Masculine and feminine

In his famous press conference on the plane coming back from Rio, Pope Francis called for a more profound theology of woman – he even used the word "mystical". For what he might mean, see "Sincere Gift", and also Paul Evdokimov's Woman and the Salvation of the World: A Christian Anthropology on the Charisms of Women.

One of the most difficult question that arises in any such discussion is whether there is such a thing as "masculinity" and "femininity". Clearly at a physical level, male and female characteristics are not too difficult to define. There are also clusters of psychological characteristics that we commonly associate with these terms. However, in the latter case it is much harder to reach agreement. This is partly due to the fact that women rightly object to being caricatured, or imprisoned by a definition.

As with all our knowledge of the world, we can only base ourselves on what the senses reveal to us. Within those images we glimpse Forms or "archetypes" (by abstraction, according to St Thomas). These Forms are real, and without them neither our knowledge of things nor the things themselves would exist. Another

The seven mysteries

The following text from St Bernard of Clairvaux summarizes the correlation I described in The Seven Sacraments between the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. See the book for more correlations based on tradition, and the reasons for them.

Thus the Holy Spirit through his sevenfold grace destroys the sevenfold misery in the human soul. In its place he builds within the soul a sevenfold blessedness:
Through the spirit of fear he makes the blessed poor in spirit.
Through the spirit of piety he makes them meek.
Through the spirit of knowledge he makes them mournful.
Through the spirit of fortitude he makes them hunger and thirst for justice.
Through the spirit of counsel he makes them merciful.
Through the spirit of understanding he makes them pure of heart.
Through the spirit of wisdom he makes them peacemakers, since wisdom conquers wickedness. The peace of God, “which surpasses all understanding”, rises up in their hearts. This represents the perfection of God’s servants. 

How one who has fallen rises again and moves forward.
We have been made in the image of God.
We cling to the Father through the power of memory,
to the Son by means of our reason or understanding,
and to the Holy Spirit through our will.

Cited in Magnificat August 2013, p. 290-291.

Man and woman

To what extent are the differences between man and woman rooted in the soul, rather than just the body? If the soul is the "form" of the body, one might assume that masculinity and femininity are characteristics of the soul before they are of the body. Yet the tradition of patristic and medieval commentary on Scripture suggests otherwise. The difficulty was partly how to reconcile the teaching of Genesis that man and woman together were made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27) and that of St Paul that man is the "image and glory of God", whereas woman is (only?) "the glory of man" (1 Cor. 11:7), having been made from man. Most agreed that woman, being taken from the side of man rather than his foot or his head, was intended to be his equal and rather than his slave or his master. Furthermore it was accepted that women were at least as capable as men of receiving grace and becoming saints. But some concluded that "woman" and "man" are sometimes used in Scripture as symbolic terms representing the lower and higher intellect respectively – woman being the lower, more engaged with the physical world. Man, however, has a certain superiority in ruling, according to these writers. To a modern person, such arguments are less than persuasive.

It seems to me that not enough attention was given to the fact that in Genesis 3:16 man's ruling over woman is identified as a consequence of the Fall, rather than as part of the original order of things. As for the allegorical identification with the higher and lower intellect, this is interesting in that it suggests a complexity

Faith

"So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love" (1 Cor. 13:13). I had not until recently noticed that faith and hope are both destined to remain for eternity. I had assumed that faith would give way to knowledge of God – we would not need to have faith, once we had direct vision, just as we would not need the sacraments, once we had God himself. But St Paul suggests otherwise, and this implies that faith is more than a substitute for knowledge. It is actually a kind of knowledge, the perfect form of which is distinct from love and hope, and inferior to love in some sense, but equally eternal.

This makes sense if we think of faith as equivalent to trust. We place our trust in someone, or in their word. Similarly, the infused virtue of faith is an act of trust we perform – we place our trust in God and in his Word and in the Church who brings him to us. In heaven we will still trust God, and we will still hope eternally in him, but we shall also know fully the One we trust, because perfect love unites us with him, and love "believes all things" and "hopes all things" (13:7).

The encyclical on faith, Lumen Fidei, is full of important insights. One of them takes the above argument a lot further. "This fullness which Jesus brings to faith has another decisive aspect. In faith, Christ is not simply the one in whom we believe, the supreme manifestation of God's love; he is also the one with whom we are united precisely in order to believe. Faith does not merely gaze at Jesus, but sees things as Jesus himself sees them, with his own eyes: it is a participation in his way of seeing" (n. 18; cf. 21).

Other interesting themes include faith as light, remembrance of the future (9), deep memory and relativism (11, 25, 40), the spiritual senses of sight, hearing and touch (30-31), importance of Greek philosophy (32), relation of truth and love (29-31), theology as a participation in God's knowledge (36), the "we" of the Church (39), the sacramental structure of faith (40), faith as the common good (51), why marriage must be between man and woman (52), the rediscovery of brotherhood (54), the grammar of creation and ecology (55), union in suffering and death as a call to faith (56-57), and much else.

Read James Schall SJ on the encyclical.
And Carl E. Olson.

Finding Wisdom

This is a book I wish I'd found some time ago. Wisdom Songs is a remarkable outpouring of Orthodox Christian wisdom, published in 2011 by Father Silouan, an English priest-monk from the Monastery of St Antony and St Cuthbert, a hermitage within the Romanian jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church, high up in the South-west Shropshire hills. Situated at 1,273 ft, under the Shepherd’s Rock, on the eastern slopes of the Stiperstones. Two sequels, Wisdom and Wonder, and Wisdom, Prophecy and Prayer, are also available – equally wonderful. Father Silouan lives alone, in what was once a miner’s cottage and small holding of twenty acres of pasture and woodland. His life of prayer, silence, liturgy and work is in the tradition of Orthodox monasticism. Priest-monk Silouan began his monastic life in the summer of 1990, in the monastery of St John the Baptist at Tolleshunt Knights in Essex, established in 1959 by the late Archimandrite Sophrony, disciple of St Silouan the Athonite. Like St Silouan, Fr Sophrony was a monk of the Monastery of St Panteleiomon on Mt Athos in Greece.

The book is wonderful – metaphysically precise, spiritually pellucid, intellectually rich, poetic (if a bit idiosyncratic in style at times) and uplifting. I thought the style a bit too idiosyncratic at first, but then I got used to it.

It is arranged in five "centuries", or series of 100 meditations, on the themes of the Song of Songs, the Holy Name, Holy Wisdom, Mysteries of Glory, and the Wisdom of Stillness. 526 pages. Here is a little taste:

"He is the axis in the midst of of subtle whirling wheels within. His are the sparkling rainbow rings that surround us within. His is the single eye at centre in the inmost heart of all hearts. It is his wisdom that surrounds us like a boundless expanse, for his glory is our firmament. Clear like crystal, translucent and bright, his glory shines through us as light from his throne in the midst. Wheels whirl like winds, all light and winged, resounding through all subtle centres and circles of our being."