The following is a series of bulletin articles on the same topic, in their original condition)
“Wanting a sign” is the quasi-Messianic political mentality. “Here at last is the one who shall kiss our collective boo-boo and heal our every ill!” A hasty generalization, of course, but it’s the impression I get from the flags, the parades, etc.
Signs aren’t just for favored candidates. Now they also signal beliefs. “Hate has no place here” was an early favorite. Would anyone be so bold as to exhibit the end of the Apostles’ Creed on their front lawn: “In this house, WE BELIEVE IN THE HOLY SPIRIT / THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH / THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS / THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS / THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY / THE LIFE EVERLASTING”? What a sign it would be!
The winding-down of Ordinary Time is high time to unpack these dimensions of our faith. For now, however, I want to review the pious practice of gaining Indulgences, worth considering in November and all year long.
Sin entails “temporal punishment” alongside the eternal punishment we deserve. Christ forgives the sins for which we repent, taking them upon Himself. But they nonetheless leave a spiritual “residue” that gears us toward future sins, especially if we cling to them, long to commit them again, etc.
Our prayers, works, joys, and sufferings can help alleviate the temporal punishment due to sin, as we offer these on behalf of the faithful departed. Under certain specific conditions, we assist in the Church’s ministry of redemption, applying the “treasury of the satisfactions won by Christ and the saints.”
We don’t (in fact, we can’t) gain indulgences to buy anyone’s way out of hell, we can’t “bank” them against future sins, nor has forgiveness ever been “sold” through this practice. They do not operate in the precise manner of judicial “sentences.”
We must perform the prayer or action with a contrite heart, desiring freedom from all attachment to sin. We receive Holy Communion, go to Confession within a reasonable period, and pray for the Holy Father’s intentions (with, for example, an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be).
What acts are indulgenced? Options include: an act of Spiritual Communion, a period of mental prayer, group rosary recitation, prayer for the dead at a cemetery, attentive reading of Sacred Scripture, and even the Sign of the Cross. Make a point of helping someone among the Church Suffering; someday it may be you.
(33rd OT A 2020)
Recently I mentioned a yard sign expressing belief in the six final articles of the Apostles’ Creed as something worth displaying. I want to unpack each of those articles. Today, then, is for the Holy Spirit (HS).
His divine personhood was revealed in its proper time even though he is the point of contact with faith and the life of grace. The HS is consubstantial with the father and the son, equally to be worshiped and believed, equally working in the plan of salvation, revealing Christ to the world.
We encounter the HS in the Scriptures, Sacred Tradition, and the Church’s “magisterium” (teaching authority). He comes to us in the liturgy, our own prayer, and the various ministers and ministries that build up the Church.
The major title for the HS is Paraclete or Advocate: someone called to the side of another, like a defense attorney, guiding us in speech and action.
Various symbols represent the HS in the Bible: water, anointing, fire, a seal, a hand, a finger, and a dove. Notice our new old baptismal font prominently features the last symbol.
The Spirit is the Agent of healing, transformation, communion, enlightenment, and peace. He imparts holiness and mission to believers. Jesus promised to send Him after his resurrection to guide the Church to all truth and to unity of faith.
He is at the origin of earthly and heavenly life. Cultivate a relationship with Him today, just for the asking.
(Christ the King A 2020)
Part Two of our “In This House” Yard Sign scaffolds off the Holy Spirit, since the Father and the Son send Him into the Holy Catholic Church” so that Christ’s faithful can be drawn into Trinitarian Communion and understanding of the Paschal Mystery as these are present in the Eucharist.
The Church’s mission is not an add-on to the Spirit’s mission, but its “sacrament” (CCC 738), for He is both Source and Giver of holiness (749). The Apostles’ Creed distinguishes believing the [One,] Holy, Catholic[, and Apostolic] Church from believing in her; this seemingly minute distinction tries not to confuse God with His works. [Nicene Creed added the bracketed parts]
“Church” comes from the Greek ekklesia, “to call out of,” suggesting an assembly of people for a religious purpose. The Hebrew Scriptures referred to Israel upon Mt. Sinai in those terms, so it was (super)natural for the Christian assembly to pick up on it. The Greek Kyriakos (“pertaining to the Lord”) lends itself to the German word for church: Kirche.
These images evoke the Church: Sheepfold, Flock, Field, Building/Household/Dwelling-Place/Temple/Family/People of God, Holy City/New Jerusalem/Bride of Christ. Church Father Tertullian famously asserted, “The world was created for the Church.” Since born of the Father’s heart as the sacrament of God’s communion with man, and foreshadowed by vagrant beloved Israel, why not?
The “happy fault” of Adam’s sin set into motion the eternal plan that God the Son (always with Father and Holy Spirit) would “reconcile the world to Himself.” Israel is Abraham’s brood, whom the prophets accuse of desertion in terms cultic and charitable.
Baptism unites members of the Church as priestly, prophetic, and kingly people to offer sacrifice, proclaim the Word, and extend truth and compassion.
The Church is distinguished by four “official” marks: one (because of her Source, Founder, Soul (HS); holy (because of Christ, though *growing in* holiness because of us); catholic (universal, “according to the whole, for the sake of the whole [human race]”); and apostolic (built on the Apostles who received from Christ and handed on to successor-bishops the teaching and sacraments).
(1st Advent B 2020)
The Church is the “Communion of Saints,” whether we are speaking of those “Militant” (slogging it out on earth), “Suffering” (undergoing Love’s purification from sin), or “Triumphant” (experiencing Love’s embrace in heaven). So this entry might better be renamed “Church, Part Two.”
All members share in the sharing of the spiritual goods that Christ lavishes upon all most tangibly in the Sacraments. Computers on the same network can access and print the same files from their current location. The Holy Spirit assures wireless fidelity to Who and What is being Communicated.
In the Byzantine Liturgy, the priest raises the Lord’s Body and Blood and declares, “Holy Things [sancta] to the Holy [sanctis].” The people remind the priest that One alone is holy. Play-acting? Posturing? Indeed not: though we are sinners, we are holy in our sincere desire to please God.
Where do we find the communion in this communion? In the faith we received from the Apostles; in the sacraments that impart divine life; in the charisms (special graces) that the Spirit distributes variously to be placed at the good of the whole; in the goods each one has and needs; in our mutual solidarity and deference.
We consider Mary herself as a type, or foreshadowing, of the Church. As Mother of God-the-Son, she is mother of us all in the order of grace. She continues to pray for and in us, begging the Holy Spirit to fill and govern the faithful to be such. Her consent to God’s will perfectly models discipleship.
Mary and all saints deserve dulia/douleia, Latin/Greek for “honor.” Mary receives hyperdulia, or exceeding honor. Still it necessarily falls short of the latria/latreia, or worship, we owe God. The Rosary and Angelus especially express that honor, joining us to the contemplating Church. Mary’s charm and glory lay in helping us reflect and respond more deeply, the better to fit ourselves to dwell in the place Jesus has gone before us to prepare.
(2nd Advent B 2020)
The Forgiveness of Sins might be my favorite of these “In This House We Believe In” tenets. It builds on the first three. Our Lord breathed the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles—the Church’s Shepherds—with the specific expectation to forgive sins (cf. Jn 20:22- 23).
Baptism is the primary locus for forgiveness. We don’t tend to think about that because most Catholic baptisms (few as there are nowadays) are sweet, “innocent” children. What sins have they be forgiven of? The Original, for sure, if no personal.
Adults preparing for Baptism do well to prepare for their Baptism with the same examination of conscience that a “convert” would make in his or her first Confession. It’s a life to consider, a life that promises to be changed—because forgiven.
The “movements of concupiscence” endure after the water hits the head: we turn our passions into our masters when they were meant to serve us; it’s harder to recognize what’s true and choose what’s truly good. With the deck so stacked against us, what’s our chance?
Thank God Baptism is not our only opportunity for mercy. “The Church must be able to forgive all penitents their offenses, even if they should sin until the last moment of their lives” (Roman Catechism, quoted in CCC 979).
As with the Eucharist, one wonders how we have failed to “awaken and nourish in the faithful faith in the incomparable greatness of...the mission and the power to forgive sins through the ministry of the apostles and their successors.” No angel can do it, just as no angel became man like God did.
I am but a weak and sinful instrument of Christ the High Priest, to whom He nonetheless has entrusted the power and the command to forgive. But even Jesus didn’t just indiscriminately go about forgiving people who didn’t ask for it.
Wait: there was that one guy He told to “pick up your mat and walk,” though first He said, “your sins are forgiven” (cf. Mt 9:5). That man’s presenting problem was paralysis, but Jesus spotted the deeper paralysis that sin causes the human will, intellect, and passions.
It really was no easier for Jesus to forgive than to cure; which act, however, is easier for us to believe He could and would accomplish in us?
(3rd Advent B 2020)
The week of the “rose” Advent candle and vestments seems appropriate for the IIE column to consider “The Resurrection of the Body,” for Jesus rose from the dead to declare divine vanquishing of sin, suffering, and death.
His Resurrection from the dead becomes the pattern for those who love Him and strive to keep His commandments. Without the Resurrection our belief, our worship, our moral living, and our prayer are vain.
“Hope in the bodily resurrection of the dead established itself as a consequence intrinsic to faith in God as creator of the whole man, soul and body” (CCC 992). What He “bothered” to create, He equally “bothers” to redeem.
Earlier in the Jewish history, one achieved immortality by living in the existence and memory of succeeding generations. By the time of the Maccabees there was a stronger sense of God’s vindication of the just with continued life.
Jesus embodies this hope in His own Person, “the Resurrection and the Life” (Jn 11:25). Each act of bodily resuscitation pointed to that final revival He predicted as “the sign of Jonah” (Mt 12:39).
His first disciples were “witnesses to His Resurrection,” whether as dinner companions or otherwise. Nevertheless the apostolic testimony has had its opponents. Spiritual continuation alone is enough for some people.
The separation of soul from body puts the human person in an incomplete, waiting state. Upon His second coming, Jesus will signal the Resurrection of just and unjust to conditions reflective of their holiness and virtue. “Some to everlasting life; others to reproach and everlasting disgrace” (Dan 12:2).
We will keep a certain intelligibility: people will recognize us, although, please God, we’ll be free of the limitations we experienced on this earth. Mindful of those limitations in ourselves and others, we treat our own and others’ bodies with due reverence. The suffering deserve particular regard.
The death we experience on account of sin is contrary to the Creator’s intention for us, but God the Incarnate Son chose to experience this death, His human body absorbing (for want of a better word) the sins and sufferings of all humanity of every place and time: expiation motivated by and received in love.
This life is, on the balance, a good one. It is a gift of God and we want to make it a gift to God. All the same, especially as time passes, we might experience an increasing longing to be free of “this mortal coil” and to be with God forever. This life is so precious that in no form can we repeat it (no reincarnation!).
Why would we want to? What we do want, however, is to prepare ourselves for Resurrection Life by repenting and confessing our sins frequently, by striving to walk in holiness and virtue, by invoking the intercession of the Mother of God and St. Joseph, patron of a happy death.
(4th Advent B 2020)
The last segment on the Creed: the Last Things! (Life Everlasting)
Hours before sitting down to type this column I visited a local health care facility to commend a sister in Christ to her Creator and ours: “May you live in peace this day, may your home be with God in Zion, with Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, with Joseph, and all the angels and saints.”
Our opportunity either to accept or reject the divine life ends with our death. Precisely how God reveals Himself to our innermost hearts is mysterious and varied, but this much is certain: In His mercy He wants to draw us to Himself and away from all that distracts us from Him.
I am writing this on the memorial of St. John of the Cross, who famously declared, “At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.” Upon our death God immediately ratifies our choice for or against Him.
We must confess all mortal sins—serious matter, committed with full awareness and freedom—as soon as possible. There’s no Confession after death.
Even in those attachments we dimly recognize the human person’s longing for complete fulfillment, which only heaven can accomplish in us. In every pleasure we seek, deep down we want divine life and love: we want to be with Christ.
“The life of the blessed consists in the full and perfect possession of the fruits of the redemption accomplished by Christ. He makes partners in His heavenly glorification those who have believed in him and remained faithful to His will.”
The traditional term for the life of heaven is the “Beatific Vision,” which always seemed to me like the largest imaginable movie theatre: everyone facing the same way, feasting their mouths on snacks and their eyes on God. Not quite, I suppose, but the reality is something that hasn’t even dawned on us.
If, as is most likely, our souls remain attached to the sinful patterns in our lives, God will want to purify us. Sonja Corbitt, of Ascension’s “Fulfilled” series asserts that Purgatory is “a Person, Not a Place”: we behold the One Who had been receiving from us far less than He deserved, and the realization of that deficit is painful, yet hopeful.
The Church has long honored the offering of reparation for the faithful departed. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is the greatest prayer to offer, with almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance a close second.
The free and definitive rejection of divine love is “Hell.” We might wonder how one could possibly get to that point. Apparently, by Jesus’ own admission, it is not only possible, but popular. The temptations against other- centered love are many and enticing, and people don’t clamp onto them by accident.
Ask yourself whether you have committed a violation of the literal sense of any of the Ten Commandments without having repented and confessed it. Numerous other offenses derive from those literal examples and are just as worthy of our honest consideration.
The Lord is all too willing to forgive those who courageously approach Him in the person of His priests, whom he sent to loosen the bonds of sin. Anticipate the Last Judgment now by making an honest Confession.
(Holy Family B 2020)
IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE / IN THE HOLY SPIRIT / THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH / THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS / THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS / THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY / AND LIFE EVERLASTING.
That was the yard sign on someone’s lawn, or at least the digital idea for a yard sign, during the election cycle that now seems forever ago, and seems to be going on forever more.
The only secure transfer of power that will take place is at the end of time, “when Jesus hands over the Kingdom to God the Father after He has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power” (1 Cor 15:24).
This yard sign series will not continue interminably. Contrary to our experiences or ruminations about it, neither will our life just keep going and going. It will have an Amen—which happens to be the last word of the Creed, as well.
According to the Catechism: “Amen comes from the same root as the word ‘believe.’ This root expresses solidity, trustworthiness, faithfulness. And so we can understand why ‘Amen’ may express both God’s faithfulness toward us and our trust in Him” (1062).
You may remember the “Chalkboard of Catholic Contents” series I recorded several months ago. Newest versions of the Treasury of Prayer booklet contain it. To be precise, they contain the “Chart of Catholic Contents”, because it’s now a simpler graphic instead of a photo of an actual chalkboard. [It also underwent some revision. (Ed.)]
At the bottom of the original photo, I drew a sort of pendulum with two Latin phrases on the sides. On the left was Fides Quae and on the right Fides Qua. The literal meanings of these are: “The Faith Which” and “The Faith By Which.”
We can speak of Faith as both content and relationship. As the existence of both Bible and Catechism indicate, there is a “content,” propositions, stuff we believe regarding the Nature of God and the Church, how it is to be celebrated and lived.
Catechesis had dwelt so much on what we believe (fides quae) that we ignored the value of the believer in the economy of salvation. We might now be reaching the proper balance after some reactionary decades where the value of the relationship ended up eclipsing the content of the faith.
“Amen” circles back to “I believe,” as the word reinforces both fides quae and qua: I believe this (quae) and I believe this (qua).
St. Augustine calls the Creed a “mirror” that we do well to look at, “to see if you believe everything you say you believe. And rejoice in your faith each day” (qtd. in CCC 1064).
God is always the truth of truths, the One faithful to his promises. Jesus’ use of “Amen” in teaching was a way of reinforcing the truth and the importance of what He was going to say. Jesus Himself is the Amen (Rev 3:14), the living proof of the Father’s promised love.
Although we regard the Consecration of the Mass as the “moment of truth” when the Word-become-flesh becomes Food-for-flesh, the entire Eucharistic Prayer is the event. The Eastern Churches call it the “Anaphora,” the “Offering-Up.” How do you pin mystery to a moment?
If anything, the Consecration finds completion in the “Great Amen,” where priest and deacon raise the Holy Things for the view of the Holy God and His Holy People in a word of glory (the literal meaning of “doxology”): Through/with/in Christ, all glory is Yours, Father forever. And the people say? ______!
