Prayer over Friar Manny as he is installed into the Ministry of Acolyte: “God of Mercy, through Your Son, You entrusted the Bread of Life to Your people. Bless Emmanuel, who has been chosen for the ministry of Acolyte. Grant that he may be faithful in the service of Your altar and faithful in sharing the Bread of Life with his brothers and sisters. May he grow always in faith and love, and so build up Your Church. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen”

Friar Manny reads the Word of God, after being installed into the Ministry of Reader (Lector)

During the January 29, 2022 Livestreamed Saturday Evening Liturgy, presided over by Fr. Dennis Mason, OFM Conv. (pastor of our Toronto, ON pastoral ministry – The Franciscan Church at St. Bonaventure), Br. Emmanuel Wenke, OFM Conv. was installed into the Ministry of Reader (Lector) and the Ministry of Acolyte. Friar Manny is currently in study for the priesthood, at Regis College, University of Toronto – Toronto School of Theology. Installation into the Ministries of Reader and Acolyte are vital steps in his formation. (Can.  1035 §1. Before anyone is promoted to the permanent or transitional diaconate, he is required to have received the ministries of lector and acolyte and to have exercised them for a suitable period of time.) Following the opening prayer, Br. Tom Purcell, OFM Conv. (Friary Guardian) called forth a joy filled Friar Manny to receive the Ministry of Reader. He then proclaimed the Scriptures of the day (at right), followed by Fr. Peter Knaapen, OFM Conv. (parochial vicar) proclaiming the Gospel. Our student friar Fabian Adderley, OFM Conv. (Apostolic Year of Formation) led the faithful in the General Intercessions, followed by special vocation intentions led by Friar Dennis. During the Communion Rite, Br. Tom again called forward Friar Manny, who then received the Ministry of Acolyte (above) and ministered the Eucharist to God’s People.

“Friar Emmanuel, take this vessel for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Make your life worthy of the service you will perform at the Table of the Lord and of His Church.”

 All are encouraged to share in Friar Manny’s happiness, as you view the Liturgy, found on the parish YouTube channel:

Also available in The Shrine of St. Anthony Gift Shop, Franciscan Soy Candles feature a 3-part wood wick system, is hand poured into a 12oz Libbey Status glass jar with a lid, in a specially designed gift box.

January 21, 2022: Our Minister Provincial ~ the Very Reverend Fr. James McCurry, OFM Conv. (left) and our Province Vocation Director ~ Bro. Nick Romeo, OFM Conv. (2nd from right) joined our friars attending and serving in Campus Ministry at The Catholic University of America, and with 100+ students of CUA, along with the over 50,000 March for Life 2022 participants who marched from the Washington Monument on the National Mall to the Supreme Court, in bitter cold temperatures, in a family-friendly spirit of hope for the future of the unborn and their mothers.

At the end of the March for Life, Friar James had a grand reunion with old friends – the 25 students and chaperones from Ville de Marie Academy in Phoenix, Arizona, which he helped to found in early 1990s; and with Most Rev. James D. Conley, D.D., S.T.L and his 250 youth and chaperones from the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska.

The May 3, 2019 news item on our Province Website, “The Journey of a Relic of St. Philip the Apostle” is a reference point for a new post about the history of St. Philip the Apostle Roman Catholic Community, on their parish website. Both of these posts refer to the July 2, 2018 presentation of The Relic of St. Philip to the pastor by our own Friar Alex Cymerman, OFM Conv. (at left), with the aid of our Minister Provincial, the Very Reverend Fr. James McCurry, OFM Conv.
Friar Alex’ brother, Richard is a very active member of Cheektowaga, NY parish and the reliquary housing the relic was a gift to the parish, by the Cymerman family.

Read More

Lost Innocence and Courage in a World Changed
1 Cor 1:3-9
…grace of God enriched you with all discourse and knowledge.
Christ will keep you firm to the end ….;
Lk 1: 39-56
“the infant in my womb leaped for joy.”
Magnificat….

God’s outcomes are God’s. Courage admits lost innocence that we have different thoughts, that thinking itself has changed and what is called thinking has changed. Courage stands for the sanctity of life and to call out those who have vacuumed out the recognition that everyone knows. Religiously speaking, it is still possible to see that Christ has done something for us by becoming Incarnate and dying on the Cross and His Resurrection out of love not because of sin. Courage reclaims Christ as Savior and Redeemer. John Locke reduces Him to being an example.
Truth wins because it is truth. “We have rights because we have duties.”[1] St. John Henry Newman could not be clearer. Look deeper. On the Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of the Unborn, all who believe in the rights of the unborn, without exception, remember forward with calm, courage, hope and joyously, the sanctity of life. The remnant remembers the need in modernity for a “thick form” of reason, science and morality to rebuild what Christianity can be. Christianity’s innocence is gone. To many, Christianity has been neutralized, left to a remnant, too often with artifacts that satisfy aesthetic appeal. To be Christian is reduced to decoration.
The deeply charged issue of life was opened up long before the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1973. It rests upon us, clearly a remnant of Christianity, to carry forward the argument for the sanctity of life to be articulated with ever greater clarity because the “gift” of modernity enables us to understand life in the womb like never before. Cheerers at the gift of greater scientific recognition are met with weepers who refuse to accept what everyone knows about life and is verified by scientific truth. Opposition to belief and to reason persists. The failure is to admit what everyone knows, the unborn have a right to life. Fortunately, not only Christians believe that God is the giver of life.
The initial attractiveness of systems of thought in the formerly Christian and now secularized western world are rooted in the desire for self-affirmation. “My conscience is absolutely supreme as the norm of truth in practice.” Such a mindset tolerates God to the degree that God is like me, shares my experience, especially of suffering and passion, rejection and abandonment. Once my experience is identical with this, I too am holy, I am God, because there is no radical difference between being finite and infinite. My conscience is auto-justified. The exact opposite is the intellectual and affective humility of the contemplation of Mary, of her pondering all in her heart, her willingness to stand at the foot of the Cross. Every person in and out of the womb is incommunicable existence.
On 22 January, let’s turn to Judge Ken Starr, Religious Liberty in Crisis: Exercising Your Faith in an Age of Uncertainty.[2] His readable account of what the U. S. Constitution says about religion and religious liberty and how the U. S. Supreme Court interpreted it, what they got right and where the justices erred is a must for all who believe in life. I join Judge Starr in his courageous critique of President Biden:[3]

a stalwart defender of religious liberty for virtually his entire career,
dramatically changed his tune during the course of the 2020 campaign. …
Even though he is a practicing Catholic,
Biden vigorously attacked the Little Sisters of the Poor
for their conscience-based objection to providing
the venerable order’s employees with contraception services.

Judge Starr concludes that President Biden has reinvented himself and now looms as a potentially dangerous enemy of religious liberty.[4] However, not all is bleak to Judge Starr.

Notwithstanding the ever-growing menace of hostile secularism,
seemingly embraced in his latter years by the nation’s new 46^th president,
with Justice Amy Coney Barret’s ascension to the High Court bench,
the future of religious liberty in America
—protected in our constitutional republic by the Supreme Court of the United States—
now seems ever more secure.

Thoughts? Trust your own thinking! I recognize, as never before in my life, that our innocence is gone. Courage is needed in the face of hostile secularism. Judge Starr analyzes the judicial effect of secularism from his own personal involvement. Without saying it, Judge Starr’s Religious Liberty in Crisis recognizes the modern condition and the need for the Christian tradition in the United States to remember prior responses. History includes the sacredness of life. History attests to carrying prior responses forward as part of protecting those rights and innate appeal to take a more active role in advancing the cause of liberty. His approach is compelling in recognition that we seem cast into a stormy sea. “Stay sober and alert” (I Pet 5:8). Judge Starr’s constitutional analysis aligns with Newman’s historical-theological analysis. Both Judge Starr and St. John Henry Newman exemplify “do well what God calls you to do in the time God gives and to leave the rest to God.” Lament lost innocence but act with courage. That is cause for jubilation!
On this Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of the Unborn, 22 January 2022, I inaugurate brief reflections historical and theological, “remembering forward.” Memory[5] recalls what needs to be recalled and puts aside for another day what is not of use. However the Christian past may have been valorized, is not the lived historical response to a God of the future as well as the past. God who we trust and count on in all of our individual and communal trials is God who surprises us. Tradition, tradio, as “handing on” fortifies, recharges, and charges us to deal with what is to come with courage and hope. It surmounts the forgetting that seems the adopted code of modernity with a forgetting sanctioned by the Holy Spirit and what I have happily discovered, “remembering forward” licensed by the Holy Spirit.

Veni Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium,
et tui amoris in eis ignem accende:
qui per diversitatem linguarum cunctarum,
gentes in unitate fidei congregasti.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful
and enkindle in them the fire of Your love.
You, even in the diversity of languages,
have gathered them in the unity of the faith.

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conv. Univ. of Notre Dame, Remembering Forward.

_____________________________________________

[1] J. H. Newman, “Letter to Norfolk” (1874-1875). E. Ondrako, Freedom Within the Church: Newman and Gladstone (Syracuse University: Diss. 1994.
[2] Ken Starr, Religious Liberty in Crisis (New York: Encounter Books, 2021).
[3] Starr, 177.
[4] Starr, 177-178.
[5] C. O’Regan, “Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Beauty of Forgetting” in Church Life Journal, McGrath Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame (24 August 2020).

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
January 22, 2022

“Postulancy” is the first year of initial formation in the Order of Friars Minor – Franciscan Friars Conventual. It is a year of introduction to and immersion in the Franciscan lifestyle. For the four provinces of North America, there is one Postulancy (Chicago, IL) so that all those in this stage of formation can live in community together, for the year. There are currently eight Postulants, of which two are of our Province.

Over the Christmas Break, our Postulants – Marvin Paul Fernandez and Connor J. Ouly – took the opportunity to stop and pray in the Portiuncula Friary Chapel, at our Provincial House, while on a visiting tour of several province ministries in MD, DC, NJ, NY and PA. The grandeur of the Christmas decorations had recently been put away. Bathed in the afternoon sun, this peace filled chapel is an example of one of the simplicity of Ordinary Time‘s extraordinary moments in the life of the Church and in our “living” Franciscan Charism.

For more information on Discernment,
and the stages of Formation for Franciscan Friars Conventual,
visit Vocations – Franciscan Voice or contact our
Province Vocation Director, Br. Nick Romeo, OFM Conv.
at vocations@olaprovince.org.

Continue to keep Marvin Paul Fernandez (Canadian Delegation or our Province), Connor J. Ouly (our Province),  Colden Fell (Our Lady of Consolation Province), Israel Garcia Alderete (Our Lady of Consolation Province), Andre Miller (Our Lady of Consolation Province), Paul Utterback (St. Bonaventure Province), Eric Rewa (St. Bonaventure Province), and Jessy Cuevas (St. Joseph of Cupertino Province), in your prayers, as well as all of the student friars in formation. Please also pray for an increase in vocations, especially for our Province and our Order around the world.

St. Julia’s parish family is blessed to have about seven young adults who have participated in the lay evangelization program of the Missionary Servants of the Word.  These young adults, who are wonderfully formed and educated in holy scripture and evangelization, are truly a treasure in our community,

About three months ago, I gathered them together and advised them to support one another in their common formation and experience.  I also invited them to share the fruits of their missionary evangelization formation and experience with the parish.  These trained missionaries have responded generously and have taken up the challenge to reach out and reignite their commitment to an evangelizing ministry.

Before I knew it, I was being contacted by the director of the seminary where the religious members of the congregation study philosophy in Michuacan, Mexico.  In dialogue with our lay missionaries, I accepted the congregation’s willingness to send two seminarians to minister at St. Julia for 15 days.  Apparently this is a vital element of their formation program that keeps alive the initial call and strengthens the charism of their congregation.  The generosity of our people made it all happen.

Luis and Jonathan, both second year philosophy students, arrived on Dec. 18^th.  With both being bilingual, the entire parish community was able to enjoy the gifts of their congregation’s spirituality and mission that they shared with us.  They both had participated in the congregation’s lay missionary program, like our own young parishoners had, that led to their discernment of a priesthood vocation.  In the short time they were with us, they visited many families, looked in on the sick and home-bound, brought comfort to many through the sharing of the Word, preached at Mass (or should I say: “shared a reflection”), conducted workshops for married couples, and conducted discussion and prayer sessions with our teenagers and young adults.  We are now reaping the fruits of their ministry among us.

These young men were sent to us totally dependent on Divine Providence.  They go to their missions with this spirit of total trust in God as demonstrated through the generosity of the people of God.  At St. Julia, one family welcomed them into their home where they lived during those 15 days.  Another family lent them a car for their use.  Family after family invited them to their homes for breakfast, lunch and supper.  Families also pitched in to supply them with the funds to pay for gas for the car and whatever needs they had.  The parish also rented them a phone and gave them a financial gift at that was well deserved.

I was highly impressed by Luis and Jonathan’s maturity and genuine commitment to their vocation and ministry.  Their humility and dedication were living sermons.  Their work ethics is strong and exemplary and they were untiring in their ministry.  The sense of peace and joy with which they went about everything was contagious.

Will I miss them?  I already do.  Their presence was the spark that our own missionaries needed to reignite their vocation and ministry.  Now, it’s our turn to get going on this ever-ancient-ever-new thing!

Peace, Friar Julio

The “Fullness of Grace” in Christ and the “Fullness of Grace” in Mary

Num 6:22-27; Gal 4:4-7; Lk 2:16-21.

Hail Mary “full of grace” the Lord is with Thee, blessed art Thou among Women and blessed is the Fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now ….

Does Mary’s fullness of grace co-exist alongside that of Christ’s fullness of grace? Bl. John Duns Scotus answers: equal “fullness of grace” alongside of Christ is impossible. God has absolute power and can grant as much grace as was granted to Christ to any nature, to Mary. God cannot do this by his ordinary power[1] because there cannot be more than one Head in the Church, from whom every grace would flow into her members.[2] The Head of the Church is Christ and we are His Body.

Christ and Mary have the “fullness of grace” on different levels. Christ’s fullness is absolute. Mary’s fullness is relative. His is natural. Hers is participated. The origin of the fullness of grace in Christ is immediately from God. The fullness of grace in Mary is immediately from Christ. To Duns Scotus, Christ presents himself to us as the absolute, natural Mediator; Mary is a relative, moral Mediatrix. We can never say enough about Mary, nor, even minimally, compromise Christ’s natural fullness of grace. By exalting the dignity of the Mother of God, all the more we exalt the dignity of the Son.

Duns Scotus overcomes difficulties in answering the total transmission of Christ’s grace into Mary.[3]  God’s absolute power and ordinary power is a tool in our tool box. Advent and Christmas bathe us in Art, Icons, Sacred Music, Literature AND Religion which provide lift for understanding the mystery of God’s counsels and lift to our hearts. An unending narrative of love and devotion to the Incarnation and to the Virgin Mary imbues the Eastern and Western Churches.

Listen to a revered Russian Orthodox theologian, Sergei Bulgakov (d. 1944): “It goes without saying, that even if we (the Russian Orthodox Church) do not accept the Catholic dogma of the “immaculate” conception, we must confess that the Mother of God is entirely full of grace.”[4] Faithful Catholics seek spiritual union with the Virgin Mary, a loving relationship with her who is “full of grace.”

Little known is that Maximilian Kolbe was excavating theological insight from the Russian Orthodox. Kolbe learned from Russian usage of “transubstantiation” as the union or communion of created persons with Mary Immaculate and through her with the Holy Spirit. No other theologian in the West has done this. In the West, “transubstantiation” touches on the Eucharist and Real Presence, to define how the essence of bread and wine is changed entirely into the Body and Blood of Christ.

In Eastern Rite theology, mainly in Russian theology, “transubstantiation” refers to the relations of persons to each other and to the Holy Spirit. Timing is right as the secular invasion is mounting. The novelist Dostoyevsky (d.1881) creates figures who mirror the deformation of modernity which he thought was caused by reason, the pathology or sin. Dostoyevsky became a counter to the Revolution of 1917 prior to the fact. Dostoyevsky (d.1881) stunned the literary world with portraits of radical alienation and deep questioning of Russia. Where is it? Where is it going? Is Christianity the solution or the problem?

Dostoyevsky’s questions apply equally to the Catholic world. His novels deal with massive human failure, massive human sin. If one considers Augustine on sin “very dark,” consider Dostoyevsky doubles how dark because of becoming demonic. Dostoyevsky draws out the contrast of light or becoming saintly.

During WW I, Kolbe was a student in Rome, a reader of Russian thinkers, co-founder of the Militia of Mary Immaculate. As a priest he innovated use of the media, taught the theology of the Franciscan School, corrected his confreres if they bore even a hint of anti-Judaism, and became “martyr of charity” in Auschwitz. Kolbe founded a City of the Immaculate in Poland, then in Japan. Who knew the hope he would be graced to bring to prisoners in man-made death camps? After 1941, his Marian metaphysics would be left for others to explain and to develop[5] as Peter D. Fehlner.

At the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th centuries, Russian Orthodox theology was engaging the cultural changes and flowering. What could be heard after the Revolution of 1917, in Chesterton’s phrase, was an audible hiss of Satan. In 1923, Bulgakov fled Russia by the skin of his teeth and established a theology center in Paris where he died in 1944. Catholic theology, effectively put on hold by external and internal historical reasons after Vatican I, burst forth as the event of events under the leadership of Pope John XXIII and Paul VI at Vatican II to reform and renew the whole Church. Kolbe was beatified in 1971 and canonized in 1982. The cause of the Immaculate remains at the heart of the Franciscan counterthrust to the secular invasion.

The Solemnity of Holy Mary Mother of God draws us to reflect on complex doctrines that have developed about Mary’s spiritual Maternity and divine Maternity. Centuries of practices and devotion to the Mother of God included the love, devotion, and hymns from my Slovak ancestors (parish, school, neighborhood). At 14, with no little trepidation, I began to walk in the footsteps of Christ as a Franciscan. Little did I know Mary’s spiritual Maternity and divine Maternity as experienced by Francis of Assisi and how this became a bulwark reaching the secular invasion today. I realized more what Fr. Fehlner would say: Our Lady chose the Franciscan Order to unravel the theological development that led to the solemn definition of the Immaculate Conception in 1854.

As Dostoyevsky did with novels, Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., did with poetry. He discovered the thought of Bl. John Duns Scotus, theology that expresses what God can do (potuit), what is fitting (decuit), and what God does (fecit). The literature of Dostoyevsky and Hopkins connect with a nostalgia for the loss of Christianity, its mourning, even as they do not substitute their work for religion.[6] Hopkins offers a “hurrah moment” with Scotistic inflections in his poetry: “She mothers each new grace that does now reach our race—Mary Immaculate, merely a woman, yet whose presence, power is great as no goddess’s ….”[7]

Remember this New Year: Christianity is a mix of treasure and human frailty, saints and sinners. Let us dare to hope! With Duns Scotus let us “attribute to Mary what seems most excellent, provided that it does not oppose the authority of the Church, nor that of Scripture.” This principle is favorable to resolution of any questions about her as the “fullness of grace” from the East and the West.

[1 Jan Mother of God, Golden Jubilee / Priesthood Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, O.F.M.Conv. eondrako@alumni.nd.edu]

__________________

[1] See E. Ondrako, Rebuild My Church (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing LLC, 2021), 33.
[2] Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, III, d. 13, q. 4, n.8 (Vivès 14, 461b).
[3] R. Rosini, Mariology of Bl. John Duns Scotus, trans. P.D. Fehlner (New Bedford, MA: 2008), 61-62.
[4] S. Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, trans. B Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co, 2002), 411, n. 23.
[5] P. D. Fehlner, O.F.M.Conv. critically evaluates the theology of Kolbe. His definitive study is Theologian of Auschwitz (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing, LLC, 2020). Studies of Kolbe’s thought continue to grow, especially from Conventual Franciscan Friars. A caveat: not all who claim a Kolbean adherence are as learned as Kolbe.
[6] C. O’Regan’s triple diagnostic of religion and literature is: retrievalist – loss and longing; antithetical – constructing religion as “once upon a time” ~ finding a substitution; parasitic – critical of Christianity but not totally dismissive.
[7] Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe.”

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
December 26, 2021

“Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety” Lk 2: 48b

Sir 3: 2-6, 12-14; Col 3:12-21; Lk 2: 41-52.

Today’s Gospel unfolds many truths. What does Mary’s parental anxiety mean? Your father and I have been looking for you. What does Jesus’ reply mean? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?  Mary and Joseph did not understand Jesus. He went down with them to Nazareth and was obedient to them. The event is pulled together with: “Mary treasured all these things in her heart.” What does it mean for Mary to treasure all? What does Mary teach by treasuring? What is in her heart?

Think of the event. “Your father and I have been looking for you.” Think of Joseph and this marriage? Is it a marriage? Were Mary and Joseph married before the message of the Angel? Scripture says: the Angel Gabriel was sent to a virgin Mary engaged to Joseph. “Hail full of grace… the Lord is with you.” Much perplexed, she pondered the greeting. “Do not be afraid Mary… you will conceive in your womb, bear a Son and name him Jesus… The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you… The child to be born will be called Son of God” (Lk 1: 26-35).

Ponder the Apostles Creed: Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. Ponder the Nicene Creed: “…For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.” Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est. The Gospel and Creeds[1] invite us to “ponder” with Mary.[2] To ponder is to receive with Mary, to dwell upon the message of the Angel Gabriel, the account of the Shepherds at Bethlehem, the question: “Why? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” To ponder with Mary is to assent, to develop, to reason upon, then to believe from love and reverence. St. John Henry Newman states: reasoning first, and after, believing.[3] To ponder with Mary after the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem tugs at our hearts: “Your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” “Why? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Imagine Mary’s thoughts.

To ponder in her heart raises more questions. What is Joseph’s position in this marriage? Sirach sets the stage: “The Lord honors a father above his children, and he confirms a mother’s right over her children. Those who honor their father atone for sins, and those who respect their mother are like those who lay up treasure.” Sirach does not answer the question of Joseph’s position in this marriage.

Mary made a vow of virginity. Was Mary able to contract matrimony without compromising her vow of virginity? Did Mary and Joseph contract matrimony before the message of the Angel Gabriel? Bl. John Duns Scotus answers. The absolute vow of virginity of Mary precedes the Annunciation and the Annunciation precedes matrimony with Joseph. Mary was enlightened by God regarding the entire mystery of the Incarnation! The special command from God was to contract marriage with Joseph to safeguard the dignity of the mother and Child. Mary was able to consent to marriage without including, even implicitly, the intention to consummate it. As guardian and witness to Mary’s Virginity by the Holy Spirit, Joseph is bound also with the same vow.[4] The vow of virginity does not take away from the marriage of Mary and Joseph as a true marriage. Their sanctity sanctifies the bond.

By calling Joseph, “your father,” Mary indicates that Joseph is far more than a custodian. Joseph is co-proprietor with Mary of the “Fruit” which matured in her womb. Mary shows that both are co-responsible for Jesus. Joseph acquired full dominion over the body of his Spouse and she over his body. He too gave his perfect consent to the procreation of children and to assume the responsibilities of marriage. Joseph has rights over Jesus and duties towards him from the matrimony itself. The final end of marriage is reserved to God insofar as the conception goes. The proprietary, responsibility, custody, etc., belongs to Joseph. Joseph’s marriage to Mary compared with other marriages is part of the plan of God. Duns Scotus helps us to understand that in this marriage it is certain that the use of marriage according to the marriage contract will not be asked for.[5] Mary did not retain in her power even the use because it is certain that use is reserved to the Holy Spirit.[6]

Ponder the “Fruit” of her womb. Joseph has a proprietary dominion over Mary, and to Another, is given the use of marriage. The Holy Spirit is the Other—who has been given the use by the will of God. The fruit of Joseph’s proprietary dominion is also the Holy Spirit’s “Fruit.” [The fruit of any possession reverts to the owner.] Joseph is the proprietor of the “Treasure.” Joseph became the proprietor of the “Field” where the Treasure was hidden. This proprietorship holds even if the treasure was hidden in that “Field” by Another, i.e., the Holy Spirit.[7] As such, Joseph is co-proprietor of this “Fruit” of her womb.

To Duns Scotus,[8] the marriage of Joseph and Mary is a true marriage with a distinction between the dominion and use of matrimony. Those who receive the sacrament of matrimony know that by natural law, marriage includes the finality of marriage, i.e., the procreation and education of children, the goal and means, consummation of the marriage. Marriage indissolubility is created by the contract.  The mutual consent of two wills, the reciprocal gift of their bodies, creates a matrimonial bond which is indissoluble. Sadly, if conditions are placed on the vow as only temporary, or physical union according to my pleasure alone, or impeding procreation, the marriage is null and void.

How well are matrimony and the family understood? The Church knows post-Christian culture and offers compassion with hope by an annulment. May the Feast of the Holy Family reveal its “secret:” Christian families long to be a holy family! The truth is: the parents need to be united indissolubly, or children cannot be educated, protected and nourished properly. As the anxiety of Mary and Joseph over the boy Jesus was lifted, may the anxieties in our lives find a lift. May we “treasure all in our hearts!”

In Celebration of My Golden Jubilee Year of Priesthood, Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, O.F.M.Conv. eondrako@alumni.nd.edu

___________________________________

[1] John Duns Scotus’ critique about the Franciscan tradition in theology and Catholic theology, in general, is that both give a large place in theory and practice to the mystery of the Church as body of Christ and participation in fellowship with divine Persons. Duns Scotus recognizes this as containing truth, but imprecise, misleading, and dangerously attractive. See Duns Scotus, Prologue to the Ordinatio, III, qq. 1-3, n. 174), ”…the adequate object (integral subject or ‘center’) of theology is not Christ, but something common (univocal) to the Word, about whom articles (of the Creed) primarily pertain, and to the Father and Holy Spirit, with whom the remaining theological truths deal.” P.D. Fehlner, “Neo-Patripassionism from a Scotistic Viewpoint” (2006), 38-39.
[2] Duns Scotus, the subtle or Marian doctor who ponders deeply with Mary, revises a less than precise formulation of a metaphorical description of theology as a whole with a center, a mathematical metaphor, that is employed to illustrate metaphysical truths. This has everything to do with the Catholic definition of matrimony.
[3] J. H. Newman, “The Theory of the Development of Doctrine,” Sermon 15, February 2, 1843, University Sermons.
[4] Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, IV, d. 30, q. 2, n. 5 (Vivès 19, 279a). This reassurance is before Mary promised to Joseph.
[5] Duns Scotus replies to the Fathers who celebrate marriage according to the common law, when there is no certainty that the use of the marriage act will follow on the contract (Ordinatio, IV, d. 30, q. 2, n. 7 (Vivès 19, 279a).
[6] Ordinatio, IV, d. 28, q. un., n. 8 (Vivès 24, 378b).
[7] R. Rosini, Mariology of John Duns Scotus, tr. P.D.Fehlner (New Bedford, MA: Academy of the Imm., 2008), 111-3.
[8] Duns Scotus is distinguishing metaphysics from our natural experience that requires metaphysical guidance.  Our metaphysics studies the light that is trans-experiential and perfected as it merges with charity.

Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
December 26, 2021