AUGUST 6 -- Feast of the Transfiguration: "We were eyewitnesses of His majesty on the sacred mountain"

[first published August 6, 2014]

"Send forth your light and your truth...
  let them lead me up your holy mountain,
  up to your sanctuary.
 I shall go in to the altar of God,
  to the God of my gladness and joy."

              (Psalm 43)

                               

Our Lord climbed Mount Tabor with Peter, James, and John -- and revealed his glory as he spoke with Moses and Elijah. As someone has said: we can be transfigured by the love of God or we can be disfigured by the love of sin!

"... and it is indeed appropriate that the greatest God-seers of the Old Testament should be present at the glorification of the Lord in His New Testament, seeing for the first time His humanity, even as the disciples were seeing for the first time His Divinity."

This article explains more of the meaning of the Greek icon above.

["Although the event celebrated in the Feast occurred in the month of February, forty days before the Crucifixion, the Feast was early transferred to August because its full glory and joy could not be fittingly celebrated amid the sorrow and repentance of Great Lent. The sixth day of August was chosen as being forty days before the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (September 14th, old style), when Christ’s Passion is again remembered."]

Saint Helena (the emperor Constantine's mother, pictured) erected a church on Mount Tabor in honor of the Transfiguration, 'the excellence of His hidden dignity.'
                          

"On the mountain wast Thou transfigured, O Christ God, and Thy disciples beheld Thy glory as far as they could see it; so that when they would behold Thee crucified, they would understand that Thy suffering was voluntary, and would proclaim to the world that Thou art truly the Radiance of the Father."

"In the spirit, the angel took me to the top of an enormous high mountain and showed me Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down from God out of heaven. The city did not need the sun or the moon for light, since it was lit by the radiant glory of God and the Lamb was a lighted torch for it."    (Apocalypse 21)

One of our writers spent time in the Holy Land and took the photo below of the Church of the Transfiguration, which sits atop Mt. Tabor just south of Galilee. The church itself has two altars: the lower for daily use and the upper to which no stairs ascend. The latter altar has been reserved for the Second Coming. Also noteworthy is the fact that Mt. Tabor overlooks the Valley of Armageddon - the location of the final battle between the heavenly army and the forces of Satan.

August 5: Dedication of Basilica of Mary -- Celebrating Virgin and Mother

Alice von Hildebrand (1923-1922)

Some people consider you a Christian feminist. How do you understand feminism?

To distinguish myself clearly from Simone de Beauvoir's powerful and poisonous book, The Second Sex, I would not call myself a Christian feminist but a champion of femininity. The sublime beauty of the female mission as virgin, wife or mother has been so degraded that I felt a calling to shed light on "the privilege of being a woman," which is also the title of one of my books.

Of all creatures mentioned in Genesis, Eve is the only one whose body is taken from the body of a person; even Adam's body was taken from the "slime of the earth." She is declared by Adam to be the "mother of the living." He is not called the "father of the living." When Eve gives birth to Cain, she ecstatically says: I have brought a child into the world with God's help. Adam, the biological father, is not mentioned. Eve proclaims that the child's soul—which is made to God's image and likeness—is placed by God himself into her body. God, so to speak, "touches" the female body and in so doing gives it a note of sacredness.

The duel which takes place between the Woman and the Serpent, not between "the strong sex" and the Serpent, hints at the crucial role of women in the economy of redemption. The most perfect of all creatures, queen of the Angels, is a woman—not a man. It is high time that women should humbly acknowledge that they are privileged to be women.

Marian Femininity--A video talk

The Feminine Breaking of the Glass Ceiling : The Assumption of Mary

                 Pope Francis visits Basilica of St. Mary Major to begin his papacy

AUGUST 4 MEMORIAL OF ST. JOHN VIANNEY: Priest, Parish, and Practicing Catholics

[first published August 4, 2014]


by David Pence


John Vianney (1786-1859) is the patron saint of parish priests. He worked in a French town of less than 500 souls called Ars, and is often called the Cure of Ars. [It is about 90 miles west of Geneva, Switzerland].

'Cure' in French means priest. The Webster word history is instructive. The old Latin word 'cura' meant "the care given to someone, often medical." Christians expropriated the word to mean "the care of souls." The Latin root passed into French, and then English, with this spiritual meaning as cure in French meaning priest and curate in English meaning "one who takes care of souls, a member of the clergy." This word history reminds us that cultures can sacralize language as well as debase it. What a culture does to the words it receives, depends on what kind of life the people are living in that culture.

Jean Baptiste Marie Vianney was no star in his seminary studies. Thank God his superiors recognized his great soul garbed with a modest mind. He received his earliest sacraments in the underground French Church, avoided Napoleon’s draft to fight the disastrous war against Spain, and was ordained in 1815. His piety, prayer, and penance made his parish a gravitational center for Catholic renewal in post-revolutionary France. He knew the basics. God had become man in Christ; the priest had become sacred in ordination; and the souls of his parishioners would be sanctified only through prayer and penance.

The humble priest provides for us an antidote to living public life "as if God doesn’t exist." The French priest had a cure for practical atheism. He built his life on prayer. He centralized the tabernacle’s sacred space in gesture and building to proclaim Jesus present. He saw men as souls. In his celebration of the Mass, he directed all present to the reality of the Triune God. In the confessional he did not turn his head from the hold of Satan on unresolved penitents. He chastised those who repeatedly failed to "amend my life."
                     

The local parish is still today the physical and communal form of Christ’s Presence shining through the sulfurous mist of practical atheism. The priest is a watchman for the city of God whenever he mounts the walls of the confessional to beat back Satan assaulting the people. The Catholic life is a daily, weekly, and annual set of practices organizing a community of prayer around a sacred space and Personage. The priest prays the daily office of Church in communion with the worldwide apostolic priesthood, and puts on the mind of Christ for his local flock by this practice. Keeping Catholic time draws the local face-to-face body into the Universal Church, and the day-to-day calendar into the timeline of the Divine Drama. The antidotes to the foggy atmosphere of practical atheism are the tabernacle lights of countless parochial sacred hills where men worship the Father. As Jesus promised the woman at the well, there shall come a time when worship is no longer restricted to the mountains of Jerusalem and Samaria. That time has been achieved through the coming of the Spirit in the sacramental Church. Let us rejoice and be glad!

The priest is not a community organizer urging his parishioners to do public service projects or postcard-campaigns to lobby the civil authorities. He mans an ark and pulls us into a sacred space where we are set apart from the corrupting flood-waters of the world. Once in the ark, man can finally see reality with his head above the waters. He has been saved and is enlightened. He understands his purpose because, finally, he stands and kneels where he is fully oriented in space and time to the Divine Person. The parish priest directs hearts to God and cleanses souls of sin. He leads us in prayer, integrates us in the sacramental order of the Church, and teaches us the pillars of the faith -- which explain Nature, History, and Person in the light of Christ. The practicing Catholic becomes a new personality. These new Christian personalities shaped by communal liturgy and prayer will feed the hungry, heal the sick, enlighten the ignorant, protect the widows and orphans, and shelter the immigrant. The men will build cities and nations while the women will build homes, schools, and hospitals. The men will be apostolic in their communal public character, and the women will be virginal in their interior lives and maternal in their care of others. Catholic practice shapes Catholic personalities, and that practice is as tactile as it is local.

Seek first the things above and all else will follow. Holy priests make holy men and holy women. There is only one kind of village that explains the Cosmos -- the parish at prayer. The local parish has never been the end game of the careerist. But it remains the locus of prayer and penance where practicing Catholics muster in the formations which proclaim the Sacramental Presence of Christ in those golden tabernacles, and herald the Final Coming of our Lord and King just over the horizon.

From the Catechetical Instructions by St. John Mary Vianney: 

Man has a noble task: that of prayer and love. To pray and to love, that is the happiness of man on earth. 

Prayer is nothing else than union with God. When the heart is pure and united with God it is consoled and filled with sweetness; it is dazzled by a marvellous light. In this intimate union God and the soul are like two pieces of wax moulded into one; they cannot any more be separated. It is a very wonderful thing, this union of God with his insignificant creature, a happiness passing all understanding... 

Our prayer is an incense that is delightful to God... My children, your hearts are small, but prayer enlarges them and renders them capable of loving God... In a prayer well made, troubles vanish like snow under the rays of the sun.

May Saint John Vianney guide many parishes and their local priests into a prayerful weekly rhythm of the Catholic sacramental order: Baptism, Confession, and the Eucharist.

                                       

"I will show you the way to heaven!"

                                                                                                           

Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola -- 'Militia est vita hominis in terra' (Man's life on earth is a warfare)

[first published July 31, 2014]


"Everything that Jesus did, from His crying as a Babe in the cradle to His getting tired and falling asleep, to His agony in the Garden, all of that is a pattern for us to imitate."

Father John Hardon, the Jesuit who died in 2000, explains that the Person of Christ is the first attribute of the spirituality of Saint Ignatius: "Man's virtues are God's attributes."

                    

The founder of the Jesuits -- unlike his Protestant contemporaries -- understood the true dignity of human freedom. Take a look at Father Hardon's fine essay.
                                 

"Take Lord and receive all my liberty... To Thee, Oh Lord, I return it. All is Thine... Give me Thy Love and Thy Grace for this is sufficient for me."         (Saint Ignatius of Loyola)

The First Jesuit Pope is Pope Francis. Many modern day Jesuits have betrayed the masculine personality of Ignatius and ignored the Evil One who Ignatius was always careful to discern and oppose. This has confused many conservative Catholics about Pope Francis. Pope Francis is not James Martin. The Pope  is not playing to the spirit of this age. Quite the contrary, Pope Francis is bringing a much needed dimension to the papal office which has been sorely lacking for over half a century. If John Paul gave priests the words of a Prophet and Benedict XVI taught the clergy to reverence the liturgy as a  priest, we believe Pope Francis will bring the king's ruling function to the priesthood and episcopacy. We believe the Pope has been misunderstood by his intellectual critics of the global North. A series of our defenses of the first Jesuit Pope.    

The Memorial of Saint Benedict: Christian fraternity and male socialization

by David Pence
                     

Saint Benedict (480-543) left the comfortable life of a university student to discipline himself as a hermit. He left the life of solitude to become  an abbot of several monasteries. He survived several poisoning attempts of monks not as dedicated to moral reform as he was. In one of those episodes, a raven clutched the poisoned bread he was about to eat and saved his life. The raven is often prominent  in the name of Benedictine institutions and pictures of the saint. He introduced an order of life (Rule of St Benedict) which regulated the prayer, study, and manual labor of men who lived together in community. He is considered the Father of Europe. Benedictine monasteries are highly independent from one another and democratic in their selection of an abbot. To this day, they number some of the holiest (and some of the most corrupt) communities in Christendom. Benedict’s Christian fraternities of work, study, and prayer were the spiritual forerunners of corporations, universities, and cities which invigorated European civilization. Benedict taught men how to live together under Christ in love. He shaped Christian masculine character in monasteries that served as the fraternal template of public life. He united men in a transcendent spiritual purpose in a specific local community under a patriarch. An excerpt of the Rule of Benedict from the Church readings for his feast day:

"Just as there exists an evil fervor, a bitter spirit which divides us from God and leads us to hell, so there is a good fervor which sets us apart from evil inclinations and leads us toward God and eternal life. Monks should put this fervor into practice with an overflowing love... No one should follow what is good for himself but rather what seems good for another. They should display brotherly love in a chaste manner; fear God in a spirit of love, revere their abbot with a genuine and submissive affection. Let them put Christ above all else; and may He lead us all to everlasting life."

                               

CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD, THE BENEDICT OPTION, AND INTERRACIAL VIOLENCE

A contemporary "Benedict Option" would be an all-male communal group which shaped men in Christian brotherhood. These all-male communities of prayer and work would be a model for interracial brotherhood and male socialization in towns or cities. The goal of the fraternity would be to teach and socialize young males as American men regardless of color. The perfection of some men leads to the maturation of many men. Men in the spirit of Benedict pray together regularly and do physically productive work. They would introduce the Christian culture of brotherhood as active protectors and workers for the young men of a local community. This is just the kind of male maturation and sex roles needed in our cities to bring cooperation between young black men and police officers. Both policemen and black male citizens SHARE a common identity as male protectors and fellow Americans. The police officers are the officer corps of the citizen protective bond. The feminist culture of the Democratic party which dominates America's inner cities is clueless about socializing and integrating young men into our protective role as men. They seek a lesbian police chief here, and many more female officers there, but the public peace of fraternity and male protective sex roles is an enemy to them. The enmity between black men and urban police is one of the bitterest fruits of the sexual revolution. Sabotaging the ability of young males to show they are men by acting out a public protector role in manners, dress, and actions pierces the masculine heart of Christian civic culture.

The Benedict Option is masculine and fraternal. Patriarchal fraternity is the fundamental form of Christian accord which shapes public life just as the marital spousality of the male-female couple shapes domestic life. Benedictine fraternity combines physical work with prayer; otherwise it is not of Benedict. The black men of our inner cities have lost the pathway to fatherhood and maturation which industrial jobs once provided. They need a Benedict. He is the father of Europe because the ordered masculine fraternity of his monks eventually flowered into the male communal forms of work, worship, and protection called nations. Benedict built masculine religiously-ordered publics. His men were patriots of whatever land they worked. They were manufacturers (manus facto -- to make by hand). Let us honor his feast day by remembering what he did long ago, and pray that men in our country will once again imitate his fraternities of ora et labora.  

                          ALL-MALE GROUPS ARE THE SOLUTION, NOT THE PROBLEM

This is the road not taken to racial reconciliation. Street violence is overwhelmingly a male problem. It can only be solved by building a civic culture which can sanctify and socialize the males. There are many paths to social deviancy when men are not integrated into public protection and meaningful labor. One is seeking social recognition in the false "communities" of drugs and sexual promiscuity. Our large cities have fatally made peace with this errant path. Another errant path is chosen by much tougher males than those at the pot parties and dance clubs. They seek public recognition in violent dissent. That path wakes society up enough to start looking for solutions. Let us consider the strategy of that Italian saint who 1,500 years ago countered the dissipating cities of Europe with prayer, learning, and manual labor forged in local fraternities under God. As part of the Church’s morning prayer memorial of Benedict, she employs a 19th-century hymn:

             "Rise up O men of God!
              His kingdom tarries long
              Bring in the day of brotherhood
              And end the night of wrong."
     


St. Benedict was one of the four holy men we featured on All Saints Day as  "A man in full."