The devil comes naked...

Technically this comes from St. Josemaría Escrivá's The Way, but it's a story he attributes to Pope St. Gregory the Great:

Detach yourself from people and things until you are stripped of them. For, says Pope Saint Gregory, the devil has nothing of his own in this world, and naked he comes to battle. If you go clothed to fight him, you will soon be pulled to the ground: for he will have something to catch you by.

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St. Thomas More is a genius

I give no man occasion to hold any one point or other, nor never gave any man advice or counsel therein one way or other. And for conclusion I could no farther go, whatsoever pain should come thereof. I am (quoth I) the King's true faithful subject and daily bedesman, and pray for his highness and all the realm. I do nobody no harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live. And I am dying already, and have since I came here, been divers times in the case that I thought to die within one hour. And I thank our Lord thatI was never sorry for it, but rather sorry when I saw the pang past.

I've caught parts of the Showtime series, The Tudors, and I was impressed by Jeremy Northam's portrayal of St. Thomas More. I had no idea that one of my favorite quotes from the show turns out to come from a a letter to his daughter Margaret.

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St. Josemaría Escrivá is a genius

For the record, I'm not a member of Opus Dei, and I'm not looking to become one, but I did discover St. Josemaría Escrivá's The Way while I was in seminary, and I re-discovered it online recently. I started re-reading it last night, and immediately fell in love with its gems again. Consider #4,

Don't say, That's the way I'm made… it's my character. It's your lack of character. Be a man.

I showed it to my wife last night, and she agreed with me that it seems particularly apt to some messy going-on in my extended family.

Or #9:

Say what you have just said, but in a different tone, without anger, and your argument will gain in strength and, above all, you won't offend God.

If I'd used that as a sure guideline, I likely wouldn't have written a few of the entries on this weblog…

Finally, #20:

It is inevitable that you should feel the rub of other people's characters against your own. After all, you are not a gold coin that everyone likes.

Besides, without that friction produced by contact with others, how would you ever lose those corners, those edges and projections—the imperfections and defects—of your character, and acquire the smooth and regular finish, the firm flexibility of charity, of perfection?

If your character and the characters of those who live with you were soft and sweet like sponge-cake you would never become a saint.

The world seems to want sponge-cake, yet never seems happy when it finds it.

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From first principles

The following passage from a book struck me as insightful.

In every science, as you know, there are first principles, fundamental points that one must know at the very beginning because upon them rest all the later developments and the final conclusion. These primary elements need going into more deeply, and they demand more attention, in proportion as their consequences are more important and more extensive. Our minds, it is true, are so made as to be easily put off in the analysis or meditation of fundamental notions. Every initiation to a science, like mathematics; to an art, like music; […] calls for an attention that our mind readily shirks. In its natural impatience, it would like to run ahead at once to the developments so as to admire their ordered arrangement, to the applications so as to gather and taste their fruits. But it is much to be feared that if it does not fathom the principles with care, it will merely lack solidarity in the developments it can afterwards draw from them, however brilliant those developments may appear. The conclusions will often be unstable and the applications hazardous.

I deliberately omitted a few words from the passage, because I didn't want the reader to guess what the text was about. I reckon that anyone who read this would gather that it came from the pen of an individual possessing not only experience in education, but some insight into how the human mind develops certain knowledge, as opposed to mere conjectures that usually work.

One of the major obstacles that students have with learning mathematics is their haste to hurry past the first principles, which seem pointless, and rush into the final results, so as to gather and taste their fruits. The author describes the consequences of this habit of ours perfectly: unstable and… hazardous.

Where did I find such an insightful passage? In the book Christ, the Life of the Soul by Blessed Columba Marmion. The words I excised from the text might have given away the subject matter: to a doctrine, like that of the interior life. He wrote the book nearly a century ago.

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Deal or no deal?

I wonder how many sermons and homilies have been preached, based on the television show Deal or No Deal. I also wonder how many of these sermons have been informed by the learned writings of a philosopher who had something to say about losing the ultimate deal.

One of the more pleasant aspects of graduate study was having the time to read the best Christian books by the best Christian authors.* Among these was Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy.

What do I always remember when I think of this book? This photograph:

Do not let this photograph give you the wrong idea; I finished and appreciated very much Boethius' take on life. It had just been a long day, and I was beat.

So who is this Boethius character, and what does he have to do with Deal or No Deal? Simply put: If you think your life is unfair, well, you're right. Life is unfair. Boethius' life was unfair, too.

However, Boethius fancied himself a Christian philosopher, so rather than complain about how his life was so unfair, he whiled away his time in jail trying to understand why, if the world was ruled by a just and reasonable God, it seemed as if a capricious goddess named Fortuna ran the show instead. He describes his thoughts as a conversation with Sapientia, that is, Wisdom personified as a woman. Actually, if my memory serves, the conversation tends to be dominated by Sapientia, who occasionally scolds Boethius for being so shallow.

That's rather remarkable. Boethius was a learned man in an age where learning had become rare. One of his life's great works was an attempt to preserve the ideas of Greek philosophy by translating them from Greek into Latin, making them more accessible to Westerners who were less and less likely to understand Greek. The premature end of his life cut that short, but I understand that the completed aspects of this project had an immense influence on the Middle Ages.

Yet Sapientia scolds him for being shallow. Why? For remarks like this:

In omni adversitate fortunae
infelicissimum est genus infortunii fuisse felicem.

(In every adversity of fortune,
the most unhappy kind of misfortune
is to have been happy.)

To this, she replies,

Adeo nihil est miserum nisi cum putes, contraque beata sors omnis est aequanimitate tolerantis. Quis est ille tam felix, qui cum dederit impatientiae manus statum suum mutare non optet?

I will observe that nothing is miserable unless you should think it so, and to the contrary a blessed lot is for all who endure calmly. What man is so happy, that when the hand of insufferability causes his status to change, he is delighted by it?

It's been too long since I've read this; I remember the spirit of these quotes, but I found them online, traced them back to the original Latin (also online), and translated them.

Anyway, what brings him to mind when I watch Deal or No Deal? The profound unfairness of the game, actually. It's a game based very much on chance: you have to be picked to play, you have to pick the right cases, etc. No skill or merit is involved at all. If that doesn't look a lot like how many of us start our lives, I don't know what does.

Even in the course of the game, the outcome can be determined by capricious chance. A few weeks ago, they had some spinwheel that could double, triple, or halve your earnings. One contestant's modest winnings were halved; another's were doubled. Why? Because the wheel of Fortune stopped that way. They couldn't very well affect its outcome deliberately.

Last week, meanwhile, they had a bizarre contraption where a woman picked a ball from the air, and that ball determined how many million-dollar cases she received. That strikes me as grossly unfair to all the players who came before her and had only one million-dollar case to shoot for (and often lost it quickly).

So, yeah, life's unfair to losers, and this awful television show really drives that point home. It's not particular fair to winners, either; Boethius for example spent most of his life as a successful civil servant, public citizen, and scholar, only to end up losing his head on account of a king's paranoia.

Strangely, I can't really remember the point of the book, except that Sapientia tells Boethius that if he wishes to enjoy the fortunes of Fortuna, he can hardly reject her misfortunes as well, as that is her nature. But Sapientia gives, gives, and gives again; with every new gift, more becomes available, even at the moment of death. From Boethius' Christian perspective, of course, Sapientia is not merely human wisdom, or philosophy, but is informed and enlightened by the wisdom of God.

I think I'll read that book again. Don't know how I'll find the time, though.

It turns out that I should refer to him as St. Boethius. I had forgotten about that.

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*In may case, of course, it may be said of me what President Lincoln is reputed to have said after hearing a lecture by a scholar of his day: Never has anyone dived so deeply into the wells of knowledge, and come up so dry.

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Beata Agnes in medio flammorum

The previous post reminded me of one of my favorite Latin expressions, which appears to originate in the antiphon below. The expression appears near the end, in bold. I originally saw it in the shrine to St. Agnes in the Crypt Church of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. My source for the text is this webpage at Latrobe University, but some version of this is also found in the Memorial of St. Agnes in the Liturgy of the Hours. I sometimes recite these words as a prayer when I approach communion. It summarizes an essential teaching that appears again and again in Christianity: only one thing can satisfy us, and that is union with God through Christ.

Beata Agnes in medio flammarum, expansis manibus orabat:	Amid the flames Blessed Agnes stretched her arms out in prayer:
Te deprecor, venerande, colen de, Pater metuende, quia per sanctum Filium tuum minas evasi sacrilegi tyranni, et carnis spurcitias immaculato cale transivi	"I pray to you, Father whom we ought to venerate, cherish, and fear, for through your holy Son I have emerged from the threat of the impious tyrant and with unblemished zeal I have passed over the filth of flesh.
et ecce venio ad te, quem amavi, quem quaesivi, quem semper optavi.	Behold, I come to you, whom I have loved, whom I have sought, whom I have long desired.

Notice how she prizes virginity, even above marriage. You can't work that into a prayer text these days, sung or otherwise, without attracting claims of hating the flesh or even misogyny. I have found online a translation of this passage that refers to "Satan's filth" instead of "the filth of the flesh". There may be problems with my translation, but "carnis" most definitely does not mean Satan.

Ironically, St. Agnes' reputation for preferring death to unchastity was the inspiration for one medieval play about a strong woman who overcame weak men. The playwright was a medieval woman, if you can believe it.

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St. Gemma Galgani's resolutions

I recently read the autobiography of St. Gemma Galgani. I found the beginning interesting, the middle captivating, and the end unsettling. My favorite parts consist of passages like these:

First Communion Resolutions

1. I will receive Confession and Communion each time as though it were my last.
2. I will visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament often, especially when I am afflicted.
3. I will prepare myself for every feast of our Blessed Mother by some mortification, and every evening I will ask my heavenly Mother's blessing.
4. I want to remain always in the presence of God.
5. Every time the clock strikes I will repeat three times: My Jesus, mercy.

I would have liked to add more resolutions to these but my teacher would not permit it. And she had good reason, for within a year after I returned to my family I had forgotten these resolutions as well as the good advice I had received and I became worse than before.

Some of her resolutions throughout the text fail to last much more than a few days. Boy, am I familiar with that experience! Can't remember the number of resolutions I've made that haven't lasted long at all. This is what I like about the lives of the Saints; they remind me that even my abysmals failings don't get in the way of joining their company.

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Motherhood

I don't think I could ever be a mother; I'd probably land in jail shortly after birth. It bewilders me how easily a baby's wails increase to an ungrateful rage, while you sit there cooing usessly, wondering, What on earth did I do wrong? In saner moments, you realize that there's nothing you can do, it's not about you or what you do; it's about the baby and what she wants — and she's not very good at communicating what she wants.

That makes it no less discouraging. Add to that the pains associated with nursing; sleepless nights and dirty diapers are child's play by comparison.

St. Therése writes that we are like small children who break our toys and run to God, asking him to fix them for us. Lately I've been thinking that we are like infants with no idea what is good for us, and are not very good at communicating it anyway. We wail inconsolably until someone puts a pacifier of sorts in our mouth. And boy, do we have loads of pacifiers: gadgets, computer games, television shows, music, world travel, weblogs... But none of these satisfies us in the end; what we really need is spiritual food and drink, which only God can give. And when God gives us what we need, how does man respond to God's self-offering? By drawing blood, in a manner similar perhaps to the way that nursing children sometimes draw blood from their mothers.

This reminds me vaguely of something from St. John of the Cross, who talks about the weaning of the soul from spriitual delights causing distress to the same. Let's see... Hey, I actually found it at the beginning of The Dark Night of the Soul:

2. It should be known, then, that God nurtures and caresses the soul, after it has been resolutely converted to His service, like a loving mother who warms her child with the heat of her bosom, nurses it with good milk and tender food, and carries and caresses it in her arms. But as the child grows older, the mother withholds her caresses and hides her tender love; she runs bitter aloes on her sweet breast and sets the child down from her arms, letting it walk on its own feet so that it may put aside the habits of childhood and grow accustomed to greater and more important things. &c.

It's curious how I can read about a thing and understand it quite well, then experience the same thing and realize how shallow that understanding was.

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St. John Climacus is a genius

A great quote, which I received today courtesy of Richard Huggins' email list, Minute Meditation:

Let your prayers be completely simple, for both the publican and the prodigal son were reconciled to God by a single phrase.

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Non abbiate paura!

John Paul II, Servant of the Servants of God, has gone to be with his Lord. I could write a great deal about the Pope, and perhaps I shall at a later date (let me apologize in advance); however, the best commentary comes from his own words, carefully chosen to address to the Church. Consider, for example, the title of this entry: they were the Pope's first words spoken to St. Peter's Square upon his election: Be not afraid! He carried out his pontificate in the same way that he began most of his writings: meditating on a quote from Scripture. One could characterize his entire papacy, and especially the agonies of his final days, by those first words: Be not afraid!

The other quote that I would choose to highlight, which I have found both poetic and inspiring in my own vocation, is the opening from his 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio:

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves. — Fides et Ratio (14 Sep 1998)

Many, many people would assert that faith and reason are inherently opposed to each other, but this pope, as a philosopher, knew better, and his well-reasoned encyclicals worked to remove that myth. When I was a seminarian, I heard even those who strongly disliked his policies admit the man's brilliance.

I have no doubt that a number of the saints whom he canonized, or whose writings he held forth as a model, were ready to greet him: Faustina Kowalska, Maximillian Kolbe, Edith Stein, Teresa of Calcutta, Gianna Molla, Thérèse of Lisieux, ...

Orate pro nobis.

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St. Thérèse of Lisieux is a genius

I seem to be starting a new sequence of posts here: St. So-and-so is a genius. I quote some passage of the Saint that I think "proves" s/he is a genius, a quote I've never seen before. To this point, I've asserted first that St. Thomas Aquinas is a genius, then St. Catherine of Siena. Now it comes to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and suddenly the women outnumber the men 2-1. The following two quotes come from Story of a Soul.

I'd heard before these two of St. Thérèse's allegories for our relationship with God:

• the child who repeatedly breaks her toys, then brings them back to her father with tears in her eyes, with the confidence that he will fix them;


• the garden filled with different flowers, and God's delight in having different flowers.

I've never heard of a third allegory, that of the little bird. I have only quoted a small part of it. In my not-so-humble opinion, it's far more profound than that of the child, or of the garden. Perhaps that is due to ways in which my particular history of faith is different from most people's.

When the human heart gives itself to God, it loses nothing of its innate tenderness; in fact, this tenderness grows when it becomes more pure and more divine.

— from chapter 10

I look upon myself as a weak little bird, with only a light down as covering. I am not an eagle, but I have only an eagle's EYES AND HEART. In spite of my extreme littleness I still dare to gaze upon the Divine Sun, the Sun of Love, and my heart feels within it all the aspirations of an Eagle.

The little bird wills to fly towards the bright Sun which attracts its eye, imitating its brothers, the eagles, whom it sees climbing up towards the Divine Furnace of the Holy Trinity. But alas! the only thing it can do is raise its little wings; to fly is not within its little power!

What then will become of it? Will it die of sorrow at seeing itself so weak? Oh no! the little bird will not even be troubled. With bold surrender, it wishes to remain gazing upon its Divine Sun. Nothing will frighten it, neither wind nor rain, and if dark clouds come and hide the Star of Love, the little bird will not change its place because it knows that beyond the clouds its bright Sun still shines on and that its brightness is not eclipsed for a single instant.

At times the little bird's heart is assailed by the storm, and it seems it should believe in the existence of no other thing except the clouds surrounding it; this is the moment of perfect joy for the poor weak little creature. And what joy it experiences when remaining there just the same! and gazing at the Invisible Light which remains hidden from its faith! ...

Yes, this is still one of the weaknesses of the little bird: when it wants to fix its gaze upon the Divine Sun, and when the clouds prevent it from seeing a single ray of that Sun, in spite of itself, its little eyes close, its little head is hidden beneath its wing, and the poor little thing falls asleep, believing all the time that it is fixing its gaze upon the Divine Star. ...

O Divine Word! You are the Adored Eagle whom I love and who alone attracts me! Coming into this land of exile, You willed to suffer and to die in order to draw souls to the bosom of the Eternal Fire of the Blessed Trinity. Ascending once again to the Inaccessible Light, henceforth Your abode, You remain still in this "valley of tears," hidden beneath the appearance of a white host. Eternal Eagle, You desire to nourish me with Your divine substance and yet I am but a poor little thing who would return to nothingness if Your divine glance did not give me life from one moment to the next. ...

As long as You desire it, O my Beloved, Your little bird will remain without strength and without wings and will always stay with its gaze fixed on You. It was to be fascinated by Your divine glance. It wants to become the prey of Your Love. One day I hope that You, the Adorable Eagle, will come to fetch me, Your little bird; and ascending with it to the Furnace of Love, You will plunge it for all eternity into the burning Abyss of this Love to which it has offered itself as victim.

— from chapter 9

My first suggestion to anyone who wants to read this book, is to skip the first few chapters. I didn't find them terribly edifying, rather tedious in their excessive sentimentality (Steven also commented on this some time ago).

I suppose one could start with chapter 6, but Thérèse is definitely in fine form once we get around to chapters 9 and 10. They are filled with reflections that represent an inner struggle to keep faith, and to reach for holiness.

If I know anything at all with certainty, I know that I struggle with faith and with holiness. I am nowhere close to perfection in either.

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When the Devil learned...

Passeranno i cieli, e passerà la terra,
la sua parola non passerà, alleluia, alleluia.
(The heavens will pass away, and the earth will pass away,
but his word will not pass away, alleluia, alleluia.)

— from Cantinfesta,
quoting Matthew 24.35, Mark 13.31, and Luke 21.33

A few quotes on how important it is that music lift us to God.

But when the Devil... learned that man had begun to sing through God's inspiration and, therefore, was being transformed to bring back the sweetness of the songs of heaven, he was so terrified at seeing his clever machinations go to ruin that he was greatly tormented... Thus he never ceases from confounding... the sweat beauty of both divine praise and spiritual hymns...

— Hildegard of Bingen, quoted in a PhD dissertation

The Patriarch called together the clergy to celebrate the day according to the custom. He lit the censers and arranged the singing and the choir. The Emperor went to church with the envoys, and they were brought to a prominent place where they could see the beauty of the church, hear the singing, and watch the deacons during the service. They were surprised, and marvelled, and praised the service. The Emperors Basil and Constantine called them, showered them with many gifts and honors, then said, "Go back to your land." [They reported to the Russian prince Vladimir,] "...We went to the Greeks and they took us where they worship their God, and we did not know whether we were in heaven or on earth for there is nothing on earth so beautiful. We were perplexed, but this much we know: There, God lives among people, and their service is better than in any other country. We cannot forget that beauty, for each of us has partaken of sweetness and will not now accept bitterness. Therefore, we can no longer remain in our former condition.

— reaction of Russian emissaries to Constantinople
after hearing the Divine Liturgy

I have felt, sometimes, what those Russians felt. The first time I remember it was at a Poor Clare monastery, where the sisters sang the Christmas Vigils and the Midnight Mass in Latin chant for a small crowd of us faithful. Another time was (again) at a Catholic Mass, where a choir of five or six young Italians was singing the passage above.

I can't argue convincingly in favor of Hildegard of Bingen's argument, nor can I explain in words what the Russian emissaries felt. I can only say: I have experienced it! I have felt the Mass lift me towards the transcendent God; I have felt that sensation of my smallness' being embraced and expanded by the transcendent divine; on each occasion, the music was essential to that experience.

It is incomparable.

(Odd. I didn't plan to write this tonight; I had something else in mind. Go figure!)

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Lode della carità divina

I came across this passage in St. Catherine of Siena's Dialogue a couple of years ago. It's not really a poem, not really a hymn, but it struck me as something I would want to remember.

O inestimabile, dolce carità, chi non s'infiammerebbe dinanzi ad un amore tanto smisurato?	O charity sweet and inestimable, who would not be inflamed before a love so immense?
Quale cuore può impedirsi di sentirsi mancare?	What heart could keep itself from feeling faint?
Tu, abisso di carità, sembri impazzito d'amore per le tue creature, come se non potessi vivere senza di loro, benché tu sia il nostro Dio, che non ha bisogno di noi.	O abyss of charity, you seem mad with love for your creatures, as though you could not live without them -- even though you are our God, who has no need of us.
Il nostro bene non accresce la tua grandezza, perché tu sei immutabile; il nostro male non ti arreca nessun danno, perché tu sei infinita ed eterna bontà.	Our goodness cannot increase your greatness, because you are unchangeable; our wickedness cannot cause you any damage, as you are infinite and eternal goodness.
Che cosa ti spinge ad usarci una misericordia così grande?	What moves you to treat us with such great mercy?
L'amore —	Love —
e non certo un qualche dovere o bisogno che tu abbia di noi, infatti siamo noi i debitori colpevoli e malvagi.	certainly not some debt or need that you have of us, indeed it is we who are the wicked and culpable debtors.
Se vedo bene, o Verità suprema ed eterna, io sono il ladro e tu sei l'impiccato per me, perché vedo il Verbo tuo Figlio confitto ed inchiodato sulla croce,	If I see rightly, O supreme and eternal Truth, I am the thief, while you were hung for me! For I see the Word your Son bound and nailed on the cross:
di lui hai fatto per me un ponte, come a me, miserabile serva, hai manifestato: per questo mi scoppia il cuore e non può scoppiare per la brama e il desiderio che ho concepito in te.	from him you have made for me a bridge, as you have shown me, your miserable servant: because of this my heart bursts within me yet it cannot burst for the longing and the desire I have conceived of you.
-- S. Caterina da Siena, Dialogo, 25	-- St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogue, 25

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St. Catherine of Siena is a genius, too

I'm blogging a lot today. I have no idea why.

I mentioned St. Thomas Aquinas last week; this week I'll tip my hat to another "doctor of the Church": St. Catherine of Siena. I won't talk too much about her life, since you can read about her at the linked website. Mostly I want to present a passage of hers that I read in Dialogo.

That said: I was raised Southern Baptist. I remember when I became a member of the church, Pastor Harry Girtman sat us down to talk about the basic ideas of Christianity. He laid out this notion: we are on one side of a canyon, and God is on the other. Even assuming we could climb down the cliffs into the canyon: a fierce, impassable river rushes there. In short, sin has separated us from God, and it is impossible to cross over. This is why God gave us Jesus, a bridge over whom we cross to arrive on the other side.

That, my friends, was presented by Pastor Girtman as the essence of Christianity. And that, my friends, was presented by St. Catherine of Siena as the essence of Christianity in La Dottrina Del Ponte (The Doctrine of the Bridge), the longest book in Dialogo. She presented a bit more detail than Pastor Girtman: churning waters, deadly rocks against which many souls are dashed, etc. It's quite vivid. Through it all, Christ is held out as our hope, provided by God's immense and unearned love. It was truly lovely to read this from the pen of a Catholic nun who lived during one of the more depressing periods of the Middle Ages.

I'd better separate the poem into another blog post.

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Aquinas is a genius...

...but you probably knew that already.

(Before I get to the main point: Go Sox! People who don't know baseball won't understand; those who do, will.)

A couple of weeks ago, I was in a Catholic bookstore and after finding what I wanted, I started browsing (always a bad idea). I happened upon the book Aquinas: On Reasons for our Faith Against the Muslims, Armenians and Greeks. That's what the cover says, anyway; Aquinas' actual title was a little more nuanced (and long-winded).

I was reading this book in chapel tonight, and that's what prompted all of the following.

I have always found "the satisfaction theory" to be one of the less convincing arguments as to why Jesus Christ had to die in order to save humanity. I've read St. Anselm's version of it and for some reason something failed to click. (Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention.)

In a grossly oversimplified nutshell: the notion is that human sin created "a legal imbalance" on God's ledger. Someone had to pay the debt that humanity had accumulated, which meant undergoing punishment for the sins of humanity. No one human could undergo it, because no one human could take upon himself the sins of humanity. Hence, Christ became man, and died for us.

Something about this has bothered me for a long, long time. It's seemed to me that the Orthodox criticism of this as overly legalistic, has merit. (That said, my experience with the Orthodox is that they insist on reducing all Catholic theology to Anselm's legalistic theory of divine atonement, as if his was the only word ever spoken on the subject. In this, I think they err.)

Enter Peter Abelard. I haven't actually read his argument, but my understanding of Abelard's argument is that it is somewhat similar to my own understanding. The way I've always thought of it, is that we were so blind and deaf in our sin, that only by committing Deicide could we be shocked into looking outside our own selfish pursuits, which will surely lead us to an eternal agony of isolation and despair, and in turning see that God reaches out not merely to save us, but to make us like himself.

I've always known that I have to accept "the satisfaction theory" to some extent, if only because the Scriptures themselves seem to make a stronger case for that than for my own understanding: consider Isaiah's Suffering Servant.

As I mentioned, I was in chapel tonight reading the aforementioned book, and this marvelous, lucid* text delves into this very question in

Chapter Seven: How the assertion:
the Word of God suffered and died, is to be understood,
and that nothing unfitting is involved in affirming this.

Obviously, I'm not going to reproduce the entire chapter here, but Aquinas' argument is built on several foundations.

The passage that I found illuminating is Aquinas' explanation of punishment. Sin occurs when our will seeks temporal goods instead of the spiritual goods it ought to seek. Very well: punishment seeks to move the will from a disordered state back to a proper state: either by deprivation of the goods which [the sinner] wishes to have or by the infliction of evils which he is naturally disinclined to endure.

Right away I find this more convincing than a divine accounting ledger or a legalistic fiat. (To be fair to Anselm, the "accounting ledger" was how it was explained to me when I was a young Southern Baptist.)

Only now do the usual arguments appear: no man can either suffer the necessary deprivation, nor endure the necessary infliction of evils for his own will to be restored to the order justice, and hence it was necessary for God himself to suffer in man's place: by uniting himself to man in Jesus Christ.

I'm not explaining it very well, I think, but there is something of a marriage of Anselm and Abelard in this, especially if we compare it to Aquinas' discourse in chapter five on why God became man, such as:

[N]othing could be more effective in stimulating our love for God than that the Word of God, through whom all things were made, should for the reparation of our nature assume it, such that the same person might be God and man.

To those who study philosophy and theology, and who can quote Aquinas like my roommate quotes baseball statistics, it's doubtless evident that I'm a rank amateur, and perhaps it is evident as well that I've got quite a few misconceptions about the ideas of Anselm, Abelard, and Aquinas.

Nevertheless, there is something beautiful and uplifting about reading these thoughts. Reading insightful books like this, I feel as if a calm light begins to radiate in front of me, and draws me closer to God. That's a sense I often get when I am reading the best that Catholic thinkers can offer, or when I read about some of the saints (esp. St. Bernadette's visions and her subsequent suffering).

*It may seem lucid to me because I've studied enough philosophy to understand some of Aquinas' jargon.

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