Ascension of Our Lord

In most places around the world, today is the Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord. Growing up I never really understood the significance, or rather the fuller purpose, if you will, of the Ascension of Jesus.  I thought of it as a "my work here is done" moment. Of course in one vein, part of his work is done. He is no long the one who descended and dwelled among us. He was and is the Risen Lord. But his work as the one he ascended into all glory was just beginning and is an eternal mission, not fulfilled until he gathers all peoples and nations into one body. And nor has he left us. "I will be with you always, even to the end of the age." It was good that he ascended, so that the Spirit could descend and so we could enjoy him intimately through the Eucharist. In that most Blessed Sacrament, he gives of himself more abundantly than the manna that was given to the Israelites in the desert. 

By his descent to this world through the Incarnation, he assumed us in life–the Creator and Creation unite in the person of Christ. The Divine comes in contact with the flesh. By his death as the divine man, he filled death with himself, and defeated it, for death cannot contain him. By his Resurrection, God the Father "introduces the Son's humanity, including his body, into the Trinity" as the Catechism says. By his Ascension, a glorified divine man assumes his place at the right hand of the Father—the God-Man Jesus Christ. "Only the one who descended can ascend into heaven." Through our Baptism we are grafted into to his Body, and so share in Him as the "whole Christ." The Body of Christ, being one with the Head, follows the Son in hope into the glory of God the Father. 

Sermon from St. Augustine on Ascension Day

Today our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with him. Listen to the words of the Apostle: If you have risen with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth. For just as he remained with us even after his ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies.

Christ is now exalted above the heavens, but he still suffers on earth all the pain that we, the members of his body, have to bear. He showed this when he cried out from above: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? and when he said: I was hungry and you gave me food.

Why do we on earth not strive to find rest with him in heaven even now, through the faith, hope and love that unites us to him? While in heaven he is also with us; and we while on earth are with him. He is here with us by his divinity, his power and his love. We cannot be in heaven, as he is on earth, by divinity, but in him, we can be there by love.

He did not leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went up again into heaven. The fact that he was in heaven even while he was on earth is borne out by his own statement: No one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.

These words are explained by our oneness with Christ, for he is our head and we are his body. No one ascended into heaven except Christ because we also are Christ: he is the Son of Man by his union with us, and we by our union with him are the sons of God. So the Apostle says: Just as the human body, which has many members, is a unity, because all the different members make one body, so is it also with Christ. He too has many members, but one body.

Out of compassion for us he descended from heaven, and although he ascended alone, we also ascend, because we are in him by grace. Thus, no one but Christ descended and no one but Christ ascended; not because there is no distinction between the head and the body, but because the body as a unity cannot be separated from the head.



___________

Almighty God,

  fill us with a holy joy;

  teach us how to thank you with reverence and love

  on account of the ascension of Christ your Son.

You have raised us up with him:

  where he, the head, has preceded us in glory,

  there we, the body, are called in hope.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

  who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

  one God, for ever and ever.

Christ is the Day

I've been thinking about what it is that makes it all worth it. If someone said to me: "Jesus is God. My sins are forgiven, but so what? Who cares?", how could I respond? This is not an unlikely proposition. It is a question I get asked from time to time in various forms. I think it to be a legitimate question. What compels us to do the will of God and tends us towards him? All my knowledge in apologetics, which talks about the truth, is deficient in answering this. It is challenging to articulate this convincingly through words unless we experience it. I think there is a tendency to focus on the negative aspects of Christianity and relegate the positive to the superfluous–the focus of Atonement for the Sinner as more important then the Resurrection. It is usually expressed in a manner similar to "The Father restored His Son to life to show us that the debt of our sin was satisfied." While this is partly true, there is so much more to the Resurrection. It comes back to the Incarnation–God becoming man. The fact that God who is being itself, the I AM, assumed humanity, is not something that is for him alone. The potentiality of the Incarnation has a universal effect on all of humanity. The Resurrection of the Son of Man is the fulfillment of that potentiality.

As Pope Benedict XVI says in the Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, "Jesus' Resurrection was about breaking out into an entirely new form of life, into a life that is no longer subject to the law of dying and becoming, but lies beyond it–a life that opens up a new dimension of human existence. Therefore the Resurrection of Jesus is not an isolated event that we could set aside as something limited to the past, but it constitutes an "evolutionary leap"... Is not creation actually waiting for this last and highest "evolutionary leap", for the union of the finite with the infinite, for the union of man and God, for the conquest of death?" Through his death he destroys death by filling it with himself, by resurrecting, he opens up the way to new life for us as sons of God–heirs in him. At Baptism we are supernaturally grafted into the Body of Christ, and through participation in the Eucharist we are transformed more perfectly into complete union with the Risen One, who sits on the Throne in Heaven, with his full humanity incorporated into the Trinity. As St. Augustine says, "'For he has given them the power to become sons of God.' If we have been made sons of God, we have also been made gods." St. Athanasius, in his work On the Incarnation, plainly lays it out: "For he was made man that we might be made God." For my part, if Christianity does not believe this, I would count myself with the ranks of the bored "so what"-ers.

Today's Office of Readings* in the Liturgy of Hours, which I highly recommend participating in, in a sermon recorded over 1600 years ago, St. Maximus of Turin speaks to the heart of this "so what?" question. I included the whole sermon:

"Christ is risen! He has burst open the gates of hell and let the dead go free; he has renewed the earth through the members of his Church now born again in baptism, and has made it blossom afresh with men brought back to life. His Holy Spirit has unlocked the doors of heaven, which stand wide open to receive those who rise up from the earth. Because of Christ’s resurrection the thief ascends to paradise, the bodies of the blessed enter the holy city, and the dead are restored to the company of the living. There is an upward movement in the whole of creation, each element raising itself to something higher. We see hell restoring its victims to the upper regions, earth sending its buried dead to heaven, and heaven presenting the new arrivals to the Lord. In one and the same movement, our Savior’s passion raises men from the depths, lifts them up from the earth, and sets them in the heights.

"Christ is risen. His rising brings life to the dead, forgiveness to sinners, and glory to the saints. And so David the prophet summons all creation to join in celebrating the Easter festival: Rejoice and be glad, he cries, on this day which the Lord has made.

"The light of Christ is an endless day that knows no night. Christ is this day, says the Apostle; such is the meaning of his words: Night is almost over; day is at hand. He tells us that night is almost over, not that it is about to fall. By this we are meant to understand that the coming of Christ’s light puts Satan’s darkness to flight, leaving no place for any shadow of sin. His everlasting radiance dispels the dark clouds of the past and checks the hidden growth of vice. The Son is that day to whom the day, which is the Father, communicates the mystery of his divinity. He is the day who says through the mouth of Solomon: I have caused an unfailing light to rise in heaven. And as in heaven no night can follow day, so no sin can overshadow the justice of Christ. The celestial day is perpetually bright and shining with brilliant light; clouds can never darken its skies. In the same way, the light of Christ is eternally glowing with luminous radiance and can never be extinguished by the darkness of sin.

"This is why John the evangelist says: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never been able to overpower it.

"And so, my brothers, each of us ought surely to rejoice on this holy day. Let no one, conscious of his sinfulness, withdraw from our common celebration, nor let anyone be kept away from our public prayer by the burden of his guilt. Sinner he may indeed be, but he must not despair of pardon on this day which is so highly privileged; for if a thief could receive the grace of paradise, how could a Christian be refused forgiveness?"

This is true hope.

*The Office of Readings is part of the Liturgy of the Hours, the official public prayer of the Catholic Church which was started by the Jews while suffering through the Babylonian Captivity and has been adapted since the Ascension of the Risen Christ. The Catholic Church has continued the Jewish practice of prayers seven times a day. This in no small way shows the continuity between Judaism and Christianity. "I came not to abolish [the law], but to fulfill."

Pope Resigns: Gonna be a wild Lent

So Pope Benedict XVI is resigning. He will be missed. He has fulfilled his post with great diligence and pastoral care. Interesting that his resignation and the next papal conclave to elect his successor will all take place during the Lenten season. I can't say that his monumental move to resign, something that hasn't been done since the Protestant Reformation, isn't wholly surprising. He's a man who has surprised everybody every step of the way. Stay tuned. I'm sure that everybody will be giving their expert input and sensationalizing this story: "I'm shocked, shocked I tell you."

Anybody want to go to Rome in mid-March?

Augustine of Hippo, the Saint

From my January 2013 Hall of Men toast

“You are great, Lord, and greatly to be praised. Your power is great, and your wisdom can’t be numbered. Humans wish to praise you—humans, a portion of your creation, who carry around their mortality, who carry around the testimony of their sin and that “God opposes the proud.” Even so, humans, a portion of your creation, wish to praise you. You excite us to pleasure in praising you, because you made us for yourself! Our hearts are restless till they find rest in you.” – Confessions, 1.1

William Jurgens said in his three-volume conglomeration on the writings of the Church Fathers that “if we were faced with the unlikely proposition of having to destroy completely either the works of Augustine or the works of all the other Fathers and Writers, I have little doubt that all the others would have to be sacrificed. Augustine must remain.” Name another man since the Apostles who has had more influence than St. Augustine. Men like Boethius, Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Luther, Calvin, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Newman, Tolkien, Lewis, Balthasar, Wojtyla and Ratzinger were all deeply influenced by him. He wrote the first known autobiography, the first history of the world and set the tone for medieval Christian thought and all of Western thought. His explanation of time is still compelling. His ideas of Just War are used as the standard today. He is known as the Doctor of Grace for his myriad of treatise on the subject. At least two of his works are consistently listed among the greatest books of all time. No great thinker can ignore this African bishop from antiquity and come away having any idea what it means to be a man of the West. We all see world through the lens of Augustine.

There was definitely a problem, for me, with the idea of toasting such a man. We could easily spend a couple hours talking about all of St. Augustine’s deeds. His works are like an abundance of fruit on a healthy tree. And we could, since we have both Catholics and Protestants present, delve into a lengthy polemical discussion about whose tradition should be used to interpret Augustine. Also, there might not be anything about this man that I will say tonight that you did not already know. It was a little vexing at first knowing that some of you might know more about him than myself. I am no Augustine expert, even though he is my patron saint and my Sacramental Name is Daniel David Augustine McNight.

I think I have a solution for myself. We’re not here to necessarily learn something new about these men–if we do, that’s gravy. Chiefly, we’re here to honor these men. I am here to be a herald for a man who wholly deserves to mentioned among these other great men. But if we are here to celebrate the man Augustine, the man, I think this must go deeper. What makes Augustine great is not his immense intelligence or his beautiful rhetoric. Sure he’s a genius, but so was Niccolo Machiavelli, Friedrich Nietzsche and John-Paul Sartre. Those men will never be on this wall. We must find the essence of St. Augustine or the truth about him, his being, rather than just his deeds, or maybe more accurately, what informs his deeds.

I want to focus on three expressions which I think, at least in my mind, encapsulate him fairly well. There are this: he is a seeker, a fighter and a lover. This is how I see him. We know of him being a seeker first of all because of his long search for truth, first as a Gnostic and then once finding Truth as a Christian, seeking understanding and wisdom in the bosom of Truth. As a fighter we see him opposing the chief Manichee at first and then as a bishop practically every single heretic, demagogue, and liar in his diocese. He could not resist to give an account to the Truth of Jesus Christ. He never backed down. His body of work is a testament to this. As a lover, we know of this side of him first imperfectly, or more properly, pervertedly, as a playboy, and then completely as a celibate priest in a fulfilling romantic relationship with the Triune God. You see the opposite ends of the spectrum–embracing a lie and then embracing truth, but he never stopped being a seeker, fighter and a lover throughout. These expressions of him were made perfect, in a sense, by something else. Something even more central.

Many men are seekers, fighters and lovers. What makes Augustine who he is, a man of near mythic proportions, is much simpler than just being a seeker, a fighter and a lover, but at the same time, it goes way beyond. I will say that we could have very easily never heard of him had he stayed a Gnostic Manichee. He could have been a phantom in the night–destined for eternal obscurity as he gallivanted around the empire seeking to quench his restlessness in the embrace of lust. No one would plunge the depths of the mind of this last ancient and first medievalist if he died saying “Lord grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” His life would have been a shadow and a dream had he not met the one lover he was trying to avoid his whole life. We would have never known of his tenacity if he had not allowed himself to be defeated. He was close to being a waste, not because of the loss of talent, but because of loss of being truly human. What makes Augustine truly great, is the same that can make us great. And at the deepest level, it is not a what, but a who. No, the who is not us, but we are required nonetheless. Catholic writer Leon Bloy said that “There is only one tragedy in the end, not to have been a saint.”

What does it mean to be a saint? Let’s tease this out. A saint starts with this: “God exists. I am not God.” If you are to become saint you must, as the Temple at Dephi says, “Know Thyself”. The only difference between a saint and a sinner is that the saint knows he is a sinner. As Peter Kreeft says: “A saint's heart is broken by every little sorrow and sin. A saint's heart is also so strong that not even death can break it. It is indestructible because it's so breakable.” Reality is transparent. To fully know oneself is to know God, not to know about God, but to be lost in him–to turn all attention and praise to him. As a spouse praises his lover, so too does the saint to God. A saint is the bride of Christ, totally and perfectly dependent on him for everything and yet at the same time, totally independent: detached from all the cares of this world. That allows the saint to participate in the sufferings of Christ. “If you lose your life for my sake, you will find it.” Augustine says “God has only one Son on earth who never sinned, but never one without suffering.”  Suffering with purpose–sacrifice. With sacrifice, we move beyond the “individual”, for we exist for another. The fullness of personhood lies in love for others. As Christ lay dying on the Cross the totality of his existence for others was made manifest. He opened himself up to us as the way to salvation and in partaking of the divine nature of God. Augustine says, echoing the Fathers, "'For He hath given them power to become the sons of God.' If we have been made sons of God, we have also been made gods." But how can this happen other than being one with Christ? The Apostle says, “I am crucified with Christ, yet not I, but Christ who lives in me.” So to answer the question to be a saint and the answer to what can make us truly great is to be another. It is to be Jesus. Augustine writes:

Let us rejoice then and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp, brethren, God's grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ. For if he is the head, we are the members; he and we together are the whole man... The fullness of Christ then is the head and the members.

But in the end a saint is most wholly himself, for Jesus was the most human of humans. Participation in Christ is to be fully human. For the saint, there is no higher purpose than total surrender to Christ in Christ. Augustine knew the cost of surrender to God. In his Confessions in Book 8, being cut to the heart by the by a messenger from God on this very issue of total surrender, he rushes out to his little garden to breathe. He leaves his friend Alypius to weep in solitude and his physical strength gives way:

I cast myself down I know not how, under a certain fig-tree, giving full vent to my tears; and the floods of mine eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to Thee. And, not indeed in these words, yet to this purpose, spake I much unto Thee: and Thou, O Lord, how long? How long, Lord, wilt Thou be angry for ever? Remember not our former iniquities, for I felt that I was held by them. I sent up these sorrowful words: How long, how long, "tomorrow, and tomorrow?" Why not now? why not is there this hour an end to my uncleanness?

So was I speaking and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo! I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, "Take up and read; Take up and read." Instantly, my countenance altered, I began to think most intently whether children were wont in any kind of play to sing such words: nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be no other than a command from God to open the book, and read the first chapter I should find... Eagerly then I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there had I laid the volume of the Apostle when I arose thence. I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell: Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, in concupiscence. No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.

So who is Augustine? Look at the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Who is Jesus Christ? Look at all his Saints among whom is Augustine. He reveals himself in the lives of those who know him. Our honored man was made St. Augustine by being made Christ. I have heard it explained that Augustine is like a child and God is a lake. The child is so much in love with the water, that he runs full steam and jumps off the pier, plunging straight into the heart of the lake–enjoying it for what it is and giving little thought as to ever getting out. Remember the opening paragraph of his Confessions. He has found himself only by having totally lost himself in God.

St. Thomas Aquinas & Grace Perfecting Nature

Today is the Feast Day of the St. Thomas Aquinas. If one's size reflected one's influence, St. Thomas is just about right. Known as the Angelic Doctor and the Universal Doctor, his importance to philosophy, theology and ethics reigns supreme. He's pretty awesome. And a super-smart brainiac. And mondo pious. He'd crush you if he sat on you. He'd crush your high hopes of dissent with his logic and make you feel silly. He was so saintly and humble, he was gifted a glimpse of the Beatific Vision. He was the most reasonable guy out there, and at the same time was a mystic. He believed in miracles, and when he saw them, he didn't think it was out of the ordinary. Why should it be? He was the intellectual genius that lived in elfland and believed that "a tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree" as another man of considerable intellect and girth once noted. What is it with heavy dudes?

Although talking about his body of work would and does take many lifetimes, I'd like to focus on one point, and that is the connection between Grace and Nature. Most people tend to pit one thing against the other saying "this or that". But that is not always the only option. Who isn't annoyed by those web polls that say "How well do you feel the president is doing his job?" And then you have to choose between "Excellent" and "Terrible". Things are never that easy. Even Socrates succumbs to  this: "Is a thing good because the gods will it, or do they will it because it is good? You have to choose between an arbitrarily "just" god or one that has to examine his conscience at night before he goes to bed. Christian Tradition says this ignores the third option of goodness being from the nature of God himself, and can never be in contradiction to him (although the reformers rejected this and promoted the Divine Command Theory). 

So it is with nature and grace. I will explain the two opposing options first and then the third way, which in reality was always the first way. Let's give a little rundown.

Pelagius

Boom goes the dynamite! This heretic entered the scene at the end of the 4th century and was a thorn in the side of the Catholic Church and a chief opponent Saint Augustine. Big bad Pelagianism teaches that your nature, via your free will, can merit eternal life on its own. No grace needed. Original Sin did not blight our nature. There might be grace out there but whatever, we lead the charge. Jesus was just a moral example of how it's done right. Nature does everything apart from grace.



St. Augustine and the Catholic Church were too much for Pelagius, and his teaching was condemned as heresy. It's kid brother semi-pelagianism, which said we need grace, but we initiate it, was also ousted by the Catholic Church at the Council of Orange in 529 and reaffirmed at Trent.


Martin Luther

Huzzah! In the early 16th century, this Reformer, as well as Calvin and most of Protestantism, believed that original sin has ruined our natures, made them evil and whatever we do in our will always leads to a mortal sin. Grace does everything apart from nature. We can only do good passively, and well, let me just quote the man: 

"I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want 'free will' to be given to me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavor after salvation... Whatever work I had done, there would still be a nagging doubt as to whether it pleased God, or whether He required something more." – Bondage of the Will

Luther taught that man's will is only "free" when he chooses sin. The good that we do comes from God taking over our wills, so, as he said, we work passively. This is pretty much the opposing extreme of Pelagianism. On the otherhand, Reformation theology also teaches that man's nature was, before the fall, capable of maintaining the full vision of God, without the aid of Divine Grace. Hmm, encroachment foul on the Reformers: bumped into a Pelagian. 


St. Thomas Aquinas

"Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it." – Summa Theologica, Part 1, 1:8.

The third way. Choosing between grace and nature is a false dichotomy. We have fallen. We no longer enjoy the grace of Original Justice before God, and we are reverted to our baser instincts. But our nature is not bad, nor is incapable of doing any good thing. Man's chief problem is not that he cannot do a good thing, it is atonement that he is incapable of and without it, his good deeds are like filthy rags, as the Apostle says. Atonement had to come from the God-Man, Jesus Christ. He won for us the merits of eternal salvation and bestows his grace to us through the Sacraments and extraordinary means. (Baptism!) Only when we've received the Holy Spirit do our works of love merit anything.

St. Thomas teaches that as a result of Original Sin, our wills are not directed towards God, but everything else. Concupiscence, or the inclination to sin, is not Original Sin itself, but a material effect of it. We need the grace for God to work in us to will, and when we do will, we cooperate with that grace. St. Thomas also said, as he did somewhere in his Summa, that "God does not justify us without ourselves, because while we are being justified we consent to God's justification by a movement of our free will. Nevertheless this movement is not the cause of grace, but the effect; hence the whole operation pertains to grace." 

1) God operates through grace to move us. The First Cause.
2) Man actively receives the grace of God.
3) Through grace God strengthens man to will to perform meritorious works. Co-operation.

As St. Augustine says: "He operates that we may will; and when we will, He co-operates that we may be perfect." – De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, 33.

So in the end it is not grace outside of nature, but nature cooperating with grace. Grace and Nature should not be disconnected. They should be ever joined at the hip. Catholic Southern Gothic writer Flannery O'Connor, commenting on the splitting of grace and nature, said: " the average Catholic reader... [is] more of a Manichean than the Church permits. By separating nature and grace as much as possible, he has reduced his conception of the supernatural to the pious cliché."

In the end, grace is not an escape from or rival of nature. It brings about the fulfillment of nature. In fact, it established our nature. It is everything one has hoped for. God, the author of our nature, condescended to assume our nature to bring it to perfect completion. In the Incarnation, all aspects of nature, which includes human nature, are joined to the divine nature of God. With the Resurrection of Jesus, he opened up to us the way to eternal life with God and our final evolution as humans. With the Ascension of Jesus, that nature, that human nature, is introduced and incorporated into the Holy Trinity. If we are part of the Mystical Body of Christ, we too will become, as St. Peter says, "partakers of the Divine Nature".

In the words of St. Thomas while pounding a large wooden table, "That will settle the Manichees!"

St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Bonus Ol' Latinus

So I've been studying Latin since May. Probably not surprising–'tis a geeky Catholic thing to do. It's at the same time exhilarating and depressing, and always hard work. For instance, since Latin is one of the most conjugated languages, the word "to chew" (mandūcō, mandūcāre, mandūcāvī, mandūcātum) has at least, sigh, 141 ways one can write the word, and this is not counting all the different ways to write indicative/subjunctive passive perfect, future perfect and pluperfect, which are sort of like the middle ground between a noun and a verb, which can cause headaches, tears and feelings of emptiness and can ultimately lead to mental breakdowns,  but I digressiō.

Because Latin is so precise, words seem to have richer and clearer meanings. For instance, look at English. Many of it's more weightier words stem from a Latin origin, like salvation, justice, virtue and intelligence. The use of conjugations allows for so much precision that you can subtly change to whom you speak to, about, with, and, to get to the point, the entire context with a one or two letter switch-a-roo-ski. This is totally great once you are liberated from the bondage which it at first seems to bring. It's subtle and powerful, as Cicero, probably the greatest Latin orator of all, found to be true.

 

I am indebted to newadvent.org for all the work done on the translation of the Church Fathers and the Summa into English in a free format on the interwebs. I hadn't notice until yesterday that the Bible format that they use has the Greek, English and Latin text side by side by side. This is most definitely the greatest web discovery for me since Google Earth. I tried to work my way through John 1 with some success, and it was very rewarding, that is, if there is a reward in kinda-sorta cheating.

One of the joys and main motivations is the participation in Ecclesiastical Latin in the liturgy of Holy Mass. My hope is that I can read St. Jerome's Vulgate, Virgil, Cicero, St. Augustine and St. Thomas in Latin, but I have a long way to go. I'll start with Caesar's Commentaries and work my way up to Hobbitus Ille (the Hobbit). The more I study it, the more I appreciate it and its huge impact on Western culture. Up until the 19th Century, it was still a commonly used language throughout the west, and "men of distinction" knew it well. I read John Henry Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua (first hint) this summer, and he was dropping Latin references like he was Harry Potter or something. After Vatican II it was downgraded for a bit with everyone freaking out and running amok, but now it's going through a little renaissance. After studying this "dead language" for a time, a renaissance is a good thing. The West thinks like a Latin. As an English speaker, it not a foreign language like French or Polish, it's our mother language (and I guess dad would be that barbarish "ye ølde engliƒh"). We can't help being affected by our upbringing. Even now that we're grown up and don't live in her house anymore, not only should we never forget her, we should probably visit often.

"Mater tua tam obesa est ut cum Romae est, urbs habet octo colles!" Oh, slam! See, everything's better with Latin.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

~Daniel 7:13-14

This Sunday is the the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. A fitting Mass for Thanksgiving weekend. The Solemnity proclaims that Christ is preeminent over all creation. But Jesus’ rise to kingship is like no other.

The desire for power is itself a powerful thing. Man has always craved power. We like to control things. But as history tells us, power also corrupts. The irony of power is that the more you desire and attain it at the expense of others, the more it destroys you–a basic survey of the history of the Byzantine emperors alone will prove this sufficiently. The Biblical record of this is also quite clear. In the garden Adam was tempted by the Serpent that if he were only to eat of the fruit, he would yield a power comparable to God. Adam knew it was forbidden, but desired to disobey God and sacrifice love in order to achieve his goal. In his moment of sin, he cared nothing for God, and as a result, nothing for himself. Adam, desiring to elevate himself, fell, and with him, the entire human race.

It seems to be that elevating yourself is... not a keen idea. But it is too late for warnings, man is severed from God and needs radical surgery to stitch up the relationship. Man, as a creature, can do nothing to reconcile himself before God. His offerings to God of things created and owned by God are worthless offerings. Man’s pride and power-seeking has been his undoing. There is no hope in himself and he knows it.

The Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, through whom the Father Almighty made all things, took the reverse route of Adam. He shared with God all things in the perfect unity of love. The Son had everything, or rather, he transcended everything. His Father loved him with a perfect love and called him His beloved Son. The Lover and the Beloved–they needed nothing. Man’s folly was no hindrance to the bliss of the Holy Godhead. But the love of the Father knows no limits. Knowing the plight of us men, the Father had compassion for us in our hopeless state. It is as if he sees from a carriage on a cold, rainy, gray day an orphaned baby sitting in the middle of the muddy road, looking, looking and crying, for someone to pick him up and hold him. There is no hope for this pitiful child, but the Father will not abandon the orphan. The Father desires to bring the child to himself. He turns to his Son, who is always with him, and asks him to get down into the mud and filth and save the child from certain death. The Son desires nothing but to please his Father. With supreme love, he gets down from the carriage.

Unlike Adam who wanted to elevated himself, the Son lowered himself to our level. He did not desire to exploit power, power that was rightfully his, but instead condescended to our lowly state and emptied himself and took on the nature of man. He restricted his divine abilities by accepting the limitations of man. “You know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sake he became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” The incomprehensibleness of his divinity remained what it was, but what he assumed was like us in every way–measurable and knowable. This divine human, whose presence among the kings of men should be beneath him, was born into poverty and grew up in a carpenter’s shop. During his ministry, he preached the Kingdom of God but desired no power. His enemies, who clung to their temporal gains, arrested him because he threatened their authority. He was stripped and scourged, humiliated with a “kingly” crown of thorns, and mocked as a king whose only subjects were but jeering, violent soldiers. Pilate, prefect of Rome in Judaea, abused his authority by avoiding responsibility and handed the Son of God over to the wishes of an angry mob.

Jesus received ultimate humiliation–condemned to die while suspended between heaven and earth on a cross. Death on a cross was the greatest insult in the Roman world. It was reserved for the wretched. He was cursed by men and felt the full brunt of man’s enmity for God. Jesus cries a psalm of David in solidarity with us: “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” Can more shame and dishonor be heaped upon one man? As he expired, he died an enemy of the Jews, a “blasphemer” and a despised outcast. He was removed from his wooden altar and laid to rest in a common tomb.

Yet, through all this suffering lies the hope of man. The injustice of his death was purposed. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, offered himself to the Father in sacrificial love and accomplishes the redemption of humanity. He passed over from death to life. Death could not contain him. This is the Paschal Mystery: Christ’s Passion as the Suffering Servant is the model and atonement for all humanity, and at the same time by his death he destroys death, and by his resurrection he opens up to us the path to eternal life. By stooping down, he lifts us up.

With his victory won and his work accomplished, he can now claim his promise from the Father–glory, honor and authority of universal proportions. He ascends through his own power to where he was before in the presence of his Father. His entry into the courts of heaven is no small thing. The entrance of the Highly Exalted One, the King of Kings, is the culminating moment in the Kingdom of God. He then takes His place at the right hand of the Father. The same unity of the Divine before the Son’s condescension is now once again fully realized, but things are different now. Jesus is still what he assumed–a man. In the love of the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, the Father introduces Christ’s humanity into the Godhead. God assumed Man, and now, Man assumes God. From his throne on High he intercedes to the Father on our behalf as the one mediator between God and Man. He spans the gulf now as he did while suspending on a tree drawing all men to himself.

But even now in His exalted state, he does not think it beneath him to continue to stoop down to our level. He promised to always be with us and he does so really, truly and substantially. As St. Francis notes: “For One in such a lofty position to stoop so low is a marvel that is staggering. What sublime humility and humble sublimeness, that the Lord of the Universe, the Divine Son of God, should stoop as to hide Himself under the appearance of bread for our salvation! Behold the humble way of God, my brothers. Therefore, do not hold yourselves to be anything of yourselves, so that you may be entirely acceptable to One Who gives Himself entirely to you.” He is with us in the form of Bread and Wine; he is with us at every Mass.

“Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” ~Philippians 2:6-11

Through humility he has been exalted. Through giving he has gained all. Through sacrificial love he is the beneficiary of the perfect love of the Father. Through emptying himself of power, he now rules with all power. He is the Great King. There is no throne or dominion in heaven or on earth that moves without him. The stars and galaxies are bound by his word. The great and powerful as well as the lowly are under his watchful eye. There is none who can escape him, and all will bow before him. He rules with justice and mercy through his perfect love. He cares about his subjects and ever serves them by making himself one with them. He gives his peace to all who are in him. He is our salvation and our King whose kingdom will last for all eternity. He shows us the way of salvation: by humbling himself, he is was raised to glory. This is the most unusual rise to power, but the only rise to power that has ever mattered. “How worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and divinity, and wisdom and strength and honor. To him belong glory and power for ever and ever.”

That is Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. Praise be to God.