Sorry, for a long break between posts. Papers and finals, etc. piled up and I've been working on one post now for two months. I was going to wait to but these sidetracks till later but for the sake of keeping up some kind of post. Here it is.
I'm going to go a little of track, but still in the context and focus of Deus Caritas Est. I was struck by something John Paul II said in his Theology of the Body.
"[The breaking of the first covenant] is a situation that comes after the failure of the test connected with the tree of the knowlege of good and evil, which was at the same time the first test of 'obedience,' that is, of hearing the Word in all its truth and of accepting Love according to the fullness of the demands of the creative Will." TOB 11:4
I was struck first of all by the capitalization of Love. Now that sounds very English teachery of me, but it has a great significance. We only capitalize very specific things, the beginnings of sentences, proper names, and place. Love is capitalized because it refers directly to God. Deus Caritas Est.
JP II sees obedience as hearing and accepting Love. Obedience, then, is our response to love. Within that loving response, I spoke last time is also the obedience of God's Will. Obedience and love, then, are intimately connected and intertwined. This connection frees the concept of obedience from oppresiveness, anger, and fear. It connects it rather to a loving response to God's call.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Eros Part 1
"There is a certain relationship between love and the divine: love promises infinity, eternity--a reality far greater and totally other than our everyday existence." Deus Caritas Est 5
This quote is within the context of the Holy Father's explication of eros. He refers back to the Greek understanding of an intoxication transcending into the divine so as to experience supreme happiness. He goes on to say this was enacted through various fertility cults, where men would go to a shrine and unleash his passionate desire upon a woman whose sole purpose was to be mediators of divine intoxication as objects of sexual pleasure. They were treated not as human beings, not as persons, but as objects for us, objects for the sole of pleasure.
This should sound familiar to us today. Pornography is not much different. Neither is prostitution. To me though pornography is exponentially more dangerous, if not for the soul reason of being much more accessible, but also from Matthew 5 where Jesus tells us that anyone who lust after a woman already commits adultery in his heart. Pornography degrades, perverts, and deconstructs the idea and truth of eros. It divinizes eros instead of letting eros be a means to the divine. Furthermore, it destroys the God given dignity of the human person, who is an end to himself (c.f. Love and Responsibility Karol Wojtyla).
Pope Benedict goes on to mention the Old Testament's rejection of this cult because it is aa shown earlier "a perversion of religiosity." However, eros was not rejected, rather, its idea and enaction needed to be purified and tempered.
This desire, ultimately, for God is within us. Eros desires to transcend finite reality to be in union with the infinite, namely God. Aristotle had this concept in his cosmology. The umoved mover, whom he referred to as god, moved all things to itself. Everything moved in its own path back toward the unmoved mover. This can easily be translated into Christian terms. God move "all creation together in Himself." "Father, I pray that they may be one as You and I are one." In the greatest sense, eros can be seen this light.
However, "eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but also a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns," (DCE 4). The tendency in our culture today is to direct this desire fro the infinite, foe beatitude, (happiness), toward finite things. These things, or persons, offer fleeting pleasure. through a temperate direction of eros, we can experience a "foretaste" of eternal life in love. It is live tasting a crumb of the greatest cake ever to be made, and this crumb springs your yearning on ever greater for the whole cake. This foretaste directed and mediate through temperance, incites full throttle the desire to be in union with our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This quote is within the context of the Holy Father's explication of eros. He refers back to the Greek understanding of an intoxication transcending into the divine so as to experience supreme happiness. He goes on to say this was enacted through various fertility cults, where men would go to a shrine and unleash his passionate desire upon a woman whose sole purpose was to be mediators of divine intoxication as objects of sexual pleasure. They were treated not as human beings, not as persons, but as objects for us, objects for the sole of pleasure.
This should sound familiar to us today. Pornography is not much different. Neither is prostitution. To me though pornography is exponentially more dangerous, if not for the soul reason of being much more accessible, but also from Matthew 5 where Jesus tells us that anyone who lust after a woman already commits adultery in his heart. Pornography degrades, perverts, and deconstructs the idea and truth of eros. It divinizes eros instead of letting eros be a means to the divine. Furthermore, it destroys the God given dignity of the human person, who is an end to himself (c.f. Love and Responsibility Karol Wojtyla).
Pope Benedict goes on to mention the Old Testament's rejection of this cult because it is aa shown earlier "a perversion of religiosity." However, eros was not rejected, rather, its idea and enaction needed to be purified and tempered.
This desire, ultimately, for God is within us. Eros desires to transcend finite reality to be in union with the infinite, namely God. Aristotle had this concept in his cosmology. The umoved mover, whom he referred to as god, moved all things to itself. Everything moved in its own path back toward the unmoved mover. This can easily be translated into Christian terms. God move "all creation together in Himself." "Father, I pray that they may be one as You and I are one." In the greatest sense, eros can be seen this light.
However, "eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but also a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns," (DCE 4). The tendency in our culture today is to direct this desire fro the infinite, foe beatitude, (happiness), toward finite things. These things, or persons, offer fleeting pleasure. through a temperate direction of eros, we can experience a "foretaste" of eternal life in love. It is live tasting a crumb of the greatest cake ever to be made, and this crumb springs your yearning on ever greater for the whole cake. This foretaste directed and mediate through temperance, incites full throttle the desire to be in union with our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Reciprocal Love
"Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 John 4:10), love is now no longer a mere 'command,' it is the response to the gift f love which God draws near to us." Deus Caritas Est 1
Christianity is a contiuation of the Shemah. Pope Benedict shares this insight. The Shemah is the prayer of Israel. They have it on their foreheads and on their door posts. "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your hear, and with all your soul, and with all your might," (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). This was the command given to Israel from the Father at Sinai.
The devout Jew utters this prayer throughout the day reminding himself to follow the law . Jesus "came not to abolish the law, but fulfill it," (Matthew 5:17). So what does this mean for us as Christians, this Shemah of Israel?
Well, with Jesus it takes on a new light. "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be expiation for our sins," (1 John 4:10). This is the verse to which the Holy Father alluded. Not that we first loved God (we were the initiators of this relationship between human divine), but He first loved us. Therefore, our love for Him is no longer a command, as in the Shemah, but a response.
Our love for God is a response to His love for us. We first experience this love as children in the faith. We experience most powerfully in our first conversion experience. We experience it at the proclamation of the Gospel during the Liturgy of the Word. We experience it even more so at the Liturgy of the Eucharist where that event is re-presented, becomes present for us. We experience when we receive the sacrament of penance.
Then, what is our response but to love back. We give back to God what He has given us, by giving ourselves fully to Him just as He gave Himself for us. There is no holding back. It must be all of you.
Christianity is a contiuation of the Shemah. Pope Benedict shares this insight. The Shemah is the prayer of Israel. They have it on their foreheads and on their door posts. "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your hear, and with all your soul, and with all your might," (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). This was the command given to Israel from the Father at Sinai.
The devout Jew utters this prayer throughout the day reminding himself to follow the law . Jesus "came not to abolish the law, but fulfill it," (Matthew 5:17). So what does this mean for us as Christians, this Shemah of Israel?
Well, with Jesus it takes on a new light. "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be expiation for our sins," (1 John 4:10). This is the verse to which the Holy Father alluded. Not that we first loved God (we were the initiators of this relationship between human divine), but He first loved us. Therefore, our love for Him is no longer a command, as in the Shemah, but a response.
Our love for God is a response to His love for us. We first experience this love as children in the faith. We experience most powerfully in our first conversion experience. We experience it at the proclamation of the Gospel during the Liturgy of the Word. We experience it even more so at the Liturgy of the Eucharist where that event is re-presented, becomes present for us. We experience when we receive the sacrament of penance.
Then, what is our response but to love back. We give back to God what He has given us, by giving ourselves fully to Him just as He gave Himself for us. There is no holding back. It must be all of you.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
What a Christian Is
"Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction." Deus Caritas Est 1
There is this idea in the world today that Christianity, Catholicism in particular, is no different than every other religion (to each his own). That is not true. In fact, it is a lie. Pope Benedict shows us in the aforementioned quote why. You can't reduce Christianity to ethical choice. Christianity is not solely an ethical system wherein the Ten Commmandments set up guideline and boundaries to live our lives. It is no a group of people who casuistically tell if you've sinned, and, therefore, need redemption. Although some of these things have their part, they are not the core of Christianity.
Christianity is about. It says so in it namesake. As St. Paul says, "We preach Jesus Christ, and him crucified." We are not Ten Commandmentians. We are Christians. Our focus, our meaning, our lives are centered on the person of Christ andthe decisive event of the Paschal Mystery.
There's an interesting point here. In the quest for the "historical Jesus" there has been this drive to find out who Jesus really was. Was he just a liberal Jew stirring up things in an already chaotic time in history? Was he a just a rabbi with followers who got some crazy ideas that he rose from the dead after he was crucified for plotting an uprising? Luke Timothy Johnson, a Catholic Scripture scholar, wished to put his two-sense into this empirically driven quest. He bases his claims on the New Testament just as the rest of the scholars did. He said that these scholars tended to separate the gospels as individual entities without any correlation except Luke and Matthew using Mark as a source. Johnson, however, finds a continuous thread throughout not only the gospels but even many of the Pauline epistles. In all of them there is a "story of Jesus" as he calls it. "It expresses the meaning of Jesu' ministry in terms of its ending: Jesus is the suffering servant whose death is a radical act of obedience toward God and expression of loving care for his followers," (LTJ The Real Jesus 165-6). In other words, the common thread among the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John, the Pauline and Petrine letters is Jesus Christ, and him crucified. Now I'll return to the previous train of thought
The person of Jesus and the event of the Paschal Mystery opens new horizons of eternal life; opens new horizon of union with the Creator, opens the new horizon of communion.
Finally, Christ give decisive direction to our lives. No longer are we nomadic wanders looking for the next unsatisfying meal. No longer are we lost in the jungle of uncertainty and lies. No longer are we in fear of the future. Christ satisfies, certifies, and is the future of our very beings.
There is this idea in the world today that Christianity, Catholicism in particular, is no different than every other religion (to each his own). That is not true. In fact, it is a lie. Pope Benedict shows us in the aforementioned quote why. You can't reduce Christianity to ethical choice. Christianity is not solely an ethical system wherein the Ten Commmandments set up guideline and boundaries to live our lives. It is no a group of people who casuistically tell if you've sinned, and, therefore, need redemption. Although some of these things have their part, they are not the core of Christianity.
Christianity is about. It says so in it namesake. As St. Paul says, "We preach Jesus Christ, and him crucified." We are not Ten Commandmentians. We are Christians. Our focus, our meaning, our lives are centered on the person of Christ andthe decisive event of the Paschal Mystery.
There's an interesting point here. In the quest for the "historical Jesus" there has been this drive to find out who Jesus really was. Was he just a liberal Jew stirring up things in an already chaotic time in history? Was he a just a rabbi with followers who got some crazy ideas that he rose from the dead after he was crucified for plotting an uprising? Luke Timothy Johnson, a Catholic Scripture scholar, wished to put his two-sense into this empirically driven quest. He bases his claims on the New Testament just as the rest of the scholars did. He said that these scholars tended to separate the gospels as individual entities without any correlation except Luke and Matthew using Mark as a source. Johnson, however, finds a continuous thread throughout not only the gospels but even many of the Pauline epistles. In all of them there is a "story of Jesus" as he calls it. "It expresses the meaning of Jesu' ministry in terms of its ending: Jesus is the suffering servant whose death is a radical act of obedience toward God and expression of loving care for his followers," (LTJ The Real Jesus 165-6). In other words, the common thread among the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John, the Pauline and Petrine letters is Jesus Christ, and him crucified. Now I'll return to the previous train of thought
The person of Jesus and the event of the Paschal Mystery opens new horizons of eternal life; opens new horizon of union with the Creator, opens the new horizon of communion.
Finally, Christ give decisive direction to our lives. No longer are we nomadic wanders looking for the next unsatisfying meal. No longer are we lost in the jungle of uncertainty and lies. No longer are we in fear of the future. Christ satisfies, certifies, and is the future of our very beings.
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