A few years back, I wrote a series of posts on the Rosary at my other blog, Barque of Peter (scroll down the page of the first link until after the list of Common Catholic Prayers). In keeping with the more apologetic purpose of my other blog, they are written to highlight the historical and theological meaning of the Rosary, as well as detailing how to pray it. Here, though, I wanted to reflect on the more personal and spiritual elements.
When Blessed Pope John Paul II wrote his Apostolic Letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, in which he introduced the Luminous Mysteries to the meditations on the life of Christ that form the soul of the Rosary, he recommended introducing each mystery with a personal prayer offering each decade for a particular intention. Many materials explaining the Rosary offer suggested intentions for each mystery. In my own practice of this devotion, I have incorporated (and occasionally adapt) these suggestions. Recently in my prayer, I noticed how these intentions, beginning with the First Joyful Mystery, and ending with the Fifth Glorious Mystery, follow the pattern of the life of faith, just as the mysteries themselves follow the events of the lives of Jesus and Mary. It is this pattern, I think, that is what makes the Rosary such an effective devotion for growth in holiness--and this only makes sense, since holiness is nothing more than conformity to the life of Christ within us--a conformity that paradoxically brings out the best of our own uniqueness. The more the Saints were conformed to Jesus, the more boldly original and exciting each individual Saint became!
And we are led on this journey toward holiness by none other than the holiest of all God's creatures, Jesus' own Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Holding the beads in our hand becomes an action very like taking our Mother's hand in ours as she leads us down the Way--drawing us gently to Her Son, who Himself is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (cf. John 14:6). This thought alone brings great comfort, for so many times we can ourselves do little more than cling tightly to those beads for dear life, trusting in Mary's loving care to guide us along the Way of Her Son.
Over the next couple weeks, I'll be writing a series of articles meditating on and examining the suggested intentions for each mystery of the Rosary, so that we might become better acquainted with Jesus, the Way. (Note: The suggested intentions on which this post is based come from the pamphlet, "Pray the Rosary Daily" published by the Ave Maria Centre of Peace, P.O. Box 489, Station U, Toronto, ON, M8Z 5Y8.)
God bless
Gregory
Thursday, 12 July 2012
Saturday, 12 May 2012
A Reader Asks... "O Happy Fault"?
At Easter, I had the honour of sponsoring a dear friend, Eric, into the Catholic Church. A few of the guests he invited were Protestants from our former Pentecostal church. Since the Vigil, several of them have expressed their various issues with the Mass, which was honestly to be expected. However, Eric had a conversation with one particular friend regarding the Easter Proclamation (the Exsultet)--the lengthy hymn of exultation about the Redemption of the world through Christ at the beginning of the Vigil liturgy. In particular, he was troubled by the very part of the exsultet that I've long considered to be my favourite part--the delightfully paradoxical portion that goes,
Our friend's problem stemmed primarily from the phrase "O happy fault", saying that this could be taken out of context in order to justify sinning, or in some way saying that sinning was itself "happy". His argument is very much in keeping with St. Paul's words in Romans. In chapter 5, St. Paul makes an argument for the super-abundant greatness of God's mercy for us in Jesus Christ--contrasting Adam's sin with Christ's free gift of salvation. He concludes with these words:
However, our friend's argument echoed St. Paul's next words in Romans chapter 6:1-2, "What shall we say, then? shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. For we that are dead to sin, how shall we live any longer therein?" In other words, our friend worried that the exsultet could be taken as celebrating Adam's sin and calling it good in such a way that it sets an example for us--the very argument that St. Paul decries in Romans 6.
Is this conclusion regarding the exsultet warranted? I would say absolutely not! When we examine the entirety of this great hymn, we recognise that the overall theme is the abolition of sin and slavery to it by the Death and Resurrection of Christ. Consider these lines, which appear just a few strophes before the part in question:
On the other side of the "O happy fault", a few strophes afterward, is stated,
But of course, my friend makes the claim that the "happy fault" portion could be understood without regard to the context we've just established, so none of the arguments above actually touch on his concern. So what does this portion mean in and of itself? Let's examine it again:
The second aspect to keep in mind is the philosophical language employed, particularly here, in the exsultet. That is, certain terms need to be understood in the very specific way they are meant, rather than in the general way we might use them in ordinary conversation--particularly the terms "necessary" and "happy".
O truly necessary sin of Adam,
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
Many people have a misunderstanding of Christ's redemption of our sins. That misunderstanding lies in the fact that they think that the incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus constituted God's "Plan B" for creation. In other words, people often assume that the original, perfect state of Adam and Eve before the Fall was "Plan A" and then when Adam and Eve sinned and were booted from Eden, God had to come up with a "Plan B" to undo the damage. When the exsultet calls Adam's sin "necessary", it intends to completely undercut this mistaken notion.
There's a huge mystery here: that ponderous mystery of God's predestination and how it ties in to our free will. While God never actively wills sin and disobedience, He made the option possible in order that we could freely choose to love Him instead. Yet Adam and Eve's decision was never unknown to God, nor was the outcome. From all eternity God knew that His rational creatures would choose to rebel against Him, and His divine plan incorporated Adam's sin from the very foundations of the world, as we see in Revelation 13:8, where we are told that Christ, the Lamb, was slain "from before the foundation of the world." The Incarnation was not Plan B. God becoming Man so that we could participate in the divine life of God through His superabundant Grace was the idea all along! In this way, Adam's sin is understood as "necessary". If Adam and Eve never fell, Christ would never have needed to come. And so God allowed the loss of perfect human bliss through the original sin of Adam and Eve in order to bring about a greater, divine bliss for humanity (cf. 2 Peter 1:4)! Because there was a Fall, all of us recognise a lack in our lives. Because God only allows evil to occur in order to bring about a greater good (as St. Augustine reminds us), the fulfilment of the lack we feel because of the Fall goes far beyond even restoring us to that Edenic state! God never goes backwards. He's not taking us back to Eden. He is doing a new thing; the same New Thing He has been unfolding from all eternity; the same New Thing that unfolded at the Cross and was confirmed in the Resurrection, and which is consummated in us through His Graces to us, especially our rebirth in Baptism and our sustaining in holiness through the gift of Himself in the Eucharist!
O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!
Because, in this light, we see that Adam's sin was in some mysterious way "necessary", we can understand how his fault was a "happy" one. Philosophically speaking, "Happiness" is not simply some emotional state of contentment with life. Rather, it is the result of something or someone being rightly ordered to its true purpose. As St. Augustine writes in his Confessions, "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." It is that rest that constitutes "happiness", in the sense in which Adam's fault is here called "happy". And, of course, the reason for that happiness is expressed in the next line, because it "earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!" In and of itself, sin, even Adam's sin, is not happy, nor does sin lead to happiness. In fact, sin is the cause of the restlessness that St. Augustine describes. Yet Adam's sin is "happy" in one and only one regard--because it was necessary to bring about the Incarnation of Jesus, and His glorious gift of Salvation through it--a Salvation that will ultimately take us far beyond what Adam and Eve lost for us in the Fall!
So, what can we conclude? Does the exsultet somehow promote sinfulness "so that grace may abound"? Absolutely not! The theme is the redemption men and the destruction of sin and its power. If we take the "Oh happy fault" out of context, can we arrive at a different conclusion? I suppose we could. If someone can take the very words of Christ in order to twist them to say precisely the opposite, they can take and twist anything. St. Peter warns us that there are those who twist even the words of Scripture to their own destruction! For the person who does not want to listen to the Truth, who refuses to "think with the mind of the Church" (sentire cum ecclesia, as St. Ignatius of Loyola put it), then they could take anything to justify their sinful lifestyle. They have not "lift[ed] up [their] hearts" to the Lord after all.
Is it then the Church's fault? Has She used "irresponsible language" in the exsultet? I suppose that depends on whether Jesus Himself used irresponsible language when He said many of the things He said that were misunderstood, and which have been taken out of context by our modern culture to justify their sins ("Judge not, lest ye be judged" anyone?).
Knowing the Truth, thinking with the mind of the Church, and lifting our hearts to the Lord are the keys to understanding the exsultet, and, indeed, all of the Christian faith, correctly.
God bless
Gregory
O truly necessary sin of Adam,Eric asked whether I would take up the subject with our friend, and I said I'd write up this blog in order to try to dissect this wonderfully troubling portion of the greatest of all Nights.
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!
Our friend's problem stemmed primarily from the phrase "O happy fault", saying that this could be taken out of context in order to justify sinning, or in some way saying that sinning was itself "happy". His argument is very much in keeping with St. Paul's words in Romans. In chapter 5, St. Paul makes an argument for the super-abundant greatness of God's mercy for us in Jesus Christ--contrasting Adam's sin with Christ's free gift of salvation. He concludes with these words:
Therefore, as by the offence of one, unto all men to condemnation; so also by the justice of one, unto all men to justification of life. For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just. Now the law entered in, that sin might abound. And where sin abounded, grace did more abound (Romans 5:18-20).It is, in fact, this reasoning, and this passage of Scripture, that is distilled by the exsultet into the paradox above quoted.
However, our friend's argument echoed St. Paul's next words in Romans chapter 6:1-2, "What shall we say, then? shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. For we that are dead to sin, how shall we live any longer therein?" In other words, our friend worried that the exsultet could be taken as celebrating Adam's sin and calling it good in such a way that it sets an example for us--the very argument that St. Paul decries in Romans 6.
Is this conclusion regarding the exsultet warranted? I would say absolutely not! When we examine the entirety of this great hymn, we recognise that the overall theme is the abolition of sin and slavery to it by the Death and Resurrection of Christ. Consider these lines, which appear just a few strophes before the part in question:
This is the nightSo, far from allowing or even encouraging a libertine attitude toward sin, the message of the exsultet is that the grace of God available to us through the Death and Resurrection of Jesus actually removes us from sin and vice and makes us holy!
that even now, throughout the world,
sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices
and from the gloom of sin,
leading them to grace
and joining them to his holy ones.
On the other side of the "O happy fault", a few strophes afterward, is stated,
The sanctifying power of this nightAgain, the exsultet, indeed, all of Easter and the totality of the Catholic faith is about the forgiveness of sins, the restoration to innocence, and the complete sanctification that comes when we cooperate with the tremendous Graces that Christ merited for us through the Cross and Resurrection!
dispels wickedness, washes faults away,
restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners,
drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty.
But of course, my friend makes the claim that the "happy fault" portion could be understood without regard to the context we've just established, so none of the arguments above actually touch on his concern. So what does this portion mean in and of itself? Let's examine it again:
O truly necessary sin of Adam,A few things must be considered here, of a poetical and philosophical nature. For starters, the exsultet is a hymn, that is, it's a poem. It's not intended to be understood precisely in terms of a laboriously spelled-out theological treatise (as, for example, this blog might be!), but as an imaginative expression of a Mystery that ultimately lies beyond our comprehension. More simply put, reading poetry requires a very different mindset than reading prose. Poetry relies on symbolic shorthand, allusions, and creative wording (such as the very paradox we are considering) to shock our imaginations into considering Truth from a wholly new perspective. G.K. Chesterton sums up the contrast by saying that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens, whereas the rationalist tries to get the heavens into his head--and it is his head that splits! This attitude is echoed at the beginning of the exsultet, when the deacon or priest intones, "Lift up your hearts," and the congregation responds, "We lift them up to the Lord."
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!
The second aspect to keep in mind is the philosophical language employed, particularly here, in the exsultet. That is, certain terms need to be understood in the very specific way they are meant, rather than in the general way we might use them in ordinary conversation--particularly the terms "necessary" and "happy".
O truly necessary sin of Adam,
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
Many people have a misunderstanding of Christ's redemption of our sins. That misunderstanding lies in the fact that they think that the incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus constituted God's "Plan B" for creation. In other words, people often assume that the original, perfect state of Adam and Eve before the Fall was "Plan A" and then when Adam and Eve sinned and were booted from Eden, God had to come up with a "Plan B" to undo the damage. When the exsultet calls Adam's sin "necessary", it intends to completely undercut this mistaken notion.
There's a huge mystery here: that ponderous mystery of God's predestination and how it ties in to our free will. While God never actively wills sin and disobedience, He made the option possible in order that we could freely choose to love Him instead. Yet Adam and Eve's decision was never unknown to God, nor was the outcome. From all eternity God knew that His rational creatures would choose to rebel against Him, and His divine plan incorporated Adam's sin from the very foundations of the world, as we see in Revelation 13:8, where we are told that Christ, the Lamb, was slain "from before the foundation of the world." The Incarnation was not Plan B. God becoming Man so that we could participate in the divine life of God through His superabundant Grace was the idea all along! In this way, Adam's sin is understood as "necessary". If Adam and Eve never fell, Christ would never have needed to come. And so God allowed the loss of perfect human bliss through the original sin of Adam and Eve in order to bring about a greater, divine bliss for humanity (cf. 2 Peter 1:4)! Because there was a Fall, all of us recognise a lack in our lives. Because God only allows evil to occur in order to bring about a greater good (as St. Augustine reminds us), the fulfilment of the lack we feel because of the Fall goes far beyond even restoring us to that Edenic state! God never goes backwards. He's not taking us back to Eden. He is doing a new thing; the same New Thing He has been unfolding from all eternity; the same New Thing that unfolded at the Cross and was confirmed in the Resurrection, and which is consummated in us through His Graces to us, especially our rebirth in Baptism and our sustaining in holiness through the gift of Himself in the Eucharist!
O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!
Because, in this light, we see that Adam's sin was in some mysterious way "necessary", we can understand how his fault was a "happy" one. Philosophically speaking, "Happiness" is not simply some emotional state of contentment with life. Rather, it is the result of something or someone being rightly ordered to its true purpose. As St. Augustine writes in his Confessions, "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." It is that rest that constitutes "happiness", in the sense in which Adam's fault is here called "happy". And, of course, the reason for that happiness is expressed in the next line, because it "earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!" In and of itself, sin, even Adam's sin, is not happy, nor does sin lead to happiness. In fact, sin is the cause of the restlessness that St. Augustine describes. Yet Adam's sin is "happy" in one and only one regard--because it was necessary to bring about the Incarnation of Jesus, and His glorious gift of Salvation through it--a Salvation that will ultimately take us far beyond what Adam and Eve lost for us in the Fall!
So, what can we conclude? Does the exsultet somehow promote sinfulness "so that grace may abound"? Absolutely not! The theme is the redemption men and the destruction of sin and its power. If we take the "Oh happy fault" out of context, can we arrive at a different conclusion? I suppose we could. If someone can take the very words of Christ in order to twist them to say precisely the opposite, they can take and twist anything. St. Peter warns us that there are those who twist even the words of Scripture to their own destruction! For the person who does not want to listen to the Truth, who refuses to "think with the mind of the Church" (sentire cum ecclesia, as St. Ignatius of Loyola put it), then they could take anything to justify their sinful lifestyle. They have not "lift[ed] up [their] hearts" to the Lord after all.
Is it then the Church's fault? Has She used "irresponsible language" in the exsultet? I suppose that depends on whether Jesus Himself used irresponsible language when He said many of the things He said that were misunderstood, and which have been taken out of context by our modern culture to justify their sins ("Judge not, lest ye be judged" anyone?).
Knowing the Truth, thinking with the mind of the Church, and lifting our hearts to the Lord are the keys to understanding the exsultet, and, indeed, all of the Christian faith, correctly.
God bless
Gregory
Monday, 7 May 2012
Luminous Sketch
Image © 2012 Gregory Watson
Pencil Sketch, 5" x 8 1/2".
Melissa suggested I draw a picture of two hands holding a Rosary. Always happy to oblige my wonderful wife, and to express my devotion to the Rosary, this was the result. I thought it would be an interesting effect to subtly make the Crucifix of the rosary the light-source of the image, representing that Christ is our Light, the source of all grace and the focus of this beautiful form of prayer.The original sketch is still available, and prints of the image are for sale. Please email doubting-thomist@hotmail.com to order Prints.
The title, Luminous, reflects this trick of the lighting, as well as alluding to the Luminous Mysteries which Blessed Pope John Paul II added to the Rosary in 2002. As we contemplate the Mysteries of Christ's life with Mary, His Mother, we will be drawn closer to His marvellous Light and be enabled to share that Light with the world around us.
- Original framed Sketch (5" x 8.5"): $15.00 (CAD)
- Full size (5" x 8.5") limited edition high quality giclée print (unframed): $7.00 (CAD)
- Full size (5" x 8.5") limited edition high quality giclée print (framed): $10.00 (CAD)
- Image on 4¼" x 5½" Greeting Card (blank): $1.50 (CAD)
God bless
Gregory
Lamppost Sketch
Image © 2012 Gregory Watson
Pencil Sketch, 5" x 8 1/2".
On Saturday, May 5th, I participated in the second Artisan and Craft Sale at the Waterdown Legion, hosted by my good friends Nick and Jen Prouse. This particular piece was done to have some new and smaller works available that would hopefully sell better than my larger paintings.The original sketch was sold at the aforementioned art show I was part of on May 5th, but prints of the image are now for sale. Please email doubting-thomist@hotmail.com to order Prints.
I spent the last Saturday of April wandering the grounds of the Cathedral of Christ the King here in Hamilton. There are a number of old-fashioned lampposts on the grounds. The two in front of the Chancery office had many white tulips growing around the base. The image captured my imagination, and I sat down on the lawn and drew one. There are only three tulips, though, because I simply got tired of drawing them!
I've always been a big fan of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, and was very tempted to call the picture "Waiting for Tumnus", but the purist in me rejected that, since the Narnian lamppost had one cross-arm below the lantern, and this one has none. Yeah, I'm weird. What can I say?
Lampposts tend to symbolise guidance and hope, lighting our path in the night. The tulips continue that hopeful symbolism, as they blossom in the Spring after the cold death of winter. I hope the image of the lamppost evokes similar feelings of hope, peace and rest as those which I experienced wandering the quiet grounds of the Cathedral.
- Full size (5" x 8.5") limited edition high quality giclée print (unframed): $7.00 (CAD)
- Full size (5" x 8.5") limited edition high quality giclée print (framed): $10.00 (CAD)
- Image on 4¼" x 5½" Greeting Card (blank): $1.50 (CAD)
God bless
Gregory
Saturday, 21 April 2012
Sign of the Cross (Commissioned)
Image © 2012 Gregory Watson
Scratchboard, 8" x 10"
After last October's art show, a lady from my church, who had seen Scratchboard (essentially a white bristol board with a black coating, which is scratched off to reveal the underlying white) piece that I had done of a Celtic Cross which incorporated elements of the Watson family crest, requested that I do a Celtic Cross for her, but one that was simply a knotwork cross. This is the result.Please email me at doubting-thomist@hotmail.com or leave a comment here if you'd like to order any of the following:
I was trying to figure out what to do with all the negative space in the four corners of the image, and decided to fill them up with the "Sign of the Cross" prayer of Catholic spirituality, i.e., "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." My second thought was, should I make it really cool and do it in Latin (because I think Latin and Cool belong in the same sentence). I considered for whom this work was intended, and decided against it. Then I thought, I bet she'd love it in Gaelic! So I looked it up, and was very close to putting "In aimn an Athar agus an Mhic agus an Spioraid Naomh. Áiméan" instead, but those fun extra vowels that are particular to the Irish tongue made the spacing of the words very unbalanced. So English it is.
This image of the Celtic Cross contains many spiritual symbols--from the Cross itself, the means of our Redemption, to the "triquetra" in the centre, symbolic of the Trinitarian nature of God. The circle surrounding most Celtic Crosses represents eternity, and I made the knotwork in the arms of the Cross reminiscent of the Ichthus design, the "Christian Fish" image, which itself is an acronym of the Greek word for fish, which, translated, comes out as "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Saviour."
Beyond being simply an aesthetic design (I hope you agree!), it also becomes a meditation on the Mysteries of our God as eternal Trinity, of the Incarnation of the Son in Jesus, and of His redemptive Death and Resurrection for our sins.
- Full size (8" x 10") limited edition high quality giclée print (unframed): $12.00 (CAD)
- Full size (9" x 12") limited edition high quality giclée print (framed): $30.00 (CAD)
- Image on 4¼" x 5½" Greeting Card (blank): $1.50 (CAD)
Thursday, 19 April 2012
Yikes!
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been over two months since my last blog post, and significantly more than that since my last post about my trip to Haiti.
For these sins I am heartily sorry!
Kidding aside, Lent is over (I gave up the internet for Lent--sorry I didn't mention that earlier!), so I'm going to be getting back in gear blogging soon. I've got a new piece of art to put up, and I hope to finally finish up my Haiti narrative. As well, I have a couple other reflections I've been saving. So the updates will be coming, hopefully, fairly regularly--starting tomorrow night.
For these sins I am heartily sorry!
Kidding aside, Lent is over (I gave up the internet for Lent--sorry I didn't mention that earlier!), so I'm going to be getting back in gear blogging soon. I've got a new piece of art to put up, and I hope to finally finish up my Haiti narrative. As well, I have a couple other reflections I've been saving. So the updates will be coming, hopefully, fairly regularly--starting tomorrow night.
Thursday, 9 February 2012
The Pursuit of Happiness: Aquinas-Style
On the 28th of January, the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, I had the wonderful opportunity to preach to a youth group led by a friend of
God bless!
The Pursuit of Happiness: Aquinas-Style
(Sorry, I don't know how to make it embedded. Click the link, and you can download the audio file as an .mp3!)
Edit: I forgot to mention a couple things. First of all, in my talk, I'd mentioned that I was going to recommend a good book about St. Thomas Aquinas, and then forgot all about it! So here it is:
St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox by G.K. Chesterton
Second, I managed to get myself quite tongue-tied when talking about my wife, Melissa, and inadvertently said that she's not "profound". This is most certainly not the case. What I was vainly trying to express is that she approaches the Truth of the faith from a very different perspective from me, and because of that, I sometimes assume that she won't be as aware of some deep theological truth or of the important ramifications of some situation or another. This is, of course, a defect on my part, and not hers--and her frequent surprising statements of deep profundity are not surprising to me because she doesn't usually think so deeply. Rather the opposite--they take me off guard and surprise me because I too often tend to underestimate her. My point in that little ill-worded anecdote is that we too often can treat our faith in God in a similar manner. We make God something comfortable, routine, and unsurprising, and then become uncomfortable when He in fact does something incredibly surprising. Just as I shouldn't underestimate my wife, we should attempt to preserve our sense of Wonder at God.
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