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

Dear Friends:

In Scripture the visitation of an angel is always alarming; it has to begin by saying ‘Fear not.’ The Victorian angel looks as if it were going to say ‘There, there.'”

So writes C.S. Lewis in the Preface to The Screwtape Letters. An apprentice devil, Wormwood, corresponds with his Uncle Screwtape concerning how best to lead astray the soul of a man who has recently found the Lord. No spoilers here, but it’s an entertaining yarn that charts the movement of sin and, more importantly, grace, in the life of a human being. Our concern, however, is not devils so much as their benevolent counterparts, the angels. As Pope St. Gregory the Great points out, “angel” refers to a function—messenger—and not a nature. Our ancestors in the faith have always recognized the existence of heavenly spirits who, while not themselves God, yet manifest divine perfections like power, wisdom, and goodness. The Bible attests to their activity: Michael (“who is like God”?) leading the angelic hosts against Satan (Rev. 12:7); Raphael (“God heals”) restoring sight to Tobit (Tobit 11:7); and Gabriel (“the strength of God”) announcing the birth of Jesus to Our Lady (Luke 1:26).

If Lewis bemoans the popular notion of angels in his time, the situation is more lamentable today. Our age obstinately refuses to entertain even the possibility that something beyond the reach of technology might exist. Catholicism is far more open-minded; we say that God is the “maker of heaven and earth, of all that is visible and invisible.” According to St. Thomas Aquinas (the “Angelic Doctor”), spirits occupy a privileged place in the “order of being”: pure bodies (physical/living things), compounds of body and spirit (i.e. human beings), and pure spirits (angels, ST Ia 1: Q. 50-60). God, of course, is pure Spirit, but he is the Creator of all things; so an angel is a limited creature that is pure spirit, “midway” between God and us.

Several things follow from this. We human beings gain knowledge from our senses imperfectly, through the body; and while we have the capacity to grow in love and virtue, this occurs over time, and again imperfectly. Yet angels, who have no bodies or senses, understand directly by means of their intellect; their intellect in turn is completely united to their will. And so, angels, each with its own limited way, know and love naturally, immediately.

Wonderful as the life of angels is—seeing God immediately, knowing the world directly, loving each other purely—it would be a terrible mistake to think that we could actually attain it here below. For one thing, it’s impossible; denying the body God made leads to spiritual ruin. Moreover, it fails to appreciate the unique privilege we enjoy, that God’s Son, who is superior to the angels (Hebrews 4:4-5) took on flesh to live with us. Yet the example of the angels still benefits us, as we admire the saints, in whom the mind and heart cooperate—more or less—with each other. (St. Ignatius sums up the life of chastity in one sentence: we are “to live in angelic purity”. If only!) And how amazing it is to think that the Lord guides the universe through the activity of these spiritual creatures. We, the children of Adam, are the voice of the material world, singing the praises of God along with the angels: Holy, Holy, Holy!

Faithfully,
Fr. Valentine

Dear Friends:
At the risk of repeating myself, the Sunday gospels from last week, this week and the next direct our attention at the paradox of the Cross. The eyes of the world see in it death, defeat, and dismissal of the Good News, while those of faith discover life, victory, and fruitfulness. For Catholics, seemingly opposite dualities—death and life, time and eternity, change and permanence, exist in a creative tension, and show forth the power and wisdom of God. Amid the changing world and his own mortality, a poet (Gerard Manley Hopkins) beholds

A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am…

What never ceases to amaze me is how God’s grace enables otherwise ordinary, limited human beings pay the ultimate price of love, accepting the Cross in whatever form it takes. We hear that to lose one’s life for Christ, and the sake of the Gospel, is to find it.

This week the Church honors the memory of Ss. Andrew Kim and Paul Chong Hasang (d. 1846) and their companions, who witnessed to Christ through martyrdom. At their canonization in 1984, Pope John Paul II noted that the

Korean Church is unique because it was founded entirely by laypeople. This fledgling Church, so young and yet so strong in faith, withstood wave after wave of fierce persecution. Thus, in less than a century, it could boast of 10,000 martyrs.

St. Andrew Kim was himself a priest, but the seeds of the faith were planted in his homeland long before he was born. For us today, the description of what Korean Catholics had to endure is difficult to hear, much less appreciate. So how does St. Andrew come to terms with it?

My very dear brothers and sisters, know this: our Lord Jesus, coming down here, himself suffered pains beyond counting: by his Passion he founded the Church and by the passion of his faithful he makes it grow. The powers of this world may well oppress it and attack it, but they will never have victory over it. After the Ascension of Jesus, from the time of the Apostles until now, the holy Church has grown everywhere in the middle of persecution.

St. Andrew is telling us: All right, we’re suffering, so what did we expect? That everything in life would fall into place without the least inconvenience? That we would be thanked, or even acknowledged, for our faith? Of course we’re suffering; everything is working as God intended.

Once again: the Gospel will never make sense to us until we know what it’s like to have fallen in love. When this happens, we find ourselves doing what we never thought possible. Today at St. Mary’s, we cherish the Korean Catholic members of our community, who are the descendents of this great tradition. So let us pray for our fellow Catholics throughout the world who continue to witness to Christ, and pay the ultimate price of discipleship.

Faithfully,
Fr. Valentine