Tag: <span>Sanctification</span>

January 1, 2021December 28, 2020

Θεοτόκος, the God-Bearer

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

The first reading and the Psalm today talk about God blessing His people. What a perfect theme for the feast of Mary, the Mother of God–for in the creation and sanctification of this model woman, God blessed His people indeed.

If we look at the core of many the heresies in the Church–for example, the great early heresies of Arianism and Nestorianism, in the face of which this title for Mary was proclaimed, and then the great Protestant heresies concerning salvation–we find an interesting theme.

Perhaps surprisingly, the theme is not one of trivializing sin, or one of disobedience to God/resistance to following key elements of His will. Quite the contrary. The theme is one of resisting the notion that God, in His redemptive act, can and wants to sanctify us profoundly, to the core, and exalt us to substantive participation in the divine nature.

God’s plan for us is literally so glorious that we find it too good to be true.

The early heresy Arianism’s brand of dumbing down God’s plan to create profound union between God and man was to deny this union first and foremost in Christ Himself, denying that Christ was truly God. Arius, the primary proponent of the heresy, found the notion of God Incarnate simply too much to fit in His brain. (Understandably, for truly it is too much to fit in any brain.)

The title of Theotokos or Mother of God was proclaimed in response to Nestorianism, which held essentially that the divine and human cannot mix–that Christ was basically two entities, divine and human, rather than being a single Person with two natures combined in Himself.

And so, like all things with Mary, proclamations in reference to her are directly targeted at glorifying a reality about her Son–in this case, the reality that the baby she carried within her was in fact God Himself, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

The soteriology (salvation theology) of the key proponents of the Protestant Reformation essentially held that God does not sanctify us to the core; rather, He leaves us corrupt, but when He sees His Son in the flesh, He is so pleased with Him that He provides salvation to those who believe in Him.

The most exciting reality in our Christian life paradoxically has also been the most difficult for theologians to bear: That, in saving and sanctifying us, God fully purifies our nature and exalts us through intimate union with Himself to heights that we cannot even imagine, bvy means of the true, real, profound union of human and divine natures in His Son.

Theologians’ difficulty with this reality give evidence of the profoundly palpable damage that original sin and our own sin have wrought on our human psyche. The depths of the fall are such that we find it very hard to imagine being fully lifted from them.

But we must remember: No matter how close we come to God in this life, until we reach our eternal destiny, we are part of a broken world that–while not preventing God’s sanctifying action–affects us to the core of our psychology. Only faith and trust in His promise can lead us to judgements free of that false and temporary downward pull, and can lead us to taste, even here, the freedom of the Sons of God.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Chat with Mary about the great things He did in her life, by calling her to be Mother of God and herself to be exalted in glory and sanctification that her earthly self could never have imagined. Ask her to give you the same simplicity of faith that she had–not one that needs to understand the “how” of God’s promise in order to trust in it fully.

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December 23, 2020December 21, 2020

He Shall Purify

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

We know that Scripture is divinely inspired and believe that the Holy Spirit Himself guided the pen of those special individuals who authored what would come to be collected into Jewish Sacred Scripture and then the New Testament, forming the Bible.

The same level of prominence and guarantee of direct divine intervention is not spoken of in relation to the organization of Scriptures in our Catholic liturgy–but there is no doubt that we can see the same hand at work guiding this effort of organization. On so many days, the profound fulfillment of the Old Testament readings chosen in the Gospel passage is beautiful and multi-layered.

On many occasions, the Old Testament prophecies serve to add spiritual and emotional depth of understanding to the events historically laid out relatively plainly in the New Testament.

Today’s first reading is nearly unparalleled in this regard, except perhaps when one considers prophecies such as that of the suffering servant in Isaiah read on Good Friday (cf. Is. 53).

And the stunning element of today’s organization of Scriptures is not necessarily just that the Old Testament reading foreshadows or clarifies today’s Gospel passage, but that the two work together–in different ways–to foreshadow and shed brilliant, vividly colorful light on the event that we will celebrate imminently at Christmas.

There are two concepts in particular that leap off the page in the first reading. First, the word “Suddenly.” “Suddenly there will come to the temple the LORD whom you seek.” The word “Suddenly” implies something unexpected, in a sense unprepared-for.

And indeed, what did man do to prepare the coming of God in the flesh, or to bring about this mad miracle of God’s love? Absolutely nothing. Until the Annunciation of the angel Gabriel to Mary, there is no evidence that any human on the planet ever dared conceive of such a radical form of divine action–even though that action was foreshadowed in the divinely inspired Old Testament Scriptures.

The miracle of the Incarnation of God in human flesh–this wonderful, unexpected initiative of God in response to our black, ugly, and hopeless rejection of Him in sin–is subject of endless fruitful contemplation and meditation. If He will take this level of creative initiative relative to the whole of the human race, what initiative will He not take in your life, if you sincerely and repeatedly invite Him in!

The second concept that leaps from today’s page is the tidy summation of the entire story arc and intent of the Incarnate Savior’s mission.

“And he will purify the sons of Levi, refining them like gold or like silver that they may offer due sacrifice to the LORD. Then the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will please the LORD, as in the days of old, as in years gone by.”

There is not a single human being whom God creates whom He does not intend for eternal salvation, by the power of His Son’s sacrifice. But He also knows full well the many who will reject that gift and fall short of salvation. In the end, the final objective of His incarnate act is the “Sons of Levi”–those who willingly offer themselves to Him.

Now, one may think of the “Sons of Levi”–Levites being the priests of the Old Testament–as an image the continuum of the ministerial priesthood between the Old and New Testaments, but that is not the meaning considered in this reflection. This reflection, rather, considers this term as a metaphor for the continuum of the entire People of God between Old and New Testaments, in their common sharing of the priestly mission, the so-called common priesthood of the faithful. By that common priesthood, the entire people of God participates in the offering of sacrifice to God.

From the moment after the fall of Adam and Eve, with the sacrifices of Cain and Abel, the People of God have been making sacrifices to God representing their desire to give their very selves back to Him, recognizing that this effort involves atonement for the grave error of sin, both of the individual and of our race.

But these sacrifices are mere symbols with no effect, until Jesus comes and makes the gift of the human self back to God, with its element of atonement, actually real, possible and effective.

He does this first of all by offering Himself as THE pleasing sacrifice, single-handedly winning for us the re-opening of the door to Heaven.

But the reading points to another element of the glorious power of this act. In His redemptive act, begun with His Incarnation, the Word made flesh actually purifies the sons of Levi–that THEY may offer unto the Lord due sacrifice. Or as an ancient Catholic translation puts it, an offering in justice; or as Handel’s Messiah puts it, an offering in righteousness.

This purification of each of us is necessary, not just to offer as a race our great Sacrifice, which is Christ Himself, but also to offer in a finite way, seconding that sacrifice, our very selves. In His redemptive act, Jesus purifies us to be a truly and actually righteous part of His acceptable gift, which is elevated through His merit to a dignity that we cannot even fathom while in our earthly lives.

THIS is the great story arc of Jesus’ Incarnation, and it is worthy of a whole season’s meditation.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus: Come, Lord, come this Christmas and purify me! Set the trajectory for my life that You choose–one that, even if it incorporates some suffering, will fully purify my gift of self to You to be an offering in righteousness. I open the door of my heart completely to You, the great Refiner, with your fire of purification, and I do so without fear. Come, Lord Jesus!

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November 2, 2020October 17, 2020

The Day of the Dead

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

All Souls Day. On this day we commemorate specifically, as can be seen from our readings, all those Christian souls who have passed on from this life, who have gone before us. We think of and pray for the dead.

The readings are not all about Purgatory. They are about the dead, and how their hope in God is not in vain. The readings are all about hope.

The readings are not all about Purgatory, but this day is. If it were not so, there would be no All Souls Day–only yesterday’s feast, All Saints Day. The definition of a saint is one who is in Heaven. If all faithful Christians who passed were in Heaven, All Saints Day and All Souls Day would be the same thing.

Yet, this is not “Purgatory Day,” but rather, “All Souls Day.” The focus is not on the difficult purification that souls must undergo after death prior to reaching Heaven but rather, appropriately, on the value of the faithful Christian soul itself, how God cherishes it, and how He holds it in His hand.

As such, we could thing that Purgatory is something of an eccentric, even embarrassing doctrine, one that no one really understands and no one knows what to do with.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. The first reading underscores the meaning of Purgatory perfectly: “As gold in the furnace, He proved them.”

Purgatory is actually critical and central to what is essential to Christian doctrine: Namely, the process of salvation and sanctification.

Jesus came to shed His blood for us. This was a big deal. He wasn’t going to do that and leave us in a state of half-baked mediocrity.

No, Jesus came for the big prize. He came for our complete purification and sanctification in order to realize–as the object of the game–our complete exaltation. He wanted nothing less for us than a true and transforming participation in the divine nature. You don’t get that unless your free will is completely and totally centered on Him, purified from any other attachments. The big prize.

To insist, however, that this purification come to complete fulfillment in this broken world, full of the fruits of sin and constant temptation, would be harsh. Most of us who are striving to choose God consistently, and keep away from the complete rejection of His path for us that is serious sin, will, however, die with some attachment to creatures and some habits of lesser sin that we have not shaken. These habits constitute weaknesses and impurities that would cause undo suffering in the presence of God.

“As gold in the furnace, He proved them.” There are some who posit that the purifying fire of Purgatory is the presence of the fullness of God’s love itself, which causes suffering in our souls due to their unworthy attachments. That this love itself is what burns away the impurities in the gold.

Whatever the case, Purgatory–purification after death–is a mercy, both because God does not allow us to be condemned due to our minor attachments, and because He allows us a finite period after death by which our souls reach the fully sanctified state for which He created us. It is a mercy because, despite minor faults with which we may die, we still come to reach the fullness of the elevated destiny won for us in Christ–the glory of which we cannot even begin to fathom here on earth.

There is a further mercy about Purgatory: The Church teaches us that we can lighten/shorten the time of souls’ purification through our prayers for them. One can infer here that our prayers bring special grace to fortify these souls, as protein does a body builder, as they go through their spiritual “workout” after death. Prayers for the dead are our way of participating in mercy of God by which He prepares them for profound eternal union with Himself.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Think of persons you have loved, who have passed. Speak to Jesus about them, about the reasons He loves them so much, what He loves about them. Ask Him to speed their period of purification, if it is still ongoing (and if not, to apply your prayers to another soul in need). Consider visiting a cemetery today or in the next couple of days. If you do and you pray for your special departed friend there, fulfilling some basic requirements you will find here, you can win for them immediate culmination of their purification and entry into Heaven. Also: Read through the readings for today again, and praise God for the hope He gives to us for eternal salvation and sanctification.

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October 19, 2020October 19, 2020

Fundamental Transformation

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

St. Paul provides an eloquent name for the effect of original sin within us in the first reading when he says that we were “by nature children of wrath.” Original sin twisted our nature itself, the nature we were born into.

But he also provides a window into one of the most exciting things about Christianity: That in saving us, Jesus does not simply ignore that spoiling of our nature, but actually restores it and recreates it for good: “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared in advance.”

The reality of Paul’s words may not be self-evident as we suffer, frustrated, the temptations and inclinations of our fallen nature, which seem no less potent than they are for the unbaptized.

The reality is that, because of His respect for human freedom, Jesus does not transform and recreate our nature from one moment to the next, when He enters our souls with His grace at baptism. Rather, He undertakes this work of re-creation in the ambit in which we dwell–the ambit of time–in a gradual manner that respects our limited capacities.

Hence the importance of collaborating with Him joyfully, actively, daily, consistently, through a committed life of prayer and the sacraments, and through a following of His ascetic teachings in the Gospel–including today’s teaching on avoiding the temptation to obsess over our material security and welfare to the point that it is a disproportionate priority in our lives.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to help you trust that He is the protagonist of your transformation, and that He has a plan for it that He will execute as long as you give your heart to Him in a real and practical way each day.

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