Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 11

The Assumption" by Monsignor Ronald Knox

The Assumption | Mgr. Ronald Knox | From Pastoral and Occasional Sermons | August 15th | Ignatius Insight

A cave Jeremias found there, in which he set down tabernacle and ark and incense-altar, and stopped up the entrance behind him. There were some that followed; no time they lost in coming up to mark the spot, but find it they could not.—2 Machabees 2:5-6.

After this, God's heavenly temple was thrown open, and the ark of the covenant was plain to view, standing in his temple.—Apocalypse 11:19.

The Son of God came to earth to turn our hearts away from earth, Godwards. The material world in which we live was, by his way of it, something immaterial; it didn't matter. We were not to be always worrying about our clothes being shabby, or wondering where our next meal was to come from; the God who fed the sparrows and clothed the lilies would see to all that. We were not to resent the injuries done to us by our neighbours; the aggressor was welcome to have a slap at the other cheek, and when he took away our greatcoat he was to find that we had left our coat inside it. Life itself, the life we know, was a thing of little value; it was a cheap bargain, if we lost life here to attaIn the life hereafter. There was a supernatural world, interpenetrating, at a higher level, the world of our experience; it has its own laws, the only rule we were to live by, its own prizes, which alone were worth the winning. All that he tried to teach us; and we, intent on our own petty squabbles, our sordid struggle for existence, cold-shouldered him at first, and then silenced his protest with a cross.

His answer was to rise from the dead; and then, for forty days in the world's history, that supernatural life which he had preached to us flourished and functioned under the conditions of earth. A privileged few saw, with mortal eyes, the comings and goings of immortality, touched with their hands the impalpable. For forty days; then, as if earth were too frail a vessel to contain the mystery, the tension was suddenly relaxed. He vanished behind a cloud; the door of the supernatural shut behind him, and we were left to the contemplation of this material world, drab and barren as ever.

What was the first thing the apostles saw when they returned from the mount of the Ascension to the upper room? "Together with Mary"—is it only an accident that the Mother of God is mentioned just here, by name, and nowhere else outside the gospels? The Incarnate Word had left us, as silently as he came to us, leaving no trace behind him of his passage through time. No trace? At least, in the person of his blessed Mother, he had bequeathed to us a keepsake, a memory. She was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, the new Eve of the new Adam. That body of hers, still part of the material order of things, had housed and suckled God. As long as she lived, there would still be a link, a golden link, between this lower earth and Paradise. As long as she lived; and even if it was God's will that she, Eve's daughter, should undergo the death that was Eve's penalty, the penalty she had never incurred, her mortal remains would still be left with us, an echo from the past, an influence on our lives. We men, since we are body and soul, do honour even to the lifeless bodies which have housed the dead; Napoleon rests in the Invalides, Lenin at Moscow. The day would come when there would be pilgrimages from all over the world to the shrines of Peter and Paul at Rome, of James at Compostela. Was it not reasonable to hope that somewhere, at Jerusalem, perhaps, or at Ephesus, we should be privileged to venerate the mortal remains of her through whom salvation came to us? Or perhaps at Bethlehem, Bethlehem-Ephrata, this new Ark of God would rest, as the ark rested of old; "And now, at Ephrata, we have heard tidings of what we looked for" [1] —the old tag from the Psalms should still ring true.

God disposed otherwise. Jewish tradition recorded that when Jerusalem was destroyed by the armies of Babylon, the prophet Jeremias took the ark of God away from the city, and buried it in some secret cleft of the rock; it was never seen again. Never again, except by St John, in his vision on the isle of Patmos; he saw the ark of God, but in heaven. And so it was with this new Ark of God, the virgin body that had been his resting-place. When and where she passed away from this earth, or in what manner, nobody can tell us for certain. But we know where she is. When Elias was carried up into heaven, the sons of the prophets at Jericho asked Eliseus if they might go out in search of him; "it may be", they said, "the spirit of the Lord has carried him off and left him on some hill-top or in some cleft of the valleys." He consented grudgingly, and when they returned from their fruitless errand, greeted them with the words; "Did I not tell you not to send?" [2] So it is with the body of the blessed Virgin: nowhere in Christendom will you hear the rumour of it. So many churches, all over the world, eagerly claiming to possess the relics of this or that saint; who shall tell us whether John the Baptist sleeps at Amiens, or at Rome? But never of our Lady; and if any of us still hoped to find that inestimable treasure, the Holy Father has called off the search, only the other day. We know where her body is; it is in heaven.

Of course, we knew it all along. For myself, I have never doubted the doctrine of the Assumption since I heard it preached forty-four years ago, in an Anglican church over at Plymouth. You see, we get it all wrong about body and soul, simply because our minds are dominated by matter. We think it the most natural thing in the world that soul and body should be separated after death; that the body should remain on earth and the soul go to heaven, once it is purged and assoiled. But it isn't a natural thing at all; soul and body were made for one another, and the temporary divorce between them is something out of the way, something extraordinary, occasioned by the Fall. In our blessed Lady, not born under the star of that defeat, human nature was perfectly integrated; body and soul belonged to one another, as one day, please God, yours and mine will.

Long ago, in those fields of Bethlehem, Ruth had gleaned in the footsteps of her beloved; and he, secretly, had given charge to the reapers to drop handfuls of corn on purpose, so that she might fill her bosom the sooner. So he, whose reapers are the angels, would leave for his blessed Mother a special portion of those graces that were to enrich mankind. The child-bearing which brought, to us others, redemption from the fault of our first parents should bring, to her, exemption; the empty tomb, which assures us that our bodies will rise at the judgment, was for her the earnest of an immediate resurrection; Christ the first-fruits, and who should glean them, but she? For that, heaven is the richer, earth the poorer. We can go to Lourdes, and offer adoration in the place where her feet stood; we cannot press with our lips some precious reliquary containing the hand that swaddled Christ. In a world so dominated by matter, in which matter itself seems to carry the seeds of its own destruction, there is no material object left that can link our destinies with hers.

And yet, is the loss all loss? When the dogma of the Assumption was defined a friend of mine, a very intelligent Mohammedan, congratulated me on the gesture which the Holy Father had made; a gesture (said he) against materialism. And I think he was right. When our Lord took his blessed Mother, soul and body, into heaven, he did honour to the poor clay of which our human bodies are fashioned. It was the first step towards reconciling all things in heaven and earth to his eternal Father, towards making all things new. "The whole of nature", St Paul tells us, "groans in a common travail all the while. And not only do we see that, but we ourselves do the same; we ourselves although we have already begun to reap our spiritual harvest, groan in our hearts, waiting for that adoption which is the ransoming of our bodies from their slavery." [3] That transformation of our material bodies to which we look forward one day has been accomplished—we know it now for certain-in her.

When the Son of God came to earth, he came to turn our hearts away from earth, Godwards. And as the traveller, shading his eyes while he contemplates some long vista of scenery, searches about for a human figure that will give him the scale of those distant surroundings, so we, with dazzled eyes looking Godwards, identify and welcome one purely human figure close to his throne. One ship has rounded the headland, one destiny is achieved, one human perfection exists. And as we watch it, we see God clearer, see God greater, through this masterpiece of his dealings with mankind.

(A sermon broadcast from Buckfast Abbey, Devon, on the Feast of Our Lady Assumption, 15 August 1954.)

ENDNOTES:

[1] Psalm 131:6.
[2] 4 Kings 2:16, 18.
[3] Romans 8:22-3.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Links:

• IgnatiusInsight.com Author Page for Monsignor Ronald Knox
• The Modern Distaste for Religion | Ronald Knox
• The Mind of Knox | David Rooney
• The School of Ronald Knox | An Interview with David Rooney
• The Monsignor and the Don | An Interview with Fr. Milton Walsh
• Monsignor Ronald Knox: Convert, Priest, Apologist | An Interview with Fr. Milton Walsh
• Experience, Reason, and Authority in the Apologetics of Ronald Knox | Milton Walsh | From Ronald Knox As Apologist
• The Four Marks of the Church | Ronald A. Knox
• Review of The Belief of Catholics | Carl E. Olson
• Ronald Knox, Apologist | Carl E. Olson
• A Lesson Learned From Monsignor Ronald A. Knox | Carl E. Olson
• Converts and Saints | An Interview with Joseph Pearce

Monsignor Ronald Knox (1888-1957) was the son of the Anglican Bishop of Manchester and it appeared that he, being both spiritually perceptive and intellectually gifted, would also have a successful life as an Anglican prelate. But while in school in the early 1900s Knox began a long struggle between his love for the Church of England and his growing attraction to the Catholic Church. He converted to Catholicism at the age of twenty-nine, became a priest, and wrote numerous books on spiritual and literary topics, including The Belief of Catholics, Captive Flames: On Selected Saints and Christian Heroes, The Hidden Stream: The Mysteries of the Christian Faith, Pastoral and Occasional Sermons, and many more. Visit Knox's IgnatiusInsight.com author page for more information about his life and work.

The Purifying Fire of Dividing, Divine Love

Detail of "The Sacred Heart of Jesus" by Salvador Dali (1962).

The Purifying Fire of Dividing, Divine Love | Carl E. Olson

The Readings for Sunday, August 14th show that Jesus causes division and brings unity for one and the same reason: He is both the scandal that divides and the Savior who unites.

Readings:
• Jer 38:4-6, 8-10
• Ps 40:2, 3, 4, 18
• Heb 12:1-4
• Lk 12:49-53

In the summer of 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a document containing “responses to some questions regarding certain aspects of the doctrine of the Church.” It carefully re-articulated some important Catholic teachings about the nature of the Church, meant to help Catholics avoid various “erroneous interpretations which in turn give rise to confusion and doubt.” 

Predictably, many media outlets sensationalized the contents of the document and ran headlines such as “Vatican hits ‘wounded’ Christian churches,” as though the teaching “that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church” is somehow new to the Vatican, the pope, or Catholicism. Of course, it isn’t. Yet that didn’t keep some Catholics from expressing their outrage at the supposed “intolerance” coming from a backwards and “polarizing” Pope Benedict XVI. 

One Catholic, in a letter to the editor of the Detroit Free Press, lamented what he described as the “believe-what-we-say-or-leave’” mentality of the Catholic Church. “I hope all of us will start acting more like Jesus…”, he wrote, “simply passing along love, peace and goodness to others.” 

That letter writer would do well to read both the document he wrongly criticizedand today’s Gospel reading, which describes Jesus explaining that He has “come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” This is a reference back to the third chapter of Luke’s Gospel and John the Baptist’s explanation that the Messiah “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” and that He will burn the chaff “with unquenchable fire” (Lk 3:16-17). Like the prophet Elijah, who called down fire from heaven to consume his enemies (2 Kgs 1:10-14), the presence of Jesus often caused violence and disturbance—not because He opposed love and peace, but because the destruction of evil and sin demanded a violent, active love. Only through bloodshed and sacrifice will peace be fully established, and then only at the end of time. 

Many theologians and authors have tried in recent decades to warp the Gospels and remake Jesus into a sort of mild-mannered self-help guru who never uttered a disturbing word or made a shocking comment. Yet Jesus stated that He would bring division, even among families, setting parents against children. This is painful to consider, but it has often been the case: sometimes the one who enters the family of God must turn his back on father, mother, and siblings. 

To take up modern terminology, Jesus came to apply shock therapy to the ailing hearts and souls of those lost in sin. The fire that He gave—and continues to give through His Church and the sacraments—is the burning life and the transforming energy of the Holy Spirit, which consumes what is weak and wanting while purifying and enlightening the minds of those who follow Him. “As fire transforms into itself everything it touches,” remarks the Catechism, “so the Holy Spirit transforms into the divine life whatever is subjected to his power” (CCC 1127; cf. 696). 

That transformation is ultimately an all-or-nothing reality; there is, in fact, a “believe-what-we-say-or-leave” aspect to Catholicism, although it is far better expressed as “believe-what-He-says-or-leave”. Jesus causes division and brings unity for one and the same reason: He is both the scandal that divides and the Savior who unites. The bloody Cross is the scarlet line that separates and a steady tie that binds. 

As the Letter to the Hebrews states today, the Cross is shameful to many. But for those who have their eyes fixed on Jesus, the Cross is the ladder to joy and life. The theologian Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar, in reflecting on martyrdom and the cost of discipleship, once wrote that the “only valid response” to the death of Christ on the Cross “is to be prepared to die for him, and even more, to be dead in him.” Through that death comes real peace; in that death we experience true and abiding love. Yes, indeed, let us start acting more like Jesus!

(This "Opening the Word" originally appeared in a slightly different form in the August 19, 2007, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Pope Francis vs. Gender Ideology

Pope Francis sits next Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, president of the Polish bishops conference, during a meeting with Poland's bishops at the cathedral in Krakow, Poland, July 27. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Pope Francis vs. Gender Ideology | Robert R. Reilly | Catholic World Report

In the end, reality always wins. An old saying has it that: God always forgives; man sometimes; Nature never.

In Krakow with the Polish bishops two weeks ago, Pope Francis declared that, “We are experiencing a moment of the annihilation of man as the image of God.” He specifically included within this defacement “[the ideology of] ‘gender’”. He was clearly outraged that, “Today children – children! – are taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex…And this terrible!”

Then he quoted Benedict XVI, who had said to him recently: “Holiness, this is the age of sin against God the Creator.” Francis’ response was that, “He is very perceptive. God created man and woman; God created the world in a certain way… and we are doing the exact opposite.”

Pope Francis is right to use the word “ideology” to define this “exact opposite.” The whole point of ideology is the transformation of reality. It seeks not to understand things, but to change them. A second or false reality is set up parallel to reality, which it then attempts to extinguish. At a certain stage, the destruction becomes literal, as was seen in the Gnostic Nazi and Communist enterprises of the 20thcentury. Scores of millions were killed in order to institute the faux realities of a race-based theory of history or a class-based theory of history.

The entire LGBT movement is similarly ideological as a gender-based theory of history, if evidently less destructive—though its denial of reality has cost the lives of scores of thousands of homosexuals and others due to HIV-AIDS and other physical ailments attendant to homosexual behavior. Aside from disease and death, how does the “gay” movement express the unreality of the “exact opposite”?

Consider what happens in an actively sexual homosexual relationship, in which sodomy is generally typical. In it, one man behaves toward another man as if that other man were a woman. The other man willingly pretends that he is a woman.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

A noteworthy (but little noted) revolution at World Youth Day 2016

A pilgrim prays during the opening Mass for World Youth Day July 26 at Blonia Park in Krakow, Poland. (CNS photo/Bob Roller)

by Carl E. Olson | The Dispatch at CWR

I've never been to a World Youth Day event, but have followed the last few as closely as possible via news accounts, blogs, and conversations with friends who have attended. This August 7th blog post by Fr. David Friel, a young priest (ordained in 20110 from Philadelphia, highlights something I'd not seen in other coverage of the recent events in Kraków (granted, I read only a slim portion of the countless articles and posts out there):

There was one truly remarkable part of the WYD celebrations that did not receive as much attention as these other details, yet it was revolutionary. I am speaking about the music used at the major English-speaking catechesis sessions.

This year, the main English-speaking catechesis was held at Tauron Arena, renamed “Mercy Centre” for the week. Each day, roughly 15,000 pilgrims packed the arena to hear keynote talks by Cardinal Seán O’Malley, Cardinal Tagle, and Cardinal Dolan. At the conclusion of the morning session, Mass was celebrated in the arena.

Nothing is new about the general structure of the catechesis I have just described. The revolutionary part was the music used at the Masses in Tauron Arena. Typically, these Masses feature pop concert-style praise & worship led by an on-stage band. This year, however, the preparations for these large-scale liturgies were entrusted to the Dominican Liturgical Centre in Kraków. Fr. Lukasz Misko, OP was invited to serve as Director of Music for the English-language liturgies, and he, in turn, invited fellow-blogger Christopher Mueller to serve as conductor for all of these liturgies (as he announced here). The result was an experience very different from the norm.

Notably, not a single hymn was sung during Mass. Praise & worship songs were used throughout the day at the arena, before and after Mass, but no garden variety metrical hymns or songs were sung during Mass, from the Sign of the Cross to the Final Blessing. This, in itself, is revolutionary.

Fr. Friel provides some details about the music and then notes: "This sea change is not insignificant. It means that the project of advocating truly sacred music within the present liturgical movement is bearing practical fruit. Even three years ago, at WYD 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, no one would have expected what transpired at the Mercy Centre in Kraków." He also provides the text of a letter that was included in the program for music, written by Fr. Lukasz Misko, OP, who was Director of Music for English-language liturgies, WYD 2016. Fr. Misko states, in part:

These English-language liturgies are the fruit of a long and ongoing collaboration between Dominican Friars in Poland and their Dominican brethren in the United States. And one of the first impressions you may have is, a lot of this music is unfamiliar. What we hope you’ll take away from these Masses, though—alongside the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the camaraderie of thousands of new Catholic friends from around the globe—is a sense of how beautiful the music of the Mass can be.

Dominicans especially cherish Gregorian chant, and yet they believe that the beauty of sacred music does not belong to one particular genre. It flows from a basic requirement found in different musical styles, which might be summed up as, “it’s all about God, and He’s a Mystery.” Inexpressible and ineffable, the Mystery of God is always ahead of us, approached but never comprehended, and therefore our liturgical music—filled with awe and love for Him—should reflect that fundamental humility. This week we are drawing from a wide variety of the Church’s music, including Gregorian chant, sacred polyphony, traditional hymnody, and contemporary praise and worship. ...

And it’s all about God, and He’s a Mystery. The unfamiliarity of this beautiful choral music gives us a chance to experience God anew at each liturgy. We can’t apply our usual “traditional music = conservative” or “contemporary music = liberal” thinking. We must become open to the vastness of God, and beauty offers us a powerful means of doing that; true beauty calls us out of ourselves, orients us to something greater, and stirs up a longing for the transcendent. Sacred music, the expression of the deepest human yearning for the most profound Mystery of Love, creates in us a special dimension whereby we can be permeated and transformed by the Eternal beauty of God, Himself.

Do read Fr. Friel's entire post.

Your days should be numbered!

Author tells how the Catholic Church’s liturgical calendar provided a spiritual renewal

SAN FRANCISCO, August 9, 2016 – Chene Heady was a devout Catholic whose daily concerns were shaped primarily by forces other than his faith: career demands as a college professor, financial decisions, scheduling conflicts, etc. He worked long hours, and had limited regular interaction with his wife, also a busy professional, and young daughter. He was the typical overextended and anonymous modern Catholic man — until he tried a fascinating experiment that drastically rearranged his life, which he chronicles in his encouragingly honest memoir, NUMBERING MY DAYS: How the Liturgical Calendar Rearranged My Life.
 
After reading about the importance of the Catholic Church’s liturgical year, Heady decided to take on the challenge of living as though the Church’s calendar, not the secular one, stood as the center of his life. He observed the Church’s seasons and feasts, and meditated on its daily readings, every day for a year. It was an immensely rewarding decision, as Heady found that his life, and his relationships, including with his wife and daughter, became more meaningful and fruitful.
 
One of the myriad ailments afflicting the modern world is the loss of the sense of the sacredness of time, a deafness to the rhythms that accentuate a truly Catholic life. Heady provides the antidote in NUMBERING MY DAYS, and describes how the liturgy is our universal story and alters our imperfect existence, even when we believe we’re stretched thin and feel as though our lives are devoid of meaning.
 
“Through engaging personal stories, Chene Heady shows just how much it will change your life to center your days on the liturgical calendar,” says Jennifer Fulwiler, author of Something Other Than God. “Highly recommended!”
 
For more information, to request a review copy or to schedule an interview with Chene Heady, please contact Kevin Wandra (404-788-1276 or KWandra@CarmelCommunications.com) of Carmel Communications.    

"'After the Natural Law' is a brilliant lesson in intellectual history, but it is also much more."

From a recent review by Jeff Mirus of Catholic Culture of John Lawrence Hill's book After the Natural Law: How the Classical Worldview Supports Our Modern Moral and Political Views (Ignatius Press, 2016):

We live and move and have our being today in what we might call the aftermath of the natural law. We have become once again culture-bound, and our culture denies the pervasive evidence for the natural law in favor of philosophies which serve particular passions, mostly having to do with a flight from God, the pursuit of power and wealth, and the unquenchable desire for utopia, by which we mean a world made in our own image.

How has this come about? How was such a great synthesis, forged over nearly two thousand years of brilliant thought and insight, torn apart over the next seven hundred years, leaving us with essentially nothing? The question is pertinent, for the “nothing” that we have now inherited looks surprisingly like the nothings that were being proposed in ancient Greece before the great Western philosophical tradition began to develop.

Talk about going back to the future! If we go back far enough we arrive at where we are today, imagining the twin deceptions of “no matter and never mind”. Either everything is materialistically determined (never mind) or everything is whatever we project it to be based on our desires (no matter). Given the intellectual achievements of our past history, it is astonishing that in the twenty-first century we have no greater grip on reality than had the Greeks before Socrates! (And no greater than the pagans before Christ.) Perhaps it is time to freshly examine how Western civilization escaped despair and futility in the first place, and to reconsider what went wrong.

Fortunately, we now have a clear and readable book which does exactly this, exploring the rise and decline of the quintessentially Western understanding of reality beginning in the sixth century before Christ. In some 275 luminous pages, John Lawrence Hill of the Indiana University School of Law connects all the dots with such clarity of thought and expression that the subject matter, which readers might otherwise find confusing, is always deeply engaging. The book was published this year by Ignatius Press. Its title is After the Natural Law: How the Classical Worldview Supports Our Modern Moral and Political Values.

Hill gives us not only Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas and the other great contributors to the Western synthesis, but also William of Ockham, Descartes, Locke, Hobbes, Mill, Kant and others who largely dismantled it, without solving the problems it had so successfully addressed. The story is riveting because it explores the fundamentals of human existence—the very fundamentals we are so desperate to grasp today. Can we know reality? If so, is there such a thing as truth? Do we have a purpose? If so, are we capable of choosing our ends and means in any meaningful way? Are we free merely for nothingness? Or are we free at all?

And:

But no matter how many factors one identifies, the progress of civilization remains a mystery. A full understanding of the ebb and flow of the human grasp of truth, including religious faith, remains hidden in the workings of Divine Providence. This makes it even more helpful to focus on the path followed by the ideas characteristic of the Western synthesis, the better to grasp how we should start thinking about things now. Again, it is precisely this story of rise and fall—of construction and deconstruction—that Hill tells with such admirable clarity.

Even better, what we see in this account is that hope is not lost. Quite the contrary. Not only does Hill enlighten in a wholly positive and encouraging way, but he also knows that those who have pronounced the Natural Law dead have made a premature diagnosis. In fact, quite a number of scholars have been quietly at work on a significant reconstruction for the past fifty years. It is true that the loss of meaning that characterizes Western intellectual life today is still pervasive, but there is rapidly growing energy on the other side—even as those who have abandoned meaning drift slowly into irrelevance.

I do not know the future, but I think it can be glimpsed in this welcome and even remarkable book. After the Natural Law is a brilliant lesson in intellectual history, but it is also much more. It is a vision of meaning, and a marking of the path that leads to it.

Read the entire review.

New: "1 & 2 Samuel: Ignatius Catholic Study Bible" by Curtis Mitch and Scott Hahn

Now available from Ignatius Press:

1 & 2 Samuel: Ignatius Catholic Study Bible

by Curtis Mitch and Scott Hahn

This volume in the popular Bible study series leads readers through a penetrating study of the Books of 1 & 2 Samuel using the biblical text itself and the Church's own guidelines for understanding the Bible.

Ample notes accompany each page, providing fresh insights by renowned Bible teachers Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch, as well as time-tested interpretations from the Fathers of the Church. They provide rich historical, cultural, geographical or theological information pertinent to the Old Testament book - information that bridges the distance between the biblical world and our own.

It also includes Topical Essays, Word Studies and Charts. The Topical Essays explore the major themes of 1 & 2 Samuel, often relating them to the teachings of the Church. The Word Studies explain the background to important Bible terms, while the Charts summarize crucial biblical information "at a glance".

Curtis Mitch, a former student of Scott Hahn, is the General Editor of the complete Ignatius Study Bible series.

Scott Hahn, Ph.D., well- known as the author of several best-selling books including Rome Sweet Home and The Lamb's Supper, is a professor of scripture at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and a very popular scripture scholar and speaker.

"With copious historical and theological notes, incisive commentary and tools for study, the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible is outstanding for private devotion, personal study and Bible study groups. It is excellent for evangelization and apologetics as well!"
— Stephen Ray, Host ,The Footprints of God series

"The Ignatius Study Bible is a triumph of both piety and scholarship, in the best Catholic tradition: simply the most useful succinct commentary that any Christian or other interested person could hope for."
— Erasmo Leiva, Author, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word

"Russell Shaw is one of the best Catholic writers and historians in the Catholic world."

From Fr. C. John McCloskey's review in the National Catholic Register of Russell Shaw's new Ignatius Press book Catholics in America: Religious Identity and Cultural Assimilation from John Carroll to Flannery O'Connor:

Russell Shaw is one of the best Catholic writers and historians in the Catholic world.

In his new book, Catholics in America, he offers the reader the opportunity to go from the very beginnings of Catholicism in the United States up to our own times, through a series of 15 portraits of important American Catholics.

He describes these major Catholic players, the influence that they had, their understanding of the congeniality or uncongeniality of the American project to Catholicism, and the difference they made — for better or worse — in the Church in the United States today. He then takes a look at how the situation of the Church in America may look in the future.

This book will greatly aid those who are history-challenged in general and Catholic students in particular.

It could also help in evangelizing relatives and friends interested in venturing deeper into the truth of Catholicism and its impact in this country. My own doctorate is in history, and I recommend this book strongly.

Read the entire review on the Register's website.

More about the book:

Catholics in America: Religious Identity and Cultural Assimilation from John Carroll to Flannery O'Connor

by Russell Shaw

This is a collection of short, popularly written profiles of some of the leading figures in American Catholic history. The group includes Archbishop John Carroll, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Orestes Brownson, Isaac Hecker, Cardinal James Gibbons, Al Smith, Dorothy Day, Cardinal Francis Spellman, John F. Kennedy, and others. Collectively, their story is the story of the building and shaping of the largest religious body in the United States.

But it is also something more. Catholics in America reflects the ongoing, often controversial, effort to work out the Catholic identity for American Catholics in the context of sometimes hostile, sometimes all-too-inviting American secular society.

The book poses a fundamental challenge to the conventional wisdom of Catholic Americanist historiography which takes cultural assimilation for granted. The oldest question in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States may be this: "Is it possible to be a good Catholic and a good American?" Catholics in America documents the variety of answers that have been given to date, and why the question is more timely now than it has ever been before.

History, human interest, and the drama of faith lived out in action come together in these portraits to tell an exciting story that stretches back two hundred years and continues today.

Russell Shaw is a widely published author and journalist who has written over twenty books, including American Church and Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication, and Communion in the Catholic Church. For 18 years, Shaw directed media relations for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference. From 1987 to 1997 he oversaw media relations for the Knights of Columbus.

"Intelligence, zeal, fidelity and a sharp critical eye: Russell Shaw excels in each of these qualities. All of his skills combine here. His portraits of 15 key Catholics from our nation's history make for a compelling experience of the tensions that exist between our Christian identity and the powerful appeal of American secular culture. This is a small book with big content. It's offers wonderful help, vividly readable and wise, in understanding the dilemmas and paradoxes of the Catholic Church in the United States."
— Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia

"Russell Shaw's fifteen great Americans brings into poignant relief the changes in the American society into which it was once thought possible and desirable for Catholics to join as fully pledged citizens. We have here a sober book that allows us, belatedly, to examine our political souls in the light of more eternal things."
— James V. Schall, S. J., Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University

“What is the mark of a Christian?”

Detail from "Christ Leading the Apostles to Mount Tabor" by Lorenzo Lotto (1512).

A Scriptural Reflection by Carl E. Olson on the Readings for Sunday, August 7, 2016

Readings:
• Wis 18:6-9
• Ps 33:1, 12, 18-19, 20-22
• Heb 11:1-2, 8-19
• Lk 12:32-48

“What is the mark of a Christian?” asked St. Basil in his work, Moralia, which is a guide living a morally upright life in the world. How might we answer this question? To be kind. To be charitable. To give to the poor. These are all good answers, but St. Basil’s answer emphasized something else: “It is to watch daily and hourly and to stand prepared in that state of total responsiveness pleasing to God, knowing that the Lord will come at an hour that he does not expect.” A true Christian is vigilant, meaning he is ready to hear God’s word and to respond accordingly.

Today’s readings are about vigilance, especially as they relate to the virtues of faith and hope. In fact, vigilance is really impossible with faith and hope, for the disciple of Christ stands prepared because he believes in faith that the Lord has come and will come, and because he believes in hope that Christ will fulfill the promises granted through the new covenant, the Church, and the sacraments.

The Book of Wisdom was written by a well-educated, anonymous Jewish author living around Alexandria, Egypt, between 180 and 50 B.C. The “night of the Passover” was, of course, a definitive moment for the Israelites. “It was a night of watching by the LORD, to bring them out of the land of Egypt” (Ex. 12:42). The vigilance kept on the night of Passover was based on the promise and the “knowledge of the oaths in which they put their faith,” which had been given to them by God through Moses.

This vigilance was not just a matter of waiting and watching, however, for it also involved the sacrifice of an unblemished lamb. The blood of the lamb was to be put on the doorposts as a sign of their faith, and then the lamb was to be eaten (Ex. 12:3-14). This led, then, to two essential acts: the liberation of the people and the destruction of their enemies.

Hebrews 11 is a powerful, even poetic, celebration of vigilant, active faith. It opens by stating that faith “is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things no seen.” Faith is rooted in God’s actions and words in the past and looks with hope toward the future and “a better homeland, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:16). Abraham, filled with faith, obeyed when he was called to go to the promised land. Vigilant, he responded, even though he was not certain of where God was leading him, but believing that God had a prepared a city for him.

That city is heaven, the new Jerusalem, the dwelling place of God. There is but one holy land, and it was inaugurated by Jesus Christ, who is the new Moses, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). He inaugurated the kingdom through preaching and teaching, and by establishing the Church, the “little flock” referred to in today’s Gospel. “The Word of the Lord,” states Lumen Gentium, “is compared to a seed which is sown in a field; those who hear the Word with faith and become part of the little flock of Christ, have received the Kingdom itself” (par. 5).

Again, vigilance and obedience are essential; those who listen with anticipation and respond in faith will receive the Kingdom. Jesus’ exhortation to alert faith is meant for all Christians, but he explained to Peter that his words held a special gravity for the apostles and their successors. The master, Jesus, has given his servants, the apostles, unique authority in the household of God. The slothful or ignorant servant will suffer severely. “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.” 

Our prayer should echo that uttered by Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, that we will be “completely vigilant in my faith, entirely adoring, and wholly given over to your creative action” (CCC 260).

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the August 8, 2010, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

 

Now in Paperback: "Works of Love Are Works of Peace: Mother Teresa of Calcutta and the Missionaries of Charity"

From Ignatius Press:

Works of Love Are Works of Peace: Mother Teresa of Calcutta and the Missionaries of Charity

A photography record by Michael Collopy

More than four years in the making and published with the permission and cooperation of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, this large format 224 page book offers the most comprehensive photographic documentation of the apostolic work and prayer life of the Missionaries of Charity yet published. Destined to serve as an important historical record, this "illustrated prayer book" vividly portrays the peace and joy that can come when "small things" are done with great love.

The more than 180 fine art quality tri-tone photographs, along with spiritual counsel from Mother Teresa, will provide a lifetime of rich material for prayer and meditation. Also included and published for the first time ever, with Mother Teresa's special permission, is an appendix containing the contents of the Missionaries of Charity daily prayer book as well as a most personal and profound letter on the interior life written by Mother Teresa during Holy Week of 1993 and addressed to her entire order. Though meant originally as an instruction and appeal to those in her order, this "I Thirst" letter is certain to become a source of spiritual light and encouragement, drawing innumerable hearts and souls closer to God.

Special Highlights of this Unique Volume:

187 fine art, high quality, original tri-tone photos
Previously unpublished private prayers of the Missionaries of Charity
Mother's profound, personal "I Thirst" letter on prayer never before published
Other quotes and spiritual counsel from Mother Teresa
The ideal gift book as a lasting keep-sake

Michael Collopy is one of the preeminent portrait photographers of our time, well known for his commissioned portraits of a variety of world figures ranging from Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher to Frank Sinatra and Placido Domingo. A student of such luminaries as Ansel Adams and Richard Avedon, Collopy's work has been published in books, magazines, newspapers, and on record and CD covers worldwide.

"This is a book infused with grace."
— USA Today

"Quietly eloquent."
— San Francisco Examiner 

"This exceptionally well-produced photo-documentary chronicles the work of Mother Teresa and the order she founded. Avoiding sentimentality, the photographs show the love of Christ in action."
— Christianity Today

"Let us pray that this book will draw people to Jesus, help them realize how much God loves them, and help them to want to pray. Let it be for the glory of God and the good of His people."
— Mother Teresa From the Introduction