How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Defend the Church

Long ago, in a band room far, far away ...

We were living in Astoria, Oregon, at the time. Dad was stationed out there at the Coast Guard Air Station, and my sister and I were in the local public schools.

Now, Oregon is a funny place. People there tend to be absolutely liberal or absolutely conservative. It felt as though there really was no moderate middle, only the indifferent. The perfect illustration of this came in the run up to the Iraq war, when protesters took to the streets of Astoria every Friday at 5 p.m. Outside the courthouse, there were the people on the left, protesting against going to war, standing there with their flags and their tie dye and their signs that read "Honk if you support us."

Not four blocks away, on a concrete Island in the middle of the highway, there stood the pro-war protesters, in their plaid, with their flags and their signs that said, "Honk if you support us."

So every Friday at 5, downtown Astoria became bedlam, because everybody was honking and everybody was protesting and nobody was sure who was honking for what side.

This sort of polarization extended to religion, as well. You didn't really have mainline Christians. Everybody was either non-denominational evangelical, or Mormon, or Catholic, or secular liberal, or agnostic, or atheist, or indifferent, or Wiccan, or whatever else was starkly defined in floodlights with vivid colors.

Outstanding among the religious students was one in particular named Art.

He was Protestant, and proud of it; I think he carried his Bible everywhere, and was willing to pull it out at the drop of a hat. I think it was obvious to everyone that Art was going to become a minister someday. He was serious about his religion and serious about his evangelization. He started Bible studies and prayer groups, sang Christian songs at school assemblies with his sister and brought Jason Evert and his then-girlfriend Crystalina (now his wife) to speak at the school on chastity, abstinence, and the importance of waiting till marriage. (It wasn't till years later that I discovered that the Everts were Catholic, graduates from Franciscan University of Steubenville, and great proponents of St. John Paul II's theology of the body.)

Art may well have attracted some amount of ridicule for his witness--it's almost unavoidable these days--but he had one great defense against it all: He really did practice what he preached. I remember him being held in a fairly high regard by the school at large, simply because he was reliably kind, good-natured, hard working, and, while a passionate preacher, was also good to people.

Art played trombone in pep band; I played trumpet. I don't remember how the conversation started one morning in the bandroom before school, but Art and I got to talking about religion. He knew I was Catholic somehow--it was a small town, and people tended to know each other's business, but he may also have simply asked me. I don't remember. He started saying something about how unbiblical Catholic teaching and practices were; I retorted that they were plenty biblical, and that certainly there was Scripture to back them up.

He said, "Oh, really? Show me! Where's Confession in the Bible?"

Now, I had no idea at the time. I'd read children's Bibles growing up, and spent some time trying to plow straight through a King James Version given me by someone on my dad's side of the family for First Communion or something like that, but I'd never really gone in depth into the New Testament. I didn't know what I was talking about ... except that I knew that the Church had a greater legacy of saints and scholarship than most people knew, and I knew that if some of the common Protestant challenges were really as devastating as most Protestants seemed to think, there wouldn't be a Catholic Church left at all, anymore. Further, the Catholic Church I'd grown up in didn't match most people's mutterings and fears.

So I said, "I know it's in there! I don't know where, but let me look it up at home tonight and I'll show you tomorrow!"

Art agreed. So that night, I pulled out the teen study Bible that I'd been given at some point and started flipping around, hoping for something to make this easy, so that I would be right. Thankfully, they had an index. Thankfully, it made it easy.

The next day, I went to talk to Art at band. He saw me coming, pulled out his Bible, and looked at me expectantly. I paused. I'd forgotten quite which way around the citation was.

The first set of numbers led nowhere, some totally irrelevant Scripture. I said, "Try them the other way around!" And we found it:

[Jesus] said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” (Jn 20:21-23)

Art knelt staring at his Bible for a moment. A mutual friend who'd been standing by started saying, "Well, that doesn't prove anything! That doesn't demonstrate any support for Confession!" And Art looked up and said a little sharply, "No, it does. He's right--it's there." And then he looked at me and said, "You're the first Catholic I've met who's ever bothered to defend their faith to me."

And I was left reeling.

"Bothered"? I was the first Catholic who'd ever "bothered" to defend their faith to him?

I was proud, of course, but also a little stunned. Art had been out to make a convert out of me, and I was sure he'd set out to save many Catholic souls from the clutches of Rome before. And I was the first one to ever defend the faith to him? Ever?

That stuck with me. That led me to begin to read, to seek out answers to the questions that the culture and other Christians had for us. Art introduced me to C.S. Lewis' nonfiction writings, thus putting me even further into his debt. I discovered internet apologetics a little bit later and decided to put the faith to the test. What were the best objections people had, and what were the answers?

All of this has culminated, in a certain sense, with my first book, How Can You Still Be Catholic? 50 Answers to a Good Question, to be released by Marian Press on July 21, 2017. In a certain sense, I owe it all to Art. He set me on the path to find answers, and also inadvertently helped me discover that there are answers available to be found. The Catholic Church has immense resources of scholarship and sanctity, of historical truth and fantastic works of fiction, all in the service of Christ, all in some way inspired by the Spirit of Jesus. And much of what I've learned, I've aimed to share in this book.

So there it is: my origin story as a Catholic apologist. Time will tell if I'm any good at it. Heaven knows the faith is better than I am!

#howcanyoustillbecatholic #hcysbc

Being Catholic in an Anti-Catholic Milieu

Excellent advice for the coming years.

Pope Francis, Proselytization, and Good and Evil

The new interview.

I think the good/evil thing was basically another (apparently ill-translated) way of saying you can't ask of someone what they haven't got. You cannot expect an infant to have the knowledge and experience of an adult. You cannot give meat before milk. People must follow the good insofar as they are aware of it, insofar as they can find it, even if their consciences are not well formed or misdirected. It's the antidote to the great Catholic error of the past, namely, coercing others to give lip-service to the faith (see: Inquisition, Heretics, etc.) even though they don't get it, don't agree with it, and see no reason to accept it as true. We can expel people from the Church, and we can admit them, but it's not right to put a sword to their throat or a gun to their head and demand of them a knowledge and acceptance of the good and the true which they're not in a place to honestly give.

Father Z. is doing some good work in translating Francis for people these days. Remember that Pope Francis is the same man who, before the election, was calling on the cardinals to elect someone who will help the Church to the sweet joy of evangelizing. Here's Jimmy Akin explicating the proselytization thing.

Deacon Greg quotes popes past on proselytization to good effect.

“The Church respects the freedom of individuals to seek the truth and to embrace it according to the dictates of conscience, and in this light she firmly rejects proselytism and the use of unethical means to gain conversions.” – Blessed John Paul II, in Sri Lanka, 1995

“ The word ‘proselytism’ has a negative meaning when it indicates a way of winning followers which does not respect the freedom of those to whom a specific kind of religious propaganda is directed. The Catholic Church in America is critical of proselytism by the sects and, for this reason, rejects methods of this kind in her own evangelizing work. Presenting the Gospel of Christ in its entirety, the work of evangelization must respect the inner sanctuary of every individual’s conscience, where the decisive and absolutely personal dialogue between grace and human freedom unfolds.” — Blessed John Paul, Ecclesia in America, 1999.

“We impose our faith on no one. Such proselytism is contrary to Christianity. Faith can develop only in freedom. But we do appeal to the freedom of men and women to open their hearts to God, to seek him, to hear his voice. ” — Pope Benedict, Munich, 2006.

You want to know what this pope is about? Read what he's said, not what he's reported to have said. For more, see:

• Pope Francis Said What?
• The Aparecida Document (of which then-Cardinal Bergoglio was the main drafter)
• An Anchoress Roundup of commentary and reaction
  

Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity--Extremist Religious Groups?

Well, that's staggering. Excerpts:

...The Archdiocese for the Military Services and Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty recently became aware of a U.S. Army Reserve Equal Opportunity training brief that expressly listed “Catholicism,” “Evangelical Christianity” and other religious groups as examples of “religious extremism” alongside groups such as “Al Qaeda”, “Hamas” and the “KKK.”

The Archdiocese is astounded that Catholics were listed alongside groups that are, by their very mission and nature, violent and extremist.

According to an investigation and reply from the Army Chief of Chaplains office, the training in question appears to have been an isolated incident not condoned by the Department of the Army. The Archdiocese and the Chaplain Alliance explained that the Army can and should take steps to prevent such incidents in the future...

From the presentation itself:

Supremacist: Any person(s) maintaining the ideology, quality, state of being, or position of being superior to all others in something. (pg. 7)

A definition so broad as to appear to include the US military, Olympic medalists, and the Gonzaga Bulldogs in the WCC.

Ideologies justify, legitimize and rationalize one particular version of reality despite other explanations and ideas. (pg. 8)

Like a physics textbook, or this presentation?

Religious Extremism:...Evangelical Christianity (U.S./Christian)...Catholicism (U.S./Christian)...

Extremism is a complex phenomenon; it is defined as beliefs, attitudes, feelings, actions, or strategies of a character far removed from the “ordinary.” Because ordinary” is subjective, no religious group would label itself extreme or its doctrine extremism.” However, religious extremism is not limited to any single religion, ethnic group, or region of the world; every religion has some followers that believe that their beliefs, customs and traditions are the only “right way” and that all others are practicing their faith the “wrong way,” seeing and believing that their faith/religion siperior to all others. (pg. 24)

And we're on a list with the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, Hamas, the KKK, Sunni Muslims (Iraq/Islam), the Nation of Islam, Fundamentalist Mormons, and Islamophobia. Oh, ye scholars of religion and religious folk, to me! Is this a slightly incoherent, incredibly broad list, or what? Behold, the dictatorship of relativism in full bloom!

Pope Francis: A Round-Up of Reactions

Man, Hugh Hewitt gets some good guests!

Father Robert Spitzer, SJ, author, former president of Gonzaga University, and founder of the Magis Institute (among a whole ton of others), reacts here.

Father Robert Barron, author, rector of Mundelein Seminary, and founder of the Word on Fire ministry, reacts here, including some interesting predictions on who will be replaced within the Vatican itself.

Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, founder of Ignatius Press, reacts here.

Rocco Palmo, blogger at Whispers in the Loggia, reacts here

Mark Steyn, author, columnist, and all-around rabble-rouser reacts here.  (Very interesting commentary on the western reaction to Blessed Pope John Paul II's death here.)

Dr. Albert Mohler, author, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and one of the country's leading Protestant theologians, reacts here.

Father C.J. McCloskey, author, a research fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C, and a priest of Opus Dei, reacts here.

Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap., author and archbishop of Philadelphia, reacts here and here.

And George Weigel, author, papal biographer, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, talks evangelical Catholicism here.

Penn Jillette, Defender of the Faith

Wow.

An Evangelical Explores Deification

Man, I wish I could comment on these posts or e-mail the author!  Mr. Scott William Bryant of the blog Blood Stained Ink, I hope you see this response (and open your comboxes a little!)

His posts:

• Becoming a “god” … (part 1) 
• Becoming a “god” … Through the Catholic Church?! … (part 2)
• Becoming a “god” … and the Great Bill Murray! … (part 3) 
• Becoming a “god,” Razorback Ridge, and the Things that Tend to Scare Us … (part 4) 
• Becoming a “god” just like Bill Murray. What is it with this guy?! … (part 5) 
• Becoming a “god” … Need a Roadmap? … (part 6) 
• Becoming a “god” … Through Luther, Calvin, Lewis, Wright and Other Protestant Giants?! … (part 7)

I was reading through them, Catholic outsider that I am, jumping up and down inside, thinking, "Yes!  You've begun exploring one of the most important doctrines in Christianity!"  And I marveled at the consonance of some of the issues raised in the comments with a number of the things I've read and explored.

A few commentators wonder if the doctrine has dropped out of Protestant favor because of the Enlightenment or perhaps radical individualism, even though it's a part of the broad Christian tradition.  I'd point to the via moderna and the rise of nominalism hundreds of years before.  The same analysis is presented in Father Louis Bouyer's The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, a fantastic and fascinating book exploring some of the dominant truths at the root of Protestant Christianity which prompt their perennial revivals, and how nominalism/modernism glommed onto Protestantism, serving to eventually drag down Protestantism until a revival hits.  Most of the issue comes from doctrines of grace and nature.

Speaking of which, a few commentators wondered what this meant for the status of our essence in eternal beatitude.  The answer can be found in Daniel Keating's Deification and Grace (an excellent summary of the doctrine of deification in Scripture and tradition), where he cites the ancient formula "Jesus is deified by nature; we are deified by grace."  Also, Catholic and Orthodox understandings of sacramentality can be very helpful in this discussion.

And guess who else has been writing about deification for years?  Pope Benedict XVI!  Check out Dr. Scott Hahn's Covenant and Communion: The Biblical Theology of Pope Benedict XVI--there's tons of good stuff on how Benedict approaches Scripture and where he locates the meaning of life (in deification!).  See, for example:

If, meanwhile, we look at the world in faith, we know that there is another, second breakthrough point within it: the moment at which God became man, the moment at which was achieved, not just the breakthrough from nature to mind, but the breakthrough from Creator to creature. That is the moment when, in one place, the world and God became one. The significance of all the history that followed after can only be that of including the entire world within this union and, on that basis, giving it the fulfilled meaning of being at one with its Creator. "God became man, in order that men might become gods," is what Saint Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, said. We can say, as a matter of fact, that the actual meaning of history is being announced to us here. In the breakthrough from the world to God, everything that went before and everything that followed afterward is given its proper significance as the great movement of the cosmos is drawn into the process of deification, into a return to the state from which it originated.--Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), What It Means to Be a Christian, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), pg. 53

For more on deification, see here.  For a reading list on deification (both what it is and how to cooperate with God's deification of us), see here.

Man, I love seeing people discover this doctrine!

The Pope: Center of Christian Unity

An interesting perspective from a new convert. Excerpts:

...In Lent 2011 I was taking some time to read more about the Catholic faith. My wife had bought this book about Catholic dogma by John Hardon and I was reading through it during Holy Week.

I was particularly struck by a passage in the book that argued for the validity of the papacy by arguing that Christ intended the church to be a Universal reality (p. 217-218). Hardon used Matthew 24:14 as a jumping off point. In the passage Jesus promises that the Gospel will go forth into the world beyond Judea and into the gentile world before the end of the generation. He points out that Jesus' vision was for a truly Catholic Church in union, where all people could find a place, and no group was excluded. The Church is a collection of diverse and particular faith communities that are all in union in one Body.

I loved that vision. One in which every culture could bring their own encounters with God and use them to help the Church see the mystery of the incarnation more clearly. In the protestant world we had been bitterly divided over ever conceivable issue. Diversity caused division. The same seemed to be true in the Orthodox world, where churches were so often divided along ethnic lines, and unity seemed almost impossible. Hardon pointed to the papacy as a center of unity around which diverse groups could truly voice their particularity while still being in union with those who were different them them.

I had never read Matthew 24:14 as a vision for a global, but united church, but I liked it. It was the first time in years I had taken the idea of the Papacy seriously. I resolved to think about it more in the days to come...

Mark Shea on Reading Scripture Literally

He responds to a commenter here with his usual wit, wisdom, and erudition.

Just to add one consideration on the whole Noah's Ark thing:  when it comes to the question of a global flood versus a local flood, I've found that if you put yourself in the mindset of Noah, the story makes a whole lot more sense.  Imagine for a moment you're in that day and age.  You're told by God that there's a flood coming and it will wipe out everybody, so gather all the animals two by two and build an ark.  Noah doesn't know the earth is round.  Nor does he know of every species of animal across the earth.  So he gathers all the animals he knows about.

The flood comes.  It wipes out everybody else, as far as Noah's concerned.  You're bobbing about in an ark.  You look out across the waters and see floods from horizon to horizon.  When you tell the story to your grandkids, what are you going to say?  "The Lord drowned the earth in water.  Water covered the whole world."  What's recorded is what someone would have seen in the ages before the Internet, weather satellites, and Greek scientists discovering the world is round.  It sounds rather like an eyewitness account, even if it's not a scientific account.

Anyway--my two cents on a controversy.

The "Christian Dark Ages"

A notion thoroughly eviscerated by Mike Flynn here, with a recommended reading list given here.  Some choice excerpts:

...It is curious how many fundamentalist tropes show up in atheist writings. In this case, the "Constantine founded Christianity" trope, which was originally proposed by fundamentalists of the "secret church" persuasion. Their animus was directed against the Roman Catholic church, which was terribly unfair to the Eastern Orthodox. At the time of Constantine, there was not yet any distinction.

Faith, Reason, and Believing What the Church Teaches

Emily Stimpson, take it away!  Excerpts:

...“Because the Church says so” is indeed reason enough to believe something when you have thought long and hard about what the Church is, by what authority she teaches, and what duty you owe her.

Since Day One, the Church has professed to being Christ’s Bride, Christ’s Body, and the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. She has likewise professed that she is the guardian of both Sacred Revelation and Sacred Tradition, guided by the Holy Spirit in her interpretation of both and protected by him from teaching error on matters of faith and morals (See: Acts 15 and 1 Clement).

If you believe the Church is all that, if you believe she is what she claims to be, trusting her teachings—even when you struggle with them—is the only sensible response. If you don’t believe the Church is what she claims to be, not trusting her teachings is equally sensible. But calling yourself a Catholic is not.

Dr. Scott Hahn on the Eucharist and Calvary

This is a gem.  Dr. Scott Hahn says:

If the Eucharist that Jesus instituted was just a meal, then Calvary was just a Roman execution. But if Jesus instituted the Eucharist to be the Passover of the New Covenant, then it had to involve both sacrifice and communion, as did the Old Covenant Passover.

The words of institution show that Jesus instituted the Eucharist as the sacrifice of the New Covenant. As such, the Eucharist transformed Calvary from a Roman execution to a holy sacrifice, the consummation of his self offering that was initiated in the Eucharist.

Thus, he didn't lose his life on Good Friday, since he had already given it - in loving sacrifice - on Holy Thursday. Jesus was not the hapless victim of Roman injustice and violence, but rather the willing victim of divine love and mercy.

Mary and the True Glory of God

Thomas Howard explains in Evangelical is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament.  Excerpts:

...There came an end to those gory altars and all that slaughter. But it was not a tissue of elevated thoughts that replaced them. Rather, an angel appeared to a woman and said, “Hail!” What we now had, far from the summons away from the physical realm that high-minded men might have wished, was gynecology, obstetrics, and a birth. Whatever we may imagine about the spiritual rhapsody that might have attended this angelic visitation to the Virgin, the one thing we know to have occurred was a conception. The Virgin’s womb teemed.

It was embarrassing to the religious mind. It proved a scandal. The whole ensuing story bothered and even enraged religious men, and it has continued to do so.

Christians Give Scandal

Every single time we do something like this, we deserve the mockery of the world.  Excerpts:

Police officers in Northern Ireland came under attack during a third consecutive night of disturbances in Belfast, police said late Tuesday.

A crowd of up to 200 people gathered in the pro-British Denmark Street area of the city. Youths, some hooded, pelted officers with fireworks, bricks, bottles and other objects, including golf balls, officials said...

The violence on Tuesday appeared to be less intense than the two previous nights when more than 60 police officers were injured trying to keep the peace during disturbances. Six people were arrested Tuesday and three officers suffered injuries that did not require medical treatment, police said.

Police said the disorder was linked to tensions between Catholics and Protestants over parades in a district near Carlisle Circus...

A Prayer at the Democratic Convention

Well done.  Excerpts:

As a young woman of faith and a leader, I am humbled to follow the First Lady, whom we all admire. So, thank you for inviting me here. As we close this day, let us quiet our hearts in prayer.

God, I stand before You and ask that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing unto You.

I pray for our President, Barack Obama. May he know Your presence, oh God, as he continues to serve as a leader of this nation, as a husband to Michelle, and as father to his daughters. Help him to seek justice, love mercy and walk humbly with you.

I pray as well for Governor Mitt Romney. May he know Your presence, oh God, as he continues to serve as a leader, as a husband to Ann, and as a father to his sons and their families. Help him to seek justice, love mercy and walk humbly with you.

Archbishop Tutu and Gonzaga's Commencement Exercises

The controversy over Archbishop Tutu at Gonzaga has come up several times recently in conversation with friends and family, so I figured I'd post this here.

First off, of course, he's a tremendous figure on the world stage, and I am a relatively innocuous blogger, so there's a certain temerity in commenting in the first place.  But I think there's a reason for this controversy.

John Paul II and the Word Which Transforms Culture

A fantastically good paper on John Paul II and the transformative power of the Word of God, delivered by a professor at a Baptist university.  Well worth a read.

The Eucharistic Presence

What it is, and where the terms in play came from by Francis Beckwith. Excerpts follow.

...Catholicism holds that bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ when they are consecrated by the priest celebrating the Mass. Oftentimes non-Catholics get hung up on the term, the name for the philosophical theory that the Church maintains best accounts for the change at consecration. The Church’s explanation of transubstantiation was influenced by Aristotle’s distinction between substance and accident.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), like most philosophers of his time, wanted to account for how things change and yet remain the same. So, for example, a “substance” like an oak tree remains the same while undergoing “accidental” changes. It begins as an acorn and eventually develops roots, a trunk, branches, and leaves. During all these changes, the oak tree remains identical to itself. Its leaves change from green to red and brown, and eventually fall off. But these accidental changes occur while the substance of the tree remains.


On the other hand, if we chopped down the tree and turned into a desk, that would be a substantial change, since the tree would literally cease to be and its parts would be turned into something else, a desk. According to the Church, when the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, the accidents of the bread and wine do not change, but the substance of each changes. So, it looks, tastes, feels, and smells like bread and wine, but it literally has been changed into the body and blood of Christ. That’s transubstantiation.

There are several reasons why it would be a mistake to dismiss transubstantiation simply because of the influence of Aristotle on its formulation. First, Eastern Churches in communion with the Catholic Church rarely employ this Aristotelian language, and yet the Church considers their celebration of the Eucharist perfectly valid. Second, the Catholic Church maintains that the divine liturgies celebrated in the Eastern Churches not in communion with Rome (commonly called “Eastern Orthodoxy”) are perfectly valid as well, even though the Eastern Orthodox rarely employ the term transubstantiation. Third, the belief that the bread and wine are literally transformed into Christ’s body and blood predates Aristotle’s influence on the Church’s theology by over 1000 years. For it was not until the thirteenth century, and the ascendancy of St. Thomas Aquinas’ thought, that Aristotle’s categories were employed by the Church in its account of the Eucharist. In fact, when the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) employed the language of substantial change, St. Thomas had not even been born!...

Mother of God

A common word between all Christians, as Dr. Bergsma describes:

...The confession of Mary as “Mother of God” presents a stumbling block for some non-Catholic Christians, but curiously it never did for me.

I think it was back in the Fall of 1992 when I was sitting in a course in Ancient Church History at one of the best Calvinist seminaries in America. Our professor, a devout Dutch Calvinist (like most of us students), was lecturing on the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus AD 431, the council that recognized Mary as “Theotokos,” “Mother of God” (or more literally, “Bearer of God”). He began to address the question, Can Calvinists confess Mary as “Mother of God”? He answered in the affirmative, granted that one understood this not as a claim for Mary’s motherhood of divinity itself, but in the sense that Mary was mother of Jesus, who is truly God. And that, of course, is precisely how the Catholic Church understands the term.

So far from being a cause of division, the common confession of Mary as “Mother of God” should unite all Christians, and distinguish Christian orthodoxy from various confusions of it, such as Arianism (the denial that Jesus was God) or Nestorianism (in which Mary mothers only the human nature of Jesus but not his whole person)...

The Holy Family: Jesus is Insane!

What did Christ mean when he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers; anyone who does the will of my Father who sent me is my brother and sister and my mother"? Augustine explains:

...Stretching out his hand over his disciples, the Lord Christ declared: Here are my mother and my brothers; anyone who does the will of my Father who sent me is my brother and sister and my mother. I would urge you to ponder these words. Did the Virgin Mary, who believed by faith and conceived by faith, who was the chosen one from whom our Saviour was born among men, who was created by Christ before Christ was created in her – did she not do the will of the Father? Indeed the blessed Mary certainly did the Father’s will, and so it was for her a greater thing to have been Christ’s disciple than to have been his mother, and she was more blessed in her discipleship than in her motherhood. Hers was the happiness of first bearing in her womb him whom she would obey as her master.

Now listen and see if the words of Scripture do not agree with what I have said. The Lord was passing by and crowds were following him. His miracles gave proof of divine power. and a woman cried out: Happy is the womb that bore you, blessed is that womb! But the Lord, not wishing people to seek happiness in a purely physical relationship, replied: More blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Mary heard God’s word and kept it, and so she is blessed. She kept God’s truth in her mind, a nobler thing than carrying his body in her womb. The truth and the body were both Christ: he was kept in Mary’s mind insofar as he is truth, he was carried in her womb insofar as he is man; but what is kept in the mind is of a higher order than what is carried in the womb.

The Virgin Mary is both holy and blessed, and yet the Church is greater than she. Mary is a part of the Church, a member of the Church, a holy, an eminent – the most eminent – member, but still only a member of the entire body. The body undoubtedly is greater than she, one of its members. This body has the Lord for its head, and head and body together make up the whole Christ. In other words, our head is divine – our head is God...