Summaries
Ascending scale of sorrow, the doctrinal phases of the church
Recall that when we explored the mystery of the ironic scale of ascending sorrow as ecclesiological truth, all the notes and phases fit perfectly for the dogmatic development of the church.
Well, now that we are in the other dimension of refined doctrine, which is to say, the way of the will, or the sacraments, we can expect the other ironic scale to reveal this dimension of faith. And in fact it really does when we are going to look into it now.
Remember also then that when we analyzed the ages of doctrinal development, the ironic scale of ascending sorrow made sense as follows: in the church's ages of doctrinal development, she is ascending or growing in her faith and in the knowledge of God and mysteries. On the other hand the scale is sorrowful, because at each juncture of the source of development juncture, she encounters opposition from the world, which is disparaging, as in schisms, heresies, infidelity, apostasies, and so forth.
The counter ironic scale would then be descending joy, since we would otherwise consider joy to be ascending. What might this symbolize? Well, it is fairly common sense when we associate it for the Sacramental life. Here, the joy dimension means that the reception of the sacraments brings joy. The descending dimension will mean that physically, one is descending towards frailty and death.
The four foundational scales of natural music
It actually works when we go back to the theology of music of the Catholic mystery. Remember that out of the infinite possibilities in musical scales, only four are uniquely foundational. These scales are unique in their notes except for the octave; they begin and end with the base note of the key, they are perfectly linear and unidirectional?meaning they don't back up anywhere?they include every note of the key in succession and only once, except the octave. Finally, there is only one direction, whether ascending or descending. Oh, and finally, they are either major or minor, meaning happy or sad.
Such characteristics leave only four possible scales, no more, no less, since two characteristics each with two parameters is 2 * 2 possibilities equals 4. Toward this end, there were two sets of scales. The consistent ones and the ironic ones. The consistent ones have an emotion that matches the direction. Hence, ascending joy and descending sorrow.
The ascending scale of joy
The greater ages of redemption
These are the great ages of the world. The joyful ascending are ages of the great phases of redemption, sub phases of redemption. The sorrowful descending ages are the great phases of sin in human history. It is consistent because we think of joy as getting better and better or ascending, Similarly we think of sorrow as getting worse and worse or descending.
This makes sense in salvation history. Each successive phase of redemption brings more and more of the world into greater Revelation and holiness.
The descending scale of sorrow
The greater ages of sin
Similarly ,with the phases of sin ,more and more of the human world is more sinful and more culpable, so that at the end, most of the world is in sin and the most culpable in all of human history.
The octaves in the consistent scales, the beginning and ending worlds are the same
The very wonderful meaning here is the octave, which we can revisit here. The octave brings you back to where you were in step 8.You can see this by singing the famous do re mi fa so la ti do of the sound of music movie. Or similarly just singing as one two three four five six seven eight.
In The sound of music, the do's are the same note only one whole scale higher. Similarly, in the numbers, 1 and 8 are the same only a higher pitch. This actually creates a striking similarity between the world at the beginning and the world at the end.
Jesus and Peter talk about this when they equate Noah's day with the days of the son of man. Similarly Peter talked about the world destroyed in the beginning by water and the world destroyed at the end by fire.
In both cases the redemption is the same. The world is destroyed and recreated. In the beginning, it is destroyed by water and recreated to begin to be redeemed. At the end it is destroyed by fire and is in the final phase of redemption, the ultimate redemption of the new creation that will never end. In either case the phases of sin are also at maximum: in Noah's day, the entire world is wicked or almost entirely sparing a remnant, and they are ignorant as they ignore God's warning of chastisement. At the end of the world, the near whole of the world is wicked in the great apostasy, sparing a remnant of gentile Catholics and then the Jews who convert at that time.
And the gentiles in apostasy are ignoring God's warnings of the terrible judgment that is coming because they have left the church. They ignore and go into the Great tribulation, and then in the Great tribulation, they do not repent because they are incurably turned away from God.
The greater ages in the days of creation and the beast Kings of Apocalypse
We do not have the space now to go into exactly what these ages are, part of which can be derived from Augustine and St Methodius of Olympus with a certain fix as it were, but suffice it to say that the ages of the world are days of creation and constantly alternate between evening and morning, which is to say between a spiritual darkness and a spiritual light.
The spiritual lights are the phases of redemption, and the spiritual darknesses are the phases of sin that are redeemed by the succeeding redemption, just as in Genesis, in the day of creation, first comes the darkness of evening and then the light of morning. For the record, at least some detail in the Book of Revelation about the beast is delineated as five Kings have fallen, one is, a 7th has not yet come, and possibly an eighth that brings one back to be again.
This concurs well with Saint Methodius of Olympus in tradition. He effectively says that five are the ages of the Old law up to and including the first coming of Christ. Then the 6th is designated into the church as an age of Labor against heresy and wickedness. The 7th is the millennium of rest, which would require a fix , since the church condemns chiliasm (my fix is to apply to a unitive way of light for the church in our lady's age of peace through Fatima).
Finally, he says that the 8th is eternity which again agrees that as Jesus rose from the dead on the eighth day, so all humanity will rise from the dead in the public judgment in the age that interrupts the Great tribulation at the end the world. Again these scales are consistent because the joy ascends and the sorrow descends.
The ironic scales
The refined dimensions of Catholicism
The ironic scales are in a situation where the direction is contrary to the to the emotion.
These are effectively ascending sorrow, and then descending Joy. These would clearly flesh out the finer details of the Catholic faith in terms of the two great dimensions of the human soul and in fact the dimensions of the catechism. Namely, the truth for the intellect, and the sacraments of grace for the soul, for the will.
The truth we will see can mean the revelation of the development of the doctrines of the church in the ages or the illuminative way of the church. This scale ascends because as the church moves through history, her understanding of the mysteries of the faith becomes deeper through doctrinal development. But it is a scale of sorrow because at each juncture that she develops doctrine, great portions of the world around her reject with heresies and schisms and infidelity etc
As for the descending joy, it is the sacramental scale of the person who receives all seven sacraments, which would be either a married priest or deacon as in say the Eastern rites or an exceptional cases in the Roman rite with say a Protestant Minister who converts.
Having reviewed our musical theology let us proceed:
The scale of descending joy, a mystery of the sacraments in analogy
For the scale of descending Joy, then with the person who receives all seven sacraments, that is, again, the married priest or deacon, the scale is as it were joyful because to receive the sacraments is joy in every case, since one is either healed spiritually, as in the confessional or the anointing of the sick, or else given beloved marks from God such as confirmation, baptism , or holy orders. which are wonderful one-time sacraments of joy to enter into a more fuller communion of the church to initiation.
To the vocations of marriage and holy orders themselves form as it were beloved Joy, the joy of the marital covenant and journey in life, and for the married Deacon, the joy of serving God as in the service of baptism and marriage and other ways of evangelizing and preaching.
But the scale is descending because in the physical sense, one is descending towards the frailty of weakness, suffering, and death. I have heard it said that the day you are born you are beginning to die!
The delineation of the sharps and flats as images of the sacraments that require the episcopate or priesthood
Now we can look towards the more incredible coincidence of how the sacraments are delineated in terms of the sharps and flats. The Sacramental scale here does not merely consist of an octave as in 8 notes because obviously there are only seven sacraments. In fact it is actually nine notes!
How?
Well, of the seven sacraments, we must also have natural birth and natural death at the beginning and end of the poles of life. Hence seven sacraments plus natural birth and natural death equals nine steps.
First, let us lay out the steps by number so we know what we are talking about. Note also that Peter's ordering is implied because obviously God prefers Peter because he is the ultimate ruler of the church, just as God preferred Joseph over the others with his colored coat etc.
1. Natural birth
2. Supernatural birth baptism
3. Confession
4. Eucharist
5. Confirmation
6. Marriage
7. Holy orders
8. Anointing of the sick
9. Natural death or Heaven
Now there is a law for these nine notes for any key, and that is this, these nine steps are the pure notes of the key that we descend. This is like do re mi etc in reverse order. However, although there are seven and only seven distinct notes in a key, western music has 12 total notes in a cycle. Hence, in addition to these seven pure notes , there must be an additional five notes. These five notes are what we call the sharps and the flats and this is because they do not quite fit with the pure notes. Effectively, they sound somewhat off or discordant with the purity of the pure notes of the key. These sharps are distributed so much sporadically throughout the seven notes of the pure scale.
Now what is incredible is that God has built into natural music that regardless of what key or tuning we are using, ?
the sharps and flats always occur at the same places in the descent, mainly right before the following steps or notes
345
78
For this end, the way this looks on a piano when we use the best illustrative example which is the key of C, we can look below. Hear all the pure notes of the key are the white keys and all the flats are the black keys, exclusively. Then the nine notes are nine white keys that descend from C down to the B below the C. Again, this is the key of C major descending the octave plus one note below the octave.
So again, the flats by law always occur before right before 3 4 and 5 and before 7 and 8.
These are the sacraments of confession, eucharist, and confirmation in our analysis, and concluding with holy orders and anointing. The other steps or sacraments do not have a black key before them, namely, baptism, marriage, and natural death.
This effectively means that between natural birth and baptism there is no black key and similarly between confirmation and marriage and between anointing and natural death.
Now note that how can we look at the black keys or the flats?
Flat notes are imperfect and priests are imperfect because they are sinners
Well these notes do not fully fit with the piano notes of the key, they're like imperfect notes. Aha! Priests are imperfect persons because they are sinners. And now note that in all of the five sacraments above that are immediately preceded by a black key or a flat or an imperfect note, these sacraments require a priest absolutely to be given since only priests or Bishop can perform these sacraments! No heretic or heretical community has these sacraments because they lack apostolic succession on which the five absolutely require!!!
Consider it.
The forgiveness of sins is delegated exclusively to priests. Other than bishops who else we can do it but normally delegated to priests. No Protestant Minister can forgive sins the name of God. Whether by confession or anointing. And confession is 3, and anointing is 8.
As far as the Eucharist is concerned, only a priest, a validly ordained priest, can turn bread and wine into God the second person of the Holy Trinity. No Protestant Minister has this power even if he thought he had it. Eucharist is 4.
Only a successor of the apostles which is the same Bishop can ordain another Bishop or a priest which is to say holy orders. This is 7.
Finally, confirmation is to strengthen the soul for the adult life in the fullness of faith. But heretics do not have the fullness of Faith because they are tossed to and throw by every wave of doctrine. So confirmation cannot make sense of them because they don't know exactly what path to follow with their errors. Only an apostolic Church has the near fullness of Truth to guide the soul down the right path. Confirmation is 5. It's only Catholics and schismatics can have this sacrament. Which then means it requires at least a priest.
So we have covered them all: 345, 78.
Hence, that an imperfect note lies behind the five exclusively apostolic sacraments is a powerful metaphor for the fact that five of these apostolic sacraments absolutely require to be mediated through an imperfect person a sinner, a priest or Bishop. That is, to get to the Sacramental steps above , you must pass through an imperfect note or priest, a sinner. Amazing! The timing of the flats perfectly correlates with the with the sacraments that require a priest!
What about the other notes? Now, baptism is valid for heretics by ancient declaration, and the marriage between two validly baptized Christians, even if they are heretics, is valid if they are free to marry, if they mean the vows, and consummate. We have seen this earlier in the book.
And cool enough, the three times where the note does not have a black key before it, it means that it does not require a priest to be received to be mediated it.
And this fits perfectly because baptism note 2 is directly preceded by a piano white note natural birth, 1. Again, baptism does not require a priest but is had by heretics.
Then, marriage would succeed confirmation does not have a black key before it since marriage does not require a priest but can be had by heretics if they meet the requirements. Note also that if a person is to receive all seven sacraments, they must first marry before Holy orders so this is not interchangeable for the location.
Finally, between natural death and holy orders, there is no black key since natural death isn't even a sacrament and therefore it does not require a priest.
The 9th Note, the major seventh, the peaceful rest of heaven
Note also that the 8th note is the anointing but the scale does not end until 9, or natural death. Nine is heaven presumably if the person was a saint. Now interestingly enough, the note just below the major note of the key forms, as it were, the major seventh chord, which is effectively a beautiful chord that conveys the sense of rest in the key of joy. This is totally apropos of the eternal rest of Heaven!
In the next segment, we will show how the base chords of the scale of joy reveal everything that will be in heaven either in principle or an eternal mark, and these total notes are six, whereas the other three will never be in heaven and only temporarily in purgatory and the negation of which will be in hell eternally.
Further observations of the Sacramental steps
We can make at least two further observations of our theology thus far. Firstly, we can know that of all of the sacramental steps, six of them will remain in heaven either by principal activity, or by eternal mark, exclusive or. The second principle is that of the three sacramental steps left over, these steps will never exist in heaven ever, whether in principle or in mark, but temporarily exist in principle within purgatory, and in primary negation in Hell eternally.
Let us first explore the purgatorial steps that will not be in heaven ever.
For the time being, we will simply go to the theology and then show why these numbers exist according to the music. Here's a brief synthesis.
Three Sacramental Signs shall never be again in heaven
Confession: There shall never be sin in heaven ever, nor is there penance or healing to do; we will have been utterly purged and utterly made selfless.
Anointing of the Sick: Every tear shall be wiped away; there is no more suffering in heaven, nor need for healing.
Natural Death: though we will have to die naturally, our soul first shall partake of the beautiful life that shall never end, then, at the end of time, our body also: ?And death and the netherworld were cast into the lake of fire.?
The other six sacramental components of life will last forever in heaven either in principle activity or in eternal mark.
Six Sacramental Signs will remain forever:
Natural life: Forever will we live, even supernaturally.
Baptism: Forever will we be children of God, the indelible mark of Baptism, members of Christ?s Church, forever will we continue to know and love God, the Baptismal Disposition.
Confirmation: Forever will we be a mature member of the Church, sealed with the Spirit, the indelible mark of the Gifts of the Spirit on our Soul.
Eucharist: Literal Eucharist will cease, but forever shall we commune with our brothers and sisters, forever shall we feast on God's truth and love and one another's love, forever will the eternal Sabbath last, the supreme day of the Eucharist.
Marriage: Literal marriage will cease in heaven, but forever will we be spouses of the Christ, both individually and collectively, receiving into our inner being the love and truth of God and offering ourselves back to Him in unfathomable ecstasy.
Holy Orders: Forever will we be marked a servant of Our God, whether by the literal, eternal and indelible mark of Holy Orders, or by the vocation that God gave us as servants and handmaids: mediating grace as a priest, as a biological father, as a single lay person in his talents and gifts, or too, in the feminine sense, motherly gifts and service, and sisterhood.
Sanctifying grace is all that is necessary to participate initially in heaven.
All that is necessary here is natural birth and supernatural birth or baptism
The question now is why do these six sacramental steps exist the way that they are?
The answer seems to come from the profound musical theory that we have just been using, as follows. The Crux of it is this:
Sanctifying Grace is already a foretaste of heaven because it is a very participation in the Divine life, love, and knowledge of the Trinity, who is the ultimate essence of Heaven. This seems to indicate that everything in heaven exists in the minimal things that are necessary to attain sanctifying grace.
The full chords of the notes of natural birth and baptism summarize the 6 dimensions of heaven above
It turns out that the first primary way we receive sanctifying grace is through baptism. Hence, all that is necessary to get a taste of Heaven is baptism. And yet now we can imagine that if we follow the notes that make up the simplest chord from baptism, we will get all of the fullest implications of what will remain in heaven and only those things. And that incidentally forms as it were what we will see.
However we must note that before we receive baptism, which is our supernatural birth, we must first exist, which is to say, our natural birth! Hence the full implications of what leads to heaven must be the base chords which follow first from natural birth and then supernatural birth in the musical scale.
As it stands, to work out intrinsically from natural music the base chords of these notes, what you do is you derive from them the points of partial resolution. By partial resolution, we mean that the notes do not leave you hanging and so have a sense of resolution, but they are not complete because they are not the octave. And so a partial resolution, as it were.
Now for the major chord, of the base key and assuming you're ascending a scale.
The base cord or simplest cord is 135.
1 of course is the base note of the key.
3 is the note that forms the happy sense or the major.
And 5 is like it says is the fifth, the simplest note that goes with a base note of the key since it is the first note that follows from the laws of harmonics that is distinct from the base note ,and yet emotionally neutral, unlike the third note which conveys happiness, which is a positive emotion.
Each of these latter two notes gives a sense of partial resolution ; try them!
However, when we are descending the scale of joy , the points of these resolutions are encountered in a different order.
Here, in the descending scale, the fifth note occurs in the fourth step, and the third note occurs in the sixth step.
Hence the natural birth chord is 146
Which is by our list
? Natural birth
? Eucharist
? Marriage
For the next chord, which derives from step 2 or baptism, the points of resolution and therefore the next chord is just scooted down a notch or 257. This is effectively the diminished chord of a key.
Hence
? Baptism
? Confirmation
? Holy orders
Profoundly, these are the exact six Sacramental steps we found to exist in heaven and only in heaven.
The other three notes do not fit into these chords
? Confession
? Anointing of the sick
? Natural death
The two chords, the two sets of sacraments, the two opposing natures and characteristics.
Something else even more profound exists when we compare the two chords of Heaven. One chord conveys the following mystery:
None of the sacramental steps gives one an eternal Mark like the other chord, but its principles will exist in heaven at least figuratively forever.
And the other chord:
An eternal Mark is given, but the principles of the sacraments will never exist in heaven either literally or figuratively. Let us probe it:
The first chord is natural birth, eucharist, marriage. None of these sacraments leaves an indelible eternal mark on the soul, but at least figuratively the principles of these sacramental steps will last forever.
How?
Firstly, we see that this is true in terms of the mark. Natural birth does not give you an indelible mark, nor does the Eucharist, since we receive the Eucharist all the time. Nor does marriage imprint on either spouse an indelible eternal mark. In fact this makes sense since marriage ceases to exist at the death of one or more spouse, which is the saying that obviously one can marry again at the death of one of the spouses so that they cannot have an eternal mark for more than one spouse. Christ is a singular God man and he only has one bride.
However, the principles will exist in heaven forever at least figuratively.
Our natural life will persist forever in heaven, even supernaturally in the resurrection.
The Eucharist will cease literally but the Holy Communion that we will have with our brothers and sisters celebrating the mystery of our faith, the truth, the doctrines, and the life and love of God that draws us together as one will last forever and ever.
And since the Eucharist must be celebrated by every Catholic ordinarily on the Sabbath, the ultimate 8th day Sabbath of Sunday, so all the just will rest in the 8th day of eternity apocalyptically in the resurrection and New Creation Sabbath.
Finally, marriage will cease literally as Christ testifies to the hypocrites that challenged him about whose wife will she be of the seven brothers. Nevertheless, conglomeratly, the entire church will be married to Christ as will each of us be to Jesus individually. The sign of man to woman will be fulfilled between Christ and the church. Jesus will offer his entire being to us by penetrating the inner being of our souls with his truth mystery and life and grace, and we shall receive it into our inner being, conceive it, and offer ourselves back to him forever and ever in an eternal ecstasy. The wedding feast of the Lamb in apocalypse.
On the other hand, for the other chord, which is to say, baptism, confirmation, and holy orders, each of these sacraments does leave an indelible eternal mark on the soul that shall never be erased, yet the principles of the sacraments will never exist in heaven ever again because they will not be needed.
More specifically, the disposition of baptism is faith and repentance. But in heaven, there is no faith because we see God as he is; for, faith is believing in what you have not seen, what you do not have absolute proof of. Nor will we have repentance or have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling as it is written, for we are now saved in the bosom of God, never again to be lost and never again able to sin or have to fight against sin. Once we see God, we can never look away, the infinite ecstasy of the beatific vision.
As for confirmation, it exists to strengthen the soul to fight the battle for the mature Christian Life to attain heaven. But once we make it to heaven, we no longer have to fight to make it to heaven; we are already there, and we have reached the maturity that can never be lost.
Finally, in holy orders, though the priest is indelibly marked in the soul, there is no need for bishops, the pope, or the priests to tell us things out of authority that we could not know infallibly without them, for we are face to face with God himself who is the infinitely infallible revealer of all things. In other words, if God is before us, there is no more Revelation mediated to men; God gives himself and tells us directly.
Too, there is no Eucharist in heaven because we do not need to be strengthened to fight against sin. There is no need to see Christ in a hidden host for we see him in his resurrected body literally and up front.
The three remaining sacramental steps of purgatory
As for the three things that never exist in Heaven, nonetheless they exist in purgatory for a time at least in principle.
Confession
All sin has been forgiven in purgatory but the full consequences of sin as temporal punishment has not been forgiven nor purged from us about attachments. Hence the penance that was not fully done for our sins is still remaining in purgatory, which is intrinsically related to the sacrament of confession.
Anointing of the sick
Anointing brings spiritual healing to the person who is suffering many times in old age. This is effectively persisting in purgatory, in the sense that the soul is still suffering for his sins and needs to be spiritually healed of his attachments to the things of this world.
Natural death
The soul has technically died and is separated from the body and so natural death is persistent in purgatory. Only when the soul is fully purged and enters into the glory of Heaven do the consequences of natural death disappear and the soul find eternal life.
Putting together the parable of the sower in the communion of saints
Now that we see six can be a symbol of Heaven because there are six Sacramental steps to persist there forever, and see three as a symbol of purgatory since temporarily there are three things that will be there before the person is fully purged, we have the numbers 6 and 3.
Interestingly enough, in the parable of the sower there are three numbers given in one view of it, which is just to say that the individual will give forth first 100 fold and then 60 fold and then 30 fold.
Here is where it was suggested 10, as we have seen before, is like a number of the world. The beast of Daniel and the sea beast and the dragon of Revelation have 10 horns,
And in an Orthodox book on the apocalypse commentary from St Andrew of Cesarea, it says it could mean that they fight against the ten commandments according to a tradition of a father.
This can mean that when we take the numbers, six and three and multiply them times 10, it could mean that both heaven, or the church triumphant, or 6, and purgatory or the church suffering, or three, both fight against the dragon who seeks to derail the ten commandments, through his worldly war against the faithful. Similarly also , their intercession is implied since we are confronted with the Communion of saints, a supreme doctrine of the faith.
Hence, 60 fold and 30 fold. Or 6 * 10 and 3 * 10.
What then about the 100 fold?
Well think about it! We are dealing with the communion of Saints! And we already have two of the three dimensions, namely, the church triumphant, and then, the church suffering. This leaves the church militant for 100 fold.
Well this is simple, since the church on earth is simply fighting for its own salvation, and its salvation is to keep the ten commandments; it's that simple.
And incidentally there is a perfect correlation between one version in scripture of the parable of the sower and the way that the catechism expresses these three dimensions of the communion of saints.
In one version admittedly the numbers are 30 60 and 100.
But in another version, they are 100, 60, and 30. This perfectly images the catechism?s order of the communion of saints. There she first mentions the church militant, or our 10. Then the church triumphant, or our 6. Then the church suffering, or our 3.
Bingo. this follows the numbers we have.
10 6 and 3.
Who would have guessed that music and the sacraments would lead to a parable that reveals the communion of the Saints! wow!