NOT AS THE WORLD GIVES

The Master of the universe,

Showing us how to walk the way of humility,

Took a towel

And, bending down below his disciples,

Washed their feet.

Learn not from an angel, He said,

Not from man, nor from a book,

But from me—

From my indwelling,

From my illumination and action within you

For I am meek and humble in heart

And in thought and in spirit,

And your souls shall find rest from conflicts

And relief from thoughts.

The cover of my new book, by Ducio, shows Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. The extract from Ch. 49 of Christ the Eternal Tao begins to explain the meaning of the image.

The Trinity reveals the pattern of the cosmos, of reality itself—from the stars to the dust we kick around our feet. The same Trinity that meets in a kiss between two people is the Trinity that governs the swirl of leaves in autumn when they fall from the trees. There is nothing beyond the Trinity, nothing beyond the particles that all things are made of, nothing beyond these pieces of stardust.

There is no peace without justice, and no justice without goodness. The Ten Commandments are a search for justice, but the Commandments of justice are balanced by the Beatitudes, and the vision of Moses is balanced by the vision of Christ. According to Pope Francis a religion of money dominates our global civilization. Money and sex, therefore, and one more determining factor, technology, needs to be taken into account. We are living under the rule of the machine, and we are called to evangelize these three with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Not As the World Gives reaches from the Age of Money to the Age of the Machine. What emerges from this sequel to The Radiance of Being is not just a presentation of Catholic social doctrine, but a vision of integration and wholeness, of a society both divine and human, and of a humanism open to the absolute.

Sparklings of the Divine Light

The Pantheon in Rome, now the Church of All Saints.

"The door of the human being is the spiracle* of life through which we spirate and breathe the Divine Being, eternal light and life. Now what is an opening if not a hole, an interruption of closure. In other words, ‘in’ this hole of the human being, which is the spiracle of Genesis, the human being ceases; it is interrupted. But there where man ceases God begins. Man is enclosed in his own nature as in a carapace (and this also includes, in a certain way, all of creation). Beyond this carapace suddenly begins the ocean of Divine Light. God pierces a hole in this carapace that is immediately invaded by Divine Light. Insofar as this light comes from elsewhere, it is Divine; insofar as it wholly occupies the place of the orifice, it is part of human nature. 

From this point of view there is profound analogy between microcosm and macrocosm, as is sometimes represented by medieval iconography: the stars are not so much luminous bodies fixed to the celestial vault, as openings in the firmament through which the sparklings of the Divine Light is [sic] glimpsed. Once we know what a close relationship there is, for Plato and Aristotle, between the stars and the essences of the intelligible world, this analogy is seen in all its profundity. Are Plato’s essences intelligible ‘things’? In a certain sense, yes. But, in another, they are holes in the sensory cosmos which, by their very notchings, delineate or cut out distinct luminous unities in that ocean of infinite light that is Divine Reality; how else could we withstand its brightness?

"To conclude let us add that, if the immutable essences are macrocosmic doorways to the divine, if neshamah is the microcosmic doorway, the Most Holy Virgin is its spiritual doorway, the Janua Coeli, which makes of her ‘the Mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope’ (Eccles. 24:24). Yes, spiritual intelligence comes into us through the doorway of Heaven."

"Spiracle" = "breathing hole.

*

The text is from Jean Borella, The Secret of the Christian Way, ed. and trans. G. John Champoux (SUNY Press, 2001), p. 110. See also Borella's Sense of the Supernatural, which I was proud to publish at T&T Clark some years ago. Secret of the Christian Way is included in my list of DESERT ISLAND BOOKS (i.e. indispensable metaphysics and theology) which you can find below.

Praying to the Trinity

There are three special prayers in the Christian tradition: The Lord’s Prayer, the Jesus Prayer, and the Hail Mary. These prayers are directed especially to the members of the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

This is easy to see in the case of the first two, which are explicitly addressed to the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is not mentioned in the third, although we know that he is the Spouse of the Mother of God, and St Maximilian Kolbe even refers to Our Lady as the “quasi-incarnation” of the Holy Spirit. These two – The Spirit and Our Lady – are closely entwined at the deepest level.

What we normally mean by “prayer” is talking to God (albeit silently) about things we need or things that worry us – or praising him and thanking him for this and that. Much of that kind of prayer involves thinking, imagining, conceptualizing. It is takes place in a mind full of echoes and mumblings of conversation, memories of things that have happened or fears of what may be about to, or simply random

Praying the Name

In what is surely an important ecumenical gesture, Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia, one of the leading exponents of Eastern Orthdoxy in the UK, has written a booklet on the Jesus Prayer for the Catholic Truth Society (CTS). The Jesus Prayer is the most popular devotional prayer in the Orthodox Church and increasingly popular in the West. A simple and direct method of invoking the mercy of Jesus Christ by repeating his Holy Name, it is a way of obeying St Paul’s instruction to “pray always”. In an increasingly noisy and frenetic world, the Jesus Prayer offers us an oasis of inner peace and a lifeline back to God.

At the same time, a new booklet from CTS on The Name of God by Canon Michael Lewis in the Deeper Christianity series explores the basis for the Jesus Prayer in the revelation of the Name both in the Old Testament and in the New.

The following beautiful passage is taken from pp. 40-41 of The Jesus Prayer by A Monk of the Eastern Church (Archimandrite Lev Gillet).

"The Jesus Prayer must be 'breathed' continually. When the intellect has been purified and unified by it, our thoughts swim in it as merry dolphins in a peaceful sea. Then a dialogue begins in which Christ, who has become the inner master, makes known his will to the heart. When the Jesus Prayer is understood in this way, clearly its final aim is not mystical silence but the hearing of the divine word. We do not remain exterior to the name invoked, but the invocation allows us to 'participate in the holy name of Jesus.' It gives us the virtues of temperance and continence. The name of Jesus comes into our life first of all as a lamp in the darkness; next it is like moonlight, and finally like the sunrise. Being the sun of our intellect, it creates within it luminous thoughts, to which it communicates its own splendour, thoughts resembling the sun. It is love which elevates us – we should notice the part played by divine love in this process of transformation – and makes us higher than angels. To pronounce the name of Jesus in a holy way is an all-sufficient and surpassing aim for any human life."

Several postings on this theme will be found elsewhere on this site, for example under dates 3 Jan 2014, 6 Nov 2013, 26 Aug 2013, and 15 Apr 2011.

Baptism

This picture of the Baptism of Christ by Fra Angelico has great depth to it. Beyond the sweep of the river and the horizon the clouds form a kind of tunnel, through which the Holy Spirit is entering into the world. It is as though everything comes from here. The Baptist is dark, as though in shadow ("I must decrease..."), and the Saviour is light – the brightest thing in the picture, glowing by his own radiance, and at the same time illuminated by the Holy Spirit. The Baptist is pouring water from a golden bowl, like the river that flows over Christ's feet and the light that flows over his head – the Upper and Lower Waters of Genesis, the Upper Waters coming directly from heaven and the Lower following a winding path through the hills.

Angels and human beings (with the Virgin Mary and St Dominic representing the saints) await the outcome of the Baptism, which is the renewal of all things. For the moment, the new creation is held between the hands of Christ. These hands are pressed together in a symbol of peace precisely at his heart. The Sacred Heart will be pierced on the Cross to allow the Church to be born in blood and water, and the hands will be spread wide. In the painting the figure of Christ is facing us, so the whole image is oriented towards the viewer. We are challenged to respond with prayer, to enter into the biblical scene ourselves, and so to become part of the mystery.

This painting is beautifully reproduced and discussed in the January issue of Magnificat (see "Art Essay of the Month").

Three wise men

Gold, frankincense, and myrrh are the gifts of wisdom, signifying the kingship of Christ, his deity, and his death (or virtue, prayer, and suffering). But one might also see them as representing the three stages of the spiritual life: myrrh for purification through ascetic struggle, frankincense for illumination through prayer, and gold for the final "unitive" stage – union with God.

St Bonaventure describes the three stages, corresponding to the three gifts of the wise to mankind, in The Triple Way. “First, the steps of cleansing. The first level of spiritual life, purification, is divided in this manner: You must blush because of your crimes; tremble in the face of judgment; weep for the damage done; beg for remedy; fight the enticements of the enemy (the devil); desire

Most Holy Name of Jesus

How can one love a name? The closer one gets to death, the more one clings to the Name of Jesus. It is a kind of sacrament, a kind of presence. Words have power, because they are not just labels, as the Nominalists thought. The right name for something touches its essence, and invokes it. It makes a connection with the thing or the person itself – in this case with the Word that was with God in the beginning; the Word that is God, the light of the world. In the Word is contained the love of God that created the world, and that saves us from sin and death. Our faith is a supernatural breath that enables us to pronounce the Name in such a way that the One named becomes present to us. Supernatural hope enables us to place our trust in that Name. Love draws the Name into our heart. The Name prepares us for Holy Communion, it opens the place in ourselves where we are to receive Jesus.

Apart from the Jesus Prayer, we need no other words rattling around our soul, wasting our energy and time. Nothing else can help us so well to live in the present moment. In Exodus, God reveals his Name as "I AM" (or "He Is" in the third person). This is the expression Jesus uses of himself, seven times on its own (e.g. John 18:5-6) and seven times coupled with a title or predicate, such as "I am the Light of the World" (John 8:12). The name Jesus or Yeshua means "YHWH saves". How better to indicate the meaning of his life and person on earth? He is not the only one to bear this name, but he is the One who fulfils it.

For more on the Holy Name and its implications, see:
The Name of God
The Heart of Wisdom
The Jesus Prayer
and

Mystery of two natures

The mystery of the Presentation, when Jesus is recognized by Simeon and the elderly prophetess Anna, "really brings together in the Temple all that was living and true in the Old Testament. This mystery shows us how the union of the Old and the New Testaments is found in Mary, how in and through her the Old Testament is assumed by the New without being abolished: the Old Testament is completely transformed" (M.-D. Philippe OP). The Mystery betokens the union of human and divine natures in Christ – the assumption of a human nature through a divine personality. The Old Testament is human nature brought by God to its highest point in Mary. It has been built up through the ages to reach the point represented by Mary sitting in her room with the Scriptures open on her lap, ready to receive the Word of God. She receives, and those Scriptures are raised to a higher level in Christ, a human nature assumed and therefore transformed by a divine Person. Anna and Simeon recognize what has happened. Among the last prophets of the Old Testament, they see the dawning of the New.

The quotation from Fr Philippe is taken from Magnificat, December 2013, p. 453. The Icon is by the hand of Father Vladimir.

Holy Family

A family like others – that is to say, unique. Of course, while many families have God at the centre, this one has God made flesh. On the road, confused, hungry, uncomfortable. What will happen next? So many children killed because of him! How much time do we have to do what God wants? The road marked out by angels leads to Egypt, the land of pagan mysteries and secret initiations. This is the land where the first Joseph was taken by slavers, where he became a master of dreams and a prince, able to offer bread in the midst of famine. Now Joseph is bringing the Bread of Angels into Egypt. How long must they stay, and what must they do there until the angels speak again, calling them home? What did they see, and what did they learn? The Bible only tells us what we need to know.

Christmas

The birth of a child is not a completely new beginning but it changes everything. It is a revelation that transforms us. The baby existed before, but now we can see its face. In this case, the unique case of Jesus, it is the face that God turns towards us, and also the face that we turn towards God – the mystery of two natures.

When Jesus comes into the world, all things turn towards him. The star representing the heavens leads wise men towards the baby. The peoples of the earth flock towards the stable where he shows his face. Everyone wants to gaze into those eyes. Mary and Joseph are the privileged ones. They live in his presence, surrounded by his aura, full of his joy.

The child begins to cry. He needs us, as we need him. He gives a voice to the cry of the ages, the cry of the world itself – the people, the animals, the rivers, the mountains. He gives a voice to the cry of God, who calls us to return to him, across such a great distance, over which there is now a bridge. The cry of God has never been heard before. The long ages have been silent. The bridge begins with a cry of need, and it will end with a cry of rejoicing, as the peoples of the world enter their Holy City.

Moses and Joseph

Saint Joseph, image of the Father, may also be seen in this image of Moses approaching the Burning Bush by Nicholas Froment. The Bush is Mary, Joseph's spouse. On her lap is the Logos, the I AM that she gives to the world. She is surrounded with flames that will descend again at Pentecost. Moses takes off his shoes, he hears the angels in the flames speaking for God. He takes his people to the threshold of Promised Land. As for Joseph, he cherishes his spouse, he listens to the angels, he leads his people into Egypt like the first Joseph, and back again. Mary is an Ark of the Covenant that contains the new Law—Mary containing Jesus, or holding him in her arms. In Jesus who is the Law, the divine Presence is saving the People of God. The whole painting is like an Annunciation because of the presence of the Angel (perhaps Gabriel) on the left. It is like the Annunciation to Joseph, when he is told about the divine conception of Jesus. It is then he sees Mary for the first time as the Ark and the Temple and the Seat of Wisdom. Or perhaps he knew this already – but now his own place in the story is revealed. The fulfillment of the divine promises is entrusted to him of all people. It is he, the unworthy, a mere creature, who must step into the place of the Invisible.

Advent devotion

Mother of God, thou heart of light,
Mother of God, heart of the world,
Mother of God, thou heart most pure,
Mother of God, heart of the Word,
We come to thee full of shame and weak of soul,
With body bowed down and bending the knee,
For, because of our ignorance,
Our hearts have greatly grown dark.
The Lord has let us wander in the paths of our spirit,
But now it is to thee that we come,
O Mother of Jesus;
Receive us as souls thirsting
For the joys of the unwaning morning,
And deign to renew in us a pure heart,
So that we may chant unto thee:

Rejoice, Ark of the Covenant with my soul!
Rejoice, Sealed Chest containing the Name of God!
Rejoice, Living Ship afloat on creation's mysteries!
Rejoice, Bridal Gift staining none with earthly vanities!
Rejoice, Throne whereon Life itself reposes!
Rejoice, living Resonance wherein chants a ray of uncreated Light!
Rejoice, interior Treasury of the riches of Grace!
Rejoice, mystic Tabernacle on the holy altar!
Rejoice, heavenly Temple whose liturgist is the Spirit!
Rejoice, Church ardently longing for espousal to Christ!
Rejoice, O Bride, Mother of continual prayer!

Part of an Akathist by the Romanian poet, Santu Tudor.

Untier of Knots

It is a 17th-century devotion that Jorge Mario Bergoglio discovered in Augsburg in 1986, a devotion to Our Lady the Untier of Knots – especially the "knots" of sin and twisted relationships that afflict families and destroy marriages. He brought it back to Argentina with him and promoted it there. The devotion is connected with the image of our Lady the Virgin of the Snows, which helps to explain his visit to Santa Maria Maggiore in his first day of office in Rome. CTS have published a book by Miguel Cuartero Samperi on this topic, and it is touched upon in this article from which the illustration was borrowed.

Cuarto writes: "The devotion to Mary Untier of Knots has been, since its origin, closely connected to marriage and the family, as it was to save the indissoluble bond between two spouses that the Virgin Mary desired to manifest her closeness and the efficacy of her intercession. Mary Untier of Knots is therefore invoked above all for family problems: marital crises, incomprehension, infidelity, separations and divisions between spouses, problems of every kind with the children, disputes between siblings, risky pregnancies, violence in the family, illnesses, work problems and other kinds of difficult situations that, like small and large knots to be untied, make family life a cluster of tangles."

Answering Descartes

Descartes sought for an indisputable first principle on which to base his philosophy, and concluded that “the proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.” I think therefore I am. But where does the “I” come from, and to what does it refer? Thinking is certainly taking place, but all that is proven here is that thinking exists.

The foundation of thought is not “I am”—that is too specific, too hasty—but “something is” or “being is”. Being is that in which there can as yet be no distinction between what it is and the fact that it is—essence and existence. It is that whose nature is to exist. Everything else exists against the background of that necessity, a Presence or Principle which contains every possibility. And all human knowledge is rooted in the intuitive apprehension of being through a

A new way of reading

The Radiance of Being draws upon an eclectic range of sources, not just authorities respected by Catholics and Orthodox. I tried to demonstrate in the book a new way of reading. Most orthodox writers try to defend Catholic truth by exposing the limitations and contradictions in heretical or marginal writers. I feel we should look for whatever may be true in those marginal writers and locate a place for it within the bigger system. Quite often the obstacle to understanding and appreciating them is our assumption that they are writing rationally, when they are writing imaginatively.

The Inklings did a great job vindicating mythopoesis. They believed that truth can be expressed imaginatively, poetically, mythologically. Can we apply this insight to these marginal theological writers and mystics? To do so we must be able to appreciate the voice of the imagination.

This does not mean accepting it as authoritative. Quite often the imagination addresses us with a magisterial tone, as if to say, "I have seen this for myself: therefore it is true." The Gnostics provide a handy example of what I mean, and

The second death

Watching the news, reading the papers, even the most sheltered of us may come to believe in the existence of real evil – of people who consciously and consistently reject God. The comic-book super-villain (such as Thanos, the arch-enemy of the Avengers, shown in this picture) is a symbol of such types. In real life, when the unrepentant sinner comes to die, what justice will he find? Eternal torment? And if so, will the punishment be made to fit the crime, as in the myths of old and Dante's Inferno? No one can deny that such an outcome seems appropriate. But why must this torment go on for ever, as it does in Christian doctrine, following a literal interpretation of Scripture (Matthew 25:46; Rev. 14:11). Why will a merciful God not not simply annihilate those who reject him?

The answer seems to be that he cannot. Even the Omnipotent cannot do what is by definition impossible. What makes this difficult to see is the meaning of time and its relation to eternity. To live even for a day is to exist eternally. That is to

Christian Taoism

The Catholic Encyclopedia describes the heresy of Quietism as follows:

"Quietism (Latin quies, quietus, passivity) in the broadest sense is the doctrine which declares that man's highest perfection consists in a sort of psychical self-annihilation and a consequent absorption of the soul into the Divine Essence even during the present life. In the state of "quietude" the mind is wholly inactive; it no longer thinks or wills on its own account, but remains passive while God acts within it.... In its essential features Quietism is a characteristic of the religions of India. Both Pantheistic Brahmanism and Buddhism aim at a sort of self-annihilation, a state of indifference in which the soul enjoys an imperturbable tranquillity. And the means of bringing this about is the recognition of one's identity with Brahma, the all-god, or, for the Buddhist, the quenching of desire and the consequent attainment of Nirvana, incompletely in the present life, but completely after death. Among the Greeks the Quietistic tendency is represented by the Stoics."

The Sacrament of the Present Moment or Abandonment to Divine Providence, a spiritual classic ascribed to Jean-Pierre de Caussade SJ, teaches a doctrine very close to Quietism. How does it differ? I suspect the difference may be found in that between "passivity" and "receptivity" – Abandonment teaches receptivity before God, not the pure passivity which would imply dissolution of the individual personality. (The difference between these concepts is not always clear, and in theology has only been explored properly in modern times by writers such as David L. Schindler and others in the Communio school, where it forms an important theme. I have tried to summarize it in my chapter on the Trinity in The Radiance of Being.)

Caussade seeks "a free and active co-operation which is, at the same time, infused and mystical". It is an active co-operation because a merely passive one would leave the human person unchanged and imperfect, unrepentant and unhappy. For Caussade, God loves the human person and brings us to perfection through grace, with which we must cooperate perfectly by the time we reach

Lectio with the Psalms

I am more and more drawn to the Psalms, and to reading them slowly, using the method of Lectio Divina. At the heart of the Bible, they reflect the whole of Scripture in the form of prayer to God. Part of the Wisdom Books that divide the Historical Books from the Prophets, they form a vital stage in the movement from the first Covenant to the last, that of Jesus.

The Pentateuch or five Books of Moses open the Bible with the first Covenant – the creation itself, then Noah, Abraham, Moses. Then the Historical Books trace the Covenant through David and his descendants, through the emergence of Israel. Then the Wisdom Books reveal the meaning, the inner meaning, of this unfolding Covenant, to the individual soul as well as the People of God. The Book of Job flattens the soul on its face before

I Am Therefore What?

For Descartes, the very fact that I am thinking – or that I can doubt that I am thinking – is proof of my existence, and for Augustine, too, fallor, sum ("If I am mistaken, I am") (XI, 26). But the relationship between consciousness (thought) and being (existence) goes much deeper, as we read in the Book of Exodus, when Moses is told that God’s proper name is “I AM”. “This is what you must say to the sons of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14). This sacred name of God then echoes throughout the Old Testament (YHVH) and the New (ego eimi). In John 8:58, Jesus tells the Jews, “Before Abraham was, I am.”

The Name is sacred and unpronounceable because it is a name that only God himself can utter, since he is the Self in question. Anyone who is not the “I” to which the Name refers is usurping the Name. And so the Name is not merely a label attached to one person by another, but an expression of who God is. It is the self-expression of God, the beginning of the revelation that becomes

Purgatory

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Mt 26:41)

It is easy to speculate about the purpose of suffering when one is feeling well, but in the midst of pain most of us find speculation impossible.  And yet as Elisabeth Leseur says (in the February 2014 issue of Magnificat), "Suffering is the great law of the spiritual world. God’s chosen ones escape it less than others; they pay the ransom for others, sometimes at a very high price. We will know only later the work accomplished by our suffering and our sacrifices. It all goes to the heart of God, and there, joined to the redemptive treasure, it expands in souls in the form of grace. We can convert, sanctify, console without going out of our home or out of ourselves."

Suffering is often the "price" we pay in advance for a grace that will come later. If that seems crude, remember that the law of exchange, justice, and balance is rooted in the very depths of divine justice. Not everything can be mercy. The pattern is established on the Cross, where our suffering is not merely imaged, but incorporated and integrated. The Cross is both Mercy and Justice. It is Justice because sin has destroyed order, and the restoration of order requires nothing less than the sacrifice of a perfect man, a sacrifice that makes up for everything that had been lost. It is Mercy, because the perfect man is also God, and therefore the payment does not merely make up what was lost, but infinitely more. Mercy is the gift of God's own self, his love. "It is love which not only creates the good but also grants participation in the very life of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For he who loves desires to give himself" (Dives in Misericordia, n. 7). Thus the balance between Mercy and Justice is established on the basis of the Hypostatic Union, the union of divine and human natures.

If we must learn to die to our false self to live in Christ, then suffering is the best way. The old self wants anything but suffering and pain. The new self, the true self, wants only the will of God.

Illustration: St Francis receives the Stigmata of Christ, by Giotto.