The Six Days: Old and New

In St. Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 9, verses 16 and 17, Our Divine Lord is answering the Pharisees, who had rebuked the disciples for not observing certain fasts. "And nobody putteth a piece of raw cloth into an old garment. For it taketh away the fullness thereof from the garment, and then is made a greater rent. Neither do they put new wine into old bottles, otherwise the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish. But new wine they put into new bottles: and both are preserved."

But when we come to Chapter 13, we find a series of parables about the Kingdom of Heaven and the End of the World, when the Angels go out to "separate" the wicked from among the just. And shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Have ye understood all these things? They said to Him: Yes. He said unto them: Therefore, every scribe, instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven, is like to a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure - new things and old. (Matt. 13:49-51.)

Are we justified in seeing these latter "new things and old", as comparable to the new cloth patched onto an old garment and the new wine put in old bottles of Chapter 9? I submit that the metaphors in Chapter 9, in the way they are presented with no reference to the absent householder's Treasury, will describe what the modernists tried to do with their reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Just one or two examples must suffice for my present purposes:

New patches from the Jewish rituals were inserted in the Offertory Prayers of the Tridentine Mass, effectively destroying thereby, both new and old. For a long time, also, the substitution of pro omnia for pro multis - has threatened the very validity of the form for the consecration. Similarly, the removal of the Mysterium fidei - outside the form is offensive to Tradition-minded priests and people, not to mention the conversion of these words into some kind of antiphonal exchange between priest and people. This new "patch" on the old garment persists to rend and tear the sacred fabric. When Pius the XII restored the Easter Vigil, why did he not insist on restoring all twelve of the traditional prophecies, for never was their literal, historical meaning so needed as it is today! In sum, the "restored" liturgy is an old garment - even currently being continually torn by the new patches added, as in the obnoxious "Prayers of the Faithful" - as if the collects as prayers of Holy Mother Church Herself, were not sufficient! Since when were we lay people equal in holiness to the Holy Spirit, Who inspires and guides the liturgical forms of Her Worship?

However, I am certain that the time will come when God and Our Lady will raise up men who will bring forth new things and old from the Treasury of the Church which is always present in Her Tradition, even whilst it may be hidden and seem to be lost forever. Not so this Deposit of Faith. The enemy of souls would like it to be so. But he is already defeated. And the Treasure remains, though hidden, even under the Rock that is St. Peter. Such are the old things that never change because of their Substantial Form. But then, too, there are the new actualizations of accidental forms always present in potentia, even while limited by the Form. This great potential source is, I submit, the Prime Matter of the Scholastics, but now seen more clearly as the Material Cause of the Body of the Universe.

Take, for example, the First Law of Thermodynamics. The standard model admits that matter/energy is neither created nor destroyed. This must mean that the amount or quantity of matter/energy was fixed for all time when it was first created, that is on Day One of Creation Week. But St. Thomas was fully aware of this First Law. He said: "All the creatures of God in some respects, continue forever, at least as to matter, since what is created will never be annihilated, even though it be corruptible...." (ST, I, q.65, a1, ad 1.) St. Thomas goes on to admit the substantial changes in the four ancient elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, which he and all the Medievals, following Aristotle, considered to be Substantial Forms.

 

However, if we follow clues given by Blessed Hildegaard of Bingen, as interpreted by Dr. Robert Sungenis in his second volume of Galileo Was Wrong..., we can, and, I believe, without doing violence to the medieval, Aristotelian view, reduce the four elements to their atomic constituents, and seeing them as one, we also see them as accidental formalities of some much larger and truly Substantial Form in which they all inhere. This great material substance is the Body of the Universe, the first of all Substantial Forms created by God on Day One of the First Week of the World. It is also, the first of all Secondary Causes - because by the created agency of its Form, it produces, under God's Primary Efficiency, all the Substantial Forms of the plant and animal kingdoms - even as to man's body - though not his soul, which must of necessity, be directly created by God, since it is rational - immortal and spiritual.
 

Thus, accommodating the four ancient Elements to the established reality of the atomic structure of matter/energy, we have brought forth both old and new things from the Treasure of our intellectual inheritance - which is an integrally necessary part of the Deposit of Faith. It is necessary, because Grace builds upon nature - even as Faith presupposes Reason and perfects it. Today we suffer under a very incomplete and severely distorted view of Reality. And this is due, I would say, entirely to the Heresy of evolutionary Modernism - as described and condemned by Pope St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili (1907). No one has yet had the courage - or the enlightened vision, to see that the Second Vatican Council was completely motivated, and thus permeated, by the so-called evolutionary "law" of change or go extinct! But the Fathers of Vatican Two had obviously lost the divine Catholic Faith that tells us infallibly that the Church founded by Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ can never go extinct, nor ever be destroyed or overcome by the forces of Hell. Like her Master, she may well be crucified, put to death and buried for a time - but it is certain that She - like Him and with Him, will rise again......
 

To be continued....