Thorns in flesh, the experience of grace

Our New Testament reading for this Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time is 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. This is one of those passages with which many people are familiar, thus making it one of those passages that is easy to water down and approach glibly. But if we take it as the apostle intended it, writing from the deep well-spring of his own experience, it is a provocation.

If we let ourselves be provoked, we can verify the truth of what we hear about in this passage, namely that "when I am weak, then I am strong," precisely because Christ's grace is sufficient. You see, it is not a sign of weakness to acknowledge our on-going need for the Lord's assistance. In Paul's case it is clear that Christ is not the cause of whatever "thorn in the flesh" against which the apostle contended. What is clear is that it was not going to be taken away in an instant, or even over a prolonged period of time, but remain precisely so that Paul, who enjoyed such close communion with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, would not only constantly be reminded how much he needed to rely on Christ, but so that he could more clearly see that his weakness was his strength because it forced him to rely solely on Jesus Christ.

I spent some time his afternoon laying out the course of my seventh grade daughter's catechesis for the upcoming school year. We are using the seventh grade curriculum of the Image of God series, which is predicated on the theology of Bl. Pope John Paul II, the unifying element of which is, according to Fr. Richard Hogan, "the human person - created by God in His own image and redeemed by the God-man," Jesus Christ. I liked very much how Fr. Hogan explained grace. You know, that thing of Christ's He tells Paul is sufficient.

Grace has three functions, three things it does for us: "unites us to God here on earth; makes it possible for us to live with God forever in heaven; and enables us to think and to choose as human beings, as images of God." Most apropos to the passage of Sacred Scripture I am considering here, "Grace does not always make it easy to act as we should, but it makes it possible for the mind and will to govern the body, that is, for the human body to express the human person," who, in turn, is best expressed as a bearer of imago dei. It is by grace that we are restored to God's likeness. Grace is experienced through our experiences, the circumstances we encounter all day everyday.

Turkey anyone?

Since I have been laid up ill for the past three days with a very nasty chest cold, I have treated myself to a Turkish film festival. First I watched On the Edge of Heaven, followed by Takva: A Man's Fear of God, finished off by Distant. Of the three I liked Takva the best as it is an Islamic tale about the impossibility of serving God and mammon, how religious institutions inevitably struggle with this, and also about the human desire to please and honor God and how we need grace, that is, God's help to live that way. Takva also offers a glimpse of Sufi Islam, thus helping Westerners to see that there is a diversity within in Islam and rather benevolent forms. As for Distant, I came across this very insightful film review: Distant. This is in no way to the detriment of On the Edge of Heaven. I recommend all three.

A still from Distant, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Ever since visiting Turkey numerous times in throughout the '90s, I have loved Turkish popular music. I haven't listened to any for quite awhile. So, our Friday traditio is Yildiz Tilbe singing "Delikanlım":

My roses bloom indefinite times for you/They won't fade even if you pick them up and throw away "Delikanlïm" means "My Boy."

"Homo technicus" or truly human?

Because it is an issue that I frequently write about, I am posting something put up on Facebook by Ignatius Press; a quote by Hans Urs von Balthasar from his book New Elucidations, regarding Natural Family Planning, which is not, at least when practiced in the proper manner, merely a natural form of contraception.

There is all the difference in the world between using one's awareness of the periods of infertility and arrogating to oneself the right to impose radical restrictions on fertility by the use of artificial contraception.

Many see little difference here. And perhaps there is little difference, so long as man views himself as an entity that invents itself and regulates itself: homo technicus. Were this view of man the truth, no limits at all could be set on his manipulation of his own nature.

But the difference is great to the eyes of any man or woman who thinks as a Christian. For in using the infertile days they are not setting bounds to their love. Otherwise, one would have to say that intercourse in the full Christian sense is impossible after a woman's menopause. Married persons who think as Christians set no barriers between the two objects of marriage: procreation and the expression of mutual love. They let the two stand together, the physical side, with its own proper laws, and the personal side. One's awareness of the opportunities provided by nature does not mean one is imposing calculation on the inner spirit of love

All of this is to more than hint at that in no realm more than in bio-technology do human beings run the risk of re-capitulating the original sin, which is our constant human desire to reject our creaturliness and establish ourselves as supreme. As with so many things, bio-technology is a two-edged sword, which is often to put to use to accomplish good ends by means that are not morally objectionable. Nonetheless, we must be careful not to fall into the trap that just because we can do something by means of technology, we should.

Jesus of Nazareth, the revelation of God

In his still timely book, one that I re-read from time-to-time, Razing the Bastions: On the Church in This Age, Hans Urs Von Balthasar wrote, "that theology is the doctrine of the divine meaning of the revelation of the historical events of revelation themselves - nothing above them, nothing behind them, nothing that one could take away and retain as a suprahistorical substance - and that therefore, the more the historical discloses itself in a theological sense, the more does theology develop" (30). Von Balthasar's definition is cited by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn is his Christology, God Sent His Son. Building on Balthasar's insight, Cardinal Schönborn moves to a critique of scholastic Christology, which, he insists,"concentrates on illuminating the significance of [Christ's] birth... in its ontological respect and that of his death in its soteriological respect" (218). This leads, at least in His Eminence's estimation, to the roughly "thirty-three lying between the birth and the events of Triduum" seeming "at most to be of significance [only] for Christ's moral message" (218).

I think Cardinal Schönborn, who serves as archbishop of Vienna, Austria, quite right to insist that "what the life of Jesus was actually like is of central importance, inasmuch as the period of [his life], this brief span of time in the history of mankind and of Israel, represents the eschatological revelation of God and his definitive salvation" (218). It is in light of Jesus' Resurrection that the events, words and actions, of his earthly life "acquire their full Christological implications... precisely as historical events," that is, things that actually occurred in the world. "For on the basis of Easter," Schönborn continues, Jesus' words and actions "acquire an eschatological, eternal significance. If the Risen One is he who lived on earth, then nothing about the earthly One is trivial" (218).

Jesus' miracle at the wedding feast of Cana

Cardinal Schönborn, who served as general editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, then paraphrases something crucial from the much-maligned Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx, thus moving from Von Balthasar's "Christology from above" to a more existential "Christology from below." The work of Schillebeeckx's he cites is his very provocative and, as a result, generally misunderstood Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter With God: "In the reading, getting to know, and following the concrete figure of Jesus [as depicted in the canonical Gospels], it is a matter not only of a theological work or of material for spiritual contemplation, but of the decisive question, vital for our salvation, of whether we accept God's revelation of himself and his saving acts, or whether we fail to do so" (218).

Perhaps the most concrete "take away" from this is, come to know Jesus by reading, studying, pouring over, praying over the Gospels. The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, reiterated, even if in an understated manner, "It is common knowledge that among all the Scriptures, even those of the New Testament, the Gospels have a special preeminence, and rightly so, for they are the principal witness for the life and teaching of the incarnate Word, our savior" (par. 18).

Another time-proven way to come to know Jesus is by meditating on the mysteries of His life by praying the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A quick look at these (i.e., Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious) verify the gap posited by Cardinal Schöborn. It seems to me that this what Bl. Pope John Paul II sought to remedy when, with the promulgation of his Apostolic Letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, in 2002, he instituted the Luminous Mysteries of Christ's life: "(1) his Baptism in the Jordan, (2) his self-manifestation at the wedding of Cana, (3) his proclamation of the Kingdom of God, with his call to conversion, (4) his Transfiguration, and finally, (5) his institution of the Eucharist, as the sacramental expression of the Paschal Mystery" (par. 21).

While these two suggestions may seem a bit pedestrian, spirituality is a mode of life, it's how we live everyday. We have various means at our disposal to draw closer to God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. The sacraments, of course, play an indispensable role in this, but we have to have things we can do on our own, things that are quiet and simple, things we can incorporate into our daily lives without too much difficulty, things that help us meet Christ in the here and now, in the hurly-burly.

Constitutionally transcendent redux

Over the history of my blog I have re-posted few things. But this Fourth of July, given that it brings to a conclusion the Fortnight for Freedom, during which we have prayed that our religious liberty, not only as Catholics, but as citizens of the U.S., would be preserved in light of the attempt by the Department of Health and Human Service to impose its unjust mandate on the Church, which would also have the effect of reducing freedom of religion in this great nation, I am re-posting what I put up last July 4th with a few minor tweaks. Once in awhile, something is more relevant than it was when it was written.
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Today we celebrate the 236th anniversary of that day when the United States, originally 13 British colonies, declared its independence from Great Britain. This post unapologetically builds on my post from two years ago, "When in the Course of human events..." In the powerful declaration, publicly proclaimed in Philadelphia, we read these important words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Furthermore, John Adams, who was perhaps the most influential Founding Father, writing to some officers of the Massachusetts militia in 1798, well after our Constitution was ratified, offered this- "we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

John Adams, painted by Gilbert Stuart 1798

Constitutionally, the United States is built on the assumption of a transcendent order. Many of our struggles today arise from a general loss, or at least diminishment, of our collective sense of transcendence. We are tempted to interpret Adams' words to mean religion as a form of social control, but to read them that way is to take them anachronistically. In his book, published last year by Catholic University Press, The Turn to Transcendence, Dr. Glenn Olsen wrote that Christianity, like Judaism before it, is cosmological, meaning that Christians "see human life both as dramatic, centered on a struggle to achieve a proper use of freedom, and as eschatological, receiving its orientation from beyond history" (208). Indeed, rather than as a form of social control, Adams, in his address, seems to also be concerned with the proper use of freedom. As St. Paul wrote in his Letter to the Galatians: "For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another" (5:13- ESV).

Olsen goes on to note that is was Heidegger who "compared the meditative knowledge of medieval figures such as St. Bernard of Clairvaux, aimed at the transformation of our being in the light of destiny, with the calculative thinking of the modern world" (209). The calculative thinking of the modern world often holds that what counts as true knowledge must be empirically verifiable, despite the devastating critique of so-called verificationism by Wittgenstein, among others. Indeed, the calculative thinking of the modern world is instrumental insofar as it is "aimed acquiring tools of action" (209).

Calculative thinking, which is instrumental, Olsen goes on to note, quoting Adriaan Peperzak, is "'rationality without receptivity,' thinking without 'admiration, gratitude, and compassion, but rather ...[based on] celebration of human intelligence, possession, engineering, and mastery'" (209). He is quite correct to note that the movement from the transformation of being in light of our destiny to so-called calculative thinking leads to a loss of transcendence, the further obliteration of the question of Being that it was Heidegger's project to recover.

Being constitutionally transcendent is exactly what still makes the United States of America exceptional. Hence, losing that which constitutes us as a nation is a perennial temptation we must resist.
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I'll end this post with the last part of the Prayer for the Protection of Religious Liberty:

Grant, we pray, O heavenly Father,
a clear and united voice to all your sons and daughters
gathered in your Church
in this decisive hour in the history of our nation,
so that, with every trial withstood
and every danger overcome—
for the sake of our children, our grandchildren,
and all who come after us—
this great land will always be "one nation, under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Christ perfects our humanity, making us all God intended

I am currently reading Christoph Cardinal Schöborn's God Sent His Son: A Contemporary Christology, which is well written, accessible, and comprehensive. Just yesterday I read his treatment of the twenty-seven article Christological formula promulgated at the Council of Chalcedon, held in AD 451.

It is easy to forget that, in addition believing that the Son is homoousios, that is, consubstantial, or one in being, "with the Father as to his Godhead," we also believe Him to be "homoousios with us as to his personhood, in all things like unto us, sin only excepted, and in these last days, the Same, for us and for salvation, born of Mary the Virgin Theotokos." Cardinal Schönborn, at the beginning of his detailed analysis of the Chalcedonian formula, comments on Christ's perfection "in personhood," observing that it "is surely among the most important credal statements of the Christian faith" (157). He goes on to point out that "being human is not a defect, a deficiency, but has its own essential perfection" (157).

Reading this reminded me that, echoing the ancient words of the Council of Chalcedon, the fathers of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of which we mark this year on 11 October, in its one-of-a-kind document, the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, reiterated the importance of our humanity and of the Incarnation for us:

The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Him all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown.

He Who is "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15), is Himself the perfect man. To the sons of Adam He restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward. Since human nature as He assumed it was not annulled, by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too. For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin (par. 22)

"Jesus' human existence," Schönborn insists, "is distinguished from that of all other men, not by what it is, but by how it is lived" (157). In his Christmas Urbi et Orbi message back in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI summarized this all succinctly, even giving it practical application: "Christ does not save us from our humanity, but through it; he does not save us from the world, but came into the world, so that through him the world might be saved (cf. Jn 3:17)."

"... the aroma of Christ to God..."

Earlier this month, over on his magnificent blog, Mystagogy, John Sanidopoulos wrote about the conversion of Rabbi Paul Fotiou in 1952. Up until his conversion to Orthodoxy, Fotiou was the rabbi of Arta, Greece. According both to his own testimony and that of others, like Archimandrite Nektarios Ziompolas, who Sanidopoulos quotes, Fotiou was a mystic of sorts, at least from the events leading to his conversion and beyond.

Due to the sensitivity of the subject, I have been a little reluctant to post about this. But anyone who reads these pages knows that, if anything, I lean on the side of being philo-Semitic and abhor anti-Semitism of any kind. I also think that we have to approach the "new" covenant, instituted by Jesus and institutionalized by Him in the Eucharist, not as superceding the "old" covenant, but as the fulfillment of the one initiated by God with humanity beginning His promise to Abraham.

For his post, Sanidopoulos' translated a portion of a booklet, written by Fotiou in Greek, entitled My Conversion to Christ. In the excerpt of the booklet you can read on Mystagogy, Fotiou tells of three separate and distinct encounters he had with our Risen Lord that led to his conversion to Christ. Of most interest to me is Fotiou's "Epistle" to the "Rabbis and Leaders of Israel." It is interesting because reading it makes me uncomfortable. It is the kind of thing that can only be written by a Jew to fellow Jews. For example, he lays the Nazi slaughter of European Jews at the feet of those, who at the time of Christ's crucifixion said, "His blood upon us and upon our children" (Matt. 27:25).

Even before invoking those words from St. Matthew, which have such a troublesome history, as the epigraph to his epistle, Fotiou invokes Leviticus: "And those of you who are left shall rot away in your enemies' lands because of their iniquity, and also because of the iniquities of their fathers they shall rot away like them. But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me..." (26:39-40- ESV). In addition to urging his fellow Jews to study the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus, he also urges them to study the fourth chapter of Malachi, urging them to "Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel" (Mal. 4:4 ESV), lest they be destroyed.

Of Paul Fotiou the aforementioned Nektarios Ziompolas wrote: "He intensely lived the sacramental life of the Church. His face and his character breathed respect, 'smelling' like incense." This brought to my mind a passage from St. Paul, another well-known Jew who was dramatically converted to Christ by an immediate encounter with Him: "But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?" (2 Cor. 2:14-16 ESV)

Of course, it is in the next chapter of 2 Corinthians that the apostle wrote:

"Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:12-18- ESV)