Jim Davila leads us to news of an Indian movie project on the life of St. Thomas. The Fathers’ witness to the work of St. Thomas in India is overwhelming. Already in the fifth century there’s evidence of Western monks making pilgrimage to the apostle’s house in India.

Chennai, July 6 (IANS) Who was the man who inspired the English term “doubting Thomas”? Was he a contemporary of Jesus, or a faithful disciple or a fourth century Christian merchant? Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi inaugurated an Indian project to film the life and times of Apostle Thomas, known popularly as St. Thomas, who straddles legend and history in Judea, Syria, Persia and several south Indian settlements in the early Christian era.

A self-acclaimed atheist, Karunanidhi said on the occasion: “Whether I am accepted by god is more important than whether I accept god.”

Paulraj Lourdusamy is chief researcher for the film to be produced by Santhome church. He has also written the script.

The Rs.500-million ($12 million) project is being supported by the St. Thomas Apostle of India Trust, set up by the Catholic Archdiocese of Mylapore.

Biblical stories identify Thomas as the disciple who doubted the resurrection of Christ. According to several edicts, Kushan king Vasudeva sent Thomas’ remains to Syria in 232 AD.

The Roman Catholic and Anglican calendars honour Thomas July 3, the day on which his relics are believed taken from Mylapore, on India’s east coast, to Edessa, Syria, where his remains are worshipped as that of the Apostle of India. Then it was taken to the Greek island of Chios in 1258 AD and then to Ortona, Italy, where it rests now.

The date July 3 was, therefore, chosen to launch the film project.

In the “Acts of Thomas”, written in 200 AD, the original key text to identify St. Thomas with India, historians agree that two people, followers of Jesus Christ, arrived first in Sandaruk (one of the ancient Alexandrias) in Balochistan.

Much mystery surrounds Thomas’ time in India. There is belief that Thomas sailed to the Kerala coast and landed at a port named Palayoor, near Guruvayoor. He then moved east to the Coramandel coast.

In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI created a controversy by saying that Thomas first evangelised Syria and Persia, then went on to western India, from where Christianity also reached the south of the country.

According to yet another Indian Christian tradition, St. Thomas landed in Kodungallur in Kerala in 52 AD in the company of a Jewish merchant Abbanes (Hebban).

Some historians say Thomas of Cana and his companion Bishop Joseph of Edessa were the ones who established the first Syrian Christian colony in Kerala but they were fourth century merchants. The two Thomases seem to have merged in today’s legends.

“Thomas the Apostle is said to have met the Tamil savant Thiruvalluvar. Superstar Rajnikanth is being persuaded to play the role of the poet saint,” Lourdusamy, the writer, told the media here.

“Popular Tamil actors like Vijay and Vikram will also appear in the film. The search is on for an actor who will be able to portray the Thomas in people’s imagination,” he added.

Talks are on with Hollywood actor James Caviezel to again play the role of Christ. He played the role in “The Passions of Christ”. Part of the film will be shot in Munnar. The Malyalam and Tamil versions will be released first. Proceeds from the film will go to an education fund.

Happy St. Thomas Day! The apostolate of Thomas in India is one of my obsessions — shared by many in India, as you’ll see if you follow the links at this post. Thomas draws more visitor comments than anyone else, and more passionate visitor comments.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review reviews Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity by Caroline Humfress. The book seems to be a vindication of legal developments after the Constantinian revolution.

Caroline Humfess has made a truly important contribution to the study of the legal history of the later Roman Empire. Not only does she prove the vibrancy of late antique legal thought, too often characterized as vulgar or debased, she also demonstrates how vital forensic (i.e. courtroom) argumentation was to legislative innovation in this period. Although imperial constitutions do provide much of her evidence, Humfress gets around the tricky problem of evaluating enforcement by focusing instead on the issues or specific cases that provoked their formulation, assuming that “virtually all the general laws in the Theodosian and Justinianic Codes were prompted by a concrete case or…a concrete situation.” Humfress parts ways here with many fine historians, who see limited evidence for real-world impetus behind imperial legislation. Nevertheless, using religious legislation as her focus, she makes a very strong case for her unorthodox position, and she is able to demonstrate convincingly the contribution of forensic argumentation to the composition of law in the later Roman Empire. What is more, Humfress shows how churchmen, trained as advocates, contributed significantly to this process…

More here.

Sister set a Syrian-summary series site.

Today’s the feast of the first Roman Martyrs. Theirs is a story you just have to hear. But first we have to backtrack a little bit.

In July of A.D. 64, during the tenth year of Nero’s reign, a great fire consumed much of the city of Rome. The fire raged out of control for seven days — and then it started again, mysteriously, a day later. Many in Rome knew that Nero had been eager to do some urban redevelopment. He had a plan that included an opulent golden palace for himself. The problem was that so many buildings were standing in his way — many of them teeming wooden tenements housing Rome’s poor and working class.

The fire seemed too convenient for Nero’s purposes — and his delight in watching the blaze didn’t relieve anybody’s suspicions. If he didn’t exactly fiddle while Rome burned, he at least recited his poems. Nero needed a scapegoat, and an upstart religious cult, Jewish in origin and with foreign associations, served his purposes well. Nero, who was a perverse expert at human torment, had some of its members tortured till they were so mad they would confess to any crime. Once they had confessed, he had others arrested.

He must have known, however, that the charges would not hold up. So he condemned them not for arson, or treason, or conspiracy, but for “hatred of humanity.”

To amuse the people, he arranged for their execution to be a spectacle, entertainment on a grand scale. The Roman historian Tacitus (who had contempt for the religion, but greater contempt for Nero) describes in gruesome detail the tortures that took place amid a party in Nero’s gardens.

Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames. These served to illuminate the night when daylight failed. Nero had thrown open the gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or drove about in a chariot. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being punished.

That is all we know about the first Roman martyrs. We know none of their names. Tacitus doesn’t tell us why they were willing to die this way rather than renounce their faith. Yet this should be an important question for us to consider. Why did the martyrs do this? What prepared them to face death so bravely? To what exactly did they bear witness with their death?

The answers to these questions (and many more) can be found in the rest of the article, at the archive of Touchstone Magazine. The article originated in a talk I gave in Rome in 2005 on the feast of the Roman Martyrs. It’s called “The Roman Martyrs and Their Mass.” You can get the talk on MP3 right here. It’s free, of course.

I also treat the subject in my book The Resilient Church: The Glory, the Shame, & the Hope for Tomorrow.

Roger Pearse may be on the trail of a long-lost English translation of Chrysostom’s letters.

My interest was sparked by a sentence in Richard W. Pfaff, The Library of the Fathers: The Tractarians as Patristic Translators, Studies in Philology 70 (1973), p.329f. This paper discusses the history of the Oxford Movement series of English translations. On p.335-6 he says: “Two of the envisaged volumes of Chrysostom never appeared: a selection of letters and the treatise On the Priesthood. The translation of letters had been undertaken before the series began by John Jebb, bishop of Limerick (d. 1833) and was completed by his son, also John, by at least 1852, but for some reason was never published.”

Now this is exciting stuff! For there is no English translation of the letters of Chrysostom, even now. Just imagine if this manuscript were still around.

I hope all the RC readers of this are saying the St. Anthony prayer right now.

Read the rest of the story.

Jeff Ziegler shows us the way to celebrate.

— Today is Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time and the
optional memorial of St. Cyril of Alexandria, bishop and doctor of
the Church.

— Pope Pius XII: Encyclical on St. Cyril of Alexandria (Orientalis Ecclesiae, 1944).

— Selected writings of St. Cyril.

Here’s Pope Benedict’s take on the man. And mine.

Today, June 26, is the memorial of St. Josemaria Escriva, the 20th-century priest who founded Opus Dei, a path to holiness through ordinary work, family life, friendship, and such — the stuff of everyday life. His is a decidedly modern spirit, but he conceived it as a retrieval of the way of the “early Christians” (his preferred term). Opus Dei was, he said, “as old as the Gospel and, like the Gospel, ever new.” He often cited the authority of the Church Fathers. A quick scan of his books online at EscrivaWorks yields many passages from Clement of Alexandria, Ignatius of Antioch, Tertullian, Ambrose, Justin Martyr, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Cyril of Alexandria, Leo the Great, Jerome, lots and lots from John Chrysostom and Gregory the Great, and dozens from Augustine.

These early Christians were not mere ornaments on his pet project. His vocation was itself a return to the sources — the pre-Nicene sources of the life and labor of ordinary, faithful Christians. The journalist John L. Allen, in his book on Opus Dei, described just how radical St. Josemaria’s vision was: “The idea of priests and laity, men and women, all part of one organic whole, sharing the same vocation and carrying out the same apostolic tasks, has not been part of the Catholic tradition, at least since the early centuries.”

Back in the 1990s (before St. Josemaria’s canonization), the theologian Domingo Ramos-Lissón wrote an excellent study of the man’s patristic influences. It’s titled “The Example of the Early Christians in Blessed Josemaria’s Teachings,” and it’s available free online at the website of the magazine Romana.

Scott Hahn has written what I consider the finest appreciation of St. Josemaria’s reliance on the Fathers. It’s in his recently released book Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace: My Spiritual Journey in Opus Dei. The whole book is great. You really should own it!

Here is Teresa Benedetta’s translation of Pope Benedict’s audience talk on St. Maximus. Raise a prayer, please, for this generous lady, who dutifully and promptly provides same-day translations of the pope’s Sunday Angelus and Wednesday audience addresses every blessed week!

Dear brothers and sisters,

I wish to present today the figure of one of the great Fathers of the Oriental Church in later times. He is the monk St. Maximus who merited from Christian Tradition the title of Confessor for the intrepid courage with which he bore witness – ‘confessed’ – even through suffering, to the integrity of his faith in Jesus Christ, true God and true man, Savior of the world.

Maximus was born in Palestine, the homeland of our Lord, around 580. From his childhood, he was attracted to the monastic life and the study of Scriptures, through the works of Origen, the great master who in the third century had already managed to define the Alexandrian exegetic tradition.

From Jerusalem, Maximus transferred to Constantinople, and from there, because of the barbarian invasions, he sought refuge in Africa. There, he distinguished himself with extreme courage in defense of (Catholic) orthodoxy.

Maximus did not accept any attempt to minimize Christ’s humanity. The theory had emerged that Christ had only one will, the divine. To defend the uniqueness of his being, these advocates rejected that he had his own human will.

At first glance, it might appear that it was good to say Christ only had one will. But St. Maximus saw right away that this would have destroyed the mystery of salvation, because humanness without its own will, a man without his own will, would not be a true man, would have been an amputated man. Therefore the man Jesus Christ would not have been a true man and would not have lived the drama of being human, which consists precisely in the difficulty of conforming our will to the truth of being.

Thus, St. Maximus affirmed with great decision: the Sacred Scripture does not show us an amputated man, without a will, but a complete true man. God, in Jesus Christ, had truly assumed the totality of being human – obviously, except for sin – and therefore, he had a human will. Stated that way, the question was clear: Christ is either a true man or not.

If he is man, then he has human will. But the problem then arises: do we not end up with a dualism? Is this not affirming two complete personalities with reason, will, and feeling? How to overcome this dualism, conserve the completeness of the human being in Christ, and still safeguard the unity of his person, who certainly was no schizophrenic?

St. Maximus demonstrated that man finds his unity, the integration of self, his totality, not in himself, but overcoming himself, getting out of himself. Thus, in Christ, man, stepping out of himself, finds God, the Son of God, and thus, he finds himself.

One need not ‘amputate’ the human Christ to explain the Incarnation. One must simply understand the dynamics of the human being who realizes himself only by stepping out of himself. It is only in God that we find ourselves, our totality and our completeness.

And so we see that it is not the man who is closed in on himself who is the complete man, but it is the man who opens up, who steps out of himself – it is he who becomes complete, who finds himself in the Son of God, finds in him his true humanity.

For St. Maximus, this vision was not merely philosophical speculation: he saw it realized in the actual life of Jesus, especially in the drama of Gethsemane. In that drama of Jesus’s agony, of his anguish about death, of the opposition between the human desire not to die and the divine will which offers the self to death, the entire human drama is played out, the drama of our redemption.

St. Maximus tells us – and we know this is true: Adam (Adam is we ourselves) thought that saying NO was the peak of freedom, that only he who could say No would be truly free, that in order to truly realize his freedom, man should say No to God; that only in that way he will finally be himself, arriving at the peak of freedom.

This tendency was also inherent in Christ’s human nature, but he overcame it, because Jesus saw that No did not represent maximum freedom. Maximum freedom is saying Yes – conformity with the will of God. Only in that Yes does man truly become himself. Only in the great openness of a Yes, in uniting his will with the divine will, can man become immensely open and become ‘divine’.

Adam’s desire was to be like God, meaning, to be completely free. But the man who is closed in on himself is not divine nor is he free. He will be, if he comes out of himself – he will be free when he says Yes. That was the drama of Gethsemane: ‘not my will, but yours, be done”. Transferring one’s will to the divine will, that is how a true man is born. That is how we are redeemed.

In brief, this was the fundamental point that St. Maximus wished to say, and we see that the entirety of being human is in question here, the entire question of our life.

St. Maximus already had problems in Africa defending this vision of man and God. Then he was called to Rome. In 649, he took active part in the Lateran Council, called by Pope Martin I to defend the two wills of Christ, against the edict of the emperor who, in the interests of peace, had forbidden any discussion of the issue.

Pope Martin had to pay a high price for his courage. Although he was in poor health, he was arrested and taken to Constantinople. Tried and condemned to death, his penalty was commutated to exile in the Crimea, where he died on September 16, 655, after two long years of humiliation and torture.

Not much later, in 662, it was the turn of Maximus who – also opposing the emperor – continued to insist: “It is impossible to state that Christ had only one will!” (cfr PG 91, cc 268-269). So, together with two of his disciples, both named Anastasius, Maximus underwent an exhausting trial at a time when he was already past 80.

The imperial tribunal condemned him for heresy to the cruel mutilation of his tongue and his right hand – the two organs through which, in words and writing, Maximus had fought the erroneous doctrine that Christ only had one will.

Finally, the holy monk, thus mutilated, was exiled to the Colchides on the Black Sea where he died at the age of 82, worn out by the sufferings he had undergone, on August 13 of that same year, 662.

Speaking of the life of Maximus, we already referred to his literary work in defense of orthodoxy. We refer in particular to the Dispute with Pirrus, then Patriarch of Constantinople, in which Maximus succeeded to persuade his adversary of his errors. With great honesty, in fact, Pirrus concludes the Dispute this way: “I beg pardon for myself and for those who came before me: through ignorance we reached these absurd thoughts and arguments; I pray that a way may be found to annul this absurdity, while saving the memory of those who erred” (PG 91, c. 352).

Dozens of his important works have come down to us, among which the Mistagoghia stands out, one of St. Maximus’s most important writings which puts together his theological thinking in well-structured synthesis.

St. Maximus’s was not just theological, speculative thinking that was folded in on itself, because it was always oriented towards the concrete reality of the world and its salvation. In this context, for which he had to suffer, he could not avoid philosophical statements that were theoretical: he had to find the sense of life, asking himself: who am I, what is the world?

To man, created in his image and likeness, God had entrusted the mission of unifying the cosmos. Just as Christ had unified man to himself, in man, the Creator had unified the cosmos. He showed us how to unify the cosmos in communion with Christ and thus arrive at a truly redeemed world.

One of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, Hans Urs von Balthasar, referred to this powerful saving vision when, in ‘re-launching’ the figure of Maximus, he defined his thinking as the representative expression of ‘cosmic liturgy’.

In the center of this solemn liturgy is always Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world. The efficacy of his saving action, which definitively unified the cosmos, is guaranteed by the fact that he, although he is God in everything, is also integrally a man, with the ‘energy’ and the will of man.

The life and thought of Maximus remain powerfully illuminated by his immense courage in bearing witness to the integral reality of Christ, without any reduction or compromise. Thus what and who man really is emerges, and how we should live to respond to our calling.

We should live united with God, in order to be united to ourselves and to the cosmos, giving the cosmos itself and mankind the correct form. Christ’s universal Yes also shows us clearly how to give the right context to all other values.

Let us think of values that are rightly defended today such as tolerance, freedom, dialog. A tolerance that can no longer discern good from evil becomes chaotic and self-destructive. In the same way, freedom that does not respect the freedom of others and fails to see the common measure of our respective freedoms, would become anarchy and would destroy authority. Dialog which no longer knows what there is to dialog about becomes empty chatter.

All these values are great and fundamental, but they can remain true values only if they have a unifying reference point to give them authenticity. This reference point is the synthesis of God and the cosmos – the person of Christ in whom we learn the truth about ourselves, and thus learn to place all other values in context because we would discover their authentic meaning.

Jesus Christ is the reference point who gives light to all other values. This is the end point of the testimony by the great Confessor. Thus, ultimately, Christ shows us that the cosmos should become liturgy, the glory of God, and that adoration is the start of true transformation, of the true renewal of the world.

And so I wish to end with a fundamental passage from the works of St. Maximus: “We adore the only Son, together with the Father and teh Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, as it is now, and for all times, and the times after time. Amen.”

St. Maximus is a must-read. Here are two great places to start: On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press “Popular Patristics” Series) and Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings (Classics of Western Spirituality Series).

The Holy Father spoke today on St. Maximus the Confessor. I haven’t yet found a translation. Here’s Catholic News Service‘s coverage:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — If values like tolerance, freedom and dialogue do not have Jesus as their point of reference, they lose their true meaning and can lead to chaos, anarchy and empty chatter, Pope Benedict XVI said.

It is from Jesus that “we learn the truth about ourselves” and how to understand all the values that are upheld rightfully in the world, he said during his June 25 general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

“Tolerance that doesn’t know how to distinguish between good and evil would become chaotic and self-destructive” while absolute freedom that ignores the rights of others “becomes anarchy and destroys authority,” he said.

“Dialogue that no longer knows what it should talk about becomes empty chatter” unless it and all the other great values in the world have a point of reference in the truth which is Christ — “the one absolute value, to whom all worldly values are directed,” he said.

The pope’s remarks were part of his catechesis highlighting the life and teachings of St. Maximus of Constantinople, a monk and doctor of the church who lived in the sixth and seventh centuries.

The pope said this Palestinian-born saint was “a heroic defender” of the church’s teaching in the true humanity of Christ during a time of bitter controversy over Christ’s humanity and divinity.

But the saint knew the negation of Christ’s human will “destroys the mystery of salvation,” the pope said.

He said St. Maximus understood that the salvation of humanity depends on Christ becoming completely and fully human, which includes the freedom to choose to cooperate with divine will.

“Adam — and this Adam includes us — thought that saying ‘no’ would be the greatest freedom; only he who can say ‘no’ would be truly free,” the pope said. Adam believed saying “no” to God would mean he would finally be free to be himself and could realize his full potential, the pope said.

This temptation in human nature was present even in Jesus but he overcame it, said Pope Benedict.

Jesus saw it was not by denying God’s will, but by saying “yes” to God’s plan that brought about “the greatest freedom,” the pope said.

People become their true selves only when they unite with the will of the divine, he said.

“Only by leaving ourselves behind, by being outside ourselves and in God do we find ourselves and our totality and completeness,” he said.

A feast of the Fathers convenes in Detroit July 7-10 with the Orientale Lumen Conference. The theme is “Feast Days of the Eastern Churches.” The organizers have reduced the price for the conference by half — a discount of $200 from the announced fees.
 
It’s not too late to register online, or download the registration form and fax it in.
 
The website is here, and the registration form is here. Phone number is
703-691-8862.

Please, please spread the word.

Speakers:

Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia
Greek Orthodox Church
Oxford, England

Archbishop Nathaniel
Romanian Orthodox Episcopate, OCA
Detroit, MI, USA

Bishop Ibrahim Ibrahim
Chaldean Catholic Church
Detroit, MI, USA

Archimandrite Robert Taft, SJ
Pontifical Oriental Institute
Rome, Italy

Father Thomas Loya
Byzantine Catholic Church
Chicago, IL, USA

Sister Vassa Larin
Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia
Munich, Germany

Dr. Richard Schneider
Saint Vladimir’s Seminary, OCA
New York, NY, USA

Bishop Nicholas Samra (Moderator)
Melkite Greek-Catholic Church
Detroit, MI, USA

Each speaker will give a plenary session followed by a panel discussion and questions from the audience.

Ben C. Smith leads us to a site of many public-domain ancient Greek texts.

And while we’re at it: Does anyone know what happened to the Patrologia Graeca? I suspected it was too good to be true.