Lent is More Than Fasting

I read from the hagiography of the day from the Prologue of Ohrid by St. Nikolai Velimirovich every single day. The stories of the saints are beautiful. If this is all you ever know in life, count yourself blessed. One of the saints for February 28 is the Blessed Nicholas of Pskov. Blessed Nicholas was one of Russia's "fools for Christ". They had gone on to despising all things in order to become worthy partakers of Christ. They were typically scorned at by upper members of the society. They devoted themselves to unending prayer and fasting, giving up wealth, home, education, fame, all these things the typical man aspires to.

The great and terrible ruler Ivan IV whom historians have permanently scorned as "Ivan the Terrible" was coming through the town of Pskov one day. The town offered him bread and salt. Ivan IV refused. This "fool for Christ", Nicholas, had scorned Ivan as having a hunger for human flesh and blood. Instead of offering the terrible ruler bread and salt, Nicholas offered him meat. Ivan IV rebuked the Blessed Nicholas stating that "I am a Christian! I fast during Lent!" for this visitation to Pskov took place during the first week of Lent. Blessed Nicholas had known this. He offered the meat for this reason. He now rebuked Ivan IV for his hypocrisy. For while he abstains from meat, his hunger is for human flesh and blood. The planned massacre for the city of Pskov did not go into effect for these words certainly had stricken at the heart of Ivan the Terrible.

Lent is more than just fasting and refraining from meat. Fasting is a means to an end. Fasting is a just and righteous means to an holy end but if we are fasting for the wrong end, an unholy end to satiate our appetites with something other than God or the sake of holiness, then we are just as ruined as Ivan the Terrible. Let us heed the warning of Blessed Nicholas of Pskov as we continue to struggle through Lent. As our Kontakion goes for this second Sunday of Lent,

The time for action is now revealed; the Judge is at the door.
Let us rise then and keep the fast, offering tears of contrition

with alms and crying aloud:

Our sins are more numerous than the sands of the sea,

but forgive us, O Maker of all, that we may receive incorruptible crowns.

St. Gregory Palamas and the Essence/Energies Distinction

Many see the Essence/Energies distinction in the East as something irreconcilable with the Western Christian concept of Divine Simplicity but nothing could be further from the truth! St. Gregory Palamas's theology is the core of the Byzantine theology. Without Palamas, our theological doctrines fall apart. Palamas is to Byzantium what Aquinas is to Rome. Remove them from the place and the entire city falls. Within St. Gregory Palamas's response to the heretic Barlaam, we see that Palamas is deeply influenced by the Church fathers of the East, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. Denys the Aeropogite. This influence is particularly striking in that St. Denys is well-renowned for his deeply Platonic theology, his focus on Divine simplicity, and his own influence on the West. Whereas St. Gregory Palamas isn't big on pagan philosophy (which is an understatement!).

Richard Swinburne states the following on the essence/energies distinction: "Aquinas also claims that we know some things about God's 'nature', which he understands in the same sense as God's 'essence' (essentia)" (The Coherence of Theism, 2nd. ed., 279). Such things include God's simplicity, his omnipotence, his eternity, his goodness, etc. For St. Gregory Palamas, these things are a part of the energies of God. Palamas rebukes the heretic Barlaam on this subject. "Our opponent...thinks that everything which has a beginning is created; this is why he has stated that only one reality is unoriginate, the essence of God, adding that 'what is not this essence, derives from uncreated nature' (Triads, III.ii.8).

Following St. Cyril and the Eastern Fathers, St. Gregory Palamas differentiates between the Divine Nature of God and his attributes such as his omnipresence (III.ii.9). "[T]he divine essence that transcends all names, also surpasses energy, to the extent that the subject of an action surpasses its object; and He Who is beyond every name transcends what is named according to the same measure" (III.ii.10). Like the sun, the rays can be experienced, but the essence is beyond our grasp. The essence of God cannot be known in the Palamite theology whereas the energies we come into contact with and touch. We will become partakers in his glory through theosis but we will never become one with the essence (III.ii.13, III.ii.17). It is this distinction that enables St. Gregory Palamas to defend the supernatural simplicity of God (III.ii.7). I have heard a subdeacon at church claim that the Divine simplicity falls apart with the essence/energies distinction as the energies and essence are now "parts" of God but nothing could be further from the truth in the orthodox Palamite distinction! The Divine simplicity of God is in His Triune essence, not in the energies!

Without the necessary distinction, men would be absorbed into the nature of God and become God by nature in deification, whereas it is in his will and in his glory that we are deified (III.iii.8). Another thing Palamas brings up is that it is those who make a poor usage of the light of God who are bereft of the light and then given over to depravity (III.ii.17). St. Gregory Palamas has important comments to say about the dignity of man which we'll return to later as that would go off-topic but one sees in these two sections of the Triads how deeply indebted to the philosophy and theology of St. Denys the Aeropagite that Palamas is. St. Denys is also one of the core influences for the Angelic Doctor and is widely regarded as the chief proponent of "Christian Platonism". This is not to say his theology is Platonic as it is not, but also shows there is much more that St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Gregory Palamas have in common other than being the core theologians of both East and West.

Going back to Swinburne, he rightly points out that "Orthodox theologians usually claim that there is a conflict here, and that Basil and Gregory Palamas are right in claiming that humans cannot have any knowledge of God's 'essence', and that Aquinas is wrong in claiming that they can have some such knowledge" (The Coherence of Theism, 280). But if what is meant in the Latin essentia that St. Thomas Aquinas applies is actually referring to the question of the properties and attributes of God rather than the actual ousia that St. Basil and St. Gregory Palamas refer to, then they could quite agree. Here, I think that the influence of St. Denys on both the doctors is important to take into account and that we might be able to unify their theologies under our Holy and Catholic Orthodoxy rather than split them apart. Richard Swinburne would certainly not be the only one that has shown this to be a matter of misunderstandings. As the Union of Brest states regarding the Filioque clause,

"Since there is a quarrel between the Romans and Greeks about the procession of the Holy Spirit, which greatly impede unity really for no other reason than that we do not wish to understand one another - we ask that we should not be compelled to any other creed but that we should remain with that which was handed down to us in the Holy Scriptures, in the Gospel, and in the writings of the holy Greek Doctors, that is, that the Holy Spirit proceeds, not from two sources and not by a double procession, but from one origin, from the Father through the Son."

Most differences and controversies seem to arise from mere translational issues. When I covered the doctrine of original sin, I discovered that there is a heavy misunderstanding between the Latin doctrine and the Greek doctrine. Almost as if there were some hostile Greeks that actually wanted to slander Latins and paint them as Calvinists which is completely irresponsible and reckless theology! As one of my professors once stated, a lot of theologians like to really go "hoo-hoo" over the differences even if they are virtually non-existent. For Byzantine Catholics, let this second Sunday of our Lenten journey remind us of the theological co-existence between East and West as the Church continues to breathe with both its lungs still in tact!

Attack Heaven With Your Prayers

I had seen a mutual follower of mine on Twitter recommending a book called Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence. She said the book will change your life. I'm not going to use hyperbole so I won't go that far but what I will say is that it really gave me perspective on the divine providence and conformity to divine providence. But more specifically, the acceptance and surrender to divine providence. Often times, I have wondered if I entered into the Church properly. I didn't go through the catechumenate. In fact, to put it in blunt terms, I scratched, gnawed, clawed, and howled, to be let in through the doors of the Church. Both figuratively and literally. I remember the depressive state I entered into prior to my baptism and wondering if any one had heard my cries. That I desired the Church, that I was ready to surrender to God, that I wanted to, but I wasn't.

One thing they told me about in an adult catechesis class once was that Christianity wasn't an idea or a philosophy but an encounter, a relationship, with God. I thought, okay, but why does it seem as if I'm only being presented mere information? All I seemed to be getting was information. I had heard that information does not save, but the transformation saves. I had never experienced any sacrament. I grew up non-denominational. We were all about information. We said we were about relationship too. But there seemed to be more information than relationship. This was like that with the catechesis classes I went to. Of course, those classes weren't actually intended to be for catechumens. They were specifically meant for those who were already converted to the faith. I had plenty of time to inquire and wrestle. The question was when I could actually be let into the Church.

But I had always wondered if even attempting to circumvent the catechumenate was a sin. But as I read Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence, something became much more clear to me. St. Claude de la Colombiere speaks of our wrestling with God as similar to the Syro-Phoenecian woman's begging and pleading with Jesus to heal her daughter.

"Remember how He acted towards the Canaanite woman, treating her harshly and refusing to see or listen to her. He seemed to be irritated by her importunity, but in reality He admired it and was delighted by her trust and humility, and for that reason He repulsed her.... The more He seems to be unwilling, the more you must insist. Do as the woman of Canaan, use against Him the very arguments He may have for refusing you.... Do not lose courage when you have begun so well to struggle with God. Do not give a moment's rest. He loves the violence of your attack and wants to be overcome by you." (ch. IV, 3)

Eastern Christians speak similarly on prayer. St. Ignatius Brianchaninov writes,

"For those who have not yet obtained true prayer of the heart, violence in bodily prayer helps—I mean stretching out the hands, beating the breast, sincere raising of the eyes to Heaven, deep sighing and groaning, frequent prostrations." (The Arena, ch. 44)

We see the recurring theme that when begging for the full abandonment to the Will of God, it is necessary to exert oneself, to beg, to persistently plead, and to use the arguments against them. If it is truly an experience, then one should stop feeding the information in a neo-Gnostic sense and allow the experience to be observed and lived. That was what I never got from having to constantly put up with the weeks, months, year and a half, of non-stop information. When I first encountered God, it was being handed a prayer book by a treasurer at an Anglican Mission. I knew then that I wanted to be brought to God there. I wanted God to show me a sign that someone cared for my soul. Then the rector asked me one week why I wasn't receiving the Eucharist. I explained that I wasn't baptized. The rector practiced what he preached and still practices what he preaches. He fulfilled the command to go forth and baptize making disciples. He baptized me as soon as he got back from his vacation.

I was going back and forth between a Ukrainian Catholic parish and a Melkite Catholic parish for some time hoping to be received into the Ukrainian Catholic parish. The appointed catechist at the Ukrainian Catholic parish didn't know what to teach me, didn't know what I needed to be taught, and didn't always have the time to teach me. Fortunately, the Crazy Church Lady came in at the right moment. I was spiritually dehydrated, I felt like I was wallowing in my sins, exerting more intellect instead of having the experience. Not observing the love of God. But that's what the Crazy Church Lady showed me. The Archimandrite asked me the week before my chrismation if I had any questions. My question was, "When can I start practicing what I believe?"

So I didn't go through the catechumenate. Either in my entrance into Anglicanism or in my entrance into Catholicism. As strange as it may be to some. No. What I did was I merely attacked Heaven persistently with a constant plea to have the Will of God done unto me according to His wish. There is an element of neo-Gnosticism that emerges when humans get in the way of the Will of God. The Will of God is that all men be brought into His Church but if it is incessantly taught to people that the Faith is not a mere intellectual assent but a relationship and an encounter lived out with the Living God, then people who realize what they are missing out on will see they are spiritually starving. They are dehydrated. I kept wallowing around in my sins wondering if I'd be able to make a confession but that was impossible as long as I was not inside the Church. And I kept being fed information while those who were "initiated" were there telling me that it was an experience, and I needed the perfect understanding of the liturgical practice. But don't get them wrong, hey, an infant can be received without perfect knowledge, it's just the adults that cannot.

Let me just say, without faithful men and one faithful woman like the treasurer at that Anglican Mission, the rector, the Archimandrite, the deacon who made the point that sometimes humans can become obstacles in preventing God's will from being done, and my godparents, I probably would have rejected God by now. I felt like my constant begging to be finally let into the Church for sometime was an act of pride on my part because of the persistent legalists who prefer to hold to the formalities even when it may not apply. I realized, especially after reading that point made by St. Claude de la Colombiere, that it was actually humility all along. I am greatly aggrieved with the neo-Catholic mentality so persistent in today's Catholicism that is more faithful to a bureaucratic institution than a living organism, but I know what I submitted to was the opposite of that mentality. I do not need to submit to that. I submit to the living organism that is the growing body of Christ. And sinful humans do harm to the body at times but the body remains His perfect, infallible body, not theirs. And the exemplary Christian witness is what is to be looked to. The witness of the saints, not the Pharisaical tribunals. So attack Heaven with your prayers until the Will of God transforms you.

Democracy and the Human Individual

The relationship between democracy and the human individual is a rocky one at best. But there are senses of the term "democracy" that reflect on how democracy values the human individual apart from the current senses of the term "democracy" which grotesquely tear down the human individual. Democracy, in its ideological conception, has not intended to regress into social conformity, collectivism, and totalitarianism as it has nowadays, but the bedrock of these social tyrannies still persists in and is inherent in democracy. That said, there is something about the philosophy in its purest faith intentions that have actually been beneficial for humanity. But this is all said with severe caveats. Democracy is a severely problematic philosophical and governmental system and any truth or valuation it gives to man needs to be looked at from the fact that all errors must derive their ultimate source of existence from the God who is the source of all being. That said, there is a sense that has been regarding democracy that can be defended.

Fulton J. Sheen comments on Marx's understanding of democracy stating that "Marx knew the basis of democracy far better than many who live under its blessings." For Marx, "democracy is founded on the principle of the 'sovereign worth of the person'. 'This, in its turn,' he continued, 'is based upon a postulate, a dream and an illusion to Christianity, namely, that every man has an immortal soul." (Life is Worth Living, 56) Obviously, the conglomerated majority rule that is understood by today's word "democracy" is severely problematic, but the concept of democracy rooted in "people rule" that stretches to the valuation of the human individual is certainly in line with the Catholic social doctrine. The valuation of the human person as a soul is what is to be stressed when Abp. Sheen speaks of democracy. He is not speaking about "majority rule" but rather that principle of the sovereign worth of the person. The dignity that the person earns.

Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn agrees in so much as there exists a classic concept of democracy as "rule by the people" and a later developed sense of democracy as "rule by the majority" whether direct or indirect. (Liberty or Equality, 6-7) The classic concept is the one that Abp. Sheen leans toward in that, strictly speaking, rule by the people does emphasize the sovereign individual and values the human being. The latter concept would be the warped format that the communists give to democracy in that it is "majoritarian rule". And this concept has become largely equated with democracy in all of its forms even as people presume themselves to mean the former. The Devil is in the details so to speak.

It's not that democracy necessarily intends to derail the human individual, though in Plato's concept, it can very easily turn into the majority merely imposing its will on the minority, it's that democracy has no clear meaning apart from the rule by the majority. If, for instance, another form of government, a monarchial form of government or aristocratic form of government, came in and valued individual liberties and the human person in his right worship of God, then that could be called a democracy under the first concept of the term. That is rarely what it means though. Democracy is generally caked with ideological concepts of majority rule, equality, and the people's rebellion against God. In his address to the Sillonists, Pope St. Pius X stated the following:

Our Predecessor of happy memory re-affirmed them in masterly documents, and all Catholics dealing with social questions have the duty to study them and to keep them in mind. He taught, among other things, that “Christian Democracy must preserve the diversity of classes which is assuredly the attribute of a soundly constituted State, and it must seek to give human society the form and character which God, its Author, has imparted to it.” Our Predecessor denounced “A certain Democracy which goes so far in wickedness as to place sovereignty in the people and aims at the suppression of classes and their leveling down.” ... The distinctive and positive aspect of Democracy is to be found in the largest possible participation of everyone in the government of public affairs. And this, in turn, comprises a three-fold aspect, namely political, economical, and moral. ... These three elements, namely political, economic, and moral, are inter-dependent and, as We have said, the moral element is dominant. Indeed, no political Democracy can survive if it is not anchored to an economic Democracy. But neither one nor the other is possible if it is not rooted in awareness by the human conscience of being invested with moral responsibilities and energies mutually commensurate. But granted the existence of that awareness, so created by conscious responsibilities and moral forces, the kind of Democracy arising from it will naturally reflect in deeds the consciousness and moral forces from which it flows. In the same manner, political Democracy will also issue from the trade-guild system. Thus, both political and economic Democracies, the latter bearing the former, will be fastened in the very consciousness of the people to unshakable bases. (Our Apostolic Mandate)

To insist that democracy alone can solve issues concerning justice is to break away from the Catholic social doctrine. It is to establish a faulty, Utopian, world of existence in which the human individual has superceded that of God. While there is much to praise in the understanding of democracy in its essential nature of valuing the human individual, the over-emphasis on the human person can become a mode of idolatry which is why democracy must be assisted by other forms of governance in order to maintain stability. Otherwise, democracy quickly collapses into totalitarian and anti-Christian rule.

The Death Penalty

Much talk on the death penalty today, especially from Catholics, comes from a severely distorted concept of not only historical theology but also ethical and moral theology. Catholics are obligated to maintain that the death penalty is morally permissible as that has been the overwhelming traditional perspective throughout the years. Catholics are obligated to affirm the infallibility of the Church on issues pertaining to the faith and morals. It is from the Church alone in which the infallibility of the Pope is fortified. When the Pope sidesteps the Church, he elevates himself above the body of Christ and begins to speak blasphemies. If the Church found it proper and morally permissible for the State to carry out the death penalty for a variety of different reasons, then we cannot argue ever that the death penalty is morally inadmissible. Doing such would be to excommunicate the Church from ourselves and by excommunicating the Church from ourselves, we excommunicate God, and then we damn ourselves to Hell. That Catholics are obligated to defend the moral permissibility of the death penalty is overwhelming based on the evidence of the consensus of tradition.

But the critics of the death penalty continue. The critics, especially among the Church, point out that if one objects to abortion, they should object to all killings in general. But this argument severely misunderstands that there is a distinction between abortion and the death penalty applied to a convicted criminal, witch, or heretic. In the act of abortion, one is actively making a decision to murder a child which has not done anything. When the death penalty is meted out, it is meted out against someone who has broken or transgressed the law, whether the civil law or the divine law. To kill an infant in the womb is a morally different question than to put to death a convicted felon or a traitor to divine law for in one act, you are putting to death an innocent and in the other you are putting to death a guilty one.

The misunderstanding then is expanded to a falsified view on human dignity. Ryszard Legutko talks such of how this false view of human dignity has been enacted in democracy but it also applies to the death penalty. Dignity, "since antiquity has been used as a term of obligation. If one was presumed to have dignity, one was expected to behave in a proper way" (Demon in Democracy, 31). One had to earn dignity, it was not an innate characteristic of a man and it was something that could be lost. But the advocates against the death penalty warp this view around to insist that dignity is nothing more than mere entitlements (33). One is not entitled to live, in fact, like the thief on the cross, we all confess we have merited our own deaths. The death penalty reminds us of this tragedy. I wrote on an old blog of mine,

"in Boethius’s writing, we see that “whatever falls short of the Good ceases to be”, “since they turned to evil, they have…lost their human nature”, and “a man transformed by vices, you couldn’t…consider human” (Consolation of Philosophy, bk 4, pr 3). It may be true that we are in our inherent nature crafted in the image of God but when we turn ourselves to evil, we throw our humanness, we become depraved, and we cease to be human. It is not those carrying out the death penalty justly who are therefore the iconoclasts but those who have submitted themselves to vice who are the iconoclasts."

It is not an attack on either human dignity or on the image of God to uphold the death penalty, especially as numerous Christians have upheld it and the Church has historically authorized the State to mete it out in the appropriate contexts. Bp. Athanasius Schneider notes that "Our Lord Jesus Christ never denied that the secular power has the authority to apply capital punishment. ... Killing a person in self-defense, in defense of the family or homeland, and in a just war, is in principle nothing other than a kind of application of the death penalty in extreme and inevitable situations against an unjust aggressor. An absolute pacifism represents an illusion and a denial of reality, and a substantial denial of original sin with its consequences for individual and social life." (Christus Vincit, 187-188)

Another one that comes up frequently is that the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11 shows that the death penalty was actually nullified by Our Lord. But that ignores a specific context. The "charge against the woman was put in such a way as to accuse Him...and to make it appear that He was violating either the law of Moses or the law of the Romans" (Fulton J. Sheen, Life is Worth Living, 219). This had nothing to do with the death penalty being valid or not but was meant as a trap for Our Lord. A typical trap that he would refute simply by refusing to give a definitive "yes" or "no" answer. He does not say, "put her to death" nor does he say "put no one to death, I have abolished the death penalty" but rather, "let he who has no sin cast the first stone". His response therefore convicts them and avoids the trap they have set for him. Much as in the question as to who the Jews are to pay taxes to. With the overwhelming evidence of tradition and theological backing for the death penalty in Catholic social teaching, we ought to affirm the statements made against its moral inadmissibility are heretical and cannot be justifiably held by a Catholic. I do not hold that Fratelli Tutti was intended to be infallible and it should be noted that not every papal encyclical is held as infallible! Look at how many progressives that have infiltrated the Church want to twist and throw away papal encyclicals! If they are playing this game, all the more can we for the Catholic faith is not allegiance to the Pope but it is allegiance to the Church founded by Christ which happens to be led by the legitimate pope.

Does 1 Kings 8 speak out against a monarchial system of governance?

It is no small feat that the Church in its Divine Wisdom has frequently spoken out against private interpretations and 1 Kings 8 is no small exception. Protestant readers are more familiar calling it 1 Samuel 8 but as I've become much more cemented in seeking out a Traditionalist perspective on Christianity, I have also become more acquainted with the numbering of the Biblical texts as 1-4 Kings. I have spoken briefly about this episode previously, but not in the intended depth that I have wanted due to time constraints. As well, I have much more time to think on it than in the past. As it seems strange that Christian tradition would carelessly promote a monarchy over that of other forms of governance knowing full well that a monarchy was rebuked by Our Lord. Crazy Church Lady brought this up to me in a recent conversation and it did give me a headache trying to explain that the purpose was not to bring up systems of governance. This is a very Protestant assessment of this text but indeed, many aspects of American Protestantism have creeped up into Catholic culture, often times to the detriment of Catholicity. Much of the neo-Catholic movement is deeply indebted to American Protestantism but also Traditionalist Catholics have allowed themselves to become Protestantized too by their participation with American Protestants in the Republican Party.

The first problem with this overtly Protestant interpretation is that it misses the context. As the Anglo-Catholic political theologian David Nicholls observed, "it was the people, in the days of Samuel, who clamoured for a king...and political theories which base authority on contract can make no claim to a specifically Christian foundation" (Deity and Domination, 26). Indeed, that is why the Catholic social doctrine firmly embraces the doctrine of subsidiarianism which is consistent with federalism. The root of the Catholic social doctrine teaches that the family, the most basic component of naturally organic society, is the only authority to know what is best for its relationship with God. From thence arises the domestic monastery which is where the worship of God, in its proper and rightly ordered sense, fully takes place. The development of any society is for a naturally organic system of governance. The philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe calls this natural order. Nicholls further spotlights that prior to the monarchy of Israel, Israel was broken down into tribes. The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia makes this observation too. When the tribes suffered from war, a military leader referred to as a "Judge" emerged. This is the one the tribes rallied around.

The second problem comes with the subject of titles. In ancient Roman society, the word imperator did not initially mean "Emperor". It meant "Commander". The imperator, like the judge in ancient Israel, was a military leader. The military leader could claim emergency dictatorial powers which lasted for six months to which he would be the absolute leader of the State, but Rome would remain a republic. Even during the time of Caesar Augustus, Rome was a republic. But the imperator was gradually granted more and more power. Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn describes a situation of asking a Roman from 280 A.D. the question of whether they are a monarchy or not. The Roman might respond, "Well aren't we still a republic...We have a senate. Of course, we have also an Imperator, but that means 'general' and a general is not a monarch. We also call him princeps but that means 'first man' and nothing else." (Liberty or Equality, 163)

The title that would be referred to here is melek which is the ancient Hebrew word for "ruler". Of course, it is commonly translated to "king" as well. As seen with Melchizedek, the King of Righteousness. Melchizedek is the King of whom Jesus would order his own priesthood after. Not much is known of Melchizedek. But going back to the main text, there are now two things to take note of: The issue of the title, and the issue of the relationship between God and the people. Having established that military rankings, even in ancient Rome, ended up becoming monarchial titles, it is interesting that the New Advent Encyclopedia has the following to say of the Prophet Samuel:

"during Israel's fierce conflict with the Philistines, Samuel, the last judge, wielded the universal and absolute power of a monarch with the title and the insignia of royalty" ("Israel")

In other words, it wasn't so much a contrast between a monarchy and a non-monarchy at this point but rather one type of rulership and another type of rulership. It should be noted that what the people wanted was a specific type of rulership. When Samuel addresses the Lord, the Lord tells him that the people have not rejected him but rather they have rejected God himself (1 Kings* 8:7). Before that, the people specify that they want a king, just like the other nations (1 Kings 8:5). The emphasis of the text is not on the system of the governance, but on the centralization that the people demand. The centralized power of a ruler possessing almost dictatorial authority, but more specifically, a ruler just like the other nations. They demanded not for God's natural ordering of society but were demanding the social contract.

Of course, the ultimate source of this particular interpretation to see it in a context condemning a monarchial system of governance is none other than Thomas Paine himself. An avowed anti-Christian deist, possibly an atheist, who was hoping to use the assessment that the republican system of government was preferred by God in order to stir up revolutionaries against King George III. Rebellion is quite strong in the American people, after all. We are a country that is built on revolution and for Catholics, there is a temptation to follow that spirit as we grow under this revolutionary spirit of governance that has become the American republic. Nowadays, though, what people clamour for is a republic like all the other nations. Is this not also our own rejection of God's rulership over us? As Nicholls pointed out long ago, the text does not single out monarchy, but addresses the people's relationship with God. It rebukes all theories of social contracts.

*1 Samuel in the Protestant Bibles

St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite - Concerning the Mind

While the mind rules over the flesh in Man, it is also enslaved to the physical pleasures of Man. We know from St. Paul that in the realm of the flesh, we are enslaved to sin. The sinful passions begin to reign over us and we do the things that we do not desire but the things we do desire we cannot do. For the flesh has come into corruption from the sinful nature. But why, if the flesh is inherently good and the mind rules over it, does this occur? Why is the mind often found to be the slave to such earthly things? Is the premise that the flesh is inherently good wrong? Or perhaps the mind has allowed itself to be enslaved? Or is there another reason?

St. Nicodemos answers that "after the disobedience of Adam, his body received the whole of its existence from physical pleasure that is impassionate and irrational". From the moment of conception, man has become the recipient of physical pleasure. He is bound to physical pleasure until his spiritual senses are allowed to activate. This is called original sin. This is also why, until very recently, the Church has never held the position that an unbaptized infant could go to Heaven. The traditional teaching was that the unbaptized infant would be unconscious, at best, unable to fully experience the joy of the eternal beatific vision of God (Canon 120 of the Holy Council of Carthage, St. Gregory of Nyssa in Concerning Infants' Early Deaths implies this).

The mind is held captive by the physical nature from Adam's sin onward. It subjected to it by the sinfulness entering into the world. It has been held captive by the physical senses. It is the spiritual sense that must be awakened in man. If a man is blind, he is unaware of the gift of sight unless he previously had it. Man is born spiritually blind. What allows a man to see? It is the sacrament of baptism that awakens the senses of Man. But we first receive the physical senses and once a body has experienced the soft touch of clothing, the beauty of living bodies, the sounds of certain songs, the fragrances of myrrh and other aromatic smells, it is difficult to convince such person that what they have experienced is actually irrational and temporal.

The senses are liberated through a process. First, by reading and hearing the Sacred Scriptures and the Words of the Church Fathers. Second, by subduing the senses and by refusing to fuel their appetites. St. Nicodemos draws along the analogy of a king fighting off a severely fortified city by first cutting off the supply chain to the city depriving the city of food and military resources useful for battle. Thus, the mind subdues best the senses by cutting off that which fuels their physical pleasures. Attrition is the first war that the Church wages against the senses. The Church prescribes fasting periods as a primary means of subjecting the body's urge to eat and consume. This is not because food is evil but because the overeating of food distracts the mind from God and keeps him subjected to sinfulness.

"[T]he reason for the coming of the New Adam, Jesus Christ, can be said to be our liberation from seeking and loving only the visible things, and at the same time our exaltation to love and enjoy the spiritual realities, thus indicating our true transference to what indeed is better." Here, St. Nicodemos touches on something without actually explicitly stating it. The coming of Jesus was as a physical, fleshly, human. Jesus was fully Man. He was the incarnate Deity. His incarnation provides another means we escape bondage from the physical senses to the spiritual senses. The sacraments are the visible, physical, things that the Church has provided for us in order to elevate our physical nature to the divine, spiritual nature that God intends to elevate it to. Through baptism we are brought into union with God and become sons of God. Through chrismation we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Through the Eucharist we are fed by God with his own very flesh.

The mind wrestles with the physical senses but it can also be aided greatly by these same senses. When it is aided by these senses, the mind retains control of the body and is held in its proper state. When it allows itself to be controlled by these senses, the mind becomes subject to those same senses and it is brought down into destruction by these senses.