Who's Up For a Happy Ending?

My time in Vancouver is proving to be a challenge on the blogging front - lots of energy and time spent in other directions, quite properly. We had a wonderful day of recollection for young women yesterday; today we have (of course) the Sunday Masses and  a few other things happening to boot.

So, in lieu of a 'normal' blog post, here is my homily for the 4th Sunday of Lent--Laetare Sunday--after the break. Enjoy!

Put It All Together, And What Do You Get?

According to the Philosopher (Metaph. i: 2), it belongs to wisdom to consider the highest cause. By means of that cause we are able to form a most certain judgment about other causes, and according thereto all things should be set in order. Now the highest cause may be understood in two ways, either simply or in some particular genus. Accordingly he that knows the highest cause in any particular genus, and by its means is able to judge and set in order all the things that belong to that genus, is said to be wise in that genus, for instance in medicine or architecture, according to 1 Cor. 3:10: "As a wise architect, I have laid a foundation." On the other hand, he who knows the cause that is simply the highest, which is God, is said to be wise simply, because he is able to judge and set in order all things according to Divine rules.

Now man obtains this judgment through the Holy Ghost, according to 1 Cor. 2:15: "The spiritual man judgeth all things," because as stated in the same chapter (1 Cor. 2:10), "the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God." Wherefore it is evident that wisdom is a gift of the Holy Ghost…

The seventh beatitude is fittingly ascribed to the gift of wisdom, both as to the merit and as to the reward. The merit is denoted in the words, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Now a peacemaker is one who makes peace, either in himself, or in others: and in both cases this is the result of setting in due order those things in which peace is established, for "peace is the tranquillity of order," according to Augustine (De Civ. Dei xix, 13). Now it belongs to wisdom to set things in order, as the Philosopher declares (Metaph. i, 2), wherefore peaceableness is fittingly ascribed to wisdom. The reward is expressed in the words, "they shall be called the children of God." Now men are called the children of God in so far as they participate in the likeness of the only-begotten and natural Son of God, according to Rm. 8:29, "Whom He foreknew . . . to be made conformable to the image of His Son," Who is Wisdom Begotten. Hence by participating in the gift of wisdom, man attains to the sonship of God

St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.II.45.1,6

Reflection – Happy Feast of Pentecost, all! May the Holy Spirit descend afresh on each of you, and pour out all seven gifts upon you, and a million other gifts, too.

So we fittingly end our tour of the seven gifts of the Spirit with the gift of wisdom, which is the crown of all of them. Wisdom is the integrating gift, the gift that puts all the other gifts, and everything else, into the divine order, that sets all things into the order of love which is God’s ordering of all that is.

This is so crucial. Without wisdom, all we have are little potsherds of reality – fragments of this doctrine, a fragment of that moral law, a bit of spiritual maxim that we read in this book, a helpful practice we heard about in a sermon once. But potsherds don’t hold water, and sometimes they have sharp edges and can cut deep. Bits and pieces of truth ultimately lead us astray; in fact, since any bit of truth has such power in it, a partial truth can do much more damage than an outright lie.

And so we need to pray for wisdom. To see and know how to fit all the jigsaw pieces into a coherent whole, and not just a coherent whole but a beautiful picture. And that picture is the love of God poured out in Jesus Christ, made really present in us by the abiding gift of the Spirit which is mediated to us through the life of the Church, and which is expressed by us in lives of justice and mercy, leading us by the loving mercy of God to eternal bliss in heaven.

That’s the big picture, and holy wisdom stirs within us, then, to bring us to live orderly lives by loving right now, by serving right now, by praying right now, by being a child of God right now.

I included the bit of article six to highlight something I have omitted, that each gift of the Spirit bears fruit in a beatitude. In this case, ‘blessed are the peacemakers’, since it is wisdom that establishes God’s order in our lives, and that order is our only peace.

So, a happy feast to you all – and may the wisdom of God bring your life into the order of love and mercy so that you can be a peacemaker, and hence a true child of God in the world.

Fly Me to the Moon

Understanding implies an intimate knowledge, for "intelligere" [to understand] is the same as "intus legere" [to read inwardly]. This is clear to anyone who considers the difference between intellect and sense, because sensitive knowledge is concerned with external sensible qualities, whereas intellective knowledge penetrates into the very essence of a thing, because the object of the intellect is "what a thing is," as stated in De Anima iii, 6.

Now there are many kinds of things that are hidden within, to find which human knowledge has to penetrate within so to speak. Thus, under the accidents lies hidden the nature of the substantial reality, under words lies hidden their meaning; under likenesses and figures the truth they denote lies hidden (because the intelligible world is enclosed within as compared with the sensible world, which is perceived externally), and effects lie hidden in their causes, and vice versa. Hence we may speak of understanding with regard to all these things.

Since, however, human knowledge begins with the outside of things as it were, it is evident that the stronger the light of the understanding, the further can it penetrate into the heart of things. Now the natural light of our understanding is of finite power; wherefore it can reach to a certain fixed point. Consequently man needs a supernatural light in order to penetrate further still so as to know what it cannot know by its natural light: and this supernatural light which is bestowed on man is called the gift of understanding.

St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.II.8.1

Reflection – As I read this little treatise on the gift of the Spirit of understanding, I realize that for myself, who had the privilege of studying Thomistic thought for two years in Washington DC, this particular passage is of clear lucidity. It may not be so for everyone reading the blog.

We are so accustomed in the modern world, whether we realize it or not, to a certain epistemological despair – a certainty that all we know in fact is the outer appearance of things, and the inner heart of the matter is in fact hidden from us. We do not believe, really, in the capacity of the intellect to ‘read inwardly’ the essential truth of things. Kant, Hume, and Descartes, among others, have sown a radical skepticism about the ability of human beings to understand reality, and their ideas have trickled down from the lofty heights of the academy to become the very post-modern air we all breathe.

It is worth noting that these thinkers never disproved the medieval account of human knowledge—they simply declared it medieval and outdated and hence ignored it, a technique in argument that has been utilized to great effect and with great frequency since. It is worth noting that it is a completely bogus argument, without a leg to stand on—if a thing is true, it is as true in 1213 as it is in 1813 and in 2013.

Anyhow, back to the gifts of the Spirit. Aquinas’ point is well taken: allowing for the natural power of our understanding, our intelligence, to penetrate the outward surface of finite realities to apprehend their inner being, nonetheless this outward power does not suffice to penetrate the supernatural realities which are from God and surpass us.

So, the gift of understanding is given us so that we can know the truth of Scripture, of the doctrines of the faith, of the Sacraments, of the mysteries of the spiritual life. Again, this is not some kind of mystical mumbo-jumbo, or some quasi-mechanistic dynamic, like getting a power-up in a video game or being bitten by a radioactive spiritual spider.

It is always and forever and deeply a personal affair, an encounter, a relationship of the human person and the Divine Person of the Holy Spirit.

Here in this gift of understanding it is the Spirit who aids our human intelligence to understand the faith and its contents. So much of the confusion and errors and heresy of our times come, I suggest, from reducing the faith from a wholly supernatural affair to just one more finite reality, one more created artifact which our human intelligence can then pick apart and analyze in a test tube like anything else we find in the world.

Von Balthasar said that theology has to be done on one’s knees. In this he echoes many of the greatest of our intellectual tradition. In the Christian East the title ‘theologian’ is not given to academics who master a course of study, but to those who allow the Holy Spirit to penetrate, purify, and illuminate their minds and hearts with the knowledge of God. Such a person might be illiterate—one of the greatest ‘theologians’ I have ever known was in fact illiterate, a man in the first parish I served in after my ordination.

Those of us who are smarty-pants (I use the technical term) need to take note here: human intellect and its natural capacities are of no use in the knowledge of God, unless and until the Holy Spirit comes to us and imparts to us His knowledge. I can climb Mount Everest, but I cannot climb to the moon by my own unaided power. God is the one who takes us where we cannot go and tells us what we cannot know, and that is the gift of understanding.

Whaddya Know?

Grace is more perfect than nature, and, therefore, does not fail in those things wherein man can be perfected by nature. Now, when a man, by his natural reason, assents by his intellect to some truth, he is perfected in two ways in respect of that truth: first, because he grasps it; secondly, because he forms a sure judgment on it.

Accordingly, two things are requisite in order that the human intellect may perfectly assent to the truth of the faith: one of these is that he should have a sound grasp of the things that are proposed to be believed, and this pertains to the gift of understanding, as stated above (Question [8], Article [6]): while the other is that he should have a sure and right judgment on them, so as to discern what is to be believed, from what is not to be believed, and for this the gift of knowledge is required…

Since the word knowledge implies certitude of judgment as stated above (Article [1]), if this certitude of the judgment is derived from the highest cause, the knowledge has a special name, which is wisdom: for a wise man in any branch of knowledge is one who knows the highest cause of that kind of knowledge, and is able to judge of all matters by that cause: and a wise man "absolutely," is one who knows the cause which is absolutely highest, namely God. 

Hence the knowledge of Divine things is called "wisdom," while the knowledge of human things is called "knowledge," this being the common name denoting certitude of judgment, and appropriated to the judgment which is formed through second causes. Accordingly, if we take knowledge in this way, it is a distinct gift from the gift of wisdom, so that the gift of knowledge is only about human or created things.

St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.II.9.1,2

Reflection – OK, so now we move into the strictly intellectual gifts of the Spirit, the gifts given us by God that perfect our minds and make us, as much as is possible in our current state of affairs, sharers in the divine intellect, the mind of God.

Well, that’s a mouthful, isn’t it! I suppose a good starting point for our reflection, before I talk about the specific gift of knowledge, is to ask if we really believe that. Do you know that in your baptism you are given the capacity to share in God’s knowledge of all things, including His own knowledge of Himself? True, in our current state of pilgrimage, this knowledge is imperfect, and even in heaven we will not fully penetrate the mysteries of God, since He is infinite and we are finite. But… really. God desires to share His truth with us, and the work of the Holy Spirit is not only that we love as God loves (which I think we all get, even if it is a daunting prospect), but that we know as God knows.

I do realize that there are formidable obstacles today to really getting this. In a world of relativism and post-modernity, where it is axiomatic that any one person only possesses a fragment of the truth at best, it seems the height of arrogance if not madness to claim to know God’s truth about things. Certainly examples are rife of people claiming knowledge of the divine mind as an excuse for violence, hatred, bigotry, terrorism, and a host of other sins both petty and grave.

Of course we have to have the whole picture. The Spirit’s intellectual gifts are one with His affective gifts. In other words, we know the divine truth so as to love with the divine love. Truth without love is a travesty. And if we can turn from our poor human experience where loveless truth is all too often used as a club to beat others with, we can see from the divine perspective that He surely must want to share His truth with us, since He loves us, and when you love, you give good gifts to your beloved. Truth is the good of the mind; God surely wants us to have it in full.

And so we have three gifts: knowledge, understanding, wisdom. Knowledge, in Aquinas’ account of it, is sure judgment regarding the truth of created things. What they are, what their goodness is, and their relative place in God’s plan. Knowledge (which is not our modern sense of scientific data) teaches us to authentically love and cherish creation, like St. Francis of Assisi or indeed like St. Thomas Aquinas, and also to be detached and free of it, as we know its relative value to the uncreated good.

Francis, with his poverty and his delight in the beauty of the earth, is the patron saint, if you will, for the gift of knowledge. Because he saw all God has made so clearly, in the light of the Spirit, He could rejoice in it, and turn his whole being towards God in radical poverty and dispossession. That is knowledge in action, and that is the gift God wants to give each of us in his Pentecostal outpouring.

P.S. Amusingly, as I am typing these words about the beauty, etc., of the earth, Combermere seems to have experienced a small earthquake! God is funny.

Taking Counsel

As stated above (FS, Question [68], Article [1]), the gifts of the Holy Ghost are dispositions whereby the soul is rendered amenable to the motion of the Holy Ghost. Now God moves everything according to the mode of the thing moved: thus He moves the corporeal creature through time and place, and the spiritual creature through time, but not through place, as Augustine declares (Gen. ad lit. viii, 20,22). Again, it is proper to the rational creature to be moved through the research of reason to perform any particular action, and this research is called counsel. Hence the Holy Ghost is said to move the rational creature by way of counsel, wherefore counsel is reckoned among the gifts of the Holy Ghost…

A lower principle of movement is helped chiefly, and is perfected through being moved by a higher principle of movement, as a body through being moved by a spirit. Now it is evident that the rectitude of human reason is compared to the Divine Reason, as a lower motive principle to a higher: for the Eternal Reason is the supreme rule of all human rectitude. Consequently prudence, which denotes rectitude of reason, is chiefly perfected and helped through being ruled and moved by the Holy Ghost, and this belongs to the gift of counsel, as stated above (Article [1]). Therefore the gift of counsel corresponds to prudence, as helping and perfecting it…

Counsel is properly about things useful for an end. Hence such things as are of most use for an end, should above all correspond to the gift of counsel. Now such is mercy, according to 1 Tim. 4:8, "Godliness [*'Pietas,' which our English word 'pity,' which is the same as mercy; see note on SS, Question [30], Article [1]] is profitable to all things." Therefore the beatitude of mercy specially corresponds to the gift of counsel, not as eliciting but as directing mercy.

St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.II.52.1,2,4

Reflection – We are doing a little tour of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, on our way to Pentecost on Sunday, and have come now to the gift of counsel. This is really a fairly simple gift, although we can sometimes make it a bit more complicated and mysterious than it needs to be.

We are all faced with decisions to make every day. Each day life comes at us: for some, with great intensity, jam-packed with incident, action and workload; for others, slower, gentler, more measured. But for all of us, each day there are a whole host of choices to make, a continual action of the mind to go this way or that way, A or B, left or right.

As Christians we are striving to do not only what seems to be the best option according to our human reason, but to do what God wants us to do. As Christians, we know that God is present in and with us, and that His will is the most loving, joyous, blessed course of action in all things. And so, as Christians we are to seek to use our reason for sure, since God has given it to us for that precise purpose, but to use our reason illuminated by and assisted by the gift of the Holy Spirit to counsel us.

And this is simply what the gift of counsel is. We are not left alone in our constant decision making. God is here to help us, to know what is the most merciful, the most loving, the most helpful course of action for our brothers and sisters, for advancing the kingdom of mercy and love in the world.

Sometimes the gift of counsel can be spoken of in ‘spooky’ terms, like we’re getting messages beamed into our heads by an invisible radio transmitter so that we ‘know’ God’s will as if by telepathy. Certainly there are some saints and others who have had a special charism of discernment, a gift of knowledge of God’s will that is truly extraordinary. We think of St. Padre Pio and his incredible insights in the confessional into people’s deepest hearts, or of many of the saints knowing things and moving in ways that only a direct revelation from God could account for.

But while this may be an acute and most beautiful expression of the gift of counsel, it really is much broader than that. I believe that counsel is given to all of us, and in much less spectacular ways than these. Simply, God wants to help us know what the best thing is to do today. It’s a question of using our minds, for sure, to take account of all the relevant information in any decision, but even more a question of our hearts, earnestly turning towards God and crying out that His will be done in our lives.

It is always personal, always a matter of communion, always a matter of you and me turning to the living God and seeking His help and guidance and grace. It is only this turning, and this grace, that will enable us to move with great counsel and confidence in the world, and extend mercy in a fruitful, useful way to one another. So, let’s get praying: today, Lord, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Amen.