2008-2009 Christian Liturgical Year: The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

The Church has told us that the Blessed Virgin Mary was born sinless, though I think it better to say she was born in a state of grace. The major reason is that grace is of primary importance in our relationship to our Savior. A second reason, important also, is that we’re at a time in history when we don’t have a rational understanding of sin. Indeed, we have a compromised understanding of Creation since we’ve not yet made peace with modern empirical knowledge and many of our ways of speaking of God’s revealed truths are drawn from pre-modern understandings of living creatures and of stars, understandings now known to be wrong. In particular, there’s some serious divergence between the man who is the subject of Christian theological and philosophical discussions and the man who is being revealed by modern scientists, historians, and other explorers of the empirical realm. If our ideas of man, in fact, our ideas of life and of Creation as a whole, are being revised, what chance is there that our ideas of sin remain valid? What chance is there that our beliefs provide a coherent description of God’s Creation?

But sin was never the main issue, nor was sinlessness. Grace was the main issue. “Hail Mary, full of grace.” “Hello Mary, how is it that you already share the life of God?” To emphasize sin or sinlessness is to return to the forms of Law rejected by Christ and, in greater detail, by St. Paul. Mary’s sinlessness followed from her fullness of grace. The grace didn’t come as a result of the sinlessness.

Mary was born full of grace. From her conception, she was in a special communion with God, a communion at least similar to that enjoyed by the resurrected if not exactly the same. The obsession with sin and the possibility or impossibility of sinlessness in our mortal lives can often hide God and His Creation from us rather than bringing us closer to Him. We should instead realize that we are bound to obey not only the moral laws which arise from our biological natures but also the more demanding versions of those laws given to us by Moses and by Jesus of Nazareth. We should also realize that perfect obedience of these laws doesn’t save us; it merely brings us to a more perfect state of humanity. Some Medieval Scholastics discussed limbo as a way of dealing with the supposed problem of the nature of life after death for ungodly but virtuous men. Perhaps this is an important problem but one that is a side-issue when we discuss salvation.

We are saved when God is truly with us. We speak truly when we speak along with God. We do God’s work when we act with God.

God wasn’t hidden to Mary. From conception, she had a relationship to her Creator more intimate than that enjoyed by others after a life devoted to learning the craft of sainthood. Mary gave her flesh to the Son of God and suckled Him at her breasts. She responded properly and without hesitation to God’s direct guidance in matters small or large. The rest of us often feel that guidance, or at least suspect it, but have trouble responding properly, trouble even discerning if that’s really God nudging us to eliminate a bad habit or even to explore the possibility of a religious vocation. Those who move freely with the will of God don’t have conversations with God to discuss the details nor do they get their instructions through angels. Those who wait for God to speak directly to them will waste their opportunities to serve God and His children.

Mary was already aware of the presence of Her Creator and was responsive to Her Creator without reserving any part of herself. From the moment of her otherwise normal conception, she was in that state, already saved but aware of her Lord’s presence and waiting for His guidance.

And now we should contemplate the meaning of this part of the story which the Church tells as we travel with Her through the liturgical year:

Mary bears the Son of God in her holy womb and God prepared her for this maternal task by forming her from conception to be fully aware of His presence and responsive without hesitation to His will.

Moving With the Grain of Universe: Becoming One With the Body of Christ

In this life, reality comes to us through the senses in such a way that we are distanced from that which is outside of us, our possessions and our parents as well as God Himself. Though God isn’t truly outside of us, He seems that way to us and allows us to be separate from Him in this way as we grow up. As St. John of the Cross once said: God distances Himself from us in the manner of a wise and loving mother who steps away from her child as he is learning to walk, letting that child fall occasionally. In the case of God, there is no true distancing as there is with a human mother, but He fosters an illusion of separation while we learn a proper sort of independence.

Even with our relationships with Creation, those with our tools and those with our loved ones, there also is no true separation. As Michael Polanyi, surgeon and scientist and philosopher, pointed out in various writings, including Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, our tools become extensions of our bodies as our brains adjust to treat them as such. You can see this in the fluid movements of surgeon or carpenter or cook. That scalpel or file or spatula is an extension of the human arm and their brain is aware of its possibilities and its dimensions in a way very similar to the brain’s awareness of that arm’s possibilities and dimensions.

Those who wish for friendship with Jesus Christ have an analogical relationship to the Body of Christ though we mortal men be more like the tool than the arm or the brain. Yet, each and every human being who willingly belongs to Christ is a living and self-aware extension of the Body of Christ. The resurrected can be more perfectly a part of the Body of Christ even as they are more perfectly human beings.

The relationship of a friend of Christ to the Body of Christ isn’t a matter of an over-excited religious imagination but rather a very real relationship as is the relationship that great mathematicians and metaphysicians have to abstract — but real — domains of truths. As is necessary in such a case, I speak analogically but it’s not wholly analogical. There’s a relationship that we can’t speak of directly in words or grammatical structures available to us and which won’t exist until we stretch and try to describe greater truths which seem so out of focus no matter how we squint the eyes of our minds. (See Abstract Mathematics and the Real Presence for a closely related discussion.)

A modern Christian has a strong tendency to shout out news of his personal salvation while talking as if the reality of salvation is but a dream with no connection to reality. My salvation is real when that claim helps me feel better but salvation is a pious illusion when that claim threatens to get in the way of my effectiveness in this real world which has no seeming connection to any real Heaven. (See A Thomistic Take on Madness and Modernism for a short discussion of the schizophrenic nature of much modern thought.)

As I’ve stated before, pre-modern Christians had a view of Heaven, of the next life, which was consistent with beliefs about the cosmos, the earth and all that encircled it. On the other side of the moon’s orbit lay ethereal stuff, pure stuff and not the dirt and flesh and blood of the earth. Hell, the place of damnation, lay below the surface of the earth. When modern empirical knowledge took this relatively simple view of the cosmos-universe from us, we Christians simply etherealized Heaven, giving up our ability to speak of Heaven or the resurrection or salvation in concrete terms. Heaven and the resurrection and salvation have become dream-like and unreal to many in the modern world, including many children raised as Christians.

In any case, we Christians need to pull ourselves together, to learn to think of Creation — all of Creation — as a unity though having different phases. We need to develop words and concepts to help us think of Heaven in concrete terms that make sense as speculations of a Creation in which this universe is but a phase. When we do so, then we can begin to see that the Body of Christ was first conceived in this universe and still grows in this universe even as that Body has reached a mature stage in Heaven, that is, the world of the resurrected. That Body is mature in Heaven but not yet complete Membership remains open to all who wish to share true life, the life of God Himself.

What Happens to Unbaptized Infants?

I don’t know.

I also don’t know why so many seem to believe it to be unfair if unbaptized infants were not to go to Heaven and I can only guess it’s some sort of squeamishness. More to the point, what makes us so certain all infants will be resurrected? What makes us so certain that all human adults will be resurrected? We’re squeamish partly because we have human traditions that have added much to the few promises of Jesus Christ and we can no longer distinguish our traditions from the Lord’s promises.

Life is a gift and God has not granted life to all possible human beings. Look at the huge number of human ova and sperm that never produce a human being. Look at the large number of spontaneous miscarriages.

Life in Heaven is a gift also, that is, life without end as a companion to the Lord Jesus Christ. Is it a gift that could possibly be enjoyed by those who don’t love God with all their hearts?

Christian history speaks of periods when harsh views of salvation were united to a theological emphasis on God as a dispenser of justice. Now we have squeamish views of salvation united to blame-free views of mercy. The biases are too clear. We modern Christians prefer the therapist and the condescending preacher to the Biblical prophet.

We shouldn’t allow our squeamishness and our sentimental attachments to shape our ideas of God’s promises as Creator and Savior nor should we give free scope to our most righteous angers. If we’re to speculate on salvation, we should do so in a disciplined manner that keeps us from intertwining inextricably our speculations and our understandings of empirical knowledge with revealed truths.

Pray for the salvation of all those you love. If you can, pray for the salvation of all men. Don’t pretend to be able to know who God will save.

Christianity and Privacy

Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. [This is the second sentence in John 17:11, where I quote from the RSV -- Catholic Edition.]

This is a very difficult verse which speaks to a theme winding its way through the New Testament, a theme related to a fundamental belief of Trinitarian Christianity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three Persons but one God. They act together, think together, love together. If we are to be one in that sense, there will be no privacy in Heaven of the sort that so many of us like so well. We will not be individuals holding our own thoughts and feelings separate from others and, yet, we’ll be our own selves, just as the Father is Himself, the Son is Himself, and the Holy Spirit is Himself. They share all and act together in all They do but each one remains Himself.

Each person saved into the Body of Christ will initiate and all will participate in what each starts. And that’s the key — Christ will be with those human beings He saves even as He is still one of the Holy Trinity.

We’ll be sharing the life of God — the only life which can allow life without end. We’ll have given up so much that we consider valuable in this life, including our privacy, and we’ll have that share in the life of God.

I long to share that life. I’m also scared to give up my privacy even knowing that I’ll gain so much more.

And I’m very curious. How can I give up my privacy and yet remain myself? How can Father and Son and Holy Spirit share all and yet each remain Himself? Do each of these questions have the same answer, or at least very similar answers? I think so. I pray that I find out.