Ever Ancient, Ever New

Today is the feast of St. Augustine, bishop and doctor. In one of the most well-known passages from his Confessions, he describes his experience of coming to know divine Truth, which he compares to light. At first it is entirely overwhelming, so that he only knows that there is such a light; but in time, he comes to see by this light and to know Him as Christ. Here's the excerpt used in the Office of Readings:

Urged to reflect upon myself, I entered under your guidance the innermost places of my being; but only because you had become my helper was I able to do so. I entered, then, and with the vision of my spirit, such as it was, I saw the incommutable light far above my spiritual ken and transcending my mind: not this common light which every carnal eye can see, nor any light of the same order; but greater, as though this common light were shining much more powerfully, far more brightly, and so extensively as to fill the universe. The light I saw was not the common light at all, but something different, utterly different, from all those things. Nor was it higher than my mind in the sense that oil floats on water or the sky is above the earth; it was exalted because this very light made me, and I was below it because by it I was made. Anyone who knows truth knows this light.

O eternal Truth, true Love, and beloved Eternity, you are my God, and for you I sigh day and night. As I first began to know you, you lifted me up and showed me that, while that which I might see exists indeed, I was not yet capable of seeing it. Your rays beamed intensely on me, beating back my feeble gaze, and I trembled with love and dread. I knew myself to be far away from you in a region of unlikeness, and I seemed to hear your voice from on high: “I am the food of the mature: grow, then, and you shall eat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food; but you will be changed into me”.

Accordingly I looked for a way to gain the strength I needed to enjoy you, but I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who is also God, supreme over all things and blessed for ever. He called out, proclaiming I am the Way and Truth and the Life, nor had I known him as the food which, though I was not yet strong enough to eat it, he had mingled with our flesh, for the Word became flesh so that your Wisdom, through whom you created all things, might become for us the milk adapted to our infancy.

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

The phrase "ever ancient, ever new" has particular resonance for me of late, as a description not only of God but also the Church's life of faith. (Incidentally, it is no surprise that the same phrase could apply to both, since the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ.) Admittedly, this blog is a strong supporter of tradition and a whole variety of ancient things. It is tempting to assume that the oldest forms of the faith are the best and we should simply strive to replicate such storied practices. But Jesus himself teaches that “every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old” (Mt 13:52). There was a time when monasticism was new. There was a time when the mendicants were new. Today we too are called to express Christianity in ways that engage with new cultures and the contemporary world, without abandoning the riches of our religious patrimony.

H/T to The Crossroads Initiative for the excerpt from the Office of Readings.

Celebrating Goodness

Thanksgiving will be here in just a few days and many of us will find ourselves sharing with family and friends those things for which we are thankful. I have noticed that, from time to time, people will formulate their thanks in a negative way. That is, instead of saying, "I am thankful for my health," they will say, "I am thankful for not getting sick this year." This is rarely intended and I probably ought not read too much into it, but it seems to be illustrative of a problem we sometimes have.

St. Augustine, when confronting the problem of evil, argues that evil does not exist. Literally. He contends that being is itself good. All things that are are good. If something seems to be evil, it is deficient in being; it does not as fully exist as a proper, good thing. If I have not yet entirely bastardized Augustine, we might put his concept into colloquial terms by saying that goodness is like heat: there is no such thing as evil (or cold), only the absence of good (or heat).

However, being thankful for "not getting sick" represents a kind of anti-Augustinianism. It places the emphasis on evil (in this case, sickness), and suggests that goodness is only the absence of evil, and not a thing in itself. This is a very dreary form of thanks, since it implicitly says, "The world is full of evil, but I have been lucky to avoid most of it." Such a statement says nothing about goodness, implicitly denying that one is thankful for it.

Last month I was in Dallas for the wedding of two of my classmates. After the reception a gaggle of alumni went out for drinks together at the Gingerman. One classmate suggested that we play a drinking game. I think mine were not the only eyebrows raised just a little. Drinking games, really...? But as our colleague explained, this "game" was different. The concept was simple enough: taking turns round the table, each person would sharing something they enjoy. The speaker, along with any others who enjoy the same thing, would take a swig of beer. Most drinking games are built on coercion: if you fail to do X, you must drink. This, it was explained to us, is a mistake. Drinking should be a joy, and should be associated with joyful things. It should be a celebration, not a punishment.

And a celebration it was. We shared joys from our undergraduate days together and from our more recent adventures in various places. Stories quickly came to the fore, stories about classes and pranks and epic road trips. We toasted academic nerdery and cute children, beloved friends and favorite places. It was more than mere thankfulness for the absence of ill in our lives: it was a celebration of real, active, vibrant goodness in our lives.


Photo credit: Today's picture comes from jypsygen's Flickr account. It is, admittedly, not from our trip to the Gingerman. But it is an authentic Dallas Gingerman photo, which counts for something, I think.

On the Subversive Use of Language - Part I

Machiavelli has given his name to a certain style of cut-throat politics characterized by intrigue, backstabbing and the unbridled pursuit of power, though he was neither its first advocate nor its most adept practitioner.1 More unique to Machiavelli’s thought is the use of language as a weapon: instead of employing language in the head-to-head combat of traditional arguments, he deploys his words on deep flanking strikes that take his opponents in the rear. “He gradually alters [words’] meaning by changing their context,” playing with double meanings or creating new meanings altogether.2 The Prince “presents evil as if it were neither evil nor good but merely useful or counterproductive. By the end unwary readers find themselves agreeing that both good and evil have their worthy places in a new ethical framework structured by the concepts of necessity and usefulness.”3 It is a linguistic coup d’etat accomplished not by force of argument but by slight of hand.

Machiavelli’s Christian contemporaries were appalled by his work, “not as virgins shocked by political horrors they did not know existed” – for medieval Christendom had its share of assassinations, intrigues and the like – but because his work is at odds with the Christian world-view. Whereas Machiavelli contended that this present world alone matters, and framed political actions accordingly, Christian political philosophy acknowledges that there are norms which transcend this world and ought to order it. Thus, Augustine and others articulated the concept that the City of God, though present in this world, will only be fully realized in the life to come. The greatest political actions undertaken by medieval Christendom, the crusades, amply illustrate this Christian world-view in action. Jonathan Riley-Smith points out that “the most characteristic feature of crusading was that it was penitential. Crusaders had engaged themselves to fight as an act of penance in which they repaid God what was due to him on account of their sins.”4 The crusaders were not any more or less calculating than Machiavelli; the difference is that their calculations included a final judgment before the Almighty and the possibility of eternal life at His side. “The last thing most sensible crusaders would have expected was material gain,” but they had much bigger matters in mind.5

For the Christian, this desire to make life conform to the highest truths extends to the use of language.

For Dante [an exemplar of the Christian position], the function of language is to describe the nature of things. To the extent that men understand the place of everything in a divinely ordered natural hierarchy, they may attune themselves to reality. Words express men’s best understanding of how every piece of reality fits with every other. Therefore, although words are not quite the means of grace, they have much to do with steering men toward saving truth or damning error…. [Machiavelli’s] thesis is that languages are essentially particular articulations of the universal struggle for primacy.6

Machiavelli’s Christian critics see that he undermines the connection between human behavior and transcendent truth and they fear for the salvation of souls. While their concern may be well-founded, these concerns need not result in a rejection of his methods out of hand.

Part II coming soon...


1. See Angelo M. Codevilla, introduction, The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), x.
2. Codevilla, “Words and Power,” The Prince, xx.
3. Ibid, xxv.
4. Jonathan Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades?, 3rd ed (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002) 3.
5. Ibid, 72.
6. Codevilla, “Words and Power,” xxiii.