Candlemas in Heiligenkreuz 2023

St Thomas Aquinas as a Model of Happiness

A Sermon Preached at the Katholische Hochschule ITI on the Feast of St Thomas Aquinas, Trumau, January 28^th, 2023

I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came upon me: And I preferred her before kingdoms and thrones, and esteemed riches nothing in comparison of her. (Wisdom 7:7-8)

The Greek historian Herodotus recounts that Solon, the lawgiver of Athens, travelled through the world and saw many things. On travelling through Asia Minor, he visited the fabulously wealthy king Croesus of Lydia. Croesus had his servants show off his many treasures to Solon. Then Croesus asked Solon who the happiest man whom Solon has seen in all his travels might be, expecting that Solon will say that none is happier than Croesus himself. Solon, however, answered that Tellus the Athenian was the happiest, for he lived at a time when his city prospered, he had excellent sons and grandsons, and he died at last a glorious death fighting for his city. Rather surprised, Croesus asks him who the second happiest of men might be, expecting to at least get the second prize. But Solon answers that two Argive athletes, the brothers Cleobis and Biton, were the next happiest. These two had achieved a great feat of strength that gave great honor to their mother, she prayed to the gods that they might receive the greatest gift that mortals can receive. The gods heard her prayer and granted her sons the gift of death. Solon explains to Croesus that we should call no man happy until he has reached his end (telos), because only then is he out of reach of the capricious cruelty of the jealous gods. Whoever is lucky enough to escape misfortunes in life, and to prosper and see his city and his relatives prosper, and then die before his blessings can be snatched away from him: this is a happy man.[1]

Pope Benedict XVI

In the latest episode of The Josias Podcast we reflect with gratitude on the life, death, and writings of Pope Benedict XVI. Urban Hannon and I also recount going to his funeral in Rome.

I also take the opportunity to read from my favorite book of Ratzinger’s, a small volume based on a retreat that he preached to priests of the Communion and Liberation Movement, entitled The Yes of Jesus Christ: Spiritual Exercises in Faith, Hope, and Love. It is one of Ratzinger’s most Thomistic books, being inspired in part by his re-reading of Josef Pieper’s trilogy on the theological virtues. The part on hope is particularly brilliant, anticipating some of the key points of by favorite of his encyclicals: Spe Salvi, but expressed with even greater simplicity and directness. The initial chapter on faith is also very good.

Here is the quote that I read on the Podcast:

[What] seems to be important is that the greatness of soul of the human vocation reaches beyond the individual aspect of human existence and cannot be squashed back into the merely private sphere. A society that turns what is specifically human into something purely private and defines itself in terms of a complete secularity (which moreover inevitably becomes a pseudo-religion and a new all-embracing system that enslaves people)—this kind of society will of its nature be sorrowful, a place of despair: it rests on a diminution of human dignity. A society whose public order is consistently determined by agnosticism is not a society that has become free but a society that has despaired, marked by the sorrow of man who is fleeing from God and in contradiction with himself. A Church that did not have the courage to underline the public status of its image of man would no longer be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the city set on a hill.

“I form the light, and create darkness”

“I form the light, and create darkness” (Isaias 45:7). Today’s Saint, John of the Cross, shows us how necessary both light and darkness are to the spiritual life. Light in order that we might know god and be enflamed with love for Him, darkness that our love might be purified from all attachment to creatures.

Ratzinger Conference in Steubenville

I just attended a conference on the Josef Ratzinger’s/ Pope Benedict XVI’s theology of the Church in Steubenville, jointly organized by the Holy See’s Josef Ratzinger Foundation and Franciscan University of Steubenville (October 20th-21st). The conference was lively and extremely thought provoking, with a large number of scholars, of various schools of thought, addressing all aspects of Ratzinger’s ecclesial theology.

^{Fr. Lombardi reads the Pope Emeritus’s letter to the conference}

The highlight of the conference came right at the start, when Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, of the Joseph Ratzinger Foundation reading a letter that the Pope Emeritus sent to the conference. The letter is a notable document of Ratzinger’s memory of Vatican II and its background. He wrote about the situation after World War I in Germany, recalling Guardini’s famous dictum about the Church awakening in souls. I could not help wondering, what Vatican II would have been like had it been held in the interwar period, with the strongly anti-individualistic, corporatist ethos of those days. Pope Benedict went on to discuss his own work on Augustine’s City of God after World War II. He sees that work, and the great Augustine Conference in Paris in 1954 as being essentially in continuity with the interwar “awakening of the Church,” but there are of course significant differences, to do (in part) with the anti-authoritarian reaction of the postwar period. In any event, Pope Benedict emphasized the way the new interpretation of Augustine to which he contributed decisively broke with the liberal reading of Augustine found, for example, in Heinrich Scholz. This was certainly an important achievement. Pope Benedict also, however, reiterated his acceptance of the Paris Conference’s rejection of medieval political Augustinianism’s interpretation of Augustine (a rejection that I myself find somewhat questionable).

St Thérèse and the Contemplative Heart of the Intellectual Life

A Sermon Preached at the Katholische Hochschule ITI on the Feast of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face, Trumau, October 1^st, 2022. PDF.

Yesterday we already anticipated the Feast of St Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face. And today we celebrate again fittingly giving our patroness a double Feast. From the very beginning of the ITI, her holy countenance has watched over us with generous and benevolent love.

When the ITI was first planted, like a delicate seedling,[1] it more than once seemed that it would wither and fail. On each occasion, the intercession of St Thérèse saved us. For example, one occasion, when the ITI was about to be closed for lack of funds. The president was in America, making a last-ditch effort to find enough donations to keep the Institute going. The students prayed a novena to St Thérèse. And then, quite unexpectedly, help came from St Thérèse’s own country, from France, from Monsieur Michelin, the pious industrialist— a generous gift that kept the ITI in existence.

Pater Albert

Die 20 mensis Junii anni 2022 obiit in Abbatia B.M.V. ad Sanctam Crucem, P. Albertus Urban, anno ætatis suæ 92, professionis 73, sacerdotii vero 68.
Pro cuius anima vestras precamur orationes et sacrificiorum suffragia ex caritate et orabimus pro vestris.

Arcanum

In Arcanum divinae sapientiae Pope Leo XIII notes that Christianity tried to end the double-standard in matrimonial morality common in ancient times. Among pagans, he notes, the allowance of divorce and other evils gave men a specious freedom or rather licence, while degrading women:

Man assumed right of dominion over his wife, ordering her to go about her business, often without any just cause; while he was himself at liberty “to run headlong with impunity into lust, unbridled and unrestrained, in houses of ill-fame and amongst his female slaves, as if the dignity of the persons sinned with, and not the will of the sinner, made the guilt.”(4) When the licentiousness of a husband thus showed itself, nothing could be more piteous than the wife, sunk so low as to be all but reckoned as a means for the gratification of passion, or for the production of offspring. Without any feeling of shame, marriageable girls were bought and sold, tike so much merchandise,(5) and power was sometimes given to the father and to the husband to inflict capital punishment on the wife.

Christians, however, charged the husband to be as faithful as the wife:

 ‘And thus the rights of husbands and wives were made equal: for, as St. Jerome says, “with us that which is unlawful for women is unlawful for men also, and the same restraint is imposed on equal conditions.”(23) The self-same rights also were firmly established for reciprocal affection and for the interchange of duties; the dignity of the woman was asserted and assured; and it was forbidden to the man to inflict capital punishment for adultery,(25) or lustfully and shamelessly to violate his plighted faith.

Christian morality imposes strict obligations, that limit superficial freedom of action, but it is at the service of a deeper moral freedom. The liberals of Pope Leo’s time, however, convinced by Enlightenment philosophy, wanted to destroy those Christian restraints in the name of freedom. Their main goal was the legalization of divorce:

Yet, owing to the efforts of the archenemy of mankind, there are persons who, thanklessly casting away so many other blessings of redemption, despise also or utterly ignore the restoration of marriage to its original perfection. […] The chief reason why they act in this way is because very many, imbued with the maxims of a false philosophy and corrupted in morals, judge nothing so unbearable as submission and obedience; and strive with all their might to bring about that not only individual men, but families, also-indeed, human society itself-may in haughty pride despise the sovereignty of God. […] For, the salutary fear of God being removed, and there being no longer that refreshment in toil which is nowhere more abounding than in the Christian religion, it very often happens, as indeed is natural, that the mutual services and duties of marriage seem almost unbearable; and thus very many yearn for the loosening of the tie which they believe to be woven by human law and of their own will, whenever incompatibility of temper, or quarrels, or the violation of the marriage vow, or mutual consent, or other reasons induce them to think that it would be well to be set free. Then, if they are hindered by law from carrying out this shameless desire, they contend that the laws are iniquitous, inhuman, and at variance with the rights of free citizens; adding that every effort should be made to repeal such enactments, and to introduce a more humane code sanctioning divorce.

Divorce increases superficial freedom of choice, but it leads to moral slavery and the destruction of human happiness and society. Moreover, Pope Leo argues, divorce re-introduces the double-standard between husband and wife that had characterized paganism:

Truly, it is hardly possible to describe how great are the evils that flow from divorce. Matrimonial contracts are by it made variable; mutual kindness is weakened; deplorable inducements to unfaithfulness are supplied; harm is done to the education and training of children; occasion is afforded for the breaking up of homes; the seeds of dissension are sown among families; the dignity of womanhood is lessened and brought low, and women run the risk of being deserted after having ministered to the pleasures of men. Since, then, nothing has such power to lay waste families and destroy the mainstay of kingdoms as the corruption of morals, it is easily seen that divorces are in the highest degree hostile to the prosperity of families and States, springing as they do from the depraved morals of the people, and, as experience shows us, opening out a way to every kind of evil-doing in public and in private life.

Liberal feminism understandably reacted against that double standard. Its “solution,” however, was the opposite of the Christian one. Instead of holding men to the same strict standard as women, it decided to hold women to the lax standard of men. Contraception and abortion are the means by which it is possible for women to have the same false and licentious freedom as pagan men. (Note that in pagan Rome men had the power of killing their new born children by exposure).

Easter Monday in Gaaden

In Austria the old custom of reading the story of the Road to Emmaus on Easter Monday has been preserved. In many parishes it is customary to have an “Emmaus Walk” often with an outdoor Mass at the end, as here in Gaaden. This year it was a bit cold, but worth it.

Holy Saturday in Gaaden

The “veil of death” at the Holy Sepulchre, viewed from a confessional.