Theology of the Body — 2010/4/26

     "[Both Genesis and the Sermon on the Mount seem] to single out the man as the one who lusts. But both men and women are subject to lust. … [One] can participate by presenting [oneself] as an object and attempting to arouse lust."


     "…[H]uman sexuality was not created only for procreation. The body, masculine and feminine, has a nuptial meaning: it is capable of expressing the selfless love by which a person becomes a gift. By becoming a gift, the human person fulfills the deepest meaning of his existence.
     "The three forms of lust — of the flesh, of the eyes, and the pride of life — all limit and distort the original, nuptial meaning of the body. This distortion takes place in the heart. Outwardly, the body … is still created for communion. But … in the experience of the heart, sexuality no longer seems to aim at communion. The body … has instead become only an object of lust.
     "In the state of original innocence, the body was a perfect expression of the spirit. Now, …
     "[t]he heart has become a battlefield between love and lust. As lust gains ground, it destroys our ability to experience the nuptial meaning of the body. …
     "The human person is the only physical creature created for communion with God. For this reason, the person should never be reduced to an object. At the same time, a person can only discover his true self by making a sincere gift of himself to another. Lust attacks this free, sincere giving. It reduces the person to an 'object for the other,' instead of being 'united with the other' in love.
     "The attacks of lust aren't always obvious. Sometimes, under the cover of strong emotions, lust disguises itself as 'love' — still, it remains selfish at the core. Does this mean we should always distrust the heart? No! But we must keep watch over it."

April 21 — St. Anselm of Canterbury

Anselm was born in what is now northern Italy in about 1033, became a Benedictine monk in Normandy in 1059, and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093. In that capacity he fought for reform of the clergy and for the freedom of the Church from the King and nobility (foreshadowing St. Thomas Becket's struggles with Henry II). He died on April 21, 1109.

He also wrote several theological and philosophical works, in which he developed proofs of the existence of God, and he is considered by some the founder of medieval Scholasticism. He described his work as "fides quærens intellectum" (faith seeking understanding), and said "Credo ut intellegam" (I believe so that I may know). He also wrote a book, Cur Deus Homo, in which he develops the idea that it was necessary for God to become man in order to satisfy divine justice for human sinfulness. The wiki article on Anselm explains it as follows:

The Satisfaction (or Commercial) theory of the atonement was formulated by Anselm of Canterbury in his book, Cur Deus Homo (lit. ‘Why the God Man’).^[53] He has introduced the idea of satisfaction as the chief demand of the nature of God, of punishment as a possible alternative of satisfaction and equally fulfilling the requirements of justice thus opening the way to the assertion of punishment as the true satisfaction of the law. In his view, God’s offended honor and dignity could only be satisfied by the sacrifice of the God-man, Jesus Christ. Anselm undertook to explain the rational necessity of the Christian mystery of the atonement. His philosophy rests on three positions—first, that satisfaction is necessary on account of God's honour and justice; second, that such satisfaction can be given only by the peculiar personality of the God-man Jesus; and, third, that such satisfaction is really given by this God-man's voluntary death.

According to this view, sin incurs a debt to Divine justice, a debt that must be paid somehow. Thus, no sin, according to Anselm, can be forgiven without satisfaction. However, the incurred debt is something far greater than a human being is capable of paying. All the service that a person can offer to God is already obligated on other debts to God.^[53] By Anselm's time the suggestion has been made that some innocent person, or angel, might possibly pay the debt incurred by sinners. That, however, we would put the sinner under obligation to that deliverer and the sinner would become indebted to a "mere creature."^{[citation needed]}

The only way in which the satisfaction could be made─that humans could be set free from their sin─was by the coming of a Redeemer who is both God and man. He himself would have to be sinless, thus having no debt that he owed. His death is something greater than all the sins of all humanity. His death makes full satisfaction to the Divine Justice. Anselm's theory persisted for eight centuries.^[54]

Anselm's formulation differs markedly from Reformation views. For Anselm, Christ obeyed where we should have obeyed; for John Calvin, he was punished where we should have been punished. While Anselm's interpretation permitted man to offer Christ to God, the Protestant Faith insists that it is God, not man, who reconciles fallen humanity by sacrificing His son.^[54]

April 19 — Patriots' Day — 2010

The battles of Concord and Lexington, generally believed to have been the opening hostilities of the American Revolution occurred on April 19, 1775. Massachusetts and Maine (which was part of Massachusetts until 1820) celebrate a public holiday called Patriots' Day each year in commemoration of the event.

There is, as the wiki article about the battles mentions, a verse from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn" inscribed on the base on the Minuteman Statue at the North Bridge in Concord, where the first serious fighting occurred.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.

Btw, the sculptor of the Minuteman statue, Daniel Chester French is also the sculptor of the Lincoln statue in the Lincoln monument in Washington, D.C.

When I was a child, we all read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Paul Revere's Ride." It had the effect of making Paul Revere seem the most important personage of the day, with his giving of the alarm as the most memorable event. Without the alarm, of course, the militias would not have come; but if they had not fought the British regulars, it would not have mattered.

Theology of the Body — 2010/4/12

Holy Week and Easter were kind of busy for me. Time to get back to excerpts from the boon on the Theology of the Body.


     "Shame doesn't arise from the body or sexuality itself [since they are elements of a creation that God pronounced good], but from the wounds inflicted on the spirit by sin. It flows from our awareness of lust — our realization that the original simplicity and purity  of sexuality has been distorted by insatiable desire.


     "Shame is a response to lust, and aims to protect us from its consequences. In fact, through shame, man and woman almost remain in the state of original innocence.


…


     "…The lust of the flesh desires to satisfy the body in ways that limit or harm the communion of persons.…


     "A true communion of persons must  be a full, selfless union of body and spirit — two persons giving themselves freely to each other. … Lust shifts the goal of union from communion to possession — obtaining the object of your desire."

Happy Easter — 2010

The title says it all. I do hope you all have a great day, and I hope my Christian readers especially find their faith, hope, and love deepened through this Easter celebration.

He is risen. Alleluia.

Good Friday — The Sermon That I Didn't Hear

What's good about Good Friday? We hear or read or remember the gospel accounts of Jesus' sufferings and his death on the cross. We may recall St. Paul's words in Romans 5:8, that "God proves his love for us in that while we were sinners Christ died for us." That's good news indeed. Jesus' death on the cross brings forgiveness of our sins and eternal life. And so we are rightfully grateful to God for his love and mercy.

But do we realize that God doesn't just love us and the other basically good people? Do we realize that God "wills everyone to be saved." 1 Timothy 2:4. So Christ died also for the other sinners, the ones we dislike intensely, the ones who are not basically good people, the ones who are spectacularly evil.

Do we want Jesus to save Adolf Hitler or Jeffrey Dahmer? Do we want him to save the pedophile priests or the killers of Matthew Shepard? Or do we want them to burn in hell for what they did? Because he wants to save them all. He died to save them all. He wants them to accept his gift of eternal life. He wants them to come to heaven forever. How do we feel about spending eternity in their company?

If we want them to spend eternity in hell, we are not perfect Christians yet. This is not to say that they don't deserve hell. But Paul's point about salvation is that it is undeserved, a gift that is given out of love.

And while I can accept this on an intellectual level, I have to admit that emotionally I'm not there yet. There is something in me that hopes that the greatest evildoers have refused the gift of forgiveness.

So on this Good Friday, while we are profoundly grateful for the gift of forgiveness which we have received, let's also ask God to make our hearts more like his — that we may love everyone with a love that is like his — that our sorrow and even righteous anger at evil will not turn into real hatred of evildoers — that we may learn to "forgive those who trespass against us" and others.