Jews, Greeks and Romans - The Feast of the Epiphany -The Heart, Head and Hands of Man

I fail to follow the Star over Bethlehem. I fail every time I fall prey to my personal monsters - arrogance, anxiety and anger. It seems that I have had a lifetime Triple A membership. This morning's Mass of the Feast of the Epiphany was another whack to the back of my ten cent head.

The Epiphany was once almost as important in Christian devotions as the Birth of Christ. According to the Gospel of St. Matthew, Magi witnessed the rise of new star signalling the birth of a Redeemer of Man in Bethlehem of Judea. These wise men or astrologers, or kings followed the star with unquestioning devotion - taking the long journeys from their homelands. Traditionally the Magi represent all the people of earth - Asian, African and Caucasian.

A wise man with whom I have the honor of knowing, Max Weismann -Director of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas - is dedicated to the study of how man can lead a happy life. The Greeks called happiness Eudaimonia (evðaimoˈnia pronounced FEW-Day Monia). Roughly translated the word is a composite for "Spirit of Well Being." Aristotle wrote in the Nicomachean Ethics that leading a happy life is not merely the pursuit of pleasure but in 'living well' - according to arete - or virtue. Doing anything well requires virtue or a tough minded application of our skills and abilities to make something useful and beautiful. It takes concentration and tireless effort to become an athlete, an artist, or a parent. Nothing springs from the head of Jove.

The Greeks it seems to me are the Head of Mankind - the Intellect.

The Jews are the Heart and Soul of Man. It was the Jews who recognized that the power of God lies not in might but in forgiveness, charity and humility.

The Romans made use of everything and everyone that they conquered and offered systematic application of all that was good, lasting and worthwhile. The Romans are the Hands of Man - the great manipulators and architects of Faith, State, and Taste.

Together, civilization offers us a means by which to follow the Star of Faith with Head, Heart and Hands. One or two is not enough. The Epiphany brings three wise men together in an act of recognition, humility and fortitude. They recognized the right path, allowed the Star to guide them without questioning its place in the heavens, and ventured into a journey fraught with perils and uncertainty.

The Epiphany has come to mean an awareness of something that was once hidden. The Star of Faith is not hidden - it is merely clouded by my submission to arrogance, anxiety and anger.

I pray that God helps me allow my membership in Triple A to lapse - permanently.

Woman -Why Boys Never Understand and Girls Can Not Be

The Bible ( Old and New Testaments), the Word of God that we Christians and Jews pay lip-service to, tells these truths wrapped in mystery -

WEAKNESS IS THE PATH TO STRENGTH

SACRIFICE IS THE PATH TO GAINING

GIVING IS THE ONLY WAY TO HAVE

DOING BAD TO DO GOOD IS FORBIDDEN

SURRENDER IS THE ONLY MEANS OF VICTORY


These are headscratchers, Bretheran and Sisteran, to be sure. Yesterday, I received this comment on my tease about President Obama playing at being Italian by flashing the Corna - The Horn sign with the hand.

wow you have alot of time on your hands! how bout helping me with something ? i need help! i read your blog about how mothers are the Divine plan...i truly believe this with all my heart. that is why I've always wanted to be a full time mom. i was. for more than 15 years. the courts awarded my x with sole custody with my three children because he has higher education and the finances. i was thrown away and my children just started today at st caj. i was only informed 24 hours ago. the courts in the city are selling our children please help us

I do have time on my hands, thanks be to God, from 4Am to just before 6AM when I pound the keys to practice my writing. More so I have had time to think about the sadness of the note. I know nothing of the situation other than the words above.

I can only imagine the sense of loss, because I have lost my wife to brain cancer. My three children have been without a mother since January 17, 1998. A great woman went home to Christ.

It took me years of courtship, remonstrances and litanies of 'What, are you just Stupid? Yeah, going to Prairie Tavern is a great way to get ready for that job interview tomorrow morning. You are going to iron your shirt and go the bed before 10, Bub! Go read and think great thoughts . . .Move it!' Got the job.

However, witnessing the power, courage, tenacity, and superhuman love from a woman in three very difficult childbirths grew some whiskers on this Boy Male.

To learn that I was in the company of a woman and not a girl was a Blessing from God. We boys, if we are to become men, must learn that the center-folds in Playboy are air-brushed conceits - two-dimensional images. Women are flesh and blood embodiments of God's Divine Plan, without whom males would wallow in filth and end up eating one another.

Women are the most powerful force for good, because they constantly renew humanity. They pick us husbands up off of the sidewalk, more than their little boys who fall off the Schwins when Mother let's go of the guiding fender. Women are our training wheels.

They nurture our better selves and introduce us to better interests, foods, habiliments and inclinations.

Boys believe in fairy princesses, as much as little girls, who will wave magic wands and make the dishes disappear from the sink, clean the toilet-in, out, and behind, make groceries appear out of nowhere, and provide a balance in the checking account at the end of the two week pay cycle, bathe the kids, check homework, call the appliance man, cut the grass and make love to them, while they play fantasy football and blow off steam at the local gin-mill.

Women spark the creative will in males to be better than they were the day before and salve the self-loathing impulse when we fail miserably to overcome our inclination for grandiose and usually very public self-pity.

Girls believe that being a two-dimensional image is the path to happiness. Happiness is hard work. Boys and Girls hate hard work, shoot they hate easy work. Spending, acquiring and ingesting are no paths to happiness.

Boys and Girls make one another wildly unhappy.

Men and Women are happy because they mutually sweat and labor until each task is complete - love making, bill paying, and child rearing.

I prayed that the poor woman who wrote the note works her way to happiness, last night and this morning; more so, I prayed that I can avoid being a boy.

Here are two Catholic Prayers - One for Couples, which is pretty safe and dull

Married Couples: Gracious God, you joined couples together in the Sacrament of Matrimony. Your Son, Jesus sanctified the married state by his miracle at Cana. Bless with your loving grace the married couples of this parish that they may see you in each other, raise their children to love and serve you, and in the fullness of time live forever with you in the joys of eternal life. AMEN.

One for the Divorced, which is more compelling and powerful . . .and needs to be so.

Separated and Divorced: Gracious God, for some among us, dreams and hopes have died. Marriages have ended. Promises and hearts have been broken. Heal those broken hearts, we pray. Help those persons whose marriages have failed to know that the one never failing love can be found in you. When they feel lonely, make them aware of your Spirit. When they feel guilty, help them to know your forgiveness. When there is anger, send them your peace. We pray for these gifts in the name of your Son, Jesus. AMEN

Happiness is not easy, but it is possible. Pray, it can't hurt.

Sarah Palin is a Happy Person and that makes Goofs Crazy - Governor, Stay Happy -Only Suckers Beef.

Sarah Palin must be the biggest threat to the corporate Progressive Machine, as the news cycle and the later-Goebbels on MSNBC, CNN and on the Big ( ABC, CBS, NBC) networks have worked this woman and her family over like they were characters out of Aeschylus*.

You are only as big as the enemies you have and Sarah Palin must be enormous.

Palin's Old Man, the kids, and even the grand kids are targeted by sad people like Letterman, Olbermann, Maddow, Schultz, Matthews, Schuster, Brown, and Maher -insignificant and self-absorbed people one and all.

These sad human beings, who make a great deal of money and have the attention of many not very bright people, detest Sarah Palin, not because she is Pro Life/Pro Gun/Pro Family/ Pro Free Enterprise, Republican, or pretty, or wildly popular. They detest Sarah Palin, because the woman is happy.

Not DL Hughley/Joy Behar/Kanye West/Alec Baldwin/Bill Maher or Katie Couric happy, but fulfilled, meaningful, centered and significant - happy.

When the Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was on his death-bed he told his mother that he was never happier.

The Irish are generally a pretty happy people - I remember going to the wake of Man from County Clare; I asked 'what did he die of?' His young widow replied, 'Nothing serious.'

Happy people make other people happy, by giving us direction. Only suckers beef.

That dictum came from a wise bartender who refused to hear the drunken bile coming from louts who 'vented' about what bitches their wives were, or how disappointing their kids turned out.

Governor Palin, stay happy.

Mortimer Adler's lesson on Happiness Eudaimonia,a contented state of being happy and healthy and prosperous, as opposed to giddy, silly, aimless and vacuous, tells us that:

These matters, of relevance to the theory of happiness, are discussed in the chapters on ETERNITY and IMMORTALITY; and in the chapter on SIN we find another religious dogma, that of original sin, which has an obvious bearing on earthly happiness as well as on eternal salvation. Fallen human nature, according to Christian teaching, is incompetent to achieve even the natural end of imperfect temporal happiness without God's help. Milton expounds this doctrine of indispensable grace in Paradise Lost, in words which God the Father addresses to His Son:
Man shall not quite be lost, but sav'd who will,
Yet not of will in him, but grace in me
Freely voutsaft; once more I will renew
His lapsed powers, though forfeit and enthralled
By sin to foul exorbitant desires;
Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand
On even ground against his mortal foe,
By me upheld, that he may know how frail
His fall'n condition is, and to me owe
All his deliv'rance, and to none but me.

God's grace is needed for men to lead a good life on earth as well as for eternal blessedness. On earth, man's efforts to be virtuous require the reinforcement of supernatural gifts - faith, hope, and charity, and the infused moral virtues. The beatific vision in Heaven totally exceeds the natural powers of the soul and comes with the gift of added supernatural light. It seems, in short, that there is no purely natural happiness according to the strict tenets of Christian doctrine.

Aquinas employs the conception of eternal beatitude not only to measure the imperfection of earthly life, but also to insist that temporal happiness is happiness at all only to the extent that it is a remote participation of true and perfect happiness. It cannot be said of temporal happiness that it "excludes every evil and fulfills every desire. In this life every evil cannot be excluded - For this present life is subject to many unavoidable evils: to ignorance on the part of the intellect; to inordinate affection on the part of the appetite-; and to many penalties on the part of the body ... . Likewise," Aquinas continues, "neither can the desire for good be satiated in this life. For man naturally desires the good which he has to be abiding . Now the goods of the present life pass away since life itself passes away ... . Wherefore it is impossible to have true happiness in this life."

If perfect happiness consists in "the vision of the Divine Essence, which men cannot obtain in this life," then, according to Aquinas, only the earthly life which somehow partakes of God has a measure of happiness in it. Earthly happiness, imperfect because of its temporal and bodily conditions, consists in a life devoted to God - a kind of inchoate participation here and now of the beatific vision hereafter. On earth there can be only a beginning "in respect of that operation whereby man is united to God. ... In the present life, in as far as we fall short of the unity and continuity of that operation, so do we fall short of perfect happiness. Nevertheless it is a participation of happiness; and so much the greater, as the operation can be more continuous and more one. Consequently the active life which is busy with many things, has less of happiness than the contemplative life, which is busied with one thing, i.e., the contemplation of truth."

When the theologians consider the modes of life on earth in terms of the fundamental distinction between the secular and the religious, or the active and the contemplative, they seem to admit the possibility of imperfect happiness in either mode. In either, a devout Christian dedicates every act to the glory of God, and through such dedication embraces the divine in the passing moments of his earthly pilgrimage.

Sarah Palin, like most happy people, suffers outrageous set-backs, endures insults, personal tragedies, stumbles and falls, but remains happy because she is centered and other directed.

That drives sad, but very successful people, crazy.

The crazy is on 24/7 on cable television.

Click my post title for one of my favorite sites belonging to a very smart Obama supporter.