Catholic Metanarrative

Monday, December 26, 2005

Interview: Opus Dei on John Allen's New Book

ROME, DEC. 25, 2005 (Zenit.org).- An Opus Dei spokesman has expressed satisfaction with a new book on the personal prelature written by an American journalist.

Marc Carroggio, who oversees Opus Dei's relationship with international journalists in Rome, said he was satisfied with the book just published by John Allen. "Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church" has been published so far in English, Portuguese and Korean.

Carroggio told ZENIT that this is the first book that compares dispassionately the myths and reality surrounding "the Work," as it's called by Opus Dei members. "The author has understood well the nature of Opus Dei," Carroggio said.

Q: You must be happy since this book clears up many issues about Opus Dei.

Carroggio: I worked in the Rome press office while John Allen was writing this book. I can say that I am satisfied with it, especially with respect to its method.

Allen spent hundreds of hours gathering a great deal of information and views from all sorts of people. He places all this information in its proper context, and so gives the rationale for many ways of doing things.

He has listened to both sides and been respectful to both. Finally, he leaves the readers to reach their own conclusions. These are desirable qualities for a book of this kind. The issues it deals with do not easily lend themselves to dialogue or dispassionate discussion.

Hence, any attempt to clear away false stereotypes is positive. I do not like comparisons, but I should point out that the author of "The Da Vinci Code" never visited a center of Opus Dei and, as far as I know, never spoke to any members. The picture of Opus Dei presented in the novel is a figment of his imagination.

I think that John Allen's work can help readers of "The Da Vinci Code" who have no firsthand knowledge of Opus Dei to understand that we are neither angels nor demons. We are human beings with flesh and blood, who are sometimes wrong and sometimes right, who have faults but also want enthusiastically to follow an ideal.

Q: As he explains, the author had access to documents that are not available to the general public. He spent time in centers of numeraries, he interviewed dozens of members of the Work and he has absorbed what it means "to be in Opus Dei." In your view, what more would he need to understand Opus Dei better?

Carroggio: I think that the author has understood Opus Dei well: the nature of its message, the reasons for the things it encourages people to do, its members' mode of life, our ideals and also where we fall short.

This book is a journalist's report, not a dissertation in theology or a treatise on the history of the Church. Its approach is sociological, although it also acknowledges and respects the spiritual dimension of things.

Allen himself says that he does not intend to give an exhaustive account of Opus Dei but rather to compare myths with reality. As a consequence, he devotes a lot of space to matters that are actually fairly secondary in the life of Opus Dei but which have received a lot of attention from the media, especially in the United States.

So, for example, one could say a lot more about the spiritual experience of belonging to Opus Dei and about the inner motivation that leads persons to choose this path in their search for holiness in the middle of the world.

This would entail a larger treatment of each person's awareness of his or her own Christian vocation as well as persons' desire to follow Jesus Christ in their work, in their family and in their daily life. For an institution in the Church, the personal and existential dimensions are more important than organizational charts or questions of image.

Q: As part of his research, John Allen has also given the ex-members of Opus Dei a chance to speak. Do you think he has given too much space to their testimonies?

Carroggio: The book is a journalist's report, not a philosophical reflection on questions of principle. It is the result of a great number of interviews with people in a variety of different situations.

In a work like this, it is the author himself who has to determine the proper balance among his sources. I respect Allen's decision here, because it seems completely legitimate to me.

Personally I think that he explains well how these sorts of criticisms differ from those that arise, if I might put it this way, from the writers of fantasy. It easy enough to show that Opus Dei is not behind the sinister operations and conspiracies so often attributed to it.

It is different, however, when we are dealing with a person who has had a negative experience. You cannot simply deny a wound, or pain, or bad memories. This is not just an issue of lies and truth.

When we encounter a person's negative experience, we have to show our respect for it, we have to share that pain, even though at times we do not share that person's interpretation of the events.

The fact is that the faithful of Opus Dei live out their dedication to God with full freedom, and their dedication helps them to find happiness, at least the relative happiness that can be had in this world.

Hence the great majority of those who come to centers of Opus Dei have a lifelong appreciation for the Work. But this is not always the case. And so it does not seem wrong, but rather just the opposite, that a book like Allen's would include these cases, which I consider to be exceptions.

When Allen asked the prelate about this matter, Bishop [Javier] Echevarría said that we ask pardon with all our heart of those persons who do not feel that they were well treated. As you can understand, I have nothing to add to that.

Q: Would you like to see a "Part Two" of this book?

Carroggio: Each book is unique and therein, it seems to me, lies its strength. Although John Allen's book is not merely a book about controversies, the emphasis is certainly on the more-debated issues.

In my opinion, he treats these questions respectfully and offers factual information more than partisan or ideological explanations of them.

Moreover, he makes an effort to summarize some of the essential characteristics of Opus Dei, such as divine filiation, freedom, the sanctification of work and ordinary life, etc.

I would like a future book to develop these aspects, and precisely in journalistic form.

Such a book would be able to describe in a fresh way the experience of living one's Christian life in the middle of the world. It would talk about how faith and prayers provide such admirable resources for one's ordinary life, including the more difficult times like sickness, unemployment or the death of a loved one. There is a lot to talk about.

Interview: Journalist John Allen on Opus Dei

ROME, DEC. 25, 2005 (Zenit.org).- In a new book on Opus Dei, an American journalist tries to separate facts from fiction about the personal prelature.

The volume is entitled "Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church."

In his research for the book, reporter John Allen of the U.S.-based National Catholic Reporter dedicated a year to interview members of Opus Dei in Italy, Spain, Kenya, the United States and Peru, among other countries.

The author also talked with former Opus Dei members. The result is 400 pages in which this Vatican correspondent, who also works with the BBC and CNN, touches on topics ranging from the separation of men and women, to the use of the hair shirt, to the organization's finances.

The book has been published in the United States by Doubleday and in England by Penguin.

Q: So ... Opus Dei is not as bad as it seemed, you state. Is this the general idea of your book?

Allen: The aim of my book is to be as objective as possible, on a subject that's not really known for attracting objective discussion. The idea is to separate fact from fiction, providing tools for a rational conversation that's grounded in reality rather than myth or stereotype.

It was not my intent to "convert" readers to any particular position about Opus Dei, and my experience is that most people come away from the book without having changed their fundamental impressions of the group, but perhaps feeling a bit more informed, and a bit less alarmed.

On the other hand, given the highly negative image Opus Dei carries in some quarters, any serious comparison of that image with reality inevitably will make the group seem more human, less nefarious, than some had previously believed.

To take the basic numbers, Opus Dei has a worldwide membership of 85,000, which is roughly equivalent to the Diocese of Hobart on the island of Tasmania off the Australian coast. The group also counts some 164,000 "cooperators," meaning "supporters."

Outside Spain, where Opus Dei was born in 1928, Opus Dei represents a tiny, almost invisible, fraction of the Catholic community; in the United States, for example, there are roughly 3,000 members out of a total Catholic population of 67 million.

Opus Dei's global wealth, meaning the physical value of all the assets listed as "corporate works" of Opus Dei, is around $2.8 billion. For one frame of comparison, General Motors in 2003 reported assets of $455 billion.

Even by Catholic standards, Opus Dei's wealth is not terribly impressive; in 2003, the Archdiocese of Chicago reported assets of $2.5 billion. The American lay organization the Knights of Columbus runs an insurance program which all by itself is worth $6 billion.

In terms of power, Opus Dei numbers only 40 out of more than 4,500 Catholic bishops worldwide, including only two members of the College of Cardinals, and just 20 out of more than 2,500 employees in the Roman Curia, including only one head of a policy-making agency.

In truth, Opus Dei's potential to "call the shots" inside Catholicism is far more limited than many imagine. For every Vatican battle Opus Dei members have won over the years, they've lost others.

Despite being a vaunted recruiting machine, Opus Dei's growth rate is pretty small. Worldwide they add about 650 members a year, and in some places they're basically stalled. In the United States, Opus Dei has hovered at about 3,000 members since the 1980s.

All this suggests that Opus Dei is not as imposing as some of the mythology would lead one to believe. Ironically, the people most determined to believe in Opus Dei's occult power are generally not its members, but its critics, who see its modest structure as masking vast unseen influence.

Q: Money, power, mortification, "Octopus Dei" ... most of your book tries to "purify" the whole mystery around Opus Dei. Do you think you have achieved this clarification?

Allen: I'm not naive enough to believe that prejudices and conspiracy theories that have formed over 70 years are going to collapse overnight because of this book.

What I hope, however, is that the factual information provided in the book, much of it for the first time, will represent a point of departure for future discussion.

There's a legitimate debate to be had about some aspects of Opus Dei's internal culture and practice, and in my experience it's a conversation happening, in the first place, inside Opus Dei itself.

The question of how Opus Dei could make itself more transparent without compromising its own identity, for example, is a completely reasonable point to press.

Opus Dei must increasingly realize that it is responsible not only to itself and the memory of St. Josemaría Escrivá, but to the broader Catholic Church, and hence should do anything in its power to respond to legitimate questions and doubts.

At the same time, Opus Dei has also been a magnet for some of the wildest accusations and speculation over the years, and I hope the book will help to clear up those distractions so a more productive discussion can move forward.

Q: Reading you, it appears that Opus Dei has not as much power or influence as it seems. Why then this controversy and mysterious aura around them?

Allen: To me, this is the greatest single question about Opus Dei: How did this relatively small group, with only modest wealth and influence, become the bogeyman of the Catholic imagination? I think the answer is complex, pivoting on at least four factors:

One, Opus Dei grew up in Franco-era Spain, and hence has long been linked to Spanish fascism.

Two, Opus Dei and the Jesuits engaged in fierce "border wars" over young vocations in Spain in the 1930s and 1940s, generating a rivalry which followed Opus Dei wherever it went because of the Jesuits' extensive worldwide network.

Three, in the post-Vatican II era, Opus Dei became a symbol of the broader struggles within Catholicism between left and right.

Four, in the John Paul II era, Opus Dei received considerable papal favor, generating envy in some quarters and ideological opposition in others. In other words, Opus Dei represents a sort of "perfect storm," where a combination of historical and political factors collided to invest this group with a mythic status that its actual sociological profile doesn't support.

Q: If I were from Opus Dei I would surely thank you for your book. Have you received lots of messages in these terms?

Allen: I've heard from a number of Opus Dei members who are grateful for what they see as the relatively balanced treatment they believe the group received in the book.

Others, however, are unhappy with what they see as excessive focus on the controversies surrounding Opus Dei. They feel as if Opus Dei is their family, and it's always painful to hear accusations against loved ones, even if they're given the most balanced treatment in the world.

I would say, by the way, I've received much the same reaction from Opus Dei critics. Some feel the book gave fair voice to their concerns, while others, convinced that Opus Dei is dangerous, feel as if I didn't go nearly far enough in "exposing" its flaws.

This reaction illustrates the unfortunately polarized nature of much discussion about Opus Dei.

Q: You think you do not fit into the Opus Dei structure. Do you realize it now, after your research, or you already knew it?

Allen: As a journalist, I don't join groups within the Church as a matter of general principle, because I need to preserve my impartiality.

For that reason, there was never any serious question of my joining Opus Dei, or any other body. Certainly my 300-plus hours of interviews and travels to eight countries for this book, however, brought home for me that if I were to join a Catholic group, it would not be Opus Dei.

This is not the result of any lack of respect, or any fears about Opus Dei; quite the contrary, I came to admire most of the people I met in Opus Dei, and I usually found their company highly stimulating and enjoyable.

Yet there is a daily "program of life" for Opus Dei members, and a set of expectations about attendance at events and so on, that I would personally find stifling.

I'm a classic "only child," meaning that control over my time and space is important to me. I don't like anyone setting schedules for me, or telling me when I need to pray, or how.

Let me be clear, however, that this is a matter of personal taste. I admire the commitment I see in most Opus Dei members, and my perception is that most are eminently satisfied with their experiences.

Pope's Homily at Midnight Mass

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 25, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the homily Benedict XVI delivered at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, held in St. Peter's Basilica.

* * *

"The Lord said to me: You are my son; this day I have begotten you." With these words of the second Psalm, the Church begins the Vigil Mass of Christmas, at which we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ our Redeemer in a stable in Bethlehem. This psalm was once a part of the coronation rite of the kings of Judah. The people of Israel, in virtue of its election, considered itself in a special way a son of God, adopted by God. Just as the king was the personification of the people, his enthronement was experienced as a solemn act of adoption by God, whereby the king was in some way taken up into the very mystery of God. [On] Bethlehem Night, these words, which were really more an expression of hope than a present reality, took on new and unexpected meaning. The Child lying in the manger is truly God's Son. God is not eternal solitude but rather a circle of love and mutual self-giving. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

But there is more: In Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God himself became man. To him the Father says: "You are my son." God's everlasting "today" has come down into the fleeting today of the world and lifted our momentary today into God's eternal today. God is so great that he can become small. God is so powerful that he can make himself vulnerable and come to us as a defenseless child, so that we can love him. God is so good that he can give up his divine splendor and come down to a stable, so that we might find him, so that his goodness might touch us, give itself to us and continue to work through us. This is Christmas: "You are my son, this day I have begotten you."

God has become one of us, so that we can be with him and become like him. As a sign, he chose the Child lying in the manger: This is how God is. This is how we come to know him. And on every child shines something of the splendor of that "today," of that closeness of God which we ought to love and to which we must yield -- it shines on every child, even on those still unborn.

Let us listen to a second phrase from the liturgy of this holy night, one taken from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah: "Upon the people who walked in darkness a great light has shone" (Isaiah 9:1). The word "light" pervades the entire liturgy of tonight's Mass. It is found again in the passage drawn from St. Paul's letter to Titus: "The grace of God has appeared" (2:11). The expression "has appeared," in the original Greek says the same thing that was expressed in Hebrew by the words "a light has shone": this "apparition" -- this "epiphany" -- is the breaking of God's light upon a world full of darkness and unsolved problems. The Gospel then relates that the glory of the Lord appeared to the shepherds and "shone around them" (Luke 2:9). Wherever God's glory appears, light spreads throughout the world. St. John tells us that "God is light and in him is no darkness" (1 John 1:5). The light is a source of life.

But first, light means knowledge; it means truth, as contrasted with the darkness of falsehood and ignorance. Light gives us life, it shows us the way. But light, as a source of heat, also means love. Where there is love, light shines forth in the world; where there is hatred, the world remains in darkness. In the stable of Bethlehem there appeared the great light which the world awaits. In that Child lying in the stable, God has shown his glory -- the glory of love, which gives itself away, stripping itself of all grandeur in order to guide us along the way of love. The light of Bethlehem has never been extinguished. In every age it has touched men and women, "it has shone around them."

Wherever people put their faith in that Child, charity also sprang up -- charity toward others, loving concern for the weak and the suffering, the grace of forgiveness. From Bethlehem a stream of light, love and truth spreads through the centuries. If we look to the saints -- from Paul and Augustine to Francis and Dominic, from Francis Xavier and Teresa of Avila to Mother Teresa of Calcutta -- we see this flood of goodness, this path of light kindled ever anew by the mystery of Bethlehem, by that God who became a Child. In that Child, God countered the violence of this world with his own goodness. He calls us to follow that Child.

Along with the Christmas tree, our Austrian friends have also brought us a small flame lit in Bethlehem, as if to say that the true mystery of Christmas is the inner brightness radiating from this Child. May that inner brightness spread to us, and kindle in our hearts the flame of God's goodness; may all of us, by our love, bring light to the world! Let us keep this light-giving flame from being extinguished by the cold winds of our time! Let us guard it faithfully and give it to others! On this night, when we look toward Bethlehem, let us pray in a special way for the birthplace of our Redeemer and for the men and women who live and suffer there. We wish to pray for peace in the Holy Land: Look, O Lord, upon this corner of the earth, your homeland, which is so very dear to you! Let your light shine upon it! Let it know peace!

The word "peace" brings us to a third key to the liturgy of this holy night. The Child foretold by Isaiah is called "Prince of Peace." His kingdom is said to be one "of endless peace." The shepherds in the Gospel hear the glad tidings: "Glory to God in the highest" and "on earth, peace ...." At one time we used to say: "to men of good will." Nowadays we say "to those whom God loves." What does this change mean? Is good will no longer important? We would do better to ask: Who are those whom God loves, and why does he love them? Does God have favorites? Does he love only certain people, while abandoning the others to themselves?

The Gospel answers these questions by pointing to some particular people whom God loves. There are individuals, like Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, Zechariah, Simeon and Anna. But there are also two groups of people: the shepherds and the wise men from the East, the "Magi." Tonight let us look at the shepherds. What kind of people were they? In the world of their time, shepherds were looked down upon; they were considered untrustworthy and not admitted as witnesses in court. But really, who were they? To be sure, they were not great saints, if by that word we mean people of heroic virtue. They were simple souls. The Gospel sheds light on one feature which later on, in the words of Jesus, would take on particular importance: They were people who were watchful. This was chiefly true in a superficial way: They kept watch over their flocks by night. But it was also true in a deeper way: They were ready to receive God's word. Their life was not closed in on itself; their hearts were open. In some way, deep down, they were waiting for him.

Their watchfulness was a kind of readiness -- a readiness to listen and to set out. They were waiting for a light which would show them the way. That is what is important for God. He loves everyone, because everyone is his creature. But some persons have closed their hearts; there is no door by which his love can enter. They think that they do not need God, nor do they want him. Other persons, who, from a moral standpoint, are perhaps no less wretched and sinful, at least experience a certain remorse. They are waiting for God. They realize that they need his goodness, even if they have no clear idea of what this means. Into their expectant hearts God's light can enter, and with it, his peace. God seeks persons who can be vessels and heralds of his peace. Let us pray that he will not find our hearts closed. Let us strive to be active heralds of his peace -- in the world of today.

Among Christians, the word "peace" has taken on a very particular meaning: It has become a name for the Eucharist. There Christ's peace is present. In all the places where the Eucharist is celebrated, a great network of peace spreads through the world. The communities gathered around the Eucharist make up a kingdom of peace as wide as the world itself. When we celebrate the Eucharist we find ourselves in Bethlehem, in the "house of bread." Christ gives himself to us and, in doing so, gives us his peace. He gives it to us so that we can carry the light of peace within and give it to others. He gives it to us so that we can become peacemakers and builders of peace in the world. And so we pray: Lord, fulfill your promise! Where there is conflict, give birth to peace! Where there is hatred, make love spring up! Where darkness prevails, let light shine! Make us heralds of your peace! Amen.

[Original text: Italian; translation issued by the Holy See]

Benedict XVI's Christmas Message

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 25, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of Benedict XVI's Christmas message delivered at midday before he imparted the blessing "urbi et orbi" (to the city of Rome and the world).

* * *

"I bring you good news of a great joy … for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:10-11).

Last night we heard once more the Angel's message to the shepherds, and we experienced anew the atmosphere of that holy night, Bethlehem Night, when the Son of God became man, was born in a lowly stable and dwelt among us. On this solemn day, the Angel's proclamation rings out once again, inviting us, the men and women of the third millennium, to welcome the Savior. May the people of today's world not hesitate to let him enter their homes, their cities, their nations, everywhere on earth!

In the millennium just past, and especially in the last centuries, immense progress was made in the areas of technology and science. Today we can dispose of vast material resources. But the men and women in our technological age risk becoming victims of their own intellectual and technical achievements, ending up in spiritual barrenness and emptiness of heart. That is why it is so important for us to open our minds and hearts to the Birth of Christ, this event of salvation which can give new hope to the life of each human being.

Wake up, O man! For your sake God became man" (St. Augustine, "Sermo," 185). 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 our way of being human. By knocking at our door, he challenges us and our freedom; he calls us to examine how we understand and live our lives.

The modern age is often seen as an awakening of reason from its slumbers, humanity's enlightenment after an age of darkness. Yet without the light of Christ, the light of reason is not sufficient to enlighten humanity and the world. For this reason, the words of the Christmas Gospel: "the true Light that enlightens every man was coming into this world" (John 1:9) resound now more than ever as a proclamation of salvation. "It is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear" ("Gaudium et Spes," No. 22). The Church does not tire of repeating this message of hope reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council, which concluded 40 years ago.

Men and women of today, humanity come of age yet often still so frail in mind and will, let the Child of Bethlehem take you by the hand! Do not fear; put your trust in him! The life-giving power of his light is an incentive for building a new world order based on just ethical and economic relationships. May his love guide every people on earth and strengthen their common consciousness of being a "family" called to foster relationships of trust and mutual support. A united humanity will be able to confront the many troubling problems of the present time: from the menace of terrorism to the humiliating poverty in which millions of human beings live, from the proliferation of weapons to the pandemics and the environmental destruction which threatens the future of our planet.

May the God who became man out of love for humanity strengthen all those in Africa who work for peace, integral development and the prevention of fratricidal conflicts, for the consolidation of the present, still fragile political transitions, and the protection of the most elementary rights of those experiencing tragic humanitarian crises, such as those in Darfur and in other regions of central Africa. May he lead the peoples of Latin America to live in peace and harmony. May he grant courage to people of good will in the Holy Land, in Iraq, in Lebanon, where signs of hope, which are not lacking, need to be confirmed by actions inspired by fairness and wisdom; may he favor the process of dialogue on the Korean peninsula and elsewhere in the countries of Asia, so that, by the settlement of dangerous disputes, consistent and peaceful conclusions can be reached in a spirit of friendship, conclusions which their peoples expectantly await.

At Christmas we contemplate God made man, divine glory hidden beneath the poverty of a Child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger; the Creator of the Universe reduced to the helplessness of an infant. Once we accept this paradox, we discover the Truth that sets us free and the Love that transforms our lives. On Bethlehem Night, the Redeemer becomes one of us, our companion along the precarious paths of history. Let us take the hand which he stretches out to us: It is a hand which seeks to take nothing from us, but only to give.

With the shepherds let us enter the stable of Bethlehem beneath the loving gaze of Mary, the silent witness of his miraculous birth. May she help us to experience the happiness of Christmas, may she teach us how to treasure in our hearts the mystery of God who for our sake became man; and may she help us to bear witness in our world to his truth, his love and his peace.

[Original text in Italian; translation issued by the Holy See]

Sunday, December 25, 2005

A Christmas Card from Pope Benedict XVI

Father Cantalamessa's 4th Advent Sermon

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 23, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the Advent sermon delivered today by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the Pontifical Household, in the presence of Benedict XVI and members of the Roman Curia.

The sermon was the fourth and last in a series. Father Cantalamessa offered a series of reflections on the theme "'For What We Preach Is Not Ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord' (2 Corinthians 4:5): Faith in Christ Today."

* * *

"To You Is Born This Day a Savior"

The Experience of the Salvation of Christ Today

1. What Savior for man?

In one of the last Christmases, I was attending a midnight Mass presided over by the Pope in St. Peter's. The moment came to sing the Calends:

"Many centuries since the creation of the world … 13 centuries after the march out of Egypt … In the year 752 of the foundation of Rome … In the year 42 of the empire of Caesar Augustus, Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal father, having been conceived by the power of the holy Spirit, after nine months, was born in Bethlehem of Judea of the virgin Mary, made man."

Having come to these last words I experienced what is called "the anointing of faith": a sudden interior clarity which makes one say to oneself: "It is true! It is all true! They are not just words. God has truly come to our earth." I felt a total upheaval, and could only say: "Thank you, Most Holy Trinity, and thank you, also, holy Mother of God!" I would like to share this profound certainty with you, venerable fathers and brothers, during this last meditation the theme of which is the experience of the salvation of Christ today.

Appearing to the shepherds on the night of Christmas, the angel said to them: "I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:10-12). The title of Savior was not attributed to Jesus during his life. There was no need of it, its contents already being expressed, for a Jew, by the title Messiah. But when the Christian faith appeared in the pagan world, the title acquired decisive importance, in part precisely to oppose the custom of calling the emperor by it as well as some saving divinities, such as Aesculapius.

It was found already in the New Testament in the Apostles' lifetime. Matthew is concerned to emphasize that the name "Jesus" means, precisely, "God saves" (Matthew 1:21). Paul already called Jesus "Savior" (Philippians 3:20); in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter specifies that he is the only Savior, "and there is salvation in no one else" (Acts 4:42), and John puts on the Samaritans' lips the solemn profession of faith: "We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the savior of the world" (John 4:42).

The content of this salvation consists above all but not only in the remission of sins. For Paul it also embraces the final redemption of our bodies (Philippians 3:20). The salvation wrought by Christ has a negative aspect that consists in the liberation from sin and the forces of evil, and a positive aspect which consists in the gift of the new life, of the freedom of the children of God, of the Holy Spirit and of the hope of eternal life.

Salvation in Christ was not, however, for the first Christian generations, only a truth believed from Revelation; it was above all a reality experienced in life and joyfully proclaimed in worship. Thanks to the word of God and to the sacramental life, believers feel they are living in the mystery of salvation realized in Christ: salvation that is configured, little by little, as liberation, illumination, rescue, divinization, etc. It is a primordial and peaceful event which authors almost never feel the need to demonstrate.

In this double dimension -- of revealed truth and lived experience -- the idea of salvation played a decisive part in leading the Church to the full truth about Jesus Christ. Soteriology was the plow that made the furrow for Christology; it was the propeller that pulls the plane or drives the ship. The great dogmatic definitions of the Councils were attained by making use of the experience of salvation that believers had in Christ. His contact, they said, divinizes us; therefore, he must be God himself. "We would not be liberated from sin and damnation," wrote Athanasius, "if the flesh the Word assumed was not human by nature; nor would man be divinized if the Word that was made flesh was not of the same nature of the Father."[1]

The relationship between Christology and soteriology is mediated, in the patristic age, by anthropology, so that it must be said that to a different understanding of man corresponds always a different presentation of Christ's salvation. The process develops through three important questions. First: What is man and where does his evil reside? Second question: What kind of salvation is necessary for such a man? Third question: What must the Savior be like to realize such salvation? Based on the different answers given to these questions we see a different understanding being delineated of the person of Christ and of his salvation.

In the Alexandrian school, for example, where the Platonic view prevails, the evil part of man most in need of salvation is his flesh; hence the emphasis on the Incarnation as the moment when, assuming flesh, the Word of God liberates it from corruption and divinizes it. In this line, one of them, Apollinaris of Laodicea, will go so far as to affirm that the Word did not assume a human soul, because the soul has no need to be saved, itself being a spark of the eternal Logos. In Christ the rational soul is substituted by the Logos in person; there is no need for a spark of the Logos where the whole Logos is found.

In the Antiochian school, where, instead, Aristotle's thought prevails, or in any case a less Platonic view, man's evil is seen, on the contrary, precisely in his soul and, in particular, in his rebellious will. Hence the insistence on the full humanity of Christ and his paschal mystery, through which, with his obedience unto death, Christ saves man. Synthesizing these two instances, the Church in Chalcedon will attain a complete idea of Christ and his salvation.

The Christian faith does not limit itself however to respond to the expectations of salvation of the environment in which it operates, but it creates and expands all expectations. Thus we see that to the Platonic and Gnostic dogma of salvation "through the flesh," the Church opposes with firmness the dogma of salvation "from the flesh," preaching the resurrection of the dead; to a life beyond the tomb infinitely weaker than the present life and devoured by nostalgia of it, deprived as it is of an objective and center of attraction, the Christian faith opposes the idea of a future life infinitely more full and everlasting in the vision of God.

2. Is there still need of a Savior?

In the first meditation I mentioned that, in regard to faith in Christ, in many aspects we find ourselves today close to the situation of the origins and we can learn from that time how to re-evangelize the world which is again, to a large extent, pagan. We must also ask ourselves today those three questions: What idea is there today about man and his evil? What kind of salvation is needed for such a man? How should Christ be announced to respond to such expectations of salvation?

Simplifying greatly, as is necessary in a meditation, we can identify two important positions in regard to salvation outside of the Christian faith: that of religions and that of science.

For the so-called new religions, which share the common background of the New Age movement, salvation does not come from outside, but is potentially within man himself. It consists in being attuned to or in rhythm with the energy and life of the whole cosmos. There is no need therefore for a savior but, at most, of teachers who show the way to self-realization. I will not comment on this position because it was refuted once and for all by Paul's affirmation on which we commented last time. "All have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God, but have been justified by faith in Christ."

Let us reflect instead on the challenge to faith in general and the Christian faith in particular from nonbelieving science. The atheist version most in fashion at present is that which is called the scientific, which French biologist Jacques Monod made popular in his book "Chance and Necessity." "The old alliance is infringed," concludes the author, "man finally knows that he is alone in the immensity of the universe from which he arose by chance. His duty, as his destiny, is nowhere written. Our number has come up randomly."

In this view the problem of salvation is not even posed, regarded as it is as a residue of that "animist" mentality, as the author calls it, which seeks to see objectives and aims in a universe which advances instead in obscurity, directed only by chance and necessity. The only salvation is that offered by science and consists in knowledge of how things are, without self-consoling illusions. "Modern societies," he writes, "are built on science. To it they owe their wealth, power and the certainty that even greater wealth and power will one day be accessible to man if he wants it. … Furnished with all power, and enjoying all the riches that science offers them, our societies still endeavor to live and teach systems of values, already undermined at the base by this same science."[2]

My intention is not to discuss these theories, but only to give an idea of the cultural context in which we are called at present to announce the salvation of Christ. We must, however, make one observation. Let us admit that "our number has come up randomly," that life is the result of a chance combination of inanimate elements. But to get the numbers from the roulette, someone has to have put them there. Who has provided by chance the ingredients with which to work? It is an old and trivial observation, and one which no scientist to date has been able to give an answer, except for the quick one that it's not something brought into question.

One thing is certain and incontrovertible: The existence of the universe and man is not explained on its own. We can give up trying to find a further explanation beyond that which science can give, but that's not to say that everything has been explained without the hypothesis of God. At most, chance explains the how, not the what, of the universe. It explains that it is as it is, but not the fact itself that it exists. Nonbelieving science does not eliminate the mystery; it only changes its name: Instead of God it calls it chance.

I believe that the most significant denial of Monod's thesis has come precisely from that science to which, according to him, humanity should entrust its own destiny. The scientists themselves are the ones who, in fact, recognize today that science alone is unable to answer all the questions and needs of man, and seek dialogue with philosophy and religion, the "systems of values" which Monod regards as irreducible antagonists of science. We see it, moreover, with our own eyes: The extraordinary successes of science and technology are not followed necessarily by more free and peaceful human coexistence in our planet.

In my opinion, Monod's book demonstrates that when a scientist wants to draw philosophic conclusions from his scientific analyses -- whether these are of biology or astrophysics -- the results are no better than when philosophers sought to draw scientific conclusions from their philosophic analyses.

3. Christ saves us from space

How can we announce in a significant way the salvation of Christ in this new cultural context? Space and time, the two coordinates within which man's life on earth develops, have undergone such a sudden expansion and acceleration that even the believer suffers vertigo. The "seven heavens" of ancient man, each one slightly above the other, have become, meanwhile, 100 million galaxies, each one made up of 100 million stars, distant from one another by thousands of millions of light-years; the Bible's 4,000 years since the creation of the world have been transformed into 14 billion years …

I believe that faith in Christ not only resists this clash, but that it offers the one who believes in him the possibility to feel at home in the expanded dimensions of the universe, free and joyful "as a child in his mother's arms."

Faith in Christ saves us above all from the immensity of space. We live in a universe the magnitude of which we can no longer imagine or quantify, the expansion of which continues without interruption, until it is lost in the infinite. A universe, science tells us, sovereignly ignorant and indifferent to what happens on earth.

But this is not what most influences the consciences of ordinary people. It's a fact that on the earth itself, with the event of mass communication, space has expanded all of a sudden around man, making him feel even smaller and insignificant, as a disoriented actor on a huge stage.

Movies, television and the Internet place before our eyes at every moment what we could be and are not, what others do and we do not do, awakening a sensation of resigned frustration and passive acceptance of one's own fortune or rather, on the contrary, an obsessive need to emerge from anonymity and call attention to oneself. In the first case one lives in the reflection of the life of another and, as a person, becomes an admirer or fan of someone; in the second case, life is reduced to a career.

Faith in Christ frees us from the need to make our way, to avoid our limitations at all costs and to be someone; it also frees us from envy of the great, reconciles us with ourselves and with our place in life, gives us the possibility of being happy and of being totally fulfilled where we are. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us!" (John 1:14). God, the infinite, came and comes continually to you, where you are. The coming of Christ in the incarnation, kept alive through the centuries by the Eucharist, makes every place the first place. With Christ in one's heart one feels oneself in the center of the world, including in the earth's most remote village.

This explains why so many believers, men and women, can live ignored by all, carry out the most humble jobs in the world or even be enclosed in a cloister and feel themselves, in this situation, the happiest and most fulfilled persons on earth. One of these cloistered souls, Blessed Mary of Jesus Crucified, known by the name "the Little Arab" because of her Palestinian origin and slight stature, on returning to her place after having received Communion, could be heard exclaiming to herself in a low voice: "Now I have everything, I have everything."

Today the fact that Christ did not come in splendor, power and majesty, but little and poor acquires a new significance for us; that he chose a "humble maiden" as his Mother, that he did not live in a metropolis of the period, Rome, Alexandria or even Jerusalem, but rather in a remote village of Galilee, exercising the humble profession of carpenter. At that moment the true center of the world was not in Rome or Jerusalem but in Bethlehem, "the smallest village of Judea," and after it in Nazareth, the village of which it was said that "nothing good could come from it."

What we say about society in general is even truer for us, people of the Church. The certainty that Christ is with us, wherever we are, frees us from the obsessive need to go higher, to hold the highest posts. No one can say that he is altogether exempt from feeling such natural sentiments and desires within himself -- not in the least, preachers! -- but the thought of Christ helps us at least to recognize them and to struggle against them so that they will never become the dominant motive of our action. The wonderful result of this is peace.

4. Christ saves us from time

The second realm in which we experience the salvation of Christ is that of time. From this point of view our situation has not changed much from that of men at the time of the Apostles. The problem is always the same and it is called death. The salvation of Christ is compared by Peter to that of Noah of the deluge that "engulfed all" (1 Peter 3:20 ff.) and it is because of this that he is represented among the mosaics of this chapel, as a moment of the history of salvation. But there is always a deluge in the world: that of time which, like water, submerges everything and sweeps all away, one generation after another.

The 19th-century Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer expressed admirably the perception that man has of himself facing death.

"Gigantic wave that the wind / curls and pushes in the sea, / And rolls on and passes, and knows not / what beach it seeks.

"Light that shines in trembling rings, close to expiring, / knowing not which will be the last to shine.

"I am he, who by chance go through the world, thinking not from whence I come or whither my steps will take me."[3]

At present there are renowned psychologists who see in the rejection of death the true spring of all human action, including the sexual instinct, placed by Freud as the basis of everything, it would be no more than one of the manifestations.[4] Biblical man was consoled by the certainty of surviving in his offspring; pagan man by surviving in fame: "Non omnis moriar (I will not die completely)," said Horace. Referring to his poetry, he said: "Exegi monumentum aere perennius (I have built a monument more lasting than bronze)."

Today appeal is made rather to survival of the species. "The survival of each individual," writes Monod, "has no importance whatsoever for the affirmation of a specific species; the latter is entrusted to the capacity to give origin to abundant offspring capable in turn of surviving and reproducing themselves."[5] A variant of the Marxist view -- based in this occasion on biology instead of dialectical materialism, but in each case the hope of surviving in the species -- has revealed itself insufficient to placate man's anguish in the face of his own death.

The philosopher Miguel de Unamuno -- who was also a "secular" thinker -- answered a friend, who reproached him as being proud and presumptuous in his search for eternity, in these terms: "I do not say that we deserve a beyond or that logic show it to us; I say that I need it, whether or not I deserve it, and nothing more. I say that what happens does not satisfy me, that I thirst for eternity, and that without it nothing matters to me. Without it there is no joy in living. … It is very easy to say: 'We must live!' 'We must be content with life!' And those of us who are not content with it?"[6] It is not the one who desires eternity, said the same thinker, who shows no love for life, but the one who does not desire it, from the moment he resigns himself so easily to the thought that it must end.

What does the Christian faith say about all this? Something simple and grandiose: that death exists, that it is our greatest problem, but that Christ has conquered death! Human death is no longer the same as before; a decisive event has intervened. It has lost its sting, as a serpent whose venom is now only able to lull the victim for an hour, but not kill it. Death is no longer a wall before which everything breaks; it is a step, that is, an Easter. It is a "passing to what does not pass," said Augustine.[7]

Jesus in fact -- and here is the great Christian announcement -- did not die just for himself, he did not just leave us an example of heroic death, as Socrates. He did something very different: "One died for all" (2 Corinthians 5:14), exclaims St. Paul, and also: "He tasted death for every one" (Hebrews 2:9). "Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live" (John 11:25). Extraordinary affirmations that do not make us cry out in joy only because we do not take them seriously enough, and to the letter, as we should.

Christianity does not gain ground in consciences with the fear of death; it gains ground with the death of Christ. Jesus came to liberate men from fear of death, not to increase it. The Son of God assumed flesh and blood like us, "to destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage" (Hebrews 2:14 ff.).

In addition to Christ's resurrection, the proof that all this is not "self-consoling illusion" is the fact that the believer already experiences, from the moment he believes, something of this victory over death. Last summer I preached in an Anglican parish in London. The church was full of young men and women. I was talking about the resurrection of Christ and, at a certain moment, after I had given all the arguments to support it, I was inspired to ask those present a question: "How many of you think you can say as the blind man from birth: 'I was blind, but now I see,' 'I was dead, but now I live'?" A forest of hands were raised even before I finished the question. Some were coming from years of drugs, prison, despairing life and suicide attempts; others, on the contrary, from promising careers in the field of business and entertainment.

To his close friends who expressed concern about his future and health conditions, raising his head in his wheelchair, Pope John Paul II surprisingly repeated one day, toward the end of his life, with a profound voice, Horace's phrase: "Non omnis moriar" (I will not die completely), but on his lips that already had another meaning.

5. Christ "My Savior"

It is not enough, however, that I recognize Christ as "Savior of the world"; it is necessary that I recognize him as "my Savior." A moment that cannot be forgotten is that in which this discovery takes place and this illumination is received. One then understands what the Apostle tried to say with the words: "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost" (1 Timothy 1:15).

The experience of salvation that is had with Christ is wonderfully exemplified in the incident of Peter, drowning in the lake. We experience daily the sense of drowning: in sin, in lukewarmness, in discouragement, in incredulity, in doubt, in routine. Faith itself is to walk on the edge of the cliff, with the constant sensation that at every moment we might lose our balance and plunge into the void.

In these conditions it is an immense consolation to continually discover that Christ's hand is ready to lift us up, if only we seek and grab hold of it. We can even experience a profound joy seeing ourselves as weak and sinners, as the liturgy sings in the "Exultet" of the Easter Vigil: "O felix culpa quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!" (O happy fault, which gained for us so great a Redeemer).

I shall end here, venerable fathers and brothers, my Advent reflections on faith in Christ in the world of today. Writing against the Docetist heretics of his time, who denied the Incarnation of the Word and his true humanity, Tertullian proffered the cry: "Do not take away from the world its only hope" (parce unicae spei totius orbis).[8]

It is the sad cry we must repeat to the men of today, tempted to do without Christ. He is, still today, the only hope of the world. When the Apostle Peter exhorts us to "give reason for the hope that is in us," he exhorts us to speak to men of Christ because he is the reason of our hope.

We must re-create the conditions for a recovery of faith in Christ. Reproduce the impulse of faith from which the symbol of Nicaea was born. The body of the Church produced on that occasion a supreme effort, raising itself in faith above all human systems and all the resistances of reason.

The fruit of this effort remained later as the symbol of faith. The tide once rose to the highest level and a sign of it remained on the rock. But it must rise again, the sign is not enough. It is not enough to repeat the Nicean Creed; the impulse of faith must be renewed which then existed in the divinity of Christ and of which there has been no equal in the centuries.

While waiting to proclaim it publicly, bending the knee, on the night of Christmas, I now take the liberty to invite everyone to recite, in Latin, the article of faith on Jesus. It is the most beautiful gift we can give Christ who comes, the one he always sought in life. He also asks his closest collaborators today: "You, who do you believe that I am?"

And we, rising to our feet, respond:

"Credo in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum. Et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula. Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero. Genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri: per quem omnia facta sunt. Qui propter nos homines, et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis. Et incarnatus est de spiritu sancto ex Maria Virgine: et homo factus est."

(I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.)

Merry Christmas to all!

* * *

[1] St. Athanasius, "Oratio contra Arianos," I,70.

[2] J. Monod, "Il caso e la necessità," Est Mondadori, Milan, 1970, pp. 136-7.

[3] Gustavo A. Bécquer, "Obras Completas," p. 426.

[4] Cf. E. Becker, "Il Rifiuto della Morte," St. Paul's Publishers, Rome, 1982.

[5] J. Monod, "Il caso e la necessità," Milan, 1970.

[6] M. de Unamuno, "Cartas a J. Ilundain," in Review of the University of Buenos Aires, 9, pp. 135-150.

[7] St. Augustine, "Trattati su Giovanni," 55, 1.

[8] Tertullian, "De Carne Christi," 5, 3 (CC 2, p. 881).

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Wednesday Liturgy: Lector in an Irregular Relationship

ROME, DEC. 20, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University.

Q: It is liturgically permissible for a person who has married outside the Church to be appointed as a reader at Sunday Mass? The person concerned had been granted an annulment of a previous marriage and desired to be married in the Church. Unfortunately her husband who was not a Catholic refused to seek an annulment of his previous marriage. This is a sensitive pastoral issue; it is understood that readers should be in good standing. Does the parish priest have some discretion in such a matter? -- K.O., Christchurch, New Zealand

A: We must take several things into account. A person who has married outside the Church with a proper dispensation is not impeded from acting as a reader or any similar ministry.

Acting as a minister, however, is also a sign of communion and fidelity. And so, the person who carries out this ministry should be in good standing with the Church.

Therefore a general rule of thumb could be that a person whose personal state impedes his or her habitual reception of Communion should not act in any public role in the liturgical assembly.

Given the public nature of the ministry, however, there may be cases when it is not prudent for a person to act in a ministry even if not impeded from receiving Communion.

Thus we may apply to readers and servers what the 1973 instruction "Immensae Caritatis" says regarding the choice of an extraordinary minister: The choice "should never fall upon a person whose designation could cause astonishment to the faithful."

The priest does have certain discretion, not regarding the accession to a ministry of a person who is impeded from receiving Communion, but with respect to the prudent admission of a non-impeded person whose designation may cause perplexity for publicly known reasons.

I do not have sufficient elements to form a judgment regarding the specific case at hand. An experienced canonist could gauge the possibilities of regularizing the marriage without the husband having to recur to an annulment process.

If this can be done, and the wife is once more free to receive Communion, then, before admitting her to a public ministry, it falls upon the priest to weigh such questions as to the notoriety and gravity of the case and the likely reaction of the faithful.

Wednesday Liturgy: Follow-up: Advent Prayer and the Incarnation

ROME, DEC. 20, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University.

After our comments on the Incarnation (Dec. 6) some readers asked specific questions regarding the liturgy at Christmas.

A Pennsylvania reader asked: "I'd appreciate some direction on the appropriate degree of altar flowers during the Advent and Christmas season and the location of a Christmas crèche. Is it acceptable to have a crèche within the sanctuary? If so, is there a preference for directly in front of the altar or off to the side, about 15 feet from the altar?"

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal, No. 305, gives the following indications regarding flowers:

"Moderation should be observed in the decoration of the altar.

"During Advent the floral decoration of the altar should be marked by a moderation suited to the character of this season, without expressing prematurely the full joy of the Nativity of the Lord. During Lent it is forbidden for the altar to be decorated with flowers. Laetare Sunday (Fourth Sunday of Lent), Solemnities, and Feasts are exceptions.

"Floral decorations should always be done with moderation and placed around the altar rather than on its mensa."

There is a very widespread custom of using poinsettias (usually red or white) during the Christmas season.

There are no official norms regarding the crèche, or crib. Most churches seem to place it to one side of the sanctuary or in some other part of the Church, such as a side chapel. It very much depends on the church's size and architecture.

I have occasionally seen a crib in front of an altar but it is probably not the best position.

On the one hand, placing it within the sanctuary makes it difficult for the faithful to get close and spend some time contemplating the mystery of Bethlehem. On the other, it can easily become an obstacle to the smooth realization of the liturgical functions.

A more delicate question came in from a Californian correspondent: "I've been asked to organize a Children's Christmas Vigil Mass that includes children dressed as Mary, Joseph, angels, and shepherds entering after the Gospel. The priest will narrate the Nativity story with the children singing songs at certain points. I've already deleted all lines to be delivered by the children. Do you have suggestions as to what should be considered distracting elements that just don't belong?"

I suppose that our reader refers to a Mass at which the vast majority of the participants are pre-adolescent children and not a mixture of older children and adults.

In the latter case the whole project should probably be dropped, as the special norms regarding children's Masses are specifically tailored to young children. Some form of dramatization by children might be allowed before Mass begins but not during the celebration itself.

Even in the case of the majority being young children, the norms do not appear to lend support for any forms of dramatization even though some special elements may be included.

Below, I present a selection of some of the norms from the directory for Masses for children at which some adults attend; these norms should help our reader prepare a celebration in conformity with the mind of the Church. The full text may be found at a Web site called www.catholicliturgy.com.

"Chapter III, Part 1. Offices and Ministries in the Celebration

22. The principles of active and conscious participation are in a sense even more significant for Masses celebrated with children. Every effort should therefore be made to increase this participation and to make it more intense. For this reason as many children as possible should have special parts in the celebration: for example, preparing the place and the altar (see no. 29), acting as cantor (see no. 24), singing in a choir, playing musical instruments (see no. 32), proclaiming the readings (see nos. 24 and 47), responding during the homily (see no. 48), reciting the intentions of the general intercessions, bringing the gifts to the altar, and performing similar activities in accord with the usage of various peoples (see no. 34).

"To encourage participation, it will sometimes be helpful to have several additions, for example, the insertion of motives for giving thanks before the priest begins the dialogue of the preface.

"In all this, it should be kept in mind that external activities will be fruitless and even harmful if they do not serve the internal participation of the children. Thus religious silence has its importance even in Masses with children (see no. 37). The children should not be allowed to forget that all the forms of participation reach their high point in eucharistic communion, when the body and blood of Christ are received as spiritual nourishment.

"23. It is the responsibility of the priest who celebrates with children to make the celebration festive, familial, and meditative. Even more than in Masses with adults, the priest is the one to create this kind of attitude, which depends on his personal preparation and his manner of acting and speaking with others ...

"24. Since the Eucharist is always the action of the entire ecclesial community, the participation of at least some adults is desirable. These should be present not as monitors but as participants, praying with the children and helping them to the extent necessary …

"Even in Masses with children attention is to be paid to the diversity of ministries so that the Mass may stand out clearly as the celebration of the community. For example, readers and cantors, whether children or adults, should be employed. In this way a variety of voices will keep the children from becoming bored.

"Chapter III, Part 5. Gestures

"33. In view of the nature of the liturgy as an activity of the entire person and in view of the psychology of children, participation by means of gestures and posture should be strongly encouraged in Masses with children, with due regard for age and local customs. Much depends not only on the actions of the priest, [29] but also on the manner in which the children conduct themselves as a community ...

"34. Among the actions that are considered under this heading, processions and other activities that involve physical participation deserve special mention.

"The children's entering in procession with the priest can serve to help them to experience a sense of the communion that is thus being created. The participation of at least some children in the procession with the Book of the Gospels makes clear the presence of Christ announcing the word to his people. The procession of children with the chalice and the gifts expresses more clearly the value and meaning of the preparation of the gifts. The communion procession, if properly arranged, helps greatly to develop the children's devotion.

"Chapter III, Part 6. Visual Elements

"35. The liturgy of the Mass contains many visual elements and these should be given great prominence with children. This is especially true of the particular visual elements in the course of the liturgical year, for example, the veneration of the cross, the Easter candle, the lights on the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, and the variety of colors and liturgical appointments.

"In addition to the visual elements that belong to the celebration and to the place of celebration, it is appropriate to introduce other elements that will permit children to perceive visually the wonderful works of God in creation and redemption and thus support their prayer. The liturgy should never appear as something dry and merely intellectual.

"36. For the same reason, the use of art work prepared by the children themselves may be useful, for example, as illustrations of a homily, as visual expressions of the intentions of the general intercessions, or as inspirations to reflection.

"45. In the biblical texts "God is speaking to his people ... and Christ is present to the faithful through his own word." Paraphrases of Scripture should therefore be avoided. On the other hand, the use of translations that may already exist for the catechesis of children and that are accepted by the competent authority is recommended.

"46. Verses of psalms, carefully selected in accord with the understanding of children, or singing in the form of psalmody or the Alleluia with a simple verse should be sung between the readings. The children should always have a part in this singing, but sometimes a reflective silence may be substituted for the singing …

"47. All the elements that will help to explain the readings should be given great consideration so that the children may make the biblical readings their own and may come more and more to appreciate the value of God's word.

"Among such elements are the introductory comments that may precede the readings and that by explaining the context or by introducing the text itself help the children to listen better and more fruitfully. The interpretation and explanation of the readings from the Scriptures in the Mass on a saint's day may include an account of the saint's life, not only in the homily but even before the readings in the form of an introduction.

"When the text of the readings lends itself to this, it may be helpful to have the children read it with parts distributed among them, as is provided for the reading of the Lord's passion during Holy Week."

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Father Cantalamessa's 3rd Advent Sermon: The Righteousness That Comes From Faith in Christ

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 16, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the Advent sermon delivered today by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, Pontifical Household preacher, in the presence of Benedict XVI and members of the Roman Curia.

The sermon was the third in a series. Father Cantalamessa is offering a series of reflections on the theme "'For What We Preach Is Not Ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord' (2 Corinthians 4:5): Faith in Christ Today."

* * *

St. Paul's Faith in Christ

1. Justified by Faith in Christ

Last time we sought to make our faith in Christ more ardent through contact with the faith of John the Evangelist; this time we will try to do the same, but this time through making contact with the faith of the Apostle Paul.

When St. Paul, from Corinth, in the years 57-58, wrote the Letter to the Romans, he would have still been active and ardent in the memory of the rejection he encountered some years before in Athens in his discourse at the Areopagus. Nonetheless, at the beginning of the letter he speaks confidently of having received the grace of apostleship "to bring about the obedience of faith, for the sake of his name, among all the Gentiles" (Romans 1:5).

Obedience, and in addition to that, among all the gentiles! His failure hadn't scratched in the least his certainty that the Gospel "is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16). In that moment, the vast work of taking the Gospel to the ends of the world was yet to be done. Shouldn't it have seemed to be an impossible and absurd task? But Paul says: "for I know him in whom I have believed" (2 Timothy 1:12), and 2,000 years has justified his audacious faith.

I reflected over these things the first time that I visited Athens and Corinth and I told myself: "If today we had just a small grain of Paul's faith, we wouldn't let ourselves be intimidated by the fact that the world has yet to be evangelized, and even more, that it rejects, at times contemptuously, like the Areopagites, being evangelized."

Faith in Christ, for Paul, is everything. "Insofar as I now live in the flesh," he writes as a testament in the Letter to the Galatians, "I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me" (Galatians 2:20).[1]

When one speaks of faith in St. Paul one thinks spontaneously of the great theme of justification by faith in Christ. And on this we wish to concentrate our attention, not to outline the umpteenth discussion on the topic, but to receive his consoling message. I was saying in the first meditation that there currently exists a need for kerygmatic preaching, suitable to incite faith where it has never existed, or where it has died. Gratuitous justification by faith in Christ is the heart of this type of preaching, and it is a shame that this is, in turn, practically absent from ordinary preaching in the Church.

In this respect something strange has occurred. To the objections raised by the reformers, the Council of Trent had given a Catholic response, that there is a place for faith and for good works, each one, it was understood, in its place. One is not saved by good works, but one cannot be saved without good works. Nevertheless, from this moment in which the Protestants insisted unilaterally on faith, Catholic preaching and spirituality ended up accepting the nearly exclusive and thankless work of calling to mind the need for good works and of one's personal contribution to salvation. The result is that the great majority of Catholics have lived entire lives without having ever heard a direct announcement of gratuitous justification by faith, without too many "buts."

After the agreement on this topic in 1999, between the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation, the situation changed in terms of principle, but it's still difficult to put it into practice. The desire is expressed in the text of that agreement that the common doctrine on justification be put into practice, making it part of the lived experience of the faithful, and not simply the subject of learned discussions among theologians. This is what we propose to achieve, at least in small part, in the present meditation. Before anything else, let us read the text:

"All have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God. They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as an expiation, through faith, by his blood, to prove his righteousness because of the forgiveness of sins previously committed, through the forbearance of God -- to prove his righteousness in the present time, that he might be righteous and justify the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:23-26).

Nothing of this text can be understood, even to the point that it could inspire fear more than consolation (as occurred for centuries), if the term "righteousness of God" is interpreted incorrectly. It was Luther who rediscovered that "righteousness of God" does not indicate here chastisement, or worse, his revenge, toward man, but rather it indicates, on the contrary, the act through which God "makes" man "just." (He really said "declares," not "makes," just, because he was thinking of an extrinsic or legal justification, in an imputation of justice, more than a real being made just.)

I said "rediscovered," because much earlier than him St. Augustine had written: "The 'righteousness of God' is used in the sense of our being made righteous by his gift ('iustitia Dei, qua iusti eius munere efficimur'), and 'the salvation of the Lord' (Psalm 3:9), in that we are saved by him."[2]

The concept of "righteousness of God" was explained in the Letter to Titus: "But when the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared, not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy" (Titus 3:4-5). Saying "The righteousness of God appeared," is the same as saying: The goodness of God, his love and his mercy appeared. It was not man who, all of a sudden, changed life and tradition and put himself to the task of doing good; the novelty is that God acted, he was the first to extend his hand out to sinful man, and his action fulfilled time.

Here is the novelty that distinguishes the Christian religion from any other. Any other religion draws out for man a path to salvation by means of practical observations and intellectual speculations, promising him, as a final prize, salvation and illumination, but leaving him substantially alone in achieving the task. Christianity does not begin with what man must do to save himself, but rather with what God has done to save him. The order is reversed.

It is true that to love God with all your heart is "the first and greatest of the commandments," but the commandments are not primary, they are secondary. Before the order of commandments comes the order of gift and of grace. Christianity is the religion of grace! If this is not taken into consideration in interreligious dialogue, the dialogue would be able to do no more than generate confusion and doubts in the hearts of many Christians.

2. Justification and conversion

I would like now to show how the doctrine of gratuitous justification by faith is not an invention of Paul, but rather the pure teaching of Jesus. At the start of his ministry, Jesus proclaimed: "This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Convert, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). What Christ includes in the expression "Kingdom of God," that is, the salvific initiative of God, his offering of salvation to humanity, St. Paul calls "righteousness of God," but it deals with the same fundamental reality: "Kingdom of God" and "righteousness of God" are brought together when Jesus says: "Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness" (Matthew 6:33). "Jesus," wrote St. Cyril of Alexandria, "calls the 'kingdom of God' justification through faith, baptismal purification and communion of the Spirit."[3]

When Jesus said: "Convert, and believe in the Gospel," he was already teaching justification by faith. Before him, conversion always meant "to go back" (in Hebrew the same word is used for both "convert" and "to go back": the word "shub"); it meant to go back to the broken alliance by way of a renewed observance of the law.

Consequently, conversion has a principally ascetic, moral and penitential meaning, and is achieved by changing how one lives. Conversion is seen as a condition for salvation; the sense is: Convert and be saved; convert and salvation will come to you. In the mouth of Jesus this moral meaning passes to a second plane (at least at the start of his preaching), with respect to a new significance, until now unknown.

Conversion no longer means to go back, to the old alliance and to the observance of the law; it means rather to take a step forward, to enter into a new alliance, to hold onto this Kingdom that has appeared, and to enter into it. And entering it by faith: "Convert and believe" does not mean two different and successive things, but rather the same action: convert, so as to believe; convert believing! "Prima conversio ad Deum fit per fidem," writes St. Thomas Aquinas: "The first conversion to God consists in believing."[4]

"Convert and believe" means therefore: Pass from the old alliance, based on the law, to the new alliance, based on faith. The Apostle says the same with the doctrine of justification by faith. The only difference is owed to what had happened, meanwhile, between the preaching of Jesus and Paul: Christ had been rejected and led to death for the sins of man. The faith "in the Gospel" ("believe in the Gospel") now takes shape as faith "in Jesus Christ," "in his blood" (Romans 3:25).

3. Faith-appropriation

Everything, then, depends on faith. But we know that there are different types of faith: There is the faith-acquiescence of the intellect, the faith-confidence, the faith-stability, as Isaiah calls it (7:9). What type of faith is addressed when talking about justification "by faith?" It addresses a special type of faith: the faith-appropriation. It does not tire me to cite in this respect a text of St. Bernard:

"But as for me, whatever is lacking in my own resources I appropriate for myself from the heart of the Lord, which overflows with mercy. My merit therefore is the mercy of the Lord. Surely I am not devoid of merit so long as he is not of mercy. And if the Lord abounds in mercy, I too must abound in merits (Psalm 119:156). But would this be my own righteousness? Lord, I will be mindful of your righteousness only. For that is also mine, since God has made you my righteousness."[5]

It is written in fact: "Jesus Christ became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30). "For us," not for himself! We pertain more to Christ than to ourselves, as he has bought us at a great price (1 Corinthians 6:20), and inversely what is Christ's pertains more to us than if it were ours. I call this the blow of audacity, or the flutter, in Christian life.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem expressed it like this, it is the same conviction in other words: "Oh the extraordinary goodness of God toward man? The just of the Old Testament thank God in the weariness of long years; but that which they obtained, by means of a long and heroic service pleasing to God, Jesus gives to you in the brief time span of an hour. Indeed, if you believe that Jesus Christ is the lord, and that God had raised him from the dead, you will be saved and you will be introduced into heaven by the same one who introduced the good thief."[6]

4. Justification and Confession

I said at the beginning that gratuitous justification by faith should transform itself into lived experience for the believer. We Catholics have an enormous advantage in this: the sacraments, and in particular, the sacrament of reconciliation. This offers us an excellent and infallible means to experience anew each time justification by faith. In it is renewed what happened once in baptism, in which, says Paul, the Christian has been "washed, sanctified and justified" (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:11).

The "admirable exchange" ("admirabile commercium") takes place in each confession. Christ takes on my sins and I take on his righteousness! Unfortunately in Rome, as in any great city, there are many homeless person, poor brothers dressed in dirty rags who sleep on the street, and who drag with them everywhere they go their few belongings. We could imagine what would happen if one day the word spread that in the Via Condotti there was a luxurious boutique where each one of them could go, leave their rags, take a good shower, pick out whatever they want, and take it, just like that, free, "without expense, without money," because for some unknown reason the owner had given to them all this out of generosity.

This is what happens in each well-made confession. Jesus inculcated this with the parable of the prodigal son: "Quickly bring the finest robe" (Luke 15:22). Rising up anew after each confession we can exclaim in the words of Isaiah: "For he has clothed me with a robe of salvation, and wrapped me in a mantle of justice" (Isaiah 61:10). The story of the publican is also repeated: "O God, be merciful to me a sinner." "I tell you, this one went home justified" (Luke 18:13f).

5. "So that I can know him"

Where did St. Paul get the marvelous message of gratuitous justification by faith, in harmony, as we have seen, with that of Jesus? He did not get it from the Gospels, for they had not yet been written, but rather from the oral tradition regarding the preaching of Jesus, and above all from his own personal experience, that is, from how God had acted in his life. He himself affirms this by saying that the Gospel that he preaches (this Gospel of justification by faith!) he did not learn from men, but rather from what Jesus Christ revealed, and he relates that revelation with the story of his own conversion (cf. Galatians 1:11ff).

Upon reading the description that St. Paul makes of his conversion, in Philippians 3, the image that comes to my mind is that of a man who moves forward in the night, through a forest, with the help of the weak flame of a candle. He makes sure that the candle does not go out, for it is all he has to help him on his way. But after a while, continuing on his way, the dawn arrives; in the horizon the sun rises, and his little light fades quickly until soon it's not even noticeable, and he throws it to one side.

The little light was for Paul his righteousness, a poor smoky wick, though based in high sounding titles: circumcised on the eighth day, of the line of Israel, Hebrew, Pharisee, impeccable in observing the law ... (cf. Philippians 3:5-6). One good day, in the horizon of his life the sun appeared: the "sun of righteousness" that he calls, in this text, with infinite devotion, "Jesus Christ, my Lord," and thus his righteousness appeared to him "loss," "rubbish," and he did not want to be found with his own righteousness, but rather with that which comes from faith. God allowed him to experience beforehand, dramatically, what he was called to reveal to the Church.

In this autobiographical text it is clear that the central focus for Paul is not a doctrine, even if it were that of justification by faith, but rather a person, Christ. What he desires more than anything else is to "be in him," "know him," where that simple personal pronoun says an infinite number of things. It shows that, for the Apostle, Christ was a real, living person, not an abstraction or an ensemble of titles and doctrines.

The mystical union with Christ, through participation in his Spirit (the living "in Christ," or "in the Spirit"), is for him the final goal of Christian life; justification by faith is only the beginning and a means to achieve it.[7] This invites us to overcome the contingent polemical interpretations of the Pauline message, centered on the theme of faith-works, so as to find again, underneath them, the genuine thought of the Apostle. What is important for him to affirm before everything else is not that we be justified by faith, but rather that we be justified by faith in Christ; it is not so much that we be justified by grace, as much as that we be justified by the grace of Christ.

Christ is the heart of the message, even before grace and faith. After having presented, in the preceding two and a half chapters of the Letter to the Romans, all of humanity in its universal state of sin and perdition ("all sinned and are deprived of the glory of God"), the Apostle has the incredible courage to proclaim that this situation has changed radically for all, Jews and Greeks, "in virtue of the redemption in Christ Jesus," "through the obedience of one man" ([cf.] Romans 3:24; 5:19).

The affirmation that this salvation is received by faith, and not for works, is present in the text and it was perhaps the most urgent to clarify in the time of Luther. But that takes second place, not first place, especially in the Letter to the Romans, where the polemic with the Judaizers is much less present than in the Letter to the Galatians. It was erroneous to reduce to a problem of schools, within Christianity, what was, for the Apostle, an affirmation of much greater and universal reach.

In the description of the medieval battles there is always a moment in which, the archers, the cavalry and all the rest overcome, the fray centers around the king. The final battle is decided here. Also for us the battle is fought around the king. As in the time of Paul, the person of Jesus Christ is at stake, not this or that doctrine regarding him, no matter how important that doctrine might be. Christianity "remains or falls" with Jesus, and with nothing else.

6. Forgetting the past

Continuing with the autobiographical text of Philippians 3, Paul suggests to us the practical idea with which we will conclude our reflection:

"Brothers, I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession [of perfect maturity]. Just one thing: forgetting the past but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God's upward calling, in Christ Jesus" ([cf.] Philippians 3:13-14).

"Forgetting the past." What "past"? That of the Pharisee, of what he had said before? No, the past of the apostle, in the Church! Now the "gain" to consider a "loss" is something else: It is precisely having already considered once everything lost to the cause of Christ. It was natural to think: "What courage, this Paul: to abandon such a good career as a rabbi for an obscure sect of Galileans! And what letters he has written! How many trips he undertook! How many churches he founded!"

The Apostle warned confusedly of the mortal danger of putting between himself and Christ "his own righteousness" derived from works -- this time the works done by Christ -- and he reacted vigorously. "I do not believe," he said, "that I have reached perfection." St. Francis of Assisi, in a similar situation, cut short any temptation of self-complacency, saying: "We begin, brothers, to serve the Lord, because until now we have done little or nothing."[8]

This is the most necessary conversion for those that have followed Christ and have lived serving him in the Church. A conversion altogether special, which does not consist in abandoning evil, but rather, in a certain sense, in abandoning the good! That is, by detaching oneself from all that you have done, repeating to yourself, according to the suggestion of Christ: "We are useless servants; we have done only our duty" (Luke 17:10). And not even, perhaps, the good we should do!

A beautiful Christmas story makes us want to arrive to the Nativity, with a heart that is poor and empty of everything. Among the shepherds who presented themselves on Christmas night to adore the Child, there was one so poor that he didn't have anything to offer and he was very much ashamed. Upon arriving to the cave, the shepherds fought among themselves to offer their gifts. Mary didn't know how to receive all of them, for she had the Child in her arms. So, seeing the poor shepherd with his hands free, she gave him Jesus to hold. Having empty hands was his fortune, and on another level, it will also be our fortune.

* * *

[1] Today there are those who want to see the expression "faith in the Son of God," or "faith in Christ," frequently used in the writings of Paul (Romans 3:22,26; Galatians 2:16; 2:20; 3:22; Philippians 3:9), as a genitive subject, as if they were addressing the faith of Christ, or the fidelity which he proved by sacrificing himself for us. I prefer to keep with the traditional interpretation, followed as well by authorized contemporary exegetes (cf. Dunn, op. cit., pp. 380-386), that see in Christ the object, not the subject of faith; not so much the faith of Christ (supposing that we could speak of Christ having faith), but rather faith in Christ. On this the Apostle based his own life, and in this he invites us to base our own.

[2] St. Augustine, "The Spirit and the Letter," 32, 56 (PL 44, 237).

[3] St. Cyril of Alexandria, "Commentary on the Gospel of Luke," 22, 26 (PG 72905).

[4] St. Thomas Aquinas, "Summa Theologiae," I-IIae, q.113, a. 4.

[5] St. Bernard of Clairvaux, "Sermons on the Song of Songs," 61, 4-5 (PL 183, 1072).

[6] Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis V, 10 (PG 33, 517).

[7] Cf. J.D.G. Dunn, "La teologia dell’apostolo Paolo," Brescia, Paideia, 1999, p. 421.

[8] Celano, "Vita prima," 103 ("Fonti Francescane," No. 500).

[Translation by ZENIT]

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Wednesday Liturgy: Formula at Priest's Funeral

ROME, DEC. 13, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University.

Q: Recently, at a funeral for a priest, a concelebrant read the prayer for the dead in Eucharistic Prayer II in this way: "Remember Joseph, whom you have called from this life. In baptism and holy orders he died with Christ; may he also share his resurrection." I have heard this said many times at priests' funerals or anniversaries of death, so I took it as a valid formula. However, one of the laity was offended by the formula, which to her seemed to equate baptism with ordination. Could you tell me whether the addition of "holy orders" in the prayer for the deceased priest is allowed during the Eucharistic Prayer? I was not able to find a separate book for priests' funerals to answer it on my own. I would certainly like to continue this tradition if possible, but not if it is incorrect to do so. -- K.H., Rochester, New York

A: There is, as far as I know, no special book for priest's funerals, although there are particular prayers for a deceased priest.

There are some marks of distinction. The coffin, for instance, is placed in the direction that a person held in the liturgical assembly. Thus, the body of an ordained minister lies facing the assembly and the body of a layperson lies facing the altar.

Where it is customary, the insignia of the minister's order may be placed on the coffin.

Apart from this, No. 832 of the Ceremonial of Bishops notes that "The funeral Mass is celebrated in the same way as other Masses. In Eucharistic Prayers II and III the intercessions (interpolations) for the deceased are added."

I do not consider that the addition of the phrase "in holy orders" to these interpolations is quite correct, and I believe that the layperson's objection touches on a valid point.

First, there is the general principle that nobody, not even a priest, may add or remove anything from the sacred liturgy, and this addition is not found in any official liturgical text.

During the funeral of Pope John Paul II the First Eucharistic Prayer's formula of intercession for the dead was faithfully followed except, as is usual in funerals, in substituting the deceased's name for the usual silent pause. To wit: "Remember; Lord, those who have died … especially the Roman Pontiff Pope John Paul, whom today you have called to you from this life …"

Second, although the reception of holy orders is a wonderful thing, and the soul receives an indelible sacramental seal, it is not quite true to say that N. has died with Christ in holy orders. The expression "in baptism he has died with Christ" is redolent of St. Paul's theology in which baptism is in itself a death to sin and a foretaste of the resurrection through the reception of a new life in Christ.

Including another sacrament in this phrase tends to obscure the scriptural and theological background and, I believe, weakens rather than enhances the depth of the interpolation.

Finally, if this addition were legitimate, then logically we would also have to include the other sacrament that leaves an indelible seal on the soul and say "in baptism, confirmation and holy orders he has died with Christ …"

Wednesday Liturgy: Follow-up: Christmas Decorations

ROME, DEC. 13, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University.

Unsurprisingly, given the haziness or inexistence of norms on the subject, some readers dissented from our opinions regarding the appropriate arrangement of Christmas decorations (see Nov. 29).

One reader took umbrage with our opinion that Christmas tress (that is, trees decorated with tinsel, silver balls, etc.) should not be placed in the sanctuary. He writes: "Christmas trees were always in the sanctuary since I was a child. Our monsignor was a graduate of the Roman Seminary, [and] taught there, became our pastor, and had a good idea as to what was appropriate … and not ...."

I have no difficulty with Christmas trees. But, with all due respect to the good monsignor, I think that placing them in the sanctuary is not a common practice in the Church. It is not advisable because, as a ubiquitous symbol, it no longer has an exclusively religious meaning and can easily evoke the more material and commercial aspect of the holy season.

The recovery of this original religious sense inspired a priest from New South Wales, Australia, to comment:

"Christmas decorations often have a local history and need explanation so that their meaning can be universalized and not just seen as something nice [and belonging] to the secular culture surrounding Christmas.

"Once the Christmas tree had been introduced to Europe sometime in the 16th century, decorations were made of bread dough, to symbolize Jesus Bread of Life. Shepherds' crooks -- the forerunner to the candy cane -- [and] candles -- the forerunner to tree lights and stars -- were made and then handed out to children on the feast of Christmas.

"Today, in our parish, I get the children to make biscuit dough decorations and ice them. They are then given out to parishioners the last Sunday of Advent. On that occasion we also bless the families' crib figures and other home decorations."

I am happy to pass along these useful pastoral suggestions hoping that they may help many readers live this Christmas with true spiritual depth.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Father Cantalamessa on St. John's Gospel

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 9, 2005 (ZENIT.org).- Here is a translation of the Advent sermon delivered today by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, Pontifical Household preacher, in the presence of Benedict XVI and members of the Roman Curia in preparation for Christmas.

The sermon was the second in a series. Preaching in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel of the Apostolic Palace, Father Cantalamessa is offering a series of reflections on the theme "'For What We Preach Is Not Ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord' (2 Corinthians 4:5): Faith in Christ Today."

* * *

"Do You Believe?" -- The Divinity of Christ in St. John's Gospel

1. "Unless you believe that I am he ..."

One day I was celebrating Mass in a cloistered monastery. It was at Easter time. The evangelical passage was John's page in which Jesus repeatedly says "I Am": "you will die in your sins unless you believe that I Am he ... When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I Am he ... before Abraham was, I Am" (John 8:24,28,58).

The fact that the words "I Am," contrary to all grammatical rules, were both written in capital letters, united undoubtedly to some other more mysterious cause, ignited a spark. That word was illuminated within me. It was no longer the Christ of 2,000 years ago who was pronouncing it, but the risen and living Christ who again proclaimed at that moment before us his "Ego Eimi," "I Am!" The word acquired cosmic resonance. It was not a simple emotion of faith, but one of those emotions that, having passed, left an indelible memory in the heart.

I have begun with this personal reminiscence because the subject of this meditation is faith in Christ in John's Gospel, and the "I Am" of Christ is the highest expression of such faith. Modern commentaries on the fourth Gospel are unanimous in seeing in those words of Jesus an allusion to the divine name, as it presents itself, for example, in Isaiah 43:10: "That you may know and believe me and understand that I am He."

St. Augustine related this word of Jesus with the revelation of the divine name in Exodus 3:14, and concluded: "I think that the Lord Jesus Christ, when saying: 'If you do not believe that I Am,' did not wish to say anything more to us than this: 'Yes, if you do not believe that I am God, you will die in your sins.'"[1]

It could be objected that these are St. John's words, late developments of the faith, which have nothing to do with Jesus. But the point is precisely here. They are, in fact, Jesus' words, certainly of the risen Jesus who is alive and now speaks "in the Spirit," but always Jesus' -- the same Jesus of Nazareth.

Today Jesus' words in the Gospels are distinguished between "authentic" and "non-authentic," that is, in words truly pronounced by him during his life, and in words attributed to him by the apostles after his death. But this distinction is very ambiguous and not valid in Christ's case, as it is in the case of a common human author.

Obviously, it is not a question of casting doubt on the fully human and historical character of the New Testament writings, the diversity of the literary genres and the "forms," and much less so of going back to the old idea of verbal and almost mechanical inspiration of the Scriptures. It is only a question of knowing whether or not biblical inspiration still has meaning for Christians; if, at the end of a biblical reading we exclaim: "Word of God!" we believe what we say.

2. "The Work of God Is to Believe in the One He Sent"

According to John, Christ is the specific and primary object of belief. "To believe," without any other specifications, already means to believe in Christ. It can also mean to believe in God, but inasmuch as he is the God who has sent his Son to the world. Jesus addresses people who already believe in the true God; all his insistence on faith is about this that is new, which is his coming to the world, his speaking in the name of God. In a word, his being the only-begotten Son of God, "one with the Father."

John made Christ's divinity and his divine filiation the primary objective of his Gospel, the subject that unifies everything. He concludes his Gospel saying: "These signs are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:31), and he ends his first letter almost with the same words: "I write this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life" (1 John 5:13).

A quick glance at the fourth Gospel shows how faith in the divine origin of Christ is at once its warp and woof. To believe in the one the Father has sent is seeing as "the work of God," what pleases God, absolutely (cf. John 6:29). Not to believe in him is seen, consequently, as "the sin" par excellence: "The counselor -- it is said -- will convince the world of sin," and sin is not to have believed in him (John 16:8-9). Jesus asks for himself the same kind of faith that was asked for God in the Old Testament: "believe in God, believe also in me" (John 14:1).

Also after his disappearance, faith in him will remain as the great dividing line within humanity: on one hand will be those who believe without having seen (cf. John 20:29) and on the other, will be the world that refuses to believe. In the face of this distinction, all the others known earlier, including that between Jews and Gentiles, become secondary.

One cannot but be astonished before the undertaking that the spirit of Jesus enabled John to accomplish. He embraced the subjects, the symbols, the expectations, all that was religiously alive, both in the Judaic world as well as the Hellenic, making all this serve a single idea, better, a single person: Jesus Christ Son of God, Savior of the world.

Reading the books of some scholars, dependent on the "School of History of Religions," the Christian mystery presented by John would not be distinguished from the Gnostic and Mandaean religious myth, or from Hellenistic and hermetic religious philosophy, except in matters of little importance. The limits are lost and the parallelisms multiply. The Christian faith becomes a variant of this changing mythology and diffuse religiosity.

But what does this mean? It means that one omits the essential: the life and historical force that lies behind the systems and representations. Living persons are different from one another, but skeletons all look alike. Once reduced to a skeleton, isolated from the life it has produced, that is, from the Church and the saints, the Christian message always runs the risk of being confused with other religious proposals, while it is "unmistakable."

John has not given us a set of ancient religious doctrines, but a powerful kerigma. He learned the language of the men of his time to cry out in it, with all his strength, the only saving truth, the Word par excellence, "the Word."

An enterprise such as this is not carried out at a desk. The Johannine synthesis of faith in Christ was "focused," under the influence of that "anointing of the Holy Spirit who teaches all things," of which John himself speaks, surely from personal experience, in the first letter (cf. 1 John 2:20,27). Precisely because of this origin, John's Gospel, also today, is not understood seated at a desk, with four or five dictionaries for consultation.

Only a revealed certainty, which has behind it the authority and very force of God, could be displayed in a book with such insistence and coherence, coming, from a thousand different points, always to the same conclusion: Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God and the Savior of the world.

3. "Blessed Is He Who Takes No Offense at Me"

Christ's divinity is the highest summit, the Everest of faith. Much more difficult than simply to believe in God. This difficulty is linked to the possibility and, even more so, to the inevitableness of the "scandal." "Blessed is he -- says Jesus -- who takes no offense at me!" (Matthew 11:6). The scandal depends on the fact that he who proclaims himself "God" is a man about whom everything is known: "We know where he comes from," say the Pharisees (John 7:27).

The possibility of scandal must have been especially intense for a young Jew like the author of the fourth Gospel, accustomed to think of God as the thrice holy, the one whom one cannot see and remain alive. But the contrast between the universality of the Logos, and the contingency of the man Jesus of Nazareth, seems extremely striking, even for the philosophic mentality of the time. "Son of God" -- exclaimed Celsus -- "a man who lived a few years ago? One of yesterday or the day before?" A man "born in a village of Judea, of a poor spinner"?[2] This scandalized reaction is the most obvious proof that faith in the divinity of Christ is not the fruit of the Hellenization of Christianity, but if anything of the Christianization of Hellenism.

Also in this connection, illuminating observations are read in the "Introduction to Christianity" of the present Supreme Pontiff: "With the second article of the Creed we are faced with the authentic scandal of Christianity. It is constituted by the confession that the man-Jesus, an individual executed about the year 30 in Palestine, is the 'Christ' (the anointed, the chosen One) of God, more than that, no less than the very Son of God, therefore focal center, determinant point of support of the whole of human history. ... Is it really right for us to cleave to the fragile stem of only one historical event? Can we run the risk of entrusting our whole existence, more than that, the whole of history, to this blade of straw of an event, which floats in the infinite ocean of the cosmic vicissitude?"[3]

It is known how much this idea, in itself already unacceptable to ancient and Asian thought, meets with resistance in the present context of interreligious dialogue. A particular event -- it is observed -- limited in time and space, as is the historical person of Christ, cannot exhaust the infinite potentialities of salvation of God and of his eternal Word; it is also true that he can accomplish, from such potentialities, all that suffices for the salvation of the world, he too being infinite!

But in the last analysis, the scandal is only surmounted with faith. Historical proofs of the divinity of Christ and of Christianity are not enough to eliminate it. One cannot really believe -- wrote Kierkegaard -- except in situations of contemporaneousness, making oneself contemporaneous with Christ and his apostles. But do not history and the past help us to believe? Did Christ not live two thousand years ago? Is his name not proclaimed and believed in the whole world? Has not his doctrine changed the face of the world and penetrated victoriously in every environment? And has not history established more than sufficiently that he was God?

No, replies the same philosopher. History could not do this in the whole of eternity! It is not possible, from the results of a human existence, as was that of Jesus, to conclude saying: Ergo, this man was God! A track on a path is a consequence of the fact that some one has passed through there. I could deceive myself believing, for example, that it was a bird. On closer examination, I might conclude that it was not a bird, but another animal. But I cannot, no matter how much more I examine it, come to the conclusion that it is neither a bird nor another animal but a spirit, because a spirit, by nature, cannot leave tracks on the path.

Similarly we cannot draw the consequence that Christ is God by simply examining what we know about him and his life, namely, through direct observation. Whoever wants to believe in Christ is obliged to make himself his contemporary in his abasement, hearing the "internal testimony" that the Holy Spirit gives us about him.

As Catholics we must have some reservations in this way of posing the problem of the divinity of Christ. What is missing is the relevance due to the resurrection of Christ, in addition to his abasement, and sufficient account is not taken of the external testimony of the apostles, in addition to the "internal testimony of the Holy Spirit." But there is in the former an important element of truth that we must keep in mind to make our faith ever more authentic and personal.

St. Paul says that "man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved" (Romans, 10:10). The second moment, the profession of faith, is important, but, if it is not accompanied by that first moment which develops in the hidden depths of the heart, the former is vain and empty. "It is from the roots of the heart that faith arises," exclaims St. Augustine, paraphrasing the Pauline "corde creditur" (belief with the heart).[4]

The social and community dimension is certainly essential in Christian faith, but it must be the result of many personal acts of faith, if it is not to be a purely conventional and fictitious faith.

4. "I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life"

This faith "of the heart" is the fruit of a special anointing of the Spirit. When one is under this anointing, to believe becomes a kind of knowledge, vision, interior illumination: "We have believed, and have come to know" (John 6:69); "We have looked upon the Word of life" (cf. 1 John 1:1). You hear Jesus affirm: "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father, but by me," (John 14:6) and feel within yourself, with all your being, that what you hear is true.

Recently I came across an impressive case of this illumination of faith, which occurred precisely thanks to this word of Jesus transmitted by John. I met an Swiss artist in Milan who had enjoyed friendship with the best-known philosophical and artistic personalities of his time, and who had held personal exhibitions of paintings of different parts of the world (one of his paintings was exhibited and acquired by the Vatican on the occasion of Paul VI's 80th birthday).

His passionate religious search had led him to adhere to Buddhism and Hinduism. After long stays in Tibet, India and Japan, he became a master in these disciplines. In Milan he had a whole group of professionals and men of culture who sought his spiritual direction and practiced transcendental meditation and yoga with him.

His return to faith in Christ seemed immediately to me an extraordinarily timely testimony, and I very much insisted that he put it in writing. I just recently received his manuscript and I would like to read a small fragment from it. It helps, among other things, to understand what Saul must have experienced on the road to Damascus before the light, which in an instant destroyed his entire interior world and replaced it with another.

"I was alone, in a dense forest, when that interior revolution occurred that changed all my mental structure. I knew Christ's words: 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father, but by me.' But in the past I found them to be somewhat presumptuous. Now these words strike at the center of my being. After 35 years of Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism I was attracted by 'that God.' However, there was in me the presence of a profound rejection for everything concerning Christianity. Slowly, I felt that I was being invaded by an altogether new strange sensation, which I had never before experienced. I perceived the presence of someone who emanated an extraordinary power.

"Those words of Christ obsessed me, they became a nightmare. I put up resistance, but the interior sound would amplify and return as en echo in my conscience. I was close to panic, I was losing control over my mind and this, after 30 years of meditation on the profound, this was for me inconceivable.

"'Yes, it is true, you are right,' I cried, 'it is true, it is true but stop, I beg you, I beg you.' I thought I would die because of the impossibility to come out of that tremendous situation. I no longer saw the trees, I no longer heard the birds, there was only the interior voice of the words that were imprinting themselves in my being.

"I fell to the ground and lost consciousness. But before it happened, I felt enveloped by a limitless love. I felt the structure of my thought was liquefying, as a great explosion of my conscience. I was dying to a past by which I was profoundly conditioned, all truth was disintegrating. I don't know how long I was there, but when I regained consciousness I was reborn. The skies of my mind were limpid and endless tears soaked my face and neck. I felt myself the most ungrateful being in all the earth. Yes, the great life exists and it does not belong to this world. For the first time I was discovering what Christians understand by 'grace.'"

For more than 25 years this man, known as Master Bee, together with his wife, also an artist, has been leading a semi-hermetical life, in the world and to his former disciples who go to consult him he teaches prayer of the heart and the praying of the rosary.

He has not felt the need to deny his past religious experiences which have prepared the encounter with Christ and now allow him to fully value the novelty. More than that, he continues to have profound respect for them, showing with deeds how it is possible to integrate today the most total adherence to Christ with a very great openness to the values of other religions.

The secret history of souls, outside the spotlights of the mass media, is full of these encounters with Christ that change life, and it is a pity that discussion on it, including among theologians, overlooks them completely. They demonstrate that Jesus is truly "the same yesterday, today and always," able to capture the hearts of the men of today with no less force than when he "captured" John and Paul.

5. The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved (and Who Loved Jesus!)

Let us return, to conclude, to the disciple whom Jesus loved. John offers us a very strong incentive to rediscover the person of Jesus and to renew our act of faith in him. It is an extraordinary testimony of the power that Jesus can have over a man's heart. It shows us how it is possible to build all one's universe around Jesus. He is able to make one perceive "the unique fullness, the unimaginable marvel that is the person of Jesus."[5]

There is more. The saints, not being able to take faith with them to heaven, where it is no longer necessary, are happy to leave it as inheritance to brothers that need it on earth, as Elias left his mantle to Elyseus, going up to heaven. It is our turn to pick it up. We can not only contemplate the ardent faith of St. John, but must make it our own. The dogma of the communion of saints assures us that it is possible, and by praying one experiences it.

Some one has said that the greatest challenge for evangelization, at the beginning of the third millennium, is the emergence of a new type of man and culture, the cosmopolitan man that, from Hong Kong to New York, and from Rome to Stockholm, already moves in a planetary system of exchanges and information which cancels distances and translates to a second plane the traditional distinctions of culture and religion.

Now, John lived in a cultural context that had something in common with this. The world was then experiencing for the first time cosmopolitanism. The term itself "kosmopolites," cosmopolitan, citizens of the world, was born and was affirmed precisely at this moment. In the large Hellenistic cities, such as Alexandria of Egypt, the air of universalism and religious tolerance was breathed.

Well then, in such a situation, how did the author of the fourth Gospel behave? Did he seek perhaps to adapt Jesus to this atmosphere in which all religions and cults were accepted, as long as they agreed to be part of something greater? Not at all! He did not argue against any one more than he did against bad Christians and heretics within the Church; he did not fling himself against other religions and cults of the time (except, in Revelation, against the wrongful emperor); he simply proclaimed Christ as supreme gift of the Father to the world, leaving every one free to receive him or not. He argued, it is true, with Judaism, but for him it was not "another religion," it was his religion!

How did John come to such a total admiration and such an absolute idea of the person of Jesus? How can one explain that, with the passing of the years, his love for him, instead of weakening, increased ever more? I think that, after the Holy Spirit, it is due to the fact that he had beside him the Mother of Jesus, he lived with her, prayed with her, and spoke with her of Jesus. A certain impression is felt when one thinks of how he conceived the phrase: "And the Word was made flesh," the evangelist had beside him, under the same roof, the woman in whose womb that mystery was realized.

Origen wrote: "The flower of the four Gospels is the Gospel of John, the profound meaning of which, however, cannot be understood by him who has not leaned his head against Jesus' breast and received Mary from him as his own mother."[6]

Jesus was born "by the power of the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary." The Holy Spirit and Mary, in different capacities, are the two best allies in our effort to come close to Jesus, to make him be born, through faith, in our lives this Christmas.

* * *

[1] St. Augustine, "In Ioh" 38,10 (PL 35, 1680).

[2] Origen, "Against Celsius," I, 26 & 28 (SCh 147, pp. 202 ff.).

[3] Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, "Introduction to Christianity," cit., p. 149.

[4] St. Augustine, "In Ioh." 26, 2 (PL 35, 1607).

[5] J. Guillet, Jesus, in "Dictionnaire de spiritualité," 8, col. 1098.

[6] Origen, Commentary on John, I, 6, 23 (SCh 120, pp. 70 f).

[Translation by ZENIT]