" PAST " BARBARIANS AT THE GATE..........OR INSIDE THE KEEP????

 Serving with the Angels

“Barbarians at the Gate”- images of Attila the Hun advancing on Rome at the head of his barbarian hordes in A.D. 452 and being dissuaded by Pope Saint Leo the Great (A.D. 440-461) are conjured up by these words. They are powerful and eloquent.

1,600 Years ago, and 42 years before Attila, Rome HAD been sacked by Alaric and the Visigoth hordes he led – something that had not happened in the preceding 800 years. The overrunning and sacking of cities was not uncommon in the ancient world. But not Rome – this was the great trauma of Civilisation! “The city that had conquered the world, was itself conquered….”says Roman citizen St.Jerome As the shock waves and consequences spread around the civilized world, St. Augustine recalled seeing the weekly pay parade of the Roman soldiers from his residence. With casual interest at first, his attention became more compelled as he noticed they became restless in their ranks and in time broke up in a disorderly fashion when their pay did not arrive.

Rome was no longer the Capital of the Empire. The seat of the Imperial Government had been moved to Ravenna. But make no mistake, Alaric had shocked and sickened the civilized world. The long, slow descent into the so called "Dark Ages" was underway

How different is our situation to-day! There is no modern equivalent of the Rome of those days. No, not Washington, not London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo, let alone Beijing has the status Rome then held. But , just as the military onslaughts of the barbarians and even more so , their assimilation as citizens undermined and finally toppled the Empire , first in the West and 1,000 years later in the East when Constantinople fell to the pagan Mohammedans, so our Western civilization, is suffering not only “Barbarians at the Gate” but its own peculiar enemies within. But who are they, that they could undermine and topple our civilization?

Even secularists now recognize that the end of Christendom began with the protestant Deformation of the Church founded by Christ. In the wake of that process came the now faltering idea of human Progress and the spread of Doubt. The perverse working out of the psychological and practical effects of the Terror in the French Revolution, the horrors of the Buonaparte military madness, the Franco-Prussian War, the American Civil War, the Great War, the Great Depression and World War II, have brutalized the sensitivities and consciences of hundreds of millions of people and taken the lives of tens of millions of people. All of these factors have worked to horribly distort and deform the moral sense of many nations and peoples. And the social fabric of so many countries, including our own, has been forever scarred. The search for escape in hedonistic materialism has been abetted by and has given purpose to modern media and technology.”The phenomenon of estrangement from the Faith, which has manifested itself progressively in societies and cultures that for centuries, seemed permeated by the Gospel” (“Ubicumque et Semper” Pope Benedict XVI) is the appalling result.

By relentless and subtle subversion, very many hearts and minds have absorbed the ideas and unspoken beliefs which constitute Relativism. They have come to accept in fact the denial of Absolute Truth. This is convenient for the avoidance of moral absolutes – right and wrong – enabling them to break free from any constraint and indulge their inclinations however perverse they might be, Before they know it, they find themselves effectively echoing the words of the one who formerly shone in Paradise, the Bearer of Light, and cry : “Non Serviam “- I will not serve.

But most folk do not want to even acknowledge what is going on about them. Like the later Romans after the Sack of Rome, they just want to keep on keeping on. We all know good people who” do not want to get involved” who do not want to hear the readily demonstrable truth in case they might have to act.

To-day’s barbarians are those busy and ever more boldly so, tearing down the remains of Christian society : abortion and euthanasia advocates, homosexual advocates, same sex marriage and adoption advocates, drug culture advocates, devotees of “Green” pan –theism, politically-correct holders and pursuers of Government Grants and pagan fundamentalists.

They are not only “at the gate” but have subverted our Governments, institutions and media. Like Pontius Pilate they ask with bitter irony: “What is Truth?”

 

 

Like his predecessor Pope Saint Leo the Great, heroically confronting Attila and his barbarian hordes, Pope Benedict XVI goes out to meet the latter day barbarians. Bravely he announces the answer: Jesus Christ – the Way, the Truth and the Life – the Light of the world. Pope Benedict has identified the heart of the problem – Relativism. He sounds the Alarm Bell, and urges the universal Church to stop just “keep on keeping on", but to see the problem clearly and confront it with the Truth – God made man – Jesus Christ and to defend Truth, Love and Beauty. He calls the Church to urgent action.

ACOLYTE

Copyright Tony Dixon - This item first appeared in the October, 2010 Issue of FOUNDATION.

" PAST " THE FOUR SENSES OF SACRED SCRIPTURE

 

“The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith;

The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.”

What is it all about? Catholics have long held that there are Four Senses in which Sacred Scripture can be understood: Literally and Spiritually which latter can be divided into Allegorical, Moral and Anagogical. This Catholic concern for the whole meaning of Sacred Scripture is part of the many things that separate fundamentalist organizations from the Church founded by Christ. (They are ultra literalist.)

The Catechism teaches us that the Holy Spirit has inspired and directed the human authors of Sacred Scripture, and in seeking to interpret the Scripture we must do so in the light of that same Spirit. To do so intelligently, we must take into account the culture and times of the authors, the literary genre they have adopted (e.g. historical, poetic, prophetic or apocalypse)

Vatican II also tells us that we must always consider that every part of Sacred Scripture must be considered in relation to the content and unity of the whole of Sacred Scripture and"the judgment of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God.” The Council also tells us that we must read Sacred Scripture within the Living Tradition of the whole Church, and also in a manner consistent with the coherence of the whole of the faith of the Church and the total plan of Revelation.

The Four Senses of Sacred Scripture are:

 Literal – that is to say, the direct meaning of the words discovered by exegesis and sound interpretation. 

The Spiritual sense is of course based on the literal and has three divisions:

 the Allegorical – in this sense we see the significance of past events in the light of Christ’s life: e.g. the Crossing of the Red Sea as a type of Christ’s victory or, alternatively of Christian Baptism. 

The Moral Sense reveals the inspiration in the events of Sacred Scripture for us to act justly. 

The Anagogical Sense can lead or inspire us toward Heaven e.g. seeing the Church on earth as a sign of the Heavenly Jerusalem

St.Augustine gets the last word: “But I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me...”

A CONTINUOUS CRESCENDO

The  Fullness of God's Love for us.

"The Year of Faith is" the Holy Father tells us, “a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Saviour of the world." He expands on this explanation of its purpose by referring to the great mystery of the death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ which reveal so dramatically the fullness of God's Love for us and open the way for our conversion of life through the forgiveness of sins.

He goes on to quote Saint Paul:

"We were buried......with Him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life."(Rom. 6:4)

Then the Holy Father tells us that “Through Faith, this new life shapes the whole of human existence according to the radical new reality of the Resurrection." We are given a deeper appreciation of this great reality by considering the words of Pope Leo XIII in "Tametsi"(All Saints Day, 1900):

”...He is the origin and source of all good, and just as mankind could not be freed from slavery but by the sacrifice of Christ, so neither can it be preserved but by His power."

 In a wonderful reflection upon a variety of writings of Saint Paul, Pope Benedict explains that "Faith working through love" (Gal. 5:6) becomes a new criterion of understanding and action that changes the whole of man's life.

The LateFather John Hardon S.J.
A remarkable example of a life of Faith working through love.

This is a crucial insight. It is something we have always understood implicitly, but here it is so succinctly expressed that we are able to address its implications more effectively. It is a brilliant expression of the appropriate understanding of Jesus as the "Way". It reveals to us with unavoidable clarity how we must follow the "Way".

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman's words should leave us unsurprised that we are always able to learn more from the life of Christ: "Every passage in the history of Our Lord and Saviour is of unfathomable depth, and affords inexhaustible matter of contemplation. All that concerns Him is infinite, and what we first discern is but the surface of that which begins and ends in eternity."(Discourses to Mixed Congregations - 19th Cent.)

Moving on the Holy Father explores the implications of this insight, and takes up the ancient formula : " Caritas Christi urget nos" that is " The Love of Christ impels us" (2Cor. 5:14), showing that it is precisely the working of Faith through love, that propels evangelization in every generation and to the ends of the earth. He urges us in effect to re-kindle the fire of apostolic zeal which will fuel the new evangelization. And, he shows that this very act of living out the implications of Faith, itself further develops that Faith and the grace and joy which follow and causes in those evangelized the opening of their hearts and minds to the Divine message.

Two lives exemplifying Faith working through love
in the service of Jesus Christ

The Holy Father quotes the great Saint Augustine to the effect that believers "strengthen themselves by believing". And he shows that in the Saints life we see a continual quest to "…search for the beauty of Faith until such time as his heart would find rest in God". He points out that the mighty writings of Saint Augustine still, after some 1,600 years are leading people to the "door of Faith".

Pope Benedict concludes this section:"Only through believing, then, does Faith grow and become stronger; there is no other possibility for possessing certitude with regard to one's life apart from self abandonment, in a continuous crescendo, into the hands of a love that seems to grow constantly because it has its origin in God."