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Thursday 3 July 2014

The Inside, Not The Outside


St. Augustine, as quoted by Garrigou-Lagrange, notes that ours is an “evening vision”. We do not have the perfect wisdom of God to understand, or even know, the reasons and consequences of events in our lives.

The Dominican writes this: “Do what we may, we here on earth see the spiritual and the divine only through their reflection in material things. It is owing to this that we attach immense importance to material happenings, such as the loss of an eye, whereas events of the spiritual world, with consequences that are incalculable, are allowed to pass almost unnoticed, such as an act of charity in the order of goodness, or in the sphere of evil a mortal sin. In other words, we see the spiritual and the diine as in the twilight, in the shadow of the sensible…”

A priest friend of mine told me months ago that the psychologists and psychiatrists connected to a famous, local, university hospital were worse than useless at curing their patients. He noted that they only attempt to cure the physical, and, as agnostics or atheists, ignore the real source of many mental problems, the soul.

His interpretation was shared with person who is dealing with a bi-polar son and this woman disagreed, as she could not see the connection, the underlying reality that the soul forms the body, and that disturbances in the soul will, obviously, affect the brain.

The glorification of material science over theology and philosophy creates a false science of psychology, unless this newer science deals with the soul.

God in the greatness of His all-illuminating Wisdom sees the material in the greater context of the spiritual.

Here is Garrigou-Lagrange again: “It is not through the body that God views the soul of the just; it is rather through the soul that He views the body as a sort of radiation of the soul. Hence, His sight is not dazzled by outward show, by wealth and its trappings; what counts with God is charity. A beggar in rags but with the heart of a saint, is of incomparably greater worth in the sight of God than a Caesar in all the splendour of his human glory.”

St. Benedict Labre, as well as St. Joseph Cupertino, are two of my personal patrons.

Great saints on the inside, as it were, but hidden from the sight of so many….

To be continued…