Christ is risen!

But you already know that. It's the people who don't already know that who need to be told.

Tell them!

Link | John da Fiesole
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Why is this night different from any other night?

The NAB's note on Mark 14:26 -- "Then, after singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives." -- reads, "Psalm 114-118, thanksgiving songs concluding the Passover meal."

Christians have always read the Psalms as prefiguring Jesus, but what must it have been like for Jesus Himself to sing these psalms of deliverance with His disciples mere hours before they were to be fulfilled? Did the disciples have any idea that the words they sang were not mere recollections of the past events but prophesy of the present?

How did the words of Psalm 116 sound in that upper room?

I was caught by the cords of death;
the snares of Sheol had seized me;
I felt agony and dread.
Then I called on the name of the LORD,
"O LORD, save my life!"

And what about Psalm 115's taunt of Israel's enemies, that describes their idols this way:

They have mouths but do not speak,
eyes but do not see.
They have ears but do not hear,
noses but do not smell.
They have hands but do not feel,
feet but do not walk,
and no sound rises from their throats.

Here singing these words is Jesus, Israel's God, Who has a mouth that speaks, eyes that see, ears that hear, a nose that smells, hands that feel, feet that walk, a throat from which sound comes. Before the sun sets again, His mouth will speak of betrayal, His eyes will see abandonment, His ears hear blasphemy, His nose smell His own blood, His hands feel the nails, His feet walk under the cross, and from His throat will come a loud cry and His final breath.

Afterwards, His body will be as the idols of the nations.

And, for all that, it will be the source of life for us all.

Link | John da Fiesole
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The man carrying a jar of water who came in from the cold

Of all the things I would like to know about how Jesus spent the days leading up to His death, the details of how the location for the Last Supper was settled on are pretty far down the list. Yet each of the synoptic Gospels takes the time to explain it; Mark even (and uncharacteristically) gives a more detailed version than Matthew.

Matthew	Mark	Luke
On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread,	On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread,	When the day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread arrived,
	when they sacrificed the Passover lamb,	the day for sacrificing the Passover lamb,
		he sent out Peter and John, instructing them, "Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover."
the disciples approached Jesus and said, "Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover? "He said, "Go into the city	when his disciples said to him, "Where do you want us to go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?" He sent two of his disciples and said to them, "Go into the city	They asked him, "Where do you want us to make the preparations?" And he answered them, "When you go into the city,
	and a man will meet you, carrying a jar of water. Follow him. Wherever he enters,	a man will meet you carrying a jar of water. Follow him into the house that he enters and
to a certain man and
tell him, 'The teacher says,	say to the master of the house, 'The Teacher says,	say to the master of the house, 'The teacher says to you,
"My appointed time draws near;
in your house I shall celebrate the Passover with my disciples."'"	"Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?"'	"Where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?"'
	Then he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready. Make the preparations for us there."	He will show you a large upper room that is furnished. Make the preparations there."
The disciples then did as Jesus had ordered,	The disciples then went off, entered the city,	Then they went off
	and found it just as he had told them;	and found everything exactly as he had told them,
and prepared the Passover.	and they prepared the Passover.	and there they prepared the Passover.

In particular, that cloak-and-dagger business with the man and the jug of water strikes me as a most unlikely thing to have been recorded in the Gospels. We can construct various plausible scenarios which explain why it happened that way -- to keep Judas from being able to betray Jesus before the Last Supper, for example. But why it was written down, what it meant to the Evangelists and to the early Christians for whom they were writing, that's a slipperier question.

As usual, the Church Fathers were able to derive spiritual lessons from this incident:

Pseudo-Jerome: And in a mystical sense the city is The Church, surrounded by the wall of faith, the man who meets them is the primitive people, the pitcher of water is the law of the letter.

Bede: Or else, the water is the laver of grace, the pitcher points out the weakness of those who were to shew that grace to the world... it is designedly that the names both of the bearer of the water, and of the lord of the house, are omitted, to imply that power is given to all who wish to celebrate the true Passover, that is, to be embued with the Sacraments of Christ, and to receive Him in the dwelling-place of their mind.

Theophylact: He who is baptized carries the pitcher of water, and he who bears baptism upon him comes to his rest, if he lives according to his reason; and he obtains rest, as being in the house.

These three go on to propose the upper room as a sign of "the wide-spread Church" (Pseudo-Jerome), "the Law, which comes forth from the narrowness of the letter" (Bede), or "the loftiness of intelligences, and which... is prepared and made level by humility" (Theophylact).

Perhaps the literal sense of the man with the jar of water (the NAB notes that "only women ordinarily carried water in jars," though the Greek word "implies simply a person and not necessarily a male"), the point about that day in Jerusalem the Evangelists were trying to make by recording the fact, lies less in the specific details and more in the overall effect of careful and elaborate planning on Jesus' part, in a way that depends for its success entirely on the free choices of others (the disciples, the water carrier, the owner of the house), of the Last Supper. It is a proof in action of Jesus' words, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer."

Link | John da Fiesole
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"Weep not for Me"

One way of praying the Rosary involves meditating first on how the mystery relates to Mary's love for Jesus, and then on what Mary's love teaches about our own love for Him.

Obviously, this requires a certain amount of imagination. We project onto our meditations our own ideas of what Mary may (or "would have" or "must have") thought, felt, and done.

But it may also involve some psychological projection onto our own thoughts and feelings. With the finding of Jesus in the Temple, for example, whatever reflection I have has to work around the facts that a) I am not nor have I ever been Jesus' mother; and b) I knew all along how the three-day search would turn out.

Similarly, the sight of Jesus carrying His cross "must have" related to Mary's love for Him in a way that it cannot relate to mine. I do the pop Ignatian thing of imagining myself in the scene -- especially this week -- and am sometimes given the grace of being profoundly affected.

But it can't stop there. I am not living in First Century Palestine. I am not, in fact, standing next to the Blessed Mother as she reaches out to her condemned Son. I am actually driving in a car, or kneeling in a church, or sitting in a comfortable chair in a quiet room.

If I get my emotions and my reason properly attuned to the sorrow of Jesus' passion, if I tell Him, "I have placed myself along the Way of Sorrows, and I offer to You as You pass my grief and my support," ... what good does that do Him?

Yes, I've heard people say that they feel, or at least like to think, that their own prayers today in some way helped support Jesus in His suffering. But what did Jesus say to those people who actually did express their grief to Him as He passed?

"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children."

What Mary's love for her suffering Son teaches us is love for her suffering Son, not as He suffered in Jerusalem in the days of Caiaphas the high priest, but as He suffers today.

When the Son of Man returns in glory and says,

I was hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, ill, in prison... Whatever you did for the least of My brothers, you did for Me.

He will not be speaking in a merely juridical sense. If an ordinary king said this, he would mean that, for purposes of reward and punishment, actions toward his brothers shall be treated as if they were actions toward himself. I don't think Jesus is proposing such a legal fiction here; I think that what is done for His brothers is done, really and for true, for Him.

The hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the ill, the imprisoned: these are the people whom we must love as Mary loved Jesus. If we try to love Jesus now the same way Mary did then, we'll only be fooling ourselves -- blinding ourselves, even, to the mission He has given us. "Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky?"

This is even true of Mary herself. We think of Jesus' word, "Woman, behold thy son," as proof of His loving care for His mother, who would otherwise be alone in the world, and it is that. But I'd suggest that it is also an instruction to her, that she must now reach out to others with that very love she had for Jesus; given at a moment when all she "would have" wanted to do is look to her Son, it may even have caused her some pain.

But no one, not even the Blessed Virgin, gets to set their own terms as a disciple of Christ. We may wish to remain at the foot of the Cross, our eyes never leaving Jesus. But that grace was not even given to those who physically were at the foot of the Cross. We must take all that we gain from the Cross to others; that's the only way for us to love Him now as Mary did then.

Labels: Praying the Rosary

Link | John da Fiesole
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The Boast

A triolet:

Someone will betray You, Lord?
Surely, Master, it's not I.
I would sooner die by sword.
Someone will betray You, Lord?
Though for You my blood be poured,
You I never shall deny.
Someone will betray You, Lord?
Surely, Master, it's not I.

Link | John da Fiesole
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We are Church

In his homily for today's Gospel, in which Judas complains about the oil Mary of Bethany pours on Jesus' feet, Fr. Philip Powell, O.P., says:

Look again at who's gathered in the house with Jesus: Lazarus, Martha, Mary, Judas... Here Jesus has with him a living miracle, a selfless good work, an indulgent act of devotion, and a heart hardened by avarice and scorn. A week or so before his death he has with him the Church....

The Church has always been a mixed bag. Golden ages, such as they are, are defined more by the number of individual saints who appeared than by the average holiness of all of her members. (See Culbreath's Equilibrium, as quoted by O'Rama: "Protestantism, historically, is better at elevating the morals and behavior of the masses. Catholicism, on the other hand, is better at making saints.")

And to some extent each of our own hearts is that house in Bethany; we are by turns and by degree miraculous signs and selfless works and indulgent devotions and greedy lies. The world plots with the Judas in our hearts, to kill not only Christ but also Lazarus. But in three days, Christ will rise again. Will He find the Judas strengthened or weakened?

Link | John da Fiesole
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The Action and Death of Our Lord

I have a way of praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet that I'm inordinately proud of. Each decade, I meditate on how Jesus was betrayed or abandoned, first by Judas, then by Peter, then the Sanhedrin, then Pilate, and finally the whole world. It emphasizes the mental and spiritual suffering Jesus endured, and tends to leave me feeling like the disciples in Gethsemane who have no answer to His question, "Could you not watch one hour with Me?"

But the other night, quite unintentionally, I prayed the Chaplet the other way around. Instead of looking at Jesus' encounters with Judas et al. from the perspective of His passion -- that is, of what happened to Him -- I looked at those encounters from the perspective of His action, of the Father's love Jesus brought to everyone he met on that last day.

To Judas and to Peter, He brought a question and a look, respectively, both invitations to repentance and to rejoining Him in His glory. To the Sanhedrin and to Pilate, He brought the witness of Himself, of the Just One Who spoke the word and did the will of the Father. To those who crucified Him, He brought prayers for mercy, and to the good thief, He brought the promise of Paradise.

And, in His last moment before death, Jesus brings back to the Father His Spirit.

While Jesus' suffering, what He received from the world as punishment for loving it so much, plays no little part in the liturgies and traditions of Holy Week, we should not mistake Him for a purely passive figure, even as He stands silent before those who condemn Him. We misread the Passion Narratives if we lose sight of the love with which Jesus acts throughout.

St. Paul wasn't exaggerating when he wrote, "If I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing." When Jesus says, "Take up your cross and follow Me," He doesn't mean to follow him only in the way of suffering. We must not only bear our crosses, we must do it with love, as He did.

Link | John da Fiesole
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A most excellent quiz

I don't often post the results I get to "What kind of X are you?" quizzes. Mostly because it's nobody else's business what kind of anime heroine or which Smurf I am (though sometimes because of the results I get).

With this quiz, though, I am too pleased with my result -- come by honestly, with no intentional rigging of the answers -- not to share it:

I am a triolet.

Even better, if I were not a triolet I would be a clerihew.

(Link via Intentional Disciples.)

Link | John da Fiesole
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Salvation history arc

The incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, taken as a whole, constitute the central fact of creation, the unexpected pivot point of the story of our salvation. From the Christian perspective, the Old Testament describes the long lead-up to the Gospels.

In fact, the (traditional) first book of the New Testament opens with a sort of mnemonic summary of the Old:

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

And after the sequence of begats, we're off into "how the birth of Jesus Christ came about."

If we think about the story of our salvation as a story, we might find it makes sense to think of the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection as the climax, even though the climax of a story comes near the end, not in the middle (or at least as near the middle as Matthew 1 is). And of course, we do speak of Jesus in terms of "fulfillment" and "fullness," and of the "final victory of the Cross" and so forth.

If (to narrow it down to a single scene) the Cross is the climax of our salvation story, then what happens before is the "rising action," which in turn arises out of some initial conflict. Or, as you might say, an Original Conflict.

But the Bible tells one of the few stories that really does begin at the beginning, and in the beginning there was no conflict. I won't say this is a reason there are two creation myths, but one of the consequences of the two we have is that we get a clear break between the opening exposition -- which sets a rather pleasant scene and ends with the words, "Such is the story of the heavens and the earth at their creation." -- and what proceeds to happen to Adam and Eve in that rather pleasant scene.

It's not altogether unlike "The Tale of Peter Rabbit," for example, which begins with a rather pleasant scene:

Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter. They lived with their Mother in a sand-bank, underneath the root of a very big fir-tree.

And only then do we begin to approach the conflict, in stock folk-tale language that (not by coincidence, I think) echoes Genesis:

"Now, my dears," said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, "you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor."

(Which suggests the unanswerable question, "What might children's stories be like if man had not sinned?")

Anyway, that's my take on the opening exposition, initial conflict, rising action, climax, and denouement of the story of God and man told in the Bible. The topic of the hero of the story could, I think, be profitably explored (by which I mean I think there's more to say on the topic than, "God is the hero.").

And it's a challenge to see ourselves as truly living in the denouement, isn't it? Don't we feel like we're still part of the rising action, that it's really the Second Coming that will be the climax, with what follows as the happily-ever-after?

There's something to that, I'd say, in the way the Church is "already and not-yet," but we shouldn't tell the story in a way that loses sight of the already. We should be able to see that we ourselves are already living happily ever after. Maybe not in the world's eyes, but let the world tell its own story; I prefer comedy.

We should be the ones who compose songs about His deeds, keeping them fresh in the minds of His people. And last I heard, He's still King of those parts, and all the people in His Kingdom are happy and rich.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Lectio Divina talk tonight

The Lenten speaker series sponsored by the Bishop Fenwick Lay Dominicans concludes tonight with Fr. Peter Fegan, O.P. His topic is, "Unlocking the Scriptures: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina."

The program begins with Evening Prayer at 7:30 p.m. The site is St. Andrew Apostle Catholic Church, Silver Spring, MD.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Once upon a time

One of my pet theories is this:

Man is a creature designed to glorify God through story.

That is, by telling the story of God's glory.

Man is to glorify God not only through story, I hasten to add, before the poets all leave in a huff.^*

But we are creatures bound by time; by our very nature, things happen to us, followed by other things. We experience everything sequentially. If our nature is to be perfected rather than replaced by grace, even God's self-revelation must be sequential.

The old joke that time is nature's way of making sure everything doesn't happen at once contains the seed of what I suspect is great wisdom: Time is not an accident of creation, an optional feature. It's essential to it; talk of it as the "fourth dimension" suggests it's as essential as depth.

It just so happens that time -- thought of, perhaps, as the process of substantial change (i.e., matter that changes from one substantial form to another, in the old hylomorphic sense) -- is also a dimension that can manifest God's glory, in the unfolding of creation as described in Genesis 1, or in the undoing of Adam's fault as described in Genesis 4 onward.

We, creatures of matter and of reason, are ideally suited to observe and relate this dimension of God's glory. And how is a process of substantial change, of unfolding and undoing, related? You tell a story.

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*. The gardeners, being more phlegmatic, would all leave in a minute and a huff.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Now I'm frightened

Rumors have been flying for months about the always-imminent release of a motu proprio from Pope Benedict XVI regarding the celebration of the Mass according to the 1962 Latin Rite.

I haven't mentioned it here, because I don't care about it.

Still, it does seem that something will happen at some point along these lines, so I thought I should go to the one source of information everyone else seems to have ignored. What I learned is startling.

For one thing, "motu proprio" is an anagram for "omit pro-pour," which certainly sounds like a tightening of the rubrics for Communion under both species.

"Rout poor imp" calls to mind the smoke of Satan that allegedly entered the Church following the promulgation of the Mass of Paul VI. Could a whole-scale rollback be in the offing? Particularly when we add "mop out prior" and "I uproot, mop"?

"Rio pomp tour" suggests a release date before the Pope visits Brazil in early May. "Pimp our root" evokes a call to even more smells 'n' bells than ever before.

Perhaps "Pout Room, R.I.P.," signals an end to papal patience with those who dislike the Latin Mass.

"Pup moor riot" -- with its clear invocation of "God's Rottweiler" and the Moor's head of Munich -- does not augur widespread acceptance of the pronouncement -- which, considering "mop up or riot," may be something the Vatican is prepared to live with.

I mention "trim our poop" here only to keep potential tastelessness out of the comments.

Most disturbing of all, however, is "opium torpor," which, however it's taken, can't be good.

Needless to say, in all these suggestions, I purport moo.

Link | John da Fiesole
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To reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily

A key concept in Catholic Social Teaching is "the common good," a term that goes back at least to the Epistle of Barnabas. The Catechism teaches that,

By common good is to be understood "the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily." The common good concerns the life of all. It calls for prudence from each, and even more from those who exercise the office of authority.

The Catechism goes on to identify three essential elements of which the common good consists: "respect for the person as such"; "the social well-being and development of the group itself"; and "peace."

Fr. Albert Nolan, O.P., in a homily preached on Human Rights Day 2007 in South Africa (here's a link to the audio), gives a succinct description of the common good:

... what is best for me is what is best for everyone. And if we can see what is best for everyone, then that is what is best for me. This is what we call "the common good." This is also the will of God.

If we can get to the point where we really see what is best for us being what is best for everyone, and vice versa, then we can get to the point where the common good is achievable. To do that, though, we can't settle for the easier goals of individualism or collectivism.

Link | John da Fiesole
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The solemnity's supporting role

The angel Gabriel is mentioned by name four times in the Bible: twice in Daniel, where he explains Daniel's visions of the end times; and twice in Luke, where he tells Zechariah and Mary of their children.

The connection between Daniel's vision of "a most holy [one who] will be anointed... [and] shall be cut down" and the birth of the Messiah is clear enough. Gabriel's role in salvation history is one of announcing Christ's arrival -- and the traditional belief that he will be the angel who blows the horn announcing the return of Christ in glory is well known.

Less well known is the traditional belief (recorded in Jewish midrash) that Gabriel was the angel who led Adam and Eve out of the Garden after their fall. Thus he who gave the bad news to the first Eve is he who gives the good news to the second.

(The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that, while Christians see Gabriel as "the angel of mercy" and Michael as "the angel of judgment," Jewish traditions reverse their roles and "attribute to Gabriel the destruction of Sodom and of the host of Sennacherib.")

A curious note to make of what you will: In Daniel 8, Daniel learns Gabriel's name, and after the angel leaves, writes, "I, Daniel, was weak and ill for some days...." In Luke 1, Gabriel only announces his name to Zechariah after the priest doubts his words, and Zechariah becomes dumb. Mary is not told (in the Gospel account) the name of the angel who appears with the greeting, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women," and she is, to say the least, not left physically disabled following their meeting.

Maybe that's coincidence (after all, St. Raphael announces his name to Tobit's family, and nothing untoward happens to them ("No need to fear; you are safe.")), or maybe the way to look at it is that no visit of Gabriel leaves you physically unaffected. Still, if I ever meet an angel who doesn't tell me his name, I think I won't ask.

Link | John da Fiesole
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We could do it the easy way or the hard way

Drusilla makes an essential correction to my point below about the completeness of Adam and Eve's knowledge of good and evil before the Fall:

Be careful not to take a short term view of creation – a view that insists there was nothing more for A&E to learn, that they had no need to grow until after they ate of the fruit. Growth seems to be built into creation (cf. Romans 8 and elsewhere)...

Obedience is also an opportunity to choose that which has been bestowed, an opportunity to participate in that which God is doing; it makes love something more than nice, warm feelings. There is reason to believe that A&E, though in a blessed state of sinlessness, had not yet grown up into the fullness of what it means to be made in God's image.

This makes a great deal of sense to me: If Adam and Eve had never sinned, they would have continued in innocence but they wouldn't have remained unchanged in wisdom.

I don't think that directly contradicts my suggestion of the completeness of their knowledge, since it was (and, without the fall, would have continued to be) all they needed to know at the time. The "shortcut" to wisdom, as Drusilla put it, that Eve tried to take with the forbidden fruit knocks them out of this state of fullness. They suddenly have more knowledge (e.g., their nakedness) than they have wisdom (fig leaves?), and they must be expelled from Eden. We might suppose that, if they had eaten of the tree of life at that moment, theirs would be lives forever be out of balance.

This idea seems to help with a few difficulties I've had with the myth. One was the impression of the pointlessness of the whole Garden environment. From eternity, God knows Adam and Eve will disobey Him; the trees and the naming of the animals and all that seems like an awfully elaborate set-up for something that will be discarded even before their first child is born.

But if they could have continued to grow in Eden, then it becomes a fully realized place, a Paradise that could have sustained mankind forever, not just a Potempkin rest-stop between the void and our current vale of tears.

It also resolves the accusative dimension of the cry, "O happy fault!" If our state of union with the Trinity will be greater on the Last Day than was Adam's in Eden, then God could be accused of coming up with a highest and last good for us that would only be possible if Adam sinned. That's like saying, "If you play fair and win, you'll get a hundred dollars. If you cheat and are disqualified, I'll reinstate you and you'll get a thousand dollars."

This way proposes a Plan A, which would have gotten the human race to the same place we're headed for with such and so great a Redeemer.

Finally (and don't tell the Dominicans), I can't say that I'm all that happy with St. Thomas's assent to the opinion that Christ would not have become incarnate had man not sinned. Given the love God showed for us as sinners, it seems even more fitting for His Son to become one of us if we were all perfect.

Clearly, Plan A would give the Incarnation quite a different purpose. As St. Thomas writes elsewhere, "the fellowship of friends conduces to the well-being of Happiness," and Christ might become man as friend -- or better, as Bridegroom come to wed His ever-spotless Bride.

I don't know, obviously. But it does make sense to me.

Link | John da Fiesole
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A little learning is a dangerous thing

[And this post is composed by someone with little learning, so consider yourself forewarned.]

Why did Adam and Eve have to go and eat that crummy old fruit anyway?

Genesis 3:6 tells us:

The woman saw that

• the tree was good for food,
• pleasing to the eyes, and
• desirable for gaining wisdom.

So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

I once heard it pointed out that the three things Eve saw correspond to the three transcendentals of goodness, beauty, and truth, respectively.

They also correspond to three powers of the soul: to sensuality, will, and intellect, respectively. By sensuality, or sensitive appetite, we tend toward things we sense as good for us ("good for food"); by will, or rational appetite, we choose goods such as the apprehension of beauty ("pleasing to the eyes"); by intellect, we comprehend truth ("gaining wisdom").

As a temptation, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil had its bases covered.

If we look a little closer, though, we can see what fools Adam and Eve were -- and, by extension, what a rotter that serpent was. Genesis 2:9 says:

Out of the ground the LORD God made various trees grow that were

• delightful to look at and
• good for food,

with the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.

The forbidden fruit, then, offers nothing to the sensitive and rational appetites that all the permitted fruits don't already have. And, as we all know,

The LORD God gave man this order: "You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and bad. From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die."

So Adam and Eve already have knowledge of good and bad! They already possess all the wisdom they need. As their postlapsarian sons and daughters, it's hard for us to see that something so simple can actually be complete. The subtlest manual of casuistry possible in Paradise could be printed on a matchbook:

WHAT'S EVIL: Eating from that tree.

WHAT'S GOOD: Everything else.

Adam and Eve knew what was good and what was evil before they fell. Claims that they didn't -- that eating the forbidden fruit represents their acquisition of moral awareness or free will, that the serpent in some manner brought them rationality -- are simply mistaken. The serpent tempts them into disobedience so that they can acquire... nothing they don't already have. Which they proceed to lose.

Yet it is written that, after eating the fruit, "the eyes of both of them were opened;" for that matter, God Himself calls the tree "the tree of knowledge of good and evil" (I'll leave "good and bad" for when I'm quoting the NAB). Doesn't this mean that Adam and Eve didn't have knowledge of good and evil beforehand?

Let me propose this explanation: Through their disobedience, Adam and Eve changed the rules. In the state of innocence, the only evil available to them was disobedience. Having once disobeyed, though, great sweeping vistas of evil were opened and available to them, together with the goods opposed to them. Cruelty, for example, was impossible to Adam before the Fall -- and so was clemency as such, since there was no context in which he could act in a way that moderated the punishment of another.

Thus too, "they realized that they were naked." Nakedness connotes weakness, as Fr. Alobaidi pointed out, and before the fall the weakness of Adam had no relevance to him. He lived within the context of God's ordering of Creation, and within that ordering there was no way for him to act with weakness.

It was only when Adam disobeyed God, when he decided to live by his own rules, that he had to look to himself as guarantor of his own life. At which point he noticed something, something that would have been useful to have noticed ahead of time but which couldn't be seen from the perspective of innocence (because the perspective of innocence looks at God, not oneself):

Adam wasn't capable of guaranteeing his own life. Hence the moment he ate from the tree he was surely doomed to die.

That would be an eye-opening realization, all right.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Join the Dominicans!

Go to Argentina!

The International Congress of Lay Dominican Fraternities is going on this week just outside Buenos Aires. The self-understanding of the Lay Dominican Fraternities is undergoing rapid development, and this Congress is, if not altogether unprecedented, certainly the largest devoted specifically to the Fraternities on a world-wide scale.

There are six main issues being considered at the Congress: preaching and prayer; study and formation; government; organization and structure; finance and economy; and the presence of Lay Dominicans in the OP Family and in the Church. I'd be surprised to learn there were many of us who gave a hoot about finance or government, but these are the sorts of things that need to be considered if we want to do something tomorrow that we weren't doing yesterday.

At some point, the keynote address of the Master of the Order, fr. Carlos Azpiroz Costa, O.P., will be posted. The title of his address, which is also the theme of the Congress, is "Companions in Preaching." I have not seen the text, but the title alone is a challenge. People usually choose their own companions, and what the Order has been saying for some time is that a Dominican's companions are his fellow Dominicans: friars, nuns, sisters, laity.

Moreover, they are companions for something. And the something isn't prayer, it's not study, it's not community. It's preaching. Since we don't even really have a solid explanation of what "preaching according to your state in life" means for Lay Dominicans that it doesn't also mean for the laity in general, acquiring companions in preaching isn't often the goal that first attracts someone to the Fraternities.

But preaching and the salvation of souls is the purpose of the Order we join, which makes it our purpose, too.

And if you think that might be your purpose, you may want to drop us a line.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Marian math

In his talk last night, Fr. John Langlois, OP, brought out a couple of aspects of the historical development of the Rosary that were new to me.

One is that the Rosary devotion is a combination of two spiritual streams popular at the time the Rosary developed: a general devotion to Mary (think of all the cathedrals dedicated to her that were built in the high Middle Ages, or the preaching of St. Bernard of Clairvaux); and meditation on the life of Christ (the medieval passion plays, the living creches of St. Francis).

So you might say that

Rosary = (Life of Christ) + (Love of Mary)

You certainly don't have the Rosary as it's been known for five hundred years without both, but I hadn't thought about the naturalness of the Rosary emerging from the combination of both. (I'm not sure a Roman Catholic can have both -- that is, meditate on the life of Christ while expressing love and honor for His mother -- without having the Rosary. At the very least, it would seem an unnatural omission.)

Another aspect is the significance of the Rosary picture books that began to be printed in the late 1400s. Rosary devotees today often say the reason many Catholics downplay the devotion is that they, the downplayers, are snobs who regard the Rosary as too common and lowbrow. However many anti-Rosary snobs there may be, it does seem to be true that the Rosary is common and lowbrow. It's in the form it is today in large part because you could print a book with three woodcuts, or commission a painting with fifteen scenes, and people could look at the pictures. If you wanted fifty different meditations, or a hundred and fifty, as a practical matter you'd have to do it with words, and at the time reading was (relatively) uncommon and highbrow.

And once picture books began to appear, standardization of the mysteries happened quickly. It was less than a hundred years between the first picture book (printed in 1483 by Conrad Dinckmut of Ulm) and Pope St. Pius V officially defining the fifteen mysteries (1569). The only change the Pope made to Dinckmut's selection was the final glorious mystery: Mary's coronation makes a more cheerful conclusion than Christ's return in glory, with the Final Judgment that entails. (People who aren't sure what to make of Mary's coronation, though, can regard it as representative of the more general reception of all the saints, body and soul, into heaven on the Last Day.)

A thorough on-line source of information on the history of the Rosary in the Catholic Church, both the prayer and the physical set of prayer beads, is "Journaling the Bead." It naturally mentions the tradition that St. Dominic received the Rosary from the Blessed Virgin in 1208, although as Fr. Langlois points out this is a tradition that cannot be traced back earlier than the preaching of Bl. Alain de la Roche (or Alanus de Rupe), beginning about 1460. I've seen some contemporary attempts to defend the tradition, but the complete silence on the matter of all surviving sources for the first 250 years after the vision reportedly occurred makes for a mighty tough burden on the defense.

Labels: Praying the Rosary

Link | John da Fiesole
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Heaven and earth shall pass away

So what does happen in heaven and on earth, according to the Book of Revelation?

All sorts of crazy things. A third of the land is burned up, a third of the sea turns to blood, a third of the stars become dark. There are earthquakes, and stars that hit the earth, and smoke and locusts and plagues, and hailstorms, and disappearing mountains, and a good deal more blood.

What's up with all that?

Fr. Corbett's suggestion is this: That God's promises are so wonderful the earth as it presently exists cannot contain them.

If God's promises amounted to nothing more than literally giving a certain stretch of land to the descendants of Abraham forever, to literally granting His faithful ones long lives, prosperity, and lots of children, then the earth as we know it can pretty well suffice. But His promises, as given in their fullness by Jesus, are so outrageous, so over the top, that the very world we inhabit needs to be remade for them to be fulfilled.

The language of Revelation is the language of the very world we inhabit coming apart, from below and from above and from the sides.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

The new heaven is also required: what happens on earth happens in heaven, and who wants a heaven where a third of the stars are missing?

From this perspective, Revelation describes not just a battle where the field belongs to God's victors, but one where the very battlefield joins in the fight, passes away, and is recreated anew. The Apocalypse, expressed apocalyptically, isn't the sober separation of sheep and goats or of wheat and tares, it's a full-scale cosmic blowout.

And not (if we follow Fr. Corbett) due to how closely matched the forced of goodness and evil are. This isn't Ragnarok or Hamlet, where everybody destroys everybody else. This is the fulfillment of God's will; it's a blowout because the cosmos God intends to endure forever is far more wonderful than the cosmos that exists now.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Self-selecting miracles

Yesterday's solemnity honored St. Joseph under the title "Husband of Mary." As many wives know, husbands can be quite literal at times:

Reminds me of the Little Sisters of the Poor, when they needed a gardener. One of the sisters found a picture in a magazine of a man with a hoe. She cut the picture out to put by the statue of St. Joseph, but in her hurry, she trimmed the man's arm right out of the image. And shortly after, a one-armed gardener came to the door, volunteering his services.

It doesn't matter how often this didn't happen, just that it did.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Literal reflections

One feature of apocalyptic literature (according to Fr. Corbett) is that what happens in heaven happens on earth, and what happens on earth happens in heaven. ("Heaven" here obviously doesn't mean just the state of perfect happiness with God, His angels, and the Church Triumphant, but the spiritual realm generally.)

Let me run with that idea a bit, considering it not just as a literary conceit but as literal truth. What if what happens on heaven happens on earth and what happens on earth happens in heaven?

For one thing, the smallest earthly sin and the least earthly suffering are in some way present in heaven. They have a spiritual reality, a spiritual weight that we are in no position to dismiss.

It works in the other direction, too. Every evil done by Satan in his fall is realized in this world, and all the good done by St. Michael and his company can be found here as well.

This puts both the devil's temptation and our own sins in a quite different light. The serpent in Eden can be seen, not as the devil let loose on the world after his fall, but as the earthly manifestation of the devil as he falls. "Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?" might be earth-speak for, "Non serviam." Looked at this way, in tempting Eve he doesn't even do her the courtesy of treating her as a subject of temptation; she is merely the earthly collateral damage of his own spiritual pride.

Moreover, in each of our earthly sins we create a spiritual sin that is of a piece with Satan's fall. When I sin, I am in a certain way joining with and endorsing the devil's fall. Which is to say (if what happens in heaven happens on earth) that I am joining with and endorsing all the evil, moral and natural, that we experience in this life. War, famine, disease, death: it's all a small price to pay for me not helping my wife fold laundry.

...

Okay, that's a bit excessive, right? And I'm just playing with a literary device, not exploring a doctrine of faith.

But then, the First Letter of Saint John seems a bit excessive, too:

No one who remains in him sins; no one who sins has seen him or known him...

Whoever sins belongs to the devil, because the devil has sinned from the beginning.

Can we take this literally? Can we at least take it seriously?

Link | John da Fiesole
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Talk on Scripture and the Rosary tonight in Silver Spring, MD

Tonight at St. Andrew Apostle Church in Silver Spring, MD, Fr. John Langlois will speak on the topic, "Mary's Scriptural Journey and the Rosary."

The event begins at 7:30 p.m. with Evening Prayer, during which several people will make their final professions in (and one person will be received into) the Lay Fraternities of Saint Dominic.

Link | John da Fiesole
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He made him the lord of his household

As traditional as the St. Joseph's Table are the expressions used when discussing the Patron of the Universal Church: "not much is known," "never speaks," "toiled in poverty and obscurity," and so forth. Let me try to shake things up a bit by proposing something non-traditional, in fact somewhat counter-traditional:

St. Joseph is a major figure in the Bible. In particular, the Old Testament is lousy with references to him.

Today's first reading is an example of one kind of reference. In the literal sense, "It is he who shall build a house for my name," refers to Solomon, who built the first Temple. Christians naturally also understand this as a prophecy of Jesus, since it goes on,

And I will make his royal throne firm forever.
I will be a father to him,
and he shall be a son to me.

But between Solomon and Jesus, there is Joseph. He stands between them, not just chronologically, but in straddling the literal and the spiritual sense of the prophecy. Joseph, Son of David (a title acknowledged by the angel of the Lord), built a house (we would say made a home) for the Name of the LORD.

All the Biblical prophecies regarding the house of David lasting forever, which we rightly take to be fulfilled in Christ, are also prophecies of St. Joseph, who "did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home."

What makes them prophecies of St. Joseph in a unique way -- a way, that is, that they aren't likewise prophecies of, say, Shealtiel, or even Joseph's own father -- is this: St. Joseph chose to be the father of Jesus.

When it came to sons, everyone else in David's line -- even David himself, much to his sorrow -- had to take what he could beget. To St. Joseph alone God came with a request to accept a son. God's own Son, of course, but a son of David only through the free choice of Joseph.

Centuries worth of promises, then, awaited their redemption in St. Joseph. His own "Yes," unrecorded in the Gospels, is recorded in prophetic terms throughout the Old Testament.

St. Joseph does speak in the Bible. We just need to be as quiet as he is to hear him.

Link | John da Fiesole
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All in the Family

The Lay Fraternities of Saint Dominic keep on growing.

A couple of weeks ago, Rosamundi made her Temporary Profession (a promise to live according to the Rule of the Laity of Saint Dominic for three years).

Yesterday, Joe Bradley of Musings of a Dominican Inquirer was received into the Order (with about a year to go before his temporary profession).

Tomorrow, three people will be making Final Profession (to live according to the Rule for life), and a fourth received, during Evening Prayer at St. Andrew Apostle Church, Silver Spring, MD. Everyone is welcome; Evening Prayer begins at 7:30 p.m.

Two of the three making profession, as well as the one being received, are from a chapter new enough that this will be the first final professions for the chapter.

The third one making Final Profession belongs to my chapter, whose birthday we take to be Pentecost 1999, when the first new members were received. Eight years isn't very old, but there are a couple of dozen Lay Dominican chapters in our Province that are younger.

Link | John da Fiesole
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The Apocalypse Three-Step

Fr. Corbett proposed a simple, three-part division to the Book of Revelation: the exhortation to the Seven Churches (chapters 1-3); God's judgment against the Great City (chapters 4-18); and the establishment of the heavenly City (chapters 19-22).

From each section, he gave a key verse. If "God wins!" is too brief a summary for the entire Book, you might try this:

Remain faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great.

I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Fr. Corbett also pointed out how liturgical Revelation is. The third sentence of the book, "Blessed is the one who reads aloud and blessed are those who listen.... [1:3]," suggests it was written with the intent that it be read during Christian religious services.

John goes on to write, "I was caught up in spirit on the Lord's day [v. 10]"; this is just the sort of thing that happens at a charismatic prayer meeting. He sees "seven gold lampstands and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, wearing an ankle-length robe, with a gold sash around his chest. [vv 12-13]" Here Christ is dressed as High Priest, standing in the midst of His churches (the lampstands; see v. 20).

The liturgical signs continue through the whole book, all the way to the final, "Come, Lord Jesus," which the NAB notes is a liturgical refrain.

(I'm not really doing justice to Fr. Corbett's ideas or presentation, but that's what you get for not coming to his talk yourself.)

Link | John da Fiesole
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The thrill was gone

Fr. John Corbett, O.P., spoke at my parish this past Tuesday on the Book of Revelation, as part of a Lenten speaker series my Lay Dominican chapter is sponsoring.

Revelation, he said, is a pastoral letter written to address two difficulties faced by the Christians in Asia Minor. One difficulty was the persecution of Domitian. The other difficulty, perhaps more relevant to us today, is the problem of love grown cold.

The Seven Churches mentioned in Revelation were all founded at a time when the Gospel wasn't just Good News, it was current events. Great things had happened, wonderful promises had been made, mighty deeds had been worked.

And then... ten, twenty, sixty years passed.

When God has done great things for you, it's natural to ask, "What's next? What will God do today?" And what if the thing that God does next is... nothing?

You could probably use a letter of exhortation, too.

Which is what St. John provides, in apocalyptic style. According to Fr. Corbett, all apocalyptic writing is intended to answer the question, "Is God faithful to His promises?" The question isn't answered in a catechetical style (i.e., "Yes.") because it isn't being asked in a catechetical style. It's being asked in an uncomfortable, indirect, unsettled style -- which, come to think of it, may be why apocalyptic writing is itself uncomfortable, indirect, and unsettling.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Is Psalm Tone VI the one that goes rum-tum-ti-tum?

From the latest issue of the Archdiocese of Washington's Catholic Standard:

Then-Bishop Wuerl was one of four U.S. bishops to attend the synod of 225 bishops in October 2005. He was chosen as a relator, or recording secretary, for one of the 12 discussion groups.

Later, he was elected one of the 12 bishops from around the world to serve on a council that worked to prepare the draft text of the exhortation...

Archbishop Wuerl said that Sacramentum Caritatis "now becomes for our archdiocesan Church a teaching instrument that we can all use and apply in our lives." He noted that "we will be looking at ways in which this can be more fully implemented in this archdiocese."

Ooh, can I volunteer to give feedback on more fully implementing n. 46?

Link | John da Fiesole
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Who's there?

Suppose your parish priest knocks on your door one fine morning this Spring and says, "I've come to bless your urn."

And you say, "My what?"

And he says, "Your urn. Your household urn. The one you keep on a shelf or in a niche above your bed."

And you say, "My what?"

And he says, "You're a practicing Catholic, right?"

And you say, "Yes."

And he says, "Go to Mass every Sunday, care about your faith, and all that?"

And you say, "Yes."

And he says, "You're supposed to have a household urn on a shelf or in a niche above your bed, and I'm supposed to bless it."

What would you say?

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And that, I think, is about what a good number of Catholics would say when first confronted with the material in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.

Link | John da Fiesole
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My enemy's enemy

In comments below, Rob and I revisit an old disagreement about whether "enemy" means "someone you hate" (Rob's position) or "someone who hates you" (my position).

The first time this came up, I took it to be a relatively uninteresting matter of semantics; it's easy enough to figure out which meaning is intended when Rob says, "Christians have no enemies," or I say, "Christians have plenty of enemies."

But Rob's latest comment suggests there's more going on here than that.

Maybe what "enemy" meant to the people who heard Jesus preach was "someone with whom you share mutual hatred." If I am your enemy, then you are my enemy.


Old idea of "enemy"

If that's what "enemy" means, then the relationship "is an enemy of" has an existence distinct from the people in the relationship. It may be than only one person really chooses to hate the other; it may even be that neither person does. "Jews and Samaritans are enemies," may just be the rule you grow up with, a fact you have to accept as much as, "Gold is valuable."

In that case, Jesus' first task would be to get people to realize that there could be a difference between the people you hate and the people who hate you.


New idea of "enemy"

Then "enemy" loses its independence. It can't exist apart from the will of the one hating. I need not hate you just because you hate me; I need not hate you just because you are a Samaritan and I am a Jew.

Only then would the idea of "loving your enemy" make sense.


The transition to Jesus' idea of "enemy"

If we only hate other people by free choice, then we are free to choose to never hate other people. I suppose this freedom would come as news to the Jews of Jesus' time, who had till then been required (either by religious prescript or practical necessity) to hate Gentiles, at least to the extent of remaining apart from them, in order to preserve their own identity as Israel. Jesus reveals the full identity of Israel, in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, and so the old idea of "enemy" must be swept away.

Link | John da Fiesole
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The unseriousness of Catholic pacifism

Karen Marie Knapp links to what she calls "a fine essay on the witness of the White Rose Society (aka Sophie Scholl and companions)."

As it happens, the essay is written by Fr. John Dear, SJ, whose book Transfiguration I read last month.

He discusses the story of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, who opposed Nazism through a campaign of anonymous leaflets distributed in Munich for several months in 1942 and 1943. The campaign ended when Sophie and two others were caught, tried, and executed over a five-day period. (Three others were executed later in 1943.)

Fr. Dear writes of a talk given by Howard Zinn, who said that the key to

Every U.S. movement for social change ... was that ordinary people kept doing ordinary acts of nonviolent resistance every day even when there was absolutely no evidence of any positive outcome...

Great breakthroughs of hope derived from this, he said. Change evolved because ordinary people kept at it. They refused to give up. They did what they could, no matter how small the act. Everyone involved made a difference.

This is the lesson of Sophie Scholl. Her life and witness, along with all the heroes of the White Rose, bore good fruit after all. Their memory urges us to stand up and do what we can to stop the evil U.S. war on Iraq, the unjust occupation of the Palestinians, the criminal bombing of Afghanistan, the lethal funding of Colombian death squads, the demonic maintenance of our nuclear arsenal, and the refusal to feed and serve the starving masses of Africa, Latin America, India and elsewhere.

The last sentence could probably have ended with the words "to stop the evil U.S." without much loss of meaning.

I consider this essay yet another example of the fundamental unseriousness -- and let's not confuse seriousness and earnestness -- of Catholic pacifism in the United States today. Sophie Scholl's life and witness were given in opposition to Nazism, and it wasn't ordinary acts of nonviolent resistance that brought Nazism down.

If anything, the White Rose is an example of a non-U.S. movement for social change that didn't evolve change and, at least at the practical level such movements speak to, didn't make a difference. What did make a difference, what effected the change Sophie Scholl desired, was that ordinary people kept doing extraordinary acts of brutal violence every day even when there was absolutely no evidence of any positive outcome. When Fr. Dear, or Catholic pacifism in general, faces up to this fact, rather than glossing over or (as in this case) flat out ignoring it, then I will say they are being serious.

I think the lesson of Sophie Scholl goes beyond, "You, too, can be a martyr to your cause, whatever it may be!" And it's ... well, I'll just call it bad manners to claim that Fr. Dear's own hope for his own cause is the "good fruit" that the White Rose bore.

Link | John da Fiesole
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A good kind of difficult

If you're going to talk about the Book of Revelation, you pretty much have to start by saying that it's a hard read. The NAB's introduction to the Book, for example, begins this way:

The Apocalypse, or Revelation to John, the last book of the Bible, is one of the most difficult to understand because it abounds in unfamiliar and extravagant symbolism, which at best appears unusual to the modern reader.

There are different ways a book can be "a hard read" or "difficult to understand." It can use big words, convoluted syntax, or lots of footnotes. It can be poorly structured, or just organized in an unusual way. It can be about ideas too abstruse, too obscure, or too odd to be grasped by a particular reader.

In that light, Revelation is difficult to understand in an easy sense. It doesn't use big words, convoluted syntax, or footnotes. Its structure is easily discernible -- most likely, it's right there in black and white in your Bible, indicated by headings and possibly an introductory outline. The ideas are familiar to any Catholic who's been paying attention at Mass.

The difficulty of understanding Revelation -- relative to the rest of the Bible, that is; this is, after all, God's self-revelation, not instructions for using a toaster oven -- lies chiefly in the "unfamiliar and extravagant symbolism" mentioned by the NAB.

Alongside the symbolism, though -- and, whatever else you make of it, you pretty much have to know there's something up with the Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes -- the book is filled with allusions to other books of the Bible. Revelation is an eschatological interpretation of human history, so it shouldn't be surprising that it refers back to other interpretations of history, including the prophetic (e.g., Ezekiel) and the, um, historic (e.g., Numbers). But you won't necessarily notice the allusions unless you're already familiar with what they allude to -- or, of course, if they're pointed out to you as you read along.

I'd say the Book of Revelation is "difficult" much the way Cockney rhyming slang is difficult. If I say, "I took the fork to the bath to get a couple of pigs," you won't (you really can't) understand what I mean unless you happen to know that "fork (and knife)" means "wife," "bath (tub)" means "pub," and "pig's (ear)" means "beer." But if you do know these things, my meaning is perfectly clear.

Not that merely knowing the symbolism of Revelation makes the book as transparent as an ordinary human conversation about ordinary human things. But it does make it accessible as Scripture to the ordinary human believer.

To say the Book of Revelation is "difficult to understand," then, is to say that you have to do some work to understand it. At the very least, you have to read a version with good notes and cross-references, and read the notes to understand the symbolism and follow the cross-references to get the allusions. In other words, take advantage of the work other people have already done.

Link | John da Fiesole
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First thoughts on the Apostolic Exhortation

In no particular order:

1. He had me at Footnote 1: "Cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 73, a. 3."
2. The word "condemn" appears only once (n. 7), and not in a viscerally satisfying way.
3. Motu proprios are way shorter.
4. Continuing a long tradition with apostolic exhortations, there is no mention of tiger quolls.
5. This strikes me as an unwieldy document, in the literal sense of being difficult to roll up and hit someone with.
6. Current odds-on favorite for "first thing to be founded with the words 'Sacramentum Caritatis' in the title": an organization to teach the faithful to recite the more common prayers in Latin, and also to sing parts of the liturgy to Gregorian chant.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Let me count, average, and fit a least squares curve to the ways

Can you love God too much?

Of course not. "Too much" implies "too little" and "just right;" in other words, a measure, which in turn generates a suitably measured response. We are not to love God in a measured way; we are to love Him with all our heart, and all our mind, and all our soul, and all our strength. Our loving God too much is like a cup holding too much water; as much love as our hearts can hold is how much love they ought to hold. (Though you usually don't want water to slosh out of a cup, while you do want love for God to slosh out of your heart, as it were.)

But you can do too much as a means of loving God. Put another way, there are disproportionate means of loving God.

When we say "proportionate," we often mean something like "on the same scale as" or "about the same size as." We might say that reading thirty books is proportionate to reading thirty-four books; the time and effort involved are roughly the same.

"Proportionate means," though, aren't means that are "on the same scale as the end." If they were, then, since our love for God should be unmeasured, so should the means by which we love Him.

Instead, proportionate means are those means proportionate to achieving the end. If my end is a fine rum swizzle, the proportionate means are combining one part sour, one part sweet, three parts strong, and four parts weak. No matter how much I want a rum swizzle, filling my glass with rum won't produce one. All parts rum is a disproportionate means to a rum swizzle.

(If you prefer a more traditional example, you want all the health you can get (as an end), but that doesn't mean you want all the medicien you can get (as a means).)

To act in order to accomplish some end is necessarily an act of reason. If we want to achieve something out of our love for God, then what we do to achieve it is determined by both our love for God and our reason. And if what we do is determined by love and reason, we can (although we usually wouldn't) say that it is "measured" by them, that there is a "too much" and a "too little" and a "just right."

St. Thomas sums all this up in these words:

For the interior act of charity has the character of an end, since man's ultimate good consists in his soul cleaving to God... whereas the exterior acts are as means to the end, and so have to be measured both according to charity and according to reason.

St. Thomas identifies beneficence ("doing good to someone"), almsdeeds (giving to the needy), and fraternal correction (everyone's favorite!) as the exterior acts of charity.

The good news in all this is that, if you find yourself asking, "Am I doing too much for God and for my neighbor?," the answer may well be, "Yes."

The bad news is that the answer depends on whether what you're doing is proportionate to the end of loving God with your whole being, and through Him your neighbor, and not on whether it's proportionate to the end of loving them as much as you happen to today.

Link | John da Fiesole
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"No particular prayers need be said for this novena."

That's my kind of novena!

Every day for nine days, turn to St. Joseph in spirit four times during the day and honor him in the following four points. (These "visits" may be made anywhere -- at home, at work, on the street, in the car or bus -- and at any time.)

1. During the first visit, consider St. Joseph's fidelity to grace. Reflect upon the action of the Holy Ghost in his soul. At the conclusion of this brief meditation, thank God for so honoring St. Joseph, and ask, through his intercession, for a similar grace.
2. Later in the day, consider St. Joseph's fidelity to the interior life. Study his spirit of recollection. Think, thank God, and ask.
3. Later still, consider St. Joseph's love for Our Lady. Think, thank God, and ask.
4. Finally, in a fourth visit, reflect upon St. Joseph's love for the Divine Child. Think, thank God, and ask.

Of course, I didn't post this in time for anyone else to see it and finish the novena on St. Joseph's Day next Monday, but if I had that much on the ball I wouldn't need novenas where all you have to do is remember you're saying one.

The website I copied the above from -- as well as the book where I first saw it -- says, "This novena has proven to be highly efficacious. It seems to be pleasing to St. Joseph and helpful to souls." I can't say for sure how pleasing to St. Joseph it is, but in its simplicity it does seem to be helpful to souls.

Link | John da Fiesole
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What's Latin for "The Sacrament of Tough Love"?

Lots of people are excited at the thought of what the Pope's apostolic exhortation might contain. I'm just a boot-licking Vatican toady, but if past performance is an indication of future results:

• there won't be much in the way of bullet points introduced with the words, "Effective immediately:"
• some people will be disappointed
• some people will be relieved
• the media will misinterpret it as a political document
• very few people will read it
• very few readers will study it
• someone will found something with "Sacramentum Caritatis" in the title

Link | John da Fiesole
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Beware the ordinary

Only Naaman the Syrian, Jesus reminds the people of Nazareth, was healed of leprosy by Elisha.

"And him just barely," He could have added.

Naaman wanted Elisha to come forth and do something fancy and showy; instead, the prophet told him, through a servant, to take a bath. The Nazoreans likewise had their categories of "Ordinary" and "Extraordinary," and likewise reacted with anger when someone dared to mix them up.

Watch out for the ordinary. It may well contain the extraordinary, the very thing you're always saying you're looking for. And don't be angry at the idea; you may be letting the extraordinary pass right out of your life. Be thankful, in fact: there's a lot of the ordinary in your life.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Timely demythification

Or, Distilling the Truth.

Belief: I'm Catholic, and therefore won't drink Bushmills. (Alternatively, I'm Protestant, and therefore won't drink Jameson).

Reality: The same company owns The Bushmills Distillery and Midleton Distillery (where Jameson is produced).

And more.

Link | John da Fiesole
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If you attend only one evening talk this week

Fr. John Corbett, O.P., will be speaking tomorrow, March 13, at St. Andrew Apostle Church in Silver Spring, MD, on the topic, Understanding the Symbolic Language of the Book of Revelation.

Fr. Corbett is an absolutely outstanding preacher. Unless you're cloistered, or trapped in Ohio somewhere, you should be there. Evening Prayer at 7:30, talk to follow.

Link | John da Fiesole
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