By Stephen P. White.

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tonight - Thursday, May 1st at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the coming conclave to choose the successor to Pope Francis, as well as other issues in Rome this week and in the global Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Now for today's column...

Today, May 1, the Church celebrates St. Joseph the Worker. It is often remarked of Joseph that Scripture records none of his words. While it is true that no direct word of Joseph's is recorded in Scripture, it is from Joseph's own lips that the name of Jesus, the name announced privately to Mary and in a dream to Joseph, is first announced publicly among the people of Israel: "And he [Joseph] named him Jesus." (Matthew 1:25)

Joseph, as we know, was not the natural father of Jesus. But Joseph, on behalf of the God-child's true Father, gave him the name by which the world would know him: Jesus. And it was in the home of Joseph that the Incarnate Word practiced obedience: "He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart."

The obedience of Jesus, of course, is manifest most perfectly in his obedience to the will of the Father, "becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross," as St. Paul writes to the Philippians. And because of this, "God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name."

The symmetry here is beautiful and shows how the fatherhood of Joseph, though not natural fatherhood, is an imitation of the fatherhood of God. The Father bestows on the obedient Son, conceived in the flesh through the Holy Spirit, the name which is above every name. Joseph gives to Jesus, conceived through the Spirit, his name and the Christ child is obedient to him.

Joseph's fatherhood was thus caught up in - caught between, we might say - the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is given the grace to experience, in a human way, the love of the Trinity, as it were, "from within."

No one is a father as God is Father, as the Catechism reminds us, but it is precisely the fatherhood of God that stands as the fundamental reference for understanding all fatherhood.

St. Joseph was not the natural father of Jesus, but his fatherhood was true fatherhood - not merely in imitation of natural fatherhood (and therefore, by analogy, to the generative fatherhood of God) but by direct reference to the Fatherhood of God by whom we are all, through baptism, made adopted sons and daughters of the Father.

Emphasizing the true fatherhood of Joseph is not only important for understanding his relationship to Jesus, but for understanding our relationship, through Christ, to God the Father. Because we have been adopted by God through baptism and the Holy Spirit, we can pray as Jesus taught us, to "Our Father."

St. Paul makes this point explicitly in his letter to the Romans:

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, "Abba, Father!" The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Being adopted sons and daughters of God makes us co-heirs with Christ. This divine filiation makes possible our divination. The Catechism sums this up, citing in turn Scripture (2 Peter), St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, and St. Thomas Aquinas:

The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine s...

By Randall Smith.

There's a lovely little pop song from the mid-1990s called "What If God Was One of Us?" The final verse says:

What if God was one of us

Just a slob like one of us

Just a stranger on the bus

Trying to make His way home?

Back up to Heaven all alone

Nobody calling on the phone

'Cept for the Pope, maybe in Rome.

For the next couple of weeks, I suppose we'll need to drop the last line, because the pope won't be "callin' on the phone," more like he'll be "knockin' on the door."

Be that as it may, and aside from whether you like or remember the song, the question it poses is worth considering. What would we expect an Incarnate God to be like? What would we expect Him to do?

The sentiment expressed in the song is one many people seem to share. "Why is God always so silent, so far away? Why can't God just come down and talk to me - like a regular guy?" That's a lovely thought. Maybe a bit idealistic; maybe even a bit naïve. But it's a lovely thought.

Here's the problem. If God showed up "as a regular guy" and said, "Hi, I'm here; you said you wanted to talk," what would you do? I mean, wouldn't your first reaction be: "You're not God. You can't be God. You're just a regular guy! You're just walking on the ground, and you're getting sweaty in the hot sun, you're not dazzling white, and you're even kind of scruffy-looking."

"Well, you said you wanted to talk to me just like a regular guy. So I'm a regular guy."

"But how can I be sure that you're God," you ask, "and not just some guy pretending to be God? Because I want to talk to the real God. Not some crazy guy who thinks he's God."

"Alright," says God, "what would I need to do to show you?"

"How about some miracles?" you say.

"What kind of miracle do you think would convince you?" asks God.

"Maybe you could zap some people with a lightning bolt," you say.

"That wouldn't show that I'm the just, loving God of the Old and New Testament. That would only show that I might be a subordinate deity like Zeus or Apollo.

"Oh, right," you reply. "Well, how about making a big volcano or a massive earthquake right here in town?"

"So now you want me to kill even more people?" says God. "Destroy countless homes? Unsettle the delicate balance of nature? Would that prove that I'm 'God,' or would it show that I'm a very powerful, but bad, deity?"

"How about levitating?" you ask.

"Haven't you seen magicians do that?" asks God. "And do you want to know whether I'm God, the Creator of All Things, or whether I'm a Marvel superhero?"

You see the problem? What could the Incarnate God do or say to prove to you that He is, in fact, God, and not some person or being pretending to be God? Although you say you want Him to be a "regular guy," His being a "regular guy" makes difficult, if not impossible, for you to believe that He is God. And if he does certain "god-like" things like zapping people or showing off His divine power, this would prove that he isn't the wise, loving God of Christian faith but a demon. So, you're in kind of a bind.

"I've got it," you say. "How about if you overcome death?"

"Just for you, or for everyone?" asks God.

Having become wiser to the fact that if you say, "Just me," and he says okay, this would show that he is an evil deity, tempting you, not the God of all Goodness, and if you say, "Just me," the God of all Goodness probably wouldn't like it, you say: "Everyone."

"Do you want me to keep everyone alive for all eternity, getting older and older with no new children so the world doesn't get jammed?"

That doesn't make immortality sound as good as you thought it would, so you ask: "Isn't there some other way?"

"Yes," says God, "but you'd have to get beyond death into a different kind of life."

"That sounds good," you say. "What would this different kind of life be like? Would there still be burritos and margaritas and puppies?"

"Nothing good in this world could possibly be absent in the next, since you would be united with the Source of the Goodness of all that is...

By Robert Royal.

Yes, even the title of the popular song said it three times. But that's virtually nothing compared to the repetitions of the word, over and over, during and after the papal funeral in Rome these days, by commentators, lay and clerical alike, as if it were a recent and novel discovery by Pope Francis. And as if the day after the funeral (Divine Mercy Sunday) had not been instituted by St. John Paul II in 2000, a full quarter century previously. Or his encyclical Dives in Misericordia ("Rich in Mercy") had not been issued in 1980, two decades before that.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re used the term multiple times in his homily for the Requiem Mass

The Cardinal also preemptively canonized the just departed pope by asking him to pray for us: "May you bless the Church, bless Rome, and bless the whole world from heaven." Not even a brief stop in Purgatory.

Of course, discussions are already underway as to what the next pope will need to be and do. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, for instance, the Vatican Secretary of State under Pope Francis - to some observers a strong contender to succeed Francis - is saying, very publicly, that the Church needs to continue Francis' legacy of "mercy." (I myself believe that Cardinal Parolin will have a steep climb to the papacy, though he's trying very hard, after his disastrous, still "secret" accord with Communist China, which has been anything but a mercy to Chinese Catholics.)

Mercy is, of course, a central theme in both the Old and New Testaments, and should remain so, along with truth, justice, and fidelity. Because an overemphasis on a naked mercy, of a somewhat superficial sort, without those other and quite crucial elements of the Faith, accounts for many of the divisions in the Church of recent years:

Communion for the divorced and remarried,

the "blessing" of gay couples,

the overturning of the teaching on the death penalty,

an essentially unrealistic plea to welcome even greater illegal immigration

a shocking lack of urgency about missionary work (and fear of "proselytizing")

a false universalism and indifferentism that views all religions as "valid paths" to God.

Yes, amidst all the talk of mercy, there have also been some words about following Jesus. But when you ignore the Lord's own teachings, sometimes even changing the words he's recorded to have said, and the doctrines of His Church developed over centuries by men and women of great learning and holiness, it's difficult to see what mercy is, other than a kindliness understood in current worldly, not Christian, terms.

The Church in the coming years needs to speak of a more robust mercy that understands, forgives, and expects weakness and sin, but isn't sentimentally indulgent. The Church was founded by a Savior who had to suffer and die a horrible death to redeem us from all that. Because the stakes, not only in this life but in the next are crucially, cosmically, eternally high.

As Monsignor Charles Pope makes clear in his stunning new book The Hell There Is: An Exploration of an Often-Rejected Doctrine of the Church, Jesus spoke often of Hell and even warned us that few find the way that leads to eternal life. The good monsignor recounts, however, what is probably not all that rare a response to that teaching these days:

Some years ago, I was preaching on heaven and hell since the Gospel for that Sunday was of the wide and narrow roads just mentioned. Afterward, a woman approached me, angry that I had mentioned hell at all, and said, "Father, I didn't hear the Jesus I know in your words today." I replied, "But Ma'am, I was quoting Him directly." She didn't miss a beat and simply replied, "Well, we know He never really said that."

If we're looking for a program for the next papacy, we could do worse than reaffirming that, in His love for us, God gave us freedom to choose between Good and Evil. (Without that freedom, our love for Him would be impossible since we'd simply be beings determined by our environment.) The...

by John Grondelski.

Expect the word "reform" to be thrown around frequently during the current interregnum in the Church. Looking backwards, there will be debates about what reforms were expected of Pope Francis, what he delivered or failed to deliver, and whether those acts or omissions were, in fact, reforms. Looking forward, the argument will be over what "reforms" to expect from the next pope.

Part of the "reform" debate will center around the Second Vatican Council and its ongoing implementation. One thing is for certain: whoever the next pope is - unless he is an octogenarian - for him, Vatican II will be an event of history, not unlike Trent or even Nicaea. And even Francis, who no doubt remembered the Council, took no part in it.

Which makes the revisionist history arising around the Francis pontificate so false.

There's a tendency to call Francis a "reformer" for "restarting" the "reception" of the Council, implicitly after the 35-year delay caused by John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Think about that: Bergoglio, a nonparticipant in the Council, supposedly better understood it than one pope who was a Council Father and another who was a distinguished peritus.

We are at a watershed moment.

This conclave will, in some sense, define how we "understand" Vatican II. Will it be a Council that fits into the long ages of Church history? Or will it be some break with that history? Will the Council be read according to what the Council Fathers actually wrote (allowing that there is ambiguity in some of the passages)? Or will "a specter be haunting the conclave," the ghost of Vatican II, that somehow, like so many emanations of penumbrae, finds scant anchorage in the Council's actual words?

This split has been plaguing the Church since the Council. It found its best recent expression in Pope Benedict's contrast between the "hermeneutic of continuity" and the "hermeneutic of rupture" - two very different ways of understanding the Council. During Benedict's lifetime, the advocates of rupture were somewhat held in check. Since his death, they've been unleashed.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith and bête-noire of the Francis papacy, captured this dilemma in the title of his 2023 book, True and False Reform: What It Means to Be Catholic. The crisis facing the Church is not, says Müeller, a choice between two equally valid and morally indifferent paths by which to go forward. The crisis she faces is one of true or false reform.

The crisis is: where do we start? Do we insist, as the Church always has, on the centrality and truth of Jesus Christ, the Word, whose teaching remains normative for the Church in all times and seasons, and which are the criteria by which those times and cultures are judged? Or, as some imagine Vatican II believed, do we start with the modern world and the concrete, existential human situation, tailoring the ecclesial response in ways that will "accompany" the world? As H. Richard Niebuhr rightly asked, does Christ measure the culture or the culture Christ?

When he delivered a Lenten retreat for Pope Paul VI, the future John Paul II prophetically remarked at one point that "we are in a lively battle for the dignity of man." In a very real sense, that too is the question the conclave will have to consider when it thinks about what kind of "Vatican II" the new pope should implement.

John Paul II put a huge focus on man because he was acutely aware of how human dignity and rights were under assault in the contemporary world. In that focus, John Paul was very much in line with the turn of modern thought towards the human subject.

But John Paul II never considered man apart from God. One text from Vatican II that he never tired of repeating was Gaudium et spes 22: "Jesus Christ fully reveals man to himself." We do not come to know who man is by examining him in his concrete - and broken - sinful reality, but as who he is supposed to be (and...

by Fr. Paul D. Scalia

For the past week, the death of Pope Francis has dominated the news. For the next several weeks, the election of his successor will do so. And today the Church places before us the story about Thomas's doubt and, therefore, about what it means to believe. (John 20:19-31) In God's providence, the scene orients our thoughts and prayers about the papacy and the next pope.

Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe." Now, it's a terrible thing to call this Apostle "Doubting Thomas." Yes, he was "unbelieving." But that wasn't the end of his story. He proclaimed the Gospel in distant lands and was martyred for Christ. He should also be remembered for that.

Of course, there's no getting away from Thomas's doubt: I will not believe. But even there, we can glean some spiritual benefit, which is why the event is recorded. Thomas's error is entirely to our benefit, as it was ultimately to his. It teaches us what it means to believe.

First, faith comes from the Church. Thomas doesn't believe that the disciples had seen the Lord, that Jesus was risen from the dead. But more to the point, he doesn't believe the testimony of the Church. For when the disciples say to Thomas, "We have seen the Lord," it is in effect the Church herself bearing witness to the Resurrection. It is the Church announcing what is to be believed. Thomas doesn't believe in the Resurrection because he doesn't accept the Church's witness.

The only way we know our Lord and His teachings is through His Church. To believe doesn't mean to prove it for ourselves, as Thomas wanted to do. It means to receive and to accept what the Church believes and teaches. An individual's act of faith is inseparable from the Church's faith.

Once, when defending her conversion to Catholicism, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton blurted out to a relative, I believe everything the Council of Trent teaches - and I have not even read it! That sounds crazy to our individualistic culture. But it captures the truth that our faith rests not on our cleverness or human proofs, but on the Church's authoritative teaching. It is the Church who believes first. Each of us can say I believe only because the Church first says We believe.

Second, faith has content. The disciples proclaim to Thomas a specific truth, the Resurrection. And Thomas makes this article of faith even more specific: "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe." This is faith not only in the Resurrection but in the physical resurrection.

We don't believe in God in some vague or general way. We believe in a particular, specific God, Who has revealed Himself by word and deed, and is known by the articles of the Creed.

It's silly to exhort someone to "Just believe!" or "Have faith!" Believe what? Faith in whom? The content of faith makes all the difference. It determines whether we have faith at all. To believe in the triune God gives us the truth and leads us to salvation. To believe in error or merely to have religious opinions leads us astray, no matter how well-intentioned we may be.

Some years ago, then-Prince Charles mused about changing the British monarch's traditional title from "Defender of the Faith" to "Defender of Faith." In fairness, a change of title is probably in order. But the now-King's proposal was typically modern, emptying faith of any content. It rejected "the Faith," implying a specific credal content, for "faith," left unspecified. For our culture, faith is just a vague kind of trust in something, somewhere. . . out there.

This fuzziness about faith leads inevitably to the notion that all religions are the same, just different paths to God. This trivialization of belief insults members of other religions ("You're Muslim? What a coincidence, I'm Catholic!"). More importantly, it fails to take our own faith...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza.

Recent popes know how to die liturgically.

The death of Pope Francis is the fourth "octave" death among the last six popes. The Holy Father died on Easter Monday, the second day of the Easter octave.

St. John XXIII died the day after Pentecost in 1963, at that time the second day of the Pentecost octave (now the feast of Mary, Mother of the Church).

In 2005, St. John Paul the Great died on the vigil of the octave of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday. Pope Benedict died on 31st December 2022, the vigil of the octave of Christmas, the feast of Mary, Mother of God.

St. Paul sixth did not die during a great octave, but on the feast of the Transfiguration, 6th August 1978, a fitting day to go to glory.

After Pope Francis returned from the hospital in late March, his physicians reported that he had almost died twice, and at times was so enfeebled that he could only sign official documents with the initial "F" rather than his name. He was weak and barely able to speak in his public appearances. It was likely that this would be his last Holy Week. While it was not expected that he would die Easter Monday morning, Pope Francis did have to decide how he would spend the last Holy Week of his life. He did so in admirable fashion.

It was an echo of Holy Week twenty years ago, when St. John Paul was too sick to attend any liturgies; too infirm indeed to leave the papal apartments. He came to his window in the Apostolic Palace to give the Easter Sunday blessing Urbi et Orbi but, even though he tried, could not speak.

Pope Francis was in better shape and, although not knowing that he would be felled by a stroke on Monday morning, was evidently preparing for the end. He lived his last Holy Week in an intensely personal way, using his remaining strength in ways that manifested his heart.

On Palm Sunday, he was wheeled to St. Peter's at the end of Mass to greet the faithful. Pope Francis had not celebrated Mass in public in nearly three years due to infirmity, but was present multiple times to preside and preach. As even that became impossible now, the Holy Father nevertheless desired to join the faithful, even if briefly. From early in his pontificate, Francis has had a deep conviction that an important part of his ministry was simply to be present. It was most evident in some of his trips, as when he told typhoon survivors in the Philippines, "I felt that I had to be here."

Before Holy Week, Pope Francis made private visits to St. Peter's, to pray before the Altar of the Chair of Peter, as well as at the tomb of St. Pius X. After visiting the tombs of his predecessors, he went on the eve of Holy Week to St. Mary Major, to pray before the image of the Salus Populi Romani. His own tomb has been prepared nearby. Did he consider it a preparatory visit to his own grave?

He had gone there on the first full day of his pontificate, and more than a hundred times since, including before and after every trip. He may have thought that one last departure was imminent.

During Holy Week, when it was evident that the Holy Father would not be at the principal liturgies, various Cardinal delegates were named. The Vatican routinely handles such protocol matters - Cardinals automatically fall into strict order of seniority when they assemble. Francis chose instead two Cardinals retired from lesser offices for the Chrism Mass and Easter Sunday. For this last Holy Week, personal friendship, not formal precedence, would prevail.

Then came the moving visit to Regina Coeli prison on Holy Thursday. Since his first Holy Week, just a fortnight after his election in March 2013, Francis has chosen to celebrate the Mass of the Lord's Supper outside of the Vatican, usually in a prison. In 2013, he went to the Casal del Marmo youth detention center. That custom, which he brought with him to Rome from Buenos Aires, emphasizes that Jesus was imprisoned on Holy Thursday. There is so much happening on Holy Thursday - Passover, the Eucharist, the priesthoo...

by Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, O.M.F., Cap.

After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to various people on a number of occasions. He appears to Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the Apostles. Paul enumerates the appearances of which he is aware:

He first appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to the apostles. Last of all, as one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Corinthians 15:5-8)

Moreover, unrecognized, Jesus also appeared to two on the road to Emmaus, one of whom is named Cleopas. (Luke 24:13-43) Traditionally, it is presumed that the two were men and portrayed as such in paintings. The two, however, could have been Cleopas and his wife. After all, it would have been more likely that a woman would invite Jesus to stay with them and then prepare a meal for him.

More importantly, Jesus transforms this meal into a Eucharistic liturgy. In the breaking of the bread and in giving of it to them, "their eyes were opened, and they recognized him." At this point, Jesus "vanished out of their sight."

Now, in all of these Resurrection appearances, Jesus appears and disappears. He comes and goes. What Jesus wants to manifest in these appearances is that he is truly bodily alive. So much is this the case, that in Luke's Gospel, after his appearance to the two on the road to Emmaus, he appeared to the eleven. They were amazed, and "supposed that they saw a spirit."

Jesus responds: "Why are you troubled, and why do questionings arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have?" In their still remaining disbelief, Jesus asked: "Have you anything here to eat?" In response, Luke states: "They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it before them."

That Jesus was truly risen was also "doubting" Thomas's concern. When the Apostles told the absent Thomas that they had seen the Lord, he declared: "Unless I see in his hands the print marks of the nails and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe." Thomas needed proof that Jesus was truly, bodily risen. He too wanted to be assured that Jesus was not just the ghost of a dead man.

Jesus honored Thomas's request. On the Sunday following Easter, Jesus appeared again to the apostles. He said to Thomas: "Put your finger here and see my hands; and put out your hand and place it in my side; do not be faithless but believing." Thomas responded: "My Lord and my God!" The bodily Jesus is truly Thomas's risen Lord and so his saving God.

Now, why, in the above, is the ability to see and touch the risen Jesus, and Jesus' ability, even in his risen state, to eat a piece of fish so important? Is it simply to prove that Jesus has authentically risen from the dead?

Although that is essential for our salvation, it is absolutely indispensable for the Eucharist. Only if Jesus is bodily risen from the dead is the Eucharist the risen body of Christ. What the two on the road to Emmaus ate in the breaking of the bread was Jesus's risen humanity - his risen body and blood, soul and divinity.

I noted above that the risen Jesus appeared and disappeared. He came and he went. Ultimately, Jesus ascended into Heaven, and he will not appear again until the end of time when he will gloriously return on the clouds of Heaven. But it's also true that Jesus has never left us! He does not appear and disappear. He is always present to us in the Eucharist.

In a sense, Jesus' salvific death and life-giving resurrection are for the sake of the Eucharist, for in the Eucharist we come into communion with the risen Jesus. In so doing, we not only abide with him here on earth, but we anticipate our abiding with him forever in Heaven. In the Eucharist, Jesus comes down to earth upon our altars, that he might lift us up into ...

By Msgr. Charles Fink.

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tonight - Thursday, April 24th at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the death of Pope Francis, plans for Saturday's papal funeral, the conclave that will begin soon after, as well as other issues in the global Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Now for today's column...

I wonder if it's really possible for us to understand the incredible mix of emotions Jesus' disciples, men and women, experienced on that first Easter morning. We really have no frame of reference, do we?

Sure, we may know the joy of finding a beloved pet we had lost and never expected to see again. We may have experienced a reprieve from an apparent death sentence after successful medical treatment of a life-threatening illness. We might even have witnessed a seemingly miraculous cure and felt overwhelmed with gratitude to God that our prayers had been answered. All of these things happen, if not routinely, then at least from time to time, and exist within the realm of possibility.

But what Jesus' friends and followers experienced on Easter morning and the days thereafter was impossible. They had seen him scourged to within an inch of his life, then crucified, then pierced through the heart with a soldier's lance, finally laid in a tomb. There is no record before or since of anybody's having endured all that, only to come back, scars, wounds and all, but fresh as a daisy, more alive than ever, capable of things no ordinary living person was ever capable of.

Is it any wonder that it took them some time to process what they were seeing and hearing and touching? Are we shocked that they found it hard to believe their own eyes, that they thought maybe they were seeing a ghost or an apparition of some sort? What they seemed to see wasn't just amazing; it was impossible! It took a little time to put it all together, to remember that with God all things are possible, that Jesus himself had predicted what they were experiencing, that the impossible had indeed happened. And that, after all, it wasn't too good to be true. And they weren't crazy.

We know they came to this improbable conclusion because instead of going back to fishing or tax-collecting and to their families, the Twelve, minus Judas, not long before trembling in fear and inclined to flee for their lives, each began to preach Jesus risen from the dead to Jews, Romans, anyone who would listen, no matter how hostile the audience. Each had years and decades to change his mind, to say it had all been a tragic mistake, but none did. All but John, the youngest, died a martyr's death. John died in exile in his nineties on the Isle of Patmos.

Moreover, what they taught about sex and marriage, love of enemies, and the dignity of the poor was unlike anything anyone had ever taught before. It was received with the same incredulity and hostility as their message that Jesus was the Savior of the world, raised from the dead, seated at the right hand of the Father.

This risen Jesus appeared to Saul, a rabid persecutor of Christians, and turned him into St. Paul, zealous missionary and author of more than a quarter of the pages of the New Testament. Over the centuries, he appeared to others: to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque to reveal the love of his Sacred Heart, to St. Faustina Kowalska to manifest the depth of the Divine Mercy. He spoke to St. Francis of Assisi and changed his life. He did the same to Mother Teresa of Calcutta. He imprinted His wounds in the flesh of Padre Pio and his mark upon every people and civilization He touched.

It would have been understandable if, way back at the beginning, the Apostles, facing an immense, powerful, often brutal Roman Empire opposed to everything they s...

by Anthony Esolen

But first a note. Be sure to tune in tomorrow night - Thursday, April 24th at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the death of Pope Francis, plans for Saturday's papal funeral, the conclave that will begin soon after, as well as other issues in the global Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Now for today's column.

The eternal does not "develop." That is a contradiction in terms. So says our Lord, in the days before his Passion, when he spoke to his disciples of the last days and the coming of the Son of Man in glory. "Heaven and earth will pass away," he says, "but my words will not pass away." (Matthew 24:35)

His saying so can become too familiar to us. We hear it at Mass every year, but it must have left the disciples dumbstruck. Moses does not say that about himself. Isaiah and Jeremiah do not say it. Such a statement is predicated only of God - as Jesus and his disciples knew. "Lift up your eyes to the heavens," says God, "and look at the earth beneath: for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner; but my salvation will be forever." (Isaiah 51:6).

The prophecy stands on the border of time and eternity. It is meant not only to convey the future, as Jesus does when he says that the last days shall be as in the days of Noah. (Matthew 24:37) It is meant to turn their eyes beyond time, above the stars, for "in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1) They have their morning and their evening. They will pass away, but the Word of God, through whom all things were made (John 1:3), "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15), "Alpha and Omega, the first and the last" (Revelation 1:8), is beyond time, for time, bound to heaven and earth, is also a creature.

Now, at the heart of all modernist notions of evolution lies a trust in time. Given enough time to work in, and the fits and starts of experimentation, whether technological, artistic, intellectual, or political, human beings become better and their lives freer.

With many reservations, we can admit that there is something to this sense of development. It is better, more culturally advanced, to be Wagner composing Lohengrin, than to be an aboriginal wailing out a war dance in the night. Yet Homer composed the Odyssey about 2,700 years ago, and many people say it is unsurpassed for poetic grandeur, coherence, beauty, and psychological insight. Or if it is surpassed, only Dante's Commedia stands above it, and that poem is itself more than 700 years old.

Most of the important ancient Greek cities had public works of astonishing beauty, such as the Parthenon in Athens, or the temple of Diana at Ephesus; do our cities of similar size boast the like?

But even if our progress in cultural matters were regular, reliable, and noticeable (it is not), that still does not mean that Christ and His words are subject to the same experimentation with its successes and failures - for success and failure are but the ratchet-gears of cultural change, and they have a habit of lurching or sticking or slipping even so.

We may learn more about Christ, as through the Holy Spirit He reveals more of Himself, more of the truth, insofar as we are capable of receiving it. But we cannot learn anything other about Him, anything that would contradict what went before; as if some prior truth should vanish like the dinosaurs, or should be cast aside like the horse and buggy.

To believe that the Word of God is the Word of God, not some human word subject to change, is to understand also that God, who used to speak through the prophets, and who gave the Law to Moses by the ministry of angels, "in these last days he...

By Robert Royal.

But first a note: I have long been scheduled to present my new book on the 21st-century martyrs in Rome next week. But the pope's death yesterday means that, in addition to those planned events, I'll be staying over and commenting on the papal funeral and new election both on this site and on television with my colleagues Raymond Arroyo and Fr. Gerald Murray. We covered the conclave (the "Conclave Crew" was the precursor of "The Papal Posse") that elected Francis in 2013 and will do similar duty again in the coming days. Let us all pray for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis and for all God's graces upon the man who will soon become the next successor of St. Peter.

Now for today's column...

Scientists say that, when a strong earthquake occurs, it sometimes causes the rotation of the earth to shift slightly, even minutely changing the shape of the planet and the length of a day. By contrast, it often seems that the Catholic Church and the papacy in these latter days have a weak and not always helpful influence around the globe. But when Pope Francis died yesterday, it was impossible not to notice that, over and beyond all the journalistic chatter, the passing of a pope still shakes up the world. Even the deeply secular, often anti-Catholic news outlets see that.

This papal interregnum is a special time for Catholics to think and act, like Catholics. In the next days, it would be an exceptionally good spiritual discipline, for example, to ignore what most of the secular media have to say in praise or criticism of the pope and to reflect deeply on God's presence in his Church through time and the particular role he has assigned to the successors of Peter. Not all of them were admirable men. Some were not even very Christian. A few were wise. Fewer truly great. But all of them belong to a spiritual order of reality that transcends the usual categories by which we measure world leaders.

Yes, you can, of course, try to apply political criteria to a pope. But it mostly leads to superficiality and foolishness. The notion, for instance, that conservatives opposed Francis while progressives loved him for his critiques of capitalism and advocacy of migrants and the environment - by the way, also major concerns of the "conservative" pope John Paul II (see Centesimus Annus) and Benedict XVI (in particular Ratzinger's beautiful book In the Beginning) - is preposterous. That's the kind of characterization that lazy journalists who see everything through simplistic political lenses use to fill up empty space.

All of that can be better put aside and instead, a Catholic should pray for the repose of the soul of a fellow Christian - a pope, to be sure, and therefore, for a Catholic, a special figure of respect and affection, whatever his flaws and failures. And as for the longer-term effects of his papacy, it's best to leave that to the judgment of time rather than the headlines.

For example, Francis has often been and is again now being touted as a "reformer" - the portfolio he was given early on by the Cardinals who elected him. Francis did scramble the Vatican curial offices, but whether that was a useful reform or "making a mess" only time will tell. The Vatican financial system, too, could have been cleaned up to a large extent by Cardinal Pell, who told me privately just before he died that everything was in place - until he and others were abruptly pulled out without a convincing explanation.

Similarly, the sex scandals led to the publication of a few documents and some weak efforts intended to bring about "reform" of some kind. But even without naming all the names here, though the monster Marko Rupnik must be specified, there was a cloud of friends of Francis accused of grave misdeeds, some even convicted by secular authorities, who were protected and, in some cases, sheltered in Rome. We still await the reckoning needed to root out what can only be called a gay-friendly network that diminishes the spiritual prof...