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CajunRick
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Posted: Sun Jul 15th, 2007 12:41 pm |
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I stumbled across this article in the California Catholic Daily column called "Notes from a Cultural Madhouse". I found it very informative. I hope you enjoy it as well.
The Emperor, the archangel, and the cosmos
Random thoughts on the Incarnation
Today, July13, when I write this “Madhouse” entry, is the feast of St. Heinrich II in the Roman calendar. On the Byzantine calendar, it is the Synaxis of St. Gabriel the Archangel. The presence of these two on the same day is lucky, if not providential, for both, I think, expresses a common theme.
 Heinrich II was a German king and Roman emperor, who ruled in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. I don’t want to go into a detailed description of his life here – readers can refer to the Catholic Encyclopedia or Butler’s Lives for that. I shall note, however, that he was not only a married man, as well as a ruler, but was married to a woman, Kunigunde, who has also been canonized a saint. Their marriage, I think, probably was not without its troubles, as a certain kind of hagiographical sensibility might suppose.
As emperor, Heinrich did not do everything right; for instance, he used the Church for political purposes as well as zealously working to reform it of the dross of simony and clerical concubinage. Saints are not men and women who were faultless or even sinless in their lives, which is why we are warned not to imitate them too closely.
But Heinrich and Kunigunde, since they are saints, worked to complete, even though imperfectly, what God had begun by becoming man. Divine incarnation. Despite his missteps as emperor and king, Heinrich worked to conform the human society over which he ruled to the social ideal of God’s Kingdom. Doubtless, Heinrich and Kunigunde strove to make their marriage an icon of the union of Christ with His Church. To do so, in the context of the temptations of power and court life, must have required great attentiveness to the interior life, fed by the sacraments, as well as an embrace of an ascetic life in keeping with their state of life.
Incarnation is what the Catholic Church has always been about. From the very beginning when God spoke it into being with His eternal Word, the cosmos has been yearning for the Divine. St. Thomas someplace in the Summa says that God moves all things by being the object of their desire. The vegetable world, the animals, even the inanimate creation seek the purposes for which they have been created. And the purpose of each thing is the good of each thing, its perfection. All things long for the good, which is nothing but an image of God. They desire to perfect the image of God in themselves, so far as they are able.
Man finds his purpose in knowledge, in a union of his intellect with the thing that is known. When the object of knowledge is God, man achieves union with God, prefigured by the “knowledge” Adam had of Eve. Holy Scripture is the record of how God throughout the ages gradually revealed Himself to man. The culmination of this revelation, and of cosmic history, was incarnation, the union of the Word of God with the creation He spoke into being. Jesus Christ was God made man, and through believing in Him, men can come into union with God.
This union, of course, is a gradual development in each of our lives. It comes through purging the dross of inordinate attachment to mere materiality. In the words of St. Basil the Great, “When a sunbeam falls on a transparent substance, the substance itself becomes brilliant, and radiates light from itself. So too Spirit-bearing souls, illumined by Him, finally become spiritual themselves, and their grace is sent forth to others. From this comes knowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, apprehension of hidden things, distribution of wonderful gifts, heavenly citizenship, a place in the choir of the angels, endless joy in the presence of God, becoming like God, and, the highest of all desires, becoming God.”
Our “becoming God,” called theosis in the East, is, of course, not the destruction of ourselves, but our union with God, so intimate, so close, that God pervades every part of our being. We shall achieve this only in the next life, when we see God as He is in Himself. But theosis begins, here and now, while we move in time through the murkiness of materiality. It requires a daily conforming of our wills and minds to the truth about God and man.
The more we conform to God, the more we can send forth grace to others, as St. Basil indicates We do this through perfecting ourselves, our families, and, then, by trying to incarnate the image of God in the wider society in which we live. This is what St. Heinrich strove to do as king and emperor. It is what we must do as neighbors and citizens. The call of theosis does not turn us to an inward looking quietism but to an active engagement with the world around us. It is our task to carry on the work of incarnation.
This means we must purify our minds of notions that come not from Christ, who speaks to us in the Church, His incarnate and incarnating presence in the world, but from a false prudence that cannot see beyond the confines of the world. It means sacrificing our own ideas when they are in conflict with the teachings of the Church – even when those ideas reflect the predominate mind of our families, our communities, and our society.
The Archangel Gabriel heralded the incarnation, the union with God and man, with the words, “Hail, Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee.” The Mother of God made God to be with her more intimately than ever before when she said, “let it be done unto me according to thy word.” In embracing sanctity, St. Heinrich, too, said, “let it be done unto me,” and then, by his life and work, “let it be done to all.” In a sense, Heinrich, too, said fiat to the Archangel Gabriel, and in doing so, furthered the incarnation in his own place and time.
Let us pray and work that we do likewise.
The above article is reposted from the California Catholic Daily.
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Credo Catholic
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Posted: Sun Jul 15th, 2007 07:14 pm |
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| Is everyone in heaven a saint? Or just those who had no need for purgatory?
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CajunRick
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Posted: Sun Jul 15th, 2007 08:14 pm |
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Credo Catholic wrote: Is everyone in heaven a saint? Or just those who had no need for purgatory?
Yes, everyone in heaven is a saint (except the angels, of course). We celebrate the feast of the unknown saints on November 1, the Feast of All Saints.
Last edited on Sun Jul 15th, 2007 08:15 pm by
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Ali
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Posted: Wed Jul 18th, 2007 01:58 pm |
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CajunRick wrote: Credo Catholic wrote: Is everyone in heaven a saint? Or just those who had no need for purgatory?
Yes, everyone in heaven is a saint (except the angels, of course). We celebrate the feast of the unknown saints on November 1, the Feast of All Saints.
Yet another thing I didn't know. Huh, glad I clicked on this thread.
Ali
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