Better than synthesis

The Victory of Truth over Heresy, by Peter Paul Rubens, Museo del Prado, Madrid

The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian. Saint Jerome, Dialogue Against the Luciferians, ca. 359 AD.

Arianism was embraced and advocated by the followers of Arius, who asserted that Christ was not God like the Father, but a creature made in time.   This heresy would formally and finally be rejected by the Council of Constantinople, but in the middle of the fourth century, the Church was wracked with conflict over the nature of Jesus Christ, and His divinity. For a time, the wrong understanding, Arianism, had a hold on many of her members and even bishops.  This is the sad situation that Jerome laments.

False understanding of Jesus’ identity and nature has always been attractive, especially to believe that He is special, blessed, talented, and amazing – but not God.  Even in our own time it is not rare to encounter people – some of them even considering themselves Christian – who would assert that Jesus was “a great teacher” or some such, but not God, even though Arius’ formulation was completely rejected.  But I recently came across an explanation of how the Church brought a great good out of this Arian evil.  

Reading Cardinal Francis George’s last book, A Godly Humanism (CUA Press, 2015), I found this footnote:  Indeed, for Augustine, the Church, in her serene guardianship of the truth, can take even heresy in her stride: “Only because of the heretics in her midst could the Church find a more exact way to express herself in words, and the orthodox were preserved in their right-thinking because of the false thinkers among them…. For example, was any complete account of the Trinity available before the Arians began to bay at it…. Nor had the unity of Christ’s body [the Church] been discussed in such a developed way until [the Donatist] division began to trouble the weaker brethren.”; Saint Augustine of Hippo, Expositions of the Psalms: 51-72 at Psalm 54:22, trans. Maria Boulding, OSB.

Wow.  What a way to look at false teaching:  Only because of the heretics in her midst could the Church find a more exact way to express herself in words.   Often when I am leading people in the Faith, I point out that the nature of the Holy Trinity, hinted at but not explained in Scripture, was not articulated until late in the fourth century, and then by the official acts of the Church.  But never had it clearly formed in my mind that the Church did so because a false teaching not only was proposed, but also was widely embraced within the Church herself.  

The one and only Church, in her holiness and her catholicity (that is, universality), is able to encounter and engage any and all interpretations and explanations of God and man, identify what in them is true and consonant with the Faith, and not simply reject but also fruitfully respond to what is false or erroneous in them.  This is true whether the error arise from outside the body of the Church or even within it.

The history of the Faith is filled with examples of this essential faculty of the Church, and its exercise in the authentic development of how Christ Jesus is taught and revealed.  There is no reason to doubt that this faculty abides and is at work even now in the Church, any more than we could expect false teachings to cease to spring from the minds of individuals, from intentions good or ill, and for those errors to appeal to and divert “the weaker brethren.”  In fact, it might provide great solace to remind ourselves that this ability to bring good and clarity out of evil and error is still intrinsic to the Church.

So rather than groan, or perhaps after indulging one hearty groan, we who are in the world should remind ourselves that Only because of the heretics in her midst could the Church find a more exact way to express herself in words – and get on with it.

Monsignor Smith

Afterword

There’s a dried-out red poinsettia leaf on the stair.  Dang.  

Once Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord roll through with all attendant solemnity, comes the time to de-Christmas the church.  And the campus.  And the rectory.

Our adopt-a-poinsettia program found good homes for dozens of the potted plants; that left only about, oh, a couple hundred others.  Anthony Dao, our Factotum of Facilities, spent most of a week removing all that had been so carefully placed in just a few hours on Christmas Eve.  Mind you, he is only one, whereas that morning there were twenty or so folks helping to decorate, so his more measured rate of removal is understandable.

All the figures in the nativity scene in the church, in front of the church, and now by the back driveway of the campus, all went into their off-season lodgings first.  The Holy Name men waited until the coldest morning so far this year to swing by and dismantle, move, and store the various components of their shelters.  

The two trees in the church are sitting outside now, getting used to the weather, waiting to learn where they will grace the campus.  The three trees in the rectory came down on successive days, starting with the little one in my sitting room, decorated with all the nostalgic and handmade ornaments I have accumulated, back to the ceramic snowman Miss Taylor gave her fifth-graders back in …oh, never mind the year.  Then the big elegant one in the dining room, where we would have had all of our festive meals if the Grinch Variant hadn’t crushed the social season.  Finally, the Parishioner Tree in the front office came down, with fifty-six family photo cards carefully removed and stored for reference.  

Just like in the church, where the altar cloth and hangings for Ordinary Time come out, so the more mundane trappings of domestic life replace their festive-themed accessories in the rectory.  It takes time and effort, but nobody objects.  The poinsettias, though, seem to put up more of a fight, if only psychologically.  You see, they’re still fine.  They’re still pretty.  They don’t bother anybody.  But it has to be done; if I move quickly, when everybody is distracted at the beginning of the day, out they go before anybody can object.  Well, except for the odd dry leaf.

So, as you noticed, the Team is back; Fathers Santandreu and Novajosky are returned, and already up to their eyeballs in Canon Law classes.  They allow how they are happy to be here; I know I am glad to have them.  I know YOU are glad to have them, as they provide the variety that is the spice of our liturgical life around here.  We have also found a frequent-flyer in Fr. Jose Cortes, of the St. John Paul II Shrine, who heroically offered to help me when I was alone on Epiphany weekend, and has kept coming back for the joy of your company, since his Shrine has stayed closed.

And once the Wedding Feast at Cana has concluded, then what?  What’s to look forward to?  Oh boy, an extra week of NFL playoffs?  (Ask Father Santandreu about the Bills’ prospects!)  February, burrowed into our homes to avoid catching anything?  Finding out by how much we can exceed the snow removal budget?  Ordinary Time might be too fancy a term for it!  But we are ready; the halls are all thoroughly undecked.

Is it Lent yet?

Monsignor Smith

Big, unwieldy, empty jars

They have no wine. (John 2:3b)

Mary, Mother of God, tells her Son: They have no wine.  The fact, the notice, the words spoken; together, the situation elicits from our Lord the first of his signs.   

Jesus’ changing of water into wine is a miracle of deep delight, familiar and approachable in a way that others are not, a divine endorsement of our desires for abundance and festivity.  So much wine, such goodness!  Easy to overlook is the necessary precondition, the wedding without wine: the disappointment, the shame, someone’s failure.  They have no wine.  

Where people had been able to provide enough wine, God’s desire to reveal Himself would have found no opportunity.  Nobody would have missed it; they would have celebrated and gone home satisfied, unaware of the good wine they lacked.

Where Christ had not been present, once the wine failed there would have been only indignation, accusation, recrimination, and regret.  Does that sound familiar?  Indignation, accusation, recrimination, and regret have become the weapons of our day, weapons of mass destruction deployed to shred the social fabric and deprive every endeavor of the possibility of convivium, the life-giving coming-together humans crave.

The list of possible reasons for the lack of wine at that Cana wedding is not only terribly long – human error, malice, mischief, poverty, climate, in a thousand combinations – but also completely absent from the Gospel account and far from the minds of all who witness the great work of Jesus, both that day and our own.  It is almost as if it is not important; not a worthy matter for inquiry; a commonplace.

They have no wine is the default reality of the human condition.  Long before we encountered the great supply chain crisis of our moment, people knew that as a matter of fact, there is usually not enough, and even for special occasions, it is hard to obtain enough – enough of anything and everything that we need.

But worse than that is when what fails is not stuff we want or need, but our personal resources, our very selves.  When someone we care about deeply, someone for whom we bear responsibility personal, familial, or professional, is engulfed in danger, pain, and consternation, and looks around for rescue, we realize what we lack.  Every father of a gravely sick child, soldier who cannot reach his wounded comrade, loving friend of a hopeless addict, comes to the horrible realization that I have no wine.  Left to ourselves, the indignation, accusation, recrimination, and regret come from within us.  

These days, circumstances have conspired to bring many of us to this point, the moment past desperate hope when helplessness sets in.  One too many efforts has failed; one too many hopes has been dashed; one too many upswings has trended down again.  Surrounded by an aggressive culture that works its wicked will by indignation, accusation, recrimination, and regret, we turn on ourselves and one another. 

People who can take care of themselves do not need a rescuer; people who can provide for themselves do not need providence; people with everything under control have no idea where or who God is.  They have no wine is the place where God Who makes Himself known has the opportunity to get our attention, and give us not only what we need but far, far better than we could earn or achieve or obtain for ourselves or the ones we love.

People who have enough wine will never get the good stuff that can only be given by our Divine Lord.  You will know you are ready for it, and for Him, when you are ready to admit: I have no wine.  

Monsignor Smith

Sunup

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. (Genesis 1:1-5)

As you and I force ourselves to write 2022, on those rare occasions we hand-write the date, we think of this as a beginning.  A new year, after all, begins, and a new calendar, somehow a new trajectory, a new course of days is launched.  Some make resolutions, some make merry; it is a beginning.  But stop and think about the beginning, described above.

First, realize that there is a true beginning to all creation, and behind that creation is the will and work of the Creator, God.  Realize, too, before descending into the details of how and when, that there is a why: because it is good.  Being is good; all creation’s being, and yours and mine too: good.  From the beginning.

God creates light, and sees that it is good; but there remains darkness.  There remains what does not have the goodness of God’s creating will.  God divides the one from the other, but does not eliminate the other.  

So it is at the beginning; so it is in this year’s beginning.  Even as we mark this beginning, the original echoes: certain darknesses are too much with us.  These weeks have been marked by a resurgent darkness that has shuttered much of our celebratory light; I have named it the Grinch Variant for its uncanny ability to take the joy out of Christmas.  Families came together, only to share the virus with one another.  Caution kept people one from another, and from the common celebration of the true light in our midst.  And now that our holiday time, thus gutted, is ended, even the tenuous, new-normal practices by which we provided and enjoyed many aspects of the common life that nurtures our life, fall short.  Will we never begin to emerge?

We can lapse into cyclical, inescapably recurring fatalism.  The hapless would-be pagans who rejoiced at the solstice know that is not a new thing, a new reality – simply the same sun, on its same course, redisposed according to our planet’s revolution to be more, rather than less, in the course of our day.   Even that increase heralds not all the desired changes.  “As the days grow longer, the cold grows stronger” a dear friend’s mother taught us.  Brace yourselves.  

But we are not bound by pagan darkness of mind; we know of the beginning; the true beginning that indicates an end, a goal, a purpose; the beginning that already includes the accomplisher of that end.  That is the true beginning present in the beginning we celebrate now.  We can see it, if we can hear the words of John who speaks the good news.  

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)

He hearkens to that same beginning, those same words that announced and describes the first beginning, but with a difference:  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. (John 1:14) 

This is the light that is not and will not be overcome by the darkness; Who gives light to our eyes and to our steps.   Every beginning, even one so filled with frustration as the one we undertake now, is made authentic because it acknowledges this light, and anticipates its accomplishment of that same will that underlay the first beginning, Creation: that it be good.  The Word has become flesh, and our eyes have seen His glory.  Behold, He makes all things new.  

Happy, new, year.  It’s a beginning.

Monsignor Smith