The story of Abraham revolves around two main themes: the quest for the Promised Land and the renewal of the quest for a son. These are two themes that are the main part of the Adam and Eve story as well. According to my understanding, the Fall consisted of the man and woman seeking a child and making a human as God had just made two humans. God had planned to give them a child, virginally, and so to test them he commanded them not to have sexual relations. They were asked to give up the greatest earthly good, human union and intimacy, to be given the ultimate good, divine union.
Adam and Eve couldn’t understand why a good God would ask them to forgo human intimacy and the children who would follow, so they trusted in the wisdom of the serpent, had sexual relations, and conceived Cain: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD’.”
The garden is not so much a garden as it is the man and woman themselves, so when God banishes them from the garden of delight, it means that they are alien’s to themselves, so to speak. As I mentioned in my entry of the early morning of December 4th, the result of the Fall was that our minds are darkened, our wills weakened, and our passions disordered. This is called concupiscence, and it was the natural result of the man and woman trusting in the powers of their bodies to have life. If they had trusted in God, that is, if they had eaten of the tree of life, then they would have had life. Before the Fall, the man was master of his body, and God was master over him, but through his sin, he rejected God as his master resulting in his body rejecting him as its master. How relationships disintegrate: when the rightful authority of God is rejected, all hell breaks loose.
So the man and the woman, Adam and Eve, begin a journey seeking peace and re-unification, seeking harmony and order, seeking faith and life. Now they have to overcome the challenges of concupiscence in their journey back to themselves, in their journey back to trusting and loving God and eating of the tree of life, in their journey back to fruitfulness, meaning, and life. This is the journey we all undertake. This journey is symbolized in the quest for the Promised Land that is initiated at the beginning of the Abraham story.
Shortly into the Abraham story, he seeks a son. His story starts with the quest for the Promised Land, and it ends with the quest for a son. This is the mirror image of the story of Adam and Eve which starts with a quest for a son and ends with the quest for both their lost personal integrity and union with God, which is symbolized by the quest for the Promised Land.
There is a psychological term known as reenactment which is when a person relives a prior event; people tend to do it much of the time, and most of it is done unconsciously. It is especially common with traumatic and unresolved events and conflicts; part of the reason it is done is due to our desire to understand. When a traumatic event leaves one dumbfounded, our desire is to make sense of it; one way we try to make sense of it is to somehow recreate the scene and relive it. It is sort of like rewinding a movie and re-watching a confusing scene or a scene where you didn’t hear all the words. Some classic examples of reenactment are the girl with an alcoholic father seeking out and marrying an alcoholic or someone alcoholic-like, the abandoned child who seeks out and marries someone who will leave them, the rejected person who always ends up rejected by everyone he tries to get close to, the son of a workaholic who swears he won’t be like his dad who was never around but yet ends up just like his dad working all the time. For whatever reason, this seems to be the way things are, as far as I understand psychology.
I bring up reenactment because a similar type of thing seems to occur throughout the Bible. The same old things happen over and over again. Some of the scenery may change and the characters, but, at root, it is the exact same event some time later. The path to understanding the Bible and the Catholic Faith which it is an expression of, is by seeing and understanding the recurring patterns throughout its story. Once you have the pattern down and can recognize it in other situations, then it is found everywhere and the story and its message become very simple. I think I have stumbled across the ins and outs of understanding this pattern. And in many ways, it is very simple. One of the easiest places to see this pattern is in the life of Abraham, which is why I chose to discuss him next.
I never read or saw the Da Vinci Code, and I am glad of it, but I think there is something to it. I think there is a code or pattern which helps to make sense of the chaos. God is not a God of disorder, confusion, isolation and death but of order, understanding, union and life. Everything fits together and has a reason: “thou hast arranged all things by measure and number and weight” (Wisdom 11:20). The Bible and Catholic Faith are already well understood, in a way, yet there is certainly room for a better understanding, one which roots the understanding in the story of the Bible, a biblical theology.
A theologian’s work is to make sense of and give reasons for that which we already believe; his task is to find the patterns and see the connections and unity in the Bible and all doctrine to better make sense of it for everyone else; his mission is to find the key and unlock the treasure chest holding the mysteries of the kingdom and then use that treasure to feed the multitude. His goal is to lead others to Christ. “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ,” said Saint Jerome. A deep understanding of the Bible is part and parcel with knowing who Jesus is and what exactly He did to remedy our specific sickness. "Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night. He is like a tree…” (Psalm 1:2-3): the tree of life. A theologian’s work is to enlighten people to the life God has given and called us to; he is to awaken and enliven the trust people have in God, that is, he is to help resuscitate each person’s tree of life.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
12.07.2007
12.06.2007
Abraham, Our Father in Faith
I want to spend more time with our father in faith, Abraham, over the next couple of days or weeks for there are rich treasures to be discovered in his life. Although he was a descendant of Shem, Noah’s righteous first-born son, Abraham’s family had moved away from the Promised Land some time before Abraham was born. God called Abraham back to the home of his ancestors. Abraham obeyed, and made his way to a place unfamiliar to him. Throughout the rest of the Old Testament, the people of God are trying to return to the Promised Land, beginning with Abraham. At the end of chapter 11 in Genesis, Abraham’s father, Terah, started the journey back to this land; he stopped short, but Abraham completed the move in Genesis 12.
This is the beginning of the constant theme of the quest for the Promised Land. What makes this land so special? God is a big God and the earth is a big planet, especially in relation to only thousands of people living on it at the time. Aren’t there many other equally or better suited locations to settle down? Why does God call Abraham back to this location, known as the land of Canaan? Another nation occupies the land, and God wants Abraham to take possession of that land away from the Canaanites. That does not seem fair or even right. Shouldn’t God send him to some unoccupied place to make him the father of a multitude of nations? Why displace another people?
In Genesis 12:7 it states: “Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, ‘To your descendants I will give this land.’ So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.” God promises him the land of Canaan. Then there is a famine in the land of Canaan, and Abraham finds help by going down to Egypt. His half-sister and wife, Sarah, is very beautiful, and Abraham is worried that the Egyptians will kill him and steal his wife. His solution: say to them that she is his sister and leave out the part about being married. The pharaoh, naturally, takes Sarah as a wife.
“But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. So Pharaoh called Abram, and said, ‘What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone.’ And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him; and they set him on the way, with his wife and all that he had.”
Why does Abraham act so poorly regarding his wife, allowing her to be taken by the pharaoh? This is the first time that there is a mention of the people of God making their way to Egypt, and this is repeated several times by Abraham’s descendants, and there are many parallels among the different journeys.
After returning to the Promised Land, “The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, ‘Lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your descendants for ever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you’.” Genesis 13:14-17.
The reason this land is called the Promised Land is that God promised it to Abraham, but that still does not explain why God chose this land and why He is willing to remove the Canaanites from it. There is a battle between kings of this land in chapter 14, and Lot, Abraham’s nephew is taken prisoner. Abraham saves him by defeating the kings who defeated the kings, making Abraham a sort of king of kings. Then he is blessed by the mysterious Melchizedek. Only after receiving the blessing, and at the very next encounter with God, Abraham, who is 75 and married to an elderly barren woman, asks God for a son. There is a connection between getting the blessing and passing it on to one’s son. He has the blessing, so now he needs and asks for a son. Again, we return to the quest for a son that we saw in the Fall.
Tonight, I just want to pose some questions and set the stage. Tomorrow, I may give some of the answers and continue to set the stage. Ultimately, I want to explain why God asks Abraham to kill his own son and how that connects to the sin of our first parents.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007
This is the beginning of the constant theme of the quest for the Promised Land. What makes this land so special? God is a big God and the earth is a big planet, especially in relation to only thousands of people living on it at the time. Aren’t there many other equally or better suited locations to settle down? Why does God call Abraham back to this location, known as the land of Canaan? Another nation occupies the land, and God wants Abraham to take possession of that land away from the Canaanites. That does not seem fair or even right. Shouldn’t God send him to some unoccupied place to make him the father of a multitude of nations? Why displace another people?
In Genesis 12:7 it states: “Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, ‘To your descendants I will give this land.’ So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.” God promises him the land of Canaan. Then there is a famine in the land of Canaan, and Abraham finds help by going down to Egypt. His half-sister and wife, Sarah, is very beautiful, and Abraham is worried that the Egyptians will kill him and steal his wife. His solution: say to them that she is his sister and leave out the part about being married. The pharaoh, naturally, takes Sarah as a wife.
“But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. So Pharaoh called Abram, and said, ‘What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone.’ And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him; and they set him on the way, with his wife and all that he had.”
Why does Abraham act so poorly regarding his wife, allowing her to be taken by the pharaoh? This is the first time that there is a mention of the people of God making their way to Egypt, and this is repeated several times by Abraham’s descendants, and there are many parallels among the different journeys.
After returning to the Promised Land, “The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, ‘Lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your descendants for ever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you’.” Genesis 13:14-17.
The reason this land is called the Promised Land is that God promised it to Abraham, but that still does not explain why God chose this land and why He is willing to remove the Canaanites from it. There is a battle between kings of this land in chapter 14, and Lot, Abraham’s nephew is taken prisoner. Abraham saves him by defeating the kings who defeated the kings, making Abraham a sort of king of kings. Then he is blessed by the mysterious Melchizedek. Only after receiving the blessing, and at the very next encounter with God, Abraham, who is 75 and married to an elderly barren woman, asks God for a son. There is a connection between getting the blessing and passing it on to one’s son. He has the blessing, so now he needs and asks for a son. Again, we return to the quest for a son that we saw in the Fall.
Tonight, I just want to pose some questions and set the stage. Tomorrow, I may give some of the answers and continue to set the stage. Ultimately, I want to explain why God asks Abraham to kill his own son and how that connects to the sin of our first parents.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007
12.04.2007
"Abba! Father!"
Last night I asked a question that I did not really answer. It may have been implied, but it was not directly answered. I answered the question about why baptism does not take away concupiscence, but I did not answer why it does not feel like anything happens when one is baptized. The first obvious response is that grace has little to do with feelings, just as much of life has little to do with feelings; they have their role, but it is a secondary and subordinate one. Living by one’s feelings is building a house upon the sand near the seashore—it feels good for a while, but catastrophe soon follows.
To discuss baptism further and in a positive light, I will examine the heart of the message of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The center and most important part of his letter is found in the middle two paragraphs which are mirror images of one another in 3:23-4:7:
“Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no better than a slave, though he is the owner of all the estate; but he is under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. So with us; when we were children, we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe. But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.”
The context of these paragraphs is that Paul is discussing how Abraham was justified by faith when he believed God would give him and his barren wife a son in their old age. God “reckoned it to him as righteousness,” back in Genesis 15, and it was not until Genesis 17 when God gives Abraham the covenant of circumcision. The big question Paul is addressing here in Galatians is the question of whether a Christian needs to be circumcised. His answer is no. Abraham had to be circumcised because he had tried to fulfill the promised son by having relations with Hagar, Sarah’s maid, upon the advice of his wife. Abraham listened to the voice of his wife and had relations with Hagar: the result was Ishmael. He was not the son God promised.
Abraham was 75 when God first promised a son to him; when he was 85 he had a son with Hagar, but that was not the son God had promised. It was not until Abraham was 99 when God gave him the covenant of circumcision that He re-promised Abraham a son. Twenty-five years after the initial promise, at the age of 100, Isaac was born to this most impossible set of parents. Isaac means laughter because his birth to such old parents was surely hysterical.
Because Abraham did not trust God Himself to provide the son but relied on the powers of his body and a woman not his wife, God provided a punishment that fit the fall. He trusted in his male part, so that very instrument, so to speak, had to be cut around. That was a painful procedure, especially at such an age, and it was a strategic strike at the symbolic root of the problem. Circumcision was added because of sin just as all the laws concerning animal sacrifices and other ritual offerings were. Israelites had to sacrifice bulls because they worshipped the golden calf; they sacrificed sheep because they worshipped goat demons in the desert; the sacrificed lambs because they worshipped themselves every time they sinned. All those laws were temporary to keep the people from falling further into sin. God is a good Father who gives appropriate and fitting penitential and medicinal punishments which are designed to bring the sinner back to Himself.
Circumcision was added as a law because Abraham, at root, did not trust in God. The problem was with his heart, his tree of life. True circumcision is circumcision of the heart; it is the cutting away of the dead, stony part to reveal the living fleshy part underneath. There is a fittingness to circumcision striking man’s “foot” as the material used in the sin, but deep down what is needed is a heart believing and obedient to God. In baptism, as Galatians says, we have been made sons and daughters of God; we have been made a new creation and given a new circumcised heart of flesh. We are born from above and become members of the new Israel of God as infants (usually), just as circumcision made one an Israelite in the Old Testament at eight days old, unless he was a convert. Baptism is the new circumcision. Instead of cutting away the foreskin, baptism imparts in our chest a new tree of life.
Now we are sons who have hearts filled with the Spirit of His Son. We have put on Christ and we make what was Christ’s our own. We become God’s children because we are now members of His Son. We have a new circumcised heart because we have been given Christ’s heart. The heart of Our Savior gave itself entirely on the cross and was cut through with a lance, pouring forth blood and water. This is the circumcision of His heart. This is the heart we receive at baptism.
Since Abraham never really trusted that God was going to give him a son, since he never fully passed the test, Abraham had to be tested once more. When Isaac, the one through whom God had promised to send a vast multitude of descendants, was old and strong enough to carry the wood for a burnt offering, it was then that God asked Abraham to kill this son of the promise. If Isaac was old enough to carry the wood for a long distance, surely he was strong enough to escape his 115 or more year-old dad. Both Abraham and Isaac willingly made the offering; there are a multitude of parallels between Isaac’s offering and Jesus’ crucifixion. For now, suffice it to say that they are images of one another. As the crucifixion was the circumcision of Jesus’ heart, so Abraham and Isaac’s sacrifice was the circumcision of theirs.
As Isaac and Abraham were getting close to offering the sacrifice, and before Isaac knew what they were going to sacrifice, Isaac said, Abba, Father, here is the wood and the fire, but where is the lamb? Since Paul is discussing all of this in Galatians, when he says that the spirit of the Son is in our hearts crying “Abba, Father,” Paul is directing our minds to these same words spoken by Isaac as he began his journey to his total self-oblation. Baptism sets us down the path that Isaac walked; it initiates us to pick up our own chunk of tree and follow our Savior as He makes His way to Calvary. The fulfillment of our Baptism is in our own crucifixion; and the Eucharist is the very heart of Jesus which provides us strength and food for this beautiful and aweful journey. On a daily basis, nourished by our daily bread, we die to our self in all the many little things of our ordinary life lived faithfully and well; we make our entire life, each and every day, each and every moment, an offering back to our loving Heavenly Father in imitation of His son who did so for most of His life in obscurity.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
To discuss baptism further and in a positive light, I will examine the heart of the message of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The center and most important part of his letter is found in the middle two paragraphs which are mirror images of one another in 3:23-4:7:
“Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no better than a slave, though he is the owner of all the estate; but he is under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. So with us; when we were children, we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe. But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.”
The context of these paragraphs is that Paul is discussing how Abraham was justified by faith when he believed God would give him and his barren wife a son in their old age. God “reckoned it to him as righteousness,” back in Genesis 15, and it was not until Genesis 17 when God gives Abraham the covenant of circumcision. The big question Paul is addressing here in Galatians is the question of whether a Christian needs to be circumcised. His answer is no. Abraham had to be circumcised because he had tried to fulfill the promised son by having relations with Hagar, Sarah’s maid, upon the advice of his wife. Abraham listened to the voice of his wife and had relations with Hagar: the result was Ishmael. He was not the son God promised.
Abraham was 75 when God first promised a son to him; when he was 85 he had a son with Hagar, but that was not the son God had promised. It was not until Abraham was 99 when God gave him the covenant of circumcision that He re-promised Abraham a son. Twenty-five years after the initial promise, at the age of 100, Isaac was born to this most impossible set of parents. Isaac means laughter because his birth to such old parents was surely hysterical.
Because Abraham did not trust God Himself to provide the son but relied on the powers of his body and a woman not his wife, God provided a punishment that fit the fall. He trusted in his male part, so that very instrument, so to speak, had to be cut around. That was a painful procedure, especially at such an age, and it was a strategic strike at the symbolic root of the problem. Circumcision was added because of sin just as all the laws concerning animal sacrifices and other ritual offerings were. Israelites had to sacrifice bulls because they worshipped the golden calf; they sacrificed sheep because they worshipped goat demons in the desert; the sacrificed lambs because they worshipped themselves every time they sinned. All those laws were temporary to keep the people from falling further into sin. God is a good Father who gives appropriate and fitting penitential and medicinal punishments which are designed to bring the sinner back to Himself.
Circumcision was added as a law because Abraham, at root, did not trust in God. The problem was with his heart, his tree of life. True circumcision is circumcision of the heart; it is the cutting away of the dead, stony part to reveal the living fleshy part underneath. There is a fittingness to circumcision striking man’s “foot” as the material used in the sin, but deep down what is needed is a heart believing and obedient to God. In baptism, as Galatians says, we have been made sons and daughters of God; we have been made a new creation and given a new circumcised heart of flesh. We are born from above and become members of the new Israel of God as infants (usually), just as circumcision made one an Israelite in the Old Testament at eight days old, unless he was a convert. Baptism is the new circumcision. Instead of cutting away the foreskin, baptism imparts in our chest a new tree of life.
Now we are sons who have hearts filled with the Spirit of His Son. We have put on Christ and we make what was Christ’s our own. We become God’s children because we are now members of His Son. We have a new circumcised heart because we have been given Christ’s heart. The heart of Our Savior gave itself entirely on the cross and was cut through with a lance, pouring forth blood and water. This is the circumcision of His heart. This is the heart we receive at baptism.
Since Abraham never really trusted that God was going to give him a son, since he never fully passed the test, Abraham had to be tested once more. When Isaac, the one through whom God had promised to send a vast multitude of descendants, was old and strong enough to carry the wood for a burnt offering, it was then that God asked Abraham to kill this son of the promise. If Isaac was old enough to carry the wood for a long distance, surely he was strong enough to escape his 115 or more year-old dad. Both Abraham and Isaac willingly made the offering; there are a multitude of parallels between Isaac’s offering and Jesus’ crucifixion. For now, suffice it to say that they are images of one another. As the crucifixion was the circumcision of Jesus’ heart, so Abraham and Isaac’s sacrifice was the circumcision of theirs.
As Isaac and Abraham were getting close to offering the sacrifice, and before Isaac knew what they were going to sacrifice, Isaac said, Abba, Father, here is the wood and the fire, but where is the lamb? Since Paul is discussing all of this in Galatians, when he says that the spirit of the Son is in our hearts crying “Abba, Father,” Paul is directing our minds to these same words spoken by Isaac as he began his journey to his total self-oblation. Baptism sets us down the path that Isaac walked; it initiates us to pick up our own chunk of tree and follow our Savior as He makes His way to Calvary. The fulfillment of our Baptism is in our own crucifixion; and the Eucharist is the very heart of Jesus which provides us strength and food for this beautiful and aweful journey. On a daily basis, nourished by our daily bread, we die to our self in all the many little things of our ordinary life lived faithfully and well; we make our entire life, each and every day, each and every moment, an offering back to our loving Heavenly Father in imitation of His son who did so for most of His life in obscurity.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
"Wretched Man That I Am!"
Tonight at my monthly evening of recollection, the priest speaker, Father Charles, talked about concupiscence. That got me thinking. My understanding of concupiscence is it is the result of original sin which weakens our will, darkens our intellect, and disorders our passions, with an emphasis on disordered passions. Saint Paul explains his own struggle with concupiscence in the letter to the Romans that could be summarized with the saying: the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
There he says in 7:15-25: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate….So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”
All of us can relate to that. The question I want to address tonight is why did concupiscence or the flesh come together with the Fall? Does God superimpose concupiscence onto us because our first parents fell? We had no responsibility in their sin, so why do we and billions of others through history have to pay for their stupid deed? Baptism takes away original sin, so why doesn’t it take away concupiscence? Since we don’t feel original sin but we do feel the effects of concupiscence, it seems that nothing much even happens when we get baptized. Baptism doesn’t seem to be very effective in undoing the Fall for it doesn’t seem to cause a change in me.
Let us look to the book in the Bible called The Wisdom of Solomon 11:15-26 where the author is talking about the Egyptians and the plagues God sent upon them. Remember, the plagues were the destruction of all the gods of Egypt by the True God. They worshipped those false gods, so God either killed those gods or swamped them with them: “In return for their foolish and wicked thoughts, which led them astray to worship irrational serpents and worthless animals, thou didst send upon them a multitude of irrational creatures to punish them, that they might learn that one is punished by the very things by which he sins. For thy all-powerful hand, which created the world out of formless matter, did not lack the means to send upon them a multitude of bears, or bold lions, or newly created unknown beasts full of rage, or such as breathe out fiery breath, or belch forth a thick pall of smoke, or flash terrible sparks from their eyes; not only could their damage exterminate men, but the mere sight of them could kill by fright. Even apart from these, men could fall at a single breath when pursued by justice and scattered by the breath of thy power. But thou hast arranged all things by measure and number and weight. For it is always in thy power to show great strength, and who can withstand the might of thy arm? Because the whole world before thee is like a speck that tips the scales, and like a drop of morning dew that falls upon the ground. But thou art merciful to all, for thou canst do all things, and thou dost overlook men’s sins, that they may repent. For thou lovest all things that exist, and hast loathing for none of the things which thou hast made, for thou wouldst not have made anything if thou hadst hated it. How would anything have endured if thou hadst not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by thee have been preserved? Thou sparest all things, for they are thine, O Lord who lovest the living.
Pardon me for the lengthy quote. The main part of the passage is, “that they might learn that one is punished by the very things by which he sins.” My theory is that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that God commanded our first parents not to eat was sexual relations; there was nothing wrong with it in and of itself, but he was asking them to forgo the greatest of earthly goods as a trial of faith. If that is true, the woman sought a child to fulfill God’s command to be fruitful and multiply but on her own terms. She sought the man as husband and physical father of the child, rejecting God as Husband and Father, and so her punishment is that now she has man as her husband; she got what she wanted. Many women can relate at times that they are “stuck” with their husbands who don’t cherish them as they seek to be cherished.
The man used his body as the source for fulfilling God’s command to be fruitful and multiply. His disobedience utilized his body, which was made good, but since he sinned with his body, now his body is master over him. It is my understanding, being a man and from what I hear and read, that men have a much more difficult time living a pure and chaste life; not being a woman it is hard to compare, but there are many studies showing the sex-crazed mentality of men, especially those who live by their basest passions. With men, apart from God’s help, the question is not so much what sexual sins would they commit, but what ones wouldn’t they. Men’s master has become his body. Therein lies the primary battlefield. One only needs a cursory understanding of the garbage rampant on the internet of the mutual degradation of men’s and women’s bodies to get an idea of what happens when men are ruled by their bodies.
Concupiscence, then, is not something superimposed by God upon the human race due to the Fall. It came as the natural consequence of choosing who our master would be and being sons of men. As sons of God we would have been perfectly ordered and grace-filled, but as temporal sons of men we have disordered bodies of death. That’s ok. The Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men might become the sons of God to quote Saint Athanasius. We have hard hearts and disobedient bodies, but in baptism we are given new hearts and are made a new creation. It is still a struggle, but we have hope. It is still a struggle, but it is in the very struggle itself that we draw closer to God and cling to Him for help and life. Paul said it well in his letter to the Philippians 2:12-13: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
There he says in 7:15-25: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate….So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”
All of us can relate to that. The question I want to address tonight is why did concupiscence or the flesh come together with the Fall? Does God superimpose concupiscence onto us because our first parents fell? We had no responsibility in their sin, so why do we and billions of others through history have to pay for their stupid deed? Baptism takes away original sin, so why doesn’t it take away concupiscence? Since we don’t feel original sin but we do feel the effects of concupiscence, it seems that nothing much even happens when we get baptized. Baptism doesn’t seem to be very effective in undoing the Fall for it doesn’t seem to cause a change in me.
Let us look to the book in the Bible called The Wisdom of Solomon 11:15-26 where the author is talking about the Egyptians and the plagues God sent upon them. Remember, the plagues were the destruction of all the gods of Egypt by the True God. They worshipped those false gods, so God either killed those gods or swamped them with them: “In return for their foolish and wicked thoughts, which led them astray to worship irrational serpents and worthless animals, thou didst send upon them a multitude of irrational creatures to punish them, that they might learn that one is punished by the very things by which he sins. For thy all-powerful hand, which created the world out of formless matter, did not lack the means to send upon them a multitude of bears, or bold lions, or newly created unknown beasts full of rage, or such as breathe out fiery breath, or belch forth a thick pall of smoke, or flash terrible sparks from their eyes; not only could their damage exterminate men, but the mere sight of them could kill by fright. Even apart from these, men could fall at a single breath when pursued by justice and scattered by the breath of thy power. But thou hast arranged all things by measure and number and weight. For it is always in thy power to show great strength, and who can withstand the might of thy arm? Because the whole world before thee is like a speck that tips the scales, and like a drop of morning dew that falls upon the ground. But thou art merciful to all, for thou canst do all things, and thou dost overlook men’s sins, that they may repent. For thou lovest all things that exist, and hast loathing for none of the things which thou hast made, for thou wouldst not have made anything if thou hadst hated it. How would anything have endured if thou hadst not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by thee have been preserved? Thou sparest all things, for they are thine, O Lord who lovest the living.
Pardon me for the lengthy quote. The main part of the passage is, “that they might learn that one is punished by the very things by which he sins.” My theory is that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that God commanded our first parents not to eat was sexual relations; there was nothing wrong with it in and of itself, but he was asking them to forgo the greatest of earthly goods as a trial of faith. If that is true, the woman sought a child to fulfill God’s command to be fruitful and multiply but on her own terms. She sought the man as husband and physical father of the child, rejecting God as Husband and Father, and so her punishment is that now she has man as her husband; she got what she wanted. Many women can relate at times that they are “stuck” with their husbands who don’t cherish them as they seek to be cherished.
The man used his body as the source for fulfilling God’s command to be fruitful and multiply. His disobedience utilized his body, which was made good, but since he sinned with his body, now his body is master over him. It is my understanding, being a man and from what I hear and read, that men have a much more difficult time living a pure and chaste life; not being a woman it is hard to compare, but there are many studies showing the sex-crazed mentality of men, especially those who live by their basest passions. With men, apart from God’s help, the question is not so much what sexual sins would they commit, but what ones wouldn’t they. Men’s master has become his body. Therein lies the primary battlefield. One only needs a cursory understanding of the garbage rampant on the internet of the mutual degradation of men’s and women’s bodies to get an idea of what happens when men are ruled by their bodies.
Concupiscence, then, is not something superimposed by God upon the human race due to the Fall. It came as the natural consequence of choosing who our master would be and being sons of men. As sons of God we would have been perfectly ordered and grace-filled, but as temporal sons of men we have disordered bodies of death. That’s ok. The Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men might become the sons of God to quote Saint Athanasius. We have hard hearts and disobedient bodies, but in baptism we are given new hearts and are made a new creation. It is still a struggle, but we have hope. It is still a struggle, but it is in the very struggle itself that we draw closer to God and cling to Him for help and life. Paul said it well in his letter to the Philippians 2:12-13: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
12.02.2007
"He is Like a Tree:" Reflections on Psalm 1
Tonight I want to examine Psalm One. This is the very first psalm, as you might have already guessed, and as such initiates the series of psalms known as the book of prayer. I think its pole position in this collection of 150 others is no small matter. Let’s see what this rather short psalm says.
“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”
First, on the negative side, a man is blessed if he does not delight in what delights the wicked; the way of the wicked will quickly die and be wiped away like so much flimsy dust. Second, on the positive side, the blessed man will delight in and continually ponder what pleases God; as such, he will be known by God—he will be of one heart and mind with Him. Instead of being dead dust like the sinner, the righteous man will be a fruitful tree near flowing water that bears its fruit regularly.
Death results from what sinners do, how the wicked think, and how scoffers are proud of heart. To have life and bear fruit, one must be obedient, believe in God’s words and laws, and be humble of heart. The tree of life is the heart, so those who shun this tree by disobedience, pride and unbelief, produce only death. When one embraces the tree of life and eats from it by obedience, belief, and humility, abundant fruit are produced. The heart of flesh, the living tree of life, loves God and the things of God and spends all its energies on knowing God better. As the four rivers were used to symbolize the heart/tree of life in Genesis 2, so here the tree of life/heart is closely linked with living/flowing water and abundant fruit. The one who seeks God with his whole heart and inwardly cries out to Him night and day continues to grow and bear fruit, in fact, everything that he does brings success in the true sense of the word.
The message of this first entry into the Book of Prayer is to open your heart to God and give your entire self to Him by believing in Him, being so in love with Him that you meditate on Him continually, humbly listening to all that pleases Him, and faithfully obeying His commands and wishes. Therein lies life, life to the full. A heart that has God as its one, primary desire, is a fruitful tree, bearing much beautiful fruit. I think of Saint Therese of Liseux and her beautiful little way of drawing ever so close to the Beloved.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”
First, on the negative side, a man is blessed if he does not delight in what delights the wicked; the way of the wicked will quickly die and be wiped away like so much flimsy dust. Second, on the positive side, the blessed man will delight in and continually ponder what pleases God; as such, he will be known by God—he will be of one heart and mind with Him. Instead of being dead dust like the sinner, the righteous man will be a fruitful tree near flowing water that bears its fruit regularly.
Death results from what sinners do, how the wicked think, and how scoffers are proud of heart. To have life and bear fruit, one must be obedient, believe in God’s words and laws, and be humble of heart. The tree of life is the heart, so those who shun this tree by disobedience, pride and unbelief, produce only death. When one embraces the tree of life and eats from it by obedience, belief, and humility, abundant fruit are produced. The heart of flesh, the living tree of life, loves God and the things of God and spends all its energies on knowing God better. As the four rivers were used to symbolize the heart/tree of life in Genesis 2, so here the tree of life/heart is closely linked with living/flowing water and abundant fruit. The one who seeks God with his whole heart and inwardly cries out to Him night and day continues to grow and bear fruit, in fact, everything that he does brings success in the true sense of the word.
The message of this first entry into the Book of Prayer is to open your heart to God and give your entire self to Him by believing in Him, being so in love with Him that you meditate on Him continually, humbly listening to all that pleases Him, and faithfully obeying His commands and wishes. Therein lies life, life to the full. A heart that has God as its one, primary desire, is a fruitful tree, bearing much beautiful fruit. I think of Saint Therese of Liseux and her beautiful little way of drawing ever so close to the Beloved.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
No Marriage in Heaven?!
Tonight I want to try and tackle a very difficult passage that sheds light on my theory and vice versa. It is from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 11: 7-10: “For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.) That is why a woman ought to have a veil on her head, because of the angels.” What I want to focus on is that man is the glory of God and woman is the glory of man. The word for glory means, among other things, heavy and full; women have a certain ability to be heavy and full, and that is when they are pregnant, especially in the third trimester. Woman is the glory of man because she bears their fruit. Likewise, man and all mankind is the glory of God because we bear the fruit from God in our trusting heart.
Both men and women bear fruit for God in their hearts; it seems that the man is able to bear fruit for God in a special way, and so he is the glory of God. How are we to correctly understand this? God is pure being and action; He does not receive, but acts and is the Creator of all that is. As the Creator, He reveals many things about Himself in creation. The primary image in all of creation is the relationship between men and women in marriage; this image symbolizes God’s relationship to humanity. Certainly, men and woman have an equality, yet men do symbolize God in a unique manner. Man, in his body and psyche and soul, has a similitude to God, and he seeks to initiate and penetrate and actively give himself. Woman, in her body and psyche and soul, is receptive and nurturing and reciprocates the loving advance. As symbols, man is God and woman is humanity; symbolically man is greater, but not in actuality (the greatest human is a woman, after all). In relation to God, ever human is feminine, that is, receptive. In our relationship with God, it is He who initiates and acts and gives us Himself; we actively respond to His loving entreaty. This is reflected in John’s first letter: “We love, because he first loved us” (4:19). God loves us, and if we are receptive, He fills us with His life; as a result, we are His glory and grow full with good fruit.
A question remains: why do woman have to cover their head due to the angels? Paul is talking about a woman covering her head in church, at the Mass. Do angels really care if a woman’s head is uncovered? Paul says she can either cover her head or shave it; both accomplish the purpose. What is the point? Who are the angels? I do not think Paul is using the word “angel” here literally. Looking to how Jesus uses the word “angel” in the context of marriage sheds light on how Paul uses it here in Corinthians.
The synoptic gospels all have the account where Jesus is rebuking the Sadducees for not believing in the resurrection. Matthew 22:30 says: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” Mark 12:25 states in almost identical fashion: “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” Luke 20:34-36 gives an expanded version of the first two: “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.”
In heaven there is no marriage of man to woman. We are not married anymore to our earthly spouse, for we are married only as long as our spouse is alive on earth. In heaven, we are not married, but we are like the angels. In heaven, we will not die, we will be equal to the angels, we will be sons of God and sons of the resurrection. Remember, marriage is a symbol of God’s relationship to man, so when the earthly symbol has served its purpose, then we enjoy the reality: marriage with God. The reason there is no marriage in heaven is that all of us are married to God. He is the one spouse, the one husband, and we are His bride. Sure we will still have a special relationship to all those close to us on earth and all those we helped get to heaven and all those who helped us, especially our favorite saints, but the primary relationship is my marriage to God, my True Spouse. In earthly marriage, each spouse is meant to assist his beloved to heaven, so a close relationship in heaven to our spouse makes sense; we will have a similar closeness to our guardian angel who has been appointed to lead us there, too.
I still haven’t answered the question about who the angels are in Paul’s prohibition of uncovered heads. Real angels are pure spirits in heaven who are united to God; when we get to heaven and are married to God we become like the angels (although we will never be pure spirit; we are embodied spirits); right now on earth the “sons of this age marry and are given in marriage” and so do not live like the angels. The angels, then, are those men who do not marry a human woman but the Church. We call them priests. The celibate life, the Church teaches, is living the heavenly life here on earth. Paul’s concern is quite simple: he doesn’t want the celibate priests to be distracted by the beauty of women in the congregation at Mass. A woman should either cover her beauty or shave her head so that she does not become a temptation to those who live celibate lives. I think that is the point of what Paul is saying. Today, I think Paul would be content that women dress modestly at Mass. It makes sense that everyone comes modestly to Mass so that we decrease the likelihood that we are a distraction to another. It is ironic to accentuate one’s attractiveness when we go to Mass because it is there that Our Husband gives us His Body: he is meant to be our focus and attraction.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
Both men and women bear fruit for God in their hearts; it seems that the man is able to bear fruit for God in a special way, and so he is the glory of God. How are we to correctly understand this? God is pure being and action; He does not receive, but acts and is the Creator of all that is. As the Creator, He reveals many things about Himself in creation. The primary image in all of creation is the relationship between men and women in marriage; this image symbolizes God’s relationship to humanity. Certainly, men and woman have an equality, yet men do symbolize God in a unique manner. Man, in his body and psyche and soul, has a similitude to God, and he seeks to initiate and penetrate and actively give himself. Woman, in her body and psyche and soul, is receptive and nurturing and reciprocates the loving advance. As symbols, man is God and woman is humanity; symbolically man is greater, but not in actuality (the greatest human is a woman, after all). In relation to God, ever human is feminine, that is, receptive. In our relationship with God, it is He who initiates and acts and gives us Himself; we actively respond to His loving entreaty. This is reflected in John’s first letter: “We love, because he first loved us” (4:19). God loves us, and if we are receptive, He fills us with His life; as a result, we are His glory and grow full with good fruit.
A question remains: why do woman have to cover their head due to the angels? Paul is talking about a woman covering her head in church, at the Mass. Do angels really care if a woman’s head is uncovered? Paul says she can either cover her head or shave it; both accomplish the purpose. What is the point? Who are the angels? I do not think Paul is using the word “angel” here literally. Looking to how Jesus uses the word “angel” in the context of marriage sheds light on how Paul uses it here in Corinthians.
The synoptic gospels all have the account where Jesus is rebuking the Sadducees for not believing in the resurrection. Matthew 22:30 says: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” Mark 12:25 states in almost identical fashion: “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” Luke 20:34-36 gives an expanded version of the first two: “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.”
In heaven there is no marriage of man to woman. We are not married anymore to our earthly spouse, for we are married only as long as our spouse is alive on earth. In heaven, we are not married, but we are like the angels. In heaven, we will not die, we will be equal to the angels, we will be sons of God and sons of the resurrection. Remember, marriage is a symbol of God’s relationship to man, so when the earthly symbol has served its purpose, then we enjoy the reality: marriage with God. The reason there is no marriage in heaven is that all of us are married to God. He is the one spouse, the one husband, and we are His bride. Sure we will still have a special relationship to all those close to us on earth and all those we helped get to heaven and all those who helped us, especially our favorite saints, but the primary relationship is my marriage to God, my True Spouse. In earthly marriage, each spouse is meant to assist his beloved to heaven, so a close relationship in heaven to our spouse makes sense; we will have a similar closeness to our guardian angel who has been appointed to lead us there, too.
I still haven’t answered the question about who the angels are in Paul’s prohibition of uncovered heads. Real angels are pure spirits in heaven who are united to God; when we get to heaven and are married to God we become like the angels (although we will never be pure spirit; we are embodied spirits); right now on earth the “sons of this age marry and are given in marriage” and so do not live like the angels. The angels, then, are those men who do not marry a human woman but the Church. We call them priests. The celibate life, the Church teaches, is living the heavenly life here on earth. Paul’s concern is quite simple: he doesn’t want the celibate priests to be distracted by the beauty of women in the congregation at Mass. A woman should either cover her beauty or shave her head so that she does not become a temptation to those who live celibate lives. I think that is the point of what Paul is saying. Today, I think Paul would be content that women dress modestly at Mass. It makes sense that everyone comes modestly to Mass so that we decrease the likelihood that we are a distraction to another. It is ironic to accentuate one’s attractiveness when we go to Mass because it is there that Our Husband gives us His Body: he is meant to be our focus and attraction.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
12.01.2007
The New Heart: Jesus' Heart
The Eucharist is the source and summit of life; it is the antidote to sin and death; it unites us to God, the True Vine: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). What fruit does a vine produce? Grapes. What do grapes produce? Wine. What happens to the grapes to make wine? They have to be crushed. We produce good fruit, but even that, in a sense, needs to be crushed and offered back to God. But even more than our good fruit, we ourselves need to die: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). It is in our dying that we have life; in dying to self we live to God.
In each of the four gospels Jesus says: “Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Luke 17:13). How did sin and death enter the world? “Through the devil’s envy death entered the world” (Wisdom 2:24). The devil deceived the woman, and according to my theory, encouraged her to get the child she wanted through relations with her husband. There was nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but God had asked them to not do so in order for Him to provide the child directly. Through her fear of not having children and passing on life, through her fear of death, sin entered the world. The letter to the Hebrews states: “that through death he [Jesus] might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Hebrews 2:14-15). It was the man and woman’s fear of not having children that led them to not trust God, put their trust in the serpent and the power of their own bodies, disobey God’s only command, and sin. They sought to gain their life, and so they lost it. They were trying to get a child, so they named him “gotten,” which is Cain. They forsook the tree of life, which is a trusting heart, and they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and bore a son of man, Cain, the murderer of his brother. They sought freedom from God’s law and found themselves in lifelong bondage to sin and the serpent.
In order for us to have life, we need to not fear death. In order for us to bear fruit, we must die like the grain of wheat. That is what Jesus did on the cross: “And he said to all, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me’ ” (Luke 9:23). If we take up our cross and follow Jesus with His cross, where is He leading us? Where did He go when He took up His cross? He is leading us to Calvary to our very own crucifixion. How do we endure and have the heart to follow Him there? Through the Eucharist, for in it He gives us His heart, the very heart that led Him to lay down His life for us, the very heart that gave everything even to the point of death and being totally poured out in blood and water when it was pierced by a lance.
The man and the woman closed their heart to God and trusted in themselves and their powers of generation for life. And they brought death and sin and bondage to the world. Unlike the man and the woman, Mary and Joseph united their hearts entirely to God while they faced the death of childlessness square in the face as they embraced virginity for life; they gave up relations and children as its normal fruit, and as such their greatest earthly desires were crucified; they were rewarded with the very thing they sacrificed; they were rewarded beyond their wildest imagination with the Son of God. Unlike Adam, Jesus did not trust in the power of His physical body and His generative powers to give life; instead, He gave up His body completely on the cross, trusting that His Father would raise Him from the dead and give Him life. Because Jesus ate of the tree of life, because He had an obedient and trusting heart, He said to His Father: “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). His heart, His tree of life, led Him to forsake the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and to embrace the tree upon which He was hung.
The Eucharist is that Heart, the very Heart of Jesus, the Tree of Life which gives life and true freedom to the world. His Heart enables you and me to imitate Him, even unto our death for love of Him. Jesus dies not so that we don’t have to; He dies so that we may be empowered to also offer our entire selves even to death as He did. Most of us are not tested with the test of virginity (priests and religious are), but each of us is tested by God. Most tests are the simple tasks He entrusts to us each day. Most of our trials involve the people and places we encounter all the time. He gives us His own Eucharistic Heart to be faithful in all of them, big and small. In such faithfulness saints are made.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
In each of the four gospels Jesus says: “Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Luke 17:13). How did sin and death enter the world? “Through the devil’s envy death entered the world” (Wisdom 2:24). The devil deceived the woman, and according to my theory, encouraged her to get the child she wanted through relations with her husband. There was nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but God had asked them to not do so in order for Him to provide the child directly. Through her fear of not having children and passing on life, through her fear of death, sin entered the world. The letter to the Hebrews states: “that through death he [Jesus] might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Hebrews 2:14-15). It was the man and woman’s fear of not having children that led them to not trust God, put their trust in the serpent and the power of their own bodies, disobey God’s only command, and sin. They sought to gain their life, and so they lost it. They were trying to get a child, so they named him “gotten,” which is Cain. They forsook the tree of life, which is a trusting heart, and they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and bore a son of man, Cain, the murderer of his brother. They sought freedom from God’s law and found themselves in lifelong bondage to sin and the serpent.
In order for us to have life, we need to not fear death. In order for us to bear fruit, we must die like the grain of wheat. That is what Jesus did on the cross: “And he said to all, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me’ ” (Luke 9:23). If we take up our cross and follow Jesus with His cross, where is He leading us? Where did He go when He took up His cross? He is leading us to Calvary to our very own crucifixion. How do we endure and have the heart to follow Him there? Through the Eucharist, for in it He gives us His heart, the very heart that led Him to lay down His life for us, the very heart that gave everything even to the point of death and being totally poured out in blood and water when it was pierced by a lance.
The man and the woman closed their heart to God and trusted in themselves and their powers of generation for life. And they brought death and sin and bondage to the world. Unlike the man and the woman, Mary and Joseph united their hearts entirely to God while they faced the death of childlessness square in the face as they embraced virginity for life; they gave up relations and children as its normal fruit, and as such their greatest earthly desires were crucified; they were rewarded with the very thing they sacrificed; they were rewarded beyond their wildest imagination with the Son of God. Unlike Adam, Jesus did not trust in the power of His physical body and His generative powers to give life; instead, He gave up His body completely on the cross, trusting that His Father would raise Him from the dead and give Him life. Because Jesus ate of the tree of life, because He had an obedient and trusting heart, He said to His Father: “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). His heart, His tree of life, led Him to forsake the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and to embrace the tree upon which He was hung.
The Eucharist is that Heart, the very Heart of Jesus, the Tree of Life which gives life and true freedom to the world. His Heart enables you and me to imitate Him, even unto our death for love of Him. Jesus dies not so that we don’t have to; He dies so that we may be empowered to also offer our entire selves even to death as He did. Most of us are not tested with the test of virginity (priests and religious are), but each of us is tested by God. Most tests are the simple tasks He entrusts to us each day. Most of our trials involve the people and places we encounter all the time. He gives us His own Eucharistic Heart to be faithful in all of them, big and small. In such faithfulness saints are made.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
11.29.2007
The Eucharist: Our New Heart
As I was saying yesterday, one of the primary underlying points of the Old Testament is that man needs a new heart; in many respects, the Old Testament reads like a soap opera or like Desperate Housewives or some other pathetic reality show. The human condition is in need of a make-over. We need help; apart from God, there is precious little evil that man will not do.
Did you ever wonder why God gave the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone? Of course, writing in stone is great for a permanent and lasting reminder of what is written; however, there is more to it than that. The two tablets with the law engraved on the outside is a symbol of our hearts. We have hearts of stone; our hearts are cold and dead; our tree of life is barren because we only obey when we have to or because we don't want to be punished; whenever we can, we disobey. We love our sin and are slow to give it up.
Ezekiel 36:26-27 states: "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances." A new heart of flesh is one that seeks to please God out of love for Him. It is not a servile, slavish heart; it is the heart of a child with his father or of a bride for her husband. The beating heart seeks to please the beloved.
Jeremiah 31:31ff states: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel... not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband....I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God.... for they shall all know me...." This is the only time "new covenant" is mentioned in the Old Testament, and it is connected to God our husband who will write His law upon our hearts, and we shall all know Him.
Connecting both of these passages we have this: when God gives the new covenant, He will give us a new heart of flesh which contains God's law and which will be careful to obey Him and will come to know Him. When Jesus uses the phrase "the new covenant," He is celebrating the first Mass as He fulfills and completes the Passover. He is the Passover Lamb who lays down His life and is lifted up on the cross where He gives His whole self, ending in the piercing of His Sacred Heart and the blood and water flowing forth from it.
From Eucharistic miracles, we know that the flesh of the Eucharist, when the reality is not hiding, is cardiac tissue. The Eucharist is Jesus' heart. His heart is the heart that loves, trusts, obeys; His heart loves to the point of giving Himself completely; His heart lays down His life for the beloved; His heart only seeks to please the Father. Every Holy Communion Jesus gives us His heart anew. He gives us the grace and courage and desire to love God above all things and our neighbor as our self. The problem of our hard, unbelieving heart is solved when we worthily receive Jesus' heart each Eucharist. He is our tree of life; when we are in communion with Him, we have life abundantly.
Tomorrow I would like to explain how the Eucharist is the precise antidote to the condition we find ourselves in due to the Fall.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
Did you ever wonder why God gave the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone? Of course, writing in stone is great for a permanent and lasting reminder of what is written; however, there is more to it than that. The two tablets with the law engraved on the outside is a symbol of our hearts. We have hearts of stone; our hearts are cold and dead; our tree of life is barren because we only obey when we have to or because we don't want to be punished; whenever we can, we disobey. We love our sin and are slow to give it up.
Ezekiel 36:26-27 states: "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances." A new heart of flesh is one that seeks to please God out of love for Him. It is not a servile, slavish heart; it is the heart of a child with his father or of a bride for her husband. The beating heart seeks to please the beloved.
Jeremiah 31:31ff states: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel... not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband....I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God.... for they shall all know me...." This is the only time "new covenant" is mentioned in the Old Testament, and it is connected to God our husband who will write His law upon our hearts, and we shall all know Him.
Connecting both of these passages we have this: when God gives the new covenant, He will give us a new heart of flesh which contains God's law and which will be careful to obey Him and will come to know Him. When Jesus uses the phrase "the new covenant," He is celebrating the first Mass as He fulfills and completes the Passover. He is the Passover Lamb who lays down His life and is lifted up on the cross where He gives His whole self, ending in the piercing of His Sacred Heart and the blood and water flowing forth from it.
From Eucharistic miracles, we know that the flesh of the Eucharist, when the reality is not hiding, is cardiac tissue. The Eucharist is Jesus' heart. His heart is the heart that loves, trusts, obeys; His heart loves to the point of giving Himself completely; His heart lays down His life for the beloved; His heart only seeks to please the Father. Every Holy Communion Jesus gives us His heart anew. He gives us the grace and courage and desire to love God above all things and our neighbor as our self. The problem of our hard, unbelieving heart is solved when we worthily receive Jesus' heart each Eucharist. He is our tree of life; when we are in communion with Him, we have life abundantly.
Tomorrow I would like to explain how the Eucharist is the precise antidote to the condition we find ourselves in due to the Fall.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
11.28.2007
Bear Fruit For God
Paul says in his letter to the Romans: "Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God" (7:4). The context for this quote is marriage and how one is bound to one's spouse as long as the spouse is alive. If one's spouse dies, he is free to marry. In a similar manner, we have died to our old spouse so we may now belong to another, Christ.
How did we die? In baptism as it says a chapter earlier in Romans: "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life" (6:3-4).
The situation is this: we were married and it wasn't to God. God made us to be married to Him, but with sin we ended up in bondage to sin and satan and the law which was added due to sin. The only way to escape that bondage is for either one of us to die, but that seems impossible. There is no way out with our adversary ready to devour us. A symbol of this in the Old Testament is when the Israelites were up against the Red Sea unarmed and loaded down with goods and little ones while Pharaoh's highly trained and highly agitated army readied itself to revenge the death of all their first-born. All hope was lost. Yet God broke in and saved Israel through the water while at the same time destroying their enemy. This is a symbol of baptism.
We are married to a tyrannical murderer who hates us with a complete hatred and only wants to destroy us; he is not going to die, and if we die, well then we are dead. So God becomes one of us, dies on the cross, and is raised from the dead. In a spiritual and real way, we are united to Jesus in both His death and resurrection through baptism. Jesus provides us a way to die so that we are no longer bound to sin and satan as spouse, and then we are free to marry another and have Him as our spouse.
We walk in newness of life because we have become a new creation in baptism and have been married to a new spouse. United to our new husband, Jesus, we are now able to bear fruit for God. "Thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart ... having been set free from sin..." (Romans 6:17-18). The place we bear good fruit is in our tree of life which is our heart. Our old stony heart has died, and with our new creation we have been given a new, living, loving, obedient heart of flesh with God's law written upon it; now we desire and seek to please God, our spouse, since we love Him and want to make Him happy.
One of the main points of the entire Old Testament is that man was entrapped by sin and that his heart was hard and unbelieving; the point is that we needed a new heart. Jesus responds to that problem by giving us a new heart, His very heart, so that we can eat of the tree of life once again and love and trust God no matter what test we have to undergo. Now we are given the heart, the courage, to lay down our life for another and be faithful to God to the point of shedding our blood in love of Him. With Him and His heart beating within us, we may bear fruit for God.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
How did we die? In baptism as it says a chapter earlier in Romans: "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life" (6:3-4).
The situation is this: we were married and it wasn't to God. God made us to be married to Him, but with sin we ended up in bondage to sin and satan and the law which was added due to sin. The only way to escape that bondage is for either one of us to die, but that seems impossible. There is no way out with our adversary ready to devour us. A symbol of this in the Old Testament is when the Israelites were up against the Red Sea unarmed and loaded down with goods and little ones while Pharaoh's highly trained and highly agitated army readied itself to revenge the death of all their first-born. All hope was lost. Yet God broke in and saved Israel through the water while at the same time destroying their enemy. This is a symbol of baptism.
We are married to a tyrannical murderer who hates us with a complete hatred and only wants to destroy us; he is not going to die, and if we die, well then we are dead. So God becomes one of us, dies on the cross, and is raised from the dead. In a spiritual and real way, we are united to Jesus in both His death and resurrection through baptism. Jesus provides us a way to die so that we are no longer bound to sin and satan as spouse, and then we are free to marry another and have Him as our spouse.
We walk in newness of life because we have become a new creation in baptism and have been married to a new spouse. United to our new husband, Jesus, we are now able to bear fruit for God. "Thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart ... having been set free from sin..." (Romans 6:17-18). The place we bear good fruit is in our tree of life which is our heart. Our old stony heart has died, and with our new creation we have been given a new, living, loving, obedient heart of flesh with God's law written upon it; now we desire and seek to please God, our spouse, since we love Him and want to make Him happy.
One of the main points of the entire Old Testament is that man was entrapped by sin and that his heart was hard and unbelieving; the point is that we needed a new heart. Jesus responds to that problem by giving us a new heart, His very heart, so that we can eat of the tree of life once again and love and trust God no matter what test we have to undergo. Now we are given the heart, the courage, to lay down our life for another and be faithful to God to the point of shedding our blood in love of Him. With Him and His heart beating within us, we may bear fruit for God.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
11.27.2007
Mystical Marriage
Today is the the day eight years ago that my wife and I married. Out of nowhere, freezing temperatures came to town and are holding all of us in Minneapolis hostage. My dear parents came over after work to watch our four little ones while my wife, six-month old and I ventured out into the biting, dark cold to partake of a nice, nearby restaurant. My wife and I had a very nice, quiet chat while our littlest one was content to sit in our laps most of the meal and smile at everyone within sight.
One of our points of conversation was about this blog. I love writing it. I haven't gotten any sleep the past two and a half weeks, but I love writing, and I have so much more I want to say. I need to reorganize my very busy schedule a bit so that sleep is not on the bottom of the list of importance all of the time. We also turned our conversation to marriage, of all things, on this night eight years ago when we began ours. Marriage is all I have been thinking about these past fifteen plus years.
One of the reasons I took the theory that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was sexual relations with some seriousness when I first began looking into it was because I knew from my reading of the spiritual classics from Saint John of the Cross and Saint Theresa of Avila in the Great Books Honors program at Franciscan University of Steubenville that the endpoint of the spiritual life is known as mystical marriage. The fullness of the prayer life is to be married to God. If our final goal in this life and for all eternity is to be married to God, then it would make sense that that is why God created us from the beginning.
Saint John of the Cross, who reached the heights of mystical union with God before he met Saint Theresa of Avila and led her there when he was only twenty-five and she fifty-two, wrote much about the dark night of the soul. Before one reaches mystical marriage with God, he has to undergo a purgation. Any immaturity in one's relationship with God needs to be washed away, so all sense perceptible feelings are entirely bypassed: one does not in any way feel like they love God and all feelings that God even exists are taken away so that one may have a pure and mighty faith, hope and love of God that is unshakable and in no way selfish. When one has successfully climbed past this test, one is truly prepared to receive God in all His fullness (insofar that that is possible on earth).
The reason why God puts a person serious about loving God above all things through all this is that it is the only way to arrive at the fullness of love. Everyone has to go through a test like Adam and Eve or Abraham and Isaac or Mary and Joseph and pass it with an unshakable faith and love if they fully want to bear abundant fruit for God. For it is only on the other side of such a test successfully endured that complete union with God is found. God asks: "Will you marry me?" Saying yes is the easy part; giving ourselves entirely to Him come what may, especially to our crucifixion, is the part that makes most of us shy away and be content with a something less that full relationship.
Earthly marriage has many similarities to our marriage with God; God created the first as a symbol of our union with Him, after all. The point I want to highlight here is that marriage in the mature and full sense of the word, in both cases, has precious little to do with feelings. Feelings are like the wind and come and go and change day by day. Marriage is for life and is unchanging, especially when it comes to God.
One of the greatest roots of the dysfunction and misery in our world today is that we live our life based on our feelings. Sure, feelings are there like the wind is sometimes blowing and is sometimes warm and other times cold, sometimes from the north and occasionally from the south, sometimes with great wrath and other times with a soft caress, but we don't live by the wind. We live in a home that stands strong and is not moved by the wind, no matter how strong or fierce, that isn't bothered by the scorching sun or the whipping rain or the driving, slicing snow. Love is not a feeling. It is a decision. Feelings are present from time to time, but the decision to love remains and endures and does not alter in times of trouble or change.
There comes a time when the pure love of commitment and self-sacrifice grow deep and strong, and it is at this time when all the feelings which supported and propped up that love are stripped away. Only when the crutches and braces and fiberglass casts are removed from our weak legs can we begin to run. The dark night of the soul is a wonderful blessing, and it brings forth the beautiful, pure fruit of love that is never blown with the wind but shines with the light and warmth of the sun.
P.S. Recently, it was revealed that Mother Theresa toward the end of her life had no feeling that God existed. That shouldn't surprise you or shake your faith. That is a wonderful sign that Jesus was bringing her very close to the consuming fire of his bridegroom's heart.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
One of our points of conversation was about this blog. I love writing it. I haven't gotten any sleep the past two and a half weeks, but I love writing, and I have so much more I want to say. I need to reorganize my very busy schedule a bit so that sleep is not on the bottom of the list of importance all of the time. We also turned our conversation to marriage, of all things, on this night eight years ago when we began ours. Marriage is all I have been thinking about these past fifteen plus years.
One of the reasons I took the theory that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was sexual relations with some seriousness when I first began looking into it was because I knew from my reading of the spiritual classics from Saint John of the Cross and Saint Theresa of Avila in the Great Books Honors program at Franciscan University of Steubenville that the endpoint of the spiritual life is known as mystical marriage. The fullness of the prayer life is to be married to God. If our final goal in this life and for all eternity is to be married to God, then it would make sense that that is why God created us from the beginning.
Saint John of the Cross, who reached the heights of mystical union with God before he met Saint Theresa of Avila and led her there when he was only twenty-five and she fifty-two, wrote much about the dark night of the soul. Before one reaches mystical marriage with God, he has to undergo a purgation. Any immaturity in one's relationship with God needs to be washed away, so all sense perceptible feelings are entirely bypassed: one does not in any way feel like they love God and all feelings that God even exists are taken away so that one may have a pure and mighty faith, hope and love of God that is unshakable and in no way selfish. When one has successfully climbed past this test, one is truly prepared to receive God in all His fullness (insofar that that is possible on earth).
The reason why God puts a person serious about loving God above all things through all this is that it is the only way to arrive at the fullness of love. Everyone has to go through a test like Adam and Eve or Abraham and Isaac or Mary and Joseph and pass it with an unshakable faith and love if they fully want to bear abundant fruit for God. For it is only on the other side of such a test successfully endured that complete union with God is found. God asks: "Will you marry me?" Saying yes is the easy part; giving ourselves entirely to Him come what may, especially to our crucifixion, is the part that makes most of us shy away and be content with a something less that full relationship.
Earthly marriage has many similarities to our marriage with God; God created the first as a symbol of our union with Him, after all. The point I want to highlight here is that marriage in the mature and full sense of the word, in both cases, has precious little to do with feelings. Feelings are like the wind and come and go and change day by day. Marriage is for life and is unchanging, especially when it comes to God.
One of the greatest roots of the dysfunction and misery in our world today is that we live our life based on our feelings. Sure, feelings are there like the wind is sometimes blowing and is sometimes warm and other times cold, sometimes from the north and occasionally from the south, sometimes with great wrath and other times with a soft caress, but we don't live by the wind. We live in a home that stands strong and is not moved by the wind, no matter how strong or fierce, that isn't bothered by the scorching sun or the whipping rain or the driving, slicing snow. Love is not a feeling. It is a decision. Feelings are present from time to time, but the decision to love remains and endures and does not alter in times of trouble or change.
There comes a time when the pure love of commitment and self-sacrifice grow deep and strong, and it is at this time when all the feelings which supported and propped up that love are stripped away. Only when the crutches and braces and fiberglass casts are removed from our weak legs can we begin to run. The dark night of the soul is a wonderful blessing, and it brings forth the beautiful, pure fruit of love that is never blown with the wind but shines with the light and warmth of the sun.
P.S. Recently, it was revealed that Mother Theresa toward the end of her life had no feeling that God existed. That shouldn't surprise you or shake your faith. That is a wonderful sign that Jesus was bringing her very close to the consuming fire of his bridegroom's heart.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
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