https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/ar...ilities-the-burning-love-of-the-sacred-heart/ I was very surprised at this article on Pope Francis’s last encyclical. Particularly interesting to me were his thoughts on Jansenism and Gnosticism. It’s sad that we didn’t hear more of this from Pope Francis. Or was it a change of course near the end?
I actually read some of that encyclical the other day and it astounded me. Only it is very long I would have printed it out. The section on St Therese of Lisieux is inspiring and revelatory. I was taken by surprise how good it was.
It is a reminder not to let our hearts to become cold like the securalists of the modern world but to keep the flame of love alive in our souls 'by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another'. And there is an inner Jansenist in all of us that we must guard against. Indeed, I saw some online 'Catholic' opposition to the Divine Mercy devotions that shocked me, because of its vehemence & because I personally trust wholeheatedly in His Mercy for it is only by his mercy we are saved. 'Everything is a grace, everything is the direct effect of our Father's love' St Therese
Yes. Everything is grace and mercy. "All things work toward good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose." To paraphrase Fr Dan Reehil " for those who love God there are no good or bad days. There are only days of grace." I saw those on line tear downs of Divine Mercy. I too thought of jansenism. It had a real foothold in the Church at on time. Its the Catholic version of Calvinism. Horrifying to think of aynyone driving people away from the Divine Mercy devotions.
We need to remember that the Trinity consists of three Persons. Ultimate Being is personal. There was a bit of Deism (something that was rife at the time) about the Jansenists. They thought of God as being very remote and distant and different…but He became a man! This Person that was Jesus Christ lived, grew, ate and drank, loved and died among us and for us. And St Thomas would have felt His Sacred Heart. Maybe, such devotions are a bit rustic for certain delicate sensibilities, which could be why they are more popular among simpler people. But, it’s a bit arrogant to accuse them of ‘superstition’, when our Faith has the Supernatural and the miracles as central planks of Its beliefs. Paradoxically, it’s this Gnostic disdain for the earthy and concrete, and its Cartesian preference for the purely spiritual which eventually led to the dismissal of the supernatural altogether and the embrace of atheistic materialism. Those who understand, like the little children, that our God is one of Time and Space are the ones who are preserving the Faith. He’s not merely a God, but a Son of Man that we can have a relationship with, however tenuous on our part, and He’s directed us to His and our Personal Father and has directed Their Personal Holy Spirit to us likewise. Pope Francis always emphasised his dislike of Pelagianism, one of his few consistencies during his pontificate, and this line of heretical thinking seemed to feature in Jansenism, in their discouragement of receiving the Eucharist, and their requirements of perfection in order to be worthy. That can easily lead one to think that one can be good enough by one’s own efforts. It’s only a short step from that to a kind of Calvinist elitism in which it is assumed that only a tiny privileged few are saved and the logical conclusion that God created most of us for damnation, much like those turtle species of which thousands must perish so that one or two might survive to adulthood. It seems likely that our present universalist tendencies are rooted in reaction to these heretical ideas, leaving us to fall between two false stools. We need to know the Sacred Heart and His Divine Mercy (a quality that confirms, by its necessity, the Fearfulness of His Justice). Those who scorn the Divine Mercy will need the Grace of it just as much as anyone else.
Protestants are like the new gnostics. https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/protestants-as-the-new-gnostics
St John Henry Newman said all heresies were there from the beginning and just reappear through history in new costumes. Makes sense.
