New Publications by Oxford Dominicans

Summer 2009 saw the publication of a number of works by members of the Blackfriars community.

Fr Richard Finn published Asceticism in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge University Press). Asceticism deploys abstention, self-control, and self-denial, to order oneself or a community in relation to the divine. Both its practices and the cultural ideals they expressed were important to pagans, Jews, Christians of different kinds, and Manichees. Fr Richard presents for the first time a combined study of the major ascetic traditions, which have been previously misunderstood by being studied separately. He examines how people abstained from food, drink, sexual relations, sleep, and wealth; what they meant by their behaviour; and how they influenced others in the Graeco-Roman world. Against this background, the book charts the rise of monasticism in Egypt, Asia Minor, Syria, and North Africa, assessing the crucial role played by the third-century exegete, Origen, and asks why monasticism developed so variously in different regions.

Fr Denis Minns, prior of Oxford from 2000 to 2006, together with Paul Parvis, published Justin, Philosopher and Martyr: Apologies (Oxford University Press). Justin Martyr (c.100-165) was one of the key apologists of the Early Church and this is a new critical edition of the Greek text of the Apologies with introduction, English translation, and textual commentary. Fr Denis and Dr Parvis take a searching look at the text transmitted by the single fourteenth-century manuscript containing the works of Justin. They attempt to see behind the work of the Byzantine editor, and of his predecessors, who sought to make sense of the badly damaged text. The commentary is designed not merely to annotate the text but to identify and draw out Justin's train of thought and the structure of his argument. Justin is located within his Christian, Hellenistic, and philosophical contexts. A new understanding of Justin emerges from this work, and the difficulty of the task he set himself of bridging the enormous gap between two cultures is clearly shown.

Fr Richard Conrad published 7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit (Catholic Truth Society), which the publishers describe as an introduction to living with the Holy Spirit and the gifts it brings. Every Christian who has been confirmed has received the fullness of the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. This booklet explains what these gifts are, the effect they can have on the life of the person who accepts them, and what a life truly led by the Spirit should look like.

In the same batch of new publications from the Catholic Truth Society is Thomas Aquinas: The Mind in Love by Fr Vivian Boland, which the publishers describe as an introduction to the life, thought and relevance of the 'Angelic Doctor'. Thomas is an unusual saint, having spent most of his life teaching in universities and writing in his convent, yet his thought has defined Catholic theology for almost eight hundred years. Not just a theologian, he was also a philosopher, mystic and poet, and responsible for some of the most beautiful hymns used in the Catholic liturgy.

We congratulate these brothers on their work and pray that their writings will not only increase people's knowledge and understanding of the faith but will also strengthen many in their love for Christ and in their service of Him.

Dominican Pilgrimage to Lourdes 2009

For the past few years, the Dominicans who minister in England and Scotland have been leading an annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Lourdes. Godzdogz has posts from the 2008 Pilgrimage, and the 2007 Pilgrimage. Pope Benedict XVI has said that "the Year for Priests that we are celebrating is a precious opportunity to deepen our knowledge of the value of the mission of priests in the Church and in the world". So, Godzdogz will present photos from the 2009 pilgrimage that show aspects of priestly life and ministry. These will be interspersed with quotations from Pope Benedict's speeches concerning this year for priests.

To become priests in the Church means to enter into the self-donation of Christ through the Sacrament of Orders and to enter with all of one's being. Jesus gave his life for all, but in a special way he consecrated himself for those the Father had given to him, that they may be consecrated in truth, that is in him, and could speak and act in his name, represent him, continue his saving actions: breaking the Bread of life and remitting sins.

Priests assembled in the Underground Basilica for the start of Sunday Mass

fr Tony Rattigan OP presides at the Eucharist


fr Tim Calvert OP proclaims the Gospel of Christ


fr Bruno Clifton OP preaching


A priest hearing confession in Lourdes

The Eucharistic Celebration is the greatest and highest act of prayer, and constitutes the centre and the source from which even the other forms receive "nourishment": the Liturgy of the Hours, Eucharistic adoration, Lectio divina, the Holy Rosary, meditation. All these expressions of prayer, which have their centre in the Eucharist, fulfil the words of Jesus in the priest's day and in all his life: "I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep" (Jn 10: 14-15).

fr Leon Pereira leads the Prayer of the Faithful during Mass


fr John Farrell OP invites pilgrims to discover the Rosary and to entrust our lives to God's providence and the workings of His grace


The Blessed Sacrament is carried in procession every day in Lourdes


A bishop blesses the sick with the Blessed Sacrament


A Carmelite friar prays the Liturgy of the Hours


The priest who prays a lot, and who prays well, is progressively drawn out of himself and evermore united to Jesus the Good Shepherd and the Servant of the Brethren.

Priests and laity together make up the one priestly people and in virtue of their ministry priests live in the midst of the lay faithful, “that they may lead everyone to the unity of charity, ‘loving one another with mutual affection; and outdoing one another in sharing honour’ (Rom 12:10)

Dominican friars and lay pilgrims lead the Rosary Procession

In today’s world, as in the troubled times of the Curé of Ars, the lives and activity of priests need to be distinguished by a determined witness to the Gospel. As Pope Paul VI rightly noted, “modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses'.

All Christians are called to be a light in the world, shining the truth of Christ, by word and example, into the darkness of our fallen world.


An expedition to the Lac d'Estaing was part of the pilgrimage this year and some climbed the steep mountain that circles the lake


Daily recreation was an important part of the pilgrimage, allowing friars and pilgrims to mingle and chat informally




fr John O'Connor OP, the Pilgrimage Director, offers his thanks to one of our many helpers on the pilgrimage

Because he belongs to Christ, the priest is radically at the service of all people: he is the minister of their salvation, their happiness and their authentic liberation, developing, in this gradual assumption of Christ's will, in prayer, in "being heart to heart" with him.

fr Dermot Morrin OP administers the sacrament of the sick


fr Leon Pereira OP with some of the group


Dominican friars with other priests and religious at the close of the torch-lit procession


Friars and pilgrims pray the Stations of the Cross together, uniting themselves to the Lord in His passion, death and resurrection


The Provincial blesses the pilgrimage candle, which burns in the shrine at Lourdes as a sign of the prayers and hopes of all the pilgrims


fr John Farrell OP greets Dominican sisters, on pilgrimage from the Philippines and Japan

May the Word of the Lord always dwell within you, renew in your hearts the light, love and peace that God alone can give, and make you capable of witnessing and proclaiming the Gospel, source of communion and love.

We have been called to share the light of Christ with others...

It is always and only the Lord who sows in human hearts. Only after the abundant and generous sowing of the word of God can one progress further along the paths of companionship and education, of formation and discernment. All this is linked to that tiny seed, the mysterious gift of divine Providence which releases from within an extraordinary force. In fact, it is the Word of God who brings about in himself what he says and desires.

Might God be calling you to serve Him as a priest or religious? Visit our Vocations page.

Preaching in the Trenches

The recent deaths of Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, the last surviving First World War veterans in Britain, marked the end of an era. Their passing reminded the present generations of the sacrifice and horrors of the Great War. Their deaths have an added significance, as the British armed forces have recently and currently been involved in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The English Dominican Province has two military chaplains serving at the moment.

This interview with Fr. Henry Bonniwell OP, produced by our brothers in the Washington Dominican House of Studies in 1982, provides a fascinating and inspiring account of his experiences as a US Army chaplain during the First World War.

H/T to McNamara's Blog

Henry William Allingham (1896-2009)

Henry John Patch (1898-2009)

Father William Bonniwell OP (1886-1984)

Eternal rest grant unto them , O Lord,

and let perpetual light shine upon them.

May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed,

through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Amen.

The Life of Virtue - Honesty

I met an old lady once who had given her life to the 'care of the well body'. This was how she described her subject and as far as I remember she was the first person in the United States to have a teaching position in it. She was not a medical person nor was she simply a beautician. Her task was to encourage people to keep well, and to present themselves well, with proper self-esteem and with the dignity appropriate to a human person. The life of virtue ought to move us towards this, a self-regard that is neither arrogant nor selfish, a humility and graciousness that are neither self-deprecating nor irritating.

Contemporary understandings, particularly in psychology, give a lot of attention to things like shame and self-esteem. Aquinas notices the importance of these in identifying diffidence (or shame) and what he calls 'honesty', honestas, as integral parts of the virtue of temperance. Temperance is about health, the health of the well person we might say, meaning not just good physical health with desires and appetites working properly but moral and spiritual health in those desires and appetites. The temperate person will be chaste, disciplined, humble, and restrained, as Aquinas goes on to explain, but these forms of temperateness, when they are truly the virtues in question, do not produce lean, cold, and anxious people but people who are warm-hearted, physically at ease, and sensitive to beauty in all its forms. We are animals with animal appetites that become gross and ugly when they are vicious (think of gluttonous excess, drunkenness, and sexual licence) but the same appetites are beautiful when they are properly virtuous (think of Babette's Feast for food and drink, The Song of Songs for erotic love).

In his classic work on The Four Cardinal Virtues Josef Pieper says that the gift of beauty is particularly co-ordinated to the virtue of temperance. Temperate people are beautiful, glowing with the truth and goodness that radiates from every ordered state of being (this is their 'honesty'). The temperate person is therefore strong so that temperance becomes the wellspring and premise of fortitude. Pieper writes that the infantile disorder of intemperance not only destroys beauty, it also makes a person cowardly, unable to 'take heart' against the wounding power of evil in the world. Temperance or intemperance, he concludes, loudly proclaim themselves in everything that manifests a personality: in the order or disorder of the features, in the attitude, the laugh, the handwriting. Temperance is the inner order of the human being but it cannot remain purely interior but must show itself in gracious and attractive physical presence and action.

Psalm 29:2 says we are to worship the Lord 'in the beauty of holiness'. Diffidence and honesty, fear of depravity and esteem for our own well-being, keep us on the road towards that goal.

The Life of Virtue - Comments & Questions I

Thank you all you who have been following our series on The Life of Virtue. Many interesting comments have come in as well as many questions. Here we respond to the questions that have not received any response so far.

Under JUSTICE there was a question about what happens when restorative justice is impossible. One of the points of punishment is to oblige an offender to restore an order of justice that has been disturbed. If you steal £1000 from me I will not be completely happy if you are obliged to pay back just £500. In fact you should really pay back more than you stole to compensate for the distress, inconvenience and infringement of my rights. Clearly, if somebody has been killed or abused there is nothing that can be done that will make the situation as good as if what had happened had never happened after all : things can never be restored to where they were before. The law of 'eye for eye and tooth for tooth' is one way of articulating the need for restorative justice. It has a primitive truth about it but a moment's reflection will lead us to see that justice needs to be a bit more sophisticated than that. To apply that principle alone would make justice a matter of vengeance simply and a society would tend to become as cruel as its worst elements. Where justice cannot be restored in a literal, commutative sense then a society has to decide what form punishment ought to take so that at least symbolically 'justice will be done'. The fact that some injustices can never be set right in this world is one reason why believers look to a final judgement on the part of God that will definitively vindicate the rights of all who have suffered injustice.

Under JUDGEMENT there was a question about positive law and natural justice. Our post was not intending to imply that all positive laws are just simply because they have been enacted by legitimate human authorities: it is clear from history that not all positive laws have been just. Laws that persecute the Church, for example, or that promote discrimination against some citizens for the sake of others: these cannot be regarded as just laws. The natural law tradition would say that they are not laws at all to the extent that they fall short of natural justice. Catholics and other Christians have often been obliged to disobey laws that are unjust in these ways. See what is written under EPIEIKEIA, the virtue that enables us to know when a lesser law is over-ruled by the requirements of a higher law. Aquinas argues that it will sometimes be necessary to tolerate some evils for the sake of preserving a common good. Many of the martyrs are people who have decided that that point has been passed and something is being asked of them that is not compatible with the faith. St Thomas More, patron saint of lawyers, is a classic example of this.

A further comment under JUDGEMENT wondered whether the term will always be paradoxical for Christians, referring presumably to the fact that Jesus says 'do not judge' but in fact judgement is necessary about many things. Another way of thinking about such uses of concepts and language is in terms of analogy, not so much conflicting meanings giving rise to paradox or dialectic as complementary meanings that can be tracked across different levels of reality, different situations and relationships, different contexts of meaning. One can say that the Christian use of 'judgement' is paradoxical but it is perhaps better to say that such use is analogical, leading us into shades and degrees of meaning in our various uses of the same term.

The Life of Virtue - Diffidence

Shamefacedness, the state of being ashamed, is not a virtue according to St. Thomas but neither is it a vice, it is only related to vice. Diffidence cannot be a virtue because, under a strict definition of virtue, only those things which belong to perfection can be described as virtues. Furthermore, diffidence cannot be said to belong to perfection because the state of being ashamed belongs to fear; those who are ashamed fear the consequences of the action that they have performed, or potential damage of some kind that may occur to them because of the situation in which they find themselves. For example, if a man steals a watch from a shop and is later confronted by somebody who saw him perform that action, the shame that he experiences cannot be virtuous because he is simply afraid of what might happen if the witness reports him to the police. This is to be afraid is a consequence of sin. We can see this in scripture: right from the beginning of the human race, Adam and Eve have nothing to be afraid of in the state of paradise in which they lived before the fall. It is only after sin enters the world and corrupts every relation between every creature that our first parents have something to be afraid and ashamed of, their nakedness and their guilt. As scripture says, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love" (1 John 4:18).

Also, for something to be a virtue it must be something that is done out of habit, an action that is performed because one wishes to do what is good, that is the way in which the virtuous person approaches life. However, the state of being ashamed is not a habitual action, or even an action at all, for it is a passion, an emotional state. St. Thomas says that the person who is perfected in virtue does not feel ashamed and does not fear the consequences of sin, since his mind is not set on things that are evil, they do not trouble him. Let us pray that we may all know, in this life, that blessed state, in which are minds, hearts and bodies, our whole being, is continually turned towards the Lord in one great act of praise, thanksgiving and adoration until we attain that perfect loves that knows no fear.

fr Columba Ryan's funeral

To view a slideshow of photos from fr Columba Ryan's funeral, which took place in St Dominic's Priory church in London on 18 August 2009, please click here. For Godzdogz's notice of his death see here. There is also an obituary in the London Times.

The Life of Virtue - Temperance

Temperance is one of the four cardinal (or, as we might say nowadays, 'key') virtues, along with prudence, justice and fortitude, which form the basis of the virtuous life, and from which the other moral virtues are in some way derived. With the other three, it's fairly clear how they function as general principles structuring the virtuous life, but what about temperance, the virtue of moderating our physical desires? Why is that a general principle of the virtuous life?

In order to understand this, we must first think about what moral virtue is. In the Aristotelian tradition followed and developed by St Thomas Aquinas, moral virtue is a habit of acting in accordance with right reason: this is because moral virtue is what determines whether we are good or bad (rather than other virtues, such as intellectual virtues, which make us good at something), and for human beings, it is our reason which allows us to identify what is good for us, and so how we should act.

With that in mind, it is clear that, in order to live the life of virtue fully, we must be free to act in accordance with our reason, and not be dominated by desires for food, drink, physical intimacy or anything else arising from the senses, with all of which the virtue of temperance is concerned. Furthermore, since virtue is an acquired habit of acting well (and not acting well on each occasion after some kind of struggle), it seems to follow that the virtue concerned with these desires will not just involve fighting desires and winning each time, but moderating the desires themselves: after all, in a reasonable measure, food and drink are necessary for the good of each individual, and procreation for the good of the human race, but in an unreasonable measure, each of these can distract a person very powerfully from the pursuit of other goods.

Thus, temperance is one of the cardinal virtues because it is necessary for a human to live well as a bodily being, giving due attention to the needs of our body, but also assigning the satisfaction of them its proper place among the many things we do.

The Life of Virtue - Perseverance

When a chick pecks its way out of an egg, it is performing an action that is much more than a break for freedom. The process of pecking at the shell begins weeks before and will have much bearing on the chick’s life outside its ovoid prison. Over the weeks that it pecks away; the chicken grows and gets stronger. When and if, it is strong enough to survive in the outside world, it will break through. If however the egg is cracked by an outside agent, such as a hen or a farmer, the chick will be too weak to survive in the outside world and will die.

Like a chick we too are trapped in a prison, a prison of sin and suffering. The Christian life allows us to break out and to know and love God. Like the chick, perseverance is essential to this breakout. Every day we meet difficulties, obstacles and hindrances to our Christian journey. These barriers are both internal and external. Perseverance allows us to stay focused on the good during difficult times. It allows us to continue in the virtuous life when times are tough. When we persevere we are strengthened by God’s gifts of habitual grace. The example of the chick is only helpful to a point. The chick can achieve liberty by his own action. For a Christian the perfect act of perseverance is persevering in Faith, Hope and Charity until death. The act of persevering is accomplished at death; but we need more than habitual grace in this instance because it is not in the power of our freewill to abide in goodness unchangeably. St. Thomas points out that final perseverance requires the “gratuitous help of God sustaining the human being in the good until the end of life”. Humans, on their own, can only fall into sin. The death and resurrection of Christ repairs the rift between God and humanity. By the grace of Christ we are lifted and raised up: we are set free! As St. Augustine says we "receive not only the possibility of persevering, but perseverance itself".

The Life of Virtue - Patience

‘Wait your turn – patience is a virtue you know!’ How many times have we all heard patience being referred to in those rebuking tones? Of all the virtues patience is perhaps one of the most widely referred to in everyday life but it is often done so glibly and with little real thought. However, the virtue of patience is of great importance in our everyday lives because no day passes without some measure of suffering, however small. Patience or patientia in the Latin is formed from the same root as pati which means ‘to suffer’. For Aquinas, suffering or grief formed the matter of patience and true patience can help us both to withstand and to overcome those evils which cause us to suffer. “It is necessary for a virtue to safeguard the good of reason against sorrow, lest reason give way to sorrow: and this patience does” ( IIa IIae, q.136 art 1). These sufferings can be great or small and our lives are full of trial, for instance we may be confronted with disagreeable tasks at home or at work or indeed disagreeable people! We may have to bear the burdens of ill health or find that the close friendships we have forged seem to be breaking down because the more we give of ourselves, the more we expose our shortcomings, the more likely we are to cause irritation!

If we are to endure and ultimately overcome these sufferings we need to practice the virtue of patience and the only way to become a patient person is to make acts of patience. In prayerfully disposing ourselves to humbly accept the trials we face and the burdens we must bear, we can cultivate this very Christian virtue. Difficult though it is, we must see these hardships as God-given opportunities for us to acquire patience. If we shy away from every difficult or disagreeable situation, if we fail to accept the cross in our lives, then we not only deprive ourselves of the opportunity to practice patience and thus grow in holiness but leave ourselves open to greater evils and the sufferings they bring. We must trust in God and face our trials. As St Paul reminds us “everything written before our time was written for our instruction that we might derive hope from the lessons of patience and the words of encouragement in the Scriptures” (Rom 15:4).

It is certain that this is no easy virtue to cultivate. Sometimes we will fail but we must persevere and we must remember that we do not do so alone. God’s love for us is beyond our understanding and we must turn toward Him in love and humbly ask Him for the grace we so deeply need. As Aquinas states, “Patience, insofar as it is a virtue is caused by charity…from which it is clear that patience cannot be obtained without the help of grace” ( IIa IIae, q.136 art 3). St Paul also insists that “charity is patient” (1 Cor 13:4.) and so we must recognise our acts of patience as being rooted in love and learn to humbly trust God to give us the grace we need to suffer for love of Him.

The Life of Virtue - Magnificence

Magnificence is a virtue that expresses courage in situations where big projects require substantial expenditures. A glimpse at pettiness, the vice most directly opposed to it, helps to show what magnificence is about. The petty person is concerned to keep expenditure down - not a bad thing in itself - but allows that concern to unsettle the balance there ought to be between the cost of something and the value of doing it. The magnificent person, on the other hand, looks to the greatness of the work being undertaken, its value, and not simply to the cost. Of course he or she is not indifferent to the cost but the magnificent person does not allow fear of the cost to prevent wonderful works being done.

Tom Hamrogue, a very fine group psychoanalyst who died prematurely some weeks ago (may he rest in peace), once commented that money is the easiest way to pay for something. There are other costs involved in great projects and schemes, sometimes great personal costs in terms of anxiety, management, and, as likely as not, perseverance in the face of opposition. The person with the virtue of magnificence will not be daunted by these costs either.

Pettiness might look like miserliness but they are not exactly the same. Pettiness is concerned with large expenses, miserliness with ordinary expenses (and so miserliness is a worse vice).

There is another vice opposed to magnificence, the vice of waste, where the balance between the value of something and its cost is tipped in the other direction: we don't pay sufficient attention to the cost of something in relation to its value. In Latin this vice is called consumptio, consumption, in Greek banausia or apyrocalia (good names for a pair of kittens!). Aquinas notices that these terms have a connection with fire and this illustrates well, he says, what is involved in the vice of waste.

This opens the door to what would be an interesting reflection about the consumerism that is a key element in the market economy, where advertisers and others play games with our appreciation of what is really valuable and necessary, where obsolescence is built in to so many things, and where there is so much waste. It is interesting that the virtues we need to stand up to this are not just virtues allied with justice and temperance but also virtues allied with courage.

Writing about the deadly sin of gluttony (also linked with consumerism) Dorothy Sayers commented that 'the great curse of gluttony is that it ends by destroying all sense of the precious, the unique, the irreplaceable'. The virtue of magnificence gives us the courage to stand up for the precious, the unique and the irreplaceable, and to sponsor works of great value particularly in education, in the arts and crafts, in strengthening the life of communities, and in making more beautiful our worship of God.

In the News ...

Until the 12th of September, Sir John Soane's Museum in London will be hosting an exhibition entitled: Images from the Past: Rome in the Photography of Peter Paul Mackey, 1890-1901. Fr.Peter Paul Mackey O.P. , a son of the Province of England, who was sent to Rome in 1881 to work on the Leonine edition of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas. He stayed in Rome until his death in 1935. During his time in Rome he took many fine photographs which he donated to the British School in Rome. The collection provides an intriguing and fascinating glimpse of the Eternal city during this period.

On the subject of camera-loving friars, it seems that our very own fr. Lawrence has been caught by the paparazzi....

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Readings: Revelation 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab; 1 Corinthians 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56

In the summer of 1270 our brother Thomas Aquinas took advantage of the long vacation to attend to a few jobs that had come in during the academic year. One was a request from a friend of his, James of Tonengo, a canon at the cathedral of Vercelli. James’s problem was that the canons of the cathedral could not agree about who the next bishop should be. They were deadlocked. Not only that, they could not appeal to the Pope because there was no Pope! Clement IV died in November 1268 and his successor, Gregory X, was not elected until September 1271, an inter-regnum of almost three years, the longest in the history of the papacy. The cardinals, meeting at Viterbo, were also deadlocked. This was so unsettling for everybody that the civil authorities eventually locked them in, took the roof off the place in which they were meeting (to expose them to the sun and the rain), and finally starved them until they came to a decision. (It was in fact Gregory X who established the conclave more or less as we know it in order to prevent such a thing happening again.)

James’s question to Thomas was this: given the circumstances, would it be acceptable for the canons of Vercelli to choose a new bishop by casting lots, i.e. by tossing a coin, using cards, or in some other way. They could not agree and there was no Pope to whom they could appeal. Would it not in fact leave more room for the Holy Spirit to show his hand if they were to cast lots? Thomas wrote a short work in reply, called De sortibus (‘On casting lots’), in which he says that it would not only be unacceptable to choose spiritual leaders in this way, it would be an insult to the Holy Spirit. Why an insult to the Holy Spirit? Because, Thomas says, the Spirit has been poured into the Church and if something is to happen now by divine inspiration it must happen through human thinking and decision-making. Thomas notes that Matthias was chosen to replace Judas by casting lots but this was before the day of Pentecost when the Spirit was given to the Church. Now – it bears repeating – if something is to happen among us by divine inspiration it must happen through what Thomas calls concordia, the consensus reached through human beings talking, thinking and voting.

Why talk about such a thing on the feast of the Assumption of Mary? It is because Mary teaches us so much about grace and the way it works in the human being. The Spirit is given to us and the gift of grace is established within us not in order to replace human conversation and thinking and decision-making but in order to enable them to happen and to happen better. The first creation requires only God’s word – ‘let there be light’, and so it was. The new creation requires also the word of the human creature – ‘let what you have said be done to me’. Mary’s fiat is her vote, her voice sounding. Creation waits expectantly for her response to the proposal put to her by Gabriel. The gift of the Spirit does not replace our humanity but enables it, heals it and strengthens it, allowing our thinking and our speaking and our action to reach beyond what would be possible for them without God’s grace. God’s will works in and through Mary’s will just as, and even more so, it works in and through the human will of Jesus. ‘Father, let this cup pass me by’, he prays in Gethsemane, ‘yet not what I will but what you will’ (Mark 14:36).

Paul speaks thus in the second reading: ‘the resurrection of the dead has come through a human being’. Later in the same chapter he writes ‘thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor 15:57). It is God’s victory, given to us. It is the work of God because it is a new creation, but God does not work it without us. Elsewhere Paul speaks of the ‘Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God’ (Rom 8: 16) – the divine Spirit and the created spirit collaborate, work together, in this new life, the life of the new creation. It is not that the Holy Spirit says to us ‘push over and let me do it’ but that the Spirit says ‘let me enable you to do it, let me establish and strengthen in you the gifts of wisdom, courage and love that will make it possible for you to do it’.

Mary’s immediate instinct on the departure of the angel is to go and visit Elisabeth. Immediately she sets out. This teaches us something further about grace, that it always carries with it a call and a mission. To receive a gift from God does not mean simply to be loved but to become a lover. Thomas Aquinas speaks beautifully about this elsewhere in his writings. The only thing God can give is God and God is love. So the gift of God is always the gift of love. But truly to receive it means not just that I am loved but that I am made to be a lover. So Mary, conceiving the Word, immediately sets out to the one who is in need, and carries the Word to her.

Mary and Elisabeth are then preachers of the gospel to each other. It is striking that the language Luke uses in his account of the visitation anticipates the language he will use in the Acts of the Apostles to speak about the preaching of the gospel: there are words spoken and heard (‘Elisabeth shouted with a great shout’, ‘when the sound of your greeting reached my ear’), there is the response within when the news of the Word is received (‘the babe leaped in her womb’), there is the Spirit enabling the reception of the Word (‘Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit’), there is faith (‘blessed is she who believed’) and joy (‘the babe leaped with joy’). This is how it is when the gospel is preached and heard.

I remember well a comment of Albert Nolan’s when he spoke in Dublin many years ago. The Cabra sisters invited him, as I remember, and the friars were invited to attend also. He spoke of the heart, lips and hands, saying that Christian compassion must reach from the heart to the lips and on to action. It is not enough just to feel for others who suffer but to speak up for them and to do something about their situation. It is not enough just to do something but that action be supported by truthful speaking and loving compassion. So with Mary, she is disposed in her heart to receive the word of the angel and so conceives the Word Incarnate. She is enabled by the Spirit to speak what has happened (‘my soul magnifies the Lord’). And she takes action, going immediately to help the one who is in need and to bring the message of the gospel to her.

As we celebrate this great feast of Mary’s participation in the new creation won by her Son, and as we recall the wisdom of our brother Thomas Aquinas, we pray that we will come to understand better the gifts we have received, to be gracious and compassionate companions, speaking what is true and doing what is good.

For another homily for the Feast of the Assumption, by fr Thomas Skeats, a Godzdogz contributor, see here.

The Life of Virtue - Magnanimity

In order to be virtuous, it is necessary to have emotional responses that are appropriate for the situations in which we find ourselves. Because certain types of situation occur more frequently than others, certain virtues may more readily be displayed than others. Perhaps one of the less frequently observed virtues is magnanimity, the virtue pertaining to great honour. Whilst most of us are capable of deeds worthy of some level of praise, few of us manage to accomplish truly great deeds, the sorts of achievements that are remembered for generations to come.

There is a virtue associated with small honours – it would be wrong to despise honour and it would be wrong to love honour too much – but Aquinas is very clear that the virtue of magnanimity is not to do with small honours, but only with great honours. The magnanimous person sets their mind on achieving great things. When faced with the prospect of attaining a difficult good, they possess a certain resolve and hope which means they are not afraid of success, of being brilliant, and they undertake their great deeds with a noble dignity. They know they are worthy of great honour, but they don't feel the need to remind others of this fact.

This doesn't mean that the magnanimous person lacks the virtue of humility. Magnanimity makes a person deem his or herself worthy of great honour only in consideration of the gifts received from God. Humility on the other hand, is revealed in a different sort of situation, the kind in which a person's weaknesses are exposed. So the person who acts magnanimously in a situation in which they excel, may also act with humility in another situation if that is appropriate.

Aquinas says that all the moral virtues are connected and if someone possesses one, they possess them all. However this has to be qualified, by adding that the moral virtues are connected only as regards their principle of origin rather than the act of virtue itself. Thus, all virtues are connected because they stem from prudence and grace - if we have these, then whatever task we undertake, whether great or small, we will have the disposition to exercise the appropriate virtue.

The Life of Virtue - Martyrdom

We recently celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration (6 August), and in the Preface for that feast, the Church recalls that Christ "revealed His glory to the disciples to strengthen them for the scandal of the cross". What we see on the occasion of the Transfiguration (see Mark 9:2-10) is a huddle of terrified disciples, not knowing how to react when they see the transfigured Jesus. But something calms them, and strengthens them. It is the admonition to listen to the voice of Jesus, who is the Father's eternal Word. So, earlier on in the Gospel, when the Lord comes to them across the stormy waters, the disciples huddle together in fear. But the command of Jesus calms them, and stills the storm. He says: "Take heart, it is I; have no fear" (Mark 6:50).

In the same way, those disciples of Jesus who look to Jesus, and who listen to his voice, are also given the courage, or fortitude, to endure all things, even death and the scandal of the Cross. Thus, the Acts of the Apostles recounts the death of the Church's first martyr in this way: "Full of the Holy Spirit, [Stephen] gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God", and so he endured being stoned to death. It was the Spirit who enabled St Stephen to see Christ, and it was by fixing his gaze on the Lord (an act of faith and love), that St Stephen had the fortitude to endure martyrdom for Christ's sake.

Why does this gazing on the Lord cause one to endure martyrdom? St Thomas Aquinas explains that "charity inclines one to the act of martyrdom, as its first and chief motive cause, being the virtue commanding it". This means that the martyr is able to endure pains and torments because he or she loves Jesus Christ above all other good things, even his or her own life. However, one might love Christ immensely, and desire to die for him (as St Peter said he would), and yet in the moment of peril, one might flee because of fear. Fear, after all, is a good and natural response, but it is an instinctive response. Fear, as St Thomas sees it, is a passion, a feeling that acts upon us. In order to counteract this instinct and to act according to what we know by the light of faith and reason to be truly good and right, we need more than just the commanding virtue of charity. We also need the virtue of fortitude which helps us to act courageously in the face of suffering and death. This virtue "regards the preparation of the mind, so that in such and such a case a person should act according to reason. And this observation would seem very much to the point in the case of martyrdom, which consists in the right endurance of sufferings unjustly inflicted".

How do we acquire the virtue of fortitude? Through those practices and daily penances that are acts of endurance, patience, perseverance, and so on, but always with the right objective in sight, which is for the love of God and the good of our neighbour. The death endured by the martyr is thus the most perfect of heroic acts, for it is motivated by great faith and perfect charity. As St Thomas says, "endurance of death is not praiseworthy in itself, but only in so far as it is directed to some good consisting in an act of virtue, such as faith or the love of God". Therefore, St John says: "greater love has no man than this: that he should die for his friends" (John 15:13). So, it is with one's eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, the king of martyrs, and by listening to his voice, that one is able to bravely suffer martyrdom for his sake, and so win the crown of unending glory.

The Life of Virtue - Fortitude

In normal, everyday situations, the process of deciding how to act involves our emotions, the use of reason and the will. Making good decisions means making sure that our emotions do not run away with us. This means that we need to make sure that they are tempered by the will and reason, so that decisions are made in a balanced and sound way. This can be hard enough at the best of times, but what about extraordinary situations, extreme situations, where the emotions are likely to be very strong, say in the face of extreme danger or death? The virtue of fortitude is one which we require in such situations. In most situations where we face possible death, we obey our emotions and take flight. If we are in the middle of a road, and a large lorry comes around the corner at speed, we are clear as to what we should do. But what if there was a small child standing in the middle of the road a few meters away? Clearly, leaving her to be run over by the lorry would not be in accord with the good; it would not be in accord with preserving life. Running towards the danger momentarily to save her is then making a decision to act in accordance with the good, even though it involves an increased risk of death for us.

This is an example of fortitude, and St. Thomas Aquinas explains what is happening in this situation as follows: 'fortitude of soul... binds the will firmly to the good of reason in face of the greatest evils' - i.e. fortitude is the virtue that allows me to act to save the girl, which is what my thinking tells me I must do, despite the fact that I may die myself. St. Thomas counts fortitude amongst the cardinal virtues, placing it third of the four in terms of rank. It belongs to the cardinal virtues because it is a virtue concerned with steadfastness of reason in the most extreme of situations, making it important in safeguarding the good

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The Life of Virtue - A Look Back at Justice

We are half-way through our series on the life of virtue and so far we have had one post on prudence and nineteen on justice and its allied virtues. The plan is to have twenty-one further posts, on the virtues of fortitude and temperance and their allies. Clearly justice receives significant attention in Aquinas's consideration of the moral life and this guides our presentation also: just under half of our series is devoted to justice as just under half of his treatment of the moral virtues is devoted to justice.

This is how it ought to be. At the heart of the Biblical revelation is the righteousness of God, God's justice, integrity, holiness, reliability, and judgement. His people are to be holy as God is holy and this means becoming just as God is just. For the Bible, justice is virtue, righteousness is morality. The Messiah comes bringing that justice which is a light to the peoples (Isaiah 51:4). The ten commandments are ten ways of doing justice. One cannot claim to know God while acting unjustly. 'Is not this to know me, to judge the cause of the poor and needy' (Jeremiah 22:16). One cannot claim to worship God while acting unjustly and to try to do so makes such worship abominable (Isaiah 1:11-17) - first 'seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow'. One cannot claim to serve God while acting unjustly. 'Is this not the fast I want, to loose the bonds of injustice' (Isaiah 58:6).

Jesus comes to enact these prophecies, establishing in his own body the kingdom of justice and peace. 'We know that God is righteous and that everyone who does right is born of God' (1 John 2:29). Jesus more than anybody else lived according to the rule of the prophet Micah: 'what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God' (Micah 6:8).

Aquinas develops principles and values about justice already acknowledged in Greek philosophy and in Roman law, but the inspiration for what he writes is the Bible and the paradigm of justice is Jesus, 'the righteous judge', for whose appearing we long (2 Timothy 4:8). In this he follows the approach of St Paul, appealing to what human culture and civilization have to say about truth, goodness and justice, but seeing it all in relation to Jesus. God 'has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead' (Acts 17:31).

The Life of Virtue - Epieikeia

Aristotle alerts us to this difficulty about knowledge, that there is nothing apart from individual things and yet knowledge is universal, drawing things into unity and identity. How there can be universal knowledge of particular things is the hardest difficulty of all, he says (Metaphysics III.4) .

The place where we see this difficulty most readily is in regard to moral action. St Thomas says that human acts are always singular and contingent, infinite in their possibilities. It is therefore impossible to frame a law which will cover all cases: 'it is impossible to institute a legal rule that will not be inadequate in some situation' (Summa theologiae II.II 120, 1). Legislators work with what generally happens but there will be cases where observing the law would be 'against the equality of justice and the common good', precisely the things laws are meant to establish and protect. Aquinas gives a couple of examples of situations where observing what the law requires would be bad: returning his sword to a lunatic, or his assets to an enemy. These are cases where following the law as it is given would be evil. The good, in such circumstances, is established and protected by ignoring the letter of the law (praetermissis verbis legis) in order to be faithful to 'the meaning of justice and to common utility'.

The virtue that enables us to make such decisions well is, in Greek, epieikeia, in Latin aequitas, in English equity. This virtue teaches us when it would be vicious to follow the letter of the law (art.cit., ad 1). It does not mean that we have become judges over the law but we are obliged to make a judgement in the particular situation in which we find ourselves (art.cit., ad 2). This virtue is needed therefore for situations of doubt, exceptional situations (art.cit., ad 3). Aristotle says that equity is a part of justice taken as a general virtue and so is higher than legal justice (Nicomachean Ethics V.10). St Thomas says that equity is thus a higher rule of human acts (superior regula humanorum actuum) than are the positive laws enacted by parliaments and monarchs (Summa theologiae II.II 120, 2). Equity is needed to moderate law which becomes cruel if it is not somehow moderated. (It is a crucial point: elsewhere St Thomas says that justice alone is cruel and must always be tempered by mercy.)

The great virtue of prudence is entirely concerned with the application of universal principles to particular situations and circumstances. It has an ancillary virtue called gnome which seems to be the basis for equity: gnome brings a perspicacity of judgement across the whole of the moral life, enabling a person to know when a higher principle takes precedence over a lower one (Summa theologiae II.II 51,4). Some of this is common sense. In England one drives on the left hand side of the road but if there is a person lying there one does not continue to drive on that side (as the law requires) and may even decide in the circumstances to drive on the right hand side: it is the reasonable thing to do thus serving the spirit of the law while ignoring its letter. Some situations will, however, be much more complex.

Does what Aristotle and Aquinas say about equity, prudence, and gnome, mean that there are no exceptionless norms governing human action? Some moral philosophers and theologians think it does, that one cannot say murder, adultery, rape and cruelty are always evil since circumstances might arise where one of these would be the right course of action. But such a view is only possible where moral norms are understood as purely legal norms, where natural law for example is understood as if it were exactly the same as positive law. There are things that the virtuous person will never do and if such a thing appears as a possible course of action he or she will immediately reject it. This is because moral norms are about more than social good or utility, they are about the values and goods without which human beings cannot begin to flourish and against which one ought never to act no matter what the circumstances.

At the same time what Aristotle and Aquinas say about equity teaches us something very important about the limits of legislation.