Category Archives: Christology

Believe, Desire, Do – Jn 6:26

loaves-and-fishes

benedictjonak

-by Rev Benedict Jonak, OP, English Province

“St Thomas Aquinas says in a neat way that there are three things necessary for our salvation: to know what to believe, to know what to desire and to know what to do.

Of course he is not the first one to stress the importance of knowledge, whether practical or theoretical. The value of knowledge has been key to many philosophical or religious movements. It is expressed in the familiar “Know thyself” of the Delphic oracle or in the saying of Laozi: “To know others is wise; to know oneself is enlightenment.”

What knowledge or understanding does Christianity offer us?

Our Lord, by His being truly human and Divine, teaches us what it means to be truly human. By His words and actions He also reveals to us something of the mystery of God.

In Jn 6:26 Jesus attempts to educate our desires, our motivations, as well as instructs us in what we ought to believe about Himself.

The crowds that followed Christ to the other side of the lake did so because He gave them food:

‘I tell you most solemnly,

you are not looking for Me because you have seen the signs

but because you had all the bread you wanted to eat.’

These words of Christ provoke us to ask some questions about our discipleship:

Why is it that we follow Him? What do we believe about Him and does that what we believe fully inform our daily lives? Feel free to meditate this week on these questions in prayer before the Lord with all honesty.

What you might discover, however, is that there are many reasons why you follow Christ.

Our motivations can be multiple because we find ourselves attracted to the goodness of God for different reasons. Some of us look for peace and consolation of the faith. Others try to make the world a more just and a better place. Some still find in the faith an insightful structure enabling them to manage their family life or the education of their children. All these motivations are good in themselves; they are right and proper, just as working to provide food for oneself and one’s family is right and proper. But there is one motivation, one desire, that needs to crown all these in order for us fully to embrace the discipleship of Christ. That fundamental desire is for God Himself, the living bread. (A sacristan saw Thomas Aquinas late one night kneeling before the altar and heard a voice, coming, it seemed, from the crucifix, which said, “Thou hast written well of Me, Thomas; what reward wouldst thou have?” To which Thomas replied, “Nothing but Thyself, Lord.”)  Good answer.  Right answer.  Best.  🙂

If we truly embrace the knowledge that Christ is our Head in his Body which is the Church, then we need to teach ourselves to long to be ever closer to Him. In the way we think or act, in the way we speak and look at each other, we are called to be Christ-like. This is the new life that St Paul talks about:

“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.”  Col 3:5-6

“So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.

That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in Him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”  Eph 4:17-24

The life that the Apostle speaks about flows from the revelation of Christ: He is sent, given to us, so that we may flourish as one body. He lives in us – this is what we ought to believe; He is coming back in glory – this is what we ought to desire; He left us His Good News and His own Body and Blood to be shared around the world – this is what we ought to do.”

Love,
Matthew

We are all Nazoreans – Mk 6:1-6

nazareth
-modern day Nazareth, Israel

We shouldn’t judge the Nazoreans too harshly.  If God appeared to us in disguise, would we see Him?  Even the disguise of bread and wine?  Would we?  Really?  You’re that sure of yourself?  I’m not.

“Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, and His hand in every happening; This is what it means to be contemplative in the heart of the world. Seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor.” -Bl Teresa of Calcutta, MC

megantwomey
-by Megan Twomey

“A priest, in his homily recently, reminded his congregation that we are all called to be prophets and evangelize to those around us and that we are not to be surprised when those around us reject us. As I listened to the priest, however, I found that I often identify not with Christ, but with the incredulous people of Nazareth. I began to wonder how often I had rejected a message from God or shut myself off from His miracles, because I was too snobbish to believe that God could work through the people around me.

The people of Nazareth were incredibly blessed among the towns of history, for they had the sole privilege of witnessing God grow up. In their simple town, the Blessed Mother and her spouse, the ever-steadfast St. Joseph, raised the Son of God. Nazareth sheltered the family from whom the Savior of the world came, and yet, they did not recognize Him. They saw only what they wanted to see: a local boy, someone “just like us”; they missed their opportunity for Christ to do what could have been His greatest miracles. They refused to believe that God could be fulfilling His promise of salvation through, in their minds, an ordinary man.

There are dozens of reasons they could have felt that way. Perhaps they did not like Christ’s message of repentance. They could have thought themselves too humble to be noticed by God, or, conversely, too proud to need help from a neighbor. It must have been hard to wrap their heads around the fact that the Messiah had been under their noses the whole time. Whether they had imagined a charismatic stranger, a solider, or a wealthy king, I doubt they saw the Anointed One as a young man with whom they had shared a village, a synagogue, and maybe a family tree.

Yet no matter the reason, be it prejudice or pride, self-abasement or self-righteousness, the people of Nazareth heard the truth and were unable to believe it. They witnessed the Son of God in their midst and saw only the son of a local carpenter. Their clouded vision cost them the chance for great miracles, miracles Jesus clearly wanted to perform. They had the opportunity to fall down at the feet of Christ, and claim, along with their unworthiness, their gratitude for what God was working in front of their very eyes. Instead, they watched the chosen one of Israel walk away and shake His head at their unbelief.

How many times have I unknowingly caused the Savior of the world to shake His head at my own doubt? I can be so blind to what the Holy Spirit is working in my life because I only see what I want to see. I must miss miracles all the time because I cannot believe I am worthy of them or that they could happen here. My ears are so often closed to the truth because of the person who has spoken it. We are so familiar with those around us that we can miss how God uses them as agents of change and messengers of repentance.

As the village of Nazareth demonstrated, the people of Israel had a habit of missing out on the prophecies of God and mistreating his prophets. God reached out to them again and again, but their hearts were hard, their ears were deaf, and their eyes were blind. And still we continue not to learn from their stories. The Holy Spirit still speaks to us: through the Church, through the Scriptures, and through the people around us. We must not let our ideas of what we want God to say and of what His messengers ought to look like cost us our ability to hear.

We walk in a landscape of prophets, angels, and miracles, if our eyes and ears will only be open. As the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning once said: ““Earth’s crammed with heaven/And every common bush afire with God, /But only he who sees takes off his shoes; /The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” God has not stopped speaking and He has not stopped working miracles. Let us not stop listening and looking. If we allow those around us to scandalize us when they speak truth and when we see our town and our time and ourselves as unworthy of miracles, we miss more than a message, we miss Christ.”

Love & blessing,
Matthew

The Way, the Truth, the Life…Jn 14:6

WayTruthLife

Ego sum via veritas et vita

alanpiper

-by Br Alan Piper, OP

“Everyone knows who Jesus is. He’s that great (God-)man Who taught His followers to love their enemies and warned them not to judge. He spoke truth to power, and He paid the price for it. He loved the outcast and dined with sinners. This is the Jesus we all know and love.

But this portrait, true as far as it goes, turns out to be rather flat. Most people agree that we should love one another. And everyone supports speaking truth to power. If Jesus taught only what everyone already knows, He really has nothing to say to us.

In fact, however, Jesus’ teaching on truth and love is far from common knowledge. It’s true, for example, that He instructs us to love our enemies, but he also says—admittedly, by way of hyperbole—that we should hate our parents out of love for Him (Lk 14:26). And His own love for the Pharisees did not prevent Him from describing them as the rankest filth (Mt 23).

He also called them “hypocrites” and “a brood of vipers”—even though He instructed His disciples not to judge (Mt 23; 7:1). Apparently (and obviously), Jesus did not mean to rule out all moral denunciation. In fact, when Jesus discourages the man with the beam in his eye from removing the speck in his neighbor’s, He advises him to remove the beam in his own eye in order better to remove the speck in his neighbor’s (Mt 7:3-5). So, according to Jesus, to pass judgment on another’s immorality is to do that person a favor!

Given all Jesus’ criticism of the religious authorities, people sometimes infer that Jesus was against hierarchy or any organized religion. But of course He Himself chose twelve men to succeed Him in teaching the world, and He gave them power to decide things concerning heaven and earth (Mt 28:19; 16:19; 18:18). In fact, what Jesus acknowledges as good in the Pharisees is precisely their official capacity. Despite the Pharisees’ egregious wickedness, Jesus tells the people to listen to them because they sit on the seat of Moses (Mt 23:2-3). That is about as ringing an endorsement of organized, hierarchical religion as one could find. Not that the Pharisees are necessarily better than everyone else. Jesus saves His highest praise for the humble: “whoever humbles himself like [a] child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:4). According to Jesus, humility and hierarchy go together. Even in heaven, human beings will be arrayed in order of greatness.

Nothing in Jesus’ teaching is self-contradictory (unlike Walt Whitman, Jesus did not consider self-contradiction an expression of wisdom). Instead, the teaching of Jesus is paradoxical, because life itself is paradoxical. Only a doctrine that is profound and perplexing is adequate to the mystery of human life. And only a teacher Who is surprising, strange, and strong can demand our full attention. If we content ourselves with anything less, we lose the real Jesus. We get a cardboard-cutout Jesus, who can be little more than a confirmation of our own prejudices.

And really, it is Jesus’s teaching about Himself that is at the heart of His message. Unlike the Buddha, for example, Jesus did not instruct His followers to ignore His person and focus on his teaching. In the center of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus asks His disciples the central question: “Who do you say that I am?” (Mk 8:29). In John’s Gospel, He answers His own question: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). It is this paradox, the mystery of Jesus’ true humanity and true divinity, that is the source and explanation of all the other paradoxes of His doctrine. And all the other paradoxes lead back to this One. And it is this mystery of Jesus’ identity that makes His teaching infinitely worth hearing.

“Let him who has ears to hear . . .” (Mt 11:15).

Love,
Matthew

“What is Truth?”, Pilate retorted. -Jn 18:38

caitlyn-jenner

Rachel-Dolezal-21

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, My servants would fight to prevent My arrest”…”You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to Me.” -Jn 18:36-37.

Our recent media coverage of “identifying as” is symptomatic, only in a clearer way, of humanity’s difficulty with objective truth, imho.  Pilate’s question about truth is one of my favorite in Scripture.  I pray on it constantly.  Perhaps reality is even too much to ask of some?  Reality is too much of a tyrant?

Serpa_Fr_Vincent161[1]

-by Rev Vincent Serpa, OP

“I suppose the most basic definition of truth would be: the conformity of the intellect with what the thing perceived actually is. This would be objective truth. In our culture many want to make such truth relative. “You have your truth and I have mine.” Such is not truth. If one’s perception of something does not conform to what it actually is, then one is in error—no matter how convinced one is and certainly no matter how one feels about it. People who  are (Ed. willfully) colorblind  are not seeing all the true colors before them.

Their perceptions are distorted, even though they are not aware of it. When I make a statement about something that does indeed actually exist, then such a statement could be called a truth. Any statement that would contradict that statement would then be an untruth. If such an untrue statement is deliberately made in order to deceive, then that statement is called a lie. This is pretty basic stuff. Unfortunately, there is so much dishonesty in our society about the very nature of truth that many are confused. Since God is the source of all that is and knows His creation perfectly, He is the fullness of all truth.”

Love,
Matthew

May 20 – St Bernadine of Siena, OFM, (1380-1444), Priest, “IHS: No other name…”

IHS_monogram_Gesu
-Church of the Gesu, Rome, Italy, please click on the image for greater detail

Saint_bernardin_de_sienne_Langeais
-16th century image of St Bernadine of Siena, OFM, Langeais Castle, France, please click on the image for greater detail

“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” -Acts 4:12
“Preach about vice and virtue, punishment and glory!” -St Francis of Assisi

JPKern
-by Br John Paul Kern, OP (a convert to the Catholic faith through Penn State’s RCIA program, where he earned a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering and a Master’s in Nuclear Engineering)

“Today is the memorial of St. Bernardine of Siena (d. 1444), a preacher renowned for his love for the Holy Name of Jesus.

As a young boy Bernardine’s love for Jesus overflowed into care for the sick during a time of pestilence in Siena. He later joined the Franciscan Order and was assigned the task of preaching, despite a serious throat affliction. God answered his prayers with the miraculous cure of his throat, and Bernardine became a zealous preacher throughout Italy. Through him the Lord converted many individuals and brought genuine reform to the Church. So great was his preaching that Pope Pius II called him “a second Paul.”

Just like that great missionary apostle, Bernardine endeavored to preach “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). When Bernardine entered a city to preach, he would have a banner carried in front of him with the Holy Name of Jesus (IHS, Ed. the first three letters of the name “Jesus” in Greek) encircled with twelve golden rays and a cross at the top. When he preached he had this symbol placed next to the pulpit, and at his encouragement the Holy Name of Jesus was placed on many altars, churches, and even on the public buildings of large cities. Bernardine had great faith in the power of Jesus’ name.

Do we believe in the power of “the name which is above every name”? Or do we hesitate to speak the name of Jesus Christ, “the power of God and the wisdom of God,” because it is a “stumbling block” and “folly” in the eyes of many of our peers? (1 Cor. 1:23-24)

Indeed, there is no other name that receives as strong and diverse an array of reactions as the name of Jesus. No other name elicits such love, peace, and joy among those who know him. No other name elicits such vitriol, scorn, and anger among those who do not.

Even those who express an initial apathy toward the name of Jesus tend to react quite powerfully when they encounter a person speaking of Jesus with great passion and love. Waning belief is enkindled into hope. “I do desire this Jesus!” “How can I find him?”

Other times, disappointment and hurt bubble to the surface, displayed as shock and skepticism. “You are crazy!” “You cannot know Him like that!” “You are brainwashed! Jesus isn’t a friend and savior!” People react strongly when they hear something they believe is too good to be true. Compared to any lesser truth we have known and experienced in our lives, Jesus, Who is Truth, does seem too good to be true.

Great thinkers and spiritual seekers have questioned, reasoned, and intuited their way to the existence of a First Cause from His effects in the world. The invisible God identified Himself sensibly to Abraham as “I am” (Ex 3:14), and this revelation allowed many people to know of God’s existence. But God became uniquely visible for us in Jesus Christ so that even the most ignorant, distracted, and skeptical of us can come face to face with His goodness, grapple with our doubts, and ask “how can this be?” and “are you for real?” There is only one name that brings everything—our lives, our joys, our sufferings, the good and evil that is in the world, in human history, and in ourselves, the apparent chaos and order of the cosmos—into focus.

We do not see Jesus incarnate with our eyes, as people 2000 years ago did. But He remains incarnate in a lesser way in his body the Church, of which we are his members. We are each united to Christ, and He lives in each of us, creating diverse points of encounter between Himself and the world through us. And yet when people see the toe, the finger, or the hand of God at work in meeting us, they may not realize whose members they are meeting. “Mother Teresa was a good person.” This is true. But to ensure that people correctly identified God as the author and source of this goodness, she always emphasized that she was but a pencil in the hand of God and that it was Jesus who was at work through her, loving the poorest of the poor. She wanted people to know Him by name.

Charity, the love that God invites us into, is not an anonymous or distant love, but a personal love. St. Thomas Aquinas writes that “charity is the friendship of man for God” (ST II-II, q. 23, a. 1).

Friendship requires that love be mutual and that both friends know that they are loved by their friend. You cannot be friends with a nebulous cosmic force or anonymous first cause, no matter how benevolent you regard it to be or how grateful you are to it for your existence. However, Jesus was and is a friend, even of sinners, and he desires that all people share in this love of friendship. But in order to enter into this friendship, as with all friendships, we must know the name of the other.

This is why, in addition to preaching the Gospel through our actions, sharing Him by our joy, praising Him for the goodness and beauty of His creation, and witnessing to Him by our love, we must speak His name so that all people may know Him and love Him. May we, like St. Bernardine, boldly proclaim this name of Jesus, the only name by which we may enter into eternal life.”

“When a fire is lit to clear a field, it burns off all the dry and useless weeds and thorns. When the sun rises and darkness is dispelled, robbers, night-prowlers and burglars hide away. So when Paul’s voice was raised to preach the Gospel to the nations, like a great clap of thunder in the sky, his preaching was a blazing fire carrying all before it. It was the sun rising in full glory. Infidelity was consumed by it, false beliefs fled away, and the truth appeared like a great candle lighting the whole world with its brilliant flame.

By word of mouth, by letters, by miracles, and by the example of his own life, Saint Paul bore the name of Jesus wherever he went. He praised the name of Jesus “at all times,” but never more than when “bearing witness to his faith.”

Moreover, the Apostle did indeed carry this name “before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel” as a light to enlighten all nations. And this was his cry wherever he journeyed: “The night is passing away, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves honorably as in the day.” Paul himself showed forth the burning and shining-light set upon a candlestick, everywhere proclaiming “Jesus, and Him crucified.”

And so the Church, the bride of Christ strengthened by his testimony, rejoices with the psalmist, singing: “O God from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.” The psalmist exhorts her to do this, as he says: “Sing to the Lord, and bless His name, proclaim His salvation day after day.” And this salvation is JESUS, her savior.”
– from a sermon by Saint Bernadine of Siena

“Bonfires of the Vanities” were held at his sermon sites, where people threw mirrors, high-heeled shoes, perfumes, locks of false hair, cards, dice, chessmen, and other frivolities to be burned. Bernardino enjoined his listeners to abstain from blasphemy, indecent conversation, and games of hazard, and to observe feast days.

“Prayer is the best preparation for Holy Communion. Prayer is the raising of the mind to God. When we pray we go to meet Christ Who is coming to us. If our Creator and Savior comes from heaven with such great love, it is only fitting that we should go to meet Him. And this is what we do when we spend some time in prayer.”
–St. Bernardine of Siena

“The last degree of love is when He gave Himself to us to be our Food; because He gave Himself to be united with us in every way.”
–St. Bernardine of Siena

Prayer

“Jesus, Name full of glory, grace, love and strength! You are the refuge of those who repent, our banner of warfare in this life, the medicine of souls, the comfort of those who morn, the delight of those who believe, the light of those who preach the true faith, the wages of those who toil, the healing of the sick.

To You our devotion aspires; by You our prayers are received; we delight in contemplating You. O Name of Jesus, You are the glory of all the saints for eternity. Amen.”
-St. Bernardine of Siena

Love,
Matthew

The Answer Who searches for us

Planetary Nebula NGC 2818, Hubble Space Telescope

Heb 13:14

JPKern

-by Br John Paul Kern, OP (Br John Paul converted to the Catholic faith while studying mechanical & nuclear engineering at Penn State)

““Why?”

It’s probably the most frequently asked question of all time.
Children can’t stop asking it.

In education, asking “why” is frequently encouraged. Some say that you should ask at least five whys to get to the root of an issue.

Asking why is the starting point for philosophy and its wildly popular offspring, the modern scientific method, which seek to answer why things are the way they are, by means of rational arguments or empirically testing hypotheses. Asking why extends to all areas of life. Why is something right or wrong? Why do I exist?

St. Thomas Aquinas agreed with Aristotle, who famously enumerated four types of causality (quinque viae), which correspond to the four ways in which one can answer the question why.

Aristotle wrote, “We do not have knowledge of a thing until we have grasped its why, that is to say, its cause,” and the fullest knowledge of a thing is knowledge according to each and every cause that makes a thing what it is.

I was therefore rather surprised to hear Richard Dawkins (aka, a leading atheist, one of the Four Horsemen of the non-apocalypse) , a leading biologist, boldly state during a televised dialogue with Cardinal Pell that it was silly to try to pursue knowledge of a thing through certain types of causality. The cardinal then explained that different methods are needed for exploring different types of causality. Their dialogue follows:

Cardinal Pell: “[Modern empirical] science tells us how [and by what mechanisms certain] things happened [in terms of material and proximate efficient causality]. Science tells us nothing about [final causality or purpose, such as] why there was a big bang or why there was a transition from inanimate matter to living matter… [or] why be good?”

Dawkins: “Why, in the sense of purpose [end, or final cause]… is not a meaningful question. . . . What you can say is what are the [material and efficient] causal factors that lead to the existence of mountains, the same with life, the same with the universe.”

Cardinal Pell: “It’s part of being human to ask why we exist. Questioning distinguishes us from the animals, to ask why we’re here. Science has nothing to say about that. Whatever it might say about mountains it can’t say what is the purpose of human life.”

Dawkins: “It may be a part of human nature but that doesn’t make it a valid question [audience laughs]. What’s funny about that? The question why is not necessarily a question that deserves to be answered. . . . Why is a silly question. . . . ‘What is the purpose of the universe’ is a silly question, it has no meaning.”

“Why” is a silly question which has no meaning? I would argue that “why,” in this sense of purpose, is the most important question of our lives!

But for people like Dawkins who embrace scientism, because the scientific method doesn’t address questions of purpose or final causality, purpose and final causality must not exist! So, they say, stop asking such questions!

In addition to pointing out that lack of sufficient time, effort, methods, or tools in a discipline has never caused anything not to exist, I must note that without understanding the purpose of our existence, our lives seem to become pointless, meaningless, and valueless, drifting to nihilism.

Dawkins mentions the consolation he tries to find in a life without a given purpose. “We therefore have to make up our own meaning in life. We have to find our own purposes in life.” Dawkins imagines such a life as a choose your own adventure story, which is free and fun.

In addition to noting the many people with seemingly unlimited resources who have come to utter ruin by this approach to life, the monstrous consequences of ideologies and organizations that choose the wrong purpose, and the universal human experience of questioning in the midst of suffering, I would point out that Dawkins himself can’t help looking for a purpose for life: “We have to make this planet as good as we possibly can.”

But what makes a planet, person, life, society, or the universe good? I must ask what the nature and purpose of a thing is in order to judge whether it or my intended action for it is good. One doesn’t help a fish by leaving it out of water, or help a plant grow by keeping it “safe” indoors away from sunlight.

The things we most desire in life—freedom, love, and happiness—also require a knowledge of nature, which includes purpose. If I want to love someone, which is to intend what is good for them, I must understand what is good for them. If I want to be free to be truly happy, I must know what human flourishing is.

Major challenges in our society, such as confusion over what marriage is and a great deal of unhappiness, stem from a failure to understand the purpose of human life. Dawkins and others who refuse to acknowledge that anything has purpose seem doomed to fail in finding the answer to the most important questions in life, society, and the universe.

Fortunately, on the first anniversary of his canonization, St. John Paul II reminds us of a key passage from the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et spes: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light… Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling” (§ 22). The Pope immediately identifies this Christ as “the Redeemer of man” (Redemptor hominis § 8).

Jesus is the answer to our deepest questions, even the questions we are afraid of or refuse to ask. And in this, despite our weakness and ignorance, lies our hope: Jesus Christ, the Way to God the Father, the Truth Who gives us true freedom, and the Life in Whom we find our ultimate happiness, does not wait for us to ask the question but instead He, The Answer, seeks us.

Jesus Christ, Redeemer of Man, save us!

St. John Paul II, pray for us!”

Love,
Matthew

Buddy Christ!!!!? :) Pope: “There are no free agents!”

Comic relief, even in Lent.  🙂

Buddy_christ

I don’t know about you, but as a life-long Catholic, I am just put off by Catholics or otherwise who speak too familiarly of the Lord?  Gives me the willies.  Just does.  A little reverential distance, respect help.

I do have, however, one of these. It is my newest, favorite possession.  It makes me smile!!!  🙂  I know the Lord is present when I sense Holy Joy!!!  I am a Jesus freak!!!  Thank you, God!!!  🙂

buddy_christ2

from http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1402635.htm

-by Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service, June 25, 2014

“VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Christians are not made in a laboratory, but in a community called the Church, Pope Francis said.

At his weekly general audience June 25, Pope Francis continued his series of audience talks about the Church, telling an estimated 33,000 people that there is no such thing as “do-it-yourself” Christians or “free agents” when it comes to faith…

…Pope Francis described as “dangerous” the temptation to believe that one can have “a personal, direct, immediate relationship with Jesus Christ without communion with and the mediation of the Church.”

Words not found in Scripture:  nice, relationship, tolerant, diversity….

Martin Luther’s famous words about standing by what he thinks the Bible teaches are “Popes and councils have erred in the past. Unless I’m convinced by Scripture and reason, here I stand.” And that’s what it means to be a Protestant.

The individual Protestant is the ultimate interpretive authority, and that under Protestantism, not only popes and councils are error-prone, but all people and churches and denominations are, so who are we supposed to follow? Who teaches the truth of God without error?  Answer = The Holy Spirit, aka The Spirit of Truth.  Jn  14:17, 16:13.

from http://www.catholic.com/tracts/proving-inspiration

Cardinal John Henry Newman, CO, DD, a convert from Anglicanism, and under consideration for beatification, Cardinal Newman put it this way in an essay on inspiration first published in 1884: “Surely then, if the revelations and lessons in Scripture are addressed to us personally and practically, the presence among us of a formal judge and standing expositor of its words is imperative. It is antecedently unreasonable to suppose that a book so complex, so unsystematic, in parts so obscure, the outcome of so many minds, times, and places, should be given us from above without the safeguard of some authority; as if it could possibly from the nature of the case, interpret itself. Its inspiration does but guarantee its truth, not its interpretation. How are private readers satisfactorily to distinguish what is didactic and what is historical, what is fact and what is vision, what is allegorical and what is literal, what is [idiomatic] and what is grammatical, what is enunciated formally and what occurs, what is only of temporary and what is of lasting obligations. Such is our natural anticipation, and it is only too exactly justified in the events of the last three centuries, in the many countries where private judgment on the text of Scripture has prevailed. The gift of inspiration requires as its complement the gift of infallibility.” 

“I would not believe in the Gospel myself if the authority of the Catholic Church did not influence me to do so.”
-St Augustine, Against the letter of Mani, 5,6, 397 AD.

Acts 8:30-31

Love,
Matthew

Dec 25 – The Incarnation & The Theological Virtues

Theological-Virtues

Founding Mothers & Fathers of the United States were trained in Virtues, literally, as children.  It was foundational to their education.  See books by Bill Bennett.  The Virtues led and formed the framework in their alphabetical training, reading, and writing.  It does not bode well, this practice & these virtues have fallen out of practice/ fashion in their creation, imho.

In Christian philosophy, theological virtues are the character qualities associated with salvation. The three theological virtues are:

  • Faith – steadfastness in belief.
  • Hope – expectation of and desire of receiving; refraining from despair and capability of not giving up.
  • Love – selfless, unconditional, and voluntary loving-kindness such as helping one’s neighbors.

They occur in the Bible at 1 Corinthians 13:13.

In Catholic theology, it is held that these virtues differ from the Cardinal Virtues in that they can not be obtained by human effort. A person can only receive them by their being “infused”—through Divine grace—into the person.

The theological virtues are so named because the object of these virtues is the divine being (theos). Other virtues have vice at their extremes, and are only virtues when they are maintained between these extremes. In the case of the Theological Virtues, they do not contribute to vice at the positive extreme; that is, there is no vice in having an unlimited amount of faith, hope, or love, when God is the object of that virtue.  (Ed. There is no such thing as “too much of a good thing” with the Theological Virtues, as their ultimate aim is God, Himself.)

More than one vice can be the opposite of each theological virtue:

  • Lack of faith may give place to incredulity (as in atheism and agnosticism), blasphemy or apostasy.
  • Lack of hope may give place to despair or cynicism.
  • Lack of love may give place to hatred, wrath or indifference.

Symbolism:

Theological Virtues are often depicted in art as young women. The symbols most often associated with them are:

Faith – cross, pointing upward, staff and chalice, lamp, candle
Hope – anchor, harp, flaming brand, palm
Charity – flaming heart, with children, gathering fruit

john_sica
-by Br John Sica, OP

St. Thomas Aquinas explains the fittingness of the Incarnation in several reasons, including how it raises our minds and hearts to an increase in faith, hope, and charity. Here I highlight a few of these reasons with respect to the Nativity of Christ and its manifestation.

1. Faith.

Faith, as St. Thomas defines it, is the habit of the mind whereby eternal life is begun in us, making the will assent to what is non-apparent. Faith rests in God as First Truth Speaking. St. Thomas says that faith “is made more certain by believing God Himself Who speaks.” In Jesus Christ, we literally hear God’s own words, from His own mouth. St. Augustine says that, “In order that man might journey more trustfully toward the truth, the Truth itself, the Son of God, having assumed human nature, established and founded faith.”

But note that Jesus became an object of faith before He began His public ministry. Indeed, Simeon takes the child Jesus in his arms and proclaims Him “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” (Lk 2:32). St. Thomas says that “the Magi were the ‘first-fruits of the Gentiles,’ who were to believe in Christ.” Simeon’s prophecy was already fulfilled in the Magi, who sought Him in response to the sign of the star and who did Him homage.

2. Hope.

Consider what hope is. The theological virtue of hope relies firmly on God for what is necessary for eternal life. In hope, our human will clings to the goodness of God for us. Augustine says, “Nothing was so necessary for raising our hope as to show us how deeply God loved us. And what could afford us a stronger proof of this than that the Son of God should become a partner with us of human nature?” Why should the Incarnation correspond to hope, as St. Augustine suggests? In hope, we formally depend on God’s merciful omnipotence: that He is omnipotent shows us that He can save us, and that He is merciful—as shown by the Incarnation—shows us that He wants to.

In the Incarnation, God pulls out all the stops. One Dominican commentator has noted that “no greater way is intelligible by which God could communicate Himself to the creature” than by uniting human nature to His Person. Seeing the Christ child in the manger, we know that God took the most extreme means to save us from sin, and we have confidence that He will continue to offer us the means to be rescued from our sin and given sanctifying grace.

3. Love.

While hope clings to God as good for us, charity clings to God as good in Himself. The divine goodness is what primarily motivates us to charity. But secondarily, St. Thomas explains, it is aimed at “other reasons that inspire us with love for Him, or which make it our duty to love Him,” and these “are secondary and result from the first.” The Incarnation is the greatest of these secondary reasons. The history of Christ’s Nativity and infancy counts powerfully towards this. Seeing that Christ became a weak and helpless infant becomes, for us, a motive to love in return. As Augustine said, “If we have been slow to love, at least let us hasten to love in return.”

Love breaks forth in acts of joy and peace. We experience joy in the possession of the good and peace when we are at concord, even within ourselves. At the Nativity the angels announce good news of a “great joy” (Lk 2:10), and their hymn of praise wishes “peace” among men of good will (Lk 2:14). All of this is because the Savior is born in the city of David, whose Nativity incites us to the acts and effects of love.”

Love,
Matthew

Jan 1 – Mater Dei

theotokos_moses

-Theotokos, “God-bearer”, icon, 16th century, Moses before the burning bush, notice the Christ seated on His mother’s lap who IS the burning bush of the OT before whom Moses kneels & removes his sandals.

In the few meaningful, thoughtful exchanges I have had with Muslims & Jews regarding the Christian belief, once in Kuwait, where a small Kuwaiti man in local attire held my hand as we walked back to his camera shop, men holding hands and walking is not a sign of erotic attraction but purely of friendship, photos of US Presidents &  Saudi kings walking hand-in-hand, are plenty & current, and then with a rabbi in Chicago, the objection is NOT the Resurrection!  A man rising from the dead, no problem!!!  It is the Incarnation.  That God would have to take a shit, Muslim objection.  Let alone suffer horribly?  Meekly?  At the hands of his enemies?  God?  Is 55:8-9.  Or, a Perfect Man?  Not within the Jewish tradition.  David, the best of Jewish heroes, was a bastard!  Bathsheba was just the cherry on parfait.  Apologies for any interpreted, unintended, vulgar pun.  Read your OT.


-by Br Alan Piper, OP

“Of all the traditional titles of the Blessed Virgin Mary—e.g., “Tower of David,” “Gate of Heaven,” “Queen of Angels”—perhaps the most impressive is “Mother of God.” The transcendent omnipotence of divinity is entrusted to the gentle intimacy of maternity, even to a certain unassuming and gentle young woman. It’s not, of course, that Mary was the source of God as such (the opposite is the case). The meaning of “Mother of God” is that the person to whom she gave birth in human flesh, whom she nursed and raised, was and is God.

But the maternity of Mary is real only if Jesus is also really human, and only if he received his humanity from her. The early Church had to withstand the mistaken idea that God’s dignity cannot allow that the Word’s embodiment and suffering be more than a mere appearance. St. John writes, “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist” (2 Jn 1:7). In opposition to this error stands the Mother of God. One could apply the phrase “a body you have prepared for me” (Ps 40:6) both to the immaculate Mary and to the body that she was prepared to provide for Jesus. She is the only human being to whom Jesus had an immediate family tie. And she is the only one to whom he bore a true family resemblance. In the face of Mary we perceive something that will be reproduced in the embodied God.

There are a few texts that seem to diminish the importance of Mary’s motherhood but actually further disclose it. Once, when a woman from the crowd cried out to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you!,” He corrected her, saying, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Lk 11:27-28). The wonderful irony is that no one was more attentive to that word and more obedient to it than the mother of Jesus. What is perhaps her most distinctive utterance comes at the start of her motherhood: fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum—”be it done unto me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). In Mary’s obedience and in her meditation on the word, we begin to see the deeper meaning of her familial relation to Jesus: “My mother and my brethren are those who hear the word of God and do it” (Lk 8:21).

Called to be the mother of the Son, Mary came to share by grace in the life of the so-called divine family that is the Trinity. At the scene of the Incarnation, Mary is surrounded by the Holy Trinity: “The Lord is with you,” which arguably refers to the Father; “you will bear the Son of the Most High”; “The Holy Spirit will come upon you” (Lk 1:28, 32, 35). The Son became man in her, and in the Son Mary came to share by grace in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4). This is the purpose of the Son’s coming: “God sent forth his Son, born of a woman . . . so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4-5). Here Mary’s motherhood is interwoven with her daughtership.

As daughter of God, Mary is the pattern of our own glorification. As mother of God, she is also mother of her Son’s body, the Church. She intercedes for us and continues to give birth to Him in our hearts. This is part of the message of today’s feast. The Church repeats to us what Jesus said to John: “Behold your mother” (Jn 19:27).”

Love,
Matthew

Dec 26 – Jesus, welcome to our nightmare!!! Exactly.

RozdestvoHristovo_RublevBlagSoborMK

-Andrei Rublev, Nativity, 15th century (please click on the image for greater detail)

luke hoyt

-by Br Luke Hoyt, OP

“St. Stephen’s memorial is always the day after Christmas. But somehow, it always surprises me. We’ve only just arrived at the cozy stable with the little baby under the shining stars, and now we have to commemorate the Church’s first martyr, a guy who was stoned to death?

Sometimes I feel a similar surprise when I see traditional iconographic depictions of the Nativity. I mean, I know that “Away in the Manger” is a little saccharine. But some of these icon Nativity scenes make it look like Jesus was born in a haunted graveyard. In his swaddling clothes, Jesus looks like a little mummy child. Not only is Mary not holding her baby – she’s not even looking at him. Instead of a stable with a dusting of snow on the roof, they’re in a cave – a cave which looks like some rent in the earth which reveals the realm of Hades. And where is Joseph? He’s huddled in a corner with a serious expression on his face, being addressed by some creepy old guy – who happens to be the devil.

After the kinds of Nativity scenes that many of us are used to, this is like a Christmas-themed nightmare.

The question arises, then: what is the Church’s Tradition saying to us in all of this, in its artistic tradition and its liturgical calendar?

It’s saying that Christmas is not a holiday for the content of the world.

Jesus was not born in a secret oasis, removed from the world’s darkness and pain. He was born in that battleground which is our earthly existence, in this world which is indeed something of a haunted graveyard.

We sometimes suppose that the holidays (and perhaps especially Christmas) are events which only happy people with lots of friends and family are entitled to enjoy. And maybe that is the case with some holidays. But it’s not the case with Christmas.

Christmas is a holiday for the broken of the world. It is a holiday for those who feel the darkness and loneliness of the cave; for those who experience, with St. Joseph, the temptations of the Evil One, struggling to maintain faith in the Christian mystery; for those who, like Jesus in his swaddling burial clothes, feel the weight of their feeble mortality; for those who, like St. Stephen, experience the hatred of the world.

Each Christmas, to all the broken and lonely people in the world, Jesus says: this one’s for you.”

Mt 11:5-6

Paolo_Uccello_-_Stoning_of_St_Stephen_-_WGA23196

-Paolo Uccello, 1435 (please click on the image for greater detail)

St Stephen Martyr, Protomartyr of Jesus Christ, pray for us sinners!

Love & Merry Christmas,
Matthew