John Henry Newman: Joshua – Combatant and Conqueror – is a Figure of Christ and His Followers Thursday, Jun 13 2013

We are told…that Joshua did not accomplish all the work that was to be done; but left a remnant of it to those who came after him.

And yet in one sense he did it all, for “all these kings and their land did Joshua take at one time” (Josh. 10:42).

And, accordingly, he divided out even the country which he had not conquered; for what he had done involved and secured, as far as God’s aid was necessary, the doing of the rest.

[...] And so in like manner Christ has done the whole work of redemption for us; and yet it is no contradiction to say, that something remains for us to do: we have to take the redemption offered us, and that taking involves a work.

We have to apply His grace to our own souls, and that application implies pain, trial, and toil, in the midst of its blessedness. He has suffered and conquered, and those who become partakers in Him, undergo in their own persons the shadow and likeness of that passion and victory.

In them, one by one, is acted over again and again the history of the Son of God, so that as He died they die to sin,—as He rose again, so they rise again to righteousness; and in this imitation of His history consists their participation of His glory.

He truly has planted us in the land of promise, and has given our enemies into our hands; but they are still in it, and they have to be expelled from it;

and as the Israelites after Joshua’s death entered into a truce with them instead of obeying his command, so we too, after our Lord’s departure, instead of making that righteousness our own, which He has of His free grace imputed to us at the first, too often are content with that nominal imputation, and think it enough that He has “divided out the nations which remain”, careless about fulfilling His directions in destroying them….

Though Joshua is a figure of Christ and His followers in that he is a combatant and a conqueror, in one point of view he plainly differs from them.

He was bidden use carnal weapons in his warfare; but of ours St. Paul says, “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong-holds” (2 Cor. 10:4).

[...] Such is the rule of our warfare. We advance by yielding; we rise by falling; we conquer by suffering; we persuade by silence; we become rich by bountifulness; we inherit the earth through meekness; we gain comfort through mourning; we earn glory by penitence and prayer.

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Sermons on Subjects of the Day, Sermon 12. Joshus a Type of Christ and His Followers.

Leave a Response »

 

Benedict XVI: We Enter Heaven when We Draw Close to Jesus and Enter into Communion with Him Wednesday, May 8 2013

“As they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9).

This is the mystery of the Ascension that we are celebrating today. But what do the Bible and the Liturgy wish to tell us by saying that Jesus “was lifted up”?

We cannot understand the meaning of these words from a single text or from a single book of the New Testament but rather by listening attentively to the whole of Sacred Scripture.

In fact the verb “to lift up” was originally used in the Old Testament and refers to royal enthronement. Thus Christ’s Ascension means in the first place the enthronement of the Crucified and Risen Son of Man, the manifestation of God’s kingship over the world.

However, there is an even deeper meaning that is not immediately perceptible. In the passage from the Acts of the Apostles it is said first that Jesus was “lifted up” (v. 9) and then it says “taken up” (v. 11).

The event is not described as a journey to on high but rather as an action of the power of God who introduces Jesus into the space of closeness to the Divine.

The presence of the cloud that “took him out of their sight” (v. 9), recalls a very ancient image of Old Testament theology and integrates the account of the Ascension into the history of God with Israel, from the cloud of Sinai and above the tent of the Covenant in the desert, to the luminous cloud on the mountain of the Transfiguration.

To present the Lord wrapped in clouds calls to mind once and for all the same mystery expressed in the symbolism of the phrase, “seated at the right hand of God”.

In Christ ascended into Heaven, the human being has entered into intimacy with God in a new and unheard-of way; man henceforth finds room in God for ever.

“Heaven”: this word Heaven does not indicate a place above the stars but something far more daring and sublime: it indicates Christ himself, the divine Person who welcomes humanity fully and for ever, the One in whom God and man are inseparably united for ever.

Man’s being in God, this is Heaven. And we draw close to Heaven, indeed, we enter Heaven to the extent that we draw close to Jesus and enter into communion with him.

For this reason today’s Solemnity of the Ascension invites us to be in profound communion with the dead and Risen Jesus, invisibly present in the life of each one of us.

Benedict XVI (b. 1927): Homily on the Solemnity of the Ascension, 2009.

One Response »

 

Cyril of Alexandria: “I Am in My Father, and You in Me, and I in You” Wednesday, May 1 2013

In that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you (John 14:20).

After the creature [man]…had attained unto the propriety of its perfect nature by means of both soul and body…, then like a stamp of His own Nature the Creator impressed on it the Holy Spirit – the Breath of Life.

Thus the creature became moulded unto the archetypal Beauty, and completed after the image of Him that created it, enabled unto every form of excellence, by virtue of the Spirit given to dwell in it.

Having free will, and entrusted with the reins of its own purposes – for this also is an element in the image, forasmuch as God has power over His own purposes – the creature turned and has fallen.

God the Father both determined and took in hand to gather together once more in Christ the nature of man unto its ancient estate, and, willing it, He accomplished it.

[...] It was not otherwise possible for man, forasmuch as he was of a nature that was perishing, to escape death, save by recovering that ancient grace, and partaking once more in God.

For God holds all things together in being and preserves them in life through the Son in the Spirit.

Therefore He has become partaker of blood and flesh. He has become man, being by nature Life, and begotten of the Life that is by nature, of God the Father.

He is the Father’s Only-begotten Word, Who became man in order that, uniting Himself with the flesh that by the law of its own nature was perishing, He might bring it back unto His own Life and make it through Himself partaker of God the Father.

For He is Mediator between God and men, according as it is written, knit unto God the Father naturally as God and of Him, and again unto men as man; and withal having in Himself the Father and being Himself in the Father.

For He is the impress and effulgence of His Person, and not distinct from the Essence, whereof He is impress and wherefrom He proceeds as effulgence.

[...] And He wears our nature, remoulding it unto His own Life. And He is also Himself in us; for we have all been made partakers of Him, and have Him in ourselves through the Spirit.

Thus we have Both, being made partakers of the Divine Nature, and are entitled sons, in this way having in us also the Father Himself through the Son.

And Paul will testify hereof where he says: Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. 

Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376-444): Commentary on St John’s Gospel, book 9 [on John 14:20].

Leave a Response »

 

Cyril of Alexandria: Christ Granted to Flesh a Way of Entrance into Heaven Saturday, Apr 27 2013

In My Father s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:2).

He says that He will depart…for the sake of securing the way to the mansions above, to prepare a passage of safety for you, and to smooth the path that was impassable in old time.

For heaven was then utterly inaccessible to mortal man, and no flesh as yet had ever trodden that pure and all-holy realm of the angels.

But Christ was the first Who consecrated for us the means of access to Himself, and granted to flesh a way of entrance into heaven.

[...] Our Lord Jesus the Christ consecrated for us a new and living way, as Paul says; not having entered into a holy place made with hands, but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us. 

For it is not that He may present Himself before the presence of God the Father that Christ has ascended up on high: for He ever was and is and will be continually in the Father, in the sight of Him Who begat Him, for He it is in Whom the Father ever takes delight.

But now He Who of old was the Word with no part or lot in human nature, has ascended in human form that He may appear in heaven in a strange and unwonted manner.

And this He has done on our account and for our sakes, in order that He, though found as a man, may still in His absolute power as Son, while yet in human form, obey the command: Sit Thou on My right hand, and so may transfer the glory of adoption through Himself to all the race.

For in that He has appeared in human form He is still one of us as He sits at the right hand of God the Father, even though He is far above all creation; and He is also Consubstantial with His Father, in that He has come forth from Him as truly God of God and Light of Light.

He has presented Himself therefore as Man to the Father on our behalf, that so He may restore us, who had been removed from the Father’s presence by the ancient transgression, again as it were to behold the Father’s face.

He sits there in His position as Son, that so also we through Him may be called sons and children of God.

For this reason also Paul…teaches us to regard the events that happened in the life of Christ alone as common to the whole race; saying that God raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ. 

Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376-444): Commentary on St John’s Gospel, book 9 [on John 14:2].

Leave a Response »

 

Cyril of Jerusalem: The Holy Spirit Conforms Us with Christ and Imparts to Us His Divine Nature Friday, Apr 5 2013

Having been baptized into Christ, and put on Christ, you have been made conformable to the Son of God.

For God having foreordained us unto adoption as sons, made us to be conformed to the body of Christ’s glory.

Having therefore become partakers of Christ, you are properly called Christs [i.e. “anointed ones”]….

Now you have been made Christs, by receiving the…Holy Ghost; and all things have been wrought in you by imitation, because you are images of Christ.

He washed in the river Jordan, and having imparted of the fragrance of His Godhead to the waters, He came up from them; and the Holy Ghost, in the fulness of His being, lighted on Him – like resting upon like.

And to you in like manner, after you had come up from the pool of the sacred streams, there was given an Unction, the anti-type of that wherewith Christ was anointed.

And this is the Holy Ghost; of whom also the blessed Isaiah, in his prophecy respecting Him, said in the person of the Lord, The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me:  He hath sent Me to preach glad tidings to the poor.

For Christ was not anointed by men with oil or material ointment, but the Father having before appointed Him to be the Saviour of the whole world, anointed Him with the Holy Ghost, as Peter says, Jesus of Nazareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Ghost.

David…cried…: Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God even Thy God hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.

And as Christ was in reality crucified, and buried, and raised, and you are in Baptism accounted worthy of being crucified, buried, and raised together with Him in a likeness, so is it with the unction also.

As He was anointed with an ideal oil of gladness, that is, with the Holy Ghost, called oil of gladness, because He is the author of spiritual gladness, so you were anointed with ointment, having been made partakers and fellows of Christ.

But beware of supposing this to be plain ointment.  For as the Bread of the Eucharist, after the invocation of the Holy Ghost, is mere bread no longer, but the Body of Christ, so also this holy ointment is no more simple ointment…after invocation, but it is Christ’s gift of grace, and, by the advent of the Holy Ghost, is made fit to impart His Divine Nature.

This ointment is symbolically applied to your forehead and your other senses; and while your body is anointed with the visible ointment, your soul is sanctified by the Holy and life-giving Spirit.

Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 313-386): Catechetical Lectures 21, 1-3.

Leave a Response »

 

Leo the Great: “The Sufferings of the Present Time are not Worthy to be Compared with the Future Glory which shall be Revealed in Us” Sunday, Feb 24 2013

(Following on from here…)

And in this Transfiguration the foremost object was to remove the offence of the cross from the disciple’s heart, and to prevent their faith being disturbed by the humiliation of His voluntary Passion by revealing to them the excellence of His hidden dignity.

But with no less foresight, the foundation was laid of the Holy Church’s hope, that the whole body of Christ might realize the character of the change which it would have to receive, and that the members might promise themselves a share in that honour which had already shone forth in their Head.

About this the Lord had Himself said, when He spoke of the majesty of His coming, “Then shall the righteous shine as the sun in their Father’s Kingdom.”

And the blessed Apostle Paul bears witness to the self-same thing, and says:  “for I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which shall be revealed in us;”

and again, “for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.  For when Christ our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.”

[...] Moses and Elias, that is the Law and the Prophets, appeared talking with the Lord.

[...] St John says, “the law was given through Moses:  but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” in Whom is fulfilled both the promise of prophetic figures and the purpose of the legal ordinances.

For He both teaches the truth of prophecy by His presence, and renders the commands possible through grace.

The Apostle Peter…, being excited by the revelation of these mysteries, despising things mundane and scorning things earthly, was seized with a sort of frenzied craving for the things eternal.

Filled with rapture at the whole vision, he desired to make his abode with Jesus in the place where he had been blessed with the manifestation of His glory.

Whence also he says, “Lord, it is good for us to be here:  if thou wilt let us make three tabernacles, one for Thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias.”

But to this proposal the Lord made no answer, signifying that what he wanted was not indeed wicked, but contrary to the Divine order.

For the world could not be saved, except by Christ’s death, and by the Lord’s example the faithful were called upon to believe that, although there ought not to be any doubt about the promises of happiness, yet we should understand that amidst the trials of this life we must ask for the power of endurance rather than the glory, because the joyousness of reigning cannot precede the times of suffering.

Leo the Great (c.400-461): Sermon 51, 3-5.

Leave a Response »

 

Basil the Great: Types and Shadows, Adam and Christ, Exodus and Baptism Wednesday, Jan 2 2013

The nature of the divine is very frequently represented by the rough and shadowy outlines of the types.

But because divine things are prefigured by small and human things, it is obvious that we must not therefore conclude the divine nature to be small.

The type is an exhibition of things expected, and gives an imitative anticipation of the future.  So Adam was a type of “Him that was to come.”

Typically, “That rock was Christ;” and the water a type of the living power of the word; as He says, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.”

The manna is a type of the living bread that came down from heaven; and the serpent on the standard, of the passion of salvation accomplished by means of the cross, wherefore they who even looked thereon were preserved.

So in like manner, the history of the exodus of Israel is recorded to shew forth those who are being saved through baptism.

For the firstborn of the Israelites were preserved, like the bodies of the baptized, by the giving of grace to them that were marked with blood.

For the blood of the sheep is a type of the blood of Christ; and the firstborn, a type of the first-formed.

And inasmuch as the first-formed of necessity exists in us, and, in sequence of succession, is transmitted till the end, it follows that “in Adam” we “all die,” and that “death reigned” until the fulfilling of the law and the coming of Christ.

And the firstborn were preserved by God from being touched by the destroyer, to show that we who were made alive in Christ no longer die in Adam.

The sea and the cloud for the time being led on through amazement to faith, but for the time to come they typically prefigured the grace to be.

“Who is wise and he shall understand these things?”—how the sea is typically a baptism bringing about the departure of Pharaoh, in like manner as this washing causes the departure of the tyranny of the devil.

The sea slew the enemy in itself: and in baptism too dies our enmity towards God.

From the sea the people came out unharmed:  we too, as it were, alive from the dead, step up from the water “saved” by the “grace” of Him who called us.

And the cloud is a shadow of the gift of the Spirit, who cools the flame of our passions by the “mortification” of our “members.”

Basil the Great (330-379): On the Holy Spirit 14, 31.

Leave a Response »

 

Hugh of St Victor: If We have Prepared a Place for Him, Jesus will Gladly Come to Us that He might Dwell in Us Wednesday, Dec 19 2012

Maybe you are asking where this house of God is to be sought, and where it may be found.

God’s house is the whole world; God’s house is the Catholic Church; God’s house is also every faithful soul.

But God inhabits the world in one way, the Church in another, and every faithful soul in yet a third.

He is in the world as ruler of His kingdom; He is in the Church as head of the family in His own home; He is in the soul as the bridegroom in the wedding-chamber.

The heathen and the unbelievers are all of them in His house that is, in His kingdom; for through the power of His Godhead He maintains and governs all that He has made.

False believers are in His house that is, in the Church; for He entrusts participation in His mysteries to all whom He has called to faith.

But the truly faithful are in His house, or rather I should say they are His house, because by dwelling in them through love He owns and rules them.

We are all in His house by our very created condition. We are in His house through the faith whereby He called us. We are in His house through the love whereby He justified us.

If you are in the house of God by your origin only, the devil is there too along with you.

If you are in the house of God by faith, there is still chaff on your threshing-floor together with the wheat.

But if you are in the house of God through love, blessed are you, for not only are you in the house of God, but you yourself have begun to be His house, to the intent that He who made you may also dwell in you.

This is the abode of health, these are the dwellings of the righteous through which the voice of joy and exultation [Cf. Ps. 118, 15] ever rings, wherein the blessed dwell.

Of this, the prophet longed to see the beauty, in it he yearned to dwell, he was on fire with desire for it [Cf. Ps. 84, 2].

If then this dwelling has begun to be in us, let us go in and abide with Him. There, where He ‘whose place is in peace’ [Ps. 76, 2] deigns to make His dwelling, we shall find peace and rest.

But if it has not yet begun to be in us, then let us build it; for, if we have prepared a place for Him, He will gladly come to us who made us that He might dwell in us, even Jesus Christ our Lord.

Hugh of St Victor (c.1096-1141): On the Moral Interpretation of the Ark of Noah, 3 @ Fr Luke Dysinger, OSB.

Leave a Response »

 

Hilary of Poitiers: God was Born to Take Us Into Himself, and Man was to Abide Eternally in God Wednesday, Dec 12 2012

In His birth, His passion, and His death, Jesus Christ passed through all the circumstances of our nature, but He bore them all by the power of His own.

He was Himself the cause of His birth, He willed to suffer what He could not suffer, He died though He lives forever.

Yet God did all this not merely through man, for He was born of Himself, He suffered of His own free will, and died of Himself. He did it also as man, for He was really born, suffered and died.

These were the mysteries of the secret counsels of heaven, determined before the world was made. The Only-begotten God was to become man of His own will, and man was to abide eternally in God.

God was to suffer of His own will, that the malice of the devil, working in the weakness of human infirmity, might not confirm the law of sin in us, since God had assumed our weakness.

God was to die of His own will, that no power, after that the immortal God had constrained Himself within the law of death, might raise up its head against Him, or put forth the natural strength which He had created in it. Thus God was born to take us into Himself, suffered to justify us, and died to avenge us.

For our manhood abides forever in Him, the weakness of our infirmity is united with His strength, and the spiritual powers of iniquity and wickedness are subdued in the triumph of our flesh, since God died through the flesh.

St Paul…writes: in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him ye are made full, Who is the head of all principalities and powers. In Him ye are made full. As the fulness of the Godhead is in Him, so we are made full in Him.

[...] All who are, or shall be, regenerated through the hope of faith to life eternal, abide even now in the body of Christ.

Afterwards they shall be made full no longer in Him, but in themselves, at the time of which Paul says: Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory.

Now…we are made full in Him, that is, by the assumption of His flesh, for in Him dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

[...] Our fulness in Him constitutes His headship and principality over all power, That in His name every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things below, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord in the glory of God the Father.

Hilary of Poitiers (c.300-368): On St Matthew’s Gospel ch. 11, translated by M.F. Toale, D.D. (PL 9, 978) @ Lectionary Central.

Leave a Response »

 

Guerric of Igny: Christ – the Way by which We Journey and the Eternity which is Our Journey’s End Monday, Dec 10 2012

Be ready to go and meet the Lord, O Israel, for he is coming. You too must be ready, for at a time when you do not expect it the Son of Man will come.

Nothing is more certain than that he is coming, nothing more uncertain than when he is coming.

So far is it from being our province to know the times and seasons which the Father has appointed by his own authority, that not even to the angels who stand in his presence is it granted to know that day and hour.

As for our own last day, it is most sure that this will come upon us, but most unsure when, or where, or from what quarter it will come.

[...] There is only one security, and that is never to feel secure. Thus our fear, prompting us to watch ourselves carefully, keeps us always prepared until fear gives way to security, not security to fear.

How beautiful a thing it is, how blessed, not merely to face death without anxiety, but through the testimony of a good conscience to triumph gloriously in it!

[...] It belongs to our human condition, I know, to quail before the wrench of death, since even the perfect are unwilling to have the old body stripped off and would rather wish to have the new body put on over it.

[...] Yet whether my distress arises from my human feelings or from my falling short in holiness or from my fear of judgment, I can say with the righteous psalmist:

You, O Lord, will be mindful of your mercy; you will display your tender love and faithfulness and snatch my soul from the midst of the young lions.

Then after my dismay sleep will come at once and I shall find rest.

Do you, then, Lord, rise up to meet me as I run to meet you. Since I have not the strength to scale your summits unless you stretch out your right hand to me whom your hands have made, rise to meet me, and see whether there is any sinful way in me.

If you find any sinful way at all, then take it from me; grant me the grace to live by your law and lead me in the way of eternity, that is, in Christ who is the way by which we journey and the eternity which is our journey’s end: an undefiled way and a blessed dwelling place.

Guerric of Igny (c.1070/80-1157): Sermon 3 on Advent 3.5 (PL 185, 18-20), from the Monastic Office of Vigils, Saturday of the First Week in Advent, Year 1.

Leave a Response »