"... There's something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there's also something in it that makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil.
... But someone must say in general what's been unsaid among you this many a year: that love, as mortals understand the word, isn't enough. Every natural love will rise again and live for ever in this country [i.e., heaven]: but none will rise again until it has been buried.
... There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. It's not out of bad mice or bad fleas that you make demons, but out of bad archangels."
C.S. Lewis, from The Great Divorce.
I'm heading out to B.C. tonight to spend some time with my father and step-mother. The doctors are not giving her much time to live, two months at the outside. Please keep them in prayer. I may not have internet access at my father's place, so I don't know when I'll be able to post again.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
"What a fearful thing it is to be a priest!"
(This is my translation / paraphrase of the Holy Father's General Audience of June 23, 2009.)
Last Friday, June 19, the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the day traditionally dedicated to prayers for the sanctification of priests, Pope Benedict inaugurated the Year for Priests, in association with the 150th anniversary of the death of St. John Baptist Marie Vianney. As a first symbolic act for this year dedicated to priests, the pope, entering the Vatican Basilica for Vespers, stopped in the Chapel of the Heart to venerate the relic kept there, the heart of St. John Vianney.
Divine Providence has brought together the two figures of St. Paul, whose year has just ended, and St. John Vianney. The lives of these two great saints were very different: Paul made a number of extraordinary missionary voyages to spread the Gospel, while St. John Vianney, a humble parish priest, received thousands upon thousands of the faithful without every leaving his small village. What fundamentally unites them is the total identification of each with his own ministry, with that communion with Christ that caused Paul to say: "I have been crucified with Christ. Now it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2,20). And St. John Marie Vianney loved to repeat: "If we had faith, we would see God hidden in the priest like a light behind glass, like wine mixed with water." One of Pope Benedict's aims in declaring this "Year for Priests" is "to help priests, and with them the entire people of God, to rediscover and reinvigorate an awareness of the extraordinary and indispensable gift of grace that the ordained ministry represents for the one who has received it, for the whole Church, and for the world, which without the real presence of Christ would be lost."
There is no doubt that historical and social conditions have changed since the time when St. John Vianney carried out his work. The sense of the sacred dimension of life is being lost more and more in our time, replaced by an idea of "functionality". Even in the thought of theologians, pastors, and those responsible for the formation of seminarians this occurs, as two conceptions of priesthood confront, even oppose each other. "On the one hand, there is a social-functional view that defines the essence of priesthood as "service", service to the community through the fulfillment of a specific function.... On the other hand, there is the sacramental-ontological conception, which of course does not negate the service character of the priesthood, but sees it anchored to the being of the minister and which believes that this being has been determined by a gift granted by the Lord through the mediation of the Church, a gift called sacrament" (J. Ratzinger, Ministry and Life of the Priest). This latter, sacramental-ontological conception, is linked to the primacy of the Eucharistic sacrifice, the other, social-functional conception, to the primacy of the word and of proclamation of the Gospel.
Pope Benedict stresses that the apparent tension between the two conceptions of priesthood can be resolved internally. As the Vatican II decree Presbyterorum ordinis asserts: "It is through the apostolic proclamation of the Gospel that the people of God are called together and assembled so that all ... can offer themselves as 'a sacrifice, living, holy, pleasing to God' (Romans 12,1). And it is by the ministry of the priest that the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful is made perfect in union with the sacrifice of Christ, the one and only mediator."
What does this primacy of proclamation actually mean for the priest? Jesus spoke of the proclamation of the Kingdom of God as the true object of his coming into the world, and his proclamation did not just consist of words. It included at the same time his actions: the signs and miracles that he performed indicate that the Kingdom is coming into the world as a present reality, a reality which ultimately coincides with his own person. In this sense it is proper to recall that also in the primacy of the proclamation, word and sign are indivisible. Christian preaching does not proclaim 'words' but the Word, and the proclamation coincides with the very person of Christ, ontologically open to the relationship with the Father and obedient to his will. Therefore, an authentic service to the Word asks from the priest that he aspire to a profound self-abnegation, to the point where he can say with the Apostle: "it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." The presbyter cannot consider himself proprietor ('padrone' in Italian) of the word, but its servant. He is not the word, but, as John the Baptist declared, he is the 'voice' of the Word: "the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths."
Now to be the voice of the Word does not constitute for the priest a mere functional aspect. It presupposes a substantial 'losing of oneself' in Christ, participating in the mystery of his death and resurrection with the whole of his being: intelligence, freedom, will, and the offering of his own body as a living sacrifice. Only the participation in the sacrifice of Christ, his kenosis, makes the proclamation authentic. And this is the path that he must follow with Christ to arrive at the point where he can say to the Father along with Him: "may it be done, not as I will, but as You will." The proclamation, then, always implies the sacrifice of self, the condition that makes the proclamation authentic and efficacious.
An alter Christus, the priest is profoundly united to the Word of the Father, Who took the form of a slave. The priest is a slave of Christ, in the sense that his existence, ontologically configured to Christ, assumes a character that is essentially relational: he is in Christ, for Christ, and with Christ in the service of humanity. Exactly because he belongs to Christ, the priest is radically at the service of his brothers and sisters and the minister of their salvation, their happiness, their authentic liberation.
The saintly Cure of Ars often used to repeat with tears in his eyes: "What a fearful thing it is to be a priest!" And he would add: "How greatly to be pitied is a priest when he celebrates the Mass as if it were something ordinary! How unfortunate is a priest without an interior life!" Let us pray for all priests, that they totally identify themselves with Christ crucified and resurrected, and that they, like John the Baptist, may always be ready to "decrease" so that He might increase; that, following the example of the Cure of Ars, they might be constantly, profoundly conscious of the responsibility of their mission, sign and presence of the infinite mercy of God.
Last Friday, June 19, the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the day traditionally dedicated to prayers for the sanctification of priests, Pope Benedict inaugurated the Year for Priests, in association with the 150th anniversary of the death of St. John Baptist Marie Vianney. As a first symbolic act for this year dedicated to priests, the pope, entering the Vatican Basilica for Vespers, stopped in the Chapel of the Heart to venerate the relic kept there, the heart of St. John Vianney.
Divine Providence has brought together the two figures of St. Paul, whose year has just ended, and St. John Vianney. The lives of these two great saints were very different: Paul made a number of extraordinary missionary voyages to spread the Gospel, while St. John Vianney, a humble parish priest, received thousands upon thousands of the faithful without every leaving his small village. What fundamentally unites them is the total identification of each with his own ministry, with that communion with Christ that caused Paul to say: "I have been crucified with Christ. Now it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2,20). And St. John Marie Vianney loved to repeat: "If we had faith, we would see God hidden in the priest like a light behind glass, like wine mixed with water." One of Pope Benedict's aims in declaring this "Year for Priests" is "to help priests, and with them the entire people of God, to rediscover and reinvigorate an awareness of the extraordinary and indispensable gift of grace that the ordained ministry represents for the one who has received it, for the whole Church, and for the world, which without the real presence of Christ would be lost."
There is no doubt that historical and social conditions have changed since the time when St. John Vianney carried out his work. The sense of the sacred dimension of life is being lost more and more in our time, replaced by an idea of "functionality". Even in the thought of theologians, pastors, and those responsible for the formation of seminarians this occurs, as two conceptions of priesthood confront, even oppose each other. "On the one hand, there is a social-functional view that defines the essence of priesthood as "service", service to the community through the fulfillment of a specific function.... On the other hand, there is the sacramental-ontological conception, which of course does not negate the service character of the priesthood, but sees it anchored to the being of the minister and which believes that this being has been determined by a gift granted by the Lord through the mediation of the Church, a gift called sacrament" (J. Ratzinger, Ministry and Life of the Priest). This latter, sacramental-ontological conception, is linked to the primacy of the Eucharistic sacrifice, the other, social-functional conception, to the primacy of the word and of proclamation of the Gospel.
Pope Benedict stresses that the apparent tension between the two conceptions of priesthood can be resolved internally. As the Vatican II decree Presbyterorum ordinis asserts: "It is through the apostolic proclamation of the Gospel that the people of God are called together and assembled so that all ... can offer themselves as 'a sacrifice, living, holy, pleasing to God' (Romans 12,1). And it is by the ministry of the priest that the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful is made perfect in union with the sacrifice of Christ, the one and only mediator."
What does this primacy of proclamation actually mean for the priest? Jesus spoke of the proclamation of the Kingdom of God as the true object of his coming into the world, and his proclamation did not just consist of words. It included at the same time his actions: the signs and miracles that he performed indicate that the Kingdom is coming into the world as a present reality, a reality which ultimately coincides with his own person. In this sense it is proper to recall that also in the primacy of the proclamation, word and sign are indivisible. Christian preaching does not proclaim 'words' but the Word, and the proclamation coincides with the very person of Christ, ontologically open to the relationship with the Father and obedient to his will. Therefore, an authentic service to the Word asks from the priest that he aspire to a profound self-abnegation, to the point where he can say with the Apostle: "it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." The presbyter cannot consider himself proprietor ('padrone' in Italian) of the word, but its servant. He is not the word, but, as John the Baptist declared, he is the 'voice' of the Word: "the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths."
Now to be the voice of the Word does not constitute for the priest a mere functional aspect. It presupposes a substantial 'losing of oneself' in Christ, participating in the mystery of his death and resurrection with the whole of his being: intelligence, freedom, will, and the offering of his own body as a living sacrifice. Only the participation in the sacrifice of Christ, his kenosis, makes the proclamation authentic. And this is the path that he must follow with Christ to arrive at the point where he can say to the Father along with Him: "may it be done, not as I will, but as You will." The proclamation, then, always implies the sacrifice of self, the condition that makes the proclamation authentic and efficacious.
An alter Christus, the priest is profoundly united to the Word of the Father, Who took the form of a slave. The priest is a slave of Christ, in the sense that his existence, ontologically configured to Christ, assumes a character that is essentially relational: he is in Christ, for Christ, and with Christ in the service of humanity. Exactly because he belongs to Christ, the priest is radically at the service of his brothers and sisters and the minister of their salvation, their happiness, their authentic liberation.
The saintly Cure of Ars often used to repeat with tears in his eyes: "What a fearful thing it is to be a priest!" And he would add: "How greatly to be pitied is a priest when he celebrates the Mass as if it were something ordinary! How unfortunate is a priest without an interior life!" Let us pray for all priests, that they totally identify themselves with Christ crucified and resurrected, and that they, like John the Baptist, may always be ready to "decrease" so that He might increase; that, following the example of the Cure of Ars, they might be constantly, profoundly conscious of the responsibility of their mission, sign and presence of the infinite mercy of God.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Dialogues of the Carmelites 3: Blanche and the Prioress
...
Prioress: Whenever you like … But will you answer me now if I ask you what idea you have about the first obligation of a Carmelite?
Blanche: It is to conquer one’s nature.
Prioress: Very good. To conquer and not to force, the distinction is important. When one tries to force nature, one only succeeds in losing what is natural, and what God demands of his daughters is not to play act every day for His Majesty, but to serve him. A good servant is always where she ought to be, and never makes herself conspicuous.
Blanche: I only ask to pass unnoticed …
Prioress: Smiling, with a hint of irony.
Alas, one only reaches that stage after a long time, and to desire it too strongly in the beginning does not make it any easier to obtain … You are of a noble family, my daughter, and we do not demand that you forget that. Just because you have renounced its advantages, you ought not to think you can escape all the obligations that such a birth imposes, and they will seem to you, here, heavier than elsewhere.
Blanche makes a gesture of dismissal.
Oh, yes, you burn to take the last place. Distrust that feeling, my child … In wishing to descend too much one risks exceeding the measure. In humility as in everything, excess engenders pride, and that sort of pride is a thousand times more subtle and dangerous than that of the world, which is more often than not mere vainglory …
A silence.
What drives you to the Carmelites?
Blanche: Does Your Reverence order me to speak with complete frankness?
Prioress: Yes.
Blanche: Well, then, the attraction of a heroic life.
Prioress: The attraction of a heroic life, or that of a certain manner of living that appears to you – quite wrongly – to make heroism easier, to put it so to speak within arm’s reach?
Blanche: Reverend Mother, excuse me, I have never made calculations of that sort.
Prioress: The most dangerous calculations we make are those which we call illusions …
Blanche: I may well have illusions. I would ask nothing better than that I be stripped of them.
Prioress: That you be stripped of them … (she repeats the words slowly, with emphasis).
You will have to take charge of that yourself, my daughter. Everyone here already has their hands full with their own illusions. Do not imagine that the first duty of our way of life is to come to one another’s aid so as to make ourselves more agreeable to the divine Majesty, like those young people who share their powder and rouge before appearing at the ball. Our business is to pray, just as the business of a lamp is to give light. It does not come into anyone’s head to light a lamp in order to illuminate another lamp. “Every man for himself”; such is the law of the world, and ours resembles it a little: “Everyone for God!” Poor little thing! You have dreamed of this house like a timid child whom the servants have just put to bed dreams in her dark room of the salon with its light and warmth. You know nothing of the solitude to which a true religious is exposed to live and to die. For one finds a certain number of true religious, but much more often mediocre and lukewarm ones. Come, come! Here as elsewhere, evil remains evil, and the fact that it has been made from pure milk does not make cream that has turned any less nauseating than rotten meat … Oh, my child, it is not in keeping with the Carmelite spirit to grow soft and emotional, but I am old and sick, here I am very near my end, so I can well afford to be emotional on your account … Great trials await you, my daughter…
Blanche: What does it matter, if God gives me strength?
Prioress: What He wants to put to the trial in you is not your strength, but your weakness …
Silence.
The scandals of the world have one good thing about them, that they revolt souls like yours. Those that you will find here will disappoint you. All in all, my daughter, the state of a mediocre nun seems to me more deplorable than that of a brigand. The brigand can convert, and that would be for him like a second birth. The mediocre nun, though, she cannot still be born, she already has been, she has missed her birth, and except for a miracle, she will always remain an abortion …
Blanche: Oh, Mother, I would not wish to see anything but good here …
Prioress: Whoever voluntarily blinds herself to the faults of her neighbor, under the pretext of charity, often does nothing other than break the mirror so as not to have to see herself in it. For the infirmity of our nature demands that we discover first of all in others our own wretchedness. Take care that you do not let yourself be overcome by some sort of naïve benevolence which makes the heart soft and the spirit false.
Silence.
My daughter, people wonder what good we serve, and after all they can well be excused for wondering. We believe that, thanks to our austerities, we bring them proof that one can perfectly well do without the things they think indispensable. But for the example to have any meaning, they must still be sure that when all is said and done, these things are as indispensable to us as they are to them …
No, my daughter, we are not in the business of mortification, nor are we conservatories of virtue. We are houses of prayer, prayer alone justifies our existence, whoever does not believe in prayer can only consider us imposters or parasites. If we were to say this openly to unbelievers, we would make ourselves better understood. Are they not forced to recognize that belief in God is a universal fact? Is it not a very strange contradiction that humanity as a whole can believe in God, and yet pray to Him so little and so badly? They scarcely give him the honor of fearing Him. If belief in God is universal, should not prayer be just as universal? Well, my daughter, God has wished that it should be so, not by making prayer, dependent as it is on our free choice, a need as imperious as hunger or thirst, but by permitting that we are able to pray for others, ourselves in the place of others. So every prayer, be it that of a little shepherd boy who watches over his flocks, is the prayer of all mankind.
Short silence.
What the little shepherd does from time to time, at the prompting of his heart, we must do night and day. Not by any means that we hope to pray better than he does, not at all. That simplicity of soul, that tender abandonment to the divine Majesty that is for him an inspiration of the moment, a grace, and like an illumination of the spirit, we consecrate our life to acquiring, or to recovering if we had experienced it before, for it is a gift of childhood which more often than not does not survive childhood. Once childhood has been left behind, one has to suffer a long time to return to it, as at the very end of the night one finds again another dawn. Have I become a child again?
Prioress: Whenever you like … But will you answer me now if I ask you what idea you have about the first obligation of a Carmelite?
Blanche: It is to conquer one’s nature.
Prioress: Very good. To conquer and not to force, the distinction is important. When one tries to force nature, one only succeeds in losing what is natural, and what God demands of his daughters is not to play act every day for His Majesty, but to serve him. A good servant is always where she ought to be, and never makes herself conspicuous.
Blanche: I only ask to pass unnoticed …
Prioress: Smiling, with a hint of irony.
Alas, one only reaches that stage after a long time, and to desire it too strongly in the beginning does not make it any easier to obtain … You are of a noble family, my daughter, and we do not demand that you forget that. Just because you have renounced its advantages, you ought not to think you can escape all the obligations that such a birth imposes, and they will seem to you, here, heavier than elsewhere.
Blanche makes a gesture of dismissal.
Oh, yes, you burn to take the last place. Distrust that feeling, my child … In wishing to descend too much one risks exceeding the measure. In humility as in everything, excess engenders pride, and that sort of pride is a thousand times more subtle and dangerous than that of the world, which is more often than not mere vainglory …
A silence.
What drives you to the Carmelites?
Blanche: Does Your Reverence order me to speak with complete frankness?
Prioress: Yes.
Blanche: Well, then, the attraction of a heroic life.
Prioress: The attraction of a heroic life, or that of a certain manner of living that appears to you – quite wrongly – to make heroism easier, to put it so to speak within arm’s reach?
Blanche: Reverend Mother, excuse me, I have never made calculations of that sort.
Prioress: The most dangerous calculations we make are those which we call illusions …
Blanche: I may well have illusions. I would ask nothing better than that I be stripped of them.
Prioress: That you be stripped of them … (she repeats the words slowly, with emphasis).
You will have to take charge of that yourself, my daughter. Everyone here already has their hands full with their own illusions. Do not imagine that the first duty of our way of life is to come to one another’s aid so as to make ourselves more agreeable to the divine Majesty, like those young people who share their powder and rouge before appearing at the ball. Our business is to pray, just as the business of a lamp is to give light. It does not come into anyone’s head to light a lamp in order to illuminate another lamp. “Every man for himself”; such is the law of the world, and ours resembles it a little: “Everyone for God!” Poor little thing! You have dreamed of this house like a timid child whom the servants have just put to bed dreams in her dark room of the salon with its light and warmth. You know nothing of the solitude to which a true religious is exposed to live and to die. For one finds a certain number of true religious, but much more often mediocre and lukewarm ones. Come, come! Here as elsewhere, evil remains evil, and the fact that it has been made from pure milk does not make cream that has turned any less nauseating than rotten meat … Oh, my child, it is not in keeping with the Carmelite spirit to grow soft and emotional, but I am old and sick, here I am very near my end, so I can well afford to be emotional on your account … Great trials await you, my daughter…
Blanche: What does it matter, if God gives me strength?
Prioress: What He wants to put to the trial in you is not your strength, but your weakness …
Silence.
The scandals of the world have one good thing about them, that they revolt souls like yours. Those that you will find here will disappoint you. All in all, my daughter, the state of a mediocre nun seems to me more deplorable than that of a brigand. The brigand can convert, and that would be for him like a second birth. The mediocre nun, though, she cannot still be born, she already has been, she has missed her birth, and except for a miracle, she will always remain an abortion …
Blanche: Oh, Mother, I would not wish to see anything but good here …
Prioress: Whoever voluntarily blinds herself to the faults of her neighbor, under the pretext of charity, often does nothing other than break the mirror so as not to have to see herself in it. For the infirmity of our nature demands that we discover first of all in others our own wretchedness. Take care that you do not let yourself be overcome by some sort of naïve benevolence which makes the heart soft and the spirit false.
Silence.
My daughter, people wonder what good we serve, and after all they can well be excused for wondering. We believe that, thanks to our austerities, we bring them proof that one can perfectly well do without the things they think indispensable. But for the example to have any meaning, they must still be sure that when all is said and done, these things are as indispensable to us as they are to them …
No, my daughter, we are not in the business of mortification, nor are we conservatories of virtue. We are houses of prayer, prayer alone justifies our existence, whoever does not believe in prayer can only consider us imposters or parasites. If we were to say this openly to unbelievers, we would make ourselves better understood. Are they not forced to recognize that belief in God is a universal fact? Is it not a very strange contradiction that humanity as a whole can believe in God, and yet pray to Him so little and so badly? They scarcely give him the honor of fearing Him. If belief in God is universal, should not prayer be just as universal? Well, my daughter, God has wished that it should be so, not by making prayer, dependent as it is on our free choice, a need as imperious as hunger or thirst, but by permitting that we are able to pray for others, ourselves in the place of others. So every prayer, be it that of a little shepherd boy who watches over his flocks, is the prayer of all mankind.
Short silence.
What the little shepherd does from time to time, at the prompting of his heart, we must do night and day. Not by any means that we hope to pray better than he does, not at all. That simplicity of soul, that tender abandonment to the divine Majesty that is for him an inspiration of the moment, a grace, and like an illumination of the spirit, we consecrate our life to acquiring, or to recovering if we had experienced it before, for it is a gift of childhood which more often than not does not survive childhood. Once childhood has been left behind, one has to suffer a long time to return to it, as at the very end of the night one finds again another dawn. Have I become a child again?
Monday, June 22, 2009
Saints Cyril and Methodius
(This is from the Pope's General Audience, given Wednesday, June 17.)
Cyril and Methodius were brothers by blood as well as in faith. They have been called the "apostles to the Slavs". Cyril was the youngest of seven children, born to an imperial magistrate in Thessalonica in 826/827. He learned the Slavic language while still a boy. At the age of fourteen he was sent to Constantinople to be educated and to serve as a companion for the young emperor Michael III. Later, having decided against marriage, though a brilliant one had been arranged, he received holy orders and became librarian for the Patriarch of Constantinople. A little later, his desire for solitude led him to embrace the monastic life, but, his intellectual gifts being in demand, he was not allowed such repose, and was called to teach subjects both religious and secular. He fulfilled this task so well that he became known as "the philosopher". At about the same time his brother Michael (born around 815), after serving as an administrator in Macedonia, retired to a monastery on Mount Olympus in Bithynia. He took the name of Methodius (the monastic name had to begin with the same letter as the baptismal name).
Attracted by the example of his brother, Cyril withdrew to the same monastery to meditate and pray, abandoning his life as a teacher. But a few years later (around 861) Cyril was entrusted by the imperial government with a mission to the Khazari who lived around the Azov Sea. They had requested that a learned man be sent to them who could debate with the Hebrews and Saracens. Cyril, accompanied by his brother, went to Crimea and remained there a long time. While there, he learned Hebrew. He also sought out and found the tomb of Pope Clement I, who had died in exile there. When the time came for their return to the empire, they carried with them his precious relics. After they reached Constantinople, the two brothers were sent off once again, this time to Moravia by the Emperor Michael III. The Moravian prince Ratislao had directed a very specific request to him: "From the time when we first repudiated paganism, our people have observed the Christian law, but we do not have a teacher who is able to explain the true faith to us in our own language." The mission would soon prove to be a tremendous success. By translating the liturgy into the Slavic language, the two brothers would gain the confidence and affection of the people.
This, however, stirred up hostility among the Frankish clergy, who had arrived there earlier and considered the territory as under their own ecclesial jurisdiction. To argue the case, the two brothers were summoned to Rome in 867. Stopping in Venice, they became embroiled in a dispute with those who held the "three languages" heresy, as it came to be known. These people held that the only languages appropriate for the praise of God were Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. The brothers, of course, had a different view, which they vigorously defended. When they arrived at Rome, Pope Adrian II met them in a formal procession to receive with appropriate dignity and decorum the remains of Pope Clement. The Pope was well aware of the great importance of the brothers' mission. Tensions were already developing between the two halves of the Roman Empire, the western and the eastern, and the Pope envisaged the Slavs, who were very numerous in the territories in between, as a kind of bridge between the two, maintaining the unity of the Christians living on either side. Consequently he did not hesitate to affirm the mission of the two brothers to Moravia, accepting and approving the usage of the Slavic language in the liturgy. The liturgy in Slavic was celebrated in the Basilicas of St. Peter, St. Andrew, and St. Paul.
But while in Rome, Cyril became gravely ill. Sensing the near approach of death, he wanted to consecrate his remaining time to prayer in one of the Greek monasteries in the city (probably at Santa Prassede), where he assumed the monastic name of Cyril (his baptismal name was Constantine). He pleaded with his brother, who had since become a bishop, not to abandon the mission to the Moravians, and to return to that people. Cyril turned to God with this prayer: "Lord my God ... hear my prayer and watch over your faithful flock which you had entrusted to my care ... free them from the heresy of the three languages, gather all into unity and grant to the people you have chosen concord in the true faith and the right confession." He died on February 14, 869.
Faithful to the task imposed on him by his brother, Methodius returned to Moravia the following year (870) and also went on to Pannonia (now Hungary). Here once again he met with a hostile reception from the Frankish clergy, who imprisoned him. Even so, he did not lose heart, and when he was liberated in 873 he devoted himself with great zeal to the organization of the church, seeing to the formation of a group of disciples. It was owing to these disciples that the crisis that burst out following the death of Methodius on April 6, 885 was overcome: imprisoned, some of them were sold as slaves and were brought to Venice, where they were ransomed by an official from Constantinople, who allowed them to return to the lands of the Balkan Slavs. Received in Bulgaria, they were able to continue the mission started by Methodius, spreading the Gospel into the "land of Rus'". God in His mysterious providence had thus availed Himself of their persecution to preserve the work of the sainted brothers.
Cyril was passionate about the writings of St. Gregory Nazianzus, having learned from him the importance of language in the transmission of the Gospel. He introduced his own work of translation with the following solemn invocation: "Listen, all you Slavic peoples, listen to the word that comes from God, the word that nourishes souls, the word that leads to the knowledge of God." In fact, already some years before the request came from the prince of Moravia for a mission to his land, Cyril and his brother Methodius had been actively engaged, together with a group of disciples, in the project of gathering Christian dogmas into books written in Slavic. At that time the need was clearly seen for new written symbols, more closely attuned to the spoken language: thus was born the glagolitic alphabet [l'alfabeto glagolitico], which after modification, became known as the "Cyrilic" alphabet in honor of the one who inspired it. This was a decisive event in the development of Slavic civilization in general. Cyril and Methodius were convinced that a people could not believe they had fully received divine revelation unless they heard it in their own tongue and read it in their own alphabet.
Pope Pius XI, in his apostolic letter Quod Sanctum Cyrillum, said of the two brothers that they were "sons of the East, Byzantines according to their homeland, Greeks by birth, Romans by their mission, Slavs by their apostolic fruit". Their historic role was next officially proclaimed by Pope John Paul II in the apostolic letter Egregiae virtutis viri, where he called them co-patron saints of Europe together with St. Benedict.
Cyril and Methodius were brothers by blood as well as in faith. They have been called the "apostles to the Slavs". Cyril was the youngest of seven children, born to an imperial magistrate in Thessalonica in 826/827. He learned the Slavic language while still a boy. At the age of fourteen he was sent to Constantinople to be educated and to serve as a companion for the young emperor Michael III. Later, having decided against marriage, though a brilliant one had been arranged, he received holy orders and became librarian for the Patriarch of Constantinople. A little later, his desire for solitude led him to embrace the monastic life, but, his intellectual gifts being in demand, he was not allowed such repose, and was called to teach subjects both religious and secular. He fulfilled this task so well that he became known as "the philosopher". At about the same time his brother Michael (born around 815), after serving as an administrator in Macedonia, retired to a monastery on Mount Olympus in Bithynia. He took the name of Methodius (the monastic name had to begin with the same letter as the baptismal name).
Attracted by the example of his brother, Cyril withdrew to the same monastery to meditate and pray, abandoning his life as a teacher. But a few years later (around 861) Cyril was entrusted by the imperial government with a mission to the Khazari who lived around the Azov Sea. They had requested that a learned man be sent to them who could debate with the Hebrews and Saracens. Cyril, accompanied by his brother, went to Crimea and remained there a long time. While there, he learned Hebrew. He also sought out and found the tomb of Pope Clement I, who had died in exile there. When the time came for their return to the empire, they carried with them his precious relics. After they reached Constantinople, the two brothers were sent off once again, this time to Moravia by the Emperor Michael III. The Moravian prince Ratislao had directed a very specific request to him: "From the time when we first repudiated paganism, our people have observed the Christian law, but we do not have a teacher who is able to explain the true faith to us in our own language." The mission would soon prove to be a tremendous success. By translating the liturgy into the Slavic language, the two brothers would gain the confidence and affection of the people.
This, however, stirred up hostility among the Frankish clergy, who had arrived there earlier and considered the territory as under their own ecclesial jurisdiction. To argue the case, the two brothers were summoned to Rome in 867. Stopping in Venice, they became embroiled in a dispute with those who held the "three languages" heresy, as it came to be known. These people held that the only languages appropriate for the praise of God were Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. The brothers, of course, had a different view, which they vigorously defended. When they arrived at Rome, Pope Adrian II met them in a formal procession to receive with appropriate dignity and decorum the remains of Pope Clement. The Pope was well aware of the great importance of the brothers' mission. Tensions were already developing between the two halves of the Roman Empire, the western and the eastern, and the Pope envisaged the Slavs, who were very numerous in the territories in between, as a kind of bridge between the two, maintaining the unity of the Christians living on either side. Consequently he did not hesitate to affirm the mission of the two brothers to Moravia, accepting and approving the usage of the Slavic language in the liturgy. The liturgy in Slavic was celebrated in the Basilicas of St. Peter, St. Andrew, and St. Paul.
But while in Rome, Cyril became gravely ill. Sensing the near approach of death, he wanted to consecrate his remaining time to prayer in one of the Greek monasteries in the city (probably at Santa Prassede), where he assumed the monastic name of Cyril (his baptismal name was Constantine). He pleaded with his brother, who had since become a bishop, not to abandon the mission to the Moravians, and to return to that people. Cyril turned to God with this prayer: "Lord my God ... hear my prayer and watch over your faithful flock which you had entrusted to my care ... free them from the heresy of the three languages, gather all into unity and grant to the people you have chosen concord in the true faith and the right confession." He died on February 14, 869.
Faithful to the task imposed on him by his brother, Methodius returned to Moravia the following year (870) and also went on to Pannonia (now Hungary). Here once again he met with a hostile reception from the Frankish clergy, who imprisoned him. Even so, he did not lose heart, and when he was liberated in 873 he devoted himself with great zeal to the organization of the church, seeing to the formation of a group of disciples. It was owing to these disciples that the crisis that burst out following the death of Methodius on April 6, 885 was overcome: imprisoned, some of them were sold as slaves and were brought to Venice, where they were ransomed by an official from Constantinople, who allowed them to return to the lands of the Balkan Slavs. Received in Bulgaria, they were able to continue the mission started by Methodius, spreading the Gospel into the "land of Rus'". God in His mysterious providence had thus availed Himself of their persecution to preserve the work of the sainted brothers.
Cyril was passionate about the writings of St. Gregory Nazianzus, having learned from him the importance of language in the transmission of the Gospel. He introduced his own work of translation with the following solemn invocation: "Listen, all you Slavic peoples, listen to the word that comes from God, the word that nourishes souls, the word that leads to the knowledge of God." In fact, already some years before the request came from the prince of Moravia for a mission to his land, Cyril and his brother Methodius had been actively engaged, together with a group of disciples, in the project of gathering Christian dogmas into books written in Slavic. At that time the need was clearly seen for new written symbols, more closely attuned to the spoken language: thus was born the glagolitic alphabet [l'alfabeto glagolitico], which after modification, became known as the "Cyrilic" alphabet in honor of the one who inspired it. This was a decisive event in the development of Slavic civilization in general. Cyril and Methodius were convinced that a people could not believe they had fully received divine revelation unless they heard it in their own tongue and read it in their own alphabet.
Pope Pius XI, in his apostolic letter Quod Sanctum Cyrillum, said of the two brothers that they were "sons of the East, Byzantines according to their homeland, Greeks by birth, Romans by their mission, Slavs by their apostolic fruit". Their historic role was next officially proclaimed by Pope John Paul II in the apostolic letter Egregiae virtutis viri, where he called them co-patron saints of Europe together with St. Benedict.
Friday, June 19, 2009
And all shall be well ...
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
-T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding (from The Four Quartets)
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
-T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding (from The Four Quartets)
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Silence, Mystery, the Mass
The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply: Create silence! Bring men to silence. The Word of God cannot be heard in the noisy world of today. And even if it were blazoned forth with all the panoply of noise so that it could be heard in the midst of all the other noise, then it would no longer be the Word of God. Therefore create silence.
-Kierkegaard
A friend I've never met sent me a worderful gift -- Max Picard's book The World of Silence (Thanks, Rachel!) The writing is poetic in places, more or less aphoristic throughout, and I don't know what to make of some of it. It's the kind of writing that needs to be pondered, prayed over, digested slowly. The above quote from Kierkegaard closes the book. Picard has profound things to say, things that we all need to hear today. Here are some of his thoughts on prayer:
"God became man for the sake of man. This event is so utterly extraordinary and so much against the experience of reason and against everything the eye has seen, that man is not able to make response to it in words. A layer of silence lies between this event and man, and in this silence man approaches the silence that surrounds God Himself. Man and the mystery first meet in the silence, but the word that comes out of this silence is original, as the first word before it had ever spoken anything. That is why it is able to speak of the mystery.
"It is a sign of the love of God that a mystery is always separated from man by a layer of silence. And that is a reminder that man should also keep a silence in which to approach the mystery. Today, when there is only noise in and around man, it is difficult to approach the mystery. When the layer of silence is missing, the extraordinary easily becomes connected with the ordinary, with the routine of things, and man reduces the extraordinary to a mere part of the ordinary, a mere part of the mechanical routine.
... Prayer is the pouring of the word into silence. ... In prayer the region of the lower, human silence comes into relation with the higher silence of God; the lower rests in the higher. In prayer the word and therefore man is in the center between two regions of silence. In prayer man is held between these two regions.
"Elsewhere, outside prayer, the silence of man is fulfilled and receives its meaning in speech. But in prayer it receives its meaning and fulfillment in the meeting with the silence of God.
"Elsewhere, outside prayer, the silence in man serves the word in man. But now, in prayer, the word serves the silence in man: the word leads the human silence to the silence of God."
Part of the problem with the Novus Ordo, at least as it is most often celebrated, is that silence does not have sufficient space. And, as Picard says, one can only approach a mystery as awesome as the Eucharist in silence. Part of the attraction of the old Latin mass is that it makes abundant room for this necessary silence. It does what Kierkegaard suggests as a remedy for the world's ills: it creates silence. But a lot of people today, confronted with silence, are at a loss as to what to do. Silence bores them, perhaps even frightens them. This is a sad state of affairs. To paraphrase Kierkegaard, if I were a parish priest, I would try to instill in my congregation a love for silence. There is more than enough noise in the world outside. Let there be silence in Church.
-Kierkegaard
A friend I've never met sent me a worderful gift -- Max Picard's book The World of Silence (Thanks, Rachel!) The writing is poetic in places, more or less aphoristic throughout, and I don't know what to make of some of it. It's the kind of writing that needs to be pondered, prayed over, digested slowly. The above quote from Kierkegaard closes the book. Picard has profound things to say, things that we all need to hear today. Here are some of his thoughts on prayer:
"God became man for the sake of man. This event is so utterly extraordinary and so much against the experience of reason and against everything the eye has seen, that man is not able to make response to it in words. A layer of silence lies between this event and man, and in this silence man approaches the silence that surrounds God Himself. Man and the mystery first meet in the silence, but the word that comes out of this silence is original, as the first word before it had ever spoken anything. That is why it is able to speak of the mystery.
"It is a sign of the love of God that a mystery is always separated from man by a layer of silence. And that is a reminder that man should also keep a silence in which to approach the mystery. Today, when there is only noise in and around man, it is difficult to approach the mystery. When the layer of silence is missing, the extraordinary easily becomes connected with the ordinary, with the routine of things, and man reduces the extraordinary to a mere part of the ordinary, a mere part of the mechanical routine.
... Prayer is the pouring of the word into silence. ... In prayer the region of the lower, human silence comes into relation with the higher silence of God; the lower rests in the higher. In prayer the word and therefore man is in the center between two regions of silence. In prayer man is held between these two regions.
"Elsewhere, outside prayer, the silence of man is fulfilled and receives its meaning in speech. But in prayer it receives its meaning and fulfillment in the meeting with the silence of God.
"Elsewhere, outside prayer, the silence in man serves the word in man. But now, in prayer, the word serves the silence in man: the word leads the human silence to the silence of God."
Part of the problem with the Novus Ordo, at least as it is most often celebrated, is that silence does not have sufficient space. And, as Picard says, one can only approach a mystery as awesome as the Eucharist in silence. Part of the attraction of the old Latin mass is that it makes abundant room for this necessary silence. It does what Kierkegaard suggests as a remedy for the world's ills: it creates silence. But a lot of people today, confronted with silence, are at a loss as to what to do. Silence bores them, perhaps even frightens them. This is a sad state of affairs. To paraphrase Kierkegaard, if I were a parish priest, I would try to instill in my congregation a love for silence. There is more than enough noise in the world outside. Let there be silence in Church.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Dialogues of the Carmelites 2: How Sister Constance Prepares for Death
In the garden, some of the religious are harvesting. Constance is sitting in a tree eating the fruit.
S. Matilda: Anxiety has not made you lose your appetite, Sister Constance. But at that rate, I’ll never fill my basket.
S. Constance: What need do we have for all these provisions? Perhaps we’ll all be dead before this fruit can spoil.
S. Matilda: And suppose we don’t die at all? I don’t have such a great desire to die, Sister Constance.
S. Constance: Oh! I don’t either! But if we put our lives in God’s hands, to decide whether or not we will die, what good is it to worry about what we will eat? We will never have a better opportunity for a bit of gluttony!
S. Matilda: Now there’s a strange way of preparing for martyrdom!
S. Constance: Oh! Pardon me, Sister Matilda. In chapel, at work, and in the great silence, I can very well prepare in another manner. This manner here is the way of recreation. Why shouldn’t both ways be good? And besides, at the end of the day, the office of martyrs is not to eat, but to be eaten.
S. Matilda: Anxiety has not made you lose your appetite, Sister Constance. But at that rate, I’ll never fill my basket.
S. Constance: What need do we have for all these provisions? Perhaps we’ll all be dead before this fruit can spoil.
S. Matilda: And suppose we don’t die at all? I don’t have such a great desire to die, Sister Constance.
S. Constance: Oh! I don’t either! But if we put our lives in God’s hands, to decide whether or not we will die, what good is it to worry about what we will eat? We will never have a better opportunity for a bit of gluttony!
S. Matilda: Now there’s a strange way of preparing for martyrdom!
S. Constance: Oh! Pardon me, Sister Matilda. In chapel, at work, and in the great silence, I can very well prepare in another manner. This manner here is the way of recreation. Why shouldn’t both ways be good? And besides, at the end of the day, the office of martyrs is not to eat, but to be eaten.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Ars moriendi
Man dies only once in his life, and as he lacks experience of the event, he bungles it. So that he may die successfully, he must learn how to die by following the instruction of experienced men who know what it means to die in the midst of life. Asceticism gives us this experience of death. (Florensky)
I've been thinking a lot about death lately. Several reasons for this, some of them personal. No need to go into that. What prompts this posting is an article written a few days back at The Catholic Thing, "Fear of Death", by Virgil Nemoianu. Reading it, I recalled something I'd read a long while back in Daisetz Suzuki's book, Zen and Japanese Culture (I've referred to this book before; see my posting on the Samurai and the cat). Suzuki quotes a story from a work entitled Hagakure, which translates as "Hidden under the leaves":
Yagyu Tajima no kami Munenori was a great swordsman and teacher in the art to the Shogun of the time, Tokugawa Iyemitsu. One of the personal guards of the Shogun one day came to Tajima no kami wishing to be trained in swordplay. The master said, "As I observe, you seem to be a master of the art yourself; pray tell me to what school you belong, before we enter into the relationship of teacher and pupil."
The guardsman said, "I am ashamed to confess that I have never learned the art."
"Are you going to fool me? I am teacher to the honorable Shogun himself, and I know my judging eye never fails."
"I am sorry to defy your honor, but I really know nothing."
This resolute denial on the part of the visitor made the swordsmaster think for a while, and he finally said, "If you say so, that must be so; but still I am sure of your being master of something, though I know not just what."
"Yes, if you insist, I will tell you this. There is one thing of which I can say I am complete master. When I was still a boy, the thought came upon me that as a samurai I ought in no circumstances to be afraid of death, and ever since I have grappled with the problem of death now for some years, and finally the problem has entirely ceased to worry me. May this be what you hint at?"
"Exactly!", exclaimed Tajima no kami. "That is what I mean. I am glad I made no mistake in my judgment. For the ultimate secrets of swordsmanship also lie in being released from the thought of death. I have trained ever so many hundreds of my pupils along this line, but so far none of them really deserve the final certificate for swordsmanship. You need no technical training, you are already a master."
Of course it is natural to fear and hate death. But even the noble pagans knew that this was something that should be and can be overcome. Suetonius tells us that on the night before he died, Julius Caesar attended a dinner party where the topic under discussion was "what is the best sort of death" (Caesar is supposed to have said, prophetically as it turned out, "Let it come swiftly and unexpectedly"). I can't say that that subject has ever come up at any party I've been to recently. (But then again, I don't get out much!) Part of the reason we fear death so much is that we keep it at a distance, push it away, refuse to think about it. It may sound morbid, but it really is a salutary spiritual exercise to "grapple with the problem" every day. It is in the Rule of St. Benedict that a monk should keep death ever before his eyes. It might not be going too far even to befriend your own personal death. After all, Francis of Assisi called her his Sister. You don't hate and fear your sister.
There is a body of Christian literature, mostly Catholic I think, on the Ars Moriendi, the art of dying well. It arose initially in Medieval times in response to changing conditions brought on by the Black Death. Perhaps this art is something that should be revived. The texts all exort the Christian that the best preparation for a good death is a good life: "Christians should live in such wise ... that they may die safely, every hour, when God will" (cited in Comper, The Book of the Craft of Dying and Other Early English Tracts concerning Death, New York, Arno Press, 1977). Clearly, the preparation for death is not something that can be put off until we are afflicted with old age or serious illness. A consistent practice of memento mori, mindfulness of death, is a necessary part of a truly Christian "art of living".
(More on this topic in my next post.)
I've been thinking a lot about death lately. Several reasons for this, some of them personal. No need to go into that. What prompts this posting is an article written a few days back at The Catholic Thing, "Fear of Death", by Virgil Nemoianu. Reading it, I recalled something I'd read a long while back in Daisetz Suzuki's book, Zen and Japanese Culture (I've referred to this book before; see my posting on the Samurai and the cat). Suzuki quotes a story from a work entitled Hagakure, which translates as "Hidden under the leaves":
Yagyu Tajima no kami Munenori was a great swordsman and teacher in the art to the Shogun of the time, Tokugawa Iyemitsu. One of the personal guards of the Shogun one day came to Tajima no kami wishing to be trained in swordplay. The master said, "As I observe, you seem to be a master of the art yourself; pray tell me to what school you belong, before we enter into the relationship of teacher and pupil."
The guardsman said, "I am ashamed to confess that I have never learned the art."
"Are you going to fool me? I am teacher to the honorable Shogun himself, and I know my judging eye never fails."
"I am sorry to defy your honor, but I really know nothing."
This resolute denial on the part of the visitor made the swordsmaster think for a while, and he finally said, "If you say so, that must be so; but still I am sure of your being master of something, though I know not just what."
"Yes, if you insist, I will tell you this. There is one thing of which I can say I am complete master. When I was still a boy, the thought came upon me that as a samurai I ought in no circumstances to be afraid of death, and ever since I have grappled with the problem of death now for some years, and finally the problem has entirely ceased to worry me. May this be what you hint at?"
"Exactly!", exclaimed Tajima no kami. "That is what I mean. I am glad I made no mistake in my judgment. For the ultimate secrets of swordsmanship also lie in being released from the thought of death. I have trained ever so many hundreds of my pupils along this line, but so far none of them really deserve the final certificate for swordsmanship. You need no technical training, you are already a master."
Of course it is natural to fear and hate death. But even the noble pagans knew that this was something that should be and can be overcome. Suetonius tells us that on the night before he died, Julius Caesar attended a dinner party where the topic under discussion was "what is the best sort of death" (Caesar is supposed to have said, prophetically as it turned out, "Let it come swiftly and unexpectedly"). I can't say that that subject has ever come up at any party I've been to recently. (But then again, I don't get out much!) Part of the reason we fear death so much is that we keep it at a distance, push it away, refuse to think about it. It may sound morbid, but it really is a salutary spiritual exercise to "grapple with the problem" every day. It is in the Rule of St. Benedict that a monk should keep death ever before his eyes. It might not be going too far even to befriend your own personal death. After all, Francis of Assisi called her his Sister. You don't hate and fear your sister.
There is a body of Christian literature, mostly Catholic I think, on the Ars Moriendi, the art of dying well. It arose initially in Medieval times in response to changing conditions brought on by the Black Death. Perhaps this art is something that should be revived. The texts all exort the Christian that the best preparation for a good death is a good life: "Christians should live in such wise ... that they may die safely, every hour, when God will" (cited in Comper, The Book of the Craft of Dying and Other Early English Tracts concerning Death, New York, Arno Press, 1977). Clearly, the preparation for death is not something that can be put off until we are afflicted with old age or serious illness. A consistent practice of memento mori, mindfulness of death, is a necessary part of a truly Christian "art of living".
(More on this topic in my next post.)
Thursday, June 11, 2009
John Scotus Eriugena: Salus nostra ex fide inchoat
"What is philosophy but an expounding of the rules of religion whereby man humbly adores and rationally seeks God, the highest cause and the source of everything? (De predestinatione)
"No one enters heaven except through philosophy." (Annotationes in Martianum Capellam)
The Holy Father's general audience on Wednesday (June 10, 2009) was devoted to John Scotus Eriugena. Born in Ireland in the early years of the ninth century, he left his native land to join the French court of Charles the Bald, a center of cultural and intellectual life at the time. The date of his death is not known with certainty, but is thought to have been around 870.
Well-versed in both Greek and Latin, John had a particular interest in Maximus the Confessor and above all, in Dionysius the Areopagite. Throughout the Middle Ages, this author was identified with the disciple of Paul mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (17:34), but he is now known to have been a Syrian living and writing in the fifth century. His works were translated by John the Scot, and so were made accessible to later theologians like St. Bonaventure. Convinced of the apostolicity of his writings, John devoted his life to deepening and developing his thought, to such an extent that sometimes it is hard to distinguish where we are dealing with the ideas of Scotus Eriugena and where he is merely transmitting the reflections of the Pseudo-Dionysius.
The theological work of John Scotus did not escape the censure of ecclesial authorities, on account of a radical Platonism that sometimes seems to draw too near to pantheism, even if his intentions were always orthodox. Among his many works, the Pope singled out De divisione naturae ("On the divisions of nature") and De hierarchia caelestia ("An Exposition on the celestial hierarchy of St. Dionysius").
Our author says: "Salus nostra ex fide inchoat", our salvation begins with faith. We cannot speak about God proceeding from our own conceptions, but from what God says concerning Himself in Sacred Scripture. But, seeing as God speaks only the truth, Scotus Eriugena is convinced that scriptural authority and reason can never contradict each other; he is convinced that true religion and true philosophy coincide. From this perspective he writes: "Any sort of authority that is not confirmed by true reason should be considered weak... There is in fact no true authority that does not coincide with the truth discovered by the power of reason ... Let no authority intimidate you or distract you from what right reasoning and contemplation lead you to understand. In fact, authentic authority never contradicts right reason, nor does the latter ever contradict true authority. Both without any doubt stem from the same source, which is the divine wisdom." We have here a courageous affirmation of the power of reason, founded on the certainty that true authority is reasonable, because God is creative reason. Erigena's profound passion for truth is clearly evident, as it also is in a passage not mentioned by Pope Benedict, where he claims that at the last judgment the wicked will suffer the worst punishment possible -- ignorance of the truth.
John Scotus repeats a point made earlier by St. John Chrysostom, that Scripture itself, though coming from God, would not have been necessary if man had not sinned. We must therefore deduce that Scripture was given by God with a pedagogial intent and out of condescension, so that man would be able to recall all that had been impressed on his heart at the moment of his creation "in the image and likeness of God" and which original sin had made him forget. Eriugena writes in the Expositiones: "Man was not created for the Scriptures, of which he would have had no need if he had not sinned, but rather the Scriptures -- woven of doctrine and symbol -- were given for man. Thanks to them, our rational nature can be introduced into the depths of pure and authentic contemplation of God." The words of Sacred Scripture purify our reason, a reason that has been a little blinded, and help us return to the memory of what we, inasmuch as we are the image of God, carry in our hearts, wounded as it is by sin.
Certain hermeneutical consequences with respect to Scriptural interpretation follow from this, and still today they can point out the right path for a correct reading of Sacred Scripture. It is a matter of uncovering the sense hidden in the sacred text and this supposes a particular interior exercise by which reason opens itself up to the sure route towards the truth. This exercise consists of cultivating a constant disposition to conversion. In order to arrive at a view into the depths of the text it is necessary to progress simultaneously in conversion of the heart and in conceptual analysis of the words. In fact it is only from the constant purification both of the eyes of the heart and the eyes of the mind that we can attain an exact understanding.
This path leads the thinking being to the very threshold of the Divine Mystery, where all our notions acknowledge their own weakness and incapacity and oblige us for that reason, with the simple power, free and sweet, of truth to always go beyond everything that has been and is continually being acquired. The adoring and silent recognition of the Mystery, which leads into a communion that makes one, is thus revealed as the one road to a relationship with the truth that is at the same time the most intimate possible and the most scrupulously respectful of God's otherness. John Scotus, making use of a vocabulary dear to the Greek Christian tradition, has called this experience towards which we are tending "theosis" or divinization, with so ardent an affirmation that it is possible to suspect him of heterodox pantheism. It is hard to avoid that feeling when faced with texts like this: "Just as iron becomes red-hot and molten in the fire so as to give the appearance that there is only fire present, and yet the two substances remain distinct, one from the other, so also we must accept that at the end of this world all of nature, corporeal and incorporeal, will manifest only God and yet remain integral in such a manner that God can in some way be comprehended while remaining incomprehensible and creation itself will be transformed, with ineffable wonder, into God."
In reality, the whole of John's theological thought is more evidently the demonstration of an attempt to express in words the inexpressible truths of God, based solely on the mystery of the Word made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. All the metaphors he uses to indicate this ineffable reality shows how much he was aware of the absolute inadequacy of the terms we use in speaking of these things. And for all that there remains the charm and a certain atmosphere of authentic mystical experience that we can every so often reach out and touch in his writings. As proof of that, it is enough to cite a page from De divisione naturae which touches in the depths of our souls even we believers in the 21st century: "Nothing is to be desired", he writes, "other than the joy of the truth that is Christ, nor is anything to be avoided other than His absence. Indeed, this ought to be considered the one and only cause of total and eternal sadness. Take Christ away from me and no other good remains to me, nor does anything terrify me so much as His absence. The greatest torment of a rational creature is the privation and the absence of Christ."
"No one enters heaven except through philosophy." (Annotationes in Martianum Capellam)
The Holy Father's general audience on Wednesday (June 10, 2009) was devoted to John Scotus Eriugena. Born in Ireland in the early years of the ninth century, he left his native land to join the French court of Charles the Bald, a center of cultural and intellectual life at the time. The date of his death is not known with certainty, but is thought to have been around 870.
Well-versed in both Greek and Latin, John had a particular interest in Maximus the Confessor and above all, in Dionysius the Areopagite. Throughout the Middle Ages, this author was identified with the disciple of Paul mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (17:34), but he is now known to have been a Syrian living and writing in the fifth century. His works were translated by John the Scot, and so were made accessible to later theologians like St. Bonaventure. Convinced of the apostolicity of his writings, John devoted his life to deepening and developing his thought, to such an extent that sometimes it is hard to distinguish where we are dealing with the ideas of Scotus Eriugena and where he is merely transmitting the reflections of the Pseudo-Dionysius.
The theological work of John Scotus did not escape the censure of ecclesial authorities, on account of a radical Platonism that sometimes seems to draw too near to pantheism, even if his intentions were always orthodox. Among his many works, the Pope singled out De divisione naturae ("On the divisions of nature") and De hierarchia caelestia ("An Exposition on the celestial hierarchy of St. Dionysius").
Our author says: "Salus nostra ex fide inchoat", our salvation begins with faith. We cannot speak about God proceeding from our own conceptions, but from what God says concerning Himself in Sacred Scripture. But, seeing as God speaks only the truth, Scotus Eriugena is convinced that scriptural authority and reason can never contradict each other; he is convinced that true religion and true philosophy coincide. From this perspective he writes: "Any sort of authority that is not confirmed by true reason should be considered weak... There is in fact no true authority that does not coincide with the truth discovered by the power of reason ... Let no authority intimidate you or distract you from what right reasoning and contemplation lead you to understand. In fact, authentic authority never contradicts right reason, nor does the latter ever contradict true authority. Both without any doubt stem from the same source, which is the divine wisdom." We have here a courageous affirmation of the power of reason, founded on the certainty that true authority is reasonable, because God is creative reason. Erigena's profound passion for truth is clearly evident, as it also is in a passage not mentioned by Pope Benedict, where he claims that at the last judgment the wicked will suffer the worst punishment possible -- ignorance of the truth.
John Scotus repeats a point made earlier by St. John Chrysostom, that Scripture itself, though coming from God, would not have been necessary if man had not sinned. We must therefore deduce that Scripture was given by God with a pedagogial intent and out of condescension, so that man would be able to recall all that had been impressed on his heart at the moment of his creation "in the image and likeness of God" and which original sin had made him forget. Eriugena writes in the Expositiones: "Man was not created for the Scriptures, of which he would have had no need if he had not sinned, but rather the Scriptures -- woven of doctrine and symbol -- were given for man. Thanks to them, our rational nature can be introduced into the depths of pure and authentic contemplation of God." The words of Sacred Scripture purify our reason, a reason that has been a little blinded, and help us return to the memory of what we, inasmuch as we are the image of God, carry in our hearts, wounded as it is by sin.
Certain hermeneutical consequences with respect to Scriptural interpretation follow from this, and still today they can point out the right path for a correct reading of Sacred Scripture. It is a matter of uncovering the sense hidden in the sacred text and this supposes a particular interior exercise by which reason opens itself up to the sure route towards the truth. This exercise consists of cultivating a constant disposition to conversion. In order to arrive at a view into the depths of the text it is necessary to progress simultaneously in conversion of the heart and in conceptual analysis of the words. In fact it is only from the constant purification both of the eyes of the heart and the eyes of the mind that we can attain an exact understanding.
This path leads the thinking being to the very threshold of the Divine Mystery, where all our notions acknowledge their own weakness and incapacity and oblige us for that reason, with the simple power, free and sweet, of truth to always go beyond everything that has been and is continually being acquired. The adoring and silent recognition of the Mystery, which leads into a communion that makes one, is thus revealed as the one road to a relationship with the truth that is at the same time the most intimate possible and the most scrupulously respectful of God's otherness. John Scotus, making use of a vocabulary dear to the Greek Christian tradition, has called this experience towards which we are tending "theosis" or divinization, with so ardent an affirmation that it is possible to suspect him of heterodox pantheism. It is hard to avoid that feeling when faced with texts like this: "Just as iron becomes red-hot and molten in the fire so as to give the appearance that there is only fire present, and yet the two substances remain distinct, one from the other, so also we must accept that at the end of this world all of nature, corporeal and incorporeal, will manifest only God and yet remain integral in such a manner that God can in some way be comprehended while remaining incomprehensible and creation itself will be transformed, with ineffable wonder, into God."
In reality, the whole of John's theological thought is more evidently the demonstration of an attempt to express in words the inexpressible truths of God, based solely on the mystery of the Word made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. All the metaphors he uses to indicate this ineffable reality shows how much he was aware of the absolute inadequacy of the terms we use in speaking of these things. And for all that there remains the charm and a certain atmosphere of authentic mystical experience that we can every so often reach out and touch in his writings. As proof of that, it is enough to cite a page from De divisione naturae which touches in the depths of our souls even we believers in the 21st century: "Nothing is to be desired", he writes, "other than the joy of the truth that is Christ, nor is anything to be avoided other than His absence. Indeed, this ought to be considered the one and only cause of total and eternal sadness. Take Christ away from me and no other good remains to me, nor does anything terrify me so much as His absence. The greatest torment of a rational creature is the privation and the absence of Christ."
Philosophy, poetry, music, silence
"We should note also that the philosopher today, in so far as he is not a merely academic, a merely professorial philosopher, tends to draw nearer to the poet. All around us we can see a new emergence of a lost Atlantis from the depths. On this recovered continent, that unity which thought, as such, and poetry, as such, had in their beginnings is being recreated ..."
-Gabriel Marcel
"The sound of music is not, like the sound of words, opposed, but rather parallel to silence.
It is as though the sounds of music were being driven over the surface of silence.
Music is silence, which in dreaming begins to sound.
Silence is never more audible than when the last sound of music has died away."
-Max Picard
-Gabriel Marcel
"The sound of music is not, like the sound of words, opposed, but rather parallel to silence.
It is as though the sounds of music were being driven over the surface of silence.
Music is silence, which in dreaming begins to sound.
Silence is never more audible than when the last sound of music has died away."
-Max Picard
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Tolstoy's last days
I've been remiss in my postings the last week or so: very busy with tutoring, and almost all my free time has been taken up with some translation work I'm doing for Ignatius Press. More on that, perhaps, in a later post. Today, I'm prompted to respond to a piece that Ralph McInerny posted several days ago on the website The Catholic Thing, a piece entitled "The Marrying Animal". In it he says: "Tolstoy became a fruitcake as he grew older, his own marriage was more war than peace, and he fled to the local railway station where he died, refusing his wife admittance. He also wanted to reinvent Christianity." It seems that McInerny is unaware, and might be gratified to know, as I was, that Tolstoy very probably sought to be reconciled to Holy Mother Church in the last days of his life. I quote extensively from the chapter on Tolstoy in a book by Karl Stern entitled The Flight From Woman (I've posted on Stern before; his conversion story, The Pillar of Fire, is well worth reading):
"We have reason to believe that the dying Tolstoy, like Andrew, came back to the faith of Marie [referring to characters from War and Peace - A.]. During the course of his famous flight from home, some remarkable events occurred which are either minimized or entirely omitted by most biographers. After the old man left his home under cover of darkness (on the night of October 26th), only accompanied by his servant Duchan Petrovich, the first goal of his secret trip was the Optina monastery. This in itself -- considering the excommunicated, the sectarian -- is strange. In his younger years Tolstoy had made pilgrimages there. This time he went with the explicit purpose of talking to the Prior, Father Joseph. It seems that the porter did not answer quickly enough, and the aged poet, with the restlessness and impatience which characterized that entire episode of the flight, turned away to spend the night at the monastery's guest house. However, even there he left precipitously at three o'clock in the morning on the 29th (not without having properly signed his name in the guest book). In view of the idea we have of Tolstoy's later years it is equally remarkable that the next stop of his trip should have been a convent -- the convent of Shamardino. There Tolstoy's sister Marya lived as a nun. He intended to stay in Shamardino for about two weeks. Tolstoy had always maintained a particular affection for this sister, an affection which was mutual. Although it is held that Marie Bolkonska is modeled after Tolstoy's mother, it is possibly no coincidence that he gave her the name of his own sister.
However, Tolstoy could not stay at the convent because Alexandra, his daughter, came and warned him that his wife was about to track him down. (It is quite conceivable that Alexandra made him leave out of jealousy towards Marya.) At any rate, a few days later, when he was lying on his deathbed in the station-master's house in Astapovo, the Metropolitan of Moscow wired a paternal greeting which was witheld from the dying man. Moreover, the Holy Synod wanted to send Starets Joseph to Tolstoy's bedside, but the monk happened to be sick. Thus, in his place, a Father Varsonofy arrived from the monastery with the sacraments. In vain did he plead to be allowed to see the dying man. Tolstoy's entourage, particularly Alexandra it seems, felt that the sight of the priest would be too much of a shock. For the same reason Sonya was not admitted to the side of her dying husband, and it is moving to read how she pleaded, nearly crazy with grief and frustration, to be allowed at least to enter the room. ...
The fact that Tolstoy, under the premonition of approaching death, headed for the monastery to see the Prior, and then to the convent to see his sister, is most remarkable. Unfortunately, no record seems to exist of his last conversations with Marya. But a strong inference may be drawn from a note which Father Varsonofy wrote to Countess Alexandra Tolstoy, when he asked for permission to be admitted to the dying man's side: "You know that the Count had expressed in front of his own sister, your aunt who is a nun, the desire to see us and talk with us in order to obtain peace for his soul, and that he deeply regretted that he had not been able to fulfill this desire." The plea was received on November 5 and was refused. On the morning of November 8, 1910, Tolstoy died."
I pray that, in the end, Tolstoy found that peace which he sought. Requiescat in pace.
"We have reason to believe that the dying Tolstoy, like Andrew, came back to the faith of Marie [referring to characters from War and Peace - A.]. During the course of his famous flight from home, some remarkable events occurred which are either minimized or entirely omitted by most biographers. After the old man left his home under cover of darkness (on the night of October 26th), only accompanied by his servant Duchan Petrovich, the first goal of his secret trip was the Optina monastery. This in itself -- considering the excommunicated, the sectarian -- is strange. In his younger years Tolstoy had made pilgrimages there. This time he went with the explicit purpose of talking to the Prior, Father Joseph. It seems that the porter did not answer quickly enough, and the aged poet, with the restlessness and impatience which characterized that entire episode of the flight, turned away to spend the night at the monastery's guest house. However, even there he left precipitously at three o'clock in the morning on the 29th (not without having properly signed his name in the guest book). In view of the idea we have of Tolstoy's later years it is equally remarkable that the next stop of his trip should have been a convent -- the convent of Shamardino. There Tolstoy's sister Marya lived as a nun. He intended to stay in Shamardino for about two weeks. Tolstoy had always maintained a particular affection for this sister, an affection which was mutual. Although it is held that Marie Bolkonska is modeled after Tolstoy's mother, it is possibly no coincidence that he gave her the name of his own sister.
However, Tolstoy could not stay at the convent because Alexandra, his daughter, came and warned him that his wife was about to track him down. (It is quite conceivable that Alexandra made him leave out of jealousy towards Marya.) At any rate, a few days later, when he was lying on his deathbed in the station-master's house in Astapovo, the Metropolitan of Moscow wired a paternal greeting which was witheld from the dying man. Moreover, the Holy Synod wanted to send Starets Joseph to Tolstoy's bedside, but the monk happened to be sick. Thus, in his place, a Father Varsonofy arrived from the monastery with the sacraments. In vain did he plead to be allowed to see the dying man. Tolstoy's entourage, particularly Alexandra it seems, felt that the sight of the priest would be too much of a shock. For the same reason Sonya was not admitted to the side of her dying husband, and it is moving to read how she pleaded, nearly crazy with grief and frustration, to be allowed at least to enter the room. ...
The fact that Tolstoy, under the premonition of approaching death, headed for the monastery to see the Prior, and then to the convent to see his sister, is most remarkable. Unfortunately, no record seems to exist of his last conversations with Marya. But a strong inference may be drawn from a note which Father Varsonofy wrote to Countess Alexandra Tolstoy, when he asked for permission to be admitted to the dying man's side: "You know that the Count had expressed in front of his own sister, your aunt who is a nun, the desire to see us and talk with us in order to obtain peace for his soul, and that he deeply regretted that he had not been able to fulfill this desire." The plea was received on November 5 and was refused. On the morning of November 8, 1910, Tolstoy died."
I pray that, in the end, Tolstoy found that peace which he sought. Requiescat in pace.
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