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All the 4's - 44!
Today is my 44th Birthday. I thank God and my parents for the inestimable gifts of life, baptism and faith. Birthdays present us with an important opportunity to seriously ask ourselves: Am I closer or further from God than I was this time last year? And being that I am now another year nearer to meeting Him, what am I going to do about it?
St. Anselm
As he is one of my heroes in the Faith, I always consider it a great blessing that my birthday is celebrated on the feast of St. Anselm of Canterbury.
St. Anselm was born in Italy in 1033 and became a monk at the abbey of Bec in Normandy. A gifted leader, philosopher and theologian, he eventually became abbot there. In 1093, he was appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury. In that role he defended the rights of the Church from the attempted infringements of King William Rufus. St. Anselm died on this day, the 21st of April, in the year 1109.
He is an important figure in the historical shaping of both our English nation and Western civilization in general. St. Anselm drew upon important sources like St. Augustine of Hippo, Dionysius the Areopagite and Aristotle. His own work would later challenge and inspire thinkers as great as St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus. Works like his Proslogion continue to invite conversion, debate and deep thought to this day. Â
St. Anselm's engagement with the key questions of human existence - and much of the body of answers which he articulated - remains extremely relevant today: Does God exist? Can we know anything about God's nature? What is truth? Can human beings have freedom of choice? What is the nature and purpose of such freedom in a world created and sustained by God?
Continued Relevance
Post-Moderns suggest that it is only those who do not believe that can be free to create and impose their own ''realities'' on existence. As this is not based in objective truth, reason, or authentic receptivity to Being, it causes many people today to unknowingly have the parameters of their ''reality'' constructed for them by those behind contemporary trends in education, mass-media and the overwhelming peer-pressure to conform to the demands of the new atheism. There is a certain irony, indeed a certain punishment, contained in all of this; for freedom without God is the worst form of slavery.
We see examples of the post-modern imposition of ''my reality'' all around us in the widespread acceptance of selfishness, sexual promiscuity, abortion, contraception, euthanasia, extreme tattooing, body-modification and gender ideology. The battle now breaking out around the globe over ''gender-neutral'' toilet facilities represents the latest stage in the unreality of post-modern deconstructionism. It is interesting to notice how every attempt to replace the natural law eventually requires the harsh enforcement of the ''new morality''. One might think here of G.K. Chesterton's prescient dictum: ''Once abolish God and the government becomes the god.''
We even see this in the Church today with the present attempt to overthrow Tradition by imposing new conceptions of the Church, the Sacraments - at least Confession, the Eucharist and Holy Matrimony - and Morality. It is interesting to note too, how the attempt to deconstruct the Church and superimpose post-modern novelties has also been preceded and accompanied by widespread persecution of orthodox Catholics...
Faith Seeking Understanding
Canterbury Cathedral - An important element in our religious, national and civilization history.Â
Needless to say, St. Anselm of Canterbury saw things rather differently.
His faith, charity, intellectual rigour, clarity of thought, lucidity of expression and, above all, openness to grace, enabled him to recognize that it is only through believing that we can truly understand and thus arrive at authentic liberty: that is to say, the freedom of the children of God.
Ultimately, it is the New Life in Christ which constitutes the basis of St. Anselm's timeless motto: fides quaerens intellectum - faith seeking understanding. The post-modern mantra, ''If you believe, you will not understand'' is overturned by St. Anselm with his, ''Unless you believe, you will not understand.''
Rene Descartes'Â Cogito ergo sum -Â ''I think therefore I am'' - would thus rather be rendered, ''I am a creature, made by God, therefore I think the way I do.''
In terms of the Church, St. Anselm's maxim remains a powerful corrective to those who, much in the manner of the Immanentists of an earlier century, would try to reduce Catholicism to a religion of mere feelings, subjective emotionalism, personal experience and will to power. He is very much the thinking man's Catholic. In the wider context of our contemporary society, Western civilization needs to urgently recover St. Anselm's maxims, if it is not to completely unravel and find itself submerged between the twin threats of radical relativism and radical Islam.
Key Quotes for Ongoing Reflection
St. Anselm's writings still have tremendous relevance and power to transform the minds and hearts of those who find them in our own days.
As I did last year, I'm heading off now with Angie and Mum to enjoy my birthday pizza, cake and Peroni! I'll conclude with a few classic quotes from St. Anselm of Canterbury:-
For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For I believe this: unless I believe I will not understand.
Therefore Lord, not only are You that than which a greater cannot be thought, but You are also something greater than can be thought.
Let no worldy prosperity divert you, nor any worldy adversity restrain you from His praise.
Remove grace, and you have nothing whereby to be saved. Remove free will, and you have nothing that could be saved.
God hath promised pardon to him that repenteth, but He hath not promised repentance to him that sinneth.
It is impossible to save one's soul without devotion to Mary and without her protection.
St. Anselm of Canterbury - Pray for us!
