Gay? Or same-sex attracted?

Take in Avera's account of her being same-sex attracted. Go here.

@JimCvit

Retrieved from: YouTube June 20, 2024

I led a gay lifestyle for many, many years. Growing up in a very devout Catholic household, I was an altar boy, lector, went to Mass faithfully, all of that. But I always knew that I was different. Then as I hit 21, I thought I needed to start living how I thought I should live: that is a gay lifestyle. It was a choice, yes, a choice, that I made, and I lived this way for 27 years: Having  same-sex relationships, having gay friends, basically "being" gay all around.

But, around 4 years ago, I had this very strong pull, as it were, to come back to the Church, but I resisted. I can't explain it, but that pull grew stronger and stronger which later I attribute this to the Blessed Virgin Mary and God’s Mercy. Eventually I realized that I needed to make amends with God and come back to Church. I went to confession and started going to Mass again. I started to pray just a little bit and as more time went by, I started to pray more and more. Today, prayer, going to Mass daily, and to Eucharistic Adoration are a huge part of my life. I have come to realize that I am not gay. I may be same-sex attracted, but the two are completely different things. As Fr. Schmitz said, one is an identity that you choose to be recognized by.

I have come also to realize that it's not about me; it's about God. The more I read the writings of the greats like St. Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, St Catherine of Siena, Francisco de Osuna, Walter Hilton, Thomas a Kempis, the more, as I said, it's about God. God is the ultimate, the supreme. In today's day and age, it's all about me. This is the trick of the Accuser. God created me and I owe God everything. I owe God my worship and my adoration. I owe Him my life.

There are certain priests, such as Fr. James Martin, SJ, and ministries like Fortunate Families and Dignity that put everything on the person. They teach false love, false compassion and false mercy. They teach a gospel of love and mercy and compassion but forget the other main point: repentance. Repentance is key first. You can't have love, mercy, and compassion without repentance of your sins, but you have to accept your sins, too. If you don't, then there is no mercy. It's about humility. You have to humbly approach God and with your whole heart, you have to acknowledge your sins regardless of what they are.

This isn't part of any of Fr. Martin's or Fortunate Family's agendas. Hidden behind a very thin veneer, they want the Church to accept homosexuality as normal. In fact, FF goes as far as saying in their beliefs, that no amount of therapy or prayer can help. This tells you right there how wrong they are. They are saying that God cannot heal the wounds of this sin. That in itself is a sin. Prayer with faith can heal. It might not change the same-sex attraction, but it helps you overcome the desires, the concupiscence and gives you the strength. But you have to put God first and recognize that He is above all and you owe Him everything. If you don't, regardless of what your sin is, you will continue in your sin.

We are so overwhelmed today by individual rights, etc., that even if we were taught who God is and how much He loves us, we will tend to forget that, and then become blinded by our own individual pride. We have to have the humility to go to God, who loves us more than anything we can ever imagine on in this earth in this life, who is there waiting for us to run to Him and ask for that forgiveness and mercy. We have to turn to Him and trust Him completely with humility. We have to give our day, our night, our lives to Him. God owes us absolutely nothing. It's us who owe Him everything. We want God, who never changes, always was, is, and will be the same, to bend to us and accept what we want namely the right to sin, and God can't and won't ever do that. Until we realize it's not about us, and it's about Him, we will be a slave to this sin or any sin.

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Other comments on this video:

@lukasmiller486

I like how you said “Your feelings or experience does not define who you are” and “There is no us and them because we’re all in the same boat when it comes to the struggles of the flesh.” So true.

@drirene57

I am a divorced Catholic. My husband (after 30 yrs together) left me and our 4 children for another woman. Even though my pastor assured me I would most likely qualify for an annulment, I knew that really wouldn’t be honest. With tears in my eyes I picked up my cross and carried it. God has blessed me and brought me closer to Him, helping me through all the difficulties life as a single mother can bring. The sexual temptations were there, but with God’s help I remained faithful to His teachings.

@DavidGCG

Thank you for addressing this. For someone who struggles with same sex attraction every day is a battle. My desires/temptations are at bay some days and other days it hits like a freight train. Been physically chaste since 2013. Pray for me!

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Ω The comments also drew attention to groups such as Courage, which support same-sex attracted people while remaining true to the insights into our human predicament that the Church offers.

Ω From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified by email when a new post is published.

Authority and submission with dignity

Mary Stanford, who asks... Are you up for trust and for risk-taking?

Why are “obedience” and “submission” such toxic words, especially with regards the relationship of man and woman in marriage?

American writer and college professor Mary Stanford answers such a question in a podcast drawing on her book The Obedience Paradox: Finding True Freedom in Marriage. She discusses her insights during a discussion with Thomas Mirus. This post uses the content of the podcast to convey Stanford’s ideas.

Stanford, a wife and mother of seven children, finds “obedience” is usually associated in the modern mind with a lack of freedom. We think of obedience as something where your freedom is taken from you because someone else is ordering you around.

However, to obey is a significant marker of human status. Since we don't assign agency and responsibility to a non-personal creature like a dog or with regards the planets obeying the laws of nature, it is clear that if only personal creatures obey, dignity must be involved. This understanding forced Stanford to consider in what way obedience expresses the highest form of how we relate to each other, and her book looks at authority and submission through the lens of giving and receiving. 

In that context, when we think about the giving and the receiving of a gift a lot of times we talk about how noble it is to give, with an offering freely made. But if it isn't received well, a gift fails, it's not complete, it's not a success. 

So if authority, in its most authentic sense, is a kind of sacrificial gift of service, one that serves the whole, then obedience is the receiving of this offering with a welcoming, or at least open, disposition, exercising an ability to recognize the significance of the act of offering and to freely accept what is offered. Of course, we know that when a gift is offered it's not just an item, it is a relationship being confirmed. 

Only a person can recognize the significance of a gift and only a person can freely enter into a relationship; you can't be forced into a relationship. Likewise, obedience is an exclusively personal act in response to another person’s gift of self.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” – Philippians 4:8 

What's interesting about looking at the fall of Adam and Eve is that it tells us a lot not only about obedience and disobedience in humanity’s relationship with God, but also about the relationship between spouses. Problems arise with Eve's unwillingness to trust that God is truly a giver and that God's commands are part of his gift rather than something he's trying to take or keep from her.

The command given to Adam and Eve, to not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is a command provided for their protection. That knowledge would have involved deciding for themselves what is good and what is evil, a claim to moral independence by which the human refuses to recognize their status as a created being, so disfiguring their ability to relate to God in a way that reflects reality. 

Stanford emphasizes that Eve has to make a choice: Do I trust God? [….] That's the disposition that's necessary to receive a gift. It is trust. You're trusting that this other person is offering you something that is for your good, that is offered out of love and in accepting it you're accepting this relationship, this union with them. That disposition of trust is huge and it's very scary. We're all feeling very vulnerable right now because in the world our trust is broken a lot.

Eve's distrust of God ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy in the context of her relationship with man. She doesn't want God to control and manipulate her, but the fallen man often does so. She has misinterpreted God’s gift, which is for her flourishing and that original lack of trust continues to have consequences.

That sinfulness is exposed in marriage as in every sphere of our lives is not denied, but the dynamic of authority and submission is letting God's design for a married couple's life come to fruition.

Stanford talks about the risk factor in a relationship, especially in one so intimate as between wife and husband – or husband and wife, as each puts their life in the hands of the other. But to obey involves a risk, which makes submission to authority a challenge to the strength of any relationship.

 The concept of equality is often reduced to sameness, “identicalness”, celebrated in Saint Paul’s words that there's neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave nor free man but all are equally offered union with God.

When two things are identical you lose so much. One of the concepts Stanford talks about in her book is the concept of asymmetry. Jesus uses examples  in his teachings about the conditions necessary for the bearing of fruit and he talks about there has to be a union of seed with good soil. Seed and soil are non-identical things, but unless these two different things come into receptive union there will be no fruit. So, too, with  a branch with the vine. Unless they're in union, there will be no fruit.

From these examples from organic reality we see that there cannot be a union unless there are two distinct non-identical elements. There is the generous element and the receptive element. Without a voluntary offering and a voluntary reception you simply can't have union. 

The pattern of married life begins with obedience and submission to the God of love

When it comes to trust, we have to accept the challenge of being in a state of vulnerability, putting ourselves in a position where we are willing to say “yes” to what is being offered – for the sake of unity – preserving the union at the centre of a commitment.

Marriage is unlike friendship because it is “an exclusive union par excellence”. The man and woman become one flesh: It's a true oneness. That oneness is then made visible in the child, and you realize this is not just any kind of union. This oneness is going to be the formative atmosphere for this child, a union that's going to reveal God to this child. 

The dynamic of giving and receiving well is central. “A woman does give to her husband but often her generosity is precisely in receiving well what he does for her. A woman can do many nice things for her husband but unless she is also simultaneously receiving what he does in an appreciative, grateful, respectful way, there's not going to be unity in that marriage. It doesn't mean women aren't generous and men aren't receptive but the primary mode is such that a woman can give all sorts of things to her husband but the union won't be there unless she receives him in a particular way.”

It’s worth noting that Paul says, “Husbands love your wives”, and places this in the context of the way Jesus Christ loves the Church, dying for it, and leaving a model of self-sacrificial behaviour.

Stanford notes: “Sometimes the test of things is time and the church throughout its history, and I quote several popes in the book looking at these passages and saying both ‘husbands you've got to love your wives in a sacrificial manner and be the head of the family’, and ‘wives be submissive but don't obey in a way that is below your dignity’. They don't always specify what that means but they do say that and so they've looked at it throughout history and interpreted it through the Church's tradition, which is that there is a principle of authority within marriage.”

Saint Peter and Saint Paul both urge wives to obey husbands. But are they just echoing what they regard as practical advice, or useful custom, from their era?

In terms of being a product of the culture, the early Christians were known for being counter-cultural. They were the ones who didn’t believe in discarding babies, refused to eat the sacrificed meat, and didn’t share their wives. So Christians weren't afraid to be counter-cultural.

Mirus remarks that this is another example of the asymmetry between the sexes Stanford discusses throughout her book. Nevertheless, why are there different modalities of love in marriage? Why don’t we just take it that each of the partners in marriage show love and respect for the other, without any distinction, as all Christians are expected to do.

Stanford says the bigger argument is that throughout time what the Church in her teaching authority, her magisterium, has taken from key scriptural passages and very assertively handed down that there is and needs to be a principle of unity within the family. Unity is made possible by having a principle of authority.

All this is not true in just a religious context but is essential on the natural plane for each woman, man and their children. Secondly, this principle of authority in the family is not the product of our fallen sinful nature. Stanford says that whereas Adam knew the created objects before Eve was made, from her start in life Eve was in a relationship, that is, with Adam. Crucially, both Adam and Eve knew they lived under the authority of God the Creator.  Also, the popes have spoken of the primal “order of love”, involving God, Adam and Eve. So the basic structure of headship/authority and obedience was already established before the fall. Submission to another is not part of God’s punishment of Adam and Eve’s sin. 

God's authority as described in Genesis in the context of him as the Creator, the Giver, the Generous One. Then, before we get to Ephesians 5, we see Jesus in his full authority at the Last Supper washing the feet of the apostles. 

Jesus says, ‘If you want to be like me, this is what you’ve got to do.’ The leader is someone who gives and serves. “So to me it's not a new form of leadership. It's just hearkening back to the original form of authority that we see with God in the garden [in] displaying his power through gift,” Stanford says.

In Ephesians 5 we have “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church”. How did he love the church? He laid down his life for her. So for wives to be submissive means nothing other than to receive and accept well what the husband is offering her and the family.

In no way are we talking about dominating power or a structure whereby one party uses the other. That’s a bastardization of authority.

The issue is that Adam and Eve were afraid to trust that God was loving them and that everything that he had offered them would enable them to flourish.

Throughout the covenants of the Old Testament, in particular before the Covenant at Mt Sinai, God is inviting them into a covenant of trust: “I am the Lord your God, the one who led you out of slavery in Egypt”. He would remind them often of all the good that he had done, the gifts that he had given them, before inviting them to trust in a New Covenant of love and service.

The image of God in the Old Testament and in the New is not this controlling, manipulative God. That's what Eve was afraid of, and that fear was what the devil preyed on.

Explaining headship in this way doesn't let us off the hook from explaining what submission means.

 Stanford says one of the important things she talks about in her book is the element of risk. When a problem arises in a family, or when a decision has to be made that will serve the family the couple need to discuss the options. Such times are a test — does each trust the other? They listen to each other and work at doing that, but when it comes down to it the family needs the father to be a man, to step up, to engage, to lead this family.

“That's really risky and it's hard and sometimes he might not quite get it right and that's precisely where [a wife’s] submission saves the unity of the family because the point is to try to preserve this unity. There's no guarantee that a man in his logical nature is going to always get it right, that every effort on behalf of the family, even if it is sacrificial, is going to pan out the way he hoped.”

So this is part of what submission looks like. It’s joining with the husband in formulating policy, but also accommodating the decision the husband makes when there is a difference on what should be done.

Stanford makes clear the wife does not have to be happy with a decision and never have a conversation with her husband about how this or that isn't working. Again, this is what being willing to take a risk is all about, taking a risk for the sake of the marital union.

There is also the “What’s good luck, what’s bad luck?” perspective that’s needed when outcomes seem to demonstrate the husband’s decision was flawed. Further, a sense of Providence being active and personal is an asset when things seem to go wrong after the husband’s exercise of authority. Maybe in the longer term, or in a different way, things will work out for the good. 

Stanford says it’s easier for women “to separate our love for my husband than for what he did. I can say ‘Okay, you failed at this, but I still love you. You're not defined by that failure.’ Women have a gift of being able to distinguish who a person is from what they do, though you can't take that distinction too far.”

A wife’s support for her husband comes into play in these situations: “A man identifies with his deeds so what he's doing for his wife and family…if those things aren't received well he feels that he's not being received well. Because women have this gift of being able to distinguish him from what he does — that's a tremendous gift — we have to employ that in our submission.

“The little everyday submission of appreciating him and appreciating what he does and not criticizing every little thing — that can be much harder for some women than the occasional final-say decision.

 “In the book I talk in a way that is equally challenging and encouraging for husbands and wives to try to look at the everyday ways in which they can do what they're called to do better because if they do that they're both going to feel more satisfied and more personally affirmed in the process.”

Mirus points out that in his encyclical letter Casti Connubii, Pope Pius XI talks about authority and obedience in marriage and qualifies the concept of subjection of the wife. The pope says it doesn't take away her liberty or her dignity as a human person. It doesn't mean that she has to obey every request of her husband if it's not in harmony with right reason or with her dignity. It doesn't mean she should be treated as somebody who doesn't have mature judgment.

But then the pope says that this qualification relating to submission “forbids that exaggerated liberty which cares not for the good of the family. It forbids that in this body which is the family the heart be separated from the head to the great detriment of the whole body and the proximate danger of ruin” (para 27-29).

💢 From: OBEDIENCE IN MARRIAGE. Catholic Culture Podcast, YouTube, October 12, 2022: Thomas Mirus speaks with Mary Stanford, who is a speaker, teacher, and writer on Catholic marriage and family life. She is an adjunct professor at Christendom College and has a master's degree in theological studies from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. She and her husband, Trey, have seven children.

💢 Mary Stanford, The Obedience Paradox: Finding True Freedom in Marriage (2022). Go here for details and to read a sample.

💢 Pope Pius XI on marriage: Casti Connubii  

💢 Find all Catholic Culture podcasts here   

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified by email when a new post is published.

Abortion: Reasoned discourse is imperative

It is heart-rending that reasoned discourse on abortion is often drowned in violent polemics or even sabotaged by violent gestures.

One of the most important things we can do, is to remind ourselves and others of just how complex this matter is, of what vulnerabilities are involved, of the responsibilities we carry. It is crucial to remember to see the subject from more than one angle. We need quietly authoritative statements like this one on YouTube by Andrea Bocelli. Or like David Scotton’s video account of meeting his birth mother in I Lived on Parker Avenue.

Andrea Bocelli. Photo: Ray Guselli

The family that would never have been - Andrea, Matteo and Virginia with Andrea’s wife Veronica and son Amos. Photo: Decca Records

💢 Read: The Implications of an Abortion Law Change, a critical moment for Norwegians and those in many other countries and federal states.

💢 Read: Why We're Pro-Life

💢 Thanks to Coram Fratribus, Choose Life.

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified by email when a new post is published.

Natural Law uplifts the human condition

A complaint lodged deep within the mindset of Western society is that the Judeo-Christian God demeans the human person by restricting their freedom through the imposition of rules – principally the Ten Commandments – under the threat of ultimate punishment. Therefore, all morality other than self-made codes of behaviour should be rejected.

Unsurprisingly, the fruit of subservience to this concept of arbitrary rule-making that is imposed on us is the breakdown of social stability and the consequent personal distress we see mounting to unprecedented proportions today.

However, this concept could not be further from the truth. A profound insight into how God’s law enlivens rather than suppresses the human project is contained in a reflection on the experience of the Hebrews after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt:

God had promised to make Abraham’s descendants a great nation. He had called them out of Egypt and separated them from the gods and practices of the Egyptians. The Israelites must now learn to become a nation that will reflect the character of the one true God to the nations around them. God called Moses up on a mountain where He gave him the laws by which they are to live. This will become the moral guide they must follow in order to reflect the character of a holy God.

[…] If they were to be the nation that represented God to the world, then they must reflect His character to the world. But they, like us, sometimes struggled to live up to God’s standard.

[…] God took Moses up onto a mountain and gave him the standards by which the people should live. These standards would retrain them to reflect the character of a loving God, rather than that of the Egyptians and their many gods. 

Then the idea is presented that God employs His laws to form His people into an expression of His values. This is key: God is the Good, the True, the Beautiful; humans are created in the image of God; therefore, we are endowed with those same values and qualities. However, we are wounded in our nature – blame Original Sin – and need to be trained to live as fully as God has made us to live based on the qualities God and all humans share, a factor whereby the grace of God rescues the human condition.

God's laws as a mirror into our own self

From a linked video reflection on the topic: 

There is a long Biblical tradition that describes God’s laws as a mirror. The closer we look at what God wants, the more we understand Him [and, therefore,] we understand our own hearts and desires. We [also] catch a glimpse of how our own hearts distort the love and community God is calling us into.

The Ten Commandments are “staggering in their timelessness”, given that hearts and mind space of today’s restless generations – plural – are largely devoted to idols of self, money, fame or at least status, to pleasure, and appearances.

Notice how the Ten Commandments are expressed in the context of a relationship.

God spoke all these words:

“I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of that place of slavery. You shall not have other gods instead of me. 

“You shall not make idols or any image of things that are in the heavens above or that are upon the earth or that are in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow before them nor shall you serve them.

“You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain, for the Lord will not leave unpunished those who use his name in vain.

“Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath in honor of the Lord your God. 

“Honor your father and your mother so that your days may be lengthened in the land that the Lord your God, will give you.

“You shall not kill.

“You shall not commit adultery.

“You shall not steal.

“You shall not give false witness against your neighbor.

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male slave, nor his female slave, nor his oxen, nor his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

— Exodus 20:1-17 (edited). See also Deuteronomy 5.

These are the ways God wants His people to reflect His own qualities and so to live as a community in conformity with all that was right and just.

Just how far from the truth it is to see this set of 10 laws as mere dictatorial restrictions or limitations is made clear in the words of Jesus, who was challenged to identify the most important of the 613 Jewish commandments (mitzvot in Hebrew) extracted from the Old Testament. Jesus went to the heart of the matter:

When the Pharisees learned that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and, to test him, one of them, a lawyer, asked this question, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Everything in the Law and the Prophets depends on these two commandments.” 

— Matthew 22:34-39 

Elsewhere, the gospels say we are to love God and neighbor with all our strength, to be prepared to lay down our lives for our friends, to cross ethnic and social boundaries as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and much more, as Jesus outlines in his Beatitudes discourse (Matthew Chapter 5).

The video reflection states that Jesus recognized that the Ten Commandments were not arbitrary restrictions but were “an invitation to live out what God valued: life, rest, respect, honor, worship, gratitude”.

This is what it meant to be God’s people, a new community for the enjoyment of his promised land.

Each of these commands had been designed to lead Israel into that promise, into its fullest enjoyment – the fullness of what God had called Israel to be.

The speaker quotes from the Letter of James (1:22-25):

Be doers of the word and not just hearers who only deceive themselves.  For anyone who listens to the word and fails to do it is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror. After seeing his reflection, he goes off and immediately forgets what he looked like. However, the one who looks intently at the perfect law of freedom and perseveres—not forgetting what he has heard but putting it into practice—will be blessed in everything he does.

This element of “Know God, and you will know yourself” is part of the richness of the Christian heritage, where, as stated in passing above, the concept is termed Natural Law. 

The conclusion is that God’s law has a decided purpose. Its call, to love God and love your neighbor, is a “call into a better way of living, of being, into a better community and a better life”.

To briefly lay out the classical principles of Natural Law I want to excerpt material from a book titled Made This Way. 

It states that we are made in such a way that we reflect God’s being. The universal moral law is of God and has been implanted in our being so it can be known by the use of reason alone. But we have to learn, by informing our conscience, how the moral law applies in particular cases. Our conscience also alerts us to issues that could harm our own moral decision-making and that of the whole of society. 

For the person with a good grasp of where morality comes from, it matters not one jot that the majority of people might disagree that abortion, for example, is a crime against the humanity of the embryo. Our reason (using scientific findings) tells us that from the moment of conception a new human being exists; this human, therefore, requires our respect and protection. That's where legislation, usually termed positive law, often based on political expediency or public opinion differs from God-given natural law.

Understanding Natural Law 

From Made This Way:

“If we want to know what is real and true, we must always ask, ‘What is the nature of a thing?’” Another way to put it would be, “What is this thing and what is it made for?” These questions unlock the force of the natural law. […]

America’s Constitution and [the US] system of laws were based on natural-law principles that transcend any merely human laws based on popular opinion or human will (what is called positive law). Abraham Lincoln, for example, cited moral truths that could be known through reason when he worked to deliver our nation from the evil of slavery. In a debate with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln said that slavery wasn’t just a political issue but one that represented “the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong”.

 A century later, Martin Luther King, Jr. was told that racial segregation was the “law of the land” and must be obeyed. MLK replied that unjust laws may be disobeyed. As he sat in jail for disobeying those laws, he wrote: How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. 

Natural law is another term for the universal moral law of God. Thomas Aquinas said that the natural law “is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided.” This law is universal because everyone—including people who have never received divine revelation—can know it.

St. Paul proclaimed that even people who have never encountered something as basic as the Ten Commandments can still apprehend God’s important moral truths, because “what the law requires is written on their hearts” (Romans 2:15). 

[…] Robert Cardinal Sarah has affirmed that “the Church’s social teaching argues on the basis of reason and natural law, namely on the basis of what is in accord with the nature of every human being.” It is because of the natural law that Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and even atheists and agnostics can hear their consciences tell them what they may do, what they must do, and what they must never do.

Natural law explains people’s deep-seated understanding that crimes like murder and theft are wrong, whereas charitable acts like feeding the hungry and clothing the naked are right. It helps us instinctively relate such actions to the way human beings have been made. When we ask, “What is human life for?” or “What is the nature of a human being?” we want to know our ultimate goal in life and how to reach that goal. Natural law shows us both, or as Professor Charles Rice says, it’s “a set of manufacturer’s directions written into our nature so that we can discover through reason how we ought to act”.

Just as we would not harm our car’s mechanical nature by putting molasses in the tank—which is made for gasoline—we should not harm our human nature by acting immorally; that is, in ways that contradict its design. 

What Natural Law is not

Natural law is not the same as the “laws of nature”. Scientific laws explain how matter and energy behave in the physical world. These laws cannot be “disobeyed” because they describe what usually happens rather than what should happen. For example, the law of gravity (science) describes how a falling bomb accelerates toward the earth. Natural law (morality) tells us whether it is right or wrong to drop the bomb on a certain target.

Natural law is not “what happens with other mammals in nature.” When Christians say that certain human behaviors go against nature, they mean that those acts contradict how human beings ought to act, not merely what happens in the natural world. Humans are animals, but we are rational animals, and so we should not make the behavior of lower animals our standard of morality. 

Lots of behaviors are “natural” for other animals, like stealing, forced sex, or infanticide, but that doesn’t make those behaviors natural for rational human beings. 

Natural law is not “what feels natural to me”. A person may have a strong inclination to eat a whole box of cookies or a persistent desire to cheat on a spouse, but the consequences of those decisions show that we shouldn’t always follow our “natural feelings”. This doesn’t mean we should never follow our instincts and feelings; it just means we should use our minds to tell us which of them we should follow. 

C.S. Lewis used the analogy of a piano to explain the relationship between our animal instincts that tempt us to do evil and our rational minds that know the moral law. He said that instincts are like the keys on the piano, and morality (the natural law) is like the sheet music that tells us when to play the keys at the right time. For example, the fight instinct is good for a young boy if a stranger is trying to pull his sister into a car and abduct her; it’s bad if he is frustrated with his sister during play and uses fists to settle the matter. Likewise, the flight instinct is good when running away from a tsunami; it’s cowardly when running away from an infant drowning in a play pool. 

Unlike the lower animals, we human beings are created with an intellect and a will (made in God’s image), which means that we are the only ones with the ability to reason morally—to choose between right and wrong. According to Thomas Aquinas’s classic definition, natural law is man’s participation in God’s eternal law, an intersection between human reason and divine wisdom.

The benefits of Natural Law 

Although natural law originates with God, it is not strictly a religious concept. Some truths of the Faith can be known only through divine revelation (e.g., the Trinity, the nature of the sacraments), and divine revelation—such as the Ten Commandments—can also more clearly reveal the truths of the natural law. 

[…] Each soul is designed by God to be attracted to truth, and we all have brains that can reason. Natural law is the only firm foundation that can ground a debate (try debating based on “feelings” and see how far you get!). We can also appeal to natural law when secularists accuse Christians of “imposing” morality on them. We can show them that natural law prevents the unjust imposition of an unsound morality, because it is a safeguard against tyranny and oppression. 

The convictions of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials were not based on man-made law (everything they did was perfectly legal in Germany), but rather on a universal morality that was recognizable by the world community.

[Of the twenty-four prominent members of the political and military leadership of Nazi Germany charged in the initial Nuremberg trial, twelve were sentenced to death by hanging and executions were carried out for 10 of them. In other trials, especially related to the Holocaust, more death sentences were handed down. See here.]

The greatest benefit of natural law is that it is not arbitrary. Some people think that Catholics blindly follow whatever the Bible or the pope says, but our faith does not consist of such commands. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) says, “God’s almighty power is in no way arbitrary: ‘In God, power, essence, will, intellect, wisdom, and justice are all identical. Nothing therefore can be in God’s power which could not be in his just will or his wise intellect’” (271). 

God loves us, so not only his positive commandments but also the moral laws we discover through reason will always correspond to what is good for us as human beings; they will never just be a set of nonsensical, disconnected, inconsistent, incoherent rules. If anything, it is our culture that is arbitrary, because it reduces morality to mere popular opinion or the will of the powerful (“might makes right”). 

Children who are raised in this culture of moral relativism, especially those who lack the stability of an intact family, can quickly become disoriented and lost. Yet, if we can provide them a moral foundation through the natural law—if we can help them see that the way they should act corresponds to the way they are made—they will feel safe and secure in the truth, even as the rest of the world stumbles in darkness. Children who understand God’s created order and how “everything fits together” are more likely to become holy, healthy, and happy adults [...]. 

 KEY POINTS…

• The natural law is simply the universal moral law, accessible to all people by the light of human reason. 

• Natural law is not the same as the “laws of nature” like gravity, nor is it simply “what happens in nature” or “what feels natural to me”. It is the law of God revealed in our very humanity, written in our consciences. 

• Natural law is not an arbitrary set of rules. Instead, it is like an “instruction manual” that tells us how to live according to the design of our human nature, providing our lives with meaning, peace, and joy. 

SEE ALSO:

💢 Martin Luther King Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”.  

💢 Does Natural Law Need Theology?

💢 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Natural Law Ethics

💢 No Natural Law? Danger alert for society!

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Eat my body, drink my blood. Really?

A portion of the host and heart tissue from Poland, 2008

Among the drama of Easter: "Take and eat; this is my body ... This is my blood..." [!!!!! How many are sufficient?]

The drama is not diminished by the intervening millennia. It remains a dramatic declaration, as Gavin Ashenden, for one, can relate. He was the Anglican Church's chaplain to the Queen from 2008 until his resignation in 2017. He is now a Catholic layman. One reason he decided to become Catholic was because of Eucharistic miracles — specifically, one that happened in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the 1990s.

From the testimony of a physician involved with the case:

On August 15, 1996, in the Parish of Santa Maria, a parishioner received the Consecrated Host in his hands during Communion, but inadvertently dropped it on the floor and thought not to pick it up because it seemed soiled to him. Another more pious person realized what had happened, picked up the host and put it aside, while quickly informing the Parish priest, Father Alejandro Pezet. The priest, following the instructions of the Church in these circumstances, put the Host in a container filled with water, which stayed in the tabernacle waiting for the Host to dissolve.

On August 26, the tabernacle was reopened to remove the fallen Host from the container, and it was found that the Host had not dissolved and had some reddish stains that were growing day by day. The Parish priests hurriedly went to the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, to tell him what had happened. It was decided that they wait before proceeding with investigations. After the Archbishop learned that I was freely following these scientific investigations, he asked me to take care of the present case.

The next step had a mind-blowing result: "A sample of the material was sent to a world-renown cardiologist in New York City, Dr. Frederick Zugibe, who did not know where the bleeding flesh came from. He reported that it was heart muscle from a man who died in torment." Dr. Zugibe reported:

The analyzed material is a fragment of the heart muscle found in the wall of the left ventricle close to the valves. This muscle is responsible for the contraction of the heart. It should be borne in mind that the left cardiac ventricle pumps blood to all parts of the body. The heart muscle is in an inflammatory condition and contains a large number of white blood cells. This indicates that the heart was alive at the time the sample was taken. It is my contention that the heart was alive, since white blood cells die outside a living organism. They require a living organism to sustain them. Thus, their presence indicates that the heart was alive when the sample was taken. What is more, these white blood cells had penetrated the tissue, which further indicates that the heart had been under severe stress, as if the owner had been beaten severely about the chest.

The author of Living In Wonder, Rod Dreher, writes in his (paywalled) daily newsletter:

Do you understand what he says here? That the sample was taken from the heart that was still beating when it was harvested!

The blind scientific investigation determined that the man was alive at the time the sample was taken. The blood type was AB — the same, by the way, as from all other Eucharistic miracles, and the same as found on the Shroud of Turin.

Once he was told what he had, Dr. Zugibe, an atheist, converted to Catholicism.

Other examples of the extra-ordinary continue in Dreher's account:

In Poland, something similar happened in 2008, in Sokolka. Two independent scientific experts examined the material:

The results of both independent studies were in perfect agreement. They concluded that the structure of the transformed fragment of the host is identical to the myocardial (heart) tissue of a living person who is nearing death. The structure of the heart muscle fibers is deeply intertwined with that of the bread, in a way impossible to achieve with human means, according to the declaration of Prof. Maria Sobaniec-Lotowska.

The host and heart tissue from Sokolka in 2008

The same thing happened in Tixtla, Mexico, in 2013:

There are four scientifically inexplicable dimensions of the Tixtla host:

1. There is a thin filament of tissue in the center of the Host from which blood is exuding. Histochemical tests indicate cardiac tissue (Sánchez Loza et al). The tissue seems to be integrated with the Host which is scientifically inexplicable.

2. The cardiac tissue is alive – presence of active red blood cells, and white blood cells/ macrophages in the process of healing. Since tissue dies shortly after being disconnected from a body and circulatory system, the presence of living tissue and blood (after three months – time between the miracle and the tests) is scientifically inexplicable.

3. The Host-tissue is exuding fresh blood from the inside to the outside. Blood on the exterior of host is produced in 2006 while blood on the inside of host is fresh as of 2010. The pressure of natural flow is from the inside to the outside. Which is scientifically inexplicable.

4. The DNA conundrum – DNA material, but no amplifiable profile.

The point that the last line highlights is, as Dreher reports, "the very strange fact that in all these Eucharistic miracles, scientists see DNA material, but can’t create a DNA profile of the person who shed the blood. Perhaps this is what you would expect from a man who has no human father."

He concludes: 

See, we do live in an enchanted world. And all the failures, sins, and even crimes of the clerics, and the people in church, and even of you and me, cannot deny the power of Emmanuel — God among us. They can only blind us to the truth.

See also: 

💢 Eucharistic miracles from the last 20 years

💢 Evidence still with us from 1300 years ago

💢 Eucharistic miracles around the world

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To feel, feel, only feel - never think!

Herman Melville (1819-1891) used well his own experience among the primitive conditions of life on sailing ships to describe the nature of the human heart. Most clearly, in his Moby-Dick, also known as The Whale, he writes of Captain Ahab's state on the third day of stalking the ghostly white monster that had enslaved Ahab's mind and soul. Melville expresses a premonition of the state of the soul of so many in our time.

Here's what Melville saw in the heart of a man who had lost control of himself:

Here’s food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that’s tingling enough for mortal man! to think’s audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that. 

As would be expected in any time but our own, the outcome of Ahab's self-obsession was tragedy. His decision to reject appeals to desist in his lust for the life of the whale that had deprived him of one leg and the respect of his men concluded with the loss of his ship, his crew (bar the narrator), and his manic self.

I read that excerpt and then the account of the paralysed man blessed with friends, who Jesus cured with the additional promise: "Courage, child, your sins are forgiven" (Matthew 9:1-8). The account seemed to have something to say about Ahab and the condition of many in our era.

What a commentator finds links the passages:

The man is told to complete his experience of healing by abandoning a life of sin, bringing body and spirit into full harmony and wholeness. This is not to say that Jesus is implying that the man had been unable to walk because of his sin. Jesus did not teach that. But what he is saying is that physical wholeness needs to be matched by spiritual wholeness, the wholeness of the complete person.

The issue of May 20, 2013

I note that, as far as the West is concerned, social observers identify that it was with the Baby Boomers that the rot set in. They (which includes me) were the first to be tagged the Me Generation, because they took delight in sloughing the discipline that enables social norms, in order to join the narcissistic Sexual Revolution. Subsequently we have had Me Me Me Generation, that is, the Millennials, and now Generation Z, with the degree of self-absorption growing, and social dis-ease mounting.

That Ahab's soul and that of our society in its state of ship-wreck are carved from the same block is certain. Ahab was called out by a plucky subordinate but he persisted on his deranged path. For our part, we have a tendency to identitfy our wants as an essential "human right", no matter the wider harm. Our society has a formidable challenge to realise it is not a mere collection of atomised personalities but that it is a living entity with members committing themselves to a bond of peace, as Augustine has it. Bon voyage!

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It was fitting that God suffer for us

A Good Friday re-enactment in San Antonio, Texas. Photo: Source

Did Christ have to suffer as he did to accomplish our salvation? Or could that purpose have been achieved another way? 

At this time each year as we enter into the passion and death of Jesus—the long-awaited Messiah, God and man, two natures in the one person—these questions arise for fresh reflection. 

Many have offered answers, basing their considerations on the foundation for Christian belief that though God works in mysterious ways and we will never comprehend the infinite reaches of God's "mind", we can explore possibilities because whatever comes from God is not capricious but in accord with reason, though revelation may often be necessary for a fuller understanding. 

The mystery is conveyed in these words from the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 2: 

9 But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

10 In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. 

It was "fitting" that Jesus should die by torture and crucifixion, the Roman manner of execution for slaves and criminals—Why? What follows is from one of the best considerations of this question:

It’s an age-old question. Sixteen centuries ago, when Augustine addressed the matter, he noted that he was not the first person even back then to discuss it. “There are those,” the bishop wrote, “who say, ‘What? Did God have no other way to free men from the misery of this mortality? No other way than to will that the only-begotten Son . . . should become man by putting on a human soul and flesh, becoming mortal so he could endure death?’”

Then, as now, Christians seemed to face a dilemma. If God could have made salvation possible for us some other way, why would he choose the way of so much blood, so much pain, so much agony? Wouldn’t something less frightful have been better?

To some observers, there are only two possibilities here: If the Crucifixion was the only means God could find to redeem us, then he must be limited in his power and wisdom. Surely an almighty, all-wise deity could have found a better way! 

On the other hand, if God preferred choosing a horrible death for his own Son over other options, then he must be wicked. How could he possibly will such a thing if he could have fulfilled his purposes otherwise?

In some ways, it’s a variation on the question long familiar to Christians: If God is all-powerful, all-wise, and all-good, then why is there suffering in the world?

Alternative strategies certainly possible

Typically, Augustine and other Doctors of the Church who followed his thought, such as Thomas Aquinas, saw right through the dilemma. They challenged the notion that, in light of Christ’s Passion, Christians serve a God who must be either a bumbling wimp or a repulsive sadist. No, they insisted: Our God is indeed all-powerful, all-wise, and all-good. But we must examine more closely, ponder more deeply, the true nature of divine power, wisdom, and goodness, as these attributes are revealed in the terrifying Passion of our Lord.

Both saints were both firm on this matter: They insisted that God is God, and his wisdom and might know no bounds. Of course he could have found another way to save us.

Augustine summed it up this way: “Other possible means were not lacking on God’s part, because all things are equally subject to his power” (On the Trinity 8:10). When examining the question many centuries later, Aquinas quoted Augustine and added scriptural support: “It was possible for God to deliver mankind otherwise than by the Passion of Christ,” he concluded, “because nothing shall be impossible for God (cf. Luke 1:37).”

Aquinas admits that some scriptural texts seem to say God had no choice in the matter (cf. Summa Theologiae 3:46:2). On several occasions in the Gospel accounts, Jesus himself spoke this way. For example, after declaring Peter to be the “rock,” our Lord said to the disciples: “The Son of Man must suffer many things . . . and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22).

Again, as Jesus walked with two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus, on the evening of the day he had risen from the dead, he rebuked the men for their lack of faith: “O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:25–26).

Necessary under certain conditions

Nevertheless, as Aquinas pointed out, there’s a difference between being absolutely necessary and being necessary given certain conditions. In the case of Jesus’ Passion, by the time Christ had come into the world, certain crucial conditions were already in place: God the Father had already ordained that this was the way our salvation would be accomplished. And his foreknowledge of these events had already been manifested in divine revelation to the prophets and recorded in Scripture.

Given these conditions, Aquinas concluded, it was correct for Christ to say that he must suffer, that it was necessary, because at that point the matter was already settled: What the Father ordained could not be avoided, and what he foreknew could not be mistaken. As our Lord put it at the Last Supper, “The hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined” (Luke 22:21–22).

This conclusion is strengthened when we observe that Christ’s statement on the Emmaus road was made with reference to Old Testament prophecies. (See also his words on the day of his ascension, Luke 24:44–46.) God had chosen the way—he had revealed it to the prophets—so this was how it had to be. We can see then that rather than implying some limit to God’s power (as if he couldn’t have chosen otherwise), these scriptural passages actually affirm God’s power and sovereignty.

This is not to say, of course, that Christ was somehow forced into such a terrible fate. Some have tried to deduce that meaning from passages such as Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane to have the “cup” of suffering removed (cf. Luke 22:42). But the truth is that, from before all time, God the Son had lived in perfect union with God the Father: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Together they had willed our redemption and determined that, in order to accomplish it, he would come to earth and suffer for us.

It’s true that in Gethsemane we hear Christ crying out as his human nature recoils in horror at the prospect of such awful suffering. But even then, our Lord wanted above all what the Father wanted: “Not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). As the writer of Hebrews reminds us, Jesus “endured the cross” not because he was forced to do so, but rather “for the joy that was set before him” (Heb. 12:2)—winning the victory he had come to achieve.

A choice both good and fitting

Because of his sovereign power, Augustine and Aquinas thus concluded, God could have found another way to save us. But Christ’s making satisfaction for the penalty of our sins through suffering was in fact the way God chose to make possible our salvation. Given this reality, we should examine it more closely to discern some reasons that it would be in accordance with the Father’s perfect wisdom and love.

Recall the dilemma we described earlier. If we hold that God could have chosen an alternative means to our salvation, then we seem to be left with a disturbing conclusion: God must be wicked to have willed such suffering for his Son. How could he have done such a thing when he had other options?

Against such objections, Augustine wrote, “We assert that the way in which God deigned to deliver us by the man Jesus Christ, who is mediator between God and man, is both good and befitting the divine dignity. . . . There neither was nor need have been any other means more suitable for healing our misery” (On the Trinity 8:10).

How could this be? What was good and fitting about Christ’s Passion? The bishop continued: “For what else could have been so necessary to build up our hope, and to free the minds of mortals despairing because of their mortality, than that God should show us how highly he valued us, and how greatly he loved us? And what could be more clear and evident proof of God’s great love than that the Son of God . . . so undeserving of evil, should bear our evils?” (ibid.).

Many of the Christians who have viewed Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ report that it brought them to tears to realize what our Lord did for us. More than ever before, they have been made aware of just how high a price was paid by God the Son—and God the Father—to save us. They have been inspired to a stronger faith in God’s love and a firmer hope in his desire to bring them to heaven.

Augustine would not have been surprised at their response. He was certain that anyone who meditated for long on Christ’s Passion would experience the same overwhelming sense of faith and hope. The Father had no greater gift to give us than his Son, the bishop insisted—and that’s precisely the gift he gave.

As Paul had put it long before: “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?” (Rom. 8:31–32).

 Inspired to respond with grateful love for God

Aquinas developed this line of thought more thoroughly. He noted that our reconciliation with God and becoming like him requires more than simple forgiveness. He wrote that, in the Passion, “many other things besides deliverance from sin came together for man’s salvation.”

First, he observed, Christ’s Passion moves us not only to have faith and hope in God, as Augustine had pointed out; it also motivates us to a grateful love for God. “By this, man knows how much God loves him, and is thus stirred to love him in return. In this loving response lies the perfection of human salvation. That is why the apostle says, ‘God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us’ (Rom. 5:8).”

Our salvation isn’t complete without our learning to love as God loves. So in Christ’s Passion, said Aquinas, we aren’t simply pardoned. We are given a convincing reason to devote our whole hearts to God.

More reasons why the Passion was fitting

Yet there is more. Christ’s suffering doesn’t just move us to respond in love. It shows us how to love in a world that is broken.

The means God used to redeem us, Aquinas continued, tells us what we ourselves must do to love as God loves in the face of natural and moral evil. Christ “set us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues displayed in his Passion, which are also necessary for man’s salvation. Thus it is written: ‘Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps’ (1 Pet. 2:21).” 

If we are to grow up into “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13), then we must imitate him. The Passion shows us most clearly what attitudes and actions we are to imitate. “Have this mind among yourselves,” wrote Paul, “which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God . . . humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:5–6, 8). The Passion demonstrates that love is costly to God, and it will be costly to us as well.

A great reward all humanity shares

A third reason God ordained that the Passion would take place is that, through it, Christ merited a great reward. Since Christ humbled himself so extravagantly, Paul added, “therefore God has highly exalted him” (Phil. 2:9).

Aquinas quoted Augustine’s comment on these words of the apostle, adding his own remarks: “Augustine says, ‘The humility of the Passion merited glory, and glory was the reward of humility’ (Tractate on John civ). But he was glorified, not merely in himself, but also in his faithful ones, as he himself says: ‘I am glorified in them’ (John 17:10)” (ST 3:48:1). Because Christ is the head of the Church, his merit overflows to the members of his body. So Christ shares his reward with us as justifying grace and the glory of blessedness in heaven.

Aquinas insisted that a fourth reason God sent his Son to suffer is that it created what can be seen as a debt to Christ’s holiness. When we recognize the debt, we see ourselves obligated to pay it by avoiding evil—and that avoidance contributes to our salvation. Because of the Passion, then, man is all the more bound to refrain from sin, according to 1 Corinthians 6:20: ‘You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body’”.

A boost to human dignity

Finally, both Augustine and Aquinas concluded that God ordained the Passion of Christ “because it redounded to humanity’s greater dignity” (ST 3:46:4). Of course, to simply have God become man in the Incarnation was an honor beyond all telling. But in Christ’s suffering, our race was granted more honor still.

How could that be? Aquinas wrote: “Just as man was overcome and deceived by the devil, so also it should be a man who should overthrow the devil. And since man deserved death, so it should be a man who, by dying, vanquishes death. That is why it is written: ‘Thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor. 15:57)”

The human race had been left in bondage to sin, death, and the devil by the Fall. So it was a fitting irony—a kind of poetic justice on God’s part—to use a member of that race to conquer sin, death, and the devil. The tables were turned; the roles were reversed; the victor was vanquished. Satan, who had fallen away from God through pride, was humiliated.

We might still be tempted to ask: If God wanted Christ, as a representative of mankind, to defeat Satan, and Christ had available to him all the power of God, why couldn’t Christ simply crush the devil in combat? Why submit himself to such torment?

In addition to the reasons we’ve already noted, Augustine offered this one: “The devil was to be conquered not by the power of God but by his righteousness. . . . For the devil, through the fault of his own perversity, had become a lover of power and a forsaker and assailant of righteousness. . . . So it pleased God that, in rescuing man from the grasp of the devil, the devil should be vanquished not by power but by righteousness. In the same way men, imitating Christ, should seek to conquer the devil by righteousness, not by power” (On the Trinity 13:13). 

Everlasting glory and grace

In all these ways Augustine and Aquinas concluded that God’s decision to have Christ suffer to save us was good and wise. Aquinas wrote: “It was more fitting that we should be delivered by Christ’s Passion than simply by God’s good will.” Augustine summed it up this way: “Why, then, shouldn’t the death of Christ come to pass? Why shouldn’t an all-powerful God have decided against innumerable other ways to free us in order to choose this death? For in this death, nothing was lost of Christ’s divine nature, and from the human nature he took for himself, how great a benefit was bestowed on us men!” 

The everlasting glory of the way of salvation the Father chose far outweighs the horrors his Son had to endure—and the resulting grace overflows in abundance to us all. 

Therefore, all of us can see in the cross the power and wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:23-24) and, along with Paul, we can boast in the cross because of all that it demonstrates of God's love for us. The compelling response from each of us ought to be gratitude to God in all humility. 

As the Church sings on the Easter Night liturgy:

Ω Listen here  to the whole chant (with words). The chant, the Exsultet – named after its first word “Rejoice!” – is an ancient hymn of praise. It seems to have its origins in the 4th and 5th centuries in the churches of Spain, Italy and France.

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