An excellent theological writing from Father Mullin. I especially appreciate his thoughts on the significance of Christ’s Presentation at the Temple for us as Christians. The good Father is clearly not ashamed of the gospel and faithful to it. Well done, good and faithful servant. Well done. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand—and be blessed by it if you do have ears to hear.
THERE are two great festivals in the Church’s calendar to lighten this season of darkness and lockdown. We have celebrated Epiphany already. Next comes Candlemas or The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, or, as the Book of Common Prayer also says, The Purification of St Mary the Virgin. The Americans celebrate something called Groundhog Day on February 2 in respect of their quaint belief that if the groundhog casts a shadow on that day, the winter will be prolonged. Which just goes to demonstrate the truth of Chesterton’s saying that when a man stops believing in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing: he believes in anything.
So, what is this ceremony with the baby Jesus and Mary his Mother about? They were of course a Jewish family and, according to the Law of Moses, women who had given birth were obliged to be ritually purified. This is ironic because Mary is the Immaculate Conception and so the only human being – female or male – who needed no purification, ritually or otherwise. Families presenting their offspring made a sacrifice of a lamb, if they were well off; if they were poor a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.
When Joseph and Mary and the baby Jesus entered the Temple, there took place a dramatic scene. Simeon, an old man, had been given the gift of prophecy from God. He was devout. The gospel tells us he was waiting for the consolation of Israel. That means the coming of the Messiah, the Christ. God had promised him that he would not see death before the Christ came. As soon as the prophet Simeon recognised Jesus as the Christ, he took him up in his arms. There must have been something strikingly holy about Simeon for Mary to let him hold the child. With the infant Jesus in his arms, Simeon utters those words which we repeat at Evensong as Nunc Dimittis:
‘Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.’
Notice how radical Simeon’s prophecy is. Here they are in the most Holy place in all Israel, the Temple in Jerusalem, devout Jews strictly performing a Jewish rite of passage. And yet Simeon prophesies that the Jewish Messiah, the Christ whom he has just recognised at a few days old, is to be the Light of the Gentiles.
What did Mary and Joseph make of it all? St Luke’s gospel in the Prayer Book version says, And Joseph and his mother marvelled at these things which were spoken of him. That’s putting it mildly. The original Greek word for marvelled is thaumazontes – shocked to the core, overwhelmed by the wonder of it. A thaumaturge was a wonder-worker, someone who worked by spells and enchantment. So, when the gospel says they were thaumazontes it was as if they were enchanted.
…Candlemas, a Christian holiday that remembers when Mary presented the Christ child at the Temple in Jerusalem and performed her purification (see below). Candlemas is also called the Festival Day of Candles, in which the parish priest would bless candles for use in the local church for the coming year and would occasionally send some of them home with his parishioners for them to use. It is one of the earliest known feasts to be celebrated by the Church.
Candlemas falls 40 days from the birth of Jesus because that is the day Mary would have completed her purification process as prescribed by the Law, which means that Candlemas always falls on February 2. It is the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox and before there ever was a Groundhog Day (also observed on February 2), tradition held that when Candlemas fell on a sunny day, there was more winter to come. But when it fell on a cloudy, wet, or stormy day, it meant that the worst of winter was over. Check out the two Candlemas poems below and see if you recognize anything familiar in them:
If Candlemas be fair and bright, Come, Winter, have another flight; If Candlemas brings clouds and rain, Go Winter, and come not again. (Anonymous English poem)
If Candlemas day be dry and fair, The half o’ winter to come and mair, If Candlemas day be wet and foul, The half of winter’s gone at Yule. (Anonymous Scottish poem)
For you Christmas junkies out there, tradition also holds that any Christmas decorations not taken down by Twelfth Night (January 5) should be left up until Candlemas and then taken down. Candlemas also officially marks the end of the Christmas and Epiphany seasons, seasons in which the Church celebrates Christ as being the light to the world.
The Fortieth Day after Epiphany [Candlemas, February 14] is observed here with special magnificence, On this day they assemble in the Anastasis [Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem]. Everyone gathers, and things are done with the same solemnity as at the feast of Easter. All the presbyters [priests] preach first, then the bishop, and they interpret the passage from the Gospel about Joseph and Mary taking the Lord to the Temple, and about Simeon and the prophetess Anna, daughter of Phanuel, seeing the Lord, and what they said to him, and about the sacrifice offered by his parents. When all the rest has been done in the proper way, they celebrate the sacrament and have their dismissal.
Spot on and full of humility. For those with ears, especially church leaders and theologians, listen and understand.
The catechism is not enough, theology is not enough, formulas are not enough to explain the Unity and Trinity of God.
We need loving communication, we need the presence of the Spirit.
That is why I do not believe in theologians who do not pray, who are not in humble communication of love with God.
Neither do I believe in the existence of any human power to pass on authentic knowledge of God.
Only God can speak about himself, and only the Holy Spirit, who is love, can communicate this knowledge to us.
When there is a crisis in the Church, it is always here: a crisis of contemplation.
The Church wants to feel able to explain about her spouse even when she has lost sight of him; even when, although she has not been divorced, she no longer knows his embrace, because curiosity has gotten the better of her and she has gone searching for other people and other things.
The revelation of a triune God in the unit of a single nature, the revelation of a divine Holy Spirit present in us, is not on the human level; it does not belong to the realm of reason. It is a personal communication which God alone can give, and the task of giving it belongs to the Holy Spirit, who is the same love which unites the Father and the Son, who is the same love which unites the Father and the Son.
The Holy Spirit is the fullness and the joy of God.
It is so difficult to speak of these things. We have to babble like children, but at least, like children, we can say over and over again, tirelessly, “Spirit of God, reveal yourself to me, your child.”
And we can avoid pretending that knowledge of God could be the fruit of our gray matter.
Then, and only then, shall we be capable of prayer; borne to the frontier of our radical incapacity, which love has made the beatitude of poverty, we shall be able invoke God’s coming to us, “Come, creator Spirit!”
For those with ears to hear, listen and understand the beautiful Truth about which he speaks.
Christ is bathed in light; let us also be bathed in light. Christ is baptized; let us also go down with him, and rise with him.
John is baptizing when Jesus draws near. Perhaps he comes to sanctify his baptizer; certainly he comes to bury sinful humanity in the waters. He comes to sanctify the Jordan for our sake and in readiness for us; he who is spirit and flesh comes to begin a new creation through the Spirit and water.
The Baptist protests; Jesus insists. Then John says: “I ought to be baptized by you.” He is the lamp in the presence of the sun, the voice in the presence of the Word, the friend in the presence of the Bride-groom, the greatest of all born of woman in the presence of the firstborn of all creation, the one who leapt in his mother’s womb in the presence of him who was adored in the womb, the forerunner and future forerunner in the presence of him who has already come and is to come again.
“I ought to be baptized by you;” we should also add: ‘“‘and for you,” for John is to be baptized in blood, washed clean like Peter, not only by the washing of his feet.
Jesus rises from the waters; the world rises with him. The heavens like Paradise with its flaming sword, closed by Adam for himself and his descendants, are rent open. The Spirit comes to him as to an equal, bearing witness to his Godhead. A voice bears witness to him from heaven, his place of origin. The Spirit descends in bodily form like the dove that so long ago announced the ending of the flood and so gives honor to the body that is one with God.
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 human beings, for whom his every word and every revelation exist. He wants you to become a living force for all humanity, 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 to enjoy more and more the pure and dazzling light of the Trinity, as now you have received—though not in its fullness—a ray of its splendor, proceeding from the one God, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power for ever and ever.
For those with ears to hear, listen and understand. For those of you who are already baptized, remember your baptism today (and everyday) and be thankful that the Lord is merciful, gracious, and kind beyond measure.
That Jesus should come and be baptized by John is surely cause for amazement. To think of the infinite river that gladdens the city of God being bathed.in a poor little stream of the eternal; the unfathomable fountainhead that gives life to all men being immersed in the shallow waters of this transient world! He who fills all creation, leaving no place devoid of his presence, he who is incomprehensible to the angels. and hidden from the sight of man, came to be baptized because it was his will. And behold, the heavens opened and a voice said: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
The beloved Father begets love, and spiritual light generates light inaccessible. In his divine nature he is my only Son, though he was known as the son of Joseph. This is my beloved Son. Though hungry himself, he feeds thousands; though weary, he refreshes those who labor. He has no place to lay his head yet holds all creation in his hand. By his passion [inflicted on him by others], he frees us from the passions [unleashed by our disobedience]; by receiving a blow on the cheek he gives the world its liberty; by being pierced in the side he heals the wound of Adam.
I ask you now to pay close attention, for I want to return to that fountain of life and contemplate its healing waters at their source.
The Father of immortality sent his immortal Son and Word into the world; he came to us men to cleanse us with water and the Spirit. To give us a new birth that would make our bodies and souls immortal, he breathed into us the spirit of life and armed us with incorruptibility. Now if we become immortal, we shall also be divine; and if we become divine after rebirth in baptism through water and the Holy Spirit, we shall also be coheirs with Christ after the resurrection of the dead.
Therefore, in a herald’s voice I cry: Let peoples of every nation come and receive the immortality that flows from baptism. This is the water that is linked to the Spirit, the water that irrigates Paradise, makes the earth fertile, gives growth to plants, and brings forth living creatures. In short, this is the water by which a man receives new birth and life, the water in which even Christ was baptized, the water into which the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove.
Whoever goes down into these waters of rebirth with faith renounces the devil and pledges himself to Christ. He repudiates the enemy and confesses that Christ is God, throws off his servitude, and is raised to filial status. He comes up from baptism resplendent as the sun, radiant in his purity, but above all, he comes as a son of God and a coheir with Christ. To him and to his most holy and life-giving Spirit be glory and power now and forever. Amen.
A superb critique of Saint Athanasius’ apologetic on a topic quite appropriate for the season of Advent with its emphasis on Christ’s two comings. I especially appreciate his emphasis that Athanasius was concerned for the reclamation of creation from the ravages of human sin and the myriad Evil it unleashed. This is what real Christian theology looks like. Ignore it at your own peril. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
The fourth-century African theologian Athanasius is known for standing contra mundum, against the world. When much of the church had turned toward Arianism, he stood firm on the truth that Jesus is, and always has been, fully God. For this, Athanasius endured opposition and exile. Yet he never wavered.
Contra mundum, however, doesn’t capture the fullness of Athanasius’s approach to the world. He was against the world for the sake of the world. He opposed the idolatry, heresy, and injustice of the world because he was for the redemptive flourishing of the world.
In a culture shaped by compromise and confusion, Athanasius shows us what it looks like to hold fast to Christ with courage and love.
Hostile Environment
To understand Athanasius’s apologetic, we must begin with his context. He wasn’t writing from history’s sidelines but from the heart of one of the world’s most influential cities.
Alexandria was the cultural capital of the Roman Empire, a bustling crossroads of trade and ideas. Home to the greatest library in the ancient world and filled with representatives from every major school of philosophy, Alexandria was a melting pot of cultures, religions, and competing worldviews. To be a bishop there was to be at the center of global conversations about truth, meaning, and power.
As bishop, Athanasius faced constant attack. His opponents launched theological challenges, political schemes, and personal accusations. These battles often forced him into exile, five times in all, equating to nearly 20 years away from his church. Yet those exiles shaped him as a theologian. In the deserts of Egypt and in the cities of the empire, Athanasius found both refuge and perspective. Cut off from his familiar responsibilities, he wrote many of his most enduring works, sharpening his vision of Christ and clarifying his defense of the gospel.
Athanasius’s apologetic wasn’t abstract. It was forged in the crucible of cultural diversity, political pressure, and personal suffering. His life in Alexandria taught him to engage competing ideas with clarity. His years in exile gave him space to reflect and to write for the good of the wider church. Out of this unique context came an apologetic that was both deeply theological and profoundly pastoral.
Vision of the World Re-Created
If Athanasius stood against the world, it was only because he believed so deeply in God’s good purposes for the world. Unlike theologians shaped by Gnostic instincts that see salvation as merely spiritual, Athanasius began with the goodness of creation itself, affirming that the world was made through the Word and intended for life with God.
He was equally clear-eyed about sin’s ravaging effects. For Athanasius, sin is not only disobedience but de-creation. It unravels God’s design, corrupts human dignity, and sets the world on a path toward death and nothingness. Salvation, therefore, can never be reduced to forgiveness alone or escape from the material world.
In Christ, God entered creation to re-create it. The incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus weren’t a detour from creation but the renewal of creation. As Athanasius put it, “The renewal of creation has been wrought by the self-same Word who made it in the beginning.” Redemption is nothing less than the re-creation of God’s good but fallen world.
This vision fueled Athanasius’s apologetic. He was against the world’s distortions precisely because he was for the world’s flourishing in Christ.
A good article, appropriate for the season of Advent, worth your time and reflection. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
The fact that death is coming for all of us, raises the inevitable question of how we should view it. Is it something we should be afraid of, or not?
In the Anglican Christian tradition to which I belong, a classic answer to this question is provided by the homily, or sermon, ‘Against the fear of death’ which was authorised for use in parish churches by the Church of England in the sixteenth century.
This homily explains why there are three reasons why ‘worldly’ (i.e. ungodly) people commonly fear death:
‘…. one, because they shall lose thereby, their worldly honours, riches, possessions, and all their heart’s desires; another, because of the painful diseases, and bitter pangs, which commonly men suffer, either before or at the time of death; but the chief cause, above all other, is the dread, of the miserable state of eternal damnation, both of body and soul, which they fear shall follow after their departing, after the worldly pleasure of this present life. ‘
However, none of these causes should make a Christian afraid of death. This is because:
Sermon originally preached on Christ the King Sunday B, November 21, 2021.
Lectionary texts: Daniel 7.9-10, 13-14; Psalm 93; Revelation 1.4b-8; St. John 18.33-37.
In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today we celebrate Christ the King Sunday, a feast relatively new to the Church’s calendar. Pope Pius XI instituted this feast in 1925 as a way to resist the rise of totalitarianism and secularism of his day. How appropriate for our day as well, even if it is misplaced on our calendar. It marks the last Sunday of the Church’s calendar year and as its name implies, today is a day when we culminate the season of Kingdomtide where we proclaim Christ as King, Messiah, and Lord of all God’s creation. I’m going to cut right to the chase. Do you believe any of this? If not, here’s why you can.
We start by acknowledging that God’s world is occupied by an alien, malevolent power—Satan and his minions, both human and spiritual. Why God has allowed this, no one can say nor should we spend much time on the question because the answer is not ours to know, at least in this mortal life. What is important for our discussion is that the ubiquitous presence of Evil in this world has caused many, Christians included, to not believe Christ is really king. What kind of king allows Evil to be so awfully present? And frankly, that is just what the dark powers want us to believe! When we see evil run apparently unchecked (the key word being apparently) and have doubts about Christ’s ability to rule over his creation, despite the NT declarations that he does reign as king (e.g., Col 1.15-19, Christ’s ascension or any of his exorcisms), the dark powers celebrate because doubt seeds despair and unbelief and can lead to the abandonment of the faith once delivered to the saints, to you and me, made saints by virtue of the blood of the Lamb shed for us.
However, the mere existence of Evil cannot fully explain why many of us fail to believe Christ is really king. Part of it involves human pride. We think we know better than God. We forget that we are finite, fragile, and mortal, prone to erroneous thinking and sinful behavior. We forget that God is omnipotent, eternal, and omniscient, that God’s ways are not our ways and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. To one extent or another we are all products of “enlightened thinking,” an oxymoron if there ever was one, where we limit reality to what our senses can perceive and what we can measure. This creates in us a skepticism about some of the things we read in the Bible, like today’s OT passage, e.g., or Christ’s healings and exorcisms. The Enlightenment, for all the good it has produced, has also produced the Holocaust, Communism, two disastrous world wars, and the woke lunacy that is attempting to impose itself on us today to name just a few. The Enlightenment reveals human pride at work, determined to use one of God’s gifts, reason, to replace superstition and religion, the two sources most enlightened thinkers believed (and still believe) were/are the cause of all the evils of the world. Of course this is utter nonsense and we can see the results of thinking that excludes God from the equation all around us. Contrary to popular belief, when humans actually take God seriously and act according to God’s holy ways and laws, the results are always positive.
Whatever the reason for our doubts and fears about God’s sovereignty—and let’s be clear, Kingdomtide season is all about God’s sovereignty—as all our lessons this morning testify, lessons that represent the whole of Scripture, Christ really is king and we can live confidently in that knowledge and reality. We must therefore learn what to look for concerning the signs of God’s rule in his world. In our OT lesson, Daniel shares the vision given to to him in response to the previous visions he received. In it we see the Ancient of Days, the Ancient One, God himself, preparing to judge the evil in his world as well as the powers behind it, both human and spiritual. The vivid imagery suggests purity and power, with God’s fiery judgment on all evil and those who perpetrate it. We humans need to be exposed to scenes like this, hidden from our senses, because they remind us God is in control of things, chaotic as our times and lives may be, mysterious as it all is to us.
And then we see the Son of Man, who interpreted through the lens of the NT is Christ himself, coming on the clouds—biblical language attributing God’s presence and power to him—ready to be God’s agent of justice and judgment. This scene should make sense to us because until the time evil and evildoers are judged, there can be no real peace, no perfect world. Like the blood of Abel, the blood of the martyrs and those murdered and killed unjustly will continue to cry out to God until God finally acts decisively to give them full justice. As Christians, we believe that day will come when Christ returns to finish his saving work and raise his saints to everlasting life. We may not like the fact that we have to wait for this day. Being children of instant gratification we may grow impatient and angry over Christ’s promised delayed gratification, but the fact remains that this promise and hope—the sure and certain expectation of things to come—are necessary if we are to thrive in this mortal life where we live in the already of God’s victory over Sin, Death, and Evil and the not yet of its consummation. As St. John the Elder reminds us in our epistle lesson, the blood of the Lamb has conquered Evil in a surprising and totally unexpected way. God’s victory is accomplished by the power of God himself, the only power strong enough to defeat Evil and Sin and Death.
In our gospel lesson, St. John the Evangelist also proclaims that Christ is God become human, that by going to the cross he will fulfill the prophecy and promise of Daniel that God will bring about God’s perfect justice to rid the world of all evil and evildoers. St. John proclaims this in part by telling us the story of Christ’s confrontation with Pilate, i.e., in telling us the story of God’s kingdom and justice confronting worldly power and justice. In this confrontation, St. John in effect proclaims that here is the Son of Man, coming on the clouds, i.e., coming in God’s power, to confront and deal with the evil and corruption of the world’s systems and beliefs. In this deeply ironic story, we see Pilate, who represents corrupt human notions of power and justice, mistakenly thinking that he is in charge and judging Christ as a political enemy when in fact it is Christ who is judging him—by going to the cross. For St. John, the cross is where Christ is crowned King and his kingdom’s rule begins. Again, in a deeply ironic moment, Christ’s crown consists not of gold but of thorns and most who are confronted by the story fail to understand this reality.
Notice carefully that Christ does not tell Pilate his kingdom is not of this world, but rather not from it, meaning the source of his power and authority emanate from God’s power and not human’s. Our Savior’s prayer that appeals for God’s kingdom to come on earth as in heaven makes little sense if Christ’s kingdom is some kind of spiritual kingdom rather than God’s power finally reasserting itself to heal a broken and corrupt world and its people. Pilate, ever caustic and cynical doesn’t get this. Neither do many of us in our cynicism. But our Lord tells him (and us) that he had come to testify to the truth, the truth being that God will not allow alien and hostile forces represented by Satan and his minions, Pilate among them, to go on causing havoc and pain and destruction and injustice and death forever. God in his loving goodness can never ultimately allow Evil to win the day as our OT lesson testifies. Pilate, of course, has no conception of truth because he retorted with the famous question, “What is truth?” Here we see St John testifying that truth is not of our making. Pilate in his cynicism, a cynicism that is increasingly popular today, cannot fathom this. Truth in his economy is something each of us holds. It is ours for the making so to speak. Not so, says Christ. Only God is the owner of truth and that truth never changes or varies. We can’t bend it or invent it according to our needs and whims. But only by Christ dying for us would the world have the chance to learn this truth and start to live by it. This in part is what it means to submit to Christ’s rule. Because we do not like the truth does not give us the license to change it. We are to obey God’s truth in how we live our lives and that means we are to pattern our lives after Christ. What is truth? God’s great love for sinners like you and me, a love so great that God was willing to become human and shed his blood to rescue us from our slavery to Sin and to conquer Evil by the self-giving power of love. And in so conquering Sin, Death, and Evil, God has pronounced judgment on it all and those who commit and perpetrate it. Evildoers may seem to win the day, but their victory is pyrrhic and short-lived. Their day of destruction and judgment is coming and what a terrible day that will be. That is the truth. If you believe it, you will treat it like the eternal treasure it is and live accordingly.
So what does that look like? What does that mean for you and me? First, when we realize that Christ is our crucified king who has defeated and judged Evil by taking it on himself, we have reason to believe the NT’s promise that on the day of his return, his cruciform victory will be consummated and we will finally be freed from all that has the power to harm and destroy us, including and especially the power of Death. And when we learn to recognize what Christ’s reign looks like, we learn to have confidence in its truth and reality. That means we have real hope for the present and future. No matter how bad things get for us, we persevere in the power of the Spirit as we await the final redemption of our body and soul. Hope is a great blessing, my beloved. Don’t ever abandon it, especially when its source is God himself.
Second, our lessons invite us to learn and live by the truth, not the fiction of our own making, but God’s truth. As we have seen, despite appearances to the contrary, the truth is that God calls us to live according to his laws and created order and when we refuse to do so, we can expect God’s judgment. I will have much more to say about this topic in two weeks, but for right now I would simply point out that God’s judgment always leads to God’s justice and is motivated by God’s love for us. God created us in his image to represent his presence in the world. When we do that, things go swimmingly well for us and we find wholeness and contentment, despite the corrupting influence of living in an evil-infested world. As followers of Christ this means that we choose not to be partakers in evil and to confront evil with love and good after the manner of our Lord Jesus, even when it appears that our efforts are defeated or go for nothing. Let me give you a quick example of what this looks like in real life. Recently the Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore J. Cordileone, confronted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her support for abortion. Unlike the powers of the world who use vitriol and anger and all the rest, the Archbishop instead called for prayer and fasting on behalf of Speaker Pelosi, asking God to convert her “maternal heart” away from supporting abortion. ++Cordileone also asked Catholic Christians to sign up for a “Rose and Rosary for Nancy,” where a rose would be sent to the Speaker for every Christian who signed up. As of Nov 15, 15,728 roses had been purchased, one of which were mine, and 1000 have been delivered, God be praised! This is how Christ the King’s reign works. In marked contrast to the nasty political business and name-calling (business as usual), we see God’s people praying for the repentance of one who denies the truth and supports murder. There was no name calling, just prayer and fasting and roses. Whether the Speaker repents is not the issue here. Rather, it is God’s people in Christ, working in loving obedience to him and appealing to his power to change hearts, minds, and lives. It is born out of a deep faith in the reality and efficacy of that power to conquer Sin and Evil and it confronts an unholy reality in a way that the person might actually be able to hear it without condemning her because we know that judgment is ultimately left to God and God alone. The world does not expect this and cannot recognize God’s power at work (one critic called the Archbishop “nutty,” for example). Therefore the world has misplaced or no hope, a terrible judgment in its own right. Not so with us. We have seen our crucified and risen Lord and we know his healing love and presence. On his behalf we dare to love each other enough despite our differences to support each other in our trials, tribulations, and suffering because we know that our trials are only temporary and the hope of glory, the new heavens and earth where we live in God’s direct presence forever, await us. And in doing so, we make known his love and presence among us. There is nothing better in all creation. This is why we can believe in Christ the King and his reign despite all the ambiguities, unanswered questions, and chaos that swirl around us. My beloved, I appeal to you to give (or continue to give) your lives and ultimate allegiance to Christ the King because in him, and only in him, will you find the strength and power for the living of your days and the blessed hope of eternal life awaiting you after you have finished running your race. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.
In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
For those of you who have read and are fans of the Revelation to Saint John (all 5 of you out there) like I am, one of the clearest interpretations of Revelation 20.5-6, a notoriously difficult passage, I have read. You would be wise to heed and follow the good’s Saint’s teaching. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
He Who Overcomes Shall not be Harmed by the Second Death
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye as the final trumpet sounds, for the trumpet shall indeed sound, the dead shall rise incorruptible and we shall be changed. In saying “we,” Paul is indicating that the gift of that future change will also be given to those who during their time on earth are united to him and his companions by upright lives within the communion of the Church. He hints at the nature of the change when he says: This corruptible body must put on incorruptibility, this mortal body immortality. In order, then, that men may obtain the transformation which is the reward of the just, they must first undergo here on earth a change which is God’s free gift. Those who in this life have been changed from evil to good are promised that future change as a reward.
Through justification and the spiritual resurrection, grace now effects in them an initial change that is God’s gift. Later on, through the bodily resurrection, the transformation of the just will be brought to completion, and they will experience a perfect, abiding, unchangeable glorification. The purpose of this change wrought in them by the gifts of both justification and glorification is that they may abide in an eternal, changeless state of joy.
Here on earth they are changed by the first resurrection, in which they are enlightened and converted, thus passing from death to life, sinfulness to holiness, unbelief to faith, and evil actions to holy life. For this reason the second death has no power over them. It is of such men that the Book of Revelation says: Happy the man who shares in the first resurrection; over such as he the second death has no power. Elsewhere the same book says: He who overcomes shall not be harmed by the second death. As the first resurrection consists of the conversion of the heart, the second death consists of unending torment.
Let everyone, therefore, who does not wish to be condemned to the endless punishment of the second death now hasten to share in the first resurrection. For if any during this life are changed out of fear of God and pass from an evil life to a good one, they pass from death to life and later they shall be transformed from a shameful state to a glorious one.
—From A Treatise on Forgiveness by Saint Fulgentius of Ruspe
This is an excellent piece. I commend the author for recognizing true love being expressed when he sees it. No shrill voice here. Neither liberal idolatry or shortsightedness. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
At a recent Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi, JD Vance remarked that he hoped his wife, Usha, would convert to Catholicism. The backlash was swift and savage. People criticized the vice president for being a bad husband and not respecting his wife’s choices and Hindu faith. Most of it was just noise. The backlash does, however, express an unfortunate reality. It is the terminus of American small-l liberalism: The ultimate truth is individual autonomy, and by publicly expressing a desire for his wife to convert, the vice president committed the cardinal sin in the religion of liberalism.
The vice president’s marital situation is common. According to the latest data from Pew Research Center, just over 25 percent of marriages in America consist of spouses with different religions. And for a few years, I too was counted among them.
My wife and I were both raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, served as missionaries for the church, were married in the Los Angeles temple, come from devout LDS families, and were ourselves devout. We had been married about ten years with four children when I left the LDS religion and converted to Catholicism. My wife had no interest in leaving her faith at that time. But eventually, she too became Catholic. Not everyone’s experience is the same: Since writing about our conversions in various publications, I have received a number of emails over the years saying: “I converted to Catholicism, my spouse did not. What do I do?” There are, to my mind, two related answers.
First, a simple directive: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it” (Eph. 5:25). Given that to love is to will the good of the other, that God is the greatest good, and that religion is an aspect of the virtue of justice whereby we render unto God what is owed him, it follows that husbands are to will that their wives believe and practice the true religion. JD Vance ought to will that his wife convert. To do otherwise would be unloving.
I told my wife on more than one occasion that I hoped she would convert, and I even expressed that desire publicly. Willing the good of the other is a concept mostly lost on liberalized Americans. “You do you” is the motto of our day. But it is an uncharitable motto.
Second, once we desire the conversion of our spouse, we need to know how to prudently direct our will to that end. I am grateful to the pastor I had during the time in which my wife and I were of different faiths, because he counseled me against both indifference and coercion. He advised prudence. As Aquinas writes, “it belongs to the ruling of prudence to decide in what manner and by what means man shall obtain [virtue].” Each marriage is different; each will need a different approach. When is the time to have that “hard conversation”? When is the time to just let something go? No one knew my wife and our relationship and our family better than I did. Prudence helps us to do the right thing, for the right reason, in the right time, and the right place.
Ultimately, it is God’s grace that first moves our wills toward him. We are merely instruments. And we never know when the right moment to say this or that thing, make this or that invitation, will be. My pastor wisely told me to faithfully live the sacramental life and use prudent judgment. And that is ultimately all I can tell anyone who finds themselves in that situation. Trust God. Never doom. And remember, prudently and publicly expressing the heartfelt hope that one’s spouse convert may just be the means by which God gives that ever important “twitch upon the thread.” JD Vance should be commended, not condemned.
A good and balanced piece on immigration. Would that the Church’s leaders pay attention. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
Catholic discussions of immigration frequently omit salient facts, most prominently the legal status of the “migrant.” I criticized this curious neglect in Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te. In that document, the discussion of “migrants” ignores the question of their legal status. Since then, Pope Leo has acknowledged state sovereignty while saying it must be “balanced” with the duty to provide “refuge”—telling us neither how such balance is achieved nor assuring that the Church won’t always fault nations for addressing a migration crisis. Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich’s latest video insisting the “Church stands with migrants” likewise evades the question of legality.
An honest discussion would not circumvent the issue of legal status, which is why growing numbers of people are beginning to ask whether the Church is a good-faith interlocutor on questions of mass migration. Glossing over the distinction between legal and illegal residency cannot be ecclesial oversight; too many critics have pointed out that the Church regularly sidesteps this issue. Church leaders at times formally acknowledge state sovereignty over immigration, but in practice the rhetoric (“undocumented”) suggests otherwise. Which makes one think the Church is dodging the question of illegal status, a posture more befitting a lobbyist pushing an agenda than an honest broker addressing a question that affects the common good.
The Church seeks to frame the discussion of illegal immigration through the lens of “human dignity.” This is a fitting concept with which to begin. But the Church’s selective use of this framing neglects to address the way in which illegal immigration offends human dignity.
Free will is an essential aspect of human dignity. Man is alteri incommunicabilis:Nobody can will for me. Nobody can ultimately makeme want something. I can be influenced, pressured, and even physically forced, but I cannot be made to will something. Even God does not interfere with free will; in the end, he respects what we have chosen, even if we damn ourselves in the process.
Willing is not limited to individuals. Political sovereignty is also an act of will. It is a decision of a community, exercised by its designated leaders. In Catholic thought, sovereign decisions are accorded deference, because the one charged with attending to the common good is supposed to employ an objective overview of the common good—which individual parties with individual interests might not see—when making a decision. It’s why distributive justice belongs to the one responsible for the community and not its individual members.
In modern political structures, the sovereign will is expressed by the democratic choice of a majority, adopted through processes established by rule of law. In our constitutional order, this is done through passing legislation in accord with proper procedures. These laws are entitled to the presumption that they serve the common good, which means that they are not subject to veto by parties outside of the legislative process. There is a profound moral reason for the presumptive respect for validly enacted laws: They express the rightly adopted will—an essential aspect of human dignity—of the organized political community on a question. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 fits that requirement.
Thus, if we recognize human dignity to be expressed through free choices, individual as well as collective, and that the latter deserve our deference as decisions made for the common good by those responsible for that common good, then validly enacted laws also deserve recognition as expressions of human dignity. A political community’s free choice of a morally legitimate option (no one has claimed immigration restrictions are intrinsically evil) by a collective decision in the name of the common good cannot be dismissed on the ground that it affects the human dignity of an individual, as if the individual is the only party that has a dignity claim.
The Church’s unartful dodges on the migrant question have especially disturbing consequences. It practically canonizes the isolated individual’s decision to judge laws, find them wanting, and justify disobeying them. This undermines the coherence of Catholic teaching. It makes an unjustified exception to a Catholic’s responsibility to obey legitimate laws, suggesting an anthropology that asserts that the only dignity at stake is the individual’s. This marks a departure from Catholic tradition, which accords dignity to the valid expression of a collective community will embodied in duly adopted laws.
When churchmen speak about the human dignity of migrants, they are drawing attention to an important principle, one that rightly governs law enforcement’s treatment of any person who is suspected of breaking the law. But it is baffling to think that the mere assertion of the human dignity of an individual can serve as justification in practice for ignoring immigration law. Does “dignity” immunize somebody against enforcement of a valid law? Does “dignity” nullify a state’s right to enforce a valid law against a violator?
