2021-11-17T03:51:54-05:00

Last updated on: November 17, 2021 at 3:51 am   By

Cbrenner21: Field Hospitals From World War I / Wikimedia Commons

The church is full of the spiritually sick and infirm, that is, sinners. As Pope Francis explained, it can be and should be seen as a field hospital. We are its patients. The church, with the graces given to it, has the spiritual draught that not only can heal us, but give us strength to become better than before. However, our sickness is not just our own. When we are sick, we can infect others with our spiritual disease. It can form a spiritual pandemic, leading to many suffering from the same malady as we do. Indeed, just as with physical illness, those who come in contact with the sick can find themselves infected by the illness they have come to cure. Even doctors can get sick, and sometimes, even though they are sick, their patients need them so much they still continue their work despite their illness.

Within the church, many of those who have been given a special charism to serve the needs of the community, and so have been granted special authority in order to make sure they can fulfill their role, not only are sick themselves, but often, their illness is worse than others because of the way they abuse the authority given to them. Priests and bishops can be great sinners. Nonetheless, the medicine they have to offer can still help those who receive it because it does not rely upon the character and quality of those who offer it to be effective. But yet, when such doctors are spiritually sick, that is, when they are great sinners, it should not surprise us that many will flee from them and seek aid elsewhere. This is a problem older than the institutional church itself. We find throughout history that those who have been given some spiritual authority, those who have been given various elements of grace to share with others, often are the ones who need it most. Instead of taking it in, cooperating with it, they resist it themselves. Thus, many today who have what we need are the cause of many of our problems, as their sin, their sickness, spreads quickly throughout the church, causing many to follow after them in their sickness, leading many astray, hurting everyone as a result of their sin. This is why we must be cautious. We must respect the charism and grace which is offered, but we must not do so in such a way as to fall for clericalism. This is why Jesus, when dealing with spiritual leaders of his day, acknowledged their charism, but warned his audience not to be like them:

Then said Jesus to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat;  so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.  They do all their deeds to be seen by men; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long,  and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues,  and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men” (Matt. 22:1-7 RSV).

Jesus, in saying this, has shown us the proper response to Donatism. We do not have to ignore the problems which exist within the institutional church. We can and should recognize that many ecclesiastical authorities are causing trouble for the church itself. However, we should also realize that the grace of God is greater. God is still at work in and through them, offering us the spiritual medicine which we need. God, of course, is not bound by those gifts and the normative ways in which they come, that is, God is not bound by the sacraments. However, we can and should recognize that if we receive them, we will receive grace, despite the character of those who give them to us. We do not have to worry about grace. Those who cause scandal and turn people away because of what they say or do will find that the words Jesus said concerning the spiritual leaders of his day applies to them as well:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.  You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel (Matt. 22:23-4 RSV).

Law, justice, mercy and faith should be what is promoted by those who have been given the spiritual charism which places them in positions of authority in the institutional church. The law should be the greater law, the law of love, the law which tells us to love God and to love everything and everyone through our love for God. Justice should promote harmony, a harmony which promotes, as it were, the middle path between extremes; if we truly love God, we would work for such justice, and find ourselves praising God in and through our promotion of justice:

St Dionysios the Areopagite says that God is praised through justice. This is true, for without justice all things are unjust and cannot endure. Justice is sometimes called discrimination: it establishes the just mean in every undertaking, so that there will be no falling short due to over-frugality, or excess on account of greed. For even if over-frugality and greed appear to be opposites, the one below and the other above justice, yet they both push us in some way towards injustice. Whether a line is convex or conclave, it still deviates from what is straight; and to whichever side the balance tilts, that side gets the better of the other side. [1]

Mercy, of course, works with the law of love and justice, making sure that those who want to overcome their sins, overcome their injustice, will have the grace needed to do so. For without such grace, without such mercy, many who would otherwise repent would feel so burdened by their sins that they will be overcome by despair. Then, thinking they can do nothing to fix the problems they have created, they will not try to do so. Mercy, and the forgiveness which comes with it, allows them to see that their efforts can be fruitful, that they can indeed repent and change their ways and work for justice; they will be shown that even if they are not capable of doing it all themselves, they will find that grace will supply what is necessary so that their work for justice, their work for reparation, can lead to their own justification.

When love, mercy, grace, and justice are promoted, people will have a reason for their faith; those priests who follow these principles,  therefore, are among those who help us keep our faith despite whatever sickness is currently infecting the institutional church. This was J.R.R. Tolkien’s understanding; he said that all the experience he had with bad priests was overcome by the charity of one imperfect priest,  Fr. Morgan:

I have met snuffy, stupid, undutiful, conceited, ignorant, hypocritical, lazy, tipsy, hardhearted, cynical, mean, grasping, vulgar, snobbish, and even (at a guess) immoral priests “in the course of my peregrinations’; but for me one Fr. Francis outweighs them all, and he was an upper-class Welsh-Spaniard Tory, and seemed to some just a pottering old snob and gossip. He was – and he was not. I first learned charity and forgiveness from him; and in the light of it pierced even the ‘liberal’ darkness out of which I came, knowing more about ‘Bloody Mary’ than the Mother of Jesus – who was never mentioned except as an object of wicked worship by the Romanists. [2]

Tolkien did not discount all the evils found within the church; he knew and understood how the failures of priests and bishops, and others with spiritual authority, have caused many to lose their faith. He did not disagree with those who were critical of such abuses; he only thought that we must look beyond them and look for those who best represent the faith in action, those who follow justice and mercy, because it is in and through them we see the full reality of Christ’s teachings and what they have to offer if they are properly lived out. Tolkien, in this instance, was in agreement with Dorothy Day:

What I feel about the institutional church for instance. For me it is the place in the slum, in our neighborhood, where it is possible to be alone, to be silent, to wait on the Lord. The sacraments mean much to me. The daily bread we ask for is there. To sit in the presence of the Sun of Justice is healing, though I have to force myself to remain in fatigue and fullness and misery often. But the healing is there too. No matter how corrupt the Church may become, it carries within it the  seeds of its own regeneration. To read the lives of the saints has always helped me. We’ve had corrupt popes and bishops, down through the ages, but a St. Francis, a St. Benedict, a St. Vincent de Paul, a Charles de Foucauld will keep on reminding me of the primary of the spiritual. Peter Maurin used to tell us to study history through the lives of the saints. [3]

The reform of the church is always to be found within the seeds of grace which have been given to, or placed within the church. Those who cooperate with grace will seek to constantly reform themselves and the institutional church. They will become the saints of the present age, the saints needed for the present day. Through them, we will see that the charisms given to the church can be effective, for through them, we see many great sinners become great saints, doing work which transcends our expectations. When we come in contact with such saints, we will see the value of grace, for we see the practical effect of such grace in their lives. That is, when we see their transformation, it will be impossible for us to deny the effectiveness of the spiritual medicine which is offered by the church. We need the spiritual food which it offers. And so, even though many within the institutional church will cause scandal, because what the church offers is grace, and grace is greater, grace will offer us the means to transcend such scandal and work to make sure the church itself is put back on track. We are all called by the grace given to us to do this. We are all called to be saints. We might now be sick, but hopefully, when we come to the field hospital, we will receive the medicine we need so that, with it, we will not only become better, but we will also be able to help others, in and outside of the church, receive the grace which they need for their own spiritual health.

[1] St. Peter of Damaskos, “Twenty Four Discourses” in in The Philokalia: The Complete Text. Volume Three. Trans. G.E.H. Palmer, Philipp Sherrard and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1986), 258-9 [Discourse XX: Justice].

[2] J.R.R. Tolkien, “Letter to Michael  George Tolkien. January 6, 1965” in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981), 354.

[3] Dorothy Day, “Letter to Karl Meyer. August 13, 1981” in All The Way To Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day. Ed. Robert Ellsberg (New York: Image Books, 2010), 491-2.

 

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2020-09-29T03:08:07-05:00

Last updated on: September 29, 2020 at 3:08 am   By

Gausanchennai Beautiful Peacock Fathers / Wikimedia Commons

St. Basil the Great tells us to glorify God as the “Master Craftsman,” for he created a wonderful, indeed, beautiful, world for us to live in. When we glorify him this way, we can be led from the beauty found in creation to the transcendent glory of God himself:

Let us glorify the Master Craftsman for all that has been done wisely and skillfully; and from the beauty of visible things let us form an idea of Him who is more than beautiful; and from the greatness of these perceptible and circumscribed bodies let us conceive of Him who is infinite and immense and who surpasses all understanding in the plentitude of His power.[1]

Goodness, truth, and beauty are the three great transcendental. All of them have God as their source.  Because God establishes them, through his actions, he can be described by them, so that he can labeled as  the Good, the Truth, and the Beautiful. Thus, as St. Gregory Palamas explains,  even though God’s essence transcends all the categories of human thought rendering it is incomprehensible, we know God through his energies, through his actions, and we can use such actions and what they tell us about God to talk about God.

God’s beauty is made manifest in the beauty of his creation; the beauty we see around us participates in the beauty of God:

From the beauty of the limited creature, God makes known his own beauty that is in no way limited, so that the human being can return to God by these very same vestiges by which he turned away from him, in order that, because he turned himself away from the form of the Creator through love of the beautiful creature, he might return back again through the beauty of the creature to the beauty of the Creator.[2]

Just as limited goods participate in the  Good, so that we should not undermine the Good by preferring lesser goods to it (which evil tempts us to do), so limited beauty participates in Beauty, and we should not undermine Beauty by preferring limited forms of beauty to it. Beauty, by nature, is attractive. Lesser forms of beauty have their attractions, so that someone of lesser character can use such beauty to lead people astray. That is, though beauty is something to be cherished, just like we should cherish whatever good we find, we should cherish it in proper fashion. For just as the good can be subverted as someone becomes inordinately attached to a lesser good, treating it as a greater good than it is, making the actions of those who do so “evil,” so beauty can be subverted as someone inordinately attaches themselves to its lesser form apart from its proper, holistic place in Beauty. This is not to say, when someone does this, the beauty fades away. Just as attachment to a lesser good does not remove that good, so attachment to lesser beauty does not diminish the beauty which is being embraced. But what is not embraced, what is rejected, is where ugliness or evil can be found. Evil is the absence of a good which should be there, so ugliness is the absence of the harmony which should be found in beauty.

While Beauty and the Good can be said to be one, because they are one in God, and so what is beautiful is good, we can attribute our relationship with beauty as being either good or bad based upon what we do with it. Those charmed by some beauty can be led to do all kinds of evil out of hope of taking control and possessing that beauty for themselves, while others, looking into the world, and the harmony presented by beauty, can be inspired to seek after what is good and just and indeed, work for the salvation of the world. Understanding this, S.L. Frank suggested, when considering beauty on its own, we can see it as something “neutral;”  by itself, it will not save the world:

Beauty as such does not save him from the destructive forces of evil or from the tragic nature of human life. Beauty as such is neutral. In a sense it is indifferent to good and evil. Symbolizing some potential harmony of being, it peacefully co-exists with actual disharmony. Furthermore, according to Dostoevsky’s profound insight, beauty combines itself in the “divine” and the “demonic,” for wherever we are seduced by deceitful appearances, there we have dealing with the demonic. This lack of concord between beauty – esthetic harmony – and the genuine reconciling, redeeming essential harmony of being was manifested concretely with astonishing persuasive force in the tragic life-experiences of such artists as Botticelli, Gogol, and Tolstoy. We can say that beauty is a sign of the potential harmony of being, of the possibility of actual, fully realized harmony. And if the world were perfectly beautiful, it would be perfectly harmonious, in inner accord, free of tragic duality. Therefore the dream of the ultimate transfiguration of the world is a dream of the complete triumph of beauty in the world. But it is precisely only a dream, which is opposed by the bitter reality of the inner discord and duality of being. Beauty is only a reflection of “paradise,” of the ontological rootedness of all reality in divine total unity.[3]

Thus, there is the potential for demonic beauty, even as there is potential for angelic beauty. We can make a beauty which will impose fear and dread upon others as they look into it, using it to manipulate and control them. Tolkien, in the Lord of the Rings, represented this potential in the way Galadriel was tempted by the Ring – if she took its power, she would use it to lead the world with her beauty, but the world would be enslaved by it, enslaved by her and her charm:

And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair.[4]

Galadriel understood the goodness of beauty, but also the dangers contained within it. We seek after paradise, but we can easily become subverted by a pale imitation of it. If we try to establish and hold onto such an illusory form of beauty, we will find ourselves lacking much of what is found in paradise, and in that lack, we will find evil. Those desperate to hold onto a form of beauty instead of to be penetrated and participate in the fullness of beauty will create a shallow illusion, one which is charming and yet without hope, without the joy which we expect from beauty itself.

This danger with beauty, however, applies only insofar as our attachment remains with a lesser beauty, whether it is some external lesser beauty, or our own internal beauty, which we enjoy because of the glory we think we already possess. The beauty that is there, insofar as it is there, is good, but it should remind us of the source and foundation of all beauty. We must not confine ourselves to that lesser beauty but seek after the source of beauty. When we do so, we will find that the beauty we had, the beauty we liked, was itself a part of the presence of that greater beauty, so that like Augustine we can end up saying:

Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so action and so new, late have I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within and I was without. I was looking for Thee out there, and I threw myself, deformed as I was, upon the well-formed things which Thou hast made. Thou wert with me, yet I was not with Thee. These things held me far from Thee, things which would not have existed had they not been in Thee. Thou didst call and cry out and burst in upon my deafness; Thou didst shine forth and glow and drive away my blindness; Thou didst send forth Thy fragrance, and I drew in my breath, and now I pant for Thee; I have tasted and now I hunger and thirst; Thou didst touch me, and I was inflamed with desire for Thy peace.[5]

Beauty is good and glorious, but our use of it is not always such. We should find the goodness in beauty. We should find out how it points to the source and foundation of all beauty, God and use it to direct us to God to find and attain that beauty which we love and desire, not just in its lesser forms,  but in its greatest form, one which is with God and so eternal. Therefore, let us glorify God, taking the beauty we find and use it to lift us up to the infinite  beauty and goodness found with God, a beauty so sublime, so great, we will never attain its limits and so it will always give us the hope and joy which we need to truly thrive.

[1] St. Basil the Great,  “Hexaemeron” in Saint Basil: Exegetic Homilies. Trans. Agnes Clare Way, CDP (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1963), 19.

[2] St. Isidore of Seville, Sententiae. Trans. Thomas L. Knoebel (New York: Newman Press, 2018),40.

[3] S. L. Frank, The Unknowable: An Ontological Introduction To The Philosophy of Religion. Trans. Boris Jakim (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2020), 196.

[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966), 381.

[5] St. Augustine, Confessions. Trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1953; repr. 1966), 297.

 

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2020-02-21T04:36:52-05:00

Last updated on: February 21, 2020 at 4:36 am   By

Anonymous: Reading Outside/ Pixnio

We all need to take care of ourselves. Leisure and rest are necessary parts of our life. We must not overburden ourselves with work, for that will only lead us to suffering a break down. Spiritual masters from Siddhartha the Buddha to St. Anthony the Great have not only come to this conclusion, they taught it to their disciples. [1] Thus, in Ecclesiastes, we are told there is a time and place for everything, including rest:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;  a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace (Eccl.. 3:1-8 RSV).

This is also true in regards to our reading habits. While it is important for us to keep abreast with the news of the day so that we do not ignore the injustices which lie before us, we must understand there is also a time to put it all aside. Sometimes, we need a break from such serious reading, lest it overcomes us with despair. We need to be nurtured even as we need to nurture others. We need rest to make sure we have the strength needed in order to confront injustices such injustices. If we don’t know when to rest, we will find out that eventually, we will be so overwhelmed we won’t know what to do with ourselves.

If we only focus on what is wrong with the world, looking for something new to confront on a daily basis, we will end up feeling bogged down and useless. We need rest. We need time for ourselves, time to reflect upon the good things in life, to laugh, to enjoy what we have, indeed, to find joy in our lives. We need, therefore, not follow the news, we need to engage whatever books, movies, music which will lift us up in our spirit, transposing us beyond the tragedies of life.   We need to be reminded that life is more than a series of tragedies which we overcome. We need, as J.R.R. Tolkien understood, a way to escape it all and feel the jubilation which life can bring. The arts can bring this to us.

How much focus on the news, especially bad news, is too much? It depends upon us and our particular needs. Some, like C.S. Lewis, probably should avoid the news altogether. Others, like Dorothy Day, should moderate their intake of the news, balancing it out with something positive to help give us hope. Thus, during a time of war  Dorothy Day suggested that we put away the daily paper and read and study what is going on once a week while taking the time to explore a diverse amount of reading material in order to make sure we do not get caught up in the present without being nourished by the wisdom and joys of the past:

BOOKS [TO READ] IN WARTIME: Labyrinthine Ways. To The End of the World. Kristin Lavransdatter. Master of Hestviken. Jeremiah. 1 Kings.

People live, eat, sleep, love, worship, marry, have children, and somehow live in the midst of war, in the midst of anguish. The sun continues to shine, the leaves flaunt their vivid color, there is a serene warmth in the day and an invigorating cold at night.

Turn off your radio. Put away your daily paper.

Read one review of events a week and spend some time reading such books as the above. They tell too of days of striving and of strife. They are of other centuries and also our own. They make us realize that all times are perilous, that men live in a dangerous world. In peril constantly losing or maiming soul and body.[2]

We need to have a greater perspective than what can be found in the daily news.  Without such a broad perspective, it is easy to get entangled by the rapid changes happening around us. We would have no basis by which to judge those changes, making it that much harder to know what to do. It would indeed be easy to hear what is being said by those in authority without questioning what they tell us. We need to realize that there will be no golden age, that all times are perilous, but we also need to realize that many of the difficulties which lie before us today are difficulties which others faced and they can provide us with wisdom and advice concerning how to deal with it. Being stuck with the daily news, no matter the source (paper, internet, radio, or television) without a greater context only makes sure we are easy targets for propaganda, either by those who try to invoke a golden past which they want us to restore (even though it never existed and can never exist), or by those trying to invoke a golden future, a utopia, which no one has been able to produce (and would likewise result in many tragedies in the attempt to make such a utopia).

But we need to do more than that. We need to find hope in the present moment, even when there is so much wrong going on around us. We cannot neglect the needs of others, selfishly looking only for ourselves, but on the other hand, we need comfort and rest. We need to enjoy life. In the midst of so much evil like war, life goes on, and with it, the joys of life go on. We should not be ashamed if we rest and find things which we enjoy and use to lift up our spirits. The world is good. Life is good. We don’t need to read only serious works of history, philosophy, or literature; we can and should also take and read other things, from comic strips which make us laugh, to flights of fantasy which help us, even for a moment, make us feel free from the problems of life.  We are meant to enjoy life; it is a gift given to us by God and if we neglect that gift, if we ignore the good which is before us, we will fail to understand what it is we are fighting for when we fight against injustice.

As we fight for others, we must not neglect our own needs. We must balance them out. We must make the most of our time, as Paul said: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph. 3:15-16 RSV).  The world is filled with wonderful gifts from God for us to enjoy; the world is also filled with all kinds of great treasures, great works of art but also not-so great works of art, all kinds of leisurely games and novelties made by others which we should also enjoy.

We must make time for ourselves, for it is only then we can truly be who we are meant to be, capable of moving on and doing the work which only we can do to help make the world a better place.

 

[1] See The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. trans. Benedicta Ward (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984), 3-4 and my reflection on that saying in A Time To Rest.

[2] Dorothy Day, The Reckless Way of Love. Notes on Following Jesus. Ed.  Carolyn Kurtz (Walden, NY: Plough Publishing House, 2017), 93.

 

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2019-10-26T10:42:47-05:00

Last updated on: October 26, 2019 at 10:42 am   By

In art, either as creators or participants, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we are asked to endure, we who are children of God by adoption and grace. — Madeleine L’Engle [1]

The proper story of man is everything. The proper study of man as artist is everything which gives a foothold to the imagination and the passions. —C.S. Lewis[2]

No author listed: Fear Halloween Ghostly Horror Scary/ MaxPixel

The Gospel is the story of the Logos, the Word made flesh. As the Word is the Word from which all other words flow, so the Story is the story from which all other stories flow. In it and through it are many side-stories which can be told, stories which connect to the one universal Story which have their own particular sub-meaning and content. These secondary stories are worthy of our own consideration because they are infused with and come from the Story; they present in various forms aspects of that Story which are needed at particular times and places. The Story reveals itself in these sub-stories, reaching down and meeting people in the complete variety of human activity and experience.

Some of these stories are comedies. Jesus himself, in his parables, demonstrates a sense of humor. Nothing defiles us than what comes out of us, indeed! The double-meaning is there, for those who have an ear and are willing to listen to it can laugh. Through such laughter much of the horror of rigorism is exposed and overcome.

Some of these stories are tragedies. In the New Testament, we can read of the mass slaughter of children. We can encounter stories of poor men and women suffering through their lives, dying without anyone showing them human love and compassion.

Some of the stories can be classified as horror, such as the stories of possession found throughout the Gospels. We need to be presented with the horror because it exists in the world. We need to realize that horror is often tragic, but even if it is not, it is difficult to overcome. There is no greater horror story than the death of Jesus and his descent into hell; there is no greater representation of the victory possible over such horror than Jesus’ resurrection. Horror is a part of the Gospel. Dark forces have their voice, even if they don’t have the last say. It is, after all, a necessary part of the story, because of sin and what sin has done to the world. We suffer from the effects of evil actions; we have to be shown what they can do but also that we can endure them and even overcome.

Dorothy Sayers, talking about artists of all kinds (including literary ones), pointed out that we need to recognize evil and have it within our stories if we want to be authentic to life: “The human maker, living and walking within a universe where Evil (whatever it is) is a part of the nature of things, is obliged to take both Good and Evil as part of his Idea. They are the medium with which he works.” [3] Horror grasps after that evil and seeks to present it. It shows us it is real, that it is powerful, and yet, that it is not omnipotent. It is in this light that horror is a legitimate genre for storytelling; it comes from and takes a part of the grand Story. As the Gospel story about the pigs which ran to their death show, not all horror stories have a positive ending. Not everyone will get out alive or unharmed. But, for the most part, the horror genre recognizes there is a limit to the horror, to the evil itself.  Most horror stories have some sort of victory against the monsters presented within them. Some get out alive. Some overcome and entirely put an end to the monster. The horror, the monster, however powerful it is, is shown to be not all-powerful; it has its limit. This is something which we all need to hear and understand, and in this way, though the way to get there is dark, horror stories often generate hope, more than many other sub-stories coming from the Story.

Even if they do not suit the tastes of everyone, we should recognize that horror stories are an invaluable representation of the great Story because they incorporate the Story into themselves. The better the horror, the better the tale, the more they are capable of bringing us into the Story, enrapturing and transporting us with grace. The monster might be something seemingly mundane, such as a serial killer, or it might be something fantastic, but because the Story itself is fantastic, transcending what the human imagination could produce on its own, it can be said the more fantastic the horror, the greater the story is in achieving its purpose and end. It is, indeed, important for stories to engage the fantastic dimensions of the Story, because in doing so, as C.S. Lewis understood, we are able to have our own lives improved by them:

The Fantastic or Mythical is a Mode available at all ages for some readers; for others, at none. At all ages, if it is well used by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power to generalise while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. But at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of ‘commenting on life’, can add to it. [4]

There is, therefore, something valid with the relationship between the secular celebration of Halloween, taking with it many horrifying pre-Christian images and ideas and cultural norms, putting them together with the Western Christian celebration of All Saints. The two go together. It is another way of presenting the Story in a form of the various sub-stories of history. The darkness is revealed in the light; the darkness assaults the light, it can cause great damage and harm, just as the saints themselves often died at the hands of cruel oppressors, but in the end, the power of the darkness comes to an end and the light wins. Those who suffered at the hands of the darkness find themselves glorified in Christ. The horror which happens before the glorification of the saints is important to remember and represent; without it, the greatness of the saints will not be properly understood. Christ is victorious over hell, but if hell is not horrifying, the victory is pyrrhic. Gene Wolfe understood this: horror, he said, is Christian:

Here’s what Tom ‘ Tor  — Tom Broken Collar – told me: Fantasy is a pagan empire; Horror’s a Christian kingdom, embracing Hell. There’s wisdom in that, but exceptions by the score. What of the host bearing the banner of Narnia, I ask you? Christian to the core, with the lion-likeness of Aslan nailed to the cross. What of Tolkien-Lifegiver? Fantasy languished till he brought The Hobbit, dwarves and elves, all three Speaking Peoples linked with humans in The Fellowship of the Ring. [5]

Horror is revealed in the descent of Christ into hell; yes, even before Christ, humanity knew horror, and there were plenty of ghosts and monsters believed to exist around the world, but in Christ, the horror is intensified and shown to relate elements of the truth to us. Horror stories, especially the most fantastic seeming horror stories, have been rendered real through Christ and his descent and conquest of hell; now it is a Christian kingdom, a Christian story taken in by Christ himself. Fear not what can destroy your body: such horrors are all over the world and come in many forms; rather, know the horror has an end, and you can survive and thrive and transcend it all. The serial killer can be captured.  Ghosts and goblins can be tricked by the great trickery, receiving their treats only to find their power over humanity is overcome by their apparent victory. The dead can rise again, but then they can be given back their souls, their humanity. The great desire to escape from the clutches of death (as Tolkien put it)[6] is demonstrated through the hallowing of hell.  But in the ascent from hell, we have to remember, the many layers of evil, the many possibilities of horror are also revealed and overcome by Christ.  And so, each layer, each aspect of hell, each demonic reality and possibility, presents to us another possibility, another sub-story for us to tell. Christ has overcome it all, yes, but if we want to truly appreciate that, then we will appreciate horror which he went through and accept it as an important mode for storytelling. We do not have to fear it, rather, we can embrace it as a way to participate in and imitate Christ himself.

[1] Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (New York: North Point Press, 1995), 19.

[2] C.S. Lewis, “On Science Fiction” on On Stories and Other Essays on Literature. Ed. Walter Hooper (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1982), 61.

[3] Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,1987), 97.

[4] C.S. Lewis, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said” on On Stories and Other Essays on Literature. Ed. Walter Hooper (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1982), 48.

[5] Gene Wolfe, “The Ethos of Elfland” in Castle of Days (New York: Tom Doherty Associations, Inc. 1992), 396.

[6] And lastly there is the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death. Fairy-stories provide many examples and modes of this—which might be called the genuine escapist, or (I would say) fugitive spirit. But so do other stories (notably those of scientific inspiration), and so do other studies. Fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies. The Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness. But our stories cannot be expected always to rise above our common level. They often do. Few lessons are taught more clearly in them than the burden of that kind of immortality, or rather endless serial living, to which the “fugitive” would fly. For the fairy-story is specially apt to teach such things, of old and still today. —  J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories” in The Monster & The Critics and Other Essays. Ed. Christopher Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 1997),  153.

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2019-05-28T03:37:34-05:00

Last updated on: May 28, 2019 at 3:37 am   By

Christoph Wagener: Pope Francis, Private audience of Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice CAPP / WikimediaCommons

As the results of various elections indicate, right-wing nationalists are slowly rising in power in Europe. In the United Kingdom’s European elections, the Brexit Party, led by hard-liner Nigel Farage, garnished the most votes of a single party, while in Italy, Lega Nord, the far-right “league” party headed by Matteo Salvini came out on top.  These nationalists often give rise to dangerous rhetoric against outsiders, with Muslims often on the receiving end of unjust bigotry. The rise of far-right nationalism in Europe should trouble everyone. Why are people attracted to it? There are many reasons; nonetheless, it should not be surprising that a part of it is the combination of a romanticism of the past combined with fears that outsiders are causing harm to society at large: outsiders are used as scapegoats by those who seek power and control.  It should be noted, however, that such nationalism, far from promoting Europe and its traditions, rather undermines the heritage and legacy of Europe and the lessons Europe learned in the past century. It can be said that an evil spirit, once thought exorcised from Europe, has returned with a vengeance.

It is in the midst of this crisis that Pope Francis issued important words for the world for his Message for the 2019 World Day of Migrants and Refugees. Hatred, fear, individualism, lack of compassion and solidarity with others, indeed, a blatant disregard for the plight of the needy, are at the core of a dangerous so-called populist movement. Pope Francis made his statements in part, to address these problems, speaking like a prophet against an ideology which threatens the world.

As Pope Francis spoke as a Christian, indeed, as the head of the Catholic communion of churches, it should not be surprising that what lies behind his message are the words and deeds of Jesus Christ. Hopefully, despite coming from a different religious tradition, non-Christians will find much value to his words and work with Christians to combat an insidious inhumane ideology that will lead to hell on earth if its goals were attained.

Thus, Pope Francis said that when we see migrants and refugees around us, we must not be afraid. We must see it as an opportunity to truly become the best of what we could be instead of following our worst inclinations:

“Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid!” (Mt 14:27). It is not just about migrants: it is also about our fears. The signs of meanness we see around us heighten “our fear of ‘the other’, the unknown, the marginalized, the foreigner… We see this today in particular, faced with the arrival of migrants and refugees knocking on our door in search of protection, security and a better future.[1]

Those who already have wealth and resources often are led to fear those who do not possess them. They fear that not only will society take from them, but society will take all that they have, so that those who have and those who have not will be switched around. Those in need are seen as an existential threat.  As a result, many respond to those in need with extreme cruelty:

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father” (Mt 18:10). It is not just about migrants: it is a question of seeing that no one is excluded. Today’s world is increasingly becoming more elitist and cruel towards the excluded.[2]

This, in some ways, is “the logic of the world.”  Many follow some form of Social Darwinism, saying it is a dog-eat-dog world, and one either stays on top by pushing everyone else away, doing whatever it takes to stay on top, or one finds themselves becoming dispossessed of all things and trampled upon by those in need. This logic, of course, is fundamentally flawed, because it leads to the destruction of all things: only by working together and trying to preserve the good together can we all find that peace and safety, that contentment, which we seek.  Pope Francis, therefore, explained that Christ came to overcome this mentality, to show us the better way:

Jesus Christ asks us not to yield to the logic of the world, which justifies injustice to others for my own gain or that of my group. “Me first, and then the others!” Instead, the true motto of the Christian is, “The last shall be first!” “An individualistic spirit is fertile soil for the growth of that kind of indifference towards our neighbours which leads to viewing them in purely economic terms, to a lack of concern for their humanity, and ultimately to feelings of fear and cynicism. Are these not the attitudes we often adopt towards the poor, the marginalized and the ‘least’ of society?[3]

Christians are called out of their individualism by being told to love their neighbor, to do good for the sake of all: that is, to embrace the common good. When someone is needy, we have to make sure those needs are properly and justly treated. If someone is wounded, we must help them be healed.  “As Jesus himself teaches us (cf. Mt9:35-36; 14:13-14; 15:32-37), being compassionate means recognizing the suffering of the other and taking immediate action to soothe, heal and save.”[4] This is true for all, not just the migrants. This is why Pope Francis constantly said in his message that what he was speaking about was not just about migrants. It is about us. It is about how we treat those in need, how we look upon them. Do we project our demons upon others, thereby showing the world how monstrous we are?

Likewise, the concern is not just about migrants, but about all those in need, how we should treat anyone who is in need. When we justify abuses against one marginalized group, we begin the process of dehumanization which allows us to mistreat others, until all but the elite are maligned, with the degradation and abuse of all people in need, wherever they are, being the final result. Pope Francis, therefore, offered four verbs which he said should be the foundation by which we treat not only migrants but all those maligned and abused by being in the peripheries of society:

Dear brothers and sisters, our response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: welcome, protect, promote and integrate. Yet these verbs do not apply only to migrants and refugees. They describe the Church’s mission to all those living in the existential peripheries, who need to be welcomed, protected, promoted and integrated.[5]

It has always been understood that the Christian faith looks to the lowest among us and promotes them; there really is a preferential option for the poor (and vulnerable) within Scripture.  Expressing this point, St. Cyril of Alexandra said: “And Christ receives from the world, not by any means those who are honored by it or valued among men, bur rather he receives as many that are considered of low estate among them and those of less repute.”[6] Those who look to preserve what they have at the expense of others will find they will lose everything. We are called to work together with our neighbor, seeing that we are in this together, and this is the way we find ourselves moving heavenward, as St. Basil the Great stated:  “He wishes us to cling to our neighbors with embraces of charity like tendrils of a vine, and to rest upon them, so that keeping our desires always heavenward, we may, like certain climbing vines, reach the upmost heights of the loftiest teachings.”[7]

The message of Pope Francis is the message of the church since its foundation. Social justice has always been a part of the Gospel proclamation.  It is, to be sure, inherent within many other religious traditions, and in many secular traditions as well, which is how and why the words of Pope Francis should be heeded not just by Christians, but by all those of good will, looking for and hoping for a better future. The lessons of the past century should tell us the terrible road which is before us if the world continues to embrace the siren call of nationalism. Sadly, even those who fought against it in the past did not often do so with the best intentions and so, it was foreseeable that the fires of nationalism could rise again if they were not properly put out. If we do not stop the hate now, it is frightening to consider what the world will look like in a few years.

[1] Pope Francis, “Pope’s Message for 2019 World Day of Migrants and Refugees” (https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-05/pope-francis-message-world-day-migrants-refugees-full-text.html).

[2]Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid.

[6] St. Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch. Volume I: Genesis. Trans. Nicholas P. Lunn (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2018), 232.

[7]  St. Basil the Great, “Hexaemeron” in Saint Basil: Exegetic Homilies. Trans. Agnes Clare Way, CDP (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1963), 76.

 

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2019-05-22T10:57:31-05:00

Last updated on: May 22, 2019 at 10:57 am   By

CanonLawJunkie: Raymond Cardinal Burke /Wikimedia Commons

Cardinal Burke, once again promoting an alt-right ideology which counters the Christian faith, called for limiting Muslim immigrants into the United States, saying such would be patriotic. Without a sense of irony, he gave this statement at a so-called “Pro-Life” March in Rome on May 17, 2019, demonstrating that his position is hostile to the dignity of all humanity, thinking that preference can and should be given to some over others according to one’s religion (or lack thereof). Such a denunciation of religious liberty denies both Catholic teaching, and the historical position of the Founding Fathers of the United States as well.

Catholic teaching is simple: religious liberty should be given to all. No one should be discriminated against because of their religion. This was made abundantly clear in Nosta Aetate:

 We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man’s relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: “He who does not love does not know God” (1 John 4:8).

No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.

The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to “maintain good fellowship among the nations” (1 Peter 2:12), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all men, so that they may truly be sons of the Father who is in heaven.[1]

What Cardinal Burke promotes is contrary to Catholic teaching; indeed, it has already been reproved by the church. Discriminating against immigrants on the basis of their religion is a refusal to act out of love for the other, for those who are in need. It is a rejection of the duty we have to the other because we share one commo humanity with them, one large human family with them, all because of our disagreements with their beliefs. Likewise, to reduce Muslims to extremists, as justification for this ideological move against the church’s teaching, is itself contrary to Nostra Aetate, which told Christians we must work together with Muslims, overcoming the hostilities which such propaganda has created in the past.[2] Indeed, if one reads the official declarations of the church, this description of Islam has been utterly rejected by the church, because the church knows that you do not judge a religion based upon the worst representations of that religion (otherwise the church would be judged for the evil its people commits, often by people who have tried to use religion to justify their actions).

The dignity of the human person is fundamental to the Catholic faith, and likewise, to any sound political system. When it is denied, justice is denied. Religious liberty follows from this, as Dignitatis humanae declared:

Since the common welfare of society consists in the entirety of those conditions of social life under which men enjoy the possibility of achieving their own perfection in a certain fullness of measure and also with some relative ease, it chiefly consists in the protection of the rights, and in the performance of the duties, of the human person.(4) Therefore the care of the right to religious freedom devolves upon the whole citizenry, upon social groups, upon government, and upon the Church and other religious communities, in virtue of the duty of all toward the common welfare, and in the manner proper to each.[3]

The United States, though imperfectly representing the ideals expressed in its founding documents and their authors, has had a long history of immigration, opening itself to others. The welcome placed upon the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” represents the highest ideals of the American system. To be patriotic is to affirm this, not only because it represents a part of the American legacy, but because it follows through with what justice demands of any society. To be patriotic is to affirm the good within one’s own society, and to promote it: not to reject it.  When Cardinal Burke calls it patriotic to reject those in need, all due to a particular religion they hold, he follows after the worst aspect of the American experience, in which each new immigrant group found itself ostracized and unjustly maligned, until a new group came in to receive a similar form of xenophobia and hate.  Catholics experienced that hate, with the same kind of bitter rhetoric in the past, which is now being used against Muslims today. Burke, far from being patriotic by affirming what is good and just in American history and tradition, rejects it, and so is the one who represents an unpatriotic position as he seeks to undermine the best of the American tradition for the sake of an inhumane (and so anti-life) ideology.  Alt-right nationalism which confuses patriotism for nationalism denies true patriotism, for it only supports and promotes a select group within America, rejecting and denigrating everyone else, while patriotism works to build up the common good.

Cardinal Burke is out of order, both as a Catholic, and as an American. He denounces and denies the teachings given by both the Catholic Church in his rejection of religious liberty, and in doing so, he also denies the common good which has been promoted by the best instincts of the American system. He is no patriot. He is an ideologue willing to undermine the dignity of life itself. Over fifty years ago, Vincent Price, a true patriot,  spoke up at the end of an episode of The Saint on NBC radio with words must never go out of fashion:

Ladies and gentlemen, poison doesn’t always come in bottles. And it isn’t always marked with the skull and crossbones of danger. Poison can take the form of words and phrases and acts: the venom of racial and religious hatred. Here in the United States, perhaps more than ever before, we must learn to recognize the poison of prejudice and to discover the antidote to its dangerous effects. Evidences of racial and religious hatred in our country place a potent weapon in the hands of our enemies, providing them with the ammunition of criticism. Moreover, group hatred menaces the entire fabric of democratic life. As for the antidote: you can fight prejudice, first by recognizing it for what it is, and second by actively accepting or rejecting people on their individual worth, and by speaking up against prejudice and for understanding. Remember, freedom and prejudice can’t exist side by side. If you choose freedom, fight prejudice.[4]

Vincent Price offered words which are one with Catholic teaching, and the best of America’s ideals. These words, instead those spoken by Burke, are what we need today. Let us be true Christians and patriots and reject religious discrimination wherever it is found.

[1] Nostra Aetate, Vatican Translation.¶5.

[2] Nostra Aetate, Vatican Translation.¶3.

[3] Dignitatis humanae. Vatican translation. ¶6.

[4] Quoted from Dangerous Minds “Vincent Price Has Some Thoughts on Racial Prejudice and Religious Hatred,” (03-20-2015).

 

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2018-11-27T08:16:07-05:00

Last updated on: November 27, 2018 at 8:16 am   By

“I don’t tell my children about Santa Clause. I don’t want to lie to them.”

This is what many tell me when they explain why they do not tell their children about Santa Claus. It saddens me to see  so many seek to remove the great modern myth from our heritage; while they might do so with the best of intentions, they remove a part of the joy which children around the world experience during the Christmas season.

While some truly think telling their children the story of Santa would be the same as lying to them, others are lying to themselves and others as they use this excuse to justify their own selfishness, as they feel they would not have to buy as many presents for their children. They are Scrooges who know nothing of the spirit of Christmas and they threaten to make their children just like them.

The truth of the matter is that it is not a lie to tell the story of Santa Claus, nor are parents lying to their children when they give gifts to their children in the guise of Santa.  While there are many variations of the story, Santa Claus is a myth, and like all myths, it is false to call it a lie: myths are not lies, as J.R.R. Tolkien once told C.S. Lewis; rather they present a different, often poetic, engagement with the world at large.[1] Lewis, then, would come to agree: myths are not lies; they are not fictions, for they give a representation of reality in a form which differs from the way modern positivistic philosophy tries to confine it. It is not mere abstraction as found in mathematics, but rather, is the invasion of a truth which transcends such thought which looks especially for particular examples or facts:

To explain this we must look a little closer at myth in general, and at this myth in particular. Human intellect is incurably abstract. Pure mathematics is the type of successful thought. Yet the only realities we experience are concrete – this pain, this pleasure, this dog, this man. While we are loving the man, bearing the pain, enjoying the pleasure, we are not intellectually apprehending Pleasure, Pain or Personality. When we begin to do so, on the other hand, the concrete realities sink to the level of mere instances or examples: we are no longer dealing with them, but with that which they exemplify.[2]

When we go to the level of myth, of storytelling, we go beyond mere abstractions, beyond mere thought and encounter reality which then is translated and expressed in a variety of ways; a variety of facts, when combined, could not grasp the myth but only reveal various notions which we can receive from it:

When we translate we get abstraction ‐ or rather, dozens of abstractions. What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is), and, therefore, every myth becomes the father of innumerable truths on the abstract level. Myth is the mountain whence all the different streams arise which become truths down here in the valley; in hac valle abstractionis. Or, if you prefer, myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really belong to. It is not, like truth, abstract; nor is it, like direct experience, bound to the particular.[3]

Santa Claus is one of the great modern myths; the fact that it has come from and developed from many other myths and historical sources (Saint Nicholas, Odin, et. al.) does it no harm.  The story, the myth, is one which tells us much about the nature of reality, of the transcendence of charity, and the relationship of grace with nature by showing how we are to cooperate with grace in order to receive its bounty. Those who do good will be rewarded in a way beyond their goodness; those who stray and do evil cut themselves from grace and face the consequences of their straying (such as having bad children find coal in their stockings). It is not, as some would think, a capitalistic myth (though capitalists can and do use it), because it is about giving to the poor and needy, and bringing cheer to all despite their wealth. The goods which are given are not bought but are given out; those who labor share the results of their labor with all, and do not hold on to it themselves, hoarding the goods which they have created as capital.

The story, the myth, is not a lie; it is not to be seen as history or some positivistic abstraction of what is thought to be true, but rather, it presents to us reality coming to us, revealing to us itself in a way which we form such notions of truth, allowing us to realize the greatness of the truth itself. We are able to be emotionally challenged and moved by the way myths are told, having us interact with the myth in a way that dull presentations of the facts are unable to do.  Telling the story of Santa is sharing in the grand story, and only when we try to interpret it in a way which goes against the truth does such an allegorical use of the story turn out to be false: but bad allegory does not make the story false, only it makes those trying to abstract meaning from it in error.

Likewise, participating in that story is telling it, and because myths are not lies, telling them and acting them out cannot be seen to be lies. The story is presented in a way which requires more than words. When parents leave gifts out late at night when their children are asleep, they are continuing with the story. When they tell their children in the morning that the gifts were given by Santa, they are not lying;  they are only continuing with the storytelling. Likewise, when children see the presents, hey know they have not being lied to: someone came and gave them gifts, and that someone is named Santa. It is the name and convention used to explain the whole phenomenon, a phenomenon which truly happens while the children are asleep. The parents who give such gifts are participating in the reality of the Santa myth, becoming a part of it, acting it out, so that the story is properly told and the reality of story is realized by the children who hear it told.  By acting out the part of Santa, they are partaking of the reality expressed and revealed in the myth, sharing with it, becoming one with it. How can they be said to be lying when the story is not a falsehood, and there are truly gifts which are given, expressed by the convention of Santa? They are not. The children received the gifts. They saw the reality become expressed in particular facts, even as the greatest myth is realized and made concrete as the central fact of history (the story of God becoming man realized in the birth of the God-man Jesus Christ).  They experience the story, the myth, indeed, the reality presented by the myth: they might not know the role their parents play in the realization of the myth, but the children see the reality of the myth, as they experience the phenomena of Santa in their lives and wake up on Christmas morning seeing the gifts which have been left behind.

“But it is a lie. Parents are not Santa.” Really? They certainly are Santa. That’s the point. The phenomenon happens – the gifts are left behind. The phenomenon is known as Santa. Those who give the gifts, those who take on the role of Santa, truly become Santa, partaking of the reality of the myth and so they truly are Santa, even as anyone who holds a particular job can be called by the title of that job, or someone wearing a mask can be called by the name of the figure in the mask. They are Santa, and they did not lie: Santa did come, and he gave gifts. The phenomenon has the conventional name of Santa; the underlying reality of that phenomenon is that it is parents who give such gifts, and the truth then is that the parents, who are Santa, gave gifts, so there is no lie. The only lie is from those who deny Santa: for how can someone explain the gifts which are given, which children can and do see with their own eye?

The phenomenon children experience on Christmas is given the conventional name of Santa. That phenomenon happens; it is true. The underlying nature of how Santa is realized is that parents partake of the role of Santa, and so make the phenomenon real. They did not lie. Likewise, it is true, they are not purely Santa: they are their children’s parents: Santa is, as with all such abstractions, capable of being true because of it is empty of any inherent nature, allowing therefore, as many forms of the phenomenon to appear as there are people giving gifts in the role of Santa.

Santa is real. Let’s stop telling the lie that there is no Santa. Let the children rejoice and let all good parents be satisfied in the good which they do for their children. Scrooge needs to be put to rest, so that in the night, he can experience that joy and come around wishing everyone Merry Christmas, never again saying “Humbug” to the reality of Santa.

 

[IMG=Cover of “Goody Santa Claus” dated 1889. by RL [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]

[1] Tolkien wrote his poem, Mythopoeia, for Lewis when Lewis was still an unbeliever; in it, Tolkien explained:

“The heart of man is not compound of lies,

but draws some wisdom from the only Wise.”

Myths present the world in a manner and style different from science or mathematics, but this does not make them any less true, any less informative for those who know how to engage them. They are not lies. They are a means by which we engage the greater reality, a reality which transcends the categories which we use to explain it.

[2] C.S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact” in Undeceptions. Ed. Walter Hooper (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1971), 41.

[3] Ibd., 42.

 

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2018-10-16T03:11:07-05:00

Last updated on: October 16, 2018 at 3:11 am   By

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26 RSV). Death is said to be the final enemy because of what death represents: the annihilation of being, the decomposition and destruction of that which is.

The kingdom of death is the kingdom of corruption and decay, the kingdom of the half-life, quarter-life, and no-life. It seeks to bring everything which exists into the underwhelming emptiness of the void, the nihilistic annihilation of all things.

That which is tainted with death, that which has the emptiness of the void of being touching their inner core, finds the kingdom of death seeking them out, wanting to make them one with it in its rejection of all being.

The principle behind death, therefore, is not the mere absence of life, but the corruption and destruction of being itself. Physical death manifests this destruction of being as that which held life finds life cut off form it. True death of a living person is spiritual death; they suffer more than the loss of their life, but the wholeness of their very being. Their inner spiritual core has been taken away from them. They no longer have a proper center of being, as that center is turned into a void which acts like a black hole in their life, sucking everything good the person has within it, as the void seeks to overcome being by destroying everything which it touches. This is why spiritual death, more than physical death, must be understood as the evil which we face; indeed, physical death sometimes can serve as a stopping point for the spiritual death, allowing physical death serve as a good which counters the spiritual corruption of being, using the power of death against itself, foreshadowing the final overcoming of death by death in the passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Horror stories, whether in print or in film, often serve to demonstrate the kingdom of death and all its power. In them, we see various representatives of the kingdom of the dead, various forms of death, coming out from the kingdom of the grave, seeking out the living, seeking either to outright destroy the living, snuffing out the Spirit of Life from the world, or else, to place its insidious corruption into the living to make them one with the kingdom of the dead. Mummies, zombies, ghouls, ghosts, and vampires all demonstrate, in their own way, a different path of the contagion of death; they are figures of horror because they are the servants and knights and principalities of the grave coming to the world to make the empire of the dead that much larger. Zombies and ghouls have less of a semblance of life, while ghosts and vampires represent those who hold some remaining sparks of life, some remaining sparks of personality, despite being among the dead and no longer truly alive. To be a vampire is to be among the living dead, to be lifeless and yet without rest, to be tortured by the living, to seek out the living and take the energy of the living so as to imitate and feel, for a few brief moments, the last remnants of life flowing through the veins: life is sacrificed in others for the simulacrum of life in the vampire.

Truly, this is also what makes reanimating the dead to also be a thing of horror: such reanimation, whether or not it brings the dead back to life, or only brings it to the semblance of life, continues to have the touch of death always upon the body of the one who has been “brought back to life.” The figure is not entirely alive; the taint of death remains and true spiritual life, the truly transformed life given in the resurrection of the dead, remains outside the grasp of such a mortal shell. This exactly was the criticism given to Fedorov by Orthodox theologians: they recognized the good Christian desires behind his notion of establishing a “resurrection science,” of bringing back the dead ancestors as a “common task” of the living, but they also saw all that what was lost in such a science would be the deifying grace which transformed the resurrected person so that no longer was any taint of death within them. Fedorov’s principle desire and end was Christian; the morality certainly was Christian, but it was also Pelagian, and so even if some sort of reanimation of the dead is possible, it would only establish a prolonging of mortality and not the true eternal life which transcends death that Christ brings to the world.[1] “By death he trampled death and to those in the graves he granted life eternal.”  Jesus, in his passion, brings about the true conquest of death, destroys the final enemy, indeed, removes the horror of death itself by the way he reconfigured creation.

Death is the final enemy. The kingdom of death continues to be all around us. The kingdom of death has power in us and against us so long as we allow its taint, the taint of sin, to abide in us. It beckons to us. We instantly recognize the horror of it when we see it touching us. We create myths and stories representing the various levels of spiritual and physical decay, various kinds of deconstruction undergoing being itself, to help us understand the various ways death comes before us and seeks to destroy us. Death desires to come into the world and use its power to destroy life itself. But the power of life is greater; the giver of life could, and indeed did, use death to be its own undoing. Death met with death and found itself deconstructed: when death is overcome by death, all there is left is life, the life of the resurrection, the joy of being itself.

The horror of death is no longer the end of the story. It is now only the beginning of the greater story which leads to eternal life.

[IMG Zombies in a City [CC0 Creative Commons] via pixabay]

[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, understanding this principle, saw the horror of temporal immortality, which he represented with the dread condition of the ring-wraiths.

 

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2019-12-25T07:01:57-05:00

Last updated on: December 25, 2019 at 7:01 am   By

Tolkien in the opening section of The Silmarillion, the Ainulindalë, presents an explanation for evil which arose from his aesthetic understanding of creation. He shows the superiority of the good over evil by the way good can take evil, harmonize with it, and make a greater good as a result; that is, good is able to grow strong, more beautiful, as it struggles with evil and overcome it, while evil is unable to indefinitely oppose the good. As discord can be harmonized with and produce something greater, some thing more beautiful, so the discord which evil brings about can be overcome in order to produce some greater, more beautiful good. There is a symphonic structure to creation; history reveals the symphony in progress, with evil seen in the dark notes of distress. And yet, when contemplated as a whole, history, like a great symphony, is to be understood only after it is over, and there we find it ends not with sorrow and despair, but with hope. Even that which is used to resist God comes from some good given by God. That is, what produces evil nonetheless has some element of good remaining within it, an element which comes from God and which God can draw upon and use to bring about his desired end. For this reason, Melkor, the Satanic figure in Tolkien’s myth, was told how his resistance itself only works for Ilúvatar ‘s greater purpose (with Ilúvatar being one of the names for God in Tolkien’s myth):

Then Ilúvatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor;  but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show  them  forth, that ye may see what  ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.’[1]

This aesthetic understanding, beautiful within the context of Tolkien’s myth, represents the way the Christian tradition has understood how God deals with evil. There is nothing which is fundamentally evil in itself. Evil is a corruption of the good, a parasite which thrives upon the good, and people are attracted to evil not because it is evil but for the limited good which they sense from it. Likewise, that good remains open to union with the rest of the good, to harmonize with the rest of the good, so that it can establish a new good, a greater good than what existed before. This is not because evil is vindicated and is accepted, but because the good is able to draw upon the good found in evil, to take what is in it, to take what is given to it new, and to grow and thrive, in the way contrasts in music establish a greater, more aesthetically pleasing composition. This is not to say evil is good and should be accepted; rather this is to say that evil does not have the final say and the good which it uses to establish itself can become its own undoing.

Marsilio Ficino, following Plotinus and Proclus and other Platonists, not only understood the relationship between discord (or disharmony) with evil, but also the way evil had at its core its own undoing:

Rather, evil is in a certain disharmony of those things among themselves which people call “asymmetry”: that is, incommensurability. In so far as it relates to bodies, evil is not in form, for the latter wishes to dominate matter. Again, evil is not in matter, since the latter seeks to be adorned. It is rather in a certain unsuitability to form on matter’s part. From this, Proclus concludes that every evil is a quasi-existent and that whatever exists in this residual sense, coming suddenly and stealing into the creative work of the Good, is tinged with divinity. Given that the realm of generation exists, this evil also necessarily exists beneath it contributing to the perfection of the world but, with divine providence overcoming all things and wishing good things, is wonderfully made conformable to the Good. [2]

Evil, in its disharmony, tries to break apart and destroy what exists. Nonetheless, its own tools come not from itself but from what already exists, that is, from what is good. Not only did God establish creation, there is a sense in which all that exists participates in God’s super-essential existence, so that all things can be said to be “tinged with divinity.”

In this fashion there is a mysterious providence over history which will be revealed in the eschaton by the way God reconstitutes creation, bringing it all together as one in the revelation of the kingdom of God. There is tragedy and sorrow involved in history and in the establishment of the kingdom of God because of free will and contingency, and yet God knew that from such sorrow there could emerge something greater, something more blessed, something more thriving and alive than if he created a universe without free will. What good is there in the establishment of automatons? Perhaps, a little, but it is an inferior good which God does not seek. God wants a greater good, a good which manifests itself in love. And if it is in love, then it must follow the way of love: love does not force itself upon the beloved; it does not coerce, it frees and lifts up the beloved. Creation is established to participate in divine love, to be filled with life; it is given freedom and finds its best, truest freedom when it is in the kingdom of God. As Sergius Bulgakov explains, the kingdom of God is not inert, is not some lifeless dead-end, but it is the true realization of life and creative activity:

The kingdom of Christ becomes the kingdom of all-conquering universal goodness, which grows toward eternal life not only by personal effort but also in the union and sobornost of the universal Church. Thus, for creation, eternity does not signify the abolition of temporality with its becoming. Eternity is not an inert immobility but an inexhaustible source of creative life.[3]

The kingdom of God reveals the restoration of all things. The good unites and reveals its glory to us so that we find it attractive through its beauty. Evil distorts this; it attracts us, to be sure, through a distortion of the good. The more we fail to follow the good, the more we sin, the more the distortion overtakes our awareness. “Evil is nothing but spiritual distortion, and sin is all that leads to such distortion.”[4] As the good draws us in, as it brings is to a new, greater harmony, even the wounds which we experienced as a result of such distortion can be healed. That is to say, we not only have something greater as a result of human freedom, but even the burdens and sorrows caused by evil can be healed, so that no place, not even the fires of hell, can overcome the good, as Sergius Bulgakov also recognizes:

And since redemption is accomplished not only by the sacrifice of the Son sent by the Father, but also by the Holy Spirit, healing the sores of creation, the Holy Spirit continues its work of healing and restoration as long as that which is unhealed and unrestored remains. And the Holy Spirit can penetrate even the doors of hell.[5]

Medieval representations of the kingdom of God as a choir, with angels and saints signing together, do not have to be taken literally. Rather, they serve to represent, through an aesthetic analogy, the glory which is to be had in heaven. Music has the power to uplift those who hear it. St. Hildegard, understanding this by her own work with music, was able to represent the eschaton as a harmonious, beautiful choir. As the sound which is made transcends the singers as it fills a room with music, so God’s power and glory can be understood to be everywhere present and filling all things;  those harmonizing themselves with God will find themselves filled with vitality, aroused beyond all forms of sloth:  “And as the power of God is everywhere and encompasses all things, and no obstacle can stand against it, so too the human intellect has great power to resound in living voices, and arouse sluggish souls to vigilance by the song.”[6] And this is done through the work of the Good Shepherd, who like a conductor, is able to harmonize diverse elements and bring them together in a beautiful whole:

And you hear another song, like the voice of a multitude breaking out in melodic laments over the people that have been brought back to that place. For the song does not only harmonize and exult over those who persevere in the path of rectitude, but also exults in the concord of those who are resurrected from their fall out of the path of justice, and are at last uplifted to true beatitude. For the Good Shepherd has brought back to the fold with joy the sheep that was lost.[7]

And so, as Ficino discusses in his works, whatever comes about in history, whatever evil which is done, leaves behind a good which can be taken in by God for the completion of his plan for creation; that everything which is done in contingency still has a place in the eschatological order of the universe: “Meanwhile, whatever is born or arises as harmful or evil with respect to certain things is not permitted to come about otherwise than as being useful and as a good toward many other things and as otherwise than as fitly completing the order of the universe.”[8] The glory of the kingdom of God is the beautiful glory of the good in which the good reveals itself superior to all resistance to itself. The good conquers evil from within evil itself, showing that at the heart of all such evil, there remains some good which can once again be integrated into the whole

“The righteous who have comprehended the world in its truth and beauty will not gaze on hell at all, for it does not exist in the eyes of God either.”[9]  In the eschatological vision of the blessed, they will see this good in all things; no longer will hell itself be a threat for them because they will see that hell itself has been overturned by God. It does not truly exist; its nature is that of evil, and evil does not exist. Only good exists, in various forms and gradations. The effects of evil will be remembered; the distortion of the will by which we sinned will be remembered, but in that memory, we can find healing grace to lift is up beyond the damage which we have done. And then, hopefully, we will see God’s providence is at work, harmonizing us with God’s eschatological goal so that all that remains before us is the beautiful kingdom of God.

[IMG= Vision of the Angelic Hierarchy by unknown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]

[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977), 17.

[2] Marsilio Ficino, Commentary On Plotinus: Volume 4. Ennead III, Part I. trans. Stephen Gersh (Cambride: Harvard University Press, 2017), 143.

[3] Sergius Bugakov, Bride of the Lamb. Trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans’ Publishing Company, 2002), 481.

[4] Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Trans. Boris Jakim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 192.

[5] Sergius Bugakov, Bride of the Lamb,515.

[6] St. Hildegard of Bingen. Scivias. Trans. Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 533.

[7] St. Hildegard of Bingen. Scivias, 533.

[8] Marsilio Ficino, Commentary On Plotinus: Volume 4. Ennead III, Part I, 133.

[9] Sergius Bugakov, Unfading Light. Trans. Thomas Allan Smith (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans’ Publishing Company, 2012), 431.

 

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2017-12-14T12:06:20-05:00

Last updated on: December 14, 2017 at 12:06 pm   By

Bernardino_Parenzano_-_Temptations_of_St_Anthony_-_WGA17016One of the normative phases of spiritual development is found when a spiritual pilgrim goes off alone to fight against all the temptations which beset them. These temptations can come from within, with all the inordinate desires, passions and habits they have developed throughout their lives, but also, it can come from some external influence, which suggest the wrong course of action which will get them off the proper spiritual path. They go to get to know themselves better, to know their failings as well as their particular strengths and gifts which they possess. Going alone means they will have to figure it out alone, but it also means they will not have some outside source confusing them, causing them to misunderstand their place in the world. For, while it is true we become better with the help of good friends, it is also true, even the best of friends, can inadvertently influence us in a direction which might be suited for them but not us, causing us to stray from the course of life which is best for us. Going out and discerning oneself alone is not meant to serve as an individualistic ego-boost, but rather, it is a stage which we all need in order to clear ourselves and our thoughts and re-center ourselves once we have silenced all internal and external thoughts which cloud our mind.

Many, who are called for a longer embrace of solitude and silence, often into places of grave danger, where they test themselves even more due to the environment which they put themselves in. Thus, as St. John of Avila explained, some desert monks and nuns were known to go out into the place of the dead, into the tombs, facing what came upon them:

The ancient fathers of the desert knew how necessary it was to have a courageous heart so as not to be overcome in these battles with the demons that were very common among them. Therefore, they used to go alone to pray at the tombs of the dead in order to obtain freedom from the fear whose dominion is very harmful. [1]

It was never easy; indeed, it often did not go well. Many were known to be physically assaulted and wounded, barely surviving the conflict as they were saved by some of their friends. Sometimes, after the conflict was over, some spiritual consolation or aid would be given, comforting the would-be ascetic, as St. John of Avila recounted of St. Anthony:

Remember Saint Antony when he was severely beaten and kicked by demons. Raising his eyes above, he saw that the roof of his cell was opened and that a ray of light so wonderful entered through there that with its presence, all the demons fled, and the pain of his wounds was taken away. With profound sighs, he said to the Lord, “Where were you, good Jesus? Where were you when I was so mistreated by your enemies? Why were you not here at the beginning of the fight so that you might prevent or heal all my wounds?” The Lord answered him, saying,: “Antony, I had been here since the beginning, but I was watching how you were behaving in the fight. Because you have struggled manfully, I will always help you, and I will make you famous in the whole world.” By these words and by the strength of the Lord, Antony arose so encouraged that he learned by experience that he had recovered more strength than he had previously lost.[2]

Thus, as we progress along the spiritual journey, it is likely we will be tested, perhaps several times in our lives; each time we will discern our growth but also where we still need help due to our personal weakness. These tests, while keeping us humble, also help preserve a sense of our own potential, so not to lose hope. We learn not only our own strengths and weaknesses, we also learn how in accepting them for what they are, we are more willing to accept the help of others, knowing that they can bring to us what we need. This, of course, also means we will overcome Pelagian self-reliance as we see how we are able to do what we do with the special aid of God. We do not have to do all things ourselves. We should not assume we can, because that will only make us fail; we need others to work with us; when we truly discern ourselves, we will be able to see this as well as see how we can help others, and do so, knowing that we will often become the means by which God offers aid to others in this world.

While most of us might not follow the desert fathers, making our life one of extreme ascetic pursuit, we will still find ourselves undergoing retreats, coming to know ourselves better through our own limited struggle against temptation. We will resist, we will find ourselves, weak, and often we will stumble and fall into sin. Time and time again, we will fall down, only to get back up with the help of God’s grace. Time and time again, we find ourselves resolved once again to combat our worst desires, and then something gives in and we fall once again. We might find ourselves giving in to anger and fight with someone in a way which we know is wrong, but fueled by anger, we let our uncharity rule; we might give in to food or drink too much, finding gluttony a problem; we might find ourselves giving in to envy or avarice, acting unmindlessly to achieve our desire only to regret what we have done once we stop and ponder what we have done.

We must not give up, we must not despair: God’s mercy is there, he loves us like a loving mother; God will not abandon us, but will take us back in, nurse us from our sounds, and help us make sure we can get back on our feet and on our way in the world. We must not fret when we trip and fall; pride will make us despair while humility will allow us to get back up, look to God for what we need, accepting the means by which he shares his grace without questioning ourselves as to whether or not we are worthy of his mercy. Even when the fall is great, we must not despair. As long as we struggle against our worst inclinations, we can still be lifted back up and indeed see our work has not been in vain. For, despite our failure, what we have done before tripping up can be of substantial worth, helping not only ourselves but others, and it will not be lost just because our endurance against temptation came to an end. This lesson is one which J.R.R. Tolkien demonstrated well in The Lord of the Rings through the trials and tribulations of Frodo.

Frodo with his constant struggles against the ring reflects the spiritual conflict we all face; we know what is right, but we also take and grasp after, and often use, that which is wrong to use, often finding that the circumstances justify it as Frodo did in the times he used Sauron’s ring.  Yet, it is not just in and with the ring we find the spiritual conflict paralleled in the exploits of Frodo; early within his journey, after he and his friends left the Shire, they found themselves in the land between the Shire and Bree, a dangerous wilderness in which they found themselves aided by the mysterious Tom Bombadil.  Frodo and his companions would even find themselves facing he power of darkness and death in the barrow downs. Like Anthony in the tombs, the Hobbits were attacked and held down by a great evil force; Frodo, before he knew it, was trapped and about to be the victim of a Barrow-wight:

When he came to himself again, for a moment he could recall nothing except a sense of dread. Then suddenly he knew that he was imprisoned, caught hopelessly; he was in a barrow. A Barrow-wight had taken him, and he was probably already under the dreadful spells of the Barrow-wights about which whispered tales spoke. He dared not move, but lay as he found himself: flat on his back upon a cold stone with his hands on his breast.[3]

Like Anthony beaten up in the tombs, Frodo and his companions had to be rescued. At first, he could hear someone coming in and through a song:

Suddenly a song began: a cold murmur, rising and falling. The voice seemed far away and immeasurably dreary, sometimes high in the air and thin, sometimes like a low moan from the ground. Out of the formless stream of sad but horrible sounds, strings of words would now and again shape themselves: grim, hard, cold words, heartless and miserable. The night was railing against the morning of which it was bereaved, and the cold was cursing the warmth for which it hungered. Frodo was chilled to the marrow. After a while the song became clearer, and with dread in his heart he perceived that it had changed into an incantation:

Cold be hand and heart and bone,
and cold be sleep under stone:
never mare to wake on stony bed,
never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead.
In the black wind the stars shall die,
and still on gold here let them lie,
till the dark lord lifts his hand
over dead sea and withered land.[4]

But then, there was great power, a great light, which came upon Frodo and Tom Bombadil showed up to save the trapped hobbits:

There was a loud rumbling sound, as of stones rolling and falling, and suddenly light streamed in, real light, the plain light of day. A low door- like opening appeared at the end of the chamber beyond Frodo’s feet; and there was Tom’s head (hat, feather, and all) framed against the light of the sun rising red behind him. The light fell upon the floor, and upon the faces of the three hobbits lying beside Frodo.[5]

Tom, in this instance, was filled with a holiness and power which transcended the darkness which had trapped Frodo and his companions. Though it was said that Anthony had the direct intervention of God in his life, he did also have companions and friends see him and help him when he was hurt or needing something which he could not provide for himself. We need each other even as we need to recognize the aid we can give to each other, for without it, we will find our weakness overcoming us and destroying us from within. Tom was able to rescue Frodo when Frodo was still welcoming the help and aid of others. Yet, through the conflict he was put into, he slowly gave way, cutting himself from his friends, and though he was able to reach his destination, he also gave in to temptation and took possession of the ring instead of willingly destroying it:

‘I have come,’ he said. ‘But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!’ And suddenly, as he set it on his finger, he vanished from Sam’s sight. Sam gasped, but he had no chance to cry out, for at that moment many things happened.[6]

Frodo was both victorious and defeated. He had come to his destination, but once he got there, he found all the times he had given into the power of the ring caused him to finally let the habit take over and consume him. As he took possession of the ring, he became possessed by his own evil inclinations, thinking, as all do, that he will use his perverted will for the sake of some good goal. And yet, because of all he had done, the war was able to be won; for he had done much good up to that point in time, including saving Gollum from death. This good was able to be the means by which Frodo, and the rest of the world, would be saved, as Gollum followed Frodo, took the ring from him, and in his joy, found himself falling into the fires of Mount Doom, destroying the ring by accident. Frodo is a hero; he fell into temptation but it was not enough to overcome the grace; he had given himself over to grace even before he had given himself into temptation, and when the two came together, grace was able to come out stronger. In Frodo’s weakness, he was still able to find victory, showing us an example of how and why even the evil we do can be turned around and used for the greater good. So long as we struggle after and seek the good, we must not despair, and that even in our weakness, we not only can be saved but shown to be holy and saintly. Tolkien, through Frodo, gives us a side of the saints which is normally glossed over or neglected in hagiography, that is the true reality of the saint as they would see themselves as fallen and unworthy of God’s love. Saints were still human, full of human frailties, and often did much which was bad; they were wounded pilgrims seeking the kingdom of God with the rest of us. Yet, we can discern a greatness in them despite their weakness, and so likewise, we are given hope for ourselves. This was something which St. Ambrose understood; in discussing the saints of the Old Testament, he once pointed out that their fallen nature was important because it helped us have the right understanding of saints. When we avoid lifting up the saints with romantic visions which ignore their foibles, we will better understand how we can be like them, struggle with failures while still working out our salvation. Even with our passions and bad habits, we can become holy thanks to the grace of God, for, so long as we allow it to do so, grace is able to perfect in us what we are incapable of perfecting by ourselves.

We might not go out into the tombs; we might not face the full onslaught of evil, destroying us in body if not in soul; but we all have journeys to make. We are all pilgrims on this earth. We all face the darkness within and without. We all find ourselves wounded, both from within and without. We need help. We need each other. We cannot do it alone. We can do it, thanks to the grace of God. When we see even the great saints, or literary representatives which resemble the saints, falling and yet thriving, we should realize we have been given signs of hope. God’s mercy and love is greater than our frailty. But this is not to say we do nothing; we must strive, we must wrestle – with the help of God—all our life, fighting for what is good and true. The structures of sin, the ring of evil which tempts humanity individually and socially to embrace evil, will eventually be put into the fire; but before it destroyed, we must realize we will often succumb to its influences, claiming what it offers to us for ourselves. Fear not. Like Frodo in the Lord of the Rings, we will find God is able to take into account all we have done in our struggles for the good, to use the limited good which we have achieved, and use it to complete his own work in us, so that as the ring of evil is destroyed, we do not have to be destroyed along with it.

 

[Image=Temptation of St. Anthony by Bernardo Parentino [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]

 

[1] St. John of Avila, Audia, filia – Listen, O Daughter. Trans. Joan Francis Gormley (New York: Paulist Press, 2006), 104.

[2] St. John of Avila, Audia, filia – Listen, O Daughter, 106.

[3] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Collector’s Edition: Fellowship of the Ring  (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965; rp. n.d.), 151.

[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Collector’s Edition: Fellowship of the Ring, 152.

[5] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Collector’s Edition: Fellowship of the Ring, 153.

[6] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Collector’s Edition: Return of the King, 223.

 

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