Social Trinitarianism and Leonoardo Boff

As you may have counterintuited, Leonardo Boff's Trinity and Society (Euegene:  Wipf and Stock, 2005) is a fairly orthodox synthesis of Trinitarian theology.  My principal quibble is that it reads, at times, more like a stream of consciousness than a dogmatic handbook, which has rendered an otherwise good book something of a hasty profiling of ideas.  Yet if I were to teach an advanced course in Triadology with a section called "What are they saying about the Trinity," this book would be at the top of the list.

Like his later Holy Trinity, Perfect Community, the (former) Franciscan friar suggests that the Trinitarian communion ought to model for us a just and ethical society, even an egalitarian one.  His starting point--as is all of Social Trinitarianism's starting-point--is the analogy used by St Gregory of Nyssa's To Ablabius:  On Not Three Gods which I briefly explained in an earlier post.  In drawing a 'social analogy' to explain the Holy Trinity, Gregory wrote:

Peter, James, and John, being in one human nature, are called three men: and there is no absurdity in describing those who are united in nature, if they are more than one, by the plural number of the name derived from their nature. If, then, in the above case, custom admits this, and no one forbids us to speak of those who are two as two, or those who are more than two as three, how is it that in the case of our statements of the mysteries of the Faith, though confessing the Three Persons, and acknowledging no difference of nature between them, we are in some sense at variance with our confession, when we say that the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is one and yet forbid men to say "there are three Gods"?

The difficulty that Gregory sets out to resolve is this:  Given the analogy of three men--Peter, James, and Andrew--all sharing one human nature, manhood to describe three Persons all sharing one Godhead, why, then, do we still call "them" one God?  Briefly put:  Because they each share in the same operation, whether it is in creating, redeeming, judging, or the like.  Gregory engages in a bit of etymology when he thinks that the Greek word for "Godhead"--θεότης (theotes)--is derived from θέα (thea), meaning "beholding," something that each the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit does, but as a single operation, thus demonstrating the oneness of the Divine Essence.

Curiously, this is where "social Trinitarianism" ends, because it does one of two things, depending upon the proponent.  On one hand, it looks at the analogy of human society, but leaves aside Gregory's explanation of the unity of Godhead that preempts the Holy Trinity from being called "three gods."  On the other hand, the analogy "bounces back," as it were, as a model of the ideal human society.

For Leonardo Boff, the "rubric" of a society based upon the Trinitarian communion is perichoresis, an element of Triadology to describe how each Person "dances around" each other.  The Latin patrimony uses the equivalent Latin term, circumincessio (or circuminsessio), a reference to "going around."  It is this interrelationship within the Trinity that Boff hopes will model an equitable human communion.  He discusses this at length towards the end of Chapter Seven of his Trinity and Society.

He is right, I think, but he cops out at the full implications of what he is suggesting.

Rather obviously, Boff winces and briskly moves on when he speaks of the "taxonomy" or ordering within the Trintiarian communion:  Father, then Son, then Holy Spirit.  Though the three hypostaseis are co-equal in glory, majesty, and divinity, this does not erase the fact that of the Father's "monarchy"--that he is the principle from whom the Son is begotten and the Holy Spirit proceeds.  What role does this have to play in Boff's (dare I say it?) utopia?  He skirts the issue altogether, which is unfortunate because he is "on to something," as they say, like a kid who builds a magnificent sandcastle, only to demolish it. 

Yet the bigger problem is the one that Boff does not even consider, because it doesn't fit within the paradigm of "Christian Marxism," namely, the role of grace in the building of a just society.  Granted, the "Kingdom of God" looms large in liberation theologies, but it undercuts itself by a de facto Pelagianism:  "We'll build the City of God on earth for the poor with our own gumpton and gall."

If the theology of grace tells us anything, it's that gumpton and gall falls woefully short in terms of energy to carry out God's project for humanity:  Transformation.  After all, Capitol Hill Organised Protest (CHOP) or the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle may have been born of a grandiose idea of a peaceful society, but the persona non grata of God's grace rendered it a dismal failure. 

More to the point, how can anyone model the Trinitarian perichoresis in their own lives when they have not been inserted into the life of the Trinity in baptism and confirmation?  It follows, then, that a just and equitable society envisioned by Boff must necessarily be a spin-off of the Church, the community of those in grace.  It means, ultimately, mission.  But when "social action" replaces "evangelisation" but retains the appellation of "mission," it is really a simulacrum of the City of God because it's following the playbook of the City of Man.

This is why I call Boff's conception of God's project an "utopia"--the term was coined by St Thomas More meaning, quite literally, "nowhere"--because pursuing God's project gracelessly will land us, indeed, nowhere.

My other critique lies in how he "truncates" the Mystery of the Incarnation to something almost entirely pre-Paschal and, worse, without considering the role of the Ascension and therefore the Lordship of Jesus over the cosmos.  But, to be fair, he hasn't read my dissertation, and to be indulgent, I haven't finished the chapter on Jesus' kingly anointing!

 

12 or 9 Fruit(s) of the Holy Spirit?

Any Confirmation prep worth its salt teaches candidates to familiarise themselves with the queue and meanings of what catechetical tradition calls "The 12 Fruits of the Holy Spirit."  We see them listed, for example, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶1832:

The fruits of the Spirit are perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as the first fruits of eternal glory.  The tradition of the Church lists twelve of them:  "charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity."

In a footnote to the above passage, the Catechism notes that the queue of twelve fruits are taken from the Vulgate edition of Galatians 5:22-23.  Yet, when we read a modern translation of the same passage, we find only nine--and not fruits in the plural, but rather "fruit" in the singular:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law [Revised Standard Version].

The above RSV--and every modern translation--has a queue of nine, rather than the traditional twelve.  As for "fruits" versus "fruit," even the Douay-Reims has the singular "fruit," reflecting the Vulgate's fructus, though the Koine Greek word here is καρπός (karpos) in the singular.  In Latin, however, fructus is a fourth-declension noun, in which case the subject ending is the same in both its singular and plural form, which may have given rise to the somewhat mistaken English "fruits" since it is easy to intuit the plural form in translation when there's a queue of twelve!  Or just nine!

But the Vulgate didn't always have 12 "fruits."  Jerome's commentary on Galatians gives in-text citations of 5:22-23, and there are still only 9.  So where did the extra three come from?

For ease of navigation, let's compare the modern queue with the one in use during St Thomas Aquinas' time (click on the image to enlarge):

In the rightmost column under "Glossa ordinaria / St Thomas Aquinas," you will see three words prefaced with a plus-sign:  "+patientia" (DRV:  patience), "+modestia" (DRV:  modesty), and "+castitas" (DRV:  chastity).  These are the three additions, bringing the original 9 to 12. You'll also see that they are not in Jerome's list.  The highlighting simply identifies how the order shifted between Jerome's early fifth-century work and the Bible used by St Thomas in the thirteenth century.

Jump to the two leftmost column, with the Greek Critical Text and the corresponding "New Vulgate" published at the orders of the late Pope John Paul II in conformity with the Critical Text.  You will see at the bottom, «+ αγνεια or + υπομονη».  The Greek additions of αγνεια (agneia) and υπομονη (hupomone), meaning "chastity" and "patience" respectively."  There are two things to note about these two Greek words.

First, these two Greek words correspond with two out of three "additional" fruits:  αγνεια = castitas and υπομονη = patientia, leaving modestia without a Greek pair.  In other words, two of the three additions have antecedents in the Greek manuscripts.

Second, the two Greek additions αγνεια and υπομονη never appear in the same manuscript together.  Some manuscripts--such as the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Augiensis have αγνεια, whereas υπομονη appears in Miniscule 442 and 463.  But these two Greek words are never, never, never--did I say "never"?--never found in the same manuscripts.  Thus some Greek manuscripts have ten fruits instead of nine--in fact, two different groups of manuscripts with 10 fruits, but never with the same "additions" together.  (See Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament [Stuttgart:  United Bible Societies, 1994], 529).

It was common, in the Carolingian Empire for example, to emend Latin Biblical texts by "correcting" them on the basis of Greek manuscripts--so, naturally, the monks (professional lay scribes diminished with the fall of Rome and re-emerged as a formidable force only during the rise of the Universities) would've seen one set of Greek manuscripts, and said, "Aha!  We're missing a fruit here" and then, with another set of Greek manuscripts, and said again, "Aha!  We're missing another fruit there."  That would give us eleven.  But that's only a conjecture, because identifying Latin manuscripts fitting this description needs further research.

When we look at the queue between the early Vulgate and St Thomas' Bible, we see that modestia and mansuetudo might represent a "doubling" of a similar concept--as it was common in the Western Text-Type to "bloat" the text to give a "fatter" sense of the words and sentences as it was transmitted from the exemplar to the copy.  Again, this is a conjecture, but based on probability on how human errors happen in scribal work and on the basis of the Western Text-Type's tendencies.

At the end of the day, it is easy to see how the three "additions" seem to be in pairs:  The addition of castitas aligns well with the meaning of the original continentia (continence), the addition of patientia aligns well with pax (peace), and the addition of modestia aligns well with mansuetudo.  It is possible that the three original words were "bifurcated" to yield both the original word and an approximate synonym.

It is also very likely, given Roman Christianity's love for systematization and consistency, that the scribes wanted to bring Galatians 5:22-23 to square with Apocalypse 22:2, "In the midst of the street thereof, and on both sides of the river, was the Tree of Life, bearing twelve fruits, yielding its fruits for every month, and the leaves of the Tree were for the healing of the nations" (DRV, emphasis added).

And that, my friends, is why we have twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit in the catechetical (but not dogmatic!) patrimony of the Church. 

Isn't textual analysis fun?

Father Lonergan's Five Theses on the TrinityAnd the Cappadocian Settlement

Perhaps the last of the neo-scholastics (and I mean that absolutely non-pejoratively) was the great Fr Bernard Lonergan SJ, whose book The Triune God:  Doctrines (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 2009) condensed Trinitarian dogmatics into just five theses:

1.  God the Father neither made his own and only Son out of preexisting matter nor created him out of nothing, but from eternity generates him out of his own substance as consubstantial with himself.

2.  The Holy Spirit, Lord and Life-give, who proceeds from the Father and who spoke through the prophets, is to be adored and glorified together with the Father and the Son.

3.  Thus, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have one divinity, one power, one substance; they are, however, three hypostases or persons distinguished from one another by their proper attributes, which are relative; hence in God all things are one where there is no relational opposition. 

4.   The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one principle and by a single spiration.

5.  The dogma of the Trinity, which is a mystery in the proper sense, cannot through natural human principles be either understood in itself or demonstrated from an effect.  Even after the revelation this remains true, although reason illumined by faith can, with God's help, progress towards some imperfect analogical understanding of this mystery.

Compared to, say the "Spanish Summa" with its twenty-six theses, Lonergan''s approach is a notable achievement.  I suppose being a theologian-economist has its advantages!  (Cue "economic Trinity" jokes.) 

Basil of Caesarea, "the Great"

In the second half of the fourth century, Sts Basil of Caesarea, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, and their colleague Gregory the Theologian exerted a tremendous amount of energy explaining the First Council of Nicaea's controversial line in the creed,  «γεννηθέντα, οὐ ποιηθέντα, ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί / gentium, non factum, consubstantialem Patri», which we hear every Sunday at Mass as "...begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father..."

The word  ὁμοούσιον / consubstantia / consubstantial was a sore point for some of the Council Fathers; the "conservative" bishops winced at the use of vocabulary found nowhere in Scripture, though many of them agreed with the sense of the word, namely, that God the Son is of the same 'stuff' as God the Father.  Others, like St Basil of Caesarea, feared that "consubstantial" could be easily mistaken for the Sabellian heresy--the idea that 'Father,' 'Son,' and 'Holy Spirit' are simply three 'masks' worn by the single-personed Godhead.  In fact, one of the senses of the word "person"--Latin persona and Greek prosopon--was that of a thespian mask; Basil worried that speaking of the Son as "consubstantial" or 'having same-substance' as the Father may look like God was essentially identical between the First and Second Person, but having only a 'different' appearance.  To remedy this, Basil insisted on conversationally refining the meaning or the sense of "consubstantial" which he insisted meant "undeviatingly similar" (Ep. 9)  The use of the word "similar" put him with the so-called homoiousian party which preferred to speak of the Son as "of similar or like substance as the Father."  "Similar" does not mean "same," of course, but Basil wanted to highlight, at once, the uniformity of essence between the Father and Son, and at the same time the distinction of persons between the two.  In his famous On the Holy Spirit, he used the analogy of "prototype/type" to describe the distinction of persons between the Father and the Son.

It was with Basil, you can see, that Theses 1 and 3 began to be clarified for the Church.

In his later controversy with the heretic Eunomius, who tried to pinpoint and name the substance of the Godhead as "innascibility"--that is to say, beginninglesness, by which he identified the Father, whereas the Son was "nascible," that is, creaturely.  It was an extreme form of Arianism.  Basil responded strongly in his book Against Eunomius, in which he distinguished between the "properties" of the Godhead from the "essence" of the same.  "Innascibility"--beginninglessness--was a property, not just of the Father, but also of the Son and Holy Spirit.  It was in this book that Basil abandoned his reticence towards the word "consubstantial" and adopted it wholeheartedly, and brought Trinitarian doctrine to a new stage by pinning down the difference between the words «ousia» «hypostasis» which had, until now, been used synonymously.  Now, said Basil, ousia would be analogous to the "universal" and hypostasis to the "particular."  So, whereas Godhead or the Divinity is the ousia of the Trinity, the "Father," "Son," and "Holy Spirit" are the hypostaseis (plural of hypostasis) as particulars within the Trinity.  We see here, especially, Lonergan's Third Thesis.

Gregory of Nyssa

Basil's younger brother gifted the Church with a definitive advancement in Triadology (the Byzantine term for what we Romans call "Trinitarian theology") in his book On Not Three Gods.  As we will see in a subsequent post, Gregory of Nyssa elaborated Basil's universal/particular analogy to ousia/hypostasis by looking at the human family as a further analogy.  in the group of men Peter, James, and John.  What is common between them?  Their humanity, of course, or their "manhood."  Peter, James, and John all have the same substance of human nature.  But they are distinguished one from another as individual persons. 

With Basil's use of Aristotelian dialectic (i.e., "universal" and "particular") and Gregory's concrete analogy (Peter, Andrew, John; all sharing human nature), Lonergan's Fifth Thesis becomes apparent:  though reason can never deduce that God is a Trinity from self-evident first principles, reason can, nevertheless, make use of analogies to approach some understanding of what the Trinity means.

Further to Lonergan's Third Thesis, again, was Nyssa's conception of "appropriations" within the Trinity, that is, a "work" or "task" that, although shared by the whole Triune Godhead, distinguishes one Person from another as their principal task:  Though the whole Trinity creates, to the Father is appropriated the work of Creation; though the whole Trinity redeems, to the Son is appropriated the task of Redemption; though the whole Trinity sanctifies, to the Holy Spirit is appropriated the task of Sanctification.

Gregory the Theologian

The Latin tradition tends to call this third--and perhaps most spectacular thinker--member of the Cappadocian Fathers "Gregory of Nazianzen."  I much prefer the Byzantine label "Theologian," both to give credit for his theological ingenuity and to differentiate him from his father by the same name.  Otherwise we'd have to call him, really, "Gregory Nazianzen, Jr."!

His Five Theological Orations makes for wonderful spiritual reading if one wishes to incorporate Trinitarian dogmatics into mental prayer.

Gregory the Theologian's contribution--which would later be picked up by St Thomas Aquinas--was the introduction of "notional relations," that is to say, something about each hypostasis/person that distinguishes one from another.  Thus, the Father's notional relation is ingenerateness, since the Father is begotten from no-one.  The Son's notional relation is generation or begottenness, because the Son emanates out of the Father.  More elusive is the Holy Spirit, who simply proceeds or is spirated, and Gregory admits that he has a difficult time getting beyond the name of the Third Person's notional relation.  Here, then, is a further advancement in Lonergan's Third Thesis that the Trinity is of "three hypostases or persons distingusihed from one another by their proper attributes, which are relative," that is to say, with respect to each other.

I should add--though we are really discussing the Father-Son relation--that Gregory the Theologian paved the way for the next council, the First Council of Constantinople in 381, to formally declare the divinity of the Holy Spirit.  Enter Lonergan's Second Thesis.  But note that the Godhead of the Holy Spirit emerged more clearly only after Father-Son relation was hammered out in this "Cappadocian Settlement.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen!

Jesus' Sevenfold Anointing

When I first visited Chartres Cathedral back in 2017, I immediately fell in love with the Arbor Iesse window inside the west facade, over the north doors (whose tympanun sculpture features a mash-up of the Ascension and Pentecost).  It was one of the early depictions of the passage from Isaiah 11:1-3a,

And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise out of his root.  And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him:  The Spirit of Wisdom, and of Understanding, the Spirit of Counsel, and of Fortitude, the Spirit of Knowledge, and of Godliness.  And He shall be filled with the Spirit of the Fear of the Lord.

(In a later post, I will explain why this passage--taken from the Douay-Rheims Version--is somewhat different than what you are likely to find in your Bible.  Suffice it to say for now that this passage is based upon a Greek translation of the Old Testament, whereas most modern Bibles' Old Testaments are taken from the Hebrew Masoretic text.)

It is often forgotten that "Christ" means, precisely, The Anointed One, and here the prophet Isaiah shows the sevenfold anointing of Jesus that was constitutive of His being Christ.

The earliest writing of St Thomas Aquinas is his Commentary on Isaiah written while he was a Bachelor of the Bible, the first step towards becoming a professional theologian, after which came being a Bachelor of the Sentences--and all of this after earning a Bachelor of Arts!  Today's theologians would have been looked upon by the Mediaevals as little more than superlative catechists.

On the basis of St Thomas' commentary on the "Tree of Jesse" passage, I would like to highlight three elements in Jesus' unique and unrepeatable Anointing (since our anointing is but an overflow of His--see Jn 1:16).  These three elements are taken from three verses:  "The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him"; "The Spirit of Wisdom...", and "He shall be filled with the Spirit of the Fear of the Lord."  These three elements refer to what St Thomas called the permanence of Jesus' Anointing, the multitude of the gifts which Jesus had, and the fullness of grace in His soul.

Regarding the verse "The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him," St Thomas also retrieved John 1:32, "And John [the Forerunner] gave testimony, saying:  'I saw the Spirit coming down, as a dove from heaven, and he remained upon Him.'"  From this, the Angelic Doctor concluded three sub-elements.  First, "grace was not increased in Him," that is, Jesus was so chock-full of the Holy Spirit that there was no more 'room' for an additional infilling.  We speak of "filling" and "pouring" metaphorically, of course, because grace is a created effect in the soul (a point St Thomas explains at great lengths in his commentary on St Paul).  Second, this grace was "not interrupted" in Christ.  Whereas Christians, when they are guilty of grave sin, evict the Holy Spirit from their soul (though the mark of ownership remains) and, by repentance and receiving divine mercy, have the gift of the Holy Spirit restored to them.  But Jesus, on account of His perfect sinlessness (2 Cor 5:21; Heb 4:15), never had an interruption of the Holy Spirit's indwelling.  Third, this grace was never troubled "by the battle of the flesh," which is to say that on account of the stability of Jesus' moral perfection, His Anointing was steady.  You and I, as Christians, on account of carnality (whether it be in regards to food, impurity, or worldliness) "fluctuate" in terms of fervency.  But since Jesus enjoyed a perfect integrity of the powers of His soul such that His emotions were perfectly ordered by his reason, He had a certain evenness and stolidity in His Anointing.

Regarding the verse "The Spirit of Wisdom...", St Thomas deduces that Jesus had all seven of the gifts.  It might seem as though it doesn't logically follow, but when we bear in mind that the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit is, really, an indivisible 'cluster' of gifts such that one cannot be separated from the rest, and when we bear in mind, furthermore, the ancient Hebrew understanding of "seven" as connoting fullness, it is easy to see that by His possession of Wisdom, the other six gifts follow in its train, since "Wisdom" is the climax of the Seven Gifts.

Now the "Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit"--we'll call them the "sevenfold grace" for short--are gifts that sanctify a person or, in traditional catechetical language, are the elements of sanctifying grace.  Now St Thomas doesn't explain this in depth but from this verse he also infers that Christ also had all the charismatic graces.  The puzzler here is that the Angelic Doctor--as does the whole Catholic tradition--insists that it is possible to exercise the charismatic graces while in the state of mortal sin (cf Mt 7:22; 1 Cor 13:1-3).  So why does he annex the charismatic graces to sanctifying grace?  It would seem that, in light of what later Catholic doctrine called the "indelible mark" Christians receive as a result of their baptism and confirmation, even believers in the state of mortal sin are still in the "state of salvation" and still have the mark of God's ownership on them.  Thus, only Christians enjoy the use of the charismatic graces, even if they have evicted the Holy Spirit from their souls as a result of sin.  All the more, then, does the Holy One, Jesus the Anointed, also have the charismatic graces--such as healing, raising the dead, and so on.  The principal difference between sanctifying grace and the charismatic graces is that, whereas the former is in the soul habitually, the latter is at our disposal ad-hoc.  Thus the multitude of the gifts in Christ:  Since He has all Seven Gifts, His humanity is thus marked by the Father's ownership over Him that He has, also, all the charisms at His disposal--though He did not necessarily use every single charism.

Finally, "...He shall be filled with the Spirit of the Fear of the Lord" refers to the plenitude or fullness of His Anointing.  To this, St Thomas retrieves John 1:14 when the Evangelist calls Jesus "full of grace."  At first glance, this might seem a redundancy to the aforementioned "multitude" of the gifts in Christ, but the Angelic Doctor here means to say that He had a 'fatness' of grace such that whereas the "multitude" of the graces spoke of their variety in Christ, the "fullness" speaks of Him having all of them such that His soul's powers was brought to perfection and--as I argued in my recent paper at Ave Maria University and as I will argue in Chapter Two of my dissertation--thus constituted the full and perfect humanity of Jesus defined at the Council of Chalcedon.

It should be added that St Thomas often refers to the verse "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov 9:10; cf Job 28:28; Ps 111:10), such that the sevenfold anointing begins with Fear and climbs upward to Wisdom.  Just as Wisdom has the other six gifts in its train, Fear likewise immediately soars through all the six other gifts to arrive at Wisdom as its climax.

So Jesus' sevenfold Anointing constituting Him as the Christ entailed (1) the permanence of the Holy Spirit indwelling Him, (2) the multitude of the Seven Gifts in Him and the charismatic graces at His disposal, and (3) the fullness of the gifts such that the powers of His soul was brought to utter perfection.

Whenever I am at Chartres Cathedral, I love to sit on the backmost row of chairs facing the west facade, and watch the colours dance through the Jesse Tree window as the sun sets, the daily twilight heralding the twilight of the universe that began with Incarnation.  It was there that I received my inspiration to undertake doctoral research on Jesus' human nature's sevenfold anointing which, in turn, overflows to us believers as from Christ to Christians.

It is also my life's work:  To turn Christians' gaze to Christ, whose Anointing is outpoured upon us in a perpetual Pentecost, thus empowering us with the wherewithal to win the world for Him.

(Christian) Witness by (Sartorial) Osmosis

Last week I was graced with a visit from some very close friends, two of which are my "Priscilla and Aquila" of New Testament fame because they are my co-workers in the Gospel (cf Rom 16:3-4).  Among the things we did was take a cruise on the Rideau Canal, walk around Parliament, and peregrinated to both the Oratoire St-Joseph in Montreal and Ste Anne de Beaupre in Quebec City.  And, of course, St-Hubert!

In keeping with the simplicity and poverty that Pope Francis has asked of the Church, and in obedience to the Congregation for the Clergy's Directory on the Ministry and Life of Priests, n. 66, I often wear my cassock, and I certainly did when my friends were in town.  While it was cumbersome in certain situations, and sweltering on other days, it provided a surprising number of 'evangelical moments' in our encounters with other people.

I should also say, by way of a prefatory note, that in my early years of formation in Yonkers, New York, at the House of Studies for Deaf Seminarians founded by the late, magnificent John Cardinal O'Connor, our superior stressed the importance of visuals in the Deaf culture, and the visibility of clerical or religious habit was important for people who, on account of their being unable to hear, rely more on sight than anything else.  So my formation had its beginnings in the ecclesiastical culture of O'Connor's New York and the early days of Deaf ministry in Upper East Manhattan.

Back to my story.

One evening, as my guests and I were walking through downtown Ottawa, a gentleman saw me and asked, "Are you a Catholic priest?"  After responding affirmatively he said, "Can I ask you a question?"  "That's what I'm here for," I thought, and told him, "Yes, of course."

He then expressed his consternation over the world's chaos, with the pandemic, riots across the United States, and so on, and then asked me, "Is the world coming to an end?"

I explained to him that while the world will come to an end some day, dogmatically speaking, a number of things have yet to happen, and I pointed out a few of these.  But then I went on to say, "Whether the world ends tonight or in a thousand years, you could have an untimely death.  So in any case, remember this:  STAY IN GRACE!"  He got the point:  "You're right, I could die at the snap of the finger, so stay in God's grace!  Got it!"  My priestly watchword of Acts 20:24 served us well.

World, 0; Jesus, 1.

On another day, we took lunch in Little Italy and, after paying, a lady who was sharing a meal with her husband came up to me and said, "Father, today is our 30th wedding anniversary.  Can you give us a blessing?"  She said that it was difficult to access a priest with the lockdown in force, so I was happy to pray over them and to impart a priestly blessing.  When we were leaving, my "Priscilla" told me how this lady gushed and rejoiced on account of receiving an unexpected grace.

World, 0.  Jesus, 2.

One last example.  After stolling in the old part of Quebec City, we took dinner at a delightful crêperie  not too far from cathedral-basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec where Bishop François de Laval awaits the resurrection on the Last Day.  As we were eating, two gentlemen approached me, seeing my cassock, one of whom belong to the First Nations, and proceeded to tell me about his experience at the residential schools which the Canadian government compelled the Catholic Church to open and operate.

"They treated me with love and respect," he kept saying over and over again.  Clearly, the other diners and bystanders could overhear this Canadian whose race and culture predates the arrival of the missionaries and explorers--telling an experience that doesn't quite fit the CBC narrative machine.

World & CBC, 0.  Jesus. 3.

In each of these encounters, I never said my name; I was beside the point.  Rather, these people saw not only a Catholic priest, but someone who (is supposed to, at least) could impart a word on behalf of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The obvious cassock (I find clerical business suits too "professional" for what is, in fact, Pentecostal business) signalled an availability on my part to impart a word of grace to people who were asking for one, to say nothing of the many shared laughter with restaurant servers assigned to our table.  Had I worn simply a tee-shirt and shorts, I would have been left unbothered by strangers, but, as a priest, it's my job to be bothered.

Had I not worn this obvious sign of priestly consecration, one might be still wondering about the End, a couple might have had their anniversary come and go without the Church to share in their joy, and a First Nations man would not have had the chance to say "thank you" for his positive experience at a residential school--to say nothing of the many restaurant servers who very much enjoyed our group's humour and levity.

That's not to say that I don't wear street clothes; when I go to the bank or pick up a Guinness, my cassock would be unseemly.  And I certainly didn't wear it while kayaking on Dow's Lake!  But the rest of the time, to me anyway, not wearing a visible sign of my consecration is--again, for me--an act of selfishness, because seekers have a right to speak to a cleric about the Gospel, and because the Gospel must be uninterruptedly available to all people.  Because they aren't always ready, I must be.

After all, the "New Evangelisation" needs to be more than just conversational ornamentation.

If you've been keeping up with this blog, you know that the Church's missionary lethargy is my major hang-up.  In my conversations with other believers, I have heard them express their genuine puzzlement:  "If we are to be missionaries, where would we go?"

On the other side of the church doors, clearly, and looking the part of a priest of Jesus Christ.

Why All This Fuss Over The Passion of St John The Forerunner?

 

Very few saints--in fact, exactly two--get both a nativity feast and a death-day feast, namely St Mary the Virgin and St John the Forerunner.  And only one saint's death-day gets to be called a "Passion," namely the aforementioned St John on 29 August.

Why all this fuss over the Baptiser?

The secret, it seems to me, is in the name given to him by the Lord Jesus:  "Friend of the Bridegroom" (Jn 3:29).  We read in the Fourth Gospel--

John [the Forerunner and Baptizer] answered, "No one can receive anything except what is given him from heaven.  You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before Him.  He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full" (Jn 3:27-29).

 The Jewish custom of the "friend of the bridegroom" is analogous to our modern "best man," except the Jewish "friend of the bridegroom" has a more specific role to play, as John pointed out to his (temporary) disciples:  To announce the arrival of the bridegroom to the wedding party.

As the last of the Old Testament prophets (Lk 16:16), John stood at the end of a long line of those who proclaimed God's purpose in wedding the children of Israel to himself.  Finally at the advent of Jesus Christ, Godhead is wedded to Manhood in the Incarnate Word (cf Jn 1:14), in Whom the the entire human family is invited to be sharers in divinity (2 Pt 1:14).  Those familiar with the Latin language cannot miss the deeply nuptial meaning of Jesus' last words, "It is finished!" (Jn 19:30), which the old Romans heard as consummatum est!--because the Lord consummated his nuptial love for Israel upon the Cross (cf Rom 5:8).  In the Apocalypse, we have a mirror of this when the majestic, enthroned Christ will declare "It is finished!  Consummatum est!" (Apoc 21:6), and afterwards His Bride--the Church--is displayed in her full splendour (Apoc 21:9f).

That being said, our question becomes more insistent:  What was the prophetic quality of St John the Forerunner's Passion?  What did his martyrdom highlight about his role as "Friend of the Bridegroom" and Jesus' role as "The Bridegroom" of the Church, of the renewed Israel?  On the flip side of our question is this:  What did unlawful union of Herod Antipas with his sister-in-law Salome have to say about the message of "The Friend of the Bridegroom"?

Setting aside the historical details of Salome's previous marriage with Philip the Tetrarch and Herod Antipas' previous marriage with Phasaelis, John simply points to the unlawful character of the union and its obscuring of the very purposes of marriage, that is, the perpetual and permanent exchange of love between a husband and a wife.  As the political leaders of the Judean province and puppets of pagan Rome, as well as religious leaders of a sort (his father, Herod the Great, initiated the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple, still unfinished in Jesus' day), their union had in fact tarnished the mirror intended to reflect God's nuptial love for Israel.

By calling Herod Antipas and Salome to account, John was shining a light not only on the divine purpose of marriage but also on his role in heralding the advent of God's eschatological nuptial love finally realised in Jesus Christ.  In criticising the king and Philip's wife, John was criticizing their obscuring of Jesus' mission.  The evangelists say that Herod Antipas enjoyed listening to John preach even as he was imprisoned, suggesting that a change in heart was possible for the adulterous king, but Salome succeeded stilling his tongue by severing his head (Mt 14:8; Mk 6:19).

The friend of the bridegroom usually fulfilled his purpose when he announced the arrival of the soon-to-be husband to the Jewish wedding party.  John, on the other hand, fulfilled his purpose completely when his life was ended, as that was when Jesus began a new stage in His public ministry (Mt 14:13; Mk  6:30-31), thus beginning the final year of His earthly life.

When John began, however, he identified himself by the prophecy of Isaiah, 

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: / Prepare the way of the Lord, / make His paths straight.  / Every valley shall be filled, / and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, / and the crooked shall be made straight, / and the rough ways shall be made smooth;  / and all flesh shall see the salvation of God! (Lk 3:4-6; cf Is 40:3-5 LXX)

It would be too facile to say that he merely pointed out the long-expected Jesus; it would facile, too, to say that he preached repentance to the hearts waiting to receive Him.  As "The Friend of the Bridegroom," St John the Forerunner insistently preached upon a bridal love for Jesus, a love that is committed, exclusive, and permanent.

Thus the Christian sacrament of marriage likewise serves to mirror the nuptial love of Jesus the Bridegroom for the Church His Bride in the exclusive, stable, and perpetual love between a wife and her husband (cf Eph 5:31f).

John, therefore, pointed to the concubinage of Herod Antipas and Salome as the mirror of unfaithful discipleship, like Gomer's unfaithfulness to Hosea.  But--

...in that day, says the Lord, you will call me, "My husband," and no longer will you call me, "My Baal."  For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more.  And I will make for you a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds fo the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety.  And I will espouse you for ever; I will espouse you in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy.  I will espouse you in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord (Hosea 2:16-20).

The question put before us by John's martyrdom, therefore, is this:  Will we be the world's concubines, picking up "spiritually transmitted diseases," or will we devote our hearts exclusively to Jesus the Bridegroom?

 

The Road to the Sacraments is Paved With Right Intentions

 

Responding to my previous entry, a reader of this blog rightly asked--

Now I understand the importance of using the proper words, but I am wondering why the principle of right intention cannot apply to a situation like this? I mean, how many times do words of the eucharistic prayer get fumbled unintentionally...  Does that invalidate a Mass?

My interlocutor is correct:  "[H]ow many times do words of the [E]ucharistic prayer get fumbled intentionally..."?  At the back of his mind, I'm sure, he is thinking of the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Paul V, de Defectibus, where the saint decreed:

If the priest were to shorten or change the form of the consecration of the Body and the Blood, so that in the change of wording the words did not mean the same thing, he would not be achieving a valid Sacrament.  If, on the other hand, he were to add or take away anything which did not change the meaning, the Sacrament would be valid, but he would be committing a grave sin.

This principle serves as a helpful analogy towards resolving my interlocutor's important question, because the sacramental intention serves as the third element in the 'triangulation' of conditions requisite for a valid sacrament:  form (or, the "sacramental word"), matter, as well as intention.  Pope Pius V points to a correct sacramental intention as a kind of 'fail-safe' in the event that the Words of Institution had words added or subtracted "which did not change the meaning" as effecting a valid sacrament.  In fact, he elaborates in the event of a genuine mistake in repeating the verba testamenti:

If the celebrant does not remember having said the usual words in the Consecration, he should not for that reason be worried.  If, however, he is sure that he omitted something necessary to the Sacrament, that is, the form of the Consecration or a part of it, he is to repeat the formula and continue from there. If he thinks it is very likely that he omitted something essential, he is to repeat the formula conditionally, though the condition need not be expressed. But if what he omitted is not necessary to the Sacrament, he is not to repeat anything; he should simply continue the Mass.

Four scenarios are laid down:  (1) If the celebrant cannot remember whether the verba testamenti was said, he oughta, like, chillax!  Or (2) if the celebrant is certain that something necessary was omitted, relax, repeat, and carry on.  Unless (3) the celebrant thinks that something indeed was omitted, he ought to repeat the Words conditionally.  Finally (4) if something nonessential was omitted (say, the "enim"), move on, bro.

If anything, Pope Pius V does not want us to wrapped around the axle about accidental mistakes in the sacramental celebration, as the first stipulation makes very clear:  "If the celebrant does not remember having said the usual words in the Consecration, he should not for that reason be worried," presumably because ill-remembering something likely means that the celebrant did not intend to do otherwise than what the Church intends, and such intentionality serves as a fail-safe to ensure validity.

Transposing the same principle to sacramental Baptism, If I were to  absent-mindedly say "We baptise you..." while I meant to say "I baptise you..." then a valid baptism would likely have taken place.  On the other hand, sacramental intention cannot be used as in lieu of prescribed sacramental words, principally because the sacramental words enshrines sacramental intentionality; in fact, St Thomas Aquinas explains that the sacramental words serves as a signification which dovetails the word with the sacraments repeated over sacramental matter (S.th., 3a, q. 64, art. 8).  Hence the Sacred Congregation explained in its accompanying "Doctrinal Note" to the Responsum:

In this light must be understood the Tridentine injunction concerning the necessity of the minister to at least have the intention to do that which the Church does.  The intention therefore cannot remain only at the interior level, with the risk of subjective distractions, but must be expressed in the exterior action constituted by the use of the matter and form of the Sacrament.  Such an action cannot but manifest the communion between that which the minister accomplishes in the celebration of each individual sacrament with that which the Church enacts in communion with the action of Christ himself:  It is therefore fundamental that the sacramental action may not be achieved in its own name, but in the person of Christ who acts in his Church, and in the name of the Church.

That being said, the 'triangulation' of sacramental word, matter, and intention must work as 'three out of three' and not, say, two or even one out of three:  Referencing matter, the intention is exteriorised by the sacramental word.  Mistakes in the recitation do not necessarily invalidate the sacramental confection in every case, but this does not thereby warrant changing the sacramental word, because this would make the word and intention desynchronous with each other, in which case the very purpose of words would be defeated (cf B. Lonergan, Verbum:  Word and Idea in Aquinas [Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1997]).

Therefore, meaning the sense of the words, "We baptise you..." with its concomitant sense of assuming the body of the Church (rather than Christ) serves as Capital Grace thus disrupts the sacramental intention, since the "I" of the correct formula has Christ as Head of the Church and as Capital Grace and as the Actant of the sacramental celebration has been replaced with erroneous theology.  If, on the other hand, I'm celebrating a baptism and my mind wanders for a bit to Fr Hood's unfortunate story, and for that I accidentally say "We baptise you..." while meaning to say "I baptise you" and meaning to express the Church's faith in Christ and not the Church as the invisible Presider of the celebration, then the sacrament is likely to be valid.  That, I think, is the scenario that my interlocutor has in mind, in which case he is correct.

And thus the exception, they say, proves the rule.