ST, THOMAS AQUINAS FOR BEGINNERS

St. Thomas Aquinas for Beginners

St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!

“We exhort you, venerable brethren, in all earnestness to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas, and to spread it far and wide for the defense and beauty of the Catholic faith, for the good of society, and for the advantage of all the sciences.”

These words of Leo XIII are no less certain today than when the Holy Father promulgated them 150 years ago. Indeed, while the neo-scholastic revival flourished for several decades in the wake of Leo’s encyclical Aeterni Patris, the “golden wisdom” of the Angelic Doctor has been conspicuously absent from many Catholic schools and even seminaries in the decades following the Second Vatican Council.

The early years of the 21st century have seen a tremendous growth of interest in the thought of St. Thomas, and many excellent books have been published for both academic and popular audiences. Nevertheless, for the average Catholic sitting in the pews of the average parish, Aquinas remains distant and largely inaccessible in his own writings. Technical jargon as well as the logical structure of the saint’s work cause many to despair of understanding.

To remedy this, on the feast of St. Thomas, we herein offer a very brief introduction to the life of this indispensable Catholic theologian, and his most famous work the Summa Theologiae, and pray that in so doing Leo’s exhortation may again be heeded in our own day.

A very brief introduction to St. Thomas

Saint Thomas was an Italian Catholic priest in the 13th century. Born to a noble family, he began his education at the famous Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino, near Rome, at the age of five. His aristocratic family had planned for him to grow up to be the Abbot at Monte Cassino, a very prestigious role which would further decorate their lineage.

The young Thomas, however, made different plans. Impelled by his love of God, Thomas made clear his intention to join the Order of Preachers, a recently established fraternity of wandering beggars who devoted themselves to study and preaching the Word of God. In the early days these friars, called the Dominicans after their founder St. Dominic, were looked upon by the nobility as the religious hippies of their day. For the young aristocrat to join such an order, as opposed to the prominent Benedictines, was an outright scandal to the family from Aquino.

So opposed was his family that when Thomas set out for the University of Paris to earn his theological master’s degree with the Dominicans, they had him kidnapped and brought home. They kept him under house arrest for nearly two years, hoping to break his spirit, but according to tradition the young saint used this time to memorize the entire Bible. As a final desperate attempt to dissuade Thomas from his vocation, his brothers hired a prostitute and sent her into his room to seduce him, but rather than staining his purity Aquinas chased her out of the room with a hot iron from the fireplace. His family, so impressed by this display of virtue and resolve, finally relented and allowed Thomas to pursue his calling with the Dominicans.

Aquinas would go on to become the star pupil of St. Albert the Great, the greatest scientist of the Middle Ages. Together, Saints Albert and Thomas would successfully introduce Aristotle to the medieval Church, which had been steeped in Platonism since the time of St. Augustine. The new synthesis of Aristotelian natural science with Christian theology, accomplished by St. Thomas in the 13th century more than by anyone else, laid the intellectual foundations of what we today mistakenly call the “scientific revolution” of the 16th century. Rather than revolting, the early modern scientists in the 16th century were continuing the legacy of the St. Thomas and the Scholastic philosophers and scientists of the high Middle Ages, notably those who had come under the influence of Aristotle as mediated by St. Thomas. In the history of science, Aquinas’ successful synthesis of Aristotelianism with Christian theology is among the most important and underappreciated events.

Of course Aquinas was a theologian more than he was a scientist, but he used natural science in the service of philosophy, just as he used philosophy in the service of theology. His work forms an organic whole which embodies the medieval adage that “philosophy is the handmaid of theology.”

A very brief introduction to the works of St. Thomas

St. Thomas’ literary output was positively staggering. The collected works of Aquinas run to 50 large folio volumes, the equivalent of about 500 short books. In order to earn his master’s degree, like all the Masters of the 13th century, Aquinas wrote a long and detailed commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Then he went on to write many commentaries on Holy Scripture and the works of Aristotle, numerous short works devoted to specific questions in philosophy and theology, and two large “Summas,” or summaries of theology.

The Summa Contra Gentiles was written as a systematic exposition and defence of Christian belief for the persuasion of unbelievers, and it ranks among the finest texts in the history of apologetics. The Summa Theologiae, Aquinas’ undisputed magnum opus, was written as a textbook for theology students, whose faith was already presumed.

A very brief introduction to the Summa Theologiae

The Summa Theologiae is a systematic work comprised of three large parts. The First Part, usually referred to by its Latin name Prima Pars, is concerned with the nature of objective reality, starting with God as the Source of all being. Aquinas considers the existence and nature of God as Creator and as Trinity, the creation of the universe, and the nature of man, the crown and synthesis of creation made in God’s own image.

The Second Part of the Summa is so large that it is subdivided into two parts. The First Part of the Second Part, the Prima Secundae, deals with happiness (flourishing) as the goal of human existence, the general principles of morality which conduce to happiness, the natural law which guides man in his quest for happiness, and human and divine government, which exist to assist man in his quest. The Second Part of the Second Part, the Secunda Secundae, treats the virtues as the way that man lives out the moral principles, and the opposing vices which deter man from attaining his final end, which is happiness with God forever. The Secunda Secundae also treats of the various states of life, the vocations by which God calls man back to Himself.

The Third Part of the Summa, the Tertia Pars, considers the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, whose incarnation and atoning sacrifice provide man with the grace to fulfil the requirements of the moral law, and thereby to be united with God. After treating of Christ in Himself, Aquinas turns to consider the Sacraments of Holy Church, which is the mystical body of Christ wherein He pours out His grace to man, to unite man to Himself in time and in eternity.

Considered as a whole, the Summa Theologiae may be considered as a mirror of reality. It starts with God the Creator, who as Love gives being to all things, which in their turn seek the perfection of their created natures and thereby return to their Source. Man, as the cosmic priest of creation, sums up all things in himself and by making a free gift of himself back to God thereby brings all creation back to its Source. Reality is thus likened to a vast metaphysical circulatory system, with created beings flowing out from God Who Is Uncreated Being, unfolding their essences in time and attaining their various ends, and thereby returning to their Source for which they unceasingly yearn. This is the deeply biblical vision that runs through the entire Summa Theologiae, and on which the very structure of the text is modelled.

St. Thomas died before completing the third part of the Summa. One night shortly after he had composed the treatise on the Eucharist, Aquinas was praying in his chapel and heard a locution from the crucifix on the wall. Christ spoke to him, “Thomas my son, you have written well of me. What will you have as your reward?” The saint’s answer is the perfect summary of his whole life and all his voluminous scholarly output. “Non nisi te, Domine.” “Only yourself, Lord.”

Shortly thereafter one day while Aquinas was celebrating Mass he was granted a profound grace of mystical union, which so transfixed him that he declared he could no longer continue his writing. When his brother friars begged him to explain himself, Thomas told them “Compared with what has been revealed to me, all that I have written seems like so much straw.” On his deathbed soon after, he asked his brothers to read aloud the Song of Songs, and cared not that his greatest work was left unfinished. Later, his brother Dominicans systematically anthologized excerpts from his earlier work to complete the last part of the Summa, which is called the Supplementum.

How to Read the Summa Theologiae

The Summa Theologiae is a massive work. The print edition runs to five volumes and over 3,000 pages. It’s also as dense as it is bulky. St. Thomas never wastes words and there’s really no fat to trim off the Summa. Furthermore, Aquinas deploys an array of technical terminology that can leave the philosophically uninitiated bewildered. How then ought one to approach reading this work?

There are two basic difficulties encountered in the Summa. First, the terminology can be overwhelming without a primer, and second, the structure of the articles themselves can be confusing to newcomers.

The jargon is the biggest obstacle to average readers approaching the Summa. Thankfully, there are many fine introductions to St. Thomas which gloss the main philosophical terms and concepts. Ed Feser’s Aquinas is among the best recent such works. Mortimer Adler’s classic Aristotle for Everybody is also an extremely helpful primer on Aristotelian philosophy, which Aquinas largely adopts as a framework.

The second difficulty is the logical structure of Summa articles, which are discussed below.

How to understand the Summa articles

Articles of the Summa are written in the style of a “scholastic disputation.” These are really short, systematic debates, and once you know your way around them they are a ton of fun to read. Sadly, most people who open the Summa get lost in the seemingly obtuse structure of the articles, get discouraged by this, and end up giving up on St. Thomas.

The basic structure is as follows.

1. Statement of the Question, usually in a yes/no form.
2. Objections, wherein Aquinas summarizes arguments against his own position.
3. “On the contrary,” wherein Aquinas quotes from an authority like the Bible, a Father of the Church, or ancient pagan philosophers like Aristotle, in support of his own position.
4. “I answer that,” wherein Aquinas argues for his own position. This is typically the longest part of the article and where the real substance of Aquinas’ one view is to be found.
5. “Replies,” wherein Aquinas answers each of the previously stated objections and explains why it’s wrong, frequently by recourse to careful distinctions that show the objection to be partly right and partly wrong.

Reading an article from beginning to end can be frustrating, because by the time one gets to the replies one may not clearly recall the arguments of the objections which the replies are replying to. Many students of Aquinas find the following re-arrangement much easier to follow.

• (1) Statement of the question.
• (3) “On the contrary,” which points in the direction of Aquinas’ view.
• (4) “I answer that,” which unfolds Aquinas’ argument for his position.
• (2 and 5) Objection 1 followed immediately by reply 1, objection 2 followed immediately by reply 2, etc., through all the objections and replies.

That said, it is encouraged of all students of Aquinas, at least some of the time, to read the articles straight through. It is a wonderful exercise in authentic mindfulness, as you have no choice but to really pay attention in order to not lose your way. It also helps to situate the articles historically, because the objections that Aquinas replies to are all real arguments that had been made by thinkers before Aquinas, and they’re often very good arguments. Aquinas always very charitably states his opponents’ views as strongly as he can, never pitting himself against straw men. Reading and thinking about the objections before reading the body of the article gives a sense of Aquinas’ brilliance, because very often you will be convinced by the objections even though you know that Aquinas is about to refute them. This is a very useful exercise, and allows you to read Aquinas the way his contemporaries would have, in the context of all the previous arguments that they would surely have already been exposed to by the time they came to study with Master Thomas.

Conclusion

The revival of Thomistic scholarship in recent years is admirable and to be commended. There are many wonderful scholars who are rediscovering St. Thomas after several decades of his thought being largely neglected. Our hope in publishing this essay is that we may yet see a flowering of popular devotion to “the golden wisdom” of Aquinas, that many lay Catholics will search this great saint’s writings, thereby become better formed in their faith, and ultimately grow closer to Our Lord Jesus Christ. Deep study of St. Thomas should lead us to adopt as our own his single-minded pursuit of our Source and Final End: “Only yourself, Lord.”

St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!

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YOUR EMOTIONS

YOUR EMOTIONS

The classical Christian understanding of the human person envisions us bridging two vastly different worlds. We are a body-soul unity, such that “I” am not my soul, nor am “I” my body, but we are, instead, incarnated souls as well as ensouled bodies.

This teaching is one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity and has so many concrete effects that we couldn’t even begin to name them. Suffice just one example: the popular slogan in defence of abortion “I can do what I want with my body.” Aside from the fact that the biology is erroneous (the baby’s body is certainly not the mother’s), the anthropology is also amiss. The slogan implies that the “I” is somehow a possessor of a body, which can be manipulated at will, with no real effects on the “I”. In fact, according to the Christian understanding, what is done to “my body” is actually done to me. My body (along with my soul) is me.

Stretched as we thus are across the worlds of spirit and flesh, we naturally have characteristics of both.

Body, Soul…and Heart?

Christian anthropology classically assigns two characteristics especially to our souls: the intellect and will. These elements mirror God’s own nature, as we are made in his image; animals do not have an intellect or a will in the sense that humans (and angels) do.

Other aspects of us pertain more specifically to our flesh — all of our bodily urges from hunger and thirst to tiredness, as well as mortality.

Yet somehow caught in the middle of this division is the mysterious feature of the “heart.” One’s heart is the core of the person, according to a scriptural understanding, and it is understood to encompass elements that can be considered both spiritual and corporal. Primary among these elements are the emotions.

Emotions are affected both by our higher faculties and our bodily realities. So when my intellect grasps some truth, I might feel a consequent emotion of elation or satisfaction. At the same time, when my stomach is retching with indigestion, I might feel the emotion of irritation or impatience. Emotions are thus both under our control, such that we can nourish and foster them with the choices we make, and entirely out of our control, affected by anything from a bad night’s sleep to a rainy day.

Emotions, of course, are given great importance in today’s culture. “Do what feels right” is basically the law of the land, proposed as the criteria for making decisions on relationships (with love understood as a feeling), to career plans, to everything else.

In opposition to the over-glorification of emotions in our culture, and because of the tendency of emotions to be beyond our control, Christians often relegate feelings to a role of little importance.

This is perhaps most seen in prayer: We pray not because we feel like it, or when we feel like it, but because we should pray. Period.

And that’s of course true. If we only do what we feel like doing, we’ll never get anywhere in our spiritual life or anywhere else.

But emotions shouldn’t be abandoned all together.

Emotions are an Essential Part of Humanity

Father Jacque Philippe, in his insightful little book Thirsting for Prayer, says that the human capacity to feel and have emotions is actually very valuable and that in the spiritual life, “it is absolutely indispensable that our feelings and emotions play their part.”

Springing from Psalm 34, which invites us to “taste and see that the Lord is good,” Father Philippe maintains that if we have never tasted God’s presence and tenderness, then we cannot have a real relationship with him. To taste God’s goodness, of course, is to feel it, to savour it, to experience it — not simply to know it with the coldness of reason.

Father Philippe goes so far as to say that we have the “right” to ask for “sense-perceptible graces,” because only in this way will the truths of our faith and the mystery of God make it into our lives “in a dynamic way.”

In Father Philippe’s estimation, churches are emptying because of celebrations that are “incapable of awakening any emotion other than boredom.”

He goes on to explain that feelings can’t be everything, that we will sometimes feel dry and unmotivated in prayer, and that in any case “what we taste of God is not yet God.” God is of course much greater than anything we could ever feel with our emotions (or understand with our reason, for that matter).

Still, it seems an important point as we resolve in the first weeks of the year to go deeper in our prayer lives. We can’t and shouldn’t discount our emotions entirely. They are part of what makes us human, and as such, should be embraced and welcomed.

The glory of God is, after all, man fully alive. And that means his emotions too.

HEALTH BENEFITS OF CHURCH ATTENDANCE

 Surprising health benefits of church attendance

It makes sense ... God doesn’t need us to attend Mass because it benefits Him.

Going to church is good for your soul, sure, but did you know it may have other benefits, too? There are at least 5 surprising improvements you might experience in a few areas of your life if you attend church services regularly …   Better sleep

Instead of reaching for the Ambien, you might want to think about incorporating daily Mass into your routine. A recent study found an association between better sleep and church attendance. According to the study authors: “More religious adults in particular tend to exhibit healthier sleep outcomes than their less religious counterparts.”

Researchers posit that religious involvement may limit an individual’s “mental, chemical, and physiological arousal associated with psychological distress, substance use, stress exposure, and allostatic load,” thereby promoting better sleep outcomes in practicing individuals.

Less risk for depression and suicide

With all of the recent news concerning the suicide of high-profile celebrities and sky-rocketing depression and suicide rates overall, it is certainly worth looking into factors that may help protect against depression and suicide risk. High up on that list of factors is church attendance – especially Mass attendance for Catholics.

In a 2016 study published by JAMA Psychiatry, researchers found that, between 1996 and 2010, “women who attended any religious service once a week or more were five times less likely to commit suicide.” And while Protestant women attending weekly services had better protection against suicide risk than the average non-practicing woman, Catholic women were seven times less likely than practicing Protestant women to commit suicide.

More stable, happy, and sexually satisfying marriages

According to the Institute for Family Studies, “the couple that prays together, stays together,” that is, couples who practice their faith through regular church attendance together tend to report significantly higher relationship quality than those couples who do not attend services together.

What’s more, attending church together seems to make for sexier marriages, too. According to the Marriage and Religion Research Institute, “Adults aged 18 to 59 in intact marriages who worshiped weekly were most likely to report enjoying intercourse ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ much with their current sexual partner, according to the National Health and Social Life Survey (1992), the most detailed analysis of sexual behaviour in America.”

Longer life

It seems like striving to get to heaven may actually keep you on Earth a little bit longer …According to 2016 study from JAMA Internal Medicine, women who reported attending religious services “more than once a week had a 33 percent lower risk of dying during the study period compared with those who said they never went.” Women who attended once a week also benefited from a 26 percent lower risk of mortality than their non-attending counterparts. The study did not examine the association between religious attendance and mortality in men, and most of the women studied were Christian. Researchers concluded that “Religion and spirituality may be an underappreciated resource that physicians could explore with their patients, as appropriate.”

Lower blood pressure

A 1998 study found that “religiously active older adults tend to have lower blood pressures than those who are less active.” By “religiously active,” researchers meant those who engaged in frequent church attendance, praying, and studying the Bible. Researchers found that “among participants who both attended religious services and prayed or studied the Bible frequently, the likelihood of having a diastolic blood pressure of 90 mm Hg or higher was 40 percent lower than found in participants who attended religious services infrequently and prayed or studied the Bible infrequently.” Interestingly, “those who frequently watched religious TV or listened to religious radio actually had higher blood pressures.”

It makes sense that church attendance would have benefits beyond improving the health of our souls — after all, God doesn’t need us to attend Mass because it benefits Him. And obviously, we shouldn’t just be attending church to get something out of it. But when we do make Mass or worship services a priority, we not only improve our relationship with God, but we strengthen ourselves and improve our relationships with those around us. 

BEING CLOSE TO CHRIST

BEING CLOSE TO CHRIST

One cannot help but notice that our Lord kept some of his followers at arm’s length (e.g., those who followed him for the loaves and fishes) while others he pulled especially close to himself. Peter, James, and John were in his inner circle.

At the Last Supper, John sat in the place of honor next to Christ (Jn. 13:23, 25). Such passages lead us to ask how one becomes like the apostle that Christ loved.

The answer to that question is certainly not by already being a saint or close to perfection. The Gospels make it clear that both John and his brother James struggled with selfish ambition and anger.

The sons of Zebedee would ask to be seated on his left and right when Christ came into the full glory of his kingdom (Mk. 10:35-37) and they wanted to call fire down on a village of Samaritans when they did not receive Christ (Lk. 9:51-56). This should be encouraging to practicing Catholics who are fighting various sins and question if God is even interested in intimacy with them or using them to advance his kingdom.

What God is looking for most of all is what Fr. Jacques Philippe calls “good faith.” Put another way, God is not only calling those to his inner circle who are already saints but also those who want to be saints.

I recently heard a practicing Catholic say, “I’m not entirely sure I’m on the straight and narrow, in comparison to the saints throughout Church history, but I want to be.” These Catholics may have their ups and downs but are pursuing a single-minded devotion to Christ exemplified by the apostles who left family, houses, businesses, and friends to follow Christ.

Like John, they are pursuing Christ as an End-in-Himself not a means-to-an-end (loaves and fishes). They get distracted now and then as John did but their modus operandi is characterized by pursuing the One Thing that is crystallized in Holy Writ:

King David only wanted one thing: “…that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27: 4b). Jesus told Martha that only one thing was needful and Mary had chosen it: to sit at his feet, listen to his voice and bask in his presence (Lk. 10:38-42).

The apostle Paul counted all things as refuse except for one thing: an intimate knowledge of Christ characterized by knowing him in the power of his resurrection, fellowship of his suffering, and identification with his death (Phil. 3:10). Like John, as practicing Catholics, we must not lose the Forest (Christ) in looking at all the individual trees (the particulars of our faith).

The truth of our mission is captured in the title of a book by Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing, and summarized in John’s final directive to the audience of his First Letter: “Little children keep yourselves from idols” (5:21). Idols become like adulterous lovers who defile our marriage bed with Christ our Bridegroom.

Someone may ask, “Is a utilitarian relationship with Christ really such a bad thing? Doesn’t he do things for us? Isn’t he our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, Provider, etc.?”

This is an excellent question, and, yes, we no doubt receive the benefits of availing ourselves to a full sacramental life in Christ. However, this isn’t the whole picture.

The earnest, practicing Catholic is like a woman from an economically deprived background who marries a virtuous man who is well-off. She is grateful for her newfound financial security but her favorite part of the marriage is being with him.

Another important way to imitate the apostle whom Jesus loved is in his relationship to the Mother of God: “When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.”

We see this mutual affection in the recent (December 12) Feast of the Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe between Juan Diego and Our Lady. She met his needs for nurturing maternal care:

Listen, and let it penetrate into your heart, my dear little son, do not be troubled or weighed down with grief. Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your Fountain of Life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle? In the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else you need?

He met her needs for receiving the tender affection of a son and in aligning his life with her agenda, which was to build a shrine for her where she could “show him [Christ] … exalt him … make him manifest … give him to the people.” Diego humbly participated in her goal as Unifier in bringing the indigenous people and Spaniards together.

The Mother of God’s agenda was to bring heaven to earth. This is what the apostle John, as an elderly man, saw in his heavenly vision in the Apocalypse: “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands” (Rev. 7:9; emphasis mine).

Few of us are called to such a spectacular or consequential mission as Diego or John, but we all are called, as St. Thérèse of Lisieux declared, to do small things with great love. This may mean, without sacrificing truth or integrity, bringing people together in small ways, whether it be at home, work, our local churches, and/or in the public square.

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REMINDER FOR THE MISFITS

Reminder for the Misfits

By Allisyn Morris, a junior sign language interpretingmajor from La Porte, Indiana

Scripture: Zephaniah 3:14-20 (NRSV)

Life can feel miserable sometimes. This past year alone, it seems as if the news can do nothing but report on horrific tragedies, controversial political topics and natural disasters. It is so easy to get swept up in the mix of bad news with our personal problems that we want to give up. But it is important for us to not give up hope and to remain strong in our faith. In Zephaniah 3:14-20, we are reminded of the justice, love and redemption God grants us.

God does not love us because of our circumstances, but God loves us in spite of our circumstances. Meaning that God forgives all, no matter our situation. If we are feeling guilt, we need to know that with God, we can be freed of our burdens and carry on with our lives. But even if we know and understand God’s forgiveness, it can still feel as if God is far away from us, living in Heaven and impossible to reach. This is not true. God lives among us always. When God ascended into Heaven, we were not left behind. God lives with us, continuously fighting for us, and fighting with us. And with God on our team, how can we lose?

Most importantly, we are reminded that we are not mistakes. Those of us with mental illnesses, physical disabilities, and those of us who feel as if we are the outcasts that God forgot about, we must know that God made us purposefully. Not to simply tolerate us, but to rejoice in us. It’s understandable for people to feel that because of our brokenness and our imperfections, we are not worthy of the goodness of God, but we are. God tells us that directly. We are reminded of the righteousness of God, and the justice God grants us in this passage. It is important to remember, no matter our experiences, our hardships, our mistakes, God wants us, God loves us, and God made us not to tolerate our existence, but to rejoice in us and to spend time in our company. God wants to know us, and God wants to bring us to our eternal home in Heaven.

Scripture: Zephaniah 3:14-20 (NRSV)

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! ¹⁵The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. ¹⁶On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. ¹⁷The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing ¹⁸as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it.¹⁹I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. ²⁰At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord.

When is our life fulfilled?

When is our life fulfilled? At what point in our lives do we say, “That’s it! That’s the climax! Nothing I can do from now on will outdo this. I’ve given what I have to give”? When can we say this? After we’ve reached the peak of our physical health and strength? After giving birth to a child? After successfully raising our children? After we’ve published a bestseller? Become famous? Won a major championship? Celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary? Found a soul mate? After we’re finally at peace after a long struggle with grief?

When is it finally done? When has our growth reached its furthest place?

The medieval mystic John of the Cross says we reach this point in our lives when we have grown to what he calls “our deepest centre”. But he doesn’t conceive of this the way we commonly picture it, namely, as the deepest centre inside our soul. Rather, for John, our deepest centre is the optimum point of our human growth, that is, the deepest maturity we can grow to before we begin to die. If this is true, then for a flower, its deepest centre, its ultimate point of growth, would be not its bloom but the giving off of its seed as it dies. That’s its furthest point of growth, its ultimate accomplishment.

What’s our ultimate point of growth? I suspect that we tend to think of this in terms of some concrete, positive accomplishment, like a successful career or some athletic, intellectual or artistic achievement that’s brought us satisfaction, recognition and popularity. Or, looked at from the point of view of depth of meaning, we might answer the question differently by saying that our ultimate achievement was a life-giving marriage, or being a good parent, or living a life that served others.

When, like a flower, do we give off our seed? Henri Nouwen suggests that people will answer this very differently: “For some, it is when they are enjoying the full light of popularity; for others, when they have been totally forgotten; for some, when they have reached the peak of their strength; for others, when they feel powerless and weak; for some, it is when their creativity is in full bloom; for others, when they have lost all confidence in their potential.”

When did Jesus give off his seed, the fullness of his spirit? For Jesus, it wasn’t immediately after his miracles when the crowds stood in awe, and it wasn’t after he had just walked on water, and it wasn’t when his popularity reached the point where his contemporaries wanted to make him king, that he felt he had accomplished his purpose in life and that people had begun to be touched in their souls by his spirit.

None of these.

When did Jesus have nothing further to achieve? It’s worth quoting Henri Nouwen again: “We know one thing, however, for the Son of Man the wheel stopped when he had lost everything: his power to speak and to heal, his sense of success and influence, his disciples and friends – even his God. When he was nailed against a tree, robbed of all human dignity, he knew that he had aged enough, and said: ‘It is fulfilled’ ” John 19:30).

“It is fulfilled!” The Greek word here is τετέλεσται (tetelestai). This was an expression used by artists to signify that a work was completely finished and that nothing more could be added to it. It was also used generally to express that something was complete. For example, tetelestai was stamped on a document of charges against a criminal after he had served his full prison sentence. It was used by banks when a debt had been repaid.

It was used by a servant to inform his master that a work had been completed. And it was used by athletes when, tired and exhausted, they successfully crossed the finish line in a race.

“It is finished!” A flower dies to give off its seed so it’s appropriate that these were Jesus’s last words. On the Cross, faithful to the end, to his God, to his word, to the love he preached and to his own integrity, he stopped living and began dying. That’s when he gave off his seed, and that’s when his spirit began to permeate the world. He had reached his deepest centre. His life was fulfilled.

When does our living stop and our dying begin? When do we move from being in bloom to giving off our seed? Superficially, of course, it’s when our health, strength, popularity and attractiveness begin to wane and we start to fade, into the margins and eventually into the sunset.

But when this is seen in the light of Jesus’s life, we realise that in our fading out, like a flower long past its bloom, we begin to give off something of more value than the attractiveness of the bloom. That’s when we can say: “It is fulfilled!”

GOD ALLOWS EVIL

Why does a good God allow evil?

If God is good, why does He allow evil in the world? Note the words “allow evil” and not “send evil” – this is a very important distinction!

This is one of those the age-old questions that no one seems to have a good answer for. It is not an easy question to answer, for who among us has the mind of God? However, Christian theology, which of course is based on the Bible, does give us some clues if not a complete answer to the question. So, what is that part of Christian theology we can examine to gain some insight into this paradox?

The basic tenets of Christianity are that man was created in the image of God and therefore must have certain attributes of God, namely a free will and the ability to love. Without these attributes, mankind would be nothing more than animals. In making man this way, God made the decision to have man freely exercise his will for Him or against Him. The angels also had been given this freedom of choice.  Knowing in advance that both man and some of the angels would choose to disobey and rebel against Him, He nevertheless proceeded to create them as He did. That is the history so clearly delineated in the Bible.

Now the question of why God did what He did:

Perhaps the best answer to why God does anything, or chooses not to act in some instances, is that God is Love and love is always His motivation, in all circumstances. But God is also just, and justice even in our world requires punishment for crimes. Sin, which is basically rebellion against God, needs to be punished. If sin is not punished, then God would not be just, but only loving and forgiving. 

Now God has a dilemma, how does He reconcile His love and His justice? They appear to be irreconcilable! The answer, of course in Christian theology, is that He sent His son Jesus to die for our sins and therefore satisfy the requirement for punishment for sin. We know that He was crucified at the hands of evil men in both the Jewish leadership and the Roman empire. Without evil men in the world, there could be no crucifixion of an innocent man, namely Jesus. No evil, no crucifixion. No crucifixion, no redemption.

God used the evil in this world to accomplish His plan for man’s redemption and at the same time manifest the magnitude of His love for man. Without evil there would be no way for Him to satisfy His justice and His love for man. Both of these were accomplished at the Cross.

Every parent’s primary desire for their children is to communicate how much they are loved. We know most parents would, if necessary, lay down their lives to protect their children from serious life-threatening circumstances. So, is it any surprise that God would do the same thing for His children?

Without evil in the world He would not be able to demonstrate that ultimate level of love, namely dying in their place. “There is no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friend,” said Jesus (John 15: 13). The most effective measure of a person’s love is the extent to which a person is willing to endure inconvenience, pain, and suffering for the beloved. Therefore, universal pain and suffering must be allowed by God or His love for mankind could never be fully recognized or appreciated.

There is one other consideration in God’s mind for allowing universal pain and suffering in this world. Would man be able to understand hell without having experienced pain in this life? Hell is real and is necessary; would anyone want to live forever in the presence of Hitler?

Jesus spoke about Hell more than He spoke about Heaven; and who can forget his teaching about, “cutting off a limb and plucking out an eye if they are the cause for your damnation to hell” ( Mark 9: 43). That sounds very serious. So, God is willing to see all his loved ones suffer in this world to make sure they understand the pain of eternal suffering in hell.

Without evil (pain and suffering) Hell would have no meaning to a sinful world. But recall that He did everything imaginable to keep man from that horrible place, nevertheless man ultimately determines where he will spend eternity. You accept and obey Jesus and you go to live with Him in Heaven; you reject Jesus’ sacrifice (suffering and death for you) and you go to Hell. It is that simple!

Well you might say: could God have chosen to avoid all this by not creating man at all and had just decided to live with His angels? Yes. He could have chosen to do that. But consider this, do not most of us long to have children of our own whom we could love and cherish with the hope that they in turn would love us? Do not women endure great pain in childbirth to deliver the child and then spend many years of work and sacrifice to raise their children?

Why, because that desire to create a person in our own image and likeness to love and be loved is very strong in mankind. That natural desire comes from God. His love motivated Him to create a family of people made in His image and likeness, and He was willing to pay the ultimate price to have that kind of family.

God is totally motivated by love and that is the reason for His creation and for allowing pain and suffering in this world. It is love, love, love, it is all about God’s Love.