Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts

Friday, October 11, 2024

Preview: Newman and the Greek Fathers: Mystery

In our discussion on Monday, October 14 of how, according to Father Ian Ker, the Greek Fathers of the Church influenced Saint John Henry Newman on the Son Rise Morning Show, we (Matt Swaim or Anna Mitchell and I) will look at the fifth theme of Mystery. Please tune in at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central DST/7:50 a.m. Eastern DST here or catch the podcast later. 

As a reminder, the first four topics we've discussed are: The Incarnation, The Resurrection and Ascension, the Indwelling of the Spirit/Justification, and the Sacraments. As we've examined them, we've seen the connections among them: the Incarnation makes the Passion, Death, Resurrection, Ascension and Descent of the Holy Spirit possible. The Descent of the Holy Spirit prepares us for the Indwelling of the Spirit, which comes to us through the Sacraments, starting with Baptism, etc.

Perhaps this last of Father Ker's themes connects them all. No matter how the Fathers of the Church sought to understand and put into words what the Catholic Church from Apostolic times believed about the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Descent of the Holy Spirit, the Indwelling of the Spirit, and the Sacraments, they all remain mysteries, beyond our human ability to thoroughly comprehend and explain. The more we try to explain them and make them comprehensible to our limited human reason, we may stumble into at least a stance of material heresy.

Newman certainly saw that danger in the doctrinal crises the Fathers of the Church faced in the early Church Councils, called to deal with divisive heresies about the Person of Our Incarnate Lord. But as Father Ker notes, he saw those dangers in his own time, among both Evangelicals and High-and-Dry Anglicans, the latter characterized by High theology and Low liturgy. Yes, Newman valued Reason and wanted to develop intellectual excellence (the "Imperial Intellect"), but he recognized its limitations when it comes to God's mysteries.

This is another insight we can trace to Newman's study of Saint Athanasius: "mystery is the necessary note of divine revelation" Newman states in his Selected Treatises of Saint Athanasius, Volume 2, "that is, mystery subjectively to the human mind . . ." continuing with these words of the saint: 
"Such illustrations and such images," says Athanasius, "has Scripture proposed, that, considering the inability of human nature to comprehend God, we might be able to form ideas even from these, however poorly and dimly, as far as is attainable." Orat. ii. 32, [amudros], vid. also [amudra]; ii. 17. (p. 92, under the heading "Economical Language")

If you go to the alphabetical listing of Newman's sermons, Anglican and Catholic, at the newmanreader.org website, you'll see several sermons with word "mystery" or "mysteries" in their title:

PPS1-16 The Christian Mysteries
PPS2-18 Mysteries in Religion
DMC-13 Mysteries of Nature and of Grace
PPS4-19 The Mysteriousness of Our Present Being
DMC-14 The Mystery of Divine Condescension
PPS5-7 The Mystery of Godliness
PPS6-24 The Mystery of the Holy Trinity

Or look at Rickaby's Index on the same site under M for Mysteries!

For example, in "The Mysteriousness of Our Present Being", Newman told his congregation:
There is nothing, according as we are given to see and judge of things, which will make a greater difference in the temper, character, and habits of an individual, than the circumstance of his holding or not holding the Gospel to be mysterious. (p. 292)
This long quotation (excerpted slightly) from "The Gift of the Spirit", offers a summary of what Newman wanted his hearers to understand about Mystery and the Catholic Christian Faith:
Till we {268} understand that the gifts of grace are unseen, supernatural, and mysterious, we have but a choice between explaining away the high and glowing expressions of Scripture, or giving them that rash, irreverent, and self-exalting interpretation, which is one of the chief errors of this time. [Newman then compares "men of awakened and sensitive minds" who are "led to place the life of a Christian, which "is hid with Christ in God," in a sort of religious ecstasy" with "sensible and sober-minded men, offended at such excesses" who think that the Gift of the Spirit "does nothing more than make us decent and orderly members of society"] . . .

For ourselves, in proportion as we realize that higher view of the subject, which we may humbly trust is the true one, let us be careful to act up to it. Let us adore the Sacred Presence within us with all fear, and "rejoice with trembling." Let us offer up our best gifts in sacrifice to Him who, instead of abhorring, has taken up his abode in these sinful hearts of ours. Prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, "good works and alms-deeds," a bold and true confession and a self-denying walk, are the ritual of worship by which we serve Him in these His Temples. How the distinct and particular words of faith avail to our final acceptance, we know not; neither do we know how they are efficacious in changing our wills and characters, which, through God's grace, they certainly do. All we know is, that as we persevere in them, the inward light grows brighter and brighter, and God manifests Himself in us in a way the world knows not of. In this, then, consists our whole duty, first in contemplating Almighty God, as in Heaven, so in our hearts and souls; and next, while we contemplate Him, in acting towards and for Him in the works of every day; in viewing by faith His glory without and within us, and in acknowledging it by our obedience. Thus we {270} shall unite conceptions the most lofty concerning His majesty and bounty towards us, with the most lowly, minute, and unostentatious service to Him.
Father Ker concludes this section on the Influence of the Greek Fathers by noting that this sense of mystery and awe Newman learned of Saint Athanasius and others is why Newman is often so spiritually and morally demanding--as demonstrated in the excerpt above--in his sermons:
If believers are really temples of the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul teaches, then it is practically sacrilegious for a baptized Christian not to be living the life of the Spirit. (p. 41)
I'd suggest that we can see how the "Fathers made [Newman] Catholic" by looking at the last chapter of the Apologia pro Vita Sua, when he explains his religious position after being received in to the Catholic Church. Newman states that he believes, for example, in the Catholic Church's teaching on Transubstantiation to describe how Jesus is sacramentally, really, and substantially present in Holy Communion when it seems like the Host is still like bread and the Blood still like wine, which is still mysterious:
People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation. It is difficult, impossible, to imagine, I grant;—but how is it difficult to believe? . . . What do I know of substance or matter? just as much as the greatest philosophers, and {240} that is nothing at all;"—so much is this the case, that there is a rising school of philosophy now, which considers phenomena to constitute the whole of our knowledge in physics. [Think of the "string theories" of recent years!] The Catholic doctrine leaves phenomena alone. It does not say that the phenomena go; on the contrary, it says that they remain; nor does it say that the same phenomena are in several places at once. It deals with what no one on earth knows any thing about, the material substances themselves. [Christ's Real Presence, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in Holy Communion]
He also comments on the Mystery of the Holy Trinity:
And, in like manner, of that majestic Article of the Anglican as well as of the Catholic Creed,—the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity. What do I know of the Essence of the Divine Being? I know that my abstract idea of three is simply incompatible with my idea of one; but when I come to the question of concrete fact, I have no means of proving that there is not a sense in which one and three can equally be predicated of the Incommunicable God.

Both are Mysteries we assent to without being able to prove them by human reason alone "through God's grace" and our cooperation with it. That of course, why Newman wrote--after years of wanting to write--An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent as explained in this draft, unpublished preface, to demonstrate that it is not unreasonable to assent to mysteries like them.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain); The Trinity, Guillaume Le Rouge, 1510 Book of Hours

Tuesday, December 5, 2023

A Cistercian Seal found in Smithfield, Virginia

You might remember that years ago--in 2015, to be precise--there was a story about a reliquary, presumed to be of Catholic provenance, found in the grave of one of the Jamestown founders. There are more details about the reliquary here. Now, there's a story about a seal from a suppressed English Cistercian monastery being identified in Smithfield, Virginia:

At a recent archaeological artifact workshop hosted by our good friends at the Isle of Wight County Museum in Smithfield, Va., a most unusual 14th-century religious seal was brought to our attention. After sharing the information we had obtained from earlier research conducted by Judith Paulos of The Mount Vernon Ladies Association, we discussed the artifact with a friend and colleague, Dr. Bly Straube, who is the Senior Curator at the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation and a superlative researcher. Bly shared the fact that the late Ivor Noel Hume, the former Director of Archaeology at Colonial Williamsburg, had seen the same seal matrix just prior to finishing his 1994 book The Virginia Adventure. In his book, Hume included a photo of the item and recognized its antiquity. He speculated that it may have been a sign indicating that the “lost colony” had made its way to the area after leaving Roanoke Island sometime prior to the 17th century. . . .

As part of the ongoing investigation into what happened at the Roanoke Settlement, the archaeologists hope to make a connection between the seal and the movement of those colonists. They identified the seal as coming from one of the Cistercian monasteries suppressed by Henry VIII, Garendon Abbey in Leicestershire, one of the hundreds of Cistercian houses established in England, Scotland, and Ireland:

Bly discovered that the seal matrix likely came from the Cistercian Garendon Abbey in Leicestershire, England. The Garendon Abbey was established under the protection of St. Mary the Virgin in 1133 by Robert [de Beaumont], Earl of Leicester. The Cistercians held a great deal of land over several counties near the Abbey, and the monks, priests, and other residents living there appear to have been occupied heavily in sheep farming. . . . 

The post references the dissolution of abbey in 1536, stating that in that year Henry VIII "officially dissolved all Catholic institutions in England, marking the end of the Garendon Abbey." That's not completely accurate: in 1536, Cromwell and Henry, after an extensive visitation of the monasteries throughout England, ostensibly to value their property for taxation purposes, but also to identify abuse and infidelity, acted upon the 1535 Act of Parliament for the "Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries", those valued less than 200 pounds. Garendon Abbey fell beneath that threshold in value, and thus was liable to suppression.

British History Online notes the discrepancy between the reports of Cromwell's visitors and local commissioners in 1535:

In the 16th century, if not earlier, the Holy Cross at Garendon was an object of pilgrimage locally. (fn. 40) In 1535 the clear yearly value of the abbey's revenues was assessed at less than £160. (fn. 41) Cromwell's investigators, visiting Garendon in the following year, alleged that five of the monks were guilty of unnatural vice, and that three sought release from religion. (fn. 42) The county commissioners, who visited the house in June of the same year, gave a much more favourable report, stating that all the fourteen monks of the house desired to continue in religion, and that twelve of them were priests, of good conversation. Divine service was well maintained, though the large old monastery was partly ruinous. Five children and five impotent persons were maintained by the monks' charity, (fn. 43) and there were also two corrodiaries [individuals living in the monastery with room and board provided]. (fn. 44) The abbey, however, was listed amongst the smaller monasteries dissolved in 1536. (fn. 45) The abbot [Randolph Arnold] obtained a pension of £30. (fn. 46) The First Minister's Account shows a net income of £100. 18s. 10½d. (fn. 47)

Why did someone bring a seal from a suppressed Cistercian abbey to the New World in the 16th or 17th century? Does this mean there was Church Papist from Leicestershire in the colony, who remained inwardly true to the Catholic Church while attending Church of England services to avoid recusancy? Like the reliquary box in Jamestown, it remains a mystery because it does not seem that the provenance of this artifact has been identified.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the founders of the Cistercian reform of the Benedictine order.

Monday, November 17, 2014

2015 Eighth Day Institute Symposium


The topic this year is Whatever Happened to Wonder? The Recovery of Mystery in a Secular Age. The speakers include James K.A. Smith, Rod Dreher, Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska, James Kushiner, and others.

The schedule is on-line with some titles to be filled in and you can register on-line or by mail. This event, from Thursday, January 15, through Sunday, January 17, includes prayer, a banquet, two receptions at Eighth Day Books, and many opportunities for fellowship and learning. My husband and I plan to go, God willing!