THE SPIRITUAL FORMATION
OF A MARRIED CATHOLIC PRIEST
AND HIS FAMILY
—-A JOURNEY INTO TRUTH AND LIGHT—-
W. E. KNICKERBOCKER, JR.
In thanksgiving for my wife, Sandie,
our children, Jon and Amy, our children-in-law, Janna and Rob,
our grandchildren, Katherine, Daniel, and Clare, and our grandson-in-law, Michael
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Part One I, Methodist Formation
Part One II, Anglican Formation
Part One III, Intentional Catholic Formation
Part Two I, Theosis: The Heart of Spiritual Formation and Spiritual Theology
Part Two II, Foundational Theology: Christology and the Holy Trinity
Part Two III, Catholic Mystical Theology
Part Two IV, Catholic Sacramental and Ascetical Theology
Part Two V, Catholic Moral Theology
Part Three I, Become Who You Are–Living the Nuptial Mystery:
The Married Priesthood
Part Three II, Epilogue: The View from Within
Appendix 1, Definitions
Appendix 2, On Philosophical Reflection
Appendix 3, On Theological Reflection
Appendix 4, Poetic Language of Catholic Spirituality
A Bibliographical Note
PREFACE
This is a story of Christian marriage and family life and the Catholic priesthood. In the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church priests have been required to be celibate for at least the last one thousand years. This is a discipline of the Church and not a doctrine. The Second Vatican Council affirmed celibacy as a discipline for priesthood in the Latin Rite. On the other hand, the various Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church follow the same discipline as the Orthodox Churches of the East. In these Eastern Rites, a man may be married before ordination, but a celibate priest may not marry, and Bishops are chosen from the ranks of celibate priests. The Second Vatican Council affirmed these disciplines for the Eastern Rites.
Because celibacy in the Latin Rite is a discipline and not a doctrine and because there are Eastern Rite Catholic priests who were married before ordination, in 1980 Pope St. John Paul II placed an indult in Canon Law that allows former priests in the Anglican Communion of Churches (which includes the Episcopal Church U.S.A. in the United States) who are Confirmed in the Catholic Church to be considered for ordination as Catholic priests in the Latin Rite on a case-by-case basis even though they are married men with children. The indult is called the “Pastoral Provision.” This was expanded by Pope Benedict XVI to allow the establishment of Anglican Ordinariates in which individual Anglican priests and Anglican parishes can become a part of the Catholic Church. Moreover, Pope Benedict XVI also made provision for clergy who entered the Catholic Church from other Protestant Denominations to be considered for ordination on a case-by-case basis.
I am a former Episcopal priest who was ordained a Catholic priest in the Diocese of San Angelo (Texas) on January 28, 2009, which was the date of our 47th wedding anniversary. Thus, my ordination brought together in a special way my marriage and my ordination. In other words, the two Sacraments were united not only in my person but also in the person of my wife, Sandie, who was invited to join Bishop Michael Pfeifer, OMI, and me in the sanctuary so he could bless our marriage as part of the Ordination Rite. Moreover, at the beginning of the Rite, our daughter, Amy, and our granddaughter, Clare, were asked to give the consent of the family to my ordination. Amy was the first of our family to become Catholic, and, when I talked with my family about entering the Pastoral Provision process, she said, “I believe I have some responsibility for this.”
In the story that follows, I trace my spiritual pilgrimage from my Methodist days through my Anglican days to the Catholic Church and the Catholic priesthood. I call attention to those parts of the Methodist and Anglican Traditions that prepare a person for the step into the fullness of truth in the Catholic Church. This story is as much about the spiritual pilgrimage of my wife, Sandie, our children, Jon and Amy, our grandchildren, Katherine, Daniel, and Clare, our children-in-law, Janna and Rob, and our grandson-in-law Michael as it is mine. Special attention is given to the truth taught by the Catholic Church about marriage and family life and to the Sacraments of Matrimony and Ordination to the Priesthood. Furthermore, because the Sacraments of Matrimony and Holy Orders are grounded in Trinitarian theology and Christology, these doctrines must be included in this story.
A special word should be said about the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the small Protestant denomination that sponsors Memphis Theological Seminary where I taught Church History, Historical Theology, and Spiritual Theology for thirty-two years and where Sandie held a variety of staff positions. The Board of Trustees and Administration of the Seminary were very supportive of us as we made the move from Methodist to Anglican to Catholic. So, even though we were never members of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, this Christian Communion also prepared us to enter the Catholic Church.
INTRODUCTION
But I am also aware that learning is very often a question of whether someone has his soul in order, whether he can be attracted by “what is.” Great things will not be seen by those whose souls are not ordered. I did not say this first. Aristotle did. But I do not mind repeating it as if I were the first to discover it. Indeed, when we are taught something, when we finally see “the truth of things,” to use Pieper’s great expression, we do “discover” it. It is now we who see.
—–James V. Schall, SJ 1
“I want you to find out what spiritual formation is and teach the rest of us about it.” This was the charge given to me by Dr. William T. Ingram, Jr., President of Memphis Theological Seminary, in the fall 1974. When I asked Dr. Ingram why he was giving me this assignment, he replied that our accrediting agency, the American Association of Theological Schools, now the ATS, was beginning to ask its member schools what they were doing about spiritual formation. Memphis Theological is the Seminary of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, a small Protestant denomination with headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee; we had recently received our full accreditation and were eager to please the Association. I was the only United Methodist on the faculty and was the junior faculty member having served on the faculty for only one year. When I asked why the Association was becoming interested in spiritual formation, he said this interest was due to Roman Catholic seminaries applying for membership in the Association as a result of the emphasis on ecumenism by the Second Vatican Council. Once they were members, they could influence accrediting standards, and spiritual formation was an essential aspect of education in Roman Catholic seminaries. Dr. Ingram concluded our conversation by saying he thought spiritual formation was going on all the time in our seminary community but we did not see it clearly: “It’s like taking a picture with a camera that’s out of focus.”
It is important to understand that Dr. Ingram asked me to find out what Christian spiritual formation is. In other words, he assumed there is a reality called “spiritual formation,” and my task was to help us know what it is. I was not to create a definition of it based on my own private experience. This assignment set me on a quest that has lasted from that fall day in 1974 to the present.
When I began my study of spiritual formation, I could not have foreseen that it would lead me to a study of spiritual theology and from The United Methodist Church through the Episcopal Church to the Roman Catholic Church and to the Catholic priesthood. I had no idea that it would cast light on my past life to reveal the call of the Catholic Church that had always been there. I learned that spiritual formation is always personal but never private. For a Christian to be formed in Christ, that formation must take place in a community. I am aware of the Christian hermits and hermitesses who appear from time to time in the history of the Church; however, even they were related to the Church or we would know nothing of them.
Along with the Church communities that have been influential in my spiritual formation, I must emphasize the importance of my family. My parents, sister, and grandparents, my wife and her family, our children, children-in-law, and grandchildren form the most basic of all Christian communities, the ecclesia domestica, the domestic Church, the Church in the home. 2 As I have learned, the Christian family is the foundation of all Christian communities, and the Catholic Church herself is the family commissioned to incarnate all human cultures with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
A word needs to be said about the organization of this book. Part I is a brief spiritual autobiography narrated in chronological fashion. It contains three chapters. The first chapter treats my spiritual formation as a Methodist, the second, my spiritual formation as an Anglican, and the third, the beginning of my intentional spiritual formation as a Catholic. Part II is a synopsis of what I learned about spiritual formation and spiritual theology following the commission by Dr. Ingram. After a chapter on theosis and a chapter on foundational theology there follow three chapters on mystical, ascetical, and moral theology. Mystical and ascetical theology mediate foundational theology to us and lead to moral theology just as in philosophy metaphysics mediated through epistemology leads to ethics. Part III is about the journey my wife and I made into ministry in the Catholic Church.
Although Part I is a chronological account of my spiritual formation, in Parts II and III I make reference to some of those events in my life as they influenced my developing understanding of spiritual formation and spiritual theology. The references to these events in Parts II and III do not appear in chronological order. Memory is not captive to chronological time, which is one indication that eternity is always impinging on chronos time to make it kairos time.
Scripture references are taken from the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition unless otherwise noted.
1 James V. Schall, SJ, The Life of the Mind: On the Joys and Travails of Thinking (Wilmington, Del.: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006), 164-165.
2 See Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1655-1658,1666,2204,2205,2221-2233; Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church in the Modern World), #11; Familliaris Consortio (Apostolic Exhortation of Pope John Paul II, The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World), #21. Also see St. John Chrysostom, Homily 20 on Ephesians; St. Augustine, Sermon 94 (sometimes numbered Sermon 44), On Selected Lessons on the New Testament.
PART ONE
METHODIST FORMATION
From hence it manifestly appears, what is the nature of the new birth. It is that great change which God works in the soul when He brings it into life; when He raises it from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. It is the change wrought in the whole soul by the almighty Spirit of God when it is ‘created anew in Christ Jesus’; when it is renewed after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness’…. – —–John Wesley 1
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to thine.
Adam’s likeness. Lord, efface,
Stamp thine image in its place,
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love!
Let us thee, though lost, regain,
Thee the Life, the inner Man;
O! to all thyself impart,
Formed in each believing heart.
—–Charles Wesley 2
My sister, Ann, and I were seated on a piano bench in the living room of our home on Maroneal Street in Houston, Texas. It was May 1944; I was five years old, and Ann was almost three. I watched my mother bring in a silver bowl that I had seen filled with bread at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. This time it was filled with water.
A tall man with a great thatch of white hair, dressed in a dark suit, stood next to me. Gathered in the room were my mother and father; my Grandmother Knickerbocker; my Grandfather and Grandmother McClung; and my Aunt Ruth, my father’s younger sister, and her husband, my Uncle Ray Davis. The tall man standing next to me was my great uncle, the Rev. Dr. Hubert D. Knickerbocker, the younger brother of my Grandfather Knickerbocker, who had died four years before I was born. Both my grandfather and Uncle Hubert were ordained ministers in the Methodist Episcopal Church (South). Uncle Hubert was retired and living in Dallas, Texas. He had taken the train to Houston at the request of my Grandmother Knickerbocker to baptize my sister and me.
I am thankful that my grandmother insisted that my sister and I be baptized even though we did not attend church regularly. We were nominal Methodists, and after our baptisms we began to attend Sunday School at St. Luke Methodist Church. I don’t remember ever going to an actual worship service, but I remember a little about the Sunday School we attended. My mother was one of the volunteers who kept the nursery during Sunday School. Mrs. Mills was the Sunday School Superintendent and led the opening assembly before we went to our classes. I remember learning to sing “Jesus Loves Me” at those assemblies. Later, I remember my father dropping off my sister and me at the door of the Sunday School building and picking us up when Sunday School was over.
When I was nine years old, I attended “Membership Training Class.” The only class session I remember was about church history taught by Dr. Durwood Fleming, the Pastor of St. Luke. Dr. Fleming drew on the blackboard a picture of a tree trunk, and part of the way up the trunk were branches coming out on both sides. The trunk, he said, was the Catholic Church and the branches were the various Protestant denominations. This impressed on me the fact that the Catholic Church was larger than all the Protestant denominations, and the trunk had been there before the branches. At the end of the Membership Training Class each student was given a Bible. I still have my Bible inscribed: “Presented to Wally Knickerbocker, Houston, 1948.”
Not long after I was presented this Bible, I turned to it during a troubling time in my life. I was in the fifth grade, and I was having difficulty in relationships with my peers at school. I was always the quiet, shy boy who did not mix well with others. One night I decided to begin reading my Bible, thinking that it would perhaps help me in my troubles. I began reading the Gospel of Matthew. A few nights after I started doing this, I remember getting sleepy, turning on my side, closing the Bible, and saying to myself, “What can I do but trust God?” At that moment I felt something come into me from outside of me and plunge down into the very depths of my being. Although I had been to the Membership Training Class, I did not remember anything being taught about the Holy Spirit or about the experience of being “born again.” I did not say anything to my parents about this experience. Once or twice on previous occasions I had asked my parents about what I call “ultimate questions,” questions about meaning in life. They always replied, “You’re too young to think about those things.” But I did think about them, and I always have. In retrospect, I know they did not know the answers to the questions I was asking, and the only thing they could say was that I was too young to ask the questions. Consequently, I did not talk with anyone about the experience I had while reading the Bible that night. For a few days I knew a kind of peace and contentment I had never known before. Then I began to feel this presence gradually withdraw from me. By that time I did not want it to leave, and I begged it to stay, but it did not. Nevertheless, the memory of that experience is vivid, even to this day, and I knew from that time on that I would someday need to come to an understanding of it. I now believe that the experience of this presence leaving me was the Holy Spirit leading me outside of myself. I also believe this experience was the personal encounter with the Holy Spirit Who had entered my life in a saving way during my Baptism.
The memory of this encounter I had while reading the Bible was present through all the years of Bible study in college, seminary, and graduate school and the years I taught at Memphis Theological Seminary. I knew with certainty the Bible is a means through which the Holy Spirit comes to us, and this truth saw me through all the vagaries of the various forms of higher criticism of the Bible that are prevalent in Protestant education. Also, when I began to be exposed to the Bible in the liturgy of both the Episcopal Church and the Catholic Church, I knew that the Holy Spirit comes through the liturgy which itself is grounded in Scripture.
As a result of that Membership Training Class and the experience I had reading the Bible, I began thinking about my Grandfather Knickerbocker who had been a Methodist minister. He was not spoken of often, but when he was mentioned it was always in the most respectful terms. I remember lying awake at night thinking about him. I said to myself, “A person would need to be pretty sure about some things before becoming a minister.” Later, I was to learn that my grandfather was not always sure about the truth of the Christian faith. In his early years as a Methodist minister he had served large churches. He was studying the higher criticism of the Bible and reading the works of various post-Enlightenment thinkers from Germany, and his sermons reflected this. For example, he denied the veracity of the Virgin Birth. Consequently, my grandfather was accused of heresy and tried before the Judicial Council of the Methodist Episcopal Church (South). He was acquitted by a vote of five to four, but he did not consider that a vote of confidence. He left the Methodist Church and the ministry for fifteen years. Later, he returned to the ministry in the Methodist Church and served in Marlin, Austin, and Texarkana, Texas. None of this was known to me when I was a young boy thinking about him as a minister. Now, after learning more about him, reading several of his sermons and poems, and looking at books that he read with his pencil markings in the books, I regret that he was never exposed to the richness of the Catholic Church and its philosophy and theology. However, he lived in a time when there was prejudice against Catholics among many Protestants.
Through my years in junior high school, my parents continued to take my sister and me to Sunday School. We had two teachers that I remember. One was a physician who read to us from Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. The other was a young lawyer, Bob Abraham. My memory of him comes from one class that made an impression on me. The lesson for the day was about great people in the world. As an exercise, we were asked to name the greatest people in the world today. We knew something about the political, military, and economic leaders of the time, probably because this was on the minds of so many people during what was then the post-World War II period. After we had named various people, Bob Abraham asked us to name the people in our lives with whom we interacted every day. After we had done that, he said that these people who were in our lives every day were the greatest people we could know. This reinforced all that I was receiving from my home life about the importance of family and friends. In retrospect, I think this is a significant part of my Methodist spiritual formation, because Methodists have always believed that the seemingly insignificant life, in a worldly sense, could be a life lived in holiness of heart, mind, words, and actions.
In elementary, junior high, and high school, I continued to be a shy, introverted person with few friends, although I did have a girlfriend for a few months when I was sixteen. I thought I was a disappointment to my parents who lived an upwardly mobile lifestyle. My father was an investment banker, and my mother was a stay-at-home socially active mom. They were members of the Houston Country Club, and, even though we lived in a middle-income home, my sister later remarked that because of the country club membership she always felt “socially secure.” When she made this remark years later, I thought to myself that I had never felt “socially secure” in my growing-up years.
Even so, my dad and mom gave my sister and me some wonderful gifts in our family life. The most important one was the gift of their good marriage. We never doubted their love for and faithfulness to each other and to our family. While my father did not have the personal commitment to Christ that his mother had, he had a staunch commitment to a rigorous ethical life. I remember him saying on more than one occasion, “There is no degree to honesty.”
Another gift from my parents was a lack of racial or ethnic prejudice, and, although his parents were prejudiced against Catholics, my father did not share this prejudice. For my father, the important thing about any man was whether he worked and took care of his family. Both my father and mother had serious health problems when my sister and I were in elementary school. My father had contracted amoebic dysentery, and it took several years and a trip to the Mayo Clinic for him to be cured. My mother had contracted undulant fever from milk that had not been properly pasteurized. This was a very debilitating disease and kept her in bed or very lethargic for several years. As a consequence, my parents employed domestic servants, including a maid and a yardman. Mr. and Mrs. (Marshall and Mattie) Brown became almost a part of the family. They were the first Black people I knew, and one of their sons, Bubba, played softball with us in the summer while his father was mowing yards in the neighborhood.
My father spent some of his growing-up years in Marlin, Texas. As the son of a Methodist minister, his family was of very modest means. Some of his playmates were the Mexican children in the area, and, as an adult, my father did not exhibit the prejudice of some Anglos toward Hispanics. In fact, he picked up some Spanish from his playmates and used it as an adult when he talked with the Mexican workers on a ranch he owned in south Texas.
When I was in high school and college and met some of my parents’ friends, usually through the Houston Country Club, I remember a Catholic family who was part of their social circle. My father would speak with approval about Mr. Gutherie’s membership in the Knights of Columbus, and their two daughters were also part of my wider social world. These were the only Catholics I knew.
During two of the summers I was in high school, I worked on the ranch owned by my father, grandfather, and uncle in south Texas and on a road construction crew in Harris County. Working on the road construction crew was especially good for me. It allowed me to associate with working-class Blacks, Mexicans (some illegal), and Anglos. My father helped me find this job, and, because of this summer job, I came to share his respect for the man who works with his hands. I enjoyed being out of the upper-middle class world, an experience I would later enjoy in the Army. When I was working on the road construction crew, I came home one evening to learn that my Grandmother Knickerbocker, Memama, had died. She had been a sweet, holy, devoutly Methodist influence in my life. She had been in a nursing home about two years, and every week-day on his way home from work my father would visit her. This is just one example of the way my father took care of the members of his family. In fact, he provided financial support from time to time for his father, mother, and one of his brothers, and care-giving for one of his sisters. After his sister, Ruth, died, I asked my dad if he ever resented the fact that he was the one family member who took care of everyone. He said that if he dwelled on it he supposed that he could have resented it, so he chose not to think about it. I have always regarded this as the perspective of a mentally healthy person. His emphasis on taking care of family has influenced me all my life.
At the beginning of our senior year in high school, each student was required to meet with the school guidance counselor, Miss Hennis, to talk about plans after graduation. Lamar High School was one of the largest high schools in the Houston area with about 2,500 students. I told the counselor that I wanted to attend a small college as far away from home as possible. My plan was to change completely my approach to life and try to make my parents proud of me. I applied to six colleges and universities and was accepted at only one, Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, an all-male liberal arts school with about a thousand students. I matriculated at W&L in September 1956.
During my four years at W&L I tried to carry out my plan. I joined a fraternity and made friends in a way I had never done before. W&L did not offer athletic scholarships and students were encouraged to participate in intercollegiate sports. I am no athlete, but for the first three years I played soccer, a sport I knew little about when I came to Lexington. I never was a starting player, but playing a sport and riding on the team bus to away games was a new experience for me. In my senior year at W&L, I decided not to play soccer but to learn how to box. There was no boxing team, but a first-year law student, Ray Robrecht, who boxed in matches in Roanoke and Lynchburg every year, needed sparing partners. I became one of them.
While at W&L I decided to major in economics. I thought this was an appropriate major since my father was an investment banker, and the expectation was that I might choose to go into business with him. However, the study of economics did not interest me, so instead of taking a B.S. degree, I took a B.A. degree in economics, which allowed me to take my electives in history, religion, and philosophy, subjects that really interested me. I managed to take six history courses, three religion courses, one two-semester philosophy course, and one course in classics. To this day I remember little of what I studied in economics, but what I studied in history, religion, philosophy, and classics has had a lasting impact on my life.
On three occasions I had conversations with Methodist ministers about my future, including the possibility of ordained ministry. One was Dr. Fleming who was still at St. Luke in Houston; one was Dr. Hassel who was at the Methodist Church in Lexington; and one was Rev. Weir, who was the director of the Methodist Student Center at W&L. I was active in the Methodist Student Center and the University Christian Association of which I was president my senior year.
My summer vacations were spent working. One summer I worked for a housing construction company that was building homes in the Westbury subdivision in Harris County. Another summer I worked in my father’s investment banking firm. After my junior year I spent the summer at ROTC summer camp.
During my four college years, I had two girlfriends, one at home during my junior year and one during my senior year from one of the women’s colleges in Virginia, which was about forty miles from Lexington. We enjoyed each other’s company, but each of these relationships ended after a few months.
Universal Military Training was the law of the land when I was a student at Washington and Lee (1956-60), so I enrolled in the ROTC program. We were a small unit so we had a general military science program, i.e., we did not have branch-specific components such as infantry, armor, or artillery. Consequently, when I attended the required six-week summer camp at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, between my junior and senior years, it was basically an infantry camp but with orientations in other Army branches, particularly the combat branches of armor and artillery. At the beginning of our senior year, each graduating cadet had a personal conversation with Major Roxberry, the Professor of Military Science and Tactics, to express his preferences with regard to his service after graduation. The requests involved three preferences: (1) which branch of the army he preferred (infantry, armor, artillery, signal corps, chemical corps, quartermaster, and transportation were the choices at that time), (2) where he desired to be stationed, and (3) the choice of either (a) two years active duty, three years ready reserve, and one-year standby reserve or (b) six months active duty and seven and a half years of ready reserve. My first two choices were infantry and armor, followed by the non-combat branches, with artillery as last; Korea as a duty station; and two years active duty. Major Roxberry said that in his recommendations for me he would put artillery as third. When we received our assignments in the spring semester, to my surprise I was assigned to Air Defense Artillery, Ft. Bliss, Texas, for two years of active duty. In retrospect, I can say without a doubt that this assignment was the Providence of God, as I will make clear in what follows.
The morning before graduation, in June 1960, I was commissioned along with about thirty others as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. I received orders stipulating that I should report on Friday, September 28, 1960, to Building 777 at Ft. Bliss at 0800 hours. A friend of mine from W&L who was also from Houston, Foxy Benton, was on the same set of orders. We both had cars and drove to El Paso, Texas, arriving on the evening of September 27. The next morning we reported at Ft. Bliss. After signing in, each of us was assigned a BOQ (Bachelor Officer Quarters) room and told to report back to Building 777 at 0800 Monday morning.
On that Monday I began the two-month Officer Basic Course in Air Defense Artillery, concentrating on the Nike Hercules Missile System, which was the standard high-altitude air defense system at that time. At the completion of the course, I was assigned to attend the five-week Hawk Missile School. However, this class did not begin immediately, and the Second Lieutenants who would be in the class received a temporary assignment to the 5th Guided Missile Training Battalion.
At this point I should pause to say that, in retrospect, the Providential Hand of God in my spiritual formation is clearly evident, even in the most mundane things. The morning all of us Lieutenants reported to 5th Battalion we were sitting around waiting for someone to tell us what to do. The Executive Office of the Battalion, Major Dahlquist, came in and asked, “Can any of you guys type?” I was the only one who raised his hand. Major Dahlquist told me to follow him. He led me to an office down the hall with three desks in it. One desk was occupied by a Warrant Officer, one by a Master Sergeant, and one had a typewriter on it with a large stack of papers beside it. The Major told me the papers contained a description of all the Standing Operating Procedures for the 5th Battalion. He said they were very disorganized and that my job was to go through all of them, organize them in a logical order, and retype them. For the next few weeks I worked on this and enjoyed listening to the stories the Warrant Officer and Master Sergeant told about their adventures in the Army, especially during World War II and Korea.
When the Hawk Missile School began, there were about fifty officers in the class. Most of the students were Second Lieutenants, but there were some First Lieutenants, Captains, one Marine Corps Major, and Lt. Col. S.R. Marconi, who was to be the commanding officer of the newly reactivated 8th Missile Battalion, 3rd Artillery Regiment to which I would be assigned. The Hawk System was the new air defense system designed to protect against attacks by low-flying aircraft.
Upon completion of the school, the seventeen of us second lieutenants who were assigned to the 8th Missile Battalion of the 3rd Artillery Regiment were told to report to building 2442, which was to be the headquarters of the Battalion and the headquarters and barracks for Headquarters Battery. The 8th of the 3rd was a Battalion that had been deactivated after World War II but was now reactivated as a Hawk Missile Battalion. The day we reported the building was empty except for a few desks and chairs. We sat around waiting for someone to tell us what to do. After a week or so the Battalion was officially activated. By that time the building was bustling with activity with a few sergeants taking charge of different rooms in the building and other surrounding buildings that were to be the headquarters buildings and barracks for the four firing batteries of the Battalion. The Captains who were to be the battery commanders were arriving as well as the Captains and two Majors who would be on the Battalion Staff.
One morning, as all of us Second Lieutenants were waiting for our assignments, a Sergeant came to the room and said that Lt. Knickerbocker was to report immediately to Lt. Col. Marconi’s office. I don’t recall how I felt at that moment, being singled out among seventeen Second Lieutenants. I walked through the Battalion orderly room, through the Battalion executive officer’s office, which was unoccupied, and into Lt. Col Marconi’s office, stood before his desk, saluted, and said, “Lt. Knickerbocker reporting, sir!” He told me to stand at ease and that he had an assignment for me. He was a friend of Major Dahlquist and had seen me at a desk in an office at 5th Battalion. Since I had “some experience” in Battalion administration, he was assigning me as Assistant Adjutant and Personnel Officer to help organize the Battalion and assign all incoming enlisted personnel, including one hundred fifty recruits just out of basic training, to the various firing batteries and headquarters battery. After the initial organization of the Battalion, I would assist the Battalion Adjutant, Captain Knox, in the administration of the Battalion and be the custodian of all personnel records. He said my office would be the large one at the end of the hall and I would have a Personnel Sergeant, an Assistant Personnel Sergeant, and several clerks to supervise. When I said that the most mundane things were part of God’s providence, I believe that saying to Major Dahlquist that I could type led me to this job in the 8th of the 3rd, which meant that I would have regular office hours Monday through Friday and would not be spending weekdays and weekends in the field training on the Hawk Missile equipment. This meant that I was free in the evenings and weekends, a freedom that was very important because of what happened shortly after beginning my job as Assistant Adjutant and Personnel Officer.
My father’s administrative assistant, Mrs. Dorthea Clark, and her husband, who was a physician, had friends in El Paso. One of their doctor friends had a daughter, Sandra Holcombe, who was a student at Texas Western College there. The Clarks and Holcombs were Methodists. Mrs. Clark gave Sandra Holcombe my name and told her I was stationed at Ft. Bliss. She suggested to me that I give Sandra a phone call and ask her on a date. One Saturday afternoon in February 1961, I called. Sandra was very nice and thanked me for the call, however, she said she had a boyfriend, Mike Behrends. She invited me to join them for Sunday School and worship at Trinity Methodist Church the next morning. I said I would like to do that and gave her my BOQ # so they could pick me up at Ft. Bliss. The next morning they picked me up and took me to Trinity. They were part of the college Sunday School class, but there were some in the class who were not in college but were of that age. I had just had my 22nd birthday in December, so this was my age group. There were about forty young adults in the class and the teachers of the class were a young couple in their thirties, Taylor and Shalmer Nichols. Taylor was a lawyer and Shalmer was a nurse. As I sat in the class I heard the Gospel proclaimed by someone who really believed it. The people in the class were not like any group I had ever known. They were joyful, believing Christians who were my age. After Sunday School we went to the worship service. The Pastor was Dr. Don Schooler, an evangelical Methodist who fervently preached the Gospel. After the service, three of the members of the college class invited me out to lunch and gave me a driving tour of El Paso to see part of the city I had not yet seen. About 3:00 p.m. they took me to my BOQ and invited me to come back that night for evening worship at 7:00 p.m.
Since I had been in El Paso, I had not gone to any church until that day. However, that evening I drove myself downtown to Trinity for the evening worship. As I sat in the congregation, the service began with a number of the college class coming from the undercroft of the Church to enter the choir loft that was behind the pulpit. I recognized some of the people I had met that morning. One girl I had not met was in the front row. She was dressed in a blue sweater and a blue plaid skirt and even from that distance I could see that she had large, beautiful eyes. The choir began by leading us in “To God be the Glory, Great Things He has Done,” the song that began all of Billy Graham’s Crusades. We then sang a number of wonderful Methodist hymns. This was my introduction to Methodist hymnody, which has been very influential in my spiritual formation, especially the hymns of Charles Wesley. Dr. Schooler preached a powerful evangelical sermon. After the service several people from the college class invited me to join the class at the “Afterglow,” a social gathering held every Sunday evening after the service at the home of someone in the area. I drove my car and followed one of the class. When I walked in the front door, Hailey Haynes, one of the guys I had met that morning said, “Knick, here is someone I would like you to meet. This is Sandra Hargraves, and she is looking for a husband.” She was the girl in the blue sweater and blue plaid skirt with the big, beautiful eyes. She later told me she was very perturbed at Hailey for introducing her that way! (As of this writing, we have been married fifty-nine years.)
Sandie grew up in a devout Methodist home. Her family lived in Liberty, Texas in her early years and then moved to El Paso where she attended high school. Their Methodist Churches in Liberty and El Paso were theologically sound and very traditional in terms of liturgy, hymnody, and reverence as well as the beauty of the worship spaces. For her, In terms of worship, it was an easy transition to the Episcopal Church and then to the Catholic Church. As a young teen Sandie gave her life to Christ at a summer church camp. Her Methodist formation in her family, her commitment to Christ in her teen years, a wonderful high-school youth group at Asbury Methodist Church in El Paso, and then the campus Wesley Foundation and college class at Trinity Methodist Church meant that Sandie was deeply formed as a Methodist Christian. Over the years she has been my best spiritual guide, always ahead of me and leading me to a more profound commitment to Christ and the Church.
The Sunday evening we met we danced and became acquainted. I walked her to her car and asked her for a date the following Saturday night, which happened to be February 24th, her twentieth birthday. After that first date, we saw each other almost every day for the remainder of my assignment at Ft. Bliss, about seven months. My job as Assistant Adjutant and Personnel Officer gave me the freedom to court Sandie during those months. During our courtship my commitment to Christ and the Church deepened, and I had another experience of the Holy Spirit in which Sandie was the principal Christ-Bearer for me. She gave me three books to read. They were On Being a Real Person by Harry Emerson Fosdick, Prayer Can Change Your Life by William R. Parker and Elaine St. John, and Abundant Living by E. Stanley Jones, a Methodist writer, who is a wonderful spiritual guide. As was the case with my experience as a ten-year-old, it was the Bible that was the means by which the Lord spoke to me. One evening, as I was driving to Texas Western to meet Sandie, something that St. Paul wrote in Galatians 6:7-8 came to me: “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” Somewhere in my Bible reading I had read those verses, but at that moment it became the Word of God directly to me. It became clear to me that I must sow to the Spirit. I met Sandie’s parents, who lived in Odessa, Texas, and her older brother, Wayne, who worked in El Paso—all faithful Methodist Christians. I also joined Trinity Methodist Church.
One of my friends at Ft. Bliss was another second lieutenant, Owen Lichtenwalner. Owen, from Seattle, Washington, was about a year older than I, was married with children, and was a Catholic. A remark he made about marriage I remember well, and it was influential in my life. Owen and I and a couple of other second lieutenants were having a conversation about marriage (I don’t remember why), and Owen said, “Well, if a young man is serious about a young woman, the question he must ask is: ‘Is she the one I want to be the mother of our children?'” Here was a young Catholic husband and father stating the truth about marriage in one sentence. I have never forgotten this, and have slightly amended the question to be: “Is she the one God wants to be the mother of our children?” I knew I loved Sandie and wanted us to be husband and wife and have a family together.
In April 1961 I proposed to Sandie. That summer I spoke with her father, and he gave his consent. I was scheduled to leave with my Hawk Missile Battalion for Okinawa in September, and I would be stationed there until my active duty time was complete in September 1962. In August I had my pre-embarkation leave, and Sandie went with me to Houston to meet my family. She had some doubts about the seriousness of my intentions because I would be away for a year and I had not given her an engagement ring. We returned to El Paso a few weeks before my departure. I planned to leave my 1959 Chevrolet Biscayne with Sandie when I boarded the train to take us to Oakland, California, where we would leave by troopship for Okinawa. We were required to be at the station in El Paso to board the train by midnight. While Sandie and I were spending our last hours together, I told her I wanted to buy her an engagement ring. I wanted the guys at Texas Western College to know she was “spoken for.” All the jewelry stores were closed, so we went to FedMart, a store for government employees, and I bought Sandie an engagement ring. This was one of the most memorable evenings of my life.
It was hard for us to part that night, but we did so with the assurance that we were to marry as soon as I returned and would write frequently in the meantime. However, on the way to Okinawa, I wrote her a postcard asking her to marry me in January!
When I arrived on Okinawa, I was no longer the Assistant Adjutant and Personnel Officer for our Battalion. Much of the headquarters staff had been transferred to other units at Ft. Bliss, and the First Guided Missile Brigade on Okinawa, which our Battalion was to join, took over much of the administrative duties of the various battalions in the Brigade. Lt. Col. Marconi transferred me to Battery D as the Launcher Platoon Leader. I already knew the officers in the Battery and some of the noncommissioned officers because of my work with all the batteries as Personnel Officer. On the crossing to Okinawa, I became further acquainted with the officers and men of Delta Battery.
We were soon settled into our routine on the island. Two of the Battalion firing batteries, A and B, had fixed sites already constructed and ready for occupation. However, C and D batteries were required to set up on temporary sites. Delta Battery set up its equipment on the west side of the Island on Bolo Point, about fifty yards from the East China Sea on the coral runways of an old Japanese Suicide Plane airstrip.
The men of our battery lived in barracks at Fort Buckner, the Army Post on the island. Officers were quartered in various places. I had a BOQ room at Site Nine, where a firing battery of another Hawk artillery battalion was emplaced. Other lieutenants from my battery lived there as well as those from the battery occupying the site. We all became good friends.
Sandie and I wrote almost every day, and in November she agreed that we would marry in January. Usually, if a soldier brought his family with him to Okinawa, he would be stationed there for three years. There was a strong American presence on the island, with military housing, schools, commissary, several post exchanges, and five officers clubs. If a soldier was not accompanied by his family, the tour was eighteen months. For me, my time there would be one year, since my active duty time would be completed in September 1962. However, some lieutenants who were not planning to make a career of the Army paid for their wives to travel to the island and arranged for their own housing. There were houses built by Okinawans for use by American personnel. Consequently, I arranged to rent one of these houses, and in January 1962, I returned to El Paso, and Sandie and I were married in the chapel of Trinity Methodist Church on January 28, 1962. Dr. Schooler officiated at the service. Our marriage meant that Sandie left Texas Western College at the end of her junior year. We made the commitment that she would complete her college degree as soon as we returned to the States.
We traveled to Okinawa and lived in the rented house from early February 1962, until late August. The last four months I was there, Delta and Charlie Batteries moved to a missile site that had just been completed on Tokashiki, a small island in the East China Sea about twenty miles west of the main island. I had been promoted to First Lieutenant on March 28, 1962, and, shortly after our move, I was transferred to Charlie Battery to become the Executive Officer. I was on the site for three days to a week and then rotated back to the main island for three or four days. While I was away, Sandie stayed alone some nights and other nights stayed with other wives and their small children. When she was alone, she sat up all night reading, with a pistol in her lap, in case “stealy boys” tried to burglarize the house!–a very common occurrence on the island. When I was on the main island, Sandie and I spent our time together, enjoying life as newlyweds, seeing things around the island, being with friends (often for hand-cranked ice cream parties), and eating at the various officers’ clubs. Our Okinawan experiences were the first of many adventures!
One of the reasons we wanted to marry when we did was to share the experience of my military duty and make plans for our future. On the island we attended church at the main military chapel at Sukiran. There were Protestant chaplains who led the Protestant services at the chapel. They were from three denominations: Methodist, Baptist, and Assembly of God. I remember especially the Baptist, Captain Goff, who was a Chaplain in the 503rd Airborne Regimental Combat Team. He was a powerful preacher and would say, from time to time, that those who had heard him teach the required “Character Guidance Classes” during duty hours should realize that what he was allowed to say then was not the full truth of the Gospel. Chaplain Goff usually preached at the Sunday evening service that reminded us of the Sunday evening services at Trinity Methodist in El Paso.
I still had a deep desire to find answers to ultimate questions. Before we left Okinawa, Sandie and I prayerfully made the decision that I would attend seminary and seek ordination as a Methodist minister. The meant that Sandie would delay the completion of her college degree, just one of many sacrifices she has made for our marriage and family. At that time there were twelve Methodist Seminaries, and I applied to three of them. We decided that I would attend the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. As I reflect on this decision, I marvel at the Providence of God at work in my acceptance at Candler and our decision to go there.
Because Sandie was a military dependent who came to the island at our own expense, we made arrangements for her to fly home alone while I either flew on a military aircraft or traveled on a troopship. However, Lt. Col. Marconi, who had granted me leave to return to the States in January for us to marry, again helped us by arranging for Sandie to accompany me as a cabin-class passenger on a civil-service troop ship when we returned to the States. Some of our friends came to see us off on a rainy morning (just ahead of a typhoon), and Lt. Col. Marconi was there as well. I should say also that Lt. Col. Marconi had arranged for me to receive a release from active duty that was two weeks earlier than my scheduled time so that I could be present for the beginning of the fall term at Candler. Lt. Col. and Mrs. Marconi, with whom we had become acquainted, were Catholics, and I can remember standing in front of Lt. Col. Marconi’s desk asking about the possibility of an early release. He was interested in what I was going to do, and, although I was a Methodist, from his Catholic formation he understood the idea of a “vocation,” and said that he thought I had been considering this calling for a long time.
After nineteen days at sea, with stops at Sasebo and Yokohama, Japan, and Inchon, Korea, we arrived at Oakland, California, where I was released from active duty, September 4, 1962. When we arrived in the States, we learned that my Grandmother McClung had suffered a stroke while we were at sea. My “Mommo” insisted that we have her car since she would not need it again. We visited family and friends along the way and arrived in Atlanta in time to register for the fall term at Candler School of Theology, Emory University. We rented an attic apartment in the home of Mr. and Mrs. William Dobson, just a few blocks from the Emory campus.
Sandie took a job on campus as the secretary to Dr. Sam Laird, the Director of Religious Life in the undergraduate school. After the first year she moved to the University Personnel Department and was there only a few months before she moved to the Office of the President of the University and became the number two secretary there. When I registered, I was assigned as a faculty adviser Prof. John Lawson, a British Methodist Minister, who was a Patristic scholar and a scholar of the Wesley brothers, who were the founders of the Methodist movement. He had published books on John and Charles Wesley, the Apostolic Fathers, and St. Irenaeus. Methodism was a part of the Church of England until the American Revolution created circumstances that caused John Wesley to establish a separate denomination. Charles Wesley never agreed with what his brother did to separate Methodism from the Church of England. Prof. Lawson, as a scholar and disciple of the Wesleys, had a great appreciation for the Anglican tradition and was himself confirmed in the Episcopal Church in this country. Again, it was providential that Prof. Lawson was assigned as my adviser, because his deep commitment to the reunion of Methodism with Anglicanism, his scholarship, and his Methodist/Anglican piety were to influence Sandie and me profoundly.
At that time it was required for students at Candler to declare an academic major, and I chose Biblical Theology, even though my adviser was a Professor of Church History. He encouraged me in this, and I was able to take a number of courses in Church History as well. The curriculum for the Bachelor of Divinity degree (later renamed the Master of Divinity) required three years of course work, including Bible, Church History and Historical Theology, Systematic Theology, Ethics, Comparative Religion, Christian Education, Pastoral Care, Homiletics, and Worship. There was no requirement to study philosophy, and what I learned in philosophy at Washington and Lee was dormant and remained dormant all through my graduate study. In my undergraduate studies I had been an average student, but now that I was studying something in which I had a great interest, I became a superior student.
Because Sandie and I were members of Trinity Methodist Church in El Paso, my candidacy for ordination was in the New Mexico Conference. In Methodism the Annual Conference is similar to a diocese in the Episcopal and Catholic Churches. The New Mexico Conference covered the entire state of New Mexico and a large part of west Texas.
When we moved to Atlanta, I was required by the Army to join a reserve unit to fulfill my three-year obligation in the Ready Reserve. After we were settled, I went to the IX Corps Headquarters in Atlanta to report and learn what my reserve assignment would be. Usually, the requirement was to train one weekend a month with a unit in which you would have a specific responsibility. I wanted an assignment, because the Army paid you for the duty you performed, and we needed the money. I learned that there were no pay slots available, and I should attach myself to a unit and train one weekend a month without pay. As a consequence, I went to see the Corps Chaplain. After explaining my situation to him, he suggested I transfer from the Air Defense Artillery to the Staff Specialist Corps, which was for students being educated as clergy to prepare themselves for duty as chaplains in the Army. In this way, my seminary education would count as my reserve time. He indicated this would be an unusual arrangement since I had already served my active duty time. In any case, he was able to do this for me, which freed me to look for work in a church on the weekend. In the Ready Reserve you are required to attend summer camp for two weeks each summer at a post near you. I worked full-time in churches each of the next two summers, so this was difficult for me to do. The first summer I was told that I was excused from summer camp because I had left active duty less than a year before. The second summer I was told I could choose to go to summer camp if I wanted to do so, but it was not required. I chose not to go. The third summer, I was to graduate from Candler in June and move to El Paso, Texas. I was told I was required to go to summer camp. Again, the Corps Chaplain intervened by informing those in charge that I was moving locations, and it would be inconvenient for me to go to summer camp. So, I was told again I did not need to go. In September 1965 my three years in the Ready Reserve were completed, and I was moved to the Standby Reserve, never having gone to a reserve meeting or summer camp!
As soon as we settled into our apartment in Atlanta in September 1962, I went to the Candler placement office to try to find a weekend job in a Methodist church. As a result, I became a Sunday School teacher for the Adult Sunday School Class at Briarcliff Methodist Church, a job I held for the first two years of school. I not only taught but also preached for the first time while at Briarcliff. The second year I also became the Youth Director and worked with the teenagers on Sunday evening. In my third year of school, I worked on weekends at First Methodist Church in Roswell, Georgia, as the Youth Director and assisted in the Sunday morning worship. In both of these churches we made good friends, and I can look on my bookshelf now and see the Bible Concordance that the Adult Sunday School Class at Briarcliff gave to me.
My classes at Candler were both interesting and challenging, and I worked hard at my studies. I was blessed to have some good scholars as my professors. They were all Protestants, most of them Methodists, with the exception of a Jewish scholar who taught Biblical archaeology. Some of these Protestant scholars I now regard as heterodox, but there were also those whose Christian faith was orthodox and whose lives were lived out of their profound commitment to Jesus Christ. Two I mention especially were Claude Thompson and John Lawson, my adviser. Dr. Thompson was as ordered a thinker as I have encountered. His field was systematic theology, which suited him well. His doctoral work had been on the theology of John Wesley, and he had studied at Oxford. He was deeply influenced by the Methodist writer, E. Stanley Jones, who came to campus to speak on one occasion. (Sandie had given me a book by Dr. Jones when we were courting.) Dr. Thompson died during my later time as a Ph.D. student at Emory, and I will always remember my last conversation with him. I was just completing my degree, and he had been on my doctoral committee. He knew I was looking for a teaching job, and, lying on his death bed, all he was interested in was me and my job search.
John Lawson’s impression on Sandie and me was life-changing. In my first year at Candler, the advisees of each professor were required to meet as a group one hour a week with him and pursue together a study of our choice that would serve as a way to integrate what we were learning in our various classes. Most students met in the homes of their advisers. However, Prof. Lawson’s wife, Rosalind, was in ill health and had remained in England during the time he spent in America. He was able to spend about five months a year in England and had bachelor quarters in Atlanta. Consequently, his group of advisees met in one of the smaller classrooms in Bishops Hall. Prof. Lawson suggested that for the basis of our study together we read and discuss W.E. Sangster’s The Approach to Preaching. If we finished that, we could read two other books by Sangster: The Craft of the Sermon and The Power of Preaching. Sangster had been a prominent Methodist minister and scholar in the British Methodist Church. We never read the last two as a group, but I read all three, and his book on the craft of the sermon influenced me more than any other book about how to construct a sermon. In the first meeting in that classroom in Bishops Hall, after we had talked for about an hour, Prof. Lawson said that we should close our meeting with prayer. At this point, he pulled back the chair from his desk and kneeled down behind the desk to lead us in prayer. That act made a profound impression on me, for here was a scholar who had published several books and a number of articles kneeling to lead us in prayer.
During the three years I studied at Candler, Prof. Lawson also taught an evening course on the history of the Church for the wives of seminary students. Sandie’s faith was broadened and deepened through knowledge of the continuity of the Church through the ages, the Church of which she was a part. She had been formed as a devout Methodist and had committed her life to Christ during her early teen years. Her pious Methodist upbringing was a strong foundation for her life through high school and college. She was committed to an intentionally Christian marriage and family life.
Sandie and I prayed our way through work and school, and in the fall of my third year we learned that Sandie was pregnant with our first child. By that time, we had decided that a teaching ministry was what I should pursue, but that would require a Ph.D. degree. In the meantime, I was available for a Methodist appointment in the New Mexico Conference beginning in June 1965.
Emory was on the Quarter System, which meant there were three quarters in the nine-month school year instead of two semesters. During registration for each quarter, I worked at the bursar’s table figuring students’ tuition and informing them of the cost for that quarter. This also meant that I could be one of the first to register. As I stood in line to register for the spring quarter of my last year, I was talking with Lon Chesnutt, the Methodist Campus Minister at Emory whom I had met on another occasion. He was allowed to take one course a semester at no charge. Lon said to me, “Knick, I know you are returning to the New Mexico Conference. My brother, Clyde, is the Methodist Pastor at the First Methodist Church in Alpine, Texas, and he is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Methodist Student Center (Wesley Foundation) at Sul Ross State College. They are looking for a new Director of the Center. A principal job is teaching Bible at Sul Ross under the Texas Bible Chair Program. Would you be interested in that appointment?” I said yes, knowing that Sandie could finish her teaching degree at Sul Ross while I was teaching Bible courses. My District Superintendent in the New Mexico Conference was Joe Scrimshire, Superintendent for the El Paso District. As my Superintendent, he influenced the Bishop about my pastoral appointment. I thought it best to write Dr. Scrimshire and tell him about my conversation with Lon Chestnutt. Dr. Scrimshire informed me that the Wesley Foundation at Texas Western College needed a new Director, and he would rather have me take that appointment. Again, I marveled at God’s Providence. Sandie could finish her degree at the college she had previously attended, I could teach Bible at the college level, and we could return to El Paso, a place that has such wonderful memories for us. I enthusiastically replied to Dr. Scrimshire that I would like to be appointed to the Wesley Foundation at Texas Western.
Sandie’s due date for the birth of our child was the first week in July. We needed to be in El Paso as early in June as possible. Consequently, I obtained permission to miss the graduation exercises. Since it was better for Sandie to fly to Texas rather than drive, I put her on an airplane to fly to Odessa, Texas, where her parents lived, 280 miles east of El Paso. I drove to Odessa, picked up Sandie, and we arrived in El Paso the second week of June 1965. Her parents came to El Paso on the weekend to help us get settled in the parsonage provided for us by the Wesley Foundation. On June 12th, while her parents were taking a nap in the guest bedroom, Sandie went into labor. We barely made it to Providence Hospital. We arrived at the hospital about 5:30 p.m., and our son, Jon, was born at 6:07. He came almost three weeks early, and he has been on the move ever since! Jon’s middle name is “McClung,” the surname of my step-grandfather, with whom I was very close growing up—the only grandfather I knew. “Poppo,” as my sister and I called him, was present for Jon’s baptism at Trinity Methodist Church on August 19, 1965. In later years my sister and I have thanked God for Poppo, who always gave us that unconditional love that we all need.
In El Paso, Sandie began to renew friendships with people with whom she had attended high school and college, and we became friends with couples at Trinity Methodist Church and Methodist clergy and their wives. Sandie completed her college degree and requirements for her permanent Texas Teacher Certification
(K-6).
As the Director of the Wesley Foundation and the Methodist teacher in the college Bible Chair Program, I was very busy working with our student organization and teaching courses in Bible and Comparative Religion. I taught “Introduction to the Old Testament,” “Introduction to the New Testament,” “The Life and Teaching of Jesus,” and “Comparative Religion.” When I was in the Army, I was required to teach classes on various subjects regarding Air Defense, and I had discovered I had a gift for classroom teaching, which included the ability to think on my feet. When you teach a course you really learn the subject you are teaching. The three years I spent at Texas Western were wonderfully fruitful years, giving me confidence in my teaching ability and greatly improving my knowledge of the Bible and the major religions of the world.
Besides enjoying friendships with couples at Trinity and other Methodist ministers and their wives, Sandie and I also had friends among the Texas Western Faculty and ministers from other denominations. One of the most stimulating friendships was with Father Andrew Burke, the Catholic Chaplain at Texas Western. Father Andy had accompanied his bishop to the meetings of the Second Vatican Council, which concluded in December 1965. Father Andy and I studied the Greek New Testament together for a short period of time. I was impressed by the fact that he could read the Greek New Testament as fast as I could read a newspaper. Also, he would bring his Latin commentaries with him, and he could read Latin the same way. I learned he was the one who helped his Bishop understand the Latin documents and the spoken Latin at the Second Vatican Council.
In the neighborhood of our Methodist parsonage was a Catholic family with whom we became friends. One result of our friendship was that Joe and Irma invited us to attend a home Mass one evening. There were several other people there. The priest was Father Dismas Percel. Before he began the Mass, he said that, although those of us who were Protestants would not be able to receive Communion, this home Mass was celebrated especially for us. Our friendship with Fr. Burke, our knowledge of the Second Vatican Council, and this home Mass were giving us a favorable impression of the Catholic Church.
We enjoyed the three years we spent in El Paso, with particular delight in watching Jon grow into a very lively, adventurous, fun-loving little boy who especially liked kicking balls. After Sandie had received her degree, we began thinking about my pursuit of a Ph.D. degree so that I could teach full-time in higher education. Both of us had a keen sense of doing God’s will by pursuing a Ph.D. degree. In fact, Sandie was so sure that I would pursue a Ph.D. degree that, before we left Atlanta, she bought me a black and white tweed sport coat with leather elbow patches that had a label on the inside pocket: “Ph.D.” While in El Paso I studied German in preparation for graduate school and passed the test before we left.
Because of the influence of Dr. Sprunt and Dr. Myers at Washington and Lee, I wanted to prepare to teach in undergraduate school. To do this I decided to apply for admission to a Ph.D. program in Systematic Theology. I saw Systematic Theology at the center of the theological disciplines, with Biblical Theology and Church History (Historical Theology) on one side and Ethics (Moral Theology) and Pastoral Theology on the other. I reasoned that a degree in Systematic Theology would prepare me to teach a number of different courses in undergraduate school including Bible, History, Theology, Philosophy, and Comparative Religion. In applications for a Ph.D. degree, it was necessary to indicate what your specific area of study would be in the context of your field. I indicated that, as a Methodist, I wanted to study the theology of John Wesley in the context of Systematic Theology. At that time “Wesley Studies” was not a featured area of study in many graduate schools. I knew of two graduate schools where this would be possible: Emory University and Southern Methodist University. At both of these schools there were professors who were known as Wesley scholars. I was not accepted at S.M.U. The reason given was that I had not studied enough philosophy in my undergraduate program, and philosophy was necessary for a degree in Systematic Theology. I received a letter from Dr. Theodore Runyon, Professor of Systematic Theology at Emory. He said he did not think I would be accepted in the Systematic Theology Department, and, based on what he knew of my work at Candler School of Theology, he suggested I request my application be transferred to the New Testament Department or the Church History (Historical Theology) Department. I did not consider a Ph.D. in New Testament to be a viable option for me for two reasons: I did not have the ability in languages to master the five languages required in New Testament studies, and I had lost interest in the higher criticism of the New Testament in all its variations. At about this time Prof. John Lawson, my adviser at Candler, wrote me to say they would be glad to have me in the Church History Department. Dr. Lawson had published several articles and two books in Wesley Studies. So, I transferred my application to the Church History Department, was accepted, and we made plans to move back to Atlanta. This is another example of God’s Providence, for St. John Henry Cardinal Newman said that to be deep into history is to cease to be Protestant.
After we arrived in Atlanta, Sandie began teaching at the half-day Glenn Memorial Methodist Church Pre-School. Jon, three years old, stayed with a neighbor family in the mornings, and I began my graduate seminars. After one quarter I knew I was in the right program and that Church History and Historical Theology were right for me. I did not know how this would affect my job possibilities, but I still thought I was called to teach in undergraduate school.
The first year I was in the program I was a graduate assistant to Dr. Manfred Hoffmann and assisted him in collecting the bibliography for a book he was writing on the theology of Erasmus of Rotterdam. The second year I was awarded a Dempster Graduate Fellowship in College teaching by The United Methodist Church. The third year I received a Cokesbury Award in College Teaching. Both of these helped us finance my degree. Also, I was on the G.I. Bill and received a monthly check all four years I was in graduate school. In June, after I completed the two years of residency for the degree and passed the French proficiency exam, I took my doctoral exams, both written and oral. I passed the exams and began working on my dissertation, the topic of which was “The Doctrine of Authority in the Theology of John Fletcher.” Fletcher was an Anglican priest and a principal theologian in the early Methodist movement.
We had been living in student housing on Andrew Circle and continued there for a third year. However, I also began serving two United Methodist Churches, the First United Methodist Church in Adairsville, Georgia, and Mt. Carmel United Methodist Church, a country Church about seven miles outside of Adairsville. In June 1971, we moved to Adairsville and lived in the Methodist parsonage. Jon went to first grade at the local school.
At the Adairsville and Mr. Carmel Churches we sang those wonderful Methodist hymns. We were especially influenced by the hymns of Charles Wesley. John and Charles Wesley had been students at Oxford University, knew the ancient languages, and were Patristic scholars. The theology of Charles Wesley’s hymns is profound, and, later, when I began studying spiritual formation and theology, I realized that Charles’ hymns express a soteriology of theosis, which is at the heart of Catholic spiritual formation and theology. Our son, Jon, was also greatly influenced by the hymn singing at Adairsville and Mt. Carmel and talks about it to this day.
The most significant event during our time in Adairsville was the birth of our daughter, Amy. She was born on September 14, 1971, in Hamilton Hospital in Dalton, Georgia, about thirty miles north of Adairsville. She is our “Georgia Peach” and has been a great delight and blessing to all of us in our family. Amy was baptized in Durham Chapel at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, on October 21, 1971, by my major professor and our good friend and mentor, Prof. Lawson. Sandie’s parents, who had come from El Paso, and her older brother, Wayne, were present for the sacrament.
Wayne had arrived in Atlanta in 1969 to attend Candler School of Theology at Emory to prepare for ordination as a Methodist minister. Jon and Amy call him “Unk,” and he has been an important part of our lives since his Candler days. He married Dixie Fleharty in August 1973 and served as a United Methodist pastor in Colorado and Texas.
I passed my doctoral exams in June 1970 and began work on my dissertation. Having a dissertation typed was a considerable expense. Consequently, we bought an electric typewriter, and Sandie typed my dissertation. This was a formidable task, and Sandie did it while taking care of our home and two children. The money we would have spent having it typed by someone else was spent on the typewriter, and we then had the typewriter, which proved to be valuable until word processors made it obsolete. I received my Ph.D. in Church History in August 1972. In the last year before my graduation, in addition to the dissertation, Sandie typed about five hundred letters of inquiry for teaching positions at undergraduate schools all over the country. There was no attempt by Emory University to help graduates find employment. From these letters I was invited to one interview. This was for a position in the History Department at Tennessee Wesleyan College in Athens, Tennessee. Sandie and I went for the interview, but I was only a token interviewee. The head of the department had already decided that a friend of his would be hired, but accrediting agencies required an interview process.
Because I did not have a college teaching job, I decided to do some post-graduate work in the History Department at Emory. I had already taken two seminars there during my doctoral studies, and the faculty of the department were welcoming to me. I called a friend of mine, Wade Johnson, who was studying for a Ph.D. in Medieval History and had been a neighbor of ours in student housing, to ask him about seminars in the History Department. Wade and his wife, Cathy, were members of the Church of Christ and were vibrant Christian people. Wade was teaching history part-time at Dekalb Junior College, and he assumed I was calling him to ask about a possible part-time teaching job there. When he returned my call, he said he had found me such a job. Again, the Providence of God directed me to a teaching job in history. For the 1972-73 school year I taught The History of Western Civilization and Humanities B (Renaissance to the Present) at Dekalb College in the evening school and the weekend program. We lived in a rented house in Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.
During that year Jon attended second grade at Westminster Elementary School and began playing soccer for the Westminster Wildcats. I helped coach and even was the referee for one game. Sandie took care of Amy and our household. Two things happened that year that again show the Providence of God. First, in January I was trying to assist a neighbor in getting in her home that she had inadvertently locked when trying to hurry her son off to school, and I had an accident from broken window glass that severely injured my right hand. I had four hours of emergency surgery to repair the damage. Sandie drove me to the hospital, and when I walked into the emergency room at Dekalb General Hospital, Dr. Benjamin Okel, our family physician, was standing there. He took one look at my hand and said I needed a plastic surgeon right away, and that Dr. Roy Madison, an excellent plastic surgeon, was standing a few feet away. After the surgery they kept me overnight in the hospital. The recovery included three months of physical therapy. Thankfully, the homeowner’s insurance of my neighbor paid for all this medical care. Dr. Madison told me that any expense the insurance would not cover, he would write off. In all of this I see the mercy of God at work. Moreover, this experience, along with the inability to find a full-time teaching job, further humbled me. During the year, for the first time since I had finished college, I had to ask my Dad to help me financially. This was an additional humbling experience. After my accident, Sandie and I had to face the fact that I still did not have a full-time teaching position. Consequently, I began to consider serving a Methodist pastorate full-time.
However, in the spring of 1973, Prof. Lawson told me of a letter he had received that had been passed to him by Dr. Mack Stokes, a faculty member at Candler and the Associate Dean. Dr. Jeff Cunningham, a friend of Dr. Stokes, was a retired District Superintendent in the Memphis Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church (since 1968 the new name of the Methodist Church because of a merger with the Evangelical United Brethren). Dr. Cunningham had been teaching classes in Methodist History, Doctrine, and Polity at Memphis Theological Seminary of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The Seminary had enough Methodist graduates in the Memphis Conference to persuade the Seminary to establish a Chair of Methodist Studies, with part of the salary paid by the Conference. The faculty member hired would teach these required Methodist courses as well as Church History. Dr. Cunningham wrote Dr. Stokes to ask if he could recommend a recent Ph.D. graduate for this position. Dr. Stokes gave the letter to Prof. Lawson, and he wrote Dr. Cunningham recommending me for the position. Sandie and I flew to Memphis, and I spent the day in an interview while Sandie visited with Norma Cowell, the wife of Jimmy Cowell, a Methodist minister in the Memphis Conference who had graduated from Candler when I did. The Cowells were our best friends from our seminary days. Again, the staggering Providence of God is evident. I was offered the job, and we moved to Memphis in June 1973.
The mercy of the Providence of God in our lives was underscored by a conversation I had with Dr. Leander Keck, the Associate Dean of the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory. Dr. Thomas Campbell, who was Dean and Professor of New Testament at Memphis Seminary was a friend of Dr. Keck. Dr. Campbell had recently published a book on New Testament theology and asked me to give a copy to Dr. Keck when I returned to Atlanta. I did not know Dr. Keck but went to his office, waited a few minutes, and then was ushered in to see him. I told him about my interview at Memphis Seminary and gave him Dr. Campbell’s book. He thanked me and then asked if I had been offered the job at Memphis Seminary. I said I had and would be moving to Memphis shortly. He immediately took a large stack of files off the top of his filing cabinet, handed them to me, and said, “These are dossiers of all the recent Ph.D. graduates of the Division of Religion Graduate School at Emory. I need your help to find jobs for these men and women.” This astounded me and showed me just how unusual it was to be offered a faculty position, especially one at a theological seminary.
Although I went to Memphis Seminary to teach Methodist Studies and Church History, when I interviewed there was another faculty member, Dick Wells, a Presbyterian Minister, who taught Church History. He taught the required courses in the field. I would be assisting him. However, when we moved to Memphis in June, I learned from Dr. William T. Ingram, President of the Seminary, that Dick Wells had just resigned and left to take a pastorate in the Presbyterian Church. Consequently, while I was hired as Assistant Professor of Methodist Studies and Church History, my title would now be Assistant Professor of Church History and Methodist Studies. This change in title was to prove significant as I continued my spiritual pilgrimage.
The transition from Methodism to Anglicanism to Catholicism was a gradual one. When we moved to Memphis, we did not understand it, but Sandie and I were well on our way to Anglicanism. Moreover, the seeds were being sown for our move to Catholicism. With our move to Memphis, in retrospect, I should now shift to our Anglican formation. This will mean picking up some of the Anglican formation that went on in seminary and graduate school and continuing with this formation at Memphis Seminary.
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1 John Wesley, “The New Birth,” Wesley’s Standard Sermons, Vol. Two, edited and annotated by Edward H. Sugden (London: The Epworth Press), 1968, 234.
2 John Lawson, A Thousand Tongues: The Wesley Hymns as a Guide to Scriptural Teaching (Exeter: The Paternoster Press), 1987, 52.
PART ONE
II
ANGLICAN FORMATION
Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
——Collect for the First Sunday of Advent The Book of Common Prayer According to the Use of The Episcopal Church
Prof. Lawson, a British Methodist minister who had been confirmed in the Episcopal Church, as my adviser in seminary and the director of my dissertation in graduate school, formed both Sandie and me in his understanding of the relationship of Methodism and Anglicanism. He prayed daily for the reunion of the Church of England and the British Methodist Church. During our time in student housing at Emory when I was in the doctoral program, we were being formed by Anglican theology as Prof. Lawson came to our home weekly and led us in Evening Prayer from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. As Christmas gifts he gave both Sandie and me copies of the Prayer Book. We began praying Morning and Evening Prayer together from time to time from the Prayer Book. In all of this, we thought we were being good Methodists like Prof. Lawson.
When he would return to England, he would attend Morning Prayer and the Eucharist in the Church of England and also preach in British Methodist Churches. In doing this, he was following the pattern of the Wesley brothers in the Eighteenth Century. Both John and Charles were priests in the Church of England. When the Methodist movement began, they saw it as a movement within the Church of England and encouraged Methodists to attend the local Anglican parish church for the Eucharist on Sunday mornings and come on Sunday evenings and weekdays to Methodist Chapels for preaching, teaching, and fellowship.
In our last year at Emory, while I was teaching at Dekalb Junior College and auditing two courses in the History Department, I attended an Episcopal celebration of the Eucharist in the Seminary Chapel at 1:00 p.m. on Thursdays. At these celebrations I became acquainted with several Episcopalian students and Fr. John McKee, the Episcopal Chaplain. Prof. Lawson also attended the service.
In the summer of 1973 when we moved to Memphis, Sandie and I had the opportunity for a two-week trip to England. This was a gift from my parents. My sister, Ann, and her husband who lived in Houston had two children and offered to keep Jon and Amy while we were away. Prof. Lawson was in England for the summer, and he and Mrs. Lawson became our guides. Primarily, the places we visited had significance in the history of Methodism, but we also visited many of the magnificent Anglican Churches that date from the Middle Ages. This gave us a rich experiential sense of Anglicanism and of Catholicism before the Sixteenth Century Reformation.
Our experiences in England influenced my teaching of Church History and Methodist Studies at Memphis Seminary. This was the background I brought to my conversation with Dr. Ingram in the fall of 1974 when he asked me to “find out for us what spiritual formation is and teach the rest of us about it.” Since Dr. Ingram said he gave me this commission because of the influence of Roman Catholic seminaries on our accrediting agency, I decided to start my study of spiritual formation by looking at Catholic sources. This was before the internet, and I left Dr. Ingram’s office and went to our library. In our reference room we had the multi-volume New Catholic Encyclopedia in which I looked for an article on spiritual formation. There was none. However, there was an article on spiritual theology. I had never heard of spiritual theology, so I read the article. At the end of the article, the reader was directed to articles on mystical theology and ascetical theology. Again, these were disciplines in theology I had never heard of. I read both these articles, and what I read began to give me a broader, deeper perspective on the Christian faith. Moreover, I began to sense that the study of spiritual formation and spiritual theology would bring order and integration to all my previous studies.
I thought it would be helpful to look through the catalogs of other Protestant seminaries to see if any of them offered courses in spiritual formation and theology. I found courses offered at two of them. One was a small Episcopalian diocesan seminary in Kentucky and the other was Lancaster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. I wrote the instructors of the courses in spiritual formation and theology listed in these two catalogs. The instructor from the Episcopal seminary replied in a brief one-paragraph letter listing two books that he asked students to read. From his remarks, I had the impression that there was not much emphasis on spiritual formation in that Seminary. He ended his letter by saying, “Good luck.” The instructor of the two-semester course at Lancaster Theological Seminary was James Walsh, S.J. Here was a Protestant seminary that employed a Jesuit priest to teach the course in spiritual formation and theology. Fr. Walsh sent me his multi-page syllabus and bibliography from his course. My effort to learn about courses in Protestant seminaries brought me right back to the Catholic Church.
At the same time Dr. Ingram gave me the commission to learn about spiritual formation, he also employed Fr. David Knight, a Jesuit priest with a doctorate in spiritual theology, to teach a course at the Seminary. Fr. Knight was the Spiritual Director of the Nazareth House of the Lord, a new religious community of women located in the community of Frayser in north Shelby County. Sandie decided to take his course on the Gospel of Matthew. The focus of the course was formation for discipleship. One of the requirements of the course was to attend a day-long retreat at the House of the Lord conducted by Fr. Knight. An invitation was extended to the spouses of the students. Consequently, I joined Sandie on the retreat. The day consisted of several presentations from Fr. Knight followed by periods of silence. The day concluded with Mass in the chapel. After the last presentation before the last quiet time preceding the Mass, Fr. Knight asked if Sandie and I planned to stay for Mass. I replied that we would like to stay, and we would sit in the back of the chapel and be unobtrusive. He replied, “I want you to give the homily.” I was taken aback! I tried to decline, but he insisted. I had about thirty minutes to prepare. It was March 19th, St. Joseph’s Day, and I preached on the lessons for the day. We all sat in a circle on the floor while Fr. Knight presided. It was a most memorable experience. This was the beginning of our friendship with Fr. Knight that continued until his death in March 2021.
Shortly after beginning my study of spiritual formation and theology, the philosophy I had studied in my undergraduate education, after lying dormant during all those years of Protestant seminary and graduate study, finally awakened in my mind. In philosophy I learned the necessity of defining terms, so I began making a list of terms I needed to define concepts within spiritual formation and spiritual theology. Over succeeding years, this list was lengthened and refined and brought the needed order to what I was studying and teaching.
A second thing this reawakening of philosophy did was to bring to mind what I learned at Washington and Lee from Dr. Myers about the various branches of philosophy. He taught us that the three principal philosophical problems were the metaphysical (What is ultimate reality [truth]?), the epistemological (How do we know ultimate reality [truth]?), and the ethical (How do we live based on what we know of ultimate reality [truth]?). This guided me as I discovered the definitions of the terms used in the study of spiritual formation and theology.
After Sandie, Jon, Amy, and I arrived in Memphis, we became members of Mullins United Methodist Church. Jimmy Cowell, our good friend from Candler School of Theology, was the Associate Minister there, and we enjoyed our time spent with Jimmy, Norma, and their children. I preached at various Methodist churches in the area on some Sundays and also taught adult education classes, sometimes on Sunday mornings and sometimes on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. We rented a small house on Montelo Road so Jon could attend Richland Elementary School, within walking distance of our home, where he attended third through seventh grades. Richland was one of the few remaining “neighborhood schools.” In 1973, the year we moved to Memphis, the city began busing students out of their neighborhoods to enforce integration. Amy attended pre-school and kindergarten at St. Luke United Methodist Church and first grade at Christ United Methodist Church.
There was an Episcopal Church, the Church of the Holy Communion, a few blocks from our home, where there was a celebration of the Eucharist at 8:00 a.m. on Sundays. With the Methodist/Anglican formation we had from Prof. Lawson, Sandie and I, from time to time, went to that service. We could do that before we began our Methodist responsibilities on Sundays.
In Lent 1976 we attended five Wednesday evening programs at the Church of the Holy Communion. Fr. Harold Barrett, the Rector of the Parish, had become a friend of ours. The program consisted of dinner, followed by a speaker on one of the sacraments, and Evening Prayer. One Wednesday evening, between the evening meal and the talk by the speaker, I was browsing through the books from the parish library that were displayed on a table in the parish hall. My eye fell on one called Mere Christianity by the Anglican writer C.S. Lewis. I casually opened the book in the middle and looked at a paragraph. I don’t remember the exact paragraph, but reading it changed my life. It was a paragraph about theosis, which is the heart of soteriology as understood by Catholics and Eastern Orthodox and is a part of the Anglican tradition. That night all I had been studying about spiritual formation and theology came together for me. I checked it out, read it, bought a copy, and began reading everything I could find by C.S. Lewis. It would be difficult to overestimate the extent of the influence of C.S. Lewis on me, and through me, on my family and the students I taught. Here is another instance of the merciful Providence of God in our lives.
Shortly after this discovery of Lewis, I returned to my office from a class I had been teaching on Methodist History and Doctrine to the Methodist students at the Seminary. I was greatly concerned about something I was not taught in my seminary education but should have been taught. I sat down, pulled out a yellow pad, and wrote a letter to an imaginary Methodist student about this truth I wished someone had told me my first year in seminary. From time to time I would write another letter to this imaginary student, a practice that helped me clarify my thinking about spiritual formation and theology.
One morning in the fall of 1976 when I arrived at the Seminary, I was shocked to learn that Bill Aldridge, the Dean of the Seminary, had had a brain aneurysm and was near death. Bill had become a good friend and was very popular among all the faculty, staff, and students. He lingered in a coma for a few days before dying. To carry us through the remainder of the 1976-77 Academic Year, Dr. Ingram parceled out the various jobs of the dean to faculty members. He assigned me the task of scheduling the courses for the January inter-term and the spring semester. In doing this I had to work with the faculty members to determine what courses would be taught and arrange the days, times, and classrooms. In this way, I became more acquainted with one of the basic tasks of the dean.
Dr. Ingram was scheduled to retire at the end of the 1977-78 academic year, so he decided to delay the search for a new dean while the Board of Trustees conducted a search for a new president. Consequently, I continued with that part of the dean’s job I had previously assumed. In the spring of 1978, the Board of Trustees elected Dr. Colvin Baird, Professor of Church and Society and Director of Field Education, as the new President of the Seminary. Dr. Baird asked me to become the dean. This was not a job I wanted, but I was willing to take it to help Dr. Baird, who was a good friend. He said he would be away from the campus much of the time raising money for the school, and he needed someone as dean who already knew the community and was familiar with the dean’s responsibilities. We agreed that I would serve for two years and at the end of the second year if I wanted to return to my position on the faculty, I could do so. Moreover, I could continue to teach the basic courses in Church History and Methodist Studies. In the spring semester of the second year, I asked Dr. Baird to allow me to return to my former position on the faculty the next year. He asked me to stay on as dean for the 1980-81 academic year to allow him time to find another dean. He offered to place me on sabbatical leave for the fall semester so I could pursue some writing I wanted to do. I would return as dean for the spring semester and then assume my former position on the faculty. This sabbatical semester was to prove a milestone in Sandie’s and my Anglican formation.
Sandie had taken a position as the Administrative Assistant to the District Superintendent of the Memphis-Asbury District of The United Methodist Church. I regret that Sandie has had to work outside the home for most of our married life. When we came to the Seminary, it was understood that the wives of faculty members would work outside the home, because the salaries of the faculty members were not adequate to support a family. In our early years at MTS the community was wonderful, with all the wives regarded as part of the Seminary team. Fellowship dinners were held once a month during the school year with the families of faculty, staff, and students attending. This Christian community was a vital part of our personal and family formation. Jon and Amy have always been seen as “children of the Seminary,” a phrase used by Irene Todd, wife of Virgil Todd, Professor of Old Testament, and long-time Administrative Assistant to the President.
Although Sandie worked outside the home, she was a conscientious, caring wife, mother, and homemaker. She made our home a place of Christian formation for all of us. From our first home on Okinawa to our student housing (twice), our two parsonages, our homes in Memphis (six), and our present home in Texas her touch as a Christian homemaker has always been evident. Our children were formed through daily prayer and Bible reading together as a family. The decor of our home showed that we were a Christian family. We celebrated the seasons of the Church year with special devotions, food, and decor. Jon and Amy especially liked the Advent and Christmas seasons with the Advent Wreath, daily devotionals, the Jesse Tree, and the central place of the creche in our home. All of our formation in the home, for which Sandie was mostly responsible, helped us understand the role of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Christian formation.
Before I write about what happened to Sandie and me on my sabbatical, I should say something about two things that happened in the spiritual formation of Jon and Amy that are significant. When Jon was in high school, his best friend, Bucky Shapley, died of liver cancer at age 16. Jon and Bucky had played on athletic teams together and were doing other things together both in and out of school. Jon and I visited Bucky in the hospital, and it was a shock to see him so emaciated. We all went to Bucky’s wake and funeral. His family were members of the Church of Christ, and, because members of the Churches of Christ do not baptize infants or children, Bucky had never made the decision himself to be baptized. When Bucky died, his mother was with him. She said to him, “Bucky, Jesus loves you,” and Bucky’s last words were, “And I love Jesus.” His father and I talked about this, and I tried to assure him that all was well with Bucky’s salvation. Bucky’s death was a blow to all who knew him, and, to this day, Jon remembers Bucky and his friendship.
When Amy was still young enough to enjoy having me read to her in the evening after she was in bed, I suggested to her, after we had finished reading The Secret Three, that we read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. We read a chapter each night, and we were both caught up in the story. When we came to the gruesome death of Aslan, the large talking lion who is the Christ figure in the story, Amy did not want to read any more of the book. She was crying over the death of Aslan, as were Susan and Lucy, the two girls in the story. I suggested we read the next chapter that night. She said she did not want to read it, but I insisted. Amy was lying in bed, I think with her head under the covers, when we came to the loud crack of the stone table on which Aslan had been killed. Amy sat bolt upright in bed as we read that Aslan was alive again, risen from the dead. Amy experienced the joy of the resurrection, and this is exactly the kind of experience that Lewis hoped children (and their parents) would have. It is an experience that shapes the soul.
The Methodist District Office where Sandie worked was located in Wesley Highland Towers, a Methodist Retirement Home. Because we needed to remain in the Memphis area for my sabbatical leave, Sandie arranged for me to have a room at the Towers to use as a study. So, for the fall semester, we had lunch together every day, and on Thursdays at noon we walked to the chapel at Barth House, the Episcopal Center at the University of Memphis, for the celebration of the Eucharist. My writing project was the letters to a seminarian I had begun a few years earlier. I had taken the student through almost three years of seminary. Of course, the student was a Methodist, and I was writing the letters from a Methodist perspective. By the Christmas holidays, 1980, I had completed the manuscript and wanted to submit it to a publisher. I asked Sandie to read it over the Christmas break. After she had completed it, using a red pen to make corrections and suggestions, we sat down one evening in the living room of our home to talk about it. She said the main problem with the manuscript, which was intended for Methodist seminary students, was that it was not Methodist. As I reflect on her comment, I don’t know if it surprised me. She said it was much too Anglican for American Methodism. American Methodism had recently affirmed its Evangelical heritage in 1968 when The Methodist Church had united with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to become The United Methodist Church. During the negotiations with the EUB Church, The Methodist Church had broken off talks with the Episcopal Church, thus taking a step away from its Anglican heritage.
With Sandie’s critique, I was unsure what to do with my manuscript. In January, Sandie returned to work, and I went to my study in the Towers to look over the manuscript in an effort to make it more Methodist. I was not due back at the Seminary until the fourth week of January. A day or two after we returned to the Towers, Joe Shelton, the Methodist District Superintendent for whom Sandie worked, came down the hall to see me. He said the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee was holding its Annual Convention Thursday through Saturday of that week. He had been invited to attend as an Ecumenical Representative along with clergy leaders of Christian communions in the Memphis area. Joe said he would not be able to attend and told me he was invited to name someone to represent The United Methodist Church if he could not do so. Sandie had told him that I was finished with my sabbatical project and might be willing to attend. I told him I would do so, and he gave me instructions to be at St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral on Thursday evening at 6:00 p.m. and to bring whatever vestments were appropriate for Methodist clergy.
On Thursday I arrived at the Cathedral with my academic robe, the appropriate Methodist vestment. We vested in a room below the nave of the Church. There were about fifteen ecumenical delegates, several of whom I knew. Mrs. Bette Winchester was the gracious hostess for us who were from other Christian communions. We were ushered outside where all the Diocesan priests were in a line waiting to process into the Cathedral. They placed us at the beginning of the line behind the Crucifer. At the appointed time the doors opened, and we started down the center isle. I had never been in St. Mary, and as the doors opened, we were greeted by music from the magnificent pipe organ and the voices of the choir and the people in a nave filled to capacity. Processing down the center aisle I was overwhelmed by the beauty of St. Mary, which reminded me of the medieval churches we had seen in England. It is in the traditional cruciform pattern, and we were seated right under the pulpit with the choir in the choir loft behind the pulpit and the high altar at the center back of the sanctuary.
Bishop William Sanders presided at the Eucharist and preached. The main item of business before the Diocesan Convention was whether or not to divide the Diocese of Tennessee into three Dioceses–West Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, and East Tennessee. Knoxville, the seat of the Bishop, is at the eastern end of the state. As Bishop Sanders delivered the homily, he said several times, “You have a choice to make, and, no matter what your choice is, if you keep your spiritual eyes on Jesus Christ, all will be well.” As he preached I realized that the Lord was giving me a choice to make. Either I could remain in The United Methodist Church or I could move to the Episcopal Church and seek ordination as an Episcopal priest. Either way, as long as I kept my spiritual eyes on Jesus Christ, all would be well.
After the celebration, I went to my car in the parking lot. Bill Trimble, an Episcopal priest who was the Rector of Grace-St. Luke Episcopal Church where I had taught a class on C.S. Lewis the previous Lent and whose car was next to mine, said, “Knick, I’m glad you were able to celebrate with us tonight.” I said, “Bill, I need to talk with you about coming into the Episcopal Church.” He replied, “Are you serious?” I said, “Yes.” He responded, “Call my office on Monday morning and make an appointment. I’ll see you at your convenience.” I thanked him and drove home.
By the time I arrived home, Jon and Amy were in bed. I said to Sandie that we needed to talk. We sat down on the sofa in the living room, and I told her about the worship at St. Mary and about my conversation with Bill Trimble. She said she had been ready to move to the Episcopal Church for months and knew how hard it would be for me to make that move, both because of my teaching position at the Seminary and because I always liked to ponder things over and over and never make a decision. She said she knew I needed something to push me to make a decision, so she had suggested to Joe Shelton that he ask me to be the Methodist ecumenical delegate to the Episcopal Diocesan Convention. Just as was to happen when we entered the Catholic Church, Sandie was ahead of me.
When I talked about this move with Colvin Baird, President of the Seminary, he assured me my faculty position was secure because I was the one faculty member who taught Church History and Spiritual Theology. The Seminary could make other arrangements for teaching Methodist Studies. The Methodist Bishop of the Memphis Conference, Edward Tullis, even allowed me to continue to teach Methodist Studies until they found someone to take my place. So, my book of letters addressed to a Methodist student was never submitted to a publisher. It had served its purpose in helping me clarify my thinking about the Methodist and Anglican traditions and discern the direction the Holy Spirit was leading Sandie and me and our children.
Bishop William Sanders was willing to accept me as a candidate for ordination as an Episcopal priest. To prepare for ordination, in the summer of 1982 I audited three Doctor of ministry courses at St. Luke’s Seminary at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee and “soaked up” the Episcopalian ethos through worship, reading, and conversation. Jon spent one week with me while I was there, and we enjoyed fishing in one of the lakes and just being together. I was ordained a deacon on September 14, 1982, and a priest on April 23, 1983. In the Anglican Calendar April 23 is St. George’s Day, and I liked being ordained on the day when we celebrated the Saint who was a dragon slayer. By this time the Diocese of Tennessee had been divided into three dioceses, and I was ordained a priest in the Diocese of West Tennessee by Bishop Fred Gates, who had been the Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Tennessee and was the Interim Bishop of the Diocese of West Tennessee.
During my years as an Episcopal priest, I continued teaching at Memphis Seminary. I also assisted at various parishes in the Diocese, and for two years (1984-86) I was the Priest-in-Charge (Vicar) of St. Paul Episcopal Church in Frayser, a suburb of Memphis. St Paul was a small parish in a changing neighborhood with a membership that was basically blue-collar and was transitioning from parish to mission status. Sandie, Amy, and I lived in the rectory for two years. Sandie left her job in the Methodist District Office and became the full-time Parish Lay Worker at St. Paul to coordinate lay ministries, direct the Christian education program, and do secretarial work. Amy was a middle-schooler at Auburndale School where she had attended since the second grade and was very active with the St. Paul youth. St. Paul was a family-oriented parish, and our ministry there strengthened our commitment to family ministry. Sandie, Jon, and Amy were confirmed in the Episcopal Church at St. Paul before I was ordained deacon and priest. Amy became a leader of the youth in the Diocese, went to Barbados on a youth mission trip, and made a report about the trip to our Diocesan Convention.
After helping St. Paul transition to mission status, we moved out of the rectory and bought a house closer to the Seminary and Amy’s high school. Sandie took a job as Program Activities Director and then Director of a Senior Center with the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association (MIFA). Amy chose to attend Immaculate Conception High School, a Catholic girls’ school and took a leadership role in the youth group at St. Mary Episcopal Cathedral. After graduation from I.C. in 1990, Amy attended and graduated from the University of Memphis (formerly Memphis State University) with a degree in Environmental and Earth Sciences. While at the University she was active in the Catholic Student Center and served as President. After graduating she worked for FedEx as a Hazardous Materials Inspector.
While in high school, Jon went to an evangelistic meeting sponsored by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and re-committed his life to Christ. He was confirmed in the Episcopal Church at St. Paul and graduated from Auburndale High School in 1984. He attended Memphis State University and graduated with honors in 1990 with a degree in Fitness and Wellness Management. While at Memphis State, Jon met Janna Westenhaver. Janna, from a farming family in Middle Tennessee, studied at Memphis State and the University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences to become an Occupational Therapist. Jon and Janna married on November 23, 1990, and I was privileged to preside at their wedding rite.
After graduation from Memphis State, Jon worked at several jobs in preparation for entering Northwestern University in Chicago to study for a vocation in prosthetics and orthotics. He entered the field in January 1996. When I asked Jon about his reason for choosing the field of prosthetics and orthotics, he said, “Dad, Jesus helped people walk again, and so do I.” Jon and Janna were blessed with the birth of Katherine Olivia on November 9, 1992, and Daniel Emerson on September 30, 1995.
During my years at Memphis Seminary, I developed four courses in Spiritual Formation and Spiritual Theology for the M.Div. degree program. The study for and teaching of these courses pushed me closer and closer to the Catholic Church. The courses were “The History of Christian Spirituality,” “Spiritual Theology and Parish Ministry,” “The Life and Writings of C.S. Lewis,” and “Seminar in Spiritual Formation and Spiritual Theology.” This Seminar was designed so that various topics could be explored, but actually, it became a reading seminar in Benedictine spiritual formation and spiritual theology. Also, I taught a seminar in Spiritual Formation and Theology in the Doctor of Ministry program. In the course on “Spiritual Theology and Parish Ministry” and the Doctoral seminar, Sandie and I together taught a section on Christian Marriage and Family Life. For all these courses I continued to develop my set of definitions of key terms in spiritual formation and spiritual theology drawing more and more on philosophy to help me develop greater precision in my thinking.
I was granted another sabbatical leave from the Seminary for the spring and summer of 1992. (The Seminary granted faculty a study leave every five to seven years.) By this time I was working on a book for Episcopalian seminary students modeled on the one I had written for Methodist students. Sandie and I went to El Paso, Texas, where her widowed mother lived. I arranged to spend the sabbatical at St. Clement Episcopal Pro-Cathedral. The Cathedral provided me with a study, and, in return, I assisted in the worship services at the Cathedral. We made some wonderful friends there and have kept up with them over the years.
About a month after we arrived in El Paso there was a lay witness mission at St. Clement. The planning was done under the direction of lay people who were involved in the charismatic movement in the Episcopal Church. The mission was to last from Friday evening through the Sunday morning celebrations of the Eucharist. For twenty-four hours prior to the beginning of the mission, a prayer vigil was kept in the chapel. Sandie and I were scheduled to be there between two and three o’clock in the morning. We arrived at the Church at the appointed hour and went into the chapel to pray. As I prayed I remembered the several weeks before we had left Memphis to begin our sabbatical. It was a time of particular stress, and I had felt very alone, despite the loving companionship of Sandie. I remembered one night about a month before we left for El Paso when I was praying in my study, wishing that my dad were there to talk with me. He had died in 1980. He has always been my hero, and I felt the need for him that night. As a result of this I went to Confession, heard by an Episcopal priest, in which I confessed that I had not always honored my dad in the way I should, received absolution, and did penance. I also remembered my dad a month later at that prayer vigil.
The prayer vigil concluded an hour before the lay mission began at 6:00 p.m. in the parish hall with a covered-dish dinner followed by the first presentation of the leader of the mission. Sandie and I arrived to join over two hundred people in the parish hall. After we went through the line for our food, we sat down at a vacant table, and other people began to join us. From behind me I heard someone ask, “Is there another place at this table?” I replied, without looking around, “Sure, right over there.” The man who walked around the table to take his seat wore a name tag the color of which identified him as one of the mission team who had come from out of the city to conduct the mission at St. Clement. I immediately recognized him as a man who, over thirty years earlier, had been a young business associate of my dad. I introduced myself and told him that I remembered meeting him years ago in my dad’s office. He said that he remembered our meeting, and we began to talk about my dad and the investment banking business. As an Episcopal priest, I was wearing a clerical collar, and he asked if I were on the staff of St. Clement. I explained that I was on sabbatical leave from the seminary where I taught. He then remarked: “Your dad used to talk about you and what you were doing and would say how proud he was of what you were doing and how proud he was of you.” I did not know how to respond to that, and, since there was much conversation around the table, my silence went unnoticed. I was thinking to myself: “I wish my dad could tell me now that he was proud of what I was doing and proud of me. Even though I am in my mid-fifties, it would mean so much to me at this time in my life. But he has been dead a dozen years, and it is too late.” Then I realized he was speaking to me right then. Here were my dad’s human words spoken over thirty years earlier, which I needed to hear, now being spoken to me by another person. On Sunday morning at the Eucharist, when Bishop Kelshaw spoke the words of Jesus in the Prayer of Consecration, I understood that here was another supper table, and Jesus’ words were being spoken by a human voice. I did not know it at the time, but the experiences of that Friday evening and the following Sunday morning were confirming in me the truth of what the Catholic Church teaches about the sacraments and personal prayer. The Episcopal Church was being used by the Lord to form me spiritually as a Catholic. My personal prayers during the weeks preceding this lay witness mission; my confession, absolution, and penance; my dad’s words spoken at the dinner table; and the words of Jesus spoken by Bishop Kelshaw at the Eucharist were all of a piece. When the priest is present in his sacramental ministry, Jesus is present. When any baptized Christian is present anywhere, Jesus is present. He is living in all of us who are His adopted sisters and brothers, adopted daughters and sons of God our Father and Mary our Mother in the Church.
This lay witness mission took place at the beginning of our time at St. Clement. During the following six months, I assisted at the various celebrations of the Holy Eucharist. Each weekend there were four celebrations of the Eucharist and a Charismatic prayer meeting in the parish hall on Sunday evening. Sandie and I decided that we would read some books together and be faithful to our prayer routine each day. We located a Catholic bookstore in El Paso and decided to read some books in Catholic theology and spirituality. Together we read The Woman and the Way: A Marian Path to Jesus and Our Father, Our Mother: Mary and the Faces of God by Fr. George Montague, S.M. We also read Fr. David Knight’s Mary in an Adult Church: Beyond Devotion to Response and James Cardinal Hickey’s Mary at the Foot of the Cross: Teacher and Example of Holiness. As I reflect on this choice of reading, I realize that as we had begun praying the Rosary, the Holy Spirit through the prayers of Blessed Mother Mary was guiding our choice of books.
During our months in El Paso, I continued working on my book containing a series of letters addressed to a student in an Episcopal Seminary. However, as we became more immersed in Catholic theology and spirituality the letters in the book became more Catholic. I thought that what I was doing would help turn the Episcopal Church in America into a more complete embrace of the Anglo-Catholic or High-Church part of her heritage. However, even as we continued what we were doing in El Paso, I think I knew that this book was having an effect on me similar to the one I wrote earlier. The first book had led me from Methodism to Anglicanism, and this one was leading me from Anglicanism to Catholicism.
Nevertheless, we were enjoying our time at St. Clement, and the people there were vibrant disciples of Jesus Christ. In particular, we were involved in the Charismatic spirit of the parish, and the Sunday evening prayer meetings were an enriching experience for us. Sandie received the gift of tongues as a private prayer language. Friends we made there continue to be part of our lives today.
In the late spring of 1992, we received a phone call from our daughter, Amy, that moved us farther along toward the Catholic Church. Through her experiences at Immaculate Conception Cathedral High School and her time at the Catholic Student Center at the University of Memphis, the Holy Spirit led her to decide to be confirmed in the Catholic Church. When she called to inform us of her decision, she said she would wait to be confirmed until we returned from our sabbatical leave. Amy was the first one in our family to become Catholic. She led the way for the rest of us.
Our son, Jon, and daughter-in-law, Janna, visited us in El Paso in the summer of 1992. They shared with us the wonderful news that they were expecting their first child. Katherine Olivia was born on November 9, 1992. I was privileged to baptize her at Holy Apostles Episcopal Church on January 10, 1993.
In August 1992, about two weeks before we were to return to Memphis, Sandie and I made a retreat at Holy Cross Retreat Center in Mesilla Park, New Mexico, which is just north of El Paso. In that retreat, Sandie was led to ask the question, “Where is the fullness of truth?” which she understood as “Where is the fullest expression of Jesus Christ?” She knew she needed to discern the answer to that question.
On our way to Memphis from El Paso, we stopped at St. Mary University in San Antonio to talk with Fr. George Montague S.M., the author of two of the books on Mary that we read in El Paso. Fr. George taught New Testament at the University and lived with other Marianist priests and brothers at Casa Maria on the University campus. A few years later Fr. George became the Moderator for the Brothers of the Beloved Disciple, a new community that combines the Marianist charism with a charismatic component. Fr. George is a spirit-filled, joyful, winsome, learned priest, author, and insightful spiritual guide. We have trusted him as our father-in-the-faith since this initial meeting. Over the years he has been our confessor and spiritual director.
While our Catholic formation began years before our sabbatical leave in 1992, it had been gradual and unintentional. Following Amy’s decision to be confirmed in the Catholic Church and Sandie’s discernment, we returned to Memphis to begin our intentionally Catholic spiritual formation.
PART ONE
III
INTENTIONAL CATHOLIC FORMATION
Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.
—–The Gospel According to Luke 9:62 (RSVCE)
When we returned to Memphis in late August 1992, Sandie entered the RCIA process at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. The Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults is a period of reflection, prayer, instruction, discernment, and formation. I attended with her. It was difficult for me to think about surrendering my credentials as an Episcopal priest, but I encouraged Sandie in her discernment about the Catholic Church. I wanted to experience this intentional formation with her. The lead teacher of RCIA was Paul Gray, the Pastoral Administrator of Sacred Heart. Paul had a Master’s Degree in theology and had taught at a Catholic University. The sponsors for each person attended the class with us. Paul Gray was my sponsor even though I probably was not going to be confirmed with Sandie. I think I knew it was only a matter of time before I joined her in the Catholic Church.
Amy was confirmed at Sacred Heart on October 10, 1992, by Fr. David Knight, the Pastor, at a Saturday Vigil Mass. Fr. David invited me to preach. It is quite unusual for someone who is not a Catholic to preach at a Catholic Mass. Nevertheless, it was done, and Amy was the first of our family to be confirmed in the Catholic Church.
As we attended Sunday Mass at Sacred Heart, we became accustomed to the rhythm of the Catholic Mass, which was not that different from the celebration of the Eucharist in the Episcopal Church. However, there was clear teaching in RCIA about the presence of Christ when, at the Eucharistic Prayer, the bread and wine, through transubstantiation, became the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. This clear teaching of the truth of the Mass, connected as it is to the Apostolic Succession of Catholic Bishops, makes clear the affirmation in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life (#1324). Listening to the teaching and attending Catholic Mass as an Episcopal priest showed me the distinction between the clear teaching of the truth of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church and the imprecise teaching about the Eucharist taught in Anglicanism.
In January 1993, Sandie reached a decision point in the RCIA discernment process. She said it would be difficult to make a decision to become Catholic without me, because the Holy Spirit had always led us together on our pilgrimage. Although she was concerned it could affect our relationship, she was convinced of the fullness of truth in the Catholic Church and felt compelled to seek that truth. She trusted the Lord to honor her decision and continued in RCIA. I encouraged her to do that. We informed our Bishop in the Episcopal Church of Sandie’s decision. She was overwhelmed with all she had learned and all she knew she did not know or understand. When Sandie asked Paul exactly what she would assent to when she was confirmed, Paul said, “The Nicene Creed.”
Sandie was confirmed at Sacred Heart Church at the Easter Vigil, April 10, 1993. After her Confirmation, she said she would receive Communion for both of us as I struggled with the issue of surrendering my ordination as an Episcopal priest and as I worried about what Confirmation in the Catholic Church would mean for my teaching position at Memphis Seminary. We knew of professors who converted to Catholicism and were immediately terminated from their positions.
In the summer of l993 we attended a Defending the Faith Conference at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. Some well-known converts from Protestantism to Catholicism were there, including Scott and Kimberley Hahn and Marcus and Marilyn Grodi. We were present at a luncheon with them that had been planned, in faith, by Fr. Michael Scanlon TOR, President of the University, to whom the Holy Spirit revealed that there would be former Protestant ministers at the Conference who were new converts to the Catholic Church and those discerning conversion to the Catholic Church. As a result of this luncheon the Coming Home Network was conceived, was established in 1993, and Marcus Grodi became the Director. This Conference was another step in my pilgrimage into the Catholic Church.
Finally, after a year and a half of soul searching, I decided it was time for me to be confirmed. I wrote a letter to Bishop Alex Dickson, the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee, to tell him of my decision. The letter arrived at his office a day or two after he had left for the three-week General Convention of the Episcopal Church. I suppose I thought this would give me three more weeks to “over-think” about my decision. Before the Convention ended, I received a letter from a person whom we knew at St. Clement Episcopal Pro-Cathedral in El Paso where we had spent our sabbatical leave in 1992. She said that Fr. Ron Thomson, the Provost of the Cathedral, had announced on Sunday that I was leaving the Episcopal Church to be confirmed in the Catholic Church. He asked the people to pray for me. I was puzzled about how the news had reached the people at St. Clement. I learned that Bishop Dickson’s administrative assistant was faxing all his correspondence to him at the General Convention. The fax room was a public place with a number of people going in and out and faxes for different people scattered around the room. One of the delegates to the Convention from St. Clement had read my letter to Bishop Dickson and informed the people of St. Clement. Now that my decision was public, there was no turning back. I was faxed into the Catholic Church! When Bishop Dickson returned, I had a conversation with him. He was gracious as always and wished me the best.
In October 1994 I made an appointment to talk with Dr. J. David Hester, the President of Memphis Seminary. Dr. Hester was a Cumberland Presbyterian minister and a good friend. When I entered his office, he said he always was concerned when one of his faculty members asked for a private conversation. I explained to him my situation with regard to the Catholic Church and that I planned to be confirmed the following month. I said that this probably would cause problems for the Board of Trustees and for the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and that I was prepared to resign my position on the faculty. I told him I had my letter of resignation from the Seminary faculty in my pocket and asked him what date he wanted me to put on the resignation. I could resign then in the middle of the semester, resign at the end of the semester, or resign at the end of the academic year in the spring of 1995.
To understand his response to me, it is necessary to explain the situation at the Seminary at that time. Since 1986 Memphis Theological Seminary, the only seminary of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, had been in an increasingly tense situation with its sponsoring denomination. The Cumberland Presbyterian Church is a small, mostly rural and small-town denomination, born on the frontier in Tennessee in 1810. Its membership is largely conservative and evangelical. The Church preaches a “whosoever will” Gospel, which proclaims that God calls all people to salvation in Jesus Christ. In other words, the C.P. Church does not accept the doctrine of predestination that is associated with the Reformed Protestant Tradition. It is presbyterian in Church government, but its theology affirms that all people are free to make a decision to follow Jesus Christ. The Confession of Faith of the C.P. Church affirms the doctrine of the Trinity and the truth of Jesus Christ as seen in the tradition of the Church and as expressed in the Nicene Creed. This is why Cumberland Presbyterians have much in common with Methodists, who do not espouse a doctrine of predestination. In May 1986 the faculty adopted an Inclusive Language Statement which called on faculty and students to use other names for God along with the traditional Trinitarian names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When this statement was presented by two faculty members for consideration by the entire faculty, it was claimed that this must be adopted or we would be “behind the times.” The rationale was that the names “Father” and “Son” for the First and Second Persons of the Trinity were adopted by a patriarchal culture. Since our culture was less patriarchal, we should adopt some feminine names for God. When a vote was taken, I was the only faculty member who voted against it. One other faculty member abstained. (See Part Two, II for more on this.)
This action of the faculty set in motion a conflict with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The conflict intensified with the debate over human sexuality that was present in our culture and especially in institutions of higher education.
On that October day in 1994 when I informed Dr. Hester about my decision to enter the Catholic Church and my readiness to resign from the faculty because I did not want to cause the Seminary and the C.P. Church any more problems than they already had, he told me he did not want me to resign. I think a primary reason for his response was because I was a faculty member who was standing for the Christian tradition with regard to language for God and marriage and family life. He said my entry into the Catholic Church would not be a problem for someone who taught Church History. After all, I believed what the Church taught throughout her history. However, he said the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees was meeting on campus in two weeks and if I wanted to talk with them about it, he would put me on the agenda. I thanked him and said I would like to meet with them. He instructed me to be available that day, and he would come to my office and inform me when they were ready to see me.
When the Executive Committee met two weeks later, Dr. Hester came to my office about noon. He closed the door and sat down. He said the Executive Committee asked him why I was on the agenda, and he told them about my decision. They asked him to tell me that they would be glad to talk with me that afternoon provided I did not bring my letter of resignation, because they did not want me to resign from the faculty. I asked him to thank the members of the Executive Committee for me, but in light of their comment, I did not need to see them and take any of their valuable time. This is one more instance of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and Memphis Theological Seminary taking care of me and my family. For over thirty years the Seminary and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church stood by me and my family, and we are forever grateful for all those good Christian people and for what they have meant in our lives. When I left the faculty in June 2005 to pursue ministry with Sandie in the Catholic Church, they invited us to attend the General Assembly of the Church. At the luncheon for the alumni of the Seminary and their families, they presented me with a certificate making me an honorary Cumberland Presbyterian. This was one of the proudest moments of my life, and my heart is still with the Seminary and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.
In November, the week before I was confirmed in the Catholic Church, I celebrated the Eucharist for the last time as an Episcopal priest. I chose to do this in the Seminary Chapel. At the end of the celebration, I stood before the altar, took off my chasuble and stole, and laid them on the altar. It was a bittersweet moment for me. I did not think I would ever be able to preside again at the celebration of the Eucharist.
On Saturday, November 19, 1994, I was confirmed at the Vigil Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church by Fr. David Knight. On the way to the Church, I told the Lord I was giving up a lot to become Catholic, and I expected Him to deliver. This was extremely impudent and arrogant of me, but the way He delivered, looking back on it now, takes my breath away! Two of my faculty colleagues from the Seminary were present along with some other friends including some of our daughter Amy’s friends from the Catholic Student Center, and my family. Our extended family members, who represent various Protestant denominations , were accepting of our conversion to the Catholic Church, and we are thankful to have good relationships with them.
The Mass when I was confirmed was the Sunday Vigil Mass closest to St. Cecilia’s Day, November 22nd. St. Cecilia is a martyr and the patron saint of musicians, singers, organ builders, and poets. Above the choir loft at Sacred Heart Church is a stained glass window depicting St. Cecilia. In light of my declaration to the Lord that I expected Him to deliver after my confirmation, it is greatly significant that I was confirmed on this day. Why is this so?
In January and February 1995, Sandie and I attended a Life in the Spirit Seminar at St. Anne Catholic Church on six Sunday evenings. On the second Sunday evening in February, we decided not to attend the Seminar. We had kept our two-year-old granddaughter, Katherine, for the weekend, and we were tired. After Jon and Janna picked up Katherine in the early evening, we sat down to a quiet supper and turned on the television. We decided to watch a C-Span program in which Brian Lamb interviewed authors about their new books. That evening he was interviewing former President Jimmy Carter about a book of poetry he had recently published. He asked President Carter how he learned to write poetry. President Carter named a book that he had read about writing poetry. I mentioned to Sandie that I had thought from time to time about writing poetry. She encouraged me to try because it would be a creative pastime that I needed. So, the next day I ordered the book suggested by President Carter. When I told Sandie I had ordered the book, she advised me not to begin by reading the book but simply to sit down and try to write a poem. She suggested this because she knew that I had problems learning how to write prose and that the only way I had learned was by listening and writing what sounded correct. After I did this, I had begun to understand the grammar rules from the “inside” so to speak.
That evening I went to my study, took a pad, sat down, and thought, “Well, what shall I write?” It is difficult to describe what happened that night. I began to hear words and see pictures in my mind as I tried to write poetry. Sometimes what I wrote sounded right, and sometimes it did not. During Holy Week the Seminary was on spring break, and Sandie and I made a private retreat at Fox Hollow outside of Junction, Texas. I took with me a high school English textbook that Jon or Amy had used. In the glossary were definitions of literary terms. After each definition there were references to pieces of literature in the volume. I realized quickly that what sounded right to me in the poetry I was hearing was always iambic meter and was always rhymed. I learned about trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter; about Shakespearean or English sonnets and Petrarchan or Italian sonnets; about couplets, tercets, quatrains, sestets, and octaves; and about Villanelles. During those five days, what I was hearing and “seeing” became much clearer. I asked the Lord what was going on
He replied in a couplet of iambic tetrameter:
Come, poet forth, grave clothes unwrapped,
Now is the time to end your nap.
This was astounding to me! I realized what was happening was a result of my Confirmation in the Catholic Church. That Sacrament and the Life in the Spirit Seminar, part of the Charismatic movement in the Catholic Church, had called forth a gift of the Holy Spirit that had been dormant.
On the way back to Memphis, we stopped to see Fr. George Montague, S.M. at Casa Maria at St. Mary University. When I told him about the poetry I was writing, he said this was the spiritual gift of prophecy. I was puzzled by the identification of this gift, and he reminded me that the Old Testament prophetic books contain much poetry. He encouraged me to continue listening to the Holy Spirit and writing the poetry. I wasn’t sure I liked being identified as a prophet since some of them were stoned!
Shortly after returning to Memphis, it was my turn to lead worship in the Seminary Chapel. These services were at 11:00 a.m. on Thursday and usually centered on Scripture reading, prayer, preaching, and singing. However, we were encouraged to be creative in these services. I decided to read some of my poetry during the service. After I did, I felt rather embarrassed for doing something so unusual and personal in a service of worship. I quickly went to my office and closed the door. In a moment there was a knock on the door, and when I opened it, there was Dr. Ingram, now retired from the Presidency of the Seminary. He happened to be on campus and had attended the worship service. He said he wanted to encourage me to continue to write poetry and to share it any way I could. Here is another instance of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Seminary ministering to me. Of the few father figures I have had in my life, Dr. Ingram stands out as one who was always encouraging me.
From August to December 1995, our son, Jon, attended Northwestern University in Chicago to study Prosthetics and Pedorthics in order to become better qualified in his professional field. While he was gone, Janna and Katherine stayed with us in our home on Rainbow Drive. Jon and Janna were expecting their second child, and, when Janna went into labor, Jon flew home and arrived in time for the birth of Daniel Emerson Knickerbocker on September 30, 1995. Daniel was baptized at Holy Apostles Episcopal Church on January 8, 1996.
In August 1996 while attending Mass at Sacred Heart Church, the Old Testament lesson from the 24th Chapter of Joshua included the words of Joshua when he said, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (24:15). Other English translations that I had read used the word “house” and not “household.” In Mass the New American Bible translation is used. When I heard that sentence, a familiar voice that I learned to recognize as the start of a poem said “Household of the Holy Family.” I realized that over the years, principally because of Sandie’s intentional spiritual formation of Jon and Amy and, therefore, of the two of us, we had been living as a “Household of the Holy Family.” In other words, I understood that the poetry and our family spirituality were seen together by the Lord as the Holy Spirit guided us.
In the spring of 1996, I applied for another sabbatical leave. This time the book I wanted to work on was a book of poetry. The Dean of the Seminary, Don McKim, encouraged me to apply, even though a book of poetry was not the kind of writing project usually done on an academic sabbatical. The Board approved the leave for the spring and summer of 1997. Sandie and I decided to spend our sabbatical at St. Mary University in San Antonio. We wanted to audit a class or two, work on the book of poetry, and attend daily Mass at Casa Maria, the residence where Fr. George Montague, S.M. lived with ten other Marianist priests and brothers. We also wanted to talk with Fr. George about a ministry as a Household of the Holy Family to encourage Catholic marriage and family life.
We rented a small apartment not far from the University campus, audited a course taught by Fr. Bob Hogan on Mariology, and went to Mass at Casa Maria where we became friends with the priests and brothers. The volume of poetry took shape, and we settled on the title New Eden. We talked with Fr. George about a ministry as a Household of the Holy Family. In our conversations, we decided we wanted the ministry to be in the Benedictine/Marianist Tradition, and Fr. George suggested we talk with Fr. Alvin McMinimee, the Provincial of the Marianists, who would be at St. Mary that spring.
In our conversation with Fr. McMinimee, he said we could form a “private lay association in formation” and regard it as a ministry from our family to other families. We could do it either in relation to the Diocese of Memphis or to the Society of Mary (Marianists). We said we would like to do it in relation to the Marianists. When we asked him what else we needed to do, he replied: “Nothing, just go to it.” So, the Household of the Holy Family as the ministry of our family to other families was born and continues to this day. Although our ministry was conceived as a ministry to Catholic families, we also have engaged in ministry to Protestant families. We have led workshops for Deacons in formation in the Diocese of Memphis and the Diocese of San Angelo, for individual parishes (including Protestant parishes), and for a Catholic school parent organization. As the ministry has developed we have helped individual families as each family has joined us in living as a “Household of the Holy Family.” We included our teaching about family spiritual formation in one of the M.Div. courses I taught at Memphis Seminary, “Spiritual Theology and Parish Ministry,” and in the Doctor of Ministry Seminar I taught on Spiritual Formation. (See Appendix 1 for our Household of the Holy Family Rule of Life, which we print and make available as a bookmark.)
While we were at St. Mary in San Antonio, we occasionally joined the priests and brothers at Casa Maria for a meal and regularly made our confessions to one of the priests. After we had been there three or four months, I made my confession to Fr. Norbert Brockman, S.M., who lived at Casa Maria and was on the faculty of the University. After I made my confession, received his counsel, was assigned my penance, made my act of contrition, and received absolution, I stood up to leave. Fr. Norbert said, “Just a minute Knick, before you go I want to ask you about something.” After I resumed my seat, he asked, “Have you ever considered seeking ordination as a Catholic priest under the Pastoral Provision?” This was something I had not asked counsel about from anyone at Casa Maria. A Catholic priest, guided by the Holy Spirit, was asking me this question. I can’t remember what I said in reply, but Fr. Norbert’s question played on my mind and heart. I am sure I mentioned this to Sandie, but I don’t remember her response.
We returned to Memphis in August 1997, and I resumed teaching at Memphis Seminary. Sandie began working as the Receptionist in the Seminary and later became the Assistant to the Associate Dean for the Doctor of Ministry program. One of the reasons she began working at the Seminary was to be present each day to support me in my ministry at a time when other faculty members were, in varying degrees, enforcing the Inclusive Language Policy adopted by the faculty. Because I opposed this policy, I was ostracized by many of the faculty. When students realized that Sandie has a natural pastoral gift and keeps confidences, some of them began to come to her to talk about their difficulties with some things going on in classes with regard to inclusive language for God and the increasing support among some faculty members for the LGBT agenda. Students also came to me to talk about these difficulties. A common statement of a student was, “Well, I’ll just have to go along to get along.” Their ordaining denominations required a seminary degree, so this was the price they would need to pay.
In the fall of 2000, our son, Jon, decided to be confirmed in the Catholic Church. His wife, Janna, said she would find it difficult to do this, because her family, who are Baptists, would not understand. She said she would attend the Catholic Church with Jon and agreed that Katherine and Daniel could receive their first Communion. Jon joined the RCIA class at St. Ann Catholic Church, and I was his sponsor. The sponsors were required to attend the classes with the one they were sponsoring. Because Jon was playing and coaching soccer that fall, and his coaching responsibilities were on Thursday evenings, the same time the RCIA class met, Fr. Bruce Cinquegrani, the Pastor, agreed to let me tutor Jon for the first few weeks of RCIA. I met with Jon over the lunch hour twice a week, and we would study the Catechism. It was a wonderful time for both of us as we learned more about the Catholic Church together. We joined the RCIA class at the end of October when Jon had finished his soccer coaching.
On April 19, 2001, at the Easter Vigil, Jon was confirmed in the Catholic Church, and Katherine and Daniel received their First Communion. A few weeks before his Confirmation, Jon, who was playing soccer with a men’s club team, in his words, “blew out his knee.” He had surgery to repair his ACL and “clean up” some of the other damage. When he was confirmed, Jon was still using a cane. As we sat in the pew waiting to go forward for Confirmation, Jon said to me, “Dad, I would like to leave my cane in the pew. If I need to do so, can I hold on to you when we go forward?” I think this is an example of what we do as Christians as we hold on to each other and lean on each other as we go through life.
At this point, I want to tell the story of my intellectual pilgrimage and to thank my family for joining me on this journey. I especially thank Sandie for her help, as she constantly pushed me to clarify my thinking.
PART TWO
I
THEOSIS: THE HEART OF SPIRITUAL FORMATION
AND SPIRITUAL THEOLOGY
I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
—–The Gospel According to John 17:20-21
Spiritual Theology: An Integrative Discipline
As I worked to bring clarity to my thinking about spiritual formation and theology, I learned that spiritual theology is all theology seen from the perspective of spiritual formation. It includes foundational (natural, biblical, historical, apologetic, fundamental, dogmatic, systematic,), mystical, ascetical, and moral theology. Spiritual theology is to the other theological disciplines as philosophy is to other academic disciplines, i.e. it is an integrative discipline. Just as philosophy is not just a subject of study among other academic subjects but rather teaches us how to think about all academic subjects, so spiritual theology teaches us how to think about all theological disciplines. Spiritual theology gave me that integrative way of looking at the Christian faith that I had missed in my seminary and graduate school education, which had emphasized analysis rather than synthesis. One was expected to become an expert in a narrow area of study. This has its purpose, but I wanted a way to integrate the various theological disciplines into a whole.
The various theological disciplines are integrated by spiritual theology because spiritual formation is at the heart of the Christian life. It is the formation of persons, families, and communities in Jesus Christ through the crucifixion of their old selves with Him and the formation of their new selves, which is the Resurrected Christ in them. The more I read the more I saw references from writers at various times in the history of the Church to what St. Paul says in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” St. Paul is writing about an ontological truth, i.e. the death and resurrection of Christ in us is a metaphysical reality that is at the heart of every person. Some writers on spiritual formation focus on the spiritual formation of an individual person. However, it is not possible for a person to be formed spiritually apart from the family, which is the basic unit of the Church, or from the entire Church, the Body of Christ, that has various smaller communities including the parish, diocese, and religious communities.
Spiritual Formation As Theosis
During the early days of my study of spiritual theology, I was especially influenced by my Protestant seminary and graduate school education in two ways. First, I had been taught that justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ was the proper perspective from which to approach the study of soteriology (the doctrine of salvation in Jesus Christ). More specifically, my study of John Wesley’s theology had taught me that the proper way to understand justification by faith was in the context of the order of salvation, which saw salvation progressing from original sin and prevenient grace through justification, the new birth (conversion) and assurance to sanctification, entire sanctification, and glorification.
As I attempted to integrate my Protestant/Wesleyan understanding of soteriology with what I was learning about spiritual theology and formation, I had magnified for me a problem that I had always seen in this Protestant approach. How were Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity related to my interior life as a Christian? C.S. Lewis clarified for me the doctrine of theosis, the patristic teaching that “The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.” 1 As Lewis writes, “The whole purpose for which we exist is to be thus taken into the life of God.” 2 Theosis, is the participation of a person, family, or community in the Holy Trinity through participation in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Second Adam, by the work of the Holy Spirit: to be “hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3) and to be part of Christ’s Body, the Church. I discovered from the early Fathers of the Church their teaching that theosis is the goal of spiritual formation. The doctrine of theosis has remained the constant, normative way of understanding spiritual formation. In His high-priestly prayer when Jesus prays for His followers “that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us” (Jn. 17:21), He is speaking of theosis. St. Peter writes about participation in Christ when he says we “become partakers of the divine nature” (II Pet. 1:4). It is what Paul writes about when he says: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we bless, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (I Cor. 10:16-17). Here is a reference to the Eucharist as the primary means of theosis. We are drawn into the life of the Trinity by the Holy Spirit, who comes from the Father through the Son (Jn. 14:26, 16:7-15, 20:19-23). Participation in the very life of God is what makes us fully human. As the fourth-century Church Father St. Gregory Nazianzen writes, the Son of God “comes down to join his fellow-servants and assumes a form which is not his own, taking upon himself me and what belongs to me, so that in himself he may consume the evil…and that I may share in what belongs to him, by reason of this comixture.” 3 “He takes upon himself the poverty of my flesh so that I may receive the riches of his divinity.” 4 And, “I must be buried with Christ, raised from the dead with Christ; I must be co-heir with Christ, and become a son of God, even myself deified.” 5 The second-century Church Father St. Irenaeus says, “the glory of God is a living man.” 6 Theosis does not mean being absorbed into God and losing our individual identities. Rather, the more deeply we are drawn into the life of God the more we become our unique individual selves. It became clear to me that justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ should be seen from the perspective of the doctrine of theosis and is properly understood when seen as a part of that doctrine. In the doctrine of theosis the work of the Holy Spirit in our interior lives is integrated with the dogmas (revealed truths) of Christology and the Trinity. As Fr. George Montague, SM says to the Christian believer, “In you, the Father is loving the Son, the Son is loving the Father, and Father and Son are giving you their mutual love in the Holy Spirit.” 7
Higher Criticism, Epistemology, and Metaphysics
A second influence, in my early study of spiritual theology, from my Protestant seminary and graduate school education was the higher criticism of the Bible. As my Protestant/Wesleyan understanding of soteriology inhibited my understanding of soteriology as theosis, so what I was taught about the higher criticism of the Bible, particularly in New Testament classes, inhibited my understanding of Scripture as the means through which the Holy Spirit brings the external act of redemption into the internal experience of the believer in theosis. 8 This is why Jesus says to His disciples, “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you” (Jn. 16:7). Looking back on what I was taught in my New Testament classes, I would summarize the impression I received this way: very soon after New Testament times the true meaning of the theology of the New Testament was obscured by misinterpretations of the Church; the Reformation of the sixteenth century had recovered Paul’s understanding of justification by faith after it had been obscured by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages; with the coming of higher criticism of the Bible in the nineteenth century, there began a second stage in the recovery of Paul’s theology, and we began to recover the true theology of the synoptic Gospels and the true meaning of the teaching of Jesus. I remember one of my New Testament professors, Norman Perrin, saying that Rudolf Bultmann, with his demythologizing and existentializing interpretation of the New Testament, had revolutionized New Testament studies in the same way that Einstein had revolutionized the study of physics. This same professor also said that only a professional New Testament theologian could understand what Bultmann wrote.
Although fascinated by higher criticism, especially “form criticism,” even then I had some gnawing doubts about this method of studying the Bible, doubts caused by my experience of the Bible as a means through which the Holy Spirit had worked in my life. For example, why did one of my New Testament professors say that the Gospel of John was a riddle to him? Why did his higher critical method not enable him to study this Gospel? Why should we trust a small number of New Testament theologians to tell us what the New Testament really teaches?
When I finished theological school and was ordained a Methodist minister, I had the opportunity to teach Bible at Texas Western College. Teaching both Old and New Testament courses I endeavored to use the higher criticism of the Bible I had learned. After two years of this, my doubts about the higher critical approach to the Bible were magnified. If someone had asked me at the time why I was disenchanted, I would have said that I thought higher criticism promised a lot more than it could deliver. I had taken college courses in Bible and philosophy because I was interested in exploring ultimate questions. Higher criticism was asking and answering secondary questions, and sometimes the answers to these secondary questions were substituted for answers to primary questions. For example, various New Testament scholars could offer opinions about who wrote a particular Gospel, the audience to whom it was written, where it was written, the approximate date it was written, and what historical events may or may not have influenced the author’s particular perspective on the life of Jesus. However, the methodology of higher criticism could not tell me whether or not Jesus is the Son of God and was bodily resurrected from the dead. It could not tell me whether or not the risen Jesus had really encountered Paul on the Damascus Road. It could not tell me what had motivated Stephen to give up his life as a martyr.
Thus, when I decided to return to graduate school and earn a Ph.D. degree, one of the reasons I did not want to study the Old or New Testaments was my doubts about the efficacy of higher criticism. It was only later that what I had learned in my college philosophy courses began to help me better understand the problem I had with the higher criticism of the Bible. In philosophy I had learned that the three major philosophical problems were the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical problems. When I began to read C.S. Lewis, he reminded me of what I had learned in philosophy and clarified for me what I had learned. In his book on Miracles Lewis writes, “An act of knowing must be determined, in a sense, solely by what is known; we must know it to be thus solely because it is thus.” 9 In other words, metaphysics is the primary determinant of epistemology, and metaphysics mediated through epistemology is the primary determinant of ethics. The primary determinant of the way we know anything (as well as what we know of that which is known) is the nature of that which is known, and what we know of that which is known determines what is an ordinate, ethical response to that which is known.
Higher criticism of the Bible makes epistemology dominant over metaphysics, i.e. a particular way of knowing that is grounded in reason understood as the faculty of analysis is the only valid way of knowing the truth in Scripture. The higher critical method tells us the initiative is on our side, and we have decided that God must reveal Himself to us in the way we want to know Him.
However, if we are to know the truth of Scripture, we must understand, as C.S. Lewis does, that if there is a God “then it is so probable as to be almost axiomatic that the initiative lies wholly on His side. If He can be known it will be by self-revelation on His part, not by speculation on ours.” 10 This self-revelation is centered in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became man and revealed to us that God is a Trinity of Persons.
Lewis helped me see that the demythologizing and existentializing of the New Testament Gospels as Bultmann and his followers do is the wrong way to interpret them. Instead of using analytical reason to demythologize Scripture, Lewis shows how myth and history are integrally related in Scripture and demand that we respond to Scripture with our imagination, will, faith, conscience, and reason. The Gospels are accounts of the historical facts of the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus. All the pagan myths that tell of the interaction of God and man in an imaginative way point to the historical fact of the real Incarnation, Atoning Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus. Instead of a merely rational higher-critical approach to the Gospels, they demand a response of the whole self. As Lewis writes, “The story of Christ demands from us, and repays, not only a religious and historical but also an imaginative response.” 11 As we respond with our whole self to the Gospel, Christ enters us in his death and Resurrection to make us new creatures in Him (II Cor. 5:17). This is theosis.
Thus, reason is only part of the way a person responds to the Gospel. Reason as “theoretical reason” and conscience as “practical reason” prepare us to receive the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Reason and conscience are manifestations of the Image of God in which we are created. Reason allows us to distinguish truth and falsehood, and conscience allows us to distinguish good and evil (right and wrong). Conscience impresses upon us the right or wrong of a particular act or behavior, and reason helps us understand why that act or behavior is in accord with truth or falsehood. This is the revelation to all people of the Natural Law of Human Behavior—sometimes this is called the Natural Moral Law or the Natural Law (see Rom. 2:14-16). Conscience and reason may unite with the will to give us a limited power, aided by prevenient grace, to try to follow the Natural Law discovered by our conscience and reason, but our efforts fall short of our goal because of our participation in Original Sin. As Lewis says, “the general tenor of scripture does not encourage us to believe that our knowledge of the Law has been depraved in the same degree as our power to fulfill it.” 12 Knowledge of the Law and our failure to follow it in the way we know we should prepare in us the repentant heart which is necessary to accept the gift of faith in Jesus Christ.
Faith in Christ is an act of the will, an act that is called forth by the story of Jesus Christ working on the imagination. Faith in Jesus Christ directs our reason to focus on God’s revelation of Himself as that which we are to reason about. As the truth of Jesus Christ is revealed to us through faith, our imagination, guided by the Holy Spirit, begins to internalize the truth, and we begin to love God with our imagination. This is what I do in my poetry—love God with my imagination guided by the Holy Spirit. Moreover, as the truth of Jesus is understood intellectually and morally by our reason and conscience, the doctrines of the Christian faith become more and more intelligible, and we are given the grace to follow our conscience in our moral life.
As I grew in understanding of theosis, faith, reason, conscience, and imagination; the eternal relationship of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics; and the role of the Church as the receiving subject of God’s revelation of Himself, I began to discern the place of foundational theology in spiritual theology.
_______________
1 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 154.
2 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 141.
3 Henry Bettenson, ed. and trans., The Later Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Cyril of Jerusalem to St. Leo the Great (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 104.
4 Bettenson, Later Christian Fathers, 106.
5 Bettenson, Later Christian Fathers, 127.
6 Henry Bettenson, ed. and trans., The Early Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Clement of Rome to St. Athanasius (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 104.
7 George T. Montague, SM, Holy Spirit, Make Your Home in Me: Biblical Meditations on Receiving the Gift of the Holy Spirit (Ijmsville, Maryland: The Word Among Us Press, 2008), 17.
8 See Montague, 15-16.
9 C.S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (London: Fontana Books, 1960), 21-22.
10 C.S. Lewis, “Religion Without Dogma?, God in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1975), 144.
11 C.S. Lewis, Miracles, 137-138n.
12 C.S. Lewis, “The Poison of Subjectivism,” Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1975), 79.
PART TWO
II
FOUNDATIONAL THEOLOGY
CHRISTOLOGY AND THE HOLY TRINITY
The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the “hierarchy of the truths of faith” (General Catechetical Directory, #43). The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men “and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin (TheCatechetical Directory, #43).
—-Catechism of the Catholic Church, #234
Thomas Aquinas, recalling Aristotle, said…”it is the nature of a wise man to order things….He then suggests that we can find a twofold order in things: first, that of the relation of the parts of something to each other so that they form a complete whole, and, second, the order of the whole to some end or purpose beyond itself….Something new existed in the time of Aquinas that did not exist in the time of Aristotle, something we call revelation. We can say of Aristotle, as Aquinas did, that he was “the Philosopher”. Aristotle thought about what the human mind by itself could know….Aquinas was careful to let Aristotle be Aristotle. But Aquinas began from revelation, from, to put it crudely, information unavailable to the natural human mind, but not information about which the human mind could not think once it knew what was presented to it.
—-James V. Schall, SJ 1
Implications of Inclusive Language
“O God, Father and Mother of Our Lord, Jesus Christ….” So began a prayer in our Seminary chapel service in the fall of 1986. This way of addressing God was used as a result of an “inclusive language” statement adopted by the Seminary faculty in May 1986. In part the statement in the Memphis Theological Seminary Student Handbook, 1986-87 read: “Further, while the Christian tradition has used masculine terms to refer to God, we have never wished to say that God is masculine or that God possesses masculine traits to the exclusion of the feminine. We therefore recommend that in speech and writing about God an effort be made to avoid the use of masculine terms exclusively and to use inclusive terms. Less androcentric language about God will be a significant Christian Witness to our oneness in Jesus Christ.”
The proposed text of this statement was circulated to the faculty on Thursday or Friday before the faculty meeting on Monday. This seemed to me inadequate time to consider the theological implications of it. When it was adopted, I cast the one dissenting vote. I told the faculty I objected to the statement because I thought it had profound implications for both dogmatic and ascetical theology, and we had made no serious effort to examine the implications. More specifically, I was concerned about the implications that referring to God as Father and Mother, as He and She, would have for the traditional feminine imagery present in Christian theology, such as references to the Church and to the soul in the feminine and the role of the Virgin Mary in dogmatic and ascetical theology.
As I understood my colleagues on the faculty who voted for this statement, they assumed the way we refer to God arises out of the cultural experience of humankind. They assumed that since the cultural experience of the early Church was patriarchal, so the ways to refer to God by Christians in that culture were patriarchal. Since our contemporary western culture is becoming less patriarchal, they determined we should refer to God in less patriarchal ways, including referring to God as “Mother,” which would also further the liberation of women and, therefore, further the cause of justice.
I did not question the fact that ancient culture was patriarchal, despite the fact that there was goddess worship throughout the ancient world. However, I did question the assumption that the early Church referred to God as Father because of the influence of that culture. Because I had learned to question what I had been taught in my Protestant education about the centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith in soteriology and had learned to question what I had been taught about the higher criticism of the Bible, I was not ready to commit myself to this rationale for inclusive language advanced by my Protestant colleagues. By that time I had begun to realize the truth of the liturgical tradition of the Church and had moved from The United Methodist Church to the Episcopal Church. My study of spiritual theology and spiritual formation was gradually drawing me into a more Catholic understanding of Christianity.
The Family of God
Although the other faculty members did not seem to be interested in making a serious study of the use of feminine imagery in the Church’s theological tradition, I knew that I must at least be aware of this as I continued to teach Church History. Since I was scheduled to teach a new course on the Early Church in the fall semester of 1986, I decided to begin my own study of the use of feminine imagery in the Church by looking for that imagery in the writings of the Early Fathers. As I read the Fathers and prepared my course, I discovered occasional references to God using feminine terms in a metaphorical way but also coming into focus before me was a picture of the family of God in early Christian theology. As that picture became clearer, the picture of the Church’s foundational theology also became clearer, a picture with Christology and the dogma of the Holy Trinity in the foreground. This in turn allowed me to see more clearly the larger picture of spiritual theology of which this picture of Christology and the dogma of the Holy Trinity is the key piece. Through all my theological reflection I talked extensively with Sandie as my thoughts were being clarified. She has a very incisive mind and pushed me to be more precise in my thinking.
It was during my consideration of the First Four Ecumenical Councils of the Church that I became aware of the picture of the Family of God. The first of these Councils met at Nicea in 325. The bishops there were concerned with the proper understanding of the relationship between Jesus, the Son of God, and God, the Father of Jesus. While there were other names given to Jesus in Scripture, such as Son of Man, the Word, Messiah (Christ), and Emmanuel, it was the name Son of God that became central in the way the Early Church understood Jesus. The name Son of God was understood as a name that included in itself the various other names given to Jesus. Although there were other names given to God in Scripture, such as Maker, Husband, and Rock, it was the name, Father, which became central in the way the early Church understood God. In the Old Testament the word “Father” is used to refer to God eleven times, and in these contexts “Father” is a title for God, not a name, i.e., the Old Testament writers were using their human understanding of fatherhood to speak of God. However, in the New Testament God is called “Father” two hundred sixty-one times, and Father is understood as being the revealed name of the First Person of the Holy Trinity, the name of God revealed to His followers by Jesus, the Son of God. 2 Jesus not only instructs His followers to address God as “Our Father,” but also instructs them to say “hallowed be your name” (Mt. 6:9; Lk. 11:2). Both the names “Father” and “Jesus” are paralleled in the Old Testament by the name “Yahweh.” For the Early Church, the central proclamation of the New Testament is that Jesus is the Son of God who, through His birth, life, death, Resurrection, Ascension, and High-Priesthood, saves us from sin, death, and Satan. The Early Church called the First Person of the Holy Trinity “Father” because Jesus called Him “Father” and taught His disciples to do the same.
The Arian Heresy, the Council of Nicea (325), and the Creed of Nicea
The effort of the Council of Nicea to understand more precisely the relationship of God the Son to God the Father was prompted by a presbyter in the Church of Alexandria named Arius (d. 336), whose teaching came to be called Arianism. As B.J. Kidd points out, Arius taught, among other things, that the Son of God “had come into being out of non-existence,” that “once He was not,” and that “He was created and made.” Arius’s teaching can be summarized in what is called the Arian syllogism, which reads: “What is true of human fatherhood is true of the relation between the Father and the Son. But the father’s priority of existence is true of human fatherhood. Therefore, it is true in regard to the Father and the Son.” In other words, in one sentence, “once there was no Son.” 3 This also meant that once God was not Father, and He could be called by other names.
. Other early Christian theologians had three basic objections to Arius’s teaching. First, if the Son is created and is not eternal, He is less than fully God, and if He is less than fully God, there may be some other supernatural power in the universe that is more powerful than He. In that case He is not the One before whom “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10-11). Second, Arius took our common, natural human experience as his starting point rather than the Special Revelation of Scripture. In that sense, he regarded natural human experience as his ultimate authority rather than Scripture. Arius understood the title “Father” as a metaphor for God, using his human understanding of fatherhood to speak of God. However, if “Father” is the revealed name of the First Person of the Holy Trinity, the Old Testament metaphor of God as “Father” has been incarnated by the divine, and since the human metaphor is not big enough to hold this incarnation of the divine, the divine took this human metaphor for God into the very being of God Himself. The metaphor itself had its origin in Him who is always Father. He who gave the metaphor to us took the metaphor back into Himself to reveal to us who He has always been: the eternal Father of an eternally begotten Son. Christians understand that the name “Father” for the First Person of the Holy Trinity is to be understood ontologically. It expresses the relationship of the First Person of the Trinity to the Second Person of the Trinity and, secondarily, the relationship of the First Person of the Trinity to every Christian. Third, in using natural human experience as his starting point, Arius began his theological reflection with the fatherhood of men and not the Sonship of Jesus. For the Nicean theologians, the supreme revelation of God comes through God’s Son, Jesus, and theological reflection begins with the Son.
The result of the Arian theological debate was the meeting of the Council of Nicea and the adoption of a Creed, which came to be called the Creed of Nicea. The Creed was Christocentric in that the second clause of the Creed, which spoke of God the Son, was the longest of the three clauses. In that second clause, the Council of Nicea affirmed that the Son is of the same “essence” or “substance” as the Father, that the Son is “begotten of the Father as only begotten” and “begotten not created (made),” and that the Son is “incarnate, becoming human.” By saying that the Son was of the same “essence” or “substance” as the Father, the bishops at Nicea meant to affirm the full equality of the Son and the Father, i.e., they meant to affirm the full divinity of the Son. The Bishops at Nicea understood “begotten” to mean something different from “created,” and “begotten” is understood in the context of “essence” or “substance.” Jesus, as Son of God, is begotten of the same “essence” as God the Father. Jesus is also “only-begotten,” i.e., the Holy Spirit is not another Son of God. Moreover, human beings are “created” by God but not “begotten” by God. Later, the phrase “begotten from the Father before all time” was added to clarify the point that there was never a time when the Son of God was not. The Son of God is “incarnate, becoming human,” meaning that it is He who is fully God who became fully human.4
The Apollinarian Heresy and the Capadocian Theologians
After the Council of Nicea, another Christian theologian, Apollinaris (d.390), began to teach a doctrine of Christ which other Christian theologians thought was heretical. One of the results of the ensuing debate was the development of an understanding concerning the Son and His sisters and brothers. Instead of beginning his theological reflection with what Scripture teaches about Christ, Apollinaris, as the Church historian, Justo Gonzalez, shows, began with an anthropological presupposition, i.e., he begins with an assumption about the trichotomist nature of persons, which he believed is expressed in I Thessalonians 5:23, where Paul writes, “May your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Apollinaris interpreted this with the help of Plato’s philosophy, which, as he understood it, taught that human nature is composed of a body, soul, and spirit (reason). The body is the flesh; the soul is the vital principle that gives life to the body; and the spirit is a rational spirit, which differentiates human beings from animals. Animals have, in this understanding, bodies and souls, but they do not have rational spirits. According to Apollinaris, at the Incarnation, the Word of God took the place of the rational spirit in Jesus. Thus, Jesus is human because His body and soul are human, and He is divine because His rational spirit is none other than the Word of God. In his desire to proclaim the “immutability” of the Word, he succeeded in “mutilating” the human nature of Jesus. In other words, since by his own presupposition the rational spirit is what makes a human being human, by taking the rational spirit away from Jesus, Apollinaris taught that Jesus was not truly human. 5
The opposition to Apollinarianism was led by the three great Cappadocian theologians, Basil of Caesarea (d.379), Gregory of Nyssa (d.394), and Gregory Nazianzus (d.390) and resulted in the meeting of the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 381. In continuity with the teaching of earlier Fathers and the Council of Nicea, the soteriology of the Cappadocian theologians and the decisions of the Council of Constantinople developed an understanding of the Son and His sisters and brothers with whom Jesus shares a true human nature.
The teaching of the Cappadocians showed the connection between theosis and the Christology of the Fathers of the Church. In their doctrine of theosis the Cappadocians taught that when Christ became Incarnate, His purpose was not only to participate in human life but also to empower people to participate in the Divine Life. As the Cappadocians taught, if Christ did not fully participate in human life, there is a part of our human life that cannot fully participate in the divine life, i.e., there is a part of our human life that is not redeemed. It was Gregory Nazianzus who provided a statement that is often quoted. He wrote: “Anyone who has placed His hope in a human being who lacked a human mind is himself truly mindless, and does not deserve a complete salvation. For what was not assumed, was not healed. What is saved is that which has been united with God. If it was half Adam that fell, then half might be assumed and saved. But if it was the whole Adam that fell, it is united to the whole of him who was begotten, and gains complete salvation.” 6
Thus, for the Cappadocians, their doctrine of salvation (theosis) helped them see the problem in Apollinaris’ Christology. They did not see the Incarnation as taking place only to give us an example to follow or only so that Christ could die for us to save us from sin and ransom us from Satan. They also saw the Incarnation as the means through which the union of the divine and human is accomplished, with the initiative from the divine in its total assumption of humanity and the response from the human, which results in the adoption of many sisters and brothers of Jesus, united to Him through the same humility by which He, the Son of God, became human (Phil. 2:1-11). This also means that those who are united with Jesus and become His sisters and brothers by adoption have God as their Father. As Athanasius (d.373) wrote: “God is first the Creator of men and then becomes their Father by virtue of his Word that dwells in them. With respect to the Word, that is reversed. God is by nature his Father and later becomes his Creator and Maker when the Word assumes flesh that is created and made and becomes man.” 7
Of course, Athanasius and the Cappadocians were teaching what they read in the New Testament. For example, in John 1:12-13 we read, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” St. Paul, writing in Galatians 4:4-7, says, “But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.” The Apostle’s use of the word “son” was not meant to exclude women. For St. Paul, male and female are all meant to be “in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). All Christians are sisters and brothers of Jesus, all Christians have God, the First Person of the Holy Trinity, as their Father, and, therefore, all Christians are sisters and brothers of one another.
Theosis, participation in the life of the Holy Trinity by being “with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3), also means being part of Christ’s Body, the Church. Union with the Holy Trinity does not mean the loss of each person’s unique individuality through absorption but means that each person becomes his/her unique self united to all others in the Church as the parts of a human body are united to one another and yet are perfectly differentiated, and each person receives spiritual gifts that will benefit the whole Body (I Cor. 12-14). When the Divine enters the human in the Incarnation, the human is too small to hold the Divine, so the Divine takes the human into itself and perfects it; just as time cannot hold eternity, so in the Incarnation eternity takes time into itself and perfects it.
The Council of Constantinople (381) and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed
When the Second Ecumenical Council met at Constantinople in 381, the Creed of Nicea was slightly edited and expanded. It is this Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that today is called the Nicene Creed. The principal expansion of the Creed was the expansion of the third and last clause which reads: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” 8 This third clause affirms the “consubstantiality” of the Holy Spirit, i.e., the Holy Spirit is divine as are the Son and His Father. The Holy Spirit is the giver of life to the sisters and brothers of the Son through baptism for the forgiveness of sin, that unites them to Christ and makes them part of the Church, His Body, whose members look forward to the resurrection and the life of the world to come.
The Nestorian Heresy and Cyril of Alexandria: Theotokos
After the Council of Constantinople, another Christological controversy caused the doctrine concerning the Son and His Mother to come to the forefront. The controversy swirled around the heresy called Nestorianism, named for Nestorius (d.ca.451), Patriarch of Constantinople. However, the Christology of Nestorianism had its beginning with Diodore, Bishop of Tarsus (d.ca.394). As patristic scholar B.J. Kidd explains, Diodore, in his Christology, distinguished the Son of God from the Son of David. For him, the Son of David is the temple of the Word. The Word is not the Son of David. He is David’s Lord. Moreover, the Word is not the Son of Mary. Therefore, Mary cannot be called Theotokos, “God-Bearer.” At this time, the term, Theotokos, was a popular term in Christian devotion and had been used by Origen (d.254), Alexander of Alexandria (d.328), Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa. The Latin term “Mater Dei” (“Mother of God”), the theological equivalent of Theotokos, had been used by Tertullian (d.225) and Ambrose (d.397) and anticipated by Ignatius of Antioch (d.ca.117). 9 His opponents said that Diodore taught that the Word was associated with Christ as it was with any prophet. Diodore responded by saying that in the prophets the divine indwelling was temporary and partial while in Jesus it was eternal and entire. In writing about Nestorianism, Kidd shows that the link between Diodore and Nestorius is Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia (d.428), who was the teacher of Nestorius and a disciple of Diodore. For Theodore, Jesus was a man who became God, not God who became human. This is the reverse of the Nicene Christology which begins with the affirmation that in Christ God became human. Theodore also said that Mary should not be referred to as “Mother of God.” Instead, Mary is the Mother of the man who was assumed by God. 10
When Nestorius became Patriarch of Constantinople, he brought this Christology of Theodore to one of the most prominent Sees in the Church. Nestorius said that Christ, the Son, the Lord, was born of Mary; God was not born of Mary. The implication, as Kidd points out, was that Jesus is not fully God, i.e., He is not “of the same substance as the Father.” Nestorius was concerned that faithful Christians were dangerously close to making Mary a goddess. He did not understand that the issue was not about Mary but about her Son. Nestorius suggested that Mary be called Christotokos, “Christ-Bearer” or “Mother of Christ.” His critics said that this implies that Christ is not fully God, i.e., that the Son is not of the same substance as the Father. Nestorius said that the Nicene Creed speaks of Jesus Christ, and not the Word, as “incarnate… crucified…raised again.” But, says Kidd, “he forgot that between subject and predicate of this sentence stood ‘true God from true God…of the same substance as the Father.’” The conclusion of Nestorius’ Christology was that in Christ there were two beings and not one Person, i.e., there was not a true (complete) Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. 11
The opposition to Nestorius was led by Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria. Cyril accepted the Christology that he saw expressed in the Nicene Creed, i.e., the Son is of the same substance as the Father. How the Son who is God could be born of a human Mother is a question that Cyril addressed from the perspective of moral theology. He drew on the passage in Philippians 2:1-11 in which Paul talked about the Son of God becoming human through humility. 12 The way to begin to understand how the Son, who is of the same substance as the Father, could be born of a human Mother, is to begin to understand that greatest of Christian virtues, the virtue of humility, which is the antidote for the sin of pride. In the very act of the Incarnation itself, God the Son reverses the sin of pride that caused the Fall. The humility of God the Son calls forth the answering humility of Mary, His human Mother, when she says to the angel Gabriel, “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Lk. 1:38). As Cyril said, “the manner of the incarnation of the Only-begotten is visible only to the eyes of the soul.” 13
In his defense of the doctrine that Mary is Theotokos, Gonzalez points out that Cyril advanced the doctrine of the “hypostatic union,” a term that may have been new with Cyril and later became a standard of orthodoxy. Cyril taught that the two natures of Christ, Divine and human, are hypostatically united in One Person. This means that while the two natures are distinct, they can never be separated. They are united in One Person in whom the human nature is always perfectly obedient to the Divine nature. This perfect obedience heals the relationship of God and man that had been spoiled in the Fall of Adam and Eve. The Doctrine of the Hypostatic Union then becomes the basis for the communicatio idiomatum (communication of idioms), i.e., anything that is true of (or can be experienced by) the human nature of Jesus is also true of (or can be experienced by) the Divine nature of Jesus. 14 Thus, the human nature of Jesus is born of a woman and so is the Divine nature. This does not mean that the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, is created, for the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, but it does mean that the Second Person of the Trinity freely chooses to unite Himself in hypostatic union with humanity through a human nature born of the Virgin Mary. Because of this hypostatic union and communication of idioms, Mary is Theotokos. While God in Himself cannot die, when united to human nature, the Son of God can die. Also, since death cannot hold the Divine nature of the Son, so it cannot hold the human nature of the Son. With regard to theosis, participation in God: because we are able to have a relationship with the human nature of Jesus, since He and we are human, we are able also to have a relationship with His Divine nature. As we participate more deeply in this relationship, we participate more deeply in the nature of Christ; because Jesus the Son is one with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, we can participate in the life of the Holy Trinity. Although the controversy over Theotokos was not present at Nicea and Constantinople, Cyril of Alexandria understood that the Creed adopted at those Councils anticipated the answer that should be given the question, “Is Mary Theotokos?” The answer, according to the Nicene Creed, is “yes.”
The Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451)
The controversy over Theotokos was one of the principal reasons for the meeting of the Council of Ephesus in 431. The Council itself ended in controversy, and the subsequent compromise statement of 433 affirmed that Mary is Theotokos. The statement says that in Jesus Christ “a unity of two natures has come about: therefore we acknowledge one Christ, one Son, one Lord. In accordance with this principle of the union without confusion, we acknowledge the Holy Virgin as Mother of God [Theotokos], because the Word was incarnate and made man, and from the very conception united to himself the temple taken from her.” 15
Prior to the Council of Ephesus, early Christians had begun to refer to Mary as the Second Eve. For example, both Irenaeus (d.ca.200) and Tertullian (d.ca.220) wrote of the Eve-Mary antithesis. 16 Some Christians had begun to interpret John 19:23-27 to mean that Jesus, while on the Cross, asked Mary and the Beloved Disciple (understood to be the Apostle John), who both stood at the foot of the Cross, to love each other as mother and son. This is a love in which Mary retains her motherhood and in which John becomes the representative of all Christians, who, as sisters and brothers of the Son and daughters and sons of the Father, also have Mary as their mother. As Eve is the mother of humankind, so Mary is the Second Eve, the second mother of humankind. In coming to this understanding, the Church linked together such biblical texts as Genesis 3:1-7,25; Luke 1:26-38; John 2:1-11; John 19:23-27; and Revelation 12. 17
Thus, by the time of the statement of 433, the Early Church had a picture of the Family of God. Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God the Father and was born of Mary, the Mother of God. All Christians are adopted as sisters and brothers of Jesus and as daughters and sons of God the Father and Mary the Mother.
Eighteen years later, the Council of Chalcedon (451) adopted the Chalcedonian Christological Statement that affirmed Mary as Theotokos. This Statement became the orthodox Christological commentary interpreting the Nicene Creed. By the middle of the fifth century, the doctrines of the Incarnation, the Holy Trinity, Mary as Mother of God (and our mother), and salvation as participation (theosis) in the life of the Holy Trinity and in the life of the Body of Christ, the Church, had come into clear focus.
The Holy Trinity
As the Church discerned the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, it proclaimed that “Father” is the name of the First Person of the Holy Trinity, but this is not the full name of God. The revealed name of God is “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus commands His disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (28:19). It is essential to understand that this truth is the revelation by God of His own inner nature. It means that ultimate reality is Three Persons in an eternal relationship with one another. In the relationship of these Three Persons with one another, there is no barrier or impediment, i.e., this relationship is one of perfect love. When two persons love each other perfectly, they manifest that love by loving a third person together. Thus, we can say that “God is love” because He is the perfect love of Three Persons for one another. Because there are no barriers separating these Three Persons, we can say that “God is One.”
This ultimate truth—God’s revelation of Himself as a Trinity of Persons who is perfect love—is “revelation” because it is not something the human race through its reason and experience could discover on its own. It is this revelation that God is a Trinity of Persons that distinguishes the Christian faith from all other religions. Other religions are either polytheist or monist. Paganism is polytheist as is Hinduism. Judaism and Islam are monist. Polytheism says there are many gods; monism says there is one god, and he is one in nature. Christianity teaches that God is One who is also Three Persons in One God. To say it another way, God is a Family of Three Persons. This dogma (revealed truth) that God is a Trinity of Persons who is perfect love is a living source of truth that makes knowledge of truth possible. 18
The Family who is the Holy Trinity meets the human family through the Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth—Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The Holy Family is an icon of the Holy Trinity, and every nuclear human family—father, mother, child—participates in the life of the Holy Family and in the life of the Holy Trinity. Every Christian family is the ecclesia domestica, the domestic Church, and spiritual formation begins in the family, the Church in the home, the basic component of every Catholic parish. 19
Holy Trinity, Holy Family, Human Family
As Sandie and I reflected philosophically and theologically on all we were learning about the Holy Trinity and Christology, we began to understand the relationship of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Family, and the human family of father, mother, and child. The family who is the Holy Trinity meets the human family through the Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth—Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The Holy Family is an icon of the Holy Trinity, and every nuclear family—father, mother, and child—participates in the life of the Holy Family and Holy Trinity.
Sandie and I saw how God Himself in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and in Christology answers the two principal metaphysical questions in philosophy, i.e., “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and “Why is what is what it is and not something else?” There is something rather than nothing because God the Holy Trinity is perfect love, with His love perfected as Two Persons love a Third Person together. It is the nature of this perfect love to give itself away, and all creation is a result of the perfect love of the Holy Trinity overflowing in the act of creation. Creation is what it is because at the heart of creation is the human family of father, mother, and child, a trinitarian likeness of God Himself. When the human family falls into sin, the Person who is the Father’s Only-Begotten Son becomes incarnate in a human family, the Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth to redeem the heart of God’s creation and, by redeeming the heart, to redeem all creation.
This helped us see “a vision of the whole.” Philosophy is “the love of wisdom” and wisdom is “a vision of the whole.” It helped us see all creation through the lens of the human family, the human icon of the Holy Trinity. No human mind can encompass the whole, but we are meant to have a vision of the whole by looking through the center of the whole at everything else. In doing so, we have the proper perspective on all the rest of creation.
As I was drawn more deeply into the truth of the Catholic understanding of Foundational Theology, I was becoming more aware of the hidden and mysterious work of God’s grace in my life and of how that grace had come to me over the years through the Bible, the Church, and my own family.
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1 James V. Schall, SJ, The Order of Things (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 23 and 28.
2 C. FitzSimons Allison, The Cruelty of Heresy: An Affirmation of Christian Orthodoxy (Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, 1994), 160.
3 B.J. Kidd, A History of the Church to A.D. 461, vol. II (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1922), 14-15.
4 Kidd, II, 27-32.
5 Justo L. Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, vol. I (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970), 347-348.
6 Henry Bettenson, ed. and trans., The Later Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Cyril of Jerusalem to St. Leo the Great (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 108.
7 Henry Bettenson, ed. and trans., The Early Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Clement of Rome to St. Athanasius (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 393.
8 This is the translation of the Creed given in the English translation of The Roman Missal, according to the Third Typical Edition, 2011. The “filioque clause” (“and the Son”) was not part of the original Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and was added to the western version of the Creed, probably because of the influence of the Trinitarian theology of St. Augustine.
9 B.J. Kidd, A History of the Church to A.D. 461, vol. III (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1922), 194-196, 201n.
10 Kidd, III, 200-201.
11 Kidd, III, 205-209.
12 Kidd, III, 210,227.
13 Bettenson, Later Christian Fathers, 262.
14 Gonzalez, 375-376.
15 Bettenson, Later Christian Fathers, 260.
16 Bettenson, Early Christian Fathers, 101, 174.
17 See Pope John Paul II, Mary: God’s Yes to Man: Encyclical Letter, Mother of the Redeemer, intro. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, commentary Hans Urs von Balthasar (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,1988) and George T. Montague, S.M., Our Father, Our Mother: Mary and the Faces of God (Steubenville: Franciscan University Press, 1990).
18 See Pope Benedict XVI, Milestones: Memoirs, 1917-1977 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 57.
19 See Catechism of the Catholic Church, #’s 1655-1658; Lumen gentium, 10,11; Familiaris consortio, 21, 85.
PART TWO
III
CATHOLIC MYSTICAL THEOLOGY
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet….” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”…So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the city, and said to people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” They went out of the city and were coming to him.
—–The Gospel According to John 4:16-19,25-26,28-30
Being Told Your Own Story
In The Horse and His Boy, one of the seven Chronicles of Narnia written by C.S. Lewis, the Christ-figure, a great golden lion named Aslan, says to two of the children when he is speaking to each one of them privately, “I tell no-one any story but his own.” 1 This is based on the story of Jesus encountering the woman at the well in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John. In other words, Christ speaks to each of us in our own language, the language of our own life story. Moreover, it is the true story of our life, because it is the story of our life as He sees it. When He reveals to us the true story of our life, He simultaneously reveals Himself to us, because He is the main character in our life story.
The purpose of mystical theology is to help us listen to the voice of Christ in our own life. It is that part of spiritual theology that deals with the more hidden and mysterious work of God’s grace in the life of a person. My Protestant seminary and graduate school education gave me some background for understanding this mysterious work of God in my life, but it was the understanding of theosis that brought together the major doctrines of the faith and my personal life.
In retrospect, I realize that the Protestant Wesleyan order of salvation helps us understand the way God works in our lives and is in some way similar to the traditional teaching of the three-fold way of purgation, illumination, and union in Catholic mystical theology. The Wesleyan order of salvation sees God’s grace moving through the stages of prevenient grace and original sin; conviction of sin and repentance; the new birth, justification by faith, and assurance; and sanctification, entire sanctification, and Christian perfection. Both of these ways give us patterns that can help us see grace in our lives. The Wesleyan order of salvation and the three-fold way can be pictured both vertically and horizontally, i.e., one can picture moving up a ladder or moving forward on a journey. The image of Jacob’s Ladder (Gen. 28:12-17) is a favorite image of mystics in the Medieval Church to describe an ascent from earth to heaven and is used by Dante in The Divine Comedy. The image of the journey, so prevalent in Scripture (the Hebrew people journeying to the Promised Land, Jesus’ disciples being told what to take on their preaching journeys, the journeys of the Apostle Paul), is an image of mystical movement that seems to be more popular in the Church in the West after the sixteenth-century Reformation. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is a picture of a spiritual journey. One does not move through one of these stages of mystical experience and never return to it. Rather, it is more like a spiral that moves upward or forward by continually revisiting each stage. For example, we are never finished with purgation (conviction of sin and repentance) in this life. We journey deeper and deeper into ourselves and discover more sin than we ever knew at the beginning of our journey. However, we also discover more illumination and deeper union with God the Holy Trinity as He simultaneously reveals Himself to us and us to ourselves.
Mystical Theology and the Liturgical Year
For Christians, mystical experience is directly related to the seasons of the Liturgical Year (Ascetical Theology), which in turn is directly related to the principal Dogmas of the Faith (Foundational Theology). Purgation is especially related to Lent and Holy week and to Advent, known as “winter Lent.” Repentance, which is a necessary part of purgation, is made possible by the work of Jesus on the Cross. Here is the Cross taking into death with Jesus my sinful self in Adam and making way for the Second Adam, Jesus Himself, in me. There is no sin more powerful than Jesus’ forgiveness. The theological virtue of hope is connected with purgation, for true repentance (godly grief, II Cor. 7:10) brings with it hope that we have responded to God as He has called us to do, and we can now hope in Him and His promise to forgive our sins and bring us into new life. This new life begins now and will continue with our bodily resurrection from the dead. In the Nicene Creed we say, “I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” The forgiveness of Jesus is so powerful and so complete that our whole self—body, soul, and spirit—is forgiven and raised from the dead with Him.
Illumination is especially related to Jesus as our teacher through His gift to us of the Holy Spirit, who comes to us from the Father through Him (Jn. 16:7; 20:22). The Holy Spirit leads us into all Truth, who is Jesus (Jn. 16:12-15). He opens the Old Testament for us through His light in the New Testament (Lk. 24:13-35). I think of both the Ordinary Time following the celebration of the Epiphany and the Ordinary Time following Pentecost Sunday as the time of Jesus as teacher and of the gift of illumination which He gives to us. In my Anglican days, I learned to call these periods of ordinary time “Epiphany Season” and “Pentecost Season,” which serve to highlight the role of Jesus the teacher who is the “light of the world” (Epiphany) and the One through whom the Father sends the Spirit (Pentecost) to lead us into all Truth.
Union is especially related to Christmas and Easter. At Christmas, Christ is born in Bethlehem so that He can be born in us. Christology, with its teaching about the Incarnation, the hypostatic union without confusion of the human and divine natures, and the communication of idioms, informs the unitive stage of mystical theology. At Easter, in His Resurrection and Ascension, Christ takes our human nature to the right hand of the Father and heals the breach made between us and the Father through Adam in the Fall.
The connection between the seasons of the Church Year and the mystical three-fold way does not mean these mystical stages occur only at these specific times of the Church Year. Rather, in the different seasons particular aspects of God’s revelation of Himself are emphasized more than other aspects. The Church in her wisdom, however, includes in her Eucharistic Liturgy all of Christology and the Trinitarian revelation of Three Persons in One God.
The Four Temperaments
Part of mystical theology that is traditional and has proved helpful to me is the explication by the Church of the four temperament types: sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic and their various combinations. These four temperament types were originally connected by the early Greeks with differences in physiology. Modern science does not understand the human body in the way the Greeks did; nevertheless, the Church has continued to make use of the temperament types. One reason for this continued use is that regardless of present knowledge about the physical make-up of the human body, the temperament types recognize the inextricable union of body, soul (mind, emotions, will, intuition, imagination), and spirit that make up the human person and the need for balance. Most people are a combination of two or more temperament types, with one being dominant. A person’s temperament combination is the way God has hard-wired that person and affects every aspect of life.
When I first learned of these temperament types, the distinction proved more useful to me than the various ways contemporary psychology categorizes persons. For example, I discovered rather quickly that I have a dominant melancholic temperament, which means I have a tendency toward introspection, sensitivity, perfectionism, and scrupulosity. These traits make me a disciplined worker who prefers to work alone and has a tendency toward sadness, depression, and extreme scrutiny for sins. The melancholic person also tends to be sensitive, creative, and artistic.
In the family it is helpful when husband and wife recognize each other’s temperament combination. Through experience and observation, Sandie and I are aware of God’s plan for complementarity in a couple’s temperaments. We’ve all heard the adage that opposites attract. While I am predominantly melancholic, she is a combination of sanguine and choleric. We actually laugh sometimes when we realize how our temperaments are influencing us when we are in the process of making family decisions. Moreover, being aware of the temperaments of our children and helping them recognize their temperaments helped them and the two of us as we lived in the close quarters of family life and now as adults. Also, the four of us have seen how a knowledge of the temperament types helps us understand members of our extended family and friends. Nevertheless, in all this we must remember that each person is a unique creation of God, and there will never be another person exactly like anyone else. (For further reading about the temperament types, we recommend The Temperament God Gave You and The Temperament God Gave Your Spouse, Art & Laraine Bennett.)
Augustinian and Thomist
Before I became a Catholic, I read The Seven Story Mountain by Thomas Merton. Merton wrote about a seminar on St. Thomas Aquinas he had taken at Columbia University. This was done before he became a Catholic, and the instructor had told him that his spirituality was more Augustinian than Thomist. 2 This had helped me understand that my spirituality is more Augustinian than Thomist, i.e., I am more contemplative and synthetic than analytical and particular in my thinking. This is one reason I had such a difficult time in my graduate education. My tendency was to synthesize while the demands on me were to analyze. The poetry is my contemplative, synthesizing tendency finally being expressed.
Under the tutelage of a friend, Bob Klyce, who is a Catholic systematic theologian, and in reading G.K Chesterton’s biography of St. Thomas Aquinas, I have arrived at a perspective on our great Catholic doctor that has been very helpful to me. It seems to me that Thomas has a Platonic presupposition in his theologizing, i.e., he assumes that all particular things are part of one whole and fit together in a synthesis of truth and beauty. Nevertheless, he makes use of Aristotelian philosophy to study the particulars that make up the whole. This understanding has led me to the sacramental truth that the water, bread, wine, and oil of our Catholic sacraments are means through which the eternal world comes into this world of matter and that what is inside the matter of this world is bigger than what is outside. It has helped me see each person I meet as a sacrament of Christ and the Holy Trinity, created in the image of God and destined to be redeemed and glorified in heaven.
Discernment of Spirits
Mystical experiences are more common than I once thought. When one engages in an examination of conscience at the end of the day to see when or how one has practiced virtue and/or fallen into sin during that day, it is also helpful to engage in an “examination of consciousness,” to see where God has been present during the day in recognizable ways. Here is a way to become sensitive to the work of the Holy Spirit through the normal routine of life. The extraordinary lies deep within the ordinary, and every person is extraordinary in God’s eyes.
I have become more aware of the spiritual warfare that is going on all the time as “Christ in us the hope of glory” engages the flesh, the world, and the Devil in cosmic warfare within each one of us. Here is the real battleground, and to participate with Christ in this war we must “put on the whole armor of God” (Eph. 6:10-20). The New Testament teaches us that the human being is porous to spirits, both the Holy Spirit and evil spirits. When we engage in an examination of conscience and consciousness asking the Holy Spirit to guide us, He will help us identify the evil spirits that have impinged on our lives.
The Communion of Saints
In this pilgrimage through the temporal to the eternal the saints are journeying with us, and we are all one family. As Charles Wesley wrote in one of his poems (hymns), “Part of His host hath crossed the flood, and part is crossing now.” 3 I call upon the saints to pray for us; especially I call upon our Mother in the Church, Mary, for her intercession. When she stood at the foot of the Cross and took the Beloved Disciple, John, as her son and he took her as his mother, John was there for all of us. Mary is our Mother in the faith and is concerned for the salvation of all her children. Mary can be considered “Co-redemptrix,” not because she is divine but because she is without sin and, therefore, fully human. She gave her sinless humanity to her Son, who had given His sinlessness to her through His perfect obedience to the Father, which was breathed back in time to her from the moment of conception in the womb of her mother, Ann. As Co-redemptrix she is not equal to Christ, who is our Redeemer; there must be a Redeemer before there can be a Co-redeemer. In the words of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, “the Immaculate Ever-Virgin Mother of God [is] the feminine complement to the mystery of the Incarnate Word, intimately associated with Him in the Economy of Redemption.” 4
After I became a Catholic, I asked certain saints for their prayers every day. However, on one occasion a saint asked me to ask her for her prayers, i.e., she actually took the initiative in our prayer together. In the fall semester of 1997, I was teaching the course “History of Christian Spirituality.” The class met for three hours on Saturday mornings. In this particular class I lectured for half the class and then students led discussions of selections from primary sources in the history of Christian spirituality. One Saturday in October, a student was leading a discussion of a passage from the writings of St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower. Another student, who was a Protestant but who had been a Catholic at one time, said: “When I was about twenty-five years old, I asked the Little Flower to pray for me, and I believe that her intercession really helped me.” As soon as she said this, I experienced an urgent plea from the Little Flower that I ask her right then to pray for me. In my heart and mind, I responded by saying, “O.K., Little Flower, you know the prayer that is constantly on my heart. Our daughter, Amy, has a vocation to be a Catholic wife and mother, but she has not yet met that Catholic man whom the Lord has prepared for her. Please pray with me that Amy will meet that man who is to be her husband and that they will marry.” Two weeks later on Saturday afternoon when I came home from class, Sandie told me Amy had met a young man whom she really liked but that she did not want to say much about him until they knew each other better. When I asked when she had met him, Sandie said she had met him two weeks earlier on a Saturday evening when the two young adult groups from St. Louis and St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Churches had a supper and hayride together. Amy was part of the St. Louis group and the young man was part of the St. Francis group. I told Sandie I had asked the Little Flower for her prayers on that very Saturday! Amy and Rob were married less than a year later in St. Francis of Assisi Church.
Since that time, Sandie and I have become more aware of specific saints, in addition to our Blessed Mother Mary, who pray for us. One is St. Rita of Cascia, who is especially concerned about marriage and family life and the necessity of reconciliation and forgiveness in families. Another person in the Church Triumphant, who is not yet canonized but who prays for us, is Sor Maria de Jesus de Agrada, known as the “Lady in Blue,” the name given her by the Jumano Indians who lived in the Concho River valley in Texas in the Seventeenth Century. Sor Maria evangelized them in the second decade of that century. She was a Conceptionist nun whose habit included a sky blue cape. She prayed for me as I was going through the Pastoral Provision process to be considered for ordination as a Catholic priest in the Diocese of San Angelo. San Angelo is located in the Concho River Valley. St. Joseph has prayed for me as husband, father, and grandfather and for us, especially with regard to our finances. Most recently, newly canonized St. John Henry Newman asked me to ask his prayers for a particular family member and for this book.
These experiences with particular saints are assurances given to me by the Lord that the Communion of Saints unites heaven and earth and that the Catholic Church is both temporal and eternal. When we have a personal relationship with Jesus, we have a relationship with others who have a personal relationship with Him. Thus, our personal relationship with Jesus is not only individual but also synchronic (with all other Christians in this life) and diachronic (with all other Christians who have gone before us and are alive in purgatory and heaven now). Mystical theology, with its emphasis on this world as the ante-room of heaven, leads to a consideration of ascetical theology, the theology of the sacraments and prayer, for it is in the sacraments and prayer that the veil between this world and the next is most transparent.
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1 C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy (New York: Collier Books), 1976, 159, 194.
2 Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain (New York: Image Books), 1970, 267-268.
3 John Lawson, A Thousand Tongues: The Wesley Hymns as a Guide to Scriptural Teaching (Exeter: Paternoster Press), 1987, 197.
4 “Her Heel Will Crush His Head,” a Letter of December 19, 2019, published in Inside the Vatican, ed. Robert Moynihan, January, 2020.
PART TWO
IV
CATHOLIC SACRAMENTAL AND ASCETICAL THEOLOGY
The Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life.” (Lumen Gentium, 11) “The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch.” (Presbyterorum ordinis, 5)
—–Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1324
Our Lord has given seven Sacraments to the Catholic Church. A sacrament is more than a sign or symbol. A sign speaks to the mind and gives us information. A symbol is also a sign, but it is more than a sign. A symbol speaks to the whole person. What is a sign for one person may also be a symbol for another person. A soldier on his way home on a bus may see a highway sign indicating the mileage to his hometown. The sign gives information, but for the returning soldier it can also be a symbol, speaking to his whole person, bringing with it memories of family and friends. A sacrament is a sign and a symbol, but it is more. A sacrament makes really present what it signifies and symbolizes. If the sign that becomes a symbol for the returning soldier could become a sacrament, then his hometown, his family, and his friends would be made really present in that bus.
Sacramental theology broadens into ascetical theology that includes corporal and spiritual works of mercy and various forms of popular piety. It also includes various forms of individual and corporate prayer and the formation of personal and family rules of life.
The Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist
“In other words,” I said, “if you have your metaphysics right, everything else falls into place.” “You got it! You got it! You got it!” exclaimed Father Tarcisius. It was the summer of 1994. We were making a retreat at the Community of St. John in Laredo, Texas, and Father Tarcisius, the Prior, had offered to give us five private retreat conferences. Sandie had already been confirmed in the Catholic Church, and the retreat was part of my discernment about whether to be confirmed. The fourth conference prompted my comment and the response of Father Tarcisius. That particular conference was from 4:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon and was followed by an hour of Eucharistic adoration in the chapel in the retreat house. Although I could not yet receive the Body and Blood of the Lord in the Mass, I could participate in adoration. As I kneeled in the chapel before the exposed Host, I thought of the retreat conference and understood that as I gazed on the Body of Christ in the monstrance, His presence there was a metaphysical fact that ordered everything else—a metaphysical fact grounded in the metaphysical fact of the Incarnation, Atonement, Resurrection, Ascension, High-Priesthood, and Second Coming of Christ. In other words, the presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine that have become His Body and Blood is grounded in Christology and the dogma of the Trinity.
Since that time, when Protestants have come to me for spiritual direction and I have sensed that the time was right, I have counseled them to go to a Catholic Church that has an adoration chapel and spend time every week before the Body of the Lord in the monstrance, i.e., to spend time with Jesus in His Real Presence. This metaphysical reality is transformative. In the Gospel of Luke 24:13-35, after the risen Jesus breaks the bread and distributes it to the two disciples, “He vanished out of their sight.” His visible physical presence has vanished into the bread and wine of the Eucharist which are His Body and Blood.
In the Holy Eucharist, we Catholics take His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity into our own bodies and souls, and He transforms us into the persons we were always meant to be. The Eucharist is the chief means of theosis. In the Eucharist we take the Incarnate Christ, His atoning death on the Cross, His Resurrection, and His Ascension with His glorified humanity into ourselves. As Jesus says, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (Jn. 6:53-56). Eternal life is Jesus living in us. As Pope Benedict XVI writes, “…eternal life is not simply what comes afterward, something about which we can have no notion at all. Because it is a new quality of existence, it can be already present in the midst of this earthly life and its fleeting temporality as something new and different and greater, albeit in an imperfect and fragmentary fashion. But the dividing line between eternal and temporal life is by no means simply of a chronological order: so that the years before death would be temporal life; the endless time afterward would be eternal life—as we generally think. But because eternity is not just endless time but another level of being, such a merely chronological distinction cannot be right.”1 Here dogmatic theology and sacramental theology are inseparable in the unity of spiritual theology.
In the Eucharist we eat the fruit of the New Tree of Life. When we in Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, we suffered the penalty of death by being cast away from the Tree of Life; eating its fruit would have allowed us to live forever. Our Father in Heaven, in order to accomplish His purposes in creation, will not allow our sin to live forever: we were barred from the First Tree of Life. Now the New Tree of Life is the Cross, and the Body and Blood of Jesus are its fruit. Eating this fruit allows us to participate in His death that crucifies our old selves with Him. Because He is sinless and needs no sentence of death, death cannot hold Him. Therefore, He is raised from the dead, and our old selves who have died with Him become the seeds of our new selves, who are raised with Him on the other side of sin and death.
In the Eucharist Jesus gives us his perfect humility, the cure of pride, the root of all our sins. Jesus, “who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:5-11). His perfect humility is seen not only in the Incarnation but also in His condescending to enter the bread and wine in His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist so His perfect humility may enter every communicant at the Holy Mass.
The Eucharist is Jesus “in Person,” the heart of every “personal relationship” with Jesus, whether we recognize it or not. Here is He who was carried in Mary’s womb and born in Bethlehem, crucified and risen from the dead, leaving our sin dead in the tomb and rising with our new self, the self we were always meant to be. In the Eucharist we see Jesus face to face.
The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony
In that participation in Christ in the Eucharist by eating His flesh and drinking His blood, we are drawn into a union that is also a symbol of the union of a husband and wife in the Sacrament of Matrimony. In marriage, the husband and wife become one flesh (Gen. 2:24; Mt. 19:5; Mk. 10:7; Eph. 5:31) and participate in the most intimate way in each other’s lives while remaining unique individuals. When that union is blessed with children, the Icon of the Trinity is manifested in another new creation. Their one flesh is an objective reality in their children. Just as there is only one Christ with whom we are united in the Eucharist, so there is to be one spouse with whom we are united in marriage.
The Sacrament of Matrimony is a sacrament of Christ and the Church. The union of Christ and the Church is manifested in the sacramental union of husband and wife in which there is mutual self-giving (Eph. 5:21-32). (For anticipatory revelation of this truth, see the book of Hosea and the various Psalms [e.g. 19] in which the imagery of marriage is used to speak of the relationship of God and His people.) Here is another expression of theosis in which the divine and human are united while each remains distinct. Both husband and wife are unique human beings who are united with Christ’s divine nature through His human nature, but in that union they also are united to each other. Marriage is an icon of the primary fact of the union of Christ and His Church. Although the First Person of the Trinity has revealed Himself to us as the Father of His Only-Begotten Son and as our Father, not only the masculine but also the feminine is contained in God who creates both genders. The feminine contained in God is seen in the Church, which is not only the Body of Christ but also the Bride of Christ. As Cyprian, the third century Bishop of Carthage (248-258) said, we cannot have God for our Father unless we have the Church for our Mother. 2 Because the Church is the Bride of Christ, she is the expression in time of God the Father’s “eternal feminine,” and “the gates of hell will not prevail against her,” for She will be taken into eternity (cf. Mt. 16:18). This created feminine which is taken into eternity is present in the Virgin Mary whose bodily Assumption into heaven is an anticipation of the destiny of the Church and of each individual Christian.
In the Gospel of John before Jesus says that no one comes to the Father but by Him, that anyone who has seen Him has seen the Father, and that He is in the Father and the Father is in Him, He says: “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (14:1-3). It is our prayer that each of us will someday be where Mary is, and when we are, we will be the husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters that God intends us to be. At the end of time we will participate with the Lord as He wipes away all tears from the eyes of His children and makes all things fresh and new (cf. Rev. 21:4; Isa. 25:8).
Fr. George Montague, SM, addresses the issue of the permanency of marriage and its existence in heaven as it relates to the Holy Trinity. In marriage there is a transcending of self. “One of the chief ways in which this transcending of self happens is the begetting and rearing of children. The couple’s love grows and is completed by their mutual investment in the life project of new human beings….Most couples do this without reflecting on their noble role. Fewer realize that what they are doing is living out the life of the Trinity in human terms.” Here Montague affirms the likeness of the Trinity in the family of father, mother, and child. Jesus says that there will be no marriage in heaven. However, “If marriage begins with the Trinity, that is where it will end.” The perfect love of the Holy Trinity will not let the love of husband, wife, and child perish at the end of earthly life. Married joy here, “no matter how ecstatic, is limited. It longs for and points to an even greater fulfillment. And that’s because there is marriage in heaven. It is the marriage of the Lamb with his bride, the Church in glory. And there, every holy union on earth finds its ultimate destiny at last achieved. For the couple is wed now, not till death do them part, but for all eternity, for they have found the fount of all love, the source from which their married love has flowed, the spousal love of Christ for his Church, of which their married love was the icon.” 3
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap, Pontifical Household Preacher under Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, addresses the issue of the permanency of marriage and its existence in heaven in an exposition of Luke 20:27-38. He says, “Is it possible that a husband and wife, after a life that brought them into relation with God through the miracle of creation, will not in eternal life have anything more in common, as if all were forgotten, lost? Would this not be contrary to Jesus’ word according to which that which God has united must not be divided? If God united them on earth, how could he divide them in heaven? Could an entire life spent together end in nothing without betraying the meaning of this present life, which is a preparation for the kingdom, the new heaven and the new earth?” At this point, Cantalamessa cites Ephesians 4:32, where St. Paul says marriage between a man and woman symbolizes the union between Christ and the Church. As Cantalamessa asks, “Is it possible that it be eliminated in the heavenly Jerusalem, where there will be celebrated the eternal wedding feast of Christ and the Church of which marriage of man and woman is an image?” He concludes by saying, “According to this vision, matrimony does not entirely end with death but is transfigured, spiritualized—it loses those limits that mark life on earth—in the same way that the bonds between parents and children or between friends will not be forgotten. In the preface of the Mass for the dead, the liturgy says that with death ‘life is changed, not taken away’; the same must be said of marriage, which is an integral part of life.” 4
The Sacrament of Baptism
In the Church Militant, we are called to be martyrs for Jesus Christ. The word martyr means “witness,” and all Christians are called to be martyrs even if all are not called to die physically for their faith. On the cross when Jesus’ side was pierced by the soldier’s lance, blood and water poured forth (Jn. 19:34). The early Fathers of the Church saw this as the gift of the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Baptism to the Church. When celebrating Baptism, an initial anointing with the Oil of Catechumens takes place before the person is baptized and symbolizes that the person is now set apart from the world in preparation for Baptism. A second anointing with the Oil of Chrism takes place after Baptism and symbolizes that the person is now a Christian. The word Christ means “anointed one,” and the person is anointed in Jesus Christ Also, in Baptism with water in the name of the Trinity we are given the grace to bleed out our lives every day for Christ. In the Sacrament of Baptism, we die and rise with Christ (Rom. 6:1-11), and our old nature in Adam is transformed, is regenerated, by the Holy Spirit. The Spiritual Gifts (Isa. 11:1-2), Gifts of the Spirit (I Cor. 12), Fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22), the Cardinal and Theological Virtues , and the virtue of humility (Phil. 2:1-11) are latent in our old selves in Adam. Those seeds which fall to the ground in death, are buried with Christ in Baptism, are cleansed of sin by that Baptism, and are waiting to be claimed by us, a claim that comes in the Sacrament of Confirmation.
The Sacrament of Confirmation
The Sacrament of Confirmation, like all the Sacraments, has many meanings and is always more than we can ever express, for, as in all the Sacraments, it remains a mystery hidden in God. One way to understand confirmation is to see it as the ordination of the laity for ministry in the Church and in the world. It is the ministry of the parish priest to help the lay Catholic remain centered in Christ and the Holy Trinity while serving other people in the Church and the world. Through Confirmation we receive Sacramental Grace that fans into flame those gifts sown in us when we were created in the Image of God and cleansed of sin in the Sacrament of Baptism. The Holy Spirit, who brings us Jesus in our Baptism, brings Jesus more deeply into us as we affirm our Baptism. The Confirmand is anointed with the Oil of Chrism symbolizing that he is now called and strengthened for ministry. Confirmation is usually administered by the bishop because he is the symbol of unity and order in the Catholic Church and is charged with ordering the Church for ministry. The bishop may delegate the authority to administer Confirmation to a priest, but the authority is the bishop’s.
Marian and Petrine Dimensions of the Church
The distinction between the Marian and Petrine dimensions of the Church was taught me by Fr. George Montague, SM. 5 He spoke of this distinction when interpreting the Resurrection story in John 20:1-10. Here the Beloved Disciple, understood by the Church to be the Apostle John, reaches the empty tomb first but allows Peter to precede him into the tomb. John has already taken Mary into his care (Jn. 19:25-27) and is the icon of the “Marian” dimension of the Church, while Peter is the icon of the “Petrine” dimension of the Church. The Marian dimension leads the Petrine dimension but always recognizes the governance of the Petrine dimension. Peter goes into the tomb, looks around, is puzzled (because he has yet to see the Risen Jesus), and leaves. John then enters the tomb, sees the same thing Peter has seen, and “believes” even though he has not yet seen the Risen Lord. Here the Marian dimension of the Church is leading the Petrine dimension in faith. As Fr. George explained, the Marian dimension is the charismatic, prophetic dimension of the Church, always leading the Petrine dimension but recognizing the ordering authority of the Petrine dimension expressed in the ordained hierarchy of the Church. Baptism and Confirmation equip the laity for their role in the Marian dimension of the Church.
The Sacrament of Ordination
The Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Matrimony, and Ordination work an “ontological change” in those receiving the sacraments, even as there is an “ontological change” when the priest prays the prayer of consecration in the celebration of the Mass, and the bread and wine are transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The Sacrament of Ordination includes anointing with Holy Chrism Oil and gives the power and authority to administer the sacraments, working an “ontological change” in the deacon, priest, and bishop. For example, when the priest is celebrating Mass or hearing confessions, he is serving in persona Christi, i.e., Christ is speaking the words which transform bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist and transform human lives in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation.
The Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation
I will always remember my participation in the Sacrament of Reconciliation just before the beginning of Lent in 2001. After a daily Mass I had a particularly urgent need to make my confession, so instead of waiting for the normally scheduled time, as I was leaving Mass I asked Fr. Bruce to hear my confession. He replied, “Of course I will. I’ll be right back.” We were standing in the vestibule in front of the confessional, and he stepped into the sacristy, got his stole, put it on, and we went into the confessional. The stole is the symbol of the yoke of Christ, a uniquely priestly vestment designating its wearer as an alter Christus. Every time I avail myself of the Sacrament of Reconciliation I know I receive grace, but that evening I was immediately aware of the grace because of Father Bruce’s act of putting on his stole. When I made my confession I was not just speaking to Fr. Bruce. I was speaking to Jesus, and He was speaking to me. When Fr. Bruce gave me his counsel and assigned my penance, Jesus was speaking to me. When I made my act of contrition, I was speaking to Jesus, and Jesus was speaking to me when Fr. Bruce spoke the words of absolution forgiving and cleansing me of my sins. As I was doing my penance, Jesus was completing the sacrament in me, drawing me more deeply into Him. We are an inextricable union of spiritual and physical reality and possess those physical senses that the Lord created good. We need to hear human words spoken by another person, who, through his ordination as an alter Christus, speaks the words of the human and divine Jesus to us forgiving us for our sins. This same voice of Jesus at the Eucharist speaks to transform the gifts of bread and wine into His Body and Blood.
The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick
Reconciliation is always related to the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick with Holy Oil. We see this in the Gospel story of the healing of the paralytic in which Jesus first forgives him for his sin and then heals him physically (Mk. 2:1-12; Matt. 9:1-8; Lk. 5:17-26 ). In James 5:13-16 we read: “Is any one among you suffering? Let him pray. Is any cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, that you may be healed.” Here the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick are seen together; forgiveness of sins and restoration of health are related. The Catholic Church has understood that the power to administer both of these sacraments is given to the Apostles and their successors by the Holy Spirit. In the Gospel of John we read, “Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’” (20:19b-23). This authority of the successors of the Apostles, the bishops of the Catholic Church, is exercised under the authority of the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, the successor of St. Peter, chosen Rock upon whom He bestowed the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 16:13-20).
Works of Mercy
Other means of grace include Corporal Works of Mercy and Spiritual Works of Mercy. The Works of Mercy are the extension of the Sacraments into all of life. The Corporal Works of Mercy are those mentioned in Matthew 25: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, providing shelter for the stranger, clothing the naked, tending the sick, visiting the imprisoned, and burying the dead (vss. 35-36). The Spiritual Works of Mercy are to instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, admonish the sinner, bear wrongs patiently, forgive offenses willingly, comfort the afflicted, and pray for the living and the dead. As Jesus says, when we engage in these Works of Mercy, we are doing this not only “for” Him but also “to” Him, because every person is created in His image, and He, therefore, lives in each person. Prayer and our actions in the world are the links between the Sacraments and all human life.
In the Corporal Works of Mercy we see the unity of the physical world and the world of the spirit. I began to read the Psalms with a deeper understanding of this unity, for in this universal prayer book of Jews and Christians, the prayer book that Jesus Himself used, we see countless references to rocks and hills, thorns and grain, water and wine, animals of all kinds, shields and spears and fortresses. In these references we see that all of these physical things point to and are illuminated by the world of the spirit, a spiritual world that expresses itself through physical matter. Jesus Himself shows us this connection of the physical world and the world of the spirit not only in his teaching but also in His actions as He changes water into wine, multiplies the loaves and fishes, forgives sins, and heals (see especially Mk. 2:1-12), institutes the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper, and completes that Sacrament with His bodily death and Resurrection. These connections made by Jesus all depend on the prior connection of the world of the spirit and the physical world in the creation of human beings in the image of God and in the Incarnation. In the Blessed Virgin Mary we see the proto-icon of the unity of the spiritual world and the physical world. As Thomas Howard points out, this sacramental vision of things is “seamless.” Creation includes everything from the “spiritual” (non-physical) angels to insects and rocks. The created world is not evil but can be used in sinful ways, and the sin comes from Satan, who is a fallen angel, and human beings, who fall for the lies of Satan. 6 About God’s original creation, we read in Genesis 1:31, “And God saw everything that he had made and, behold, it was very good.”
Popular Piety
In addition to the Sacraments, the Catechism teaches us about “Popular Piety.” This includes the use of sacramentals, which are sacred signs that bear a resemblance to the Sacraments. They always include prayer and often involve such actions as the laying on of hands, making the sign of the cross, or sprinkling with holy water. The sprinkling with holy water as a sacramental reminds us that sacramentals derive from the baptismal priesthood of all Christians and that each baptized person is called to be a blessing to others. Our popular piety also includes “veneration of relics, visits to sanctuaries, pilgrimages, processions, the stations of the cross, religious dances, the rosary, medals, and so on.” 7 It can be salutary to our faith life to carry rosaries, wear crucifixes on chains, carry holy cards, touch each other when we offer the sign of peace, and value the touch of a priest when he gives a blessing. As Catholics, we bless animals, vehicles, and homes as well as Churches and other buildings, baptismal fonts, and altars. This emphasis on the use of physical objects in Catholic piety attests to the reality of the physical world and is grounded in the fact of the bodily Resurrection of Jesus and the promise of our bodily resurrection with him in heaven.
Prayer and a Personal/Family Rule of Life
As I mentioned in Part I, Prof. Lawson introduced Sandie and me to the 1662 British edition of The Book of Common Prayer in 1968. Sandie and I began to pray the daily office from the prayer book. After we were confirmed in the Episcopal Church, we used the American 1979 edition of The Book of Common Prayer. Later still, after we were confirmed in the Catholic Church, we began praying from the four-volume Liturgy of the Hours. In my study of spiritual formation and spiritual theology, I embraced the imperative of consciously establishing a personal rule of life in which daily personal prayer and corporate worship are the central components. In order to make personal prayer and corporate worship both regular and frequent, I was led to examine the way I ordered all my life, including work, sleep, diet, exercise, recreation, works of charity (mercy), and family time.
As Sandie and I developed our personal rules of life, we saw how our personal rules inevitably led to a family rule of life. We also saw how the Christian (Liturgical) Year provides a general pattern both for our personal rules of life and our family rule of life. Thus, a personal rule of life, a family rule of life, the life of the parish Church, and the life of the Catholic Church are inextricably connected. (See Appendix 1 for a description of a Catholic Family that follows the Rule of Life of a Household of the Holy Family.)
My study of the history of Christian spirituality and our use of The Book of Common Prayer and The Liturgy of the Hours, both of which are gifts of the Benedictine tradition to the Church, brought us to the realization that Benedictine spirituality is that expression of Catholic spirituality to which we are most suited. In 1997, when we were at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, for a six-month sabbatical leave, we became Companions of the Beloved Disciple. This is a lay association related to the Brothers of the Beloved Disciple, a new Catholic religious community that has roots in the Marianist tradition, which, in turn, has roots in the Benedictine tradition.
As we were drawn into the Catholic Church through Benedictine and Marianist spiritualities, we recognized that prayer is always personal but never private. We may pray in a private place, but we are always praying with the saints. At Mass we gather around the Lord’s Table with angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven—those officially canonized by the Church and those who may not be officially named as saints by the Church but who have been means of grace in our lives, especially family and friends.
When Jesus lives in each of us in a unique way, He comes to us personally in a way that each of us can understand. This uniquely personal experience of the Lord in our lives is considered in the previous chapter on Catholic mystical theology. Wherever Jesus is present He is striving to live a holy life in and through us. We are expected to live virtuously showing forth to the world the Spiritual Gifts and Fruit of the Spirit and ministering with the spiritual gifts which He chooses to give us for the sake of others. Catholic moral theology teaches us about holiness of heart and life.
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1 Pope Benedict XVI, God is Near Us: the Eucharist, the Heart of Life, ed. Stephan Otto Horn and Vinzenz Pfnur and trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003), 137.
2 Henry Bettenson, ed. and trans., The Early Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Clement of Rome to St. Athanasius (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 366.
3 George T. Montague, SM, Living in the Father’s Embrace: Experiencing the Love at the Heart of the Trinity (Frederick, Maryland: The Word Among us Press, 2014), 122-123.
4 “God is Not God of the Dead,” 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), 2007, http://www.zenit.org. (Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary).
5 See Catechism of the Catholic Church, #773 and Pope John Paul II, On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, #77 and endnote #55.
6 Thomas Howard, Lead Kindly Light: My Journey to Rome (Steubenville: Franciscan University Press, 1994), 20-21.
7 Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1674.
PART TWO
V
CATHOLIC MORAL THEOLOGY
Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others as better than yourselves….Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
—–The Letter of Paul to the Philippians 2:3,5-7
To be human is to be a moral agent. That, in turn, meant that we live in a human universe the very structure of which is dramatic. And the great drama of any life is the struggle to surrender the “person-I-am” to the “person-I-ought-to-be.”
—-George Weigel 1
The spiritual warfare is intensely personal. Any consideration of it is a consideration of definite personalities, divine, angelic, human, Satanic—God, the Angels, the Soul, and Satan. We speak commonly of great principles being at stake in this warfare, often forgetting that it is not possible for a moral or spiritual principle to exist apart from a person.
—-Shirley C. Hughson 2
My studies at seminary and graduate school did not help me make a clear connection between moral theology and foundational theology. It was not until I began to study spiritual formation and spiritual theology that I saw how moral theology is grounded in foundational theology. Just as in philosophy metaphysics is the primary determinant of epistemology and metaphysics mediated through epistemology is the primary determinant of ethics, so foundational theology is the primary determinant of mystical and ascetical theology, and foundational theology mediated through mystical and ascetical theology is the primary determinant of moral theology. This means that any sin is not only a violation of moral truth that is inextricably woven into the fabric of human existence but also is blasphemy against Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, and against God, the Holy Trinity.
Deontological Approach to Moral Theology
There are two principal approaches to moral theology. One is the deontological approach, which emphasizes that the Christian life is to be lived according to certain principles and rules. Thus, the Ten Commandments exemplify a deontological approach to moral theology. In the Ten Commandments we can see the relationship of foundational theology, mystical theology, ascetical theology, and moral theology. In Exodus 19 and 20, the Lord speaks to the Hebrew people and reminds them that it was His initiative in leading them out of slavery in Egypt into their relationship with Him. He then asks if they will be His people. Here is the free choice they must make in response to the initiative of God in revealing Himself to them through His actions. They say that they choose to be His people. Then He reveals to them that to be His people means living by the Ten Commandments. In other words, foundational theology (God’s revelation of Himself through His actions) mediated through mystical theology (the personal experience of God by Moses on Mt. Sinai) and ascetical theology (the celebration of the Passover and the desert journey) is the basis for the moral theology expressed in the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments are an affirmation in God’s Special Revelation to the Hebrew people of the General or Natural Revelation to all people of His Natural Moral Law. St. Paul speaks of this Natural Moral Law when he says that the Gentiles have this Law written on their hearts. (Rom. 2:14-16) This Law can be known by reason and conscience, which are God’s gifts to us when He created us in His own Image. With our reason we can determine truth and falsehood, and with our conscience we can determine what is morally right and wrong. The presence of the Natural Moral Law in all people is the basis upon which Christians can relate to people of other religions or of no religion. All human cultures express this Natural Moral Law, but some express it more clearly than others. The Hebrew people express it more clearly than any other people because it is confirmed for them in Special Revelation.
Effects of Sin
Our ability to discern what is true and right is greater than our desire to affirm the truth and do what is right because of sin. Both our reason and conscience condemn us. Moreover, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reveals the inner character and demands of this Moral Law. Reason and conscience teach us that they cannot give us the desire to affirm God’s truth and cannot satisfy the longing of our hearts to live a moral life. In other words, reason and conscience prepare the way for faith in Jesus Christ and the grace that comes through Him, grace that gives us His power through the Holy Spirit indwelling us to desire to affirm the truth and follow the Moral Law. People of other religions, who recognize by their reason and conscience their inability to follow their perception of the inner character and demands of this Moral Law and who call upon God to help them, will be helped by Christ whether or not they acknowledge Him.
The teaching of Jesus about the inner character and demands of the Moral Law exposes the root of all sins in the human heart. The Church teaches us to see the sins of the heart by identifying seven capital sins: pride, anger, covetousness, envy, gluttony, lust, and sloth. I have listed these alphabetically with the exception of pride. Pride is named first because it is the mother of all other sins. As C.S. Lewis writes, “According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites by comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind….Pride is competitive by its very nature….It is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began….Pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only between man and man but enmity to God.” 3 It is pride that makes us think God cannot forgive our sins, that our sins are stronger than God’s forgiveness. We remember that Jesus said from the Cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk. 23:34). The virtue that is the opposite of pride is humility, which brings us to a consideration of the teleological approach to moral theology.
Teleological Approach to Moral Theology
The second principal approach to moral theology, the teleological approach, emphasizes that the moral life is governed by the end or goal which one has. For the Christian the goal is theosis, union with the Holy Trinity through Christ. It is this teleological approach that leads us to the habituating of virtue. In Galatians 2:20 Paul writes that the heart of the Christian life is being crucified with Christ and Christ living His resurrected life in us. As Christ ever more deeply lives His sinless life in us, the virtues become more and more habitual for us. Once again, moral theology is grounded in foundational theology. The revelation of God in Christ (foundational theology) mediated through mystical and ascetical theology (those mysterious personal encounters with the Lord, Sacraments, and prayer) is the basis for moral theology understood as the life of virtue. By God’s grace we practice the Cardinal Virtues (prudence, temperance, justice, courage), the Theological Virtues (faith, hope, love) (cf. I Cor. 13:1-13), and the virtue of humility (self-forgetfulness) (Phil. 2:1-11; Mk. 8:34-36; Mt. 16:24-25; Lk. 9:23-25), which is the virtue that unites the other virtues. As Pope St. Gregory the Great teaches, humility is the mother and mistress of all virtues. 4 It is the virtue of humility that is the opposite of the vice of pride. As we live in the grace of God and strive to live a virtuous life we are able to receive and live the Gifts of the Spirit (Isa. 11:2), the Spiritual Gifts (I Cor. 12-14), and the Fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) that are integral to the virtues.
Cardinal Virtues
To understand properly the Cardinal Virtues (prudence, temperance, justice, and courage), which come into the Christian tradition from Greco-Roman culture, one must ground that understanding in the Incarnation. Just as Jesus Christ is fully divine and fully human and heresies neglect either the divine or the human and over-emphasize the other, so any misunderstanding of a Cardinal Virtue may err on either side of that virtue. For example, we can err from the Cardinal Virtue of courage either in the direction of bravado or in the direction of cowardice. To understand correctly any single virtue, such as the virtue of courage, we must practice the other virtues. In other words, we must practice the virtues of prudence, temperance, and justice if we are to be able to distinguish courage from either bravado or cowardice. Prudence can be called ordinary common sense. To be free to follow that common sense, we must not be under the tyranny of the emotions. This means that we must live a life of temperance in all things. Temperance or balance in our life means that we must engage in just relationships with God, other people, the natural world, and ourselves. This practice of the Cardinal Virtue of justice means relating to God, others, the natural world, and ourselves in an ordinate way, i.e., a way that is proper to the nature of that person or object to which we are relating. So we have returned to the primacy of metaphysics in determining both epistemology and ethics and the primacy of foundational theology in determining mystical, ascetical, and moral theology.
Theological Virtues, Humility, and the Catholic Church
The Cardinal Virtues, valuable as they are in themselves apart from Christianity, need the Christian theological virtues of faith, hope, and love and the virtue of humility if they are to be habituated in that necessarily balanced way that makes us fully human—and the Theological Virtues demand obedience to the Catholic Church. St. Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109) said that one must have faith if one is to understand. As a Protestant I had thought of faith as faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord. As I continued my study of spiritual theology, I learned that St. Anselm, and St. Augustine of Hippo whom he was following at this point, not only meant faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord but also faith in the Catholic Church and her teachings. The Catholic Church is the Body of Christ, the continuation of the Incarnation in human history. The teaching Magisterium of the Catholic Church has preserved and developed the revealed truth of Christian dogma (and mystical, ascetical, and moral theology) despite the presence of sin and the wiles of Satan.
This does not mean that everything the Church has ever taught is dogma; there is a distinction of dogma, doctrine, and proximate teachings of the Church. Dogma is that revealed truth that is at the center of Christianity. The Dogmas of the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity are at the heart of the Christian revelation and are proclaimed in the Nicene Creed (325/381 A.D.) and the Chalcedonian Christological Definition (451 A.D.). It is a dogma that Christ’s death atoned for our sins and defeated Satan. The various doctrines of the Atonement such as the ransom theology of the early Fathers, the satisfaction theology found in the Fathers and further developed by St. Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109), and the moral influence theology found in the Fathers and further developed by Abelard (d. 1142) are all part of the doctrinal tradition of the Church; however, any one of them is not dogma in the way that the Nicene/Chalcedonian definitions of the Incarnation and the Trinity are dogma. Sometimes a doctrine of the Church, as our understanding of God’s revelation develops and deepens, is elevated to the status of dogma. Thus, the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, her Immaculate Conception, and her Bodily Assumption were all doctrines that the Church came to perceive are dogmas that grow out of the dogmas of the Incarnation and the Trinity.
Proximate teachings of the Church are those teachings related to dogma and doctrine that do not contradict dogma and doctrine and may be part of the personal piety of a Catholic Christian. For example, it may be part of one’s personal piety to believe that every person has a guardian angel, but that belief is not a dogma or doctrine. Some proximate teachings of the Church are timebound and sometimes a proximate teaching is found to contradict dogma and doctrine. This is where the Church has made and continues to make mistakes. There were times in the past when the Church, in the teachings of various bishops and even popes, supported such things as slavery and the forced conversion of non-Christians. Even so, the teaching Magisterium of the Church never changed the dogma that is at the heart of Christianity. Rather, the dogma, over time, worked to correct these erroneous proximate teachings.
Over the years, as I pondered the meaning of the Augustinian/Anselmian dictum, “I have faith in order that I may understand,” I realized that this is bound up with the issue of the authority of Scripture. The Episcopal Church had taught me the authority of Tradition, but I came to see that there is no clear break between Scripture and Tradition. Indeed, the Church and her Tradition were present even before the New Testament was written. I came to see the impossibility of separating Scripture and Tradition and that Scripture is the Church’s book. Her members wrote the New Testament books, decided which Christian writings of the first few centuries were uniquely authoritative, decided which Old Testament books were authoritative for Christians, and decided the authoritative interpretation of these books. I saw why Paul, in his First Letter to Timothy, had called the Church “the household of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (3:15).
The Truth and the Catholic Church
By the end of the summer of 1992, Sandie and I perceived that the Lord, speaking to us in His story of our lives, was leading us into the Catholic Church. We were praying, “Lord, help us understand the way you are speaking to us.” I became convinced that the Theological Virtue of faith meant obedience to the Church and her teachings. I had learned from the Wesley brothers in my Methodist days to distinguish between faith and the assurance of faith. Faith is an act of the will and may not be accompanied by a mystical assurance that God loves you in a particular and personal way. Faith as an act of the will meant accepting the teachings of the Catholic Church even when I did not fully understand them. Indeed, those teachings are so rich and deep that I will never fully understand them. Having faith in the Church’s teachings means that I can allow the Church to understand for me as I seek to participate in her understanding of truth.
Pope Benedict XVI, in his autobiographical Milestones: Memoirs, 1927-1977, clarified for me that the Catholic Church is the “receiving subject” of God’s revelation of Himself. Not only does God decide how He will reveal Himself, but also decides who will be the receiving subject of His revelation. The Virgin Mary, as the Father’s chosen receiving subject of His revelation of Himself in the Incarnation of His Son, is the Mother of the Church. Jesus said He had many things to teach His disciples, but they could not bear them at that time. He said it was expedient that He die for our sins, rise from the dead, and ascend into heaven because then the Father would send the Holy Spirit to lead them into all truth. Jesus said to His disciples, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn. 8:32). The world cannot receive the Spirit of Truth, but the disciples will be able to receive Him (cf. Jn. 14:15-17, 25-26). Jesus also said He would build His Church on the Rock of Peter and the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Mt. 16:13-20). It is the Catholic Church, with the successor of St. Peter as the Holy Father of the Church, that continues to be the receiving subject of God’s revelation of Himself as the Church is led into all truth. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, Catholic tradition is “the living process whereby the Holy Spirit introduces us to the fullness of truth and teaches us how to understand what previously we still could not grasp (cf. Jn. 16:12,13)…. [S]ubsequent ‘remembering’ (cf. Jn. 16:4, for instance) can come to recognize what it had not caught sight of previously and yet was already handed down in the original word.” 5
The Flesh, the World and the Devil
In his book, The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis makes the Augustinian distinction between the head, the heart, and the belly. Lewis points out the need for the heart to direct the head even when the belly is pulling us in another direction. 6 The symbolism of Satan assuming the form of a snake, as Genesis 3 is interpreted by Christians, is significant. Eve looks down to the ground to talk with this fallen angel (Rev. 12:7-12). In the symbolism of the human body, the belly is the seat of the emotions, that part of us which Satan most directly attacks. Through the emotions he reaches upward for the heart, the seat of the will, and through emotions and will to the head, the seat of reason, which, guided by a will dominated by emotions, seeks seemingly “reasonable” ways to justify what we want to do to satisfy our emotional desires. Symbolically, the movement is from the bottom–the belly, the ground—to the top. The downward look away from God caused the original sin. When praying the Rosary I realized that the second Glorious Mystery, the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven, leads us symbolically to lift our eyes away from the ground where Satan crawls and away from our belly upward where the saints, the unfallen angels, and the Holy Trinity dwell. Sometimes it is difficult for our heart to look up and join our reason while our fallen emotions are working hard to pull us down. As Lewis says, at times such as these our faith, seated in our heart [will], and our reason work together against our emotions and also our imaginations, when our imaginations surrender to our emotions. 7
The more I tried to live a virtuous life, the more I became aware of the depth of temptation to sin. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks of those sins of the heart that come before the sins of the body. It is in the heart that the battle is waged at its deepest and most decisive level as one seeks to habituate the virtues. Here is where the flesh, the world, and the Devil, those three enemies of the soul, are unmasked. The gift I have of seeing truth through my imagination is a point at which these enemies focus their attack, i.e., these enemies want to disable that very gift which the Lord wants to use for His purposes as I seek with all my heart to live a virtuous life. Although I became aware of this spiritual warfare in my moral life, it is important to remember that the primary determinant of moral theology is foundational theology mediated through mystical and ascetical theology. Satan and his fallen angels work with the flesh and the world not only against the virtues and commandments taught in moral theology but also against the epistemology through which we receive the knowledge of those virtues (mystical and ascetical theology) and against the revealed truth of foundational theology, the metaphysical truth that is the heart of Christianity. This means the Devil is at war with the Catholic Church, for she is the chosen receiving subject of God’s revelation of Himself.
The Charismatic Movement, in which Sandie and I participated as Episcopalians and continue to participate as Catholics, clearly teaches about the nature of “spiritual warfare.” We began to take seriously what Scripture and the Catholic Church teach about our warfare against Satan and how he and his fallen angels are involved in our temptations to sin. In Revelation 12 we have the story of the fall of Satan to earth, which came before the Fall of Adam and Eve. Satan is cast down to earth and appears in the Garden of Eden as a serpent. He who is the “father of lies” (Jn. 8:44) beguiles Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, and Eve passes the fruit along to Adam. Like the story of the Fall in Genesis 3, the story in Revelation 12 is a myth in the Socratic sense, i.e., a not unlikely tale of an event that expresses a metaphysical fact. 8 That fact is that Satan is a fallen angel, a created being who has rebelled against God. Therefore, though he is “supernatural” to us, he is not the equal of God. In the Gospels there are a number of references to Satan, and Jesus teaches us not to “fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt. 10:28). St. Paul counsels us to “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:11-12). St. Peter teaches that God did not spare the sinful angels but cast them into hell (II Pet. 2:4) and that entering our world from the regions of hell, “the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (I Pet. 5:8). Satan can tempt us to sin, but he cannot make us do anything. We must surrender our will to his temptation in order to commit sin; if our will is to do Satan’s will, then, as it was with Judas, he can “enter into us” (Lk. 22:3).
Weapons in Spiritual Warfare
Satan can assume a variety of disguises as he and his fallen angels work with the flesh and the world for the ruin of souls. However, resistance to Satan by fixing our spiritual eyes on Christ helps us more quickly and clearly to recognize Satan and the way he manipulates the flesh and the world to tempt us to sin. A primary means of keeping our eyes fixed on Christ is praying the Rosary. It was a great blessing for Sandie and me that we began to pray the Rosary every day at the same time we were learning about spiritual warfare. The Blessed Mother’s intercession is powerful in this fight against the enemies of the soul. For me this is especially true in warfare against the Devil. While the First Eve succumbed to the temptations of Satan, Mary, the Second Eve, never succumbed to his temptations.
As the role of Satan and his angels in tempting us to sin became clearer, we had a better understanding not only of our willful sin but also of our participation in Original Sin and how this Original Sin becomes personal for us in “generational sin.” The sins of our immediate ancestors contributed to our tendency to sin which is part of our fallen human nature (Ex. 20:5-6, Ex. 34:6-7, Num. 14:18). Under the guidance of Fr. George Montague, SM and Fr. Joseph Mary Marshall, SM, both priests of the Brothers of the Beloved Disciple, we were led to forgive our ancestors who are partly responsible for this generational sin, to pray for them, and to seek forgiveness for generational sin that we have passed on to our children and grandchildren. It was important for us to pray through this process as a couple. The book they recommended was very helpful: The Healing of Families, How to Pray Effectively for Those Stubborn Personal and Familial Problems, Fr. Yozefu – B. Ssemakula.
The Church’s Sacrament of Reconciliation is a valuable weapon in spiritual warfare. We must be truly contrite and repent of our sins. In II Corinthians 7:8-12 Paul makes a distinction between worldly grief and godly grief. When I have worIdly grief, imperfect contrition, I am sorry for my sins because I am suffering from having committed them. When I have godly grief, perfect contrition, I am sorry for my sins because I have hurt God and other people by committing them. True repentance is godly grief that “brings no regret.” True repentance brings with it the theological virtue of hope that is grounded not in our own merits but in the forgiveness offered by Jesus Christ. We can claim the Lord’s words spoken through Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (29:11). Our hope in this life is hope in the forgiveness of the Lord for our sin and in the Lord’s power to overcome this sin as He creates us new creatures in Christ (II Cor. 5:17). When we hope in the Lord’s mercy in this life, we are acknowledging our desire for heaven, for the Lord’s mercy comes from heaven. I found that the penance assigned by my confessor need not be a one-time thing, though the doing of it once completes the Sacrament. For example, if my confessor tells me for my penance to pray an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be, I will immediately go into the Church and do that. However, from then until my next confession, anytime an interior sin raises its head, I will immediately pray an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be. In other words, I will have begun to use some of the weapons the Church gives to us for spiritual warfare, including the St. Michael Prayer and Ephesians 6:10-20, putting on the armor of God. The military imagery reminds us that this is truly a war in which we are engaged. “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Cor. 15:57).
The Theological Virtue of love, which is an act of the will, is another weapon in spiritual warfare. C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves distinguishes four kinds of love, distinctions which he explained using the four Greek words for love: storge (affection), philia (friendship), eros (the love between the sexes), and agape (the self-giving love that is Christ and the Holy Trinity). As Lewis explains, the other loves are good but can be twisted by self-interest unless they are incarnated by agape. Here we see again how foundational theology is the basis for moral theology. We can love each other with this radical, self-giving love because God first loves us with such a love. The other loves cannot be commanded, but agape, as an act of the will, can be commanded. 9
How do we have the will to follow the command to love one another with self-giving love? Once again we come to the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten Son in Jesus and to that proclamation of this incarnational love by Paul in Philippians 2:1-11. The virtue of humility, self-forgetfulness, knits together the Cardinal and Theological Virtues even as all truth is found in Jesus Christ whose humility is perfectly demonstrated in the Incarnation. This is the mind we are to have which is in Christ Jesus. Humility means we lose our life to Him and, paradoxically, find it in Him as he unites in us all the virtues, and we become new creatures in Him (II Cor. 5:17), become who we were always intended to be before the fall and now are as a result of the coming of the Second Adam (Rom. 5, I Cor. 15). In Christ we see the perfect union of foundational and moral theology.
Coming to terms with the relationship between humiliation and humility has been a difficult process for me, but it is necessary in order to understand the effects of the flesh, the world, and the Devil. Humility is self-forgetfulness, while humiliation makes you intensely conscious of yourself. Habituating the virtue of humility does not mean that you do not know yourself but that you know yourself as God knows you. Humility is knowing who God is and who you are in Him. When you know God and know who you really are, you can forget about yourself, about trying to create yourself according to your own wishes. In March 2001, Sandie and I made a two-week pilgrimage to Italy to “visit the saints” with a group of pilgrims led by Dcn. Tom and Mary Jane Fox from the Pilgrim Center of Hope in San Antonio, Texas. One of the saints we visited was St. Rita of Cascia, who is known especially for her virtue of humility that was confirmed by her reception of the stigmata from Jesus’ crown of thorns in the form of a bleeding, putrid wound on her forehead. As I pondered St. Rita’s witness and the crown of thorns she shared with Our Lord, I thought of the Third Sorrowful Mystery in the Rosary in which we remember Jesus’ crown of thorns. I thought of Jesus’ severe humiliation as He was mocked by the Roman soldiers and how St. Rita participated in that humiliation through the various trials she suffered in her life. When we submit our humiliation to Jesus and participate with him in wearing his crown of thorns, our humiliation is transformed into the self-forgetfulness of humility. This was the truth St. Rita taught me as I pondered her participation in Jesus’ crown of thorns.
Examination of Conscience and Consciousness
Making the connections among foundational theology, mystical theology, ascetical theology, and moral theology can be an intentional part of one’s daily rule of life, a rule that is an essential part of the practice of ascetical theology. The rule of life involves both an “examination of conscience” and an “examination of consciousness.” In an examination of conscience, usually done at the end of the day, one reviews the day to see where God’s commandments have been followed or violated (deontological moral theology) and where the virtues have been lived and where they have not (teleological moral theology). Thanks are given to God for successes in following His commandments and in living the virtues, and repentance is made for those times during the day when commandments have been violated and the virtues have not been lived. The review of the day also can include an examination of consciousness in which one recalls the times when the presence of God has been manifest. Christology, the Doctrine of the Trinity, and other Doctrines can inform both this examination of consciousness and the examination of conscience. For example, where has Christ’s incarnate life shown forth in others and in me today? Where has the triune love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit been experienced today? Where have I tasted the suffering of the cross with Jesus today? Where have I intentionally violated God’s will for me today and fallen into sin? Were these sins of commission or sins of omission? Did I intentionally avoid whatever might lead me to sin? As we engage in an examination of conscience and an examination of consciousness, we discover at an ever-deepening level that mysterious and intensely personal way God works in the lives of each one of us.
When a family engages in this examination in the evening, Sandie and I have found that children and teens are tired and are actually more open to conversation about important matters in their lives. Also, what I have said about this examination in the preceding paragraph may seem too formal. The actual practice can be done during family prayer time or one-on-one at bedtime, and the conversation need not be overly structured. Above all, parents should listen to their children and not be too ready to talk themselves. And never give a dismissive answer to a child’s question. Take every question and comment seriously. This does not mean that we cannot have a sense of humor. Remember, the Devil hates humor and especially hates it when we laugh at him.
Foundational theology, mediated through mystical and ascetical theology, lives in the life of a Christian in moral theology. Catholic moral theology teaches us to live the fullness of truth found in the faith of the Catholic Church.
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1 George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: Cliff Street Books [HarperCollins], 1999), 8.
2 Shirley C. Hughson, The Warfare of the Soul: Practical Studies in the Life of Temptation (West Park, N.Y.: Holy Cross Press, 1942), 1.
3 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972), 109, 110-111.
4 The Liturgy of the Hours: According to the Roman Rite, vol. III (New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1975), 304.
5 Pope Benedict XVI, Milestones: Memoirs, 1917-1977 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 59.
6 “The head rules the belly through the chest [heart]—the seat , as Alanus tells us, or Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiment. The Chest—Magnanimity—Sentiment—these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.” C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1975, 34.
7 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 122.
8 See Catechism of the Catholic Church, #390. See also C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1976, Ch. 5, “The Fall of Man,” 69-88.
9 See C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1960).
PART THREE
I
BECOME WHO YOU ARE
LIVING THE NUPTIAL MYSTERY: THE MARRIED PRIESTHOOD
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness;…” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.
—–Genesis 1:26a,27-28
An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel” (which means, God with us). When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son; and he called his name Jesus.
—–The Gospel of Matthew 1:20-25
And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce, and put her away.” But Jesus said to them, “For your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”
—–The Gospel of Mark 10:2-9
“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church.”
—–The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians 5:31-32
When Sandie and I returned from our sabbatical leave at the end of the summer of 1997, we resumed our ministries at the Seminary and developed our ministry as a Household of the Holy Family. I continued to ponder the mediatory role of the Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth as the icon of God the Holy Trinity on the one hand and the icon of every nuclear human family of father, mother, and child on the other. One day I went to the Episcopal Bookshop at St. Mary Episcopal Cathedral to pick up a book I had ordered, and a friend of mine, Fred Bittle, was in the shop. Fred is a member of the Holy Orthodox Church and was studying for the priesthood. (He is now Father Joseph Bittle.) He knew of the ministry Sandie and I have in family spiritual formation and showed me an icon of the Holy Family, probably written originally in the Eighteenth Century by an unknown Russian iconographer. The copy of the icon was written by Sister Marie-Paul, a Benedictine nun, born in Egypt of Palestinian and Italian descent, who lives in a convent on the Mount of Olives. 1 This icon became my focus as I pondered the relationship of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Family, and the nuclear human family.
While on sabbatical leave in San Antonio in 1997, we became friends with Deacon Tom and Mary Jane Fox, Directors of the Pilgrim Center of Hope. As part of their ministry they lead pilgrimages to various places in Europe, Mexico, and the Holy Land. As I wrote previously, in March 2001 Sandie and I went with a group they led on a pilgrimage to visit the saints in Italy. We visited St. Charles Boromeo in Milan, St. Anthony in Padua, St. Catherine in Sienna, St. Rita in Cascia, St. Francis and St. Clare in Assisi, St. Padre Pio in San Giovani, St. Michael in Monte San Angelo, St. Benedict at Monte Cassino, and Saints Peter and Paul in Rome. It was a spiritually enriching experience that deepened our relationship with these holy brothers and sisters in the faith and deepened our understanding of ministry as a Household of the Holy Family. In particular, St. Rita recommended herself to us as an intercessor for troubled marriages and family communities in need of reconciliation.
After returning from our sabbatical, we moved into an apartment in suburban Memphis. We began attending St. Ann Church in Bartlett where Fr. Bruce Cinquegrani was Pastor. In Lent 2002 I went to a penance service at St. Ann. Because of responsibilities at the Seminary, I arrived late and was the last penitent in line at Fr. Bruce’s station that was in the sanctuary. After I made my confession, received counsel, was assigned penance, and received absolution, I stood up to leave. Fr. Bruce asked me to sit down again because he had something he wanted to ask me: “Have you ever thought about becoming a Catholic priest under the Pastoral Provision?” This was the same question Fr. Norbert Brockman had asked me in 1997. Again, I don’t remember what I said to Fr. Bruce, but the fact that a second priest had asked me the question made me begin to ask what Jesus wanted me to do in the Catholic Church, or, more specifically, who Jesus wanted me to be.
Call to Ministry in the Catholic Church
In the fall of 2004, Sandie and I were led by the Holy Spirit to believe that the Lord was calling us to make another leap of faith and to give ourselves in ministry to the Catholic Church. We were doing ministry in the Catholic Church through the Household of the Holy Family, but both of us were still employed at Memphis Seminary, where Sandie was Assistant to the Associate Dean, working with Doctor of Ministry students. We did not know what form ministry in the Catholic Church would take or how we would manage financially. Perhaps, we thought, we might expand our ministry of the Household of the Holy Family. God is full of surprises!!!
Although the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church had directed the Seminary to remove the original inclusive language statement from Seminary publications, by this time the faculty had not only persuaded the Board of Trustees to adopt another inclusive language statement, but also some members of the faculty were championing what came to be called the LGBT agenda. Thus, there was both a call from ahead—or a call from above, in this case—and a push from behind for us to leave the Seminary for ministry in the Catholic Church. We both submitted our resignations, effective at the end of the 2004-2005 academic year. I was sixty-six and Sandie was sixty-four.
I cleaned out my office at the Seminary in May 2005. The Seminary gave us a reception to honor our thirty-two years of ministry in the Seminary community. At the meeting of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in June 2005, Sandie and I were recognized at the Seminary Alumni Luncheon and thanked for our many years of service to the CP Church and the Seminary. Both of us have great respect and admiration for the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and her people and are thankful for the many years we were allowed to serve at Memphis Theological Seminary.
By the time we left the Seminary we had decided that apartment living was not for us and were living economically in a mobile home in Lakeland, an incorporated community on the northeastern edge of metropolitan Memphis. We also had owned a manufactured home and ten acres of land in the hill country of Texas since 2002. Our son, Jon, and daughter-in-law, Janna, planned to begin homeschooling our granddaughter, Katherine, in the seventh and eighth grades to prepare her to enter St. Benedict High School. We offered to assist them in homeschooling her, which we did from the fall of 2005 until August 2007. We planned to spend some time during these two years at our Texas home during vacation times in the home-school schedule. Sandie and I still did not know what the Lord had planned for us in the Catholic Church.
Since we were going to be in the Memphis area during the school year, and since homeschooling Katherine would not take all of my time, in August I decided to inquire at several of the institutions of higher education in Memphis about teaching some classes as an adjunct instructor. As I sat at our dining table making phone calls to several people I knew at other academic institutions, I had the strong impression that I was not supposed to be doing this. The Lord was calling us to ministry in the Catholic Church, so I decided not to send my credentials to these academic institutions.
The Call to the Catholic Priesthood
As I lay in bed one August night after leaving the Seminary in May, praying the Rosary, once again I was asking the Lord to show me what we were supposed to do in ministry in the Catholic Church. What I distinctly heard the Lord say in my heart was “Become who you are.” This puzzled me. I know I am His disciple whose vocation is Catholic Christian husband, father, and grandfather. This is my identity. This is who I am. This is who Christ is in me. Drowsily, I said, “But what should I do?” The Lord said, “You are not your Father.” My dad had been an investment banker whose particular gift was to earn money, a gift that he used for the benefit of our family and of many other people in the Houston, Texas, area whom he had helped in a variety of ways over the years. When we left the Seminary I had been concerned about how we would make ends meet financially, since we had given up two pay checks. One reason for considering adjunct teaching had been to earn some money. However, I realized I was not supposed to do that. Yes, I am not my father and do not have his gift of earning money. I knew that, too. So I asked the Lord, what do you mean by saying “Become who you are”? “Who am I, Lord?” “Who are you as you live your life through me?” The Lord brought to my mind the priesthood in the Episcopal Church that I had given up eleven years earlier when I became a Roman Catholic. Again, He said, “Become who you are.” At that moment I heard again the question that Fr. Norbert Brockman and Fr. Bruce Cinquegrani asked me, and it became clear to me that I am a priest and that I was to seek ordination as a Catholic priest. This is possible under the Pastoral Provision put in place in 1980 by Pope John Paul II in which former priests in the Episcopal Church U.S.A can seek ordination as Roman Catholic priests in the Latin Rite on a case-by-case basis even though they are married men with families.
When I came into the Catholic Church in November 1994, I was aware of the existence of the Pastoral Provision. I declined to pursue ordination at that time because I understood the theology of the discipline of celibacy for the Latin Rite priesthood, and I did not want to be an exception to that discipline. One of the requirements of the Pastoral Provision is that the former Episcopal priest must agree not to marry again if his wife dies. I had thought this was a not-so-subtle indication that, if I were ordained, the Church would regard Sandie as simply an adjunct to my life as a priest. Therefore, I would not pursue ordination. That August night in 2005 I realized that in my study of the Catholic theology of marriage and family life that I had pursued as Sandie and I developed our ministry in the Household of the Holy Family, I had discerned a theology of the married priesthood that was complementary to the theology of the celibate priesthood. It is a theology that affirms the eternal character of my marriage to Sandie. I realized that even as a priest in the Episcopal Church, I had already been pondering this theology. In seeking ordination as a Catholic priest I would truly become who I already am as husband, father, and grandfather: a married Catholic priest with children and grandchildren. This is who Christ is in me as He lives His life through me. If I tried to be someone else, I would not be me. As Jesus teaches: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mk. 8:34-35). Again, that seemingly ever-present text from St. Paul came to mind: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). As Pope Benedict XVI says, this is the “passional pattern of being ‘not me’ and yet ‘wholly me.'” 2 That August night all of this came to me in one of those moments of kairos time, when chronos time is taken into eternity.
Sandie and I talked and prayed about the possibility of ministry as married priest and wife in the Catholic Church and decided to pursue it to see if this were the Lord’s will for us. Our children and children-in-law were supportive; their only concern was the amount of work this would require of us. Our daughter, Amy, said, “I believe I have some responsibility for this.” She said this because she was the first of our family to be confirmed in the Catholic Church, and, thus, led the rest of us to Rome.
Bishop Pfeifer and the Diocese of San Angelo
Sandie and I prayed about the choice of dioceses. Should we pursue this in the Diocese of Memphis where our family lived or in the Diocese of San Angelo where we had our new home? In the first week of September 2005, I had a preliminary phone conversation with Bishop Michael D. Pfeifer, OMI, the Bishop of the Diocese of San Angelo. We made an appointment to see him in San Angelo the first week in October. Before we saw him, he asked us to talk with our family, friends, and priests who knew us to see how they viewed our decision and to have a conversation with Fr. Bob Wright, OMI, who is on the faculty of Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio. One of the priests we talked with was Fr. George Montague, SM, whom we have known since 1992. Fr. George had been influential in our decision to be confirmed in the Catholic Church. He said he had no doubts that I had a vocation to the priesthood. The decision was whether to offer myself for the priesthood in the Diocese of San Angelo or in the Diocese of Memphis. He suggested that we do an Ignatian process of discernment. We did this, and the result was to “trust Bishop Mike.” In other words, trust Bishop Pfeifer’s judgment—follow his counsel about whether or not I had a vocation to the priesthood and, if he thought I did, what diocese I should try to enter. Other priests we consulted were Fr. David Knight, who had been our mentor for over twenty years as well as our Pastor at Sacred Heart Church, Fr. Bruce Cinquegrani, our pastor at St. Ann Church, and Fr. Joseph Mary Marshall, SM, who was our spiritual director but was away from his usual ministry in San Antonio on a five-month assignment in Kenya. We were thankful for the ease of communication by email with Fr. Joseph Mary. All of them encouraged me to offer myself for ordination under the Pastoral Provision.
A good friend of mine, Walt Bolton, now a Deacon, was part of our Charismatic Prayer Group in Memphis. We asked the members of the group to pray with us about our decision. Walt called me on the phone the morning after we met with the Prayer Group to say that he had a word of the Lord for me about the vocation to the priesthood. As he was praying for us, the Lord had given him the Scripture passage from Genesis that tells the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac (22:1-19). Walt knew about my last celebration of the Eucharist as an Episcopal priest when, at the conclusion of the liturgy, I had laid my chasuble and stole on the altar and walked away. He said that the sacrifice of my priesthood was not accepted by the Lord in the way that Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac was not accepted. Just as Abraham was asked by the Lord to sacrifice a ram instead, so the Lord had accepted my sacrifice of my teaching ministry at Memphis Seminary. Now I was to pick up my chasuble and stole from the altar and reclaim my identity as a priest.
The interview Sandie and I had with Fr. Bob Wright, OMI, proved to be an excellent one in helping us clarify some things about my vocation to the Catholic priesthood. Fr. Bob wrote a four-page commentary on the interview and sent it to Bishop Pfeifer. His commentary became the basis for the conversation Sandie and I had with Bishop Pfeifer the first week in October 2005.
For several years our daughter, Amy, and her husband, Rob had been trying to conceive a child. It was proving difficult for them to have children. I had asked St. Therese of Lisieux for her prayers when Amy was praying for a Catholic husband, and she and Rob met at a church fellowship gathering the day I asked the Little Flower for her intercession. Sandie and I had been asking St. Therese, St. Rita, and the Blessed Mother for her prayers when they were trying to conceive a child. As we left Bishop Pfeifer’s office after our interview, Sandie’s cell phone rang. It was Amy. She was calling to tell us she was pregnant.
Development of a Theology of the Married Priesthood
I spent three years and four months in the Pastoral Provision process before I was ordained a Catholic priest. As I went through the Pastoral Provision process, I continued to develop a theology of the married priesthood as a compliment to the celibate priesthood. A basic requirement of the Provision is the assembling of a dossier containing thirteen items, one of which is a spiritual autobiography. In my autobiography I had one paragraph in which I wrote about the discernment of a theology of the married priesthood. This autobiography was read by Bishop Pfeifer, Fr. Bob Wright, and members of the Clergy Personnel Board. I do not recall that any of them made a comment about the paragraph on the theology of the married priesthood. In September 2006 Sandie and I went to Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University where I underwent an academic assessment by the theological faculty in seven areas: Scripture, Church History, Systematic Theology, Moral Theology, Spiritual Theology, Liturgics, and Canon Law. While we were on the campus at Seton Hall, we met six other candidates for ordination under the Pastoral Provision. In October one of the candidates emailed the rest of us asking if we had read a recently published article by a Pastoral Provision priest in which he supported the discipline of celibacy for the priesthood in the Latin Rite. The concern expressed in the email was whether or not he should continue to seek ordination as a married man with children, even though the Pastoral Provision allowed it. Sandie suggested I send him an email with some of my thoughts about the way a theology of the married priesthood is a compliment to the theology of the celibate priesthood. This was the first time I wrote more than a paragraph about what I had discerned concerning a theology of the married priesthood.
In the spring of 2007 Bishop Pfeifer sent me a copy of a new provision that had been adopted to guide Catholic bishops if they were approached by former clergy of Protestant denominations, other than the Episcopal Church, who had been confirmed in the Catholic Church and were seeking ordination as Catholic priests. Since I had taught at a Presbyterian theological seminary for thirty-two years, Bishop Pfeifer thought I might have some ideas about what should be done if a former Protestant clergyman came to him asking about ordination. I wrote a commentary on the various provisions of the document, and, as I worked through my commentary, I realized that everything I said was predicated on the understanding that these were married men. I talked with my spiritual director, Father Joseph Mary Marshall, SM about this, and he encouraged me to write a separate paper on the theology of the married priesthood. This was the next step in putting my thoughts about this in writing.
After I had prepared this commentary for Bishop Pfeifer, I decided to seek the counsel of two friends, both theologians, about my theology of the married priesthood. One of those friends is Father Joseph Bittle, who had directed my attention to the icon of the Holy Family a few years earlier. He is a married priest with children in the Holy Orthodox Church. The other is Bob Klyce, a Catholic layman who is married with children and was completing a Ph.D. degree in systematic theology. Both Father Joseph and Bob gave me excellent counsel about my paper. I revised the paper and sent it to Bishop Pfeifer who suggested I wait until after I was ordained to find a publisher.
I was ordained a Deacon on December 28, 2008, at St. Theresa of the Child Jesus Church in Junction, Texas. Our Texas home is seventeen miles north of Junction, and the people of St. Theresa, our home parish, had been praying for us. Once again, the Little Flower was present at a significant place in our lives. This was Holy Family Sunday, a particularly appropriate Sunday for Sandie and me because of our ministry of the Household of the Holy Family, and it was my seventieth birthday. A month later on Wednesday evening, January 28, 2009, I was ordained a Catholic priest by Bishop Michael Pfeifer, OMI at Sacred Heart Cathedral in San Angelo, Texas. During the Ordination Rite, he invited our daughter, Amy, and our granddaughter, Clare, age two, to come forward to give the consent of the family for my ordination. This date, the Memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas, was also our forty-seventh wedding anniversary. After I was ordained and concelebrated Mass, Bishop Pfeifer invited Sandie to come into the sanctuary, and he blessed our marriage.
After I was ordained I was assigned as a Sacramental Minister, placed in the category of “retired priest serving as needed,” at St. Theresa Church in Junction, Texas, population 2,573. I was to assist the Pastor who is assigned to both Sacred Heart Church in Menard, Texas (where he lives) and St. Theresa in Junction. The Little Flower has been a special blessing to our family! Occasionally, I also assisted at Sacred Heart. At the time I was ordained, the stipulations of the Pastoral Provision included the restriction that I could not serve as a Pastor or Parochial Vicar on my own in a parish but always had to be under the authority of a celibate priest who was the Pastor. (Pope Francis has removed this restriction.) We continued to live in our Texas home and visited our families several times a year in Shelby County, Tennessee. When Bishop Pfeifer gave me my assignment, he said that, because the Pastor had lived in Menard for twenty-five years, anything I could do for the people at St. Theresa by simply being present in their lives would be more than they had had for twenty-five years. I remembered from my study of Canon Law paragraph 529 in which there is a description of exactly what Bishop Pfeifer was assigning me to do. Fr. Bill DuBuisson, OMI, a retired priest and canon lawyer, who had been my guide through the Pastoral Provision program and was present when Bishop Pfeifer gave me my assignment, said, “Knick, you will find that if you are present in Junction as a Catholic priest, you will become the priest for the whole community, not just Catholics.” I have found what Fr. DuBuisson said to be correct.
When Bishop Pfeifer reached the mandatory retirement age, Bishop Michael Sis became Bishop of the Diocese of San Angelo in 2014. He did not renew my assignment at St. Theresa, and now I am simply a retired priest. Sandie and I continue in ministry as a Household of the Holy Family. Bishop Pfeifer authorized me to have a home altar, and Sandie and I celebrate daily Mass together. Bishop Sis asked Sandie and me to write a monthly article for the West Texas Angelus, our diocesan newspaper, and we have done so since December 2014. We have found this to be a gratifying ministry, and most of the articles are related in some way to our ministry with families. Sandie keeps up with birthdays and baptismal, confirmation, and wedding anniversaries of family members and people to whom we have ministered over the years, sending them cards, notes, and intercessory prayers. We continue to minister to couples who are preparing for marriage and those who have problems develop in their marriage and families. Sandie visits some of the younger mothers in our parish during the week and is active in other ministries at St. Theresa and in the Junction community. Together we take home communion to elderly members of St. Theresa, and I hear confessions at Church and in homes. I am active in the Junction Ministerial Alliance and value my friendship with the Protestant clergy in the community. I take my turn preaching at the Lenten Luncheons and reading Scripture at the community Christmas Cantata. Sometimes when the Pastor is away from St. Theresa I will celebrate Mass there on Sunday or Wednesday. On Sunday evenings in the fall and spring I teach a Bible Study, which is the only adult education available to people in our parish. From time to time Sandie and I serve as Advocates for someone seeking an annulment, and we teach RCIA when the need arises. Because the Pastor of St. Theresa and Sacred Heart lives in Menard, what Fr. DuBuisson said is still true. I am the Catholic priest for the entire community.
As Sandie and I have lived out our vocation as married Catholic priest and wife, we have had confirmed for us our understanding of the married priesthood as a complement to the celibate priesthood, which has been the norm for the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church for a thousand years. The celibate priesthood expresses the metaphysical truth of the mystical and sacramental marriage of Christ and His Church. At the Eucharist, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the priest is the icon of Christ the Bridegroom, and the people are an icon of the Church, His Bride. In his ministry the celibate priest is able to dedicate himself with undivided loyalty as a husband to his faithful people and be available for them any hour of the day or night.
The Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches of the East ordain married men to the priesthood alongside celibate men, while celibacy is required for bishops. The Second Vatican Council in its Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests (Presbyterorum Ordinis) teaches that celibacy “is not demanded of the priesthood by its nature. This is clear from the practice of the primitive Church (cf. I Tim. 3:2-5; Tit. 1:6) and the tradition of the Eastern Churches where in addition to those—including all bishops—who choose from the gift of grace to preserve celibacy, there are also many excellent married priests.” 3 It was in this context that Pope John Paul II approved the Pastoral Provision for former Episcopal priests and that Pope Benedict XVI approved another Pastoral Provision for other formerly Protestant clergy.
When I received the call of the Lord to offer myself for ordination under the guidelines of the Pastoral Provision, we understood that the theology of the priesthood originates and develops from the doctrines of the Holy Trinity, Christology, Ecclesiology, and the theology of the Eucharist. While a married priesthood is not the norm for the Latin Rite, the theological truth expressed in the icon of the Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth seen in the married priest and his family complements the theological truth expressed in the icon of Christ and His Church seen in the celibate priest and his faithful people.
As Sandie and I have followed the guidance of the Holy Spirit into the married priesthood, these are the points I have discerned in a theology of the married priesthood.
First, marriage is a gift received from the Holy Trinity just as celibacy is such a gift: marriage is not simply a discipline that is followed if someone is not given the gift of celibacy. Moreover, the gift of marriage is always “particular” in that it is not just any man or woman a person takes as husband or wife. Husband and wife are providentially unique gifts of God to each other.
Second, when a husband and wife become father and mother by conceiving a child, they are fulfilling the first commandment given by God: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it….” (Gen. 1:28a). Unless husbands and wives become fathers and mothers there would be no one to receive the call to be a celibate Catholic priest. The family has a metaphysical (ontological) priority over celibacy. Moreover, the relationship of God and His people in the Old Testament is sometimes described as the relationship of a husband and wife (e.g. Isa. 54:5, Jer. 31:32), i.e., the relationship between husband and wife is the primordial icon of the relationship of God to His people and precedes the nuptial relationship of the celibate priest as an icon of Christ the Bridegroom and His people as the Bride of Christ.
Third, the married priest is one person with one vocation that has two dimensions. His vocation is “married priest.” It is not “priest who is also married” or “husband who is also priest.” If this is not recognized by the Church, the ordination of a married man to the priesthood can have a detrimental effect not only on him but also on his wife and children who can perceive themselves to be adjuncts to the life of their husband and father.
Fourth, the married priest is an icon of the Bridegroom (Christ), and his wife is an icon of the Bride (the Church). A woman as bride, mother, and locus of fecund receptivity is the essential icon of the Church. The Church is composed of people of both genders, and the woman is capable of bearing in her own being both genders. In this role as icon the married priest and his wife bring into focus the truth that all Christian married couples are icons of Christ and His Church. They also point to the truth of the choice of celibacy by the celibate priest as a choice of conforming himself in a special way to Christ’s own life. As Pope Benedict XVI has reminded us, “This choice has, first and foremost, a nuptial meaning; it is a profound identification with the heart of Christ the Bridegroom who gives his life for his Bride.” 4 The iconographic role of the married priest and his wife and children and the iconographic role of the celibate priest and his faithful people are seen particularly in the celebration of the Eucharist, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. In the Eucharist both the immanent nuptial presence of the Holy Trinity and the eschatological promise of full participation in the life of the Holy Trinity are present. The married priest as icon places an emphasis on immanent presence, while the celibate priest as icon places an emphasis on eschatological promise.
Fifth, in the stipulations of the Pastoral Provision, if the wife of a married priest dies before he does, the priest may not remarry. If the priest dies before his wife, it is permissible for her to marry again. In other words, the discipline for her is like the discipline for lay Catholics. However, Sandie and I have made a vow to each other that when one of us dies the other will not marry again. When we were still Episcopalians, we came to believe in the eternal character of marriage. It is true that Jesus says that in heaven we neither marry nor are given in marriage, but this does not nullify having been married in this life. As indicated previously (Part Two, Ch. IV) both Fr. George Montague, SM and Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap address the issue of the permanency of marriage and its existence in heaven. Fr. Montague emphasizes that the father, mother, and child are living out the life of the Trinity in human terms, and the perfect love of the Trinity, which brought the love of marriage and parenthood into existence, will not let that love perish at the end of earthly life. Rather, this love, which began on earth, will be perfected in heaven. Fr. Cantalamessa says that what God unites on earth in the marriage of husband and wife He will not deny in heaven. Their marriage symbolizes the union of Christ and His Church (Eph. 5:32), a union that is eternal. Marriage does not end with earthly life but is transfigured, spiritualized. With regard to celibacy, there are those who teach that the saying of Jesus indicates that there are no exclusive relationships in heaven, even though there are such relationships here. However, as Fr. Montague and Fr. Cantalamessa teach, in eternity the exclusive relationship between us as husband and wife will continue. Moreover, we will still be the parents of Jon and Amy, who are our one flesh. As Christians we do not believe in the immortality of the soul but in the bodily resurrection. We will still be ourselves in heaven, but we will be ourselves without sin. As a consequence of our understanding of marriage, we believe it would be a salutary requirement that neither the married priest nor his wife can marry again when the other dies. This would be a witness to the eternal character of marriage, a discipline that would encourage the laity to have a more complete understanding of sacramental marriage. Just as Baptism, Confirmation, and Ordination impart an indelible character, so does Marriage.
Sixth, a married priest, his wife, and child (children) together are an icon of the Holy Trinity that points to the likeness of the Holy Trinity in every Christian family. When God revealed Himself as a Trinity of Persons, He revealed Himself as perfect love, in that two persons love each other perfectly as they love a third person together. When a married priest who is father of a child (children) celebrates the Eucharist, his wife and child (children) are with him, even if not physically present, because their family is an icon of the Holy Trinity and a sign of the iconographic relationship of every Christian family, and of every family, with God, the Holy Trinity.
Seventh, the Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth–Jesus, Mary, and Joseph–is the proto-icon of the Holy Trinity and of the Domestic Church, the Church in the home, the fundamental unit of the parish and diocese and “the primary vital cell of society.” 5 It is the Holy Family that unites Catholic truth, the married priesthood, and the celibate priesthood. As the proto-icon of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Family unites every husband, wife, and child with God. Our Catholic understanding reverses the order in which we refer to the human family. Instead of saying “father, mother, and child,” we say “Jesus (child), Mary (mother), and Joseph (father).” In the Holy Family, the child is named first because He is part of both the Godhead as the Second Person of the Trinity (of the same substance as the Father and the Spirit) and because He completes the love of Mary and Joseph. In this way, these three become an icon of the Trinity in which Three Persons love each other perfectly. The Son is able to unite all people with Himself, the Holy Family, and the Holy Trinity because He is both divine and human, receiving His human nature from His mother. We are able to have a fully human relationship with Jesus because he is fully human. When we do this, because of the Hypostatic Union and Communication of Idioms, we are having a relationship with the divine Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity. Because the Son is of the same substance as the Father and the Spirit we are able to have a “personal” relationship with the Trinity. Salvation is being taken into the triune life of God (theosis) as we become fully human and fully alive.
The Holy Family
When Jesus spoke the words from the Cross to Mary and John, we hear Joseph, the icon of a human father, speak his words through his foster Son, a Son who has inherited from His earthly father the care of His mother. Here is the earthly husband and father through his foster Son continuing to provide for his beloved Mary by taking John into the Household of the Holy Family. Here is St. Joseph’s role as protector of the family continued in the Apostle John. John took care of Mary for the rest of her earthly life, as he was being supported by the heavenly arms of Joseph, her beloved husband. The married priest is an icon of St. Joseph, the husband and father in a Household of the Holy Family. With his wife, the mother of the Household, who is the icon of Mother Mary, and with their child (children), an icon of the Son, they are an icon of the Trinity and participate in the life of the Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth, the proto-icon of the Trinity.
In the Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth, we see united fecundity and continence, marriage and celibacy, the gifts of the married priesthood and the celibate priesthood. In the Holy Family, the Virgin Mary has the place next to her Son. As the Church teaches, “in the mystery of the Church, which itself is rightly called mother and virgin, the Blessed Virgin stands out in eminent and singular fashion as exemplar both of virgin and mother.” 6 God the Father eternally begets His Son who is forever united with our human nature through His mother and forever fostered by His human father, Joseph. The married priesthood complements the celibate priesthood as Mary’s motherhood complements her virginity. The complementary relationship of the married priesthood and celibate priesthood is part of the Catholic tradition, which Pope Benedict XVI describes, as indicated earlier in the chapter on Moral Theology “as the living process whereby the Holy Spirit introduces us to the fullness of truth and teaches us how to understand what previously we could still not grasp (cf. Jn. 16:12-13)…. [S]ubsequent ‘remembering’ (cf. Jn. 16:4, for instance) can come to recognize what it had not caught sight of previously and yet was already handed down in the original word.” 7
My ordination as a Catholic priest was not the end of my journey of “becoming who I already am,” as Christ lives His life in me and through me. As Catholic doctrine grows and develops, so does the individual Christian. My greatest blessing from the Lord in this process of “becoming” is my dear wife, Sandie. She and our children, children-in-law, and grandchildren are constant reminders, not only of the great mercy of the Father through Christ by the Holy Spirit in my life, but also of the other members of my family, many of whom have passed from this life, and of other people without whom I would not be “becoming who I already am.”
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1 This information is contained in a pamphlet that comes with the icon.
2 Pope Benedict XVI, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 161.
3 Presbyterorum Ordinis, Vatican II: Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, #16.
4 Sacramentum Ordinis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Benedict XVI, #24.
5 Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1655-1658; Apostolicam Actuositatem, Vatican II Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People, #11.
6 Lumen Gentium, Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, #63.
7 Pope Benedict XVI, Milestones: Memoirs, 1917-1977 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 59.
PART THREE
II
EPILOGUE: THE VIEW FROM WITHIN
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
—–The Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians 5:17-18
“Further up and further in.” At the end of The Last Battle, the concluding volume of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, the children and talking animals face an endless future of glory going “further up and further in” as they journey ever more deeply into the heavenly Narnia. 1 For my family, in this life, this means to journey ever more deeply into the truth of the Catholic Church.
It has been over forty-seven years since Dr. Ingram gave me the commission “to find out what spiritual formation is and teach the rest of us about it.” That commission took me from The United Methodist Church through the Episcopal Church to the Catholic Church. Memphis Theological Seminary and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church were supportive of me as our family walked this pilgrim road, giving me stability in my vocation as a teacher, a stability that has allowed our family to grow spiritually.
As I write this, I have been away from the Seminary since 2005, and I have been a Catholic priest since 2009. When I began teaching at the Seminary, I think I emphasized ideas more than people. As I pursued the commission given me by Dr. Ingram, my focus changed to people, for the Christian faith is about a relationship with a living Person, Jesus Christ, not a set of ideas however true they may be. As C.S. Lewis says, we have never met a mere mortal, 2 and as a Catholic priest, I have been ordained to have the cure of souls. The primary arena of God’s activity in Church History and, indeed, all history is within each human person. Moreover, each person is a member of a family. The family may be a healthy family or an unhealthy one, but each person has a father and mother. Each family is meant to be an icon of the Holy Trinity and participate in the proto-icon of the Trinity, the Holy Family. From God’s activity in the life of a person and family, He moves outward to influence all life. This is why James Schall, SJ, titles one of his books The Unseriousness of Human Affairs. 3 We can concentrate so much on outward “human affairs” that we neglect the primary place where God is acting in human history—the human heart and the human family. God addressed Mary’s heart at the Annunciation, and the “yes” of her heart preceded the conception of Jesus in her womb by the Holy Spirit. Joseph took Mary as his wife because God addressed his heart, and he also responded with a “yes.” I now see more clearly than ever that each father and mother has as their primary responsibility the care of the souls of their children. The Household of the Holy Family, our ministry to encourage Catholic family spiritual formation, proclaims that the Catholic family is the monastic movement of our time in the Catholic Church that will reclaim our culture for Jesus Christ. The married Catholic priest and his family is a model for other families as we transform the culture of death into a culture of life.
As I reflect on my own father, mother, and sister and the extended family we had in my growing up years, I remember how my father was the one who always stepped up to care for other family members. I now realize that my father’s care for his family was a profound influence on my own life and a primary motivation for the ministry Sandie and I have as a Household of the Holy Family.
For two years, August 2012 to August 2014, Sandie and I were away from St. Theresa parish in Junction, Texas, residing in Shelby County, Tennessee, where our children and their families live. We were there to help our son in his business and to provide some “parent and grandparent presence” for our children, children-in-law, and grandchildren. We were living our apostolate of a Household of the Holy Family.
Reflecting on what I have written in the previous pages, I am reminded of a passage in St. Therese of Lisieux’s The Story of a Soul in which she is writing about her experience during her Confirmation. Of one aspect of that experience she writes: “But I don’t want to enter into the details. Just as there are things that lose their sweet scent as soon as they are exposed to the air, there are also thoughts of the soul that cannot be interpreted in the language of the earth without losing their intimate and heavenly feeling.” 4 As our family goes “further up and further in,” it is in my poetry that I can expose to the air in a better way my thoughts of the soul. I think poetry is the language of earth that is closer than prose to heavenly language.
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1 See C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Collier Books, 1976), Chs. 15 and 16.
2 C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, rev. and expanded, ed. with Intro. by Walter Hooper (New York: Macmillan, 1980), 19.
3 James V. Schall, SJ, The Unseriousness of Human Affairs (Wilmington, Delaware: Books Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2012). See especially Ch. 1.
4 Therese of Lisieux, The Complete Therese of Lisieux, trans. and ed. Robert J. Edmonson, CJ (Brewster, Mass.: Paraclete Press, 2009), 64.
APPENDIX 1
DEFINITIONS
The lack of a coherent system of ideas is one of the great misfortunes of our age. To escape it, thanks to the intellectual balance afforded by a sure body of doctrine, is an incomparable benefit.
—–A.G. Sertillanges 1
In my study of spiritual theology, the “sure body of doctrine” I have learned is summarized in the definitions that follow. The statements on Philosophical Reflection and Theological Reflection in the next two appendices are expansions of two items in this list of definitions.
1. Christian Spirituality: Theosis, which is the gift of God’s grace in spiritual formation.
2. Theosis: The participation of a person, family, or community in the Holy Trinity through participation in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Second Adam, by the work of the Holy Spirit, i.e. to be “with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3) as “partakers of the divine nature” (I Pet. 1:4) and to be part of Christ’s Body, the Church.
3. Spiritual Formation: The formation of persons, families, parishes, and communities in Jesus Christ through the crucifixion of their old selves with Him and the formation of their new selves—the Resurrected Christ in them who lives through them for the sake of others. (See Gal. 2:20; 4:19)
4. Spiritual Theology: All theology seen from the perspective of spiritual formation. It includes foundational, mystical, ascetical, and moral theology.
5. Foundational Theology: That synthesis of natural, biblical, historical, apologetic, fundamental, dogmatic, and systematic theology which gives shape to and is shaped by mystical, ascetical, and moral theology.
6. Mystical Theology: That part of spiritual theology which deals with the more hidden and mysterious work of God’s grace in the life of a person, family, parish, or community. Sometimes there is an attempt to describe a pattern which God’s grace follows as Christ works in the life of a person, family, parish, or community. A traditional pattern found in Roman Catholic mystical theology is the “threefold way” of purgation, illumination, and union. A typical pattern in Protestant mystical theology is repentance, justification (new birth), sanctification (holiness), and glorification.
7. Ascetical Theology: The theology of the means of grace. Instituted means of grace are those specifically enjoined in Scripture and are usually understood as
the Sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Marriage, and Ordination) and personal prayer. Any thought, word, or deed can be used by God as a prudential means of grace, if God chooses to do so. Prudential means of grace are the extensions of the Sacraments and prayer into all of life. Every thought, word, and action is offered to God, and in this way Christians “pray constantly.” Prudential means of grace include the corporeal works of mercy: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, providing shelter for the stranger, clothing the naked, tending the sick, visiting the imprisoned, and burying the dead (see Mt. 25:35-36) and the spiritual works of mercy: giving guidance and counsel to others, instructing others in the faith, encouraging others by example and word to do good to others, comforting the injured and depressed, forgiving others their wrong- doing, bearing wrongs, praying for the living and the dead. Prudential means of grace also include the various Sacramentals of the Catholic Church.
8. Moral Theology: That part of spiritual theology that deals with the ethical question, “How should a person live?” There are two principal approaches to moral theology. One is the deontological approach, which emphasizes that the Christian life is to be lived according to certain principles or rules. Thus, the Ten Commandments are ingredients of a deontological approach to moral theology. The second is the teleological approach, which emphasizes that the moral life is governed by the end or goal which one has. For the Christian the goal can be seen as Christian perfection or union with God through Christ. As one pursues this goal, she/he is guided by learning to practice, in order to make “habitual,” the cardinal virtues (prudence, temperance, justice, and courage) and the theological virtues (faith, hope, and love [I Cor. 13:13]). The virtue of humility (knowing who God is and who you are in relation to God, which results in self-forgetfulness) unites these cardinal and theological virtues in the life of a Christian person, family, parish, or community (see Philip. 2:1-11). In moral theology the flesh, the world, and the devil are understood to be the “enemies of the soul” (see I Jn. 2:5-17; I Pet. 5:8-9) and are at work to defeat the habituation of these virtues. These enemies lead us to commit the seven capital sins of pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth. As the Holy Spirit works to habituate virtue and defeat the enemies of the soul, a person receives the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord (Isa. 11:2), spiritual gifts (see I Cor. 12), and fruits of the Holy Spirit: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity (Gal. 5:22-23).
9. Spiritual Warfare: The personal warfare that takes place in the soul, with the persons involved being the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity, the good archangels and angels, the devil and his fallen angels, the saints, other persons in this life, and the soul of the individual person. The devil enlists the services of the world and the flesh to aid him and his fallen angels. The world is not only the objective world in which the individual person lives but also the world of his or her imagination and memory and the world of his or her family history, recognized
and known or unrecognized and unknown. The world of a person’s family history can be an ally of the soul in spiritual warfare, strengthening the new creature in Christ, or an enemy, conspiring with the flesh, a person’s fallen nature, to form the old creature in Adam who fights the new creature in Christ. (See Jn. 13:2,27; 15:19; 16:33; Rom. 5:14-15; I Cor. 15:20-24, 45-48; II Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:7-8; I Pet. 2:11; 5:8-9; I Jn. 2:15-16; 3:8-10).
10. Personal Rule of Life: Ordering under the Holy Trinity one’s daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly patterns of life, to include both instituted and prudential means of grace. The ordering of one’s participation in corporate worship and personal prayer life is a central piece of the rule. The rule should also include the intentional ordering of such things as work, sleep, diet, exercise, recreation, works of charity (mercy), and family time. Personal rules vary in specificity from a few general points to a number of particular points. The rule should suit the person.
11. Family Rule of Life: Ordering under the Holy Trinity the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly patterns of family life to include both the instituted and prudential means of grace. The Christian (Liturgical) Year provides a general pattern for a family rule of life. As the personal rule of life should suit the particular person, so the family rule should suit the particular family. (See #17, “Household of the Holy Family.)
12. Parish Rule of Life: Ordering under the Holy Trinity the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly patterns of communal life in a parish to include both instituted and prudential means of grace. The Christian (Liturgical) Year provides a general pattern for a congregational rule of life. As the personal and family rules should suit the particular person or family, so the parish rule should suit the particular community.
13. Personal Spiritual Direction: A one-to-one interpersonal relationship established to assist growth in the spiritual life, i.e., to assist in personal spiritual formation. While one person is usually seen as the spiritual director and the other person as the one being directed, spiritual direction is sometimes viewed as a shared journey. Director and directee are both on a life-long spiritual pilgrimage, and they assist each other. Priests and deacons minister in personal spiritual direction both formally and informally.
14. Communal Spiritual Direction: The relationship of priest, deacon, and parish established to assist the spiritual direction of the community, i.e., to assist in communal spiritual formation. The priest and deacon are usually seen as the spiritual directors, but all members of the community, including the priest and deacon, are on a shared journey. Communal spiritual direction also takes place in small groups within the parish and in the Christian family.
15. Philosophical Reflection: Seeking wisdom, which is a comprehensive understanding of God’s truth, 2 through reflecting on the three basic questions of philosophy: the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical questions. Philosophical reflection is open to answers from all sources and demands humility on the part of the philosopher in the search for truth.
16. Theological Reflection: Reflecting the light of Christ and the Holy Trinity–as revealed in the Catholic Church in her Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium through our reason, conscience, intuition, imagination, and will–upon human experience (which includes but is not limited to memory, passions, affections, emotions, and sexuality). In this reflection Christ incarnates our reason, conscience, intuition, imagination, will, and experience, and, because they are too small to hold Christ, Christ takes them into Himself and through Him into the Holy Trinity and redeems them. Philosophically, theological reflection shows the eternal relationship of metaphysics (the essential nature of reality, which is God’s truth, “what is”), epistemology (how we know reality), and ethics (how we relate in an ordinate way to reality), in which metaphysics is the primary determinant of epistemology, and metaphysics mediated through epistemology is the primary determinant of ethics.
17. Household of the Holy Family: A Household of the Holy Family is a Christian family (parents with children, couples, single persons, extended family) living as the domestic Church (Ecclesia domestica), the primary unit of the parish Church, whose spirituality is Marian and Eucharistic and whose spiritual formation is guided by the Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph–God’s Icon of His Trinity) through the Rule of Life of the HHF. The Rule of Life of the HHF is: Fidelity to the Pope and Magisterium of the Catholic Church; Promotion of life from conception to natural death; Mass on Sunday and Holy Days (weekday Mass and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament when possible); Reconciliation monthly or at regular intervals; Daily Prayer and Bible reading as a family and individually, including the Liturgy of the Hours and the Rosary as appropriate, and the Marianist Three O’clock Prayer; Participation in the liturgical seasons through celebrations, use of Christian symbols, art, music, food, decor; Age-appropriate educational formation, e.g. study of the Catechism, Christian literature, PRE, CCD, retreats, seminars, preparation for sacraments, parochial or homeschooling; Family/couple/individual retreats; Simplicity of lifestyle and stewardship of all resources; Hospitality to persons of all ages, including priests and religious; Service to the community (local and global), especially persons in greatest spiritual/physical need including evangelization of the unchurched; and Ecumenical concern for the universal Church. Each family should adapt this rule of life to its particular circumstances.
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1 A.G. Sertillanges, O.P., The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary Ryan with Foreword by James V. Schall, S.J. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press), 1998, 114.
2 John W. Carlson, Words of Wisdom: A Philosophical Dictionary of the Perennial Tradition (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press), 2013, 292.
APPENDIX 2
ON PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION
The study of philosophy is not directed toward discovering what men may have thought but toward knowing what is true
—–St. Thomas Aquinas 1
The attention to wisdom means that we need in our souls a genuine philosophy, a genuine learning, if you will, that can enable us to seek, and yes, to know what is truly worthy of being known….St. Thomas Aquinas records a famous phrase at the beginning of his Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics. It reads, sapientis est ordinare; “it is the task of the wise man to order things.” I would suggest then that our first “call” to wisdom is the very unsettlement we find in our souls, when we begin to wonder whether things are ordered and, if so, how things are ordered.
—–James V. Schall, SJ 2
The quest for the ground…is a constant in all civilizations….The quest for the ground has been formulated in two principal questions of metaphysics. The first question is, “Why is there something: why not nothing?” and the second is, “Why is that something as it is, and not different
—–Eric Voegelin 3
Philosophy is the love (philia) of wisdom (sophia), and wisdom seeks a vision of the whole. When we seek to understand one thing, we must be aware of all things. This means that philosophers should be open to answers from whatever source. This requires humility on the part of the philosopher, whose vocation should be at the service of truth. 4 In his First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul says that Christ is “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” This power and wisdom are found in Christ crucified, who is a “stumbling block to Jews and a folly to Gentiles.” (1:22-25) However, this stumbling block and folly are removed when we accept the humility of the Cross as Jesus did. (Philip. 2:5-11) In other words, if a philosopher is humble enough to be open to answers from whatever source, philosophy can lead to the wisdom of God who is Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn. 14:6). Therefore, philosophical reflection on the three basic questions of philosophy can inform theological reflection.
These three basic questions are the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical questions. The metaphysical question is: “What is ultimate reality?” The epistemological question is: “How do we know ultimate reality?” The ethical question is: “How do we live our lives in an ordinate way based on what we know of ultimate reality?” Another way of stating the metaphysical question is in two parts: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and “Why is what is what it is and not something else?” It is axiomatic that the nature of that which is known is the primary determinant of the way we know that which is known. In other
words, metaphysics is the primary determinant of epistemology and, therefore, metaphysics mediated through epistemology is the primary determinant of ethics.
The Christian Gospel answers these three philosophical questions. The metaphysical question, What is ultimate reality?, is answered with the proclamation that God is One God who is a Trinity of Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is One because there is no barrier (impediment) separating the Three Persons, and, with no barrier separating them, the Three Persons love each other perfectly. Perfect Love is Two Persons together loving a Third Person. Thus, God is One who is a Trinity of Persons and is Perfect Love. It is the nature of Perfect Love to give itself away. As the Trinity who is One God gives His love away, creation comes into being as the fruit of this self-giving Love. The supreme act of God’s creation of the world is His creation of man in His image. As creatures created in His image, we reflect the Trinity of Love who is One God. The human family of father, mother, child is the fundamental community of human life and is the “likeness” of God the Holy Trinity. (Gen. 1:26-28)
The epistemological question, How do we know ultimate reality?, is answered by proclaiming that this knowledge that God is One God who is a Trinity of Persons is revealed to us by God Himself as part of His gift to us of His Perfect Love. This knowledge of God does not come as a result of the exercise of human reason. This Special Revelation comes to us through the record of His revelation in Scripture and through the Tradition and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Other religions are either monist (e.g. Judaism and Islam) or polytheist (e.g. Hinduism and various forms of Paganism). However, these other religions have gleams of God’s truth in them through the Natural Revelation of God in us about good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood. The capacity to receive this Natural Revelation is present in us as creatures created in the image of God. When we receive the Special Revelation that God is a Trinity of Persons who is One God, our reason is able to discern the implications for us of this Special Revelation including the way Natural Revelation prepares us to receive Special Revelation.
The ethical question, How do we live our lives in an ordinate way based on what we know of ultimate reality?, is answered by proclaiming that God determines good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood. The ability to live our lives in an ordinate way based on the Special Revelation that God is One and is a Trinity of Persons who is Perfect Love is impeded in us by the existence of supernatural evil and human sin. Evil that is supernatural to us exists in the person of Satan and his fallen angels. These are created beings and are not equal to God. They sinned by refusing to acknowledge that they are creatures who are not equal to God. Satan tempted the first human beings to sin by disobeying God. Thus, supernatural evil and sin impede our reception of the Perfect Love of God for us. God in His mercy redeems us from our sin and the domination of Satan by the Second Person of the Holy Trinity becoming incarnate as a human being and defeating Satan in His Human Person. We recover our ability to discern good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood and respond to God in an ordinate way in our moral lives by accepting Jesus Christ as our Redeemer and Lord who welcomes us back into an ordinate relationship with God the Holy Trinity.
Moreover, God comes to us in the Person of the Son of God in a human family, the Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth–Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The Holy Family is the proto-icon of the Holy Trinity and also the saving icon of the human family of child, mother, and father. The family is the pinnacle of God’s creation and the primary locus of His salvation.
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1 St. Thomas Aquinas, quoted in James V. Schall, Political Philosophy and Revelation (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 3.
2 James V. Schall, SJ, The Life of the Mind (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2006), 48.
3 Eric Voegelin, Conversations with Eric Voegelin, quoted in James V. Schall, Another Sort of Learning (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 8.
4 James V. Schall, SJ, The Mind that is Catholic: Philosophical and Political Essays (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Press of America, 2008), 28-29.
APPENDIX 3
ON THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION
What is perhaps unique about Christianity is that it is a revelation that unabashedly also addresses itself to intellect. It recognizes that everyone, philosopher or not, needs to be properly directed to the highest things, to that which we are ordered in the very structure or our being. We also need to be receivers, to be open to what is not ourselves so that we are able to respond to what is.
—–James V. Schall, SJ 1
Theological reflection is reflecting the light of Christ and the Holy Trinity—as revealed in the Catholic Church in her Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium—through our reason, conscience, intuition, imagination, and will upon human experience (which includes but is not limited to memory, passions, affections, emotions, and sexuality). In this reflection Christ incarnates our reason, conscience, intuition, imagination, will, and experience, and, because they are too small to hold Christ, He takes them into Himself and through Him into the Holy Trinity and redeems them. Philosophically, theological reflection shows the eternal relationship of metaphysics (the essential nature of reality), epistemology (how we know reality), and ethics (how we relate in an ordinate way to reality), in which metaphysics is the primary determinant of epistemology, and metaphysics mediated through epistemology is the primary determinant of ethics.
Another way of understanding theological reflection which, over the centuries, has led the Church into error with regard to God’s revelation of Himself, is to begin with reflection on human experience and move through reason, conscience, intuition, imagination, and will to Scripture and Tradition.
To illustrate the difference between these two ways of reflecting theologically, we can examine the different ways these two methods make use of analogy. In the usual analogy or simile, which is an analogy writ small, the second clause of the analogy is the primary clause. Thus, if you say the relationship of a human father and a human son is like the relationship of God the Father and God the Son, then you could proceed to say that this human father-son relationship is conceived eternally in the providence of God and will last eternally even as God the Father eternally begets the Son. On the other hand, if you say that the relationship of God the Father and God the Son is like the relationship of a human father and a human son, then you could proceed to say that every human father exists in time before his human son exists in time even as God the Father existed before God the Son existed. In the first analogy you are reflecting theologically from the perspective of Scripture as determined and interpreted by the Tradition of the Catholic Church, and in the second analogy you are reflecting from the perspective of human experience. (This second analogy is the basis of the Arian syllogism.)
These two methods of theological reflection also differ in the way metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics are related to one another. In the first method, metaphysics is seen as the primary determinant of epistemology, and metaphysics mediated through epistemology is seen as the primary determinant of ethics. In other words, the primary determinant of the way we know anything is the nature of that which is known, and what we know of that which is known determines what is an ordinate, ethical response to that which is known. In the second method, epistemology is seen as the primary determinant of
metaphysics, and what we know of anything is the primary determinant of ethics. In other words, human experience is the way whatever is known is known, and what we know by human experience determines what is an ordinate, ethical response to that which is known.
Finally, theological reflection is always personal and communal but never private, i.e. it takes place in the Church for the sake of the Church and the world.
_______________
1 James V. Schall, SJ, The Life of the Mind (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2006), 87.
APPENDIX 4
POETIC LANGUAGE OF CATHOLIC SPIRITUALITY
I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
—–Psalm 104:33
Let mind and heart be in your song:
This is to glorify God with your whole self.
—–Hesychius, Liturgy of the Hours, IV, p. 1095
HE’S NEVER LATE
Be still before the Lord and wait,
And He will act in His own time,
For in His plan He’s never late.
Our death eternal not our fate;
His plan for us is heaven’s clime.
Be still before the Lord and wait.
For Son who comes is Father’s gate
To world of truth in Him sublime,
For in His plan He’s never late.
We never will be Devil’s bait,
For Jesus says to each, “You’re mine!”
Be still before the Lord and wait.
His world is purged of Devil’s hate
By Blood made from the earth’s own wine,
For in His plan He’s never late.
Our longing His truth satiates,
And in His truth new life we find:
Be still before the Lord and wait,
For in His plan He’s never late.
.
HOME IN CHURCH OF ROME
So silent will your Spirit move
I know not how to act,
But action a response to love
That I so sorely lack.
My lack of love clouds my weak eyes
To others’ love for me;
Yet, lately in my heart does rise
A yearning there for Thee.
Through others’ love my heart is touched,
Your Spirit’s finger taps,
Then shoulder of my soul is clutched,
And I awake from nap.
That still, small voice which Mary heard
From angel in her heart
Now comes to me as Father’s Word
From those my life a part.
I reach out now; for you I grasp
And find you holding me;
So in my life I’ve found at last
The Truth all long to see.
That Truth is Jesus Christ, God’s Son,
Died on the Cross for all;
With Mary now of us He’s born,
Through us He others calls.
In each of us in human form
God’s image is renewed;
His virtues are for all the norm,
As Satan is subdued.
That Spirit now that called me forth
Will someday take me home;
Meanwhile, I know I’ve found on earth
A home in Church of Rome.
OUR LADY’S TROUBADOUR
O who will be that troubadour
To sing Our Lady’s song of love;
To sing of her who opened door,
And welcomed Holy Spirit’s Dove?
To sing of Jesus at age twelve
Found in eternal Father’s house;
And Mary, Joseph ponder well
What Jesus said He was about.
“O Lord, I’m here,” say I, “send me”
To sing her song in English rhyme
In sweet melodious poetry
To bring eternity in time.
To sing of how a Maiden fair
Heard angel’s words through silver breathed–
She opened heart to God, laid bare
Her womb to His own Son receive
Oh, sing of her at Wedding Feast
Who said, “Do what He says to do
Of Son whose sonship does not cease–
In making wine His glory viewed.
To sing of Mary’s faithfulness
Who by her Son is always seen;
Incarnates Mother’s naturalness
In her no sin has ever been.
To sing of Joseph’s heavenly dream,
Who took her as his loving spouse,
As in her eyes love for him gleamed.
God’s Son will live in David’s house.
To sing how she in manger laid
Their Baby, was so gently wrapped,
Who one day will be laid in grave,
So peacefully in hay now naps.
To sing of temple proph’cy heard
And suffering that will come to pass.
To world God’s plan will seem absurd,
But worldly wisdom will not last.
To sing of Joseph in the lead,
To Egypt Holy Family flew,
As Innocents for Jesus bleed–
Their blood with His now mingles new.
To sing of trip to Galilee,
So He’ll be called a Nazarene,
And He will sit at Joseph’s knee
To learn to work with hands and beam.
To sing of faith at Cross is ripe
And plucked for us by dying Son
Then given us, as tears she wipes
Of Church reflected there in John.
To sing that she needs not to see
His Risen Self with Mother’s eyes
For knows in heart that He will be
By Father raised to never die.
To sing of Mary, who was there
When Spirit fell at Pentecost
To form the Church for whom she cares:
Through her Christ came to save the lost.
To sing of Mary, Heaven’s Queen,
Who now we see as Second Eve,
Assumed, with her Son now to reign,
We ask her prayers: “May we believe.”
SACRED HEART, OUR CORNERSTONE
O Sacred Heart, so wounded deep,
With Mary’s Heart your vigil keep,
As for us both your Hearts do weep;
For as we sow, we also reap.
Peace in our hearts we cannot buy,
So trapped are we by Satan’s lie;
No matter now how hard we try,
In us the price is just too high.
Imperfect cannot perfect be
Since first Eve chose imperfectly.
One perfect in humanity
Must come to us to human free.
God’s New Creation now is born
Of Woman from the old not scorned.
Her Heart one Heart that’s not forlorn,
A Heart that has not our sin worn.
From Mother, He our nature takes;
His Sacred Heart her own Heart makes,
As human nature on earth quakes,
When from its sin-drugged sleep awakes.
That Sacred Heart joins with our own;
Her Heart Immaculate now known.
In human nature virtue grown
From Jesus’ Heart, our cornerstone.
JOSEPH’S SILENT MANTLE
An upright man, who preaches with his life–
Through Joseph shines the light
Of Son of Mary born–
Who speaks His Word by silent mantle worn
To show the world the beauty of their truth,
God’s Holy Family formed by plighted troth.
Of human reason not a captive made,
He woke from Adam’s shade
With gift in dream received
Saw clearly Mary’s Son, with her believed
That from their sin His people He will save,
By death will triumph over Adam’s grave.
In silence suffered in the joy is giv’n
By Spirit straight from heav’n,
And died with open eyes,
Saw grave of Son will with him in death lie,
Will take his hand to raise on Easter morn–
His earthly father with Him is reborn.
MARRIAGE SACRAMENT
In our fragmented human race,
God comes to make us whole–
To heal our wounds with saving grace,
Our lonely hearts console.
For at the Fall both female, male
Began disordered love–
A thing of beauty now turned pale,
Reordered from above.
Baptism’s wash wakes us from sleep
We see each other new.
Plunged once for all beneath the deep,
God’s purpose now in view.
Two wedding rings join hearts as one,
A sacramental act–
A union that’s forever done,
Eternity’s own fact.
Lord’s new wine again is poured
Through two at wedding feast;
Their Lord through other each adores—
For world, salvation’s yeast.
A consummation of God’s plan,
When He created two–
New soul mates for His human clan
Their union earth renews
(New Eden, P. 95)
A VISION OF THE WHOLE
The beauty of your face I seek
Inside my human fear.
Come to me in a heart made meek
And wipe away my tears.
For venture I on paths unknown,
While old life left behind;
I see the only light I’m shown
In darkness of my mind.
A vision of the whole is giv’n,
And I must step inside;
Please let this be a glimpse of heav’n
Where lasting joy abides.
May family mine I not forsake
Nor seek myself to fill;
Your truth will only our thirst slake
And give your “Peace, be still.”
Please, Holy Family, pray with me
And join us to the whole—
Our family to His Trinity,
One heart and mind and soul.
GLORY IN YOUR EARTH AND SKY
Your earth and sky reveal to us your name,
For it is “glory” shows us who you are,
And then for sinful eyes to see you came
To make us wise, so we can see your star
Shines in the night o’er Bethlehem will rest
Reveals the name you want all earth to know:
Is “Trinity” comes through His mother’s “yes,”
By Spirit One who made us is made low
To bring your glory in our hearts reside,
Who will with Mary choose to Him receive,
And when we do your glory will abide
In those who in humility believe;
And then we see your glory in each face,
For you fill all creation with your grace.
A LILY AND HER ROSE
In dark of night made dead by Eden’s sin,
A Rose of Sharon born to Lily blue,
And with them Eden will begin again
With life raised from His grave is born anew.
For Sharon’s Rose will pour His life blood red
From manger to His Cross o’er all the earth,
And with His Body, Blood we all are fed,
Are taken through His grave to our new birth.
So, Christmas is the hope of all the world,
Comes in the black as pitch of Eden’s night,
And swaddling clothes will be grave clothes unfurled,
For truth in Him shows forth His heaven’s light.
We celebrate the birth of Sharon’s Rose
To Lily through whom Eden’s dawn now glows.
HIS CROSS AN OLIVE TREE
His Cross becomes an olive tree
On fire but not consumed;
Gives healing light so all can see
He has our sin assumed.
Anointed with His healing oil
Our eyes are opened now;
Dead at His feet is serpent’s coil,
And we before Him bow.
Commands us then to lift our eyes
To see Him raised above;
Ascended we can with Him die,
Be raised to live in love.
Join Him to bring His light to earth
Salvation to proclaim;
Creation raised in second birth,
Healed by His light and flame.
SUNSET IN SUNRISE
His finger paints a sunset ‘Cross the sky–
The same that raised a Tree on Calvary’s hill–
A signal night for Eden’s East is nigh
And voice to heavy hearts says “Peace, be still!”
Our sin is buried in the coming night,
Becomes as silent as His rock-hewn grave;
Yet, in His promised dawn breaks heaven’s light,
And all of us in Adam New are raised.
His break of dawn our broken hearts will mend,
As sunset in new sunrise is contained,
The veil between the two His death now rends,
Makes dusk and dawn in glory one the same.
We drink His sunset in our wounded souls
And with it drink the dawn that makes us whole.
THREE TABLES
For Supper of the Lamb, a table laid
Above in Father’s house to welcome home
His Son, who here below atonement made
For human family in which sin had come.
But first a table spread in upper room,
For family gathered there, of wine and bread
Who sit with Him who on this earth is doomed
To give His Body, Blood among the dead.
Between those two are Resurrection meals—
In upper room, on road, and by the sea—
To show His tomb is Eden’s gate unsealed
For all redeemed to be what meant to be.
Three tables–all are one–for us are spread
Who do not living seek among the dead.
New Eden, p. 121
EXIT SIGN
The exit sign is on the door
Of grave where death has reigned,
For Jesus came with spirit poor,
Salvation for us gained.
His spirit poor He gives to us,
Is called humility,
When we in Him place all our trust
We are from sin set free.
The Devil cannot understand
How low can be made high,
For he in pride will take his stand
And choose in hell to lie.
Then we will rise with Christ, our Lord,
And exit from the grave,
To sing of Him whom we adore
For us He came to save.
HOLY DOOR
At last comes dawn for which we’ve longed
Since we in Adam fell;
In garden we have not belonged,
Cast out to hear death knell.
But now we see an open Door
Of tomb in garden new,
With grave clothes empty on the floor,
As life begins anew.
He’s raised from dead and we’re with Him,
Our sin is left behind;
The Devil’s left with “might have been,”
Cast down with his own kind.
Through Holy Door at dawn we step,
And all is fresh and new;
His promise to us Jesus kept:
New Life in us imbued.
ALPHA AND OMEGA
I come to Alpha on my knees
To ask him my Omega be
For God’s own Natural Law in me
Responds to Him I hear and see–
Reminds me of His Natural Law
Which Moses past on Sinai saw,
Not Nature red in tooth and claw
But Law obscured by Devil’s paw–
Before the Fall did Adam know,
Through Conscience, Reason rightly so,
By heart to say a “yes” or “no;”
Knew happiness with God also–
Now marred by Satan’s ugly tempt,
Its beauty covered by contempt
Of one who thought he was exempt;
Appearance of men now unkempt,
But Jesus sees the beauty there:
Beneath sin’s dirt a heart that’s fair,
That longs to know salvation’s air,
From sin at last to be made bare.
His Word to all of us the same:
Come follow me, no longer lame,
For I will banish Satan’s claim;
That’s why into my world I came.
I came to wipe away your sin,
That Natural Law be free again;
A New Birth given to all men,
And then your real life will begin–
For I your Alpha come to you
To cleanse you with baptismal dew,
And let you hear Dove’s coo anew;
For I am your Omega, too.
A CLASSROOM WITHIN
A classroom we have found within
Where our eternal teacher speaks
To guide us each away from sin
And to the holiness we seek.
He teaches to His grave clothes see
Are empty, laid by Him to rest,
Is risen, sits at Father’s knee
To guide us in our heavenly quest.
Among His living we will find
His saints who pray for us below,
The leaders of all humankind,
His truth in inward parts to show.
He dwells in us by Spirit brought
Our Father’s Truth and Way and Life:
That triune love we so long sought
Is light illumines darkest night.
Reality we now have learned
Is Second Adam in us born,
The heaven for whom all hearts yearn–
Within He dwells, our Easter Morn.
THREE GARDENS
His truth and beauty hearts and minds unite
Through gardens tied with kingly purple thread,
From Eden through Gethsemane’s dark night
To garden where He’s risen from the dead.
His Easter garden now brings Eden bloom,
As purple thread turned crimson by Cross cast
Back through Gethsemane to Eden’s gloom,
And spring to Eden comes again at last!
His truth and beauty, woven now as one
Through hearts and minds, bring harmony and peace.
Creation and redemption through His Son
From Father, Holy Spirit is released.
May bloom of Eden New fill hearts and minds
With beauty, truth—God’s gifts to humankind
New Eden, p. 74
OUR LORD’S SONG
Can song we sing in land so strange
Be our Lord’s melody–
A place were fame and fortune reign
In land that thinks its free?
Where freedom from God’s moral law
Is only standard held,
With nature red in tooth and claw
Where human nature fell?
What is that melody so clear
O’er all the earth it wafts?
It’s joy’s own song I yearn to hear
Like children when they laugh.
A heaven’s song is in earth’s air
Of our Messiah’s birth:
Eternal comes for human care,
And earth is filled with mirth.
An old, old story born again;
God enters human flesh.
It’s God’s true fairy tale for men,
As earth and heaven mesh.
Can song we sing be old made new
In land without the Tao?
Where people say most new is true
Is all that matters now?
The One who walked that Garden cool
Comes now as little child;
To make again the earth His school,
And burn the tares gone wild.
But from that burning there will rise
A New Creation born;
No longer will our Rachel cry–
We rise on Easter morn.
That song I hear is of death’s night
And Resurrection’s dawn;
And old, old song raised to new heights
By coming of God’s Son.
The closer heaven draws to earth
The more like home earth seems,
For earth inherits sacred worth
Reflecting heaven’s scenes.
That song we hear has changed this land,
And it is strange no more;
It’s now a place that we can stand
To step through heaven’s door,
A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
This is not the standard bibliography or annotated bibliography. Rather, this is a bibliographical note about some of the books that have been especially helpful in my pilgrimage along the road of spiritual formation to the Catholic Church. In this note I will mention only author and title. Other information about publisher and date of publication can be found on the internet.
The most important single teacher for me, through his books, is C.S. Lewis. I have read most of what he has written, and anything he wrote is worth reading. However, I mention particularly five books: Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, The Abolition of Man, and The Screwtape Letters. Three collections of essays have been especially helpful: God in the Dock, Christian Reflections, and The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. In the three volumes of his science fiction trilogy and seven volumes of his Chronicles of Narnia one finds the same truths taught as are in his books and essays.
A Catholic philosopher whose writings have been significant for me is James V. Schall, SJ. I mention only a few of his books, but, as is the case with Lewis, anything he wrote is worth reading. I have been helped especially by Another Sort of Learning, The Order of Things, The Mind that is Catholic, The Modern Age, The Sum Total of Human Happiness, Reasonable Pleasures, The Life of the Mind, The Politics of Heaven and Hell, and Schall on Chesterton. Also, a helpful book for which Schall wrote the Foreword is The Intellectual Life by A.G. Sertillanges O.P.
Reading Lewis and, later, Schall has taught me much of what I have learned about the great Catholic intellectual tradition.
Thinking of Schall’s book on G.K. Chesterton leads me to mention Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, The Catholic Church and Conversion, The Thing: Why I Am a Catholic, and St. Thomas Aquinas. Chesterton is a prolific writer on so many subjects, and I have found two books by Dale Ahlquist to be helpful in condensing Chesterton’s teaching: G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense and Common Sense 101.
Another Catholic philosopher whose writings have been helpful is Dr. Peter Kreeft. Like Lewis and Schall, anything he writes is worth reading. I mention especially Heaven: the Heart’s Deepest Longing, A Refutation of Moral Relativism, and The Snakebite Letters. This last named is in the same vein as Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters.
Since my graduate education was in Church History, as I carried out Dr. Ingram’s commission to learn what spiritual formation is I naturally turned to the history of the Church. Louis Bouyer’s A History of Christian Spirituality in three volumes (with contributions to volume two by Jean Leclercq and Francois Vandenbroucke) is a work I consulted many times. Jordan Aumann’s Christian Spirituality in the Catholic Tradition is a helpful one-volume overview of the history of Catholic spirituality.
Especially important in learning more about the Early Church from the perspective of spiritual formation and spiritual theology with its basis in foundational theology were B.J. Kidd’s three-volume A History of the Church to A.D. 461, with an accompanying two-volume collection of documents. C. FitzSimmons Allison in his The Cruelty of Heresy provides a short lucid study of the first four Ecumenical Councils. William A. Jurgens provides a useful three-volume collection of documents from the Early Church, and Henry Bettenson provides a two-volume collection from that period. Georges Florovsky’s Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View was helpful for me in seeing the perspective of the Orthodox Churches on this period of Church History and on Orthodox spirituality. Of Course, St. Augustine’s Confessions is a classic for a study of spiritual formation and spiritual theology. The Rule of St. Benedict (there are many editions) was composed at the end of the period of the Early Church but had profound influence on the Medieval Church and, indeed, the Catholic Church up to the present day.
One of the most informative books about the medieval period of Church History from the perspective of spiritual theology was Jean Leclercq’s The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture. R.W. Southern’s Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape was also helpful not only for understanding St. Anselm but also for understanding the period in which he lived. Moreover, Southern provides a useful comparison of St. Anselm and St. Augustine.
Specifically with regard to spiritual formation and spiritual theology a number of authors have been helpful. Some of them are Catholic, some Anglican, and some Protestant. Books by Protestants that have been helpful include On Being a Real Person by Harry Emerson Fosdick and Changed into His Likeness by Watchman Nee. Several books by the Methodist writer E. Stanley Jones were helpful to me in my early spiritual pilgrimage. Also, I should mention Prayer Can Change Your Life by William R. Parker and Elaine St. John. I am not sure of the religious tradition of those two authors.
The Anglican Tradition has provided some instructive studies in spiritual formation and spiritual theology. These include English Spirituality and Spiritual Direction by Martin Thornton, Participation in God: A Forgotten Strand in the Anglican Tradition by A.M. Allchin, The Seven Christian Virtues by Hugh Ross Williamson, Some Principles of Moral Theology by Kenneth E. Kirk, The School of Charity by Evelyn Underhill, and Life of Evelyn Underhill by Margaret Cropper. A special mention must be made of The Elements of the Spiritual Life by F.P. Harton. This is an excellent summary treatment of spiritual theology. The writings of S.C. Hughson are excellent, but I single out The Warfare of the Soul, the most useful book I have read on spiritual warfare. Also, I mention the hymns of Charles Wesley and the Holy Sonnets of John Donne.
Catholic writers who have been of great consequence in the spiritual formation of my wife and me include Fr. David Knight, who influenced us both in his writings and as a pastor, spiritual director, and friend. He is the author of many books on Scripture, Catholic spiritual life, and discipleship. I would especially mention three that were significant in our journey to Catholicism: His Way: An Everyday Plan for Following Jesus, Mary in an Adult Church: Beyond Devotion to Response, and Living the Sacraments. Fr. David prayed for us for the twenty years we knew him as Methodists and then Episcopalians. Thanks to his prayers, inspiration, and spiritual direction his prayers were answered when he confirmed Amy, Sandie, and me at Sacred Heart Church in Memphis. He also encouraged me to become a Catholic priest.
Another Catholic writer who has been a teacher, spiritual director, and friend for both Sandie and me is Fr. George Montague, SM whose Our Father, Our Mother: Mary and the Faces of God clarified my understanding of the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary. His The Woman and the Way: A Marian Path to Jesus also helped us open ourselves to Marian devotion. I should also say that Fr. George provided significant encouragement for me to consider ordination as a Catholic priest. He continues to provide encouragement to me in writing poetry and in writing this book. Fr. George’s many published works include scholarly Scripture studies, Marian theology and spirituality, and life in the Spirit. All of his books integrate his scholarly work with Catholic spiritual life.
Other books by Catholic authors that have been significant for me are St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Essay on the Development of Doctrine, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, and Prayers, Verses, and Devotions; Thomas Merton’s The Seven Story Mountain; and John LaBriola’s Onward Catholic Soldier. LaBriola’s work is very helpful in understanding spiritual warfare.
Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery, O.P. and the Catechism of the Catholic Church are indispensable for understanding the Catholic Church and growing in the faith. Pope Paul VI presided over much of the Council and his Encyclical Of Human Life is a prophetic affirmation of the truth about marriage, family, and human sexuality in the face of what he saw coming in our western culture.
I conclude this Bibliographical Note with references to Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. I have been fortunate to live in a time of two great teaching Popes. Anything these Popes have written is excellent, and I mention only a few of their writings.
From Pope St. John Paul II, his Encyclicals Mother of the Redeemer, The Gospel of Life, The Splendor of Truth, and Faith and Reason have been especially helpful. I also mention his Theology of the Body, his Apostolic Letter On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, his Apostolic Exhortation The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World, and his Letter to Families. George Weigel’s biography of St. John Paul II, Witness to Hope, is a book that brings together the Saint’s spirituality and all the events in the history of the Church and world in which he was involved. This biography is an excellent introduction to the fullness of truth in the Catholic Church.
The brief autobiography of Pope Benedict XVI’s early life, Milestones: Memoirs, 1927-1977, is an inside look not only at the Pope’s spiritual formation, including his academic formation, but also the history of the Second Vatican Council and its teaching. Other writings of Pope Benedict that have been especially helpful are the following: Introduction to Christianity, God is Near Us, The Spirit of the Liturgy, Daughter Zion, an introduction to Saint John Paul II’s Encyclical on Mary, and a book of Pope Benedict XVI’s writings arranged as a day by day devotional guide, Benedictus, that integrates the wholeness of Catholic truth.
Finally, I mention Eerdman’s Book of Christian Poetry: A Treasury of Poems and the Stories of Their Writers, compiled by Pat Alexander.
PROCLAIMING TRUTH! 