Coronavirus Comes to Town

Tasmania's first case of COVID-19 has just been announced here in Launceston. Of your charity, pray for his recovery, and for the safety of those treating him, and of all whom he has encountered en route to this city – hopefully this novel infection has not yet spread to others, or if it has, it can be prevented from spreading further. However, given the impending pandemic, it may be that this is the harbinger of a local outbreak, which God avert.

Sanctus Deus, Sanctus Fortis, Sanctus Immortalis, miserere nobis: et sicut pepercisti clementer contritæ Urbi Ninivæ, sic et parce Stephanopoli*.
Sancta Trinitas, unus Deus, pro avertenda peste, qua nos punis, vota Tasmaniæ urbisque Stephanopolitani† benigne exaudi.
Ut a pestilentiæ flagello nos liberare digneris, — Te rogamus, audi nos.
Ut civitatem istam defendere, protegere, custodire, conservare et benedicere digneris, — Te rogamus, audi nos.

Domina nostra, Salus infirmorum, — Ora pro nobis.
Sancte Sebastiane, — Ora pro nobis.
Sancte Roche, — Ora pro nobis.
Sancta Rosalia, — Ora pro nobis.  

Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy upon us; and as thou didst clemently spare the contrite city of Nineveh, so also spare Launceston.
Holy Trinity, one God, for averting the plague, with which thou dost punish us, benignly hear the prayer of Tasmania and of the city of Launceston.
That thou vouchsafe to free us from the scourge of pestilence, — We beseech thee, hear us.
That thou vouchsafe to defend, protect, guard, preserve and bless this city, — We beseech thee, hear us.

Our Lady, Health of the sick, — Pray for us.
Saint Sebastian, — Pray for us.
Saint Roch, — Pray for us.
Saint Rosalia, — Pray for us.  

Gentle reader, please replace the italicised words with the names of whatever localities and regions you may wish to pray for.

* Having consulted the far-famed Fr Hunwicke, it seems fitting to render the placename Launceston, its name being derived from the Cornish Lannstevan, land of (St) Stephen, as Stephanopolis, especially by analogy with the New Zealand city of Christchurch being latinised as Christopolis.

† In Latin, one does not say, the city of Launceston, but the Launcestonian city, using the adjectival form.

Nichols on Bulgakov on the Trihypostatic Divine Life

With quite some difficulty, for to comprehend the content, however lucidly put, is intellectually demanding, I have been reading Aidan Nichol’s book about the theology of the Russian Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944).  In doing so, I feel a little like St Jerome reading Rufinus’ presentation of the thoughts of Origen – without the sad breakdown of friendship consequent upon that, I hasten to add! for I was greatly pleased to meet the easily approachable and utterly unpretentious Fr Aidan some years ago, a man who carries his great learning with unassuming humility – since the somewhat unusual sophiological ideas of Bulgakov, even when presented most irenically, do sound more than a bit unorthodox to this rather rigid amateur theologian-cum-heresy-hunter.  

That said, this volume is a marvellously just and charitable presentation of the deep and difficult work of Bulgakov, a writer whom I have often wished to understand better with the aid of a sure and reliable guide: and in Fr Aidan, my prayer has been answered.  To shew how ecumenically his presentation has been received, his tome contains a Foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury (no mean Patristic scholar and theologian, howsoever some of his pronouncements on morals and ecclesiology may be viewed by Catholics) and a Preface by the noted Orthodox prelate, Bishop Kallistos Ware.  

For Trinity Sunday, I present some apposite extracts:

Who and what?

Th greatest of the names for God in the Old Testament is surely that found in the Book of Exodus, 3:14.  The Lord reveals his name to Moses as ‘I am He who is’.  Bulgakov begins his theology of the triune God from here.  As he points out, this divine name already implies that God is both a personal subject – ‘I am He’ – and has an objective nature – ‘who is’.  The distinction between being a subject, a ‘who’, and having a nature, a ‘what’, is of course something we are highly familiar with… In the Church’s tradition, the Tradition of the Fathers and the early Councils, we are told that the divine personality is three ‘hypostases’, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But we are also told that the divine personality has a single, unique nature, shared by no one else.  In God there is one being or nature – in Greek, the main language of the Fathers, one ousia.  In his single unique nature, God is the personal subject of a tri-hypostatic life.

…

The trihypostatic divine life

… Bulgakov wants to say something more about the three persons in God.  … he wants to introduce his theology of the three persons who are nonetheless one single personal being, our divine Creator.  The Lord God is supremely personal because he unites in himself all the modes in which the personal principle can find expression.  Not only ‘I’ but ‘thou’ or ‘you’ in the singular, and ‘he’, ‘we’ and’you’ in the plural.  The Father, for example, can say ‘I’ about himself, and ‘thou’ to, for instance, the Son.  And he can say ‘he’ of, for example, the Holy Spirit.  Then again, the Father and the Son can say ‘we’ together or the Father can say ‘you’ to the Son and the Spirit.  And this would work as well for any of the divine Three.  God is thus the fullness of personal awareness, a single personality in three mutually related centres.  From all eternity, he affirms himself in a Trinitarian fashion, which is to say not as a ‘unipersonal “I”’ but by the affirmation of each hypostasis in the others.  The divine personality realizes itself as the ‘source of self-renouncing love, entering into ecstasy [goes out of itself to find itself again] in another “I”’.

— Aidan Nichols, O.P., Wisdom from Above: A Primer in the Theology of Father Sergei Bulgakov (Leominster: Gracewing, 2005) 11 and 17.

Mistaken... for a Yank

Last night I heard Holy Mass at Ssma Trinità again, and afterward had the pleasure of meeting one of the curates, an Englishman, who gave me a tour of the church, explaining some of the details I'd missed, and shewing me two fabulous paintings in the sacristy - one, being of the Mass of St Gregory, a very famous work, and the other, a picture of St Philip Neri surreptitiously sketched while he was washing the feet of pilgrims: he is reported to have laughed at this pious deception, and said, Ah, you've robbed me! (He abhorred any focus on his person, and grew angry if any dared call him a saint to his face, for he always considered himslef wretched, and after every illness earnestly purposed to mend his ways and start to do good... it was his desire to be unknown - amare nescivi - and another motto of his was Secretum meum mihi, My secret is mine own.)

I think I will obtain a reproduction, by the way, of the Guido Reni altarpiece of the Trinity: it would fit admirably with my reproduction copy of Our Lady's apparition to St Philip, and I can get it framed to match.

(Here is a link, by the way, to an image of the chapel of St Philip in the main church.)

I had a curious experience on my way back to the monastery: having wandered along - past (for instance) the church on the Tiber Island which proudly declares upon its façade, Here lies the body of St Bartholomew the Apostle! - I stopt at the nearest bar to have some dinner. I waited, and waited... the waiter, when he finally materialized, seemed rather churlish in dealing with me, and made what even my Italian registered as some impertinent comments. But all was revealed at last - at the end of the meal, when he and his sister spoke with me in halting English, it turned out they thought I was a Californian, and when they discovered I was Australian, all was forgiven, and they invited me back! Perhaps if I get over my mortification I will return there...

I suspect that these Romanian shopkeepers (for such they were) have got sick of that international pest, "the ugly American", a tourist rude and loud, and when they detected I spoke English assumed the worst. You'd think that my patient waiting, saying grace and reading a book on the Mass while drinking my beer may have let them know I was a bit different to that!