The twenty-fifth day of December.
In the five thousand one hundred and ninety-ninth year of the creation of the world from the time when God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth;
the two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seventh year after the flood;
the two thousand and fifteenth year from the birth of Abraham;
the one thousand five hundred and tenth year from Moses and the going forth of the people of Israel from Egypt;
the one thousand and thirty-second year from David’s being anointed king;
in the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel;
in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;
the seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the city of Rome;
the forty second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus;
the whole world being at peace,
in the sixth age of the world,
Jesus Christ the eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,
to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming,
conceived by the Holy Spirit,
and nine months having passed since his conception,
was born in Bethlehem of Judea of the Virgin Mary,
being made flesh.
The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.

Now, what you heard in church was probably a slightly different version, updated with somewhat contemporary science (“unknown ages from the time when God created the heavens and the earth,” etc.) which is good in that it dodges the presumption that we have exact knowledge of the history of the universe but bad in that it loses a great deal of the poetry of the traditional version. Such is life: we can’t have all good things all the time.

But what I love about the Proclamation is that it places Jesus Christ in the very midst of history and fact. As the time of Jesus’ birth draws near, the revised and the traditional versions are almost identical, because these are historical events we know with much greater accuracy and certainty. And the point is that the Christmas miracle is not some unknown philosophical idea or moral code or community feeling.

The Christmas miracle is that an infinite God of pure spirit entered into full union with the material world he created in the person of Jesus, son of Mary.

The Christmas miracle is that Creator and creation are no longer divided, but are related.

And the Christian religion stands or falls on the truth or falsehood of this concrete historical claim. Christianity is not a moral code, though Jesus Christ does offer moral teachings. It is not a philosophical system, though philosophers have built systems on its foundation. It is not a a social or political ideology, though knowledge of Christ expresses itself in some social and political ways. Rather, Christianity at its heart is a relationship between the God who is Love and the world that he loved into being. Love always seeks the good of the beloved; so God gave the greatest good he could, his infinite self, in the only way a finite world could truly receive him, in a simple human being.

That is the great mystery and miracle and true spirit of Christmas. May yours be blessed!

It keeps going, and going, and going...

I’m working my way through Thomas Aquinas’s description of Charity, or Love as a theological virtue, and I’m fascinated by the way he distinguishes Charity from other forms of love. For example, he insists that Charity, properly speaking, is more than a natural virtue. It is not something we can achieve by our own power.

As stated above (Question 23, Article 1), charity is a friendship of man for God, founded upon the fellowship of everlasting happiness.

He later notes that Charity applies to other people because they share with us this fellowship of everlasting happiness in God. But God is always first, and is the source and reason for all Charity.

Now, it’s very important to me that my blog be accessible and welcoming to non-Catholics and non-Christians and non-theists even. This is because, even though I’m firmly convinced of the truth of Catholic teaching, I’m just as firmly convinced that I’m only able to understand and act on that truth in the concrete people and situations of everyday life. Even if the Catholic Church is one of the biggest religions on earth, it’s still only claims less than a quarter of all Americans, and less than one-sixth of the people on this planet. In other words, most of the people I meet and connect with and become friends with are not Catholic. And all these people are my teachers in the virtue of love.

Can non-Christians love?

That said, I’m not going to just reject Thomas’ idea that genuine virtuous love is fundamentally the love of God. Thomas is much smarter than I am, and I’m not going to cross him if I don’t have really good reason.

But it does raise the question whether, in his understanding, a non-Christian is capable of love at all.

Now, there are lots of kind of love, according to Thomas; there is the kind of love I have for chocolate or garlic; there is the kind of love I have for my garden or my pet; there is the love I have for my friends, the love of my family, the love I feel toward a benefactor, the love I feel for my home or my country, the love I feel for my spouse, and so on. All of these are natural loves, and what they all have in common is that they guide us toward something good.

Love always recognizes the good, seeks the good, enjoys the good.

What sets Charity apart, for Thomas, is that it seeks and enjoys a good beyond our natural capacity: it loves God, and seeks eternal union with him.

This is a love so great that it is impossible to achieve by human will or effort. This kind of Charity is utterly impossible for a mere mortal; it can only come as a gift from God. That is why Charity is a theological virtue rather than a natural or moral virtue.

Really impossible?

Let’s try a thought experiment: imagine eternity. Unless you’re a high-falootin’ philosopher, you’re probably thinking of an endless extension of time. Now, imagine hanging out with your best friend or your deepest love for all eternity. No matter how lovable that person is, the fact is that at some point you’ll get a little bored, you’ll want some variety, you’ll grow tired of telling and hearing those same old stories over and over again.

In other words, even the sort of heaven that we can imagine – and the Catholic idea of heaven claims that it’s ultimately beyond our imagination – runs up against limits in our ability to recognize and enjoy the good things that we have.

For Thomas, Charity is a new ability: the ability to love infinitely, not bounded by the limits of our time or attention or emotions. It is an ability that reaches its perfection only in heaven; on earth we strive to grow in Charity, by what Thomas calls “earnest endeavor,” knowing we will only find its fulfillment beyond this life.

Gift and giver

Now, a Christian is someone who seeks this gift in Jesus Christ, believing and following and taking up his or her cross, and so on. But a gift is not something anyone can demand. If God is the giver, none of us can force his hand.

The Catholic teaching is that God gives Charity (among other gifts) in baptism. But God is not limited to our rituals; God can give his gifts, including the gift of Charity, well beyond the visible confines of the Church. This is not a perfect Charity, but only for the same reason that no Christian’s Charity is perfect in this life. This life is not for perfection; this life is for growth and “earnest endeavor.”

I don’t expect non-Christians to necessarily agree with this definition or line of argument; but I hope that I’ve been able to express what Thomas is saying with enough clarity that we can discuss (or debate) about it without misunderstanding each other.

A quick summary, as I understand his argument: classical virtue theory provides a basis for morality among atheists; but most atheists these days reject, not only God, but also any notion of natural good. Therefore, atheists can act morally, but have largely destroyed their own philosophical basis for doing so.

My take: most of us, with or without God, are hypocrites. I do all sorts of stuff I know is wrong; and when I do good things, I don’t always have good reasons for it. So I would separate out the question into two parts:

1. Can atheists act morally? Yes. Experience shows that most atheists do good stuff most of the time.
2. Do atheists have a philosophical basis for moral behavior? That’s a question we can leave to the academics to debate.

For myself, I find my own motivation for acting morally is usually based on what other people will think of me, rather than religious motives. Not that that’s the best reason for doing anything; but at least it’s good to know how weak my moral reasoning can be.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return

Today, Ash Wednesday, begins the season of Lent in the Catholic Church. It’s a season of prayer and fasting and almsgiving, imitating Christ’s forty days in the desert, and preparing to celebrate his passion and resurrection at Easter.

Some Christian traditions, such as the Orthodox, have a very strict discipline for Lent. We Catholics have it fairly light in terms of required discipline: two days of actual fasting – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday – and no meat on any Fridays. But we’re encouraged to take on other penances ourselves.

So, here’s how I’m going about the whole Lenten thing.

Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving

Prayer is the foundation and the heart of Lent. But not just any prayer. It’s a prayer of testing. Jesus went into the desert to be tested, so this prayer is for strength and endurance in the face of testing, in the face of temptation. It’s also a prayer of abandonment to God. It’s giving him permission to test me, and to challenge me in ways I haven’t necessarily planned for.

So, I’m taking up an old form of prayer: the Liturgy of the Hours. I’ve prayed this way before, and I’ve taken a break from it for a little while. But it’s very appropriate for Lent because it constantly recalls me to the very basics of my dependence on God.

As for fasting, I’m going to give up salty snacks (like chips and peanuts and such) as well as desserts at home. These are things that I really do long for, that I’ll notice are gone from my diet, and that will remind me that “man does not live on bread alone.” And that’s the main point of fasting: to rely on God’s care at a fundamental level. I don’t make my own food. God, ultimately, is the one who feeds me.

Also, on the not-so-foodlike-stuff level, I’m giving up computer games. I enjoy the heck out of them, but they too easily distract me from what’s truly important in life.

I’ll be honest: I don’t quite know what to do about almsgiving. I do make regular charitable donations from my income. I probably could devote a bit more money to it, but I don’t have all that much to give. So I’ve been thinking about doing some kind of volunteer work. I know there’s plenty that needs doing. Just not quite sure where to focus.

If you have any ideas, I’m open to them. I figure I’ll talk it through with my spiritual director when I next see him.

In any case, giving alms is like the other two Lenten disciplines: it forces me to put my trust in God. Not only that I can make do with less, but that God can give great things to others through me.

I don’t know how many of my readers celebrate Lent, but if you want to share what you’re doing, I think it would make great conversation in the comments box!

Faith as a noun and as a verb

Some of my friends think that the important thing is to have faith – any faith at all. They think that spirituality is a fundamental part of human life, and that it’s not healthy to neglect or avoid it. But the actual content of that spirituality, whether Christian or Buddhist or Native American or some mixture of anything one finds, doesn’t really matter.

What’s important is to have faith rather than what faith one has; the verb of faith trumps the noun.

At the same time, the recent controversies about politicians (such as Patrick Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi) claiming to be faithful to the Catholic Church while opposing some moral teachings of the Church indicate that content – at least by name – really is important.

In other words, the verb defines the meaning of the noun.

Meanwhile, traditional religions such as the Catholic Church teach that the noun should guide the verb. That is, one’s actions should be based on the content of one’s belief. And, moreover, the quality of one’s belief can therefore be discerned in one’s actions.

But don’t they all teach the same thing?

If the content of various religions was the same across the board, there would be very little conflict between religions, and almost none within religions. But this clearly is not the case. Content matters a great deal to a great many people, and for good reason.

I am a Catholic myself, and have done some academic theological study. I admit to being woefully ignorant about Buddhism or Islam or most other major world religions, but I do know that they differ from Catholic Christianity on a basic level.

Catholic teaching, for example, says that our ultimate destiny is communion in love with God. Buddhism, on the other hand, teaches that our ultimate goal is to end they cycle of rebirth through extinction of oneself. Islam sets forth a paradise including a vision of God, but that seems to maintain an absolute separation between God and the believer.

These different visions of ultimate destiny tend toward different attitudes toward morality: a Catholic approach emphasizes love and hope; a Buddhist approach stresses peace and equanimity; Islam sees morality as duty.

Learning from differences

Now, I’m convinced that no religion could have prospered for centuries on end without some insight into the truth of human nature and the world we inhabit. So I think there’s a great deal that the Catholic Church can learn from other religions, and vice versa.

I also know that, despite the differences, we hold many things in common. Most (if not all) world religions seek to draw the individual out of him- or herself to an attentiveness and care for others and for the world itself. This means we can collaborate on all sorts of philanthropic or environmental projects.

But in the end, reality is one; and different religions describe it in contradictory ways. It really matters whether we reincarnate, or whether we rise again in Christ Jesus. It really matters whether we are allowed to eat pork or any meat at all or only vegetables.

It is theoretically possible that all religions on earth are wrong; but at most, one is right. So I see nothing but good in sorting out exactly which one – if any – is true.

Advent wreaths: full of symbolism

Holy days in the secular world?

I mentioned in an earlier post that Thanksgiving really strikes me as a holy day. And, being a Catholic, Christmas is of course a big deal for me and my family. But these two days are, I think, holy in very different ways.

Thanksgiving is holy in a kind of universal way, while Christmas is holy in a very specific and particular way.

See, Thomas Aquinas proposes that religion is a natural virtue, not one that depends on any particular creed or belief. He considers it a sub-virtue of justice. He doesn’t mean by this that a court should find you guilty of not spending enough time on your knees or of missing church on Sunday. But he does mean that everybody has a duty to respect and honor the holy and the divine.

And one of the main ways of honoring the holy and divine is through festivals and celebrations. We give thanks for the good things that we have received, and we give credit to the power beyond ourselves which has given those good things to us.

Even if we don’t all agree on the name that power goes by, it is a matter of justice to acknowledge that we have not and could not make or earn or create all the good things we have by our own power. And that’s something that even atheists and Baptists should be able to agree on.

And they do: by celebrating Thanksgiving Day.

Religious religion

Christmas, on the other hand, is a particularly Christian holiday. It’s only because the vast majority of the early American colonists came from Christian backgrounds that government offices and banks and most other businesses close for Christmas.

For myself, I celebrate Christmas because I believe that God became human and was born of the Virgin Mary roughly two millenia ago. I know Jews who celebrate Hanukkah because they believe that God once blessed their temple with light and continues to bless their people. I don’t know people of other faiths well enough to speak for them, but I expect that they celebrate various feasts for similar reasons: because they see some particular way that the holy and divine has touched this world, and perhaps has touched their lives directly.

The virtue of religion

By setting aside time, and by celebrating with special foods and with songs or dancing or trees or costumes or any kind of ritual – by dedicating some part of our lives to religious celebration, we build the habit of keeping in touch with those parts of reality which are beyond our ability to know completely, the source of good and the ground of our existence. This is the virtue of religion: to acknowledge and to honor the holy and divine.

For what we are about to receive...

The attitude of gratitude

I find it ironic that a festival for giving thanks has both taken deep cultural root in the U.S. and even has become a civil holiday. Why? Because “the American dream” is so rooted in self-reliance, in pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps, in the notion of independence. The American ideal is to take what one earns rather than to receive what one is given.

But I think most people – American or otherwise – are too wise to believe all that. I’m certainly aware of how much I have been given without a hint of deserving or earning on my part: my very life, to begin with; my education; the love of my friends and family; the benefits of growing up in the late twentieth century in the wealthiest nation on the planet.

I think there are two ways to show gratitude: first is to rejoice at the gift, and to celebrate the one who gave you the gift; the second way is to use the gift, to unwrap it and give it a place in your life. In other words, when Grandma gives you a sweater, you tell her “Thank you” and then you wear it the next time you see her.

Developing the virtue of gratitude

For much of my life, I felt guilty about all the gifts I’d been given. I actually hated my birthday and Christmas because I had done nothing to deserve the presents I received. I somehow felt like they weren’t actually mine if I hadn’t earned them.

In other words, I’d let the “American ideal” overcome the natural order of things in my life.

Needless to say, “Thank you” did not come easily from my lips – until I realized that gifts are the most natural thing in the world. I realized that gifts always come before accomplishments or “earnings”. And that almost all the anxiety and frustration in my life came from refusing to receive anything as a gift.

So, over the past few years, I’ve been practicing the virtue of gratitude. I don’t mean just saying “Thank you.” I mean pushing aside that feeling of unworthiness and focusing on the goodness of the gift. This is even true of gifts that I don’t want or that are useless to me: I can focus on the love that someone is expressing by giving me something.

And, like all virtues, it grows with practice. By receiving small gifts, physical gifts, I find it’s easier to see the less tangible gifts. I find it’s easier to rejoice in my family, my friends, even co-workers and colleagues. I find it’s easier to see what is good in my church, my country, my home. I find it easier to give thanks for my own life, and I want to use my life for a good purpose.