Episodes

  • April 23: Saint George, Martyr

    April 23: Saint George, Martyr
    Apr 22 2024
    April 23: Saint George, Martyr
    c. Late Third Century
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saint of England, the nation of Georgia, and scouting

    Widely venerated, historically elusive, his legacy is massive

    Saint George suffered martyrdom in Palestine before the reign of Constantine. And that is all that can be said with certainty about Saint George. Yet where the documentary record is lacking, other traditions suffice. No one, after all, can document why we blow out candles on a birthday cake, where this nearly universal custom originated, or in what century it even began. Someone, somewhere, for some reason, thought it was a lovely thing to do, and started doing it, otherwise it would not be done today. But questions of where, when, and why fade when friends and family gather around their loved one in the dark, the simple joy on their faces captured in the flickering of the candlelight. Knowing the origin of a tradition matters, since it may reveal unappreciated depths to a common practice. But that a healthy tradition continues is more significant than knowing, or explaining, where it came from. Few Christians can explain the hypostatic union, but everyone loves to unwrap a gift on Christmas morning. No one can determine where and when Saint Valentine lived and died, but our lips broaden into a smile when we open a card on Saint Valentine’s Day. A good tradition conveys meaning implicitly whether its origin is obscure or not.

    If traditions age like wine, then the traditions surrounding Saint George are of the rarest vintage. Devotion to Saint George is so ancient, so deeply rooted, and so cross cultural that to argue that it rose like a chimera from the hot desert sands would be ridiculous. In the remote valleys of the Judean Desert east of Jerusalem, clinging to the copper-colored cliffs shooting straight up from a wadi, is an ancient monastery named Saint George. It was founded in the fifth century. And amid the stately Roman ruins of Jerash, in Jordan, are the remaining stone walls and mosaic floors of the Church of Saint George, built around 530 A.D. Official devotion to Saint George manifests itself, then, in some of the oldest Christian structures in the Holy Land.

    The murky origins of these early buildings merged with written traditions from centuries after George’s death until, over time, Saint George was known as a chivalrous knight who died for his faith under the Emperor Diocletian. The lore of a mounted warrior for Christ was immensely appealing to the Crusaders who populated the Holy Land in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They transported the hagiography of Saint George back to Europe with them. Oral tradition and popular custom then did its slow work until the ancient Palestinian devotion to Saint George was revived in a new age for new people in new lands. From the Byzantine East to the Latin West, from the Mediterranean South to the Saxon North, few saints became as popular as Saint George. He was named the patron of an enormous number of castles, kingdoms, churches, abbeys, cities, and orders, and even of England itself, where his dragon-slaying exploits still resonate in that country’s national mythology.

    Traditions hold that Saint George was among the many soldier-martyrs of early Christianity who, instead of dying to protect the Emperor, were killed on the Emperor’s orders for refusing to deny Christ. A loyal soldier obeys his master and is prepared to offer his life for a higher good. Roman soldiers were naturally prepared to die for the faith, and many did, killed by their fellows perhaps with some regret. Though the legends swirling around Saint George cannot be verified, they have been accepted by the faithful of many nations for many centuries. Acceptance of traditions is a cultural sieve straining chunks of absurdity from the liquid truth. Saint George has passed through that filter all the stronger. He died for the faith when many of his contemporaries did not—and only the greatest of men did that.

    Saint George, you were a loyal soldier and humble Christian who gave your life for Christ. Inspire us to have your same loyalty, your same courage, and your same nobility to die for a mighty cause, whether all at once or bit by bit over time.
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    6 mins
  • April 23: Saint Adalbert, Bishop and Martyr

    April 23: Saint Adalbert, Bishop and Martyr
    Apr 23 2024
    April 23: Saint Adalbert, Bishop and Martyr
    956–997
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saint of the Czech Republic and Poland

    Pagans cut down a courageous bishop in the frozen North

    Old, stodgy, traditional Catholic Europe in tension with new, liberal, flexible Europe is not a new dichotomy. A millennium ago the roles were reversed. It was old, stodgy, traditional pagan Europe in tension with new, groundbreaking, and progressive Catholic Europe. As the missionary monks, abbots, and bishops of Europe fanned out, ever northward and ever eastward, into upper Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, and the Baltics, they met the warrior tribes and painted chieftains of old Europe, men with skin like bark. These forest clans gathered in sacred groves to offer sacrifice to their pagan idols under the broad canopies of large oaks. In these open- air temples, they butchered prisoners of war and cattle in offerings to their dark powers, sprinkling the blood of the slain on their bodies. Yet from the eighth through the eleventh centuries, missionaries poured into these remote lands, shining the light of the Gospel into its darkest corners. Teutonic and Norse paganism, for all of its unwritten creeds of courage and manliness, was doomed. It was strong, but the Church was stronger. Paganism could not stop vital, solid, well-organized Catholicism with its coherent monotheism, sacred worship, Ten Commandments, self-sacrificing missionaries, and its Gospel of love and respect for all.

    The Catholic Church does not arrive to a mission territory, however, as a full-fledged institution. The Church arrives in a person who embodies all that the Church teaches and symbolizes. This person is the Church to those he encounters. Today’s saint was one of the first missionary bishops to penetrate into the lands of Prussia, in Northeastern Germany. And for daring to preach the Gospel to coarse men, he was murdered on the frigid coast of the Baltic Sea. The Prussians thought he was a Polish spy, and a pagan priest upset at the disruptions Adalbert was causing in Prussian society commanded his death. Saint Adalbert’s lifeless body was ransomed for its weight in gold by a Polish king and returned to Poland. He was eventually canonized as Saint Adalbert of Prague, since he was born and raised in Bohemia. He remains a saint equally claimed by both the Polish and Czech people and a seminal figure in early medieval Europe.

    Courageous men like Saint Adalbert don’t just happen. They are forged over time in red hot fires. Adalbert had a long, difficult, and interesting ecclesiastical career before giving his life for the faith. He was baptized as Vojtěch. But he was so impressed with the saintly German Bishop named Adalbert who taught him, that he took his tutor’s name at Confirmation. Adalbert was then named Bishop of Prague at a young age, a consecration whose responsibilities turned him into a far more serious Christian. He quickly matured into his exalted vocation. Bishop Adalbert started aggressively challenging the people of his diocese to shed their pre-Christian customs and to learn what it meant to be true children of God. But Adalbert had a strong temperament and came from a noble family with serious enemies, all of which led him to abandon his diocese twice and flee to Rome. In the Eternal City, he came to know the Benedictines and lived as a monk for several months. Later he would establish Benedictine monasteries in the North in the hope of holding the Christian ground he gained. And to the North he always returned: to Bohemia, to Germany, to Hungary, and to Poland. He was a multilingual and multicultural Pan Slavic Bishop fully equipped to evangelize throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

    The rough Prussian people who murdered Adalbert were not fully conquered and converted until 1239, when the Teutonic Knights planted themselves in that land more than two hundred years after Saint Adalbert’s death. Yet somebody had to take the first step on the long journey of converting the Prussians. Someone first had to hear “No” a thousand times before someone unknown, much later, ever heard “Yes.” Adalbert heard “No” first and died for it. His body absorbed the blows so that other bodies could walk safely. His suffering and death proved that he, an educated man, was just as sturdy as the rugged men he sought to convert, and so was worthy of adding the title of martyr to that of bishop and monk.

    Saint Adalbert, we ask that you intercede before God to make all missionaries as courageous as you were, willing to place themselves in difficult situations for the good of the Church. By your example, may we be brave witnesses to the fact that death is sometimes preferable to life.
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    6 mins
  • April 21: Saint Anselm, Bishop and Doctor

    April 21: Saint Anselm, Bishop and Doctor
    Apr 14 2024
    April 21: Saint Anselm, Bishop and Doctorc. 1033–1109Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: WhiteHis pen pierced the blue sheet above, revealing GodFew bishops have been canonized as saints since the Catholic Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The earlier history of the Church is, however, replete with saintly bishops. In the patristic era, in the first few centuries after Christ, a vast constellation of saintly bishops shined on the Church. Today’s saint was a scholar bishop in the mold of the educated churchmen of an earlier time. Saint Anselm was a world-class thinker, a politically aware defender of the Church’s rights, a contemplative monk, a faithful son of the pope, and the greatest philosopher of the eleventh century.Saint Anselm entered the Monastery of Bec in Normandy, France, as a young man and quickly impressed his superiors with his character and incisive mind. He was elected prior, then abbot, at a young age. He was a deeply prayerful abbot who was close to his monks and who hated to be away from the cloister. The monastery had many dealings with England due to its close proximity to that country, though, so Anselm travelled there regularly. These visits eventually led to his appointment as the Archbishop of Canterbury. Anselm spent many years as archbishop in conflict with English civil power over who had the authority to “invest,” or empower, a bishop with the symbols of office at his installation Mass. The lay investiture controversy was a long simmering dispute throughout Europe. It was eventually resolved in favor of the Church’s right to invest its bishops with crozier, miter, and ring.Much more than his role as a pastor in church-state conflicts, Saint Anselm’s most enduring legacy is as a philosopher and theologian. Thinking was his avocation even as the monastery was his vocation. Anselm’s famous definition of theology as “Faith seeking understanding” has guided centuries of Christian thinkers. Anselm was a working intellectual who produced erudite works on a range of complex subjects. He is the originator, in particular, of the ontological argument for the existence of God. The argument is ontological (or just “logical”) in that it is not empirical (scientifically verifiable). It does not argue from outward in, starting with external, observable evidence and then moving toward internal conclusions. The argument is powered, instead, by the raw strength of reason itself. As an example of a reason-driven argument, no one needs to search the world over for square circles to conclude that square circles don’t exist. Circles are round, by definition. And no one needs to interview every single bachelor to know that a bachelor is male. A bachelor is, by definition, male. Similarly, the very definition of God, Anselm’s holds, is proof that God exists.Anselm argued that God is a being than which none greater can be imagined. Supposing that the mind can imagine nothing greater than God, and further supposing that what exists in reality is greater than what exists only in the mind, then God must exist in reality. God’s non-existence is, then, logically impossible. This argument assumes that the maximum, or upper limit, to what the mind can attribute to God is self-contained in the meaning of the word God. No such upper limit exists in defining pain, temperature, length, or numbers,for example. A longer line can always be drawn, a greater number imagined, a sharper pain experienced, or a hotter temperature described. But to imagine a being greater than God would just be to imagine God more fully. As long as the mind’s concept of God is rational, then the argument is convincing. Anselm’s nuanced argument has provoked centuries of sophisticated commentary.Anselm’s life began among the Alps of today’s Northern Italy, a land of jagged, snow-encrusted mountains which stand over the green valleys below. One night the boy Anselm, asleep in his remote valley home, had a vision. He was called to the court of God on a high summit. Ascending to the very peak of a mountain, he entered the presence of the royal court and sat at the feet of the Master. God asked the boy who he was and where he came from. Anselm answered well and was rewarded with sweet bread from heaven. And then he woke up. Anselm never forgot this dream. He recounted it, in detail, many decades later, to the fellow monk who wrote his first biography. Saint Anselm’s mind never really came down from that high court he first visited in a childhood dream. He walked in the highest ranges, above the clouds, hiking from summit to summit, his pen piercing the blue sky to gaze directly into the realm above.We ask your intercession, Saint Anselm, to help our faith to understand its object. You did not leave man’s sense of wonder unchallenged but sought to organize human thought to meet the challenge of God. Help all thinkers to be open to finding as much as searching.
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    6 mins
  • Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord

    Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord
    Mar 30 2024
    Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord c. 33 A.D. The first Sunday after the first full moon that falls on, or after, March 21 Solemnity; Liturgical Color: White or GoldCheckmate!If you want to discover what’s really going on in a story, follow the women. Curious about how the plot of a book, movie, or show is going to resolve itself? Follow the female characters, because the men...and the rest of the story...will soon catch up with them. It is a female disciple, Mary Magdalen, who takes our hand and walks us quickly onto the stage of Easter Sunday. Mary doesn’t go to the tomb on Saturday, because no work can be done on the Sabbath. So early Sunday, while it is still dark, Mary walks alone to the burial garden and sees something, or, more precisely, doesn’t see something, that changes world history. The dead body of Jesus is not on the slab! The stone is rolled away! The tomb is empty! Mary Magdalen is witness one, the first of billions to know that Jesus rose from the dead. Witness one then quickly runs to tell the good news to witness two and three, the Apostles Peter and John. Thus the first links in the endless chain of believers were forged, a strong, enduring chain that has wended its way through history until today.Relegating Jesus’ miracles to the bin of apocryphal but consoling stories, many moderns argue Christ’s most enduring legacy is the verifiable good He did for His fellow men. Yet the Gospels don’t tell us that Jesus went around doing good. They tell us He went around doing miracles. Jesus doesn’t help an old woman carry a load up a hill. He doesn’t dig His hand deep into His pocket and spare some change. Jesus doesn’t offer words of comfort to the sick; He heals the sick. Jesus doesn’t jump into the sea to save the drowning Peter; He walks on the water. Jesus didn’t volunteer in a soup kitchen; He miraculously multiplied bread and fish and distributed food to the masses. And Jesus didn’t save people from the danger of death; He raised them from the dead. Jesus temporarily resuscitated three people, all of whom later died, before He resurrected Himself forever. There was nothing dreamy about the Resurrection. Real people with real names in a real place saw the Resurrected Jesus with real eyes. Easter celebrates the miracle of all miracles, the greatest unexpected result of all time, the indispensable genesis event of Western Civilization.So today we raise a toast to a fresh spring morning two thousand years ago. In a garden moist with dew, with small birds chirping and flowers’ bending toward the dawning sun, in a small, darkened hollow cut into the rock, a dead man, icy cold to the touch, zapped to life. He achingly rose from His stone slab and walked slowly toward the low entrance. He rolled away a heavy stone and stepped out into a new world where death was no longer the master. The ageless, see-saw battle between life and death was resolved in favor of the more powerful. Checkmate! The mind wanders at the beauty of it all.The story is told of the conception of twins. In their first weeks of life they stretch and groan and grow. They are happy to be alive, to be together. They squirm and jostle and explore their cramped watery world. They are curious. They see a life cord tethering them to someone greater and are overjoyed. “How great is our mother’s love that she shares her life with us.” Weeks turn into months in their warm amniotic bath. The twins shift and change. “What does this mean?” Twin One asks. “It means that our life in the womb is ending,” Twin Two responds. “But I don’t want to leave the womb! I am happy here. I want to stay here forever, close to our mother!” “But we have no choice,” Twin Two responds again. “Besides, maybe...just maybe, there is life after birth.” Twin One: “But how can that be? The sac will break, the cord will be severed, and we’ll be cut off from our source of life. And besides, there’s evidence that others were here before us, and none has ever come back to tell us that there is life after birth. No, this is the end.” Twin Two begins to despair, “If life in the womb ends in death, what’s its purpose? It’s meaningless! Maybe...maybe we don’t even have a mother...maybe we just made her up.” Twin One: “But we must have a mother. How else did we get here? How else do we stay alive?”And so the last days in the womb were filled with questioning and deep fear about the future. The moment of birth came at an hour they did not expect. The twins were emotional, wondering about the unknown, uncertain if they would ever see each other, or their mother, again. The transition was painful. They struggled. They heard screams. All that they knew disappeared. And then… light! Shocking bright whiteness. Their eyelids slowly peeled from their skin, and they gazed in confused wonder at a new world around them. Their life-source, their great mother, wept when they were placed in her ...
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    7 mins
  • Friday of the Passion of the Lord (Good Friday)

    Friday of the Passion of the Lord (Good Friday)
    Mar 29 2024
    Friday of the Passion of the Lord (Good Friday)
    c. 33 A.D.
    Triduum; Liturgical Color: Red

    No one knew love looked like this

    One of the most famous Greek sculptures in the world, a larger-than-life marble statue of a female, reigns over a monumental staircase in the Louvre. A soft, unfelt breeze ripples through the thin, flowing sheets that wrap her frame. Two expansive, articulated wings sweep elegantly back from her torso, giving the impression that she has just floated down from on high and landed softly on the prow of an invisible ship. Though now headless, the statue’s sense of movement is so vivid that one can still “see” her neck craning, her jaw jutting, and her eyes looking carefully downward as she settles to ground. She moves and yet she is still. She is “Winged Victory,” Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.

    Victory in battle, conquest in war, and success in sport are typically celebrated with a blast of trumpets, gold medals hung around the neck, ticker-tape parades, a crowning with laurels, or the placing of an elegant statue like “Winged Victory” to serenely personify triumph over one’s enemies. Jesus Christ changed all that. He changed what victory looked like. Jesus climbed a different podium to win a different type of victory over man’s greatest enemy.

    On Good Friday, the God of the Living descended into the depths of human experience to conquer death. His victory parade was the carrying of the Cross on His tender shoulders up the hill of Calvary, where His hands were nailed to a splintery timber. He was raised on high by centurions for mockery, not exaltation. He then died a slow, agonizing death as His thorax sunk lower and lower and His diaphragm sucked less and less air into His lungs. It was not fast and clean. It took three hours. No one knew it at the time, but this was the new look of love in the Christian age, this was the new victory pose. Not laurels, but thorns. Not trumpets, but screams. Not medals, but scars. On Good Friday, Christ redefined victory. The victor is not prideful or strong, but humble, meek, wrecked, injured, and dead. Pain in the non-Christian world, whether in the past or today, has no redemptive power or reward. It is just mindless and arbitrary suffering. At best, it is stoicism.

    In the person of Jesus Christ, God does not explain human suffering. Instead, He gives it meaning. And giving meaning to something is a type of answer, although not a solution. We do not go to a funeral to solve a problem. We go simply to be present, to share the family’s sorrow. Sharing is a powerful response. It is more satisfying and profound to give something meaning than to make it disappear. The answer of Jesus Christ to human suffering is to share it. His answer is empathy. He suffers, dies, and is buried. No one can point a finger at God and say, “You don’t know what it’s like!” He certainly does know what it’s like! Jesus could have saved the world by cutting Himself shaving. But He didn’t. He experienced more than was necessary, because it was more fitting that God share every single human experience except sin. God drinks the common cup of human suffering to the dregs.

    Jesus did not die full of years. He died young, like many tragic heroes. Christ’s death gives hope to all who are preyed upon by loneliness, depression, fear, illness, anxiety, confusion, sin, and shame. In His death, Jesus does not just tell us but shows us that all these things can be conquered when united to Him. Jesus did not leave us a book but a life. And that life continues to be shared with us in word and sacrament, in its fullness, in the Catholic Church.

    God did not die on the Cross so that artists could sculpt Him. God died for a higher reason. He died for us. In Christ, the gift and the giver, the priest and the sacrifice, merge, and the result is life. As in marriage, so also in the Trinity, self-gift merges in generative love and creates life. So we etch that powerful reminder of Christ’s life-generating gift of self—the Crucifix—into our tombstones and place it high in our churches. This universal symbol of redemptive love even hangs from fine chains on our necks. In hoc signo vinces. Christ is our new winged Victory, not with two glorious wings spreading out in a proud gesture of triumph, but with His two thin bloody arms pinned to the Cross. He hangs there in agony, gasping for air, and heroically waits for Sunday to come.

    Crucified Lord, in Your passion and death, You walked for us the hard path to new life. You exited life through the door of death and so give us hope that the end is the beginning, that loss is gain, that defeat is victory, and that death is life.
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    7 mins
  • Thursday of Holy Week (Holy Thursday)

    Thursday of Holy Week (Holy Thursday)
    Apr 16 2025
    Thursday of Holy Week (Holy Thursday)
    c. 33 A.D.
    Triduum; Liturgical Color: White

    No last will and testament has been as heeded as Christ’s

    From the moment Christ first uttered the words at the Last Supper on Holy Thursday evening, the Church has never ceased to be faithful to them: “Do this in memory of me.” These words of a man about to die, if not a dying man, were a commandment more than a request, marching orders more than a mission statement. And everyone in that upper room understood exactly what He meant. No last will and testament of any man has ever been as faithfully fulfilled as these last words of Christ. What Christ ordered to be done has been done, and continues to be done, every day, throughout the world, by every single priest who stands at an altar and recites the words of consecration in persona Christi.

    The world has never moved on from Christ and never will. He is not in the world’s rear-view mirror. He is here, He is present, He is alive. And in every tight corner of the globe, from a tidy Polish village to a rambling Filipino city, from a Palestinian monastery hugging a sun-baked cliff to an Argentinian parish in a sprawling suburb, the Mass makes Him real because it is done in memory of Him. Literally every minute of every day, Mass is celebrated across the globe in a ceaseless offering to God the Father. “From the rising of the sun to its setting,” in a thousand tongues, priests bend slightly over their chalices and the white linens covering their altars and carefully repeat a chain of words in a cadence known to all the faithful: “Take this, all of you, and eat of it…Take this all of you, and drink from it…This is my Body…This is my Blood.” No words are more familiar. None! Not Shakespeare’s, not Caesar’s, not Lincoln’s. The everlasting words of the cross-cultural and cross-generational Christ simply have no equal.

    If we expect from the Church the sacraments, we will never be disappointed. If we receive from the Church more than the sacraments, we should rejoice. The Last Supper fulfills and completes the Jewish Passover sacrifice ordered by God of Moses and the Jews in Egypt. The Last Supper, at the same time, prefigures in an unbloody way the physical sacrifice Christ would make on the morrow on the hill of Calvary. In the Last Supper, Christ also gives priests the perennial form for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Last Supper, then, is a composite act of Jewish and Christian ritual, of Old and New Testament theology, of historical and spiritual realities all packed into one dense liturgical act which the Church presents anew at every Mass. The Mass is the Christian work of art par excellence. It is the public act which never stops showing. It is the magnet which pulls mankind through the doors of thousands of churches every morning, noon, and night.

    We do this in memory of Him because God deserves worship as a matter of justice, not charity. We do this in memory of Him because He ordered us to do so. We do this in memory of Him because it prefigures what we will hopefully do in heaven for eternity. And we do this in memory of Him for a thousand million reasons locked in the quiet places of a thousand million hearts: For Jill to come back home. So that Robert survives the war. In thanksgiving for a good husband. So that a pain in the gut not be what it might be. In gratitude for the rain that saved the crops. At a king’s crowning, a convict’s death, or the bond of marriage. For the shocked just after the martyrs’ mangled bodies were dragged out of the arena over the blood-stained sand. In thanksgiving because my father did not die of cancer, and in remembrance of my cousin who did. For the fireman who couldn’t find his way out of the building, for the barren woman, for the anniversary of an aged couple, or for the nation on its birthday. There is no end of reasons.

    Month after month, year after year, century after century, until the sands of time run out, the voice of the Lord on Holy Thursday echoes over the waters and down the halls of time: “Do this in memory of me.” *

    Lord Jesus Christ, Your total physical gift of self on Good Friday began internally at the Last Supper. May the faithful often profit from Your priestly ministry by receiving Your body and blood consecrated on Your sacred altars by those who share in Your one priesthood.

    *See “The Shape of the Liturgy” by Dom Gregory Dix for a similar reflection on the Holy Eucharist.
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    6 mins
  • April 13: Saint Martin I, Pope and Martyr

    April 13: Saint Martin I, Pope and Martyr
    Apr 13 2025
    April 13: Saint Martin I, Pope and Martyr c. 590–655 Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red Exiled, abandoned, starving, a Pope dies for sound theology After being elected the Bishop of Rome in 649, today’s saint called a local Council which established the correct theology of the Church regarding the two wills of Christ. For this teaching and its broad dissemination, Martin was abducted in Rome by emissaries of the Byzantine Emperor Constans II, brought to Constantinople, and humiliated. Martin refused to retract or bend to the Emperor’s incorrect theology, which denied that Christ had a human will. Martin was imprisoned, publicly flogged, maltreated, condemned for treason, and exiled from Constantinople to the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea. And there the Pope died—naked, starving, forgotten, and alone—far from Rome, in the year 655, a victim of bad theology and the last pope, so far, venerated as a martyr. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 had synthesized centuries of theological debate by teaching, authoritatively, that the divine nature of the Second Person of the Trinity and the human nature of Jesus were distinct but united in the one person of Jesus Christ. This merging of natures in one person is called the hypostatic union. The Son of God, then, truly took flesh and experienced all things, save sin, that a man experiences. So when Jesus said, “I am thirsty” (Jn 19:28), He didn’t mean to say, “Just my human nature is thirsty.” And when His majestic voice echoed off the stone walls of Bethany calling, “Lazarus, come out!” (Jn 11:43), He didn’t mean to say, “The divine nature inside of me, and only the divine nature, says ‘Lazarus, Come Out!’” Yet Eastern Christians, primarily in Egypt and Syria, clung to a Monophysite, or one nature, theology of Jesus Christ long after Chalcedon had settled the matter. The Second Council of Constantinople in 553 attempted, unsuccessfully, to pull the Monophysites back into the orbit of Chalcedon. By the 600s, tensions between Chalcedonians and Monophysites were a political problem for the Byzantine empire. So some Eastern theologians, supported by the Emperor, looked for common ground and proposed a one-willed Christ, instead of a one-natured Christ. This one-will heresy is called Monothelitism (monos = one; thelos = will). The issue of Christ’s will(s) had never been formally resolved, so the Emperor hoped a one-willed, instead of a one-natured, Christ would placate the Monophysites and unite his theologically diverse subjects. Chalcedon’s teaching on Christ’s two natures was ontological, or just logical, and did not explain how a person operates with dual intellects and wills. Monothelitists argued that if Christ’s two natures could seamlessly unite in one person, then so could His two wills. There was no human will in Christ, the argument went, because it was totally subsumed into the mightier divine will. But Pope Martin and others knew that this was theologically impossible, since a Christ without a functioning human will would have been a zombie, a ghost of a man. Nor could one argue that Jesus had one will divided into a divine and a human sphere, as Jesus was not a schizophrenic with a split identity. Martin’s theology of the two wills was vindicated after his death when it was explicitly defined by the Third Council of Constantinople in 681. This Council taught Christ’s human will was “in subjection to his divine and all-powerful will.” That is, Christ’s two wills were separate in their natures but freely united in their object. How do two wills inside of one person enter into communion? In the same way that two wills in two different persons enter into communion. Each will gives free and independent assent to a principle, idea, or truth shared with the other will. The two wills retain their independence but freely unite in their assent to a common value. Thus Jesus’ human will, in total freedom, submitted to the will of the Son of God. During his captivity, Martin was hurt by the indifference which the Church of Saint Peter in Rome paid to one of their own. Martin was also deeply pained when a new Pope was elected though he was still alive. It is every pope’s duty to preserve the unity and integrity of the Church by preserving the unity and integrity of Christ. Martin did just that. The fruits of Martin’s martyrdom advanced theology toward its correct conclusion on Christ’s two wills in the decades after he died, even though poor Martin himself has been largely forgotten. His remains were returned to the Eternal City after his death and he now rests in peace somewhere under the marble floor of Saint Peter’s Basilica. Pope Saint Martin I, through your intercession before the Father in Heaven, fortify all teachers and leaders of the Church to remain steadfast in the truth, to advocate for the truth, and to suffer for the truth, no matter the personal cost.
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    6 mins
  • Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

    Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord
    Apr 12 2025
    Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord
    c. 33 A.D.
    The Sunday before Easter
    Solemnity; Liturgical Color: Red

    Beginning with the end we understand His greatness

    One way to understand a book, or to watch a movie, is to begin at the end. To read, or watch, backwards allows every character and plot twist to be interpreted in light of their conclusions. Working backwards removes much of the drama and tension from a story, of course, but it also makes the story perfectly intelligible. No slow unwinding of the plot, no “whodunit,” no surprise around the corner, and no unexpected deaths. Skipping to the end makes the entire narrative clear, with prior knowledge infusing prior meaning into the story as it unfolds.

    The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are essentially Passion narratives with extended introductions. There is plenty of evidence that the end of Christ’s life, particularly his last seventy-two hours, were well remembered by His disciples, the events being repeated in great detail until they were ultimately written down. The Evangelists eventually supplemented these often-repeated Passion narratives with further details about Christ’s life which had occurred long before Holy Week. These prior narratives are often inconsistent across the Gospels, emphasize diverse aspects of Christ’s life, and omit or add details in a seemingly arbitrary manner. What are very consistent, however, are the Passion narratives. Their vivid details are, without doubt, the heart and soul of the story of Jesus Christ.

    On Palm Sunday we begin with the end. We read our way backwards. It is not possible for any Christian to think of Jesus Christ divorced from how His earthly life ended. Even the earliest Christian writings were composed from a post-Resurrection perspective. The “real” Jesus of history did not have miracles placed on Him like ornaments on a Christmas tree. His miracles were not later adornments hung on His human frame to lend Him credibility. The “real” Jesus is not the simple carpenter lurking in the shadows behind the Christ of Faith created by later generations. There are scant biblical references to Jesus’ occupation as a carpenter, or to His simple and humble existence in a provincial town. There is a massive amount of biblical evidence, on the contrary, that Jesus suffered, died, and rose from the dead. And this biblical evidence is buttressed by an abundance of postbiblical testimony and the universal witness of an army of Apostles, saints, and martyrs.

    All of this means that the “real” Jesus is the Christ of faith! The “real” Jesus did suffer, die, and rise from the dead! The “real” Jesus is not found in the subtext of the Gospels—He is found in the text of the Gospels! And those texts are indisputably ancient. In other words, the narrative read at Mass on Palm Sunday is the oldest, truest, and most well-remembered portion of one of the most fully preserved and extraordinary documents from the ancient world—the New Testament.

    Our faith is rooted in history, a miraculous history. The Passion of Jesus Christ is not a parable, analogy, or metaphor. It is not a story meant to teach us a lesson apart from its facts. It is not a morality play whose actors mean to teach a lesson. The Passion of Christ is theologically significant because it is historically true. If it were not historically true, it would have no significance beyond its power to inspire as a story. But every culture already has myths to inspire its people, or at least mythical figures whose superhuman qualities model greatness. The story of Christ is so much more. It is the true story of a God-man who was betrayed by a friend, suffered calumny from His enemies, was publicly humiliated, made to carry the instrument of His own execution, and then was left to die, naked on a rough-hewn tree.

    This story is not sad by analogy to another story. It is sad in and of itself. This is the story we hear every Palm Sunday. This is how a great man’s life came to an end. It is also the story of how the Son of God conquered death and opened the gates of heaven to all who not only believe in Him but who belong to Him through the Catholic Church.

    Lord of the Passion, You suffered calumny and humiliation, You bore the Cross and did not complain. Intercede before Your heavenly Father that we may bear whatever crosses we must with fortitude. Without Your grace, we are no better than Godless pagans, in search of frivolous signs to lend meaning to life.
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