St. Gregory the Great: Be Not Possessed By Your Possessions

Pope St. Gregory contra materialistic consumerism!  Oh, those Fathers, so ancient and so timeless ...

"I want to advise you to leave everything, but I do not want to be presumptuous.  If therefore you are unable to abandon everything which the world offers, you must so hold those things that are of this world that you may not be held by them in the world; that earthly interests may be possessed, not be the possessor, and that what you have should be under the control of your mind.  Otherwise, if your mind is bound by the love of earthly things, it may itself rather be possessed by its own possessions.  Therefore, let temporal possessions be what you use, eternal things what you desire ...

"To carry out these things, we have a mediator between God and men, our helper, through whom we shall more quickly obtain everything, if we burn with true love for him, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.  Amen."         ~St Gregory the Great, Book 2, Homily 36

 

C.S. Lewis: 'Old Books', a Bulwark Against the Nonsense of the Present

"It is his glory that he did not move with the times; it is his reward that he now remains when those times, as all times do, have moved away."
- C.S. Lewis, on St. Athanasius

In my classroom, I always start the hour with an appropriate quote to get students thinking about the day's topic, or to review what we learned the previous class.  One of my favorites is from C.S. Lewis.  I've forgotten the source, but he writes,

"Most of all, perhaps, we need an intimate knowledge of the past.  The man who has traveled widely is less likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times, and so is to some extent immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age." 

If ever an age could be justly accused of spewing forth a "cataract of nonsense", I think it must be our own.  Lewis, of course, has a way of expressing things with irresistible wit, but this is really 'History 101'.  In the introductory chapter of his book, The Church in History, John E. Booty writes,

"If we ignore history, we deteriorate, becoming less than fully human.  If we refuse to study the past, we abdicate from the power and authority, which we rightly possess, over the historical forces that impinge upon us, and we are in grave danger of being led like dumb oxen into the future.  There are strong tendencies within us, as individuals and as groups, to conform to the dominant intellectual, moral, and cultural trends of the present age, without thought, without criticism, and without control."

It is disciplined historical study, a consciously developed "historical sense", as Booty goes on to say, that enables us to escape the controlling forces of the present.  We should not think, however, that true historical study is escapist; on the contrary, we engage in such study so that "traveling away from ourselves into that past we gain necessary perspective on the present."

And there is no better method for gaining that perspective than by reading old books.  C.S. Lewis wrote a preface to an English translation of St. Athanasius's fourth century treatise On the Incarnation, in which he develops this idea further.  It is one of my new year's resolutions to make a more conscious effort to be always reading at least one "old book".  Lewis's preface is not long, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in becoming immune to the pervasive microphone of the press that would treat us as unthinking cattle.  Of course, reading said preface will undoubtedly lead to the reading of St. Athanasius, which is really the whole point.

"Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books.  But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old.  And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet.  A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it.  It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down through the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light... The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity ("mere Christianity" as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective.  Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books.  It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.  If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

"Every age has its own outlook.  It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes.  We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period.  And that means the old books.  All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook -- even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it.  Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should absolutely deny.  They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united -- united with each other and against earlier and later ages -- by a great mass of common assumptions.  We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century -- the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" -- lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H.G. Wells and Karl Barth.  None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books.  Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already.  Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill.  The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.  Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past.  People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as any mistakes as we.  But not the same mistakes.  They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us."  C.S. Lewis, Preface to On the Incarnation, by Saint Athanasius the Great of Alexandria

Happy reading, and Peace of Christ.

Trinity, Gender, and the Oneness of God

And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance.
For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.  
Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.
~ from the Creed of Saint Athanasius

Yesterday was Trinity Sunday, one of the principal feasts of the Church year, in which the Church gives thanks to God for the grace to hold to "the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity" (from the collect for Trinity Sunday, BCP).  The doctrine of the Trinity is truly foundational to the way the Church understands the nature of God; it is also truly difficult to understand (indeed, it is actually not something that can be understood rationally, but is a divine mystery), and can therefore sometimes be a source of controversy.

Another, not entirely unrelated, source of potential controversy has to do with the way the Church understands and speaks of God in relation to human concepts of gender.  In the Christian tradition, God has generally (though not absolutely) been spoken of using masculine terminology, even as most would acknowledge that God is neither male nor female (though, of course, God was incarnate in the man Jesus, who is truly God).  Both sexes have their origin in God, and both reflect the Divine Image, as the Genesis account asserts, "And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."  Throughout the Scriptures (and the Christian tradition) one can find images of God that are decidedly masculine, others that are decidedly feminine, and others that transcend gender; note the response to Moses' question about God's identity: "And God said to Moses, 'I AM WHO I AM'" - God cannot be contained within our human categorizations.  In light of this, it is understandable that the Church has in recent years been exploring ways to understand and speak about God that are more gender inclusive.  I think this is a conversation that the Church can and should have, reasonably and prayerfully.  Which is to say the conversation should be within the Church, working from the Scriptures and tradition as they have been revealed to us, out of a desire for truth in our ever seeking for a greater understanding of God (i.e. the motivation should not be from a secular pressure to 'get with the program and join the 21st century', and all the sexual politics and tensions that entails).

Much could be said on this topic, of course, but I would simply offer one brief thought at a point where this discussion intersects with Trinitarian doctrine.  The doctrine of the Trinity is, admittedly, quite masculine.  And for a host of theological reasons, which I won't go into right now, the matter is not so easy as simply 'switching genders' and speaking interchangeably of God as Mother, Daughter, and Spirit.  One seemingly less controversial approach which seems to have gained some traction has been to speak of God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier (or some similar language).  This is fine in one sense, as God is indeed all of these.  The problem lies with identifying God in Trinity as defined by what God does, rather than who God is.  In other words, using such language specifically as an expression of the Trinity does precisely what the Church in the first few centuries went to such great lengths to prevent - it results in 'dividing the Substance' of God, implying that 'this part' or person of God creates, and another redeems, and another sanctifies.  But God, as the creeds and traditions assert, is 'one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity', Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; this mystery is lost in such a formulation as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, which is functional, rather than relational.  And at the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity is the revelation that God is Love, a continuous and perfect outpouring of love in the relationship of the Father, Son, and Spirit.  And this is indeed a truth and a mystery that we do not want to lose sight of through an attempt, however well intentioned, to speak more inclusively about God.

A few apropos thoughts from minds far greater than yours truly.

Saint Athanasius, from his Epistle I to Serapion:

"And so the Trinity, which is recognized in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is holy and perfect, and has no adulteration of that which is foreign or external.  Nor is it compounded of creator and created matter, but it is endowed with the complete power of creating and energizing; its nature also is consistent with itself and undivided, and its energy and activity is one."       

Rowan Williams, reflecting over the Rublev Trinity icon (the Hospitality of Abraham); from his The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ:

"But it is, as I have already hinted, very important in the interpretation of the story that it shows three agents acting as one - not a sort of divine drama with different characters.  At a time when the theology of the Trinity sometimes sounds as though we are talking about three 'personalities' collaborating in a project, it is good to be reminded forcefully that all that God does is done by the whole Trinity equally, and that to talk of three divine persons must not mislead us into thinking of human patterns of relationship and cooperation."

Williams continues with a thought about how sound doctrine does not hinder, but rather facilitates inclusivity and welcome:

  "The doctrines of Christ and of the Trinity can seem remarkably remote and theoretical to most people these days; what we seem to forget is that they were designed in order not only to tell us the truth about God but to make us live that truth.  They are invitations, ways of passing on Jesus' invitation to be changed, to repent and trust him, to walk with him ... Accepting the invitation, going through the gate into the new territory of Jesus' life (and it is worth noting how often we come back to open doors of one kind and another in thinking about icons of Christ), is the essence of orthodoxy; the teachings of classical theology are there to reinforce and expound the divine welcome."

Peace.

       

Saint Leo the Great: 'Admitted into the eternal Father's dwelling'

Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things; Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides with his Church on earth, even to the end of the ages; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God in glory everlasting.  Amen.
~ Collect for Ascension Day

A reading from a sermon by Saint Leo the Great:

"Throughout this time between the Lord's resurrection and ascension, my dear brethren, the Lord in his providence fulfilled one purpose, taught one lesson, set one consideration before the eyes and hearts of his followers: that the Lord Jesus Christ, who was truly born, truly suffered and truly died, should be recognized as truly risen.  The apostles and all the disciples had been filled with fear by his death on the cross, and their faith in the resurrection had been hesitant; but now they gained such great strength from seeing the truth, that when the Lord went up to heaven, far from feeling sadness, they experienced a great joy.  Indeed they had a great and mysterious cause for rejoicing.  For in the sight of the vast company of the blessed, human nature was exalted above the dignity of all the creatures of heaven, passing beyond the ranks of the angels, being raised above the high seat of the archangels, to receive an election that would have no limit until it was admitted into the eternal Father's dwelling, to share the glorious throne of him with whose nature it had been united in the person of the Son."          ~Leo the Great, Sermon I on the Ascension

Williams: 'That wholeness given by Christ's resurrection'

(this post is part 2 of a series - part 1,  part 3)

Having sketched how the icon of the resurrection points to Christ’s healing of divisions, even those between the living and the dead, Williams continues by noting that this brings critical insight into how Christians read the Scriptures. The Biblical figures, the patriarchs, prophets, and saints, are our contemporaries (the communion of saints) precisely because of Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus is the center upon which all else turns, in whom all things hold together. The Church Fathers were well aware of this; I love how they are able to see Christ in all the Scriptures, from Genesis right down to Revelation. Sometimes, I think, the Fathers may be justly criticized for overly stretching a text to read into it a Christian meaning, or going a bit overboard with an allegory. Certainly, it is important to understand the historical and cultural contexts in which a passage emerged. But even in these ‘creative’ cases, I find myself inspired by the Fathers’ interpretations, longing myself to be so soaked in the ever-present Christ that I cannot help but find Him everywhere I turn. And I do agree with Williams that ‘a proper Christian reading of the Bible’ must always be in the light of Christ and His work, or else ‘we shall read inadequately.’

“The Bible is not a human record from the distant past, full of a mixture of inspiring and not-so-inspiring stories or thoughts; nor is it a sort of magical oracle, dictated by God. It is rather, the utterances and records of human beings who have been employed by God to witness to his action in the world, now given to us by God so that we may learn who he is and what he does; and the ‘giving’ by God is by means of the resurrection of Jesus. The risen Jesus takes hold of the history of God’s people from its remotest beginnings, lifts it out of death by bringing it to completeness, and presents it to us as his word, his communication to us here and now. Because we live in the power of the risen Christ, we can hear and understand this history, since it is made contemporary with us; in the risen Christ, David and Solomon, Abraham and Moses, stand in the middle of our assembly, our present community, speaking to us about the God who spoke with them in their lifetimes in such a way that we can see how their encounter with God leads towards and is completed in Jesus. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus speaks of Abraham being glad to see his coming (John 8.56); this is the thought that the icon represents. Just as Jesus reintroduces Adam and Eve as he takes each of them by the hand, so he takes Abraham and ourselves by the hand and introduces us to each other. And from Abraham we learn something decisive about faith, about looking to an unseen future and about trusting that the unseen future has the face of Christ. Thus a proper Christian reading of the Bible is always a reading that looks and listens for that wholeness given by Christ’s resurrection; if we try to read any passage without being aware of the light of the resurrection, we shall read inadequately.”   ~ Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light

Two Ancient Readings for Eastertide

O God, whose blessed Son didst manifest himself to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open, we pray thee, the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.
~ Collect for the Third Sunday of Easter

Two readings from the ancient Fathers, which are appropriate for Easter, and which I have found inspiring.  First, from a sermon by Saint Ephrem the Syrian.  I'm always delighted by the way in which the Fathers see the whole of Scripture as turning upon and pointing to the supreme event of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I also love the triumphant Christus Victor understanding of the work of Christ, so prominent in the early Church.  Alleluia!  Christ is risen!  

From Saint Ephrem the Syrian:

"Our Lord was trodden underfoot by death, and in turn trod upon death as upon a road.  He submitted to death and endured it of His own free will, in order to destroy death against death's will.  For our Lord went out carrying His cross, according to death's wish; He cried out on the cross and led the dead out from hell, against death's wish ...

And so, since death could not devour Him without a body and the world of the dead could not swallow Him up without flesh, He came to the Virgin, so that He might receive from her a chariot on which to ride to the underworld.  In the body He had assumed He entered death's domain, broke open its strong-room and scattered the treasure.

And so He came to Eve, the mother of all the living.  She is the vineyard whose hedge death opened by Eve's own hands, so that she might taste death's fruit.  Thus Eve, the mother of all the living, became the source of death for all the living. 

But Mary blossomed, the new vine compared with the old vine, Eve.  Christ, the new life, lived in her, so that when death, brazen as ever, approached her in search of his prey, life, the bane of death, was hidden within her mortal fruit.  And so when death, suspecting nothing, swallowed Him up, death set life free, and with life a multitude of men.

This glorious son of the carpenter, who set up His cross above the all-consuming world of the dead, led the human race into the abode of life.  Because through the tree the human race had fallen into the regions below, He crossed over on the tree of the cross into the abode of life.  The bitter shoot had been grafted on to the tree, and now the sweet shoot was grafted on to it so that we might recognize the One whom no creature can resist.

Glory to you!  You built your cross as a bridge over death, so that departed souls might pass from the realm of death to the realm of life.  Glory to you!  You put on the body of a mortal man and made it the source of life for all mortal men.  You are alive!  Your murderers handled your life like farmers: they sowed it like grain deep in the earth, for it to spring up and raise with itself a multitude of men."          ~ Saint Ephrem, Sermon on our Lord, 3-4.9

Having "set up His cross above the all-consuming world of the dead", Christ grasps Adam and Eve to lead them "from the realm of death to the realm of life."

 And here is Origen, reflecting on "the ransom", a common theme in patristic writings on the atonement:

"But to whom did He give His soul as a ransom for many?  Surely not to God.  Could it, then, be to the Evil One?  For he had us in his power, until the ransom for us should be given to him, namely the soul of Jesus; and he had been deceived, and led to suppose that he was capable of mastering that soul, and he did not see that to hold Him involved a trial of strength greater than he was equal to.  Therefore also Death, though he thought he had prevailed against Him, no longer lords it over Him, He having become free among the dead, and stronger than the power of death, and so much stronger than death that all who will amongst those who are overcome by death may also follow Him, death no longer prevailing against them.  For everyone who is with Jesus is unassailable by death.                   ~Origen, Commentary on Matthew xvi. 8

It's interesting to me that Origen's concluding remarks here represent essentially my own attempt to explain the resurrection to my young children.  More than once, when we've talked about the meaning of Easter, I've said something to the effect of, "Because Jesus was raised to life, it means He is stronger than death.  And since we are with Jesus, we don't need to be afraid of death either."

A question for the reader (if I may be so presumptuous): When we seek to explain a spiritual truth (e.g. the atonement, the Trinity, the Eucharist) to an inquiring child, should we expect to find ourselves coming nearer to the heart of the matter than we might in a "mature, adult conversation", or is it more likely that we shall find ourselves trying to convey complex, theological doctrines in a simplistic manner that does not adequately plumb the depths of deep concepts which deserve nothing less than a lifetime of reflection? I am not suggesting that we shouldn't try to impart the faith to our children in terms that they can understand. I am wondering if we should generally look to such conversations as valuable distillations of essential truth, or rather be wary of them as attempts to state simply truths which are not in fact simple. I suppose I am here asking that ancient question posed to our Lord: What is truth? Is it by nature simple or complex?

Peace.     

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.
~Collect for the First Sunday in Lent


Last Sunday, we heard St. Luke's account of how Jesus was "led about by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil."  The Daily Office readings from the Letter to the Hebrews for this week have built upon this theme.  In chapter two, the writer to the Hebrews says, "Since then the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil ... for since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted."

Saint Augustine writes,

Our pilgrim life here on earth cannot be without temptation for it is through temptation that we make progress and it is only by being tempted that we come to know ourselves.  We cannot win our crown unless we overcome, and we cannot overcome unless we enter the contest, and there is no contest unless we have an enemy and the temptations he brings. (Discourse on Psalm 60)

I think these words have particular power today, at a time when many, even within the Church, are reluctant to speak of either sin or the devil.  Given that the Church in times past has, in my opinion, sometimes overemphasized the same makes this understandable, but not justified.  For it is indeed hard to separate sin (not simply vague, impersonal corruption in which we are stained by association, but personal, willful evil which I myself commit) and the devil (not just a personified symbol of evil, but a spiritual reality, an enemy against whom we wage battle by the grace and in the power of Jesus) from the New Testament, and the Gospels in particular.  I'm reminded of H. Richard Nieburh's famous criticism that "A God without wrath brought a people without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."  Incidentally, praying the Great Litany (BCP, pg. 148-155) is a good antidote for this kind of delusion.

But lest, while being "assaulted by many temptations", we start to get discouraged, we do well to bear in mind that this battle has already been won.  The good news is that Christ has already overcome the world, and He that is now within us who believe is greater than the evil one.  Augustine continues:  

When he willed to be tempted by the devil, he figuratively transferred us into himself.  We have just read in the gospel that our Lord Jesus Christ was tempted in the desert by the devil and this is exactly what happened.  In Christ you were being tempted because Christ had his human flesh from you, just as he won salvation for you from himself.  He received death from you, just as he gained life from himself for you.  From you he received reproaches and from himself for you he gained glory and honour.  In the same way he suffered the temptation for you and he won from himself the victory for you.  If we have been tempted in him, in him we conquer the devil.  Do you notice that Christ has been tempted and fail to notice that he overcame the temptation?  Recognize your own self, tempted in him and conquering also in him.  He might have avoided the devil completely but, had he not been tempted, he would have failed to give you the lesson of conquering when you are tempted.

So, in this, as in all things, we have in Christ our supreme example. But more than an example, by Christ's Incarnation, we have become joined to Him by faith. He takes our weaknesses and transfers to us His victory. "For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end" (Hebrews 3:14). It is because of this that we live in victory, even as we acknowledge in this penitential season of Lent that "our pilgrim life here on earth cannot be without temptation." As the writer to the Hebrews assures us in closing chapter four,

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.  For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.  Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need.

Peace.