Catholic Metanarrative

Friday, November 28, 2008

Article: The Catholic Origins of Thanksgiving!

TAYLOR MARSHALL

This history books will tell you that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the pilgrims in 1621. Not true.

An interesting bit of trivia is that the first American Thanksgiving was actually celebrated on September 8, 1565 in St. Augustine, Florida. The Native Americans and Spanish settlers held a feast and the Holy Mass was offered.

A second similar "Thanksgiving" celebration occurred on American soil on April 30, 1598 in Texas when Don Juan de Oñate declared a day of Thanksgiving to be commemorated by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The Catholic origins of Thanksgiving don't stop there. Squanto, the beloved hero of Thanksgiving, was the Native American man who mediated between the Puritan Pilgrims and the Native Americans. Squanto had been enslaved by the English but he was freed by Spanish Franciscans. Squanto thus received baptism and became a Catholic. So it was a baptized Catholic Native American who orchestrated what became known as Thanksgiving.

All that being said, Thanksgiving is traditional Protestant and marks the tradition of religious toleration (something in which the Puritan pilgrims did not actually believe -- they set up a "theocracy").

My wife once taught at an high-church Episcopalian/Anglican classical school in Philadelphia. The school consciously played down the significance of Thanksgiving. Why? The reason is simple. At root, Thanksgiving commemorates the good fortune of political and ecclesiastical rebels against the Church of England and the Anglican tradition as a whole.

It all started with Richard Clyfton who was a Church of England parson in Nottinghamshire in the early 1600s. Clifton sympathized with the Separatists of that era. Separatists were Calvinistic non-conformists to the doctrine and liturgy of the Church of England. The Hampton Court Conference held by King James I (1604) condemned those who would not conform to the more outwardly Catholic usages in the Church of England (e.g. robes, candles, bowing the head at the name of Christ, processions). The result was that Richard Clyfton was "defrocked" and stripped of his clerical status in the Church of England. Shortly thereafter Richard Clyfton went to Amsterdam and was followed by his disciples: the Pilgrims.

These Pilgrims moved around a bit until finally coming to America in 1620. An interesting bit of trivia is that one child was born on board the Mayflower while at sea. The child was given the rather lame name: "Oceanus". Poor child.

And let everyone remember that "Thanksgiving" in Greek is Eucharistia. Thus, the Body and Blood of Christ is the true "Thanksgiving Meal".

In 1621, the Pilgrims allegedly celebrated a happy meal with the Native Americans and the rest is history. So why would an Anglican school be against Thanksgiving? It celebrates those who defied the Church of England and the Crown of England.

Now that I'm a no longer an Anglican and now a Catholic, things are a bit different. The penal laws of England regarding non-conformists affected not only the rigorous Calvinistic Puritans in England, but also the English Catholic recusants. The Pilgrims shared the same lot as the Catholic faithful of England. Interestingly enough, the Catholics who lived in Nottinghamshire where the Pilgrims originated were persecuted mercilessly.

So while Thanksgiving may celebrate the Calvinists Separatists who fled England, Catholics might remember the same unjust laws that granted the crown of martyrdom to Thomas More, John Fisher, Edmund Campion, et al. are the same injustices that led the Pilgrims to Plymouth.

Another bit of trivia is that the truly "First Thanksgiving" celebration occurred on American soil on April 30, 1598 in Texas when Don Juan de Oñate declared a day of Thanksgiving to be commemorated by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

And let everyone remember that "Thanksgiving" in Greek is Eucharistia. Thus, the Body and Blood of Christ is the true "Thanksgiving Meal".


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Taylor Marshall. "The Catholic Origins of Thanksgiving!" Canterbury Tales blog (November 24, 2008).

Reprinted with permission of the author, Taylor Marshall.

THE AUTHOR

Taylor Marshall is a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary (MA) and Nashotah Theological House (Certificate in Anglican Studies). He was an Episcopal priest in Fort Worth, Texas before being received into the Catholic Church by Bishop Kevin Vann of Fort Worth.

Taylor was also formerly the Assistant Director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., located three blocks north of the White House, where he lectured regularly. He was served under Archbishop John J. Myers and Msgr. William Stetson for the Pastoral Provision of John Paul II, the canonical structure by which Anglican clergy are received into the Catholic Church and then go on to pursue Holy Orders in the Catholic Church.

He is currently a Ph.D. student in Philosophy at the University of Dallas where he studies Natural Law theory of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae Ia Iaa qq. 94-108). Taylor and his wife live in Dallas, Texas with their five children. He is the author of Does the Pope Wear a Yarmulke: Discovering the Jewish Origins of the Catholic Church, and Saint Paul was a Catholic: The Old Perspective on Paul (both forthcoming). Taylor is also the Editor of Christian and American at: www.christianandamerican.com. He blogs here.

Copyright © 2008 Taylor Marshall

Article: Created Equal


DINESH D’SOUZA

The new atheism is going mainstream. Now atheist groups are taking out signs on public buses that say "Why believe in God? Just be good for goodness sake."

They are also purchasing public banner ads, "Imagine...no religion." The premise of these ads, as of the books by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens that seem have inspired them, is that our society would be better off if we could eradicate the last vestiges of Christianity from it.

In my book What's So Great About Christianity , just out in paperback from Tyndale, I argue that this whole line of attack is based on historical amnesia. I attempt to show that Christianity is responsible for many of the values and institutions that even secular people cherish. Here I emphasize how Christianity has produced our culture's emphasis on equality and human dignity.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal" he claimed that this was a "self-evident" truth. But it is not evident at all. Indeed most cultures throughout history, and even today, reject the proposition. On the face of it, there is something absurd in claiming human equality when all around us we see dramatic evidence of inequality. People are unequal in height, in weight, in strength, in stamina, in intelligence, in perseverance, in truthfulness, and in about every other quality. Inequality seems to be the self-evident reality of human nature.

Jefferson knew this. He was asserting human equality of a special kind. Human beings, he was claiming, are moral equals. They don't all behave equally well, but each of their lives has a moral worth no greater and or no less than that of any other. According to this strange doctrine, the worth of a street sweeper on the streets of Philadelphia was as great as that of Jefferson himself. Each life is valuable, and no one's life is more valuable than that of another.

The preciousness and equal worth of every human life is a Christian idea. Christians have always believed that God places infinite value on each human life He creates, and that He loves each person equally. In Christianity you are not saved through your family or tribe or city. Salvation is an individual matter. Moreover, God has a "vocation" or calling for every one of us, a divine plan for each of our lives. During the Reformation, Martin Luther stressed the individualism of the Christian journey. Not only are we each judged at the end of our lives as individuals, but throughout our lives we also relate to God as individuals. Even religious truth is something that is not just handed down but is something that is worked out through individual study and prayer. These ideas have had momentous consequences.

Human beings were routinely bludgeoned to death or mauled by wild animals in the Roman gladiatorial arena. The greatest of the classical thinkers saw nothing wrong with these practices. Christianity banned them and introduced the moral horror that we now feel when we hear about them.

In the culture of ancient Greece and Rome -- the culture that preceded Christianity -- human life had very little value. The Spartans left weak children to die on the hillside. Infanticide was common, as it is common even today in many parts of the world. Fathers who wanted sons had few qualms about drowning their newborn daughters. Human beings were routinely bludgeoned to death or mauled by wild animals in the Roman gladiatorial arena. The greatest of the classical thinkers saw nothing wrong with these practices. Christianity banned them and introduced the moral horror that we now feel when we hear about them.

"Consult the Bible," Sam Harris writes in Letter to a Christian Nation, "and you will discover that the creator of the universe clearly expects us to keep slaves." Steven Weinberg notes that "Christianity…lived comfortably with slavery for many centuries." These atheist writers are certainly not the first to fault Christianity for its alleged approval of slavery. But slavery pre-dated Christianity by centuries and even millennia. It was widely practiced in the ancient world, from China to India to Greece and Rome. Most cultures regarded slavery as an indispensable institution, like the family. Sociologist Orlando Patterson notes that for centuries, slavery needed no defenders because it had no critics.

Even so, Christianity from its very beginning discouraged the enslavement of fellow-Christians. We read in one of Paul's letters that Paul himself interceded with a master named Philemon on behalf of his runaway slave. "Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while," Paul says, "so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave, but as a brother." How can a slave also be a brother? Christians began to see the situation as untenable. Slavery, the foundation of Greek and Roman civilization, withered throughout medieval Christendom and was replaced by serfdom, which was not the same thing. While slaves were "human tools," serfs were human beings who had rights of marriage, contract, and property ownership that were legally enforceable. And of course serfdom would eventually collapse under the weight of the argument for human dignity.


Moreover, Christians were the first group in history to start an anti-slavery movement.

In England, William Wilberforce spearheaded a campaign that started out with almost no support and was driven entirely by his Christian convictions -- a story powerfully told in the film Amazing Grace. Eventually Wilberforce triumphed, and in 1833 slavery was outlawed in Britain. Pressed by religious groups at home, England then took the lead in repressing the slave trade abroad.

The values of the West are based on Christianity. Some of these values seem to have taken a life of their own, and this gives us the illusion that we can get rid of Christianity and keep the values. This, Nietzsche says, is an illusion. Our Western values are what Nietzsche terms "shadows of gods." Remove the Christian foundation and the values must go too.

The debate over slavery in America was essentially a religious debate. Free blacks who agitated for the emancipation of their fellow blacks invoked the narrative of liberation in the Book of Exodus, in which Moses led the captive Israelites to freedom: "Go down Moses, way down to Egypt land and tell old Pharaoh, let my people go." But of course throughout history people have opposed slavery for themselves while being perfectly happy to enslave others. What is remarkable in this historical period is for a group to oppose slavery in principle.

The Quakers were the first people in America to oppose slavery, and the evangelical Christians soon followed. These groups gave a political interpretation to the biblical notion that all are equal in the eyes of God. From this spiritual truth they derived a political proposition: because human beings are equal in God's sight, no man has the right to rule another man without his consent. This doctrine is the moral root of both abolitionism and of democracy.

The significance of all this was recognized a little more than a century ago by, of all people, the atheist philosopher Nietzsche. The life of the West, Nietzsche said, is based on Christianity. The values of the West are based on Christianity. Some of these values seem to have taken a life of their own, and this gives us the illusion that we can get rid of Christianity and keep the values. This, Nietzsche says, is an illusion. Our Western values are what Nietzsche terms "shadows of gods." Remove the Christian foundation and the values must go too.

True, values like equal dignity and equal rights will persist for a period out of sheer unthinking habit. But their influence will erode. Consider the example of Western Europe. Secularization has been occurring in Europe for well over a century. For a while it seemed as if the decline of Christianity would have no effect on Western morality or social institutions. Yet increasingly today there is evidence of the decline of the nuclear family. Overall birth rates have plummeted, while rates of divorce and births out of wedlock are up. Nietzsche also warned that, with the decline of Christianity, new and far different ideas would arise. We see these today in demands for the radical redefinition of the family, the revival of eugenic theories, and even arguments for infanticide and euthanasia.

In sum, the death of Christianity would also mean the gradual extinction of principles of human dignity and equality. Where do these principles come from? Jefferson recognized that they come from "our Creator." There is no other source for inalienable rights. Thus if we cherish the distinctive ideals of Western civilization, then whatever our religious convictions, we will not rashly try to hack at the religious roots from which they spring. On the contrary, we will not hesitate to acknowledge, not only privately but also publicly, the central role that Christianity has played and still plays in the things that matter most to us.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Dinesh D'Souza. "Created Equal." tothesource (November 19, 2008).

This article reprinted with permission from tothesource.

Tothesource is a forum for integrating thinking and action within a moral framework that takes into account our contemporary situation. We will report the insights of cultural experts to the specific issues we face believing these sources will embolden people to greater faith and action.

THE AUTHOR

Dinesh D'Souza is the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. D'Souza has been called one of the "top young public-policy makers in the country" by Investor’s Business Daily. His areas of research include the economy and society, civil rights and affirmative action, cultural issues and politics, and higher education. Dinesh D'Souza's latest book is What's So Great About Christianity. He is also the author of: The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, Letters to a Young Conservative, What's So Great about America, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus; The End of Racism; Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader; and The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence. Dinesh D'Souza is on the Advisory Board of the Catholic Education Resource Center. Visit his website here.

Copyright © 2008 tothesource

Article: How to strengthen our hope in God

FATHER JOHN HARDON, S.J.

During my five years of teaching at a state university, I had some remarkable experiences and learned many things that would otherwise never have entered my life.

Among the most remarkable of these experiences was the number of young people who I discovered are not only sad and discouraged, but actually in despair. In one short three-week period there were three attempted suicides that I ministered to.

Among these young people some were in despair. Some I successfully convinced that life was worth living and they are still alive. With others I was less successful.

"What do I have to look forward to after college?" one of my students asked me at the state university. He was a very successful senior who planned to take his life shortly before graduation. Although not publicized, the second principal cause of death among college students in America is taking their own lives. What a mockery of so-called prosperous America, the wealthiest nation on earth and the most affluent society in history, that so many of its citizens are taking their own lives; that euthanasia laws are being passed by one state after another to legalize self-murder and the murder of unwanted adults; that over a million unborn children are murdered each year by their, shall we call them, "mothers"; that some sixty-five million Americans are keeping some semblance of emotional sanity by using strong medical sedatives and millions of others have become confirmed alcoholics; and that drug addiction especially among the young has reached epidemic proportions. No doubt other causes and explanations are also the reason for this contradiction between material prosperity and spiritual destitution, but I think the fundamental reason is the weakening of hope among our people. They are discouraged, despondent, disenchanted, and not a few finally despair because they lack hope.

Our concern in this chapter, however, is not mainly to talk about others; it is rather to talk about ourselves. It is impossible to live in the United States these days and not be affected by the culture that surrounds us, notably for our purpose, by the mood of sadness that pervades the atmosphere because so many people are wanting in hope. In fact, the empty laughter on television; the crude, obscene jokes; the make-believe romances in millions of books and magazines, on the radio and screen; the expensive pleasures of the body and the extravagant forms of comfort and entertainment that have given our country the dubious title of "Playboy America" -- these are not signs of prosperity at all, they are symptoms of a disease and the disease is a creeping despair.

If we Christians and Catholics are to protect ourselves from being infected and indeed are to help others overcome this disease, we must look to our own virtue of hope and make sure that we at least know that life is worth living and that even suffering and death have a meaning, as they do. Our hope has a foundation which is faith, and a source which is grace to be nourished by prayer, developed by patience and strengthened by the love of Jesus Christ who is the final object of our hope in that eternity where possession will replace all our earthly desires.

Foundation

This is the first and fundamental way of doing so: deepen your faith and your hope will strengthen accordingly. No building is stronger than its foundation and the divinely established foundation of our hope is our faith.

The foundation of Christian hope is the Christian faith. St. Paul makes it very plain: "Only faith," he says, "can guarantee the blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of the realities that at present remain un seen." So it is. We have grounds for hoping in the future good things we look forward to, but only because we believe that God will be true to His promises. We hope to reach heaven and obtain the graces we need to arrive there, but only because we have faith in God's goodness and believe that having been so good to us so far He will not be less, but even more, generous in the time and eternity still to come. Our hope therefore is based on faith. A strong faith is the basis of a strong hope; a weak faith produces a weak hope, and in the absence of faith there can be no hope. Faithless people, let us keep telling ourselves, are hopeless people. Is it any wonder that so many are without hope, since so many have lost or never acquired a true Christian faith?

We are addressing ourselves to the question of how to strengthen our hope in God. This is the first and fundamental way of doing so: deepen your faith and your hope will strengthen accordingly. No building is stronger than its foundation and the divinely established foundation of our hope is our faith. Sine fide nulla spes. Without faith there is no hope -- is not only a statement of scholastic theology, it is a maxim of Christianity.

Source

This is another way of saying that we must be constantly praying to God, asking Him to preserve us in hope and not allow us to be discouraged or depressed or dispirited or sad. All of which are signs of a weakening or a lessening of hope. Hopeful people are never sad.

But if faith is the foundation of hope, divine grace is its indispensable source. When Christ told us that "without me you can do nothing," He was saying that without His divine grace we could neither believe nor hope. This deserves to be singled out and spelled out more carefully than I fear most of us tend to do. Why? Because if our hope must be constantly sustained by the grace of God, then we had better make sure that we have a constant supply of this grace. This is another way of saying that we must be constantly praying to God, asking Him to preserve us in hope and not allow us to be discouraged or depressed or dispirited or sad. All of which are signs of a weakening or a lessening of hope. Hopeful people are never sad.

There are many fine prayers asking God for hope that we could recite. I personally and with understandable prejudice like the one of St. Margaret Mary's confessor and spiritual director, Blessed Claude Colombiere. Let me read just a few of his lines: "I know, I know but too well, that I am frail and changeable. I know the power of temptation against the strongest virtue. I have seen stars fall from heaven and pillars of the firmament tot ter. But these things alarm me not. While I hope in You, I am sheltered from all misfortune and I am sure that my trust shall endure for I rely upon You to sustain this unfailing hope. I know that my confidence cannot exceed Your bounty and that I shall never receive less than I have hoped for from You. Therefore, I hope that You will sustain me against my evil inclinations, that You will protect me against the most furious assaults of the Evil One, and that You will cause my weakness to triumph over my most powerful enemies. I hope that You will never cease to love me and that I shall always love You unceasingly. In You, O Lord, have I hoped, let me never be confounded. Amen."

Development

Without grace hope is impossible, and without prayer grace is not avail able. Those who pray receive grace and those who have the grace will be saved. Those who do not pray will not receive the grace and they will not be saved. That is an article of our Faith: no one is saved without prayer. If, however, prayer is the in dispensable way to obtain the grace without which we could not even begin, let alone continue, to hope, patience is the normal means that God asks of us to develop our virtue of hope. May I admit it took me years to find this out. Yet there is nothing strange about this. After all, what is patience except the humble endurance of trials with resignation to the divine will?

Let us make sure that our hope is not cheap. Precious hope is different. It is a confidence in God that has been proved, perhaps through years of trial or misunderstanding, through temptation and humiliation, yet far from letting his trust in God's goodness grow weak, such a person grows in confidence and matures in hope.

There are few virtues more highly or frequently recommended by the Scriptures, especially by the New Testament, than patience. Christ tells us, "…in patience you shall possess your souls." St. Paul sums it all up in one magnificent passage: "We can boast about our sufferings" -- leave it to Paul to say impossible things. "These sufferings bring patience as we know and patience brings perseverance and perseverance brings hope, and this hope is not deceptive because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. Yes, but notice this hope is not deceptive. There is hope and hope. It is the tried hope, the hope that has gone through suffering and produced patience that is not deceptive.

The divine logic from suffering to patience, from patience to perseverance, and from perseverance to hope is therefore a matter of revelation. The Holy Spirit Himself tells us that if we would even retain our hope, and much more so, if we would develop our hope, we must be ready to endure. Let us relax; that is the way it is. Why? Because in the ordinary course of Providence this is the way the Lord perfects His servants. He knows there is hope and just a whisper, hope. And what I like to distinguish as cheap hope and precious hope. Cheap hope is the untried virtue that someone may indeed possess, but his trust in God has not been tested in the crucible of suffering.

Let us make sure that our hope is not cheap. Precious hope is different. It is a confidence in God that has been proved, perhaps through years of trial or misunderstanding, through temptation and humiliation, yet far from letting his trust in God's goodness grow weak, such a person grows in confidence and matures in hope. When I suffer for Jesus I become more and more like Jesus, and nothing makes us more Christ-like, or I prefer the word Jesus-like, than to have a share in His cross. Nothing more surely assimilates two people who may indeed be friends than their partnership in suffering. This kind of partnership in being a companion with Jesus in His passion will infallibly deepen the virtue of hope.

When my hope has been purified by suffering it is a hope that I can safely call supernatural. Why supernatural? Because then I know from experience that what I am looking forward to from God is nothing that this world calls good. It is possible, too possible, to hope and hope legitimately, yet have one's hope centered on this life. Look back over the object of most of our prayers -- health, reputation, success, possession, a job, food, money, clothing, friends -- all good, all valid objects to pray and, therefore, hope for, yet all are good things of this life. My hope becomes that much more, with stress, supernatural, which means super-earthly, super- terrestrial; it becomes more pure and perfect as it is focused on the life to come, on grace as a means to heaven and on divine mercy as a means for this sinner to reach God; that even I, dear God, even I have a chance. But this kind of pure hope is not cheaply acquired, it costs a high price. The price is the patient acceptance of suffering that in time, if we give God a chance, makes everything on earth seem unimportant when compared to the glory to be revealed in us. Suffering is marvelous. It removes the scales from our eyes. It shows us that compared with heaven this world is a passing dream and that only the all-beautiful God whom we hope to possess really counts.

Love

There is nothing mysterious about this relationship between hope and love. After all, if I trust that someone will give me what he promised, my confidence will depend on how well I appreciate that person's goodness, in a word, how much I love him or her. People that we love, we always trust. Better, we trust nobody else.

We have one more aspect of hope to consider and that is the role of love in the maturing of hope. Even as faith is the foundation of hope, so love is its motivation and the principal means for strengthening our trust in God. There is nothing mysterious about this relationship between hope and love. After all, if I trust that someone will give me what he promised, my confidence will depend on how well I appreciate that person's goodness, in a word, how much I love him or her. People that we love, we always trust. Better, we trust nobody else. Either we recognize a person's generosity and kindness or we would be fools to trust him. Moreover, it is not only or mainly our love for someone that motivates our trust. It is also and especially that person's love for us. Transfer these reflections to God and we see how close a relationship there is between hope in God and love of God, ours for Him and His for us. Can we possibly doubt God's promises for the future, seeing how good He has been to us in the past and up to the present moment? What have we, beginning with ourselves, that we have not received from His bounty?

We began, if that is the verb, as nothing. Time was when we were not. Our existence is the fruit of divine love and from then on God has been giving us everything just to show how much He cares. Cares? He gave us Himself on the cross. He gives Himself in the Eucharist and He continues giving Himself in all the wonderful persons and graces and blessings and experiences of our lives. Thanks, Lord, I appreciate it.

Reflection on God's goodness so far is a sure way of growing in confidence in His goodness into the future. It is a future that is bright with promise. Why should it not be? We have the words, and I would add the warning, of our Savior, not asking but commanding us. Listen: "Do not let your hearts he troubled. Trust in God, trust in me.

Yes, we trust You, Jesus, because You are our God. We know that You love us and we love You. Between those who love there should be no worry or distrust, but only a calm abiding hope that casts out all fear.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Father John A. Hardon. "How to strengthen our hope in God." from Spiritual Life in the Modern World (Boston: MA Daughters of St. Paul, 1982): 41-48.

Reprinted with permission from Inter Mirifica.

THE AUTHOR

Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. (1914-2000) was a tireless apostle of the Catholic faith. The author of over twenty-five books including Spiritual Life in the Modern World, Catholic Prayer Book, The Catholic Catechism, Modern Catholic Dictionary, Pocket Catholic Dictionary, Pocket Catholi Catechism, Q & A Catholic Catechism, Treasury of Catholic Wisdom, Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan and many other Catholic books and hundreds of articles, Father Hardon was a close associate and advisor of Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, and Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity. Order Father Hardon's home study courses here.

Copyright © 2008 Inter Mirifica

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Wednesday Liturgy: Readers' Bows to the Presider

ROME, NOV. 25, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.


Q: I have been asking lay readers at the parish to bow to the presider of the Mass when they approach the sanctuary to proclaim their reading. I remembered studying this in the seminary when reviewing the proper gestures and postures of the people during Mass, as well as those participating in the liturgical ministries. In my parish church the tabernacle is in the center and the priest sits to the left of the altar. The pulpit is to the right. From reading Church documents, I have been only able to identify the person they should bow to in Masses where the bishop presides. From a theological as well as liturgical point of view, it is my understanding that the priest as presider (in persona Christi) at the Mass is where the liturgical ministers would bow, signifying they are participating in his ministry as presider. Am I instructing the people correctly? And is there a particular liturgical document that covers this area well for instruction? -- G.D., Halifax, Nova Scotia

A: This question is often broached and is sometimes subject to degrees of confusion.

First of all, I would say that, strictly speaking, it is not correct to say that readers are sharing in the ministry of the priest celebrant. Rather, they are fulfilling a specific lay ministry within the celebration itself.

In fact, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), No. 59, clearly excludes the presidential character of reading in the Latin rite, to wit: "By tradition, the function of proclaiming the readings is ministerial, not presidential. The readings, therefore, should be proclaimed by a lector, and the Gospel by a deacon or, in his absence, a priest other than the celebrant. If, however, a deacon or another priest is not present, the priest celebrant himself should read the Gospel. Further, if another suitable lector is also not present, then the priest celebrant should also proclaim the other readings."

Not every liturgical gesture requires a theological foundation. Some are customary signs of courtesy and respect that add overall decorum to the celebration.

Monsignor (now bishop) Peter Elliott describes the reader's bow in his "Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite": "The lector (comes to the sanctuary and) makes the customary reverences; first bowing deeply to the altar, then bowing to the celebrant, before going to the ambo ..."

The sanctuary situation described here seems to correspond to that of our ZENIT reader's parish church. Two bows are described. The first bow toward the altar is based on the Ceremonial of Bishops, No. 72: "A deep bow is made to the altar by all who enter the sanctuary (chancel), leave it, or pass before the altar."

The second bow, toward the priest celebrant, is not explicitly prescribed in the liturgical books, but may be considered as customary and based on an extension of the indications for reverence toward bishops in the Ceremonial, Nos. 76-77:

"The bishop is greeted with a deep bow by the ministers or others when they approach to assist him, when they leave after assisting him, or when they pass in front of him.

"When the bishop's chair is behind the altar, the ministers should reverence either the altar or the bishop, depending on whether they are approaching the altar or approaching the bishop; out of reverence for both, ministers should, as far as possible, avoid passing between the bishop and the altar."

It is noteworthy that none of these texts explicitly mention readers, and are only applicable insofar as they enter or leave the sanctuary, or, in a very broad sense, assist the presiding celebrant. It does not appear that these bows form a stable and obligatory part of the rites for those who exercise the ministry of reader.

Indeed, in describing the Liturgy of the Word the Ceremonial of Bishops, No. 137, makes no mention of any bows: "After the opening prayer, the reader goes to the ambo and proclaims the first reading "

Therefore if, for example, the seating arrangements are such that the readers are in the sanctuary from the beginning of Mass and have no need to cross in front of the altar, they could exercise their ministry without making any of these bows.

Wednesday Liturgy: Follow-up: Eucharist vs. the Word

ROME, NOV. 25, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.


In the wake of our column on the Eucharist and the Word (see Nov. 11), a Singapore reader offered the following comments:

"In this week's topic on 'Eucharist vs. the Word,' I was also thinking about Vatican II's dogmatic constitution on divine Revelation, 'Dei Verbum,' when I read the question posed by N.C. from Cleveland, Ohio.

"In No. 21 of 'Dei Verbum' it states, 'The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God's word and of Christ's body.'

"The proclamation of the Scriptures has always been an integral part of the liturgy at Mass. In a sense, [the] relationship between Scriptures and the Eucharist is complementary, as expressed in 'Dei Verbum.' This was also clearly brought out in your reply.

"The 17th General Congregation (12th Synod of Bishops) on Oct. 15, 2008, reported in the third point: 'Eucharist, homily, community' deals with the relationship between Scripture and the Eucharist, with the question, which emerged from the synodal discussion, on how to privilege, among the faithful, a more unitary perception of this relationship; the sacramental dimension of the Word and eschatological dimension; the celebration of the Word; the importance of the homily; art as an analogical form of preaching; finally, the relationship between the Word of God, celebration and community.

"Perhaps this is also the reason why, in the question asked, the reader said he was told that 'Catholics believe that the Word of God is as important as the Eucharist.'"

While "Dei Verbum" is a solemn conciliar text, the text from the Synod represents a work in progress. The latter will become formally magisterial in the degree that the Holy Father might incorporate these suggestions into an apostolic exhortation.

It is quite possible that a misinterpretation of texts such as "Dei Verbum" could have led some Catholics to cast a shadow on the mutually complementary relationship between Eucharist and Word, thus leading to a false opposition between them.

"Dei Verbum" simply recalls that the Church has historically observed a certain parallelism between the liturgical honors offered to sacred Scriptures and that offered to the Eucharist (incense, candles, etc.). The point was not to produce equivalence but rather to emphasize the fact that, contrary to certain accusations, Catholics had always venerated the Word. After all, the same Second Vatican Council had earlier proclaimed the liturgy, and especially the Eucharist, as the summit and source of the Church's life.

The Synod's recommendation of a more unitary perception of the Word in its relationship with the Eucharist should also be seen in continuity with previous doctrine. At the same time, a fuller and deeper vision of the various dimensions of the Word in Catholic life and worship can only lead to a fuller appreciation of the importance of the Eucharist as the fulfillment of Scripture.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Before Him All Nations Will be Gathered: Gospel Commentary for Solemnity of Christ the King

Father Raniero Cantalamessa is the Pontifical Household preacher. The readings for this Sunday are Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17; 1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28; Matthew 25:31-46.

* * *

ROME, NOV. 21, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The Gospel of the last Sunday of the liturgical year, the Solemnity of Christ the King, presents us with the concluding moment of human history: Judgment Day.

Jesus says in Matthew 25: "When the Son of man will come in glory with all his angels, he will sit upon the throne of glory, and before him all nations will be gathered and he will separate them one from another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats and he will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left."

The first message contained in this Gospel does not have to do with the form or the outcome of the judgment, but the fact that there will be a judgment, that the world does not come from chance and does not end in chance. This world begins with: "Let there be light ... Let us make man." And ends with: "Come, blessed of my Father ... Depart from me, accursed ones." At the beginning of the world and at its end there is a decision of an intelligent mind and a sovereign will.

This beginning of the millennium is characterized by a heated debate over evolutionism and creationism. Reduced to its essentials, on the one side there are those who, appealing -- not always rightly -- to Darwin, believe that the world is a fruit of blind evolution, dominated by natural selection, and, on the other side, those who, although they admit a form of evolution, see God at work in the evolutionary process itself.

Some days ago at the Vatican there was a plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which treated the theme "Scientific Insight Into the Evolution of the Universe and of Life." Distinguished scientists from around the world participated: some believers, some not, some were Nobel Prize recipients.

On the RAI 1 program on the Gospel that I host I interviewed one of the scientists, Professor Francis Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health in the US. I asked him: "If evolution is true, is there still room for God?" He answered: "Darwin was right in formulating his theory according to which we descend from a common ancestor and there have been gradual changes over long periods of time, but this is the mechanical aspect of how life came to form this fantastic panorama of diversity. This does not answer the question of why there is life."

"There are aspects of humanity," he continued, "that are not easily explained: Like our moral sense, the knowledge of good and evil that sometimes leads us to make sacrifices that are not dictated by the laws of evolution. These laws would suggest that we preserve ourselves at all costs. This is not a proof, but does it not perhaps indicate that God exists?"

I also asked Collins whether he had first believed in God or in Jesus Christ. He said: "Until the age of about 25 I was an atheist, I did not have a religious formation, I was a scientist who reduced almost everything to the equations and laws of physics. But as a doctor I began to meet people who were faced with the problem of life and death, and this made me think that my atheism was not an idea that had a basis. I began to read texts about rational arguments for faith that I did not know.

"First I arrived at the conviction that atheism was the least acceptable alternative, and little by little I came to the conclusion that a God must exist who created all of this, but I did not know about this God. This led me to conduct research to find out what the nature of God is, and I found it in the Bible and in the person of Jesus. After two years of research I decided that it was not more reasonable to resist and I became a follower of Jesus."

A major promoter of evolutionism in our days is the Englishman Richard Dawkins, the author of the book "The God Delusion." He is now promoting a public campaign to put placards on buses in English cities that read: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy life." If I put myself in the shoes of a parent with a handicapped, autistic or gravely sick child, or a farm worker who has lost his job, I wonder how such a person would react to that announcement: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy life!" "Probably": He doesn't even exclude the possibility that God could exist! But if God doesn't exist, the believer loses nothing. On the other hand, the nonbeliever loses everything.

The existence of evil and injustice in the world is certainly a mystery and a scandal, but without faith in a final judgment, it would be infinitely more absurd and more tragic. For many millennia of life on earth, man has become accustomed to everything; he has adapted to every climate, become immune to every disease. But there is one thing that he has not gotten used to: injustice. He continues to feel it intolerable. And it is to this thirst for justice that the universal judgment will respond.

Not only God will desire it, but, paradoxically, men will too, even the wicked ones. "On the day of the universal judgment, it will not only be the Judge who will descend from heaven," the French poet Paul Claudel wrote, "but the whole earth will rush to the meeting."

The solemnity of Christ the King, with the Gospel of the final judgment, responds to the most universal of human hopes. It assures us that injustice and evil will not have the last word and at the same time it calls on us to live in such a way that justice is not a condemnation for us, but salvation, and we can be those to whom Christ will say: "Come, blessed of my Father, take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]

Friday, November 21, 2008

Article: The Christian Story and the World's Story

GEORGE WEIGEL

In A Short World History of Christianity, Robert Bruce Mullin offers us, not a theological interpretation of history but a concise narrative of the Church's life in the world -- the Church's life between "Redemption" and "the Kingdom of God."

I can't remember precisely when I fell in love with history, but it was surely in the first innings of my reading life.

Granted, this was easier in the days when history was written and taught as, well, history -- meaning drama, heroes and villains, great arguments, wars and revolutions, and all that other dead white male stuff. I was fortunate in my third grade teacher, the estimable Sister Miriam Jude, SSND (then a postulant known as Sister Florence); she had sold World Book encyclopedias on the side during her days as a Philadelphia public school teacher, and talked my parents into buying a set. Thanks to the World Book, I was off to the historical races. Then there were Random House's "Landmark Books," wonderful history-for-young-readers, written by real historians, not overly dumbed-down, and costing something like $.95 or $1.25 for a hardback. I owned dozens, and read more than a few of them several times. Thus prepared, high school and college history were fun, not drudgery, and to this day, reading good narrative history is a never-failing pleasure.

History, that is, like Robert Bruce Mullin's A Short World History of Christianity, recently published by Westminster John Knox Press. It is no easy business, getting two millennia of Christian history into 283 readable pages. But Professor Mullin has done the job, in a readable style that makes the fruits of his impressive ample scholarship available to a general audience.

Mullin is a master at sketching brief portraits of key figures in the Christian story. He neatly disentangles the great -- and often daunting -- trinitarian, christological, and mariological controversies of the first centuries in a thoroughly accessible way. Unlike many, perhaps most, historians of Christianity, he understands that the Christian contest with Islam has been a defining experiences of Christian history, ever since the armies of Islam broke out of the Arabian peninsula and swept across what was, in the 7th century, one of the vital centers of the Christian world -- North Africa. His description of the accomplishments of the often-deplored Middle Ages is both just and enlightening, as are his depictions of the Reformation, the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and the European wars of religion. His attention to the tremendous missionary expansion of Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries is a useful reminder, in this Pauline year, that great Christian missions didn't stop with St. Paul -- or St. Francis Xavier, for that matter.

A Short World History Of Christianity

by Bruce Mullin
(Westminster John Knox Press, 296 pages)

What's the relationship between the story told so well by Robert Bruce Mullin and the history I inhaled with those World Books? When history was taught properly, the sequence was usually organized by chapter headings that read something like "Ancient Civilizations," "Greece and Rome," "the Dark Ages," "the Middle Ages," "Renaissance and Reformation," "the Age of Reason," "the Age of Revolution," "the Age of Science," "the Space Age," or some such. From a Christian perspective, however, that is history read on its surface.

For there is another way to schematize the human story. Its chapter headings would run something like this: "Creation," "Fall," "Promise," "Prophecy," "Incarnation," "Redemption," "Sanctification," "Proclamation," "the Kingdom of God." That story -- the biblical story, if you will -- does not, however, run parallel to the "real" story as taught in the history textbooks. The story that begins with "Creation" and culminates in "the Kingdom of God" is the human story, read in its proper depth and against its most ample horizon. For the central truth of history is that history is His-story: the story of God's coming into time and our learning to take the same path that God takes toward the future.

In A Short World History of Christianity, Robert Bruce Mullin offers us, not a theological interpretation of history but a concise narrative of the Church's life in the world -- the Church's life between "Redemption" and "the Kingdom of God." To know that story is to see how, in specific personalities and communities, both the Spirit promised to the Church and the ancient enemy have been at work, shaping what the world regards as "history." It's a story every literate Catholic should know.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

George Weigel. "The Christian Story and the World's Story." The Catholic Difference (November 5, 2008).

Reprinted with permission of George Weigel.

George Weigel's column is distributed by the Denver Catholic Register, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Denver. Phone: 303-715-3123.

THE AUTHOR

George Weigel, a Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Roman Catholic theologian and one of America's leading commentators on issues of religion and public life. Weigel is the author or editor of eighteen books, including Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action, God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church (2005), The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God (2005), Letters to a Young Catholic: The Art of Mentoring (2004), The Courage to Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church (2002), and The Truth of Catholicism: Ten Controversies Explored (2001).

George Weigel's major study of the life, thought, and action of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (Harper Collins, 1999) was published to international acclaim in 1999, and translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Czech, Slovenian, Russian, and German. The 2001 documentary film based on the book won numerous prizes. George Weigel is a consultant on Vatican affairs for NBC News, and his weekly column, "The Catholic Difference," is syndicated to more than fifty newspapers around the United States.

Copyright © 2008 George Weigel

Article: The Seven Deadlies Revisited, Continued: Sloth

MARY EBERSTADT

What could possibly be more unwanted at this particular intense and critical political moment than a thumb-sucking reflection on -- of all things -- the Deadly Sin known as Sloth?

In all likelihood, just about nothing. One week after an election that has made national laughingstocks of many believers and their beliefs, much of Catholic America lies temporarily spent and despondent. Meanwhile, conservative America, this faction's accustomed ally, is flat-out moribund, a gross object for dissection, with a thousand gloating obituaries buzzing daily around its head.

Other signs of exhaustion abound. The country's people, it is widely believed -- including by them -- are overworked, the more so as they navigate churning financial waters. Even the better-off are said to labor constantly, and at night visions of Blackberries d"ance in their heads. Truly, have any people ever worked so much, or as far removed from the sin of Sloth, as we Americans today?

Show me a sin, deadly or otherwise, that you think is farthest away at any given time, and I'll show you something breathing just over your shoulder with a pickax under its coat. In truth, the signs of Sloth are everywhere in our lives. "Our technology and our gadgets have freed us from most drudgery," as Henry Fairlie observed in his rich study, The Seven Deadly Sins Today, "and what do we do with the time that is now available to us? We turn inward and become utterly absorbed in ourselves." All the more prescient, Fairlie penned these words in 1979 -- i.e., even before every home in America was to acquire what has become for many a virtual shrine to Sloth at any given hour, namely an internet connection in the kitchen or living room.

Consider also the critical role of Sloth in our modern sexual disarray. The unprecedented rates at which pornography is devoured in states red and blue may be more commonly associated with the Deadly Sin known as Lust. But pornography owes much to Sloth, too. Pornography and Sloth between them have induced in some men a state that their ancestors would have thought impossible: it has rendered them too lazy for real sex. And Sloth plays a similar supporting role in other aspects of our moral disorder. Defined from Aquinas on down as "the desire not to be troubled by what God wants," Sloth obviously dictates the shortcut of artificial contraception, for example, at least as much as Lust does.

It is Sloth that whispers into our willing modern ears, telling us to postpone marriage and childbearing till our careers are solid and we're "financially stable." Sloth is the voice confiding that other forms of human "union" -- i.e., those without the rigors of real marriage -- will be easier on us no matter what the Bible says. And it is Sloth, finally, that seduces us into shirking the public consequences of believing just what we believe - that tells us we should just give up, go along and get along like the rest of the folks, and put up with the fiercely held untruths of our time.

Faith, after all, is more like a muscle than an instinct; it is only by exercising that most people can even begin to learn how to use it. Yet straight-faced instruction about religion by militant unbelievers who wouldn't know a tabernacle if it fell on them couldn't abound more.

The recent revival of atheism also owes a hidden debt to Sloth. How often is the refusal to attend religious services really a result of high-minded principle -- and how often instead an unwillingness to get out of bed on Sunday morning, to leave the internet for no apparent purpose for even one hour a week, or to be bothered in any way at all from doing what "I" want to do with "my" time? One suspects that Sloth is similarly helpful to the spread of secularism itself. Faith, after all, is more like a muscle than an instinct; it is only by exercising that most people can even begin to learn how to use it. Yet straight-faced instruction about religion by militant unbelievers who wouldn't know a tabernacle if it fell on them couldn't abound more.

"Sloth," says the Catechism in a particularly useful reminder this week, "becomes a sin when it slows down and even brings to a halt the energy we must expend in using the means to salvation." Translation today: "Business as usual, Sloth's comfortable traveling companion, may just have to go.

So where does this possibility of actually having to bestir ourselves leave American Catholics? For lay people, how about getting off those couches and internet connections long enough for, say, daily Mass? For those in the public eye, how about ignoring what's said in the papers and on Campbell Brown and in the blogosphere -- especially in the blogosphere -- and instead just slugging the arguments out as best we can?

And speaking of the public eye, maybe our bishops and archbishops could forgo that easy and coveted state dinner, that tres charmant next white-tie event in honor of this one or that one in our new administration, so long as the executive branch brings such brio to the destruction of the unborn. In these and a hundred other small ways, maybe meditating on Sloth will be a first step out of the hole we're all in. What's the alternative, after all -- being too lazy for salvation? Bad as things may look now, it's hard to get more pathetic than that.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Mary Eberstadt. "The Seven Deadlies Revisited, Continued: Sloth." The Catholic Thing (November 13, 2008).

Reprinted with permission from The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@thecatholicthing.org.

The Catholic thing -- the concrete historical reality of Catholicism -- is the richest cultural tradition in the world. That is the deep background to The Catholic Thing which bring you an original column every day that provides fresh and penetrating insight into the current situation along with other commentary, news, analysis, and -- yes -- even humor. Our writers include some of the most seasoned and insightful Catholic minds in America: Michael Novak, Ralph McInerny, Hadley Arkes, Michael Uhlmann, Mary Eberstadt, Austin Ruse, George Marlin, William Saunders, and many others.

THE AUTHOR

Mary Tedeschi Eberstadt is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and consulting editor to Policy Review. She is the author of Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs and Other Parent Substitutes and the editor of Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys.

Eberstadt focuses on issues on American society, culture, and philosophy. She has written widely for various magazines and newspapers, including Policy Review, the Weekly Standard, First Things, American Conservative, the American Spectator, Los Angeles Times, London Times, Newark Star-Ledger, and the Wall Street Journal. Between 1998 and 1990, she was executive editor of the National Interest magazine. From 1985 to 1987, she was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. State Department, a speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and a special assistant to Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. She was also managing editor at the Public Interest. A four-year Telluride Scholar at Cornell University, Eberstadt graduated magna cum laude in 1983. She is an associate member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.

Copyright © 2008 The Catholic Thing


Article: How to be truly happy

FATHER JOHN HARDON, S.J.

One of the deepest mysteries of life is that of happiness.

I am not exactly referring to happiness in the next life in heaven with God, but here on earth among men. How is it that what everyone is looking for, so few seem to find? And how is it that what all the wise men of history have been teaching, so few seem to have learned? It cannot he that people's desire for happiness is not strong enough. It is on examination the strongest impulse of human nature. Nor can it be that God does not want us to be happy already this side of heaven. He does not want us to be sad.

It must only be either because people do not understand what true happiness is or are not willing to pay the price to achieve it. These must be the reasons. Given the fact of man's universal hunger for happiness and God's goodness -- not to say justice -- towards His noblest visible creation, the absence of happiness in so many people can only be due to ignorance or failure to take the proper means. You might ask: why go into this huge subject? Why not deal with something more specific? And besides, what has all of this to do with the spiritual life?

The subject of happiness is not huge at all. It is very specific. In fact, it is as particular as each one of us in the world of our own personality. It is the one aspect of the spiritual life that we cannot pass over at the risk of talking about holiness without ever arriving there. If I were to coin a homely definition of sanctity, I would say that it is the achievement of true happiness. The saints are the only really happy people on earth.

The logical division of our title is to ask "What is true happiness?" and to find out "How do you get it?"

What is true happiness?

As a background for this question we might for a few moments reflect on false happiness. It has to be false, seeing how many people are pursuing what they think will make them happy and are disappointed. True happiness is not found in riches as anyone who knows the wealthy can attest. One of the most unhappy men I ever met was in New York State on his square-mile estate. A multi-millionaire, he had in the process of amassing so much wealth lost his Catholic Faith. As we drove in his limousine, driven by the chauffeur, through twenty miles of garden, he kept repeating, as he sipped from a glass of cider in one hand and held on in the automobile with the other, "This is all for my pleasure, all for my pleasure." But I found out from my four hours of conversation with him he was terribly unhappy. I am pleased to report that he eventually died with the sacraments partly because I entered his life. He did not want to receive me, but did so to please his saintly sister. She had been praying for thirty years for his return to God. She died shortly after he did. Her mission was accomplished.

True happiness has three characteristics that are never absent, but always in greater or lesser measure together.

True happiness does not consist in sex indulgence. That brings its victims only remorse and degradation and disease and an early grave. It does not consist in immense learning or academic honors or success in industry or one of the trades. It does not consist in acquiring a reputation or becoming the idol of millions in sports or on the screen. It does not consist in reaching the top of the ladder in politics or high authority in Church or state. I know enough famous people to be able to say that for many of them their fame is their greatest trial and for some, as they have told me, a crucifixion. On a lower level, happiness is not found in drink or entertainment or fine clothes or physical beauty or in any one of the thousand ways that the advertising industry keeps telling the people, and that millions are gullible enough to believe.

True happiness has three characteristics that are never absent, but always in greater or lesser measure together. True happiness is spiritual. It is generous and it is always related to God. In order, then, to be really and not spuriously happy we have to work for happiness in these three ways: in the spirit, the practice of generosity, and in relationship to God. At this point we turn from asking what true happiness is to how we can achieve it.

How to achieve true happiness?

We begin by asking ourselves what we mean by saying that authentic happiness is spiritual. You might say that it is not material. True enough. Rut more accurately it means that for a person to be happy the first condition is that his or her moral life be sound. A good moral life is the first and fundamental condition for valid happiness. By the moral life I mean the practice of the virtues of honesty, of chastity, of meekness and patience, of humility and diligence. In a word, the happy person is a morally good person. And the deeper and stronger his moral integrity, the greater is that person's happiness. Dishonest people are not happy; unchaste people are not happy; angry people, impatient people, lazy people, proud people are not happy. No matter how many speeches or books they give or write to the contrary, they are not happy.

This, I think, deserves further commentary because not all virtuous people seem to be happy and, as far as we can tell, not all apparently ill-behaved persons are sad. We have a problem. How do we deal with it? First of all, appearances are deceiving.

The second condition for true happiness is generosity. People who are generous are happy people. Have you ever met a truly happy, but selfish person?

A virtuous person undergoing some difficulty is understandably oppressed. That is what problems do -- they tend to depress us. So perhaps this virtuous person shows the strain that he is under. Or it may be that he is not fully resigned to the trial or suffering to which he is being subjected and to that extent he is wanting in perfect virtue. So we have another equation: virtue makes for happiness; greater virtue makes for greater happiness; and perfect virtue, as far as we can talk about it in this life, makes for perfect happiness because perfect virtue includes resignation to the acceptance of a trial. Moreover, and more profoundly, true happiness, being spiritual, is deeply interior. It abides in the inmost recesses of one's soul. It may, therefore, coexist with struggle and suffering, with tribulation and with the heaviest cross. Could anything be clearer than Christ's own prediction in the beatitudes? "Lord," we are tempted to say, "are these beatitudes? Happy are those who... -- and then you look at the who and you are all but terrified. "Happy? Did I hear You right, Lord? Did You say happy?" "I said happy. Happy are those who mourn. "Lord, I believe You, but what on earth or in heaven do You mean?" Happy those who are poor, the gentle, the merciful, the peacemakers. Christ even foretold how happy would be those who are persecuted in the cause of right. There is a center to the human spirit and a core in the heart of man which can be in peace and in joy, not in spite of, but actually because the outer man is undergoing tribulation in a just cause. In fact, when we are thus persecuted, you know what the Savior says, we are not just to rejoice, we are to dance for joy.

In spite of all the rhetoric to the contrary, therefore, and it takes a lot of faith to draw this conclusion, virtue is its own reward although the reward may be so deeply within a man's spirit that everything else in him, as in Job, may be in profound pain. Part of this spiritual joy is the confident expectation of a heavenly reward. I am happy now, although perhaps in trial, because I am sure that the trial will one day cease and the joys of heaven, God tells me, will never end. What is an ending trial compared to endless joy? Many, many times I have comforted myself with this thought.

The second condition for true happiness is generosity. People who are generous are happy people. Have you ever met a truly happy, but selfish person? There is something in our human nature that clamors for expression in giving ourselves to others. Have you ever watched a loving mother at the bed of her sick child, tenderly caring for her offspring after perhaps many sleepless nights and with scarcely any food, yet she is serenely happy because she is giving of herself to someone she dearly loves? There is the story, or rather cluster of stories, about Maryann, published in a small paperback that I commend to all of you called Mission Fulfilled. It describes in about one hundred pages the heartwarming events in the life of a young patient of the Hawthorne Dominican Sisters for the care of those with incurable disease. Maryann was allowed to become a Dominican tertiary before she died at the ripe age of thirteen. Her grave is marked with her family and her religious name. Through the years she was with the Sisters -- so the book reads and the Sisters who knew her tell me -- she was, along with her painful illness, very, very happy. But why? Because she made every effort, sometimes not appreciated, to make the other patients comfortable, relieve their pain, offer them water, speak to them for a long time with her childish prattle, until they died. I have seen aged men assisting their less-able fellow residents in a home of the Little Sisters of the Poor. Hardly able to walk themselves, they were positively radiant because they were able to help their more disabled companions. It was often the blind leading the blind. I have seen husbands come home from a hard day's work, tired and physically worn out, suddenly beam as they entered their home and caught sight of the wife and children for whom they had been working all day.

All of this we have seen and in many ways experienced ourselves, but there is more to this formula for true happiness -- the second level of our reflection -- than just the satisfaction of seeing someone we have helped obviously pleased. They are pleased, so we are pleased, too. It is deeper than that. As with the practice of virtue in general, so here with generosity, the true happiness that comes from kindness is something different from the natural pleasure of doing good. I am not discounting that or denying it, but we are talking about something more. Let me explain. It may hap pen -- and the more we try to grow in holiness, the more likely it will happen -- that those we try and actually help may not appreciate our efforts. I hope you have lived long enough to experience that. People may even resent what they consider an intrusion, for a variety of reasons that are valid in themselves. They may think us impertinent or actually selfish in what on our part may be a most self-sacrificing deed. Whatever the reason, people do not always recognize what we do for them. And they never, we may feel, appreciate enough what we do. Take the years of generous self-giving of a father and mother to their children only to have these children become later on indifferent to their parents' sacrifices and even ungrateful for all they have received. Take the years of dedicated service that a priest may have given to his people, or a religious to his or her community, only to find him or herself, as they say, put on the shelf, and it may be long before their time. I have seen too much of the sorrow of consecrated souls suffering because of the cold ingratitude from those whom they have served not to know that we are touching here upon mystery. There is no simple equation between doing good for others and feeling good in side. That is why we must go on to the third and most important condition of true happiness, namely, its relationship with God. I have saved this characteristic of real happiness for last because without it we would not be talking about happiness at all.

That is why we must go on to the third and most important condition of true happiness, namely, its relationship with God. I have saved this characteristic of real happiness for last because without it we would not be talking about happiness at all.

What does it mean to say that for happiness to be genuine it must be related to God? By this we mean that only God can make us genuinely happy and therefore we must finally look to Him even for our earthly reward. This bears a lot of stress. All genuine happiness, not only in the life to come, but in this life, comes uniquely from God. Do not look to creatures to make you truly happy. If you do you are going to be disappointed not once, or often, but always. On our part this means that we try as far as possible to remain in contact with God. Call it keeping in touch with God or living in the presence of God or being mindful of God or talking with God or turning towards God. How we describe what we must do is not important. What matters absolutely is that we and no one else, not even God Himself, must do this. We must decide and constantly act on our decision to remain united with God. Are we talking about some extraordinary mystical experience or rapture or ecstasy? Not at all. When I wrote these lines that I am sharing with you I did not consult Catherine of Siena or Teresa of Avila or John of the Cross. I consulted the Scriptures and, I must add, my own experience.

This is within the reach of every believer who believes in the words of the Savior as He told us the night before He died: "If anyone loves me he will keep my words and my Father will love him and we shall come to him and make our home with him." But, notice that sentence begins with an "if." If anyone really loves Christ he will keep the commandments of Christ and the rest will follow. The secret of happiness is to strive always to do the Master's will, to keep His words no matter what the cost to self-will or self- conceit. We do His will and He, this is really strange, He will satisfy our will. We try to please Him; He will in turn please us.

In His own words, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit will love us if we love Them by keeping Their word, and when God loves you, you know it. Knowing that God loves you is happiness. You do not talk about this, you live it. They, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, will come to us, and of all the expressions that Christ might have used, He said, "and they will make their home with us"; They will keep us company. This is Christ's own definition of happiness: the awareness of God being at home in our souls. Yes, there are two homes in which the Trinity dwells, one in heaven with the angels and saints and the other on earth in the hearts of those who are doing God's will. And in both homes, although the effects differ in degree, they are essentially the same. What, then, does it mean to be truly happy? It means to experience the presence of God whether by faith and imperfectly in this life, or by vision and without end in the life to come.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Father John A. Hardon. "How to be truly happy." from Spiritual Life in the Modern World (Boston: MA Daughters of St. Paul, 1982): 83-90.

Reprinted with permission from Inter Mirifica.

THE AUTHOR

Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. (1914-2000) was a tireless apostle of the Catholic faith. The author of over twenty-five books including Spiritual Life in the Modern World, Catholic Prayer Book, The Catholic Catechism, Modern Catholic Dictionary, Pocket Catholic Dictionary, Pocket Catholi Catechism, Q & A Catholic Catechism, Treasury of Catholic Wisdom, Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan and many other Catholic books and hundreds of articles, Father Hardon was a close associate and advisor of Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, and Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity. Order Father Hardon's home study courses here.

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