Our Father who art in Heaven

I always wanted to do an exposition on the Lord's Prayer, but I'll bow to a more esteemed expert. Thanks to Binu Abraham for pointing this out to me.

From a letter to Proba by Saint Augustine, bishop

(Ep. 130, 11, 21—12, 22: CSEL 44, 63-64)

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On the Lord’s Prayer

We need to use words so that we may remind ourselves to consider
carefully what we are asking, not so that we may think we can
instruct the Lord or prevail on him.

Thus, when we say: Hallowed be your name, we are reminding
ourselves to desire that his name, which in fact is always holy, should
also be considered holy among men. I mean that it should not be
held in contempt. But this is a help for men, not for God.

And as for our saying: Your kingdom come, it will surely come
whether we will it or not. But we are stirring up our desires for the
kingdom so that it can come to us and we can deserve to reign there.

When we say: Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we are
asking him to make us obedient so that his will may be done in us as
it is done in heaven by his angels.
When we say: Give us this day our daily bread, in saying this day we
mean “in this world.” Here we ask for a sufficiency by specifying
the most important part of it; that is, we use the word “bread” to
stand for everything. Or else we are asking for the sacrament of
the faithful, which is necessary in this world, not to gain temporal
happiness but to gain the happiness that is everlasting.

When we say: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass
against us, we are reminding ourselves of what we must ask and what
we must do in order to be worthy in turn to receive.

When we say: Lead us not into temptation, we are reminding
ourselves to ask that his help may not depart from us; otherwise we
could be seduced and consent to some temptation, or despair and
yield to it.

When we say: Deliver us from evil, we are reminding ourselves to
reflect on the fact that we do not yet enjoy the state of blessedness in
which we shall suffer no evil. This is the final petition contained in
the Lord’s Prayer, and it has a wide application. In this petition the
Christian can utter his cries of sorrow, in it he can shed his tears, and
through it he can begin, continue and conclude his prayer, whatever
the distress in which he finds himself. Yes, it was very appropriate
that all these truths should be entrusted to us to remember in these
very words.

Whatever be the other words we may prefer to say (words which
the one praying chooses so that his disposition may become clearer
to himself or which he simply adopts so that his disposition may
be intensified), we say nothing that is not contained in the Lord’s
Prayer, provided of course we are praying in a correct and proper
way. But if anyone says something which is incompatible with this
prayer of the Gospel, he is praying in the flesh, even if he is not
praying sinfully. And yet I do not know how this could be termed
anything but sinful, since those who are born again through the
Spirit ought to pray only in the Spirit.

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One is never disappointed with St.Augustine (though he did have some odd opinions about babies and plays among other things).

May God Bless you all.

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

A holiday is a holy day (although Valentine's Day is no longer technically a holy day, it remains so in my heart), as the word would suggest, but days of holiness have reasons for their holiness and that, my friends, is where the history comes in.



DISCLAIMER: This is going to be somewhat more personal, its going to go on tangents which contain telescoping parentheses, its going to be heavily Catholic, and while I'm going to put in as much history as I can, this is a post about love written by a rank sentimentalist, so be prepared for some rank sentimentalism.



There are a couple fold aspects to St. Valentine's Day. Firstly, as many classicists will emphasize, the holiday takes the place of a popular Roman holiday, Lupercalia. Like many pagan Roman holiday's its association with the pagan religion made it uncomfortable for Christians to celebrate and difficult for potential converts to give up.



(Would they have to give it up? If I might point out some Christian precedent, this situation is somewhat similar to eating food that has been offered up to idols, ie, enjoying the benefits of pagan ceremonies without participating in the pagan part, and this situation was a historical dilemma for Christians. The solution however, can be seen in the First Letter of Paul to the Corithians. He says that in his view it is not a sin to eat food offered to idols, although if the Christian worried that it might be a sin, then it would be a sin because he or she would be choosing pleasure over potential sin. Thus my view is that enjoying the celebrations of a pagan holiday without having any sort of reverent attitude to the religion that sparked the celebration would not be a sin, however, if the Christians were ambivalent and worried about the potential sinful nature of the holiday, then precedent holds they should probably not participate, and this likely was the case of many Christians in the Roman world with Lupercailia, hence the dilemma.)



But while the celebration of Lupercalia was primarily of fertility (in this it was also a celebration of spring, similar to those present in many other cultures, perhaps explaining why its replacement spread so fast), it also had aspects of celebrating love, and love was (and is) a hugely important theological principle among Christians.



(while Jesus himself talked about love, the most famous theological speculation after Jesus about love was St. Paul's in his First Letter to the Corinthians)



Thus a logical way out was to change the celebration from fertility to love, and to secure the new emphasis, no longer was the celebration commemorating the abduction (essentially rape, but to be fair marriage by abduction was practiced by many cultures in the ancient world) of the Sabine women by the early founders of Rome (a more exact explanation of Lupercalia can be found in this page by Professor James Grout of U. Chicago), but rather now the emphasis was on a saint who embodied love. Yet to not break completely from the fertility celebration, the saint had to be one of marital and romantic love. The question of if this saint was real or was just folklore or was even invented so that there could be a saint of marital and romantic love is still debated among historians, but I find it of less importance. The importance of the holiday is romantic love, which good marital love hopefully has, and so instead of joining that debate, I instead direct you to a good place to check out the various stories of several, perhaps real, saints called Valentine who are celebrated on this holiday.



And here's a little more on the Catholic perspective on St. Valentine's Day (if I'm seeming a little uber-Catholic today, well it's because I am uber-Catholic and as I said holiday has historically and literally meant holy day). By the way, the previous Catholic site I directed you to comes from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, a good resource (the early 20th century encyclopedias, many of whom are on the web and public domain, represented a different age in encyclopedia making, when it was not just about knowledge (not that there's anything wrong with solely-knowledge-centric encyclopedias) but also about fine writing and that's why a lot of people still like them despite their age) but a bit out of date, this second Catholic site is from AmericanCatholic.org and is up-to-date, for example, it notes that St. Valentine's Day has been taken out of the Catholic Liturgical Calender.



And for you Valentine's Day haters out there, here's a Christian anti-Valentine's Day site (although it's from BibleStudy.org which I feel is a bit Protestant-y) and here's a secular anti-Valentine's Day site. (the secular one's also a bit more bitter and a bit more vulgar, but hey, so are many people (including me occasionally) around Valentine's Day)



My own feelings about the day are not historic (so I'll try to be brief about them), and they might strike some as not strictly Christian (although they are rooted in my faith). I like St. Valentine's Day a lot, I think love is something sacred and grand, and while I do not think romantic love is for everyone, (historically has been acknowledgement that romantic love is not for everyone, see for example, Jesus's words about marriage and divorce) I do believe it is wonderful for those who can find it and have the capacity to embrace it. I hope someday to fall into the latter category myself some day.



And if I do not have anyone to celebrate the majesty and mystery of romantic love, well, at least I can raise a toast to it. Because it really is good stuff, after all, were it not for romantic love, none of use would even be here.