December 4, 2003
Crooked Hearts Straightened
By Father Brian Mullady, O.P.
Professor, Systematic Theology
Campion College, San Francisco, California
The world can indeed seem an unhappy place to many. Many attribute the source of their discontent to others. "There's nothing wrong with me." "I could be a saint if I did not have to live with YOU." "YOU are the reason I cannot grow in holiness." "If only I had a different job, spouse, children, parents, physical condition, then I really could be an engraced person." Many people believe that they must find the right exterior place or method to make them experience God's grace. They think that their half-heartedness in prayer is due to some situation or person. Their unhappiness is caused principally by other things or people. The crooked paths and rough ways are outside them and they must be free from those in order to find the Lord. This is largely due to the fact that we deceive ourselves into thinking that the problem in our lives is caused by things outside ourselves. In fact, the primary source of our personal unhappiness and lukewarmness is caused from within. The source is sin.
First, the Original Sin. In the sin of Adam, we lost grace and also all of the special interior gifts given to Adam that he might be as happy as possible in this world. This happiness was caused by interior integrity, which allowed Adam to see every moment as an engraced moment. Living the "sacrament of the present moment," as one spiritual author puts it, was an easy thing for Adam and Eve. They looked at all from the supernatural point of view. This was lost in the Original Sin, which gave rise to many personal sins. All these personal sins increased the blindness and unhappiness caused by the Original Sin, a world without intimacy with God.
For many centuries, the human race wandered lost in darkness and blindness. The crooked ways and rough places were in their hearts and blinded them even to their own sins. The crookedness was due to weakness of will in the face of temptation and blindness to the darkness of the mind's inability to know God as he is in himself. In fact, these rough ways were caused by the mountains of our pride and our inability to adopt the supernatural point of view, God's point of view towards the world.
The resolution of this condition was accomplished in Christ. In Advent, we recall the time past when for many centuries the ancients waited for the resolution of their blindness and weakness in the first coming of Christ, born in the stable in a manger. The Advent wreath symbolizes the green life of integrity of grace in the circle of eternity. The slow-burning candles recall the time spent for many ages waiting for the Redeemer who alone could bring God's grace back to us.
The first Advent is already past. We are now waiting for the final completion, for "he who began this good work in you to carry it to completion." That completion is found in the 2nd Advent or coming of Christ in the last judgment. Then, he who came in weakness will come in glory. Though the Original Sin was resolved in the first coming, we still suffer from crooked and rough ways in our hearts. The voice cries in the desert asking us to prepare our hearts primarily by repentance, which lowers the mountains of our pride and fills the valleys of our cruelty. Our crooked ways of lust are made straight by grace and the rough places of our interior falsity of ideas smooth and straight by the truth. This happens in the third coming or Advent of grace now.
In this season then, by the practice of the sacraments and joyful penance, we who exist between the first and second coming allow God to fulfill the command of Baruch "stand upon the heights" of the knowledge given us by faith. We are called upon to respond to the preaching of John the Baptist when he prepared the people for Christ's coming by the mere baptism of water. The more we examine and confess where WE need to be healed and detach ourselves from our disordered inclination, the more we are clothed with the splendor of God forever. Then we shall truly experience the peace of interior justice and Christ can find a fit manger in our hearts. Confidence in his mercy for our sins and surrender to his providence are the keys to this. These are accomplished in the practical works of everyday charity willing the good of our brothers and sisters and the community in which we live.
Those who do this by Christ's power in the first coming prepare themselves for the second coming by the practice of the virtues and grace and by this truly "all flesh shall see the salvation of God." (Luke 3:6)
Suggested readings. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 379-401, 407-409.
Loving Obedience
By Father Brian Mullady, O.P.
Professor, Systematic Theology
Campion College, San Francisco, California
Obedience and love go together. Adam and Eve were invited in their original creation in grace to a daily, wonderful life of obedience and love of God. This was ultimate human freedom, which they abused. Many people struggle with the fact of our freedom. Why did God allow us to sin? The human race would have been better off if God had just bound our freedom and kept us from sinning. It is true that many evils were introduced into the human race by sin. But Scripture does not portray sin as the end of the story. In fact, immediately after Adam and Eve committed the sin, which is a result of their unloving disobedience and failure to respond to grace, God promises the Redeemer. This is called the Protoevangelium or "first Gospel" which sets the terms of the conflict between Christ and Satan. God says to Satan, "I will make you enemies of each other: you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel." (Gen. 3:15)
God is never frustrated in communicating his goodness to the human race and from the unloving disobedience of Adam and Eve, he brought forth the even greater grace of the Redeemer. To satisfy for this sin, God brought forth the greatest expression of his grace possible, the New Adam, Jesus Christ. It is not miraculous but still wondrous that man should be joined to God by nature in sanctifying grace, but that man should be joined to God in person is what many ancient theologians called the miraculum miraculorum, the miracle of miracles.
How good, kind and gracious of God to use the sin as the occasion of coming to earth to atone. This is due to no human merit, but loving choice on the part of this good God. So as a fittingly friendly thing, God chose us, but especially Mary to be "holy and spotless, to live in love in his presence [….] chosen from the beginning under his predetermined plan." (Ephesians 1:4-5, 11) God takes a human nature that the unloving disobedience of Adam might be satisfied by an act of human loving obedience. As Eve prepared the way for Adam's sin, so Mary, the first among the redeemed, receives a unique grace to prepare for Christ's atonement.
In her Annunication, this unique grace is expressed by the Angel when she is called "full of grace." (Luke 1:28) The Immaculate Conception expresses this grace, that Mary was conceived in her mother's womb without the stain of Original Sin. In this, she was not separated from her Son the Redeemer, but in light of her participation in the redemption, God kept Original Sin from entering her. Pius IX declared the dogma thusly, "The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin." (CCC 491)
The Angel explains to Mary the terms of her consent to the marriage between heaven and earth. God has already consented to the marriage. This is her catechesis, which precedes her act of loving obedience a unique expression of her personal grace. Her freedom as the New Eve is a part of the providence of God as Eve's free choice was a part of the providence of God in bringing about the sin. When Mary consents, by the sanctifying grace that she received, Christ takes flesh in her womb and she weds heaven to earth in her. "Let it be done to me according to your word." (Luke: 1:38) In this act, she shows she is the New Eve, the Mother of the Redeemer and the Bride of the Lamb all at once.
Today, people have a lot of trouble with the idea that obedience and love go together. Make me loving, but do not expect me to obey. One who obeys all the time cannot be free. Mary shows that attitude is based on a false dichotomy between freedom and truth. Because of her Immaculate Conception, she shows us where true human freedom in grace is found. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord" (Luke 1:38).
Suggested Readings: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 490-495.