St. Mary's Church, Roslyn: Pastor's Page

Dear Friends:

The American novelist Truman Capote famously remarked, “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” If that’s the case, I am far more familiar with ketchup and relish than hamburger. Failure, of course, is not an entirely bad thing, and certainly not the catastrophe to be fled that our world makes it out to be. The experience of failure, or at least the perception of it, can have the salutary effect of keeping us humble, giving us perspective, and helping us form a realistic view of the world. To be sure,
thinking that one is nothing more than a failure can also skew our outlook, but genuine humility has its benefits. We human beings do well to take God and the call of the Gospel very seriously, but ourselves…not so much. Consider that Socrates, one of the world’s greatest minds, started most of his
conversations by admitting—sincerely—that he was the most ignorant person in the room. This week the Church celebrates the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), the “Angelic Doctor.” The 13th century was a time of extensive intellectual and cultural development in Europe, as the
philosophical and “scientific” knowledge of antiquity was being rediscovered. Thomas, born to an aristocratic family, had been educated by the Benedictines at Monte Cassino with an eye to a career in
law and politics. His decision to become, not simply a priest—the horror!—but a “mendicant” (begging) priest of the Dominican order, was shocking. After imprisoning him (and other drastic/comical
measures) to dissuade him from this terrible fate, they finally relented, and this large, slow-moving young man, dubbed the “dumb ox,” pursued his vocation. His intellectual career is legendary; adopting
the philosophical terminology of Aristotle, he explained the Catholic faith with an encyclopedic worldview that set the standard for brilliance, precision, and depth. His mystical insight is distilled in the
Church’s liturgy for the Body and Blood of Christ. His open-mindedness was never intimidated by differing opinions, and he was as willing to glean the truth from pagan (Plato and Aristotle), Muslim
(Avicenna) and Jewish (Moses Maimonides) sources as he was from St. Paul or St. Augustine. Scholars are of two opinions as to why he was called the “Angelic Doctor.” His purity of heart was so profound
as to typify more an angel than a man. Moreover, his writings betrayed a fascination with the spiritual beings who could know essences without the use of the bodily senses as human beings do. One might think that an individual of such extraordinary intellectual, spiritual, and ethical power might, over time, have an “overly developed” self confidence. On the contrary, as today’s artwork, Santi di Tito’s 1593 work, The Vision of St. Thomas illustrates, when compared with the experience of Christ in
the sacrifice of the Mass, St. Thomas concluded that his life’s work—which set the course of western theology for the next 800 years—seemed to him “so much straw.” Not exactly an admission of failure, of course, but perhaps an expression of the futility in seeking happiness from anything beyond the grace of our Crucified Lord Jesus.
An individual with the gifts of Thomas Aquinas is quite rare; but he himself would tell us that the capacity to love God—which is within the reach of everyone—is much more important in the long run.

Faithfully,
Fr. Valentine

Dear Friends:

Returning to New York this past weekend, I was, like you, heartbroken by the recent events that took place in Washington, D.C. No decent human being, certainly no American, could be anything but ashamed by the spectacle. Violence is simply incompatible with our inalienable rights as citizens of this great nation (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) and the values we hold dear (equality, peace). Indeed, it is an attack on the very soul of America, because it brings to a standstill the very mechanisms by which a just society corrects injustice. It is a tragic culmination of what we have experienced this past year, what some call the “banality of evil.”

Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil. (Hannah Arendt)

As Catholics enter Ordinary Time, we accept our responsibility to pray for our world, to love friend and foe, and yes, to think; but we do so as Catholics. Too much is at stake for us to allow forces within our world—those who do not look at the world through the eyes of Christ—to dictate the terms of the conversation.

This week we behold the work of the Roman painter Placido Costanzi (1702-59), entitled Ecce Agnus Dei (“Behold the Lamb of God”). According to the J. Paul Getty Museum website, Costanzi blended the Baroque artistic sensibility—dramatic, intense, colorful—with the influence of Raphael. He was apparently given to the use of allegory: the depiction of highly symbolic objects, colors, gestures, etc. to refer to spiritual realities. Curiously, the center of the painting is not Christ, but rather the Baptist, who directs our attention away from himself, to the Lamb of God, standing at a distance. Indeed, if not for John pointing to our Lord dramatically, we might altogether miss him. Notice, too, that John is a massive presence in the painting, at least ten times the size of Jesus. Two chapters later in the Gospel (John 3:30) he will say of Jesus, “he must increase; I must decrease.” These two clues form the “lesson” of the painting. If not for the Christian who calls attention to the presence of the Son of God, the world whom he came to save might never notice him. But the way the Christian does this entails something modern culture finds quite onerous. One can only make room for the grace of God through what the Church calls “self-abnegation,” that is, the extinction of one’s own interests for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. This always, always, stings. Yet when the ego’s obsession with itself is brought under control, only then do we find true joy. (This occurs by God’s grace: not by positive thinking, or yoga, or self-empowerment, or a “healthy lifestyle.”)

Consider one more symbol: Jesus is standing across the Jordan River, among palm trees. These trees are an ancient figure for paradise. To be with Christ is by definition to be in heaven: eternal fullness of life. But notice what lies between one side of the river and the other: water, or death to sin. The peacefulness of the palm trees belies the action going on beneath the surface. Pope Benedict remarks that Jesus’ suffering

turns the underworld around, knocking down and flinging open the gates of the abyss…This struggle is the ‘conversion’ of being that brings it into a new condition, that prepares a new heaven and a new earth.

Friends, you and I are part of God’s solution to the mystery of evil in our world today. We embrace neither a naïve “I’d like to teach the world to sing” attitude, nor the arrogance of thinking we can “build” the Kingdom of Heaven by our own feats of spiritual engineering. Both are destined for failure. Instead, we are called to follow Jesus humbly, and love our neighbor without demand.

Faithfully,
Fr. Valentine