Catherine Gave the Holy Spirit Sovereignty

The following is a homily I preached in the presence of the Dominican community at Couvent St-Jean-Baptiste on the occasion of the Order's commemoration of St Catherine of Siena.

While at table for our Epiphany dinner in 2019, a few of us somehow struck up a conversation about today’s saint, and one of the friars admitted with his characteristic candour, “I do not like Catherine of Siena—she is just too crazy for me.”  Anyone who’s read even a paragraph of her Dialogues knows exactly what he’s talking about, and probably secretly agrees that she’s a hard one to control.

The gospel’s image for the Holy Spirit, “Rivers of living water” which “will flow from within” (Jn 7:38) the Lord also gives the impression of something uncontrollable.  In fact, all of the Biblical metaphors for the Holy Spirit seem to make the same point, whether it’s a bursting stream of water, a blazing fire, or a blustery wind.  John the Baptist’s prophetic word about the Anointed One baptizing us with “fire” (Lk 3:16), this same Christ who “wished it were already kindled” (Lk 12:49) is nothing if not unsettling.  Nicodemus was right to be perplexed about this unpredictable Wind making “everyone born of the Spirit” (Jn 3:8) equally unpredictable.  And the fact that the elemental diversity of water, wind, and fire—besides the fact that they don’t mix very well—perhaps tells us something of the Holy Spirit’s recalcitrance.  Small wonder the field of Pneumatology is so difficult.  Thank God for Yves Congar!

What my former rector said about my seminary could very well be applied to Catherine, “It’s a crazy house, but that’s a good thing.”  He was thinking of variety and excitement, except those were things Catherine did not like.  The goodness of her craziness—if you’ll forgive my momentary irreverence—was located in her very surrender to “Love,” a favourite sobriquet for the Holy Spirit.  As anyone who’s been in love knows, the only sensible thing to do is to surrender to it.  I believe the expression is “crazy in love,” and Catherine certainly was.  Here we’re talking about the Loving between the Lover and the Beloved; only, the world’s been caught in-between.  This is the heart of the Church’s Mission:  To tell the world to just “go with the flow”—pun intended.

A few years ago, a friend of mine said “Give the Holy Spirit sovereignty.”  We’re now peregrinating towards Pentecost; if anything, our consistent reading from the Acts of the Apostles throughout Easter highlights the inescapable necessity of pairing the Gospel proclamation with the Holy Spirit’s sovereignty.

The tricky bit is learning how to distinguish ‘hype’ from ‘Holy Spirit’ and that, in part, is done by again distinguishing Biblical ‘freedom’ described by the Apostle, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17)) from ‘freewheeling.’  This, I submit to you, is what ‘redeems’ the lady of the hour’s “craziness.”

St Thomas tells us that the Seven Gifts make us free and ever freer, and that was the secret to being Catherine:  She gave the Holy Spirit sovereignty.

May her secret be ours, too.

Theology as Pastoral Praxis

On the top shelf of one of my bookcases sits several series of dogmatic manuals--the "Spanish Summa," Tanqueray, Wilhelm and Scannell, Hunter, and Ott.  Yet, when one compares these manuals with the Summa theologiae of St Thomas Aquinas, something very odd emerges.  That odd thing is the complete absence of "moral theology" within these textbooks of dogmatic theology.

Aquinas, in contrast, appears to 'wedge' so-called "moral theology" in the Secunda pars, that is, between the Prima pars on God, Creation, and divine government and the Tertia pars on the Mystery of Jesus Christ, the Sacraments, and the Last Things.  The reason for doing this is revealed in putting "moral theology" in scare quotes--because the Angelic Doctor's long, long treatment on the virtues, vices, gifts of the Holy Spirit, and Beatitudes is not--I repeat not--"moral theology" in the usual sense of the term.  The Secunda pars is, rather, a confessor's handbook, and Aquinas' detailed explanations of the soul's parts, what constitutes moral excellence, and so on, are put in place in order to help the confessor diagnose penitents.

Hence the expression cura animarum--the "cure of souls."

But that's not all.  Unlike the general modern pastoral praxis of minimalism, the Secunda pars aims to shape the Christian soul not only for "moral excellence" but especially to live the virtuous life in such a way that the soul becomes disposed for contemplation.  The idea is that--if I'm reading Aquinas correctly--he intends to form the soul in such an exercise of the supernatural virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit that they have the right spiritual apparatus to gaze upon Christ who comes to the reader in the Tertia pars.  In other words, the Secunda pars makes a contemplative out of the reader so that she can approach the mystery of Jesus Christ in the best possible way.

This is a far cry from how "moral theology" is often done nowadays--with the notable exceptions of Servais-Theodore Pinckaers OP and Romanus Cessario OP.  As Marie-Dominique Chenu OP says in his Aquinas and His Role in Theology--

Theology in St Thomas's hands creates an organic structure for the content of this truth:  it is a wisdom that is at once both comptemplative and active.  Of course, contemplation and action emerge from different "disciplines"; but the modern distinction between dogma and morality finds no support within the spirituality and methodology of the Summa.  Likewise, the distinction between the ascetical (action) and the mystical (contemplation) breaks down before the unity of the grace of Christ [p. 45].

I an beginning to suspect that Aquinas' abandoned project of commenting on the Sentences of Peter Lombard has to do with just this--in Book III, the Lombard discusses the virtues and the gifts in Christ; the new project of the Summa theologiae sought to create a whole section on the Christian life ("morality" seems too mundane) to bridge God and Christ within us Christians.

Too often I've been told two things.  First, theology is "not pastoral"--heck, if the old manuals drive a wedge between dogmatic and moral theology, then of course it's not going to be "pastoral"--which is precisely the genius of Aquinas in laying out the Secunda pars bridging the Prima and Tertia pars.  This mentality of theology-less homilies (God save us) and doctrinally insipid catechumenates  arises precisely out of this false dichotomy.

Second, I've also been told that the laity "do not need" hefty doctrine or that "they won't understand."  This flies in the face of the entire purpose of the indwelling Holy Spirit (cf Jn 14:26) and the whole purpose of ecclesial leadership (cf 1 Tim 3:2, 5:17), which is to teach and preach.  Christian Smith coined the phrase moralistic therapeutic deism to describe what has become the norm of pastoral praxis--a "God says you're ok and will make everything ok" approach to life that is anything but Christian.  The indwelling Third Person of the Holy Trinity in Christ's disciples serves a far, far more formidable purpose than that.

Despite their differences, both Chenu and his Magister, Reginal Garrigou-Lagrange OP, agreed that contemplation was the normal life of grace--and it is precisely the Lord Jesus Christ to whom Christians' contemplative gaze is to behold and to love.

The Christian "moral life" is not simply about being "good" or simply about "staying forgiven"; it is about ordering the soul so excellently that they are ideally disposed to befriend Christ.

After all, God did not become Man in order to "break even" what was lost by Adam, but to raise us up to glory.  As we've heard several times already over the Easter Octave,

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.  For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:1-3).

Anointed for Sacrifice

We know that the Passion of Jesus--"glorification" in the language of St John the Evangelist--released the Holy Spirit upon the world.  John 7:39 and 16:7 make that abundantly clear.

What's often lost upon us poor Anglophones at the mercy of Bible translations is that the Greek text behind the verse we all think we know, "He gave up the ghost," says, literally, "He handed [over] the Spirit" (paredōken to Pneuma, Jn 19:30).  Scholars call this the "Johannine Pentecost"; many are needlessly confused about this version of "Pentecost" vis-a-vis the version we all know from Acts 2, but that's a topic for another post.

We ought to pair with this Passion-Pentecost relay with Hebrews 9:14, "...how much more shall the Blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God..." which, in turn, suggests to us that the Holy Spirit had a role in Jesus' very self-offering to His Father.

The overall thrust of Hebrews was to demonstrate the validity of Jesus' priesthood despite His descent from the tribe of Judah rather than Levi; that validity was demonstrated by the sacred author's appeal to Psalm 110:4 (cf Heb 7:7).  At the very start of Hebrews, however, there is a subtle hint that could easily get lost in that forest of words and ideas, especially at 1:9, "You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; / therefore God, your God, has anointed you / with the oil of gladness beyond your comrades."  This, in turn, is taken from Psalm 45:7.  What was this "oil of gladness," and when was Jesus "anointed"?

St Thomas Aquinas appeals to Romans 14:17 in explaining this "oil of gladness," where St Paul says that "...the Kingdom of God does not mean food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit"; to this we can easily add that verse from St Luke, "At that time, Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit" (Lk 10:21).  The anointing itself took place at Jesus' conception (cf Mt 1:18; Lk 1:35), otherwise He wouldn't be "Christ" until later on--and there was never a time when Jesus was not "the Christ," that is, the Anointed One, and it was precisely this anointing of Jesus how He was able to "offer Himself without blemish" by way of the "eternal Spirit."

Going back to Hebrews 1:9/Psalm 45:7, especially where it reads "...anointed you above your fellows," bear in mind that the anointing of Christians is an overflow from Christ's own anointing:  "From His fullness have we all received, grace upon grace" (Jn 1:16); by the Father's arrangement, the Anointing belongs to Jesus (cf Is 11:1-3, 61:1), and Christians receive it only from Christ Himself.

But what does this mean?

The "baptismal priesthood" or the "royal priesthood" is a grace that the entire People of God share in--as distinguished from the ministerial priesthood of the ordained.  The whole Body of Christ--clergy and laity--receive the overflow of the Anointed One's superabundant unction such that we are constituted a "holy priesthood" (1 Pt 2:5, 9) and "a kingdom, priests to His God and Father" (Apoc 1:6).

The question remains:  What does it mean to be a "holy priesthood"?  St Peter offers us a hint:  "...be yourselves built up into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Pt 2:5).  A priest, by definition offers a sacrifice; it is false to think that a "sacrifice" necessarily involves killing or bloodshed; rather, to sacrifice something is to make that something sacred--notice how each word begins with "sacr--":  sacrifice; sacred.  Our question then becomes:  What, then, do I sacrifice?  With what do I offer this sacrifice?

St Paul answers the question for us:

I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (Rom 12:1).

Now do you see what Jesus did?  By His indwelling Holy Spirit, His self-offering to the Father was enabled and "without blemish" (Heb 9:14); we Christians thus share in the priesthood of Jesus by offering ourselves along with Him--which is the full meaning of Colossians 1:24.

The royal priesthood which we all share in is not an opportunity to try to pull rank in the Church as a kind of power-play; rather, it is an opportunity to let God himself pull rank on us because our anointing thus enables us to surrender ourselves completely to God.  The Holy Spirit enabled Jesus to surrender Himself on the Cross for our salvation; the Holy Spirit also enables us to surrender ourselves with Jesus; the Holy Spirit, therefore, is the very rubric whereby we obey the Lord's command to "take up your cross and follow Me" (Mt 16:24-26).

Enough with tokenism.  Enough of using devotions as a bargaining chip.  The Bible is clear--as Christians, we must surrender ourselves to the Lord, giving him sovereignty in our lives.  That's what the anointing is for.  By refusing this self-surrender, we shirk from discipleship.

Do not let a single drop of that unction of the Holy Spirit go to waste.

Pentecost's Passion Preparation

Here at the conventual priory where I live with the Dominican friars, we shared in an ancient custom of the Order, namely, the public reading of John 14, 15, 16, and 17, known as the Sermo Domini--the "Lord's Sermon."  Johannine scholars call these chapters the "Farewell Discourse" of Jesus.  The idea of (usually chanting) the Sermo Domini is to bridge the gap between the gospel of the Last Supper read on Holy Thursday (John 13) and the gospel of the Passion on Good Friday (John 18-19).

At two points during the Sermo Domini--at 14:15-31 and 16:4c-15--Jesus gives his penultimate teaching on the arrival of the Holy Spirit.  Go ahead now and read it; I'll wait...

Have you read it?  Good.  Otherwise the rest of what I'm going to say won't make much sense to you.

Back in John 7:37-39, the Lord Jesus makes it very clear that His Passion is going to 'trigger' or set in motion the coming of the Holy Spirit--

On the last day of the feast [of Tabernacles], the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, "If any one thirst, let him come to Me and drink.  He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.'"  Now this He sais about the Spirit, which those who believed in Him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

Two things are going on here:  The Festival of Tabernacles and a very precise doctrine about the relationship between the Passion and Pentecost.

At John 7:10, the Evangelist introduces a section about Jesus at Jerusalem for the Festival of Tabernacles, recalling the Israelites' forty years of pilgrimage between the Exodus from Egypt until their arrival in the Promised Land (cf Leviticus 23:34-44).  By calling the Holy Spirit "Living Water," He was referring to the custom of drawing water from the Pool of Siloam and pouring it upon the base of the altar of burnt sacrifice to clean it of the blood of the animals ceremonially killed and drained of blood.  Not only that, but Jesus was also making a contrast between the human labour of drawing water from a pool and travelling up and down the pilgrim road, and the rivers of the "Living Waters" of the Holy Spirit that would flow out of the hearts of Christians.

Now do you see why we sing Isaiah 12:2-6 after the Fifth Reading during the Paschal Vigil?  And do you see, too, the meaning of the "blood and water" the flowed from the side of Jesus on Good Friday?

In other words, if Jesus' Paschal Mystery "triggers" Pentecost, then Lent is not only a preparation for Easter, but also for Pentecost.  That's why, too, the liturgical book used by Byzantine Christians for the Easter Season is called the Pentecostarion, as it contains prayers spanning the whole time from the Vigil to Pentecost--fifty days.

Actually, it's not only Lent the prepares us for Pentecost; it's also Advent.  On the Second Sunday of Advent (Years A, B) or on the Third Sunday (C), the gospel is always about John the Baptist's prophecy of the coming Holy Spirit:  "I baptize you with water; but He who is migheter than I is coming, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie; He will baptize you with the Holy spirit and with fire..." (Lk 3:16; cf Mt 3:11; Mk 1:8).

So, way back at the beginning of the liturgical year, we're already given a heads-up about the tongues of fire that would alight on the heads of Chrisitians in Acts 2:1f.  The preparation for Pentecost happens, as it were, in three stages:  Adventide, Lententide, and Paschaltide.

Coming back to the Sermo Domini, Jesus again points out that His 'departure'--meaning both his death/resurrection and His Ascension--will bring out the Holy Spirit's descent:  "But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My Name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance al that I have said" (Jn 14:25)--"remembrance" because Jesus will no longer be present in an earthly way to speak to us.  A little later, Jesus is more explicit:  "...for if I do not go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; btu if I go, I will send him to you" (Jn 16:7).

As you can see, the Passion "triggers" Pentecost.  And if Pentecost needs not one, or two, but three periods of preparation, what does that say about the importance of the Holy Spirit?  As Saint Paul said with his characteristic bluntness, "Any one who does not have th Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him!" (Rom 8:9).

So:  How are you preparing for Pentecost?

Mining the Mind of the Magister in Sacra Pagina

Last week, while I was organising a number of books in my personal collection related to St Thomas Aquinas and his doctrine, I stumbled upon a comparison between two "Thomists" without intending to.  I had been reading a reputable scholar--whose name I respectfully withold from my audience--who has written formidable texts on the sources of Aquinas, on his ethics, and who once served on the Pontifical Academy of St Thomas Aquinas, and by no means a source to be slighted.  Then I found myself thumbing through several works by Herbert McCabe OP--especially his On Aquinas and The Good Life.  Immediately, I was struck by how both had a firm grasp of the Angelic Doctor, but whereas our anonymous author could easily repeat themes and quotes from Aquinas, the Oxford Dominican could deliver his thirteenth-century confrere in a way that was almost second nature:  fresh and right on the money with little or no need for quotes.  Here at Dominican Univeristy College, Congar and Chenu are all the rage (and we're damned proud of it), but McCabe's the guy for me.

Last year and this year, I took a seminar given by my Doktorvater--'Aquinas on Vice' and 'Aquinas on Virtue,' respectively, wherein we were expected to read, re-read, read again, and repeat parts of the Secunda pars on what is (perhaps unfortunately) called "virtue ethics."  Marie-Dominiqe Chenu's project of an historical Thomism played no insignificant role in this semester's rubric of exploring régimes d'interaction in Thomas' explication of the human person's concurrent pursuit of felicity and beatitude by exercising virtues and conscientiously overcoming vices.  Though, if we had to put a name to the subject-matter of our studies, it would be too facile to call it 'moral philosophy' or 'moral theology,' though we did that.  It was, ultimately, a laboratory on how to read Thomas qua Thomas and only carefully to bring in 'schools' of Thomism.  (Brian Davies OP tells us that McCabe "hated being called a Thomist.")

On the surface, my experience was fortutitous, almost haphazard; what made it Providential, I dare to say, was studying--ahem--"moral theology" under Prof Dr John Berkman at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology (now teaching at Regis College).  I had decided to scrub the academic credits I received at my old seminary in Menlo Park (McCormick, Gula, that lot) and give myself a do-over, and boy, am I ever glad I did.  Had I not learned about Servais-Théodore Pinckaers OP, neither of my seminars here at DUC would've made as much sense as it did.

I make no secret of my flirtations with dogmatic manuals; neither do I entirely regret that Ratzinger had a hand in their decline.  (Nor again am I ashamed that I proudly own a set by Schmaus, despite being a Ratzinger fanboy!)  What's striking about the revolving-door introduction and expiration of one manual (and textbook!) to the next is the timelessness of the Summa theologiae such that it can be retrieved on the whole from one generation to the next, and one of the keys to this is precisely the régimes d'interaction rubric bequeathed to us by our professor.  Though I haven't yet got an equivalent word for it, "there must needs be" (as the Blackfirars' edition of the Summa is wont to say) a similar rubric for reading (what we would now call) the "dogmatic" parts of Aquinas.  In any case, the point is the same:  By being attentive to the historical context of Aquinas, his thought can be better transposed from one historical epoch to the next without being ahistorical, charges of la nouvelle théologie notwithstanding.  (Which is why, unlike many other faculties, DUC can easily move from Congar to Garrigou-Lagrange without apology.)

What's more, the application of these last two seminars to my doctoral research project has already proven to be a boon, since I was not only taught how to mine the corpus Thomisticum, but also to approach the virtues as a kind of 'rear-view mirror' whereby the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit are seen more clearly.  The gifts so enhance the virtues that the gifts themselves are "seen" not in se but in the virtues in their heroic mode.  So many of my secondary sources have been dead-ends; all I'm left with is to excavate Aquinas' writings in such a way that I find connections that have been overlooked.

It is one thing to read and to memorise St Thomas Aquinas; it is another thing altogether to mine his thinking.  The difficulty for me, is this:  How would I communicate this skill to seminarians and catechists?