“It’s no mistake” I said to Mike, “that every Catholic church has an image of St. Joseph up front.”
Mike had come for confession and counseling over his failures as a husband and father. He had got caught up in the trap of pornography and ambition. He made some bad, short cut decisions. Stress built up and workaholism began to bite. Mike began neglecting his wife and children — regarding them as a burden and nuisance. As a result, his wife was threatening divorce. Mike came to see me because reality had hit him in the face like a splash of ice water
“St. Joseph”, I continued, “is given to us as the model husband and father. His primary virtue is faithfulness, and from that faithfulness comes every other virtue that he displays.”
In Matthew’s gospel St. Joseph is described as “a just man”. Other versions translate the text saying he was “faithful to the law”. In other words, Joseph submitted himself to the higher law of God, and it was this essential obedience to God and faithfulness to God’s will that was the bedrock of his life. St. Joseph lived out that verse from the gospel, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his goodness, and everything else will be added to you.”
As the foster father of Jesus, St. Joseph’s faithfulness produced a list of other virtues, but there are three that we see in the Christmas stories which are especially necessary for men who wish to walk in his footsteps.
1. Purity
The first virtue that springs from St. Joseph’s faithfulness was purity. In an age where pornography and rampant immorality rage around us, purity can seem passive and pusillanimous. Purity which is passive and weak is not a masculine virtue. Instead true purity is powerful. True purity is rooted not simply in the avoidance of sexual sin, but in a positive and pro-active faithfulness.
The man who is faithful to his wife and to the Christian call to chastity walks a path of freedom and strength. Purity rooted in faithfulness to God’s will and God’s way displays a fully mature and integrated sexuality. The powerful and positively pure man understands the fecund drive of sexuality and treats it as a powerful force in his life—not simply a plaything or something to be feared and suppressed. We see this positive purity in St. Joseph’s acceptance of the Virgin Mary as his wife, his ability to refrain from sexual relations with her, and his powerful channeling of his sexuality into the service of a higher love.
2. Patience
The second virtue that grows from St. Joseph’s faithfulness is patience. St. Joseph comes across as the strong, silent type. He watches and waits. He observes the situation carefully. He is able to stop, look and listen. He does not react impulsively, but holds back, so that he can move carefully at the right time after gathering all the facts.
Joseph’s patience grows from faithfulness because his whole life has been rooted in the law of God. Through a life of study and prayer a Jewish man of Joseph’s generation learned to listen to God, trust in God and then to obey. To develop such a deeply spiritual life requires hard work, perseverance and patience—a virtue we see in his careful care for Mary and the Christ child, and a virtue we need to develop in our highly charged, impulsive and fast paced world.
3. Prudence
The third virtue that emerges from St. Joseph’s bedrock of faithfulness is prudence. Prudence is the wise and careful discernment that enables us to choose the right path. St. Joseph’s prudence is seen as he finds shelter for Mary as she is about to give birth. His choice to flee into Egypt and return when conditions are safe, reveal a prudent, mature and wise guardian of Christ. Again, St. Joseph’s virtue of prudence is rooted in his faithfulness because it is his deep trust in God’s providence which empowers him to take risks and make right choices knowing that God is ultimately in charge.
The Christmas story is wonderful not only because it is loaded with supernatural elements like a miraculous birth, angels and guiding stars, but because it is also full of the extraordinary strengths of ordinary people like St. Joseph. The purity, patience and prudence he displays were a reminder to people like Mike who are struggling with the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood. Mike’s marriage was in a mess because he lacked purity, patience and prudence, and he lacked those virtues because he lacked that deep faithfulness to God from which those virtues grow. When I was able to direct him to re-prioritize his live and develop a genuine devotion to St. Joseph, we began to see those same virtues flourish in Mike’s life and his home life began to turn in the right direction
Christmas festivities are therefore an opportunity not only to celebrate food, family and friends, but also to re-set our priorities and determine once again that we will build on the bedrock of Christ, and like St. Joseph, ensure that our whole lives revolve around the child in the manger.
Brought up as an Evangelical in the USA, Fr. Dwight Longenecker earned a degree in Speech and English before studying theology at Oxford University. He served as a minister in the Church of England, and in 1995 was received into the Catholic Church with his wife and family. The author of over twenty books on Catholic faith and culture including his most recent title, Immortal Combat, Fr Longenecker is also an award winning blogger, podcaster and journalist. He is pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Greenville, South Carolina. Ordained as a Catholic priest under the Pastoral Provision for married former Protestant ministers, Fr Longenecker and his wife Alison have four grown up children.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola gives us the Principle and Foundation on which our life is based, starting with the following Two Principles:
Pray & Meditate on The Creation in Genesis
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In this meditation on the reality of creation, you will be begging for the grace to contemplate the God of Creation. All that God created was and is good!
However, the high-point of creation is the creation of man and woman, who were created in His image and likeness. Still more, through the gratuitous gift of the Sacrament of Baptism, your dignity skyrockets and your destiny reveals itself with the utmost splendor and beauty.
Read and meditate on prayerfully Genesis Chapter 1 in the light of God’s goodness, generosity, and love. Most especially beg for the grace to really understand the infinite love that God had in creating you out of the abundance of love that flows from His Heart.
1. You and Creation
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In all of the ranks of creation on earth, you are the crown of creation, the high-point of creation, the summit of creation, the apex and zenith of creation. Indeed, you were created in the image and likeness of God. Meditate and pray over this profound reality and truth.
2. Your Dignity
In his Christmas sermon that we read in the second Reading of the Liturgy of the Hours, Pope Saint Leo the Great exclaims: “O Christian, recognize your dignity.” Indeed, your dignity is great compared to all of physical creation. Saint Thomas Aquinas asserts: “Your soul is worth more than all of the created universe!” How great God is, but also, how great God is in His creation of man and woman!
3. Your Destiny
Our dignity and destiny are interconnected and interrelated. Your destiny is to be united with God for all eternity! Challenge yourself to meditate upon this truth constantly: I am created for one primary purpose—to be united with God in heaven for all eternity. May this truth engrave itself into the very depths, fiber, and marrow of your being!
4. Creation and Your Dignity Through Baptism
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Once I have received the gratuitous gift from my loving Father of Baptism, then my dignity skyrockets almost beyond limits. In a word, my relation to the Triune God becomes intimate, deep, dynamic, and transformative. In your reflection on Principle and Foundation related to Creation, let your heart burst in thanksgiving for the inexplicable gift of the Sacrament of Baptism.
5. Your Relation to God the Father
Once baptized you have entered into a new family — the family of God. In all truth, you are a son/daughter of God the Father. You can call Him Abba— meaning Daddy! God as your personal Father truly loves you. This must be repeated with insistence— God the Father truly loves you.
Indeed, He loved you into existence. God the Father always loves you. Even though you may have made countless mistakes, errors, and sins, maybe thousands, still the love of God the Father for you is eternal, infinite, and never changes.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
Call to mind the love of the Father for the Prodigal Son. (Lk. 15:11-32) Now it is your turn: tell God the Father that you love Him. You can spend your whole time of prayer simply loving God. But also, let God the Father love you!
Remember the words of Saint John: “It is God who loved us first!” (1 Jn 4:19) Let your guard down and let God love you!
6. Jesus Is Your Brother
From Baptism you have entered into a new relation to Jesus. If God is your Father, then Jesus is your older brother.
True Brothers care for each other; true brothers watch over each other’s safety mutually; brothers sacrifice themselves for the welfare of each other. Jesus is your Older Brother. He loves you so much that He even died for you, shedding His Precious Blood for you on the cross!
Allow this thought to sink deep into the very recesses of your soul.
7. The Holy Spirit: Your Constant, and Best Friend
In a world where so many people experience a crushing loneliness, you have a huge advantage: you are never alone. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit is always present to you and with you to comfort you, to console you, to guide you, to protect you. Beg the Holy Spirit for a constant awareness of His Consoling Presence.
8. The Blessed Trinity
Then it must be expressed with the utmost clarity that through your Baptism you have been transformed into a living Tabernacle of the Blessed Trinity. Indeed, within the depths of your soul lives the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In truth, you are the House of God, the Indwelling of the Triune Mystery, the Blessed Trinity.
Close your eyes and enter into the very depths of your being and praise the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit within you! Incidentally, Carmelite spirituality focuses much upon the Indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in our souls through Baptism and through grace. Pray for a more keen awareness of God who dwells within you—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
9. Principle and Foundation — Creation and Love
This must be repeated time and time again: God created you, your whole being, body and soul, for one primary reason: Love. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit love you beyond your wildest imagination! Their love is strong, pure, constant, faithful, eternal, infinite! Saint John states: “God is love.” (1 Jn 4:8)
However, love demands a response of love. Indeed, God wants to be loved by you. Right now is the precise moment in which you are called to open up your heart and tell God that you want to experience His love, and to love Him with all of the fiber of your being. You want to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. This is a key element of Principle and Foundation and the concept of Creation!
10. Mary Is Very Close to You: She Is Your Mother
In all that has been said about your close relationship to the Blessed Trinity — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Blessed Virgin Mary has a very important role and place. Indeed, Mary is the Daughter of God the Father; she is the Mother of God the Son; she is the Mystical Spouse of God the Holy Spirit. Mary is the Mother of the Church.
However, in relation to you, Mary is truly your Mother. Saint Therese of Lisieux stated: “Mary is Queen and Mother, but she is more Mother than Queen!” Invite the Blessed Virgin Mary to pray with you and to pray for you. She will help you go deep in your knowledge and love of God. She will help you to understand and live out Principle and Foundation to the fullest extent possible.
Talk now to Mary, your loving Mother, from the depths of your heart and beg her for the grace to love God more and more every day, leading you to heaven!
What was it like for Mary to be the Mother of God? Our Gospel reading gives some hints.
Gospel (Read Lk 2:16-21)
Included in the Octave of Christmas is tomorrow’s solemnity, which gives us an opportunity to think about Mary’s participation in the Incarnation. We know, of course, that the description of Mary as “Mother of God” came as a result of confusion in the early years of Christianity over the exact nature of the Incarnation. The controversy pivoted on the question of whether Jesus was fully divine from the womb. Some suggested that He was born human and endowed with His divine nature. The Church declared that Jesus, from His conception in Mary’s womb, was fully human (from His mother) and fully divine (from His Father). If we believe that Jesus is God (we do), then we believe that Mary is the Mother of God.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
However, to observe this solemnity only as a theological marker, as important as that is, would be to fall short of all it offers to us. Aren’t we curious about what it was like for Mary to be God’s Mother? Jesus, from the Cross, gave her to us as our own Mother, too. Don’t we want to know her better?
The Gospel takes up the Nativity narrative with the visit of the shepherds, who had just gotten an angel’s announcement of “good news of a great joy which will come to all people, for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Lk 2:10-11). The angel gave the shepherds directions to find this baby. When the shepherds arrived, they told Mary and Joseph “the message that had been told them about this Child.”
Let us think for a moment about Mary in this scene. She knew that she had given birth to God’s own Son, in a truly miraculous way. Do we wonder what it was like for her to give birth to Him in a make-shift “home,” in the shabbiest of circumstances? Every expectant mother wants safety and hospitable surroundings for the birth of her child. This is a biological dictum of motherhood. Did Mary’s mother’s heart shrink when she realized this was not to be the case for her Son? Was this her first opportunity to wonder what lay ahead for this Child? If these thoughts filled her, imagine the impact of the shepherds’ arrival. These men were simple folk. In fact, shepherding in that day was sometimes done by men who could get no other work, hired hands who were often thought to be borderline suspicious. In other words, they were on the lowest rung in society. Yet it was to these men—not those in palaces or in the precincts of the Temple—to whom the news of the birth of the Savior was first given. As they burst upon the scene, excited with their news and full of joy over God’s goodness, did their presence (and God’s choice of them to be witnesses to Mary’s Son) begin to deepen her understanding of the kind of ministry He would have? Did their exuberance make her smile?ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
We have all seen the almost beatific gaze of love that mothers lock onto the faces of their newborns. There is unbounded tenderness and awe in that look. Did Mary, the Mother of God, after hearing the report of the shepherds and seeing their conversion to God, look down on her Infant’s face and think to herself, “Behold, the face of God”? Did the shepherds’ visit give her encouragement that even though His birth probably didn’t happen as a mother would have hoped, she could be confident that it had happened exactly right?
We see that Mary “kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” We can only imagine all the questions that flooded into her mind, but we can have no doubt that what she pondered gave her joy. She was, in her mother’s gaze of love, face-to-face with God’s mysterious way of working in the world to ransom His people from the bondage of sin and restore them as His children. There would surely be many surprises ahead. Yet, even as an Infant in a manger, Jesus was reaching out to the simple, the disenfranchised, the struggling, the outcasts, and His presence turned their lives into testimonies that glorified and praised God.
Mary, Mother of God, in that humble stable found herself and her Son at the very center of this explosion of blessing. And that is where she remains, forever.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
Possible response: Father, thank You for sending shepherds to adore Mary’s Son and give delight to a mother’s heart.
First Reading (Read Num 6:22-27)
We have here the oldest Hebrew prayer in the Old Testament. God gave it to Moses for Aaron, the high priest, to pray over His people. It is an Old Testament antecedent to our Lord’s Prayer, because it is an explicit divine direction on how to pray for God’s blessing. See how its main petitions have all been fulfilled in Jesus: blessing, protection, the face of God, grace, and peace. Do we not constantly hear these elements in the Liturgies of the Church? Mary, Mother of God, heard this prayer for God’s people throughout her life. When the shepherds arrived to pay homage to the new king, did these words resound in her heart as she looked into the tiny face of her Son? God now had a Face, and wherever that Face looked, the light of blessing, protection, grace, and peace would shine. No wonder Mary had much to ponder that day!
Possible response: Father, You have always desired that we should see Your face and live in its light. Help me keep a steady gaze on Jesus; in His light, we see You.
Psalm (Read Ps 67:2-3, 5-6, 8)
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The psalmist, in his prayer, repeats the elements of the Aaronic blessing in our first reading (“May God have pity on us and bless us; may He let His Face shine upon us”). All of mankind, since Eden, has longed to see God’s face, to be restored to the communion with Him destroyed by sin. The angel who visited the shepherds told them that the “good news” he announced would be for “all the people,” not just the people of Judah. See how the psalmist foretells this universal blessing when God “let His face shine on us”: “So, may Your way be known upon earth; among all nations, Your salvation.”
Later in our liturgical calendar, we will celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, remembering the men from the East, far from Judah, who came to do homage to the newborn king. When we say our responsorial, “May God bless us in His mercy,” we are praying that all the world will behold the face of God in Christ Jesus and be saved.
Possible response: The psalm is, itself, a response to our other readings. Read it again prayerfully to make it your own.
Second Reading (Read Gal 4:4-7)
St. Paul here helps us understand why the angels who sang in the night sky and the shepherds who heard and saw them were filled with God’s praises. He tells us that the Babe in the manger, “born of a woman, born under the law” came “to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” What?
Yes, although it seems too good to be true, it is true. Jesus, born of God and Mary, makes it possible for us to be adopted by God and Mary through our baptism. St. Paul even gives us “proof” of this adoption: “God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’ So you are no longer a slave but a son.” The Holy Spirit, given to us in baptism, moves us to turn to God deep in our souls and call Him “Father,” not “Master.” This is a supernatural event! Jesus came not only as a revelation of God but also to make us His adopted sons and daughters. Children need a father and a mother. Jesus, from the Cross, gives Mary, Mother of God, to John, His disciple. The Church sees in this the gift of Mary’s motherhood to all those reborn in baptism as God’s adopted children.
So, Mary, Mother of God, is our Mother, too. What a difference this can make in our lives when we open our hearts to her. She is a Mother who witnessed, firsthand, how God blesses the meek and the lowly. She is a Mother who knows that even when things don’t turn out as we had hoped, they can still be filled with God’s goodness. She is a Mother who casts on us that same gaze of love that fell first on Jesus. She is a Mother who ponders the events of life and, through God’s mercy, finds herself at the center of the explosion of His blessings.
Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!
Possible response: Blessed Mother, how well you understand that life with God requires faith and patience. Pray for me to have a heart willing to ponder His Word and His work.
Gayle Somers is a member of St. Thomas the Apostle parish in Phoenix and has been writing and leading parish Bible studies since 1996. She is the author of three bible studies, Galatians: A New Kind of Freedom Defended (Basilica Press), Genesis: God and His Creation and Genesis: God and His Family (Emmaus Road Publishing). Gayle and her husband Gary reside in Phoenix and have three grown children.
There is a sin that all of us who are not saints battle. It is the sin of pride. It causes division within ourselves and in our relationships with other people. We see the devastating impacts of pride in our families, friendships, relationships with co-workers, strangers, and in the inner-workings of the Church.
Pride is the original sin through which we desire to be God, to always be right, and to have power. No joy can come from pride, but we continue on this path in vain. It is only through an emptying out of ourselves that we are able to grow in humility and abandon pride through the grace God gives to us. It is when we forget ourselves that we are filled up and our relationships become what God means for them to be and we are infused with joy.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
Love is not competitive. It does not seek power or to rule others. Instead love shows us how to turn towards others without concern for our own desires. In giving completely of ourselves we receive back infinitely more than we could have expected.
Christ shows us this lesson at the Last Supper when he washes His disciples feet. Christ the King of the Universe stoops to wash the feet of men who will, in a few short hours, flee from Him, except for St. John.
After He has washed their feet, He says:
“You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do. Amen, amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him.
If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it. I am not speaking of all of you. I know those whom I have chosen. But so that the scripture might be fulfilled, ‘The one who ate my food has raised his heel against me.’ From now on I am telling you before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe that I AM. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me (John 13:13-20).”
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Our Lord shows all of us what love and service look like in action. It is to leave behind desires for power, prestige, and control. It is to relinquish our grip on the petty things we hold onto so tightly. He invites us to a new way of growing in communion with others: the way of love and humility.
It is the path of humility and self-forgetfulness that helps us grow in love of God and our neighbor. When we stand before our neighbor we no longer look at them as a competitor who stands in opposition to all of our desires. Instead, we see them as our brother and sister who is loved by God as much as we are and we desire to be united to them in the fraternal bond of charity we share in Christ. We begin to see the light of Christ in each person and to treat them with the love, dignity, and respect they deserve. It is to put their needs above our own. In our fear and sin we think we will lose everything we want and need, but in truth, we will find ourselves in this pouring out.
Our lives are transformed when we begin to see Christ in others. Our relationships deepen and become more still and restful. They become a place of rejuvenation instead of frustration and fatigue. It is exhausting having to placate the ego in its lust for pride and vanity. We become more and more free as we let go of our small-minded desire for power and control. We all do it. We do it in our families, at work, and even in ministry. In reality, we are called to relinquish it all and give it back to God so He can teach us how to love and serve Him and our neighbor.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
As our relationships with other people deepen, grow, and mature we will discover the communion we are made to share with one another in heaven. We will come to understand that pride impedes our progress. It is a heavy and destructive sin. It causes us to scatter and mistrust one another. Humility recognizes that we are all loved by God and therefore should ‘love one another as He has loved us’ (1 John 4:7).
Consider how much our lives would change if we stopped grasping at power. If we focus on viewing our neighbor in a charitable light and we work to forget always having it our own way. God will reward us with great peace, stillness, and love of our neighbor if rather than placating our egos, we seek the humble places offered to us that we often ignore. We crave this place of rest, even if we can’t see it right now.
Pride is the sin of Lucifer and it is the sin that causes the most division and pain both within the Church and without. We are not in competition with one another. We are brothers and sisters in Christ made for the joy of everlasting life, but we can’t get there on our own. God has united us to one another and so we must learn to abandon ourselves in love of Him so that we can learn to love our neighbor as ourselves.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
The next time we sense competition arising between one of our brothers and sisters, let’s remember to step back in humility and love. We don’t always have to be right, often we aren’t.
Constance T. Hull is a wife, mother, homeschooler, and a graduate with an M.A. in Theology with an emphasis in philosophy. Her desire is to live the wonder so passionately preached in the works of G.K. Chesterton and to share that with her daughter and others. While you can frequently find her head inside of a great work of theology or philosophy, she considers her husband and daughter to be her greatest teachers. She is passionate about beauty, working towards holiness, the Sacraments, and all things Catholic. She is also published at The Federalist, Public Discourse, and blogs frequently at Swimming the Depths
By David Schloss Most Catholics are oblivious to the powerful yet personal effects the Sacrament of Confirmation can have in our lives. The Church tells us that once we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we can call our savior brother and actually cry, “Abba! Father!” to the Almighty because we are now deeply united to Christ Himself. The ramifications of this truth have the potential to transform us.
The Sacraments
In my previous article, I had begun a discussion of the sacraments of the Catholic Church, starting with baptism. I now turn to the second of the three sacraments of initiation, confirmation. Where baptism frees us from the bonds of original sin and makes us members of the body of Christ, which is the Catholic Church, confirmation is intended to strengthen and deepen the effects of baptism. And confirmation has the bonus of giving you a new name. Sort of. I will begin by defining the Sacrament of Confirmation, the biblical basis for it, the history of confirmation, and finally, the significance and necessity of confirmation in the life of the Catholic.
Pentecost
The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that the sacrament of Confirmation is “the special outpouring of the Holy Spirit as once granted to the apostles on the day of Pentecost”, and “brings an increase and deepening of baptismal grace” (CCC 1302-1304). I hope now we can see the connection between Pentecost and confirmation. For just as the apostles received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, so to do we receive the Holy Spirit at confirmation, and in so receiving, build upon the Graces received by baptism.When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them (Acts 2:1-4).
The Word Confirmation
The word confirmation comes to us from Latin where it means “to make firm” or “establish”. This etymology can be understood in the sacrament itself. For confirmation makes firm and establishes that which was begun in baptism. Confirmation is said to mark the individual as a witness of Christ and seals us with gifts of the Holy Spirit. Those gifts are counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, wisdom, understanding, and fear of the Lord. These gifts are meant to be used by Catholics to glorify God. In baptism, we are ushered into a new life in Christ. In confirmation, that new life is strengthened and perfected.
A New Name
I would like to touch here on the tradition of taking a confirmation name. At various points throughout the Bible, God re-names individuals. Think of Abram becoming Abraham (Genesis 17:5), Jacob becoming Israel (Genesis 32:28), or Simon becoming Peter (Matthew 16:17-18). Do not think that receiving a confirmation name comes without a price. The biblical figures whom God renamed were also sent on a mission. So it is with us. Finally, the confirmation name is that of a Saint who provides us with a model for our own lives.
n ScriptureThe Bible provides several references related to confirmation. We read in Hebrews 6:2 of the “the laying on of hands”, a practice intended to invoke the Holy Spirit. Most explicitly, we read in the Acts of the Apostles, “When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit”. The placing of hands on the one to be confirmed remains significant today. During the confirmation process, a bishop, who is the ordinary minister of confirmation, will extend his hands over those who are to be confirmed, pray that they may receive the Holy Ghost, and anoint the forehead of each with holy chrism in the form of a cross. Holy chrism is a mixture of olive-oil and balm, consecrated by the bishop. Chrism or oil has a special place in Biblical history. The Old Testament describes rituals in which priests, prophets, and kings are anointed with oil.
Not Simply Symbolic Lest we mistake the anointing as simply symbolic, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem reminds us that,
For just as the bread of the Eucharist after the invocation of the Holy Spirit is simple bread no longer, but the body of Christ, so also this ointment is no longer plain ointment, nor, so to speak, common, after the invocation. Further, it is the gracious gift of Christ, and it is made fit for the imparting of his Godhead by the coming of the Holy Spirit. This ointment is symbolically applied to your forehead and to your other senses; while your body is anointed with the visible ointment, your soul is sanctified by the holy and life-giving Spirit. Just as Christ, after his baptism, and the coming upon him of the Holy Spirit, went forth and defeated the adversary, so also with you after holy baptism and the mystical chrism, having put on the panoply of the Holy Spirit, you are to withstand the power of the adversary and defeat him, saying, ‘I am able to do all things in Christ, who strengthens me (Catechetical Lectures, 21:1, 3–4 [A.D. 350]).It was common during the early church to celebrate the three sacraments of initiation during the same ceremony. This began to change in the fourth century as more and more people were being baptized and it became impossible for bishops to preside at every baptism. Over time, bishops began delegating baptisms to priests. The bishops retained the function of the laying on of hands and the anointing of the oil, which would be done separately from baptism.
Graces received are meant to be Graces rendered. It is the metaphysics of God’s Grace that it increases in the measure that we give it away. Having been consecrated by the chrism of confirmation and given the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we are now to give that Grace away so as to bring others to God.
It’s usual this time of year for some folks to point out that the celebration of Christmas and Easter are “pagan.” Are they right? In fact, they are both right and wrong.
They are right because much of what we take for granted in our Western culture has deep roots in the pre-Christian cultures of Europe, but does that mean we have to get rid of every trace of paganism? If so we must get rid of our Christmas trees and our Easter eggs. We must also re-name the days of the week because they honor the pagan deities Tiu (Tuesday) Wotan (Wednesday) Thor (Thursday) Frige (Friday) and Saturn (Saturday) not to mention the worship of the Sun and Moon (Sunday and Monday).
We must also demand that the names of the months of the year be purged of their demonic and absurd pagan associations! Out Janus, the two-faced god of January! Begone Mars for March, the goddess Maia for May and Juno to follow. New Year’s Day! The horror! That the beginning of the year should be celebrated at the beginning of January is pagan through and through!
Roots in Rome
It would be both impossible and insane to try to purge every trace of paganism from our culture. The ancient customs have merged, developed and adapted to changing times, but they are not to be scorned simply because they are pagan or because they are from the past. Common sense should prevail. Just because there are traces of pagan cultures does not mean we worship pagan gods.
A good example of how an originally pagan custom has developed into a harmless modern celebration is New Year’s Day.
Just because there are traces of pagan cultures does not mean we worship pagan gods.
The earliest records of a New Year celebration are from Mesopotamia around 2000 B.C. Then the new year was heralded not in mid winter, but at the Spring equinox in mid-March. Following these already ancient customs, the first Roman calendar had ten months and also recognized March as the beginning of the year. This is why September, October, November and December have their names: from March they were the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months.
The second king of Rome, Numa Pontilius added January and February to the calendar and in 153 B.C. we have the first record of January first being celebrated as New Year’s Day. It change was decreed for civil reasons (the consuls began their term at that time) but many people still recognized mid-March as the start of the year.
When Julius Caesar replaced the old lunar based calendar with a solar calendar he also formally established the beginning of January as New Year’s Day. As the Empire fell and Europe transitioned to Christianity as the new religion of Rome, the vestiges of pagan culture were purged. New Year’s Day at the beginning of January was officially eliminated at the Council of Tours in 597, and across Europe the start of a new year flipped back to the more ancient time of March 25.
The Fresh Start
The date of March 25 not only connected with the most ancient celebrations of the new year at the Spring equinox, but in the Christian calendar March 25 is the celebration of the Annunciation — the announcement by the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would bear a son. The date of March 25 was determined by the Jewish belief that great men were conceived on the same day of the year as their death. Jesus Christ died on March 25, (so the theory goes) which means he was conceived on March 25.
Christians understood that the beginning of the life of the Son of God in the Virgin Mary’s womb was the beginning of God’s work among mankind, the restoration and redemption of the world and the beginning of a new creation. It was therefore theologically fitting that March 25 or Lady Day (in honor of the Virgin Mary) should be celebrated as New Year’s Day. And so it was for a thousand years.Please Support The Stream: Equipping Christians to Think Clearly About the Political, Economic and Moral Issues of Our Day.
Then in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII tinkered with Julius Caesar’s ancient calendar. Because of imprecise calculations, the date of Easter had been drifting and the pope decided it needed fixing. Part of the reform was to re-establish January first as New Year’s Day. Seeing this as papal presumption, the Eastern Orthodox rejected the reform. Seeing this as not only papal presumption, but paganism restored, many Protestants also rejected the new Gregorian calendar. The British did not adopt the new calendar until 1752. The Greeks held out until 1923. The monks of Mt Athos still hold on to the Julian calendar.
The Middle Ages and Middle Earth
Did I mention Frodo Baggins? J.R.R.Tolkien — the creator of Middle Earth — was a devout Catholic Christian. He wove his faith into his masterpiece The Lord of the Rings in very subtle ways. In his epic fantasy story he keeps a precise calendar of events. Tolkien says that it is on March 25 that the ring of power is cast into the fires of Mount Doom, and so the destruction of the demonic Sauron heralds a new beginning for Middle Earth. Thus Tolkien gives a nod to the medieval Christian tradition that March 25 is the true New Year’s Day — the beginning of the defeat of this world’s dark Lord and the dawn of mankind’s redemption.
As you celebrate New Year’s Day remember that for one thousand years the welcoming of a new year was not just a calendar event, and not a pagan celebration, but a deeply Christian event which linked the start of the new year with the renewal of nature and the redemption of the world.
As for me and my house, we’ll celebrate New Year’s Eve and set off some fireworks, but on March 25 we will celebrate Lady Day — the day we remember the incarnation of Christ the Lord when the Angel Gabriel overshadowed Mary, and like all good hobbit lovers, we’ll will celebrate Tolkien Reading Day with a meeting of friends, the reading of Tolkien, a pint of ale and maybe even a few puffs on a pipe.
It’s usual this time of year for some folks to point out that the celebration of Christmas and Easter are “pagan.” Are they right? In fact, they are both right and wrong.
They are right because much of what we take for granted in our Western culture has deep roots in the pre-Christian cultures of Europe, but does that mean we have to get rid of every trace of paganism? If so we must get rid of our Christmas trees and our Easter eggs. We must also re-name the days of the week because they honor the pagan deities Tiu (Tuesday) Wotan (Wednesday) Thor (Thursday) Frige (Friday) and Saturn (Saturday) not to mention the worship of the Sun and Moon (Sunday and Monday).
We must also demand that the names of the months of the year be purged of their demonic and absurd pagan associations! Out Janus, the two-faced god of January! Begone Mars for March, the goddess Maia for May and Juno to follow. New Year’s Day! The horror! That the beginning of the year should be celebrated at the beginning of January is pagan through and through!
Roots in Rome
It would be both impossible and insane to try to purge every trace of paganism from our culture. The ancient customs have merged, developed and adapted to changing times, but they are not to be scorned simply because they are pagan or because they are from the past. Common sense should prevail. Just because there are traces of pagan cultures does not mean we worship pagan gods.
A good example of how an originally pagan custom has developed into a harmless modern celebration is New Year’s Day.
Just because there are traces of pagan cultures does not mean we worship pagan gods.
The earliest records of a New Year celebration are from Mesopotamia around 2000 B.C. Then the new year was heralded not in mid winter, but at the Spring equinox in mid-March. Following these already ancient customs, the first Roman calendar had ten months and also recognized March as the beginning of the year. This is why September, October, November and December have their names: from March they were the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months.
The second king of Rome, Numa Pontilius added January and February to the calendar and in 153 B.C. we have the first record of January first being celebrated as New Year’s Day. It change was decreed for civil reasons (the consuls began their term at that time) but many people still recognized mid-March as the start of the year.
When Julius Caesar replaced the old lunar based calendar with a solar calendar he also formally established the beginning of January as New Year’s Day. As the Empire fell and Europe transitioned to Christianity as the new religion of Rome, the vestiges of pagan culture were purged. New Year’s Day at the beginning of January was officially eliminated at the Council of Tours in 597, and across Europe the start of a new year flipped back to the more ancient time of March 25.
The Fresh Start
The date of March 25 not only connected with the most ancient celebrations of the new year at the Spring equinox, but in the Christian calendar March 25 is the celebration of the Annunciation — the announcement by the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would bear a son. The date of March 25 was determined by the Jewish belief that great men were conceived on the same day of the year as their death. Jesus Christ died on March 25, (so the theory goes) which means he was conceived on March 25.
Christians understood that the beginning of the life of the Son of God in the Virgin Mary’s womb was the beginning of God’s work among mankind, the restoration and redemption of the world and the beginning of a new creation. It was therefore theologically fitting that March 25 or Lady Day (in honor of the Virgin Mary) should be celebrated as New Year’s Day. And so it was for a thousand years.Please Support The Stream: Equipping Christians to Think Clearly About the Political, Economic and Moral Issues of Our Day.
Then in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII tinkered with Julius Caesar’s ancient calendar. Because of imprecise calculations, the date of Easter had been drifting and the pope decided it needed fixing. Part of the reform was to re-establish January first as New Year’s Day. Seeing this as papal presumption, the Eastern Orthodox rejected the reform. Seeing this as not only papal presumption, but paganism restored, many Protestants also rejected the new Gregorian calendar. The British did not adopt the new calendar until 1752. The Greeks held out until 1923. The monks of Mt Athos still hold on to the Julian calendar.
The Middle Ages and Middle Earth
Did I mention Frodo Baggins? J.R.R.Tolkien — the creator of Middle Earth — was a devout Catholic Christian. He wove his faith into his masterpiece The Lord of the Rings in very subtle ways. In his epic fantasy story he keeps a precise calendar of events. Tolkien says that it is on March 25 that the ring of power is cast into the fires of Mount Doom, and so the destruction of the demonic Sauron heralds a new beginning for Middle Earth. Thus Tolkien gives a nod to the medieval Christian tradition that March 25 is the true New Year’s Day — the beginning of the defeat of this world’s dark Lord and the dawn of mankind’s redemption.
As you celebrate New Year’s Day remember that for one thousand years the welcoming of a new year was not just a calendar event, and not a pagan celebration, but a deeply Christian event which linked the start of the new year with the renewal of nature and the redemption of the world.
As for me and my house, we’ll celebrate New Year’s Eve and set off some fireworks, but on March 25 we will celebrate Lady Day — the day we remember the incarnation of Christ the Lord when the Angel Gabriel overshadowed Mary, and like all good hobbit lovers, we’ll will celebrate Tolkien Reading Day with a meeting of friends, the reading of Tolkien, a pint of ale and maybe even a few puffs on a pipe.
Among other things, the events of the past year have taught us that fear can be coercive, and that respect for authority is plummeting.
A carabiniere stands watch at an empty St. Peter’s Square during the first evening of Italy’s nationwide lockdown on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 2020. (photo: Fabrizio Villa / Getty Images)
The year 2020 began with great hope and expectation. I distinctly remember welcoming in the new year just after the homily at our midnight Mass. Many remarked that because “20/20” is the term for perfect vision, the Lord would surely give us greater clarity and vision. We had no idea what we were saying!
Though I was in exceedingly poor health from January through mid-February, the year still began with great hope. The economy was roaring, unemployment was near zero, and the President’s State of the Union address brimmed with robust optimism. The annual pro-life march was invigorated by the first attendance of a sitting U.S. President. Although there was debate about immigration, border walls, Russian collusion, race, sex (the #MeToo movement) and whether the president was a hero or a demon, America seemed to be moving forward. Patriotism was strong, at least among conservative Americans.
As early as Jan. 9, though, there were reports of a mysterious viral pneumonia in Wuhan, China. The first case of COVID-19 reached our shores on Jan. 21. On Jan. 31, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency and by Feb. 2 the President had imposed restrictions on those traveling to the U.S. from China. Dire predictions of massive death tolls circulated throughout February (predictions which were later scaled back). By March 13, President Trump declared a national emergency and banned incoming travel from most of Europe.
Shutdowns and “stay-at-home” orders quickly followed in many states. The previously bustling economy screeched to a near halt with so many forced closures, and unemployment soared. Then, the unthinkable happened: Catholic priests were ordered to cease all public liturgies. Some bishops ordered churches locked, and a few even forbade the giving of sacraments under any circumstance. The crucial seasons of Lent and Easter were lost to the faithful. I cannot even begin to describe my dismay and shock at the cancellation of Mass. The year was off to an awful start, and it would only get worse with months of racial unrest and then a hotly contested election.
We need to remember the panic-stricken atmosphere in those early weeks of March, lest we be too severe in our judgments of those who had to make difficult decisions. But if 20/20 means perfect vision, we were certainly shown that we had hard lessons to learn and that we got a lot of things wrong. We were quick to entrust ourselves into the hands of professed experts, surrendering many of our rights as well as abandoning our religious duties and blessings.
Rather than merely chronicling what was surely the worst year in a long time, I would like to speak to some of the lessons we were taught. I propose to do this in two articles: this first one focuses on the social and political order while the next one will be on the responses in the Church.
Lesson 1: Fear can be coercive.
One of the most astonishing observations is the worldwide panic that has crippled us with fear. So intense is this fear that I cannot ascribe it simply to human means such as globalists or the media; it is surely demonic as well. Scripture attests to this:
Now since the children have flesh and blood, Christ too shared in their humanity, so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death (Hebrews 2:14-15).
Thus, Scripture teaches that the fear of death can hold us in bondage. Never before in most of our lifetimes has a fear of sickness and death so assailed us. Our parents, grandparents and other relatively recent ancestors went out daily into a world with far greater dangers than COVID-19. They faced smallpox, tuberculosis, polio and other life-altering and deadly illnesses. Despite this, they went to work every day, many in dangerous and/or unhealthy settings such as mines, mills and factories. They did not have antibiotics or many other of the medicines routinely available today. Yet they went forth.
Today, the level of fear of a virus that kills less than one percent of its victims under the age of 65* is astounding to me. Media coverage explains part of it, but there is also something mysterious and demonic in the intensity of the fear. Because of it, many are all too willing to surrender freedoms to the heavy hand of the State.
The 20/20 vision granted us here is that fear can coerce us into accepting severe and even draconian measures to make us feel safe. We can argue endlessly about what preventive measures are needed and for how long. Prudent measures have their place, but never before in American history has there been such a lengthy and severe lockdown. We have had pandemics in the past, but we quarantined the sick and vulnerable, not the healthy and strong.
Some 10 months into these severe measures, “cases” continue to rise; the goalposts keep moving, from a vague “flattening the curve” so as not to exceed hospital capacity, to now insisting on a COVID-free world before we can return to normal life (if even then). It is shocking to me that we have accepted for so long these severe measures in what was once called the land of the free and the home of the brave. Fear has us in its powerful grip, and I wonder, “When it will abate?”
In the Scriptures, God repeatedly commands the faithful not to be afraid. Notice, he commands this. He is not merely consoling the faithful. We are not to be afraid because he is near to deliver us. Perhaps this crushing fear is a result of widespread secularism and an absence of God in the hearts and minds of many. Whatever its full cause, it has made us vulnerable to manipulation. Life is important, but so is liberty. As Franklin wrote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Lesson 2: Other things and other people matter, too.
The COVID-19 crisis has an almost exclusive preoccupation with those who might get seriously ill or die from the virus. I am one of those predisposed to suffer serious illness from COVID-19 due to lifelong pulmonary weakness. Yes, my life and the lives of other vulnerable people matter, but so do the lives of millions who have been deprived of their livelihoods, schooling, sports, recreation, numerous life events and rites of passage, and even the ability to comfort dear friends and relatives during their final days.
Many small business owners have lost everything they’ve worked for their entire lives. We are perfectly willing to see enormous economic and social costs borne by others, especially lower-wage workers who cannot “virtually” sweep floors or assemble products.
Further, there is evidence that depression, addiction, domestic tension, and suicide have all increased. How do we regard their suffering? The metrics are less clear than the 300,000+ dead (from/with COVID-19). But clearly, tens of millions of Americans have seen their lives limited in significant and often devastating ways. I can only speak for myself, but as one of the “vulnerable” (who spent more than 11 days in the ICU with COVID-19), I can say that I am responsible for my health and I do not ask to be protected at such a high social and personal cost to my fellow Americans.https://5beeb5b5bf548e1d4fe1fb37c82f86e9.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
How do we balance all these competing interests? In the past, we quarantined the sick and vulnerable. Never before have we shut down the entire nation to protect a much smaller number. The balance is off; simply accusing people who raise this of not caring that people die is neither constructive nor true. All lives matter and the effects on everyone during this time of pandemic must be considered. We need better 20/20 vision.
Lesson 3: The ability to dissent is rapidly disappearing.
One of the most serious issues in terms of its widespread effect is the suppression of alternate views to the State and media narratives. Our 20/20 vision has supplied us with clear evidence that free speech is dying in our country. This has been widely noted on college campuses, but more recently we have seen it on the large social media platforms that ban or suppress voices not in agreement with mainstream media narrative.
Posting any COVID-related information that does not agree with what media-approved experts assert could get one’s account shut down, or at the very least slapped with a warning label. The rather obvious suggestion that rioting, burning and looting were not good or appropriate responses to racial injustice, could result in similar measures. The media, along with social media platforms, exercise great power in what they report or do not report and in what posts they allow or actively suppress.
The increasing suppression of writing and speech not in conformity with a particular narrative is a disturbing trend indeed. Vigorous debate about ideas has been the hallmark of the American scene. Free speech was once a pillar of liberalism, but this has radically changed. Dissenting views are now regarded by the left not merely as “wrong,” but as dangerous, necessitating their suppression so as not to “hurt” others. There is a growing range of views that are labeled hateful, “phobic,” “violent” or intolerant. Unfortunately, this trend only appears to be getting worse. With 20/20 vision this matter has become shockingly clear.
Lesson 4: Those who question are demonized.
There is always the temptation to dismiss one’s opponent on simply personal terms rather than via logical argumentation. Many are quick to label someone a bigot, racist, xenophobe, homophobe or religious zealot if he has a different point of view.
Regarding COVID-19, some have questioned if the numbers of those who have died are accurate; others point to the low death rate for those under 65; still others question if the shutdown “cure” is worse than the disease. Such questioners are very often simply dismissed as reckless or heartless, not caring that more than 300,000 have died. They are demonized as selfish and unconcerned with the welfare of their neighbor. There is return fire, too, wherein those who support mandates and shutdowns are described as brainwashed sheep or fearmongers.
The racial strife in our land during 2020 has similar parameters. One side is caricatured as filled with racist white supremacists guilty of using their white privilege to profit from systemic racism. The other side is vilified as obsessed with perpetual victimhood.
In 2020, the government, journalists and scientists have all lost credibility to a significant degree among Americans. The unrelenting attacks on the current president from the media and the tone of press conferences has given 20/20 clarity to heavy bias in most media coverage. This has been a long trend, but in the past few years all pretense of fairness or commitment to reporting all the facts has been cast aside.
The politicization of everything, from science to sports, has not only divided us further but has made people cynical of everything they read or hear. Scientific experts have too easily been coopted to announce facts rather than to discover them. Calls to “follow the science” are met with deserved derision by many Americans who long ago realized that science has become highly politicized and is only to be followed when it serves desired views. It is a sad thing to behold — science should be stubbornly concerned with the facts and data, wherever they lead. This is seldom the case today, at least in the world of media reporting on science.
All of this has tended to undermine the respect Americans once had for science, government, and journalism. Add to this the fact that many do not believe the reported results of the November election. There is a broad cynicism that everything is agenda driven, and this has replaced respect and trust for leaders of all kinds.
This, too, is bad for our culture and has led to a situation in which many live in echo chambers in which everyone in our side is of a single mind and we all presume that the other side is lying to us. Whom can we trust? Even in the Church, Catholics have lost faith that the clergy is honestly sharing the truth with them.
There are so many other things I could mention but suffice it to say that we are in a dark and deeply divided place as a nation, and 2020 has brought this into 20/20 focus. In my second installment I would like to look at the Church’s response and see if we can find some 20/20 focus there as well.
Msgr. Charles Pope Msgr. Charles Pope is currently a dean and pastor in the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, where he has served on the Priest Council, the College of Consultors, and the Priest Personnel Board. Along with publishing a daily blog at the Archdiocese of Washington website, he has written in pastoral journals, conducted numerous retreats for priests and lay faithful, and has also conducted weekly Bible studies in the U.S. Congress and the White House. He was named a Monsignor in 2005.
Despite the persistent opposition and public protest of the architectural elites against a proposed executive order titled Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again, first obtained and reported by the Architectural Record eleven months ago, President Trump, on December 21, signed the executive order titled Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture, which declares that “traditional and classical architecture” is the “preferred architecture for applicable Federal public buildings.”
Acknowledging the possibility of new building designs that do not fit the favored category, yet still beautify the public square, the executive order—to the great surprise of the establishment—makes an exception. It allows contemporary designs “that command respect from the general public and clearly convey to the general public the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of America’s system of self-government” a seat in the selection process, overseen by the General Services Administration, for future Federal public building projects.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
Recalling the ancient wisdom of the past, the executive order begins with an excerpt from the 1309 Constitution of the City of Siena, which reads: “[w]hoever rules the City must have the beauty of the City as his foremost preoccupation…because it must provide pride, honor, wealth, and growth to the Sienese citizens, as well as pleasure and happiness to visitors from abroad.” It also includes the pronouncements of the British Architect Sir Christopher Wren, who stated, “public buildings [are] the ornament of a country. [Architecture] establishes a Nation, draws people and commerce, makes the people love their native country…Architecture aims at eternity.”
Not a single day passed after the signing before the American Institute of Architects released a press statement denouncing the executive order for “mandating design preference for federal architecture.” The Executive Vice President and CEO of the AIA, Robert Ivy, remarked that “Communities should have the right and responsibility to decide for themselves what architectural design best fits their needs, and we look forward to working with President-Elect Biden to ensure that.” Expecting such a response from an exclusive organization that claims to represent the people, the executive order declares that the “GSA should seek input from the future users of applicable public buildings and the general public in the community where such buildings will be located before selecting an architectural firm or design style.”
Furthermore, highlighting the lack of commitment to the trinity of the modern left (equality, diversity, and inclusion), Torey Carter-Conneen, American Society of Landscape Architects CEO, stated: “Civic spaces, whether they be federal buildings, parks or national monuments, should reflect the values of equality, diversity and inclusion to which we as a nation aspire,” and is already pressing for the “incoming administration to rescind this order upon assuming office.” In the face of these negative reactions, one might ask why the progressive left, to include the architectural establishment, objects the executive order. According to a new survey commissioned by the National Civic Art Society involving two thousand citizens from all backgrounds (race, gender, income, education, and party affiliation included), over 72% of the participants prefer traditional architecture.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
As the nation witnessed during the height of the “peaceful protests” and “summer of love,” protesters, for weeks on end, not only tore down historic statues on impulse-driven irrational motives and mob rule, but vandalized federal and state capitol buildings, resulting in millions of dollars’ worth in damages. The Colorado State Capitol, built in the 1890s in the Neoclassical style, was one of those buildings unmercifully defaced by the revolutionary vanguard. In the protest’s aftermath, graffiti was visible on every side of the building and the steps leading to the main corridors. Newly replaced windows were smashed and boarded, and street lights shattered; no stone was left unturned.
For those individuals who vandalized historic federal and state buildings, classical and traditional forms of architecture represent everything they firmly reject and oppose in their personal lives. The artistic discipline required to construct the building within the bounds of scale and proportion, the order and stability expressed by the marble colonnades, and the invocation of our Western heritage—the architecture of Greek and Roman antiquity—are all diabolically incompatible with modern man’s insatiable love of progress for its own sake, his absolute disregard for virtue and the transcendent, and most gravely, the lack of order within the human soul. The style of architecture best suited to the illiberal left would be “deconstructivism,” which “subverts the traditional values of architecture through such features as fragmentation, disorder, discontinuity, distortion, skewed geometry, and the appearance of instability.”
In Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World, Anthony Esolen observes that modern man is culturally homeless, divorced from the vast lineage of our Western cultural heritage and thus, standing alone in relation to the past, present, and future. “They who are at home in culture,” Esolen writes, “dwell in something that spans the generations and renews them, throwing bridges across the divides of class and sex and age.” When we enter the illustrious halls of Congress or walk up the granite steps leading to the colossal Lincoln Memorial, we—The People—become aware of the gravitas of the American political project; we are reminded of our nation’s continuity with the great Western tradition. “[The Founding Fathers] sought to use classical architecture to visually connect our contemporary Republic with the antecedents of democracy in classical antiquity,” the executive order reads, “reminding citizens not only of their rights, but also their responsibilities in maintaining and perpetuating its institutions.”ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
Conversely, what becomes of the man who has no home, culture, or past? Since all men are born with a telos and the free will to pursue that aim, what path does the revolutionary, culturally illiterate man endeavor on, and what is his philosophical framework? Thomas Molnar, in The Counter-Revolution, answers:
The promise of revolutionary doctrine is then predicated on the denial of stable forms, whether of art, institutions, or the meaning of words, and on the denial of time…Hence, the destruction of the old becomes an urgent matter, a historic duty. Shirking this duty, let alone obstructing the avenue of progress, is a major crime, in fact the only sin the revolutionary recognizes.
Although the executive order will have minimal impact on the daily lives of most Americans, and none at all for those federal bureaucrats working out of the monstrous J. Edgar Hoover Building, it will, nevertheless, spark a much desired renaissance in the use of classical architecture in the construction of new Federal public buildings. Just as Saint Augustine felt when he fathomed his newfound, inestimable love for God, we will cry out the same words upon the sight of such divine beauty reflected in our architecture: “O Beauty ever ancient, ever new.” Let us be grateful for the continual effort and dedication put forth by the National Civic Art Society that made the signing of the executive order, Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture, possible. Also, let us hope that this executive order will remain in place, and play a vital role in beautifying our republic for ages to come.
Francis Lee is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. He has served on two deployments in the South China Sea as part of Forward Deployed Naval Forces-Japan. His writing has appeared in the National Catholic Register, Catholic World Report, and OnePeterFive. The views expressed are those of the individual only and not those of the Department of Defense (DoD)
We’ve been hearing it for weeks now: 2020 was a terrible year and we all can’t wait to shake its dust from our feet and move on to a better, brighter 2021. Between tense racial eruptions, the Covid stranglehold of fear and “socialist” distancing, and the flagrant fraudulence of our election system, 2020 was a bad year, certainly. 2021 can be a better year, certainly, but we all have a part to play in that potential. In many ways, 2020 was a bad year because we collectively went along with bad things. A strange, sheepish monster of subservience came out of many of us in 2020 and, as the famous Dr. Jekyll would certainly diagnose, we have a choice before us on the threshold of 2021.
Rather than looking at the events of the year past, we should all look at how we reacted to them. Such New Year’s reflections might unmask a particular horror of human existence—a horror that was captured by the ancient Romans, who gave the passage into a new year to Janus (the god of gateways) who bore two faces, one facing forwards and the other backwards, looking both to the future and to the past. G. K. Chesterton adds further poignancy to this two-faced horror as he muses over Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: “The real stab of the story is not in the discovery that the one man is two men, but in the discovery that the two men are one man.” So are we all, and it is the person we choose to be on the tumultuous stage set for 2021 that will make or break the New Year.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
When R. L. Stevenson scribbled down a nightmare he had in 1885, calling it The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Fanny Stevenson did not care for her husband’s story. Mrs. Stevenson’s objection was that the tale relied too much on the gothic style prevalent at the time, which is related to the modern “goth” style insofar as they are both reactions to and rebellions against the same problem—the problem of eradicating mystery for the sake of elevating mastery, which always leaves the world too small to satisfy. This was largely a literary backlash against the Victorian Enlightenment, which stressed reliance on reason, science, and social progress to solve the problems of the human condition. The gothic movement, contrariwise, stressed the unknowable, obscurity, and even criminality to remind us that there are realities at large that are beyond man’s ken or control.
Back then, young ladies wrote shocking novels about ambitious scientists who reasoned they could make men out of corpses, just to discover they could only make monsters. In recent years, young delinquents wore stark eye makeup and studded leather while preaching the nihilistic street slogans of a subculture of death-worship and despair. And who are the new gargoyles of the Gothic movement? Could it be the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers? The science deniers, racism deniers, and election deniers, perhaps? We have come a long way, but the sickness is the same. There are no simple, scientific solutions for social harmony.
Stevenson was sensitive to the gothic principle that man does not live by reason alone, and that attempts to do so would lead to a tragic fall. Consequently, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is constructed according to a classical, tragic pattern in which the hero toils towards his own undoing, yet doesn’t realize it until it is too late. Dr. Jekyll devised to hide within himself in the act of his animal indulgences, and so gave birth to the troglodytic Mr. Hyde. Hyde was the drug-induced liberation of all that was base in Jekyll—everything vile that was lurking beneath his civilized surface—as well as the doctor’s foil to free himself from shame by eliminating his better nature from the equation.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
The tragedy came in the discovery that conscience can never be eliminated from the equation. The patient dies on the operating table in an effort to surgically amputate common sense from existence. Dr. Jekyll was made to learn “that the doom and burden of our life is bound forever on man’s shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.”
We should all bear these words in mind as we make resolutions for the New Year. We should resolve to accept that the doom and burden of our lives is bound forever on our shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it returns with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure. The more we as a nation push away the fear of social stigma, sickness, frailty, and even death, the more we give in to increasingly unfamiliar and pressurized enslavements.
But we went along under the pressure, unfamiliar as it was. We went along, more or less, with racial stereotyping, government overreach, forsaking our freedoms left and right, and even election fraud, giving over more and more control of our lives. We accepted a culture of scientific nonsense, media manipulation, and societal shaming and domination. 2021 may be no brighter than 2020 if this stream is the one we have chosen to drift along in, floating haplessly like dead things. If 2021 is to be a better year, this bizarre submission can’t continue any further than it already has. 2021 will be a better year only if people like you and me choose to think and act for themselves according to right reason, sound morals, and religious duty—and, in so doing, stand up against inappropriate attempts to govern our way of life.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
As Dr. Jekyll’s experiment demonstrated, there is no circumvention of the consequences of letting vice run amok while virtue slumbers. There is no security for the soul who keeps his allegiance to truth a secret. There is no immunity and no escape, because there never can be a happy balance between good and evil. As Lucifer betrayed the Father, so Dr. Jekyll’s counterpart betrayed his maker; and so are we betraying our image and likeness when we wear the masks, avert our eyes, stay silent, and become monsters of subservience to the narrative. Societal adaptation, like temptation, is a sly device that takes silent root and grows like a tree, becoming more and more difficult to do away with, until it dominates and defines a landscape.
Dr. Jekyll teaches that those who make deals with the devil are more likely to be his victims than those who make war with him. Shall we continue, then, to countenance Catholics who vote for pro-abortion politicians, as they show their patriotism by masking up, crying “Science is real”, when they aren’t hiding away from their communities? Dr. Jekyll’s professional recommendation would be that America needs a healthy dose of the gothic attitude, which values the dangerous and delightful mysteries of life and love, of religion and death. That’s a prescription we won’t be getting from Dr. Fauci anytime soon.
If you make any New Year’s resolution this year, consider making a resolution to examine The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—and through it, your own strange case. Will you rend the veil of self-deception from head to foot? Will you look on your life as a whole? Will you choose the better part? “The terms of this debate are as old and as commonplace as man,” Dr. Jekyll warns us, and we are well to be warned as we weigh 2021’s reaction to 2020’s soft totalitarian takeover.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
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