On this page: The Mother of all the Faithful and Sermon on Independence Day, 2010
 The Mother of all the Faithful:Sermon for the Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin also called the Assumption of our Lady,on the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity (2010)
Behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things to me, and holy is his Name. [Luke 1:48b-49]
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
On this day, we celebrate the heavenly birthday of the Mother of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. As is true of all the feasts of the saints, the most basic theme of this one is the grace of God shown forth in the life of people. In keeping this particular feast, we focus our attention on the fulfillment of God’s grace displayed in the ongoing life of a Jewish maiden who, by that grace with which he filled her, faithfully and obediently accepted the call to a unique and indispensable role in God’s purpose. Because it continues in him who is the God, not of the dead, but of all those who live in him, her life participates in and shows the power of his Redemption and his Mediation for us before the Throne of God. In this, she is like all the saints in Christ, but to a supreme degree.
Mary’s role is unique in that he to whom she gave birth is the one and only divine Savior of mankind. Never before was there, and never again will there be, anyone called upon to such a ministry and service. Her role is indispensable in that, for God to show his mercy without violating his justice, it was necessary that he assume fully our human nature with the free consent of the one he called to provide it.
It is worth considering that, in the blended light of Revelation and Reason – the dogma of our Lord’s virginal conception and what we now know about human genetics – everything that Jesus shares with us in terms of his humanity is supplied through Mary, even as everything that he shares with God in terms of his divinity is supplied through the Holy Ghost. It is also worth noting that, in strict theological terms, it is not too much to accord Mary the status of the greatest human person who ever lived, for as we are taught through the definition of Chalcedon – echoing the teaching of Pope St Leo the Great – the Lord’s nature (his “what-ness”) is fully human and fully divine, but his Person (his “Who-ness”) is wholly divine. It was necessary that Jesus be fully Man, in order to represent us before the Father, and that he also be fully God in order that he might save us. Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed, he is “God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man of the substance of his Mother, born in the world” and he accomplishes his work “not by the conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by the taking up of the manhood into God.”
Now, for a variety of reasons – most of them understandable, but not all of them good – there is often a reluctance among many good Christian people to deal with Mary’s unique and indispensable role in the drama of our salvation. For some, she is thought of –when she is thought of at all – as simply “a dead Roman Catholic,” or as a figurine in the crèche to be packed away after Christmas.
Others see the threat of idolatry looming behind any acknowledgment of her uniquely exalted place in the kingdom of God. To be sure, there are many examples of devotion to her that run to excessive and theologically insupportable lengths. But to forget or to downplay or to misrepresent her importance is not merely unnecessary, but dangerous.
The reason many good Christians – even high-church Anglicans – shy away from venerating the Blessed Virgin Mary is that they fear that honor given to her detracts from that due to her divine Son. This might be true if love were quantifiable, but genuine love is not divided or diminished by having more than one object, (and who better to understand this than a Mother?) though its quality and expression will differ according to the nature of its object. Further, it is the tendency of genuine love –following the pattern of the Holy Trinity in Whom and from Whom all love originates – not only to form and strengthen the bond between the persons who love each other, but to overflow and encompass others. (It is this, fundamentally, that lies behind the Church’s consistent condemnation of the use of contraception in the marital act, for the union of husband and wife “in heart, body, and mind” is to image the loving union of the Persons of the Trinity and so to bring forth fruit.)
Through our love for one person, we come to love those whom he loves, and if we do not, then it is worth asking whether our love for him is deficient. If we love Jesus fully, we love him not just in our minds, not just on our lips, but in the members of his Body, all and each, not excluding ourselves. If we begin by genuinely loving him in his saints, then our love for him whom we love in them can only be strengthened and perfected and bear fruit.
To say, “I cannot honor/ pray to/ praise Mary without diminishing or corrupting the honor I give to Jesus,” is substantially no different than saying you cannot admire the “Mona Lisa” without diminishing the regard you have for Leonardo, or that you cannot listen to Bach’s music lest you think less of his genius, or that you cannot commend Dickens’ books for fear that you might not adequately appreciate his greatness. Any of these statements are obviously absurd, for it is through the works of Leonardo or Bach or Dickens that we know not just their greatness, but them.
What is true regarding the sub-creating artist is supremely true of the All-Creating God: To praise His work is to praise Him in His work. Indeed, His work is fully comprehended in the “great glory” for which we praise him. That includes the greatest of his created works – whom we hymn as “higher than the Cherubim, more glorious than the Seraphim” [Hymn 599] – whom Wordsworth called “our tainted nature’s solitary boast” – whose glory is derived entirely from Him, as she herself acknowledges from the first: “For he that is mighty hath magnified me, and holy is his Name.”
Now, it cannot be denied that it is possible, and that it often has happened, that devotion to Mary has become distorted. So has patriotism, and love of family, and love of food and drink, and just about anything else you can name. Idolatry is the risk God runs for creating a world filled with the signs of his presence. However, when idolatry is present, it is so because of a moral failure – generally originating in a failure of imagination – within the idolater. Idolatry is in the idolater, not in the thing of which he makes an idol. The destruction of the idol leaves the fundamental disease untreated, and the idolater will simply shift his misdirected devotion to another object that is less than God. This is the sad case of the “dry drunk,” who having ceased to consume alcohol sets some other substance or activity on the pedestal in the temple of his spirit instead of moving through to him who alone can fill the void and cause all to appear in its proper light.
It is really no accident that many of the very Christian bodies that, in reaction to abuses, have defined themselves as being against the veneration of Mary have evolved into associations that deny – or make optional, which is a “soft denial,” – belief in the divinity of Jesus and his saving work. This is true whether the self-definition in question is openly stated or implied in practice. (It is not an accident, nor is it unconnected, that such bodies tend also to condemn the veneration of the saints general and the acknowledgement of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and in the Church. Soft denials almost always end in firm denials: As the late Fr Richard John Neuhaus said, “Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will be outlawed.” Its corollary is also true: “Where heresy is permitted, heresy will be required.”)
If this is doubted, one need only look at what has happened to those Christian bodies in which denial of the Virgin’s role, whether hard or soft, has taken root: They have tended to become less and less committed to the classical teaching of the Church about the incarnation of Christ and the dignity of man as male and female, and more and more apt to permit sacramental and moral deviance. It is, for example, difficult if not impossible to imagine a church that is committed to the biblical doctrine of the incarnation endorsing or giving even optional approval to such things as abortion or non-marital sexual activity.
This pattern of belief and behavior also accounts for the fact that so often when there are traditionalist revolts against the increasing and inevitable doctrinal and moral corruption of their parent bodies, the reformed churches established in consequence will themselves – sometimes within a generation – begin to show the same tendencies against which they revolted, and yet another schism will result as their own traditionalists flee.
In such cases, the problem invariably is that the reformers have been treating symptoms rather than the disease, that they have not got beyond the symptoms of doctrinal and moral decadence and dealt with the root of the problem. The problem itself is not the entire absence of truth, but a deficiency of truth, the absence of the fullness of truth, which is the plain meaning of the phrase, “the catholic faith” – the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth for everyone, everywhere, and in every age.
That all this is so is no accident, for every doctrine held by Christians about Mary is not just about her, but about Jesus – her Son, God’s Son, and our Lord God incarnate – and every doctrine about Jesus is a doctrine about God the Father, whose will he came to do.
In the fifth century, one of the classic controversies about who Jesus is involved the question of who Mary is. It began with the objection of a Bishop of Constantinople named Nestorius to the habit of the faithful of referring to Mary as “Theotokos,” which best translates into English as “Birth-giver of God,” [L., Dei Genitrix] though we are more familiar with the rendering “Mother of God.” [L., Mater Dei] This popular practice was of such long standing that no one could remember when it began, but Nestorius objected that it was inaccurate: He asserted that a divine person cannot be born and therefore can have no mother. He had no difficulty with a title such as “Christ-bearer,” or “Mother of Jesus,” since it was evident that Mary had given birth to the human child Jesus, but “God-bearer” was unacceptable.
This is where Nestorius showed his hand, though, and this is why his teaching ended up being condemned as heresy by the Council of Ephesus in 431: In order to take such a position, you must believe that Jesus not only has two natures (two “whats,” which is true), but that he is in effect two distinct persons (two “whos”) morally conjoined in a single entity, but in principle separable. This is not the place to go into the details of the dangers of this position, except to say that it is one more way of putting forth the notion that Jesus of Nazareth, while an extraordinarily good man, is not really God. If that is true, to borrow Saint Paul’s phrase, we are still dead in our sins, for if he is not God, he cannot save.
Though it took another twenty years to reach its classic formulation, the teaching of the Church from which Nestorius dissented had been, was then, and remains that Jesus has two natures joined in one divine Person: What he is, is human and divine. Who he is, is God. So if the Son of God is also the Son of Mary, then who she is, is the Mother of God.
I was once told that there was a story current among some of the Desert Fathers of the third and fourth centuries to the effect that everything had been in readiness for the incarnation four hundred years before it actually took place, but that the woman called to the mission said, “no.” I’m sure there is no historical truth in this story, and that the originators intended no assertion of historical truth in the telling of it. Instead, their intent was to underline the fact that there was a real option presented to God’s chosen vessel, Mary. In God’s plan, what was done by the free consent of the will of our first parents – rejecting God’s call to holiness by opting to believe the serpent’s lies about a shortcut to happiness – had to be undone by the free consent of a human will accepting through grace the call to bear the Holy One. In order for that choice to be truly free, the human person to which it was offered had to be unimpaired – free of the taint of that inborn bondage of the will which makes us tend to do our own will in preference to that of our Creator. Forcing people to participate in his plan is simply not God’s way. He does not make us offers we cannot refuse, but he does give us the grace to accept his call. So he did with Mary, in a unique, prevenient, and abundant way, and in that grace she freely accepted the call. Therefore, all generations indeed call her blessed.
Because of this, she is seen as an example of faithful submission to the will of God which is exceeded only by that of her Son. Mary is the chief model after Jesus for the faithful Christian and the faithful Church.
When we are being faithful, we understand ourselves as did Mary at the Annunciation – as the handmaiden of the Lord. We understand our role to be the same as Mary’s at the wedding of Cana – to intercede with Jesus about the needs of humanity and then to point them to Jesus and say, “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” (These, by the way and most significantly, are chronologically the last words of Mary recorded in Scripture.) We realize, as did she, her that while we are blessed in bearing the Word of God, we are even more blessed when we keep it (and upon whose lap was it that this Child was taught what as God he knew?). We recognize that, as the Lord from the Cross committed her into the care of Saint John, so has he committed us into the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, in which we are to continue in the breaking of the bread and the prayers. Finally, we recognize that, as we imitate her faith and obedience, we are preparing for the Lord to take us to himself, as he has taken her to himself, and to set upon us, as he has set upon her, the crown of glory that fadeth not away. The more we enter into this realization, the more we with Mary will magnify the Lord, and rejoice in him who does great things to us, for us, in us, and through us.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Saint Peter’s Church
Waynesville, North Carolina
August 15, 2010
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Sermon for Independence Day (2010)
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Each of us is – and all of us are – driven by two basic human spiritual needs: The need for freedom and the need for order. This is a reflection of the fact that we have been made in the image of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and called into his likeness. In him is absolute freedom and perfect order, and the definition of our happiness – the object of the life that we pursue in liberty – is to be wholly free and perfectly ordered to the highest degree possible for created beings.
On this day when we give special thanks for the freedoms we enjoy in these United States, it would be a good idea for us to think about just what we think freedom is and whether what we think measures up to what God has told us about its nature and purpose.
When we use the word “freedom,” we can mean one of two things: We can mean, “the liberty to do whatever my passions tell me,” or “the liberty to do what makes me more genuinely human.” We can mean “freedom to do” – which technically is called “initial freedom” – or we can mean “freedom to be” – which is called “terminal freedom.” One kind has to do with what we want; the other with what we need. The first kind has to do with satisfying our appetite – at least temporarily; the second has to do with doing our duty. The first has to do with what we desire; the second with what we require. The two meanings of “freedom” are not necessarily in conflict, but it is possible to misuse our freedom to do whatever we can to the extent that we lose both it and our ability to become what we are called to be.
The late Father Homer Rogers of Saint Francis’ Church in Dallas said,
I have the duty to perfect and fulfill myself, and therefore I have the right to strive for and seek my true happiness. Because I have that duty, I have that right. It is a stark naked political fact that I only have those rights which correspond to my duties. I have no inalienable right which is not the right to fulfill a duty. In practice the only liberties which men will actually fight and die for are those rights which enable them to do their duty. If I tell an atheist that he isn’t going to be allowed to worship on Sunday, he wouldn’t care. If I am convinced that it is my duty to worship God on Sunday and you tell me I can’t, I’ll fight you. These have to do with terminal freedoms. [The Romance of Orthodoxy, Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1991. Page 37.]
This distinction seems clearly to have been understood by the founders of this republic, and it is vitally important for us to remember that they declared our political independence of Britain because their experience over the years demonstrated that there was no reasonable alternative course of action that would enable them to keep their freedom to do their duty. Independence is not a good in itself but is good only insofar as the end to which it is directed is good.
Because most of the Founders were Christians – and those few who weren’t still acted out of assumptions that sprang from the Christian tradition – they recognized that the fundamental rights of man are gifts that governments cannot confer. Governments can only recognize and secure these rights. It is worth noting that a look at the plain text of such documents as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights makes it clear that the rights to which they refer existed before they were named, and would exist if no one ever named them.
In the collect for this day we acknowledge God to be the source and origin of our liberties in this land, and we ask him for “grace to maintain these liberties in righteousness and peace.” Christians recognize that there is an essential connection between freedom and moral virtue: You cannot keep one without the other. The conventional wisdom says that it is impossible to legislate morality, but this is true only in the sense that it is impossible by statute to change people’s hearts and minds. Otherwise, it ignores the fact that there is no legislation that is not at least implicitly derived from some sort of morality and thence from some kind of answer to the question, “what is really real?” In the end, no one has the right to do wrong, and when a government begins to legislate against “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” when it abandons its commission to “truly and impartially administer justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice, and to the maintenance of … true religion and virtue,” when by positive enactment it sets wrong on the throne or by permissive neglect stands aside while wickedness assumes the seat of power, it has ceased to have binding authority and may – and in some cases must – in good conscience be resisted and replaced.
In a free and open society, the sustained absence of moral virtue leads to the loss both of freedom and openness, for if there is one thing that people cannot stand, it is absence of order. If there is anarchy, they will sacrifice their freedom in exchange for stability. When any society is governed by a faction which, through ignorance or malice, seeks to overthrow its founding principles and to create crises which it then can pretend to solve by an increase of government’s coercive power, the peril is great indeed that such a society will “morph” into one that is despotic and closed.
In such a despotic and closed society, moral virtue is stunted: One of the most noxious effects of tyranny is the corrosive effect it has on social relationships. A tyranny eventually makes of everyone a criminal, unless he is happens to be one of the criminals who hold power. In such a twisted social order, those with power oppress and plunder those who have no power, and those who are without power are persistently engaged in deceiving their overlords, or currying their favor by ratting on their fellows, or both.
The realization of this basic fact of civil life is what led to John Adams’ famous assertion that, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” It is what led George Washington to point out in his Farewell Address that, “It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government.” It is what led Robert E. Lee to say, “I cannot consent to place in the control of others one who cannot control himself.”
Now, at this point we need to stop and remember that there is no morality that is not dependent upon some sort of religion. It is possible for a society to exist – and to do so for a long time – in which there is a consistent public ethic to which most people adhere and which has effective government, but which is at bottom godless and therefore inhumane. This is exactly what happens when the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is excluded from the social and political consciousness, not only of the state, but of the ordinary citizen.
If someone has told you that you can put your faith to one side while making decisions about your government, then you have been lied to, big time. A lot of people – including a great many professing Christians – have bought that lie. What most of them do not appreciate is that by doing so they have replaced the God whom they profess with another God. You see, we are so made that we cannot not worship: If we will not worship the God who made, saved, and sanctifies us, we will worship another who will destroy us, enslave us, and make us vile. In our time and our society, the names of the substitute gods are many – convenience, happiness, choice, entertainment, self-actualization, for example – but they are all related and they all in the end lead us to personal and social ruin. Each of them focuses us on ourselves as individuals at the expense of other individuals, and the paradoxical truth is that no social system can be humane where man himself – especially man as an individual isolated from other individuals – is the prime focus of attention.
Having said all that, it is also important to remember that the primary object of Christianity is not to promote public morality, good citizenship, or good government. The primary object of Christianity is to bring people to an encounter with God in Jesus Christ that will transform them into his likeness and enable them to become real people – people as authentically human as is Jesus himself. If this is understood, then Christians will be able to endure bad public morality, poor citizenship and tyrannical government. If we persist in this understanding, and allow Christ to live in us, then our godly acts will form godly habits that form godly characters that may become the means whereby God transforms the society in which we live into one that is at the same time both more godly and more genuinely humane. Whether or not this happens, if we remain faithful to the one who calls us and who dwells in us, we will assuredly enter into the full privileges of citizenship in that heavenly country for which our citizenship in this earthly republic is a probation and a preparation.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Saint Peter’s Church, Waynesville
July 4, 2010
[see Appendix for further teaching on Christian social and political doctrine.]
APPENDIX
The Human Community
THE PERSON AND SOCIETY
401. In what does the social dimension of man consist? [1877-1880, 1890-1891]
Together with the personal call to beatitude, the human person has a communal dimension as an essential component of his nature and vocation. Indeed, all are called to the same end, God himself. There is a certain resemblance between the communion of the divine Persons and the fraternity that people are to establish among themselves in truth and love. Love of neighbor is inseparable from love for God.
402. What is the relationship between the person and society? [1881-1882, 1892-1893]
The human person is and ought to be the principle, the subject and the end of all social institutions. Certain societies, such as the family and the civic community, are necessary for the human person. Also helpful are other associations on the national and international levels with due respect for the principle of subsidiarity.
403. What is the principle of subsidiarity? [1883-1885, 1894]
The principle of subsidiarity states that a community of a higher order should not assume the task belonging to a community of a lower order and deprive it of its authority. It should rather support it in case of need.
404. What else is required for an authentic human society? [1886-1889, 1895-1896]
Authentic human society requires respect for justice, a just hierarchy of values, and the subordination of material and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones. In particular, where sin has perverted the social climate, it is necessary to call for the conversion of hearts and for the grace of God to obtain social changes that may really serve each person and the whole person. Charity, which requires and makes possible the practice of justice, is the greatest social commandment.
PARTICIPATION IN SOCIAL LIFE
405. What is the foundation of the authority of society? [1897-1902, 1918-1920]
Every human community needs a legitimate authority that preserves order and contributes to the realization of the common good. The foundation of such authority lies in human nature because it corresponds to the order established by God.
406. When is authority exercised in a legitimate way? [1901-1904, 1921-1922]
Authority is exercised legitimately when it acts for the common good and employs morally licit means to attain it. Therefore, political regimes must be determined by the free decision of their citizens. They should respect the principle of the “rule of law” in which the law, and not the arbitrary will of some, is sovereign. Unjust laws and measures contrary to the moral order are not binding in conscience.
407. What is the common good? [1905-1906, 1924]
By the common good is meant the sum total of those conditions of social life which allow people as groups and as individuals to reach their proper fulfillment.
408. What is involved in the common good? [1907-1909, 1925]
The common good involves: respect for and promotion of the fundamental rights of the person, the development of the spiritual and temporal goods of persons and society, and the peace and security of all.
409. Where can one find the most complete realization of the common good? [1910-1912, 1927]
The most complete realization of the common good is found in those political communities which defend and promote the good of their citizens and of intermediate groups without forgetting the universal good of the entire human family.
410. How does one participate in bringing about the common good? [1913-1917, 1926]
All men and women according to the place and role that they occupy participate in promoting the common good by respecting just laws and taking charge of the areas for which they have personal responsibility such as the care of their own family and the commitment to their own work. Citizens also should take an active part in public life as far as possible.
SOCIAL JUSTICE
411. How does society ensure social justice? [1928-1933, 1943-1944]
Society ensures social justice when it respects the dignity and the rights of the person as the proper end of society itself. Furthermore, society pursues social justice, which is linked to the common good and to the exercise of authority, when it provides the conditions that allow associations and individuals to obtain what is their due.
412. On what is human equality based? [1934-1935, 1945]
All persons enjoy equal dignity and fundamental rights insofar as they are created in the image of the one God, are endowed with the same rational soul, have the same nature and origin, and are called in Christ, the one and only Savior, to the same divine beatitude.
413. How are we to view social inequalities? [1936-1938, 1946-1947]
There are sinful social and economic inequalities which affect millions of human beings. These inequalities are in open contradiction to the Gospel and are contrary to justice, to the dignity of persons, and to peace. There are , however, differences among people caused by various factors which enter into the plan of God. Indeed, God wills that each might receive what he or she needs from others and that those endowed with particular talents should share them with others. Such differences encourage and often oblige people to the practice of generosity, kindness and the sharing of goods. They also foster the mutual enrichment of cultures.
414. How is human solidarity manifested? [1939-1942, 1948]
Solidarity, which springs from human and Christian brotherhood, is manifested in the first place by the just distribution of goods, by a fair remuneration for work and by zeal for a more just social order. The virtue of solidarity also practices the sharing of the spiritual goods of faith which is even more important than sharing material goods.
[From the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, qq. 401–414. The numbers following the questions refer to paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.]
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