The Gospel of St. John

Reading N°32 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by

 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

St. John the Evangelist
Domenichino (1581-1648)

The fall of the Flavians was followed by a conservative reaction, from which the Christians profited. At Domitian's death, in 96, St. John returned from exile to Ephesus. There he had the consolation of being again in the society of Christians in which he had lived for about thirty years. This whole crowd of converts, some from the ranks of Judaism, some from paganism, were all more or less imbued with the same philosophical ideas that issued from Alexandria. The educated discussed abstract systems that were venturesome and obscure. Even the common people spoke the language of those ideas; and by that unfelt influence which descends from the heights of speculative science little by little into the practice of life, curious theories insinuated themselves into the popular beliefs.

Some people were making a distinction between Christ and Jesus, regarding the latter as a mere man, like other men. This theory had been taught especially by a certain mysterious personage, Cerinthus, whose life is almost entirely unknown to us. His views are recorded by St. Irenaeus.^[1]

Cerinthus seems to have been a native of Egypt. He was a Jew before his conversion. After becoming a Christian, he kept his narrow views, refusing to admit the catholic character of Christianity. If we are to accept St. Epiphanius' report,^[2] Cerinthus organized even around St. Paul a sort of opposition preaching for the purpose of maintaining the Christian religion in strict dependence on Judaism. But the Judaism to which Cerinthus held was that interpreted by Philo - a synthesis of pagan wisdom and Mosaic teaching. After travelling through Palestine, Syria, and Galatia, Cerinthus returned to Asia. He may have settled at Ephesus during St. John's exile. Here is a brief outline of his teaching:

So far is the supreme God raised above all things, that even the angels do not know Him. He is neither the Creator nor Lawmaker of the world. This function belongs to the angels. As for Jesus, He is the son of Joseph and Mary. At His baptism, a power of the supreme God descended upon Him and remained in Him until the Passion exclusive. This divine entity was the Christ. The power of the supreme God left Him during His Passion, but nevertheless He rose from the dead.^[3]

Did Cerinthus confine himself to teaching by word of mouth, or did he put his ideas in writing? Contemporary evidence is too vague on this point to allow us to decide. We know that he made devoted disciples among the Christians. Upon St. John's return to Ephesus, the heresy of the Cerinthians was a great peril for the Church. Polycarp relates that John, the disciple of the Lord, one day entered a bath at Ephesus and there saw the heresiarch; thereupon John ran out, crying: "Let us fly lest the baths fall in, since Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within."^[4]

Besides Cerinthus, were there any forerunners of Docetism - later propounded by Saturninus, Basilides, Valentinus, and Marcion - the error which holds that Jesus Christ had only an apparent body? Or did Cerinthus himself teach this heresy? It is impossible to say. But several passages of St. John's writings seem to have such a doctrine in mind.^[5]

However this may be, to refute the false notions that were circulating about the adorable person of the Savior, nothing could equal the testimony of him who had known the Master intimately, who had rested his head upon His breast the night before He died, and who had heard His last words on Calvary. St. John addressed to the Christians of Asia Minor, who had been converted from paganism, a letter which may be considered as a preface to the Gospel which he wrote later. This letter begins thus:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life. [...] That which we have seen and have heard, we declare unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship may be with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.^[6]

These words indicate the aim of the Fourth Gospel: to show, as against the new heretics, the identity of Jesus of Nazareth with the eternal Son of God, the life and light of the world. The first three Gospels had given a glimpse of the eternal preexistence of Jesus Christ.^[7] St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Colossians, and later in the Epistle to the Hebrews, represented Christ as the sole revealer and sole mediator of the invisible Father.^[8] St. John's originality consisted in this, that, in the light of more intimate recollections and deeper supernatural illuminations, he made Christian revelation more precise on these points; and that, in his exposition, he ventured to use the abstract expressions of Oriental language, expressions that were common in the country where he was writing.

Soon afterward, St. John's Gospel appeared. It begins thus:

In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God.

This term "Word" or Logos was in common use by the Alexandrian philosophers. But we would be quite mistaken if we therefore concluded that the Evangelist's thought is at all dependent upon a particular philosophy. In the philosophy of Philo, the word Logos means vaguely an organ of the divine power, although we cannot exactly say whether it is confounded with God or constitutes a distinct person; for other philosophers, this word signified either a being intermediate between the world and God, or divine reason spread forth in the world, or something entirely different. The Logos, for the Hellenists of the time, was the favorite word to express whatever is beautiful and harmonious and great. We may form an idea of this by considering what the eighteenth century philosophers put under the name of Reason, those of the nineteenth under the name of Science, those of the twentieth under the name of Life. The Apostle seized upon this word - he uses it only four times in all his writings - and declares to that Alexandrian world, seduced by all the grand things which that term suggested to them, that its ideal is fully realized only in this Jesus, whose witness he, John, is.^[9] And the Evangelist makes the idea of the Word, or Logos, more precise by means of the two clearer words, light and life:

The Word was with God. [...] In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.^[10]

The wonderful prologue containing these words so far surpasses the ordinary conceptions of the human mind as to dazzle and astound it. This son of thunder does not speak a human language; he flashes lightning, he thunders, he stuns, he humbles every created mind under the obedience of the faith, when, by a rapid flight, cleaving the air and piercing the clouds and rising above the angels, he intones these words: "In the beginning was the Word."^[11]

Once the theologian has set forth the grand concept we should have of Jesus Christ, the part of the witness begins. St. John's aim in writing his Gospel is evidently to prove the faith; but he wishes to prove it by history, chiefly by that which he knows in a more personal way. He is not at pains to harmonize his account with that of the preceding Evangelists. As a rule John records the events in the order of their happening; and nevertheless it is possible to note a progressive movement in the march of ideas, which warrants the division of the Holy Book into three parts. The first recounts the various greetings accorded by the world to the Light bestowed on it by the Incarnate Word;^[12] the second describes the implacable resistance it met with from the creatures of Darkness;^[13] the third describes the eclipse of the Light, but only an apparent eclipse, since from it Jesus emerges in a more striking manifestation of His Divinity: His love attaining its climax in the Eucharist and the sacrifice on the Cross.^[14] "None but God could have loved so greatly as this."^[15]

The Fourth Gospel seems to flow in a single stream. The events and discourses connect, explain, and supplement each other in a magnificent unity. Everything in it is lifelike and glowing; the events are intermingled with dialogue and animated retort, with realistic interruptions; the actors of the story seem to live again in its pages. Even the abstract ideas take on a body, and the most material events evoke supernatural realities. The Savior's features appear more lifelike than in the Synoptic Gospels; the inner depths of His soul are more clearly revealed. The Apostle, writing his narrative after a long interval, "recording conversations and discourses that he did not write down on the spot, subjects these conversations and discourses to certain literary transformations," by giving them "a personal stamp of his own in the construction of phrases and the grouping of ideas."^[16] Yet it is quite natural to think that the beloved disciple was able to attain to deeper realities than the other Evangelists, either by the more intimate confidences which his divine Friend may have bestowed on him, or because a more ardent love made it easier for him to understand and remember, or because a half-century of intense mystical life revealed to him more clearly a saying at first imperfectly understood.^[17]

The appearance of St. John's Gospel was one of the greatest events in the early Church. It occurred about the year 98.^[18] The Evangelist accomplished his purpose. Without any direct controversy or specific mention of the heresy, by a simple mention of the opposite facts,^[19] which he himself had witnessed, he reduced to nothing all the affirmations of Cerinthus. Thereafter, in the teaching of the faithful, the influence of this book was immense. Eusebius says: "It is read in all the churches under heaven."^[20] Some heretics tried to make it serve their own purpose; others fought it with all their might. Especially in Alexandria it occasioned many metaphysical speculations. Eusebius speaks of "a school of sacred learning" or didascalia, founded in Alexandria at an early date.^[21] This was the germ of the famous school on which Clement of Alexandria and Origen shed such incomparable luster. It was the beginning of a new phase in the history of the Church. In Jerusalem, Christianity appears as a brotherhood, with St. James the Less as its father; at Antioch, it appears as a propaganda, with St. Paul as its chief champion; at Rome, it declares itself as a government, with St. Peter as the head; at Alexandria, it presents itself as a philosophy, with St. John as its doctor. These were, however, merely diverse aspects, successive adaptations, of a doctrine always one, always identical: for it to enlarge and develop was simply to succeed in fathoming the Master's teaching more and more deeply.

The story of St. John's last years has not been recorded; it is lost in fanciful legend, with which the Gnostics embellished it. What we can accept as a truthful detail is the continuance of his amiable kindness. All the traditions represent him as a kindly man advanced in years, summing up all his teaching in one saying:

My little children, let us love not in word nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth.^[22]

These same traditions are agreed in saying that his death was as gentle as falling asleep.^[23] His tomb soon became an object of universal veneration. Today, upon the ruins of the city of Ephesus, it is thought that traces of it are to be found on the side of a hill where eight or ten poor families are living together; and the memory of the great Apostle survives in the name of the little village which these families have founded, Aya Suluk, the place of the "Holy Theologian" (aghiou apostolou).^[24]

Tomb of St. John the Apostle in Ephesus. The Basilica which once stood over
the tomb was abandoned after the Seljuk conquest of the 13th century, with the
remains being completely burned and destroyed during the Mongol raids of 1402.

Footnotes

[1] St. Irenaeus, Haereses, I, xxvi, 1.

[2] St. Epiphanius, Haereses, XXVIII, 2-4.

[3] St. Irenaeus, III, xi, 7. On Cerinthus, cf. idem, I, xxvi, 1; Tertullian, De praescr., 48.

[4] Eusebius, H. E., IV, xiv, 6.

[5] John 1:14; 19:34; 1 John 1:1; 4:3; 2 John 7.

[6] 1 John 1:1.

[7] Mark 12:35-37; Matt. 22:41-46; Luke 20:41-44.

[8] Coloss. 1:13-20; Heb. 1:2 f.; 7:6; 9:15; 12:24. Cf. 1 Cor. 8:6.

[9] On the comparison of Philo's Logos with the Logos of St. John, see Lebreton, Les Origines du dogme de Ia Trinité, I, 515-523.

[10] Anyone who will consult a Concordance, under the words "light" and "life," will be impressed with the important place which these two ideas hold in St. John's Gospel.

[11] Cf. Bossuet, Elévations sur les mystères, 7th edition.

[12] John 1-4.

[13] John 5-12.

[14] John 12-20. The last chapter, undoubtedly added as an afterthought, presents a somewhat different point of view.

[15] Fouard, St. John, p. 176.

[16] Lepin, art. "Evangiles", in the Dict. apol. de la foi catholique.

[17] Fouard (St. John, p. 175) admits as probable that other hands cooperated with St. John in the editing of his recollections. Calmes (Comment se sont formes les Evangiles, pp. 5-7, and L'Evangile selon saint Jean, Introduction) is willing to consider rather broadly the part of St. John's disciples in the editing of his Gospel. But, on any supposition, these authors maintain that the whole Gospel reproduces the Apostle's thought. Even with this restriction, the hypothesis admitted by Fouard and Calmes seems to us improbable. The perfect unity of plan and style to be observed in the Fourth Gospel does not easily comport with the supposition of a plurality of collaborators; unless these latter be regarded as simple scribes, passive secretaries, solely engaged in rendering with scrupulous care the thoughts and expressions of the Apostle - which would fundamentally be a return to the traditional thesis. (On the history of the Fourth Gospel, see Levesque, Nos quatre evangiles.)

[18] Probably the Apostle had begun to write his Gospel during his exile at Patmos, or even earlier, and it was merely the reproduction and orderly arrangement of his habitual preaching.

[19] Cf. Döllinger, The First Age of Christianity and the Church, I, 192.

[20] Eusebius, H. E., III, xxiv, 2. On the Gospel of St. John, see Corluy, Commentarium in Evangelium S. Joannis; Knabenbauer, ibidem; Lepin, La Valeur historique du quatrième Evangile; Nouvelle, L'Authenticité du quatrième Evangile.

[21] Eusebius, H. E. V, x, 1.

[22] 1 John 3:18.

[23] Zahn, Acta Johannis, p. 256.

[24] Le Camus, Voyage aux pays bibliques, III, 132 ff.

***

Join the discussion at:

Oaths

Twenty-Eighth in a Series on Catholic Morality

 by
 Fr. John H. Stapleton

The first quality of an oath is that it be true. It is evident that every statement we make, whether simple or sworn, must be true. If we affirm what we know to be false we lie, if we swear to what we know to be false, we perjure ourselves. Perjury is a sacrilegious falsehood, and the first sin against the Second Commandment.

If, while firmly believing it to be true, what we swear to happens to be false, we are not guilty of perjury, for the simple reason that our moral certitude places us in good faith, and good faith guarantees us against offending. The truth we proclaim under oath is relative, not absolute, subjective rather than objective, that is to say, the statement we make is true as far as we are in a position to know. All this holds good before the bar of conscience, but it may be otherwise in the courts where something more than personal convictions, something more akin to scientific knowledge, is required.

He who swears without sufficient certitude, without a prudent examination of the facts of the question, through ignorance that must be imputed to his guilt, that one takes a rash oath - a sin great or small according to the gravity of the circumstances. It is not infrequently grievous.

Some oaths, instead of being statements, are promises - sworn promises. That of which we call God to witness the truth is not something that is, but something that will be. If one promises under oath, and has no intention of redeeming his pledge; or if he afterwards revokes such an intention without serious reasons, and fails to make good his sworn promise, he sins grievously, for he makes a fool and a liar of Almighty God who acts as sponsor of a false pledge. Concerning temperance pledges, it may here be said that they are simple promises made to God, but not being sworn to, are not oaths in any sense of the word.

Then, again, to be lawful, an oath must be necessary or useful, demanded by the glory of God, our own or our neighbor's good; and it must be possible to fulfill the promise within the given time. Otherwise, we trifle with a sacred thing, we are guilty of taking vain and unnecessary oaths. There can be no doubt but that this is highly offensive to God, who is thus made little of in His holy name.

This is the most frequent offense against the Second Commandment, the sin of profane swearing, the calling upon God to witness the truth of every second word we utter. It betrays in a man a very weak sense of his own honesty when he cannot let his words stand for themselves. It betokens a blasphemous disrespect for God Himself, represented by that name which is made a convenient tool to further every vulgar end. It is therefore criminal and degrading, and the guilt thereby incurred cannot be palliated by the plea of habit. A sin is none the less a sin because it is one of a great many. Vice is criminal. The victim of a vice can be considered less guilty only on condition of seriously combating that vice. Failing in this, he must bear the full burden of his guilt.

Are we bound to keep our oaths? If valid, we certainly are. An oath is valid when the matter thereof is not forbidden or illicit. The matter is illicit when the statement or promise we make is contrary to right. He who binds himself under oath to do evil, not only does not sin in fulfilling his pledge, but would sin if he did redeem it. The sin he thus commits may be mortal or venial according to the gravity of the matter of the oath. He sinned in taking the oath; he sins more grievously in keeping it.

The binding force of an oath is also destroyed by fraud and deception. Fear may have a kindred effect, if it renders one incapable of a human act. Likewise a former oath may annul a subsequent oath under certain conditions.

Again, no man in taking an oath intends to bind himself to anything physically or morally impossible, or forbidden by his superiors; he expects that his promise will be accepted by the other party, that all things will remain unchanged, that the other party will keep faith, and that there will be no grave reason for him to change his mind. In the event of any of these conditions failing of fulfillment his intention is not to be held by his sworn word, and his oath is considered invalidated. He is to be favored in all doubts and is held only to the strict words of his promise.

The least, therefore, we have to do with oaths, the better. They are things too sacred to trifle with. When necessity demands it, let our swearing honor the Almighty by the respect we show His holy name.

Between Husband and Wife

Sixth in a Series on Catholic Marriage and Parenthood

 by

 Fr. Thomas J. Gerrard

There is a very old Hindu legend in which the making of the first woman is described in this wise. When the creator Twashtri had made man, he gathered together a million contradictory elements, and out of them he made a woman whom he presented to the man. After eight days the man became dissatisfied. "My lord," he said, "the creature you gave me poisons my existence. She babbles unceasingly, she takes all my time, she grumbles at nothing, and is always ill." So Twashtri took the woman away. But after another eight days the man became again uneasy. "My lord," he said, "my life is very solitary since I returned this creature." So Twashtri gave him the woman back again. This time, however, only three days had gone by when the man came once more to the god. "My lord," he said, "I do not know how it is, but somehow the woman gives me more annoyance than pleasure. I beg of you to take her away." But Twashtri would not. "Go and do your best," he said. "But I cannot live with her," cried the man. "Neither can you live without her," cried the god. " Woe is me!" mourned the man," I can neither live with nor without her."

Since that story was written, thousands upon thousands have felt the conflicting experience which the story expresses. The underlying truth is that, when man and woman are joined together in matrimony, neither of them is perfect. It is their mutual life and constant adjustment of mind and heart, under the influence of matrimonial grace, which is to make them perfect. Marriage is one of the means of their salvation. Let us refer to St. Paul to see how the grace acts. He touches two sensitive nerves when he says: "Wives, be obedient to your husbands as you should be in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter toward them."

Doubtless, the Apostle was writing to correct certain abuses prevalent among the people to whom he wrote. He was not necessarily giving a full and comprehensive description of the marriage ideal. Forgetting this, many people have misunderstood the Apostle's words, especially that portion of them which speaks of the obedience of wives. How many women there are now who, reading the epistle in the light of present day abuses, "cannot stand that man Paul!" Let our consideration, then, be confined to these two virtues of conjugal relationship, love and obedience, for it is the failure to appreciate their true nature which issues in multitudes of other evils, affecting not only individual families, but communities, nations, nay, the whole human race.

"Husbands, love your wives."

The Apostle is evidently referring to a neglect on the part of the husbands. He is not talking as if love were to be a one-sided affair. The very nature of love requires that it should be reciprocal, and should exist at least between two persons. The ideal love requires three persons. In God, it is the love of the blessed Trinity. In the religious, it is the love of God and of one's neighbor. In the family, it Is the love of husband, wife, and child. The love between two is the inchoate and root love which issues in the perfect love between three. The love of the Father and the Son issues in the personal Spirit of Love. A religious must love God before she can love her neighbor. Husband and wife must love each other before they can love their children perfectly. It often happens that a wife who is without a husband's love can take refuge in the love of her children. But she can love her children more when she knows that she possesses also the love of their father.

The nature of man and woman, however, is such that the love of the man toward the woman needs a more careful watching, a more careful cultivation. A woman's love is as a torrent which is always flowing. It has been used even by God as one of the most forceful analogies by which to make men realize His love for mankind. It is of its nature so generous and so constant as to overshadow that other endowment of woman: her intelligence.

The difference, however, between the two faculties - the faculty of loving and the faculty of thinking - is not so great as has been frequently supposed. In our endeavor to emphasize the quality of a woman's love we may not undervalue her intelligence. We must ever remember that woman is essentially a rational being just as man is. She herself is beginning to realize this all the world over. One of the most remarkable phenomena of the age is the movement for the emancipation of women. While admitting and asserting then the claims of woman's intelligence, we cannot overlook the fact that it is in affairs of the heart that she is the stronger.

On the other hand, it is, ordinarily speaking, the lot of the man to be the breadwinner of the family. He it is who must use his brains in the learned professions, in commerce, in the arts, and in the crafts.

There are exceptions. Oftentimes the wife is the brains of the family. Half of the teaching profession consists of women. But the lady doctor, the lady dentist, and the lady professor, usually find it more convenient to retire from their professions whenever they enter the state of matrimony. And simply because man is the working brains of the family, his faculty of loving needs a special culture. He has so many outlets for his attention that, if he does not take the greatest care, his love which should be devoted to his wife and family is absorbed in his business or other intellectual pursuit.

The lines upon which the cultivation of a husband's love should take place will be decided according to the character and dispositions of the wife. Generally, however, it must have the three qualities of being affectionate, practical, and exclusive.

It must be first of all affectionate. The double affection of a woman for her children and her husband springs from the same affectionate nature. If it is to flourish, it must be fed. The need must be satisfied or it will shrivel away. There is a tendency among men to regard the time of courtship as the time of poetry, and the time of marriage as the time of prose. And there is an axiom among women that they are to expect about half as much affection after marriage as before. It is very sad that it should be so, although it may be excusable. There are far more cares in the married state than in the single, which, of their very nature, tend to take the poetry out of life. It has been divinely foretold that such shall have trouble in the flesh. But it need not be so bad as it is. Nay, the very cares which tend to lessen the affection ought to be the occasion of its increase. To cultivate such affection requires an active will and a keen intelligence. The man ought to be a man. That is, he ought not to allow himself to be moved merely by his passions and feelings. He ought to use his intelligence to find out what little acts of sympathy, kindness, interest, and attention affect his wife's feelings toward himself. Then he ought to put forth a strong will in the frequent repetition of such acts. It is extremely beautiful when an old Darby and Joan can look back on a married life of, say, forty years, and tell you with a knowing smile that they have not yet finished courting. They have learnt the secret of cultivating affection, of seizing upon adversity only as an occasion for deeper sympathy, of studying each other's likes and dislikes, of saying the word which gives pleasure, of avoiding the word which gives pain.

Secondly, a husband's love must be practical. Here, again, it is a question of external attractions against the attraction of the wife at home. Some men there are so absorbed in their business or profession as to regard their wife and home as a mere accident in life. Their business is not, as it were, a means of keeping one's self, wife, and family in comfort, but rather the wife and the family are the means of carrying on the business. Or, again, the counter-attraction may be only low pleasures, the pleasure of company, the pleasure of the club, the pleasure of the public-house. All are violations of the practical love due from husband to wife. Frequently the wife can just tolerate them, provided she gets the affection. But that is only because by nature she has such a strong affection. Nevertheless, a prolonged neglect of the practical side of a husband's love must wear out a wife's affection, and then there is an end of all love, the family life is broken and the strength of society is sapped at its foundations. The husband's practical love of his wife, therefore - his care for her dress, her housekeeping, her health, her pleasures - has consequences reaching much further than would appear at first sight. His affection must be translated into action, else he fails in one of the greatest duties of his manhood.

Thirdly, a husband's love must be exclusive. The Christian dispensation in forbidding polygamy shows how much more it is in conformity with the laws of human nature than the other religions which allow plurality of wives. If there is one instinct which is paramount in woman it is that the love given to her by her husband must be exclusive. And what the law of nature demands the law of revelation confirms and sanctions. The Christian wife cannot for a moment tolerate the idea which prevails in the Mormon or the Mohammedan social systems.

Even more peremptory is the law of nature against the crime of adultery. Nowhere, however, are these laws of nature more carefully protected than in the Catholic Church. She has had twenty centuries' experience of human nature. She knows quite well that those laws cannot be observed by merely forbidding the grosser sins of adultery or polygamy. One does not fall into those sins suddenly, while leading an otherwise pure and blameless life. The way is prepared by a series of seemingly less harmful sins, the unchaste thought, the unchaste look, the unchaste word. Therefore it is that, in the matter of purity, the Church brands as mortal sin even the lesser faults when deliberately committed.

The true Christian husband, then, will not be content with merely guarding against sin. He will strive all he can in the opposite direction. He will avoid even innocent attentions to others which may possibly give displeasure to his wife. He will make it a special study and effort that his wife shall realize that she is the only one who has any attraction for him. If this habit of thought and action be sedulously cultivated it will bear fruit on both sides. The mutual love between husband and wife will be so strong and constant as to leave no room for jealousy, for such love is strong as death, and actually is the death of that jealousy which would be hard as hell.

What has been said of a husband's love applies equally to a wife's love. It must be affectionate, practical, and exclusive. Although these qualities are ordinarily found more pronounced and more natural in the wife than in the husband, yet even the wife cannot afford to leave them to natural impulse. She also must cultivate them, must watch them, must seek out opportunities of giving them free and healthy exercise. There is only a slight difference in their order. Bending to the nature of the man, instead of making her love first affectionate, then practical, then exclusive, she will simply reverse the order, so that her love shall be first exclusive, then practical, and then affectionate.

"Wives, be obedient to your husbands in the Lord."

Like all other social movements, the movement for the emancipation of women is fraught with the danger of rushing into the opposite error of that which is to be remedied. Impotent of discernment, the agitator will purge away both the dross and the gold together. Especially in this question of the obedience of wives to husbands will he, or rather she, persist in confusing the true obedience with false, in condemning an obedience which no Christian wife is supposed to render.

Let us see then what is conjugal obedience. No one will deny that in some sense the husband is the head of the family. Man was made first, and made lord of the earth. In his overlordship, he was lonely and had need of a helpmeet for him. To this end was a woman taken from his flesh and bone and given to him to be his wife. She was not to be reckoned, among the rest of creation, as part of the man's goods and chattels. Nor yet was she to be reckoned above man. Nor yet again was she to be reckoned as fulfilling the same office as man. She was to be his complement, helping him in those things for which by nature he was unsuited. He was to be the strong element, she the gentle. He was to be her protector; she was to find her joy in the sense of the security of his protection. Obviously, then, she was meant to yield, at least to some extent, to his overlordship. The only question is as to what extent.

We all know the distinction between servile and filial obedience. The one is the obedience of slaves, informed by the motive of fear; the other is the obedience of sons, informed by the motive of love. So, likewise, there is a distinction between servile obedience and conjugal obedience. The obedience of wives is as much raised above that of sons as that of sons is above that of slaves. Doubtless there have been many husbands who have demanded of their wives the obedience of a slave. And doubtless such husbands are largely responsible for much of the present misunderstanding of the nature and limits of wifely obedience. Broadly speaking, we may say that the obedience of the wife is due to the husband only within certain limits. It is not absolute. It is due to him in all those matters where it is evident that he must rule. It is not due to him in those matters where it is evident that the wife must rule.

All matters of business, everything which seriously affects the income of the family, the choice of trades or professions for the children: these evidently belong to the judgment of the husband. The wife may be, and ought to be, frequently consulted. But, having expressed her opinion, she ought to abide by the decision of the head of the family. On the other hand, the interior domestic arrangements pertain to the judgment of the wife. The management of servants and babies, for instance, are points upon which the husband should have nothing to say, except perhaps when he is asked, or when he divines that his suggestion will meet with his' wife's approval. And a wife would be acting well within her rights were she to resent any interference in these matters.

Hard and fast rules, however, cannot be laid down. Much depends upon the temperament of individuals and the force of circumstances. If a man has failed in business, say three times, and eventually has to depend on his wife's dowry for a livelihood, or upon another business built up by his wife, then he cannot expect to have the same authority as one possessing the full complement of manhood.

Again, no obedience is due to him when he is obviously demanding something contrary to divine law. To require a wife to give up any of her religious duties as a Catholic, to ask her to do something which is against any of the Ten Commandments: these are occasions when she not only may, but must disobey. In all cases of doubt, however, the presumption is in favor of the husband.

Above all things, however, the obedience must have its foundation in mutual love. Unless there is present that determination to love each other through thick and thin, through success and through adversity, through life and through death, it will be useless to try to decide by argument who has the right to command and who the duty to obey. The love in marriage is a great mystery, and he who would reduce it to mechanical laws must possess a higher knowledge than that ever yet possessed by mere man.

Pope St. Clement

Reading N°31 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by

 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

Pope St. Clement (92-99)

The Church is more than a society guided by a common inspiration: it is a hierarchical organization with a supreme authority to regulate its operation and to decide disputes. At the very hour when persecution and heresy were increasing their ravages, a painful quarrel broke out in the Christian community at Corinth. Following certain troubles, the precise cause of which we do not know, some members of the councilor presbyters were deposed. In a city like Corinth, disorder may assume very serious proportions. The Greek spirit, naturally particularistic and fickle, found it hard to submit to the fundamental law of Christianity, which established its hierarchy on the unity of doctrine and government. Thirty years earlier, St. Paul was obliged to administer a sharp reprimand to the Corinthians, who were saying: "I am of Paul; and I am of Apollo; and I am of Cephas,"^[1] as they might have said: "I belong to the Porch, or to the Lyceum, or to the Academy." The schism threatened to rend the Church. To prevent this, there was need for something besides the exhortations of a doctor or prophet; the situation called for the decision of a supreme chief and sovereign judge. This is why recourse was had to the successor of the Apostle Peter, to Clement of Rome.

The Roman Pontiff wrote them a letter wherein, along with an admirable spirit of prudence, there appears the consciousness of undeniable authority. He begins by excusing himself for not having intervened sooner. He says:

Owing to the sudden and repeated misfortunes and calamities which have befallen us, we consider that our attention has been somewhat delayed in turning to the questions disputed among you.^[2]

This is evidently a reference to the persecution of Domitian. Then the head of the Roman Church enters clearly upon the capital question: the necessity of humble submission to the order established by God in all things, and principally in His Church.

Let us be humble-minded, brethren, putting aside all arrogance and conceit. [...] Let not the wise man boast himself in his wisdom. Let him boast in the Lord, to seek Him out and to do judgment and righteousness.^[3]

But to be just and righteous is to bow before the order and harmony that God has establislled in all things.

The ocean and the worlds beyond it are ruled by the same injunctions of the Master. The seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter give place to one another in peace. [...] All these things did the great Creator and Master of the universe ordain to be in peace and concord.^[4]

This comparison, taken from the harmony of the physical world, which the Greeks called the Kosmos, or order par excellence, was particularly well chosen. Clement pushes his argument farther. He takes his analogies from the human body and the social organization.

Let us take our body; the head is nothing without the feet; likewise the feet are nothing without the head.^[5]

He recalls that, in the Old Testament, God, the direct author of the Law, instituted a hierarchy composed of four degrees: the laity, the Levites, the priests, and the high priest.^[6]

The Apostles received the gospel from the Lord Jesus Christ, who was sent from God. They appointed their first converts to be bishops and deacons.^[7]

The bishop of Rome in fine compares the ecclesiastical discipline to military discipline.

Let us consider those who serve our generals. [...] Not all are prefects nor tribunes nor centurions nor in charge of fifty men, or the like, but each carries out in his own rank the commands of the emperor and of the generals.^[8]

We know how inclined St. Paul was to use these military comparisons.^[9] But Christians are something more than an army. Clement says they are also "the flock of Christ,"^[10] or, better still, "the members of Christ."^[11] The flock should be at peace under the safekeeping of the presbyters;^[12] the members of Christ's body should not be torn asunder.^[13] The consequences that follow from these principles are solid and clear:

Let no one rebel against correction.^[14] [...] Let all submit to the presbyters.^[15] [...] Let the offerings be made and the ceremonies be performed, not according to each one's pleasure and without order, but as the Master commands and at fixed hours.^[16]

The pontiff sums up the whole instruction, saying:

Let us put aside empty and vain cares, and let us come to the glorious and venerable rule of our tradition.^[17]

The letter closes with these lines, in a spirit of calm but firm authority:

You will give us joy and gladness if you are obedient to the things which we have written through the Holy Spirit, and root out the wicked passion of your jealousy. [...] We have sent faithful and prudent men, who have lived among us without blame from youth to old age, and they shall be witnesses between you and us. We have done this that you may know that our whole care has been and is directed to your speedy attainment of peace.^[18]

Whether we consider this spontaneous act of Rome in itself or whether we weigh the terms of the letter, we cannot escape the impression that, as early as the end of the first century of the Christian era, i.e., about fifty years after her foundation, the Roman Church was conscious of possessing supreme and exceptional authority, which she will never cease hereafter to claim. But how did the Corinthians receive the exhortations and the messengers of the Church of Rome? So well, that St. Clement's Epistle was placed by them almost on a level with the Holy Scriptures. Seventy years later,^[19] it was still read on Sundays in the assemblies of the faithful.^[20]

By the fullness and reliability of its teaching, St. Clement's letter deserved the honors given it in the first centuries. Although it recalls the truths of the faith only in passing and insofar as they are related to the practical purpose of the letter, those truths are a sort of portrayal of the Christian beliefs in their main lines. The author appeals in turn to God's supreme authority and His creative power, to His providence, and to His love.^[21] The last judgment, Heaven, and the resurrection of the dead are presented as the final end of man;^[22] Christ, as man's divine model. The Son of God, equal to the Father and the Spirit by His divine nature, became man like us to save us by His death.^[23] Through Him, our high priest and our advocate with God the Father, man, aided by grace and making his faith fruitful by his works, has hope of being saved.^[24]

In testimony of the bonds, which in the Church have ever united the law of belief and the law of prayer,^[25] dogma and liturgy, the Pontiff inserts in his letter a solemn formula of prayer which we may regard, if not as the official formula of liturgical prayer of that time, at least as a specimen of the way the celebrants developed the subject of Eucharistic prayer:

Thou dost humble the pride of the haughty, thou dost destroy the imaginings of nations [...] thou dost slay and make alive [...] and art God of all flesh [...] thou dost multiply nations upon earth and hast chosen out from them all those that love thee through Jesus Christ thy beloved child. [...] We beseech thee, Master, to be our help and succor. [...] Feed the hungry, ransom our prisoners, raise up the weak. [...] O merciful and compassionate, forgive us our iniquities and unrighteousness, and transgressions and shortcomings. Reckon not every sin of thy servants and handmaids. [...] Give concord and peace to us and to all that dwell on the earth. [...] Thou, Master, hast given the power of sovereignty to them [our rulers and governors]. [...] And to them, Lord, grant health, peace, concord, firmness. [...] Direct their counsels according to that which is good and pleasing before thee. [...] O thou who alone art able to do these things and far better things for us, we praise thee through Jesus Christ, the high priest and guardian of our souls, through whom be glory and majesty to thee, both now and for all generations and for ever and ever. Amen.^[26]

Such is the beautiful prayer that ascended to God from the Christian assemblies of Rome, like a hymn of serene peace and unspeakable purity, after Domitian's persecution, in the midst of that "corrupted and corruptive" society, whose baseness and cruelty are recounted by the pens of Tacitus and Suetonius.^[27]

Footnotes

[1] Cf. 1 Cor. 1:12.

[2] Clement, First Epistle, 1:1.

[3] Ibidem, 13:1.

[4] Ibidem, 20:8-11.

[5] Ibidem, 37:5.

[6] Ibidem, 40:5.

[7] Ibidem, 62:1, 4.

[8] Ibidem, 37:2 f.

[9] Cf. 2 Cor. 10:3-6; Ephes. 6:10-18; 1 Tim. 1:18; 2 TIm. 2:3.

[10] Clement, First Epistle, 54:2.

[11] Ibidem, 46:7.

[12] Ibidem, 54:2.

[13] Ibidem, 46:7.

[14] Ibidem, 56:2.

[15] Ibidem, 57:1.

[16] Ibidem, 40:2.

[17] Ibidem, 7:2.

[18] Ibidem, 63:2-4.

[19] Cf. Dionysius of Corinth, in Eusebius, H. E., IV, xxiii.

[20] Cf. Duchesne, The Churches Separated from Rome, p. 85.

[21] Clement, First Epistle, Chapters 19, 23, 29, 35.

[22] Cf. Chapters 5, 24, 25, 26, 50.

[23] Cf. Chapters 2, 7, 12, 31, 32, 35, 49.

[24] Cf. Chapters 7, 8, 16, 18, 32, 33, 35.

[25] According to the well-known formula: lex orandi, lex credendi.

[26] Clement, First Epistle, Chapters 59 to 61. This letter was widely known and greatly venerated in Christian antiquity. But it seems to have been neglected in the West from the fourth century onward. In the Middle Ages, it was altogether unknown. In the seventeenth century, it was partly recovered in the famous Codex Alexandrinus. Bryennios, in 1875, reconstructed the entire text. The beautiful prayer quoted above forms a part of recently discovered fragments.

[27] "Corrumpere et corrumpi saeculum vocatur." (Tacitus, Germania, 19.)

***

Join the discussion at:

Swearing

Twenty-Seventh in a Series on Catholic Morality

 by
 Fr. John H. Stapleton

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God in vain."

A name is a sign, and respect for God Himself, as prescribed by the First Commandment through faith, hope, charity, prayer and religion, naturally implies respect for the name that stands for and signifies God. Your name may, of itself, be nothing more than mere sound; but used in relation to what it represents, it is as sacred, and means as much to you, as your very person, for whatever is addressed to your name, whether of praise or blame, is intended to reach, and does effectively reach, yourself, to your honor or dishonor. You exact therefore of men, as a right, the same respect for your name as for your person; and that is what God does in the Second Commandment.

The name of God represents all that He is. He who profanes that name profanes a sacred thing, and is guilty of what is, in reality, a sacrilege. To use it with respect and piety is an act of religion which honors God. Men use and abuse this holy name, and first of all, by swearing, that is, by taking oaths.

In the early history of mankind, we are told, swearing was unknown. Men were honest, could trust each other and take each other's word. But when duplicity, fraud and deception rose out of the corrupt heart of man, when sincerity disappeared, then confidence disappeared also, no man's word was any longer good. Then it was that, in order to put an end to their differences, they called upon God by name to witness the truth of what they affirmed. They substituted God's unquestioned veracity for their own questioned veracity, and incidentally paid homage to His truth; God delivered security for man. Necessity, therefore, made man swear; oaths became a substitute for honesty.

A reverent use of the name of God, for a lawful purpose, cannot be wrong; on the contrary, it is good, being a public recognition of the greatest of God's attributes - truth. But, like all good things, it is liable to be abused. A too frequent use of the oath will easily lead to irreverence, and thence to perjury. It is against this danger, rather than against the fact itself of swearing, that Christ warns us in a text that seems at first blush to condemn the oath as evil. The common sense of mankind has always given this interpretation to the words of Christ.

An oath, therefore, is a calling upon God to witness the truth of what we say, and it means that we put our veracity on a par with His and make Him shoulder the responsibility of truthfulness.

To take an oath we must swear by God. To swear by all the saints in the calendar would not make an oath. Properly speaking, it is not even sufficient to simply say: "I swear," we must use the name of God. In this matter, we first consider the words. Do they signify a swearing, by God, either in their natural sense or in their general acceptation? Or is there an intention of giving them this signification? In conscience and before God, it is only when there is such an intention that there is a formal oath and one is held to the conditions and responsibilities thereof.

Bear in mind that we are here dealing for the moment solely with lawful swearing. There are such things as imprecation, blasphemy, and general profanity, of which there will be question later, and which have this in common with the oath, that they call on the name of God; the difference is the same that exists between bad and good, right and wrong. These must therefore be clearly distinguished from religious and legal swearing.

There is also a difference between a religious and a legal oath. The religious oath is content with searching the conscience in order to verify the sincerity or insincerity of the swearer. If one really intends to swear by God to a certain statement, and employs certain words to express his intention, he is considered religiously to have taken an oath. If he pronounces a formula that expresses an oath, without the intention of swearing, then he has sworn to nothing. He has certainly committed a sin, but there is no oath. Again, if a man does not believe in God, he cannot swear by Him; and in countries where God is repudiated, all attempts at administering oaths are vain and empty.

Mixed Marriages

Fifth in a Series on Catholic Marriage and Parenthood

 by
 Fr. Thomas J. Gerrard

The Church, in her dispensation of the Sacraments, always acts as a good and kind mother. She has regard to the weakness, as well as to the strength of her children. Her divine message is all-beautiful. The ideal which she sets before her children is a perfect ideal. She ever emphasizes this ideal even though she knows that in many cases it will not be realized. She wishes her children to conform to the ideal as nearly as possible. Consequently, she condescends to them, and where in her wisdom she finds that the weak ones cannot realize what she wishes, she allows, within certain limits, that which is less good. She knows that the Sacraments were made for men, not men for the Sacraments. She prefers, then, to administer the Sacraments with certain accidental imperfections rather than allow her children to go without the grace which the Sacraments convey. For this reason, she tolerates what are known as mixed marriages.

Strictly speaking, mixed marriages are those which take place between baptized persons, of whom one is a Catholic and the other a non-Catholic. Thus, the ceremony performed between a Catholic and a Jew would not be a mixed marriage in the sense of the word as we use it. A mixed marriage, generally speaking, is that which takes place between a Catholic and a Protestant. Now, although the Church tolerates such marriages under certain conditions, yet she ever deprecates them. They fall below her ideal. In order, then, to understand clearly why the Church looks so unfavorably on such marriages, we must keep before our minds the nature of her ideal. The bond between man and wife is as the bond between Christ and His Church.

The chief characteristic of the bond between Christ and His Church is its intense intimacy and absolute perfection. Christ, indeed, by another comparison, likens it to the substantial union between Himself and His eternal Father. Nowhere can distinctness and unity be so complete as in the bosom of the blessed Trinity. The distinctness is infinite, and thus enables the Father and the Son each to receive an infinite love. Their unity is that of one infinite substance, which enables them to communicate to each other an infinite love, a love which issues in the person of the Holy Spirit. This is a type of the union between Christ and His Church. The Church, of course, is a finite creature and incapable of giving an infinite love to Christ. Nor again is the union between Christ and the Church a substantial union. The Church and Christ do not make up together one substance. But since that union has been likened to the substantial and infinite union of the Father and the Son, we conclude that it must be of a nature far more intimate and far more perfect than we can ever hope to comprehend. And since the union of man and wife has been likened to the union of Christ and the Church, we conclude that that also must be of a nature far more intimate and far more perfect than we can ever hope to comprehend. The Sacrament of marriage is a great mystery, a shadow of the mystic union of Christ and His Church, a shadow of the eternal and substantial union of the Father and the Son in the blessed Trinity.

The first and foremost reason why the Church deprecates mixed marriages is because they spoil God's ideal. Christ came on earth to speak the mind of the eternal Father. The Church exists to speak the mind of Christ. Any suggestion of difference of thought between the Father and the Son, or between Christ and His Church, carries with it the evident mark of its own absurdity. From this absurdity, however, we may gather something of the imperfection of a marriage union in which the parties profess different faiths. The Catholic faith is the most precious treasure, the most illustrious adornment, which a man can possess. It is a possession, moreover, which is unique of its kind. It cannot combine or make terms with any other faith. If one article be changed only in the slightest degree, the whole faith is rendered vain. A marriage union, therefore, in which one party makes profession of Catholicism and the other of Protestantism cannot be but an ungraceful thing in the eyes of God.

Indeed, there are few people who do not recognize the irregularity. It is only the immediately interested couple, who, for the time being, cannot see that it is a matter of the highest importance. They are madly in love, and where it is a question of so much love, the faith must accommodate itself to circumstances. Yet, if they could only see the connection between faith and love, they would have to recognize that diversity of faith in the marriage union must eventually tell against love in the marriage union. Faith is the gift by which we believe in God and in His word. Without belief in God, we cannot love Him. Without the full acceptance of His word, we cannot follow His commands and ordinances. We cannot live in sympathy with that wonderful system of morality by which He adjusts and fosters the love between man and man.

Thus it is that the Protestant married to a Catholic cannot avail himself of the teaching and the Sacraments of the Catholic Church which might be so effectual in fostering love between man and wife. Real love is that only which has faith for its foundation. But, in the mixed marriage, the faith is all on one side. It does not flourish with that fecundity which would be present were the parties united in one and the same belief. Further, this absence of faith-informed love on the part of the non-Catholic partner must in a measure react on the Catholic partner. Grace is very powerful, but it needs a nature upon which to act. And if the faith-informed love of the Catholic partner finds no response in the non-Catholic partner, if It receives an inferior love in return, or if it discovers itself misunderstood and unappreciated, then, if it does not dwindle away, it at least fails in its possible measure of fruitfulness.

The Church has her eyes wide open to the weakness of human nature when she tolerates a mixed marriage. A mixed marriage is a real Sacrament, and all the graces of the Sacrament are capable of being conveyed through it, though these graces may often fail in their effects through the want of disposition in the non-Catholic party. The Catholic party may do his or her best, as the case may be, but as human nature is so weak, there is naturally an ever-present danger of the Catholic losing the faith. Over and above the certainty of spoiling God's ideal, there is the disadvantage of risking the loss of faith altogether.

Therefore it is that the Church, when she allows a mixed marriage, insists on the condition that the Catholic partner shall not be hindered in the practice of the faith. The non-Catholic must give an explicit promise to this effect. He may not make any contrary conditions, either before or after the marriage. Any attempt to compel or persuade the Catholic to go to a Protestant Church, to stay away from Mass, or to abstain from Confession, is a dishonorable violation of the condition and promise.

The Church, by a long experience, knows that such attempts are only too common. Sometimes they are done openly and menacingly. Oftener, perhaps, they are done quietly and in a friendly way. Numberless are the occasions when the danger creeps in. The Catholic is perhaps too late for Mass on Sunday. Then the obvious suggestion of the non-Catholic is: "Oh, well, come to our church for a change." Or it may be merely a social gathering under Protestant auspices, a bazaar, a tea party, an excursion - surely one cannot be so narrow as to object to these! There would be less danger in them for a Catholic who was out and out a Catholic, a Catholic joined to a Catholic in marriage, and generally subject to Catholic influences. But for the Catholic who is the partner of a Protestant, and who is without all those helps which an entirely Catholic family provides, these social functions are so many pitfalls. They seem harmless enough in themselves, but they lead from one thing to another, from the social to the religious. Indeed, wherever one partner is Protestant, the opportunities of perversion are as persistent in their frequency as they are subtle in kind and degree. In this, as in all other dangers, prevention is better than cure.

Foster a strong dislike for mixed marriages. Avoid company where you are likely to meet a partner of another religious persuasion. Reject the first overtures made by one who is not of your faith. Then, if circumstances have been too many or too strong for you, make up your mind at once that only by strict observance of the conditions laid down by the Church can your faith and your hope and your love be saved.

The fostering of mutual love, however, even the most perfect and most spiritual love, is not the chief end of marriage. The chief end of marriage is the begetting, and educating, of children for the kingdom of heaven. The Church, therefore, in her legislation for mixed marriages has a special care for the children that may be born of them. The child pertains to the ideal of the great Sacrament. In the mystery of the blessed Trinity, it is the united love of the Father and the Son, in the person of the Holy Ghost. In the mystery of Christ and His Church, the one is bridegroom, the other the bride, and they are united for the purpose of bringing forth children for the kingdom of heaven.

So, if the Sacrament of marriage must be true to its mystic types, it must be so ordained as to be an apt principle for the bringing forth and for the educating of children in the Catholic faith. The faith is so important for the child that its influence should be felt at the first dawn of reason, and all through those impressionable days of childhood and youth. No demonstration is needed to show that only when both father and mother are united in the faith can those early impressions be efficiently imparted. A different faith, in either one or the other, must inevitably tell on the character of the child. In the interest then of the offspring the Church looks askance on the mixed marriage.

When, however, she permits it as something less good, and for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, then she places a special condition in  favor of the children. The non-Catholic party must explicitly promise that all the children must be brought up in the Catholic religion. There must be no compromise. Oftentimes the non-Catholic party proposes to meet the Church half way, and suggests that the girls shall follow the mother while the boys follow the father. And the idea prevails in some quarters that the Church is willing to allow this. Let it be clearly made known that the Church knows nothing of such half measures. According to her law, every child of a mixed marriage must be brought up a Catholic. The soul of a boy is just as valuable as the soul of a girl, and the soul of a girl is just as valuable as the soul of a boy, for both have been bought with an infinite price. In their education, therefore, there must be no compromise. All, without exception, must be brought up in the Catholic faith.

Further, the Church has also a cure for the non-Catholic party. He has already received the Sacrament of baptism and now he receives the Sacrament of matrimony. He is a subject of the Church, albeit a rebellious subject. His rebellious state may be due to no fault of his own, and he may not recognize his rebellious state. The Church, however, recognizes it and consequently makes a special effort to win him back to her obedience. She places a third condition to a mixed marriage - the Catholic party must strive to bring about the conversion of the non-Catholic.

The condition tends to the perfection of the ideal, tends to the preservation of the faith of the Cathohc partner, tends to the preservation of the faith of the children, tends to the eternal salvation of the non-Catholic partner. The reasonableness of the condition is evident. Its application, however, seems at first sight to be fraught with considerable difficulty. How is one to know whether there is any hope of a professing Protestant becoming a Catholic? Does not the Spirit breathe where He will? Must the non-Catholic have already entered upon a course of instruction? The practice of the Church does not require the manifestation of such clear signs as suggested in the last question. But the two conditions concerning the faith of the wife and the children, if generously fulfilled, would seem to go a long way toward fulfilling the third condition. If the non-Catholic party willingly signs the declaration that his wife may have the free exercise of her religion, and that the children may be brought up Catholics, then that may be deemed sufficient grounds for hoping that he, too, may some day become a Catholic. Evidently he is not fighting against the Church. Evidently he has some good will toward it. Presumably he is not resisting grace. Under such conditions one may reasonably hope that the grace of God will some day prove effectual.

We must strive, then, to keep three things well to the front of the Catholic consciousness. First, the union of marriage is a great Sacrament, having its ideal likened to the union between the Father and the Son, and to the union between Christ and His Church. Secondly, mixed marriages are discountenanced by the Church because they spoil God's ideal, because they endanger the faith of the Catholic party, and because they endanger the faith of the children. Thirdly, they are sometimes tolerated in order to avoid greater evils, and then only on the three conditions that the Catholic shall have free exercise of religion, that all children shall be educated as Catholics, and that there shall be a reasonable hope of the Protestant becoming a Catholic.

The Apocalypse of St. John

Reading N°30 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by

 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

The island to which Domitian's tribunal banished the Apostle John was one of the Sporades in the Aegean Sea, the most arid and uncultivated of those islands mentioned by ancient Greek poets. A long volcanic mountain chain, its two parts connected by a narrow ridge, barely supported a few sorry orchards. The Apostle was probably obliged to labor in the mines. There it was that he learned, perhaps from some Christians who came from Miletus or Ephesus, which were only a few hours' sailing distance away, that in Asia, as at Rome, the Christians were being hunted out, despoiled, and put to death for their faith. There, too, he heard of the advance of another dread evil: heresy, which had so greatly disturbed St. Paul, was developing there in an alarming manner. The Apostle of the Gentiles had been much concerned about certain men of Asia who combined an excessive worship of the angelic powers with exaggerated painstaking in the matter of observances, feasts, abstinences, and practices of humiliation, thus lessening the part of the Savior in the work of salvation.^[1] Not long before, in Galatia, the question was one of opposition between the Law and the Faith. But here we have to do with a new doctrine, cleverly arranged, with a tendency to corrupt the Christian religion in its very essence. Under the influence of certain men claiming connection with the deacon Nicolas, and calling themselves Nicolaites, the sect spread rapidly. Besides the strange mysteries of its doctrine, it possessed a particular character of immorality in its practices. St. Irenaeus speaks of the "unrestrained indulgence" which he noted among the Nicolaites,^[2] and St. John remarks "the depths of Satan" that he observed therein.^[3] The Apostle's presence in Ephesus had doubtless restrained them; his exile at Patmos seemed to leave them free rein.

"On the Lord's Day," i.e., a Sunday, while the soul of the exiled Apostle was afflicted at the thought of so many evils, he was taken up in spirit. He says:

I heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet saying: 'What thou seest, write in a book. [...]' And being turned, I saw [...] one like to the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the feet, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. [...] His voice as the sound of many waters. [...] His face was as the sun shineth in his power. And when I had seen him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying: 'Fear not. I am the first and the last, and alive, and was dead, and behold I am living for ever and ever and have the keys of death and of hell.'^[4]

Revelations of this sort, "apocalypses" as they were called, were not rare at that period. Supernatural gifts or charisms were frequent in the early Church. Unfortunately, illusion and fraud were mingled in them. Thirty years earlier (AD 58), St. Paul had found so many prophets and prophetesses at Corinth that he felt the urgent need of regulating the manifestations of their noisy inspirations.^[5]

The account of John's visions, written at Patmos,^[6] or perhaps at Ephesus after his return from exile, was addressed directly to the seven Churches of proconsular Asia: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamus, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Indirectly it was destined for the whole Church. A preface, often given the title of "Letter to the Seven Churches," in a tone of authority that we can feel rests on a divine mission, assigns blame and praise to each of the Christian communities. The Church of Ephesus is relaxing from its first fervor;^[7] the Christians of Laodicea are lukewarm;^[8] those of Sardis are spiritually dead;^[9] the communities of Pergamus and Thyatira allowed themselves to be partly seduced by the Nicolaites.^[10] Only the Christians of Smyrna and Philadelphia receive nothing but praise, for having courageously suffered persecution from the enemies of the faith.^[11]

After this preamble, there begins a series of visions; their strange character and seeming lack of order are at first disconcerting, but their power captivates. As Bossuet writes:

All the beauties of Holy Scripture are gathered together in this book. [...] Notwithstanding its depth, the reader feels so gentle an impression and so superb a harmony of God's majesty, that it is something to ravish heaven and earth. [...] In the Gospel we see Jesus Christ as man, talking with men, humble, poor, weak, and suffering. But the Apocalypse is the Gospel of the risen Christ: He there speaks and acts as a conqueror.^[12]

The purpose of the book is to encourage the Christians to whom it is addressed, to show them that the triumph of the saints is assured, that the persecuting empire will be laid low, that upon its ruins will rise up a new and glorious Jerusalem. The whole book is an invitation to the Churches to look for strength in the hope of Christ, who will return triumphantly.

This moral aim is the chief intent of the Apocalypse. But we can easily see in it a great dogmatic and liturgical inspiration also.

The doctrine of this book is especially Christological and eschatological.^[13] Christ is called "Alpha and Omega," the "Prince of the kings of the earth," "He that searcheth the reins and hearts," He who has "the keys of death and of hell," the Lord God, the object of adoration for Heaven and earth.

As for this visible world, it will come to an end after frightful calamities. The devil will come forth from the abyss, will seduce nations, and will encompass the city of the saints with enemies. But God and His own will triumph. The wicked will be the everlasting prey of hell, where they will fall with the beast, the false prophet, and the dragon; whereas the just will enter into possession of Heaven. For them God will create a new Heaven, a new earth, a new Jerusalem, where they will reign forever. The Apocalypse furnishes no additional data enabling us to fix upon the date of these catastrophes. Evidently all the figures which it gives are symbolic numbers.^[14] The world must remain ignorant of a date which Christ Himself said He did not know, or was unwilling to reveal even to His most intimate confidants.

The magnificent images by which the Apocalypse represents Christ's eternal glory were destined to exercise a deep influence on the development of Christian liturgy. The slain lamb standing on the throne amid the unnumbered throng of the elect; the ancients gathered about Him, carrying cups that contain the prayers of the saints; the cry of the martyrs rising from beneath the altar; the song of thanksgiving ascending from the multitttde to God, like a "new canticle," to glorify the Lamb for having "redeemed us to God in Thy blood, out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation"; the angels standing round about the ancients, who "fell down before the throne upon their faces and adored, saying: Amen"; the incense rising to the throne - all these magnificent scenes would little by little inspire the liturgical ceremonies of that "breaking of bread," which, by the addition of new rites, would become the solemn Mass, celebrated by a bishop with his priests about him, amidst the smoke of incense, before an altar bearing relics of the saints and often adorned with the very image of the Lamb of God slain for the salvation of men.^[15]

These sublime visions and fervent exhortations would make a powerful impression upon the Churches of Asia. Such and such details or allusions, which have become obscure for us, no doubt were living words to the men of that time.

Footnotes

[1] Coloss, chapters 1 and 2.

[2] St. Irenaeus, Haereses, I, xxvi, 3.

[3] Apoc. 2:24.

[4] Apoc. 1:10-18.

[5] 1 Cor. 14:26.

[6] Harnack says: "l make profession of this heresy, which attributes the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel to one and the same author." Harnack, Chronologie, I, 675, note.

[7] Apoc. 2:4 f.

[8] Apoc. 3:15-20.

[9] Apoc. 3:1.

[10] Apoc. 2:14-20.

[11] Apoc. 2:9 f.; 3:7-10.

[12] Bousset, L'Apocalypse, preface.

[13] Here and there in the Apocalypse will be found also important indications of doctrine regarding God, the Trinity, the angels, the Church, etc.

[14] For example, the number seven, recurring all through the Apocalypse, is plainly symbolic. Besides the seven Churches, there are the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven signs, the seven vials, the seven angelic prophecies about great Babylon, the seven characters of the final triumph. (Crampon, La Sainte Bible, VII, 434.) The thousand years of peace mean simply a long period of time. The number seven everywhere indicates something accomplished and complete, and the number 666, which is the sign of the beast, indicates the unachieved, the imperfect, the evil, threefold, i. e., characterized absolutely.

[15] See Dict. d'arehéol. chrét., under the word Agneau. Cf. Olier, Cérémonies de la grand'-messe, bk. 6, chap. 2. The Office of All Saints takes its whole inspiration from the Apocalypse.

***

Join the discussion at: