Last week’s musical selection was “The Heavens are Telling” from Joseph Haydn’s masterpiece, an oratorio called The Creation. There are three parts to the oratorio as a whole. The first part deals with the creation of the heavens and earth, and inanimate things such as light, water, land and plants.The subject of the second part is the creation of the animals. The third part is a celebration of our first parents, Adam and Eve.
Joseph Hadyn, by Ludwig Gettenbrunn, 1791-1792
The selection we heard last week came from the end of part one. Today we go back to the beginning, not only the beginning of The Creation, but the beginning of time, the beginning of everything: the Chaos before Creation itself. Haydn’s overture is a musical evocation of that Chaos.
Interestingly, the Chaos section may not sound quite as chaotic to us as it did to audiences at the end of the eighteenth century, accustomed as most of us are to dissonant, syncopated music. This is nevertheless a powerful musical experience, all the more so when we listen with the Biblical account in mind. The sense of order underlying chaos also makes me think of some of the current ideas in physics. Consider, for instance, this sentence that I cribbed from the Wikipedia article “Chaos Theory”:
Chaos theory states that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization.
We can take both Haydn’s overture, and the discoveries of modern physics, as a reminder that God sees the order underlying the appearance of chaos, always and everywhere.
The clip below features a performance of “Chaos” from Haydn’s The Creation by the Palomar Symphony Orchestra directed by Ellen Weller, with a rather interesting video by Kali Coogan.
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel– not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:6-8)
From the film1984 (1956)
Big Brother is watching.
The all powerful totalitarian state in George Orwell’s novel 1984 uses the comforting, familial image of “Big Brother” to mask the ugly reality of its absolute control. Big Brother uses many tools (such as constant surveillance) to keep and exercise his power, but the most effective is language. By tightly controlling the language, Big Brother can control the way his subjects think. Just as the image of Big Brother himself is a fiction, words and phrases serve, not to convey meaning, but to hide real meanings in favor of whatever content the state chooses to give them.
This language that is intentionally designed to deceive rather than inform is called Newspeak. A character in the novel named Syme, a lexicologist, explains that, as Newspeak develops,
The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of The Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like Freedom is Slavery when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
Again, making things mean their opposite is not a side effect, it’s an intentional strategy, a way of achieving the end goal of controlling how people think and, ultimately, doing their thinking for them.
Orwell had long been concerned about the manipulation of language as a means of thought control. Several years before 1984 came out he published an essay called “Politics and the English Language” in which he explicitly examines the topic. He discusses at length the way in which vague and abstract language is especially suited to confusing and deceiving one’s listeners or readers:
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer . . .
“The great enemy of clear language
is insincerity.”
-George Orwell
“But,” Orwell adds, ” if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Lying language leads to poor reasoning, or “not thinking,” as Syme put it. People who can’t think need somebody else to do their thinking for them: that’s why Newspeak is so loved by demagogues: “Political language−and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists−−is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Orwell is trying to avoid the appearance of partisanship in this last quote. He had in fact always considered himself a socialist, but learned to hate totalitarianism while serving with the “republican” (i.e., communist and anarchist) forces in the Spanish Civil War (he gives a vivid account of his experiences in Spain in his book Homage to Catalonia). In this case, his phrase “with variations” covers a lot of ground. It’s true that politicians of all sorts will abuse the language in order to manipulate the electorate. True totalitarians are something else altogether: they’re not interested in simply winning elections, they want everything. They want to fundamentally transform entire societies.
And that is why language has become so controversial, including everything from gender pronouns, to which words constitute “microaggressions” and “cultural appropriation,” to symbolic language like flags and statues. A word such as “marriage,” whose meaning has been clear for thousands of years, now somehow means something completely different, and you’re a “hater” if you insist on the historical meaning. When language trumps truth, the masters of the language get to decide what’s real and what isn’t.
Sadly, that’s the way it is out in a world that has forgotten God. There’s really nothing to stop those who have power from imposing their will on those who are less powerful. “”You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them,” Jesus tells his disciples, but “It shall not be so among you.” (Matthew 20:25-26). That’s why it’s so discouraging to see what’s happening to the Church in Germany. I wrote last year that the so-called “Synodal Way” that the German bishops are travelling looks like nothing so much as a straight road out of Christianity. It hasn’t become any better since. The most recent news is that the German bishops have given their blessing to an initiative called “#OutInChurch — For a church without fear.” Among other “demands” the initiative insists that “Defamatory and outdated statements of Church doctrine on sexuality and gender need to be revised on the basis of theological and human-scientific findings.” Among other statements of support, one German bishop notes approvingly that this document represents “a courageous step by 125 queer employees of the Catholic Church from all over the country.”
This isn’t the language of the Gospel . . . at least not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Not only the initiative itself, but, even more alarmingly, the statements of the Heirs of the Apostles in Germany speak the language of a “different gospel,” as St. Paul calls it, the false gospel of the Sexual Revolution and of the impossible campaign to reshape reality according to human desires.
The corruption and abandonment of the traditional language of the Gospel didn’t start with the Synodal Way in Germany. In “Politics and the English Language” Orwell creates a “modern” translation of a well-known passage from Ecclesiastes that would be hilarious if it weren’t so troubling:
“I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well−known verse from Ecclesiastes:
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Here it is in modern English:
Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”
Among the various shortcomings of Orwell’s “modern English translation,” the most telling is that, as he puts it, “The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness.” He points out that
The first sentence contains six vivid images and only one phrase (“time and chance”) that could be considered vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its 90 syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first.
“Lord, I am not worthy . . .”Christ and the Centurion, Paolo Veronese, 1571
Does that ring a bell? It does for me. When I was seven years old the first official post-Vatican II translation of the Mass was introduced. I had been hearing a temporary, fairly literal, English translation of the liturgy for as long as I could remember in my short life (I never heard the Mass in Latin until many years later, when I had children of my own). I recall becoming slowly aware that something was different as the Mass progressed until finally, just before the adults were to go up for communion, the congregation intoned “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you . . .” At that point an outraged voice in my head screamed out: “What happened to the roof?” I didn’t understand anything about principles of translation, abuse of language, or any of the rest of it. All I knew was that we had been saying “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof,” something I could picture and hold on to, and now that familiar image had been replaced with empty words.
That’s the problem with concrete images, for the idealogue. Things we can see and touch, hear and smell, have a meaning of their own independent of the idealogue’s intention. If you want to change the Church, if you want to change the beliefs that have animated Christians for two millennia, you need to take away the concrete images, the traditional words, and the familiar actions that embody the traditional understanding of the faith. When you take away “the roof” you don’t merely take something solid and turn it into something malleable, you hide the scriptural source of the liturgical prayer. You cut the connection to the Roman centurion who says to Jesus: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed” (Matthew 8:8). You erase the memory of the military officer who has the power of command, but confesses that he himself is “under authority” (Matthew 8:9), and that his authority is of no account compared to the authority of Christ. You replace the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a different gospel.
That’s one of the things that’s most alarming about Traditionis Custodes, last year’s papal intervention severely restricting the Traditional Latin Mass (you can read my discussions of the pope’s letter here and here). Where is the urgent need to separate the faithful so forcefully from the things that have embodied the faith for generations of believers, going back to the early centuries of the Church? Why the fanaticism of those such as the cardinal archbishop of Chicago who have gone beyond the strictures of pope’s letter (I suppose we could call it “The Spirit of Traditionis Custodis“)? Cardinal Cupich has even banned saying the post Vatican II Mass ad orientem, that is to say, the traditional manner in which the priest faces the altar rather than the congregation. It is noteworthy that the same prelate has taken a much more benign approach to liturgies that deviate sharply from the rubrics of the Mass in order to promote homosexuality and other politically fashionable topics. This, too, looks a lot like a different gospel.
Words are important. It was not random choice or whimsy that led St. John to begin his Gospel with an extended meditation of Jesus Christ as the Eternal Word. John’s apostolic colleague St. Peter, who went on to become the first pope, tells us: “First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” We don’t get to make it up: our task is to preserve and pass on what we have received.
“What is truth?” I seem to remember someone raising the question somewhere. For the idealogue, “truth” is whatever promotes the ideology, and if it happens to correspond with reality that’s fine; if it doesn’t, no problem, we’ll make something up. Followers of Him who is “The Way, The Truth, and The Life” (John 14:6) know better . . . or we should know better. Truth isn’t something we create to serve our own purposes, it exists beyond and above us. We can’t manufacture truth, but we can discover it.
One of the Church’s greatest discoverers and teachers of the truth is St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church, whose feast day we celebrate today. Idealogues in the Church will often use his name, when it suits their purposes, to promote their heterodox version of Catholicism but, as we shall see, St. Thomas isn’t easily exploited. Below is a revised version of my very first blog post seven years ago. Since we have been exploring the theme of truth recently (here, here, and here), this seems a good day to republish “A Sin is a Sin: St. Thomas and Conscience.”
The Temptation of St. Thomasby Francesco Gessi, 1632-1633. St. Thomas says “no” to sin.
When is it A Sin Not To Sin?
St. Thomas Aquinas, greatest of Catholic theologians, has been the target of a sort of “hostile takeover.” That is to say, I’ve heard some people invoke his authority in order to justify ignoring Catholic moral doctrine. They point out that St. Thomas says it’s wrong not to follow our conscience, even if it’s in error; therefore, if our conscience tells us to use contraceptives, or support pro- abortion politicians, or vote in favor of redefining marriage we would actually be sinning if we obeyed the Church! Don’t blame them, these people add: St. Thomas Aquinas made them do it. What else can they do?
It’s Wrong to Will Wrong
What can any of us do? Well . . . we can let the Angelic Doctor speak for himself. On the one hand, St. Thomas does actually say what the dissenters claim he says, that we are morally bound to follow our conscience. On the other hand, if we look at all of what he says, he actually means the opposite of what they say he means. Let’s look at the relevant passage from his Summa Theologiae [ST hereafter: italics mine here and below]:
. . . conscience is nothing else than the application of knowledge to some action. Now knowledge is in the reason. Therefore when the will is at variance with erring reason, it is against conscience. But every such will is evil; for it is written (Romans 14:23): “All that is not of faith”–i.e. all that is against conscience–“is sin.”
Therefore the will is evil when it is at variance with erring reason. ST IiaIae
Yes, it is “evil” to disobey even an erroneous conscience, but conscience does not mean “feelings” or “opinions” (the common misrepresentation); rather, it is “the application of knowledge to some action.” To St. Thomas (and to the Church) it is the process of applying moral principles to one’s particular situation, or “knowledge applied to an individual case,” as he describes it in another section (ST I, 79, 13). Since conscience is the reasoning process by which we determine whether a course of action is good or evil, going against conscience means deliberately choosing what we believe to be evil, even if we do not actually accomplish evil:
But when erring reason proposes something as being commanded by God, then to scorn the dictate of reason is to scorn the commandment of God. (ST IiaIae)
When we violate our conscience, then, quite apart from the actual harm we might or might not be doing (objective sin), we are intentionally rejecting what we believe to be God’s will (subjective sin): the “evil” in violating our conscience is our conscious choice to disobey God. This act of defiance is a sin in itself, quite apart from the sinfulness (or not) of the particular act we are contemplating.
Forming Our Conscience
The story doesn’t end there, of course; St. Thomas was well aware that someone might try to use his argument to justify sin. He goes on to explain that, even though we must obey an erroneous conscience, we might be morally culpable (i.e., guilty of sin) for having an erroneous conscience. He says:
St.Thomas composing theSumma (image from aquinasonline.com)
If then reason or conscience err with an error that is voluntary, either directly, or through negligence, so that one errs about what one ought to know; then such an error of reason or conscience does not excuse the will, that abides by that erring reason or conscience, from being evil. But if the error arise from ignorance of some circumstance, and without any negligence, so that it cause the act to be involuntary, then that error of reason or conscience excuses the will, that abides by that erring reason, from being evil. (ST IiaIae)
Recall that conscience is moral principles (what he calls “knowledge” or “Divine Law”) applied to particular circumstances. We don’t get to create those moral principles for ourselves. For an adult Christian “what one ought to know” are the moral principles contained in Church teaching, although it is quite possible to be mistaken or misinformed, through no fault of one’s own (invincible ignorance), about the circumstances to which one is applying the principles. Therefore, invincible ignorance excuses us from subjective guilt, but failure to form our conscienceproperly does not. Just to be sure his point is clear, St. Thomas illustrates with the following examples:
For instance, if erring reason tell a man that he should go to another man’s wife, the will that abides by that erring reason is evil; since this error arises from ignorance of the Divine Law, which he is bound to know. But if a man’s reason, errs in mistaking another for his wife, and if he wish to give her her right [i.e., sexual intercourse] when she asks for it, his will is excused from being evil: because this error arises from ignorance of a circumstance, which ignorance excuses, and causes the act to be involuntary. (ST IiaIae)
Notice the phrase “bound to know”: whether or not adultery is wrong is not a matter of conscience, its wrongness is an unalterable reality that we are “bound” to acknowledge.
The Wages of Sin
When the champions of conscience (or perhaps more properly, “conscience”) over and against Catholic moral doctrine invoke St. Thomas, it is almost always in order to justify their rejection of the Church’s teaching on one of the currently fashionable sexual issues, such as contraception, gay marriage, extra-marital sex, and so on. These practices have been explicitly and unambiguously condemned in scripture and in the teaching of the Church under the sixth commandment’s prohibition of adultery. If we look at St. Thomas’s entire discussion, however, and not just the one sentence that seems to excuse dissent, we see that he is saying explicitly that you cannot invoke conscience against these teachings. Using adultery as his example, he demonstrates that the role of conscience is not to determine basic rules of right and wrong, but to guide our own actions according to the sure rules we have received from God through his Church.
St. Thomas did not make her do it.
It would be helpful at this point to recall that sin involves a lot more than just the will of the sinner. The Church teaches that there must be three conditions for a sin to be a mortal sin: grave matter, full knowledge, and full consent or, more prosaically, “it’s bad, you know darn well it’s bad, but you go ahead and do it anyway.” St. Thomas is here considering only the second part of the formulation, that is, whether or not you know darn well it’s bad. Even if, through no fault of your own (a significant “if”, as we saw above) you don’t know it’s bad, and so are not guilty of choosing bad, it’s still bad. And it’s bad because bad consequences, for you and/or society at large, are likely to follow.
That’s why it’s a sin, after all. Consider St. Thomas’s example of the unwitting adulterer. He is not guilty of subjective sin, because he is not aware of what he is doing. The act is nevertheless an objective sin, which could lead to all manner of destructive consequences: fathering a child out of wedlock (with all the attendant problems), or receiving a disease which might in turn infect his innocent wife; the other woman might receive an infection from him, and, depending on her awareness of the situation, might feel exploited or betrayed by him. If the adultery becomes known, as is likely, it will damage the man’s relationship with his wife and children; if not, he may feel the need to cover up his deed and commit the further sin of lying in order protect his family . . . And on and on.
In other words, a sin is a sin is a sin, and whatever we may think, it’s still a sin. As Catholics, we have ample means of knowing the Moral Law, and therefore have no excuse for disobeying it. We have it right from the Ox’s mouth: nothing justifies committing acts which the Church teaches to be morally wrong.
Do you want to talk about living on the edge? “Few composers can boast on their curricula vitae,” wrote R.J. Stove in Catholic World Report a few years ago, “a deliberate and successful avoidance of gelding. Haydn could.”
Indeed he could: it was only through the timely and forceful intervention of his father that the young Haydn avoided joining the ranks of castrati before his voice changed. Stove cites this particular biographical detail to illustrate that Haydn’s life, and by extension his music, had some acquaintance with the sharp edges of his world. And yet, the composer who was honored, emulated, and imitated more than any other during his prime in the late 18th and early 19th century, and who was teacher, mentor, and friend to those two gigantic musical Bad Boys Mozart and Beethoven, has all too often over the past two centuries been dismissed for his lack of edginess.
That verdict is more a judgment on the shallowness of our age than it is a true assessment of either the depth or power of Haydn’s music, not to mention some of the sharper circumstances of his life. I started paying closer attention to Haydn after I ran across Stove’s article, and then found his judgment confirmed by others (as in this assessment of the composer by Richard Wigmore).
It’s true that Haydn’s public persona was placid and genial, unlike the mercurial Mozart and the turbulent Beethoven, and much of his music pleasing and inoffensive to the ear of the casual listener. A closer study, however, reveals an inventiveness and feel for drama that gives him no cause to be ashamed in the company of his better known pupils.
Haydn (at the keyboard lower left) at the first performance of his opera L’Incontro Improvviso, 29 August 1775, by Pietro Travaglia
The Creation, an oratio first performed in Vienna in 1799, is perhaps Haydn’s greatest work. He was inspired by performances of Handel’s oratorios which he attended while visiting London. Naturally, he to compose an oratorio of his own. For a great work he chose a grand subject: God’s creation of the universe. He built his composition around a libretto by Gottfried von Swieten which draws on Genesis, the Psalms, and John Milton’s epic of The Fall, Paradise Lost. Within the bounds of an old, established genre the composer finds new ways to express the drama and wonder of creation.
The excerpt below is a good introduction to Haydn’s magnum opus. It is from Part I, scene 4 of The Creation, a piece called “The Heavens are Telling.” The text is based on Psalm 19, which begins “The Heavens are telling the Glory of God.” The music is performed here by The Academy of Ancient Music, with Christopher Hogwood conducting.
Psalm 19
2The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament proclaims the work of his hands.
3Day unto day conveys the message,
and night unto night imparts the knowledge.
4No speech, no word, whose voice goes unheeded;
5their sound goes forth through all the earth,
their message to the utmost bounds of the world.
6There he has placed a tent for the sun;
it comes forth like a bridegroom coming from his tent,
rejoices like a champion to run his course.
7At one end of the heavens is the rising of the sun;
Truth is the mortal enemy of Sin. There is nothing sin hates and fears more than the truth. Few issues illustrate that reality as starkly as abortion. Truth has been the theme of a number of my discussions here recently (“I Show You The Times: The Truth v. The Narrative,” “Rights, Solidarity, and the Truth“). It’s only fitting that we return to the topic today on the 49th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, in which the court sacrificed the Truth of Human Life to the Untrammelled Human Will.
Before we get to the main topic, however, I’d like to look briefly at today’s anniversary. I’ve seen and heard more than one Catholic commentator hopefully suggest that this year’s March for Life, which has taken place in Washington, D.C. every January since 1974, may be the last. The Supreme Court is hearing another abortion case this year, Dobbsv.Jackson Women’s Health, and opponents of the abortion regime are hoping that the current court will have the nerve to overturn Roe. Then, as Katherine Jean Lopez writes in the National Review, “If it’s overturned in June, I’m hoping the march will move to June. The march would then be in thanksgiving.” Such a decision would be cause for rejoicing indeed . . . but I’m not holding my breath.
The March for Life fills Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., 21 January 2022 (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
I don’t mean to sound negative, but hear me out. In the best case scenario, the Supreme Court completely overturns Roe, as well as 1992’s Casey v. Planned Parenthood. In that case, states would be free to restrict or even outlaw abortion, but it would need to be fought out state by state. The pro-life movement would need to keep going strong for years to come, both working to outlaw abortion, and to fight off the inevitable challenges to any pro-life laws that are passed.
As it is, I don’t expect the best case scenario from this court, although, pray God, nothing would please me more. Whatever the outcome, total reversal of Roe, a widening of the loopholes in the old decision, or a ringing endorsement of Roe’s unrestricted abortion regime (which I admit is also unlikely), the struggle won’t be over, now or ever. Abortion is just one front in the eternal war. I’m reposting below a revised version of my discussion of this topic on the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, “‘Choice’ and the Father of Lies’:
The Father of Lies
“He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)
As we mark the ugly anniversary of Roe vs. Wade this week, it is only appropriate that we take a look at “Old Scratch” himself, the Devil. In John’s Gospel our Lord tells us everything we need to know about the Devil: “He was a murderer from the beginning”, and “He is a liar, the father of lies”. And what is his first lie, the Big Lie that is still his primary murder weapon? “You will not die . . . you will be like God, knowing good and evil”. (Genesis 3:4-5) No worries, there will be no eternal consequences, Satan tells us, we can decide for ourselves what is good and evil, we aregods. For this reason he is called “the Devil”, from the Greek διάβολος (diabolos), which means “slanderer, perjurer, false accuser, and can also mean “deceiver, one who misleads”. It derives from the verb διαβάλλω (diaballo), whose original meaning is “drive through”, or destroy. Satan seeks to destroy us, eternally, by using falsehood and deception to separate us from God.
A Unique Set of Prayers
I got to thinking about all this the other day due to an obervation from my Lovely Bride. She had just run across this article [here] from the National Right To Life News, detailing certain pro-abortion “prayers” that are being circulated by our old friends at Planned Parenthood. She couldn’t help but think of the observation of C.S. Lewis (and many others) to the effect that Satan can’t create anything on his own, all he can do is mock and falsify God’s creation. I think she has a point. PP calls their campaign by the inelegant title “40 Days of Prayer For Women Everywhere”, an obvious mockery of 40 Days For Life. Here is a sample of a few of the Planned Parenthood “prayers”, from the NRTL News article:
“We give thanks for the doctors who provide quality abortion care”
“We pray for a cloud of gentleness to surround every abortion facility.”
“We pray for all the staff at abortion clinics around the nation. May they be daily confirmed in the sacred care that they offer women.”
“We give thanks for abortion escorts who guide women safely through the hostile gauntlet of protesters.”
“We pray for women who have been made afraid of their own power [of choice, i.e. abortion] by their religion. May they learn to reject fear and live bravely.
”National Right To Life News notes that these “prayers” were composed by a group calling itself “Faith Aloud”, and that “Infamous late term abortionist Dr. Leroy Carhart is a member of the board.”
“To Whom It May Concern . . .”
Planned Parenthood ‘honors’ the birth of Christ
My first reaction on reading this was: do these people really believe that God will surround their butchery of unborn babies made in His image and likeness with “a cloud of gentleness”? That this butchery could be in any sense called “sacred care”? That the Lord would smile upon their request to separate women from their (most often Christian) religion?
Well, maybe they don’t, because these petitions are not actually addressed to God, or to anyone else for that matter. Is it due to a lack of faith, or perhaps a realization that a just and loving God would not be likely to answer prayers such as these? Whatever the case may be, these are the same people who mocked the words of the Heavenly Host with “Choice on Earth” Christmas cards (in Planned Parenthood newspeak, “choice” always means “abortion”); these are the same people who thought it a generous gesture after the terrorist attack on 9/11 to offerfree abortions to pregnant widows of men who died in the World Trade Towers.
This macabre mockery of religious faith has been a part of the pro-abortion industry/movement for a long time, and it isn’t limited to that movement’s flagship enterprise: immediately after the Roedecision in 1973 a group calling itself the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (RCAR) was founded, which soon, recognizing that the truth in this case was a rather unlovely thing, removed the explicit reference to abortion and changed their name to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. And the ugly truth about abortion is the reason for the euphemisms and the bizarre, phony prayers: if they’re honest, they lose, and so they must pretend to be something they’re not. Abortion, like all sin, can’t survive in the Light of Truth.
Spiritual Hosts of Wickedness in Heavenly Places
The AntiChrist taking orders from his boss: detail of fresco in Orvieto Cathedral by Luca Signorelli, 1499-1504
So, let’s see now, lies, mockery of God and sacred things, death; who does that sound like? Could it be…? Yes, you know where this is going. Now, I’m not saying that the people at PP and their fellow travelers in the abortion industrial complex are Satans themselves: I’m willing to believe that most of them think they’re doing the right thing, and that they’re on the side of the angels. The problem is, they are on the side of the fallen angels, whose army is commanded by the father of lies himself. It’s for such a reason that St. Paul tells us: “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly place” (Ephesians 6:12). So how do we go about combating the Powers of Darkness? St. Paul tells us to take on “the whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:13) and “pray at all times in the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:18) “that utterance may be given me in boldly proclaiming the Gospel” (Ephesians 6:19).
The battle against the Spiritual Hosts of Wickedness, then, calls for a two-pronged strategy: first prayer and reliance on God, next a bold proclamation of the truth. That’s why, before the March for Life in Washington and our local marches, we attend Mass or a prayer service. We need to remember that it’s not simply a matter of politics, it’s not even primarily a matter of politics: it’s a matter of Good and Evil, the God of Truth and the father of lies. Let’s make sure we stay on the right side.
Sir Thomas More and Family, by Rowland Lackey, c. 1594
O, the Times!
We live in interesting times. We have a United States Senator, who is also a licensed doctor, temporarily banned from social media for spreading “misinformation”about face masks, even though the CDC has admitted that his offending claim is true. The President’s press secretary has boldly admitted that the administration is coordinating with large, powerful media entities such as Facebook to censor people who contradict the politically correct narrative concerning COVID. The totalitarian squelching of dissenting voices even goes beyond the reach of the media behemoths: a doctor in Maine has had her license suspended for prescribing ivermectin to COVID sufferers. Ivermectin has a decades-long safety record, and dozens of studies around the world have proven it to an extremely effective treatment for COVID, but it contradicts the favored narrative that only the barely year-old mRNA vaccine is an effective treatment for the Dread Disease from Wuhan (and if you dare to present any evidence casting doubt on the safety or efficacy of said vaccine, expect equally harsh consequences). One more thing: not only was the doctor’s license pulled: she was ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation . . . just as they used to do to dissidents in the old Soviet Union. Apparently, only an insane person would believe the documented evidence and the evidence of her own eyes instead of the Official Narrative. Oh the times, oh the customs!
And what times they are. I find myself thinking of a scene from Robert Bolt’s dramatization of the life of St. Thomas More, A Man For All Seasons. More has just resigned the Office of Chancellor of England because he can’t in good conscience promote King Henry VIII’s efforts to procure an annulment for his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Ann Boleyn. At the same time, More is trying to protect himself and his family by not publicly opposing the king’s scheme. When his friend the Duke of Norfolk tries to pin down the former Chancellor about his real position on Henry’s marriage, the following scene ensues:
MORE (Looks at him, takes him aside; in a lowered voice) Have I your word that what we say here is between us two?
NORFOLK (Impatient) Very well.
MORE (Almost whispering) And if the King should command you to repeat what I may say?
NORFOLK I should keep my word to you!
MORE Then what has become of your oath of obedience to the King?
NORFOLK (Indignant) You lay traps for me!
MORE (Now grown calm) No, I show you the times.
The Truth v. The Narrative
St. Thomas More lived in a time when men and women had to choose between the Official Narrative and the Truth. Of course, the choice was starker in More’s day: St. Thomas was ultimately put to death for his refusal to give his public blessing to the King’s new marriage (and also the King’s new role as Pope of England). There are no beheadings so far in the current War on Reality, and pray God we never reach that point, but losing one’s livelihood and reputation is nevertheless a significant price to pay for the refusal to assent to a lie.
2019 March for Life outside U.S. Supreme Court building
The current COVID regime is just an example, by the way, just one of the absurdities to which that the Keepers of The Narrative are demanding that we give our “amen!” And there were many more examples before our day. We might say that the whole thing goes back before the creation of this world to the rebellion of the Prince of Lies and his hench angels in Heaven, and to his sly promise to our first father and mother: “when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5).
The recent American version goes back at least thirty-eight years, to January 22nd 1973, when the United States Supreme Court imposed an unrestricted abortion regime on this country. In its decision the court intoned that “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.” But the question of when life begins was not difficult at all: no serious biologist would have asserted then, and would not now, that the human embryo was not alive. The question before the court was whether all human life is worthy of protection, or only some human lives, to which the court replied, in essence: the only worthy lives are those that The Narrative chooses to protect.
Disengaging From the Tech Tyrants
The creeping tyranny of The All Mighty Narrative is nothing new, then, but it has grown in alarming ways in recent years. The social media companies that have acquired a stranglehold over the transmission of information have become bolder in using their power, in conjunction with other financial and political interests, to shut down any dissent from The Narrative. That’s why I started this blog, one year ago today (January 19th, 2021). As I said in my introductory post:
This new blog grew out of my efforts to disengage from the giant communications companies that seem increasingly intent on squashing any voices that don’t submit to a certain secular and, increasingly, totalitarian social and political perspective (needless to say, traditional Christian belief and morality lie very much outside of that perspective).
I had two main ideas in mind: the first was to promote independent, dissenting voices outside the domain of the Tech Tyrants. The other was to stop feeding The Beast by avoiding its products whenever possible. Ideally, this could be done without any added expense. To that end my new blog was not on the Google acquisition Blogger (where I had published previously) but on WordPress.com, which provides a free blogging platform. I set out to post sacred music clips, one every week if possible, and none of them from the Google-acquired YouTube. Since I had forsworn Facebook and Twitter (and all their works and promises) I shared my posts on other social media outlets that did not consider themselves part of the Vanguard of the Woke Revolution (chiefly Gab and Mewe).
One Year Later
I’m still at it one year later. There have been some snags along the way. Wordpress.com places ads on free websites. I was under the impression that the ads were only for the hosting service itself. When I discovered otherwise, I checked in on my blog from a computer at work. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Spes In Domino, my faithful Catholic web site, was advertising contraceptives. I decided that as soon as possible I would move to a self-owned website, which I did as soon as another family member acquired a hosting package for an ecommerce site. It was well worth the $20 annual fee for the domain name.
Samizdat from Soviet Russia
Those are minor inconveniences, of course, and a small price to pay for the ability to speak the truth. Under the totalitarian communist regime in the Soviet Union dissidents intent on telling the truth used to evade the censorship and the distortions of the official press by distributing samizdat, which was no more than mimeographed pamphlets passed from hand to hand. We need to be as resourceful in fighting the creeping totalitarianism in our world today.
Granted, nobody in the United States is being sent to the Gulag just for opposing the favored Narrative . . . at least not yet. On the other hand, a recent Rasmussen Reports poll has found that “Nearly half (48%) of Democratic voters think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.” That’s a frighteningly large chunk of the population who favor the security state over the free exchange of ideas. The Narrative is a jealous god indeed.
Ultimately, it comes down to a matter of truth. Our Lord tells us “He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.” (Luke 16:10) How can we hope to be faithful to Him Who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6) if we’re not faithful to the ordinary everyday truths? Christ further tells us that “the Truth will set you free”(John 8:32). There is no freedom without truth. Lord, give us the courage to face and to speak the truth!
Catholic Christianity has been blessed with a vast array of artists of every sort whose manifold talents have brought glory to God. There are poets as different as Dante Alighieri and Gerard Manley Hopkins, we have Carravaggios and Michelaengelos in the visual arts, and there are a whole list of Catholic composers including Monteverde, Vivaldi, Haydn and countless others.
There is no other artist, however, Catholic or otherwise, quite like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was a child prodigy who showed off his keyboard skills on a tour of the noble courts of Europe at six years old and who composed his first symphony at eight. Before his death at thirty-four years old he had produced over six hundred major compositions in which he displayed mastery of every major musical genre of his time, including both sacred and secular music.
Mozart at the spinet, performing selections from ‘Don Giovanni’ for the first time to a small company, 19th century illustration by Edouard Hamman (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek)
Mozart’s musical brilliance, unfortunately, did not carry over into his personal life. He was not a good manager of his personal affairs, and his family always struggled financially. Also, while he always considered himself a Catholic, his relationship to the Church was at times rather complicated. Nevertheless, Mozart seemed to have a deep and personal understanding of the allure of sin and the redemptive power of Jesus Christ. This intuitive grasp of the drama of salvation and damnation permeates not only his religious music (particularly his Requiem Mass, which remained unfinished when he died), but even secular works such as the magnificent opera Don Giovanni, which concludes with a band of demons hauling the wicked old sinner Don Juan off to Hell.
The clip below features the Agnus Dei from Mozart’s Coronation Mass in C major. The composer finished the Mass on March 23rd, 1779. It was performed at the crowning of Holy Roman Emperor Francis II in 1792, and became a standard feature of coronations over the next century (from which it derived its nickname).
. . . and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:32)
I’ll bet you’re tired of talking about COVID. I certainly am. The curious little virus (SARS-CoV-2) from Wuhan (or, more accurately, our reactions to it) has tyrannized not just conversation but public life for almost two years now, in a way that no other illness (or illness causing agent) has since the Spanish Flu a century ago. The HIV virus never achieved anything like the universal impact of COVID, not even back in the eighties when AIDS first burst on the scene and a young doctor named Anthony Fauci came to public prominence predicting that we were all at risk, and that we could look forward to millions of people dying of AIDS by the 1990s (forty years later, the official count stands at approximately 700,000).
The little tyrant: SARS-CoV-2 (publicdomainpictures.net)
I’ve addressed COVID a few times on this blog, but I’ve avoided getting into it too deeply. I try to avoid partisan politics here, and COVID is very, very (very) political. We live in a time, however, in which politics intrudes very deeply into our personal and spiritual life, so just as politics is unavoidable, so is COVID . . . or, more accurately, the public policies and practices predicated on COVID. Having said that, take heart, this discussion is not really about COVID, or about the vaccine mandate, they just provide the raw material. Today’s topic is truth.
The precipitating event for today’s discussion was Thursday’s U. S. Supreme Court decision striking down the Biden administration’s COVID vaccine mandate in the guise of an OSHA regulation. I tend to think the Supreme Court did the right thing. But again, that’s not my argument here. Instead, I’d like to start with a remark I heard on Catholic radio this morning. A commenter observed that Catholics who base their criticisms of the vaccine mandate (or other public policies) on the concept of individual rights are taking the wrong approach: “rights” is a secular concept, Catholics ought instead to make “solidarity” their primary thrust.
There’s a lot that is true in that observation, but there’s enough that’s not quite right that I must, respectfully, disagree. The speaker is correct that the concept of individual rights in and for themselves has never been part of Catholic teaching. I could point out that the term “solidarity” doesn’t have much of a Catholic pedigree, either: it’s my impression that it doesn’t appear in Catholic teaching before the pontificate of St. John Paul II (I’m happy to accept correction if I’m wrong about that). Nonetheless, it is true that the idea behind the term has been a core concept in Catholic teaching since the beginning of the Church. It’s omnipresent in the Gospel: “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:40). So what’s is my objection to the comment?
Let’s start with rights. First of all, we need to make a distinction between arguments we use among other Catholics, other Christians, and non-believers out in the world. We invoke teaching documents and the established tradition of the Church along with the testimony of the Bible when we want to convince a fellow Catholic. Protestant Christians won’t be impressed by Catholic magisterial teaching, but they’ll listen to those arguments based on Scripture. Depending on their flavor of Protestantism, they may also be willing to look at the practice of the early Church, and maybe the first few ecumenical councils. Non-Christians or those whose orientation is largely secular won’t be swayed by any sort of religious arguments. That’s why the public arguments of the pro-life movement are generally based on natural law and concepts of right and wrong that are accessible to everyone regardless of belief, including atheists. Catholics who invoke the secular concept of rights in the case of COVID vaccine mandates are not arguing from Catholic theology, but are appealing to a concept shared by believers and non-believers alike in order to convince the largest number of people.
“I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” (1 Corinthians 9:22) St. Paul Preaching on the Ruins, by Giovanni Paolo Pannini, 1640
Beyond that, it’s not quite true to say that Catholic teaching has no concept of rights, even if it doesn’t envision them in the same way the secular world does. Consider this passage from The Catechism of the Catholic Church (my bold):
Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions. “He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters.” (CCC 1782)
The Church, then, is very much in favor of our right to follow our conscience. Conscience, in fact, provides a good illustration of how the Catholic idea of rights and freedom differs from a more worldly view. God gives us good things so that we can use them for good ends: a free conscience, for instance, enables us “personally to make moral decisions.” We are certainly capable of making immoral decisions (and we all often do so, unfortunately), but such decisions are an abuse of our freedom, and inevitably bring bad consequences for ourselves and others. Rights, in the Catholic view, don’t exist just for ourselves alone, but to enable us to achieve higher ends.
So, where does the COVID vaccine mandate come into this discussion? Before I go any further, let me stipulate that I’m not judging (after all, who am I to judge?) anybody’s personal decision to take or not to take the available vaccines. The official statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (based on the 2008 CDC instructionDignitatis Personae, among other sources) assures us that, despite the use of cells from aborted embryonic humans in the production of the vaccines:
when ethically irreproachable Covid-19 vaccines are not available . . . it is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process. (Note on the morality of using some anti-Covid-19 vaccines, 2)
To put the above quote in context, it’s important to take into account that the acceptability of a tainted vaccine is not just dependent on the availability (or not) of other vaccines. We need to consider the gravity of the illness we are seeking to avoid, and whether there are other means of avoidance or treatment. We need to weigh whether possible side effects of the vaccine outweigh potential benefits. If we decide to receive the tainted vaccine, we have “a duty to make known [our ]disagreement and to ask that [our] healthcare system make other types of vaccines available” (Dignitatis Personae 35). There are no hard and fast answers to these questions: everyone needs to evaluate them in the light of his or her own properly informed conscience. That’s why the CDC note goes on to say:
At the same time, practical reason makes evident that vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary. In any case, from the ethical point of view,the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one’s own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good. (Note on the morality of using some anti-Covid-19 vaccines, 5)
The idea of the common good brings us to St. John Paul’s concept of solidarity, to which it is closely connected. John Paul explains the concept as follows:
The exercise of solidarity within each society is valid when its members recognize one another as persons. Those who are more influential, because they have a greater share of goods and common services, should feel responsible for the weaker and be ready to share with them all they possess. Those who are weaker, for their part, in the same spirit of solidarity, should not adopt a purely passive attitude or one that is destructive of the social fabric, but, while claiming their legitimate rights, should do what they can for the good of all. The intermediate groups, in their turn, should not selfishly insist on their particular interests, but respect the interests of others. (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 39)
Pope St. John Paul II
There can be little doubt that any Christian response to the COVID situation, including the question of vaccination, should be informed by a sense of solidarity. The difficulty is, what specific actions should we take, or not take, “for the good of all”? In what way does taking a given vaccine benefit my neighbor? Does it really provide the promised protection? Do any benefits outweigh potential harms? Does the gravity of the threat require making the choice at all? Must my idea of appropriate solidarity in this situation necessarily be the same as someone else’s?
As is the case with conscience, we need to apply prudential judgment to determine what solidarity demands in a given circumstance, and my answer may not be the same as yours. As is the case with conscience, our prudential judgment needs to be informed, both by the moral teaching of the Church and by the actual facts on the ground. COVID and the newly developed vaccines have been so thoroughly politicized that it’s difficult to trust the information provided by public authorities, prominent medical spokespersons, and major media outlets. What are we to make of the fact, for instance, that even the head of CDC admits that the vaccines can’t prevent transmission of the virus, while the administration demands we all get vaccinated in order to prevent, yes, transmission of the virus? This is just one example of public pronouncements and policies in conflict with what appear to be objective facts.
So, yes, solidarity is an essential part of our response to questions of public policy, but true solidarity needs to be rooted in the truth. Pointless gestures that make us feel good about ourselves but do nothing to help our neighbor aren’t true solidarity. Giving public affirmation to a political narrative based on distortions, or even falsehoods, does not promote the common good. Feelings of solidarity not rooted in reality are mere sentiment, which can (and and so often has been) used by demagogues to manipulate the masses.
We can’t act in meaningful solidarity if we don’t know what solidarity really requires. We can’t properly exercise our consciences if we don’t know the actual facts. We can’t have any sort of healthy civil society, to say nothing of a properly functioning republic, without a healthy respect for reality. A society that builds on lies will sooner or later come under the sway of the Prince of Lies. Our starting point as Catholics in approaching questions of public policy must be to insist on a commitment to the truth.
Feature image top of page: St. Augustine Disputing WithFortunatus, by unknown Umbrian Master, c. 1510
One year ago I started this blog, Spes in Domino, in large part because I felt the need for independent voices, even small, insignificant voices like mine, to provide some alternative to the increasingly totalitarian dominance of tech giants such as Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and Google. I had previously run two blogs on Blogger, but hadn’t done much with them for several years previously.
The alarming highhandedness and arrogance of the Tech Tyrants in 2020 convinced me that it was time to take up the standard of Catholic Bloggery once again – but not on Blogger, which, like many useful and innovative products available online, had been acquired (or stolen – ask Oracle about that) by the evil empire known as Google. I would start anew on the free platform WordPress.com, and avoid, if at all possible, using any other Google owned entities (such as YouTube).
I intend to publish an update and retrospective on the past year next week. If all goes well, I will have moved this blog from WordPress.com to my own platform by then (WordPress.com is better than feeding the Beast known as Google, but it’s not without its own issues). In the meanwhile, I’m reposting my inaugural post for Spes In Domino, a stirring manifesto entitled, “Forget the Tech Tyrants, Our Hope is in The Lord”:
Welcome to Spes in Domino (Hope in the Lord). This new blog grew out of my efforts to disengage from the giant communications companies that seem increasingly intent on squashing any voices that don’t submit to a certain secular and, increasingly, totalitarian social and political perspective (needless to say, traditional Christian belief and morality lie very much outside of that perspective). I found dropping the likes of Twitter and Facebook to be easy; untangling myself from the many tentacles of the behemoth known as Google is a more complicated task.
In my current job there’s not much I can do about the pervasiveness of Google: Gmail, Google Meet, Google Classroom, and a whole series of (admittedly convenient) other tools are furnished by my employer. Ending my personal entanglement with Google is another matter: it’s achievable, but time-consuming and tedious. I’ve begun the process of shifting my email traffic from Gmail to Protonmail, I’m moving documents from Google Drive to Zoho, and I’m looking for ways to replace other Google products as well. Among my Google connections are two Blogger blogs, now mostly moribund, except at Christmas time. Blogger was swallowed up by Google some years ago. As I’ve been looking over all my old blog posts while working to rescue them from the maw of Google, I’ve been inspired to resume the regular practice of bloggery. I’ve reflected on how important it is to keep independent voices in the public square – especially Catholic Christian voices. In addition to providing a sane perspective on our life here on Earth, I had always tried with my old blogs to share the immense, beautiful, and inspiring treasury of religious art and music we have inherited, much of which remains unknown to so many of us. I’m convinced that this remains a an essential mission.
Don’t trust in this guy
Sharing some of those treasures more widely, then, is one of the purposes of this blog (and part of the fun for me is learning about them and experiencing them myself). I also hope to discuss (charitably, if I can) events and ideas from a Catholic perspective. In addition, I will also be taking note of saint’s days, liturgical feasts, and other elements of Catholic life and Catholic culture as they suggest themselves to my distractible mind. Oh, and I promise to try not to get too caught up in the specifics of politics. Politics is like the horse in Psalm 33: “The war horse is vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save” (Psalm 33:17).
The Good News is that there’s someone who can save:
Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death, and keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and shield. Yea, our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let thy steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in thee. (Psalm 33: 18-22)
Our hope is not in politics, or programs, or policies, or in people . . . our hope is in The Lord: Spes in Domino est.
“The people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ . . .”(Luke 3:15)
Today our mission starts in earnest. The Baptism of the Lord is the end of the official Christmas Season, although, as we have seen, there is a time honored tradition of keeping the Christmas lights burning until the Feast of the Presentation on February 2nd. And to be sure today’s feast and the Presentation both have important connections to Christmas, but both also point us forward into the drama of the liturgical year.
John the Baptist, by El Greco, 1597-1607
There’s something a little unsettling about the Baptism of Jesus, but the inspired authors of the Gosples clearly want us to pay close attention to it. It’s the opening action in the Gospel of Mark, and the first event in the other Gospels after the infancy narratives or, in the Case of John’s Gospel, the Hymn of the Word Made Flesh. The Baptism inaugurates Christ’s public ministry, and is also one of the few events outside of the Passion and Resurrection narrative that all four Gospels describe in (more or less) the same terms.
I say “more or less” because there are subtle but significant differences. Mark’s account, for instance, is the sparest, except that he gives us the most vivid picture of the Baptist himself: “Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey” (Mark 1:6). John’s Gospel recounts John the Baptist hailing Jesus with the title “Lamb of God” (John 1:36), an image which takes a prominent place in other Johannine books, especially Revelation. They all tell of John’s recognition of himself as a mere the forerunner to Jesus, whom he points out as the true Messiah, but only Matthew records his reluctance to baptize the Lord:
Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. (Matthew 3:13-15)
The Baptist, like us, finds something unsettling about Jesus seeking baptism. John knows who Jesus is. He knows that Jesus, being sinless, has no need of forgiveness. He only consents to baptizing his Lord after Jesus assures him that it is “to fulfill all righteousness.” But what does that mean for Jesus, who is surely the very embodiment of all righteousness?
Before we try to answer that question, let’s take a look at Luke’s Gospel, which provides this year’s Mass reading. Luke includes an observation unique to his account: “The people were filled with expectation.” (Luke 3:15) He draws our attention not just to the curiosity of the crowd asking John whether he is the Messiah, but to the longing in their hearts. The Man to whom John directs their attention as one mightier than himself answers their expectation by submitting to baptism in company with them, and he is praying in their midst, when
heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:21-22)
Jesus undergoing baptism, not for himself but for the benefit of the crowd watching him with expectation in their hearts, is pleasing to God. In today’s Office of Readings St. Gregory Nazianzus explains the implications of Christ’s actions for our own expectant hearts:
Today let us do honor to Christ’s baptism and celebrate this feast in holiness. Be cleansed entirely and continue to be cleansed. Nothing gives such pleasure to God as the conversion and salvation of men, for whom his every word and every revelation exist. He wants you to become a living force for all mankind, lights shining in the world. You are to be radiant lights as you stand beside Christ, the great light, bathed in the glory of him who is the light of heaven.
“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:21-22)
The Baptism of Christ, by Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci, 1470-1475
St. Gregory tells us we are to be shining lights, not shining with our own glory, but reflecting the Light of God. Our being cleansed, that is to say, the forgiveness of our sins, is not for ourselves alone, but in order to make us suitable instruments for the Lord.
We welcomed the Christ Child at Christmas and now, as he takes up his mission as a grown man, our mission is to follow him, that all righteousness may be fulfilled. All four Gospels contain some version of words from Heaven at the Baptism of Jesus: “You are my beloved Son, in You I am well pleased.” We are reminded of these words later, on Mount Tabor, but now directed not at Jesus himself, but to the watching disciples: “This is my chosen son.” Here we have the added command: “Listen to Him!” (Luke 9:35). We have our marching orders.
Featured image top of page: The Baptism of Christ, by Hans Rottenhammer and Jan Bruegel, early 17th Century
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