13 April 2019
Optional Memorial of Saint Martin I, pope and martyr
St. Martin I was a good pope. He was a martyr, too. That is why the Church holds him up for us today, 1,370 years after he died, on his feast day. He is remembered primarily for making significant contributions to dogmatic theology, so he might not be the sort of figure you would expect in a blog on spirituality, but let us not be too hasty.
This pope’s major dogmatic contribution was his defense of the existence of a human will in Jesus Christ. In defending this theological claim, he was joined by Maximus the Confessor and hundreds of bishops and eventually the decrees of an ecumenical council. But meanwhile, he had plenty of opponents who claimed that Jesus Christ had only a divine will, but not a human will. One of these opponents was the Byzantine Emperor Constans, who disagreed so strenuously that he had the pope arrested in his cathedral in Rome (the Lateran) and dragged off into exile on the Crimean peninsula, where he died after a few months.
The eleventh rule for thinking with the Church from St. Ignatius’ Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises(363) declares: “We should praise both positive theology and that of the Scholastics.” St. Martin I would certainly qualify for such praise. Today might be a good opportunity for you to do so. Think, then: does it make any difference to your prayer whether Jesus Christ had a human will or not? Is this not an important fundamental presupposition of Ignatian spirituality? Wasn’t St. Martin I a good pope?