David Scott sends us a thought for Sunday, from Augustine’s Letter 98. 9.

As the Paschal season draws near we say without a thought: “Tomorrow is the Lord’s Passion” and yet many years have passed since the Lord underwent his Passion, which took place once for all (Heb 9:26). This Sunday, too, we can rightly say: “The Lord is risen today” although many years have passed since Christ was raised. So why is it that no one comes to blame us for this “today” as though it were a lie?

Is it not because we say “today” because this day stands for the return, in the course of time, of the day on which the event we are commemorating took place? We are right to say “today”: today, indeed, the event that took place so long ago is fulfilled by our celebration of the mystery. In himself Christ was sacrificed once for all; nevertheless, he is sacrificed today in the mystery we celebrate, not only at every paschal feast but every day, for all people. This is not to lie, then, but to affirm: “Christ is sacrificed today.” For if the sacraments we are fulfilling did not have a genuine likeness to the reality of which they are the sign, they would not be sacraments. But it is precisely this likeness that allows us to call them by the same name as the reality of which they are the sign. And so the sacrament of the body of Christ we celebrate is, in some way, the body of Christ; the mystery of the blood of Christ that we fulfil is the blood of Christ. The sacramental mystery of faith is the reality in which we believe.

Zenit interviewed Archbishop Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston on the eve of his getting the cardinal’s hat. Archbishop DiNardo showed us the kind of thinking we should hope to find in a cardinal who holds graduate degrees in the study of the Fathers.

Q: As a patristic scholar, you have a deep appreciation for the Church’s sacred Tradition. Benedict XVI has in his pontificate underlined the importance of not rupturing with the Church’s past, and to provide continuity with its rich liturgical and theological traditions. In what ways can bishops implement the Holy Father’s program in their dioceses?

Archbishop DiNardo: When I arrived in the archdiocese, I really didn’t find a lot of instances of discontinuity or rupture. There are always complaints with the way Mass is celebrated in some places, but my predecessor bishops were great moderating forces. Thus, the diocese avoided some of the problems found elsewhere associated with a rupture from the past.
With regard to the liturgy, I think we can take a cue from the liturgical piety of the Church Fathers. In the Fathers, you see an emphasis not only on the words said at Mass, but also the importance of the gestures of the liturgy. In other words, say the black, do the red.

I also always emphasize unity in faith, meaning unity in the Creed. The Creed allows the Church to unite around a common set of beliefs. And knowing the Creed and what it means helps root the faithful in the great Tradition of the Church.
As I tell my seminarians, it is not enough to have the right sentiments about God; you actually have to know something. You have to know what the Church teaches and what theologians such as St. Augustine or St. Thomas said about particular doctrines…

Read more.

It’s Black Friday, and you have no idea what to buy for the patristics nerds on your shopping list. Here are some suggestions — all new books — most of which I’ve reviewed on this blog or in Touchstone magazine this year.

A Patristic Greek Reader, by Rodney A. Whitacre

Fathers Of The Church: A Comprehensive Introduction, by Hubertus Drobner

The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions, by Fabrizio Bisconti et al.

The Treasures of Coptic Art, by Gawdat Gabra

Through Their Own Eyes: Liturgy as the Byzantines Saw It, by Robert Taft, S.J.

Deification and Grace, by Daniel A. Keating

We Look for a Kingdom: The Everyday Lives of the Early Christians, by Carl Sommer

Letter & Spirit, Vol. 3: The Hermeneutic of Continuity: Christ, Kingdom, and Creation, edited by Scott Hahn (with patristic contributions by Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., Gary Anderson, and others)

Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger, by Gary Michuta

Son Of Skip James, by Dion (with his musical tribute to St. Jerome, “The Thunderer”)

The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption, by Stephen J. Shoemaker

And don’t forget the NEW, expanded editions of these titles:

The Fathers of the Church: An Introduction to the First Christian Teachers, by Mike Aquilina

The Mass of the Early Christians, by Mike Aquilina

Today is the feast of St. Clement of Rome, whose Letter to the Corinthians is among the oldest Christian writings we have, outside the Bible. His letter is stunning, and it held a semi-canonical status in some ancient churches. It was bound in with other New Testament books, and it was even read in the liturgy. Clement was widely loved and revered for his sacrifice. In his honor, read Pope Benedict’s address on Clement’s life and work; it was the first in his series on the Fathers.

Here’s Kevin’s translation of Clement’s letter. In this post and in the comments, we discuss the dating of Clement. Several scholars believe the letter was written before 70 A.D.

Dangerous Danny Garland alerts us to recent miracles involving the relics of St. John Chrysostom, which are currently in Nicosia, Cyprus. He leads us to a news report.

Two miraculous cures have been reported in Cyprus as a result of contact with the skull of St. John Chrysostom, according to the Associated Press.

Father Paraskevas Agathonos claimed the visiting relic, which normally resides in a monastery in northern Greece, had healed a partially paralyzed teenager and a woman with a broken leg.

“The pain left, she got rid of the crutches and took off the cast,” he said of a 42-year-old woman who allegedly recovered after visiting the relic Saturday.

The other cure is said to have involved 16-year old Panayiotis Panayiotou, who had been paralyzed in his right arm and the right side of his face following a brain hemorrhage. He reportedly regained full mobility after venerating the skull.
Panayiotou told private TV station Sigma that “the numbness was gone…yes, it was a miracle.”

Some things never change (see 2 Kings 13:21; Acts 19:12).

And, Danny, we’re all watching the blog for baby news.

It’s not just Thanksgiving. It’s the feast of St. Cecilia, the patroness of sacred music. And that’s something to sing about. If you’ve had the privilege to visit the Roman catacombs of San Callisto or the city Church of St. Cecilia, you know the story. You’ve seen the famous statue of her body as it lay in martyrdom — and as it was found, incorrupt, more than a millennium later! You can see the sculpture at Catholic Culture‘s page for the feast day, whence cometh this information.

Cecilia was so highly venerated by the ancient Roman Church that her name was placed in the Canon of the Mass. Already in the fourth century there was a church of St. Cecilia in Trastevere, erected on the site where her home had stood. Her martyrdom probably occurred during the reign of Emperor Alexander Severus, about the year 230. In 1599 her grave was opened and her body found in a coffin of cypress wood. It lay incorrupt, as if she had just breathed forth her soul. Stephen Maderna, who often saw the body, chiseled a statue that resembled the body as closely as possible. Since the Middle Ages, Cecilia has been honored as patroness of Church music, a practice having its source in a false application of a passage from the Office (cantantibus organis). Apart from the fact of her martyrdom, we know practically nothing about her that is historically genuine.

An offbeat addendum: Paul Simon dedicated his excellent album The Rhythm of the Saints to “St. Cecilia, patroness of music.” I’m told (but I have not confirmed) that Simon has always considered St. Cecilia to be his muse, and that the Simon & Garfunkel song Cecilia is actually an allegory of his writer’s block — his sense that the muse had abandoned him and given all the good tunes to other songwriters.

May she intercede for him, and for all of us, on this her memorial.

I knew the Pope would get around to Aphrahat. I wondered a bit when he pulled ahead of the Persian Sage chronologically. But apparently he did so in order to make connections between neighbording Fathers in successive weeks (e.g., Ambrose and Maximus of Turin). In his book Jesus of Nazareth, the Pope returns often to the work of the great contemporary Jewish scholar, Jacob Neusner, who published an appreciative study of Aphrahat and Judaism. Perhaps we’ll once again see the influence of Neusner on Ratzinger as His Holiness discusses this Father “on the frontier between Judaism and the Greek world.”

Aphrahat also figures prominently in the expanded edition of my book The Fathers of the Church.

I’ll post full text as soon as it emerges.

UPDATE: Amy has posted an unofficial translation.

Taylor Marshall has an interesting post on The Christian Origin of Neo-Platonism. It’s worth your time, since you’ll often read that the influence ran the other way — and that patristic theology is just Plato dressed up in the vestments of Nicea. But, as Marshall points out, it was the Christian Ammonius (third century) who taught Plato to Plotinus, and Plotinus who taught him to the anti-Christian Porphyry. By the time Neo-Platonism got to Augustine, it was no longer Neo and was considered a pagan thing.

A recent book, The Mysticism of Saint Augustine by John Peter Kenney, argues that Augustine’s Confessions is an artful apologetic against the pagan Neo-Platonism that Augustine had known and loved. In the culminating scene, Augustine portrays his unlettered mother, Monica, in an intellectual ecstasy — the sort of contemplation that Plotinus had sought all his life, but reached only rarely, with great difficulty, and for fleeting moments. (Did Plotinus himself have a Christian phase in his past? Readers ancient and modern have suspected so, with all his talk of a divine triad. Some graces die hard.)

Earlier this year I posted an excerpt of R.L. Wilken’s review of Kenney’s book. Give it a read.

And as long as you’re on your Neo-Platonist kick, read Andrew Louth’s The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys.

But do start your binge with Taylor Marshall.

Maureen has some really goodies up in audio: Origen on prayer and Irenaeus on heresies (she’s closing in on the end of Book 5, really, she is).

Mine, Ours, and Theirs.

It’s always great when the rock-music critics stay in lockstep with the Pope. His Holiness has spent the better hours of the last two weeks talking about St. Jerome. And as my friend Dion DiMucci, of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, rakes in the reviews of his new album, Son Of Skip James, he’s gratified to know that the critics are loving his musical tribute to Jerome, titled “The Thunderer.”

Ken Barnes in USA Today said:

If your image of Dion DiMucci is flash-frozen as a finger-snapping doo-wopper, the idea of a blues album from the singer (his second, following last year’s fine Bronx in Blue) may seem incongruous. But throughout a half-century’s career, Dion has shown he can sing anything, and the mostly acoustic blues standards and originals (plus a little Berry and Dylan) are masterfully delivered via nimble guitar and rich, resonant, nuanced vocals — not far removed from the voice that turned The Drifters’ Ruby Baby and Drip Drop into bluesy classics. And where else are you going to hear a Christian blues number that professes, “I’m a lover, not a fighter/But I could kick your a**”?

The Times of Trenton said:

Of all the rockers left from the 1950s, there is no one still singing with the fire, intensity and passion of the pride of New York, Dion DiMucci. The man who brought us “Runaround Sue,” “The Wanderer” and “Abraham, Martin and John,” has still got it going on as we can hear on the new blues-based “Son of Skip James.”
Dion recorded several blues-based albums in the past, but this return to the genre is a mighty one, filled with scorching versions of classics like Chuck Berry’s “Nadine,” Junior Wells’ “Hoodoo Man Blues,” and a distinctive re-working of Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man.” The big surprise though is that Dion, who released several outstanding faith-based albums in the past, occasionally returns here to themes of religious devotion, especially on one of the set’s major standouts, “The Thunderer,” which focuses on the life of one of his idols, St. Jerome.

We can forgive the word “idols” since the review’s so good. But if anyone wants to help the reviewer to understand the difference between dullia and latreia, go ahead and send him a copy of St. John of Damascus’s Three Treatises on the Divine Images. I’m sure Dion will approve.

And if you haven’t heard “The Thunderer” … get with the papal program!

Here’s the unofficial Zenit translation of yesterday’s papal audience on St. Jerome.

Dear brothers and sisters!

Today we continue with the presentation of Saint Jerome. As we said last Wednesday, he devoted his life to the study of the Bible, for which he was acknowledged as “eminent doctor in the interpretation of sacred Scripture” by one of my predecessors, Pope Benedict XV.

Jerome underlined the joy and importance of familiarizing oneself with the biblical texts: “Don’t you feel, here on Earth, that you are already in the kingdom of heaven, just by living in these texts, meditating on them, and not seeking anything else?” (Ep. 53,10).

In truth, to converse with God and with his word means to be in heaven’s presence, that is to say in God’s presence. To draw close to the biblical texts, above all to the New Testament, is essential for the believer, because “ignorance of Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” This is his famous sentence, also quoted by the Second Vatican Council in the constitution “Dei Verbum” (No. 25).

Truly “enchanted” by the Word of God, Jerome asked himself: “How could we live without the science of Scriptures, through which we learn how to know Christ himself, who is the life of the believer?” (Ep. 30,7). Hence the Bible, the instrument “with which God speaks to the faithful every day” (Ep. 133,13), becomes catalyst and source of Christian life for all situations and for everyone.

To read Scripture is to converse with God: “If you are praying,” he writes to a noble young lady from Rome, “you are speaking with the Groom; if you are reading, it is He who is speaking to you” (Ep. 22,25). The study and meditation of Scripture makes man wise and at peace (cf. In Eph., prol.). Certainly, to penetrate more deeply the word of God, a constant and increasing practice is necessary. This is what Jerome recommended to the priest Nepoziano: “Read the divine Scriptures with much regularity; let the Holy Book never be laid down by your hands. Learn there what you ought to teach (Ep. 52,7).”

To the Roman matron Leta he gave the following advice for the Christian education of her daughter: “Make sure that every day she studies some passages of Scripture. … That she ensues from reading to praying and from praying to reading. … Instead of loving jewelry and silk garments, may she rather love the divine books” (Ep. 107,9.12). With the meditation and the science of the Scriptures one “maintains the balance of the soul” (Ad Eph., prol.). Only through a deep spirit of prayer and the help of the Holy Spirit are we able to understand the Bible: “For the interpretation of sacred Scripture we always need the help of the Holy Spirit” (In Mich. 1,1,10,15).

A passionate love for Scripture pervaded all of Jerome’s life, a love that he sought to also awaken in the faithful. To a spiritual daughter he recommended: “Love sacred Scripture and wisdom shall love you; love it tenderly, and it will protect you; honor it and you shall receive its caresses. Let it mean to you as much as your necklaces and your earrings mean to you” (Ep. 130,20). And again: “Love the science of Scripture, and you shall not love the vices of the flesh” (Ep. 125,11).

A fundamental criterion Jerome used to interpret Scripture was to be in tune with the magisterium of the Church. Alone we are not able to read Scripture. We find too many closed doors and we are easily mistaken. The Bible was written by the people of God, for the people of God, with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Only in communion with the people of God can we truly enter the core of the truth that God intends to convey us.

For him an authentic interpretation of the Bible always had to be in harmony with the faith of the Catholic Church. This is not an external requirement imposed on the book. The book itself is the voice of the people of God in pilgrimage, and only in the faith of these people we find the right frame of mind to understand sacred Scripture. Hence Jerome warned: “Stay firmly attached to the traditional doctrine that has been taught to you, so that you can preach according to the right doctrine and refute those who contradict it” (Ep. 52,7).

In particular, given that Jesus Christ founded his Church on Peter, he concluded that every Christian has to be in communion “with the chair of St. Peter. I know that on this stone the Church is built” (Ep. 15,2). Consequently, he declared: “I am with whoever is united to the chair of St. Peter” (Ep. 16).

Jerome obviously does not neglect the ethical side. Rather often he recalls the duty of reconciling life with the divine word, and that only by living it we manage to understand it. Such coherence is necessary for every Christian, especially for the preacher, to ensure that his actions are not a source of embarrassment when conflicting with his speech. So he urges the priest Nepoziano: “Let not your actions deny your words, so that when you preach in church someone won’t be able to say: ‘Why don’t you act this way?’ Easy is the teacher who, with full belly, preaches about fasting — even a thief can condemn greed — but for the priest of Christ the mind and word have to match” (Ep. 52,7).

In another letter Jerome confirms: “Even when mastering a wonderful doctrine, he who is condemned by his own conscience will be shamed” (Ep. 127,4). Always in terms of coherence, he observes, the Gospel has to translate into attitudes of true charity, because in every human being Christ is present. For instance, when addressing Paolino (who became bishop of Nola and then a saint), Jerome advises: “The true temple of Christ is the soul of the faithful: adorn this sanctuary, embellish it, put your offers in it and receive Christ. To what purpose do you adorn walls with precious stones, if Christ starves in the person of the poor?” (Ep. 58,7).

Jerome continues: It is necessary “to dress Christ among the poor, to visit him among the suffering, to nourish him among the starving, to host him among the homeless” (Ep. 130,14). The love for Christ, fed with study and meditation, makes us overcome any difficulty: “We love Jesus Christ, we always search the union with him: then all that is difficult will seem easy” (Ep. 22,40).

Jerome, defined as “a model of conduct and a master of the human kind” by Prosper of Aquitaine (“Carmen de Ingratis,” 57), also left us a rich teaching on Christian asceticism. He reminds us that a courageous engagement toward perfection requires a constant alertness, frequent mortifications, even if with moderation and caution, an assiduous intellectual or manual work to avoid idleness (cf Epp. 125.11 and 130,15), and above all obedience to God: “Nothing … pleases God as much as obedience. … That is the most outstanding and the sole virtue” (Hom. De oboedientia: CCL 78,552).

The practice of pilgrimages can be included in the ascetic path. In particular, Jerome gave impulse to pilgrimages to the Holy Land, where pilgrims were welcomed and accommodated in the buildings built near Bethlehem’s monastery, thanks to the generosity of the noblewoman Paola, Jerome’s spiritual daughter (cf Ep. 108,14).

Finally, we have to mention Jerome’s contribution to Christian pedagogy (cf Epp. 107 and 128). He proposes to form “a soul that has to become the temple of the Lord ” (Ep. 107,4), a “most precious gem” to the eyes of God (Ep. 107,13). With deep intuition he suggests to protect the soul from evil and from sinful events, to exclude equivocal or wasteful friendships (cf Ep. 107.4 and 8-9; cf also Ep. 128,3-4).

Above all he urges the parents to create an environment of serenity and joy around the children, to encourage them to study and work, also through praise and emulation (cf Epp. 107,4 and 128,1), to encourage them to overcome difficulties, to nurture in them good habits and protect them from bad ones because — here he quotes a phrase that Publilius Sirus had heard as a schoolboy — “you will barely succeed to correct those things that you are getting used to do” (Ep. 107,8).

Parents are the primary educators for children, their first life teachers. By addressing to the mother of a girl and then to her father, with much clarity Jerome warns, as to express a fundamental requirement of every human creature that is brought to existence: “May she find in you her teacher, and may her inexperienced childhood look at you with wonder. May she never see, neither in you nor in her father, any actions that, if imitated, could lead her to sin. Remember that … you can educate her more with the example than with the word” (Ep. 107,9).

Among Jerome’s main intuitions as a pedagogue we must underline the importance attributed to a healthy and complete education since infancy, as well as the special responsibility acknowledged to parents, the urgency of a serious moral and religious education, and the need of study for a more complete human formation.

Moreover, a vital aspect retained by the author but disregarded in ancient times is the promotion of the woman, to whom he acknowledges the right to a complete education: human, academic, religious, professional. We actually see today that the true condition to any progress, peace, reconciliation and exclusion of violence is the education of the person in its entirety and the education in responsibility before God and before man. Sacred Scripture offers us the guidance of education and of true humanism.

We cannot conclude these rapid notes on the great Father of the Church without mentioning his effective contribution to the safeguard of the positive and valid elements of ancient Israeli, Greek and Roman cultures in the rising Christian civilization. Jerome recognized and assimilated the artistic values, the rich feelings and harmonic images of the classics, which educate heart and fantasy to noble feelings.

Above all, he put the word of God at the center of his life and actions, a word that shows to man the paths of life and discloses the secrets of holiness. Today we can’t be but deeply grateful to Jerome for all this.

And remember that rocker Dion’s new album includes a musical tribute to St. Jerome, called “The Thunderer.” Don’t miss your chance to hear The Wanderer, to hear The Wanderer, Jerome around, around, around, around…