Augustine On The Old Testament Canon

“He will be the most expert investigator of the Holy Scriptures who has first read all of them and has some knowledge of them, at least through reading them if not through understanding them. That is, he should read those that are said to be canonical…The whole canon of the Scriptures on which we say that this consideration of the step of knowledge should depend is contained in the following books: the five books of Moses, that is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; one book of Josue, one of Judges, one short book called Ruth which seems rather to pertain to the beginning of Kings; then the four books of Kings and two of Paralipomenon [Chronicles]….Job, Tobias, Esther, Judith, two books of Machabees, and two books of Esdras…Then there are the Prophets, among which are on book of the Psalms of David, and three books of Solomon: Proverbs, the Canticle of Canticles, and Ecclesiastes. For those two books, one of which is called Wisdom and the other Ecclesiasticus, are said to be Solomon’s through a certain similitude, since it is consistently said that they were written by Jesus son of Sirach. Nevertheless, since they have merited being received as authoritative, they are to be numbered among the prophetic books. The remainder are those books called Prophets in a strict sense, containing twelve single books of Prophets joined together. Since they have never been separated, they are thought of as one. The names of the Prophets are Osee, Joel, Amos, Abdias, Jonas, Micheas, Nahum, Habacuc, Sophonias, Aggeus, Zacharias, and Malachias. Then there are four books of four major Prophets: Isaias, Jermias, Daniel, Ezechiel. The authority of the Old Testament ends with these forty-four books.”

-St. Augustine in On Christian Doctrine, Book II, Chapt. 8.

Philippians 2:6-11

I received the following question:

todays (palm sunday) second reading was: Philippians 2:6-?
my question is this--> if someone were to read that (specifically verse 6), they may say "see? this proves Jesus was not divine, since he was 'in the form of God', and 'did not regard equality with God something to be grasped' ".
how would you respond to that?

Here is my response:

What Saint Paul is doing here in these verses is showing the stages of the Second Person of the Trinity. He was in the "the form of God." Being in the "form" of God implies that one is God. We see in this verse that Paul adds the word "though" before "he was in the form of God." Meaning, although he was God. And then Paul tells us what follows. He "did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, talking the form of a servant." Here we see Paul stating that although Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity is God and hence equal with God, He humbled Himself and took on our human nature, thus taking the form of a servant. This is the Incarnation. Paul tells us that Christ suffered and died in His human nature. Therefore, for His obedience, God exalted Christ again. This doesn't mean that the Second Person of the Trinity changed or was any less exalted than before. It means that Christ's humanity which He took on was exalted andglorified, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!

St. Paul is clearly extolling Christ as God in these verses. He does it by showing the three stages of the Mystery. 1) Christ pre-existed. 2) He became Incarnate. 3) His human nature is gloried and exalted and Christ the Second Person of the Trinity is now seated at the right hand of the Father.

Damascene On Transubstantiation

"To the divinity is truly united the body that was born of the Blessed Virgin, not in the sense that the body which ascended into heaven comes down again, but in the sense that the bread and wine are changed into God's body and blood. If you ask how this takes place, it is sufficient for you to know that it is done by the Holy Spirit, in the same way that our Lord took flesh from the Holy Mother of God and made it subsist in Himself. We apprehend and understand no more than that God's word is true and efficacious, and can do all things. But the way it was done is simply beyond our powers of investigation. This much may be said without misgiving: just as bread by eating, and wine and water by drinking, are naturally changed into the body and blood of him who eats and drinks, and do not become a body different from the living body that existed before, so the bread that had previously been placed on the table, and also the wine and water, are converted into the body and blood of Christ by the invocation and coming of the Holy Spirit, in a manner that exceeds the powers of nature. Once this action has been performed, there are no longer two substances, but one and the same."

-St. John Damascene in De fide orthodoxa.

"All Presence Of Christ Is Presence Of His Sacrifice"

"A theology of the eucharistic presence that does not involve the sacrifice, that does not effect the synthesis of the presence and the sacrifice, should acknowledge its failure: it is not a true theology of the presence."

-F.X. Durrwell in The Eucharist: Presence of Christ.

Bravo For Bishop D'Arcy

Here is another post for that "fundie" website to spew their vitriol at me simply because I disagree with their liberal ways:

There is an article here about Bishop D'Arcy's condemnation of the V-monologues that the President of Notre Dame plans to allow (again!) on their campus. I had to read this awful play as an undergrad Theatre major at Florida State for my "Gender, Race, and Performance" class. Unfortunately, I was the only one in the class who raised objections about the play and its denigration of women. For those who have not read it (which is a good thing), it basically defines a woman by her vagina. How, I ask, is that upholding a women's dignity? How is that liberating of a woman? It does not liberate, but further confines a woman, stripping her of all dignity that is owed to her by virtue of being a creature of God! Our culture has become so sex-obsessed that it only sees the world and humanity through the lens of sexual power and dominance. As we move further and further away from God, we slide ever deeper into the abyss of immorality and licentiousness, and closer to Satan.

This kind of demonic influence can only be overcome through prayer and fasting. I am in full support of Bishop D'Arcy that this play has no place on a Catholic University and is in direct contradiction of Ex Corde Ecclesiae:

“We start from the truth that has been revealed to us in the Word of God, the person of Jesus Christ, and the teaching of His Church." The idea that truth will emerge from a discussion in which many points of view are represented both “disrespects revealed truth” and “separates the search for truth from the certainty of faith.” “A decision not to sponsor the play is not only consistent with academic freedom but is a right use of such freedom for it shows respect for the truth, for the common good and the rights of others.”

It will be interesting to see if Bishop D'Arcy follows up with any ecclesiastical discipline for the President if he decides to go through with allowing the play on campus.

The Union Of Heaven And Earth

"In the union of the Holy Spirit with [Mary], not only do we have the love of two beings; in one of the two we have all the love of the Trinity itself; and in the other we have all of creation's love. Hence, in this union heaven and earth meet; all of heaven with all of earth, the totality of divine eternal love with the plenitude of created love. It is the true summit of love."

-St. Maximilian Kolbe

Anything Less Is Not The Eucharist, And Hardly A Sacrament

“The Fathers, and again St. Cyril of Alexandria in particular, refer us to the Holy Eucharist. Here we come in contact with the entire spiritualized Body of the Lord, which bears in Itself the source of all life. Here we eat the Bread of eternal life, which makes us one body and blood with Christ; here we are verily lifted to the fountain of life, one body with the Body of the God-Man. ‘He that eateth My flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting life’ (John 6:55). In virtue of the fact that the Body of the Lord, animated by the life-spirit of God, saturates our body and soul with the fullness of the divine life and Spirit, we are placed within the wondrous orbit of the inner life of the Trinity. As St. Thomas says, in the Eucharist we drink God’s life as it were from the very source. We are now no longer far from God. We have come quite close to Him; God in His very substance is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.”

-Julius Tyciak in Life in Christ.

The Splendor Of Grace

Grace is not a mere gift. It is God communicating His very life to us. Our creation by God is gratuitous. Grace is more. Much more. Grace moves us from a relation of slave and Creator to son and Father. Hence, it can only be given through Christ. His grace allows us to be sons with the Son and cry out to God, "Abba, Father!"

“Christian life is not mere friendship with God, not mere favor or acceptance. No, there are mysteries aglow here! Theology speaks with shy reverence and reserve of a ‘partaking in the divine nature.’ She sees in the life of grace an assimilation, a real, supernatural communion with God, which she calls physico-mystical…Grace is the appearing of God’s life in us. Created grace is the reflection of the uncreated grace which is God Himself. It is more than an elevation of being: since God gives Himself to the soul for its own, the soul is gripped by the heavenly notes that peal forth the canticle of grace within it. Grace is a vibrating in unison, a trembling and smouldering of the creature together with the divine music, holy and eternal, which rises in the august silence, the bright-darkness of the godhead; it rests truly therefore on a mysterious presence of God in us…With Cyril [of Alexandria] the Greek Fathers evolve a profound doctrine: that the sharing in God’s nature, the supernatural assimilation with God, grows as it were out of the insertion of our being in the life, the bosom of God. The Fathers recognize the full splendor of grace as a mysterious life-giving union of our being with the infinitely glorious life of God.”

-Julius Tyciak in Life in Christ.

Obama Is An Antichrist

Peter Leithart in his book, The Kingdom and the Power, has this to say about Satanic influences in the world:

"If we focus our attention on sensational incidents like the grizzly slaughter at Matamoros or the pop-occultism of New Age humanism, however, we may miss the larger point. Most of the iceberg remains submerged. Satanic influence does not always appear so blatantly evil. Often, as Hannah Arendt has noted, evil can seem perfectly banal. Satan can appear disguised as an angel of light. He can also wear the disguise of a state legislator who fights to keep abortion 'safe and legal'..."

This describes perfectly the underlying satanic agenda of Sen. Obama. He may seem all smooth and hip on the outside, but the things he advocates and says are nothing short of demonic. But, unless you think this is merely an ad hominem attack on Obama, consider his actions. For example, in Illinois there was a bill proposed in 2003 that would have banned killing an infant outside the womb who had survived an abortion. Even the notorious pro-death group, National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), supported the ban. Obama, on the other hand blocked the bill from being passed!

But it gets worse. Listen to what Obama had to say to NARAL after his losses to Clinton in Ohio and Texas:

“In 1973 alone white doctors aborted roughly 400,000 African-American fetuses. Those people would be 35-years-old this year, and would have been eligible to run for the presidency. But they didn’t make the cut, so to speak. I did. I’m a survivor and that’s the kind of person we need in the White House advocating the pro-choice cause.”

Did you catch that? Those babies aborted 35 years ago "didn't make the cut, so to speak." Obama is gloating about other babies being murdered by abortion and the fact that he did not. How absolutely sick, twisted, and demonic is this man?!

"Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour." (1 Jn 2:18)

Update: It seems that the quote above from Obama is from a satirical blog. Good. It's to Obama's credit that this horrible remark didn't actually come from his mouth. This does not change the fact that Obama is an antichrist. I thought he was an antichrist before I found the quote. Why? Because anyone who advocates the death of a baby is against Christ and thus an antichrist. Abortion is murder no matter what way you look at it. Besides, it is not a stretch of the imagination to believe that Obama would actually say such a thing considering his stance on abortion and his 2003 vote in support of infanticide, which even NARAL had the decency to oppose.

I also see that this post has made it on a website that has quotes from supposed "fundies" (which basically means anyone whom they disagree with, anyone who is an orthodox Christian, anyone who opposes murdering babies, or anyone who supports traditional family values). If that is what it means to be a "fundie", then by all means guilty as charged!

They also have a link on the site that says "Please support animal rights." Seems that for them animals have more rights than humans.

What Does Grace Do?

“Grace joins the creature so closely to God that the soul, while it is in the state of grace, cannot be separated from God by any barrier of guilt. Grace, which bridges the infinite gap yawning between the creature and the divine nature, spans the still greater fissure caused by the upheaval of sin. By transforming man from a bondsman to a child of God, grace makes him also a friend of God, since God cannot but stand in a relation of friendship with His children as long as they remain His children. For this reason grace is called both gratia sanctificans (sanctifying grace) because it completely does away with all sinful disorder, and gratia gratum faciens (grace which renders one pleasing) because it makes the creature so pleasing in God’s sight that God myst deal with him as His friend and child.”

-Matthias Scheeben in The Mysteries of Christianity.