Some documents, and as well some thoughts on this blog and the coming summer

God has ascended with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet!

As this is the evening after the Vespers for Ascension I greet you all on the Feast. Following Liturgy tomorrow morning, my family and I will be going on vacation, but I have some podcasts already in teh queue for everyone, including a great one with Fr. Anthony Perkins. Below you will find all the documents for the last several episodes of the podcast (for which there are documents to be had).

In a few weeks I will be moving all of my postings to a new website. I will cross post for the time being, but I purchased a website, and so shall be using that for my blog (it allows me to do a lot more). I will keep you all posted. The site is up, it just needs some refinement.

I pray the documents help all of you.

Episode 60: On Constantine, Constantius, and the Imperial Church

Now I pray to you, most high God. Under your guidance I have begun and accomplished my mission for the welfare of mankind; everywhere I had borne before me your Holy Spirit and so have led the army to glorious victories. And if by chance the needs of the state lay claim on me again, again I will follow the same sign and march against the enemy. To such a degree am I prepared personally to go into action to rebuild for you a holy dwelling place, criminally devastated and profaned by the hateful and the wicked. The Emperor Constantine on his Divine Mission.

Since I have learned from the state’s prosperity the goodness of divine authority, I thought that it is the state’s duty to preserve in the Catholic Church, among so fortunate a people, the only Faith, a sincere charity and a common worship of almighty God. But no fixed and enduring disposition can be concluded unless all, or at least the greater part, of the bishops gather together and arrive at a decision; therefore, many bishops are now meeting together to resolve this problem, and I am among them, as one of them, since I confess that it gives me great pleasure to be their colleague in the service of God. The Emperor Constantine on his felt prerogative.

If it were to happen that you were quite unexpectedly replaced by order of the civil authority as you presided blamelessly in your churches in union with your people, would you not protest indignantly and demand reparation? In this case justice demands that you show your disapproval, because, if you remain silent, in a short time the evil will spread to all the churches, and the places where our Faith is taught will become from then on markets and places of commerce. (St. Athanasius, Against the Arians)

“Do not confuse the Church’s jurisdiction with the RomanEmpire, since religious authority does not derive from you but from God.” St. Athanasius to Constantius in Contra Arianos

“I want you to know that despite all your cruelty you lie helpless at the feet of God’s servants, and all your imperial pomp is for us nothing; for us you are with all the authority of your empire only a passing breeze. And if one of your court flatterers claims that we are only boasting, do not forget, Constantius, what I said in the face of your judges, while you hid behind a curtain, “Even if the emperor were to send all his army against us, even if he were to shoot all the arrows of his empire at us, this would not budge us an inch from our decision.” Lucifer of Cagliari, Against Constantius.

“Where the Faith is, there is freedom.” St. Hilary of Poitiers

“The spiritual welfare of all people everywhere rests on the just ordering of ecclesiastical affairs; it is the duty of the bishops to see to this.” But the emperor then concludes: “You at Rimini have absolutely nothing to say about the bishops and theproblems of the Eastern Church.” This was directed against Athanasius and any attempt to join forces with the bishops at Seleucia. He closes: “No decision can have any standing at law if I deny it my stamp of approval.” Constantius’s response to the Orthodox of Rimini

Episode 61 was on St. Mary of Egypt and St. Zosimus, and I think you all can find that story online.

Episode 62 An Intro to Apollinariansim: A Genealogy of Heresy

He asserts that the flesh which the only-begotten Son assumed in the incarnation for the remodeling of our nature was no new acquisition, but that that carnal nature was in the Son from the beginning. And he puts forward as a witness to this monstrous assertion a garbled quotation from the Gospels, namely, “no man has ascended up into heaven save the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven” [John 3.13]. As though even before he came down he was the Son of Man, and when he came down he brought with him that flesh, which it appears he had in heaven, as though it had existed before the ages and been joined with his essence. For he alleges another saying of an apostle, which he cuts off from the whole body of its context, that the second man is the Lord from heaven. [1 Cor 15.47] Then he assumes that that man who came down from above is without a mind, but that the Godhead of the only-begotten fulfills the function of mind, and is the third part of this human composite, inasmuch as soul and body are in it on its human side, but not mind, the place of which is taken by God the Word. Epistle to Nectarius (202) Gregory the Theologian

The Basic Syllogism of Confusion. The word is the subject even of the human operations and sufferings of Christ (major premise); but whatever is predicated of the Word, must be predicated of him κατa φuσιν (minor premise); ergo, the nature of the Word is limited and affected by the human operations & sufferings of Christ.

Episode 64: The Life of St. Gregory the Theologian

To me, nothing seems preferable to the state of the man who, closing his senses to exterior impressions, escaping from the flesh and the world, re-entering into himself, retaining no further contact with any human beings except when necessity absolutely requires it, conversing with himself and with God, lives beyond visible things and carries within himself the divine images, always pure, untouched by any admixture with the fugitive forms of this earth.’ Oration 2.7

Complaint concerning his own calamities Often have I reproached Christ the king when I suffered great misfortunes: for a king endures his servant’s mutterings if expressed in a restrained manner, just as a good father often calmly accepts the outspoken words his thoughtless son utters in public. So may you, my God, receive with indulgence the words my grieving heart addresses you, most gentle one. To pour forth mental anguish provides some relief for sufferings. Lord Christ, why have you inflicted such terrible misfortunes on me from the moment I slipped from my mother onto mother earth? If you did not keep me confined in the dark womb, why was I assailed by such painful attacks, both by land and sea, by enemies and friends alike and by most wicked leaders, by foreigners and fellow countrymen, in public and in secret, by means of invidious rumours and blizzards of stone?

Epitaph and synopsis of his life Lord Christ, why have you bound me in these toils of the flesh? Why have you subjected me to this painful life? Of a godlike father I was born and of a mother who was not insignificant. As a result of her prayers I came into the light. She prayed and dedicated me as a child to God. A nocturnal vision instilled in me a burning desire for purity. Christ was responsible for all this, but later I was dashed by the waves, snatched by greedy hands, my body crushed. I fell among uncaring shepherds and experienced treachery. I was deprived of my children and overwhelmed by misfortune. Such has been the life of Gregory: what remains will be the concern of Christ the giver of life. Inscribe these words on my tombstone.

Episode 65 Gregory of Nyssa contra Apollinarium

Do not let the men deceive themselves and others with the assertion that the “Man of the Lord,” as they call him, who is rather our Lord and God, is without human mind. For we do not sever the man from the Godhead, but we lay down as a dogma the unity and identity [of person], who of old was not man but God, and the only Son before all ages, unmingled with body or anything corporeal; but who in these last days has assumed manhood also for our salvation; passible in his flesh, impassible in his Godhead; circumscript in the body, uncircumscript in the Spirit; at once earthly and heavenly, tangible and intangible, comprehensible and incomprehensible; that by one and the same [Person], who, was perfect man and also God, the entire humanity fallen through sin might be created anew. St. Gregory’s letter to Theophilus

Episode 66 was simply me going over St. Greogry’s Antihereticis or Refutation. I pray you all enjoy it.

Will be posting this week while on Vacation.