Fr. James V. Schall - The Reason for the Seasons: Why Christians Celebrate What and When They Do

James V. Schall, S.J.

The Reason
for the Seasons

Why Christians Celebrate
What and When They Do

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2018 by James V. Schall, S.J.

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Perceptions Design Studio.

On the cover: Icon from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from The Catholic Study Bible .

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schall, James V., author.

Title: The reason for the seasons : why Christians celebrate what and when

they do / by James V. Schall, S.J.

Description: Manchester, New Hampshire : Sophia Institute Press, 2018. |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018037156 | ISBN 9781622826902 (pbk. : alk. paper) ePub ISBN 978-1-622826-919

Subjects: LCSH: Fasts and feasts Catholic Church. | Church year. |

Apologetics.

Classification: LCC BV30 . S3185 2018 | DDC 263 dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037156

To my sister, Norma Jean Vertin,
who, on holidays, filled our house
with the music of Christmas and Easter

So convinced were the ancients that wonder is something distinctively human that there was even an argument from wonder that was proffered as an argument in favor of the genuine humanity of Christ in the controversies surrounding Christological dogma.

Josef Pieper, For the Love of Wisdom

No other story, no pagan legend or philosophical anecdote or historical event, does in fact affect us with that same peculiar and even poignant impression produced on us by the word Bethlehem . No other birth of a god or childhood of a sage seems to us to be Christmas or anything like Christmas.

G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

On the 9th of April, being Good Friday, I, Boswell, breakfasted with Samuel Johnson on tea and cross-buns, Doctor Level making the tea. He carried me with him to the church of St. Clement Danes, where he had his seat, and his behavior was, as I had imagined to myself, solemnly devout. I shall never forget the tremendous earnestness with which he pronounced the awful petition of the Litany: In the hour of my death, and at the day of judgment, good Lord, deliver us. We went to church both in the morning and in the evening. In the interval between the two services we did not dine; but he read in the Greek New Testament.

James Boswell, The Life of Johnson

You created Heaven and earth, but you did not make them of your own substance. If you had done so, they would have been equal to your only-begotten Son, and therefore to yourself, and justice could in no way admit that what was not of your own substance should be equal to you. But besides yourself, O God, who are Trinity in Unity, Unity in Trinity, there was nothing from which you could make Heaven and earth.

St. Augustine, Confessions

And yet we cannot avoid the appalling realization, that at no time have the revolt from Christ and the supernatural and the idealization of man and his nature been so noisily proclaimed, so audaciously organized and carried into effect with such terrible severity and such extensive display of power as in these days in which we live. The era of the serpent is near. Already its word, Ye shall be as gods, may be heard in the streets and lanes. Did Christ die in vain?... Because man is inexhaustible in his wickedness, God must be inexhaustible in His redemptive love, that He will subdue such wickedness by the superabundance of His love.

Karl Adam, The Son of God

Contents

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the publishers and editors of the following sources for permission to reprint these essays: The Catholic Thing , Catholic World Report , Gilbert Magazine , Crisis Magazine , MercatorNet , Aleteia.org , The Hoya , National Review , Inside Catholic , and The University Bookman.

Introduction

Over the years, I have written a number of relatively short essays on various Church feasts. These feasts are always an occasion to ask: What is the point of the celebration? Why is it a case, not just of rejoicing, but of knowing the truth that makes real joy possible? We cannot be joyful without ultimately knowing why we should be joyful, without having something to be joyful about.

In particular, I have written (and include here) many reflections on Christmas, Easter, and the days surrounding them. Also in this text are considerations of Pentecost, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day as well as of the End Times that come up in the last Sundays of the Liturgical Year.

I have also included my 2009 essay on Msgr. Robert Hugh Bensons novel The Lord of the World , because the book now has been cited any number of times by Pope Francis. It fits in with the Gospel themes for the last days of the Liturgical Year, when we are reminded of the end of our temporal existence.

The feast of the Immaculate Conception, which is the transition to the Nativity cycle, completes the Liturgical Year. I do not talk much here of Advent, Lent, or the various other celebrations of the Lord or of the saints. Although these seasons are important, I want to focus in these pages on more central considerations.

It has always been a pleasure and an inspiration for me to say something each year on Christmas and Easter. These days are never-ending causes of insight into what we are and who God is. For that reason, you need not sit down and read this book from page 1 to its end, although there is nothing wrong in doing so. Each chapter is its own reflection. Come back to the same feast again and again: each time you will find something astonishingly new that you missed before.

These essays are not homilies or sermons, though they can be made into them. Rather, they are each intended to reveal something of the meaning and depth of the occasion that we might otherwise pass over unnoticed.

All Christian feasts have in common their particularity in time and place as well as their transcendent reaching to the truth that God has revealed to us. The second reading of each day in the Breviary, for instance, can come from any time or place in the past two thousand years and still speak to us as we read it.

Likewise, although they speak of universals, sometimes these essays reflect the time in which they were written, so I have included on the first page of each chapter the source and date of its first publication.

The reader will notice that I have my favorite authors and books. No one writes better about Christmas than Chesterton. Anyone who reads the Breviary knows that its readings contain a wealth of information and insight along with their prayerful nature.

In our day, the basic truths of Christianity are not well known. They are often rejected before their point or reasonableness is seen. Rejection of the truths of faith and reason is not always, or even mostly, due to lack of intelligence or diligence. They are rejected because people do not want them to be true, as their truth would affect the way people live. So people blind themselves to their logic and evidence. They formulate theories or ideologies that claim to be the real world, when actually they are subjective projections onto reality that do not correspond to it.