Catholic Thought discussion

Introduction

This book is an essay in reclamation. First, with the aid of the Church’s Fathers and chief Doctors, drawing on Christian philosophy, liturgy, poetry, and iconography, it seeks to recover and reconsider a forgotten pearl from the treasury of revelation: the nine months of Jesus’ life as an unborn child in Mary. Secondly, since the Incarnation of God the Son in the Virgin’s womb reveals the greatness of man’s dignity…

Chapter 1 – The Moment God Became Man

…according to the Church’s teaching, we can be precise about the moment of the Incarnation: it took place when the Virgin Mary said to the angel, “Be it done unto me according to thy word” (v. 38). It was exactly then that, by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, a body was fashioned from the Virgin’s flesh and blood, a rational soul created and infused into the body and, in the same instant, the complete human nature united to the divine Word. There were no successive stages in this taking of manhood; the body did not come into being before the soul, nor the soul before the body, nor were either ever other than his, God the Son’s: the flesh was conceived, ensouled, and assumed simultaneously.

When exactly was Christ conceived in the Virgin’s womb? There was a debate in the Church from early on spanning many centuries about it as well as to when Christ’s body and soul was fully formed in the Virgin’s womb. Did he have a soul prior to conception as Origin proposed? Was there first the body and then it was infused with a soul? It was Maximus the Confessor (580 – 662) who ultimately determined that the intellectual soul is created by God and infused into the body in the very instant of conception. He teaches that man is a synthesis of body and soul. One cannot exist without the other. St. Thomas Aquinas added that Christ’s body was perfectly formed from the moment of conception. This conclusion, while wholly logical for his time, is now outdated given our current understanding of the mechanisms of conception and the developmental stages of the human baby in the womb.

I will post the second chapter tomorrow.

Thank you, Kerstin. I really liked this from pg. 18:

"Maximus suggests that, were soul not wedded to body from the beginning, there would be no reason why it should not, so to speak, divorce and remarry at the end: reincarnation would be as reasonable a human destiny as resurrection."

Thanks Kerstin and thanks Michelle for your sharing. This book it's a bit difficult for me to read. And I feel too "small" to talk about it, but I'll try.

I don't think that the mystery of Christ's birth can be seen only in biological or logical terms. Mary's virginity already shows us that is not a conventional conception. We're outside any other conception that has ever taken place, and any other conception that will take place between the beginning and the end of the world. Christ and his Blessed Mother are a unique and unrepeatable event.

Oh great. The folder is up. I will have comments on the first chapter tonight. I really enjoyed the first two chapters.

I feel similar, Michael!! But I will also try, seeing as I've made a lot of notes on the first two chapters.

I loved the comparison of Elizabeth to King David: How can the Ark of the Lord come to me? I don't think such a similarity is accidental - nothing is accidental with the Lord, and so it's such a wonder. I also put down some notes on how Mary might be the redeeming quality of Eve. I'm not a theologian and I don't want to say the wrong thing, but still I'd like to share these two notes I made:

"The greatest miracle of humanity is that God came to dwell among us. And He did it through a humble woman. There is this striking difference between Eve and Mary – Mary’s obedience was absolute, even to the point of her life being in danger. She, in some sense, is the redeeming quality of Eve."

"Corinthians 22:15 “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” Can we also apply this to Eve and Mary? Mary is exempt from labour pains for her holiness, she is holy."

(Here I would also love to draw from Vita Consecrata by st. John Paul II. when he described how Mary is the first consecrated person - she has been, since Jesus' conception)

Wonderful Ellie, thank you for sharing. I'll keep this with me as I read.

Thanks Michael & Ellie for your thoughts. I too have some trouble with anything even flirting with philosophy. I have to reread some sections in order to make sense of the meaning.

Ellie, I enjoyed the sections about Mary as the new Ark of the Covenant, too. And the comparison of the journeys of each of them was fascinating.

Let me complete the paragraph Kerstin provided as summary for the Introduction.

This book is an essay in reclamation. First, with the aid of the Church’s Fathers and chief Doctors, drawing on Christian philosophy, liturgy, poetry, and iconography, it seeks to recover and reconsider a forgotten pearl from the treasury of revelation: the nine months of Jesus’ life as an unborn child in Mary. Secondly, since the Incarnation of God the Son in the Virgin’s womb reveals the greatness of man’s dignity, I am inviting my readers to look again, this time in the light of the incarnate Son of God, at the womb-weeks of their own and every human life. I am going to suggest that we re-read this first chapter of the human story and find afresh its beauty, truth, and goodness. It is only our estranged faces that have missed this many-splendored thing.

That statement of objective is split in two. First it presents the conception and gestation of our Lord within His mother’s womb, but it also stops to meditate on the significance of the various stages leading to the birth. I think the book is first a meditation on Christ in the womb and second a book of theology.

A good question is how do we approach meditations? I think we approach them knowing there are insights we glean to deepen our devotion, deepen our understanding, and deepen our faith.

Manny wrote: "A good question is how do we approach meditations? I think we approach them knowing there are insights we glean to deepen our devotion, deepen our understanding, and deepen our faith."

Yeah, I agree. That's a good way to go.

Chapter 1 is a meditation on the conception of Christ within the Blessed Virgin’s womb. Saward goes on to say that at the very moment, that is with no lapse of time, the Blessed Mother gave her yes was the physical conception generated.

There were no successive stages in this taking of manhood; the body did not come into being before the soul, nor the soul before the body, nor were either ever other than his, God the Son’s: the flesh was conceived, ensouled, and assumed simultaneously.

It was at this very moment, and again with no lapse of time, that the full nature of Christ became incarnate.

The coincidence of the Virginal Conception and the hypostatic union is a defined doctrine of the Catholic faith. In the words of the ‘Formula of Union’ agreed between St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Antiochene bishops in 433 and canonized by the General Council of Chalcedon in 451, “We confess the holy Virgin to be Mother of God, because God the Word was made flesh and became man and from the very moment of conception united to himself the temple he had taken from her.”

This also provides insight as how a natural person is ensouled during typical conception. Saward takes from St. Maximus the Confessor:

One of the questions concerns the moment at which soul and body are united. Does the soul exist before the body (as the Origenists teach)? Or does the body exist before the intellectual soul (as Aristotle and the Stoics, in their different ways, teach)? Both hypotheses are to be rejected, says Maximus: the intellectual soul is created by God and infused into the body in the very instant of conception.

So when the pro-abortion crowd try to sell you that a fetus has no soul until some distant point in the gestation, you can utterly reject that out of hand. It is not what the Catholic Church teaches.

Maximus goes on to conceptualize, and again this is Catholic Church teaching, that the body and soul are integral to each other.

Maximus insists that man is not a soul using a body but a unity of body and soul, a “synthesis,” a “complete figure” (eidos holon). This “completeness” (ekplêrôsis) of the human person enjoys a physical as well as metaphysical priority. If a man is essentially
a whole, then he must be a whole from the beginning: the genesis of body and soul must be simultaneous. This soul is defined in relation to this body; that body in relation to that soul. Each must, therefore, belong to the other from the outset. After all, even after separation in death, they do not lose their reference to each other. Maximus suggests that, were soul not wedded to body from the beginning, there would be no reason why it should not, so to speak, divorce and remarry at the end: reincarnation would be as reasonable a human destiny as resurrection.

So there is a knitted relationship between one’s body and one’s soul that are linked even after death and reunited at the end of time. All of this seems to be derived from Christ’s incarnation and resurrection.

The miraculous how of Christ’s conception reveals who he is; it does not make him any the less what we are. This is the doctrine of Pope St. Leo the Great (d. 461) in his Tome. The Son of God becomes man, he says, “in a new order, generated in a new birth,” but this newness—so “singularly wonderful and wonderfully singular”—has not abolished the nature of our race.

Saward goes on to conclude:

Apart from the saving novelty of its virginal manner, the conception of Christ is in all respects like ours. For us, then, as for him, it is the moment from which we are fully and completely human, endowed with rational soul as well as body.

Some in the pro-abortion crowd will argue that St. Thomas Aquinas did not believe in that the soul was formed at conception, and this is true. Saward fully provides Aquinas’ argument that a rational being required organs to be rational, and so could not be ensouled until they had formed. On this Thomas Aquinas is wrong, and the Church has never accepted that argument.

One aspect of Christ’s conception that Saward does not contemplate upon is the interaction of the male and female DNA at conception. Twenty-three pairs of chromosomes come together at conception, half from the father and half from the mother. Christ’s conception did not have a human father. So what DNA did Christ have? This is something I’ve contemplated over the years, and unfortunately have not come to any conclusion. It’s too bad Saward doesn’t take this up; I would have loved to have seen some speculation. As I have thought on this, there are a myriad of possibilities that I can come up with. Here are some.

1. Christ could have received the female contribution from his Blessed Mother and God could have infused a divinely inspired male side. This would dovetail with Christ’s two natures.

2. Christ could have received the female contribution from his Blessed Mother and God could have infused the DNA of Joseph, Mary’s spouse and Christ’s foster-father as a fitting formation of their family.

3. Christ could not have had any human DNA and had a uniquely set of divinely inspired chromosomes.

4. Christ could have had some general Jewish DNA formulated from his genealogy.

5. Christ could have had his Blessed Mother’s DNA from the female side and King David’s from the male side. Or Abraham’s from the male side. Or Adam’s from the male side.

Anyone think of any other possibility? Which one do you think is most likely?

Manny wrote: "So when the pro-abortion crowd try to sell you that a fetus has no soul until some distant point in the gestation, you can utterly reject that out of hand. It is not what the Catholic Church teaches. "

I was actually thinking exactly that!! To be Catholic is to be, first and foremost, pro-life and I love how this book subtly emphasizes. It will come up in the third chapter, too, so I don't want to get ahead, but some of the things the Church Fathers dealt with are so eerily similar to what we have to deal with in today's society, including the dignity of human life.

Manny wrote: "Anyone think of any other possibility? Which one do you think is most likely?"

This is such a complicated idea and much too big for me to even attempt to unravel, but I would probably point to the Shroud of Turin or the Eucharistic miracles. The DNA found on the Shroud might have been from people touching it, but what about the blood of the miracles? It would be awesome if we could amplify the DNA samples from the blood, then the mystery would be solved, but I guess some things have to remain a mystery because they are too great for us to understand? That's my understanding.

But I think all the options you laid out, Manny, are interesting. I guess Jesus would probably have to have some DNA from the Davidic line, and subsequently, Adam's, since he is the Son of Man, completely human as well as God.

It's a wonderful question for contemplation, though!

It took me a few days to summarize chapter 2. Fr. Saward packs so much information into each paragraph it was slow going.

Chapter 2 – How Can the Ark of the Lord Come to Me? The Gospels

He is not only the inhabitant of the womb; he is also its “fruit” (Luke 1:42). His body does not come down from heaven; it is fashioned out of his Virgin Mother’s flesh and blood. Indeed, since she is made fruitful by the Holy Spirit, not by male seed (see Matt. 1:20), he is physically more indebted to her than any other child could be to his mother.

When Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist, she walks the same path as Jesus would later leading up to the crucifixion. Even unborn, John is Christ’s herald; by his infant joy, he is prophet. As St. Ambrose says, “Before his father or mother had done anything wonderful, he leapt in his mother’s womb and preached the good news of the advent of the Lord.”

Even before his birth, the Child Jesus is at his saving, sanctifying work. While still in the womb, the Savior consecrates the forerunner for his mission. What is more, grace comes to John from Jesus through Mary, who, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ words, “this one work has to do—Let all God’s glory through.”10 Already, at Ain-Karim, Our Lady is at her handmaidenly, motherly work of mediating the grace of her Son.

Mary is the New Ark of the Covenant. Just like the Ark of old had been carried up the hills toward Jerusalem, so Mary carries Jesus.
The Baby in the womb is God, and so the expectant Mother is the definitive Ark, and hereby God is made present in a very tangible way. Before God has shown Himself in a cloud, an entity that eludes physical grasp. Now, in a very real way, God makes Himself known in person without losing his transcendent reality.

This New Testament revelation of Jesus in Mary presupposes the Old Testament belief that the womb of woman is the stage on which the first scenes of the human drama are played out. The Lord forms, “knits together,” every man from the womb (see 2 Macc. 7:22–23; Ps. 139:13–16; Is. 44:2, 24). Indeed, “He-who-fashions-you-in-the-womb” is one of the divine names in Deutero-Isaiah (Isa. 49:5). The nakedness of the human person as he comes from the womb foreshadows the nakedness with which he goes into the tomb: both signal his utter dependence upon his Creator (see Job 1:21) … Thus in Mary, who conceives her Son by the Holy Spirit, not by human seed, two major themes of the Old Testament converge and are surpassed: the hidden presence of God and the secret beginnings of man.

Mary speaks her sublime Magnificat. A hymn of praise to God. Unfortunately modern scholars do not think the lowly and uneducated Mary to be capable of uttering such beautiful poetry spontaneously. What they do not acknowledge is that she has been immersed into Scriptures her whole life, probably knowing much of it by heart, as many did at the time. From this perspective her composing the Magnificat is entirely plausible.

If the Annunciation narrative reveals the faith and love with which the Holy Virgin welcomed God’s Son into her flesh, the Magnificat expresses the joy and gratitude with which she sheltered him. These religious acts are more than simply individual. Mary of the Magnificat is Israel in person. Her ‘I’ recapitulates the ‘we’ of her people. What God has done for her, he has done for all Israel (see Luke 1:54). The grace poured out on the lowly Handmaid is a blessing for all the poor of the Lord (vv. 48 and 53). In the Child in Mary’s womb, every promise made to Abraham is fulfilled (v. 55).

There is a long tradition wherein Joseph already knew of the Virginal Conception before the angel appeared to him in a dream. The angel’s message told him not to leave her but to protect her. We’ve all heard the translated words of Joseph wanting to “divorce her quietly” which is, when one thinks about it, nonsensical. All divorces are public then as now. A better translation would be that he decided to leave her quietly. Joseph is in awe and fear of the holy occurrence happening in front of his eyes, and like we see in the Bible so often, he is afraid and wants to withdraw. The angel tells him not to withdraw but to protect the Holy Child concealed in the Virgin’s womb.

Manny wrote: "This also provides insight as how a natural person is ensouled during typical conception."

There is a natural phenomenon that occurs when the two gametes join to form a new human being, there is a flash of light. With frog eggs, which are quite large and the laying and fertilizing is outside the body, one can observe it with the naked eye.

Manny wrote: "One aspect of Christ’s conception that Saward does not contemplate upon is the interaction of the male and female DNA at conception. Twenty-three pairs of chromosomes come together at conception, h..."

Many years ago, when our bishop came to visit the parish, he spoke on the very same thing. He didn't know how the "missing" human father's contribution was accomplished. It is still in my memory how my immediate reaction was: we're dealing with God here, I think He can manage!

What was my gut reaction here? We in the West have a tendency to explore things into minute details often at the expense of the great mystery before us. Unlike our Orthodox brothers and sisters we are not very good at keeping a mystery a mystery, we have to dissect it as much as possible. Yes it is fun to play around with the possible permutations, but in the end we should not lose sight of the wonder and mystery.

Kerstin wrote: "Manny wrote: "This also provides insight as how a natural person is ensouled during typical conception."

There is a natural phenomenon that occurs when the two gametes join to form a new human bei..."

I didn't know that- how cool!

Thank you for such beautiful contributions, Kerstin. I don’t remember his words in their entirety, and so this is only part of a quotation, but at the ceremony celebrating the re-opening of Notre Dame Cathedral, Gabriel Macron said that one reason the cathedral has so much significance for us is the human longing for “meaning and transcendence.’’ I think that is exactly what you are stressing in reminding us not to lose sight of ‘’the wonder and mystery” as we read.

Kerstin wrote: "Manny wrote: "This also provides insight as how a natural person is ensouled during typical conception."

There is a natural phenomenon that occurs when the two gametes join to form a new human bei..."

Yes, I had forgotten about that. That is true and I think represents God's involvement in the creation of life.

The second chapter meditates on what the Gospels say of Mary’s carrying of Jesus in her pregnancy.

The key Biblical event of Mary’s pregnancy is the Visitation, her travel to assist her cousin Elizabeth in her pregnancy. Much of the chapter is taken up with meditations on the Visitation.

Apart from the journey to Bethlehem, St. Luke records only one event during Our Lady’s pregnancy: the Visitation. “In those days,” after the departure of Gabriel, Mary hastened to visit her cousin Elizabeth in the hill country of Judaea (Luke 1:39–56), probably in the neighborhood of Ain-Karim, six kilometers to the west of Jerusalem. The Evangelist says that, in going south, Mary “arose” (anastasa), the verb used to designate the Resurrection. This strong and suggestive word, one of Luke’s favorites, heightens the drama of the Blessed Virgin’s journey: it is an ascent, a climb into the high country. Similar language is used to report the three other southward expeditions of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph (Luke 2:4, 22, and 42).2 It is as if Luke wants Theophilus to lift up his eyes to the mountains (see Ps. 120:1), to the heights of Mount Zion. Later, he will show how, in his public ministry, Jesus kept his sights on Jerusalem: “When the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). The message of Luke 1:39 is that the first time the Savior ventured south, presaging his later journey, was as an unborn child. Mary carries Jesus on the road that later he will purposefully tread.

Saward quite rightly points out that as one travels southward from Israel’s north country (Nazareth and the towns about the Sea of Galilee) toward Jerusalem, one is traversing uphill, and in some places very steeply up hill. I have never been there, but I have seen topographic representations of the geography. Quite nice how the word “arose” is used here and tied to the Resurrection. Mary’s life is frequently portrayed as in communion with Christ’s life.

What stood out to me the most in this chapter was the comparison of the Ark of the Covenant to Mary as the new Ark. She traveled to the hill country of Judea where David was with the OT ark. And Elizabeth and David both basically said the same thing regarding their respective encounters with the ark:

Elizabeth: And why is this granted me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me? (Luke 1:43)

David: How can the Ark of the Lord come to me? (2 Sam. 6:9)

It is so fitting that today, the fourth Sunday of Advent of Year C we are in this chapter. Today’s Gospel reading was the Visitation scene where Mary after the Annunciation and “in haste” travels to visit Elizabeth who is pregnant with John the Baptist. Saward does a nice job of explaining the Marian theology connecting her to the Ark of the Covenant.

The chief actors in the drama of the Visitation are two babies in the womb—Jesus in Mary and John in Elizabeth, the Prince and the Prophet, the Word and the Voice. Luke says that the unborn Baptist “skipped” (eskirtêsen) in his mother’s womb when she heard the greeting of the Christ-carrying Virgin (Luke 1:41). Elizabeth is overwhelmed. Her baby’s inward dance—he jumps “for joy,” says Elizabeth, en agalliasei (v. 44)—fills her with the Holy Spirit. She recognizes her cousin’s unborn baby, the blessed fruit of her womb, as God, “my Lord” (v. 43),3 and declares Mary to be “blessed among women,” blessed in body and in soul, blessed because of the One she carries, blessed because she believed (v. 45).

Saward goes on to point out the Old Testament connections to the Ark, King David’s moving of the Ark, and David’s jumping for joy. Every word used in the Visitation narrative has allusions to the Old Testament, which provides the significance of the Blessed Virgin.

But I’m not sure I quite agree with Saward that the “chief actors in the drama of the Visitation are two babies in the womb.” On the one hand, I could see that Jesus is always the central character, but Mary is also quite central to this scene. Can one minimize the Blessed Virgin here as a supporting character? I wouldn’t.

Saward quotes Origen who make this remarkable connection of the Visitation as foreshadowing Pentecost.

The God-man sanctified his forerunner while they were both being carried by their mothers. At the Visitation, the promise made to Zechariah comes true: “[John] will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb” (Luke 1:15). The grace of the Holy Spirit flows from Jesus through Mary to John and from John to Elizabeth. Origen (c. 185–c. 254) describes this cascade of the Spirit, this proto-Pentecost,

I would never had made that connection but it is apropos. Saward then quotes Gerard Manly Hopkins how Christ’s graces flow through Mary.

Even before his birth, the Child Jesus is at his saving, sanctifying work. While still in the womb, the Savior consecrates the forerunner for his mission. What is more, grace comes to John from Jesus through Mary, who, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ words, “this one work has to do—Let all God’s glory through.”10 Already, at Ain-Karim, Our Lady is at her handmaidenly, motherly work of mediating the grace of her Son.

Make sure you point that out to your Protestant friends!

But Saward doesn’t go far enough. In listening to a bunch of homilies on the internet (I do this every Sunday) for today’s Gospel reading, a certain Fr. Anthony Craig (no one famous that you would know) pointed out that Christ’s first action incarnate in the world while still in the womb is an act propelling the bearer to service and charity. I don’t know if Fr. Anthony came up with that himself (probably not) but I had never heard it before. I found that really worth contemplating. You can read my blog post on understanding today’s Gospel reading of the Visitation here: https://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot....

The Visitation is one of my favorite scenes in the New Testament. There is so much one can meditate upon.

Manny wrote: "The Visitation is one of my favorite scenes in the New Testament. There is so much one can meditate upon."

Very much so. Our priest had a beautiful homily today with the theme of letting Christ in, letting Him dwell within us just like Mary.