Neo-Patristic Expositions on Mark

On Mark 4:35-41

As Our Lord’s fame as a teacher, as one who taught “as one having authority, and not as the scribes and Pharisees” (Matt 7:29), as a healer, and as a wonderworker increased, he was ever more thronged with importunate crowds, among which were many of less than the noblest intentions. One of these was a scribe, who professed that he would follow Our Lord wherever He should go, to whom Our Lord replied, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matt 8:20). That is to say, you who desire to follow me for riches and glory in a temporal Kingdom of Israel can expect nothing of the sort from Me, whose kingdom is spiritual, and who counts holy poverty His only riches in this world. This saying can also be understood as having the double meaning that cunning (represented by foxes), and pride (represented by the birds) had a place in the scribe’s heart, leaving no place for the indwelling presence of God. To such persons, who by willful obstinacy blinded themselves to the truth, Our Lord spoke in parables “that seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand” (Mark 4:12). Jesus taught anyone amongst the crowd who had ears to hear (Mark 4:23), that is, a mind receptive to His teaching, and a will to put it into practice, according to their capacity to understand (Mark 4:33). Our gentle Lord was always the consummate teacher, condescending to the weakness and littleness of His listeners that He might raise them up by degrees from spiritual milk to the meat of the highest mysteries of the Christian faith. However, He nevertheless grew weary of the crowds, dismissed them that night, and retired to one of his three places of refuge, namely the barque of St. Peter (the other two being the mountain and the desert).

But Our Lord used even this as an opportunity for teaching. In the events which follow, He teaches His disciples (and by means of Scripture, us as well) at once to be undismayed in danger, patient in trials, and persistent in prayer; He leads them ever closer to the full realization of His Divinity and equality with the Father. Moreover, He exhibits tremendous prudence in taking His disciples out to sea alone, that others might not see and be scandalized at their weakness of faith. Under His all encompassing providence He makes “all things work together unto good, to such as according to his purpose are called to be saints” (Rom 8:28).

Now the barque of St. Peter, symbolically, of course, corresponds to the Catholic Church. The sea is the world, and the great tempest represents trials, temptations, afflictions, persecutions, etc. as applied by the devil, the flesh, and the world either to individual Catholics or the Church as a corporate entity. St. Matthew refers to the storm with the Greek seismos, which usually denotes earthquakes, that we may understand its furious intensity. That the ship was “filled” with water (Mark 4:37), and thus appearing for all the world as if it would imminently sink and take its passengers down to destruction, demonstrates that in the spiritual life of the individual on the way of Christian perfection there will come a point when the soul feels as if the devil is winning; her lower faculties are so seized by evil that she fears she may even have given her will, and thus incurred the guilt of mortal sin and ceased to be a child of God. St. Francis de Sales and St. Edith Stein both speak of such a state:

The devil being permitted by God vehemently to assault [St. Catherine of Sienna's] purity so long as he touched her not, filled her heart with all manner of unholy suggestions, and, together with his associates, exposed her to all manner of assaults, which, although they were external, so penetrated her heart, that, according to her own confession, all save her most refined and superior will was agitated by the storm. This lasted some time, until at last, beholding her Saviour, she exclaimed, 'O my Saviour! where wert thou when my heart was so filled with darkness and base thoughts?' To which He replied, 'My daughter, I was within thy heart.' 'How couldst Thou be there,' she asked, 'when it was so foully tenanted? Dost thou come into that which is impure?' But He inquired, 'Tell me, did these unholy thoughts fill thy heart with pleasure or sadness, with delight or with bitterness?' 'With exceeding sadness and bitterness,' she made answer. (St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, pp. 253-254)

Before the Night of the Spirit begins, aridity and emptiness are aggravated by distressing trials and agonizing temptations: the imagination is seized by the spirit of impurity and blasphemy; a spirit of vertigo attacks the soul, casting it into a welter of scruples and perplexity. (St. Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross, pp. 37-38)

As applied to the Church at large, that the barque of St. Peter was filled with water demonstrates that at times in Christian history it may appear that the gates of hell are about to prevail and that the Church soon will be destroyed. In ages past, Catholics would have looked with fear upon conquering hordes of pagans or Mohammedans, and with disgust upon the flagrant personal immorality of many Catholic prelates, as posing the greatest threat to continued survival of the Church. At times in the recent past, on the other hand, it may have appeared that theological liberals would gain the leadership of the Church and compromise essential doctrines of faith and morals.

And yet Jesus sleeps. Why does He not intervene? Why does He not banish the devil from the soul of His beloved, and restore to her the sweetness of spiritual consolation? Why does He not end the persecutions, and rescue and vindicate His bride, and cast down the Caesar who with such audacity sets himself up as a god? Why does He not with signs and wonders bring back apostate nations to contrition, penance, and faith, and why does He permit unworthy men to sit on episcopal thrones?

“Our present tribulation, which is momentary and light, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor 4:17). No evil could exist if God did not will to permit it for the sake of a greater good. In His good time Our Lord will do all of these things, but at present He wills to permit such evils, that His Church and His elect and chosen people might be refined in the fire of suffering (Wis 3:1-9), that their faith might be proved, and that they might grow in virtue and grace and merit (for there is nothing so meritorious as to willingly bear suffering for the sake of and in union with Our Lord). We ought rather to thank Our Master for tarrying so long in returning to us, for the longer He is away, the more time we have to multiply the talents with which He has entrusted us (Matt 15:14-28), and the sweeter will be our reunion. The longer and deeper we suffer, and with the greater charity and loving trust in divine providence, the greater will be our reward in eternity. And we will rue every time we backed down from facing those persecutions which God willed that we suffer, and every time we doubted, mistrusted, or questioned His loving presence and protection. St. Teresa of Avila once appeared to a nun and told her she would gladly live her entire life over again just so she could say one more Hail Mary, and grow that little bit more in grace, that she could have greater joy in heaven. How much more should we regret any and all cravenness in the cosmic battle for souls? Gladly should we face any danger or pain. The suffering is finite; the reward is infinite, for though our capacity to understand and love the Blessed Trinity in eternity will be finite, our understanding and loving will perdure through an infinite duration, and thus the slightest increase in this capacity, and the slightest corresponding increase in the intensity of our joy, will be for us infinitely enjoyable. Now any sane person will see that this exchange is profitable in which we bear some finite affliction to procure for ourselves an infinite good.

Hence, we must be patient. Jesus will permit us and His Church to suffer so long as it is His will, and no longer. He will never suffer us to be tempted greater or longer than we can endure, nor His Church to be destroyed. Moreover we must believe by faith that He is with us always, and able to deliver us in an instant, even when His presence cannot be perceived, that is, even when He appears to be asleep. He rebuked His disciples for their weak faith in thinking that He was less able to save them when He was asleep than when He was awake and conversing with them sensibly, and for their implication (“Master, doth it not concern thee that we perish?” (Mark 4:38)) that He was negligent and ambivalent towards their well-being. The Lord is never such. He is no less a loving and devoted Father in time of desolation than in time of consolation, and He has not (and will not) ever abandon His Church and His sheep, no matter how much it appears from a human perspective that He has. The disciples had no more reason to fear for their lives when Jesus was sleeping than when He was awake and miraculously exercising His dominion. What insanity to think the Lord has less knowledge of our danger, or less power or desire to relieve us at one time than another!

In the meantime, the best we can do is to persevere in prayer. We will say “Lord, save us, or we perish,” (Matt 8:25) understanding always that if it is not yet His will that we should be relieved, we do not wish yet to be relieved, and also that our salvation concerns Him very much. If for a time it appear that He does not hear us, we must persist with the persistence enjoined upon us by the Gospel, which Our Lord likens to knocking repeatedly on a neighbor’s door at midnight (Luke 11:5-8). Eventually, infallibly, He will save those who obey Him in love, and who call upon His name. He will show forth His power; just as He rebuked the wind and the waves and they immediately ceased, so when He rebukes the wicked both of angels and men, they will be conquered. Willingly or unwillingly, “in the name of Jesus every knee will bow of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth; and every tongue will confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:10-11).

The disciples wonder, “who is this (thinkest thou) that both wind and see obey him?” (Mark 4:40) The Psalm answers this question for them, which says, “Thou art mighty, O Lord, and thy truth is round about thee. Thou rulest the power of the sea: and appeasest the motion of the waves thereof” (Psalm 88[89]:9-10). Jesus is God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, to whom be all glory and honor through all ages of ages. Amen.

On Mark 5:21-43

Dearest brethren, when the Centurion told Our Lord that He need only say the word, and his servant would be healed, Jesus replied that He had not found such faith in all Israel (Matt 8:10). However, today we shall see Israel approach it:

And when Jesus had passed again in the ship over the strait, a great multitude assembled together unto him, and he was nigh unto the sea. And there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue named Jairus: and seeing him, falleth down at his feet. And he besought him much, saying: My daughter is at the point of death, come, lay thy hand upon her, that she may be safe, and may live (Mark 5:21-23).

Now, St. Matthew says that Jairus informed Jesus, “my daughter is even now dead,” but we have just read that his words were, “my daughter is at the point of death,” that is, almost dead, but not quite. St. Augustine’s solution to this difficulty was that Mark related his exact words, whereas Matthew attended rather to his thoughts, as Jairus could reasonably infer from the time which had elapsed since he left, that his daughter had since then died. However, this solution does not seem to be the most preferable, as St. Matthew uses the same word legon (saying) as St. Mark, and does not add the qualifier en heauto (within himself, cf. Matt 9:21), which would let us know that these words were spoken in the silence of his heart. Context might supply the en heauto (cf. Mark 5:28), but in this case it does not, since Jairus is clearly addressing Jesus. Rather, anyone reading St. Matthew’s account independently of St. Mark would interpret his words quite plainly and conclude that Jairus spoke these words out loud. St. Augustine’s interpretation is highly strained, and we should not have to force a strained interpretation on any biblical text in order to reconcile it with another. We must respect the integrity of St. Mathew’s account, and interpret it at face value.

The best solution seems to rest on St. Mark’s statement, “And he besought him much.” Jairus was in great sorrow, for this was his only daughter (Luke 8:42), and she was only twelve years old (Mark 5:42), the very flower of youth. He must have been pleading with Our Lord frantically, with the torrent of words and tears which comes concomitantly with such as state. He must have said both the words which Matthew ascribes to him and the words ascribed to him by Mark. For he indeed inferred that his daughter must have died since he left the house, and hence whereas he began by saying “my daughter is at the point of death,” after he made this inference he began to say, “yet more, by now my daughter is already dead.”

Yet he maintains his faith in the healing power of Our Lord. For he, being a prince of the synagogue, would have well known that God has given to His greatest prophets the power to raise the dead to life. Well would he have known the story of Elijah raising to life the son of the widow Zarephath (1[3] Kings 17:17-25). If only Catholics were as familiar with the resurrections performed by Sts. Benedict and Bernard of Clairvaux! But I digress. Here Jairus nearly matches the faith of the Centurion, for though he expects Jesus to come to his daughter’s bedside, and lay His hand upon her to heal her, whereas he should realize that God, or even a prophet acting by the power of God, could do so without His bodily presence, he nevertheless acknowledges that Our Lord is able to effect the work. He will maintain this faith in spite of the derision of his household, as we shall later see.

And [Jesus] went with him, and a great multitude followed him, and they thronged him. And a woman who was under an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things from many physicians; and had spent all that she had, and was nothing the better, but rather worse, when she had heard of Jesus, came in the crowd behind him, and touched his garment. For she said: If I shall touch but his garment, I shall be whole (Mark 5:24-28).

Scripture tells us nothing about this woman’s life, save this one meeting with Our Lord. However, tradition fills out the story for us a little bit more. Her name was Veronica. According to Eusebius, she “came from [Caesarea Philippi], and… her house is shown in the city, and… remarkable memorials of the kindness of the Saviour to her remain there. For there stands upon an elevated stone, by the gates of her house, a brazen image of a woman kneeling, with her hands stretched out, as if she were praying. Opposite this is another upright image of a man, made of the same material, clothed decently in a double cloak, and extending his hand toward the woman. At his feet, beside the statue itself, is a certain strange plant, which climbs up to the hem of the brazen cloak, and is a remedy for all kinds of diseases. They say that this statue is an image of Jesus. It has remained to our day, so that we ourselves also saw it when we were staying in the city” (Ecclesiastical History, VII, 18). In The Avenging of the Savior: The Death of Pilate, she is identified with St. Veronica, the woman who gave Our Lord a cloth to wipe His face while He was on the via dolorosa, and was rewarded with a miraculous image of His holy face.

In any case, she exhibits likewise a great faith in the power of Our Lord, for she knew He could heal any disease, even those impossible to the physicians: humility as well, for she dared not to approach Our Lord face to face, as she was ashamed and regarded herself as unclean because of her condition. Thus, like the Centurion, in addition to receiving compassion from Our Lord, she also showed compassion to Him, as she did not wish to implicate Him in any ritual uncleanness.

According to Leviticus 15:19, 25, one who touched such a woman would be unclean until evening, and she did not wish to ask Our Lord to do such a thing, but thought rather, I will only touch the hem of His garment. Though due to the Pharisaic/Talmudic penchant for adding to the biblical laws and making them even more onerous, the Pharisees would probably call Jesus unclean anyway. But Jesus has always disregarded such bitter zeal.

In any case, we see also in this woman great piety, for she knows that God is so holy that anything even remotely associated with Him is likewise holy and venerable. God is holy, therefore His prophet is holy (for thus the Jews yet regarded Jesus), therefore the prophet’s garments are holy. Similarly, the Sacrament is holy, therefore the corporal on which it lies is also holy, as also the altar upon which lies the corporal, and indeed the whole church which contains the altar. And if the saints are holy, then their whole bodies are holy, and everything they touched is holy, and even those things touched to their relics are holy as well. Such is the intensity of the majesty of God. And so Catholics venerate the things of God even to the fourth and fifth degree of separation from Him, as also the Jews venerated Jerusalem, because it contained Mount Zion, and Mount Zion, because it contained the Temple, and the Temple, because it contained the Holy of Holies, where God dwelt above the Cherubim in a cloud of glory. In such wise must we delight in being effusive in our reverence for the majesty of God.

And forthwith the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of the evil. And immediately Jesus knowing in himself the virtue that had proceeded from him, turning to the multitude, said: Who hath touched my garments? And his disciples said to him: Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou who hath touched me? And he looked about to see her who had done this. But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he said to her: Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole: go in peace, and be thou whole of thy disease (Mark 5:29-34).

Jesus does heal her, but He is not content to let her be made whole and go home in secret. The Lord delights to give to us beyond what we ask of Him. Indeed, He would give her also the security and joy of spiritual salvation, and exalt her as an example of faith and humility for all of Christian posterity. Moreover, He wishes her to have a clean conscience, not troubled by the thought that she had stolen the gift of her healing. So, He asks for the person who touched Him to reveal herself, and though she is afraid that she has displeased Him, she conceals nothing and tells Him the whole truth. Because of this He dispels all her fear: take courage, daughter. For by faith she had become His daughter. She now knows that there is no need to conceal herself, but rather she can approach Our Lord with the familiarity of, indeed, family. Moreover she now knows never to attribute anything to a superstitious or magical efficacy supposedly inherent in relics, but that it is her faith, and the compassion of the One in whose relics she has placed her faith, which has cured her. Thus Our Lord left her with abiding spiritual peace. The physician now turns to his next patients.

While he was yet speaking, some come from the ruler of the synagogue's house, saying: Thy daughter is dead: why dost thou trouble the master any further? But Jesus having heard the word that was spoken, saith to the ruler of the synagogue: Fear not, only believe (Mark 5:35-36).

What foolishness do the men of Jairus’ house here display! Ever putting a limit on the power of God! As if He could heal the nearly dead, but not restore the dead to life; as if He could tip the tide of battle in the favor of the Jews, but not win for them a battle against (from a human perspective) forces far and away superior (Num 13:31)! Dearest brethren, how stultified, how much like the Greeks with their finite gods, do these Jews appear, who admit the possibility of an ordinary miracle (in so far as any miracle can be considered ordinary) such as healing, but think it idle and useless to hope for a really extraordinary one?

But Our Lord inoculates Jairus against such foolish beliefs. “Fear not: only believe” (Mark 5:36). Have the faith of Caleb (Num 13:30), who shouted out against the perfidy of his fellow Jews the plainly manifest truth that if God says He will deliver their enemies into their hands, it is entirely irrelevant how strong, how numerous, or how well armed they may be. For that matter they may as well have guns and tanks and planes! For even an army of guns and tanks and planes can only exist in so far as the Lord sustains it in existence by a continual act. God is all powerful; He is the pantokrator, and He is no less able to perform a great miracle than a little one. And even though the men of Jairus’ house did not yet know that Jesus was God Himself, still they are without excuse, for as noted above He can produce great miracles through His prophets just as well as He can do so immediately.

And he admitted not any man to follow him, but Peter, and James, and John the brother of James. And they come to the house of the ruler of the synagogue; and he seeth a tumult, and people weeping and wailing much. And going in, he saith to them: Why make you this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. But he having put them all out, taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying (Mark 5:37-40).

It was the custom among the Jews of that day for a family to hire mourners to wail over the body of a deceased. That is why St. Matthew describes them as “minstrels.” To have a great number of these was considered a sign of wealth and prestige. But this was a vain practice, and we have some hint of this when we observe the character of the mourners. They should have known that if Jairus had gone to beseech the aid of a Man who could heal all ills, then they had little cause to mourn. Moreover, when they saw that very Man coming in person to her bedside, this should have dispelled all doubt: the girl would soon be well. Though her spirit had left her body (cf. Luke 8:55), she was not dead so as to remain such, but was awaiting an imminent resurrection. But the mourners do not know the Scriptures or the power of God, so they laugh Our Lord to scorn. Therefore He puts them outside. St. Gregory applies this analogically to our spiritual resurrection, for if we are to be born again, all vain and worldly concerns must be banished from our souls.

And taking the damsel by the hand, he saith to her: Talitha cumi, which is, being interpreted: Damsel (I say to thee) arise. And immediately the damsel rose up, and walked: and she was twelve years old: and they were astonished with a great astonishment. And he charged them strictly that no man should know it: and commanded that something should be given her to eat (Mark 5:41-43).

The Gospels only record three instances where Our Lord raised the corporally dead to life. This one had just died; the son of the widow of Nain was about to be buried (Luke 7:11-17); Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days (John 11:38-44). This again has a spiritual application: it shows us that God is able to resurrect us spiritually from even the deepest depths of human depravity. Despair is always madness in absolutely every case. God’s mercy is infinite and He can just as well restore a supernatural sanctity and beauty to the soul of one fallen into the most despicable sins as one fallen into something less serious (in so far as any mortal sin can be considered less serious). The doors of repentance are open both to the Christian who just gave into lust (that is, the recently deceased) and to the apostate who has lived a depraved and dissolute life for years (that is, the decomposed).

The vision of Ezekiel 47 beautifully expresses this truth. The Temple is the body of Our Lord, and the waters represent the Sacraments of the Church, which flowed forth from His right side when he was pierced with a lance by St. Longinus while he hung dead on the Cross on Calvary. Ezekiel adds moreover that trees (that is, Christian virtues) will grow in abundance where they are watered by this river (v. 7), and that this river will be filled with fishes (that is, Christians). For these waters heal and vivify all things that they touch. The fishermen (v. 10) are the apostles, who catch the fish “according to their kinds”; they make Christians from every race and nation under heaven. But what is most germane to the present discourse is that the waters flow east, into the Dead Sea (v. 8), and make it live. This expresses the truth of which we are treating on two levels. (1) No fish can live in the Dead Sea, but no matter how noxious it may be, these waters can cure it. (2) This was the location of Sodom and Gomorrah; even those who have fallen into that detestable crime of Sodom may be saved. God is able to restore even a festering corpse, yet more, even bare bones, yet more, mere dust, to the supernatural life of grace and communion with the thrice holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to whom be all glory and honor through all ages of ages. Amen.

On Mark 6:1-6

Dearest brethren, today we see how deeply ingrained in the minds of the Jews was their error concerning the person of the Messias. For they expected a great king, at that one who would appear suddenly, mysteriously, from some unknown origin (John 7:27), ready for battle to restore to them the former glory of their temporal kingdom. Indeed they were all too ready to obey a man promising such a secular freedom, and a worldly power, as we read in the sad history of the rebellion of Bar Kochba. Not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God, who hath scattered the proud in their conceit, who hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble (for He often drew His prophets from some lowly origin: David was the son of a husbandman, and Amos was a shepherd), they did not wish to follow a carpenter, the son of a carpenter (cf. Matt 13:55), such as Jesus of Nazareth. They expected neither to see nor to hear great things from such an “ordinary” man. Thus the Nazarenes wonder:

How came this man by all these things? and what wisdom is this that is given to him, and such mighty works as are wrought by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joseph, and Jude, and Simon? are not also his sisters here with us? (Mark 6:2-3)

Had they not been ignorant, they would have known that God might thus enlighten a prophet, even if he be “unlettered and uninstructed” (Acts 4:13), with the pure light of true theology, and give the same great power in miracles, even if he be weak in body, and not possessed of an army. Yet more, even had they remained ignorant, had they merely been possessed of a good will they would have realized that Our Lord was from God, and soon enough He would have enlightened them further. Not only is He from God: He is God, true God of true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father. Not only does He have wisdom: He is wisdom itself, the wisdom of the Father, proceeding from His infinite and exhaustive knowledge of Himself. Not only does He do mighty works: He holds the universe and our very souls in existence. How came Jesus of Nazareth by these things? “All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine” (John 16:15).

But what insanity in the Nazarenes! Rather than fall to their knees and thank God for such an immense privilege, that they should have known the God-man from His youth, and have lived among His very brothers and sisters (now these were not siblings, but merely close relatives, according to the manner of speaking of the Jews, cf. Gen 14:12-14; 1 Chr 23:21-22), and even His most pure and Immaculate Mother, they instead are scandalized! They have so convinced themselves of their own peculiar notions and fancies concerning God, that when they actually meet Him face to face they find Him offensive! Dearest brethren, how essential it is that we take every care to form our conception of God according to revelation, mediated through the teaching Church, and not according to our own tastes. Otherwise we too, when we meet God face to face at our particular judgment, may find His character to be sharply different from how we had imagined it.

And Jesus said to them: A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and in his own house, and among his own kindred. (Mark 6:4)

Dearest brethren, how often do we see this principle illustrated in the lives of the saints. Many of you may have seen this Scripture fulfilled in your own lives as well. For truly those who speak the words of God in love receive their share of honor and admiration from the faithful. One thinks of St. Vincent Ferrer, or St. Bernard of Clairvaux, or St. Peter Damien, who were frequently burdened with throngs of the adoring public. And yet, from their own families the saints have so often faced fervent opposition. St. Philippine Duchesne’s father was a rationalist; St. Lucy’s father willed that she marry a Mohammedan; St. Edith Stein’s mother nearly disowned her for becoming a Christian. Whether such opposition proceeds from worldly-mindedness on the part of the family, or, as in the case of Sr. Lucia dos Santos of Fatima, from misunderstanding in an otherwise good-willed Catholic, it is one of the most distressing trials through which God can put His servants.

This, then, is the great fire of purgation. Yet more, these are the goads which impel us, slothful and sluggish creatures that we are, to die to self and to live for God alone. For who is so deeply hurt when a godless heathen expels some repulsive drivel in the general direction of a Catholic in front of an abortion mill? Whose heart is broken by the disdain of the partisans of sodomy? Who among the faithful sinks into dejection when a heretic calls him a servant of the devil, unless it be out of compassion for the heretic? Indeed, far from plunging our hearts into depths of pain and sorrow, do we not count the insults of the wicked as badges of honor? Do we not thank God for the privilege of seeing fulfilled in our very selves Our Lord’s prophecy “you shall be hated by all nations for my name's sake” (Matt 24:9)? Indeed Our Lord proclaims “Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake” (Matt 5:11). Again, we take such abundant consolation in those sweet words of our Divine Master: “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:18-19). If this were all the suffering we had to endure, truly our tribulation would be light and easy.

Ah, but when we face opposition from the very flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, from those with whom we are most closely joined by bonds of love and affection, then it is heart wrenching. Then there is real opposition between fulfilling the will of God and gratifying the desires of our weak nature. Then it is impossible to serve God because it makes us feel good, because it makes us feel terrible. For what is the use of serving God because it brings us admiration, when this admiration comes from strangers and we get the opposite from those from whom we most desire it? Rather should we compromise our Catholicism, and abandon our apostolate, in order to win favor with those whose opinion holds the most sway in our hearts, unless we were laboring for God alone. But because we are laboring for God alone, we press on in spite of the pain it brings.

Again, this trial purifies our love; it makes it impossible to harbor two loves: one for God and another for our parents, or children, or wife. For these two will be set against one another, and we will be forced to choose between our beloved and our Beloved. Should we choose the creature, we shall have ruin. But should we choose the Creator, all our loves will be subsumed into the one blazing fire of divine and holy charity, which contains all other loves, and we shall love our beloved in God, by God, for God, and because of God. We will thus love them far and away more than had we chosen to love them more than God. For we will then be working most effectively for their true and highest good: not the interchange of affection with ourselves in the present moment, but union with God in eternity. Yes, it is difficult, for we also desire earnestly that interchange of affection. But we may at lease take consolation in two things. First, our trial is not so great as that of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, whom the Lord permitted all of Christendom to turn against! And second, as Our Lord says “seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things [that is, all those natural goods which it is God’s will that we should possess] shall be added unto you” (Matt 6:33), we may soon have that interchange of affection which we so desire anyway.

And he could not do any miracles there, only that he cured a few that were sick, laying his hands upon them. (Mark 6:5)

O the gifts God desires to give us, the miracles He desires to work in the souls of men, but He cannot because of their evil and obstinate will! What visible miracles Our Lord would have worked among the Nazarenes, had they not rendered themselves unworthy by their unbelief, we know not. But what He would have done in their souls, we do. For the Lord fervently and earnestly desires to infuse grace into the souls of men, to wash them whiter than snow and elevate them to a supernatural beauty. Moreover He desires to set up His dwelling place in our hearts, and take consolation and delight in this most intimate union. He desires to so sanctify our souls that in His exhaustive knowledge of us He finds every tiny thing He sees in our souls enrapturing. As the spouse says in the Canticle of Canticles, “thou hast wounded my heart with one of thy eyes, and with one hair of thy neck” (Cant 4:9). Let our Lord then not marvel at our unbelief, but let Him find in us a receptive will, which desires to receive with some share of the earnestness with which He desires to give, that He might work the greatest of miracles, the sanctification of souls, and we in holiness and gratitude might return pleasing worship to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to whom be all glory and honor through all ages of ages. Amen.

Ben Douglass
July 10, Anno Domini MMVI

Bibliography
St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1994)
St. Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross, trans. Hilda Graef (Chicago, IL: Regnery, 1960)
Fr. Matthias Scheeben, The Glories of Divine Grace, trans. Patrick Shaughnessy, O.S.B. (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 2000)
St. Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea, Vol. II (London: J.G.F. and J. Rivington, 1842)
Bishop Frederick Justus Knecht, A Practical Commentary on Holy Scripture (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 2003)
Fr. George Haydock, The Douay-Rheims Old Testament (Monrovia, CA: Catholic Treasures, 1991)
Fr. George Haydock, The Douay-Rheims New Testament (Monrovia, CA: Catholic Treasures, 1991)
Robert Sungenis, The Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Vol. I (Goleta, CA: Queenship Publishing, 2003)
St. John Chrysostom, Homilies 28, 31, and 48 on the Gospel of Matthew
Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, Book VII