Archangels, St. Jerome, Morality, And God’s Law

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

nor stands in the way of sinners,

nor sits in the seat of scoffers;

but his delight is in the law of the LORD,

and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

that yields its fruit in its season,

and its leaf does not wither.

In all that he does, he prospers.

The wicked are not so,

but are like chaff which the wind drives away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,

nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;

for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. (Psalm 1)

  The first Psalm gives us an enlightening account of God’s law.  The explanation is primarily prescriptive: if you follow God’s Law, and take it to heart, you will be happy, but if you choose wickedness . . . well, then your wages will be death.  Here is one of many indications in Scripture that while God allows us to conduct our own affairs, both on an individual and societal level, he wants to be involved. For instance, here he reminds us of the consequences that necessarily follow bad actions. He has created us in such a way that we desire his presence in our lives (as St. Augustine puts it: “Our heart is restless until it rests in you”).  And so he has created a variety of means for communicating with us without controlling us.

“The Annunciation” by Sandro Botticelli, 1489

     We see God’s desire to communicate reflected in different ways in our observances over the next two days.  Today is the feast of the Archangels: our word “angel” comes from the Greek ἄγγελος, which simply means “messenger”.  The function of angels, at least as far as they concern us, is as carriers of God’s messages to us.  In addition to that, tomorrow is the feast of St. Jerome, who is known primarily for creating the first complete and reliable Latin translation of the Holy Scriptures, making the Bible available to all those inhabitants of the Roman Empire who did not know Greek. We honor St. Jerome not just because of his life of heroic virtue, but because he made the word of God available to so many people.

      I couldn’t help thinking about the Archangels and St. Jerome when I read this column [“Americans Concerned about the Declining Influence of Religion”] by Star Parker.  It was published a few years ago, but we can be sure that the trends it identifies haven’t gotten any better in the interim. Parker is discussing a survey by the Pew Center showing that:

Over the last 12 years, the percentage of Americans that think religion is losing influence in American life has increased dramatically.  In 2002, 52 percent of those surveyed said religion is losing influence.  In 2014, 72 percent of Americans said religion is losing influence.

     At the same time, Parker says, “fifty-six percent say that the waning of religion is a bad thing compared to 12 percent that say it is a good thing”, and she points to a Pew poll from 2012 that found that 58 percent thought religion was “very important” against only 12 percent who believed the opposite.

     What are we to make of these figures?  One would think that the large majority decrying the decline of religion must nonetheless play some part in that decline.  I suspect that we are seeing, at least in part, the struggle between our willing spirits and the weak flesh (see Matthew 26:41) within our restless hearts: “Lord give me chastity . . . but not yet” (St. Augustine has all the bases covered).  There are also more concrete considerations.  Parker, who was at one time a single mother on welfare, and who credits the welfare reforms of the 1990’s with rescuing her from a life of dependency on government largesse, sees the baleful moral consequences of such dependence as an important proximate cause.  Most Americans, largely out of a sense of Christian Charity, supported the enormous expansion of government assistance programs starting in the 1960’s.  

Who appreciated that the program would undermine the very religious, traditional values that keep families intact, essential for the work ethic that leads people out of poverty?  Massive increases of government in the lives of low-income black families were accompanied by a tripling of single parent households and out-of-wedlock births, laying the groundwork for intergenerational poverty.

Now it’s happening in the whole country.  As we’ve gotten more government telling Americans how to save for retirement, how to deal with their health care, how to educate their children – American families have been damaged and out-of-wedlock births have increased six-fold from 1960 to 42 percent today.  Government has displaced family.

“Now it’s happening in the whole country . . . Government has displaced family.“

-Star Parker

But it’s not simply about government.  In fact, Parker finds fault with both the Statists on the left and the Libertarians on the right who see the government per se as the issue, as if adding more government or radically cutting it will alone solve our social problems.  No, “you can’t have a free society that is not also a virtuous society”, and “we can’t separate our fiscal and economic problems from our moral problems.”  And where does morality come from?  Of course . . . God’s Law.

     I want to be clear that I’m not pushing some kind of “Gospel of Prosperity”, but the discussion above does offer an example of how God knows the truth about us, and that living by that truth leads to happiness, while denying it brings on ruin.  We know it from the messages carried by his Angels, the Scriptures he inspired, and the Church he established.  As the Lord Himself tells Moses:   

For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.  It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.  “See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil.  If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you this day, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land which you are entering to take possession of it.   (Deuteronomy 30:11-16)

Featured image: “The Archangels” by Michele Tosini, late 16th century

Vittoria Aleotti: Io v’amo vita mia

    The claim that Christianity has historically been used as weapon against women, a tool to keep them down, is a falsehood, a smear against the Church.  The charge misses the point, first of all, because Christ didn’t come to offer anyone advancement in this world, but to draw all of us, women and men alike, deeper into the life of the Trinitarian God.  But even on its own terms the accusation is false.  Nowhere else anywhere in human history (up until the last couple centuries) could a woman who was not heir to a throne aspire, solely on her own merits, to the sort of influence wielded by a St. Catherine of Siena or a St. Theresa of Avila. The greatest Catholic Saint of all, the Blessed Mother, is a woman.

While it is true that such women were not the norm, they were more common than one might think.  The Venerable Bede almost offhandedly relates that the Northumbrian monastery in which the famous 7th century singer Cædmon lived was part of a dual male/female establishment; both convents, housing men and women alike, were presided over by a woman, St. Hilda. The arrangement seems to have been fairly unremarkable.

     Given all that, it should come as no surprise that the creator of the beautiful piece below, composed in an age when music was a mostly male domain, was a consecrated nun.  Her name was Vittoria Aleotti, and she was an Augustinian sister who lived from c. 1670-1740.  In addition to her talents as a composer, she was also known as an accomplished organist. In the video below the Green Mountain Project Chant Schola performs her musical setting for “Io v’amo, vita mia”.

Featured Image: “Song of Songs”. Woodcut after a drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (German painter, 1794 – 1872) 1877

Io v’amo, vita mia, Vittoria Aleotti (c.1575-aft.1620)

Green Mountain Project Chant Schola

Jeffrey Grossman, chamber organ

Hank Heijink, theorbo

Behind Convent Walls with TENET Vocal Artists:

January 4, 2019 Kirkland Chapel at the Fifth Ave Presbyterian Church

Text in Italian:

Io v’amo vita mia Volli sovente dire, Ed ardo ahi lasso. Chiuse la voc’entro le labbi’Amore E vergogna e timore. E mi cangiar d’huom vivo in muto sasso. Amor, ma se tu vuoi Ch’i miei martiri Io pur taccia e sospiri, Tu dilli à lei che mi consuma e sface E le riscalda il sen con la tua face.

English:

“I love you, my life,” I often wanted to say, and “I’m burning for you.” But my voice was within the lips of Love, and shame and fear changed me from a living man into a dumb stone. But, Love, if you want me to stop my suffering and my sighing, tell it to her who consumes and melts me, and ignite her heart with your appearance.

Why Would You Want Satan As A Mascot?

In their case the god of this world [the Devil] has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God. (2 Corinthians 4:4)

     I don’t watch professional sports these days, as their main appeal was always as a refuge, a “safe space” if you will, away from unpleasant things like politics. Sadly, politics have invaded and ruined sports as completely as they have so many other things in our society.  Nonetheless, a quick glance at the Major League Baseball standings the other day brought to mind an old blog post I published a few years back about the odd place the Devil’s image plays in our culture. What does that have to do with baseball?  Read on to find out.

     This is not actually about sports, by the way.  It starts, in fact, over a quarter century ago at a staff meeting for a high school newspaper of which I was faculty moderator. One student, seemingly out of blue, remarked “When you think about it, why would you want Satan as a mascot?”  He had been leafing through a book of clip-art (do such things exist anymore?) when, in the mascot section, he came across several pages of containing images of “devils”.  I had never thought about it in those terms before, but he had a point: why in heaven’s name would you want the Prince of Darkness as your mascot? I’ve never since been able to consider devil logos as innocent and harmless.

     Now, there are many folks out there who will say that I’m making a big deal out of nothing.  As Catholics, however, we should know better: we of all people should understand the power of images. After all, what is the point of the great art, stained glass windows, cathedrals and Gregorian chant, the whole “smells and bells” routine?  Why else the traditional condemnation of “impure” images, and the stern warnings to steer clear of their dangers? We know from centuries of experience (and modern brain research confirms it) that images have a profound, often unconscious, impact on the psyche.

     In the case of mascots the connection is explicit. They are the modern-day descendants of the ancient tribal totems, which were believed to confer their most prominent qualities (e.g., the bear’s strength, the wolf’s ferocity, etc.) on the people that had adopted them.  While we no longer attribute numinous powers to them, groups still choose mascots (today mascots are often people as well as animals) because they represent certain desirable qualities that the group would like to associate with themselves, and that they would like their members to emulate.  For example, American Indians have long been a popular mascot for athletic teams in the United States (or perhaps I should say, had been) because of their reputation as brave and tenacious warriors.

   Images and logos on clothing serve a similar function for individuals: they depict things and ideas with which we want to associate ourselves, such as admired athletic teams and players, schools which we have attended, maybe a political message of some kind or some other symbol of personal importance (marijuana leaves are popular among a certain set).  The point is that we wear images on our person to tell the world something about us (and, usually, to tell ourselves something about ourselves).

     It was for this reason that my lovely bride was somewhat dismayed a few years ago when she went online to look for t-shirts for our children.  She visited the site of a well-known retailer that she had often used before, but found that this time a wide array of children’s clothing was adorned with skulls and similarly macabre images.  Now, I know that such images have been around for a long time, although usually displayed by a very narrow segment of the population; today they are becoming ever more pervasive, and less and less remarkable.  What does it say about our culture that we seem to think nothing of decorating our children, even little girls, with images of death and corruption?  What qualities are we holding up for emulation to these young people who are still forming their sense of self?

    This is the bottom line: if we surround ourselves with ugliness and grotesquerie, we shouldn’t be surprised to find our world growing more ugly and grotesque; if we dress our children that way, why should we expect them to aspire to beauty and nobility?  That’s no way to evangelize the world.  We need to say “no!” to the Culture of Death, even in a matter as “trivial” as a Jolly Roger t-shirt. Don’t they always say “the Devil is in the details”? As St. Paul puts it:

     Finally, brethren, what is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4:8)

Not only is that Holy Scripture, it’s plain common sense.

Losers . . .

  A final thought: In the first version of this post seven years ago I wrapped up with the story of the baseball team known as the Tampa Bay Rays (here’s the baseball connection for you sports fans out there).  The Rays played for the first time in 1998.  For their first ten years the name was actually the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (named after a fish, to be sure, not the Prince of Darkness himself). In those first ten seasons the team finished in last place nine times, second to last once.  In 2008, the first season after the team had exorcised the word “Devil” from its name, they went to the World Series as American League champions.  Coincidence, perhaps, but who knows?

. . . and winners

     Now, in the twelve years since that first World Series appearance the Rays have made the post-season five more times, including a second appearance in the World Series last year, where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated them in six games.  The team currently has the best record in the American League, and is stands a good chance to be in the Series again next month. The point is, since dropping the Devil, they have gone from consistentlybeing the worst team in baseball to one of the best.  Do you suppose that if they moved across the bay and changed their name to the Saint Peterburg Rays they’d actually win the World Series?

We Came, We Saw . . . God Conquered – Jan Sobieski and The Holy Name of Mary

Jesus looked at them and said, “With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.” (Mark 10:27)

        Many of us are upset, quite rightly, that twenty years after our intervention in Afghanistan,  we seem to have accomplished little aside from the deaths of several thousands of our young men and women.  The jihadist terrorists known as the Taliban are as firmly in control of the country as they were twenty years ago, only enriched by eighty-plus billion dollars of the most advanced military equipment, and buoyed by the prestige of having prevailed over the world’s greatest military power.

      Twenty years, however, is next to nothing in the history of the long struggle between Christianity and Islam.  Today, September 12th, we commemorate one of the great victories in that contest. On this date in 1683 a Christian army led by Polish King John III Sobieski defeated the Muslim Ottoman Turks in battle, freeing the city of Vienna from a two months long siege and freeing Europe, for a time, from the fear of Islamic conquest.

The Madonna of the Roses, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1903)

     The siege of Vienna in 1683 was the final salvo of a period lasting almost a millennium, starting when Charles Martel’s victory at Tours in 732 stemmed the first Muslim incursion into Europe, during which the Christian West was constantly under the threat of subjugation by the followers of Mohammed. Had Charles Martel failed, or Sobieski, or any of the other Christian commanders in between, our world today would be very different. Consider what Tunisia, Libya, or Egypt might be like today – or Syria – if they had remained part of Christendom. Does anyone doubt that things there would be better, probably much better?

     And we need to bear in mind that this was really a struggle not simply of peoples or of nations, but between Christendom and Islam. Sobieski’s force was called The Holy League, the same name borne by that alliance which defeated the Turks in the naval battle of Lepanto in the previous century. Like those earlier Christian soldiers, who prayed the Rosary before going into battle with the Turkish fleet, Sobieski’s army prayed: they attended Mass, after which Sobieski formed up his army and “commended their mission and their souls to the care of the Blessed Virgin.” After victory was achieved he informed the Pope that “we came, we saw, God conquered”, turning Julius Caesar’s proud boast to the Roman Senate into a humble acknowledgement of God’s saving Grace. In acknowledgement of the intercession of the Blessed Mother in the Christian victory, Pope Innocent XI designated September 12th as the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary.

     There are two points that stand out here. One is that we need to recognize that sometimes it is necessary to fight; our opponents have been at it for almost a millennium and a half, and there’s no indication that they are any more interested in compromise, or anything short of total victory, than they were at any point since Mohammed emerged from his cave with the Koran. Certainly the outlook and behavior we’re seeing from the Taliban or ISIS is nothing new: during the battle for Vienna, the Turks murdered 30,000 defenseless Christian hostages.

     The second, more important, point is that fighting itself is not enough: we will fail unless we rely on God: “Unless the LORD builds the house”, says Psalm 127,“those who build it labor in vain.” Our prevailing secular culture has shown it can’t do the job. Today’s Muslims, enabled by the moral decay and post-Christian depopulation of the continent, are gradually achieving by peaceful migration (although it’s becoming less peaceful) the capture of Europe that eluded the strongest armies of their forebears. The formerly Christian West is defeating itself before the literal battle even commences.

    Today’s celebration of the Holy Name of Mary reminds us how little we can accomplish by our own efforts, and how completely we are in the hands of the Lord. Our only hope is to return to God and, as did John Sobieski, to make Jesus Christ the general of our armies.

Featured image top of page: Jan III Sobieski Sending Message of Victory to the Pope after the Battle of Vienna, by Jan Matejko (1880)

Be Sober and Vigilant: You-Know-Who is Prowling

     You wouldn’t be wrong if you observed that it’s becoming increasingly uncomfortable to be a professing Christian in our culture.  The good news is, being comfortable or safe has never been part of the job description for a follower of Christ (I’ll bet you’re feeling better already).  In fact, Jesus Himself is very emphatic on this point; this passage from the Gospel of John is just one example::

They will put you out of the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.  And they will do this because they have not known the Father, nor me.  But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you of them. (John 16: 2-4) 

    We can see that persecution, even in times and places that claim to be Christian, has been more the rule than the exception throughout the history of the Church.  Just take a look at the Saints for today (September 10th) at Catholic.org. There are 59 separate entries for today, most of them martyrs. While many of them are from the same persecution in Japan in 1622, a random sampling finds Saints suffering for the Faith throughout the history of the Church. Let’s take a look and see how, as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same:

St. Nemesian, Felix, and Companions

A group of Nicomedian martyrs condemned to labor in the marble quarries of Sigum. They all died in this arduous servitude. The group was comprised of nine bishops from Numidia, along with other clergy and laity. The bishops include Lucius, Litteus, Polyanus, Victor, Jader, Dativus, and a second Felix. St. Cyprian wrote to them from his place of exile. (c. 250?)

We are all familiar with the first three centuries of the Church as a time of persecution. The Romans took particular care to target the leaders of the Christian movement, the bishops.  There are places today (Syria and Iraq come to mind) where Christians are persecuted with a ferocity equal to, or even greater than, that under the Romans.

St. Theodard of Maastricht

Bishop and martyr. A disciple of St. Remaclus in the Benedictine abbey of Malniely. Stavelot, Belgium, he succeeded him as abbot in 635, receiving appointment as bishop of Maastricht, Netherlands, in 662. He was murdered by a band of robbers in the forest of Bienwald, near Speyer, Germany, while on his way to defend the rights of the Church against the harsh confiscatory policies of King Childeric II (r. 662-675) of Austrasia. (670)

Imagine needing to “defend the rights of the Church against . . . harsh confiscatory policies”. We can’t think of anywhere today where the state is encroaching on the Church, can we?  In any case, here’s a Saint and who didn’t hesitate to stand up for Christ’s Church in the public square.

St. Cosmas of Aphrodisia

A bishop and martyr, born in Palermo, on Sicily. He was named bishop of Aphrodisia, ordained by Pope Eugene III. When the Saracens captured his see, Cosmas was seized and died as a result of harsh abuse. His cult was approved by Pope Leo XIII. (1160)

Speaking of Syria and Iraq, here we see a Catholic Bishop murdered by the Muslim jihadists of the day. While not always as virulent as it is under ISIS, Al Qaeda, and similar groups, persecution of Christians is endemic throughout the Islamic world.

St. Joseph of St. Hyacinth

Dominican martyr of Japan. He was born in Villareal, Spain. The provincial vicar of the Dominicans in Japan, he spoke perfect Japanese. Joseph was burned alive at Nagasaki.  He was beatified in 1867. (1622)

Bl. Lucy de Freitas

Martyr of Japan. A native Japanese, she was the widow of Philip de Freitas. Lucy, a Franciscan tertiary, was arrested for sheltering Blessed Richard of St. Anne, a Franciscan priest. Although advanced in age, Lucy defended the faith before the authorities and was burned to death for it at Nagasaki, Japan, on September 10. She was beatified in 1867. (1622)

St. Joseph and Blessed Lucy are just two of a large number of Christians martyred at Nagasaki in 1622; there is no part of the world that has not been baptized with the blood of Christian martyrs.

“Resist him, steadfast in faith”

     As noted above, Jesus is not at all hesitant about reminding his followers that discipleship is not a warm and fuzzy business.  On the contrary, he says: “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” (Matthew 5:11) It’s going to happen. Sometimes it’s as ugly and brutal as it was for the Saints above, or as it is for many Christians in the Middle East today; sometimes it’s a much milder variety of uttering “all kinds of evil against you falsely”, as is becoming more common in the United States and other Western countries.

  Nonetheless our own sufferings for the name of Christ, even when they don’t rise to the level of serious persecution, are still hardships and injustices. As St. Peter wrote:

Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same sufferings. (1Peter 5:8-11)

     St. Peter’s warning is as timely for us as it was for his correspondents back in the first century.  We are all subject to the temptation to take the easy way out, a way that seeems easier than picking up our cross and following Christ (see Matthew 16:24). The sufferings of the Saints of the past, and of our fellow Christians throughout the world today, remind us that we are not alone, that they suffer with us just as Christ suffered for us.  We can, and should, pray for persecuted Christians around the world just as we ask the Saints of the past to pray for us. Together we can stand firm, steadfast in our faith.

Featured image top of page: Japanese martyrs

Kyrie from Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis

  When we think of Beethoven, Sacred Music might not be the first thing that comes to mind. Religious compositions weren’t Beethoven’s main interest, but he was a Catholic composer and often composed for Catholic patrons.  His most prominent patron was Archduke Rudolph, the Emperor’s brother, for whom he composed the Missa Solemnis (completed in 1823). The Missa Solemnis was the second of Beethoven’s two masses (the other was the Mass in C Major, which he completed in 1807). The clip below is the Kyrie from the later mass.

      Aside from the two masses, his only other sacred composition was the 1803 oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. So, no, Sacred Music wasn’t his main interest, but what he did compose was, as we might expect, moving, powerful . . . and simply beautiful. 

     If that’s not enough, consider this: Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is from the same time period as his magnificent 9th Symphony.  At this point of his life he was almost completely deaf, which is to say he probably never actually heard a note of it. Amazing.

Featured image: “The Last Judgment” by Michelangelo