The Church Is a Bridge, Buckling and Swaying

Amici,

The Catholic Church is like a bridge.

Imagine a huge chasm, vast, overwhelming, terrifying. It reaches so far down you can't see the bottom, just swirling mist, but you hear thunder and crashing sounds of avalanches, and a roaring of great waters. The Church is like a one-arc bridge leaping across the chasm in a single bound.

The only way across the abyss is this arcing bridge. Yet many people don't want to take the bridge because the chasm is so vast and threatening, and the bridge looks so small in comparison. These folk stay on the near side of the chasm, shivering. Eventually, they wander away. Others cross the bridge easily enough, though they are laden with a lot of baggage. But as they get part way across, and the bridge's arc rises, they start to become unhinged. Some, terrified, run back to the near side, carrying their baggage. Others start shouting and dancing and quivering and shaking. They begin to open their luggage and take out all sort of shocking things; they shout obscenities and engage deviant acts – until, in groups or singly, they literally jump off the bridge, screaming. Still another crowd scoffs and laughs. They stand on the near side, hooting and scowling, and say, "Fools! That's not really a bridge at all. It's a fake bridge. Never was a bridge. Leads nowhere. Everyone, everyone who walks that bridge, the good or the bad or the in-between, end up in the chasm below." This crowd then walks away, noses in the air, though a few remain to mock. 

Then there's a group that marches across together, organized. They sing religious songs and recite prayers, and do not carry much in terms of luggage. They've been going over this bridge for a very long time. Yet about 60 years ago some of them added a new lane to the bridge. Those taking this new lane didn't pray very much, and spent a lot of time on the near side drinking coffee and tea and eating donuts, and attending psychology lectures. When they do cross, now and then, they drag along a lot of fancy, trendy, colorful baggage. Lately, their leaders DRIVE across the bridge, in big, weighty electric vehicles. Electric vehicles are very heavy compared to internal-combustion engine cars. They put a LOT of weight on any bridge, road, or car garage. AND these big bosses carry with them a lot of crazies in outlandish costumes, making a lot of noise, and committing all sorts of carnal acts in the process. It as though they were sort of on a parade route, a demented Mardi Gras. The bridge, especially the novo lane they use, is buckling. It's cracking. It emits all sort of squeaks and groans and snapping sounds. Finally the biggest electric vehicle of all starts across, driven by a very fat man in white, who orders the other lane closed to traffic (though many ignore his order). His heavyweight transport is carrying the most outlandish characters yet seen. The bridge begins to seriously wobble.

Will the bridge fall? Will it snap? Or only the novo lane, obviously the weakest? Will it become a single-file bridge? Stay tuned. But as you step back from the bridge you notice a plaque bolted on the near-side entrance. It reads: "Founded by the Holy Ghost on the First Pentecost Sunday. The Gates of Hell will not prevail against it. -Signed Jesus Christ, Sovereign King." It's a bit tarnished, and the mocking crowd papered over it at one point. The perverts then splashed it with gaudy paint. But it is still there, still legible, for those to see who can.

         AnP

Playwright David Mamet tells us about how Christianity came to be...

Amici,

The Muslims smell blood in the water. Like sharks, they're beginning to swim around Israel in ever closer circles.

And the USA are about at war with the world. Should Israel go into Gaza to wipe out Hamas (remember, an organization that certain Israelis helped in some way to form), it will potentially be like Stalingrad, a fighting step-by-step through a pile of ruins. House to house, and of course, civilians will be killed. As Col. Macgregor says, no soldier will try to ask first, "Excuse me, are you a Hamas terrorist or...?" No one can expect soldiers to do that. It would be a repeat of trying to figure out who was a Viet Cong guerilla and who a Vietnamese peasant. And as for the Jihadi Muslims, the two million Gazans are already dead, martyrs for Allah. The men among them will get to spend Eternity in carnal relations with the legendary 72 virgins per Muslim man, while their women can look on from the sidelines.

Since the U.S. is stitched cheek by jowl to Israel – well, the Obama/Biden Regine is cheek by jowl with Iran, insanely enough – the Americans will get dragged into whatever war develops. It all depends on what Israel does, but nothing stays the same forever, as the old saying goes. And Israel is badly, badly divided in many ways, a large segment of the population was enraged about the government's attempt to reign in their out-of-control supreme court. Many reservists were not showing up for duty, and air force pilots wouldn't fly. So no wonder the Muslims scented blood in the water, all right. They're now in it for the kill. (And the American's pending collapse will be icing on their cake.) Ironically, Israel has lasted about as long as the Crusader states in the same exact region. A bitter irony, indeed, for them, and for us Catholics with long memories.

Meanwhile, we must seemingly blindly follow the Biden Regime into war, but I don't think they're going to war for Israel. And anyway, Israel, so loved by evangelical Christians in America, loathes Christians. A controversial statemet? Yes, but let's see the celebrated American Jew David Mamet has to say in his essay about it. 

I read it. “Very intense” is one way to describe it. Mamet's angry and he doesn't "hold back". No doubt he, too, senses this is a critical time for Israel, and its survival is at stake. First, Mamet clearly points out how the Democrats in the USA have betrayed Jews in various way, and that’s all too true, in various ways. Especially about that evil man, FDR. But then the playwright points out that the American Jews tended to vote in a block for Democrats. There's an old joke that Jews live like Episcopalians yet vote like Puerto Ricans. Somehow – like the American Negroes – the Democrats keep Jews "down on the plantation" too.

Mamet and Christianity

Mamet also writes of Christianity that “Christianity came into being with the destruction of the Jewish State — the adherents were Jews whose Temple and culture had been destroyed. Every new religion, in its foundation myths, slanders its parent faith.”

Lovely. Let's get this straight. So Christianity, founded on a myth, only exists because the Romans destroyed the Temple and murdered up to a million Jews (some historians estimate that high a number for the 70 A.D. war, and a like number later with the later Bar Kochba revolt, when the Romans renamed the region "Palestine") and scattered the rest, and some of these traumatized survivors formed the first the Christian Jews? Most Christians of that first generation were indeed Jews. St Luke is the only Gentile writer of the New Testament (though some claim he was a Hellenized Jew). But nothing supernatural about the origin of Christianity occurred, Mamet seems to say; they only became Christians because they were depressed that the Temple was destroyed, so they made up the Jesus Myth. Nice. And remember as you contemplate that bit of insight that Mamet is a famous playwright and not supposedly some ignorant yahoo.

Mamet also writes: “Afterwards, we find the Christian libel that the Jews killed Christ, the medieval information that we slay Christian children to bake their blood into matzoh, that we were the cause of the Second World War; and, currently, that we exist to murder Moslems.”

• Well, well. Sadly, the “blood libel” has indeed been around for ages, and it is a great evil. Mamet left off that many Medieval people blamed Jews for the Black Death, by the way. And Muslims hate Jews for a host of reasons, and certainly slander them. When they're not killing them.

So, to sum up, the Jewish leaders of Christ's day didn’t kill Christ. (Maybe it was the Buddhists?) I suppose the Romans did the deed just for the heck of it. Pontius Pilot got up that morning and said, "I'm feeling bad today. Go round up some harmless Jewish dreamer and crucify him for me. I'll feel better." "But hey, boss, we got Barabbas. We can crucify him. He's a murderer!" "Naw, an innocent day dreamer is who I want to see crucified today."

And Christians have been slandering Jews ever since? In fact, Mamet quotes St John's Gospel, 8:44: “You are of your father, the Devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the Beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth because the truth is not in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Ouch. But curiously enough, gee whiz, Mamet the playwright doesn't bother to stage the scene. So, allow me to do so. 

• Jesus of Nazareth is brought the "woman caught in the act of adultery" at the beginning of St. John 8. 
• He says His famous, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." 
• So the whole trap they had set blew up in the Pharisees' faces. I suppose Mamet would say that whole scene didn't actually occur. Part of that Christian mythology, dontcha know? 
• Then Our Lord says, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

The Pharisees immediately dispute His self-witness, and assert that "Your witness is not true." So Our Lord Christ goes into long conversation where after much give and take, they insist “Abraham is our father.” (In St Matthew 3:9 the Jews are saying the same thing, "Abraham is our father" so often that St John the Baptist shouts out, "God could raise up children to Abraham from these very stones!") In St John's Gospel scene, Jesus tells them no, they are not Abraham's children for were they Abraham's descendants, "You would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this." 

By this time they're really angry, not least because He obviously knows they plan to kill him (oh, right; it wasn't the Jews!) and they say, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father—God.” Notice how they've moved from Abraham to God? We're now up to verses 42 and 43, and Our Lord says, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word." It is then with verse 44 that He begins the speech Mamet quoted. 

This dramatic scene builds and builds, and is excellent dialogue. It would be fantastic on a stage. Doesn't the playwright notice that? In any event, the whole confrontation goes on until they say, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” Jesus answers them with his famous “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” That's it for the Jews He has been speaking with. Without ever uttering it themselves, they know the Sacred Tetragrammaton, the "I Am Who Am." This unemployed wanderer Who performs endless miracles is claiming to be God Himself, so they take up stones to stone him with, and He disappears from the Temple.

Now, wouldn't that make a fantastic drama on the stage, Mr. Playwright? Oh, yeah, it's mythology. Um, but still...

A Revelation

Perhaps an article like this gives insight for those who might be interested into the intractable separation between Judaism and Christianity. They are non-negotiable. No middle ground can be reached except to go their separate ways, a lot like Abraham and Lot. The average Christian has no idea of how Jews loathe Christians who take their religion seriously. It is widely taught by Jews that a gentile who obeys the Noahide covenant might have some share in the afterlife, but a Christian who tries to convert a Jew will go to the deepest part of Hell for eternity. A wise rabbi, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, famously said “Christianity is Judaism for Gentiles” But his was a rare wisdom, and sorely missed in these times.

But I digress. Armageddon does that to me.

God bless them and have mercy on all of us. 

The Jewish people, or Biblically speaking, the People Israel (St. Paul seems to see a difference), have a major role to play in the End Times. Fr. Mawdsley discusses that with Kennedy Hall here. "ISRAEL: Biblical prophecy of the conversion of the Jews to Christianity with Fr. Mawdsley". This second is a new one: "Jesus is no Zionist. Neither is Moses." Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss is a revelation, and Brother Nathaniel in a clip from his: "Why I Left Judaism", is priceless.

Fr Mawdsley going to get himself banned from YouTube, no matter how pro-Jewish he otherwise is. The other day he had one where he showed video clips of an altar they erected somewhere in Jerusalem (IIRC) where newly reconstituted Levitical priests offered the carcass of a freshly slain lamb up in the fire. The lamb had been butchered somewhere else, but it was a pathetic – truly the word for it – sight. Skinned carcass. Guys in robes awkwardly leaning toward fire. THAT's the religion religious Jews want to bring back?

Most Jews are not "religious observant". I read a Times of Israel article recently about just how religious Israeli Jews actually are. Most Jews in the U.S., which some say has 51 percent of the world's Jews, are not "religious" either. Note this doesn't necessarily mean they're atheists, just not that into God. Being Jewish without God can great if no Muslims are around. Fun festivals, a strong identity, lots of connections. But to really believe it...? Those poor kids at the music festival had a huge statue of the Buddha there. Isn't that like setting up a pillar to Baal or an Asherah? Does anyone besides the religious observant in Israel know about false idols? Do they ever wonder, "Gee, maybe...?"

Asking for a friend, as they say.

           AnP

The BVM Hers was the first face He saw...a contemplation on Mary

Hers was the first face He saw in His new Person, 100 percent God and 100 percent Man, two Natures in One Person, Immanuel, God-with-us; Her face God Almighty first saw with His human eyes. 

Ever think of that?

The first eyes He looked into were Her eyes, the first voice His Divinely perfect ears heard was Her voice. The touching, caressing, all the intimate reality of being a human mother caring for her child, He, Our Most Blessed Lord, could PERFECTLY see, taste, smell, hear, in short, realize in all its intimacy – through Her. AND do so in the womb, as well. Think of that. God Almighty spent nine month's in a Jewish teenagers womb, because he wanted to bring Salvation to us, Jesus, Joshua: Yehoshu'a, which means "YAHWEH is salvation", (from the roots יְהוֹ (yeho) referring to the Hebrew God and יָשַׁע (yasha') meaning "to save").

And let's not forget, God chose HER, and she responded with Her freely given fiat. (Talk about Abraham going to sacrifice Isaac! She knew getting pregnant outside of marriage in her culture meant death by stoning, yet she said, "Yes.")

We cannot even begin to appreciate the power of Their intimacy with One Another. Words fail, it is so glorious. We'll spend Eternity contemplating it.

Rejecting the Mother is most definitely a rejection of the Son, certainly in His Incarnation, and Christianity is all about the Incarnation, a word we don't hear or read much today. 

Thank you, oh Lord God, for what you did and are doing for us through your Incarnation, and thank you, oh Blessed Virgin Mary, for all you've done, and are doing. You are, through our participation in the Seventh Covenant, the Most Holy Eucharist, our Mother, too. We have Our Lord in us, and thus we have you.

An Préachan

A Christmastide Contemplation on the Incarnation

A Christmas meditation on the Incarnation

Amici,

A Blessed and one hopes Merry Christmas 2019 to everyone.

In lieu of an online card, I offer a Christmas-tide reflection on the Incarnation, if wanted. FWIW. I know people don't seem too keen or either philosophy or theology today, certainly you're unlikely to hear any such from a pulpit. (And remember, "back in the day" Presbyterians were supposed to preach at least 45 minutes, all theology! Those were the days!) But human beings are thinkers  – or should be. Aristotle's "rational animals." So here's a little of both philosophy and theology, just because it is Christmas.

Premise: The Incarnation is the fulcrum, the centerpiece, the raison d'être of Christianity.

"...For through the Mystery of the Word made flesh, new radiance from Thy glory hath so shone on the eye of the soul that the recognition of our God made visible draweth us to love what is invisible." From the preface of the Nativity, Proper Prefaces

That's a wonderful, holy insight into the profound power of the Incarnation, but alas, not much understood today. For some would say it is the Crucifixion and Resurrection that is the heart of the Faith, what the Faith is about. Perhaps most would say so. It is curious that while you hear in popular Christianity that "Jesus died for you," you don't hear too much on the Incarnation, not as a subject in itself and what it entails, and can mean, to "the eye of the soul".

One hears a lot about "Jesus, meek and mild," Who died for our sins. But the Incarnation? St. Matthew in 1:22-23 quotes Isaiah 7:14 about a virgin conceiving a son: Matt 22: All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” – which means “God with us”. God with us. Great name. But what does it mean?

(You haven't lived till you've read modern Jewish commentary on how "virgin" there in 7:14 isn't the word for "virgin" but just a "young woman" and the child so born was just another king of Judah, and so on; it is glaring aspect of the massive change in Judaism post the three great 1st/2nd century Jewish Revolts, the first of which destroyed Jerusalem and killed about a million Jews, and the third killed almost another million and saw the expulsion of the Jews from the ancient Land of Israel altogether. After all that Messianic-fever inspired slaughter, the survivors – those who hadn't converted to Christianity along the way – decided Judaism had had enough of Messiahism, and they downplayed passages formerly seen as heralding the Messiah, such as Isaiah 7:14, which Jewish scholars in Alexandria themselves had translated as "parthenos" in the century or so before the advent of Christ.)

But at Christmas one does sometimes hear it commented upon ironically that Easter, which is a superior feast to Christmas, gets less attention than Christmas. Our Lord died on Good Friday and Rose Again on Easter Sunday, after all. Right? Usually, it is chalked up to the commercialization of Christmas as opposed to Easter, which is mostly about bunnies and brightly colored bunny eggs (who knew bunnies laid eggs?).

However, Christmas – as one of the Feasts of the Incarnation – is on par with Easter, for without the Incarnation, we wouldn't have the Resurrection. They are two sides of Christianity's single Incarnational coin. To split that coin is to engage in counterfeit.

Christmas is one of the major Incarnational Feasts, the others being: The Solemnity (these are all Solemnities and require the Solemn High Mass) of the Annunciation, traditionally "Lady Day" in old Catholic England, is celebrated on March 25. It's also known as the Feast of the Incarnation (or Festum Incarnationis). Then there's the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrated on December 8 (her birth is celebrated on September 8.) The Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity became a human being through his Mother's freely willed participation in his Incarnation; hence, her importance to His Incarnation. It would not have happened at all had Mary declined God's offer.

One can say Easter is an Incarnational feast as well, for the Incarnated God is bodily offered up as food for eternal life, mirroring the Pascal Lamb's far more humble, and temporary, sacrifice. (Protestantism was one of those attempts to simplify the Faith, and it deleted the Eucharistic feast as the Real Presence of God in the Flesh, thus leaving its adherents a sort of spiritual junk food, à la carte.)

Christianity is all about the Incarnation, actually, if you consider it a moment. The point of it is to transform us, actually. Hence its necessity. But even as a basic notion, the Incarnation is a radical one, and many reject it. That God became a human being in order to save those of the human race whom He called, and who would choose to turn to Him – that's a Mysterium Fidei, but also a theological puzzle. Why would such an Act be a necessity?

First, consider, this God of ours is not a Supreme Being God (Zeus, Indra, The Dagda) but the Absolute Being God, Being as such, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses, who told Moses that His name is "I AM" and thus identifies as the Absolute Being God, the God the great philosophers of later times would define (Aristotle, Aquinas, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Maimonides, and various others over the centuries, down to today, such as Edward Feser).

Although the great philosophers of the past were able to deduce the existence of Absolute Being, and many of His attributes, only Revelation could reveal that that God (the only God worth the title "God"), became a human being. Obviously, this teaching separates Christianity from both Judaism and Islam, which cannot accept of the Most Holy Trinity. The Most Holy Trinity is a revelation which, if nothing else, introduces the highest love: charity, charitas / agapé, into the very Essence and Being of the Creator. (Absolute Being as absolutely singular, such as described by the Muslim teaching "Tawhid" about Allah, could not have such an interior dynamic within Itself. And Allah doesn't. He's a paroxysm of will, and never described as a lover, but a "willer".)

Yet why the necessity of the Incarnation? There's a question worth pondering, for how you answer it will define how you understand Christianity and how thus you comprehend and interact with God. Why the necessity of becoming a human being and suffering and dying? God is Absolute; if God says something, that something exists. Period. He doesn't need therefore to do anything but to choose of His own will, to accept the prayers of those who turn to Him, surely (sort of like Allah does, according to Muslim teaching, when he's in the mood to be merciful). God sustains all being in being, in existence. If He stops doing that, it all stops – or whatever particular part of it He wants stopped. (Curiously, Islam teaches Allah destroys everything and recreates it all every split second, almost always the way it was before – yet Allah keeps everything going not out of love – which is not exactly an attribute of Allah's to begin with, but rather habit; the Arabic theological term for Allah's habit of keeping things as they are is 'ada).

In contrast, Christianity's God made a Covenant with all Creation, that it was good and real, and blessed in itself (see Genesis 2, the first few verses). Christianity's god is a God of love, as in self-sacrificing love, but also boundless, giving love. Even contractual love, such as in a marriage, for God has made Seven Covenants from the beginning, the last being the Holy Eucharist by which we are transformed in Christ.

Yet one has to respond to that love by transforming one's life, and doing so through participation in God, via entering into the ancient Covenants through Baptism and then the Holy Eucharist. It is in that Sacramental life that we "enter in" to Salvation, our natures changed, ourselves uplifted. In short, orthodox, full-Catholic Christianity is a complex religion. That's a problem for us orthodox Christians, perhaps the biggest. It takes a lot of study, reflection, and prayerful contemplation to understand even initial aspects of the Faith, and because of all that there's been an endless attempt to simplify it, to "boil it down to the basics". Protestantism, on a basic level, was one such attempt; Vatican II another. But one can't "boil it down". Too much is always and ever left out, and the Baby Jesus gets tossed out with the manger hay. Why should it be simple? The Faith is itself a Mysterium Fidei that we'll spend Eternity in contemplation of, after all – we'll never exhaust its beauty; or, if we're in Hell, we'll spend Eternity in repudiation of it.

But the urge to simplify is ever-present. The current pope himself is notorious for how he "doesn't get it", as he clearly gives basically a Lutheran understanding of salvation, with heavy doses of German-originated moral-relativistic "Modernism" as a side dish, and a very sulfuric horderves of Socialism, a political theory which purports to be motivated by Christian charity but in reality is based on and conjures endless envy, the nastiest of the Seven Deadly Sins. However, any reading of the Gospels, especially but not necessarily in conjunction with the rest of the New Testament, clearly shows Our Lord Christ requires superhuman efforts at true, profound moral perfection. "Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5:48 (This idea appears in Deuteronomy 18:13 and Leviticus 19:2, or in St. Paul 2 Corinthians 7:1, and a host of other verses – Philippians 3:15 has an interesting way of putting it.)

Protestants as a whole don't get it, either. They are descendants – of a sort – of St. Augustine, the "Doctor of Grace" and they focus on Christ dying for our sins, as Augustine did. (Augustine is why Western Orthodoxy – Catholicism – has the Crucifix as the most ubiquitous symbol of our Lord, unlike the Christos Pantokrator in the Eastern iconography.) But God is greater than any sin, and could overturn the Fall of Adam and Eve in a second – since it happened in time, and Adam and Eve didn't have a full understanding of what they were getting themselves into. When the Angels fell, on the other hand, being outside of time as we understand it – existing in Eternity, in short – their Fall was made in full knowledge of what they were doing, and it was permanent (being in Eternity, how could it be anything else?).

Yet Historical Christianity teaches that God became Man, while fully remaining God, 100 percent of both, and not inheriting the Fallen Nature of human beings (thus his Mother had to be conceived immaculately, obviously, since He received His human nature fully and solely from His Mother.) And He wants us to be like Him, as the verses quoted above indicate. We obviously can't do that, unless we're fundamentally changed. Now we're on the trail of why the Incarnation was a necessity.

St. Augustine, a dour, reformed hedonist, stressed that Fallen Nature because he had wallowed in it for much of his life, a lot like Martin Luther wallowed in it 1100 years later; yet Saint A felt the full impact of the infusion of grace from God that transformed the moral pagan lout Augustine's nature. So, Saint Augustine stressed ever this so-relevant-to-him personal insight, how it was an unmerited grace that saved him. (Grace ultimately derives from the Greek χᾰ́ρῐς, (kháris), meaning "gift." Also prevalent was the idea of Atonement: that Our Lord Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, suffered the Passion and Crucifixion as a vicarious punishment for our sins and a redemption from them.

Yet Augustine was a Catholic, believing in the Real Presence and the infusion of grace necessary to change our nature, and the necessity of a changed nature, which along with the rest of the Sacraments all involving an ordained priesthood and hierarchy – himself being a bishop; Protestantism differs from Augustine in many ways, but an important one is that it sees no transformation of the sinner, no infused grace, but rather an imputed grace that, in Luther's famous image, is like snow covering a manure pile. For the Catholics and Orthodox, that idea never passed the smell test.

But prior to and encompassing the whole Passion and Crucifixion and Resurrection is the Incarnation, the latter the necessary foundation of the former – but again, why? Why were all these needed? Incarnation, Passion, Crucifixion, Resurrection?

At Christmas we should perhaps ponder the core of the Christian Faith isn't quite only that "God died for your sins" but rather that we are transformed in Christ via His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection. The Easterners (whether in Communion with Rome or not) have always stressed this transformation, and they call it Theosis. It is why the main iconography of Our Lord in the East is Christos Pantokrator, Christ the Ruler of All. In short, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity had to become a human being in order to take on human nature in order to change it, to uplift it, to make us New Creations in Christ.

Simply: God Incarnated into the human race in order to Incarnate the human race into God. The Incarnation was necessary not only for God "to empty himself" (Philippians 2:7) but for God to give us "participation in Himself" (2 Peter 1:4). This is the significance of Christmas; it is the reason for the Incarnation. It is what Salvation is.

This Christmas, therefore, I myself want to contemplate the following, and pass it on to you, for what it is worth:

•    The Incarnation: Absolutely necessary and central to salvation, wherein God becomes a human person, Jesus / Yeshu'a (Yehoshu'a: "Yahweh is salvation").
•    God’s Incarnation didn’t lower God so much as elevate human nature, in Christ, enabling…

•    "Theosis" (Divinization) which by grace χᾰ́ρῐς / kháris); a word originally meaning just "gift") – not by nature – is our incorporation into Christ, raising us up to participate in His Divinity (as St. Peter teaches in 2 Peter 1.4). Usually described in the Western Church as an Infusion of Grace, it means our natures are changed. (Compare to Protestantism's Imputation of Grace: God assigns grace to us but doesn’t actually divinize or change our nature; i.e. Luther's manure pile.)

•    St. Athanasius the Great (296-373): "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God" (i.e., participate in the inner life of the Trinity). (De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B) and [CCC 460]

•    St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274): "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (Opusc. 57, 1-4) [CCC 460]
•    This teaching is stated in many ways throughout the New Testament, and is heavy in St. John:

•    John 1:12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Obviously, a new creation.) Reread the first three chapters of St. John's Gospel, and then chapter 6, for a powerful meditation on what the Incarnation means.

•    This teaching is also central to St. Paul: 2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (Again, a new creation) 2 Peter 1:4 might well put it best; see also St. Paul in Romans, 6:4, 7:6, 12:2; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-12. (Protestants, the Biblical literalists, somehow see all these passages, especially the extended Eucharistic discussion in John 6, as being merely metaphorical; literary devices, basically.)

•    And note how Theosis makes sense of Our Lord's teachings. In general, Our Lord Jesus seems to demand the impossible of “ordinary” humans. In Matthew 5, during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives the Beatitudes, then says we are “salt of the earth” and “light of the world”, discusses how He has come not to do away with the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them – and the point of both Law and Prophets was to perfect us. Our Lord discusses elevated behavior regarding anger, adultery, divorce, making oaths and not retaliating (“turn the other cheek”) and love our enemies. He ends with "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) That is something manifestly impossible for “normal” human beings to do.

There it is, a mere suggestion of the complexity and profundity of Historical Christianity, of the East and West. John Paul II used to like to say he wanted the Church to "breathe with both lungs", which of course the 14 separate,  Autocephalous Orthodox Churches not in Communion with Rome just laughed off. But the first thousand years of Eastern theology was just as Catholic as Saint Augustine's theology was, and it is worth dwelling a bit on it.

A Blessed Christmas and Excellent New Year to all.

An Préachán

Pope Francis gets it exactly backwards in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium

A friend posting at OnePeterFive mentioned (and kindly linked to) Bergoglio outragous comment in the pope's Apostolic  Exhortation EVANGELII GAUDIUM, section 161, that:

It would not be right to see this call to growth exclusively or primarily in terms of doctrinal formation. It has to do with “observing” all that the Lord has shown us as the way of responding to his love. Along with the virtues, this means above all the new commandment, the first and the greatest of the commandments, and the one that best identifies us as Christ’s disciples: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12). Clearly, whenever the New Testament authors want to present the heart of the Christian moral message, they present the essential requirement of love for one’s neighbour: “The one who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the whole law… therefore love of neighbour is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom 13:8, 10). These are the words of Saint Paul, for whom the commandment of love not only sums up the law but constitutes its very heart and purpose: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’” (Gal 5:14).

Ambaist! What a perversion to write this. Read John 15, from the first verse to 17. Note how not so subtly Bergoglio perverts it. St. John is quoting Our Lord as saying, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.  If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love." (Verses 9-10) Clearly the idea is to be right with with God, to place God first, as He must be, necessarily so. One cannot "love" (in the high sense, charitas, agapē) without loving God first. Matthew 22:37-39 "Jesus declared, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.’" 

Instead, as my friend pointed out, Bergoglio makes a Humanist statement, not a Catholic theological one. As I wrote in answer to his post:

Naturally, Bergi has got it exactly backward. First things first, and God necessarily – by essential definition – comes first; but our Caudillo puts Man first, and of course he puts himself first among men.

What kills me is it is all so banal, so lame, so stupid -- could anyone design anything more likely to turn off people to religion than the Vatican II Church and its Bergoglio? What homosexuality is to procreation, what Modernism is to Aquinas, what the N.O. is to the TLM, that's what the Vat2 Church is to Catholicism.

AnP

Answer to Mike about "Wacky goings-on within the Church"

Hi Mike,

You write:

As I read about all this wacky goings-on within the Church, I cannot help but recall the words from Matthew 16 where Jesus says to Peter, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."  Seems to be quite a promise.  Gotta believe that Jesus knew what he was talking about. 

MIKE

I've been thinking how to answer this one, Michael. Three options come to mind.

I suppose Option 1 is to get on the Vat2 Church Bandwagon, i.e., become a Progressive Modernist oneself. They're in power now, and so many in the hierarchy, whatever their personals beliefs, are now "out and proud" pro-Gay Progressives. They're weather vanes, they blow which way the wind blows.

Option 1 stinks, of course. Anyone who really believes the religion, accepts it as Divine Revelation, can't join The Church of What's Happening Now. That's an act of non-belief in itself.

Option 2 is to cry up, "To your tents, O Israel!" as Jeroboam did in King Rehoboam's day. It has lots of drama, but it didn't work out so well for the Northern Kingdom, soon conquered by sin, unbelief, and scattered to the four winds by the Assyrians. That's the Protestant option -- and there are now 20,000 Protestant denominations. They scattered. A cacophony. There's also cacophony on the Orthodox side of things (big "O" crowd, not those in Communion with Rome); they are hopelessly divided along linguistic and national lines, and that's the looming fate of the mainstream Western Church that doesn't return to the Latin Mass. (This "nationalization" is something that can't be reversed, really, except by a "conversion" to the TLM!)

So, what's behind Door Number 3?

Recently, to the extent I pay attention to religious sites, I look a good bit at OnePeterFive and a handful of others. Not much chance recently to blog anything. But it is clear from what I read that "Conservative" Catholics, those Middle-of-the-Roaders (aka Magisterium Catholics) who tend toward orthodoxy -- probably the actual majority of Catholics in the world -- are pretty much at the end of their rope. Hence my comments about Robert Royal and Fr. Murray. Another season or two of The Bergoglio Show and they'll become Hindu Kanwariyas, making their pilgrimage to the Ganges, singing to Shiva.

As a "Trad" Catholic, I don't really care too much about the Progressive (Left-Wing) Catholics; they're not Catholic any more, except in their own minds, sort of like Mormons consider themselves "Christian". One can, after all, only walk so far out on the plank before one falls into the sea. Deny you've fallen into water, deny you're drowning: fine; but one's denials don't change reality.

Of course I feel very sorry for the Magisteriums. Their bishops are either aiders and abetters in the Gay / Modernist / Secularist takeover of the Church, or they are somnolent zombies. (The left-tending Magisteriums are very similar to the Progressives, and seem unable to "read the signs of the times." Or perhaps they've given up reading; theirs is a "feel good" faith!)

Zombie bishops: take the U.S. bishop's recent vote on June 12th to (what, exactly? Endorse? Accept? Ratify? -- classic Vat2 "creative ambiguity!) Bergoglio's condemnation of the Death Penalty, for example: they voted 194 to 8 to favor Bergi's heresy, with three abstaining. The Catechism will be "reformulated".

Now, take note that the bishops use a secret ballot, so we cannot know their names! We don't know who the eight orthodox ones are, though perhaps we can guess. But aside the heresy the 194 are embracing, consider that we have, in effect, a "faceless bureaucracy" voting to do X, Y, and Z, and no actual individual is responsible. A bishop is God-on-earth to his diocese, God's vicar, His stand-in, God's direct representative, accountable on Earth (as it is currently sent up) only to the pope, who as top bishop (he's not consecrated pope, but elected; it is a juridical-executive position as God's vicar general on Earth, as it were) and court of final appeal. In that capacity, a pope can remove or discipline a bishop. Over the past century or so, the Vatican has come to be the sole appointer of bishops, too. The episcopal bench used to be locally elected (by Cathedral chapters) and only affirmed by Rome when the news eventually got to Rome. Occasionally a pope would appoint a bishop directly, but that was usually an archbishop. By the time the first trans-Atlantic cables were laid (mid-19th century), the pope at that time began to assume "up close and personal" control of bishops (he of Vatican I fame, Pio Nono).

Speaking of archbishops, the archbishops currently have some small role to play today in lower bishops' Church discipline, too, but the archbishops should be the ones directly answerable to the pope, and responsible for managing their suffragan bishops -- there are over 5000 bishops in the world, and that's far too many for the Vatican to directly manage. It used to be that the pope of the time would send a pallium to a local bishop (or include the man with the pallium!) to manage a nation's bishops, to be the pope's man-on-the-scene, the archbishop. The buck always stopped at the archbishop -- though on very rare occasions it might be passed to Rome. But as it is now, there's just no actual responsibility for overseeing the overseers (the definition of episkopoi) except these faceless national bishop conferences and ultimately the faceless Vatican bureau responsible for bishops. All these insulate the pope from direct responsibility.

So, while these national bishops' conferences are not the actual Church rulers in each country in terms of God-ordained responsibility, yet, for all intents and purposes, they actually govern the national Churches of each nation! AND they're essentially anonymous! Say you are one of the eight against the 194 (sort of like the Seven Against Thebes) -- you oppose the heretical pope (for heretic Bergoglio is, as he himself evinces about every time he opens his mouth, as with this Amazon synod ) -- but now you're stuck with going against your conscience because of some anonymous vote!

Needless to say, were I a bishop, I would resign from the bishop conference and explain why, and in effect dare the bureaucrats (in the national bishop conference or Rome) to remove me! All that garbage is yet another rotten fruit of the Animus of Vatican II. But it is running the Church -- into the grave.

Of course, none of them have that kind of chutzpah, if I may use that word.

So were does that leave us? What's behind Door Number Three. The Gates of Hell will not prevail, as Matthew says, but then Scripture is written on many levels, like a Shakespeare play. And it raises the question: What is the Church? The old answer is the faithful laity of the bishops who are in Communion with the pope in Rome. But what happens when the pope is a heretic? It is a Scylla and Charybdis situation: you can't be Catholic and not be in Communion with the pope and yet you can't be in Communion with a heretic.

What to do with a heretic pope? Can anything be done? The question has been asked in the past and various saints and theologians have put forward various answers, but the bottom-line is we have to wait it out, to let God Himself take care of it. We just need to be prayerful and suffering. Suffering is at the core of the Faith, so suffer, offer it up. No actual mechanism exists to judge a sitting pope, after all. Some writers I like say Bergoglio is a "severe mercy" God has afflicted us with, in order to trash out and drive a stake through the unquiet corpse that is the Vatican II Church. That's probably true. Even Satan himself, the top (lowest?) guy, does God's will, much against Satan's will and much to his eternal chagrin. And it is a trope of Greek tragedy that the king who acts to prevent a prophecy from coming true, well, in that very act he brings about the circumstances that eventuate the prophecy!

The Door Three option isn't purely passive, either. We can certainly stop funding the dying Vatican II Church, taking care only of our local orthodox priests and monastic communities. (This is what mostly happens today -- the mainstream Church lives off of U.S. government money given out for "refugees".) That's hard to do in any event because Pope Plutarco Elías Calles will unleash his gay Federalis against them at any time. True, we've yet to rise up in a La Cristiada revolución against Pope Callous Calles Bergoglio, but it's coming, in God's good time. (What we really need is a General Enrique Gorostieta, of course.) "Viva Christo Rey!" we should all be saying, as the Cristeros shouted when they shot up the Federalis down in Old Mexico. Of course, the mainstream Church betrayed them, then. But now it has betrayed itself. 

The Bottom Line

All we can do is try to live like Catholics ought to live -- as any good Christian ought to live, whatever their perception of what "Church" is: i.e., if you live by the Gospels, you should know that The Figure therein -- Yehoshu'a, Joshua of Nazareth, is interested in primarily two things: how we treat one another, A, and B, whether we recognize Him. "Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect", said Joshua of Nazareth (Matthew 5:18). In the Historical Church (Catholicism and the Orthodoxies) that means baptism and then Holy Communion, by which we "take on Christ", "put on Christ" become "new creations in Christ" (St. Paul used various ways to say this). Protestantism rejects the Holy Eucharist being God Himself and thus deletes the possibility of this Transformation/Divinization in Christ, what the Greeks call Theosis. For Protestants, as Luther taught, we can't be perfect and are manure piles covered with God's grace, entering Heaven shining outside but reeking of filth within. But that is clearly NOT what the New Testament teaches, and the New Testament is not the 27 books of the Bible Christians use, but the Holy Eucharist itself, the Seventh Covenant, the one God made with Himself, Father and Son, through Himself, the Holy Spirit.

The Most Holy Lord God of Hosts would not pour Himself into walking manure piles.

This "be perfect as your Heavenly Father is" is also NOT what Jorge Bergoglio teaches -- to the extent he's revealed his mind on this, it is Lutheran, and how can that be surprising since Modernism developed in Lutheran 19th century Germany? Modernism is essentially Lutheran: we're incapable of fulfilling Matthew 5:18, so "sin boldly, Philip," as Luther wrote Melanchthon. Isn't that exactly what Pope Francis teachers? Anyone who teaches otherwise, he says, is a Pharisee.

Whatever. It's a crazy world. Always was. Hold on, Mike. The krill of the Modernists have been swallowed by the humpbacked whale and we orthodox minority are like Marlin and Dori, the fish in Finding Nemo, about to be blown out through the whale's blow spout as the krill remain behind to be digested.

Well, something intestinal like that! :D

An Préachán

Christmas and Incarnation: What Does It Mean? Christmas readings and thoughts

Christmas is about the Incarnation, the central mystery and most profound revelation of Christianity. God becomes a human person, Jesus / Joshua: Yeshu'a (Yehoshu'a: "Yahweh is salvation").

Stunning. We who grew up with it are too used to it, perhaps, and "pop" religion brings Jesus down to a magical free-escape ticket from Hell, an nonjudgmental hippie or guru figure offering the certainty of "rapture" or even a Pentecostal nirvana-state in which to lose one's self in here and now. But Christianity is not a "get out of jail card" for a Narcissistic self, and the Incarnation is the most stunning revelation – in any religion anywhere. If you don't "get" the Incarnation, you won't truly grasp the significance of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, both of which are dependent on the Incarnation.

The Incarnation is the most radical idea revealed to the world since Moses asked God His Name. The Incarnation is a teaching that stood Judaism on its head and split it in pieces from the moment Jewish leaders understood what Jesus of Nazareth was claiming, while Islam has ceaselessly – ceaselessly – fought against it with fire and sword and slavery and slaughter.

Christianity is unique to the three Monotheistic religions because it insists on the Incarnation, on God becoming Man. Judaism rejects this teaching with horror, as does Islam, to such an extent that Islam can be said to exist in order to deny the Incarnation. Islam exists on many levels, of course: politically as a Herrenvolk religion, designed to enable a few to rule masses of subjected peoples; it is an economy, too – and originally a slave economy: it emptied cites through slavery and closed trade in the Mediterranean except for slavery, in the process destroying the Late Ancient/Early Medieval European world, funding the Viking Age and reducing the Cradle of Civilization to a vast dustbowl; and finally Islam exists as a political and juridical system. But as a religion per se, from its oldest existent writings on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem down to its latest murder, Islam's main point is to deny the Incarnation.

Historical Christianity, traditional Catholicism and the Orthodoxies, teach that the Incarnation was necessary to transform our human nature by the Infusion of Grace the Incarnation made possible, for in taking on human Nature, God elevated it. God changed our natures. Transformed us – "pro multis", those of us participating in this Salvation through Baptism and the other Sacraments. In the process, the world itself and all that's in it is also transformed. The Lord God, through His Incarnation, is still creating, He is Re-creating. As St. Anselm (see further below) put it, Creation's "lost beauty [is] endowed with inexpressible new grace." Christians are re-created. This is Salvation. Faith isn't a "leap in the dark" of fevered belief, especially not belief against evidence, but one's conscious intellectual acceptance of the truths that the Universal Church, East and West, has taught from the beginning.

Christmas should not therefore be merely the celebration of "God's birthday", the birth of Yeshu'a in Bethlehem. It's nothing less than the source-point of Yahweh Is Salvation, the Re-Creation of Creation. As the 1962 Missal translates part of the Offertory from the Latin: "O God, who in creating human nature, didst wonderfully dignify it, and hast still more wonderfully restored it, grant that, by the mystery of this water and wine, we may become partakers of His divine nature, who deigned to become partaker of our human nature."

And the Incarnation must necessarily be about Mary, too, whose fiat made the Incarnation possible. Mother and Child are inseparable. Then, and now, at Christmas. And the Cross.

The God Whom earth, and sea, and sky
Adore, and laud, and magnify,
Whose might they own, whose praise they tell,
In Mary’s body deigned to dwell.

O Mother blest! The chosen shrine
Wherein the Architect divine,
Whose hand contains the earth and sky,
Vouchsafed in hidden guise to lie.

Blest in the message Gabriel brought;
Blest in the work the Spirit wrought;
Most blest, to bring to human birth

The long desired of all the earth.

O Lord, the Virgin-born, to Thee
Eternal praise and glory be,
Whom with the Father we adore

And Holy Ghost for ever more.

Text: Venantius Fortunatus 530-609 (As found in my Little Office of the Blessing Virgin Mary; see also: https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/god_whom_earth_and_sea_and_s.htm for sheet music, etc.)

A few of the Incarnation's meanings as found in the New Testament: The Elevation of the human race, Theosis as the Greeks call it, is what Saint Paul calls being made a new creation in Christ. More than a metaphor, it is absolutely necessary and central to salvation.
•    God’s Incarnation didn’t lower God but rather elevates human nature, enabling…
•    "Theosis" (Divinization) which by grace – not by nature – is our incorporation into Christ, raising us up to participate in His Divinity (as St. Peter teaches in 2 Peter 1.4). Usually described in the Western Church as an Infusion of Grace, our natures are changed, whereas Protestantism teaches Imputation of Grace: i.e., God assigns or imputes grace to us but doesn’t actually divinize or change our nature. (Luther explained the Protestant teaching via his famous "manure pile covered in snow" metaphor. C.S. Lewis carefully disagrees with this central Protestant idea in the 10th of his Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer.)

This Theosis teaching is stated in many ways throughout the New Testament. Examples:

•    John 1:12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Obviously, a new creation)
•    2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (Again, a new creation) 2 Peter 1:4 might well put it best; see also Romans, 6:4, 7:6, 12:2; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-12.

•    St. John refers to it explicitly. Gospel of John 3:3-8, the famous "born again" passages, read from the Historical Church's understanding instead of the Protestant one. One is born anew in Baptism, via the water and the Spirit, a new creation, born of the Spirit.

•    Two Old Testament examples: Isaiah 65:17; Ezekiel 36:25-26

•    Much is asked of this New Man, this New Creation. In general, note how Our Lord seems to demand the impossible of “ordinary” humans. In Matthew 5, during the Sermon on the Mount, Our Lord gives the Beatitudes, then says we are “salt of the earth” and “light of the world”, discusses how He has come not to do away with the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them. Christ discusses elevated behavior regarding anger, adultery, divorce, making oaths and not retaliating (“turn the other cheek”) and love our enemies. He ends with "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." (5:48) That is something manifestly impossible for “normal” human beings to do.

•   We are not "normal"; as St Paul puts it "And such some of you were; but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God." (1 Cor 6:11; note the order: baptism first, then the work of sanctification/moral living, then justification.)

The New Testament shows what the first generation of Believers preached of this New Creation, while the Medievals repeatedly give a strong sense of the stunning quality of the Incarnation.

•    St. Athanasius: "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." (De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B) and [CCC 460]

•    St. Thomas Aquinas: "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (Opusc. 57, 1-4) [CCC 460]

From a sermon by Saint Anselm, bishop (1033/4–1109)

Blessed Lady, sky and stars, earth an rivers, day and night – everything that is subject to the power or use of man—rejoice that through you they are in some sense restored to their lost beauty and are endowed with inexpressible new grace. All creatures were dead, as it were, useless for human beings or for the praise of God, who made them. The world, contrary to its true destiny, was corrupted and tainted by the acts of human beings who served idols. Now all creation has been restored to life and rejoices that it is controlled and given splendor by those who believe in God.

The universe rejoices with new and indefinable loveliness. Not only does it feel the unseen presence of God Himself, its Creator, it sees him openly working and making it holy. These great blessings spring from the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb.

Through the fullness of the grace that was given you, dead things rejoice in their freedom and those in heaven are glad to be made new. Through the Son who was the glorious fruit of your virgin womb, just souls who died before his life-giving death rejoice as they are freed from captivity, and the angels are glad at the restoration of their shattered domain.

Lady, full and overflowing with grace, all creation received new life from your abundance. Virgin, blessed above all creatures, through your blessing all creation is blessed, not only creation from its Creator, but the Creator Himself has been blessed by creation.

To Mary God gave his only-begotten Son, whom he loved as himself. Through Mary God made himself a Son, not different but the same, by nature Son of God and Son of Mary. The whole universe was created by God, and God was born of Mary. God created all things and Mary gave birth to God. The God who made all things gave himself form through Mary, and thus he made his own creation. He who could create all things from nothing would not remake his ruined creation without Mary.

God, then, is the Father of the created world and Mary the mother of the re-created world. God is the Father by whom all things were given life, and Mary the mother through whom all things were given new life. For God begot the Son, through whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to him as the Savior of the world. Without God’s Son, nothing could exist; without Mary’s son, nothing could be redeemed.

Truly the Lord is with you, to whom the Lord granted that all nature should owe as much to you as to himself.

And from Saint Lawrence Justinian, bishop (Lorenzo Giustiniani, 1 July 1381 – 8 January 1456)

While Mary contemplated all she had come to know through reading, listening and observing, she grew faith, increased in merits, and was more illuminated by wisdom and more consumed by the fire of charity. The heavenly mysteries were opened to her, and she was filled with joy; she became fruitful by the Spirit, was being directed toward God, and watched over protectively while on earth.

So remarkable are the divine graces that they elevate one from the lowest depths to the highest summit, and transform on to a great holiness. How entirely blessed was the mind of the Virgin which, through the indwelling and guidance of the Spirit, was always and in every way open to the power of the Word of God. She was not led by her own senses, nor by her own will; thus she accomplished outwardly through her body what wisdom from within gave to her faith.

It was fitting for divine Wisdom, which created itself a home in the Church, to use the intervention of the most blessed Mary in guarding the law, purifying the mind, giving an example of humility and providing a spiritual sacrifice.

Imitate her, O faithful soul. Enter into the deep recesses of your heart so that you may be purified spiritually and cleansed from your sins. God places more value on good will in all we do than on the works themselves.

Therefore, whether we give ourselves to God in the work of contemplation or whether we serve the needs of our neighbor by good works, we accomplish these things because the love of Christ urges us on. The acceptable offering of the spiritual purification is accomplished not in a man-made temple but in the recesses of the heart where the Lord Jesus freely enters.

"Imitate her, O faithful soul." Indeed.

Christmas. As with so much else that is from God, it is a bit more than perhaps we bargained for. Merry Christmas to all.

An Préachán