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

 

Set Me as a seal on your heart

Crossing the Potomac on the bridge the CSX railroad shares with Appalachian Trail hikers as well as less ambitious walkers like me, I saw them: the padlocks.   Many alien objects cling to that old bridge, from the disintegrating wooden crosspieces that held the ancient telephone wires, to neon-colored stickers for musical groups and outdoor equipment.  But most eye-catching are the padlocks on the fencing, brackets, and every fixture or protuberance that will hold them.

Padlocks on the CSX bridge over the Potomac.  
The couple you see here did not add to the padlocks.

Years ago, while still living in Rome, I first saw this bizarre phenomenon: clusters of padlocks clinging to the ancient and elegant bridges there: the Ponte degli Angeli, the Ponte Sisto.  In response to my baffled question, someone explained to me that there had been a movie, or maybe a television show, featuring a young couple desperately enamored of one another who visited Paris.  While strolling the City of Lights, the moon-eyed twosome paused on one of the beautiful bridges there to pledge their undying affection. One of them whipped out a padlock and clicked it to the rail as a token of their enduring love.  Millions of people saw that show, and bought padlocks; the bridges of the world now sag beneath the burden.

The padlock phenomenon reflects the universal human desire to make visible what is invisible, and to make permanent what is best, highest, and most beautiful in us.  It does not necessarily take a padlock, because human genius can come up with an infinite variety of ways to try to do this.  But because human genius is a reflection of the divine genius, God Himself is the one to ‘pull it off’, to make visible what is invisible, and make permanent the highest of which we are fleetingly capable, love.  

That is why we come, to adore Him Who is the invisible God in human flesh, His own love; the eternal Word of the Father, spoken from before all eternity, which shall not pass away. 

Christmas is very much about what we see, what finally we are able to see. Hidden but growing in His mother’s womb for nine months since His Incarnation, the enfleshment of God, now He appears at His Nativity, His birth, revealed before the marveling eyes of all who heed the host of angels.  What is by nature invisible, God, makes Himself visible.  Jesus is God’s ‘padlock.’

This is clearly laid out in the ancient text of the Preface of the Nativity, the prayer of the Mass after the Offering is completed, which follows the Lift up your hearts dialogue and precedes the Holy Holy Holy.

For in the mystery of the Word made flesh a new light of your glory has shone upon the eyes of our mind, so that, as we recognize in him God made visible, we may be caught up through him in love of things invisible.

At Christmas, we recognize in the infant whom we see, the invisible God we long to see.  And in that last phrase of the preface, where we pray to be ‘caught up,’ the Latin verb is rapiamur, a very strong, dramatic expression that means snatched up; embraced and taken away.  There is almost a violence to it.  Through our adoration of this baby we can see, we want to be snatched up and carried away into love of the things of God, divine reality, eternal life, and love, which until now had been invisible.   

God’s padlock is now visible, like the ones the couples write their names on and clasp to the bridge.  Moreover, God’s padlock is what any amorous pair can only dream of accomplishing with their padlock, or their love: God’s padlock is permanent.  

Cristina and Luigi, Marie and Pierre, Barbara and Joe want the padlock not only to be a sign of their love’s existence, but also to be a sign of its endurance.  You need not be a cynic to recognize that the padlocks will outlast the love they represent in too many cases.  Human love is fickle, and weak.  

However, even when love perdures in faithfulness and forgiveness, and our happy couple live a married life of mutual respect and fidelity, that love will pass away when they do.  Because not only can a padlock be destroyed and removed, the bridge itself one day will crumble into the water.  

The love poem we know as The Song of Solomon is one book in the Old Testament that seems not to fit at all, until we realize it rhapsodizes and reveals the divine love that comes to snatch us up and carry us away.  You will recognize this passage, often read at weddings:  Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; For stern as death is love, relentless as the nether world is devotion; its flames are a blazing fire.  Deep waters cannot quench love, nor floods sweep it away. (Song of Solomon 8:6-7)

That ‘floods cannot sweep it away” part appeals to young couple, but the only love that lasts, the love that the Song of Solomon describes, is the love Who comes in the manger.  And because He is perfect love, consummated in His giving up His life and His body to death on the Cross, He is the bridge that does not wash away.  His body, once tiny and helpless, later laid in the tomb, is raised; His body dwells now and forever in glory in the Divine Communion that is the Triune God, Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit.  

The baby Jesus not only is God’s padlock, but He Himself also is the bridge; the bridge between God and Man, between heaven and earth, the bridge from death into life.  Deep waters cannot quench love, nor floods sweep it away.  He Himself is the ever-lasting Way, He is the Love Who bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:7)

Our parish’s new Nativity set, which is the image of the Image of the invisible God.

When I see those padlocks on a bridge, in West Virginia, or Paris, or Rome, I see people yearning to make love visible, and to make love last.  What I want to show those people is what I hope you see this Christmas, that God has accomplished what they crave, has done precisely this: make love visible, and make love last.  Look at the Child, whose image is in the manger, and whose flesh is on the altar.  This is the sight come to snatch you up and carry you away to know and enjoy forever the invisible love of God.

Blessed Christmas to you, not only from me, but also from Father Santandreu and Father Novajosky, and from the good people whose days are spent here in the rectory to make you know God’s care.  Peace be on your houses; in your families, peace; and in your hearts, Christ’s peace.

Monsignor Smith

Whatcha doin' that for?

Happy holidays!, while seeming to be a dodge from mentioning Christmas, has a persistence to it, and perhaps even genuine value beyond that negative.  In addition to being a good wish, it is also a statement of fact.  The holidays mentioned, Christmas and the days of preparation for it, give much evidence being, well, happy days.  Look around you: people are in a good mood: optimistic, excited, and disposed to be generous.   That is enough to make people happy.  Why is that?

The “holidays,” as many people call them, are truly holy days, though they may not know or acknowledge that.  What makes them holy?  They are a time of preparation for the coming of God as Man, which not only is commemorated but also in fact occurs at Christmas.  Advent is holy because it is ordered to what happens at Christmas, and people can be happy, and often are happy, because they are ordering their days toward that great event.

Most of the conventional activities associated with this period, such as gift buying, food preparing, home decorating, family gathering, party throwing, and almsgiving, are all motivated by the desire to be ready.  There are many folks around us who may not have Jesus in mind as the encounter for which they prepare, but that missed perception does not eliminate the reality of their preparation.  When people participate in the preparation, they find themselves happy.  

The reason for this is found in human nature and dignity.  Rational creatures are invested with dignity on account of their end, which is to know and love God, the ultimate end of the universe, summarized an author in a philosophical article I was reading recently.  It follows that when we are moving toward and preparing for an encounter with that God, our human dignity is heightened and strengthened.  When much of society sets about this noble activity, as in Advent, human nature is burnished and bright: people are happy.  

The Prayer after Communion for the day that falls seven days before Christmas (December 18; Saturday of the third week of Advent this year) reveals that preparing to celebrate is a sanctifying and elevating activity:  May we receive your mercy, in the midst of your temple, O Lord, and show fitting honor to the coming solemnities of our redemption, through Christ our Lord.

It is true that many of the people charging about and reveling are not fully intent upon the redemption that comes at Christmas.  However, it is also true that in allowing themselves to be drawn into the solemnities, and in fact contributing to them, they are ordering themselves and their days in some way, however incomplete, to the encounter with God which is their goal and end.  Every activity suitable to this celebration elevates and enhances their human dignity.  This is another way of saying that it brings joy to them and those around them.  

These holy days are happy indeed because they remind everyone what they are truly for.  We look around us at all these semi-witting participants in the great undertaking of Christian life not with scorn for what they do not know, do not recognize, or do not accept; but we look at them with love and fellow-feeling.  We look at them with grace and gratitude.  We look at them with hope, that this taste of the joy that comes from preparing for the coming of the Divine Child will lead them to seek, to find, and to embrace a faith-filled lifetime of happy, holy days.

Monsignor Smith

Please Sir, may I have some more?

Don’t spoil your appetite!  Many is the mom who admonishes her kids, not always in vain, with those very words in these days when treats and tasties abound, often as prologue to celebratory meals lovingly prepared and presented to be enjoyed with some ceremony.  The holy days of Advent and Christmas feature much feeding, and sometimes it can be hard to finish one massive meal in time to move on to the next; an embarrassment of riches, indeed.

It is odd, therefore, that even as we look forward to the great feast of Our Lord’s Nativity, united in worship as Christ’s pilgrim people, we do so by… eating.

The God Who Comes will be found in a feed trough, and that is no accident, nor devised by some clever set designer.  The Blessed Mother about to give birth goes to the home of her husband’s tribe, a tiny town known as the House of Bread – Bethlehem.  Food references abound, and if this awakens your hunger, that is because it is supposed to do just that.  But the best way to prepare for the promised banquet is, counterintuitively, to chow down now. 

All through Advent, we chew figuratively, and meditatively, on the promises of God laid down by the holy prophets.  We ruminate on the psalms, the poetic songs of praise and petition that passed our Lord’s lips with the familiarity of His own name.  We drink in the glory of the Gospel, the News so Good we can become tipsy from joy, with thirty-gallon jars filled to the brim standing by with more.

But more than a figure is the fact and food of Our Lord’s Body and Blood, which He has lovingly prepared and presents for us to enjoy with no small ceremony.  This is the Main Course, giving us entrée into the Divine Life that he brought bundled with His newborn body into that manger.  We show our appreciation for this gift by destroying it, devouring and digesting Him Who lays the spread.  

Remarkably this repast reverses the results of regular meals.  Rather than turn the food into what we already are, as we do (some of us to excess) with meat and bread, fruit and cheese, augmenting the flesh we already have with more of the same, this food transforms us into what it is, and what we long to be: ever-living bodies, raised and glorified with God.  You are what you eat.  

Repeated application of this food therapy results not only in augmentation, but also in a reduction: Christ’s presence in our bodies reduces the persistence and power of sin, dropping the dead weight that accumulates over time like so much cholesterol.  Reducing resistance increases speed, and we fly toward our heavenly goal with souls and bodies made light with eager joy. 

Perhaps because we are sated, perhaps because we are delighted, and please do not let it be because we are distracted, it can be easy to miss the Prayer after Communion:  We implore your mercy, Lord, that this divine sustenance may cleanse us of our faults and prepare us for the coming feasts. Through Christ our Lord.  This food sustains us on our journey, but marvelously makes more room, not less, for more of the same, by cleansing us of what we have consumed in our selfishness and sin.  This morsel is the foretaste of heaven itself, the first course that does not fill us, but rather frees us.

Therefore even now, long days and still longer nights away from the joy of our Lord’s birth, we light the pink candle and Rejoice in the Lord always; I say it again – Rejoice!  (Entrance antiphon for Gaudete Sunday, Phil 4:4-5)  The Lord spreads a banquet in the sight of our foes; to allow him to feed us will only enhance and enliven our appetite.  Our Mother, the Church, not only approves; she insists.

Monsignor Smith