Strange Need
Our divine Lord said, “Woe to the world because of scandals! For it must needs be that scandals come, but woe to that man through whom scandal does come!” (Matthew 18:7). The reality of evil continues in our world even after Jesus conquered wickedness, sin, and death by His own dying and resurrection. Until Christ comes again at the end of time, for some mysterious reason known in full only to God Himself, He permits evil and sin to continue on earth, and allows the affliction of the human race by temptations deriving from our fallen human nature, from the sinful aspects of the world that surrounds us, as well as from the archenemy of our happiness and salvation, that is, from Lucifer and his fallen angels, the devils of hell. Our Savior never promised that by His coming “the gates of hell” would be immediately exterminated, but only that they would not ultimately prevail everywhere against the Catholic Church which He founded (Matthew 16:18). Indeed, over the centuries they have prevailed, but only in certain times and places on the earth. Christ’s promise and guarantee for His Church, because He is a divine Person Who makes it, always abides.
The enemies of Christ and the enemies of His Church (actually always the same) know quite well the old saying, that the only possible way to destroy the Church would be to destroy the priesthood. Cardinal Suhard wrote, “There has been nothing more belittled, nothing more misunderstood, nothing more attacked in all history than the priesthood.” The attacks often come, unfortunately, not exclusively from the fiendish devils and from people outside the Church, but also occasionally from some of her own disloyal children, including sometimes wicked priests themselves. Perhaps one of the reasons why Jesus, Who conducted the most perfect priestly formation program possible on earth, nevertheless permitted Himself to be betrayed by Judas Iscariot, one of His own Apostles, was to keep us from being excessively shocked by the (fortunately rare) scandalous behavior of some few priests, which in our time is being endlessly screamed at us by the pagan and hostile media. In this world why “it must needs be that scandals come” will probably never be completely answered. That complete answer to the mystery of evil and the reason for God’s permitting it will only be known to us in eternity.
Cardinal Suhard wrote, “Christ’s enemies well know that destroying the priesthood is the only way to banish God’s Church forever from the world. Until the end of time the priest then will be the most beloved and the most hated of men, the most incarnate and the most transcendent, their dearest brother and their archenemy. Priests know as they go to the altar that they will be a sign of contradiction, a light for the children of light and darkness for the sons of night.”
Pray for Priests
Saint Therese, the Little Flower, recalling her childhood pilgrimage to Rome accompanied by a group of priests, wrote, “I came across many holy priests, and I saw that their sublime dignity raised them above the angels, but that they were nonetheless men, weak and fragile. If then, holy priests, whom Jesus names in His Gospel as the salt of the earth, are in such need of prayers, what must be thought of those who are tepid?” Cardinal Richard Cushing wrote, “Catholics must beg God to shield their priests from every danger, to drive far from them the onslaughts of the infernal enemy. They should ask that each priest may daily increase in virtue and that his imperfections be melted away in the heat of divine love. They should pray that the way of the Lord may be made smooth for the blessed feet of those who preach and bring the good news of peace.”
Boyd Barrett wrote, “Catholics should instinctively pray for their priest that he might persevere to the end as their priest and shepherd. They know the road before him can be steep and beset with danger. Their prayer should be touched with pity and tenderness, for their priest belongs to them, and they have a duty toward him. They pray because they know he needs the help of prayer to fulfill his high vocation, and because they know that, even as Saint Peter and Saint Thomas stumbled, he too could fail. And what if, after some years of faithful service, he should fail? Will the prayers for him then cease? Will pity and tenderness turn to ill will and hate? Should there not be feelings of charity even for a stray shepherd?” The Epistle to the Hebrews says (5:2-3), “He is able to have compassion for the ignorant and erring because he himself is also beset with weakness, and by reason thereof is obliged to offer for sins on behalf of the people so also for himself.”
Latin Saying
There is a Latin saying from the Middle Ages to the effect that the corruption of the best always results in the worst (“corruptio optimi pessima”). This certainly proves true especially for fallen priests. One thinks of the incredible amount of damage done to Christendom, for instance, by such ex-priests as Martin Luther, and how the scandalous sins of some Catholics in his times had provided the tinder in which flames of his errors could catch fire and spread.
Evidently, in the immediate past, not so much in the present or the remote past, there have been acts of sexual misconduct by a relatively very small number of priests, which can only be called heinous, vile, abominable, abhorrent, and unspeakably evil. Next to the innocent victims those detestable crimes have hurt, the Church herself and the reputation of the overwhelming majority of priests, who are good, holy, pure, and selfless, have been most harmed. Attempts, of course, must be made to provide restitution and reparation for those crimes, although we realize that this probably can never be adequately accomplished.
Also, it is important never to forget the vast number of priest-saints who have in the past and continue in the present to embellish our lives and our world, being channels of God’s grace, forgiveness, and joy to us all. In the words of Father John O’Brien, “For centuries the ambassadors of Jesus Christ, our priests, have marched in the vanguard of civilization. They have made contributions to literature, science, medicine, art, sculpture, music, and to all the cultures which enrich the mind of man and emancipate the spirit from the thralldom of the material. They have fought for the poor and downtrodden against the tyranny of kings. They have enriched the moral and spiritual life of man and enshrined in the hearts of the masses a new and deeper reverence for the sanctities of the spirit and the verities of the Eternal. They have been sculptors of human character and the molders of the ideals of the human race They have stood as a beacon on the mountain top, proclaiming to humanity the supremacy of God and the nobility of the human soul.” Pope Pius XI said, “A final tribute to the priesthood is given by the enemies of the Church. They show that they fully appreciate the dignity and importance of the Catholic priesthood by directing against it their first and fiercest blows. The rabid enemies of the Catholic priesthood are today the very enemies of God, a homage indeed to the priesthood!”
A week from next Sunday we Americans will be celebrating the 234th signing of the embossed copy of the Declaration of Independence, a day we have always considered the birthday of our nation, although the joint resolution of independence for the United Colonies had been really passed days earlier by the Continental Congress, and a first copy of the plain and simply written Declaration actually was signed on July 2nd, 1776. This annual civil holiday of ours, the 4th of July, always furnishes a good occasion to remind ourselves to pray for our beloved country and for our state, and to invoke the blessing of God upon our national future, while we also should thank Him for His gifts and benefits given to our United States in the past, thanking our “Creator” Who “endowed” us with “certain inalienable rights”.
In recent times, due to a widespread distortion of a correct understanding of religious freedom, due to a sometimes misreading and misinterpretation of the first amendment to our national constitution, due to a false irenicism that is always frightened to offend people who do not share one’s religious faith, and due to the growth of religious indifferentism and relativism in the general population, we have been experiencing an onslaught, indeed a juggernaut of secularism in the public square, determined to exclude all religion and all reference to God in the government and in any and all public mention, and a striving to make “non-religion” or even “anti-religion” the officially established “religion” of our country. To accomplish this nefarious goal, of course, the militant secularists, who are often the disciples of the ACLU, not only regularly threaten with lawsuits and adverse publicity those with whom they disagree, but also undertake to rewrite and restyle the realities of our country’s history. Celebrating the Glorious Fourth each year can provide an opportunity to look back at where we have come from and to see how alien to our national origins are the designs of the militant and anti-religious secularists, and their close allies, the atheists and agnostics.
Some Books
In our historic “look-back” there fortunately are some newly published books that can be of assistance for our purposes. Three which deserve mention and which I have recently read are:
“The Founders on Religion” edited by James Hutson, published by Princeton University Press, “One Nation Under God” by Father Eugene Hemrick, published by Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, and “Washington’s God” by Michael and Jana Novak, published by Basic Books.
Father Hemrick, whose book is a survey of religious symbols, quotes, images found in our official buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., mentions that he could not come up with the exact number of crucifixes and references to God that he found, because, he writes, “every time I begin to count them, I find more. My guess is that they are equal to or greater than those found in many of our biggest churches in this country.” In the Capitol Building itself he found statues of Saint Damien of Molokai and Blessed Junipero Serra, also of Father Jacques Marquette, Father Eusebio Kino, and Mother Joseph Pariseau, as well as carved medallions of Pope Innocent III, Pope Gregory IX, and Saint Louis IX of France.
Father Hemrick found the image of Christopher Columbus on the front doors showing Franciscan Friars with him with rosaries and crucifixes. In the Rotunda there is a picture of De Soto’s discovery of the Mississippi River depicting priests erecting a cross on its banks, and there is also a picture of DeSoto’s body being carried into the river for burial with Holy Mass being celebrated on the barge and a priest holding a crucifix over the body of the explorer. Also all over the House and Senate Chambers and throughout the building he notes innumerable inscriptions of the national motto: In God We Trust.
Carroll
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland, was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. (There were very few Catholics in any of the English colonies in those days because of anti-Catholic laws and persecutions.) He wrote: “Remember your God. The fear of the Lord, says the wise man, is the beginning of wisdom. Without virtue there can be no happiness and without religion no virtue.” In another place he wrote, “Being persuaded that there can be but one true religion taught by Christ and the Roman Catholic Church is that religion, I conceive it to be my duty to have my grandchildren brought up in it. I feel no ill will or illiberal prejudices against sectarians who have abandoned that faith....I even have hope they might be rewarded with eternal happiness, although they entertain erroneous doctrines....”
Carroll once wrote to his son, “Do not forsake the faith in which you have been educated. I am no bigot and I have charity for all men, but if the Christian Religion be true, it can be but one. For if revealed by God, He could not reveal different and inconsistent doctrines and variant truths. All the reformed Churches have varied and departed from the doctrine with which they set out. The Catholic, Roman and Apostolic Church is the only one whose doctrine has been uniform from the beginning. I have said this much on the subject to induce you to study the grounds of our Catholic Faith.”
Washington
The Novak book with its extensive research shows that Washington was sincerely religious in his convictions. Although only a nominal Anglican, his writings and speeches demonstrate beyond any doubt that he was no secularist and far from being an anti-religious fanatic. For example, in his general orders for May 15, 1776, he said, “The General commands all officers and soldiers to pay strict obedience to the orders of the Continental Congress, and by their unfeigned and pious observance of their religious duties, incline the Lord and Giver of victory, to prosper our arms.”
In his first inaugural address, Washington said, “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand Which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by a token of a Providential Agency.” When he resigned his military commission to the Continental Congress at the end of the Revolutionary War, on December 23, 1783, he said, “Glorious indeed has been our contest. Glorious if we consider the prize for which we have contended and glorious in its issue. But, in the midst of our joys, I hope we shall not forget that to divine Providence is to be ascribed the glory and the praise.” He also wrote: “The All-wise Dispensor of human blessings has favored no nation on the earth with more abundant and substantial means of happiness than the United States of America. May we not be so ungrateful to our Creator, so wanting to ourselves, so regardless of posterity, as to dash the cup of beneficence which is thus bountifully offered to our acceptance.”
Wonderful Thing
For more than a decade I had been assigned, in my younger years as a priest, to work in the Holy See as an official in the Congregation for Catholic Education, from 1969 through 1980. Most of that time was during the very significant pontificate of Pope Paul VI, whose many writings and talks, for that reason, are strongly impressed on my memory. As I personally approach, in these coming days, the 50th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood, and as I thank God in a very special way for the innumerable undeserved and infinitely generous gifts He has bestowed on me in my more than 74 years of life, in the half century of my priestly ministry, and in my more than 18 years as a Bishop, some words of Pope Paul VI come into my mind: “What a wonderful thing it is to be a priest! Experience gained by the vicissitudes of the years increases our sense of the intrinsic relationship between the priesthood and the Lord’s cross. Yet, that never exhausts the priesthood’s beauty and its happiness. Every day, every year, every anniversary renews the enjoyment of that beauty and happiness and brings greater knowledge and inner experience of them to priests. The strength of Christ’s passion and resurrection is in His priests and, therefore, His grace supports them so they always can remain in His love.”
Pope Paul VI said, "A priest’s title makes him both lowly and sublime. He is the vessel of clay that nevertheless contains a treasure of eternity (2 Corinthians 4:7). He is the shepherd of God’s People, the worker of charity, the guardian of orphans and little ones, the advocate of the poor, the consoler of the suffering, the father of souls, the confidant, the counselor, the guide, the friend of all, the man for others, and, if need be, the willing and silent hero. If you look closely at the anonymous countenance of this solitary man with no home of his own, you will see that he is incapable of any love which is merely human, because he has given his heart, without keeping back any portion of it, to that Christ Who gave Himself for him, even to the cross (Galatians 2:20), and to that neighbor whom he has resolved to love to the extent that Christ Himself does (John 13:15). This is the meaning of his intense and happy sacrifice in celibacy. To put it in a single phrase, he, the priest, is another Christ."
My Adventure
As I finished my college seminary work and prepared to graduate from Saint Francis Seminary’s college division with the customary bachelor’s degree in philosophy in the spring of 1957, I was summoned to the office of the Rector, Monsignor Frank Schneider, who told me that Archbishop Albert Meyer (who later become the Cardinal-Archbishop of Chicago) was coming to the seminary on some business and wanted to talk to me, informing me that he had decided that I was to finish my seminary studies in Rome. The Archbishop arrived, gave me $50 for spending money, told me what a privilege it would be to study in the Eternal City, said that he was disappointed to learn that I was ethnically only one quarter German, and informed me that he himself would be in Rome the following October and would then take me into a private audience with Pope Pius XII. So I sailed, business class, on the Giulio Cesare, with another seminarian from Milwaukee (from then on my ever very good friend, now Father Richard Breitbach) and two priests from Milwaukee going for graduate studies in Canon Law. I docked in Naples, and eventually got to Rome. I lived and studied at the Pontifical North American College, with most of the classes and work, however, at the Pontifical Gregorian University (where Latin was the language of instruction and of the administration). Archbishop Meyer was true to his word. The audience with Pope Pius XII was the first that I had with a Pope, little suspecting then that I one day would have similar private audiences with Popes Blessed John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. At the beginning of my second year of Roman studies (second theology) Pope Pius XII died and Angelo Roncalli (John XXIII) was elected the Bishop of Rome. He was the Pontiff during most of my seminary studies and when I was ordained a priest. His esteem and love of the priesthood and his jolly good nature were a particular inspiration to all of us seminarians in those days, and, of course, we were overwhelmed with happy anticipation when he announced that he was going to summon a new Ecumenical Council, the first since the conclusion of the First Vatican Council in 1870.
Early Ordination
Sometime in 1959, I was called to the office of the Vice Rector of the North American College and told, to my astonishment, that the Rector and faculty had decided that I was to be ordained ahead of my class and that they had procured all the necessary dispensations from the Holy See for this. So I rapidly went up the ladder of Holy Orders. (The ladder has been changed from what it was in those days.) I received holy Tonsure on February 28, 1959, in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, from Cardinal Luigi Traglia, the Vicar General of Rome, then received the Minor Orders of Porter and Lector, on March 14, 1959, in the Church of Saint Marcellus from Archbishop Ettore Cunial, then the Minor Orders of Exorcist and Acolyte on November 29, 1959, from Bishop Cesar Benedetti, in the Church of Saint Teresa, then ordained Subdeacon in the Church of San Andrea della Valle on March 12, 1960, by Bishop Roberto Ronca, ordained a Deacon on May 8, 1960, in the Church of Saint Marcellus, by Archbishop Martin J. O’ Connor, and finally ordained a priest on July 17, 1960, in the Church of the Twelve Apostles (Dodieci Apostoli) by Cardinal Luigi Traglia.
A dear friend of our family, originally from Milwaukee, Cardinal Aloysius Muench, the former Nuncio to West Germany and Bishop of Fargo, was living in Rome in retirement. He honored me by attending my ordination reception and so I had my First Mass at the Motherhouse of the Salvatorian Sisters, where he was residing. My second Mass was in the Chapel of the Popes in the Catacomb of Saint Callixtus next to the tomb of my patron Saint Fabian. He was the 21st Pope, martyred by the Emperor Decius, and the inscription on the slab over his grave says: “Fabianus Episcopus” (Fabian the Bishop). My third Mass was at the Sisters’ Chapel at the College Villa of Santa Catarina. The Superior of the Swiss nuns who worked at the College was Madre Pasquilina, who had been for many years the housekeeper of Pope Pius XII. She wanted me to celebrate Mass wearing his favorite vestments, using his favorite chalice, etc., which, of course, I gladly did.
Before my parents and family members and friends who came to Rome for my ordination returned to the United States (after visits to Spain, France, Belgium, and England) I had the opportunity to celebrate Mass with them at the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul, at Lourdes, at Assisi, and at many other shrines in Italy and western Europe. I remained in Rome for a year after my ordination in order to obtain my Licentiate degree in Sacred Theology, and this also gave me the chance for many beautiful experiences of offering Mass in some of the countless churches and shrines of Rome. It happened fifty years ago! The Italians would say “magari” (wow)! Please pray for me. “What can I offer to the Lord for all that He has given to me?” (Psalm 116:12)
The ‘Apologia’
An authority on the life and work of the recently beatified Blessed John Henry Newman has noted that “Most readers today will find his “Apologia” an obscure work without a considerable apparatus of explanatory matter”. However, once that apparatus or a substantial part of it is in hand, a reader will be in possession of a splendid and memorable treasure. Philip Hughes, the famous church historian, remarked about this work of Newman, the official and full title of which is: “Apologia pro Vita Sua, being a History of His Religious Opinions”, that it is “unquestionably one of the literary and spiritual classics of all time. In it one of the finest masters of the English language tells in majestic and eloquent prose the story of his change of religious opinions from his first childhood experiences until finally, after years of study and deliberation, all doubts resolved, in perfect peace and contentment, he entered the Catholic Church.” “Such are its (the book’s) force and power that people of every religious persuasion have acknowledged this dynamic account of spiritual conversion as an extraordinary record of self-revelation and as a superb piece of controversial writing. Its sheer power of style, its remarkable absence of pose, its simple dignity as it reveals the intimate self of a very sensitive and reserved man, its almost unrivaled logical powers, the meticulous care for accuracy, all combine to make this a masterpiece of autobiography and a powerful defense of Catholicism. Cardinal Newman was a thinker of the first rank who has influenced the course of English thought more perhaps than any of his contemporaries. His intellectual gifts have made the “Apologia” one of the most influential (English language) religious books of Western civilization.”
How Began
The occasion for the writing The ‘Apologia’ An authority on the life and work of the recently beatified Blessed John Henry Newman has noted that “Most readers today will find his “Apologia” an obscure work without a considerable apparatus of explanatory matter”. However, once that apparatus or a substantial part of it is in hand, a reader will be in possession of a splendid and memorable treasure. Philip Hughes, the famous church historian, remarked about this work of Newman, the official and full title of which is: “Apologia pro Vita Sua, being a History of His Religious Opinions”, that it is “unquestionably one of the literary and spiritual classics of all time. In it one of the finest masters of the English language tells in majestic and eloquent prose the story of his change of religious opinions from his first childhood experiences until finally, after years of study and deliberation, all doubts resolved, in perfect peace and contentment, he entered the Catholic Church.” “Such are its (the book’s) force and power that people of every religious persuasion have acknowledged this dynamic account of spiritual conversion as an extraordinary record of self-revelation and as a superb piece of controversial writing. Its sheer power of style, its remarkable absence of pose, its simple dignity as it reveals the intimate self of a very sensitive and reserved man, its almost unrivaled logical powers, the meticulous care for accuracy, all combine to make this a masterpiece of autobiography and a powerful defense of Catholicism. Cardinal Newman was a thinker of the first rank who has influenced the course of English thought more perhaps than any of his contemporaries. His intellectual gifts have made the “Apologia” one of the most influential (English language) religious books of Western civilization.”
How Began
The occasion for the writing and publishing of Newman’s “Apologia” arose from a vicious 1864 written attack upon him and upon the Catholic Church by Charles Kingsley, an Anglican vicar, professor of modern history at Cambridge University in England, and something of a writer. His works include “Hypatia”, “The Water Babies”, and “Westward Ho”. Kingsley gratuitously (in a published magazine book review) said that Newman, like other Catholic priests, promotes and practices lying. In a published exchange of letters between Kingsley and Newman about the Kingsley’s slander in his book review, Newman easily got the better of him and clearly won the argument in public opinion. Kingsley then published a pamphlet entitled “What Then Does Doctor Newman Mean ?” Newman noted that the pamphlet’s “ultimate point is an attack upon the Catholic Religion.” Newman said that although “it is indeed I whom he is immediately insulting, he desires to impress upon the public mind the conviction that I am a crafty scheming man, simply untrustworthy; that in becoming a Catholic I have found just my right place...” Newman noticed, he said, that Kingsley is throwing dirt upon him. “Some dirt sticks longer than others, but no dirt is immortal.” He said that Kingsley’s “foul calumnies” and “base and cruel method of controversy” did not deserve his attention, but that he owed it to the Catholic Church and to the Catholic priesthood to contradict the accusation of untruthfulness and systematic lying. As Newman describes Kingsley’s view, it was a claim, Newman wrote, “that I was secretly a Catholic while I was openly professing to be a clergyman of the Established Church, that so far from bringing, by means of my conversion, when at length it openly took place, any strength to the Catholic cause, I am a burden to it, an additional evidence of the fact that to be a pure, genuine Catholic, a man must be either a knave or a fool.” But Newman describes how carrying out what he saw to be his obligation in refuting Kingsley would have its pains. “It is not pleasant to be giving to every shallow and flippant disputant the advantage over me of knowing my most private thoughts...but I do not like to be called to my face or to my name a liar and a knave, not should I be doing my duty to my faith or my name, I were to suffer it. I know I have done nothing to deserve such an insult and if I prove this, as I hope to do, I must not care for such incidental annoyances as are involved in the process.”
The Work
Newman said initially that he would only concern himself with refuting the Kingsley charge of untruthfulness. However, as the publication of his defense went forward, it was met with so much approval not only by Catholics but by the English public in general that at the end he presented a “General Answer to Mr. Kingsley” as well as a “Detailed Answer to Mr. Kingsley’s Accusations.” He also added an Appendix with a collection of quotations from Catholic moral teachers and authors with other information that not only vindicated his own conduct and views but also presented in an unexpectedly beautiful and respectable light Catholic history and teaching in many areas. The sincerity and honesty of Newman won people over and his book became in those days, what would be called today a “best-seller”. The autobiographical section of the work was the most appealing and delightful to read, but the way Newman then politely but clearly demolished the writing of Kingsley, with a series of precise and logical refutations destroying what he called the “blots” in those Kingsley writings, was a source of amusement for the public in England and a source of satisfaction and contentment for the Catholics of that time and place. As he began his own work, Newman wrote: “And now I am in a train of thought higher and more secure than any which slanders can disturb. Away with you, Mr. Kingsley, and fly into space. Your name shall occur again as little as I can help, in the course of these pages. I shall henceforth occupy myself not with you, but with your charges.” After his public conflict with Newman, Kingsley, who was obviously and totally defeated, retreated into deserved oblivion, denounced by all, except a tiny following of hateful and irrational anti-Catholics, as an ignorant bigot.
The Book
Newman divided the autobiographical part of his work according to a timetable of years. He began with “History of My Religious Opinions Up to 1833”, then went on to sections from 1833 to 1839, then 1839 to 1841, then 1841 to 1845. He noted for the first years to 1839, “I honestly wished to benefit the Church of England at the expense of the Church of Rome. For the second four years I wished to benefit the Church of England without prejudice to the Church of Rome. At the beginning of 1843 I began to despair of the Church of England and gave up all clerical duty.....and was influenced by a mere wish not to injure (the Church of England) it.” Then Newman wrote he contemplated leaving the Anglican Church and told his friends about his intention. Finally, it was only when he was writing his “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine” that he began in his intentions to be in favor of the Roman Church and indirectly against the Anglican Church. He said of Kingsley’s pamphlet, “It is as slovenly and random and futile in its definite charges as it is iniquitous in its method of disputation.” However, it did occasion a great work of literature as all now agree.
Not Adequate
Many lads in Catholic high schools in years past, including this writer in his youth, were required to study and even memorize Cardinal John Henry Newman’s famous “definition of a gentleman”, which is found in his book “The Idea of a University”. Not so much a definition, however, it is rather a description, being, as he called it, “the lineaments of the ethical character which the cultivated intellect will form apart from religious principle.” Newman remarks, that these lineaments “are seen within the pale of the Church and without it, in holy men and in profligate. They form the “beau ideal” of the world. They partly assist and partly distort the development of the Catholic. They may subserve the education of a Saint Francis de Sales or a Cardinal Pole. They may be the limits of the contemplation of a Shaftesbury or a Gibbon. Basil and Julian were fellow students at the schools of Athens, and one became a saint and Doctor of the Church, the other her scoffing and relentless foe.” In other words, Newman says that there are some aspects of his description of a gentleman of the Victorian era that can be useful and even important in an educational enterprise, but a true Catholic education and formation must involve much more and far greater spiritual things. as well as discarding those aspects of secular esteem which might be adverse to the Catholic Faith.
Definition
Newman writes, “Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied with removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him, and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature, like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides both means of rest and animal heat without them. The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast, all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint or suspicion or gloom or resentment, his great concern being to make one at ease and at home. He has eyes on all his company. He is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd.”
“He can recollect to whom he is speaking. He guards against unseasonable allusions or topics which may irritate. He is seldom prominent in conversation and never wearisome. He makes light of favors while he does them and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort. He has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he one day were to be our friend.”
Disputes & Tolerance
Newman continues, A true gentleman “has too much good sense to be affronted by insults. He is too well employed to remember injuries and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned on philosophical principles. He submits to pain because it is inevitable, to bereavement because it is irreparable, and to death because it is his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering, discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds, who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust. He is as simple as he is forcible and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candor, consideration, indulgence. He throws himself into the minds of his opponents. He accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strengths, its province, and its limits.”
Newman then writes with irony, “If he be an unbeliever, he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it. He is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion. He even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which he does not assent. He honors the ministers of religion, and it contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend of religious tolerance, and that, not only because his philosophy has taught him to look upon all forms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of feeling which is the attendant on civilization. Not that he may not hold a religion too, in his own way, even when he is not a Christian. In that case, his religion is one of imagination and sentiment. It is the embodiment of those ideas of the sublime, majestic, and beautiful without which there can be no large philosophy. Sometimes he acknowledges the Being of God; sometimes he invests an unknown principle or quality with the attributes of perfection. And this deduction of his reason, or creation of his fancy, he makes the occasion of such excellent thoughts, and the starting point of so varied and systematic a teaching that he even seems like a disciple of Christianity itself. From the very accuracy and steadiness of his logical powers, he is able to see what sentiments are consistent in those who hold any religious doctrine at all, and he appears to others to feel and to hold a whole circle of theological truths, which exist in his mind not otherwise than as a number of deductions.”
Additional
Newman adds several other elements that characterize a Victorian English gentleman: “neatness, decency, uprightness, manliness, and generosity.” Other elements consist in “being an enemy of extravagances of any kind and shrinking from what are called scenes, having no mercy on the mock-heroic, on pretence or egotism, on verbosity in language, or on what is called prosiness in conversation.” A true gentleman “detests gross adulation...sees the absurdity of indulging it, and understands the annoyance thereby given to others.” Good manners “teach men to suppress their feelings, to control their tempers, and to mitigate the severity and the tone of their judgments.”
In another place Newman said, “I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, and who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it and who know so much of history that they can defend it.”
Church Views
One of the best ways to begin to encounter the profound thought as well as to begin to touch the wonderful spirituality of Blessed John Henry Newman is simply to sample some of the vast quantity of written material that he left behind, and which is ours to treasure and enjoy. For instance, he wrote, "There is only one Oracle of God, the Holy Catholic Church and the Pope as her head. To her teaching I have ever desired all my thoughts, all my words to be conformed." Again he wrote, "Herein is the strength of the Church. She professes to be built upon facts, not opinions, on objective truths, not on variable sentiments, on immemorial testimony, not on private judgment, on convictions or perceptions, not on conclusions. None else but she can make this profession. She makes high claims against the temporal power, but she has that within her which justifies her. She merely acts out what she says she is. She does not more than she reasonably should do. If God has given her a specific work, no wonder she is not under the superintendence of the civil magistrates in doing it. She is the organ and oracle, and nothing else, of a supernatural doctrine, which is independent of individuals, given to her once for all, coming down from the first ages."
He wrote, "Right reason, that is, reason rightly exercised, leads the mind to the Catholic Faith, and plants it there, and teaches it in all its religious speculations to act under its guidance. But reason, considered as a real agent in the world and as an operative principle in man’s (fallen) nature, with a historical course and with definite results, is far from taking so straight and satisfactory a direction. It considers itself from first to last independent and supreme. It requires no external authority. It makes a religion for itself." Again he remarks, "This is glory of the Church, to speak, to do, and to suffer with that grace which Christ brought and diffused abroad. Not the few and the conspicuous alone, but all her children, high and low, who walk worthy of her and her divine Lord, will be shadows of Him. All of us are bound, according to our opportunities, first to learn the truth, and moreover we must not only know but we must impart our knowledge. Not only so, but next we must bear witness to the truth."
More on Church
In one of his meditations, Cardinal Newman wrote this prayer to Jesus: "Let me never for an instant forget that Thou has established on earth a kingdom of Thy own, that the Church is Thy work, Thy establishment, Thy instrument, and that we are under Thy will, Thy laws, and Thy eye, and that when the Church speaks, Thou dost speak. Let not familiarity with this wondrous truth lead me to be insensitive to it. Let not the weakness of Thy human representations lead me to forget that it is Thou Who dost speak and act through them." Addressing the Catholic Church in a poetic apostrophe, he wrote: "O long sought after, tardily found, desire of the eyes, joy of the heart, the truth after many shadows, the fullness after many foretastes, the home after many storms! Come to her, all poor wanderers, for she it is, and she alone, who can unfold the meaning of your being and the secret of your destiny. She alone can open to you the gate of heaven and put you on your way."
In another place he wrote, "The general sense of right and wrong, which is the first element in religion, is so delicate, so fitful, so easily obscured or perverted, so subtle in its argumentative methods, so impressed by education, so biased by pride and passion, so unsteady in its flight, that in the struggle for existence amid the various exercises and triumphs of the human intellect, this sense is at once the highest of all teachers, yet the least luminous, and, therefore, the Church, the Pope, and the hierarchy are in the divine purpose the supply of an urgent demand." He once exclaimed , The Catholic Church "coming to you from the very time of the Apostles, spreading out into all lands, triumphing over a thousand revolutions, exhibiting so awesome a unity, glorifying in so mysterious a vitality, so majestic, so imperturbable, so bold, so saintly, so sublime, so beautiful! O you sons of men, can you doubt that she is the divine messenger for whom you seek?"
Liberalism
In his "biglietto speech" on the occasion when he was officially notified that he was to be named a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, in 1879, Blessed John Henry Newman said, "For 30, 40, and 50 years, I have resisted, to the best of my powers, the spirit of liberalism in religion, an error overspreading the whole earth. Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is a teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion." He said, "Liberalism, then, is the mistake of subjecting to human judgment those revealed doctrines which are in their nature beyond and independent of it, and of claiming to determine on intrinsic grounds the truth and value of propositions which rest for their reception simply on the authority of the divine Word. It is the view that revealed religion is not a truth but a sentiment and a taste, not an objective fact, not miraculous, and it is the right of each individual to make it say what strikes his fancy. It is the view that the Governor of the world does not intend that we should gain the truth, that we are not more acceptable to God by believing this than by believing that, that no one is answerable for his opinions, that it is enough that we sincerely hold what we profess, that it is a duty to follow what seems to be true without any fear lest it should not be true, and that we may safely trust to ourselves in matters of faith and need no other guide."
Newman noted that Catholic truth, which is the fullness of correct Christianity, opposed to these errors, "teaches that there is a truth then, that there is one truth, and religious error is in itself of an immoral nature, that its maintainers, unless involuntarily such, are guilty in maintaining it, that the mind is below the truth and not above it, and is bound not to descant upon it, but to venerate it, that truth and falsehood are set before us for the trial of our hearts, that our choice is an awful giving forth of lots on which salvation or its rejection is inscribed, and before all things, it is necessary (as the Athanasian Creed proclaims) to hold the Catholic Faith, and that he who would be saved must think thus and not otherwise." Newman remembered that even when he was still a Protestant he thought that, "Liberalism was the badge of a theological school, of a dry and repulsive character, not very dangerous in itself, although dangerous as opening the door to evils which it did not in itself either anticipate or comprehend."
Pope’s Words
At the Newman beatification Mass last September 19th, Pope Benedict XVI talked about Newman’s "long life and priestly ministry of preaching, teaching, and writing." In Newman "the tradition of gentle scholarship, deep human wisdom, and profound love for the Lord has borne rich fruit, as a sign of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit deep within the heart of God’s people, bringing forth abundant gifts of holiness."
Eyes Open
The vast knowledge of history which Cardinal Newman possessed at the time of his conversion to the Catholic Faith prevented him from any "pollyanna" (i.e. over optimistic) misunderstanding the holiness of the Church. He knew quite well the extraordinary paradox that the Church, founded by Jesus Christ, is sinless and intrinsically holy, while at the same time she is composed of sinners and sometimes contains people who were and are far from holy. The Catholic Church is always holy in her doctrine, the unmutilated and incorrupt teaching she possesses from and about Jesus, and forever holy in her liturgy, the Mass and sacraments, which do not depend for their supernatural efficacy on the holiness of the priest or other minister, and holy and the cause of holiness in her laws, her devotional life, and her hierarchical, ecclesiastical discipline. She has produced, down more than twenty centuries, an enormous throng of saints, including martyrs, virgins, confessors, married and widowed saints, and holy men and women of every kind and from every age. Nevertheless the reality of the weeds and wheat growing together in God’s kingdom (Matthew 13:24-30) was always apparent to Newman, not only from his deep historical studies, but also from his later labors in what Pope Benedict XVI calls "his profoundly human vision of priestly ministry at the Oratory he founded, visiting the sick and poor, comforting the bereaved, and caring for those in prison." Thus, Newman always realized and rejoiced in the irrevocable promise of Christ to be with His Catholic Church always, (Matthew 28:20) and Jesus’ glorious reassurance that God, the Holy Spirit, would be her divine Guide and Companion in her entire journey through history (John 14:26-31 & 16:7-14) until His return to earth.
Observation
Already when he was not yet a Catholic, but coming close, Newman wrote about the Catholic Church: "It is true there have been seasons when from the operation of external or internal causes, the Church has been thrown into what was almost a state of deliquium, but her wonderful revivals while the world was triumphing over her is further evidence of the absence of corruption in the system of doctrine and worship into which she has developed. If corruption be an incipient disorganization, then surely an abrupt and absolute reoccurence to the former state of vigor after an interval is even less conceivable than a corruption that is permanent."
Newman goes on to say, "Now this is the case for the revivals I speak of. After violent exertion, men are exhausted and fall asleep. They wake the same as before, refreshed by the temporary cessation of their activity, and such has been the slumber and such the restoration of the Church. She pauses in her course, and almost suspends her functions. She rises again, and she is herself once more. All things are in their place and ready for action. Doctrine is where it was and usage and precedence and principle and policy. There may be changes, but they are consolidations or adaptations. All is unequivocal and determinate with an identity which there is no mistaking. Indeed, it is one of the most popular charges against the Catholic Church at this very time that she is incorrigible. Change she cannot, if we listen to Saint Athanasius or Saint Leo. Change she never will, if we believe the controversialist or alarmist of the present day."
Almost Like Now
Looking into the past of the Church, Newman also described in his book "The Idea of a University" what could be a picture of some aspects of our contemporary Catholic Church: "It is a miserable time when a man’s Catholic profession is no voucher for his orthodoxy, and when a teacher of religion may be within the Church’s pale, yet external to her faith. Such as been for a season the trial of her children at various eras of her history. It was the state of things during the dreadful Arian ascendancy, when the flock had to stay aloof from the shepherd, and the unsuspicious Fathers of the Western Councils trusted and followed some consecrated sophist from Greece or Syria. It was the case in those passages of medieval history when simony resisted the Supreme Pontiff, or when heresy lurked in universities. It was longer and more tedious trial while the controversies lasted with the Monophysites of old and with the Jansenists in modern times. A great scandal it is and is a perplexity to the little ones of Christ to have to choose between rival claimants upon their allegiance, or to find a condemnation at length pronounced upon one whom, in their simplicity, they have admired. We too in this age have our scandals, for scandals there must be..."
After mentioning the possibilities of "rampant infidelity" and "false teachers", Newman cites Sacred Scritpure, in which he notes, "The Apostle says, ‘They went out from us but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they left in order to make manifest that not one of them was of us.’ (1 John 2:19)." Then Newman goes on to describe an internal attitude or prejudice, sometimes subtle and unspoken, but often present in a non-Catholic university: "I have already said that its fundamental dogma is that nothing can be known for certain about the unseen world. This being taken for granted as a self-evident point, undeniable (to such a university) as soon as stated, it goes on to argue that, in consequence, the immense outlay, made of time, anxiety, and toil, of health , bodily and mental, upon theological researches has been simply thrown away. Nay, has been, not merely useless, but even mischievous, inasmuch as it has indirectly thwarted the cultivation of studies of greater promise and of an evident utility. This is the main position of the school I am contemplating (describing -the non-Catholic university), and the result, in the minds of its members, is a deep hatred and a bitter resentment against the Power which has managed, as they consider, to stunt the world’s knowledge and the intellect of man for so many hundred years."
Reeling But Erect
Had he know the expression later used by Chesterton (in his book "Orthodoxy"), there is little doubt that Cardinal Newman would have seen it as encapsulating his view of the Catholic Church throughout human history: "The heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, but the wild truth reeling but erect." Following her incarnate Founder, the Catholic Church is both visible and invisible, human and divine. Unlike Jesus, Who was like us in all things but sin, however, the human element in His Church still bears the pull of original sin in her members and, thus, can be and often is a source of disappointment, hurt, and even scandal. But He is always with His Church to forgive when necessary, to ever call for repentance, and eternally to proclaim the truth "that makes one free" (John 8:32). Knowing and living in that attitude after his conversion to the Catholic Church enabled Newman, in the words of the hymn he composed, to sing with the angels of heaven to God: "Praise to the Holiest in the height and in the depth be praise. In all His words most wonderful, most sure in all His ways. O loving wisdom of our God, when all was sin and shame, a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came."
The Coelian Hill
One of the fabled seven hills of Rome, the Coelian, has some interesting places, which indirectly touched on the life and destiny of Blessed John Henry Newman, and which directly touched on the life and destiny of the priest who received him into the Catholic Church, Passionist Father Dominic of the Mother of God. On the crest of that hill stands an ancient Basilica, the Church of Saints John and Paul, whose names are mentioned in the Roman Canon. They were officers, rich and influential, in the household of the Princess Constantia, the daughter of the Emperor Constantine. When the Emperor Julian the Apostate came to the throne he tried to persuade them to offer sacrifice to idols, but they refused, saying, "Our lives are at the disposal of the Emperor, but our souls and faith belong to God." Julian, fearing people’s outrage over a public execution and frightened that their example might persuade other Christians to fortitude in their Catholic Faith, had them beheaded privately in their own house, where they were buried. That house is the basis of the present day Basilica. The church was the titular church of Pope Pius XII when he was a Cardinal and is now the titular church of retired Cardinal Edward Egan of New York.
Centuries later the church and the adjoined gardens were given to Saint Paul of the Cross, the Founder of the Passionist Order, for the headquarters of his order. It continues to serve that purpose to the present, and Saint Paul of the Cross is entombed beneath one of the altars in that building. I made my retreat before ordination to the diaconate in the Passionist Monastery next to the church in May of 1960. The retreat and accommodations, I recall, were very austere and penitential. It was to that monastery that a humble Italian man from Viterbo came in 1814 and was received into the Passionist Community there. His name was Dominic Barberi. He later professed his vows as a Passionist and then was ordained a priest there on March 1, 1818. He became a lecturer in philosophy and theology to Passionist clerics there and subsequently was named the religious superior of various Passionist houses in different parts of Italy.
The Slope
Nearby, down on the slope of the Coelian Hill is a very ancient monastery. It originally was part of the ancestral property of Gregory (who later became Pope Saint Gregory the Great). It adjoined the house and gardens of his mother, Saint Silvia. He built the monastery, named it after Saint Andrew (one of his all time favorite saints), then abandoned all his worldly possessions (except for his pet cat), and with some monk companions lived for many years the life of a Benedictine Monk. The Monastery continues today, but it belongs to the Camoldolese Order and is no longer Benedictine. Saint Gregory’s cell and chair, however, are still preserved there.
The connection with Father Dominic, the Passionist who lived nearby, was most likely because of the great historical event that had occurred on the steps of that Monastery back in the seventh century, but was vividly and continuously remembered on the Coelian Hill. After Gregory had become the Pope, he sent one of the monks, Saint Augustine, with thirty other of the monks from there to England to convert the heathen Angle and Saxon German invaders of that land, who had driven the Celtic Catholics out to the north and west of the island. Deeply affected by the fact that England had largely fallen away from that Catholic Faith brought there by those monks, Dominic, in the Passionist Monastery, set about to fast and pray for the conversion of England.
His Call
Dominic became convinced that he was called by God to go to England for the purposes of its conversion back to the Catholic Religion. He wrote in his diary in 1813, "I was on my knees before God, praying and beseeching Him to provide for the necessities of the Church, when I heard an interior voice, which told me.... I was destined to announce the truths of the Gospel and to bring stray sheep back to the way of salvation" After much difficulty, he persuaded his religious superiors to allow him to go to England to establish a Passionist Monastery in that land. He arrived in 1841 and in 1842 established a house in Ashton in Staffordshire. He prayed constantly and begged others to pray for the conversion of England.
Initially, however, he met with no visible success. In the streets he often was pelted with mud, hit and kicked, and called names such a "the stuttering papist" and the "Demon Friar" Like all Passionists, he went about barefoot and physically he was ugly and ungainly in appearance, all of which lent itself to his being disdained. Catholics themselves often mistrusted him as a foreigner who spoke imperfect English, and the Protestants, once they knew he had come to convert them, treated him with scorn and persecution.
Ironically, when Newman was still a Protestant, he once wrote about Catholics, "If they want to convert England, let them go barefooted into our manufacturing towns...let them be pelted and trampled on and then I will own that they can do what we cannot."
Newman’s Words
Blessed Dominic Barberi fasted often and was visibly a priest who loved an ascetic lifestyle (as did Newman himself). Perhaps it was that which began to attract Newman to him and why Newman chose to go to him for his entry into the Catholic Church. Newman wrote about him, "Father Dominic was a marvelous missioner and preacher, filled with zeal. He had a great part in my conversion and that of others. His very look had about it something holy. When his form came within sight, I was moved to the depths in the strangest way. The gaiety and the affability of his manner in the midst of all his sanctity was in itself a holy sermon. No wonder that I became his convert and his penitent. He was Dominic of the Mother of God, a great lover of England."
Dominic only lived for four more years after he received Newman into the Church on October 9, 1845. He was on a train in England on Friday, August 27, 1849, on his way to another Passionist House when he collapsed with a heart attack. The passengers, thinking he had cholera, insisted that he get off the train, which he did despite excruciating pain. A kindly medical doctor saw him and helped him into a nearby train station. All the while Dominic kept saying "Thy will be done". He died that very afternoon. He was 58 years old. He was beatified on October 27, 1963.
Famous Letter
Apart from his bringing Newman into the Catholic Church, probably his most famous act, Dominic is also known for his public letter "To the Professors of Oxford", welcoming their Catholic spirit in the "Oxford Movement", but telling them with powerful arguments that they can only achieve what God wants for them by coming into full communion with the See of Rome and obedience to the Pope. Blessed John Henry Newman and Blessed Dominic Barberi, pray for us!
Stands and Falls
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, both before and after his election to the See of Rome, has written and spoken extensively about the sacred liturgy. His work in this field derives from his theological expertise as well as from his extensive pastoral experience, supplemented by what he learned from his world-wide travels and international discussions. He has made his own the words of the Second Vatican Council: "From the liturgy, and especially from the Eucharist as from a fountain, grace is channeled to us, and the sanctification of men in Christ and the glorification of God, to which all other activities of the Church are directed as toward their goal, are most powerfully achieved."
The Pope says, "What we previously knew only in theory has become for us a practical experience: the Church stands and falls with the liturgy. When the adoration of the divine Trinity declines, when the faith no longer appears in its fullness in the liturgy of the Church, when man’s words, his thoughts, his intentions are suffocating him, the faith will have lost the place where it is expressed and where it dwells. For that reason, the true celebration of the sacred liturgy is the center of any renewal of the Church whatever."
The Holy Father states, "Theology of the liturgy means that God acts through Christ in the liturgy, and that we cannot act but through Him and with Him. Of ourselves, we cannot construct the way to God. This way does not open up unless God Himself becomes the way. And again, the ways of man which do not lead to God are non-ways. In the liturgy the Word Himself speaks to us, and not only does He speak, He comes with His Body and His Soul, His Flesh and His Blood, His Divinity and His Humanity, in order to unite us to Himself, to make of us one single body. In the Christian liturgy, the whole history of salvation, even more, the history of all human searching for God is present, assumed, and brought to its goal. The Christian liturgy is a cosmic liturgy. It embraces the whole of creation which ‘awaits with impatience the revelation of the sons of God’ (Romans 8:9)."
Kneeling
The Pope uses the gesture of kneeling to draw attention to the cosmic nature of our Catholic liturgy. "I would like to refer the gesture which is central to worship... namely, the practice of kneeling. We know that the Lord knelt to pray (Luke 22:41), that Stephen (Acts of the Apostles 7:60), Peter (Acts of the Apostles 9:40, and Paul (Acts of the Apostles 20:36) did so too. The hymn to Christ in Philippians (2:6-11) speaks of the cosmic liturgy as bending of the knee at the name of Jesus, seeing in it a fulfillment of the Isaian prophecy (Isaiah 45:23) of the sovereignty of the God of Israel. In bending the knee at the name of Jesus, the Church is acting in all truth. She is entering into the cosmic gesture, paying homage to the Victor and thereby going over to the Victor’s side. For in bending the knee we signify that we are imitating and adopting the attitude of ‘Him, Who, though He was in the form of God...yet humbled Himself unto death.’ In this way, by combining the prophetic word of the Old Covenant and the manner of life of Jesus Christ, the Letter to the Philippians has taken up the sign of kneeling, which it regards as the appropriate posture for Christians to adopt at the name of Jesus, and has given it a cosmic significance in salvation history. Here the bodily gesture attains the status of a confession of faith in Christ. Words could not replace such a confession."
Cosmic
Pope Benedict XVI says, "If we can describe the central meaning of the Christian liturgy as the ‘Feast of the Resurrection’, its formative core is worship. In worship death is overcome and love is made possible. Worship is truth. It follows that the liturgy has a cosmic and universal dimension. The (Catholic) community does not become a community by mutual interaction. It receives its being as a gift from an already existing completeness, a totality. This is why liturgy cannot be ‘made’. This is why it simply has to be received as a given reality and continually revitalized. This is why its universality is expressed in a form binding on the whole Church, committed to the local congregation in the form of a ‘rite’. As a `Feast’ liturgy goes beyond the realm of what can be made and manipulated... The obligatory character of the essential parts of the liturgy guarantees the true freedom of the faithful. It makes sure that they are not victims of something fabricated by an individual or a group, that they are sharing in the same liturgy that binds the priest, the Bishop, and the Pope."
"Christian liturgy is cosmic liturgy, as Saint Paul tells us in the Letter to the Philippians. It must never renounce this dignity, however attractive it may seem to work with small groups and construct home made liturgies. What is exciting about Christian liturgy is that it lifts us up out of our narrow sphere and lets us share in the truth. The aim of all liturgical renewal must be to bring to light this liberating greatness."
Active Participation
The Holy Father at many times and places has spoken and written about the words "active participation" which the Second Vatican Council borrowed from Pope Saint Pius X, who, in his encyclical "Tra le solicitudine", declared that "the primary and indispensable source of the true Christian spirit is active participation in the public worship of the Church (the liturgy)." The Pope, however, says this concept often is "fatally narrowed down, giving the impression that active participation is only present where there is evidence of external activity-speaking, singing, preaching, other liturgical action." Even the Second Vatican Council, he points out, claims that silence too is a mode of active participation, as are receptivity, perception, being moved, etc. Claiming otherwise produces, he notes, a "diminished view of man which reduces him to what is verbally intelligible."
Pope Benedict XVI, in reference to the laity’s participation in the sacred liturgy, frequently cites Saint Paul’s saying, "I exhort you, therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God to present your bodies as a sacrifice, living, holy, pleasing to God, your spiritual service." He notes that the laity (and the clergy as well) in the words of Saint Paul (1 Corinthians 6:17) are to be in the liturgy "united to the Lord" thus becoming "one spirit with Him". Liturgically then, "there is only one action, His and ours, ours because we become one body and spirit with Him. The uniqueness of the Eucharistic liturgy lies precisely in the fact that God Himself is acting and that we are drawn into that action of God. Everything else is secondary. The liturgy derives its greatness from what it is, not from what we make of it. The liturgy is not an expression of the consciousness of a community... It is a revelation received in faith and prayer, and its measure is consequently the faith of the Church in which that revelation is received. What is essential is the link to the Church which, for her part, is united in faith in the Lord. The obedience of faith guarantees the unity of the liturgy beyond the frontiers of place and time, and so lets us experience the unity of the Church, the Church as the homeland of the heart."
Christ the King
It was in 1925 that Pope Pius XI instituted the Solemnity of Christ the King and inserted that celebration into the universal liturgical calendar of the Latin Rite. However, in commenting on this feastday, our present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI noted that its elements are not new but are deep in history. He said, "On the last Sunday of the liturgical year, we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King, a feast established relatively recently, but which has deep biblical and theological roots. The title "king" designating Jesus is very important in the Gospels and makes possible a complete interpretation of the figure of Jesus and of His mission of salvation. In this regard a progression can be noted. It starts with the expression "king of Israel" and extends to that of "Universal King, Lord of the cosmos and of history," thus exceeding by far the expectations of the Jewish People. It is yet again the mystery of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection that lies at the heart of this process of the revelation of His kingship."
"When Jesus is hung on the cross, the Jewish priests, scribes, and elders mocked Him, saying, ‘He is the king of Israel. Let Him come down now from the cross and we will believe in Him’ (Matthew 27:42). In fact it is precisely as the Son of God, that Jesus freely gives Himself up to His passion. The cross is the paradoxical sign of His kingship, which consists in the loving will of God the Father in response to the disobedience of sin (John 19:19-22). It is in the very offering of Himself in the sacrifice of expiation that Jesus becomes King of the universe, as He Himself was to declare to the Apostles after the resurrection: ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me’ (Matthew 28:18). Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of a carpenter, is so intrinsically king that the title ‘king’ has actually become His name. The ‘subject’ of the liturgy’s intrinsic beauty is Christ Himself, risen and glorified in the Holy Spirit, Who includes the Church in his work."
Power
The Holy Father goes on to rhetorically ask, "In what does the power of Jesus Christ the King consist? It is not the power of the kings or of the great people of this world. It is rather the divine power to give eternal life, to liberate from evil, to defeat the dominion of death. It is the power of love that can draw good from evil, that can melt a hardened heart, that can bring peace amid the harshest conflict, and kindle hope in the thickest darkness. Jesus Himself is the son of David, the king. God entered mankind in Him and espoused the cause of mankind in Him. If we look closely at this matter we can see that this is the fundamental form of God’s activity regarding humanity. By calling ourselves Christians, we label ourselves as followers of this King, as people who recognize Him as their King."
The Holy Father goes on to draw an important conclusion from those premises, a conclusion that should become more vivid for us each year on the Solemnity of Christ the King. Each human being "must make a choice. Who do I want to follow, God or the evil one, truth or falsehood? Choosing Christ, of course, does not guarantee success according to the world’s criteria, but assures the peace and joy that He alone can give. This is demonstrated in every epoch by the experience of numerous men and women who, in Christ’s name and in the name of truth and justice, are able to oppose the enticements of earthly powers with their different marks, to the point that some sealed their fidelity with martyrdom. The feast of Christ the King is not a feast for those who are subjugated but rather a feast of those who know they are truly free (John 8:32 & 18:37) and are in the hands of the One Who writes straight with crooked lines."
Echo
Pope Benedict XVI, in his writing and speaking about Christ the King, beautifully echoes what his predecessors in the See of Peter had previously declared. Pope Pius XII said, "In the recognition of the royal prerogatives of Christ and in the return of individuals and of society to the law of His truth and His love lies the only way to salvation." The Pope also echoes what many of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church have remarked about our Lord’s kingship. For instance, the old and holy Bishop of Smyrna in the second century, Saint Polycarp, when he was told that he had to revile Jesus or be killed, said, "Eighty-six years I have served Him and He has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King Who has saved me?"
Saint Augustine of Hippo preached, "Christ became our King not to exact tribute, not to equip armies, not to subdue visible foes, but rather that He might rule over men’s souls, counsel them about eternity, and lead to the kingdom of heaven those who would believe in Him, hope in Him, and love Him." Saint Cyril of Alexandria wrote, "Christ has dominion over all creatures, a dominion not seized by violence nor usurped from anyone, but one that is His by His essence and by His nature." Pope Pius XI observed, "Since Jesus unites in His divine Person a total and complete human nature with His eternal divine nature, in what is technically called the hypostatic union, He is not only to be adored as God by angels and men, but He is also to be obeyed and worshipped by angels and men as Man."
Through Scripture
The kingship of Christ is proclaimed throughout the New Testament, beginning with the annunciation, when Gabriel told Mary He was to have the "throne of David His father," and would be "king over the House of Jacob forever" (Luke 1:32-33).
The Magi came looking for "the king of the Jews" (Matthew 2:2). While He walked on earth He was called "the son of David", and the proclamation of His kingship was especially apparent on the first Palm Sunday. On the first Good Friday He explicitly told Pontius Pilate "You have said it. I am a King" (John 18:37). He explained that the beginning of His kingdom was underway in His Church, but the Catholic Church is only the kingdom in embryonic form. Therefore, we, His disciples, must pray daily "Thy kingdom come" (Matthew 6:10).
Our Savior told us that, although His kingdom is "not of this world" (John 18:36), nevertheless its music can and should be heard from that other and better world which is our true homeland and where He reigns seated at the right hand of God the Father.. So that music from heaven can be heard more clearly, we pray and beseech God at Mass on our annual celebration of Christ the King that He will bring about the completeness of His kingdom in our midst, "a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, peace, and love." As we recite in the Creed at our Sunday Masses, based on what He has promised us will happen at end of time: "Of His kingdom there will be no end".
Advent - Time
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, preaching about the First Sunday of Advent, says that, as we begin a new liturgical year, "this season invites us to reflect on the dimension of time, which always exerts great fascination over us. We all say we do not have enough time because the pace of daily life has become frenetic for everyone. In this regard, the Church has some good news to bring. God gives us His time. We always have little time, especially for the Lord. We do not know how (or sometimes we do not want) to find it. Well, God has time for us! This is the first thing that the beginning of the liturgical year makes us rediscover with ever new amazement. Yes, God gives us His time, because He entered our history with His Word and with His works of salvation to open it to eternity, to make it become a covenantal history."
"In this perspective, already in itself time is a fundamental sign of God’s love, a gift that man, as with everything else, is able to make the most of, or, on the contrary, to waste, to take in its significance or to neglect with obtuse superficiality."
Three Time Points
The Successor of Saint Peter notes, "There are three great points in time which delineate the history of salvation: at the beginning, creation; then the incarnation-redemption at the center; and at the end the "parousia". The final coming that also includes the last judgment. However, these three moments should not be viewed merely in chronological succession. In fact, creation is at the origin of all things, but it also continues and is actuated through the whole span of cosmic becoming until the end of time. So too, although the incarnation-redemption occurred at a specific moment in history, the period of Jesus’s journey on earth, it nevertheless extends its radius of action to all preceding time and to all that is to come. And, in their turn, the final coming and the last judgment, which were decisively anticipated precisely in the cross of Christ, exercise their influence on the conduct of the people of every age."
"The liturgical season of Advent celebrates the coming of God in its two moments. It first invites us to reawaken our expectation of Christ’s glorious return. Then, as Christmas approaches, it calls us to welcome the Word made Man for our salvation. Yet, the Lord comes into our lives continually. How timely then is Jesus’ call which, on the First Sunday of Advent, is powerfully proposed to us: "Watch" (Mark 13:33-37). It is addressed to the disciples but also to everyone, because each one, at a time known to God alone, will be called to account for his life. This involves a proper detachment from earthly goods, sincere repentance for one’s errors, active charity to one’s neighbor, and, above all, a humble and confident entrustment to the hands of God, our tender and merciful Father."
Waiting
The Bishop of Rome, in words that one can find useful in meditating around a family Advent wreath, also remarks, "One aspect of Advent is a waiting that is full of hope. In this, Advent enables us to understand the content and meaning of Christian time and history as such. Man is always waiting in his life. Mankind has never been able to cease hoping for better times. Christians have always hoped that the Lord will always be present in our history and that He will gather up all our tears and all our troubles so that everything will be explained and fulfilled in His kingdom. At the same time, however, we discover how many different ways there are of waiting. When time itself is not filled with a present that is meaningful, waiting becomes unbearable. If we look forward to something that does not touch us now in any way, if , in other words, we have nothing here and now and the present is completely empty, every second of our life seems too long. Waiting itself becomes too heavy a burden to bear when we cannot be sure whether we have anything at all to wait for. When, on the other hand, time itself is meaningful and every moment contains something especially valuable, our joyful anticipation of the greater experience that is still to come, makes what we have in the present even more precious and we are carried by an invisible power beyond the present moment. Advent helps us to wait with precisely this kind of waiting. It is the essentially Christian form of waiting and hoping."
"Thus Advent means commemorating the first coming of the Lord in the Flesh, with His definitive return already in our minds, and at the same time it means recognizing that Christ is present in our midst making Himself our travelling Companion in the life of the Catholic Church, which celebrates His mystery. In this perspective, Advent becomes for all Christians a time of expectation and hope, a privileged time for listening and reflection, as long as we let ourselves be guided by the liturgy, which invites us to advance to meet the Lord Who comes."
Prepare a Welcome
The Pope says that in Advent we should be "nourished by the word of God in order to be helped to see the world with different eyes, to interpret the individual events of life and history as words that God addresses to us, as signs of His love that assure us of His closeness to every situation. This awareness should prepare us to welcome Him when He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and His kingdom will have no end."
"Come, Lord Jesus (Revelation 22:20) is the ardent invocation of the Christian community of the early days and it must also become the aspiration of the Church in every epoch, which longs for and prepares herself for the encounter with her Lord. Come today, Lord, we should pray. Come to enlighten us, to give us peace, to help us triumph over violence. Come precisely in these weeks of Advent. Let us see Your face, Lord, and we shall be saved! (Psalm 79:3)."
"Advent is the season of the presence and expectation of the eternal. For this reason it is in a particular way a period of joy, an interiorized joy that no suffering can diminish. It is joy in the fact that God made Himself a Child. This joy, invisibly present within us, encourages us to journey on with confidence. The Lord Jesus came in the past, comes in the present, and will come again in the future. He embraces all the dimensions of time because He died and rose. He is the Living One. While He shares our human precariousness, He remains forever and offers us the stability of God Himself. He is Flesh like us and Rock like God."
The Holy Father has often urged us not to become slaves to consumerism and to keep from making our Christmas preparations nothing but "a marketer’s paradise." Listening to him and heeding his words can assist us in restoring to some extent the season of Advent to its proper and appropriate spiritual dimension in our lives, to heading off the encroaching and enveloping secularism that seems to be, like an evil cancer, eating into the reality of our annual celebration of the Solemnity of the Nativity, and to making our Christmas not superficially, but profoundly and supernaturally merry. May it be so.
Two Elements
Historically and traditionally the sacred liturgy in the Latin Rite presents the figure of Saint John the Baptist, the son of Saint Elizabeth, the Virgin Mary’s cousin, (Luke 1:5; 2:36), and Saint Zachariah, the Jewish priest, (Luke 1:8-9), as one of the most significant Advent personalities, to be pondered and listened to across the centuries by Christians of every time and place, when they annually prepare themselves for the coming of Christ anew by grace at Christmas and wait for His ultimate coming at the end of time. As John once prepared the world for our Lord’s first coming, so his words and intercession are meant to prepare us Catholics for these other "comings" of our Savior to us.
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, remarks about the precision with which the Evangelists situate John the Baptist in human history, citing as they do the imperial reign of Tiberias Caesar, the governorship of Pontius Pilate, the kingship of the three sons who succeeded Herod the Great (Herod, the namesake, in Galilee, Philip in Ituraea and Traconitis, and Lysania in Abilene), and the time of the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiphas. The Pope says "Two things attract our attention here. The first is the abundance of references to all the political and religious leaders of Palestine in the years 27-28 A.D." The Evangelists "wanted to warn those who might read or hear about it, that the Gospel is not a legend but an account of a true story, that Jesus of Nazareth is an historical figure Who fits into that precise context."
"The second noteworthy element is that, after ample historical introductions, the subject (of these Gospel passages) becomes the Spirit of God, presented as that Power Which comes down from heaven and settles through John the Baptist on Jesus."
Precursor
The Holy Father says, "John appears in the wilderness as a man dedicated to God. First of all, he preaches repentance, purification, and the gathering of the people for the coming of God. In a sense, this proclamation summarizes the whole of prophecy at the very moment when history is reaching its goal. His mission is to open the door for God, so that Israel is ready to welcome Him and to prepare for this hour in history. The important things are first his call to repentance, which continues what all the prophets said, and second his witness to Christ, which again makes prophecy concrete in the image of the lamb, which is the Lamb of God. Let us recall the stories of Abraham, the stories of Isaac, the sacrifices that involve a lamb, especially the paschal sacrifice, in which a lamb is sacrificed. These substitutes now find their fulfillment. Basically, the paschal lamb stands in the place of us men. Now Christ is sent by God to become the Paschal Lamb, and He shares our fate and thereby transforms it. John says that Christ is not just some historical personage, but is the One Who goes before us all, Who comes forth from the eternity of God and is an intimate Part of that eternity" (John 1:29).
The Bishop of Rome goes on to suggest that in Advent, "Let us gaze on John the Baptist. Challenging and active he stands before us, a type of the manly vocation. In harsh terms he demands "metanoia", a radical transformation of attitudes. Those who would be Christians must be transformed ever again. Our natural disposition, indeed, finds us always ready to assert ourselves, to pay like with like, to put ourselves at the center. Those who want to find God need, again and again, that inner conversion, that new direction. And, this applies also to the total outlook on life. Day by day we encounter the world of visible things. It assaults us through billboards, broadcasts, traffic, and all the activities of daily life, to such an enormous extent that we are tempted to assume there is nothing else but this."
"Yet, the truth is that what is invisible is greater and much more valuable than anything visible. One single soul, in Pascal’s beautiful words, is worth more than the entire visible universe. But, in order to have a living awareness of this, we need conversion. We need to turn around inside, as it were, to overcome the illusion of what is visible and to develop the feeling, ears, the eyes, for what is invisible. This has to be more important than anything that bombards us day after day with such exaggerated urgency. "Metanoite"! Change your attitude so that God may dwell in you and, through you, in the world. John the Baptist himself was not spared this painful process of change, of turning around."
Advent Advice
Pope Benedict XVI, who recently beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman in Birmingham, England, very often has cited and quoted him in his own works. Speaking of Advent, Newman said, "Year passes after year, silently. Christ’s coming is ever nearer than it was. O that as He comes nearer the earth, we may approach nearer to heaven. O my brethren, pray Him to give you a heart to seek Him in sincerity. Pray Him to make you in earnest. You have one work only, to bear your cross after Him. Resolve in His strength to do so. Resolve to be no longer beguiled by mere "shadows of religion", by words, by disputings, or by notions, or high professions, or by excuses or by the world’s promises or threats."
"Pray Him to give you an honest and good heart.... and without waiting begin at once to obey Him with the best heart you have. Any obedience is better than none. Any religious profession which is disjoined from obedience is mere pretence and deceit. All your duties are obediences. You have to seek His face and obedience is the only way of seeking Him. If you believe the truths He has revealed, if you are to regulate yourselves by His precepts, are to be frequent in His ordinances, are to adhere to His Church, what is it, except because He bid you? And, to do what He bids is to obey Him and to obey Him is to approach Him. Every act of obedience is an approach, an approach to Him Who is not far off, though He seems so, but is close behind the visible screen of things which hide Him from us. Earth and sky are but a veil going between Him and us. The day will come when He will rend that veil and show Himself to us. And then, according as we have waited for Him, will He recompense us. But, if we have forgotten Him, He will not know us. But, ‘blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He comes will find watching. He will gird Himself and make them sit down to eat and will serve them Himself. If He comes in the second watch or the third and finds His servants watching, blessed will those servants be’ (Luke 12:37-38). May this be the portion of every one of us. It is hard to attain, but woeful to fail. Life is short, death is certain, and the world to come is everlasting."
Two Big Ones
Each year, as we in the Church celebrate the weeks before Christmas in the beautiful and spiritually enriching liturgical season of Advent, our journey toward the Solemnity of our Savior’s Nativity is enlivened and assisted by two special feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary. While neither of them are directly related to Advent and Christmas, they, like all Marian feasts, cannot but be related to the Christmas mystery and the reality of the incarnation of God’s eternal Word, because God chose Mary to be an important instrument and part of that mystery and reality. After Christmas, on its Octave Day the liturgical calendar celebrates the Solemnity of Mary’s Divine Maternity. But it is before Christmas when we celebrate what a little boy in his CCD class once called "the two big ones", the Solemnity of her Immaculate Conception on December 8th, and her apparitions in Mexico in 1531, to Saint Juan Diego, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, December 12th.
The words which the Blessed Virgin Mary addressed to Saint Juan Diego contain also for us, especially during some of the pre-Christmas stress and strain that many undergo at this time of the year, a measure of consolation and reassurance: "My dear little son, I love you. I desire you to know who I am. I am the ever-virgin Mary, Mother of the true God Who gives life and maintains its existence. He created all things. He is in all places. He is Lord of heaven and earth. I am your merciful Mother, the Mother of all those who live in this land, and of all mankind, and of all who love me, who cry to me, of those who have confidence in me. Here I will see their tears. I will console them and they will be at peace. Do not be distressed, my little son. Am I not here with you, I who am your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not one of your own kind?"
Pope Benedict XVI said, "What an immense joy to have Mary as our Mother! She is our guiding star in the storms of life. Every time we experience our frailty and the promptings of evil, we can turn to her and our hearts will receive light and comfort. Even in the trials of life, in the storms that cause faith and hope to vacillate, let us recall that we are her children and that she will help us to remember that our existence is deeply rooted in the infinite grace of God." The Pope notes, "Mary is a Mother whom anyone can dare to address in any kind of need in weakness or in sin, for she has an understanding for everything and is for everyone the open power of creative goodness. In her, God has impressed His own image."
Immaculate
Nine months before her birthday on September 8th, we also celebrate Mary’s conception in the womb of her mother, Saint Ann. This celebration, which always occurs in Advent because of the nine month interval, happens because God has revealed that from the first moment of Mary’s existence He decided to keep her free from all stain of sin, redeeming her in anticipation of Christ’s saving death and resurrection. Thus, it would only be the ever sinless Mary who would then be worthy to become the Ark of the New Covenant, the "Theotokos", the Mother of God, "our tainted nature’s solitary boast", the very special vessel and instrument for the miraculous and virginal conception and birth of Christ.
Blessed John Henry Newman said, "Who can estimate the holiness and perfection of her who was chosen to be the Mother of Christ? If to him that has, more is given, and holiness and divine favor go together, what must have been the transcendent purity of her, whom the Creator-Spirit condescended to overshadow with His miraculous presence? What must have been her gifts, who was chosen to be the only earthly relative of the Son of God, the only one He was bound by nature to revere, and who had the privilege of instructing Him day by day in His human nature as He grew in wisdom and stature? (Luke 2:51-52)."
Advent Connection
Saint Katharine Drexel said, "Our Lady, while she awaits the birth of her Child, appears to us as a perfect mystery of recollection and absorption in God. She bears the wonder of God below her heart. She is conscious that He dwells within her and she is full of tranquil faith in the angel’s message, in the signs of the nearness of the approaching Savior, Whom even she does not yet behold."
Caryll Houselander wrote, "Advent is the season of the secret, the secret growth of Christ, of divine Love growing in silence. For nine months the Baby grew within His Mother. By His own will she formed Him. She had nothing to give Him but herself. She carried Him and prayed. Washing, weaving, kneading, sweeping, she carried Him and prayed. Breaking and eating the bread and drinking of wine of the country, she gave Him nourishment. Jesus depended on Mary. He made Himself absolutely helpless. Her breathing was His breathing. Her heartbeat was His heartbeat. She herself was to be His food, His warmth, His shade, His home, His cradle, and His rest." A holy priest observed that "this means we must be conscious especially in Advent that we are called to be true to Christ, carrying Him in our hearts as He was with Mary. He depends on us to spread His love among men. As Christ’s followers we are obliged to bring Him to others in our world, as Mary brought Him to Elizabeth, her cousin, and so as well to Elizabeth’s yet unborn baby, John the Baptist" (Luke 1:39-45).
Saint Katharine Drexel said of Advent, "Our inner world conceals a wealth of sacred mysteries. We bear God within our souls by grace and with Him the kingdom of heaven and eternal life. All this dwells within us although it is invisible. Yet we must not yield to doubt and wavering because we cannot see God. His traces are there for us to see in the whole of creation, giving fresh life and growth everywhere. We live in the midst of innumerable mysteries which are known by faith alone. This fact should constantly spur us to Christian activity and increase our joy in God, while banishing all melancholy and dejection. Saint Paul instructs us and the Church during Advent reminds us that joy is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and it our duty to "rejoice in the Lord always" (Philippians 4:4). "Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into His presence singing with exceeding great joy!" So we are commanded by Sacred Scripture.
Speaking of Mary
Archbishop Fulton Sheen, speaking of Mary, said, "Here was a Mother, a Madonna, who did not look up. She looked down to heaven, for This Child was heaven in her arms. This Child came not to save people from insecurity or to make them rich and powerful, but to save them from their sins. Hence, He was given the name Jesus, which means Savior. It was an irreplaceable name, before which the heavens and the earth tremble and before which our knees must bend and bow. God preexisted His own Mother...so we can understand that, when He took on human flesh and became a Baby, He climbed upon her as an ivory tower to kiss upon her lips a mystic rose."
The Third Mass
From the most ancient times, it has been the custom in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church for priests to offer three Masses on Christmas and to use a distinctly different prescribed liturgical text for each of those Masses. Pope Benedict XVI remarks that "in the Gospel of the third Christmas Mass, (called the Mass During the Day, in contrast with the second Mass, called the Mass at Dawn, and the first Mass, called the Mass at Midnight), the lovable and familiar elements of the story of Jesus Christ’s birth in the stable at Bethlehem seem to have been caught up into the foreign immensity of the mystery. We do not hear about the Child and His mother or about the shepherds and their sheep or about the song of the angels that proclaims to men the peace that comes from God’s glory. And yet, there are common elements. This Gospel too speaks of the light that shines in the darkness. It speaks of the glory of God, which we can see as grace in the incarnate Word, and it speaks of the Lord Who was not welcomed in His own home."
The Gospel passage for the third Mass of Christmas consists of the first eighteen verses of the Gospel according to Saint John, which is called the Prologue to his Gospel narrative. The great saints and doctors of the Church have said that the Gospel according to Saint John is the pearl of great price among the New Testament texts and the Prologue is the priceless heart of that pearl within that Gospel. Saint Augustine and Saint John Chrysostom both said that it is totally beyond the ability or power of any human being to have written such glorious words as are in the Prologue, and, therefore, they could only have come directly from God Himself. The Prologue is an utterly splendid poem and an extremely beautiful hymn. Because of its beauty, it had been a long standing custom from the earliest times for the priests of the Church to read it over sick people after anointing them and over newly baptized infants. It often was written down and placed in lockets which the early Christians then would wear around their necks, especially in times of danger or when travelling. For many centuries it was the final prayer (called the "last Gospel" - as it still is in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite) in the Latin Rite Mass, where it served as a blessing for people as they exited the church at the conclusion of Mass and as a form of thanksgiving after the Eucharistic sacrifice.
The Same
Our Holy Father notes, "If we listen more closely, we can perceive that the Gospel of the third Mass on Christmas Day is telling us exactly the same story as the Gospel of the first Mass on Christmas night, and we see that all the evangelists are relating one and the same Gospel, but approaching it from different angles. Luke and Matthew relate the earthly story, on the basis of which they allow us to see God’s hidden action. John, the eagle, looks from the vantage point of the mystery of God and shows how this mystery penetrates the stable and enters the flesh and blood of man. What does he wish to tell us? And, what does the Church intend to tell us about Christmas Day and, on the basis of this feast, about the entire year and, indeed, about our life as a whole, when she presents us with this solemn and hieratic text, although we rather might have expected the warm words of the story of Jesus’ birth?" Of course, as the Pope says, "This Gospel belongs from the earliest centuries to the Christmas liturgy because it contains the sentence that expresses the very reason for our joy and the real contents of the feast: ‘The Word became Flesh, and dwelt among us’ (John 1:14)."
Deep Celebration
The Supreme Pontiff preaches, "What we are celebrating at Christmas is not the birthday of some great man or other. There are many great men. Nor are we simply celebrating the mystery of what it is to be a child. It is, of course, true that the freshness, the purity, and openness of a child give us hope. We find the courage to trust that new possibilities lie ahead of man. But, if we cling too tightly to this aspect alone, seeing nothing more than the new beginning of life in a child, we risk ending up disillusioned and sad, for this newness too will be used up.... If all we had to celebrate was the idyll of a birth and a childhood, we would, in the last analysis, have no idyll at all. All that would remain would be the perennial cycle of death and birth, and one may ask whether in that case being born is not in fact rather a cause for sadness, since it leads only to death. This is why it is so important to realize that something more has happened here: the Word has become Flesh. Here, something utterly immense, something we could never have thought up for ourselves has happened: God has become one of us. He has united Himself to a human being so inseparably that this Man is genuinely God from God, Light from Light, while remaining true Man."
"The eternal Meaning of the world has come to us in so real a manner that we can touch Him and see Him (1 John 1:1). For what John calls ‘the Word’ also means in Greek ‘the Meaning’...and this Meaning addresses us, knows us, leads us. This Meaning is Itself a Person, the Son of the living God, Who was born in a stable in Bethlehem. Many people, indeed in some sense all of us, find this too good to be true. The Meaning has power. It is God and God is good, and is not some remote highest Being forever inaccessible. He is very close to us. We can call to Him. We can always reach Him. He has time for me, so much time that He lay as a Man in a crib and remains a Man for all eternity."
His Glory
The Bishop of Rome says, "He came a Child in order to break down our pride. Perhaps we would have capitulated before power and wisdom, but He does not want our capitulation. He wants our love. He wants to free us from our pride and thus make us truly free. Let us then allow the joy of Christmas to penetrate our souls. It is no illusion. It is the truth. The ultimate and genuine truth is beautiful and good. When men encounter it, they become good. The truth speaks to us in a Child Who is God’s own Son. The Gospel closes with the words: ‘We have beheld His glory’ (John 1:14). These could be the words of the shepherds and the words of Mary and Joseph describing their memory that night in Bethlehem." The Pope suggests these should be our words as we leave church after the Mass or Masses (many Catholics try to attend more than one Mass) on Christmas. ‘We have beheld His glory’. Pope Benedict says "These words explain what believing means. It means seeing His glory in the world."
There is probably no more appropriate time in the liturgical calendar than the annual Advent-Christmas period to read again and meditate on the wonderful and divinely inspired words of the magnificent Prologue to the Gospel according to Saint John.
Despite Obstacles
It would not be surprising if the mythical visitor from another planet, who comes to visit America at Christmas time, were to surmise that Christmas itself was nothing but a national holiday which is secular, sentimental, and commercial. He would be sure to note that elements of the pagan past, when heathen celebrations of the winter solstice annually took place, continue to abound in the current culture. And, still, in the words of the lovely Christmas essay of Therese Ickinger in "The Wanderer", he might also note that, despite such obstacles, even now "the wind remembers Eden".
"For men of bad will Christmas remains a story told by the fire for children and old women. Greed has exploited it. Avarice ever buys and sells the Christ in a hundred treacheries. Yet to it all, the eloquent stillness of the Child, the kind and beautiful face of His mother are answers to the world’s profanities. Let vanity wear her emerald eyes. Let ambition build a throne of alabaster. Let talent boast and knowledge preen her purple plumes. Let strength array its arms of might, charms beguile, wealth secure. Love comes in straw, a ragged Prince with a court of oxen, breathing low the ancient anthem of life. Love comes in whispers, a Presence Which invites without urging, a Reality, Which compels by appeal. Before the stable of Bethlehem the world shrinks to its true proportions. Before the manger man comprehends without words the futility of cave and castle alike, the tyranny of possession, the weakness of power, the meagerness of domain, the shortness of time, the all of God."
"It is the utterly confounding reality of the incarnation, totally without pretense, which appalls the non-believers. It is a Gift so enormous, yet so simple, that gratitude can only speak with tears. Silence is the hymn of adoration. Before the Word of God, the words of men fail. Learning seeks dispute, but faith kneels. Pride loses all its passion before the humility of God. A dark night, a single star, and Love is born."
What Happened
Saint Augustine, the great Bishop of Hippo in North Africa in the 5th century, preaching on Christmas, said, "Let no one believe that the Son of God was changed or transformed into the Son of Man, but rather let us believe that He, remaining the Son of God, was made the Son of Man, without loss of His divine substance but by the perfect assumption of the human substance. When the Word of God took on Flesh in the fullness of time that It might appear in our temporal life, Its eternity was not lost in the flesh, but It came to confer immortality on human flesh!"
Saint Augustine goes on, "Brethren, today, on Christmas, let us be happy. Let the nations rejoice and exult. Not the visible sun, but the sun’s invisible Creator gave us this Holy Day, when the Virgin Mother, from the fruitfulness of her womb and with her virginity preserved, brought forth Him Who was made visible for us and by Whom, invisibly, she herself had been created. Before He was made, He was. His was the power, because He is all-powerful, to be made and to remain as He always was. Abiding with His Father, He made for Himself a mother, and when He was made in the womb of His mother, He remained in the Heart of His Father. In short, It was One and the Same Who, from all time and forever, is the Son of God, begotten of the Father, but Who began to be the Son of Man by His birth of the Virgin Mary. Thus, was human nature added to the Son’s divine nature, united in one divine Person."
Other Fathers
Saint John Chrysostom said in a Christmas homily, "How shall I describe this birth to you? For, this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of days has become an Infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly throne now lies in a manger. He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners is now bound by an infants’ bands. He has decreed that ignominy shall become honor, infamy be clothed with glory, and total humiliation the measure of goodness. He assumed my body that I may be capable of His Word. Taking my flesh, He gives me His Spirit, and so, He bestowing and I receiving, He prepares for me the treasure of life. He takes my flesh to sanctify me. He gives me His Spirit that He might save me.
Pope Saint Leo the Great, speaking of Christmas, said, "What mind can comprehend this mystery? What tongue can describe this wondrous grace? Iniquity returns to the ways of innocence, old age to newness, strangers receive adoption as sons, and they without a claim enter upon an inheritance; the evil begin to live as righteous, the stingy become generous, the impure chaste, and earthly people heavenly minded. The descent of God to what was human has brought about the raising of man to what is divine."
Ickinger
Therese Ickinger writes of Christmas, "Upon our poverty He rests awhile. To the passerby the world is the same, but the clean of heart behold the splendor, and the humble hear the angels’ wings. Virtue becomes more compelling, vice more unthinkable. Human souls become more valuable, human sins more horrible. Love, born in silence and apart, calls us to a divine embrace."
"For we are the wheat of God, buried but alive. Darkness cannot harm us nor cold nor sometime friend nor tyrants’ heel nor terrors terrible. We are the grass of the resurrection, the children of springtime, the sons of summer. We sleep till He calls and then we shall arise and inherit the earth. Winds shall sing through us. Angels shall harvest us. On a golden sabbath upon the altar of His creation the eternal Priest shall pronounce His consecration upon us and pour His life into us. This is My Body He shall say to the Father. This is My Loved One, My Bride (the Catholic Church). Angels shall bend to us; stars shall descend to us, all the bells shall ring for us; all the earth sing for us. For Christ shall consume us and gather us into God. Christ was born on Christmas. Let us glorify Him and lift up our hearts, for we too were born on Christmas." And so, at Midnight Mass let us remember in faith that "the crib and the cross are now cups of gold which truly hold Christ as they did yesterday" in Bethlehem and on Golgotha. Mass, "the greatest miracle of all, is at once Christmas and Calvary, the hope of the huddled cave and the triumph of the empty tomb. It is for believers alone. Faith alone can perceive it."
This is the promise of Christmas and the meaning of Christ’s Mass. Dear readers, may your Christmas be for you and your loved ones, holy, blessed, and really merry!
What it is Not
Years ago, when I was a parish priest, I was approached by a lady who complained that her children did "not seem to get anything out of the Mass". It turned out that she had two children who were aged four and five. I was somewhat taken aback by her lament, but then it occurred to me that her basic problem was that she really had no idea what the liturgy was about. She evidently considered it to be nothing more than some form of entertainment for her amusement and that of her children. Unfortunately, her mistaken attitude, especially in the past forty years in the Church’s history, seems to have crept into the minds, perhaps sometimes subconsciously, of too many Catholics.
Particularly in America and in the whole of our Western culture, abundant and mostly passive entertainment has overtaken an exceptionally large portion of our human activity and time. Television and movie films have probably made the biggest contribution in pushing people in that direction. It is no wonder then that for some such people going to Mass is simply like having to watch a non-exciting and highly uninteresting television presentation without the possibility of a "remote" to change channels. Since modern parents also often use television as an inexpensive diversion for children, even those who have not reached the use of reason, the attitude and complaint of that lady, upon reflection, were not all that surprising.
Another contributing factor toward this misapprehension about Catholic liturgical practice is the heavy influence of Protestantism. In many, perhaps most, of the Protestant denominations the worship service, sometimes shown on television, takes on the character of a type of performance. The sermon of the minister is the main feature and the musical performers and singers are located and considered by the "audience" as being "on stage". Even the architectural construction of the church buildings gives the impression of a sort of theater which is meant to draw attention to people and not really at all to God.
Pope’s Words
In his recent book-length interview with the German journalist, Peter Seewald, (in English, "Light of the World", published by Ignatius Press), our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI remarked, "The liturgy is something that is given in advance. It is not about our doing something, about our demonstrating our creativity, in other words, about displaying everything we can do. Liturgy is precisely not a show, a piece of theater, a spectacle. Rather it gets its life from the Other. This has to become evident too. That is why the fact that the ecclesial form has been given in advance is so important. It can be reformed in matters of detail, but it cannot be reinvented every time by the community. It is not a question of self-production. The point is to go out of and beyond ourselves, to give ourselves to Him and to let ourselves be touched by Him."
The Pope goes on to say, "In this sense it’s not just the expression of this form that is important, but also its communality. This form can exist in different rites, but it must always contain that element that precedes us, that comes from the whole Church’s faith, from the whole of her tradition, from the whole of her life, and does not just spring from the fashion of the moment." The Holy Father says this does not mean that we have to remain in a state of passivity. "Because it’s precisely this approach, you see, that really challenges us to let ourselves to be snatched out of the mere momentary situation, to enter into the totality of the faith, to understand it, to take part in it interiorly, and, on that basis, to give the liturgy the worthy form that makes it beautiful and a source of joy. ....Of course, it is important that we give the whole (liturgical celebration) a beautiful form (especially in music), but always in the service of what precedes us, and not as something we ourselves are first supposed to produce."
Religion
The sacred liturgy (the Mass, the sacraments, the sacramentals, the Divine Office, etc.) must always be seen as the supreme act of our Catholic Religion. Religion can be theologically categorized in various ways. One way for Saint Thomas Aquinas was to see religion as the highest form of the virtue of justice. The virtue of justice moves us to give to everyone what is due to him. Religion is giving to God what is His due, namely worship and adoration, thanksgiving and gratitude, contrition and sorrow for sin, along with appropriate petitions, humbly begging and beseeching Him for supernatural and spiritual needs and desires, as well as for those which are temporal, physical, and material.
This is why Pope Benedict says, "The Church becomes visible for people in many ways, in charitable activity or in missionary projects, but the place where the Church is actually experienced most of all as Church is the liturgy. And, that is also as it should be. At the end of the day, the point of the Church is to turn us toward God and to enable God to enter into the world. The liturgy is that act in which we believe that He enters our lives and that we touch Him. It is the act in which what is really essential takes place. We come into contact with God. He comes to us and we are illumined by Him."
The Bishop of Rome teaches, "The liturgy gives us strength and guidance in two forms. On the one hand, we hear His Word, which means we really hear Him speaking and receive His instructions about the path we should follow. On the other hand, He gives us Himself in the transformed Bread. Of course, the words can always differ, the bodily attitudes can differ. The Eastern Church, for instance, uses certain gestures that differ from the ones familiar to us.... The essential point is that the Word of God and the reality of the sacrament really occupy the center stage, that we don’t bury God underneath our words and our ideas, and that the liturgy does not turn into an occasion to display ourselves."
Continuity
Recently, the Holy Father has emphasized the "hermeneutic of continuity" in all of Catholic life, including the liturgy. He states emphatically, "The (Second Vatican) Council has not created any new matter for belief, let alone replaced an old belief with a new one. Fundamentally, the Council sees itself as continuing and deepening the work of earlier Councils, in particular those of Trent and Vatican One. Its sole concern is to facilitate the same faith under changed circumstances, to revitalize it. That is why the reform of the liturgy aimed at making the faith’s expression more transparent. But, what we have is a renewed expression of the one same faith, not a change in faith." The Second Vatican Council stated, "The liturgy is the outstanding means by which the faithful can express in their lives and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church." We attend Mass to pray and worship God, not to be amused or entertained.
Feminine Pronoun
Because of liturgical translation problems, especially in the English-speaking part of the world, where "political correctness" and some ideological distortions unfortunately had crept into certain liturgical texts, Pope John Paul II had sent a mandate on February 1, 1997, to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (the department of the Holy See that assists the Holy Father in liturgical matters) to draw up a new set of regulations for those who would be commissioned to translate liturgical texts into the vernacular languages. These new regulations would replace a document entitled "Comme le prevoit", which had been in use since the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council in December of 1965. The result, after widespread international consultation, was a document in Latin entitled "Liturgiam Authenticam", finished on March 20, 2001, which the Pope then approved and ordered published and placed into effect on March 28, 2001. "Liturgiam Authenticam" now must guide and direct all liturgical translations in the Church.
When, at the beginning of next Advent, the new official English language edition of the Roman Missal ("editio tertia typica") will begin to be used in the United States, the ICEL (International Commission of English in the Liturgy) translation will be seen as conforming to the rules set out in "Liturgicam Authenticam". One of those rules (31-d) states: "Insofar as possible in a given vernacular language, the use of the feminine pronoun, rather than the neuter, is to be maintained in referring to the Church." While this rule and usage will affect primarily the priest-celebrant at Mass, it is good for all to reflect on the theological and catechetical significance of requirement.
‘She’ Not ‘It’
As symbolized supremely by the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Catholic Church is a virgin and mother, the Body and the Bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:22-32). Therefore, it is most inappropriate to use the pronoun "it" when talking about the Church, but most suitable to use the feminine "she" when doing so. This usage conforms much better to our Catholic traditions and customs, and obviously it also was the way the Doctors and Fathers of the Church spoke and wrote about her. It also is a more accurate and correct translation of the official Latin text.
Honorius of Autun wrote, "The glorious Virgin Mary stands for the Church, Who is both virgin and mother. She is mother because every day she presents God with new children in Baptism, being made fruitful by the Holy Spirit. At the same time, she is virgin because she does not allow herself to be in any way corrupted by the defilement of heresy, preserving inviolate the integrity of the faith. In the same way Mary was mother in bringing forth Jesus and virgin in remaining intact after bearing Him. The one gave salvation to the people while the other gives the people to their Savior. The one carried Life in her womb, while the other carries Him in the wellspring of the sacraments. What was once granted in the flesh to Mary now is granted spiritually to the Church, Who conceives the Word in her unfaltering faith, bears Him in a spirit freed from all corruption, and contains Him in a soul overshadowed by the power of the Most High. Everything that is written of the Church may also be read as applying to Mary, and what is written of our Lady can also, as to essentials, be read as applying to the Church."
Mother Church
Cardinal Henri de Lubac writes, "The Church is a community, but in order to be that community she is first of all a hierarchy. The Church, which we call our mother, is not some ideal and unreal Church, but this hierarchical Church herself, not the Church as we might dream her but the Church as she exists in fact, here and now. Thus, the obedience which we pledge her in the persons of those who rule her cannot be anything else but a filial obedience. She has not brought us to birth only so as to abandon us and let us take our chance on our own, but rather she guards us and keeps us together in her maternal heart. We continually live by her Spirit, as children in the womb of their mothers live on the substance of their mothers. And every true Catholic will have a feeling of tender piety towards her. He will love to call her "mother", the title that sprang from the hearts of her first children, as the texts of Christian antiquity bear witness on so many occasions." The Cardinal tells us to repeat with Saint Cyprian and Saint Augustine, "He who has not the Church for mother cannot have God for Father."
When in the future celebrations of the liturgy we use or hear used that feminine pronoun for the Church, we might use the occasion to recall the beautiful words of Cardinal de Lubac: "The Church is the mother of love at its most lovely, of healthy fear, of divine knowledge, and of holy hope. Without her our thought is diffuse and hazy, but she gathers it together into a firm unity. She scatters the darkness in which men either slumber or despair or pitifully shape as they please their fantasies of the infinite. Without discouraging us from any task, she protects us from the deceptive myths of the churches made by the hands of men and spares us from the aberrations and revulsions that follow them."
"She saves us from destruction in the presence of God. She is the living ark, the gate of the east. She is the unflawed mirror of the activity of the Most High. As the beloved of the Lord of the universe, she is initiated into His secrets and teaches us whatever pleases Him. Her supernatural splendor never fades, even in the darkest hours, and it is thanks to her that our darkness is bathed in light. Through her the priest goes up every day to the altar of God Who gives joy to our youth. The glory of Lebanon is in her under the obscurity of her earthly covering. Each day she gives us Him Who is the Way and the Truth, and it is through her that we have hope of Life in Him. The memory of her is sweeter than honey, and he who hears her shall never be put to confusion. For she is the holy mother, the unique mother, the immaculate mother, the great mother. She is the holy Church, the true Eve, sole true mother of all the living." She is "the pillar and ground of truth" (1 Timothy 3:15).
Gelasian
Speaking of Baptism. the old Gelasian Sacramentary says, "As Mary thrilled with joy at the birth of God-made-Man, so the Church thrills with joy in the mystery of the birth of her children in Baptism." Eusebius, the first church historian, said that already early in the second century, the Christians of Vienne and Lyons spoke of the "holy Church as our virginal mother". Inscribed on the wall of the great baptistry next to the Cathedral of Rome, the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, are the words: "At this fountain-spring the Church, our mother, bears in her virginal womb the children she has conceived under the Breath of God." The use of the feminine pronoun for the Catholic Church in the new and better translation in the liturgy can have profound implications for us and should perhaps cause us to reflect more deeply on the meaning of what we say in the Creed: "I believe in the holy Catholic Church!"
The Word
Last September 30th, on the Feast of Saint Jerome, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, issued a "Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church", to which he gave the title in Latin "Verbum Domini" ("The Word of the Lord"). This exhortation he directed to the world’s "Bishops, Clergy, Consecrated Religious, and Lay Faithful". The splendid document is the result of the work of the Twelfth Ordinary General Assembly of the International Synod of Bishops. In composing the document, the Pope, along with adding his own comments and ideas, summarized and synthesized the work of that gathering of Catholic Bishops, elected by Bishops’ Conferences from around the world. This included the general outline ("lineamenta"), the working paper ("instrumentum laboris"), the presentations ("relationes"), the speeches and written presentations of the Synod Fathers, their final "Message to the People of God", and the specific proposals that the Bishops gave to the Pope ("propositiones"), for his consideration.
One very important and central part of the Holy Father’s document is entitled "The Liturgy, Privileged Setting for the Word of God". In it, the Supreme Pontiff says, "In considering the Church as the home of the word, attention must first be given to the sacred liturgy, for the liturgy is the privileged setting in which God speaks to us in the midst of our lives. He speaks today to His people, who hear and respond. Every liturgical action is by its very nature steeped in Sacred Scripture. The Bishop of Rome then cites the Constitution on the Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council ("Sacrosanctum Concilium"): Sacred Scripture is of the greatest importance in the celebration of the liturgy. From it are taken the readings, which are explained in the homily, and the psalms that are sung. From Scripture the petitions, prayers, and liturgical hymns receive their inspiration and substance. From Scripture the liturgical actions and signs draw their meaning. Even more, it must be said that Christ Himself is present in His word, since it is He Who speaks when Scripture is read in Church."
The Liturgy
The Pope then quotes the introduction in the Lectionary used in the Masses of the Latin Rite: "The liturgical celebration becomes the continuing, complete, and effective presentation of God’s word. The word of God, constantly proclaimed in the liturgy, is always a living and effective word through the power of the Holy Spirit. It expresses the Father’s love that never fails in its effectiveness towards us." The Holy Father notes, "Thanks to the Paraclete, the word of God becomes the foundation of the liturgical celebration, and is the rule and support of all our life. The working of the same Holy Spirit brings home to each person individually the fact that everything which is in the proclamation of the word of God is spoken for the good of the whole gathering. In strengthening the unity of all, the Holy Spirit at the same time fosters a diversity of gifts and furthers their multiform operation." He remarks, "To understand the word of God then, we need to appreciate and experience the essential meaning and value of the liturgical action. A faith-filled understanding of Sacred Scripture must always refer back to the liturgy in which the word of God is celebrated as a timely and living word. In the liturgy the Church faithfully adheres to the way Christ Himself read and explained the Sacred Scriptures, beginning with His coming forth in the synagogue and His urging all to search the Scriptures (Luke 4:16-21; 24:25-35; 44-49)".
Pedagogy & Silence
Pope Benedict XVI says, "Here one sees the sage pedagogy of the Church, which proclaims and listens to the Sacred Scriptures following the rhythm of the liturgical year. This expansion of God’s word in time takes place above all in the Eucharistic celebration and in the Liturgy of the Hours. At the center of everything the paschal mystery shines forth, and around it radiate all the mysteries of Christ and the history of salvation which become sacramentally present. By recalling in this way the mysteries of redemption, the Church opens up to the faithful the riches of the saving actions and merits of her Lord and makes them present in all times, allowing the faithful to enter into contact with them and to be filled with the grace of salvation."
The Holy Father also writes about the "importance of silence in relation to the word of God and its reception in the lives of the faithful. The word, in fact, can only be spoken and heard in silence, outward and inward. Ours is not an age which fosters recollection. At times one has the impression that people are afraid of detaching themselves, even for a moment, from the mass media. For this reason, it is necessary nowadays that the people of God be educated in the value of silence. Rediscovering the centrality of God’s word in the life of the Church also means rediscovering a sense of recollection and inner repose. The great patristic tradition teaches us that the mysteries of Christ all involve silence. Only in silence can the word of God find a home in us, as it did in Mary, woman of the word and, inseparably, woman of silence. Our liturgies must facilitate this attitude of authentic listening. The importance of all this is particularly evident in the "liturgy of the word", which should be celebrated in a way that favors meditation. Silence, when called for, should be considered part of the celebration."
Holy Eucharist
The Pope remarks, "The profound unity of word and Eucharist is grounded in the witness of Scripture, attested to by the Fathers of the Church, and reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council." To illustrate this the Holy Father cites a number of appropriate scriptural passages (John 6:22-69; Exodus 33:11; Psalm 119; Luke 24:13-35; etc.) He goes on to write, "From these accounts it is clear that Scripture itself points us towards an appreciation of its own unbreakable bond with the Eucharist. It can never be forgotten that the divine word, read and proclaimed by the Church, has as its one purpose the sacrifice of the New Covenant and the banquet of grace, that is, the Eucharist. Word and Eucharist are so deeply bound together that we cannot understand one without the other. The Word of God sacramentally takes flesh in the event of the Eucharist. The Eucharist opens us to an understanding of Scripture just as Scripture for its part illumines and explains the mystery of the Eucharist. Unless we acknowledge the Lord’s real presence in the Eucharist, our understanding of Scripture remains imperfect. For this reason the Church has honored the word of God and the Eucharistic mystery with the same reverence, although not with the same worship, and has always and everywhere insisted upon and sanctioned such honor."
Music
The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council considered music to have such a high importance in the sacred liturgy that they devoted an entire chapter to that subject in the Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy ("Sacrosanctum Concilium"), placing it prior to and separate from their treatment of other sacred art and sacred furnishings. The Council declared, "The musical tradition of the Universal Church is a treasure of immeasurable value, greater even than that of any other art. The main reason for this pre-eminence is that, as sacred melody united to words, it forms a necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy." Pope Benedict XVI, who, when still a young priest, was present at the entire Council as a "peritus" ("expert"), observed, "The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy does not see music as merely an addition or ornamentation on the liturgy, but as liturgy itself, an integrating part of the complete liturgical action." The Council teaches, "Sacred music increases in holiness to the degree that it is intimately linked with liturgical action, winningly expresses prayerfulness, promotes solidarity, and enriches sacred rites with heightened solemnity."
The GIRM (The General Introduction to the New Roman Missal, which will come into obligatory use in the United States at the beginning of next Advent) states, "Great importance should be attached to the use of singing in the celebration of Mass, with due consideration for the culture of the people and the abilities of each liturgical assembly. Although it is not necessary (e.g. in weekday Masses) to sing all the texts that are of themselves meant to be sung, every care should be taken that singing by the ministers and the people is not absent in the celebrations that occur on Sundays and on Holy Days of obligation. In choosing of the parts to be sung, however, preference should be given to those that are of greater importance, and especially to those to be sung by the priest or the deacon or the lector, with the people responding, or by the priest and people together."
Biblical
Our Holy Father notes, "The importance of music in biblical religion is shown very simply by the fact that the verb "to sing" (with related words such as "song") is one of the most commonly used words in the Bible. It occurs 309 times in the Old Testament and 36 times in the New Testament. When man comes in contact with God, mere speech is not enough. Areas of his existence are awakened that spontaneously turn into song. Indeed, man’s own being is insufficient for what he has to express, and so he invites the whole of creation to become a song with him (Psalm 57: 8 etc.)."
The GIRM tells us about our attendance at Mass: "The Christian faithful, who gather together as one to await the Lord’s coming, are instructed by the Apostle Paul to sing together psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Colossians 3:16). Singing is the sign of the heart’s joy (Acts of the Apostles 2:46). Thus Saint Augustine says rightly: ‘Singing is for one who loves!" There is also the ancient proverb: One who sings well, prays twice." The Council says to us: "Holy Scripture has bestowed praise upon sacred song (Ephesians 5:19), and the same may be said of the Fathers of the Church and of the Roman Pontiffs, who in recent times, led by Saint Pius X, have explained more precisely the ministerial function rendered by sacred music to the service of the Lord."
The Lord Himself
Our Christian ancestors in the early Church never forgot (nor should we) that Jesus Himself was recorded as singing. It was after He instituted the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper, and what He sang was most probably the "Great Hallel", which usually was sung by devout Jews after their annual celebration of the Passover Meal (Matthew 26:30; Mark 14:26; Psalms 120-136). Historians and scientists have determined also that in the time of Jesus it was customary to have singing in Jewish synagogues, and it was most likely that this brought singing into the liturgical practice of the Catholic Church from her earliest years, as the art in the catacombs illustrates. The Holy Father, following Saint Thomas Aquinas, remarks that the continuous use of the psalms in the Church’s liturgy means that whole wealth of feeling of Israel’s prayer was always present in the Church.
In this connection various biblical scholars and exegetes have pointed out how Saint Paul’s New Testament writings indicate that he used hymns in his preaching and teaching which were already well-known to the Christian communities to whom he was communicating in his Epistles (1 Corinthians 14:25-26; Colossians 3:16; Ephesians 5:18-20). They also show how the New Testament contains the texts of some actual early Christian hymns (Philippians 2:5-11; Ephesians 2:14-16; 2 Timothy 2:11-13). It is in the line of this long continuity of tradition that the Second Vatican Council asserts: "Liturgical action is given a more noble form when sacred rites are solemnized in song with the assistance of the sacred ministers and the active participation of the people."
Pope Benedict XVI points out how, from the Book of Revelation, we learn that in the end times those who conquer the "beast, its image, and the number of its name" will then, "standing beside the sea of glass with the harps of God in their hands, sing the song of Moses, the servant of God (Exodus 15:1-21), and the song of the Lamb" (Revelation 15:2-4). The sacred liturgy is always, among other things, a symbol and anticipation of what is yet to come. Thus, liturgical singing is seen as an already existing anticipation of Christian destiny in eternity.
Chant and Organ
The Second Vatican Council proclaims: "The Church acknowledges Gregorian Chant as proper to the Roman liturgy. Therefore, other things being equal, it must be given pride of place in liturgical services. But, other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of liturgical action...." This kind of music is called "Gregorian" because it was codified, polished, and synthesized by Pope Saint Gregory the Great at the beginning of the 7th century in Rome. Some of those chants, however, are called Ambrosian, because of the work of Saint Ambrose when he was the Archbishop of Milan a century earlier.
The Holy Father points out too how the Second Vatican Council produced "a positively enthusiastic panegyric upon the pipe organ, causing J.A. Jungmann to remark that this most ancient instrument of church music is praised in terms markedly different from the usually sober, juridical language." The Council states: "In the Latin Church the pipe organ is to be held in high esteem, for it is the traditional musical instrument and one that adds a wonderful splendor to the Church’s ceremonies and powerfully lifts up a man’s mind to God and to heavenly things. But, other instruments also may be admitted for use in divine worship with the knowledge and consent of competent territorial authority... This may be done, however, only on condition that the instruments are suitable for sacred use, or can be made so, that they accord with the dignity of the temple, and truly contribute to the edification of the faithful."
Pope on Music
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, has discussed in his writings the interesting link between being rescued from water and subsequent triumphant and victorious singing, applying this to our Christian situation in the sacred liturgy. Foreshadowed by a water event, the rescue of Moses as an infant from the River Nile, which saved his life, so the Chosen People of the Old Testament, led by Moses were later, in another water event, enabled by "an overwhelming experience of God’s saving power" to pass safely through the Red Sea, a passage that "definitively delivered them from slavery" and that drowned their enemies. It is after the account of that deliverance, the Pope notes, that we see the first mention of singing in the Bible: "Then Moses and the People of Israel sang this song to the Lord" (Exodus 15:1).
Each year during the Great Easter Vigil, "Christians join in the singing of this song. They sing it in a new way as their song, because they know that they have been taken out of the water (Baptism) by God’s power and set free by God for authentic life." This song of Moses, the servant of God, and of God’s People, will become, in the future of eternity as the Book of Revelation states (15:3), the song also of the Lamb. "It is the sacrificed Lamb Who conquers. And so, once again definitively, there resounds the song of God’s servants which has become now the song of the Lamb." The Supreme Pontiff remarks, "Liturgical singing is established in the midst of this great historical tension."
"For Israel the event of salvation in the Red Sea will always be the main reason for praising God, the basic theme of the songs it sings before God. For Christians, the resurrection of Christ is the true Exodus. He has striven through the Red Sea of death itself, descended into the world of shadows, and smashed open the prison door. In Baptism the Exodus is made ever present. To be baptized is to be made a partaker, a contemporary of Christ’s descent into hell and of His rising up from there, in which He takes us up into the fellowship of new life. Here then is the theological basis for liturgical singing."
U.S. Bishops
In 2007 (published in 2008) the Catholic Bishops of the United States issued a document entitled "Sing to the Lord, Music in Divine Worship". They compiled this document from the the works of the Second Vatican Council, from the writings of the Popes and from previous documents of the Bishops’ Conference, as well as from a large number of instructions from history and from various official sources, that is, from the Holy See and from Conferences of Bishops in other countries. The Bishops note how Saint Paul and Saint Silas sang together while they were in prison for the faith "while the other prisoners listened" (Acts of the Apostles 16:25). They also cite the Epistle of Saint James (5:13) where he says, "Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone in good spirits? He should sing praise."
The Bishops say, "Obedient to Christ and to the Church, we gather in a liturgical assembly week after week. As our predecessors did, we find ourselves singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in our hearts to God (Ephesians 5:18-19). This common sung expression of faith within liturgical celebrations strengthens our faith when it grows weak and draws us into the divinely inspired voice of the Church at prayer. Faith grows when it is well expressed in celebration. They go on to say, "Our participation in the liturgy is challenging. Sometimes our voices do not correspond to the convictions of our hearts. At other times, we are distracted or preoccupied by the cares of the world. Christ always invites us, however, to enter into song, to rise above our own preoccupations, and to give our entire selves to the hymn of His paschal sacrifice for the honor and glory of the Most Blessed Trinity."
Questions
In a chapter of their document entitled "Judging the Qualities of Music for the Liturgy", the American Bishops speak about three judgments forming one evaluation, with each of the judgments associated with a specific question. They say, "In judging the appropriateness of music for the liturgy, one will examine its liturgical, pastoral, and musical qualities. Ultimately, however, these three judgments are but aspects on one evaluation, which answers the question: Is this particular piece of music appropriate for the use in this particular liturgy? All three judgments must be considered together and no individual judgment can be applied in isolation from the other two. This evaluation requires cooperation, consultation, collaboration and mutual respect among those who are skilled in any of the three judgments, be they pastors, musicians, liturgists, or planners.
The question from liturgical judgment that must be answered is: Is this composition capable of meeting the structural and textual requirements set forth by the liturgical books for this particular rite? The pastoral judgment must answer: Does a musical composition promote the sanctification of the members of the liturgical assembly by drawing them closer to the holy mysteries being celebrated? Does it strengthen their formation in faith by opening their hearts to the mystery being celebrated on this occasion or in this season? Is it capable of expressing the faith that God has planted in their hearts and summoned them to celebrate? Musical judgment must ask whether the composition has the necessary aesthetic qualities that can bear the weight of the mysteries celebrated in the liturgy. It asks: Is this composition technically, aesthetically, and expressively worthy?
Of course, the strict orthodoxy of the composition has to be a paramount consideration, an orthodoxy which must be accompanied by a spirit of meditation and contemplation. In all Catholic Church music, it also should be noted that the text must predominate over the melody, so that the words are always assumed to be more important than the music that carries them. In addition, it is an important principle of Catholic liturgical music that during Mass or other liturgical actions attention is never to be drawn to the singers and musicians themselves, who, in the liturgy are expected to be self-effacing and humble, never giving an impression of "a performance" or a theatrical show detracting from the attention that is due to God alone in the sacred liturgy. This is one of the reasons why, in traditional Catholic Church architecture, choirs and musicians were customarily situated in a loft in the rear of the church.
Other Thoughts
The Bishops assert, "God has bestowed upon His People the gift of song. God Himself dwells in each human person in the place where music takes its source. Indeed, God, the Giver of song, is present whenever His People sing His praises. As a cry from deep within our being, music is a way for God to lead us to the realm of higher things. By its very nature song has both an individual and a communal dimension. Thus it is no wonder that singing together in church expresses so well the sacramental presence of God to His People. Music is a sign of God’s love for us and of our love for Him. In this sense it is very personal. But unless music sounds, it is not music, and whenever it sounds, it is accessible to others.
Sacred Time
By means of the sacred liturgy God makes time holy. In and through the liturgy, which is the sublime and divinely instituted worship given by the "whole Christ", Head and members, to God the Father through the Holy Spirit, the space-time continuum into which creation is inserted is sanctified. Each day, each week, each season of the year, and each year in itself is made holy by the liturgy. Then too, the lifetime of each Catholic is touched by the liturgy, especially by the sacraments and sacramentals, and thus the "time" allotted to each Christian’s existence on earth too is sanctified and made holy.
Pope Benedict XVI explains in his book "The Spirit of the Liturgy": "All time is God’s time. When the eternal Word assumed human existence at His incarnation, He also assumed temporality. He drew time into the sphere of eternity. Christ Himself is the bridge between time and eternity. At first it seems as if there can be no connection between the "always" of eternity and the "flowing away" of time. But now the eternal One Himself has taken time to Himself. In the Son time co-exists with eternity. God’s eternity is not mere time-lessness, the negation of time, but a power over time that is really present with time and in time. In the Word incarnate, Who remains man forever, the presence of eternity with time becomes bodily and concrete. All time is God’s time. On the other hand...the time of the Church is a "between" time, between the shadow and the reality, and so its special structure demands a sign, a time specially chosen and designated to draw time as a whole into the hands of God."
Malachi
About four hundred years before the era of Christ on earth, one of the last of the Old Testament prophets, a man named Malachi (whose name means the messenger of the Lord) appeared on the scene. He foretold the rejection of the Jewish temple sacrifices (and to some extent of the Jews themselves) and then told of the coming call of the Gentiles (the "goyim", that is, the non-Jews) and of their future sacrifice that God would find acceptable. "For from the rising of the sun even to its going down, My Name is great among the Gentiles and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to My Name a clean oblation, for My Name is great among the Gentiles, says the Lord of hosts" (Malachi 1:11).
Almost immediately the first Christians saw in those prophetic words a foretelling of the sacrifice of the Mass, making present again and again the once-and-for-all saving sacrifice of Jesus on Mount Calvary. The words of the prophet were taken to mean two things, time and space. Holy Mass is always offered through the day throughout the world from dawn to dusk. However, the expression in Hebrew "from the rising of the sun to its setting" also can be understood geographically, that is, "from east to west". Our English language does not have the capacity in a translation to include both of those meaning at the same time. This sometimes requires the translator to chose one or the other, that is, time or space.
This is why in the Third Eucharistic Prayer (Third Canon), where there is a clear reference to that prophecy of Malachi, the original ICEL translators chose to make the expression geographic (..."from east to west"). The newer translation, however, which will come into use at the beginning of Advent this year (November 27, 2011) will be a more accurate translation from the Latin and will say "from the rising of the sun to its setting a pure sacrifice will be offered to Your Name..." Those modern translators wanted to mirror more precisely the prophecy of Malachi and to retain the possibility of those words being understood both ways by the hearers, that is, as concerning time as well as concerning geographic space.
Days and Weeks
The sacred liturgy sanctifies each day first and foremost by the sacrifice of the Mass. Then the hours of the day are made holy by the Church’s prayers contained in the Divine Office (the Liturgy of the Hours). These prayers are recited by all priests and transitional deacons and by others, especially consecrated religious, who are deputed by the Church to pray for all of mankind. The hours of prayer are Readings (Matins or Vigils), Morning Prayer (Lauds), Daytime Prayers at 9 AM, noon, and 3 PM, Evening Prayer (Vespers) and Night Prayer (Compline). Many lay people often also recite some or all of these prayers which are found in the prayerbook commonly called the Breviary.
Every week is made holy by the sacred liturgy because of the importance of Sunday, the Lord’s Day, which is called either the first or the eighth day of the week. It is the day of the week in which the most important events in world history occurred, the day that creation began, the day on which Christ rose from the dead, to begin the new creation of Christianity, and the day on which the Holy Spirit descended upon the nascent Catholic Church, beginning her manifestation to the world. Every Sunday is considered an Easter. (This is why Sundays in Lent are not calculated as part of the traditional forty days of that liturgical season.) Pope Benedict XVI remarks, "For Christians it (Sunday) is the weekly returning of the resurrection... It is called the eighth day because it looks forward and not backward, looking toward the final consummation. With the day of the resurrection coming after the Sabbath, Christ, as it were, strode across time and lifted it up above itself... The eighth day signifies a new time that has dawned with the resurrection. In the liturgy we already reach out to lay hold of it, but at the same time it is ahead of us. It is the sign of God’s definitive world in which shadow and image are superseded in the final indwelling of God and His creatures."
The Holy Father notes that "It was to reflect this symbolism of the eighth day that people liked to build baptistries with eight sides. This was meant to show that Baptism is birth into the eighth day, into the resurrection of Christ and into the new time that opened up with the resurrection. Sunday is thus for the Christian, time’s proper measure, the temporal measure of his life. It is not based on an arbitrary convention that could be exchanged for another, but contains a unique synthesis of the remembrance of history, the recalling of creation and the theology of hope."
The Pope notes also that in the Church’s liturgy "we do participate in the heavenly liturgy, but this participation is mediated to us through earthly signs which the Redeemer has shown us as the place where His reality is to be found. The liturgy is the means by which earthly time is inserted into the time of Jesus Christ. The Shepherd takes the lost sheep onto His shoulders and carries it home."
Liturgical Importance
Pope Benedict XVI, our Holy Father, writing about the sacred liturgy, has said, "Throughout the years of the Liturgical Movement, as well as at the outset of the Second Vatican Council’s reform of the liturgy, it appeared to many as if striving for the correct liturgical form were a purely pragmatic matter, a search for the form of worship most accessible to the people of our time. Since then it has become increasingly clear that the liturgy involves our understanding of God and the world, our relationship to Christ, to the Church, and ourselves. How to attend to liturgy determines the fate of the faith and the Church. For this reason liturgical matters have acquired an importance today that we were unable to envision before."
In his very recent book-length interview with the German journalist, Peter Seewald, the Pope also commented in reply to various questions on liturgical matters: "The essential point is to avoid celebrating the liturgy as an occasion for the community to exhibit itself, under the pretext that it is important for everyone to involve himself, though in the end, then, only the "self" is really important. Rather, the decisive thing is that we enter into something much greater. That we can get out of ourselves, as it were, and into the wide open spaces. For that same reason, it is also important that the liturgy itself not be tinkered with in any way."
The Successor of Saint Peter went on to remark: "Liturgy in truth is an event by means of which we let ourselves be introduced into the expansive faith and prayer of the Church. This is the reason why the early Christians prayed facing east, in the direction of the rising sun, the symbol of the returning Christ. In so doing, they wanted to show that the whole world is on its way toward Christ and that He encompasses the whole world. This connection between heaven and earth is very important. It was no accident that ancient churches were built so that the sun would cast its light into the house of God at a very precise moment. Nowadays we are rediscovering the importance of the interactions between the earth and the rest of universe, and so it makes perfect sense that we should also relearn to recognize the cosmic character of the liturgy, as well as its historical character. This means recognizing that someone didn’t just one day invent the liturgy, but rather that it has been growing organically since the time of Abraham. There are various kinds of elements from the earliest times which are still present in the liturgy."
Seasons
One of the most notable aspects of the sacred liturgy is that it sanctifies time, making holy not only each day and each week, but every time of the year. The liturgical year is marked by sacred seasons in which one finds a significant number of solemnities, feasts, and commemorations. The pivot and most important solemnity of the liturgical year is, and always has been, the celebration of Easter and its glorious aura of accompanying feasts. The liturgy of Christ’s resurrection is the highest and greatest feast of the year for Catholics. The forty days before Easter and the fifty days after that most important of all liturgical events help us to appropriately situate it in our own regular and annual journey through the calendar.
Second in importance is the Christmas cycle of the liturgical year. Pope Benedict XVI notes: "The cross and resurrection presuppose the incarnation. It is only because the Son, and in Him God Himself, came down from heaven and became incarnate from the Virgin Mary that Jesus’ death and resurrection are events that are contemporary with us all and touch us all, delivering us from a past marked by death and opening up the present and the future."
The liturgical year and its cycles and celebrations are all structured toward Christ and, hence, toward the one true God. The liturgical year also contains feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, "whose person is so closely interwoven with the mystery of Christ." Then, as the Pope says, "In addition there come the commemorations of the Apostles and martyrs, and finally the memorials of the saints of every century. One might say that the saints are, so to speak, new Christian constellations, in which the richness of God’s goodness is reflected. Their light, coming from God, enables us to know better the interior richness of God’s great light, which we cannot comprehend in the refulgence of its glory."
Individual Lives
Not simply the general days, weeks, and years in which all of humanity is situated are made holy by the liturgy, but also the time of every Christian’s individual life is sanctified by the series of encounters with the risen Christ which are made real and efficacious through the sacramental system. Centered around and ordered to the most Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Eucharist, the other six sacraments are arranged by God’s providence to sanctify Christ’s disciples at the significant stages of their lives. This means, at life’s beginning, a new and second birth in Baptism, a strengthening and spiritual growth toward maturity in Confirmation, a worshipping and constant nourishing in the sacred and sacrificial banquet of Holy Communion, a deepening of friendship with God and even a restoration of the adoption process of being a child of God in Penance and Reconciliation, an anointing at the time of physical decline and danger to prepare for the possible entrance into another and better world and readiness to appear before the throne of the divine Judge of the living and dead, in Extreme Unction or Anointing of the Sick. Sometimes too there is Matrimony, witnessing to the perpetual and life-giving union of Christ and the Catholic Church or Holy Orders enabling men to stand in the Person of Christ and to be the vehicles of His mercy and His grace.
As the Second Vatican Council indicates it is the Catholic Church which is the great sacrament ("an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace") into which the seven great and efficacious signs, called sacraments are inserted. Two are called "sacraments of the dead, which means they may licitly be received even when one is spiritually dead, that is, not in the state of grace. These are Baptism and Penance (The Anointing of the Sick can be in this category in certain circumstances). The other five require their recipients to be in the state of grace for liceity. Three are unrepeatable because they involve the indelible mark of Christ’s priesthood (Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders). Two (Holy Orders and Matrimony) are called social sacraments since they have as their purposes things beyond individual lives, but pertain to the building up of the community of the Church. Three (Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Eucharist, when received as First Holy Communion) are referred to as the sacraments of Christian Initiation, since they are the means by which a person enters the Catholic Church and thus finds the possibility of eternal salvation.
The sacraments in the sacred liturgy are the way that Christ chooses to come to us and to allow us to encounter Him. They are acts of our worship with Him of God the Father, but they are also His acts of love and tender pity for us who still live in a "valley of tears" touching us with what He won for us on the cross. As Pope Benedict XVI says, "With this particular human form Christ comes to us and precisely thus does He make us His brethren beyond all boundaries. Precisely thus do we recognize Him: It is the Lord (John 21:7)."
Controversial
The late date (April 24th) for the celebration of the Solemnity of the Lord’s Resurrection this year (the second latest day that Easter could be) lends itself to some interesting history and facts about the dating of the most important and greatest of all the feasts of the liturgical year. As Blessed John Henry Newman observed, "Easter is for Christians down the centuries the Queen of all Festivals". However, from the earliest days of the Church there were controversies and disputes about when to celebrate Easter, precisely because its celebration was considered so very important. The question was more or less definitely resolved, however, by the First Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church, the Council of Nicea, which took place in 325 A.D and which decreed that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Although this is what has been generally observed in the Church since that time, there had been and continue to be discussions and even disagreements about this issue even up to the present time.
When the Eastern Orthodox (after centuries of on-and-off schisms) finally separated themselves from the Catholic Church in 1054 A.D., one of the many pretended causes (although a very minor one) was a dispute about the date of Easter. The Orthodox added another "after" to the decree of Nicea (the first Sunday after the first full moon of springtime - after the Jewish Passover). This is why usually (but this year 2011 is one of the exceptions) the Eastern Orthodox Easter is celebrated on a different Sunday than that of the Catholic Church. Many Protestants still follow the Catholic calculation for the celebration of Easter, but there are some Protestant denominations (Christian Science, Jehovah Witness, Salvation Army, etc.) which do not celebrate Easter at all.
Vatican Two
The twenty-first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council (from October of 1961 to December of 1965), also discussed and to some extent debated the issue of the possibility of changing the appropriate date for the celebration of Easter. The Council Fathers, with the approval of Pope Paul VI, who was the Supreme Pontiff at the time, added what they called "an appendix" to their Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (entitled "Sacrosanctum Concilium"), dealing with a fixed Sunday for Easter and with the possibility of a fixed and perpetual civil calendar for human society. What the Second Vatican Council said in its "Appendix Declaration" about these matters was obviously influenced by the "ecumenical euphoria" of those conciliar days.
The document says: "The most sacred Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican recognizes the importance of the wishes expressed by many concerning the assignment of the Feast of Easter to a fixed Sunday and concerning an unchanging calendar. Having carefully considered the effects which could result from the introduction of new calendar, the most sacred Council declares as follows: 1. It would not object if the Feast of Easter were assigned to a particular Sunday of the Gregorian Calendar, provided that those whom it may concern give their consent, especially the brethren who are not in communion with the Apostolic See. 2. The most sacred Council likewise declares it does not oppose efforts designed to introduce a perpetual calendar into civil society. But, among the various systems which are being devised for establishing a perpetual calendar and introducing it into civil life, the Church has no objection only in the case of those systems which would retain and safeguard a seven-day week including Sunday, without the introduction of any days outside the week. In other words, the sequence of seven-day weeks should remain unbroken. Only the weightiest of reasons, acknowledged as such by the Apostolic See, would make the contrary acceptable."
Of course, nothing so far has come from this "Appendix Declaration", and it does not look too promising for the immediate future. Nowadays most of the Eastern Orthodox even refuse to use or accept our present Gregorian Calendar (because it was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII), but they still use the old defective Julian Calendar (which was invented by Julius Caesar). Also, since the Orthodox Churches are quite independent of each other and "autocephalous", it is difficult to see how they could come to an agreement about such matters until or unless they were to hold some kind of "Pan-Orthodox Synod", which might be possible, but not very likely. Since there are more than 30,000 known Protestant sects and denominations in the world today, coming to an agreement about Easter with all or most of them seems even more utopian and close to completely impossible.
Lunar and Solar
Until the Council of Nicea, there were two major conflicts in the celebration of Easter. In the eastern part of the Church there was a strong emphasis on the Jewish Passover, and, therefore, the usual observance of the Christian Easter was on the first month of the Hebrew lunar calendar, the 14th of the month of Nisan, the date of the Passover. In Rome and the west on the other hand there was an emphasis on Sunday as the day of the Resurrection and "this was the determining factor". Pope Benedict XVI noted that through the ruling of the Council of Nicea "the solar and lunar calendars were interconnected and the two great cosmic forms of ordering time were linked to each other in association with the history of Israel and the life of Jesus."
Another aspect of the Easter date disputes, emphasized by Pope Leo the Great in the 5th century, was the theory that the first month of the year, when Easter should be celebrated in accordance with the Jewish Passover celebration, had to do most of all with the first part of the stellar zodiac, that is, the sign of Aries, which is the ram or the lamb. Pope Leo said the Jewish Passover was put deliberately into that sign of the zodiac because of the lamb and its sacrifice and its blood that enabled the Hebrews to escape their Egyptian enslavement, and thus "that constellation in the heavens seemed to speak, in advance and for all time, of the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), the One Who sums up in Himself all the sacrifices of the innocent and gives them their meaning."
"Also the mysterious story of the ram caught in the thicket and taking the place of Isaac as the sacrifice decreed by God Himself (Genesis 22:13-14) is now seen as the pre-history of Christ. The fork of the tree in which the ram was hanging is seen as a replica of the sign of Aries, which in turn was the celestial foreshadowing of the crucified Christ. These cosmic images enabled Christians to see, in an unprecedented way, the world embracing meaning of Christ and so to understand the grandeur of the hope inscribed in Christian faith." Pope Benedict then observes, "It seems clear to me that we have to recapture this cosmic vision if we want once again to understand and live Christianity in its full breadth."
Forty Days
For many centuries the English-speaking world has used the word "Lent" to designate the penitential period of the year in preparation for the annual celebration of Easter, our Lord’s glorious resurrection from the dead. That word comes from the Anglo-Saxon word "lengton" or "lencton", which means springtime. This is an appropriate term, since, as Father Pius Parsch observes, "Lent is the springtime of the ecclesiastical year. From the dying kernels of divine wheat a wonderful harvest will come: first, souls ripe for Baptism, second, an interior purification of cleansing by means of penance, a sort of second Baptism for sinners, and third, an opportunity for all the faithful to be reinforced and strengthened by necessary mortification and self-denial in their life’s journey toward the final happiness that awaits them in heaven."
The official liturgical term which the Church uses for this period of time that begins with Ash Wednesday is the Latin term "Quadragesima" ("Forty Days"). Our Holy
Father, Pope Benedict XVI, points out how the Church by this term "uses a typological exegesis to enclose us in a spiritual context. Israel wandered forty years in the desert. Elijah walked forty days to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. Jesus fasted forty days in the desert. What is the meaning of this series of forties?"
The Pope explains, "At a later date in its history, Israel came to regard the forty years of its wanderings in the desert as the time of first love between God and Israel. The years in the desert seemed to them to be a time of special election. But, the Bible also depicts those years as a time of extreme danger and temptation, a time when Israel murmured against its God, when it was dissatisfied with Him and wanted to return to paganism." The Holy Father asks, "Is this not also a description of our own time? The Church today finds herself relegated once again and in an entirely new way to the forty days, to a time in the desert... The Church of our day is also threatened by the mirages of the desert, by its temptations." Like the Chosen People of the Old Testament in biblical times, so there are certain Christians, the Chosen People of the New Testament, who sometimes think "the distant God is beyond reach" and so they "must cooperate with a nearer god and (falsely) declare worldliness itself as Christianity and immersion in the world as the true service of Jesus Christ." However, each Lent gives to the Church and her children, if they "wander on with patience and faith, a new day" dawning "out of darkness, and then God’s bright world, the lost world of images and sounds, will be bestowed upon us anew, and we shall experience a new morning of God’s creation" at Easter.
Prefaces
Pope Benedict XVI has mentioned that one of the fine ways to enter into the spirit of Lent according to the mind of the Church is to notice the words of some of the Lenten prefaces currently in use in the Latin Rite and to use those words as the starting point for some Lenten reflections and meditations. Addressing God the Father, for instance, we say: "Each year You give us this joyful season, when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery with mind and heart renewed. You give us a spirit of loving reverence for You, our Father, and of willing service to our neighbor. As we recall the great events that gave us new life in Christ, You bring the image of Your Son to perfection within us." Again we say, "This great season of grace is Your gift to Your family to renew us in spirit. You give us strength to purify our hearts, to control our desires, and so to serve You in freedom. You teach us how to live in this passing world with our heart set on the world that will never end."
Other prefaces state to the Almighty Father: "You ask us to express our thanks (to You) by self-denial. We are to master our sinfulness and conquer our pride. We are to show to those in need Your goodness to ourselves. Through our observance of Lent You correct our faults and raise our minds to You. You help us grow in holiness and offer us the reward of everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Those words of the Lenten prefaces help us "to come to realize our need for that reality this is expressed in the word "fasting". Granted certainly people fast today in many different ways, for medical, aesthetic, and other reasons. And that is good. But such fasting is not of itself sufficient for Lent because the purpose of such fasting is always one’s self. It does not free the individual from self because it is for the self that it is done. But men need unselfish fasting, a renunciation that frees them from themselves, that frees them for God, that frees them also for other people. The demand that this fasting makes upon us is certainly uncomfortable, but anyone who is even slightly aware of the situation of the human race today, and of his own situation, also knows how much we need this call to a genuine fasting that does not have self as its object."
Special Time
Father Parsch says, "Lent then is the time of salvation "par excellence", not only for the catechumens and penitents, but for all the faithful as well. The catechumens are getting ready for their reception of Baptism on Holy Saturday, while the penitents are preparing for a good Confession and are already doing penance to repair the damage they have done by their sins to the Church, to themselves, and to many others. However, all the faithful are given a commission in this season to enhance, enrich, and perfect the divine life within them, an opportunity to draw nearer to the cross of Jesus so that they, along with the catechumens and penitents, will be able once more to stand on Holy Saturday evening clothed in their baptismal innocence, free from all attachments to sin, cleansed of all guilt, in the unsullied perfection of sanctifying grace." The Catechism of the Catholic Church remarks, "By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert (Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13)."
Warned against vanity and egomania in carrying out our Lenten practices by the Gospel passage proclaimed during the Ash Wednesday Mass (Matthew 6:1-6), we must go forward each Lent to work on gathering and amassing heavenly treasures for ourselves through more intense and devout prayer, fasting and other forms of spiritual and bodily penance, and through almsgiving, not only in money, but also in smiles, cheer, and in sharing our faith (Matthew 6:19-21). Saint Benedict, long ago, told his monks, "In these days of Lent let us add something beyond our usual measure of service... Let each one, over and above doing what is prescribed for him, offer to God something extra of his own free will in the joy of the Holy Spirit."
Temptations
Each year the Gospel passage liturgically proclaimed on the First Sunday of Lent is one of Synoptics’ accounts of the temptations experienced by our Savior after His desert retreat, which followed upon His baptism by Saint John the Baptist, His public investiture on that occasion as the Messiah, the Christ, by the words of God the Father and the descent of the Holy Spirit, and then His forty days and nights of fasting. This narrative, of course, is not simply about the temptations of Christ, but, even more importantly, about the great victory of Jesus against the wiles and snares of Lucifer, the Prince of devils. It is important that we annually hear and ponder this Gospel pericope because, as Jesuit Father William Dalton, explains, "It would be to our own (spiritual) peril to neglect the emphasis of the New Testament on Christ’s victorious battle with the hostile angelic powers" (Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:13).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, "The Evangelists indicate the salvific meaning of this mysterious event. Jesus is the new Adam Who remained faithful just where the first Adam had given in to temptation. Jesus fulfills Israel’s vocation perfectly, in contrast to those who had once provoked God’s wrath during forty years in the desert. Christ reveals Himself as God’s Servant, (Isaiah 53: 3-12), totally obedient to the divine will. In this Jesus is the Devil’s Conqueror. He binds the strong man to take back his plunder (Mark 3:27; Psalm 95:10). Jesus’ victory over the Tempter in the desert anticipates His victory at His passion, the supreme act of His obedience, of His filial love for the Father."
The Catechism goes on to remark, "Jesus’ temptations reveal the way in which the Son of God is the Messiah, contrary to the way Satan proposes to Him and the way men wish to attribute to Him. This is why Christ vanquished the Tempter for us. ‘For we have not a High Priest Who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One Who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sinning’(Hebrews 4:15). By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert."
Application
In the first volume of his splendid work, "Jesus of Nazareth", which he calls "my personal search for the face of the Lord", our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, devotes an entire chapter to "The Temptations of Jesus". In his biblical and theological reflection, the Pope points out how this Lenten Gospel narrative applies to our present cultural situation. He writes, "At the heart of all temptations is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive Him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives. Constructing a world by our own lights, without reference to God, building on our own foundation, refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material, while setting God aside as an illusion, that is the temptation that threatens us in many varied forms."
"Moral posturing is part and parcel of temptation. It does not invite us directly to do evil, no, that would be far too blatant. It pretends to show us a better way, where we finally abandon our illusions and throw ourselves into the work of actually making the world a better place. It claims, moreover, to speak for true realism. What’s real is what is right there in front of us, power and bread. By comparison the things of God fade into unreality, into a secondary world that no one really needs. God is the issue. Is He real, Reality Itself, or isn’t He? The God question is the fundamental question, and it sets us down right at the crossroads of human existence. What must the Savior of the world do or not do? That is the question the temptations of Jesus is about."
Mockery
The Bishop of Rome points out how the first temptation (according to Saint Matthew) begins, "If You are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread" (Matthew 4:3). These words again are found in the mouths of the mocking bystanders at the foot of the cross, "If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross" (Matthew 27:40). The Pope says, "Mockery and temptation blend into each other here. Christ is being challenged to establish His credibility by offering evidence for His claims. This demand for proof is a constantly recurring theme in the story of Jesus’ life. Again and again He is reproached for having failed to prove Himself sufficiently, for having hitherto failed to work that great miracle that will remove all ambiguity and every contradiction, so as to make it indisputably clear for everyone Who and What He is or is not."
Now the Pope says that mankind continues these blasphemies and demonic acts of evil pride: "We make this same demand of God and Christ and His Church throughout the whole of human history. If You exist, God, we say, then You’ll just have to show Yourself. You’ll have to part the clouds that conceal You and give us the clarity we deserve. If You, Christ, are really the Son of God and not just another of the enlightened individuals who keep appearing in the course of history, then You’ll just have to prove it more clearly than You are doing now. And, if the Church is really supposed to be Yours, You’ll have to make it that much more obvious than it is at present. The issue is that God has to submit to experiment. He is to be tested as products are tested. To think like that is to make oneself God, and to do so is to abase not only God, but the world and oneself too."
Damned Error
In his play "The Merchant of Venice" Shakespeare says, "In religion what damned error, but some sober brow will bless it and approve it with a text." Especially in the second temptation (Matthew 4:5-7) does the Devil, like a Protestant citing "proof texts" to persuade people to adopt his doctrinal mistakes and religious innovations, present himself as a Scripture scholar and theologian to dispute arrogantly with Jesus. Pope Benedict says realizing this fact "is not a rejection of scholarly biblical interpretation as such, but an eminently salutary and necessary warning against its possible aberrations." Just as we know that the devils in hell believe but that their faith alone certainly was not enough to save them (James 2:19), so those fallen angels evidently also know the Bible, but that knowledge too is not enough for their salvation.
The Holy Father mentions that after the episode of the temptations, "Jesus emerged victorious in His battle with Satan. To the Tempter’s lying divinization of power and prosperity, to his lying promise of a future that offers all things to all men through power and through wealth, He responds to the fact that God is God, that God is man’s true Good. To the invitation to worship power, the Lord answers with a passage from Deuteronomy, the same book the Devil himself had cited: ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve’ (Matthew 4:10; Deuteronomy 6:13). This fundamental commandment of Israel is also the fundamental commandment for Christians. God alone is to be worshiped."
Connections
There are four accounts in the New Testament about the miraculous and mysterious event which we call the transfiguration of Jesus on a high mountain (Matthew 17: 1-8; Mark 9:1-7; Luke 9:28-36; 2 Peter 1:16-18). This transfiguration of the Lord is recalled each year in the Gospel proclamation on the Second Sunday of Lent in the Latin Rite liturgy ( and now as well in the fourth luminous mystery of the rosary). It is clear that the account of this event is connected with many various elements found throughout divine revelation and in the sacred liturgy. For instance, the transfiguration is linked with Saint Peter and his profession of faith in Christ’s divine sonship, with the Jewish festival of Tabernacles, with the tent of Moses and the cloud of God described in the Book of Exodus, with the Hebrew celebration of atonement on the great feast of Yom ha-Kippurim, with the story of Moses ascending a mountain with Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, with the theophany at our Savior’s Baptism in the Jordan River, with Peter, James, and John accompanying Jesus into the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, with Christ’s promise that some bystanders would not see death until they saw God’s kingdom in all its glory, and with His discussion about the law and the prophets which He held after His resurrection with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.
However, the biggest and most important connection of the transfiguration has to do with the redemptive suffering and death of Jesus. This makes hearing about it annually during Lent so very appropriate. Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, writes, "The appearance of His glory is connected with the passion motif. Jesus’ divinity belongs with the cross. Only when we put the two together do we recognize Jesus correctly. John expressed this intrinsic interconnectedness of the cross and glory when he said that the cross is Jesus’ exaltation, and that His exaltation is accomplished in no other way than in the cross." The Gospel according to Saint John echoes the transfiguration event in several places where the Evangelist recounts how God the Father interacts with His divine Son (John 12:28-30 & 17:1-4).
Catechism
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in its section about the transfiguration, quotes a beautiful prayer customarily addressed to Jesus in the Byzantine liturgy: "You were transfigured on the mountain, and Your disciples, as much as they were capable of it, beheld Your glory, O Christ, our God, so that when they should see You crucified, they would understand that Your passion was voluntary, and then they could proclaim to the world that You truly are the Splendor of the Father." The Catechism explains, "For a moment Jesus discloses His divine glory, confirming Peter’s confession. He also reveals that He will have to go by the way of the cross at Jerusalem in order to enter into His glory (Luke 24:26). Moses and Elijah had seen God’s glory on a mountain. The law and the prophets had announced the Messiah’s sufferings. Christ’s passion is the will of the Father. The Son acts as God’s Servant (Isaiah42:1)." Saint Thomas Aquinas notes, "The whole Trinity appeared: the Father in the voice, the Son in the Man, and the Holy Spirit in the shining cloud."
Pope Benedict XVI remarks about how "Moses and Elijah appear (during the transfiguration) and talk with Jesus. What the risen Lord will later explain to the disciples on the road to Emmaus is seen here in visible form. The law and the prophets speak with Jesus and they speak of Jesus. ‘They appeared in glory and spoke of His departure (His exodus) which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem’ (Luke 9:31). Their topic of conversation is the cross, best understood in an inclusive sense as Jesus’ exodus, which had to take place in Jerusalem. Jesus’ cross is an exodus. a departure from this life, a passage through the Red Sea of the passion, and a transition into glory, a glory, however, that forever bears the mark of Jesus’ wounds. This is a clear statement that the law and prophets are fundamentally about the hope of Israel, the exodus that brings definitive liberation. But, the content of this hope is the suffering Son of Man and Servant of God, Who, by His suffering, opens the door into freedom and renewal." The correct understanding of the transfiguration event will help us to see that it displays "the irruption and inauguration of the messianic age", with the witnesses of the Old Covenant speaking with Jesus about His passion as the way to His glory."
Cloud and Tent
In the Prologue of his Gospel, Saint John says in well-known words, "The Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). However, the last phrase says literally in Greek that "He pitched His tent among us." To a Bible reading Hebrew, the phrase recalls the "Tent of the Meeting" in the desert wanderings of the Jews. It was over that tent that "the holy cloud (the "shekinah" in Hebrew) often hovered as a sign of God’s presence." That cloud with God’s voice within it hovered over the disciples and over Jesus at the transfiguration (Mark 9:7). This indicates, the Holy Father notes, that now "Jesus is the holy tent above which the cloud of God’s presence stands and spreads out to overshadow the others as well. The scene repeats that of Jesus’ Baptism..."
At both Christ’s Baptism and at His transfiguration God the Father announces that Jesus is His Beloved Son. However, in the baptismal event the Father says that He (the Father) is "well-pleased" with Jesus, while at the transfiguration the Father concludes His words with a command: "Listen to Him!" The Pope, quoting a German author, says God is telling the disciples that Jesus Himself has become the Word of divine revelation. Jesus Himself is now the Torah of the New Covenant. "This one command brings the theophany to its conclusion and sums up its deepest meaning. The disciples must accompany Jesus back down the mountain and learn ever anew to listen to Him."
Augustine and Leo
Noting how Saint Peter at the transfiguration, in a kind of trance, proposes building huts or tents on the mountain top for Jesus, Moses, Elijah, and the three disciples, Saint Augustine of Hippo says that Peter did not yet realize that "it is only through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God" (Acts of the Apostles 14:22). The great Bishop and Doctor of the Church said, "Peter did not yet understand this when he wanted to remain with Christ on the mountain. It has been reserved for you, Peter, but after death. For now, Jesus says, Go down to toil on earth, to serve on earth, to be scorned and crucified on earth (as I Myself now do). Life goes to be killed. Bread goes down to suffer hunger. The Way goes down to be exhausted on His journey. The Fountain goes down to suffer thirst, and you refuse to suffer?"
Pope Saint Leo the Great said the whole Church, learning what those three disciples saw and heard in the transfiguration, is inspired "never to be ashamed of the cross of Christ or fear to suffer for Him. Provided we persevere in faith and love, the transfiguration teaches us that through toil we come to rest and through death we cross over to life. And so, Beloved, that we may do what He told us to do and bear our trials in patience, we should have ever in our ears the voice of the Father telling us: Listen to Him."
Cycle A
This year the prescribed readings for the Gospel passages for the Sundays of Lent in the Latin Rite are in "cycle A" of the Sunday Lectionary. The passages for the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sundays of Lent in this cycle are especially appropriate for making Lent the season of preparation for Baptism for the catechumens, as well as for all of us faithful to be preparing for the renewal of our baptismal commitments and vows at Easter. Those next three Sunday Gospel pericopes have to do with water, light, and life. Our reflecting on those Gospel passages, Pope Benedict XVI tells us, can be "an opportunity to return to the foundation of Christian life in a baptismal itinerary." Those passages from the New Testament "are the great announcement of what God carries out in this sacrament, a stupendous baptismal catechesis directed at each of us."
The Third Sunday passage gives us the fascinating story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob (John 4:5-42). That incident reminds us that in our Baptism "we too were touched by the water that saves." At the end of the account, the Samaritans of the town of Sichar, after listening to Jesus, told that woman, "We no longer believe because of what you have said for we have heard for ourselves and know that this in truth is the Savior of the world." The passage to be heard on the next Sunday, the Fourth of Lent this year, is Saint John’s account of the healing of the man born blind (John 9:1-41). The account also has a significant baptismal theme in that, after Christ anointed the man’s eyes with clay, the man had to bathe in the pool of Siloe to obtain his sight. With typical Johannine irony, the passage relates how the man born blind in innocence is enabled by our Savior to obtain his sight both physically and spiritually, while the Pharisees, although sighted physically, are in reality spiritually blind. Our Lord proclaims, "For judgment have I come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that they who do see may become blind."
The liturgical Gospel passage for the Fifth Sunday of Lent this year is the account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1-45). It is one of three resurrections from the dead worked by Christ which are related in the New Testament. (the daughter of Jairus and the son of the widow of Naim: Mark 5:21-43; Luke 7:11-17). Lazarus lived with his sisters, Mary and Martha, in the village of Bethany and was evidently very much loved by Jesus. Pope Benedict XVI says, "Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead, teaches us about life. In Baptism we pass from death to life and become capable of pleasing God, of causing the old man to die so as to live in the Spirit of the Risen One." The Holy Father exhorts us, "On this Lenten journey, let us be attentive to welcoming Christ’s invitation to follow Him more decisively and coherently, (Matthew 16:24: Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23), renewing the grace and commitments of our Baptism so as to clothe ourselves in Christ and thus reaching Easter renewed, and being able to say with Saint Paul: It is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).
Obedience
As the penitential season of Lent progresses toward our celebration of Christ’s triumphant and glorious resurrection, it is also appropriate to meditate on His saving obedience and, following His example and with the help of His grace, to renew our own humble "obedience to faith" (Romans 1:5), which must accompany our work of Lenten baptismal renewal in order to make it efficacious. Many saints have written and spoken about the importance of obedience. Saint Francis de Sales, for instance, said, "The Devil does not fear austerity, but he fears holy obedience. When God puts inspirations into a human heart, the first that He gives is obedience. Blessed are the obedient, for God will never allow them to go astray!" Saint Benedict wrote in his rule, "Humility before God is the fundamental virtue and the first degree of humility is obedience."
Pope Benedict XVI has written that God makes it necessary that "the New Covenant must be founded on an obedience that is irrevocable and inviolable. This obedience, now located at the very root of human nature, is the obedience of the Son, Who made Himself a Servant and took all human disobedience upon Himself in His obedience even unto death, suffering it right to the end and conquering it. God cannot simply ignore man’s disobedience and all the evil of history. He cannot treat it as if it were inconsequential or meaningless.... That which is wrong, the reality of evil, cannot simply be ignored. It cannot just be left to stand. It must be dealt with. It must be overcome. And, the fact is that God now confronts evil Himself, because men are incapable of doing so. Therein lies the unconditional goodness of God, which can never be opposed to truth or to the justice that goes with it. "If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself" (2 Timothy 2:13).
Empowering Example
Saint Peter explained that the passion and death Jesus not only provides us with possibility of obtaining the grace from God without which we cannot be saved, but also gives us a most precious model. ""Unto this indeed you were called because Christ has suffered for you, leaving you an example that you may follow in His steps" (1 Peter 2:21). Our Lord saved us not only because He was the most innocent of innocent victims, a spotless Lamb Who suffered pain and death utterly unjustly due to the multiplicity and wickedness of human sins and out of His unbounded love, but most of all because He did this voluntarily in obedience to His Father’s divine will. "He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to death, even to death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8). Saint Paul explains, "For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous" (Romans 5:19). The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "by His obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the Suffering Servant, Who makes Himself an offering for sin, when He bore the sins of many, and Who shall make many be accounted righteous, for He shall bear their iniquities" (Isaiah 53:10-12). Saint Peter reminds us that Jesus "bore our sins in His Body upon the tree that we, having died to sin, might live to justice and by His stripes you were healed" (1 Peter 2:24).
In the Garden of Gethsemane we hear how the human will of our Savior was in perfect conformity with His divine will regarding His passion and death. When He taught us to pray to the Father: "Thy will be done..", He made those human words the guiding light of His conformity to the Father’s command, saying in His agony, "Not My will, but Yours be done..."(Luke 22:42).
C.S.Lewis notes that heaven is populated by souls who in their lifetime repeated the words to God "Thy will be done", while hell is peopled with souls who said instead, "My will be done". "Obedience is submission to the authority of God, obeying the divine law, the laws of the Catholic Church in those things that pertain to salvation, and obeying legitimate civil authority which has its origin in God for the sake of the common good and the order of society." Obedience undertaken in grace is an imitation of Christ and a source of true freedom and grand joy. In Lent let us commit ourselves anew to obedience and thus draw closer to His cross and to our renewal of baptismal innocence.
The Entry
Each year the entire season of Lent liturgically tends toward its finality in Holy Week and Easter Week. The beginning of that part of the liturgical year is marked by our recollection of the triumphant and messianic entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. However, it is spiritually helpful to begin to keep this in mind even during the earlier weeks of Lent. Gilbert Keith Chesterton once managed to place some of the memory of that event into the mouth of a beast in his poem "The Donkey": "I also had my hour, one far fierce hour and sweet. There was a shout about my ears that day and palms before my feet".
Treating the importance of that entry of our Savior into the holy city, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, "Although Jesus had always refused popular attempts to make Him king, He chooses (before His passion) the time and prepares the details for His messianic entry into the city of His father, David (Luke 1:32; Matthew 21:1-11; John 6:15). Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem manifested the coming of the kingdom that the King-Messiah was going to accomplish by the passover of His death and resurrection. Jesus went up to Jerusalem voluntarily, knowing well that there He would die a violent death because of the opposition of sinners (Hebrews 12:3). (He is) welcomed into His city (on that occasion) by children and by the humble of heart."
José Granados notes, "The scene certainly presents a novelty with respect to the rest of the public life of Christ. Having repeatedly refused to be acclaimed, having pledged to silence many of those He healed to prevent them revealing that He was the Messiah, the Master now orchestrates this triumph of palm branches and hosannas. This new way of proceeding must not, however, lead us to forget the continuity of the scene with the rest of Jesus’ life. The tenor continues to be that of profound obedience to His Father, expressed in attentive listening to the ancient Scriptures in which the voice of God is revealed. What Jesus effects in entering the city is in fact a prophetic sign that recapitulates key Old Testament themes. Only by reference to these can we make sense of certain enigmatic aspects of the scene: the donkey on which Jesus is mounted and the cry of hosanna with which the people receive Him. All attempts to interpret the heart of the preaching of Jesus, need to take into account this episode."
In his new book, his second volume of "Jesus of Nazareth", (published in English by Ignatius Press), our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, begins that work by a rather extensive treatment of the triumphal entry. He follows most commentators in seeing that Saint John in his Gospel relates three passover feasts celebrated in Jerusalem by Jesus in His earthly life (John 2:13-25; 12:1; 13:1), the last being the "great passover, the reason for our celebration of Easter, which is the Christians’ passover". The three Synoptics, however, "contain just one passover feast, that of the cross and resurrection. Indeed, in Saint Luke’s Gospel Jesus’ path is presented as a single pilgrim ascent from Galilee to Jerusalem." "He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem" (Luke 9:51).
Jerusalem
From the time of King David who founded the city, devout Jews, including those of our Lord’s time, always have had a profound, sentimental, and theological attachment to Jerusalem. Psalm 137, recited by the Hebrews in the years of their Babylonian exile, represents this attitude: "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten. Let my tongue cleave to my jaws if I do not remember you, if I make not Jerusalem the beginning of my joy." To this day, Orthodox Jews at the conclusion of their annual passover "seder" say to each other: "Next year in Jerusalem!"
It is clear that our Savior, God incarnate as a devout descendant of Abraham, shared in His human nature that great Jewish love for the city of His ancestor, David. Our Lord on one occasion said, "Nevertheless, I must go my way today and tomorrow and the next day, for it cannot be that a prophet perish outside Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you, how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you would not! Behold your house is left desolate to you, and I say to you that you shall not see me until the time comes when you shall say: Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord" (Luke 13:33-35; Matthew 23:37-39).
There is an old Jewish midrash which says of Jerusalem: "The Creator allotted ten measures of beauty to the world, and of them Jerusalem received nine. The Creator allotted ten measures of wisdom to the world, and of them, Jerusalem received nine. The Creator then allotted ten measures of suffering to the world, and of them too, Jerusalem received nine!" Granados remarks, "History seems to have confirmed this special joint assignment of glory and pain to the capital of Judea. The city has become a symbol of impossible aspirations and an icon of peace that is forever being disrupted by political and religious conflicts. In fact it was already thus when Jesus entered that city mounted on a donkey and acclaimed by the multitude. An analysis of this moment can help not only to bring us closer to the mystery of Christ, but also to enable us to interpret the significance of His action in the political and religious heart of the Jewish society of His day, and thus illuminating our own cultural situation."
The Donkey
In the time of Christ there was a general law in force in the Roman Empire called "angaria", which empowered higher public officials to requisition an animal or demand manual labor from anyone if those authorities were to need it to carry out their official duties. (See the Simon of Cyrene incident -Luke 23:26.) Evidently our Savior invoked this law in His own regard when He gave His two disciples instructions to requisition the colt of an ass for His purposes (Luke 19:29-35). As He began to fulfill the prophecy of Zachariah (9:9; Isaiah 62:11; Matthew 21:4-5), Jesus first paused to weep over Jerusalem as he caught sight of the city on His trip there from the Mount of Olives near Bethphage and Bethany. In poignant and moving words He addressed His holy city in a most touching way: "If you had known this in your day, even you, the things that are for your peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a rampart about you and surround you and shut you in on every side, and will dash you to the ground and your children within you, and will not leave one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation!" (Luke 19:41-44).
The Prophet Zachariah identified the horse with warrior power (Zachariah 9:10). It was in contrast with this that "the long awaited Messiah does not come into Jerusalem on a horse, a sign of power, but on a donkey, an emissary of peace. He is not a warrior Christ, but One Who will preach the kingdom of God as tranquility and peaceful order. The humility of His triumphant entry proclaims that His is the kingdom of the little ones, the meek who imitate His own divine meekness" (Matthew 5:4; 11:29; 21:5; 2 Corinthians 10:1; Psalm 45:4; etc.).
Eucharistic Resonance
In reflecting on the beginning of Holy Week each year, it is spiritually enriching also to always remember how "the decisive sayings and events of Jesus’ life", commemorated in that special week, continue in our liturgical worship throughout the year. Pope Benedict XVI says of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem before His passion, "The early Church was right to read this scene as an anticipation of what she does in her liturgy. The ‘benedictus’ entered the liturgy at a very early stage. For the infant Church Palm Sunday was not a thing of the past. Just as the Lord entered the Holy City that day on a donkey, so too the Church saw Him coming again and again in the humble form of bread and wine. The Church greets the Lord in the Holy Eucharist as the One Who is coming now, the One Who has entered into her midst. At the same time she greets Him as the One Who continues to come, the One Who leads us toward His coming. As pilgrims we go up to Him. As a Pilgrim He comes to us and takes us up with Him in His ‘ascent’ to His cross and resurrection, to the definitive Jerusalem that is already growing in the midst of this world in the Communion that unites us with His Body."
Jose’ Granados writes, "The cry of hosanna can be seen to sum up the pilgrimage to the New Temple, that of the Body of Christ. As a petition for help or an exclamation of jubilation, hosanna attests that the Christian preaching of the word is always rooted in the body. The hosanna is part of what Gabriel Marcel called the exclamatory quality of existence. As incarnate beings, we are not just placed in front of the world, as if it were an external object at our disposal, but we are immersed in the world and we participate in it with wonder and passion. This is the hosanna that is heard by all who journey alongside Jesus from the glory of the palm branches to the suffering of Golgotha. This is said before each Eucharist in the ‘sanctus’, at the making present of the mystery of the Body, dead and risen. And, from time immemorial it was used to express hope for the second coming of Christ, ‘when our bodies will be transfigured into the image of His glorious Body’ (Philippians 3:21). Thus we find written in the Didache (one of the earliest non-scriptural Christian documents, which dates from about the year 60 A.D.), ‘Let grace come and let this world pass away. Hosanna to the Son of David. If anyone is holy, let him approach (to receive Holy Communion) . If anyone is not, let him repent. Maranatha! Amen!’." (Father Granados teaches patrology and philosophy at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.)
Hosanna
The Hebrew term "hosanna" was clearly important in the "happening" of our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Its importance is indicated not only because it was retained in its original Hebrew form by the Evangelists, but also because, as Pope Benedict XVI observes, "the Christian liturgy had adopted this greeting, interpreting it in the light of the Church’s Easter faith." What does it mean? The term’s meaning seems to have undergone an evolution over several centuries.
It is related to Psalm 117, (118), where it was used originally in the Jewish temple liturgy as a sort of dialogue with two choirs. At that time it was addressed to God and meant something like "save us soon" or "save us now" or "come to our aid". The Jewish priests mantra-like would "repeat it in a monotone on the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles, while processing seven times around the temple altar of sacrifice." However, the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles gradually morphed from a time and season of petition to God for His favors, especially for rain in time of drought, into a feast of jubilation, and so the word itself turned into a shout of triumph. Pope Benedict tells us that "By the time of Jesus, the word had also acquired messianic overtones. So then we find in it an expression of the complex emotions of the pilgrims accompanying Jesus and of His disciples: joyful praise of God at the moment of the processional entry, hope that the hour of the Messiah had arrived, and at the same time a prayer that the Davidic kingship and hence God’s kingship over Israel would be reestablished." Saint Augustine observed that "in Hebrew the cry of hosanna was an interjection, a shout coming from the very heart of man where the emotion of the one who speaks matters more than the meaning of the sounds."
Similarly, the other expression "blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord" originally was a blessing that the Jewish priests would pronounce over each pilgrim when he or she would arrive in the Jerusalem temple for some act of worship. But, later it too "acquired a messianic significance, a designation of the one promised by God, and so, from being an ancient pilgrim-blessing, it became the praise of Jesus, a greeting to Him Who comes in the name of the Lord, the One awaited and proclaimed by all the promises."
Secret Finished
The so-called "messianic secret" is a significant element in all the Gospel narratives of the New Testament. Jesus confided gradually but clearly to His closest followers His identity as the Messiah and, ultimately, the divine Son of God, but demanded that they keep this confidential. It was only on the verge of His passion and death that He permitted others to so acclaim Him, in effect ending His messianic secret, and doing this obviously by His entry into Jerusalem. Our Redeemer knew that, on that occasion, there would be no further misunderstanding. He is acclaimed a King, but "His kingdom will be different from every other that has been or will be. He comes as a humble King to transform spears into pruning shears. His claim, however, is more daring than that of any previous king, for He proclaims Himself a King in a universal and eternal sense, Who reaches the very core of human identity" (John 18:33-37). He foresaw that "the necessary acclamation of hosanna" was going to be "united with the accusation of blasphemy by Caiphas (Matthew 26:63-66), and that the palm branches of glory were to be united to His cross." Only when those things come together "does Jesus’ royalty cease to be at risk of misunderstanding and He permits Himself to be acclaimed as the King of Israel by the crowd."
Saint John Chrysostom preached that it was only when Jesus "had given sufficient proof of His power and the cross was at the very doors, that He revealed Himself more clearly and did publicly whatever might foreshadow the things to come." He came as a King Who would soon be crowned with thorns and wrapped in the royal purple of His Blood, Whose throne would be a wooden cross and Whose spiritual kingdom would allow its citizens one day to rise from the dead and enjoy eternal and unbounded happiness before the face of God.
Special Week
Palm Sunday annually ushers in the most sacred and important week of the year for us who are Catholics. Although the secular world largely ignores this week, filling it with its ordinary entertainment, normal sporting events, every day television news and amusements, and the usual commercial life, we, who are privileged to be Christ’s disciples, should strive to set aside to the greatest extent possible our worldly affairs and occupations in this coming week in order to participate in the sacred liturgy, particularly in what are called "the very holy three days". The phrase in Latin is the Sacred "Triduum", that is, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and, most important of all, the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday evening, "the mother of all vigils", as the Pope calls it. Of course, the Chrism Mass on Monday of Holy Week invites us all, along with the urgent custom of making a devout Easter Confession. We also have an invitation to attend as well the many para-liturgical or extra liturgical devotions which take place in our parish churches during this special week, such as Stations of the Cross, Liturgy of the Hours, Devotions at the Sepulcher, Devotions to the Five Wounds and Last Words of Jesus, Tenebrae, Tre Ore Services, the Blessing of Easter Food on Holy Saturday, etc. It is in the sacred liturgy and in its accompanying halo of prayers and devotions that the events of our salvation are made present for us, pushing aside the veils of time and space. It is in the liturgy that Jesus touches us with what He merited for us on His cross and in the Garden of the Resurrection.
Holy Week is when we not only remember but actually relive in sign, symbol, word and sacrament the history of our salvation. We recall the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, the cowardice of Pilate, the fickle and manipulated crowds, the time when the King of Ages is crowned with thorns, the Holy Strong One is fastened with nails to a cross, and the Holy Immortal One dies. Each year we are requested, for our spiritual benefit and enrichment, to weep with Mary, to be vigilant with the Beloved Disciple, to be deeply thankful for the Eucharist and the priesthood of the New Covenant instituted in that Upper Room, to mourn our sins, and to see in the bloody sweat, the scourging, and the stab of the lance, what is our own doing by our sins and their profound wickedness, and to see also, in contrast, God’s infinite pardon and His eternal love for us made visible on a hill called "Skull Place". Holy Week is the time of our Christian Passover, when the Paschal Lamb of God is slain, and when His precious Blood, if we allow It, marks the doorposts of our souls to prevent our deserved damnation. Pope Benedict XVI says, "I urge you to live these days intensely so they may decisively direct the life of each one to generous and convinced adherence to Christ, Who died and rose for us."
What it Does
Saint John Chrysostom says, "We call Holy Week the Great Week because in it many ineffable good things come our way: the Devil’s tyranny is relaxed, his pomps are destroyed, his curses are lifted, man is again reconciled with God, and from being God’s enemies we are changed into His friends and His children, made once more into the brothers and sisters of Jesus by our baptismal renewal. In Holy Week heaven is made accessible and our spiritual shadows are cleared away. It is the week when we no longer wander in the desert for we have found the right way. We no longer are outside the palace for we have found the entrance. We no longer fear the flaming arrows of Lucifer, for we have seen where the font of water is located." The days of Holy Week, especially the Sacred Triduum, constitute the stepping stones toward our genuine and authentic celebration of Easter.
It is true that in Holy Week we are given a golden opportunity to share the tears and pain of our suffering Redeemer, and to sorrowfully lament the evil of our sins and those of all mankind, which are the real cause of His horrible torture and hideous death. However, as Father Pius Parsch observes, there is also, throughout the entire week, a note of victory and joy, a realization that Christ’s sacred passion was, by God’s will and arrangement, a necessary prerequisite to His risen glory (Acts of the Apostles 24:25-27).. The theme of triumph, therefore, permeates all aspects of the sacred liturgy of that week. A Friday called "Good" is a most important part of the story of our salvation, but it is utterly incomplete and meaningless without that Sunday called "Easter". "The cross and the resurrection are inseparable." Holy Week is when we must vividly remember what is sung in the great Easter Proclamation on Holy Saturday evening: "It profits us nothing to be born if we are not saved."
Important Reading
One of the fine ways to enhance our celebration of Holy Week is to take up our Bible, which might be gathering dust somewhere in our house, and prayerfully and thoughtfully read some texts that will enrich our liturgical participation throughout the week. Texts might include our Lord’s last discourse and His high priestly prayer (John, chapters 14-17), appropriate for prayer time before the sacred repository on Holy Thursday evening. Read Psalm 22 (21), containing the words Jesus spoke on the cross on Good Friday, Psalms 38, 69, 89, 102, etc. along with some of the "Suffering Servant of Yahweh" passages from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (chapters 40-55), the Lamentations and the Book of Jeremiah, and the accounts of the passion and death of the Savior according to Saint Mark (chapters 14-15) and Saint Luke (chapters 22-23).
Pope Saint Leo the Great said of Holy Week: "Dearly beloved, the festival of the passion, so earnestly looked forward to, so desired of all men, is now here, a subject, in that it is so unutterable, gives matter without end for speaking, nor may what we say fall short, for of what we speak never can there be enough." Saint Augustine of Hippo said, "Since our Lord Jesus made a day of this week glorious by His resurrection, and another which He had made doleful by His death, let us recall both days in solemn memorial, keeping vigil in recollection of His death and rejoicing in His resurrection. This is our greatest annual feast, our Pasch." Saint Ambrose of Milan preached, "We must observe both the day of the passion and the day of the resurrection, having a day of bitterness and one of joy, fasting on the one day and being refreshed on the other." Blessed John Henry Newman wrote, "We cannot truly feast unless we first have fasted." Saint Gregory of Nyssa said, "Holy Week is week like none other."
The biography of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary notes, "Nothing can express the fervor, love, and pious veneration with which she celebrated those holy days of Holy Week, on which the Church, by ceremonies so touching and so expressive, recalls to the mind of the faithful the sorrowful and unspeakable mystery of our redemption." May what was written about that splendid woman be also said one day of us. May her example and that of all of the heavenly court serve to inspire and move us to properly celebrate this "week like none other".
The Proclamation
In his first sermon on the first Pentecost, Saint Peter asserted what was ever to be and to always remain the center and heart of the Good News of Jesus Christ proclaimed by the Catholic Church down the ages: "God raised Him up, delivering Him from the pangs of death because it was impossible for death to hold Him in its power" (Acts of the Apostles 2:24). Easter, the celebration of the glorious resurrection of the Lord, enfolds the Old Testament into the New. As we say in our Creed, He rose "in fulfillment of the Scriptures" (Psalm 16:26-27; Psalm 110:1). The resurrection proclaims the startling but true and utterly new fact that Jesus Christ "not only was, but still is!".
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, wrote: "The process of coming to a resurrection-faith is analogous to what we saw in the case of the cross. Nobody had thought of a crucified Messiah. Now the fact was there, and it was necessary, on the basis of that fact, to take a fresh look at Scripture... Scripture yielded new insights in the light of the unexpected turn of events and...the fact then began to make sense. Admittedly, the new reading of Scripture could begin only after the resurrection, because it was only through the resurrection that Jesus was (seen to be) accredited as the One sent by God. Now the people had to search the Scriptures for both cross and resurrection, so as to understand them in a new way and thereby come to believe in Jesus as the Son of God. This presupposes that for the disciples the resurrection was just as real as the cross. It presupposes that they were simply overwhelmed by the reality, and that, after their initial hesitation and astonishment, they could no longer ignore that reality. It is truly He. He is alive. He has spoken to us. He has allowed us to touch Him even if He no longer belongs to us in the realm of the tangible, in the normal way. The paradox was indescribable. He was quite different, no mere resuscitated corpse, but One living anew and forever in the power of God."
In But Beyond
The Pope observes, ""The resurrection does not simply stand outside or above history. As something that breaks out of history and transcends it, the resurrection nevertheless has its origins within history, and, up to a certain point, still belongs there. Perhaps we could put it this way: Jesus’ resurrection points beyond history but has left a footprint within history. Therefore, it can be attested by witnesses as an event of an entirely new kind. Indeed, the apostolic preaching with all its boldness and passion would be unthinkable unless the witnesses has experienced a real encounter, coming to them from outside, with something entirely new and unforeseen, namely the self-revelation and verbal communication of the risen Christ."
"If we attend to the witnesses with listening hearts and open ourselves to the signs by which the Lord again and again authenticates both them and Himself, then we know that He is truly risen. He is alive. Let us entrust ourselves to Him, knowing that we are on the right path. With Thomas, let us place our hands into Jesus’ pierced side and confess: My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). The resurrection of Jesus is a fact, a definite, datable, perceptible event. And, it is this event which, in the words of the great Easter proclamation sung each year at the Easter Vigil, "banishes enmities, drives out wickedness, washes away guilt, restores innocence, brings joy, establishes peace, and weds heaven to earth." Pope John Paul II said, "Easter is the day that dawns after a night of watching, "the day the Lord has made" (Psalm 117:24). It is the most special day in the history of the universe and in all human history. This is the day in which God clearly revealed that He is the God of the living and not of the dead (Mark 12:27)."
The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, "Christ’s resurrection was not a return to earthly life, as was the case with the raisings from the dead that He performed before Easter, Jairus’ daughter, the young man of Naim, and Lazarus. These actions were miraculous events, but the persons miraculously raised returned by Jesus’ power to ordinary earthly life. At some particular moment they would die again. Christ’s resurrection is essentially different. In His risen Body He passes from the state of death to another life beyond time and space. At Jesus’ resurrection His Body is filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. He shares the divine life in His glorious state, so that Saint Paul can say that Christ is the Man of heaven (1 Corinthians 15:35-50). Christ’s glorified humanity can no longer be confined to earth and belongs henceforth only to the Father’s divine realm" (Luke 24:30-43; John 20:27).
The Holy Trinity
"Christ’s resurrection is an object of faith in that it is a transcendent intervention of God Himself in creation and history. In it the Three Divine Persons act together as One, and manifest Their own proper characteristics. The Father’s power raised up Christ His Son and by doing so perfectly introduced His Son’s humanity, including His Body, into the Holy Trinity. Jesus is conclusively revealed as Son of God in power according to the Holy Spirit of holiness by His resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:3-4; Acts of the Apostles 2:24). Saint Paul insists on the manifestation of God’s power through the working of the Holy Spirit Who gave life to Jesus’ dead humanity and called It to the glorious state of Lordship (Romans 6:4; 2 Corinthians 13:4; Philippians 3:10; Ephesians 1:19-22). As for the Son, He effects His own resurrection by virtue of His divine power. Jesus announces that the Son of Man will have to suffer much, die, and then rise (Mark 8:31; 9:9-31; 10:34). Elsewhere He affirms explicitly: I lay down My life that I may take it up again....I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again (John 10:17-18)."
"The Fathers (of the Church) contemplate the resurrection from the perspective of the Divine Person of Christ, Who remained united to His (human) Soul and Body, even when these were separated from each other by death. Saint Gregory of Nyssa said, By the unity of His Divine Nature, Which remains present in each of the two components, these are reunited. For as death is produced by the separation of the human components, so resurrection is achieved by the union of the two."
"The resurrection above all constitutes the confirmation of all Christ’s works and teachings ( 1 Corinthians 15:14). All truths, even those most inaccessible to human reason, find their justification there. Christ’s resurrection is the fulfillment of the promises of the New and Old Testaments (Matthew 28:6, Mark 16:7; Luke 24:6-48). The truth of Christ’s divinity is confirmed by His resurrection (John 8:28). By His death Christ liberates us from sin. By His resurrection He opens for us the way to a new life. Finally, Christ’s resurrection, and the risen Christ Himself, is the principle and source of our own future resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:20-22; Hebrews 6:5; 2 Corinthians 5:15; Colossians 3:1-3)."
Dear readers, may every Easter blessing be yours, and may our risen Savior pour into your hearts and those of your loved ones an abundance of His sacred peace and eternal joy.
Made By Christ
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, citing extensively the Second Vatican Council, teaches that "Christ Himself is the Source of ministry in the Church. He instituted the Church. He gave her authority and mission, orientation and goal." The Council declared, "In order to shepherd the People of God and to increase their numbers without cease, Christ the Lord set up in His Church a variety of offices which aim at the good of the whole Body. The holders of office, who are invested with a sacred power, are, in fact, dedicated to promoting the interests of their brethren, so that all who belong to the People of God may attain salvation." The Catechism notes, "Holy Orders is the sacrament through which the mission entrusted by Christ to His Apostles continues to be exercised in the Church until the end of time. Thus it is the sacrament of apostolic ministry. It includes three degrees: episcopate, presbyterate, and diaconate."
The impending ordinations to the diaconate and priesthood in the coming month in our Diocese and the expectation of a new Bishop, when our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, activates the canonically required retirement of the current Bishop, make a reflection on the episcopacy and the priesthood quite timely and perhaps very useful as well. The Catechism says, "Today the word "ordination" is reserved for the sacramental act, which integrates a man into the order of Bishops, priests, or deacons, and which goes beyond a simple election, designation, delegation, or institution by the community, for it confers a gift of the Holy Spirit that permits the exercise of a sacred power, which can come only from Christ Himself through His Church. Ordination is called a consecration, for it is a setting apart and an investiture by Christ Himself for His Church. The "laying on of hands" by the Bishop, with the consecratory prayer, constitutes the visible sign of this ordination."
The Catechism teaches, "No one can give himself the mandate and the mission to proclaim the Gospel. The one sent by the Lord does not speak and act on his own authority, but by virtue of Christ’s authority, not as a member of the community, but speaking to it in the name of Christ. No one can bestow this grace upon himself, but it must be given and offered. This fact presupposes ministers of grace, authorized and empowered by Christ. From Him Bishops and priests receive their mission and faculty, the sacred power, to act in the Person of Christ the Head. Deacons receive the strength to serve the People of God in the diaconate of liturgy, word, and charity, in communion with the Bishop and his presbyterate. The ministry in which Christ’s emissaries do and give by God’s grace what they cannot do and give by their own powers is called a sacrament by the Church’s Tradition. Indeed, the ministry of the Church is conferred by a special sacrament."
Hierarchical Structure
The entire third chapter of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church proclaimed by the Second Vatican Council (entitled in Latin "Lumen Gentium") is concerned with the intrinsically hierarchical nature and structure of the Catholic Church as instituted and intended by Jesus Himself, when He walked on our earth (John 20:21). "Jesus willed that the successors of His Apostles, namely the Bishops, should be shepherds in His Church even to the consummation of the world."
The Council says, "Continuing in the same task of clarification begun by the First Vatican Council, this Council has decided to declare and proclaim before all men its teaching concerning Bishops, the successors of the Apostles, who, together with the Successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ and the visible head of the whole Church, govern the House of the living God. The divine mission entrusted by Christ to the Apostles will last until the end of the world (Matthew 28:20), since the Gospel which was to be handed down by them is for all time and the source of life for the Church. For this reason the Apostles took care to appoint successors in this hierarchically structured society. Among the various ministries which, as Tradition witnesses, were exercised in the Church from the earliest times, the chief place belongs to the office of those who, appointed to the episcopate in a sequence running back to the beginning, are the ones who pass on the apostolic seed. Thus, as Saint Irenaeus testifies, through those who were appointed Bishops by the Apostles, and through their successors down to our own time, the apostolic tradition is manifested and preserved throughout the world."
Fullness
The Catechism remarks, "The Second Vatican Council teaches that the fullness of the Sacrament of Holy Orders is conferred by episcopal consecration, that fullness namely which, both in the liturgical tradition of the Church and the language of the Fathers of the Church, is called the high priesthood, the summit of the sacred ministry. Episcopal consecration confers, together with the office of sanctifying, also the offices of teaching and ruling. In fact, by the imposition of hands and through the words of consecration, the grace of the Holy Spirit is given and a sacred character is impressed in such wise that Bishops, in an eminent and visible manner, take the place of Christ Himself, Teacher, Shepherd, and Priest and act as His representative. By virtue, therefore, of the Holy Spirit, Who has been given to them, Bishops have been constituted true and authentic teachers of the faith and have been made pontiffs and pastors" (Acts of the Apostles 1:8; 2:4; John 20:22-23; 1 Timothy 4:14; 2 Timothy 1:6-7).
"One is constituted a member of the episcopal body in virtue of the sacramental consecration and the hierarchical communion with the head and members of the college (of Bishops). The character and collegial nature of the episcopal order are evidenced among other ways by the Church’s ancient practice which calls for several Bishops to participate in the consecration of a new Bishop. In our day the lawful ordination of a Bishop requires a special intervention by the Bishop of Rome because he is the supreme visible bond of communion of the particular churches in the one Church and the guarantor of their freedom."
"As Christ’s vicar, each Bishop has the pastoral care of the particular church entrusted to him, but at the same time he bears collegially with all his brothers in the episcopacy the solicitude for all the churches. Though each Bishop is the lawful pastor only of the portion of the flock entrusted to his care, as a legitimate successor of the Apostles, he is, by divine institution and precept, responsible with the other Bishops in the apostolic mission of the Church. The above considerations explain why the Eucharist celebrated by the Bishop has a quite special significance as an expression of the Church gathered around the altar, with the one who represents Christ, the Good Shepherd and Head of His Church, presiding." The Second Vatican Council teaches, "In the Bishops, therefore, for whom priests are the assistants, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Supreme High Priest, is present in the midst of those who believe."
Succession
The Second Vatican Council teaches, "For the discharging of their great duties the Apostles were enriched by Christ with a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Who came upon them (Acts of the Apostles 1:8; 2:4; John 20:22-23). This spiritual Gift they passed on to their helpers by means of the imposition of hands (1 Timothy 4:14; 2 Timothy 1:6-7), and it has been transmitted down to us (the Bishops at the Second Vatican Council) in episcopal consecration. This sacred Council teaches that by episcopal consecration is conferred the fullness of the Sacrament of Holy Orders."
Before he became our Pope, our present Holy Father, at that time Father and later Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, wrote many theological and pastoral works concerning the episcopacy. Father Timothy Byerley has studied these works and notes how the authenticity of apostolic teaching, that is, the sure and certain transmission of the undiluted, unmutilated, complete, and unsullied doctrine of Jesus, must always be linked in logical unity with the principle of apostolic succession in the Catholic Church. "Apostolic succession is derived from the Christological and missiological data of the New Testament. As Jesus was sent by the Father, so He sent His Apostles. ‘He who receives you receives Me’ (Mark 10:40; Luke 10:16; John 13:20). Christ designates, authorizes, and commissions certain men to be His Apostles. He endows them not only with the authority to teach but also with sacramental powers. Accordingly, it also becomes quite clear in Saint Paul that the sacramental authority of the Apostles is a specific ministry and in no way describes ( the ordinary and usual) Christian life as a whole. Paul’s writings confirm and define more clearly what the Gospels indicate: a distinct sacramental office of ministers of the New Covenant. In these ministers, i.e. Bishops and priests, the Apostles’ Christ-given authority continues vis-a-vis the Church and the world. Because the sacramental authority to confect the Eucharist is exclusive to the Bishop and the priest, a theology of communion that centers around the Holy Eucharist implicitly necessitates the principle of apostolic succession."
Ignatius of Antioch
One of the earliest witnesses to the presence in the Church of the threefold level of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, that is, the orders of Bishops, priests, and deacons, is the martyr Saint Ignatius of Antioch. He was a disciple and convert of Saint John the Apostle and a close and good friend of Saint Polycarp of Smyrna. He was the successor of Saint Peter the Apostle in Antioch, becoming the Bishop of that See in the year 69 A.D. He was arrested in the year 107 for being a leader of the Christians, and he was taken to Rome where he eventually died, fed to lions on December 20, 110 A.D. in the Roman amphitheatre to amuse the pagan rabble.
While being transported by ship to Rome for his execution, he wrote seven letters, all of which we still have intact, six to the Christians in each of the ancient cities of Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Philadelphia, Smyrna, and Rome, and another letter to Saint Polycarp. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles tells us that it was in Antioch that the followers of Christ were called Christians for the first time (Acts of the Apostles 11:26). It is significant that the name "Catholic" is also found to be Antiochian in origin. It is found for the first time in writing in an Ignatian letter, to indicate the Universal or Great Church as distinguished from various heretical or schismatic sects and denominations which already had begun to break off from the Church founded by Christ. Saint Ignatius wrote in his letter to the Christians in Smyrna: "Wherever the Bishop is, there let the people be, for there is the Catholic Church."
What He Wrote
Saint Ignatius wrote to the Smyrnaeans: "Let no one do anything touching the Church apart from the Bishop. You must all follow the lead of the Bishop, as Jesus Christ followed that of the Father. Follow the priests as you would the Apostles. Reverence the deacons as you do the commandments of God. It is not permitted without authorization from the Bishop either to baptize or to hold a Eucharist (Agape=Love Feast), but whatsoever he approves is also pleasing to God. It is well to revere God and the Bishop. He who honors a Bishop is honored by God."
To the Trallians, he wrote: "Let all respect the deacons as representing Jesus Christ, and respect the Bishop as the type of God the Father, and esteem the priests as God’s high council and as the apostolic college. Apart from these, no church deserves the name of Church. Beware of heretics, and, if you are aware of them, you will not be puffed up and you will cling inseparably to God, to Jesus Christ, and to the Bishop and thus to the precepts of the Apostles. He that is inside the sanctuary is pure and he that is outside the sanctuary is impure. In other words, he that does anything apart from the Bishop, the presbytery, or the deacons has no pure conscience."
To the Philadelphians, he wrote: "It was the Holy Spirit Who kept preaching in these words: Apart from the Bishop do nothing. Preserve your persons as shrines of God; cherish unity, shun divisions; do as Jesus Christ did, for He too did as the Father did. Be obedient to the Bishop as to the commandments, and so too be obedient to the priests, and love one another with an undivided heart. Surely all those who belong to God and Jesus Christ are the very ones who side with the Bishop."
To the Magnesians, he wrote: "I exhort you to strive to do all things in harmony with God. The Bishop is to preside in the place of God, while the presbyters (priests) are to function as the council of Apostles, and the deacons, who are most dear to me, are entrusted with the service-ministry of Jesus Christ. Let there be nothing among you tending to divide you, but be united with your Bishop and with those who preside (in his place, i.e. the priests), being for the world a pattern and a lesson of incorruptibility. The proper thing, then, is not merely to be styled Christians, but also to be such. There are those who say a man is a Bishop but completely disregard him in their conduct. Such persons, I claim, do not have a good conscience, inasmuch as they do not assemble for the liturgy in the fixed order prescribed by him."
To the Ephesians, he wrote: "Assuredly, if the prayer of one or two has such efficacy, how much more does that of the Bishop and the entire Church. Let us take care, therefore, not to oppose the Bishop that we might be submissive to God. Hence it is proper for you to act in agreement with the mind of your Bishop and this you do. Certain it is that your priests (your presbytery) do that. This is a credit to their name and a credit to God, for your priests harmonize with the Bishop as completely as the strings with a harp. This is why in the symphony of your concord and love the praises of Jesus Christ are sung."
The Second Vatican Council says, "Bishops have been appointed by the Holy Spirit and are the successors of the Apostles as pastors of souls. Together with the Supreme Pontiff and under his authority, they are sent to continue through the ages His work as the eternal Pastor."
Priests at the Council
During the Second Vatican Council, the priesthood of the Catholic Church was considered, discussed, and treated in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (entitled in Latin "Lumen Gentium") and in several other conciliar documents, but many of the Bishops at the Council complained at the time that the treatment of the priesthood in those documents was too scattered, meager, and inadequate, given the fact that Catholic priests, as men of the Church, undertake a most important work and a total dedication that is essential to the very life of Christ’s Mystical Body. So it was decided, after further discussion, that, in addition to what is taught by the Council scattered in other places, a separate Decree on the Priesthood would be issued (entitled in Latin "Presbyterorum Ordinis"), and this was formulated, voted on, and then promulgated on the second last day of the Council, December 7, 1965.
Bishop Guilford Young, one of the prelates who was deeply involved in that particular aspect of the Council’s work, commented: "The pivotal principle on which the Council’s teaching turns is that the priest is a man drawn from the ranks of the People of God to be made, in the very depths of his being like to Christ, the High Priest of mankind. The priest is consecrated by a special seal of the Holy Spirit. In virtue of this consecration, he acts in the Person of Christ, and, as a minister of Christ, the Head, he is deputed to serve the People of God. Through the priest Christ continues and fulfills the mission which He received from God the Father."
A New Balance
Bishop Young goes on to remark, "The teaching of Vatican Two corrects an off-balance view of the priesthood that we have had, at least in the west, for centuries. Looking at the Sacrament of Holy Orders, the tendency has been to see the priesthood as the point of departure to which the episcopate added an extension of jurisdiction plus extra-sacramental powers. The Council takes as its perspective the uniqueness and unity of the priestly consecration and mission of Christ, and then it sees in the first place the episcopate as the full and highest participation in that consecration and mission through the Sacrament of Holy Orders. In his turn Bishop communicates in a subordinate degree to priests this consecration and mission. Thus they become his co-workers and extension. Bishops and priests, being thus united in their participation in the one priesthood and ministry of Christ, although hierarchically graded, fundamentally are brothers. This brotherhood is not a mere communion ofmind and heart, but is a sacramental reality. Its intimacy is especially close among the priests of a Diocese, forming one body (the one "presbyterium") under the leadership of the Bishop. The Bishop, limited by time and space, cannot be everywhere at once, and this is why he has a body of co-workers, extensions of himself, his priests who teach, sanctify, and rule in his name. Hence the duty of loyalty and obedience that the priests must have to their Bishop."
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, "In the ecclesial service of the ordained minister, it is Christ Himself Who is present to His Church, as the Head of His Body, Shepherd of His flock, High Priest of the redemptive sacrifice, the Teacher of truth.This is what the Church means by saying that the priest, by virtue of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, acts in the Person of Christ, the Head." The Catechism quotes Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical on the sacred liturgy ("Mediator Dei"): "It is the same priest, Christ Jesus, Whose sacred Person His minister truly represents. Now the minister, by reason of the sacerdotal consecration which he has received, is truly made like to the High Priest and possesses the authority to act in the power and place of the Person of Christ Himself. This priesthood is ministerial. That office which the Lord has committed to the pastors of His people is in the strict sense of the term a "service". It is entirely related to Christ and to men. It depends entirely on Christ and on His unique Priesthood. It has been instituted for the good of men and the communion of the Church. The Sacrament of Holy Orders communicates a sacred power, which is none other than that of Christ Himself."
Human Frailty
From my long ago youth I remember a little prayer we often would say for priests, one of whose verses was: "Keep them we pray Thee, dearest Lord, keep them for they are Thine, Thy priests whose lives burn out before Thy sacred shrine. Keep them, and O remember, Lord, they have no one but Thee, yet, they have only human hearts with human frailty." Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, (commonly known as Saint Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower), wrote: "My second experience was with regard to priests.Until then I never could understand the principal end of the reform of Carmel, to pray for sinners, that indeed ravished me, but to pray for priests whose souls I conceived to be purer than crystals! That caused me no little surprise. Ah, I understood my vocation during our pilgrimage to Italy. I had not to look far to gain a knowledge so useful and necessary. In the course of a month I came across many holy priests, and I saw that if their sublime dignity raised them above the angels, they were, none the less, men, weak and fragile. If then, holy priests, whom Jesus names in His Gospel the salt of the earth, are in such need of our prayers, what must be thought of those who are tepid? O my mother, how wonderful is our vocation! It is ours here in Carmel to preserve the salt of the earth!"
The Catechism notes: "This presence of Christ in the (ordained priestly) ministeris not to be understood as if the latter were preserved from all human weaknesses, the spirit of domination, error, and even sin. The power of the Holy Spirit does not guarantee all acts of ministers in the same way. While this guarantee extends to the sacraments, so that even the minister’s sin cannot impede the fruit of grace, in many other acts the minister leaves human traces that are not always signs of fidelity to the Gospel and consequently can harm the apostolic fruitfulness of the Church." Cardinal Cushing once said: "Catholics should beg God to shield their priests from every danger, to drive far from them the onslaughts ofthe infernal enemy. They should ask that each priest may daily increase in virtue and that his imperfections may melt away in the heat of divine love. They should pray that their priest may be, not only in the eyes of those who share our faith, but before all the world, truly a man of God, that Christ may live in him and in him walk this world once more."
In an old book of mine ("The World, the Flesh, and Father Smith") I remember reading: "It wasn’t easy to be a Bishop sometimes, because, although a Bishop has the Holy Spirit to help him, he was still in most matters an ordinary man liable to err. This is because that had been God’s way of building the Church, out of rickety human planks and bits of odd wood He had found lying about the world." An old prayer, I was taught to pray when I was a boy long ago says, "Jesus, Savior of the world, sanctify Your priests and all sacred ministers." It’s a prayer still worth praying!
Doctrinal Preface
The liturgical Preface for the Chrism Mass, which is also used for the Mass for the Ordination to the Priesthood in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, contains a beautiful doctrinal summary of the theology of the Catholic priesthood. Addressing God the Father, the text says: "By Your Holy Spirit You anointed Your only Son (to be) High Priest of the New and Eternal Covenant. With wisdom and love You have planned that this one priesthood should continue in the Church (Hebrews 10:14). Christ gives the dignity of a royal priesthood to the people He has made His own (1 Peter 2:5-9; Revelation 1:6 & 5:9-10). From these, with a brother’s love, He chooses men to share His sacred ministry by the laying on of hands. He appoints them to renew in His name the sacrifice of our redemption as they set before Your family His paschal meal. He calls them to lead Your holy people in love, nourish them by Your word, and strengthen them through the sacraments. Father, they are to give their lives in Your service and for the salvation of Your people as they strive to grow in the likeness of Christ and honor You by their courageous witness of faith and love."
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas, "Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only His ministers. Christ is the Source of all priesthood. The priest of the Old Law was a figure of Christ. The priest of the New Law acts in the Person of Christ." The Catechism goes on to paraphrase the words of the Second Vatican Council: "The ministerial or hierarchical priesthood of Bishops and priests and the common priesthood of all the faithful participate, each in its own proper way, in the one priesthood of Christ. While being ordered one to another, they differ essentially. In what sense? While the common priesthood of the faithful is exercised by the unfolding of baptismal grace, a life of faith, hope, and charity, a life according to the Spirit, the ministerial priesthood, on the other hand, is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of the baptismal grace of all Christians. The ministerial (ordained) priesthood is a means by which Christ unceasingly builds up and leads His Church. For this reason it is transmitted by its own sacrament, the Sacrament of Holy Orders." The Second Vatican Council says, "Through the ordained ministry, especially that of Bishops and priests, the presence of Christ as Head of the Church is made visible in the midst of the community of believers."
The Catechism points out, "...Christ Jesus is the one Mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5). Christian Tradition considers Melchizedek, priest of God Most High (Genesis 14:18; Hebrews 5:10 & 6:20), as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, holy, blameless, unstained (Hebrews 7:26), Who by a single offering has perfected for all time those who are sanctified , that is, by the unique sacrifice of the cross."
The Church
Pope Benedict XVI remarks, "Since the priesthood is rooted in Christ, it is by its nature rooted in the Church and exists for the Church. Indeed, the Christian faith is not something purely spiritual and internal, nor is our relationship with Christ exclusively subjective and private. Rather, it is a completely concrete and ecclesial relationship."
The Catechism explains this further: "The ministerial priesthood has the task not only of representing Christ, the Head of the Church, before the assembly of the faithful, but also of acting in the name of the whole Church when presenting to God the prayer of the Church, and, above all, when offering the Eucharistic sacrifice. The phrase ‘in the name of the whole Church’, however, does not mean that priests are delegates of the community. The prayer and offering of the Church are inseparable from the prayer and offering of Christ, her Head. It is always the case that Christ worships in and through His Church. The whole Church, the Body of Christ, prays and offers herself ‘through Him, with Him, and in Him in the unity of the Holy Spirit’ to God the Father. The whole Body, Head and members, prays and offers herself, and therefore those who are in the Body are especially His ministers, called ministers not only of Christ but also of the Church. It is only because the ministerial priesthood represents Christ that it can represent the Church."
The Council of Trent in the 16th century, refuting some of Martin Luther’s heresies, stated clearly the perennial doctrine of the Catholic Church: "This sacred Council declares that in the ordination of Bishops and of priests the consent, the call, or the authority neither of the people nor of any secular power or public authority is necessary to the extent that without it the ordination is invalid. Rather, it decrees that all those who have been called and appointed merely by the people or by a secular ruler, and who thus undertake to exercise these ministries, and that those who arrogate these ministries to themselves on their own authority are not ministers of the Church, but should be considered thieves and robbers who have not entered through the door (John 10:1)." The Council declared, "Only those men who are called by the legitimate Pastors of the Church may consider themselves truly called by Christ to His priesthood."
Concerned
However, this does not mean that the people in the Church, including the laity as well as all the clergy and religious, should not concern themselves about who and how many are called to Holy Orders. The Second Vatican Council declares, for instance, "The task of fostering vocations to the priesthood devolves upon the whole Christian community..."
At the beginning of the Bishop’s exhortation before ordination to the priesthood in the old rite (still being used in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite), the Bishop says: "Dearly beloved brethren, the captain of a ship as well as the passengers are in the same condition as to the safety or danger of the vessel. Their cause is common. Therefore, they ought to be of the same mind. Indeed, not without reason did the Fathers of the Church ordain that in the election of those who were to be employed in the service of the altar, the people also should be consulted. For it happens here or there that as to the life and conduct of a candidate a few know what is unknown to the majority. Necessarily also people will render obedience more readily to the ordained if they have consented to his ordination. Now, with the help of the Lord, these deacons are to be ordained priests. As far as I can judge, their lives have been of approved goodness and pleasing to God, and in my opinion merit for them promotion to a higher ecclesiastical honor. However, lest one or a few be mistaken in their judgment or deceived by affection, we must hear the opinion of many. Therefore, whatever you may know about their lives or character, whatever you think of their worthiness, freely make it known... If anyone has anything against them, before God and for the sake of God, let him confidently come forward and speak, but let him be mindful of his own condition."
Blessed John Paul
Blessed John Paul II, even before the time of his pontificate, contributed in important ways to the teaching of the Church’s Magisterium in matters pertaining to the priesthood. He was a significant player in bringing into being the Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests of the Second Vatican Council, ("Presbyterorum Ordinis"), participating in that Council as a Bishop and later as Cardinal Karol Woytila. In that role he also was involved in producing the 1971 document on the priesthood of the International Synod of Bishops. Then, as Pope he convened another such International Synod on the priesthood in 1990, and followed this with his Apostolic Exhortation, "I Will Give You Shepherds" ("Pastores Dabo Vobis"), and he later also arranged for the issuance of the "Directory on the Ministry and Life of Priests" in 1994. In addition, on every Holy Thursday during his pontificate (the day when the institution of Holy Orders is especially remembered), he wrote an open letter to all the priests of the world treating the theme of the priesthood itself.
He wrote, "The priesthood is a vocation. ‘No man can take this honor to himself, but only he can take it who is called by God as Aaron was’ (Hebrews 5:4). The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it very clearly when he affirms that the divine vocation to the priesthood does not only concern the ancient Jewish priests of the Old Testament, but first and foremost it concerns Christ Himself, the Son Who is consubstantial with the Father, made a Priest (Mediator between God and men - 1 Timothy 2:5) according to the order of Melchizedek. Jesus is the one Priest forever of the New and Eternal Covenant (Hebrews 4:14). In the divine Son’s vocation to the priesthood a dimension of the Trinitarian mystery is expressed. The Letter to the Hebrews says that a priest is taken from among men and made their representative before God to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins (Hebrews 5:1). This is the best definition of the priest’s identity. Every Catholic priest, according to the gifts bestowed upon him by the Creator, can serve God in various ways and, with his priestly ministry, can reach various sectors of humanity, bringing men and women closer to God. However, as a priest, sharing in the one priesthood of Jesus Christ, he remains and must remain always a man chosen from among others by God and made their representative before Him to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins."
He goes on to say, "The Catholic priesthood is a gift and a mystery. It is the nerve center of the Church’s whole life and mission. It is what makes the Holy Eucharist valid, possible, and real. Blessed John Paul’s successor in the See of Peter, Pope Benedict XVI, says, "The priest, for the Church and in the Church, is a humble but real sign of the one eternal High Priest, Who is Jesus. The priest must proclaim His word, authoritatively renew His acts of pardon and offering, and exercise loving concern in the service of His flock, ever in communion with the Bishops and faithfully docile to the Church’s Magisterium (Teaching Authority)."
No Democratizing
Cardinal Julian Herranz Casado, writing as the President of the Pontifical Council for the Correct Interpretation of Texts, said, "In emphasizing the divine institution of the ministerial priesthood, the accent falls on the divine calling of the priest. He is not, therefore, a delegate of the community before God nor a functionary or employee of the people before God. He is a man chosen by God from among men in order to realize the mystery of salvation in the name of Christ. The notion of a divine vocation is essential to oppose certain overly democratizing notions present and unfortunately influential in some Church circles. These can arise only from a very defective view of the very nature of the Catholic Church. Thankfully, the majority of the faithful have a clear awareness of the distinction between the priests and the laity by reason of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. They do not pose problems with regard to the hierarchical nature of the Church because they well know that Christ willed it so." The Holy See’s Directory for the Ministry and Life of Priests condemns what it called "functionalism, which is an erroneous mentality that reduces the ministerial priesthood to its strictly functional aspects. To merely play the role of a priest, carrying out a few services and ensuring completion of various tasks would make up the entire priestly existence in that view. Such a reductive conception of the identity of the priest risks pushing priests’ lives toward an emptiness which could only be filled by lifestyles not consonant with their very ministry."
Cardinal Herranz remarks, "Although chosen by God to perform priestly functions under official auspices in the name of Christ, priests, according to the Tradition of the Catholic Church and the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, are something much more than mere holders of public office and men who do some sacred exercise in the service of the community of the faithful. The priesthood is essentially and above all a configuration, a mysterious and sacramental transformation of the person, the priest-man, into the Person of Christ Himself, the only Mediator. The conciliar image of the priest is that of a man configured ontologically to Christ, the Head and Shepherd of the Church, in order to perform a specific mission."
First & Foremost
It has been noted that there is what might seem at first glance to be a sort of contradiction in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council about the primary duty of priests. However, the apparent contradiction is only illusory and is basically paradoxical. On the one hand, preaching is primary. The Council says, "The People of God find unity first of all through the word of the living God which is quite properly sought through the lips of priests. Since no one can be saved who has not first believed, ( 1 Timothy 1:9 & 4:11-13; Hebrews 11:6), priests, as co-workers with their Bishops, have as their primary duty the proclamation of the Gospel to all."
On the other hand, the Council tells us that offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is first and foremost among the duties and privileges of ordained priests. However, the Council itself gives us the resolution of the paradox: "The Holy Eucharist shows Itself to be the Source and Summit of the whole work of preaching the Gospel." Although the Council notes that the ministry of preaching the word of God is carried out by priests "in many ways according to the various needs of who hear and the special gifts of those who preach", nevertheless, the preaching that is done in the first part of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Word, has a very special quasi- sacramental aspect and leads inseparably to the proclamation of the death and resurrection of the Lord in the Liturgy of the Eucharist, which is the heart of the sacred liturgy and thus the apex and fountain of all the Church’s work and activity.
The Second Vatican Council notes, "God, Who alone is holy and bestows holiness, willed to raise up for Himself as companions and helpers, men who would humbly dedicate themselves to the work of sanctification. Hence, through the ministry of the Bishops, God consecrates priests so that they can share by a special title in the priesthood of Christ. Thus, in performing sacred functions they can act as ministers of Him Who in the liturgy continually exercises His priestly office to bring about the action of His Holy Spirit."
Celibacy
The Second Vatican Council teaches, "With respect to priestly life, the Church has always held in especially high regard perfect and perpetual continence." The Council goes on to affirm, "Celibacy accords with the priesthood on many scores. For the whole priestly mission is dedicated to that new humanity which Christ, the Conqueror of death, raises up in the world through His Spirit. This humanity takes its origin not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:13). Through virginity or celibacy observed for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:12), priests are consecrated to Christ in a new and distinguished way. They more easily hold fast to Him with an undivided heart (1 Corinthians 7:32-34). They more freely devote themselves to Him and through Him to the service of God and men. They more readily minister to His kingdom and to the work of heavenly regeneration, and thus become more apt to exercise (a spiritual) fatherhood in Christ and to do this to a greater extent. Hence, in this way they profess before men that they desire to dedicate themselves in an undivided way to the task assigned to them, namely, to betroth the faithful to one Man, and present them as a pure virgin to Christ (2 Corinthians 11:2). They thereby evoke that mysterious marriage which was established by God and will be fully manifested in the future and by which the Church has Christ as her only Spouse (Ephesians 5:25-32). Moreover they become a vivid sign of that future world, which is already present through faith and charity, and in which the children of the resurrection will neither marry nor take wives (Luke 20:35-36)."
The Council goes on to explain, "For these reasons, which are based on the mystery of the Church and her mission, celibacy was at first recommended to priests. Then, in the Latin Church, it was imposed by law on all who were to be promoted to Sacred Orders. This legislation, to the extent that it concerns those who are destined to the priesthood, this most Holy Council again approves and confirms. It trusts in the Holy Spirit that the gift of celibacy, which so befits the priesthood of the New Testament, will be generously bestowed by God the Father, as long as those who share Christ’s priesthood through the Sacrament of Holy Orders, and indeed the whole Church, humbly and earnestly pray for it."
Alvaro Del Portillo
Bishop Alvaro del Portillo was the executive secretary of the commission of the Second Vatican Council on priests, which presented the special document on the priesthood, requested by many Council Fathers, to the entire Council for its approval and discussion. That document, amended by the entire Council, then was debated, voted on, and passed by an almost unanimous majority, (only two dissenting votes), and thus it became the Council’s Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests ("Presbyterium Ordinis").
On this matter, the Bishop said, "Celibacy makes the priest a special representative sign of the virginity and fruitful love of the Bride of Christ (the Catholic Church), and makes the priest also a prophetic witness in the present age of that future world where justice dwells (1 Peter 3:12), and in which the redeemed will be like God since they will see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). Everyone can see how perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven reinforces and shows forth to men the eschatological calling which is inherent in Christ’s mission, and especially in the evangelizing ministry of the priest, who must always be the restless witness of eternity. This sign is particularly powerful in the crisis of faith which materialism has provoked in our world today."
Blessed John Paul II
During the course of his long and glorious pontificate, Blessed Pope John Paul II often spoke and wrote about priestly celibacy in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. When a Bishop and later as Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, and thus a Council Father, he was active in the discussion and decisions of the Council about the priesthood. As Pope, he frequently condemned "the systematic propaganda which is hostile to celibacy and which finds support and complicity in some of the mass media." In one of his talks he said, "At this time, when some question the desirability of maintaining the discipline of priestly celibacy, Bishops must courageously teach the fittingness of linking this sign of contradiction with the ministerial priesthood."
In his papal discourse, he went on to say, "On the basis of her experience and reflection, the Church has discerned, with growing clarity through the ages, that priestly celibacy is not just a legal requirement imposed as a condition for ordination. It is profoundly connected with a man’s configuration to Christ, the Good Shepherd and Spouse of the Church. Certainly, it is a grace which does not dispense with, but counts most definitely on, a conscious and free response on the part of the receiver. This charism of the Holy Spirit also brings with it the graces for the receiver to remain faithful to it for all his life and to be able to carry out generously and joyfully its concomitant commitments."
Blessed John Paul said, "Cultural considerations and the scarcity of priests in certain regions sometimes give rise to calls for a change in this discipline. To give decisive weight to criteria deriving more from certain currents of anthropology, sociology, or psychology than from the path of the Church’s living tradition is certainly not the path to follow. We cannot overlook the fact that the Church comes to know the divine will through the interior guidance of the Holy Spirit (John 16:13), and the difficulties involved today in keeping celibacy are not sufficient reason to overturn the Church’s conviction regarding its value and appropriateness, a conviction constantly reaffirmed by the Church’s Magisterium, not least by the Second Vatican Council."
Pope Benedict XVI
Our present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, has remarked, "The priest must make himself available to the Lord in the fullness of his being and consequently find himself totally available to men and women. I think celibacy is a fundamental expression of this totality and already, for this reason, an important reference in this world, because it only has meaning if we truly believe in eternal life and if we believe that God involves us and that we can be for Him."
Preaching at a Mass for the ordination of priests for the Diocese of Rome, the Roman Pontiff stated, "To become priests in the Church means to enter into the self-donation of Christ through the Sacrament of Holy Orders and to enter with all one’s being. Jesus gave His life for all, but in a special way He consecrated Himself for those the Father had given Him, that they could be consecrated in truth, that is, in Him, and could speak and act in His name, represent Him, continue His saving actions, breaking the Bread of Life, and remitting sins. The mystery of the priesthood of Christ lies in the fact that we, miserable human beings, by virtue of the Sacrament of Orders can speak with the "I" of Jesus and stand "in the Person of Christ". He wishes to exercise His priesthood through us."
Hierarchy
The Catholic Church, founded by Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:18-19), which has His guaranteed continued presence and guidance (Matthew 28:20), as well as always enjoying the constant instruction and care of God the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-26: & 16:7-14), was instituted by her sacred Lord with an intrinsically hierarchical constitution. Because of the divine nature of this arrangement made by Christ Himself, that hierarchical constitution must and will abide until the end of the world, as Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition attest, and it may not and cannot be substantially varied or changed. What God has revealed about this constitutional arrangement has become clearer and more specified in the course of the more than 2,000 years through which the Catholic Church has journeyed since her founding, especially in the Church’s replies to innumerable questions and sometimes to the vicious attacks that she has faced over the centuries.
The Second Vatican Council, teaching about this matter, proclaimed, "This most sacred Council, following the footsteps of the First Vatican Council, teaches and declares with that Council that Jesus Christ, the eternal Shepherd, established His holy Church by sending forth the Apostles as He Himself had been sent by the Father (John 20:21). He willed that their successors, namely the Bishops, should be shepherds in His Church even to the consummation of the world. In order that the episcopate itself might be one and undivided, He placed Blessed Peter over the other Apostles, and instituted in him a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and fellowship (John 21:15-17; Luke 22:32). And all this teaching about the institution, the perpetuity, the force, and the reason for the sacred primacy of the Roman Pontiff and of his infallible teaching authority, this sacred Synod again proposes to be firmly believed by all the faithful. Continuing the same task of clarification begun by the First Vatican Council, this Council has decided to declare and proclaim before all men its teaching concerning Bishops, the successors of the Apostles, who together with the successor of Saint Peter, the Vicar of Christ and the visible Head of the whole Church, govern the House of the living God."
Catechism
There has always been a temptation by people outside the Catholic Church, and sometimes even by some of her own mistaken and ignorant children, to regard her erroneously as simply a man-made sociological or political construct, as are the myriads of Protestant sects and denominations, instead of the God-made institution that she is. This is why the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, "Christ is Himself the Source of ministry in the Church. He instituted the Church. He gave her both authority and mission, as well as orientation and goal. To proclaim the faith and to plant His reign, Christ sends His Apostles and their successors. He gives them a share in His own mission. From Him they receive the power to act in His Person."
"The Lord made Saint Peter the visible foundation of His Church. He entrusted the keys of the Church to him. The Bishop of Rome, the successor of Saint Peter, is the head of the college of Bishops, the Vicar of Christ and the Pastor of the Universal Church on earth. The Pope enjoys, by divine institution supreme, full, immediate, and universal power in the care of souls. The Bishops, established by the Holy Spirit, succeed the Apostles, They are the visible source and foundation of unity in their own particular Churches. Helped by the priests, their co-workers, and by the deacons, the Bishops have the duty of authentically teaching the faith, celebrating divine worship and above all the Eucharist, and guiding their Churches as true pastors. Their responsibility also includes concern for all the Churches with and under the Pope."
This echoes the Second Vatican Council which says, "The divine mission entrusted by Christ to His Apostles will last until the end of the world, since the Gospel which was to be handed down by them is for all time the source of life for the Church. For this reason the Apostles took care to appoint successors in this hierarchically structured society. For they not only had helpers in their ministry, but also, in order that the mission assigned to them might continue after their death, they passed on to their immediate cooperators, as a kind of testament, the duty of perfecting and consolidating the work begun by themselves, charging them to attend to the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit has placed them to shepherd the Church of God. (Acts of the Apostles 20:28). They therefore appointed such men and authorized the arrangement that, when these men should have died, other approved men would take up their ministry. Among those various ministries, which, as Tradition witnesses, were exercised in the Church from the earliest times, the chief place belongs to the office of those who, appointed to the episcopate in a sequence running back to the beginning, are the ones who pass on the Apostolic seed (as Tertullian says). Thus, as Saint Irenaeus testifies, through those who were appointed Bishops by the Apostles and through their successors down to our own time, the Apostolic Tradition is manifested and preserved throughout the world."
Popes
Pope Leo XIII wrote, "The order of Bishops could not be regarded as truly united to Peter, in the manner willed by Christ, if it were not subject to Peter and united to him. Otherwise it would inevitably be broken into a multitude, full of confusion and disorder. To preserve unity of faith and communion as it should be, neither a primacy of honor nor a power of direction is sufficient. There must necessarily be an authority which is real and also sovereign, obeyed by the whole community." Pope Pius XII wrote, " Certainly it was to the Apostle Peter alone and to his successors the Roman Pontiffs, that Jesus entrusted the whole of His flock. But while each Bishop is the special Pastor only of that portion of the flock entrusted to his charge, his character as a lawful successor of the Apostles by divine institution also makes him jointly responsible for the Apostolic mission of the entire Church. This mission has not ceased with the death of the Apostles. It continues in the person of the Bishops in communion with the Vicar of Jesus Christ, in them who are the envoys, the missionaries of the Lord. In them resides the dignity of the episcopate, which is the highest in the Church, as Saint Thomas Aquinas declares in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans."
The Second Vatican Council says of Bishops, "These Pastors, selected to shepherd the Lord’s flock, are the servants of Christ and the stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Corinthians 4:1). To them has been assigned the bearing of witness to the Gospel of God’s grace (Romans 15:16; Acts of the Apostles 20:24), and to the ministration of the Holy Spirit and to God’s glorious power to make men just (2 Corinthians 3: 8-9)." Father Joseph Urtasun observes, "The Catholic Church is a supernatural mystery. The body of Bishops, which perpetuates in time the Apostolic college, shares in that mystery of life and unity, under the guidance of the Bishop of Rome, the successor of Saint Peter and the Vicar on earth of Jesus Christ."
Finished Business
When the First Vatican Council unexpectedly ended in 1870 because of the invasion and conquest of the Papal States by the forces of the King of Savoy, many of the important doctrinal matters that had been planned to be studied and proclaimed by the Council were left unfinished. The First Vatican Council did define and specify how the fonts of revelation, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, always contained the doctrine of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, and how, in certain limited circumstances, that primacy also can involve the charism of infallibility which Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, bequeathed to His Catholic Church. However, the First Vatican Council did not have time to consider fully the revealed doctrine concerning the order of Bishops and how the episcopacy, by divine design, is related to the primacy of the Pope and to the work of the Church. This is why the Second Vatican Council, in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (called in Latin "Lumen Gentium") and in its Decree on Bishops ("Christus Dominus") extensively took up this matter.
In preparation for the Second Vatican Council, several prominent theologians did significant research on this issue. Among them were Father Karl Rahner and then Father Josef Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). Father Ratzinger at that time called attention to what he said was a "sadly neglected document", which is an "authentic commentary" on the First Vatican Council, a "key to the full meaning" of the conciliar decrees about the primacy. It was drawn up in Germany in 1875 and received the full approval of Blessed Pope Pius IX as stating what the Council intended and what the Holy See has always held. It is entitled "Collective Statement of the German Episcopate Concerning the Circular of the Imperial Chancellor" (Otto von Bismarck). The theologian Dom Olivier Rousseau, quoted by Father Ratzinger, noted that this document could be summed up in seven points.
Seven Points
The points of that document, many of which were included in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, are: 1) The Pope cannot arrogate to himself the rights of the Bishops nor substitute his power for theirs; 2) Episcopal jurisdiction has not been absorbed into papal jurisdiction; 3) The First Vatican Council did not give the Pope the fullness of the individual Bishops’ powers; 4)The Pope has not virtually taken the place of each individual Bishop; 5) The Pope, by Christ’s design for His Church, cannot in every instance assume the government that belongs to Bishops; 6) The Bishops are not the instruments or agents of the Pope; 7) The Bishops are not officials of a foreign Sovereign in their relationships with the governments of their own countries.
The Second Vatican Council states, "The College of Bishops has no authority unless it is simultaneously conceived of in terms of its head, the Roman Pontiff, Saint Peter’s Successor, and without any lessening of his power of primacy over all, pastors as well as the general faithful." But, the Council nevertheless goes on to proclaim, "Bishops govern the particular Churches entrusted to them as vicars and ambassadors of Christ. This they do by their counsel, exhortations, and example, as well as, indeed, by their authority and sacred power. This power, which they personally exercise in Christ’s name, is proper, ordinary, and immediate, although its exercise is ultimately regulated by the Supreme Authority of the Church and can be circumscribed by certain limits for the advantage of the Church or of the faithful. In virtue of this power, Bishops have the sacred right and the duty before the Lord to make laws for their subjects, to pass judgment on them, and to moderate everything pertaining to the order of worship and the apostolate. The pastoral office and the habitual and daily care of their sheep is entrusted to them completely. Nor are they to be regarded as vicars of the Roman Pontiff, for they exercise an authority which is proper to them, and are quite correctly called prelates, heads of the people whom they govern. Their power, therefore, is not destroyed by the Supreme and Universal power of the Pope. On the contrary, it is affirmed, strengthened, and vindicated thereby, since the Holy Spirit unfailingly preserves the form of government established by Christ the Lord in His Church."
Vatican Two
The Council goes on to assert, "The order of Bishops is the successor to the College of the Apostles in teaching authority and pastoral rule, or, rather, in the episcopal order the apostolic body continues without a break. Together with its head, the Roman Pontiff, and never without this head, the episcopal order is the subject of supreme and full power over the Universal Church. But this power can be exercised only with the consent of the Roman Pontiff, because our Lord made Simon Peter alone the rock and keybearer of the Church (Matthew 16:18-19) and appointed him shepherd of the whole flock (John 21:15-17). It is definite, however, that the power of binding and loosing, which was given to Saint Peter (Matthew 16:19), was granted also to the College of Apostles, joined to their head (Matthew 18:18 & 28:16-20). The college of Bishops, insofar as it is composed of many, expresses the variety and universality of the People of God, but insofar as it is assembled under one head, it expresses the unity of the flock of Christ. In it, the Bishops, faithfully recognizing the primacy and pre-eminence of their head, exercise their own authority for the good of their faithful and, indeed, for the whole Church, with the Holy Spirit constantly strengthening her organic structure and inner harmony."
The Second Vatican Council, the twenty-first Ecumenical Council in the Church’s history, also remarks, "This sacred Council teaches that by episcopal consecration is conferred the fullness of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, that fullness which in the Church’s liturgical practice and in the language of the holy Fathers of the Church is undoubtedly called the high priesthood, the apex of the sacred ministry. Episcopal consecration, together with the office of sanctifying, also confers the offices of teaching and of governing. These, however, of their very nature, can be exercised only in hierarchical communion with the head and members of the college of Bishops. For from Tradition, which is expressed especially in liturgical rites and in the practice of the Church, both East and West, it is clear that by means of the imposition of hands and the words of consecration, the grace of the Holy Spirit is so conferred and the sacred character so impressed that Bishops in an eminent and visible way undertake Christ’s own role as Teacher, Shepherd, and High Priest, and that they act in His Person. Therefore, it devolves upon the Bishops themselves to admit newly elected members into the episcopal body by means of the Sacrament of Holy Orders."
Father Joseph Urtasun observes, "The sublime grandeur of the Pope and Bishops does not eliminate their human weakness... and so, while our loyalty and obedience must encourage them in the midst of their cares and troubles, we also are obliged to pray for them that they may be examples to us, their flock, (1 Peter 5:1-3) and so, they might, by God’s grace, be sanctified and thus may be able to sanctify others as their vocation calls them to do."
Papal Books
Among the inspiring books written by the late Pope, Blessed John Paul II, (Karol Wojtyla), were two that pertained in a special way to the priesthood and the episcopacy. The first, "Gift and Mystery", was written in 1996 on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood and treated, in an autobiographical context, the Catholic priesthood. The second, "Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way", written in 2004 shortly before his death, was addressed specifically to and about Catholic Bishops and was done in the same interesting and autobiographical context. He said that what he related in those books "belongs to my deepest being, to my innermost experience. I offer this to priests and the People of God as a testimony of love."
For title of his second book Blessed John Paul chose some divine words of Jesus Himself (Mark 14:42), noting that our Lord spoke those words to His chosen Apostles, Peter, James, and John, in the Garden of Gethsemane, indicating that "not only He must be on His way to fulfill His Father’s will, but they too must go with Him’, and "that invitation is addressed particularly to us Bishops." Our former Holy Father remarks, "The call to become a Bishop is certainly a great honor. This does not mean, however, that a man is chosen for having distinguished himself among many others as an outstanding person and Christian. The honor comes from his mission (his duty) to stand at the heart of the Church as the first in faith, the first in love, the first in fidelity, and the first in service. If someone seeks in the episcopal office honor for its own sake, he will not be able to fulfill his episcopal mission well. The first and foremost aspect of the honor due to a Bishop lies in the responsibility associated with his ministry."
The Symbols
Blessed John Paul wrote about the symbolic elements traditionally associated with the office of Bishop, especially those bestowed on him at the liturgical ceremony of his consecration to become a successor to the Apostles. In addition to the anointing with sacred chrism and the bestowal of the Book of the Gospels, there is the ring, the crosier, and the miter. "The ring on the Bishop’s finger signifies that he is married to the Church. ‘Take this ring, the sign of your fidelity. In integrity of faith and purity of life, protect the holy Church, Bride of Christ. Be faithful until death’ (Revelation 2:10). This ring, a nuptial symbol, expresses the particular bond between the Bishop and the Church." The Pope wrote, "My ring reminds me of the need to be a strong link in the chain of succession that stretches back to the Apostles. The strength of a chain is measured by its weakest link. I must be strong with God’s own strength (Psalm 28; 27:7 & Psalm 23; 22:4)." In itself the "ring means nothing, but when the Bishop wears it, it symbolizes his authority. He must serve. In a sense the Bishop’s ring is a symbol of the passion of Christ and of all the martyrs."
"The investiture with the miter during the ordination ritual for the consecration of a Bishop is an especially eloquent sign. The newly ordained Bishop receives the miter as a sign of his commitment, according to the liturgical text, ‘to let the light of holiness shine in him and to become worthy to receive the unfading crown of glory when Christ, the Supreme Shepherd will appear." Miters have been worn by Catholic Bishops from at least the middle of the 10th century. They were an echo of the headdress worn by Jewish high priests in the Old Testament. There is evidence that they evolved from the head-covering worn by the highest civil officials in the ancient Roman Empire called the "camelaucum" and which the Emperor Constantine already in the fourth century told the Pope and the Bishops to wear in order to show to Christians and others their high authority in the Church.
Crosier & Book
The crosier, the blessed ceremonial Bishop’s staff, shaped like a piece of a shepherd’s necessary equipment, "is a sign of the authority that enables a Bishop to fulfill his duty to care for his flock. Like other signs it too speaks of the Bishop’s solicitude for the holiness of the People of God. A shepherd must watch and protect his flock and must lead his sheep into green pastures... There is always a problem in achieving balance between authority and service. Obviously, a Bishop has authority, but much depends on how he exercises it. If a Bishop stresses his authority too much, then the people might think all he can do is issue commands. He must serve by ruling and rule by serving. We have an eloquent model of this dual approach in Christ Himself. He served unceasingly, but in the Spirit of God He was also able to expel the money changers from the temple when this was needed." Bishops began to use the crosier from at least the beginning of the 7th century. The Bishop’s staff in the Latin Rite always had a shepherd’s staff kind of look, but in the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church it is usually surmounted by a cross with two serpents heads on each side, a reminder of the words of Jesus about His being raised up from the earth like the bronze seraph serpent of Moses (John 3:14 & Numbers 21:4-9). It has been the perpetual custom for the Pope, because he is the Chief Bishop and Supreme Pontiff, not to use a crosier but rather to carry a staff which is actually a cross or crucifix.
In an episcopal consecration liturgy, after the laying on of hands and the sacramental prayer of consecration, a new Bishop is handed a Book of the Gospels. "This gesture indicates that the Bishop is to accept and preach the Good News. He is a sign of the presence in the Catholic Church of Jesus, the Teacher. Teaching is of the essence of a Bishop’s calling. He too must be a teacher. The Bishop is to become the servant of the Word. Precisely as a teacher he sits on the cathedra, the chair eloquently situated in the church known for that reason as the cathedral, from which he is to preach, proclaim, and explain the Word of God. There are others who assist the Bishop in proclaiming the Word of God, priests and deacons, catechists and teachers, professors of theology, and ever growing numbers of lay persons faithful to the Gospel, but nothing can take the place of the Bishop himself seated upon the cathedra or standing in the pulpit of his episcopal church..."
Also in that ceremony there is an anointing with sacred chrism. "At a priestly ordination the hands are anointed but at an episcopal consecration the head is anointed. This is another gesture that speaks of the imparting of the Holy Spirit, Who enters and takes possession of the candidate and makes him His instrument. The anointing of the head signifies the call to new responsibilities. The Bishop will have the task of guiding the Church, which task places great demands on him. This anointing by the Holy Spirit has the same Source as the anointings in other sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation), that is, Jesus Christ. The designation Christ, the Anointed One, became the proper name of Jesus because the divine mission that this name signifies was perfectly fulfilled in Him." If the new future Bishop of Lincoln will have already been a Bishop, he will simply be installed here, but if he is not yet a Bishop, we may be able once again to witness an episcopal consecration when that time comes.
Old Question
Scholastic theologians over the years often treated the question of the relationship of the episcopacy, the office and place of Bishops, with the divine primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the structure of the Catholic Church as Jesus Christ, her divine Founder, had arranged it. Although always answered in the negative, the question would sometimes be asked if it would be within the purview of the Pope to simply abolish the episcopacy if he wished. This could not happen, although he can and sometimes does remove from office and jurisdiction heretical or otherwise bad Bishops. The primacy of the Pope, important and true as it is, clearly taught and shown in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, has very precise limits placed there by that same divine revelation, as well as also by the continuous presence the Holy Spirit Who is the Soul of the Mystical Body (John 14:25). The fact that Jesus instituted the supreme primacy of Saint Peter and his successors in the See of Rome (John 21:15-17; Matthew 16:13-20) is balanced by the fact that He also constituted all His Apostles and their legitimate successors as the pillars of the new Israel, the Chosen People of the New Testament (Matthew 18: 17-18 & 19:28), His Catholic Church
This is why the First Vatican Council, which solemnly defined the primacy (as well as the infallibility in certain cases) of the Roman Pontiff on July 18, 1870, also taught in that same document: "This power of the Supreme Pontiff is far from standing in the way of the power of ordinary and immediate episcopal jurisdiction by which the Bishops, who, under appointment of the Holy Spirit (Acts of the Apostles 20:28), succeed in the place of the Apostles and feed and rule individually, as true shepherds, the particular flock assigned to them. Rather this latter power is asserted, confirmed, and vindicated by the authority of this same supreme and universal Shepherd, as seen in words of Pope Saint Gregory the Great: My honor is the honor of the whole Church. My honor is the solid strength of my brothers (the Bishops). I am truly honored when due honor is paid to each and every one of them."
Ratzinger
In preparation for the Second Vatican Council, which it was foreseen would be treating extensively the episcopacy, many theologians wrote and spoke about the old scholastic question involved in the issue of relating the Pope to the Bishops. Among these theologians was the young German scholar, Josef Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). In a monograph written before the Council, at which he was present as a personal "peritus" (expert) for Cardinal Frings of Cologne, our future Pope wrote: "The actual content of the Roman claim is expressed by the concept of the Apostolic See in centripetal fashion, yet the same concept also connotes an orientation to the fullness of the Church. We get, therefore, the following picture. The Church is the living presence of the divine Word. This presence is made concrete in those persons, the Bishops, whose basic function is to hold fast to the Word, and who then are the embodiment of "tradition" and to this extent are in the apostolic line of "succession". Conspicuous among the successors of the Apostles is the line of Apostolic Sees, which ultimately is concentrated in the See of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. This is the touchstone of apostolic succession. Thus, the Bishops are first of all referred to Rome, for only communion with Rome gives them "Catholicity" and that fullness of apostolicity without which they could not be true Bishops. Without communion with Rome one cannot be in the "Catholica". This reference of the Bishops to Rome is the primary relationship to be ascertained."
The then Father Ratzinger went on to say, "On the other hand the episcopal See of Rome itself does not stand in isolation, devoid of relationships. It creates the Catholicity for the other Sees, but exactly for this reason it also needs Catholicity. It sets up the essential order of Catholicity and precisely for this reason it also needs the reality of Catholicity. Just as, on the one hand, it guarantees essential Catholicity, so, on the other hand, real Catholicity stands warranty for it. Just as the other Sees need the apostolic testimony of Rome in order to be Catholic, so Rome needs their Catholic testimony, the testimony of real fullness in order to remain true. Without the testimony of reality, Rome would negate its own meaning. A Pope who would excommunicate the entire episcopate could never exist, because a Church which had become only Roman would no longer be Catholic. And conversely, a lawful episcopate which would excommunicate the Pope could never exist, since a Catholicity which renounces Rome would no longer be Catholic. Both are simultaneously included in the notion of Catholicity properly understood. The universal claim of the Pope and the inherent limitation of this claim remain bound to the basic law of fullness and so also to the divine right of Bishops."
Vatican Two
The Second Vatican Council says, "As successors of the Apostles, Bishops automatically enjoy in the Dioceses entrusted to them all the ordinary, proper, and immediate authority required for the exercise of their pastoral office. But this authority never in any instance infringes upon the power which the Roman Pontiff has, by virtue of his office, of reserving cases to himself or to some other authority."
The Council teaches, "The Lord Jesus, after praying to the Father and calling to Himself those whom He desired, appointed twelve men who would stay in His company and whom He would send to preach the kingdom of God (Mark 3:13-19; Matthew 10:1-42). These Apostles He formed after the manner of a college or fixed group, over which He placed Saint Peter, chosen from among them (John 21:15-17). He sent them first to the children of Israel and then to all nations (Romans1:16), so that as sharers in His power they might make all people His disciples, sanctifying and governing them (Matthew 28:16-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:45-48; John 20:21-23). Thus they would spread His Church and by ministering to her under the guidance of the Lord, would shepherd her all days even to the consummation of the world (Matthew 28:20). They were confirmed in this mission on the day of Pentecost (Acts of the Apostles 2:1-26) in accordance with the Lord’s promise. By everywhere preaching the Gospel (Mark 16:20), which was accepted by their hearers under the influence of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles gathered together the Universal Church, which the Lord established on the Apostles and built upon Blessed Peter, the Chief, Christ Jesus Himself remaining the supreme Cornerstone (Revelation 21:14; Matthew 16:18; Ephesians 2:20). That divine mission, entrusted by Christ to the Apostles will last until the end of the world (Matthew 28:20), since the Gospel which was to be handed down by them is for all time the source of life for the Church. For this reason, the Apostles took care to appoint successors in this hierarchically structured society."
Shortly after the Second Vatican Council, an American Bishop remarked that the Council made clear that the Bishops must not be considered merely the extensions or the agents of the Pope. Their office makes them much more. However, as fellow successors of the Apostles, they are obliged to obey the Bishop of Rome and to keep themselves and their flocks, for the sake of their eternal salvation, always in peace and communion with the See of Peter. Saint Ambrose said, "Where Peter is there is the Church, and where the Church is there is everlasting life."
Ratzinger and Wojtyla
Both Father Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) and (the then) Bishop Karol Wojtyla (later to become Pope John Paul II) attended and participated in all the sessions and activities of the Second Vatican Council, Ratzinger as a "peritus" (credentialed expert) and Wojtyla as an actual voting member. In subsequent writings both reiterated what is generally held by all experts about one of the major thrusts of that Ecumenical Council. As Pope John Paul II put it: "The Second Vatican Council, in fact, looked specifically at the responsibilities of the Bishop. The First Vatican Council addressed papal primacy, but the Second gave particular attention to Bishops." Pope Benedict XVI, in his 1986 interview book, "The Ratzinger Report", (published by Ignatius Press), notes that "Bishops, the successors of the Apostles, holding the fullness of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, are the authentic, autonomous, and immediate authority in the Dioceses entrusted to them, of which they are the principle and foundation of unity. United in the episcopal college with their head, the Pope, they act in the Person of Christ in order to govern the Universal Church. All these definitions are specific to the (perennial) Catholic doctrine on the episcopate, and they have been vigorously reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council."
"The Council wanted specifically to strengthen the role and responsibility of Bishops by resuming and completing the work, interrupted by the capture of Rome, of Vatican I, which was only able to concern itself with the Pope. The Council Fathers had confirmed the Pope’s infallibility in the Magisterium when, as Supreme Shepherd and Teacher, he proclaims a teaching on faith or morals as binding. By doing this, however, a certain imbalance was created with some theologians who did not sufficiently stress that the episcopal college also enjoys the same infallibility in the Magisterium, provided the Bishops preserve the bond of communion among themselves and with the Successor of Peter."
Local and More
In his book, written toward the end of his life, "Rise. Let Us Be On Our Way" (published in English by Warner Books), Pope John Paul II asks, "What is the place that God in His goodness assigns to a Bishop within the Church? The mystery of a Bishop’s vocation in the Church consists precisely in the fact that he is situated both in a particular visible community for which he has been made a Bishop, and at the same time in the Universal Church. It is important to understand clearly the connection between these two aspects. It would undoubtedly be an oversimplification and a serious misunderstanding of the mystery to think that the Bishop represents the Universal Church in his own diocesan community and at the same time represents this community to the Universal Church, in the way in that, for example, ambassadors represent their respective states or international organizations." An American Bishop observed during the Council that " Catholic Bishops, by Christ’s design for the Catholic Church which He founded, are not merely satraps."
Pope John Paul II goes on to write, "Every Bishop, while he bears within himself a responsibility for the Universal Church, finds himself placed at the center of a particular Church, namely the community that Christ has entrusted specifically to him, so that through his episcopal ministry the mystery of the Church, the sign of salvation for all people, might be realized ever more perfectly." Pope John Paul II then quotes the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church ("Lumen Gentium") of the Second Vatican Council: "This Church of Christ is really present in all legitimately organized local groups of the faithful which, insofar as they are united to their pastors, are also quite appropriately called Churches in the New Testament. In each community gathered around the altar and gathered under the sacred ministry of the Bishop, a manifest symbol is to be seen of that charity and unity of the Mystical Body, without which there can be no salvation. In these communities, though they may often be small and poor or existing in the "diaspora", Christ is present through Whose power and influence the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is constituted."
Paradoxical
Pope Benedict XVI notes, however, that there is "another of the paradoxical effects of the post-conciliar era" in that, while on paper the balance and place of the Bishops in the Church is clear, it is not always so in practice. "The decisive new emphasis on the role of Bishops is in reality restrained or actually risks being smothered by the insertion of Bishops into episcopal conferences that are ever more organized often with burdensome bureaucratic structures. We must not forget that episcopal conferences have no theological basis. They do not belong to the structure of the Church as willed by Christ as structures that cannot be eliminated. Those conferences have only a practical and concrete function. The new Code of Canon Law prescribes the extent of the authority of the conferences, which cannot validly act in the name of all Bishops unless each and every Bishop has given his consent, except in cases where the common law prescribes it or a special mandate of the Holy See determines it. The collective, therefore, does not substitute for the persons of the Bishops, who, recalls the Code confirming the Council, are the authentic teachers and instructors of the faith for the faithful entrusted to their care. No episcopal conference as such has a teaching mission. Its documents have no weight of their own save that of the consent given to them by individual Bishops."
The Holy Father sees this as very important because "It is a matter of safeguarding the very nature of the Catholic Church, which is based on an episcopal structure and not on a kind of federation of national churches. The national level is not an ecclesial dimension. It must once again become clear that in each Diocese there is only one shepherd and teacher of the faith in communion with the other pastors and teachers and with the Vicar of Christ. The Catholic Church is based on a balance between the community and the person, in this case between the community of individual particular Churches united in the Universal Church and the person of the responsible head of the Diocese."
Apostolic Suos
Because the concerns expressed by Cardinal Ratzinger were also those of many other thoughtful Bishops from around the world, Pope John Paul II, with Ratzinger’s urging and advice, issued a "Motu Proprio" Encyclical, entitled from its first words in Latin "Apostolos Suos" ("His Apostles"), on May 21, 1998. The theme for the title and work according to the Pope was "On the Theological and Juridical Nature of Episcopal Conferences". Reviewing the history of joint episcopal meetings and activities throughout the two millennia of the Catholic Church’s existence and situating modern Bishops’ Conferences and their work in that history and in the intentions of the Second Vatican Council and the current Code of Canon Law, the Pope wrote about the positive and useful features of Bishops’ Conferences, as well as about their limitations and their necessarily circumscribed functions and activities, which are circumscribed by both divine and ecclesiastical laws.
Wan and Weak
In his 1986 book, "The Ratzinger Report", (published by Ignatius Press), the future Pope Benedict XVI spoke to the journalist, Vittorio Messori, at some length about what he saw as certain drawbacks deriving from excessive and exaggerated importance sometimes being attributed to national or regional Bishops’ Conferences and to their undertakings. He said, for instance, "It happens that with some Bishops there is a certain lack of a sense of individual responsibility, and the delegation of his inalienable powers as shepherd and teacher to the structures of the local (Bishops’) conference leads to letting what should remain very personal lapse into anonymity. The group of Bishops united in the conferences depends in their decisions upon other groups, as for example, upon commissions (committees) that have been established to prepare draft proposals. It happens then that the search for agreement between different tendencies and the effort at mediation often yield flattened documents in which decisive positions, where they might be necessary, are weakened."
He then gave an example from the 1930’s in his native country of Germany. "Well, the really powerful documents against National Socialism (the Nazi doctrines) were those that came from individual courageous Bishops. The documents of the (Bishops’) Conference, on the contrary, were often rather wan and too weak with respect to what the tragedy called for."
Blessed Von Galen
There seems to be little doubt that one of the "individual and courageous Bishops" to which he referred was Blessed Clement August, Count (Graf) von Galen, whom he, as Pope Benedict XVI, beatified on October 9, 2005. Nick-named the "Lion of Munster", (the city where he was the Catholic Bishop from 1933 to 1946), Blessed Bishop von Galen spoke out and wrote heroically against the Nazi Party and against what it was doing to Germany. As Nazi diaries and other historical documents show, Hitler and his Party hated the Bishop, but were frightened of him because he came from the one of the most ancient and noble families in Germany, because of his life of conspicuous virtue and learning, as well as his famous German patriotism during the First World War, and because he was profoundly loved and esteemed by the Catholics of Westphalia. The Nazi SS kept demanding that Bishop von Galen be arrested and executed, but Hitler secretly promised that he would do this only after the war (World War II) to avoid causing a catastrophic uproar among German Catholics. Pope Pius XII knew and admired Bishop von Galen, praised his anti-Nazi sermons and writing, and discreetly encouraged and supported him. Immediately after the war at Christmas in 1945, the Pope announced that he would create him a Cardinal. The British troops in Munster tried to keep the Bishop from going to Rome, but he succeeded nonetheless and was created a Cardinal there in February of 1946. Because his personal fasting for peace during the war had been so severe and because the British occupation forces in Munster cruelly denied him any medicine, any decent food, and any heat for his house during the winter, he died a month after his return from Rome, on March 22, 1946.
More than Protests
Blessed Bishop von Galen was basically a kind, gentle, and loving pastor of souls. He was hardworking and dedicated to helping the poor in his Diocese and beyond. However, he became famous for his outspoken courage, conviction, and resolution. He was always a fierce anti-Communist and maintained that stance during and after the Second World War, regarding Stalinism as intrinsically evil as Hitler’s views. He strongly and publicly denounced the Nazi policies on euthanasia, Gestapo terror, forced sterilization, and the entire apparatus of the concentration camps. He fought and ridiculed the Nazi racial ideology, and he particularly opposed the Nazi attacks on the Old Testament because of its Jewish authorship and significance. He loudly proclaimed what Pope Pius XI had said when he condemned Nazism in the encyclical letter "Mit Brennender Sorge": "Spiritually we are all Semiites". Bishop von Galen also protested, largely in vain, against the desecration of Catholic churches by the regime, and the arrest of priests and religious, often under bogus accusations and falsehoods, the forced closing of convents and monasteries, etc. He condemned the indiscriminate Allied bombing of civilians and the killing of innocent women and children, but he said, at the same time, "the German people are not being destroyed by Allied bombing from the outside as much as from the negative forces within the country," that is, the Nazis who, he said, "were doing away with the fifth commandment." He said "the Nazi regime was undermining justice and reducing the German people to a state of permanent fear, even cowardice." He cried out: "As a German, as a citizen, I demand justice!"
He struggled hard and long to maintain the Catholic schools in his Diocese and to continue Catholic religion instruction for all the Catholic youth free from the totalitarian intrusion of the Nazi Party which demanded total control of all aspects of the education and formation of young people. Von Galen’s sermons against the Nazi ideology were secretly reprinted and circulated throughout Germany and even beyond by various underground groups. Among those who read them with intense interest in those war years was a Polish seminarian in Krakow named Karol Wojtyla. Von Galen’s words during the war were the inspiration of the well known anti-Nazi resistance group called "The White Rose". Toward the end of the war he was kept under house arrest by the Gestapo, until the Allied victory freed him.
Post War
As the war was drawing to a close and Germany was facing utter destruction, some of his attention turned to the Allies and their behavior. In an interview after the war he told a British newspaper correspondent. "Just as I fought against Nazi injustices, so I will fight any injustice wherever it comes from." He protested loudly, publicly, and clearly against the forced starvation of the German people by the Allies at the war’s end, against the thousands of rapes of German women and girls by not only the Russians, but also by many British and American soldiers, and against the plundering of peoples’ homes. He said there was "widespread ransacking of homes already destroyed by bombs, the pillaging and destruction of houses and farms by armed bands of robbers, the murder of many defenseless men, along with numerous rapes by bestial lechers." The British authorities tried to punish him for talking and writing that way by confiscating his car and taking away his ration card which was the only way he was enabled to buy any food, but this did not daunt him. He said many of the postwar horrors perpetrated upon the German people "found justification in erroneous and hate-filled Allied propaganda based on the false view that all Germans are criminals and deserve the most severe punishment, including death and extermination." He told the Allies that he and other anti-Nazi Germans demanded punishment for all Nazi war criminals, but he pleaded for mercy for the German prisoners of war who for many months were not allowed even to contact their families. He also begged, without effect, for justice for the millions of innocent Germans expelled from former parts of Germany which were annexed after the war by the Communist governments of Poland and the Soviet Union. After his death it was discovered that he often had pleaded (and sometimes met with success) for the lives of many Allied prisoners held by the Nazis who had been condemned for one reason or another to be shot. Blessed Clement August, Count von Galen, pray for us!
School Pattern
Catholic schools have a long history on our continent. Already in 1516 there were Catholic schools attached to village churches in the Spanish colonies in Central and South America and in the Caribbean area. In 1640 a Catholic elementary school was established in Maryland and a Catholic college in 1660. By 1727 there were Catholic elementary schools in French Canada, followed by French Catholic schools in 1755 and 1774 in what is now Detroit and Saint Louis. In that same 18th century there were Catholic schools attached to the California missions, most of which were established by Blessed Junipero Serra: San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Carmel, Santa Monica, etc.
In the English colonies along the Atlantic Seaboard, which were the original building blocks of our country’s future history, all the early schools were religious and denominational. Since Catholics at first in those colonies were an extremely tiny minority, those schools were entirely Protestant and often heavily and severely anti-Catholic. Books were bigoted and gave inaccurate information about the Catholic Church and frequently about religion in general. Prayers which were said in those schools were filled with various Protestant doctrines, Bibles were read which were Protestant in their translations and versions, and graduation ceremonies and other school activities were usually held in Protestant churches, with Protestant ministers presiding and preaching. To preserve the faith of their children in those days, many wealthy Catholics in the colonies would send their youngsters to Europe for their schooling, while the poorer Catholics would have to home-school or risk losing the souls of their offspring, if they had the misfortune of living far from one of the few Catholic schools.
However, by 1775 there was a Catholic elementary school in Kentucky, and by 1790, when the first Catholic Diocese was established in the United States (in Baltimore with John Carroll named the first Bishop), the number of Catholic schools in our country had grown despite the poverty and hardships of most of the few Catholic settlers. By 1840 there were more than 200 Catholic schools in the United States, with about half of them west of the Alleghanies.
The Year 1840
The year 1840 was something of a watershed year for Catholic schools. By that year almost the entire United States was offering tax supported, government-controlled schools for its citizens, and in some States of the Union, legally requiring education for all children and youth up to a certain age. Yet, the Protestant character and culture still prevailed, and most of those public schools were in reality simply Protestant schools supported by taxes. Catholics found this arrangement and this environment for their children to be at best uncongenial and at worst gravely hostile and perilous to eternal salvation. It was in 1840 too that the gigantic European immigration to the United States began, with huge numbers of immigrants, in one of the largest migrations in human history, pouring into the United States.
The American Catholic Bishops became deeply concerned that the soaring numbers of new Catholics, in their cultural assimilation, might also lose their faith-identity along with their cultural roots. This was particularly the case with Catholics coming from countries where English was not the predominant language. The immigrants from Ireland in this matter were better prepared for keeping the faith in a non-Catholic, English-speaking culture when they arrived in the United States than immigrants from other lands. As a consequence, the American Catholic Bishops pushed and ordered to the extent possible the construction and promotion of Catholic schools. Thus, with great sacrifices on the part of Catholic communities throughout our country, the number of Catholic schools in America grew at a fast pace.
What made this growth possible and what made those schools so successful were the large numbers of young women who gave themselves to the service of God and His people in many religious orders and communities. In their professional expertise, religious dedication, and astounding sacrifices can be found the secret to the success of the largest parochial school system in the world.
Erosion
In recent times, the original Protestant hue and character of American public schools have significantly eroded, changing many public schools into something even worse from the point of view of conscientious Catholic parents. All prayer, any mention of God, all religion now must be totally excluded. The doctrines of Marx, Stalin, Hitler, etc. can be taught, but even the mention of Jesus, to say nothing of His teaching, is somehow now a crime against the US Constitution. In that "brave new world", sexual perversion is all right but reading the Bible or saying a prayer to God in a government-controlled school is almost as evil as smoking a cigarette there. There even are a significant number of public school teachers’ unions (sometimes called "education associations"), influenced by the false philosophy of John Dewey, which adopt and support issues which the Catholic Faith rightly considers immoral.
This erosion is due in large measure to the increasing numbers of Protestant sects which quarrel with each other as they multiply, to the huge national influence of non-Christians and the imposition of their world-views, especially through the mass media, to certain weird and twisted Supreme Court constitutional decisions, to the gradual secularization of our entire culture with its neo-pagan accompaniments, and to the growing decline in the numbers of Protestants and in the influence of Protestant opinions. This is the reason why even in more modern times Catholics in our country must insist on the freedom to educate and form their children with a moral and religious dimension which they cannot find in any other educational system than their own. From the Catholic viewpoint it is impossible to be "neutral" about Christ and about the one true religion. To be "neutral" is to be "opposed". Attempting neutrality in these matters is to participate, albeit implicitly and sometimes inadvertently, to the national trend of making "non-religion" into the established religion of our country. Religious tolerance and pluralism is not the same as religious indifference. Catholics do not accept a doctrine that says religion is an entirely private affair, a mere opinion that can be ignored.
Good Schools
Having an educated citizenry in a Democratic Republic is important, and therefore good public schools, even those with serious shortcomings, are needed and valuable. However, it is unjust not to allow Catholic parents the right to educate their children according to the truth of the Catholic Faith, and through economic discrimination and questionable constitutional court decisions prevent their hard-earned tax dollars from being used to educate their own children. Fortunately, recent court decisions have decided that "school vouchers" are entirely constitutional. Thus, a voucher system, already being used to great advantage in several States and cities, could be a method for tax-payers to save vast amounts of money now used for school taxes, for fair competition to develop and so to improve all school systems, and for Catholic parents at last to receive at least some justice and some return on their own tax dollars.
Meaning
The original and traditional meaning of "catechesis" (from the Greek-teaching by word of mouth) was instruction or teaching. It meant the setting out and the explanation of Christian Doctrine. This is the sense in which the word is used in the Bible ( for instance in Luke 1:4 & Acts of the Apostles 18:25). In the New Testament there were two basic aspects to this explanation. One was called in Greek "kerygma" and the other "didache". "Kerygma" was an initial proclamation to people, telling them the startling Good News about the entrance of Almighty God Himself into our human history in the divine Person of Jesus Christ, Who came down from heaven to die and rise and thereby save and redeem humanity. "Didache" (literally-the teaching of the twelve Apostles) was in a certain sense the "follow-up", presenting to one who had already received and assimilated the "kerygma" the completeness and fullness of divine revelation, with its implications and consequences for the world and especially for those who have heard and accepted the "kerygma". Both of these aspects are present and operative in the present day catechetical work of the Catholic Church.
The late Pope, Blessed John Paul II, said, "Quite early on the name "catechesis" was given to the totality of the Church’s efforts to make disciples, to help men believe that Jesus is the Son of God, so that believing they might have life in His name, and to educate and instruct them in this divine life, thus building up the Body of Christ. Catechesis is an education in the faith of children, youth, and adults, which includes especially the teaching of Christian doctrine, imparted, generally speaking, in an organic and systematic way, with a view to initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life."
The National Catechetical Directory for the United States (published in 2005 by the USCCB) tells us where all genuine and authentic Catholic catechesis comes from. "Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition remain the foundation for the Church’s ministry of the word. These fonts of revelation continue to play an essential and indispensable role in catechesis. Sacred Scripture inspires, directs, and nourishes the Church’s catechetical mission."
Vatican Two
The Second Vatican Council, in its Dogmatic Constitution on divine revelation (called "Dei Verbum" in Latin), explains how guarding and proclaiming what God has revealed in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition involves the "Magisterium" of the Church, and thus, this teaching of the Council can give a hint as to how and why Bishops in union with the Bishop of Rome, the Successor of Saint Peter, are rightfully concerned about the catechizing of the people whose salvation has been entrusted to their care. The Council proclaims, "The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously, and explaining it faithfully by divine commission with the help of the Holy Spirit. It draws from this deposit of faith everything it presents for belief as divinely revealed. It is clear, therefore, that Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together, each in its own way under the action of the One Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls."
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, has written that the world’s Bishops’ "experience as shepherds had shown them (after the Council) that the various new pastoral activities have no solid basis unless they are irradiations and applications of the message of faith. Faith cannot be presupposed but must be proposed. This is the purpose of the Catechism. It aims to propose the faith in its fullness and wealth, but also in its unity and simplicity."
Two Documents
When one enters the field of catechetics, there is at the current time an immediate encounter with two types of documents. One type are "catechetical directories", General or National, which usually set out the table of contents of what is to be taught, discussion about the audience that will be receiving the teaching, the people and teachers who are responsible, and something about the didactic techniques and pedagogical methods which are suggested to be employed. The other type are the catechisms themselves. These are the most important kinds of documents because they present the contents of what is to be taught. Sometimes there is an overlap between the catechisms and the directories, but they are most often distinct kinds of documents.
As Pope John Paul II wrote, "A catechism should faithfully and systematically present the teaching of Sacred Scripture, the living Tradition in the Church, and the authentic Magisterium, as well as the spiritual heritage of the Fathers, Doctors, and saints of the Church, to allow for a better knowledge of the Christian mystery and for enlivening the faith of the People of God. It should take into account the doctrinal statements which down the centuries the Holy Spirit has intimated to His Church. A catechism should also help to illumine with the light of faith new situations and problems which had not yet emerged in the past."
Pope Benedict XVI noted that after the Second Vatican Council, its documents, especially the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, its decrees on ecumenism, the missions, and its declarations on non-Christian religions and on freedom of religion, opened up broad vistas of dialogue making the Church responsible to confront with renewed energy the many new questions pressing in from every side. This is what led to the call in the 1985 International Synod of Bishops for a new universal and standard catechism on which national and regional catechisms could be based. This led to the formation by Pope John II of a commission of Cardinals and Bishops to draw up this new Catechism of the Catholic Church, which he then endorsed, approved, and promulgated. The older catechisms certainly retain their value and importance The new Catechism of the Catholic Church thus, said Pope John Paul II, "contains both the old and the new (Matthew 13:52) because the faith is always the same yet the source of ever new light."
Q and A
Catechisms have a long history in the Catholic Church. Beginning in the 16th century, however, for teaching ease, they often were formatted in a question and answer way, particularly when presenting them to children. Recognizing the desirability of such a format, Pope Benedict, shortly before the death of Pope John Paul II, drew up a Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic in just such a question and answer form. He flattered this columnist by requesting that I do the English translation of that Compendium, which I finished just before his election to the papacy. If the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church seems too formidable, I would certainly commend the Compendium to your attention, especially if you are a CCD teacher.
History
Catechisms, which are basically a gathering into one book of the fundamental Christian truths, are intended to present those truths "in a readily accessible and understandable form." The Bible itself contains various summaries of this or that teaching, but a rather full summary of all the basic truths of Christianity in what are called catechisms began to take shape in the Catholic Church, as far as we know, starting from the end of the first century, when new converts, along with Catholic children and youth, were seen to need help to master rather complete instructions in Christianity. By the fourth century catechetical work was highly developed in the Church, and many Bishops are recorded as urging and insisting that Christian parents especially have an obligation before God to see to the correct and complete religious training of their offspring. It was in that century that Saint Cyril, the Bishop of Jerusalem, issued a document called "Catechetical Instructions" in which he embodied for the first time the fourfold division of catechetical material used ever since by the Church.
The traditional fourfold division of the Catholic catechisms are: first, an explanation of the Creed, and then of the liturgy and sacraments, followed by the commandments of God and the laws of the Church, and concluding with a discussion about virtues (particularly faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance) with prayer (especially the Lord’s Prayer and the Marian prayers). The term "catechism" was also used to describe sermons and books of instruction for adults, and, from the beginning, the term was not restricted to something only for children and youths. It was in the the fourth century too that Saint Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa and Doctor of the Church, wrote one of the most important classical works on catechetics, "On Instructing the Ignorant" ("De Rudibus Catechizandis"), in which he set forth the contents of the catechism in question and answer form. As catechisms evolved down the centuries they took on various styles and forms. These variances mainly were due to the readership they were intended for: Bishops and theologians, parish priests, lay adults, children, older youths, etc. In the Middle Ages, brilliant personages such as Saint Thomas Aquinas produced important catechisms. In later centuries to combat the grave errors and mistakes of Protestantism, Saint Charles Borromeo, Saint Robert Bellarmine, and Saint Peter Canisius composed important catechisms and published them in the vernacular languages of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Trent and Beyond
The Bishops at the Council of Trent saw a serious need for a revised and updated Catholic Catechism, especially because by that time both Luther and Calvin had published Protestant catechisms, which were being widely diffused and which were filled with doctrinal errors. The result was that shortly after the Council ended the Holy See published what was called "The Catechism of the Council of Trent" or "The Roman Catechism". Translated into the various languages of the world, it quickly became normative for all the various subsequent Catholic Catechisms published in the succeeding centuries up to the end of the twentieth.
In 1885 the American Bishops in the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore ordered and approved for use in the United States a catechism which quickly took up the name "The Baltimore Catechism". Approved by the Holy See and based on the Roman Catechism, but arranged in a simple question and answer format, it became the standard for America for many decades. It was revised in 1941 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) Committee of the U.S. Bishops and was then set up in a ratchet form for the various grade levels in American schools. After the Second Vatican Council post-conciliar doctrinal and moral confusion became widespread, leading the International Synod of Bishops to suggest to the Holy Father another normative and updated Catechism be authored and issued for the whole Catholic world. This was done in 1992 and then published in a final edition in 1997. The working version was in French but the official version of this "Catechism of the Catholic Church" is in Latin. Of course, it has been translated into all the world’s vernacular languages.
It is rather large and is an important resource for theologians and catechists, However, its use as a textbook, especially for children and youths, is somewhat problematic. As a consequence the Holy See has now published "A Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church". It is a smaller book and is done in question and answer form. The then Cardinal Ratzinger honored this columnist by asking him to do the English translation (from the working version in Italian), which I was flattered to do.
National
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (the USCCB) has published in 2005, at the urging of the Holy See, a revised "National Catechetical Directory", based on the Holy See’s "General Catechetical Directory". The USCCB also is engaged in putting out various other catechetical works, such as a "National Catechism for Adults". The U.S. Bishops too have established a committee of Bishops to ascertain and to publicize whether there is correct conformity in the individual catechetical works of various publishers to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Sometimes there are found in those works not only mistakes and errors, but also serious omissions of important Catholic doctrines. This work of the USCCB is generally appreciated by most Catholic book publishers, and it facilitates the duty that diocesan Bishops have in regard to vigilance over the orthodoxy of what is being taught in Catholic schools and CCD programs.
Recent Popes repeatedly have exhorted their brother Bishops throughout the world to produce numerous aids to assist the religious formation of their people, aids which are clear, accurate, and profound. These are human (and hence highly imperfect) attempts to speak of divine truth and are, at best, paraphrases of the divine Scripture, but nevertheless a labor that must be constantly done. These catechetical works, while significant and vital, ought to be seen as subordinate to other essential instructional elements that should be in every Catholic family such as regular participation in the sacred liturgy along with parental teaching and example. It is astonishing to notice that conscientious Catholic parents sometimes will be appropriately concerned about proper nourishment, exercise, and safety for their children, while being utterly neglectful of their greater and more important obligation to see to the spiritual, intellectual nourishment of their children and teenagers, by insisting on their regular reception of correct and complete religious and catechetical instruction, if possible in a Catholic school or otherwise in the CCD program. Solid and complete religious instruction does not guarantee perseverance in the faith. (Sin is, after all, in the will and not in the intellect.) However, it is one of the best ways that parents can transmit to their offspring the most priceless inheritance possible, the Catholic Faith with its promise of eternal happiness.
The Holy See has stated that the Catechism of the Catholic Church is meant "to encourage and assist in the writing of new local catechisms." It also says that "parents receive in the Sacrament of Matrimony the grace and the ministry of the Christian education of their children to whom they transmit and bear witness to human and religious values."
Civics - History
It is something of a loss and a shame that in these days very few American schools teach civics in a way that links that study to history. As a matter of fact, it can be shocking to know that significant numbers of high schools and elementary schools in our country do not teach any civics at all. So it is not surprising to be told that although some American young people might learn something about our constitutional Bill of Rights, that is, the first ten amendments to our federal constitution, surveys show that even then they rarely can identify the first of our rights listed in that document. They, and the general American public too, often say freedom of speech or of the press, or freedom from being forced to self-denunciation, or freedom from warrantless searches, etc. are the first of our rights. However, it is actually freedom of religion which is listed first in the Bill of Rights. The first words of the first article of the first amendment are: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...."
It is also little known that the only two Catholic signers of the U.S. Constitution (Catholics were a very tiny minority in the original thirteen colonies.) were both very active in bringing about the Bill of Rights and in promoting the placing of religious freedom in the first position. These were Thomas Fitzsimons of Pennsylvania and Daniel Carroll of Maryland. Daniel Carroll, a patriotic supporter of the American Revolution, was a cousin to the famous Charles Carroll, the Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, and he was the brother of Father John Carroll who later became the first Catholic Bishop and Archbishop of Baltimore, which was the first Diocese and Archdiocese established by the Catholic Church in the new United States of America. Daniel was elected to the House of Representatives of the First Congress and served though three sessions from March 4, 1789 to March 4, 1791. Daniel Carroll took special interest in the first and the tenth amendments and was on the committee delegated to steer the Bill of Rights through the House.
It is clear from the accounts of the debates and discussions that the First Congress did not intend the Constitution to be hostile to religion. It was initially suggested, for example, that the amendment say "No religion shall be established by law nor shall the right of conscience be infringed." This was seen, however, as "a tendency to abolish religion" by many representatives and those words were rejected on that basis. Some people have asserted that Bishop John Carroll had been instrumental in formulating the first amendment, but there is no evidence to support that view. He did express his sentiments about the matter as the leader of the Catholic community in the new country, but it appears that all the specific work was done by Daniel, his brother. Charles Carroll, Daniel’s well-known cousin, was a Senator from Maryland in the First Congress and strongly supported the Bill of Rights in that Upper House.
Afterwards
After the First Congress had passed the Bill of Rights and had sent the amendments to the States for ratification, the same Congress then subsequently passed legislation to hire and pay chaplains for both the House and Senate and for the military services and to pay for religious missionaries to Indians. Obviously they did not see this as a violation of the Bill of Rights which they had just passed. Over the centuries since the passage of the Bill of Rights, court decisions unfortunately excessively have emphasized the "establishment" aspect of the first amendment and have basically ignored the Bill of Rights forbidding the "prohibition of free exercise" clause. In May of 1789 George Washington wrote, "If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the constitution framed in the convention where I had the honor to preside might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it...."
One of the reasons for the freedom of religion part of the Bill of Rights being positioned in first place was the large number of petitions sent to the First Congress from throughout the States. The Congress paid close attention to those desires of the people especially because the ratification of the Constitution was a close call, and the main objection of those who opposed it was that the original document lacked a Bill of Rights. It should be remembered too that at that time several of the States, particularly in New England, had Protestant churches and religions established and supported by their laws, taxes, and State Constitutions. The first amendment was not meant to interfere from the federal level with those arrangements. Before the Bill of Rights was passed, the State of Virginia, largely through the work of Thomas Jefferson, had already disestablished its state-church which was the Anglican, but some of the other States kept their established Protestant churches for some years. Massachusetts, for example, kept theirs until the 1830’s. By that time all the state churches had been disestablished.
Daniel Carroll believed in a stronger central government for America than was found in Articles of Confederation and so firmly supported the new Constitution. However, he was also strongly in favor of a limited federal government and that is why he pushed for the adoption of the tenth amendment. He followed the view of Saint Robert Bellarmine that national sovereignty was owned by the people who then can give some of it to this or that institution or person, but have the authority to retain some for themselves. Thus, the tenth amendment reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by this Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." This Right sadly is largely unknown and seems in modern times to have no or very little influence in American national life.
Even Jefferson
Although he later coined the phrase "wall of separation between Church and State", (which is found nowhere in the Constitution) Jefferson himself, with his customary inconsistency, sponsored and attended Protestant divine services held in the national Capitol while he was President. He may have done this to counteract the accusations of his political opponents that he was an atheist. (He might have been some kind of Deist.) He also authorized and sponsored paying the salaries of ministers (and even some Catholic priests) who were ministering to native American groups. Neither Jefferson’s nor Madison’s anti-religious views seem to have had any influence on the first amendment language. Jefferson was not directly involved in the constitutional convention nor in the First Congress.
Certainly Washington, the Carrolls, and even Jefferson would probably be astonished to learn that in our times the ACLU liberal types insist that the first amendment makes it a crime to say a prayer or even mention God at a public school graduation ceremony or to sing a Christmas carol there.
Militant Secularism
A Catholic professor of constitutional law in a prominent American university recently remarked, looking at the evolution of American cultural thought regarding the history of freedom of religion in the United States: "There has been a full and vicious circle, from religious persecution, intolerance, and church establishment to benign tolerance, to disestablishment, to equality of all faiths before the law, to equality of belief and unbelief before the law, and now to the secularists’ and the religious dissenters’ intolerance of all religious belief in public law. The wry irony of that is that this is being done in the name of and for the sake of religious liberty."
The professor goes on to say: "American believers are losing by default. They have taken their spiritual heritage for granted. The have allowed a creeping gradualism of secularism, under one specious pretext or another, to take over..... A vociferous and highly organized pressure group is exerting its own form of indirect coercive pressure upon the American community. Determined to deflect American national traditions and heritage from their authentic historic course, this group is cutting a divisive swath across the nation, advertising for clients to challenge in court what is obnoxious to them."
An American historian has noted, "Although our national history is rich in evidence that our political democracy was conceived in theological terms, not every American has posited religious beliefs as the wellspring of our democracy. Since the time of Washington there has been clear evidence of a secularist concept of our national experiment. But, this secular tradition is not the only American tradition. On the contrary, the religious tradition is the original and prevailing one. It is authentic in the very fiber of our body politic and as such constitutes the genuine American consensus."
Where We Were
In order to see where we were on the issue of the first part of the first amendment to our United States Constitution just a short time ago, we can read what the United States Supreme Court said in 1952 (in the case of Zorach versus Clauson), and then note how far away from those words we currently have come: "We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. We guarantee the freedom to worship as one chooses. We make room for as wide a variety of beliefs and creeds as the spiritual needs of man deem necessary. We sponsor as an attitude on the part of the government that shows no partiality to any one group and that lets each flourish according to the zeal of is adherents and the appeal of its dogma. When the State encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions. For then it respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs. To hold that it may not would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe."
The Court goes further: "Prayers in our legislative halls, the appeals to the Almighty in the messages of the Chief Executive, the proclamations making Thanksgiving Day a holiday, the "so help me God" in our courtroom oaths, these and other references to the Almighty that run through our laws, our public rituals, our ceremonies, would be flouting the first amendment (in the view of the secularists). A fastidious atheist or agnostic could even object to the supplication with which our Supreme Court opens each session: God save the United States and this Honorable Court."
In 1940 the Dean of one of the Yale University Colleges said, "The principle of religious freedom is designed to protect religious belief and not to hinder or destroy it. It is meant to insure the free exercise of religion according to the dictate of consciences, but not to limit the exercise by forcing secularism upon American citizens."
Catholic Indians
The First Congress in our nation’s history, after it had passed the Bill of Rights and sent it to the States for ratification, appropriated funds for the support of Christian missionaries among the Indians (which are now called Native Americans). George Washington and his Secretary of War Henry Knox supported this appropriation, "the object of which would be the happiness of Indians, teaching them the great duties of religion and morality and to inculcate a friendship and attachment to the United States." It is clear that Washington, Knox, and the First Congress did not think this violated the U.S. Constitution.
Even more amazing was that this practice was continued by Thomas Jefferson, the author of the famous phrase (in his letter to the Danbury Baptists on January 1, 1802), "wall of separation between church and state". In 1803, for instance, he approved and sent to the U.S. Senate for ratification a treaty between the Kaskasia Indians and the United States. One passage of the treaty says the following: "And whereas the greater part of said tribe have been baptized and received into the Catholic Church, to which they are much attached, the United States will give annually for seven years one hundred dollars for the support of a priest of that religion, who will engage to perform for said tribe the duties of his office and also to instruct as many of their children as possible in the rudiments of literature, and the United States will further give the sum of three hundred dollars to the said tribe for the erection of a church." It is obvious that Jefferson, despite his devious and frequent ideological inconsistencies, saw the relationship of church and state in a far different light than the radical American secularists of today, who often try to manipulate him and his words to achieve their goals.
Useful Idiots
In the Soviet era of Communist expansion, Lenin and Stalin after him instructed party members to refer in public to left-wing liberals, democratic socialists, and others who agreed with many of the communist programs without actually being party members as "fellow travelers". However, they were instructed to refer to them always in private and in cell meetings as "useful idiots". The fanatic secularists, in their present and ongoing campaign to eliminate all religion in general and specifically Christianity and the Catholic Religion from American cultural life and from any participation in the discussions in the public square, unfortunately are assisted by many "useful idiots". People often fall into that category out of terror of being considered intolerant, insensitive to minority feelings, or out of the mainstream. You can detect them easily.. They are the ones who refuse to say "Merry Christmas", but insist on saying "Happy Holidays"!
Near Home
An unusual attack by secularism in one of its many recent attempts to impose that anti-religion on all Americans and to twist the first amendment to our American Constitution, in order to require the government to be hostile to religion, had come a few years ago from a Senator in the Unicameral of the State of Nebraska. It was a lawsuit brought about in 1983 by the notorious Ernest Chambers, an eccentric personality and a darling of the secular media, who recently and absurdly even sued God for causing tornados. He claimed back then that the practice of the legislature to have a chaplain chosen biennially by the Executive Board of the Legislative Council and paid by public funds violates the establishment clause of the first amendment. At that time the legislative chaplain was a Nebraska Presbyterian Minister named Robert E. Palmer. He was paid $319.75 a month when the legislature was in session. Chambers sued a State Official over the matter, and thus the lawsuit was called "Marsh versus Chambers". Chambers lost initially, but then won in the Federal Court of Appeals. This was followed by an appeal and a final judgment against Chambers and the overturning of the judgment of the Court of Appeals by the U.S.Supreme Court on July 5, 1983. On that occasion Chief Justice Burger delivered the opinion of the court, from which it appears there were three dissenting Justices. Many knowledgable observers say that were the case to be decided nowadays, 28 years later, the decision might be different, so we must rejoice in the circumstances that brought it about at the time that it did.
Chief Justice Burger wrote: "The opening of sessions of legislatures and other deliberative public bodies with prayer is deeply imbedded in the history and tradition of this country. From colonial times through the founding of the Republic and ever since, the practice of legislative prayer has coexisted with the principles of disestablishment and religious freedom. In the very courtrooms in which the United States District Judge and later three Circuit Judges heard and decided the case, the proceedings opened with an announcment that concluded, "God save the United States and this Honorable Court", which is the same invocation that occurs at all sessions of this Court.... Clearly the men who wrote the first amendment religion clauses did not view paid legislative chaplains and opening prayers as a violation of that amendment, because the practice of opening sessions with prayer has continued without interruption ever since that early session of Congress. It can hardly be thought that in the same week members of the First Congress voted to accept to pay a chaplain for each House and also voted to approve the draft of the first amendment for submission to the States that they intended the establishment clause of the amendment to forbid what they had just declared acceptable. In applying the first amendment to the States through the fourteenth amendment, it would be incongruous to interpret that clause as imposing more stringent first amendment limits on the States than the draftsmen imposed on the Federal Government."
Burger noted that when in history John Jay and John Rutledge objected to a motion to begin the first session of the (pre-Constitution) Continental Congress with a prayer, Samuel Adams led the majority who voted them down, saying: "I am no bigot, and I can hear a prayer from any gentleman of piety and virtue who is at the same time a friend of his country." Burger concluded: "In the light of the unambiguous and unbroken history of more than 200 years, there can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society. To invoke divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the laws, is not, in these circumstances, an establishment of religion or a step toward establishment. It is simply a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country." Thus "Ernie" Chambers was thwarted in one of his first efforts to force his anti- religion of secularism on Nebraska and its people.
Calendar Secularism
Another area where secularism of a virulent anti-Christian character has entered our culture and is striving to force itself upon the people can be found in the changes demanded and often now used in substitution for the calendar expressions that previously have been used for almost 2000 years by all of Western civilization. The semi-official newspaper of the Holy See, "L’Osservatore Romano", said that "this change reflects a wider effort to cancel every trace of Christianity from Western culture."
The change being done is dropping the reference to Jesus Christ in the expressions A.D. (Latin for "Anno Domini" -"the Year of our Lord") and the term B.C. ( in English "Before Christ") and in place of them using the expressions B.C.E. (meaning "Before the Common Era") and C.E. (meaning "Common Era"). The fanatic followers of the anti-religion of secularism claim that this usage would be "more neutral religiously". Many critics have joined L’Osservatore Romano in pointing out the hypocrisy of this undertaking, since those new dating abbreviations still use the birth of Christ as a reference point but try with a change of words to escape acknowledging the connection. Hatred for Jesus seems to be a hallmark of secularists.
Since the more recent archaeological discovery of the exact date for the death of King Herod the Great, we now know that the monk who made the calculation we use in the calendar was mistaken by at least five years. Nevertheless, we have used and understood his intention to place the birth of Jesus at the center of the entire human experience and to mark everything in history that has occurred after His birth as "year of the Lord" and everything in human history that happened before His birth as leading up to it and, therefore, rightly called "before Christ". L’Osservatore Romano says, "To deny the historically revolutionary importance of the coming of Christ on earth, which is also accepted even by those who do not recognize Him as the Son of God, is an act of foolishness. From the moment God became incarnate, our world and its history have changed, and, therefore, Christ must be always seen as the Fulcrum of history and its Center."
National Thanks
On September 25, 1789, the First Congress unanimously passed a resolution "that a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States (George Washington) to request that he recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a constitution of government for their safety and happiness."
Washington did this, stating at the beginning of his proclamation that "it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor...." Secularism was never the established religion ( or more accurately the anti-religion) of the United States. It certainly will become so soon, however, unless God-fearing and believing Americans are ever vigilant and do not allow our freedoms to be gradually eroded and destroyed by the insidious work of the secularists and their (often unwitting) allies.
An Incident
A news article from a few years ago can serve to illustrate what Doctor Stephen Krason calls "the rigidity, unreasonableness, and even unreality of the new strict separation doctrine" enacted by the U.S. Supreme Court. The story begins in a small middle America town with one public high school where, for more than one hundred years, a Christmas program for the townsfolk was held, in which the high school chorus sang. A non-Christian family moved into the town and enrolled a teen-aged daughter in the school. She liked to sing and joined the chorus. However, she (and the family) strenuously objected to using the term "Christmas" and to the singing of any Christmas carols. The school authorities offered to have her sit out for any songs she did not care for or, if she wanted, to sit out for the whole program. However, this was not acceptable for her family and they demanded that the whole celebration must have nothing to do with Christ’s birth, but had to celebrate only the winter solstice, forcing the school and town to reject any mention of Christianity and to accept a government mandated complete secularism. The family obtained support from some national, liberal organizations and their attorneys, who flew in from both coasts and "bamboozled" a local dim-witted judge, who then issued an injunction imposing secularism, claiming that using the word Christmas and singing carols was the equivalent of "Congress establishing a state church" and, therefore, the usual century old high school program in that town had been violating the first amendment to the Federal Constitution.
The story goes on. In conformity to the court ruling, a secular "solstice program" was presented to replace the Christmas program, but during the new program, somewhere between the songs "Frosty the Snowman" and "Winter Wonderland", one of the men in the audience stood up and began to sing loudly "O Come All Ye Faithful". In a few seconds the entire audience was singing that carol. When they had finished, they were evidently so exhilarated that they went on to sing other religious carols together with the smiling chorus youths. The non-Christian girl and her family fled the school, screaming obscenities. They then demanded that the entire town be cited for "contempt of court", but that turned out to be too much secularism even for the dim-witted judge, who at last began to realize that the first amendment also does not permit the government to prohibit the free exercise of religion.
Recent Book
In giving consideration to the "constitutional turmoil" caused in recent decades by what many scholars see as the "gross historical error" of the U.S. Supreme Court’s "strict separatist interpretation of the establishment clause", attention should be paid to the growing amount of learned literature currently being published on the issue. A recent book especially deserves, in my estimation, a careful reading in its exhaustive treatment of the matter. It is entitled "Church, State, and Original Intent" (Cambridge University Press, 2010). The author, Donald L. Drakeman, is a well known church-state attorney and a lecturer at Princeton University’s Department of Politics. He is also the Chairman of that University’s Advisory Council of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. His book is a formidable work, and I have only had time to read a portion of it, but it has been excellently reviewed by Doctor Krason in the latest issue of Catalyst (October 2011).
Krason notes, "Drakeman catalogues, as other writers have, the ways in which the government in the U.S., at all levels, for much of our history gave aid to religion. If our government was supposed to be neutral as between belief and unbelief, which the Supreme Court has said is constitutionally mandated, it certainly did not act that way." He points out how the anti-Catholic attitudes and beliefs of such Justices as Hugo Black and Wiley Rutledge accelerated the slide to the establishment of secularism as the national religion (or non-religion). He also remarks about the excessive reliance on and uncritical acceptance by the Court of Irving Brant’s multi-volume biography of James Madison and on the mixed, complex, and often internally contradictory views of Madison and Jefferson, resulting in an erroneous understanding of the Founders’ thoughts and intentions.
Ironically, it was after the Second World War that the onslaught of secular liberalism came full force into our national culture. The irony is that the 1940’s were some of the most religious years in our country’s recent history ("There are No Atheists in Foxholes", "God is My Co-Pilot", "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition", "Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer", etc.). Krason concludes his review: "Our Platonic guardians on the High Court have tried to remove from the realm of politics an essentially political problem. An assumption motivating them has been that any government support for religion inevitably breeds divisiveness. So, they have taken it upon themselves to fashion a secular state, a naked public square to use the term of the late Father Richard John Neuhaus, and have created divisiveness anyway. Moreover they have tried to justify themselves by promulgating the fantasy that the establishment clause requires it. One wonders how long the Court will keep up the charade."
Even Protestants
The wrong turn taken by the Supreme Court was noted even by some prominent Protestants, who issued a strong statement criticizing the Court in 1948: "The signers of the statement are right in seeing that the Supreme Court extended the meaning of the original conception of separation in a most fateful way when it moved from the mere prohibition of an establishment of religion to the exclusion of all cooperation between the state and the various religious bodies even when such cooperation does not give any of them an advantage over others. The logic of this new position would destroy all types of cooperation between church and state, which the American people have long taken for granted from the military chaplaincies to tax exemption for church property.... This new form of the doctrine of separation tends in practice to give an advantage to aggressive secularism." They said that this new doctrine is "unwarranted by the language of the first amendment"......and "will accelerate the trend toward the secularization of our culture."
The Protestant magazine, The Christian Century, said about this statement that "it commits its signers to a position virtually identical with that of the Roman Catholic Church, which contends that tax funds and the civil law may be used to aid churches provided that the aid is available to all churches alike."
Being opposed to the establishment of secularism as the national religion of America does not mean, however, that American Catholics are in any way in favor of some other establishment of a national religion. Cardinal James Gibbons said it well: "No establishment is dreamed of by any Catholics. But were it attempted it would meet united opposition from all the Catholic people of the USA, priests and prelates included." Provided that our Constitution is correctly interpreted, American Catholics see our national relationships between church and state as those which work best for the good of religion and the good of the government.
The Pledge
One of the recent efforts of the secularists in their campaign to expunge all religion from American cultural life was represented by a citizen from California who brought a lawsuit in federal court trying to impose his desire to disallow the use of the phrase "under God" in the American Pledge of Allegiance to the national flag. The lawsuit was dismissed on a legal technicality, but there are promises from secularists to continue their efforts to get the mention of God out of the Pledge. Those words, "under God", were inserted officially into the Pledge by a bill passed by the U.S. Congress on June 14, 1954, and signed into law on that same day by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who said, "In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future. In this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace and war." The President then stood on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and recited the Pledge of Allegiance officially for the first time using the phrase "one nation under God" .
The phrase "under God" was taken from the Gettysburg Address of Abraham Lincoln, who said "that this nation under God shall enjoy a new birth of freedom...". The effort to bring about that insertion into the Pledge of Allegiance was largely led by the Knights of Columbus in the United States. The original Pledge itself seems to have been composed in 1892 by Francis Bellamy and was first published on September 8, 1892, in a Protestant magazine of the time called "The Youth’s Companion". It was first used publicly when a large group of public school children recited it together at the beginning of the International Columbian Exposition in Chicago (World’s Fair) on October 12, 1892, commemorating "landing day", the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.
Another Absurdity
Sometimes the anti-religion work of the secularists takes on preposterous dimensions. Recently a public school district somewhere in America sent a stern warning to its school bus drivers that they were forbidden to post in their buses any pictures of Santa Claus, the reason asserted being that he is a "Catholic saint", and, therefore, those bus drivers who would post such pictures were "establishing a religion" in violation of the first amendment to the Federal Constitution. Now we all know that the Santa myths came about through ancient Christian devotion to Saint Nicholas, who was the Catholic Bishop of Myra in the fourth century and whose body was brought by the Crusaders to Bari, Italy, where it rests to this day. However, the real and genuine Saint Nicholas did not live at the North Pole, did not have a wife, did not cavort with elves, was not overweight, did not wear a red suit and ride about with reindeer, etc. It certainly takes a very fanatic public-school secularist to identify a figure that has morphed into Santa Claus with an actual Catholic saint.
Most recently, a current federal bureaucrat in the United States Veterans’ Administration forbade the use of the words "God" or "Jesus" in any burial rites in a national cemetery for military veterans and their families. The matter was threatened with litigation causing the bureaucrat to retreat somewhat, saying she only means to forbid chaplains from the American Legion or VFW from using those words, but other chaplains may do so! This is a secularist idea of religious freedom!
Congressional Report
On January 19, 1853, in the midst of some general public outrage in America over the organization called "The American Protective Association" (which was popularly called the "No Nothing Party" from the practice of its members responding to all inquiries with the phrase "I know nothing"), the U.S. Congress received an interesting report from the Senate Judiciary Committee about the first amendment, which already then was beginning to be given a distorted construction. "The first amendment clause speaks of an establishment of religion. What is meant by that expression? It referred without a doubt to that establishment which existed in the mother country, endowment at the public expense, peculiar privileges to its members, disadvantages and penalties upon those who should reject its doctrines or belong to other communions. Such a law would be a "law respecting an establishment of religion". They intended by this amendment to prohibit an establishment of religion such as the English Church presented or anything like it. But, they had no fear or jealousy of religion in itself, nor did they wish to see us become an irreligious people."
"They did not intend to spread over all the public authorities and the whole public action of the nation the dead and revolting spectacle of atheistic apathy. Not so had the battles of the Revolution been fought and the deliberations of the Revolutionary Congress been conducted." The term "atheistic apathy" is an interesting but accurate description of current day secularism and its goals. The Judiciary Committee noted the religious aspects of the 1783 treaty between the United States and Great Britain, which ended our Revolutionary War and, in effect, brought about our national independence, and which begins with these words: "In the Name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity: It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and of the United States of America to forget all past misunderstandings and differences, etc."
Court Confusion
The U.S. Supreme Court has found itself seriously conflicted in recent times in matters pertaining to the issues of church and state. This is easily seen in the confusing and often contradictory rulings it sets out. There even are occasionally some that actually do not favor secularism. For instance, in 1985 (in "Wallace versus Jafree"), Justice William Rehnquist, rendering the Court’s decision, said, "It is impossible to build sound constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of constitutional history. The establishment clause had been expressly freighted with Jefferson’s misleading metaphor for nearly forty years. There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the framers intended to build a wall of separation between church and state. The recent court decisions are in no way based on either the language or intent of the framers."
In a 1963 case ("School District of Abington Township versus Schempp"), Justice Tom Clark, writing the Court’s opinion, said, "The history of man is inseparable from the history of religion. Secularism is unconstitutional, preferring those who do not believe over those who do believe. It is the duty of government "to deter no-belief religions". The facilities of government cannot offend religious principles. The state may not establish "a religion of secularism" in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion...." On March 3, 1865, the U. S. Congress approved the proposal of Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase to have the U.S. mint inscribe on all American coinage the motto "In God We Trust", to the fury of the rabid secularists even to this day who are trying to get it removed.
Bishops’ Concern
Last October 26th, Bishop William Lori, the Catholic Bishop of Bridgeport and the Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on Religious Liberty, testified before a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representative in the U. S. Congress. He noted that the Bishops of the United States, representing more than 69 million Americans who are Catholics, are very concerned about recent grave threats to religious freedom in our country. He remarked that both the Bill of Rights and our Declaration of Independence require the government "to acknowledge and protect religious liberty as something fundamental, no matter the moral or political trends of the moment." Bishop Lori said, " However, in recent days the Bishops of the United States have watched with increasing alarm as this great national legacy of religious liberty, so profoundly in harmony with our own teachings, has been subject to ever more frequent assault and ever more rapid erosion."
In the name of all the American Catholic Bishops, Bishop Lori urged some "corrective action by the Congress". He said "The ultimate root causes of these threats to religious liberty are profound and lie beyond" (the scope of the Congress to fix) "But, we can and must also treat the symptoms immediately, lest the disease spread so quickly that the patient is overcome before the ultimate cure can be formulated and delivered."
Six Areas
The Bishop stated that there are six areas of immediate and urgent concern for the Bishops and for American Catholics: First, there are the regulations issued last August by the Federal Department of Health and Human Services, mandating coverage of contraception, sterilization, and other evil practices in almost all private health insurance plans in the U.S., (as though those things have anything to do with "health"), with a conscience exception clause so preposterously drawn that, as one observer said, Jesus and the Apostles would be required by Mrs. Secretary Sebelius to get involved in artificial birth prevention and other wickedness. Second, there is a new requirement by the Federal HHS that would force the Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services to agree to provide the "full range of reproductive services, including abortion and contraception, to all human trafficking victims and all unaccompanied refugee minors."
The third attack by the current federal government upon religious freedom and upon the Catholic Church in particular involves a new requirement by the U.S. Agency for International Development that Catholic Relief Services and all other contractors include condom distribution in all HIV prevention activities and provide contraception in a wide range of international relief and development programs. Fourth, there are the Department of Justice actions to mischaracterize the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, which states that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, as an "act of bigotry", and the Justice Department also is actively attacking the DOMA’s constitutionality. Fifth, that same Justice Department is working hard to undermine all "ministerial exceptions" which generally exempt religious institutions from civil laws when it comes to hiring and firing (their own priests or ministers, etc.). Sixth, State actions promoting same-sex marriage resulted in Catholic Charity agencies in Illinois "being driven out of the work of adoption and foster care" and "some county clerks in New York State having to face legal action for refusing to participate in same-sex unions." Bishop Lori said that "these areas are only the most recent instances in a broader trend of erosion of religious liberty in the United States." The ardent and fanatical secularists are unrelenting in their determination to force their anti-religion on the United States, trying to make us accept godlessness as our "national church".
Final Verses
It was on September 14, 1814, that Francis Scott Key, a Washington D.C. lawyer and poet, was being held captive on a British warship off the harbor of Baltimore and witnessed the bombardment by the British fleet of the American-held Fort McHenry. The next morning when the mist and smoke had cleared, he saw the American flag still flying over the fort and was inspired to write "The Star Spangled Banner". As he wrote the poem he kept in mind the cadence of an old English drinking song "To Anacreon in Heaven", and the poem almost immediately was set to the music of that tune and then quickly became very popular throughout our country. On March 3, 1931, by an Act of Congress, all four of its verses became the official national anthem of the United States.
The fourth verse is little known and seldom sung, except in wartime, but it stands as another refutation of the efforts to force national secularism on our country: "O thus be it ever, when free men shall stand between their loved homes and the war’s desolation. Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven rescued land praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto: In God is our trust! And the star spangled banner in triumph shall wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave."
In 1831, Samuel Francis Smith, using the melody of the national anthem of Great Britain ("God Save the King"), wrote one day within a half hour the words of the patriotic hymn "My Country ‘Tis of Thee". Its last verse is the famous prayer: " Our fathers’ God, to Thee, Author of Liberty, to Thee we sing. Long may our land be bright with freedom’s holy light. Protect us by Thy might, Great God. our King."
Some Quotes
It is useful occasionally to recall some interesting words of George Washington, especially in relation to the current controversies about church-state issues and religious freedom. The father of our country wrote and said much that is useful for America even today. He said, "While just government protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government its surest support." Under date of March 11, 1792, he wrote in a private letter, "I am sure that there never was a people who had more reason to acknowledge a divine interposition in their affairs than those of the United States, and I should be pained to believe that they have forgotten that Agency, Which was so often manifested during our revolution, or that they failed to consider the omnipotence of that God Who is alone able to protect them."
On November 19, 1794, Washington said in a speech: "Let us unite, therefore, in imploring the Supreme Ruler of nations to spread His holy protection over these United States; to turn the machinations of the wicked to the confirming of our constitutions: to enable us at all times to root out internal sedition, and to put invasion to flight; to perpetuate to our country that prosperity which His goodness has already conferred, and to verify the anticipation of this government being a safeguard to human rights."
A wise man stated that trying to be neutral between belief in God and atheism is like trying to be neutral between the fire and the fire department. That kind of neutrality always favors the fire.
The Door of Faith
In his most recent Apostolic Letter, written to the Universal Church, entitled "The Door of Faith", ( words from the Acts of the Apostles 14:27), and dated October 11, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI said, "I have decided to announce a Year of Faith. It will begin on October 11, 2012, the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, and it will end on the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Universal King, November 24, 2013. The starting date of October 11, 2012, also marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the "Catechism of the Catholic Church", a text promulgated by my Predecessor, Blessed John Paul II, with a view to illustrating for all the faithful the power and beauty of the faith."
The Holy Father has made it an important point of his pontifical teaching to emphasize, more than a few times in the past seven years, that the Second Vatican Council, which is a precious gift from God, the Holy Spirit, to Christ’s Catholic Church, had been subject sadly to serious misunderstanding and misinterpretation by people inside and outside the Church over the past half century. To correctly understand and interpret the Council one must use what the Pope calls "a hermeneutic of continuity" whenever reading what the Council did and intended to do. This is why he wrote in his Apostolic Letter: "It seemed to me that timing the launch of the Year of Faith to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council would provide a good opportunity to help people understand that the texts bequeathed by the Council Fathers, in the words of Blessed Pope John Paul II, have lost nothing of their value or brilliance. They need to be read correctly, to be widely known and taken to heart as important and normative texts of the Magisterium within the Church’s Tradition. I feel more than ever duty bound to point to the Council as the great grace bestowed on the Church in the twentieth century. There we can find a true compass by which to take our bearings in the century now beginning. I would also like to emphasize strongly what I had occasion to say concerning the Council a few months after my election as the Successor of Peter, namely, if we interpret and implement it guided by a right hermeneutic, it can be and can become increasingly powerful for the ever necessary renewal of the Church."
Neither the Council Fathers nor anyone else in authority in the Catholic Church intended the Council to constitute any kind of break with the Church’s past or to discard her traditions, customs, and perennial teachings, but rather intended that sacred gathering to endow the Catholic Church, in the words of Blessed Pope John XXIII, with "greater spiritual riches and new energy" for the tasks that her Divine Founder, Jesus Christ, has commissioned her to carry out until He returns to earth at the end of time.
Precedent
Pope Benedict XVI notes, "It is not the first time the Church has been called to celebrate a Year of Faith. My venerable Predecessor, the Servant of God, Pope Paul VI, announced one in 1967, to commemorate the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul on the 19th centenary of their supreme act of witness. He thought of it as a solemn moment for the whole Church to make an authentic and sincere profession of the same faith. Moreover, he wanted this to be confirmed in a way that was individual and collective, free and conscious, inward and outward, humble and frank. He thought that in this way the whole Church could reappropriate an exact knowledge of the faith, so as to reinvigorate it, purify it, confirm it, and confess it. The great upheavals of that year made even more evident the need for a celebration of this kind. It concluded with the "Credo of the People of God" (composed by Pope Paul VI himself) , intended to show how much the essential content that for centuries has formed the heritage of all believers needs to be confirmed, understood, and explored anew, so as to bear consistent witness in historical circumstances very different from those of the past."
In his opening address at the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, Blessed Pope John XXIII said, "The greatest concern of this Ecumenical Council must be this, that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously." That Blessed Pope noted that "modern society is earmarked by a great material progress to which there is not a corresponding advance in the moral field. Hence, there is a weakening in the aspiration toward the values of the spirit. Hence, there exists an urge for an almost exclusive search for earthly pleasures, which progressive technology places with such ease within the reach of all. And, thus there is a completely new and disconcerting fact, the existence of a militant atheism which is active on the world level."
Pope’s Desire
Pope Benedict XVI said, "We want this (coming) Year (of Faith) to arouse in every believer the aspiration to profess the faith in its fullness and with renewed conviction, with confidence and hope. It will also be a good opportunity to intensify the celebration of faith in the liturgy, especially in the Eucharist, which is the summit towards which the activity of the Church is directed and also the source from which all its power flows. At the same time we make it our prayer that believers’ witness of life may grow in credibility. To rediscover the content of the faith that is professed, celebrated, lived, and prayed and to reflect on the act of faith is a task that every believer must make his own, especially in the course of this Year." Saint Thomas Aquinas remarked, "The infused light of the habit of faith discovers the meaning of the articles of the Creed, just as the mind’s natural power of abstraction discovers the first evidences of reason."
The Holy Father says, "In fact, there exists a profound unity between the act by which we believe and the content to which we give our assent. Saint Paul helps us to enter into this reality when he writes: ’Man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved’ (Romans 10:10). The heart indicates that the first act by which one comes to faith is God’s gift and the action of grace which acts and transforms the person deep within."
The First Vatican Council teaches, "Faith is that supernatural virtue by which, through the help of God and through the assistance of His grace, we believe what He has revealed to be true, not on account of the intrinsic truth perceived by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Himself, the Revealer, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived." Saint Augustine of Hippo said, "There is no love without hope and no hope without love, and no hope nor love without faith." Blase Pascal wrote, "If we surrender everything to reason, our religion will lose all mystery and will lose the supernatural, but if we offend against the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous."
Started by George
Thanksgiving, a civil holiday celebrated in the United States on the last Thursday of each November, became an official and annual national holiday in 1863, during the administration of President Abraham Lincoln. However, it appears to have been first observed by President George Washington, who issued the first presidential proclamation of national Thanksgiving to God in 1789. He wrote, "Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, Who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be, that we may all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation, for His signal and manifold mercies, for the favorable interposition of His providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted. for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge, and in general for all the great and various favors which He hath been pleased to confer upon us."
In His proclamation, Washington goes on to say that he is proclaiming a national day of Thanksgiving to God "that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations, especially such as have shown kindness unto us, and bless them with good governments, peace, and concord, to promote the knowledge of true religion and virtue and the increase of science among them and us, and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best."
The States
Washington cited a series of precedents for his action, particularly certain days of Thanksgiving to God which had been established by the Continental Congress following the American victories at Saratoga and Yorktown, during the Revolution.
Presidents John Adams and James Madison subsequently issued Thanksgiving proclamations, but the other presidents up until the time of Lincoln preferred to leave such undertakings to the governors of the States. The custom grew rather rapidly. By the 1840’s a Thanksgiving holiday was celebrated in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, New York, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, and Pennsylvania. Lincoln himself issued a first Thanksgiving proclamation in 1863, telling the people to thank God for the victories of the Union Armies at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.
However, Lincoln was persuaded to establish another national Thanksgiving holiday in that same year of 1863, and to make it perennial, largely through the untiring efforts of an enthusiastic woman named Sarah Josepha Hale.
Mrs. Hale
Mrs. Hale was the editor of a 19th century influential woman’s magazine called "Godey’s Lady Book", and from the 1840’s she was unrelenting in her determination to have an annual Thanksgiving Day in the United States celebrated on the last Thursday of every November. She wrote editorial after editorial on the matter and her magazine illustrated many features telling housewives on how to celebrate such a holiday. With regularity she published articles about historical Thanksgiving celebrations recorded among the early English settlers in America, especially in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Jamestown, Virginia. She continually wrote to all the governors of the States and territories, urging them to persuade the Congress and the President to establish such a national holiday. Finally, she managed to touch the right note for persuading Lincoln when she kept insisting that such a national holiday would promote reconciliation in the country when it was being torn and divided by the Civil War, and, thus, he instituted this national holiday that perdures to this day.
Initially the day was basically a home and church event, but the "add-ons" came soon. By the 1880’s football, especially the Yale-Harvard Game at the Polo grounds, began to be part of the occasion. In 1934 the Detroit Lions established their custom of playing a Thanksgiving Day game, first broadcast on radio and then on television. In 1924 Macy’s Department Store began having their annual Christmas parade in New York on Thanksgiving, and now that seems to have become an American Thanksgiving Day custom.
Lincoln
Lincoln wrote in his proclamation, "The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the Source from Which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, Who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy."
Lincoln went on to write, "It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a Day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father Who dwelleth in the heavens. And I do recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union."
Advent
There are many liturgical texts which can help us focus our thoughts each year during the season of Advent on the reality of the coming of Christ. As we prepare to commemorate on Christmas, the Solemnity of His Nativity, His coming out of His eternal timelessness into our human space and time, during Advent we also ought carefully to remember and ponder His promise to return to us one day in glory on the clouds of heaven at the end of the world (Matthew 24:30). And then, of course, there are His "intermediate comings to us" to remember, especially in the Holy Eucharist (Luke 22:14-20) and in the persons of the poor and needy whose lives touch ours and for whose help He will hold us responsible when He returns to judge the earth (Matthew 25:34-46).
Among those traditional Advent liturgical texts, several can be found in the words of the Nicene-Constantinople Creed with which we profess our Catholic Faith at every Mass on Sundays and Holy Days. We say, for instance, "He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and His kingdom will have no end." We conclude the recitation of the Creed by saying (in the new translation), "I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." The old translation simply says "look", but the Latin word "expecto" really has a deeper and richer meaning, which is better translated "look forward", and this new translation which makes it much more an Advent expression, echoes the phrase in the prayer after the "Our Father" when the priest, in the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, says, "as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ."
Last Judgment
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, "The last judgment will come when Christ returns in glory. Only the Father knows the day and the hour. Only He determines the moment of its coming. Then through His Son, Jesus Christ, He will pronounce the final word on all history. We shall know the ultimate meaning of the whole work of creation and of the entire economy of salvation and understand the marvelous ways by which His providence led everything towards its final end. The last judgment will reveal that God’s justice triumphs over all the injustices committed by His creatures and that God’s love is stronger than death."
"The message of the last judgment calls men to conversion while God is still giving them the acceptable time, the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2). It inspires holy fear of God and commits them to the justice of the kingdom of God. It proclaims the blessed hope of the Lord’s return, when He will come to be glorified in His saints and to be marveled at in all who have believed (Titus 2:13 & 2 Thessalonians 1:10). Since the Ascension, Christ’s coming in glory has been imminent, even though it is not for you to know the times of seasons which the Father has fixed by His own authority (Acts of the Apostles1:7 & Mark 13:32). This eschatological coming could be accomplished at any moment, even if it and the final trial that will precede it are delayed (Matthew 24:44; 1 Thessalonians 5:2; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12)."
Saint Augustine
In speaking about the correct Christian attitude that should condition and characterize our celebration of Advent each year, Saint Augustine, the great Doctor of the Church and the Bishop of the North African city of Hippo, said, "Let us not resist His (Christ’s) first coming (by wickedly resisting those He has commissioned to preach His Gospel), so that we may not dread the second. What then should the Christian do? He ought to use the world, but not become its slave. He who is without anxiety waits without fear until His Lord comes. For what sort of love of Christ is it to fear His coming? Brothers, do we not have to blush with shame? We love Him, yet we fear His coming. Are we really certain that we love Him, or do we love our sins more? Therefore, let us hate our sins and love Him Who will exact punishment for them. He will come whether we wish it or not. Do not think that, because He is not coming just now, He will not come at all. He will come. You know not when. Provided He finds you prepared, your ignorance of the time of His coming will not be held against you."
In talking about the last judgment, Saint Augustine says, "Do you, because you are unjust, expect the Judge not to be just? Or, because you are a liar, will the truthful One not be true? Rather, if you wish to receive mercy, be merciful before He comes. Forgive whatever has been done against you. Give of your abundance. Of whose possessions do you give if not from His? If you were to give from your own, it would be largess, but since you give of His, it is restitution. For what do you have that you have not received? (Matthew 10:8). These are the sacrifices most pleasing to God, mercy, humility, praise, peace, charity. Such as these, then, let us bring and, free from fear, we then shall await the coming of the Judge Who will judge the world in equity and the peoples in His truth."
Encyclopedia
In writing about the liturgical season of Advent, the Catholic Encyclopedia says, "Because Christ has come once, He will come again. Indeed, He has never left, but is continuously present in His Catholic Church. For this reason, Advent is at once a celebration of His first coming and His presence in the midst of His Church as well as a looking forward to the full and final coming, when He will complete the work of redemption. The word Advent must, therefore, be taken in the fullest sense, past, present, and future. This is the basis for speaking of three comings of Christ. Since the time of Saint Bernard, Christian spirituality has maintained this way of approaching Advent, an approach that finds its best justification in the liturgy itself. For, between the first and second coming of Christ, the present coming in grace is constantly taking place, His coming by grace in men’s hearts, (to be born anew in that grace and in those hearts at Christmas). The Catholic Church not only prepares during Advent to welcome Him at Christmas time and to greet Him in the hour of His final triumph, but she rejoices even now in the possession and the presence of the Lord within her. (Intensely during Advent) but all through the year (the children of the Church) are summoned to prepare the way of the Lord, to hear the voice of Him Who even already now is in their midst, and to prepare for His second coming by living the mystery of Christ in the present moment."
Saint Bernard said that during every Advent, we who are Christ’s disciples must ask ourselves anew "Who it is that is coming? Where is He coming from and how is He coming? To what purpose and when and where does He come?" This kind of curiosity is "praiseworthy and salutary." We must "consider before everything else with the awed and wondering Apostle (Hebrews 7:4) Who it is that is coming. He is the Son of the Most High (Luke1:32) and co-equal with the Father, equal in majesty and equal in dignity. He comes from the Heart of God the Father, and into the womb of the Virgin Mary. He comes from the sublimity of heaven to the lowliness of our earth. He comes to love us, to call us, and to save us."
A Marian Month
Our season of Advent, which always occurs almost entirely in the month of December, is made more beautiful each year by several liturgical celebrations in which the Blessed Virgin Mary is particularly honored, venerated, and invoked by us, and in which we are invited to request her special intercessory prayers to God to help us better prepare annually for Christmas, when we are to welcome a new rebirth of Jesus Christ by grace in our souls. The feasts which immediately come to mind are the Solemnity of Mary’s Immaculate Conception on December 8th, and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12th. In the Litany of Loreto Mary is called the "Mystical Rose", reminding us each year in wintry December of God’s special and miraculous goodness to her and through her to all of us.
Nine months before Mary’s birthday (September 8th) we recall that from "the first moment of her conception", which came about in the normal way in the womb of Saint Ann, her mother, "by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, she was preserved immune from all stain of original sin." The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, "The splendor of an entirely unique holiness by which Mary is enriched from the first instant of her conception comes wholly from Christ. She is redeemed in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son. The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person in Christ with every spiritual blessing and chose her in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before Him in love."
The Catechism tells us, "Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, full of grace through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses." Implicitly but clearly this truth is found in the fonts of divine revelation, that is, in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, and that is what Blessed Pope Pius IX said when he defined that dogma in 1854. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is often and mistakenly confused with another dogma of our Catholic Faith, that is, with the miraculous Virginal Conception and Birth of our (and Mary’s) Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Both dogmas are very important truths revealed by God.
Pope Benedict XVI
Our Holy Father, the Bishop of Rome, has said, "In today’s consumer society the period of Advent has unfortunately suffered a sort of commercial pollution that risks changing its authentic spirit, marked by recollection, moderation, and joy, which is not external but intimate. It is thus providential that almost as a portal to Christmas there should be the feast of one who is the Mother of Jesus and who, better than anyone else, can lead us to know, love, and adore the Son of God made Man. Let us therefore allow her to accompany us. May her sentiments prompt us to prepare ourselves with heartfelt sincerity and openness of spirit to recognize in the Child of Bethlehem the Son of God Who came into the world for our redemption. Let us walk together with her in prayer and accept the repeated invitation that the Advent liturgy addresses to us to remain in expectation, in watchful and joyful expectation. For the Lord will not delay. Thus it is Mary who tells us what Advent is: a going forth to meet the Lord Who comes to meet us. It is waiting for Him, listening to Him, longing for Him, and looking at Him."
Tepayac
Thirty-nine years after Christopher Columbus discovered our New World, while sailing on a ship called "Holy Mary" ("Santa Maria"), Mary herself chose to visit a part of that world on a hill in present day Mexico, which the Spaniards called "Guadalupe" and which the natives called "Tepayac". It was in December of 1531 that she appeared to an extremely poor, insignificant, and humble indigenous peasant, Juan Diego, recently canonized a saint by Pope John Paul II. Juan Diego then was a widower who lived with an aged and sick uncle and was on his way to Mass when the first apparition happened.
We know well the charming story of how Mary told him to go to the Bishop and tell him to build a beautiful church on that hilltop. The Bishop put him off and Juan Diego, discouraged, asked Mary in the second vision to go to the Bishop herself or to send a noble hidalgo because the Bishop would not believe an ignorant and impoverished Indian. She told him to return. The Bishop’s servant initially would not let him see the Bishop a second time, but the Bishop, hearing the commotion at his doorway did encounter Juan Diego, but told him, "Words are cheap. Tell this lady you are seeing that I, your Bishop, ask her for a sign." On December 12th, the uncle of Juan Diego looked like he was dying and so Juan Diego ran for a priest, but tried to avoid Tepayac so he would not be delayed talking to Mary, but she encountered him on the side of the hill, told him his uncle was cured, and instructed him to ascend the hill to find the sign for the Bishop. There Juan Diego found, despite the frost, cold, and barren rocks, a field of beautiful roses. Mary said, "Fill your cloak with those roses and bring them to the Bishop. He will understand." Juan Diego did so and ran to the Bishop’s house and dumped the roses in front of the Bishop, who rose from his desk and then fell on his knees in wonder because on Juan’s tilma, that had held the roses, there was a splendid image of Mary and her face, in a golden halo, was that of an Aztec princess.
The image persists to this day. Scientists have examined it. The paint is a strange combination of oil, water-color, tempera, and fresco. The tilma is woven of cactus fiber (as was the Indian custom), but there is no explanation of why it has not crumbled to pieces over these centuries, as have all other garments of that nature. During the 20th century Mexican persecution by the Marxists and Free Masons, led by Calles and supported by many American liberals, the government planted a bomb to destroy the tilma, but it was not damaged although the basilica that housed it was severely harmed. The image depicts Mary as pregnant with the stars on her mantle arranged in the constellations that were over Mexico in December of 1531.
Father Joseph Manton observes, "At Guadalupe our Lady said to the Spaniards: These Indians have souls as precious as yours. To the Indians she said, These Spaniards, for all their faults, are bringing you the true faith, the religion of Jesus Christ. Accept it and fling away forever your pagan superstitutions." He goes on to remark: "Guadalupe reminds us that nobody can be so lowly or stupid or blundering that heaven is not interested in him. What could be less important than Juan Diego and his old cloak." Another author writes, "In our Lady of Guadalupe God overturns the world by identifying with the poor and powerless. She is a magnificent symbol of our Advent hopes and longings that the Word of God at Christmas will be born anew by grace in our souls and will continue to dwell among us (John 1:14)." Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, "On that first Christmas God took Flesh and climbed upon Mary’s body as an ivory tower to kiss on her lips a mystic rose." Roses in December, indeed!
None Greater
In the beautiful cycle of the liturgical year, the Church’s official prayer arrangement gives us in each Advent Season a spiritual opportunity to encounter anew the person and message of Saint John the Baptist, about whom Jesus spoke saying, "...among those born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist, yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he" (Luke 7:28). The words and example of the great Jewish priest who was the precursor and cousin (Luke 1:36 & 76-79) of our divine Savior resonate down the centuries to help us annually to prepare for Christmas and for the coming of Christ at the end of the world as well for His intermediate comings to us, especially in our Eucharistic encounters with Him. John’s fearless words and his heroic martyrdom for the cause of God-given morality can have the effect, if we allow them, to inspire us before our celebration of the Solemnity of Christ’s Nativity to straighten out the pathways and roads of our lives if they might have become distorted and twisted by our cultural hedonism and materialism, to lower the mountains and hills of our overbearing pride in ourselves and our accomplishments, and to fill in the valleys of our culpable omissions and neglect. God’s providential economy of salvation arranged that John should be the last and the greatest prophet of the Old Testament with the mission to straddle the unification of the Old and New Covenants. Our Lord said, "All the prophets and the law have prophesized until John" (John 11:13).
It is clear that the story of Saint John the Baptist always occupied an important place at the beginning of the proclamation of the Gospel from the earliest days of the Church (Acts of the Apostles 1:22 & 10:37). This place of John the Baptist in the drama of human salvation appears to receive special emphasis in the magnificent words of the Prologue to the Gospel according to Saint John, which is the Gospel passage that is liturgically used for the Third Mass on Christmas Day, and which, in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, constitutes what used to be called "The Last Gospel". Saint John the Evangelist said of John the Baptist, "There was a man sent from God whose name was John. This man came as a witness to bear witness concerning the Light that all might believe through him" (John 1:6-70). Pope Benedict XVI notes that all four Gospels describe the (Baptist’s) mission using a passage from Isaiah (40:3): "A voice crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, etc. ....These Old Testament texts envisage a saving intervention of God, Who emerges from His hiddenness to judge and to save. It is for this God that the door is to be opened and the way made ready. These ancient words of hope were brought into the present with the Baptist’s preaching. (They indicate that) great things are about to unfold."
A Sect
There can be little doubt that John the Baptist had a powerful personality which made an enormous impact on many people. Although he might have been using hyperbole, Saint Mark noted that "All the country of Judea and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem went out to him..." (Mark 1:5). John’s words and manner of expression were attractive, it seems, even to those, like Herod, his eventual murderer, who were troubled by them (Mark 6:20), and his influence extended beyond the borders of the Holy Land, because Saint Paul, well after Pentecost, encountered twelve of John’s disciples at Ephesus (Acts of the Apostles 19:1-7). Like Apollos initially (Acts of the Apostles 18:25) , they did not yet know about the Holy Trinity and Christian Baptism.
It was most likely the continued existence of groups of disciples of John the Baptist still existing well into the Christian era which accounts for the repeated polemical elements in the Prologue regarding John the Baptist and his relationship to Jesus. The Evangelist says, "He himself was not the Light but was to bear witness to the Light" and "John bore witness concerning Him and cried: This was He of Whom I said: He Who is come after me has been set above me because He was before me" ( John 1:8 & 1:15).
Probably to call attention to the disciples of the Baptist who had not yet journeyed to Christianity, the Synoptic accounts of the ministry of the Baptist also emphasized, in addition to his heroic denunciations of evil, his profound and exceptional humility in relationship with the coming Messiah. "One mightier than I is coming, the strap of Whose sandals I am not worthy to loose" (Luke 3:16); "One mightier than I is coming after me..." (Mark 1:7); "But He Who is coming after me is mightier than I....His winnowing fan is in His hand and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but the chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire" (Matthew 3:11-12).
Rival Baptisms?
Along the same line, Saint John the Evangelist recounts the incident of some Jews having a discussion about "purification" with some disciples of the Baptist in the course of which the Jews noted that Jesus’ disciples had begun baptizing down the way from where John was doing his work, and actually had been baptizing and making more disciples than John (John 3:22-30 & 4:1-2). It was on that occasion that Saint John the Baptist compared himself to the best man at a wedding in reference to the groom.
He said, "You yourselves bear me witness that I said I am not the Christ, but have been sent before Him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices exceedingly at the voice of the bridegroom. This my joy, therefore, is made full. He must increase, but I must decrease."
Although Jesus was the cousin of the Baptist and John must have had some suspicion that He was the Messiah, he seemed to be somewhat uncertain. Saint John notes that the Baptist initially "did not know" Christ’s messianic identity (John 1:30-33).. This appears corroborated by the deputation the Baptist sent to Jesus after his imprisonment (Matthew 11:1-19) to ask for a clear answer about the mission of Jesus, to which our Lord replied with a famous messianic passage from the Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 35). Then our Savior went on to praise John the Baptist and to identify him with Elijah, who, according to Hebrew tradition, was to return to earth to precede the arrival of the "Anointed One", that is, the Messiah. Jesus called John the Baptist "a prophet and more than a prophet."
Advent Preacher
Father Pius Parsch has often said that John the Baptist "par excellence" is "our Advent Preacher". His words "Prepare the way of the Lord" are intended by God "not just for the Jewish People of a bygone era, but for the Church, as long as she remains a pilgrim." Also the words of the Baptist, "In your midst stands someone you do not know" should be understood as directed to the whole world and also to all of us. The paradoxical reality of Advent is that we await the Lord, while at the same time realizing that in many marvelous ways we already possess Him.
Light
Pope Benedict XVI has given us some interesting Christmas reflections on the meaning of "light". They are particularly meaningful when we see and admire so many Christmas illuminations and decorations which feature beautiful lights. He remarks, "In our hemisphere, the Feast of Christmas coincides with the days of the winter solstice, after which the daylight time gradually lengthens, in accordance with the sequence of the seasons. This helps us understand better the theme of light that overcomes the darkness (John 1:4-5). It is an evocative symbol of a reality that touches the innermost depths of a human being. I am referring to the light of good that triumphs over evil, the light of love that overcomes hatred, the light of life that defeats death. Christmas makes us think of this inner light, the divine Light that returns to propose anew to us the proclamation of the definitive victory of God’s love over sin and death. Let us remember in particular as we look at the streets and squares of the cities decorated with dazzling lights, that these lights refer to another Light, invisible to the eyes but not to the heart. While we admire them, while we light the candles in churches or illuminations of the crib and the Christmas tree in our homes, may our souls be open to the true spiritual Light brought to all people of good will."
The Holy Father says, "The grace of God has appeared. That is why Christmas is a feast of light. Not like the full daylight which illumines everything, but a glimmer beginning in the night and spreading out from a precise point in the universe, from the stable at Bethlehem where the divine Child was born. This is Christmas, the historical event and the mystery of love, which for more than two thousand years has spoken to men and women of every era and every place. It is the Holy Day on which the great Light of Christ shines forth bearing peace. Certainly, if we are to recognize it, faith and humility are needed, the humility of Mary, who believed in the word of the Lord, and, bending low over the manger, was the first to adore the Fruit of her womb. The glory of the true God becomes visible when the eyes of our hearts are opened before the stable of Bethlehem. Only if people change will our world change, and, in order to change, people need the Light that comes from God, the Light, which so unexpectedly on the night of Christmas entered into our earthly night."
Smallness
In his Christmas reflections, our Supreme Pontiff often has talked about the divine condescension. "God has made Himself small for us. God comes not with external force, but He comes in the powerlessness of His love, which is where His true strength lies. He places Himself in our hands. He asks for our love. He invites us to become small ourselves, to come down from our high thrones and to learn to be childlike before Him. He speaks to us informally. He asks us to trust Him and thus to learn how to live in truth and love. In the Child of Bethlehem the smallness of God-made-Man shows us the greatness of man and the beauty of our dignity as children of God and brothers and sisters of Jesus."
The Pope goes on to say, "God’s sign is His humility. God’s sign is that He makes Himself small. He becomes a little Child. He lets us touch Him, and He asks for our love. How we would prefer a different sign, an imposing, irresistible sign of God’s power and greatness! But, His sign summons us to faith and love, and thus it gives us hope. This is what God is like. He has power. He is Goodness Itself. He invites us to become like Him. Yes indeed, we become like God if we allow ourselves to be shaped by this sign, if we learn humility, and hence true greatness, if we renounce violence and use only the weapons of truth and love. Having become a Man, Christ gave us the possibility of becoming, in turn, like Him. The Heart of God on the holy night of Christmas stooped down to the stable. If we approach this humility of God, then we can touch heaven even now, and we help the earth too to be made new."
Our Involvement
The Successor of Saint Peter notes that the mystery of Christmas profoundly involves all of us who are Christ’s disciples.. "Wake up, O men and women of the Third Millennium! At Christmas the Almighty becomes a Child and asks for our help and protection. His way of showing that He is God challenges us and our freedom. He calls us to examine how we understand and live our lives. In being born again among us (by grace in our hearts), may the Child Jesus not find us distracted or merely busy beautifying our houses with decorative lights, but rather let us deck our soul and make our families a worthy dwelling place where He feels welcomed with faith and love. Christmas is the day when God gave a great Gift to us, not something material, but His Gift was the Gift of Himself. He gave us His Son, so Christmas became the feast of gifts."
"The tree and the crib are elements of that typical Christmas atmosphere which is part of the spiritual heritage of our communities. It is a climate steeped in religiosity and family warmth, which we must also preserve in contemporary society, where the consumeristic rush and the search for material goods alone sometimes seem to prevail. Every Christmas crib is a simple yet eloquent invitation to open our hearts and minds to the mystery of life. It is an encounter with the immortal Life Which became mortal in the mystic scene of the nativity. Joy is the true gift of Christmas, not expensive presents that demand time and money. We can transmit this joy simply, with a smile, with a kind gesture, with some small help, with forgiveness. Let us give this joy and then the joy we give will be returned to us."
"Christmas brings joy and peace to those who, like the shepherds, accept the Angel’s words. This is still the sign for us, too, men and women of the Third Millennium. There is no other Christmas. In the divine Newborn, Whose image we place in the manger, our salvation is made manifest. In the God Who makes Himself Man for us, we all feel loved and welcomed. We discover that we are precious and unique in the eyes of the Creator."
Genuflection
At Midnight Mass and at all the Christmas Masses we genuflect at the words in the Creed: "For us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became Man." Pope Benedict says, "We genuflect at this clause because at this point the heavens, the veil behind which God is secluded, are swept aside and the mystery touches us directly. The distant God, our God, becomes "Emmanuel", God-with-us (Matthew 1:23). The Word became Flesh, that Word Who is with God and Who is God (John 1:1).
Saint Gregory
Preaching on Christmas in Rome in the early 7th century, Pope Saint Gregory the Great, said: "It was fitting that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, since Bethlehem means "The House of Bread", for He was destined to say, ‘I am the the living Bread, which has come down from heaven’ (John 6:32-60). In His own nature He was born before all time. In our nature He came to us in human time. While remaining eternal, He appeared to us in mortal time. It was fitting too that it was an angel who announced that a King was born amid choirs of angels uniting their voices with his and rejoicing while singing ‘glory to God’. Before the Redeemer was born in the Flesh, there was discord between us and the angels, from whose brightness and holy perfection we stood from afar, in punishment first of original sin and then because of our own daily offenses. Because of sin we had become strangers to God, and the angels, as God’s subjects, cut us off from their fellowship. But, since we have now acknowledged our King, the angels receive us as fellow citizens. Because the King of heaven has taken unto Himself the Flesh of our earth, the angels from their heavenly heights no longer look down upon our infirmity. Now they are at peace with us, putting away the remembrance of the ancient discord (Genesis 3:24). Now they honor us as friends, whom before they beheld as weak and despised below them."
"Let us then be careful, dearest brethren, that no uncleanness shall defile us, who, in the divine foreknowledge, are destined to be the subjects of God’s heavenly kingdom and, in that, the equal of His angels. Let us prove our worthiness by the manner of our lives. Let no sensuality soil us, no evil purpose come to accuse us. Let malice not devour your hearts, nor pride exalt them, nor the desire of worldly gain blow them about in every direction, nor anger inflame them. Defend the honor of God within you against these vices, since it was because of you that God became Man."
Saint Leo
In the 5th century, Pope Saint Leo the Great, preaching on Christmas at Midnight Mass, said, "The Word of God, Who in the beginning was with God, by Whom all things were made and without Whom was made nothing that was made, became Man that He might free men from unending death. He bent down in the taking of our lowliness without the diminution of His own majesty, so that, remaining what He was, and taking upon Himself what He was not, He might join the form of a true Servant to that form in which He is equal to God the Father (Philippians 2:6), and by such a bond so link both natures, that the exaltation might not swallow up the lesser, nor the adoption lessen the higher. Preserving, therefore, the substance of both natures and uniting them in one Person, lowliness is assumed by majesty, infirmity by power, mortality by immortality. To pay the debt of our present state, an inviolable nature is united to our suffering nature, and true God and true Man are welded into one Lord, so that, as was needed for our healing, one and the same Mediator between God and men might, by the One suffer death and by the Other rise again from the dead."
"Such a birth, dearly beloved, befitted Christ, Who is the Power of God and the Wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). By it, He would be joined to our lowliness, yet remain far above us in His divinity. For unless He were true God He could bring us no help, and were He not true Man He could not suffer nor give us an example. This is why the angels sang to the newborn Lord glory to God and peace to men. With what joy may not the lowliness of mankind rejoice in this unspeakable work of divine compassion, when the angels themselves in their heavenly glory so greatly rejoice.".
Saint Chrysostum
Saint John Chrysostum, the Archbishop of Constantinople in the late 4th and early 5th century, in a Christmas sermon, said, "Bethlehem this day resembles heaven, hearing from the stars the singing of angelic voices, and, in the place of the sun, enfolds within itself the Sun of Justice. Ask not how, for where God wills, the order of nature yields. For He willed. He has the power. He descended. He redeemed. All things move in obedience to God. This day He Who is, is born and He Who is becomes what He is not. When He was God He became Man, but not departing from the Godhead that is His. Nor yet by any loss of His divinity did He become Man nor through any increase, but the Word became Flesh, yet His divine nature remained unchanged."
"This day we consider a new and wondrous mystery. The angels sing. The archangels blend their voices in harmony. The Cherubim hymn their joyful praise. The Seraphim exalt His glory. All join to praise this holy feastday, beholding God here on earth and Man in heaven. He Who is above, now for our redemption dwells here below, so that we who are lowly might be raised by divine mercy."
Saint Augustine
Preaching a Christmas homily in his North African diocese in the first part of the 5th century, Saint Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, said, "When the Maker of time, the Word of the Father, was made Flesh, He gave us His birthday in time, and He, without Whose divine bidding no day runs its course, in His incarnation reserved one day for Himself. He Himself with the Father precedes all spans of time, but on this day, issuing from His mother, He stepped into the tide of years. Man’s Maker was made Man that He, the Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast, that the Bread might be hungry, that the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired from the journey, that Truth be accused by false witnesses, that the Judge of the living and dead be judged by a mortal judge, that the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Vine crowned with thorns, the Foundation be suspended on wood, that Strength might be made weak, that the Healer be wounded, that Life might die."
"He became Man in order to suffer these and similar undeserved things for us so that He might save us, who are undeserving of being saved. He, Who on account of us endured such great evils, Himself merited no evil, while we, who through Him are so bountifully blessed, have no merits of our own, except for those He chooses to give us, to show for such blessings. Therefore, because of this, He, Who before all ages and without any beginning determined by days, was the Son of God, saw fit in these latter days to become the Son of Man. And, He, Who was born of the Father but not made by the Father, was made in the womb of the mother whom He Himself had made, that He might be born here on earth of her who did not exist except through Him. She was the one who conceived Him in her heart before conceiving Him in her womb." Dear readers, may you and your loved ones be given by God the most merry, happy, and blessed Christmas. This is my prayer for you.
Coming Year
With his October 11, 2011, Apostolic Letter, entitled "The Door of Faith" (in Latin "Porta Fidei"), our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, undertook the "indiction" of the Year of Faith, which he announced will be celebrated in the Universal Church from October 11, 2012, until November 24, 2013. That new Apostolic Letter along with the coming Year of Faith provides all of us Catholics with a suitable occasion and fitting opportunity to reflect on our faith, on its vital importance, and on its salvific significance, as well as on the central location it ought to have in our entire existence. The Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament tells us very clearly, "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews 11:6), and tells us also that "Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things unseen" (Hebrews 11:1).
As the Pope points out in his letter, this is not the first time that such a "Year of Faith" has been celebrated in the Church in recent times. In 1967, Pope Paul VI announced such a year to commemorate the 19th centenary of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul in Rome, who had been put to death for the faith in the year 67 A.D. by the Emperor Nero. In the turbulent and sometimes confused situation in the Church that followed the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI was anxious to have the entire Catholic Church profess again with humble intellectual cohesion and continuity the very same and unchangeable faith for which Saints Peter and Paul gave up their lives and to which their martyrdom gave witness. The word "martyr", of course, is the Greek word for "witness".
As we prepare for our own Year of Faith in our 21st century, it would be well to begin by remembering some of the eloquent and instructive words of Pope Paul VI spoken in the course of that previous Year of Faith in the last century, which even might be remembered by some who are still among us today.
Words of Pope Paul
In describing faith, he writes, "Faith properly speaking is a response to the dialogue with God, to His Word, to His revelation. It is the "yes" which allows the divine Thought to enter into our own. It is the adherence of the spirit, both intellect and will, to a truth that is justified not by its direct evidence, by its scientific evidence we might say, but by the transcendent authority of a testimony. It is the kind of testimony which is not only reasonable to accept and adhere to, but also intimately logical because of a strange and vital persuasive source which renders the act of faith extremely personal and satisfying."
"Faith is an attitude of soul, a virtue which has its roots in human psychology, but which derives its validity from a mysterious, supernatural action of the Holy Spirit, from the grace infused into us by Baptism. This virtue is in fact the spiritual capacity which makes it possible for us to adhere to the truths which the Word of God has revealed to us as corresponding to reality. Consequently, faith is an act which is based on the credit we give to the living God, It is an act both of conviction and confidence, which permeates the whole personality of the believer and has an impact ever after on his way of life. It is his greatest offering to God, to Christ the Master, and to the Catholic Church which guards and interprets the divine message. And, it is his most personal, most intimate, most determining and decisive choice. It is the step by which the faithful cross the threshold of the kingdom of God and enter on the road of their eternal destiny."
Incorrect Ideas
To some extent in our English language as well as in the world at large, there exist some erroneous ideas about the meaning of faith. For instance, the word "believe" occasionally is taken to mean merely a "guess" (e.g. I believe it will rain tomorrow, etc.). Supernatural faith, our Catholic faith, however, is not a "guess" or a "persuasion", but, since it is based on what God says, it provides a believer with a certitude of the most absolute kind. Furthermore, the direct and immediate object of our faith is the Person of Jesus Christ. When it comes to belief in someone’s testimony, we first believe the person and only then do we believe what it is that the person says. In faith Someone comes first before something.
Pope Paul VI pointed out several errors or defective ideas about faith. "One meaning given to faith simply associates it with a religious feeling, a kind of vague generic belief in the existence of God and in some kind of relationship between God and our life. In this definition faith is understood as equivalent to religion in a broad sense and sometimes includes the most elementary notions of spiritual and moral life in reference to the Deity. Sometimes the notion of faith is transferred, because of certain strong personal convictions, to some reality in the temporal order (e.g. faith in democracy, faith in agriculture, faith in labor unions, faith in science, faith in economics, faith in liberalism, faith in socialism, faith in the future, etc.). More often, in ordinary conversation we say that people have maintained their (Christian) faith when all they do is merely admit certain very imprecise religious formulas which are like the residue of a forgotten catechetical instruction or of an abandoned religious observance which is, however, occasionally revived (e.g. so-called Christmas and Easter Christians). Unfortunately, this is the faith of many people in today’s world. It is a faith from habit, a conventional faith, a faith not understood and little practiced, a faith that is not in accord with the rest of their lives, and, consequently, a faith which they find wearisome and boring. It is a faith that is not entirely dead, but is on the way there and is a long way from being alive."
Word of Pope Benedict
Our present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, notes: "To a greater extent than in the past, faith is now being subjected to a series of questions arising from a changed mentality which, especially today, limits the field of rational certainties to that of scientific and technological discoveries. Nonetheless, the Church has never been afraid of demonstrating that there cannot be any conflict between faith and genuine science, because both, albeit via different routes, tend towards the truth. (See the Encyclical Letter "Fides et Ratio" - "Faith and Reason", written by Pope John Paul II, on September 14,1998.)."
"Faith implies public testimony and commitment. A Christian may never think of belief as only a private act. Faith is choosing to stand with the Lord so as to live with Him. This "standing with Him" points towards an understanding of the reasons for believing. Faith, precisely because it is a free act, also demands social responsibility for what one believes. The Church on the day of Pentecost (Acts of the Apostles 2: 1-36) demonstrates with utter clarity this public dimension of believing and proclaiming one’s faith fearlessly to every person. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit that makes us fit for mission and strengthens our witness, making it frank and courageous."
Three Things
When talking or writing about faith in the Catholic Religion, the word can be used in three basic ways. First, it can mean the virtue of faith, a supernatural gift from God infused into a soul, always initially compounded with supernatural hope and love, and linked with the Sacrament of Baptism. This virtue is a capacity or potency to believe, which gives a human being the ability to commit himself totally to God who invites and speaks. Next, it can refer to the very act of faith, in which a human being, using his or her reason, actualizes and makes use of that virtue or capacity. The act of faith, by which a human being cooperates, using his or her free will under God’s grace, can be either explicit (e.g. as when he or she recites the words of the Creed) or implicit (e.g. as when he or she does or says something under the influence of faith, such as genuflecting before the Blessed Sacrament). The third meaning can refer to the contents of what is believed by divine and supernatural faith.
The Second Vatican Council, in its second most important document (The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, entitled "Dei Verbum" - "The Word of God"), spoke about the "Deposit of Faith", that is, the third meaning above, the place where the contents of divine revelation can be encountered. "Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture form one Sacred Deposit of the Word of God, which is committed to the care of the Church. Holding fast to this Deposit, the entire holy people, united with their shepherds, remain always steadfast in the teaching of the Apostles, in the common life, in the Breaking of the Bread, and in prayers (Acts of the Apostles 2:42), so that, holding to, practicing, and professing the heritage of the faith, there results on the part of the Bishops and faithful a remarkable common effort."
The Catechism
In his Apostolic Letter "indicting" the coming Year of Faith, Pope Benedict XVI draws attention to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. His words should inspire every adult Catholic to resolve to read the entire Catechism at least once, either in preparation for the Year of Faith or as part of the celebration of that Year. Just as at least once in a lifetime every Catholic should resolve to read the entire Bible from Genesis to the Book of Revelation, with prayer and careful thought, and a good Catholic commentary.
The Holy Father writes, "In order to arrive at a systematic knowledge of the content of the faith, all can find in the Catechism of the Catholic Church a precious and indispensable tool. It is one of the most important fruits of the Second Vatican Council. In the Apostolic Constitution "Fidei Depositum", signed, not by accident on the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Blessed John Paul II wrote: ‘This Catechism will make a very important contribution to the work of renewing the whole life of the Church...I declare it to be a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion and a sure norm for teaching the faith.’ It is in this sense that the Year of Faith will have to see a concerted effort to rediscover and study the fundamental content of the faith that receives its systematic and organic synthesis in the Catechism of the Catholic Church."
"Here (in the Catechism), in fact, we see the wealth of the teaching that the Church has received, safeguarded, and proposed in her two thousand years of history. From Sacred Scripture to the Fathers of the Church, from theological masters to the saints across the centuries, the Catechism provides a permanent record of the many ways in which the Church has meditated on the faith and made progress in doctrine so as to offer certitude to believers in their lives."
"In its very structure the Catechism of the Catholic Church follows the development of the faith right up to the great themes of daily life. On page after page we find that what is presented there is no theory, but an encounter with a Person (Jesus Christ) Who lives within the Church. The profession of faith is followed by an account of sacramental life in which Christ is present, operative, and continues to build His Church. Without liturgy and sacraments, the profession of faith would lack efficacy because it would lack the grace which supports Christian witness. By the same criterion, the teaching of the Catechism on the moral life acquires its full meaning if placed in relationship with faith, liturgy, and prayer."
Obedience
Obedience for a human being requires in him or her qualities both of humility and docility as conditions for validity. The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes: "Our moral life has as its source faith in God Who reveals His love to us. Saint Paul speaks of the obedience of faith as our first obligation." This should be kept in mind when remembering the words of the Second Vatican Council: "The obedience of faith (Romans 1:5 & 16:26; 2 Corinthians 10:5-6) must be given to God, Who reveals, an obedience by which man entrusts his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of his intellect and will to God Who reveals, assenting to the truth revealed by Him. If this faith is to take place, the grace of God and the interior help of God the Holy Spirit must precede and assist a person, moving his heart and turning it to God, opening the eyes of the mind, and giving joy and ease to one in assenting to the truth and believing it. To bring about an ever deeper understanding of revelation, the same Holy Spirit constantly brings faith to completion by His gifts. Since faith is supernatural, God must and does act on men interiorly, to enable them to realize it. Without His effective interior help, which we call grace, we can do nothing profitable for salvation."
Pope Paul VI, speaking during the previous Year of Faith, said, "One of the recurring themes throughout the New Testament is this: Christian revelation is not presented in a way which is perfectly understandable and directly proportionate to our reason. Rather it is presented on a higher level which is proper to the Person of Christ and His words. And, it must be accepted by faith. It must be believed, not just understood, but received with a vital and total act of the mind and heart because it is Christ Himself Who announces it. This is because He alone, as Saint Peter said, has the words of everlasting life (John 6:68). The Catechism tells us that ‘the first commandment of the decalogue requires us to nourish and protect our Catholic faith with prudence and vigilance and to reject everything that is opposed to it. To obey in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard because its truth is guaranteed by God Who is Truth Itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered to us by Sacred Scripture. The Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment. By His revelation the invisible God, from the fullness of His love, addresses men as His friends and moves among them to invite and receive them into His company. The adequate response to this invitation is faith.’ "
Magisterium
The technical Latin term for the official, living teaching office of the Catholic Church is the Magisterium. This is constituted by the legitimate successors of the Apostles in the Catholic Church, namely the Bishops "with and under" the Bishop of Rome, the Successor of Saint Peter. The Second Vatican Council declares, "The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the Magisterium (i.e. the living teaching office of the Church), whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously, and explaining it faithfully by divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit. It draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed." When properly and legitimately assigned and designated, priests and some lay people, such as catechists, can occasionally have a certain kind of derived and subordinated participation in the magisterial activity of the Church, but it would be incorrect to claim that they (or any non-Bishop theologians for that matter) are, properly-speaking, members of the Magisterium.
The Council goes on to proclaim, "It is clear, therefore, that Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the Magisterium of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit, contribute effectively to the salvation of souls." In the coming Year of Faith, proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI, special attention is expected to be drawn to the virtue of faith, to the act of faith, and to the contents or the object of our faith. It is in connection with those contents, that is, the substance of what we believe, the deposit of faith, that we should be interested in its authenticity, its correct interpretation, and the guarantee that it comes to us unmutilated, undiluted, and unchanged from its origins in God. For this reason, it is good to consider the place and importance of the Magisterium in the Catholic Church, the one true Church which was founded by Jesus.
Previous Year
In the last recent Year of Faith (in 1967), Pope Paul VI remarked, "The religious truth coming from Christ is not spread among men in an uncontrolled and irresponsible way. That truth requires an exterior and social channel. It demands an authorized Magisterium. And, only with the help of this service (charity in and of the truth) does it conserve its unequivocal divine meaning and its saving value. Yes, this system does bind the truth, but certainly not in any way contrary to deeper study, meditation, and the vital application of religious truth. Instead it educates us to do so. Nor does this system in itself bind religious truth to its verbal expression, although dogmatic formulas are so intimately tied to their content that every change hides some of the content or provokes a change in it."
"But this service of an authorized Magisterium does not allow what so many men of today and yesterday would like for themselves, namely a free examination of the divine word, that is, a separation of the written words of Sacred Scripture from the spoken, living, present, and faithful words of the ecclesiastical Magisterium. Such a separation would permit whatever interpretation best suits their fancy. Saint Augustine warned, ‘You, who believe what you like in the Gospel and do not believe what you do not like, actually believe in yourselves instead of believing in the Gospel.’ That is a stern warning against committing a grave sin of pride and arrogance."
That kind of grave sin, Pope Paul VI points out, "gives free rein to the opinion, which, forgetting the demands of orthodoxy, maintains that one can choose among the truths of faith those which seem admissible in the judgment of an instinctive personal preference, rejecting others, as if the rights of moral conscience, free and responsible for its acts, could be claimed in preference to the rights of truth, foremost among which are the rights of divine revelation (Galatians 1:6-9). This is as if the doctrinal patrimony of the Church could be subjected to revision in order to give Christianity new ideological dimensions, far different from the theological dimensions which genuine tradition delineated with immense reverence for the thought of God."
Words of Pope Paul
Pope Paul VI said, "The concern for doctrinal fidelity which was so solemnly enunciated at the beginning of the Second Vatican Council must direct our post-conciliar times. We must guard the deposit of faith, since the dangers which today threaten are more numerous and serious, immense dangers caused by the irreligious orientation of the modern mentality and insidious dangers which even from within the Church find utterance in the work of some teachers and writers who are desirous, it is true, of giving new expression to Catholic teaching, but who are frequently even more desirous of adapting the dogmas of our faith to profane thought and language rather than adhering to the norm of the Church’s Magisterium."
"The faith, as we know, is not the fruit of an arbitrary or purely naturalistic interpretation of the word of God, just as it is not a religious expression born from some collective opinion, deprived of an authorized guide. Still less is it acquiescence to the philosophical or sociological currents of the passing historical moment. Faith is the adherence of our whole spiritual being to the marvelous and merciful message of salvation communicated to us by the luminous ways of revelation. Faith is not only a searching, but above all else, it is a certainty. And, rather than being the fruit of our investigations, it is a mysterious gift which requires our souls to be attentive and trusting, docile and available for the great dialogue with God Himself."
Vatican Two
The Second Vatican Council teaches that "the apostolic preaching was to be carried on by a continuous succession of preachers until the end of time." Through them the Apostles continue "to warn the faithful to hold fast to the traditions which they have learned either by word of mouth or in writing (2 Thessalonians 2:15) and to fight in defense of the faith handed down once and for all (Jude 3). Now what was handed on by the Apostles includes everything which contributes to the holiness of life and the increase in faith of the People of God, and so the Church in her teaching, life, and worship perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes."
Necessary Grace
Faith, supernatural faith, is absolutely necessary for salvation (Mark 16:16; John 3:36 & 6:40). Saint Ambrose said, "Faith is the firm foundation of all the virtues," and Saint Augustine reiterates this by saying."Faith is the foundation of all righteousness." Saint Thomas Aquinas states, "Faith is a habit of mind which begins eternal life inside of us, sanctifying grace which is a created share in the nature of God Himself " (2 Peter 1:4). The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, "Faith is both a theological virtue given by God as a grace and an obligation imposed on all human beings which flows from the first commandment of the Decalogue." While faith is necessary for a human being to be saved, it is not sufficient in and of itself. In order for it to be salvific, faith needs to be enveloped and thoroughly penetrated by the other two theological virtues of hope and love. These too, like faith, are supernatural, that is, far above our human nature’s ability to acquire and achieve on our own, and can only be had as free and undeserved gifts (graces) from God, which then must be freely preserved and exercised, under divine grace, by the one who receives them. The insufficiency of faith alone is clear from the teaching of Saint Paul, who even tells us in one place (1 Corinthians 13:2) that were we to possess a faith strong enough to ‘move mountains’, but lack love (charity), such a faith would be worthless toward our salvation.
Because God wills "all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4), and yet all are not saved (e.g. Matthew 25:41-45), it must be that God in some way offers the grace of faith to every human being, with some of them accepting and conserving it and others sadly and tragically rejecting it. Robert Hugh Benson said, "Faith is a gift which can be given or withdrawn. It is something infused into us and not produced by us." The Catechism tells us that faith is a grace and also at the same time faith is a human act. It says, "When Saint Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:17; Galatians 1:15), Jesus declared to him that this revelation did not come from "flesh and blood", but "from my Father Who is in heaven". The Second Vatican Council declared "Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by Him. Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him. He must have the interior help of the Holy Spirit, Who moves the heart and converts it to God, Who opens the eyes of the mind and makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth."
Human Act
The Catechism goes on to teach, "Believing is possible only by grace and the interior helps of the Holy Spirit. But, it is no less true that believing is an authentically human act. Trusting in God and cleaving to the truths He has revealed are contrary neither to human freedom nor to human reason. In faith the human intellect and will cooperate with divine grace. Saint Thomas Aquinas writes, "Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace."
Blessed John Henry Newman said, "Faith then is not a conclusion from premises, but the result of an act of the will, following upon a conviction that to believe is a duty. The safeguard of faith is a right state of heart. This is it that gives it birth. It also disciplines it. This is what protects it from bigotry, credulity, and fanaticism. It is holiness, or dutifulness, or the new creation, or the spiritual mind, however we word it, which is the quickening and illuminating, principle of true faith, giving it eyes, hands, and feet."
All adult and reasonably intelligent Catholics should make certain that they themselves are adequately catechized and have a sufficient grasp of Catholic apologetics, so as to be able (as Saint Peter tells us) "to be always ready with an answer to everyone who asks a reason for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15). This catechetical and apologetic preparation should include a solid grasp of the reasons that constitute the "motives of credibility", namely, that the Catholic Faith is in accord with human reason and it is completely logical to believe, and that it is unreasonable and illogical not to believe. The "motives of credibility" can lead a person to the threshold of faith, making it easier for that person then to accept from God the precious and saving grace of faith itself. The Catechism lists as some of the "motives of credibility": "the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church’s growth and holiness and her fruitfulness and stability through the centuries." Blessed John Henry Newman said, "Right reason, that is, reason rightly exercised, leads the mind to the Catholic Faith and plants it there, and teaches in all its religious speculations to act under its guidance. Few minds in earnest can remain at ease without some sort of rational grounds for their religious beliefs."
Nevertheless, as Pope Saint Gregory the Great said, "If the work of God could be completely comprehended by human reason, it would no longer be wonderful, and faith would have no merit were reason able to provide proof." Blessed Cardinal Newman notes: "Life is not long enough for a religion of inferences. The natural man holds to divine truths merely as an opinion and not as a point of faith. Grace believes while reason does but opine. Grace gives certainty, while reason actually is never decided."
Catechism
The Catechism of the Catholic Church remarks, "Faith makes us taste in advance the light of the beatific vision, the goal of our journey here below. Then we shall see God face to face, as He is. So faith is already the beginning of eternal life." Saint Bernard of Clairvoix said, "When finally in heaven the veil shall have been utterly removed from the things of which we are now assured by faith, then the cup of our bliss will be overflowing." Now, however, "we walk by faith and not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7). We perceive God "as in a mirror dimly and only in part" (1 Corinthians 13:12). Even though enlightened by Him in Whom it believes, faith is often lived in darkness and can be put to the test. The world we live in often seems far from the one promised us by faith. Our experience of evil, suffering, injustice, and death seem to contradict the Good News." Still the words of Blessed Newman must be kept in mind: "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one (sinful) doubt." Many times we must make our own the tear-filled prayer which the father of the epileptic boy made to Jesus in the Gospel (Mark 9:23): "Lord, I do believe; help Thou my unbelief."
Faith Words
It is expected that during the coming "Year of Faith", which was proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI and which is scheduled to begin next October 11th, that our Holy Father himself will be speaking and writing extensively about faith. We are fortunate, however, that he already has done this in large measure during the course of his pontificate and had done so even before his election as Pope, and so we can more or less anticipate his expected words about faith even now by recalling some of his already eloquent treatment of that vitally important matter.
He says, "Faith in God is not a form of knowledge that can be learned like chemistry or mathematics, but remains a belief. Since faith demands our whole existence, our will, our love, and since it requires letting go of ourselves, it necessarily goes beyond a mere knowledge, beyond what is demonstrable. And, because this is so, I can always turn my life away from faith and find arguments that seem to refute it. We must have the courage not to lose hold of the truth, but to stretch toward it and to accept it humbly and thankfully whenever it is given to us. Belief is never simply there in a way that would enable me to say at a certain point in time that I have it, and others do not have it. It is something living, which is inclusive of the whole person in all his dimensions, understanding, will, and feelings. It can then fasten its roots ever deeper into my life, so that my life becomes more or less identical with my faith. But, for all that, it is never just a possession. A man can always still give way to other tendencies within himself and thus fall away. Faith is always a path. As long as we live we are on the way, and on that account faith is always under pressure and under threat. It is healthy that faith can never turn into a convenient ideology and that is does not make me hardened and unable to follow the thoughts of my doubting brother and to sympathize with him. Faith can only mature by suffering anew at every stage in life the oppression and power of unbelief, by admitting its reality out there, and then finally by going right through it, so that faith again finds the path for a man opening ahead...."
The Holy Father remarks, "The Christian Faith is not a pastime, and the Church is not one club among others of a similar or different sort. Rather faith responds to the primordial questions of mankind regarding his origin and goal. It bears on those basic problems which Kant characterized as the essential core of philosophy: What can I know? What may I hope for? What is man? In other words, faith has to do with truth, and only if man is capable of truth can it also be said that he is called to freedom."
To Theology
The Pope writes, "The first item in the alphabet of faith is the statement: ‘In the beginning was the Word’ (John 1:1). Faith reveals to us that the eternal Reason is the Ground of all things, or, put in other terms, that things are reasonable from the ground up. Faith does not aim to offer man some sort of psychotherapy. Its psychotherapy is the truth. This is what makes it universal and by its nature missionary. It is also the reason why faith is intrinsically seeking understanding, as the Fathers of the Church say. Understanding, hence, rational engagement with the prior given Word is a constitutive principle of the Christian Faith, which of necessity spawns theology. This trait, moreover, distinguishes the Christian Faith from all other religions, even from a purely historical point of view. Theology is a specifically Christian phenomenon which follows from the structure of this faith."
The Supreme Pontiff says, "Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself ‘be tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine’ (Ephesians 4:14), seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires. We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God and true Man. He is the measure of true humanism. A mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false and deceit from the truth."
"One element Jesus uses to define friendship is the communion of wills. For the Romans ‘idem velle, idem nolle’ (‘having the same likes and the same dislikes’) was also the definition of friendship. Friendship with Christ coincides with the third request of the ‘Our Father’, which is, ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. At His hour in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus transformed our rebellious human will into a will conformed and united with the divine will. He suffered the whole drama of our autonomy, and precisely by placing our will in God’s hands, He gives us true freedom. ‘Not as I will but as You will’ (Matthew 26:39). Our redemption is brought about in this communion of wills. Being friends of Jesus is to become friends of God. The more we love Jesus and the more we know Him, the more our true freedom develops and the more our joy in being redeemed flourishes."
Faith Thoughts
Father Walter Farrell says about faith, "Faith is a view, a superior view, opening up truths that only God could know. In itself faith perfects the mind of man far beyond anything else that can come to it in the universe. Yet, for all that, faith is an imperfect thing. Although the vision should be spread before us, we have not the eyes of God. We are looking at truths too bright for our eyes, so we move in obscurity. Faith is obscure. By faith a man moves through darkness, but he moves securely because his hand is in the hand of God. He is literally seeing through the eyes of God, as a blind person sees through the eyes of a friend, because all that he believes, he believes precisely by reason of the word of the First Truth. The darkness of faith is not a discouragement or a ground for mistrust. It is a promise of that time when we shall no longer see ‘as in a mirror obscurely, but face to face’ (1 Corinthians 13:12). It is a challenge that can be met only by bending the stiff neck of pride while we listen again to the wise words of a Father as He tells us things which our puny experience can never reach."
Rosalind Murray says, "The light of faith confers upon us an undreamed enhancement of our vision... but it is only to be bought at a price, the price of our submission and surrender, the giving up of what we ourselves are or claim to be."
Sins Against
In writing about faith, Father Walter Farrell remarks, "Faith can be hated for the hard things it demands, and the acid of distortion may be thrown in its face in a vain attempt to destroy the power of its beauty. Faith can be the victim of mockery by men in love with their own willful blindness. It can be denied, rejected, and lightly tossed aside. But then again, it can be lived up to, cherished, jealously guarded, and proudly defended at whatever cost. In the latter case, the world looks on, blind to the beauty of actions that are robed in the splendor that comes from an object so high that it properly belongs to God, the vision of the face of God." Gilbert Keith Chesterton once observed, "It is a thousand times easier to criticize the creed of another than to formulate and express one’s own."
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, "When we say the word "God", we confess a constant, unchangeable Being, always the same, faithful and just, without any evil. It follows that we must necessarily accept His words and have complete faith in Him and acknowledge His authority. He is almighty, merciful, and infinitely beneficent." Saint Paul points out that "ignorance of God" is the principle and explanation of all moral deviations (Romans 1:18-32). The Catechism teaches us, therefore, "Our duty toward God is to believe in Him and bear witness to Him. The first commandment of the Decalogue requires us to nourish and protect our faith with prudence and vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to it."
Among the sins against faith which the Catechism lists is voluntary doubt, that is, deliberately disregarding or refusing to hold as true what God has revealed and what the Magisterium of the Catholic Church proposes for belief. This is not the same as involuntary doubt which sometimes refers to hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming obstacles connected with the faith, or anxiety aroused by the faith’s obscurity. Voluntary doubt is a mortal sin. Involuntary doubt usually could be a venial sin or no sin, but if cultivated and not confronted and struggled against, it could be a mortal sin and lead to serious spiritual blindness.
Other Sins
The Catechism speaks of the sin of incredulity, which is the neglect of revealed truth or the refusal to assent to it. It talks of the grave sin of heresy, "which is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truths which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith, or heresy likewise can be an obstinate doubt concerning the same." Apostasy is the mortal sin of a total repudiation of the Catholic Faith, which is the completeness and fullness of Christianity. Schism is the mortal sin of refusing to acknowledge the primacy of the Roman Pontiff in ecclesiastical and religious matters, and thus the refusal of submission and obedience to the Bishop of Rome or else a refusal of communion with the members of the Catholic Church who live their religious lives subject to him. The Pope, of course, as the Successor of Saint Peter, is the visible head of the Church founded by Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:18-19), while Christ Himself remains forever the Catholic Church’s invisible Head (Ephesians 1:19-23). Saint Ambrose said, "Where Peter is, there is the Church..."
It is sinful, and sometimes mortally so, to place one’s faith unnecessarily in danger. This means that "occasions of sins" against faith must be avoided. These are persons, places, or things that may endanger our faith. In the contemporary American media especially, there are regular attacks against the faith, some overt and clearly seen, but many others very subtle, often enclosed in sneers and ridicule. Some reading material, some situations marked by anti-Catholic or non-Catholic activities or words, in such things as films. DVD’s , stage plays, university discussions or classes, etc. can turn out to be serious occasions of sins against faith. Archbishop Fulton Sheen said that in his experience, most people who lose their faith, however, come to that tragedy only after committing mortal sins against other commandments, and then try to escape from what they realize will be the consequences of their immorality by denying their faith altogether.
In Hell
It is an axiom of moral theology that unless one commits a mortal sin directly against faith, one’s faith still is retained, even though there is a loss of supernatural love (charity) and a loss of sanctifying grace. However, that faith will not prevent the consequences of a deliberate ending of one’s friendship and intimacy with God. Every mortal sin violates the supernatural love we must possess in order to please God, but even mortal sins which do not directly attack our faith do have a weakening effect upon it. Nevertheless, it is the retained faith in a sinful soul that can inspire and assist a sinner to return to God and to be reconciled with Him in the Sacrament of Penance. In the New Testament, Saint James startles us by reminding us that even some of the fallen angels who are burning in the torments of hell forever, actually have kept some semblance of faith: "You believe that there is one God. You do well, but the devils also believe and tremble!" (James 2:19)
The temptation of the people of Babel (Genesis 11:4) to attempt to reach heaven by their own activity and to forget that the supernatural order is utterly gratuitous, and that, therefore, heaven is above the capacity of all human nature (and certainly fallen human nature) to attain on its own, is perennially present in our world. We are saved by faith, Saint Paul reminded his Jewish converts, and not by simply following the instructions of the Old Testament laws (Romans 3:29; Galatians 2:16-17). Saint Paul emphasized that "all is grace". This is why Jesus told us, "Even do you also, when you have done everything that was commanded you, say, We are merely unprofitable servants for we have done only what it was our duty to do" (Luke 17:10).
Merit
If we cannot be saved by our own doing, if faith, hope, and love are supernatural gifts, and salvation is ultimately a freely bestowed gift from God, how do we account for the words "merit", "reward", etc. in the New Testament? Saint Paul, for instance, says, "God will render to every man according to his works" (Romans 2:6) The Catechism of the Catholic Church treats this matter extensively and deserves our attention (numbers 2006-2011). Our free will and cooperation are deeply involved. However, we must remember God never really owes or could owe us anything, but, on the other hand, all that is good we owe to God. Even our good works are ours but also His. The Council of Trent teaches, "God allows His gifts to be called our merits." The Catechism says, "With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality. The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of His grace." Saint Augustine of Hippo often preached, "Our merits are God’s gifts." "The charity of Christ in us is the source of all our merits before God."
Back to Dust
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, has noted that "the Lenten season offers us an annual ascetic and liturgical journey that, helping us to open our eyes to face up to our own weakness, makes it possible for us also to open our hearts to the merciful love of Christ." The words of the Supreme Pontiff will resonate again in our lives next week, when once more, on Ash Wednesday, we will start on the road toward the glorious celebration of Easter, a road which begins, as it has for centuries, with ashes on our heads and with the cursing words that God addressed to our ancestor, Adam, sounding in our ears: "You will go back to the ground out of which you were taken, for you are dust and unto dust you will return" (Genesis 3:19). This is a reminder, of course, that, as far as we know, human beings are the only creatures who are mindful of their mortality, that is, who know that one day their earthly existence will terminate. But, most of these same human beings, even those with no faith, seem intuitively to suspect also that some kind of immortality might be lurking beyond that dust, perhaps an intimation of that special breath that God Himself at creation blew into the primordial slime (Genesis 2:7).
Pope Benedict comments, "Why in fact do we fear death? Why has mankind never been able to believe simply that nothing more comes after it? There are many reasons. First, we fear death simply because we are afraid of the void, afraid to step out into the completely unknown. We rebel against death because we simply cannot believe that so many great and meaningful things that occur in a life should suddenly fall into oblivion. We resist death because love demands eternity and because we cannot accept the destruction of love that death brings with it. We fear death because none of us can quite shake off the feeling that there will be a judgment in which the memory of all our failures emerges unvarnished that we otherwise are so busy finding a way to suppress."
Saint Augustine
Saint Augustine said, "Virtually every one fears the death of the body, but so very few the death of the soul. Everyone worries about the death of the body which must happen sooner or later, and does everything possible to avert it. Yet, all that one does to avoid death is in vain. At best one can only delay it, but never escape it. If instead one strives to avoid sin, he will not grow weary and he will live forever. Oh, if we could only succeed in urging others, and ourselves together with them, to love eternal life at least as much as they love fleeting life.... God commands us to do less burdensome things to give us eternal life, yet we neglect to obey."
The great Bishop of Hippo puts these thoughts into the liturgical perspective of Lent and Easter: "Our current time of destitution and tears is symbolized by the forty days before Easter, while the time to follow, a time of gladness, peace, happiness, eternal life, and endless reigning that has yet to come, is instead symbolized by the fifty days (after Easter) during which we lift our praises to God. In other words, we are presented with two time periods, one before the resurrection of the Lord and one after the resurrection. One is the time in which we now live, while the other is the time in which we one day hope to live. The present time of weeping, symbolized by the forty days of Lent, is the time in which we now live and is symbolized in ourselves (by our Lenten practices). The other time of joy, peace, and reigning, symbolized (after Easter), is expressed by our ‘alleluia’... What does that word mean? It means ‘praise God’, but we do not yet possess that praise in its fullness. That praise echoes in the Church, but our own participation in it will be eternal only after our own personal resurrection."
Pope Benedict
Our Holy Father remarks that, although the beginning of each Lent finds us hearing and pondering the somber words that accompany the ceremony of the ashes, we must also use the entire holy season of Lent to remember that our inevitable death is but a doorway opening into another and everlasting world. He notes that the early Christians used to write about the ancient pagan philosophy which said that, "if you want to survive beyond death, you must acquire now in yourself as much as possible what is eternal, namely, truth, justice, and goodness. The more you have of these in yourself, the more of you remains, the more you remain. Or better, you must attach yourself to the eternal so that you belong to it and partake of its eternity."
The Pope says that the early Christians then would use this philosophical beginning to go on to say: "Hold fast then to the truth and thereby belong to the One Who is indestructible. Hold fast to Christ for He carries you through the night of death that He Himself has overcome. In this way immortality comes to make sense." Already in the earliest ages of the Catholic Church our Christian ancestors "realized that man (and death) can be understandable only if there is a God, if God exists. But for them this ’if’ was no longer an ‘if’ and therein lies the answer. God has stepped out of His unknown distance and has entered our ( Catholic) lives, in that He said: ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ (John 11:25). And, still other words illuminated the darkness of death: ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life’ (John 14:6) and ‘Today you will be with Me in paradise’ (Luke 23:43). Above all He has risen and said ‘In my Father’s house there are many rooms...I go to prepare a place for you’ (John 14:2). God is no longer distant. He has shown Himself, and He is accessible. God has shown Himself in Jesus , and so there is eternal life, and death truly is a way of hope."
Saint Leo
Pope Saint Leo the Great, preaching on Ash Wednesday, said, "As we are about, dearly beloved, to embark upon these mystic days, appointed and consecrated for the purification of both soul and body, let us take care to obey the apostolic commandments about Lent. Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, so that in the struggles that go on between our two natures, the soul, which under the guidance of God should govern the body, may uphold the dignity of its rule. Thus giving offense to no one, we will not be exposed to the reproach of those who revile us. For we shall be justly blamed by unbelievers, whose wicked tongues will find in our misdeeds a weapon of attack against all religion, if the conduct of those who keep the fast is not in accordance with the spirit of perfect continence. For our fasting does not consist merely in abstinence from food. It will do us no good to deprive the body of food if the mind be not recalled from wickedness. Remember that the sacrament of Baptism made you into a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not cause such a great Guest to flee because of your bad conduct. Do not put yourself again into slavery to the Devil, for the price at which you were ransomed is the Blood of Christ. He ransomed you out of mercy, but He will judge you in His truth..."
Christ’s Temptations
By ancient liturgical custom, the Gospel passage for the First Sunday of Lent is always an account of our Lord’s desert experience, at the conclusion of which is the story of the temptations. The temptations’ account in the Synoptic Gospels always follows the story of His Baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. Two of the accounts of the temptations, those by Saint Matthew (4:1-11) and by Saint Luke (4:1-13) are rather detailed and extensive, while that which we will hear in this year’s biblical cycle from Saint Mark (1:12-13) is very sparse, consisting of only two sentences and thus once verse. However, that verse does encapsulate the essence of the narrative: "The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert and He remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among the wild beasts and the angels ministered to Him."
Pope Benedict XVI remarks, "The First Sunday of Lent, known as the ‘Sunday of the Temptations’ because it presents Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, invites us to renew our definitive adherence to God, and , in order to remain faithful to Him, to face courageously the struggle that awaits us." The Holy Father goes on to say, "The temptations of Jesus can be understood as an acceptance and overcoming of the original temptation of Adam (Genesis 3:1-6). Being tempted is an essential part of His being a Man, part of His descent into fellowship with us, into the depth of our need. Temptations depicted in grand images reoccur concretely at particular stages in the life of Jesus (e.g. John 6:15; Mark 1:35-39; Mark 8:33; etc.). Thus, the temptation story summarizes the entire struggle of Jesus. It is about the nature of His mission, but at the same time it is also about the right ordering of human life, about the way to be human, about the way of history. Finally, it is about what is really important in the life of man. This ultimate thing, this decisive thing, is the primacy of God. The germ of all temptation is setting God aside, so that He seems to be a secondary concern when compared with all the urgent priorities of our lives. To consider ourselves, the needs and desires of the moment to be more important than He is, that is the temptation that always besets us. For in doing so, we deny God His divinity and we make ourselves, or rather the powers that threaten us, into our god."
O.T. Allusions
From the earliest days of the Church, the accounts of the temptations, which always were assumed to have come to the Apostles from Jesus Himself, were seen to have been foreshadowed in the Old Testament. The Evangelists seem to see a strong connection between the action of the Holy Spirit Who came down upon Jesus at His Baptism and that same Spirit Who drove Him into the desert. All of this appears to be connected with the Spirit God at the creation (Genesis 1:2), Which moved over a mass of chaos to bring order through light and life, So, now in the New Testament the Holy Spirit impels Christ, the true Light and Life, to begin His sublime work to bring order out of the chaos of sin. Then at the start of humanity the first Adam was tempted and conquered by the Devil, while Jesus, the Second Adam and new Head of the human race, renews humanity by turning the situation around and conquering the Devil.
Also, there can be little doubt that the forty days of Jesus fasting in the desert constitute a clear reference to the forty years the Chosen People of the Old Covenant were required by Yahweh to wander in the desert (Numbers 14:26-35). It was in that desert that the ancient Chosen People were tempted and fell, but now Jesus, Who embodies the New Israel of God in His Person, turns that situation around, too. Then too, there is the remembrance that Moses fasted for forty days on Mount Sinai before he inaugurated the Old Covenant. So, now our divine Lord, the New Moses, Who brings to mankind the New Law, fasts for forty days before He establishes the New and Eternal Covenant.
Lessons
There are innumerable lessons that can and have been taught and insinuated by the Gospel stories of our Savior’s temptations. There is, for instance, the obvious example given to us of how to deal with temptations by prompt and decisive opposition, or by fleeing from them. Our temptations sometimes come to us, like His in these episodes, from the Devil. However, we can also be tempted by the fallen world in which we live and by our own internal disorder and weakness coming from our sins. Although Jesus took on our fallen human nature and thus could be tempted as we are (Hebrews 4:15), He could not be tempted internally from the world and the flesh because of His sinless and divine perfection, but only externally, as He was, by the Fiend of hell. And, of course, He underwent those temptations for our sake: "For in that He Himself has suffered and has been tempted, He is able to help those who are tempted" (Hebrews 2:18).
Another lesson strongly implicit in these episodes is the startling fact that the Devil himself knows the Bible and can quote from it. Saint Matthew and Saint Luke depict the temptations as dispute between Bible scholars. Jesus refutes Satan’s interpretation of the Bible, demonstrating that, in order to be properly understood, Sacred Scripture requires an authoritative and infallible interpreter, with a wrong interpretation leading to spiritual disaster. The Bible is not a self-interpreting book and was never intended by God to be. This is why the Second Vatican Council says, "The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church (the Magisterium), whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ."
Main Points
The principal emphasis of the temptation stories, however, appears twofold. First, to show that the messianic mission of Jesus, Who is the foretold obedient Servant of Yahweh, must initially involve, by God’s design and purpose, austerity, suffering, and death before any promised glory can arrive. Second, to show that the mission of Jesus is not some kind of terrestrial messianism, a satanic design to challenge God, to tempt God, and to rely on earthly values, earthly power, and worldly goals. Saints Mark and Matthew mention that angels ministered to Jesus after the temptations, a sign of His victory. But, Saint Luke tells us that after the temptations "the Devil left Him for a while". The Evil Lucifer returned often in the course of Christ’s life on earth (John 12:31; John 13:27; Luke 22:31; Luke 21:53, etc.) and to this day his evil temptations continue to afflict Christ’s followers. The annual journey of Lent is intended to equip us by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to have the courage and strength to use our Lord’s very words in our moments of temptation: "Begone, Satan! It is written the Lord your God alone shall you worship and Him alone shall you serve" (Matthew 4:10; Deuteronomy 6:13).
Transfiguration
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, notes that the Second Sunday of Lent traditionally goes by the name of "The Sunday of Abraham and the Sunday of the Transfiguration". This is because the first liturgical reading from Sacred Scripture on that Second Sunday always has something to do with the Patriarch Abraham, whom in the Mass we call "our father in faith", while the Gospel narrative that is read is always one of the accounts of Christ’s transfiguration (Mark 9:2-10; Matthew 17:1-8; Luke 9:28-36; See also 2 Peter 1:16-18). The Pope remarks that liturgically this placement of those texts occurs because of the basic connection of the season of Lent with Baptism. It is the principal time of the year when catechumens are preparing for their Baptism at the Easter Vigil, and, at the same time, when those already baptized are being restored to their baptismal innocence by means of the penitential exercises of the traditional forty days, and are getting ready for the renewal of their own baptismal promises and commitments at Easter.
The Supreme Pontiff says, "Baptism is the sacrament of faith and also of divine sonship. Like Abraham, the father of true believers, we are asked by our Baptism to leave the worldly securities that we have created for ourselves and instead to place ourselves in God by means of trust. The transfiguration then gives us a glimpse of our ultimate destiny, when, due to our Baptism and our loyalty to its vows, in Christ, the Beloved Son of the Father, and our listening to Him, we too shall become authentic children of God."
Jose’ Granados says, "According to Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, the transfiguration of the Lord on the mountain was an ascent toward a higher grace not only for the three disciples who were granted the favor of witnessing it, but also for the other two witnesses, Moses and Elijah. This was indeed the fulfillment of an old promise that was made to them when they saw the glory of God on Mount Sinai. Here on Mount Tabor they were finally able to converse with their Lord face to face. The scene is linked with the vision of God and thus with the most profound desire that moves our lives until we are able one day, as Saint Augustine says, to rest and see, to see and love, to love and praise." The theologian Klaus Berger says that what happened on Mount Tabor was that God made visible to Peter, James, and John what we now, in our apostolic faith, recite in the Nicene Creed: "God from God, Light from Light". Many saints and thinkers have also noted that the transfiguration made visible in Jesus, the new Adam, the deeper meaning of the passage in the Book of Genesis: "And God created man to His own image, to the image of God He created him.."(Genesis 1:27).
Mountains
In the first volume of his great work "Jesus of Nazareth", Pope Benedict XVI writes about mountains in his treatment of the transfiguration, saying that in the transfiguration "once again the mountain (Tabor) serves, as it did in the Sermon on the Mount and in the nights spent by Jesus in prayer, as the locus of God’s particular closeness. Once again we need to keep together in our minds the various mountains of Jesus’ life: the mountain of temptation, the mountain of His great preaching, the mountain of His prayer, the mountain of the transfiguration, the mountain of His agony, the mountain of His cross, and finally, the mountain of the risen Lord (the Ascension), where He declares, in total antithesis to the offer of world dominion through the Devil’s power, ‘All power in heaven and on earth is given to Me’ (Matthew 28:18). But, in the background (of these New Testament mountains) we also catch sight of Sinai, Horeb, Moriah, the mountains of the Old Testament revelation. They are all at one and the same time mountains of passion and revelation, and they also refer to the Temple Mount, where revelation becomes liturgy."
"When we inquire into the meaning of the mountain, the first point, of course, is the general background of mountain symbolism. The mountain is a place of ascent, not only outward, but inward ascent. It is a liberation from the burden of everyday life, a breathing in of the pure air of creation. It offers a view of the broad expanse of creation and its beauty. It gives one an inner peak to stand on and an intuitive sense of the Creator. History then adds to all this the experience of the God Who speaks, and the experience of the passion, culminating in the sacrifice of Isaac, in the sacrifice of the lamb that points ahead to the definitive Lamb (of God) sacrificed on Mount Calvary. Moses and Elijah were privileged to receive God’s revelation on a mountain, and now (in the transfiguration event) they are conversing with the One Who is God’s revelation in Person."
Toynbee
There can be little doubt that one of the main purposes of Christ’s transfiguration was to prepare the Apostles for the coming shock and scandal of the cross (Luke 9:31). It was as well a clear trinitarian event and revelation, with the Father in the voice, the Son in the Man, and the Holy Spirit in the cloud, resonating the previous baptismal events involving Jesus at the Jordan River. Then too, it has links to the ancient Law and the Prophets in the persons of Moses and Elijah. It also is linked with the Jewish liturgical calendar, especially the Feast of Booths or Huts (Sukkoth). It is also linked with prayer, since Saint Luke tells us the reason Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the mountain with Him was "to pray" (Luke 9:28).
Jose’ Granados explains how "in the transfiguration the glory of God shines through Jesus’ journey in time, and expands to the pilgrimage in history of His entire Church. The importance of this event for the Christian vision of time was grasped by the British historian Arnold J. Toynbee. Toynbee understood the Tabor scene as the Christian answer to the upheavals of time. When a civilization is in crisis, he says, there are two different options: that of the archaist who wishes to remain in the past and that of the futurist who desires to move quickly toward a different tomorrow. If both fail, the temptation of escapism emerges, of a withdrawal from history, one that flees.... According to Toynbee there is another option beyond these, the Christian answer he calls transfiguration.... It consists of withdrawal from the course of events only in order to return to them to find in them the meaning that is able to save time from above by anchoring the instant in eternity."
Saint Augustine, preaching on the transfiguration, said "Peter did not then understand that ‘it is only through many persecutions that we may enter the kingdom of God’ (Acts of the Apostles 14:22) He wanted to remain on the mountain, but Jesus told him that his remaining would only come later after his death. In the meantime, he must imitate Jesus. Life goes down to earth to be killed. Bread goes down to suffer hunger. The Way goes down to be exhausted by the journey, the Spring goes down to suffer thirst...and you refuse, Peter, to suffer?" The transfiguration teaches each year some of the profound significance of Lent.
The Cleansing
One of the striking actions that our Savior took in His sacred ministry on earth was His cleansing of the temple. This action of Jesus is recorded in all four Gospels (John 2:13-25; Matthew 21:12-17; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45-48). In the present Lenten liturgical cycle we are scheduled to hear next Sunday the account of the event as recorded by Saint John, an account which Pope Benedict XVI thinks might be more "chronologically accurate" than that in the Synoptics, "notwithstanding the profoundly theological character of the material". In reply to the question by the "Jews" of what kind of sign our Lord could show that He had authority to drive out the cattle dealers, turn over the tables of the money changers, and chase out of the Court of the Gentiles the dove and pigeon sellers, Jesus reiterated, in similar words to His famous "sign of Jonah" (Matthew 12:38-42), His foretelling His resurrection: "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up!" Saint John notes that "He was speaking about the temple of His Body" and after His resurrection "His disciples remembered that He had said this..."
Of course, they were not the only ones to remember. At Christ’s trial, Saint Mark tells us of the false witness who accused Jesus of saying: "I will destroy this temple that is made with hands and in three days I will build another not made with hands." Pope Benedict guesses that this "witness comes close to Jesus’ accurate words, but is mistaken in one crucial point: It is not Jesus Who destroys the temple, but it is those who turn it into a den of robbers and who abandon it to destruction just as in (the Prophet) Jeremiah’s day." Our Holy Father observes that Jesus’ sign of His authority is His cross and resurrection. His dying and rising "gave Him authority as the One Who ushers in true worship. Jesus justifies Himself through His passion, the sign of Jonah that He gives to Israel and to the world... The disciples understood this in its full depth only after the resurrection, in their memory, in the collective memory of the community of disciples enlightened by the Holy Spirit, that is, in the Church."
The Supreme Pontiff remarks, "The rejection and crucifixion of Jesus means at the same time the end of this temple. The era of temple is over. A new worship has been introduced in a temple not built by human hands. This temple is Christ’s Body. It is the risen One Who gathers the peoples and unites them in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. He Himself is the new temple of humanity. The crucifixion of Jesus is at the same time the destruction of the old temple. With His resurrection a new way of worshipping God begins, no longer on this or that mountain, but "in spirit and truth" (John 4:23)." Jesus clearly foretold the final destruction of the temple (Matthew 24:1-2) and His prophecy about this was symbolized in fact and validated by God the Father when He died. "The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom" (Matthew 27:51; Mark 17:38).
The Temple
The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us of the special love for the temple during His life on earth that Jesus enjoyed. "Like the prophets before Him, Jesus expressed the deepest respect for the temple in Jerusalem. It was to the temple that Joseph and Mary presented Him forty days after His birth (Luke 2:22-39). At the age of twelve He decided to remain in the temple to remind His parents that He must be about His Father’s business (Luke 2:46-49). He went there each year during His hidden life, at least for Passover (Luke 2:41). His public ministry itself was patterned by His pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the great Jewish feasts ((John 2:13-14; 5:1; 7:1; 8:2; 10:22-23). Jesus went up to the temple as the privileged place of encounter with God. For Him the temple was the dwelling place of His Father, a house of prayer, and He was angered that its outer court had become a place of commerce (Matthew 21:13). After His resurrection, His Apostles retained their reverence for the temple (Acts of the Apostles 2:24; 3:1; 5:20-21)." As He hung dying on the cross, His temple prophecy, in its distorted form, was flung into His face as an insult by His enemies (Mark 14:57-58; Matthew 27:29-40). He was never hostile to the temple. Indeed, even one time He arranged a miracle for Saint Peter to pay the temple tax for both Himself and for Peter too (Matthew 17:23-26).
Pope Benedict XVI notes that, after Jesus cleansed the temple, "the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple and He healed them" (Matthew 21:14). "In contrast to the cattle trading and money changing, Jesus brings His healing goodness. Saint Mark tells us that, after He cleansed the temple, He taught in the temple (Mark 11:17-18). This is the true cleansing of the temple. Jesus does not come as a destroyer. He does not come bearing the sword of a revolutionary. He comes with the gift of healing. He turns towards those who, because of their afflictions, have been driven to the margins of life and society".
Zeal
At the time of Christ, there existed among the Jews in the Holy Land a movement called the "Zealot Movement". It evidently had to do with plotting political revolution. Although one of Christ’s Apostles, Simon, "was called the Zealot" (Luke 6:15), there is every indication that Jesus with His whole ministry and message was radically different from that moment. Perhaps Simon at one time had been part of the Zealot Movement, but after being called to discipleship by Jesus, his life took a different turn. Saint John notes that after the temple cleansing Christ’s disciples remembered Psalm 69, with its words "Zeal for Your house has eaten me up!" This is part of the great passion Psalm, which relates that the psalmist is living according to God’s word, and this loyalty to God causes him to have to live in isolation and suffering. The temple cleansing has nothing to do with violence, although some modern revolutionary movements such as "liberation theology" sometimes try to use what Jesus did in the temple to try to justify their false ideologies.
The temple itself, we know was destroyed in the year 70 A.D. in the course of the Roman repression of a Jewish revolt against Roman domination. Under Vespasion and later his son, Titus, the temple building that Jesus experienced and spoke about was completely ruined. Later in a subsequent revolt against Rome, even the temple ruins were utterly destroyed by the Emperor Hadrian. He built a new city called "Aelia Capitolina" where Jerusalem had been, and where the temple had been Hadrian put up a pagan temple dedicated to the Roman god Jupiter. Hadrian then forbade all Jews under pain of death to enter where Jerusalem once had been. It was only centuries later under the Emperor Constantine that Jews were again permitted to go there, but only once year, and only to grieve at the remaining wall fragment of the original temple mount, which place is still a sacred Jewish shrine even to this day. Jesus Christ is the living temple of the New Testament and He allows us to share in that glory. Thus, Saint Paul tells us that we are the temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19; 1 John 3:24). In each Lent let us ask Jesus to cleanse anew these temples which we are!
Lifted Up
This coming Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Lent, the Gospel passage at Mass is part of the great discourse and dialogue that Jesus had with Nicodemus, as recorded by Saint John the Evangelist. It is "the first of three statements in the Gospel according to Saint John in which Jesus refers to His being "lifted up" (John 2:14; 8:28; 12:32-34)". In this first statement, our Lord’s words indicate a compelling necessity: "So must the Son of Man be lifted up..." His being "lifted up" seems to be needed to make faith in Him efficacious and salvific for believers. In the second statement, in the context of arguments with His Jewish enemies, He asserts His divinity by invoking the sacred tetragram ("Yahweh"): "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM..." In the third statement Jesus says that His being lifted up will have the effect of drawing all human beings to the possibility of salvation: "When I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all men to Myself". After reporting those words, Saint John comments, "Now He said this signifying by what death He was to die". Most Catholic scholars say that the expression of Jesus about being "lifted up" did not refer, however, exclusively to crucifixion and His death on the cross, but also included His resurrection and ascension.
Our Lord Himself compared His being lifted up for the salvation for the world that would flow from that lifting to the incident recorded in the Old Testament when God sent poisonous snakes (saraph serpents) to punish the Israelites for "speaking against God and Moses" (Numbers 21:6-9; Deuteronomy 8:15). The deadly bites and the burning sensation caused by them ("saraph" in Hebrew means "burning") brought the people to repentance. In answer to their pleas for mercy, God told Moses to make a saraph image out of brass (a brazen serpent) and to set it up "as a sign". Those people thereafter who were bitten by the snakes had only to look at that sign and they would be healed. Jesus told Nicodemus that in a similar way "the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life." The irony of the incident in relationship to Jesus, of course, is that the fall of mankind took place through the suggestion of the Devil who took the form of a cunning serpent. Now through the symbol of the brazen serpent, God Himself in Christ would begin to undo the primordial calamity of humanity’s fall which has so scarred the race of man from its beginning.
Love
Our Lord, after explaining to Nicodemus the deeper meaning of the brass serpent episode in the Gospel passage, went on to tell him about the self-sacrificing love of God for the world, that He sent His only-begotten Son, indeed, He gave Him up not to condemn the world but to save the world, that is, to make it possible for human beings to be happy beyond telling forever. Pope Benedict XVI teaches that "our life tends in the end toward a discovery of love, toward receiving love and giving love. And, the crucified Christ, Who presents us with love lived out to the end lifts this principle up into the realm of absolute reality. God Himself is love.
The Holy Father goes on, "In this sense love is indeed both the fundamental rule and the ultimate aim of life. Here we come again to the mystery of the grain of wheat, to the mystery of losing oneself and finding oneself. And we must link this to the observation that no one can manufacture love. It is given to us. It comes to me from someone else. It enters into me. Even from a purely human point of view, love is what we are looking for and is the goal toward which our lives are directed. But within its own framework and on its own terms. it directs our view toward God and brings us to wait upon Him." The Bishop of Rome states, "Only with the heart can we see Jesus. Only love purifies us and gives us the ability to see. Only love enables us to recognize God Who is love itself."
"But, love seeks understanding. It wishes to know even better the one whom it loves. It ‘seeks His face’, as Saint Augustine never tires of repeating. Love is a desire for intimate knowledge, so that the quest for understanding can even be an inner requirement of love. Put another way, there is a coherence of love and truth. Christian faith can say of itself, I have found love. Yet love for Christ and of one’s neighbor for Christ’s sake can enjoy stability and consistency only if the deepest motivation is love for the truth. Real love for a neighbor also desires to give him the deepest thing man needs, namely, knowledge and truth."
Sign of Cross
When, especially during Lent, we think for a few moments about the brass serpent and how it symbolized and foreshadowed the cross of Jesus, it might serve as a reminder about the gesture we make so often, and sometimes so thoughtlessly, namely, the sign of the cross. Pope Benedict calls it "the most basic Christian gesture in prayer". He says, "It is a way of confessing Christ crucified with one’s very own body. To seal oneself with the sign of the cross is a visible and public ‘yes’ to Him Who suffered for us, to Him Who in the Body made God’s love visible even to the utmost, to the God Who reigns not by destruction but by the humility of suffering and love, which is stronger than all the power of the world and wiser than all the calculating intelligence of me. The sign of the cross is a confession of faith. I believe in Him Who suffered for me and rose again, in Him Who has transformed the sign of shame into a sign of hope, and of the love of God that is within me."
"By signing ourselves with the cross we place ourselves under the protection of the cross. We hold it in front of us like a shield that will guard us in all distress of daily life and give us the courage to go on. We accept it a signpost that we follow. The cross shows us the road of life, the imitation of Christ. Whenever we make the sign of the cross we accept our Baptism anew. Christ from the cross draws us, so to speak, to Himself. We make the sign of the cross on ourselves and thus enter the power of the blessing of Jesus Christ. Through the cross we can become sources of blessing for one another."
"Man is redeemed by the cross. The crucified Christ is the completely opened Being, the true Redemption of man. This is the central principle of the Christian faith, and, in the last analysis, of man. One cannot become wholly a man in any other way than by being loved, by letting oneself be loved. Love (for and from God) represents simultaneously both man’s highest possibility and deepest need."
Blood
As our annual journey during the holy season of Lent nears its destination of Easter, the two weeks immediately preceding our celebration of the glorious triumph of our Lord are given over in the sacred liturgy to what is traditionally called "passiontide", a salutary and important opportunity to meditate prayerfully and thoughtfully on the shedding of Christ’s precious Blood in the horrible suffering and saving death that He underwent on our behalf. Passiontide should bring to mind the words in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "With blood almost everything is cleansed according to the Law (Leviticus 17:11), and without the shedding of blood there can be no pardon for sins" (Hebrews 9:22). The Old Testament and the Law of Moses contained many regulations and exhortations regarding blood. These, of course, were foreshadowings of what God’s providence had planned in the future. For instance, that same Epistle to the Hebrews beautifully tells us, "For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkled ashes of a heifer sanctify the unclean unto the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the Blood of Christ, Who through the Holy Spirit offered Himself unblemished unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Hebrews 9:13-14). Also conceptually linking the Old Covenant with the New are that Epistle’s proclaiming to us that the sprinkling of our Lord’s Blood "cries out to God more eloquently than the blood of Abel" (Hebrews 12:24; Genesis 4:10). In this matter Pope Benedict XVI calls the Epistle to the Hebrews "a great theological vision".
It is a true saying that "devotion to the Blood of Christ is the Christian’s response of love and gratitude to Jesus Who offered His Blood for mankind in His atoning sacrifice." Christ Himself spoke of It as the Blood of the New Covenant to be shed for many for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:28). With His Blood He purchased His Catholic Church (Acts of the Apostles 20:28). His Blood is precious (1 Peter 1:19), and by It we are justified (Romans 5:9), cleansed (Hebrews 9:14; 1 John 1:7), washed from sin (Revelation 7:14 & 22:14), and redeemed for God (Revelation 5:9). Among the many saints, who found profound inspiration in meditating on the Blood of Jesus, were Saints Gertrude, Catherine of Siena, Gaspar del Bufalo, Mechtilde, Bonaventure, and Albert the Great. In our times, Blessed Pope John XXIII showed great devotion to our Savior’s Blood by approving the Litany of the Precious Blood for public and private recitation and by inserting into the Divine Praises (which are usually said after Benediction with the Most Blessed Sacrament) the phrase "Blessed be His Most Precious Blood". Blessed Pope John also, on June 30, 1960, wrote an Apostolic Letter (entitled in Latin "Inde a primis") calling on all the Bishops of the world to promote devotion to the most precious Blood of the Redeemer.
Old Testament
One of the primary "blood texts" in the Old Testament is found in the Book of Leviticus: "The life of a living body is in its blood" (17:11). Blood among primitive people was always seen as a mysterious substance. Living bodies have blood in them, but when blood is poured out, death follows. Therefore, God, condescending in His revelation to the often ignorant condition of mankind as He finds it, made blood and its significance in ancient times important in Hebrew cultic and moral practices. The fundamental principle was that life belongs to God and so blood too belongs to Him. God forbade men to eat blood (Leviticus 3:17), a prohibition that probably came from ancient hygienic concerns but which Moses made a religious precept. This part of the Kosher law was so deeply ingrained in Jewish consciousness that even at the beginning of the New Testament the early Christians were forbidden "to eat blood" to avoid offending the sensibilities of the recent Jewish converts (Acts of the Apostles 15:29). Also, anyone who sheds the blood of another human being (commits murder) must himself be put to death (Numbers 35:16-34 & Deuteronomy 21:8-9) according to the Law of Moses.
The Covenants with Abraham (Genesis 15:9-18 & 16:10-27) and Moses at Sinai were sealed in blood, in accord with Middle East practices in those times. For instance, Moses took the blood of a sacrificed animal and sprinkled it on the altar (representing God) and then on the people, saying "This is the blood of the Covenant" (Exodus 24:8). Then too it was the famous blood of a passover lamb on their doorposts and thresholds that saved the Hebrews in Egypt from experiencing the death of their first born (Exodus 12:1-30). In Jewish temple worship on the great feast of atonement (Yom Kippur) the Jewish high priest would enter the Holy of Holies with a bowl of animal blood, whisper the sacred name of Yahweh, and then proceed to sprinkle the propitiatory (the top of the ark) with the blood and also sprinkle the altar of holocausts and the altar of incense. The blood signified expiation, atonement, propitiation, and justification. That action was a solemn renewal of the Covenant and it restored or renewed the special relationship of the people with God. When the Jewish priests, the men physically descended from the family of Aaron in the tribe of Levi, would begin their ministry in the temple, in addition to being anointed with oil, their ears, hands, and feet were smeared with animal blood, to make them "holy to the Lord" (Exodus 29:21).
New Testament
Building on the symbolism of blood in the Old Testament, the New Testament tells us Christians the importance of the Blood of our Savior in regard to our destiny and our salvation. Saint Peter, our first Pope, says, "You know that you were redeemed from the vain manner of life handed down from your fathers, not with perishable things, with silver or gold, but with the precious Blood of Christ, as of a Lamb, without blemish and without spot" (1 Peter 1:18). Saint Paul assigns our redemption to Christ’s Blood. "In Him (Jesus) we have redemption through His Blood, the remission of sins, according to the riches of His grace" (Ephesians 1:7). The Apostle of the Gentles tells us we are justified by His Blood. "Christ died for us. Much more now that we justified by His Blood shall we be saved through Him from wrath" (Romans 5:9). Christ’s Blood gives us peace (Colossians 1:20), and it is displayed publicly as a propitiation for our sins (Romans 3:25). His Blood is the "great price" with which we have been bought back from the Devil, who from the beginning held all of humanity hostage (1 Corinthians 6:20 & 7:22; Acts of the Apostles 20:28).
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, notes that when the Roman soldier pierced the side of the already dead Jesus with a lance, at once there came out blood and water (John 19:34). That happened at the exact hour in which the paschal lambs were being slain in the temple in preparation for the Jewish Passover celebration. Since not a bone of Jesus was broken, just as those lambs had to have unbroken bones (Exodus 12:46), so "Jesus appears here as the true Paschal Lamb, pure and whole", an obvious reference to John the Baptist’s cry: "Behold the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world!" (John 1:29). In passiontide, let that cry often be found in our hearts.
Without a Cross
In a convent of consecrated religious women near Milwaukee, there hangs in a prominent place a beautifully colored crochetcraft sign which simply says "Without a Cross, No Crown" (in German "Ohne Kreuz, Keine Krone"). It was brought from Germany by the founding nuns of the community and has inspired generations of Sisters, starting with those first pioneers who experienced unbelievable hardships on the American frontier which greatly tested their physical and moral fiber.
As we near the destination of our Lenten journey this year, which is our coming celebration of the Solemnity of our Lord’s Resurrection, and as we approach, in preparation for that greatest of our feasts, the holiest and most sacred week in our calendar, it would serve us well to impress that slogan of those Sisters deeply into our consciousness and carry it in our hearts as we participate in the sacred liturgies of Palm Sunday, the Chrism Mass (Monday), Solemn Mass of the Lord’s Supper (Holy Thursday), Solemn Liturgy of the Passion and Death of Jesus (Good Friday), the Glorious Vigil of Easter (Holy Saturday Night), and the Triumphant Masses of Easter Sunday. Saint John of Damascus said, "No other thing than the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ has subdued death, expiated the sin of our first parents, despoiled the inferno of hell, gave us the power of holding in utter contempt this present world and even death itself, prepared our human race for a return to its former and initial blessedness, reopened the gates of paradise for us, given our human nature a seat at God’s right hand, and made us God’s children and heirs."
Thomas a’Kempis writes in "The Imitation of Christ", "In the cross is salvation and life. In the cross is protection from our enemies. In the cross is an effusion of heavenly sweetness. In the cross is strength of mind. In the cross is joy of spirit. In the cross is the height of virtue, In the cross is the perfection of sanctity. There is no health of soul nor hope of eternal life, but in the cross of Jesus." Saint Paul, in the New Testament, exclaimed, "God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world" (Galatians 6:14).
Popes
Pope Saint Leo the Great said. "The cross of Christ, which is granted for the salvation of mortals, is both a mystery and an example. It is a mystery by which the power of God is shown forth and an example by which man’s devotion is aroused." Our present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, speaking last year at the Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum in Rome on the evening of Good Friday, said, "This evening in faith we have accompanied Jesus as He takes His final steps of His earthly journey, the most painful steps, the steps that lead to Calvary. We have heard the shouts of the crowd, the words of condemnation, the insults of the soldiers, the crying and tears of the Virgin Mary and of the holy women. Now we are immersed in the silence of this night, the silence of the cross, the silence of death. It is a silence pregnant with the burden of pain borne by a Man rejected, oppressed, downtrodden, covered by the burden of our sins which mars His face...deep within our hearts we relive the drama of Jesus ...."
"What remains now before our eyes is a crucified Man, a cross raised on Golgotha, a cross which seems a sign of the final defeat of the One Who brought light to those immersed in darkness, Who spoke of the power of forgiveness and mercy, Who asked us to believe in God’s infinite love for every human person. Despised and rejected by men, there stands before us a Man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity, One from Whom others hide their faces (Isaiah 53:3). But, let us look more closely at this Man crucified between earth and heaven. Let us contemplate Him more intently, and we will realize that the cross is not the banner of death, sin, and evil, but rather the luminous sign of love, of God’s immense love, of something that we could never have asked, imagined, or expected. God Himself bent down over us. He lowered Himself even into the darkest corner of our lives in order to stretch out His hands to draw us all the way to Himself. The cross speaks to us of the supreme love of God and invites us today to renew our faith in that love, and to believe that in every situation in our lives, in our history, and in our world, God is able to vanquish death, sin, and evil and to give us a new risen life."
God Calling
Pope Benedict XVI said the night of Good Friday is one of silence but is actually full of hope. He said it is a very special time when we should spiritually hear God calling to us (in the words of Saint Augustine): "Have faith! You will come to Me and you will taste the good things of My table, even as I did not disdain to taste the evil things of your table. I have promised you My life, and as a pledge of this, I have given you My death. Look, I am inviting you to share in My life. It is a life where no one dies, a life which is truly blessed, which offers incorruptible food, the food which refreshes and never fails. The goal to which I invite you is friendship with the Father and the Holy Spirit, It is an eternal supper. It is communion with Me. It is a share in my own life."
Then the Pope says, "Let us gaze upon the crucified Jesus and ask Him in prayer: Enlighten our hearts, Lord, that we may follow You along the way of the cross. Put to death in us the ‘old man’ bound by selfishness and sin. Make us ‘new men’, that is, men and women of holiness, transformed by Your love."
Words on the Cross
In a section of Matins of the Byzantine Rite, dating from the 6th century, we read, "The cross is the watcher of the whole world, the adornment of the Church, the might of kings, the strength of the faithful, the glory of angels, and a deadly wound for the demons." In the old Latin Rite, we used to say: "O cross, brighter than the stars, honored throughout the world, most worthy of the love of men, holiest of holy things, you alone were found worthy to bear the ransom of the world. Sweet the wood, sweet the nails that bore such a sweet and precious weight."
Pope Saint Leo the Great preached, "When Christ is lifted up on the cross, do not let the eyes of your mind see those things only which the eyes of the ungodly see. They could see nothing but the rebuke of their own crimes..... Let our understanding, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, see with an untrammeled heart the true glory of the cross, which casts its light over heaven and earth." "We adore You, O Christ, and we bless You, because by Your holy cross, You have redeemed the world!"
Great Duel
The Sequence Song for the liturgy of Easter Day depicts what happened in the Paschal Mystery as a magnificent cosmic duel: "Death and Life have contended in a combat stupendous, and the Prince of Life, Who died, now reigns immortal." Easter is the triumph of light over darkness. The resurrection of Jesus Christ "gives substance to human dreams, gives purpose to human progress, and gives a destination to the journey of humanity." The beginning of the Easter Proclamation on Holy Saturday evening says it well: "Let the hosts of heaven exult; let the angels, the ministers of God exult; let the trumpet of salvation sound aloud our mighty King’s triumph. Let the earth be glad as glory floods her, ablaze with light from her eternal King. Let all the corners of the earth be glad, knowing an end to gloom and darkness. Let our Mother Church also rejoice, arrayed with the light of His glory! Let this holy building shake with joy, filled with the mighty voices of the peoples."
The Proclamation goes on: "This is the night when Christ broke the prison bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld. O truly blessed night when things of heaven are wed to those of earth and the divine to the human! Our birth would have been no gain had we not been redeemed. O wonder (God our Father) of Your humble care for us! O love, O charity beyond all telling, to ransom as slave You gave away Your Son!"
Father Pius Parsch remarks, "The early Christians kept but one feast, Easter, and they were right in doing so, for the Easter Solemnity embraces all the events in the life of Christ. His birth, baptism, passion, death are all segments of His one great task, the work of man’s redemption. At Easter this work reaches its full and final stage. At Easter Christ becomes the Redeemer, the Conqueror, the Father of a new family of human beings. At Easter He becomes the glorified Head of the Mystical Body, His Catholic Church. That Body can now expand to its predestined fullness. It now can sanctify and divinize all its members."
Pope Benedict
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, said, "Easter morning brings us news that is ancient, yet ever new: Christ is risen! The echo of this event which issued forth from Jerusalem twenty centuries ago continues to resound in the Church, deep in whose heart lives the vibrant faith of Mary, Mother of Jesus, of Mary Magdalene, and the other women who first discovered the empty tomb, and the faith of Peter and the other Apostles. Right down to our own time, even in these days of advanced communications technology, the faith of Christians is based on that same news, on the testimony of those sisters and brothers who saw firstly the stone that had been rolled away from the empty tomb and then the mysterious messengers who testified that Jesus, the crucified was risen. And then, Jesus Himself, the Lord and Master, living and tangible, appeared to Mary Magdalene, to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and finally to all the Eleven gathered in the Upper Room (Mark 16:9-14)."
"The resurrection of Christ is not the fruit of speculation or mystical experience. It is an event which, while it surpasses history, nevertheless happens at a precise moment in history and leaves an indelible mark upon it. The light which dazzled the guards keeping watch over Jesus’ tomb has traversed time and space. It is a different kind of light, a divine light that has rent asunder the darkness of death and has brought to the world the splendor of God, the splendor of Truth and Goodness. Just as the sun’s rays in the springtime cause the buds on the branches of the trees to sprout and open up, so the radiance that streams forth from Christ’s resurrection gives strength and meaning to every human hope, to every expectation, wish, and plan. Hence, the entire cosmos is rejoicing on Easter, caught up in the springtime of humanity, which gives voice to creation’s silent hymn of praise. The Easter Alleluia, resounding in the Church as she makes her pilgrim way through the world, expresses the silent exultation of the universe and above all the longing of every human soul that is sincerely open to God, giving thanks to Him for His infinite beauty, goodness, and truth."
Easter Words
As has been said, Easter is the annual proclamation that eternal life is available and here and that victory has been won. It inspires us, the disciples of Christ, to toil more diligently upon the lake (John 21:3), knowing that He is on the shore waiting to greet us, to love us, and to ask us to love Him in return. Easter should remind us that at every Mass He walks with us on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), to tell us what little sense we have, to interpret for us the passages of Sacred Scripture, and to make our hearts burn within us so we can recognize Him in the "Breaking of the Bread". Creation began on a Sunday and so the fact that the resurrection occurred on a Sunday means that a new creation has been begun by Almighty God. The history of the new creation began on the first day of the week and will continue until it is, at Christ’s Second Coming, enveloped in an endless sabbatical rest.
Blessed John Henry Newman said, "The celebration of Easter is meant to help us to know our place, our position, our situation as children of God, members of Christ, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. We are risen and we know it not. It takes a long time for us to apprehend what we profess. We are like people waking from sleep who cannot collect their thoughts at once. But, little by little, the truth should dawn on us. Let us pray, let us work, let us meditate and thus gradually comprehend what we are. As time goes on, we must struggle to give up the shadows and find the substance. Each Easter as it comes will enable us more to rejoice with heart and understanding about that great salvation which Christ accomplished. With Saint Paul each Easter calls out to us across the centuries: Our commonwealth is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). Let us answer that call, in the words of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, by going to Jesus’ empty tomb with the perfumes of good acts and the spices of holy desires until we see God’s face and share Christ’s victory forever." Saint Augustine preached that we, Christ’s followers, are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux said that Easter makes us realize that "the Lion of the Tribe of Judah has conquered and Wisdom has prevailed over malice."
Pope Benedict said, "On Easter let us resolve to walk behind Christ through our wounded world singing Alleluia. In our hearts there is joy and sorrow and on our faces there are smiles and tears. Such is our earthly reality. But, Christ is risen. He is alive and He walks with us. For this reason, we can sing as we walk, faithfully carrying out our tasks on earth with our gaze fixed on heaven." Dear readers, to you and your loved ones go out my fervent prayers and good wishes for a most blessed Easter!
Three Feasts
Traditionally in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church there were always three solemnities associated with a customary blessing of holy water, the Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost. The Epiphany not only commemorates the coming of the Magi who followed a miraculous star to Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1-15), but also includes, although often liturgically spread over several weeks, the other two initial "manifestations" of Jesus, namely, His Baptism in the River Jordan by His cousin, Saint John the Baptist (Matthew 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22; John 1:29-34), and His first public miracle, changing water into wine at the wedding at Cana in Galilee ( "The conscious water saw its God and blushed" John 2:1-11). Hence, the water connection! Pentecost is the great solemnity which recalls the coming of God, the Holy Spirit, in fire and wind upon the Infant Catholic Church, gathered with the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Upper Room in Jerusalem (Acts of the Apostles 1:14 & 2:1-41). But, water is involved because Jesus at one time referred to the Holy Spirit in terms of water, when He said, "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture says, from within him there shall flow rivers of living water", and then Saint John notes, "He said this, however, of the Spirit Whom they who believed in Him were to receive" (John 7:37-39; & Ezekiel 47:1-12).
It is Easter, however, which is the primary water solemnity of the Church year. This is because Easter is the time and season for Baptism, either the baptizing of the new members of the Church or the time for the regaining of baptismal innocence by those already baptized as the culmination and completion of their Lenten penances and self-denial. At Easter Sunday Mass, in place of reciting the Creed, it is the custom and tradition for all the faithful to renew their baptismal promises and commitment, "which they either made themselves or their parents and godparents made for them". It is the association of Baptism with the dying and rising of Christ, an insight from the earliest days of the Church, that situated Easter as the major time for Baptisms. Saint Paul, for example, declares: "Do you not know that all we who have baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? For we were buried with Him by means of Baptism into His death in order that, just as Christ has arisen from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall be so in the likeness of His resurrection also. .....But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live together with Christ, for we know that Christ, having risen from the dead, dies no more, death shall no longer have dominion over Him" (Romans 6:3-11). Of course, this is made dramatically and vividly clearer on those occasions when Baptism is administered to adults by immersion.
Most of Planet
It is a fact that we human beings are creatures of water. So it was very fitting that Jesus would use this very common and familiar but also very necessary item as the sign and vehicle of His foundational sacrament. About three quarters of our planet’s surface is covered with water. About two thirds of a human’s body weight is actually water. Even before we are born, when we are in our mother’s womb, we are surrounded by water. It has been pointed out too that human blood has the same proportion of salt in it as does the ocean, another link with water.
Water (H-2 O) generally serves two basic functions: it washes and cleanses as an almost universal solvent, and then it provides for and sustains life. So appropriately, a human being’s first encounter with the risen Christ which occurs through the water of Baptism, first of all, washes away the tragic legacy, original sin, which is the primordial catastrophe that we all inherit from our earliest human ancestors. Then, through baptismal water, Christ infuses His own risen life into the human soul, that is, He pours into the baptized peson His sanctifying grace which makes one a partaker in the very divine nature (2 Peter 1:3-4), opening to such a predestined and chosen one the possibility of eternal and heavenly joy.
Since life as we know it seems to depend on water, it is understandable that interplanetary exploration, by NASA or other such entities, always seems to involve a search for water. Life of any kind would seem to require water in order to exist. Looking at satellite photographs taken of our earth from outer space, one can see very plainly places such as the Sahara Desert, where only minimal amounts of life, whether vegetative or animal, can exist, due to the extremely tiny amounts of water available. Where there is more water, there seems to be more capacity for life. Divine life then is properly and wonderfully signified by the waters of Baptism.
The New Eve
In the Easter blessing of holy water, the ritual cites the great moments in sacred history when water destroyed evil and effected salvation simultanously: at creation when order came out of chaos (Genesis 1:1-2); at the time of Noah (Genesis 6-10; 2 Peter 2:5); and at the time of the Exodus, when Moses led the descendants of Abraham through the Red Sea (Exodus 14:10-31). But, of course, it was in our Lord’s passion, when, after His death on the cross, the soldier pierced His side with a lance and blood and water poured out (John 19:33-34). that water took on the most sacred and important significance.
Saint John Chrysostom said regarding the blood and water flowing from Christ’s side, "Beloved, do not pass over this mystery without thought...I said that water and blood symbolized Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. From these two sacraments the Church is born....Since the symbols of Baptism and the Eucharist flowed from His side, it was from His side that Christ fashioned the Church, as He had fashioned Eve from the side of Adam.... God took the rib when Adam was in deep sleep, and in the same way Christ gave us the blood and water after He was in the sleep of His own death. Do you understand then how Christ has united His Bride to Himself....?
Saint John the Evangelist says, "This is He Who came in water and blood, Jesus Christ, not in water only but in water and in the blood. And, it is the Spirit Who bears witness that Christ is the Truth. For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and these Three are One. And there are three that bear witness on earth: Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one!"
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI says, "Water typifies all that is precious on earth. Anyone who has ever been thirsty knows the truth of this....In Baptism a spring of water flows from Christ’s cross through the entire Church, like a mighty stream that gladdens the City of God (Psalm 46:5). We must never forget that the most precious stream of water in the world pours from the cross and death of Jesus..."
Cannot Define
Many millions of Catholic children in the United States, over more than a century in the past were required to memorize one of the first questions and answers in the Baltimore Catechism: "Who is God? God is the Supreme Being Who made all things and keeps them in existence." The answer, of course, is correct, but is only partially so. It is, as all such answers to such a question must be, wholly inadequate. This is because God cannot be defined. A definition means to surround something with words that set forth its limits and boundaries. However, God is infinite, utterly transcendent, and totally "Other", and, therefore, has no limits or boundaries. Human beings might be able to come up with some partial descriptions of Almighty God and speak, though weakly, about His attributes, but to "define" Him would be as absurd as trying to reduce Him to a mathematical formula or placing Him in a test tube! For any creature attempting to "define" God would mean succumbing to the primordial lie and temptation of Lucifer in the Garden of Eden, with the arrogance and consequences of what happened to Adam and Eve. The Devil told them, and they believed him, "No, you shall not die. For God knows that on whatever day you eat thereof your eyes will be opened, and you shall become like gods, knowing (defining) good and evil" (Genesis 3:5).
According to Saint Thomas Aquinas God is the Unmoved Mover of all motion. By this the Angelic Doctor does not merely mean the physical motion of material beings (stars, planets, elements and parts of our universe or perhaps other universes, etc.), but most importantly the philosophical movement from potency to act. In God Himself, there is not and never could be any potency. He is pure and absolute Act. All beings, except God Himself, are a combination of essence and existence. God is the Purest of pure spirits, and His mysterious and most sacred name (Exodus 3:13-14; John 8:58) tells us that His essence is identical to His existence ("I AM WHO AM"- in Hebrew "YAHWEH"). God is also the Uncaused Cause of all causes. Saint Thomas followed Aristotle in asserting that there seems to be in all beings, except the Supreme Being, internal causes (a material cause and a formal cause) and extrinsic causes (an efficient cause and a formal- or ultimate purpose- cause). Some students of Saint Thomas also talk about an "exemplary cause", but most scholars reject the term.
Magisterium
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, has remarked that God is the Supreme Reason and Intellect behind the design, the laws, and the order of the universe. He says, "The more we know of the universe the more profoundly we are struck by a Reason Whose ways we can only contemplate with astonishment. In pursuing those ways we can see anew that creating Intelligence to Whom we owe our own reason. Albert Einstein once said that ‘in the laws of nature there is revealed such a superior Reason that everything significant which has arisen out of human thought and arrangement is, in comparison with It, the merest empty reflection.’ In what is most vast, in the world of heavenly bodies, we see revealed a powerful Reason That holds the universe together. And, we are penetrating ever deeper into what is smallest, into the cell and into the primordial units of life. Here too we discover a Reason That astounds us, such that we must say with Saint Bonaventure, ‘Whoever does not see here is blind. Whoever does not hear here is deaf. And, whoever does not begin to adore here and to praise the creating Intelligence is dumb.’ God Himself shines through the reasonableness of His creation (Romans 1:18-23; Wisdom 13:1-19). Physics and biology and the natural sciences in general have given us a new and unheard of creation account with vast new images, which let us recognize the face of the Creator, and which make us realize once again that at the very beginning and foundation of all being there is a creating Intelligence. The universe is not the product of darkness and unreason. It comes from intelligence, freedom, and from the beauty that is identical with love. Seeing this gives us the courage to keep on living, and it empowers us, comforted thereby, to take upon ourselves the adventure of life."
The First Vatican Council explicitly taught that human beings have the capacity to come to a knowledge of God’s existence by the simple and natural use of their human reason. However, that Ecumenical Council also taught that it was "the good pleasure of His wisdom and goodness to reveal Himself..." The Council said that God decided not to leave the knowledge of His existence solely to human reason but made it part of His divine revelation, in order that it could be known more easily by every human being, could be known with solid certitude, and could be known with no fear of error. In this matter the First Vatican Council issued three condemnations: "1- If anyone says that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known with certainty with the natural light of human reason by the things that have been made, let him be anathema. 2.-If anyone says that it is impossible or useless for man to be taught through divine revelation about God and about the service (religious adoration) to be rendered to Him, let him be anathema. 3.-If anyone says that man cannot be elevated by the divine power to a knowledge and perfection that surpasses natural knowledge and perfection, but that he can and should by his own efforts and by continual progress eventually arrive at the possession of every truth and good, let him be anathema."
Teaching
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "Our profession of faith begins with God, for God is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End of everything. The words ‘I believe in God’ constitute the first affirmation of the Apostles Creed and are also the most fundamental. The whole Creed speaks of God, and even when it also speaks of man and the world, it does so in relation to God. The other articles of the Creed all depend on the first..."
The Fourth Lateran (Ecumenical) Council teaches: "We firmly believe and confess without reservation that there is only one true God, eternal, infinitely immense, unchangeable, incomprehensible, all powerful, and ineffable. He is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, three Persons indeed, but one essence, substance, and one divine nature entirely simple."
The Catechism says, "Jesus Himself affirms that God is the one Lord (Mark 12:29-30) Whom we must love with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. At the same time Jesus gives us to understand that He Himself is the Lord (Mark 12:35-37). To confess that Jesus is the Lord is distinctive of the Christian Faith. This is not contrary to belief in one God, nor does believing in the Holy Spirit as the Lord and Giver of life introduce any division into our concept and belief in the one God."
Big Word
God, we know, has revealed Himself as completely infinite, purely spiritual, and totally transcendent. Any matter in Him, matter which is always limiting with its space, weight, etc., would mean imperfection in God, and that is impossible because it would be contradictory to the all-perfect God. Therefore, until the astounding and miraculous incarnation occurred, the conception and birth of Jesus, it would always have been utterly impossible accurately to think or speak of God as having human dimensions and organs, human emotions, characteristics, and attitudes, etc. Yet, divine revelation, especially in Sacred Scripture and particularly in the Old Testament, speaks of God precisely in that way, attributing to Him human form and dimensions, although He has no body nor spatial dimensions. Since all the words of the Bible are inspired by God and are thus inerrant, we must conclude that the sacred authors used that way of speaking as a literary form or device in order to better dramatize and depict God’s dealings with humanity. This literary form is called by theologians by the word "anthropomorphism". In the divine condescension of supernatural revelation, God, Who knows well that He is beyond all human imagining or experience and beyond created human grasp, bent down to us to speak of Himself in a literary form that would be comprehensible to finite human reason.
Throughout the Old Testament, repeatedly the faith of the Chosen People of the Ancient Covenant was expressed concretely in anthropomorphic language. God is said to have eyes (Amos 9:3; Sirach 11:12), ears (Deuteronomy 9:18), hands (Isaiah 5:25), and feet (Genesis 3:8). God molds man out of slime and clay, plants a garden, and takes His rest (Genesis 2:3-8). God speaks (Genesis 1:3; Leviticus 4:1), listens (Exodus 16:12), closes the door of Noah’s ark (Genesis 7:160, and whistles (Isaiah 7:18). He laughs (Psalm 2:4), rejoices (Sophoniah 3:17). becomes angry (1 Chronicles 13:10), disgusted (Leviticus 20:23), regretful (Jeremiah 42:10), revengeful (Isaiah 1:240, and jealous (Exodus 20:5; Deuteronomy 5:9). However, the Hebrew People periodically were warned very sternly to take these descriptions of God only as graphic metaphors and not literally (Osee 11:9; Job 10:4; Numbers 23:19). They were strictly forbidden to make or tolerate any man-made images of Yahweh, Who is all-holy, divine, unique, and different from all creatures, with no visible shape or form (Deuteronomy 4:12 & 5:8).
Anthropomorphism
Since the time of the New Dispensation (the New Testament) it has become even more clear to any human intelligence, when illuminated by supernatural faith, that nothing material can be said or thought about God, except by way of what is called "analogy". Things like God’s walking and talking with Adam, changing His mind about various things sometimes in reaction to human words or acts, becoming exasperated, venting emotions, etc. can only be metaphors and understood by analogy. However, the theological matter becomes a bit more complicated when spiritual activity, similar to what His rational creatures (angels and humans) can do, are attributed also to God, for instance, knowing and loving.
Knowing and loving when attributed to God are not merely metaphors. God truly knows and loves, as do human beings. However, God’s knowing and loving, are somehow like those activities in His creatures, and yet are absolutely and totally different in Him. This similar yet utterly dissimilar concept is what theologians call "the analogy of being", something that great Thomist philosophers, like Maritain, often say must be grasped by intuition rather than reason alone. All human activity, even that which is spiritual, by definition is finite and imperfect. However, God’s spiritual acts of knowing and loving, on the contrary, are infinite and perfect. Saint Augustine of Hippo tells the story of his stroll along a beach while working on his great book on the Most Holy Trinity ("De Trinitate"), and there seeing a little boy playing in the sand with a toy shovel and pail. When asked what he was doing, the small boy replied that he was planning to put the entire ocean in a hole he was digging in the sand. Then it dawned on the Doctor of the Church that it would be easier for that boy to accomplish his impossible task, than for himself to try to insert the infinite totality of God into his finite mind.
Saint Anselm
Saint Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury and Doctor of the Church, who lived from the years 1030 A.D. to 1109, wrote this prayer when standing in awe before his study of God: "The light in which You dwell, O Lord, is beyond my understanding. It is so brilliant that I cannot bear it. I cannot turn my mind’s eye toward it for any length of time. I am dazzled by its brightness, amazed by its grandeur, overwhelmed by its immensity, bewildered by its abundance. O Supreme and Inaccessible Light, O Complete and Blessed Truth, how far You are from me, even though I am close to You. How remote You are from my sight, even though I am present to Yours. You are everywhere in Your entirety, and yet I do not see You. In You I move and have my being (Acts of the Apostles 17:28), and yet I cannot approach You. You are within me and around me and yet I do not perceive You."
"O God, let me know You and love You so that I may find my joy in You. And, if I cannot do this fully in this life, let me at least make some progress every day until at last that knowledge, love, and joy come to me in all their plenitude. While I am here on earth let me learn to know You better, so that in heaven I may know You fully. Let my love for You grow deeper here so that there I may love You fully. On earth then I shall have great joy in hope and in heaven complete joy in the fulfillment of my hope. Surely, Lord, inaccessible light is Your dwelling place and no one apart from You Yourself can enter into it and fully comprehend You. If I fail to see this light it is simply because it is too bright for me. Still, it is by this light that I see all that I can, even as weak eyes, unable to look directly at the sun, see all they can by the sun’s light."
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI reminds us, "God loved us first! One should take this sentence as literally as can be. For this is truly the great power in our lives and the consolation we need, and it’s not seldom that we need it. He loved me first, before I myself could love at all. It was only because He knew me and loved me that I was made. I was not thrown out into the world by some operation of chance....and now have to do my best to swim in this ocean of life, but I am preceded by a perception of me, an idea and a love of me. These are present in the ground of my being. What is important for all people, what makes their lives significant is the knowledge that they are loved." "In this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that He has first loved us and sent His Son as a propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10).
Personal
It is a truth of our Catholic Faith that human reason, even when exercised by fallen human nature and unaided by divine intervention, would be capable of demonstrating with certainty the existence of God, and consequently knowing that God is personal and that God is one. Tertullian said, "The Supreme Being must be unique and without equal. If God is not one, then He is not God." This is why God in His divine revelation teaches that pagans are to be blamed for not honoring the God that they should have known by their natural reason through a consideration of His creatures (Romans 1:20). Of course, these facts about God Himself He also revealed, thereby reinforcing and supporting such naturally knowable truth. Both divine revelation and natural reason also teach humanity that deriving from monotheism, the truth of the oneness of God, the fact that God is completely distinct from all of His creatures. Pantheism, in all of its forms, is a violation of human reason as well as a denial of divine revelation. Finally, human thought correctly used must, therefore, come to the necessary conclusion that God must be adored and worshiped, that is, that all human beings instinctively know that they are required to practice religion and that God must be obeyed. At least implicitly, all humans, even those unfortunates who have not yet heard the Gospel, are required by their human condition as rational animals to practice at a minimum natural morality and always to proclaim in regard to their Creator, "Thy will be done" (Matthew 6:10). Their ultimate salvation depends on this. In God, as Saint Paul teaches, we human creatures "live and move and have our being... since it is He Who gives to all men life and breath and all things" (Acts of the Apostles 17:25-30).
Human reason along with divine revelation teaches that God is provident and personal. He is not merely some kind of impersonal "force" or "power". Hence, it is quasi-blasphemous to use such expressions as "May the force be with you". Nor may God be considered a sort of impersonal "ether" penetrating the universe, but He is the Existent Essence, (Yahweh, Elohim, Adonai -God and Lord), and in and identical to that divine Essence is an all-knowing Intelligence and absolute Free Will. The theologian and philosopher John of Saint Thomas says it is legitimate to speak of God as the Self-Subsistent Intellection.
Attributes
What are called the attributes of God are in reality identical to His divine Essence. From a creature’s point of view, however, attributes can be considered in their individual significance and in their relationship to each other. Sometimes this relationship folds into the realm of supernatural mystery. For instance, divine revelation tells us that God is all-Just and also all-Merciful. From our human angle absolute justice and absolute mercy seem fundamentally incompatible and in some measure contradictory. Yet, in God there can be no contradiction because that would be a an imperfection and God is absolutely perfect. We know with the certainty of faith that total justice and complete mercy somehow fit together in God, but we also realize that how this is possible is something beyond our human capacity to fully grasp.
Among the attributes of God which are in His very Being are simplicity and unicity. God is one in Himself and, therefore, utterly simple, which is to say, in Him there is no composition, neither physical, metaphysical, nor logical. God is infinite, that is, without any limits. His infinity has no indefiniteness or indetermination possible, since that would involve imperfection. God, therefore, is utterly unchangeable and impassible. All beings as beings are good, true, and beautiful. But, created beings, in this, are merely an extremely pale reflection of the Supreme Being, Who is Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in Himself. God is almighty, omnipotent, and thus can do all things without limit. However, He cannot contradict Himself or His perfect wisdom for that would mean imperfection in Him. (He cannot make a stone so heavy He Himself could not lift it. There is no limit to His infinite power.) God is perfect Intelligence and perfect Free Will. He is identical too with His supreme freedom, His supreme wisdom, His ubiquity, and His omniscience.
Knowing and Loving
In God there is no "before and after" but a only total "now". He knows, of course, the past, present, and future, but He also knows "futurables", that is, all possibilities and probabilities past, present and future. He knows every "what would be if". (For instance, He knows what you would be doing if you would have been born in China in 2300 A.D. instead of now in America, or what you would have done and what would have happened to you had you been born in a cave in Africa in the year 20 B.C., etc.) It is in God’s total knowledge, linked with His total freedom, that we can situate some notion of His loving reality in our personal predestination (Romans 8:30; Ephesians 1:5). He even keeps track of the number of hairs on our heads (Matthew 10:30; Luke 12:7).
In the Old Testament God confided to Israel that His revelation to them and His choosing them as His special possession was motivated out of sheer gratuitous love (Deuteronomy 4:37; 7:8; 10:15). It was out of that love that His prophets explained that He never stopped loving them and pardoning their infidelities and sins (Isaiah 43:1-7; Hosea 2; Jeremiah 31:3). In the New Testament, however, His everlasting love (Isaiah 54:8) reached its climax and conclusion with the giving of His most precious Gift: "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son" (John 3:16). As the Easter proclamation sings to God: "To ransom a slave You gave away Your Son". The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, "Saint John goes even further when he affirms that God is Love (1 John 4:8). God’s very Being is Love. By sending His only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed His innermost secret (1 Corinthians 2:7-16; Ephesians 3:9-12). God Himself is an eternal Exchange of Love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and He has destined us to share in that exchange."
Testimony
The Catechism reminds us of the great Jewish Sabbath Prayer" "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord" (Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29). Saint Augustine tells us, "Even when He reveals Himself, God remains a mystery. If you understood Him, He would not be God." The Catechism goes on to say, "Faith in God leads us to turn to Him alone as our first Origin and our ultimate Goal, and neither to prefer anything to Him nor to substitute anything for Him. The God of our faith has revealed Himself as He Who Is, (Yahweh), and He has made Himself known to us as "abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness" (Exodus 34:6)." "Behold God is great and we know Him not" (Job 36:26). Saint Joan of Arc said, "Therefore we must serve God first." Saint Teresa of Jesus said, "Whoever has God wants for nothing. God alone is enough." Let us always keep those saintly words in our hearts and minds.
Ubiquity
The infinity of God, the truth that in Him there are no limits, must necessarily apply also to His presence. To the question: Where is God?, the standard and correct catechism answer is: God is everywhere. Although completely and totally different and distinct from all His creatures, that is, from all other reality, God, nonetheless, is present to them all, by His knowledge, by His almighty power which keeps and sustains them in existence, and by His infinite love. To us human creatures also He is ever present, always closer to us than the air we breathe or the clothes we are wearing. He knows our thoughts before we think them. He knew all about us well before He created our immortal souls, and now He parcels out, second by fraction of a second, our continued existence.
The place or state of the hell of the damned, like sin itself, is fundamentally a "nothing", an emptiness, a negation, in the same way as a hole is defined by what it is not. God is present there only by His power and justice, but not by His joy, beauty, truth, and goodness. The fallen angels and human souls that are damned are suffering the torments of the inferno because God allows them to have for all eternity what they have chosen by their abusive use of their own free will. The perceived absence of God, it is said, is the worst and primary suffering of hell, the frustration of knowing that the ultimate purpose of one’s existence was the glorious happiness of union with God in the beatific vision and then the corresponding realization that this will not happen or even be possible for all eternity. The absence of God means the absence of love, which is why the hell of the damned is the permanent state of confusion and hatred where the devils and the damned souls hate God and hate each other forever.
Special Places
Although God is present everywhere, He is present and has been present, as divine revelation tells us, in certain special places and in certain special and sometimes intense ways.
In the Old Testament, for instance, there are many appearances and locutions of God speaking and acting through His Angels, Patriarchs, and Prophets. One can recall the presence of God in the Exodus episodes such as the cloud by day and the fire by night, the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions at Horeb and Sinai, the "Shikinah" or His special presence hovering over what was called the "kapporit" or "propitiatory", which was the golden slab, with the figures of the golden Cherubim, that covered the Ark of the Covenant. Devout Jews always knew from their inspired Scriptures that the Tabernacle, and later the Jerusalem Temple, was a particular location for the special presence of God (1 Kings 8:23-53). And, therefore, Mount Zion, where Jerusalem was situated, participated in this special presence. The Tabernacle, and the Temple that replaced and reflected it, had to be constructed in a way that God Himself had revealed and demanded. Jewish Rabbinic theology explained that God’s insistence on this arrangement was because that building was to be an earthly reflection or replica of the construction of the heaven of the saved itself.
In the New Testament all of that was superseded. The hypostatic union of the human nature of Jesus with His divine nature in His divine Person made Him an eternal living Temple where God was and is present in the most sublime way (John 2:21). The earthly Jerusalem sanctuary is now surpassed, overtaken, and made obsolete by "the greater and more perfect Tabernacle not made by hands" (Hebrews 9:1-14). In the New Testament also the Catholic Church, as the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ where God lives in His Holy Spirit, ( 1 John 3:24), now is the one and only Temple where God dwells and works out human salvation (Ephesians 2:19-22; 2 Corinthians 6:16). Indeed, because of this, God also makes the individual members of the Church, particularly by means of the Sacrament of Confirmation, His Temple, that is, the place of a most special divine presence. Saint Paul wrote: "Do you not know that your members are the Temple of the Holy Spirit, Who is in you, Whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?" (1 Corinthians 6:19).
Wisdom
Saint Paul also exclaims: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments and how unsearchable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor? Or who has given to Him the recompense that should be made to Him? For from Him and through Him and unto Him are all things. To Him be glory forever-Amen" (Romans 11:33-36; Isaiah 27-34 & 40:13; Job 41:11; Wisdom 9:13). Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said that "some who are called the ‘intelligentia’ are merely smart aleck and arrogant people who had been educated beyond their intelligence." Evidently Saint Paul, who clearly endorsed and deeply respected the wisdom literature of the Old Testament as found, for instance, in the Book of Wisdom. the Book of Ben Sirach, etc., discovered that it was necessary for him to decry the strutting and arrogant wisdom of some of the Greek philosophers whom he encountered in his ministry of proclaiming the Gospel and who were troubling some of his recent converts.
This caused him to say quite clearly: "Has not God turned to foolishness the wisdom of this world? ....for to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.... God has chosen to put to shame the wise with the foolish things of this world.... The wisdom that we speak about with those who are (spiritually) mature is not a wisdom of this world nor of the rulers of this world who are passing away. But we speak of the wisdom of God, mysterious and hidden, which God foreordained before the world for our own glory, a wisdom which none of the rulers of this world has known, for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Corinthians 1:17-31 & 2:6-16). In writing to the Colossians, Saint Paul told them, after he learned about their supernatural love in the Holy Spirit, "I have been praying for you unceasingly....asking that you may be filled with knowledge of God’s will, in all spiritual wisdom and understanding" (Colossians 1:9).
The only way to stand before God correctly in accordance with His will is to do so with profound humility and docility. He Himself says, "Learn then that I, I alone, am God, and there is no god beside Me. It is I Who bring both death and life, I Who inflict wounds and heal them, and from My hand there is no rescue" (Deuteronomy 32:39). The "Imitation of Christ" says: "Better to be the humble rustic who loves and obeys God than the proud scientist who can chart the course of the stars, but neglects his own soul. Better to experience compunction for sin than merely to know how to define it." Worldly wisdom often can be good, holy, and important, but we must never allow it to impede our growth in heavenly wisdom, which alone echoes into eternity.
Ordinations
In this beautiful time of each year, as we come near to the celebrations of the ordinations to the holy priesthood in our Diocese, it becomes quite suitable as well as spiritually enriching to reflect on the reality of Holy Orders once again, to pray anew and with increasing vigor for our priests and seminarians, and to thank Jesus, our divine Master, for giving us Himself in the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper, along with the Sacrament of Orders, which makes the Holy Eucharist valid and possible for us. What is the Catholic priesthood? Blessed Pope John Paul II said that question can be partly answered by proclaiming that the priesthood is a vocation, the priesthood is a gift, the priesthood is the nerve center of the whole life and mission of the Catholic Church, and the priesthood is a mystery. The Second Vatican Council teaches that "those men who receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders are consecrated in Christ’s name to feed the Church by the word and grace of God." The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, "Holy Orders is the sacrament through which the mission entrusted by Christ to His Apostles continues to be exercised in the Church until the end of time. Thus, it is the sacrament of apostolic ministry. It includes three degrees: episcopate, presbyterate, and diaconate. Ordination is also called "consecration", for it is a setting apart and an investiture by Christ Himself for His Catholic Church. The laying on of hands by the Bishop, with the consecratory prayer, constitutes the visible sign of the ordination."
"The Catholic priesthood is ministerial, that is, it is not mainly for the man himself who receives Orders, as much as for the people he is destined to serve. The Second Vatican Council says, ‘That office which the Lord entrusted to the pastors of His people is, in the strict sense of the term, a service.’ It is entirely related to Christ and to men and depends entirely on Christ and on His unique priesthood. It has been instituted for the good of men and the communion of the Church. The Sacrament of Holy Orders communicates a ‘sacred power’ which is none other than that of Christ."
From God Not Man
At every Mass we present our gifts to the Almighty, our tears and smiles, our work and play, our very breath and heart beats, all symbolized by the bread and wine brought up to God, but, of course, these are only things which God has first given to us. Then these gifts are taken by Christ, through the person and power of the ordained priest, and transubstantiated into Christ’s Flesh and Blood, the dying and rising of Jesus Himself, thus made into the perfect worship of God by God’s own action. Something that is somewhat analogous happens at ordinations to the priesthood.
A man is presented to God by the community and for the community of the Church, but he is, before all that, first given a call, a vocation, not from the community but from God Himself. As the Catechism says, "The ministerial priesthood has the task not only of representing Christ, Head of the Church before the assembly of the faithful, but also of acting in the name of the whole Church when presenting to God the prayer of the Church, and above all when offering the Eucharistic sacrifice. The words ‘in the name of the whole Church’ do not mean, however, that priests are delegates of the community.... It is because first of all that the ministerial priesthood represents Christ that it can represent the Church."
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, explains this further: "Here (in Holy Orders) a man does not exploit his own powers and capacities and is not installed as a functionary just because he can do something particularly well, or because he has a knack for something, or simply because it is a way he can earn his daily bread by holding this as a job." The word ‘Sacrament’ means a man is enabled to give what he cannot give by himself, doing things that he cannot do by himself. He is sent on a mission and becomes the messenger of what the divine Other has transmitted to him. This is why no one of his own accord can declare himself a priest. This is why no community can, by its own decisions, empower anyone to be a priest. Only from this Sacrament can a man receive what belongs to God and thus enter into the mission that turns him into being God’s messenger and God’s instrument. Being entrusted with the mission that the whole Church in her unity has herself received is what we call ordination to the priesthood. At an ordination to the priesthood, something is happening there that is greater than anything that any human beings on their own can do."
Council Teaching
The Second Vatican Council teaches, "Christ, Whom the Father hallowed and sent into the world, has, through the Apostles, made their Successors, the Bishops namely, sharers in His consecration and mission, and these, in their turn, duly entrusted in varying degrees various members of the Church, with the offices of their ministry. The function of the Bishops’ ministry was handed over in a subordinate degree to priests so they might be appointed in the order of priesthood and be co-workers of the episcopal order for the proper fulfillment of the apostolic mission that had been entrusted to it by Christ. Whilst not having the supreme degree of the pontifical office, and notwithstanding the fact that they depend on the Bishops in the exercise of their own proper power, the priests are for all that associated with them (the Bishops) by reason of their sacerdotal dignity and in virtue of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, after the image of Christ, the supreme and eternal priest. They are consecrated in order to preach the Gospel and shepherd the faithful as well as to celebrate divine worship as true priests of the New Testament."
"Through the Sacrament of Holy Orders priests share in the universal dimensions of the mission that Christ entrusted to the Apostles. The spiritual gift they have received in ordination prepares them not for a limited and restricted mission, but for the fullest, in fact universal, mission of salvation to the ends of the earth (Acts of the Apostles 1:8), prepared in spirit to preach the Gospel everywhere. It is in the Eucharistic cult or in the Eucharistic assembly of the faithful that they exercise in a supreme degree their sacred office. There, acting in the Person of Christ and proclaiming His mystery, they unite the votive offerings of the faithful to the sacrifice of Christ their Head, and, in the sacrifice of the Mass, they make present again and apply until the coming of the Lord, the unique sacrifice of the New Testament, that namely of Christ offering Himself once and for all a spotless victim to the Father. From this unique sacrifice their whole priestly ministry draws its strength".
The Catechism reminds us, "Priests can exercise their ministry only in dependence on the Bishop and in communion with him. The promise of obedience they make to the Bishop at the moment of ordination..." means that they "owe the Bishop love and obedience."
Solemn Words
Many recent Popes and various important magisterial documents have commented about the Catholic priesthood, emphasizing how, in the New Testament, there is only one authentic priesthood, that of the High Priest, Jesus Christ. All priesthood in the New Covenant is participatory, that is, it is always a privileged share in the one priesthood of Christ, Who is the only Mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5). No one can go to God, that is, get to heaven, except through Him (John 14:6).
The Venerable Servant of God, Pope Pius XII, wrote, "As our predecessors have taught, especially Pope Saint Pius X and Pope Pius XI....the priesthood is a great gift of the divine Redeemer, Who, in order to perpetuate the work of the redemption of the human race which He completed on His cross, confided His powers to the Church which He wished to be a participator in His unique and everlasting priesthood. The priest is like ‘another Christ’ because he is marked with an indelible character making him, as it were, a living image of our Savior. The priest represents Christ Who said, ‘As the Father has sent Me, so I also send you’ and ‘He who hears you hears Me’ (John 22:21; Luke 10:16). Admitted to this most sublime ministry by a call from heaven, the priest ‘is appointed for men in the things that pertain to God that he may offer gifts and sacrifices for sins’ (Hebrews 5:1). To the priest must come anyone who wishes to live the life of the divine Redeemer and who desires to receive strength, comfort, and nourishment for his soul. From the priest the salutary medicine must be sought by anyone who wishes to rise from sin and lead a good life. Hence, all priests may apply to themselves with full right the words of the Apostle of the Gentiles, ‘We are God’s helpers’ (1 Corinthians 3:9)".
Our present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, says, "The priest, for the Church and in the Church, is a humble but real sign of the one eternal Priest, Who is Jesus. The priest then has the duty to proclaim His word authoritatively, renew His acts of pardon and offering, and show His loving concern in the service of His flock, doing this in full communion with the Bishops and faithfully docile to the teaching of the Magisterium of the Church. The mystery of the priesthood in the Catholic Church lies in the fact that miserable human beings, by virtue of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, can speak with the ‘I’ of Jesus, acting in the very Person of Christ, Who wishes to exercise His priesthood through them. The priest receives his name and his very identity from Christ. Everything he does is done in His name. The priest’s ‘I’ becomes totally relative to the ‘I’ of Jesus. Therefore, the priesthood is indispensable because by means of the Holy Eucharist, which originates in God, the Catholic Church is built. In the Sacrament of Penance purification is conferred. Through the Sacrament of Holy Orders, therefore, the priesthood is precisely an involvement in the ‘salvation intended and offered for all’ of Jesus Christ."
Saints
Saint Ambrose said, "Nothing in the world can surpass the dignity of the priesthood. It exceeds that of kings as gold surpasses the worth of lead. The reason is because the power of kings extends only to temporal goods and to the bodies of men, but the power of the priest extends to spiritual goods and to the human soul. Hence, as much as the soul is more noble than the body, so much is the priesthood more excellent than royalty." Saint Bernard of Clairevaux agreed, saying, "The priesthood exceeds all the dignities of kings, emperors, and even angels."
Saint Ignatius of Antioch wrote, "You must consider your priests as the dispensers of divine graces and as the associates of God Himself." Saint Prosper said, "Priests are the glory and the immoveable columns of the Church. They are the gates to the eternal city, through which one is able to reach Christ. They are the vigilant guardians to whom the Lord has entrusted the custody of the keys of His kingdom of heaven. They are the stewards of the house of the divine King, Who assigns to each, according to His good pleasure, a place in His hierarchy." Saint Laurence Justinian wrote, "A few words fall from the lips of a priest and the Body of Christ is there substantially under the form of bread, and the Incarnate Word descends from heaven and is really present on the table of the altar. Never did the divine Goodness give such power to angels. The angels abide by the order of God, but the priests take Him into their hands, distribute Him to the faithful, and partake of Him as Food for themselves."
Saint Alphonsus Liguori said, "Priests truly have power over the actual Body of the Lord in the Holy Eucharist, but they also are given, in their ministry of the Sacrament of Penance, power over the Mystical Body of Christ. They have the power of the keys, that is, the power of delivering sinners from the danger of hell and of making them worthy of paradise, of changing them from slaves of Satan into being once more the children of God."
Saint John Chrysostom says of this priestly action, "The sovereign Master of the universe in this only follows His servant-priest by confirming in heaven what the servant decides on earth (John 20:23), in regard to forgiving or retaining sins."
Councils
The Second Vatican Council clearly intended all its work to be seen in the perspective of what is called the "hermeneutic of continuity’, that is, it explicitly stated many times in its documents that it had no intention or desire of overturning nor repudiating what the previous twenty ecumenical councils in the Catholic Church’s history had proclaimed, particularly stating its intention to accept and build upon what had been stated in the First Vatican Council and in the Council of Trent. Because of the denial by Luther and the Protestants of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, the Council of Trent treated Holy Orders extensively, especially in its twenty-third session (1545-1563 A.D.), so it serves a good purpose to know something of what the Council of Trent taught in order to understand better the teaching about the priesthood of the Second Vatican Council.
The Council of Trent says, for instance, "In conformity with God’s decree, sacrifice and priesthood are so related that both exist in all divine law. Therefore, in the New Testament, since the Catholic Church has received the holy and visible sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist according to the institution of the Lord, it is likewise necessary to acknowledge that there is in the Church a new, visible, and external priesthood into which the Old Testament priesthood was transformed (Hebrews 7:12). Moreover, Sacred Scripture makes it clear and the Tradition of the Catholic Church has always taught that this priesthood was instituted by the same Lord and Savior, and that the power of consecrating, offering, and administering the Body and Blood of Jesus in Holy Mass, and likewise the power of remitting and of retaining sins, was given to the Apostles and to their successors in the priesthood."
Sacred Heart
For the last several decades, Blessed Pope John Paul II and now our present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, have asked all the faithful on the Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (which this year falls on Friday, June 15th) to pray in a special way for the sanctification and holiness of all the priests of the Catholic Church. Pope Benedict says, "Let us pause on that feastday and contemplate the pierced side of the Crucified One. The essential nucleus of Christianity is expressed in the Heart of Jesus. In Christ the whole of the revolutionary newness of the Gospel was revealed and given to us. He is the Love that saves us and makes it possible for us already now to begin to live in God’s eternity. (John 3:16). His divine Heart calls to our hearts, inviting us to come out of ourselves, to abandon our human certainties, to trust in Him, and, following His example, to make of ourselves a gift of love without reserve."
" It is true that the invitation of Jesus to abide in His love (John 15:9) is addressed to every baptized person, but on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Day of Prayer for the holiness of priests, it resounds more powerfully since it is directed more to priests. It is a special moment to remember one of the beautiful and moving sayings of Saint John Marie Vianney, the Cure’ of Ars, who is the patron saint of all priests, especially parish priests, a saying cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: The priesthood is the Love of the Heart of Jesus."
The Pope remarks, "It is the experience of many priests today to notice that the modern "world" does not understand the Christian and, therefore, does not understand the priest, who is designated by God Himself to be the minister of the Gospel. This is sometimes because the world simply does not know God, but more frequently it is because it does not want to know Him (John 17:14-16). The world does not want to know God because it does not want to be disturbed by His will ( 1 John 4:4-5). That is the reason oftentimes that it refuses to listen to His priests." In the "Imitation of Christ", Thomas a’ Kempis reminds the faithful, however, that they themselves should always recall that "the priest, clad in sacred vestments, is Christ’s vicegerent, who is commissioned to pray to God for himself but also for all people" (Hebrews 5:1-3).
Great Words
Blessed Columba Marmion the brilliant and holy Benedictine Abbot, wrote: "Remember what happens on the day of ordination to the priesthood. On that blessed morning a young levite, overwhelmed by the sentiment of his own unworthiness and weakness, prostrates himself before the Bishop who represents the heavenly Pontiff. He bows his head under the imposition of hands by the consecrating prelate. At this moment the Holy Spirit descends upon him and the eternal Father is able to contemplate with ineffable complacency this new priest, a living reproduction of His beloved Son: This is My beloved Son! While the Bishop holds his hand extended and the whole assembly of priests imitate his gesture, the words of the angel addressed to the Virgin Mary are accomplished anew: The Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you (Luke 1:35). At this moment, full of mystery, the Holy Spirit takes possession of this chosen one of the Lord and effects between Christ and him an eternal resemblance. When he rises, he is a man transformed: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech (Psalm109:4 or 110:4)."
Father Walter Farrell, the great Thomist philosopher, says, "The priest is a man of power and authority. By his preaching, example, and counsel, he directs the lives of his parishioners in accordance with the revealed wisdom of God and the laws of His Catholic Church. In his administration of the sacraments and the blessings of the Church, the priest is the human channel through which the power of the passion of Christ is transmitted to men for their salvation. No man could give himself such power or arrogate to himself such authority. No mere man could even dare to choose himself for so stupendous a role in the life of men. Only God can make a priest and He does so in the Sacrament of Holy Orders."
"When a man becomes a priest he becomes another Christ. Before his ordination he received grace from others. But after his ordination he can communicate grace to others. He is the active human instrument through which the grace of Christ passes to men. Holy Orders sanctifies a man for the benefit of others. It makes him holy so that he can communicate holiness to others."
Humanity
The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, "The presence of Christ in the minister is not to be understood as if the latter were preserved from all human weakness, the spirit of domination, error, or even sin. The power of the Holy Spirit does not guarantee all the acts of ministers in the same way. While this guarantee extends to the sacraments, so that even the minister’s sin cannot impede the fruit of grace, in many other acts the minister leaves human traces that are not always signs of fidelity to the Gospel and consequently can harm the apostolic fruitfulness of the Church." This is why praying for our priests is so important, especially on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Saint Anthony said that he was convinced that priests are tempted by the Devil far more than lay people, because Lucifer knows winning a priest over to evil brings innumerable souls to hell. The old doggerel verse is worth remembering: "Keep them we pray Thee, dearest Lord, keep them for they are Thine, Thy priests whose lives burn out before Thy consecrated shrine." We must love and respect our priests, pray for them, and support them, and, if we detect their short-comings, to tell these to God, asking Him to assist and enlighten them, and, if necessary, change them.
The Second Vatican Council teaches, "Priests, as partakers of the function of Christ, the sole Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5), on their level of ministry announce the divine word to all. They exercise this sacred function of Christ most of all in the Eucharistic liturgy or synaxis. There, acting in the Person of Christ and proclaiming His mystery, they join the offering of the faithful to the sacrifice of their Head. Until the coming of the Lord (1 Corinthians 11:26), they re-present and apply in the sacrifice of the Mass the one sacrifice of the New Testament, namely the sacrifice of Christ offering Himself once and for all to His Father as a spotless Victim (Hebrews 9:11-28). For the penitent or ailing among the faithful, priests exercise fully the ministry of reconciliation and alleviation. They labor in word and doctrine (1 Timothy 5:17), believing what they have read and meditated upon in the law of the Lord, then teaching what they believe and practicing what they teach."
Into
It has been pointed out that the Greek preposition used in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, (Matthew 28:19) , recounting Christ’s final instructions to His Apostles about baptizing, is really "into" and not just "in". In other words, our Lord said that His future disciples were to be baptized "into" the name of the Most Blessed Trinity, that is, into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Since sanctifying grace, the created share in God’s own life which is infused into a human soul at Baptism, makes one a partaker in the nature of God Himself, (2 Peter 1:4), it was most suitable that Jesus would reveal something that we could not possibly have even suspected, had He not told us, about that divine nature into which Baptism plunges us, namely, that in one God, utterly simple, Pure Spirit, undivided and indivisible, there are three divine Persons. God is one but God is also a Trinity. That there are three Persons in God is and must ever remain a most sacrosanct mystery, which human reason cannot fathom, a mystery which does not contradict human reason, but which totally surpasses its ability to grasp. It is only through divine revelation that we can know of the immanent process of generation and spiration which underlies the real distinction of three Persons in one Godhead. The oneness of God, His unity and unicity are as essential to the revealed dogma of the Holy Trinity as is the dogma of the Trinity in Itself. Because no theistic philosophy is able to approach this dogma with unaided human reason, a believing Catholic is compelled to accept and believe it completely by obediently adhering, with the help of supernatural actual grace, to the teaching of the Church which Christ founded (Matthew 16:18-19). Only then, may one inquire further about this revealed mystery and examine it.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wrote: "To wish to fathom the mystery of the Holy Trinity is boldness, to believe it is happiness, and to realize it is everlasting life." Saint Francis of Assisi, one time after reciting the great doxology ("Glory be to the Father, etc.), exclaimed" "My God, how small You would have to be if we were able to understand You!" All the official prayers of the Catholic Church always begin and end in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, as do most of the private prayers of devout Catholic people. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: "The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in Himself. It is, therefore, the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching of Christianity."
Athanasian
All the known official creedal statements of Christianity from the earliest antiquity contain a profession about the Triune Godhead. One of the better known of these goes by the name of the Athanasian Creed. It carries the name of Saint Athanasius, the heroic defender of Christ’s divinity in the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.), which was the first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church. It contains his expressions and some of his very words, embodying his thought, but was written some time later in Latin (Saint Athanasius spoke and wrote only in Greek.), probably by Saint Ambrose, the Archbishop of Milan in the 4th century. The Athanasian Creed was regularly recited every Sunday in the Liturgy of the Hours until recent changes in the Divine Office. It goes by its first word in Latin "Quicumque" ("Whosoever"), and is still an important and valid expression, used in our time too, of the orthodox Catholic Faith.
"Whosoever wishes to be saved before all things must profess the Catholic Faith, which Faith, unless it is kept by one whole and undefiled, without a doubt that one will perish eternally. Now this is the Catholic Faith: We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the Persons nor dividing the Nature. The Person of the Father is distinct. The Person of the Son is distinct. The Person of the Holy Spirit is distinct. Yet the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit possess one Godhead, equal glory, and co-eternal majesty. As the Father is, so is the Son, and so also is the Holy Spirit. The Father is Uncreated, the Son is Uncreated, the Holy Spirit is Uncreated. The Father is Infinite, the Son is Infinite the Holy Spirit is Infinite. The Father is Eternal, the Son is Eternal, the Holy Spirit is Eternal. Nevertheless, there are not three Eternals, but one Eternal, even as there are not three Uncreateds, but one Uncreated, and one Infinite."
"So likewise, the Father is Almighty, the Son is Almighty, the Holy Spirit is Almighty. And yet there are not three Almighties but only one Almighty. So also the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. And yet, there are not three Gods, but only one God. So too, the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord. And still, there are not three Lords, but only one Lord. For just as we are compelled by Christian truth to profess that each Person is individually Lord and God, so also are we forbidden by our Catholic Religion to hold that there are three Gods or Lords."
"The Father was made by no one, being neither made, nor created, nor begotten. The Son is from the Father only, being neither made nor created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, being neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. Consequently, there is one Father, not three Fathers; there is one Son, not three Sons; there is one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits. Furthermore, in this Trinity there is no "before" or "after", no "greater" or "less" for all three Persons are eternal and co-equal. In every respect, therefore, as has already been stated, Unity must be worshipped in Trinity and Trinity in Unity."
Nicene-Constantinople
On each Sunday, Holy Day, and Liturgical Solemnity in the Latin Rite, we recite at Mass the Nicene-Constantinople formulation of our Catholic Creed, which, of course, contains the same trinitarian realities as the Athanasian Creed. Those words which we use were given to us by two Ecumenical Councils, that of Nicea (325 A.D.) and that of the First Council of Constantinople (381 A.D.). The words were forged mostly in various anti-heretical polemics, in which the Catholic Church had to find and use exact expressions in her journey through history, as she exercised her Christ-given duty to maintain intact and undiluted God’s divine revelation bestowed on humanity and found only in its complete and correct form in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, as properly guarded and interpreted by the Church’s Magisterium (Teaching Authority).
An old Latin hymn exclaims: "Three Persons, one Immensity encircling utmost time and space! One Greatness, Glory, Sanctity, one everlasting Truth sublime!" The Byzantine Liturgy has the exclamation: "The Father is my trust, the Son is my refuge, and the Holy Spirit is my protection. O Most Holy Trinity, all glory to Thee!"
Seeing God
In the Book of Exodus God bluntly told Moses, "You cannot see My Face" (Exodus 33:18-23). God probably set down that prohibition because of His desire to honor the outlook of His primitive Chosen People of old, who were convinced that seeing anyone means placing his image, and in some way his very being, into one’s eye and then conceptually into one’s mind. Since God is infinite, seeing Him, like knowing His name, would somehow be an attempt to encompass Him, and, thus, be a blasphemous try to limit Him Who cannot be limited. Therefore, in the Old Testament the vision of God’s face was confined only and exclusively to an after-death experience. The people then in those ancient times were terrified to see God’s face, for that would mean immediate death. Moses, the great lawgiver himself, who spoke with God "as a friend does, face-to-face" (Exodus 33:11), really only was permitted to view God’s "back". Even with that restriction, the face of Moses glowed so brightly after talking with God that he had to veil it when he later talked to the Israelites who were otherwise too frightened to look at him (2 Corinthians 3:7-18).
Divine ingenuity, however, designed for the New Testament, a way that we mortal human beings, who are, with no merit of our own, the predestined folk of the New and Eternal Covenant (Romans 8:30; Ephesians 1:5-11), could, while still dwelling on earth, gaze on the sacred countenance of God. This was accomplished, of course, by the incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Who united to His divine Personhood and His infinite nature a created human nature, body and soul, becoming like us in all things but sin (Hebrews 4:15).. Thus, He was able to say, "Philip, he who sees Me sees also the Father" (John 14:9). In His human nature Jesus would say: "....for the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28), while in His divine nature and divine Personhood He would proclaim that He constitutes forever one eternal Reality with God, the Most Blessed Trinity: "The Father and I are One" (John 10:30).
An unpublished "schema" for the First Vatican Council said, "Although it was the whole Blessed Trinity Who effected the incarnation of the Son of God, because the works of the Trinity cannot be divided, it was the Son alone Who took on a Servant’s form unto this one Person, not in the unity of the divine nature, but unto that which is proper to the Son and not what is proper to all Three Persons" (Philippians 2:5-11).
Chalcedon
The fourth Ecumenical Council in the history of the Catholic Church took place in the year 451 A.D. in what was then a suburb of Constantinople. Its main purpose was to settle various Christological questions, to eliminate some doctrinal confusion, and to refute some serious heresies in regard to beliefs about the identity of our Lord. Pope Saint Leo the Great sent legates from Rome to preside at the Council and also sent a famous "Tome" to guide the deliberations of the Bishops. When it was read aloud to the Council Fathers, they called out all together: "Peter has spoken through the mouth of Leo!" The Council issued an important and welcomed declaration of faith, removing ambiguity and strengthening dogmatic clarity throughout the Catholic world. It said:
"Following the teaching of the holy Fathers of the Church, we all with one accord teach this profession of faith in one identical Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We declare that He is perfect both in His divinity and in His humanity, true God and true Man, composed as Man of body and rational soul, and that He is consubstantial with the Father in His divinity and consubstantial with us in His humanity, being like us in every respect except for sin. We declare that in His divinity He was begotten of the Father before time began, and in His humanity He was begotten in this last age of the world of Mary the Virgin, the Mother of God, for us and for our salvation. We declare that the one selfsame Christ, only-begotten Son and Lord, must be acknowledged in two natures without any commingling or change or division or separation, and that the distinction between the natures is in no way removed by their union, but rather that the specific character of each nature is preserved and that they are united in one Person and one Hypostasis. We declare that Jesus is not split or divided into two Persons, but that there is one selfsame only-begotten Son, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. (John 1:1-14). This the prophets have taught about Him from the beginning and this is what Jesus Christ Himself has taught us. This is the Creed which the Fathers have handed down to us. This holy Ecumenical Council has formulated these truths with all accuracy and care and, therefore, orders that no one may bring forth or put into writing or devise or entertain or teach others anything contrary to this faith."
The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon show that the Bishops at the Council intended to mean this declaration as a commentary on the text: "No one has ever seen God. It is the only-begotten Son, Who is nearest to the Father’s heart, Who has made Him known" (John 1:18).
Pope Benedict XVI
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, says: "The great question.... What did Jesus bring, if not world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has He brought? The answer is very simple: God! He has brought God. He has brought the God Who formerly unveiled His countenance gradually, first to Abraham, then to Moses and the Prophets, then in the (biblical) Wisdom literature, the God Who revealed His face only to Israel, even though He was often honored among pagans in various shadowy guises. It is this God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the true God, Whom Jesus has brought to all the nations of the earth. And, now we can know His face, now we can call upon Him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus brought God and with God the truth about our origin and destiny, faith, hope, and love."
The Holy Father notes the importance and significance of the exchange of the words of Jesus with His bitter and hateful foes: Our Lord said to them. "You will die in yours sins, unless you believe that I am" (John 8:24). It is clear from the context of that exchange that Christ (Exodus 3:14) used the sacred tetragram ("Yahweh- "I Am Who Am"). Then He used the expression again, saying, "Before Abraham came to be I am" (John 8:59). On that occasion, as on another that Saint John relates (John 10:31-33), the Jews "took up stones to cast at Him", and the reason was the same in both incidents. Christ’s enemies told Him, "Not for any good work do we stone You but for blasphemy, because You, being a Man, make Yourself out to be God." Jesus, Saint Paul tells us, "is the image of the invisible God....For in Him were created all things in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and invisible..." (Colossians 1:15-16).
Crucial Questions
In the New Testament can be found many significant questions about the identity of Jesus, and, in some ways, the entirety of the four Gospel narratives constitutes a series of answers to those important questions, showing how our Lord gradually and progressively made known the fullness of Who He is was, and, indeed, Who He always is. This is a sample of those kinds of questions: "What manner of Man is this that even the wind and the sea obey Him?" (Matthew 8:27). "Who can forgive sins except God alone?" (Mark 2:7). "Are You the One Who is to come, or are we to look for another?" (Luke 7:19). "What must I do to gain eternal life?" (Luke 10:25). "Who then can be saved?" (Luke 18:26). "Who are You?" (John 8:25). "Who do You make Yourself out to be?" (John 8:53). "Where do You come from?" (John 19:9). "Are You then a king?" (John 18:37) "What is truth?" (John 18:38). "I adjure You by the living God to tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God?" (Matthew 26:63). "Behold, we have left everything in order to follow You, so what then shall we have?" (Matthew 19:27). "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life." (John 6:69). Then there are the great questions asked by Jesus Himself, such as: "Who do men say the Son of Man is?" and "But, who do you say that I am?" (Matthew 16:13-15). Those questions of our Redeemer, of course, were intended not only to be answered by the Apostles and other contemporaries of Christ in the course of His earthly sojourn, but by all humanity down through all the ages.
Jesus claimed and proved that He was the promised Messiah (in Greek, the "Christ" or the "Anointed One"), the Messiah Who was royal, descended from King David, (Luke 1:32), Prophetic, according to the promise foretold by Moses, (Mark 6:4), and Priestly, not by direct descent from Aaron, but according to the mysterious "Order of Melchisedech" (Hebrews 5:6; Psalm 110:4; Genesis 14:18-20). But, even before His resurrection, it seems that His divinity, something far above and beyond His "messiahship", was acknowledged, because He was addressed not only as "Master" and "Teacher" (in Hebrew "Rabbi"), but also by divine titles, such as ‘Lord" (in Greek "Kyrios" and in Hebrew "Adonai"). However, it is clear, especially in the Fourth Gospel, that the reality of the incarnation of God Himself, united to His "Word" (in Greek "Logos"), is the transcendent and sublime reality of Christ’s complete identity: "And the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us. And we saw His glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and of truth." (John 1:14). Thus the Fourth Gospel draws to a conclusion with the crescendo-words of the Apostle Saint Thomas addressed to Jesus, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28).
Aquinas
Probably the finest and most brilliant mind God ever created among mortal men belonged to the genius thirteenth century Dominican Friar, Saint Thomas Aquinas. His words in his theological treatment of Jesus deserve respect and study: "God the Son is equal with the Father. He was subject to death, not in His divine nature, which is the living fountainhead of all things, but in our nature, which He assumed in the unity of His Person. God the Son was not made by God, but was naturally born of God. Consequently, He is not subject to the eternal law, but rather is Himself the eternal law by a kind of appropriation. One difference between Christ and other men is this: they do not choose when to be born, but He, the Lord and Maker of history, chose His time, His birthplace, and His mother. We profess two wisdoms in Christ, the uncreated wisdom of God and the created wisdom of man."
The Angelic Doctor, (the common nickname for Saint Thomas Aquinas), goes on to say:
"Theological tradition ascribes to Christ a threefold grace. First, the grace of the hypostatic union, whereby a human nature is united to the Person of the Son of God; second, sanctifying grace, the fullness of which distinguishes Christ above all others, and third, His grace as Head of the Church. The proper office of a mediator is to join opposed parties, to labor so that extremes meet in the middle. To achieve our union with God is Christ’s work as High Priest and Mediator. He alone is the perfect Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5) between God and men, forasmuch as the human race was brought into agreement with God through His death. He is the only Mediator, Peace-maker, and Intercessor Who can save us. Christ’s manner of life was shaped by the purpose of His incarnation. He came into the world, first, that He might proclaim the truth, second, that He might free men from their sins, and third, that He might make it possible for human beings to have access to God."
Other Testimony
Saint John of Damascus, a great theologian in the eighth century, wrote: "The Word appropriates to Himself the attributes of humanity, for all that pertains to His holy Flesh is His, and He imparts to the Flesh His own divine attributes. He lived and acted both as God and as Man, taking to Himself a human nature which interacts with His divine nature, so that One and the Same Christ, therefore, is One Person, that is, perfect God and perfect Man. Him we worship along with the Father and the Holy Spirit with one obeisance, adoring also His immaculate Flesh and not holding that the Flesh is not worthy of worship. In fact, that Flesh is worshipped in the One Person of the Word Who came to earth to use it to save mankind. In this, however, we do not adore what is created. We worship Him not as mere Flesh, but as Flesh united to divinity, and we worship Him because His two natures are brought together in One Person and One Subsistence of God the Word."
"For there never was time when God was not His Word. He ever possesses His own Word, begotten of Himself, not as our word is, without subsistence and dissolving into air, but having a Substance in Him, and being Life and Perfection, not proceeding out of Himself but ever existing within Himself." Saint John of Damascus concluded one of his treatises on Jesus with a prayer: "Hail O Christ, the Word and Wisdom and Power of God and God Omnipotent! What can we helpless mortals give You in return for all the good gifts of Yours. For all things are Yours and You give us our salvation. You ask nothing from us except that we accept this gift and accept Yourself, Who are the Giver through Your indescribable goodness. Thanks be to You Who gives us divine life with the grace of possible eternal happiness. And, You restored this to us when we had gone astray through Your glorious condescension!"
Saint Ambrose remarked: "Jesus, the Son of God, is the face of the Father. Whoever sees the Son, sees the Father also. This is what Christ Himself said (John 14:9). This is Who God really is!"
Anniversary
The late and well known scholar, Sister Loretta Gosen C.PP.S., who researched and authored the first volume of the history of the Diocese of Lincoln, began her book with these words: "On August 2, 1887, the 23,844 square miles of Nebraska, located south of the Platte River, became the Diocese of Lincoln by decree of Pope Leo XIII." He signed the Papal Bull on August 2, 1887, bringing this about, and then on August 9, 1887, he appointed Thomas Bonacum as the first and founding Bishop of Lincoln. The territory of this extensive Diocese is larger than the combined territory of the four States of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, where there are fifteen separate Catholic dioceses. It embraces two time zones and is also larger than the entire island of Ireland, where there are 26 Catholic dioceses. This year, then, marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Diocese of Lincoln. This anniversary will be celebrated here in various ways, beginning with a special Solemn Pontifical Mass at the Cathedral of the Risen Christ in Lincoln on August 15th, 2012. On that date, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, there will also be special anniversary Masses celebrated in various parishes throughout our Diocese as well. It will be a wonderful occasion for all Catholics in this Diocese to thank God for the many blessings that He has showered upon our Diocese in this past century and a quarter, to ask His pardon for our faults and failings, and to beg Him anew for His continued blessing, grace, and guidance for the years ahead.
Reflecting on the diocesan history, Sister Loretta remarks that, looking at that history, we can see it as a part of "the plan of a kind Providence, Who has guided the Church since her beginning and will continue to care for her until the end of time" (Matthew 28:20; Ephesians 5:25-30). Sister Loretta suggested that we view "the development of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Lincoln as a manifestation of God’s wisdom, guiding His people to love and serve Him and each other." In an exhortation to our Diocese for its diocesan centennial in 1987, she encouraged gratitude to God Who made the achievements of the Diocese possible and helped the present members of the Church "to gain encouragement and strength from all those noble people, known and unknown, who have woven the history of the Diocese. They understood their limitations and endured the stresses and even the tragedies of life without being overwhelmed. Through their personal industry and sacrifices they brought to fruition the divine plan in history."
Jurisdictional History
From her earliest days, after she emerged from the catacombs and ancient pagan persecutions in the early 4th century, the Catholic Church everywhere has usually and ordinarily found it helpful, for purposes of efficiency and effectiveness, to follow the boundaries of civil political units, whether national, international, or local, in drawing up her own internal administrative and jurisdictional boundaries. This is why from 1493, shortly after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, the territory of the Diocese of Lincoln was considered to be under the ecclesiastical authority of the Bishops in Spain. This changed in 1682, when the explorer De La Salle claimed for the King of France all the land drained by the Mississippi River and its tributaries. The territory of the Diocese of Lincoln then came under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of Quebec. European history caused another change in 1763, when the territory reverted to Spain and was given briefly into the care of the Bishop of Santiago in Cuba. Then in the Napoleonic era France again took control, but before there could be an ecclesiastical change, Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory to Thomas Jefferson in 1803, and our diocesan territory became part of the United States in the Louisiana Purchase, and was then placed under the spiritual care of Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore, who almost immediately passed the spiritual jurisdiction over to the Bishop of New Orleans. Then in 1827, when Saint Louis became a Diocese, the territory of what is now the Diocese of Lincoln came under the jurisdiction of Bishop Rosati of that See. It remained part of Saint Louis until Blessed Pope Pius IX, in 1850, agreeing with the suggestions of the American Catholic Bishops, detached it from Saint Louis and made it part of a new Vicariate Apostolic called "The Vicariate of East of the Rocky Mountains", nicknamed "The Indian Territory".
The Vicariate consisted of what is now all of Nebraska, both Dakotas, most of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, and all of what is now Kansas. The new Vicar Apostolic was the Jesuit missionary from France, Father John Baptist Miege, who was consecrated a Bishop on March 25, 1851. At that time there were no priests and no Catholic churches in what is now Nebraska and very few Catholic people, mostly French fur traders and Indian converts to the Faith. Bishop Miege lived mainly in Missouri and in the Kansas area, but he did occasionally visit the Nebraska territory, and he tried to get the Church somewhat organized at least in Nebraska City and Plattsmouth, which had the largest population of any Nebraska towns in those times.
Further Developments
After many pleas to the Pope, the Holy Father allowed Bishop Miege to arrange in 1857 for the Vicariate to be split in two, making a Nebraska Vicariate and a Kansas Vicariate Even so, the Nebraska Vicariate extended from Canada to Kansas and from the Missouri River to the summit of the Rockies, which included part of Idaho, Montana, and the Dakotas. It was Bishop Miege who persuaded Benedictine monks from the Latrobe Abbey of Saint Vincent in Pennsylvania and later from Atchison in Kansas to make missionary visits to Southern Nebraska. When he retired in 1859, Bishop Miege was succeeded as the Vicar Apostolic of Nebraska by a Trappist Abbot, James O’Gorman, who had been born in Ireland, and who had been one of the founders of the Cistercian Abbey of New Melleray near Dubuque. Following his consecration as a Bishop in Saint Louis in 1859, and travelling by river boat, O’Gorman took up residence in Omaha, where he found one small shed used as a church building and a few visiting Benedictine missionaries, but only two resident priests in all of Nebraska. His tenure was marked by severe obstacles and hardships beyond belief which were met, however, by his unflagging energy, perseverance, and unconquerable faith. He was one of the American Bishops who participated in the First Vatican Council which closed in 1870 in Rome. At O’Gorman’s death in 1874, there were 14 Catholic churches in Nebraska and a growing number of priests. By that time too the population of the Nebraska Territory began to grow quite rapidly, mostly from European immigration and the promise of free Homestead land.
The final Vicar Apostolic of Nebraska (1876 to 1885) and then the first Bishop of Omaha (1885 to 1890) was Bishop James O’Connor, an Irish born priest of Philadelphia, who had previously been successively Rector of Saint Michael Seminary in Pittsburgh, convent chaplain in Youngstown. Ohio, Rector of Saint Charles Seminary in Philadelphia, and then, while a Parish Pastor, the spiritual director of Saint Katherine Drexel.
Quasquicentennial
There were many significant factors that contributed to the 19th century population growth in Nebraska and which eventually pointed toward the formation of the Diocese of Lincoln one hundred and twenty-five years ago this month. Undoubtedly the fact that Nebraska was admitted into the Union as a State in 1867 was important, along with extensive commercial development, when many people and businesses began to make money by providing a variety of supplies for the more than 300,000 people who traversed Nebraska travelling the Oregon Trail to the Pacific Northwest and sometimes to California. The prospect of free Homestead land and extensive advertising throughout Europe by the important and prosperous Railroad Companies, which were anxious to gather customers, seem to have had what was perhaps the greatest impact on Nebraska’s population growth. Between 1880 and 1885 the population of Nebraska witnessed a sixty percent increase.
Since that population increase was also experienced in the neighboring territories, Bishop James O’Connor, the Vicar Apostolic of the Vicariate of Nebraska gathered support from other American Bishops to persuade the Holy See to detach from the Vicariate the territories of the Dakotas and of Montana and Idaho, leaving Bishop O’ Connor’s Vicariate only Nebraska and the Wyoming territory. Then, in answer to a petition to the Holy See by all the U.S. Bishops gathered at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, the status of the Vicariate was elevated to that of a Diocese, and Bishop O’Connor was named by Pope Leo XIII as the first Bishop of the Diocese of Omaha on October 2, 1885. The Diocese consisted of all of Nebraska and Wyoming, and was designated a suffragan See to the Archdiocese of Saint Louis. Almost immediately, however, Bishop O’Connor thought the territory too large for one Bishop and was joined by the Bishops of the Province of Saint Louis in 1886, in petitioning the Holy See to make two additional dioceses out of the Diocese of Omaha, Cheyenne in Wyoming and Lincoln south of the Platte River. The Bishops said this was necessary because of population increase and the enormous expanse of territory being simply too much for any one Bishop to care for pastorally.
When the Holy See initially hesitated about making Lincoln a Diocese, Bishop O’Connor, "with his Irish up", sent a strong letter to the Propagation of the Faith Office in Rome (which was in charge of such things for America which at that time was still considered missionary territory), explaining that the Pope ought to do this for three main reasons: first, the Platte River divided the State about equally into two habitable parts, and the people south of the river for cultural and historical reasons did not like the people to the north; second, there were very few usable bridges over the river; third, the river often was too shallow to use boats to ferry across but it was always too dangerous to ford, especially in the springtime. He pointed out that there would be 31 priests in any new Diocese south of the river, which was 7 more than he found in the entire Vicariate when he arrived decades earlier. And so, by decree of Pope Leo XIII, signed, sealed, and sent on August 2, 1887, the Diocese of Lincoln was created, and several days later the Reverend Thomas Bonacum, a priest of Saint Louis, was named the Bishop. The diocesan boundaries for Lincoln were assigned as the south bank of the Platte River on the north, the middle of the Missouri River on the east, the State of Kansas on the south, and the State of Colorado on the west.
First Bishop
In our diocesan Chancery Office, there is a wall-plaque beneath a portrait of Bishop Bonacum, placed there by Bishop James Casey, which says: "This Chancery and Administration Headquarters for the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Lincoln is dedicated on September 19, 1961, in grateful memory of the first Bishop, The Most Reverend Thomas Bonacum, whose zealous and untiring leadership from 1887 to 1911 laid the foundations of the faith across the prairies of Southern Nebraska." Thomas Bonacum was born at Thurles in County Tipperary, Ireland, on January 29, 1847. While he was still an infant, his parents, Edmund and Mary moved with him to Saint Louis, Missouri. He attended a Christian Brothers grade school there and then, deciding God was calling him to the priesthood, went to high school and college at Saint Francis de Sales Seminary in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He then was sent to complete his priesthood preparation at Saint Vincent Seminary in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He was ordained a priest on June 18, 1870, in Saint Louis and was an assistant pastor there for six months, followed by two three year terms as a pastor in two parishes.
Always intellectually brilliant and outstanding in his academic work, he was then sent from 1877 to 1879, to study at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Wurzburg in Germany under the future Cardinal Joseph Hergenrother. It was there that he acquired his doctorate and perfected his grasp of languages, which included German, Czech, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He was noticed and highly praised by his professors, and, as a result, the American Bishops chose him as one of their theological experts and consultants for their Plenary Council in Baltimore in 1884. The American Bishops were so impressed by him there that they unanimously proposed him as a candidate first for the Diocese of Davenport, Iowa, and later for Belleville, Illinois. But the Holy See had other ideas, and on August 9, 1887, Pope Leo XIII named him as the founding Bishop of Lincoln. He received the official letter the following September, but somehow, to his distress, the secular press got the news first and published it a month ahead of time. At the time he was named a Bishop, Father Bonacum was the pastor of Holy Name Parish in Saint Louis and was in the process of constructing a new Catholic school for his parish.
Warm Welcome
Father Bonacum was consecrated a Bishop on November 20, 1887, in Saint Louis by Archbishop Peter Kenrick. He was taken aback by the enthusiasm his appointment had generated not only among the Catholics of Southern Nebraska, but also among the non-Catholic clergy of the region, and among the politicians and secular political leaders. At the time he wrote to Bishop O’Connor, "Without any display of sham humility, I must confess that your letter, as well as the comments of the press, notably the German press, on my appointment have caused me much disquietude because I see that expectations have been raised in the midst of those who do not know me, which can never be realized."
He arrived in Lincoln through Omaha on a bitterly cold December 20, 1887. He was met by hundreds of officials and clergy and faithful, and was escorted to the local opera house by a band and by a parade of the Loyal Order of Hibernians in colorful uniforms and carrying torches. On arrival at that packed house, there were speeches of welcome from the stage by civic municipal and state politicians, various Catholic representative of the new Diocese, and large numbers of non-Catholic religious leaders. Bonacum replied that he would have preferred to have arrived quietly and unobserved, but he accepted the enthusiastic welcome as an honor not for him personally, but as a representative of the Catholic Church.
First Task
Almost as soon as he arrived in Lincoln to take up his duties as the Bishop of the new Diocese, Bishop Thomas Bonacum decided that one of the first immediate needs he had to confront, as the founding Bishop, was finding a cathedral. A cathedral, of course, is designated as the principal church of a Diocese where the Bishop has his permanent and fixed ceremonial seat, the symbol of his authority as a Successor of the Apostles in any locality. This episcopal seat or throne is called in Latin the "cathedra". Hence, the name of such a church is the "cathedral". Technically the Bishop himself is always the Pastor of his cathedral Parish. However, he usually assigns another priest to be the Rector, who, embellished by the Bishop’s vicarious authority, actually and "de facto" functions as the Cathedral Pastor as any pastor of a parish would.
Looking for a suitable church to be the Cathedral of the new Diocese, Bishop Bonacum could not find any. However, the largest church then in Lincoln and one of the newer ones was Saint Theresa Church located at 13th and M Streets. It was a brick structure and had been built in 1879. However, when the Bishop arrived in December of 1887, Saint Theresa Church was already too small even for the number of people who belonged to the parish, and thus not only the Bishop, but also the clergy, immediately declared that it was really not adequate to be a cathedral. However, since it was all he could find, Bishop Bonacum on December 21, 1887, named Saint Theresa Church as the Pro-Cathedral of the Diocese of Lincoln. (A pro-cathedral is an "acting" or "temporary" or "substitute" cathedral.) The patron saint of the parish was Saint Theresa of Avila (Theresa of Jesus, the "Big Flower"). In 1887, the other Therese (the future saint to be later called the "Little Flower") was only a fourteen year old girl, getting ready to enter, with a special dispensation because of her young age, the Carmel Cloister of Lisieux.
Pro-Cathedral
Bishop Bonacum, in that same December of 1887, called a special meeting of the people of Saint Theresa Parish along with some of his prominent priests of the new Diocese to discuss the possibility of constructing a new Cathedral. After some extensive consultation with architects, builders and others, however, they discovered it would cost at least $100,000. That kind of money was not available, and Bishop Bonacum was dead set against accumulating any such debts at the outset of his episcopate, so he and his consultants decided instead to enlarge Saint Theresa Church, the pro-Cathedral. The thinking was to find enough money in several years to build a new Cathedral at a more desirable location, and using money from selling the 13th and M property to pay for most of that undertaking. So, starting in the following April (1888), an annex was built onto Saint Theresa Church, with two transepts, each with a gallery, one for the choir loft and the other for the religious sisters. They also added two small rooms, one to be the sacristy and other to be an office for Bishop Bonacum. The annex cost $15,000. The new annex was supposed to be blessed on October 7, 1888, but all the parishioners’ financial pledges had not been met at that time, due mainly to the fact that the pledges also included money for a new parochial school for the pro- Cathedral. Bishop Bonacum decided to postpone blessing the annex and new school until there were no debts. The debts unfortunately remained until 1899, and it was only on August 5th in that year that the blessing finally took place.
The priest who was most instrumental in finally paying off the Saint Theresa debts was Father James Reade, who had come to live in Lincoln from New York because the healthy Nebraska climate was advertised there to be the best for peoples’ health, and Father Reade was in fragile health. He belonged to the wealthy and distinguished Rhode Island Cole-Reade Family. Two of his ancestors had been among the signers of the Declaration of Independence, one from the Cole Family and one from the Reade Family. Because of his fame and family connections, he was able to obtain generous financial donations from many non-Catholics in Lincoln, which also enabled him to renovate the church building inside and out, install a new pipe organ, arrange for artistic frescoes and paintings, decorate it with beautiful tiles, etc. By Easter Sunday in 1902, Saint Theresa Church even had more than 300 electric lights in it, something very new and exciting in those times.
St. Mary’s
However, Saint Theresa Church was still too small for episcopal ceremonies and for the numbers of parishioners and for those who attended pontifical ceremonies. Bishop Bonacum, therefore, kept an eye out for some other possibilities. He spied one located in Lincoln on 14th and K Street, where a Protestant denomination had purchased some land and built an imposing edifice calling itself the First Church of Christ in Lincoln. Bishop Bonacum learned that the Protestant Congregation had gone bankrupt in the national financial panic (the name for recessions in those days) of the 1890’s, and the property had passed into the possession of the mortgage holder, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
At first Bishop Bonacum tried to persuade the Jesuit Order to come to Lincoln and purchase the Saint Theresa property and run the parish, so he could use the money to buy that property for a new Cathedral. However, the Jesuits declined his offer. Then he called a meeting of the diocesan priests about the matter, but initially there was too much opposition from some of them to borrowing the money to buy the 14th and K place. However, the property remained unsold and deserted, so Bishop Bonacum soon tried again. Most of the priests by then agreed to go forward with the buy, and the diocesan canonical College of Consultors on March 24, 1904, gave him the formal "go-ahead" to make the purchase, and so he paid $14,000 for the actual property and $3900 for some adjoining land. He informed his priests that he intended to remodel the Protestant building to make it suitable for Catholic worship at an estimated cost of $8500. He remarked that it needed immediate work to repair the roof and replace the broken windows in order to save the building from further deterioration. He told them he hoped to sell the 13th and M property as soon as possible so as to fund most of the project, but until that sale was done, the parishes all together would have to pay $750 yearly, the annual interest which would be due on the purchase loan. Consequently several of the priests did not hold his name in benediction because of this "financial burden" which they would have to share, but most were happy "to pitch in".
Little suspecting the disappointments that lay ahead for him, Bishop Bonacum then arranged for the Vincentian Order (nicknamed the "Lazzarists" and officially the "Congregation of the Mission") to buy the Saint Theresa property and run that parish instead of the Jesuits. This then permitted him, so he thought, to sign the contracts to begin the remodeling of the First Church of Christ structure so it could become the diocesan Cathedral. But, disaster in this matter loomed in the near future for Bishop Bonacum and the Diocese of Lincoln.
Big Second
The first Bishop of Lincoln, the Most Reverend Thomas Bonacum, was rather short and stocky in stature, in contrast to his successor, the Most Reverend J. Henry Tihen, who was, as photographs from those times indicate, a tall and husky man, with a booming voice. He was appointed to be the second Bishop of Lincoln May 12, 1911, only a few months after the death and funeral of Bishop Bonacum. At the time, the diocesan newspaper of Omaha noted that the speed with which Pope Saint Pius X made the Tihen appointment indicated that his name must have been the unanimous suggestion both of the Diocesan Consultors of Lincoln and the Bishops of the Province of Saint Louis. That paper said too that he was already well known and agreeable to the priests and people of the Lincoln Diocese as a priest of strong conservative views and as "an orator of great ability." This knowledge probably came about because of his reputation for powerful speeches on the Midwest Chautauqua circuit, where he was already becoming even more popular than William Jennings Bryan. (Chautauqua gatherings in those times were occasional assemblies of rural folks for purposes of entertainment, to hear lectures on many topics, but mostly on politics and religion, and to obtain a variety of educational instructions that would be useful to farm families and small town folk. Those gatherings also served the purpose of useful socialization for people who ordinarily lived apart from much contact with others, living as they did in remote parts of the rural prairies. The name came from the town of Chautauqua in Upstate New York.)
John Henry Tihen was the oldest of ten children of devout Catholic parents, Herman and Maria. He was born on July 14, 1861, in Oldenburg, Indiana, and spoke both German and English from his early childhood. He always preferred to use his middle name rather than John and always signed himself "J. Henry". His father was in the construction business, and it was an offer to build a new wall around the new Missouri state prison in Jefferson City that caused the family, when Henry was four years old, to move to Missouri and settle in Jefferson City, which at that time was in the Archdiocese of Saint Louis. There Henry attended a Catholic elementary school and a public high school and then went to Saint Benedict College in Atchison, Kansas.
Initial Vocational Steps
It was at Benedictine College that Henry Tihen discovered his vocation to the priesthood, while, at the same time, he was excelling in all his academic work. He graduated in 1882, as the valedictorian of his class. The Archdiocese of Saint Louis then sent him for his canonical philosophical and theological studies to Saint Francis de Sales Seminary in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At that time the languages of instruction in that seminary were Latin and German, in both of which Tihen was fluent. He was ordained a priest on April 26, 1886, by Archbishop Peter Kenrick, in Saint Louis and then was assigned as assistant pastor to Saint John Parish there. Three years later, his pastor there, Father J. J. Hennessy, was appointed to be the Bishop of Wichita, and Hennessy persuaded Tihen to ask to accompany him there. The request of Tihen and Hennessy was granted, and so in 1889, Tihen started work as a priest of Wichita, assigned to be the Rector of Saint Aloysius Pro-Cathedral there.
By 1905 he was named a Monsignor and then in 1910 given the higher rank of "Prelate". Because of his eloquence, the Lyceum Bureau linked him up to the Chautauqua arrangements, and, as a consequence, in addition to his work at the Cathedral, he was booked to speak all over the United States on a variety of social, economic, and patriotic topics. His speeches were not limited to Catholic audiences, but were heard and appreciated by non-Catholics as well. He generously donated all his income from his talks to aid in the construction costs for a new Cathedral in Wichita, over which project Bishop Hennessy had placed him. The new Cathedral in Wichita was not yet completed when Tihen was named the second Bishop of Lincoln on May 12, 1911, and so he was consecrated a Bishop in the Wichita Pro-Cathedral of Saint Aloysius.
Bishop Tihen
His episcopal consecration took place on July 6, 1911. A large group of priests and Catholic laity from Lincoln rode the Rock Island railroad overnight down to Wichita for the occasion. The main consecrating Bishop was J.J. Hennessy and the co-consecrators were Bishop Nicholas Matz of Denver and Bishop James Keane of Cheyenne. Archbishop John Glennon of Saint Louis preached the sermon. Two Lincoln priests were the new Bishop’s deacons of honor and five other Bishops were present for the liturgy along with 250 priests. On the following July 19th, Bishop Tihen set out by railroad to his installation in Lincoln. When his train reached Fairbury, a large group of Lincoln priests climbed aboard to give him a hearty welcome. When his train arrived an hour behind schedule in Lincoln, he was met by a large throng of priests, religious, and laity. Father George Agius, who had been Bishop Bonacum’s secretary, presented him with the keys to a new Buick motor car, a gift from the Lincoln priests. Then a large automobile procession took place with cars filled with visiting clergy, Knights of Columbus and Knights of Saint George, and members of various parish and diocesan Catholic organizations, which escorted him to Saint Theresa Pro-Cathedral for the installation Mass. The Pro-Cathedral was decorated with American flags and banners inscribed: "Welcome to our new Bishop". After the Mass, there was a banquet at the Lyceum Hall and an evening reception, with speeches from Governor Aldrich, Mayor Armstrong of Lincoln and other important State and local officials.
The local Lincoln newspaper described Tihen: "He has an impressive personality. He is tall and graceful. His movements are easy. In conversation his voice is mellow, but in the pulpit it is powerful. One of the first things one notices in meeting the new Bishop is his smile." As he immediately set to work in the Diocese, everyone was impressed by Bishop Tihen’s "pipe organ voice", which, without any public address system, could capture the attention of crowded churches and even large outdoor crowds for talks sometimes lasting up to ninety minutes.
Whereas Bishop Bonacum had been a bundle of nervous energy and wore his emotions "on his sleeve", Bishop Tihen was more calm and even phlegmatic and choleric in temperament.
However, in a systematic way he pushed forward to completion the many projects started by Bishop Bonacum, including the construction of new churches, schools, and rectories. He did his best and met with some success in reconciling to the Church some of the troublesome priests who had been adverse and hostile to Bishop Bonacum. His congenial personality made him quite popular even with non-Catholics, and this did much to dissipate the ugly anti-Catholic prejudices which stained a good part of Southern Nebraska in those times. He often was invited to attend and address civic organizations and their meetings, and he served on the board of the Nebraska State Historical Society. However, his tenure in Nebraska was not too long and, to the disappointment of many, soon God’s Providence gave him another destiny.
Bonacum
Bishop Thomas Bonacum, the first Bishop of the Diocese of Lincoln, was the most decisive figure in the establishment of the Diocese one hundred and twenty-five years ago. From December of 1887 until the beginning of February 1911, he poured his energy, zeal, and talent into bringing the new Diocese from infancy to adolescence, and this was done not only by courageously confronting countless difficulties and problems, but also by bravely facing severe hardships. He has always been described in these matters as an exceptional man of "indefatigable energy, broad vision, and strong will." His constant travels over the more than 22,000 square miles of the diocesan territory, occasionally by railroad, but most often by horse and buggy, never daunted him. The country roads and even some state highways in those days were usually just paths of mud or dust. He tirelessly and joyfully carried an enormous pastoral work-load of travel and labor almost up to the very end of his life.
The growing population in Southern Nebraska in those 23 years of his episcopate brought along the necessity of finding adequate numbers of priests and religious to shepherd the increased number of Catholics in that population growth. It also brought, however, some of the national post-Civil War social problems, among which were noisy and sometimes dangerous anti-Catholic movements and groupings. Among these were the remnants of the "Know-Nothing" national bigotry along with its so-called "respectable political arm", the "American Protective Association" (the "APA"). Both overt and covert prejudice against immigrant-settlers, especially Catholics, became widespread. Although the Territory of Nebraska was on the side of the Union in the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan also began to penetrate into the State at the end of the 19th century, particularly south of the Platte River, and it quickly added Jews and Catholics, along with Negroes, to its list of people to be hated. Since there were almost no Jews in Nebraska in those times, and very few African-Americans, the Klan began to concentrate its initial hatreds in Nebraska mostly against Catholics.
Methodist circuit riders, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Episcopalian ministers, promoters of various Baptist-type sects, and non-Catholic neighbors often strove to lure Catholics away from the truths of their faith. Their labors sometimes met with success because of the isolation of Catholics in the vast landscape of the Great Plains, and because many of the newly-arrived Catholics were poorly catechized and thus easily susceptible to Protestant blandishments.
Internal Problems
Probably the heaviest cross Bishop Bonacum had to carry and the cause of much heartbreak for him had to do with troublesome priests and usually with their disobedience in regard to their assignments. Encouraged by the congregational polity of many Protestants, a small number of priests encouraged their parishioners to insist that the parish members themselves were to hire and fire their priests as Protestants generally do with their ministers. This led to many conflicts with the Bishop and indeed many court cases. The lower courts in Nebraska were mostly in the hands of anti-Catholic judges who sided with the rebellious priests and parishioners. Bishop Bonacum was always vindicated in the State and the U.S. Supreme Courts, but those issues often took years to come to a conclusion. The newspapers in Lincoln, then, as even now sometimes, for the most part, were hostile to the Bishop, with an almost visceral hatred. Although some of the disputes between the Bishop and the small group of priests were sometimes petty and minor, a few were not. Once a priest even had the Bishop arrested for "criminal libel", when Bishop Bonacum told the people of his parish that he had removed that priest as the pastor. There frequently were threats against the person of the Bishop and even occasional violence.
Bishop Bonacum for his part was a man of strong character and conviction and always stood his ground when he knew he was in the right. The priests who opposed him were some who had been sent out years before as troublemakers and alcoholics from various East Coast Dioceses to the Indian Territory (where Bishops probably thought they could cause less trouble and were "out of sight and out of mind"). They were among those that Bishop O’Connor had placed south of the Platte River when he arranged for a Diocese there. It seems that it was not only his problems with crossing the river that caused Bishop O’Connor to push for another Diocese in Nebraska in 1887. The personality of Bishop Bonacum was such that he did not suffer fools or rebels easily and had no patience with disobedience from priests. Most of his priests loved him dearly and supported him in his difficulties.
Denouement
As Bishop Bonacum’s life and work entered its autumn phase respect for him began to increase, even among non-Catholics. His sterling integrity and obvious virtues, along with his clear accomplishments, caused many people who had considered themselves his enemies to reconsider their positions and views. Some of his priest-opponents even apologized openly and publicly to him for causing so much hurt and sorrow. Some other people, who remained hostile, nevertheless began to moderate and mitigate their expressions in his regard.
What he did with very limited resources, amid crop failures, grasshopper invasions, weather extremes, market, economic, and population fluctuations, and general Catholic poverty, was truly remarkable. When he arrived in Lincoln to become its first Bishop, the only Catholic school in the diocesan territory was the Academy of the Holy Child. When he died, there were 26 Catholic schools in the Diocese. Also there were 37,000 Catholics, 98 priests, 160 consecrated religious women, and 130 Catholic churches.
When he died on February 4, 1911, he was so well esteemed that the Mayor of Lincoln, Don Love, issued a proclamation: "By this sad event we have lost not only a great prelate but a distinguished and public-spirited citizen as well... It would be a fitting tribute to display emblems of mourning along our public streets and to close our offices and places of business during the hour of his funeral". The newspaper reported that the Mayor’s proclamation was heeded. Almost all businesses and offices closed, the courthouse and the judges stopped their work that day, and all the flags in Lincoln were flown at half mast at the Mayor’s suggestion. Some years later, at a celebration for the 25th anniversary of Bishop Louis Kucera, Father John Carey said this: "The more the passing of years takes us older priests away from the time of Bishop Bonacum, the greater he looms up before us. Bishop Bonacum was a true pioneer Bishop. He was a builder. He knew his duty and loved it. He thought not of himself, but only of the work to be done."
After Bishop Bonacum’s funeral, the diocesan consultors chose Father (later Monsignor) Alois J. Klein to be the Administrator of the Diocese until the Pope would name the next Bishop. This second Bishop of Lincoln was Monsignor J. Henry Tihen, a priest of the Diocese of Wichita, who was appointed by Pope Saint Pius X on May 12, 1911.
Last Friday, September 14, 2012, on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, in his role and duty as the Successor of Saint Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and as, therefore, the Chief Bishop of the Catholic Church, appointed the present Auxiliary Bishop of Denver, His Excellency, the Most Reverend James Conley, to be the ninth Bishop of the Diocese of Lincoln, succeeding your columnist, who has had the undeservedly wonderful privilege, for a bit more than the last 20 years, to be the eighth Bishop of this extremely fine Diocese. If all goes according to our new Bishop’s wishes and according to our diocesan planning, Bishop Conley will be formally installed as the Bishop of Lincoln in the course of a Sacred Liturgy in our Cathedral of the Risen Christ on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving this year, November 20th, preceded by an introductory Vesper Service the evening before. Over the coming years, I hope and pray that all in our Diocese of Lincoln will get to know Bishop Conley, as I have been privileged to know him. In knowing him, a person will be able to see and experience a warm, loving, hard-working, highly learned, modern (in the best sense of the word), and exceptionally able church administrator and pastor. I have always thought of him in terms of G.K. Chesterton’s definition of a "true conservative", one who sometimes has to take a fence down, but never does that until he first knows for sure the reason why it was put up.
I personally feel that God has answered our two years of ardent prayers for our new Bishop in the best possible way. I am certain that Bishop Conley will win the hearts of all, will be an enormous and constant blessing to us here in Southern Nebraska, and will spiritually enrich our Diocese of Lincoln with his goodness, efficiency, broad experience, and outstanding talents. We certainly now must spend some time thanking God, Who, through Christ’s Vicar on earth, has given us such a precious gift in the person of our new spiritual Shepherd.
Known to Us
One of the positive aspects of Bishop Conley’s appointment is that we already have had many contacts with him, and that he already knows something about our Diocese, having visited us at various times. In recent years, for example, he had visited, in his capacity as the Auxiliary Bishop of Denver, the seminarians at Saint Gregory the Great Seminary in Seward who are studying for the priesthood there for that Archdiocese. He also had celebrated ordinations in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite for the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (the "FSSP") at their Seminary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Denton.
As a priest of the Diocese of Wichita, he served under two Bishops who previously had been priests of the Diocese of Lincoln before being named to the episcopacy, Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who later had been transferred from Wichita to the Diocese of Phoenix, and the present Bishop of Wichita, Bishop Michael Jackels. He is a seminary acquaintance and classmate of various priests of our Diocese, and has retained some close and cordial friendships with a good number of our Lincoln priests over the years.
Connections
There are a series of other interesting historical connections between the two Dioceses of Wichita and Denver to which Bishop Conley has belonged, and the Diocese of Lincoln, where he is about to become the ninth Bishop-Ordinary. The second Bishop of Lincoln, the Most Reverend J. (for John) Henry Tihen, started out as a priest of Saint Louis, but arranged to be incardinated into the Diocese of Wichita when his good friend and Saint Louis pastor, J.J. Hennessy, was named its first Bishop. Thus, Tihen was a priest of Wichita when named to be the second Bishop of Lincoln. Wichita, incidentally, was created a Diocese on the same day as Lincoln (August 2, 1887). Then, after serving as Lincoln’s Bishop for six years (from 1911 to 1917), Bishop Tihen was appointed to be the Bishop of Denver. (He never was an Archbishop, because Denver was still a Diocese. It only was elevated from being a Diocese to being an Archdiocese after his retirement and death in 1940.)
Another connection with Denver involved the sixth Bishop of Lincoln, the Most Reverend James V. Casey, who was originally a priest of the Archdiocese of Dubuque. At first he was nominated to be the Auxiliary Bishop of Lincoln in 1957, to help Bishop Louis B. Kucera, who had suffered a heart attack the previous year and was somewhat incapacitated. However, before Bishop Casey could take up that role, Bishop Kucera died on May 9, 1957. Shortly afterward, Bishop Casey, whose appointment as Auxiliary Bishop was voided by the Kucera death, was named by Pope Pius XII to succeed him as the Bishop of Lincoln. He pontificated here for ten years. until he was appointed as the Archbishop of Denver on February 22, 1967, by Pope Paul VI.
Some Canon Law
As our Diocese of Lincoln prepares itself for its new Bishop, it might be useful, in addition to offering many extra prayers for Bishop Conley, who will become our "servant-leader", to note a few of the things that the Code of Canon Law says about Bishops: "By divine institution, Bishops succeed the Apostles through the Holy Spirit Who is given to them. They are constituted as the Pastors in the Church in order to be the Teachers of doctrine, the Priests of sacred worship, and the Ministers of Church governance. By their episcopal consecration Bishops receive, together with the office of sanctifying, the offices of teaching and of ruling, which, however, by their nature, can be exercised only in hierarchical communion with the Head (the Pope) of the College (of Bishops) and its members." (Canon 375).
"Bishops to whom the care of a Diocese is entrusted are called Diocesan Bishops. The others are called Titular Bishops." (Canon 376). "The Supreme Pontiff freely appoints Bishops or confirms those lawfully elected." (Canon 377). "In the Diocese entrusted to his care the Diocesan Bishop has all the ordinary, proper, and immediate authority required for the exercise of his pastoral office, except in those matters which the law or a decree of the Supreme Pontiff reserves to the supreme authority or some other ecclesiastical authority." (Canon 381). "The Diocesan Bishop governs the Particular Church entrusted to him with legislative, executive, and judicial authority in accordance with the law. The Bishop exercises legislative power himself. He exercises executive power either personally or through Vicars General or Episcopal Vicars in accordance with the law. He exercises judicial power either personally or through a Judicial Vicar and Judges in accordance with the law." (Canon 391). "In all juridical transactions of the Diocese, the Diocesan Bishop acts in the person of the Diocese." (Canon 393).
Exciting - Joyful
Our Diocese of Lincoln is approaching a special time that we can prudently foresee as particularly promising, exciting, and joyful for us. We are already involved in celebrating our diocesan quasquicentennial. Now, in the course of that celebration, we shall soon be joining the Universal Church, that is, all our Catholic brothers and sisters throughout the whole world, in a greater celebration of a "Year of Faith", proclaimed by our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, to extend from October 11, 2012, to November 24, 2013. Then, in the midst of these happy celebrations we shall have the additional joy of welcoming our new Bishop, His Excellency, the Most Reverend James Conley, as the ninth Ordinary of our Diocese of Lincoln, who is scheduled to take possession of this See in the course of a Sacred Liturgy in our Cathedral of the Risen Christ on November 20th. As we experience these events, it is a most appropriate time to express a special amount of prayerful gratitude to God for these gifts and graces He has given to us.
It seems it is also a suitable time to think back to the earlier days of our diocesan existence and to reflect on some of our early Bishops, who laid the historical foundations upon which our present diocesan arrangements are so securely situated. There may still be some senior citizens among us who can remember such ecclesiastical giants in our diocesan history, as Bishop Francis J. Beckman (1924-1930), Bishop Louis B. Kucera (1930-1957), Bishop James V. Casey (1957-1967), and Bishop Glennon P. Flavin (1967-1992). Monsignor Denis L. Barry, a priest of our Diocese who died at the age of 100 on November 10, 2000, boasted before his death that he had shaken hands with all eight of the Bishops of Lincoln, beginning with Bishop Bonacum, for whom he had served Mass as an altar boy when he was 10 years old. However, lesser known might be those Bishops who preceded those later Bishops, such as Bishop Bonacum, our first Bishop, Bishop Tihen, our second Bishop, and Bishop O’Reilly, our third Bishop.
Bishop J. Henry Tihen
After only six years as the Bishop of Lincoln, Bishop Tihen was named by Pope Benedict XV, on September 18, 1917, as the Bishop of Denver. He was quite popular throughout the State, and so his leaving Nebraska caused considerable sadness for both Catholics and non-Catholics. On November 26, 1917, the priests of the Diocese of Lincoln sponsored a farewell banquet for him in the dining hall of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, and the Vicar General, Monsignor Alois J. Klein, delivered a farewell address. After this, it was announced to the priests through a letter from Archbishop Giovanni Bonzano, the Apostolic Delegate in Washington, that Monsignor KIein was appointed by the Holy See to be the Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese until a new Bishop would be named. Following the banquet, there was a farewell program presented by civic officials in the Lincoln City Auditorium, with presentations and speeches by politicians and leaders of the University community. The Mayor of Lincoln, John E. Miller, praised the Catholic Church in his talk: "It is the organized Church and the spirit of the Church in the hearts and minds of its members that today is doing more than any other agency to save society from anarchy."
Bishop Tihen went by train to Denver the next day, and was installed the day after, (November 28, 1917), as the third Bishop of Denver. He served there until his health gave way in 1931, when he retired and took up residence in Wichita at Saint Francis Hospital, where he died of pneumonia on January 14, 1940. He was buried in Denver at Mount Olivet Cemetery.
Bishop Charles O’Reilly
The shortest tenure in the Lincoln Diocese of any of its Bishops was that of five years of Bishop Charles O’Reilly, the successor of Bishop Tihen. A native of New Brunswick, Canada, whose family immigrated to Portland, Oregon, O’Reilly was at first a college professor and high school principal before entering the seminary in Montreal. He was ordained a priest of Portland by Archbishop William Gross on June 29, 1890, and distinguished himself in many diocesan duties. He was named the first and founding Bishop of Baker and consecrated on August 25, 1903. The territory of the new Diocese, all of Eastern Oregon, was huge (65,000 square miles) with only eight priests and 6000 Catholics. He exhausted himself with raising money, finding clergy, and travelling and living in primitive conditions. When appointed to Lincoln on March 15, 1918, and installed as Bishop on June 25, 1918, he was already quite sickly and weak. He was warmly welcomed by the clergy, religious, and laity, as well as by the Governor of Nebraska, the Mayor of Lincoln, and the Chancellor of the University.
He, however, sick or not, swung into immediate action with remarkable energy. Impatient and irascible, he founded six parochial schools and three parishes in five years. He especially labored to find priests for an enormous influx of Bohemian Catholics in Southern Nebraska and to provide for the German-speaking population, too. With sermons, pastoral letters, and other activities he tried mightily to foster vocations to the priesthood and religious life. His biggest problems involved religious indifference, with consequent low attendance at Sunday Masses, along with many tragic deaths of good priests and religious sisters because of the often fatal influenza epidemic that swept the world after the First World War. He also had to face down some vicious anti-clericalism, especially with the Bohemian "Sokols", among the Czech settlers, where anti- Catholic newspapers also abounded. By strenuous efforts he managed to get Father Hubert Campo, a native of Holland and a precious priest collaborator of his from Baker, to come to Lincoln, where he functioned as O’Reilly’s much needed secretary and as the Chancellor of the Diocese for all the time the Bishop lived.
Bishop O’Reilly travelled to Rome in January of 1921 in order to find some more needed priests, especially Czech speakers for the Diocese. He did meet with Vatican officials and was able to get several priests from Moravia and Bohemia (which at that time along with Slovakia formed the newly constituted country of Czechoslovakia). Monsignor Klein in those days reported to O’Reilly that there were at least 20,000 Czechs in the Diocese, but many of them were only baptized and did not practice their faith or know much about it.
Sick with heart disease and arteriosclerosis, Bishop O’Reilly fell on the ice-covered steps of his residence on December 6, 1922. He had to stay in the hospital after the fall until February 2, 1923. He returned home but almost immediately turned critical and died on February 4, 1923. His funeral Mass on February 8, 1923, was celebrated by his predecessor, Bishop Tihen who came back from Denver for that occasion. There were eight other Bishops and one hundred priests at the Mass. He was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Lincoln. Later, Bishop Casey moved his body and that of Bishop Bonacum, who was buried first at Saint Thomas Orphanage and then later at Calvary, to entombment in the Cathedral of the Risen Christ, where Bishop Casey also entombed the body of his immediate predecessor, Bishop Kucera. May they rest in peace and, we hope, they will pray for our Diocese of Lincoln in the halls of eternity.
Long Ago
When I was a high school student, I recall being challenged once in Latin class to memorize some of the famous sayings of the ancient Roman philosophers and sages. As I now finish more than twenty years of writing this column in the Southern Nebraska Register, which I entitled from its beginning "An Ordinary Viewpoint", for some reason the dying words of the Roman author Catullus (who lived from 87 BC to 54 BC) came to my mind for the title of this last column: "Forever hail and farewell" (in Latin "In perpetuum ave atque vale"). Another ancient Roman sage, Cicero, wrote: "The beautiful harvest of old age is the recollection of the abundance of blessings previously obtained." I leave off this weekly chore of writing, which, however, despite its occasional inconvenience, I never found to be anything but one of my many blessings, with no regrets, but with a sense of contentment and satisfaction, although I am personally happy to foresee that perhaps I shall find more time in my scheduled retirement for prayer, reading, and several dozen other things I have promised myself to do if God were to grant me some golden years. In a certain sense, writing the column also satisfied my sense of duty, since it enabled me to carry out, albeit in a partial and imperfect way, the duty of preaching and catechizing which Lord entrusted to me, as He does to all diocesan Bishops when He calls us to the priesthood and even more to the episcopacy.
The kindness of many readers, who are sometimes occasional and sometimes steady, and who are also sometimes from beyond the borders of Nebraska, has always amazed me. With no illusions about any large numbers of readers, about the effectiveness of my efforts, or about the extent of the column’s influence, nevertheless it has always been flattering to me to receive "feed-back" and reactions to my efforts, even when this might have sometimes involved disagreements. Now that the governance of our Diocese is soon to pass to the extraordinarily fine Bishop whom the Holy Father has appointed to succeed me, I think it is time for me to start to remove myself from the pages of our diocesan newspaper in order to make room for what I am sure will be the wonderful elements of our promising future. It is hard to imagine a more suitable time for my farewell from these pages as the present days, when we are celebrating a Year of Faith and the Hundred and Twenty-fifth Anniversary of our diocesan existence, and preparing to welcome a fresh, new Shepherd for our diocesan family. It should be remarked, however, that we Catholics also are facing some current and unprecedented challenges, such as modern governmental attacks upon our cherished American religious freedom, relentlessly encroaching secularism, and the corrosive materialism, pan-sexualism, and hedonism that marks our deteriorating culture and characterizes much of the social media. Our new Bishop needs our prayers and support as our Diocese confronts these challenges.
Stealing Words
In order to express adequately my true thoughts and feelings in writing this last column, I find that I really have to use the words of others such as Saint Paul and Saint Augustine. I hope they will not mind my plagiarizing their words and expressions for this occasion. "I give thanks to my God in all my remembrances of you, dearly beloved. You are always in my prayers by my making supplications for you with all joy because of your association with me in spreading the Gospel of Christ." (Saint Paul to the Philippians). "I must distinguish carefully between two aspects of the role the Lord has given me, a role that demands a rigorous accountability, a role based on the Lord’s greatness rather than on my own merit. The first aspect is that I am a Christian, the second is that I am a Bishop. I am a Christian for my own sake, whereas I am a Bishop for your sake. The fact that I am a Christian is to my own advantage, but I am a Bishop for your advantage. Many persons come to God as Christians, but not as Bishops. Perhaps they (the non-Bishops) travel by an easier road and are less hindered since they bear a lighter burden. In addition to the fact that I am a Christian and must give to God an account of my life, I as a Bishop must give Him an account of my stewardship as well" (Saint Augustine "On Pastors").
Blessed John Paul
It was Blessed Pope John Paul II who named me the eighth Bishop of Lincoln on March 24, 1992, and who signed the document to that effect which had me consecrated a Bishop on May 13, 1992, in the Cathedral of the Risen Christ. He and I had been friends for some years before, since, as the Cardinal-Archbishop of Cracow, he had served on the Congregation for Catholic Education in Rome, where I had been assigned as a staff member from 1969 to 1980. His were the words and example that moved me to the regular weekly work of writing this newspaper column over the past decades:
"The call to become a Bishop is certainly a great honor. This does not mean, however, that he is chosen for having distinguished himself among many others as an outstanding person and Christian. This honor comes from his mission to stand at the heart of the Church as the first in faith, first in love, first in fidelity, and first in service. If someone seeks in the episcopal office honor for its own sake, he will not be able to fulfill the episcopal mission well. The first and most important aspect of the honor due to a Bishop lies in the responsibility associated with his ministry. Sometimes you hear people defending the idea that a Bishop’s authority should be understood as precedence. They say the sheep are to follow behind the shepherd, not the shepherd behind the sheep. One can agree with this, but only in the sense that the shepherd leads by giving his life for his sheep. He must be first in sacrifice and in dedication. The Bishop’s precedence takes the form of a generous love for the faithful and for the Church, in imitation of Saint Paul (Colossians 1:24). A certain balance is needed. If a Bishop says, ‘I’m in charge here!’ or ‘I’m only here to serve!", then something is missing. He must serve by ruling and rule by serving. We have an eloquent model of this dual approach in Christ Himself. He served unceasingly, but in the spirit of serving God, He was also able to expel the money changers from the Temple, when this was needed!"
Good-Bye
And so, dear readers, this is good-bye for now. Although I will still be around in Lincoln, you henceforth will be relieved of my weekly "episcopal comment", I am sure to the happiness of some, to the sadness of a few, to the indifference of most! Auf Wiedersehen, au revoir, adieu, na shledanou, do widzenia, arriverderci, adios!
Christmas 2009 was one that will be remembered and talked about for generations to come. Hopefully, we all have some agreeable memories to enjoy.
Most Nebraskans could relate all too well with the classic Christmas movie, “Home Alone.” Mother Nature left many Christians “home alone” for Christmas as mammoth snow drifts and highway closures prevented families from getting together and even prevented many Catholics from being able to attend Mass. While this Christmas was certainly one for the record books, faith can point us to the good that might be extracted even from life’s unpleasant surprises.
True Christians appreciate the fact that they are never really alone. All three Persons of the Divine Trinity are always at our side and the Holy Spirit dwells within those who are authentic friends of God. Besides that, our Guardian Angels watch over us incessantly, even while we too often forget about their abiding presence.
Also, technology allows us to communicate with family and friends when we can’t be physically together. So, even when we are physically by ourselves, we can enter into stimulating and uplifting exchanges with those whom we love. Let us not forget that this is also the case in our relationship with the Lord. We need not be in a church to communicate effectively with Jesus.
Even though many could not make it to Mass for Christmas or the ensuing weekend, television and Catholic radio provided the best substitutes by airing Masses and other devotions. One of my parishioners who was snowbound outside of Brainard teased that even Mother Nature’s fury couldn’t keep him away from my Mass, as I coincidentally was the celebrant of the televised Mass he watched at home on the Feast of the Holy Family.
Just as families tend to enjoy the utmost excitement when all of the family members, near and far, manage to get together for holiday celebrations, so much more is it the case when all of the members of the Family of God get together for Lord’s Day and Holy Day celebrations! We should experience sadness at the absence of our baptized Catholic brothers and sisters from the greatest of all possible family celebrations: Holy Mass. Our sadness will go away once we resolve this crisis.
While we are never alone in our most secure home—i.e., the Catholic Church—we must never allow ourselves to become comfortable with the number of empty pews around us that once were occupied by fellow Catholics. Our present diocesan Catholics Come Home television and radio commercial initiative is meant to provide a starting point for the greatest ‘family gathering’ in diocesan history—namely, the reunion of all baptized Catholics in our churches to worship God together as one big happy family (the way God meant for it to be!).
Let us be sure to do our part to make this goal a reality. We can begin by visiting the CatholicsComeHome.org website and inviting those who could benefit from this marvelous resource to make a visit too. We might also invite them to “come home” to the Church. The commercials will do their part, but we must do ours as well, including fervent prayers on behalf of inactive Catholics. Many find themselves alone in houses; but in our true home, we are never alone.
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen is a person very likely remembered by most of us. His cause for canonization is currently underway. We are excited to present his autobiography as this winter’s selection for the “One Book, One Diocese” program.
In this publication, we learn much about this great leader’s early childhood, his call to the priesthood and his work during the years of his life as a priest. Archbishop Sheen chose the title “Treasure in Clay” for his autobiography because he wanted “to point out the contrast between the nobility of the vocation to the priesthood and the frailty of the human nature which houses it.” He adds later: “Each priest is a man with a body of soft clay. To keep that treasure pure, he has to be stretched out on a cross of fire… In the middle between the mission and the human instrumentality there is always the outpouring of the love of Christ.”
“Treasure in Clay” gives us details of Sheen’s childhood years—for example, how his parents sacrificed for the family and how he was brought up with a hard work ethic. He entered the seminary during World War I and was ordained a priest in September of 1919 in Peoria, Ill. He obtained a doctorate in philosophy from Catholic University in Washington and continued his education in Belgium in order to “know what the modern world was thinking and how to answer the errors of modern philosophy in the light of St. Thomas.”
Archbishop Sheen describes his call to the priesthood as un-datable, persistent and silent, giving him no rest. He became uncomfortable when he thought of doing anything else. He shares that he always approached the Communion rail with the words, “Oh, Lord, I am not worthy.” He moved toward the priesthood with the idea that God could take a lump of clay and place a treasure within it.
Sheen also shared how he needed to be a victim priest just as Christ was and how it was the Lord Himself who laid the cross on his back. He talked much of the discipline of the Lord and the ‘chisel’ of the Divine Sculptor. All go together to make the man a better representative of Christ.
During his long confinement in bed due to illness, he gazed on a large crucifix that reminded him of the suffering of Christ and our salvation that it bought. To him the crucifix was not representing something that had happened in the past, but rather something that is happening. He had a hunger for souls and points to his daily Holy Hour as the reason he was able to touch minds and hearts.
Archbishop Sheen touched many lives through his writing, his missionary work, radio and TV, and a multitude of other great works. His signature television program, “Life Is Worth Living,” drew an average of 30 million viewers a week in the 1950s. His autobiography, is an inspirational read and one that leaves the reader with a deep gratitude for priests. This book offers a treasure-trove of wisdom and is a lasting testimony to a life that truly was worth living.
One of the saddest things that can be said of a Christian is that his faith is dead. Of what use is the gift of faith if it isn’t alive? Very little, to be sure!
Just on the horizon is the season utilized by Christians perhaps the most successfully to grow in their faith—namely, Lent. When we meditate upon Jesus’ passion and death, it becomes a bit easier to take our faith more seriously. And we need to take faith seriously lest we become lukewarm, putting in peril our relationship with Jesus and the gift of salvation itself.
A relatively new series of books called Faith Alive! (by Christopher Ruff, M.A., S.T.L.) is meant as a remedy, of sorts, for faith in need of being rekindled. The subtitle for the series is: Seeking His Face – Sharing His Love – Finding His Joy. Are these not the very goals of the Christian journey? Indeed, we were created to know God, to love God and to serve God in this life so as to enjoy eternal happiness with Him in the next life. The Faith Alive! books attempt to help us to fulfill this very purpose of our existence.
There are three volumes in “The Discipleship Series”: As I Have Loved You; Who is My Neighbor?; and The Greatest of These is Love. These resources “for people with busy lives but open hearts” are concise and readable, with six sessions in each book, each of which includes prayers, reflections, discussion questions and suggestions for service. While these books are ideal for small faith-sharing groups, they are suitable for individual use as well.
Father Benedict Groeschel, CFR had this to say about the series: “Small faith-sharing groups which challenge the individual to works of charity and the apostolate are at the very core of the history of the reform of the Catholic Church. I congratulate Christopher Ruff on his work and hope it will continue to be so well received.” The Most Rev. Jerome Listecki, the new Archbishop in Milwaukee, gave this endorsement: “The response to these faith-sharing resources has been extraordinary. I recommend them wholeheartedly to individuals, groups, parishes and dioceses that wish to foster a deeper, fuller discipleship in Christ.”
Many Catholics in the Diocese of Lincoln participated in the “Disciples in Mission” Lenten program that ran for three consecutive years, helping us to reflect on how we, as Christ’s disciples, share in His mission of bringing the Good News of salvation to all. This new series can be used with that same apostolic goal in mind. Some parishes may opt to organize new groups to go through one or more of the books in the aforementioned series. Small groups that are already in place may also order the materials directly from the publisher.
While Lent lends itself to a six-week series, the theme of discipleship is a good fit for the Easter season as well. In any event, it behooves every Christian to make sure that his or her faith remains ALIVE and well! Take the initiative to form a study group in your parish… today!
For more information about the Faith Alive! series or to order books, call (608) 304-1768, or visit the Novo Millennio Press website: www.novomill.com. Questions may also be submitted to the Office for Evangelization at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
One of the most wonderful gifts from God that most of us take for granted on a daily basis is the gift of sight. A more basic gift even less appreciated is the gift of light, which makes sight possible. When giving God thanks for His many gifts, we would do well to include these among the other blessings for which we are grateful.
At Mass for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, we are presented with one of two Gospels: the story of the Prodigal Son (cycle C) or the story of the man born blind (cycle A, used this year only in conjunction with the RCIA program). Both passages are masterfully constructed accounts of significant miracles of light, the first a parable and the latter a historical event. The central figure from each story “saw the light” after some time in darkness. The difference is that, for the blind man, seeing the light was a literal miracle whereas, for the Prodigal Son, seeing the light was a miracle of grace that included a conversion of heart that followed his intellectual enlightenment.
A frustration shared by many good and faithful Christians is that there are so very many extremely intelligent people in our world who do such deplorable things. The irony that adds fuel to the fire is that this same group is commonly seen as “enlightened” while we disciples of Jesus are considered to be out of touch. Sadly, the intellectual and spiritual blindness from which they suffer is difficult to cure because they are not aware of their sickness, and thus they seek no treatment. Many a Scriptural lesson indicates that our fallen human nature makes all of us susceptible to this affliction. While few of us suffer from physical blindness, many of us allow ourselves to lose sight of Jesus, the Light of the World, from time to time.
The spiritual renewal sought after by serious Christians during Lent must include some form of authentic enlightenment in Christ. Meditating upon Sacred Scripture, reading good spiritual books or periodicals, attending weekday Masses, studying the Catholic Catechism, spending time in Eucharistic Adoration, listening to Catholic radio, watching EWTN programs, participating in Lenten devotions (especially Stations of the Cross), joining a faith-sharing group, doing corporal and spiritual works of mercy: all of these activities involve the opening of the eyes of our soul to let in the light of Christ. Such efforts will undoubtedly bear the spiritual fruits we seek during Lent.
Literally thousands of folks throughout the Diocese of Lincoln have participated in a Light of the World retreat during which we experience a renewal of the Sacraments of Initiation: Baptism, Eucharist and Confirmation. Many participate in faith-sharing groups that include various forms of study as a means to continue inviting Christ the Light into one’s life. Real efforts by genuine Christians are what provide the Light of Christ needed to see with the eyes of faith. Our spiritual labors are rewarded by Jesus with the miracle of sight that serves as a balm to our blindness.
The miracle of seeing the light of Christ more brightly in our lives is not reserved to the physically blind or to prodigal children. It is there for the taking by all Christians who wish to make this Lent—or at least what’s left of it—a truly fruitful journey. Allowing the Light of Christ to shine in our souls may help us better to appreciate the splendid gift of sight.
Four years ago, the bishops of the United States produced a document about evangelization entitled Go and Make Disciples. The document begins by defining the word evangelization as “bringing the Good News of Jesus into every human situation and seeking to convert individuals and society by the divine power of the Gospel itself.”
The bishops go on to list three goals for Catholic evangelization in this country. The first objective underscores where evangelization begins: “To bring about in all Catholics such an enthusiasm for their faith that, in living their faith in Jesus, they freely share it with others.”
We are being reminded that all evangelization begins with oneself. Only then can it be carried out for the benefit of others. Of special note are the words, “enthusiasm for their faith.” This begs the question: Am I truly enthused about my faith? Enthusiasm necessitates action—committed action. If I am enthused about my faith, I cannot keep it to myself; I will be driven to share it with others.
We find ourselves at the threshold of Holy Week. We are about to engage in the most beautiful and most meaningful liturgies of the entire liturgical year. On Monday of Holy Week there will take place in the Cathedral the Mass of Chrism. During this impressive ceremony, Bishop Bruskewitz will bless the three holy oils that will be used in our parishes during the coming year. In addition, all the priests of our diocese will recommit themselves to their priestly service.
During the Mass on Holy Thursday evening, the priest, in imitation of Jesus at the Last Supper, washes the feet of twelve men in the parish. The liturgy that evening will revisit the scene at the Last Supper when Jesus gave Himself to His apostles in the Holy Eucharist and then ordained them as His first priests, sharing with them the power to do what He had done.
On Good Friday the Church commemorates Jesus’ suffering and death. The Passion will be read or sung and the cross will be venerated by all as a reminder of Jesus’ sacrifice for us on Mount Calvary. An aura of silence descends on the Church between this somber service and the joyous celebration of the Easter Vigil on Saturday.
If one can speak of liturgies being “spectacular,” the Easter Vigil certainly qualifies. From the tiniest parish to the largest, this is a night to remember. From the Easter fire, to the Easter Proclamation, to the special readings, to the baptism and reception into the Church of the catechumens and candidates, to the renewal of our baptismal promises, the liturgy experiences what could be termed a “liturgical explosion.” If there were ever a fitting moment for enthusiasm for the faith on the part of those present, this is certainly it.
That being the case, the liturgies of Holy Week are meant to be shared. Sad to say, there are numerous Catholics who have never witnessed a single one of these glorious celebrations of faith. This is the time to become an evangelizer. Don’t miss a single one of these events! And be the evangelizer our Lord calls us to be; don’t come alone.
A heartwarming image seen on billboards along many highways is that of Jesus touching His Heart from which two rays of red and white shine forth. Below the image of Jesus is the prayer, “Jesus, I trust in You!”
This is the image of The Divine Mercy. The word mercy means the compassion shown to an offender, or the relief given to one in distress. The word divine is that which is of God. When people sin they offend God, feel a separation from Him, and may even sense that He is unhappy with them. If they go to God for His mercy, He lovingly forgives their offenses, relieves them of their distress and draws them more closely to Himself.
The eighth day of the Easter Octave is Divine Mercy Sunday. On this day more than ever, sinners who trust in God’s mercy are joyful that Jesus would die for them in order to redeem them, save them from hell and place them in the Kingdom of God. Spreading the Divine Mercy devotion and message is an effective means of evangelizing people in our lives who need relief from the distress caused by their sins.
In the 1930s a Polish nun, St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, had visions of Jesus from which came the popular Divine Mercy images we often see. She also received messages from Jesus about spreading devotion to this image to help build up people’s trust in His Mercy. Reflecting on passages from The Diary of St. Faustina can help us to appreciate this rich spiritual treasure.
Looking at the Crucifix, we can see that the blood and water from the pierced heart of the dead Jesus are shown coming from the living heart of the Risen Jesus in the Divine Mercy image. “The pale ray stands for the Water which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls” (Diary, 299).
St. Faustina reported that Jesus wanted the world to be evangelized with the Good News of His Mercy. “I desire that the whole world know My infinite mercy” (301). “Proclaim to the whole world My unfathomable mercy” (1142). “Souls who spread the honor of My mercy I shield through their entire life as a tender mother her infant, and at the hour of death I will not be a Judge for them, but the Merciful Savior” (1075).
There is no need for any of us Catholics to fear spreading the message that Jesus will forgive anyone of any sin, if he would only seek His mercy. Jesus assured St. Faustina: “Oh, if sinners knew My mercy, they would not perish in such great numbers. Tell sinful souls not to be afraid to approach Me; speak to them of My great mercy (1396). “No soul that has approached Me has ever gone away unconsoled. All misery gets buried in the depths of My mercy” (1777).
The Easter Season is a time ripe for passing on the message of Jesus’ mercy to everyone. Just as we did a Lenten work of penance, so now we can do an Easter work of charity. Be an apostle of mercy! Get some holy cards of the Divine Mercy image, pass them out to people, and invite them to trust in Jesus’ mercy. St. Faustina’s Diary, holy cards, and other resources may be obtained from Catholic bookstores of from the Family Life Office in Lincoln, 402-488-2040.
Do you ever wonder what effect all of those Catholics Come Home commercials that ran a few months ago had in our diocese? If so, read on.
Several years ago, our diocese began doing an annual Mass attendance count during the first couple of weekends in October. The purpose, quite simply, is to track the trends in this regard from year to year.
I regret to inform you that the trend in our diocese has been downward over the past couple of years, much as it has been elsewhere in the country. In other words, fewer of the 95,000 Catholics registered in the 135 parishes of our diocese are attending Mass than were just two short years ago. It is a sad reality that requires a faith-filled response from us all.
Merely a couple of years ago, regular Mass attendance in the Lincoln Diocese impressively was nearly double the national average, which is lamentably only about 35%. Regrettably, our 65% figure dipped below the 60% mark last October, indicating that there were upwards of 5,000 fewer Catholics attending Mass throughout our diocese than there were just a couple of years earlier. We have to ask the tough questions: What is happening here? And what can we do about it?
Unfortunately, there are so many things presently in our culture that compete with our spiritual values that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to establish the primary reason for increasingly casual attitudes toward weekly Mass attendance. Research has indicated that most Catholics have drifted away from the regular practice of their faith for no particular reason. It usually is simply the result of laziness or of a lack of connectedness to one’s parish.
We cannot very easily alter another’s tendencies toward slothfulness, but we can make an effort to help others feel more connected to their parish.
Two simple ways to do that are: 1) Befriend other members of the parish and let them know you enjoy connecting with them each week at Mass; and 2) Invite other members of the parish to get involved either in things that you are involved in or in things that may be of interest to them. Many other techniques can be employed to help others to connect. Generous stewardship of time and talent is a helpful practice, for example.
Now for some good news. The Catholics Come Home campaign seems to have had a positive effect in our diocese. Based upon the “head count” done at Masses last month, our attendance rebounded a little more than 2%, amounting to about 2,000 more Catholics going to church than in October. Considering the impact that similar campaigns have had in other dioceses, it is reasonable to assume that this positive outcome is due, in large part, to the commercials and the local parish efforts that were made in conjunction with the Catholics Come Home media initiative.
It is likely that many of those who have recently returned to the practice of their Catholic Faith will be looking for ways to connect—or re-connect—with their parish.
You may be the very person the Lord wants to use as an instrument to help make this happen, be it with a returnee or a longtime regular attendee. In any event, do you ever wonder what effect you might have on others in your parish community?
Wonder no longer… and wait no longer! Reach out and connect with someone in your parish. True zeal will be required of us all to keep our recent upward trend going.
One of the most recent unofficial titles given to the Mother of God is “Mary, Star of Evangelization.”
During May, the Month of Mary, it is fitting for us to ponder how Mary serves as the perfect model not only of discipleship, but also of evangelization.
The image of Mary as Star of Evangelization was commissioned for an evangelization conference sponsored by the U.S. Bishops and held in Portland, Ore. in 2003. The image has several prominent features: Mary herself, the Star of Bethlehem, the hill on which she stands, and the multifaceted oval background. Mary is shown reading from Scripture. The visible verse reads, “She rose and went to the hill country,” symbolically depicting her first evangelizing journey when she visited her cousin Elizabeth to share the Good News of the Incarnation.
Mary is robed in the familiar turquoise veil associated with her 16th-Century Guadalupe appearance, complete with stars adorning the garment. The turquoise color in iconography is the color given the Holy Spirit, the principle agent of all evangelization. Her robe is rose-colored, identifying her also with God the Father, while God the Son is hidden within her womb. Her prayerful posture is indicative of the praise she gave—and continues to give—to the entire Trinity of Persons for the great things done for her, as well as in and through her.
The six-pointed Star of Bethlehem shines brilliantly as a backdrop for the image. Once Jesus is born, He Himself will become the “star” of Bethlehem and take front stage as Mary moves into the background. The thrice-shaded oval backdrop depicts our movement from darkness into light as we come to know Jesus through Mary. The hill over which she walks depicts both the “hill country” through which she traveled to proclaim her special grace to Elizabeth and Mount Zion, the symbolic mountain in Jerusalem transformed into heavenly glory by the grace of the cross on which Jesus died. Included in the icon are the familiar Greek letters representing Mary’s title Theotokos, or God-bearer.
Brother Claude Lane, OSB, the icon’s artist, summarizes the image: “This is a visitation icon. There are the three apparitions, or visitations, of Mary. She visits her cousin, she visits the people of America in an actual apparition, and now she is visiting us. The Daughter of Zion is made visible.” Mary, Star of Evangelization, is a visual model for us as one who carries Jesus within her and then shares her divine Son with the whole world. We are called to do the same.
A Prayer: O Mary, Star of Evangelization, intercede with your Son to bring about in each of us a renewed enthusiasm for our faith. Inspire in us the courage and zeal to live the Gospel and to bring Christ to everyone we meet. Open our hearts to the gift of the Holy Spirit, the agent of evangelization, and enable us to transform the world in the image of your Son. O Mary, Star of Evangelization, enlighten us with the radiance of your Son, walk with us in faith, strengthen us in hope, and unite us in love as we strive to become disciples in mission. We ask this through your son, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.
More information and a picture of the icon of Mary, Star of Evangelization, may be viewed at the website: www.archdpdx.org/icon/icon.html.
