Ego vos elegi

Thoughts from a St. Louis seminarian

ART!

Secundum Cor Tuum

This phrase, Latin for "after your own heart," is, as some of you might know, the episcopal motto of St. Louis' Archbishop Raymond Burke.  It comes from the promise of God in Jeremiah (I think) that he will provide shepherds "after his own heart."   Hence, it is also found in the Collect for yesterday's feast of St. Ambrose, as the Church prays, "O God, who made the blessed bishop Ambrose a teacher of the Catholic faith and an example of apostolic courage, stir up in Your Church men after Your own heart, who will govern her boldly and wisely." (translation mine)

"A man after God's own heart" certainly sums up Ambrose.  In few pastors of the history of the Church has it been so clear that the priesthood is truly a call from God to serve His people, a call which no one takes on himself.  Ambrose, still a catechumen and the imperial governor of Milan, so impressed everyone in his efforts to make peace while Catholics and Arians were debating over a new bishop that he wound up being spontaneously chosen for the office.  (So the story goes, and even the more sceptical scholarly types don't seem to question its accuracy.)  Ambrose did everything he could to escape the office, but was eventually prevailed upon by the combined forces of the people, the neighboring bishops, and the emperor. 

Well, like that later royal-official-turned-bishop, Thomas Becket, Ambrose quickly showed that his loyalty was to God and His Church above all, and engaged throughout his episcopate in many conflicts with the civil power, resisting the imperial attempts to hand over Catholic churches to the Arians (once spending all of Holy Week besieged in the church with his people, singing psalms and hymns to pass the time).  In a particularly well-known incident, Ambrose forced the emperor Theodosius to submit to public penance after he had ordered a massacre of several thousand innocent people in Thessalonica.  It was at this point that Ambrose enunciated that "the emperor is in the Church, not above it."  It was a principle for which later shepherds like Gregory VII and Becket would suffer persecution or even martyrdom, and it continues to be relevant today as bishops in America have recently begun to take action against Catholics in public life who support the killing of the innocent. 

The relations of Catholics and Arians in this period is amazing, and should be heartening to Catholics today dismayed at the inroads made in some corners of the Church by dissent.  Before Ambrose was elected bishop, the reason there was strife requiring the intervention of the civil power was that the people of Milan couldn't agree whether the new bishop should be a Catholic or an Arian!  That the bishopric of an imperial city such as Milan was at the time could have been so up for grabs between the orthodox and the heretics can serve to remind us that "the course of true faith never did run smooth", to parody Shakespeare's words. 

Ambrose gave us many other things: a large number of Latin hymns for the breviary, sermons on the sacraments and on the value of virginity.  But perhaps his greatest contribution, like that of St. Albert the Great (St. Thomas' teacher), came from whom he taught.  Ambrose's eloquence was what originally drew the young Augustine to come listen to him.  Fortunately for the West, the young man from Hippo discovered the substance behind the rhetoric, and would later be instucted and baptized by Ambrose.  For that, as for much else, the Church in the West has much to be grateful to Ambrose for.

posted by: mhouser at 10:00 | link | comments |

Adveniat Regnum Tuum!

. . . Et lux perpetua luceat eis

Well, I probably flatter myself by thinking that anyone is still reading this blog, considering nothing's been posted in weeks, but I will briefly finish up my thoughts on the old funeral liturgy from All Souls' Day (now over a month ago!), and it's simply this: in giving up our old funeral customs, we may have lost out not just theologically, but culturally and psychologically as well. 

What I mean is that the Requiem as traditionally understood was something that Western culture, even outside the Church, had come to identify with.  The texts of that Mass have inspired tremendous composers from Mozart to Verdi to Faure to Durufle.  Such great compositions, however, are generally little more than artistic relics now; no one would play them at a real funeral even if they had the resources too, and hardly any average Catholic would recognize these prayers as being a living part of our faith. 

Then there is the psychological side of things.  I don't claim to be an expert in grief issues, and those who know more could probably correct me.  But is it not an important principle that grief at the passing of a beloved is not something that we should attempt to hide?  It is natural to show sorrow in a visible manner, and in making use of her traditional black funeral trappings, the Church was, it seems to me, at least partly acknowledging this human reality: that while a funeral is a time to hope and pray for the Resurrection, it is not healthy to act as if grief weren't real, which it seems to me our almost exclusive use of white vestments can seem to imply.  That in addition to the fact that, as I pointed out earlier, we do no service to the dead by treating the funeral as a virtual canonization, rather than emphasizing the need to pray for them. 

I have ventured in these thoughts far from the realm of established Catholic theology into some of my own personal liturgical opinions, but I think I am on good ground in suggesting that the old funeral liturgy had a lot to be said for it.  That being said, I've rarely experienced it, and those who have more knowledge of grief issues than I could profitably weigh in on this question.

posted by: mhouser at 00:14 | link | comments (1) |

Template by motime.com