Today we honor Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, the Mother of God

Mary is True Theotokos.

Folks, let's talk about Our Lady, the Blessed Mother of our Lord, Mary, since today is the Solemnity of her dignity as Mother. That's why we call her Theotokos.

What does the title Theotokos mean? The Greek word, Theotokos, means in literal translation "God - Birthgiver (Theos - God; tokos - birthgiver. It is translated directly into Slavonic as bogoroditsa, and into Latin as Dei Genitrix. Because the term translated directly into English, namely "God-Birthgiver" is awkward in English speech, the preferred translation is MOTHER OF GOD. We acknowledge, however, that birthgiver and mother are not identical. The Greek word, tokos, is limited to birthgiving, whereas the English word "mother" includes birthgiving and many other tasks. (Source)

During the late 4th and early 5th centuries the theological debates in the Church shifted from Trinitarian concerns to the very nature of Christ. Eventually the dispute over the nature of Christ was brought to a head by Nestorius, Archbishop of Constantinople, who championed the cause of those who claimed that the two natures of Christ, human and divine, were separate, distinct and independent. Nestorius declared that there existed between the two natures only a moral union, i. e. the two natures were united in love but separated in essence. This meant, of course, that there was no room for the divine maternity of Mary. If there are two distinct persons in Jesus Christ, Mary would be the mother of the human person only. Thus the reference to Mary as Mother of God (Theotokos) was anathema to the Nestorians who preferred to refer to Her as "Christotokos" (Mother of Christ). (Source)

The orthodox party led by St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, moved quickly to resolve the issue. Unable to convince Nestorius of his errors, St. Cyril appealed to Pope Celestine I who condemned the teachings of Nestorius at a Roman Council held in August, 430. Nestorius remain adamant , whereupon the Emperor Theodosius II summoned an ecumenical council of the Universal Church which met in Ephesus in Asia Minor in 431. The Council of Ephesus, the Third Ecumenical Council of the Church (see account thereof in OTHER SITES herein) was not a happy event; it was rife with real controversy and chicanery, but orthodoxy eventually triumphed with the Edict of Union in 433. This rested upon the principle that there is in Christ a union of two natures in one Lord and that the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God (Theotokos). (Source)

Following the Council, Nestorianism was condemned throughout the Empire, but took refuge in Persia where a heretical church was organized. Little remains of the Nestorian heresy today in the East. It remains, however, alive and flourishing in the West where it is an essential part of various Protestant and other deconstructionist theologies which reject the role of the Virgin Mary in the scheme of salvation. (Source)

The "formula of union" of the Council of Ephesus, 433, reads in pertinent part as follows:

We profess therefore that Our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, is true God and true man, constituted by a body and a rational soul: that He was engendered by the Father before all time as to His divinity, and as to His humanity, was born of the Virgin Mary in time for us and for our salvation; that He is consubstantial with the Father in His divinity, and consubstantial with us in His humanity; for one union was effected by the two
natures, and we acknowledge only one Christ, one Son, one Lord. 

Because of this union, which is free from all admixture, we also
acknowledge that the Blessed Virgin is the Mother of God,
because God the Word was made flesh, was made man, coalesced
with the Temple (His humanity), which He took from Her.(Source)

So it is that the title "Mother of God" or Theotokos came to be applied to Mary, for if we use any other title -- except perhaps, "Mother of the Lord" -- we would be denying a central tenet of the Christian faith, namely, that Jesus Christ is True God and True Man, joined hypostatically in One Person. One would think that in this day and age is difficult for knowledgeable Christians to fall into such a basic error, but here you have many Protestants who can't ask, or don't want to ask these questions, much less answer them. Heck, I don't want to pick on Protestants, there are way too many Catholics who find themselves in the same situation, and therefore are equally spiritually impoverished as a consequence. Today's Antiphon for the Morning Prayer's Canticle of Zechariah summarizes the Mystery of Mary's Divine Motherhood:

Marvelous is the mystery proclaimed today: man's nature is made new as God becomes man; he remains what he was and becomes what he was not. Yet each nature stays distinct for ever undivided.

and the one from the Evening Prayer's Canticle of Mary:

Blessed is the womb which bore you, O Christ, and the breast that nursed you, Lord and Savior of the world, alleluia.

This is the perennial faith of the Apostles, this is the faith of the Fathers, this is the faith of the Church. If you reject it knowingly, willfully, and freely, you can't be saved.

Happy New Year!

Living in occupied territory

Brethren, greetings again in Jesus Christ, in whose heart we take constant refuge.

Anna Williams wrote over at First Things a piece titled The Holy Innocents in Enemy-Occupied Territory that you all ought to read. However, what caught my eye was this quote from C.S. Lewis that I now reproduce for you:

Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.

Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.

As a military person, I understand fully what the phrase “enemy-occupied territory” means. I am sure that many others around the world, victims mainly, understand also the meaning of the phrase.

The facts are as Jack Lewis stated them: we’re at war, we live in enemy-occupied territory, and it shouldn’t surprise us to see so many enemy collaborators, all of them pushing us to accept the pax diabolica as “the new normal.”

We must say “no” and engage in the spiritual warfare the good of the world expects from us.

Apex of Anti-Catholic Stupidity

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in Our Lord Jesus Christ, whose Nativity we just celebrated.

One of the “services” I provide to my readers is to explore slummy “virtual terrain” so that you don’t have to. My latest such foray took me to a Facebook page, Sonny Cardona Extreme Reality out of simple curiosity.

At first glance, it looks like the self-expression medium of an intense Protestant Christian – and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, a closer look shows a clear tendency toward Anti-Catholic bigotry a la Jack Chick and (the young) Ralph Woodrow, attempting to resurrect the myth of the Catholic Church’s “connection” to Babylonian Mystery Religion, etc.

I place before you this piece of evidence, a picture flaunted at Cardona’s site as some sort of decoded “discovery”:

Differences between Protestants and Catholics are almost 500 years-old. Much blood has been spilled and suffering by each side upon the other that should’ve taught us already that gross lies and caricatures of each other have no place between us, if we say we’re God’s sons and daughters in Jesus Christ. It’s saddening to see Mr. Cardona hasn’t learned that most elementary lesson.

Mr. Cardona’s message is not from God, nor his “radical reality”: a dark world of gothic distortion where lies and ill-disguised obscenities pass for the purity of the Gospel. His work brings him great dishonor, demonstrating graphically the flaws of his character and of his view of Christianity.

Yet, before such despondency and failure, we are to return good for evil, a blessing for a curse, and our prayers for insult. Let us all include in our prayers the soul of Mr. Sonny Cardona, that the Lord forgive him as he forgives our own sins. Lord, have mercy!

We remember today the Holy Innocents, First Martyrs

The Holy Innocents: that's the name traditional Catholic piety uses to refer to the children, 2 years and under, that Herod killed in Bethlehem, hoping by this to also kill the Christ Child. Eastern iconography portrays the event as "Rachel Weeping for Her Children," a reference to the Prophet Jeremiah (3:15-17) also echoed in St. Matthew's Gospel (2:16-18):

Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not. Thus saith the LORD; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the LORD; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the LORD, that thy children shall come again to their own border.

The Troparion of the Feast is very succint; it highlights the apparent contradiction of the tragedy:

As acceptable victims and freshly plucked flowers, as divine firstfruits and newborn lambs, you were offered to Christ who was born as a Child, O most pure children. You mocked Herod's wickedness: now we beseech you, unceasingly pray for our souls. (Source)

Bishop St. Quodvultdeus, in today's Office of Readings, provides another insight into the event:

A tiny child is born, who is a great king. Wise men are led to him from afar. They come to adore one who lies in a manger and yet reigns in heaven and on earth. When they tell of one who is born a king, Herod is disturbed. To save his kingdom he resolves to kill him, though if he would have faith in the child, he himself would reign in peace in this life and for ever in the life to come.

Why are you afraid, Herod, when you hear of the birth of a king? He does not come to drive you out, but to conquer the devil. But because you do not understand this you are disturbed and in a rage, and to destroy one child whom you seek, you show your cruelty in the death of so many children.

You are not restrained by the love of weeping mothers or fathers mourning the deaths of their sons, nor by the cries and sobs of the children. You destroy those who are tiny in body because fear is destroying your heart. You imagine that if you accomplish your desire you can prolong your own life, though you are seeking to kill Life himself.

Yet your throne is threatened by the source of grace, so small, yet so great, who is lying in the manger. He is using you, all unaware of it, to work out his own purposes freeing souls from captivity to the devil. He has taken up the sons of the enemy into the ranks of God’s adopted children.

The children die for Christ, though they do not know it. The parents mourn for the death of martyrs. The child makes of those as yet unable to speak fit witnesses to himself. See the kind of kingdom that is his, coming as he did in order to be this kind of king. See how the deliverer is already working deliverance, the saviour already working salvation.

But you, Herod, do not know this and are disturbed and furious. While you vent your fury against the child, you are already paying him homage, and do not know it.

How great a gift of grace is here! To what merits of their own do the children owe this kind of victory? They cannot speak, yet they bear witness to Christ. They cannot use their limbs to engage in battle, yet already they bear off the palm of victory. (Source)

Finally, the antiphon to the Benedictus in today's Morning Prayer is most eloquent:

At the king's command these innocent babies and little children were put to death; they died for Christ, and now in the glory of heaven as they follow him, the sinless Lamb, they sing for ever: Glory to you, O Lord.

It is most appropriate that we also remember today the little babies killed in today's abortion mills. Let us ask their intercession for us, their mothers, and those who defend their deaths as the free exercise of an inalienable "right." May we repent, do penance, and turn to God for forgiveness as doers and enablers of this grievous sin

Holy Father's traditional Urbi et Orbi message on Christmas Day

"Truth has Sprung Up, Bringing Kindness, Justice and Peace"

VATICAN CITY, December 26, 2012 (Zenit.org).

Here is the translation of the Holy Father's traditional Urbi et Orbi message on Christmas Day.

* * *

"Veritas de terra orta est!" – "Truth has sprung out of the earth"(Ps 85:12).

Dear brothers and sisters in Rome and throughout the world, a happy Christmas to you and your families!

In this Year of Faith, I express my Christmas greetings and good wishes in these words taken from one of the Psalms: "Truth has sprung out of the earth". Actually, in the text of the Psalm, these words are in the future: "Kindness and truth shall meet; / justice and peace shall kiss. / Truth shall spring out of the earth, /and justice shall look down from heaven. / The Lord himself will give his benefits; / our land shall yield its increase. / Justice shall walk before him, / and salvation, along the way of his steps" (Ps 85:11-14).

Today these prophetic words have been fulfilled! In Jesus, born in Bethlehem of the Virgin Mary, kindness and truth do indeed meet; justice and peace have kissed; truth has sprung out of the earth and justice has looked down from heaven. Saint Augustine explains with admirable brevity: "What is truth? The Son of God. What is the earth? The flesh. Ask whence Christ has been born, and you will see that truth has sprung out of the earth … truth has been born of the Virgin Mary" (En. in Ps. 84:13). And in a Christmas sermon he says that "in this yearly feast we celebrate that day when the prophecy was fulfilled: ‘truth shall spring out of the earth, and justice shall look down from heaven’. The Truth, which is in the bosom of the Father has sprung out of the earth, to be in the womb of a mother too. The Truth which rules the whole world has sprung out of the earth, to be held in the arms of a woman ... The Truth which heaven cannot contain has sprung out of the earth, to be laid in a manger. For whose benefit did so lofty a God become so lowly? Certainly not for his own, but for our great benefit, if we believe" (Sermones, 185, 1).

"If we believe". Here we see the power of faith! God has done everything; he has done the impossible: he was made flesh. His all-powerful love has accomplished something which surpasses all human understanding: the Infinite has become a child, has entered the human family. And yet, this same God cannot enter my heart unless I open the door to him. Porta fidei! The door of faith! We could be frightened by this, our inverse omnipotence. This human ability to be closed to God can make us fearful. But see the reality which chases away this gloomy thought, the hope that conquers fear: truth has sprung up! God is born! "The earth has yielded its fruits" (Ps 67:7). Yes, there is a good earth, a healthy earth, an earth freed of all selfishness and all lack of openness. In this world there is a good soil which God has prepared, that he might come to dwell among us. A dwelling place for his presence in the world. This good earth exists, and today too, in 2012, from this earth truth has sprung up! Consequently, there is hope in the world, a hope in which we can trust, even at the most difficult times and in the most difficult situations. Truth has sprung up, bringing kindness, justice and peace.

Yes, may peace spring up for the people of Syria, deeply wounded and divided by a conflict which does not spare even the defenceless and reaps innocent victims. Once again I appeal for an end to the bloodshed, easier access for the relief of refugees and the displaced, and dialogue in the pursuit of a political solution to the conflict.

May peace spring up in the Land where the Redeemer was born, and may he grant Israelis and Palestinians courage to end to long years of conflict and division, and to embark resolutely on the path of negotiation.

In the countries of North Africa, which are experiencing a major transition in pursuit of a new future – and especially the beloved land of Egypt, blessed by the childhood of Jesus – may citizens work together to build societies founded on justice and respect for the freedom and dignity of every person.

May peace spring up on the vast continent of Asia. May the Child Jesus look graciously on the many peoples who dwell in those lands and, in a special way, upon all those who believe in him. May the King of Peace turn his gaze to the new leaders of the People’s Republic of China for the high task which awaits them. I express my hope that, in fulfilling this task, they will esteem the contribution of the religions, in respect for each, in such a way that they can help to build a fraternal society for the benefit of that noble People and of the whole world.

May the Birth of Christ favour the return of peace in Mali and that of concord in Nigeria, where savage acts of terrorism continue to reap victims, particularly among Christians. May the Redeemer bring help and comfort to the refugees from the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and grant peace to Kenya, where brutal attacks have struck the civilian population and places of worship.

May the Child Jesus bless the great numbers of the faithful who celebrate him in Latin America. May he increase their human and Christian virtues, sustain all those forced to leave behind their families and their land, and confirm government leaders in their commitment to development and fighting crime.

Dear brothers and sisters! Kindness and truth, justice and peace have met; they have become incarnate in the child born of Mary in Bethlehem. That child is the Son of God; he is God appearing in history. His birth is a flowering of new life for all humanity. May every land become a good earth which receives and brings forth kindness and truth, justice and peace. Happy Christmas to all of you!

Christ is born! Come, let us adore Him!

The Christmas Kalend or Proclamation

In the year 5199 from the creation of the world, from the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth; 2,957 years from the flood; 2,015 years from the birth of Abraham; 1,510 years from Moses and the Exodus of Israel from Egypt; 1,031 years from the anointment of David as king; in the 65th week of Daniel's prophecy; in the 194th Olympiad; in the year 752 of the foundation of Rome; in the year 42 of the reign of Octavius Augustus; the whole world being at peace; in the sixth age of the world: Jesus Christ, eternal God and eternal Son of the Father; wishing to consecrate the world through his most merciful Advent, having being conceived of the Holy Spirit, and having passed 9 months from his conception, He was born, He was made Man, from the Virgin Mary, in Bethlehem of Judah.

We wish you all a happy and blessed Christmas Day!

Fourth Sunday of Advent, A.D. 2012

A Reading from the Office of Readings
A sermon of St Bernard

The whole world awaits Mary's reply

You have heard, O Virgin, that you will conceive and bear a son; you have heard that it will not be by man but by the Holy Spirit. The angel awaits an answer; it is time for him to return to God who sent him. We too are waiting, O Lady, for your word of compassion; the sentence of condemnation weighs heavily upon us.

The price of our salvation is offered to you. We shall be set free at once if you consent. In the eternal Word of God we all came to be, and behold, we die. In your brief response we are to be remade in order to be recalled to life.

Tearful Adam with his sorrowing family begs this of you, O loving Virgin, in their exile from Paradise. Abraham begs it, David begs it. All the other holy patriarchs, your ancestors, ask it of you, as they dwell in the country of the shadow of death. This is what the whole earth waits for, prostrate at your feet. It is right in doing so, for on your word depends comfort for the wretched, ransom for the captive, freedom for the condemned, indeed, salvation for all the sons of Adam, the whole of your race.

Answer quickly, O Virgin. Reply in haste to the angel, or rather through the angel to the Lord. Answer with a word, receive the Word of God. Speak your own word, conceive the divine Word. Breathe a passing word, embrace the eternal Word.

Why do you delay, why are you afraid? Believe, give praise, and receive. Let humility be bold, let modesty be confident. This is no time for virginal simplicity to forget prudence. In this matter alone, O prudent Virgin, do not fear to be presumptuous. Though modest silence is pleasing, dutiful speech is now more necessary. Open your heart to faith, O blessed Virgin, your lips to praise, your womb to the Creator. See, the desired of all nations is at your door, knocking to enter. If he should pass by because of your delay, in sorrow you would begin to seek him afresh, the One whom your soul loves. Arise, hasten, open. Arise in faith, hasten in devotion, open in praise and thanksgiving. Behold the handmaid of the Lord, she says, be it done to me according to your word. (Source: Universalis.org)

Jüng’s “Red Book”: A Gnostic Work

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in Christ Jesus, who saves us by faith, hope, and charity, not by acquiring esoteric knowledge only available to some “initiates”. For the saving “mysteries” of our faith are quite visible: water, oil, bread, and wine.

Over at First Things David Bentley Hart wrote an article, entitled, Jung’s Therapeutic Gnosticism, which I think you ought to read. Here’s an excerpt:

The book’s religious sensibility is thoroughly Gnostic, in a number of ways. It is, for one thing, simply saturated in imagery and concepts drawn from the Gnostic systems of late antiquity, and its narrative form—its incontinent mythopoeia, its rococo excesses, its figural syzygies and archons and aeons (or whatever one might call them)—has all the occult grotesquerie of authentic Gnostic myth. More to the point, its entire spiritual logic is one of “gnosis”: a saving wisdom vouchsafed through an entirely private revelation; a direct communication from a mysterious source that is also one’s own deepest ground, but from which one has become estranged; a truth attained not through the mediation of nature or culture, and certainly not through the moral “law,” but solely in the apocalyptic secrecy of the illuminated soul.

And yet, it is also almost wholly devoid of the special pathos that is the most enchanting, sympathetic, and human aspect of ancient Gnosticism: the desperate longing for escape, for final liberation, for a return to the God beyond. Jung’s scripture is, in the end, a gospel not of salvation, but of therapy—not of deliverance, but of conciliation—and in this sense it truly is a liber novus, a newer new testament, a “sacred” book of a kind that only our age could have produced.

To the Gnostics of old—to indulge in a bit of synoptic generalization—this world is an immense prison guarded by malevolent powers on high, a place of exile where the fallen and forgetful divine spark dwelling deep within the pneumatikos (the “spiritual man”) languishes in ignorance and bondage, passing from life to life in drugged sleep, wrapped in the ethereal garments of the “souls” it acquired in descending through the planetary spheres, and sealed fast within the coarse involucrum of an earthly body. The spiritual experience at the heart of the Gnostic story of salvation was, as Hans Jonas puts it, the “call of the stranger God”: a call heard inwardly that awakens the spirit from its obliviousness to its own nature, and that summons it home again from this hostile universe and back again to the divinepleroma—the “fullness”—from which it departed in a time before time.

Read it all here.

I don’t have much to say in terms of commentary – yes, I know! Incredible! Only this: be careful with Jüng, for he bites.

VIDEO: Imagine if Obama were pro-life

Just imagine...

 

Abortion lit the way for the Newtown massacre

It's the Culture of Death, silly!

Brothers and Sisters, Peace be with you.

Like many of you, I've been perusing the more "thoughtful" introspections by writers of national recognition. One by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker's blog caught my eye. It's titled Newtown and the Madness of Guns. Here's an excerpt:

The people who fight and lobby and legislate to make guns regularly available are complicit in the murder of those children. They have made a clear moral choice: that the comfort and emotional reassurance they take from the possession of guns, placed in the balance even against the routine murder of innocent children, is of supreme value. Whatever satisfaction gun owners take from their guns—we know for certain that there is no prudential value in them—is more important than children’s lives. Give them credit: life is making moral choices, and that’s a moral choice, clearly made.

You know, if I were to replace the subject of these sentences "...the people who fight and lobby and legislate to make guns regularly available" and "gun owners" by "the abortion industry," the sentences would still be true.

I submit to you that one factor that ended in the killing of so many innocents is the low regard we have for human life in this country, that is, for those least able to defend and proclaim their own right to live, to grow, and to contribute to the life of our country.  There's no difference between killing a child inside a womb, or killing him or her outside the womb. None whatsoever. The objective of abortion is the same as the Newtown's murderer: to kill innocent, defenseless children with the same cold efficiency that an abortion doctor and assistants sport when killing a child in utero.

In 2008, the latest date for which data are available, there were 825,564 abortions reported to the Center for Disease Control. That's a rough average of 2,646 "Newtowns" every month. But who cries for them, other than their mothers? Those who do are labeled "fanatics" and "extremists" and those who do the labeling would be the first to deny that the abortion industry is a mill of death for hundred of thousands of children who had the same right to live as the angels who once lived, and have now departed, Newtown Connecticut.

Since we, as a society, hold life in such a low esteem, should we be surprised when these massacres take place? No, I don't think so. Should we expect these to happen again despite draconian gun control measures? As they've done in China, the crazies will just look for other weapons. In China, where abortion is mandatory after one live pregnancy and where girls are aborted at a higher rate than boys.

As the days go by more evidence will come to light that the shooter in Connecticut was mentally ill. But he acted with the same cold calculation an abortionist has when killing a baby in her mother's womb, and the abortionist does it when supposedly sane. If young, human life is cheap, whether a baby lives inside or outside the womb is irrelevant. The shooter made the connection and acted upon it. He may have been insane, but he made the connection.

Laws will be passed, perhaps some gun control measures similar to the last ones, riddled with enough loopholes to make them meaningless. Questions have been asked from gun control advocates regarding the shooter's weapon of choice and its availability under the previous gun control law. The answer has been, "it's complicated." Which means that no, that the gun used by the Newtown shooter would not have been banned under the previous law. No matter, a new law will pass, politicians will congratulate themselves and run on that "record", and we will once again be lulled into a false sense of security. The set is ready for a new charade.

Massacres like this will happen again, or course. It doesn't matter how many guns are banned or even confiscated. The problem is the Culture of Death that holds human life cheap from the moment of its conception to that of natural death. I repeat, the best way to prevent these tragedies is to adopt a thorough, deep, and proactive life-affirming, life-protecting ethos, where human beings may develop without the threat of untimely, arbitrary death from the moment of conception to that of natural death. Not only we would have prevented school massacres then, but also understood our moral obligations toward the poor, the alien, the orphan, and the infirm (the biblical protected classes) under a new light.

Only when our nation embraces a truly prolife ethic, we will see a new dawn of freedom and domestic happiness the like we haven't seen before, and may never see again, unless we act now with speed and righteousness.

*Revised, 12/19/2012.

Third Sunday of Advent, AD 2012

From today’s Office of Readings A sermon by St Augustine

John is the voice, and Christ is the Word

John is the voice, but the Lord is the Word who was in the beginning. John is the voice that lasts for a time; from the beginning Christ is the Word who lives for ever.

Take away the word, the meaning, and what is the voice? Where there is no understanding, there is only a meaningless sound. The voice without the word strikes the ear but does not build up the heart.

However, let us observe what happens when we first seek to build up our hearts. When I think about what I am going to say, the word or message is already in my heart. When I want to speak to you, I look for a way to share with your heart what is already in mine.

In my search for a way to let this message reach you, so that the word already in my heart may find place also in yours, I use my voice to speak to you. The sound of my voice brings the meaning of the word to you and then passes away. The word which the sound has brought to you is now in your heart, and yet it is still also in mine.

When the word has been conveyed to you, does not the sound seem to say: The word ought to grow, and I should diminish? The sound of the voice has made itself heard in the service of the word, and has gone away, as though it were saying: My joy is complete. Let us hold on to the word; we must not lose the word conceived inwardly in our hearts.

Do you need proof that the voice passes away but the divine Word remains? Where is John’s baptism today? It served its purpose, and it went away. Now it is Christ’s baptism that we celebrate. It is in Christ that we all believe; we hope for salvation in him. This is the message the voice cried out.

Because it is hard to distinguish word from voice, even John himself was thought to be the Christ. The voice was thought to be the word. But the voice acknowledged what it was, anxious not to give offence to the word. I am not the Christ, he said, nor Elijah, nor the prophet. And the question came: Who are you, then? He replied: I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way for the Lord. The voice of one crying in the wilderness is the voice of one breaking the silence. Prepare the way for the Lord, he says, as though he were saying: “I speak out in order to lead him into your hearts, but he does not choose to come where I lead him unless you prepare the way for him.”

What does prepare the way mean, if not “pray well”? What does prepare the way mean, if not “be humble in your thoughts”? We should take our lesson from John the Baptist. He is thought to be the Christ; he declares he is not what they think. He does not take advantage of their mistake to further his own glory.
If he had said, “I am the Christ,” you can imagine how readily he would have been believed, since they believed he was the Christ even before he spoke. But he did not say it; he acknowledged what he was. He pointed out clearly who he was; he humbled himself.

He saw where his salvation lay. He understood that he was a lamp, and his fear was that it might be blown out by the wind of pride.
Source: Universalis.com

The Nation Mourns its Latest Tragedy

Brothers and sisters, as you all probably know, 27 people were shot and killed in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, including 18 children. An entire kindergarten class is missing. The 20-year old shooter is diseased inside the school building.

This was an obscenity. Words cannot adequately convey what I'm feeling now. I now await for more information.

Let us pray for the families of all the victims. Let us pray for the town of Newtown and our Nation.

My considered views on religious displays on public land

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you.

As you know, every year during the holiday and Christmas seasons, religion-objectors redouble their efforts at proscribing religious displays on government buildings and other common areas in our cities, towns, and villages. The mainstream media’s (MSM’s) strategy has been to declare that there is no “war on Christmas” but Bill Donohue from the Catholic League already took the MSM to task.

Of course, I often share many of Bill Donohue’s observations across many other social platforms including Twitter, and it was in Twitter where I got a couple of respondents who are representative of the repressive school of Christmas display haters. Their argument is straightforward: they argue that the “non-establishment clause” of the First Amendment prohibits religious displays on public – government-owned – property. Therefore, a Christmas crèche, the Ten Commandments, and other demonstrations of religious faith that have had an effect in our culture for over two centuries are verbotenunder the First Amendment.

But confusion follows when the Christmas-haters are shown the applicable clause of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

When I ask how a religious display on public property violates the non-establishment clause, I get stammers. If I mention that the Framers had a very precise idea of what an established religion meant (they only had to look back to England, the German states, and Spanish Empire to make their point), I am told that the Framers “knew nothing” about today’s circumstances – which I detect as an argument in favor of the notion that “the Constitution evolves” although they don’t tell me exactly how. Or if I point out that these displays were never an issue until the 1960’s, when Madeline Murray O’Hair started her jihad against religion in the public place, I am answered with non-sequiturs regarding the legal status of atheists in the country, on how the US is not nor was ever a “Christian” country, etc.

After all my years studying this issue, I hereby announce my position on this issue. If you care to read it, this is it:

The First Amendment does not prohibit religious displays on public land. Citizens of any religious persuasion or none at all should be free to exercise their religion on public, government property however they see fit. The only proper role of government is to regulate this exercise in such a way that decorum, order, and safety are guaranteed to those citizens choosing to exercise their liberty in this manner.

In other words, my brothers and sisters, I don’t simply want the courts or the religion-haters to be more accommodating to religious expression in public spaces.  No, what I am looking for is their complete capitulation. I hold that every single verdict, judgment, or regulation limiting the free exercise of religion anywhereruns counter to the letter and the spirit of the First Amendment, that such judgments, verdicts, or regulations are rotten at the core, and therefore, contemptuous of our First Freedom. Furthermore, I hold that the enforcement of said judgments, verdicts, or regulations is repressive by their nature, being a flagrant abuse of the coercive power of the state to undermine the freedom of We, the People.

That’s where I stand, my brethren. Our duty is fight this repression with all legitimate tools at our disposal and reverse the sorry course our courts and branches of government have been charting during the last 50 years, a court that has veered us away from liberty and toward the intellectual and moral subjugation of the many by the few.

Forgiveness

Father Nicolas Schwizer

“How many times will I have to forgive my brother when he offends me?” Peter’s question is always current for a Christian: Where is the limit of our forgiveness? Do we have to forgive the offences always anew and without measure?

Jesus gives us a very clear answer: The measure of forgiveness is the measure of love. And our obligation is to love without limits and, consequently, we also have to forgive without limits. So, the only thing left for us is to forgive always.

And to help us understand the rigor of his commandment, Jesus relates the parable of the wicked servant: “A king wanted to adjust the accounts with his employees. They brought forth one who owed a thousand talents.” It has to do with a fantastic sum which probably no one of us has. But we must understand the parable in its symbolic sense. God himself is the king in the parable. The enormous sum signifies our great debt to God.

Man is God’s debtor. Any child, at birth, is a millionaire. But no one becomes aware of it; no one recognizes himself as the debtor of such a great sum. And no one is concerned about giving thanks to God for all of that. In addition, man increases his debt with God. We make use of these gifts to sin by misusing them.

The servant of the parable acknowledges his fault, his guilt, his debt. Humbling himself he throws himself at the feet of the king saying: “Be patient with me and I will pay you for everything.” And at that moment an unexpected change of scene takes place: the king not only drops the punishment, he forgives his debt completely.

God is this way. God is Father. Immediately He is moved with his children. He delights in giving them gifts, but even moreso, He loves to forgive them. For God, this is his favorite occasion to show his children all his love as a Father.

Before this priority of the king, the wickedness of his servant is much more stressed: he treats his companion who only owes him a few talents, in a violent and inhumane way. And that in spite of the fact that his companion begs him for patience, repeating his same words. Perhaps we become indignant with this fact. But, do we not sometimes do the same?

In summary, the parable tells us the following: For God to forgive us our innumerable faults, we have to fulfill two conditions:

1. The first condition is to acknowledge before God that we are sinners, debtors. The first sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit in a soul is that it acknowledges its culpability. Therefore, the Saints see themselves covered with faults. But the majority of the people – who are most unsaintly – think of themselves as good persons, sinless: they do not steal, nor kill, nor commit adultery. That is why they rarely take advantage of the sacrament of confession in which man acknowledges himself as a sinner before God.

2. The second condition for being forgiven is that we also forgive others. We are refusing God’s forgiveness if we do not forgive others. Hell would not exist if men would have imitated the mercy of God because Hell is the place where there is no forgiveness and where forgiveness is not wanted.

Dear brothers and sisters, what Jesus tells us is very decisive for our salvation: “My Heavenly Father will do the same with you if you do not forgive your brother with all your heart.”

Questions for reflection

1. Is it easy for me to forgive others as I forgive myself?

2. Is forgiveness an aspect which needs to be cultivated in our family or community?

Second Sunday of Advent, A.D. 2012

A Reading from Today’s Office of Readings

A commentary on Isaiah by Eusebius of Caesarea

A voice of one crying in the wilderness

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God. The prophecy makes clear that it is to be fulfilled, not in Jerusalem but in the wilderness: it is there that the glory of the Lord is to appear, and God’s salvation is to be made known to all mankind.

It was in the wilderness that God’s saving presence was proclaimed by John the Baptist, and there that God’s salvation was seen. The words of this prophecy were fulfilled when Christ and his glory were made manifest to all: after his baptism the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove rested on him, and the Father’s voice was heard, bearing witness to the Son: This is my beloved Son, listen to him.

The prophecy meant that God was to come to a deserted place, inaccessible from the beginning. None of the pagans had any knowledge of God, since his holy servants and prophets were kept from approaching them. The voice commands that a way be prepared for the Word of God: the rough and trackless ground is to be made level, so that our God may find a highway when he comes. Prepare the way of the Lord: the way is the preaching of the Gospel, the new message of consolation, ready to bring to all mankind the knowledge of God’s saving power.

Climb on a high mountain, bearer of good news to Zion. Lift up your voice in strength, bearer of good news to Jerusalem. These words harmonise very well with the meaning of what has gone before. They refer opportunely to the evangelists and proclaim the coming of God to men, after speaking of the voice crying in the wilderness. Mention of the evangelists suitably follows the prophecy on John the Baptist.

What does Zion mean if not the city previously called Jerusalem? This is the mountain referred to in that passage from Scripture: Here is mount Zion, where you dwelt. The Apostle says: You have come to mount Zion. Does not this refer to the company of the apostles, chosen from the former people of the circumcision?

This is the Zion, the Jerusalem, that received God’s salvation. It stands aloft on the mountain of God, that is, it is raised high on the only-begotten Word of God. It is commanded to climb the high mountain and announce the word of salvation. Who is the bearer of the good news but the company of the evangelists? What does it mean to bear the good news but to preach to all nations, but first of all to the cities of Judah, the coming of Christ on earth?

Source: Universalis.com

Today's the Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Mary the Dawn, Christ the Perfect Day;
Mary the Gate, Christ the Heav’nly Way!
Mary the Root, Christ the Mystic Vine;
Mary the Grape, Christ the Sacred Wine!
Mary the Wheat-sheaf, Christ the Living Bread;
Mary the Rose-Tree, Christ the Rose Blood-red!
Mary the Font, Christ the Cleansing Flood;
Mary the Chalice, Christ the Saving Blood!
Mary the Temple, Christ the Temple’s Lord;
Mary the Shrine, Christ the God adored!
Mary the Beacon, Christ the Haven’s Rest;
Mary the Mirror, Christ the Vision Blest!
Mary the Mother, Christ the Mother’s Son.
Both ever blest while endless ages run.
Amen.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

USCCB: Sexual Difference & the Meaning of Marriage: FAQs

Brothers and Sisters: Peace be with you!

I wanted to share with you these links to the FAQ file at the Marriage: Unique for a Reason site, maintained by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Enjoy!

1. Marriage: What’s a good starting point?
2. Where does marriage come from?
3. What is marriage?
4. Why can’t marriage be “redefined” to include two men or two women?
5. What is sexual difference?
6. Isn’t marriage just about love and commitment between two people?
7. Why does a person’s gender matter for marriage?
8. How is the love between a husband and a wife irreducibly unique?
9. What is complementarity?
10. Why does the Catholic Church care so much about marriage?
11. Where can I learn more about marriage?

On Religion and Science (Again)

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in Jesus Christ Our Lord.

OK, I don’t pretend to close this debate once and for all, but to continue my brief, limited contributions to the subject. ‘Tis because Yahoo News published this report, titled Does the GOP need a religious retreat? which says in part:

It's no surprise that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio took heat for an interview he gave to GQ magazine this month: Departing from scientific consensus, the rising Republican star refused to state whether the Earth is billions of years old or a few thousand, as many fundamentalist Christians believe.

What no one expected was the rebuke from televangelist and longtime Christian conservative leader Pat Robertson, dismissing theories of a "young Earth."

"If you fight science, you are going to lose your children," Robertson said last week during an appearance on the Christian Broadcast Network, the television empire he founded three decades ago.

Robertson wasn't directly speaking to Rubio, but the senator and others in his party might heed the advice. Viewed by many voters as anti-science and too conservative on social issues such as gay marriage, the Republican Party is in danger of losing young and less religious voters for years to come.

I applaud Pat Robertson, but I must say that ever since I’ve lived in the US mainland, I’ve never understood how people could accept the notion of a 6,000 year-old Earth as true. I had a Catholic education and I had no conflict between the notion of a vast universe billions of years old, and the objective existence of One God who created it all in time. I found the Bible literalism that confronted me childish, fearful, and ignorant.

Even the question “Do you believe in creation or evolution” leveled at me by fundamentalists from both sides of the issue is misleading. First, because I hold that “belief” is one act of the intellect and will that is different from the intellectual assent given to factual, albeit preliminary data always in a state of flux. I believein God which is to say I acknowledge the objective truth of His existence as well as the objective truth of his Word made flesh in Jesus Christ. However, I don’t acknowledge scientific data in the same way, I may think a given theory – which is more a model than a hypothesis – more reasonable than another according to the objective empirical evidence discovered to support one against the other, but I don’t give it my religious faith. It soon appear to me that both Christian and atheistic empiricists held with religious faith to one or the other explanation.

That takes me to the second reason I find the “Do you believe in creation or evolution” question misleading: because the questioner assumes that belief in a Beneficent, Creator God who created all is incompatible with the findings of modern cosmology, physics, and evolutionary biology. The Fundamentalist Christian questioner also adds “That’s not in the Bible, don’t you believe that the Bible is the Word of God”? whereas the atheist usually states,“If you understood cosmology, physics, or  evolutionary biology correctly, you would see why the God (usually in minuscule, “god”) hypothesis is unnecessary or necessarily false”. Both fundamentalists would accuse me of gravely misunderstanding the facts, at which point I have to smile.

It seemed that no matter what I understood or tried to explain, I was the ignorant, uniformed one.

We can set aside for know the objections from Christian fundamentalists and focus on the scientist crowd's argumentation. A significant part of the problem is that outside of physics, no one holds to philosophical realism. Worse, many physicists fail to recognize their own position as philosophical realism, further failing to think outside their cosmological box. There is also a failure on the part of many atheist scientists to understand that their language is meant to reflect precisely to their intellects the nature of the things they study. This facilitates not only the study, but the construction of theoretical models and mutual communication between the scientists themselves. This mutual intelligibility between symbol (equations, schemes, diagrams) and the thing itself is also part and parcel of philosophical realism.

The above are Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetism. These equations denote the nature of light as an electromagnetic wave. Later studies in quantum mechanics would subsume these equations to denote light’s dual nature as both a wave and a particle. Yet, the expression “let there be light” and Maxwell’s equations are functionally equivalent. The difference lies in that the equations lack an “active subject” which in the biblical verse is “God.” Adding God to the equations do not change the nature of light or the logic of the equation, but deleting God from the biblical verse renders the expression useless as a sentence.

Many unbelievers would say that since mentioning “God” in the equations is superfluous, that the existence of God as an actor is also superfluous in any meaningful empirical statement made about nature. Yet this denial itself is a matter more of faith – faith in “unbelief” – than a statement of science.

Scientific equations are an extension of language and therefore intelligible to the reader because of their logical interrelationship. This logic in communicating fundamental notions about nature is what sets apart these equations – mathematical sentences – from mere gibberish. The beautiful, mind-blowing thing is that these relationships preexist their understanding by the scientific mind, they are engraved in the fabric of nature itself, so-to-speak. It stands to reason that something or someone put them there, and that omitting God as an active subject of the equations is not a claim about his superfluity, but must be the common sense understanding that his active presence must be assumed in the fundamental nature of the cosmos and that therefore, “God” doesn’t have to be mentioned every time there’s an equation in order to reduce redundancy and repetition. The same applies to taxonomies or other mathematical or illustrations of physical, chemical, or biological phenomena.

In other words: God cannot be easily written out from nature, try as we can. Even at this fundamental level, the statement "let there be light" demands a Primal Actor.

Nature is indeed mysterious and beautiful. That scientists can use a series of symbols to describe “light” should move us to awe, but saying that God created light should move us to adoration.

I leave you with one question for your coconuts: Can the statement “God is Love” be explained mathematically? Yes, no, why or why not?

Book Review: Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness

Brothers and sisters: Peace be with you!

A revelation of Lincoln and the mood disorder that shaped him; that’s how I would describe Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness by Joshua Wolf Shenk, in brief.

 

Mr. Shenk takes the reader in a tour of President Abraham Lincoln’s character and personality, focusing on his trials with what we might call today “clinical depression”. Along the way, Mr. Shenk regales the reader with fascinating insights into this mood disorder, as well as the manner 19^th century Americans regarded anyone suffering from depression compared to those in the 20^thcentury down to our own times. He also explains why the principal “scientific historians” gave short shrift to President Lincoln’s “melancholy” and the milestones that reopened this field of inquiry to scholars and the general public.

One thing I liked of Mr. Shenk’s technique is that he avoided banal psychoanalytic approaches in favor of what contemporary documents and oral histories told about Lincoln. Mr. Shenk studiously avoided putting Lincoln “on the couch”, as it were, which enabled Shenk to avoid the pitfall of projecting his own view of Lincoln on to the paper, clothed in psychological jargon of Shenk’s own making. The Lincoln that jumps out of the pages of this book is one that is alive, recognizable as a human being, neither a marble sculpture nor a mental wreck.

However, one thing I disliked of Mr. Shenk’s research is his equation of depression with acedia, the “noonday demon” often talked about by monastic contemplatives. I admit both acedia and depression are connected and their symptomatology is similar, but had he read Kathleen Norris’ Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life, or at least this interview of Norris by the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Shenk would have seen that “…The boundaries between depression and acedia are notoriously fluid; at the risk of oversimplifying, I would suggest that while depression is an illness treatable by counseling and medication, acedia is a vice that is best countered by spiritual practice and the discipline of prayer."

In Shenk’s fascinating description of how Lincoln both integrated into his character and transcended his sufferings, I see this “blank” on how Lincoln’s spiritual practices and disciplined prayer may have assisted him throughout his life. Yes, Shenk tell us of Lincoln’s earlier dabbling with deism and then about his evolution toward a belief in a providential “God” or transcendent reality, but it lacks the “oomph”, the vital force thrusting this evolution forward beyond Lincoln’s sheer force of will. I think that if we were to distinguish correctly between depression and acedia, a new field of Lincoln research would open itself up. Though his book stands on its own, by equating depression with acedia, Mr. Shenk unnecessarily “flattened” a still-hidden facet of Lincoln’s inner life.

Nevertheless, despite this flaw, I learned a lot from Mr. Shenk’s presentation and as it is often the case in books I enjoy, I also learned a lot about my own self and inner life. That by itself makes Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness by Joshua Wolf Shenk, worth reading.

First Sunday of Advent, AD 2012

From the Office of Readings: The twofold coming of Christ
St Cyril of Jerusalem

We do not preach only one coming of Christ, but a second as well, much more glorious than the first. The first coming was marked by patience; the second will bring the crown of a divine kingdom. 

In general, whatever relates to our Lord Jesus Christ has two aspects. There is a birth from God before the ages, and a birth from a virgin at the fullness of time. There is a hidden coming, like that of rain on fleece, and a coming before all eyes, still in the future. 

At the first coming he was wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger. At his second coming he will be clothed in light as in a garment. In the first coming he endured the cross, despising the shame; in the second coming he will be in glory, escorted by an army of angels. 

We look then beyond the first coming and await the second. At the first coming we said: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. At the second we shall say it again; we shall go out with the angels to meet the Lord and cry out in adoration: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. 

The Saviour will not come to be judged again, but to judge those by whom he was judged. At his own judgment he was silent; then he will address those who committed the outrages against him when they crucified him and will remind them: You did these things, and I was silent.
His first coming was to fulfil his plan of love, to teach men by gentle persuasion. This time, whether men like it or not, they will be subjects of his kingdom by necessity. 

The prophet Malachi speaks of the two comings. And the Lord whom you seek will come suddenly to his temple: that is one coming. 

Again he says of another coming: Look, the Lord almighty will come, and who will endure the day of his entry, or who will stand in his sight? Because he comes like a refiner’s fire, a fuller’s herb, and he will sit refining and cleansing. 

These two comings are also referred to by Paul in writing to Titus: The grace of God the Saviour has appeared to all men, instructing us to put aside impiety and worldly desires and live temperately, uprightly, and religiously in this present age, waiting for the joyful hope, the appearance of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Notice how he speaks of a first coming for which he gives thanks, and a second, the one we still await. 

That is why the faith we profess has been handed on to you in these words: He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. 

Our Lord Jesus Christ will therefore come from heaven. He will come at the end of the world, in glory, at the last day. For there will be an end to this world, and the created world will be made new.