Category Archives: August

Aug 27 – Servant of God Fr. Igor Aleksandrovich Akulov (Epiphany, Epiphanius), (1897-1937) – Priest, Martyr, Victim of Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge

Fr. Epiphany was born 13 April 1897, Novo-Nikitskaya, Korchevsky County, province of Tver and was executed on 27 August 1937, Leningrad. He was a Russian orthodox monk and priest of the Russian Catholic Church, and a victim of Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge.

Igor Aleksandrovich Akulov was born into a family of orthodox peasant farmers. He graduated from Technical High School (2009). In 1918-1920 worked as a telephone clerk at the Moscow – Saint Petersburg Railway. During the Russian Civil War, he was mobilized and served in the Red Army as a noncombatant. From 1920 he became a postulant at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and studied at the Petrograd Theological Institute (1920–1922). On 2 July 1921 he was tonsured a Russian Orthodox monk with the name of Brother Epiphany.

After meeting with Exarch Leonid Fyodorov, and under his influence Brother Epiphany Akulov began attending Eastern Rite Catholic Liturgies, and in the summer of 1922 was received into the Russian Catholic Church. In 1921, he was ordained as an Eastern Catholic priest by Archbishop Jan Cieplak. After August 1922 he was the Pastor of the Byzantine Catholic Church of the Descent of the Holy Ghost in Petrograd. He also served in the Latin parish of St. Boniface. According to Leonid Fedorov:

By the infinite mercy of God, and there has not left us, sent us a young priest-monk Epiphanius. He came to us in the midst of the struggle for the Church, but was not scared and did not retreat. He was not touched by Protestantism and rationalism. He serves well…”

In 1923, after the closure of the church, he secretly served at an apartment.  23 November 1923 he was arrested. After the arrests of other priests and their parishioners (during which he was not in Petrograd), he went to the police station and claimed to be a priest and Catholic. He was accused of the Catholic counter-revolutionary organization.  19 May 1924 was sentenced to 10 years in prison, was in political prison near the Irkutsk.  While Fr. Epiphanius was imprisoned, he corresponded with his elderly mother. In his letters, he tried to persuade her to remain as a steadfast Catholic. In 1927 released early and sent into exile. In 1933 he was freed from exile, he served in various churches in St. Petersburg.

In 1935 Akulov was arrested again for a short time. 26 July 1937 he was arrested and on Aug. 25 he was sentenced to death and executed on August 27. He was buried at Levashovo Mass Grave in St. Petersburg, a desolate area near the city.

O God Almighty, Your Son suffered on the Cross and died for the salvation of people.  Imitating Him, Your Servant Fr. Epiphany Akulov loved You from the bottom of his heart, served You faithfully during the persecutions, and devoted his life to the Church. Make him known in the assembly of Your blessed so that the example of his faithfulness and love would shine before the whole world. I pray to You through his intercession, hear my request ………………through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The prayer has to be used in private, as well as in public, out of the Holy Mass.
+ Archbishop Thaddeus Kondrusiewich, St. Petersburg 05.04.2004
Postulator asks to inform about the graces received through the mediation of the Servant of God.
Address: Fr. Bronislav Chaplicki, 1st Krasnoarmyskaya, D.11, 198005, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Love,
Matthew

Aug 25 – St Louis IX of France (25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270) – Crusader King

“Louis’s insistence on taking the cross [in December 1244] and journeying to the Holy Land was an outgrowth of his deep faith and love for Christ. He yearned to see Jerusalem under Christian control once more. His desire was so great that he was prepared to risk his personal and royal fortunes on the expedition. He was sovereign of the wealthiest region in all Christendom and the king of the most populous Christian country. There was much to lose by going on Crusade, but King St. Louis IX knew that the eternal reward greatly outweighed the temporal risk.

The thirteenth-century was the “century of St. Louis,” as no man more exemplified the tenor of the age than the saintly king of the Franks. Louis was blond, slender, handsome, gentle though firm, decisive in policy and generous in charity. He was a devout and dutiful son and a loving husband and father. Along with the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, Louis was the most important political figure of the thirteenth century and the central figure in Christendom. Those two men could not have been more opposite in all aspects of their lives. Frederick was the “Crusader without faith” whereas Louis was the “perfect Crusader.” One man seemed to eschew all religious faith, whereas the other embraced it and was declared a saint of the Church. Frederick kept a harem of Muslim women, whereas, uncharacteristic of the age for monarchy, Louis was a monogamous husband. Louis was a product of his times, but he also shaped the era in which he lived, and his influence (and intercession) continues to the modern world.

There was perhaps no greater king in the history of France. He governed his realm peacefully and justly for forty-four years, following three principles: devotion to God, self-discipline, and affection for his people. Even in an age of faith, the king’s personal piety and sanctity stood out. He wore simple clothing, especially after his return from the Crusade, and kept a regimented prayer life. He awoke each night at midnight to participate with his royal chaplains in the Liturgy of the Hours, and said fifty Hail Marys each evening, kneeling and standing for each prayer. Louis’s prayer life was augmented by penitential practices, including fasting, the wearing of a hair shirt, weekly confession, and the special personal mortification of not laughing on Fridays. He was concerned for his own salvation, but even more so for the salvation of his subjects, which he considered “his highest duty.”


-contemporary depiction ~1230 AD

…The Egyptian Campaign Begins

The French fleet arrived at Damietta on June 4, 1249, and once more the Muslim garrison prepared to fight Crusaders. The next morning, the Crusaders undertook an amphibious landing with Louis in the lead. When warriors waded to shore, the Muslim garrison commander, Fakhr al-Din, saw the strength of the Crusader army and decided to withdraw from the city to the sultan’s camp several miles away.

The city, now emptied of its defenders, was soon occupied by the French Crusaders in a surprisingly easy undertaking, which was the opposite of the siege during the Fifth Crusade [a 17-month siege in 1218-19].  Louis found stockpiles of food, equipment, and material that the Muslims left behind in their hasty retreat. The king decided to spend the summer in Damietta while waiting for his brother Alphonse and other Crusaders to arrive.

As winter approached, Louis thought an attack on Cairo would give the Christians complete control of Egypt and finish the task left undone by the Fifth Crusade, so he gave the command to march there in late November, 1249. He left a garrison and his five-months-pregnant queen in Damietta, and ordered the fleet to shadow the army’s movement offshore…”

Love,
Matthew

Aug 15 – Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Eastern Tradition


-by Fr Deacon Daniel G. Dozier

“In the great mystery and divine economy of the Christian faith, the role of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God (or Theotokos) is pivotal. It is from her that the incarnate Son of God received his human nature. The Church’s cycle of feasts pertaining to the life of Jesus are celebrated to some extent in the context of the symphony of Mary’s life, from holy beginning to holy end. We celebrate this holy end of Mary’s life today with the Solemnity of the Assumption, in the East called the Dormition.

Catholics of the Latin tradition often assume that Mary’s final end has been sufficiently addressed by the dogma of the Assumption, that is, her translation, body and soul, into heaven as defined by Pius XII in 1950. But as glorious as the mystery of her Assumption is, it represents only one dimension of the mystery of the end of Mary’s life. There is also her death and subsequent resurrection. On this subject, Pope Pius remained silent, choosing not to address the subject of Mary’s mortality. The Byzantine tradition, however, as part of the universal and fully Catholic patrimony of the Church, is not silent on this topic. It guards a rich treasury of teaching, iconography, and liturgy concerning the end of Mary’s life.

According to the tradition of the Byzantine East, the Assumption was the final stage of Mary’s transition into the glory of heaven. This Analepsis or “translation” of Mary to eternal life was preceded by what was called the Koimesis or “sleep” or Mary in death. These three events—her death, her resurrection, and her assumption into heaven—complete the mosaic of the holy end of Mary’s life. But what are the literary and historical bases for such a belief within the traditions of the Church?

Before the Council of Ephesus (third and fourth centuries)

It must first be said that Sacred Scripture is completely silent on the matter. No explicit reference to Mary’s death is ever mentioned in the New Testament.[1] Prior to the first Council of Nicaea, the only explicit references to Mary’s death come from Origen of Alexandria and Ephrem the Syrian who both mention her death (which seems to be assumed as fact) in the context of defending her perpetual virginity (which they were intent on defending.[2]

Although not entirely convinced of the fact of the Virgin’s death, Epiphanius of Salamis in the late fourth century wrote that three possibilities existed concerning the end of Mary’s life: death due to natural causes, death through martyrdom, or immortality without death. He was the first patristic source to posit the death of Mary as a question or a problem with a limited number of solutions due to the lack of evidence in Scripture.

Pseudo-Melito of Sardis, who wrote in the fifth century, related a distinct Palestinian tradition in favor of acknowledging the Virgin Mary’s death. His writing was the first and most explicit account of this tradition, which was probably a story orally transmitted over the course of several generations of Christians. His account is the first of what became known as the “Palm of the Tree of Life Tradition,” which represents a family of writings characterized by the distinctive palm branch given to Mary by the archangel Gabriel as a sign of the Lord granting her prayerful petition to pass from this life in death into paradise with him.

According to Stephen Shoemaker, a contemporary theologian who specializes in the area of the Dormition traditions, some of the common threads running through the Palm narratives are as follows:

  1. An angel meets Mary on the Mount of Olives and announces to her that her time of death has come and brings to her a palm branch from the Tree of Life in paradise;
  2. Mary goes back to her home in Jerusalem and informs her friends and family of the message of the angel, and the apostles, who were engaged in their respective missions all over the earth, re-gather miraculously in Jerusalem;
  3. Peter, who is treated as the head of the apostles, delivers a homily to those who have come the night before to pray as Mary prepares for her death;
  4. When the moment arrives, the crowds are put to sleep, all except the apostles and three virgins, who see Jesus and a host of angels appear;
  5. Jesus receives the immaculate soul of Mary, appearing in the form of an infant wrapped in white swaddling clothes, and gives it to Michael the Archangel;
  6. The apostles carry Mary’s body on a funeral bier to a tomb beside the Garden of Gethsemane;
  7. Jephonias, one of the Jewish leaders, attempts to upend the funeral bier but as he does so his hands are severed by an angel, then later restored by his conversion and prayers to Mary;
  8. After laying her body in the tomb, the apostles wait for Christ there for several days until he returns, resurrects Mary and takes her body, along with the apostles, to paradise;
  9. The apostles, after being shown heaven and hell, then return to earth with Mary remaining, body and soul, in heaven.

One of the later narratives also mentions a situation where Thomas arrives late. By the time he reaches the city and meets with the other apostles, Mary has been buried and he requests to see her body in the sealed tomb. When the tomb is opened, however, Mary’s body is not to be found, but rather the relics of her funeral robe and her girdle. The finding of the relics is also part of the Dormition traditions of Constantinople and Ephesus.

Byzantine homiletic literature (seventh and eighth centuries)

Following the advent of a special feast in honor of Mary’s Dormition, an enormous amount of Byzantine homiletic literature developed in the seventh and eighth centuries. Preachers and writers of the era generated a body of teaching on the Dormition that was unparalleled in patristic literature. This period in many ways represents the full flowering within the first millennium of the theological implications of Mary’s title of Theotokos. Patristic scholar and Jesuit Father Brian Daley notes several common themes that appear in these writings:

Mary’s glory and beauty, as the highest embodiment of an idealized humanity, reaching its divine destiny; Mary’s enthronement as lady and queen, and her share in Jesus’ Messianic rule over all creation; Mary’s continuing role in the everyday life of the Church, as intercessor, kindly patron, even mediator between Christians on earth and her glorified Son; the direct link between this new and glorious status for Mary and the purity of her earthly life—her obedience and fidelity, her total dedication to God, expressed  in her virginity, and freedom from the “corruption” of passion and self-interest; her role as the one who fulfills and epitomizes the hopeful imagery of the whole Bible, realizing the ancient promise of a transforming human intimacy with the God of life—as Ark of the Covenant, Mother Sion, Bride of the heavenly Bridegroom.

Father Daley also observes that “for all these preachers, the heart of the ‘mystery’ being celebrated in Mary’s name is the Mystery of redemption through and in Christ.”

The central meaning of this celebration was that, although Mary has received from her Son this great privilege of entry into the glory of heaven, this was done not for her sake alone, but also for the sake of her spiritual offspring in the Church. Mary’s Assumption, like all Marian mysteries, is an instrument for the salvation of souls. Her role of maternal mediation, made more powerful by her glorification in heaven, continues in the life of the Body of Christ and therefore merits a deep, rich, and public veneration by the Church.”

Troparion — Tone 1
In giving birth you preserved your virginity, / in falling asleep you did not forsake the world, O Theotokos. / You were translated to life, O Mother of Life, / and by your prayers, you deliver our souls from death.

Kontakion — Tone 2
Neither the tomb, nor death could hold the Theotokos, / who is constant in prayer and our firm hope in her intercessions. / For being the Mother of Life, / she was translated to life by the One who dwelt in her virginal womb.

Love,
Matthew

[1] Mary’s presence in heaven as the glorified and crowned Woman of Revelation 12 implies her entry into paradise as the New Eve and Queen Mother at the end of her earthly life, but nothing indicates her translation through death and resurrection.

[2] See Walter J. Burghardt’s The Testimony of the Patristic Age Concerning Mary’s Death.

Aug 15 – Assumption/Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary


-please click on the image for greater detail

[Aug 15 is a special day for entering and advancing novices, those who have completed their canonical year, of transition in the Dominican Order. Those invited take the simple vow of obedience for three years, the only vow Dominicans ever take. All the evangelical counsels are summed up in the vow of obedience to Dominicans.]


-by Tim Staples, Tim was raised a Southern Baptist. Although he fell away from the faith of his childhood, Tim came back to faith in Christ during his late teen years through the witness of Christian televangelists. Soon after, Tim joined the Marine Corps.

“As we approach the great feast of the Assumption of Mary, I, having written a post on the biblical evidence for the Assumption of Mary, thought I would change gears and consider the historical evidence for the Assumption in honor of this year’s feast day.

The doctrine of the Assumption of Mary began with a historical event to which Scripture alludes and that been believed in the Church for 2,000 years. It was passed down in the oral tradition of the Church and developed over the centuries, but it was always believed by the Catholic faithful. Let us examine the facts:

1. Archaeology has revealed two tombs of Mary, one in Jerusalem and one in Ephesus. The fact that Mary lived in both places explains the two tombs. But what is inexplicable apart from the Assumption is the fact that there is no body in either tomb. And there are no relics. Anyone who peruses early Church history knows that Christian belief in the communion of saints and the sanctity of the body—in radical contrast to the Gnostic disdain for “the flesh”—led early Christians to seek out with the greatest fervor relics from the bodies of great saints. Cities, and, later, religious orders, would fight over the bones of great saints.

This is one reason why we have relics of the apostles and so many of the greatest saints and martyrs in history. Yet never was there a single relic of Mary’s body? As revered as Mary was, this would be very strange, except for the fact of the assumption of her body.

2. On the historical front, Fr. Michael O’Carroll, in his book, Theotokos: A Theological Encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin Mary, writes:

We have known for some time that there were widespread “Transitus Stories” that date from the sixth century that teach Mary’s glorious Assumption. It was the promulgation of the dogma of the Assumption by Pope Pius XII that rekindled interest in these stories of the end of Mary’s life. In 1955, Fr. A.A. Wenger published L’Assomption (p. 59).

Fr. Wenger found a Greek manuscript that verified what scholars had previously believed to be true. Because there were whole families of manuscripts from different areas of the world in the sixth century that told a similar story of Mary’s Assumption, there had to be previous manuscripts from which everyone received their data. Fr. Wenger discovered one of these earlier manuscripts, believed to be the source later used by John of Thessalonica in the sixth century in his teaching on the Assumption. Fr. O’Carroll continues:

Some years later, M. Haibach-Reinisch added to the dossier an early version of Pseudo-Melito, the most influential text in use in the Latin Church. This could now, it was clear, be dated earlier than the sixth century. . . . V. Arras claimed to have found an Ethiopian version of it which he published in 1973; its similarity to the Irish text gave the latter new status. In the same year M. Van Esbroeck brought out a Gregorian version, which he had located in Tiflis, and another, a Pseudo-Basil, in the following year, found in Mount Athos.

Much still remains to be explored. The Syriac fragments have increased importance, being put as far back as the third century by one commentator. The whole story will eventually be placed earlier, probably in the second century.

This is significant. Recently discovered Syriac fragments of stories about the Assumption of Mary have been dated as early as the third century. And there are undoubtedly more manuscripts to be found. It must be remembered that when we are talking about these “Transitus stories,” we are not only talking about ancient manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts, but we are talking also about two different “families” of manuscripts written in nine languages. They all agree on Mary’s Assumption and they presuppose that the story was already widely known.

Gnostic Fable or Christian Truth?

What about those who claim the Assumption of Mary is nothing more than a Gnostic fable? Or those who claim the historical narratives about the Assumption of Mary were condemned by Pope Gelasius I? James White, in his book Mary—Another Redeemer?, goes so far as to claim:

Basically, the first appearance of the idea of the Bodily Assumption of Mary is found in a source that was condemned by the then-bishop of Rome, Gelasius I! The irony is striking: what was defined by the bishop of Rome as heresy at the end of the fifth century becomes dogma itself in the middle of the twentieth! (p. 54).

Mr. White’s reasoning fails for several reasons.

1. Even if it were a papal document, Decretum Gelasianum would not be a “definition” by the bishop of Rome declaring the Assumption of Mary to be heresy, as White claims. The document does not make such an assertion. It gives us a rather long list of titles of apocryphal books after having listed the accepted books of the Bible. That’s all. One of these titles declared to be “apocryphal” is referred to as: “Liber qui appellatur  ‘Transitus, id est Assumptio sanctae Mariae,’” which translates as “A book which is called, ‘Having been taken up, that is, the Assumption of Holy Mary.’”

White evidently thought this document condemned as untrue the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary. But it did not. As a matter of history, this document does not condemn any doctrines in the books it lists at all; it declares the books themselves to be apocryphal and therefore not part of the canon of Scripture.

This would be something akin to the Church’s rejection of The Assumption of Moses and The Book of Enoch as apocryphal works. The fact that these works are apocryphal does not preclude St. Jude (9; 14) from quoting both of them in Sacred Scripture. Because a work is declared apocryphal or even condemned does not mean that there is no truth at all to be found in it.

2. There is a real question among scholars today as to whether Pope Gelasius wrote what is popularly called the Dectretum Gelasianum. According to The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Faith (p. 462), it was probably written in the sixth century (Pope Gelasius died in the late fifth century) in Italy or Gaul and was most likely not a papal work at all. In fact, it was falsely attributed to several different popes over the years.

3. If the pope had genuinely condemned the teaching of the Assumption, great saints and defenders of orthodoxy such as St. Gregory and later St. John Damascene would not have taught it. Further, we would have found other writers condemning this teaching as it became more and more popular throughout the world. And we certainly would not see the Assumption celebrated in the liturgy as we do as early as the fifth century in Palestine, Gaul in the sixth, universally in the East in the seventh century, and in the West in the eighth century. Far from a condemnation of the Assumption, this reveals just how widespread this teaching truly was.

Why Don’t the Earliest Fathers Write About the Assumption?

The most obvious reason would be that when Gnostics, who were some of the main enemies of the Faith in the early centuries of the Christian era, agreed with the Church on the matter, there would have been no need to defend the teaching. In other words, there is no record of anyone disagreeing on the matter. We don’t find works from the earliest Fathers on Jesus’ celibacy either, but that too was most likely due to the universal agreement on the topic. Much of early Christian literature was apologetic in nature. Like the New Testament, it mostly dealt with problem areas in the Church that needed to be addressed.

Even so, it is not as though there is no written evidence to support the Assumption either. According to Fr. O’Carroll (Theotokos, 388), we now have what some believe to be a fourth-century homily on the prophet Simeon and the Blessed Virgin Mary by Timothy, a priest of Jerusalem, which asserts Mary is “immortal to the present time through him who had his abode in her and who assumed and raised her above the higher regions.”

Evidently, there was disagreement in the circulating stories of the Assumption of Mary as to whether she was taken up alive or after having died. But whether or not she was assumed was not in question. Indeed, the Church even to this day has not decided definitively the matter of whether Mary died or not, though at the level of the Ordinary Magisterium it does teach that Mary died—for example, in Pope Pius XII’s Munificentissimus Deus, 17, 20, 21, 29, 35, 39, and 40.

Rethinking St. Epiphanius

I believe St. Epiphanius’s work needs to be reexamined when it comes to the Assumption of Mary. This great bishop and defender of orthodoxy may give us key insights into the antiquity of the Assumption, writing in ca. A.D. 350. In his classic Panarion (“breadbox”) or Refutation of All Heresies, he includes eighty-eight sections dealing with scores of the most dangerous heresies of his day. In sections 78 and 79, he deals with one particular sect comprised mainly of women called the “Collyridians.” Evidently, this sect was “ordaining” women as “priestesses” and adoring Mary as a goddess by offering sacrifice to her. St. Epiphanius condemns this in the strongest of terms:

For I have heard in turn that others who are out of their minds on this subject of this holy Ever-virgin, have done their best and are doing their best, in the grip both of madness and of folly, to substitute her for God. For they say that certain Thracian women there in Arabia have introduced this nonsense, and that they bake a loaf in the name of the Ever-virgin, gather together, and attempt an excess and undertake a forbidden, blasphemous act in the holy Virgin’s name, and offer sacrifice in her name with women officiants.

This is entirely impious, unlawful, and different from the Holy Spirit’s message, and is thus pure devil’s work . . .

And nowhere was a woman a priest. But I shall go to the New Testament. If it were ordained by God that women should be priests or have any canonical function in the Church, Mary herself, if anyone, should have functioned as a priest in the New Testament. She was counted worthy to bear the king of all in her own womb, the heavenly God, the Son of God. Her womb became a temple, and by God’s kindness and an awesome mystery, was prepared to be a dwelling place of the Lord’s human nature. But it was not God’s pleasure that she be a priest.

These women who were adoring Mary as if she were a goddess would no doubt have been well acquainted with the “Transitus Stories” and would have been teaching Mary’s Assumption. In fact, it appears they were teaching Mary never died at all. This would be in keeping with John of Thessalonica, Timothy of Jerusalem, and others who taught this among Christians. However, these women were taking Mary and the Assumption to the extreme by worshiping her. What is interesting here is that in the midst of condemning the Collyridians, St. Epiphanius gives us, in section 79 of Panarion, a point-blank statement that is overlooked today by many:

Like the bodies of the saints, however, she has been held in honor for her character and understanding. And if I should say anything more in her praise, she is like Elijah, who was virgin from his mother’s womb, always remained so, and was taken up, but has not seen death.

St. Epiphanius clearly indicates his personal agreement with the idea that Mary was assumed into heaven without ever having died. He will elsewhere clarify the fact that he is not certain, and no one is, at least not definitively so, about whether or not she died. But he never says the same about the Assumption itself. That did not seem to be in doubt. By comparing her to Elijah, he indicates that she was taken up bodily, just as the Church continues to teach 1,600 years later.

A Final Thought

Since the time of the promulgation of the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, there has been much new discovery. We now have written evidence of belief in the Assumption of Mary as far back as the third century. Though it is not necessary for there to be written evidence all the way back to the second century for us as Catholics because we have Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture as interpreted by the Magisterium of the Church first and foremost that has already given us the truth of the Matter, I believe it is really exciting that new historical discoveries continue to be made and once again . . . and again . . . and again, they confirm the Faith of our Fathers.

If you enjoyed this, and you would like to learn more, click here.

Love,
Matthew

Aug 29 – Beheading of John the Baptist & free will


-“The Feast of Herod”, Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1531, oil on panel, Height: 81.3 cm (32 ″); Width: 119.7 cm (47.1″), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT (please click on the image for greater detail)


-by Br Raymond La Grange, OP

“Today is the memorial of the Passion of John the Baptist, who was killed by the corrupt King Herod for condemning the monarch’s illicit marriage (Mk 6:17-29). For John, this was the culmination of a life of sanctity announced by an angel even before his conception (Lk 1:11-17). (Ed. Freed from sin by the Magnificat, John leapt in his mother’s womb.)  This divine decree presents a curious paradox. God, being all-powerful, was able to determine the course of John’s life before his birth (ST I q. 23, a. 6), but at the same time, God respected John’s free will (ST II-I q. 6, a. 4, ob. 1). How is it that God can determine what we will freely choose?

Modern thinking often seems to suppose that freedom of the will means that our choices have no cause other than the will, as if the will depends on nothing. Thomas explains instead that the will is free because it proceeds from an interior principle, namely knowledge, that allows us to act for an end which we know (ST II-I q. 6, a. 1, 4). God did not ‘force’ John the Baptist to give up his life; rather, by his grace he enlightened John the Baptist so that he would understand the good of preaching the truth even when it endangered him.

As a rather crude analogy, consider how a parent can teach a child to make good choices, not by compulsion, but by education. Keep in mind also that some knowledge is abstract, as when a smoker who is trying to quit knows that his habit is bad for him, but rationalizes that away each time he smokes. John’s knowledge was entirely practical; he knew clearly that in his situation the only thing worth doing was to tell the truth. He saw clearly the disappointment inherent in every other course, and so he was free to act for the sake of the truth.

Furthermore, there is never competition between divine and human causality. Two human agents can operate on the same level, when for example two men pull on a rope. In that case, we can ask who pulls harder, and if the men are pulling in opposite directions, maybe the rope will not move at all. But God operates on a completely different level. He is the one who created humans and ropes and set all things in motion.

As another crude analogy, if I write with a pencil, both I and the pencil are equally truly causes of the writing, but in very different ways. Even though I am “in charge,” I do not force the pencil to do anything unnatural. God has even more causal power, because he created pencil-materials in the first place. In the same way, God created John the Baptist as the kind of person who would give up his life for the sake of the truth. God is the first cause on which all else depends. Nothing escapes his causal power, not even the interior life of John (ST I q. 19, a. 6, ad. 3).

You might have noticed that, left to our own devices, there are actually significant limits on our freedom. Those who struggle with habitual sin will know well the painful cycle of repeatedly making a bad choice. The will continually inclines toward damaging action, misapprehended (deceived) for the moment as a good.

Our choices are rather dependent on our own fallen selves, and so we will not always be able to avoid deceiving ourselves and making poor choices. True freedom, then, can only be found outside ourselves, in grace given freely by God that can break us out of our own self-imposed prison. It is by such grace that John’s interior movements were so perfected that he was able to freely give his life. It is only by such divine grace, and not by some creative act of the will, that we can truly draw closer to God”

Love,
Matthew

Aug 15 – Let Heaven receive her Queen

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary completed in 1773 by Charles-Antoine Bridan, Chartres Cathedral.


-by Br Cyril Stola, OP

“Celebrations that commemorate Mary gild the liturgical year. Among others, we remember her Immaculate Conception, her Presentation at the Temple, her fiat at the Annunciation, her Visitation unto Elizabeth, her divine maternity, and, today, her Assumption into heaven. In the Assumption, Mary’s graced life reaches its culmination by ultimate union with the source of grace.

If Adam and Eve had not sinned, the separation of the body and soul at death and the subsequent corruption of the body would be foreign to man. God freed Mary from the stain of that original sin at her conception, thus restoring to her our lost purity. Nonetheless, he did not wish merely to restore us to Eden; he desired to bring us to a higher glory. By his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus opened the gates of heaven for us, and at the end of time he will restore our bodies in a new creation. Mary gave Jesus his human nature, and he in turn repaid her a hundred-fold by bringing her into heaven to share in his bodily resurrection now. In the words of the preface of today’s Mass, the Assumption is “the beginning and image of your Church’s coming to perfection and a sign of sure hope and comfort to your pilgrim people.” It is a foretaste of what is to come to us, and the choirs of angels surely rejoiced exceedingly when their queen entered her home in heaven.

Mary, having borne Christ in her womb and having pondered him in her heart, heard the word of God and kept it during her earthly life. Her perfect obedience to the divine will and the fact that she became the mother of God made Mary the highest of all women, “the glory of Jerusalem, the joy of Israel, the fairest honor of our race.” (Benedictus Antiphon, Memorial of the Blessed Virgin on Saturday) Through her Assumption, she received the capacity to do the Lord’s will at an even higher level.

By this awe-inspiring gift, Mary now shares Christ’s love for us and can hear the supplication of all. She who traveled to assist her kinswoman Elizabeth during her pregnancy now assists each of us. She who turned the gaze of her son to a newlywed’s lack of wine in Cana now turns his gaze to every family who turns to her. She who stood by the cross of her son now consoles us in our suffering. Today we thank God that he gave us such a mother and placed her in such an exalted place. Mary, queen assumed into heaven, pray for us.”

Love,
Matthew

Aug 27 – Tears of St Monica


-“The angel appears to St Monica”, by Pietro Maggi, [1714], painting in Saint Augustine chapel, in the right hand transept of san Marco church in Milan (Italy), please click on the image for greater detail.

Thus you gave another answer through your priest, a certain bishop nurtured in the Church and trained in your books. When that woman implored him to consider speaking with me, to refute my errors, un-teach me evil, and teach me good…he refused her, quite prudently, as I understood later. He responded that I was as yet indocile, that I was inflated with my heresy’s novelty… “but let him be. Only pray for him to the Lord: he will discover by reading what his error is…” She would not acquiesce to what he said but continued imploring… “Go away,” he said, “while you live, the son of these tears of yours shall not perish!” (The Confessions of St. Augustine III, 12)


-by Br Nicholas Hartmann, OP

With these words St. Augustine narrates the exchange between his mother St. Monica and an unnamed bishop. Monica weeps to the saintly bishop, urging him to purge her son of his errant thinking. Because of his intelligence and his studies in rhetoric, Augustine enjoyed worldly success, but his moral profligacy made his inner life tumultuous. He likely hoped Manichaeism—the errors referred to in the above passage—could acquit him of intemperance within the inner court of his conscience.

Monica knew better, or at least she knew that this heresy kept Augustine withdrawn from the true faith. Augustine’s successful career advanced him to Rome and then Milan, but it failed to placate her vexations about his well-being. Monica’s personal piety and progress in Christian virtue informed her to see through that veneer into the rot of his inner life. Indeed, Augustine lived in great spiritual danger, nurturing disordered loves and rejecting the truth of the gospel. He covered over his deep-seated unhappiness and moral fragility with theories of reality he imagined would exonerate him of any moral responsibility.

Monica shed tears over genuine evil. These were not worldly tears of self-pity brooding over failures in her maternal character. Neither did Monica blame the harshness of the world for her son’s character. Monica’s were profitable tears, and she sought a remedy in prayer and through a holy bishop. In her grief she sought to move Augustine to repentance.

The bishop, in his spiritual prudence, knew the best course: his intervention at that time would be inopportune and an impediment to the prodigal Augustine’s future conversion. That her tears did not move the saintly bishop to action does not imply they were in vain. On the contrary, they became a powerful intercessory prayer God was most disposed to answer—and he did. He was disposed to answer not because he needed any convincing, but because it is good for us to seek aid from God and receive it. In this case, Monica sought aid not only for herself, but for another.

Such was the prophecy of the bishop. Because of Monica’s tearful prayers to God for her son, Augustine would not be lost. God is disposed to answer our prayers, especially when we seek virtue for ourselves or others. St. Dominic himself was known to weep while praying: “what will become of sinners!” God is so disposed because it is good for us to seek from Him what is truly good for ourselves and others. By doing so we depend on God, the giver of every good thing.

“Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7)”

Love, tears of joy,
Matthew

Aug 15 – Sermon on the Assumption by St John Damascene (675-749 AD), Doctor of the Church & the Assumption


-Assumption of the Virgin, oil on canvas, Height: 237 cm (93.3 in); Width: 169 cm (66.5 in), by Juan Martín Cabezalero, 1660, Prado National Museum, Spain. Please click on the image for greater detail.

-by St John Damascene

“Thy blessed soul is naturally parted from thy blissful and undefiled body, and the body is delivered to the grave, yet it does not endure in death, nor is it the prey of corruption. The body of her, whose virginity remained unspotted in childbirth, was preserved in its incorruption and was taken to a better, diviner place, where death is not, but eternal life. …Therefore I will not call thy sacred transformation death, but rest or going home, and it is more truly a going home … thou dwellest in a happier state.

Angels with archangels bear thee up. Impure spirits trembled at thy departure. The air raises a hymn of praise at thy passage, and the atmosphere is purified. Heaven rejoices thy soul with joy. The heavenly powers greet thee with sacred canticles and with joyous praise saying:

‘Who is this most pure creature ascending, shining as the dawn, beautiful as the moon, conspicuous as the sun? [cf Revelation 12, Song of Songs 6:10] How sweet and beautiful thou art, the lily of the field, the rose among thorns [cf Song of Songs 1:16, 2:1,2]; therefore the young maidens loved thee [cf Song of Songs 1:3]. We are drawn after the odor of thy ointments [cf Song of Songs 1:3-4]. The King introduced thee into His chamber [cf Song of Songs 2:4]. There Powers protect thee, Principalities praise thee, Thrones proclaim thee, Cherubim are hushed in joy, and Seraphim magnify the true Mother by nature and by grace of their very Lord. Thou wert not taken into heaven as Elias [Elijah] was, nor didst thou penetrate to the third heaven with Paul, but thou didst reach the royal throne itself of thy Son, seeing it with thine own eyes, standing by it in joy and unspeakable familiarity. O gladness of angels and of all heavenly powers, sweetness of patriarchs and of the just, perpetual exultation of prophets, rejoicing the world…refreshment of the weary, comfort of the sorrowful…health of the sick, harbour of the storm-tossed, lasting strength of mourners, and perpetual succour of all who invoke thee…’

We, too, approach thee today, O Queen; and again, I say, O Queen, O Virgin Mother of God, staying our souls with our trust in thee, as with a strong anchor. Lifting up mind, soul, and body, and all ourselves to thee, rejoicing in psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles, we reach through thee One who is beyond our reach on account of His Majesty. If, as the divine Word made flesh taught us, honor shown to servants is honor shown to our…Lord, how can honor shown to thee, His Mother, be slighted? How is it not most desirable?…those who think of Thee should recall the memory of Thy most precious gift as the cause of our lasting joy. How it fills us with gladness! How the mind that dwells on this holy treasury of Thy grace enriches itself.

Watch over us, O Queen, the dwelling-place of our Lord. Lead and govern all our ways as thou wilt…Lead us into the calm harbor of the divine will. Make us worthy of future happiness through the sweet and face-to-face vision of the Word made flesh through thee. With Him, glory, praise, power, and majesty be to the Father and to the holy and life-giving Spirit, now and forever. Amen.”

Love,
Matthew

Aug 15 – Solemnity of the Assumption & Disfigurement of Death


-please click on the image for greater detail

“At Your right hand stands the Queen in gold of Ophir.” – Ps 45:9

The doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven, body & soul, implicitly taught in the liturgy since at least the sixth century AD and explicitly taught by the ordinary magisterium of the Church since that time, was solemnly defined as a dogma of faith in 1950 by Pope Pius XII, the ONLY time the doctrine of papal infallibility has been invoked since it was dogmatically defined.


-by Br Simon Teller, OP

“Sooner or later, my body will become a corpse.

A corpse looks alien. It’s both strangely familiar (so clearly my body), yet utterly unrecognizable (so clearly not me), putting on display the jarring indignity of death, the separation of my soul from my body—the fundamental elements that constitute me as a human person. Death dissolves the integration of my human identity, separating (in a sense) me from myself.

The cold truth about being mortal is that, sooner or later, we all suffer the disfigurement of death.

All of us except one, who, “when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 966). Death could not defile Mary because she was so closely united, in the core of her identity, to her Son, the very Source of Life.

While she gave her own physical likeness to Jesus, Mary was deeply conformed to Him as one made in the Divine Image. She defined her very identity by this conformity: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done unto me according to thy word” (Lk. 1:38). Through her union with the Divine Word, Mary’s heart and soul magnified the glory of the Lord. She was full of grace, full of Divine Life, which is to say that she was full of Divine Love—the Love that the deep waters of death cannot quench (cf. Song of Songs 8:6-7). Because of this, when she came to the end of her earthly life, she crossed over those waters of death undefiled to the core of her being, with the harmonious union of her body and soul intact.

Mary’s assumption into heaven teaches us what it means to be fully alive, truly ourselves, immune to death’s sting, immortal. The true life is the life of grace, our participation in the Divine Life of God, into which we are initiated and in which we are sustained through the Sacraments. When we lose this Divine Life through sin we become spiritual corpses—alienated from our true selves, unrecognizable, disfigured. The Sacraments incorporate us into the resurrection of Christ, raising our spiritual corpses from the dead and making us participants in the undying life of God.

Mary lives now in heaven to save us from eternal death. She is our Blessed Mother, gaining for us the gift of Divine Life through her prayers, now and at the hour of our death. Which is why today, on the Feast of the Assumption, we entrust ourselves, body and soul, to Mary, Queen of Heaven.”

Love,
Matthew

Aug 10 – Sermon by St Leo the Great (400-461 AD) on the Feast of St Lawrence


-“Marytrdom of St Lawrence”, Pellegrino Tibaldi, 1592, oil on canvas, Height: 419 cm (13.7 ft); Width: 315 cm (10.3 ft), Basilica of Escorial, Spain


-annual Perseid meteor shower, “Tears of St Lawrence”, always around this time of year

“While the height of all virtues, dearly-beloved, and the fullness of all righteousness is born of that love, wherewith God and one’s neighbor is loved, surely in none is this love found more conspicuous and brighter than in the blessed martyrs; who are as near to our Lord Jesus, Who died for all men, in the imitation of His love, as in the likeness of their suffering. For, although that Love, wherewith the Lord has redeemed us, cannot be equalled by any man’s kindness, because it is one thing that a man who is doomed to die one day should die for a righteous man, and another that One Who is free from the debt of sin should lay down His life for the wicked Romans 5:7-8: yet the martyrs also have done great service to all men, in that the Lord Who gave them boldness, has used it to show that the penalty of death and the pain of the cross need not be terrible to any of His followers, but might be imitated by many of them. If therefore no good man is good for himself alone, and no wise man’s wisdom befriends himself only, and the nature of true virtue is such that it leads many away from the dark error on which its light is shed, no model is more useful in teaching God’s people than that of the martyrs. Eloquence may make intercession easy, reasoning may effectually persuade; but yet examples are stronger than words, and there is more teaching in practice than in precept.

And how gloriously strong in this most excellent manner of doctrine the blessed martyr Laurentius is, by whose sufferings today is marked, even his persecutors were able to feel, when they found that his wondrous courage, born principally of love for Christ, not only did not yield itself, but also strengthened others by the example of his endurance. For when the fury of the gentile potentates was raging against Christ’s most chosen members, and attacked those especially who were of priestly rank, the wicked persecutor’s wrath was vented on Laurentius the deacon, who was pre-eminent not only in the performance of the sacred rites, but also in the management of the church’s property , promising himself double spoil from one man’s capture: for if he forced him to surrender the sacred treasures, he would also drive him out of the pale of true religion. And so this man, so greedy of money and such a foe to the truth, arms himself with double weapon: with avarice to plunder the gold; with impiety to carry off Christ. He demands of the guileless guardian of the sanctuary that the church wealth on which his greedy mind was set should be brought to him. But the holy deacon showed him where he had them stored, by pointing to the many troops of poor saints, in the feeding and clothing of whom he had a store of riches which he could not lose, and which were the more entirely safe that the money had been spent on so holy a cause.

The baffled plunderer, therefore, frets, and blazing out into hatred of a religion, which had put riches to such a use, determines to pillage a still greater treasure by carrying off that sacred deposit , wherewith he was enriched, as he could find no solid hoard of money in his possession. He orders Laurentius to renounce Christ, and prepares to ply the deacon’s stout courage with frightful tortures: and, when the first elicit nothing, fiercer follow. His limbs, torn and mangled by many cutting blows, are commanded to be broiled upon the fire in an iron framework , which was of itself already hot enough to burn him, and on which his limbs were turned from time to time, to make the torment fiercer, and the death more lingering.

You gain nothing, you prevail nothing, O savage cruelty. His mortal frame is released from your devices, and, when Laurentius departs to heaven, you are vanquished. The flame of Christ’s love could not be overcome by your flames, and the fire which burnt outside was less keen than that which blazed within. You but served the martyr in your rage, O persecutor: you but swelled the reward in adding to the pain. For what did your cunning devise, which did not redound to the conqueror’s glory, when even the instruments of torture were counted as part of the triumph? Let us rejoice, then, dearly-beloved, with spiritual joy, and make our boast over the happy end of this illustrious man in the Lord, Who is wonderful in His saints , in whom He has given us a support and an example, and has so spread abroad his glory throughout the world, that, from the rising of the sun to its going down, the brightness of his deacon’s light does shine, and Rome has become as famous in Laurentius as Jerusalem was ennobled by Stephen. By his prayer and intercession we trust at all times to be assisted; that, because all, as the Apostle says, who wish to live holily in Christ, suffer persecution 2 Timothy 3:12, we may be strengthened with the spirit of love, and be fortified to overcome all temptations by the perseverance of steadfast faith. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, etc.

Love & perseverance in & through & for Him,
Matthew