Beatus Vir

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Whoever is in Christ is a new creation; the old has passed away. Now by the “new creation” Paul means the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in a heart that is pure and blameless, free of all malice, wickedness or shamefulness. For when a soul has come to hate sin and has delivered itself as far as it can to the power of virtue, it undergoes a transformation by receiving the grace of the Spirit. Then it is healed, restored and made wholly new. Indeed the two texts: Purge out the old leaven that you may be a new one, and: Let us celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, support those passages which speak about the new creation.

Yet the tempter spreads many a snare to trap the soul, and of itself human nature is too weak to defeat him. This is why the Apostle bids us to arm ourselves with heavenly weapons, when he says: Put on the breastplate of righteousness and have your feet shod with the gospel of peace and have truth around your waist as a belt. Can you not see how many forms of salvation the Apostle indicates, all leading to the same path and the same goal? Following them to the heights of God’s commandments, we easily complete the race of life. For elsewhere the Apostle says: Let us run with fidelity the race that has been set before us, with our eyes on Jesus, the origin and the goal of our faith.

Posted by Dan Woodring at 11:14 AM | 0 comments  

This is our glory: the witness of our conscience. There are men who rashly judge, who slander, whisper and murmur, who are eager to suspect what they do not see, and eager to spread abroad things they have not even a suspicion of. Against men of this sort, what defence is there save the witness of our own conscience?

My brothers, we do not seek, nor should we seek, our own glory even among those whose approval we desire. What we should seek is their salvation, so that if we walk as we should they will not go astray in following us. They should imitate us if we are imitators of Christ; and if we are not, they should still imitate him. He cares for his flock, and he alone is to be found with those who care for their flocks, because they are all in him.

And so we seek no advantage for ourselves when we aim to please men. We want to take our joy in men – and we rejoice when they take pleasure in what is good, not because this exalts us, but because it benefits them.

It is clear who is intended by the apostle Paul: If I wanted to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ. And similarly when he says: Be pleasing to all men in all things, even as I in all things please all men. Yet his words are as clear as water, limpid, undisturbed, unclouded. And so you should, as sheep, feed on and drink of his message; do not trample on it or stir it up.

You have listened to our Lord Jesus Christ as he taught his apostles: Let your actions shine before men so that they may see your good deeds, and give glory to your Father who is in heaven, for it is the Father who made you thus. We are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hands. If then you are good, praise is due to him who made you so; it is no credit to you, for if you were left to yourself, you could only be wicked. Why then do you try to pervert the truth, in wishing to be praised when you do good, and blaming God when you do evil? For though he said: Let your works shine before men, in the same Sermon on the Mount he also said: Do not parade your good deeds before men. So if you think there are contradictions in Saint Paul, you will find the same in the Gospels; but if you refrain from troubling the waters of your heart, you will recognise here the peace of the Scriptures and with it you will have peace.

And so, my brothers, our concern should be not only to live as we ought, but also to do so in the sight of men; not only to have a good conscience but also, so far as we can in our weakness, so far as we can govern our frailty, to do nothing which might lead our weak brother into thinking evil of us. Otherwise, as we feed on the good pasture and drink the pure water, we may trample on God’s meadow, and weaker sheep will have to feed on trampled grass and drink from troubled waters.

--St. Augustine, Bishop.

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St Thomas Aquinas:

Since it was the will of God’s only-begotten Son that men should share in his divinity, he assumed our nature in order that by becoming man he might make men gods. Moreover, when he took our flesh he dedicated the whole of its substance to our salvation. He offered his body to God the Father on the altar of the cross as a sacrifice for our reconciliation. He shed his blood for our ransom and purification, so that we might be redeemed from our wretched state of bondage and cleansed from all sin. But to ensure that the memory of so great a gift would abide with us for ever, he left his body as food and his blood as drink for the faithful to consume in the form of bread and wine.

O precious and wonderful banquet, that brings us salvation and contains all sweetness! Could anything be of more intrinsic value? Under the old law it was the flesh of calves and goats that was offered, but here Christ himself, the true God, is set before us as our food. What could be more wonderful than this? No other sacrament has greater healing power; through it sins are purged away, virtues are increased, and the soul is enriched with an abundance of every spiritual gift. It is offered in the Church for the living and the dead, so that what was instituted for the salvation of all may be for the benefit of all. Yet, in the end, no one can fully express the sweetness of this sacrament, in which spiritual delight is tasted at its very source, and in which we renew the memory of that surpassing love for us which Christ revealed in his passion.

It was to impress the vastness of this love more firmly upon the hearts of the faithful that our Lord instituted this sacrament at the Last Supper. As he was on the point of leaving the world to go to the Father, after celebrating the Passover with his disciples, he left it as a perpetual memorial of his passion. It was the fulfilment of ancient figures and the greatest of all his miracles, while for those who were to experience the sorrow of his departure, it was destined to be a unique and abiding consolation.

Posted by Dan Woodring at 7:42 PM | 0 comments  

From R. H. Benson "Paradoxes of Catholicism"


FAITH AND REASON


_Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall
not enter into it_.--MARK X. 15.

_Some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and the unstable
wrest, as also the other Scriptures, to their own perdition_.--
II PET. III. 16.


There are two great gifts, or faculties, by which men attain to truth:
faith and reason. From these two sides, therefore, come two more
assaults upon the Catholic position, a position which itself faces in
both these directions. On the one side we are told that we believe too
simply, on the other that we do not believe simply enough; on the one
side that we reason too little, on the other that we do not reason
enough. Let us set out these attacks in order.

I. (i) "You Catholics," says one critic, "are far too credulous in
matters of religion. You believe, not as reasonable men believe, because
you have verified or experienced the truths you profess, but simply
because these dogmas are presented to you by the Church. If reason and
common-sense are gifts of God and intended for use, surely it is very
strange to silence them in your search for the supreme truth. Faith, of
course, has its place, but it must not be blind faith. Reason must test,
verify, and interpret, or faith is mere credulity.

"Consider, for example, the words of Christ, _This is My Body_. Now the
words as they stand may certainly be supposed to mean what you say they
mean; yet, interpreted by Reason, they cannot possibly mean anything of
the kind. Did not Christ Himself sit in bodily form at the table as He
spoke them? How then could He hold Himself in His hand? Did He not speak
in metaphors and images continually? Did He not call Himself _a Door and
a Vine_? Using Reason, then, to interpret these words, it is evident
that He meant no more than that He was instituting a memorial feast, in
which the bread should symbolize His Body and the wine His Blood. So too
with many other distinctively Catholic doctrines--with the Petrine
claims, with the authority 'to bind and loose,' and the rest. Catholic
belief on these points exhibits not faith properly so-called--that is,
Faith tested by Reason--but mere credulity. God gave us all Reason! Then
in His Name let us use it!"

(ii) From the other side comes precisely the opposite charge.

"You Catholics," cries the other critic, "are far too argumentative and
deductive and logical in your Faith. True Religion is a very simple
thing; it is the attitude of a child who trusts and does not question.
But with you Catholics Religion has degenerated into Theology. Jesus
Christ did not write a _Summa_; He made a few plain statements which
comprise, as they stand, the whole Christian Religion; they are full of
mystery, no doubt, but it is He who left them mysterious. Why, then,
should your theologians seek to penetrate into regions which He did not
reveal and to elaborate what He left unelaborated?

"Take, for example, Christ's words, _This is My Body_. Now of course
these words are mysterious, and if Christ had meant that they should be
otherwise, He would Himself have given the necessary comment upon them.
Yet He did not; He left them in an awful and deep simplicity into which
no human logic ought even to seek to penetrate. Yet see the vast and
complicated theology that the traditions have either piled upon them or
attempted to extract out of them; the philosophical theories by which it
has been sought to elucidate them; the intricate and wide-reaching
devotions that have been founded upon them! What have words like
'Transubstantiation' and 'Concomitance,' devotions like 'Benediction,'
gatherings like Eucharistic Congresses to do with the august simplicity
of Christ's own institution? You Catholics argue too much--deduce,
syllogize, and explain--until the simple splendour of Christ's
mysterious act is altogether overlaid and hidden. Be more simple! It is
better to _'love God than to discourse learnedly about the Blessed
Trinity.' It has not pleased God to save His people through dialectics._
Believe more, argue less!"

Once more, then, the double charge is brought. We believe, it seems,
where we ought to reason. We reason where we ought to believe. We
believe too blindly and not blindly enough. We reason too closely and
not closely enough.

Here, then, is a vast subject--the relations of Faith and Reason and the
place of each in man's attitude towards Truth. It is, of course,
possible only to glance at these things in outline.

II. First, let us consider, as a kind of illustration, the relations of
these things in ordinary human science. Neither Faith nor Reason will,
of course, be precisely the same as in supernatural matters; yet there
will be a sufficient parallel for our purpose.

A scientist, let us say, proposes to make observations upon the
structure of a fly's leg. He catches his fly, dissects, prepares, places
it in his microscope, observes, and records. Now here, it would seem, is
Pure Science at its purest and Reason in its most reasonable aspect. Yet
the acts of faith in this very simple process are, if we consider
closely, simply numberless. The scientist must make acts of faith,
certainly reasonable acts, yet none the less of faith, for all that:
first, that his fly is not a freak of nature; next, that his lens is
symmetrically ground; then that his observation is adequate; then that
his memory has not played him false between his observing and his
recording that which he has seen. These acts are so reasonable that we
forget that they are acts of faith. They are justified by reason before
they are made, and they are usually, though not invariably, verified by
Reason afterwards. Yet they are, in their essence, Faith and not Reason.

So, too, when a child learns a foreign language. Reason justifies him in
making one act of faith that his teacher is competent, another that his
grammar is correct, a third that he hears and sees and understands
correctly the information given him, a fourth that such a language
actually exists. And when he visits France afterwards he can, within
limits, again verify by his reason the acts of faith which he has
previously made. Yet none the less they were acts of faith, though they
were reasonable. In a word, then, no acquirement of or progress in any
branch of human knowledge is possible without the exercise of faith. I
cannot walk downstairs in the dark without at least as many acts of
faith as there are steps in the staircase. Society could not hold
together another day if mutual faith were wholly wanting among its
units. Certainly we use reason first to justify our faith, and we reason
later to verify it. Yet none the less the middle step is faith. Columbus
reasoned first that there must be a land beyond the Atlantic, and he
used that same reason later to verify his discovery. Yet without a
sublime act of faith between these processes, without that almost
reckless moment in which he first weighed anchor from Europe, reason
would never have gone beyond speculative theorizing. Faith made real for
him what Reason suggested. Faith actually accomplished that of which
Reason could only dream.

III. Turn now to the coming of Jesus Christ on earth. He came, as we
know now, a Divine Teacher from heaven to make a Revelation from God; He
came, that is, to demand from men a sublime Act of Faith in Himself. For
He Himself was Incarnate Wisdom, and He demanded, therefore, as none
else can demand it, a supreme acceptance of His claim. No progress in
Divine knowledge, as He Himself tells us, is possible, then, without
this initial act. _Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a
little child shall not enter into it_. Every soul that is to receive
this teaching in its entirety must first accept the Teacher and sit at
His feet.

Yet He did not make this claim merely on His own unsupported word. He
presented His credentials, so to say; He fulfilled prophecy; He wrought
miracles; He satisfied the moral sense. _Believe Me_, He says, _for the
very works' sake_. Before, then, demanding the fundamental act of Faith
on which the reception of Revelation must depend, He took pains to make
this Act of Faith reasonable. "You see what I do," He said in effect,
"you have observed My life, My words, My actions. Now is it not in
accordance with Reason that you should grant My claims? Can you explain
away, _reasonably_, on any other grounds than those which I state, the
phenomena of My life?"

Certainly, then, He appealed to Reason; He appealed to Private Judgment,
since that, up to that moment, was all that His hearers possessed. But,
in demanding an Act of Faith, He appealed to Private Judgment to set
itself aside; He appealed to Reason as to whether it were not Reasonable
to stand aside for the moment and let Faith take its place. And we know
how His disciples responded. _Whom do you say that I am?... Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the Living God._

At that instant, then, a new stage was begun. They had used their Reason
and their Private Judgment, and, aided by His grace, had concluded that
the next reasonable step was that of Faith. Up to that point they had
observed, dissected, criticized, and analyzed His words; they had
examined, that is, His credentials. And now it was Reason itself that
urged them towards Faith, Reason that abdicated what had hitherto been,
its right and its duty, that Faith might assume her proper place.
Henceforth, then, their attitude must be a different one. Up to now they
had used their Reason to examine His claim; now it was Faith, aided and
urged by Reason, which accepted it.

Yet even now Reason's work is not done, though its scope in future is
changed. Reason no longer examines whether He be God; Faith has
accepted it: yet Reason has to be as active as ever; for Reason now must
begin with all its might the task of understanding His Revelation. Faith
has given them, so to speak, casket after casket of jewels; every word
that Jesus Christ henceforth speaks to them is a very mine of treasure,
absolutely true since He is known to be a Divine Teacher Who has given
it. And Reason now begins her new work, not of justifying Faith, but, so
to say, of interpreting it; not of examining His claims, since these
have been once for all accepted, but of examining, understanding, and
assimilating all that He reveals.

III. Turn now to Catholicism.

It is the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church only, that acts as
did Jesus Christ and offers an adequate object to Reason and Faith
alike. For, first, it is evident that if Christ intended His Revelation
to last through all time, He must have designed a means by which it
should last, an Authority that should declare and preserve it as He
Himself delivered it. And next, it is evident that since the Catholic
Church alone even claims that prerogative, clearly and coherently, her
right to represent that Authority is in proportion to the clearness and
coherence of her claim. Or, again, she advances in support of that claim
precisely those same credentials as did He: she points to her miracles,
her achievements, the fulfilment of prophecy, the unity of her teaching,
the appeal to men's moral sense--all of them appeals to Reason, and
appeals which lead up, as did His, to the supreme claim, which He also
made, to demand an Act of Faith in herself as a Divine Teacher.

For she alone demands it. Other denominations of Christendom point to a
Book, or to the writings of Fathers, or to the example of their members,
and she too does these things. But it is she alone who appeals to these
things not as final in themselves, not as constituting in themselves a
final court of appeal, but as indicating as that court of appeal her own
Living Voice. _Believe me, for the works' sake_, she too says. "Use your
reason to the full to examine my credentials; study prophecy, history,
the Fathers--study my claims in any realm in which your intellect is
competent--and then see if it is not after all supremely reasonable for
Reason to abdicate that particular throne on which she has sat so long
and to seat Faith there instead? Certainly follow your Reason and use
your private judgment, for at present you have no other guide; and then,
please God, aided by Faith, Reason will itself bow before Faith, and
take her own place henceforth, not on the throne, but on the steps that
lead to it."

Is Reason, then, to be silent henceforth? Why, the whole of theology
gives the answer. Did Newman cease to think when he became a Catholic?
Did Thomas Aquinas resign his intellect when he devoted himself to
study? Not for one instant is Reason silent. On the contrary, she is
active as never before. Certainly she is no longer occupied in
examining as to whether the Church is divine, but instead she is busied,
with incredible labours, in examining what follows from that fact, in
sorting the new treasures that are opened to her with the dawn of
Revelation upon her eyes, in arranging, deducting, and understanding the
details and structure of the astonishing Vision of Truth. And more, she
is as inviolate as ever. For never can there be presented to her one
article of Faith that gives the lie to her own nature, since Revelation
and Reason cannot contradict one the other. She has learned, indeed,
that the mysteries of God often transcend her powers, that she cannot
fathom the infinite with the finite; yet never for one moment is she
bidden to evacuate her own position or believe that which she perceives
to be untrue. She has learned her limitations, and with that has come to
understand her inviolable rights.

See, then, how the features of Christ look out through the lineaments of
His Church. She alone dares to claim an act of Divine Faith in herself,
since it is He Who speaks in her Voice. She alone, since she is Divine,
bids the wisest men _become as little children_ at her feet and endows
little children with the wisdom of the ancients. Yet, on the other hand,
in her magnificent Humanity, she has produced through the exercise of
illuminated human Reason such a wealth of theology as the world has
never seen. Is it any wonder that the world thinks both her Faith and
Reason alike too extreme? For her Faith rises from her Divinity and her
Reason from her Humanity; and such an outpouring of Divinity and such an
emphatic Humanity, such a superb confidence in God's revelation and such
untiring labours upon the contents of that Revelation, are altogether
beyond the imagination of a world that in reality, fears both Faith and
Reason alike.

At her feet, and hers only, then, do the wisest and the simple kneel
together--St. Thomas and the child, St. Augustine and the "charcoal
burner"; as diverse, in their humanity, as men can be; as united in the
light of Divinity as only those can be who have found it.

So, then, she goes forward to victory. "First use your reason," she
cries to the world, "to see whether I be not Divine! Then, impelled by
Reason and aided by Grace, rise to Faith. Then once more call up your
Reason, to verify and understand those mysteries which you accept as
true. And so, little by little, vistas of truth will open about you and
doctrines glow with an undreamed-of light. So Faith will be interpreted
by Reason and Reason hold up the hands of Faith, until you come indeed
to the unveiled vision of the Truth whose feet already you grasp in love
and adoration; until you see, face to face in Heaven, Him Who is at once
the Giver of Reason and the _Author of Faith_."

Posted by Dan Woodring at 12:25 PM | 0 comments