Patristic (and Vatican) soundings on the question of Communion on the tongue.

Sorry for my absence. While Papa Benedetto was charming the people of the Eastern States (and a huge TV audience), I was away from all media on a father-son trip (planned long ago) to the Gettysburg Battlefield. I returned to looming, threatening, dark stormclouds of deadlines.

But there’s so much I’ve wanted to send your way.

Discovery Network has posted an interesting piece on earthquake archeology. Natural disasters may not interest you much, but they will if you’ve read Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity (and its helpful sequel Cities of God). In a long discussion of natural disasters in antiquity, Stark notes that Antioch alone suffered from hundreds of significant earthquakes during the centuries when Christianity was just emerging. These caused the population to plummet, but the Church’s numbers to rise. Why? Christianity provided the most satisfying explanation for the “Why?” of natural disasters. What’s more, the Christian ethic of self-giving created a community that increased survival rates for those who were under Christian care. And if pagans survived thanks to Christian care, they were likely to convert.

The cultural effects were seismic, causing major tectonic shifts.

Anyway, the Discovery Network article does mention some early Christian centers. Use your imagination.

Sister Macrina continues her conversation on matters patristic, focusing now on “the way the Fathers often appear to be dealt with in western academic circles.”

…for patristics appears to be viewed largely in historical terms – if it appears in academic programmes then this is often together with Church History. Now I certainly have nothing against Church History. But my own interest in the Fathers is not simply to understand them in their historical context, important as this is. My interest in the Fathers is theological, but this is not simply an abstract interest in which they can be used as source material for building elaborate theological artifices or an armoury for defending particular positions. It is rather concerned with their life-giving role in passing on a living Tradition which is able to feed and sustain, but also challenge and transform.

Now this does not mean that we don’t need historical knowledge, nor does it deny that the Fathers are indeed a rich resource into which we can tap. And it also doesn’t exclude critical study, an appreciation of different traditions and our posing of awkward questions. But when such a critical approach loses its rootedness in the Fathers’ own commitment to ascesis, conversion and prayer, to being taken up in and transfigured into the Mystery of Christ, then it doesn’t seem to have much point.

New Testament scholar Darrell Pursiful alerts us to a new Yahoo group to discuss the Didache. He says:

The Didache is an ancient Christian document, often described as a “church order.” It is very old; in fact, many believe it is contemporary with the New Testament era (I would be one of those). There are even theories out there that make it a possible influence on some of the NT documents.

Darrell has been blogging much and well on the development of the ancient liturgies.

You should visit A Vow of Conversation. Sister Macrina reads deeply in the Fathers and blogs eloquently. For some time, she’s been pondering Andrew Louth’s Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology. She posted an excerpt, The Fathers on Theologia, that you should read.

It illuminates this paragraph from the Catechism:

236 The Fathers of the Church distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia). “Theology” refers to the mystery of God’s inmost life within the Blessed Trinity and “economy” to all the works by which God reveals himself and communicates his life. Through the oikonomia the theologia is revealed to us; but conversely, the theologia illuminates the whole oikonomia. God’s works reveal who he is in himself; the mystery of his inmost being enlightens our understanding of all his works. So it is, analogously, among human persons. A person discloses himself in his actions, and the better we know a person, the better we understand his actions.

Pope Benedict has gone back to the Fathers. Here’s the audience for April 9, on the Holy Father’s ancient namesake.

Teresa Benedetta translates:

Dear brothers and sisters,

I wish to speak today about St. Benedict, founder of Western monasticism, and also the Patron of my pontificate.

I will begin with a statement by St. Gregory the Great, who wrote of St. Benedict: “The man of God who shone on this earth with so many miracles does not shine any less for the eloquence with which he knew how to present his teaching” (Dial. II, 36).

The great Pope wrote these words in 592. The sainted monk had died some 50 years earlier and was still alive in the memory of the faithful, above all, in the flourishing religious Order that he established.

St. Benedict of Norcia, with his life and his work, has exercised a fundamental influence on the development of European civilization and culture.

The most important source about his life is the second book of Dialogues by St. Gregory the Great. It is not a biography in the classical sense. According to the idea of his times, the great Pope wanted to illustrate, through the concrete example of a person – of St. Benedict’s, precisely – the ascent on the slope of meditation. Thus, he gave us a model of human life as an ascent towards the peak of perfection.

St. Gregory the Great also recounts, in this book of Dialogues, many miracles performed by the saint. Even in this, he did not simply want to narrate something wondrous, but to show how God – by admonishing, aiding and even punishing man – intervenes in the concrete situations of human life.

He wanted to show that God is not a remote hypothesis situated at the origins of the world but that he is present in the life of man, of every man.

This perspective taken by the ‘biographer’ can also be explained in the general context of Pope Gregory’s time: on the cusp of the fifth adn 6th centuries, the world was involved in a tremendous crisis of values and institutions caused by the fall of the Roman Empire, the invasion of new peoples and the decadence of customs.

By presenting St. Benedict as a ‘luminous star’, Gregory wished to show – in that grave situation, right here in the city of Rome – a way out of the ‘dark night of history’ (cfr John Paul II, Teachings, II/1, 1979, p. 1158).

In fact, the work of St. Benedict, particularly his Rule, proved to be the bearer of an authentic spiritual ferment, which, in the course of centuries – far beyond the confines of his native land and his time – changed the face of Europe, by inspiring, after the collapse of the political unity created by the Roman Empire, a new spiritual and cultural unity: that of the Christian faith shared by the peoples of the continent.

That is exactly how the reality we call Europe came into being.

St. Benedict is thought to have been born around 480, and according to St. Gregory, he came “ex provincia Nursiae” – out of the region of Nursia. His well-to-do parents sent him to Rome to be educated.

St. Gregory points out quite credibly that the young Benedict found the lifestyle of many of his schoolmates distasteful – they lived dissolutely, and he did not wish to make the same mistakes. He wanted ‘to please God only’: “soli Deo placere desiderans” (II Dial., Prol 1).

Therefore, before he could complete his studies, Benedict left Rome and retreated to the solitude of the mountains east of the city. After first staying in a village called Effide (today Affile), where he was associated for some time weith a ‘religious community’ of monks, he became a hermit in nearby Subiaco.

He lived there for three years competely alone in a cave, which since the High Middle Ages, has been the heart of the Benedictine monastery called Sacro Speco.

Benedict’s time in Subiaco, a time of solitude with God, was for him a time of maturation. Here he had to bear and overcome the three basic temptations to every human being: the temptation of self-assertion and the desire to place oneself at the center of things; the temptation of the senses; and finally, the temptation of anger and revenge.

In fact, Benedict was convinced that it was only after having conquered these temptations that he would be able to say anything useful to others who were in need.

Thus, with his soul becalmed, he became able to fully control the impulses of the ego to become a man who could create peace around him. It was only then that he decided to found his first monasteries in the Anio valley, near Subiaco.

In 529, Benedict left Subiaco to establish himself in Montecassino. Some have interpreted his move as a flight from the intrigues of an envious local prelate. But this has been shown to be unconvincing since the prelate’s sudden death did not cuase Benedict to return (II Dial. 8).

In fact, his decision came about because he had entered a new phase of interior maturation and of his monastic experience. According to Gregory the Great, Benedict’s transfer from the remote Anio valley to Monte Cassino – a height which dominates the surrounding plains and is visible from afar – had a symbolic nature: that a hidden monastic life has its reasons, but that a monastery also has a public purpose for the life of the Church and of society – it should give visibility to faith as a force of life.

In fact, when, on March 21, 547, Beneict’s earthly existence ended, he left – with his Rule and the Benedictine family he founded – a patrimony which has borne fruit throughout the world in the centuries that followed, to the present time.

In the entire second book of Dialogs, St. Gregory shows us how the life of St. Benedict was immersed in prayer, the defining foundation of his existence. Without prayer, there is no experience of God.

But Benedict’s spirituality was not an interiority remote from reality. In the unease and confusion of his time, he lived under the eye of God, and thus, he never lost sight of the duties of daily life and of man with his concrete needs.

Seeing God, he understood the reality of man and his mission. In his Rule, he desscribed monastic life as “a school in the service of the Lord” (Prol. 5) and asked his monks “not to place anything ahead of the Work of God” (that is, the Divine Office and the Liturgy of the Hours)(43,3).

But he underscored that prayer is, in the first place, an act of listening to God (Prol 9-11), which must then be translated into concrete action.

“The Lord expects us to respond daily with deeds to his holy teachings”, he says (Prol. 35). Thus, the life of a monk becomes a fruitful symbiosis between action and contemplation “so that God may be glorified in everything” (57,9).

In contrast to facile, egocentric self-realization, which is often exalted today, the first and irrenuciable commitment of a disciple of St. Benedict is the sincere quest for God (58,7) along the humble and obedient way shown by Christ (5,13), to whose love nothing and no one should come ahead (4,21; 72,11), thus becoming, in the service of others, a man of service and peace.

In the exercise of obedience as an act of faith inspired by love (5,2), the monk achieves humility (5,1), to which the Rule devotes an entire chapter (7). In this way, man conforms ever more to Christ and attains true self-realization as a creature in the image and likeness of God.

To the obedience of the disciple must correspond the wisdon of the Abbot, who, in the monastery, ‘takes the place of Christ’ (2,2; 63,13). His figure, described above all in the second chapter of the Rule, with a profile of spiritual beauty and demanding commitment, could be considered a self-portrait of Benedict since, as Gregory the Great writes – “the Saint could not teach what he himself had not lived” (Dial II,6).

The Abbot should be a tender father as well as a severe teacher (2,24), a true educator. Inflexible against vices, he is called above all to imitate the kindness of the Good Shpeherd (27,8), and “to help rather than to dominate” (64,8), “to emphasize more with deeds than with words everything that is good and holy” and to “illustrate the divine commandments with his example” (2,12).

In order to be able to decide ressponsibly, the Abbot should himself listen to “the advice of his brothers” (3,2), because “often God reveals the best solution to the youngest” (3,3). This disposition makes a Rule written almost 15 centuries ago surprisingly modern! A man with public responsibility, even in small circles, should always know how to listen and to learn from what he hears.

Benedict describes the Rule as “minimal, intended only as a beginning”(73,8). In fact, it offers instructions useful not only to monks, but to all those who seek a guide in their way towards God.

Because of its measured perspective, its humanity and its sober discernment between the essential and the secondary in spiritual life, the Rule has been able to maintain its illuminating power up to our day.

Paul VI, proclaiming St. Benedict a Patron of Europe on October 22, 1964, wished thereby t oacknowledge the marvelous work carried out by the Saint through his Rule towards the formation of European civilization and culture.

Europe today – just emerging from a century profoundly wounded by two world wars and the collapse of major ideologies that proved to be tragic utopias – is in search of its identity.

To create a new and lasting unity, political, economic and juridical instruments are certainly important, but an ethical and spiritual renewal drawing from the Christian roots of the continent must also be inspired, otherwise Europe cannot be reconstructed.

Without this vital lymph, man remains exposed to the danger of falling to the ancient temptation of self-redemption – a utopia which caused, in various ways during the 20th century, as John Paul II pointed out, “an unprecedented regression in the tormented history of mankind” (Teachings, XIII/1, 1990, p. 58).

In seeking true progress, let us heed the Rule of St. Benedict even today as a light for our way. The great monk remains a true teacher in whose school we can learn the art of living true humanism.

Roger Pearse has posted full text of Cyril of Alexandria’s great Commentary on Luke. He talks about it here.

Gashwin Gomes gets us up-close and personal with St. Ambrose’s bones!