Catholicism 101
(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)
Church of the Holy Cross
August 24, 2008
Part 23
- Last week we considered the birth and childhood of Jesus. Now let us consider his adulthood: his ministry.
- His public life begins with his baptism at the hands of John the Baptist.
o John protests that he needs to be baptized by Jesus, and yet Jesus is coming to him.
o Jesus says: “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Mat. 3.15).
o There is a theophany:
§ And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." (Mat. 3.16-17)
§ So at the beginning of Jesus’ public life, the Father and the Holy Spirit bear witness to him, to his identity as the beloved and well-pleasing Son of God.
- From there he is led into the wilderness for an intense period of fasting and prayer. It is as though he is gathering strength and focusing for the task at hand.
- he returns from the wilderness and:
§ We have talked before about the meaning of the “kingdom of heaven” or the “kingdom of God” – it is the location of the carrying-out of God’s will; in other words: where God reigns. This had been the message of John the Baptist too, who was “the forerunner” but who was destined to die and not see the Kingdom.
· The Kingdom is Jesus himself:
o “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (Jn. 6.38).
o He has come to carry into effect the Father’s plan for the reconciliation of mankind and the whole of creation to himself. That’s the missio dei – that’s why Jesus is here.
§ So Jesus’ proclamation of the nearness of the Kingdom, and his call to repentance, is because of the immanent fruition of God’s will, the fulfillment of his promises.
· That means one thing: the cross, with all its ironic trappings of kingship and reign and dominion: the cross is where God’s will is carried out, its where the “Kingdom comes”.
o And this explains why Jesus proclaimed its nearness, while he was himself it. He is oriented toward the cross: his incarnation, his nativity, his presentation in the temple, his ministry, all points toward the cross.
There is a famous depiction of “the deposition” by Rogier van der Weyden that make this point: as the corpse of Christ is taken down from the cross, blood flows from his pierced side, down under his loincloth, emerging again, and running down his thigh. It’s a visual connection of Christ’s first wound, his circumcision, (contemporaneous with his naming) and his last wound: the opening of his heart – reminding us that the purpose of the eight-day old child is to be crucified, to reconcile us to God through the water and the blood flowing from his side 33 years later.
o Then he summoned the 12:
§ “And he went up on the mountain, and called to him those whom he desired; and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, to be with him, and to be sent out to preach and have authority to cast out demons” (Mrk. 3.13-15).
· He appoints the twelve, the apostles – apostolwn – from the Greek word for “sent”, for they are called “to be with him, and to be sent”.
o And they are sent 1) to preach, and 2) to have authority. In other words, to perpetuate Jesus’ own mission and work. He proclaims himself, and they will in turn proclaim him. His words and works are done with divine authority (because they are HIS, and he is all about God, being God himself): and so the apostles words and works are spoken and done with divine authority: HIS authority.
o And their authority is to “cast out demons” – in other words, to oppose and cast out “the ruler of this world” (Jn. 12.31) – the lying, murdering, personal force working corruption behind the scenes of creation from the beginning. The apostles will oppose and conquer this power, because they are commissioned to do what Jesus does, and he opposes and conquers Satan and his demons.
§ During that time Jesus goes throughout the land preaching the Good News of the coming Kingdom – that death and hell and sin are about to be conquered. And he works miracles – what John’s Gospel calls “signs” of the Kingdom. He heals sickness, he opens the eyes of the blind, he casts out demons, he raises the dead, he feeds the hungry.
· John Keble (d. 1866) said: “All his time, from his baptism to his crucifixion, was entirely spent in waiting on those who needed him, either for their sorrows or for their sins.”
§ And Moses and Elijah (representing the Law and the Prophets) appear, talking with Jesus. Ostensibly the subject of conversation is the impending fulfillment of the divine plan: the cross. Remember that this is a brief stop on the way to Jerusalem, towards which Jesus had “set his face” (Lk. 9.51) – in other words, he knew what he was doing: that he was going to Jerusalem to carry out the will of the Father – to suffer and die.
§ And there is a final, ominous, divine witness to the identity of Jesus on the mountain:
· “And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, ‘This is my beloved Son; listen to him"’ (Mrk. 9.7).
o There is little left for Jesus to do at this point in his ministry, really just one thing, on account of which he sets his face toward Jerusalem. This is the final journey. A good deal is recorded about it in the Gospels, but it took place in a short amount of time. Jesus’ words become terse:
· Jesus has put his hand to the plow, and he is not looking back. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Very soon he will be crowned.
Catholicism 101
(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic
Religion.)
Church of the Holy Cross
August 17, 2008
Part 22
Christian Duty: Christian Belief: The Three Great Creeds: Concerning God: Jesus
Christ: The Incarnation: The Blessed Virgin Mary and the Advent of the Christ: “he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.”
- To sum up on Mary, let’s quote Bishop Hall, who said:
o “But how gladly do we second the angel in the praise of her, which was
more ours than his! How justly do we bless her, whom the angel pronounced blessed. How worthily s she honoured of men, whom the angel proclaimed beloved of God! O blessed Mary, he cannot bless thee, he cannot honour thee too much, that deifies thee not! That which the angel said of thee, thou hast prophesied of thyself: we believe the angel and thee; ‘All generations shall call thee blessed,” by the fruit of whose womb all generations are blessed.”
- Mary is honored because she bore the Savior. The Athanasian Creed says
that Jesus, “although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ. One,
not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into
God."
o It is “taking that manhood [i.e. human nature / humanity] into God”
that saves us. It is that event in which we are “reconciled to God”. God’s plan
for us since the Garden of Eden (which we botched, and which we continue to
botch through sin), that we should be together with him in mutual delight, joy
and peace, in the communion of love that is the divine economy – in short, the
reconciliation of God and man takes place in Mary’s womb, when “the Word was made flesh”.
o The Annunciation (Luke 1) is this event. We celebrate it in the Church
on March 25 (“Lady Day”), and every day at Evening Prayer, when we join Mary in her canticle, Magnificat (Luke 1.46ff, and BCP Evening Prayer), when we “magnify the Lord” with her in our mutual joy at the coming of Jesus.
o The Incarnation is likewise celebrated at Christmas, the feast of the “Nativity” (the birth) of the Lord.
o In Hebrews 1.6 we see that the Angelic Spirits have a doxological and
liturgical share in the Incarntion:
§ “when he brings the first-born into the world, he says, ‘Let all God's angels worship him.’”
§ And we see this jubilation in the Spiritual realm breaking forth into the phenomenal in Luke 2:
· And an angel of the Lord appeared to them [the shepherds], and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, "Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased!"
· And the Church herself joins this angelic jubilation at each Sunday mass when she sings the Gloria.
o Not withstanding the jubilation of the angels, and now of the Church,
at the time, the birth of Jesus was rather obscure. He was not born in a great cosmopolitan center of the world, not Rome, or Athens, or Alexandria; not even Jerusalem. He was born in Bethlehem, as the prophet Micah had foretold: “But you, O Bethlehem Eph'rathah, who are little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days” (Micah 5.2). And his birth was only known to a band of Persian astrologers and a group of Shepherds.
o To fulfill the requirements of the Torah:
§ Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. The Church commemorates the feast of the Circumcision (and the Naming of Jesus) on January 1, eight days after Christmas. Cf. Luke 2.21.
§ Likewise Mary went to the temple 40 days after giving birth to the Lord to be ritually purified (this ritual survives in the Prayer Book as “the churching of women” where a new mother and child are blessed; in our Prayer Book it is called “Thanksgiving for the birth or adoption of a Child”), when at the same time Jesus was “presented” in the temple. This feast (The Purification of our Lady / The Presentation of our Lord) is commemorated 40 days after Christmas, on February 2. Cf. Luke 2.22.
· At the Purification / Presentation, Simeon sings the Nunc Dimittis, which the Church sings likewise each day at Evening Prayer (or Compline) (Luke 2.29ff). And Simeon blesses them, and prophecies to Mary: “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2.34f), referring to the Cross and to Mary’s co-agony on Calvary.
§ The Persian Astrologers who came to honor the Lord stopped by to share the good news with Herod, the corrupt Jewish king (a petty stooge of the Romans). Herod, thinking that a rival had been born, ordered the massacre of the children under the age of 2 in Bethlehem and the environs. The Church has always seen the deaths of these children as martyrdoms for the sake of Jesus, and has commemorated the event on the feast of the Holy Innocents, on December 28 each year. (Cf. Matthew 2.16ff.)
· Jesus was protected because an angel warned St. Joseph in a dream to flee. And so they journeyed into Egypt, and came back when the threat had passed, when Herod had died.
§ The Holy Family returned from Egypt to live at Nazareth, the home of Mary. So the prophecy was fulfilled:
· From Hosea “Out of Egypt have a called my son” (Matt. 2.15).
· And that Jesus was derisively called “a Nazarene” (along with the early Christians) – fulfilling the prophecies about the Messiah being derided and ridiculed.
o Scripture is silent about the events of the Lord’s life after this
point, until he is about 12 years old.
Catholicism 101
(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)
(Again, this particular session is actually all Fr Will; not Fr Staley)
Church of the Holy Cross
August 10, 2008
Part 21
We are still paused to look at “catholicity” as it relates to doctrine.
(We’re headed back toward: Christian
Duty: Christian Belief: The Three
Great Creeds: Concerning God:
Jesus Christ: The Incarnation:
The Blessed Virgin Mary)
- We have paused for the last two sessions to reconsider what catholicity means for us.
o Being catholic really means being a Christian – and conversely, non-catholic ways of being Christian are therefore atrophied iterations of Christianity – something is wanting in them.
§ And that is because Jesus is the bestower of catholicity. It belongs to him, and he gives it to his Bride, the Catholic Church. She is “Catholic” because she is His, and He is Catholic.
§ Being a Catholic means being brought into the “one new man” (Eph. 2.15) who is Jesus Christ, in whom we are reconciled to God and to one another. This means being a part of God’s plan for redeeming all of creation. Because this divine plan into which we are incorporated is universal in scope, we are “catholics” – because the plan is universal, and Jesus Christ is universal.
§ So being a Catholic Christian means, in a sense, being a “churchman” – belonging to the Bride of Christ, who is our Mother. We are begotten from the water and the blood flowing from the wounded side of our Lord’s Body (another word for the Church).
· Remember the Lord’s words to Nicodemus:
o [Nicode'mus] came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew [Grk: anwqen - “anew” or “from above”] he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicode'mus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3.2-6)
§ This means we are made new by these two great Sacraments of which “Holy Mother Church” is the dispenser: Baptism and the Eucharist. They are part of the Catholic Church’s “dowry” – what she is given by her husband, Jesus Christ. And also because she is mystically identical with his Body:
· The Catholic Church is “the Body of Christ” – because they are
Bridegroom and Bride: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'… So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Mark 19.5-6). And the water and the blood flow from the wounded Body – the “one flesh”.
o So being a Christian means being a part of the “one new man” – the
universal Body of Christ, the Catholic Church.
§ “Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sos'thenes, To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours…” (1 Cor 1.1-2).
· You see here the primacy of universality, of catholicity. There is one, catholic “church of God” and it subsists “at Corinth” – because the Corinthians are called to sanctity (another attribute of the Church – “we believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church”) “together with all… in every place” who call on the name of Jesus. So the call to holiness is in virtue of our being a part of the fellowship of the Catholic Church.
§ And being a Christian means (in part) a unity in Catholic doctrine (in Latin doctrina means “teaching” from docere – “to teach”).
· “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them… teaching them … and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28.19-20).
o You see in this verse that “Catholic Doctrine” is a mandate of Jesus. Its about “teaching them” (doctrine) and its about “all nations” (catholicity).
o Combine this passage with the one above from 1 Corinthians, and you see that we are “called to be saints together with” those from “all nations” who have received the teaching of the Apostles.
§ This is not merely a geographic unity – in other words, its not only, as Paul says, a unity of those “in every place” – its also a unity of those in every time who have received the teaching of the Apostles, Catholic Doctrine.
· When Pope Benedict came to America recently, he addresses an ecumenical gathering of Christian leaders (including the Episcopalian Bishop of New York, Mark Sisk who filled in for our Presiding Bishop, who had something else to do that day). He said this:
o “Too often those who are not Christians, as they observe the splintering of Christian communities, are understandably confused about the Gospel message itself. Fundamental Christian beliefs and practices are sometimes changed within communities by so-called ‘prophetic actions’ that are based on a hermeneutic not always consonant with the datum of Scripture and Tradition. Communities consequently give up the attempt to act as a unified body, choosing instead to function according to the idea of “local options”. Somewhere in this process the need for diachronic koinonia – communion with the Church in every age – is lost, just at the time when the world is losing its bearings and needs a persuasive common witness to the saving power of the Gospel.”
o Now he is talking about our own time, but his words are equally applicable to aberrations from Catholic Doctrine in any age. Remember that Christian unity in the teaching of the Apostles (“Catholic Doctrine”) is, according to Jesus, his gift “so that the world may believe” (John 17.21-23). And the phrase to notice is “diachronic koinonia”. Koinonia is the Greek word for “fellowship” (as in Acts 2.42: “they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship [Koinonia], to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
· St. Vincent of Lerins (born late 300’s or early 400’s) wrote in his
work The Commonitory that Scripture must be our guide in all matters of doctrine, but that a problem arises when people interpret Scripture differently. It therefore must be interpreted in accordance with the tradition of the Catholic Church, and the lenses of interpretation must be 1) antiquity, 2) universality, and 3) consent. Pithily put, we believe: “Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus” – what was believed everywhere, always, and by all.
o “With regard to antiquity, that interpretation must be held to which has been handed down from the earliest times; with regard to universality, that which has always been held, if not by all, at least by the most part, in preference to that which has been held only by a few; with regard to consent, the determination of a General Council on any point will of course be of summary authority, and will hold the first place; next to this, the interpretation which has been held uniformly and persistently by all those Fathers, or by a majority of them, who have lived and died in the communion of the Catholic Church. Accordingly, whatsoever interpretation of Holy Scripture is opposed to an interpretation thus authenticated, even though supported by the authority of one or another individual teacher, however eminent, whether by his position, or his attainments, or his piety, or by all of these together, must be rejected as novel and unsound” (from “Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers”, Series II, Voulme 11).
· We see this principle at work even in the apostolic age of the Church:
o “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thes. 2.15).
· With respect to the doctrine of “sola scriptura” or “scripture alone” (propounded, I am told, by Martin Luther): 1) it is itself not found in Scripture; 2) it assumes that Scripture is perspicacious, which it isn’t; and 3) the Church existed for some time without the New Testament, so we know as an historical datum that catholicity (and Catholic Doctrine) precedes Scripture.
In his biography of St. Silouan the Athonite (d. 1938) (which I have lately been reading), Archimandrite Sophrony (d. 1993) put it this way: The life of the Church means:
…life in the Holy Spirit, and Sacred Tradition the unceasing action of the Holy Spirit in her. Sacred Tradition, as the eternal and immutable dwelling of the Holy Spirit in the church, lies at the very root of her being, and so encompasses her life that even the very Scriptures come to be but one of its forms. Thus, were the Church to be deprived of Tradition she would cease to be what she is, for the ministry of the New Testament is the ministry of the Spirit ‘written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stones, but in the fleshy tables of the heart’ [2 Cor. 3.3].
Suppose that for some reason the Church were to be bereft of all her books, of the Old and New Testaments, the works of the holy Fathers, of all the service books – what would happen? Sacred Tradition would restore the Scriptures, not word for word, perhaps – the verbal form might be different – but in essence the new Scriptures would be the expression of that same ‘faith which was once delivered unto the saints’ [Jude 3]. They would be the expression of the one and only Holy Spirit continuously active in the Church, her foundation and her very substance.
The Scriptures are not more profound, not more important than Holy Tradition but, as said above, they are one of its forms – the most precious form, both because they are preserved and convenient to make use of. But removed from the stream of Sacred Tradition, the Scriptures cannot be rightly understood through any scientific research….
Men are wrong when they set aside Sacred Tradition and go, as they think, to its source – to the Holy Scriptures. The Church has her origins, not in the Scriptures but in Sacred Tradition. The Church did not possess the New Testament during the first decades of her history. She lived then by Tradition only – the Tradition St. Paul calls upon the faithful to hold [cf. 2 Thes. 2.15, above].
(Again I apologize for the wonky formatting.)
Catholicism 101
(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)
(Actually, today’s lesson is all Fr Will – not Fr Staley.)
Church of the Holy Cross
August 3, 2008
Part 20
Let us Pause and reflect (again) on Catholicity and the Church
- Last time we looked at the meaning of catholicity. It means universality, because God wants his creation, which was primordially broken by sin, to be reconciled to himself. That was God’s intention all along: for us to be united to him. We blew it. There was a fragmentation in the beginning. It is as though “Adam” (“Man”) stands for one universal man, one humanity, which (who) is fragmented and shattered through sin. De Lubac, following St. Maximus the Confessor (early 600’s AD), says: “Whereas God is working continually in the world to the effect that all should come together into unity, by this sin which is the work of man, ‘the one nature was shattered into a thousand pieces” and humanity which ought to constitute a harmonious whole, in which ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ would be no contradiction, is turned into a multitude of individuals, as numerous as the sands of the seashore, all of whom show violently discordant
inclinations.” St. Maximus says: “And now we rend each other like wild beasts.”
o This happens immediately after the fall. With Cain and Abel, the third and fourth people on the scene, there is jealousy and murder – and not just murder, but fratricide. Violent disharmony, not just between man and God, but between man and man.
- But God did not abandon us to this condition, because he is love. He made us out of love, and he was not content to see us turn away from him into nothing (into death).
o St. Irenaeus of Lyons said (c. 180 AD): “God, in the beginning of time
plants the vine of the human race; he loved this human race and purposed to pour out his Spirit upon it and to give it the adoption of sons" (Adversus Haereses).
o So we read that Fr Henri de Lubac said: “And when Christ as last appeared, coming as the ‘one bridegroom’, his bride, once again, was the ‘whole human race’.”
o And St. Paul said: “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5.19).
- The whole purpose of God’s plan is harmony and peace. He wants togetherness – we with him, and therefore with one another. Think of it as though we were spokes on a wheel. God is the axle. Through sin, we have removed our center of consciousness far out, toward the rim. But the closer we get to God, the closer also we get to one another. This is a way of understanding the universality, the reconciliation, and the peace God intends for us to have in the Catholic Church.
o Again, St. Paul (Ephesians 2.13-18): “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the
dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and
peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”
o When you read something like that, in the back of your mind you should have the story of the Fall in Genesis: the shame of Adam and Eve, the corrosive mendaciousness of the Serpent, the murder of Abel, the confusion of tongues at Babel, the inability of men to understand one another, literally and figuratively, all the elements of the curse, the abuse of women, the necessity of toil and struggle, licentiousness, jealousy, physical pain. All of that is the “fragmentation” of man St. Maximus talked about. And its all of that that God undoes in Jesus Christ.
§ It’s a collective Fall – it’s the Fall of “Adam” – the fall of “Man”.
§ And it’s a collective redemption: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15.22).
§ All shall be made alive. That is God’s purpose.
o So man must be “renewed”, recreated. There must be a new Genesis, and a new Adam. Christ became the new Adam, the new mankind, in whom “all shall be made alive” – recall Ephesians: “For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility… that he might create in himself one new man.”
§ Because Christ is the “one new man” – the recreated mankind, the new Adam, the single, universal man – he is truly the one and only “Catholic” because he is the oloz, the whole. And as soon as we have mention of this “wholeness” – this catholicity of Jesus Christ, we have mention of the Catholic Church:
· For God “has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1.22-23).
o Because Christ is the whole, universal man, because he “fills all in all”, because he is the “one new man”, the Church likewise is universal, is Catholic, encompasses all, because it is “his body” by being his bride with whom he has become “one flesh”, an indissoluble unity.
Recall last time we discussed the whole marriage vows: “With my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
Jesus endows his bride with all that he has, and all that he is. He gives her his own selfhood, his life; and so she bears a mystical IDENTITY with him. Christ is the sacrament or icon of God, and the Church is the sacrament or icon of Christ, giving to men freely from what she freely receives from Christ, re-presenting him in every time and in every place.
§ So the Church is catholic because Jesus Chris is catholic. And we must be catholic Christians in order, in the end, to be reconciled to God – because this is God’s plan and purpose of reconciliation and peace, the one and only plan and purpose, his one and only Son. There’s no other way but the Catholic Church, because there is no other Son of God, no other qeanqropoz, God-man, but Jesus Christ. Therefore, as St. Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258 AD) said: extra ecclesiam nulla salus – outside the Church there is no salvation. Because in Jesus Christ alone Go “has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1.13-14).
§ Now, Jesus himself gives us a glimpse of this scheme in John 17 (which we’ve looked at before): Jesus says that for the sake of the Apostles he has consecrated himself in the truth, that they might be consecrated in the truth, because he has given them his word, which he received from the Father, and they have kept it, and he prays not only for the 12 Apostles, but for those who believe in Jesus through their teaching, their “word”, which they pass on (tradere), from him.
· And St. Paul says: ““So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is
joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2.19ff).”
· This catholicity is therefore (partly) doctrinal – which is to say, it is important for us to hold to catholic doctrine:
o “Take heed to yourself and to your teaching; hold to that, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (St. Paul to St. Timothy – apostolic succession – 1 Tim. 4.16)
o And we see the how it is that doctrine is “catholic” (in the theological sense above) explicitly when St. Paul says: “Him we proclaim, warning EVERY MAN and TEACHING EVERY MAN in all wisdom, that we may present EVERY MAN mature in Christ” (Col. 1.28), and this connects with what St. Paul says in
Ephesians about building up the body of Christ (the Church) “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4.13).
So we see that a unity in catholic doctrine is part of what it is to “grow up into” or be conformed to Christ, the “one new” universal (catholic) man, the new Adam, in whom mankind is renewed and recreated.
Lastly, and most importantly, Paul says: “Let the elders [Greek: presbuteroi, “priests”] who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching” (1 Tim. 5.17). (Jokes.) (Sort of.)
Catholicism 101
(The outline of this series is taken rom Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)
(Actually,
today’s lesson is all Fr Will – not Fr Staley.)
Church of the Holy Cross
July 27, 2008
Part 19
Let us Pause and reflect.
- What is Catholicism?
o Fundamentally, Catholicism is a property of the one Church:
§ “We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church…” (from the Nicene Creed)
§ We only believe in “one… Church” and that Church we describe (among other things) as “catholic”.
o More fundamentally still, Catholicism is a property of Jesus Christ: Everything that God IS, he gives. And most fundamentally he is himself: “I am.” So we can see that he gives himself.
o And to whom does he give himself? His bride, the Church.
§ “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5.25).
· The Sacrament of Christian Marriage is a holy image, an eikon of this love of between Christ and his Church.
o In the old form for the Solemnization of Holy Matrimony, the Bridegroom put a ring on the finger of his bride and said: “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
§ The old meaning of “worship” was simply to
revere and to declare the “worth” of something (or someone). The formal title for mayors in England
to this day is “Your Worship”. So “with my body I thee worship” means that the husband is declaring the “worth” of the bride with his body – not least in the marital embrace.
§ This too is a poignant icon of the cross,
whereon Jesus solemnly declares the worth of (or “worships”) his bride with his body.
o “Catholic” means “universal”. Olos means something that “forms a whole” and kaq olou means “together in one whole”.
§ If “Catholicism” is a predicate of the one Church, if its something the Church “has”, then it must be given to her by the Bridegroom, who endows her with all his “worldly goods” – i.e. everything he
has (and he has everything).
§ This universality is in virtue of Christ’s being the “universal man”.
· St. Paul expresses this universality of the man Jesus Christ when he calls him the new Adam:
o “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15.21f).
o Christ abolished “in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself ONE NEW MAN…” (Ephesians 2.15).
o Henri de Lubac (in Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man): “For Irenaeus again, as indeed for Origen, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, for Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus, Hilary and others, the lost sheep of the Gospel that the Good Shepherd brings back to the fold is no other than the whole of human nature; its sorry state so moves the Word of God that he leaves the great flock of the angels, as it were to their own devices, in order to go to its help. The Fathers designated this nature by a series of equivalent expressions, all of a concrete nature, thus demonstrating that it was in their view a genuine reality. They seemed to witness its birth, to see it live, grow, develop, as a single being. With the first sin it was
this being, whole and entire, which fell away, which was driven out of Paradise and sentenced to a bitter exile until the time of its redemption. And when Christ as last appeared, coming as the ‘one bridegroom’, his bride, once again, was the ‘whole human race’.” (Quoting Pseudo-Chrysostom.)
§ At Pentecost, the reconciling work of the “universal man” (this work = the cross) is poured out, and the prophecy of Joel is fulfilled (as Peter says explicitly in Acts 2.14-17):
· “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh” (Joel 2.28).
· And the universality of this outpouring is symbolized in the multiplicity of tongues:
o “When the day of Pentecost had come, [the 12 Apostles] were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And ther appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.”
§ This episode undoes what was done at the Tower of Babel (which symbolizes the disunity and disharmony of our fallen condition, our alienation from one another):
“And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city” (Genesis 11.5-8).
§ The disciples all proclaimed the same thing,
“the mighty works of God” (Acts 2.11), the Gospel of Jesus.· This outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Church, the Bride, is proleptically figured in the annunciation to Mary (“Spouse of the Holy Spirit”):
o ‘And the angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be
called holy, the Son of God”’ (Luke 1.35).
§ The same thing is going on with Mary as will happen at Pentecost with “all flesh” – the Holy Spirit comes upon her, and she conceives and brings forth Jesus.
· So we see that the birth of the Church, at Pentecost, (when the Church was already catholic – universal – and when there were as yet only 12 members of her).
· Members of “the Catholic Church” must therefore manifest a unity of faith with the Apostles in part because we say that we believe the one Church is also “apostolic”, but mainly because in anticipating Pentecost, Jesus said to the 12 Apostles:
o “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Sama'ria and to the end of the earth.”
o And because his gift of unity (“oneness”) is a gift of unity in faith with these 12 men:
§ “And for their sake [the sake of the 12] I
consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth. "I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me” (John 17, passim).
Catholicism 101
(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic
Religion.)
Church of the Holy Cross
July 20, 2008
Part 18
Christian Duty: Christian Belief: The Three Great Creeds: Concerning God: Jesus Christ: The Incarnation: The Blessed Virgin Mary
- Jesus Christ is both God and man.
o The Athanasian Creed puts it this way:
§ “For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God, of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the Substance of his Mother, born in the world; Perfect God and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting; Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferior to the Father, as touching his Manhood. Who although he be God and Man, yet he is not two, but one Christ; One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God; One altogether; not by confusion of Substance, but by unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and Man is one Christ…”
o At the fourth General (or Ecumenical) Council held at Chalcedon (modern Turkey) in October of 451 AD, against the teaching of a monk named Eutyches, who taught that while Jesus was divine, he was not really fully human. Following the teaching of Pope Leo I and St. Cyril of Alexandria, the Fathers of the council said this:
§ “We teach . . . one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, known in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.”
o The “two natures” of Christ are the divine and the human. This is really just a fancy way of saying that Jesus is really God, and at the same time he is really a man. Neither is qualified, and neither is an illusion. He is fully and really God, and fully and really a man.
o And as the Athanasian Creed says, the humanity of Christ comes from his
mother: “…God, of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the Substance of his Mother, born in the world…”
§ This means that Jesus really was human. He was born of a mother. He had human DNA, and everything else that goes with being a human. And
he got it all from his mother, Mary.
§ Thus, as the Archangel Gabriel says in the Gospel of Luke, there are two “agents” or actors in the Incarnation of God: 1) the Holy Spirit, and 2)
The Blessed Virgin Mary:
· “And the angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God’… And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according t your word.’” (Luke 1.35, 38).
§ Scripture is silent about the birth and early life of St. Mary, although there is an ancient extra-canonical book known as the Protoevangelium of James (written about they year 150 AD) which says much about her early life and her parents. Most likely, however, the Protoevangelium of James was a symbolic / theological work not meant to be taken literally (but we don’t know for sure).
§ We may, however, say with certainty that St. Mary was, in fact, born, that she had an early life, etc. And we may say with reverent conviction (and the Church DOES say) that God did not pick her at random for so monumental a task. Rather, like many of the key players in salvation history, she was chosen from the moment of her conception, and specially sanctified by God for this purpose.
· This was also the case, according to Scripture, of the Prophet Jeremiah, and St. John the Baptist:
o Jeremiah 1.5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
o Luke 1.15 (about St. John the Baptist): “for he will be great before the Lord, and he shall drink no wine nor strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb.”
o Being elected by God and consecrated for a particular role in the narrative of salvation is something that the Lord does. And the Church has ever held that this was the case with THE
key player in salvation history, the one from whose body God would give himself to us: the Blessed Virgin.
o Only by being so graced could she have played such a mysterious and high part in God’s plan.
§ And Gabriel bears witness to Mary’s being specially graced: he says that she is “kecaritwmenh” – in the Vulgate “gratia plena” – in English: “full of grace”.
§ The Church has explained the Gospel’s teaching about Mary being specially graced, saying that “her soul, in the first instant of its creation… was, by a special grace and privilege of God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, her Son and the Redeemer of the human race, preserved free from all stain of original sin” (Ineffabilis Deus – the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Pius IX on the Immaculate Conception).
§ On the Principle of Lex orandi, lex credendi, w find that this teaching is contained in germ within the Book of Common Prayer:
· “Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin: Grant that we, being regenerate and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ…” (The third Collect for Christmas Day). Note the phrase “pure virgin”.
§ Concerning Mary’s perpetual virginity:
· Consider St. Mary’s response to the Annunciation: she asks St. Gabriel, “How shall this be, since I have no husband?”
o This is a poor translation (the King James was better). In Greek it says: pws estai touto epei andra ou ginwskw. “How shall this be since I am not knowing [present, active] man?”
§ This response doesn’t make much sense unless
Mary was a virgin and intended to remain a virgin (otherwise, there would have been no perplexity [“How shall this be…?”] – she would have expected it to have come about in the normal manner: through the conjugal embrace).
· Father Staley says: “The Church has ever held that the mother of Jesus was a virgin both before and after the birth of Jesus. St. Augustine speaks of her as ‘a virgin conceiving, a virgin bringing forth, a virgin dying.’ The title ‘ever-virgin’ is applied to her by St. Athanasius. The words ‘And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son’ (St. Matt. 1.25), do not imply that she ceased to be a virgin after the birth of Jesus, or that there were other children born later. They are intended simply to make it quite plain that Joseph was not the father of Mary’s child. They guard Mary’s virginity up to the time of the birth of her first and only son. The term ‘firstborn’ does not imply a second born. There were amongst the Jews certain rites performed in reference to the first son born into a fmaily’ and thus he was called ‘the firstborn’ whether there were other children or not (see Ex. 13.2; St. Luke 2.22, 23). The brethren of our Lord, alluded to in the Gospels, were not the children of the Virgin Mother. They are generally supposed either to have been children of Joseph by a previous marriage, or to have been the cousins of our Lord. When we realize that God himself took flesh in Mary’s womb, it is inconceivable that other children should afterwards been born of her.”
Catholicism
101
(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)
Church of the Holy Cross
June 28, 2008
Part 17
Christian Duty: Christian Belief: The Three Great Creeds: Concerning God: Jesus Christ: The Incarnation (2)
- The Purpose of the Incarnation (why was God made man?)
o To save us, to redeem us from sin, certainly.
o Had there been no sin, would God have become incarnate?
§ We don’t know for sure – it is not a part of the deposit of faith, and the Church does not deal in counterfactuals: the narrative of salvation is about the data – what is given. Christian doctrine is concerned with facts.
§ Though we don’t know for sure whether, or in what form, the incarnation of God might have happened had there been no sin, yet there are reasons to believe that God would have become incarnate in any case.
· Fr Staley says “…there are weighty reasons for believing that God’s purpose of becoming man was prior to and independent of the fall.”
· As we saw last time:
o The Fourth Ecumenical Council (Chalcedon) put it
this way (against the “Monophysites”): “We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person [prosopon] and one hypostasis.”
o This is important because it means that the life, the power, the immediate influence of the Godhead was in all that Christ
did and said, every moment of his life on earth; it means that the words and actions of Jesus of Nazareth are the words and actios of God himself, and that they are therefore salutary in an ultimate way: they save us.
· This is the greatest gift imaginable: that our very nature, who we are, is transformed by being united to God in Christ. Who we are is now, and is forever, wrapped up in Who God is, because who we are has been hypostatically, irrevocably, united to who He is.
· It is difficult to imagine that this greatest of all possible gifts is only given because of sin, that we are better off because of our rebellion.
· But that is a strand of Christian belief:
Adam lay y-bounden
Bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winter
Thought he not too long;
And all was for an apple
An apple that he took,
As clerkes finden written
In theire book.
Ne had the apple taken been,
The apple taken been,
Ne hadde never our Lady
A been heaven's queen.
Blessed be the time
That apple taken was!
Therefore we may singen
'Deo Gratias!'
(Anonymous c. 1450)
· But something about this doesn’t seem right, and if it is not right, then what can we deduce about the purpose of the incarnation?
o “It is that the whole creation may be united to the Creator, God choosing man’s nature for this end, since man is the
representative [the priest] of creation.”
§ Cf. Hebrews 2.10: “For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.”
§ Cf. also Ephesians 1.9f: “For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
o Had there been no sin, no fall, there may well have been an incarnation (indeed, I think it is safe to assume there would have been), but the Lord would certainly not have had to suffer and die. His suffering and death are the consequence of sin. Sin makes his suffering necessary.
§ Our response to this fact must be gratitude, thanksgiving, EUCHARIST, and praise to God, because despite the fact that we despised his love for us and turned away from him, he was not deterred in his plan to be united to us forever, but accomplished it anyway, even though the price for him was the suffering and death of Jesus. God could have
scrapped the whole show and been within his rights. Instead, he sent his only Son, though it meant his Son would suffer horribly, and die.
§ That is the greatness of God’s love, and that is the truth about who God is, which is disclosed totally on the cross. There is nothing more to learn about God. That’s why Paul says “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2.2). Because that’s all there is to know: that our rebellion could not quench God’s love, “though involving the incarnate god in the added humiliation of suffering as the fruit of our sins.”
