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Patristiblogger hyperekperisou has kind words about my little … well… not so little Rosary project last October.  I am delighted that he thinks it might be of interest to Protestants.

Patristic Projects

Father Z, on his blog, What Does Prayer Really Say?, started and completed the Patristics Rosary Project. This project follows the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary and seeks out patristic passages which relate to the mysteries to which this rosary refers. Father Z deals with each subject by citing patristic parallels as explanations of the scriptural passages central to each mystery and, then, includes his own commentary. This is a tremendously learned series, but well worth reading, even for a Protestant such as myself.

In October 2006 I decided to look at the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a slightly different way. I searched out some passages from the Fathers of the Church which had something to do with the different mysteries of the Rosary. Here are some links to the 20 different entries I came up with.

Joyful Mysteries

The Annunciation

The Visitation

The Nativity

The Presentation

The Finding in the Temple

Luminous Mysteries

The Baptism of Jesus by John

The Wedding at Cana

Proclamation of the Kingdom

The Transfiguration

Institution of the Eucharist

Sorrowful Mysteries

The Agony in the Garden

The Scourging

The Crowning With Thorns

The Carrying of the Cross

The Crucifixion

Glorious Mysteries

The Resurrection

The Ascension

Descent of the Holy Spirit

The Assumption

The Coronation of Our Lady

 

We conclude our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

5th Glorious Mystery: The Coronation of Our Lady

Can we be certain of our final judgment? Those who say they are run the risk of the sin of presumption. We must proceed always with humbly confident perseverance. Salvation is possible. Our Lord has taken our humanity to the heavenly throne, where it (and we in it) already are glorified. The saints the Church has discerned through our long earthly pilgrimage, demonstrate that virtue and perseverance is possible. They intercede before God’s throne for us. Our greatest example and intercessor is the Blessed Mother of God, our Mother and Mother of the Church, who was assumed body and soul into heaven and is now reigning as heavens Queen. In our recitation of the Rosary we gaze at Mary our motherly Queen who redirects our gaze to the source of her beauty, the Lord Himself. Their glory is our promise. But first, with tools such as the Rosary in hand, we must make our way through this world and persevere to the end and our judgment.

Cassiodorus (+c. 585) writes:

The holy man demands judgment because he is certain of the Lord’s mercy. As Paul has it: "As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me in that day." He walks in his innocence because… he puts his trust in the Lord. The presumption he shows is not in his own powers but in God’s generosity. [Explanation of the Psalms 25.1]

The idea of judgment can make us at times shivers. But we approach it knowing that Mary is our advocate. We can come to heaven with some measure of humble confidence. St. Augustine of Hippo (+430) wrote to Hesychius a bishop in Dalamatia:

I have received the letter of your Reverence in which you urge on us the great good of loving and longing for the coming of our Savior. In this you act like the good servant of the master of the household who is eager for his lord’s gain and who wishes to have many sharers in the love which burns so brightly and constantly in you. Examining, therefore, the passage you quoted from the apostle where he said that the Lord would render a crown of justice not only to him but to all who love His coming, we live as uprightly as he and we pass through this world as pilgrims while our heart constantly expands with this love, and whether He comes sooner or later than He is expected, His coming is loved with faithful charity and longed for with pious affection. [ep. 199.1.1]

In heaven Mary has been crowned with glory. This is the reward of her faithfulness, a faithfulness beyond all others which merits a crown more glorious than any other. The reward of the crown is often, mostly associated with the struggle ending in bloody martyrdom. Our Lady is also crowned as the Queen of martyrs. Not all of us will be graced with the final perseverance that ends in the perfect charity which is bloody martyrdom for the sake of God and neighbor. We must persevere in far more mundane details of ongoing life, in prayer, work, and contemplation. Cassiodorus mentions something in this regard, however, which is very useful for us:

As someone has said, you will scarcely ever find that when a person prays, some empty and external reflection does not impede him, causing the attention which the mind directs on God to be sidetracked and interrupted. So it is a great and most wholesome struggle to concentrate on prayer once begun, and with God’s help to show lively resistance to the temptations of the enemy, so that our minds may with unflagging attention strain to be ever fastened on God. Then we can deservedly recite Paul’s words: I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, i have kept the faith. [Explanation of the Psalms 101.1]

Our Blessed Mother exemplifies perfectly the struggle of perseverance. Given exceptional graces, Mary was open with perfect focus to all God offered her, including her sufferings in unity with her Son. Her willing participation in the Passion of the Lord makes her the greatest of the martyrs, and while she did not physically receive the Lord’s wounds, she suffered by them nonetheless.

St. John Chrysostom (+407) speaks of crowns:

We see no garments or cloaks, but we see crowns more valuable than any gold, than any contest prizes or rewards, and ten thousand blessings stored up for those who live upright and virtuous lives on earth. [On the incomprehensible nature of God 6.7]

The many beautiful things of this world can take our attention and affection so much that they begin to displace in us our hunger for the reward of heaven. We must keep always firmly in mind that everything in this world fades and passes. Our hope of lasting happiness is found only in heaven with God. Venerable Bede (+735) speaks to this:

The flower of the field is pretty and its smell is pleasant for a while, but it soon loses the attraction of its beauty and charm. The present happiness of the ungodly is exactly the same – it lasts for a day or two and then vanishes into nothing. The rising sun stands for the sentence of the strict Judge, which puts a quick end to the transient glory of the reprobate. Of course it is also true that the righteous person flourish, though not in the same way. The unrighteous flourish for a time, like glass, but the righteous flourish forever like great trees, as Scripture says: "The righteous flourish like the palm tree." [Concerning the Epistle of James]

Didymus the Blind (+398), the teacher of St. Jerome and Rufinus expands this:

James does all he can to encourage people to bear their trials with joy, as a burden which is bearable, and says that perfect patience consists in bearing this for their own sake, not for the hope of some better reward elsewhere. He nevertheless tries to persuade his hearers to rely on the promise that their present state will be put right. The person who has fought the hard battles will be perfectly able to handle anything. Someone who comes through his troubles in this way will be duly prepared to receive his reward, which is the crown of life prepared by God for those who love him. [Commentary on James]

The Rosary teaches us to gaze, with Mary as our guide and companion, always upon the face of Christ, who reveals man more fully to himself. In crowning our Lady as Queen, the Lord does in an unsurpassed way what He does in each one of us: He crowns His own merits. But in doing so, Christ reveals more and more about who we are and what we were made for.

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

4th Glorious Mystery: The Assumption

We do not know if Mary died and was assumed body and soul into heaven or if she was assumed without dying. Either way, it was fitting that the Mother of God, who had never known the stain of sin, while requiring a Redeemer just like every other human being, should not experience the corruption of the grave. Our humanity is seated at the right hand of the Father in the divine Person of our Lord, but now also in the human person of our Lady. Christ is consubtantial with the Father. Christ is consubstantial with His mother. Mary is Mother of a divine Person with two natures. She is not Mother of part of Christ, but Mother of all of Christ in His integrity. And so, we can call her Mother of God and Mother of the Church. Her heavenly Assumption was fitting.

There are not elaborate reflections in the writings of the Fathers on the Assumption, because it was not a main point of reflection. Still, we can find their thoughts on some passages of Scripture
which help us to understand Mary’s role in the plan of our salvation.

As a perfect model for our own Christian discipleship, we can consider, among many texts, Proverbs 8:

And now, my sons, listen to me: happy are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it. Happy is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For he who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD; but he who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death.

 

While this concerns Wisdom, in a sense it harks to Mary, Wisdom’s seat. Here is the reflection of Athenagoras on this section of Proverbs:

[The Son] is the first offspring of the Father, I do not mean that He was created, for, since God is eternal mind, He had His Word within Himself from the beginning, being eternally wise. Rather did the Son come forth from God to give form and actuality to all material things, which essentially have a sort of formless nature and inert quality, the heavier particles being mixed up with the lighter. The prophetic Spirit agrees with this opinion when He says, "The Lord created me as the first of His ways, for His works." Indeed we say that the Holy Spirit Himself, who inspires those who utter prophecies, is an effluence from God, flowing from Him, and returning like ray of the sun. Who, then, would not be astonished to hear those called atheists who admit God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and who teach their unity of power and their distinction in rank? ... We affirm, too, a crowd of angels and ministers, whom God, the maker and creator of the world, appointed to their several tasks through His Word, He gave them charge over the good order of the universe, over the elements, the heavens, the world, and all it contains. [A plea regarding Christians 10]

 

This fellow sounds a bit like a subordinationist, but he is fascinating. This passage is interesting also for its hints at the cosmology and phyics of late antiquity. Also, it aims at the spiritual hierarchy in which our wonderous Lady has a privileged place.

Consider that the reward of assumption into the beatific vision stems as well from her perfect act of free will when she gave her "Fiat" to God’s will as expressed by the angel. Here is St. Augustine speaking of the impact of free will:

Man in paradise was capable of self-destruction by abandoning justice by an act of will; yet if the life of justice was to be maintained, his will alone would not have sufficed, unless He who made Him glad had given him aid. But, after the fall, God’s mercy was even more abundant, for then the will itself had to be freed from the bondage in which sin and death are the masters. There is no way at all by which it can be freed by itself, but only though God’s grace, which is made effectual in the faith of Christ. Thus, as it is written, even the will by which "the will itself is prepared by the Lord" so that we may receive the other gifts of God through which we come to the Gift eternal – this too comes from God. [Enchiridion 28.106]

 

God’s grace and Mary’s "Fiat" which was by grace. Mary was drawn with love into God’s plan and, later, into God’s presence. The Fathers made frequent use of the Song of Songs. St. Gregory the Great writes about the exchanges of heaven and earth which marked the plan of salvation:

The Church speaks through Solomon: "See how he comes leaping on the mountains, bounding over the hill!" ... By coming for our redemption the Lord leaped! My friends, do you want to become acquainted with these leaps of His? From heaven He came to the womb, from the womb to the manger, from the manger to the Cross, from the Cross to the sepulcher, and from the sepulcher He returned to heaven. You see how Truth, having made Himself known in the flesh, leaped for us to make us run after Him. [Forty Gospel Homilies 29]

 

Our Lady, who would feel Christ leap beneath her heart, would herself leap after Christ in her heart by her "Fiat". She leapt to begin His public ministry when she said at Cana "Do whatever He tell you." She leapt up Calvary with Him when the Blood and water flowed down. Her motherly and Christian heart leapt in joy in seeing Him gloriously risen. She leapt to Him in heaven when her earthly life was concluded.

In heaven Mary shines with the glory God shares with her. In the book of Revelation we have a description chapter 12 of the woman clothed with the sun. The Fathers speak about this image. They will mostly consider the woman as an image of the Church. We cannot reduce the Church to Mary. Nor in talking of the Church as Christ’s Body reduce Christ to the Church. But the three, Christ, Mary and Church are intimately associated. Hippolytus (+245) writes:

By the "woman clothed with the sun", he meant most manifestly the Church, endued with the Father’s Word, whose brightness is above the sun. And by "the moon under her feet," he referred to [the Church] being adorned, like the moon, with heavenly glory. And the words "upon her head a crowd of twelve stars" refer to the twelve apostles by whom the Church was founded.

Of course Christ founded the Church on the Apostles, and chiefly upon the Rock who is Peter. The description of the woman, however, fits Mary the Mother of the Church as well as the Church herself. Here is an extended piece by someone not too many in the West may read, Oecumenius (6th c.) called the "Rhetor" who wrote the earliest Greek commentary on Revelation:

The vision intends to describe more completely to us the circumstances concerning the antichrist…. However, since the incarnation of the Lord, which made the world his possession and subjected it, provided a pretext for Satan to raise this one up and to choose him [as his instrument] – for the antichrist will be raised to cause the world again to fall from Christ and to persuade it to desert to Satan – and since moreover His fleshly conception and birth was the beginning of the incarnation of the Lord, the vision gives a certain order and sequence to the material that it is going to discuss and begins the discussion from the fleshly conception of the Lord by portraying for us the mother of God. What does he say? "And a sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sum and the moon was under her feet." As we said, it is peaking about the mother of our Savior. The vision appropriately depicts her as in heaven and not on the earth, for she is pure in soul and body, equal to an angel and a citizen of heaven. She possesses God who rests in heaven – "for heaven is my throne" – it says yet she is flesh, although she has nothing in common with the earth nor is there any evil in her. Rather, she is exalted, wholly worthy of heaven, even though she possesses our human nature and substance. For the Virgin is consubstantial with us. Let the impious teaching of Eutyches, which make the fanciful claim that the Virgin is of another substance than we, be excluded from the belief of the holy courts together with his other opinions. And what does it mean that she was clothed with the sun and the moon was under her feet? The holy prophet Habakkuk, prophesied concerning the Lord, saying, "The sun was lifted up, and the moon stood still in its place for light." calling Christ our Savior, or at least the proclamation of the gospel, the "sun of righteousness". When He was exalted and increased, the moon – that is, the law of Moses – "stood still" and no longer received any addition. For after the appearance of Christ, it no longer received proselytes from the nations as before but endured diminution and cessation. You will, therefore, observe this with me, that also the holy Virgin is covered by the spiritual sun. For this is what the prophet calls the Lord when concerning Israel he says, "Fire fell upon them, and they did not see the sun." But the moon, that is, the worship and citizenship according to the law, being subdued and become much less than itself, is under her feet, for it has been conquered by the brightness of the gospel. And rightly does he call the things of the law by the word "moon", for they have been given light by the sun, that is, Christ just as the physical moon is given its light by the physical sun. The point would have been better made had it said not that the woman was clothed with the sun but that the woman enclothed the sun, which was enclosed in her womb. However, that the vision might show that the Lord, who was being carried in the womb, was the shelter of His own mother and the whole creation, it says that He was enclothing the woman. Indeed, the holy angel said something similar to the holy Virgin: "The Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you." For to overshadow is to protect, and to enclothe is the same according to power. [Commentary on the Apocalypse 12.1-2]

Take careful note of the image drawn on by the interesting Oecumenius, which also speaks to the cosmology of late antiquity. First, Oecumenius either knew that the sun gave light to the moon, as it does, or he extrapolates this from the glory that Christ gives to Mary.

All our Marian feasts, all our reflection, to keep the sunlight and moon theme going, always must draw us back to the Person of the Lord. We reflect on the face of the Lord who is reflected in the face of His Mother. Our recitation of the Rosary brings us to know the Lord more and more and, in turn, know ourselves better. We reflect His image and likeness and He came into the word to reveal us more fully to ourselves.

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

3rd Glorious Mystery: Descent of the Holy Spirit

Pentecost is the birthday of the Church, when the Holy Spirit breathes His own life into the Body and all the members. The descent of the Holy Spirit marks one of the ways in which Christ is faithful to His promise that He would be "with us always" (Matthew 28). The Scriptures describe the coming of the Holy Spirit, ru’ach, as a mighty wind rushing and as fire fifty days after the Lord’s Resurrection on a Jewish festival called the “feast of weeks” (Cf. Exodus 34:22; Deut 16:10). Here is St. Cyril of Jerusalem (+386):

‘And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 2:3-4). They partook of fire, not of burning but of saving fire; of fire which consumes the thorns of sins, but gives luster to the soul. This is now coming upon you also, and that to strip away and consume your sins which are like thorns, and to brighten yet more that precious possession of your souls, and to give you grace; for He gave it then to the Apostles. And He sat upon them in the form of fiery tongues, that they might crown themselves with new and spiritual diadems by fiery tongues upon their heads. A fiery sword barred of old the gates of Paradise; a fiery tongue which brought salvation restored the gift. [Catechetical Lectures 17.15]

Do you remember that image of the fiery sword in the hands of the angel who closed the gates behind Adam and Eve? We have seen the Father’s refer to this before. Notice also how Cyril makes the event of Pentecost so personal. This leads to the question: Upon whom did the Holy Spirit descend? On the Twelve alone? Here is St. John Chrysostom (+407):

Was it upon the twelve that it [the Holy Spirit] came? Not so; but upon the hundred and twenty. For Peter would not have quoted to no purpose the testimony of the prophet, saying, ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith the Lord God, I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams’ (Joel 2:28). ‘And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.’ For, that the effect may not be to frighten only, therefore it is both ‘with the Holy Spirit, and with fire. And began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance’ (Mt. 3:11). [Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles]

One of the signs of the working of the Spirit in the new Church is the anti-Babel, or anti-babble He produced. You remember that as punishment for his pride, in the book of Genesis God inflicted man with different languages. From that point men could no longer understand each other with facility. At Pentecost, they hear each other as if they were all using everyone else’s mother tongue. Here is St. Gregory Nazianen (+389):

But as the old Confusion of tongues was laudable, when men who were of one language in wickedness and impiety, even as some now venture to be, were building the Tower; for by the confusion of their language the unity of their intention was broken up, and their undertaking destroyed; so much more worthy of praise is the present miraculous one. For being poured from One Spirit upon many men, it brings them again into harmony. And there is a diversity of Gifts, which stands in need of yet another Gift to discern which is the best, where all are praiseworthy. [Oration on Pentecost]

The spellbinding Romanos the Melodist (+6th c.) has this about our praise of the Spirit. Amazing imagery:

Brothers, we shall hymn with praise the tongues of the disciples, because, not with elegant speech, But in divine power they have revived all men. Because they took up His Cross as a reed, So that they might again use words as fishing lines and fish for the world Since they had speech as a sharp fishhook, Since the flesh of the Master of all Has become for them a bait, it has not sought to kill But it attracts to life those who worship and praise The All-Holy Spirit. [On Pentecost]

One of my favorite lines in all of Scripture is John 21:3: Simon Peter said to them, "I’m going fishing."

Many don’t realize the great importance the feast has always had in the Church. In the pre-Conciliar Roman rite, Pentecost actually had more liturgical bells and whistles attached to it that Easter Sunday. St. Pope Leo I, "the Great" (+461) preaches about the granduer of Pentecost with his characteristic elegance:

Pentecost holds great mysteries in itself, mysteries new and old. By them it is clear that grace was foretold through the old law, and the old law was fulfilled through grace. When the Hebrew people were freed from the Egyptians, the law was given on Mount Sinai on the fiftieth day after the sacrifice of the lambs. So, after the suffering of Christ — the true Lamb of God, who was slain — and on the fiftieth day from His resurrection, the Holy Spirit came down upon the Apostles and the crowd of believers. The true Christian can easily see how the beginnings of the Old Testament prepared for the beginnings of the gospel, and that the second covenant was founded by the same Spirit who had set up the first …

Oh, how swift are the words of wisdom! How quickly the lesson is learned when God is the Teacher! No interpretation is needed for understanding, no practice for using, no time for studying. The Spirit of Truth blows where He wills (see Jn 3:8), and the languages of each nation become common property in the mouth of the Church. So, from that day, the Gospel preaching has resounded like a trumpet. From that day, the showers of gracious gifts, the rivers of blessings, have watered every desert and all the dry land. To “renew the face of the earth” (Ps 103:30), the Spirit of God “was moving over the face of the waters” (Gen 1:2); and to drive away the old darkness, flashes of new light shone forth. By the blaze of those busy tongues, the Lord’s bright Word kindled speech into fire — fire to arouse the understanding and to consume sin. Fire has the power to enlighten and the power to burn.

God’s word has authority, and it is ablaze with these and countless other proofs. Let us, all together, wake up to celebrate Pentecost. Let’s rejoice in honor of the Holy Spirit, through whom the whole Catholic Church is made holy, and every rational soul comes alive. He is the Inspirer of Faith, the Teacher of Knowledge, the Fountain of Love, the Seal of Chastity, and the Source of all Power.

Let the spirits of the faithful rejoice. Let one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be praised throughout the world, by the confession of all languages. And may that sign of His presence, the likeness of fire, burn perpetually in His work and gift.

The Spirit of Truth makes the house of His glory shine with the brightness of His light, and He wants nothing in His temple to be dark or lukewarm.

Note the images of water, the baptismal medium, and the fire. Let’s stick with that for a moment longer. Here is St. Ambrose of Milan (+397):

So, then, the Holy Spirit is the River, and the abundant River, which according to the Hebrews flowed from Jesus in the lands, as we have received it prophesied by the mouth of Isaiah. This is the great River which flows always and never fails. And not only a river, but also one of copious stream and overflowing greatness, as also David said: "The stream of the river makes glad the city of God."

For neither is that city, the heavenly Jerusalem, watered by the channel of any earthly river, but that Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Fount of Life, by a short draught of Whom we are satiated, seems to flow more abundantly among those celestial Thrones, Dominions and Powers, Angels and Archangels, rushing in the full course of the seven virtues of the Spirit. For if a river rising above its banks overflows, how much more does the Spirit, rising above every creature, when He touches the as it were low-lying fields of our minds, make glad that heavenly nature of the creatures with the larger fertility of His sanctification.

And let it not trouble you that either here it is said "rivers," or elsewhere "seven Spirits," for by the sanctification of these seven gifts of the Spirit, as Isaiah said, is signified the fulness of all virtue; the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and godliness, and the Spirit of the fear of God. One, then, is the River, but many the channels of the gifts of the Spirit. This River, then, goes forth from the Fount of Life.

And here, again, you must not turn aside your thoughts to lower things, because there seems to be some difference between a Fount and a River, and yet the divine Scripture has provided that the weakness of human understanding should not be injured by the lowliness of the language. Set before yourself any river, it springs from its fount, but is of one nature, of one brightness and beauty. And do you assert rightly that the Holy Spirit is of one substance, brightness, and glory with the Son of God and with God the Father. I will sum up all in the oneness of the qualities, and shall not be afraid of any question as to difference of greatness. For in this point also Scripture has provided for us; for the Son of God says: "He that shall drink of the water which I will give him, it shall become in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life." This well is clearly the grace of the Spirit, a stream proceeding from the living Fount. The Holy Spirit, then, is also the Fount of eternal life. . . .

Good, then, is this water, even the grace of the Spirit. Who will give this Fount to my breast? Let it spring up in me, let that which gives eternal life flow upon me. Let that Fount overflow upon us, and not flow away. For Wisdom says: "Drink water out of thine own vessels, and from the founts of thine own wells, and let thy waters flow abroad in thy streets." How shall I keep this water that it flow not forth, that it glide not away? How shall I preserve my vessel, lest any crack of sin penetrating it, should let the water of eternal life exude? Teach us, Lord Jesus, teach us as Thou didst teach Thine apostles, saying: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where rust and moth destroy, and where thieves break through and steal." [On the Holy Spirit, 1.177-82]

Ambrose is good in print, even in translation. But when you read him in Latin, out loud and will some energy, you get a sense of why even someone like Augustine, who was a professional orator in the Imperial court, was completely captivated and much in awe of this mighty figure. In his piece above, Ambrose is very much bringing our baptism to mind. Our baptism is like our own personal Pentecost. Another captivating Latin Father, St. Hilary of Poitiers (+367) wrote about the commission laid by Christ on the Church to baptize:

Our Lord commanded us to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In baptism, then, we profess faith in the Creator, in the only-begotten Son and in the gift which is the Spirit. There is one Creator of all things, for in God there is one Father from whom all things have their being. And there is one only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things exist. And there is one Spirit, the gift who is in all. So all follow their due order, according to the proper operation of each: one power, which brings all things into being, one Son, through whom all things come to be, and one gift of perfect hope. Nothing is wanting to this flawless union: in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, there is infinity of endless being, perfect reflection of the divine image, and mutual enjoyment of the gift.

Our Lord has described the purpose of the Spirit’s presence in us. Let us listen to his words: I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. It is to your advantage that I go away; if I go, I will send you the Advocate. And also: I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth. He will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine.

From among many of our Lord’s sayings, these have been chosen to guide our understanding, for they reveal to us the intention of the giver, the nature of the gift and the condition for its reception. Since our weak minds cannot comprehend the Father or the Son, we have been given the Holy Spirit as our intermediary and advocate, to shed light on that hard doctrine of our faith, the incarnation of God.

We receive the Spirit of truth so that we can know the things of God. In order to grasp this, consider how useless the faculties of the human body would become if they were denied their exercise. Our eyes cannot fulfil their task without light, either natural or artificial; our ears cannot react without sound vibrations, and in the absence of any odor our nostrils are ignorant of their function. Not that these senses would lose their own nature if they were not used; rather, they demand objects of experience in order to function. It is the same with the human soul. Unless it absorbs the gift of the Spirit through faith, the mind has the ability to know God but lacks the light necessary for that knowledge.

This unique gift which is in Christ is offered in its fullness to everyone. It is everywhere available, but it is given to each man in proportion to his readiness to receive it. Its presence is the fuller, the greater a man’s desire to be worthy of it. This gift will remain with us until the end of the world, and will be our comfort in the time of waiting. By the favors it bestows, it is the pledge of our hope for the future, the light of our minds, and the splendor that irradiates our understanding. [On the Trinity, 2.1.33,35]

We can spend some more time with St. Augustine as he describes the Spirit as the love. Take a moment to hear Augustine. Read all the Fathers aloud, but especially Augustine:

There is no gift of God more excellent than this. It alone distinguishes the sons of the eternal kingdom and the sons of eternal perdition. Other gifts, too, are given by the Holy Spirit; but without love they profit nothing. Unless, therefore, the Holy Spirit is so far imparted to each, as to make him one who loves God and his neighbor, he is not removed from the left hand to the right. Nor is the Spirit specially called the Gift, unless on account of love. And he who has not this love, "though he speak with the tongues of men and angels, is sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; and though he have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and though he have all faith, so that he can remove mountains, he is nothing; and though he bestow all his goods to feed the poor, and though he give his body to be burned, it profiteth him nothing."

How great a good, then, is that without which goods so great bring no one to eternal life! But love or charity itself,—for they are two names for one thing,—if he have it that does not speak with tongues, nor has the gift of prophecy, nor knows all mysteries and all knowledge, nor gives all his goods to the poor, either because he has none to give or because some necessity hinders, nor delivers his body to be burned, if no trial of such a suffering overtakes him, brings that man to the kingdom, so that faith itself is only rendered profitable by love, since faith without love can indeed exist, but cannot profit. And therefore also the Apostle Paul says, "In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith that worketh by love:" so distinguishing it from that faith by which even "the devils believe and tremble." Love, therefore, which is of God and is God, is specially the Holy Spirit, by whom the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, by which love the whole Trinity dwells in us. And therefore most rightly is the Holy Spirit, although He is God, called also the gift of God. And by that gift what else can properly be understood except love, which brings to God, and without which any other gift of God whatsoever does not bring to God? . . .

Wherefore, if Holy Scripture proclaims that God is love, and that love is of God, and works this in us that we abide in God and He in us, and that hereby we know this, because He has given us of His Spirit, then the Spirit Himself is God, who is love. Next, if there be among the gifts of God none greater than love, and there is no greater gift of God than the Holy Spirit, what follows more naturally than that He is Himself love, who is called both God and of God? And if the love by which the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, ineffably demonstrates the communion of both, what is more suitable than that He should be specially called love, who is the Spirit common to both? For this is the sounder thing both to believe and to understand, that the Holy Spirit is not alone love in that Trinity, yet is not specially called love to no purpose. [On the Trinity 15.18.32; 19.37]

Several of the Fathers, East and West, wrote on the Holy Spirit. Here is St. Basil the Great (+379) talking about the effect of the indwelling of the Spirit:

Now the Spirit is not brought into intimate association with the soul by local approximation. How indeed could there be a corporeal approach to the incorporeal? This association results from the withdrawal of the passions which, coming afterwards gradually on the soul from its friendship to the flesh, have alienated it from its close relationship with God. Only then after a man is purified from the shame whose stain he took through his wickedness, and has come back again to his natural beauty, and as it were cleaning the Royal Image and restoring its ancient form, only thus is it possible for him to draw near to the Paraclete.

And He, like the sun, will by the aid of thy purified eye show thee in Himself the image of the invisible, and in the blessed spectacle of the image thou shalt behold the unspeakable beauty of the archetype. Through His aid hearts are lifted up, the weak are held by the hand, and they who are advancing are brought to perfection. Shining upon those that are cleansed from every spot, He makes them spiritual by fellowship with Himself. Just as when a sunbeam falls on bright and transparent bodies, they themselves become brilliant too, and shed forth a fresh brightness from themselves, so souls wherein the Spirit dwells, illuminated by the Spirit, themselves become spiritual, and send forth their grace to others.

Hence comes foreknowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, apprehension of what is hidden, distribution of good gifts, the heavenly citizenship, a place in the chorus of angels, joy without end, abiding in God, the being made like to God, and, highest of all, the being made God [that is, sharers in the divine nature]. Such, then, to instance a few out of many, are the conceptions concerning the Holy Spirit, which we have been taught to hold concerning His greatness, His dignity, and His operations, by the oracles of the Spirit themselves. [On the Holy Spirit, 9]

Basil is referring to the "divinization" of our souls, an ongoing process in the life come when God shares His own glory with us. I love the image of the light in a trasparent body. We have all seen light defract through the flowing water of a stream or falls, or though a prism. The light makes luminous what it illuminates and seems almost to be increased. The thing illuminated is made more than it was. So, Basil says that we who are weak are "taken by the hand" and lead on the proper path. Stunning.

Turning now to an Easterner relocated in the West, we hear St. Irenaeus of Lyon (+202) on the effect of the Spirit not on just the individual, but on the collective:

When the Lord gave to the disciples power to confer rebirth into the life of God, he said: "Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit".

He promised through his prophets that he would pour out this spirit in the last times on his servants and handmaidens so that they would prophesy. And so the Spirit came down on the Son of God, who became the Son of man, and with him became accustomed to dwell in the human race and to abide in God’s creation, within men, working the Father’s will among them and making their old natures new with the newness of Christ.

Luke says that at Pentecost, after the ascension of the Lord, the Spirit came down on the disciples with power to grant all nations entry into life, and to open the new testament. And so in every language they sang a hymn to God in unison; for the Spirit brought the scattered races together into a unity, and offered to the Father the first-fruits of all the nations.

Therefore the Lord promised to send us the Holy Spirit to make us fit for God’s purposes. Just as dry flour cannot coalesce into a lump of dough, still less a loaf, without moisture, so we, who to begin with are dry wood, can never bear the fruit of life unless the rain from heaven falls upon our wills.

For our bodies through the water of baptism have received the unity which leads to freedom from corruption; but our souls have received it through the Spirit.

The Spirit of God came down on the Lord, "the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and devotion, the Spirit of fear of the Lord". He gave the same Spirit again to the Church, sending the Counselor to every nation from heaven, from which the Lord said "the devil was cast down like lightning". Accordingly we need God ’s dew, so as not to be burnt up and made unfruitful but rather to have a Counselor when we have an accuser. For the Lord entrusts to the Holy Spirit his man who had fallen among thieves. Taking pity on him he has bound up his wounds, and given two imperial coins, stamped with the image of the Spirit and the inscription of the Father and the Son. We are to accept them, and make the coin entrusted to us bear fruit and multiply for the Lord. [Against Heresies]

Hmmm…. dew of the Spirit… where have I seen that before? If you are registered on this blog, I think you get the use of a search function and can look up the many entries I posted on the Fathers and dew imagery. But let’s shift images back to one of the most dramatic of the Holy Spirit: tongues of fire. Since this blog is interested in translation issues and various tongues, we can linger over something of the Great Basil. :

That day all the believers were gathered together in one place. Suddenly there came a sound from heaven like a strong wind blowing, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then they saw what looked like tongues of fire coming down to rest on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them the power of utterance (Acts 2:1-4).

No sooner had the Spirit come upon them than they began to speak in tongues. They needed no time to study the languages they were given, nor practice to gain facility. Nor did their hearers need an interpreter. God was the master of speakers and hearers alike; it was his Spirit that inspired the apostles to give testimony and enabled the crowds to understand them. That day the wonderful works of God were proclaimed in every language of the world. The Spirit of Truth breathes where he will, and since the day of Pentecost each country’s native tongue has become common property in the mouth of Christ’s Church, as the gospel is preached throughout the world. The Spirit of God has swept over the chaos once more to renew the face of the earth, watering every barren place with a rain of charismatic gifts and blessings. The tongues of men declare God’s mighty deeds and proclaim his word in the power of the Spirit, while the Lord works with them and confirms their message by accompanying signs (cf. Mark 16.20).

The perrenial message of the gospel is that the Lord has saved his people. he has conquered sin and death, and given us new life as God’s adopted sons. And because we are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son intou our hearts, crying "Abba, Father!" (Gal. 4:6). Now where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Cor. 3:17). We are no longer slaves, but free men. It belongs to the dignity of free men to play some part in their own salvation; our task is to elude the enemy’s clutches by constantly turning in repentance to our Redeemer and proclaiming that Jesus is Lord of our whole lives. [On the Holy Spirit]

We pray that those who are working now in the matter of translating the Church’s liturgy into many languages of the world will be open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

There is too much to read from the Fathers on Pentecost and the Holy Spirit. We can close with a magnificent piece again from the eloquent Leo speaks about the effect of the Holy Spirit in the Church today. Among the many things I note in this is the appeal to reason much as Leo’s successor Benedict XVI is doing. You will note that this is for the Vigil of Pentecost. Through the centuries Catholics dedicated themselves to serious fasts so that they could participate more fully and consciously and actively in the liturgy.

By these and other numberless proofs, dearly-beloved, with which the authority of the Divine utterances is ablaze, let us with one mind be incited to pay reverence to Whitsuntide [Pentecost], exulting in honour of the Holy Ghost, through Whom the whole Catholic Church is sanctified, and every rational soul quickened; Who is the Inspirer of the Faith, the Teacher of Knowledge, the Fount of Love, the Seal of Chastity, and the Cause of all Power. Let the minds of the faithful rejoice, that throughout the world One God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is praised by the confession of all tongues, and that that sign of His Presence, which appeared in the likeness of fire, is still perpetuated in His work and gift. For the Spirit of Truth Himself makes the house of His glory shine with the brightness of His light, and will have nothing dark nor lukewarm in His temple. And it is through His aid and teaching also that the purification of fasts and alms has been established among us. For this venerable day is followed by a most wholesome practice, which all the saints have ever found most profitable to them, and to the diligent observance of which we exhort you with a shepherd’s care, to the end that if any blemish has been contracted in the days just passed through heedless negligence, it may be atoned for by the discipline of fasting and corrected by pious devotion. On Wednesday and Friday, therefore, let us fast, and on Saturday for this very purpose keep vigil with accustomed devotion, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who with the Father and the Holy Ghost lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. [s. 75.5]

"Pious devotions". The recitation of the Holy Rosary, with a meditation on the mystery of Pentecost, will help us focus our gaze on the Person of Christ who sent His Spirit upon and and who is with us until the ending of the world.

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

2nd Glorious Mystery: The Ascension

Everything about the life of the Lord is a blessing for us.  After His resurrection the Lord blessed the Apostles with His presence, gloriously risen.  When His earthly work with them was completed, He very explicitly blessed them.  "Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven." (Luke 24:50-51).  Even the Lord’s departure from us was a blessing and it occurred in the midst of Christ’s explicit blessing of His apostles.  Venerable Bede (+735) speaks of the Lord’s blessing:

Our Redeemer appeared in the flesh to take away sins, remove what humans deserved because of the first curse, and grant believers an inheritance of everlasting blessing.  He rightly concluded all that He did in the world with words of blessing.  He showed that He was the very one of whom it was said, "For indeed He who gave the law will give a blessing."  (Ps 83:8 Vulgate)  It is appropriate that He led those who He blessed out to Bethany, which is interpreted "house of obedience".  Contempt and pride deserved a curse, but obedience deserved a blessing.  The Lord Himself was made obedient to His Father even unto death, so that He might restore the lost grace of blessing to the world.  He gives the blessing of heavenly life only to those who strive in the holy Church to comply with the divine commands. [Homilies on the Gospels 11.15]

Remember that for Bede, like most of the Fathers, the details have spiritual meanings.  Even the place to which the Lord led the Apostles meant something:

We must not pass over the fact that Bethany is on the slope of the Mount of Olives.  Just as Bethany represents a Church obedient to the commands of the Lord, so the Mount of Olives quite fittingly represents the very Person of our Lord.  Appearing in the flesh, he excels all the saints, who are simply human beings, by the loftiness of His dignity and the grace of His spiritual power.

St. Cyril of Alexandria (+444) speaks of the blessing the Lord confers:

Having blessed them and gone ahead a little, he was carried up into heaven so that He might share the Father’s throne even with the flesh that was united to Him.  The Word made this new pathway for us when He appeared in human form.  After this, and in due time, He will come again in the glory of His Father with the angels and will take us up to be with Him.  Let is glorify Him.

We may not at all times remember that even at this very instant our human nature is, in the divine Person of Our Lord, seated at the right hand of the Father.  We are therefore in a state of "already but not yet": humanity is enthroned in heaven sharing something of God’s glory, and yet we are still here, awaiting the final realization of all Christ accomplished.  St. Leo the Great (+461) pries this open:

Dearly beloved, through all this time between the resurrection of the Lord and His ascension, the providence of God thought of this, taught this and penetrated their eyes and hearts.  He wanted them to recognize the Lord Jesus Christ as truly risen, who was truly born, truly suffered  and truly died.  The manifest truth strengthened the blessed apostles and all the disciples who were frightened by His death on the Cross and were doubtful of His resurrection.  The result was the were not only afflicted with sadness but also filled with "great joy" when the Lord went into the heights of heaven.  It was certainly a great and indescribable source of joy when, in the sight of the heavenly multitudes, the nature of our human race ascended over the dignity of all heavenly creatures.  It passed the angelic orders and was raised beyond the heights of archangels.  In its ascension, our human race did not stop at any other height until this same nature was received at the seat of the eternal Father.  Our human nature, united with the divinity of the Son, was on the throne of His glory.  The ascension of Christ is not elevation.  Hope for the body is also invited where the glory of the Head preceded us.  Let us exalt, dearly beloved, with worthy joy and be glad with a holy thanksgiving.  Today we not only are established as possessors of paradise, but we have even penetrated the heights of the heavens in Christ.  The indescribable grace of Christ, which we lost through the ill will of the devil, prepared us more fully for that glory.  Incorporated within Himself, the Son of God placed those whom the violent enemy threw down from the happiness of our first dwelling at the right hand of the Father.  The Son of God lives and reigns with God the Father almighty and with the Holy Spirit forever and ever.  Amen.  [s. 73.3-4]

Before His ascension, the Lord laid a great commission on the apostles.  Here is St. Jerome (+420):

"Jesus approached them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.’"  This authority was given to one who had just been crucified, buried in a tomb, laid dead, and afterwards had arisen.  Authority was given to Him in both heaven and earth so that He who once reigned in heaven might also reign on earth through the faith of His believers.  "Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’"  First they teach all nations; then they baptize those they have taught with water for the body is not able to receive the sacrament of baptism before the soul has received the truth of the faith.  They were baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit so that the three who are one in divinity might also be one in giving themselves.  The name of the Trinity is the name of the one God.  "’Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.’" What a marvelous sequence this is.  He commanded the apostles first to teach all nations and then to baptize them in the sacrament of faith and then, after faith and baptism, to teach them to observe all that He had commanded.  Lest we think these commandments of little consequence or few in number, he added, "all that I have commanded you," so that those who were to believe and be baptized in the Trinity would observe everything they had been taught. [Commentary on Matthew 4.28.18-19]

This is a heavy charge, but the Lord consoles them as well.  St. John Chrysostom (+407) makes this point:

After that, because he had enjoined on them great things, to raise their courage He reassures them that He will be with then always, "even to the end of the world."  Now do you see the relation of His glory to His previous condescension?  His own proper power is again restored.  What He had said previously was spoken during the time of His humiliation.  He promised to be not only with these disciples but also with all who would subsequently believe after them.  Jesus speaks to all believers as if to one body.  Do not speak to me, He says, of the difficulties you will face, for "I am with you," as the one who makes all things easy.  Remember that this is also said repeatedly to the prophets in the Old Testament.  Recall Jeremiah objecting that He is too young and Moses and Ezekiel shrinking from the prophet’s office.  "I am with you" is spoken to all these people.  [The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 90.2]

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

1st Glorious Mystery: The Resurrection

The Lord of life laid down His life. St. John Chrysostom (+407) explained:

"When Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, he yielded up the spirit." This refers to what he had earlier said: "I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again," and "I lay it down of myself." So for this cause He cried with the voice, that it might shown that the act is down by His own power. [The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 88.1]

 

Already in the death of Christ the work of the resurrection began. The wonderful St. Hilary of Poitiers (+367) looks at moment the Lord died:

The earth shook. For the earth could not hold this dead man. Rocks were split, for the Word of God and the power of His eternal goodness rushed in, penetrating every stronghold and principality. Graves were opened, for the gates of death had been unlocked. And a number of the bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep arose. Dispelling the shadows of death and illuminating the darkness of hell, Christ destroyed the spoils of death itself at the resurrection of the saints, who saw Him immediately. The centurion and the guards who witnessed this disturbance of the entire natural order confessed Him to be the Son of God. [On Matthew 23.7]

 

The Lord is laid in His heavily guarded borrowed tomb. The women come on Sunday and find the angel. The tomb is empty and they do not see the one they were seeking. St. Peter Chrysologus (+450) speaks of the Lord’s bodily resurrection:

The Lord rises in the same flesh. He brings back the wounds, takes on again the holes from the nails and bears witness by His resurrection, which were the ravages of His suffering. If so, how could anyone imagine that He might return in some other body? How could anyone fail to believe that He will return in His own flesh? IT is fanciful to think that the servant would be chance disdain His own flesh. Rest assured, my friend, when you arise form the dead it will be you in your own body. Otherwise it would not be you if your should rise in the flesh of another. [s. 76.1]

 

St. Cyril of Alexandria 9+444) has an interesting comment about the role of the angel at the tomb:

So the angel became an evangelist and herald of the resurrection to the women. "Do not seek," he says, "the one who" always "lives," who in His own nature is life,."among the dead. He is not here," that is, dead and in the tomb, "but He has been raised." He has become a way of ascent to immortality not only for Himself but also for us. For this reason He made Himself nothing and put on our likeness, that "by the grace of God," just as the blessed Paul says, "he might taste death on behalf of all." And so He has become the death of death. [Frag. 317]

 

The Lord of Life is the slayer of the death that is perpetual. In doing so, He was like the new Adam putting to right what the old Adam had failed to do. Consider how Adam, who was given guardianship of the garden and all that was in it, had also been given guardianship of Eve. Christ overturned the old defeat of our human nature and undid what Adam and Eve had done: St. Jerome has more to say about the new Adam and the curse of Eve:

Two different feelings occupied the minds of the women: fear and joy. Fear came from the magnitude of the miracle they had witnessed and joy from their desire for the resurrection. Nevertheless both feelings impelled their steps. They continued on to the apostles so that through them the seed of faith would be scattered. "And behold, Jesus met them, saying, ‘Hail!’" They who sought Him out and ran to Him deserved to be the first to meet the risen Lord and to hear Him say "Hail!". Thus it happened that Eve’s curse was undone by these women. [Commentary on Matthew 4.28.8-9]

 

And they worship Him. St. John Chrysostom:

After they had departed with fear and joy, Jesus met them saying, "Hail!" They ran to Him with great joy and gladness. They "took hold of His feet". Thus they received by His touch an irrefutable proof of His resurrection, with full personal assurance of it. And they "worshipped Him." What does He then say? "Do not be afraid." Again, Jesus Himself casts out their fear, making room for their faith: "Go and tell my brothers to go to Galiliee, and their they will see me." Note well how He Himself sends good tidings to his disciples by these women. He thereby brings honor to that sex which is most prone to be dishonored. Through these women He brings good hope and the healing of that which was diseased.

 

Some among you may desire to be liKe these faithful women. You too may wish to take hold of the feet of Jesus. You can, even now. You can embrace not only His feet, but also His hands and even His sacred head. You too can today receive the awesome mysteries with a pure conscience. You can embrace Him not only in this life but also even more fully on that day when you shall see Him coming with unspeakable glory, with a multitude of the angels. If you are so disposed, along with Him, to be compassionate, you shall hear not only these words, "All hail!" but also those others: "Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world." [The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 89.3]

Before the creation of the world, God knew each and every one of us and desired us for Himself. The death and resurrection of the Lord was for our sake, not His. He gives Himself to us in Communion ("You too can today receive the awesome mysteries…") for our sake, not His. And in the life to come, He opens the way to heaven for those who have accepted Him and His gifts for our sake and that love and glory be multiplied, not because He can change in love or glory.

Imagine how the one who is entirely transcendent and unchanging forever banished the hideous parody of God’s unchanging nature which would have befallen if not for the resurrection. We learn in our study of physic about the principle of entropy and the slow but sure distribution of energy throughout the universe. Eventually, if not for the resurrection, after who knows how long, after how many billions of eons, all energy would be evenly distributed and there would remain only the perfectly lightless, motionless, cold silence of absolute death in the physical realm. With Christ, the Victor King, though the world will eventually be unmade in fire, as we read in the letter of Peter, all will be taken by Him and submitted to the Father so that God might be all in all, as Paul told the Corinthians. All things shall be made new.

When we face our own death or consider the death of loved ones, Christians look to the resurrection. Since we are approaching the month in which we pray in a special way for the dead, let us listen to St. Augustine, who speaks to the hope we find in the Lord and His resurrection:

1. When we celebrate days in remembrance of our dead brothers and sisters, we ought to bear in mind both what we should be hoping for and what we should be afraid of. We have reason to hope, you see, because "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones (Ps 116:15); but reason to be afraid, because "The death of the sinner is very evil" (Ps 34:21). That’s why, as regards hope, "The just will be kept in mind for ever"; while as regards fear, "he will not fear an evil hearing (Ps 112:6-7). There will be something heard, you see, than which nothing could be worse, when those on the left hand are told, "Go into everlasting fire" (Mt 25:41). That is the evil hearing which the just will not fear, because he will be among those on the right hand who will be told, "Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom" (Mt 25:34).

 

In this life, though, which is spent halfway between and before ultimate good and ultimate evil things, in the midst of middling goods and evils, in neither case the ultimate – because whatever good things come one’s way here are just nothing in comparison with the good things of eternity; and whatever evils one may experience in this life are not to be counted at all in comparison with eternal fire – so in this halfway kind of life we must hold onto what we heard just now in the gospel: "Whoever believes in me", he said, "even though He dies, is alive." He both proclaims life and does not deny death. What does it mean, "even though he dies, is alive?" Even though he dies in the body, he is alive in the spirit. Then He adds, "and whosoever is alive and believes in me, will not die for ever (John 11:25-26). Well, now, "even though he dies"; but how, if "he will not die?" Yes, but even though he dies for a time, "he will not die for ever." That’s how we solve that problem, and see how the words of Truth do not contradict each other, and how they can support our loving devotion. So then, although we are going to die in the body, we are alive if we believe. ....

So let us comfort one another, even with these words of ours. It is possible for the human heart not to grieve for a dear one who has died; it is better, though, that the human heart should feel grief and be cured of it, than by not feeling any grief to become inhuman. [s. 173.1-2]

The recitation of the Rosary directs us to contemplate the face of the Lord in His infancy, His ministry, His suffering and in His glory. In each glimpse of the Lord’s face, Christ reveals man more fully to himself (Cf. GS 22). The Rosary, the patient prayer, can also help us see our neighbor, even the most annoying or disappointing, in a new light. The beads of the Rosary help us to build what we might call "resurrection glasses", which when directing our gaze at our neighbor, helps us to see him in light of the resurrection for which he was destined from before the foundation of the world. Christ died for our neighbors and the resurrection is what defines them too, despite their and our shortcomings.

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

5th Sorrowful Mystery: The Crucifixion

We come to the place of the Skull, Golgotha, where some traditions held Adam was buried. The New Adam is about to put to right the damage of the old Adam. This time, in defending His Bride from the serpent, the Bridegroom will be entirely faithful, even to the shedding of His Blood.

St. Ambrose of Milan (+397) connect’s Christ crucifixion and Adam’s burial:

The very place of the Cross is in the middle, as conspicuous to all. It is above the grace of Adam, as the Hebrews truly argue. (Mat 27:33; Mk 15:22; John 19:17) It was fitting that the beginning of death occured where the first fruits of our life were placed. [Exposition of the Gospel of Luke 10.114]

Since death entered by a man’s sin, in justice a man had to put it right. However, no man could possible be adequate or proportioned to bridge that gap between the human race and God. Thus, one who is both man and God had to do it.

St. Cyril of Alexandria also comments on the connection between death from Adam and life from Christ:

By becoming like us and bearing our sufferings for our sakes, Christ restores human nature to how it was in the beginning. The first man was certainly in the Paradise of delight in the beginning. The absence of suffering and of corruption exalted him. He despised the commandment given to hm and fell under a curse, condemnation and the snare of death by eating the fruit of the forbidden tree. By the very same thing, Christ restores him to his original condition. He became the fruit of the tree by enduring the precious Cross for our sakes, that He might destroy death, which by means of the tree [of Adam] had invaded the bodies of mankind. [Commentary on Luke, Homily 153]

Death is described almost like a parasite, slithering into our innards. Indeed, death is connected to the worm and the skull. We are freed from the eternity of nothingness in the grave by the humble submission of the God Man to the Cross and the tomb. Consider His condescension. The Rosary helps us redirect and fix our gaze on the face of the Crucified Christ.

St. Augustine (+430) considered the intention of the Lord in His Sacrifice:

Look at the Lord who did precisely what He commanded. After so many things the godless Jews committed against Him, repaying Him evil for good, did He not say as He hung on the Cross, "Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing?" He prayed as man, and as God with the Father, He heard the prayer. Even now He prays in us, for us and is prayed to by us. He prays in us as our High Priest. He prays for us as our Head. He is prayed to by us as our God. When He was praying as He hung on the Cross, He could see and foresee. He could see all His enemies. He could foresee that many of them would become His friends. That is why He was interceding for them all. They were raging, but He was praying. They were saying to Pilate "CRUCIFY!", but He was crying out "Father, FORGIVE!" He was hanging from the cruel nails, but He did not lose His gentleness. He was asking for pardon for those from whom He was receiving such hideous treatment. [s. 382.2]

So much is available in this short excerpt for our reflection. Think of it this way. When we are at Holy Mass, we are at the renewal of the event of this mystery: the Crucifixion, the Bloody Sacrifice raised to the Father for our salvation. We participate in this Sacrifice as the Head of the Body (the priest) and the Body of Christ (the congregation), together Christ entire and whole (as Augustine says, Christus totus). We have our roles to fulfill. Our reflection on the crucifixion through the recitation of the Rosary can help us participate more fully at Mass.

Secondly, consider how Augustine makes the distinction that Christ died for all, but that He foresaw that He would have many as His friends. Augustine is sometimes thought to be a pessimist about human nature and, indeed, he is truly pessimistic, but in a realistic way. Still, while Augustine does not say here that "all" would be His friends, neither does Christ say "few" will be His friends.

The word Augustine chose was "many", which is what we find in Scripture. This is what we find in the consecration of the Precious Blood at Mass. At the second of the two-fold consecration, the Sacrifice is enacted, by the separation of the Body and the Blood. In this moment, Holy Church expresses correctly in Scripture and in the liturgical form of the sacrament her proper understanding: Christ died for all but many, not all, will be saved. The Latin says that clearly. And we rejoice to pray that in all the vernacular translations to be issued in the future, we will say "for many" as a fuller and better explanation of the meaning of the moment.

Another thing this wonderful passage from Augustine tells us is that when we pray the Rosary and participate at Mass, nay rather, before Mass, we ought to take stock of how we may have committed wrongs against others and find forgiveness for wrong committed against us. Let’s hear more Augustine, in a sermon on St. Stephen, holds a mirror up to our souls:

But people who are reluctant to carry out the precept [of forgiveness], eager to get the reward, who don’t love their enemies but do their best to avenge themselves on them, don’t pay attention to the Lord, who would have had nobody left to praise Him if He had wanted to avenge Himself on His enemies. So when they hear this place in the Gospel, where the Lord says on the Cross, "Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing," they say to themselves, He could do that as the Son of God, as the only Son of the Father. Yes, it was flesh hanging there, but God was hidden within. As for us, though, are we to do that sort of thing? So didn’t He really mean it when He gave this order [to forgive]? Perish the thought. He certainly mean it. If you think it is asking too much of you to imitate Your Lord, look at Stephen your fellow servant.... [s. 317.2-3,6]

Again, the Rosary redirects and focuses our gaze on the face of Christ, the Priest and Victim. We can use the Rosary to prepare for Mass. Here is another mighty preacher, St. Pope Leo I (+461) on the Cross and the altar we kneel before to receive Holy Communion:

This Cross of Christ holds the mystery of its true and prophesied altar. There, through the saving Victim, a sacrifice of human nature is celebrated. There the Blood of a spotless lamb dissolved the pact of that ancient transgression. There the whole perversity of the devil’s mastery was abolished, while humanity triumphed as conqueror over boasting pride. The effect of faith was so swift that one of the two thieves crucified with Christ who believed in the Son of God entered paradise justified.

Who could explain the mystery of such a great gift? Who could describe the power of such a marvelous transformation? In a brief moment of time the guilt of a longstanding wickedness was abolished. In the middle of the harsh torments of a struggling soul, fastened to the gallows, that thief passes over to Christ, and the grace of Christ gives a crown to Him, someone who incurred punishment for his own wickedness. [s. 55.3]

How much time does it actually take to go to confession?

St. Jerome (410) in his direct and forceful way describes the Cross thusly:

That flaming flashing sword is keeping Paradise safe. No one could open the gates that Christ closed. The thief was the first to enter with Christ. His great faith received the greatest of rewards. His faith in the kingdom did not depend on seeing Christ. He did not see Him in His radiant glory or behold Him looking down from heaven. He did not see angels serving Him. To put it bluntly, he certainly did not see Christ walking about in freedom, but on a gibbet, drinking vinegar and crowned with thorns. He saw Him fastened to the Cross and heard Him begging for help, "My God, my God, why have you foresaken me?"... The Cross of Christ is the key into paradise. The Cross of Christ opened it. He has not said to you, "The kingdom of heaen has been enduring violent assault, and the violent have been seizing it by force"? (Mat 11:12) Does not the One on the Cross cause the violence? There is nothing between the Cross and paradise. The greatest of pains produces the greatest of rewards. [On Lazarus and Dives]

How we have seen some many things happen in the Church which we would rather not have seen. But Christ has permitted them. It is His Church. He permits challenges for the Church and for us. There is no glory without the Cross. Even in the Cross there is, for the Christian, hope. Here is Ephrem the Syrian:

There came to my ear
from the Scripture which had been read
a word that caused me joy
on the subject of the thief;
it gave comfort to my soul
amidst the multitude of its vices,
telling how He had compassion on the thief.
O may He bring me too
into that garden at the sound of whose name
I am overwhelmed with joy;
my mind bursts its reins
as it goes forth to contemplate Him.

[Hymn on Paradise 8.1]

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

4th Sorrowful Mystery: Carrying the Cross

In the Gospel we read: "And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’" (Mark 8:34) Christ has been interrogated, humiliated, excoriated, beaten, exposed to ridicule and condemned. The Jews called down His Blood upon their heads and choose to call for mercy for a criminal rather than their Messiah. Now the Lord will begin the last foot journey, though part of it will be made on His bloody hands and knees. He gives concrete witness to what he taught His followers: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart" (Matthew 11:29).

During the carrying of the Cross, there were some who followed the Lord. The "daughters of Jerusalem" followed the Lord and He told them to week for themselves and their children. (Luke 23:28) Cyril of Alexandria (+444) writes:

He was going to the place of crucifixion. Weeping women, as well as many others, followed Him. The female sex tends to weep often. They have a disposition that is ready to sink at the approach of anything that is sorrowful. "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but week for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck!’" How did this happen? When the way came on the country of the Jews, they all totally perished, small and great. Infants with their mothers and sons with their fathers were destroyed without distinction. He then says, "Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’; and to the hills "Cover us.’" In extreme miseries, those less sever misfortunes become, so to speak, desirable. [Commentary on Luke, Homily 152]

 

The Rosary can help us put things into perspective. The day’s business will often distract us from very important things, such as the contemplation of our judgment. What seems terrifically difficult here and now might, in the long run, not be so very difficult after all. With each Hail Mary, we remind ourselves of the Four Last Things. With this repetition, we can gain some perspective. On that note, the Lord continues with enigmatic phrase, hard to understand. The Fathers tried to break it open. Jesus said: "For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?" (Luke 23:31). The lyrical Ephrem the Syrian (+373) comments:

The Lord said, "If they do that to the green wood." He compared His divinity with the green wood and those who received His gifts to the dry wood. What is green bears fruit, as these words that He spoke testify: ‘For which of my works are you stoning me?" (John 8:46) If I suffer to this extent, although you have found no sin in me, which of you will convict me of sin? (John 8:46) Since you have invented a pretext to dispose of me, how much more will you suffer?" Perhaps He was referring the green wood to Himself, because of the miracles He had done. He called the righteous who were without virtue the dry wood. They are the fruit of this green wood, and they rejoiced beneath its foliage. Then they took it in hatred and destroyed it. What more will they do to the dry wood, which does not even have a sprout? What more will they do to the ordinary righteous people who do not work miracles? [Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron 20.21]

 

Trust too much in the world lately?

Another now famous figure accompanied Jesus with His Cross. Simon of Cyrene was constrained to help the Lord carry His burden. The same Ephrem comments:

After He took up the wood of His Cross and set out, they found and stopped a man of Cyrene, that is, from among the Gentiles, and placed the wood of the Cross on him. It was only right that they should have given the wood of the Cross voluntarily to the Gentiles, since in their rebellion, the Jews rejected the coming of Him who was bringing all blessings. In rejecting it themselves, in their jealousy, they threw it away to the Gentiles. They rejected it in the jealousy and the Gentiles received it, to their even greater jealousy. The Lord approved the welcoming Gentiles and this provoked jealousy among their contemporaries through the Gentile’s acceptance. By carrying the wood of His Cross Himself, Christ revealed the sign of His victory. Christ said that another person would not pressure Him into death, "I have power over my life, to lay it down or to take it up again." (John 10:18) Why should another person have carried the Cross? This showed that He, in whom no sin could be found, went up on the Cross for those who rejected Him. [Commentary on Tatian’s Diatesseron 20.20]

 

Again we see how the theme of the shift from the Jews to the Gentiles is taken up.

The carrying of the wood up Golgotha, was seen as symbolic by the Fathers, foreshadowed in a well-known event in the Old Testament. Here is Cyril of Alexandria:

When Blessed Abraham went up the mountain that God showed him so that he might sacrifice Isaac according to God’s command, he laid the wood on the boy. Isaac was a type of Christ carrying His own Cross on His shoulders and going up to the glory of His Passion. Christ taught us that His Passion was His glory. He said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and in Him God is glorified; if God is glorified in Him, God will also glorigy Him in Himself, and glorify Him at once." (John 13:31) [Commentary on Luke Homily 152]

 

Fathers such as Origen of Alexandria tended to find in events and people of the Old Testament foreshadowings or "types" of what would occur in the mysteries of Christ’s life, which we meditate on in the Rosary. Here the figures of Abraham and Isaac are together "types", foreshadows, of Christ as simultaneously Priest and Victim, Abraham with the knife, Isaac with the wood, both ascending the hill.

The Rosary can help us to steel ourslves for the reality of the Lord’s invitation to take up our own Cross and follow Him. Epiphanius the Latin (5th c.) comments on the yoke and our reluctance:

Therefore let everyone who whan life and desires to see good days put down the yoke of iniquity and malice. The prophet says, "Let us burst their bonds and thrust their yoke from us." (Ps 2:3) For unless one throws behind the yoke of iniquity, that is, the spark of all vices, one cannot take up the agreeable and light yoke of Christ. But if the yoke of Christ is so agreeable and light, how is it that divine religion seems so harsh and bitter to some people? It is bitter to some because the heart that has been tainted by earthly desires cannot love heavenly things. It [the heart] has not yet come to Christ, so that it can take up His yoke and learn that He is gentle and humble of heart. Hence we observe, my dearest friends, from the teaching of our Lord, that unless a person is gentle and humble of heart, he cannot bear the yoke of Christ. [Interpretation of the Gospels 26 PG 56:780]

 

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

3rd Sorrowful Mystery: The Crowning with thorns

One of the wonderful things which exploring the Fathers can teach us is how to savor each and every detail of the Scriptures. After many decades of Scriptural deconstruction and over-application of the historical critical method, with its "hermeneutic of suspicion" we can benefit from a refresher on how to approach Scriptures through the example of the Fathers.
For the Fathers, the details in the accounts of the Scriptures were laden with significance. Let us listen for a moment to St. Hilary of Poitiers (+367) on the torment Christ suffered in this Third Sorrowful Mystery:

The beaten Lord is dressed in a scarlet robe, a purple cloak and a crown of thorns, and a reed is placed in His right hand. Bending their knees before Him, they mock Him. Having taken upon Himself all the infirmities of our bodies, He is covered with the scarlet blood of all the martyrs destined to reign with Him, and He is cloaked with the high honor of the prophets and patriarchs in purple cloth. He is also crowned with thorns, that is, with the former sins of the remorseful Gentiles, so that the glory might derive from the destructive and useless things, plaited on His divine head, which they contrive. The sharp points of the thorns aptly pertain to the sins from which a crown of victory is woven for Christ. The reed symbolizes the emptiness and weakness of all those Gentiles, which is held firm in His grasp. His head, moreover, is struck. As I believe, not much harm was done to His head being struck with a reed; however, the typical explanation for this is that the bodily weakness of the Gentiles that was previously held in Christ’s hand finds comfort now in God the Father, for He is the head (cf 1 Cor 11:3). But amid all this, while Christ is mocked, He is being adored. [On Matthew 33.3]

The details are meaningful. A robe is put on the Lord. The robe is stripped off. The writer Appolinaris says:

The cloak itself represents the blood shed by the world and the people in it. The Savior was put to death for the salvation of all. But they who are choked by "worries, wealth, and pleasure" have received the word of God but have not borne fruit. (Luke 8:14) They weave thorns togethe and crown Jesus with them, dishonoring Him…. Those who deemed His Kingdom to be of little value placed a reed in His right hand. [Fragment 139]

Remember: Christ died for all but only many will actually be saved! We can choke off the fruits of our salvation with the strangling thorny weeds of sin.

The creative Origen (+254) has more on the robe and the crown:

So now, in taking up the "scarlet robe", He took upon Himself the Blood of the world, and in that thorny "crown" plaited on His head, He took upon Himself the thorns of our sins. As to the robe, it is written that "they stripped Him of the scarlet robe". But as to the crown of thorns, the Evangelists mention nothing further. Apparently they wanted us to determine what happened to that crown of thorns placed on His head and never removed. My belief is that the crown of thorns disappeared from the head of Jesus, so that our former thorns no longer exist now that Jesus has removed them from us once and for all on His own distinguished head. [Commentary on Matthew 125]

Consider the famous line of Isaiah 1:18: "Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool." "Reason together".... Pope Benedict XVI would love that.

There is no sin so terrible we finite little mortals can commit that the infinite power of our merciful God cannot forgive. Not only forgive, but wash clean, washed pure and away from our souls as if it had never been there. At our judgment, they will not be held against us, provided we receive their cleansing in the way He desired us to receive it: especially in the sacrament of penance. That sacraments takes your sins away so they are not there. Cloaked with the scarlet of our sins, the Lord is then stripped of the cloak. But, alas, the thorns of their memories remain, do they not?

The interesting and ecclectic Chromatius of Aquileia (+407)gives us a reflection on the mysterious kingship of the Lord. Remember that Jesus had already had a surprising exchange with the cowardly Pilate about His kingdom:

These things were done to mock Jesus. But now we know these things happened through a heavenly mystery. Wickedness was at work among the former; among the latter, the mystery of faith and the light of truth. In the purple tunic Christ is dressed as a king; and in the scarlet robe, as prince of martyrs, He is resplendent as precious scarlet in His sacred Blood. He receives the crown as conqueror, for crowns are usually bestowed upon conquerors. He is adored as God by people on bended knees. Therefore He is vested in purple as king, in scarlet as prince of martyrs; He is crowned as conqueror, is hailed as Lord and is adored as God. We can recognize in the purple cloak also the Church, married to Christ the King and resplendent with regal glory. Hence it is called by John in the Revelation a "royal nation". (Rev 1:6; cf. 1 Pet 2:9) As to this purple cloth, we read in the Song of Solomen: "His whole bed is purple." (Cant 3:10) For Christ rests on that bed where He is able to find purple cloth, that is, royal faith and a beautiful spirit…. The crown of thorns which the Lord received on His head stands for our community, which came to faith from the Gentiles. At one time we were thorns, that is to say sinners. Believing now in Christ, we have become a crown of righteousness, for we no longer cause pain or harm to the Savior. Rather, we surround His head with our profession of faith while we praise the Father in the Son, because the head of Christ is God, as the apostle says. (1 Cor 11:3) This is the crown foretold by David in a psalm: "You placed a crown of precious stones on His head." (Ps. 21:3 (20:4 LXX) We were thorns at one time, but after we were included in the crown of Christ, we became precious stones. For he, who raised up children of Abraham from stones, made precious stones out of thorns. (Matthew 3:9) This scriptural passage did not consider of trivial importance the fact that a reed was placed in the Lord’s right hand. Note what David says about Christ in the psalm: "My tongue is the pen of a ready writer" (Ps 45:1 (44:2 LXX). As He was about to suffer, therefore, He took up the reed in His right hand so that with a heavenly notation He might pardon our misdeeds or inscribe His law in our hearts with divine letters. As He says through the prophet: "I will put my law within them." (Jer 31:33) We may also infer other things about the reed, for it has many spiritual meanings. A reed that is hollow and without pith connotes the Gentile people, who were once without the pith of God’s law, empty of faith and devoid of grace. Therefore this type of reed, that is, the Gentile people, is put in the Lord’s right hand, for His left had already contained the Jewish people who were persecuting Him. [Tractate on Matthew 19:1-4]

Fascinating connections here, no? Take note that the Fathers I cite bring the Gentiles into the symbolism of the details, in slightly different ways. But what I find interesting about the imagery of Chromatius is how he suggests that the praying assembly of the Church is like the crown of thorns. Some wag might wrying respond, "Yah, and the thorns are still pretty painful when I look around at people at Mass, too, especially the ‘priest’ and ‘song leaders’!" Still, this is a wonderful thing to think about. By the sacraments, we are made more and more like a temple made of living stones. Stones seem woven together when they are laid and cemented into walls and floors. When they form a church building they surround the Body and Head of Christ, the priest and the congregation. The thorns are like stones, for Chromatius. It might be interesting to think of this when you are having problems or difficulties with people, even at Mass. Think about them as thorns, like yourself, causing suffering but… but… destined for glorious transformation. Christ died for each thorn and by each thorn. The goal was not the tomb, but the resurrection.

Notice also how Chromatius makes a connection between the hollow reed in Christ’s hand and the hollow pen with which He can write. He can write our name in the Book of Life. He can strike through our name as well. It depends on us. When we receive the sacrament of baptism and, later, penance, our souls are wiped clean. They are like a perfect white parchment waiting to receive its words, to be over written. Shall he offer it to the King of Glory or to the Prince of this world, the Enemy of the soul? Before the Lord received His thorns from us and the reed and the blows that went with them, He told Pilate in no uncertain terms: "I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me; but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go hence." (John 14:30-31) "Non habet in me quidquam..." Does the Prince of this world have anything on you?

Recitation of the Rosary can give us some clarity about the state of our own souls, as we pray again and again about the hour of our own death. With death comes judgment. God’s justice we will receive whether we want to or not, but His mercy is always there for the asking.

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

2nd Sorrowful Mystery: The Scourging

The Roman flail was a terrible thing, designed to do maximum damage. The Lord endured outrageous humiliation of His Divine Person as well as physical suffering beyond our understanding.

Pilate, who made decisions based on polls, queried the Lord about His Kingship. Christ responded: "My kingship is not of this world" (John 18:36). The Bishop of Hippo, St. Augustine (+430) wrote what is probably the best commentary on John ever assembled. Here is an obervation on Christ’s dialogue with Pilate:

2. Hear then, ye Jews and Gentiles; hear, O circumcision; hear, O uncircumcision; hear, all ye kingdoms of the earth: I interfere not with your government in this world, "My kingdom is not of this world." Cherish ye not the utterly vain terror that threw Herod the elder into consternation when the birth of Christ was announced, and led him to the murder of so many infants in the hope of including Christ in the fatal number, made more cruel by his fear than by his anger: "My kingdom," He said, "is not of this world." What would you more? Come to the kingdom that is not of this world; come, believing, and fall not into the madness of anger through fear. He says, indeed, prophetically of God the Father, "Yet have I been appointed king by Him upon His holy hill of Zion;" but that hill of Zion is not of this world. For what is His kingdom, save those who believe in Him, to whom He says, "Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world"? And yet He wished them to be in the world: on that very account saying of them to the Father, "I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil." Hence also He says not here, "My kingdom is not" in this world; but, "is not of this world." And when He proved this by saying, "If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews," He saith not, "But now is my kingdom not" here, but, "is not from hence." For His kingdom is here until the end of the world, having tares intermingled therewith until the harvest; for the harvest is the end of the world, when the reapers, that is to say, the angels, shall come and gather out of His kingdom everything that offendeth; which certainly would not be done, were it not that His kingdom is here. But still it is not from hence; for it only sojourns as a stranger in the world: because He says to His kingdom, "Ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world." They were therefore of the world, so long as they were not His kingdom, but belonged to the prince of this world. Of the world therefore are all mankind, created indeed by the true God, but generated from Adam as a vitiated and condemned stock; and there are made into a kingdom no longer of the world, all from thence that have been regenerated in Christ. For so did God rescue us from the power of darkness, and translate us into the kingdom of the Son of His love: and of this kingdom it is that He saith, "My kingdom is not of this world;" or, "My kingdom is not from hence." [tr. Io. eu. 115]

 

The cowardly Pilate declares Christ innocent several times. Yet He condemns Him to savagery anyway. St. Ambrose (+397) has something to say about this:

They send Christ to Herod and then to Pilate. Although neither pronounces Him guitly, both gratify the desires of strange cruelty. Pilate washes his hands but does not wash away his actions. A judge should not yield to either envy or fear and then sacrifice the Blood of the innocent (cf. Matthew 27:24). Pilate’s wife warned him (Matthew 27:19). Grace shone in the the flight. The Godhead was revlead, yet he still did not abstain from a sacrilegious verdict. [Exposition of the Gospel of Luke 10.100]

Cyril, (+386) the bishop of Jerusalem where it all took place, writes about Christ’s innocence and the subsequent impact of His condemnation.

Many have been crucifed throughout the world, but the demons are not afraid of any of these. These people died because of their own sins, but Christ died for the sin of others. He "did not sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth". It was not Peter, who could be suspected of partiality, who said this, but Isaiah, who, although not present in the flesh, in spirit foresaw the Lord’s coming in the flesh. Why do I bring only the prophet as a witness? Take the witness of Pilate himself. He passed judgment on Him, by saying, "I find no guilt in this man." When he delivered Him over and washed his hands, he said, "I am innocent of the Blood of this just man." (Matthew 27:24) [Catechetical Lectures 13.3]

 

Indeed, demons fear Christ. His Presence, even in the Blessed Sacrament is unfathomable agony for them. And yet their malice for us is so great that they over come their agony in the presence of the Eucharist so for the opportunity to weaken us, tempt us to receive Communion when we ought not. Then the demons do not fear us. They fear and hate us when our souls shine with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, made more splendid yet by Communion received in the state of grace. The Rosary can be a great tool of discernment in our approach to Communion.

St. Augustine puts Christ’s betrayal, scourging, humiliation and condemnation into perspective:

1. On the Jews crying out that they did not wish Jesus to be released unto them all the passover, but Barabbas the robber; not the Saviour, but the murderer; not the Giver of life, but the destroyer,—"then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him." We must believe that Pilate acted thus for no other reason than that the Jews, glutted with the injuries done to Him, might consider themselves satisfied, and desist from madly pursuing Him eve, unto death. With a similar intention was it that, as governor, he also permitted his cohort to do what follows, or even perhaps ordered them, although the evangelist is silent on the subject. For he tells us what the soldiers did thereafter, but not that Pilate ordered it. "And the soldiers," he says, "platted a crown of thorns, and put it on His head, and they clothed Him with a purple robe. And they came to Him and said, Hail, King of the Jews! And they smote Him with their hands." Thus were fulfilled the very things which Christ had foretold of Himself; thus were the martyrs moulded for the endurance of all that their persecutors should be pleased to inflict; thus, by concealing for a time the terror of His power, He commended to us the prior imitation of His patience; thus the kingdom which was not of this world overcame that proud world, not by the ferocity of fighting, but by the humility of suffering; and thus the grain of corn that was yet to be multiplied was sown amid the horrors of shame, that it might come to fruition amid the wonders of glory.

 

2. "Pilate went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring him forth, that ye may know that I find no fault in him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And he saith unto them, Behold the man!" Hence it is apparent that these things were done by the soldiers not without Pilate’s knowledge, whether it was that he ordered them or only permitted them, namely, for the reason we have stated above, that His enemies might all the more willingly drink in the sight of such derisive treatment, and cease to thirst further for His blood. Jesus goes forth to them wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, not resplendent in kingly power, but laden with reproach; and the words are addressed to them, Behold the man! If you hate your king, spare him now when you see him sunk so low; he has been scourged, crowned with thorns, clothed with the garments of derision, jeered at with the bitterest insults, struck with the open hand; his ignominy is at the boiling point, let your ill-will sink to zero. But there is no such cooling on the part of the latter, but rather a further increase of heat and vehemence. [tr. Io. eu. 116]

How often do we warm to the theme of our own sins, sparing not even our Crucified Lord, sunk so low for our salvation? As Pope John Paul emphasized, the Rosary teaches us to gaze with Mary on the face of Christ. He must be seen not only in His risen glory, but also in His battered state when He had been beaten "beyond recognition of a man".

Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the LORD to bruise him; he has put him to grief; when he makes himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand; he shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous; and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. [Isaiah 53]

 

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

1st Sorrowful Mystery: The Agony in the Garden

As the Passover approached, the Lord would enter into His Passion, from Latin patior, "suffer". After the Last Supper, where Christ washed His apostles feet and preached and instituted the Eucharist, thus ordaining them the first bishops of the Catholic Church which He founded, He went out to the Garden the Gethsemane. There He would pray and suffer and experience the bitterness of betrayal.

St. Jerome (+420) writes of the garden:

Gethsemane is interpreted as the "very fertile valley" where the Lord ordered His disciples to sit down and wait for Him to return while He prayed alone for everyone. [Commentary on Matthew 4.26.37]

Origen (+254), the creative writer of Alexandria, speaks to why Christ went from the Upper Room to a different place to pray:

... because, after He was betrayed, He did not want to be arrested in the same place where He and His disciples had eaten the Passover. Even before He was betrayed, however, He thought it fitting to choose to pray in places devoted purely to prayer, for He knew that some locations are holier than others, as it is written: "The place where you are standing is holy ground" (Ex 3:5; Acts 7:33). [Commentary on Matthew 89]

Some things are indeed set apart for God. There are sacred objects, persons and places. This observation of Origen, however, brings to mind the tension we have in life between the active and contemplative dimensions of our lives as praying, working Christian Catholics. We should make more holy all that we do by prayer, but we should have those special times set aside for holy things. It is hard to find space in busy days. All the more reason to have special times which help us to make even the busy times prayerful. Having a place to go, precisely for silence and calm and contemplation, is a very helpful tool of the spiritual life. You can also use the gentle repetitions of the Rosary to make a break from the pressing details of life and then bring those details back into prayer.

In the garden the Lord experience a horrific sorrow. Peter, John and James were in the garden with Him, as they were with Him during the Transfiguration (one of the Luminous Mysteries). Here is St. Hilary of Poitiers (+367):

When we read that the Lord was sad, we must examine everything that was said to find out why He was sad. He previously warned that they would all fall away. Brimming with confidence, Peter responded that even though all the others might be alarmed, he would not be moved (Mt 26:33), he who the Lord predicted would deny knowing Him three times. In fact, Peter and all the other disciples promised that even in the face of death they would not deny Him. He then proceeded on and ordered His disciples to sit down while He prayed. Having brought with Him Peter, James and John, He began to grieve. Before He brought them along with Him, He did not feel sad. It was only after they had accompanied Him that He grew exceedingly sad. His sadness thus arose not from Himself, but from those whom He had taken with Him. It must be realized that the Son of man brought with Him none but those whom He showed that He would come into His kingdom at that time when, in the presence of Moses and Elijah on the mountain, He was surrounded by all the splendor of His eternal glory. But the reason for bringing them with Him both then and now was the same. [On Matthew 31.4]

St. Jerome also addressed the matter of the Lord’s sorrow in the garden:

It shows that the Lord, to test the fidelity of human nature He had taken on, truly felt sorrowful. However, lest the suffering in His soul be overwhelming, He began to feel sorrowful over the events taking place just before His suffering. For it is one thing to feel sorrowful and another thing to begin to feel sorrowful. But He felt sorrowful, not because He feared the suffering that lay ahead and because He had scolded Peter for his timidity but because of the most unfortunate Judas and the falling away of all the apostles and the rejection by the Jewish people and the overturning of woeful Jerusalem. Jonah too became sad when the plant or ivy had withered, unwilling to have his booth disappear. [Commentary on Matthew 4.26.37]

Things do pass. As I write I see out my window how incipient winter is killing the plants. My booth is shifting from the Sabine Farm back to the City now, and winter seems to reflect what I feel as I begin to be sorry to leave. But think of the Lord’s sufferings, with his human intellect informed by His divine knowledge, over what will happen. What is our sorrow in the face of His? Is there sorrow like unto His sorrow? (Lamentations 1:12) In a sense, our sorrows can be like His when we join them to His sufferings. They are transformed, just as the little bit of water we add to the wine in the chalice in preparation for its transubstantiation.

Our tendency is to draw back from pain, and rightly so. Some pain, however, cannot be avoided and must be embraced willingly. The Lord teaches us about pain and St. John Chrysostom (+407) comments:

By saying then, "If it be possible, let it pass from me," He showed His true humanity. But by saying, "Nevertheless not as I will, but as You will," He showed His virtue and self-command. This too teaches us, even when nature pulls us back, to follow God. In order to make clear that He is truly God and truly man, words alone would not suffice. Deeds were needed. So He joined deeds with words in order that even those who have been highly contentious may believe that He both became man and died. Admittedly, some still do not believe that this was so. But many more would have been unable to have believed if His face had not been seen at Gethsemane. See in how many ways He shows the reality of the incarnation. He demonstrates both by what He speaks and by what He suffers. [Gospel of Matthew, Homily 83.1]

The Great Leo, Bishop of Rome (+461) says:

The disciples were admonished, and the Lord beseeches the Father that they might confront the force of present temptation with watchful prayer: "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not I as will, but as You will." The first petition arises from weakness, the second from strength: He desired the former based on our nature and chose the latter based on His own. Equal to the Father, the Son knew that all things were possible to God; rather, He descended into this world to take up the Cross against His will so that He might suffer through this conflict of emotions with a disquieted mind. But in order to show the distinction between the receiving nature and the received nature, what was proper of humanity desired divine intervention and what was proper of God looked upon the human situation. The lower will yielded to the higher will, and this demonstrated what the fearful person may pray for and what the divine Healer should not grant. "For we do not know how to pray as we ought" (Rom 8:26) and it is good for us that what we want, for the most part, is not granted. God, who is good and just, shows mercy toward us by denying us those things we ask for which are harmful. [Sermon 4.3.2]

God answers our prayers, sometimes with a "yes", sometimes with a "not yet", sometimes with "no", or even silence. God knows our true needs better than we do.

Eventually, we face moments of truth. The Big Moment of Truth comes for us all, of course. In the meantime, the clock ticks and moments come that we know we are going to have to face, like it or not. We must approach them in the proper spirit, in conformity with God’s will, in the tangle of our minds, but with the help of grace and authority and our virtues/habits. The ever interesting Origen has this to say:

"Look! the hour is approaching, and the Son of man ill be delivered up into the hands of sinners." It is also in view of this hour, I believe, that He said to his mother, "My hour is not yet come" (John 2:4 – The Wedding at Cana, the 1st Luminous Mystery). And now He declares that with the hour approaching, "the Son of Man will be delivered up into the hands of sinners." Would that only into the hands of those sinners had Jesus been delivered up! But now I believe that He is delivered up always "into the hands of sinners" when they who seem to believe in Jesus have Him in the hands since they are sinners. Indeed, as often as a righteous person indwelt by Jesus has fallen under the sway of sinners, Jesus is delivered up "into the hands of sinners".

"Rise, let us be going; see my betrayer is approaching." After He has awakened them from that sleep we spoke about, He says to His disciples, "Rise, let us be going." And seeing Judas in His mind, who was approaching Him to deliver him up and who was not yet seen by His disciplines, He says, "See, the one who will deliver me up is approaching." I believe, however, that "see, he is approaching" and "see, the one who will deliver me up is approaching" are not equivalent. Furthermore, the traitor, who had separated himself from Jesus by his sins and his betrayal was not simply "approaching" Jesus, but "he is approaching" to deliver us the Son of God, whom he already betrayed. Plainly, all wrongdoers first betray Jesus; then they deliver Him up. [Commentary on Matthew 97-98]

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

5th Luminous Mystery: Institution of the Eucharist

The Eucharist, its celebration and the Sacred Species, is the greatest of the sacraments. It is the only of the seven which actually is that which it confers. It is like the great jewel of a heavenly centerpiece set about with other gems, each making the others more beautiful by their relationship.

Holy Mass has been celebrated in one form or another in the Church since the Last Supper. The early Church bears witness to its celebration. Here is a famous passage from St. Justin Martyr (165):

There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; and he taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at His hands. And when he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by saying Amen. This word Amen answers in the Hebrew language to genoito [so be it]. And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion. And this food is called among us Euxaristia, of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, "This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body; "and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, "This is My blood; "and gave it to them alone. [First Apology 65-66]

The Supper occured on that fateful evening when Christ was betrayed. The Fathers teach us that even the details are significant. St. John Chrysostom (+407) talks about "evening":

But the evening is a sure sign of the fullness of times and that the things were now come to the very end. [He took bread] and gave thanks to teach us how we ought to celebrate this sacrament and to show that He does not unwillingly come to the Passion. He is teaching us so that whatever we may suffer, we may bear it thanksfully. So it is a sign of good hope. If the [Mosaic] type pointed to deliverance from bondage, how much more will the truth He embodies set free the whole world. He is being delivered up for the benefit of our whole human race. This is why He did not ordain the sacrament before this time. But from then on, when the rites of the law were no longer in effect, Jesus ordained it. [The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 82.1]

The mighty Bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose (+397) talks about the consecration of the bread:

Do you wish to know how it is consecrated with heavenly words? Accept was the words are. The priest speaks. He says: "Perform for us this oblation written, reasonable, acceptable, which is a figure of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. On the day before He suffered He took bread in His holy hands, looked toward heaven, toward You, holy Father omnipotent, eternal God, giving thanks, blessed broke, and having broken it gave it to the apostles and His disciples," saying: "Take and eat of this, all of you; for this is my Body, which shall be borken for many" (1 Cor 11:24). Take note. Before it is consecrated, it is bread; but when Christ’s words have been added, it is the Body of Christ. [On the sacraments 4.5]

Sound familiar? It ought to. It is the Roman Canon. There is a two-fold consecration at the Last Supper renewed in Holy Mass. Again, Ambrose:

Before the words of Christ, the chalice is full of wine and water; when the words of Christ have been added, the the Blood in effect redeems the people. So behold in what great respects the expression of Christ is able to change all things. Then the Lord Jesus Himself testified to us that we receive His Body and Blood. Should we doubt at all about His faith and testimony? [On the sacraments 4.23]

Christ’s words can change all things. When was the last time you hear the alter Christus, the other Christ, the priest say, "I absolve you of your sins"? Have you received Communion without hearing those words? His words, through the priest, can change all things. He made this possible… all for you. Christ’s Blood was poured out "for the many", since although He died for all, not all will accept the gifts He offers. This is clear from the Greek text of the New Testment accounts of the Last Supper. The Fathers knew this, of course. St. Jerome certainly did when he gave us "pro multis" in the Vulgate.

Perhaps more is needed about this all important issue. In the Latin Church (as in all the ancient Churches) we have ever said "for many". But in the terrible English translation (which, though horrible does not invalidate the consecration), we hear "for all". We should get at this a little more.

What has the liturgy of the Mass actually had in the past? We get “pro vobis et pro multis … for you and for many” in the formula of consecration from a blending of the accounts in Mark 14:24 (translated from Greek: “this is my blood of the covenant (diatheke) shed for many (tò peri pollôn)”) and Matthew 26:28 also says “for many” together with Luke 22:20 (translated from Greek: “Likewise also the cup, after the supper, saying ‘This cup is the new covenant (diatheke) in my Blood which will be poured out for you.’” The choice to do this had theological significance. Our Patristic sources, such as the writings of Ambrose when describing the words of consecration in the Eucharistic liturgy, have pro multis and not pro omnibus, etc. The liturgical formulas were from Scripture. Jerome, who translated from Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin giving us a Bible translation called the Vulgata, chose to use pro multis when translating the Greek tò peri pollôn (genitive plural of polus) in describing Jesus’ words at the Last Supper. In Greek polus means “many” or “much” or even “most” as in the majority: it does not mean “all”. In the ancient Church, no one said “for all” instead of “for many”. In the Greek Gospel accounts of the Last Supper, Jesus uses a form polus “many”. The liturgical rites of the East retained a form of polus. The rites of the Latin West have ever used pro multis.

Theological challenge, especially heresy, forces us to reevaluate our doctrines and their formulations. Theological revolt and heresy constrains Catholics to go deeper, and the disputes bear great fruits in the long run. During the 16th c. the Church was compelled to battle the Protestant heresies concerning the Eucharist, grace, and justification, the nature of man, etc. The long process of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) deepened our understanding of the faith and gave clear expression to what we believe. We find the Church’s teaching enunciated succinctly by the Roman Catechism or Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), the practical guide for pastors of souls. This Catechism says about the pro multis topic:

But the words which are added for you and for many (pro vobis et pro multis), were taken some of them from Matthew (26: 28) and some from Luke (22: 20) which however Holy Church, instructed by the Spirit of God, joined together. They serve to make clear the fruit and the benefit of the Passion. For if we examine its value (virtutem), it will have to be admitted that Blood was poured out by the Savior for the salvation of all (pro omnium salute sanguinem a Salvatore effusum esse); but if we ponder the fruit which men (homines) will obtain from it, we easily understand that its benefit comes not to all, but only to many (non ad omnes, sed ad multos tantum eam utilitatem pervenisse). Therefore when He said pro vobis, He meant either those who were present, or those chosen (delectos) from the people of the Jews such as the disciples were, Judas excepted, with whom He was then speaking. But when He added pro multis He wanted that there be understood the rest of those chosen (electos) from the Jews or from the gentiles. Rightly therefore did it happen that for all (pro universis) were not said, since at this point the discourse was only about the fruits of the Passion which bears the fruit of salvation only for the elect (delectis). And this is what the words of the Apostle aim at: Christ was offered up once in order to remove the sins of many (ad multorum exhaurienda peccata – Heb 9:28); and what according to John the Lord says: I pray for them; I do not pray for the world, but for those whom you gave to Me, for they are Yours (John 17:9). Many other mysteries (plurima mysteria) lie hidden in the words of this consecration, which pastors, God helping, will easily come to comprehend for themselves by constant meditation upon divine things and by diligent study. (My translation and emphasis. Part II, ch. 4 (264.7-265.14) from the Catechismus Romanus seu Catechsimus ex decreto Concilii Tridentini ad parochos …. Editio critica. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1989, p. 250. Cf. The Catechism of the Council of Trent. Trans. John A. McHugh & Charles J. Callan. Joseph F. Wagner, Inc.: New York, 1934, pp. 227-28.)

Think about it and decide. Back to the Fathers. The amazing Origen (+254) has this for our reflection:

If therefore we wish to receive the bread of blessing from Jesus, who is eager to give it, we should enter the city and go into the house, prepared beforehand, where Jesus kept the Passover with His disciples. We ascent to the "large, furnished upper room"(Luke 22:12) where He "took the cup"from the Father and, "when had given thanks, He gave it to them" who had gone up there with Him and said, "Drink this, for this is my Blood of the new covenant." The cup was both consumed and poured out. It was consumed by the disciples. It was "poured out for the remission of sin" committed by those who drink it. If you want to know in what sense it was poured out, compare this saying with what was written [by Paul]: "God’s love has been poured into our hearts." (Rom 5:5) If the Blood of the covenant was poured into our hearts for the remission of our sins, then by the pouring of that potable Blood into our hearts all the sins we have committed in the past will be remitted and wiped clean. He who took the cup and said "drink this all of you" will not depart from us who drink it but will drink it with us (since He Himself is in each of us), for we are unable alone or without Him either to eat of the bread or to drink of the fruit of the true vine. You should not marvel that He who is Himself the bread also eats the bread with us or that He who is Himself the cup of the fruit of the vine also drinks it with us. This is possible because the Word of God is omnipotent and is at once the bearer of many different names, for the multitude of His virtues are innumerable, since His is Himself every virtue. [Commentary on Matthew 86]

This takes nothing away from the necessity of baptism and and sacrament of penance, the obligation to be baptized and confess our sins to the alter Christus. However, it directs our gaze to the connect of the sacraments, especially how the forgiveness we receive flows from the Eucharistic Lord, offered and consumed, and culminates in His celebration and reception.

Recitation of the Most Holy Rosary, can be an excellent help for our preparation for confession and for Communion. The Rosary always guides us back to Christ through His Mother’s gaze, she who first bore the Eucharistic Lord within and beneath her heart so that we could receive Him.

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

4th Luminous Mystery: The Transfiguration

The Mystery of the Transfiguration was a matter of intense reflection on the part of the Fathers.

Remember that this takes place some eight days after the Lord confers the keys on Peter by the Jordan at Caesarea Philippi.  The Fathers thought everything in Scripture was significant and they attached great meaning to numbers.  Let us see what the mighty Ambrose of Milan (+397) has to say about the timing of the Transfiguration in relation to the events at Caesarea Philippi:

You may know that Peter, James and John did not taste death and were worthy to see the glory of the resurrection.  It says, "about eight days after these words, He took those three alone and led them onto the mountain." Why is it that he says, "eight days after these words"?  He that hears the words of Christ and believes will see the glory of Christ at the time of the resurrection.  The resurrection happened on the eight day, and most of the psalms were written "For the eighth".  (cf. e.g., Ps 6:1; 12:1 LXX and Vulgate)  It shows us that He said that he who because of the Word of God shall lose his own soul will save it, (Luke 9:24) since he renews his promises at the resurrection.  (Matthew 16:25-27)  But Matthew and Mark say that they were taken after six days.  (Cf. Matthew 17:1; Mark 9:2)  We may say that they were taken after six thousand years, because a thousand years in God’s sight are as one day.  (Ps 89:4 LXX)  We counted more than six thousand years.  We prefer to understand six days as a symbol, because God created the works of the world in six days (Gen 2:1), so that we understand works through the time and the world through the works.  [Exposition of the Gospel of Luke 7.6-7]

St. Augustine (+430) also gets into this issue of six days, as recounted in Matthew and Mark, and eight days (as in Luke) in a discussion of the resurrection three days after the Passion and death of the Lord.  He is trying to make sense of the numbers.  In other places I have explained how the ancients numbered their periods of days, that is, inclusively.

St. Cyril of Alexandria (+444) wrote of the Transfiguration in terms of the connection between suffering and glory, between the Law and the Prophets, between the foreshadowings of the past and their fulfillment.

"I say to you, there are some of those standing here who shall not taste of death until they have seen the kingdom of God." ... By the "kingdom of God" He means the sight of the glory in which He will appear at His revelation to the inhabitants of earth.  He will come in the glory of God the Father and not in a humble condition like ours.  How did He make those who received the promise spectators of a thing so wonderful?  He goes up into the mountain taking three chosen disciples with Him.  He is transformed to such a surpassing and godlike brightness that His garments even glittered with rays of fire and seemed to flash like lightning.  Besides, Moses and Elijah stood at Jesus’ side and spoke with one another about His departure that He was about, it says, to accomplish at Jerusalem.  This meant the mystery of the dispensation in the flesh and of His precious suffering upon the Cross.  It is also true that the law of Moses and the word of the holy prophets foreshadowed the mystery of Christ.  the law of Moses foreshadowed it by types and shadows, painting it as in a picture.  The holy prophets in different ways declared before hand that in due time He would appear in our likeness and for the salvation and life of us all, agree to suffer death on the tree.  Moses and Elijah standing before Him and talking with one another was a sort of representation.  It excellently displayed our Lord Jesus Christ as having the law and the prophets for His bodyguard.  It displayed Christ as being the Lord of the Law and the Prophets, as foretold in them by those things that they proclaimed in mutual agreement beforehand.  The words of the prophets are not different from the teachings of the law.  I imagine this was what the most priestly Moses and the most distinguished of the prophets Elijah were talking about with one another.  [Commentary on Luke, Homily 51]

The last line here is interesting.  It makes me call to mind what one finds in studying ancient historiography, such as Herodotus and Thucydides.  When reporting the speeches great figures made, about which they might at the very best have some distant report from someone who heard about the content of the speech, such as Pericles’s great oration, from a generation or more removed, Thucydides would record what the great man ought to have said in that momentous occasion.  This sounds much like what Cyril is doing.

Have you ever wondered why some get some graces and others do not?  St. Maximus Confessor (+682) gives an interesting insight while he comments on the Transfiguration:

The Lord does not always appear in glory to all who stand before Him. To beginners He appears in the form of a servant (Phil 2:7); to those able to follow Him as He climbs the high mountain of His Transfiguration He appears in the form of God, the form in which He existed before the world came to be (John 17:5). It is therefore possible for the same Lord not to appear in the same way to all who stand before Him, but to appear to some in one way and to others in another way, according to the measure of each person’s faith. When the Logos of God becomes manifest and radiant in us, and His face shines like the sun, then His clothes will also look white. That is to say, the words of the Gospel will then be clear and distinct, with nothing concealed. And Moses and Elijah – the more spiritual principles of the Law and the Prophets – will also be present with Him.  

St. John Chrysostom (+407) takes on this same issue:

"Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves;" (Matt. 17:1) ...Note, I pray you, the severe goodness of Matthew, not concealing those who were preferred to himself. Also, John often does this (in his Gospel), recording the peculiar praises of Peter with great sincerity. For the choir of these holy men (disciples) was everywhere pure from envy and vainglory. Having taken, therefore, the leaders, "He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him." (Matt. 17:2,3) Why does Jesus take with Him these three only? Because these were superior to the rest. And, Peter indeed showed his superiority by exceedingly loving Him; John; by being exceedingly loved by Him; and James again by his answer which he gave with his brother, saying "We are able (to drink this cup);" (Matt. 20:22) but not by this answer only, but also by his works …For so earnest was he (James), and so grievous to the Jews, that Herod himself supposed that he found favor with the Jews by slaying him (James)."  [St. John Chrysostom, Homily 56]    

I suppose we ought to be careful what we ask for.  Our earthly fate notwithstanding, we are always able to have a moment of Transfiguration in the proper reception of Holy Communion, which is far more than a mere vision of something of Christ’s divine shining through our humanity.  The Eucharist is not only the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ, it is for us a "pledge of future glory, containing in Itself all delight", as St. Thomas Aquinas (+1274) wrote for the feast of Corpus Christi, and which we all sing whenever there is Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.  A good reception of Communion is an even greater encounter with the Lord, than a Transfiguration.  It opens up the way to a bright future for us.  On that note, Gregory of Nazianzus (+389) ties us all into the mystery of the Transfiguration, saying:

He was bright as the lightning on the mountain and became more luminous than the sun, initiating us into the mystery of the future.  [Oration 3.19, On the Son]

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

3rd Luminous Mystery: Proclamation of the Kingdom

There are many moments in the Gospels we could use to illustrate this Mystery so we must make a choice.

Consider what the Lord says in Mark 1:15, after John has been arrested when Christ is in Galilee: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel."  In a sense, many of the things Christ says after this extend and exemplify the "good news", the "proclamation of the Kingdom".  

Since I am dealing these days with many apples, their eating and general enjoyment, my mind is drawn to something that St. Jerome (+420) wrote:

The sweetness of the apple makes up for the bitterness of the root.  The hope of gain makes pleasant the perils of the sea.  The expectation of health mitigates the nauseousness of medicine.  One who desires the kernel breaks the nut.  So one who desires the joy of a holy conscience swallows down the bitterness of penance.  [Commentary on the Gospels]

These are not the Glorious Mysteries.  Christ is preaching Good News which, at this point, is the Kingdom is at hand.  He will say to skeptics and onlookers in different times and ways that if the blind see and lame walk and miracles are being worked by Him, then the Kingdom of God is upon them.  In a way, His own sacred Person is the Kingdom of God in small.  Entrance into the Kingdom of God and into Christ requires the bitter before the sweet, suffering before joy, penance before peace.  The Cross precedes the glory.  But is it not true that even in the anticipation, the preparation, the purification and perseverance the glory is already present?  Didn’t Christ wear a crown already while on the Cross?  This Mystery reminds us that the Kingdom, although already (but not yet) at hand, requires us to repent as contituent element of the enjoyment of the Good News.  What a gift we have in the sacrament of penance.

To that end, one of the most amazing and conforting dimensions of Christ’s proclamation of the Kingdom, the announcement that we are slaves to sin no more and, instead, we are to be adopted children of the Father, is the gift of the sacraments and, in particular, the sacrament of penance, wherein repentence and the Good News of forgiveness converge.

When Christ healed the paralytic in Mark 2, He forgave his sins.  St. Ambrose, the great bishop of Milan (+397) offers this:

In their ministry of the forgiveness of sin, pastors do not exercise the right of some independent power.  For not in their own name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit do they they forgive sins.  They ask, the Godhead forgives.  The service is enabled by men, but the gift comes from the Power on high.  [The Holy Spirit 3.18.137]

And were there ever greater words about the Kingdom spoken than those Christ uttered before His Ascension?  He breathed on the Apostles and gave them His own power to forgive His in His stead.  So, the priest, acting in the person of Christ, forgives sins.   St. Augustine (+430) explains something important:

He exhibits Himself as occupying a middle position when He says, He me, and I you.  "And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost." By breathing on them He signified that the Holy Spirit was the Spirit, not of the Father alone, but likewise His own.  "Who soever sins," He continues, "ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever ye retain, they are retained." The Church’s love, which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, discharges the sins of all who are partakers with itself, but retains the sins of those who have no participation therein.  Therefore it is, that after saying, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," He straightway added this regarding the remission and retention of sins."  [tr. Io. eu.]

Christ is truly the "middle position", the one Mediator between God and man.  The priest, so closely associated with Christ by the power the Holy Orders, is another middle man with Christ’s own power to forgive sins.  The sinner must be with the Church to be forigven.  So must also the priest.  So important is this sacrament that the priest himself must have more than just the sacrament, the "power" to forgive, he must also have the mandate from the Church.  This is all according to the will of God, who desired that the gates of heaven be opened, the bonds of sins broken and the Good News be proclaimed by a Mediator.  And the words "I absolve you from your sins" are Good News.

The key to forgiveness, on the part of God and the priest and the penitent, is love.  Love must be part of the mix, not just fear (though fear really helps!).  About the woman "who loved much" and obtained from Christ forgiveness of her sins in Luke 7, we hear from Ambrose:

A kiss is a mark of love…. He truly kisses Christ’s feet who, in reading the Gospel, recognizes the acts of the Lord Jesus and admires them with holy affection.  With a reverent kiss, he caresses the footprints of the Lord as He walks.  We kiss Christ, therefore, in the kiss of Communion: "Let him who reads understand." (Mt 24:15)  The Church does not cease to kiss Christ’s feet and demands not one but many kisses in the Song of Songs. (1.2)  Since like blessed Mary she listens to His every saying, she receives His every Word when the Gospel or the Prophets are read, and she keeps all these words in her heart.  (Luke 2:51).  The Church alone has kisses, like a bride.  A kiss is a pledge of nuptials and the privilege of wedlock.  [ep. 62]

Christ walked all over as He proclaimed the Good News.  His feet could be a matter of reflection for us.  St. Alphonsus de Liguori says in his Stations of the Cross, "Nail my heart to Thy feet."  A baroque flourish, perhaps, but it is another way of kissing, like the penitent Mary Magdalene, the feet of the Lord as she weeps over them on account of her sins and her confidence in His mercy.  Christ dirtied His own feet in proclaiming and washed the feet of the Apostles who walked with Him.  His feet are beautiful: "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’" (Isaiah 52:7)

Each bead of the Rosary can be like a footstep along the path leading to our salvation and the blessed relief of the souls in Purgatory.

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

2nd Luminous Mystery: The Wedding at Cana

The late great John Paul II wrote in his letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae wrote:

24. The Rosary is at the service of this ideal; it offers the “secret” which leads easily to a profound and inward knowledge of Christ. We might call it Mary’s way. It is the way of the example of the Virgin of Nazareth, a woman of faith, of silence, of attentive listening. It is also the way of a Marian devotion inspired by knowledge of the inseparable bond between Christ and his Blessed Mother: the mysteries of Christ are also in some sense the mysteries of his Mother, even when they do not involve her directly, for she lives from him and through him.

First, Mary stays mostly in the background. But in the case of the Wedding at Cana, she steps for a moment into the light. In the Gospel we read: "On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; Jesus also was invited to the marriage." Take careful note that Mary seems to have had the main invitation and The Lord was "also invited". Mary, however, redirects everyone back to the Lord. Second, in all the moments in the Gospel in which Mary appears, she is seen to take in what happens in regard to her Son and herself and then contemplate them in silence before doing anything. After the Angel departed from her, she journeyed to see Elizabeth contemplating what happened before she burst out in her great Canticle. At the Presentation she contemplated the things Simeon told her. You will find this pattern again and again. At Cana Mary sees how the time, the right moment, had finally arrived for Jesus to make Himself known in public. Mary contemplated everything and, when all was prepared, she spoke and then stepped back into the shadows. She always redirects our gaze to her Son.

As Catholics we know with certain and divinely guided Faith that Christ instituted sacraments which would be the ordinary means for us to obtain the graces opening the way to salvation. God the Father created marriage in the creation of Adam and Eve and the mandate and different roles He gave them. We know that Christ’s presence at the Wedding at Cana did sanctify that marriage and, in so doing, sanctifies Christian marriage contracted in Christ in and under His Church, raising marriage to the dignity of a sacrament. As Venerable Bede said (+735):

To show that all states in life are good… Jesus designed to be born in the pure womb of the Virgin Mary; soon after He was born He received praise from the prophetic lips of Anna, a widow, and, invited in His youth by the betrothed couple, he honored the wedding with the power of His presence. [Homily 13]

It might strike some as odd to connect the mystery of Cana with the creation of Adam and Eve, but the connection is there. St. Augustine of Hippo (+430) wrote a commentary on the Gospel of John which has never been surpassed in all the ages since. In Tractate IX, he explores the symbolism of the six water-jars and the measures of wine within them.

In the very beginning, Adam and Eve were the parents of all nations, not of the Jews only; and whatever was represented in Adam concerning Christ, undoubtedly concerned all nations, whose salvation is in Christ. What better can I say of the water of the first water-jar than what the apostle says of Adam and Eve? For no man will say that I misunderstand the meaning when I produce not my own, but the apostle’s. How great a mystery, then, concerning Christ does that of which the apostle makes no mention contain, when he says, "And the two shall be in one flesh: this is a great mystery!" (Eph 3.31) And lest any man should understand that greatness of mystery to exist in the case of the individual men that have wives, he says, "But I speak concerning Christ and the Church." What great mystery is this, "the two shall be one flesh?" While Scripture, in the Book of Genesis, was speaking of Adam and Eve, it came to these words, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they two shall be one flesh." (Gen 2:24) Now, if Christ cleave to the Church, so that the two should be one flesh, in what manner did He leave His Father and His mother? He left His Father in this sense, that when He was in the form of God, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking to Him the form of a servant. (Phil 2:6) In this sense He left His Father, not that He forsook or departed from His Father, but that He did not appear unto men in that form in which He was equal with the Father. But how did He leave His mother? By leaving the synagogue of the Jews, of which, after the flesh, He was born, and by cleaving to the Church which He has gathered out of all nations. Thus, the first water-jar held a prophecy of Christ; but so long as these things of which I speak were not preached among the peoples, the prophecy was water, it was not yet changed into wine. And since the Lord has enlightened us through the apostle, to show us what we were in search of, by this one sentence, "The two shall be one flesh; a great mystery concerning Christ and the Church;" we are now permitted to see Christ everywhere, and to drink wine from all the water-jars. Adam sleeps, that Eve may be formed; Christ dies, that the Church may be formed. When Adams sleeps, Eve is formed from his side; when Christ is dead, the spear pierces His side, that the mysteries may flow forth whereby the Church is formed. [tr. io. eu. 9.10]

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

1st Luminous Mystery: Baptism of Jesus by John

The one God had sent to prepare the way and whom Christ Himself would describe as the greatest man born of woman, was a focus of much contemplation by the Fathers and we can only touch the surface of their comments.  Chromatius (+c.406), Bishop of Aquileia, wrote of the Baptist and his significance for us:

Hence John prepared these ways of mercy and truth, faith and justice.  Concerning them, Jeremiah also declared, "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it.  (Jer 6:16)  Because the heavenly kingdom is found along these ways, not without good reason John adds, "The kingdom of heaven is near." (Mt 3:2)  So do you want the kingdom of heaven to also be near for you?  Prepare these ways in your heart, in your senses and in your soul.  Pave within you the way of chastity, the way of faith and the way of holiness.  Build roads of justice.  Remove every scandal of offense from your heart.  For it is written: "Remove the stones from the road."  (Is 40:4)  And then, indeed, through the thoughts of your heart and the very movement of your soul, Christ the King will enter along certain paths.  [Tractate on Matthew 8.1]

Why Christ submitted to baptism was a puzzle to the Fathers.  Christ, who had no need of baptism, received baptism by water.  Hilary of Poitiers (+367) spoke about Christ’s effect on the water, rather than its effect on Him:

In Jesus Christ we behold a complete man.  Thus in obedience to the Holy Spirit the body he assumed fulfilled in him every sacrament of our salvation.  He came therefore to John, born of a woman (Cf. Gal 4:4), bound to the law and made flesh through the Word.  (Cf. Jn 1:14)  Therefore there was no need for him to be baptized, because it was said of him: "He committed no sin." (1 Pet 2:22)  and where there is no sin, the remission of it is superfluous.  It was not because Christ had a need that he took a body and a name from our creation.  He had no need for baptism.  Rather, through Him the cleansing act was sanctified to become the waters of our immersion.  [On Matthew 2.5]

Jerome (+420) also comments on this mystery:

For three reasons the Savior accepted baptism from John.  First, because He was born a man, that He might fulfill all justice and humility of the Law.  Second, that by His baptism He might confirm John’s baptism.  And third, that by sanctifying the waters of the Jordan through the descent of the dove, he might show the Holy Spirit’s advent in the baptism of believers.  [Commentary on Matthew 1.3.13]

One of the remarkable things occurring at the baptism of Jesus is the sound of the Voice.  Here is Hilary again:

A voice from heaven thus spoke: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."  (Mt 3:17)  God’s Son is manifested both by hearing and by sight.  Both the witnesses of contemplation and the spoken word are sent from the Lord to an unfaithful people who disregard the prophets.  At the same time, we know from those who were immersed in Christ that after baptism with water the Holy Spirit would descend to us from the heavenly gates.  Then we would be filled with the anointing of heavenly glory and become God’s children through the adoption the Father’s voice announced.  Truth prefigures the image of the sacrament through these very happenings.  [On Matthew 2.6]

The great bishop of Hippo, the Doctor of Grace, St. Augustine (+430) spoke about the Trinitarian dimension of this mystery:

Here then we have the Trinity presented in a clear way: the Father in the voice, the Son in the man, the Holy Spirit in the dove.  This only needs to be barely mentioned, for it is so obvious for anyone to see.  Here the recognition of the trinity is conveyed to us so plainly that it hardly leaves any room for doubt or hesitation.  The Lord Christ Himself, who comes in the form of a servant to John, is undoubtedly the Son, for here no one can mistake Him for either the Father or the Holy Spirit.  It is the Son who comes.  And who could have any doubt about the identity of the dove?  The Gospel itself most plainly testifies: "The Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form or a dove."  So also there can be no doubt whose voice it is who speaks so personally: "You are my beloved Son." So we have the Trinity distinguished…. Here are the three Persons of the Trinity distinguished: When Jesus came to the river, He came from one place to another.  The dove descended form heaven to earth, from one place to another.  The very voice of the Father sounded neither from the earth nor from the water but from heaven.  These three are as it were distinguished in places, in offices and in works.  But one may say to me, "Show me instead the inseparability of the triune God.  Remember you who are speaking are a Catholic, and to Catholics you are speaking."   For thus does our faith teach, that is, the true the right Catholic faith, gathered no by the opinion of private judgment but by the witness of the Scriptures, not subject to the fluctuations of heretical rashness but grounded in apostolic truth.  This we know, this we believe.  This, though we do not see it with our eyes nor as yet with the hear, so long as we are being purified by faith, yet by this faith we most firmly and rightly maintain the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are a Trinity – inseparably one God, not three gods.  But yet one God in such a way that the Son is not the Father, and the Father is not the Son, and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son but the Spirit of the Father and of the Son.  This ineffable Divinity, abiding ever in Itself, making all things new, creating, creating anew, sending, recalling, judging, delivering, this Trinity, I say, we know to be at once indescribable and inseparable.  [Sermon 1.1.2 – c. 410-12]

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

5th Joyful Mystery: The Finding in the Temple

Pious Jews would go to Jerusalem for the Passover so that they could bring a lamb to the Temple to be sacrificed at the right moment on the right day. Jesus Himself would be nailed to a Cross and die during the slaughter of the lambs in the Temple while the priests lined the stairs to the altar and sang Psalms. In the quiet of the ancient world, when Jerusalem was still on that holy day, Jesus could probabaly hear the crying of the lambs and the psalms being sung. Did Jesus picture the scene as He was dying? He knew the Temple well, after all. The Holy Family travelled to the Temple at least one during the childhood of the Lord and Jesus wound up spending three days there.

Mary and Joseph lost Jesus for three days and found Him again in the Temple. Few hints of His childhood remain to us in Scripture. Thus, the Fathers thought they were filled with meaning. St Ambrose of Milan (+397) wrote:

The beginning of the Lord’s disputation is takem from His twelf year. This number of the evangelists was intended for the preaching of the Faith. (cf. Mt 10:1-2,7) Nor is it idly that, forgetful of His parents according to the flesh, he who according to the flesh assuredly was filled with the wisdom and grace of God is found after three days in the Temple. It is a sign that He who was believed dead for our Faith would rise again after three days from His triumphal Passion and appear on His heavenly throne with divine honor. [Exposition of the Gospel of Luke 2.63]

The Father’s reflected about the divinity even in the context of this very human situation. Venerable Bede (+735) offers this:

The Lord’s coming every year to Jerusalem for the Passover with His parents is an indication of His human humility. It is characteristic of human beings to gather to offer God the votive offerings of spiritual sacrifices, and by plentiful prayers and tears to dispose their Maker toward them. Therefore the Lord, born a man among men, did what God, by divine inspiration through His angels, prescribed for man to do. He Himself kept the Law which He gave in order to show us, who are human beings pure and simple, that whatever God orders is to be observed in everything. Let us follow the path of His human way of life. If we take delight in looking upon the glory of His divinity, if we want to dwell in His eternal home in heaven all the days of our lives (Ps 27:4 (26:4 LXX)), it delights us to see the Lord’s will and to be shielded by His holy Temple. And lest we be forever buffeted by the wind of wickedness, let us remember to frequent the house, the Church of the present time, with the requisite offerings of pure petitions. [Homilies on the Gospels 1.19]

 

We can always find Jesus in Person in the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle of a Catholic church. When buffeted, find Him.

Sometimes we think we know more than we do and we press it on others. The young Christ, God, gives a good example to pushy know-it-alls. The always engaging Origen (+254) wrote:

Because He was a small child, He is found "in the midst of teachers", sanctifying them and instructing them. Because He was a small child, He is found "in their midst", not teaching them but "asking questions". He did this because it is appropriate to His age, to teach us what befits boys, even if they are wise and learned. They should rather hear their teachers than want to teach them and not show off with a display of knowledge. He interrogated the teachers not to learn anything be to teach them by His questions. From one fountain of doctrine, there flow both wise questions and answers. It is part of the same wisdom to know what you should ask and what you should answer. It was right for the Savior first to become a master of the learned interrogation. Later He would answer questions according to God’s reason and Word. [Homilies on the Gospel of Luke 19.6]

 

"The Church should ordained women!"
"The Church should back off about homosexuality!"
"The Church must conform to modern times!"

Perhaps some of those who are constantly telling the Church what ought to be believed might spend some time meditating on this mystery.

People lose Jesus all the time. They lose Him in the details of life. They lose them in their own naval gazing. They lose Him sometimes for years or decades and they never search Him out.

He never stops searching for us, however.