"The greatest wisdom"

For this final day of the first month of the Year of Our Lord 2012, a brief passage from the very first section of Thomas à Kempis' Imitation of Christ strikes me as most fitting:

"This is the greatest wisdom—to seek the kingdom of heaven through contempt of the world. It is vanity, therefore, to seek and trust in riches that perish. It is vanity also to court honor and to be puffed up with pride. It is vanity to follow the lusts of the body and to desire things for which severe punishment later must come. It is vanity to wish for long life and to care little about a well-spent life. It is vanity to be concerned with the present only and not to make provision for things to come. It is vanity to love what passes quickly and not to look ahead where eternal joy abides."

The Madonna in Sorrow by Il Sassoferrato, seventeenth century

In a word, true wisdom leads us to consider transcendence and not merely as a generic and ambiguous word, but our own transcendence, our constant and restless longing for that something more. In the introduction to his worthwhile book, The Turn to Transcendence: The Role of Religion in the Twenty-First Century, Dr. Glenn Olsen wrote that alongside the forces of secularization in the West there remains the human longing "for that which transcends history and orients life."

In his book The Religious Sense, Giussani, noting this universal human longing for transcendence, forces the matter by saying that this longing which constitutes our humanity, can either be fulfillment in reality or it cannot not. Concluding it cannot not seems unreasonable and contrary not only to human experience, but what he calls "elementary experience." So, holding that our longing, which is bigger than our hearts and even the world, can be fulfilled means that an infinite, that is, unbounded longing can only be met by something, or Someone, equal to this measure.

These observations lead us back to à Kempis' insight, which is nothing other than the Gospel, what Jesus proclaimed when He said, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel"(Mark 1:15 ESV).

Year B Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Readings: Deut. 18:15-20; Ps 95:1-2.6-9; 1 Cor. 7:32-35; Mark 1:21-28

Who is Jesus? I mean you hear about Him all the time, you may even speak about Him yourself once in a while, but do you hear Him in order to know what He is saying to you? Our readings today are about three things: Jesus’ identity, the necessity of hearing Him, culminating with what the implications of hearing Jesus are.

In our first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses tells the Israelites that God “will raise up for them a prophet like [Moses] from among their kin, and [God] will put [His] words into [the prophet’s] mouth; [the prophet] shall tell them all that [God] command[s] him” (Deut. 18:18). Moreover, anyone who hears but does not “listen” to this “prophet” will be held to account by God. As we all know, there is a huge difference between hearing and listening.

It is useful to look at an example from Jesus’ ministry in order to clearly see Jesus as the fulfillment of Moses’ prophecy. So, let’s flip ahead several chapters in Mark’s Gospel, to chapter ten, where we read about Jesus engaging in a disputation about marriage with some Pharisees. In order to test Him the Pharisees ask Jesus, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife” (Mark 10:2)? Jesus answered their question in true rabbinical fashion by asking them a question: “What did Moses command you” (Mark 10:3)? Of course, knowing the Law and knowing that Jesus knew the Law, they answer, “Moses permitted him to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her” (Mark 10:4). Now notice that there was no question about whether a woman could divorce her husband, such a question would have been unthinkable to observant first century Jews. Nonetheless, Jesus does level the playing field, but does it, as He often did, in an unexpected and surprising way.

Citing Genesis 2:24, the foundational verse of Scripture on marriage, Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Because of the hardness of your hearts [Moses] wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother [and be joined to his wife], and the two shall become one flesh.’” (Mark 10:5b-8a). He concludes His teaching emphatically, thereby demonstrating that He is the prophet about whom Moses spoke and giving us an example of what we read about Him in our Gospel today- “for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22b) - by saying, “Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate” (Mark 10:9).

This encounter, along with many others in the Gospels, shows us who Jesus is. He is no mere interpreter of the Law. While He is like Moses insofar as He teaches what God commands, He is greater because He teaches everything God commands without compromise. In other words, Jesus is the Law-giver and the One who not only teaches us, but shows us how to fulfill the Law. Looking ahead to the twelfth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus teaches that you fulfill God’s law by loving God “with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and [by loving] your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:33). He says that doing this is “worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Mark 12:33).

If nothing else I have said this far helps you know who Jesus is, consider the words of the unclean spirit in the synagogue: “I know who you are - the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24). His casting out of the unclean spirit coupled with His teaching that day caused those who witnessed it to ask, “What is this?” Only to answer their own question: “A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him” (Mark 1:27). The implication is clear: if even the unclean spirits recognize and obey Him, we should too.

It is necessary to mention here the role of the Church’s teaching authority, what we call the magisterium, as it relates to hearing and obeying Jesus. Since this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, let’s turn to what the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum:

[T]he task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit… (par. 10).

This might sound pretty scary, even somewhat self-defeating because of the challenge it presents to us, which is why the second thing our readings for today teach us (i.e., the necessity of listening to Jesus) is so important. Like the man with the unclean spirit and, looking forward a little farther in the first chapter of Mark, Simon Peter’s mother-in-law and the leper, in our weakness the Lord meets our needs. He meets our needs as we acknowledge our weaknesses, our inability, even our lack of desire to love God and our neighbor. Jesus us wants us not so much to need Him as to want Him, to desire Him.

Passionate desire for the Lord is assumed by St. Paul in the passage from his First Letter to the Corinthians that is our second reading. In this passage Paul writes about obediently serving the Lord without distraction or anxiety. Without a doubt, those who choose celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of God, that is, to serve the Lord with an undivided heart, choose an excellent thing indeed. However, Paul’s primary point is not, “Don’t get married,” a bit of advice likely given in the expectation of the Lord’s imminent return, which he does not offer in order “to impose a restraint” (1 Cor. 7:35), but as an exhortation for all to live in obedience to Jesus Christ.

The implications of listening to Jesus, as opposed to only hearing Him, are to love Him and to place your trust in Him, meaning to obediently follow Him. So, my dear friends, despite how you feel, you can be certain that in the proclamation of the Scriptures during this liturgy you have heard God’s voice. The question is are you listening? If you are, I urge you “harden not your hearts.”

On the memorial of the Angelic Doctor

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"The abstract philosophies of the modern world have had this queer twist. Since the modern world began in the sixteenth century, nobody’s system of philosophy has really corresponded to everybody’s sense of reality; to what, if left to themselves, common men would call common sense. Each (modern philosophy) started with a paradox; a peculiar point of view demanding the sacrifice of what they would call a sane point of view"- G.K. Chesterton

This is exactly the kind of smug assertion that Chesterton was so full of and that so many people admire. I think Chesterton's propensity to generate such profound insights at the rate of one every thirty seconds would quickly grow tiresome. Despite loathing modernity more than Chesterton (and expressing his disgust in a brilliant and honest, that is, artistic manner), I have often wondered how my beloved Huysmans would have responded to Gilbert Keith. I do not think his response would be favorable, which probably doesn't matter to many people apart from myself. Frankly, such observations, stated in this absolutist manner, precisely because they do not come close to taking all of the necessary factors into account, drive me nuts. Now, don't get me wrong the synthesis achieved by Angelic Doctor is amazing by any measure and has relevance for us now. Lest I provoke an overly strong reaction, I think there is also much of value in the prolific writings of Chesterton. However, to dismiss all philosophy from Descartes forward as lacking sanity and failing to address reality is not a sustainable position. If nothing else, Descartes blew away the tenability of an unreconstructed realism by showing the gap between the subject and the object. Too often such quotes are invoked to support an anti-intellectual position. After all, life's big questions become much easier if someone has figured it all out for you, n'est ce pas?

The odd thing is most people who use such quotes, like one on philosophy after Aquinas by Chesterton, have read precious little, or even no, Aquinas and they certainly have not read Descartes, let alone Wittgenstein, whose honesty before reality is breathtaking, or Heidegger, whose philosophical project was what he saw as the necessary destruction of the metaphysics of substance in order to fully recover the question of being, or Husserl, whose phenomenology, the school to which Heidegger belonged, came along as the necessary response to the gap posited by Descartes and as an attempted correction to the various idealist philosophies (Kant, Fichte, Hegel et al.) that began to proliferate in the late eighteenth century. Also, it seems to me that from a straight-up Christian perspective, one of the main grounds that cause people to question Thomism, even authentic Thomism, as opposed to the stilted school Thomism, the later of which was called into question by theologians such as the Dominicans Chenu and Schillebeeckx, along with the Jesuits de Lubac and Von Balthasar in the middle of the last century, is the overly-optimistic view of the human person, especially when contrasted with the theological anthropology of St. Augustine, whose own experience prior to his conversion, it seems to me, made him more realistic in this regard. Besides, Bl. John Paul II, who was a philosopher, not a theologian, was deeply influenced by phenomenology, especially the personalist philosophy of Max Scheler, which, like Heidegger's work and that of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (a.k.a. Edith Stein), even after her conversion (Ex: The Science of the Cross), both of whom worked with Husserl, was a notable development of the methods of phenomenology.

I am not advocating disregarding Aquinas, as if such a thing were either desirable or even possible, but putting his work in conversation with what followed. How can we do this if we dismiss all philosophy after Aquinas as insane and out-of-touch with reality a priori? Obviously, that is a rhetorical question, the answer to which is, "We can't."

It is of great interest to me that at the time of his death, according to his friend Ian McEwan, Christopher Hitchens was working on a piece about Chesterton. I am not endorsing it without reading it, but I find the prospect of an incendiary Hitch-bomb to get the party started somewhat exciting. At least in my experience, faith is more about holding things in tension instead of just letting one end go slack and, as a result, being violently thrown to the other extreme. Wasn't it the Angelic Doctor who wrote, "evil consists in discordance from their rule or measure. Now this may happen either by their exceeding the measure or by their falling short of it;...Therefore it is evident that moral virtue observes the mean" (Summa Theologica, Question 64 of the Prima Secundæ Partis).

Reaching way back, below are two posts on the Angelic Doctor from the Καθολικός διάκονος archives:

A tale of two (complementary) theological anthropologies: Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas

Christians & Muslims must Worship God and "promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values for the benefit of all humanity"

"Childhood living is easy to do"

It's been a week at the end of which a little Gram Parsons is wholly called for, as opposed to all those times when I have said or done something that prompted someone to tell me, "That wasn't called for." I remember once I responded by stating the obvious: "If I waited for someone to call for it, then I would never get to do it." So, Gram's Wild Horses recorded by The Sundays is our late traditio for this late January Friday.

I watched you suffer a dull aching pain/Now you've decided to show me the same/But no sweet, vain exits or offstage lines /Could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind

"cloaks that had covered the eucharist were removed"

Looking at my post from last Saturday and thinking about this year being the 50th Anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, I was struck by something I read over on Sandro Magister's Chiesa site:

"Luther, who never doubted the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, rejected 'transubstantiation,' because it was bound to the Aristotelian-Thomistic concept of substance, which is foreign to the Church of the apostles and the Fathers . . .

"The rigidity and fixity of the Council of Trent generated a static mentality in the liturgy, which has persisted to our day, quick to be scandalized by any change or transformation. And this is an error, because the liturgy is life, a reality of the Spirit living among men. For this reason, it can never be bottled up . . .

Neo-Catechumenal liturgy

"Having emerged from a legalistic and rigid mentality, we witnessed at Vatican II a profound renewal of the liturgy. The cloaks that had covered the eucharist were removed from it. It is interesting to see that originally, the anaphora [the prayer of consecration] was not written, but was improvised by the presider . . .

This is an extract of a book written by Fr. Piergiovanni Devoto abd published in Italy in 2004- "Il neocatecumenato. Un’iniziazione cristiana per adulti, which roughly translates to The Neo-Catechumenate: A Christian Initiation for Adults. Magister notes that this book was publicly presented by Paul Josef Cordes, who was then President of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum for Human and Christian Development (Cor Unum means "one heart"- he is now President-emeritus), who was created a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in the Consistory of 2007.

I am not so much interested in the liturgical details, but in the theology of the Eucharist very partially articulated here by Fr. Devoto , even as I realize the theology and praxis cannot be separated.

Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul

"For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.

"Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord's brother. (In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!) Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. And I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only were hearing it said, 'He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.' And they glorified God because of me" (Galatians 1:11-24 ESV).

As I mentioned yesterday, today is the anniversary, the sixteenth to be exact, of Archbishop George Niederauer's ordination as a bishop. So, a happy anniversary to him as he continues to serve us.

Ordination anniversary

Along with my classmates, I was ordained a deacon in the Cathedral of the Madeleine by then-Bishop George Niederauer eight years ago today, 24 January 2004. It's difficult to believe that it has been that long. Given the special relationship between a bishop and his deacons, I have always thought it significant that we were ordained just one day prior to the ninth anniversary of Archbishop Niederauer's episcopal ordination, which was 25 January 1995, the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. It is pretty cool that we were ordained on the liturgical memorial of St. Francis de Sales, who, among other heavenly duties, is the patron saint of writers and journalists (anyone who undertakes to read these pages can see how badly I need his intercession!). We were ordained on a Saturday, the twenty-fifth that year being a Sunday.

So, to my brothers Manuel, Manuel, Tom, Herschel, Jack, Steve, Forrest, Dan, Marcel, Paul, John, John, John, George, Gene, Roger, Willie Willis, Ricardo, and Billy, Happy Anniversary! Today I also remember our departed classmates: Gerry, Scott, and Aniceto.

With Fr. Dave Fitzpatrick in Iraq, January 2006

In a still very relevant New Testament word study, “Behind the Word ‘Deacon’: A New Testament Study,” published in 1983, D. Edmond Hiebert notes that the Greek personal noun διάκονος, which transliterates to diakonos and comes into English as “deacon,” occurs in the New Testament thirty times. Those passages in the New Testament, apart from the Gospels, in which this word or one of its variants, shows that most occurrences do not refer to an office, ministry, or any official role in the nascent Christian community. Hiebert also asserts that “deacon” must be differentiated from “slave,” at least in 1 Philippians 1:1, where Paul seems to refer “deacon” as an office in the church. The word “deacon” in the New Testament generally denotes a voluntary servant, a minister, an attendant; only occasionally, as in 1 Timothy 3:8, does “deacon” refer to an office, as it does in Philippians 1:1 and 1 Timothy 3:12. As a voluntary servant, or minister, a deacon, according to Hiebert, is distinct from a slave. The ancient Greek word for “slave” is doulos. This distinction helps demonstrate that the term “deacon,” as it is used in ancient Christian sources, cannot be equated to “servant,” without a certain qualification. So, the deacon is one who is called forward to serve others. As Herbert Vorgrimler wrote: “In his person, the deacon makes it clear that the liturgy must have consequences in the world with all its needs, and that work in the world that is done in a spirit of charity has a spiritual dimension.”

Ad multos annos dear brothers!