Tag Archives: Marian Devotion

The Touch of a Woman

21 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by in Early Church, Faith, Marian devotion, St Luke's Gospel

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In my last two posts, I have highlighted how in medieval days Mary was revered, not least because she was approachable. That’s important, I think. Women, as a rule, are seen as non-threatening as compared with even the best-intentioned men, by men but perhaps even more by women. It’s certainly true for me.

The idea of telling my sins to a man (especially when I was young) was a very frightening thing. Not so much Christ, of course, because He knew me better than I did anyway. But I wonder, and always will if Marian devotion had been available to me in those days if it might have made a difference. Not that I was any terrible ogre, mind, but I did things that even then I wasn’t proud of, and would have been embarrassed to tell my mom, so I wonder if knowing Mary then would have made a difference.

And now, as I start to draw near the end, Mary indeed provides me much comfort. Those of you who know me will know that I am divorced and without kids, and sadly see no possibility of that changing. And yes, Mary provides a comfort, nearly a companionship, that I find in no other way, anymore. She is the one I can talk about anything with. Strange how life works out isn’t it? But so it is.

But she is much more than that, of course. She is Theotokos, the Mother of God. And that is surely much more important than my little problems, but still, she finds time to tell me that she has talked to her Son about me and to comfort this old man, not that it is overt or anything, just a feeling.

But this very human and attractive side of Our Lady goes way back in our history. In our archives there is an article, bylined by Jessica (although I wonder, as it reads more as Chalcedon) speaking of The Protoevangelium of St. James

The Protoevangelium of St. James, which dates from the mid second century, belongs to that group of works which, whilst never canonical, was treasured by Christians for centuries because it filled in the gaps left by the Gospels. Nothing will shake my conviction that in St. Luke we have portions of the memoirs of Our Lady herself; where else could the Magnificat come from, or the story of the Annunciation. It thrills me to know that when I read these things, I am reading what the Blessed Virgin herself said; so I understand why it is early Christians wanted more.

The Protoevangelium filled the gap admirably. It described the circumstances of Our Lady’s birth, and how at the age of three she was brought by her parents to the Temple. It contains one of my favourite accounts of Our Lady. When she came to the Temple she was given to the High Priest who

 set her down upon the third step of the altar, and the Lord God sent grace upon her; and she danced with her feet, and all the house of Israel loved her

How adorable is that?

Here is where those charming legends that we looked in my article on Lady Day in Harvest got their start. In the 2d century, well before the Scripture was canonized. We have always venerated Mary, she is one of the things that sets Christians apart. It is our kinder gentler side and something that is lacking in most religions which tend to be ‘by the book’ and the book alone. She introduces mercy into the whole thing, and yes, it shown forth in her Son as well. But it is, I think, one of the singularities that divide the Second Covenant from the First.

The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

31 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by in Faith, Marian devotion, Saints

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Originally published on The Catholic Thinker:

https://whysoseriousdotcom.wordpress.com/2017/05/26/the-immaculate-conception-of-the-blessed-virgin-mary/

In the Constitution Ineffabilis Deus on December 8, 1854, Pius IX pronounced and defined that the Blessed Virgin Mary “in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin.” (1)

The term conception does not mean the active or generative conception by her parents. Her body was formed in the womb of the mother, and the father had the usual share in its formation. The question does not concern the immaculateness of the generative activity of her parents. Neither does it concern the passive conception absolutely and simply (conceptio seminis carnis, inchoata), which, according to the order of nature, precedes the infusion of the rational soul. The person is truly conceived when the soul is created and infused into the body. Mary was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin at the first moment of her animation, and sanctifying grace was given to her before sin could have taken effect in her soul. (2)

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, as formally defined by Pius IX, states that Mary was sinless her entire life from the beginning of her conception. This doctrine proves to be a “stumbling block” for many non-Catholics, as they counter with the statement that God alone is sinless.

If God alone were sinless, this means that either Mary could not have been sinless, or she would have been God, correct?

Well, it isn’t as simple as that. For instance, any “Christian” will have to admit that God is not the only being to have ever been sinless, when taking a look at Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were created by God, and for a time, before their Fall, were sinless creatures. They were sinless, and yet they were not God.

Angels presently in heaven are not God, and yet they are sinless creatures. They were created without sin, and have remained sinless ever since. A person cannot just simply say that God alone is sinless, when there have been and are other sinless creatures.

Catholic Apologist Patrick Madrid says of the Immaculate Conception:

“The Immaculate Conception emphasizes four truths: (1) Mary did need a savior; (2) her savior was Jesus Christ; (3) Mary’s salvation was accomplished by Jesus through his work on the Cross; and (4) Mary was saved from sin, but in a different and more glorious way than the rest of us are.” (3)

After hearing something like this, many non-Catholics ask, “Why would Mary need a Savior if she was sinless?”

The Immaculate Conception does not mean that Mary did not need Christ as her Savior. All men, after the Fall needed Christ as their Savior, including Mary, as she says in Luke 1:47.

Catholic Apologist Tim Staples explains:

“Not a few Protestants are surprised to discover the Catholic Church actually agrees that Mary was “saved.” Indeed, Mary needed a savior! However, Mary was “saved” from sin in a most sublime manner. She was given the grace to be “saved” completely from sin so that she never committed even the slightest transgression. Protestants tend to emphasize God’s “salvation” almost exclusively to the forgiveness of sins actually committed. However, Sacred Scripture indicates that salvation can also refer to man being protected from sinning before the fact:

” ‘Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you without blemish before the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and for ever.’ (Jude 24-25)

“Six hundred years ago, the great Franciscan theologian Duns Scotus explained that falling into sin could be likened to a man approaching unaware a deep ditch. If he falls into the ditch, he needs someone to lower a rope and save him. But if someone were to warn him of the danger ahead, preventing the man from falling into the ditch at all, he would be saved from falling in the first place. Likewise, Mary was saved from sin by receiving the grace to be preserved from it. But she was still saved.” (4)

Pat Madrid goes on to add:

“Mary needed Jesus as her savior. His death on the Cross saved her, as it saves us, but its saving effects were applied to her (unlike to us) at the moment of her conception. (Keep in mind that the Crucifixion is an eternal event and that the appropriation of salvation through Christ’s death isn’t impeded by time or space.)” (5)

The usual counter argument made by non-Catholics is in reference to Romans 3:23 which says:

“For all have sinned, and do need the glory of God.”

Is this a rule with absolutely no exceptions? Everyone has sinned? Well, no “Christian” would say that Christ sinned. He is a major exception. What of children below the age of reason, those who do not know what sin is? Have they voluntarily sinned? Have aborted babies sinned? Have the mentally retarded sinned, even though they cannot comprehend sin itself? There seems to be many exceptions to what Paul is saying. It is either there are exceptions or he was not speaking of literally the entire human race.

It might be that it refers not to absolutely everyone, but just to the mass of mankind, which would allow the exceptions listed above. If not that be the case, then perhaps he is referring to everyone being subject to Original Sin, which would still have a few exceptions. (6)

The only point here is that, with all obvious exceptions to “all have sinned”, one cannot conclusively say that it is impossible for Mary to be free of sin.

After dealing with a few arguments using logic, one must wonder what is the biblical basis for the Immaculate Conception. A Catholic Life blog elaborates:

“As we look at the Hail Mary we see part of the Archangel Gabriel’s address in the exclamation: “full of grace”. Grace is defined as a supernatural gift from God’s infinite goodness given by God to His sinful people for their eternal salvation. Mary is addressed as “full of grace” which shows that she must be in complete favor of God to have earned the fullness of God’s grace. This particular instance is a special one, in which God chose Mary to be conceived sinless to make her a house for God to dwell within.” (7)

In Luke 1:28, Gabriel greets Mary with “hail, full of grace”, the Greek being kecharitomene. If Mary is full of grace, then how can she be sinful? One cannot have Christ’s life of grace within them while being in the state of sin.

Catholic Answers, in its article Immaculate Conception and Assumption comment:

“The traditional translation, “full of grace,” is better than the one found in many recent versions of the New Testament, which give something along the lines of “highly favored daughter.” Mary was indeed a highly favored daughter of God, but the Greek implies more than that (and it never mentions the word for “daughter”). The grace given to Mary is at once permanent and of a unique kind.Kecharitomene is a perfect passive participle of charitoo, meaning “to fill or endow with grace.” Since this term is in the perfect tense, it indicates that Mary was graced in the past but with continuing effects in the present. So, the grace Mary enjoyed was not a result of the angel’s visit. In fact, Catholics hold, it extended over the whole of her life, from conception onward. She was in a state of sanctifying grace from the first moment of her existence.”  (8)

The next piece of biblical evidence in found in Genesis.

“We see a crucial statement in Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmity between you [Satan] and the woman, between your seed and her seed; he will crush your head, and you will strike at his heel.” This passage is especially significant in that it refers to the “seed of the woman,” a singular usage. The Bible, following normal biology, otherwise only refers to the seed of the man, the seed of the father, but never to the seed of the woman. Who is the woman mentioned here? The only possibility is Mary, the only woman to give birth to a child without the aid of a human father, a fact prophesied in Isaiah 7:14. If Mary were not completely sinless this prophesy becomes untenable. Why is that? The passage points to Mary’s Immaculate Conception because it mentions a complete enmity between the woman and Satan. Such an enmity would have been impossible if Mary were tainted by sin, original or actual (see 2 Corinthians 6:14). This line of thinking rules out Eve as the woman, since she clearly was under the influence of Satan in Genesis 3.” (9)

If Mary were not free of sin, why should the angel Gabriel call her “full of grace”? By being under sin, how could there be enmity between Mary and Satan? One cannot merely look over these verses.

The Immaculate Conception is reasonable from a logical stand point. If God was to be born as a man, why would he be born in a creature of sin? God’s eyes can’t stand evil (Habukkuk 1:13). How could he be created within a creature under Satan’s power? Does that even seem logical?

If you were to create your own mother, as God the Son did, would you not make her perfect? That’s what God did.

“O God, who by the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin didst prepare a worthy dwelling place for Thy Son…”

(Collect for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1962 Roman Missal)

(1) http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm

(2) Ibid.

(3) http://patrickmadrid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Madrid_ark_newcov.pdf

(4) https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/hail-mary-conceived-without-sin

(5) http://patrickmadrid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Madrid_ark_newcov.pdf

(6) https://www.catholic.com/tract/immaculate-conception-and-assumption

(7) http://acatholiclife.blogspot.com/2005/10/immaculate-conception.html

(8) https://www.catholic.com/tract/immaculate-conception-and-assumption

(9) http://patrickmadrid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Madrid_ark_newcov.pdf

The Miracle at Fatima: the centenary

13 Saturday May 2017

Posted by in Faith, Fatima, Marian devotion

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[*Trigger warning for Bosco – do not read, it will bring on strange palpitations]

It is now a century since the Blessed Virgin appeared in the Cova del Iria in Fatima, to three peasant children. She would appear to Lucia dos Santos and Jacinta and Francisco Marto four more times. On the last occasion, in October 1917, a huge crowd gathered to see her, as rumour had spread that a sign would be granted. It was. On that day ‘the sun danced’, or at least that was what onlookers reported – the sun seemed to move, come close to the earth – some even thought (as men and women will) that the end times had come. It had not. Within four years two of the little ‘seers’, Jacinta and Francisco, were dead; Lucia, who became a nun, lived on until 2005. Today, Pope Francis will canonise Jacinta and Francisco. What began as a small, local phenomenon, has become a global one.

Jesus himself lamented the tendency of mankind to demand signs, not least because it always needed more signs. The Church imposes no obligation upon us to believe the revelations of Fatima, although the canonisation of the little Seers is a clear statement of its view; we can choose to believe or not. Faith does not depend on signs, but the signs given at Fatima were the ones our age needed to hear. It is natural that our age should respond by shutting its eyes to them. “What”, it says, “a miraculous sign, well, we don’t believe in such things, we seek rational explanations”. But there is nothing rational about rejecting a priori miraculous events; Christian history is full of them, and our faith is founded on the greatest miracle of all – that God became man for our sakes, died on the Cross and was raised again on the third day. If we believe that, how can there be a problem with any other miracle?

Our Lady calls for repentance. Again, our age offers cheap forgiveness, so what need has it for repentance? The Church, like Christianity in general, has more or less topped talking about hell, and the way it emphasises that all can be forgiven, shades too readily into the message that all are forgiven. Our Lady of Fatima warns of the perils of hell. Our age has abolished hell and does not want to hear about it; yet another reason we prefer not to listen to the message of Fatima. She also calls for penance, something else with which our age is uncomfortable, so much so that it tends to find the self-mortification of the little seers almost a form of child abuse. Then, of course, is the idea that God might send a war as punishment for the sins of the world. We have constructed a God outside of time and space, so the notion he intervenes, as he always has, is yet another reason we are uncomfortable with the message from Fatima.

Yet what, in any of it, is not there from the beginning? We are called to repentance and penance by a God who intervenes to save us from the fires of hell and who wants all souls led to heaven. That the mother of Our Saviour should exercise her maternal care for her children and seek to lead all souls to the path that leads to her Son is, if one stops to pray, the most obvious thing in this world or the next. But the world does not want to believe in hell, so closes its ears. But the message from Our Lady through the little Seers is as relevant now as it ever has been.

As Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco did, so must we do. They listened, they did penance, they prayed the Rosary, and they spread the message that God wants to lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of his mercy. The message of Fatima is not one set apart for private revelation, it is the call our age needs to heed. For those who want to know more, there is a new book out by the estimable Professor Stephen Bullivant on the meaning of the Fatima Prayer – I recommend it highly.

O My Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who are in most need of Thy mercy.

What could be more relevant to our age than these words> If we will not turn to Jesus and repent, then the path ahead of us is clear enough. That some men will focus upon ‘Diana worship’ when they should be focussing on their sins, says much for why we should heed the lessons of Fatima. St Francisco, St Jacinta, Blessed Sr Lucia, pray for us, Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death.

Marian devotion

11 Thursday May 2017

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Catholic Tradition, Faith, Marian devotion

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This is a topic which seems to generate a good deal of heat; the problem is that energy so deployed might be better utilised to bring light. To bring a charge of ‘Mary worship’ against another Christian is to accuse them of blasphemy – of putting someone else in the place of God. Such a charge should not be levelled because you thought that when someone bowed to a statue they were worshipping it. That is to elevate your own limited cultural experience to the status of a universal norm. If I bow to Queen Elizabeth II, it does not mean I worship her. Over-literal readings of the Bible have a lot to answer for. In the culture of ancient Israel bowing to a statue was a sign of worship, which is why Moses told us God forbade it; but God did not ban the making of images – as anyone familiar with his instructions for the Ark of the Covenant will know. There are those uncomfortable with emotionalism in religion, there are those deaf to poetic language, and alas, such people tend also to be addicted to over-literal readings of Scripture, although few of them, thanks the Lord, actually pluck out their own right eye or chop off their own right hand.

No Catholic thinks that Our Lady delivers salvation to us, but every Christian knows that she was the gateway through which Our Salvation entered this world of sin, and some of us like to express our gratitude to her for that. We know it is easy to misread such devotion, not least because we have a commentator here, Bosco, who does so every day, but again, it is necessary to stress that those doing this incur the serious charge of calling their brothers and sisters in Christ ‘fool’ – they might want to look up the words of Jesus on such matters.

This is the month in which the Church celebrates the Blessed Virgin, which is one reason we have just had a series on the definition of the dogma of the Theotokos. It is also the month in which we shall soon celebrate the centenary of Fatima, on which there will be a post here on 13th May. But why do I choose to write on Our Lady? The answer is a simple one; I owe her a great deal, not simply in the way all Christians do, but also for her help personally.

It was through the Rosary that I was led into the Church; that was her guidance. She has been a never-failing source of solace, a constant refuge. Could I not, you might ask, find these things in her Son? Good question. All I can say is that she guided me to her Son, and that redoubles my devotion.

In this I am one in a long line, which includes St Cyril and the Blessed John Henry Newman and St John Paul II and Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. Perhaps we are all stupid and/or deluded, and we are all Diana worshippers, after all, between us we only have about nine degrees and deep historical knowledge, what is any of that to put into the balance against the opinion of a Protestant with an opinion? The Pope is only infallible on certain matters, but the Protestant with an opinion on Our Lady is always infallible.

Our Lady is the greatest human being God ever made. All generations call her blessed. In saying that, I am part of the long chain.

Ephesus: the aftermath

09 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Marian devotion, st cyril of alexandria

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It took sixty years after Nicaea before its results could be said to have been accepted by a majority of Christians; even then, it took an expansion of the Creed agreed there before anything resembling a consensus was reached. In the case of Ephesus, there was a more ready consensus – but also a resistance to the doctrine. This is not the place to go into the history of the so-called ‘Nestorian’ Church, but for those interested there is a good short series on it on this blog starting with this introduction. The whole dispute had been one about the nature of Christ, and it was that subject, and especially the issue of the legitimacy of confessing two natures in Christ after the Incarnation, which occupied the next three Councils: Ephesus II in 449, Chalcedon in 451 and Constantinople II in 553.

It is worth dwelling a little more on the reconciliation with Antioch, because it is one of the few examples we have of such a major potential schism being healed.

The reconciliation with John of Antioch had been an act of great courage on Cyril’s part. Right through the year after Ephesus, most of Syria had been in the rejectionist camp; Theodosius’ instructions that they should accept what had been decided had been ignored, and the Syrians had made a rejection of Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas a condition of reconciliation. Had Cyril been the man portrayed by Gibbon he would not have acted as he did, and there would have been no reunion.

Cyril gave no ground on what he had said, but did make it plain that his condemnations had been of Nestorius, not of the whole Antiochene school. John of Antioch offered an explanation of his position which Cyril found orthodox; Cyril insisted that they accept the deposition and condemnation of Nestorius. With good will on both sides, the way to substantial reunion was found. Once orthodoxy had been established, Cyril worked hard to make the yoke easier on those whose pride had been assailed. If only some later Popes had behaved in such a manner. It is terribly unfair that Cyril has been stigmatised in the way he has been; in practice, once the central theological orthodoxy was established, he was flexible on other matters.

It was, as the Pope told Cyril, his triumph. But within his own Church, and within the Syrian one, there were those who wanted a different sort of triumph – one more akin to that won by Rome against Carthage. Nestorius never accepted his fate, and even in exile in the prison colony of the Great Oasis in Egypt, continued to protest his case; his Bazaar of Heraclides was rediscovered in the nineteenth century, and for those with a taste for such things, stands as a monument to human vanity. Theodoret of Cyrrhus  continued to agitate against Cyril, and would help cause the next great crisis.

As for Cyril, his victory won, he continued to write on Christological issues. His three great Christological works: That the Christ is One; The Exposition of the Creed; The Three Books to the Monks, as well as the monumental Against Julian the Apostate all belong to this last period of his life. He died on 27 June 444, just short of his 70th birthday. He was the greatest theologian of his time; one the the greatest of all time. It was fitting that he should have been called ‘The Seal of all the Fathers’. Had his successor, Dioscorus, possessed a fraction of either his genius in theology of diplomacy, much ill might have been averted.

It remains only to comment on what Cyril achieved – from his own point of view.

St Cyril praises Our Lady at Ephesus

07 Sunday May 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Faith, st cyril of alexandria

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One of the tragedies of the Reformation as it progressed was that narrow and literal minded men not only lost contact with the age-old devotion of Christians to Our Lady, but, in their ignorance, sought to suggest that her place in Christian devotion was, in some unspecified way, a version of the worship of Diana which had taken place in Ephesus. Quite how it was that a Church which canonised St Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, which mentions this tradition at Ephesus, but makes clear Paul made converts there, came to adopt ‘Diana worship’, is never explained by such people. Being both rather ignorant and literal minded, and perhaps with a trace or three of misogyny, they see veneration of the Mother of God, they vaguely know there was a cult of Diana at Ephesus, so they put 1 and 1 together and come up with 11, never stopping to explain two things: why Christians would worship Diana in another guise; and why none of their bishops would have noticed?

Ephesus was, as Cyril knew, the place where the Blessed Virgin had come to live with St John, the pair of them fulfilling Jesus’ charge to them. Our friend Bosco poured scorn on the idea, it is not, after all, in the Bible. Well, of course, the charge from Jesus is there, and unless we suppose the pair of them disobeyed that command, we believe they were faithful to Him. But why Ephesus? It was certainly traditional by the time of Cyril, but where did the tradition originate?

One of the Churches to whom St John addressed a letter in the Book of the Apocalypse, was that at Smyrna. Now known as Izmir and the third largest city in Turkey, it is located just north of the old capital of Roman Ephesus. St Polycarp, who was martyred in 156, lived there, and was a disciple of St John, whom he had known as a young man, and by whom he had been brought to Christ. St Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons who died in 200, was a disciple of Polycarp’s, and carried forward the traditions he was taught by the disciple of St John. Among those traditions was that the two saints, John and Our Lady, lived in Ephesus; that house has been uncovered by archaeologists. Naturally, those who prefer their own unaided interpretation of Scripture to the traditions handed on by the Church will do what some of St John’s own disciples did, which is to deny his testimony. The rest of us will respect that a faithful disciple of a faithful disciple of St John knew what he was talking about.

All of that is by way of prelude to an examination of St Cyril’s speech at the opening of the Council at Ephesus, a city steeped in stories of the life of Our Lady and St John. The first of the Church Fathers to have a developed Mariology was Irenaeus. He made no claim to originality in what he wrote, and was recording systematically what the generation before him had taken for granted – it was, after all, a time when first-hand testimony of those who had known the Apostles was beginning to fade – hence the need to note it down. He saw Our Lady as the New Eve, through whose obedience the disobedience of the first Eve was redeemed. Where Eve’s disobedience had condemned mankind, Mary’s obedience brought into the world Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. In emphasising the reality of Jesus as a man incarnate of the Virgin, Irenaeus fought the heresy of docestism, which taught that Jesus was just a man filled with the Spirit (a statement recently made here by our friend Bosco, who was unaware he was repeating the earliest heresy). All of these themes we find in St Cyril’s address to the Fathers at the opening of the Council.

I see here a joyful company of Christian men met together in ready response to the call of Mary, the holy and ever-virgin Mother of God. The great grief that weighed upon me is changed into joy by your presence, venerable Fathers. Now the beautiful saying of David the psalmist: How good and pleasant it is for brothers to live together in unity (Psalm 133) has come true for us.

Therefore, holy and incomprehensible Trinity, we salute you at whose summons we have come together to this church of Mary, the Mother of God.

Mary, Mother of God, we salute you. Precious vessel, worthy of the whole world’s reverence, you are an ever-shining light, the crown of virginity, the symbol of orthodoxy, an indestructible temple, the place that held him whom no place can contain, mother and virgin. Because of you the holy gospels could say: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

We salute you, for in your holy womb was confined him who is beyond all limitation. Because of you the holy Trinity is glorified and adored; the cross is called precious and is venerated throughout the world; the heavens exult; the angels and archangels make merry; demons are put to flight; the devil, that tempter, is thrust down from heaven; the fallen race of man is taken up on high; all creatures possessed by the madness of idolatry have attained knowledge of the truth; believers receive holy baptism; the oil of gladness is poured out; the Church is established throughout the world; pagans are brought to repentance.

And there, of course, we come to the heart of the matter. For Cyril, as for all Christians, the fact of the Incarnation is a cause of overwhelming joy, and that leads him to praise Our Lady extensively. This, of course, is the sort of thing which dour Protestants tend not to get, which makes one wonder what they do when they are taken up with the sheer joy of Christ? St Cyril, however, has only just begun:

What more is there to say? Because of you the light of the only-begotten Son of God has shone upon those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death; prophets pronounced the word of God; the apostles preached salvation to the Gentiles; the dead are raised to life, and kings rule by the power of the holy Trinity.

Who can put Mary’s high honor into words? She is both mother and virgin. I am overwhelmed by the wonder of this miracle. Of course no one could be prevented from living in the house he had built for himself, yet who would invite mockery by asking his own servant to become his mother?

Behold then the joy of the whole universe. Let the union of God and man in the Son of the Virgin Mary fill us with awe and adoration. Let us fear and worship the undivided Trinity as we sing the praise of the ever-virgin Mary, the holy temple of God, and of God himself, her Son and spotless Bridegroom. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Formulaic language? No, there is a depth of devotion there which, as events were to show, was shared by so many others. This was no expression of a new doctrine. It was the eloquent restatement of one always held by Christians. Reading it gives one some idea of the depth of Cyril’s devotion – and an insight into why he fought this fight as fiercely as he did.

St Cyril: how to write about God

05 Friday May 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Marian devotion, st cyril of alexandria

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One of the main shortcomings of Gibbon’s approach, is that in failing to understand what Cyril thought was at stake, he misses the real criticism which might be, and was, levelled at Cyril, and it is one which nearly wrecked the Council – and the unity of Christendom.

Cyril’s Third letter was a sound statement of orthodoxy. If he had left things there he would have saved himself much trouble; but he did not. The Twelve Chapters which accompanied them could be read as an uncompromising attack on the whole Antiochene school. One rule of thumb always works; when something can be read as an attack, it will be. Nestorius sent the Chapters to John, bishop of Antioch, who, prompted his two leading theologians, Andrew of Samosata and Theodoret of Cyrrhus to fire counter-blasts at Cyril. (McGuckin, pp. 44-4)

Some good would come from the subsequent epistolary warfare, although not in time for the Council. Andrew and Theodore both accused Cyril of Appolinarianism, that is of believing that Christ did not have a human soul but was a man with a divine soul, and therefore not man at all. This could certainly be one reading of the theopaschite language used by Cyril ‘God died in the flesh’; but it was a misunderstanding of the paradoxical language which Cyril loved to use. Both Theodore and Andrew hammered out an expression of the Antiochene position which made it less liable to be taken as adoptionist; that is that Our Lord was a man whose form was infused by divinity, but not, itself, divine.

But if the controversy forced the Antiochenes to clarify their position, the same was true for Cyril. His language had left him open to the charges laid against him, and his answers in treatises Response to the Orientals, and To Euoptus, while they dealt with the charge of Appolinarianism, did not quite provide an answer to the key question at issue. Should Jesus be ‘properly and distinctly viewed as a human individual (a Jewish man) or whether he was the divine Son in person (God).’ (McGuckin, p. 49). The Theopascite language had been meant as a paradox to show the mystery of the mode of union between the divine and the human – that is it was as such that ‘God died’. But Cyril would have to do better than that.

Cyril knew that God had become man and died for us, and on that point he would not yield; it was that which he took Nestorius to be challenging by denying to Mary the title of God bearer. But he also came to realise that he would need to do more work to explaining the way in which the humanity of Jesus was not simply a cypher.

However, the calling of the Council at Ephesus would both cut across this work, and make the urgency of it the more acute. At Ephesus Cyril, like St. Paul before him, would be fighting with the beasts.

St Cyril contra Nestorius

04 Thursday May 2017

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At the heart of the dispute was not the power struggle depicted by Gibbon and others, but the very nature of our salvation. Nestorius’ position was clear:

That God passed through the Virgin Christokos I am taught by the divine Scriptures, but that God was born from her I have not been taught anywhere

Nostorius argued that those who taught that Mary was Theotokos were ‘heretics’. (Russell, p. 34) This he proclaimed from the cathedra in Constantinople; this it was which so concerned Cyril. As neither of his first two letters secured any concessions from Nestorius, and with the latter clearly marshalling the forces of the Empire against him, Cyril needed to gather his own resources. His attempts to garner support from the sister of Theodosius back-fired; but he fared better elsewhere.

In the summer of 430 Cyril sent Pope Celestine a dossier on Nestorius’ teaching, along with a commentary and patristic testimony. The Pope, no theologian, handed the dossier to his archdeacon, Leo (later Pope Leo the Great) and John Cassian, the two most formidable theologians in the West; they advised him that Cyril was correct.   On 11 August 430 a local synod was held in Rome. It condemned the teachings of Nestorius as heretical. Celestine told Cyril of this and appointed him his representative at the synod which it had been announced would take place at Ephesus. Nestorius’ own appeals to Celestine went unanswered. For those who care about such matters, it ought to be noted that both patriarchs appealed to Rome for support.

In November 430 a local synod at Alexandria found Nestorius guilty of heresy. St. Cyril send a third letter to Nestorius containing 12 anathemata which he was required to accept as the price of entering back into communion:

1. If anyone does not confess the Emmanuel to be truly God, and hence the holy virgin to be Mother of God (for she gave birth in the flesh to the Word of God made flesh), let him be anathema.

2. If anyone does not confess that the Word of God the Father was hypostatically united to the flesh so as to be One Christ with his own flesh, that is the same one at once God and man, let him be anathema.

3. If anyone divides the hypostases of the One Christ after the union, connecting them only by a conjunction in terms of honour or dignity or sovereignty, and not rather by a combination in terms of natural union, let him be anathema.

4. If anyone interprets the sayings in the Gospels and apostolic writings, or the things said about Christ by the saints, or the things he says about himself, as referring to two prosopa or hypostases, attributing some of them to a man conceived of as separate from the Word of God, and attributing others (as divine) exclusively to the Word of God the Father, let him be anathema.

5. If anyone should dare to say that Christ was a God-bearing man and not rather that he is truly God as the one natural Son, since the Word became flesh and ‘shared in flesh and blood just like us’ (Heb.2.14), let him be anathema.

6. If anyone says that the Word of God the Father is the God or Lord of Christ, and does not rather confess the same one is at once God and man, since according to the scriptures the Word has become flesh, let him be anathema.

7. If anyone says that Jesus as a man was activated by the Word of God and invested with the glory of the Only Begotten, as being someone different to him, let him be anathema.

8. If anyone should dare to say that the assumed man ought to be worshipped along with God the Word and co-glorified and called ‘God’ as if he were one alongside another (for the continual addition of the phrase ‘along with’ demands this interpretation) and does not rather worship the Emmanuel with a single veneration and render him a single doxology since the Word became flesh, let him be anathema.

9. If anyone says that the One Lord Jesus Christ was glorified by the Spirit, using the power that came through him as if it were foreign to himself, and receiving from him the power to work against unclean spirits and to accomplish divine signs for men, and does not rather say that the Spirit is his very own, through whom he also worked the divine signs, let him be anathema.

10. The divine scripture says that Christ became ‘the high priest and apostle of our confession’ (Heb.3.1) and ‘offered himself for our sake as a fragrant sacrifice to God the Father’ (Eph.5.2). So if anyone says that it was not the very Word of God who became our high priest and apostle when he became flesh and man as we are, but it was someone different to him, a separate man born of a woman; or if anyone says that he made the offering also for himself and not rather for us alone (for he who knew no sin had no need of offerings), let him be anathema.

11. If anyone does not confess that the Lord’s flesh is life-giving and the very-own flesh of the Word of God the Father, but says that it is the flesh of someone else, different to him, and joined to him in terms of dignity, or indeed only having a divine indwelling, rather than being life-giving, as we have said, because it has become the personal flesh of the Word who has the power to bring all things to life, let him be anathema.

12. If anyone does not confess that the Word of God suffered in the flesh, was crucified in the flesh, and tasted death in the flesh, becoming the first-born from the dead, although as God he is life and life-giving, let him be anathema.

This, along with the decision of the Roman synod, was conveyed to Nestorius on 30 November. Only two weeks earlier, on 19 November 430, Theodosius II had invited the bishops to a synod to be held at Pentecost (7 June 431). The scene was set for one of the most controversial of all ecumenical councils, and an occasion which would provide Cyril’s opponents with much ammunition.

St Cyril, Gibbon and the limits of Enlightenment thought

03 Wednesday May 2017

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After the due acknowledgement to St Cyril’s great predecessor, St Athanasius, I want to return to Cyril himself, and, as May is the month of Mary, to an examination of his role in the definition of the dogma that Our Lady is the Theotokos, the God-Bearer, the Mother of God. That involves a preliminary skirmish with Edward Gibbon whose Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, contains one of his most vicious pen portraits, which has set the tone for the way in which later writers have treated St Cyril. If history does not repeat itself, the same cannot be said of historians.

As an Enlightenment thinker, Edward Gibbon had little patience with religion, and even less interest in understanding it as a motive force in politics. Thus, when he came to examine St Cyril’s part in the Council of Ephesus, which defined the dogma that Our Lady is the ‘God-bearer’ or Theotokos, he brushed aside impatiently the immense weight of writings in which Cyril explained his case, and went straight for a motive he understood – power. In this he was a pioneer for a method many historians have used since. It is essentially reductionist. It begins with the view, clearly shared by the historian, that all this religion stuff is to do with power, and proceeding from that assumption, goes on to ‘prove’ it is so. Thus, writing about the background to Ephesus, Gibbon observes:

Cyril was at length awakened by the exaltation of a rival more worthy of his esteem and hatred. After the short and troubled reign of Sisinnius, bishop of Constantinople, the factions of the clergy and people were appeased by the choice of the emperor, who, on this occasion, consulted the voice of fame, and invited the merit of a stranger. Nestorius, native of Germanicia, and a monk of Antioch, was recommended by the austerity of his life, and the eloquence of his sermons …

Gibbon assumes the lowest of motives: ‘Religion was the pretence’, he explains, adding that: 

in the judgment of a contemporary saint, ambition was the genuine motive of episcopal warfare

The saint concerned was St. Isidore of Pelusium. If we read what the Blessed Saint (who was probably related to Cyril) wrote, we see how disingenuous Gibbon is. St. Isidore wrote:

Liking cannot see far ahead, while dislike cannot see clearly. So if you wish to remedy both of these sight problems, do not spout out such vehement statements, instead be more fair in your accusations. Even God All Knowing, before his birth, thought it best out of his love for man to come down and see the boisterousness of the Sodomites, teaching us a lesson in fully inquiring. Many of the people who have come to Ephesus (are) ridiculing you for acting out of personal enmity and not for the doctrine of Jesus Christ. “Here’s this nephew of Theophilus, they say, imitating his way of thinking. Like him, he falls into a rage against the God-loving John, inspired by God, and he desires ever so much to lecture, even though there is a great difference between the people (who are) deciding.”

Isidore, is referring to Cyril’s uncle and predecessor, Theophilus of Alexandria who had brought down St. John Chrysostom at the Synod of Oak. He is warning Cyril about how to behave and what people are saying about him; what he is not doing is attributing that motive to Cyril. Had a student of mine made such a mistake, he or she would have been awarded a ‘fail’. But it illustrates the way in which a polemicist differs from the genuine historian; the latter allows the sources to shape the narrative, the former shapes the sources around the agreed narrative. That so many later historians have accepted this without question tells us more about their biases than they should be comfortable with.

Gibbon’s account tells us more about him, and the limits of Enlightenment thought, than it does about Cyril and Ephesus. Gibbon, like many moderns, cannot understand why men thought the issues at stake were worth dying for; if we are to do so, we must investigate Cyril’s thought and the context in more depth. It is to that I shall turn tomorrow and for the rest of the week.

May: the month of Mary, the Theotokos

01 Monday May 2017

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May is the month of Our Lady for Catholics. To the poorly-educated, the prejudiced and the ignorant, this will raise the issue of Catholics ‘worshipping’ her, so it is as well to say at the outset, that this is nonsense. Catholics, like all Christians, worship only God. To say that a Catholic ‘worships’ Our Lady by kissing a statue of her, would be like claiming a Protestant ‘worshipped’ the Bible by kissing it. It is the sort of pernicious sectarian tosh that has no place in Christian dialogue.

For as long as we can look back, Christians have had a veneration for Our Lady. One of the most popular non-canonical texts was the so-called Evangelion of St James, which dates to the mid or late second century, and shows that by then, the intense interest in her was being satisfied by a steady supply of imaginative literature. Nor is this surprising. Last week we looked at St Cyril of Alexandria, who had a particular devotion to Our Lady. If its origin is unclear,its depth is not. Any attempt to deny that St. Mary was the Mother of God cast doubt on the source and fact of our salvation. Cyril agreed with St. Gregory Nazianzus that what was not assumed cannot be healed.

If Christ was not both fully divine and fully human, he wrote:

 we have no longer been redeemed by God (how could we have been?) but rather by the blood of someone else. Some man or other, an impostor and a falsely-named son, has died for us. The great and venerable mystery of the incarnation of the Only Begotten has turned out to be only words and lies, for he never really became man after all. We certainly could not regard him as our Saviour who gave his blood for us, we would have to attribute this to that man.

When it came to his ears that the new Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, was denying St. Mary the title of ‘Theotokos’ (God-bearer), he was alarmed.

Our opponents have chosen to hold and teach that the Only Begotten Word of God assumed a man of the line of the divine David and Abraham, and took care to form him in the holy virgin, then conjoined himself to him, made him come to the trial of death, raised him from the dead, took him up to heaven, and seated him at the right hand of God. But if this is the case then it seems to me that the holy Fathers and all the God-inspired scriptures, and we ourselves, are speaking in vain whenever we say that he became man. Nonetheless I think that it is exactly this, and nothing else, that the all-wise John meant when he wrote: “The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14).

‘Thetokos’ was popularly translated as ‘Mother of God’. The laity had long used this appellation for the Blessed Virgin. Long before any theologian pronounced, the consensus of the faithful was orthodox – the Blessed Virgin was the Mother of Our Lord and Saviour, and since He was the God-Man (Theandros) she was the Theotokos. Popular opinion in Constantinople was outraged at any attempt to deny this; so was Cyril. In his paschal letter of Easter 429, St. Cyril affirmed the reality of the humanity of Christ and insisted on the unity of His Divine Person in terms quoted above. He composed his ‘Letter to the Monks‘ in which he founded his belief in the unity of God in his understanding of the position of Our Lady:

I was completely amazed that certain people should be in any doubt as to whether the holy virgin ought to be called the Mother of God or not. For if our Lord Jesus Christ is God, then how is the holy virgin who bore him not the Mother of God? The divine disciples handed on this faith to us even if they did not make mention of the term. We have been taught to think this way by the holy Fathers. Our Father Athanasius … composed a book for us concerning the holy and consubstantial trinity where, throughout the third discourse, he calls the holy virgin the Mother of God… the exact words are these: ‘This, then, is the purpose and essential meaning of the divine scripture, as we have said many times, that it contains a two-fold statement about the Saviour; firstly that he is eternally God,and that he is the Son being the Word, the Radiance, and the Wisdom of the Father, and secondly that later for our sake he took flesh from the virgin Mary the Mother of God and so became man’ (Contra Arianos 3.29).

At Ephesus in 432, St Cyril fought Nestorius to ensure that the correct understanding of the place of Our Lady in our salvation was enshrined in Christian doctrine. At the beginning of the month when we celebrate her, it seems respectful to remind ourselves of what St Cyril said and to honour his devotion. This is the first in a short series examining the Council of Ephesus.