Stained glass window in the Cenacle (Upper Room)
Cenacle Window 2, Onceinawhile (CC BY-SA 4.0)

When [the apostles] entered the city
they went to the upper room where they were staying.[…]
All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer,
together with some women,
and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
(Acts 1:13–14)

Fr. Smith’s Commentary on the Church Fathers
Seventh Sunday of Easter
St. Augustine
May 21, 2023

The weekly commentaries after Easter have examined the Eucharistic writings of some of the greatest theologians of the early church whom we now call the Fathers. The Chuch Fathers are always worth reading but especially during the “Year of the Eucharist”. As we have seen, the Fathers have offered wonderful insights and I must admit regret that very few of the copious materials prepared for the “Year of the Eucharist” have included their wisdom. A notable exception is Cardinal Tobin of the Archdiocese of Newark. The central section of His Pastoral letter on the Eucharist “Returning to Grace” is on St. Augustine, the most brilliant of the all the Fathers and the one to whom we now turn:

St Augustine (354-430 AD) is so complex a figure that providing even a superficial biography would be impossible for our present purposes. Most simply, he was a man of his time and place and wished to address contemporary questions. As we have seen, one of them was the consequences of being bodily creatures. Christians held the Jewish view that we did not have a body, we were our bodies. They are good, that the fullness of the Kingdom would be bodily, and we were not just ghosts in a machine.

Continue reading “7th Sunday of Easter – Being Christ’s Real Presence” →

Remain in My Love stained glass, 1931
Church of St. Catherine of Siena (New York)

“And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”
(John 14:21)

Fr. Smith’s Commentary on the Church Fathers
Sixth Sunday of Easter
St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 to c. 395)
May 14, 2023

Pope St. John Paul II believed that the Catholic Church breathed with two lungs: Western and Eastern. He saw clearly that they brought life to the body of Christ because they reflected different but complementary approaches to the same truth. The Western approach is based upon technological speculation and philosophy, the Eastern on the experiences of those who have best known God. In the West, we attempt to express the truth with clarity and rigor. In the East theologians seek to lead each baptized person to experience God’s reality for him or herself. For them, doctrine develops in response to spiritual experience. Pope John Paul understood that this was a matter of emphasis, Western theologians experienced what they taught and that Eastern theologians accepted that truth extended beyond their feelings and experience but nonetheless we could each learn much from each other’s perspectives. (Ut Unum Sint) In this he reflects one of the most beneficial explorations of many theologians of the last century. Theologians of the East and West read each other’s classics, sometimes with great suspicion but with great profit on both sides. St. Gregory of Nyssa who we read today was one of the first to be discovered in the West and has been especially fruitful.

Continue reading “Sixth Sunday of Easter – The Measure of All Things” →

Photo by Craig McLachlan on Unsplash

Come to him, a living stone, rejected by human beings
but chosen and precious in the sight of God,
and, like living stones,
let yourselves be built into a spiritual house
(1 Peter 2:4–5)

Fr. Smith’s Commentary on the Church Fathers
Fifth Sunday of Easter
St. Irenaeus on the Eucharist
May 7, 2023

St. Irenaeus (c. 130 to c. 202 AD) was the Bishop of Lyon in what is now France. He was however born in the East most likely in Syrma in today’s Turkey. His assignment to Lyon was not happenstance. It was then, as it is now, a commercial center and had a large population of traders and merchants from the east. Irenaeus spoke Greek knew the culture and was uniquely able to minister to their needs. Also, they not only imported goods but also the church’s first major heresy, Gnosticism.

Gnostic means knowledge and although it came in many forms Gnostics of every kind believed that people were saved by having the right knowledge not by the death and resurrection of Jesus. They usually believed that the body was disposable or even evil and only the non-material spirit was important. This is an eternal temptation. We saw that Paul constantly taught the Gentiles that they would be raised “body and soul”. Pope Francis, as we will see, finds it in our own society, The Gnostics often went far beyond this and considered the human body to be a creation of a lesser god or even the devil. St Irenaeus fought the most dangerous form of Gnosticism devised by a charismatic Roman teacher Valentinus (c.  100 to c.  180 AD).
Continue reading “Fifth Sunday of Easter – Entering Heaven Together” →