catholicism 101 / part 18

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 / part 17

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.”

a question...

I would like to post these little outlines of our Adult Education series more frequently (particularly as some people have said that they appreciate them). One of the reasons that I don't, is that they are prepared in MS Word, and when I try to put them in Blogger, the formatting of the outline goes all wonky, and it takes ages to reformat them. I found a quasi-workaround, involving pasting them from MS Word to Google Docs, and then moving them from Google Docs to Blogger. Some reformatting is still required, but it isn't quite the Kafkaesque nightmare that moving from MS Word to Blogger always is. Does anyone know of a solution to this problem? You would think that someone would have come up with a way simply to preserve formatting when moving text MS Word --> Blogger....

catholicism 101 / part 16

Catholicism 101

(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic Religion.)

Church of the Holy
Cross

June 15, 2008

Part 16

Christian Duty:  Christian Belief: The Three Great
Creeds: Concerning God:  Jesus
Christ: The Incarnation

-      The Doctrine of the Incarnation

o   The Apostles’ Creed puts it this way:

And [I believe] in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary.

o   The Nicene Creed is a bit more expansive:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

o   In considering the doctrine of the Trinity, we saw how the Father eternally begets the Son, because the essence of God is love.

§ The first part of the above quote from the
Nicene Creed expands a bit on the significance of this.

·    It means that Jesus Christ is “God from God,
Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.”

·     The “from” which is repeated three times has the sense of “out of” or “from the substance of”.  It means that the Son shares what the Father is, they are of the same “stuff” (that stuff is divinity).  And it means that Jesus is God.

§ St. Hippolytus (born about 170 AD) said:  “When I say that the Son is distinct from the Father, I do not speak of two Gods, but as it were, light from light, and the stream from the fountain, and the ray from the sun.”

·     These particular images were frequently deployed
by the Fathers to speak of the relationship between the persons of the Trinity (particularly of the Son’s being begotten from the Father).  The Cappadocians, for example, use them (Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nazianzan).

o   The word “incarnation” means “taking flesh” or “becoming enfleshed”.  You will recognize “carne” as for example the Spanish word for meat.  So it was in Latin (carne is the ablative of carnis – meat / flesh).

§ It became the word for the event described in the Bible most succinctly in the Gospel of St. John:  “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1.14).

·     You can see the word in the Latin Vulgate version of this verse:  Et verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis.

o   Father Staley says “It is most important that the Christian should be well instructed in the doctrine of the Incarnation, for the whole scheme of redemption circles round this great foundation truth of our religion.  We shall not give God the loving gratitude which is his due, nor will our hope of salvation rest secure, until we have grasped the truth concerning the person and office of the Saviour [sic].”

§ And he points out that the Athanasian Creed highlights the centrality of the doctrine of the Incarnation when it says “Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation, that we also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ."

o   And the Incarnation IS the central mystery of Christian faith.  It is the coming of the Kingdom, the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, the summary of the Law, the manifestation of things to come, the fulfillment of God’s promise, etc. etc. etc. etc.  All of Christianity indeed “circles round” this greatest and most important of mysteries.

o   And the right faith is this:  that God loved the world so much, that in order to deliver us from the curse under which we had brought ourselves through our rebellion against him, he sent his only and eternal Son, himself also God, who out of love for us and in great humility, took our nature upon himself in the womb of Mary and from her substance (her humanness).  Mary’s conception of Jesus was miraculous. The Apostles’ Creed says “He was conceived by the power of the Holy
Spirit”.  This is a bad translation.  The Latin original says: Qui conceptus est de spiritu sancto, and the older versions (e.g. Rite I in the BCP) of the Apostles’ Creed say merely: “He was conceived by the Holy Spirit”.

§ This last point is important because everyone might in a sense be said to be conceived “by the power of” the Holy Spirit.  But the Holy Spirit, uniquely in the case of Jesus, took the place of a Human Father at this conception.  When Mary asks how she will conceive, as she “knows not man” -- The Angel Gabriel says to her: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1.35).  This is a unique event, and its miraculous character is attested in Mary’s being a virgin before and after she conceived and bore Jesus.  And one of the Blessed Virgin’s traditional titles is therefore “Spouse of the Holy Spirit”, likewise an expression of the uniqueness of Jesus’ birth (and
therefore her conception of him).

o   This supreme act of humility and condescension, that God himself should stoop to our level in this way, is literally the substance of our redemption, and the end of God’s plan.

o   It is important to say:  God the Son did not cease to be God when he became a man.  He always was God, he always is God, he will always be God.  But at the incarnation, in the womb of the Virgin, God began to be a man. 
That is the mystery.  God the Son united a perfect human nature to his perfect divine nature, and ever after that moment inside the Virgin’s womb, God the Son had two inseparable natures, God and human.

§ 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.”

§ 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 actions of God himself, and that they are therefore salutary in an ultimate way:  they save us.

holy cross sermon / christ the king / 2008

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is the day the Church celebrates our Lord under the title Christ the King, and today’s Gospel reading begins with the Lord referring to his final revelation as the king and ruler of all. “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats” (Matt. 25.31-32).

We are accustomed to hearing that Jesus is a King, but the NATURE of his dominion – the WAY he rules as king – is perhaps something less familiar.

Jesus is King because he is the only Son of God. He is therefore the only heir of all that God is. He eternally inherits blessing and honor and glory and might (Rev. 5.13), even as the prophet Daniel saw in a dream: “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 8.16ff).

Jesus came into the world to show us who God is – and God is the King of all creation (cf. Sir. 50.15 & Judith 9.12).

Today’s Gospel reading speaks of the end of time, when the Lord will come “in his glory”, when all eyes will see Christ the King, and there will be no misrecognition (Rev. 1.7). But what of his first coming? What of his coming in humility? Even here, in his lowliness, in his humility, even (and ESPECIALLY) in his suffering, his humiliation, and his death, he is supposed to have manifest himself as King.

Jesus refers to his suffering and death as the hour when he comes into his kingdom (Matt. 20.21) – as the actualization God’s dominion and sovereignty over the world (cf. Jn. 12.28 & 31). This is HARD to see, because it can only be seen with the eyes of faith.

Pontius Pilate famously missed it. When Jesus stood before Pilate to answer his questions, Jesus declared that he was in fact a king, but that his kingdom “is not of this world”, and then he says “For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, TO BEAR WITNESS TO THE TRUTH” (Jn. 18.36). Jesus bears witness to a truth that has been obscured within the world – obscured BY the world, subject as it is to the law of sin, to self-seeking, corruption and death. And because we have become accustomed to operating within this paradigm, the act of Jesus' testimony to the Truth is easy for us to misrecognize.

What is the truth to which Jesus bears witness? It is the truth of the sovereignty of the LOVE OF GOD. With every ounce of his being, and every moment of his life, Jesus testifies and enacts the love of God – the truth, in fact, that GOD IS LOVE (1 Jn. 4.8), and that only THIS divine love has the power to conquer the powers of darkness that make war against our humanity, and rage against the beauty and goodness of all that God has made (cf. Gen. 1.31 & 1 Cor. 15.24).

The victory of divine love is the Kingdom of God. It is this Kingdom, stronger than death (Cant. 8.6), that Jesus inaugurates by pouring out his life, once for all, on the cross for our sins. And it is this Kingdom that will be revealed in an undeniable way at the end of time, “when the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him” (Matt. 25.31). Then the darkness that obscures God’s truth in the world will be blown away like mist, and Jesus Christ will be all in all (1 Cor. 15.28). This is the reality toward which we are journeying as Christians, this is the reality for which we pray, which we claim to expect.

But how do we reach the Kingdom? How do we get there? How are we to be saved? It’s not easy. Jesus himself said “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. [But] the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt. 7.13-14). Why is salvation so difficult? Because God does not impose his will on us, because love does not work that way. Rather God INVITES us to himself (Lk. 13.34), he KNOCKS at the door of our hearts (Rev. 3.20), he CALLS OUT to us through the world's darkness like a Lover calling his beloved (Cant. 5.2).

But we have to CHOOSE to rise and follow him (Cant. 2.10) to the place of his victory, and that path leads through the world's darkness, up the steep ascent of Calvary, and passes right through the cross. And God respects our freedom to choose – because that freedom is his gift to us, and the material condition of our communion with him in love. But his respect of our freedom does not mean that we may choose whatever we like and still be “okay”. Quite the contrary: We must freely choose the difficult way and the narrow door if we would share in the victory of God’s love. EVERY DAY we have to choose what is good, what is beautiful, what is true; and to turn from what is wicked, unlovely, and false. God will not force us, because love is neither arrogant nor rude; it does not insist on its own way (1 Cor. 13.5). In the end, God will respect our freedom to choose destruction and death.

If you are ready to answer the call of Jesus and to follow the difficult path to his sovereignty, to the dominion of God’s love, the question will arise: how do you know what is good and true and beautiful? After all, part of the problem is that we live in the dominion of shadows. We are subject to temptations which obscure our vision and cloud our judgment. The Apostle Jude Thaddeus asked Jesus such a question, and Jesus said “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me” (Jn. 14.23-24).

By answering his call, by choosing to rise and follow him, to keep his word, we come to know Christ as our King. And as we progress in our journey with him through the darkness of this world, toward the dawning of his Kingdom, our vision becomes more and more clear, and we see what St. Paul called “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things” – that we are offered not just a place under Christ’s dominion, but a share in his sovereignty: “that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3).

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

holy cross sermon / pentecost 26 / proper 27 / year a / november 9 / 2008

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s readings speak of what Amos calls “the day of the Lord” (5.18). It is fitting that we read these passages as we approach the season of Advent, when our liturgy will turn earnestly to a consideration of the coming of the Lord. For this is what is before us in today’s lessons: the return of Christ, last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell.

That sounds ominous, and indeed it is. In the back of our minds we might have the very final verse of the Bible: Revelation 22.20, where St. John the Divine says: “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’” And then the Seer adds: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”

That prayer, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” should be hedged around with some trepidation in light of today’s readings. And we should ask ourselves whether we can pray it earnestly – whether we can honestly look forward with joy and anticipation to Christ’s immanent return in light of the fact that he is coming to judge the living and the dead.

In today’s Epistle reading, St. Paul exhorts us to “comfort one another with these words” (v. 18) -- that “the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise” (v. 16). And yet in the Old Testament reading the prophet Amos speaks with foreboding: “Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD! Why would you have the day of the LORD? It is darkness, and not light; as if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house and leaned with his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him. Is not the day of the LORD darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?” (vv. 18-20).

The seeming incongruity between these two depictions of the day of the Lord – a day “gloom with no brightness in it” in the vision of Amos, and a day in the thought of which we take comfort according to St. Paul – the tension between these two visions is resolved in the reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew.

In the Gospel reading Jesus gives us the parable of the foolish and wise virgins. And the very mention of the foolish and the wise suggests the resolution of the tension between the two competing visions of the day of the Lord. It is a day of darkness and gloom for the foolish – like fleeing from a lion and meeting a bear, like leaning against a wall and being bitten by a serpent. But for the wise virgins, and precisely because of their wisdom, the very thought of the day of the Lord and its immanence is a comfort.

Jesus said “the kingdom of heaven shall be compared to ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.”

St. Gregory the Great says that the kingdom of heaven is here meant to be the present Church, where “bad are mixed with good, and reprobate with elect; it is like a mixture of wise and foolish virgins.”

And as we have heard, the wisdom and foolishness of the respective virgins consists in the one group having taken with them flasks of oil, whereas “When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them” (vv. 2-3). The lamps represent the righteous works of the saints of God, as the Lord himself said in another place: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5.16).

Last week the Gospel warned us of conspicuous piety. But we should recall that the danger arising from conspicuous piety arises from its being motivated by its visibility. But here the Lord says “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works AND GIVE GLORY TO YOUR FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN.” And last week we saw how it is that our motives are manifest in our actions.

So the oil in this parable represents the impetus for our visible action, the spiritual fuel that fires our work and makes it visible and without which our works grow dim and are finally extinguished. So the 3rd century Church Father, Origen, says that the oil is the doctrine of the Church: “The oil is the word of teaching, with which the vessels of souls are filled; for what gives so great content as moral discourse, which is called the oil of light. The wise took with them of this oil, as much as would suffice, though the Word should tarry long, and be slack to come to their consummation. The foolish took lamps, alight indeed at the first, but not supplied with so much oil as should suffice even to the end, being careless respecting the provision of doctrine which comforts faith, and enlightens the lamp of good deeds.”

We must be animated by the truth of the Gospel, the Truth that is Jesus Christ: he must be the impetus that fires our action, and we must store him up in our hearts so that we don’t burn out – because he alone has overcome the world (Jn. 16.33) – and because there will come a time when it will be too late. This is represented in the parable by the sleep that overtakes the virgins, wise and foolish alike. And this represents death, the great equalizer. Into which one day we shall all fall, to be wakened by the midnight cry: “Behold the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!” (v. 6). And those who trimmed their lamps will be those who are prepared to render an account of their deeds (Cf. Augustine, NOTES, below; cf. 2 Cor. 5.10).

This is why Scripture speaks of “the day of the Lord” at once as darkness and gloom without any light, on the one hand; and as the source of our comfort, on the other: because there are two possible responses to it, that of the foolish virgins, and that of the wise virgins. Let us therefore continually ask ourselves whether we can pray with comfort: “Amen. Come Lord Jesus.” And let us root out of ourselves that which is foolish, and cultivate that which is wise.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

sermon from the 25th sunday after pentecost, proper 26 , november 2 2008 (church of the holy cross)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus condemns the religious legalism of the Pharisees, and their hypocrisy, “for they preach, but do not practice. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by men... and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues, and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men.”

The Pharisees went around being conspicuously religious, desiring to be seen and to be honored. Is it wrong then to be conspicuously religious? Not necessarily, but it all depends on your MOTIVE – and your motive, contrary to how it may seem, will color how your actions appear to others. If we are publicly pious so that others may see us and approve of us, then we do wrong. Then we have become pharisaical. But if we are publicly pious in order that JESUS may be seen, then we do well.

For example, consider pausing for prayer and crossing yourself before you eat in a restaurant. In our culture, there is not much danger of being approved by people for doing this. At best, most people will be indifferent. At worst, they will scoff. But if your prayer and the sign of the cross well up out of your devotion to the Crucified, then it honors and glorifies the Lord, and it brings before others not only the cross, but also that honor and glory which the Church and her members render to the Lord. Such a thing can edify and even convict others.

This is the broad point for every aspect of our “cultic” life – the life of our external devotion: vestments, candles, genuflecting, and everything else. The whole point of these beautiful things is not to make the priest and ministers look like anything. But rather, perhaps counterintuitively, to render the priest and ministers invisible, and to lift up Jesus. I am not wearing any of this and prancing around up here because I am anything but a priest. And God knows I’ve done nothing to deserve any of this. I’m just an “earthen vessel” (2 Cor. 4.7), a mud creature (Gen. 2.7). Its all grace – no one but Jesus is worthy of anything.

And that’s just it: every religious practice, indeed EVERYTHING WE DO, must flow from our trust in Jesus, our love of him, and our hope in his promises. Its why we sing, its why we kneel, its why we pray, its why we turn up at mass when we’re supposed to, its what these vestments are about, and it should be the reason we climb out of bed every morning: because the Lamb who was slain is worthy “to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing” (Rev. 5.12). And if anything in our lives whatsoever does NOT spring from our trust in Jesus, our love of him, and our hope in his promises, then those things become useless to us, or even worse: doing things, even otherwise good things, out of impure motives, to be seen by men, or to exalt ourselves, or even perhaps because “its just what you do” – then they become a hindrance to us, and they can even send us to hell.

This is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” Actions are important, and they have consequences: this is especially true of the sacraments. But our doing them must proceed from a heart given to the Lord, who said “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man” (Matt. 15.18-20).

This applies too to what the Lord says further down in today’s Gospel: “But you are not to be called teacher, for you have one teacher, and you are all brethren. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called masters, for you have one master, the Christ.” If we read these as injunctions about external behavior, then we fall immediately back into what Jesus has just rebuked: thinking that obeying injunctions is anything whatsoever in itself. And many Christians think this way; many cite this passage as the reason why they don’t call their pastors “Father”. (But I would note that these same people refer to their biological fathers as “father” – which is also ruled out on such a superficial reading, because it enjoins us to call NO MAN ON EARTH our father.)

But the truth is that like every other act of external religiousness: this too must spring from our trust in Jesus, our love for him, and our hope in his promises. This is what St. Paul means in speaking of the permissibility or impermissibility of other religious acts in 1 Corinthians: “If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks? So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” So I call priests “Father” – because I believe that God sent his only Son to die for our sins, and that the Son has given us the Church as the sacrament of that salvation.

Lastly: Today’s Gospel reading should draw our attention to the importance of constantly examining ourselves and checking our motives. Why do we do the things we do? Why do we abstain from the things from which we abstain? If we are motivated out of trust in Jesus, love of him, and hope in his promises, then we will do well. But if we are motivated by selfishness or pride or concupiscent desire or other such things, we have room for improvement, and we must resolve to root those things out of our consciousness by confessing them, and confessing those actions that have sprung from such motives. For most of us, when we take the time honestly to examine ourselves in this way, we will find a mixture of motives, some more or less pure than others.

The question is how we may instill in ourselves trust in the Lord, love of him, and hope in his promises, so that we may act out of THOSE motives. Self-examination and confession is half of the method. The other half is first positively and intentionally devoting ourselves to prayer, then to the moral disciplines of the Church and to works of mercy. This is what it is, as St. Paul says in today’s Epistle: to receive the word of God AS the word of God (1 Thess. 2.13) and “to lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory” (v. 12).

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

NOTES:

Chrysostom: Again, He brings a further charge against them, that they oppress those that are put under them; They bind heavy burdens; in this He shows a double evil in them; that they exacted without any allowance the utmost rigor of life from those that were put under them, while they allowed themselves large license herein. But a good ruler should do the contrary of this, to be to himself a severe judge, to others a merciful one.

Pseudo-Chrysostom: Also, if we should be wrong in imposing too light a penance, is it not better to have to answer for mercy than for severity? Where the master of the household is liberal, the steward should not be oppressive. If God be kind, should His Priest be harsh? Do you seek thereby the character of sanctity? Be strict in ordering your own life, in that of others lenient; let men hear of you as enjoining little, and performing much. The Priest who gives license to himself, and exacts the utmost from others, is like a corrupt tax-gatherer in the state, who to ease himself taxes others heavily…. Every substance breeds in itself that which destroys it, as wood the worm, and garments the moth; so the Devil strives to corrupt the ministry of the Priests, who are ordained for the edification of holiness, endeavoring that this good, while it is done to be seen of men, should be turned into evil. Take away this fault from the clergy, and you will have no further labor in their reform…


Pseudo-Chrysostom: “For some vain men hearing that it was a commendable thing to seat himself in the lowest place, chooses so to do; and thus not only does not put away the vanity of his heart, but adds this additional vain ostentation of his humility, as one who would be thought righteous and humble. For many proud men take the lowest place in their bodies, but in haughtiness of heart think themselves to be seated among the highest; and there are many humble men who, placed among the highest, are inwardly in their own esteem among the lowest.”

Jerome: It is a difficulty that the Apostle against this command calls himself the teacher of the Gentiles; and that in monasteries in their common conversation, they call one another, Father. It is to be cleared thus. It is one thing to be father or master by nature, another by sufferance. Thus when we call any man our father, we do it to show respect to his age, not as regarding him as the author of our being. We also call men 'Master,' from resemblance to a real master; and, not to use tedious repetition, as the One God and One Son, who are by nature, do not preclude us from calling others gods and sons by adoption, so the One Father and One Master, do not preclude us from speaking of other fathers and masters by an abuse of the terms.