Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 258

As Eden was the Paradise of Creation, Mary is the Paradise of the Incarnation

From Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen's The World's First Love: Mary, Mother of God:

God never does anything without exceeding preparation. The two great masterpieces of God are Creation of man and Re-creation or Redemption of man. Creation was made for unfallen men; His Mystical Body, for fallen men. Before making man, God made a garden of delights—as God alone knows how to make a garden beautiful. In that Paradise of Creation there were celebrated the first nuptials of man and woman. But man willed not to have blessings, except according to his lower nature. Not only did he lose his happiness; he even wounded his own mind and will. Then God planned the remaking or redeeming of man. But before doing so, he would make another Garden. This new one would be not of earth but of flesh; it would be a Garden over whose portals the name of sin would never be written—a Garden in which there would grow no weeds of rebellion to choke the growth of the flowers of grace—a Garden from which there would flow four rivers of redemption to the four corners of the earth—a Garden so pure that the Heavenly Father would not blush at sending His Own Son into it—and this "flesh-girt Paradise to be gardened by the Adam new" was Our Blessed Mother. As Eden was the Paradise of Creation, Mary is the Paradise of the Incarnation, and in her as a Garden were celebrated the first nuptials of God and man. The closer one gets to fire, the greater the heat; the closer one is to God, the greater the purity. But since no one was ever closer to God than the woman whose human portals He threw open to walk this earth, then no one could have been more pure than she. In the words of Lawrence Housman:

A garden bower in flower
Grew waiting for God's hand: 

Where no man ever trod, 

This was the Gate of God. 

The first bower was red— 

Her lips which "welcome" said. 

The second bower was blue— 

Her eyes that let God through. 

The third bower was white— 

Her soul in God's sight.
Three bowers of love
Now Christ from heaven above.

This special purity of hers we call the Immaculate Conception. It is not the Virgin Birth. The word "immaculate" is taken from two Latin words meaning "not stained." "Conception" means that, at the first moment of her conception, the Blessed Mother in the womb of her mother, St. Anne, and in virtue of the anticipated merits of the Redemption of her Son, was preserved free from the stains of Original Sin.

I never could see why anyone in this day and age should object to the Immaculate Conception; all modern pagans believe that they are immaculately conceived. If there is no Original Sin, then everyone is immaculately conceived. Why do they shrink from allowing to Mary what they attribute to themselves? The doctrine of Original Sin and the Immaculate Conception are mutually exclusive. If Mary alone is the Immaculate Conception, then the rest of us must have Original Sin.

The Immaculate Conception does not imply that Mary needed no Redemption. She needed it as much as you and I do. She was redeemed in advance, by way of prevention, in both body and soul, in the first instant of conception. We receive the fruits of redemption in our soul at Baptism. The whole human race needs redemption. But Mary was de-solidarized and separated from that sin-laden humanity as a result of the merits of Our Lord's Cross being offered to her at the moment of her conception. If we exempted her from the need of redemption, we would also have to exempt her from membership in humanity. The Immaculate Conception, therefore, in no way implies that she needed no redemption. She did! Mary is the first effect of redemption, in the sense that it was applied to her at the moment of her conception and to us in another and diminished fashion only after our birth.

She had this privilege, not for her sake, but for His sake. That is why those who do not believe in the Divinity of Christ can see no reason for the special privilege accorded to Mary. If I did not believe in the Divinity of Our Lord—which God avert—I should see nothing but nonsense in any special reverence given to Mary above the other women on earth! But if she is the Mother of God, Who became Man, then she is unique, and then she stands out as the new Eve of Humanity—as He is the new Adam.

Read more.

Fr. Raymond J. de Souza on the "real hero" behind the new missal translation

Fr. Raymond J. de Souza writes in the Catholic Register (Canada) of how the new missal translation is a sign of hope for and confidence in the future:

A Polish (John Paul II) and German (Benedict XVI) Pope, working together in Italian, were instrumental in bringing together the beauty that is seen in the new Roman Missal — though the true hero was Chilean Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, according to Fr. de Souza. CNS photo/Eliseo Fernandez, Reuters

If you were to follow the secular press and, to be honest, much of the religious press, the impression could be had that the Christian Church is beset by moral controversies, political conflicts and managerial challenges. The idea that a Christian community could devote enormous energies over more than a decade on the right worship of God is refreshingly encouraging. That the Catholic Church, so often portrayed as battered and bewildered, could put in good order the most important thing she does — the worship of God — means that the shepherds of the Church have not lost track of her mission, even if others have lost the story.

A translation for the entire English-speaking world necessarily involves collegial work by a wide array of Catholics from different parts of the world. Which other Church could manage that today? A great sadness of the 21st century will be the accelerating death of large parts of the Christian Church, especially in its historic homelands. In many parts of world Christianity, gathering leaders together simply to meet has become a task too difficult. The prospect of actual agreement is pure fantasy. Catholics acknowledge that our capacity to do so is not our work, but the grace of the Petrine ministry as the rock of the Church's unity. Is it not a marvel of Providence that a Polish and German Pope, working in Italian, would be instrumental in the beauty of our English translation? The real hero of the whole piece was actually a Chilean cardinal, Jorge Medina Estevez — about whom more in a later column.

The new translation is a mark of renewed confidence in the future. I don't mean the theological virtue of hope, but rather something on the natural plane, namely a sense that the future is not all bleak. That confidence permits a global project that will outlive many who worked on it. Communities that are only managing terminal decline do not engage in such bold action.

Read the entire piece, "New Missal bodes well for the new evangelization" (Dec. 7, 2011). I'm curious to see the promised column about Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez as I don't know much of anything about his involvement with the translation. I do know, however, that two of his excellent books have been published by Ignatius Press: Lord, Who Are You? and Male and Female He Created Them.

Here are excerpts from those books:

Some reading recommendations for Advent (and Christmas)...

... have been posted on the Word on Fire blog; they include some of my selections. Check it out.

Holy Father reflects on Jesus' prayer of praise, the Messianic Hymn of Jubilee

From Vatican Information Service:

VATICAN CITY, 7 DEC 2911 (VIS) - Benedict XVI dedicated the catechesis of today's Wednesday audience, celebrated in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall, to the Messianic Hymn of Jubilee, Jesus' prayer of praise recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which constitutes the "apex of a path of prayer in which Jesus' profound and intimate communion with the Father in the Holy Spirit and His divine filiation clearly emerges".

Already at the opening of the hymn, the Pope observed, Jesus addresses God by calling him Father, a term that expresses "Jesus' awareness and certainty of being 'the Son' in close and constant communion with Him. This is the central point and the source of Jesus' every prayer. ... The name of 'Father' is followed by a second title: 'Lord of heaven and earth'", which "recalls the great biblical narration of the history of God's love for human beings that began with creation. Jesus ... is the pinnacle and the fullness of this history of love. ... Through the expression 'Lord of heaven and earth' we also recognize how, in Jesus, the one who reveals the Father, the possibility of access to God is opened to humanity".

But, to whom does the Son want to reveal the mysteries of God? "Divine revelation", the pontiff explained, "does not occur within earthly logic, according to which humans are the wise and powerful who posses important knowledge and transmit it to those who are more simple. ... God's style is another: His communication is addressed precisely to the 'childlike'. ... And what is this childlikeness that opens humans to a filial intimacy with God and to welcoming His will? ... It is the pureness of heart that allows us to recognize the face of God in Jesus Christ. It is keeping our hearts as simple as those of children, without the presumptions of those who are locked in themselves, thinking they have no need of anyone, not even God".

"In Matthew's Gospel, after the Hymn of Jubilee, we encounter one of Jesus' most moving pleas: 'Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.' Jesus asks that we go to Him, the true wisdom, to the one who is 'meek and humble of heart'; He proposes His 'yoke', the path of evangelical wisdom, which is neither a doctrine to learn nor an ethical proposal, but rather a Person to follow: He himself, the only-begotten Son, in perfect communion with the Father".

"We also can address God with the confidence of sons and daughters", Benedict XVI concluded, "calling Him Father when we pray. But we have to keep the heart of a child, the heart of those 'poor in spirit', in order to recognize that we are not self-sufficient ... that we need God, that we have to seek Him, listen to Him, speak to Him. Prayer opens us to receiving the gift of God, His wisdom who is Jesus himself, in order to accept the will of the Father in our lives and to find consolation in the weariness of our journey".

At the end of the audience, Benedict XVI greeted the pilgrims present in the hall in their various languages and noted that the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, which is celebrated tomorrow, "reminds us of Mary's singular acceptance of God's salvific plan. Preserved from any stain of sin in order to be the holy dwelling place of the Incarnate Word, she always trusted fully in the Lord". The Pope especially urged the youth to make the effort to imitate the Virgin "with pure and clean hearts, letting yourselves be shaped by God who, in you as well, desires to bring about 'great things'".

On the personal testimony and effective preaching of St. Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor

From Pope Benedict XVI's October 24, 2007, general audience, dedicated to Saint Ambrose, whose feast is celebrated today:

Until that moment, Ambrose had been the most senior magistrate of the Empire in northern Italy. Culturally well-educated but at the same time ignorant of the Scriptures, the new Bishop briskly began to study them. From the works of Origen, the indisputable master of the "Alexandrian School", he learned to know and to comment on the Bible.

Thus, Ambrose transferred to the Latin environment the meditation on the Scriptures which Origen had begun, introducing in the West the practice of lectio divina. The method of lectio served to guide all of Ambrose's preaching and writings, which stemmed precisely from prayerful listening to the Word of God. The famous introduction of an Ambrosian catechesis shows clearly how the holy Bishop applied the Old Testament to Christian life: "Every day, when we were reading about the lives of the Patriarchs and the maxims of the Proverbs, we addressed morality", the Bishop of Milan said to his catechumens and neophytes, "so that formed and instructed by them you may become accustomed to taking the path of the Fathers and to following the route of obedience to the divine precepts" (On the Mysteries 1, 1). In other words, the neophytes and catechumens, in accordance with the Bishop's decision, after having learned the art of a well-ordered life, could henceforth consider themselves prepared for Christ's great mysteries. Thus, Ambrose's preaching - which constitutes the structural nucleus of his immense literary opus - starts with the reading of the Sacred Books ("the Patriarchs" or the historical Books and "Proverbs", or in other words, the Wisdom Books) in order to live in conformity with divine Revelation.

It is obvious that the preacher's personal testimony and the level of exemplarity of the Christian community condition the effectiveness of the preaching. In this perspective, a passage from St Augustine's Confessions is relevant. He had come to Milan as a teacher of rhetoric; he was a sceptic and not Christian. He was seeking the Christian truth but was not capable of truly finding it.

What moved the heart of the young African rhetorician, sceptic and downhearted, and what impelled him to definitive conversion was not above all Ambrose's splendid homilies (although he deeply appreciated them). It was rather the testimony of the Bishop and his Milanese Church that prayed and sang as one intact body. It was a Church that could resist the tyrannical ploys of the Emperor and his mother, who in early 386 again demanded a church building for the Arians' celebrations. In the building that was to be requisitioned, Augustine relates, "the devout people watched, ready to

die with their Bishop". This testimony of the Confessions is precious because it points out that something was moving in Augustine, who continues: "We too, although spiritually tepid, shared in the excitement of the whole people" (Confessions 9, 7).

And from St. Augustine's Confessions, this praise for the great bishop:

And to Milan I came, to Ambrose the bishop, famed through the whole world as one of the best of men, thy devoted servant. His eloquent discourse in those times abundantly provided thy people with the flour of thy wheat, the gladness of thy oil, and the sober intoxication of thy wine. To him I was led by thee without my knowledge, that by him I might be led to thee in full knowledge. That man of God received me as a father would, and welcomed my coming as a good bishop should. And I began to love him, of course, not at the first as a teacher of the truth, for I had entirely despaired of finding that in thy Church--but as a friendly man. And I studiously listened to him--though not with the right motive--as he preached to the people. I was trying to discover whether his eloquence came up to his reputation, and whether it flowed fuller or thinner than others said it did. And thus I hung on his words intently, but, as to his subject matter, I was only a careless and contemptuous listener. I was delighted with the charm of his speech, which was more erudite, though less cheerful and soothing, than Faustus' style. As for subject matter, however, there could be no comparison, for the latter was wandering around in Manichean deceptions, while the former was teaching salvation most soundly. But "salvation is far from the wicked," such as I was then when I stood before him. Yet I was drawing nearer, gradually and unconsciously. (Bk. 5, ch. 13)

Read more.

On Ignatius Insight:

• All books by or about Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI
• Excerpts from books by Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI

University: Want your college degree? Attend "gay pride" parades.

And so it goes, apparently without any end in sight:

ATLANTA (BP) -- The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has heard arguments in a religious liberty case that could determine whether a college has the right to require students to profess certain beliefs about homosexuality in order to get a degree.

Augusta State University, in east Georgia, put counseling student Jennifer Keeton on academic probation in 2010 after she acknowledged in private conversations and during class that she disagreed with homosexuality. School administrators claimed Keeton said it would be hard for her to counsel gay clients, a stance they said violated ethical standards for licensed counselors, as put forth by the American Counseling Association.

Faculty members also faulted Keeton for saying she wanted to work with conversion therapy -- which aims to help clients stop living a homosexual lifestyle -- after graduation. And the faculty feared Keeton might harm middle and high school students she was scheduled to work with as part of her degree plan, said Cristina Correia, the state attorney who argued the school's case.

"The university has a responsibility when putting students in a practicum and graduating them," Correia told the court during oral arguments Nov. 29 in Atlanta. "When you have that kind of evidence, the faculty could not, under their ethical standards, put that student in a clinical setting without further remediation."

After putting her on probation, school administrators required Keeton to complete a remediation plan that included going to gay pride events, attending sensitivity training and writing monthly reflection papers. Keeton declined to participate in the plan, and the Alliance Defense Fund filed suit on her behalf in July 2010.

Read the entire piece.

The debate, if there even is one, is no longer about whether or not homosexuality is morally wrong, but whether there are any limits as to how much pro-homosexual propaganda can be shoved down our throats. And while the government pretends to be "neutral" about such things, it's good to bear in mind that when it comes to right and wrong, the state cannot, ultimately, be neutral, no matter claims to the contrary.

A couple of years ago, my wife and I had to take nearly forty hours of classes from the Oregon Department of Human Services in order to pursue the adoption of a young boy from another state (Dominic's adoption was finalized this past February). It was a lesson in well-intentioned, very polite, state-faciliated, tax-financed intimidation, especially when it came to issues of sexual morality (and race, but that's another story). The class of about 60 potential foster parents (the 75% of whom were seeking to become foster parents of their own biological grandchildren) were informed in no uncertain way that "being gay" is a wonderful and natural way of being, and that they could not—in any form or fashion—discourage a child from "exploring" and "expressing" their sexuality. Moreover, foster parents were encouraged (quite strongly, in fact) to learn more about the joy of being "gay" by reading "gay" literature, attending "gay pride" events, and so forth. It was clearly communicated, in various ways, that one's religious and personal beliefs meant nothing; they weren't to be expressed or allowed.

To borrow from Mark Shea, the Gay Brownshirts have, for all intents and purposes, won the day. As well as the minds and moral compasses of the current generation. And if you think they are going to be nice or fair or tolerant with their cultural prisoners, think again.

Vatican newspaper addresses traditionalist concerns | by Jimmy Akin

Essay examines questions about Vatican II, authority, and assent

In an unusual move, the Vatican newspaper has published an essay responding directly to concerns raised by the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).

The piece, titled "On Adhesion to the Second Vatican Council," appeared in the L'Osservatore Romano (L'OR) section of the Vatican's online news portal on December 1, and it deals with one of the most troublesome points in the Holy See's dialogue with the formerly schismatic society of priests.

Troublesome history

The SSPX broke from full communion with the Church in 1988 when its head, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, acted against the instructions of Pope John Paul II and ordained the four bishops who currently lead it.

The SSPX argued that this action was necessary because of a crisis in the Catholic Church brought on in part by statements made by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

Since his election to the papacy, Benedict XVI has sought to heal the situation by allowing broader use of the traditional Latin Mass (one of the group's key demands) and lifting the excommunications that the four bishops leading the organization had incurred when they were ordained in 1988.

He also gave the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) the task of continuing a dialogue with the priestly society to resolve doctrinal concerns and, hopefully, clear the way for the SSPX's full rehabilitation.

A "doctrinal preamble"?

This dialogue has been conducted privately for the last two years, and recently the Holy See asked SSPX leaders to assent to a document referred to as a "doctrinal preamble."

Read the entire essay on www.CatholicWorldReport.com...

Introduction to Abbot Vonier's "The Human Soul" | by Ralph McInerny

This is one of the last pieces written by the great Dr. McInerny before his death last year:



Introduction to Abbot Vonier's The Human Soul | by Ralph McInerny

"What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?"

We understood that easily the first time we heard it, just as we understood that it applied to both male and female. In one sense, of course, no one can lose his soul; it's not like an extra ten pounds or a suntan in winter. It's pretty close to being what we are, who we are. Close, but not quite.

At death, body and soul are separated; we are human persons in the full sense when they are together. That is why it is one of the great consolations of the faith that there will be a resurrection of the body. In the end, we will be body and soul again and for all eternity. The condition of the departed before that time has been much discussed by theologians, but it remains obscure. A human soul without a body is an anomaly. Anima mea non sum ego, Saint Thomas Aquinas said. I am not my soul. Jesus rose into heaven, body and soul, and His Mother was assumed into heaven, body and soul. That is why we can say that she is His Mother, and not merely that she was. She could scarcely be a mother without a body and Her Motherhood has never ceased. She is a full-fledged human person right now, body and soul.

We did not need a lot of help, if any, when we first read the Sermon on the Mount. The Good News comes in on all frequencies. We have a lifetime to ponder it and as we do we turn to such authors as Abbot Vonier in order to understand it better. At first they might not seem to help. Things we had no problem with become hazy, and the lingo does not have the straightforward intelligibility of the gospels. If you were told that the verse I quoted at the outset involves the subjunctive in the if clause— as does this sentence in which I am saying so — your blank look would be pardoned. Even applauded. What difference does it make? None, really. But when an Abbot Vonier turns over in his mind the great truths of the faith and lets us in on his thinking, we are well advised to listen. At first it may put us into a subjunctive mood — would that I were reading a murder mystery — but following closely has enormous rewards.

The opposite of losing one's soul is saving it. Abbot Vonier's chief interest is to help us to save our souls.

The Fathers of the Church, when they reflected on the content of the faith, tended to ask what light philosophers might contribute. Of course they did not think that philosophy could just as such arrive at the faith, any more than they thought pure reason stood in judgment of the faith. "Beware lest you be led astray by philosophy," Paul warned the Colossians. He meant philosophers who thought they should judge the faith rather than vice versa. For all that, what philosophers had to say before the coming of Christ turned out to be helpful in understanding the faith. This is especially true in the case of the soul.

Everyone finds Plato the most delightful of philosophers, particularly when he is talking about his teacher Socrates. Back from the wars, Socrates decided to figure out what men are. You might say that he turned from the sciences to the humanities, but don't. That makes it sound like a career move, and it went a lot deeper than that for Socrates. He wanted to live in such a way that he would be ready to die.

Plato was an artist as well as a thinker and it is not easy to tell whether what

he attributes to Socrates belongs to his teacher or to himself. That is a scholarly question; meaning, uninteresting. Like who wrote Shakespeare. In the Republic Plato tells an unforgettable story about the human condition. Imagine a cave in which from birth men have been imprisoned, chained so as to look at the back wall. Behind them figures, statues, are held up before a fire and they cast shadows on the wall. Those shadows are real for the prisoners; they have nothing to contrast them with. So unchain them, turn them around. When their eyes become accustomed to the firelight they think that the images they now see are the real thing, not their shadows on the wall. But images are images of something, so they are led outside and see the originals of the images that cast the shadows. How unreal to them seem those shadows and images now.

Plato is talking about the liberation of the soul from ignorance. Ignorance began, he says, when the soul was put into the body. All the knowledge it had as a pure spirit is forgotten, and it must grope through life among the shadows and images and pick up intimations of the really real things it knew before birth.

Plato's view, in short, is that the soul is what we are and that our earthly condition is anomalous. Death, the release of soul from the prison of the body, restores soul to its normal condition.

Aristotle, by contrast, likened the union of soul and body to an impression in wax. You cannot lift the impression from the wax. And yet Aristotle went on to argue that the human soul is immortal; that is, survived death. What for Plato was paradise regained was for Aristotle self-hood lost. He doesn't have much to say of the condition of souls after death. St. Thomas commends him for this. Such information as we have on the matter comes from the faith.

I suppose you could divide theologians into those who are more Platonic and those who are more Aristotelian. Abbot Vonier begins with a discussion of spiritual substance. That is what the soul is, he writes, just like God and the angels. Now that works because it is in the context of the faith that we think about the soul, and of course God and the angels are familiar to us — from the faith. Like Aristotle, though in reverse, Abbot Vonier has set a great difficulty for himself, quite deliberately, I think, and The Human Soul can be read as the gradual and finally triumphant overcoming of that difficulty. Abbot Vonier moves from what might seem to be an unabashedly Platonic view of soul to the Aristotelian, the process being guided by the faith. The soul as he first discusses it seems to have no more need of a body than do the angels. Everything he says in that chapter can be found in Thomas Aquinas. The difference is that Thomas would not have begun in that way. One might imagine that, after seemingly cutting himself off from it, Abbot Vonier proceeds to the great truth of the resurrection of the body

Our lives begin in time but we are destined for eternity. Our soul is what makes us what we are. It animates the body, enables us to sense and imagine, and most importantly to think and will. Life is a drama in which we are readying ourselves to die, that is, to save our souls. The deeds we do, with the grace of God, make us what we ought to be for all eternity. It is a sobering thought that we can fail at this. That is the message of this book.

It is a learned book, but Abbot Vonier is a gifted teacher who brings the whole weight of the tradition and teaching of the Church to bear on his subject, the human soul. It is easy for us to swerve from the way and the truth and the life and become what T. S. Eliot called hollow men. Men who have forgotten their eternal destiny and try to muddle through with only those shadows on the wall. Christianity is the only adequate answer to the question, How can we be happy? Hence the Beatitudes. This book shows us where true happiness lies, and how to gain it. It is an important book, a powerful book. Tolle et lege. Read on.

Ralph McInerny
University of Notre Dame

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Book Excerpts:

• Abbot Vonier and the Christian Sacrifice | Introduction to Abbot Vonier's A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist | Aidan Nichols, O.P.
• Pope John Paul II and the Christ-centered Anthropology of Gaudium et Spes | Douglas Bushman
• The Dignity of the Human Person: Pope John Paul II's Teaching on Divinization in the Trinitarian Encyclicals | Carl E. Olson

Dr. Ralph McInerny (1929-2010), was a longtime professor of philosophy and director of the Jacques Maritain Center at Notre Dame. He began teaching at the University of Notre Dame in 1955; he was the author of two dozen scholarly books and many more scholarly essays, as well as numerous general interest works. He was an expert in the work of Thomas Aquinas, Soren Kierkegaard, and Jacques Maritain, and wrote and lectured extensively on ethics, philosophy of religion, and medieval philosophy. He also wrote over fifty novels, including the well-known Father Dowling mystery series and The Red Hat.

A brief primer on St. John the Baptist, Forerunner...

... and a key figure during Advent, by Frank Sheed:

St. John the Baptist, Forerunner | Frank Sheed | From To Know Christ Jesus

All four evangelists begin Jesus' entry into public life with John the Baptist's emergence from his desert. Matthew leaps straight to John's mission after the return of the Holy Family from Egypt, Luke after the finding of the boy in the Temple. The other two actually begin their Gospel with it, nothing of our Lord's earthly life being told before, apart from John's "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

It is clear, then, that John the Baptist's mission was essential: Jesus' own mission needed it. In his Gospel, St. John interrupts his breathtaking Prologue about the Incarnation of the Word (which we Catholics read as the Last Gospel at Mass) to say: "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to give testimony of the light, that all men might believe through him." So that the Light of the World, the Light which of all lights could surely not be hid, needed someone to give testimony to him, needed John to give testimony to him!

Little is said in the New Testament to show why John's work was thus essential. Our Lord praises him indeed: "Amongst those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist" (Luke vii.28): and he was not lavish of praise; pause a moment and try to think of anyone else he praised. But although Jesus says (you will find it in the verse before) that John was to prepare his way, it is hard to find any hint from him as to why any preparation at all was necessary for a mission as powerful in word and as studded with miracles as his. We are not shown in the Gospels mighty things flowing from John's work into Christ's. And in the rest of the New Testament nothing much is made of St. John's mission either. St. Paul never refers to it at all, though he must have known about it, since the only description we have of John's origin is given by Paul's companion and disciple, Luke.

Thanks to Luke, all the same, the Church has been intensely aware of John ever since. He is one of that small and immeasurably select band to whom we say the Confiteor at every Mass and daily in our own prayers. Great saints have been named after him—St. John Baptist de la Salle, for instance, who founded the Brothers of the Christian Schools in the seventeenth century; St. John Baptist de Rossi, the eighteenth-century saint whose own instincts were rather like those of his namesake; in the nineteenth century the Cure of Ars, Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianaey, who would have loved a desert but was never allowed by God to go to one. The number of not spectacularly saintiy persons. who bear his name is, of course, beyond counting—the great French writer of comedy, Moliere, for instance, was Jean-Baptiste Poquelin.

But all that this means is that the parents of the saints, to say nothing of the parents of the dramatist and of the unnumbered others, had a great devotion to the son of Zachary and Elizabeth, not that they had any clear understanding of why it was essential that Our Lord should have him for a Forerunner, or why be should have anybody for a Forerunner. What herald could he possibly need?

Their devotion was almost certainly not to the prophet without whom Christ's mission would have lacked an essential element: it was to the child whose birth had been foretold by Gabriel, the child who had leapt in his mother's womb at the sound of Mary's voice as she entered the house of his parents with the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity in her womb: it was to the man who had paid with his head for telling the truth about Salome's mother.




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From John's circumcision until the day he began his great mission in preparation for Christ's greater mission, there is a gap of thirty years, and only two phrases to tell us anything about them. The first: "The child grew and was strengthened in spirit"—probably the spirit here is the Holy Spirit: the whole phrase is at once like, and not quite like, what is said of Our Lord in verse 40 of Luke's second chapter. The second: "And he was in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel."

Zachary and Elizabeth were both old when John was born. The general view of commentators is that they died when John was young, and that it was as a child he chose the desert rather than the priesthood to which, as his father's son, he was entitled. The whole Jewish priesthood had been a mighty thing, but a foreshadowing only. Now that the Reality it foreshadowed was itself in the world, John had a duty mightier still.

To the south of Jerusalem one finds two areas of rock and chasm, one running westward, the other eastward towards the Dead Sea, where to this day a man could live in almost total solitude. Here, probably, John the Baptist made his long novitiate. It has been suggested that he spent part of the time with the Essenes, as Josephus was to do in his late teens. They were a rigorous, ascetical sect. If he did, his teaching is in reaction against theirs.

But we have no detail of his desert life, save what he ate and what he wore. He wore a garment whose shape, if it had any shape, is not told us: it was made of camel's skin—the nomads used the same material for making tents. Round his waist was a strip of leather. He ate, so Matthew and Mark tell us, locusts and wild honey: the locust is a flying insect about two inches long: the Bedouins still eat them, dried in the sun and salted to taste. What he ate and what he wore must have mattered very little to John: it was not merely asceticism that took him into the desert, he could have been ascetical at home. Solitude was what he wanted, the solitude in which the strong soul called to it reaches maturity most surely.

Did the Devil bother him? John's strange, improbable conception—of a mother past her menopause and an elderly priest—was a nine-days' wonder in and about the Temple. Satan could not have failed to know of it. The child was worth watching. And then there were the long years in the desert. There was, of course, no descent of a dove upon John, no voice from heaven: but these things had never happened to anyone, and Satan had no means of knowing that they were the sign of signs. We know that the Pharisees would later be asking themselves, and ultimately asking John, if he were the Messias. Satan could hardly have avoided wondering too.

Related Ignatius Insight Book Excerpts:

• The Incarnation | Frank Sheed
• The Problem of Life's Purpose | Frank Sheed
• Theology, Sanity, and Trinity | Carl E. Olson

Frank Sheed (1897-1981) was an Australian of Irish descent. A law student, he graduated from Sydney University in Arts and Law, then moved in 1926, with his wife Maisie Ward, to London. There they founded the well-known Catholic publishing house of Sheed & Ward in 1926, which published some of the finest Catholic literature of the first half of the twentieth century.

Known for his sharp mind and clarity of expression, Sheed became one of the most famous Catholic apologists of the century. He was an outstanding street-corner speaker who popularized the Catholic Evidence Guild in both England and America (where he later resided). In 1957 he received a doctorate of Sacred Theology honoris causa authorized by the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities in Rome.

Although he was a cradle Catholic, Sheed was a central figure in what he called the "Catholic Intellectual Revival," an influential and loosely knit group of converts to the Catholic Faith, including authors such as G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Arnold Lunn, and Ronald Knox.

Sheed wrote several books, the best known being Theology and Sanity, A Map of Life, Theology for Beginners and To Know Christ Jesus. He and Maise also compiled the Catholic Evidence Training Outlines, which included his notes for training outdoor speakers and apologists and is still a valuable tool for Catholic apologists and catechists (and is available through the Catholic Evidence Guild).

For more about Sheed, visit his IgnatiusInsight.com Author Page.

Meanwhile, in an alternative universe...

Part of a letter to the editor in the December 2nd edition of the local newspaper, The Register Guard:

Occupy Eugene's "dry-place-to-sleep" zone is working great. Thanks to everyone for the donations. The port-a-­potties are a high-priority expense, the city parks and recreation department is taking away the garbage, all recyclables and compost are continuously and carefully prescreened on site, and the wood-chip paths are refreshed regularly.

The kitchen is incredible, serving more people than the city's only other secular soup kitchen (FOOD for Lane County). Having homeless people camp at the conveniently located and unobtrusive site is a natural. This is a priceless opportunity to raise the consciousness of citizens who are, for whatever reasons, clueless about the severity of economic the recession.

Let's see: Free food. Nap zones. Bathroom facilities and breaks. People who clean up after you. Clean play areas. Why not just call it Occupy DayCare for Adults? The big difference, however, is that the children in ordinary daycares don't spend their spare time lecturing the clueless citizens (aka, working parents) about the need for a raised consciousness regarding the goodness of a Nanny State.

• What would Jesus Occupy? (Nov. 29, 2011) | Insight Scoop
• Occupy Olsons: A Report From the Front Lines (Nov. 3, 2011) | Insight Scoop