The Liberal Arts, the Holy Eucharist, and the Significance of a Catholic Education
Over the last several decades, the West has undergone a disastrous revision in its popular education. This involved a near-total abandonment of the humanities—tragic, but hardly the only issue with the current quandary that is modern education. It almost goes without saying that a Catholic, liberal arts education is both rare and profoundly counter-cultural. Regardless, it can be difficult amidst our 21st-century wasteland to discern its importance, and even its necessity. What is the point in studying philosophy and literature? What do the liberal arts have to do with the hard sciences, or the professional schools? Why should a student be concerned with such classes amidst the busyness of requisite coursework, and the need to get internships or work experience? The answers lie in the teleology and tradition of the liberal arts, as well as the mission of the institution where you find yourself studying. Welcome to your education. Welcome to your Catholic education.
Like all meaningful concepts in life, the liberal arts are teleological—end-oriented, directed towards a specific goal. We find that end in the term's etymology: "liberal," coming from Latin, means "free." "Art" implies the product of a craft; bringing together these two terms, we see that the liberal arts are to produce freedom. They result in freedom. This may seem an odd claim: often, working through assigned reading, preparing for an exam, or perfecting an essay feel the opposite of freeing. Our answer comes from Christ's words in John 8:31-32: "If you continue in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed. And you will know the truth: and the truth will make you free." The truth will make you free. The liberal arts are freeing because they introduce you to the truth that forms the ground of freedom.
Now to the specifics. Tradition reveals what disciplines comprise the liberal arts (I hardly need to note that, being Catholics, and Catholics interested in true education, we are fans of tradition). The liberal arts include the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). In very abbreviated explanations, grammar teaches how to correctly form a sentence such that the words effectively communicate the intended meaning. Logic teaches how to put sentences together to reach a correct, reliable conclusion. Last in the trivium, rhetoric teaches the effective oral or written communication of those conclusions, usually to a specific purpose. The quadrivium begins with arithmetic—counting and calculation. Geometry is arithmetic in two-dimensional space: lines, planes, angles, and shapes. Astronomy is arithmetic in three-dimensional space, the motions and relationships of planetary bodies. While geometry and astronomy deal with number in space, music is number in time. Pitches, intervals, harmonies, and rhythms are all rooted in number, related by a handful of basic proportions, and when we play or listen to music, we are experiencing those numerical relationships unfold over time.
While these seven may seem like a jumble of subjects, they are anything but. The trivium is concerned with the word, with language, and the quadrivium is concerned with number. Words and numbers are the two most fundamental tools in comprehending reality, forming the basis for further exploration and creativity. The liberally educated person is, then, a true universalist, able to engage nearly any question or topic, because he or she has first encountered what is foundational. The student can think well, speak well, and write well, with competency as well as intellectual virtue, which is nothing but the habitual excellence of the intellect (honed hopefully under the guidance of a virtuous teacher worthy of trust and imitation).
In the understanding of the ancient Greeks, the liberal arts were a stepping-stone to the study of philosophy. Understood etymologically, philosophy refers to the love of wisdom, the love of discovering and living with reference to what is first. Wisdom is the principle of an ordered life, and brings about great freedom for the one pursuing philosophy. Within the Catholic tradition, philosophy receives an additional honor: the designation as the handmaid of theology. It forms the basis of dialogue with Divine revelation, and the ability to teach and defend it. One example may help illustrate the point. The term transubstantiation refers to the dogma that bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ at the words of consecration. While this is squarely within the realm of theology, note the composition of the term: "trans-substance-ation," literally "a change in substance." Substance is a philosophical term, not a theological one; philosophy lies at the heart of the Church's teaching of this central mystery.
To briefly recap: the liberal arts are end-oriented, intended to reveal the truth foundational to our freedom. Through the trivium and the quadrivium, the student understands reality through word and number, a study in preparation for philosophy and then theology. While theology stands at the apex of this educational trajectory, the Faith is relevant along this whole journey—the Church is not the reason-hater her ill-informed critics accuse her of being. How can the person of Faith study language through grammar, logic, rhetoric, and their applications, and not perceive the Word behind the words? The reality we encounter through philosophy and the liberal arts is created reality, and St. John gives us our interpretive key: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made." Creation was brought about through the Divine Logos, and the study of the logic innate to creation is an indirect study of God, whether the student knows it or not.
However, the Evangelist does not end there. St. John continues in his magnificent prologue with these revolutionary words:
That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in his name. Who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
The Word became flesh. The Word, the Logos, that we see in the mirror dimly through liberal education made a gratuitous revelation of Himself unparalleled even in the words of the prophets that foretold His coming. The Creator entered creation. The playwright took to the stage. Catholicism makes the extraordinary claim that God took on a human nature and walked the earth, growing up in a family, living in a community of friends, and teaching with extraordinary authority. Not content to only walk around speaking the truth, the Truth chose to ransom our hearts, suffering crucifixion to liberate us from a much greater malady than mere intellectual ignorance. In proof of His divinity, He rose from the dead on the third day, so that in Him, death might be swallowed up in victory and all might be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:55, 22). His final words during His earthly life carried the command to go out to all the world preaching the Gospel, and baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. His Church, founded on the rock of Peter, is now the conduit of His grace, most gloriously His very presence in the Holy Eucharist.
The Catholic Faith becomes a special privilege to a student pursuing liberal education the moment you set aside your books. You can go to Mass and receive as your nourishment the very Truth that you have been pursuing in the liberal arts. Greet Him as Magdalene did when she first saw her Risen Lord: Rabboni, "teacher" (John 20:16). Let Him reveal Himself to you during Mass and adoration. Let Him, the Word, open up the word of Scripture and the word of creation for you, and create good soil in your heart for its flourishing and growth (Matthew 13:8). I pray you have the experience of leaving a lecture or a discussion, and going immediately to the chapel because of what you just learned. I pray your reading becomes a spiritual reading because you are certain of His presence as Word and Teacher. I pray you experience the drive towards study and the thirst for truth because you are in love with Truth Himself. I have had these experiences, and I can assure you that, once you do, your education will never be the same.
The journey does not end here. Freedom itself has a purpose. Our goal as persons with a liberal education is not to entertain deep discussion of Boethius from an armchair (coffee in hand, of course). Neither is it to wear tweed, listen to Brahms, smoke a pipe, and do Latin translations over breakfast instead of a crossword. We see in Scripture that every single person who encountered the Lord is healed, redeemed, and sent on mission. We are living in a post-Christian (and in many ways an anti-Christian) culture. This is our mission ground. I will close with some words from St. Edmund Campion, a 16th century Jesuit priest and English martyr, killed under Queen Elizabeth I for doing his pastoral duty to the underground Catholics in violation of the law. While in prison, he wrote a challenge to the Privy Council, the governing body that had the power to put him to death, requesting an opportunity to defend his case before them and the Queen. As far as we know, he never got this chance, and so he defended his case by his blood instead. In this letter, he said, “Many innocent hands are lifted up for you daily by those English students, whose posterity shall never die, who beyond seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you to heaven or to die upon your pikes. . . . The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted; so it must be restored.”
If you follow in this way, you will truly be disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.
