By Nothing But Prayer and Fasting

Because of the movable date of Easter, and of everything that depends on it, the Ember Days of September can occur within any of the weeks after Pentecost from the 13th to the 19th inclusive. This year, they occur within the 17th week, where they are traditionally placed within the Roman Missal [1], a textual arrangement which reflects a very ancient theme that permeates the Masses of this set of Ember Days. (Next year, Easter will be very late, on April 20th, and the September Ember days will fall within the 14th week.)

The Collect of the 17th Sunday after Pentecost is a very ancient one, found in different places in the various versions of the Gelasian Sacramentary, but already fixed to the 17th Sunday in the Gregorian Sacramentary by the end of the 8th century. “Da quaesumus, Domine, populo tuo diabolica vitare contagia, et te solum Deum pura mente sectari. – Grant to Thy people, o Lord, to shun (or ‘avoid, escape from’) diabolical contamination, and to follow Thee, who alone art God, with a pure mind.” [2] This is the only Mass Collect of the ecclesiastical year that refers directly to diabolical influence, but the Secret of the 15th Sunday has a similar theme: “May Thy sacraments preserve us, o Lord, and always protect us against diabolical incursions.”

Folio 115r of the Gellone Sacramentary, a sacramentary of the Gelasian type dated 780-800, with the prayer “Da quaesumus...” assigned to the 20th week after Pentecost. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 12048)

On the Ember Wednesday of September, the Gospel is St Mark’s account of the healing of a possessed child, chapter 9, 16-28. Apart from Easter and the Ascension, the ancient Roman lectionary makes very little of use of St Mark, notwithstanding the tradition that the Evangelist was a disciple of St Peter and composed the Gospel while he was with him in Rome. Here, his version was surely chosen for the moving account of the exchange between Christ and the child’s father, which is less detailed in St Matthew’s version.

“And He asked his father, ‘How long time is it since this hath happened unto him?’ But he said, ‘From his infancy, and oftentimes hath he cast him into the fire and into waters to destroy him. But if thou canst do any thing, help us, having compassion on us.’ And Jesus saith to him, ‘If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.’ And immediately the father of the boy crying out, with tears said, ‘I do believe, Lord: help my unbelief.’ ”

The lower half of Raphael’s Transfiguration, the story which precedes the Gospel of Ember Wednesday. The possessed child’s father, on the right side in green, presents him to the Apostles; Raphael beautifully captures the pleading in his facial expression. The brightness of the figure symbolizes his faith, as it does likewise in that of the possessed child, for devils, as St James says, have no doubts about God. (“Thou believest that there is one God. Thou dost well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” 2, 19). The brightest figure, the woman kneeling next to the boy and pointing at him, is an allegorical figure of Faith itself; where the light on these figures expresses their belief, the nine Apostles on the left are wrapped in shadow to symbolize the lack of faith that prevented them from casting out the devil.

At the end of the passage, the disciples ask Christ why they could not expel the devil, to which He replies, “This kind can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” In the Office, these words are sung at Lauds as the antiphon of the Benedictus.

On Ember Friday, the Gospel is that of the woman who anoints the Lord’s feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee, St Luke 7, 36-50. This is one of the very few examples of a Gospel which is repeated from another part of the temporal cycle; it is also read on the Thursday of Passion week, and again on the feast of St Mary Magdalene, with whom the woman is traditionally identified in the West. This identification is partly reinforced by the words of St Luke which come immediately after it (chapter 8, 1-3), although they are not read in the liturgy.

“And it came to pass afterwards, that He travelled through the cities and towns, preaching and evangelizing the kingdom of God; and the twelve with him, and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary who is called Magdalen, out of whom seven devils were gone forth, and Joanna the wife of Chusa, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who ministered unto him of their substance.”

On Saturday, the Gospel is two stories from St Luke, chapter 13, 6-17, the parable of the fig tree, and the healing of the woman “who had a spirit of infirmity… and was bowed together, (nor) could she look upwards at all.” The choice of this Gospel for the Saturday is a very deliberate one, since it takes place in a synagogue, the ruler of which, “being angry that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, answering, said to the multitude, ‘Six days there are wherein you ought to work. In them therefore come, and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” To this Christ answers, “Ye hypocrites, doth not every one of you, on the Sabbath day, loose his ox or his ass from the manger, and lead them to water? And ought not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?”

An ancient Christian sarcophagus known as the Sarcophagus of the Two Brothers, made in the second quarter of the 4th century, now in the Vatican Museums. The healing of the crippled woman is depicted in the upper left.

Each of these Gospels, therefore, refers to the same theme as the Collect of the 17th Sunday, the Church’s prayer to the Lord to protect Her and Her individual members from the malign influence of the devil.

It is a well-known fact that the Ember Days are one of the very oldest features of the Roman Rite. Pope St Leo I (444-61) preached numerous sermons on them, and believed them to be of apostolic origin, as he says, for example, in his second sermon on Pentecost. “To the present solemnity, most beloved, we must also add such devotion, that we keep the fast which follows it, according to the Apostolic tradition. For this must also be counted among the great gifts of the Holy Spirit, that fasting has been given to us as a defense against the enticements of the flesh and the snares of the devil, by which we may overcome all temptations, with the help of God.” (Sermon 76; PL 54, 411B)

Likewise, in his second sermon on the Ember Days of September, he refers to Christ’s words about fasting which are read on Wednesday. [3] “In every contest of the Christian’s struggle, temperance is of the greatest value and utility, to such a degree that the most savage demonic spirits, who are not put to flight from the bodies of the possessed by the commands of any exorcist, are driven out just by the force of fasts and prayers, as the Lord sayeth, ‘This kind of demons is not cast out except by fasting and prayer.’ The prayer of one who fasteth, therefore, is pleasing to God, and terrible to the devil…” (Sermon 87; ibid. 439b)

The collect of the 17th Sunday after Pentecost is one of the more obvious cases of a prayer deemed unsuitable by the post-Conciliar reformers for the ears of Modern Man™, who must never be confronted with any “negative” ideas while at prayer. Despite its antiquity and the universality of its place within the Roman Rite, it was removed altogether from the Missal, along with the Ember Days, most references to fasting, and all references to the devil. In a similar vein, when the pseudo-anaphora of pseudo-Hippolytus was adapted as the Second Eucharistic Prayer, the original version of the section that parallels the Qui pridie, “Who, when he was delivered to voluntary suffering, in order to dissolve death, and break the chains of the devil, and tread down hell, and bring the just to the light, and set the limit, and manifest the resurrection,” was reduced to “At the time He was betrayed and entered willingly into His Passion…”

However, as Fr Zuhlsdorf once noted, the 2002 revised edition of the Missal contains certain hints of an awareness that the post-Conciliar reform wantonly threw out far too much of the traditional Roman Rite. Among the things which it restored is the traditional prayer of the 17th Sunday after Pentecost, which now appears as an optional collect among the Masses “for any necessity”, raising the total number of references to the devil in the Missal to one.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal contains an exhortation (and no more than that) to the effect that Rogation Days and Ember Days “should be indicated” (“indicentur”, not “indicandae sunt – must be indicated”) on local calendars, and a rubric (I.45) that it is the duty (“oportet”) of episcopal conferences to establish both the time and manner of their celebration. Unsurprisingly, this rubric has mostly been ignored. However, it has become impossible for any Catholic who loves the Church to ignore the hideous consequences of the almost total abandonment of any kind of formal, liturgically guided ascetic discipline, and the free reign which this seems to have given to the devil. A permanent and universal restoration of the traditional discipline of fasting, including the Ember Days, would be a small but important step in the direction of ending that free reign.

[1] In many medieval liturgical books, they are placed after the last Mass of the season after Pentecost, as for example in the Sarum Missal.

[2] The earliest manuscripts read “dominum” instead of “Deum”; the change would have been made since “Domine” is already said at the beginning. Many manuscripts read “puro corde – with a pure heart” instead of “pura mente.”

[3] It is tempting to think of this as proof that the Roman lectionary tradition, which is first attested in the lectionary of Wurzburg ca. 700 AD, was already set down 250 years earlier in Pope Leo’s time. This is quite possible, of course, but it is equally possible that the unknown compiler of the lectionary was inspired to choose this Gospel by reading Pope Leo’s sermon.

Renewing Respect for Christian Despisal

Allegory of Vanity, by Antonio de Pereda, 1632-6

With the end of Lent in sight, it is meet to reflect upon the meaning behind our mortification of the flesh, especially the notion of Christian despisal. It is also worth wondering about the wisdom of removing this notion from the Church’s sacred liturgy, which happened in 1969.

To Despise

The issue concerns the use of the word despicere in solemn worship. As Daniel Van Slyke notes in his groundbreaking article on the subject, and upon which we are heavily relying here, “translating despicere into modern languages admittedly is tricky.” [1]  The English cognate for this word is “despise,” which generally carries with it a note of disdain or disgust.

The Latin despicere, however, literally means to “look down upon” and may or may not imply an attitude of contempt or revulsion. The statement “the girl looked down on the street” has no element of disdain, but “the rich girl looked down on the poor boy” does. “Looking down on” may therefore be the best translation of despicere and related concepts such as spernere (to spurn) because it is flexible enough to allow but not require disdain or contempt. As we shall see later, this flexibility is important, for Christian despisal (as we are tentatively calling it in this article) may or may not involve a negative emotional component.

That said, not even “looking down on” is a foolproof translation for despicere or spernere. There is a famous medieval aphorism: spernere mundum, spernere nullum, spernere se ipsum, spernere se sperni— “to look down upon the world, to look down upon no one, to look down upon one’s very self, and to look down upon being looked down upon.” [2]  It is the last clause that is difficult to render, for it could be taken to mean that I should recoil in disdain every time that I am disdained and that I should despise being despised by others. Yet such an act of pride is the precise opposite of the phrase’s intended meaning, which enjoins Christian disciples to think nothing of being thought nothing of and to have no consideration for being disdained by others. Indeed, the perfectly humble man welcomes being dismissed and despised, for it mortifies his ego and fosters the all-important virtue of humility. As we pray in the Litany of Humility, “From the fear of being despised, deliver me, Jesus.”

Despisal in the Patristic Era

Whatever resonance despicere has for modern ears, it was understood and appreciated in the early Church. In Patristic literature, despising earthly things (terrena despicere) was typically contrasted with a love of the heavenly (caelestia). As Tertullian succinctly advises his wife: “Think about heavenly things and you will think little of (despicies) earthly things.” [3] Saint Ambrose adorns his contrast of earthly and heavenly attachments with military imagery: “You contend as a good soldier of Christ Jesus and despising the inferior, forgetful of the earthly, strive zealously for the celestial and eternal.” [4] For Saint Augustine, despising the world is a precondition for the rightly ordered desires by which the soul is united to God: “if you despise the world, you will have a pure heart, and you will see Him who made the world.” [5]

Pope Saint Gregory the Great was particularly adept at exploring the relationship of despisal to Christian discipleship. His Dialogues begin and end with a call to disregard the siren song of the world and to seek higher. In the body of the work, Gregory praises various figures such as Saints Benedict, Constantius, Sanctulus, and Hermenegild for utterly despising worldly things and for being on fire for heaven alone. [6] In the case of Hermenegild, this son of an Arian Visigothic king was imprisoned by his own father (and eventually suffered martyrdom) for his conversion to the Catholic faith. Gregory writes:

And so this young king Hermenegild, despising the earthly kingdom and seeking heaven with strong desire, began to despise so much the more nobly the glory of this transitory world insofar as, while bound, he recognized that nothing could be taken away from him. [7]

The Triumph of Saint Hermenegild, by Francisco Herrera the Younger, 1654

The Meaning of Christian Despisal

From this brief overview we can draw several conclusions about the nature of despisal in the Latin Christian tradition:

First, despisal is not commended as an end unto itself, but praised as the necessary complement of heavenly desire. Good despising and good loving are two sides of the same coin. When you love the important things, you are unattached to the unimportant; similarly, learning to detach from the unimportant helps one fall in love with what is important. To yoke good loving and good despising in this way is not a Patristic innovation but a development grounded in the Scriptures, as when St. Paul juxtaposes those who “mind earthly things” with those whose “conversation is in Heaven.” (Philippians 3, 19-20).

Second, despising earthly things is not a rejection of the goodness of God’s creation or of temporal and material things but of a disordered attachment to them; it is an affirmation of the supreme importance of loving God “in all things and above all things” [8]  rather than slavishly and foolishly loving things more than God. When, for instance, the New Testament stresses the evil of the “world,” it is not condemning the world per se but the human lusts that privilege the world over its Maker. As we already saw from Saint Augustine, despising the world purifies the heart and enables it to unite to Him who made the world, and who made it very good. (Genesis 1, 31)

This paradox was expressed well by the famous homilist Bossuet: in Christian parlance, “the world” is not the sum total of visible and transient things but the people “who prefer visible and transient things to those invisible and everlasting.” But it is also present in the Parable of the Sower, when some of the seeds are choked by “the cares and riches and pleasures of this life” (Luke 8, 14). Cares and riches and pleasures are not evil per se but they choke the believing soul if the soul does not hold them in low regard.

Third, good despisal may or may not involve a negative emotional element, but either way, it is a healthy response. Despisal can mean nothing more than dispassionately having little consideration for passing fancies as one focuses on the “one thing necessary,” or it can involve a more visceral reaction to those fancies when they “allure and caress” the soul, endangering its love of God. [9] Despisal can be as irenic as Christ patiently turning His Apostles’ ambitious hearts to the will of the Father or it can be as spirited as Christ abruptly admonishing Saint Peter with the chilling words “Get thee behind me, Satan!” when Peter unwittingly tempts Him to abandon His divine mission. (Matthew 16, 23)

That said, my guess is that because of the effects of original sin, most Christian despisal does involve a kind of righteous anger that says no sharply and decisively to false allurements preying upon the soul’s postlapsarian weakness. [10] The mortification of the Saints, for instance, is testimony to the constant need to be vigilant against the world, the flesh, and the Devil by fighting against them in earnest and not as one beating the air. For mortification is nothing else than a means of improving or practicing despisal.

The Meditation of St Jerome, by Benvenuto Tisi da Garofalo, 1520-5

Despisal in the Tridentine Rite

Like many other aspects of Catholic doctrine, despisal is a seemingly minor concept that points to greater truths lying at the center of our Faith. As Van Slyke puts it, “The fundamentals of the Catholic spirit or worldview are at stake” in the “complementary antithesis” of despising earthly things and loving the heavenly. [11]

It is therefore fitting that this language found its way into the Roman Rite during the Middle Ages. By the time the 1570 edition of the Roman Missal or so-called Tridentine Mass was published, the word despicere could be found three times in the Eucharistic liturgy.

First, the Postcommunion Prayer for the Second Sunday of Advent prays that by participating in the mystery of the heavenly banquet upon which the faithful have just feasted, God may teach them “to despise earthly things and love the heavenly.” The Biblical and Patristic juxtaposition of good loving and good despising is here used with wording almost identical to that of Tertullian and the Church Fathers.

Second, the Collect for Saints Dionysius, Rusticus, and Eleutherius on October 9 petitions God that the faithful may despise the “prosperous things of the world out of love for Thee, and to fear none of its adversities.” The basic juxtaposition of despising/loving is developed here in two ways. First, instead of “earthly things” the Collect mentions prospera mundi, which we have translated as “the prosperous things of the world” but can also mean the lucky or fortunate things of the world. The pleasures and honors that the world offers depend on fortune, which can just as easily take things away as it can give them. Second, one of the advantages in looking down on the things that fortune can provide is that one lives without any fear that they can be taken away. Despising the prospera is liberating, freeing the soul from a servile anxiety about the caprices of Lady Luck.

Third, the Collect from the feast of St Hermes on August 28 repeats the formula from the feast of Saint Dionysius, applying it to another saint and thus hinting at its universality.

Despisal in the 1962 Missal

The Tridentine Mass is sometimes criticized for being “frozen in time,” yet one of the areas where one can trace an organic liturgical development from the close of the Council of Trent to the eve of the Second Vatican Council is in its expanding use of the concept of Christian despisal. Of the seventeen times that the word despicere appears in the 1962 Missal, fourteen of these were added after Pope Saint Pius V promulgated the 1570 Missale Romanum. One of these is the Collect for Saint Hermenigild. Added in the seventeenth century, its use of despicere finally incorporates the praise that Gregory the Great gave the saint in his Dialogues.

As Van Slyke writes, “During this period, the motif of despising the world was retained, the Church continually and increasingly recognized its value, and the euchology of the missal was enriched accordingly.” [12] In addition to loving the right things (amare or amor), the Church expanded her vocabulary to following (sectari), holding dear (diligere), yearning for (desiderare), and seeking after (inquirere) the right things. And as for the object of desire, the Church began to speak of “eternal things” (aeterna) in addition to God and heavenly things.

Finally, the list of things to despise was increased from terrena and prospera mundi to the intriguing category of caduca. [13] Caduca literally refers to escheatable property, property that does not go to a chosen heir but reverts to the State or the lord of the fee or the Crown or some other such agency. Hence, it refers to the goods that can be taken away from you and that on which you best not put your hopes. This concept of alienable goods, used here as a synonym of earthly things, is an apt reminder of the fleeting nature of material possessions and of why it is unwise to grow too attached to them. It is not simply out of piety but out of good sense that one should avoid pinning one’s happiness on shifting sands.

Despisal in the Novus Ordo

Of the seventeen uses of despicere in the 1962 Missal, only one was retained in the 1969 Missal, the opening prayer for the now optional feast of St Dionysius. The effect of these changes is that the average Catholic, especially outside of France, will never participate in a Mass in which despising earthly things is liturgically proclaimed as a characteristic of holiness. The Novus Ordo preserves the important teaching of loving God in all things and above all things, but it has almost entirely omitted the specific habit of despising the world as an essential ingredient in doing so.

And with the loss of despicere comes a decline in resolute naysaying to the world’s false allurements. No longer is there the same clear and hearty praise for uttering that gallant battle cry at whatever comes between us and our Savior: “Get thee behind me, Satan!” Unfortunately, the Novus Ordo is similarly taciturn about the practices of mortification and fasting, ascetical practices meant to break the stranglehold of earthly things upon our affections and to help us despise them. [14]

Questionable Rationale

The reformers who drafted the new Missal offered at least four different reasons for their decision to excise the sacred liturgy of the theme of despisal. First, despicere was removed “in light of the new vision of earthly things.” [15] The author (Carlo Braga) did not explain what this new vision is, but we hope that it is not a new Gospel in which the thorny “cares and pleasures and riches of this life” that choke the Word of God are now being called a bed of roses in which the people of God are invited to luxuriate.

Carlo Braga, 1889-1971

Second, both Braga and his predecessor Placide Bruylants imply that despising earthly things is more fitting for religious than for the laity, as if such a virtue were not a universal Christian trait. [16] This position, which is mildly elitist, would have come as a surprise to Gregory the Great, who praised the layman St. Hermenegild for his despisal of the earthly. And it would have surprised Saint Philip Neri, whose special vocation in life was not to swell the ranks of the religious and the clergy but to “make saints in their own homes.” The Apostle of Joy, who apparently never got the memo from Dumas and Bruylants, cherished the “spurn the world” medieval aphorism that we quoted earlier and taught it to all of his disciples, lay and clerical and religious, as a “crowning maxim” essential to “the gift of humility.” [17]

Third, another peritus responsible for revising the prayers argued that despising the earthly and loving the heavenly “put heaven and earth into radical opposition.” [18] Antoine Dumas, the author of this comment, does not claim that the Church had a dualist, Manichean hatred of creation but that the concept of despising the world is “so often poorly understood” and therefore better left out. Similarly, Dumas charges that despicere terrena is “very easily poorly translated.”

We have already noted the challenges in translating and explaining despicere so that it does not give rise to a Manichean hatred of material being but instead shows the dangers of disordered desires and unhealthy attachments. Giving up on this challenge, on the other hand, is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Dumas’ rationale also betrays a problematic yet common conviction of the conciliar mind, that the liturgy is supposed to be readily intelligible. We see this assumption manifesting itself in Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium [19] and continuing up to our own day with Pope Francis’ support of retranslating parts of the Lord’s Prayer. One particularly telling example is when the American bishops tried in 2006 to block the use of the word “consubstantial” from the revised translation of the Creed in the new Mass on the grounds that “‘consubstantial’ is a theological expression requiring explanation” [20]—as if somehow it wasn’t the job of priests and bishops to explain theological expressions.

In the face of all this dumbing down stands the observation of Peter Kwasniewski: “To make the liturgy obvious, easy, simple, is to make it cease to be the liturgy.” [21] And we, might add, if every facet of the mystery of Faith that is not readily intelligible to modern man were to be discarded, hardly any facets would be left.

Fourth—and speaking of modern man—Dumas claims that removing despicere from the calendar was imperative in order to take “account of the modern mentality and the directives of Vatican II.” Dumas does not elaborate, but Van Slyke speculates that he is referring to the optimistic tone that some of the documents of Vatican II evince towards the modern world. Van Slyke points out, however, that the same Council also makes strong statements about the fallenness of the world and that it in no way calls into question the Christian doctrine of despisal.

As for “the modern mentality,” it is certainly true that modern man does not despise the world. Far from it, one of the hallmarks of modernity is a shift away from the True, the Good, and the Beautiful to “the relief of man’s estate” (in Francis Bacon’s famous formulation), that is, to his bodily health and creature comforts. Or to put it in the language of this article: from its philosophically revolutionary framework to its technological obsessions, modernity conditions people to love earthly things and despise the heavenly. [22]

Yet if modern man is so enamored of the earthly, all the more reason to disabuse him of this destructive infatuation, and to teach him that true happiness resides only in the love of the very realities he has been increasingly ignoring for the past five hundred years. Again Kwasnieski: “We believe that what modern people need the most is someone with a foothold outside of modernity.” [23] It is a bitter irony that instead of helping the world on this score, the Church capitulated to the spirit of the world on her very teaching about its dangers.

If only the reformers of the new Missal had valued despising the allurements of earthly things as much as they despised despisal, they might have made a more substantive contribution to addressing modern man’s malaise and the crisis of Faith in the modern age. Instead they ended up confirming modern man in one of his more despicable prejudices.

This article first appeared as “Renewing Respect for Christian Despisal,” The Latin Mass magazine 27:1 (Winter/Spring 2018), pp. 36-40, and has since been modified. Many thanks to the editors of TLM for allowing its inclusion here.

Notes

[1] Daniel G. Van Slyke, “Despicere mundum et terrena: A Spiritual and Liturgical Motif in the Missale Romanum,” Usus Antiquior 1.1 (2010), 60.

[2] Attributed to St. Malachy of Armagh (d. 1148), this aphorism became a staple of Cistercian through St. Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) or his disciples. See István Bejczy, The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages (Brill, 2011), 106.

[3] Ad uxorem 1.4.

[4] De Bono Mortis 6.24.

[5] Sermo 216.

[6] See Van Slyke, 64-65.

[7] Dialogues 2.31.2.

[8] See the Collect for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost.

[9] See Dialogues 2.38.4.

[10] The fact that our Lord grew angry on occasion (e.g., with the moneychangers in the Temple) in no way implies that He had any stain of sin. My point is that righteous anger is a spiritual tool that is especially useful for a soul suffering from the effects of original sin as, for instance, when a soul grows angry at itself for sinning.

[11] Van Slyke, 65.

[12] Van Slyke, 69.

[13] See Collect of St. Hermenegild, April 13.

[14] See my “What the Traditional Latin Mass Can Teach the World,” TLM 22:2 (Summer 2013), 50-53, and “The Great Fast,” TLM 26:1 (Winter/Spring 2017), 46-50.

[15] See Van Slyke, 74.

[16] See Van Slyke, 75, 77-78.

[17] Pietro Giacomo Bacci,;The Life of Saint Philip Neri, Apostle of Rome, trans. F.W. Faber, Vol. 1 (London: Thomas Richardson and Son, 1848), 301.

[18] See Van Slyke, 76-77.

[19] Cf. 21, 34, 48, 50, 59, 79, 90, 92. See my “The Erosion of Comprehension in the Roman Rite,” TLM 16:1 (Winter 2007), 30-33.

[20] Laurie Goodstein and Cindy Chang, “A Changing Mass for U.S. Catholics,” New York Times, June 16, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/us/16mass.html.

[21] Peter Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness (Angelico Press, 2017), 18.

[22] See Van Slyke, 77.

[23] Kwasniewski, 49.

The Mass Should Not Be a Torture Device

Thanks to Austin Ivereigh, I stumbled on a thread on Twitter in which a lady of whom I had never heard (I’m taking her words only as a point of departure) expresses a view that I’ve come across many times and that I find terribly perverse:

Spelled out a bit more, it goes like this: “It’s okay if a Mass is irreverent, cringe-worthy, full of minor celebrities and contemptible music, and tortures you in a hundred ways, because, AFTER ALL, Jesus was crucified for us and the Mass is the sacrifice of the Cross, so basically, you get to be crucified with Him, ya know? And if you offer it up, that might just become the best Mass!”

That is at very least fallacious, and probably blasphemous on top of it.

At Holy Mass we participate mystically in the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension into Glory of Christ Jesus our Eternal High Priest. It is our highest form of prayer and praise by which we render to God the most pleasing act of worship, not just by consecrating the Eucharist, but by surrounding Him with the best we can give Him, internally at least, but also externally, as the Church had always striven to do. The Lord gave us the liturgy to heal us of our worldliness and to elevate us to Himself.

The Mass is not time-travel to Calvary so that we can elbow our way through the Roman soldiers and climb up onto a neighboring cross. The Mass is not there to torture us but to bathe us in the splendor of the love of God and to unite us with the innocent victim so that we may offer back to God a love worthy of Him.

That upward ascent to the throne of grace is contradicted and heavily undermined by the horizontal chumminess and the “Call-Me-Fr. Jimmy” show and the crummy music, Eucharistic informality, and all the rest of the problems Catholics too often suffer through week to week. That kind of dissonance is not something Our Lord desires nor is it something we should put up with; respect for Him forbids it. If you would not let your spouse or your parent be insulted to his or her face, why would you let Jesus be?

Those who add to the Passion of Christ by misdeeds in the Mass displease the Lord, add to the burden of His Cross, and store up wrath in the world to come. As with any sin, repentance and conversion can open the way again into His kingdom.

I think we could describe the basic fallacy here as a literalist parody of the Western emphasis on the Mass as the re-presentation of the Passion of Christ. Without a doubt the Mass is a re-presentation of the once-for-all sacrifice of Calvary, but a mystical one, by which we enter into the great mystery of the Lamb of God making intercession for us before the Father with His glorious wounds. We do not seek to emulate the historical event, as does the Oberammergau Passion Play. Dramas like that have their place, but no one (I think) has ever mistaken them for the Mass, or the Mass for them.

As a result, even if we meditate on the wondrous Passion of the Son of God during Mass, as many classic devotional books have recommended over the centuries, we should be careful not to draw the wrong conclusions. Specifically: let’s not make spiritual sadomasochism into a virtue, and let’s recognize that the crucified One is the King of Kings, entering into His glory.

One might be taken by surprise heading into an unknown situation that causes suffering, and then, as with all suffering, like stubbing your toe or getting a headache, one can offer it up as best one can. That’s what often happens to people during vacation when they have to look for a Mass in unknown surroundings (for that reason, I won’t even travel anymore on Sundays or Holy Days unless I’m able to get to a TLM). But to try to persuade oneself that a regular diet of bad liturgy is somehow good because it can be “offered up” is self-destructive and, objectively considered, insulting to God, who is not to be mocked.

Incidentally: Padre Pio is not a counterexample. That kind of mystical Passion during the Mass is on a totally different plane from what we are talking about with the inflicting of bad liturgy on the laity.

Moreover, I am not saying that one has to be comfortable at Mass. Plush-cushion pews in perfectly air-conditioned or heated suburban churches are a way to lull the congregation to sleep, not to awaken their faith and fire their charity! No, a bit of ascetical discomfort is all to the good: doing the Eucharistic fast from midnight if possible, or three hours; kneeling for long stretches during Mass, and at times on a hard floor; keeping one's back straight rather than sagging, and keeping custody of the eyes rather than seeing who's at Mass or what they're wearing... Such classic forms of freely embraced self-discipline prepare us better to assist at the divine sacrifice and partake of the mystical supper. They are, again, on a totally different plane from abusive, ugly, or unfitting liturgy imposed on us from the outside that fails to be objectively what it should be, both for God's sake and for the faithful's.

So, enough with this wretched nonsense about “it’s great when Mass makes you suffer, like Jesus!” No, no, and no.

Addendum. Prompted by this post, a reader sent me the following:

Thank you for that piece. Here is a supplement for you: a dear friend of mine once responded to an argument I was making on the basis of the leading indicators of Catholic collapse since Vatican II. He said (more or less): "Well all the people who left after the Council can't have had a very strong faith to begin with then." My response: "The purpose of the Church is not to test the faith of her members. That is the specific task of the devil."

By Nothing But Prayer and Fasting

Because of the movable date of Easter, and of everything that depends on it, the Ember Days of September can occur within any of the weeks after Pentecost from the 13th to the 19th inclusive. This year, they occur within the 16th week, but next year, they will fall within the 15th week. In the Roman Missal, they are traditionally placed after the 17th week [1], a textual arrangement which reflects a very ancient theme that permeates the Masses of this set of Ember Days

The Collect of the 17th Sunday after Pentecost is a very ancient one, found in different places in the various versions of the Gelasian Sacramentary, but already fixed to the 17th Sunday in the Gregorian Sacramentary by the end of the 8th century. “Da quaesumus, Domine, populo tuo diabolica vitare contagia, et te solum Deum pura mente sectari. – Grant to Thy people, o Lord, to shun (or ‘avoid, escape from’) diabolical contamination, and to follow Thee, who alone art God, with a pure mind.” [2] This is the only Mass Collect of the ecclesiastical year that refers directly to diabolical influence, but the Secret of the 15th Sunday has a similar theme: “May Thy sacraments preserve us, o Lord, and always protect us against diabolical incursions.”

Folio 115r of the Gellone Sacramentary, a sacramentary of the Gelasian type dated 780-800, with the prayer “Da quaesumus...” assigned to the 20th week after Pentecost. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 12048)

On the Ember Wednesday of September, the Gospel is St Mark’s account of the healing of a possessed child, chapter 9, 16-28. Apart from Easter and the Ascension, the ancient Roman lectionary makes very little of use of St Mark, notwithstanding the tradition that the Evangelist was a disciple of St Peter and composed the Gospel while he was with him in Rome. Here, his version was surely chosen for the moving account of the exchange between Christ and the child’s father, which is less detailed in St Matthew’s version.

“And He asked his father, ‘How long time is it since this hath happened unto him?’ But he said, ‘From his infancy, and oftentimes hath he cast him into the fire and into waters to destroy him. But if thou canst do any thing, help us, having compassion on us.’ And Jesus saith to him, ‘If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.’ And immediately the father of the boy crying out, with tears said, ‘I do believe, Lord: help my unbelief.’ ”

The lower half of Raphael’s Transfiguration, the story which precedes the Gospel of Ember Wednesday. The possessed child’s father, on the right side in green, presents him to the Apostles; Raphael beautifully captures the pleading in his facial expression. The brightness of the figure symbolizes his faith, as it does likewise in that of the possessed child, for devils, as St James says, have no doubts about God. (“Thou believest that there is one God. Thou dost well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” 2, 19). The brightest figure, the woman kneeling next to the boy and pointing at him, is an allegorical figure of Faith itself; where the light on these figures expresses their belief, the nine Apostles on the left are wrapped in shadow to symbolize the lack of faith that prevented them from casting out the devil.

At the end of the passage, the disciples ask Christ why they could not expel the devil, to which He replies, “This kind can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” In the Office, these words are sung at Lauds as the antiphon of the Benedictus.

On Ember Friday, the Gospel is that of the woman who anoints the Lord’s feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee, St Luke 7, 36-50. This is one of the very few examples of a Gospel which is repeated from another part of the temporal cycle; it is also read on the Thursday of Passion week, and again on the feast of St Mary Magdalene, with whom the woman is traditionally identified in the West. This identification is partly reinforced by the words of St Luke which come immediately after it (chapter 8, 1-3), although they are not read in the liturgy.

“And it came to pass afterwards, that He travelled through the cities and towns, preaching and evangelizing the kingdom of God; and the twelve with him, and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary who is called Magdalen, out of whom seven devils were gone forth, and Joanna the wife of Chusa, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who ministered unto him of their substance.”

On Saturday, the Gospel is two stories from St Luke, chapter 13, 6-17, the parable of the fig tree, and the healing of the woman “who had a spirit of infirmity… and was bowed together, (nor) could she look upwards at all.” The choice of this Gospel for the Saturday is a very deliberate one, since it takes place in a synagogue, the ruler of which, “being angry that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, answering, said to the multitude, ‘Six days there are wherein you ought to work. In them therefore come, and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” To this Christ answers, “Ye hypocrites, doth not every one of you, on the Sabbath day, loose his ox or his ass from the manger, and lead them to water? And ought not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?”

An ancient Christian sarcophagus known as the Sarcophagus of the Two Brothers, made in the second quarter of the 4th century, now in the Vatican Museums. The healing of the crippled woman is depicted in the upper left.

Each of these Gospels, therefore, refers to the same theme as the Collect of the 17th Sunday, the Church’s prayer to the Lord to protect Her and Her individual members from the malign influence of the devil.

It is a well-known fact that the Ember Days are one of the very oldest features of the Roman Rite. Pope St Leo I (444-61) preached numerous sermons on them, and believed them to be of apostolic origin, as he says, for example, in his second sermon on Pentecost. “To the present solemnity, most beloved, we must also add such devotion, that we keep the fast which follows it, according to the Apostolic tradition. For this must also be counted among the great gifts of the Holy Spirit, that fasting has been given to us as a defense against the enticements of the flesh and the snares of the devil, by which we may overcome all temptations, with the help of God.” (Sermon 76, PL 54, 411B)

Likewise, in his second sermon on the Ember Days of September, he refers to Christ’s words about fasting which are read on Wednesday. [3] “In every contest of the Christian’s struggle, temperance is of the greatest value and utility, to such a degree that the most savage demonic spirits, who are not put to flight from the bodies of the possessed by the commands of any exorcist, are driven out just by the force of fasts and prayers, as the Lord sayeth, ‘This kind of demons is not cast out except by fasting and prayer.’ The prayer of one who fasteth, therefore, is pleasing to God, and terrible to the devil…” (Sermon 87, ibid. 439b)

The collect of the 17th Sunday after Pentecost is one of the more obvious cases of a prayer deemed unsuitable by the post-Conciliar reformers for the ears of Modern Man™, who must never be confronted with any “negative” ideas while at prayer. Despite its antiquity and the universality of its place within the Roman Rite, it was removed altogether from the Missal, along with the Ember Days, most references to fasting, and all references to the devil. In a similar vein, when the pseudo-anaphora of pseudo-Hippolytus was adapted as the Second Eucharistic Prayer, the original version of the section that parallels the Qui pridie, “Who, when he was delivered to voluntary suffering, in order to dissolve death, and break the chains of the devil, and tread down hell, and bring the just to the light, and set the limit, and manifest the resurrection,” was reduced to “At the time He was betrayed and entered willingly into His Passion…”

However, as Fr Zuhlsdorf once noted, the 2002 revised edition of the Missal contains certain hints of an awareness that the post-Conciliar reform wantonly threw out far too much of the traditional Roman Rite. Among the things which it restored is the traditional prayer of the 17th Sunday after Pentecost, which now appears as an optional collect among the Masses “for any necessity”, raising the total number of references to the devil in the Missal to one.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal contains an exhortation (and no more than that) to the effect that Rogation Days and Ember Days “should be indicated” (“indicentur”, not “indicandae sunt – must be indicated”) on local calendars, and a rubric (I.45) that it is the duty (“oportet”) of episcopal conferences to establish both the time and manner of their celebration. Unsurprisingly, this rubric has mostly been ignored. However, it has become impossible for any Catholic who loves the Church to ignore the hideous consequences of the almost total abandonment of any kind of formal, liturgically guided ascetic discipline, and the free reign which this seems to have given to the devil. A permanent and universal restoration of the traditional discipline of fasting, including the Ember Days, would be a small but important step in the direction of ending that free reign.

[1] In many medieval liturgical books, they are placed after the last Mass of the season after Pentecost, as for example in the Sarum Missal.

[2] The earliest manuscripts read “dominum” instead of “Deum”; the change would have been made since “Domine” is already said at the beginning. Many manuscripts read “puro corde – with a pure heart” instead of “pura mente.”

[3] It is tempting to think of this as proof that the Roman lectionary tradition, which is first attested in the lectionary of Wurzburg ca. 700 AD, was already set down 250 years earlier in Pope Leo’s time. This is quite possible, of course, but it is equally possible that the unknown compiler of the lectionary was inspired to choose this Gospel by reading Pope Leo’s sermon.

By Nothing But Prayer and Fasting

Because of the movable date of Easter, and of everything that depends on it, the Ember Days of September can occur within any of the weeks after Pentecost from the 13th to the 19th inclusive. This year, they occur within the 17th week, which is where they are traditionally placed in the Roman Missal [1], but next year, for example, they will fall within the 14th week. This placement in the text reflects a very ancient theme which permeates the Masses of this set of Ember Days, and which seems to be particularly appropriate for our current annus horribilis.

The Collect of the 17th Sunday after Pentecost is a very ancient one, found in different places in the various versions of the Gelasian Sacramentary, but already fixed to the 17th Sunday in the Gregorian Sacramentary by the end of the 8th century. “Da quaesumus, Domine, populo tuo diabolica vitare contagia, et te solum Deum pura mente sectari. - Grant to Thy people, o Lord, to shun (or ‘avoid, escape from’) diabolical contamination, and to follow Thee, who alone art God, with a pure mind.” [2] This is the only Mass Collect of the ecclesiastical year that refers directly to diabolical influence, but the Secret of the 15th Sunday has a similar theme: “May Thy sacraments preserve us, o Lord, and always protect us against diabolical incursions.”

Folio 115r of the Gellone Sacramentary, a sacramentary of the Gelasian type dated 780-800, with the prayer& “Da quaesumus...” assigned to the 20th week after Pentecost. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 12048)

On the Ember Wednesday of September, the Gospel is St Mark’s account of the healing of a possessed child, chapter 9, 16-28. Apart from Easter and the Ascension, the ancient Roman lectionary makes very little of use of St Mark, notwithstanding the tradition that the Evangelist was a disciple of St Peter and composed the Gospel while he was with him in Rome. Here, his version was surely chosen for the moving account of the exchange between Christ and the child’s father, which is less detailed in St Matthew’s version.

“And He asked his father, ‘How long time is it since this hath happened unto him?’ But he said, ‘From his infancy, and oftentimes hath he cast him into the fire and into waters to destroy him. But if thou canst do any thing, help us, having compassion on us.’ And Jesus saith to him, ‘If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.’ And immediately the father of the boy crying out, with tears said, ‘I do believe, Lord: help my unbelief.’ ”

The lower half of Raphael’s Transfiguration, the story which precedes the Gospel of Ember Wednesday. The possessed child’s father, on the right side in green, presents him to the Apostles; Raphael beautifully captures the pleading in his facial expression. The brightness of the figure symbolizes his faith, as it does likewise in that of the possessed child, for devils, as St James says, have no doubts about God. (“Thou believest that there is one God. Thou dost well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” 2, 19). The brightest figure, the woman kneeling next to the boy and pointing at him, is an allegorical figure of Faith itself; where the light on these figures expresses their belief, the nine Apostles on the left are wrapped in shadow to symbolize the lack of faith that prevented them from casting out the devil.

At the end of the passage, the disciples ask Christ why they could not expel the devil, to which He replies, “This kind can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” In the Office, these words are sung at Lauds as the antiphon of the Benedictus.

On Ember Friday, the Gospel is that of the woman who anoints the Lord’s feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee, St Luke 7, 36-50. This is one of the very few examples of a Gospel which is repeated from another part of the temporal cycle; it is also read on the Thursday of Passion week, and again on the feast of St Mary Magdalene, with whom the woman is traditionally identified in the West. This identification is partly reinforced by the words of St Luke which come immediately after it (chapter 8, 1-3), although they are not read in the liturgy.

“And it came to pass afterwards, that He travelled through the cities and towns, preaching and evangelizing the kingdom of God; and the twelve with him, and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary who is called Magdalen, out of whom seven devils were gone forth, and Joanna the wife of Chusa, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who ministered unto him of their substance.”

On Saturday, the Gospel is two stories from St Luke, chapter 13, 6-17, the parable of the fig tree, and the healing of the woman “who had a spirit of infirmity… and was bowed together, (nor) could she look upwards at all.” The choice of this Gospel for the Saturday is a very deliberate one, since it takes place in a synagogue, the ruler of which, “being angry that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, answering, said to the multitude, ‘Six days there are wherein you ought to work. In them therefore come, and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” To this Christ answers, “Ye hypocrites, doth not every one of you, on the Sabbath day, loose his ox or his ass from the manger, and lead them to water? And ought not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?”

An ancient Christian sarcophagus known as the Sarcophagus of the Two Brothers, made in the second quarter of the 4th century, now in the Vatican Museums. The healing of the crippled woman is depicted in the upper left.

Each of these Gospels, therefore, refers to the same theme as the Collect of the 17th Sunday, the Church’s prayer to the Lord to protect Her and Her individual members from the malign influence of the devil.

It is a well-known fact that the Ember Days are one of the very oldest features of the Roman Rite. Pope St Leo I (444-61) preached numerous sermons on them, and believed them to be of apostolic origin, as he says, for example, in his second sermon on Pentecost. “To the present solemnity, most beloved, we must also add such devotion, that we keep the fast which follows it, according to the Apostolic tradition. For this must also be counted among the great gifts of the Holy Spirit, that fasting has been given to us as a defense against the enticements of the flesh and the snares of the devil, by which we may overcome all temptations, with the help of God.” (Sermon 76, PL 54, 411B)

Likewise, in his second sermon on the Ember Days of September, he refers to Christ’s words about fasting which are read on Wednesday. [3] “In every contest of the Christian’s struggle, temperance is of the greatest value and utility, to such a degree that the most savage demonic spirits, who are not put to flight from the bodies of the possessed by the commands of any exorcist, are driven out just by the force of fasts and prayers, as the Lord sayeth, ‘This kind of demons is not cast out except by fasting and prayer.’ The prayer of one who fasteth, therefore, is pleasing to God, and terrible to the devil…” (Sermon 87, ibid. 439b)

The collect of the 17th Sunday after Pentecost is one of the more obvious cases of a prayer deemed unsuitable by the post-Conciliar reformers for the ears of Modern Man™, who must never be confronted with any “negative” ideas while at prayer. Despite its antiquity and the universality of its place within the Roman Rite, it was removed altogether from the Missal, along with the Ember Days, most references to fasting, and all references to the devil. In a similar vein, when the pseudo-anaphora of pseudo-Hippolytus was adapted as the Second Eucharistic Prayer, the original version of the section that parallels the Qui pridie, “Who, when he was delivered to voluntary suffering, in order to dissolve death, and break the chains of the devil, and tread down hell, and bring the just to the light, and set the limit, and manifest the resurrection,” was reduced to “At the time He was betrayed and entered willingly into His Passion…”

However, as Fr Zuhlsdorf noted a few days ago, the 2002 revised edition of the Missal contains certain hints of an awareness that the post-Conciliar reform wantonly threw out far too much of the traditional Roman Rite. Among the things which it restored is the traditional prayer of the 17th Sunday after Pentecost, which now appears as an optional collect among the Masses “for any necessity”, raising the total number of references to the devil in the Missal to one.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal contains an exhortation (and no more than that) to the effect that Rogation Days and Ember Days “should be indicated” (“indicentur”, not “indicandae sunt – must be indicated”) on the local calendars, and a rubric (I.45) that it is the duty (“oportet”) of episcopal conferences to establish both the time and manner of their celebration. Unsurprisingly, this rubric has mostly been ignored. In recent days, however, it has become impossible to ignore the hideous consequences of the almost total abandonment of any kind of ascetic discipline in the life of the Church, and the free reign which this seems to have given to the devil. As a result, some bishops have called for the faithful to fast on the Ember Days this year, among them Robert Morlino of Madison and David Zubik of Pittsburgh, along with a number of Catholic commentators. If the Church does not wish this annus horribilis to become a lasting feature of its life, a permanent and universal restoration of the traditional discipline of fasting, including the Ember Days, would be a small but important step in that direction.

[1] In many medieval liturgical books, they are placed after the last Mass of the season after Pentecost, as for example in the Sarum Missal.

[2] The earliest manuscripts read “dominum” instead of “Deum”; the change would have been made since “Domine” is already said at the beginning. Many manuscripts read “puro corde – with a pure heart” instead of “pura mente.”

[3] It is tempting to think of this as proof that the Roman lectionary tradition, which is first attested in the lectionary of Wurzburg ca. 700 AD, was already set down 250 years earlier in Pope Leo’s time. This is quite possible, of course, but it is equally possible that the unknown compiler of the lectionary was inspired to choose this Gospel by reading Pope Leo’s sermon.

How to Be A Living Sign of Beauty in the Desert of Secular Culture

Prof. David Fagerberg on Beauty and Asceticism

Beauty is the apex of an invisible pyramid of virtues; it is the flower on a stalk of living habits, habits which you cannot see, but which are necessary for beauty to exist.

I recently had the great pleasure of attending the annual conference of the Institute for Religious Life. There were many highlights; all the speakers were excellent, but one in particular stood out for me. Dr David Fagerberg’s lecture entitled Beauty and Asceticism was perhaps the best talk at an event of this type I have ever heard. It was inspiring and enlightening, theoretical and practical, and for all the weightiness of the subject matter, light and entertaining to listen to.

Drawing on the wisdom of the collection of texts written between the 4th and 15th century called The Philokalia, a Greek word which means “love of beauty”, he spoke of how the beautiful life is one that is transformed supernaturally in Christ. Through the Christian life, we partake of the divine nature, we are reborn and walk the Way of Beauty, a path of virtue and Christian asceticism.

The audience was largely religious, and so he had that in mind when he gave this talk. As he points out, all of us are called to live an ascetic life to some degree. We might not be called to a life as a hermit in the desert or on a mountain top, but rather to a life where we are in the world, but not of it - an urban anchorite praying to the family icon corner in his suburban skete (an apartment block or cul-de-sac maybe). What Dr. Fagerberg does is point out the special role of the religious in the Church in cultivating this “ascetic aesthetic.”

He gives us an image of the beautiful life as a flower on a stalk of virtue. This is flower power, but not an imaginary one borne of self-indulgence of the 1960s, but one rooted in the Christian life which has the force of the divine.

It is the liturgy and the culture that cultivate such a transformation and by which we are deified. That is how we become people whose lives and work speak beautifully of Christ and how we become creative artists of the New Evangelization.

Dr. Fagerberg, who is a professor in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame was kind enough to send to me the text of his talk, which I give to you here. He writes:

In the 18th century, two Greek Orthodox scholars named Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and Makarios of Corinth compiled a collection of writings they found in the libraries of monasteries on Mount Athos. They selected from among texts written between the 4th and 15th century for the guidance and instruction of monks in the contemplative life, and they titled their collection The Philokalia. Probably even our rudimentary Greek recognizes the first half of the word: philia is one of the Greek words for love, alongside eros and agape. The second half of the word is probably less familiar to us: kallos basically means “beauty,” so they were calling this collection The Love of Beauty. What might it be about? What might five volumes on the “love of beauty” contain? What topics would you include? Would a convenient search on Amazon books for “beauty” give us a hint? I find a literature book that explains the lyrical vision of tragic beauty; I find a cookbook by ‘the beauty chef,’ who can tell us about food for radiant well-being; I find a pop psychology book on radical beauty whereby you transform yourself from the inside out; and I find a philosophy book treating beauty in art, nature, and the human form.

But when we crack open the Philokalia we find some unexpected sentences. Although this is a book about beauty, the first sentence of the first book of the first volume reads “There is among the passions an anger of the intellect, and this anger is in accordance with nature. Without anger a man cannot attain purity: he has to feel angry with all that is sown in him by the enemy.” The next book is by Evagrius of Pontus, who sketches his topic by saying,

“Of the demons opposing us in the practice of the ascetic life, there are three groups who fight in the front line: those entrusted with the appetites of gluttony, those who suggest avaricious thoughts, and those who incite us to seek the esteem of men. (You might recognize the three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, given in sequence 1, 3, 2.) All the other demons follow behind and in their turn attack those already wounded by the first three groups.”

He offers these bits of advice: “Do you desire, then, to embrace this life of solitude, and to seek out the blessings of stillness? If so, abandon the cares of the world… .” “With regard to clothes, be content with what is sufficient for the needs of the body.” “Keep a sparse and plain diet, not seeking a variety of tempting dishes.”

Flipping back to the table of contents, we see this is not an ordinary book on beauty. John Cassian writes about the eight vices, Mark the Ascetic offers 200 texts on the spiritual law, Hesychios the priest speaks of watchfulness and holiness. Maximus the Confessor takes up the most space in the five volumes, and he begins by saying “Dispassion engenders love, hope in God engenders dispassion, and patience and forbearance engender hope in God; these are the product of complete self-control, which itself springs from fear of God. Fear of God is the result of faith in God.”

I hope I have startled you into appreciating the juxtaposition in my title: asceticism and beauty. (We might call it an ascetic aesthetic.) The spiritual and monastic tradition of both east and west have united the two, and so Makarios and Nicodemus title their five volumes dealing with fasting, vigils, self-discipline, constant prayer, contemplation, and the struggle between vices and virtues “a love of kallos.” Perhaps that word has a thicker meaning than our simplistic understanding of beauty. A Greek concordance reveals additional dimensions of the word, and, sure enough, kallos can be defined as

• beautiful to look at, shapely, magnificent
• good, excellent in nature, well adapted to its ends, pure
• praiseworthy, morally good, noble, becoming
• honorable, or conferring honor
• affecting the mind agreeably, comforting and confirming
• valuable, virtuous, fair

Philo-kalia is a love of these goods. And a quick online search shows the appearance of the word in the following Scripture verses, and I think you would agree with the translator’s choice to render kallos as “good”:

• Matthew 3,10 : that which does not bear good [kalon] fruit is cut down.
• Matthew 5, 16 : that they may see your good [kala] works and give glory to your Father
• Mark 9, 5 : Rabbi, it is good [kalon] for us to be here
• John 2, 10 : everyone serves the good [kalon] wine first, and then the cheaper wine
• and, indeed, John 10, 11 : I am the good [kalos] shepherd

My purpose in calling out these examples from Scripture is to make us conscious of an additional meaning resonating in those verses. For example, that which does not bear beautiful fruit is cut down

• that they may see your beautiful works and glorify your heavenly Father
• Rabbi, this is a beautiful place to be
• and Jesus is the Beautiful Shepherd

Beauty, goodness, morality, nobility, honor, and virtue are inseparable from asceticism. Why would that be? I take this opportunity to try and think that through with you.

Let’s invite Chesterton to provide us with an opening metaphor...

To read the article or download a pdf full click this link.

Announcing Two New Books on the Liturgy by David Fagerberg

Many NLM readers will be familiar with the name of David Fagerberg, who has significantly enriched contemporary discussions of liturgy. I am pleased to be able to announce the recent appearance of not one but two new books by him. I've read Consecrating the World and my positive opinion of it is indicated in the blurb below, courtesy of the publisher's (Angelico Press) website.

CONSECRATING THE WORLD
On Mundane Liturgical Theology
(Angelico Press, 2016)

156 pages
ISBN: 978-1-62138-168-6
$17.95 US Buy now from Amazon.com
£11.50 UK Buy now from Amazon UK

WHAT HAS LITURGY TO DO WITH LIFE? The sacred with the secular? This study proposes that the liturgy calls us, in the words of Aidan Kavanagh, “to do the world as the world was meant to be done.” The sacramental liturgy of the Church and the personal liturgy of our lives should be as a seamless garment. Consecrating the World continues David Fagerberg’s exploration of the Church’s lex orandi (law of prayer) by expanding two major themes. The first considers liturgy as the matrix wherein our encounter with God becomes an experience of primary theology. The second illustrates how a believer is made ready for this liturgy through asceticism in both its faces — the one negative (dealing with sin), the other positive (dealing with sanctification). This book turns these two themes outward to a liturgical theology of the cosmos — a mundane liturgical theology of the consecration of the world and the sanctification of our daily life.

“David Fagerberg invites us, with the urgency of the gospel, to see God the Trinity in every created thing, and to offer to God as a joyful sacrifice of praise the good things He has made, rather than cleaving egocentrically to these good things. When, through the Dove (the Spirit), Christ frees us to do the world in this way, we become the liturgical priest-kings we were meant to be; we learn how to live and die on the ascending path of Christ. Steeped in the spirituality of the Orthodox East and the Anglican West, enriched by the Catholic masters of Ressourcement, Fagerberg shares his vision in everyday language for all to hear. Just when it seemed that spiritual masters no longer roamed university hallways, God has raised up a true spiritual guide for our time. Open this book, awaken from spiritual slumber, read and rejoice.”

—MATTHEW LEVERING, Mundelein Seminary

“Consecrating the World takes up where David Fagerberg’s masterful On Liturgical Asceticism left off, providing a key to living the liturgy in every moment and aspect of human life. That this is indeed an everyday task takes nothing away from its divine content and sublime finality. Fagerberg is rightly regarded as one of the foremost liturgical theologians of our day. His engagement with the tradition is both fresh and fruitful. If we are to be ‘thoroughly imbued with the spirit and power of the liturgy,’ we must grasp what the Sacred Liturgy in fact is. For this, Fagerberg is a worthy and rightly demanding guide.”

—DOM ALCUIN REID, Monastère Saint-Benoît, La Garde-Freinet, France

“Consecrating the World is no ordinary book. It is a course in re-training the mind and the senses to perceive the world in a new way. Like the ancient Fathers, David Fagerberg sees all material things as sensible signs leading us to heavenly realities. Like Maximus and Dionysius, he shows us that the cosmos is itself a liturgy, calling us to consecrate ourselves and our work, our passions and the world to God — to sanctify the temporal order. This is a theology most visionary, joyful, and passionate.”

—SCOTT HAHN, Franciscan University of Steubenville

“In David Fagerberg’s new book, his trademark genius for integrating liturgical theology, ascetical theology, and the theology of creation is on full display, but here developed in a new, pneumatological direction that seems to lift it all up on the wings of the Holy Spirit. This book fully corroborates Fagerberg’s reputation as one of the most creative and inspiring liturgical theologians of our time. It will have a wide readership both inside the academy, in seminaries, and in the hands of anyone interested in learning what is the deep connection between the sacred moments of the liturgy and the mundane moments of life in the world as we all must live it.”

—JOHN C. CAVADINI, University of Notre Dame

“This book succeeds as an imaginative, at times provocative paean to the total integration of liturgy and life, by carrying to the utmost the logic of the Incarnation and the radical challenge of the Ascension. Can God become flesh, as it were, in all the aspects of life? And can the whole of creation really be raised up on high, as a sign, even a foretaste, of the heavenly liturgy? Fagerberg’s arguments lead us to see the urgency of rediscovering the full symbolic richness, the ‘splendid beauty,’ of traditional liturgy as the means by which we must glorify God and divinize our lives in this world. The author has a particular gift for expounding old truths in startlingly original ways — enough to capture our jaded attention and make us rethink certain doctrines ‘from the ground up.’”

—PETER KWASNIEWSKI, Wyoming Catholic College

WHY DO WE NEED THE MASS? ASCETICISM, SANCTIFICATION, AND THE GLORY OF GOD
(Hong Kong: Chorabooks)
EBook (format Kindle)
ISBN 9789881482129
$8.99 (in all Amazon stores: USA; UK)

From the publisher:

Liturgy in recent years has returned to the center of the attention, thanks to the Pontificate of Benedict XVI. This is why it is always relevant to witness the release of a new book from Professor David W. Fagerberg, a world famous expert in this topic. This is an important short book for the Catholic understanding of the Mass and of the role of the liturgy in today's world. . . .

"Liturgy refers man to God, and God to man, even if we cannot know God in his full mystery": liturgy is the limen that allows us to look at a dimension that is beyond our understanding but that at the same time was made present thanks to God's incarnation. But we should avoid thinking that "humanizing" the liturgy will do us good: "We serve the glory of God, the glory of God does not serve us". Being reminded of this is very important, because we need to put always in the right hierarchical order the relationship we have with God. Several themes are touched in this book, as teleology, asceticism, ecstasy, and so on.

When talking about asceticism this is what Professor Fagerberg has to say: "I propose that liturgical glorification of God is a daughter born of asceticism. We need to undergo the ascetical technology of self, and make our wills conform to God’s, before we can worship and glorify him properly. Each person is a block of marble within which lies an image of the image of God (Jesus), and each strike of mallet and chisel by the Holy Spirit frees that image from stone-cold vices in order to create out of women and men a liturgical son who shares the Son’s filial relationship with God the Father. At the end of asceticism is dispassion, which has a child called love, who opens the door to the cosmos as theophany, and invites us to a union with God that is true theology. Purity of heart is to will one thing – we hear this from Evagrius in the desert, from Augustine in the ancient Church, from Petrarch in the medieval Church, and more recently from Kierkegaard. If we are to do the world the way the world was meant to be done, then the Holy Spirit will have to craft our hearts until we only desire one thing, too. The pure in heart are blessed because they shall see God (Matthew 5). The purpose of liturgy is to glorify God, but our ability to do so comes at a price: it is born of asceticism."

Can Catholics Learn Today from the Continent Marriage of Joseph and Mary?

If you have not read my article from last week, it would make the most sense to start there, and then come back to this one.

In the mind of believers reflecting on the Holy Family, an obvious question ought to arise: Are we supposed to learn from the celibate marriage of Mary and Joseph a lesson that is actually applicable to married laypeople? Put differently, could their “Josephite marriage” have anything to say to us here and now?

St. Thomas answers in the affirmative: “By this example [of Mary and Joseph] the faithful are taught that if after marriage they remain continent by mutual consent, their union is still marriage and is rightly called such, even without intercourse of the sexes.”[1] Peter Lombard goes further: “without carnal commingling, marriage is holier, as is said in the text [of the Sentences].”[2] In two places Aquinas even formulates the view in his own words, albeit buried in objections as premises to which he does not take exception: “It is even better for spouses to restrain themselves than to make use of marriage”[3]; again, “those marriages are more perfect that are accompanied by a vow of continence (pari voto continentium).”[4] It is hard to know the extent to which Aquinas personally endorses this opinion, but there are many reasons to think he could not have rejected it altogether, and may even favor it.

This being so, we are left with matter for reflection. If, as occurred fairly often in former centuries, a Catholic couple today felt drawn by the Lord to a deeper life of prayer and contemplative intimacy with Him and were convinced that He had given them the desire and strength to remain perpetually continent, would we, as a friend or spiritual director, counsel them in favor of this choice or against it? Would we view it as a case of confused vocational identity, of mistaking for superior virtue what is in reality a retreat from the demands placed on Christians living in the world? A too-quick answer about “medieval Manichaeism” or “contempt of God’s good creation” or “staying in line with one’s state in life” might well bring to light a superficial spirituality that does not respect the divine initiative and the Spirit’s free giving of gifts, not to mention a failure to comprehend a rare but defensible application of ascetical-mystical doctrine.

The saints are given to the faithful as luminous exemplars of Christian life, practitioners of heroic virtue worthy of our prudent imitation. Now, it is well known that many saints in all periods of history have lived perpetual continence either for the whole of their married life or for a notable part of it.[5] We are bound, therefore, by our very trust in the Church’s recognition of sanctity, to see in this (admittedly atypical) path a genuine “vocation within a vocation,” a different mode of nuptial love to which the Lord has called and will continue to call some Christians.[6]

We could understand a Josephite relationship in this way: as Christian marriage, with its divinely graced bodily-spiritual intimacy, is the privileged earthly sign of that heavenly reality of which religious life is the superior anticipation and realization, so a Josephite marriage is the mutual and voluntary surrender or sacrifice of spousal rights in order that the spouses — precisely as representing the perpetual gift of self, total yet non-sexual, that subsists between the Bridegroom Christ and His bridal Church — may become for each other more transparent signs of the ineffable intimacy awaiting them in their final beatific destiny, an intimacy with God and with one another in Him that is more lofty and profound than any earthly communion they might enjoy. It would be, then, the renunciation and offering up of a way of life that is rooted in the sanctified and sanctifying but necessarily transitory and imperfect communion of man and wife, in order to achieve another kind of communion of brother and sister in the Spirit; and this for no other reason than that both may strive more wholeheartedly to attain, in their common life, an ever-fuller participation in the divine holiness and beatitude that knows neither beginning nor end.[7]

Such was indubitably the calling of Joseph and Mary and of certain saints who followed in their footsteps. We could not dare, for fear of sinning against Love, to state categorically that such a vocation is no longer possible or no longer given. The parents of St. Thérèse, Louis and Zelie Martin, are sometimes ridiculed for the vow of continence they made at the start of their marriage. But their very openness to renunciation, together with an ongoing discernment, was a crucial part of their sanctity, and when they came to see that it was God’s will for them to have children, they embraced that vocation without demur, giving to the Church the gift of five daughters who entered religious life, one of whom became the greatest saint of modern times.

In the midst of synodal confusion and chaos, this topic is more pertinent than ever, due to the flawed reasoning of certain leaders in the Church who seem to take for granted that chastity and continence within marriage are simply impossible, off the table.[8] If we adopt a broader perspective, we can see that history furnishes us with more than a few examples of the reality of such unions, which can be a solution for couples in adulterous unions who wish to be fully reconciled with God and the Church and thus able to receive our Lord in the Most Holy Eucharist.


NOTES

[1] Summa theologiae III, q. 29, a. 2, sc (quoting Augustine with approval).

[2] In IV Sent. d. 26, q. 2, a. 4, sc 2.

[3] In IV Sent. d. 32, a. 2, arg. 2.

[4] In IV Sent. d. 34, a. 2, arg. 1.

[5] See, for abundant examples, Ferdinand Holböck, Married Saints and Blesseds Through the Centuries, trans. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002).

[6] Indeed, in any marriage that lasts over many decades, there will be a phase of it to which this description can and should apply.

[7] For the metaphysical and theological principles underlying this claim, see Peter Kwasniewski, “On the Ideal Basis and Fruition of Marriage,” Second Spring 12 (2010): 43–53.

[8] See Benedict Constable, "Chastity is Impossible: The Kernel of the Kasperite Position," published on September 23, 2015, at Rorate Caeli.