Author: Deacon Douglas McManaman

A Brief Note on Aquinas, Progress, and Asking Questions

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Aquinas was a genuinely progressive thinker. In fact, he was the “progressive” theologian of the 13th century. Thomas was open to everything that was good and useful for helping to explicate the faith. He exhibited great reverence not only for St. Augustine, but also for “the Philosopher” (Aristotle), as well as for Dionysius, Hilary, Ambrose, Peter Lombard, Maimonides, Avicenna and Averroes, Damascene, Gregory of Nyssa, and so many more. Although he was raised on Augustine, he clearly did not limit himself to Augustine. The irony, however, is that a number of Thomists during my early years in philosophy would limit their sources to St. Thomas Aquinas. In fact, in my 2nd year when we were taught modern philosophy for the first time, the professor would teach us some basic ideas of this or that thinker and then proceed to tell us what was wrong with them and why Aquinas had it right. This, of course, was a terrible way to teach–it was grounded in a flawed starting point. The result he was trying to achieve was for us to limit our thinking, our sources, to St. Thomas, which is a very “anti-Aquinas” way of operating. 

We have much more data at our disposal today than Aquinas had in the 13th century, very important data on human nature thanks to the development of the science of psychology and its various schools of thought, as well as psychiatry, neuroscience, anthropology and sociology, physics, history and various approaches to hermeneutics, etc., not to mention the different kinds of logic that developed in the 20th century, such as mathematical, modal, epistemic, temporal and many valued logics. There is no doubt that Aquinas would have taken a deep dive into all of this and more. 

There is a serious temptation in some people to want to keep things very simple and manageable, i.e., the bible alone, the koran alone, or the Catechism alone, or Aquinas alone. I believe that is why many young university students are drawn to ideological thinking, for it makes life much simpler. They can look at this utterly complex world through the lens of an ideology and everything begins to make sense. Karl Popper addressed this problem and showed how this kind of thinking is problematic–everywhere one looks one can find confirmation for an overarching idea.[1]  Ultimately, this is just lazy mindedness and an inordinate need for security. In short, closed mindedness. We see this pattern of thinking in fundamentalism of all stripes, that is, in Islam, Evangelical Protestantism, Catholicism, left and right wing political ideology, etc. It makes for a very simple existence, but an impoverished one. 

When we study Aquinas for years on end, we do see that out of great reverence he very often bends over backwards to defend the particular authority he leans on, such as the Philosopher (Aristotle) or whoever he cites in his Sed contra. He’s very respectful of these authorities, but not all of his arguments are of the same strength and weight–some just hang from a thread. He has been severely criticized for his arguments for the death penalty–dangerously akin to totalitarian thinking–, and Grisez took issue with what he wrote on desire after the Beatific vision, and in the end it is hard to disagree with Grisez on this. The point I make is that one can indeed argue with Aquinas, and great theologians have been doing so for the past 700 years, but especially in the 20th century. He was a genius of the highest order and a Doctor of the Church and deserves great reverence and consideration, but the notion that he cannot be contradicted and is immune from further development is not quite right. The wonderful thing about Catholic theology and Catholic teaching is that, despite what many traditionalists seem to believe, it continues to develop on the basis of questions that have never been asked. Questions are the driving force behind any science, and Aquinas asked a ridiculously large number of questions, which is why he made so much progress (progressive). But all possible questions have not been exhausted and never will be.

Notes

1. In his Science: Conjectures and Refutations , Popper writes: “These theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refused to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still “un – analysed” and crying aloud for treatment.

The most characteristic element in this situation seemed to me the incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which “verified” the theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasized by their adherents. A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation which revealed the class bias of the paper – – and especially of course in what the paper did not say. The Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified by their “clinical observations”. As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analyzing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, although he had not even seen the child.

Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. “Because of my thousand-fold experience,” he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: “And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold.” What I had in mind was that his previous observations may not have been much sounder than this new one; that each in its turn had been interpreted in the light of ‘previous experience’, and at the same time counted as additional confirmation. What, I asked myself, did it confirm? No more than that a case could be interpreted in the light of the theory.”

Some Thoughts on Sanity, Theology, and Change

Copyright © 2020-2026 by Douglas P. McManaman
All Rights Reserved (revised in 2026)

Deacon Douglas McManaman

We speak of psychosis as a loss of contact with reality, either permanent or temporary; psychotic episodes, for instance, are temporary breaks with reality. There is a sense, however, that being out of touch with “reality” is a matter of degree. I contend that the more we come to understand the inductive nature of knowledge acquisition and its implications, we should begin to see that we are always, to some degree at least, out of touch with reality. All knowledge begins in sensation, as Aristotle maintained (nothing is in the intellect that is not first in the senses); in other words, our knowledge has empirical origins; this means it begins with evidence and proceeds towards the most coherent and consistent explanation of the evidence. Most importantly, however, although our grasp of the real expands continually—or should—, the process of expansion is—or should be—accompanied by an awareness of an ever-decreasing circle in the midst of which we find ourselves, and at the edge of which is a vast and expanding penumbra of obscurity. Leaving aside early or first-episode psychosis (FEP), the genuinely insane are typically unaware that they have lost contact with the real, but the most sane among us have the greatest awareness that in the final analysis, the reality they are in touch with is so much larger than is their current grasp of it—increasingly so—, and they have the greatest awareness that their current worldview, which cannot exceed the limited information they possess about the real, is in large measure the product of what they believe the world to be through the lens of that limited set of information. It is all too easy to confuse our worldview with the world, which we always know only deficiently.

The benefit of coming to a deeper appreciation of statistical reasoning and Bayesian inference [1] is that one begins to realize both how risky our intuitive and formal statistical inferences are, and how precarious are those estimates that are the product of Bayesian inference. Statisticians and research scientists tend to have a deeper appreciation of the risky nature of their (and our) current convictions. Their subject matter is very often data that is too large for us to manage with great precision, such as a population mean, which we can only estimate—along with its standard deviation—, on the basis of a sample. The estimate, however, is typically an interval, and the wider the interval, the greater our confidence; the lesser our confidence level, the narrower and more precise that interval becomes. In other words, the more precise and thus more useful our estimates, the greater their vulnerability to error (i.e., we estimate the house for sale down the road to be between $850,000 – $900,000 vs. between $100 and 6 million. The latter is more certain, but less useful). Perhaps this is why good scientists tend not to speak with a rhetoric of high confidence, especially when our truth claims bear upon matters of precision. Only when matters become more general—and perhaps less useful—is greater confidence warranted. 

Moreover, Bayesian inference should bring us to a greater awareness of the role that experience plays in knowledge acquisition.[2] The probability of a hypothesis given the evidence [p(H|E)] leaves us with a space of uncertainty (i.e., 49% or 70%), and such inference depends upon a knowledge of base rates (for example, 48.2% of all Americans age 15+ are married, while 51.8% are not) and likelihoods (i.e., the probability that a couple has children given that they are married is 90%). However, when we estimate the probability of a belief given certain pieces of evidence, we tend to ignore base rates (prior ratios), and so our estimates that are the product of intuitive reasoning are often seriously mistaken—hence, we ought not to trust our intuitive probability estimates. The most important implication of Bayesian inference, however, is the effect that experience has on our posterior probabilities: new information changes them. And so, once again, we are reminded not to be too confident in what we claim to “know”—the very fact that new information that affects our base rates demands that we continually update our estimates, not to mention recognize them as estimates in the first place, and not “knowledge” per se.[3]

Our day to day reasoning, however, is not fundamentally mathematical, that is, we do not typically perform mathematical calculations on the basis of prior probabilities; rather, we reason on the basis of plausible data, not probabilities, and the reasoning is not calculative, but comparative. Sometimes what is improbable, i.e., that Jack was hit by a city bus, is moderately plausible given the plausibility indexes of our current data (witness statements, or a statement from the victim, or other sources, etc.), and often a number of competing estimates are equally plausible.[4]

In terms of plausible reasoning, all we ever have at any one time are limited sets of data formulated in propositions having a degree of plausibility, either minimal, moderate, high, etc., that is, a less than certain character. The entire set of data at our disposal is typically overabundant and inconsistent. Indeed, there are many propositions in our data set the truth of which we can be certain and from which we can deduce a great deal, rendering explicit what was previously implicit.[5] There are, however, a myriad of theses that are less than certain. The task of sound reasoning is to bring maximal consistency to this set of data.

What is particularly interesting to note is that bringing maximal consistency does not guarantee that in the end we possess the truth. What we have at best is the most plausible estimate given the information currently available. New information very often alters the consistency of our plausibilistically favored subsets of data bearing upon specific matters, with the result that a new estimate is in order. This is why there is a great deal of “mind-changing” in the sciences—we just don’t know whether or not we have enough information at any one time to resolve a particular question with complete certitude. It seems, in fact, that we are always information deficient.

And so, once again, the worldview that results from our current set of information is an ever changing one, that is, an evolving worldview. It has always been a deficient worldview, because the information on the basis of which it is established at any given time is deficient. Even the little that we have at our disposal is a product of interpretation, and our interpretation is once again made up of risky inferences. As Feynman says of science, it is an ever-expanding frontier of ignorance. Similarly, our day to day knowing is precisely an ever expanding frontier of ignorance: the more we come to know about the world we live in, the more we should realize just how much more we did not know than we previously thought there was to know. With every new discovery comes a manifold of new questions, and new questions open up new and unexplored avenues that, when explored, provide new information that very often upsets the consistency of what we thought was a well-established conceptual framework, causing us to adjust our estimates by discarding data inconsistent with more plausible data in order to establish a different and plausibilistically favored subset of data from which a better and more accurate worldview may arise. Moreover, new information may inadvertently strengthen a position we’ve held for a time; however, a new and maximally plausible estimate is no guarantee that we are any closer to the truth—a previous but now plausibilistically less favored estimate may in fact be true, and time may reveal that. In other words, the most current estimate is not necessarily closer to the truth. That is why learning is very often an oscillating process. If a position or estimate is true, it is not necessarily the case that newer information will corroborate it; we may be taken further away from the truth, only to return to it at a later date. Progress, in other words, is not necessarily unidirectional.

What this implies is that we are always, in a manner of speaking, out of touch with reality, for reality is so much larger, inconceivably larger, than our current grasp of it, and the frontier of our ignorance is ever expanding. And although we are always relatively out of touch with the real, at least we can know that we are always relatively out of touch with it. That, I contend, is what distinguishes the sane from the insane—the insane are out of touch and have no awareness of the fact. I dare say, however, that most people believe their grasp of reality to be far more comprehensive that it can possibly be, for many speak with a rhetoric of certainty that assumes a knowledge that is just not humanly possible on a large number of issues, given the little time invested in those matters. What I am suggesting is that most people have a greater resemblance to the insane than they do to the genuinely sane; the former tend to resist this never-ending learning process that requires adjusting our estimates in the light of new information. The intellectual, for example, who works exclusively in the realm of ideas, who has little interest in testing those ideas before they are imposed on a society, has a greater resemblance to the insane than the sane, which is likely why intellectuals who succeed in having their untested albeit interesting ideas implemented on a wider social scale usually end up costing the taxpayer a great deal. 

One irony in all of this is that a great deal of disordered confidence and resistance of the learning process is found within that discipline whose object is the mystery par excellence, namely the unutterable mystery of God. Many who are fond of theology fail to appreciate just how much the logic of the scientific method is involved in this more general science. Moral philosophy does not escape this logic, nor is this logic foreign to biblical exegesis and the study of Scripture, and thus by extension, moral theology or any other branch of sacred theology. Moral reasoning follows much the same law of complementarity that we encounter in statistics: the more universal or general the discourse, the greater the certainty, but as we move to greater precision, vulnerability to error increases. A fine example of this is Germain Grisez’s Difficult Moral Questions (Franciscan Press, 1997). That volume was the product of years of thinking about principles and their application to specific moral problems that have arisen as a result of new circumstances. On a number of occasions, I had the privilege of observing Joseph Boyle’s uncertainty as he pondered on the edge of the frontiers of a difficult moral problem. He refused to overstate his case, and he was all too aware that he may not have in his possession enough rational data necessary to satisfactorily work out the problem which preoccupied him at the time; moreover, these analytical moral philosophers (Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, etc.) have, over the years, changed their position on a number of important issues, thanks to more thought, dialogue, and discussion. Most especially, we see the same inductive/investigative process in the area of biblical studies/exegesis. With new historical data, what was once thought to be the case is now relegated to a lower level of plausibility while a more plausible hypothesis takes top spot. 

Canon lawyers working on marriage tribunals, for example, judging cases on a team of three, will testify that some cases are easy while others are very difficult; the latter are often resolved with a 2:1 ratio (the one outvoted has to humbly accept the majority decision, but after reviewing the reasons given will often see what was not noticed earlier). Those on the outside, unfamiliar with this process–and it is a process–, tend to have a difficult time appreciating the subtleties of these matters. Unlike judges who regularly work on such cases, most people have not encountered such intricate and murky situations, permeated as they are with uncertainty. A view from the “inside”–whether the subject matter is politics or law, etc.–is very different from a view from the “outside”, and many on the outside are too emotionally vested to acknowledge their own deficiency of information and will proceed to dogmatically spout off on all sorts of issues they know very little about.

Pastoral approaches to spiritual direction magnify this logic even further. A good pastor of souls must be able to pick up subtle clues in the words, gestures, and reactions of the directee, clues on the basis of which one may rapidly inference to information needed to uncover the best way to communicate important principles and insights that cannot be effectively imparted in the same way to everyone. A pastor of souls, like a good teacher, is one who is capable of detecting clues that give evidence of conditions within a person that render him/her temporarily incapable of understanding certain things (as well as conditions that make possible a certain understanding). Moreover, there is a distinction between a pastor of souls and a moral theologian. It is certainly possible for a person to be both, but a theologian without a good pastoral sensibility, that is, without a mind for contingent factors and other clues and who perhaps loves moral problems more than people, is not someone who should be providing spiritual direction. To be avoided are the two extremes of the easy going nonchalant who confuses a pastoral sense with moral permissiveness on the one hand, and the hard-nosed dogmatist who has no sense of the complexities of the human person on the other.

There’s no warrant for dogmatism here; what appears to be the “truth” at one time is often eventually discovered to be a rather deficient position or a position in need of further distinction. In the end, what this suggests is the need for a spirit of greater humility; it suggests the need for constant dialogue and a listening posture. But this is precisely the posture lacking in a large sector of our society, including our Church, that is, among the passionately conservative or traditional, among many of the clergy (both “liberal” and “conservative”), as well as the university environment, among professors of certain non-scientific disciplines, etc. What makes these epistemic matters more difficult is the fact that character, psychology, and mood play a significant role in knowledge acquisition. Character plays a fundamental role in our ability to make moral distinctions, among other things—people will not see what it is they are unwilling to see or are not emotionally ready to see. Character is a more permanent epistemic condition, while mood is temporary. Both, however, can beget blind spots.

End Notes

1. Bayesian inference seeks to estimate the probability of a belief or hypothesis given certain pieces of evidence. Hypothesis testing, on the other hand, seeks to determine the probability of evidence given a particular belief or hypothesis (a null or alternative hypothesis).

2. The formula for Bayes Theorem is: p(H|E) = p(H)p(E|H)/p(H)p(E|H) + p(~H)p(E|~H)

3. We typically confuse the p(E|H) with p(H|E). For example, over the years I have found that school administrators often assume that since the likelihood that a good teacher interviews well is over 90%, it follows that this or that person just interviewed is a good teacher (90% probability), since she interviewed very well. This conclusion, however, is invalid. There is a real distinction between 1) the probability that a person interviews well given that she is a good teacher [p(E|H)], and 2) the probability that this person is a good teacher given that she interviews well [p(H|E). For the sake of argument, let it be the case that 90% of good teachers interview well–that’s not an unreasonable assumption. Furthermore, with some experience in education, it soon becomes evident that the majority of a typical staff of teachers are not great teachers–great teachers are usually in the minority, and administrators desperately want to hang on to such people when they discover them (let us say 20% are hard-working, self-motivated, reliable, positive, love their subject matter and their students, and are not in it merely for the perks, etc.). And let us estimate that the likelihood that a “not so great” teacher will interview well is 40%. Given these numbers, the probability that this person is a good teacher given that he/she interviewed very well is only 36% (0.2 x 0.9/0.2 x 0.9 + 0.8 x 0.4 = 0.36). Hence, the reason administrators, much to their dismay, continue to hire the wrong people. Bayesian inference requires that we pay attention to how our prior probabilities change with the addition of new evidence. 

Consider as well how judgment of character might look from a Bayesian point of view. I see a person for a relatively short period of time. I am not aware of this at the time, but he’s going through chemotherapy treatments, which can make it much easier for a person to behave in a way that is relatively uncharacteristic. But during this relatively small period of time, he gives evidence of undesirable character. A person of good character might give evidence to the contrary about 5% of the time overall, but within a relatively limited period of time, he might give evidence to the contrary about 50% of that time period. After a while, it might average out to about 5% (much like scoring birdies for the first four holes in a game of golf, only to average out to 102 by the end of 18 holes). More time and experience allow us to change our prior ratios, that is, our base rates. A 1:1 ratio at the start of an investigation may become a 1:20 ratio by the end. Given a likelihood ratio 90:5 (a 90% likelihood that a person of bad character will give evidence consistent with it, and a 5% likelihood that a person of good character will give evidence to the contrary), a judgment that this person is of undesirable character can go from a 95% probability (highly probable) to 47% (i.e., the inference is probably wrong). The problem is that we typically focus our attention exclusively on the likelihoods [p(E|H)] and we neglect the incompleteness of our base rate information, that is, possible background knowledge that can change our posterior probabilities. 

4. It is not easy to explain the difference between Bayesian reasoning and plausibility reasoning. The former is quantitative and calculative, while plausibility is qualitative and comparative. Nicholas Rescher writes: “On the basis of logic and probability theory one cannot tell what may reasonably be accepted in the face of imperfect, indeed conflicting data. By contrast, the mechanisms of plausibility theory are designed to provide a basis on which it becomes possible to effect a transition of this nature–a move from the reliability of sources to the plausibility of their declarations. In providing a tool for handling cognitive dissonance, plausibility theory affords a reasonable basis for discriminating between the inferences which can and cannot be drawn from the inconsistent data-base yielded by the conflicting reports of imperfect sources. Accordingly, plausibility is intended to reflect an index of what reasonable people would–and should–agree on, given the relevant information.” Plausible Reasoning: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Plausibilistic Inference. The Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1976, pp. 4-5.

5. This is particularly the case when it comes to probabilities and statistics. At the very least we can say that if our numbers are correct–and we cannot always be sure–, then we are certain that the interval is between # (lower limit) and # (upper limit). Moreover, I have argued elsewhere that on the most important matters, certainty is much easier to achieve. For example, the fundamental principles of the natural moral law (intelligible human goods) are naturally known, as well as the most general precepts of natural law. Indeed, they are imperfectly understood and inconsistently applied by most people, and of course much better understood by analytical moral thinkers who offer tentative estimates on the most difficult moral matters. And Leibniz has shown that the most important knowledge of all, namely the knowledge that God exists, is so simple that it is easily overlooked by most people: “If the necessary being is possible, then the necessary being exists” (because the necessary being cannot not exist, otherwise it is not the necessary being, but a contingent being). On matters somewhat less important, however, we are almost always information deficient. This epistemic state of affairs demands a posture of constant readiness to listen, to dialogue, to be corrected, one that is certainly not very widespread today, even in environments in which this openness to learning is reasonably expected to abound, namely the university environment. 

O Mavros Christos (The Black Christ)

Deacon Doug McManaman

I was inspired to write this Icon (O Mavros Christos/The Black Christ) while reading James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree. It was Rev. David McClearly who, soon after we met at Southlake hospital in Newmarket, ON, suggested I read this book. At the same time I recommended that he read G. Studdert Kennedy, Episcopalian chaplain to the British Army during WWI—specifically his book The Hardest Part. One of Studdert Kennedy’s great poems is entitled Indifference:

When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary;
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.
When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed Him by.
They would not hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die;
For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.
Still Jesus cried, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,”
And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through and through;
The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall, and cried for Calvary.

This poem prepared me for the impact that James Cone’s book was going to have on me. It was one of the most deeply moving books in theology that I had read up to this point in my life. It left me speechless on a number of occasions. He writes:  

The lynching tree is a metaphor for white America’s crucifixion of black people. It is the window that best reveals the religious meaning of the cross in our land. In this sense, black people are Christ figures, not because they wanted to suffer but because they had no choice. Just as Jesus had no choice in his journey to Calvary, so black people had no choice about being lynched. The evil forces of the Roman state and of white supremacy in America willed it. Yet, God took the evil of the cross and the lynching tree and transformed them both into the triumphant beauty of the divine. If America has the courage to confront the great sin and ongoing legacy of white supremacy with repentance and reparation, there is hope “beyond tragedy”. 

I’ve studied iconography for many years now, and I knew that I wanted to “write” an icon of a black Christ–after all, Jesus was not white. But most importantly, the fundamental reason I have for this idea is that the moral and spiritual life of a believer is about becoming the unique Christ, which Christ can be in you individually, in me individually. When you are the person Christ intends you to be, when it is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you (Gal 2, 20), then Christ appears in this world uniquely, through you. No one can be that unique Christ except you. And when you are that, you have a beauty that no one else can possess. There is a beauty that only you can bring the world. And so there is a “black Christ”, an Asian Christ, an Indigenous Christ, a Caucasian Christ, etc. I also knew I wanted a Christ with dreads. The symbolism of dreadlocks is rich and broad. It symbolizes connection to the divine, resistance against oppression; it is a symbol of African heritage and identity, and it became an emblem of resistance against colonial oppression. Of course, dreadlocks are an ancient symbol of wisdom and spiritual insight. Also, I wanted to make sure to include a “lynching tree” in the background. I cannot explain this better than Cone himself who writes:

As I see it, the lynching tree frees the cross from the false pieties of well-meaning Christians. When we see the crucifixion as a first-century lynching, we are confronted by the reenactment of Christ’s suffering in the blood-soaked history of African Americans. Thus, the lynching tree reveals the true religious meaning of the cross for American Christians today. The cross needs the lynching tree to remind Americans of the reality of suffering–to keep the cross from becoming a symbol of abstract, sentimental piety. …Yet the lynching tree also needs the cross, without which it becomes simply an abomination. It is the cross that points in the direction of hope, the confidence that there is a dimension to life beyond the reach of the oppressor. “Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more (Lk 12, 4). 

I would like to emphasize, however, that the tragedy of Good Friday was transformed into the beauty of the divine light, and thus the same is true of the lynching tree. Cone writes: 

Though the pain of Jesus’ cross was real, there was also joy and beauty in his cross. This is the great theological paradox that makes the cross impossible to embrace unless one is standing in solidarity with those who are powerless. God’s loving solidarity can transform ugliness–whether Jesus on the cross or a lynched black victim–into beauty, into God’s liberating presence. Through the powerful imagination of faith, we can discover the “terrible beauty” of the cross and the “tragic beauty” of the lynching tree. 

The following are pictures of the stages of development that this icon went through. The first stage of the writing of an icon is the preparation of the sketch and transferring it onto the gessoed surface of a poplar wood board. The gold leaf is then applied to the clay surface. 

The first layer in the painting process is roskrysh, which is followed by first lines, and then the first highlight. After the first highlight, one applies the first float, which dampens the brightness of the highlight. After the first float, we apply a second highlight, followed by a second float, a third highlight followed by a third float, and finally the second lines. The icon then sits for two weeks to dry before olipha (applying linseed oil). 

Notes for the icon Lynching treeDownload

A Reflection on Beauty in Time

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Ever since I retired, I’ve had more time to reflect upon my years as a teacher, and my years of friendship with some of my colleagues, and my good friends. Sometimes I have to drive to a nearby town for an eye appointment, and I’ll have to drive right past the school at which I taught for the past 20 years, and when I do so, I experience a certain euphoria, all as a result of an influx of various memories. 

So much has been forgotten, so many students that have passed through my classroom, the details of so many days, etc., and although I do remember many things, I do think I’ve forgotten more than I remember. But there is a joy there that I experience when I am brought back to that place, among other places.

My good friend is a retired priest, but I often think of my last 30 years with him, visiting him when he was stationed at this or that parish, and then after I was ordained in 2008 I could give him a break from preaching. A teaching colleague started to join me on these weekend visits; he’d cook, I’d preach, and our friend would smoke cigarettes and relax. Those were great memories. And they’re gone.  

I am acutely aware that there was something beautiful in those moments, something I miss, and something I long to recover, to experience again. And I believe this is the root of tradition, which is an attempt to make the past present once again. We believe that doing something the same way, repeating an action, making it ritual, like singing happy birthday and blowing out candles, or opening presents on Christmas morning and having turkey in the evening, allows us to experience once again what we experienced in the past, which now, in the present, we long for. We long to connect to that past, to the people who perhaps are no longer with us. 

But it begins with seeing something in the past that we didn’t quite see back then, or were not explicitly aware of at the time. It seems that time strips away some of the dross of our experiences and leaves us with a memory that is purified, and something now radiates. 

I became more and more aware of this the older I got. I began to realize that this beauty that I saw when looking back, was there at the time, when it was not past, but present, but something prevented me from seeing it at the time, or appreciating it. It was buried underneath a host of baggage–perhaps stress, anxiety, preoccupation with what needs to be done at the moment, marking tests or creating exams, etc. What this means is that today, in the present moment, that element, that nugget of beauty that I will appreciate and see clearly 10 or so years from now (looking back and recalling this present moment), is here now, at this moment. 

So, the question is: Is there a way for me to become aware of it now, so that I can delight in it now, rather than 20 years from now? And so a few years ago I began to really look for it in the present, to look for this element, this beauty, that I know I will see in retrospect.

So I know that one day I’m going to look back and remember teaching Confirmation to these kids, in the church basement either at St Lawrence the Martyr, or Blessed Trinity, or Sacred Heart in Uxbridge, taking their questions, questioning them, and I’m going to miss those moments, so, now, when I am teaching these classes, I am becoming more aware of that hidden element in the here and now. Same with preaching. One day I won’t be preaching anymore, but I’ll recall those times when I was preaching at this Church or that Church, and I’ll see something, something very memorable. I visit the hospitals often, at least once a week. Someday I might be a patient at Southlake hospital, and I’ll recall the years when I’d walk the halls and visit the patients, and I know I will long for those moments again, and I am aware of that now when I am in the hospital visiting patients, walking the halls and stairwells, making my way to their rooms. It’s hard to be attuned to this when we are young, because the young mind is just not focused on the present moment, but on the future. 

And yet, the moments keep on drifting into the past. I am aware that when I discern that element in the present moment, I will often try to grasp on to it and keep it, but I can’t do it. It still drifts into the past. And it is always sad to see it drift away like that. 

And yet, for God, nothing is past. God is the eternal present. So, does that mean when we die and enter into his rest, that all those moments will be recovered in some way? That we will experience the accumulated joy of each one of those moments, in the eternal present? 

I think so. I am quite convinced that this is part of the joy of heaven. We are not to experience the fullness of that joy here, it will always escape our attempts to capture it, but it will be returned to us one hundredfold later on, in eternity. 

Existence in time is a constant dying, drifting into the non-existent past. But Christ conquered death; he rose from the dead, so existence in time is a constant dying, each moment of which will rise again, in glory. Tradition seeks to recover the past, to make it present again, like the Mass, which actually does make present the sacrifice of Calvary. But in heaven, what tradition aims to achieve will be achieved. The joy of heaven will include the joys of each present moment of our existence, and so the deaths of each moment are not permanent; we can look at each moment and instead of saying “good-bye”, we can say: “see you again soon”. 

Now, the gospel reading for the 2nd Sunday of Lent, was the Transfiguration. You know it well, so I’m not going to read it, but I have always been struck by what Peter says there: 

Rabbi, it is good that we are here!
Let us make three tents:
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

And every time I read that, I think of Father Frank Kelly, a homily that he gave way back in the early 90s, and I think it was when we came home from a retreat in New Jersey, we took a bunch of students, and we had Mass on our return. And the translation at that time was: “It is wonderful for us to be here”. That’s a better translation than what we have now.

The Greek word here is not “good” as in “It is good to be here”. The Greek word is kalon. It is kalon for us to be here. 

Aristotle used that word kalon in his Nicomachean Ethics. The word kalon is derived from kaleo, which means attractive, and it is a word used in the context of aesthetics, the study of art and the beautiful. The kalon in Aristotle is best translated as the morally beautiful. 

The gospel really should read: “It is beautiful for us to be here”, or “morally beautiful to be here”. The beauty is the moral atmosphere. This is an experience of beauty, the divine beauty. And it is an aesthetic experience that Peter, James, and John want to perpetuate. They want to keep it from drifting into the past.

Moses and Elijah, they are from the past, but they are present, in the present moment of the Transfiguration, contributing to its beauty; they represent salvation history before Christ. What is past is made present, in the here and now, through Christ. 

God the Son joined a human nature to himself. The eternal, who is Beauty Itself, has entered into time and joined himself to the matter of the universe. Now, Pope John Paul II said often, in joining a human nature, God the Son joined himself as it were to every human being. He is present to every human person. Those who have the theological virtue of faith, those who have allowed Christ the king to reign in their lives, are given the light of grace, the light of faith. They have become aware of that deep and hidden presence, the presence of God the Son within the interior of the soul. That’s the kalon that exists at every moment, within every moment, in the lives of the faithful. That element of beauty that we see when looking back at things that have past is the kalon of the divine presence, stripped of the dross that acted as a distraction at the time. Our life is transfigured in Christ, right now, but there is so much that eclipses the radiance that the present moment contains. Later on, our memories of these events unveil the kalon so that we have a minor transfiguration experience.

To find that experience in the present, underneath the current dross that clouds it, we need to learn to be present. To be present is to be in the present. And to be present is a skill. It is interesting how the two words are akin: present and presence. To be present to another is to be in the presence of another, to be aware of their presence–not just their position in space. To be in the here and now, focused on the person before us. It is easy to be focused on a great person, but being present to the lowest of the low, that’s a skill. It requires an ability to see something in that person that is well disguised. Mother Teresa always spoke of the poor as Jesus’ disguise. 

Now, the Greeks distinguish two kinds of time: chronos time and kairos time. Kairos is used over 80 times in the New Testament, and it refers to a season, such as harvest time. Chronos time is measured time, quantified into an hour, or a minute. Chronos time moves outside of us. The clock is ticking. The present moment, the now, is here instantaneously and then quickly drifts into the past, always escaping us. 

However, we can be “within time”, that is, in time. We can move in it. If we move in it, then it is always now. As an analogy: think of a spacecraft. If we are outside the spacecraft, it zooms by us. If we are inside the spacecraft, we move along with it. Kairos time is time that we are in, and so it is always present. 

But, chronos time is real, and it makes demands on us. We have an appointment and so we have to move on. Peter, James, and John got a taste of the kairos time that is in heaven, but chronos time made demands on them. The experience of the transfiguration came to an end and they had to come down from the mountain. 

Chronos time and kairos time are simultaneous. Chronos time says I have an appointment at 10 o’clock, so I have to take leave of my friends and make my way there. But when I get to the doctor’s office, I have to be present to the doctor, pay attention to him, be a presence to him and allow him to be a presence to me. But, even the trip to the doctors, the drive, or the bus ride, is not meant to be pure chronos. I must be present to the beauty of the present moment. The view outside the window, or to the people on the subway, the walk to the doctor’s office, or whatever. 

God is outside of time, not subject to the passing of time, but time exists, and God is intimately present within all that exists, as the First Cause of all that exists. God, who is Beauty Itself, is present in each moment of time.

And my students feel it. The first assignment that I give to my Niagara University students in January is to have them write out a short essay on how it is they got to where they are now, that is, how they got to teachers college. Reading their personal stories of how they got to this point is really an exhilarating experience. Their stories are so unique and so rich in content, and there is often some hero in their lives, either their parents, who came to Canada under adverse circumstances but struggled and overcame these obstacles through faith, trust in God, and hard work, or a great and unknown teacher in their lives who had a profound influence on the student as a result of the way that teacher related to her students, with great patience and perseverance, or some priest in their lives. etc. Many of them have very positive memories of their school years. Each story from each student is so different, but each one is usually so uplifting and exhilarating. And it is so easy to see the hand of divine providence in their lives, leading them to where they are now. 

Now, it is amazing how many of these prospective teachers drifted from the faith, but returned, and it was the result of memories that were gradually uncovered, a feeling like something was lost, a world, and they rediscovered it. 

The transfiguration was really a gift given to Peter, James, and John, to strengthen them for the impending trauma of Christ’s passion, and the memories we create for our students, for young people in the parish, are ordered to the same end, to strengthen them for the impending sufferings and difficulties and traumas that await them.  

It is a ministry ordered to the creation of memories. I was going over these ideas with a patient of mine at the hospital, a young lady who suffers from clinical depression. I’ve been visiting her for many years now. Certain months of the year are very difficult for her. But I was telling her about the themes of this retreat.

I did ask her if she has any memories that bring her a sense of peace, and she said she had very few if any. And of course, she suffers from depression. When I spoke of this, she was reminded of Erik Erickson, the final stage of psychosocial development, the stage of integrity vs despair. Now, it is not quite the same in her case, because the stage of despair results from the fact that one sees the choices that one has made, and the despair is the result of those bad choices. Clinical depression is not something that results from bad moral choices. It is a brain disease. But I did give her something to think about. This is what I said:

We believe that God the Son joined a human nature and entered into human suffering. In joining himself to every man, he is especially present in the depths of our suffering and darkness. We don’t suffer alone, although it may often feel that we do. But we don’t. And this lady has a special cross to bear, as do all those who suffer from clinical depression. 

And they must feel like they’ve been ripped off terribly. Others have their health, both mental and physical, they are privileged, brought up in a family that is well off, they travel and they’ve gone to university, they’re working. Life is tremendous. And here she is, this girl, in and out of mental health wards all her life. Life seems very unfair. But of course, our God is a God of justice. He balances the scales, and the divine justice has been revealed as the divine mercy. I told her that when you stand before God at the end of your life, and you see and grasp the meaning of your entire life from God’s point of view, that is, when you see your life in the light of Christ and the paschal mystery, and you reflect on the prospect of doing it all again, you will not want to change anything. She reacted to that and said she just cannot imagine that and doubts very much that she would not want anything changed. Nevertheless, that is the case, because she will see that Christ was present all along in the depths of that suffering, that her depression was a special sharing in the mental anguish of Christ that he endured throughout his life, especially on Holy Thursday night. She will see how her suffering has imprinted on her the image of the suffering Christ, and friendships are based on common qualities, and she’ll see how much her life has in common with Christ’s life, unlike the life of prosperity and privilege. She can’t see that now, but she will in eternity. But, she can begin to look now, to reflect upon her life in that light and perhaps begin to see it, begin to discover the suffering Christ in the midst of that darkness.

But the suffering involved in clinical depression is deep, but the Lord is there nonetheless. The specific cross given to such a person may involve being unable to detect the peace of his presence at any level, but he is there nevertheless, and one day this person will see it and delight in it, and see what it has done for her, how that suffering has configured her to the beautiful image of Christ crucified. And so the scales will be balanced in her favor.

A Season of Irony

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Years ago I was struck by something Gregory of Nyssa wrote in a Sermon on the Beatitudes: 

What more humble for the King of creation than to share in our poor nature? The Ruler of rulers, the Lord of lords puts on voluntarily the garb of servitude. The Judge of all things becomes a subject of governors; the Lord of creation dwells in a cave; He who holds the universe in His hands finds no place in the inn, but is cast aside into the manger of irrational beasts. The perfectly Pure accepts the filth of human nature, and after going through all our poverty passes on to the experience of death. …Life tastes death; the Judge is brought to judgement; the Lord of the life of all creatures is sentenced by the judge; the King of all heavenly powers does not push aside the hands of the executioners (Sermon 1, The Beatitudes).

Notice the irony in this. Christmas, the birth of Christ, is a season of irony. For this reason, it is a season of humour; for it is irony that makes us laugh. That’s what makes good comedians, namely, an ability to see and make explicit the irony in everyday situations. Consider the nick names kids give one another; they are often very funny because they are ironic: the tall kid is called ‘shorty’, the short one is called stretch, the weak and skinny kid is ‘hercules’, and they called me “slim”.   

If we stand back and think about the irony in the mystery of the Incarnation, it is rather funny. God, who is all powerful, immaterial, and indestructible, becomes flesh; God, who is eternal, is born in time; God, who is all powerful and independent, becomes a weak and vulnerable baby dependent upon a mother and father; God who is the judge of all is judged by a mere human being; God who is Life Itself dies on a cross. This is irony, and there is joyful humour in this. It is as if God is playing a joke on us, one serious to be sure, but a joke nonetheless–and it is serious because love is serious. 

The word ‘humor’ comes from the Latin humous, which means soil or dirt. The word ‘human’ is also derived from the same root, because we came from dust and to dust we shall return. And the word ‘humility’ has the same origin, for the humble know they are dust and ashes and they have their feet planted firmly on the ground–they do not walk high and mighty; they realize they are just flesh and blood and are everywhere prone to error. These three words (human, humility, humour) are clearly related. The more humble you are, the more human you are, and the more you are able to laugh, especially at yourself.  

This is a problem with our notion of holiness. In movies, saints are almost always depicted as overly serious, heavy, not disposed to laughter, as if laughter is offensive to God. But a truly holy person sees the irony in life in light of the divine irony, which is why truly holy people laugh a lot. Above all, they can laugh at themselves, because they take themselves lightly. I always emphasize to couples taking Marriage Prep that being able to laugh at yourself and taking yourself lightly is the key to conflict resolution–those who cannot laugh at themselves, who take themselves too seriously, will indeed have marital difficulties. 

God is joy itself, and you and I are called to enter into that joy, to enter into the divine humour. Grace gives us the eyes to see life’s irony so that we can begin to laugh with God. We cannot laugh, however, if we are afraid, and there is a great deal of fear in people’s lives. Inordinate fear can cause us to do things that only make a mess out of our lives and bring chaos to the lives of others. Human beings are limited by matter, by flesh and blood. Our abilities and our knowledge in particular are terribly limited. When we experience those limits, we typically begin to fear, because we realize there is very little that is in our control, and then we are tempted to make choices that are contrary to the limits that the moral law imposes upon us. In other words, we are tempted to sin, to take matters into our own hands. But this is where we have to trust; for the spiritual life is about learning to trust and to fear less and less. Christians have a unique advantage here, because we have the example of divine irony: God is so powerful that he can defeat the one enemy that man could not hope to defeat, namely sin and death, and he does so not through power, but weakness: the weakness of a child, the weakness of poverty, the weakness of a bad reputation (as a result of sharing table fellowship with tax collectors, sinners, and prostitutes), and the weakness of death on a cross. He rose from the dead. And he gives us his very self under the appearance of ordinary bread–more irony; God, who is extraordinary, allows himself to be consumed under the appearance of ordinary bread, in order to strengthen us, in order to dwell within us. God, who cannot be contained, allows us to contain him. So why are we afraid? “If God is for us, who can be against us (Rm 8, 31). 

Finally, the angel says to Joseph in a dream: “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. The child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit”. Why in a dream? The reason is that when we are sleeping, we are no longer in control. And if we are not in control, we cannot screw things up. We are most disposed to listen when we are not in control. And that’s why God often does speak to us in dreams. But the message in this is that we must learn to relinquish control, more and more, when we are not sleeping, but awake. The more we relinquish control and allow God to be God, the more we will see miracles. We see so few miracles because we insist on managing things ourselves, managing other people, and driving them away in the process. But the more we learn to trust him and listen in silence, the more we will hear him speak to us, and like Joseph, we will know what to do, where to go, and how to get there.

Thoughts on God as Pure Act of Being and Atheism

Deacon D. McManaman

God is pure act of existence. But what does this mean?  I can look at you and form a concept, an idea of what you are. In other words, I grasp something of your nature, i.e., you are a human kind of being, you have size and affective qualities, you have certain abilities and potentialities very similar and different from other kinds of beings. But I also apprehend that you exist, which is a different apprehension than the first (the apprehension of the kind of being you are). Your existence is intelligible, but I cannot form a concept of it–as I can form a concept of your nature, the kind of person you are. You are a certain kind of being that “has an act of existence”, but existence does not belong to your nature. Existence is an “act” that you have, while “human”, for example, is “what” you are (not what you have). The key point here is that your existence is not a concept; it is, nonetheless, intelligible. 

God is not a composite of essence and existence (as are you), rather, his essence is to exist. He does not “have” existence; rather, he is his own act of existing. And so God is intelligible, but we cannot form a concept or idea of God. And because God is pure act of existence, he is pure goodness and beauty, because goodness and beauty are properties of being. 

And so we need to be careful with confusing the worship of God with the worship of a conceptual framework. As pure act of being, God is intimately present to whatever has existence; God is more intimately present to you than you are to you. Being is the most interior aspect of a thing, and so God, who is the first existential and preservative cause of your being, is, of all that is within you, the most interior. How you relate to God, who is goodness itself and beauty itself, is not always clear to you, certainly not immediately clear. It becomes increasingly manifest in your dealings with other goods, such as human goods or human persons. 

The atheist typically rejects a conceptual framework, as opposed to God himself. Even the use of “himself” is dangerous because it brings God into a conceptual circle. This is not to say that it is false, but it can be misleading. God is in many ways “himself” and “herself” and infinitely more, while at the same time God is absolutely simple, for there is nothing simpler than “being itself”. 

And so when someone says he or she is an “atheist”, we have to ask what that means precisely. It very often does not mean that God is rejected–especially if the atheist has a degree of wisdom. It is usually a conceptual framework that is rejected, for a variety of reasons. The good news is that God is not a concept. God is intelligible, infinitely knowable, and incomprehensible. We believe he revealed himself in history, and this is where the construction of an elaborate conceptual framework begins, but this religious conceptual frame of mind, although not necessarily false, is always subject to reform and constant editing. God, however, is always infinitely larger than this religious conceptual framework. That is why openness to and dialogue with other religions and denominations is of the utmost importance. 

Fear and Primitive Reasoning

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God (Is 35, 4)

So much of what goes wrong in the world has its roots in fear. And there is so much about this world today that gives rise to fear; but this life is really about learning to depend upon God, that is, learning to fear less (fearless), and the way to do that is first to become increasingly aware that independence is relative and ultimately an illusion, and that we depend on God ultimately, and second to actually begin to rely on God. We certainly depend on one another, but ultimately everyone depends on God. And the more we surrender our lives to God, the more we learn through our own experience that God really is intimately involved in everything that happens to us and that nothing happens outside of his providential control. However, although human beings really do make a mess out of their lives when they take matters into their own hands instead of relying on God, they are still wrapped up and surrounded by God’s providence.  

My spiritual director would always say to me: “Fear is useless, what is needed is trust”. And fear is useless, at least fear without trust, because we all experience our radical limitations, but without trust we are tempted to cross those limits, that is, moral limits, and then we do things that we know to be wrong, like lying under oath, or stealing, or undermining the reputation of another, plotting to bring others down, etc. We make every effort to create an environment that is safe for ourselves, and this soon becomes a machination process in which we are willing to sideline those who get in our way. That injustice generates resentment in others, and such wounds can stay with a person all throughout his or her life. And soon everybody is carrying around a soul riddled with bullet holes, and the result is that we only think of ourselves, sort of like having a toothache–you can’t think of anything other than your own pain. 

But God does allow suffering into our lives. He does not impose it on us, but He does allow it; for suffering is the opportunity God gives us to depend on Him, to trust Him more fully, to place ourselves in His hands. When we do, we can be assured that he will act, but God does tend to “take his time”, not our time. And so, we have to be patient. That’s the problem with living in a fast-paced society–we are disposed to want things done quickly, and that just does not happen with God. The reason is that love is patient, and God is love, and he calls us to be patient: “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains” (Jm 5, 7).  Suffering and moments of darkness are symbolized here by the image of early and late rains–there is no “precious fruit of the earth” without that suffering. 

In my experience, most people, even religious people, believe that suffering, hardship, and struggles are anomalies. Religious people in particular often assume that if we have a relationship with God, all will be smooth and relatively easy, so that if suffering enters our life, that must mean that our relationship with God has somehow been broken by something we did, some sin that we committed. This is how Israel interpreted her own suffering and hardship on a national level; on an individual level, it was assumed that those who were poor, lame, deaf or blind, etc., were forsaken by God by virtue of some ancestral or personal sin. This is a primitive way of trying to make sense out of suffering. Jesus, however, challenged this in the gospel of John: “As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him’” (Jn 9, 1-3).

Unfortunately, many people still tend to think this way, because they want to make sense out of suffering, and if I can convince myself that a person is suffering because of something sinful he has done, well then I don’t feel so bad–on some level I convince myself that he deserves it. If we carefully read the book of Job, we see that Job’s friends were reasoning precisely along these lines, which is why in the end God rebuked them for this (See Jb 42, 7-9).  

We have to be very careful with this kind of reasoning, which is still rather prevalent. Some people take many sections of the Old Testament literally and believe that God does in fact destroy otherwise innocent people (i.e., Amalekite children, David’s infant son, etc.) as a punishment for the sins committed by others. We have to keep in mind that Israel, in her infancy, thought as a child does, namely, egocentrically: if something bad is happening to a child, for example, if the child is being abused by a parent, or the child’s parents are going through a separation and divorce, that child believes this is all happening because “I am bad”. It takes years for a person to escape from this mythology–and he or she may need help (a trained therapist) to overcome such harmful and subconscious beliefs, otherwise they may carry that conviction into their adult lives, feeling and believing on some level that they are deeply flawed, and without knowing why. Such people typically carry around a great deal of anger. We see precisely this kind of thinking on a national level in the Hebrew Scriptures, but Israel is a nation in history, a nation that through time grew in her understanding of God as a result of that historical relationship. The way Israel thinks about herself and God later in her history is very different from the way she thought earlier.

However, God reveals his true face in the Incarnation of the Son, that is, in the Person of Christ. God’s response to human sin was pure grace. He does not impose suffering but enters into human suffering, for he joined a human nature to himself and entered into our darkness, so that when we suffer, we may find him in the midst of that suffering. He came to sanctify our suffering and death, to inject it with his life. That is why the Old Testament must always be read in the light of the New, that is, in the light of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. 

Finally, John the Baptist, the greatest of those born of women, is suffering in the darkness of a prison cell, awaiting his execution. He does not suffer by virtue of some sin; rather, he is suffering because of his heroic virtue, that is, his decision to speak out against Herod, who after visiting his brother in Rome, seduced his wife and married her after dismissing his own wife. John rebuked Herod for this, and Herod responded by throwing him into the dungeons of the fortress of Machaerus, near the Dead Sea. In that darkness, John was tempted to doubt. Initially, he pointed out rather definitively that Jesus was the lamb of God, but in this dark and final period in prison, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus: “Are you the One who is to come, or, must we go on expecting another?” Jesus sent John’s disciples back with the evidence: the blind are given their sight, the lame are walking, lepers are being cleansed, the deaf are hearing, and the dead are being raised and the poor are receiving the good news. What Isaiah prophesied in the first reading is being fulfilled in the Person of Christ himself. And if the lame, the poor, the sick, the deaf, etc., were thought to be forsaken, abandoned, and rejected by God, then what is happening here can only be interpreted as a vindication of the poor, that the kingdom of God has come upon them in the Person of Christ. He overthrows the kingdom of darkness, and the true face of God is being revealed not a God who punishes retributively,[1] but a God who forgives and loves, who loves us so much that he will take on our sufferings, join us in our deepest darkness so that we may not suffer alone. He enters into the worst possible darkness that a person can experience: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”. He tastes the furthest extremity of God forsakenness, the depths of hell, in order to fill it with his light and love. That is the good news of our salvation. 

1. When the New Testament speaks of divine punishment, the Greek word employed is kolasis, which is best translated as “chastisement”. Timoria is the Greek word for retribution or retributive punishment, but we do not find this word in the New Testament associated with divine punishment. Kolasis, on the contrary, is a horticultural term that refers to pruning, as in pruning a plant. One prunes a plant for the good of the plant. In other words, divine punishment is ordered to the good of the “chastised” and is consistent with the divine love.

    Perfect Victory

    Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Advent
    https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_437perfectvictory.html
    Deacon Douglas McManaman

    Anyone who uses social media and follows American politics is acutely aware of how divided we have become as a nation. This division is also evident in a number of Catholic journals, especially those that allow comments. YouTube videos often bear the legend “so and so gets humiliated”, or “____________ gets schooled by __________”, or crushed, demolished, destroyed, and so on. Such videos are not about listening to the finer points of an issue in order to inch our way closer to the truth; rather, the attitude is so often “demolish the enemy”, and the enemy, needless to say, are those who disagree with us. In the end, victory leaves us with one apparent winner and one loser; the winner gloats, and the loser is humiliated and goes off with his proverbial tail between his legs. Moreover, there is a tremendous lack of civility today on social media, especially when it comes to politics. 

    However, the first reading for the 2nd Sunday of Advent provides a very different vision of what a genuine victory is. I’m referring specifically to the last section of the first reading from Isaiah (11, 6-8):  

    The wolf shall live with the lamb,
    the leopard shall lie down with the baby goat,
    the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
    and a little child shall lead them.
    The cow and the bear shall graze,
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
    The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the den of the venomous snake.

    In short, no harm shall come from those who were at one time the enemy to be feared. This reading from Isaiah is a vision of the eschatological harmony that we can look forward to. And it is an entirely different vision of victory than what we typically understand by that word. There will not be one winner standing over the defeated enemy; rather, the enemies have been changed, that is, completely transformed. In short, there will be no more enemies; for they will have ceased to be such. That’s precisely what Christ’s victory is, which is the greatest possible victory. 

    I debated a lot when I was younger, and at times those debates got very heated. Back then, I was quite convinced that I won those debates, but my opponents were equally certain they did. In formal debates, it is the audience that decides the winner. If you came to the debate favoring a particular side, but the other side changed your mind, you indicate that at the end and the one who turned more people around to their side is the winner–and there is only one winner and one loser. 

    But is it possible to have two winners? Most people would say no, but it is possible. I know that in my case, on a number of occasions in my late 50s and especially in recent years, after reflecting upon certain issues for decades, I have said to myself more than once: “Gosh, so and so was right 35 years ago when I argued with him on this issue”, and “I think that person was right 20 years ago when we debated that issue”. This has happened many times in recent years, only because I still study. And it’s a marvelous experience to be sure, not unpleasant in any way, but there’s no way of getting in contact with these people to tell them: “Hey, remember the debate we had 35 years ago. You were right all along. It just took me 35 years to see it.” 

    In this case, we have two winners. And why did it take so long? Because human knowing is very limited; human intelligence is sluggish, and we depend so much on experience (empirical data), which takes time. Certain epistemic conditions were not in place at a specific point in our personal history, but after three decades, if and when those conditions are established, we see what we could not see earlier. That’s a true victory, when two opposing parties finally see eye to eye. And again, that’s why synodal listening is so important. Pope Francis understood something of the fundamentals of a sound theory of knowledge, and Pope Leo XIV continues to emphasize this essential aspect of the Church as “listening Church”. If Christ is victorious, it can only be a perfect victory, one that in the end leaves no enemies, a victory in which the enemy is entirely transformed: “Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2, 9-11).

    The book of Revelation also envisions the same thing. The kings of the earth are depicted as opponents of God, for they side with the beast and wage war against Christ at Armageddon (Rev 16, 16), but in chapter 21, verse 24, we read: “The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and to it the kings of the earth will bring their treasure.” Christ’s victory involves the transformation of the kings of the earth, from enemies to worshippers who adore the Lamb–a perfect victory.

    And we have a role to play in this eschatological state of affairs. Christ does not usher in the kingdom of God without us. We have to do our part and work for peace. We can move this world forward or we can hold things back. It all depends on the attitude we adopt. And it begins in the ordinary ways we relate to people who do not think like we do, whether they are on the right or the left, inside the Church or on the outside. How we talk and how we listen is important. People throw around the word “truth” rather loosely, but knowledge is very hard to achieve, and “truth” is for the most part truth as we currently see it, which implies that “truth” is, for the most part, tentative. The ones who  seem to appreciate this fact are scientists who must always test their hypotheses. Outside of that circle, people tend to speak with a rhetoric of certainty. 

    In my last 20 years of teaching, close to 40% of my students were Muslim. Around 2013, I started to show the film Dancing in Jaffa–it was a Muslim girl who urged me to purchase the film and show it. The film is about a world champion ballroom dancer, Pierre Dulaine, who returns to Jaffa, Israel, where he grew up 30 years earlier, and his goal was to teach ballroom dancing to Jewish and Palestinian kids, and then to have them dance together, boy with girl, but one must be Jewish and the other Palestinian. He thought this was going to be a cakewalk, but it proved to be much more challenging than he realized–he was ready to quit on a number of occasions; many kids simply refused to dance with a Jew, or dance with a Palestinian. They just would not have it; the prejudice was deep and ingrained. But some were willing to try it, and the film has a beautiful ending, with the 11 year old Jewish and Palestinian dance couples in a competition between schools. It’s a very moving and hopeful film. 

    But it does give us a glimpse of how difficult it is to overcome deep-seated prejudice, in particular prejudice that has been picked up from parents and religious communities. And that prejudice is not only there in the Middle East, it is here too in North America. The way some Catholics still talk about Protestants and the way some Protestants still talk about Catholics, or Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, and of course the way Liberals talk about Conservatives and Conservatives talk about Liberals strongly suggests that we really have a long way to go and that we are probably many centuries away from true and lasting peace. But that is our task, and we especially are responsible for taking the lead since we claim to worship the Prince of Peace, who was victorious over sin and death not through any kind of aggression, military or otherwise, but through the divine weakness, Christ’s birth in poverty and his death on the cross.