Author: acyrus

In reading O’Neill, I was struck, and a bit confused, by his continued use of the term Pattern, particularly in the beginning of the work. Instances of use begin with this definition: “This supreme harmony of the Blessed Trinity is the Pattern, glimpsed by Moses, to which all must conform” (9). Other examples include: “The passion and resurrection in their integral reality…would be impressing on the Christian the Pattern of submission to the Blessed Trinity” (61). And again, “It is man who must conform himself to the heavenly Pattern” (9). 

Now prima facie, the term seems quite clear. The use of Pattern is evidently referring to the model the Christian ought to use as a framework for entering into the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. 

This model is, ultimately,  obedience. O’Neill makes clear that in the Old Law did not allow for a complete submission to the Divine will, because, simply, it didn’t ask it of the person. “But just as the Law was an external one only, warning the people of their duties but not itself strengthening their wills to obey it, so the official worship, being part of the Law, could not itself satisfy the demands of God, nor could its priests enter truly into the presence of God” (5). In other words, “The Law and the liturgy it prescribed did not of themselves or necessarily imply the submission of man’s will” (5). Without the ability to offer “the substance of realities” as the Letter to the Hebrews mentions, neither can the Law and its liturgy create the conditions in which complete obedience to the Divine will is assumed, albeit still needed. 

With the New Law, with Christ’s incarnation, the restoration of the image of the Blessed Trinity in the lives of men occured. Christ’s taking on flesh was done “that by his eaerthly life he might through his obedience reimpress on humanity the Pattern of submission to the divine will…” (9). No man could reimpress this model since “the sons of Adam had renounced their right to enter the sanctuary…” (9). His complete submission to the divine will is revealed in that “Christ had to suffer death; only after this could he be raised up in body to the right hand of the Father…” (15). The master-form, as O’Neill calls is, is Christ’s entire earthly existence, the totality of which have universal signifiacne, but which culminates in the Pattern of his death and resurrection. 

The multiple uses of the word Pattern, to refer to both the Paschal sacrifice and the harmony of the Blessed Trinity, indicate the nature of the harmonious relationship in the Blessed Trinity. The relationship between the Persons of the Trinity is that of complete obedience to each, the “master-Pattern.” Christ’s death and resurrection is the full revelation of the love of the Trinity on display for mankind. It is God’s love for God, God obedient to God. 

So why Pattern? I like to think that there is a reason that O’Neill chose this word among others. Instead of simply the “model” or “template” or even simply the “virtue” of obedience, Pattern, used as a proper noun, hearkens two particular connotations.

The first is the use of the word pattern within craftsmanship, particular stitching or needle-work. The pattern is both something decorative and beautiful, but also is the form of the thing. There is both an ornamental nature to it – something beautiful for beauty’s sake – and yet also expressing substance. It is inimitable, but not robotic. It requires delicacy, care, and in the case of something like needlework and stitching, complete submission to the pattern itself. In fact, to form a pattern one must submit oneself to the pattern’s formal cause – the essence of the pattern. In a similar way, in order to enter into the divine life and love of the Trinity, one cannot choose the means by which that life is entered. The essence of the Pattern of obedience, Christ’s obedience, is itself the thing which is impressed upon the person. And yet, it is not something coercive, but pleasing to the eye, though difficult, and (if we carry the analogy through, the person being the fabric), painful as the needle of obedience and sacrifice pierces the flesh of the fabric. Gertrude Schnackenerg’s “Supernatural Love” comes to mind.

Perhaps this is a too deep look at the nature of needlework…

The second connotation is one of etymological relations. The word pattern bears close proximity, and was used interchangeably for a time, with the word Patron. Patron means model among other things, but also means Master. The Pattern is more than a idyllic template or something that prescribes procedural steps. It is itself the thing that we seek. The means are the end. 

Although this was more than likely not thought of by O’Neill, and I tend to get swept up in semantics, the word Pattern has both an aesthetic and formal meaning that provide, I think, real depth to an understanding of our entry into Heaven. We must enter into the Pattern, as Christ revealed to us on the Cross and in the Garden outside of the Tomb. This Pattern is not simply juridical, but makes the thing upon which the Pattern is impressed, the person, beautiful. And when the canvas of the human heart submits to the form of the Pattern it becomes an re-presentation of the Pattern – the harmonious relationship that is the Trinity. 

Henri de Lubac’s sincere emphasis on the accidental nature of holiness in A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace, parries the  accusations of intrinsicism levied against him. “​​Grace,” he writes, “is supernatural in the fundamental sense that it is superior to any created or creatable nature, but it is in no sense a ‘supernature’. It is, so to speak, a new ‘accident’, ‘hidden in and penetrating the substance of the soul and rendering it, as a soul, capable of living God’s own life, his divine life’ (46). Mischaracterized as an superimposed nature Lubac clarifies, using the language of St. Thomas and Aristotle that grace does not imbue mankind with a new, divine, metaphysical nature, but instead is a quality, a divine trait so to speak, that spurs man’s natural longing to act in favor of the good, and to be receptive to the love of the Trinity. In this way Lubac counters both an extrinsic and intrinsic strain within his writings, as the person is not divine in nature intrinsically, nor is given a divine nature coercively, but is stamped with the Spirit of God, “‘who becomes the spirit of the soul’” (47). Quoting Origen, he notes that “‘in every creature, holiness is accidental’” (47). 

Since grace is not a gift belonging to the human being by nature, but rather gratuitously given, the disproportionate relationship between the natural world and man’s supernatural end is maintained. Citing Cugno in the footnotes to the first chapter, we read “The ‘Kingdom of God’ is not a ‘world’. It is not to be classed with this world; its relationship with the latter is one of ‘radical heterogeneity’” (54). The nature in which man finds himself, and the telos to which man longs for, can only be brought to completion through supernatural action, through an act of God. The term “supernatural” as an adjective describing the transcendent order of being that God is, and the noun “nature” in which man finds himself, do not, Lubac reminds us, do justice to that to which they designate or signify. But “they remain useful because ‘they forewarn us against the temptation of ‘naturalizing’ the mystery’, in other words, ‘of undervaluing the divine Love which freely evoked another love’” (40-41).

In past blog posts I have quoted Hopkins’ poem “God’s Grandeur” which begins, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God…” Professor O’Malley used the same phrase to describe an potentially intrinsicist framework. Lubac would parse through this phrase with the scholastic distinctions between actual, sanctifying, and created grace. Actual grace is the grace given to us that enables us to will the good in a given situation, different from sanctifying grace, or the objective gift of God’s own being with mankind. Finally, there is a created grace, which, in quoting Louis Bouyer, is the prolongation of the Spirit in the soul itself, or the grace created within the soul. Emphatically, for Bouyer and Lubac, this created grace “is not a superior and distinct nature” (46). Therefore the world is charged with the grandeur of God in the sense that the world, as Fr. Bouyer mentions in his Cosmos, “will be entirely absorbed into God’s glory” (94), and actual grace gives us the capacity to see God’s glory within the natural order, an ability we would not have without this grace, but for which we have a capacity born of a lack within human nature. 

Though de Lubac pushes against the extrinsicist mode, in doing so he does not inevitably fall into a trap of intrisicism. He states, explicitly, that Christ’s kenosis “makes himself partially immanent in his creatures” but this immanence is not something intrinsic, but given, and given objectively through the sacraments. The “partially” caveat, which Lubac uses again (85), denotes the care in which Lubac wants to describe the natural order. He elevates Maurice Blondel’s philosophy as attacking both the extrinsicist and intrinsicist schools of thought. Blondel, says Lubac, “overcame the opposition between an exctrinsicism which ruined Christian thought and an immanentism which ruined the objective mystery which nourishes this thought” (38). 

In distinguishing modes of grace within the human soul, and categorizing the infusion of grace as an accident to human nature, Lubac counters any notion of an overly intrinsicist thought, while still maintaining the real communion between God and man through the sacred mysteries instituted by Christ and given to mankind freely through Christ’s Church.

Bouyer provides a fitting overview at the end of his book of the way in which the entire universe, with mankind at its center, is brought to fruition in Christ, and therefore cosmified, its mythos renewed. Danielou provides particular examples in the Sacraments, particularly in his deep dive into the holy oil of Confirmation, that brings Bouyer’s overview within a lived experience and a concrete situation, and then again elevated to a supernatural reality. 

The universe, says Bouyer, does not exist conceivably outside a society of spirits, who hold the cosmic order of the universe as a whole inside of their consciousness. And the body extends to the limits of the universe in its ability to perceive the universe, and the universe’s penetration of our senses (225 . The feeling that mankind is small in relation to spatial dimension of the universe is in fact an illusion, as man is able – and this is a very Heideggerian concept – to extend through space through the action of his senses, and the “roots of his consciousness”. In other words, the spirituality of man, in his hylemorphism, is far greater in magnitude than the seemingly grander realities of space or time (which do not conceivably exist apart from a perceiver). 

How does this relate to the sacraments and salvation history? Bouyer notes that when the Son of God incarnates into mankind, we are renewed through the Son to the Father. “What will be the situation when the Word is incarnate in the flesh of man and when he instills into our spirit the very Spirit of his Father, the Spirit of filiation? The universe will henceforth be entirely seized by mankind and returned to the praise of his creator: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (225). And mankind is caught up in this heist through the sacraments, in which Christ “assimilates them [mankind] so completely to the temple of his own body, that their bodies become even now ‘the Temple of the Spirit’” (226). The ultimate end of mankind will be the Lamb’s nuptials, where Wisdom will be revealed as the goal of all history and mankind.

The mystical wedding feast of Heaven, particularly coupled with the revelation of Wisdom as the thread that pulls man towards his end, can be a difficult notion for the Western reader. This seemingly different, or perhaps offshoot entity of Wisdom, is however present in the Old Testament, and directly related to the Lamb’s feast. Fr. Danielou, in his work “The Bible and the LIturgy” notes how the Church Fathers focused on Wisdom’s feast in Proverbs IX:1-5 when discussing the ends of the Eucharist: “Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pillars.  She hath slain her victims, mingled her wine, and set forth her table. She hath sent her maids to invite to the tower, and to the walls of the city: Whosoever is a little one, let him come to me. And to the unwise she said: Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine which I have mingled for you.” (Prov. IX:1-5) Wisdom, or the Mind of God, which I believe is what Bouyer means by wisdom, (and what wisdom truly is), has set the table for the “messianic banquet” where “the blessings are spiritual ones, of which the visible foods of the liturgical meal are the symbols” (154, Danielou). The physical realities of the Old Testament – the Manna sent from heaven, the Rock of Horeb – are merely shadowed prefigurements to the reality of the Lamb’s Supper, initiated by Christ on the Cross, and foreshadowed in the Gospels. As Bouyer remarks, the person in baptism and faith enters into the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection (226, Bouyer). This initiation, and the following spiritual progress towards total union with Christ through the eschatological Bride, the Church, is itself an example of the manner in which the universe is “seized” by the Trinity and returned to the praise of the Creator.

Another example, evident of the way in which the spiritual reality is greater than the physical, and how consciousness pervades physical limits, can be found in Danielou’s exposition of the muron, or holy perfume that anoints the Christian, or the christos, into the royal priesthood of believers. Danielou notes that it was reserved for post-baptismal persons: “For it is by Baptism which gives the capacity to perceive the divine perfume, while Confirmation ‘sets in motion the energies given in the sacred bath’” (124, Danielou – quoting St. Ambrose). While Baptism enters the person into the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection, the muron, a consecrated perfume – therefore truly efficacious – seals the person into the life and way of Christ. In the same sense that it seals and sets in motion, Danielou says that it represents the “development of faith into ‘gnosis’” a strange term in our general conception of gnosis, but one that makes sense given the topic of the muron. For in receiving the Anointing, the sweet perfume of Christ, we are called to become the sweet perfume ourselves, and therefore to understand more fully the biblical passage “Thy name is as oil (muron) poured out.” God’s name is indescribable and incomprehensible, but in taking on the role of the muron, in becoming the oil ourselves – depending on our capacity or ability to perceive, says Danielou – we are able to see (or more acutely know) that which Gregory of Nyssa describes: “‘All the marvels that we see in the world furnish material for the divine names by which we say that God is wise, powerful, good, and holy. They betray a remote quality of the divine muron” (125, Danielou – quoting Gregory of Nyssa). The world is charged with the grandeur of God, or as Bouyer remarks, is seized and returned to the praise of its creator. 

There are two connections I hope to draw between Bouyer’s Cosmos and Ratzinger’s article on the sacraments, one particular and one thematic and broad. The first is a particular focus on matter and the modern concept of matter as purely material and yet somehow a principle of reality. Bouyer focuses on this in his penultimate chapter in which he attempts to define matter and spirit. He notes, via Collingwood and Piper, that most “Materialists” tend to use the word in a manner more akin to God, in that it is a foundation or origin of all that exists. He notes that the ancients, primarily Aristotle, saw matter as a pure abstraction, the “substratum or supposition of everything visible or tangible,” (220) upon which substance is predicated. By itself, however, matter is “pure abstraction, made into a substance only at the cost of inextricable contradictions” (221). In other words, matter does not exist in reality outside of a “society of spirits” (222), who perceive and through the foundation of language perceive meaning in material things. But materiality is the periphery of the spiritual reality within the existing thing, most fully realized in the human person, a spiritual being. 

Ratzinger also notes this modern emphasis on matter as a principle of reality, and “matter as material” (153) meaning as a unit of physical substance – as we head toward contradictions – that makes up all reality. Things are merely things, and their thingness is simply material, simply physical. For both Bouyer and Ratzinger, not only is the modern conception of materialism contradictory, it is simply out of touch with reality. Not substance can be perceived, that is physical, and yet devoid of any characteristic, predication, or, more significantly, form. And yet that is how we view “matter” in our modern age (somehow). This focus on matter offers, in my opinion, a practical first step towards ingesting a sacramental worldview. Without a paradigm shift, in which reality is revealed to be primarily spiritual, and matter is not what Locke told you, then entering into a sacramental view of reality becomes impossible in ordinary human routine. 
In a broader, more thematic sense, both Ratzinger and Bouyer attend to the reality of the sacraments by prioritizing their fundamental existence throughout history. Ratzinger offers two questions to attend to the crisis of sacramentality: What is man? And what is a sacrament? Most contemporary readers might argue that the former should be addressed first, seeing that we are talking about something foundational in our understanding of reality: ourselves. The genius of Ratzinger here is that he starts with the latter question, orienting the reader toward a deeper understanding of the meaning of the word, and showing us that in fact we can only understand ourselves through the sacraments, the fissured through which the supernatural enters the temporal. Bouyer does the same throughout Cosmos, by attending to the history of mankind but constantly reminding the reader that mankind is swallowed up by mythos at every stage. That the transcendence of the divine has been immanent in human history, and that Christianity was not a completely original notion, unattached to the past, as Ratzinger points out as well (160). Bouyer, and Ratzinger’s focus on ritual as carrying the human towards divine activity (on page 19 of Cosmos and page 156 of Ratzinger) indicates that the sacraments, be them primeval or instituted by Christ are present, since God permeates the physical world throughout all of history. Bouyer and Ratzinger touch on Jung’s archetypes of king and priest to show that man attempts to reconcile the supernatural with the natural, though often through different means. In other words, both thinkers show the primacy of the sacraments in history, and in offering history a role in man’s salvation. Bouyer, in his emphasis on mythos and logos, and Ratzinger in his description of the natural sacraments provide a more robust understanding of the Christian sacraments as more than mere remedies to sin, but in fact authentications, stamps, of the Divine in the temporal, instituted by Christ but experienced in the Spirit and the Word throughout human history. Matter is not simply physical, things are not merely things, but “cosmified”, “charged with the grandeur of God.”