Christianity
**Faith & Culture**

Joseph Pearce, Editor of Faith & Culture magazine, has weekly interviews with well-known Catholic authors, speakers, and academics on a variety of topics related to Catholicism.

Latest Episodes:

Aquinas on True Happiness Jun 19, 2020

Show notes

Now, one should note that many things are set down here about the beatitudes. . . Yet one should know that all complete happiness is included in these words: for all men desire happiness, but they differ in their judgments about happiness, and for this reason some men desire this, others desire that.

But we find four opinions about happiness. For some believe that it consists only in exterior things: namely, in an abundance of temporal things; “they have called the people happy, that have these things” (Ps 144:15). Others, that perfect beatitude consists in the fact that a man fulfills his own will; hence we say, blessed is he who lives as he wants. “And I have known that there was no better thing than to rejoice, and to do well in this life” (Eccl 3:12). Others say that perfect beatitude consists in the virtues of the active life. Others, that it consists in the virtues of the contemplative life, namely of divine and intelligible things, as Aristotle says.

But all these opinions are false, although not in the same way. Hence the Lord condemns all these.

He condemns the opinion of those who say that it consists in the abundance of exterior things: hence, he says, “blessed are the poor” (Matt 5:3) as though to say, the wealthy are not happy.

And he condemns the opinion of those who place beatitude in the satisfaction of appetite when he says, “blessed are the merciful” (Matt 5:7).

But one should know that there are three appetites in man. The irascible, which desires vengeance on enemies, and he condemns this when he says, “blessed are the meek” (Matt 5:5). The concupiscible, whose good is to rejoice and be delighted; he condemns this when he says, “blessed are they who mourn” (Matt 5:4). The will, which is twofold, according as it seeks two things: first, that the will be forced by no higher law; second, that it be able to bind others as subjects: hence it desires to command, and not to be under another. But the Lord shows the contrary regarding both. And regarding the first, he says, “blessed are they who hunger and thirst after justice” (Matt 5:6). Regarding the second, he says, “blessed are the merciful” (Matt 5:7). Therefore both those who place beatitude in the abundance of exterior things and those who place it in the satisfaction of appetite are wrong.

Those, however, who place beatitude in the actions of the active life, namely, in moral acts, are wrong, but less so, because that is the way to beatitude. Hence the Lord does not condemn them as though evil, but shows the ordering to beatitude. Because the virtues of the active life are either ordered to oneself, such as temperance and others of this kind, and their end is cleanness of heart, because they enable one to conquer the passions; or they are ordered to another, and so their end is peace, and of this kind: “the work of justice will be peace” (Isa 32:17). And therefore these virtues are ways to beatitude, and not beatitude itself; and this is “blessed are the clean of heart: for they will see God” (Matt 5:8). He does not say, “they see,” because this would be beatitude itself. And similarly, “blessed are the peacemakers” (Matt 5:9) not because they make peace, but because they tend toward something else: “for they will be called children of God.”

Now, the opinion of those who say that beatitude consists in the contemplation of divine things is condemned by the Lord only as to the timing, for otherwise it is true; because the last happiness does consist in the vision of the best intelligible, namely God; hence he says, “they will see.”

And one should note that, according to the Philosopher, two things are required for the contemplative act to make one happy: one has to do with the substance, namely, that it be the act of the highest intelligible, which is God; the other has to do with form, namely love and delight, for delight perfects happiness just as beauty perfects youth. And therefore the Lord sets down two things, “they will see God” (Matt 5:8) and “they will be called children of God” (Matt 5:9) for this pertains to the union of love. Behold what manner of charity the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the sons of God (1 John 3:1).

~Matt.C5.L2.n404

Luke 7:6–9 with St. Thomas Aquinas Jun 17, 2020

Show notes

“And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, ‘Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, “Go,” and he goes; and to another, “Come,” and he comes; and to my servant, “Do this,” and he does it. When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, ‘I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.’”

The story of the centurion and his sick servant is full of meaning on several levels, and usually when we read this story we tend to focus, and rightly, on the centurion. His faith is remarkable, and even more remarkable is what Jesus points out: this Gentile’s faith exceeds that of God’s chosen people.

St. Thomas Aquinas helps to draw our attention to a detail that might otherwise go under appreciated: “When Jesus heard these things, he marveled” (Lk. 7:9). The Greek word for marveled can be also be translated as “was amazed” or “was filled with wonder.” This reaction is a beautiful one, not only for highlighting the centurion’s faith, but also for redirecting our gaze to the figure of Christ. As St. Thomas points out, “We experience wonder in the face of those things whose causes we do not know.” Wonder is a distinctly human phenomenon, precisely because it involves the combination of knowing something and being ignorant of the reasons for it, and this combination is only possible for the finite intellectual capacity that human beings possess.

By attributing this phenomenon of marveling to Christ, Thomas sees the gospel affirming that Christ really was human and, just like us, experienced that quintessentially human experience of wonder. Moreover, by affirming the true humanity of Christ, the gospel also affirms our humanity and can help us recall what we are made for: we are made to stand before the truth and to pursue it ever more deeply, and it is wonder that arouses us to this pursuit, leads us to persevere, and awakens in us the delight that only wisdom can bring.[1]

[1] Summary by Scott Hefelfinger with the use of Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles IV.33.5, trans. Charles J. O’Neil (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1975 [1957]), 162.

The Manna and Coriander Seed Jun 15, 2020

Show notes

Recently, while reading through the book of Exodus, I came to the passage that describes the Israelites receiving the manna from heaven during their desert wanderings. I must have read this verse a hundred times before, but something new caught my eye:

Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey (Ex. 16:31).

As a novice gardener, the detail that the manna was like coriander seed suddenly stood out to me. Coriander seed, the seed of the herb cilantro, is not special in any way that I could think of at first blush. A small, brown and wrinkly seed of spherical shape, it does not have any characteristic that would seem to fit nicely into the biblical narrative. The taste of the food being likened to honey seems significant enough; honey was a delicacy in the ancient world (one of the only sweeteners) and the manna was also to be a foretaste of the promised land to which the Israelites were travelling, a land “flowing with milk and honey” (Ex. 3:17). But why is the manna said to be “like coriander seed”? And if the manna tasted like honey, in what way was it “like” coriander? Not in color, it seems, as the book of Numbers tells us:

Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of bdellium (Num. 11:7).

Bdellium is white, unlike the brown coriander seed (the relationship between manna and a white stone also appears in Rev. 2:17). It seems, therefore, that taking Exodus and Numbers together we can conclude that the manna was like coriander neither in taste (which was like honey) nor in appearance (which was as bdellium). What, then, can we make of this strange reference to coriander? Searching through commentaries, much to my chagrin, it seemed that this detail is usually passed over without a comment. But how could it be that the reference to honey was considered to be a noteworthy detail, and yet the coriander was deemed irrelevant? Following my curiosity about coriander, as it turned out, was an instructive lesson in biblical translation and about the effort we must make to access the world of the Bible and its images.

Reading further into scholarship on the plants of the Bible, one option presented itself: to suggest that the translators have simply misidentified the seed. Despite the seemingly smooth translation of the passage to English readers of the Bible, scholars of the Old Testament often have to make an educated guess when it comes to plants, animals and agricultural terms that might only appear once in the whole Old Testament and that are references belonging an agrarian society thousands of years old. The word coriander, in fact, appears only in the passages cited in Exodus and Numbers. Having no comparison for the word in Hebrew, then, translators must rely on the early Latin and Greek translations to corroborate the meaning of the word.

This option appears most logical to German scholar Immanuel Löw, who wrote a veritable magnum opus in German on the plants of the Bible (called Die Flora der Juden, in four volumes). He argues that the Hebrew word refers not to coriander, but to “tamarisk manna.” Tamarisk manna is a secretion left on the tamarisk tree by insects, which solidifies into a thick, sweet substance. He provides a long linguistic case for why this confusion might have taken place, and the theory that the biblical manna is related to tamarisk manna seems to have gained some traction, despite the fact that tamarisk manna does not have many of the features of biblical manna (perhaps, most notably, it cannot be ground and made into cakes; cf. Num. 11:8).

To me, however, the possibility of a mistranslation does not seem very likely. Unlike many other plants or agricultural words, all of the early sources we have – the Septuagint (an early Greek translation of the Old Testament), the Vulgate (an early Latin translation of the Bible) and the Samaritan Pentateuch (an alternate attestation to the Old Testament in Samaritan characters) all report that the manna was like coriander. In other words, there does not seem to have been any debate among ancient translators about the term. Moreover, coriander was certainly present in Israel and its environs during the time period in which the Old Testament was taking shape, in fact, the oldest known coriander seeds were found there. Whether or not tamarisk manna has some relationship to the manna the Israelites ate in the desert, it still seems that the biblical authors wished to liken it to coriander.

There are other options to make sense of this reference to coriander, and perhaps the most obvious is to suggest that the shape of the manna is like that of coriander. Coriander is round, almost a perfect sphere, and few seeds have this nice, globular shape – which might be why this particular seed is invoked to describe the manna. Fourth century author Sulpicius Severus takes the reference to coriander to refer to the physical form of the manna – that it was “a sort of pod…a coriander-seed of snowy whiteness.”[1] There is also at least one rabbinic source (which identifies the seed with flax) that emphasizes that the manna was round.[2] If indeed the shape (and perhaps size) of the manna is indicated by the reference to coriander, it could help to explain the seemingly grain-like quality that allows the manna to be ground into meal.

If the key point of comparison between coriander and manna is roundness, then perhaps the reference can also shed light on the form the Eucharist has taken in the Western tradition. Even in the writings of some of the earliest Christians, the manna is seen as a foreshadowing of the Eucharist. For example, Cyprian of Carthage (3rdcentury bishop) writes: “we see the sacrament celebrated in Exodus, when the manna flowed down from heaven, and, prefiguring the things to come, showed forth the nourishment of the heavenly bread and the food of the coming Christ.”[3] If, then, manna was understood as white, wafer-like and round, and also as the most important type of the Eucharist in the Old Testament, we can also see how those elements could have informed the appearance of the Eucharist in the West. Certainly many artistic representations of the Israelites gathering manna would bring to the mind of a modern Catholic Eucharistic hosts raining down from heaven.

In the end, I was somewhat disappointed that I did not come to some revelation about the deeper significance of the coriander-like manna. But whatever the case may be – whether coriander is a mistranslation, whether it indicates the shape and size of the manna or its preciousness (like that of a fine spice) – the biblical account is not nearly so straightforward or unsophisticated as it might seem at first glance. If we want to understand the Scriptures, which God ordained to be written at particular times and in particular places, we too have to commit ourselves to the particulars and to the discovery of what God has hidden in his word.

[1] Sulpicius Severus, Sacred History, 1.16. Translation from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series, vol. 11

[2] See Immanuel Löw, Die Flora der Juden, vol. 1,444.

[3] Cyprian of Carthage, ep. 75. Translation from the Ante Nicene Fathers Series, vol. 5.

The Marvel of the Eucharist Jun 12, 2020

Show notes

We need to understand the marvel of the Eucharist—what it is, why it was given, and what is the profit of its celebration: we become one Body, and members of His flesh and of His bones. Let those initiated into the Sacraments follow what I say.

In order then that we may become one Body not only in love but in lived reality, let us be blended into that flesh. This blending is accomplished by the Food which He has freely given us, desiring to show the love He has for us. On this account He has mixed up Himself with us. He has kneaded up His body with ours, that we might be a One thing, like a body joined to a head—for this belongs to those who love strongly. That is why Christ has done this: to lead us to a closer friendship, and to show His love for us. He has granted to those who desire Him not only to see Him, but even to touch, and eat Him, and fix their teeth in His flesh, and to embrace Him, and satisfy all their love.

Let us then return from that Table like lions breathing fire, having become terrible to the devil, thinking about our Head, and about the love which He has shown for us. Parents often entrust their offspring to others to feed. “But I,” He says, “do not do that. I feed you with My own flesh, desiring that you all be nobly born, and holding forth to you good hopes for the future. For He who gives Himself out to you now, will do so much more in the future. I have willed to become your Brother. For your sake I shared in flesh and blood, and in turn I give out to you the flesh and the blood by which I became your kinsman.”

This Blood makes the image of our King flower brilliantly within us, produces unspeakable beauty, and keeps the nobility of our soul from wasting away, watering it continually, and nourishing it. The blood we derive from our normal food does not turn into blood at once, but something else. This Blood does not work that way, but right away waters our souls, and works in them a certain mighty power. This Blood, worthily received, drives away devils and keeps them far away from us, while it calls to us Angels and the Lord of Angels. For wherever they see the Lord’s blood, devils flee, and Angels run together.

This Blood, poured forth, washed clean all the world. This Blood is the salvation of our souls. By it the soul is washed, is made beautiful, and is set on fire. It causes our understanding to be brighter than fire and our soul more sparkling than gold. This Blood was poured forth and made heaven accessible.

Awe-inspiring indeed are the Mysteries of the Church. Awe-inspiring indeed is the Altar. A fountain went up out of Paradise, sending forth physical rivers. From this Table springs up a fountain which sends forth spiritual rivers. By the side of this fountain are planted not fruitless willows, but trees reaching even to heaven, bearing fruit always ripe and unfading. If anyone is scorched with heat, let him come to the side of this fountain and cool his burning. For it quenches drought, and comforts all things that are burnt up, not by the sun, but by the fiery darts of the devil. For it has its beginning from above, and its source is there, from which also its water flows. Many are the streams of that fountain which the Comforter sends forth, and the Son is the Mediator, not holding mattock to clear the way, but opening our minds. This fountain is a fountain of light, spouting forth rays of truth. By it stand the Powers on high looking upon the beauty of its streams, because they more clearly perceive the power of the Eucharistic offerings, and the flashings unapproachable.

For as when gold is being molten if one (if it were possible!) dipped his hand or tongue in it, he would immediately render them golden, so also—but in much greater degree—do the Eucharistic offerings work upon the soul. Fiercer than fire the river boils up, yet it does not burn but only baptizes whatever it lays hold of.

This Blood was ever prefigured of old in the altars and sacrifices of the righteous. This Blood is the price of the world. By this Blood Christ purchased the Church for Himself. By this Blood He has adorned her entirely. Christ has purchased us with His Blood and adorned us with His Blood. Those who share this Blood stand with Angels and Archangels and the Powers that are above, clothed in Christ’s own kingly robe, and having the armor of the Spirit. But I have not yet said the greatest thing: they are clothed with the King Himself.

From St. John Chrysostom, Homily on John 46.3–4, adapted from the NPNF translation by John Sehorn.

The Eucharist and True Sacrifice Jun 10, 2020

Show notes

A true sacrifice is every work which is done that we may be united to God in holy fellowship, and which has a reference to that supreme good and end in which alone we can be truly blessed. And, therefore even the mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God's sake, is not a sacrifice. For, although made or offered by man, sacrifice is a divine thing, as those who called it sacrificium meant to indicate.[1] Thus man himself, consecrated in the name of God, and vowed to God, is a sacrifice in so far as he dies to the world that he may live to God.

For this is a part of that mercy which each man shows to himself; as it is written, “Have mercy on your soul by pleasing God” (Sir. 30:24). Our body, too, is a sacrifice when we chasten it by temperance, if we do so as we ought, for God's sake, that we may not yield our bodily members to be instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but to be instruments of righteousness unto God (Rom. 6:13) Exhorting to this sacrifice, the apostle [Paul] says, “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service [i.e. sacrifice]” (Rom. 12:1). If, then, the soul uses the body, which is inferior, as a servant or instrument, and it is a sacrifice to God when it is used rightly, how much more does the soul itself become a sacrifice when it offers itself to God, in order that, being inflamed by the fire of his love, it may receive of His beauty and become pleasing to Him, losing the shape of earthly desire, and being remoulded in the image of permanent loveliness? Indeed, the apostle [Paul] exhorts us to do this, saying, “And be not conformed to this world; but be transformed in the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:2).

Therefore, true sacrifices are works of mercy done to ourselves or to others, and done with a reference to God. And, since works of mercy have no other object than the relief of distress or the conferring of happiness, and since there is no happiness apart from that good of which it is said, “It is good for me to be very near to God” (Ps. 73:28), it follows that the whole redeemed city, that is to say, the congregation or community of the saints, is offered to God as our sacrifice through the great High Priest, who offered Himself to God in His passion for us, that we might be members of this glorious head, according to the form of a servant. For it was this form of a servant that he offered, and in this he was offered, because it is according to it that he is Mediator, in this he is our Priest, in this the Sacrifice.

Accordingly, when the apostle [Paul] had exhorted us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, our reasonable service, and not to be conformed to the world, but to be transformed in the renewing of our mind, that we might prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God, that is to say, the true sacrifice of ourselves, he says, “For I say, through the grace of God which is given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith. For, as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another, having gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us” (Romans 12:3-6). So this is the sacrifice of Christians: we, being many, are one body in Christ. And this also is the sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, known to the faithful, in which she teaches that she herself is offered in the offering she makes to God.

[1] In Latin, this word literally refers to a sacred action.

Excerpt from City of God X.6. Translation taken from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series, with minor modifications by Elizabeth Klein.

Matthew 26:26–27 with St. Irenaeus of Lyons Jun 08, 2020

Show notes

“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.’”

In his famous work, Against Heresies, St. Irenaeus wrote against the heresy of Gnosticism, which denied the goodness of the material creation. To demonstrate the error of the Gnostics, Irenaeus turns to the Eucharist. First, he points out that Jesus gave “directions to His disciples to offer to God the first-fruits of His own, created things” so that “they might be themselves neither unfruitful nor ungrateful.” He goes on to explain: “[Jesus] took that created thing, bread, and gave thanks, and said, ‘This is My body.’ And the cup likewise, which is part of that creation to which we belong, He confessed to be His blood.”

Further commenting on this passage, Irenaeus insists that the Church’s eucharistic celebration fulfills the oracle of the prophet Malachi: “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering” (Mal 1:11). The eucharist—which employs material things—constitutes a “pure offering.”

For Irenaeus, then, Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist directly contradicts the false teaching of the Gnostics, since the sacrament underscores the inherent goodness of the physical world. As Irenaeus would say elsewhere, “Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking.”[1]

[1] Summary by Michael Barber with the use of Irenaeus, Against all Heresies 4.17-18, in Ante Nicene Fathers vol. 1, ed. Alexander Robertson and James Donaldson(Peabody, MA: Henrickson Publishing, 2012 [1885]), 484.

An Interview with Fr. Daniel P. Moloney Jun 04, 2020

Show notes

Faith & Culture presents an interview with Fr. Daniel P. Moloney, Ph.D., chaplain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of Mercy: What Every Catholic Should Know (Augustine Institute & Ignatius Press, 2020).

FAITH & CULTURE:

This book seems wonderfully timed given the Coronavirus crisis. What led you to write it?

FR. DANIEL P. MOLONEY:

I wrote the book because I’m convinced that most people don’t understand the concept of mercy. Since mercy is basically the virtue we turn to when things aren’t right, and this fallen world has a lot of imperfection, getting mercy wrong is a big deal. For one thing, it means that we also misunderstand justice, even though we talk about ‘justice’ nonstop in our politics (social justice, economic justice, environmental justice, gender justice, racial justice, etc.). Most people think that justice and mercy are opposites. But if justice is the opposite of mercy, then mercy is unjust! A lot of people believe that there’s something wrong with mercy, especially in those political movements that promote a vision for a more just version of society (a phenomenon which I call in the book “justice-only politics”). But a theory of justice that doesn’t have a coherent account of mercy soon becomes inhumane.

What’s more, the same mistake happens in the Church. People frequently oppose God’s justice to God’s mercy. Sometimes that involves the ancient heresy of Marcionism, which claims that the Old Testament God is justice-only, and the New Testament introduces the merciful Jesus. Of course, that gets the bible wrong: God is called merciful throughout the Old Testament, even when he’s punishing Israel or its enemies; meanwhile the concept of Hell as an eternal punishment for sinners is developed for the first time… in the Gospels by Jesus himself. One of the themes of the book is that we have to be merciful as God the Father is merciful (Luke 6:36), and so we need to start to see how the Father is both merciful and just.

In the book I also talk about a third common mistake, in which Catholic spirituality over the centuries has divided into a spirituality of strictness as opposed to a spirituality of laxity. The advocates of strictness tend to disparage mercy, while the advocates of laxity tend to disparage justice (and occasionally, they also disparage truth, as when people argue that “for pastoral reasons” or reasons of mercy, we should not teach certain controversial doctrines or form people in them). A healthy Catholic spirituality includes both—a great ambition to be holy along with a great spiritual support system to pick us up when we sin or fail.

I wrote the book because I want people to understand that mercy is actually ordered towards justice and holiness, rather than opposed to them.

FAITH & CULTURE:

You explain that we can rightly say ‘God is love’ but should not say ‘God is mercy’: why is that distinction important?

FR. DANIEL P. MOLONEY:

Mercy is a virtue that responds to something wrong, some privation that those in need of mercy can’t fix on their own. The poor are in need of alms, because they can’t give themselves the money they need; the homeless can’t give themselves a home, so they need someone else to help them; sinners can’t make themselves into saints without God’s help. As I say in the book, if you’re asking for mercy, it’s a sign that you’re having a bad day. And yet, before the Fall, everything was perfect, and so there was no need for mercy. God saw that the world He had created was good, and loved it.

There are a lot of things that we can say about God that are always true because they describe what God is essentially and eternally—those would be things like “God is Justice” “God is Goodness” and “God is Love”. On the other hand, there are some things we can say about God that are true because of God’s actions in creation, and these aren’t eternally true—before God created, one couldn’t say that He was “Creator,” for example, and so to be Creator isn’t part of God’s eternal essence. Mercy is in that second category. If it were the case that God were eternally merciful, then He’d have to be eternally responding to something wrong. But before the universe was created, there was only God—and there’s nothing wrong with God.

Truths about God in that second category, even though they don’t characterize God’s essence, do reveal to us something about God’s essence—after all, God does what he does because of who he is. And so mercy tells us some important things about God. For many people, the experience of God’s mercy confirms to them that God loves them and that God is good and that God is powerful enough to help them when they’re in need. So, yes God is merciful, but no, He’s not mercy itself the way He’s Love itself.

FAITH & CULTURE:

Why does Mercy: What Every Catholic Should Know begin with an examination of mercy as a virtue or prerogative of a ruler?

FR. DANIEL P. MOLONEY:

Mercy today is often thought to be a religious idea only. But originally the idea came from politics. Julius Ceasar was famous for his clemency towards his political opponents. Augustus Ceasar had the word “clementia” on his shield. The Roman senator and Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote a treatise On Mercy to counsel the young emperor Nero on how to be a great ruler like the emperors before him (it must be said, Nero wasn’t a great student). In this older view, good rulers had humane and merciful policies for when things went wrong, while tyrants punished mistakes and failures severely. The ruler who was known for his mercy earned the love of his people, while the tyrant could only rule by fear.

The religious concept of mercy borrows from this political concept—obviously, if God is the greatest king, He would also rule with mercy. But not with a mercy that is opposed to political reality or is something utopian. God’s rule over fallen human persons has many of the same challenges as for anyone who tries to rule over fallen human persons. He cannot govern by fear alone, and He cannot allow leniency to lead to general disorder. I argue that certain lessons we learn from our own social and political lives can help us to understand why even some of the harsher aspects of God’s government in the Old Testament are consistently described as an aspect of His mercy.

That’s why the book goes back and forth between mercy in politics and mercy in God’s plan for salvation. There’s a sense in which mercy is part of the natural law, so that if our policies get mercy wrong, nature—human nature—will resist and we’ll see those policies fail. In the mid-20th century, there was a movement to replace criminal punishment with psychiatric therapy (as depicted in the book A Clockwork Orange). The reformers thought this was a more merciful way of dealing with criminals; however, they got mercy wrong. They assumed that the criminals never had bad wills, but just needed to deal with some problems from their youth—and the crime waves of the 1970s and 80s followed as a consequence. Mercy is supposed to lead to a more just society, a more politically stable and humane society that is well-ordered and that people support willingly. If some conception of mercy doesn’t do that, it’s probably not real mercy.

FAITH & CULTURE:

How does the devotion to Divine Mercy relate to the theology of God’s mercy?

FR. DANIEL P. MOLONEY:

Devotions are very important in the Catholic Church, in part because they often pack a lot of solid theology into a practice that anyone can adopt. The ancient slogan lex orandi, lex credendi captures this—how we pray reflects and reinforces what we believe. St. Faustina’s devotions to Divine Mercy, as promoted especially by St. John Paul II, have made many people interested in mercy when the culture at large barely talks about it. In my own pastoral practice, I’ll often assign as a penance the chaplet of Divine Mercy, which is especially effective spiritual medicine when someone confesses anger towards a particular person or group. By entering into God’s mercy towards sinners or towards our enemies, we start to look on them with God’s loving eyes, separating the sinner from the sin all the while growing in solidarity with the person—and we grow in mercy towards them as well.

Some people go overboard with St. Faustina’s revelations, elevating them to the level of Scripture. In the book I mention a former parishioner of mine who would claim that, since St. Faustina had visions of Jesus in her prayers, we should treat her Diary as the word of Jesus himself—more important than the catechism, more important than the pope. Pope Benedict XVI addressed this sort of argument in an interesting reflection on the Third Secret of Fatima. He says that part of the problem comes from calling such supernatural visions “private revelation,” which seems to put them on the same level as the deposit of faith, which was closed at the death of the last apostle. He suggests that the visions of the sort received by St. Faustina, or St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, or St. Bernadette, or the children of Fatima shouldn’t be called ‘revelation,’ but rather modern-day prophecy. That points their supernatural origin, but also makes clear that they aren’t the same as the Word of God becoming Incarnate. One characteristic of prophecy, even from the Old Testament, is that the prophets see more than they can understand. St. Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Isaiah’s prophecies applied to Jesus and Mary, but Isaiah himself didn’t completely comprehend what God was telling him about events hundreds of years in the future. Likewise, the children at Fatima didn’t fully understand what our Lady was telling them about Russia, because they didn’t know enough about world politics. The Church has investigated these prophetic prayer experiences and declared that they don’t contradict the deposit of faith, that the faithful can accept them with prudence, but that they aren’t something that one has to accept to be a good Catholic. The focus of the devotions should be God’s mercy itself—and for most people most of the time, they are.

I speculate in the book that God might have sent us the devotions of these modern-day prophets (St. Faustina, as well as St. Margaret Mary and the Fatima visionaries all introduced devotions focused on God’s mercy) in response to the angry, justice-only political climate that characterizes our day. Rather than wanting to destroy our enemies or the enemies of justice, these devotions teach us to pray for them and call God’s mercy down upon them. This teaches us to think about those who fall short of God’s standards in a Christian fashion, as those most in need of God’s mercy.

John 5:13 with St. Thomas Aquinas Jun 03, 2020

Show notes

“Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place.”

In John 5, Jesus heals a man who is unable to walk and then quickly slips away, disappearing into the crowd of people in Jerusalem. Why does Jesus so quickly vanish from the scene? In his commentary on the Gospel of John, Thomas Aquinas offers two sets of reasons for Jesus’ actions. He begins by offering an explanation based on the literal meaning of Scripture. He says that Jesus faded into the crowds “to give us the example of concealing our good deeds and of not using them to seek praise. Here he quotes from the Sermon on the Mount: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 6:1).

St. Thomas also explains that Jesus knows that by our deeds we can stir up the envy of others. There were those present who were already opposed to Christ. Jesus knew this and withdrew in order not to flame the fire of their hatred for him. Aquinas writes, “in all our actions, we should leave and avoid those who are envious, so as not to feed and increase their envy.” He here cites the teaching of the book of Sirach: “Do not be provoked by one who speaks evil of you, so he will not trap you by your own words” (Sir. 8:14).

Going on, however, St. Thomas also draws out what he describes a “mystical reason” Jesus slipped away quickly after his miracle. He writes, “First, it teaches us that Christ is not easy to find in the midst of men, or in the whirlwind of temporal cares; rather, he is found in spiritual seclusion.” St. Thomas cites the book of Eccelsiastes to make his point: “The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools” (Eccl. 9:17).

To properly hear Christ—the one who is Wisdom Incarnate—it is necessary for us to spend time with him in quiet prayer. Withdrawing from the erratic pace of modern life to pray is not simply advisable, it is necessary in order for us to fully encounter Jesus. Like the man healed in John 5, Christ invites us to follow him away from the crowds and the noise of the world to find him in the solitude of silent meditation. [1]

[1] Summary by Michael Barber with the use of Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, trans. Fabian Larcher and James A. Weisheipl, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 1:265 (#728).

St. Joan of Arc May 29, 2020

Show notes

The story of Joan of Arc is preposterous. In what reality could a teenage girl approach the would-be king of her country with an account of angelic and saintly visitations and persuade him to give her troops to fight against a vastly superior army – and, after he agrees, she wins? It’s the stuff of myth and legends, but not history.

Except that it is history. In fact, it is one of the most well-documented cases of its time, with detailed eyewitness accounts of everything that happened with, and to, the “Maiden of Orleans,” the peasant girl of Domremy. There are transcriptions of her two trials. The first declared that she was a heretic, allowing her to be burned at the stake; the second posthumously declared that she wasn’t. In her story we see bravery and cowardice, political intrigue and ecclesiastical subterfuge, loyalty and betrayal, vision and blindness, hope and despair, the best and worst of our human condition.

Little wonder, then, that a glance at the artistic record shows the many ways the preposterous peasant-girl-who-became-a-warrior story has quickened the imaginations of artisans across all spectrums of creativity. Paintings, sculptures, operas, musicals, plays, films and television productions have all attempted to capture and reinterpret the story of Joan.

Apart from short paragraphs in books about the saints, or prayer cards, many of us know about Joan through Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. Some consider it the best novelization of her life. Surprisingly, Twain himself considered it his finest work. Many other authors have attempted to tell her story through fiction, myself included, though her character is often filtered through sensibilities that were not of her time. For some, she is a feminist. For others, a representative of a working-class heroine along a Marxist vein. For Protestants, she is as a foreshadowing of a type of Martin Luther.

Voltaire wrote a satirical poem about her, which received a rebuttal fifty years later by German poet Friedrich Schiller.

Joan is no stranger to theatrical productions. William Shakespeare gave her a prominent place in his Henry VI series. Saint Therese of Lisieux wrote two small dramas about her, focusing on her visions, to be performed on various feast days for her religious community (St. Therese herself initially played Joan). George Bernard Shaw directed his particular style to her in Saint Joan, which later became the basis for Otto Preminger’s 1957 film version, scripted by the so-called “Catholic novelist” Graham Greene.

Playwright Maxwell Anderson gave his own interpretation of the story through Joan of Lorraine, leading to a Tony Award for its star Ingrid Bergman, and opened the door for her to portray the saint in a big-budget film version of the play a year later. Directed by Victor Fleming, known for The Wizard of Oz, critics have called it the best film version of Joan. Curiously, Ingrid Bergman would appear as Joan on film in 1954 for her then-husband Roberto Rossellini, the Italian director.

Some would argue that the most powerful film rendering of Joan came during the Silent Era from Danish film-maker Theodor Dreyer. His The Passion of Joan of Arc, released in 1928, blends a harsh realism with stylistic imagery to show Joan, not as a victorious girl on the battlefield, but a young girl enduring torturous interrogations. Long, lingering close-ups of her face give us an intimate view of a saint-in-the-making as she attempts to reconcile the attacks of her tormentors with the calling of God that led her to them. The effect is oppressive and claustrophobic, until she is finally taken out to be burned at the stake (which is seen in its raw brutality).

Not surprisingly, the last year of the 20th century gave us two opposing views of Joan. A television mini-series featured LeeLee Sobieski presented a straight-forward telling of Joan’s life, with an all-star cast and the latest special-effects to highlight the battles. It won multiple awards but, alas for me, Sobieski’s performance was unconvincing. She seemed more like a modern girl dropped back in time than a girl from the time itself. Meanwhile, French director Luc Besson presented Joan as a woman whose visions were not God-given, but merely the result of mental instability.

Another French director, Bruno Dumont, created two unusual films about Joan in 2017 and 2019. The first was an odd musical, integrating heavy-metal styles with the story of Joan as a young girl. Its star, Lise Leplat Prudhomme, was the right age and had the right look for Joan. The second film departed from the musical format and gave us the now-teenage Prudhomme as Joan after her capture. The actress’ performance was praised by some critics, but the overall film left most viewers flat. The main complaint was that the director could not seem to decide if he was producing a drama, a comedy, or a tragedy.

Against that artistic backdrop, I wondered anew about Joan as I began to write The Warrior Maiden (the second novel in the Virtue Chronicles series from the Augustine Institute). I opted to return to the original transcripts from the two trials, hoping to let her speak for herself. I was surprised to encounter a young woman, very much a teenager in her sensibilities and occasional emotional outbursts, but mature in the simplicity of her convictions. There was no artifice or guile in her determination to accomplish what God – through His messengers – had told her to do. If she was impatient, it was because she couldn’t understand why those in power did not share her vision. Sadly, her political naivete put her at the mercy of unscrupulous men, even while her determination gave those same men military unimaginable victories. She succeeded in the impossible: seeing the estranged Dauphin officially crowned as king and driving the English army out of long-held areas of France. She obeyed her God and, like her Lord, was betrayed by men. The whole thing was preposterous.

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Commentary on Matthew, 5.2.404–408. Cited from https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~Matt.C5.L2.n404

[1] Summary by Scott Hefelfinger with the use of Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles IV.33.5, trans. Charles J. O’Neil (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1975 [1957]), 162.

[1] Sulpicius Severus, Sacred History, 1.16. Translation from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series, vol. 11

[2] See Immanuel Löw, Die Flora der Juden, vol. 1,444.

[3] Cyprian of Carthage, ep. 75. Translation from the Ante Nicene Fathers Series, vol. 5.

From St. John Chrysostom, Homily on John 46.3–4, adapted from the NPNF translation by John Sehorn.

[1] In Latin, this word literally refers to a sacred action.

Excerpt from City of God X.6. Translation taken from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series, with minor modifications by Elizabeth Klein.

[1] Summary by Michael Barber with the use of Irenaeus, Against all Heresies 4.17-18, in Ante Nicene Fathers vol. 1, ed. Alexander Robertson and James Donaldson(Peabody, MA: Henrickson Publishing, 2012 [1885]), 484.

FAITH & CULTURE:

FR. DANIEL P. MOLONEY:

FAITH & CULTURE:

FR. DANIEL P. MOLONEY:

FAITH & CULTURE:

FR. DANIEL P. MOLONEY:

FAITH & CULTURE:

FR. DANIEL P. MOLONEY:

[1] Summary by Michael Barber with the use of Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, trans. Fabian Larcher and James A. Weisheipl, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 1:265 (#728).

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