The Catholic Mind       “What Makes the Catholic Mind Unique?” is the title of an article by Fr. David Meconi, SJ, in the December 2020 issue of New Oxford Review magazine, available online.       To summarize his presentation, we might start with creation: space, time, matter. “God’s world,” Fr. Meconi says, “by its very nature, is a sacramental that lifts human minds to their Creator through the divine embeddedness of matter. For the truly Catholic mind, this world is awash with grace.”       “Embeddedness” here is something like St. Paul’s expression that God’s “eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” ( Ro 1:20 ). And yet it goes further. It means God’s incarnation. Not absorption – we are not God, the universe is not God.       Incarnation means the Second Person of the Divine Trinity assumed human flesh in Jesus Christ, which flesh has the ...

The Gospel of the Forty Days: Baptism, Part 4         In this fourth article on Christ’s command to baptize given to the Apostles during the forty days between His Resurrection and Ascension, we discuss the second effect and purpose of Christian Baptism: sonship, adoption, becoming a child of God. (The first being incorporation into Christ, discussed in the prior article.) How might Jesus have taught about this during those forty days?       Probably as St. John speaks of it: “To all who received Him, who believed in His Name, He gave power to become children of God; who were born ... of God” (Jn 1:11-12).       But how is one born of God? That was the question Nicodemus raised, and Jesus replied: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:5). “Water and the Spirit” is an obvious reference to the baptism that Jesus would institute. To the woman at...

The Gospel of the Forty Days:  The Church as the Restored Kingdom       Last week we developed the theme of the Messianic expectation of the restoration of the Kingdom of David, and asserted that in Jesus’s teaching about the “kingdom of God” during the forty days between His resurrection and ascension (Ac 1:3), He would have taught that this kingdom is now the Church. Let’s explore that a bit more.       David’s kingdom was based on covenant with God (2 Sam 7:1-29), which included God’s promise to establish an eternal kingdom with a descendant of David, and “I will be His Father, and He shall be My Son.” Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that Jesus, in the flesh, is a descendant of David (Lk 2:4-7, 3:31); and in previous articles we have discussed some of the Bible’s evidence that Jesus is, at the same time, in His Divinity, the Son of God.       Now at the Last Supper, Jesus says to the Twelve, “As My Father appoin...