Reflection on Volunteering

As some might surmise by some of my recent post, I help out with my church's Middle School Youth Group.  The Youth Minister discovered my Bachelor's in Scared Theology and did the whole puppy eye thing and asked if I would volunteer for Youth Group.  Needless to say the puppy eye thing worked.

Thus began my weekly obligation on Sunday evening in which I took nuggets of Theological information wrapped up in fun and talked with the kids.  I have made attempts in the past to volunteer at church, mostly with the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults).  I will say with no ill will that it did not work well.  Most people going through the program were older than me, enough that they were in a different generation than me. 

After every talk I gave there was a complaint; I was unsettling, unfeeling, or unkind.  The last person demanded my removal from the program because I offended her.  Now, I can understand the annoyance of someone younger than you telling you what to do; really, I do.  But I do have a degree in Theology!!!! I know what I'm talking about.  The overall experience was not completely bad - it just left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

So with that experience under my belt I was not sure how good I would be with the Middle School. To my amazement they liked me - they really really like me.  The moms are happy, the kids are having fun and they pay attention.  One Sunday when I told the moms I was going to teach the kids about the Four Lasts Things, they were wary - I don't blame them.  It's a heavy theological topic, but it's something that I was never really taught in Middle or High School.  But the following Sunday a few moms approached me and said that their kids were rapid firing questions at them about the talk and how they were really into it.

This is an instant where I have no shame in saying 'SQUEEEEEEEE!', none at all.

Last Sunday there was no Middle School Youth Group so I helped out with the High School Youth Group in their small group discussions.  I tagged along with another volunteer with her group.  We had fun talking going over what was earlier discussed.  My crowning moment of the evening was when one girl said 'ReTweet that!' to something I said. That's right, I got a non-virtual retweet.

So all in all, am I glad I started volunteering with the Youth Group - Yes.  Now if you will excuse me, I have to get ready for my next talk.

St John Bosco, Patron of Youth Ministries, Ora pro nobis 

Where Did the Advent Wreath Come From and What Does it Mean?

As it is often the case with many traditions that we hold dear to our hearts the Advent wreath has pagan origins and as with many Christmas traditions practiced here in America, this came from Germany.

Evidence shows that the pre-Christian Germanic peoples used wreath with lit candles in the cold dark Winter as a sign of hope for the future warm and extended sun lighted days of Spring.  Similarly, in Scandinavia lighted candles were placed around a wheel and prayers were offered to the god of light to, in a sense, turn the ‘wheel of the earth’ back towards the light of the sun.

As often seen in the Church, especially in the first few centuries, we would take the pagan practices and Christianized it.  This practice of ‘Christionzation’ took what was intrinsically good in the pagan tradition and essentially baptized them into the Church.

By the Medieval period, say about the 16th century or 1500s, the wreath with lighted candles was adapted for Advent as part of a spiritual preparation for Christmas.  Both German Catholics and Lutherans practiced this tradition.  What we would recognize as the Advent wreath took shape in the 19th century or 1800s.  The original wreath started out with a candle for each day of the season, Sundays being big white candles and the rest were smaller red candles.  Over time it simplified to just each Sunday having a candle and sometimes Christmas Day having its own.  This practice was brought over to the United States in the 1930s by German immigrants.

Advent is a time of reflections and preparation and the wreath works as both a reminder and a meditation of what is to come.  It’s easy to perceived the reminder aspect of it, lighting each candle as Christmas gets closer, so let’s focus on the meditative aspect.

It must be understood that the Advent wreath is full of symbols.  This is not a bad thing; symbols are used to help us focus giving us a tangible aspect for the abstract. The act of lighting the candles, with an additional one each week in tandem if the liturgical colors on the candles, represents our expectation and hope of Christ’s first coming, His birth.  That hope and expectation also includes Christ’s second coming at the end of the world.  Remember, everything about Christmas points towards Easter.

This has evergreen, holly leaves, pine cones, and fruit.

To the physical wreath itself:  Traditionally the wreath is made of different types of evergreens wrapped into a circle; the circle has not beginning or end and the evergreen is green throughout the year representing the eternal life of Christ, and his eternal never ending rule.  The wreath can also include holly, pine and yew all of which is symbolic of immortality.  The holly also is symbolic of the crown of thrones worn by Christ at His Passion; there’s also a neat English legend that states the wood of the cross was holly.  Pine cones, seedpods, and nuts can be added for a representation of Christ’s Resurrection. Cedar for strength and healing. Fruits for the nourishing fruitfulness of the Christian Life.  All of this as a whole is Christ, the eternal Word of the Father, who became man was victorious over sin and death by His Passion, Death and Resurrection.

Let us not forget the candles.  As I’ve mentioned before the candles bear the color of the liturgical season; three purple and one rose (not pink).  These are the same colors for the Lent season (again, pointing towards Easter); purple is a reminder of prayer, penance and preparatory sacrifices and good works undertaken during this season (sounds like Lent, doesn't it?). Rose if for Gaudete Sunday, gaudete is Latin for rejoice, this Sunday is the midpoint of Advent and we are close to Christmas.

There’s also some traditions where each candle has a meaning. In one tradition:
Candle #1: Hope, Prophet’s candle representing Jesus’ coming
Candle #2: Faith, Bethlehem candle representing Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem
Candle #3: Joy, Shepherd’s candle representing the joy at the coming of the birth of Christ
Candle #4: Peace, Angel’s candle representing the message of the Angels ‘Peace on Earth, Good Will towards Men.’

Another tradition:
Candle #1: Patriarchs
Candle #2: Prophets
Candle #3: John the Baptist
Candle#4: Mother Mary

Happy Advent!!

(This is a rough transcript of a lecture I gave to the RCIA class at my church.)

The Development of the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception

The feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary was celebrated on the 8th of December.

From the very moment of her conception she was free from the all stain of original sin and in a state of grace. Immaculate means 'without stain'. But she still suffered from the effects of sin – sorrow, illness, death.

How is this possible?

Well, Mary received grace same as us via Christ's death on the cross; His death is an eternal event meaning that the effects of it reach back in time as well as forward. Same as with the Sacrifice of the Mass it cannot be confine to time. God granted her freedom from sin to make her a fitting mother for His Son.

If was officially declared on 8 December 1854 by Pope Pius IX. So does that mean that the Pope just thought of it one day and said to himself 'that's a good idea'?

No it does not.

Let's first start with the Bible (I'm using the Dewey Rheims translation); Genesis 3:15 “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she/he shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.”

There is a parallel between Eve and Mary; If there is to be complete enmity between the woman and the serpent, then she never should have been in any way subject to him even briefly. This implies an Immaculate conception.

Luke 1:28 “And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.”

An angel declared her 'full of grace'; it indicates an unique abundance of grace in her person.

There are a lot angels visiting people in the Bible, but Mary is the only one greeted by 'Full of Grace”

As I've said before the doctrine was not invented in 1854, it was defined or declared. That only happens for two reasons; firstly being that there is a controversy that needs to be cleared up or secondly when the Magisterium believes that the faithful can be helped by a particular emphasis on an already preexisting belief.

The declaration was prompted by the latter of the two. Pius IX had a great devotion to Mary and hoped that the declaration would inspire others in their devotion to Mary.

Let's us now turn to the Fathers of the Church. Now who exactly are these guys? Simple answer: they are men who lived before 750 and are called as such because of their leadership in the early Church, especially in defending, expounding, and developing Catholic doctrines. For the first two centuries, most of these men were bishops, although in later years certain priests and deacons were also recognized as Fathers. They were closes to the sources than we are today.

Many of them make very blatant statements about Mary's immaculate nature.

• St. Justine Martyr (d.165) the Church’s first major lay apologist, remarks on Mary's obedience to God (her willingness to do His will) in opposite to Eve's disobedience.
• St. Irenaenus (2^nd century) Bishop in Gaul, expands on that saying that Mary's obedience undid what Eve's disobedience brought to man.
• Origen (184/5-253/4) calls her worthy of God, immaculate of the immaculate.
• The Syrian Fathers wouldn't shut up (as it were) about her sinlessness.

The Syrians were really the first to have a feast day commemorating this, since about the 5^th century. It becomes wide spread by the 7^th century in the East and by the 8^th it is celebrated in parts of the Western Church.

The feast day became very deeply rooted in Anglo-Saxon monasteries by the 11^th century. We even find an old calendar in Winchester dating 1030 with 'Conceptio S'ce S. Mariae'. The monks celebrated it and it was encouraged to the devotion of the individual.

But then, cue ominous music please, the Normans arrived.

For the Normans the feast appeared to be very English, too English; they considered it a product a product of insular simplicity and ignorance (the celebration, not the idea behind it mind you). Thus we can thank the Normans for stopping public devotion, but it lived on in the devotion of the individual. Thank you Normans (sarcasm in abundance here).

It was reestablished, however, by Anselm the Younger, nephew of St. Anselm (Yeah, that's not confusing).

It is after this, going into the 12^th century, that we begin to see a confusion over the idea of the Immaculate Conception.

St Bernard of Clairvaux protested what he perceived to be a new way of honoring Mary and reproved the canons (those are people of a religious order who are attached to a particular church) of the Cathedral of Lyons for acting without the authority of Rome when they started celebrating it in 1240. He saw it as a foreign to the traditions of the Church, but here's the kicker – he didn't know that the Church in Greece and Syria had been celebrating the feast with a rich tradition regarding the sinlessness of Mary. (There's no phone system, email, facebook, twitter, or texting)

He was not wrong in wanting a careful inquiry into the reason for observing the feast.

Even St Thomas Aquinas, one of the foremost philosophers and theologians of the Medieval Church, had difficulty grasping the concept. As seen in the Summa Theologica (III.27:2,a2), mostly along the lines of Mary's redemption, how could she be redeemed if she had not sinned.

For some reason, the major philosophers and theologians at the time were stuck on two possibilities:

One, the sanctification of Mary happened before the fusion of the soul into the body; or

Two, the sanctification happened after the union of soul and body.

None of them ever truly considered the moment between – the sanctification of the soul at the moment of conception. The idea of both the sanctification and the fusion of the soul could be simultaneous in time.

This is a good example of how science and faith work together.  When conception was better defined by science it aided in a clearer understanding of the doctrine.

Of course there were some issues, because people always have issues.

St Paul in Romans (5:12) states that all men have sinned via Adam. That would include Mary, right? By this declaration, St. Paul is trying to explain that all men need redemption via Christ. Mary is no exception to this rule as stated before.

Then the silence of the Church Fathers. Well, as we have seen the Church Fathers were not silent, just the ones that most people in the West were reading. There was limited access to those sources and some were lost to them, but not to us today.

It was Blessed John Duns Scotus (d. 1308)(a Franisican) who provided the answer of the simultaneous sanctification and conception. He stated that God had sanctified Mary at the moment of her conception in His foreknowledge that the Blessed Virgin would consent to bear Christ. In other words, she too had been redeemed—her redemption had simply been accomplished at the moment of her conception, rather than (as with all other Christians) in baptism. It was essentially Scotus who laid the foundation of the doctrine that we see to day and Pius IX referenced him when declaring the feast.

After Scotus the doctrine became commonplace at all the major universities and the feast was fast spreading. Most religious orders took up the celebration, except the Dominicans – why? They're sticking with Aquinas.

In 1439 the University of Paris asked the Council of Basle for a dogmatic definition. After 2 years the bishops declared the Immaculate Conception : a doctrine which was pious, constant with Catholic worship, faith, right reason and Holy Scripture and no one could declare contrary to this.

Problem solved, right? 

But wait – this is 1441. The problem? Council of Basle was not an ecumenical council, meaning that anything it declared only effected the area that those bishops lead, not for the Church as a whole. So disputes and discussions continued.

In 1661 P. Alexander VII promulgated in 'Sollicitudo omnium Ecclesiarum' the true sense of the word 'conceptio', and that the immunity of Mary from original sin in the first moment of the creation of her soul and its formation into the body was the subject of the feast. This was when it was finally universally accepted within the Church. So by the time Pius IX promulgated the dogma on 8 December 1854 there was a ring of 'about time'.

In the decades that followed an octave was attached to the feast then became a holy day of obligation, then was allowed a vigil. All of which were in practice in local tradition in many areas.

Our Lady of Immaculate Conception was decreed By the First Council of Baltimore (1846) as the principal Patron of the US.

(This is a rough transcript of a lecture I gave to the RCIA class at my church for the Feast Day.)

Is That What You Think?

Even after living in the Bible Belt for over a decade I am always surprised about the misconceptions of non-Catholics of Catholic beliefs.  Granted there is about 500 years of rumors developing and confusion becomes a blaze that spreads quickly on dry grass.

Growing up I always knew that I would go to college and major in Theology, even though I never really knew what I would do with that degree.  I wanted to know everything about my faith and was tired of my religion class teachers giving me wishy-washy answers that did not clarify anything.  I grew up with a strong example of the faith from my parents, who made sure we learned our Hail Marys and Our Fathers like all good Catholic boys and girls.  At some point I became interested in the meaning behind the traditions and rituals that had developed in the Church and from that, my fascination with relics.  All the tradition we have in the Church there is a meaning behind it, ranging from the types of vestments the priest wears during the Mass (and outside the Mass as well) to the simple act of crossing ourselves before prayer.  As I entered my young adult life I had studied beyond what was required for class to feed the hunger I had to know more about my faith.  My parents even started asking me questions of something or other concerning the faith (even a few upperclassmen too).


I could not see myself studying anything else.  But now I have a degree in Theology - what to do?  Why, teach it of course!  The RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) program at my church was a good way to get my feelers out to see if I would make a half-way decent teacher.  And thus a journey of discovery began.

Remember I'm in the Bible Belt, so a lot of out inquirers are from very Protestant backgrounds, many of which still hold the Catholic Church in contempt.  There are things that I always thought simple and basic to understand that many of the Inquirers have a hard time wrapping their heads around it.  Many of them do not understand at first that being Catholic is a lifestyle and joining the Catholic Church is not like moving to a new house up the street.  Oh no, it's more along the lines of becoming a citizen of a different country whose culture is similar but different in so many ways.  It's out of the comfort zone of many people and it scares them, sometimes it can be too much.

For those who the change is too much for, they sometimes lash out at us who teach them.  This reaction, however, is not limited to people in the RCIA program. I am in no means saying that this is a one way street.  Catholics also have some misconjectures when is comes to their Protestant brethren. 

The goal in life is to find the truth, no matter what our situation in life is we have to find it.  For as they say Christ is the Way, the Life and the Truth.