The Catholic Thing

By Anthony Esolen

My wife likes well-made and handsome objects for the house, so whenever I look for gifts to give her, I go to antique stores, or to stores selling unwanted objects from estate sales. Even if it's only a box for trinkets, I make sure it's joined with dovetails and not with cheap little nails that work loose. Bakelite, for old kitchen utensils, is better than plastic; it's a little heavier, and it acquires a mellow toning over the years. We have landscape paintings in oil pastels, framed behind that sort of old-style glass that makes it seem as if a window were opened into a world beyond.

I might say the same thing about books and their covers. For I do judge books that way. You must, when you come upon a lot of shelves and you don't have all day to scan the books one by one. I judge by the garish covers that began to prevail in the 1960's, sometimes for good books but far more often for garbage – think of the latest slapdash book ghost-written for the latest forgettable politician.

Old books aren't like that. That doesn't mean they were all good. It does mean, from my experience, that they at least were not stupid. Even the old Doubleday Image series of Catholic classics, once the 1970s come along, suffers a collapse in quality, made evident by a cheap and banal flashiness in the covers. It is like what happened to dimes and quarters after 1964, in the change from silver to the zinc-copper sandwich. Silver has a milky-white and sober sheen, and a silver coin rings when you spin it on a table. Zinc has a flat gray glare. It does not ring. It clanks.

For the sake of art, the revision of the Mass after Vatican II could not have come at a worse time. By now, many people have come to value what came before the great flattening, whether in music or art or architecture, or even in humble household utensils and the look of your backyard garden. But in those days? I am reminded of the satire on high modern nonsense in the comedy, The Odd Couple. Felix gets rid of Oscar's old homely furniture and replaces it with minimalism and absurdity. One of the pieces is a chair shaped like an open palm, with a thumb for the armrest and four fingers for the back.

I can spend all afternoon in a room with old books, not because they are old, but because most of them will be real books. I can take my time. They do not drum noise into my head. I cannot spend more than a couple of minutes in a room full of books with those glaring covers, whose contents will usually be just as garish, cheap, and loud.

I can sit at a piano for an hour and play old hymns, their lyrics written by people for whom the tradition of English poetry was ever present, a formative and continuing influence in their lives. I cannot do so with hymns whose poetry is cheap, clumsy, and sometimes stupidly heretical. "Abide with Me," composed by Henry Lyte a few days before he died, indeed abides with me, and if I am conscious during my own last hours, I hope to pray in his words, "Hold thou thy Cross before my closing eyes." It is a better line than any written for any Catholic hymn in the last sixty years.

What puts me in mind of this? Christmas does; not the feast, but the translation of the prologue of John, the Gospel reading for the Mass during the day. I often pray that prologue at night, as the old translators have nobly rendered it, building up to that grand and mysterious revelation: "But to as many as did receive him, he gave power to become children of God, who believed in his name: who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."

Do I understand those words? That depends on what we mean by understanding. They are not meant to be understood as if they were a medical report, nor can I fix their meaning in a single interpretation. Such is the case with all great poetry. I can go where Shakespeare directs my mind and heart when he says that Love "bears it out even t...

By Michael Pakaluk

Did the Virgin Mary suffer the trauma of labor and its pains? Not a few preachers at Christmas Mass speak as if Mary did. But a long tradition in the Church presents a very different picture.

First, what does Scripture say?

"She gave birth to her son, the first-born, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger." (Luke 2:7). As the Catholic Encyclopedia observes, such language implies that Mary did not go through ordinary labor. Moms after labor are not in a position to stand up, get swaddling clothes, wrap their baby, and walk across the room to place him in a manger. Others must do this for them. Joseph is conspicuously not mentioned.

Luke also changes his language, from Elizabeth's case to Mary's. The change is not easy to see in English. He says about Elizabeth that "the time for Elizabeth to carry was completed, and she begat (egennēsen) a son" (1:57), using a word which means that this son sprang from her. But about Mary, Luke writes: "the time for her to carry was completed, and she bore (eteken) her son" (2:7), using a softer and ambiguous word, which in Greek is used for the gestation as well as parturition.

Besides, there are words in Greek for labor (see Matthew 24:8, Galatians 4:19). Wouldn't Luke the physician have deliberately employed these words, if Mary went through labor? For clearly, her labor would have been significant.

Then there are the Old Testament passages interpreted by the Fathers to mean that Mary's virginity was a like a gate, or a wall, through which nothing went in or out.

Consider Ezekiel, 44:2: "And the Lord said to me, 'This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it; for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore, it shall remain shut.'" Of this verse, St. Ambrose says (Letter 42):

Why is it hard to believe that Mary gave birth in a way contrary to the law of natural birth and remained a virgin, when contrary to the law of nature the sea looked at Him and fled, and the waters of the Jordan returned to their source. . . It is not past belief that a man came from a virgin when a rock bubbled forth a flowing stream, iron floated on water, a man walked upon the waters. If the waters bore a man, could not a virgin give birth to a man [hominem virgo generare]?

The mode of birthing for a virgin bearing the God-man must be miraculous, St. Ambrose insists, just as her mode of conception of the God-man is miraculous.

Or consider Song of Songs, 4:12: "A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a garden locked, a fountain sealed." Of this verse, St. Jerome says (Against Jovinian, I.31, "That which is shut up and sealed stands for the mother of our Lord who was a mother and a Virgin."

Surely, we detract nothing from Mary's motherhood if we say she did not suffer labor. She was already fully a mother when she conceived Jesus: "And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1:43), said most probably when Jesus was a blastula in a fallopian tube of Mary.

In God's intention for Creation, childbearing did not involve any trauma or pain: these are part of the penalty of the Fall. (Genesis 3:16) Then why should Mary, free from Original Sin from the moment of her conception, be subject to this penalty, any more than she was subject to disordered concupiscence?

Sometimes a Christian woman will choose to give birth without anesthesia, in solidarity with their sisters in the past, or to embrace some of the due penalty for sin - but not because she'd be less of a mother if she took pain relief. Similarly, no one believes that a mother who gives birth by C-section is thereby less of a mother.

Nor can one say that Mary's pain of childbirth was meant to be a pattern for us. Catholic hospitals place crucifixes over birthing beds, not pictures of Mary in labor. His own crucifixion, Our Lord says, is the proper pattern for a woman's throes of labor. (John 16:21) And wasn't Mary's role to suffer precisely...

By Saint John Henry Newman.

Mary is called the Gate of Heaven, because it was through her that our Lord passed from heaven to earth. The Prophet Ezekiel, prophesying of Mary, says, "The gate shall be closed, it shall not be opened, and no man shall pass through it, since the Lord God of Israel has entered through it - and it shall be closed for the Prince, the Prince Himself shall sit in it." Now this is fulfilled, not only in our Lord having taken flesh from her, and being her Son, but moreover, in that she had a place in the economy of Redemption; it is fulfilled in her spirit and will, as well as in her body.

Eve had a part in the fall of man, though it was Adam who was our representative, and whose sin made us sinners. It was Eve who began, and who tempted Adam. Scripture says: "The woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold; and she took the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband, and he did eat."

It was fitting then in God's mercy that, as the woman began the destruction of the world, so woman should also begin its recovery, and that, as Eve opened the way for the fatal deed of the first Adam, so Mary should open the way for the great achievement of the second Adam, even our Lord Jesus Christ, who came to save the world by dying on the Cross for it.

Hence Mary is called by the holy Fathers a second and a better Eve, as having taken that first step in the salvation of mankind which Eve took in its ruin. How, and when, did Mary take part, and the initial part, in the world's restoration? It was when the Angel Gabriel came to her to announce to her the great dignity which was to be her portion.

St. Paul bids us to "present our bodies to God as a reasonable service." We must not only pray with our lips, and fast, and do outward penance, and be chaste in our bodies; but we must be obedient, and pure in our minds. And so, as regards the Blessed Virgin, it was God's will that she should undertake willingly and with full understanding to be the Mother of our Lord, and not to be a mere passive instrument whose maternity would have no merit and no reward.

The higher our gifts, the heavier our duties. It was no light lot to be so intimately near to the Redeemer of men, as she experienced afterwards when she suffered with Him.

Therefore, weighing well the Angel's words before giving her answer to them - first she asked whether so great an office would be a forfeiture of that Virginity which she had vowed. When the Angel told her no, then, with the full consent of a full heart, full of God's love to her and her own lowliness, she said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to thy word." It was by this consent that she became the Gate of Heaven.

[And "Mother of the Creator."]

This is a title which, of all others, we should have thought it impossible for any creature to possess. At first sight we might be tempted to say that it throws into confusion our primary ideas of the Creator and the creature, the Eternal and the temporal, the Self-subsisting and the dependent; and yet on further consideration we shall see that we cannot refuse the title to Mary without denying the Divine Incarnation - that is, the great and fundamental truth of revelation, that God became man.

And this was seen from the first age of the Church. Christians were accustomed from the first to call the Blessed Virgin "The Mother of God," because they saw that it was impossible to deny her that title without denying St. John's words, "The Word (that is, God the Son) was made flesh." And in no long time it was found necessary to proclaim this truth by the voice of an Ecumenical Council of the Church.

For, in consequence of the dislike which men have of a mystery, the error sprang up that our Lord was not really God, but a man, differing from us in this merely - that God dwelt in Him, as God dwells in all good men, only in a higher measure; as the Holy Spirit dwelt in Angels and Proph...

By Francis X. Maier

Pascal Bruckner, the political philosopher, is a classic French intellectual. Raised Catholic and educated in Jesuit schools, his adult thought is thoroughly secular. But he has a keen intellect, a clever pen, and a lively skepticism. And, to his credit, he applies it with vigor to a wide range of sacred cows - including the God-vacant modernity of which he himself is a creature.

One of Bruckner's key targets is the cult of counterfeit happiness that, in his view, rules our age. On the one hand, he argues that religious faith infantilizes its followers. "It is typical of Christianity," he writes, "to have overdramatized our existence by subjecting it to the alternative between hell and paradise. . . .Pass or fail: Paradise is structured like a school."

Can the meager sins of our tiny world - Bruckner asks derisively - earn endlessly disproportionate torment in the next? Yet at the same time, he notes that man's repudiation of God has not produced freedom, but a vulgar universe of advertising instead. In effect, what was liberated by humanity's perceived psychic and sexual coming of age "was less our libido than our appetite for unlimited shopping."

For Bruckner, we've become little more than the "galley slaves of pleasure." Every new distraction, gadget, and tech marvel drives our hedonism more deeply into its own exhausted punishment.

Past cultures accepted suffering as a normal, often meaningful, element of life. Happiness was seen as fragile and transient. Real joy was exceptional. For Bruckner, our age, especially in the West, has turned such thinking upside down. We're expected - in effect, we're commanded by 24/7 marketing - to be happy with the deluge of options presented to us.

When we're not, we're failures; or worse, deviants. "Happy Honda Days" become a sacrament of the consumer holiday season. As a result, despite mountains of contrary evidence in the real world, we insist on a spirit of mandatory optimism; we're "the world's first societies that make people unhappy, not to be happy."

In the end, modernity has "raised human hopes so high that it can only disappoint us." And this provides a bitter revenge for religions: "They may be in bad shape, but what succeeded them isn't doing so well, either."

True, that. Bruckner is strong medicine. No one will confuse him with Mr. Glad Pants. His lack of religious faith looks suspiciously like a case of self-inflicted blindness. And despite (or perhaps because of) his Jesuit background, his grasp of Christianity seems barely adolescent.

But on the final day of an old year and the brink of a new one, Bruckner's thoughts are nonetheless worth considering. Around the world tonight people will be wishing each other a happy new year. Yet the lights will be out in the Maier household by 10 pm. The idea of celebrating a giant electric ball falling at midnight in Manhattan to welcome in another hangover January just doesn't tickle the heartstrings.

So what exactly can "happiness" mean in an age of noise and manufactured excitement - an age, not by accident, rich in anxiety and conflict? And what about joy? We're still in the Christmas season, the very reason for "joy to the world."

For both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, happiness and joy are related, but finally very different things. This becomes clear throughout their fiction and other writings. In Tolkien, happiness is always in some sense selfless. It flows from doing what's right, even at great cost. It's tied to sacrifice, friendship, faithful service, fulfilling one's appointed purpose, and the enjoyment of simple pleasures in the natural world. Lewis likewise saw happiness as a matter of this-world satisfaction, the fruit of success, comradeship, innocent pleasures, and basic comforts.

Note that none of the above easily survives in a culture of constantly teased and escalating appetites. In fact, the happiness of a society - consider the state of our own - seems inversely proportional to the self-fo...

By Randall Smith

Many have likely seen the amazing photos from the James Webb Space Telescope showing thousands of galaxies. Not just stars, mind you, but galaxies, each of which is filled with trillions of stars. Now imagine those thousands upon thousands of galaxies condensed down into an infinitely dense point the size of - nobody really knows - but let's say, the size of a baseball. Something like this is the picture we have of the Big Bang Theory of the beginning of our universe. It may or may not be what actually happened, but we can conceive of it as a possibility.

I mention the possibility merely as a way of wrapping our minds around what is involved in the Incarnation. The Creator of all those galaxies and every atom and quark in them - the infinite Source of the Being and Goodness of whatever exists - constricted Himself down to the size of a baby - to the size of an embryo. In the movie Aladdin, the genie mentions the paradox of having "phenomenal cosmic power" in an "itty bitty living space." He's not even close to the greatness of the power or the smallness of the space.

In Philippians 2:7, Paul says that Christ "emptied himself" of his divinity and took on our humanity. Do we quite understand how radical a claim that is? The Incarnation isn't like Apollo or Zeus appearing to someone or taking control of a human body for a while. Those "gods" are localized entities, not as vast as the entire universe. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - is more vast than the universe itself.

All that is hard enough to get our heads around. Actually, I don't think we can ever really get our heads around it. We don't even know what "dark matter" is, or what's inside a black hole, or why the Higgs Boson does what it does. Whereas God not only knows those things completely, He made them, and they only continue to exist because He is keeping them in existence. The difference between that "mind" and our minds is like the difference between a cherry tomato and the entire galaxy - only now you need to multiply that difference by the biggest number you can think of, and you'd still not be close.

Okay, so now try to get your head around the notion that it's that God who actually loves us. Not only does He take notice of us, like you might notice a moderately interesting pebble at the beach, which would be startling enough. There has to be more interesting stuff to gaze at in the universe than me. There are more interesting things on this desk than me. But God not only notices, He actually loves us.

How do we know that? Why would we think that He even cares? The laws of quantum physics don't care about the world or you. They just are. Why would anyone come to the rather startling conclusion that the universe is a gift of boundless, infinite love? It's not immediately apparent just from looking at things in the world, so we should be very understanding when some of our fellow citizens find it difficult to believe.

Christians believe that the evidence for this all-pervading creative love is found in the Incarnation. A God bigger than we can even imagine chooses to become incarnate in an embryo smaller than we can see with the naked eye. It certainly turns everything upside down. Pope Benedict XVI wrote somewhere that this is like balancing the well-being of the entire cosmos on the head of a pin.

The most powerful force in the entire universe became incarnate in perhaps the most powerless thing we can imagine. Is there anything more powerless than a baby? God has not only "taken on our humanity," He has taken on our humanity at its weakest and most defenseless. And then, He goes even further and does the one thing the classical Greek gods could never do: die. He dies for us, taking on Himself both our sin and our death to vanquish both. Again, we need to be understanding of people who can't quite wrap their heads around this. It's a lot.

But we should at least be clear about this. If Christ is not ...

By Fr. Peter M. J. Stravinskas

The Church, "expert in humanity" (as Pope Paul VI put it), knows that the mystery of Christmas (like that of Easter) is so great that it cannot be adequately plumbed - let alone celebrated - in a single day. And so, taking a page out of our Jewish liturgical heritage, the Church gives us an octave observance - eight full days to consider the central doctrine of the Incarnation, enabling us to reflect on it from a variety of perspectives, not unlike holding a diamond up to the sun to appreciate its beauty from many different angles.

Throughout the Christmas Octave, we encounter a number of saints' feasts. Do these commemorations serve as distractions from the central mystery of the Octave? Not at all - because, as St. Paul teaches us, "God is glorious in His saints." (2 Thessalonians 1:10) Indeed, we can say that the very first fruits of the Incarnation are saints, the comites Christi (the companions of Christ), and in this week, the majority of them are martyrs - privileged "witnesses" to Christ: Stephen, the so-called "proto-martyr" (Dec. 27); Thomas à Becket, the medieval defender of the freedom of the Church (Dec. 29); and also, the Holy Innocents, really the first to shed their blood for Christ.

We are introduced to the "Holy Innocents" by St. Matthew (Chapter 2 Verses 16-18) after he has told us of the visit of the Magi, whom Herod wanted to use as "reconnaissance" men to determine the identity of this "newborn King of the Jews." Not obtaining the information he desired, Herod resorts to mass murder to ensure his competition is dead, ordering the execution of all male babies under the age of two in Bethlehem.

The Collect for the day's liturgy notes that these little ones confessed the true faith, "not by speaking but by dying." Indeed, the very word "infans" in Latin means one who cannot yet speak! The prayer goes on to ask the Lord for the great grace "that the faith in you which we confess with our lips we may also speak through the manner of our life."

The Office of Readings for the feast treats us to a reflection of Quodvultdeus, a fifth-century bishop of Carthage in North Africa and a spiritual son of the great St. Augustine. The author addresses a question to the absent Herod: Why are you afraid, Herod, when you hear of the birth of a king? He does not come to drive you out, but to conquer the devil. But because you do not understand this you are disturbed and in a rage, and to destroy one child whom you seek, you show your cruelty in the death of so many children.

The Church in the United States has seen in the Holy Innocents the forerunners of the millions of babies slaughtered through legalized abortion. And we have witnessed the fear and rage of those ensnared in the culture of death. But why such rage? The vast majority of pro-lifers offer a kindly protest. The rage is born, no doubt, because - deep down - everyone knows the truth of what is happening in the abortion clinics.

The Church in America - especially the hierarchy - have made numerous mistakes in the post-Vatican II era. One area in which the Church shines, however, is in her unrelenting pro-life witness. Ours was a lone voice in the immediate wake of Roe v. Wade. In fact, the pro-abortionists used our solitary witness to play the anti-Catholic card, hoping to make the issue appear as a sectarian Catholic issue.

Our Catholic school system provided strength and youthfulness to the pro-life movement. A few years ago after the March for Life in Washington, D. C., a journalist in favor of "abortion rights" noted in the Washington Post (also strongly pro-abortion) that he was "expecting to write about [the March's] irrelevance." But admitted: "I was especially struck by the large number of young people among the tens of thousands at the march." He highlighted the fact that the vast majority came from Catholic schools who "were taught from an early age to oppose abortion."

Europeans are stunned by the vitality of the pro-l...

By Fr. Paul D. Scalia.

The collect for today's feast prays, "O God, who were pleased to give us the example of the Holy Family, graciously grant that we may imitate them." Now, that's a tall order. After all, the Holy Family was exceptional. Inimitable, one might say. Joseph and Mary were indeed married. But their marriage was unlike any other. Jesus was indeed their Son. . .but not in the usual sense.

Still, this collect and the intuition of the faithful throughout history indicate that there is, in fact, something to be imitated here. And capable of imitation. Now, that doesn't mean tugging the Holy Family down to our level. Rather, what we encounter in a unique and unrepeatable way in the Holy Family reveals what is true for every family.

First, the Holy Family begins with the love of Joseph and Mary. Many Christians might see their marriage as something of a fiction. Mary was going to have a baby and there needed to be a husband/father in the picture. Hence the depictions of the doddering old Joseph trying to keep up with Jesus and Mary.

But God doesn't traffic in make-believe. Joseph and Mary loved one another with an authentic spousal love, even if it was lived out in a unique manner. She entrusted herself and her vowed virginity to his protection. He gave himself in love as her spouse and guardian. What each desired for the other was the holiness to which God called them. Her sanctity inspired his generous response to God and his protection enabled hers.

Just so, the holiness of a family begins with the love of the spouses. This isn't the romanticized "soulmate" theory that ironically leads to infidelity and broken families. No, it's the simple spousal love discerned by a bride and groom that prompts them to vow permanence, fidelity, and openness to children. It is the daily choosing to love one another that not only keeps those vows intact but also deepens them.

Second, although Joseph and Mary never had conjugal relations, they were nevertheless open to life - obviously, in an exceptional way. The Child born of Mary is the fruit of their union. Their marriage already existed at the time of Christ's conception. It was within their marriage that He was conceived. It was due not only to her faith in God but also to her trust in Joseph that Mary could say Yes to the angel. This singular openness to life brought the Lord of Life into the world.

"Be fruitful and multiply." That is God's first and thus most fundamental command. As with all His commands, it's for our good, and flouting it only brings us sadness. A couple's openness to children - and, even better, their generosity in receiving them - indicates trust in God's providence and a willingness to be stretched in self-giving. That openness and generosity in turn become a means of sanctification, of growing in trust and self-giving. The ordinary sacrifices of mothers and fathers have been woven into the fabric of Christian holiness.

Third, the Holy Family had a clear purpose. Indeed, a mission. Christ had been entrusted to the marriage of Joseph and Mary. Their mutual love established the home where He was received and where He "advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man." (Luke 2:52) In short, their purpose was Jesus. Everything about their love and their home was ordered towards Him and His mission.

Every family has a mission and purpose. On a natural level, the family brings many benefits to society (and as the family unravels, we're sadly discovering how many of those benefits will be lost). But the ultimate purpose of the family is beyond this world. Indeed, as with the Holy Family, the purpose of every family is Jesus Christ. To give Him a dwelling place in the home, among the members. To increase in knowledge and love of Him, to grow in the capacity to imitate Him.

Finally, the Holy Family prayed. Given the presence of the Incarnate Word and the Immaculate Conception in their home, their prayer would have been unique. But in another sense, it wa...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza.

High culture - and the spiritual appreciation of high culture - returned to the Vatican this month. Pope Leo XIV is quietly restoring some recent traditions, such as personally celebrating Holy Mass on Christmas morning, not done since 1994. Earlier this month, he brought back the classical sacred music concert.

Sixty years ago, at the conclusion of Vatican II, some "messages" were read to various groups; one was to artists, including musicians:

The Church of the council declares to you, if you are friends of genuine art, you are our friends. The Church needs you and turns to you. Do not refuse to put your talents at the service of divine truth. Do not close your mind to the breath of the Holy Spirit.

A few months later, in April 1966, St. Paul VI made this friendship manifest by attending a concert at the St. Cecilia auditorium near the Vatican. Four years later, in honor of his priestly golden jubilee, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis was performed in his presence in St. Peter's Basilica itself.

Post-conciliar papal patronage of classical music reached its apogee forty years ago. St. John Paul the Great, on a visit to Austria in 1983, met the celebrated Herbert von Karajan, who suggested that a magnificent Mass setting should be performed at a Pontifical Mass. John Paul agreed.

In 1985, for the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, Karajan conducted Mozart's Coronation Mass in St. Peter's. The Vienna Philharmonic was joined by renowned soloists, including Kathleen Battle. It was the final great moment of the "conductor of Europe's" career, and the elderly and infirm Karajan received Holy Communion from the Holy Father himself. He would die four years later, reconciled with the Church, with which his relationship had been fraught.

The grand papal concerts continued, with another highlight coming in 1994, when John Paul held a concert to commemorate the Shoah, conducted by Gilbert Levine in the Paul VI Audience Hall. It was a moment of high history and intense emotion. The chief rabbi of Rome sat beside the Holy Father. Richard Dreyfuss recited the Kaddish. Cardinal Jean-Marie (born Aron) Lustiger of Paris, whose mother was killed at Auschwitz, embraced Levine. It was music fulfilling its highest vocation.

Pope Benedict XVI had a high appreciation for music, and was a musician himself, playing Mozart on the piano. It was fitting then that this year the Ratzinger Prize for distinguished achievement in scholarship and culture was awarded to his longtime friend, Maestro Riccardo Muti.

Even better, after something of a suspension of papal concerts under Pope Francis, the prize was conferred by Pope Leo XIV himself at a concert offered by Muti in the Paul VI Hall. He chose Luigi Cherubini's Coronation Mass of Charles X, composed in 1825. Muti chose the Mass on its bicentennial, a moment in which sacred music itself (briefly) reasserted its presence in the cultural and spiritual patrimony of France after the vandalism of the revolution and terror. Charles X's coronation was the first since 1775, and the last for the French monarchy.

In receiving the prize, Muti spoke with affection for Pope Leo, recalling his many years as musical director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Muti mentioned that he had conducted Haydn's Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, with Cardinal Cupich narrating the work.

Muti further recalled Benedict's thoughts about sacred music. In 2015, Benedict received in retirement an honorary doctorate from the Pontifical University John Paul II of Kraków and the Kraków Music Academy. He spoke on that occasion of the "three places" whence music comes - the experience of love, the experience of sadness, suffering, and loss, and the encounter with the divine:

The quality of music depends on the pureness and greatness of the meeting with God, with the experience of love and of suffering. The purer and the truer that experience is, the purer and greater the mus...

By Stephen P. White

The history of salvation is long. It begins, as we read in Genesis, even before Creation itself. Before space and time were, God already was preparing all that would unfold. The ultimate culmination of that story is as yet unknown, though it has been revealed to us in part. Our own part in the story of salvation is unfolding every moment. And while God comprehends all from outside of time, our own actions and choices cooperate (or not) with the plan which He laid down before the foundation of the world.

We human creatures are not eternal beings; we have a beginning. While our bodies are mortal, our souls are not; there is no end to us. Unlike God, we are changeable - mutable, in the language of theologians and philosophers - in both our mortal bodies and our immortal souls.

From the study of physics we learn about the conservation of mass and energy, by which all the mass and energy that ever was or will be already exists. Carl Sagan famously observed that we are "star dust," which is true in one sense. But the celestial origins of our material existence do not tell the whole story. We are more than recycled bits of the Big Bang's leftovers. Much more.

With the creation of every new soul, an entirely new thing comes into existence. The composition of the cosmos changes in kind, not just degree. When a new person comes into existence, reality itself is altered forever. Souls are not star dust, neither do they pass away.

And so there are new things - genuinely new things - which come into existence every day. Changes - irrevocable, eternal changes - happen all around us. New souls come into being. Souls are marked indelibly with baptism or by holy orders. Souls are parted, for the time being, from their mortal bodies. Souls are judged. And they are saved or they are damned.

The history of salvation, told in something like its fullness, is a story not only of Creation, but of God's continual intervention. God visits His people. He makes covenants with them. He calls them to Himself. He chastises them and shows them mercy. He delivers them from bondage. He keeps His promises.

The central event in this long tale of salvation history is, of course, the greatest New Thing in all Creation. An angel appears to Mary, and she conceives by the Holy Spirit: the Word made flesh. A child is born in Bethlehem. He grows in wisdom and favor before God and man. He is tempted. He is without sin. He preaches the coming of the Kingdom and good news to the poor. He performs great miracles. He is betrayed, suffers, dies, descends into hell, rises, and ascends to the right hand of the Father. He sends the Holy Spirit. He feeds His people with His own body and blood. He keeps His promises.

The scope of this glorious mystery is so vast that it can be difficult, if not impossible, to behold all at once. The Church, in her wisdom, recalls it through the rhythms of the liturgical year. We savor one moment at a time through our successive feasts. The whole is always there, but we encounter it most often in some particular facet: the life of some great saint, the commemoration of great moments in the life of our Lord or of the Blessed Virgin, whole seasons of penance and rejoicing.

It is at Easter, and particularly the Easter Vigil, that the Church draws our eyes to the broadest horizon. We hear the whole story of salvation history, and the full glory and import of the Resurrection is made as plain to mortal minds as our liturgy and praise can make it. Easter joy is cosmic, triumphant, exhilarating. Easter joy is all trumpet blasts and blinding light. Easter joy is apocalyptic in the oldest sense: a revelation of what was previously hidden in the divine mind.

The joy of this season, Christmas joy, is of a different timbre altogether. Christmas joy is humble, quiet, less exalted, somehow more profoundly. . .human. The joy of Christmas is as different from that of Easter as the smile of a sleeping baby is from a triumphal march of the K...

By Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM Cap.

Luke's Gospel provides a rather detailed rendering of Jesus' birth. Because Mary "kept all these things, pondering them in her heart," she must have given her eyewitness account to Luke. Thus, the historicity of what is declared should not be challenged. Within Luke's written words, we hear Mary's spoken words.

So, Luke/Mary gives the historical setting of what would take place. Caesar Augustus decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. Everyone went to their home city to be enrolled. Thus, "Joseph also went up to Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be enrolled with Mary his betrothed, who was with child."

Joseph's lineage is theologically significant. He is from "the house of David," and so he must register "in the city of David," Bethlehem. It was here that David was born, and God told Samuel to anoint David king. "Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward." (1 Samuel 16:13)

Moreover, God later, speaking through Samuel, declared. "When your [David's] days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever." (2 Samuel 7:12-13)

These prophetic promises are now being fulfilled as Joseph journeys to Bethlehem to be enrolled. The son to be born of Mary in the city of David is the Lord's anointed, the one who is filled with the Holy Spirit, having been conceived by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. He is the king of the everlasting Davidic kingdom, and his throne will last forever.

All this is founded upon Joseph's royal lineage, for he is of the house of David. Thus, Joseph is of foundational theological importance, for without him the child to be born of Mary would not be the fulfillment of God's ancient prophesies. He would not be the king of God's everlasting Davidic kingdom.

Now, while Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem, "the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn." There was nothing miraculous in the manner of His birth. If such was the case, Mary would have informed Luke, and he would have stated what was the nature of the miracle.

What is unusual is that, finding no room in the inn, Mary gave birth to Jesus in a stable, and so she placed him in a manger. He who will sit upon the royal throne as the king of David's everlasting kingdom is born in humble lowliness and unassuming poverty.

All of the above is implied within the context of Joseph's lineage as being from the house of David. No one has yet declared his royalty or spoken of his identity. Everything up to this point in Luke's narrative is simply normal - a baby was born of Mary in a stable in Bethlehem. However, in the midst of this normality, something will now be announced that is extraordinary.

"And in that region, there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flock by night." This too is normal. This is what shepherds do. However, "an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear."

What has taken place on earth may have appeared normal, but the heavenly realm knew otherwise. One of the Lord's heavenly angels, engulfed in the Lord's glory, appeared to the shepherds. Though the shepherds were afraid upon beholding such a spectacular sight, the angel said to them:

Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will come to all people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

Rather than being a...