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Friday, December 29, 2006
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Papal Homily at Midnight Mass
VATICAN CITY, DEC. 25, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Here is a Vatican translation of the homily Benedict XVI gave at the Christmas Midnight Mass in St. Peter's Basilica.
* * *
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
We have just heard in the Gospel the message given by the angels to the shepherds during that Holy Night, a message which the Church now proclaims to us: "To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger" (Lk 2:11-12). Nothing miraculous, nothing extraordinary, nothing magnificent is given to the shepherds as a sign. All they will see is a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, one who, like all children, needs a mother's care; a child born in a stable, who therefore lies not in a cradle but in a manger. God's sign is the baby in need of help and in poverty. Only in their hearts will the shepherds be able to see that this baby fulfils the promise of the prophet Isaiah, which we heard in the first reading: "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder" (Is 9:5). Exactly the same sign has been given to us. We too are invited by the angel of God, through the message of the Gospel, to set out in our hearts to see the child lying in the manger.
God's sign is simplicity. God's sign is the baby. God's sign is that he makes himself small for us. This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendour. He comes as a baby -- defenceless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will -- we learn to live with him and to practise with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love. God made himself small so that we could understand him, welcome him, and love him. The Fathers of the Church, in their Greek translation of the Old Testament, found a passage from the prophet Isaiah that Paul also quotes in order to show how God's new ways had already been foretold in the Old Testament. There we read: "God made his Word short, he abbreviated it" (Is 10:23; Rom 9:28). The Fathers interpreted this in two ways. The Son himself is the Word, the Logos; the eternal Word became small -- small enough to fit into a manger. He became a child, so that the Word could be grasped by us. In this way God teaches us to love the little ones. In this way he teaches us to love the weak. In this way he teaches us respect for children. The child of Bethlehem directs our gaze towards all children who suffer and are abused in the world, the born and the unborn. Towards children who are placed as soldiers in a violent world; towards children who have to beg; towards children who suffer deprivation and hunger; towards children who are unloved. In all of these it is the Child of Bethlehem who is crying out to us; it is the God who has become small who appeals to us. Let us pray this night that the brightness of God's love may enfold all these children. Let us ask God to help us do our part so that the dignity of children may be respected. May they all experience the light of love, which mankind needs so much more than the material necessities of life.
And so we come to the second meaning that the Fathers saw in the phrase: "God made his Word short". The Word which God speaks to us in Sacred Scripture had become long in the course of the centuries. It became long and complex, not just for the simple and unlettered, but even more so for those versed in Sacred Scripture, for the experts who evidently became entangled in details and in particular problems, almost to the extent of losing an overall perspective. Jesus "abbreviated" the Word -- he showed us once more its deeper simplicity and unity. Everything taught by the Law and the Prophets is summed up -- he says -- in the command: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… You shall love your neighbour as yourself" (Mt 22:37-40). This is everything -- the whole faith is contained in this one act of love which embraces God and humanity. Yet now further questions arise: how are we to love God with all our mind, when our intellect can barely reach him? How are we to love him with all our heart and soul, when our heart can only catch a glimpse of him from afar, when there are so many contradictions in the world that would hide his face from us? This is where the two ways in which God has "abbreviated" his Word come together. He is no longer distant. He is no longer unknown. He is no longer beyond the reach of our heart. He has become a child for us, and in so doing he has dispelled all doubt. He has become our neighbour, restoring in this way the image of man, whom we often find so hard to love. For us, God has become a gift. He has given himself. He has entered time for us. He who is the Eternal One, above time, he has assumed our time and raised it to himself on high. Christmas has become the Feast of gifts in imitation of God who has given himself to us. Let us allow our heart, our soul and our mind to be touched by this fact! Among the many gifts that we buy and receive, let us not forget the true gift: to give each other something of ourselves, to give each other something of our time, to open our time to God. In this way anxiety disappears, joy is born, and the feast is created. During the festive meals of these days let us remember the Lord's words: "When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite those who will invite you in return, but invite those whom no one invites and who are not able to invite you" (cf. Lk 14:12-14). This also means: when you give gifts for Christmas, do not give only to those who will give to you in return, but give to those who receive from no one and who cannot give you anything back. This is what God has done: he invites us to his wedding feast, something which we cannot reciprocate, but can only receive with joy. Let us imitate him! Let us love God and, starting from him, let us also love man, so that, starting from man, we can then rediscover God in a new way!
And so, finally, we find yet a third meaning in the saying that the Word became "brief" and "small". The shepherds were told that they would find the child in a manger for animals, who were the rightful occupants of the stable. Reading Isaiah (1:3), the Fathers concluded that beside the manger of Bethlehem there stood an ox and an ass. At the same time they interpreted the text as symbolizing the Jews and the pagans -- and thus all humanity -- who each in their own way have need of a Saviour: the God who became a child. Man, in order to live, needs bread, the fruit of the earth and of his labour. But he does not live by bread alone. He needs nourishment for his soul: he needs meaning that can fill his life. Thus, for the Fathers, the manger of the animals became the symbol of the altar, on which lies the Bread which is Christ himself: the true food for our hearts. Once again we see how he became small: in the humble appearance of the host, in a small piece of bread, he gives us himself.
All this is conveyed by the sign that was given to the shepherds and is given also to us: the child born for us, the child in whom God became small for us. Let us ask the Lord to grant us the grace of looking upon the crib this night with the simplicity of the shepherds, so as to receive the joy with which they returned home (cf. Lk 2:20). Let us ask him to give us the humility and the faith with which Saint Joseph looked upon the child that Mary had conceived by the Holy Spirit. Let us ask the Lord to let us look upon him with that same love with which Mary saw him. And let us pray that in this way the light that the shepherds saw will shine upon us too, and that what the angels sang that night will be accomplished throughout the world: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased." Amen!
[Translation of the Italian original distributed by the Holy See]
© Copyright 2006 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana
* * *
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
We have just heard in the Gospel the message given by the angels to the shepherds during that Holy Night, a message which the Church now proclaims to us: "To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger" (Lk 2:11-12). Nothing miraculous, nothing extraordinary, nothing magnificent is given to the shepherds as a sign. All they will see is a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, one who, like all children, needs a mother's care; a child born in a stable, who therefore lies not in a cradle but in a manger. God's sign is the baby in need of help and in poverty. Only in their hearts will the shepherds be able to see that this baby fulfils the promise of the prophet Isaiah, which we heard in the first reading: "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder" (Is 9:5). Exactly the same sign has been given to us. We too are invited by the angel of God, through the message of the Gospel, to set out in our hearts to see the child lying in the manger.
God's sign is simplicity. God's sign is the baby. God's sign is that he makes himself small for us. This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendour. He comes as a baby -- defenceless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will -- we learn to live with him and to practise with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love. God made himself small so that we could understand him, welcome him, and love him. The Fathers of the Church, in their Greek translation of the Old Testament, found a passage from the prophet Isaiah that Paul also quotes in order to show how God's new ways had already been foretold in the Old Testament. There we read: "God made his Word short, he abbreviated it" (Is 10:23; Rom 9:28). The Fathers interpreted this in two ways. The Son himself is the Word, the Logos; the eternal Word became small -- small enough to fit into a manger. He became a child, so that the Word could be grasped by us. In this way God teaches us to love the little ones. In this way he teaches us to love the weak. In this way he teaches us respect for children. The child of Bethlehem directs our gaze towards all children who suffer and are abused in the world, the born and the unborn. Towards children who are placed as soldiers in a violent world; towards children who have to beg; towards children who suffer deprivation and hunger; towards children who are unloved. In all of these it is the Child of Bethlehem who is crying out to us; it is the God who has become small who appeals to us. Let us pray this night that the brightness of God's love may enfold all these children. Let us ask God to help us do our part so that the dignity of children may be respected. May they all experience the light of love, which mankind needs so much more than the material necessities of life.
And so we come to the second meaning that the Fathers saw in the phrase: "God made his Word short". The Word which God speaks to us in Sacred Scripture had become long in the course of the centuries. It became long and complex, not just for the simple and unlettered, but even more so for those versed in Sacred Scripture, for the experts who evidently became entangled in details and in particular problems, almost to the extent of losing an overall perspective. Jesus "abbreviated" the Word -- he showed us once more its deeper simplicity and unity. Everything taught by the Law and the Prophets is summed up -- he says -- in the command: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… You shall love your neighbour as yourself" (Mt 22:37-40). This is everything -- the whole faith is contained in this one act of love which embraces God and humanity. Yet now further questions arise: how are we to love God with all our mind, when our intellect can barely reach him? How are we to love him with all our heart and soul, when our heart can only catch a glimpse of him from afar, when there are so many contradictions in the world that would hide his face from us? This is where the two ways in which God has "abbreviated" his Word come together. He is no longer distant. He is no longer unknown. He is no longer beyond the reach of our heart. He has become a child for us, and in so doing he has dispelled all doubt. He has become our neighbour, restoring in this way the image of man, whom we often find so hard to love. For us, God has become a gift. He has given himself. He has entered time for us. He who is the Eternal One, above time, he has assumed our time and raised it to himself on high. Christmas has become the Feast of gifts in imitation of God who has given himself to us. Let us allow our heart, our soul and our mind to be touched by this fact! Among the many gifts that we buy and receive, let us not forget the true gift: to give each other something of ourselves, to give each other something of our time, to open our time to God. In this way anxiety disappears, joy is born, and the feast is created. During the festive meals of these days let us remember the Lord's words: "When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite those who will invite you in return, but invite those whom no one invites and who are not able to invite you" (cf. Lk 14:12-14). This also means: when you give gifts for Christmas, do not give only to those who will give to you in return, but give to those who receive from no one and who cannot give you anything back. This is what God has done: he invites us to his wedding feast, something which we cannot reciprocate, but can only receive with joy. Let us imitate him! Let us love God and, starting from him, let us also love man, so that, starting from man, we can then rediscover God in a new way!
And so, finally, we find yet a third meaning in the saying that the Word became "brief" and "small". The shepherds were told that they would find the child in a manger for animals, who were the rightful occupants of the stable. Reading Isaiah (1:3), the Fathers concluded that beside the manger of Bethlehem there stood an ox and an ass. At the same time they interpreted the text as symbolizing the Jews and the pagans -- and thus all humanity -- who each in their own way have need of a Saviour: the God who became a child. Man, in order to live, needs bread, the fruit of the earth and of his labour. But he does not live by bread alone. He needs nourishment for his soul: he needs meaning that can fill his life. Thus, for the Fathers, the manger of the animals became the symbol of the altar, on which lies the Bread which is Christ himself: the true food for our hearts. Once again we see how he became small: in the humble appearance of the host, in a small piece of bread, he gives us himself.
All this is conveyed by the sign that was given to the shepherds and is given also to us: the child born for us, the child in whom God became small for us. Let us ask the Lord to grant us the grace of looking upon the crib this night with the simplicity of the shepherds, so as to receive the joy with which they returned home (cf. Lk 2:20). Let us ask him to give us the humility and the faith with which Saint Joseph looked upon the child that Mary had conceived by the Holy Spirit. Let us ask the Lord to let us look upon him with that same love with which Mary saw him. And let us pray that in this way the light that the shepherds saw will shine upon us too, and that what the angels sang that night will be accomplished throughout the world: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased." Amen!
[Translation of the Italian original distributed by the Holy See]
© Copyright 2006 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana
posted by Chipi Buenafe at
9:19 PM
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2 comments
Benedict XVI's Christmas Day Message
VATICAN CITY, DEC. 25, 2006 (ZENIT.org).- Here is a Vatican translation of the Christmas Day address Benedict XVI delivered at midday from the central loggia of St. Peter's Basilica.
* * *
"Salvator noster natus est in mundo" (Roman Missal)
"Our Saviour is born to the world!" During the night, in our Churches, we again heard this message that, notwithstanding the passage of the centuries, remains ever new. It is the heavenly message that tells us to fear not, for "a great joy" has come "to all the people" (Lk 1:10). It is a message of hope, for it tells us that, on that night over two thousand years ago, there "was born in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord" (Lk 2:11). The Angel of Christmas announced it then to the shepherds out on the hills of Bethlehem; today the Angel repeats it to us, to all who dwell in our world: "The Saviour is born; he is born for you! Come, come, let us adore him!".
But does a "Saviour" still have any value and meaning for the men and women of the third millennium? Is a "Saviour" still needed by a humanity which has reached the moon and Mars and is prepared to conquer the universe; for a humanity which knows no limits in its pursuit of nature's secrets and which has succeeded even in deciphering the marvellous codes of the human genome? Is a Saviour needed by a humanity which has invented interactive communication, which navigates in the virtual ocean of the internet and, thanks to the most advanced modern communications technologies, has now made the Earth, our great common home, a global village? This humanity of the twenty-first century appears as a sure and self-sufficient master of its own destiny, the avid proponent of uncontested triumphs.
So it would seem, yet this is not the case. People continue to die of hunger and thirst, disease and poverty, in this age of plenty and of unbridled consumerism. Some people remain enslaved, exploited and stripped of their dignity; others are victims of racial and religious hatred, hampered by intolerance and discrimination, and by political interference and physical or moral coercion with regard to the free profession of their faith. Others see their own bodies and those of their dear ones, particularly their children, maimed by weaponry, by terrorism and by all sorts of violence, at a time when everyone invokes and acclaims progress, solidarity and peace for all. And what of those who, bereft of hope, are forced to leave their homes and countries in order to find humane living conditions elsewhere? How can we help those who are misled by facile prophets of happiness, those who struggle with relationships and are incapable of accepting responsibility for their present and future, those who are trapped in the tunnel of loneliness and who often end up enslaved to alcohol or drugs? What are we to think of those who choose death in the belief that they are celebrating life?
How can we not hear, from the very depths of this humanity, at once joyful and anguished, a heart-rending cry for help? It is Christmas: today "the true light that enlightens every man" (Jn 1:9) came into the world. "The word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn 1:14), proclaims the Evangelist John. Today, this very day, Christ comes once more "unto his own", and to those who receive him he gives "the power to become children of God"; in a word, he offers them the opportunity to see God's glory and to share the joy of that Love which became incarnate for us in Bethlehem. Today "our Saviour is born to the world", for he knows that even today we need him. Despite humanity's many advances, man has always been the same: a freedom poised between good and evil, between life and death. It is there, in the very depths of his being, in what the Bible calls his "heart", that man always needs to be "saved". And, in this post-modern age, perhaps he needs a Saviour all the more, since the society in which he lives has become more complex and the threats to his personal and moral integrity have become more insidious. Who can defend him, if not the One who loves him to the point of sacrificing on the Cross his only-begotten Son as the Saviour of the world?
"Salvator noster": Christ is also the Saviour of men and women today. Who will make this message of hope resound, in a credible way, in every corner of the earth? Who will work to ensure the recognition, protection and promotion of the integral good of the human person as the condition for peace, respecting each man and every woman and their proper dignity? Who will help us to realize that with good will, reasonableness and moderation it is possible to avoid aggravating conflicts and instead to find fair solutions? With deep apprehension I think, on this festive day, of the Middle East, marked by so many grave crises and conflicts, and I express my hope that the way will be opened to a just and lasting peace, with respect for the inalienable rights of the peoples living there. I place in the hands of the divine Child of Bethlehem the indications of a resumption of dialogue between the Israelis and Palestinians, which we have witnessed in recent days, and the hope of further encouraging developments. I am confident that, after so many victims, destruction and uncertainty, a democratic Lebanon, open to others and in dialogue with different cultures and religions, will survive and progress. I appeal to all those who hold in their hands the fate of Iraq, that there will be an end to the brutal violence that has brought so much bloodshed to the country, and that every one of its inhabitants will be safe to lead a normal life. I pray to God that in Sri Lanka the parties in conflict will heed the desire of the people for a future of brotherhood and solidarity; that in Darfur and throughout Africa there will be an end to fratricidal conflicts, that the open wounds in that continent will quickly heal and that the steps being made towards reconciliation, democracy and development will be consolidated. May the Divine Child, the Prince of Peace, grant an end to the outbreaks of tension that make uncertain the future of other parts of the world, in Europe and in Latin America.
"Salvator noster": this is our hope; this is the message that the Church proclaims once again this Christmas day. With the Incarnation, as the Second Vatican Council stated, the Son of God has in some way united himself with each man and women (cf. "Gaudium et Spes," 22). The birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, as Pope Saint Leo the Great noted. In Bethlehem the Christian people was born, Christ's mystical body, in which each member is closely joined to the others in total solidarity. Our Saviour is born for all. We must proclaim this not only in words, but by our entire life, giving the world a witness of united, open communities where fraternity and forgiveness reign, along with acceptance and mutual service, truth, justice and love.
A community saved by Christ. This is the true nature of the Church, which draws her nourishment from his Word and his Eucharistic Body. Only by rediscovering the gift she has received can the Church bear witness to Christ the Saviour before all people. She does this with passionate enthusiasm, with full respect for all cultural and religious traditions; she does so joyfully, knowing that the One she proclaims takes away nothing that is authentically human, but instead brings it to fulfilment. In truth, Christ comes to destroy only evil, only sin; everything else, all the rest, he elevates and perfects. Christ does not save us from our humanity, but through it; he does not save us from the world, but came into the world, so that through him the world might be saved (cf. Jn 3:17).
Dear brothers and sisters, wherever you may be, may this message of joy and hope reach your ears: God became man in Jesus Christ, he was born of the Virgin Mary and today he is reborn in the Church. He brings to all the love of the Father in heaven. He is the Saviour of the world! Do not be afraid, open your hearts to him and receive him, so that his Kingdom of love and peace may become the common legacy of each man and woman. Happy Christmas!
[Translation of the Italian original distributed by the Holy See]
© Copyright 2006 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana
* * *
"Salvator noster natus est in mundo" (Roman Missal)
"Our Saviour is born to the world!" During the night, in our Churches, we again heard this message that, notwithstanding the passage of the centuries, remains ever new. It is the heavenly message that tells us to fear not, for "a great joy" has come "to all the people" (Lk 1:10). It is a message of hope, for it tells us that, on that night over two thousand years ago, there "was born in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord" (Lk 2:11). The Angel of Christmas announced it then to the shepherds out on the hills of Bethlehem; today the Angel repeats it to us, to all who dwell in our world: "The Saviour is born; he is born for you! Come, come, let us adore him!".
But does a "Saviour" still have any value and meaning for the men and women of the third millennium? Is a "Saviour" still needed by a humanity which has reached the moon and Mars and is prepared to conquer the universe; for a humanity which knows no limits in its pursuit of nature's secrets and which has succeeded even in deciphering the marvellous codes of the human genome? Is a Saviour needed by a humanity which has invented interactive communication, which navigates in the virtual ocean of the internet and, thanks to the most advanced modern communications technologies, has now made the Earth, our great common home, a global village? This humanity of the twenty-first century appears as a sure and self-sufficient master of its own destiny, the avid proponent of uncontested triumphs.
So it would seem, yet this is not the case. People continue to die of hunger and thirst, disease and poverty, in this age of plenty and of unbridled consumerism. Some people remain enslaved, exploited and stripped of their dignity; others are victims of racial and religious hatred, hampered by intolerance and discrimination, and by political interference and physical or moral coercion with regard to the free profession of their faith. Others see their own bodies and those of their dear ones, particularly their children, maimed by weaponry, by terrorism and by all sorts of violence, at a time when everyone invokes and acclaims progress, solidarity and peace for all. And what of those who, bereft of hope, are forced to leave their homes and countries in order to find humane living conditions elsewhere? How can we help those who are misled by facile prophets of happiness, those who struggle with relationships and are incapable of accepting responsibility for their present and future, those who are trapped in the tunnel of loneliness and who often end up enslaved to alcohol or drugs? What are we to think of those who choose death in the belief that they are celebrating life?
How can we not hear, from the very depths of this humanity, at once joyful and anguished, a heart-rending cry for help? It is Christmas: today "the true light that enlightens every man" (Jn 1:9) came into the world. "The word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn 1:14), proclaims the Evangelist John. Today, this very day, Christ comes once more "unto his own", and to those who receive him he gives "the power to become children of God"; in a word, he offers them the opportunity to see God's glory and to share the joy of that Love which became incarnate for us in Bethlehem. Today "our Saviour is born to the world", for he knows that even today we need him. Despite humanity's many advances, man has always been the same: a freedom poised between good and evil, between life and death. It is there, in the very depths of his being, in what the Bible calls his "heart", that man always needs to be "saved". And, in this post-modern age, perhaps he needs a Saviour all the more, since the society in which he lives has become more complex and the threats to his personal and moral integrity have become more insidious. Who can defend him, if not the One who loves him to the point of sacrificing on the Cross his only-begotten Son as the Saviour of the world?
"Salvator noster": Christ is also the Saviour of men and women today. Who will make this message of hope resound, in a credible way, in every corner of the earth? Who will work to ensure the recognition, protection and promotion of the integral good of the human person as the condition for peace, respecting each man and every woman and their proper dignity? Who will help us to realize that with good will, reasonableness and moderation it is possible to avoid aggravating conflicts and instead to find fair solutions? With deep apprehension I think, on this festive day, of the Middle East, marked by so many grave crises and conflicts, and I express my hope that the way will be opened to a just and lasting peace, with respect for the inalienable rights of the peoples living there. I place in the hands of the divine Child of Bethlehem the indications of a resumption of dialogue between the Israelis and Palestinians, which we have witnessed in recent days, and the hope of further encouraging developments. I am confident that, after so many victims, destruction and uncertainty, a democratic Lebanon, open to others and in dialogue with different cultures and religions, will survive and progress. I appeal to all those who hold in their hands the fate of Iraq, that there will be an end to the brutal violence that has brought so much bloodshed to the country, and that every one of its inhabitants will be safe to lead a normal life. I pray to God that in Sri Lanka the parties in conflict will heed the desire of the people for a future of brotherhood and solidarity; that in Darfur and throughout Africa there will be an end to fratricidal conflicts, that the open wounds in that continent will quickly heal and that the steps being made towards reconciliation, democracy and development will be consolidated. May the Divine Child, the Prince of Peace, grant an end to the outbreaks of tension that make uncertain the future of other parts of the world, in Europe and in Latin America.
"Salvator noster": this is our hope; this is the message that the Church proclaims once again this Christmas day. With the Incarnation, as the Second Vatican Council stated, the Son of God has in some way united himself with each man and women (cf. "Gaudium et Spes," 22). The birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, as Pope Saint Leo the Great noted. In Bethlehem the Christian people was born, Christ's mystical body, in which each member is closely joined to the others in total solidarity. Our Saviour is born for all. We must proclaim this not only in words, but by our entire life, giving the world a witness of united, open communities where fraternity and forgiveness reign, along with acceptance and mutual service, truth, justice and love.
A community saved by Christ. This is the true nature of the Church, which draws her nourishment from his Word and his Eucharistic Body. Only by rediscovering the gift she has received can the Church bear witness to Christ the Saviour before all people. She does this with passionate enthusiasm, with full respect for all cultural and religious traditions; she does so joyfully, knowing that the One she proclaims takes away nothing that is authentically human, but instead brings it to fulfilment. In truth, Christ comes to destroy only evil, only sin; everything else, all the rest, he elevates and perfects. Christ does not save us from our humanity, but through it; he does not save us from the world, but came into the world, so that through him the world might be saved (cf. Jn 3:17).
Dear brothers and sisters, wherever you may be, may this message of joy and hope reach your ears: God became man in Jesus Christ, he was born of the Virgin Mary and today he is reborn in the Church. He brings to all the love of the Father in heaven. He is the Saviour of the world! Do not be afraid, open your hearts to him and receive him, so that his Kingdom of love and peace may become the common legacy of each man and woman. Happy Christmas!
[Translation of the Italian original distributed by the Holy See]
© Copyright 2006 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana
posted by Chipi Buenafe at
9:17 PM
|
0 comments
Speech: Father Cantalamessa on the Family
ROME, DEC. 25, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of a commentary by the Pontifical Household preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, on the liturgical readings for next Sunday, the feast of the Holy Family.
* * *
Sunday after Christmas: Feast of the Holy Family
1 Samuel 1:20-22,24-28; 1 John 3:1-2,21-24; Luke 2:41-52
On the family
"Son, why have you done this to us? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety." In these words of Mary we see that all three of the essential components of a family are mentioned: father, mother and child. This year we cannot talk about the family without touching on the problem that in the present moment is most disturbing society and causing the Church concern: the discussion in Parliament about the recognition of cohabiting couples.
The state cannot be prevented from responding to new situations present in society, from recognizing some civil rights of persons, even of the same sex, who have decided to live together. That which is essential for the Church -- and which must be essential for all those interested in the future good of society -- is that this is not translated into a weakening of the institution of the family, which is already so threatened by modern society.
We know that the best way to weaken a reality or a word is to thin it out, to make it banal, making it embrace different and even contradictory things. This happens if homosexual couples are put on the same footing with a marriage between a man and a woman. The meaning itself of the word "matrimony" -- from the Latin for maternal office -- reveals the insensitivity of such a project.
Above all, I must say that I just do not see the reason for making these two things equal, given that there are other ways of safeguarding the rights in question. I do not understand the suggestion that there has been an offense to the dignity of homosexual persons whom all today feel the need to respect and love. I know personally the rectitude and suffering of some of these persons.
What we are saying applies even more to the problem of homosexual couples adopting children. Adoption by homosexual couples is unacceptable because it is an adoption exclusively for the benefit of the couple and not the child, who could just as well be adopted by a normal couple, that is, by a father and mother. There are many who have been waiting for years.
Homosexual women have a maternal instinct and they want to satisfy it by adopting a child; homosexual men experience the need to see a young life grow beside them and want to satisfy this need by adopting a child. But what attention is given to the needs and sentiments of the child in this case? Rather than having a father and mother, the child will find himself having two mothers or two fathers with all the psychological problems and problems of identity that this brings with it in and outside the home. At school, what effect will this situation, which makes the child different from his companions, have on the child?
Adoption is disturbed in its deeper significance: It is no longer a giving of something but a looking for something. True love, Paul says, "does not seek its own interests." It is true that even in normal adoptions the parents sometimes seek their own good. They want to have someone with whom they can share their reciprocal love, someone who can benefit from all their labors. But in this case the good of those who adopt coincides with that of the adoptees, it is not opposed to it. Objectively speaking, we are not pursuing the child's good but his harm if we allow him to be adopted by a homosexual couple when it would have been possible for him to be adopted by a normal couple.
The Gospel passage of the feast ends with a small portrait of family life that gives us insight into the whole life of Jesus from 12 to 30 years: "He went with them and returned to Nazareth and was obedient to them. His mother stored up all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom, age and grace before God and men." May the Virgin obtain for all the children of the world the gift to be able to grow up in grace surrounded by the affection of a father and a mother.
* * *
Sunday after Christmas: Feast of the Holy Family
1 Samuel 1:20-22,24-28; 1 John 3:1-2,21-24; Luke 2:41-52
On the family
"Son, why have you done this to us? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety." In these words of Mary we see that all three of the essential components of a family are mentioned: father, mother and child. This year we cannot talk about the family without touching on the problem that in the present moment is most disturbing society and causing the Church concern: the discussion in Parliament about the recognition of cohabiting couples.
The state cannot be prevented from responding to new situations present in society, from recognizing some civil rights of persons, even of the same sex, who have decided to live together. That which is essential for the Church -- and which must be essential for all those interested in the future good of society -- is that this is not translated into a weakening of the institution of the family, which is already so threatened by modern society.
We know that the best way to weaken a reality or a word is to thin it out, to make it banal, making it embrace different and even contradictory things. This happens if homosexual couples are put on the same footing with a marriage between a man and a woman. The meaning itself of the word "matrimony" -- from the Latin for maternal office -- reveals the insensitivity of such a project.
Above all, I must say that I just do not see the reason for making these two things equal, given that there are other ways of safeguarding the rights in question. I do not understand the suggestion that there has been an offense to the dignity of homosexual persons whom all today feel the need to respect and love. I know personally the rectitude and suffering of some of these persons.
What we are saying applies even more to the problem of homosexual couples adopting children. Adoption by homosexual couples is unacceptable because it is an adoption exclusively for the benefit of the couple and not the child, who could just as well be adopted by a normal couple, that is, by a father and mother. There are many who have been waiting for years.
Homosexual women have a maternal instinct and they want to satisfy it by adopting a child; homosexual men experience the need to see a young life grow beside them and want to satisfy this need by adopting a child. But what attention is given to the needs and sentiments of the child in this case? Rather than having a father and mother, the child will find himself having two mothers or two fathers with all the psychological problems and problems of identity that this brings with it in and outside the home. At school, what effect will this situation, which makes the child different from his companions, have on the child?
Adoption is disturbed in its deeper significance: It is no longer a giving of something but a looking for something. True love, Paul says, "does not seek its own interests." It is true that even in normal adoptions the parents sometimes seek their own good. They want to have someone with whom they can share their reciprocal love, someone who can benefit from all their labors. But in this case the good of those who adopt coincides with that of the adoptees, it is not opposed to it. Objectively speaking, we are not pursuing the child's good but his harm if we allow him to be adopted by a homosexual couple when it would have been possible for him to be adopted by a normal couple.
The Gospel passage of the feast ends with a small portrait of family life that gives us insight into the whole life of Jesus from 12 to 30 years: "He went with them and returned to Nazareth and was obedient to them. His mother stored up all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom, age and grace before God and men." May the Virgin obtain for all the children of the world the gift to be able to grow up in grace surrounded by the affection of a father and a mother.
posted by Chipi Buenafe at
9:15 PM
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Speech: Father Cantalamessa on Christmas
ROME, DEC. 24, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of a commentary by the Pontifical Household preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, on the readings from the liturgy of Christmas.
* * *
Why did God become man?
Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-16; John 1:1-18
Let us go right to the apex of the prologue of John's Gospel, which is read at the third Mass on Christmas day.
In the Credo there is a line that on this day we recite on our knees: "For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven." This is the fundamental and perennially valid answer to the question -- "Why did the word become flesh?" -- but it needs to be understood and integrated.
The question put another way is in fact: "Why did he become man 'for our salvation?'" Only because we had sinned and needed to be saved?
There is a vein of the theology inaugurated by Blessed Duns Scotus, a Franciscan theologian, which loosens a too exclusive connection to man's sin and regards God's glory as the primary reason for the Incarnation. "God decreed the incarnation of his Son in order to have someone outside of him who loved him in the highest way, in a way worthy of God."
This answer, though beautiful, is still not the definitive one. For the Bible the most important thing is not, as it was for Greek philosophers, that God be loved, but that God "loves" and loved first (cf. 1 John 4:10, 19). God willed the incarnation of the Son not so much as to have someone outside the Trinity that would love him worthily as to have someone to love in a way worthy of him, that is, to love without measure!
At Christmas, when the child Jesus is born, God the Father has someone to love in an infinite way because Jesus is together man and God. But not only Jesus, but us together with him. We are included in this love, having become members of the body of Christ, "sons in the Son." John's prologue reminds of this: "To those who welcomed him he gave the power to become sons of God."
Therefore, Christ did descend from heaven "for our salvation," but what moved him to come down for our salvation was love, nothing else but love.
Christmas is the supreme proof of God's "philanthropy," as Scripture calls it (Titus 3:4), that is, of God's love (philea) for man (anthropos). John too responds to the why of the Incarnation in this way: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever should believe in him would not die but have life everlasting" (John 3:16).
So, what should be our response to the message of Christmas? The Christmas carol "Adeste Fideles" says: "How can we not love one who has so loved us?"
There is much that we can do to solemnize Christmas, but the truest and most profound thing is suggested to us by these words. A sincere thought of gratitude, a feeling of love for him who came to live among us is the best gift we can give to the child Jesus, the most beautiful ornament in the manger.
To be sincere, however, love needs to be translated into concrete gestures. The simplest and most universal -- when it is pure and innocent -- is the kiss.
Let us kiss Jesus, then, as we desire to kiss all children just born. But let us not just kiss the statue of plaster or porcelain but the child Jesus in flesh and blood. When we have kissed those who are wretched, suffering, we have kissed him!
To kiss someone, in this sense, is to help in a real way, but it is also to speak a good word, to give encouragement, to pay a visit, to smile, and sometimes -- why not -- to give an actual kiss. These are the most beautiful candles that we can light in our manger.
* * *
Why did God become man?
Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-16; John 1:1-18
Let us go right to the apex of the prologue of John's Gospel, which is read at the third Mass on Christmas day.
In the Credo there is a line that on this day we recite on our knees: "For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven." This is the fundamental and perennially valid answer to the question -- "Why did the word become flesh?" -- but it needs to be understood and integrated.
The question put another way is in fact: "Why did he become man 'for our salvation?'" Only because we had sinned and needed to be saved?
There is a vein of the theology inaugurated by Blessed Duns Scotus, a Franciscan theologian, which loosens a too exclusive connection to man's sin and regards God's glory as the primary reason for the Incarnation. "God decreed the incarnation of his Son in order to have someone outside of him who loved him in the highest way, in a way worthy of God."
This answer, though beautiful, is still not the definitive one. For the Bible the most important thing is not, as it was for Greek philosophers, that God be loved, but that God "loves" and loved first (cf. 1 John 4:10, 19). God willed the incarnation of the Son not so much as to have someone outside the Trinity that would love him worthily as to have someone to love in a way worthy of him, that is, to love without measure!
At Christmas, when the child Jesus is born, God the Father has someone to love in an infinite way because Jesus is together man and God. But not only Jesus, but us together with him. We are included in this love, having become members of the body of Christ, "sons in the Son." John's prologue reminds of this: "To those who welcomed him he gave the power to become sons of God."
Therefore, Christ did descend from heaven "for our salvation," but what moved him to come down for our salvation was love, nothing else but love.
Christmas is the supreme proof of God's "philanthropy," as Scripture calls it (Titus 3:4), that is, of God's love (philea) for man (anthropos). John too responds to the why of the Incarnation in this way: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever should believe in him would not die but have life everlasting" (John 3:16).
So, what should be our response to the message of Christmas? The Christmas carol "Adeste Fideles" says: "How can we not love one who has so loved us?"
There is much that we can do to solemnize Christmas, but the truest and most profound thing is suggested to us by these words. A sincere thought of gratitude, a feeling of love for him who came to live among us is the best gift we can give to the child Jesus, the most beautiful ornament in the manger.
To be sincere, however, love needs to be translated into concrete gestures. The simplest and most universal -- when it is pure and innocent -- is the kiss.
Let us kiss Jesus, then, as we desire to kiss all children just born. But let us not just kiss the statue of plaster or porcelain but the child Jesus in flesh and blood. When we have kissed those who are wretched, suffering, we have kissed him!
To kiss someone, in this sense, is to help in a real way, but it is also to speak a good word, to give encouragement, to pay a visit, to smile, and sometimes -- why not -- to give an actual kiss. These are the most beautiful candles that we can light in our manger.
posted by Chipi Buenafe at
9:11 PM
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0 comments
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Interview: Microcredits, Big Hopes
ROME, DEC. 20, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Muhammad Yunus, the "father" of microcredits and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, was an inspiration for Elisabeth Petit.
Petit is the author of a book which recounts the day-to-day hopes of the microcredit initiative, "Rebondir, partis de rien, ils ont créé leur entreprise" (Starting Afresh, from Nothing, They Created Their Businesses), published by CLD. She shared her views about microcredits with ZENIT in this interview.
Q: You have just published a book on microcredits. What has it meant for you that Muhammad Yunus, the "banker to the poor," was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?
Petit: It is a greatly merited recompense, to the measure of the exceptional destiny of that Bangladeshi whose action has permitted tens of millions of deprived people to rise from their poverty.
Muhammad Yunus is considered in the world the father of microcredits. He first had the idea in 1974, when a deadly famine hit his country.
Muhammad Yunus is a professor of economics. Passing through villages where thousands of people lost their lives, he was overwhelmed by the poverty of the landless peasants, exploited by usurers. Given this injustice, it was impossible for him to shut his eyes. In 1976, he decided to found his own bank, the Grameen Bank, to lend small sums of money to those who were excluded.
In 1997, Muhammad Yunus explained that "one does not eradicate poverty except by giving the poorest the means to control their own destiny." To believe in what is the best in each one, not to act in his place, but to treat him as an equal by enabling him to ensure his survival by his own means -- therein lies the whole of his genius.
In 30 years, that which in the beginning was an unusual initiative has become a formidable chain of solidarity. In total, $5.7 billion has been lent, and more than 6.61 million people have been financed. The Grameen Bank model has been examined in some 40 countries. Today, it is estimated that 113 million people worldwide are benefiting from microcredits.
Q: What is the microcredit practice like in France?
Petit: Microcredits came into being in 1989 with the creation of the Association for the Right to Economic Initiative. ADIE grants loans up to a maximum of €5,000 to the unemployed and to "Rmistes" -- those who understand the RMI: minimum insertion revenue -- who wish to have an account, but are excluded from the "classic" banking system. Since the beginning, it has been possible to create more than 36,000 jobs.
Other organizations also give decisive financial incentives to individuals who wish to get a fresh start by creating their own employment.
It is the case, for example, of the France Initiative network, founded in 1980. This movement grants honor loans without requiring any personal guarantee. Their average amount rose to €7,350 last year.
This year, France Initiative financed 10,900 project bearers. Among them, close to two-thirds were asking for employment. In total, it is estimated that each year more than 10,000 people create their own employment thanks to microcredits. If this figure is significant, it represents nevertheless only a drop of water, compared to the needs which are enormous.
Maria Nowak, president of ADIE, assessed the potential annual demand at 300,000 loans. Microcredits alone do not constitute the solution to unemployment, but can represent hope for close to one out of 10 unemployed individuals.
Q: Your book shows the importance of a network of aid and solidarity. In short, is there much generosity around us?
Petit: Yes, it is undoubtedly the great lesson of the testimonies we have received.
The creators of businesses that we met were unanimous. Alone, they would not have achieved anything. If they were able to get a fresh start, it is because they found near their families, relations and friends treasures of solidarity, which often surprised them. An attentive ear, a shoulder to lean on in difficult moments ... the feeling that something was still possible.
But if they dared to plunge into the waters, it was also thanks to the networks of aid to create business, which gave them the necessary advice and moral support to surmount the inherent obstacles of their society, to take off. They benefited from different and specific forms of solidarity, which would be more profitable if they were better known by the general public.
There is only one sponsorship. Certain organizations suggest to creators of businesses that they be supported by a "godparent" before and after the birth of their company. This is the case of the Entreprendre movement founded in 1986 by André Mulliez, of Roubaix.
The sponsors are retired persons or heads of enterprises, who allow their "godchildren" to benefit from their experience. These benevolent individuals want the project bearers to avoid committing the errors they themselves committed, and are pleased to offer them a bit of what was the key to their own success. The bonds they forge with their godchildren are often very strong. Both gain from this exchange, where each learns to know the other better, through concern for the other.
The example of the Cigales, created in 1982, could also be mentioned. These are investors' clubs for an alternative and local management of joint saving.
These structures of common risk capital mobilize the savings of their members for the creation and development of microenterprises. Their members are people like you and me, not necessarily specialists in economics.
Every month they put a small amount in a common pot. Then they enter together in the capital of one or several companies. At the end of five years, they move out, and the creator buys back their shares. The objective of these investors is not to make profits but to give a helping hand to the most deprived. In 2005, 62 enterprises came into being thanks to their contribution.
Q: Your book talks not only about solidarity but also about hope.
Petit: Yes, the people we met were those who experienced what we call a "life accident." They suffered a layoff, a divorce, an illness or an accident, which deprived them of their work and at times of their physical capacities.
For all of them, to create something was a challenge. Work gives each one of us a role and an identity. When one is deprived of it, one is lost and one must battle with oneself so as not to give in to discouragement and panic, and to draw from oneself sufficient strength and lucidity to climb the slope and give one's life a fresh start. Most of the business creators did not feel they had the strength.
They could have given up, but they chose to do battle with themselves. They dispelled their doubts and fears with the energy of those who have the conviction of giving it their all.
Little by little they were able to free themselves from the links that chained them to their past, to learn to have new confidence and to make of their experience a force put entirely at the service of their project.
Why? Because for them to create a business represented much more than an economic necessity. It was a personal need, deep-seated in them: that of proving that they could come out of their predicament and to show those around them that they were capable of doing so.
Q: Can you give us some examples?
Petit: There are many, but I am thinking in particular of Mariama Schumann's career. Last January, this 51-year-old woman realized her dream, by opening a ready-to-wear boutique in Paris.
Mariama has been deaf since childhood. But about 30 years ago, she met an employer who gave her a chance, by employing her as a stylist. That man became her friend.
When he died, Mariama found herself again without a job. For years she searched in vain for employment. Her handicap was enough for her to be refused everywhere. But in remembrance of that man who had taught her everything, Mariama refused to give up her passion for sewing.
She battled with the elements to stay alive. And she succeeded! Today she dreams of giving a chance to a young person who is hard of hearing, by sharing her knowledge with him, as her friend did with her.
I could also mention Michèle Gautrot. A few years ago, this woman who was passionate about horses had to close the equestrian center she ran with her husband and daughter in Loire-Atlantique, because it no longer met the standards.
Michèle found herself without a roof and without resources. But because she refused to see her three granddaughters, whose father had died, sink into misery, she decided to do battle, creating a parcel transport company. Today, at 54, Michèle crisscrosses the routes of Europe, at the wheel of her van. Thanks to her, her granddaughters lack nothing. The careers of both of these women are lessons of courage and life.
Q: Is the solidarity shown by the persons who supported these creators of businesses an expression of their faith?
Petit: In some cases, yes. Bruno Tesson, director general of the Entreprendre network, explains that thanks to his mission in the network he was able to accomplish his passion: "to help others to succeed and to see the success of their projects.… It is what has guided my life for so many years, without my knowing it." Those are his words.
The foundational values of the network are those he always had in him. "The gratuitousness [of our aid] is an expression of charity, in the sense that it excludes each one being for himself. Reciprocity implies fraternity and love of the other," explained Bruno Tesson. In all of them, these principles are due to their faith.
But for others, solidarity is not the expression of their belief in God. In the book, we let Yvette, a 52-year-old woman, speak. For years, Yvette endured the abuse of a violent husband. She did not confide her Calvary except to one of her friends.
This man helped her to address the hell she lived in. When this friend, who was without means, decided to turn to her [for help], Yvette did not hesitate. She loaned him the meager savings she had. Because for her, it was simply obvious. She "couldn't not do so."
Yvette and Bruno Tesson are guided by the same values, even if the latter acknowledged himself openly to be Christian and the former not. Despite their differences, they are united by the love and confidence they give others.
Petit is the author of a book which recounts the day-to-day hopes of the microcredit initiative, "Rebondir, partis de rien, ils ont créé leur entreprise" (Starting Afresh, from Nothing, They Created Their Businesses), published by CLD. She shared her views about microcredits with ZENIT in this interview.
Q: You have just published a book on microcredits. What has it meant for you that Muhammad Yunus, the "banker to the poor," was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?
Petit: It is a greatly merited recompense, to the measure of the exceptional destiny of that Bangladeshi whose action has permitted tens of millions of deprived people to rise from their poverty.
Muhammad Yunus is considered in the world the father of microcredits. He first had the idea in 1974, when a deadly famine hit his country.
Muhammad Yunus is a professor of economics. Passing through villages where thousands of people lost their lives, he was overwhelmed by the poverty of the landless peasants, exploited by usurers. Given this injustice, it was impossible for him to shut his eyes. In 1976, he decided to found his own bank, the Grameen Bank, to lend small sums of money to those who were excluded.
In 1997, Muhammad Yunus explained that "one does not eradicate poverty except by giving the poorest the means to control their own destiny." To believe in what is the best in each one, not to act in his place, but to treat him as an equal by enabling him to ensure his survival by his own means -- therein lies the whole of his genius.
In 30 years, that which in the beginning was an unusual initiative has become a formidable chain of solidarity. In total, $5.7 billion has been lent, and more than 6.61 million people have been financed. The Grameen Bank model has been examined in some 40 countries. Today, it is estimated that 113 million people worldwide are benefiting from microcredits.
Q: What is the microcredit practice like in France?
Petit: Microcredits came into being in 1989 with the creation of the Association for the Right to Economic Initiative. ADIE grants loans up to a maximum of €5,000 to the unemployed and to "Rmistes" -- those who understand the RMI: minimum insertion revenue -- who wish to have an account, but are excluded from the "classic" banking system. Since the beginning, it has been possible to create more than 36,000 jobs.
Other organizations also give decisive financial incentives to individuals who wish to get a fresh start by creating their own employment.
It is the case, for example, of the France Initiative network, founded in 1980. This movement grants honor loans without requiring any personal guarantee. Their average amount rose to €7,350 last year.
This year, France Initiative financed 10,900 project bearers. Among them, close to two-thirds were asking for employment. In total, it is estimated that each year more than 10,000 people create their own employment thanks to microcredits. If this figure is significant, it represents nevertheless only a drop of water, compared to the needs which are enormous.
Maria Nowak, president of ADIE, assessed the potential annual demand at 300,000 loans. Microcredits alone do not constitute the solution to unemployment, but can represent hope for close to one out of 10 unemployed individuals.
Q: Your book shows the importance of a network of aid and solidarity. In short, is there much generosity around us?
Petit: Yes, it is undoubtedly the great lesson of the testimonies we have received.
The creators of businesses that we met were unanimous. Alone, they would not have achieved anything. If they were able to get a fresh start, it is because they found near their families, relations and friends treasures of solidarity, which often surprised them. An attentive ear, a shoulder to lean on in difficult moments ... the feeling that something was still possible.
But if they dared to plunge into the waters, it was also thanks to the networks of aid to create business, which gave them the necessary advice and moral support to surmount the inherent obstacles of their society, to take off. They benefited from different and specific forms of solidarity, which would be more profitable if they were better known by the general public.
There is only one sponsorship. Certain organizations suggest to creators of businesses that they be supported by a "godparent" before and after the birth of their company. This is the case of the Entreprendre movement founded in 1986 by André Mulliez, of Roubaix.
The sponsors are retired persons or heads of enterprises, who allow their "godchildren" to benefit from their experience. These benevolent individuals want the project bearers to avoid committing the errors they themselves committed, and are pleased to offer them a bit of what was the key to their own success. The bonds they forge with their godchildren are often very strong. Both gain from this exchange, where each learns to know the other better, through concern for the other.
The example of the Cigales, created in 1982, could also be mentioned. These are investors' clubs for an alternative and local management of joint saving.
These structures of common risk capital mobilize the savings of their members for the creation and development of microenterprises. Their members are people like you and me, not necessarily specialists in economics.
Every month they put a small amount in a common pot. Then they enter together in the capital of one or several companies. At the end of five years, they move out, and the creator buys back their shares. The objective of these investors is not to make profits but to give a helping hand to the most deprived. In 2005, 62 enterprises came into being thanks to their contribution.
Q: Your book talks not only about solidarity but also about hope.
Petit: Yes, the people we met were those who experienced what we call a "life accident." They suffered a layoff, a divorce, an illness or an accident, which deprived them of their work and at times of their physical capacities.
For all of them, to create something was a challenge. Work gives each one of us a role and an identity. When one is deprived of it, one is lost and one must battle with oneself so as not to give in to discouragement and panic, and to draw from oneself sufficient strength and lucidity to climb the slope and give one's life a fresh start. Most of the business creators did not feel they had the strength.
They could have given up, but they chose to do battle with themselves. They dispelled their doubts and fears with the energy of those who have the conviction of giving it their all.
Little by little they were able to free themselves from the links that chained them to their past, to learn to have new confidence and to make of their experience a force put entirely at the service of their project.
Why? Because for them to create a business represented much more than an economic necessity. It was a personal need, deep-seated in them: that of proving that they could come out of their predicament and to show those around them that they were capable of doing so.
Q: Can you give us some examples?
Petit: There are many, but I am thinking in particular of Mariama Schumann's career. Last January, this 51-year-old woman realized her dream, by opening a ready-to-wear boutique in Paris.
Mariama has been deaf since childhood. But about 30 years ago, she met an employer who gave her a chance, by employing her as a stylist. That man became her friend.
When he died, Mariama found herself again without a job. For years she searched in vain for employment. Her handicap was enough for her to be refused everywhere. But in remembrance of that man who had taught her everything, Mariama refused to give up her passion for sewing.
She battled with the elements to stay alive. And she succeeded! Today she dreams of giving a chance to a young person who is hard of hearing, by sharing her knowledge with him, as her friend did with her.
I could also mention Michèle Gautrot. A few years ago, this woman who was passionate about horses had to close the equestrian center she ran with her husband and daughter in Loire-Atlantique, because it no longer met the standards.
Michèle found herself without a roof and without resources. But because she refused to see her three granddaughters, whose father had died, sink into misery, she decided to do battle, creating a parcel transport company. Today, at 54, Michèle crisscrosses the routes of Europe, at the wheel of her van. Thanks to her, her granddaughters lack nothing. The careers of both of these women are lessons of courage and life.
Q: Is the solidarity shown by the persons who supported these creators of businesses an expression of their faith?
Petit: In some cases, yes. Bruno Tesson, director general of the Entreprendre network, explains that thanks to his mission in the network he was able to accomplish his passion: "to help others to succeed and to see the success of their projects.… It is what has guided my life for so many years, without my knowing it." Those are his words.
The foundational values of the network are those he always had in him. "The gratuitousness [of our aid] is an expression of charity, in the sense that it excludes each one being for himself. Reciprocity implies fraternity and love of the other," explained Bruno Tesson. In all of them, these principles are due to their faith.
But for others, solidarity is not the expression of their belief in God. In the book, we let Yvette, a 52-year-old woman, speak. For years, Yvette endured the abuse of a violent husband. She did not confide her Calvary except to one of her friends.
This man helped her to address the hell she lived in. When this friend, who was without means, decided to turn to her [for help], Yvette did not hesitate. She loaned him the meager savings she had. Because for her, it was simply obvious. She "couldn't not do so."
Yvette and Bruno Tesson are guided by the same values, even if the latter acknowledged himself openly to be Christian and the former not. Despite their differences, they are united by the love and confidence they give others.
posted by Chipi Buenafe at
11:08 AM
|
0 comments
Speech: Father Cantalamessa on the Peacemakers
VATICAN CITY, DEC. 23, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the Advent sermon delivered Friday by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, Pontifical Household preacher, in the presence of Benedict XVI and members of the Roman Curia in preparation for Christmas.
Preaching in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel of the Apostolic Palace, Father Cantalamessa continued a series of meditations on the beatitudes.
* * *
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God"
1. The Holy Father's Message for the world day of peace
The beatitudes are not arranged according to a logical order. Except for the first one, which sets the tone for all the others, each one can be considered separately without its meaning being in the least compromised.
The Pope's message for the World Day of Peace has made me decide to dedicate our meeting today to the beatitude about the peacemakers and to postpone for another time my reflections on the third beatitude, the one about the meek. Let us hope that the message of peace, directed to the whole world, be above all accepted, meditated on, and bear fruit here among us, at the center of the Church.
This year message is for peace in all areas, from the more personal ambit to the more vast ones of politics, economy, ecology, and international organizations. These are different fields, but they are united by the fact that all have the human person as their primary object, as the title of the message indicates "The Human Person: Heart of Peace."
There is a fundamental affirmation in the message that is the interpretive key of the whole. The Holy Father says: "Peace is both gift and task. If it is true that peace between individuals and peoples -- the ability to live together and to build relationships of justice and solidarity -- calls for unfailing commitment on our part, it is also true, and indeed more so, that peace is a gift from God.
"Peace is an aspect of God's activity, made manifest both in the creation of an orderly and harmonious universe and also in the redemption of humanity that needs to be rescued from the disorder of sin. Creation and Redemption thus provide a key that helps us begin to understand the meaning of our life on earth."[1]
These words help us to understand the beatitude of the peacemakers and this beatitude, in turn, throws light on these words of the Pope's message. The nearness of Christmas sets a particular tone, a liturgical one, to our meditation. On Christmas night we will hear the words of the angelic hymn: "Peace on earth to men loved by the Lord." The meaning of these words is not may there be peace, but rather there is peace. "The birth of the Lord," St. Gregory the Great said, "is the birth of peace": Natalis Domini natalis est pacis.[2]
2. Who are the peacemakers?
The seventh beatitude says: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God." Along with the beatitude about the merciful, this one does not speak so much about how we must "be" (poor, afflicted, meek, pure of heart) but about what we must "do." The Greek term "eirenopoioi" means those who work for peace, who "make peace." Not so much, however, in the sense of being reconciled with our enemies as in the sense of helping enemies to be reconciled with each other. "What we are dealing with here are people who so love peace that they have no fear of compromising their own personal peace when they intervene in conflicts to help those who are divided to find peace."[3]
Peacemakers are not synonymous, then, with the peaceful or pacific, that is, tranquil, calm persons who avoid contrariety as much as possible (they are proclaimed blessed by another beatitude, that of the meek); neither are peacemakers synonymous with pacifists, if by pacifists we mean those who are against war (with great frequency, against one of the two sides in a war!) but who do nothing to reconcile the combatants. The most just term is pacifier.
In New Testament times the rulers were called the peacemakers, above all the Roman Empire. Augustus Caesar put world peace as his top accomplishment, which he achieved through military victory (parta victoriis pax). He built the famous Ara pacis, the Altar of Peace, in Rome as a testament of his legacy.
Some have understood the Gospel beatitude to be intentionally opposed to this position and to have pointed to the true peacemakers are the true way in which peace is promoted: through victory, yes, but victory over themselves, not over their enemies, not by destroying the enemy, but by destroying enmity, as Jesus did on the cross (Ephesians 2:16).
Today, however, the prevalent view is that this beatitude must be read according to the Bible and the Jewish sources in which helping people in discord to reconcile and live in peace is seen as one of the principal works of mercy. On Christ's lips the beatitude of the peacemakers is derived from the new commandment of fraternal love, it is a way in which love of neighbor expresses itself.
In this sense we would say that this is the beatitude par excellence of the Church of Rome and of her bishop. One of the more precious services that the papacy has rendered to Christianity has always been to promote peace among the various churches, and, in certain eras, also among the first Christians. The first apostolic letter of a Pope, that of St. Clement I, written around the year 96, (perhaps even before the fourth Gospel) had the purpose of returning peace to the Church of Corinth which was divided by discord. It is a service that cannot be rendered without some sort of real juridical authority. If we want to see the value of this service we just need to look at those situations where it is absent.
The history of the Church is full of episodes in which local churches, bishops or abbots, arguing among themselves or with their flocks, have turned to the pope as an arbiter of peace. I am certain that even today this is one of the more frequent services, even if little known, of the pope to the universal Church. Equally the Vatican diplomacy and the apostolic nuncios find their justification in being instruments at the service of peace.
3. Peace as a gift
But God himself, and not man, is the true and supreme "peacemaker." It is for this reason that those who work for peace are called "sons of God." They resemble God, imitate him, they do what he does. The Pope's message says that peace is characteristic of the divine action in the creation and redemption, whether in God's action or in Christ's.
Scripture speaks of the "peace of God" (Philippians 4:7) and more often of the "God of peace" (Romans 15:32). Here peace does not mean what God does or gives, but also what God is. Peace is what reigns in God. Almost all the religions that flourished around the Bible know divine worlds marked by internal warfare. Babylonian and Greek myths about the world's coming into being speak of divinities at war with each other and tearing each other to pieces. In heretical gnostic sects in Christianity there is no unity and peace between the celestial Aeons, and the material world is supposed to be the fruit of an accident and a disharmony in the higher world.
Against this religious background we can better grasp the novelty and the absolute otherness of the doctrine of the Trinity as perfect unity of love in the plurality of persons. In one of her hymns, the Church calls the Trinity an "ocean of peace," and this is not only a bit of poetry. The thing that is most striking when we contemplate Rublev's icon of the Trinity (reproduced in this chapel in the front wall, over the enthroned Virgin) is the sense of superhuman peace that emanates from it. The painter has succeeded in translating into an image the motto of St. Serge of Radonezh, for whose monastery the icon was painted: "Contemplating the Most Holy Trinity, overcome the hateful disharmony of this world."
The one who has best celebrated this divine Peace that comes from beyond history, was Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Peace is for him one of the "names of God" just as "love" is.[4] Even of Christ it is said that he "is" himself our peace (Ephesians 2:14-17). When he says, "My peace I give to you," he transmits that which he is.
There is an inseparable link between peace gift from above and the Holy Spirit; it's not without reason that both are represented symbolically with a dove. In the afternoon on Easter Jesus gave, in practically the same instant, to this disciples peace and the Holy Spirit: "Peace be with you!" ... He blew over them and said to them "Recieve the Holy Spirit" (John 20: 21-22). Peace, says St. Paul, is a "fruit of the Spirit" (Galatians 5:22).
It is then understood what it means to be a peacemaker. It is not about inventing or creating peace but of transmitting it, letting in the peace of God and of Christ "that transcends all understanding." "Grace and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 1:7). This is the peace that the Apostle passes on to the Christians of Rome.
We must not, nor can we be, the origin but only the channel of peace. The prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi expresses this perfectly: "Lord, make me a channel of your peace."
But what is the peace of which we speak? The definition of peace proposed by Augustine has become classic: "Peace is the tranquility of order."[5] Taking this definition, St. Thomas says that in man there exist three types of order: order with oneself, with God, and with our neighbor, and, in consequence, there exist three forms of peace: interior peace, by which man is at peace with himself; the peace whereby man is at peace with God, submitting himself fully to God's dispositions; and the peace relative to one's neighbor, by which we live in peace with all men."[6]
In the Bible, however, shalom, peace, says more than simply tranquility of order. It also means well-being, repose, security, success, glory. Indeed, sometimes it means the totality of the messianic goods and is synonymous with salvation and goodness: "How beautiful are the feet of the messenger of good news on the mountains, he who announces peace, the messenger of goodness and of salvation" (Isaiah 52:7). The new covenant is called a "covenant of peace" (Ezekiel 37:26) and the Gospel is called the "Gospel of peace" (Ephesians 6:15), as if the word "peace" summarized the whole content of the covenant and the Gospel.
In the Old Testament, peace is often side by side with justice (Psalm 85:11, "Justice and peace shall kiss") and in the New Testament it is side by side with grace. When Paul writes: "Justified by faith we are at peace with God" (Romans 5:1), it is clear that "at peace with God" has the same pregnant meaning as "in the grace of God."
4. Peace as a task
The Pope's message also says that besides being a gift, peace is also a task. It is of peace as a task the beatitudes speak to us in the first place.
The condition for being a channel of peace is being in union with its source, which is the will of God. "In his will is our peace," says a soul in Dante's purgatory. The secret to interior peace is total and ever renewed abandonment to the will of God. To maintain or find this peace of heart again it helps to repeat the words of St. Teresa of Avila often to ourselves: "Let nothing disturb you, nothing frighten you. Everything is passing, only God remains. Patience overcomes everything. Nothing is lacking to those who have God. God alone suffices."
The apostolic preaching is rich with practical indications about what makes for and what is an obstacle to peace. One of the better known passages is that of the Letter of James: "For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every foul practice. But the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace" (James 3:16-18).
From this very personal sphere must begin every effort to bring about peace. Peace is like the wake of a great ship that expands toward the infinite but begins as a point, and the point in this case is the heart of man. John Paul II's message for the World Day of Peace in 1984 bore the title: "Peace is Born in a New Heart."
But it is not on this personal sphere that I want to focus. Today a new, difficult, and urgent field of work is opening up to peacemakers: promoting peace between religions and with religion, that is, promoting peace between different religions and between the various religions and the secular, non-believing world. The Pope dedicates a paragraph of his message to this field.
The Pope writes: "As far as the free expression of personal faith is concerned, another disturbing symptom of lack of peace in the world is represented by the difficulties that both Christians and the followers of other religions frequently encounter in publicly and freely professing their religious convictions…
"There are regimes that impose a single religion upon everyone, while secular regimes often lead not so much to violent persecution as to systematic cultural denigration of religious beliefs. In both instances, a fundamental human right is not being respected, with serious repercussions for peaceful coexistence. This can only promote a mentality and culture that is not conducive to peace."
In the present moment we have and example of this cultural derision, or at least marginalization, of religious beliefs with the campaign in different European countries and cities against the religious symbols of Christmas. The reason often given for this is the desire to not offend persons of other religions among us, especially the Muslims. But it is a pretext, an excuse. In reality it is not the Muslims who do not want these symbols but a certain non-believing group in society. Muslims have nothing against the Christian celebration of Christmas, indeed, they honor it.
We have arrived at a rather absurd juncture: On the one hand, many Muslims celebrate the birth of Jesus and want a creche in their house and say that "those who do not believe in the miraculous birth of Jesus are not Muslim,"[7] while others call themselves Christians who want to make Christmas a "winter festival" populated only by reindeer and teddy-bears.
In the Qur'an there is a Sura worth knowing (also as an aid in friendly dialogue between religions) that is dedicated to the birth of Jesus:
"The angels said, 'O Mary! Allâh gives you good tidings through a word from Him. His name is the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary. He shall be worthy of regard in this world and in the hereafter… 'And he will speak to the people when in the cradle and when of old age, and shall be of the righteous.' Mary said, 'My Lord, how can I have a child when no man has yet touched me?' He said, 'In this way: Allâh creates what He will. When He decides something He simply says "be" and it is.'"[8]
In an episode of the RAI 1 program "In His Image," which is on the Sunday Gospel, and which will air tomorrow evening, I asked a Muslim brother to read this passage and he did so with great joy, saying that he was happy to clear matters up about something which other Muslims have rendered confused with the pretext of advancing their cause.
What that allows for a dialogue between religions -- founded not only the reasons that we know well, but rather on a solid theological foundation -- is that "we alll have a single God," as the Holy Father recalled when he visited the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. It is with this same truth that St. Paul began his discourse at the Areopagus in Athens (cf. Acts 17:28).
Subjectively we have different ideas about God. For us Christians God is "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," whom we do not know except "through him," but objectively we know well that God can only be one. There is "only one God, Father of all, who is above all, who acts in all, and is present in all" (Ephesians 4:6).
Our faith in the Holy Spirit is also a theological foundation for dialogue. As the Spirit of the redemption, and Spirit of grace, he is the bond of peace among the baptized and of the different Christian confessions; as the Spirit of creation, Spiritus creator, he is the bond of peace among the believers of all religions and indeed among all men of good will. "Every truth, whoever pronounces it," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "comes from the Holy Spirit." [9]
The recent trip of the Holy Father to Turkey was on behalf of religious peace, which has shown itself to have produced rich fruit, as do all things that are born from the womb of the cross: peace between the Eastern and Western Christian Church, between Christianity and Islam. On the occasion of his silent prayer at the Blue Mosque the Holy Father said that "this visit will help us to find together the means and the roads to peace for the good of humanity."
5. Peace without religion?
To tell the truth, the secularized West hopes for a different type of religious peace, one that would result from the disappearance of religion:
"Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people, living for today. Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine all the people, living for today. Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.
"Imagine all the people, living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one."[10]
This song, written by one of the idols of modern rock music, with its suave melody, has become a kind of secular manifesto of pacifism. If that which is envisioned here were to be realized, the world would be poorer and more squalid than we can imagine. It would be a drab world in which all differences were abolished, where people are destined, not to peace, but to tear each other apart because -- as René Girard has shown -- where everyone wants the same thing, the "mimetic desire" will be unleashed and with it rivalry and war.
We believers must not allow ourselves to fall into resentment and polemics not even with the secularized world. Alongside dialogue and peace between religions, there is another aim of peacemakers: that of peace between believers and non-believers, between religious persons and the secular world, indifferent or hostile to religion.
It will be difficult this test: to give a reason, with firmness, for the hope in us, but to do so, as St. Peter says, "with sweetness and respect" (1 Peter 2:15-16). Respect does not mean in this case "human respect," keeping Jesus hidden so as not to excite reactions. It is a respect of an interiority that is known only to God and that no one can violate for constrain us to change. It is not putting Jesus into parentheses, but rather a showing forth of Jesus and the Gospel through our lives. We ask only that an equal respect be shown by others to Christians, something which so far has often been lacking.
We end returning with a thought on Christmas. An old response of evening prayer for Christmas said: "Hodie nobis de caelo pax vera descendit. Hodie per totum mundum melliflui facti sunt caeli" (Today true peace has come down from heaven for us. Today the heavens distill honey over the world).
How can we correspond to the infinite gift that our Father gave to the world, giving his only son? If there is one faux paux that we should not commit during Christmas, it is to recycle a gift and give it back to the person that gave it to us. But with God, we can't help but do this continuously! The only act of thanksgiving possible is the Eucharist: Giving back Jesus, his son, our brother.
And what gift do we give to Jesus? A text of the oriental rite for Christmas says: "What can we offer to you, Christ, for having become man on Earth? Every creature gives you a sign of recognition: The angels their songs, the heavens their star, the earth a cave, the desert a manger. But we offer to you a virgin mother!"[11]
Holy Father, venerable Fathers, brothers and sisters: thanks for your kind attention and Merry Christmas!
* * *
[1] Benedict XVI, "The Human Person: The Heart of Peace," Message for the World Day of Peace, 2007, §3.
[2] St. Leo the Great, "Treatises," 26 (CC 138, line 130).
[3] J. Dupont, "Le beatitudini," III, p.1001.
[4] Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, "The Divine Names," XI, 1 s (PG 3, 948 s).
[5] St. Augustine, "The City of God," XIX, 13 (CC 48, 679).
[6] Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, "Commentary on the Gospel of John," XIV, lect.VII, n.1962.
[7] Magdi Allan, "Noi musulmani diciamo sì al presepe," Il Corriere della sera, Dec. 18, 2006, p. 18.
[8] Qur'an, Sura III.
[9] St. Thomas Aquinas, "Summa Theologiae," I-IIae q. 109, a. 1 ad 1; Ambrosiaster, On the First Letter to the Corinthians, 12, 3 (CSEL 81, 132).
[10] John Lennon.
[11] Idiomelon of the Vespers for Christmas.
Preaching in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel of the Apostolic Palace, Father Cantalamessa continued a series of meditations on the beatitudes.
* * *
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God"
1. The Holy Father's Message for the world day of peace
The beatitudes are not arranged according to a logical order. Except for the first one, which sets the tone for all the others, each one can be considered separately without its meaning being in the least compromised.
The Pope's message for the World Day of Peace has made me decide to dedicate our meeting today to the beatitude about the peacemakers and to postpone for another time my reflections on the third beatitude, the one about the meek. Let us hope that the message of peace, directed to the whole world, be above all accepted, meditated on, and bear fruit here among us, at the center of the Church.
This year message is for peace in all areas, from the more personal ambit to the more vast ones of politics, economy, ecology, and international organizations. These are different fields, but they are united by the fact that all have the human person as their primary object, as the title of the message indicates "The Human Person: Heart of Peace."
There is a fundamental affirmation in the message that is the interpretive key of the whole. The Holy Father says: "Peace is both gift and task. If it is true that peace between individuals and peoples -- the ability to live together and to build relationships of justice and solidarity -- calls for unfailing commitment on our part, it is also true, and indeed more so, that peace is a gift from God.
"Peace is an aspect of God's activity, made manifest both in the creation of an orderly and harmonious universe and also in the redemption of humanity that needs to be rescued from the disorder of sin. Creation and Redemption thus provide a key that helps us begin to understand the meaning of our life on earth."[1]
These words help us to understand the beatitude of the peacemakers and this beatitude, in turn, throws light on these words of the Pope's message. The nearness of Christmas sets a particular tone, a liturgical one, to our meditation. On Christmas night we will hear the words of the angelic hymn: "Peace on earth to men loved by the Lord." The meaning of these words is not may there be peace, but rather there is peace. "The birth of the Lord," St. Gregory the Great said, "is the birth of peace": Natalis Domini natalis est pacis.[2]
2. Who are the peacemakers?
The seventh beatitude says: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God." Along with the beatitude about the merciful, this one does not speak so much about how we must "be" (poor, afflicted, meek, pure of heart) but about what we must "do." The Greek term "eirenopoioi" means those who work for peace, who "make peace." Not so much, however, in the sense of being reconciled with our enemies as in the sense of helping enemies to be reconciled with each other. "What we are dealing with here are people who so love peace that they have no fear of compromising their own personal peace when they intervene in conflicts to help those who are divided to find peace."[3]
Peacemakers are not synonymous, then, with the peaceful or pacific, that is, tranquil, calm persons who avoid contrariety as much as possible (they are proclaimed blessed by another beatitude, that of the meek); neither are peacemakers synonymous with pacifists, if by pacifists we mean those who are against war (with great frequency, against one of the two sides in a war!) but who do nothing to reconcile the combatants. The most just term is pacifier.
In New Testament times the rulers were called the peacemakers, above all the Roman Empire. Augustus Caesar put world peace as his top accomplishment, which he achieved through military victory (parta victoriis pax). He built the famous Ara pacis, the Altar of Peace, in Rome as a testament of his legacy.
Some have understood the Gospel beatitude to be intentionally opposed to this position and to have pointed to the true peacemakers are the true way in which peace is promoted: through victory, yes, but victory over themselves, not over their enemies, not by destroying the enemy, but by destroying enmity, as Jesus did on the cross (Ephesians 2:16).
Today, however, the prevalent view is that this beatitude must be read according to the Bible and the Jewish sources in which helping people in discord to reconcile and live in peace is seen as one of the principal works of mercy. On Christ's lips the beatitude of the peacemakers is derived from the new commandment of fraternal love, it is a way in which love of neighbor expresses itself.
In this sense we would say that this is the beatitude par excellence of the Church of Rome and of her bishop. One of the more precious services that the papacy has rendered to Christianity has always been to promote peace among the various churches, and, in certain eras, also among the first Christians. The first apostolic letter of a Pope, that of St. Clement I, written around the year 96, (perhaps even before the fourth Gospel) had the purpose of returning peace to the Church of Corinth which was divided by discord. It is a service that cannot be rendered without some sort of real juridical authority. If we want to see the value of this service we just need to look at those situations where it is absent.
The history of the Church is full of episodes in which local churches, bishops or abbots, arguing among themselves or with their flocks, have turned to the pope as an arbiter of peace. I am certain that even today this is one of the more frequent services, even if little known, of the pope to the universal Church. Equally the Vatican diplomacy and the apostolic nuncios find their justification in being instruments at the service of peace.
3. Peace as a gift
But God himself, and not man, is the true and supreme "peacemaker." It is for this reason that those who work for peace are called "sons of God." They resemble God, imitate him, they do what he does. The Pope's message says that peace is characteristic of the divine action in the creation and redemption, whether in God's action or in Christ's.
Scripture speaks of the "peace of God" (Philippians 4:7) and more often of the "God of peace" (Romans 15:32). Here peace does not mean what God does or gives, but also what God is. Peace is what reigns in God. Almost all the religions that flourished around the Bible know divine worlds marked by internal warfare. Babylonian and Greek myths about the world's coming into being speak of divinities at war with each other and tearing each other to pieces. In heretical gnostic sects in Christianity there is no unity and peace between the celestial Aeons, and the material world is supposed to be the fruit of an accident and a disharmony in the higher world.
Against this religious background we can better grasp the novelty and the absolute otherness of the doctrine of the Trinity as perfect unity of love in the plurality of persons. In one of her hymns, the Church calls the Trinity an "ocean of peace," and this is not only a bit of poetry. The thing that is most striking when we contemplate Rublev's icon of the Trinity (reproduced in this chapel in the front wall, over the enthroned Virgin) is the sense of superhuman peace that emanates from it. The painter has succeeded in translating into an image the motto of St. Serge of Radonezh, for whose monastery the icon was painted: "Contemplating the Most Holy Trinity, overcome the hateful disharmony of this world."
The one who has best celebrated this divine Peace that comes from beyond history, was Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Peace is for him one of the "names of God" just as "love" is.[4] Even of Christ it is said that he "is" himself our peace (Ephesians 2:14-17). When he says, "My peace I give to you," he transmits that which he is.
There is an inseparable link between peace gift from above and the Holy Spirit; it's not without reason that both are represented symbolically with a dove. In the afternoon on Easter Jesus gave, in practically the same instant, to this disciples peace and the Holy Spirit: "Peace be with you!" ... He blew over them and said to them "Recieve the Holy Spirit" (John 20: 21-22). Peace, says St. Paul, is a "fruit of the Spirit" (Galatians 5:22).
It is then understood what it means to be a peacemaker. It is not about inventing or creating peace but of transmitting it, letting in the peace of God and of Christ "that transcends all understanding." "Grace and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 1:7). This is the peace that the Apostle passes on to the Christians of Rome.
We must not, nor can we be, the origin but only the channel of peace. The prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi expresses this perfectly: "Lord, make me a channel of your peace."
But what is the peace of which we speak? The definition of peace proposed by Augustine has become classic: "Peace is the tranquility of order."[5] Taking this definition, St. Thomas says that in man there exist three types of order: order with oneself, with God, and with our neighbor, and, in consequence, there exist three forms of peace: interior peace, by which man is at peace with himself; the peace whereby man is at peace with God, submitting himself fully to God's dispositions; and the peace relative to one's neighbor, by which we live in peace with all men."[6]
In the Bible, however, shalom, peace, says more than simply tranquility of order. It also means well-being, repose, security, success, glory. Indeed, sometimes it means the totality of the messianic goods and is synonymous with salvation and goodness: "How beautiful are the feet of the messenger of good news on the mountains, he who announces peace, the messenger of goodness and of salvation" (Isaiah 52:7). The new covenant is called a "covenant of peace" (Ezekiel 37:26) and the Gospel is called the "Gospel of peace" (Ephesians 6:15), as if the word "peace" summarized the whole content of the covenant and the Gospel.
In the Old Testament, peace is often side by side with justice (Psalm 85:11, "Justice and peace shall kiss") and in the New Testament it is side by side with grace. When Paul writes: "Justified by faith we are at peace with God" (Romans 5:1), it is clear that "at peace with God" has the same pregnant meaning as "in the grace of God."
4. Peace as a task
The Pope's message also says that besides being a gift, peace is also a task. It is of peace as a task the beatitudes speak to us in the first place.
The condition for being a channel of peace is being in union with its source, which is the will of God. "In his will is our peace," says a soul in Dante's purgatory. The secret to interior peace is total and ever renewed abandonment to the will of God. To maintain or find this peace of heart again it helps to repeat the words of St. Teresa of Avila often to ourselves: "Let nothing disturb you, nothing frighten you. Everything is passing, only God remains. Patience overcomes everything. Nothing is lacking to those who have God. God alone suffices."
The apostolic preaching is rich with practical indications about what makes for and what is an obstacle to peace. One of the better known passages is that of the Letter of James: "For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every foul practice. But the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace" (James 3:16-18).
From this very personal sphere must begin every effort to bring about peace. Peace is like the wake of a great ship that expands toward the infinite but begins as a point, and the point in this case is the heart of man. John Paul II's message for the World Day of Peace in 1984 bore the title: "Peace is Born in a New Heart."
But it is not on this personal sphere that I want to focus. Today a new, difficult, and urgent field of work is opening up to peacemakers: promoting peace between religions and with religion, that is, promoting peace between different religions and between the various religions and the secular, non-believing world. The Pope dedicates a paragraph of his message to this field.
The Pope writes: "As far as the free expression of personal faith is concerned, another disturbing symptom of lack of peace in the world is represented by the difficulties that both Christians and the followers of other religions frequently encounter in publicly and freely professing their religious convictions…
"There are regimes that impose a single religion upon everyone, while secular regimes often lead not so much to violent persecution as to systematic cultural denigration of religious beliefs. In both instances, a fundamental human right is not being respected, with serious repercussions for peaceful coexistence. This can only promote a mentality and culture that is not conducive to peace."
In the present moment we have and example of this cultural derision, or at least marginalization, of religious beliefs with the campaign in different European countries and cities against the religious symbols of Christmas. The reason often given for this is the desire to not offend persons of other religions among us, especially the Muslims. But it is a pretext, an excuse. In reality it is not the Muslims who do not want these symbols but a certain non-believing group in society. Muslims have nothing against the Christian celebration of Christmas, indeed, they honor it.
We have arrived at a rather absurd juncture: On the one hand, many Muslims celebrate the birth of Jesus and want a creche in their house and say that "those who do not believe in the miraculous birth of Jesus are not Muslim,"[7] while others call themselves Christians who want to make Christmas a "winter festival" populated only by reindeer and teddy-bears.
In the Qur'an there is a Sura worth knowing (also as an aid in friendly dialogue between religions) that is dedicated to the birth of Jesus:
"The angels said, 'O Mary! Allâh gives you good tidings through a word from Him. His name is the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary. He shall be worthy of regard in this world and in the hereafter… 'And he will speak to the people when in the cradle and when of old age, and shall be of the righteous.' Mary said, 'My Lord, how can I have a child when no man has yet touched me?' He said, 'In this way: Allâh creates what He will. When He decides something He simply says "be" and it is.'"[8]
In an episode of the RAI 1 program "In His Image," which is on the Sunday Gospel, and which will air tomorrow evening, I asked a Muslim brother to read this passage and he did so with great joy, saying that he was happy to clear matters up about something which other Muslims have rendered confused with the pretext of advancing their cause.
What that allows for a dialogue between religions -- founded not only the reasons that we know well, but rather on a solid theological foundation -- is that "we alll have a single God," as the Holy Father recalled when he visited the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. It is with this same truth that St. Paul began his discourse at the Areopagus in Athens (cf. Acts 17:28).
Subjectively we have different ideas about God. For us Christians God is "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," whom we do not know except "through him," but objectively we know well that God can only be one. There is "only one God, Father of all, who is above all, who acts in all, and is present in all" (Ephesians 4:6).
Our faith in the Holy Spirit is also a theological foundation for dialogue. As the Spirit of the redemption, and Spirit of grace, he is the bond of peace among the baptized and of the different Christian confessions; as the Spirit of creation, Spiritus creator, he is the bond of peace among the believers of all religions and indeed among all men of good will. "Every truth, whoever pronounces it," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "comes from the Holy Spirit." [9]
The recent trip of the Holy Father to Turkey was on behalf of religious peace, which has shown itself to have produced rich fruit, as do all things that are born from the womb of the cross: peace between the Eastern and Western Christian Church, between Christianity and Islam. On the occasion of his silent prayer at the Blue Mosque the Holy Father said that "this visit will help us to find together the means and the roads to peace for the good of humanity."
5. Peace without religion?
To tell the truth, the secularized West hopes for a different type of religious peace, one that would result from the disappearance of religion:
"Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people, living for today. Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine all the people, living for today. Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.
"Imagine all the people, living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one."[10]
This song, written by one of the idols of modern rock music, with its suave melody, has become a kind of secular manifesto of pacifism. If that which is envisioned here were to be realized, the world would be poorer and more squalid than we can imagine. It would be a drab world in which all differences were abolished, where people are destined, not to peace, but to tear each other apart because -- as René Girard has shown -- where everyone wants the same thing, the "mimetic desire" will be unleashed and with it rivalry and war.
We believers must not allow ourselves to fall into resentment and polemics not even with the secularized world. Alongside dialogue and peace between religions, there is another aim of peacemakers: that of peace between believers and non-believers, between religious persons and the secular world, indifferent or hostile to religion.
It will be difficult this test: to give a reason, with firmness, for the hope in us, but to do so, as St. Peter says, "with sweetness and respect" (1 Peter 2:15-16). Respect does not mean in this case "human respect," keeping Jesus hidden so as not to excite reactions. It is a respect of an interiority that is known only to God and that no one can violate for constrain us to change. It is not putting Jesus into parentheses, but rather a showing forth of Jesus and the Gospel through our lives. We ask only that an equal respect be shown by others to Christians, something which so far has often been lacking.
We end returning with a thought on Christmas. An old response of evening prayer for Christmas said: "Hodie nobis de caelo pax vera descendit. Hodie per totum mundum melliflui facti sunt caeli" (Today true peace has come down from heaven for us. Today the heavens distill honey over the world).
How can we correspond to the infinite gift that our Father gave to the world, giving his only son? If there is one faux paux that we should not commit during Christmas, it is to recycle a gift and give it back to the person that gave it to us. But with God, we can't help but do this continuously! The only act of thanksgiving possible is the Eucharist: Giving back Jesus, his son, our brother.
And what gift do we give to Jesus? A text of the oriental rite for Christmas says: "What can we offer to you, Christ, for having become man on Earth? Every creature gives you a sign of recognition: The angels their songs, the heavens their star, the earth a cave, the desert a manger. But we offer to you a virgin mother!"[11]
Holy Father, venerable Fathers, brothers and sisters: thanks for your kind attention and Merry Christmas!
* * *
[1] Benedict XVI, "The Human Person: The Heart of Peace," Message for the World Day of Peace, 2007, §3.
[2] St. Leo the Great, "Treatises," 26 (CC 138, line 130).
[3] J. Dupont, "Le beatitudini," III, p.1001.
[4] Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, "The Divine Names," XI, 1 s (PG 3, 948 s).
[5] St. Augustine, "The City of God," XIX, 13 (CC 48, 679).
[6] Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, "Commentary on the Gospel of John," XIV, lect.VII, n.1962.
[7] Magdi Allan, "Noi musulmani diciamo sì al presepe," Il Corriere della sera, Dec. 18, 2006, p. 18.
[8] Qur'an, Sura III.
[9] St. Thomas Aquinas, "Summa Theologiae," I-IIae q. 109, a. 1 ad 1; Ambrosiaster, On the First Letter to the Corinthians, 12, 3 (CSEL 81, 132).
[10] John Lennon.
[11] Idiomelon of the Vespers for Christmas.
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Father Cantalamessa on Fourth Sunday of Advent
DEC. 22, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of a commentary by the Pontifical Household preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, on this Sunday's liturgical readings.
* * *
Fourth Sunday of Advent
Micah 5:2-5; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-48a
He has looked upon his handmaid's lowliness
The last Sunday of Advent is the one that must prepare us immediately for Christmas. By now we should be done with our shopping and be more open to also think about the religious meaning of this festive time.
Today's Gospel is the one that recounts Mary's visit to Elizabeth, which ends with the Magnificat: "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior. For he has looked upon his handmaid's lowliness."
With the Magnificat Mary helps us to take in an important aspect of the Christmas mystery on which I would like to insist: Christmas as the feast of the lowly and as the ransoming of the poor.
Mary says: "He has cast down the powerful from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty."
In today's world there are two new emerging social classes which are no longer the ones we knew in the past. On one hand, there is the cosmopolitan society that knows English, that moves easily in the airports of the world, that knows how to use computers and to "navigate" the internet. For this group the world is already a "global village."
On the other hand, there is the great mass of those who have just left the country of their birth and have limited and only indirect access to the great means of social communication. It is these two groups which today are, respectively, the new "powerful" and the new "lowly."
Mary helps us to put things right again and to not let ourselves be deceived. She tells us that often the deepest values are hidden among the lowly; that the more decisive events in history (such as the birth of Jesus), takes place among the lowly and not on the world's great stages.
Today's first reading tells us that Bethlehem was "a little one among the towns of Judea," and yet in her the Messiah was born. Great writers, like Manzoni and Dostoyevsky, have immortalized, in their works, the values and stories of the "lower class."
The "preferential option" for the poor was something that God decided on well before the Second Vatican Council. Scripture says that "the Lord is on high but cares for the lowly" (Psalm 138:6); he "resists the proud but gives his grace to the humble" (1 Peter 5:5).
In revelation God continually appears as one who pays attention to the wretched, the afflicted, the abandoned and those who are nothing in the eyes of the world. All of this contains a lesson that is extremely relevant for us today. Our temptation is to do exactly the opposite of what God does: to want to look to those who are on top, not at those who are on the bottom; to those who are prosperous, not to those who are in need.
We cannot be content just remembering that God considers the lowly. We ourselves must become little, humble, at least in our hearts.
The Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem has only one entrance, and you cannot pass through it without bending down. Some have said that it was built this way so that the Bedouins could not enter seated on their camels. But there is another explanation that has always been given, and which, in any case, contains a deep spiritual truth. This door is supposed to remind pilgrims that in order to penetrate the deep meaning of Christmas it is necessary to humble oneself and become little.
In the days that follow we will hear our old Italian carol sung: "Tu scendi dalle stelle, o re del cielo…" (You descend from the starry skies, O King of heaven…). But if God has descended "from the starry skies," should we not also come down from our pedestals of superiority and power and live together as brothers reconciled?
We too must climb down from the camels to enter into the stable of Bethlehem.
* * *
Fourth Sunday of Advent
Micah 5:2-5; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-48a
He has looked upon his handmaid's lowliness
The last Sunday of Advent is the one that must prepare us immediately for Christmas. By now we should be done with our shopping and be more open to also think about the religious meaning of this festive time.
Today's Gospel is the one that recounts Mary's visit to Elizabeth, which ends with the Magnificat: "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior. For he has looked upon his handmaid's lowliness."
With the Magnificat Mary helps us to take in an important aspect of the Christmas mystery on which I would like to insist: Christmas as the feast of the lowly and as the ransoming of the poor.
Mary says: "He has cast down the powerful from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty."
In today's world there are two new emerging social classes which are no longer the ones we knew in the past. On one hand, there is the cosmopolitan society that knows English, that moves easily in the airports of the world, that knows how to use computers and to "navigate" the internet. For this group the world is already a "global village."
On the other hand, there is the great mass of those who have just left the country of their birth and have limited and only indirect access to the great means of social communication. It is these two groups which today are, respectively, the new "powerful" and the new "lowly."
Mary helps us to put things right again and to not let ourselves be deceived. She tells us that often the deepest values are hidden among the lowly; that the more decisive events in history (such as the birth of Jesus), takes place among the lowly and not on the world's great stages.
Today's first reading tells us that Bethlehem was "a little one among the towns of Judea," and yet in her the Messiah was born. Great writers, like Manzoni and Dostoyevsky, have immortalized, in their works, the values and stories of the "lower class."
The "preferential option" for the poor was something that God decided on well before the Second Vatican Council. Scripture says that "the Lord is on high but cares for the lowly" (Psalm 138:6); he "resists the proud but gives his grace to the humble" (1 Peter 5:5).
In revelation God continually appears as one who pays attention to the wretched, the afflicted, the abandoned and those who are nothing in the eyes of the world. All of this contains a lesson that is extremely relevant for us today. Our temptation is to do exactly the opposite of what God does: to want to look to those who are on top, not at those who are on the bottom; to those who are prosperous, not to those who are in need.
We cannot be content just remembering that God considers the lowly. We ourselves must become little, humble, at least in our hearts.
The Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem has only one entrance, and you cannot pass through it without bending down. Some have said that it was built this way so that the Bedouins could not enter seated on their camels. But there is another explanation that has always been given, and which, in any case, contains a deep spiritual truth. This door is supposed to remind pilgrims that in order to penetrate the deep meaning of Christmas it is necessary to humble oneself and become little.
In the days that follow we will hear our old Italian carol sung: "Tu scendi dalle stelle, o re del cielo…" (You descend from the starry skies, O King of heaven…). But if God has descended "from the starry skies," should we not also come down from our pedestals of superiority and power and live together as brothers reconciled?
We too must climb down from the camels to enter into the stable of Bethlehem.
posted by Chipi Buenafe at
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Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Wednesday Liturgy: 3 Masses on Christmas
ROME, DEC. 19, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.
Q: When, where and why did the practice of Midnight Mass begin? -- F.S., Columbus, Ohio
A: Like many liturgical practices the origin of the three Christmas Masses (midnight, dawn and during the day) is not totally certain.
Christmas as a liturgical feast falling on Dec. 25 originated at Rome, in or around the year 330. It is very likely that the feast was first celebrated in the newly completed basilica of St. Peter.
From Rome the celebration of Christmas then slowly spread eastward and little by little was incorporated into the liturgical calendar of the principal Churches. Some of these Churches had celebrated Christ's birth on Jan. 6 and they have continued to give more importance to this date even after accepting Dec. 25.
During this period the Church at Jerusalem had established some particular customs.
Egeria, a woman who made a long pilgrimage to the Holy Land from 381 to 384, described how the Christians of Jerusalem commemorated the Christmas mystery on Jan. 6 with a midnight vigil at Bethlehem, followed by a torchlight procession to Jerusalem arriving at dawn to the Church of the Resurrection (Anastasis in Greek).
Fifty years later at Rome, Pope Sixtus III (432-440) decided to honor the proclamation of Mary's divine maternity at the Council of Ephesus (431) by building the great basilica of St. Mary Major on the Esquiline hill.
Among other elements Sixtus III built a chapel that reproduced the cave of Bethlehem. (The relics of the Crib, still found today in St. Mary Major's, were not placed in this chapel until the seventh century.) Sixtus III, probably inspired by the custom of the midnight vigil held in Jerusalem, instituted the practice of a midnight Mass in this grotto-like oratory.
In Rome the custom already existed of commemorating important feasts with two distinct offices, one held at night and the other toward dawn. It is easy to see how the simple feast initiated by Sixtus III at St. Mary Major's increased in importance and developed. The first development was that the oldest Christmas office, which was sung at St. Peter's, began to be also held at St. Mary Major's.
A further development occurred around 550. The Pope, and some members of the curia, celebrated a second Mass sometime before dawn at the Church of St. Anastasia.
At the beginning this happened because St. Anastasia's feast day also fell on Dec. 25 and had nothing to do with Christmas. Later however, probably inspired by the practice of the dawn Mass in the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, and coupled with the similarity of the name Anastasia, this celebration was transformed into a second Christmas Mass.
After this almost-private Mass, the Pope would go directly to St. Peter's where a large assembly of faithful awaited the solemn dawn office of Christmas. This custom continued at least until the time of Pope Gregory VII (died 1085).
Initially the privilege of three celebrations at Christmas was reserved to the Pope. The first evidence we have of a single priest celebrating the three Masses is from the Monastery of Cluny before the year 1156.
All priests may still avail of this privilege and celebrate three Masses on Christmas Day providing they respect the proper hours. The first Mass is celebrated at Midnight (the vigil Mass of Dec. 24 does not count as the first of the three Masses), the second at dawn and the third at some time during the day.
Q: When, where and why did the practice of Midnight Mass begin? -- F.S., Columbus, Ohio
A: Like many liturgical practices the origin of the three Christmas Masses (midnight, dawn and during the day) is not totally certain.
Christmas as a liturgical feast falling on Dec. 25 originated at Rome, in or around the year 330. It is very likely that the feast was first celebrated in the newly completed basilica of St. Peter.
From Rome the celebration of Christmas then slowly spread eastward and little by little was incorporated into the liturgical calendar of the principal Churches. Some of these Churches had celebrated Christ's birth on Jan. 6 and they have continued to give more importance to this date even after accepting Dec. 25.
During this period the Church at Jerusalem had established some particular customs.
Egeria, a woman who made a long pilgrimage to the Holy Land from 381 to 384, described how the Christians of Jerusalem commemorated the Christmas mystery on Jan. 6 with a midnight vigil at Bethlehem, followed by a torchlight procession to Jerusalem arriving at dawn to the Church of the Resurrection (Anastasis in Greek).
Fifty years later at Rome, Pope Sixtus III (432-440) decided to honor the proclamation of Mary's divine maternity at the Council of Ephesus (431) by building the great basilica of St. Mary Major on the Esquiline hill.
Among other elements Sixtus III built a chapel that reproduced the cave of Bethlehem. (The relics of the Crib, still found today in St. Mary Major's, were not placed in this chapel until the seventh century.) Sixtus III, probably inspired by the custom of the midnight vigil held in Jerusalem, instituted the practice of a midnight Mass in this grotto-like oratory.
In Rome the custom already existed of commemorating important feasts with two distinct offices, one held at night and the other toward dawn. It is easy to see how the simple feast initiated by Sixtus III at St. Mary Major's increased in importance and developed. The first development was that the oldest Christmas office, which was sung at St. Peter's, began to be also held at St. Mary Major's.
A further development occurred around 550. The Pope, and some members of the curia, celebrated a second Mass sometime before dawn at the Church of St. Anastasia.
At the beginning this happened because St. Anastasia's feast day also fell on Dec. 25 and had nothing to do with Christmas. Later however, probably inspired by the practice of the dawn Mass in the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, and coupled with the similarity of the name Anastasia, this celebration was transformed into a second Christmas Mass.
After this almost-private Mass, the Pope would go directly to St. Peter's where a large assembly of faithful awaited the solemn dawn office of Christmas. This custom continued at least until the time of Pope Gregory VII (died 1085).
Initially the privilege of three celebrations at Christmas was reserved to the Pope. The first evidence we have of a single priest celebrating the three Masses is from the Monastery of Cluny before the year 1156.
All priests may still avail of this privilege and celebrate three Masses on Christmas Day providing they respect the proper hours. The first Mass is celebrated at Midnight (the vigil Mass of Dec. 24 does not count as the first of the three Masses), the second at dawn and the third at some time during the day.
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Wednesday Liturgy: Follow-up: Substituting the Creed
ROME, DEC. 19, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.
Our response on omitting or substituting the creed (Dec. 5) generated a surprisingly heavy correspondence which requires us to further nuance our earlier reply.
Regarding the omission of the creed, a priest pointed out that the Ritual for the Christian Initiation of Adults does offer the possibility of omitting the creed when the Scrutinies are celebrated with the Elect on the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sundays of Lent (No. 156), to wit:
"When the Eucharist is to follow, intercessory prayer is resumed with the usual general intercessions for the needs of the Church and the needs of the whole world; then, if required, the profession of faith is said. But for pastoral reasons these general intercessions and the profession of faith may be omitted. The liturgy of the Eucharist then begins as usual with the preparation of the gifts. …"
A similar option also occurs in some other moments such as the "Sending of the Catechumens for Election" which occurs in the parish church when the Rite of Election will occur with the bishop at the cathedral (see No. 117 RCIA).
In this case we are before a possibility that is to be used if and when there are good pastoral reasons for doing so. The correctness of this possibility should always be explained to the faithful so as avoid confusion when the creed is omitted.
A reader in Biloxi, Mississippi, asked if the creed may be omitted whenever an Advent wreath or Nativity scene is blessed during Mass. The Book of Blessings, the reader wrote, "mentions that the blessing takes place on the First Sunday of Advent (BB 1509), and the Order of Blessing During Mass first mentions the homily (1517), then says (in 1518), 'The general intercessions follow.' No mention is made of the Profession of Faith."
The examples come from that part of the Book of Blessings which does not form part of the Latin original but are approved supplements for the United States. Unlike the case of the Scrutinies, where the possibility of omitting the creed is explicitly mentioned, the absence of any indication here is perhaps a case of a rubrical oversight.
Since the creed is not normally left out, even on solemn occasions such as priestly ordinations, it would seem strange that a humble blessing of an Advent wreath should occasion its omission.
With respect to substituting the creed with the renewal of baptismal promises on Easter Sunday, one reader correctly pointed out that it was not a universal practice. Rather, it was an adaptation which the Holy See approved for the United States and may have approved for some other bishops' conferences as well.
It was also pointed out that Pope John Paul II sometimes substituted the renewal of promises for the creed at World Youth Day Masses.
That approval by the Holy See, or a personal initiative of the Pope who is the supreme legislator, is required for such a change would indicate that a priest should not presume to introduce it into the liturgy on his own initiative. This also applies even when the change would appear appropriate, such as for the feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
For such occasions, as another correspondent noted, the rite of blessing and sprinkling with holy water at the beginning of Mass (which also recalls baptism) may be profitably used.
It is certainly true that the baptismal promises are just another form of profession of faith. But the Church has good pastoral reasons for reserving the renewal of baptismal promises to specific times and situations and requiring that the habitual form of profession of faith be the recitation of the creed.
All the same, if the occasion warrants it, the rite of renewal of baptismal promises may be used with the creed or on days where the creed is not required. Such occasions could be pilgrimages or the conclusion of retreats and spiritual exercises.
This brings us to the topic of using either the Nicene or the Apostles' Creed on a Sunday. An acute reader pointed out: "You wrote […]: 'According to the new Latin missal the Apostles' Creed may be used during Lent, Easter and at Masses for Children. Some countries have received permission to use the Apostles' Creed every Sunday."
I believe it is an option in every country, every Sunday. The rubric is: "19. Loco symboli nicaeno-constantinopolitani, praesertim tempore Quadragesimae et tempore paschali, adhiberi potest symbolum baptismale Ecclesiae Romanae sic dictum Apostolorum" (Missale Romanum, Page 513). The meaning of "praesertim" is "especially, particularly."
The rubric could be rendered thus: "The Roman Church's baptismal creed, the so-called Apostles' Creed, may be used in place of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, especially in Lent and Eastertide."
Our interlocutor is correct that under this formulation the Apostles' Creed could be recited every Sunday and the Nicene Creed left aside.
Yet, I believe that if such an interpretation were widely applied it would go against the legislator's intention and would impoverish the richness of the liturgy.
Through this rubric the Church expresses a desire that both creeds should be known and used by all the faithful. The Nicene Creed would remain that of common use while the Apostles' Creed would also be used on occasion. The mention of this latter creed's primarily catechetical origin as a baptismal symbol is an indicator of why it is proposed especially for Lent and Easter.
Used in this way, the advantages of both creeds could be brought to the fore. The concise Apostles' Creed can be used to express the essential tenets of the faith in the context of baptism and the baptismal commitment.
The more theological Nicene Creed affords an opportunity to deepen into these essential elements and into the mystery of Christ and of our salvation.
It must also be remembered that historically it was the Nicene Creed that was first introduced into the Eucharistic liturgy. And this was not originally done to recall baptism but rather to express the fullness of the faith in Jesus Christ. Likewise, it is this creed, and not that of the apostles, that is liturgically recited by practically all forms of Christianity.
Our response on omitting or substituting the creed (Dec. 5) generated a surprisingly heavy correspondence which requires us to further nuance our earlier reply.
Regarding the omission of the creed, a priest pointed out that the Ritual for the Christian Initiation of Adults does offer the possibility of omitting the creed when the Scrutinies are celebrated with the Elect on the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sundays of Lent (No. 156), to wit:
"When the Eucharist is to follow, intercessory prayer is resumed with the usual general intercessions for the needs of the Church and the needs of the whole world; then, if required, the profession of faith is said. But for pastoral reasons these general intercessions and the profession of faith may be omitted. The liturgy of the Eucharist then begins as usual with the preparation of the gifts. …"
A similar option also occurs in some other moments such as the "Sending of the Catechumens for Election" which occurs in the parish church when the Rite of Election will occur with the bishop at the cathedral (see No. 117 RCIA).
In this case we are before a possibility that is to be used if and when there are good pastoral reasons for doing so. The correctness of this possibility should always be explained to the faithful so as avoid confusion when the creed is omitted.
A reader in Biloxi, Mississippi, asked if the creed may be omitted whenever an Advent wreath or Nativity scene is blessed during Mass. The Book of Blessings, the reader wrote, "mentions that the blessing takes place on the First Sunday of Advent (BB 1509), and the Order of Blessing During Mass first mentions the homily (1517), then says (in 1518), 'The general intercessions follow.' No mention is made of the Profession of Faith."
The examples come from that part of the Book of Blessings which does not form part of the Latin original but are approved supplements for the United States. Unlike the case of the Scrutinies, where the possibility of omitting the creed is explicitly mentioned, the absence of any indication here is perhaps a case of a rubrical oversight.
Since the creed is not normally left out, even on solemn occasions such as priestly ordinations, it would seem strange that a humble blessing of an Advent wreath should occasion its omission.
With respect to substituting the creed with the renewal of baptismal promises on Easter Sunday, one reader correctly pointed out that it was not a universal practice. Rather, it was an adaptation which the Holy See approved for the United States and may have approved for some other bishops' conferences as well.
It was also pointed out that Pope John Paul II sometimes substituted the renewal of promises for the creed at World Youth Day Masses.
That approval by the Holy See, or a personal initiative of the Pope who is the supreme legislator, is required for such a change would indicate that a priest should not presume to introduce it into the liturgy on his own initiative. This also applies even when the change would appear appropriate, such as for the feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
For such occasions, as another correspondent noted, the rite of blessing and sprinkling with holy water at the beginning of Mass (which also recalls baptism) may be profitably used.
It is certainly true that the baptismal promises are just another form of profession of faith. But the Church has good pastoral reasons for reserving the renewal of baptismal promises to specific times and situations and requiring that the habitual form of profession of faith be the recitation of the creed.
All the same, if the occasion warrants it, the rite of renewal of baptismal promises may be used with the creed or on days where the creed is not required. Such occasions could be pilgrimages or the conclusion of retreats and spiritual exercises.
This brings us to the topic of using either the Nicene or the Apostles' Creed on a Sunday. An acute reader pointed out: "You wrote […]: 'According to the new Latin missal the Apostles' Creed may be used during Lent, Easter and at Masses for Children. Some countries have received permission to use the Apostles' Creed every Sunday."
I believe it is an option in every country, every Sunday. The rubric is: "19. Loco symboli nicaeno-constantinopolitani, praesertim tempore Quadragesimae et tempore paschali, adhiberi potest symbolum baptismale Ecclesiae Romanae sic dictum Apostolorum" (Missale Romanum, Page 513). The meaning of "praesertim" is "especially, particularly."
The rubric could be rendered thus: "The Roman Church's baptismal creed, the so-called Apostles' Creed, may be used in place of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, especially in Lent and Eastertide."
Our interlocutor is correct that under this formulation the Apostles' Creed could be recited every Sunday and the Nicene Creed left aside.
Yet, I believe that if such an interpretation were widely applied it would go against the legislator's intention and would impoverish the richness of the liturgy.
Through this rubric the Church expresses a desire that both creeds should be known and used by all the faithful. The Nicene Creed would remain that of common use while the Apostles' Creed would also be used on occasion. The mention of this latter creed's primarily catechetical origin as a baptismal symbol is an indicator of why it is proposed especially for Lent and Easter.
Used in this way, the advantages of both creeds could be brought to the fore. The concise Apostles' Creed can be used to express the essential tenets of the faith in the context of baptism and the baptismal commitment.
The more theological Nicene Creed affords an opportunity to deepen into these essential elements and into the mystery of Christ and of our salvation.
It must also be remembered that historically it was the Nicene Creed that was first introduced into the Eucharistic liturgy. And this was not originally done to recall baptism but rather to express the fullness of the faith in Jesus Christ. Likewise, it is this creed, and not that of the apostles, that is liturgically recited by practically all forms of Christianity.
posted by Chipi Buenafe at
10:05 AM
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Sunday, December 17, 2006
Dec 2006 Letter from the Prelate of Opus Dei
A letter from Bishop Javier Echevarría to the faithful of the Prelature of Opus Dei, focusing on the Advent season, "a time of joy and hope."
*~*~*~*~*
In two days Advent begins. During this liturgical time, the Church urges us to consider the end of time, when Christ will come in the splendor of his glory to judge all men, and to prepare ourselves to remember his temporal birth, now twenty centuries ago.
The two comings are intimately related. In the first, divine mercy is especially evident; in the final one, his justice will be clearly seen. But both are a manifestation of God’s love for man, as St. Paul teaches: “For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men, training us to renounce irreligion and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world, awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:11-14).
Let us take advantage of the opportunity which the liturgy now offers us, to meditate personally and to remind others of the splendid truths of our faith regarding the last things. People frequently experience a certain fear when thinking about these realities. We children of God, Christ’s apostles (without being “alarmists,” but also without being naive) have to help others (without considering ourselves superior to them) to face these realities which, in many cases, can be the impetus for a deep conversion or for drawing closer to God.
A few weeks ago, Benedict XVI invited us to consider the Judgment of God, who comes to fulfill the longing for justice that dwells in human hearts. “Does not everyone want to see justice eventually rendered to all those who were unjustly condemned, to all those who suffered in life, who died after lives full of pain? Don’t we, all of us, want the outrageous injustice and suffering which we see in human history to be finally undone, so that in the end everyone will find happiness, and everything will be shown to have meaning?
“This triumph of justice, this joining together of the many fragments of history which seem meaningless and giving them their place in a bigger picture in which truth and love prevail: this is what is meant by the concept of universal judgment. Faith is not meant to instill fear; rather it is meant to call us to accountability. We are not meant to waste our lives, misuse them, or spend them simply for ourselves. In the face of injustice we must not remain indifferent and thus end up as silent collaborators or outright accomplices. We need to recognize our mission in history and to strive to carry it out. What is needed is not fear, but responsibility—responsibility and concern for our own salvation, and for the salvation of the whole world. Everyone needs to make his or her own contribution to this end” (Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, September 12, 2006).
Let us ask the Holy Spirit, my daughters and sons, to place on our lips the opportune words to effectively move souls. The holy fear of God, a gift of the Paraclete, means above all that his children do not want to sadden their heavenly Father. But the consideration of death and faith in the particular judgment, in the universal judgment and in the other final realities, can help convince many people to uproot sin from their lives. This is not merely a question of fear, but of the certainty that doing so brings with it all the advantages of a happy life, both in this world and the next. Saint Josemaría Escrivá wrote: “‘He shall come to judge the living and the dead.’ So we pray in the Creed. God grant that you never lose sight of that judgment and of that justice and...of that Judge” (The Way, no. 745). “Does your soul not burn with the desire to make your Father God happy when he has to judge you?” (Ibid., no. 746).
Advent is a time of joy and hope. “We might say that Advent is the season in which Christians must rekindle in their hearts the hope that they will be able with God’s help to renew the world” (Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Allocution, November 27, 2005). The Church highlighted this reality in the recent Solemnity of Christ the King, reminding us that we have to play an active role in establishing God’s kingdom on earth. And we need to do so day after day, in the incidents of our daily life, preparing for the constant coming of our Lord to souls. Let us not forget that Jesus did not come only in the first Nativity, nor will he present himself only at the end of time. Our Lord constantly wants to be present in our souls, and he counts on us to sanctify all noble human realities. He acts through the grace of the sacraments, especially Confession and the Eucharist, and also through the example and word of his disciples, of his friends.
While in the first part of Advent, as we noted at the beginning of this letter, the liturgy points us towards the second coming of Christ, from December 17 on its focus is on the immediate preparation for Christmas. Let us make our way towards Bethlehem, then, closely united to Mary and Joseph. They will teach us to show Jesus affection and refinement, to follow him, to fall in love with him. The fruit of this greater intimacy will be the aspiration Saint Josemaría expressed seventy-five years ago: “I want my mere presence to be enough to set the world on fire, for many miles around, with an inextinguishable flame. I want to know that I am yours. Then, let the Cross come: never will I be afraid of expiation. To suffer and to love. To love and to suffer. What a magnificent path! To suffer, to love and to believe: faith and love. The faith of Peter, the love of John, the zeal of Paul.”
Let us continue to pray for the Holy Father, each day more insistently. I have no doubt that, through your prayer and joyful sacrifice, you have been accompanying him on his recent trip to Turkey. Let us try to get many people to pray for him and for his intentions. And don’t forget my intentions: never let this become a routine request.
*~*~*~*~*
In two days Advent begins. During this liturgical time, the Church urges us to consider the end of time, when Christ will come in the splendor of his glory to judge all men, and to prepare ourselves to remember his temporal birth, now twenty centuries ago.
The two comings are intimately related. In the first, divine mercy is especially evident; in the final one, his justice will be clearly seen. But both are a manifestation of God’s love for man, as St. Paul teaches: “For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men, training us to renounce irreligion and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world, awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:11-14).
Let us take advantage of the opportunity which the liturgy now offers us, to meditate personally and to remind others of the splendid truths of our faith regarding the last things. People frequently experience a certain fear when thinking about these realities. We children of God, Christ’s apostles (without being “alarmists,” but also without being naive) have to help others (without considering ourselves superior to them) to face these realities which, in many cases, can be the impetus for a deep conversion or for drawing closer to God.
A few weeks ago, Benedict XVI invited us to consider the Judgment of God, who comes to fulfill the longing for justice that dwells in human hearts. “Does not everyone want to see justice eventually rendered to all those who were unjustly condemned, to all those who suffered in life, who died after lives full of pain? Don’t we, all of us, want the outrageous injustice and suffering which we see in human history to be finally undone, so that in the end everyone will find happiness, and everything will be shown to have meaning?
“This triumph of justice, this joining together of the many fragments of history which seem meaningless and giving them their place in a bigger picture in which truth and love prevail: this is what is meant by the concept of universal judgment. Faith is not meant to instill fear; rather it is meant to call us to accountability. We are not meant to waste our lives, misuse them, or spend them simply for ourselves. In the face of injustice we must not remain indifferent and thus end up as silent collaborators or outright accomplices. We need to recognize our mission in history and to strive to carry it out. What is needed is not fear, but responsibility—responsibility and concern for our own salvation, and for the salvation of the whole world. Everyone needs to make his or her own contribution to this end” (Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, September 12, 2006).
Let us ask the Holy Spirit, my daughters and sons, to place on our lips the opportune words to effectively move souls. The holy fear of God, a gift of the Paraclete, means above all that his children do not want to sadden their heavenly Father. But the consideration of death and faith in the particular judgment, in the universal judgment and in the other final realities, can help convince many people to uproot sin from their lives. This is not merely a question of fear, but of the certainty that doing so brings with it all the advantages of a happy life, both in this world and the next. Saint Josemaría Escrivá wrote: “‘He shall come to judge the living and the dead.’ So we pray in the Creed. God grant that you never lose sight of that judgment and of that justice and...of that Judge” (The Way, no. 745). “Does your soul not burn with the desire to make your Father God happy when he has to judge you?” (Ibid., no. 746).
Advent is a time of joy and hope. “We might say that Advent is the season in which Christians must rekindle in their hearts the hope that they will be able with God’s help to renew the world” (Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Allocution, November 27, 2005). The Church highlighted this reality in the recent Solemnity of Christ the King, reminding us that we have to play an active role in establishing God’s kingdom on earth. And we need to do so day after day, in the incidents of our daily life, preparing for the constant coming of our Lord to souls. Let us not forget that Jesus did not come only in the first Nativity, nor will he present himself only at the end of time. Our Lord constantly wants to be present in our souls, and he counts on us to sanctify all noble human realities. He acts through the grace of the sacraments, especially Confession and the Eucharist, and also through the example and word of his disciples, of his friends.
While in the first part of Advent, as we noted at the beginning of this letter, the liturgy points us towards the second coming of Christ, from December 17 on its focus is on the immediate preparation for Christmas. Let us make our way towards Bethlehem, then, closely united to Mary and Joseph. They will teach us to show Jesus affection and refinement, to follow him, to fall in love with him. The fruit of this greater intimacy will be the aspiration Saint Josemaría expressed seventy-five years ago: “I want my mere presence to be enough to set the world on fire, for many miles around, with an inextinguishable flame. I want to know that I am yours. Then, let the Cross come: never will I be afraid of expiation. To suffer and to love. To love and to suffer. What a magnificent path! To suffer, to love and to believe: faith and love. The faith of Peter, the love of John, the zeal of Paul.”
Let us continue to pray for the Holy Father, each day more insistently. I have no doubt that, through your prayer and joyful sacrifice, you have been accompanying him on his recent trip to Turkey. Let us try to get many people to pray for him and for his intentions. And don’t forget my intentions: never let this become a routine request.
posted by Chipi Buenafe at
10:14 AM
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Father Cantalamessa on Those Who Mourn
VATICAN CITY, DEC. 16, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the Advent sermon delivered Friday by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, Pontifical Household preacher, in the presence of Benedict XVI and members of the Roman Curia in preparation for Christmas.
Preaching in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel of the Apostolic Palace, Father Cantalamessa began a series of meditations on the beatitudes.
* * *
"Blessed are you who weep now!"
The beatitude of those who mourn
With this meditation we begin a cycle of reflections on the beatitudes which, if it pleases God, we will continue in Lent. Within the New Testament itself, the beatitudes have known a development and various applications as these were determined by the theology of the particular Gospel writer or the needs of the new community. The words that St. Gregory the Great says of Scripture in general are also applicable to the beatitudes: "Cum legentibus crescit,"[1] they grow with those who read them and never cease to reveal new implications and richer content, according to the circumstances and needs of the readers.
Being faithful to this principle means that even today we must read the beatitudes in the light of the new situations in which we find ourselves living. Yet, we must remember that the interpretations of the Gospel writers are inspired, and for this reason remain normative for us. Our contemporary interpretations do not share this prerogative.
1. A new relationship between pleasure and pain
Leaving aside the beatitude of poverty, which we meditated on during a previous Advent, we will concentrate on the second beatitude: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" (Matthew 5:4). In the Gospel of Luke, where the beatitudes, four in number, form a direct discourse and are reinforced with woes, the same beatitude is pronounced thus: "Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh ... Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep" (Luke 6:21, 25).
There is a formidable message enclosed within in the structure of this beatitude. It permits us to see the revolution that the Gospel wrought in regard to the problem of pleasure and pain. The point of departure -- common to both religious and profane thought -- is the realization that pleasure and pain are inseparable in this life; they follow upon each other with the same regularity as the cresting and falling of waves in the sea.
Man tries desperately to detach these Siamese twins, to isolate pleasure from pain. But in vain. The same disordered pleasure turns back on him and transforms itself in suffering, either suddenly and tragically, or a little at a time, insofar as it is by nature ephemeral and generates exhaustion and nausea. It is a lesson that comes to us from the daily news and which man has expressed in a thousand ways in his art and literature. "A strange bitterness," wrote the pagan poet Lucretius, "emerges from the heart of every pleasure and disturbs us already in the midst of our delight."[2]
The Bible has an answer to give to this the true drama of human existence. From the very beginning man has made a choice, rendered possible by his freedom, that has brought him to orient his capacity for joy -- which was bestowed on him so that he would aspire to the enjoyment of the infinite good, who is God -- exclusively toward visible things.
In the wake of the pleasure that is chosen against God's law and symbolized by Adam and Eve who taste the forbidden fruit, God permitted that pain and death should come, more as a remedy than as a punishment. God wanted to prevent man, who would be moved by his instinct and an unbridled egoism, from destroying everything, including his neighbor. Thus, we see that suffering adheres to pleasure as its shadow.
Christ finally broke this bond. He, "in exchange for the joy that was placed before him submitted to the cross" (Hebrews 12:2). In other words, Christ did the contrary of what Adam did and what every man does. "The Lord's death," wrote Maximus Confessor, "different from the death of other men, was not debt paid for with pleasure, but rather something cast against pleasure itself. Thus, through this death, the fate merited by man was changed."[3] Rising from the dead he inaugurated a new type of pleasure: that which does not precede pain, as its cause, but that which follows on it as its fruit.
All of this is wondrously proclaimed by our beatitude which opposes the sequence weeping-laughter to the sequence laughter-weeping. This is not a simple temporal inversion. The difference, which is infinite, is in the fact that in the order proposed by Jesus, it is pleasure, and not suffering, that has the last word, that counts more, a last word that endures for eternity.
2. "Where is your God?"
But let us try to understand just who exactly are those who mourn and weep who Christ proclaims blessed. Today exegetes exclude, almost unanimously, that these are only those who are afflicted in a purely objective or sociological sense, people who Jesus would proclaim blessed simply because they are suffering and weeping. The subjective element, that is, the reason for the weeping, is decisive.
And what is this reason? The surest way to discover which weeping and which affliction are those which Christ proclaims blessed is to see why one weeps in the Bible and why Jesus wept. In this way we discover that there is a weeping of repentance like that of Peter after the betrayal. There is also a "weeping with those who weep" (Romans 12:15), that is, of compassion for the sorrows of others, as Jesus wept with the widow of Nain and with the sisters of Lazarus. There is likewise the weeping of the exiled who long for their homeland, as the Israelites wept along the rivers of Babylon. There are many others besides...
I would like to focus on two reasons for weeping in the Bible and for which Jesus wept, which seem to me particularly appropriate to meditate on in the time in which we live.
In Psalm 41 we read: "Tears are my bread day and night, as they daily say to me, 'Where is your God?' ... While my bones are broken, my enemies who trouble me have reproached me; they say to me all the day long, 'Where is your God?'"
This sadness of the believer, caused by the presumptuous denial of God that surrounds him, has never had more reason to exist than it does today. After the period of relative silence that followed the end of Marxist atheism, we are witnessing the return to life of a militant and aggressive atheism of a scientific and scientistic kind. The titles of some recent books speak eloquently of this: "The Atheist Manifesto," "The God Illusion," "The End of Faith," "Creation without God," "An Ethics without God."[4]
In one of these treatises we read the following declaration: "Human societies have developed various normative means for acquiring knowledge which are generally shared, and through which something can be accepted. Those who affirm the existence of a being that cannot be known through those instruments must take upon themselves the burden of proof. For this reason it seems legitimate to hold that, until the contrary is proved, God does not exist."[5]
With the same arguments we could demonstrate that love does not exist either, from the moment that it cannot be ascertained by the instruments of science. The fact is that the proof for God's existence is found in life and not in the books and laboratories of biology. First of all, in the life of Christ, and in the lives of the saints and of countless witnesses of faith. It is also found in the much derided signs and miracles that Jesus himself gave as a demonstration of his truth and that God continues to give but which atheists reject a priori, without trying to investigate them.
The reason for the sadness of the believer, as for the psalmist, is the impotence that he feels when faced with the challenge of those who say "Where is your God?" With his mysterious silence God calls the believer to share his weakness and defeat, allowing victory only under this condition: "The weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Corinthians 1:25).
3. "They have taken away my Lord!"
No less painful for the Christian believer today is the systematic rejection of Christ in the name of an objective historical research which, in certain forms, degenerates into the most subjective thing one can imagine: "photographs of the authors and of their ideals," as the Holy Father notes in the introductory pages to his new book on Jesus. We are watching a race to see who succeeds in presenting a Christ who best measures up to the man of today, stripping him of every transcendental aspect. In answer to the question of the angels, "Woman why do you weep?" Mary Magdalene, on Easter morning, says, "They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where to find him" (John 20:13). This is a reason for weeping that we can make our own.
The temptation to clothe Christ in the garb of our own epoch or ideology has always existed. But in the past the causes were arguably serious and of a wide scope: Christ the idealist, the romantic, the liberal, the socialist, the revolutionary... Our time, obsessed as it is with sex, cannot but think of him as troubled by certain problems of desire. "Once again Jesus has been modernized, or better, postmodernized."[6]
It is good to know the origin of these recent currents which make Jesus of Nazareth a testing ground for the postmodern ideals of ethical relativism and absolute individualism (called deconstructionism) that are, directly or indirectly, inspiring novels, films and events and also influence historical investigations of Jesus. We can trace it to a movement that emerged in the United States in the final decades of the last century and that in the "Jesus Seminar" had its most active form.
This movement defined itself as "neo-liberal" on account of its return to the Jesus of the liberal theology of the eighteenth century, without any connection to Judaism or to Christianity and the Church; a Jesus who is a propagator of moral ideas, no longer of a universal scope, as in classical liberalism (the paternity of God, the infinite value of the human soul), but of a narrow wisdom, of a sociological rather than a theological nature. The aim of these scholars is no longer simply to correct but to destroy, as they say, "that mistake called Christianity."
The programmatic remarks made by the founder of the movement in 1985 is significant:
We are about to embark on a momentous enterprise. We are going to inquire simply, rigorously after the voice of Jesus, after what he really said. In this process, we will be asking a question that borders the sacred, that even abuts blasphemy, for many in our society. As a consequence, the course we shall follow may prove hazardous. We may well provoke hostility. But we will set out, in spite of the dangers, because we are professionals and because the issue of Jesus is there to be faced, much as Mt. Everest confronts the team of climbers.[7]
Jesus is liberated not only from the dogmas of the Church, but also from the Scriptures and the Gospels. What sources remain to speak of him at this point which are not pure fantasy? The apocrypha, naturally, and, in the first place, the Gospel of Thomas, indeed dated by them around 30 to 60 A.D., before all the canonical Gospels and before Paul. Another source would be the sociological analysis of the conditions of life in Galilee at the time of Christ.
What image of Jesus was extracted? I will cite some of the definitions that have been given, not all, naturally, shared by all: "an eccentric Galilean"; a "wise and subversive drifter"; the "master of an aphoristic wisdom"; "a Judean peasant soaked in the philosophy of cynicism."[8]
The mystery of how this innocuous individual ended up on the cross and became "the man who changed the world" remains to be explained. The truly sad thing is not that these things have been written (you need to invent something new if you want to continue to write books) but rather that, once published, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of these books are sold.
It seems to me that the incapacity of historico-philological research to link the Jesus of reality with the Jesus of the Gospel and ecclesiastical sources has to do with the fact that it ignores and does not concern itself with studying the dynamic of spiritual or supernatural phenomena. It would be like trying to hear a sound with your eyes or see colors with your ears.
The study and the experience of mystical phenomena (these too are real!) shows how a later development, in the life of a person or a movement started by him, can be contained in an event, sometimes a brief instant (when we are dealing with an encounter with the divine), the hidden potentialities of which are only revealed afterward in its fruits. Sociologists get close to this truth with the concept of a "nascent state."[9]
The child or adult man looks different from when he was an embryo at the beginning; and yet we know that in the embryo everything was contained. In the same way the kingdom is at the beginning "the smallest of seeds," but is destined to grow and become a great tree (Matthew 13:32).
The birth of the Franciscan movement lends itself to a comparison, one on a qualitatively different level of course. The Franciscan sources present differences and contradictions on nearly every point about the life of the Poverello (St. Francis): on the vision and the words of the crucifix of San Damiano, on the episode of the Stigmata. There is no word of the saint, except for those few written by his own hand, about which there is certainty that they came from his mouth. The "Fioretti" seem to be an idealization of history.
And yet all that which blossomed around and after Francis -- the Franciscan movement with its reflections in spirituality, in art, in literature -- stems from him; it is nothing but a manifestation -- even an impoverished one -- of the spiritual energies unleashed by his person and life; better, by that which God did in his life.
There are many, even among believing scholars, who take for granted that the real Jesus was, and understood himself to be, much less than that which is written about him in the Gospels, that this or that title is not to be attributed to him. The truth is that he is much more, not less, than that which is written about him! Who the Son is, is known only to the Father and, in small part, it is known to those to whom the Father chooses to reveal him, in general not the gifted and the wise, so long as they do not turn and become like children.
Paul spoke of experiencing "a great pain and continual suffering" in his heart for his fellow Jews who had rejected Jesus (Romans 9:1 ff); how can we not feel the same pain for his rejection by many of our contemporaries in the countries of ancient Christian faith? For a similar reason -- for not having recognized a friend and savior in him -- Jesus wept over Jerusalem.
Fortunately, it seems that a chapter in the studies of Jesus is finally closing and the page is being turned. In a work entitled "Los albores del cristianismo" (Christianity in the Making), destined to be a watershed as his previous studies have been, James Dunn, one of the best living scholars of the New Testament, after a careful analysis of the results of the last three centuries of research, comes to the conclusion that there was no rift between the Jesus who preached and the Jesus who was preached, between the Jesus of history and of faith. This faith was not born after Easter but in the first encounters with the disciples, who became disciples precisely because they believed in him, even though at the beginning it was a fragile faith, naive about its implications.
The contrast between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history is the result of a "flight from history," before it is a "flight from faith," due to the projecting onto Jesus of the interests and ideals of the moment. Yes, Jesus is freed from the garb of ecclesiastical dogma, but only to be put into the clothing of a fashion that changes from season to season. The immense effort expended on research into the person of Christ has nevertheless not been in vain since it is precisely thanks to it that now, with all the alternative solutions explored, we are able to critically reach this conclusion.[10]
4. "The priests weep, the ministers of the Lord"
There is another weeping in the Bible that we must reflect on. The prophets speak of it. Ezekiel recounts the vision he had one day. The powerful voice of God cries out to a mysterious person "dressed in linen with an inkwell in his hand": "Go through the whole city, through all of Jerusalem, and mark a tau on the forehead of all those who sigh and weep because of all the abominations that are committed there" (Ezekiel 9:4).
This vision has had a strong impact on revelation and on the Church. That sign, the tau, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, because of its cross-like form, became in the Book of Revelation the "seal of the living God" signed on the forehead of all those who are saved (Revelation 7:2 ff).
The Church has "wept and sighed" in recent times for the abominations committed in her womb by some of her own ministers and shepherds. She has paid a high price for this. She has sought to repair the damage. Strict rules have been laid down so that these abuses do not happen again. The moment has come, after the emergency, to do that which is the most important: to weep before God, to do penance, as God himself has been abused; to do penance for the offense against the body of Christ and the scandalizing of the "least of his brothers," more than for the damage and dishonor that has been brought upon us.
This is the condition for bringing good from this evil and for bringing about a reconciliation of the people with God and with its priests.
"Blow the trumpet in Zion, proclaim a fast, call a solemn assembly.… Between the porch and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say: 'Spare, O Lord, your people, and make not your heritage a reproach with the nations ruling over them'" (Joel 2:15-17).
These words of the prophet Joel call out to us. Could we not perhaps do the same today: call a day of fasting and penance, at least at the local and national level, where the problem has been the worst, to publicly express repentance before God and solidarity with the victims, bring about the reconciliation of souls, and take up again the path of the Church, renewed in heart and in memory?
The words spoken by the Holy Father to the episcopate of a Catholic country in a recent ad limina visit give me the courage to say this. The Holy Father said that "the wounds caused by similar acts are profound, and the work to restore confidence and trust once these have been broken is urgent … In this way the Church will be strengthened and will be always more capable of bearing witness to the redemptive power of the Cross of Christ."[11]
But we must not leave this topic without a word of hope for the unfortunate brothers who have been the cause of the evil. In regard to a case of incest in the community of Corinth the Apostle declared: "Let this person be delivered up to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that in the day of the Lord his spirit may obtain salvation" (1 Corinthians 5:5). (Today we would say: Let him be subjected to human justice so that his soul might obtain salvation.) The salvation of the sinner, not his punishment, was what concerned the Apostle.
One day when I was preaching to the clergy of a diocese that suffered much because of these things, I was struck by a thought. These brothers of ours have been stripped of everything, ministry, honor, freedom, and only God knows with what effective moral responsibility in individual cases; they have become the last, the rejected.… If in this situation, touched by grace, they do penance for the evil caused, they unite their weeping to that of the Church, then the blessedness of those who mourn and weep could become their blessedness. They could be close to Christ who is the friend of the last, more than others, me included, rich with their own respectability and perhaps led, like the Pharisees, to judge those who make mistakes.
There is something, however, that these brothers must absolutely avoid doing but which some, unfortunately, are attempting to do: profiting from the clamor to take advantage even of their own guilt, giving interviews, writing memoirs, in an attempt to put the guilt on their superiors and the ecclesial community. This would reveal a truly dangerous hardness of heart.
5. The most beautiful tears
Let us conclude with a look at a different kind of tears. It is possible to weep because of pain but it is also possible to weep because we are moved and to weep for joy. The most beautiful tears are those that fill our eyes when, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, "we taste and see how good the Lord is" (Psalm 34:9).
When we are in this state of grace we marvel that the world and we ourselves do not fall on our knees and, being moved and in a stupor, continually weep. Tears of this kind must have fallen from Augustine's eyes when in the "Confessions" he wrote: "How you loved us, good Father, to have not spared your only Son but to have given him up for all of us. How much you loved us!"[12]
Pascal shed such tears on the night that he had the revelation of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who disclosed himself through the Gospel. Pascal wrote on a piece of paper (found sown into his jacket after his death): "Joy, joy, tears of joy!" I think that the tears with which the woman who was a sinner bathed the feet of Jesus were not only tears of repentance but also tears of gratitude and joy.
If in heaven it is possible to weep, then paradise is full of such weeping. In Istanbul, the ancient Constantinople, where the Holy Father traveled some days ago, St. Simeon the New Theologian lived, the saint of tears. He is the most luminous example in the history of Christian spirituality of tears of repentance that transform themselves into tears of wonder and silence. "I wept," he says in one of his works, "and I was in an indescribable joy."[13] Paraphrasing the beatitude of those who mourn, he says: "Blessed are they who always weep bitterly over their sins, for the light will catch hold of them and will transform their bitter tears into sweet."[14]
May God allow us to enjoy, at least once in our lives, these tears of emotion and joy.
* * *
[1] Gregory the Great, "Commentary on Job," 20, 1 (CC 143 A, p. 1003).
[2] Lucretius, "De rerum natura," IV, 1129 s.
[3] Maximus Confessor, "Capitoli vari," IV cent. 39; in Filocalia, II, Torino 1983, p. 249.
[4] Respectively Michel Onfray, di Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Telmo Pievani, Eugenio Lecaldano.
[5] Carlo Augusto Viano, "Laici in ginocchio," Laterza, Bari.
[6] J.D.G. Dunn, "Gli albori del cristianesimo," I,1, Paideia, Brescia, 2006, p. 81. The first two volumes of the first part have appeared in Italian with the title "Albori del cristianesimo," I, La memoria di Gesú, vol. 1: Fede e Gesú storico; I, 2: La missione di Gesú (English title, "Christianity in the Making").
[7] Robert Funk, Opening remarks of March 1985, at Berkeley, California.
[8] Cf. J.D.G. Dunn, "Gli albori del cristianesimo," I, 1, pp. 75-82.
[9] Cf. F. Alberoni, "Innamoramento e amore," Garzanti, Milano 1981.
[10] Cf. Dunn.
[11] Benedict XVI, Discourse to the bishops of the episcopal conference of Ireland, Saturday, 28 October, 2006.
[12] Augstine, "Confessions," X, 43.
[13] Simeon the New Theologian, "Thanksgivings," 2 (SCh 113, p. 350).
[14] Simeon the New Theologian, "Ethical Treatises," 10 (SCh 129, p. 318).
Preaching in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel of the Apostolic Palace, Father Cantalamessa began a series of meditations on the beatitudes.
* * *
"Blessed are you who weep now!"
The beatitude of those who mourn
With this meditation we begin a cycle of reflections on the beatitudes which, if it pleases God, we will continue in Lent. Within the New Testament itself, the beatitudes have known a development and various applications as these were determined by the theology of the particular Gospel writer or the needs of the new community. The words that St. Gregory the Great says of Scripture in general are also applicable to the beatitudes: "Cum legentibus crescit,"[1] they grow with those who read them and never cease to reveal new implications and richer content, according to the circumstances and needs of the readers.
Being faithful to this principle means that even today we must read the beatitudes in the light of the new situations in which we find ourselves living. Yet, we must remember that the interpretations of the Gospel writers are inspired, and for this reason remain normative for us. Our contemporary interpretations do not share this prerogative.
1. A new relationship between pleasure and pain
Leaving aside the beatitude of poverty, which we meditated on during a previous Advent, we will concentrate on the second beatitude: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" (Matthew 5:4). In the Gospel of Luke, where the beatitudes, four in number, form a direct discourse and are reinforced with woes, the same beatitude is pronounced thus: "Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh ... Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep" (Luke 6:21, 25).
There is a formidable message enclosed within in the structure of this beatitude. It permits us to see the revolution that the Gospel wrought in regard to the problem of pleasure and pain. The point of departure -- common to both religious and profane thought -- is the realization that pleasure and pain are inseparable in this life; they follow upon each other with the same regularity as the cresting and falling of waves in the sea.
Man tries desperately to detach these Siamese twins, to isolate pleasure from pain. But in vain. The same disordered pleasure turns back on him and transforms itself in suffering, either suddenly and tragically, or a little at a time, insofar as it is by nature ephemeral and generates exhaustion and nausea. It is a lesson that comes to us from the daily news and which man has expressed in a thousand ways in his art and literature. "A strange bitterness," wrote the pagan poet Lucretius, "emerges from the heart of every pleasure and disturbs us already in the midst of our delight."[2]
The Bible has an answer to give to this the true drama of human existence. From the very beginning man has made a choice, rendered possible by his freedom, that has brought him to orient his capacity for joy -- which was bestowed on him so that he would aspire to the enjoyment of the infinite good, who is God -- exclusively toward visible things.
In the wake of the pleasure that is chosen against God's law and symbolized by Adam and Eve who taste the forbidden fruit, God permitted that pain and death should come, more as a remedy than as a punishment. God wanted to prevent man, who would be moved by his instinct and an unbridled egoism, from destroying everything, including his neighbor. Thus, we see that suffering adheres to pleasure as its shadow.
Christ finally broke this bond. He, "in exchange for the joy that was placed before him submitted to the cross" (Hebrews 12:2). In other words, Christ did the contrary of what Adam did and what every man does. "The Lord's death," wrote Maximus Confessor, "different from the death of other men, was not debt paid for with pleasure, but rather something cast against pleasure itself. Thus, through this death, the fate merited by man was changed."[3] Rising from the dead he inaugurated a new type of pleasure: that which does not precede pain, as its cause, but that which follows on it as its fruit.
All of this is wondrously proclaimed by our beatitude which opposes the sequence weeping-laughter to the sequence laughter-weeping. This is not a simple temporal inversion. The difference, which is infinite, is in the fact that in the order proposed by Jesus, it is pleasure, and not suffering, that has the last word, that counts more, a last word that endures for eternity.
2. "Where is your God?"
But let us try to understand just who exactly are those who mourn and weep who Christ proclaims blessed. Today exegetes exclude, almost unanimously, that these are only those who are afflicted in a purely objective or sociological sense, people who Jesus would proclaim blessed simply because they are suffering and weeping. The subjective element, that is, the reason for the weeping, is decisive.
And what is this reason? The surest way to discover which weeping and which affliction are those which Christ proclaims blessed is to see why one weeps in the Bible and why Jesus wept. In this way we discover that there is a weeping of repentance like that of Peter after the betrayal. There is also a "weeping with those who weep" (Romans 12:15), that is, of compassion for the sorrows of others, as Jesus wept with the widow of Nain and with the sisters of Lazarus. There is likewise the weeping of the exiled who long for their homeland, as the Israelites wept along the rivers of Babylon. There are many others besides...
I would like to focus on two reasons for weeping in the Bible and for which Jesus wept, which seem to me particularly appropriate to meditate on in the time in which we live.
In Psalm 41 we read: "Tears are my bread day and night, as they daily say to me, 'Where is your God?' ... While my bones are broken, my enemies who trouble me have reproached me; they say to me all the day long, 'Where is your God?'"
This sadness of the believer, caused by the presumptuous denial of God that surrounds him, has never had more reason to exist than it does today. After the period of relative silence that followed the end of Marxist atheism, we are witnessing the return to life of a militant and aggressive atheism of a scientific and scientistic kind. The titles of some recent books speak eloquently of this: "The Atheist Manifesto," "The God Illusion," "The End of Faith," "Creation without God," "An Ethics without God."[4]
In one of these treatises we read the following declaration: "Human societies have developed various normative means for acquiring knowledge which are generally shared, and through which something can be accepted. Those who affirm the existence of a being that cannot be known through those instruments must take upon themselves the burden of proof. For this reason it seems legitimate to hold that, until the contrary is proved, God does not exist."[5]
With the same arguments we could demonstrate that love does not exist either, from the moment that it cannot be ascertained by the instruments of science. The fact is that the proof for God's existence is found in life and not in the books and laboratories of biology. First of all, in the life of Christ, and in the lives of the saints and of countless witnesses of faith. It is also found in the much derided signs and miracles that Jesus himself gave as a demonstration of his truth and that God continues to give but which atheists reject a priori, without trying to investigate them.
The reason for the sadness of the believer, as for the psalmist, is the impotence that he feels when faced with the challenge of those who say "Where is your God?" With his mysterious silence God calls the believer to share his weakness and defeat, allowing victory only under this condition: "The weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Corinthians 1:25).
3. "They have taken away my Lord!"
No less painful for the Christian believer today is the systematic rejection of Christ in the name of an objective historical research which, in certain forms, degenerates into the most subjective thing one can imagine: "photographs of the authors and of their ideals," as the Holy Father notes in the introductory pages to his new book on Jesus. We are watching a race to see who succeeds in presenting a Christ who best measures up to the man of today, stripping him of every transcendental aspect. In answer to the question of the angels, "Woman why do you weep?" Mary Magdalene, on Easter morning, says, "They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where to find him" (John 20:13). This is a reason for weeping that we can make our own.
The temptation to clothe Christ in the garb of our own epoch or ideology has always existed. But in the past the causes were arguably serious and of a wide scope: Christ the idealist, the romantic, the liberal, the socialist, the revolutionary... Our time, obsessed as it is with sex, cannot but think of him as troubled by certain problems of desire. "Once again Jesus has been modernized, or better, postmodernized."[6]
It is good to know the origin of these recent currents which make Jesus of Nazareth a testing ground for the postmodern ideals of ethical relativism and absolute individualism (called deconstructionism) that are, directly or indirectly, inspiring novels, films and events and also influence historical investigations of Jesus. We can trace it to a movement that emerged in the United States in the final decades of the last century and that in the "Jesus Seminar" had its most active form.
This movement defined itself as "neo-liberal" on account of its return to the Jesus of the liberal theology of the eighteenth century, without any connection to Judaism or to Christianity and the Church; a Jesus who is a propagator of moral ideas, no longer of a universal scope, as in classical liberalism (the paternity of God, the infinite value of the human soul), but of a narrow wisdom, of a sociological rather than a theological nature. The aim of these scholars is no longer simply to correct but to destroy, as they say, "that mistake called Christianity."
The programmatic remarks made by the founder of the movement in 1985 is significant:
We are about to embark on a momentous enterprise. We are going to inquire simply, rigorously after the voice of Jesus, after what he really said. In this process, we will be asking a question that borders the sacred, that even abuts blasphemy, for many in our society. As a consequence, the course we shall follow may prove hazardous. We may well provoke hostility. But we will set out, in spite of the dangers, because we are professionals and because the issue of Jesus is there to be faced, much as Mt. Everest confronts the team of climbers.[7]
Jesus is liberated not only from the dogmas of the Church, but also from the Scriptures and the Gospels. What sources remain to speak of him at this point which are not pure fantasy? The apocrypha, naturally, and, in the first place, the Gospel of Thomas, indeed dated by them around 30 to 60 A.D., before all the canonical Gospels and before Paul. Another source would be the sociological analysis of the conditions of life in Galilee at the time of Christ.
What image of Jesus was extracted? I will cite some of the definitions that have been given, not all, naturally, shared by all: "an eccentric Galilean"; a "wise and subversive drifter"; the "master of an aphoristic wisdom"; "a Judean peasant soaked in the philosophy of cynicism."[8]
The mystery of how this innocuous individual ended up on the cross and became "the man who changed the world" remains to be explained. The truly sad thing is not that these things have been written (you need to invent something new if you want to continue to write books) but rather that, once published, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of these books are sold.
It seems to me that the incapacity of historico-philological research to link the Jesus of reality with the Jesus of the Gospel and ecclesiastical sources has to do with the fact that it ignores and does not concern itself with studying the dynamic of spiritual or supernatural phenomena. It would be like trying to hear a sound with your eyes or see colors with your ears.
The study and the experience of mystical phenomena (these too are real!) shows how a later development, in the life of a person or a movement started by him, can be contained in an event, sometimes a brief instant (when we are dealing with an encounter with the divine), the hidden potentialities of which are only revealed afterward in its fruits. Sociologists get close to this truth with the concept of a "nascent state."[9]
The child or adult man looks different from when he was an embryo at the beginning; and yet we know that in the embryo everything was contained. In the same way the kingdom is at the beginning "the smallest of seeds," but is destined to grow and become a great tree (Matthew 13:32).
The birth of the Franciscan movement lends itself to a comparison, one on a qualitatively different level of course. The Franciscan sources present differences and contradictions on nearly every point about the life of the Poverello (St. Francis): on the vision and the words of the crucifix of San Damiano, on the episode of the Stigmata. There is no word of the saint, except for those few written by his own hand, about which there is certainty that they came from his mouth. The "Fioretti" seem to be an idealization of history.
And yet all that which blossomed around and after Francis -- the Franciscan movement with its reflections in spirituality, in art, in literature -- stems from him; it is nothing but a manifestation -- even an impoverished one -- of the spiritual energies unleashed by his person and life; better, by that which God did in his life.
There are many, even among believing scholars, who take for granted that the real Jesus was, and understood himself to be, much less than that which is written about him in the Gospels, that this or that title is not to be attributed to him. The truth is that he is much more, not less, than that which is written about him! Who the Son is, is known only to the Father and, in small part, it is known to those to whom the Father chooses to reveal him, in general not the gifted and the wise, so long as they do not turn and become like children.
Paul spoke of experiencing "a great pain and continual suffering" in his heart for his fellow Jews who had rejected Jesus (Romans 9:1 ff); how can we not feel the same pain for his rejection by many of our contemporaries in the countries of ancient Christian faith? For a similar reason -- for not having recognized a friend and savior in him -- Jesus wept over Jerusalem.
Fortunately, it seems that a chapter in the studies of Jesus is finally closing and the page is being turned. In a work entitled "Los albores del cristianismo" (Christianity in the Making), destined to be a watershed as his previous studies have been, James Dunn, one of the best living scholars of the New Testament, after a careful analysis of the results of the last three centuries of research, comes to the conclusion that there was no rift between the Jesus who preached and the Jesus who was preached, between the Jesus of history and of faith. This faith was not born after Easter but in the first encounters with the disciples, who became disciples precisely because they believed in him, even though at the beginning it was a fragile faith, naive about its implications.
The contrast between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history is the result of a "flight from history," before it is a "flight from faith," due to the projecting onto Jesus of the interests and ideals of the moment. Yes, Jesus is freed from the garb of ecclesiastical dogma, but only to be put into the clothing of a fashion that changes from season to season. The immense effort expended on research into the person of Christ has nevertheless not been in vain since it is precisely thanks to it that now, with all the alternative solutions explored, we are able to critically reach this conclusion.[10]
4. "The priests weep, the ministers of the Lord"
There is another weeping in the Bible that we must reflect on. The prophets speak of it. Ezekiel recounts the vision he had one day. The powerful voice of God cries out to a mysterious person "dressed in linen with an inkwell in his hand": "Go through the whole city, through all of Jerusalem, and mark a tau on the forehead of all those who sigh and weep because of all the abominations that are committed there" (Ezekiel 9:4).
This vision has had a strong impact on revelation and on the Church. That sign, the tau, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, because of its cross-like form, became in the Book of Revelation the "seal of the living God" signed on the forehead of all those who are saved (Revelation 7:2 ff).
The Church has "wept and sighed" in recent times for the abominations committed in her womb by some of her own ministers and shepherds. She has paid a high price for this. She has sought to repair the damage. Strict rules have been laid down so that these abuses do not happen again. The moment has come, after the emergency, to do that which is the most important: to weep before God, to do penance, as God himself has been abused; to do penance for the offense against the body of Christ and the scandalizing of the "least of his brothers," more than for the damage and dishonor that has been brought upon us.
This is the condition for bringing good from this evil and for bringing about a reconciliation of the people with God and with its priests.
"Blow the trumpet in Zion, proclaim a fast, call a solemn assembly.… Between the porch and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say: 'Spare, O Lord, your people, and make not your heritage a reproach with the nations ruling over them'" (Joel 2:15-17).
These words of the prophet Joel call out to us. Could we not perhaps do the same today: call a day of fasting and penance, at least at the local and national level, where the problem has been the worst, to publicly express repentance before God and solidarity with the victims, bring about the reconciliation of souls, and take up again the path of the Church, renewed in heart and in memory?
The words spoken by the Holy Father to the episcopate of a Catholic country in a recent ad limina visit give me the courage to say this. The Holy Father said that "the wounds caused by similar acts are profound, and the work to restore confidence and trust once these have been broken is urgent … In this way the Church will be strengthened and will be always more capable of bearing witness to the redemptive power of the Cross of Christ."[11]
But we must not leave this topic without a word of hope for the unfortunate brothers who have been the cause of the evil. In regard to a case of incest in the community of Corinth the Apostle declared: "Let this person be delivered up to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that in the day of the Lord his spirit may obtain salvation" (1 Corinthians 5:5). (Today we would say: Let him be subjected to human justice so that his soul might obtain salvation.) The salvation of the sinner, not his punishment, was what concerned the Apostle.
One day when I was preaching to the clergy of a diocese that suffered much because of these things, I was struck by a thought. These brothers of ours have been stripped of everything, ministry, honor, freedom, and only God knows with what effective moral responsibility in individual cases; they have become the last, the rejected.… If in this situation, touched by grace, they do penance for the evil caused, they unite their weeping to that of the Church, then the blessedness of those who mourn and weep could become their blessedness. They could be close to Christ who is the friend of the last, more than others, me included, rich with their own respectability and perhaps led, like the Pharisees, to judge those who make mistakes.
There is something, however, that these brothers must absolutely avoid doing but which some, unfortunately, are attempting to do: profiting from the clamor to take advantage even of their own guilt, giving interviews, writing memoirs, in an attempt to put the guilt on their superiors and the ecclesial community. This would reveal a truly dangerous hardness of heart.
5. The most beautiful tears
Let us conclude with a look at a different kind of tears. It is possible to weep because of pain but it is also possible to weep because we are moved and to weep for joy. The most beautiful tears are those that fill our eyes when, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, "we taste and see how good the Lord is" (Psalm 34:9).
When we are in this state of grace we marvel that the world and we ourselves do not fall on our knees and, being moved and in a stupor, continually weep. Tears of this kind must have fallen from Augustine's eyes when in the "Confessions" he wrote: "How you loved us, good Father, to have not spared your only Son but to have given him up for all of us. How much you loved us!"[12]
Pascal shed such tears on the night that he had the revelation of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who disclosed himself through the Gospel. Pascal wrote on a piece of paper (found sown into his jacket after his death): "Joy, joy, tears of joy!" I think that the tears with which the woman who was a sinner bathed the feet of Jesus were not only tears of repentance but also tears of gratitude and joy.
If in heaven it is possible to weep, then paradise is full of such weeping. In Istanbul, the ancient Constantinople, where the Holy Father traveled some days ago, St. Simeon the New Theologian lived, the saint of tears. He is the most luminous example in the history of Christian spirituality of tears of repentance that transform themselves into tears of wonder and silence. "I wept," he says in one of his works, "and I was in an indescribable joy."[13] Paraphrasing the beatitude of those who mourn, he says: "Blessed are they who always weep bitterly over their sins, for the light will catch hold of them and will transform their bitter tears into sweet."[14]
May God allow us to enjoy, at least once in our lives, these tears of emotion and joy.
* * *
[1] Gregory the Great, "Commentary on Job," 20, 1 (CC 143 A, p. 1003).
[2] Lucretius, "De rerum natura," IV, 1129 s.
[3] Maximus Confessor, "Capitoli vari," IV cent. 39; in Filocalia, II, Torino 1983, p. 249.
[4] Respectively Michel Onfray, di Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Telmo Pievani, Eugenio Lecaldano.
[5] Carlo Augusto Viano, "Laici in ginocchio," Laterza, Bari.
[6] J.D.G. Dunn, "Gli albori del cristianesimo," I,1, Paideia, Brescia, 2006, p. 81. The first two volumes of the first part have appeared in Italian with the title "Albori del cristianesimo," I, La memoria di Gesú, vol. 1: Fede e Gesú storico; I, 2: La missione di Gesú (English title, "Christianity in the Making").
[7] Robert Funk, Opening remarks of March 1985, at Berkeley, California.
[8] Cf. J.D.G. Dunn, "Gli albori del cristianesimo," I, 1, pp. 75-82.
[9] Cf. F. Alberoni, "Innamoramento e amore," Garzanti, Milano 1981.
[10] Cf. Dunn.
[11] Benedict XVI, Discourse to the bishops of the episcopal conference of Ireland, Saturday, 28 October, 2006.
[12] Augstine, "Confessions," X, 43.
[13] Simeon the New Theologian, "Thanksgivings," 2 (SCh 113, p. 350).
[14] Simeon the New Theologian, "Ethical Treatises," 10 (SCh 129, p. 318).
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