The Gospel and the Meaning of Life

The Last Judgment (c. 1450)
Fra Angelico
Staatliche Museen, Berlin

My post titled, "The Gospel and the Meaning of Life" can be found here on Called to Communion.

Justification: Divided over Charity

Council of Trent
Paolo Farinatis (c. 1524 - c. 1606)
(click on the painting for a larger image)

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Protestantism, there are three primary theological principles separating Catholics and Protestants. These principles have to do with justification, Church tradition, and Church authority. Here I want to focus on justification, briefly laying out the fundamental difference between the Catholic and Protestant positions on this doctrine only with respect to the role of charity.

Protestants and Catholics have somewhat different definitions of the term 'justification'. For Protestants, 'justification' refers not only to an initial justification at the moment of faith, but also to a final justification at the Final Judgment (see, for example, here and here). The Catholic understanding of the term 'justification' includes a third aspect: ongoing justification (see here). That is partly because the Catholic Church defines 'justification' such that sanctification is intrinsically included within it (see here), while Protestants define 'justification' such that sanctification is not included within it per se, but is supposed to attend or follow it.

These disagreements between Protestants and Catholics are partly semantic differences. Mere semantic differences are not substantive differences. But the disagreements are not entirely semantic. In this post, however, I will focus only on one aspect of [initial] justification, namely, its relation to charity.

Recently, Pope Benedict spoke about justification as the topic of one of his weekly general audiences. That address is something I hope all Protestants will carefully and prayerfully read. In that address he said the following:

"For this reason Luther's phrase: "faith alone" is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love.

Responding to Pope Benedict's statement quoted above, R. Scott Clark, professor of Church History & Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary [a Protestant seminary] wrote [UPDATE: his post has been moved to his new blog here] the following:

That conditional, that "if," makes all the difference in the world. That one little conditional is the difference between Rome and Wittenberg. Why? After all, Protestants affirm that faith alone is not opposed to charity (love) or sanctification. That's certainly true, but the question here is whether [...] Benedict means by "faith" what we mean by it and whether we're talking about the same justification and the same role of faith? For us Protestants, charity is the fruit and evidence of justification. Is it so for Benedict? If so, he's abandoned his own catechism and magisterial Roman dogma since 1547. That would be remarkable indeed! (emphasis mine)

Clark suggests that the fundamental point of disagreement between Catholics and Protestants regarding justification is whether charity is or is not necessarily present with justifying faith as its form. In other words, Is the faith by which we are justified necessarily formed by charity [fides formata caritate ] or not?

Catholics understand charity to be that theological virtue by which we love God above all things for His own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God - see CCC 1822 and ST II-II Q.23 a.3. And Catholics do believe that charity is evidence of justification, and that charitable actions are the fruit of justification. But the fundamental point of disagreement between Protestants and Catholics with respect to the role of charity in [initial] justification seems to be whether charity is necessarily present within the person having justifying faith, or whether charity only necessarily follows justifying faith as its fruit. We can see the Catholic position on the relation of justifying faith and charity in Chapter VII of Session VI of the Council of Trent in 1547:

For though no one can be just except he to whom the merits of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ are communicated, yet this takes place in that justification of the sinner, when by the merit of the most holy passion, the charity of God is poured forth by the Holy Ghost in the hearts of those who are justified and inheres in them; whence man through Jesus Christ, in whom he is ingrafted, receives in that justification, together with the remission of sins, all these infused at the same time, namely, faith, hope and charity. For faith, unless hope and charity be added to it, neither unites man perfectly with Christ nor makes him a living member of His body. For which reason it is most truly said that faith without works is dead and of no profit, and in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith that worketh by charity. This faith, conformably to Apostolic tradition, catechumens ask of the Church before the sacrament of baptism, when they ask for the faith that gives eternal life, which without hope and charity faith cannot give.

(To avoid the technical part of this post, skip over the following section between the dashed lines.)

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Why does the Council of Trent teach that charity must be present in us in order for our faith to be justifying? St. Thomas Aquinas addresses the relation of charity and justifying faith in Summa Theologica II-II Q.4 a.3, where he argues that charity is the form of faith. First, consider some background philosophical anthropology.

Rational beings each possess two rational powers: intellect and will. The intellect is by its nature directed toward the true; the will is by its nature directed to the good. These two powers (i.e. intellect and will) have habits, i.e. dispositions. Good habits are called virtues; bad habits are called vices. The virtues can be divided into the natural virtues and the supernatural virtues. The natural virtues can be acquired (though not perfectly) through the use of our own powers, without supernatural infusion. There are three supernatural virtues, called 'supernatural' because they can be acquired only by supernatural infusion. Hence they are also called the "theological virtues". They are faith, hope, and charity. Faith is a virtue of the intellect; charity is a virtue of the will. The theological virtue of hope also is a virtue of the will.

Why then, according to Aquinas, is charity the form of faith? In ST II-II Q.4 a.3 he writes:

As appears from what has been said above (I-II, 1, 3; I-II, 18, 6), voluntary acts take their species from their end which is the will's object. Now that which gives a thing its species, is after the manner of a form in natural things. Wherefore the form of any voluntary act is, in a manner, the end to which that act is ordered, both because it takes its species therefrom, and because the mode of an action should correspond proportionately to the end. Now it is evident from what has been said (art. 1), that the act of faith is directed to the object of the will, i.e. the good, as to its end: and this good which is the end of faith, viz. the Divine Good, is the proper object of charity. Therefore charity is called the form of faith in as much as through charity the act of faith is perfected and is formed.

What is Aquinas saying here? His argument can be analyzed in this way:

(1) Voluntary acts take their species from their end, which is the will's object. [From ST I-II Q.1 a.3 and ST I-II Q.18 a.6]

(2) That which gives a thing its species is its form, in the manner of a form in natural things.

Hence

(3) The form of any voluntary act is, in a manner, the end to which that act is directed. [From (1) and (2)]

(4) An act of faith is related both to the object of the will, i.e. to the good and the end, and to the object of the intellect, i.e. the true. [ST II-II Q.4 a.1]

(5) The act of faith is directed to the object of the will, i.e. the good, as to its end. [From (4)]

(6) This good which is the end of faith, viz. the Divine Good, is the proper object of charity. [From ST II-II Q.24 a.1]

Therefore,

(7) Charity is the form of faith inasmuch as through charity the act of faith is perfected and is formed. [From (3), (5),(6)]

Premises (1)-(3) are quite straightforward. To understand the basis for premise (4), we have to look back at ST II-II Q.4 a.1. Recall that faith is "the substance of things hoped for". (Hebrews 11:1) Because hope is a virtue of the will, faith is a virtue of the intellect, and because faith is defined as "the substance of things hoped for" (ST II-II Q.4 a.1), therefore the act of faith on the part of the intellect is directed to the same object and end that the act of charity on the part of the will is directed to (i.e. the Divine Good). Premise (5) follows directly from (4). Premise (6) is drawn from ST II-II Q.24 a.1, where Aquinas argues that the subject of charity is not the sensitive, but the intellective appetite, i.e. the will, which is ordered to the good. (To understand why charity is a virtue of the [rational] appetite, see also my post titled "Love and Unity: Part 2".) Charity is thus the form of faith [forma fidei], in that it is only through charity that the act of faith attains the end by which it is given its species.

Aquinas makes this even clearer in the following article (ST II-II Q.4 a.4), where he argues that unformed faith [fides informis] is the same habit as formed faith. He writes:

We must therefore hold differently that formed faith and unformed faith [fidei formatae et informis] are one and the same habit. The reason is that a habit is differentiated by that which directly pertains to that habit. Now since faith is a perfection of the intellect, that pertains directly to faith, which pertains to the intellect. Again, what pertains to the will, does not pertain directly to faith, so as to be able to differentiate the habit of faith. But the distinction between formed faith and unformed faith [fidei formatae et informis] is in respect of something pertaining to the will, i.e. charity, and not in respect of something pertaining to the intellect. Therefore formed faith and unformed faith [fides formata et informis] are not distinct habits.

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What is this unformed faith [fides informis]? Aquinas identifies it with the faith referred to in James 2:20, where St. James writes that "faith without works is dead'. Thus according to Aquinas, fides informis is "dead faith". What makes it dead is the absence of the virtue of charity in the will, for as St. Paul says in Galatians 5:6, "faith worketh through charity". [cf. ST II-II Q.4 a.2 arg.3] In other words, what distinguishes formed faith [i.e. living faith] from unformed faith [i.e. dead faith] is nothing in the faith itself, that is, nothing in the habit in the intellect. Rather, what distinguishes formed faith (i.e. living faith) from unformed faith (i.e. dead faith) is that the former is accompanied by the supernatural virtue of charity in the will, while the latter is not accompanied by the supernatural virtue of charity in the will.

The interesting thing here is that Protestants do not believe that anyone is justified by dead faith. Protestants believe, with Catholics, that a justifying faith must be a living faith. So the difference between Catholics and Protestants with respect to this point is that Protestants do not believe that charity is what makes faith living (though they do believe that charity necessarily follows living faith), while Catholics believe that charity is precisely what makes faith living.

This raises the following questions for Protestants: What is the difference between dead faith and living faith? More specifically, what does living faith have per se that dead faith does not? Are they two species of faith? If so, are they both gifts of God? If so, when a man moves from dead faith to living faith, does God take away His previous gift of dead faith? If God does not do so, then does the gift of dead faith remain in the man, but inactive for the rest of his life as a believer? On the other hand, if dead faith is *not* a supernatural gift of God, then how is it different from any belief about God we might come to merely through our natural power of reason? And if dead faith is no different from any belief about God we might come to merely through our natural power of reason, why is it rightly called 'faith'? Moreover, how can charity be the fruit of living faith if living faith does not contain charity? In other words, how can charity come from non-charity?

In his Institutes, John Calvin briefly treats the relation of charity to faith. There he writes, "For the teaching of the Schoolmen, that love is prior to faith and hope, is mere madness; for it is faith alone that first engenders love in us." (Institutes, III.2.41) Aquinas discusses this question in ST II-II Q.4 a.7 and ST II-II Q.17 a.8. Aquinas makes a distinction between the order of generation and the order of perfection. In the order of generation, faith precedes hope and charity, because we cannot hope in or love what we do not know. This is because the movement of the will toward its end depends upon the intellect presenting this end to it. But, according to Aquinas, in the order of perfection, charity precedes hope and faith. This can be shown from what St. Paul himself says in 1 Corinthians 13:13.

When Calvin claims that "faith alone first engenders love in us", there is a certain *qualified* sense in which a Catholic can agree, because faith precedes charity in the order of generation. But the question is whether faith without charity simultaneously co-present, is living, and thus justifying, faith. In his article, Clark cites Calvin's commentary on Galatians, where Calvin writes: "When you are engaged in discussing the question of justification, beware of allowing any mention to be made of love or of works, but resolutely adhere to the exclusive particle." (Commentary on Galatians 5.6, 1548). By "the exclusive particle" Calvin means the term 'alone', as in "faith alone". So we see here Calvin at least implicitly denying that charity is necessarily simultaneously co-present with justifying faith.

The Catholic Church teaches that the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity are infused into us when we receive the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of baptism. St. Paul writes that "the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:5). Only when faith is living (i.e. accompanied by the virtue of charity as its form), is faith justifying. Notice that this does not mean that the deathbed convert must do charitable works in order to be justified. It does mean, however, that unless there is charity in his will, whatever virtue of faith is present in his intellect is not a justifying faith.

Professor Clark seems not recognize that justification being progressive is fully compatible with an initial justification. For example, Pope Benedict claims that "Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ, conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love." Clark responds by saying, This is code for "to be gradually sanctified and gradually justified." Of course Catholics do believe that being conformed to Christ and entering His love is something that does continue over the course of a believer's life, insofar as the believer makes use of the means of grace. But, Catholics also believe that in our [initial] justification in the sacrament of baptism, we are at that moment "conformed to Christ and enter into His love", for at that moment we receive His life and love and Holy Spirit into our hearts. The death-bed convert who converts in his dying breath, is at that very moment truly "conformed to Christ", even though at that moment he might not yet be as conformed to Christ as he possibly could be, and will be in heaven.

If Clark is right that this disagreement between Protestants and Catholics regarding the role of charity in [initial] justification is "the difference between Rome and Wittenberg", then I'm left wondering how Protestants can be so sure that charity is not what makes faith living, that they are willing to make (or perpetuate) this 488 year-old schism on account of it. I invite my Protestant brothers and sisters, in this week of prayer for Christian unity, to consider prayerfully this fundamental point of disagreement. It is tragic and ironic that we should be divided over the role of charity. May charity break down this division between us, by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit.

Let's give Him the gift He most deeply desires

"To love God is to wish Him all honour and glory and every good, and to endeavour, as far as we can, to obtain it for Him." (source)

"May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (St. John 17:23)

Lord Jesus, may we by your grace, be granted to present to You this gift: the overcoming of our divisions. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Love and Unity: Part 3

The Visitation
Mariotto Albertinelli (1503)

Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.

In this part of my discussion on the relation of love and unity, I focus on St. Thomas Aquinas's distinction between two different kinds of love, and the types of unity to which they are ordered.

Two Types of Love
In his answer to the question "whether in God there is love", Aquinas writes the following:

An act of love always tends towards two things; to the good that one wills, and to the person for whom one wills it: since to love a person is to wish that person good. Hence, inasmuch as we love ourselves, we wish ourselves good; and, so far as possible, union with that good. So love is called the unitive force, even in God, yet without implying composition; for the good that He wills for Himself, is no other than Himself, Who is good by His essence, as above shown (6, 1, 3). And by the fact that anyone loves another, he wills good to that other. Thus he puts the other, as it were, in the place of himself; and regards the good done to him as done to himself. So far love is a binding force [vis concretiva], since it aggregates another to ourselves [quia alium aggregat sibi], and refers his good to our own. And then again the divine love is a binding force, inasmuch as God wills good to others; yet it implies no composition in God. (ST I Q.20 a.1 ad.3)

This consideration of the nature of love reveals the basis for Aquinas's distinction between love of friendship and love of concupiscence (amorem amicitiae et amorem concupiscentiae). (ST I-II Q.26 a.4) First he refers to Aristotle's statement that "to love is to wish good to someone." From this Aquinas draws the conclusion that love by its very nature has a twofold tendency: "towards the good which a man wishes to someone (to himself or to another) and towards that to which he wishes some good." This twofold tendency intrinsic to love makes possible the difference between love of friendship and love of concupiscence. He explains the difference between these two kinds of love when he says that "man has love of concupiscence towards the good that he wishes to another, and love of friendship towards him to whom he wishes good." These two kinds of love are related as primary and secondary, in this way: "that which is loved with the love of friendship is loved simply and for itself (simpliciter et per se amatur); whereas that which is loved with the love of concupiscence, is loved, not simply and for itself, but for something else."

If we love something in the sense of wishing good to it for its own sake, that is the type of love Aquinas calls 'love of friendship'. But if we love something in the sense of wishing it to be the good of something or someone else, that is the type of love he calls 'love of concupiscence'. For example, if we love an apple, we love it in the sense of wishing it to be a good for someone (either our self or someone else) when it is eaten. The type of love we have for the apple, in that case, is 'love of concupiscence'. But if we love a friend with the 'love of friendship', we love our friend not as a means to a further good to ourselves, but simpliciter et per se, that is, for his own sake, and that is why we wish good to come to him.

Aquinas then adds: "the love with which a thing is loved, that it may have some good, is love simply; while the love, with which a thing is loved, that it may be another's good, is relative love." So love of concupiscence is relative love; it is directed toward a good with the intention that it may be another's good. Love of friendship, by contrast, is love simply; it is directed toward something with the intention that it have some good.

If we are loving something as a good for ourselves, it is plain that such love is unitive in this respect, that we seek to be united to that good such that it becomes our good. In the example of loving the apple, we desire the apple to be united to us through eating the apple, so that it provides the goods of nourishing our body, satisfying our hunger and pleasing our palate. So the type of unity aimed at by the 'love of concupiscence' is the having of the beloved good by the lover.

In what way then, does the love of friendship aim at unity? Given what I have said about the manner in which love of concupiscence is unitive, it may seem initially that, as directed toward other persons, love of friendship is unitive only in the sense that the lover wishes that what is good for his friend be united to his friend. What I wish to show here and in part 4 is how the the love of friendship also seeks union of the lover and the friend.

Unity as a Cause of Love
In order develop this argument, we need to consider the ways in which union is both a cause and an effect of love. First, let us consider briefly how, according to Aquinas, union is a cause of love. According to Aquinas, union is a cause of love in two ways. The type of union that causes the love with which one loves oneself is substantial union. (ST I-II Q.28 a.1 ad.2) This claim has its basis in what Aquinas said earlier, namely, that "everything has this aptitude towards its natural form, that when it has it not, it tends towards it; and when it has it, it is at rest therein. It is the same with every natural perfection, which is a natural good." (ST I Q.19 a.1 co.) And elsewhere he writes, "But it is common to every nature to have some inclination; and this is its natural appetite or love." (ST I Q.60 a.1 co.) The transcendental relation of being, unity and goodness shows that insofar as everything is naturally inclined to its perfection, so it is naturally inclined to its being and unity. Hence Aquinas says elsewhere, "[H]ence it is that everything guards its unity as it guards its being." (Et inde est quod unumquodque, sicut custodit suum esse, ita custodit suam unitatem.)(ST I Q.11 a.1 co.)

The second way in which unity causes love is by unity of likeness. We have seen this already in our discussion of connaturality in Part 2, where we saw that the principle of movement in the appetite is the appetitive subject's connaturality with the thing to which it tends. Connaturality is a kind of likeness of natures. According to Aquinas, there are two types of likeness between things, and each type of likeness causes a different type of love. One type of likeness between two things arises when each thing has the same quality actuality. The other type of likeness between two things arises when one thing has "potentially and by way of inclination, a quality which the other has actually". (ST I-II Q.27 a.3 co.) The first type of likeness, that is, the type of likeness that arises when each thing has the same quality actuality, is love of friendship. Aquinas writes, "For the very fact that two men are alike, having, as it were, one form, makes them to be, in a manner, one in that form: thus two men are one thing in the species of humanity, and two white men are one thing in whiteness. Hence the affections of one tend to the other, as being one with him; and he wishes good to him as to himself. But the second kind of likeness causes love of concupiscence, or friendship founded on usefulness or pleasure: because whatever is in potentiality, as such, has the desire for its act; and it takes pleasure in its realization, if it be a sentient and cognitive being." (ST I-II Q.27 a.3 co.) Thus we can be caused to love another person by likeness in two general ways. Either the other person has actually some good quality that we have potentiality, or the other person has actually some quality that we have actually. In the former case, either we love the other as a means to the actualization of our potentiality, or we love the other as a pleasing subjunctive depiction of what we would be were our potentiality actualized. But in the case where both the lover and the beloved share the likeness of actuality to actuality, that which is like need not be only a quality or set of qualities; it may also be a nature, for example, human nature. Love caused directly by apprehended likeness of this sort is love of friendship.

Two types of Unity
Aquinas teaches that the union of lover and beloved is fundamentally of two sorts. "The first is real union; for instance, when the beloved is present with the lover. The second is union of affection: and this union must be considered in relation to the preceding apprehension; since movement of the appetite follows apprehension." Aquinas explains this when he says, "The first of these unions [i.e. real union] is caused effectively by love; because love moves man to desire and seek the presence of the beloved, as of something suitable and belonging to him (quasi sibi convenientis et ad se pertinentis). The second union is caused formally by love; because love itself is this union or bond. In this sense Augustine says (De Trin. viii, 10) that "love is a vital principle uniting, or seeking to unite two together, the lover, to wit, and the beloved." For in describing it as "uniting" he refers to the union of affection, without which there is no love: and in saying that "it seeks to unite," he refers to real union." (ST I-II Q.28 a.1 co.)

Again, in the reply to the second objection he writes, "There is also a union which is essentially love itself. This union is according to a bond of affection, and is likened to substantial union, inasmuch as the lover stands to the object of his love, as to himself, if it be love of friendship; as to something belonging to himself, if it be love of concupiscence. Again there is a union, which is the effect of love. This is real union, which the lover seeks with the object of his love." (ST I-II Q.28 a.1 ad.2)

In this first article of question 28, Aquinas is making two points. First he is showing that the union of affection is essentially love itself, and this union is likened [assimilatur] to substantial union inasmuch as the lover stands to the beloved as to himself (i.e. in love of friendship), and to a lesser degree if the lover stands to the beloved as one stands toward something belonging to oneself (i.e. in love of concupiscence).

Aquinas's second point is that real union is the effect or goal of love; real union is what the union of affection seeks to bring about. Regarding real union as an effect of love he says, "Moreover this union [real union] is in keeping with the demands of love (convenientiam amoris: for as the Philosopher relates (Polit. ii, 1), "Aristophanes stated that lovers would wish to be united both into one," but since "this would result in either one or both being destroyed," they seek a suitable and becoming union--to live together, speak together, and be united together in other like things." (ST I-II Q.28 a.1 ad.2) In seeking real union love does not seek to destroy its own possibility, but seeks rather that which preserves its own actuality. Both types of love seek real union of the lover with the beloved.

In the middle of this article, Aquinas distinguishes between the two types of unity that are apprehended by the lover, and which give rise to the love of concupiscence and the love of friendship, respectively. He writes, "Now love being twofold, viz. love of concupiscence and love of friendship; each of these arises from a kind of apprehension of the oneness of the thing loved with the lover. For when we love a thing, by desiring it, we apprehend it as belonging to our well-being (quasi sibi convenientis et ad se pertinentis). In like manner when a man loves another with the love of friendship, he wills good to him, just as he wills good to himself: wherefore he apprehends him as his other self (vult ei bonum sicut et sibi vult bonum, unde apprehendit eum ut alterum se), in so far, to wit, as he wills good to him as to himself. Hence a friend is called a man's "other self" (Ethic. ix, 4), and Augustine says (Confess. iv, 6), "Well did one say to his friend: Thou half of my soul." (ST I-II Q.28 a.1 co.)

The kind of unity that when apprehended gives rise to love of concupiscence is one in which the lover stands to the beloved as to something belonging to himself (ut ad aliquid sui). This unity seems to be apprehended as a potential unity. The kind of unity that when apprehended gives rise to love of friendship is one in which the lover stands to the beloved as to himself (ut ad seipsum) [ST I-II Q.28 a.1 ad.2]. This unity seems to be apprehended as an actual unity, though this leaves open the discovery and dynamic creation of further actual unity, as well as the apprehension of potential unity.

So to summarize, first, substantial unity gives rise to self love. Second, there are two types of apprehended unity that give rise to the two types of love. These two types of apprehended unity are an accidental unity (i.e. of having or possessing a good for oneself) and a formal subjective unity of being another self. They give rise to love of concupiscence and love of friendship, respectively. In the former, the union aimed at by the appetite is the union of possessing the good loved, such that this good actualizes the lover's potential and thus perfects the lover. In the love of friendship, by contrast, the union aimed at by the appetite is a union of subject with subject, and this grounds the love of concupiscence towards the good that the lover wishes to his friend. The object of the love of friendship is not loved as a means to one's own perfection, but as another self. This is primarily a spiritual union of a self with another self, an outward extension of the love that one has for oneself to that which is another self. But the beloved as an object of the 'love of friendship' does not cease to be apprehended as a good any more than in self-love the self ceases to be apprehended as a good. On the contrary, just as the self is apprehended as a qualitatively greater good than all those goods perfecting of the self, so likewise the beloved as an object of the 'love of friendship' is apprehended as a qualitatively greater good than all those goods perfecting either oneself or the beloved (God excepted).

In the next part in this series I will examine the three ways in which love effects mutual indwelling, focusing most especially on the third way. I will be focusing particularly on the way in which love of friendship seeks not only that what is good for one's friend be united to one's friend, but also seeks the union of the lover with the friend. For this I will draw on Aquinas's commentary on chapter four of book nine of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.

Love and Unity: Part 2

Part 1 is here.

In order to understand better why love seeks union with the beloved, we first need to step back and consider what love is. I am not here addressing the theological virtue of charity. Grace builds upon and perfects nature, so to understand the theological virtue of charity, we must first understand natural love. Writing about the nature of love may not seem to have anything to do with the reunion of all Christians. But it serves as the philosophical background for the argument that if we truly love one another, then we will actively be seeking unity with each other, pursuing every attempt to be reconciled and reunited. Part of what it means to obey Christ's command to love one another, I will argue, is to seek unity with each other. If we say that we love each other, but are content with being divided, then we are deceiving ourselves. A week ago Pope Benedict said, "Is it indeed possible to be in communion with the Lord if we are not in communion with each other? How can we present ourselves divided and far from each other at God's altar?" Some of what I have written in this post is more philosophical in nature and terminology, so please bear with me.

Aquinas tells us that everything by its very nature has a natural aptitude or inclination toward its natural form, that is, its natural perfection. In things that do not have knowledge, this natural aptitude is called natural appetite (appetitus naturalis). (ST I Q.19 a.1 co.) Seedlings, for example, have a natural appetite for becoming full-grown trees, even though seedlings do not themselves have knowledge of this goal. The knowledge of their goal remains in their Designer, but the natural appetite for their goal is within the seedlings.

In addition to this natural appetite, animals and humans have something that plants do not have; we have the power to sense material things that are outside of us. Accompanying this power to sense material things is an additional appetitive power by which we can desire the things whose sensible forms we receive in our sense powers. In virtue of this appetitive power, animals and humans can desire the things that we sense insofar as we apprehend them as desirable, i.e. as suited to our natural perfection. (ST I Q.78 a.1 co.) This appetite is the sensitive appetite or "sensuality" (sensualitas). (ST I Q.81 a.1 co.)

Humans are distinguished from other animals in that we have a rational soul. This allows us to receive not just sensible forms, but also intelligible forms. In this way we are capable of understanding what a thing is, that is, its essence. But again, along with this greater power of apprehension is a greater corresponding appetitive power. This greater appetitive power is the "rational appetite", which is another term for the will. Aquinas describes this three-fold distinction in appetites in this way:

[A]ll things in their own way are inclined by appetite towards good, but in different ways. Some are inclined to good by their natural inclination, without knowledge, as plants and inanimate bodies. Such inclination towards good is called "a natural appetite." Others, again, are inclined towards good, but with some knowledge; not that they know the aspect of goodness [rationem boni], but that they apprehend some particular good; as in the sense, which knows the sweet, the white, and so on. The inclination which follows this apprehension is called "a sensitive appetite." Other things, again, have an inclination towards good, but with a knowledge whereby they perceive the aspect of goodness [boni rationem]; this belongs to the intellect. This is most perfectly inclined towards what is good; not, indeed, as if it were merely guided by another towards some particular good only, like things devoid of knowledge, nor towards some particular good only, as things which have only sensitive knowledge, but as inclined towards good in general[universale bonum]. Such inclination is termed "will." (ST I Q.59 a.1 co.)

Aquinas sums this up in his answer to the question of whether there is natural love in the angels. And here we see what appetite has to do with love. He writes:

But it is common to every nature to have some inclination; and this is its natural appetite or love. This inclination is found to exist differently in different natures; but in each according to its mode. Consequently, in the intellectual nature there is to be found a natural inclination coming from the will; in the sensitive nature, according to the sensitive appetite; but in a nature devoid of knowledge, only according to the tendency of the nature to something. (ST I Q.60 a.1 co.)

Notice that for Aquinas love is found in every existing thing. It is present in each thing as a natural inclination toward its good. For Aquinas, it is not the case that love is something had only by God, angels, and humans, and is devoid from non-rational animals, plants, and inanimate objects. For Aquinas, the primary movement of anything that moves, is love. But love is present in a thing according to the nature of the thing. In other words, things with lower natures love in only a limited way compared with things that by nature have greater apprehensive power. This correlation of love and knowledge is based on the principle from St. Augustine that nothing is loved except it be first known (nihil amatur nisi cognitum). (ST I Q.60 a.1 s.c.) Thus the greater a thing's natural capacity for knowing, the greater its natural capacity for loving.

This principle, quite importantly, also works the other way around: the more we love something, the more we are able to know it. We become more observant about it, more interested in every detail about it, more likely to retain it in our memory, and more intent on understanding it in its entirety and to its core. Where our heart is, there our mind operates. This is how someone like St. Thérèse de Lisieux, whose heart was bursting with love for God, and who never went to seminary or graduate school, and who died at the age of 24, could become a doctor of the Church.

So although love requires knowledge, knowledge is advanced by love. A being's capacity for love is dependent upon its appetitive capacity, which in turn is dependent on its capacity for knowing. Elsewhere Aquinas distinguishes these three appetitive powers in a similar manner. He writes:

Love is something pertaining to the appetite; since good is the object of both. Wherefore love differs according to the difference of appetites. (Unde secundum differentiam appetitus est differentia amoris.) For there is an appetite which arises from an apprehension existing, not in the subject of the appetite, but in some other: and this is called the "natural appetite." Because natural things seek what is suitable to them according to their nature, by reason of an apprehension which is not in them, but in the Author of their nature, as stated in the [ST I Q.6 a.1 ad 2; ST I Q.103 a.1 ad. 1,3]. And there is another appetite arising from an apprehension in the subject of the appetite, but from necessity and not from free-will. Such is, in irrational animals, the "sensitive appetite," which, however, in man, has a certain share of liberty, in so far as it obeys reason. Again, there is another appetite following freely from an apprehension in the subject of the appetite. And this is the rational or intellectual appetite, which is called the "will." (ST I-II Q.26 a.1 co.)

Aquinas then continues:

Now in each of these appetites, the name "love" is given to the principle movement towards the end loved (principium motus tendentis in finem amatum). In the natural appetite the principle of this movement is the appetitive subject's connaturalness with the thing to which it tends, and may be called "natural love": ... In like manner the aptitude (coaptatio) of the sensitive appetite or of the will to some good, that is to say, its very complacency (complacentia) in good is called "sensitive love," or "intellectual" or "rational love." So that sensitive love is in the sensitive appetite, just as intellectual love is in the intellectual appetite. (ST II-I Q.26 a.1 co.)

In each of the three appetitive powers, there is a principle movement towards the end loved, and this is love.

But first let us ask what Aquinas means by connaturalness, aptitude, and complacency? Connaturality shouldn't be understood as a relation of mathematical forms, devoid of teleology. For Aquinas says, "But the true is in some things wherein good is not, as, for instance, in mathematics." (ST I Q.16 a.4 s.c.) And yet connaturality is a principle of motion. But nothing moves except insofar as it moves toward a perceived good. Therefore connaturality should not be understood as the relation of abstract forms such as those of mathematics. Connaturality is a kind of sharing of the same nature, in some respect. Thus in the encounter of that which is connatural to oneself, self-love is extended outward to the other, and rests in the other as it already rests in the self. (More on that later.)

Regarding love as the principle movement toward the end loved, Aquinas says the same elsewhere when he says, "love is the first movement of the will and of every appetitive faculty" (Primus enim motus voluntatis, et cuiuslibet appetitivae virtutis, est amor.) (ST I Q.20 a.1 co.) In that same place he explains in more detail what he means in saying that love is the first movement of the will and of every appetitive faculty. He writes:

Now there are certain acts of the will and appetite that regard good under some special condition, as joy and delight regard good present and possessed; whereas desire and hope regard good not as yet possessed. Love, however, regards good universally, whether possessed or not. Hence love is naturally the first act of the will and appetite; for which reason all the other appetite movements presuppose love, as their root and origin. For nobody desires anything nor rejoices in anything, except as a good that is loved: nor is anything an object of hate except as opposed to the object of love. Similarly, it is clear that sorrow, and other things like to it, must be referred to love as to their first principle. Hence, in whomsoever there is will and appetite, there must also be love: since if the first is wanting, all that follows is also wanting. (ST I Q.20 a.1 co.)

Love then, for Aquinas, is the principle movement of the will and appetite, not in the sense of being temporally prior (even if it is temporally prior), but in the sense of being formally and teleologically prior. Every other movement of the will and appetite presupposes love, and therefore these other movements formally and teleologically depend on love.

We can see already, however vaguely, that love is unitive by its very nature. Since love is the first movement of the will and appetite toward the end loved, therefore love by its very nature aims at union of the appetitive subject (i.e. the one having the appetite) with the end loved. In the next post in this series, I intend to write about the distinction between the love of concupiscence and the love of friendship.

Love and Unity: Part 1

Icon of the Trinity
Andrei Rublev (1410)

This is the first of a series of posts on the relation between love and unity, as I mentioned in early August that I intended to write. At a later time I hope to write about the relation between love and truth. But for now I want to focus on how and why love seeks unity with the beloved, and the way in which unity with the beloved constitutes love. I have written about this relation previously here and here. I was again prompted to write about this subject earlier this year, as I reflected on the nature of love, and also as I experienced the conjunctive dissonance of stated love and simultaneous contentment with disunity.

The experience was similar to the dissonance described in St. James 2:14-26 between the simultaneous presence of stated faith and the absence of charity. St. James calls such a faith "dead faith". Likewise, in reflecting on the nature of love I concluded that contentment with disunity, all other things being equal, is something like "dead love". True [living] love tirelessly seeks union with the beloved, and does not rest content with disunity. That pursuit of unity may take different forms, depending on various other factors. But if a man says that he has love for his brother, but is content with disunity, he is deceiving himself. If he says to his brother, "Go in peace, with all my love", but does not seek out reconciliation (St. Matthew 5:24) and resolution of the schism that divides him from his brother, he does not truly love. True love seeks both to reach over and break down the wall of separation, even if that activity involves immense sacrifice, suffering, rejection, and persecution -- even if it involves the cross.

If love by its very nature seeks unity with the beloved, what then is the cause of the widespread acceptance and seeming contentment among Christians with our present disunity? Have we become cold-hearted persons so gravely deficient in love that we can walk nonchalantly right by our present divisions the way the priest and Levite walked by the injured traveler on the road to Jericho? Over fifty years ago, J.B. Phillips wrote a book titled Your God is Too Small. The thesis of the book is that our conception of God is too small. Similarly, it seems to me that often what makes Christians content with disunity is an unawareness of the full nature of unity, and thus a blindness to our present disunity, its magnitude, and its evil. Having reduced our concept of unity to something quite entirely spiritual and invisible, we now tend not to see our disagreements about doctrine, sacraments and church government as divisions -- that was the point of my post titled "Dodos, Passenger Pigeons, and Schisms". They're just variations, or differences, all legitimate options within the big tent of mere Christianity.

This reductive reconception of unity as merely invisible or spiritual has as an effect the diminution of our capacity to love. We cannot love a good that we do not in some sense apprehend as good, and that is no less true of our apprehension of our union with the beloved. Aquinas writes that love "arises from a kind of apprehension of the oneness of the thing loved with the lover." (ST I-II Q.28 a.1) Hence if our conception of oneness is atrophied, and we apprehend (as a goal) only a weak or minimal unity with that which is loved, our capacity to love will be diminished. The more we perceive the fullness of the unity that is not only possible but desired by Christ for His people, the more we will love each other and thereby seek to bring about that full unity.

As an example, consider the scene in the movie WALL-E where humans accidentally rediscover the experience of touching each other. The conception of that type of unity (physical touch) had been lost, replaced by a mere virtual [de-materialized] unity through a technological medium. Rediscovering actual touch allowed a new and deeper dimension in which love could be actualized. Similarly, when we rediscover the three dimensions of unity, we begin to see how much deeper and richer is the unity that true love pursues. So one way of responding to the present contentment with disunity among Christians is to expand and deepen our understanding of unity in all its fullness so that we can see the present disunity for what it is, and thus see how to love, that is, see where true love takes us.

Another way to respond to the present contentment with disunity is to meditate together on the nature of love, and show how true love cannot possibly rest content with the present state of disunity. And that is what I wish to do in this series, drawing largely from St. Thomas Aquinas. I want to examine why love seeks unity with the beloved, and how love effects unity, and what sort of unity love produces.

Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross

Christ on the Cross
Rembrandt (1631)

Today is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. I have written about the Cross here and here. I write about it because the way to unity is through the Cross, as we share in Christ's sufferings not just passively, but actively, in the way that He embraced the Cross and meekly bore its shame, like a sheep that is silent before its shearers. (Isaiah 53:7) St. Peter tells us that the greater the degree to which we share in Christ's sufferings, the more we should rejoice. (1 Peter 4:13) Why? Because we are more deeply sharing in His Life, for He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and rejection. (Isaiah 53:3)

How does the pursuit of unity involve sharing in Christ's suffering? When in hope and love we extend our hands over the walls of separation, we will face insult and rejection. The Cross is humiliation, bearing insult, rejection, scorn and injury for His sake. For as they hated Him without cause (St. John 15:25), so they will hate without cause those who follow Him, for the servant is not greater than his Master. (St. John 13:16) We know that all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. (2 Tim 3:12) The Cross is not the place of safety or comfort or security. It is the place of exposure and complete vulnerability. To be a Christian, that is, a Christ follower, we must deny ourselves and take up our cross. (St. Matthew 16:24) To be a Christian is to submit to crucifixion, and embrace it. In imitating Christ in His meek but undaunted embrace of the Cross, we participate in His saving work of drawing all men unto Himself (St. John 12:32) and thus to His Body, the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. The power of the Cross is not in the giving of a mere doctrine, but in the total self-giving of a Person. This is the self-giving sacrifice that demonstrates Christ's love to the world. This is the self-giving Love that we feed upon in the Eucharist, and that we are to demonstrate in gracious sincerity and sacrifice to those Christians from whom by the bitter fruit of schism we are now divided. This love keeps reaching over the walls in hope of reconciliation, as an older brother would seek to be reunited with his younger brother after many years of separation.

To embrace the Cross is to die to pride. And pride is the chief of the seven deadly sins. By it Lucifer fell, seeking to usurp the divine throne. (Isaiah 14:12-14) All the divisions of Christians have their ultimate root in this same sin. Thus these divisions can be overcome only through the grace of humility, and this means embracing the Cross, for humility is the fruit of this tree. Love is not arrogant. (1 Corinthians 13:4) Those who, as St. Paul says, "live as enemies of the cross of Christ" (Philippians 3:18) cause division (Romans 16:17), for they live to self and not to God who is One (Mark 12:29). Unity comes through the Cross, because only through the Cross comes the humility by which we can all be joined into one Body greater than ourselves. (Ephesians 4)

In order to bring to others the humility that must precede reconciliation we must have it first in ourselves, for Christ humbled Himself even to death, to reconcile us to God. (Philippians 2:5-8). In order to stir up in others the self-sacrificing love that does not rest content with separation, we must have it first in ourselves, for Christ did not rest content with our separation from Him through sin, but while we were yet estranged from Him, He demonstrated His love for us by dying for us. (Romans 5:8) My brothers and sisters, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him." (St. John 11:16)

Unite us Lord Jesus to your Cross, that by it we may be instruments of your peace. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

"Let us Pray for the Resolve to Nurture Unity"

Here is the address Benedict XVI gave at the World Youth Day vigil Saturday night (July 19) at the Randwick Racecourse in Sydney. (My emphases are in bold.)

* * *

Dear Young People,

Once again this evening we have heard Christ’s great promise – "you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you". And we have heard his summons – "be my witnesses throughout the world" – (Acts 1:8). These were the very last words which Jesus spoke before his Ascension into heaven. How the Apostles felt upon hearing them, we can only imagine. But we do know that their deep love for Jesus, and their trust in his word, prompted them to gather and to wait; to wait not aimlessly, but together, united in prayer, with the women and Mary in the Upper Room (cf. Acts 1:14). Tonight, we do the same. Gathered before our much-travelled Cross and the icon of Mary, and under the magnificent constellation of the Southern Cross, we pray. Tonight, I am praying for you and for young people throughout the world. Be inspired by the example of your Patrons! Accept into your hearts and minds the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit! Recognize and believe in the power of the Spirit in your lives!

The other day we talked of the unity and harmony of God’s creation and our place within it. We recalled how in the great gift of baptism we, who are made in God’s image and likeness, have been reborn, we have become God’s adopted children, a new creation. And so it is as children of Christ’s light – symbolized by the lit candles you now hold – that we bear witness in our world to the radiance no darkness can overcome (cf. Jn 1:5).

Tonight we focus our attention on how to become witnesses. We need to understand the person of the Holy Spirit and his vivifying presence in our lives. This is not easy to comprehend. Indeed the variety of images found in scripture referring to the Spirit – wind, fire, breath – indicate our struggle to articulate an understanding of him. Yet we do know that it is the Holy Spirit who, though silent and unseen, gives direction and definition to our witness to Jesus Christ.

You are already well aware that our Christian witness is offered to a world which in many ways is fragile. The unity of God’s creation is weakened by wounds which run particularly deep when social relations break apart, or when the human spirit is all but crushed through the exploitation and abuse of persons. Indeed, society today is being fragmented by a way of thinking that is inherently short-sighted, because it disregards the full horizon of truth– the truth about God and about us. By its nature, relativism fails to see the whole picture. It ignores the very principles which enable us to live and flourish in unity, order and harmony.

What is our response, as Christian witnesses, to a divided and fragmented world? How can we offer the hope of peace, healing and harmony to those "stations" of conflict, suffering, and tension through which you have chosen to march with this World Youth Day Cross? Unity and reconciliation cannot be achieved through our efforts alone. God has made us for one another (cf. Gen 2:24) and only in God and his Church can we find the unity we seek. Yet, in the face of imperfections and disappointments – both individual and institutional – we are sometimes tempted to construct artificially a "perfect" community. That temptation is not new. The history of the Church includes many examples of attempts to bypass or override human weaknesses or failures in order to create a perfect unity, a spiritual utopia.

Such attempts to construct unity in fact undermine it! To separate the Holy Spirit from Christ present in the Church’s institutional structure would compromise the unity of the Christian community, which is precisely the Spirit’s gift! It would betray the nature of the Church as the living temple of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 3:16). It is the Spirit, in fact, who guides the Church in the way of all truth and unifies her in communion and in the works of ministry (cf. Lumen Gentium, 4). Unfortunately the temptation to "go it alone" persists. Some today portray their local community as somehow separate from the so-called institutional Church, by speaking of the former as flexible and open to the Spirit and the latter as rigid and devoid of the Spirit.

Unity is of the essence of the Church (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 813); it is a gift we must recognize and cherish. Tonight, let us pray for the resolve to nurture unity: contribute to it! resist any temptation to walk away! For it is precisely the comprehensiveness, the vast vision, of our faith – solid yet open, consistent yet dynamic, true yet constantly growing in insight – that we can offer our world. Dear young people, is it not because of your faith that friends in difficulty or seeking meaning in their lives have turned to you? Be watchful! Listen! Through the dissonance and division of our world, can you hear the concordant voice of humanity? From the forlorn child in a Darfur camp, or a troubled teenager, or an anxious parent in any suburb, or perhaps even now from the depth of your own heart, there emerges the same human cry for recognition, for belonging, for unity. Who satisfies that essential human yearning to be one, to be immersed in communion, to be built up, to be led to truth? The Holy Spirit! This is the Spirit’s role: to bring Christ’s work to fulfilment. Enriched with the Spirit’s gifts, you will have the power to move beyond the piecemeal, the hollow utopia, the fleeting, to offer the consistency and certainty of Christian witness!

Friends, when reciting the Creed we state: "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life". The "Creator Spirit" is the power of God giving life to all creation and the source of new and abundant life in Christ. The Spirit sustains the Church in union with the Lord and in fidelity to the apostolic Tradition. He inspired the Sacred Scriptures and he guides God’s People into the fullness of truth (cf. Jn 16:13) In all these ways the Spirit is the "giver of life", leading us into the very heart of God. So, the more we allow the Spirit to direct us, the more perfect will be our configuration to Christ and the deeper our immersion in the life of the Triune God.

This sharing in God’s nature (cf. 2 Pet 1:4) occurs in the unfolding of the everyday moments of our lives where he is always present (cf. Bar 3:38). There are times, however, when we might be tempted to seek a certain fulfilment apart from God. Jesus himself asked the Twelve: "do you also wish to go away?" Such drifting away perhaps offers the illusion of freedom. But where does it lead? To whom would we go? For in our hearts we know that it is the Lord who has "the words of eternal life" (Jn 6:67-68). To turn away from him is only a futile attempt to escape from ourselves (cf. Saint Augustine, Confessions VIII, 7). God is with us in the reality of life, not the fantasy! It is embrace, not escape, that we seek! So the Holy Spirit gently but surely steers us back to what is real, what is lasting, what is true. It is the Spirit who leads us back into the communion of the Blessed Trinity!

The Holy Spirit has been in some ways the neglected person of the Blessed Trinity. A clear understanding of the Spirit almost seems beyond our reach. Yet, when I was a small boy, my parents, like yours, taught me the Sign of the Cross. So, I soon came to realize that there is one God in three Persons, and that the Trinity is the centre of our Christian faith and life. While I grew up to have some understanding of God the Father and the Son – the names already conveyed much – my understanding of the third person of the Trinity remained incomplete. So, as a young priest teaching theology, I decided to study the outstanding witnesses to the Spirit in the Church’s history. It was on this journey that I found myself reading, among others, the great Saint Augustine.

Augustine’s understanding of the Holy Spirit evolved gradually; it was a struggle. As a young man he had followed Manichaeism - one of those attempts I mentioned earlier, to create a spiritual utopia by radically separating the things of the spirit from the things of the flesh. Hence he was at first suspicious of the Christian teaching that God had become man. Yet his experience of the love of God present in the Church led him to investigate its source in the life of the Triune God. This led him to three particular insights about the Holy Spirit as the bond of unity within the Blessed Trinity: unity as communion, unity as abiding love, and unity as giving and gift. These three insights are not just theoretical. They help explain how the Spirit works. In a world where both individuals and communities often suffer from an absence of unity or cohesion, these insights help us remain attuned to the Spirit and to extend and clarify the scope of our witness.

So, with Augustine’s help, let us illustrate something of the Holy Spirit’s work. He noted that the two words "Holy" and "Spirit" refer to what is divine about God; in other words what is shared by the Father and the Son – their communion. So, if the distinguishing characteristic of the Holy Spirit is to be what is shared by the Father and the Son, Augustine concluded that the Spirit’s particular quality is unity. It is a unity of lived communion: a unity of persons in a relationship of constant giving, the Father and the Son giving themselves to each other. We begin to glimpse, I think, how illuminating is this understanding of the Holy Spirit as unity, as communion. True unity could never be founded upon relationships which deny the equal dignity of other persons. Nor is unity simply the sum total of the groups through which we sometimes attempt to "define" ourselves. In fact, only in the life of communion is unity sustained and human identity fulfilled: we recognize the common need for God, we respond to the unifying presence of the Holy Spirit, and we give ourselves to one another in service.

Augustine’s second insight – the Holy Spirit as abiding love – comes from his study of the First Letter of Saint John. John tells us that "God is love" (1 Jn 4:16). Augustine suggests that while these words refer to the Trinity as a whole they express a particular characteristic of the Holy Spirit. Reflecting on the lasting nature of love - "whoever abides in love remains in God and God in him" (ibid.) - he wondered: is it love or the Holy Spirit which grants the abiding? This is the conclusion he reaches: "The Holy Spirit makes us remain in God and God in us; yet it is love that effects this. The Spirit therefore is God as love!" (De Trinitate, 15.17.31). It is a beautiful explanation: God shares himself as love in the Holy Spirit. What further understanding might we gain from this insight? Love is the sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit! Ideas or voices which lack love – even if they seem sophisticated or knowledgeable – cannot be "of the Spirit". Furthermore, love has a particular trait: far from being indulgent or fickle, it has a task or purpose to fulfil: to abide. By its nature love is enduring. Again, dear friends, we catch a further glimpse of how much the Holy Spirit offers our world: love which dispels uncertainty; love which overcomes the fear of betrayal; love which carries eternity within; the true love which draws us into a unity that abides!

The third insight – the Holy Spirit as gift – Augustine derived from meditating on a Gospel passage we all know and love: Christ’s conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. Here Jesus reveals himself as the giver of the living water (cf. Jn 4:10) which later is explained as the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 7:39; 1 Cor 12:13). The Spirit is "God’s gift" (Jn 4:10) - the internal spring (cf. Jn 4:14), who truly satisfies our deepest thirst and leads us to the Father. From this observation Augustine concludes that God sharing himself with us as gift is the Holy Spirit (cf. De Trinitate, 15, 18, 32). Friends, again we catch a glimpse of the Trinity at work: the Holy Spirit is God eternally giving himself; like a never-ending spring he pours forth nothing less than himself. In view of this ceaseless gift, we come to see the limitations of all that perishes, the folly of the consumerist mindset. We begin to understand why the quest for novelty leaves us unsatisfied and wanting. Are we not looking for an eternal gift? The spring that will never run dry? With the Samaritan woman, let us exclaim: give me this water that I may thirst no more! (cf. Jn 4:15).

Dear young people, we have seen that it is the Holy Spirit who brings about the wonderful communion of believers in Jesus Christ. True to his nature as giver and gift alike, he is even now working through you. Inspired by the insights of Saint Augustine: let unifying love be your measure; abiding love your challenge; self-giving love your mission!

Tomorrow, that same gift of the Spirit will be solemnly conferred upon our confirmation candidates. I shall pray: "give them the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of right judgement and courage, the spirit of knowledge and reverence … and fill them with the spirit of wonder and awe". These gifts of the Spirit – each of which, as Saint Francis de Sales reminds us, is a way to participate in the one love of God – are neither prizes nor rewards. They are freely given (cf. 1 Cor 12:11). And they require only one response on the part of the receiver: I accept! Here we sense something of the deep mystery of being Christian. What constitutes our faith is not primarily what we do but what we receive. After all, many generous people who are not Christian may well achieve far more than we do. Friends, do you accept being drawn into God’s Trinitarian life? Do you accept being drawn into his communion of love?

The Spirit’s gifts working within us give direction and definition to our witness. Directed to unity, the gifts of the Spirit bind us more closely to the whole Body of Christ (cf. Lumen Gentium, 11), equipping us better to build up the Church in order to serve the world (cf. Eph 4:13). They call us to active and joyful participation in the life of the Church: in parishes and ecclesial movements, in religious education classes, in university chaplaincies and other catholic organizations. Yes, the Church must grow in unity, must be strengthened in holiness, must be rejuvenated, must be constantly renewed (cf. Lumen Gentium, 4). But according to whose standard? The Holy Spirit’s! Turn to him, dear young people, and you will find the true meaning of renewal.

Tonight, gathered under the beauty of the night sky, our hearts and minds are filled with gratitude to God for the great gift of our Trinitarian faith. We recall our parents and grandparents who walked alongside us when we, as children, were taking our first steps in our pilgrim journey of faith. Now many years later, you have gathered as young adults with the Successor of Peter. I am filled with deep joy to be with you. Let us invoke the Holy Spirit: he is the artisan of God’s works (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 741). Let his gifts shape you! Just as the Church travels the same journey with all humanity, so too you are called to exercise the Spirit’s gifts amidst the ups and downs of your daily life. Let your faith mature through your studies, work, sport, music and art. Let it be sustained by prayer and nurtured by the sacraments, and thus be a source of inspiration and help to those around you. In the end, life is not about accumulation. It is much more than success. To be truly alive is to be transformed from within, open to the energy of God’s love. In accepting the power of the Holy Spirit you too can transform your families, communities and nations. Set free the gifts! Let wisdom, courage, awe and reverence be the marks of greatness!

The Gospel according to a Bird of Paradise

This post is a follow-up to "Prolegomena to the gospel", and presupposes familiarity with it.

A few months ago, a good friend let my family borrow a copy of the BBC video series Planet Earth, narrated by David Attenborough. Many of the scenes are stunningly beautiful, and the camera work is quite incredible. We all enjoyed it. We found ourselves laughing out loud during various parts, especially the courtship rituals. Here's a clip showing the courtship displays of some birds of paradise in New Guinea:



(Other clips of courtship rituals by different species of birds of paradise can be seen here and here.)

I laughed too, but I found myself wondering exactly why I was laughing. Humor is like time, in that respect; we all know it when we experience it, but trying to explain it is not easy. Part of my laughter was nervous, slightly embarrassed laughter, because there is way too much there that I, as a male, can identify with in my own antics as a youth. We [men] laughed at George Costanza for the same reason. But even so, that just pushes back the question, why do such displays make us laugh, even at ourselves? Why, for example, do we laugh at Mr. Bean? We laugh, it seems, because of the dissonance between the nature of his actions and the ordinary or expected type of behavior in accord with our intrinsic human dignity. In every scene his behavior unintentionally falls short of the decorum befitting human dignity, and it is this dissonance that we experience as humor. That's why the behavior is more humorous when the dissonance is increased, for example, by making an inebriated man (who is unaware of his inebriation) turn out to be the pilot of a 747. Even very young children are capable of discerning this dissonance, as this example shows. But when the departure from human dignity becomes malicious or harmful or perverse or weighty or evil, the dissonance is no longer humorous, but sorrowful or even repulsive.

I realized that I was laughing at the routines of these male "birds of paradise" because I was experiencing the dissonance between their natural dignity and the self-deprecation inherent in the ostentation of their courtship ritual. But it is precisely this dissonance that gets the female's attention; "Look at what he is willing to do for me", if we can be allowed to anthropomorphize a bit. And yet at the same time, it is odd to find behavioral dissonance among animals, which supposedly simply are what they are. It seemed to be an ontological clue left in the fabric of creation. But a clue of what?

Three other bits of evidence helped me arrive at an answer. A few years ago I was talking with a priest about certain claims in anti-Catholic literature. One of those claims was that early pagan religions typically possessed a female deity of some sort: e.g. Isis, Aphrodite, or Artemis, or some other such goddess. The charge against the Catholic Church was that the Church's veneration of Mary was simply a case of syncretism wherein pagan practices had worked their way into the Church. The tone of the priest's reply reminded me of how Christ's must have been when He chided the two disciples on the road to Emmaus for their foolishness and lack of faith. The priest replied, "Didn't you consider the possibility that these pagan practices were prefigurations of the Christian teaching concerning Mary?" He said something quite similar about the universal pagan practice of offering sacrifices, how it prefigured its culmination in the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, in which the Holy Eucharist is a participation. God had been providentially preparing all these peoples for the gospel, he claimed.

This is an example of the Duhem-Quine thesis that an argument can be treated as a support for its conclusion or as a refutation of at least one of its premises, depending on which is more evidently true to the reasoner. The implicit premise that this priest rejected in the anti-Catholic arguments was that whatever was pagan was both evil and untouched by the divine providence that had prepared the world to receive Christ in the "fullness of time". (Gal 4:4) These similarities between pagan beliefs and the Catholic faith, he argued, are not evidence against the Church's fidelity to the gospel, but are rather evidence of the providence of God in preparing the pagans for the gospel.

The second important piece of evidence that helped me arrive at the deeper meaning of the courtship rituals of the birds of paradise is found in the prefiguration of Christ throughout the Old Testament. Long before the incarnation, God was already revealing Christ, even in His statements in Genesis 3 regarding the punishments of Adam and Eve, and His killing of an animal in order to clothe them. From that time on, He was calling a people to Himself, gathering them together into one. Noah was a type of Christ, and the ark a type of Christ's cross. Of course the sacrifice of Isaac was a prefiguration of Christ. Jacob too, who labored for 14 years for Rachel, though they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her, was a type of Christ. (Gen 29:20) Moses was a type of Christ, as was Joshua, and King David. The theme of gathering a people together for God is found throughout the Bible.

"Gather My godly ones to Me, Those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice." (Psalm 50:5)

"Save us, O LORD our God, And gather us from among the nations, To give thanks to Your holy name And glory in Your praise." (Psalm 106:47)

"The LORD builds up Jerusalem; He gathers the outcasts of Israel." (Psalm 147:2)

"And He will lift up a standard for the nations And assemble the banished ones of Israel, And will gather the dispersed of Judah From the four corners of the earth." (Isaiah 11:12)

"The Lord GOD, who gathers the dispersed of Israel, declares, "Yet others I will gather to them, to those already gathered." (Isaiah 56:8)

Through the Old Testament God was gathering a people to Himself, through these types of Christ. In each case God made a covenant with them, to make them into a holy people called out from the world to be His very own. He promised to make Abraham's descendants into a great nation. At Sinai He promised to make the Hebrews into a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

This theme of gathering a people into a unity continues in the New Testament. Jesus desires to "gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad." (John 11:52)

Jesus says, "and he who does not gather with Me scatters." (Matthew 12:30)

And elsewhere He says, "Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling." (Matthew 23:37)

Notice that Jesus refers to the behavior of a bird as a depiction of His own heart.

The Catechism tells us:

"The gathering together of the People of God began at the moment when sin destroyed the communion of men with God, and that of men among themselves. The gathering together of the Church is, as it were, God's reaction to the chaos provoked by sin. … The remote preparation for this gathering together of the People of God begins when he calls Abraham and promises that he will become the father of a great people. Its immediate preparation begins with Israel's election as the People of God. By this election, Israel is to be the sign of the future gathering of All nations." (CCC 761-762)

After His death and resurrection, Christ commissioned the Apostles to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth, and baptize them into His Body, the Church. The Church is the people whom God calls and gathers together into one people, from every part of the earth. Gathering His people from all the earth, making them into one people by baptizing them into His Mystical Body, is the making of His Bride, as I explained here. The whole of the Old Testament is in this way a preparation for the making of a Bride, and it prefigures the gospel. This becomes especially clear to us when we look at it with hindsight.

The third bit of evidence came from meditating on the first part of Pope Benedict's encyclical Deus Caritas Est. There Pope Benedict talks about eros and agape. Eros is that form of love that desires the beloved as a good for oneself. Agape, on the other hand, is that form of love that desires the good for the beloved, even to the point of sacrificing oneself. But these two aspects of love, argues Pope Benedict, cannot be entirely separated. He writes:

"Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the other, it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to "be there for" the other. The element of agape thus enters into this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature. On the other hand, man cannot live by oblative, descending love alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift. Certainly, as the Lord tells us, one can become a source from which rivers of living water flow (cf. Jn 7:37-38). Yet to become such a source, one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God (cf. Jn 19:34)." (DCE, 7)

Fundamentally, "love" is a single reality, but with different dimensions; at different times, one or other dimension may emerge more clearly. Yet when the two dimensions are totally cut off from one another, the result is a caricature or at least an impoverished form of love." (DCE, 8)

What becomes fascinating here is that Pope Benedict goes on to say that in its perfected form, eros is also found in the love of God for us. We tend to think of God's love as being in no way desiderative, but only and entirely benevolent. But Pope Benedict teaches that God's love is both eros and agape.

"God loves, and his love may certainly be called eros, yet it is also totally agape." (DCE, 9)

"The philosophical dimension to be noted in this biblical vision, and its importance from the standpoint of the history of religions, lies in the fact that on the one hand we find ourselves before a strictly metaphysical image of God: God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal principle of creation—the Logos, primordial reason—is at the same time a lover with all the passion of a true love. Eros is thus supremely ennobled, yet at the same time it is so purified as to become one with agape." (DCE, 10)

Christ, the Logos of God, is a Lover with all the passion of a true love. This is signified in the Song of Songs, which has long been understood by the Church as referring to the love between Christ and His Bride, the Church. This is a love that passionately seeks union with the beloved. Pope Benedict says:

"Thus the Song of Songs became, both in Christian and Jewish literature, a source of mystical knowledge and experience, an expression of the essence of biblical faith: that man can indeed enter into union with God—his primordial aspiration. But this union is no mere fusion, a sinking in the nameless ocean of the Divine; it is a unity which creates love, a unity in which both God and man remain themselves and yet become fully one. As Saint Paul says: "He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him" (1 Cor 6:17)." (DCE, 10)

When we put all the pieces of evidence together, we see that not just the whole of redemptive history, but the whole of history, is a love story, the most intensely passionate love story ever, for this Lover goes through a preparation, patience, humiliation, suffering, and rejection far greater than mankind has ever known or will know. All other love stories are only a shadow of a shadow compared to this love story. The whole of history prior to the incarnation is a preparation for the entrance of the Lover. Every act of Christ has been the act of a Lover, loving both His Father and His Bride. Pope Leo XIII wrote, "Marriage has God for its Author, and was from the very beginning a kind of foreshadowing of the Incarnation of His Son." (Arcanum, 19)

If we read the Gospels and only see Jesus going through a series of events to fulfill prophecy and the requirements of the law, we are not seeing what is going on underneath, in the heart of Christ. Christ is a mad boundless lover, to use Maritain's phrase. From His birth to His passion and death, the whole of His life is like the ritual of those male birds of paradise, going through these amazing dance/displays seeking to woo a bride for eternity. His life on earth was a life-long dance, a courtship ritual made not for birds, but for all mankind. It was the most perfect embodied demonstration of love, ever. And it was all perfectly planned from the beginning, to demonstrate His love for us and draw us to Himself forever. People who love do 'crazy' things for those they love. And the life of Christ, taking on human flesh and giving Himself over to suffer and die on a cross, is the 'craziest', the most unsurpassable demonstration of a lover's love for his beloved, ever, for all time. "I give myself to you, to the point of death at your hand, in order that I might show you how much I want you to be with me forever."

When we meditate on Christ's life in this way, the eros jumps out at us; we see the Lover in Him. We can see this in little things that He said. For example, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me." This statement makes sense to someone who has loved deeply, or been deeply in love. What energizes the lover is blessing the beloved. He will go without food for forty days, if necessary, for the sake of love for His Father and His people. Or consider this example. Jesus said to His Apostles: "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. (St. Luke 22:15) When Jesus speaks to us, He is reserving 99% of His heart from us, because if He were to disclose the magnitude of His love for us, it would be like a consuming blazing fire, and we would be frightened to death, even though there would be nothing to fear. But little snatches of blazing love slip out here and there. "Peter, do you love Me?" (St. John 21) and "Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him" (St. Mark 10:21). You can hear it the solitary word He says to the Magdalene: "Mary" (St. John 20:16), and in the tender words He says to the woman caught in adultery. "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more." (St. John 8:11) You see it when he weeps with the women at Lazarus' tomb (St. John 11:35), and when He weeps over Jerusalem (St. Luke 19:41). Mostly you can hear it coming from His lips in that moment of greatest agony and yet simultaneously greatest glory, as He is giving up His life for His beloved, on the cross, when He says, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." (St. Luke 23:34)

The dissonance in the courtship display of the male bird of paradise is a prefiguration, designed into its very nature, of the greatest dissonance ever, when the Second Person of the Trinity humbled Himself and became man to win for Himself an eternal bride. It is the gospel prefigured in a bird of paradise. The dissonance between who Christ is, and what He did, is so prodigious that the proper response is amazement, gratitude, worship, absolute unqualified love and unending joy. The greatest dissonance ever which is the life of Christ is an infinite expansion of that small sort of dissonance that makes us laugh; this is what we call joy. It is God-sized laughter. As Chesterton says at the end of Orthodoxy:

There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.

St. John tells us that we love because He first loved us. The more we perceive His love for us, the more we fall in love with Him. And the ones who love Him the most are closest to His throne, like St. Therese; they are truly Christ's lovers. They do not merely love Him; they are madly in love with Him. They are truly intimate with Him, in perfect purity. They are totally smitten; and yet they are the most rational. The 'craziest' are the most rational, because they are seeing most clearly and accurately and fully the blazing furnace of passion which is Love Himself, whose demonstration of His mad boundless love for us is "foolishness to the Greeks". May the Lord give us eyes to see His love for us, that we may become His mad boundless lovers, and in union with that Love, may we be one with each other, as He is one with the Father.