-repeated saying “Many times I spoke, and as a result felt sorry, but I never regretted my silence”, he died in 445 at the age of nearly 100. There is an engaging bigraphy on the Coptic Orthodox Church Network.

St Camillus de Lellis

2011-07-18T19:13:00.004+01:00

Today is the feast of St Camillus de Lellis in the EF calendar. St Camillus is a patron saint of the sick and of those who care for them. A short biography can be found here, and a longer one here. And this post by Richard at Linen on the Hedgerow is well worth reading. Below is a short homily from Our Lady of Guadalupe Friary (Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate).

“Who seeks entry?”

2011-07-17T14:34:00.003+01:00

I warmly recommend the post about the obsequies for Otto von Hapsburg on Tea at Trianon. The post (aptly entitled The Passing of an Age) includes a description of the moving ceremony in Vienna in which Otto von Hapsburg is admitted to the Imperial Crypt in the Capuchin Church where most of the Hapsburg emperors and empresses are buried. The short video shown below can also be seen (with others) at the engaging Mad Monarchist blog.

Prayer to Our Lady of Mount Carmel

2011-07-16T18:43:00.001+01:00

Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

2011-07-16T12:13:00.001+01:00

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

2011-07-16T11:16:00.003+01:00

Scenes from Mass (EF) and Devotions in honour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (today's feast) from Campos in Brazil in 2005, with the Flos Carmeli and Agnus Dei chanted by the Traditional Carmelite Monks of Ancient Observance from Wyoming.

The Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

2011-07-16T11:09:00.002+01:00

Benedict on Benedict

2011-07-12T14:57:00.002+01:00

Some words of Pope Benedict on St Benedict (whose feast was yesterday)...

St Benedict

2011-07-12T14:17:00.002+01:00

This video features a prayer by St Benedict, whose feast day it was on July 11th.

Saint Peter and Saint Paul

2011-06-29T11:30:00.002+01:00

St Leo the Great (pope from 440-461) is very interesting on the subject of today’s feast, the Solemnity of Saint Peter and St Paul.

Leo views salvation very much in terms of Christ’s victory over the devil. In virtue of his incarnation, death, and resurrection, the incarnate Son of God achieves a decisive victory over the devil and all his works – death, sickness, fear, error, idolatry, and sin.

However, although defeated, the devil and his army of demons continue to fight on. They cannot win the war, but they can carry on skirmishing while in retreat, and they can endeavour to bring down with them as many human beings (Christians included) as possible.

In his homily (Sermon 82) on the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, Leo presents Rome as lying at the heart of this ongoing battle between Christ and the demons. Leo argues that all the error, vice, idolatry, and demonic wickedness of the world was (providentially) concentrated in pagan Rome.

Consequently, the washing of Rome in the blood of Peter and Paul and of the other Roman martyrs, together with the establishment of Rome as the centre of orthodox teaching, effected a kind of redemption of Rome.

Rome becomes the scene of an epic battle between Christ and his Church on the one side and the devil and his demons on the other. Through the teaching and martyrdom of Peter and Paul, Christ wins another crushing victory.

The results of this victory – won on the devil’s own home-turf – reverberated around the world. Where she had previously poured out the toxin of demonic error and immorality and idolatry, Rome now pours out the medicine of truth and holiness.

The Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul celebrates of the salvation of Rome – of the washing of Rome in the blood of her first martyrs and in the transformation of what had previously been (to use a modern expression) the global epicentre of the culture of death into the global epicentre of the outpouring of divine life.

Corpus Christi

2011-06-25T10:55:00.004+01:00

Some readings relating to the Feast of Corpus Christi from my other blog...

Columba Marmion: Christ is Upon the Altar with the Divine Life which Never Ceases

Columba Marmion: If We Allow It to Penetrate Our Souls, We shall Feel the Love and Desire for this Divine Food Increase Within Us

Cyril of Alexandria: The Body of Christ Gives Life to Those Who Receive It

Cyril of Alexandria: “He That Eateth Me Shall Live By Me”

Thomas Aquinas: To Impress the Vastness of this Love more Firmly upon the Hearts of the Faithful

John Damascene: Cleansed and Incorruptible, Partakers of His Divinity

John Damascene: Communion in Christ, Participation in His Flesh and Divinity

St Augustine of Canterbury, "Apostle of the English"

2011-05-27T11:19:00.003+01:00

May 27th is the feast of St Augustine of Canterbury, "Apostle of the English".

I have written about his life elsewhere, and have also posted the delightful reflection by Pope St Gregory the Great on the conversion of the Angles which is prescribed for the Office of Readings for the feast.

As for St Bede (see previous post), so also for St Augustine there are some liturgical texts for Vespers, Mattins and Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Churches at Orthodox England, which could provide material for private devotion.

St Bede the Venerable

2011-05-25T09:22:00.005+01:00

Today the Catholic Church in England observes the memoria of St Bede the Venerable. Recently the bishops of England and Wales upgraded the memorias of certain English saints to the status of feasts, and it is perhaps a little strange that Bede wasn't among their number. He is, after all, the only Englishman mentioned by Dante as being in Paradise, and the only Englishman who is officially a Doctor of the Church (St Anselm being originally an Italian).

Over recent months I've gathered together on my other blog some short extracts from Bede's voluminous writings. (Although he is now known mostly for his History of the English Church and People, in previous ages he was celebrated primarily as one of the great commentators on Scripture.)

The are some lovely liturgical prayers appropriate to the the feast (specifically, for Orthodox Vespers, Mattins, and Divine Liturgy) over at Orthodox England. These could easily be used, in whole or in part, as the basis for a novena or just for private devotion.

Saints of the British Isles and the "new evangelisation"

2011-05-22T12:45:00.004+01:00

"The Church in the British Isles will only begin to grow when she begins to venerate her own saints again."

Arsenios of Cappadocia (thanks to Anagnostis for the correction).

St Godric of Finchale

2011-05-22T12:34:00.001+01:00

Saturday 21st May was the feast of another great but relatively little-known English saint, St Godric of Finchale (1065-1170) – featured a long while ago on my currently dormant Saints and Blesseds blog, and reproduced below....

Godric was born at Walpole in Norfolk (England) around the year 1065. He was a peddler of some sort – a traveling salesman, indeed – whose wanderings led him to sea for a period of around sixteen years, during which time he became a part-owner of a number of vessels, one of which he went on to captain. There is, in fact, some indication that he may have been operating more or less as a pirate, and that his lifestyle was as far removed from the ways of Christian living as that of pirates generally is.

Godric’s maritime exploits brought him to the island of Lindisfarne off the Northumbrian coast, and here he became acquainted with tales of St Cuthbert, Lindisfarne’s greatest saint. Godric’s life was transformed by his encounter with Cuthbert (who, even centuries after his death, must have remained an almost tangible presence on Lindisfarne), and he experienced a profound conversion.

Ever the seafarer, his conversion of heart manifested itself in a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In the early Middles Ages as in Late Antiquity, the idea of pilgrimage exercised a powerful hold over the imaginations of the holy, symbolizing as it did both the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert as they passed from Egypt to the Promised Land, and the wanderings of Christians exiled by sin from Paradise and living in this world as “strangers and pilgrims” en route to the New Jerusalem. Christ himself, who had “nowhere to lay his head”, was essentially a pilgrim, and pilgrimage was understood as a way of conforming oneself with Christ and of following in his footsteps.

This last aspect of following in Christ’s footsteps was one which Godric interpreted with a certain literalness. While in Jerusalem he visited the river Jordan, and, contemplating his own feet, vowed: “Lord, for love of your name, who for men’s salvation walked barefoot through the world, and did not deny to have your naked feet struck through with nails for me; from this day I shall put no shoes upon these feet”. Godric always remained faithful to this vow – even in old age (he lived to be around 100) amid the biting winters of the North East of England.

Further pilgrimages took him to Santiago de Compostella, the shrine of Saint Giles in Provence, to Rome, to Cumberland in North West England (where he obtained a copy of the Psalms which was to provide the material and inspiration for his life of prayer and contemplation), and back to Jerusalem, where he spent time working in a hospital and living with the hermits of Saint John the Baptist and worked in a hospital for several months.

Cuthbert remained his inspiration, however, and it was a vision of Cuthbert in which the saint promised him a hermitage in England that promoted him to return to the land of his birth – this time to Durham, where Cuthbert lay buried – and eventually became a hermit in the forest around Finchale (just outside Durham) in the hunting grounds of the rather disreputable Bishop Ranulf Flambard (the first man to escape from the Tower of London).

Godric embarked upon a life of austerity and mortification, wearing a hair shirt under a metal breastplate, under the guidance of the prior of Durham. Many people sought his advice either in person or from a distance (the latter group included both St Thomas à Becket and Pope Alexander III), and Godric developed a reputation for miracles, for prophecy and for an affinity (characteristic of hermits) for the wild animals among which he lived.

His gift of prophecy extended to foretelling not only his own death both also the deaths of others. Though he seafaring days were now behind him, his prophetic charism enabled him to know when a ship somewhere was in danger of being wrecked, and he would cease from whatever he was doing in order to offer up a prayer.

Godric’s prophetic visions were also the occasion for the Blessed Virgin (among others) to teach him songs, and the four which are recorded by his biographer Reginald are the oldest examples of English verse for which we possess the original musical settings survive, and also the first to favour rhyme and metre over traditional Anglo-Saxon techniques of alliteration.

He died in 1170, tended and mourned by the monks of Durham, having given expression during the course of his extended life to the vocations of both the pilgrim and the hermit.

St Milburga

2011-05-19T14:02:00.001+01:00

Following on from my post on St Dunstan, I see from the Ordo of the English Benedictine Congregation that today is also the day (at Curzon Abbey, anyway) when the feast of St Milburga (d. 715?) is observed. Like St Dunstan, St Milburga is one of the saints of Anglo-Saxon England about whom I wrote on my currently mothballed Saints and Blesseds blog. The original post is reproduced below....

Milburga (or Milburgh) was born in the latter half of the seventh century, one of three daughters of Ermenburga, a Kentish princess. The family was devout and completely devoted to Christ, and all three sisters – Milburga, Mildred and Mildgytha – were canonized as saints.

It was commonplace in Anglo-Saxon England for royal women to use their wealth and influence to support the Church and promote learning. They were involved in founding (and running) abbeys, in education, in patronage of sacred art, and in care for the poor and sick.

It was not unusual for these royal women to marry, raise their children, and then retire to a nunnery or to some other form of consecrated life, and this is precisely what Ermenburga did.

Milburga was keen to follow in her mother’s footsteps, and enlisted the support of her father Merewald and of her uncle Wulfhere (who happened to be King of Mercia), she established a monastery at Wenlock (in modern-day Shropshire), of which she became the second abbess, being consecrated by St Theodore of Canterbury.

Milburga’s abbey was intended to reflect and represent the beauty of the human soul redeemed and graced by God. Milburga in effect created a foretaste of heaven, in icon of God’s new creation, in which the surpassing perfection of the fruit in the orchards, of the flowers in the gardens, and, in short, of the entire physical environment, was so charged with intimations of redemption and renewal that it possessed a sacramental quality.

However, Miburga did not shut herself up within this living, breathing icon of the new creation, but regularly went forth into the wild and dangerous world beyond the abbey walls to bring conversion and consolation to the abandoned souls who inhabited the remote fastnesses of the Mercian countryside.

On one occasion while engaged upon works of mercy she encountered a young prince, who, wishing to marry her, sent his soldiers to sieze her. In an episode which recalls the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites, she fled across a stream called the Corve which then swelled up to the size of a small river, thereby frustrating the pursuing soldiers.

Like many Anglo-Saxon saints, Milburga had a tremendous affinity with the natural world – an affinity which found expression not only in the arrangements of the abbey gardens which teemed with herbs and flowers and birds (with which Milburga had a special and mysterious relationship), but also in a love of country people and country life in general.

She used to visit the surrounding villages, treating the ailments of the country-dwellers (probably with herbs), and occasionally effecting miraculous cures, and was known for her gentleness and kindness, her sanctity of life, and her ability to levitate.

After her death (some time between 700 and 722) she was buried near the altar of the abbey, but, in the wake of the destruction of the church by Danish invaders, the exact location of her mortal remains was unknown. However, after the re-founding of Wenlock Abbey by Cluniac monks from La-Charité-sur-Loire in 1079, her tomb was discovered and opened up, giving forth a heavenly fragrance which recalled the sensory paradise of the old monastery garden.

St Dunstan

2011-05-19T11:19:00.002+01:00

Today is the feast-day of St Dunstan of Canterbury (909-988AD). A long while ago I wrote piece on St Dunstan on my currently dormant Saints and Blesseds blog, which I reproduce below....

Born shortly before 910AD, Dunstan was the son of a Wessex noble, Heorstan, and nephew of the bishops of Winchester and Wells. Taught by Irish monks amidst the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, from an early age he developed a love of learning and of artistic craftsmanship.

Having entered the service of his uncle Athelm (now Archbishop of Canterbury) he was soon appointed to the court of King Athelstan, where he became a favourite of the king. Envious courtiers successfully discredited him by accusing him of witchcraft, and he was banished from the court.

Not content with thus disgracing him, his adversaries assaulted him as he left, and cast him, beaten and bound, into a cesspool. Dunstan recovered from his ordeal sufficiently to travel to Winchester where he entered the service of the bishop, his uncle Ælfheah, who encouraged him to become a monk.

At this point Dunstan developed severe blood-poisoning (wrongly diagnosed as leprosy) as a result of having been plunged, covered in open wounds, into the cesspool, and he interpreted this as a sign from God that he did indeed have a religious vocation.

Having first been ordained, he retired to live the life of a hermit at Glastonbury, constructing a minuscule cell no more than five feet long and two and a half feet deep against the wall of the ancient church of St Mary. Here he practised the harp and developed the skills of a craftsman while fighting off repeated demonic attacks (on one occasion he restrained the devil by holding his face with his craftsman’s tongs).

According to another story, Dunstan (a skilled blacksmith) was asked to shoe a horse whose owner he perceived to be the devil, and he duly nailed the shoe to the hoof not of the horse but of the devil. In return for removing the nails (which were the cause of considerable pain) Dunstan made the devil promise that he would never enter a house where a horseshoe was displayed above the door, and this appears to be the origin of the idea of the “lucky horseshoe”.

While at Glastonbury, Dunstan extended his reputation as a silversmith, musician and illuminator of manuscripts. He also inherited a substantial amount of money from his father and from King Æthelstan’s niece, Lady Æthelflaed (in gratitude for his trusted advice), and resolved to use the money for the good of the Church.

His new-found fortune made him a man of wealth and status, and in 940 he was invited to King Edmund’s court at Cheddar. However, history repeated itself, and jealous courtiers contrived to turn Edmund against Dunstan.

Happily, a miraculous event prompted Edmund to a change of heart. Pursued by Edmund in the Mendip Forest, a stage hurtled over the edge of the Cheddar cliffs, closely followed by the hounds. Unable to stop his horse as it careered towards certain death, Edmund was suddenly inspired to repent of his treatment of Dunstan and to promise to make amends. His horse pulled up right at the edge of the precipice, and Edmund was true to his promise, taking Dunstan to Glastonbury and set him on the abbot’s throne with a remit to restore divine worship and regular monastic observance.

Blessed with copious financial resources and with the support of the king, Dunstan set about rebuilding Glastonbury – both in the sense of physically reconstructing the abbey, and in the sense of establishing authentic Benedictine monasticism there. Dunstan ruled the abbey in strict fidelity to the Rule of St Benedict,

The assassination in 946 of King Edmund and his replacement by King Edred resulted in a new determination to work for reconciliation and unification between the Anglo-Saxon and Danish halves of England. Edred, together with the Kentish and East Anglian nobles, was keen to promote true Catholic observance (including the rebuilding of churches and the reform of monasticism) as a part of this campaign, but was opposed by the nobles of Wessex (many of whom were Dunstan’s relations) who wished to uphold existing customs.

Dunstan was very much on the side of the king in opposition to the Wessex nobles, but Edwy, who succeeded Edred in 955, reversed the policy, and was soon in open conflict with Dunstan, who went too far in his criticism of the youthful king when he upbraided him for cavorting on his coronation day with a noblewoman called Ælfgifu and her mother. Dunstan fled to his cloister, but Edwy pursued him and looted the monastery.

Dunstan now went into exile in Flanders (in modern Belgium) where he spent time in the Abbey of Mont Blandin near Ghent – one of the centers of the Clunicac reform which had led to a Benedictine revival in that part of Europe – and here he encountered a model for the reform of monasticism in England which was to be his major undertaking upon his return, underpinning as it did his vision for a renewed church.

Meanwhile, a revolt by Mercian and Northumbrian nobles meant that Edgar became king north of the Thames (Edwy remained in power south of the river), and Dunstan was recalled to England and consecrated Bishop of Worcester in 957, and, Archbishop of Canterbury in 959 (Edwy having died).

Dunstan was now, in effect, both Archbishop of Canterbury and Prime Minister. Having appointed like-minded reformers to key bishoprics, he was soon able to begin his reform of the English church, rooting out abuses, building monasteries, replacing the secular canons in many of the great cathedrals with monks, and raising the standard of the parish clergy (who were now expected to teach their parishioners trades in addition to ministering to them spiritually).

Secular reforms included the creation of a navy to protect England from Viking attacks, and the establishment of some measure of law and order where previously there had been lawlessness. He also devised an imperial-style coronation ceremony for Edgar in 973 (which became the basis for coronation ceremonies up to the present day), and persuaded six other British kings (including the king of Scotland) to pledge allegiance to Edgar.

Edgar died in 975, and was succeeded by Edweard II (his son), but Edweard was opposed by Ælfthryth (Edgar’s second or third wife) who wished to see her own son Ethelred reign as king. Supported by Dunstan, Edweard was crowned at Winchester, but the opponents of Dunstan’s reforms felt empowered, and parts of the country witnessed a sustained attack on the monasteries which were seen as driving the reform-movement in both church and state.

The assassination of King Edweard in 978 (he was later venerated as St Edward the Martyr) and the subsequent accession of Ethelred the Unready marked the end of Dunstan’s career in the service of the king (his coronation of Ethelred being his final act of participation in the life of the state), and he went into retirement at Canterbury where he devoted himself to long hours of prayer and to teaching at the cathedral.

While at Canterbury he fostered devotion to the saints of the city, especially St Augustine and St Æthelberht, whose shrines he used to visit by night (sometimes to the accompaniment of angelic song). He continued to establish schools and to build and restore churches, to offer patronage to visiting scholars from Europe, and to promote – and practise – the crafts that he had learned both in his youth and in his later years (including organ-building and bell-making).

Having been forewarned by angels of his impending death, he bade farewell to his flock on the Feast of the Ascension in 988 and retried to his bed to prepare for death, his final words (reportedly) being “He hath made a remembrance of his wonderful works, being a merciful and gracious Lord: He hath given food to them that fear Him”.

Dunstan soon became one of England’s favourite saints – perhaps the premier saint until he was eclipsed by Thomas Becket. His relics were rescued from the old Canterbury Cathedral (destroyed by fire in 1074) and transferred to the new Cathedral, but his shrine was destroyed at the time of the Reformation.

Syrian Popes

2011-05-06T19:44:00.007+01:00

There have been a number of Syrian Popes: Evaristus (died in 107), Anicetus (168), John V (687), Serguis I (701), Sisinnius (708), Constantine I (715), and Gregory III (732).

These thumbnail sketches of some of the most significant Syrian Popes are extracted from an essay entitled by Allen Maloof at Catholic Culture entitled The Popes and the Eastern Rites, originally published in The American Ecclesiastical Review (October 1963)

Sergius I (687-701) came from a Syrian family, which had settled at Palermo, Sicily. Leo II appointed him the titular priest of the Church of St. Suzanna (he was responsible for its restoration). He championed the prerogatives of St. Peter against the Byzantine emperor Justinian II. As pope, he encouraged missionary work in France, England and Ireland. (He baptized the King of Wessex— Caedwalla.) He introduced into the Latin Liturgy, the prayer "Agnus Dei" at the moment of the breaking of the bread; he also solemnized the celebration of the four principal feasts of the Blessed Virgin: The Nativity, the Purification, the Annunciation, and the Dormition.
Constantine I (708-715) was a champion of papal rights against the tyranny of the Byzantine emperors and against the Monothelite heresy, which taught that there was only one will in Christ. He was the first to wear the Tiara of Eastern origin. Most likely the lozenge shaped Greek "Epigonation" was adopted at this time. The pope alone among Western bishops wears it.

Gregory III (731-741) was a Benedictine of Syrian origin. He was noted for his linguistic abilities and his subtle sense of humor. A great missionary pope, he organized the religious structure of Germany under St. Boniface as Metropolitan. In 732, he condemned the Iconoclastic heresy and proclaimed his veneration for the holy images and relics by building a beautiful oratory, dedicated to all the saints, at Rome. It was he who obtained the political sovereignty of Rome (with himself as temporal ruler) from Pepin the Short. This sovereignty existed until 1870.

Melkite Greek-Catholic head on the "Arab Spring"

2011-05-06T17:02:00.003+01:00

From the Catholic News Agency...

Patriarch Gregorios III, the Syria-based head of the Melkite Greek-Catholic Church, is warning Western leaders not to encourage the revolutions currently shaking up the Middle East.
“Our Arab countries are not ready for revolutions, and not even for democracy of the European kind and model,” the patriarch explained in a recent letter to Western leaders. “I am asking the West not to encourage revolutions unconditionally here and there in the Arab world.”

In the patriarch's native Syria, government forces have killed hundreds of protesters in response to continuing mass demonstrations.

The patriarch said “social, religious, and demographic” factors could cause instability and violence if regimes are toppled rather than reformed. He called for “evolution, not revolution,” and said Western leaders should push for reforms.

“Ask the heads of state of Arab countries to work for real development, and demand a clear, bold plan,” he stated. “But don’t encourage revolutions!”

“Arab heads of state should be invited and encouraged to develop democratic structures, freedom, and respect for human rights,” wrote Patriarch Gregorios, the spiritual leader of 1.6 million Melkite Catholics.

He said Arab leaders should also be “supported in promoting systems of medical and social welfare and housing,” to ease economic difficulties that have fueled many of the revolutions.

The patriarch described Syria's own instability, characterized by mounting public protests and increasingly violent responses by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, as a “tragic situation” for all concerned.

But he rejected the notion of overturning the government. Many Syrian Christians are not supporting the protests, fearing that a sudden end to the Assad regime would plunge the country into a sectarian power struggle comparable to the aftermath of the Iraq war.

“Already, the situation has deteriorated,” Patriarch Gregorios observed, citing reports of “organized crime, robbery, fear, terror being spread, and rumors of threats to churches … All this creates trauma.”

Under its present government, Syria manages to keep a delicate balance between its Muslim majority and Christian minority. The patriarch described the country as a “model of faithful and open secularism,” and said the city of Damascus was “one of the most important cities in terms of Christian presence in the Arab world.”

But this presence could come to an end if a sudden vacuum of power leaves Islamic extremists and others fighting to control the country. “Christians especially are very fragile in the face of crises and bloody revolutions,” the patriarch said.

“Christians will be the first victims of these revolutions, especially in Syria. A new wave of emigration will follow immediately.”

Patriarch Gregorios also asked the West to prioritize the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. He said the outcome of that project, which became stalled last year over the issue of Israeli settlements, would be decisive for the future of Christianity in the Middle East.

H/T Byzantine, Texas

Bl John Paul II the theologian

2011-05-01T12:39:00.003+01:00

Over the last couple of years I've gathered together on my other blog (Enlarging the Heart) a few extracts from the teaching of Bl John Paul II - extracts reflecting certain themes in his theology (the Trinity, divine mercy, the Holy Spirit, redemption understood in terms of the Patristic idea of "deification", liturgy understood in terms of participation in the liturgy of heaven) which seem to me to lie at the very heart of his vision.

Revisiting them on the occasion of his beatification I'm reminded that, though people sometimes refer to Bl John Paul as a "philosopher pope" and to Pope Benedict as a "theologian pope", Bl John Paul's more specifically theological writing is extraordinarily rich and warm, and is truly steeped in the Scriptures, the Fathers (eastern and western), and the fulness of Catholoc tradition.

Five Things meme

2011-04-21T11:58:00.003+01:00

Heather at The Practicing Catholic and Ros at Shadowlands have both very kindly tagged me for this meme: Those tagged will share 5 things they “love” about Jesus, or why they love Jesus.

1. He offers forgiveness of sin to all those who truly seek it - and not just forgiveness of sin, but also freedom from the power of sin, freedom from the habit of sin, frredom from the damage wrought by our past sins (all in proportion to our openness to receiving these things from Him. And He continues to offer this forgiveness time after time after time, irrespective of our ingratitude or faithlessness or hardness of heart.

2. He offers healing - primarily, healing of the heart, of the understanding, of the will, of our imaginations, of our hopes and fears and desires; and, secondarily, healing that may, in accordance with His will, extend to release from physical and psychological illness.

3. He offers interior peace - the peace that comes from conformity with His will, from acceptance of whatever He sends, from laying aside worry and anger and resentment and criticism and judgmentalism and self-pity, and, above all, from quietening down the perpetual noise within our souls (whether this comes from thoughts within or from stimuli without) and learning to dwell with Him in interior stillness.

4. He offers us grace - a sharing in His own life; a sharing in His Passion and Resurrection and in their fruits; the "life in Christ" as members of His Mystical Body; His own indwelling (indeed, the indwelling of the whole Trinity) within our hearts.

5. He offers us the Holy Spirit - who prays within us "with sighs too deep for words", establishing us as adopted sons of the Father and co-heirs with Christ, transforming and "gracing" every area of our lives, sanctifying us and effecting in us what some of the Church Fathers and their mediaeval successors dared to call "divinisation".

Ignatius Brianchaninov on the manifestations of mercy

2011-03-22T14:04:00.004Z

Ignatius Brianchaninov (a 19th century Russian Orthodox monk and bishop, and a saint of the Orthodox Church) writes as follows on the subject of the Last Judgment, mercy, forgiveness, and forgiving-ness:

We should not forgive one another only by words, but with a pure heart so that our memory of the evil will not turn the sword against us.

At the judgment of Christ, a justification for mercy will be demanded as an active expression of love, and only mercy will deserve mercy, as a manifest proof of love.

[...] Mercy will bring justification for those who love mercy, while those who rejected it will be condemned.

Mercy will stand boldly before the Lord, and present all its children to Him. It will present those who showed it materially, who fed their hungry brothers, received strangers into their homes, clothed the naked, visited the sick and imprisoned.

Mercy will present to Christ those who wrought it secretly in their souls, who had mercy upon their neighbor by refraining from judging him when he stumbled, forgiving him any insults and offences, rendering him blessings for his curses, and good deeds for his evil ones.

Mercy will present to Christ the pastors of the Church, who gave their brethren incorruptible food—the Word of God; who clothed those naked in sin with the garments of virtue, supplied spiritual medicine to those sick of soul, and patiently visited with edification those imprisoned by their unbelief or the darkness of error.

[...] Mercy will present to Christ also those who were only able to show mercy to themselves, who visited themselves with self-criticism and freed themselves from the poverty, sickness, and prison of sin through repentance.

Repentance is impossible for the hardened heart: the heart must be softened, filled with sympathy and mercy toward its catastrophic state of sinfulness.

Only when the heart is embraced and filled by mercy can it become capable of repentance.

Only when it has abandoned its condemnation of others can it turn and look at itself; and, salvifically condemning itself, apply the cure of its wounds by repentance.

Source

John Chrysostom on forgiving

2011-03-22T09:27:00.005Z

John Chrysostom on forgiving:

Our having been offended will not cause us evil as much as we cause ourselves, feeding the anger in ourselves and exposing ourselves to condemnation by God for that.

If we love those who offend us, then evil will be turned on its very head, and it will continue to suffer severely.

But if we will be indignant, then we shall continue to suffer all the same even in spite of ourselves.

Quoted at Mystagogy.

See also John Chrysostom on the five ways of repentance.

Catherine of Siena on the Cross

2011-03-21T12:07:00.003Z

From a letter of St Catherine of Siena to Monna Agnese:

There is no obedience without humility, nor humility without charity.

This is shown by the Word, for in obedience to His Father and in humility, He ran to the shameful death of the Cross, nailing and binding Him with the nails and bands of charity, and enduring in such patience that no cry of complaint was heard from Him.

For nails were not enough to hold God-and-Man nailed and fastened on the Cross had Love not held Him there.

Fr Zuhlsdorf on the Sunday Collects

2011-03-20T15:00:00.005Z

Fr Z's theological analyses of the Sunday collects are among the best items on the Catholic blogosphere, and his latest one (on the Collect for the Second Sunday in Lent) is truly superb.

Benedict XVI: "we see who Jesus is if we see him at prayer"

2011-03-19T10:58:00.005Z

When he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict wrote that "we see who Jesus is if we see him at prayer" (Behold the Pierced One, p. 19).

"Jesus at prayer" certainly seems to be one of the recurrent themes of the reading at Mass and the Office of Readings during Lent, which move from the Temptation via the Transfiguration to the Agony in Gethsemane and the Cry of Dereliction on the Cross.

From a theological point of view, the question of what it means to say that the incarnate Son of God prayed is the most dazzling and unfathomable of mysteries - one which plunges us into the very heart of the interconnected mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation.

It was in wrestling with this mystery that St Maximus the Confessor established the foundation for the Church's teaching on the two wills of Christ, which found concrete expression at the Third Council of Constantinople.

Pope Benedict's short address on Maximus, Gethsemane and the mystery of redemption gives an indication that this is one of those aspects of the mysterium fidei (mystery of faith) which in this life can only be viewed contemplatively and "through a glass darkly".

Over on my other blog, in addition to the Benedict/Maximus link above, I've been assembling a few patristic and mediaeval texts which suggest various responses to Benedict's invitation to see who Jesus is by seeing him at prayer":

Aelred of Rievaulx on Christ's prayer "forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do"; Leo the Great on the implications of the Garden of Gethsemane; Augustine of Hippo on Christ's prayer on the Cross; Cyril of Alexandria on the Temptation in the Wilderness.

Leo the Great on Lent

2011-03-18T15:04:00.003Z

The patristic understanding of salvation outlined in my previous post has implications for how we understand Lent, as is made very clear in the Lenten sermons of St Leo the Great (d. 461).

Leo takes the view that the crucified, risen and glorified Christ has won a decisive and irreversible victory of ther devil and his army of demons, but that the devil is still trying his hardest to prevent as many people as possible from sharing in the fruits of that victory.

The devil, according to Leo, hates Lent with a vengeance - primarily because he can see people from all over the Roman Empire, barbarians included (Leo is writing, clearly, for a fifth century audience) preparing themselves for Easter baptism.

Every time a someone is baptised, the devil suffers a defeat, which he takes very personally. He also takes is personally when existing Christians pray, fast, give alms, fight against their unruly passions, and preserve orthodox faith and morals - all of which, again, are things that happen in an especially focused way during the Lenten fast.

Leo sees the devil, fearful of losing ground to the ever-growing Kingdom of God, as redoubling his efforts against the Church during Lent - in terms both of attacks on the Church as a whole, and in terms of attacks (mostly in the form of temptation to sin and heterodox belief) on individual believers.

Lent, accordingly, becomes a battlefield - a time in which the unceasing warfare between the Kingdom of God and the worlds, the flesh and the devil assumes an unparalleled intensity. Christians are fighting their passions, fighting the demons, fighting anything and everything that might allow the enemy to catch them off guard.

The idea that Lent is a time for doing penance and making reparation for past sins is not a prominent one in patristic literature, and very much reflects St Anselm's account of salvation as an act of satisfaction for sin. Leo and his contemporaries are less interested in making reparation for past sins than they are, so to speak, in repairing hearts, minds and bodies which have subjected themselves to sin and to the passions - and thus, ultimately, to death and corruption.

This process of "repairing" is the corollary of the ongoing fight against the demons (for fighting results in injuries, and injuries require repair-work...), and is undertaken through what Leo calls the "threefold office" of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and also by participation in the liturgical life of the Church - in which, for Leo, we are presented with a divine remedy (remedium) for our sickness and with an example (exemplum) of how to appropriate that remedy.

Leo, like many of the Western Fathers, uses the word salus to denote salvation - a significant choice, inasmuch as salus denotes "health" as well as "salvation" - and Lent is, above all, a time of fighting and a time of healing.

St Patrick, paganism, and salvation

2011-03-17T16:10:00.003Z

I once saw a TV documentary in which an Irish priest of decidedly liberal leanings argued that Irish paganism was Ireland's equivalent of the Old Testament. Just as the New Testament fulfilled and perfected the Old Testament, he suggested, so also Irish Christianity fulfilled and "completed" Irish paganism.

St Patrick, of course, would not have seen it like that. If anything, he would have regarded Irish paganism as equivalent to the religion of the Canaanites that the Israelites discovered when they first entered to Promised Land - a demonic religion of unimaginable horror and wickedness.

I think it's Peter Brown in The Rise of Western Christendom who explains that, in the period of Late Antiquity, the Church understood the work of redemption very much in terms of Christ's victory of the devil - a victory which encompassed his victory over hell, death, the demons, and the pagan deities who were themselves regarded as demons.

According to this way of looking at salvation, the devil and his armies of demons had suffered a decisive and irreversible defeat, but the retreating battalions continued to engage in skirmishes with the victorioius Christians, and were determined to drag as many human beings as possible down to hell with them.

The Church, accordingly, brooked no compromise with pagan gods and goddesses, and either destroyed their shrines or else transformed them into the shrines of martyrs - that is, of those saints who personified better than any other what it meant to participate in Christ's triumph over the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Exercising his ministry in the middle part of the fifth century, it is inconceivable that Patrick would not have shared this approach to paganism. The story of his driving all the snakes out of Ireland may or may not be true at a literal level, but, at the level of theological symbolism, it sums up very accurately how he would have understood his preaching mission - that is, as the deliverance of Ireland from its occupation by demons and false divinites.

The words of St Patrick's Breastplate reflect the theological presuppositions of the fifth century Church as it gradually expanded the borders of Christendom. Patrick surrounds himself with the power of the Trinity and incarnation and the various mysteries of the life of Christ to ward off and overcome the forces of darkness and malevolence.

In the light of the patristic understanding of salvation in terms of an ongoing and bitter conflict (notwithstanding that the war has already been won) against the principalities and powers and against the world, the flesh and devil, Patrick's idea of a spiritual lorica (breastplate) needs to be seen not just as a piece of poetic imagery but also as an absolutely necessary piece of equipment for the Christian who is under constant attack.

This being the case, it seems fair to say that St Patrick would have been utterly aghast at the suggestion that Irish paganism stood in the same relation to Irish Christianity as the Old Testament to the New. Indeed, he would have viewed the neo-pagan tendencies of modern society (in their various manifestations) with absolute horror.

When to say "thank you"

2011-02-10T09:05:00.001Z

St John Chrysostom (c.349-407) on thankgiving:

If you have suffered evil, give thanks and it is changed to good.

He has not sinned who suffered the evil but he who has done the evil.

Give thanks even in disease, lack of possessions, or false accusations.

Quoted on Glory to God for All Things.

The trials of life

2011-02-08T14:18:00.003Z

St. Jerome Emiliani (1481-1537) on the struggles of everyday living:

As we say in our prayer, we are to place our trust in God and in no one else. In his kindness, our Lord wished to strengthen your faith.

[...] He also wished to listen to your prayer, and so he ordained that you experience poverty, distress, abandonment, weariness and scorn.

[...] Our blessed Lord is telling you that he desires to include you among his beloved sons, provided that you remain steadfast in his ways, for this is the way he treats his friends and makes them holy.

[...] God wishes to test you like gold in the furnace. The dross is consumed by the fire, but the pure gold remains and its value increases.

It is in this manner than God acts with his good servant, who puts his hope in him and remains unshaken in times of distress.

God raises him up and, in return for the things he has left out of love for God, he repays him a hundredfold in this life and with eternal life hereafter.

If then you remain constant in faith in the face of trial, the Lord will give you peace and rest for a time in this world, and for ever in the next.

Extracted from the second reading at the Office of Readings for February 8th (memoria of St jerome Emiliani), which you can read online in a more complete version at The Apostolate of Hannah's Tears.

Sophronius of Jerusalem on the Presentation

2011-02-02T12:25:00.004Z

Sophronius of Jerusalem (d. 638) on the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (from today's Office of Readings and at Crossroad Initiative):
Through Simeon’s eyes we too have seen the salvation of God which he prepared for all the nations and revealed as the glory of the new Israel, which is ourselves.

As Simeon was released from the bonds of this life when he had seen Christ, so we too were at once freed from our old state of sinfulness.

By faith we too embraced Christ, the salvation of God the Father, as he came to us from Bethlehem. Gentiles before, we have now become the people of God.

Our eyes have seen God incarnate, and because we have seen him present among us and have mentally received him into our arms, we are called the new Israel.

Never shall we forget this presence; every year we keep a feast in his honor.

Feast of the Presentation

2011-02-02T08:58:00.002Z

Hymns for the Feast of the Presentation from the Byzantine liturgy:

Apolytikion (First Tone)
Hail Virgin Theotokos [Mother of God] full of Grace, for Christ our God, the Sun of Righteousness, has dawned from you, granting light to those in darkness. And you, O Righteous Elder, rejoice, taking in Your arms, the Deliverance of our souls, who grants us Resurrection.

Kontakion (First Tone)
Your birth sanctified a Virgin's womb and properly blessed the hands of Symeon. Having now come and saved us O Christ our God, give peace to your commonwealth in troubled times and strengthen those in authority, whom you love, as only the loving one.
Source.

"How good it is to be here"

2011-01-25T14:50:00.006Z

Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022), from The Book of Mystical Chapters: Meditations on the Soul's Ascent from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplatives, translated by John Anthony McGuckin:

As soon as your mind has experienced
what the scripture says:
"How gracious is the Lord,"
it will be so touched with that delight
that it will no longer want to leave the place of the heart.
It will echo the words of the apostle Peter:
"How good it is to be here."

Online source. (Symeon was a Byzantine Christian monk, theologian and hymn-writer whose life and writings were the subjeect of one of Pope Benedict's general audiences on patristic and mediaeval theology and spirituality.)

Loving God in the depths of the heart

2011-01-21T18:25:00.001Z

In his treatise On Spiritual Perfection Diadochus of Photiké (c.400-before 486) writes:

Anyone who loves God in the depths of his heart has already been loved by God.
In fact, the measure of a man’s love for God depends upon how deeply aware he is of God’s love for him.

When this awareness is keen it makes whoever possesses it long to be enlightened by the divine light, and this longing is so intense that it seems to penetrate his very bones.
He loses all consciousness of himself and is entirely transformed by the love of God.

Such a man lives in this life and at the same time does not live in it, for although he still inhabits his body, he is constantly leaving it in spirit because of the love that draws him toward God.

Once the love of God has released him from self-love, the flame of divine love never ceases to burn in his heart and he remains united to God by an irresistible longing.

Fuller text here.

Failure and glory

2011-01-19T14:36:00.003Z

Alice von Hildebrand (from an article originally published in Homiletic and Pastoral Review and available on Ignatius Insight) on success, failure, and the glorification of God:

Mother Teresa of Calcutta put it very convincingly: "God does not ask us to be successful; He asks us to be faithful."

Moreover, for man's fallen nature, success is fraught with danger. It flatters our pride; it tends to make us arrogant and to view ourselves as superior to other men, to nourish our hubris....

Success is a heavy fare to digest. Only the saints can handle it because they keep repeating in their heart:..."Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Thy name give glory".

They know that he alone is the victor and that they are useless servants.

Supernaturally speaking, it should make no difference whatever whether I or another succeed in the work we perform in God's vineyard.

The only concern of the supernaturally motivated person is that God is glorified.

If we accept a defeat with humility, we can glorify God more and better than if we had succeeded and fall prey to pride.

The workers in God's vineyard should always remember that God does not need us. He deigns to use us.

Liturgy of the heart

2011-01-17T15:43:00.003Z

Fr Jean Corbon OP on liturgy and theosis (divinization) in an extract (on the Ignatius Insight website) from his book The Wellspring of Worship (Ignatius Press, 2005):

If we consent in prayer to be flooded by the river of life, our entire being will be transformed;
we will become trees of life and be increasingly able to produce the fruit of the Spirit: we will love with the very Love that is our God.
It is necessary at every moment to insist on this radical consent, this decision of the heart by which our will submits unconditionally to the energy of the Holy Spirit;
otherwise we shall remain subject to the illusion created by mere knowledge of God and talk about him and shall in fact remain apart from him in brokenness and death.

On the other hand, if we do constantly renew this offering of our sinful hearts, let us not imagine that our New Covenant with Jesus will be a personal encounter pure and simple.

The communion into which the Spirit leads us is not limited to a face-to-face encounter between the person of Christ and our own person or to an external conformity of our wills with his.

The lived liturgy does indeed begin with this "moral" union, but it goes much further.

The Holy Spirit is an anointing, and he seeks to transform all that we are into Christ: body, soul, spirit, heart, flesh, relations with others and the world.

If love is to become our life, it is not enough for it to touch the core of our person; it must also impregnate our entire nature.

To this transformative power of the river of life that permeates the entire being (person and nature), the undivided tradition of the Churches gives an astonishing name that sums up the mystery of the lived liturgy: theosis or divinization.

Through baptism and the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit we have become "sharers of the divine nature" (2 Pet 1:4).

In the liturgy of the heart, the wellspring of this divinization streams out as the Holy Spirit, and our individual persons converge in a single origin.

But how is this mysterious synergy to infuse our entire nature from its smallest recesses to its most obvious behaviors?

This process is the drama of divinization in which the mystery of the lived liturgy is brought to completion in each Christian.

When prayer appears to be unanswered

2011-01-15T15:56:00.004Z

Joseph the Hesychast (an Orthodox monk on Mount Athos in the first half of the 20th Century), says the following about the need for patience and endurance when our prayers appear, on the surface of things, to be unanswered:

God always helps. He always comes in time, but patience is necessary. He hears us immediately when we cry out to Him, but not in accordance with our own way of thinking.

You think that your voice did not immediately reach the saints, our Panagia [the All-Holy Virgin Mary], and Christ.
On the contrary, even before you cried out, the saints rushed to your aid, knowing that you would call upon them and seek their God-given protection.
However, since you do not see beyond what is apparent and do not know how God governs the world, you want your request to be fulfilled like lightning. But this is not how things are.
The Lord wants patience. He wants you to show your faith. You cannot just pray like a parrot.
It is necessary also to work towards whatever one prays for, and then to learn to wait.

[...] Now you become angry and fainthearted and grieved, thinking that the heavenly Father is slow in answering.
But I tell you that this will also happen as you desire—it will definitely happen—but first it takes prayer with all your soul, and then you must wait.
And when you have forgotten your request and have ceased asking for it, it will come to you as a reward for your patience and endurance.
When you reach the verge of despair while praying and seeking, then the fulfillment of your request is near.
Christ wants to heal some hidden passion within you, and this is why He delays in granting your request.
If you obtain it sooner, when you demand it, your passion remains uncured within you.
If you wait, you obtain your request and the cure of the passion.
And then you rejoice exceedingly and give warm thanks to God Who arranges all things in wisdom and does everything for our benefit.

So then, there is no point in losing heart, getting upset, complaining. You must close your mouth.
Let no one perceive that you are disturbed. Don't fume with anger, as if to work it out of your system, but rather be calm. Burn the devil through patience and forbearance.

From Monastic Wisdom: The Letters of Elder Joseph the Hesychast (Florence, AZ: St. Anthony's Greek Orthodox Monastery, 1998), and online here at Orthodox Christian Information Center.

"The prism of passion"

2011-01-07T21:05:00.005Z

I came across the following at The Crescat (it's taken from Vox Nova's 10 Suggestions For a Better Catholic Blogosphere in 2011):

If you frequently find yourself losing your cool in discussions at certain blogs, stop commenting on them.

If you try that and don’t succeed, stop going to certain blogs altogether.

It is the sin of pride that convinces us that we must engage certain people in order to show them the truth.

The fact is that people who can’t engage each other productively force one another away from the truth, not towards it.

The Holy Spirit has more instruments than just you.

I don't know the origion of the following quotation on the subject of Dispassion (I discovered it serendipitously on an Orthodox blog called Tales of the Wild Babushka), but it makes a similar point in a more specifically theological way:

The absence of passion when either seeing or thinking of things is the absence of egoism.

The dispassionate person no longer sees and thinks of things through the prism of passion which wants to be satisfied with them;

in reference to himself, things no longer seem to be gravitating around him, but they appear as having their own purpose independent of his egotism.

Other people appear to him as human beings who are purposes in themselves, who need help from him….

The dispassionate person knows that he influences his neighbors more by his quietness, as a sign of his deep cleansing from passions.

He works for salvation of others, with the unwavering confidence in the plan which God has for every soul….

Dispassion leads us into the inner most part of the mind, to the heart, where God is found and the winds of passion aren’t whistling and blowing, but where the peaceful and conquering breezes of love are stirring.

Feast of the Theophany

2011-01-07T09:52:00.003Z

From Vespers for the Feast of the Theophany (Eastern Catholic):

When the Forerunner saw the One who is our enlightenment,
the One who has brought light to all, coming to be baptized,
his heart rejoiced and his hand trembled.
He pointed Him out to the people and said:
This is the Savior of Israel who delivered us from corruption.
O Christ our God, O Sinless One, glory to You!

O our Saviour, the armies of angels trembled
when they saw You baptized by your servant,
and the Holy Spirit bearing witness and descending,
and when they heard the voice of the Father speaking from heaven:
This One upon whom the Forerunner lays his hands
is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.
O Christ our God, glory to You!

When the Jordan River received You, O Fountainhead,
the Comforter descended in the form of a dove.
Now behold the marvel:
the One who bowed the heavens bows his head to the Forerunner,
and the one made of clay cries out to his Maker:
"Why do You command me to perform what is beyond my power?
It is I who need to be baptized by You!"
O Christ our God, O Sinless One, glory to You!

H/T Ignatius Insight.

Émile Mersch - adoptive sonship

2011-01-06T20:30:00.006Z

Fr. Émile Mersch (1890-1940) on adoptive sonship and divinization:

The Word is united to us in order to unite us to Him and to transform us into what He is, that is, to make us sons of God, not by nature, like Him, but by grace; to stamp us with His form and character of Son.

Thus through One, He has taken up His abode in us all. ...

This is the great Christian truth: the Son was made man that in Him and through Him, men might be adopted as sons.

By our participation in the only-begotten Son we become adopted sons, truly and "physically."

This shows clearly that He is the Son in the full sense of the term, that is, by nature.

[...] As the Fathers repeat so often, we become by grace what Christ is by nature.

Christ is the Son by nature, and He is God because He is the Son.

The grace we receive ought to make us sons, that is, adopted sons, who are divinized because we are adopted.

Our divinization comes from our adoption, and our adoption is no less sublime than our divinization; the excellence of both is derived from that of the sonship of God the Son.

[...] He has made us His own beloved children by sanctifying us in His well-beloved Son.

Émile Mersch: The Theology of the Mystical Body (B. Herder Book Co., 1952; originally published in French c. 1940), pp. 347-8, 372, 374; quoted here by Carl E. Olson.

Cyril on the Baptism in the Jordan

2011-01-06T20:20:00.003Z

In today's Office of Readings (on those regions where Epiphany was celebrated last Sunday), St Cyril of Alexandria gets right to the heart of things in a passage from his majestic commentary on St John's Gospel:

Christ, as the first fruits of our restored nature, was the first to receive the Spirit.

John the Baptist bore witness to this when he said: “I saw the Spirit coming down from heaven, and it rested on him”.

Christ “received the Spirit” in so far as he was man, and in so far as man could receive the Spirit.

[...] The Father says of Christ, who was God, begotten of him before the ages, that he has been “begotten today”, for the Father is to accept us in Christ as his adopted children.

The whole of our nature is present in Christ, in so far as he is man.

So the Father can be said to give the Spirit again to the Son, though the Son possesses the Spirit as his own, in order that we may receive the Spirit in Christ.

[…] The only-begotten Son received the Spirit, but not for his own advantage, for the Spirit in his, and is given in him and through him, as we have already said.

He receives it to renew our nature in its entirety and to make it whole again, for in becoming man he took our entire nature to himself.

[...] Christ did not receive the Spirit for himself, but rather for us in him.

For it is also through Christ that all gifts come down to us.

Fuller text here on my other blog.

Hippolytus of Rome - suffering and salvation

2010-12-30T13:26:00.002Z

In his Refutation of All Heresies, Hippolytus of Rome writes the following passage (used on today's Office of Readings):

When we have come to know the true God, both our bodies and our souls will be immortal and incorruptible.

We shall enter the kingdom of heaven, because while we lived on earth we acknowledged heaven’s King.

Friends of God and co-heirs with Christ, we shall be subject to no evil desires or inclinations, or to any affliction of body or soul, for we shall have become divine.

Whatever evil you may have suffered, being man, it is God that sent it to you, precisely because you are man.
But equally, when you have been deified, God has promised you a share in every one of his own attributes.

Longer version at Enlarging the Heart.

Jordan of Saxony - the Word in the crib

2010-12-29T08:37:00.003Z

Jordan of Saxony on Christmas:

I write and send thee the Word Abbreviated, made little in the Crib,

the Word made flesh for us, the Word of salvation and grace,

the Word of sweetness and glory, the good and gentle Word, Jesus Christ

and "Him crucified," exalted on the Cross, lifted up to the right hand of the Father.

To Him and by Him lift up thy soul, and may He be thy rest without end.

This Word read in thy heart, revolve in thy mind, and let It become sweet as honey in thy mouth.

Think over and meditate upon this Word;

may It remain and dwell always with thee.

Blessed Jordan of Saxony OP, Christmastide letter (1229) to Blessed Diana d’Andalò OP.

Cyril of Alexandria on the Magnificat

2010-12-22T16:51:00.003Z

Today's Gospel was the Magnificat (see previous post). St Cyril of Alexandria (c.375 - 444) offers a typically forthright interpretation in his Commentary on Luke:

1:51. He hath shewed strength with His arm: He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their heart.

The arm enigmatically signifies the Word that was born of her: and by the proud, Mary means the wicked demons who with their prince fell through pride....

For these, when openly claiming mastery over the world, the Lord by His coming scattered, and transferred those whom they had made captive unto His own dominion....

1:52. He hath put down riders from their thrones, and exalted the humble.

Great used to he the haughtiness of these demons whom He scattered, and of the devil....

But He put them down, and exalted those who had humbled themselves under their mighty hand, "having given them authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy".

And He made the plots against us of these haughty-minded beings of none effect.

Ambrose of Milan - "let the soul of Mary be in each one of you"

2010-12-22T16:44:00.002Z

In the following passage from his Commentary on the Gospel of St Luke (used as the second reading at the Office of Readings, December 21st), Ambrose of Milan (c. 337-397) reflects on the meaning and application to the individual believer of Mary's Magnificat:

Every soul that believes – that soul both conceives and gives birth to the Word of God and recognises his works.

Let the soul of Mary be in each one of you, to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. Let the spirit of Mary be in each one of you, to rejoice in God.

According to the flesh only one woman can be the mother of Christ but in the world of faith Christ is the fruit of all of us.

For every soul can receive the Word of God if only it is pure and preserves itself in chastity and modesty.

The soul that has been able to reach this state proclaims the greatness of the Lord just as Mary did and rejoices in God its Saviour just like her....

Christ is the image of God and so any good or religious act that a soul performs magnifies that image of God in that soul, the God in whose likeness the soul itself was made.

And thus the soul itself has some share in his greatness and is ennobled.

Fuller text at Enlarging the Heart.

Ephraem the Syrian - "all-pure, all-immaculate"

2010-12-10T11:26:00.005Z

This quotation from St Ephraem the Syrian (c. 306-373) is a couple of days late. haven't checked the exact reference; I came upn the quotation here.

Most holy Lady, Mother of God, alone most pure in soul and body, alone exceeding all perfection of purity . . . alone made in thy entirety the home of all the graces of the Most Holy Spirit, and hence exceeding beyond all compare even the angelic virtues in purity and sanctity of soul and body . . . my Lady most holy, all-pure, all-immaculate, all-stainless, all-undefiled, all-incorrupt, all-inviolate spotless robe of Him Who clothes Himself with light as with a garment . . . flower unfading, purple woven by God, alone most immaculate.

St Nicholas in iconogaphy

2010-12-06T15:40:00.004Z

December 6th is the feast of St Nicholas the Wonderworker (270-346), Archbishop of Myra in Lycia. The reflection from The Prologue from Ohrid on the iconography of St Nicholas are worth reading. Numerous examples of icons of St Nicholas can be seen here.

Merciful, truthful, and a lover of justice, he walked among the people as an angel of God.

Even during his lifetime, the people considered him a saint and invoked his aid in difficulties and in distress.

A light shone from his face as it did from the face of Moses, and he, by his presence alone, brought comfort, peace and good will among men.

In icons of St. Nicholas, the Lord Savior is usually depicted on one side with a Gospel in His hands, and the Most-holy Virgin Theotokos is depicted on the other side with an episcopal omophorion in her hands.

This has a twofold historical significance: first, it signifies the calling of Nicholas to the hierarchical office, and second, it signifies his exoneration from the condemnation that followed his confrontation with Arius.

St. Methodius, Patriarch of Constantinople, writes: "One night St. Nicholas saw our Savior in glory, standing by him and extending to him the Gospel, adorned with gold and pearls.

"On his other side, he saw the Theotokos, who was placing the episcopal pallium on his shoulders.''

Shortly after this vision, John the Archbishop of Myra died and St. Nicholas was appointed archbishop of that city. That was the first incident.

The second incident occurred at the time of the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea.

Unable to stop Arius through reason from espousing the irrational blasphemy against the Son of God and His Most-holy Mother, St. Nicholas struck Arius on the face with his hand.

The Holy Fathers at the Council, protesting such an action, banned Nicholas from the Council and deprived him of all emblems of the episcopal rank.

That same night, several of the Holy Fathers saw an identical vision: how the Lord Savior and the Most-holy Theotokos were standing around St. Nicholas -

on one side the Lord Savior with the Gospel, and on the other side the Most-holy Theotokos with a pallium, presenting the saint with the episcopal emblems that had been removed from him.

Seeing this, the fathers were awestruck and quickly returned to Nicholas that which had been removed.

They began to respect him as a great chosen one of God, and they interpreted his actions against Arius not as an act of unreasonable anger, but rather an expression of great zeal for God's truth.

John Damascene

2010-12-04T18:45:00.002Z

Today (December 4th) is the memorial day of St John Damascene (c. 675 - 749) - a monk and theologian who was resolute in his defence of the veneration of icons at a time when the Byzantine Emperor was seeking to eradicate the practice.

St John's De Fide Orthodoxa was a major influence on St Thomas Aquinas. Translated into Latin by Burgundio of Pisa in 1150 (very few western theologians were able to read Greek), it soon became a conduit for the transmission of the wisdom of the Greek Fathers - most especially Gregory Nazianzen, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, Athanasius, John Chrysostum, and Epiphanius - into the world of Latin-speaking theology.

I've featured some extracts from John Damascene's writings on my resources blog. Like Maximus the Confessor (see previous post), he played an important part in the development and transmission of the characteristically "Greek" idea of salvation as theosis (deification; divinisation), which is also present (though in a less clearly defined form) in the thought of the Latin-speaking Fathers and of Thomas Aquinas.

Maximus the Confessor - "the meaning of Holy Scripture"

2010-12-03T16:24:00.006Z

Following recent posts on St Anastasius the Sinaite, St Sophronius of Jerusalem and St John Climacus, here's another on a Seventh-Century Greek-speaking theologian, St Maximus the Confessor (f/d August 13th).

To begin with, a short biography of Maximus:

Maximus the Confessor (also known as Maximus the Theologian and Maximus of Constantinople) (c. 580 – 13 August 662) was a Christian monk, theologian, and scholar.

In his early life, he was a civil servant, and an aide to the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius. However, he gave up this life in the political sphere to enter into the monastic life.

After moving to Carthage, Maximus studied several Neo-Platonist writers and became a prominent author.

When one of his friends began espousing the Christological position known as Monothelitism, Maximus was drawn into the controversy, in which he supported the Chalcedonian position that Jesus had both a human and a divine will.

Maximus is venerated in both Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity.

His Christological positions eventually resulted in his torture and exile, soon after which he died.

However, his theology was vindicated by the Third Council of Constantinople and he was venerated as a saint soon after his death.

His feast day is celebrated twice during the year: on 13 August and 21 January. His title of Confessor means that he suffered for the Christian faith, but was not directly martyred.

His Life of the Virgin is thought to be the earliest complete biography of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Secondly, an extract from his Gnostic Chapters, which is read in some monasteries at the Monastic Office of Vigils on Sunday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time (Year 1), and which, among other things, affords an excellent template for the practice of lectio divina:

The meaning of Holy Scripture reveals itself gradually to the higher senses of the more discerning mind when the mind has put off the complex bodily form of the words which are formed in it.

This revelation is like a still small voice.

Through a supreme abandonment of its natural activities, such a mind has been able to perceive the meaning only in a simplicity which reveals the divine Word.

This is the way that the great Elijah was granted the vision in the cave at Horeb.

For ‘Horeb’ means ‘newness’, which is our virtuous condition in the new spirit of grace.

The cave is the hiddenness of spiritual wisdom in which the one who enters will mystically experience the knowledge which goes beyond the senses.

This is the knowledge in which God is found.

Therefore anyone who truly seeks God, as did the great Elijah, will come upon him not only on Horeb; that is, as an ascetic in the practice of the virtues.

He will also encounter him in the cave of Horeb, that is as a contemplative in the hidden place of wisdom which can exist only in the habit of the virtues.

When the mind shakes off the many distractions about things which are pressing on it, then the clear meaning of truth appears and gives it pledges of genuine knowledge.

These are given after it has driven off its recent preoccupations which were like scales on the eyes, just as in the case of the great and holy Apostle Paul.

For thoughts about the mere letter of Scripture and the consideration of those visible things that hinder understanding are indeed scales which cling to the clear-sighted part of the soul and hinder the passage to the pure meaning of truth.

John Climacus - repentance

2010-12-01T20:19:00.003Z

St John Climacus, also known as John of the Ladder, was, like St Anastasius, a 7th century monk of the monastery on Mount Sinai.

His reputation as an ascetic, theologian and spiritual father spread as far Pope St Gregory the Great who (according to St John's biographer) wrote to him in order to request his prayers and provided a sum of money for the hospital of Sinai where visiting pilgrims stayed.

John is best known for his Ladder of Divine Ascent. One of the major themes in the Ladder is that of compunction and repentance - something which is finds expression in the troparion for his feast:

By a flood of tears you made the desert fertile

And by your longing for God you brought forth fruits in abundance.

By the radiance of miracles you illuminated the whole universe.

O our holy Father John Climacus, pray to Christ our God to save our souls.

According to John, Adam is punished not for his original disobedience but for his non-repentance and his self-justification:

But Adam did not wish to say, "I sinned," but said rather the contrary of this and placed the blame for the transgression upon God Who created everything "very good," saying to Him, "The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate."

And after him she also placed the blame upon the serpent, and they did not wish at all to repent and, falling down before the Lord God, beg forgiveness of Him. For this, God banished them from Paradise, as from a royal palace, to live in this world as exiles....

Moses, by way of contrast, is an example of someone who truly repents:

Nothing equals or excels God's mercies. Therefore, he who despairs is committing suicide. A sign of true repentance is the acknowledgment that we deserve all the afflictions, visible and invisible, that come upon us, and ever greater ones.

Moses, after seeing God in the bush, returned again to Egypt, that is, to darkness and to the brick-making of Pharaoh, who was symbolical of the spiritual Pharaoh. But he went back again to the bush, and not only to the bush, but also up the mountain.

Whoever has known divine vision will never despair of himself. Job became a beggar, but he became twice as rich again.

Baptism heals the sin of Adam, and repentance renews baptism:

Repentance is the renewal of baptism. Repentance is a contract with God for a second life. A penitent is a buyer of humility. Repentance is constant distrust of bodily comfort.

Repentance is self-condemning reflection, and carefree self-care. Repentance is the daughter of hope and the renunciation of despair. A penitent is an undisgraced convict.

Repentance is reconciliation with the Lord by the practice of good deeds contrary to the sins. Repentance is purification of conscience. Repentance is the voluntary endurance of all afflictions.

A penitent is the inflicter of his own punishments. Repentance is a mighty persecution of the stomach, and a striking of the soul into vigorous awareness.

Quotations from the relevant entry on Orthodox Wiki.)

Bernard of Clairvaux - lectio divina and the meaning of Advent

2010-12-01T15:34:00.003Z

In today's second reading at the Office of Readings, St Bernard of Clairvaux talks about the three comings of Christ:

At his first coming the Lord was seen on earth and lived among men, who saw him and hated him.
At his last coming All flesh shall see the salvation of our God, and They shall look on him whom they have pierced.

In the middle, the hidden coming, only the chosen see him, and they see him within themselves; and so their souls are saved.

Bernard explains that

This middle coming is like a road that leads from the first coming to the last. At the first, Christ was our redemption; at the last, he will become manifest as our life; but in this middle way he is our rest and our consolation....

If anyone loves me, he will keep my words, and the Father will love him, and we shall come to him.

Bernard asks

Where are these words to be kept? In the heart certainly, as the Prophet says I have hidden your sayings in my heart so that I do not sin against you. Keep the word of God in that way: Blessed are those who keep it.
Let it penetrate deep into the core of your soul and then flow out again in your feelings and the way you behave; because if you feed your soul well it will grow and rejoice.

Do not forget to eat your bread, or your heart will dry up. Remember, and your soul will grow fat and sleek.

He promises that

If you keep God’s word like this...the Son will come to you with the Father: the great Prophet will come, who will renew Jerusalem, and he is the one who makes all things new.

The result of this renewal will be the restoration of the image of God in those who thus keep the words of God in their hearts, culminating in their beling filled and glorified with Christ:

For this is what this coming will do: just as we have been shaped in the earthly image, so will we be shaped in the heavenly image.

Just as the old Adam was poured into the whole man and took possession of him, so in turn will our whole humanity be taken over by Christ, who created all things, has redeemed all things, and will glorify all things.

Full text here...

Ambrose of Milan - "Scripture alone is their occupation"

2010-12-01T15:21:00.005Z

St Ambrose of Milan (c.337-397) regards reading and praying the Scriptures and a joyful and delightful occupation which should fill our waking moments:

When day finds you meditating on God’s word and the pleasant task of prayer and psalmody delights your mind, you will once more say to the Lord Jesus: You fill both morning and evening with joy....
With the Jewish elders there is no worldly conversation: Scripture alone is their occupation; voice follows voice in turn so that the holy sound of God’s commandments knows no holiday.

How then can you, a Christian, with Christ as your master, take your sleep without fear of having it said to you: This people does not even honour me with its lips....

What a length of time you are sunk in sleep, in secular affairs, in the cares of this life, in things of earth!

At least divide your time between God and the world.... To keep yourself from dropping off to sleep, recite a psalm, cheat sleep with holy guile.

In the morning hurry off to church, offer the first fruits of your prayers, and after that, if the world and its needs call you, you will be able to say: My eyes are watchful in the morning, to meditate on your words.

More here on my "sources" blog...

Sophronius of Jerusalem - theology through people and places

2010-11-30T19:23:00.005Z

Anastasius the Sinaite (see my earlier post) came a generation or so after Sophronius of Jerusalem, who played an important role in the debates leading up to the Sixth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople III).

Born in Damascus in around 560, Sophronius was a monk, ascetic, hagiopgrapher, poet, philosopher and theologian.

Having succeeded St Modestus as Patriarch of Jerusale, he was primate of that church from 634 until 638, when he died after guiding his flock through a two year siege of Jerusalem by the Moslems.

By the time of Sophronius, the Church had already condemned:

(a) the Nestorian heresy (which taught that the fact that Christ possessed divine and human natures meant, in effect, that he was a human person united by means of a kind of moral union to the divine person of the Son),

(b) the Monophysite heresy (which taught that the fact that Christ was a single undivided person - the Son of God incarnate - meant, in effect, that he possessed only a divine nature, and that his humanity was somehow swallowed up in his divinity).

In the late sixth/early seventh century, a subtler version of the Monophysite heresy emerged. The more evolved form of this was Monothelitism, which taught that Christ had just one (divine) will, and which was condemned at Constantinople III.

Monothelitism was itself a development from Monergenism, which taught that there was just one (divine) operation or activity (Latin: operatio) in Christ - or, in Greek (the language in which the debate was for the most part conducted), one divine energy (energeia - a term which carries a good deal more theological weight than the Latin equivalent).

The role of Sophronius in this ongoing dispute was to defend the orthodox Catholic faith at a time when both the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople were initially unable to see the dangers inherent in this new and more refined variant of Monophystitism.

A definitive explanation of the true doctrine of the two energies and the two wills was to be developed a little later by Maximus the Confessor and the Sixthe Ecumenical Council.

As a preacher, Sophronius seems to have had a gift for seeing and reflecting on Christ's work of redemption through the eyes of those who encountered him.

The following is an extract from a homily on Christ's presentation in the Jerusalem Temple - a location of great significance for Sophronius - (a longer version of which is available on the Mystagogy blog of J. Sanidopoulos):

Let us be shining ourselves as we go together to meet and to receive with the aged Simeon the light whose brilliance is eternal.

Rejoicing with Simeon, let us sing a hymn of thanksgiving to God, the Father of the light, who sent the true light to dispel the darkness and to give us all a share in his splendor.

Through Simeon’s eyes we too have seen the salvation of God which he prepared for all the nations and revealed as the glory of the new Israel, which is ourselves.

As Simeon was released from the bonds of this life when he had seen Christ, so we too were at once freed from our old state of sinfulness.

By faith we, too embraced, Christ, the salvation of God the Father, as he came to us from Bethlehem.

Gentiles before, we have now become the people of God.

Our eyes have seen God incarnate, and because we have seen him present among us and have mentally received him into our arms, we are called the new Israel.

Sophronius appears also to have possessed a gift for seeing and reflecting on Christ's work of redemption in the light of the physical geography of the City of Jerusalem. In one of his poetic works, the twentieth of his Anacreonta, he writes:

[...] Let me walk thy pavements
and go inside the Anastasis,
where the King of All rose again,
trampling down the power of death.

[...] Through the divine sanctuary
I will penetrate the divine Tomb,
and with deep reverence
will venerate that Rock.

[...] And prostrate I will venerate
the Navel-point of the earth, that divine Rock
in which was fixed the wood
which undid the curse of the tree.

How great thy glory,
noble Rock, in which was fixed
the Cross, the Redemption of mankind!

[...] And let me go rejoicing
to the splendid sanctuary, the place
where the noble Empress Helena
found the divine Wood;

and go up,
my heart overcome with awe,
and see the Upper Room,
the Reed, the Sponge, and the Lance.

Then may I gaze down
upon the fresh beauty of the Basilica
where choirs of monks
sing nightly songs of worship.

Extracted from a much longer extract, translated by John Wilkinson (Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades, 1977).

Feast of St Andrew - Aquinas on today's Epistle

2010-11-30T16:40:00.004Z

Today's Epistle (for the feast of St Andrew, is Romans 10:9-18). Verse 10 reads "For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved".

In his Commentary on Romans, St Thomas Aquinas explains the three ways in which we confess Christ with our lips:

First, the confession of one’s own iniquity: “I said: ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’“ (Ps 32:5), which is the confession of the repentant.

The second is that by which a man confesses the goodness of God mercifully bestowing His benefits: “Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things (Ps 98:11) and this is the confession of one giving thanks.

The third is the confession of divine truth: “Every one who confesses me before men, I will also confess before my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 10:32) and this is the confession of the believer, about which the Apostle is now speaking.

Commentary on Romans, ch. 10, lect, 3, n. 832.

Anastasius the Sinaite - what is the mark of a true Christian?

2010-11-29T14:49:00.010Z

Anastasius the Sinaite (d. 686) was a priest and abbot of Mount Sinai.

He was one of the great exponents of the theology of guardian angels. According to the short biography on the Orthodox Church in America website

St Anastasius taught that God gives each Christian an angel to care for him throughout his life.

However, we can drive our Guardian Angel away by our sins, just as bees are driven away by smoke.

While the demons work to deprive us of the heavenly Kingdom, the holy angels guide us to do good.

Therefore, only the most foolish individuals would drive away their Guardian Angel from themselves.

In his Answers to Questions St Anastasius addressed the question "what is the mark of a true Christian?":

A Christian is a veritable dwelling place of Christ, held together by good works and pious beliefs.
True faith, without works is dead, as are works without faith...wherefore the Lord says:
If a man loves Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love Him, and We will come unto him and make Our home with him (John 14:23).

Correct belief and good works may not Do we not learn from this that the house of the soul is built through correct belief and good works, and thus God dwells within us. I will dwell in them, He says, and walk in them (II Cor. 6:16)....
Will not the devil then know whether or not the Master of the house, Christ, is inside your mind?

Fuller extract here at OCIC.

Aquinas on today's Epistle (1st Sunday of Advent)

2010-11-28T10:59:00.003Z

Today's Epistle (Romans 12:11-14) reads (in the public domain Douay-Rheims version):

And that knowing the season; that it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is passed, and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day: not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy: But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences.

St Thomas explains the words the night is passed, and the day is at hand (v. 12) as follows:

The import is that the entire time of the present life is compared to night on account of the darkness of ignorance with which the present life is encumbered.
“We are swallowed up in darkness” (Jb 33:4). Isaiah says of this night: “My soul yearns for thee in the night” (26:9).

But the state of future happiness is compared to day on account of God’s splendor with which the saints are enlightened: “the sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you by night, but he Lord will be your everlasting light” (Is 60:19).
Continued here on my "sources" blog, "Enlarging the Heart".

Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

2010-11-20T13:29:00.004Z

November 21st would normally be the memorial day of the Presentation of Our Lady in the Temple. Orthodox Portal has the following explanation of the iconography of the feast (including an image of the icon) taken from The Meaning of Icons by Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky.

The mystery of this feast of the Theotokos, which can be compared to the Dormition, leads us into the very treasure house of the Church’s Holy Tradition.

The Church breaks the silence of the Scriptures and shows us the incomprehensible ways of providence, which prepare the receptacle of the Word, “the Mother foreknown before the ages,” “preached by the Prophets,” and now introduced into the Holy of Holies, like a hidden Treasure of the Glory of God.”

The theme of the temple is developed in the liturgy and iconography of the Presentation. It is the temple rebuilt by Zorobabel, less glorious than that of Solomon.

The rabbinical tradition tells us: ‘Five things which were in the first temple were no longer in the second.

They were: The Fire from on high, the Oil of anointment, the Ark (Second Maccabees 2), the Holy Spirit (Ezekiel 10:18), the Urirn and the Thummim.’

The Holy Spirit abandons the Temple, to speak by the Prophets. But He will confer on the temple of the law a glory not to be compared with that of the old covenant, by introducing into the Holy of Holies the Virgin who is to give birth to ‘Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek’ (Hebrews 6:20).

He who welcomes the Holy Virgin, the priest Zacharias, the father of the Forerunner, reunites in his person the two traditions—priestly and prophetic.

If he allows the Virgin to go in behind the second veil, which is contrary to the Law, it is because he sees in her the new Ark of the covenant, “the Living Ark of God.”

“The Angels were astonished to see the Virgin enter the Holy of Holies”: the Divine plan of the Incarnation remains incomprehensible “to the principalities and powers in heavenly places,” which will be known only through the Church “the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hidden in God” (Ephesians 3: 9-10).

It is the secret preparation of the humanity of Christ: In the temple of Jerusalem the chosen Virgin will prepare herself to become later “the Temple of His body,” that which will be destroyed and in three days raised up.

The Meaning of Icons. Ouspensky and Lossky, St Vladimir's Seminary Press,U.S.; 2nd Revised edition edition [May 1983] pp. 153-154.

More from St Mark the Ascetic

2010-11-19T16:35:00.003Z

More from Mark the Ascetic (see previous post), taken from his On Those who Think They Are Made Righteous by Works: Two Hundred Twenty Six Texts.

Unless a man acquires, through the grace of Christ, knowledge of the truth and fear of God, he is gravely wounded not only by the passions but also by the things that happen to him.

When you want to resolve a complex problem, seek God’s will in the matter, and you will find a constructive solution.

When something accords with God’s will, all creation aids it. But when God rejects something, creation too opposes it.

He who opposes unpleasant events opposes the command of God unwittingly. But when someone accepts them with real knowledge, he ‘waits patiently for the Lord’ (Ps 27:14).

When tested by some trial you should try to find out not why or through whom it came, but only how to endure it gratefully, without distress or rancor.

[...] If it is not easy to find anyone conforming to God’s will who has not been put to the test, we ought to thank God for everything that happens to us.

Text from G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (trans. and eds.) The Philokalia: The Complete Text, vol. I (Faber & Faber, London & Boston: 1979), pp. 125- 146.

Mark the Ascetic - "if you wish to gain victory over the passions"

2010-11-17T16:18:00.003Z

Mark the Ascetic (also known as Mark the Hermit, Mark the Monk) was, as the Catholic Encyclopedia laconically puts it, "a theologian and ascetic writer of some importance in the fifth century".

According to the Prologue from Ohrid (entry for March 5th)

Mark was an ascetic and miracle-worker. In his fortieth year he was tonsured a monk by his teacher St. John Chrysostom.

Mark then spent sixty more years in the wilderness of Nitria in fasting, prayer and writing many spiritual works concerning the salvation of souls.

He knew the entire Holy Scriptures by heart. He was very merciful and kind. He wept much for the misfortunes which had befallen all of God's creation.

On one occasion, while crying, he prayed to God for a blind puppy of a hyena and the puppy received its sight. In thanksgiving the mother of the hyena brought him a sheepskin. The saint forbade the hyena in the future to kill any more sheep of poor people.

He received Communion at the hands of the angels.

St Mark's advice on prayer and asceticism is is practical and striking. The following example is quoted on the Word in the Desert blog (an excellent resource for Patristic theology and spirituality):

If you wish to gain victory over the passions, enter within yourself through prayer and God's help.

Then descend into the depths of your heart and there track down these three powerful giants — forgetfulness, laziness, and ignorance.

It is these three who uphold the ranks of our spiritual adversaries: supported by these three, all the other passions, returning to the heart, act, live, and gain strength in self-indulgent and uninstructed souls.

But if by means of great attention and persistence of mind, and with help from above, you find those evil giants that are unbeknown to many, you will easily drive them away with the weapons of righteousness — with the remembrance of what is good, with the eagerness that spurs the soul to salvation, and with knowledge from heaven.

Sacramentality of Scripture

2010-11-13T21:38:00.005Z

One of the most striking passages in Verbum Domini (PDF version here, HTML version here) is the following extract from Paragraph 56.

Drawing on St Jerome (the doctor of biblical interpretation par excellence), Pope Benedict discusses the "sacramentality" of Scripture, and the presence of Christ in Scripture (particularly within a liturgical context) which he presents as analogous with, but not equivalent to, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist:

At the heart of the sacramentality of the word of God is the mystery of the Incarnation itself: "the Word became flesh" (Jn 1:14), the reality of the revealed mystery is offered to us in the "flesh" of the Son.

[...] The sacramentality of the word can thus be understood by analogy with the real presence of Christ under the appearances of the consecrated bread and wine.

By approaching the altar and partaking in the Eucharistic banquet we truly share in the body and blood of Christ.

The proclamation of God's word at the celebration entails an acknowledgment that Christ himself is present, that he speaks to us, and that he wishes to be heard.

Saint Jerome speaks of the way we ought to approach both the Eucharist and the word of God:

We are reading the sacred Scriptures. For me, the Gospel is the Body of Christ; for me, the holy Scriptures are his teaching.

And when he says: "whoever does not eat my flesh and drink my blood" (Jn 6:53), even though these words can also be understood of the [Eucharistic] Mystery, Christ's body and blood are really the word of Scripture, God's teaching.

When we approach the [Eucharistic] Mystery, if a crumb falls to the ground we are troubled.

Yet when we are listening to the word of God, and God's Word and Christ’s flesh and blood are being poured into our ears yet we pay no heed, what great peril should we not feel? (In Psalmum 147: CCL 78, 337-338.).

Christ, truly present under the species of bread and wine, is analogously present in the word proclaimed in the liturgy.

Verbum Domini 56.

Verbum Domini - scripture and prayer

2010-11-13T09:22:00.006Z

As one would expect from the most patristic-minded of popes, Pope Benedict's recent Apostolic Exhortation, Verbum Domini, is steeped in the wisdom of the Church Fathers.

In the following extract he discusses the connection between scripture and prayer - the connection that lies at the heart of lectio divina - with reference to St Augustine and Origen (who isn't technically a Father, but whose approach to interpreting the scriptures shaped the entire patristic and early mediaeval exgetical tradition).

The Council [Vatican 2]...sought to reappropriate the great patristic tradition which had always recommended approaching the Scripture in dialogue with God.

As Saint Augustine puts it: “Your prayer is the word you speak to God. When you read the Bible, God speaks to you; when you pray, you speak to God ”.

Origen, one of the great masters of this way of reading the Bible, maintains that understanding Scripture demands, even more than study, closeness to Christ and prayer.

Origen was convinced, in fact, that the best way to know God is through love, and that there can be no authentic scientia Christi [knowledge of Christ] apart from growth in his love.

In his Letter to Gregory, the great Alexandrian theologian gave this advice:

“Devote yourself to the lectio of the divine Scriptures; apply yourself to this with perseverance.

Do your reading with the intent of believing in and pleasing God.

If during the lectio you encounter a closed door, knock and it will be opened to you by that guardian of whom Jesus said, ‘The gatekeeper will open it for him’.

By applying yourself in this way to lectio divina, search diligently and with unshakable trust in God for the meaning of the divine Scriptures, which is hidden in great fullness within.

You ought not, however, to be satisfied merely with knocking and seeking: to understand the things of God, what is absolutely necessary is oratio.

For this reason, the Saviour told us not only: ‘Seek and you will find’, also added, ‘Ask and you shall receive’ ”.

Verbum Domini 86;
quoting AUGUSTINE, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 85, 7: PL 37, 1086;
ORIGEN, Epistola ad Gregorium, 3: PG 11, 92.

Verbum Domini

2010-11-11T17:36:00.003Z

Michael Barber at The Sacred Page reports the release of a new Apostolic Exhortation (i.e. one step down from an Encycliucal, though still part of the ordinary magisterium) on Scripture, Verbum Domini which follows on from the Synod on Scripture held in 2008.

Michael Barber provides some historical context which serves to underline the significance of the document:

For some perspective, the last major papal document on Scripture was Divino afflante Spiritu, which was released by Pius XII in 1943. Before that the two other major papal documents on Scripture were Leo XIII's landmark Providentissimus Deus (1893) and Benedict XV's, Spiritus Paraclitus(1920). All three of those documents were encyclicals. Again, today's new document is not.

So, today's document is an important milestone -it is the first major papal document on Scripture in 57 years! The last magisterial document which really dealt with Scripture in an extensive way was Dei Verbum (1965), which is one of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. So the last magisterial document treating Scripture extensively is 45 years old!

It will be worth keeping an eye on The Sacred Page for further analysis and reflections.

Elizabeth, Caesarius, Leo...

2010-11-10T20:40:00.004Z

Monday's memorial was that of Bl Elizabeth of the Trinity. Elizabeth frequently meditated on the meaning of her own name - "house of God" - which led her deeper and deeper into the mystery of indwelling of the Trinity in her heart.

Tuesday's feast was that of the dedication of the Lateran basilica. In the old Breviary, the Mattins and Lauds hymns focused on the two key themes:

(1) Christians are stones whom Christ builds up into the living Temple of which he is the cornerstone; and (2) this Temple - the Temple of the New Jerusalem described in the Book of Revelation which comes down from heaven - is where heaven and earth, divine and human, are united.

In the modern Divine Office (or Liturgy of the Hours), the Patristic reading was taken from a sermon by St Caesarius of Arles, and spoke of the souls of believers as Temples in which Christ dwells.

Today's memorial is that of St Leo the Great, and the Patristic Reading in the LotH draws these various threads together, exploring the themes of (1) Christians as living stones in the true Temple; (2) Christians as Temples of God - "spiritual houses" - in their own right; (3) Christians as exercising a royal priesthood in virtue of their membership of Christ's mystical body (Christ being King and Priest, and also the living Temple in whom divine and human natures are united in a single Person).

The apostle Peter says in these words: And you are built up as living stones into spiritual houses, a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices which are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
And again: But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart.

For all, regenerated in Christ, are made kings by the sign of the cross; they are consecrated priests by the oil of the Holy Spirit, so that beyond the special service of our ministry as priests, all spiritual and mature Christians know that they are a royal race and are sharers in the office of the priesthood.

For what is more king-like than to find yourself ruler over your body after having surrendered your soul to God? And what is more priestly than to promise the Lord a pure conscience and to offer him in love unblemished victims on the altar of one’s heart?

One of the many wonderful aspects of the liturgical year is the way in which it offers up these connections...