The Unfaithful Steward - A Patristic Comment

In what follows, St Peter Chrysologus gives a refreshing (and, perhaps to our ears, unique) interpreation of a difficult pericope--the parable of the unfaithful steward. As you read, you will notice that the church father sees the "summons" as Gospel, because it calls the man to repentance so that he might receive Christ's forgiveness in true faith. You will also notice that St Peter turns the phrase "Give an account" from condemnation of the sinner to the salvation in Christ. It is, at least for me, a magnificent homiletical turn.

And a change against him was brought before him that he had squandered his goods, and he summoned him (vv. 1-2). He summoned him by means of the Gospel. And he said to him (v. 2). And what does he not do by means of the Gospel[—]by means of which he criticizes behavior , he lay bare what was hidden, he exposes ones conscience, he reproves offenses he enumerates sins, and to the one who persists in them he threatens punishment, although to the one who changes his ways he promises pardon in return? And he summoned him, and said to him: “What is this I hear about you?

Give an account of your stewardship; you will no longer be able to be a steward (v. 2) Why does he join such severity with such kindness? Why does he remove him from stewardship before receiving his report? Give an account; you will no longer be able to be a steward. As man he now asks for an account, as God he announces what is not at hand and what will be. Give an account; you will no longer be able to be a steward. He asks for an account, not to exact but to forgive. He asks, in order to be asked; he asks here, so as not to ask there; he asks in this age, so as not to ask at the judgment; he is in a hurry to ask, in order that the time of punishment not preclude time to make amends.

Give an account of your stewardship; you will no longer be able to be a steward. Why? Because the end of your life and the moment of death are coming; already attendants from heaven are ready to bind you, already judgment is beckoning; so hasten, in order not to lose time to make amends, you who have list the time to the do good deeds.

Give an account. That is to say: “Settle your account, settle your business, so that you do not have to pay back what belongs to me; you will settle it, however, if you now stop squandering it. I assume your prior debts, when I assumed you; I paid them off, when I absolved you. As your Advocate I was present to be heard on your behalf; although I am the Judge I stood trial, I was found guilty by those judged guilty by me; although free of punishment, I underwent punishments, and did not avoid being sentenced by those who were condemned; I the conqueror of death accepted death, I the destroyer of hell entered the underworld, not only to wrest you from your punishment by these means, but also to raise you to my dignity. So see to it that although the period of your stewardship has left you excluded, you be now included among the recipients of my everlasting gift.

Source, 177-178

Lutheran Monks? In America?

Yes, there are a few. Granted, not as many as there were in the days shortly after the Reformation. And I don't believe a current Lutheran monastery claims to have operated continuously since before the Reformation. However, despite prejudices and misconceptions about Luther's views on monasticism, Lutheran monks exist in Europe and North America.

St Augustine's House is the sole remaining Lutheran monastery in North America. It follows what might be called a "modern observant" form of the Benedictine Rule. This means, among other things, that the full Divine Office is recited daily with Holy Mass also celebrated daily. When sung, the Office and Mass employ the common Gregorian tones. It has never had many professed members but by God's grace, and with the generous support of a dedicated few, it has remained.

In a few weeks, St. Augustine's House will celebrate its Golden Jubilee, having been founded on 27 May 1956. The Prior, Fr Richard Herbel, OSB, announces that the Golden Jubilee anniversary will be celebrated August 25-26. In good Lutheran fashion, the celebration will commence with an organ recital and hymn sing in the Chapel immediately after Vespers. Then, on the annual "Fellowship Day," after Holy Mass, Dr Robert L Wilken will give a presentation entitled "Monasticism: A Gift to the Church." In the afternoon, Fr Caesarius Cavallin, OSB, (the Prior of the Östanbäck monastery, a Lutheran monastery in Sweden) will given a presentation entitled "The Fifty Years from the Swedish Horizon."

As a member of the Pastoral Council (the legal "board of directors") for St Augustine's House, I would be remiss if I did not encourage you to attend--or, at least, remember the monastery in your prayers.

Beware of False Prophets II

Our Blessed Lord goes on to say that “you will know them by their fruits.” What does this mean? Does it mean that you will know whether prophets are true by how they live and act? Perhaps. But chiefly it means that you will know them by the Christians they produce; those who defend them as true and honorable teachers of the Faith when, in fact, they usurp what the Church has always confessed.

True prophets, priests, pastors and bishops nurture you in the true faith. They speak from the Spirit of God. They activate in you a lively faith and godliness. Theses are their good fruits—together with their bold confession of the faith and their willingness to suffer all, even death, rather than depart from the Church’s Faith. If these are the fruits, then these pastors and preachers are good trees in communion with and united to the Tree of Life.

So Our Lord warns you. But do not let this warning trouble you. For Our Lord does not say, “Beware” to frighten or scare you, but to comfort and strengthen you. For when you know that there are false preachers and evil prophets; when you know that there are pastors who speak of their own dreams rather than of the Lord’s heavenly vision; and when you know that there are preachers whom Our Lord never sent—then you are more intent to search diligently for the true bishops, the godly priests, the faithful pastors who will shield you and soothe you with the Lord’s undying mercy.

An excerpt from a sermon preached in 2004 on Mt 7.15-21.

Beware of False Prophets I

When Our Blessed Lord warns us to “Beware of false prophets,” He is not warning us about immoral or perverted priests, or lazy or corrupt bishops. These men are wicked, and their wickedness should be exposed and dealt with. But there is a difference between a cleric who does not live the truth he teaches, and one who does not teach the true Faith. Better to have a thousand pastors who teach holiness but do not live it, than to have one morally upright man who tells us devilish lies and who tries to convince us that we should believe and live and worship as the Lord never commanded. These are the real false prophets because they teach not the truth of God but the fancy of their own mind.

So when Our Lord Jesus says “Beware of false prophets,” He is urging us to watch out for those pastors and preachers, bishops and priests in our own midst; those who are part of our communion fellowship. They urge unity at the expense of integrity, and let false teaching and false worship live alongside the truth. They are more impressed with the world’s standard of success than with the kingdom of God. They quickly assign tradition to the trash heap and favor newer, better, more modern ways. And they not only allow but encourage and even insist on innovations which sweep away what we have received, what our ancestors knew and believed, and what we must rely on in time of need.

“Beware of them,” our Jesus says, “because they partake of your communion, yet with their words they destroy it. They urge you not to get so riled, yet they rile you up. They speak of peace, but they persecute the true bringers of My peace. So beware of them. For these are the ones who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”

An excerpt from a sermon preached in 2004 on Mt 7.15-21.

St Gamaliel?

The Western Church remembers as saints those honorable Jewish rabbis or Pharisees who did not deny the Christ but embraced Him. And today (3 August) is one such day for this commemoration.

In the Tridentine tradition, today is know as "The Invention of St Stephen, Protomartyr." St Stephen we know. His feast is celebrated on 26 December, when his glorious death at the hands of Jews "stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears" is commemorated. So why a second feast? Because this is the day when (as Christian tradition has it) his relics were found. (In Middle English, and even today's English, "invention" can mean "finding" or "discovery.")

Yet it is not just St Stephen's relics that were found, but (not surprisingly) those also of some Jews who were known to speak well of the Christ and Christians. Here is how the Anglican Breviary recounts the day:

It is related that, for a long time, there lay hidden, in a mean and obscure place near Jerusalem, the bodies of the following Saints : Stephen the Protomartyr ; Gamaliel, the celebrated Doctor of the Old Law, who withstood his fellow-members of the Sanhedrin when they desired to put the Apostles to death ; Nicodemus, who had defended Jesus in the Sanhedrin, and afterward came to him by night, unto whom was thereupon revealed the mystery of baptismal regeneration, and who assisted in the burial of Jesus ; and Abibon, the son of Gamaliel. Today's feast is a commemoration of the finding of the holy relicks of these men of God. ... [I]n the places where a feast is kept in honor of Saint Nicodemus, or the other aforementioned holy ones, it is observed on this day.

It appears, then, that the Western Church has not traditionally shied away from venerating these Jewish men of God who did not deny, but confessed the Christ. Let us now praise men of renown, and our fathers in their generation. (Eccl 44.1)

Holy Maccabees, Martyrs

Today, according to the older (pre-Vatican II) Latin calendar and in conjunction with the Byzantine calendar, we commemorated the Maccabean Martyrs at Holy Mass. It is one of the few instances in the older calendar when the Latin rite commemorates a pre-Apostolic saint. Their moving hagiagraphy is summarized here. But I would urge the readers of this blog to read the entire account here.

How Christ Saves

Excerpt from "Passions & Theosis in St Maximos the Confessor" (a paper written for a D.Min. class)

The salvation of mankind results from Christ (in His hypostatic union of passible human nature within the divine nature) exercising his free choice by not succumbing to the “liability to passions.” He became sin because He was capable of transgressing God’s commandment, truly suffered temptation, and experienced all the urges of corrupted human passions. “For it was in human passibility that the power of sin and death, the tyranny of sin connected with pleasure, and the oppression associated with pain, all began.”[1] Yet He who became sin knew, or committed, no sin because He willfully and freely chose to restrain the passions, resist temptation and refrain from transgression. In Christ, this restraint of passions is redemptive, as is forthrightly manifest when He suffered, was crucified and died. This one event, above all others, is the poignant recapitulation of Christ’s willed free choice in order to restore human nature. Yet the Lord’s Passion is “not a penalty exacted for that principle of pleasure, like other human beings, but rather a death specifically directed against that principle.”[2] For this reason, Christ “erase[s] the just finality which human nature encounters in death, since his own end did not have, as the cause of its existence, the illicit pleasure on account of which he came and which he subjected to his righteous punishment.”[3] Christ’s passion, then, is a true offering not to pay for the debt incurred by Adam’s willful sin, but to free mankind from passions. In a liturgical context, St. Maximos offers this summary:

By it [Christ’s incarnation] he freed human nature which had been enslaved by corruption, betrayed through its own fault to death because of sin, tyrannically dominated by the devil. He redeemed all its debt as if he were liable even thought he was not liable but sinless, and brought us back again to the original grace of his kingdom by giving himself as a ransom for us. And in exchange for our destructive passions he gives us his life-giving Passion as a salutary cure which saves the whole world.[4]

St Maximos argues, then, that by His willful free choice Christ overcomes the consequences of Adam’s sin; that is, the “liability to passions” which is imbedded in with the passible human nature. In doing so, Christ, in His person, restores human nature so that it might be what it was created to be—a nature capable of being deified.

For having given our human nature impassibility through his Passion, remission through his toils, and eternal life through his death, he restored that nature again, renewing the habitudes of human nature by his own deprivations in the flesh and granting to human nature through his own incarnation the supernatural grace of deification.[5]

In another place, St. Maximos declares that, by assuming passibility wits its “liability to passion,” Christ was able to renew our nature; “or better yet, he created our nature anew, and returned it to its primordial dignity of incorruptibility through his holy flesh.”[6] This results in the gift of deification “which he could not possibly have failed to bestow since he was himself God incarnate, indwelling the flesh in the same manner that the soul indwells the body, that is, thoroughly interpenetrating it in a union without confusion.”[7]

---

[1] Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken, trans., On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: St Maximus the Confessor (Crestwood NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 134. (From Ad Thalassium 42)

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] George C. Berthold, Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 198. (From Mystagogia 8)

[5] Blowers, 135. (From Ad Thalassium 61)

[6] Blowers, 83. (From Ambiguum 42)

[7] Ibid.

Book Tag

Okay, I'll play along.

1. One book that changed your life:
Ceremony and Celebration - Paul H D Lange (yes, you can blame him)

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
The Hammer of God - Bo Geirtz

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
Monastic Diurnal - lightweight, has everything I need

4. One book that made you laugh:
I watch my humor

5. One book that made you cry:
I watch my tear-jerkers

6. One book that you wish had been written:
Dies Irae: A Novel about Irises

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
Sein und Zeit

8. One book you’re currently reading:
On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: St Maximos the Confessor

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
Beginning to Pray

10. Tag others.
Pr Petersen, Chris Jones, Fr Marco Vervoorst, Byzantine Dixie (I just love the nom de plume), Dr William Tighe (if he doesn't have a blog, he should!)

On Lutherans Becoming X

In the latest issue (vol 9 no 3) of De Trinitate, the Newsletter of the Society of the Holy Trinity, Rev Dr Frank C Senn, the STS Senior, comments on the departure of Lutheran clergy to either the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church. His focus is on those in the Society who have left including Phillip Max Johnson, the previous STS Senior (and Paul V Abbee, a former STS Dean and a classmate of mine at CTS). However, he also comments briefly on the departures of non-STS members Jaroslav Pelikan (of blessed memory), Richard John Neuhaus and Leonard Klein.

Senn notes that Neuhaus and Klein (among others)

developed a view of Lutheranism as a reform movement in the Catholic Church of the West. That was exciting, but I think finally misleading.

I think Senn is absolutely correct. If Lutheranism is nothing more than a "confessing movement within the Church Catholic" (a phrase, if memory serves, that A C Piepkorn employed), then it is either the worst form of schism (a selectively communing "church within a church") or it is an admission that, apart from self-invented concordants between local communities, there really is no trans-parochial entity called "church."

Senn continues by stating that one tempting reaction to these departures is to "[look] for deficiencies in Rome or other communions to justify why we are not making this journey" (empahsis added). Let me add that another temptation is to wring our hands wondering about by-gone years (a temptation I've been accused of indulging). Several months ago, Carl E Braaten offered a healthier avenue by asking, in an open letter, not "What's wrong with them" but "What's wrong with us." This, however, can lead to a third and fourth temptation. The third is to say, "Things are getting better" (which, on a lighter note, brings this to mind). And the fourth is to suggest the formation of a new church or another version of a "church-within-a-church."

Predictably, Senior Senn urges his charges not to despair but to remain true to the confession to which they have pledged themselves. He reminds them that "It's not always pleasant to remain in place and contend for the truth of the gospel or to champion the great tradition in our congregations and denominations." These are words to which any faithful churchman, regardless of his communion, would say a hearty "Amen."

Bolstering his argument with the stern warning of a good father, Dr Senn makes this blunt statement:

Short cuts to Rome [or elsewhere, I would add] may be tempting and personally satisfying, but it is pastorally irresponsible to abandon congregations and colleagues, and it is ecumenically irresponsible to give up the painstaking work of moving whole communities toward fellowship with each other.

Again, these are words that, in most circumstances, are true. However, the latter "irresponsibility" assumes that the "work of moving whole communities" is best accomplished within some sort of bureaucratic, centralized structure and not one local parish at a time. This is a point that could be disputed. The former "irresponsibility" assumes that the abandoner is doing so for less than pure motives.

There are many "less than pure motives" that are possible; namely, the desire to run from the cross, pride, greed, etc. The most insidious of these "less than pure motives" is found in the statement, "By becoming x, I became a better Lutheran." Frankly, I once favored that logic, but now I grow increasily impatient with it. For it suggests that joining another communion is little more than a "hop," and that one's not really giving up anything but simply "completing" himself. It also belies an untenable notion of truth; namely, that there is no sure body of truth located in one place (i.e., a true visible church), but that the Lutherans have a bit that helps complete the defiencies of x. Finally, in ecclesial terms, this argument partakes of the false primacy of the invisible church by suggesting that, in the end, communions matter--but only as "communities" and not as assemblies of rightly prayed dogma.

By using the phrase "less than pure motives" I have, of course, raised the question, "What would be pure motives for abandoning one's congregation?" I can think of only one: the Pastor (or layman) has come to the conclusion that he no longer is of the same faith as those with whom he is in communion. In other words, the person who leaves his communion does so with pure motives because he can articulate at least the material (if not also the formal) deficiencies in the confession to which he has pledged himself. I would further add that it is not enough to articulate those deficiencies in terms of doctrinal formulae or propostions which are wrongly stated; more than that, he must articulate the material liturgical deficiencies in his present communion. (Notice, not how doctrinal formulae are poorly prayed, but how the liturgy has helped inform the deficient doctrinal formulae.)

To be sure, it is not always charitable or helpful to articulate those deficiencies publicly; and, I would think, it is certainly pastorally irresponsible to do so to the congregation he may be leaving. But this does not absolve the person from being able to do so--perhaps, if only, to his incoming superior.

In this regard, the title and nuanced argument that Fr Richard John Neuhaus made at Concordia Theological Seminary some years ago (published later in First Things) is very instructive. Neuhaus does not write about "How I Became the Lutheran I Always Should Have Been," but "How I Beame the Catholic I Was." Simply put, his argument is that the Roman Church made up for the deficiencies he found in Lutheranism.

On the whole, then, I resonate with Dr Senn's pastoral letter to the members of STS. However, I offer this caveat:

It is pastorally irresponsible for a man to remain in his parish and in communion with his colleagues when he is capable of articulating serious deficiencies in their common confession; that is, when he can no longer pray the same dogma as they pray.

Tribute to Jaroslav Pelikan

In yesterday's mail was my issue of First Things. The last piece in the "Opinion" section is what I deem a fine tribute to Jaroslav Pelikan by Robert Louis Wilken. Both grew up in the LCMS. Pelikan died in the Orthodox communion, and Wilken is Roman Catholic.

Wilken's tribute begins with a scene from the vigil at the Three Heirarchs' Chapel of St. Vladimir's Theological Seminary prior to the "Divine Service for the Funeral of a Layman During the Forty Days of Pascha." It concludes with a reminiscence of his last converastion with Pelikan while listening to Bach's B-Minor Mass. In between is a fond eulogy commenting on the major highlights of Pelikan's contributions to church history.

Two sentences in that eulogy stand out for me.

[Pelikan's] historical study had convinced him that the most faithful bearer of the apostolic faith was the great tradition of thought and practice as expounded by the orthodox Church Fathers.

Pelikan knew, and his scholarship demonstrated, what many Christian theologians and Church leaders have forgotten, that over the Church's long history, the orthodox and catholic form of Christian faith, what the Church "believes, teaches and confessions on the basis of the Word of God" [from Pelikan's introduction to The Christian Tradition] has been the most biblical, the most coherent, the most enduring, the most adaptable, and, yes, the most true.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide a link to this tribute. But I commend you to get the August/September 2006 issue and read the whole thing for yourself.