Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So many people love Augustine because he speaks to us still today. His friend Posidius, who knew him for about 40 years, said after Augustine's death that the faithful will always find Augustine alive in his books and sermons. Pope Benedict had a special love for Augustine, and he says in one of his Wednesday audiences, I find him my contemporary, but that he really is alive.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Welcome to the catholic theology show presented by Ave Maria University. This podcast is sponsored in part by Annunciation Circle, a community that supports the mission of Ave Maria University through their monthly donations of dollar ten or more. If you'd like to support this podcast and the mission of Ave Maria University, I encourage you to visit avemaria.edu join for more information.
I'm your host, Michael Dauphine, and today I am joined by Father Andrew Hofer, a Dominican of the East coast province. Yes, and a professor, associate professor of patristics in ancient languages at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, and editor of the Thomist. So welcome to the show, Father.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here with you.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: So glad to have you on the show. Father Andrew, you and I have worked together, I think, for ten years now on co organizing conferences between the Thomistic Institute and Ave Maria University.
So it's great to have you on the show. It's great to have you here. We're doing a conference on Aquinas and the Eucharist pathways for revival.
So today we want to talk about the power of patristic preaching. Right. Your new book that you just published with CuA Press and kind of dive into why kind of, why does the thought and the preaching and the lives of the fathers of the church matter so much for us today?
[00:02:01] Speaker A: That's a great question, Michael. So the fathers of the church are first of all saints in the early church who received the word of God and passed that word on to us. So our church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets and that the word was given to them and their witness to Jesus Christ and how they have passed that faith on to us. So if we're concerned about our salvation, we should be concerned about the preaching of the early church.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Yes.
Pope Benedict the 16th said that the fathers as a whole were the moment of the definitive reception of biblical revelation.
Right. Christ's revelation is all, everything. The word has been spoken and it's received by the church and it's expressed in scripture. But that fundamental revelation, of course, also in the tradition and sacraments and life of the church and the hierarchical structure of the church has to be received. And we saw in the patristic period, which is those years from maybe 200 to 700 or something, that there were a lot of misunderstandings, a lot of attempts to kind of take the mystery of the gospel, the mystery of the incarnation, and fit it into kind of pagan philosophical ideas that somehow didn't fit or, you know, somehow to make, you know, Jesus into just an exalted man or half man, half God, but neither, neither God nor man. And that these different ideas were really deleterious to us actually becoming saved and experiencing the mission of salvation. So the fathers helped to kind of again be that moment of, that definitive moment of the reception of biblical revelation.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Absolutely. Sometimes people are mistaken when they think back on the early church as if the time of the early church was this pristine time where there was just simply the purity of the faith. Well, yes, you had the purity of the faith, but you also had lots of errors. And this is how the purity of the faith became known, was that you had God raise up men to become preachers of the word, to be able to articulate for the salvation of the world the truth of Jesus Christ. So this is just really important to see, because we have lots of errors in the world today, and for us to go back to the holy preachers of the early church who received that word and gave that definitive proclamation of the word for our salvation.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think it's also fascinating, you mentioned this connection between the time of the fathers and our own times, and I was actually just thinking a little bit about that and preparing for the podcast. But in that time, you have, during those years, you still have a vibrant pagan culture. Yes, right. That in many ways, the pagan elites are not christian, are often rather critical kind of Christians, and often look down on Christians. They're not very sophisticated, they have very narrow moral practices.
So you have this sense in which you have this time period where you have the kind of political and philosophical and educated elites offering many different alternatives.
And so Christianity is having like to kind of jostle for even just a seat at the table, so to speak, even be able to enter into the conversation. And at the same time, you have this through really the same idolatrous worship that's continuing through these periods, and through a lot of basically kind of immorality that's pretty widespread throughout much of the greco roman area, that there's a lot of temptations. And then even beyond that, you have often tremendous confusion within the church, arguments within the church, the Arians versus the Niceans, the donatists versus really the catholic church. So you're like, whoa, that's a lot like our own age. We have very powerful government and intellectual elites. We have a lot of immorality or very strong sensual temptations. And at the same time, we also have confusion right within the church, broadly. So can you maybe just talk a little bit about how is it that the fathers navigated these tremendous challenges?
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Thanks, Michael. It's a great question. And I thinking first of the homily that I begin the book with. So St. Augustine preached a homily probably on September 11 in the year 410, just a couple weeks after the goth sacked Rome. And the Christians were blamed for the sacking of Rome because the Christians had taken down the altar of victory there in Rome. And there were various pagan elites who looked at eternal Rome, the eternal city now falling to barbarians. And so what St. Augustine does in his preaching just a couple weeks later there in North Africa, is he asks, what's the good of my having become a Christian?
And this is where he gives voice to various people's concerns and doubts. And he asks the question. This is one of the things that I find so attractive about the patristic creatures that I study in the book, is how they ask the questions that bother people. And so this is, what's the good of my having become a Christian? And then he goes, am I better off than so and so who despises my God? And then he makes us turn to the reality of the faith and the importance of believing in Jesus, that the word was made flesh, our flesh, which is so weak, which is so susceptible to all the different things that happen in this world, that the word has come and taken our flesh. And so that's where for us to be able to see that we have different kinds of concerns today, various kinds of pressures, various kinds of violence, and to be able to go back to the reality of the incarnation, and that we really, as Christians, believe that God so loved us that he sent his own son to this world.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: You draw a lot on Augustine in the book, both to kind of frame the book with that instance you just gave. You have a beautiful chapter on Augustine on love.
How does kind of Augustine, and maybe because Augustine, I think, probably is one of the fathers, you look at seven, we'll talk a little bit about them all. But Augustine's probably one that you, maybe that listeners are probably the most familiar with. We've done a couple podcast episodes, I think, one with John Cavadini on the confessions, and one with Gerald Borisma, who's a professor at Ave Maria on kind of Augustine's theology as a whole.
But what would you say would be, why is Augustine still so relevant in his teachings and his preaching? Maybe what can we learn from Augustine today?
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Michael so many people love Augustine because he speaks to us still today.
His friend Posidius, who knew him for about 40 years, wrote his life, and he said after Augustine's death that the faithful will always find Augustine alive in his books and sermons. And this is where Pope Benedict had a special love for Augustine. And he says in one of his Wednesday audiences about Augustine, I find him my contemporary, that I don't find him as someone just dead and gone, but that he really is alive. And then to think about the truthfulness of this, that the saints are alive. And St. Augustine preached so often, and the people so much loved his preaching, that we have today about 900 sermons by St. Augustine. And I'm editing the Cambridge companion to Augustine sermons. And it's just wonderful for me to be immersed in St. Augustine's preaching because I belong to the order of preachers, the Dominicans. And we call Augustine Holy Father Augustine, because he wrote the rule for our order. And so I, in a special way, have a love for Augustine, but so many people are attracted by him. The confessions have really just marked something about western literature like no other work. And what I want people to do is to go back, especially to his preaching, because he fundamentally was a preacher and for us to be able to hear him. There were secretaries in the churches where he preached. He didn't write out his homilies ahead of time. He was a master orator, and he prayed over the scriptures, and then he was praying during his preaching, and he asked his people to pray for him during his preaching. And then his homilies then are fruit of his prayer and his reflection over the word of God. And you can imagine those people in the church, the secretaries, taking these things down. And so they're verbatim reports, so to speak, of the live preaching of Augustine. So it's so attractive to be able to hear that.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And when you, in the chapter on Augustine, which you focus on love, you go into a little bit of his de doctrina Christiana, right, on christian kind of teaching, broadly speaking, and then also through the homilies on one John. And so could you just maybe summarize kind of briefly and for listeners who might not be familiar with either of those works? What are a couple themes that you think are so important on this work from Augustine's de doctrina Christiana but then also how do we see those kind of come to life in his homilies on one John.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Okay, so St. Augustine, after he was made a bishop, so bishop of Hippo in North Africa knew that there were various priests who were being allowed to preach. Earlier it was only bishops who could preach in North Africa. And when Augustine was a priest, his own bishop, Bishop Valerius of Hippo, allowed him to preach. And that was innovative. Bishop Valerius knew that the easterners were doing this to allow priests, but it wasn't the case in North Africa. And then once Augustine became a bishop, he himself wanted priests to be able to preach. Now what do you need in order to preach? You need to know the Bible and you need to be able not only to know the Bible but also to know how to communicate what is the word of God. So de doctrina christiana or unchristian teaching is in four books. The first three are about the way of finding what is in the scriptures. And then the fourth book is about the way of delivering what you find in scriptures. And what's the message of all scripture? Love. So St. Augustine goes back to our Lord's words when our Lord is asked about what is the greatest of all commandments. So St. Augustine then repeats the Lord about how you shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, soul, mind and strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And then in Matthew's account it continues on these two hang the law and the prophets. So all the law and the prophets, all of scripture depends upon this double love commandment. So this is where then to think about Augustine as a preacher, forming others, especially for preaching in on christian teaching, to know the love of God at work in the Bible and then to be able to know how to deliver it to people. And then what I do in the chapter is to go to the ten tractates or homilies on one John and to show how St. Augustine, well, when he looks at one John he says it's all about love.
And then how he communicates that especially for the needs of the people because there was the donatist schism at the time and he knows how actually the donatists are a majority in different parts of North Africa and various Catholics are being influenced by the donatists and he wants people to know the love at work in Christ's body, the church.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think one thing that's really fascinating about that is there's two ways of kind of saying it's all about love.
Maybe there's a little bit like the kind of contemporary way, which is like, oh, it's just all about love. We don't need to worry about religion or the creed or Jesus or something. And that's like the furthest from. And it's interesting because one John actually is where we have in one John four where it says, God is love.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: But it's interesting. It says, this is in one John four eight, for God is love. But then it says in this, the love of God was manifest to us. So the love of God was revealed, shown to us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the expiation for our sins. So in the very passage says God is love, it says basically, but true love is not that we loved God, it's that God loved us. So it's turning upside down, this kind of humanistic notion of love. And so could you say just a little bit about how Augustine kind of connects that sense of love being the center to the whole mystery of the incarnation?
[00:15:23] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. So this is where that, going back to John three, God so loved the world that he sent his own son and that he sent his own son as an expiation for our sins. And then how we then experience this love with the gift of the Holy spirit. So Saint Augustine, to quote romans five five, the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy spirit given to us. And then he sees this as how God, by his grace, recreates us, deifies us to be able to love him, and then how that requires sacrifice. Okay, so one quotation from St. Augustine's preaching on one John, which is picked up in the tradition, is love and do what you want. And some people take this in one direction, and other people know that it's another, different direction. So again, the quotation is love and do what you want.
And if you understand St. Augustine's preaching, you realize that the love means that complete conformity to God, particularly in the sacrifice of his son Jesus. So this is where that once you really are loving in terms of that theological virtue of charity, that you have God's love at work in you, then your will is conformed to God, and then you really can do what you want because your will now is completely obedient to God in his love. So rather than going through a whole list of rules, it's a matter of being conformed to God, who is love. And now being able to as divinized or deified, to be able to, to do as God does love.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: So we still follow the commandments. It's just that now we want to follow the commandments because we are wanting to follow the commandments with Christ's own love, and that love that sacrificed everything for the sake of following those commandments. So that's a really beautiful image. And you were mentioning a little bit beforehand, actually, before the podcast, we were talking a little bit about this, and you said that Augustine's homilies on one John would be something that you think that maybe the interested lay listener or audience could pick up. Why don't you say a little bit more about that?
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Absolutely. So the works of St. Augustine is a series that is translating the entire works of St. Augustine into what we could call contemporary English. And Father Boniface Ramsay did the translation of the homilies on first John, and it's from the works of St. Augustine, New city press.
And you can purchase that or check it out from a library and read the ten tractates. And tractates is a fancy word to say homily. So first ten, or they have just ten tractates or homilies on one John. And so that would be one way of approaching this, where you can experience St. Augustine's preaching. And some say it's the most beautiful preaching of St. Augustine.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: Wow, that's really exciting. I know. I have a couple of Augustine's homilies on Christmas and homilies on different feast days that are really powerful. So maybe before we kind of jump in and look a little bit at the other seven, well, the other seven patristic preachers that you highlight here, could you tell us a little bit about your own background? How did you get interested in studying the fathers? How did you discover, you know, how did you get interested in studying theology, becoming a Dominican?
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Okay, well, thanks, Michael. So I grew up on a farm in Kansas as the youngest of ten children, and I was fascinated by the lives of the saints and by the word of God. So I say that in my acknowledgments that my dad taught the Old Testament, he taught the Bible, and my mom taught the saints in fifth grade. So we had what's called CCD religion class on Wednesday evenings. And I say that it was especially the witness of my dad and my mom teaching the Bible and teaching the saints when I was in fifth grade, that really was one of the formative aspects of my life. And so then to be able to see that when I was confirmed, I was confirmed with the name Thomas Aquinas. I was 16 years old, and then I went to Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. And at that time, we had four philosophers, and all four were Thomas. And the Benedictines there were very supportive of me, and a couple of the monks had lived at the dominican house of studies in Washington, DC. And I had not met a dominican friar, but I was encouraged to contact the Dominicans. And so I entered the eastern province of St. Joseph in the summer of 1995. I was ordained a priest in 2002, and a year after that, I went to Kenya and taught in seminaries there for a couple years before going on to Notre for my doctorate in theology. And I asked in my province about studies. And there was a need for someone to study the fathers of the church. So I've always loved history, and I've always loved that history, particularly of holiness of the saints. And so by studying the fathers of the church, you get to study saints and the saints that are commemorated in the liturgy. So as a preacher, I love the different feast days and to be able to connect what God did in the lives of those saints with what God does in our lives today.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: So in your description of that, as you talk a little bit about the overall notion of patristic theology, you quote one of our common teachers, Father Brian Daley, who has a whole book about patristic theology, but he really focuses on, I guess it's patristic christology, but it's called God made visible. You cite that. You cite a few quotes.
What's so important about that notion of God made visible at the heart of the theological legacy from the fathers?
[00:21:30] Speaker A: Well, because that is at the heart of our christian faith, that God was made visible, that in the fullness of time, God sent his son born of a woman. And then for us to go back to how that is so definitive for the entire cosmos, that all of salvation history, that all of creation is, in a sense, centered on this event of God sending his son to our world and that he took the eternal word of God, took our weak, frail flesh. He knew that we have sinned, that we suffer, that we die. And so because of us and for our salvation, Jesus came and is saving us. And so then to be able to see that the fathers of the church are able, in a beautiful way, to proclaim the truthfulness of our gospel and to see how life is different, that we look upon the world with different eyes, you know, this world is passing away. And how the fathers of the church then allow us to see that by loving Jesus, we are caught up into, into things that we cannot see, that precisely because we are so earthbound in various ways that God came down to us so that we may rise up to him.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: I think it's Augustine in his detri Nata, perhaps a very, very long sermon in a way, but very rhetorical. In his writing, he talks about that idea that because we fell by loving the things of this world more, in a way we fell through kind of idolatry. But you can think about that loving other people, loving ourselves, loving any created things, loving all the actual living or during his time, the actual pagan cults. He says, of course, therefore God in a way almost becomes an idol for us, not actually right, but that because we love created things more than God, God becomes a created thing.
And how beautiful that in the incarnation God becomes a created thing because he knows we like to, we love created things too much.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: So now we get to love not just God who is above, but God who has become below a child, a baby, a man, a friend with flesh and blood that we, he rescues us in the midst of our brokenness so that we can now no longer follow idols created things that we love more than God, but we recognize Christ as the icon, the image of the invisible God, as colossians 115 says, and we can kind of follow that created reality of the human nature of Jesus Christ all the way up into God's divinity.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: That's right. Exactly. So my book has this sub theme of incarnation deification proclamation. And it begins with that incarnation and how God became man so that we might go into God, that we may be deified.
St. Cyril of Alexandria loves the line God's by grace. So then to be able to see that the incarnation is just most fundamental and the incarnation is for our salvation or deification, and then we are meant to communicate that. So then proclamation. So again and again in the book it's incarnation deification proclamation.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: That's a great way of kind of creating this order and organization. Amidst all of these, I don't know how many you mentioned, there are 900 sermons by Augustine, and you have six other preachers in here. So how many sermons you must have looked through and read through? I'm sure many thousands.
But creating that fundamental order, because the order comes from the order of reality, and the order of reality is that which is disclosed in the incarnation and then the effect of the incarnation in us to make us sons and daughters in the son, gods in the God. And then also, then that reality that was always communicated. And of course thats the beauty is that the bishops and even priests are communicating that Gospel through kind of taking up almost also like taking up the best of the rhetorical traditions of the pagans.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: And yet putting them now of service to disclose what the pagans were seeking, this God whom was unknown to you, as Paul says in, you know, I think it's acts 17. Right. I make known to you.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: Yes, that's right. And how that this proclamation is to be lived by all. So this is where I feature various clerics in the book. But Saint Augustine, in one of his homilies that I show forth, says, and you too preach in your own way. And so various people love the word evangelization today, and it's great. And then to be able to see the connections between evangelization and preaching. So sometimes people will make various kinds of differences. But to be able to see that every Christian is to receive and express the word of God, so that's where that priests are ordained for the sake of the people, that we as priests are to minister for the holiness of the church and that all the faithful really are to be able to receive and to express. So that's why this book is meant for those who in a special way are ordained for preaching, but also it's meant for anybody who, anybody who's a Christian who wants to receive the word of God and pass that word of God to others.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Well, that's great. It's really beautifully put. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll come back. And when we come back, I want to just talk a little bit about kind of what led you to pull together this book, the power of patristic preaching, and maybe see if we can kind of dive into, I don't know whether we'll get through all six of the other fathers, but try to at least dive into a few of them.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Thank you, Michael.
[00:28:00] Speaker C: You're listening to the catholic theology show presented by Ave Maria University and sponsored in part by Annunciation Circle. Through their generous donations of dollar ten or more per month, Annunciation circle members directly support the mission of AMU to be a fountainhead of renewal for the church through our faculty, staff, students and alumni. To learn more, visit avemaria.edu Join thank you for your continued support. And now let's get back to the show.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Welcome back to the Catholic Theology show. I'm your host, Michael Dauphine, and today we're joined by Father Andrew Hofer, dominican priest of the east coast province of St. Joseph and an associate professor of patristic theology at the Dominican House of Studies in DC. Thanks again for being on the show, Father.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: Thank you very much, Michael.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: So today we've been talking about your recent book, the power of patristic preaching the word in our flesh, and kind of just trying to dive back into what made the fathers and their teachings so significant and kind of a perennial relevance for the church. I'm reminded that even Leo XIII, when he articulates and kind of reestablishes Thomas as kind of the center of the renewal of philosophy and theology in the church in attorney patras in I think it's like, anyway, around like, say, 1880 or so he says, in a way that one of the reasons why Aquinas is so important is because Aquinas has the mind of the fathers.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: And so it's actually the fathers that have authority as the definitive reception of biblical revelation. And then Aquinas is helpful because Aquinas has the mind of the fathers. The fathers, in a way, are so vast that it's helpful to have Aquinas to draw them into a larger ordering.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: And at the same time, then it's also appropriate then to kind of like, having studied Thomas, then also go back and love the fathers. They're not meant to be competitive in any sense or replacing one another. So as a Dominican, a lover of St. Thomas, could you just say a word about how we co edited a book on Thomas and the greek fathers? So there's a lot of this that we've done, but just maybe for people that are trying to think through the relationship, how do we.
How does your love of Thomas also enkindle a love of the fathers?
[00:30:38] Speaker A: St. Thomas loved the fathers. He called the fathers these saints, or holy doctors. And one of the projects he did, commissioned by the pope, Pope Urban IV, was to collect together various sayings of the fathers on the gospel. So he was able to do the Gospel of Matthew before Pope Urban IV died. And he continued with all three other gospel accounts. So this is called the golden chain of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And I mentioned in my introduction to this book the Power of Patristic Preaching, that I want to imitate St. Thomas, that St. Thomas actually has this work which has been so influential for preachers. It was the Oxford movement of the 19th century that translated that work into English. And all sorts of preachers today will go back to St. Thomas's golden chain to find what was preached in the early church. And what I want to do in this book is to do something similar, but it's not organized by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but especially the theological virtues, the very path of what it means to be a Christian, to live a Christian as a Christian in this world, and then to be able to see how these seven fathers of the church that I choose show forth something about what it means to be a christian today. Okay, so because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, and how just like St. Thomas went back to the fathers, I think we can do the same.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: So in the book, you begin with origin and especially the kind of call to holiness.
Ephraim, the call to humility.
Gregory of Nazianzus. The faith is purifying our mind. And then you Chrysostom, hope for eternal life. Augustine on love in itself, Leo the great on love of the poor in almsgiving. And then Gregory the great finally in his elements of that. We have to do all this with the awareness of our own weakness and limitations. So kind of coming back in a way to humility.
So maybe, just, maybe we could just begin with maybe origins called a holiness.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: Yes, and it could be a little controversial, because Origen is the only one of these that we don't call saint. Saint Thomas Aquinas cites Origen's name over a thousand times. No other scholastic was so devoted to Origen as St. Thomas Aquinas. And Origen appears in the catechism of Catholic Church, in the liturgy of the hours, in the office of readings. And Origen had some things wrong. Yes. He also had a wonderful approach to the Bible, which has been extremely influential, and how Origen really wanted people to receive the holiness of God, so that we have only a few homilies before Origen, who died either in 253 or 254. But during Origen's lifetime, he preached a great deal. And for us then to be able to see well, what's the real message of his preaching is holiness.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: And it's also interesting, and this is something that we can talk about as well, maybe now, but that, so obviously there's a centrality of faith come to faith in Jesus Christ, the word made flesh come. And this faith has content. Yes, it's a person, but it's also real. And it has real content. It has a real creed. The creed matters, yes. All right. It's, you know, that nothing matters more in a way than it, because I don't get to know Jesus if I'm not getting to know Jesus. Right. It has to be the true Jesus.
But it's also the case that the sacraments of baptism in the Eucharist are just central. There's no sense that you can have faith without baptism, obviously, if you can't make it to baptize it. But the normal expression of faith is to be baptized. And so origins call to holiness. Here is actually a series of homilies on Leviticus, which has within it the beautiful expression. I think it's Leviticus, maybe 19 two. Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: We also get in there called to love your neighbor as you love yourself in the midst of this holiness and love within Leviticus. But he preaches that to the newly baptized.
What difference does it make that he's speaking to the baptized? And what does that say, in a way, about his understanding of what it means to be a Christian?
[00:35:20] Speaker A: So he sees that the entire Bible is for our holiness. There were various confusions during his time. So some people were rejecting what we call the Old Testament, and Origen did not reject it. Origen saw that the scripture was written for our salvation in Christ. And so then he takes the time to be able to help Christians understand that the word, that all the details, all the details of the Bible are for our salvation in Christ. Okay, so then to see that this is his message and he is leading the people into a priestly holiness by baptism, so that you have different kinds of participations in Christ and that there is really a baptismal priesthood and for people to see their dignity once baptized precisely in Christ our priest. And so Origen, then, as a priest, is helping people understand the baptismal priesthood and to live it out for holiness.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that really is beautiful. And then it's interesting. It's kind of not seeing the Old Testament as merely historical, but as kind of having present significance for how to actually grow closer to God.
[00:36:35] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:36:35] Speaker B: Right. And that sense of that baptismal dignity, which shows up a lot with the fathers. So St. Ephraim might be a father that people are less familiar or maybe even haven't heard of. So you connect him, especially with humility. What would you say is kind of for people or members of the audience who may not be familiar with St. Ephraim the Syrian?
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So first off is the Therian. So St. Ephraim is the only doctor of the church from the first eight centuries of the church who did not preach in either Greek or Latin. So he preached in Syriac, and he died in the year 373. So St. Ephraim, then, as Syriac speaking, is very much allied with Jesus own culture. So the Aramaic and the Syriac of Ephraim's world, that these are absolutely together. And then to think about how St. Ephraim very much emphasizes God's own condescension or coming down to us, and that if we want to rise up, we need to see where God has gone. He has gone down in a sort of humbling.
And you think about Philippians two, that he humbled himself, becoming obedient even until death, death on the cross. So St. Ephraim wants christians to be able to accept the humility of God because God came down to our level for our conversion and so that we then can, in humility, rise up with God.
[00:38:08] Speaker B: Now, a lot of his preaching, is it. Am I correct that they were hymns as well?
[00:38:12] Speaker A: That's right. So St. Ephraim communicated both in prose and poetry, and that he had different kinds of poetic hymnody that is still sung in syriac churches. And all sorts of scholars today are going back to his witness and to be able to. To make better known the beauty of his poetry. So there have been different translations into English, and I highly recommend people to read St. Ephraim and to think about the poetry of it. I remember I was talking with someone about my writing of the book, and this scholar said, you chose St. Ephraim as a preacher. Absolutely. So when St. Jerome writes his unillustrious men. So this is just a few years after St. Ephrem's death. He says that St. Ephraim, Ephraim's writings are being read after the gospel and the liturgy, in other words, that people during the time of the homily would simply read St. Ephraim's work. And you just think that it's remarkable that so early on that we have this witness of Ephraim's poetry then being read soon after his death as, okay, this is the time of the homily. So let's hear from St. Ephraim. So, absolutely, he's one of the most important preachers of the early church.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: So next is Gregory of Nazianzen.
You've written a whole book on Gregory in your earlier writing a monograph, but here you focus on him as faith, as purifying the mind.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: Yes. So I was talking with Father Basil Cole, who is this great dominican priest of my province. When I asked him about this, he said, absolutely the importance of purification, that people don't have the sense of purification today as, say, St. Gregory did. And he uses the word purification hundreds of times. And for us to be able to believe, we need to be purified so that we have different kinds of blocks to accept the revelation of God. And to be able to have our mind purified. Okay, so St. Peter preaches purified by faith, and that faith then frees our mind to think as God thinks. So that's where Gregory is especially called the theologian in the tradition. So St. Gregory the theologian, because he speaks so beautifully about God, he expresses the mystery of the most holy Trinity so beautifully. And for us then to see that in order for us to rise up, we need things purified, and St. Gregory's preaching helps us to be purified.
[00:40:55] Speaker B: Gregory was basically like the president of the Council of Constantinople in 381, where we actually get our nicene Constantopolitan creed that we say every Sunday after mass.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: So.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: Right. His purification of faith is something that we at least receive the expression of. I know he has that language of. And some of his orations, which are kind of sum, are versions of basically homilies, sermons he'll talk about. We have to smooth the theologian within us like it's this. We have a statue of somebody who could know and love God.
[00:41:30] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:41:31] Speaker B: But not easily. You have to smooth it. We have to correct our thinking, but also correct our passions.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:41:37] Speaker B: So next you have Chrysostom, John Chrysostom, called the golden mouth. Right. Beautiful, beautiful preacher. You focus his work on hope.
[00:41:47] Speaker A: Yes. So this is where I was wondering what to do with St. John Chrysostom, because constructing a book, you have all sorts of options. And St. John Chrysostom loved St. Paul like no other. So he was just fascinated by St. Paul. And he has hundreds of homilies where we hear about St. Paul. I mean, he preached on the entire Pauline corpus. He preached on the acts of the apostles. He brings up Paul all the time. I thought maybe Paul. And then I was thinking, well, in his preaching, he asked so many questions, and I wish preaching today would have more questions to get people to think. But then someone helped me to see that it would really be hope, because the chapter before is Gregory of Nazius on faith, and the chapter afterwards is Augustine on love. And you just see the theological virtues being in the front and center. And then I thought about this. Yes, sometimes St. John Chrysostom is known for preaching on almsgiving, and rightly so. He preaches a lot on love of the poor. But why do we love the poor? It's because of the hope of heaven that there's something about heaven that is always at work in all of his preaching, that we are being lifted up to heaven, precise in our love for one another, and that we especially are concerned about the weak, those who have various kinds of needs, but ultimately it's about being in heaven together, and so it's the hope of salvation.
[00:43:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it reminds me that I think there's that story of Aquinas when he's one time walking with a. And he's walking and they all of a sudden see the city of Paris before them. And so it's like, oh, my gosh, what an amazing city. And wouldn't you love to have it or something? He says. And Aquinas is right. I would rather have Chrysostom's commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.
And it's one of the beautiful things that Aquinas actually got newly translated a lot of the, not only Aristotle from the greek, but a lot of the greek fathers, and therefore really began to incorporate them much more than any of the other latin scholastic theologians in the 12th century. But I just think that shows how much he valued Chrysostom. So maybe in terms of. Could you just say a quick word about Leo and Gregory?
[00:44:02] Speaker A: Yes. So Saint Leo the great is pope in the middle of the fifth century, during the time of the counts of Chalcedon. And rather than emphasizing something particular about christian or christological doctrine, what I wanted to show was that actually in his homilies, he especially emphasizes love of the poor.
And so then to be able to see how after Augustine on love, to see that Leo the great has this love of the poor, that is beautiful. So one line is, nobody should despise the nature that God himself has taken in anyone. So that because he believes in the incarnation that the word was made flesh, we should never despise human nature. And then to think about the pro life ramifications of that, that St. Leo the great wants us to love everybody who has human nature. And you just think, oh, why? Because God has human nature and that there's just something beautiful about that. And so that in that chapter six is Saint Leo the great on the love of the poor and the weak. And then chapter seven, I go to another pope. So St. Gregory the Great, who died in 604, was really interested in our weakness, where he say, in his book of the pastoral rule, has four books about preacher formation, and the fourth book is the shortest, but it's after the preacher lives and preaches, he should go back and know he's just a man in the presence of God and to be able to accept his weakness. So then to go back and realize, okay, we are not God and that God has come to us in the incarnation, and that we are deified. We're being raised up by God to share in his nature. So two, Peter, chapter one, verse four, partakers of the divine nature. And that we proclaim this. And at the end, it is all God's work. And so with Gregory the Great, then to accept our own weakness, because if we don't accept our own weakness, then we don't accept the reality of what God is doing for us in his love.
[00:46:12] Speaker B: It's really amazing to see that. And it's beautiful to see how from the right, the second century with origin, up to almost the 7th century with Gregor the Great, that there's this kind of continuity between this call to holiness through the incarnation, through the humility of the incarnation, and then being raised up into faith, hope and love.
And that the kind of, I don't know, put it like this obsession with the truth and getting the truth about the faith right was always lived out, right. That there is this just absolute unity between the truth and life, right. Christ is the way, the truth and life. The fathers want so much for us to believe truthfully who Jesus Christ is and at the same time live that out. And so somehow it just. It's almost so obvious. It's hard to even try to, like. It's hard to do it justice, but like somehow in our world, in our contemporary world and maybe in theirs as well. And certainly, I think it wasn't uncommon in late antiquity, but that we have this certain sense, well, truth is over here, and who really knows? And what really matters is just what you do. And this is just absurd.
[00:47:34] Speaker A: Yes, it is absurd.
[00:47:35] Speaker B: And they hold it together. And I love the way that you kind of draw that deep sense of not only loving the poor, but if I'm going to love the poor, Leo, who, of course, has the beautiful defense of the two natures of Christ, he's always very committed to the creed that will become part of the creed of Chalcedon through his writings, in part to love the poor. And then Gregor reminds us that the one poor person we really ought to love is ourselves in our poverty. Not a prideful love of self, but a love of ourself and our poverty. What a beautiful message.
[00:48:09] Speaker A: Yes, Michael, it's true.
[00:48:11] Speaker B: So again, we've been talking about the power of patristic preaching, the word in our flesh today. By the way, any readers who are interested in listening to this or into buying the book and get it at CUA press, there is a code for the catholic theology show. It's CT ten. Ct ten. And you get 20% off. But before we close, I'd like to ask you three questions I try to engage our guests in. And so what's a book you've been reading?
[00:48:38] Speaker A: So, a book I've been reading. Well, I've been trying to finish this Cambridge companion to Augustine's sermons. So I'm reading a lot of Augustine, a lot of Augustine's sermons, and a lot of works about Saint Augustine.
[00:48:52] Speaker B: So just anything in the sermons that you've, like maybe just stuck out to you that you didn't know before.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: So, one of my latest is actually reading epistle 29, where we have none of these sermons kept in the about 900 sermons. But in one epistle to his friend Alypius, he talks about a series of sermons that he preached over three days in May of 395. And he gives a blow by blow reaction of what he does and how he plans the sermons concerning the scripture texts, and then what the people do, how many people come to church at different times, and the give and take between himself and his people. And so I didn't realize this epistle 29 when I was writing this chapter on St. Augustine. And so just each. Each day when I read more, I just think, oh, this is so beautiful.
So that would be an example where I continue to learn about St. Augustine's preaching.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: Yeah. So, obviously, as a Dominican and a Catholic for many, many years, you have a variety of practices and religious observances.
But maybe what's one that you might select to share that you find? What's a daily practice you do to, you know, to kind of discover this beauty of that we've been talking about here, of the incarnation, divinization and proclamation.
[00:50:19] Speaker A: The first thing that comes to my mind is the holy Rosary. So, according to my constitutions and the order of preachers, we are to not only preach. We are not only to pray the rosary every day, but to preach the rosary fervently, and then to be able to see that in the rosary we have that incarnation, so that the word was made flesh. And just thinking about the ave Maria, that hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, that you see then something about the coming of the word in Mary, and then the presence of the Lord and how Mary is transformed. She's deified. And then the second joyful mystery, the visitation that you hear, Mary's magnificat, the candle of praise, my soul, proclaims the greatness of the Lord.
This book, the power of patristic preaching, is dedicated to our lady queen of preachers. And then I give a little scripture quotation from St. Elizabeth at the beginning of the book. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my lord should come to me? So when I think about dominican life and what I especially want to emphasize now, it's the rosary. And then to see just the connections of praying the rosary and then letting people passing that rosary on to others. So to be able to see how it's true the word was made flesh, that we are to be deified and we are to proclaim this for the salvation of the world.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: That's really beautiful and encouraging. It's a great way of kind of situating the rosary within the whole mystery of redemption of the incarnation. Right. Suffering and call to eternal life.
[00:51:57] Speaker A: Yes. Because that's what the rosary is.
[00:51:58] Speaker B: Absolutely, yes. That's why Saint Dominic. Right.
[00:52:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:52:03] Speaker B: Encouraged us so much. And then finally, this is a theology show. So the idea is that good ideas about God make our lives better, and bad ideas about God make our lives harder. And there are a lot of bad ideas.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: There are a lot of bad ideas.
[00:52:18] Speaker B: Maybe just what's a belief that you held about God that you later discovered, that you discovered was false and what was the truth you discovered?
[00:52:28] Speaker A: Okay, so that's so hard.
I would say one thing that St. Thomas has helped me more about with God is God's presence, the mysterious of God's presence. So this can be surprising for some people. But St. Thomas talks about how you cannot know with certainty if you are in a state of grace. And St. Thomas goes back to Job. God comes. I know not. He leaves. I know not. And that there's something more about the mysteriousness of God in our human life and how then St. Thomas follows upon the fathers of the church and just recognizing more and more the mysteriousness of God. So that's where that with St. Thomas and the fathers, I think, to be able to appreciate more and more the mysteriousness and how in faith, we, you know, we walk by faith, not by sight, and that we really want to live for God and to allow God to be God on God's own terms, that he is God, we are not. And that there's just something about the fathers of the church, St. Thomas Aquinas, that allows us to. To appreciate more and more the mysteriousness of the presence of God.
[00:53:50] Speaker B: I live for God. God doesn't live for me. Right. And it's that real, deep sense of just trusting ourselves entirely into a mystery that's so much greater and so much more wonderful than we are. And then we discover that that's our beauty.
[00:54:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:54:04] Speaker B: Right. That, that's our beauty and our dignity.
[00:54:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:54:06] Speaker B: I think it's Leo, isn't it? Leo the great who says, right. Christians know your dignity.
[00:54:10] Speaker A: Yes, that's right.
[00:54:11] Speaker B: To the newly baptized. So we have, we do have a dignity, but it's in Christ's calling.
[00:54:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:54:18] Speaker B: It's in Christ's baptism. So again, Father Andrew Hofer, thank you so much for being on our show. The book we've been discussing is the power of patristic preaching the word in our flesh. It sounds like maybe this would be a good gift to give to maybe a priest or a friend. And sounds like also the kind of book that really anyone who kind of wants to have a, not an easy book, but I think it's very accessible to, to people. And at least in looking it over, I think the chapters, I found that the chapters on the fathers were, we didn't talk about this too much, but you also talked about some of their successes and their failures. And so not only what they taught, but how they lived, the messiness of their life and amidst the beauty of their preaching. And I think that was a real something that I think readers might enjoy. And also, as always, I think just a good reminder to really pay attention to the, the fathers and what they taught. There often are readings from the fathers in the office of readings which more people are praying and love. Your recommendation? If there's one book of the Fathers, one sermons, you said, go to homilies on one John by Augustine, published by New City Press, would be a great place to start. So again, Father Hofer, thank you for being on the show and thanks for all your collaboration over the years as you been working with the Thomistic Institute as well.
[00:55:41] Speaker A: Thank you very much. Michael.
[00:55:42] Speaker B: Excellent, and thanks to our listeners and viewers for being with us today. Again, if you enjoyed the show, please continue to subscribe to us and share us with your friends and family. Thank you.
[00:55:57] Speaker C: Thank you so much for joining us for this podcast. If you liked this episode, please rate and review it on your favorite podcast app to help help others find the show. And if you want to take the next step, please consider joining our enunciation circle so we can continue to bring you more free content.
We'll see you next time on the Catholic Theology show.
