FEAST of SAint Thomas AQuinas
Sirach,
Chapter 33, Verse 1
No evil can harm the one who fears
the LORD; through trials, again and again he is rescued.
What
is love? In his text On Loving God, St. Bernard surveys the four types
of love that Christians experience as they grow in their relationship with God:
loving one's self, selfish love, loving God as God, and loving one's self in
God. St. Bernard reminds us that not only did God give us life, but He gave us
Himself. For indeed, "God deserves to be loved very much, yea,
boundlessly, because He loved us first, He infinite and we nothing, loved us,
miserable sinners, with a love so great and so free." St. Bernard reminds
us that we are indebted to God for his love and His sacrifice. Not only should
we love God because it is what He deserves, but also because loving God does
not go without reward. Loving God is to our advantage. The Lord rewards those
who love Him with the blessed state of the heavenly Fatherland, where sorrow
and sadness cannot enter. St. Bernard's medieval prose is poetic and full of
clever imagery. His work is as beautiful as it is knowledgeable.
Emmalon Davis, CCEL Staff Writer
First
degree of love: wherein man loves God for self's sake[1]
Love
is one of the four natural affections, which it is needless to name since
everyone knows them. And because love is natural, it is only right to love the
Author of nature first of all. Hence comes the first and great commandment,
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.' But nature is so frail and weak that
necessity compels her to love herself first; and this is carnal love, wherewith
man loves himself first and selfishly, as it is written, That was not first
which is spiritual but that which is natural; and afterward that which is
spiritual' (I Cor. 15.46). This is not as the precept ordains but as nature
directs: No man ever yet hated his own flesh' (Eph. 5.29). But if, as is
likely, this same love should grow excessive and, refusing to be contained
within the restraining banks of necessity, should overflow into the fields of
voluptuousness, then a command checks the flood, as if by a dike: Thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself'. And this is right: for he who shares our nature
should share our love, itself the fruit of nature. Wherefore if a man find it a
burden, I will not say only to relieve his brother's needs, but to minister to
his brother's pleasures, let him mortify those same affections in himself, lest
he become a transgressor. He may cherish himself as tenderly as he chooses, if
only he remembers to show the same indulgence to his neighbor. This is the curb
of temperance imposed on thee, O man, by the law of life and conscience, lest
thou shouldest follow thine own lusts to destruction, or become enslaved by
those passions which are the enemies of thy true welfare. Far better divide
thine enjoyments with thy neighbor than with these enemies. And if, after the
counsel of the son of Sirach, thou goest not after thy desires but refrainest
thyself from thine appetites (Ecclus. 18.30); if according to the apostolic
precept having food and raiment thou art therewith content (I Tim. 6.8), then
thou wilt find it easy to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the
soul, and to divide with thy neighbors what thou hast refused to thine own
desires. That is a temperate and righteous love which practices self-denial in
order to minister to a brother's necessity. So our selfish love grows truly
social, when it includes our neighbors in its circle. But if thou art reduced
to want by such benevolence, what then? What indeed, except to pray with all
confidence unto Him who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not (James
1.5), who openeth His hand and filleth all things living with plenteousness
(Ps. 145.16). For doubtless He that giveth to most men more than they need will
not fail thee as to the necessaries of life, even as He hath promised: Seek ye the
Kingdom of God, and all those things shall be added unto you' (Luke 12.31). God
freely promises all things needful to those who deny themselves for love of
their neighbors; and to bear the yoke of modesty and sobriety, rather than to
let sin reign in our mortal body (Rom. 6.12), that is indeed to seek the
Kingdom of God and to implore His aid against the tyranny of sin. It is surely
justice to share our natural gifts with those who share our nature. But if we
are to love our neighbors as we ought, we must have regard to God also: for it
is only in God that we can pay that debt of love aright. Now a man cannot love
his neighbor in God, except he love God Himself; wherefore we must love God
first, in order to love our neighbors in Him. This too, like all good things,
is the Lord's doing, that we should love Him, for He hath endowed us with the
possibility of love. He who created nature sustains it; nature is so
constituted that its Maker is its protector for ever. Without Him nature could
not have begun to be; without Him it could not subsist at all. That we might
not be ignorant of this, or vainly attribute to ourselves the beneficence of
our Creator, God has determined in the depths of His wise counsel that we
should be subject to tribulations. So when man's strength fails and God comes
to his aid, it is meet and right that man, rescued by God's hand, should
glorify Him, as it is written, Call upon Me in the time of trouble; so will I
hear thee, and thou shalt praise Me' (Ps. 50.15). In such wise man, animal and
carnal by nature, and loving only himself, begins to love God by reason of that
very self-love; since he learns that in God he can accomplish all things that
are good, and that without God he can do nothing.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor of the Church[2]
Thomas Aquinas thoughts
on Fear
Article 1. Whether God can be feared? I answer that,
Just as hope has two objects, one of which is the future good itself, that one
expects to obtain, while the other is someone's help, through whom one expects
to obtain what one hopes for, so, too, fear
may have two objects, one of which is the very evil which a man shrinks
from, while the other is that from which the evil may come.
Accordingly, in the first way God, Who is goodness itself, cannot be
an object of fear; but He can be an object of fear in the second way, in so far
as there may come to us some evil either from Him or in
relation to Him. From Him there comes the evil of punishment, but
this is evil
not absolutely but relatively, and, absolutely speaking, is a good. Because, since a
thing is said to be good
through being ordered to an end, while evil implies lack of this
order, that which excludes the order to the last end is altogether evil, and such is the evil of fault. On the
other hand the evil
of punishment is indeed an evil,
in so far as it is the privation of some particular good, yet absolutely
speaking, it is a good,
in so far as it is ordained to the last end. In relation to God the evil of fault can come to
us, if we be separated from Him: and in this way God can and ought to be
feared.Article 2. Whether fear is fittingly divided into filial, initial, servile and worldly fear? I answer that, We are speaking of fear now, in so far as it makes us turn, so to speak, to God or away from Him. For, since the object of fear is an evil, sometimes, on account of the evils he fears, man withdraws from God, and this is called human fear; while sometimes, on account of the evils he fears, he turns to God and adheres to Him. This latter evil is twofold, viz. evil of punishment, and evil of fault. Accordingly if a man turn to God and adhere to Him, through fear of punishment, it will be servile fear; but if it be on account of fear of committing a fault, it will be filial fear, for it becomes a child to fear offending its father. If, however, it be on account of both, it will be initial fear, which is between both these fears.
Article 3. Whether worldly fear is always evil? I answer that, moral acts and habits take their name and species from their objects. Now the proper object of the appetite's movement is the final good: so that, in consequence, every appetitive movement is both specified and named from its proper end. For if anyone were to describe covetousness as love of work because men work on account of covetousness, this description would be incorrect, since the covetous man seeks work not as end but as a means: the end that he seeks is wealth, wherefore covetousness is rightly described as the desire or the love of wealth, and this is evil. Accordingly worldly love is, properly speaking; the love whereby a man trusts in the world as his end, so that worldly love is always evil. Now fear is born of love, since man fears the loss of what he loves, as Augustine states. Now worldly fear is that which arises from worldly love as from an evil root, for which reason worldly fear is always evil.
Septuagesima[3]
Three weeks prior to Ash
Wednesday, on the day before Septuagesima Sunday, a touching ceremony is held.
A choir assembles, chants the divine office and, afterwards, sings a
bittersweet hymn bidding farewell to the word
"Alleluia": We do not now
deserve to sing the Alleluia forever; Guilt forces us to dismiss you, O
Alleluia. For the time approaches in which we must weep for our sins.
So important was Lent to
both Eastern and Western Christians that they actually had a separate season to
prepare for it. Thus, the day after Septuagesima Sunday, they would begin a
period of voluntary fasting that would grow more severe as it approached the
full and obligatory fast of Lent. The amount of food would be reduced, and the
consumption of certain items, such as butter, milk, eggs, and cheese, would
gradually be abandoned. Starting on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday, this self-imposed
asceticism would culminate in abstinence from meat. Thus the name for this
seven-day period before Ash Wednesday is "Carnival," from the Latin carne
levarium, meaning "removal of meat." Finally, within the week of
Carnival, the last three days (the three days prior to Lent) would be reserved
for going to confession. This period was known as "Shrovetide," from
the old English word "to shrive," or to have one's sins forgiven
through absolution.
Devout Instructions[4]
WHY is this Sunday traditionally called Septuagesima? The word
means seventy. According to the First Council of Orleans, in the year A.D. 545,
many pious ecclesiastics and lay persons of the primitive Church used to fast
seventy days before Easter, and their fast was called, therefore, Septuagesima,
a name which was afterwards retained to distinguish this Sunday from others.
The same was the case with the three following Sundays; many Christians
beginning their fast sixty days before Easter, whence the name Sexagesima; others
fifty days, whence Quinquagesima; others forty days, whence Quadragesima.
Why did the first Christians fast seventy days? Alcuin and Amakrius
say that the captivity of the Jews in Babylon first suggested it; for as the
Jews were obliged to do penance seventy years, that they might thereby merit to
return into the promised land, so Christians sought to regain the grace of God
by fasting for seventy days.
Why does the Church, from this Sunday
until Easter, omit all joyful
chants, as the Te Deum, Alleluia, Gloria in Excelsis? To remind the
sinner of the grievousness of his errors, and to exhort him to penance. To
incite us to sorrow for our sins, and to show us the necessity of
repentance, the Church at the Introit in the name of all nations unites her
prayers with David, saying,
“The
sorrows of death surrounded me, the sorrows of hell encompassed me,
and in my affliction I called upon the Lord, and He heard my voice from His holy temple. I
will love Thee! O Lord, my strength; the Lord is my firmament, my refuge, and
my deliverer.”
In 1913 the renowned Harry Emerich Fosdick wrote a 12 week study
on the Manhood of Jesus Christ. Fosdick writes, “This work is not a portrait of
the life of the Master or a study of his teaching. It is an endeavor to
understand and appreciate the quality of his character. Neither, this this work
an attempted to contribution to the theology; it is an endeavor, rather, to get
back behind the thoughts of the centuries about him, and to see the Man Christ
Jesus himself as he lives in the pages of the gospels. During the Lenten period
we will utilize the work to come closer to Christ’s manhood using this source
as fruit for a study of Christ. Hopefully our study will help us rise with
Christ and become true sons of Mary and the Church.
Daily
Devotions
·
Please pray for me and this ministry
[1]
On Loving God, Chap. VIII. St. Bernard of Clairvaux
[3]
http://www.holytrinitygerman.org/septlent.html
[4]Goffines
Devout Instructions, 1896
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