St. Peter Canisius Apostolate

Though it doesn’t fit the liturgical season of Advent, this is a good quote nevertheless — something to be savored. It’s from Ronald Knox’s Caliban in Grub Street:

The idea that Jesus was a great Moral Teacher, and that men afterwards came to think he had risen from the dead is simply unhistorical; you are putting the cart before the horse. The message which electrified the world of the first century was not “Love your enemies,” but “He is risen.”

From Archbishop Charles Chaput’s Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life:

A man may claim he loves his wife. His wife will want to see the evidence. In like manner, we can talk about God all we please, but God will not be fooled. Jesus told the story of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25.31-46) for a reason. Saying we’re Catholic does not mean we are, except in the thinnest sense. Relationships have consequences in actions. Otherwise, they’re just empty words. Our relationship with God is no exception. When Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” and Peter answers yes, it’s no surprise that Jesus immediately follows with: “Then feed my sheep” (John 21.17). God loves us always. We can choose to ignore that. All of the damned do. But if we claim to love him, it’s an “if/then” kind of deal, with obligations of conduct and personal honesty just like any good marriage or friendship.

From Dom Hubert van Zeller’s Holiness: A Guide for Beginners:

If personal holiness is thought of as being a name at the top of a list, it is understood wrong. If it is thought of as something that merits a feast in the Church’s calendar, it is understood wrong. If it is thought of as something to which is attached the power of working miracles, it is understood wrong. If it is thought of as mooning about in a state of pious contentment (or sweet ecstasy or noble and aloof virtue), it is understood wrong. There is nothing “superior” — in the sense of being one up on everybody else — about it.

The way to think of sanctity is as something that, by being generous and faithful to grace, gives back to God the love He has given to the soul. So it is for God’s sake, more than for our own, that we should want to be saints. We work away at holiness not because we are ambitious, and want to be experts in a particular kind of lofty career, but because God wants us to be saints and it praised by our striving after sanctity.

Anyone can be holy, or rather act holy, so long as others are saying, “There’s a saint for you,” but sooner or later this sort of holiness wears off. Either the person sees the trap, becomes humble, and goes ahead toward real holiness, or keeping up the act becomes too much of a strain and there’s a swing toward worldliness and perhaps to a lasting unholiness. The whole secret of sanctity is that it is a thing of grace, and so cannot be switched on as a part to be played.

This means that however determined you are to be a saint, you will not become one if you rely on your own strength of mind. The thing that can get you to sanctity is God’s grace. You will need all the strength of mind you have just to work together with God’s grace, but if you imagine that making good, strong resolutions will carry you the whole way, you are wrong. About the first thing to happen will be that God lets you break some of those good, strong resolutions before you get properly started. This will be to put you in your place, and show that you can do nothing without Him.

From Pope Paul VI’s Evangelii Nuntiandi (On Evangelization in the Modern World)

Above all the Gospel must be proclaimed by witness. Take a Christian or a handful of Christians who, in the midst of their own community, show their capacity for understanding and acceptance, their sharing of life and destiny with other people, their solidarity with the efforts of all for whatever is noble and good. Let us suppose that, in addition, they radiate in an altogether simple and unaffected way their faith in values that go beyond current values, and their hope in something that is not seen and that one would not dare to imagine. Through this wordless witness these Christians stir up irresistible questions in the hearts of those who see how they live: Why are they like this? Why do they live in this way? What or who is it that inspires them? Why are they in our midst? Such a witness is already a silent proclamation of the Good News and a very powerful and effective one. Here we have an initial act of evangelization. The above questions will ask, whether they are people to whom Christ has never been proclaimed, or baptized people who do not practice, or people who live as nominal Christians but according to principles that are in no way Christian, or people who are seeking, and not without suffering, something or someone whom they sense but cannot name. Other questions will arise, deeper and more demanding ones, questions evoked by this witness which involves presence, sharing, solidarity, and which is an essential element, and generally the first one, in evangelization.

From Fr. Thomas Dubay’s Seeking Spiritual Direction:

Our first sign of growth comes from the lips of the Lord himself, and it strikes at the very heart of reality: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Lk 12.34). Or as St. Paul expressed it: since you have risen with Christ, mind the things above, not those on earth (Col 3.1-2). Love is like gravity: everything in the lover’s life tends toward the beloved. People growing toward God find that more and more the indwelling Trinity is their center of gravity. While they do not neglect duties toward others, their thoughts and choices are focused on their one love. When St. Francis of Assisi looked at a rose or a bird, he did not see only a remarkable artifact of the Creator. Deep in the center of the flower or the animal, he saw a glimpse of the divine glory, which is one reason why he and all the saints did indeed rejoice in the Lord always; they sought and found the supreme Beloved everywhere, even in hardships and sufferings.

From a spiritual conference by Father John Hardon:

In the words of St. Ignatius, I quote, “Christ our Lord, the Lord of all the world, chooses so many persons, apostles, disciples and sends them throughout the whole world to spread His Sacred doctrine among all men. No matter what their state or condition may be, the address which Christ our Lord makes to His servants, whom He sends on this enterprise, is to urge them to seek to help everyone. First, by attracting them to the highest spiritual poverty and should it please the Divine Majesty and should He deign to choose them, even to actual poverty. Secondly, by encouraging them to desire insults and contempt, for from these two things comes humility. So then, there are three steps. The first poverty, opposed to riches, the second scorn or contempt, opposed to worldly honor, the third humility, opposed to pride. From these three steps Christ leads them to all virtues.”

We now have the contrast and what a contrast this is. Christ’s strategy is the direct opposite of Satan’s. It begins by inspiring His followers and future apostles in every age, in every state of life to practice the first beatitude, ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’, detachment of heart from earthly possessions. And even, if it is God’s will, attracting them to dispossession.

In all my years in the priesthood I don’t go to theological analysis when I invite people to work in the apostolate, but behind every invitation is the principle behind the Two Standards. The first condition is that the person who wants to serve Christ in winning souls for His Divine Majesty is himself, at least internally, detached from everything and I mean everything, and I mean everything, in this world, money is the most obvious but not only. This is so fundamental in the apostolate that in two thousand years, what am I saying, I mean it, in two thousand years there have been no exceptions, the only persons that Jesus Christ uses to spread His gospel are the people detached from the things of this world. And nobody cheats. You cannot play both sides. You cannot love, as Christ tells us, both God and mammon.

Then Christ inspires His followers just the opposite of the devil’s instigation. And those are the two words I always use theologically — instigation by the devil, inspiration by Christ. Christ inspires His followers to actually desire, of course, of course, under the influence of grace, to be scorned or contempted. I know whereof I speak. I made the Spiritual Exercises for the first time at the ripe old age of twenty-two. I have not had to change one syllable ever since. You must want, I mean it, you must want, and I quote Ignatius, “to be scorned, despised, ignored, rejected.”

That doesn’t mean you go around behaving as somebody who is well, out of his mind. But, for the world, and I mean that in the most generic sense possible, for the world anyone who follows Christ faithfully is out of his mind, do you hear me. And in the world’s estimate we are only as out of our mind as we are faithful in the following of Christ. And having, God knew I didn’t know then, having done my own graduate studies and got my degree in psychology, having read, because, well I had to, volumes of Siegmund Freud. One of his favorite definitions of a psychotic, “a psychotic is anyone who believes that he will be rewarded after death for the good that he has done here on earth.” Pardon me ladies and gentlemen, my dear fellow psychotics. In other words, presumed behind all that we are saying is that sincerely to imitate Jesus Christ is to be considered, well, not just unworldly, but irrational. And the best we can do is, well, hide or protect or mask what the world calls our irrationality, quite an art. I give a whole course on that subject.

(Don’t forget to read Part 1: The Standard of Satan: Pride)

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From a spiritual conference by Father John Hardon:

Let me first quote from St. Ignatius, “The chief of all the enemy summons innumerable demons and scatters them. Some to one city and some to another throughout the whole world, so that no province, no place, no state of life, no individual is overlooked. He goes around to lay snares for men to seek to chain them. First they are to tempt them to covet riches, as Satan himself is accustomed to do in most cases, that they more easily obtain the empty honors of this world and then come to overweening pride. The first step then, will be riches, the second; honor, the third; pride, from these three steps the one leads to all other vices.”

Now some explanation, the devil’s strategy is to get people to become attached to earthly things. He urges them to, well, acquire say material wealth, which is the cheapest kind of riches, or acquire education. Ah, dear Lord, how clever the devil is. Or acquire mastery in the use of their emotions, or cultivate gifts in the social order, or, would you believe it, the devil will even tempt people to acquire spiritual riches. Forty-seven years in the priesthood, as I keep telling people, have taught me an awful lot. Twenty-five years of teaching the most highly intellectual people that the Church can gather, members of the Society of Jesus, oh how hungry men can be for knowledge. But whatever the possession, whether as cheap a thing as money, or special things say as, secular knowledge or even spiritual wisdom, the beginning is to become wealthy and thus to attain to recognition, praise, honor. How well I know, I’ve lived with too many people, too many highly gifted individuals, who have fallen like cheap tinder because they’ve allowed themselves to be beguiled by the evil spirit.

Attachment to the things of this world gradually makes a person, not only satisfied with what he or she possesses, but hungry for acceptance, recognition, praise, and honor. And once, as Ignatius says, once a person becomes a victim of empty honors, then pride follows as a matter of course. I’ve struggled with too many multi-millionaires not to know how weak these wealthy people can be if they allow their attachment to the things of this world to bewitch them, and as a consequence makes them an easy prey by making them proud. Because once a person falls into pride, there is no limit to that person’s malice. Proud people are the agents of the devil. He uses them to seduce others. In fact, he uses them to work with him, and under his demonic power he organizes proud people into what some of the Fathers of the Church, as I have said, call a distinct power, call it the mystical body of satan. By whatever name, it is mastered by the father of lies. And God allows the demons to exercise superhuman power over those who allow themselves to be victimized.

(Don’t forget to read Part 2: The Standard of Christ: Humility)

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From Fr. Livio Fanzaga’s The Deceiver:

The one who is Full of Grace is the only human person who, from the moment of her conception, has been preserved from original sin. In calling Mary the “All Holy,” the Church affirms that the one who was predestined to divine maternity has been conceived in the splendor of grace from the first instant. This means that Satan has never been able to claim any right over her. Mary has always been completely and solely of God. This is the profound reason for her enmity towards the serpent and the reason for the uncontrollable fury of the evil one at the mere sound of her name.

I would like to underline the important of the expression “from the first instant,” which Blessed Pius IX specifically willed should be included in the formulation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. In the debate that lasted more than a millennium preceding this dogmatic definition, there were some theologians who were so concerned to uphold the truth of faith regarding the universality of original sin that they affirmed that, at least in the instant of her conception, the Virgin Mary had contracted original sin, only to be healed of it immediately afterward through a special grace, in view of her future divine maternity.

Whenever this hypothesis was proposed in preaching, it was met with the hostility of the Christian people, who would often expel from the Church the so-called “maculate” preachers, that is, those who maintained that the one Full of Grace had been conceived “stained” (Latin macula) by original sin. The supernatural instinct of the faithful would not accept that Satan could claim possession over Mary, even at the first instant of her conception.

The great controversy ended in 1854 with the solemn proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception “from the moment of conception,” meaning that the enmity between the serpent and the woman was total and radical. The evil one was never able even slightly to touch her, not even for a moment. Four years later, at Lourdes, when Bernadette asked Mary her name, the Virgin Mary affirmed her title as the Immaculate Conception.

Certainly we have here an extraordinary and enormous gift of grace, given to Mary in view of the merits of Jesus Christ. This means that Our Lady has been redeemed, but in a way much more perfect than ours, inasmuch as the grace of redemption has been offered to her from the first instant. She who was going to generate the victor over the evil one, was never subject to Satan. To whom, if not her, the woman clothed with the sun of divine sanctity, could Jesus have entrusted the task of tearing souls away from the furious dragon who wants to devour them?

From This Tremendous Lover by Fr. Eugene Boylan:

Once a man has realized that God wills his happiness and that all that happens to him is ruled and regulated by God with infinite wisdom and power towards that end, and that all God asks of him to to co-operate with that loving will of His — then, that man has found the beginning of peace. And if he would be filled with that peace which is as a river, full, overflowing, rising up from the depth of his own heart, the peace which surpasseth all understanding, the peace which the world cannot give — let him devote himself to the pracice of abandonment to God’s will, always remembering that where God’s will is to be done or to be accepted, Jesus Christ is waiting to share our doing of it. He always does the things that please the Father.

From The Practice of Christian Perfection by Saint Alphonsus Rodríguez:

For this spiritual reading to be profitable, it must not be done hastily, or at a gallop, as when one reads stories, but very leisurely and attentively; for an impetuous flow of water or a heavy shower does not penetrate or fertilize the earth, but small, gentle rain; so for reading to enter and be drunk in by the heart, the reading must be done with pausing and pondering.

From Seeking Spiritual Direction by Fr. Thomas Dubay:

Most of us assume that world-class excellence in music, scholarship, or sports is due mainly to extraordinary talent, but studies of the question find that while talent does play a part, the chief factor is drive and determination. So it is with sanctity. Saints are not born saints. They do not have a superior human nature. They are as weak and wounded as the rest of us. The difference lies in their resolution. Men and women on fire do not simply admire holiness or merely wish it were so. They make up their minds to take the Lord at his word and with no dilution of his message. Am I as determined in my pursuit of God as the worldly are in seeking prestige and power, fame and fortune?

From The Lord by Romano Guardini:

Revelation shows that the merely unitarian God found in post-Christian Judaism, in Islam, and throughout the modern consciousness does not exist. At the heart of that mystery which the Church expresses in her teaching of the trinity of person in the unity of life stands the God of Revelation. Here [in John 1.1-18] John seeks the root of Christ’s existence: in the second of the Most Holy Persons; the Word (Logos), in whom God the Speaker, reveals the fulness of his being. Speaker and Spoken, however, incline towards each other and are one in the love of the Holy Spirit. The Second “Countenace” of God, here called the Word, is also named Son, since he who speaks the Word is known as Father. In the Lord’s farewell address, the Holy Spirit is given the promising name of Consoler, Sustainer, for he will see to it that the brothers and sisters in Christ are not left orphans by his death. Through the Holy Spirit the Redeemer came to us, straight from the heart of the Heavenly Father.

From Fr. John Hardon’s History and Theology of Grace:

St. Thomas’s analysis of the structure of the Pater Noster leans heavily on Augustine and emphasizes theological intimations that might otherwise be overlooked. Since prayer is an interpretation of our desires, he says, we should pray for those things which are proper for us to desire. In the Lord’s Prayer, we are asking of God everything that may lawfully be ambitioned. It is therefore not only a catalogue of petitions but also a corrective for the affections.

In other words, if we’re unsure whether we have a proper Christian outlook, we should spend some time meditating on the “Our Father.”

Last week, we started looking at what St. Thomas Aquinas has to say about our ultimate end. We noted that in order to understand Thomas, we need to understand his notion of human freedom — namely, that all people seek the (perceived) good and avoid the (perceived) evil. In other words, we all choose courses of actions by whether or not we believe they are good for us or bad for us. Therefore, the only way we can pursue the true good and avoid the true evil — not just those things we perceive to be good and evil — is to know what our ultimate end is.

St. Thomas was a university professor and not a parish priest, so therefore his writings can be abstract and obscure. So in this edition of “Friday with the Church Fathers” I thought we’d look at an extended passage from St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430), in which one of the greatest bishops and pastors of souls speaks about our desire to seek the good and avoid the evil with words that are more easily grasped than those of St. Thomas.

This passage is taken from Augustine’s Commentary on Psalm 32.

All men love happiness, and therefore men are unreasonable in wanting to be wicked without being unhappy. And whereas unhappiness is the inseparable companion of wickedness, these perverse folk not only want wickedness without unhappiness, which is an impossibility, but they want to be wicked on purpose to avoid being unhappy. What do I mean by saying they want to be wicked on purpose to avoid being unhappy? Consider this point for a moment: in all the wickedness men commit, they always desire happiness. A man steals; you ask: “Why?” For hunger, for need. So he is wicked for fear of being unhappy, and all the more unhappy for being wicked. For the sake of driving away unhappiness and obtaining happiness, all men do whatever they do, good or bad; they invariably, you see, want to be happy. Whether they lead a good life or a bad one, they want to be happy; but not all attain to what all desire. All wish to be happy; none will be so but those who wish to be good. And then, lo and behold, someone or other, although doing wrong, wants to be happy. How? With money, with silver and gold, with estates and farms, with houses and servants, with worldly magnificence, with fleeting and perishable honors.