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Augustine on the Beatitudes
This Sunday we will hear in the Gospel the wonderful account of our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, the pinnacle of which is certainly the Beatitudes. This passage used to be at the center of the Church's moral tradition, though it is generally ignored today by most textbooks of moral theology. St. Augustine, quite representative here of the later patristic tradition, wrote an entire book of twenty-three chapters devoted exclusively to this sermon, with an extensive treatment of the Beatitudes. I offer a few observations of my own: First, Augustine inaugurates (or perhaps solidifies - I cannot find an earlier Father who teaches this as clearly) an ecclesial tradition of seeing in the Beatitudes the quintessence of the Christian moral life, 'a perfect standard of the Christian life.' Even more, it is all-comprehensive, containing 'perfect in all the precepts by which the Christian life is moulded' (emphasis mine). Augustine's ethic is teleologically oriented towards the end of happiness, or beatitude, which for him lies in possession of God - hence, Our Lord's direct revelation of the way to beatitude unsurpassable as a moral code. Secondly, Augustine departs on what one might call a 'spiritualization', or to put it better, an 'interiorization' of the beatitudes. More modern scholars are tempted by the very 'social' language of the sermon to interpret it primarily in terms of social reform - the exaltation of the poor and persecuted, the value of peacemaking, the language of human comfort, etc. Augustine, on the contrary, is intent on redirecting these values inward, into the seat of the human soul in its quest for the vision of God. The 'poor' are the humble and God-fearing. The 'possession of the earth' which belongs to the meek is in fact the 'certain firmness and stability of the perpetual inheritance,' viz. the 'very rest and life of the saints.' The 'comfort' that belongs to the mourners is that of the Holy Spirit, which is given in the midst of temporal suffering. The 'food' of the hungry is the same food which nourished Christ - doing the will of His Father. The 'peacemakers' are those who possess peace of soul, when passions are rightly subjugated to the rulership of God. This is consistent with Augustine's theological formula of the relativization of temporal values vis-a-vis the absoluteness of the eternal (the programme of the City of God). Thirdly, inasmuch as Augustine sees the beatitudes as a perfect compendium of the moral life, he also views them as an ordered hierarchy of mystical ascent. Accordingly, he lops off the eighth beatitude (regarding persecution, which he sees as an off-hand remark directed specifically and exclusively to the present audience) to make the perfect number, seven: 'Seven in number, therefore, are the things which bring perfection'. And it is, for Augustine, a hierarchy of progressive stages, beginning with the elementary value of humility, and reaching its culmination in the seventh and perfect beatitude, divine sonship ('. . . for they shall be called the sons of God' - note that sonship, here at least, surpasses even the vision of God, which constitutes the sixth and penultimate beatitude). Fourthly, Augustine cannot help but notice a certain correlation between the sevenfold Beatitude and the sevenfold operation of the Holy Spirit in Isaiah 11:1-3, traditionally known as the 'gifts of the Spirit' in the Catholic tradition. Although he has to reverse the order of the latter to make them fit, Augustine sees the parallelism as follows: Poor in Spirit: Fear of God Meekness: Piety Mourning: Knowledge Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness: Fortitude Merciful: Counsel Pure in Heart: Understanding Peacemakers: Wisdom His reasoning behind each comparison is rather clever at many points, although perhaps somewhat forced at others. But the unity between them is essential, as it demonstrates the unity of all Scripture, especially between the Old and New Covenants. Lastly, it is essential for Augustine that the seven beatitudes, or seven gifts, do not correspond to seven disctinct rewards, but rather, constitute one reward. Thus, he says, it is 'the one reward, which is the kingdom of heaven, [which] is variously named according to these stages'. This same regal reward is titled diversely: 'an inheritance', 'comfort', 'a full supply', 'mercy', 'the sight of God', and 'divine sonship'. All, in the end, amount to the same thing, the eternal possession of God Himself. # posted by Jamie : 1:28 PM |
Personal Update
# posted by Jamie : 1:55 PM |
Pope Grants Plenary Indulgence for Year of the Eucharist
VATICAN CITY, JAN 14, 2005 (VIS) - A Decree from the Apostolic Penitentiary, dated December 25, 2004 and published today, states that during an audience granted on December 17, 2004 to Cardinal James Francis Stafford and Fr. John Francis Girotti, OFM.Conv., respectively penitentiary major and regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary, "the Holy Father wished to enrich with indulgences several determined acts of worship and devotion to the Most Holy Sacrament, which are indicated below. ... The Decree will be in force during the Eucharistic Year, starting with the day of its publication in the L'Osservatore Romano. Notwithstanding any disposition to the contrary." Following are excerpts: "A Plenary Indulgence is granted to all faithful and to each individual faithful under the usual conditions (sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion and prayer in keeping with the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff, with the soul completely removed from attachment to any form of sin), each and every time they participate attentively and piously in a sacred function or a devotional exercise undertaken in honor of the Blessed Sacrament, solemnly exposed and conserved in the tabernacle. "A Plenary Indulgence is also granted, under the aforesaid conditions, to the clergy, to members of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, and to other faithful who are by law obliged to recite the Liturgy of the Hours, as well as to those who customarily recite the Divine Office out of pure devotion, each and every time they recite - at the end of the day, in company or in private - Vespers and Night Prayers before the Lord present in the tabernacle. "The faithful who, through illness or other just cause, are unable to visit the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist in a church or oratory, may obtain a Plenary Indulgence in their own homes, or wherever they may be because of their ailment, if, ... with the intention of observing the three usual conditions as soon as possible, they make the visit spiritually and with the heart's desire, ... and recite the Our Father and the Creed, adding a pious invocation to Jesus in the Sacrament. "If they are unable to do even this, they will receive a Plenary Indulgence if they unite themselves with interior desire to those who practice the normal conditions laid down for Indulgences, and offer the merciful God the illnesses and discomforts of their lives."
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Over Christmas I finished my second book by Mortimer Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes. So I thought I would write an overly-pompous book review: Adler, true to form, has bitten off in this work more than even he could possibly chew, much less any of us lesser mortals - to identify and conquer the noetical errors at the heart of modernism. Predictably, he has accomplished the first task far better than the latter: e.g., pinpointing nominalism as the root cause of modern evil is easier than sacking it, especially when you try to do so in less than three sentences. (And, yes, he really does seem to think he has logically disproven it in that many sentences.) Even novices like myself are bound to feel the errors in question worthy of a little more thoroughness than Adler grants them. But perhaps the process of sleuthing should be seen as Adler's primary task here (as he himself claims), and if that is the case, then he has accomplished it with ease and grace. He does not rest with the symptoms of modern relativism (either moral or dogmatic), but goes to the very heart of the matter, dissecting the way we humans think and judge in a masterful way, and better yet, demonstrating that we way these things are done simply do not mesh with relativism. More to the point, Adler's arguments will be convincing only to the already converted; it strains the imagination to picture his keen reasoning bringing a hardened modernist to his knees. His success, I think, lies in helping his fellow classicists (like myself) to purge the last remnants of Enlightenment rationalism from the deepest corners of our minds. The frustrating thing for me, as someone who considers himself already somewhat narrow-minded, is how Adler's can manage to be even narrower. I stumbled once, twice, thrice over trains of thought where I couldn't quite follower Adler to the end: he denies flatly that universals have any existence in reality (p. 73), categorizes mathematics as a discipline whose object is not reality but conceptual notions (p. 103), and mocks Plato for thinking happiness could be found in virtue alone, without wealth (p. 143). It's not that I necessarily disagree with Adler here (though I think I do), but that I think intelligent people can disagree on these questions and still stand apart from the 'erroneous moderns' against whom Adler rages. It is in his final chapter that the author 'shows his cards,' simultaneously revealing to me why I disagreed with him more often than I had anticipated. Finally admitting his confessional stance, Adler apologetically insists that "it is possible to be an Aristotelian without being doctrinnaire about it" (p. 96), but methinks Adler is a bit more doctrinnaire than he thinks. Still, apart from a few sticking points, Adler has done a fine job in plunging yet another dagger into the heart of a dying school of thought (if it is not already dead, at least at its font), and his book will be of enormous value to almost any reader. # posted by Jamie : 8:14 AM |
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