Marian Consecration With Aquinas , livre ebook

TAN Books - Matt Fradd

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

41 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

St. Louis de Montfort's classic Total Consecration to Mary has seen a strong resurgence in recent years, with Catholics around the world consecrating themselves to Our Lady. Building off this momentum, we wanted to encourage this closeness to Jesus through Mary, but with a preparation that reflected the Church's love for St. Thomas Aquinas. In Aquinas's writings, we found ample resources for the task. Especially in his preaching, we discovered passages detailing the graces bestowed on Mary and the role afforded her in leading us to Christ. Special inspiration came from a passage where Aquinas describes what motivates religious to consecrate themselves. He writes that it is their great desire to "offer to God all that one has." Wow! That struck a chord. We wrote this book to assist others in offering all that they have in consecration, with the Angelic Doctor as a teacher and guide. After all, it's not just religious who are called to holiness. We all are! It is our hope that this method will captivate you like it has us, and lead you to closer union with Jesus as you offer yourselves to Him through Mary.

Sujets

Catholic Church

Philosophie et théologie

Informations

Publié par	TAN Books
Date de parution	17 février 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781505114928
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0600€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Marian Consecration With Aquinas
M ARIAN C ONSECRATION
WITH
A QUINAS
A Nine Day Path for Growing Closer to the Mother of God
MATT FRADD FR. GREGORY PINE, OP
TAN Books Charlotte, North Carolina
Marian Consecration With Aquinas copyright © 2019 Matt Fradd
All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts used in critical review, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Unless otherwise noted, or in texts quoted from other sources, all Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible—Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Cover design by Caroline Green
Cover image: The Virgin and Child with St. Thomas Aquinas , 1424-30 (fresco) / Angelico, Fra (Guido di Pietro) (c.1387-1455) / Bridgeman Images
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019953005
ISBN: 978-1-5051-1490-4
Published in the United States by TAN Books PO Box 410487 Charlotte, NC 28241 www.TANBooks.com
Printed in the United States of America
C ONTENTS
Introduction
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
I NTRODUCTION
M ARIAN C ONSECRATION
M arian consecrations are all the rage in some quarters. Hip Catholics tote their True Devotion books around campus, organize Morning Glory prayer groups, and sport consecration chains without apology.
Yet in other circles, there is decidedly less Marian verve. Folks in secular settings or with Protestant friends sometimes find it hard to justify such a visible provocation. To take one of the more controversial elements of the faith and to make it the be-all and end-all seems to some a bit imprudent. Is this supposed to further the conversation or end it?
I (Matt) first learned about Marian consecration when I was serving as a missionary with NET Ministries of Canada. When it was introduced to me, I remember the thought freaking me out a bit. Leading up to that time, I was becoming more and more comfortable with invoking the saints in my own personal prayer and asking for their intercession. I had also enjoyed some success in warding off objections from my Protestant friends. Then all of the sudden, here’s this talk about total consecration and slaves of Mary. I found it to be too much.
But at the prompting of my friends, I gave it a go. I made an honest attempt at reading St. Louis de Montfort, but—truth be told—I couldn’t really get into it. I’d come across individual quotations that I found interesting or beautiful, but the overall approach never really appealed to me. His flowery language didn’t resonate; it left me cold. Now, this isn’t to say that the problem is his. Many find his writings inspiring, but—for whatever reason—I didn’t. If patron saints are like heavenly friends, then you could say that we never hit it off.
For a while, I remained on the periphery of the consecration scene, but over the course of an ongoing conversion and coming to know the saints of the tradition, I discovered an approach that spoke to me. Later on, I heard consecration described as “entrustment,” and I found that more palatable. Again, I don’t mean to suggest that the truth of a doctrine is a matter of taste, but—in my own case—presentation was a big part of whether or not to get on board. The language of entrustment—language that Aquinas uses in his prayer to Mary and that St. John Paul II uses in the modern magisterium—conveyed a sense that was more maternal and less cultic. I thought, “Yeah, that’s a lot cooler.”
The point of this book is to offer another approach to Marian consecration. As we know from St. Maximilian Kolbe and Fr. Michael Gaitley, there isn’t just one path to Marian consecration. Rather, there is a whole variety, and these can work well to captivate the different spiritual temperaments of a wide range of Christians.
So, as students and devotees of St. Thomas Aquinas, we wanted to put together this book for people who hear the Gospel best when it is preached and explained in St. Thomas’s idiom—for those who want to be formed by what he says about Marian consecration. As a result, this consecration will be a bit more theological than most. St. Thomas believed that it matters what you think and that when you know well, you are freer to love better. So, part of the aim of this preparation for consecration will be to instruct and enlighten, with the confidence that an illumined mind prompts a devoted heart.
S T . T HOMAS AND THE V IRGIN M ARY
St. Thomas, like many of the saints before and after him, had a great love for the Blessed Virgin Mary. While there are not many stories of his devotion to her, one early story is illustrative. As a small child, he was often seen toddling around his family home (well, it was a castle) with a piece of paper balled up in his fist. When his mother finally wrested it from his grasp, she saw that it read, “Ave Maria, gratia plena” (Hail Mary, full of grace).
St. Thomas’s love for the Blessed Virgin comes out even more spectacularly in his writings. In the Summa , he asks the question, “Whether God can do better than what He does?” St. Thomas responds with a scriptural passage from St. Paul, “[God] is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Eph 3:20). So, in short, yes, God could do better. For everything that he’s made, we can imagine a better version or something else that bests it somehow. Picture your best friend. Now, picture him with wings. Bingo.
But, here’s the thing. St. Thomas doesn’t just leave it at that. In the reply to the fourth objection, he writes, “The humanity of Christ, from the fact that it is united to the Godhead; and created happiness from the fact that it is the fruition of God; and the Blessed Virgin from the fact that she is the mother of God; have all a certain infinite dignity from the infinite good, which is God. And on this account there cannot be anything better than these; just as there cannot be anything better than God” (ST Ia Q. 25, a. 6, ad4um). You heard right, St. Thomas just classed Mary with the humanity of Christ and created beatitude. Clearly, he esteems her greatly.
S T . T HOMAS AND C ONSECRATION
The next question naturally arises: Did St. Thomas even write anything about Marian consecration? To be perfectly honest, St. Thomas Aquinas never addresses the question of Marian consecration directly . That being said, we can get at his thoughts by approaching it from another angle. Consecration comes up in his writings on the sacraments, specifically when talking about Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, and Holy Orders. But his teaching on consecration is clearest in the discussion of religious life.
After describing the theological and moral virtues—which God intends for all—St. Thomas shifts gears and concludes with a short section describing the charismatic graces and states of life—which God intends only for some. So, after passing through prophecy, rapture, tongues, words, and miracles (a pretty exciting section), he rounds out the scoring with a treatment of religious life. (Don’t worry, this isn’t a vocation advertisement. It’s safe to read on.)
In one of those questions, St. Thomas is trying to get at the heart of religious consecration. What exactly is religious consecration anyway? He gives a few explanations, but the last one is the most powerful:
Again, “a holocaust is the offering to God of all that one has,” according to Gregory (Hom. xx in Ezech.). Now man has a threefold good, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. i, 8). First, the good of external things, which he wholly offers to God by the vow of voluntary poverty; secondly, the good of his own body, and this good he offers to God especially by the vow of continence, whereby he renounces the greatest bodily pleasures. The third is the good of the soul, which man wholly offers to God by the vow of obedience, whereby he offers God his own will by which he makes use of all the powers and habits of the soul. ( ST IIaIIae Q. 186, a. 7)
What exactly is he saying here? Recall that in the Old Testament, during those times when the temple was open for worship, there were a variety of ways that one could make a gift of his possessions. If you’ve ever read through Leviticus, you’ve probably come across cereal offerings, wave offerings, incense offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings, guilt offerings, et cetera. Now, with all of these offerings, part of the host would be given to God (often the blood or the fat), part would be given to the priest(s), and (sometimes) part would be given to the one offering the sacrifice. But there is one offering—the whole burnt offering or holocaust offering—that wasn’t divided up. Rather, the host was consumed whole and entire on the altar of sacrifice. This was seen by the Jews as the greatest kind of offering. Why? Well, because it gets to the heart of what sacrifice is for. We receive our lives from God, and we offer them to God. We have nothing of our own. Rather, it’s all a gift. And so we should live with the recognition and the gratitude that comes of receiving everything from the Lord, and this should translate into a spirit of sacrifice, of self-offering.
So, given that background, we can appreciate why St. Thomas describes religious life as a kind of whole burnt offering. By the vow of poverty, one offers his possessions. By the vow of chastity, one offers his body. By the vow of obedience, one offers his soul. Taken together, they offer the whole person.
In another place, in the same question, St. Thomas borrows again from St. Gregory the Great’s Homilies on Ezekiel . There St. Gregory writes, “When a man vows to God all his possessions, all his life, all his knowledge, it is a holocaust.” And why, one might ask, would anyone choose to do that? Well, because God is worthy. But here’s the