A Christmas Reflection

Let us never tire of metaphysics. Metaphysics is the study of being. It is also the study of God. It is the study of demonstration; demonstration of what is. Metaphysics teaches us about the name of God. Yahweh, which means "I am," is a unique name. Why so? Most descriptions or demonstrations are made of subject and predicate. For example: The cat is sleeping in the basket. Or: The man is a teacher, and so on. The subject refers to the substance. The predicate refers to what is said about the substance. In the theory of concept containment, the essence of the predicate needs to be contained in the essence of the subject for it to be a true statement. We can make true statements about things in the natural world because we can easily determine that the essence of the concept of the predicate is contained in the essence of the subject. You know, because we can speak categorically about things in the natural world. And we can speak about such things univocally.

 

With God however, we can at best speak analogically, or apophatically. We can only adduce characteristics for God by drawing analogies with characteristics of things in the natural world. And so, when we speak about God, we do not apply the concept containment theory. We do not say that the essence of the predicate we use to describe God is contained in his essence, because his reality lies beyond whatever description we adduce for him. If we said for example: God is good. This is true, but only analogically. We draw from what we observe good things in the natural world to be like, and we apply this observed state of affairs to God. Whereas the reality is that God is beyond good. If we said as well: God is beyond good, or: God is infinitely good; both these statements are true, but still only analogically. We have no positive idea of what "beyond good" is, or what "infinitely good" refers to. We hardly even know what "good" is completely. And so, we cannot say this truthfully about God  as we can say: The cat is in the basket.

 

One of the reasons we cannot apply the concept containment theory in defining what is true as pertains to God is because God is a simple being. His essence is his existence. Things in the natural world are by no means simple like God is. Things in the natural world, including humans, are made of matter-form-composite essences, as Aquinas would assert. We can easily adduce predicates for these things because their composite natures make such things analyzable. We can however not analyze God. Who can subject God to the art of the vivisectionist! Aha - got you, didn't I! God is beyond our human understanding. And so, perhaps the only truthful thing we can say about God is the content of his name: Yahweh, which means: I am that I am (I am I); God is God; he is what he is. In such a case, the subject and the predicate are the same. Nothing else can replace such a predicate, because no essence of anything is containable in the essence of God as to be capable of truthfully defining him. God is beyond form, as my metaphysics teacher told us. God is beyond reality. Like Plotinus' One, God is transcendent of the intelligible.

 

He is who he is. Just think about that. When you are overwhelmed by the mysteriousness of life, and it seems as if you do not understand what it means, just realize that God does. And you can trust God. But again: if you can trust God whom you do not know, then you can trust life that you do not know. Such faith makes triumphant living possible. In the burning bush, God told Moses, "I am who I am." Yahweh. The power of that name is hopefully not lost on countless generations. From the time of Abraham to the present age, God remains unsearchable, but he remains nonetheless who he is. And he is. Make no mistake about that. I am 33 years old, and so far there is only one thing I have never doubted, and that is the fact that there is in fact God. God exists. I don't just believe it, I know it for a fact, just as I know that 2 plus 2 is 4. I know that God exists. I may not be able to prove his existence in some classy way like countless philosophers have - by the way, let's mention a bunch of the philosophers that have formally proved the existence of God: Descartes, Anselm, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Scotus, Melbranche, Spinoza, and Berkeley; and this is just a handful - yet I know from private experience and thought that there is indeed a God. It is the infinity of God that keeps the universe perennially going, as if to infinity itself. "Light from light."

 

Anyway. I intend this to be a Christmas reflection. But why should it qualify as such? Because it talks about God. I know about God. I know that he exists, and because this is the only truth I know categorically of him, it is what he is. It is his essence. Because we have said that the only truth we can say about God is that God is God (He is who He is); but if we can say he exists, then "exists" defines him. He is the existing thing, if Descartes is the thinking thing. The essence of existence is the essence of God. God cannot not exist. Christ's birth is celebrated today: the birth of the existing one. This one comes to exist in our hearts and minds. He lives that we too might. We need to trust in him. He will never fail us. We must be close to him, and obey his will for our lives. It's how we're going to move forward. There can be no other way. God is God. Stay with it. Know it. Merry Christmas.

Nkembo Olikolo

Let us praise God! Nkembo, nkembo, na tata; nkembo, nkembo; olikolo! God is so good. He never forsakes his own. Here is a song we used to sing as children:

 

Jesus, Jesus (2ce)

If you really love me

Don't leave my heart (2ce)

I can't sleep without you

I can't do without you

If you really love me

Don't leave my heart

 

Nkembo is a hymn of glory to God. Nkembo olikolo is an affirmation of praise to the almighty. Indeed we must praise God. But why must we praise him? What are the reasons for which it is right and necessary to praise the Lord?

 

For the gift of life. I recall that as a child when we prayed we used to say: "Many slept without waking up, but we have, and so we thank you, O Lord." We sojourned for hours in the world of dreams but we did not stay there. It happened by the power of God, and so it is fitting to praise him. There were evil spirits that competed for possession of our soul, but God did not grant them custody of it, and so we must praise God. We lay semi-conscious to unconscious in the state of sleep, not knowing what was going on around us, but God did not allow our environment to overwhelm or squelch us. We should praise God. We were vulnerable to fate, but nothing chanced to do us in. We need to praise God. Nkembo olikolo! Nkembo na tata.

 

For the gift of family. God gave us a first participatory framework, the family. We need to praise him for it. These are the people that love us no  matter what. These are the people that we recourse to when the whole world treats us ill, as the title sequence of 7th Heaven says. They are the ones that know us the most and love us the most. They are the ones that gave us our very first home, and our very first global orientation. They are the ones with whom we shared our earliest selves, and mistakes and hopes. We pray with our families. We stay with our families. We derive succor from them, and we pledge our deepest allegiance to them. "Home is where the heart is," as they say. Our hearts are with our families. God gives us our families to support us in the turmoil and trial of life. Our families are gifts to us; we should be gifts to them as well. And so, for the gift of family, we should praise God. We should sing: Nkembo na wana. Nkembo li sanga; nkembo olikolo!

 

For the gift of faith. What is life without faith of some kind? We need faith with which to continue to move in spite of difficulties. Without faith, the difficulties of life will overwhelm us. Without faith, the difficulties of life will do us in. We are encouraged to "trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding; in all our ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct our paths: not allowing our feet to be moved; he that keeps us not slumbering; being near as he is to all of us that call upon him, we that call upon him in truth" (Prov. 3: 5-6). Without faith, life will be too hard for us to live. Without faith, we will be unable to progress. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. It is what keeps putting one foot in front of another, dragging us steadily to those hoped-for things. It is with faith "as small as a mustard seed" that we can surmount any difficulty and remove from our way any mountain of obstruction (Matt. 17:20). Our faith sets us apart from the world. It gives us a character. And it is a good reason for which to praise God. Nkembo nkembo; nkembo na ta e!

 

For the gift of hope. Faith bears hope. Because God has answered our prayers made through faith in the past, we hope for more. And hope predisposes us to believe all the more. Hope makes us set our sights on the transcendent. Hope gives us a reason to go on living. It paints a picture of heaven in our mind. Hope sustains us. Hope is the opposite of despair. Hope is the antidote to the nothingness of Heidegger. Hope gives us peace. Hope consoles us. Hope paves the way for progress. The Catholic Act of Hope states: "O God I hope in you for grace and for glory; because of your promises, your mercy and your power." Hope is true beauty. Indeed what could we possibly accomplish in life without hope! God gives us hope in order to build us up for the beauty of heaven, the grace of the afterlife. How could we look to such afterlife without hope! Impossible. We definitely need hope. We cannot do without hope. And for this indispensable gift of hope, we praise God: Nkembo na wana!

 

For the gift of love. Love is the beginning and end of life itself. Everything ends in love, dissolves into love. We live for love. We live in, through and with love. Love is the life of the soul. Love is the ultimate religion, the ultimate spirituality. Love makes us call God father, and everyone else our brother or sister. St Paul extols love in 1 Cor. 13. He calls love patient and kind; humble and forgiving; universally hopeful, and universally true. Love conquers all. Love endures all. We need love to live. The love of our parents brought us into this world in the first place. The love of our family saw us through our formative years. Their love, and the love of our friends continued to guide us through life, especially  in times of difficulty. And the love of God ultimately watches over us. Love lifts us up. "Behold what manner of love the father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God" (1 John 3:1). And so for this identity of love, let us praise God: Nkembo olikolo!

Patience Pays

St Augustine tried to understand the quantification of time. But not just he: many other thinkers over the years have tried to understand things like: "There are twenty-four hours in a day." Or, "There are seven days in a week," and so forth. The calendars that have been created over the years have been as a result of humans trying to control the most uncontrollable thing in the world. They have been about humans trying to make objective sense of a seemingly senseless phenomenon. A statement like: "Time and tide wait for no one" shows how it is that, in the bid to understand time, characteristics have perennially been adduced by which to conceptualize it. And yet time remains unknowable, unsearchable and all-powerful. Time remains the controller of destiny, and the "healer of all wounds." Time remains the measure of existence and the announcer of progress or deterioration.

 

We should wait for time. Awed by its power, we cannot afford to challenge time. We must rather wait for it. We must give time its due respect and its mastery. We cannot overtake it. We may anticipate it, but never overtake it. By the way, isn't the word "anticipate" such a beauty? By way of etymology, it comes from the Latin words: "ante," and "capere." Ante is a pre-fix that means before. Capere is a verb that means to take. In ancient Rome, learning or knowing or understanding was considered a form of taking. I guess it is in this spirit that when we say we grasp something we mean we understand it, and grasp is a form of take. And so ante-capere refers to taking before, or better still knowing before, or simply foreknowledge: knowing what will happen before it actually does happen.

 

Anticipation should be done with humility, though. We can never be so proud that we become clairvoyants, knowing and seeing the future in such clear and predictable terms that we begin to dictate for it. Even when we anticipate, we should carefully allow for time and the course of events to proceed differently, if time so chooses. We simply need to be patient. Patience in this regard may be defined as the humility we experience in cognizance of the awesomeness of time, and the realization that we may never overtake it and, even when we anticipate it, we may never alter or best it. Patience is an attribute of the scientific mind. This is the sort of mind which, in contrast to the artistic one, plans and organizes and then carries on. It is the sort of mind that, in cognizance of the awesomeness of time and the realization that we can never overtake it even if we may anticipate it, always creates paradigms for more easily understanding what may be accomplished in a given period.

 

Patience is important for progress. All things happen in time. And so, progress is related to time, and if our attitude toward time is one of respect, then our attitude toward progress will be one of respect as well. This means that patient people achieve more than people who are impatient. Patient people don't give up. They are not the sort of people who miss something because they failed to wait just one more day for it. They are not the people who throw in the towel when the treasure was just one more inch below the ground. Had they rather used the towel to wipe their face and continued digging, they would very likely have struck the gold. Patient people are never tired of waiting. They know that life itself is a sort of endless wait. And concerning waiting, the bible says: "Those that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and shall not be weary. They shall walk and shall not faint" (Isa. 40:31). Let us all be patient, and in our patience, let us keep blessing the Lord God, and fervently praising him all our days. Amen.

"The Stone the Builders Rejected"

In every way that humans have evolved over the years, rejection has always preceded perfection. All people start out doubting. And they don't just doubt themselves: others doubt them as well. Their potential is perennially called to question. Heidegger has, unlike Aristotle and Aquinas, seen potentiality to be pre-eminent to actuality, since it is the possibility that what is lives up to. You probably have heard it said for example: "Mr. Y is not living up to his potential." In Mark 11: 12-25, we see Jesus cursing a fig tree. The tree was not living up to its potential, and did not deserve to subsist, and so Jesus cursed it and it died. It is the same with us. We must endeavor to be useful. We cannot become nihilists, by embracing and living out the nothing. Rather, we must live out Dasein. And this demands, for Heidegger, creativity. We must think creatively. We must act creatively. This means that, rather than complain about situations that ape the nothing, we must participate and create networks and paradigms that hold what is up to the teleology of what can be. Through creative thinking and acting, we can shape a mental reality that gives a moral imperative to what is.

 

But this task is by no means easy. Rejection abounds: rejection of the self; rejection by the community, and rejection by one's family. And yet, rejection is not the final verdict of destiny. "The stone the builders rejected has become the corner stone" (Psalm 118:22). The Bible describes the event as "a marvel in our eyes" (ibid.v.23). Indeed, the creativity of existence in spite and instead of the nothing is a true beauty to see. But what are the grounds for rejection? Isolation is one. The fault here lies with the individual who, rather than embrace the phusis with faith and love, sets himself contrary to it. But other factors cause rejection as well, such as: misunderstanding, jealousy, hate and acrimony. Rejection leads to the nothing; paves the way for it. And the nothing is the principle of depression and annihilation. Our struggle as humans is to overcome the nothing. But where and when we are rejected, we are forced to encounter and stay with the nothing. And we often stay too long, in the pain and suffering of it all. But creativity helps and saves us eventually, if we try.

 

Even if the community rejects us, we must not reject ourselves. We must patiently continue to create. We must persist with faith. We must never lose sight of what can be, our potential, even if what is seems like the nothing. For, Heidegger would remind us that potential precedes the actual. And even if the actual seems to thrust us out of happiness and into the nothing we must still hope in the ought; in the possibility. To them that believe, all things are possible, as the bible tells us. The moral imperative to hold what-is accountable to what can be remains a vocation for as many as are rational; for as many as are truly human. In the quest to live authentic, happy lives, we must always reach out to touch the possible; we must always reach out to touch the ought. In spite of our being sometimes rejected in so doing. Yet, no matter how many times we are rejected - and even if it seems our whole life is one collection of rejections - we must persist. We must continue to think and act creatively and hold the what is up to the possibility of what can be. We must always have faith. We must never fall into the abyss of the nothing. We must always be. Be, instead of not be; be in spite of the nothing.

 

That is where happiness lies: in not rejecting the self; in not succumbing to the nothing. The marvel of Dasein is the perennial holding up to a teleology the potential of the phusis. This is done by creative thought and action. In this poetic creativity lies the answer to the question: "Why is there being instead of nothing?" It is a question Heidegger severally asks in his Metaphysics. The refusal to fall into the abyss of the nothing, but rather to creatively pursue our calling; to submit our actions to the scrutiny of the moral imperative; to be - this is authentic, happy living. The many people that visit psychiatric hospitals for one so-called mental illness or another; the people who fall into deep depression; the people who despair - these individuals have succumbed to the nothing. They have neglected to hold the status quo up to the teleological standard of the ought and, in so doing, have neglected to obey the moral dictate of rational human conscience. They have neglected to participate in the concert of living, the universal struggle to apply a moral yardstick to what is. Yet we must realize that even the stone rejected by the builders stayed put. And it became very useful where it did.

"Perfect Love Drives Out all Fear"

Who are you? Can this question be adequately answered by merely looking into the mirror? I doubt it. You need to ponder. Now, I'm not talking of the kind of pondering I saw on Family Guy, where a Griffin character sat on a stool with head in hand, thinking. His wife came up to him and begged him to go look for a job, and he raised his hand carefully to heaven, struck a very contemplative pose and said, "Why?" No, definitely not that kind of questioning. The sort I mean is that which refuses to lie to the self. Heidegger calls this authentic existence, or Dasein. It is observing three ethical codes, which my uncle describes as the measures of good living: don't deceive yourself; don't deceive other people, and don't keep bad company. Words to live by indeed.

 

A story was once told of a woman that went to see a voodoo priest. She told him that she was having problems with her husband, and their marriage was suffering. The voodoo priest said he could help, but he needed five strands of hair from the mane of a lion. The woman was alarmed, but she knew there was a lion that lived not far from her village. She knew she could get five strands of the hair of its mane. But she needed to tame it first. The voodoo priest understood. He told the woman that she could in fact tame the lion. She was to go toward the lion each morning, taking with her a large portion of raw meat. She was to throw the meat at the lion and watch the animal devour the meat from a safe distance. From that safe, vantage distance, she was to speak and sing to it. The woman agreed. Each morning, she would draw close to the lion with some raw meat, and throw it to the animal to eat. While she watched the beast eat from a safe distance, she would speak and sing to it. She did this for many, many days. And when the lion became used to her, it allowed the woman to draw close and sit with it. The woman stroked the mane of the beast and, carefully, pulled five strands of hair from it. She brought the hair strands to the voodoo priest. He told her, "In the same way you treated the lion, treat your husband and you will be fine."

 

In the Lion King, Simba initially refused to go home. He was afraid of his uncle, Scar. He was afraid of embracing himself and fate. But when the baboon, Rafiki, confronted him, Simba realized that it was time to begin to return home. Sometimes a person treats a foreign land with more respect and reverence than he ever treated his, but just imagine if that person were to treat his own nation with the same love and reverence he treated another nation with. Just imagine, indeed. Of course his own nation might not be developed or fancy, but it is home. It truly is home.

 

Heidegger talks about the un-canniness of existence, and how the threat of the nothing scares us. Yet he insists that isolation is never the solution to the nothingness, to the threat of depression. Rather, embracing the present, the reality, the phusis; what is, with love, is the best way to endure and survive, and underscore the reality of being in spite of nothing; instead of nothing. Because, after all, as Paul would ask: "What can separate us from the love of God?" We must participate in spite of fear. We must return home and help our kin. We must be a gift to our people, to our nation.

 

"Perfect love drives out all fear," I have been told. It drives out the fear of oneself; it drives out the fear of the nation. It drives out the fear of one's family; one's truest family. For there is nothing wrong with the nation. All there is something wrong with is my perception. I can never know the nation; all I can know is what I think of it. And if I think and speak positively of the nation, treating it like God and Lord, in quite the same way I treated another nation; acting only good toward it, always, then I can begin to thrive, and be happy in my own land. And I am willing to try.

Forgiveness in Bethany, Part 8

In conclusion, this paper has dealt with the event of the anointing of Jesus by a (sinful) woman, or Mary, in Bethany. This woman felt that she owed (ὤφειλεν) Jesus a debt of gratitude because she claimed in faith as reality that he had forgiven her many sins, even before he actually spoke the words of absolution. (Recall in this regard that faith has been described as “the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not yet experienced.”) She poured costly ointment on Jesus and drew criticism from those around who claimed she was being wasteful; but Jesus claimed she was doing good, and preparing him for burial; and that she would be well known because of her action. In the course of this paper, we have shown the literary similarities and differences in the different gospel accounts of the event; how for example Matthew and Mark tell the story in pretty much the same way, but Luke and John tell it a tad differently.

The paper has in this regard shown how Matthew and Mark state that the woman poured the costly ointment on the head of Jesus, whereas Luke and John state that she poured it on his feet. Luke in particular talks about the woman kissing and weeping over his feet, and with John mentions her drying Jesus’ feet with her hair. We have shown as well how John edited the story to include the names of Jesus’ friends, Lazarus, Mary and Martha. John it was that specifically named the woman as Mary, unlike in the three other gospels, where she is simply called woman, or sinful woman, as is the case in Luke’s Gospel.

The paper also mentioned that a central motif in the event as recorded in all the gospels is one of money. Mark, Matthew and John treat this issue from the point of view of waste when viewed against the backdrop of need. In Mark and Matthew, individuals in the house of Simon the Leper complain bitterly that the costly ointment could have been sold and its proceeds given to the poor and the needy. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is concerned that the woman shows greater love to him than Simon the Pharisee does, very likely because the sinful woman is more convicted of her sin and her indebtedness to God than Simon is. She as the greater sinner, the one with the greater debt to God, is drawn more to Jesus in her realization of his forgiveness of her great amount of sin than Simon is, because his indebtedness (sinfulness) is apparently less. It is in this regard that Luke mentions the Parable of the Two Debtors.

The paper used the Greek word, ὤφειλεν, as a signpost in this paper, and it hints at our universal indebtedness to God, especially because all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. Unlike the Pharisee in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, our realization that we have sinned and so owe God a significant debt should make us feel a sense of gratitude to him when through faith we realize that he has forgiven us, in other words has let go of the debt that we otherwise could not pay by ourselves.

Forgiveness in Bethany, Part 7

We have in any case seen that all four gospel writers touch on the issue of money. Matthew, Mark and John approach this motif from the point of view of waste or extravagance as observable in the woman’s, or Mary’s, lavishly pouring otherwise expensive ointment on the head, or feet as the case might be, of Jesus; especially when this situation of waste is juxtaposed with the existence of poor people in society who could very well benefit from the material cost of the ointment. We related this to present day socioeconomic issues. Money is a major issue in all the books of the bible. In several passages, the love of money is seen to be in marked opposition to the Christian faith and conduct. Statements like: “you cannot serve both God and money,” (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13) or “the love of money is the root of all evil,” (1 Tim. 6:10) seem to point to the need for Christians to be vigilant in their dealings with money.

In the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, we see Jesus encouraging Christians to use material wealth to gain spiritual capital. This sort of exchange seems to be similarly recommended in this pericope. The woman, or Mary, or sinful woman as the case might be, is not interested in how expensive or not the ointment is. All she is interested in is pleasing Jesus, and ensuring that her sins are forgiven. Convicted of her sinfulness and cognizant of her great need for salvation, the type that Jesus affords, the woman is ready to throw away all the expensive oil in her possession to obtain in return a shot at heaven, through her sins being forgiven. This is unlike the case with Simon the Pharisee, and the Pharisee in the Parable named after him and the Publican.

According to Fitzmeyer, “The sense of the Lucan passage as a whole is not difficult. Repentance, forgiveness of sins, and salvation have come to one of the despised persons of Israel (the sinful woman); she has shown this by an act of kindness manifesting a more basic love and faith, love shown to Jesus and faith in God himself; implying that the forgiveness shown her is the result of her love.” Fitzmeyer goes further to state: “The parable of the two debtors, inserted into the pronouncement-story, not only carries its own message about the relation between forgiveness and love (that the sinner turns out to be the one who manifests to God greater gratitude than the upright, critical Pharisee), but also allegorizes the narrative: repentance for the sins of the woman's life has made her more open to God's mercy than the stingy willingness of the host who wanted to honor Jesus with a dinner.” The foregoing reiterates our earlier thesis concerning the superiority of spiritual works of mercy to corporal ones.

The foregoing also bears relevance in the parameters by which we judge others. The Jerome Biblical Commentary states in this regard: “While Simon silently condemns Jesus for not divining the character of the woman, Jesus proves himself to be a prophet by reading the secret thoughts of Simon.” Whereas Simon judges the woman by her reputation, Jesus judges by the unseen state of her heart. According to Fitzmeyer, Jesus is able to contend with the physicality of Simon, and to chide him for his meanness when he is confronted with the superabundant love of the woman. The Catholic Commentary on Scripture in turn states exactly thus: “A further conclusion Simon is left to draw for himself: he has treated the woman with contempt as one separated from God, but if Jesus may conclude from the woman's behavior that God has forgiven her, Simon too may conclude from his own behavior toward Jesus that God has not forgiven him.” Again, the Catholic Commentary on Scripture further states: “Simon objects that Jesus must be ignorant of the woman's character; Jesus replies that he knows very much about her, even that her sins have been taken away. Faith here and elsewhere in Luke is not mere intellectual assent to truths about God under the influence of the will, but an attitude of the whole man toward God; a compound of faith, hope and charity.”

The Jerome Biblical Commentary sin this regard is of the view that Jesus in his participatory relationship with the people of faith symbolically gives us of himself, when he reclines with the people of faith at table. Guijarro states in this regard: “Two peculiar elements of the Markan account of the anointing of Jesus in Bethany—the anointing of the head and the mandate to remember—suggest that the evangelist has transformed this memory into a rite by which Jesus is anointed as Messiah. This new ritual redefines the traditional rite of royal anointing to give new significance to the messianic character of Jesus. The mandate to remember the woman’s gesture and the critical moment in which Mark has placed the scene reveal that this new understanding of what it means to be the Messiah is key to the true identity of Jesus and of his followers.”

Forgiveness in Bethany, Part 6

John’s account of the event is contained in the twelfth chapter of the Gospel. It begins by saying that Jesus went visiting with Lazarus, Martha and Mary. This was the same Lazarus that Jesus had raised from the dead. Martha and Mary had also entertained Jesus in chapter 10 of John’s Gospel, where Martha had complained about her sister Mary’s not helping out with the chores, and in response to her request of Jesus to ask Mary to help her, Jesus had told Martha that the better part which Mary had chosen was not to be taken away from her.

The Catholic Commentary on Scripture informs us that John takes especial care to date this event of Jesus' anointing as six days before the pasch. It goes further to state that it was on the evening of the Sabbath. The Commentary states that Mary's act of anointing was especially courteous and significant, and worth remembering for posterity. It states that the oil itself, called nard pistic had a lasting aroma. It makes especially note as well of the character of Judas, who was called a thief; how it was that Judas did not have genuine care for the poor.

The second verse of John 12 states like Mark does that Jesus reclined at table. It also states that Martha served, which is no surprise. She served in chapter 10 as well. The latter part of verse 2, and verse 3 states that Mary “took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.” Hence we see that the nameless woman in the three gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the one Luke specifically calls sinful, is named as Mary, the sister of Lazarus, in John’s Gospel. Notice as well that John describes the ointment as being genuine aromatic nard; this hints at the fact that it was costly, and so we see that all four gospel writers agree that the oil or perfume or ointment – whatever it was called – was expensive.

John states that it was Judas who was indignant at Mary. It was not the disciples, as in Matthew, or the people at the house as in Mark, or Simon the Pharisee as in Luke, that complained, but Judas. And Judas complained not because he loved the poor, but because he was a thief. This assertion by John probably prefigures Judas’ acceptance of money in order to betray Jesus. Jesus, as in Mark and Matthew, defends Mary, by saying that the poor would be around for much longer than he would. He also states that Mary’s anointing was to prepare him for his burial, just like Mark and Matthew state (John 12:7-8).

Forgiveness in Bethany, Part 5

We have already shown how the commentaries we have been treating see Luke's Gospel as a tad different than the others in the way it renders the pericope under review. We have shown how Fitzmeyer explicitly states on page 684 of his Commentary that Luke's account was taken from “L.” We have also seen how both the Catholic Commentary on Scripture and the Jerome Biblical Commentaries similarly mark Luke's separately from the other accounts. So it is permissible to see that Luke broaches the motif of money, but in a different way than Matthew or Mark. Matthew and Mark looked at the idea of money from the angle of waste and the potential of helping the poor. Luke drives the real message home by seeing it in terms of gratitude for our own immense debt to God for all our sins; a debt we cannot repay ourselves.

Hence, Luke is asserting that the message of the parable is not so much concern or lack thereof for the poor as it is our need to come to terms in our actions with the immense debt we owe to God for our sins. The Jerome Biblical Commentary in this regard states exactly thus: “Our Lord goes further to add, 'but he to whom less is forgiven loves less,' with evident reference to the parable whereby he has shown Simon that the greater mercy calls forth the greater love of gratitude.” In turn, Fitzmeyer states: “Whereas the Marcan story has a certain intrinsic coherence and verisimilitude with its anointing of Jesus' head and the protest about the waster of the precious perfume, Luke's account [quarrels] with the conduct of the Pharisee, which is strange in that he does not show Jesus the customary hospitality; whereas the woman's sins are forgiven because of her (great) love.” So we see that both Fitzmeyer and Brown echo precisely this one point: the woman loves much in humble gratitude for her many sins having been forgiven. Simon on the other hand does not feel convicted enough to love as she does.

The Greek word in this regard that serves to center the paper is ὤφειλεν, which as used in Luke 7:41 means “owed,” from the infinitive “to owe.” It refers to the circumstance of the two debtors in the Parable of the Two Debtors. They both owed (ὤφειλεν) the creditor amounts they could not repay, like every human person owes God an incredible amount because of our sins. “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

Luke tries to stress that those who feel more convicted of sin tend to depend on God more, and are capable of greater love for God, whereas those, like the Pharisee, who feel they are already righteous and have no need for God consequently love him less. A similar teaching is contained in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. It is interesting to note in any case that both parables are contained in Luke. And so he confirms that the woman’s sins are forgiven. This gesture makes the people there wonder who Jesus is to forgive sins. Jesus in any case insists that the woman’s faith has saved her, and recommends that she go in peace.

Forgiveness in Bethany, Part 4

A central strain of both Matthew and Luke’s account of the Bethany anointing makes reference to money and the poor. Both gospel accounts insist that the ointment could have been sold, and for a great price. This price was equivalent to the wages of laborers for an entire year. Fitzmeyer is of the view in this regard that there is plenty of criticism and opprobrium heaped on “the one who wastes,” what might have been given for the benefit of the poor.

But it was not just that the perfume was very costly. It was also the fact that there were poor people that might have benefitted from the money it could have been sold for. Before we explore this concern in further detail, let us examine Luke’s account of it, as contained in Luke 7:36-50. The Gospel of Luke’s account of the event records that a Pharisee invited Jesus to dinner, and the savior went and reclined at table in the Pharisee’s house. The account further details that a woman with a sinful reputation came with an alabaster jar of perfume, and poured its contents on Jesus’ feet – not head. This time around it was neither the disciples nor the guests at the house that complained, but only the Pharisee himself, Simon – not Simon the Leper neither, but only Simon. And the Pharisee’s concern in this case was not so much that the perfume was wasted, as it was that Jesus allowed an otherwise awful woman – a woman with a bad reputation – to touch him, a prophet.

So we observe that the concern shifts a bit from finance to propriety. This point is similarly noted in the fact that Luke’s account makes the woman’s behavior appear more sexually explicit than in Mark and Matthew, for here she weeps over, kisses, and caresses Jesus’ feet with her hair. Jesus notices that Simon is offended, and so proceeds to tell the Parable of the Two Debtors. It is a story wherein two people owe money to a creditor. One owes more than the other, and when the creditor forgives them both, the one who owed more to begin with is forced to love the creditor more. Having so told the parable, Jesus proceeds to show how Simon, the apparently better person – the one with fewer sins or debts – loved less in comparison to the woman, the apparently worse person, the one with greater sins or debts. For, Simon did not tend to Jesus as hospitably as the woman did: he did not kiss, or wash or anoint Jesus.

Forgiveness in Bethany, Part 3

To begin with, Matthew and Mark render the story in essentially the same way, with Mark being a tad more detailed. They both start off by indicating that Jesus was in Bethany in the house of Simon the Leper. Mark in any case further details that Jesus was “reclining” (Mark 14:3). Both accounts then state that a woman came up to him with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil. But whereas Matthew simply said it was costly, Mark detailed that it was “costly, genuine, spikenard” (Ibid.) They both state that the woman poured the oil on his head – not his feet, as in Luke and John – but Mark adds that she broke the jar first (Ibid.) Mark then testifies that some people, very likely those who were similarly in Simon the Leper’s house, were indignant. Matthew specifically uses the word “disciples” in this regard (Matt. 26:8).

Matthew and Mark say the indignation was owing to their assertion that the ointment could have been sold, even though as has been previously stated there is discrepancy as to the exact cost of it. Both gospels assert that the proceeds of such a sale could be given to the poor. Mark in particular adds that the indignant people murmured at the woman. Both accounts state that Jesus came to the woman’s defense, insisting that her actions were good, and that she was preparing him for his burial. He also reminds her critics that the poor are around all the time, but he was not going to live long among them. And he prophesied that the woman’s deed would make her memory endure (Matt. 26:13; Mark 14:9). All of this ties in neatly with what has been said previously in this paper.

The statement by Jesus that the woman was preparing him for burial is typical. The gift of myrrh by one of the wise men at Jesus’ birth is of similar strain. Mary Magdalene also came to the tomb with ointments, which certain commentaries say was left over from what she poured over his feet earlier in Bethany, and which is justification that she was the woman that Mark, Matthew and Luke omitted to name, but which John did. And perhaps Jesus’ prophecy of ensuing notoriety for the woman underpins the presence of the story in all four gospels, in addition to the theories earlier floated in this paper.

Forgiveness in Bethany, Part 2

Unique to Luke’s version of the event is the Parable of the Two Debtors, which is contained in Luke 7:41-43. Concerning the uniqueness of Luke's account of the pericope, the Catholic Commentary on Scripture states: “Latin Tradition since the time of St. Gregory the Great has been in favor of identity; the general tradition among the Greeks (except for Origen) is that Luke's incident is altogether different, and most modern Catholic commentators adopt this view.” Furthermore, Fitzmeyer categorically states: “The story in Luke of Jesus' pardon of the sinful woman is derived from 'L.' It is almost certainly a conflated story, since, form-critically judged, it is made up of a pronouncement story and a parable of two debtors. But there is no reason to think that Luke has conflated these elements; they should be regarded as having come to him so in the tradition.” This paper does, in keeping with the aforementioned observation, treat Luke's account as unique and draw special interpretive themes therefrom.

The parable of the debtors, which is unique to Luke's account, tells of two debtors. One owed five hundred days’ wages, and the other owed fifty, to a certain creditor who ultimately forgave both debts, seeing that the debtors were unable to repay. Jesus asked his host, Simon, which of the two debtors would love the creditor more for the favor of forgiving the debt, and Simon correctly replied that it was bound to be the one who owed more to begin with. Luke describes Simon as a Pharisee, and Pharisees were self-righteous. Recall how the Jerome Bible Commentary as quoted above shows that Jesus was seen as a glutton and wine drinker by the Pharisees, and this motif played into their interpersonal relationships with him. Recall in this regard also the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18: 9-14). The occasion for this self-righteousness of the sort the Pharisees had was in this case of Jesus' anointing at Bethany an otherwise sinful woman’s touching of the feet of a prophet in the house of a consequently indignant Pharisee.

Hence, one point it appears Jesus is trying to make here is humility. God the father who forgives our sins wants us to acknowledge what he has done for us. The Jerome Commentary, on the theme of loving gratitude for what God has dome for us, including the forgiveness of our sins, states thus: “This [text] has been a classic text for showing that the forgiveness of sins leads to perfect charity.”1 Again, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), we see the example of charity played out. Setting a background to the foregoing is here apt. John’s Gospel states that Jesus was visiting with Lazarus and his sisters. The Gospel also states that a large crowd was there and they had come to see not only Jesus, but also Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead, and the Pharisees were intent on killing Lazarus because he represented to the people the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ. (John 12:9-11). We are told in all other three gospels other than Luke in any case that the event in question took place in Bethany, the town where Lazarus, Martha and Mary lived; and, even though Luke does not expressly mention Bethany, we can assume that it was because he was more interested in the message than in the location of the important event of Jesus’ being anointed by the woman.

Luke calls the woman sinful, but the other gospels are silent as to her moral repertoire. They simply call her a woman (Matt. 26:7; Mark 14:3). And so, where it seems as if Mark and Matthew are interested in the location and the tradition, Luke is interested in the message, and John draws our attention to the relationship between Jesus and Lazarus, as well as the symbol of the salvific power that Lazarus portrays. One may theorize in this regard, borrowing from the theory that places Mark’s Gospel first, that Matthew borrowed the account from Mark and left it in much the same way with regard to detail. Luke in turn edited the story to highlight points he considered to be important. John took a further step in the editorial process. The subsequent portion of the paper proceeds with providing a background to the didactic events of the pericope, and gradually builds up to its themes and motifs, and the review of a pertinent Greek usage.

Forgiveness in Bethany, Part 1

The event of the anointing of Jesus with oil by a woman occurs in all four Gospels, even if not in exact same detail. Matthew and Mark say the event took place in the house of Simon the Leper (Matt. 26:6; Mark 14:3). Luke says the event took place in the house of “one of the Pharisees,” who had invited Jesus to have dinner with him (Luke 7:36). John in turn says the event occurs in the house of Lazarus, Martha and Mary (John 12:1-3). In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the identity of the woman is not revealed. The Catholic Commentary on Scripture states in this regard: “If [the gospels] omit to name her, it is only in harmony with their delicate reserve.”]In John however, she is revealed to be Mary, the sister of Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Luke in any case describes her as a sinful woman who should not have been permitted to touch the body of a prophet such as Jesus (Luke 7:39). Furthermore, according to C.H. Dodd (Historical Tradition, 162-173), the pericope is not similar in all the gospels because of oral traditions, especially Lucan and Johanine traditions.

Another discrepancy to note in the rendering of the passage in the different gospels is that Matthew and Mark say that the woman poured the ointment on the head of Jesus (Matt. 26:7; Mark 14:3), while Luke and John both say she poured the ointment on his feet (Luke 7:38; John 12:3). The actual words used, and the characters that used them, also differ from one gospel account to another. John’s Gospel for example mentions Judas (John 12:4-6). All four gospels in any case hint at the concept of money or wages or debt, and so it is clear that finance is a central concern in this passage. This paper will treat this theme in due course. All the foregoing are hinted at on page 137 of Jerome's Biblical Commentary.

According to Jerome's Biblical Commentary as well, the story as presented by Luke in particular broaches the theme of the relationship Jesus had with the Pharisees, especially as such relationship revealed itself in interpersonal situations, in this case with the “eating and drinking Jesus.” This paper will discuss this theme a bit further subsequently. Also, according to Josef Blank, the ceremony of feet washing, whether performed by a woman for Jesus' benefit or by Jesus for his disciples' benefit, shows “the manifestation of the highest, freest, and truest love the world has ever known, a love that gives all humanity an inkling of what God really is, namely the God characterized by such love as this.” In view of the foregoing statement, which this paper agrees with, I will argue that we owe such a God the humble gratitude of devotion owing to his forgiveness of our sins.

Locke Argues Against Innate Ideas

Locke in his first essay is concerned with statements of fact, and ideas. Statements of fact are also called principles. Ideas on the other hand are things that we have names for. Locke is against the possible existence of innate ideas. Locke’s objections proceed as follows: Firstly, if there were innate ideas, then everyone would assent to them; secondly, there are no principles that everyone assents to, and so thirdly, there are therefore no innate ideas. To further buttress his point, he mentions children and shows how they are born with empty-slate minds, knowing nothing without deriving it from experience first. He also shows that some of the ideas which we might call innate are actually so complex that they need to be analyzed first to be believed. In all his argumentation, Locke repeatedly appeals to the principles of non-contradiction and identity. 

An objection to Locke’s view is that we do not have innate ideas per se, but only innate capacities with which to conceive of innate ideas. Locke rubbishes this view because, if that were the case, then everything we could know would be innate because our capacities are the very ways by which we cogitate and come to know anything at all. For Leibniz, we have an inherent disposition to know and we can come to know things through introspection. In Leibniz’s view, even though experience is important in coming to know things, it is not our basis for actually knowing them. In his view, we can never depend solely on experience in our knowledge of reality, because particular representations of universal realities are limited in number. 

The underpinning consequently of substantial (epistemological) knowledge or truth must be the mind. For Kant, the categories form the epistemological molds by which we have innate appreciation of reality. Recall in this regard what St. Augustine would say: Who in his right mind would send his son to school to learn what the teacher thinks? It is only when the student realizes within himself that truths have been expressed that he comes to believe. In other words, like Leibniz, Augustine is apparently saying that experience alone is not sufficient for knowledge. Locke in any case is arguing for empiricism, and so he grinds the gears of rationalists. He distinguishes between simple and complex ideas; as well as primary and secondary qualities. He also, inter alia, talks about personal identity. His attack on innate ideas is called an attack on nativism. Either by sensation or reflection for Locke, every idea is obtained via experience and nowhere else. Locke is epistemologically conservative.

One of the objections Locke is interested in quelling is the supposed possibility that a child or an idiot can have ideas that they are unaware of. For Locke, it is a contradiction in terms to be both knowledgeable and ignorant at the same time. It is a manifest repugnance to the principle of non-contradiction, which he depends upon in the defense of his ideas. Hence, for Locke, ideas cannot be unconsciously imprinted in the minds of babies before they are born. Another objection Locke seeks to quell is that we get to discover innate ideas by the power of reason. For Locke, we cannot be sure of this, because we cannot effectively distinguish between the truths that come to us later, and those that we suppose are innate, albeit all supposedly obtained via the exercise of reason.

I think that a possible weakness of Locke’s argument is to ground innate ideas on universal assent. Can there not be innate ideas that are not necessarily shared by everyone, perhaps a worldview dependent on a demographic orientation? Besides, babies are unable to communicate and so it is impossible tell for sure if they have ideas or not. Notice in any case that Locke’s views remain in sharp contrast with the views of the rationalists. Where Descartes and other rationalists would distrust the knowledge sourced via the senses, Locke seems to be affording this sort of knowledge a pride of place. As far back of Plato, the dichotomy of body (sensation) and spirit (rationality) has been clearly enunciated. Descartes and Berkeley (an idealist) side with Plato, where Locke would more easily tolerate Aristotle’s views than theirs.

Further Word on Kantian Philosophy

Philosophers believe that, in his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant achieves some measure of synthesis between rationalism and empiricism. From rationalism, he borrows the view that the mind (reason) can help us to attain knowledge, even though he denies that reason can lead us to knowledge of things in themselves. (Recall in this regard in any case that Heidegger in his Metaphysics makes significant mention of things in themselves.) From empiricism, he borrows the view that knowledge is primarily from experience, but he allows, unlike Hume does, that we can make inferences about universals. For Kant in other words, metaphysical situations are located not in Plato’s form heaven or in Aquinas’ mind of God, but in a critique of pure reason. And in so doing, he gives definitive boundary to metaphysical speculation and approaches science or knowledge with reasonable empiricism.

What is more important than things for Kant is the nature of the perceiving mind. Again, compare this view with that of Berkeley. So for Kant, even though reality is an intercourse between reality and the perceiving mind, knowledge is better had of the latter. In so doing, Kant challenges Locke’s blank-slate theory. For Kant, the mind is not the passive receptor of stimuli from the external environment. Rather, it is active in shaping the reality external to it. Through our mental faculties, for Kant, the mind shapes and molds knowledge actively and perceptively. Kant achieves some level of genius wiggle room in this: He is able to show that apriori knowledge (the basis by which we know universal truths, and not the facts that are obtainable merely from observation of particulars) is also synthetic, because Hume would allow that all synthetic knowledge must be aposteriori and on this ground Hume would deny that we can know any universals. Kant on the other hand is of the view that math and scientific principles, like Euclidian geometry for example, are synthetic apriori kinds of knowledge and so can afford us significant knowledge of universals.

In any case, unlike rationalists, Kant does not believe that space, time, causation and other metaphysical constructs can be known. They are not extra-mental realities to be known as such, but only forms that the mind gives to reality. And so, we must not look outside the mind for knowledge to these things. At least not for Kant. And so, we must look at the mind. And so where Plato would look at form heaven, and Aristotle would look at things in themselves in their exercise of metaphysics, Kant would look at the mind, and its intellectual operatives.

It bears repeating, in order to reiterate how awesome was Kant’s discovery, that before Kant all apriori knowledge was thought to be analytic. The fact that Kant was able to argue for the existence of synthetic apriori knowledge was a huge breakthrough in our allowing for our knowledge of universals through math, scientific principles and geometry. Kant was responsible in other words for devising a means to tame Hume’s empiricism.

A Prolegomena to Kantian Philosophy

Kant is interested in his work, Critique of Pure Reason, in finding out what it is the mind (reason) alone can discover without recourse to the senses. He is not the first, obviously, to undertake an epistemological pursuit of such nature. Plato, in the Theaetetus, is interested in what the soul in itself, by itself and with itself can know without recourse to sense perception, which at best can only lead us to opinion. And opinion of course is not knowledge. Kant said he undertook his work because he was awakened from his dogmatic slumber by Hume. For those of you that do not know Hume, he was the most radical empiricist ever. He so extended Locke’s empiricism that philosophers have said that Hume took empiricism to its logical limits. To attempt, in other words, to be more empirical that Hume would be to become a mad person. Indeed, some people think Hume is pretty absurd. But this post is about Kant, not Hume.

Kant makes distinctions between apriori and aposteriori knowledge, as well as between analytic and synthetic judgments. Aposteriori knowledge is that which we get from experience, whereas apriori knowledge is independent of experience, such as arithmetic or math. In an analytic judgment, the concept in the predicate is contained in the concept in the subject. For example, “A bachelor is an unmarried man.” In a synthetic judgment, the predicate contains concepts that are not in the subject concept, and so the synthetic judgment is categorial (here, don’t confuse this word with “categorical”) and not simply definitional: in other words, it says something more about the subject. Association is made between aposteriori knowledge and synthetic judgments, while association is made between apriori knowledge and analytic judgments. In any case, a crossover is possible, such as in subjects like math and the principles of science, where we can have apriori synthetic knowledge.

And the fact that we can have synthetic apriori knowledge shows that our minds can know some crucial truths. Furthermore, Kant believes that our intellectual processes shape our reality. In other words, our thoughts can cause our experience. How cool is this for proponents of positive thinking! Time, space, and other physical realities are simply the intuitive operations of the mind, for Kant. The fact that sensory experience makes sense is simply because our sensory faculties accord them intelligibility based on the limiting construct of time and space possessed by the mind. Extensions of this reality are true for math and geometry (compare this with Descartes’ views as contained in his first meditation. Recall in this regard how, for Descartes, only math could survive the dream argument.)

For Kant, events that take place in space and time would still not make sense, if it were not for the power of our mind organizing and shaping them in a coherent fashion capable of making sense. But then, if it is just our mind conditioning and shaping reality based on intellectual faculties and principles (for example causation), what can we really know of what is out there, then? For Kant, we cannot know for sure (compare this view with Berkeley’s view of immaterialism.) The “things-in-themselves” which stimulate the mind are for Kant the noumena. We cannot really know these things. But we can know phenomena, which is the way these things are for us in our minds.

Kant goes further to state that the task of metaphysics is a critique of pure reason. Like Locke, he calls for modesty in our concept of the knowable. For Kant, we should not even bother to apply reason to things in themselves, because we can never know these things. For Kant, the role of reason instead is to try to understand itself. Again think here of Berkeley and what he says concerning spirits, and how these are all we can properly have notions of, and speak coherently about, because these are all that truly exist. It is when, according to Plato in the Theaetetus, the soul in itself through itself and by itself engages in a dialog with itself that we can even begin to have a chance at knowing truth.

Help Us, Mother Mary; Help Us!

As a child, at Block Rosary Crusade meetings, we used to sing:

Help us, Mother Mary, help us (2ce)

For we need your help-o, mother!

We need your help-o-oh, mother

Mother, mother, Mary, help us!

And as we sang, we would dance soulfully. We did need her help, the help of the mother of Jesus. We need the same help even now. We can never get too old or too cool to need her help.

Today is the Immaculate Conception, a day set aside by Mother Church to celebrate the pure birth of the one who gave Jesus his body and blood. This is a huge deal for us Catholics. Nine months from today, September 8, we will celebrate the birthday of Mary. [The Immaculate Conception is normally celebrated on the 8th of December, but because yesterday was a Sunday, it is being marked today, the 9th.] There is a legend about the Immaculate Conception. I learned it as a child. It goes thus:

A long time ago, there was a man named Joachim. He was a very devout and faithful man. Everyone knew him to be upright and ethical. But he was childless. He and his wife, Anne, had been married for years, but without offspring. Nevertheless, Joachim was a very wealthy man. And he often used to make large contributions to the poor, and to temple funds. At harvest time he would divide his produce into three portions. He would bring one portion to the temple; he would give another portion to the poor, and he would give the third portion to his wife for the upkeep of his own home. He was very generous. He counted material wealth as nothing. He rather fixed his sights on the goodness of heaven. One day, he came as usual to donate a third of his wealth to the temple. He was making his way to the inner sanctuary to donate his gift when a jealous Levite mocked him. The Levite said to Joachim: "Are you truly a righteous man as you would have others believe? If you are, why has God not blessed you with any offspring after years of marriage? You always come to this temple to show off your wealth under the pretext of charity. But God knows better what sort of person you really are!" Joachim was very hurt to hear the Levite speak so. He was so hurt that he left his offering there and ran away, into the desert. There in the desert, he wept bitterly to the Lord. He asked God to remove his shame; he told God to bless him with a child, in order to prove to everyone that he was a righteous man deserving of God's blessings. He refused to eat or drink for the number of days he spent in the desert, weeping and praying.

Meanwhile, Anne was in the house. She too was praying and weeping. She was concerned for her husband. She prayed to God to protect him and bring him back home to her safe and sound. God heard the prayers of Joachim and Anne. He saw their tears as well, and so he sent Angel Gabriel to comfort them and bring them relief from their suffering. Promptly, Angel Gabriel went to the desert where Joachim was and inspired him to begin to walk toward the temple. Then Gabriel went to Anne where she was at home and similarly inspired her to begin to walk to the temple. And so Anne and Joachim both began to walk toward the temple, inspired by God's angel. Now, at the exact second that Anne reached the gate of the outer court of the temple, Joachim reached the same spot too; and immediately a light from heaven shone down and encircled both of them, and in that very instant Anne conceived and became pregnant. Joachim took Anne back home and, nine months later, she gave birth to the baby girl, Mary. Thus it was, by this legend, that Mary was preserved from conception in original sin of the sort that everyone else experiences.

Today's readings are from: Genesis 3:9-15, 20; Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12, and Luke 1:26-38. The first reading, from Genesis, talks about how it is that all of us, except for Mary, are born with original sin. This is what happened. God created everything to be good. And in the center of it all he created a garden. He put the first man and the first woman, Adam and Eve, in the garden. He asked them to eat everything, except the fruit of the tree of good and evil. But the devil in the form of a snake deceived Eve into eating it, and Eve in turn got Adam to eat it too. And God was very angry. He cursed the snake, Eve, and Adam. And he made all the offspring of Eve (all humans) culpable of original sin through that sad curse, the curse of perpetual enmity with fate. Mother Church gives us this reading on a day like this to show how it is that Mary is special. Unlike us, she was not born with the culpability of original sin. The second reading from Ephesians shows how possible it is that God could indeed have singled Mary out to be born free from sin. This God is the one that is able to choose people from before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish; predestining them to act according to a set purpose; to exist for the praise of his glory, and to be blessed with every esoteric, spiritual blessing. And in the Gospel reading, we see how the Angel Gabriel was sent to Mary to announce the coming of Jesus through her, this coming being the reason for her immaculate conception in the first place. In other words, it is because God wanted her to be his son's mother that he preserved Mary from being born with original sin. God wanted the flesh and blood that his son would receive from her to be free from stain.

Now that we've briefly explored the theological foundation of the Immaculate Conception, let us look at it from the point of view of alternate spirituality. Recall that we have said in a previous post in the words of Iyanla Vanzant, eminent spiritual writer, that a soul "chooses" its body even before birth. In other words, because each soul has a lesson to learn, it unconsciously selects a body through which it will learn what it has to learn. The soul of Jesus was to learn humility through suffering and, through sacrifice, destroy in himself and in the entire human race the consequences of negative emotions. (He could do this for the entire human race because his rational capacity is infinite, being as it were the rational capacity of God himself.) To do this, he chose the body of a humble girl, who was innocent and well-groomed. But, in order that the sacrifice should be efficacious in removing sin, he had to be free from sin from the get-go, lest his death be punishment rather than sacrifice. [The logic here is that there is punishment for sin, which is death, according to Romans 6:23a, which states, "The wages of sin is death." Jesus had no sin at all. But he still died. So, his death is not punishment for his sin - since there is no sin in him - but sacrifice to destroy the "wages" of our own sins, every last one of us.] This was why the global soul, Jesus, chose Mary's body; chose the material circumstances it did.

Phew! Lots of theological and spiritual gymnastics going on here. Anyway. The Immaculate Conception is real, folks, and it makes plenty of sense. And so, today, let us rejoice, and let us ask Mary for her help. "Beata mater, intacta virgo, regina mundi, ora pro nobis." [Use Google Translate, and please don't hate me for knowing a little Latin.] Let us now sing:

Help us, Mother Mary, help us (2ce)

For we need your help-o, mother!

We need your help-o-oh, mother

Mother, mother, Mary, help us!

Message to the Weary Soul: "Move On, Don't Be Weary"

This is a message to the weary soul. When I was growing up we used to sing:

Move on, move on; don’t be weary
My savior understands: he knows the way.

I have never forgotten the song. And like I said, it is a message to the weary soul. Keep moving on. Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.

We recently lost a friend. He was known to me and my confreres. He kept to himself a lot of the time, and was suffering on the inside. Many times, I tried to reach out to him; but I always felt I couldn’t quite get through to him. There was a wall between my attempts and his heart. And I was often helpless. Recently, he moved away. And only yesterday, I learned he had taken his own life. He took his own life by swallowing very many medicines. They call it overdosing. Suicide. The one thing I have said is the worst event ever. I know that suicide hurts. My father committed suicide. I cannot forget it. But sometimes, it appears as if we need people to commit suicide, so that we can feel our own lives are better. So that, compared with them, we feel justifiably strong. We can say like the Pharisee who mocked the Publican: At least I’m not like them – I mean, life is hard but you don’t see me committing suicide!

But on a more humane level, when a person commits suicide, we are forced to feel pity. We are forced to wonder if there was anything we could have done for them or to them when they were alive to prevent them from opting out of life altogether. We wonder if there was a word we could have said; a word they could have hung onto. We wonder if there was a gesture we could have made; a gesture they could have appreciated and remembered. Maybe the word or the gesture might have kept them from taking their own life. Maybe they could have talked themselves out of their action by their contemplation of our example. Maybe. Just maybe.

But we cannot deal with what-ifs. All we can deal with is what is. Parmenides would remind us of that. What is (reality) is all we can deal with. And in the reality following the suicide of a sibling, or friend or acquaintance, we can examine our lives after mourning. We can meditate on the circumstances in our lives that are most difficult. These circumstances are potential suicide inducers, but not for the strong. St Paul says: “Can anything ever separate us from Christ's love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?” (Rom. 8:35). Suicide is like separating ourselves from the love of Christ. Theologians tell us that the Holy Spirit is the love existing between the Father and the Son. This is the same love that the Son, Jesus Christ, shares with us. This love which Jesus shares with us, the Spirit, is what animates our bodies; and suicide is our forcefully separating ourselves from that Spirit, from that love. St Paul does not see how grave a situation can get to merit our separating ourselves from the principle of animation, the Spirit, Christ’s love. No matter what condition we face, we must remain in the love of God. We must cling tenaciously to the love of Christ. We must move on without being weary, trusting in that abundant Spirit, in that abundant love of the redeeming Christ. 

“I shall not die, but live to declare the praise of God” (Psalm 118:17). It was so the psalmist said. Also recall the example of Job. Despite all the bad things that happened to him, he held on. Even when his wife told him to disregard God and commit suicide. He refused to succumb to the temptation to throw in the towel. And that is what suicide is: throwing in the towel. We must never do it. I have said severally that it is the singular worst thing ever. The funny thing about suicide is that the people who commit it give many excuses. They say life was so hard and so tough and so this and so that. The funny thing is that many of them have not even suffered a tenth of what many others have. Think of the martyrs of Uganda whose bodies were roasting on the flames, and they were smiling the whole time! Think of the inmates of the ships that were making their way from the Motherland to the New World. Think of the inmates of the various concentration camps of the Second World War. Think of all these people – is what you are going through in life as difficult as the circumstances they faced? Of course not! And yet you didn’t see them kill themselves. Or you may argue that they probably weren’t allowed to kill themselves, by the people that subjected them to such hardships – but this objection does not undermine my point. The fact that those sufferers could bear their pains means that the human capacity can rise to the level of any pain that the mind can conceive without dying spiritually. The body may break and die under the pressure, but the spirit can rise above it, even in the face of such death. And this is what St Paul means by these words, which form part of the earlier quote from Romans 8:35: “or threatened with death.” Nothing – no hardship whatsoever – justifies suicide. 

The Spirit of God that lives in us is powerful enough to preserve us in the worst of hardships. But we must pay attention to such spirit. To sin against the spirit, such as by despairing, is a sin that is forgiven neither in this world nor in the next. In this regard, spiritualists have told us that a person that commits suicide is doomed in so far as his or her spirit is incarnated in successively lesser bodily forms, till resultant souls are so powerless that the spirit is denied them altogether. These souls consequently form a universe that is perennially cut off from the life of God, from the light of the spirit. This is what hell means. 

The spirit of God is powerful enough to set us free from the depression that leads to a contemplation of suicide. All the mental illnesses that psychology comes up with are, in the realm of spirituality, simply sins against the spirit. They are ways by which the body attempts to reject the help that that spirit persistently affords. Jesus says in this regard: “Behold I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with such a person” (Rev. 3:20). The spirit remains relentless in this knocking, in the persistent invitation to us to participate in the fellowship with the Son and the Father and with all the other members of the human race. But when we implode within ourselves and do not reach out in participatory unity with the Trinitarian Godhead and with one another in this world, we set ourselves up to sin against the Holy Spirit, and in such a fashion deny ourselves the privilege of living free and victorious lives in communion with the one Lord and Savior of the human race.  

We must never give up. This is my message to the weary soul. We must insist on life. We must reject death. We must never waver. “They that trust in the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and shall not be weary; they shall walk and shall not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). This is the message of God. And now, let us sing: 

Move on, move on; don’t be weary
My savior understands: he knows the way.

Please, soul farer, do not give up. Let us keep blessing the Lord, and praising him all our days. Amen.

The Tides of the Mind

That which comes to light does so for a reason. The purpose for which everything was created defies complete understanding. But in faith we come to accept that there is no useless thing. Everything that is - being - is teleological. We know this because Aristotle said so. That should be enough. We explore the meaning of reality in various ways, but we come back to the threshold of probable science - especially when our exploration is conducted by sense perception. Where Berkeley has denied material substances and Kant has demarcated the world into noumena and phenomena, we come to realize that the best reality we get is in the mind, and our reason creates our reality. This is the modern philosophy project.

 

It is only with phenomenology that we begin to retrace our steps back to the old days, when we allowed for there to exist an epistemological realism, a relationship between the ideas we conceive in the mind and the extramental material substances that we believe cause the ideas. These substances have sides, aspects and profiles, and are manifold in their possession of all three. Through phenomenology, we can confidently say that we appreciate reality as that: reality. We are able to have an intentional grasp of it.

For Kant, there is need to examine consciousness, especially a consciousness of the self, in such a fashion that we examine our memories and see how they form a logical representation of the reality that we accept in manifold, but which we synthesize in order to make sense of a complex world. This Kantian paradigm is different from the Berkelian model, but I think they both point to the reality of the limitedness of science, especially when it is lower than math. Descartes and the moderns would let us have math; but they would wash their hands off the possible crime of letting us have physical sciences as well. They would like Pilate ask us to bear the risk of believing what our senses tell us.

No one in any case has yet explained in full what the relationship between the mind and the body is, or how it is that we can will and spontaneously behold the product in the body of the effect of willing in the mind. For if the mind and the body are supposedly separate, how can they seem to be so fluidly one and the same as per effects? This precludes modern understanding. Philosophy continues to search for the ultimate causes of things, metaphysics continues to swim in murky waters. They continue to carry us along the current of our human understanding, bearing us along the tides as far as we can and may go. And no farther.