The Incarnation, the Passion, and the Eucharist as Keys to Rightly Interpreting the Song of Songs

If you’ve ever read the Song of Songs (also called the Canticle of Canticles) in the Old Testament, you probably had more than a few questions about it! What is this very sensuous book about a lover and a beloved doing in the canon of Scripture? Are the modern biblical exegetes right when they say it’s just a loose collection of ancient Near Eastern erotic poetry that accidentally found its way into the Hebrew scriptures? Were the Jewish rabbis closer to the truth when they said it depicts the tender and tempestuous relationship between YHWH and Israel?

In his new book Wounded I Sing: The Song of Songs and the Incarnation of the Son of God, Dr. Timothy Kelly, a professor of theology at the International Theological Institute in Trumau, Austria, argues that Christians are uniquely positioned to unlock the mysteries of this book, which opens its secrets more and more as we read it in and through the Heart of Christ.

When the Word became flesh, the transcendent God of love reached down into our mortal, passible nature to join it as a man joins his betrothed, and upon the Cross He accomplished a bodily-spiritual nuptial covenant with the Church and every baptized soul that He renews, day after day, in fleshly-and-spiritual Eucharistic communion.

What the Hebrews longed for as yet-to-be-attained in the Messianic age, the Christian receives as now accomplished in the sacrifice and sacrament of the Lord's Passion—yet this, in turn, is the foretaste and pledge of something far greater: the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb. The dynamism of eros that characterizes the Song reveals both the fiery love of the Divine Lover and the yearning of His beloved to be inseparably one, but in a manner that is incarnate, ecstatic, total, irrevocable, blissful beyond what mind can conceive or imagine.

This is the essence of the Christian life and no book in the entire Bible conveys it better. No wonder the Fathers and Doctors wrote more commentaries on the Song of Songs than on any other book. No wonder it entices and baffles us: it speaks to our deepest desire, and yet does so with all the enigmas of salvation history and of our pilgrimage under the invisible hand of Providence.

And we can be thankful to Dr. Kelly for synthesizing all of this—drawing especially on St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Matthas Scheeben—into a readable guide that opens one magnificent vista after another. An exemplary work of Thomistic synthesis, with the clarity of Garrigou-Lagrange and the eloquence of Pieper.

Readers of NLM will be particularly interested in Kelly's extensive discussion of the Passion narratives (pp. 63-96), which play so pivotal a part in the ancient Roman Rite's celebration of Holy Week (with all four being read between Palm Sunday and Good Friday); how Christ's spousal office is necessarily priestly, sacrificial, and nutritive of His bride, the Church and the Christian soul; and how baptism and the Holy Eucharist, in particular, are nuptial sacraments with analogous aspects of unity and fecundity (pp. 97-149).

Without necessarily intending to be an apologetics work for the Catholic Faith, in fact Kelly's argument shows that both the Old Testament as a whole and the Passion of Christ make no salvific sense if there is not an immediate physical-spiritual communion possible with the Son of God, and in that sense proves that the Protestant account of personal salvation (through faith, by Scripture, by grace alone, etc.) is in tension with the entire trend of salvation history and of the life of Christ.

The early readers of this manuscript—including some of the greatest living Catholic biblical scholars—loved it.

Scott Hahn, editor of the Ignatius Bible’s commentary on the Song of Songs, wrote: “Rarely will you see a book that brings biblical, dogmatic, and mystical theology together so artfully and lucidly as this remarkable and readable synthesis does. Timothy Kelly refreshingly resets the entire question of the Song’s literal and spiritual meanings.”

John S. Bergsma, who co-authored A Catholic Introduction to the Bible with Brant Pitre, and wrote a book called The Bible and Marriage, had this to say: “An exquisite contemporary reading of the book, which I hope will contribute to returning the Song to its rightful and central place within Catholic biblical theology.”

Stephen K. Ray, author of commentaries on Genesis and the Gospel of John, summed it up as “an illuminating guide to a sublime and mysterious book.”

Fr. John Saward, author of some of the finest theological works of recent decades, declared: “Writing with a poet’s sensitivity to language, Dr. Kelly shows us how the Nuptial Mystery of Christ and His Church, of which the Song of Songs speaks with the authority of divine and prophetic inspiration, stands at the very centre of the Catholic faith.”

To find out more or “look inside,” visit the publisher’s site or any Amazon site.

Here’s a short video introduction, including a reading of part of the text:

A Reader’s Guide to the Mystical Writings of Julian of Norwich

Julian of Norwich was a medieval anchoress who wrote two extraordinary books about sixteen visions of Christ granted to her when she was thirty years old, in 1373. Though she was never beatified or even widely venerated, she is informally honored on May 13th, the approximate date when she was healed from the grave illness that prompted her mystical experiences. It is characteristic of Julian’s humble soul, inquiring mind, and well-grounded spirituality that she only tentatively ascribed her remarkable recovery to miraculous intervention: “suddenly all my pain was away from me, and I was all whole.... I marveled of this change, for methought it was a mysterious working of God, and nought of nature.”

All the quotations in this article are my highly conservative translations of Julian’s Middle English text. My intent is to make her words comprehensible while retaining her style and word choice to the extent possible. To give you an idea of how readable—or unreadable, depending on your perspective—the original is, a Middle English version of the passage given above reads thus: “sodeynlye alle my paine was awaye fro me and I was alle hole.... I merveylede of this change, for methought it was a prive wyrkinge of God, and nought of kinde.” I draw attention to this linguistic dimension of Julian’s works because much of her unique value and appeal as a spiritual writer is interwoven with her use of language.

A statue of Julian, carved by local sculptor David Holgate (d. 2014), at Norwich Cathedral, East Anglia, England.

Julian’s English

Julian wrote in English at a time when the language still gave voice to the vigorous, elemental culture of the Anglo-Saxon lands. It was also a time when, in the West, most spiritual and theological works were written in Latin. Julian’s prose lacks the elegance, sophistication, and precision of Latin. It seems rather to have grown with the heather and ash groves from rich East Anglian soil: when reading it one senses the simple, endearing, forceful language of the hearth, the meadows, and the northern seas. And because she wrote in the vernacular, English speakers still have fairly direct access to her rich and fascinating interior life, which the old Catholic Encyclopedia described as “the most perfect fruit of later medieval mysticism in England.”

Whether we work through an annotated edition of Julian’s Middle English text or read a translation into modern English, we see with special clarity into a devout and brilliant medieval mind. Most of us simply cannot draw this close to the essence of the writer’s spiritual experience when we are reading something that has been translated from Latin.

“After this, Christ showed me a part of his passion near his dying. I saw that sweet face as it were dry and bloodless with pale dying; then more deathly pale, languishing; and then turned more deathly to the blue” (from Julian’s shorter account of her visions, Section 10).

Julian’s Works

Julian wrote two books about her visions, commonly called the Short Text and the Long Text. This terminology is misleading insofar as it implies that these are different “editions” of the same book, whereas they are better understood as two separate works. A more proper title for the Short Text, taken from the first sentence of the original manuscript, is A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman. The Long Text is sometimes entitled Revelations of Divine Love. Both are excellent, but part of my motivation in writing this article is to recommend the Short Text, which tends to be overshadowed by the Long Text.

“I said to me: ‘Look up to heaven to his father.’ Then saw I well, with the faith that I felt, that there was nothing between the cross and heaven that might have troubled me.... Thus chose I Jesu for my heaven.... I desired no other heaven than Jesu” (Short Text, Section 10–11).

The relationship between the Short Text and the Long Text is comparable to the relationship between a Shakespeare play in its original form and a Victorian novel based on a Shakespeare play. The Short Text is concise, vivid, deeply personal, and formed into a pleasing, orderly structure. The Long Text was written later in Julian’s life as an ambitious, exploratory expansion of the Short Text; it abounds in theological and allegorical richness but also in complexities and digressions that can become tiresome, especially for readers accustomed to modern English rather than medieval English.

“Then said our lord, asking: ‘Art thou well pleased that I suffered for thee?’ ‘Yea, good lord,’ quoth I, ‘I thank thee, good lord, blessed may thou be.’ ‘If thou be pleased,’ quoth our lord, ‘I am pleased. It is a joy and a bliss and an endless pleasure to me that ever I suffered passion for thee. For if I might suffer more, I would suffer.’ ... [Christ] is fully blissful in all the deeds that he has done concerning our salvation.... We are his bliss, we are his reward, we are his honor, we are his crown” (Short Text, Section 12).

Choosing a Modern Edition

Nowadays, Julian’s books seem to generate more enthusiasm among academics than among Christians seeking spiritual nourishment. The academic interest is understandable: Julian is reputed to be the first female English-language author, and at times her thoughts are speculative or unconventional in a way that appeals to the ethos of modern scholarship. This doesn’t mean that she dabbled in heterodoxy. In the Short Text Julian clearly states that “in all things I believe as holy church teaches. For in all this blessed showing [i.e., vision] of our lord ... I understood never nothing therein that bewilders me nor keeps me from the true teaching of holy church.”

All this attention from the scholarly community has ensured that Julian’s works are readily available to the general public. For this we should be grateful. The list below is a brief guide to some of the recently published editions, which are subject to some textual confusion: the titles currently in use do not clearly distinguish between the Short Text and the Long Text, and the two most important manuscripts in which the Long Text survives, called the “Sloane 1” and “Paris” manuscripts, have significant differences.

The Showings of Julian of Norwich (Norton critical edition, edited by Denise Baker): This is an annotated, Middle English version of the Long Text. It is relatively affordable and includes a helpful introduction and glossary.

The Shewings of Julian of Norwich (Medieval Institute Publications, edited by Georgia Crampton): This is a free, online, annotated version of the Long Text in Middle English. It is based on Sloane 1, whereas Norton preferred the more modernized language of the Paris manuscript.

Revelations of Divine Love and The Motherhood of God (translated by Frances Beer): This book includes a modern English version of the Short Text.

The Writings of Julian of Norwich (edited by Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins): This is an extensively annotated volume intended more for researchers. It has Middle English versions of the Short Text and the Long Text.

Revelations of Divine Love (Oxford World’s Classics, translated by Barry Windeatt): This includes modern English versions of the Short Text and the Long Text.

“He looked down on the right side, and brought to my mind where our lady stood in the time of his passion, and said: ‘Will thou see her?’ And I answered and said: ‘Yea good lord, I thank thee, if it be thy will.’ ... He showed her then high and noble and glorious and pleasant to him above all creatures.... And in that word that Jesu said—‘Will thou see her?’—methought I had the most pleasure that he could have given me” (Short Text, Section 13).

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For thrice-weekly discussions of art, history, language, literature, Christian spirituality, and traditional Western liturgy, all seen through the lens of medieval culture, you can subscribe (for free!) to my Substack publication: Via Mediaevalis.

The Mystery of Incomprehensible Love: A Remarkable New Book from Angelico

The Mystery of Incomprehensible Love. The Eucharistic Message of Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament. Foreword by Dom Mark Kirby, OSB. Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2020. 184 pp. 978-1-62138-521-9 (paper), $16.95; 978-1-62138-522-6 (cloth), $25. Available from Amazon and its affiliates.

CATHERINE DE BAR (1614–1698), later taking in religion the name Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament, was one of the great teachers of the interior life in 17th-century France, in regular contact with all of the prominent figures of that very rich age of saints and mystics. She began in the order of the Annunciades but, due to the upheavals of the time, ended up staying for a long period at a Benedictine monastery, eventually becoming a Benedictine nun. In 1653, with the support of Queen Anne of Austria, she founded the Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration, an order represented today by houses in France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Mexico, Poland, Germany, Uganda, Italy, and Haiti. The first house of Benedictine Monks of Perpetual Adoration, Silverstream Priory, is located in Ireland.

Angelico Press has done yet another great service by bringing out the first book in English by and about Mother Mectilde, who is better known in the French and Italian spheres, where many publications have been dedicated to her eventful life and copious writings. The book consists of several parts. From Mother Mectilde herself we have excerpts taken from her many writings—conferences, chapter talks, letters, treatises—where she speaks about the greatest mystery of love entrusted to the Church. From other authors, we have a Foreword by Dom Mark Kirby, OSB (pp. 1–6); a probing commentary on one of Mectilde’s most famous pieces, “The Solemnity of Thursday” (pp. 11–14); a detailed biography by Canon G.A. Simon (pp. 113–51); and an essay by Dom Jean Leclercq, OSB, on Mectilde’s place in the history of Benedictine spirituality (pp. 153–70). All in all, I find it a splendid introduction to a spiritual giant who deserves to be better known: as Dom Mark writes, “Catherine Mectilde de Bar is, I believe, a woman of the stature of a Gertrude the Great, a Teresa of Avila, and a Marie of the Incarnation” (3).

I had the good fortune of being able to read this manuscript carefully and found myself continually astonished by the author’s insights into the Holy Eucharist, her writing style’s unusual combination of lyricism and bluntness, and the spirit of refined courtesy and audacious zeal that shines forth from the pages. It is a book to spark wonder, feed prayer, and enliven adoration. I cannot recommend it too highly. (The blurbs from Fr. Jacques Philippe, Fr. John Saward, Msgr. Arthur B. Calkins, Mother Immaculata Franken, Sr. Julia Mary Darrenkamp, and Anthony Lilles speak for themselves.)

My article on May 8, “Contempt for Communion and the Mechanization of Mass,” closed with a quotation drawn from this new book:

Can there be anything greater? Has Our Lord not extended His love even to excess? Ah! If we had the faith to believe it, and if we would think about how we receive a God of infinite majesty as He truly is, would we not be overwhelmed with reverence?

I cannot help being struck by how relevant her words are to the current situation. As Dom Mark points out, she “lived in a time marked by superstition, sorcery, dalliance with the powers of darkness, blasphemy, and sacrilege. Distressing events in churches on every continent have demonstrated that global society today has more in common with war-torn 17th-century France than one might think” (5). The Huguenots of her day threw hosts to the floor and trampled on them. Today, more horribly because they should know better, there are Catholic clergy who, by means of communion in the hand, let the particles of the Eucharist be scattered hither and yon, to be trampled under foot, or who have arrived at the limit of impious techniques for “delivering sacramental goods.”

Here are several more passages that continue the same theme:

A God — greatness, power, richness itself — reduces Himself to nothing for us in the Host, and we think no more of it than one would of something commonplace and ordinary. O stupidity! Oh, the ingratitude of men! One does not think of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and, yet, is this not, of all mysteries, the most divine, of all marvels the most prodigious, the most inconceivable? What has anyone said of this divine mystery up until the present that in any way approaches the reality of it? (55)

All must remain in the silence of admiration. A God makes Himself our food! O astonishing prodigy! What are all the miracles worked by Jesus Christ during the course of His earthly life in comparison to this one? What a spectacle! What bounty! What charity! A God who gives Himself to us! O love! He who with three fingers sustains the universe is held by the priest. He who commands all of nature obeys a being who is nothing. He who is all-powerful makes Himself so dependent that He is in the power of His creatures; they carry Him, they bring Him wherever they choose. This is too much. Your charity, my Saviour, goes even to excess! O incomprehensible miracle! Mystery forever inconceivable! No, the thought of man would not know how to attain it. (53)

We must be very surprised to see with what boldness people enter churches and we ourselves enter choir, which is a place sanctified by the Real Presence of God. Oh! If we could see the posture of the angels and the saints before the adorable Eucharist, we would not be so bold as to enter without fear, without respect, and without amazement. It is here that we lack faith. (126)

The Mass is an ineffable mystery in which the eternal Father receives infinite homage: in it He is adored, loved, and praised as much as He deserves; and that is why we are advised to receive Communion frequently, in order to render to God, through Jesus, all the duties we owe Him. This is impossible without Jesus Christ who comes into us in order to accomplish [in us] the same sacrifice as that of the Holy Mass. (31)

There is so much treasure in these pages — I could quote and quote until your eyes wearied of scrolling. There’s a better solution: get the book and read it. Mother Mectilde’s teaching shone brightly in the gloom of her age and it continues to shine in ours, radiating fervor, joy, devotion, inspiring a charity that runs happily to excess.

Link to the publisher page.

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s website, SoundCloud page, and YouTube channel.

A Mystic Who Shed Tears During Mass: Revising Our Image of St. Thomas Aquinas

On March 7th, we observe the dies natalis of St. Thomas Aquinas, the day on which he passed from this mortal life to immortal glory, and, for that reason, the traditional date of his liturgical feast. In a biographical sketch, Fr. Simon Tugwell notes the following:

Thomas’ deep devotion to the Mass emerges clearly from all our sources. Sometimes he evidently became deeply absorbed in it and was profoundly moved by it. Toward the end of his life he sometimes became so absorbed that he just stopped and had to be roused by the brethren to continue with the celebration. [1]

The contemporaries of this often silent Dominican friar testified far more often about his tears at Mass, his vigilant prayer and virginal purity, than of his disputations and publications. As one of his early biographers, William of Tocco, writes:

He was especially devoted to the most holy Sacrament of the Altar; since it had been granted him to write so profoundly of this, he was likewise given grace to celebrate it all the more devoutly. . . . During Mass he often would be seized by such strong feelings of devotion that he dissolved in tears, because he was absorbed in the holy mysteries of the great sacrament and invigorated by its offerings. [2] 

The narrative related by Tugwell gains all the more plausibility when we consider the well-documented lives of more recent saints — Philip Neri, Ignatius of Loyola, Padre Pio — for whom the action of offering the Mass was such an overwhelming experience that a server or assistant had to nudge them back on track, otherwise the Mass would never end.

Throughout his life, which ended before he was 50 years of age, St. Thomas was given to taste by experience the mysteries of God, of Christ and the Church, that he pondered and wrote about with such astonishing energy and penetration. Contrary to the popular picture of Aquinas as an abstract professor, the actual hagiographical accounts left by people who knew him or could report stories from those who knew him tell us about a man who always made time to help others with their questions, who always put himself at the disposal of the Church and of his own Order of Preachers, who dealt swiftly and capably with family difficulties. Even his university teaching constantly involved an extasis caritatis, a going out of himself in charity, as he unstintingly handed over to others the fruits of his own contemplation, and as he composed apologetic and pedagogical works with a vigorous competence seldom seen in the human race. We know for a fact that he would compose multiple works at once, dictating to several secretaries in sequence. His was a soul on fire, never resting so long as the Word was to be pondered, preached, taught.

St. Thomas is temperamentally scientific but his doctrine and life are purely mystical. [3] It is fitting to recall a curious “contradiction” that has drawn the attention of all of his biographers. There is perhaps no theologian as famed for sobriety and dispassionate reasoning as Thomas, whom one finds throughout his life, at Paris, Orvieto, Rome, or Naples, busy lecturing, disputing, preaching, dictating. At the height of his work on the Summa theologiae, in the midst of a swirl of events in the Church and in the world, he is calmly commenting line by line on the Philosopher’s De generatione et corruptione, a treatise on different kinds of natural change, primarily changes in substance. Yet in response to the anxious questioning of Countess Theodora near the end of her brother’s life, his socius Reginald could only say: “The Master is often borne away in spirit when absorbed in contemplation, but never have I seen him estranged from his senses for as long as today.” [4]

In spite of how busy he must have been to have written such mighty works in so short a time, we find him described as miro modo contemplativus, “wondrously contemplative.” Nor did this make him an ivory-tower intellectual, cut off from his neighbors, for he readily helped hierarchs of the Church, brother Dominicans, blood-relatives and other laypeople, and vigorously engaged the pressing issues of his day. [5] The “Dumb Ox” took an interest in the biology of animals, because they are God’s gifts to mankind, to aid his life and enrich his wonder; the Angelic Doctor mounted upwards like the Seraphim, who are “named from the burning of charity” (nominata ab incendio caritatis)  —  such gifts only intensifying his desire for their Giver. [6] In the character of Thomas, the world-embracing wonder of Aristotle and the mystical eros of Dionysius are not opposed, they are contained in each other.

Pondering these well-known facts of the life and work of the Angelic Doctor, Etienne Gilson rightly concludes:

If we want to recapture the true meaning of Thomism we have to go beyond the tightly-woven fabric of its philosophical doctrines into its soul or spirit. What lies back of the ideas is a deep religious life, the interior warmth of a soul in search of God. ... The burning desire of God which in a John of the Cross overflows into lyric poems is here transcribed into the language of pure ideas. Their impersonal formulation must not make us forget that they are nourished on the desire for God and that their end is the satisfaction of this desire. … Only a complete giving of himself can explain his mastery of expression and organization of philosophic ideas. Thus his Summa Theologiae with its abstract clarity, its impersonal transparency, crystallizes before our very eyes and for all eternity his interior life. … Only that will to understand [reality], shared between ourselves and St. Thomas the philosopher, will serve to make us see that this tremendous work is but the outward glow of an invisible fire, and that there is to be found behind the order of its ideas that powerful impulse which gathered them together. [7]

It is as if Gilson would say that there is no “secret life” of Thomas beneath the writings, no esoteric mysticism cordoned off from the public products of reasoning. His total dedication to the truth of creation and of revelation, in which he submerged his ego into nothingness and aspired to maximal lucidity and cogency, shows a soul ravaged out of itself into God.

Thomas’s submission, at the end of his life, of all of his teachings on the sacraments to the authority of the Roman Church is the act of a teacher par excellence: in humble deference to the heavenly Teacher, he places himself at the disposal of a Truth that is neither his handiwork nor his possession. He is and always was its servant, never its master. Thus he provides to worshipers, choirmasters, liturgists, rubricians, masters of ceremonies, clergy — indeed, to all of us — a perfect model of disponibilité: the capacity to give of oneself for the sake of others, and ultimately, for the sake of Him who gave Himself for us. “Christ died for all: that they also who live may not now live to themselves, but unto him who died for them and rose again” (2 Cor 5:15).

A recent icon of St Thomas Aquinas
(from the Byzantine chapel in Gaming, Austria)

NOTES

[1] Simon Tugwell, Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1988), 264.

[2] See Thomae Aquinatis vitae fontes praecipue, ed. Angelico Ferrua, O.P. (Alba: Edizioni Domenicane, 1968), n. 30, p. 73.

[3] It is necessary to recover an authentic and profound understanding of “mysticism” and “mystical theology,” in view of their distortion by conventional “spiritual theology” and, more recently, their dismantling by arrogant reductionisms (psychoanalysis, cultural history, feminism, etc.). For two brilliant contributions towards this recovery, see Louis Bouyer’s The Christian Mystery: From Pagan Myth to Christian Mysticism (1989) and Denys Turner’s The Darkness of God: Negativity in the Christian Tradition (1998).

[4] “Frequenter Magister in spiritu rapitur, cum aliqua contemplatur, sed nunquam tanto tempore sicut nunc uidi ipsum sic a sensibus alienatum” (Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino de Guillaume de Tocco §47, quoted in Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal [CUA Press, 1996], 289). The legendary abstractio mentis of Thomas is not the mark of an absent-minded academic; it is the mark of one whom his contemporaries referred to as homo magnae contemplationis et orationis (Processus canonizationis S. Thomae, Neapoli §40, in Fontes fasc. 4, p. 317, quoted in Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 284, n. 81; see 283–95).

[5] See Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 141; Pieper’s biography is also good on this point, and Gilby (Blackfriars Summa, vol. I, Appendix 4, p. 54, opening paragraph). In “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Profession of Arms” (Mediaeval Studies 50 [1988]: 404–47), Edward Synan discusses Thomas’s views on social and military issues of his day.

[6] On the material creation as a gift of divine amor amicitiae, see ST I.20.2 ad 3; the phrase regarding the Seraphim is from Sent. II.6.1.5, notitiae.

[7] Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Thomas (1924), trans. Laurence K. Shook, CSB (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 375–76.

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s website for selected articles, sacred music, and books from Os Justi Press, his SoundCloud page for lectures and interviews, and YouTube for additional talks and sacred music.

How the Seven Sacraments “Christianize” Us

Rogier van der Weyden's Seven Sacraments Altarpiece (c. 1450)

In this month of July, dedicated to the mystery of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, I wish to reflect on sacramental realism. For indeed the sacraments are as real, as tangible, as powerful, as cleansing, as the very lifeblood of the Savior pouring forth from His body, nailed to the Cross and opened with a lance.

For Aquinas the most basic function of the sacraments is to place man in vital contact with the crucified and risen Lord [1]; they are, in the words of Romanus Cessario, “graced instruments for restoring the image of God” [2] through assimilation to God’s Son, who is the Father’s perfect image and man’s formative exemplar. By virtue of the God-man’s sacrifice, each sacrament has power to originate, deepen, or repair a direct relationship between man and God, a communion of like-minded friends having a shared beatitude for its goal.

Each sacrament configures one to Christ in a specific way, according to a certain grace in the soul of Christ, connected with His deeds and sufferings on earth. This reference to the past may be seen in the sacraments as follows:

• The Eucharist brings us into contact with Christ in the state of bloody immolation, though the mode is unbloody. [3]
• Baptism unites us with Christ dying and rising.
• Confirmation unites us with Christ as descended upon by the Holy Spirit.
• Holy Orders fuses the candidate with Christ offering sacrifice.
• Matrimony conjoins spouses to Christ in the act of uniting to himself mankind and the Church.
• When the sick are anointed, it is Christ strengthening those who are struggling, he is the angel who visits them in their Gethsemane.
• The penitent sinner is made one with Christ efficaciously making satisfaction for us — the sinner is nailed to an invisible Cross where the Savior meets him, and breathes out peace upon him. [4]

In every case, it is Christ Himself, in His sacred humanity, in His eternal divinity, who acts directly upon the recipient; it is He who bestows the healing and elevating effects of grace through the sacramental signs administered by others. “The man who baptizes provides only exterior ministry,” writes Thomas, “but it is Christ who baptizes interiorly, who is able to use all men for whatever He wills” (ST III, q. 67, a. 5, ad 1). In another text the point is made quite forcefully:

It is evident that Christ Himself accomplishes all the Church’s sacraments: He it is who baptizes; He it is who forgives sins; He is the true priest, who offered Himself on the altar of the Cross, and by whose power His own Body is consecrated daily on the altar. And yet, because he was not to remain bodily present to all the faithful, He chose ministers, that through them He might give that same Body to the faithful. (SCG IV, ch. 76)

Thus, in and through the seven sacraments, Christians re-live mystically the life Christ lived when He dwelt among us full of grace and truth, and the risen life He is now living forever: we enter into His earthly ministry, His passion and death, His resurrection and ascension.

The sacraments derive their efficacy from the Word-made-flesh; each has its power and operation immediately from Jesus Christ, whose glorified humanity is the inseparable instrument, the predestined channel, through which the divine Word pours out grace into souls. When a human being, properly disposed, receives one of the seven sacraments, he is at that moment in mystical contact with the Person of the Savior, who pours out as much grace as the soul is ready to receive.

This mystical contact attains an incomparable fullness and immediacy in the Eucharist, which both symbolizes and accomplishes the intimate communion of the Savior with the members of his body. Here the sacramental encounter is no mere contact, but the context for an unreserved, mutual gift of self that can attain a unity and fecundity only distantly hinted at in human marriage.

Thomas’s uncompromising sacramental realism is in many ways astonishing. Without denying that they are social, symbolic celebrations for calling to mind important truths, Aquinas holds the sacraments to be, first and foremost, a real participation in Christ’s own actions, sufferings, and glory, for the sake of receiving into one’s being the effect of those actions, the fruit of those sufferings, the vision of that glory. As Gilles Emery phrases it: “They bear the historical event of the Passion of Jesus, whence they procure the fruit of grace in the present moment, while announcing the fulfillment whose seed they possess.” [5] For example, when asking whether a man is freed from all guilt through baptism, Aquinas responds:

Through baptism one is incorporated into Christ’s passion and death, according to Romans 6:8, “If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live together with Christ.” From which it is clear that Christ’s passion is communicated to every baptized person as a remedy, as though he himself had suffered and had died. Now Christ’s passion . . . is sufficient satisfaction for all the sins of all men. And so the one who is baptized is freed from the debt of all the punishment due to him for sins, as though he himself had sufficiently satisfied for his own sins. (ST III, q. 69, a. 2, emphasis added)

In baptism the death and resurrection of Christ becomes ours; it becomes our paschal mystery, the origin of a new life with Him. The effect is the same as if we, become unblemished victims, had hung on the Cross; as if we had suffered and died, though guiltless of all crime; as if we had risen again, forever beyond the reach of death and decay.

So much is this the case, believes Thomas, that it even dissolves the obligation of rendering the marriage debt in a certain case:

Now he who goes over to the religious life dies only a spiritual death, not a bodily death; and so, if the marriage be consummated, the husband cannot go over to religious life without his wife’s consent (whereas he can do so prior to there being a carnal joining, when there is only a spiritual joining).  But the one who undergoes baptism is even corporeally buried with Christ in death; and therefore he is freed from paying the marriage debt even after the marriage has been consummated. (In IV Sent. d. 39, q. 1, a. 4, ad 2)

This “as if” is not the als ob of Kantian philosophy — we must behave as if there is a God; we must view nature as if there is teleology; we must approach the beautiful as if beauty is an objective trait.  It is the mystical “as if” that means: we have really done and suffered these things because we have been joined, even identified, with the One who really did and suffered them. Being true man, Christ could act and undergo as a creature acts and undergoes; being true God, he can, in the power of the Spirit, make his accomplishments ours.  The phrase “as if” merely preserves the reverent distance of participant to source.

This “incorporation,” begun at baptism, is perfected by a man’s being united in the power of the Spirit to the Body of Christ — engrafted into His Mystical Body by way of His glorified Body shared in the Eucharist — that we may no longer live for ourselves, but for Him. The Eucharist is “the consummation of spiritual life, and the end of all the sacraments” (ST III, q. 73, a. 3), containing substantially the common spiritual good of the whole Church. It is “the sacrament of Christ’s passion in so far as a man is perfected in union with the Christ-who-suffered” (ST III, q. 73, a. 3, ad 3). [6]

The sacraments in fact simply Christianize us. Contrary to the heresy of Karl Rahner, no soul is “naturally” or “anonymously” Christian, as if one could be a Christian and not even know it. We need to receive, in faith, the gift of Christ’s life, His grace, His charity. The sacraments find us more or less pagan, more or less self-centered, and they evangelize and convert us to be centered on Christ, to have our center in Him. This means that a sacramental life, so far as the recipient’s experience is concerned, will not consist of satisfying (one might say, flattering) encounters between a well-defined self or subject and a securely-apprehended object. [7] Rather, it will be a mirror, at times bright, at times blurry, in which I am able to glimpse the Face of the One who seeks me out in love, and the unfolding of my life in relation to Him, in union with Him. “Sacraments are proportionate to faith, through which the truth is seen in a mirror and in an enigma” (ST III, q. 80, a. 2, ad 2).

When we come before the Lord at the end of our lives, may He recognize in us the beauty of His own features.

Johannes Hopffe, Distribution of Divine Graces by Means of the Catholic Church and the Sacraments (before 1615)

NOTES

[1] See Joseph J. Sikora, S.J., “Sacraments and Encounter,” in Theological Reflections of a Christian Philosopher (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), 213–33.

[2] From his essay “Aquinas on Christian Salvation,” in Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction, ed. T. Weinandy, D. Keating, and J. Yocum (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 129. See also the same author’s “The Sacramental Mediation of Divine Friendship and Communion,” Faith & Reason 27 (2002): 7–41.

[3] The Eucharist occupies so unique a place and enjoys such a primacy among the seven sacraments of the New Law that even the very term “sacrament” has to be regarded as analogous, with the Eucharist being the very locus of divinization and communion with the Savior, and the other sacraments streaming out from it and leading back to it.

[4] The phrases in quotation marks are taken from André-Charles Gigon, O.P., De Sacramentis in communi (Fribourg: Typographia Canisiana, 1945).

[5] Gilles Emery, O.P., “The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist,” Nova et Vetera [English] 2 (2004): 43–60.

[6] For more on the Eucharist as containing Christus passus, see my article last week: “‘The Application of the Lord’s Passion to Us’: St Thomas on the Blessed Sacrament.”

[7] The experience, as such, may be empty and dry, or overfull and beyond words — like bodily intimacy, like evanescent recollection. But this is not the crux of the matter. The desire to equate faith or love with a subjective “experience” of God, and the consequent tendency to spurn a God who eludes experience, is one of the chief temptations a Christian has to overcome if he is to get beyond “self-cultivationism” into the maturity of spiritual marriage.

Visit www.peterkwasniewski.com for events, articles, sacred music, and classics reprinted by Os Justi Press (e.g., Benson, Scheeben, Parsch, Guardini, Chaignon, Leen).

“Manifold and Marvellous Workings of Grace”: Anne Catherine Emmerich on the Blessed Sacrament

As I mentioned on Monday, Angelico Press has released a new series of volumes on Anne Catherine Emmerich (12 volumes, to be precise, available in paper and cloth) that contain by far the most complete and accurate translation into contemporary English of her visions. The volumes are conveniently divided into themes, so that, for example, one who wishes to read everything the mystic has to say about the Blessed Virgin Mary may find it all in volume 8.

And here, if I may, I should like to insert a note to readers. I was frankly astonished to see in the readers' comments the level of negativity that was directed toward Anne Catherine Emmerich in particular, and toward mystical visions in general. It is perfectly obvious, on the one hand, that some people can get carried away with such things and thereby fail to hold fast to the fundamentals of the Faith (as some other rare specimens might get carried away with liturgical finery or exquisite dogmatic distinctions); but it is also no less obvious that some have developed a disdainful attitude towards the rich Catholic history of mysticism, reminiscent in fact of the skeptical mindset of so-called "scientific reason" and the contempt for subjective devotion found in the first wave of the Liturgical Movement, by which it eventually vomited forth the rationalistic, linear-modular, didactic, symbol-bereft, unimaginative, and utterly unmystical modern liturgy, under the ill effects of which all Latin-rite Catholics are, to one degree or another, suffering.

Personally, I am not wedded to mystical visions as if they were Gospel truth or as if one "had to read" them in order to be saved, or any such nonsense. I simply find them (at their best) refreshing, intriguing, thought-provoking, insight-begetting. They help me to make connections that I hadn't made before; they lead me back to the sources of the Faith with renewed appreciation. Can one not approach such writings with theological open-mindedness, and with an innocent enjoyment of religious literature? Must we reject the use because of the abuse? Shall we dismiss a surprisingly large part of the medieval Catholic heritage because it disturbs our tidy conception of a catechetical, rubrical, juridical, and scholastic universe? One thinks naturally of the glorious visions of St. Gertrude the Great, one of the greatest saints of the Benedictine order. I am sure that Our Lord would not have honored her by placing seven rings on her hand — a golden circlet on each finger, and on the signet finger, three — if He had thought she did not deserve it; and it would seem that her larger monastic family willingly concurs with the Lord by honoring this saint with three sets of special antiphons for Vespers I, Lauds, and Vespers II, something unique, as far as I know, in the entire Antiphonale Monasticum.

Today I would like to share some striking passages from volume 11, Spiritual Works and Journeys: The Nuptial House, Vineyard, Sufferings for Others, the Church,  and the Neighbor, in which Anne Catherine speaks about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Most Blessed Sacrament. As will become evident, she was at once powerfully drawn into these mysteries with burning desire, as well as painfully aware of the irreverence, lukewarmness, and routine neglect that surrounded these great gifts of God in her own day. The parallels to our times will not be hard to see.

It is also beautiful to note, throughout these volumes, how much Anne Catherine's visions were linked to the liturgical calendar and the sanctoral cycle in particular. She seemed to have internalized the calendar to such an extent that its themes and rhythm became the guiding lines of her interior world. She intensely lived the very mysteries re-presented in the sacred liturgy, not only the mysteries of Our Lord, but also those of all of His saints, who are present to us in a special way on their feasts.

I once had a beautiful revelation on this point, in which I learned that seeing with the eyes is no sight, that there is another — an interior sight — that is clear and penetrating. But when deprived of daily communion a cloud obscures my clear inward sight. I pray less fervently, with less devotion. I forget important things, signs, and warnings, and I see the destructive influence of exterior things that are essentially false. I feel a devouring hunger for the blessed Sacrament, and when I look toward the Church I feel as if my heart were about to escape from my breast and fly to my Redeemer. (p. 9)

In the vineyard were many beautiful houses, all in the very best order inside, although on the outside the weeds grew up to the doors and almost as high as the windows. I saw in them ecclesiastics — dignitaries of the Church — reading and studying all sorts of useless books. But no one took the least care of the vineyard. In the middle of the latter stood a church with several farmhouses around it, but there was no way to get to it — all was covered with rank weeds, even the church was as it were tapestried with green. The blessed Sacrament was in the church, but no lamp hung before it. The bishop appeared to be away. Inside the church — even there — was no clear passage. All was overgrown with weeds. It made me sad. I was told to set to work, and I found a two-edged bone knife like a reaping-hook with which to prune the vine, a hoe, and a basket for manure. The work to be done was all explained to me. It was hard at first but afterward became easier. (pp. 30–31)

On the feasts of the holy peasant Isidore many things were shown me on the importance of celebrating and hearing Mass, and I saw how great a blessing it is that so many are said though even by ignorant and unworthy priests, as it averts all sorts of dangers, chastisements, and calamities from humankind. It is well that many priests do not realize what they do, for if they did they would be so terrified as not to be able to celebrate the holy sacrifice. I saw the marvelous blessings attached to hearing Mass. It facilitates labor, promotes good, and prevents loss. One member of a family returning from Mass carries home a blessing to the whole house and for the whole day. I saw how much greater is the advantage attached to hearing a Mass than to having one said without assisting at it. I saw all defects in the celebration of Mass supernaturally supplied. (pp. 95–96)

Her desire for the blessed Sacrament becomes more violent. She languishes, laments the privation of her daily bread, and cries out in ecstasy: “Why dost Thou leave me thus to languish for Thee? Without Thee I must die! Thou alone canst help me! If I must live, give me life!” — When she awoke, she exclaimed: “My Lord has told me that I now must see what I am without him. Things are changed—I must become his nourishment, my flesh must be consumed in ardent desires.” (p. 96)

On the feast of Pentecost (May 21st) the pilgrim, who had witnessed Anne Catherine’s anguish and tears on the preceding evening, found her this morning radiant as a spouse of Christ, breathing but joy and holiness: I have been in the cenacle with the apostles, and I have been fed in a way that I cannot express. Nourishment under the form of a wave of light flowed into my mouth. It was exceedingly sweet but I know not whence it came. (p. 96)

I felt as if I were wandering among the starry heavens. These vessels of God are of every variety of form and appearance, but all are filled with Jesus Christ. The same law governs all, the same substance pervades all though under a different form, and a straight line leads through each into the light of the Father through the cross of the Son. I saw a long line of royal females extending from the Mother of God, virgins with crowns and scepters, though not earthly queens, souls who had preceded or followed Mary in the order of time. They seemed to serve her as the twenty-four ancients serve the Most Holy Trinity. They were celebrating the feast by a marvelously solemn movement severally and all together. I can compare it only to beautiful music. The angels and saints advanced in one or many processions to the throne of the Most Holy Trinity like the stars in the sky revolving around the sun. And then I saw down on the earth innumerable processions corresponding to the celestial ones, also celebrating the feast — but how miserable! how dark! how full of breaks! To look upon it from above was like looking down into the mire — still there was much good here and there. (p. 102)

Again I felt those pains like fine rays falling upon me, piercing me in all directions like threads of silver. Besides, I had to carry, to drag so many people along that I am all bruised; so that not a bone in my body is not, as it were, dislocated. When I awoke, the middle fingers of both hands were stiff, bent, and paralyzed, and my wounds have pained intensely all night long. I saw in numerous pictures the coldness and irreverence shown the blessed Sacrament, by which I understood the guilt of those who receive it unworthily, negligently, and by routine; and I saw many going to confess in very bad dispositions. (p. 104)

I beheld the manifold and marvellous workings of grace by means of the blessed Sacrament as a light shining over all its adorers. Yes, even they who think not of it receive a blessing in its presence. (p. 104)

I beheld pictures referring to the defects in divine worship and how they are supernaturally repaired. It is hard for me to say how I saw it, how the different scenes blended and harmonized, one explaining another. One thing was especially remarkable — that the failings and omissions in divine worship on earth only increase the indebtedness of the guilty. God receives the honor due Him from a higher order. Among other things I saw that when priests have distractions during the sacred ceremonies, Mass, for instance, they are in reality wherever their thoughts are — and during the interval a saint takes their place at the altar. These visions show frightfully the guilt of carelessly celebrating the holy mysteries. Sometimes I see a priest leaving the sacristy vested for Mass; but he goes not to the altar. He leaves the church and goes to a tavern, a garden, a hunt, a maiden, a book, to some rendezvous, and I see him now here, now there, according to the bent of his thoughts, as if he were really and personally in those places. It is a most pitiful and shameful sight! But it is singularly affecting to behold at this time a holy priest going through the ceremonies of the altar in his stead. I often see the priest returning for a moment during the sacrifice and then suddenly running off again to some forbidden place. Such interruptions frequently last a long time. When the priest amends, I see it in his piety and recollectedness at the altar, etc. In many parish churches I saw the dust and dirt that had long defiled the sacred vessels cleared away, and all things put in order. (pp. 111–12)

I saw in all places priests surrounded by the graces of the Church, the treasure of Jesus Christ’s merits as well as those of the saints; but they were tepid, they were dead. They taught, they preached, and offered the holy sacrifice most slothfully. … Mass badly celebrated is an enormous evil. Ah! it is not a matter of indifference how it is said! I have had a great vision on the mystery of holy Mass and I have seen that whatever good has existed since Creation is owing to it. (pp. 116–17)

To purchase this volume, go to its page at Angelico Press.

New Light on the Visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) is without a doubt one of the most fascinating and complex mystics in a Catholic Church that already boasts a very large number of fascinating and complex mystics.

From the time she was a tiny child, Anne Catherine experienced constant, vivid, often disconnected visions of faraway places, times, and individuals. Scrutiny of her descriptions indicates an uncannily detailed and accurate knowledge of countless things that she could never have directly experienced or even heard about, considering where she grew up and subsequently lived, her low level of education, and her limited circle of friends. To take an example, her descriptions of early Christian liturgical practices (such as wearing the Blessed Sacrament in a sort of pyx, receiving It in the hand on a cloth, receiving under both kinds) are striking, matching the scholarship of a later period, and utterly unlike the Church worship she was familiar with in her time.

Unfortunately, Anne Catherine has been ill-served in English. Until quite recently, the available translations represented but a tiny sliver of her marvelous range of visions, edited with pious intentions and rendered in a stiff style. It would be like having only one Book of the Confessions, The Imitation of Christ, or the Showings of Julian of Norwich, each expurgated and translated by Edward Pusey.

I say "until quite recently" because Angelico Press began to fill the void in 2015 with the release of a handsome set of 3 volumes, The Visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich (vol 1, vol 2, vol 3) which include extensive maps and hundreds of illustrations, and significantly improved translations of the texts.

Angelico has just announced the publication of an even more impressive series: New Light on the Visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich, 11 matching volumes of the mystic's visions, plus a biography, all in both paper and cloth. These volumes, containing huge amounts of text never before published in English, represent the fruit of more than a decade of research and translation by James Wetmore. In 2009, the original notes of Anne Catherine’s visions, in 38 notebooks, became available for reference for the first time, and the present series incorporates much new material from them.

With regard to individuals and themes, every reference thus far located in the notes and in prior translations have been woven together so that the reader can easily find in one place almost all of what Anne Catherine had to say on any topic.

The volumes in this new series include:

1. First Beginnings: Creation to the Patriarchs

2. Mysteries of the Old Testament: From Joseph to Malachi

3. People of the New Testament, Book I: St. Joseph, the Magi, St. John the Baptist, Four Apostles

4. People of the New Testament, Book II: Nine Apostles, St. Paul, Lazarus, Secret Disciples

5. People of the New Testament, Book III: Major Disciples and Other Friends of Jesus

6. People of the New Testament, Book IV: Early Friends and Minor Disciples and Persecutors

7. People of the New Testament, Book V: Holy Women, Female Disciples, Relatives

8. The Life of the Virgin Mary (including her Essene ancestry)

9. Scenes from the Lives of the Saints (treating of 59 saints)

10. Inner Life and Worlds of Soul & Spirit: Prayer, Parables, Purgatory, Heavenly Jerusalem, Revelations, Holy Places, Gospels, etc.

11. Spiritual Works and Journeys: The Nuptial House, Vineyard, Sufferings for Others, the Church, and the Neighbor

12. The Life of Anne Catherine Emmerich by Carl Schmöger and Helmut Fahsel, with additional material

Just to give two examples of the riches to be found in these volumes:

First Beginnings commences with the visionary’s account of Creation, the Fall of the Angels, the formation of the Earth and Paradise, and the mysterious Mountain of the Prophets. The second part presents Adam and Eve, the Trees of Life and Knowledge, the Fall of Humankind, the Promise of the Redeemer, Cain and Abel, the Children of God, the Giants, Enoch, Noah, the Tower of Babel, and such ancient figures as Hom, Jamshid, Nimrod, Derketo, Semiramis, and Melchizedek, concluding with Job. The third part offers fascinating new insights into the lives and missions of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Mysteries of the Old Testament commences with an account of Joseph and his wife Asenath in Egypt, with special focus on “The Mystery of the Promise”—perhaps the most unique and powerful theme running through all these volumes. Fresh perspectives are offered on Moses, Samson and Delilah, the Nazirites, Elijah and Elisha, Tobias, Ezra, Zoroaster, the Holy Book of Ctesiphon, and the final prophet, Malachi. The second part is thrilling, passing through several stages of the Ark of the Covenant, which reaches its consummation, in its fourth and final form, in the Virgin Mary herself.

Christopher Ferrara says of this set: “Angelico Press has established a landmark in publishing definitive, revised editions (in many cases supplemented with material never translated before) of the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich, who was beatified by John Paul II in 2004. This multi-volume work will be the authoritative English-language reference for her testimony.”

Kevin Vost reacts: “To call Angelico’s new, definitive editions based upon the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich a stunning, moving, and beautiful epic is an exercise in understatement. Their multi-volume editions detail not only the fascinating story of the stigmatist and visionary of the turn of the 19th century, but the even more enthralling stories of just what those visions contained, depicted both in words and images, supplemented and made complete by previously untranslated material from the original notes of Clemens Brentano, maps, chronologies, genealogies, and everything readers need to immerse themselves in the totally gripping world of the life of Jesus Christ as God revealed it to her, as well as stories from the Old Testament and the lives of the saints, teachings on the spiritual life, heaven, hell, purgatory, and more.”

As time permits, I hope to share with NLM readers extracts from these volumes that pertain to the sacred liturgy. There are many such passages.

I have been edified, dazzled, perplexed, nourished, and moved by what I have read in these new volumes, and can give them my unqualified recommendation.