Podcasts for Young Philosophers and IB Theory of Knowledge Students – A Catholic Philosophy and Theology Resource Page by Deacon Douglas McManaman: Recent Episodes
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Homily for the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
https://wherepeteris.com/the-nobility-of-matter/ (@Where Peter Is)
Deacon Douglas McManaman
Recently I drove up to the cemetery to say a rosary and visit my mother’s grave site, as well as a number of other parishioners who are buried there. I thought I had the whole cemetery to myself until I saw an old man in a lawn chair smoking a cigarette, sitting next to a grave. I assumed it was his wife’s grave. Whoever he was visiting, again probably his deceased wife, he loved her and wanted to be near her, so he sat next to her grave and had a smoke. For me, it was a very touching scene.
And that’s love. We are drawn to those we love, we wish to be in close proximity to them, and when they are deceased, the next best thing, I suppose, is their grave site. I don’t mean to suggest that they are there, six feet under, but we are flesh and blood creatures, and matter gives rise to place, and we need to be in the same place as the one we love. We are not angels, or pure spirits; rather, we are composites of spirit and matter, and matter situates us in place, and if we love someone, we need to situate them in place and occupy a place next to their place. That’s why cemeteries are so important. My mother used to say she just wanted to be cremated and her ashes scattered to the wind, but one day she expressed her desire to be buried in the nearby cemetery. My sister eventually told me why she changed her mind; apparently, I told her one day that it would be nice if she were buried somewhere so I could visit regularly. I didn’t think my saying that would make a difference to her, but it did.
Now God became matter, joined matter to himself, and began to occupy place. In doing so, God elevated flesh; he elevated matter and material existence. When God became flesh, he gave matter a new dignity. Life in the body is now holy. Early Gnosticism could not understand this; for the Gnostics, matter is evil, the body is evil, which is why they denied the Incarnation of the Son of God. In their minds, it is unthinkable that God would join matter to himself. But everything God created is good, but in joining himself to matter, God actually made matter holy, that is, extraordinarily good. The flesh is holy. Your body is holy. He joined himself to the matter of humanity because he loves each one of us, and love seeks to unite with the beloved, and if the beloved is in the flesh, love seeks to unite with the beloved in the flesh. In joining a human nature to himself, God the Son joined himself to every man and woman, as it were.
But God did more than that. In his flesh, Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father. That expression “right hand” is not to be taken literally, as if God the Father has a literal right hand. It is a symbolic expression that we still use today when we refer to someone as my right hand, like my right-hand man: my closest most intimate friend. God the Son sits at the right hand of the Father, because he is the Son, and the Father loves the Son as His eternal divine Son. But the flesh to which God the Son joined himself was not some temporary covering or shell that is disposed of after death. Rather, the flesh he assumed was forever. In his ascension, matter has been glorified, deified, for all eternity. Humanity has been lifted up to the right hand of the Father, and we are part of humanity. And every level of the hierarchy of being exists in us, that is, the mineral level, the vegetative level, the animal level, all within each human being, and so in being raised in the flesh to the right hand of the Father, all of material creation has been raised to the right hand of the Father in the Person of Christ. Pope Francis, in his Encyclical Laudato Si, wrote:
The ultimate destiny of the universe is in the fullness of God…The final purpose of other creatures is not to be found in us. Rather, all creatures are moving forward, with us and through us, towards a common point of arrival, which is God (83).
So, we have begun to sit at the right hand of the Father, in Christ who has ascended. All of humanity and all creation has begun to sit at the right hand of the Father. When the Father looks upon his Son, he sees humanity, each one of us, and when he looks upon humanity, he sees his Son, and he loves humanity with the same love by which he loves the Son, and he sees and loves all creation in loving humanity: As Christ said: “not one sparrow falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge” (Mt 10, 29).
My daughter is a high extrovert, while my wife and I are high introverts–she was in many ways God’s practical joke on us. My wife and I would be content staying at home all the time, but since as far back as we can remember, my daughter has always been one who wanted to get out and party and see people and travel, especially where her favorite celebrities live and eat at restaurants where these celebrities eat, and so we had to go to Los Angeles, New York, Paris and London, and Rome and Capris, etc. We were forced out of our shell; if it wasn’t for her, we never would have visited these places. But what I discovered is that when I see these places that I’ve visited with her on television or in movies, like the Observatory in Hollywood, or a street in Santa Monica or New York or London, or if I am actually in one of these places without her, I actually love these places and want to visit the same places we visited when I was there with her. I thought to myself: What do I love about the Griffith Observatory in Hollywood, or Central Park in New York, or the fashion district in Rome of all places? It’s that she loves them, and she was there and I was with her, and I realized that it is her that I love in these places. She loved them, so I found that I began to love them as well. In the same way, the Son loved humanity and the matter of this creation to the point of joining to himself a human nature, becoming a part of humanity, raising up human flesh in the process. And so, the Father loves us because the Son loves us; the Father loves us because his Son was here and is still united to the flesh of humanity.
That’s why you and I will be raised up on the last day, because we are in him, and when God looks upon us, he sees his Son in our flesh, and He cannot turn his back on his Son, so he does not turn his back on us.
A Message to Confirmation Candidates, 2025
Deacon Douglas McManaman
It is always frustrating teaching a Confirmation course like this every year, because there is just so much more to do, so much more to cover, and there just isn’t the time. We barely scratched the surface, and all we were able to do for you is open a few doors and hope that you’ll walk through those doors into this inexhaustible treasure house that is ours. When I speak about the rich heritage that is ours in the Church, I often think of the movie The Hobbit, which was written by JRR Tolkien, who also wrote The Lord of the Rings. There is a scene in The Hobbit where Bilbo Baggins finds himself in this massive cave of treasure, walking on a mountain of jewels, gold and silver coins, diamonds and precious stones, etc. The camera moves to a panoramic angle, and now we see how tiny he is in relation to this massive cave. Of course, there is a huge dragon underneath all that treasure that Bilbo slowly awakens by his footsteps. The scene is spectacular. The Catholic heritage that you were born into is like that, but so much more, and our hope is that you explore that limitless cave for the rest of your lives.
During the Winter and Spring seasons I teach prospective Catholic teachers at Niagara University, and a good number of the students speak of the regret they feel that they had left the faith years earlier, that they allowed themselves to drift away, and they almost always point out that they had no idea how deep, meaningful and beautiful is the Catholic faith. They seem to have come to a realization that it is so much larger than they thought, and they do genuinely feel a degree of sorrow for dismissing it.
I know an elderly woman in her 90s who said to me that the greatest blessing she’s received in her life was the stroke she had that paralyzed her. Her biggest regret in life is that she’s spent most of it without thinking about God, without thanking God, living as if God does not exist. She told me that they had money, that her husband had a very good job and she had a very good job. They would throw dinner parties for their many friends. During one of these parties, her husband asked her to go to the cellar to get some more soft drinks to bring up for the guests. When she opened the fridge, she felt funny and then fell to the floor. Her husband wondered what was taking her so long, so he asked a guest to go down and check on her. When the guest saw her on the floor, he called 911 immediately. She had had a stroke. Her life would never be the same again, and lying there in a hospital bed, paralyzed and in despair, she thought to herself: “My life is over”. But she remembered the Our Father from her youth, and so she started to pray that prayer for the first time in decades. She told me she suddenly felt a profound sense of peace come over her. She continued to pray that same prayer every day.
All she could do at this point was develop her spiritual life, which she had neglected. And developing a spiritual life is very much like physiotherapy, which can take a long time to restore the strength to the injured part of the body. The spiritual life is like that, and she kept at it, and now she is a woman of great faith and great charity. Her husband died and now she is in a nursing home, not a very luxurious one I’ll tell you, but she’s happy. Joyful. And I see how much she brings to the lonely and suffering residents every day. She is a remarkable woman. But what struck me is that although she told me she’s profoundly happy, at the same time feels regret that most of her life was wasted on the pursuit of wealth and luxury. The stroke was her greatest blessing, because it was as a result of that stroke that she returned to God.
Each year it seems I meet so many people who have discovered this boundless cave of treasure that they didn’t know was under their very noses, the spiritual, intellectual, philosophical, theological, literary, and artistic heritage of the 2000-year-old Church that Christ established.
One of these great treasures of the Church is Julian of Norwich, who was a great mystic who lived in the 14th century and died in the early 15th. She says this about heaven:
Every man’s age will be known in heaven, and he will be rewarded for his voluntary service and for the time that he has served, and especially the age of those who voluntarily and freely offer their youth to God is fittingly rewarded and wonderfully thanked.
That’s such an important line: “…those who voluntarily and freely offer their youth to God are fittingly rewarded and wonderfully thanked.” For as you know, most people do not offer their youth to God. Most people usually keep their youth for themselves. Only much later on in life do they come to the realization that the things they’ve been pursuing in life are just empty bubbles with very little substance, so only a small minority offer their youth to God. We really hope that you will offer your youth to God, that you will hang on to the faith in which you have been baptized, that you survive your teenage years with your faith and morals intact.
After 38 years of teaching, I can say this: the happiest students that I have every year are those who practice their religion, whether they are Catholic, Muslim, Hindu or Sikh. The happiest are those who live and breathe their faith, who study it, and who develop a strong spiritual life, and who avoid bad friends and bad influences and who are committed to justice and fighting oppression in all its various forms. These are the ones who exhibit the greatest mental and emotional health and who radiate a genuine spirit of joy and who have the strength to endure the sufferings and difficulties that life brings to each one of us in our youth.
So, I beg you to continue to pray, to grow in a love for the Eucharist, to take advantage of the sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession) by going regularly, at least once a month, but more than that if you can, to develop a devotion to our Blessed Mother, to pray the rosary. Stay close to God, and give God permission to do with you what He wants to do with you. If you give God permission to take over your life, to use you, to do with you as He pleases, you are going to live a life that will be profoundly rich in meaning.
Homily for the 4th Sunday of Easter
Deacon Douglas McManaman
My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.
Years ago I was reading parts of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography in which he makes the interesting observation that a shepherd (or shepherdess) leads his (her) sheep from the back. This image was his model of leadership. The Vice President of a Canadian company that specializes in offering leadership training for corporations travelled to Israel to watch how a shepherd relates to his sheep in order to gain insight into the fundamental principles of leadership. And of course, the shepherd made it very clear that a shepherd typically leads from behind, not from the front. That is the first principle of leadership. But before he can lead from behind, he must invest time and ‘relational equity’ in the sheep. He must come to know each sheep individually. Owners of dogs usually recognize the distinct and unique sound of their pet’s bark. Similarly, a shepherd knows intimately the sound and behavior of each of his sheep.
How does this translate to leadership? About 30 years ago I met a well-loved high school principal from the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, Lorne Howcroft, who said to me that being a principal is primarily about recognizing the gifts and talents of your staff and putting them up front in leadership positions, while you step back. A good principal–not to mention a good bishop–is like an umpire in a baseball game; he does not have the skills to pitch or catch high flies–that’s for the skilled athletes. In the same way, a good leader is not necessarily skilled in this or that, but will recognize the talents and gifts in the people around him and place them up front so that they may lead in that capacity for the benefit of the community.
The second principle of good leadership is that one should only lead from the front in times of danger, or when the shepherd needs to trace out a different route. Such a frontline position, however, is only temporary; the normal course is to step back and get out of the way. Poor leaders, on the contrary, lead from the front for the most part, and run to take cover in times of danger; thus, the sheep are thereby left to the wolves, or thrown under the bus, as they say.
The third principle is “do not lead alone”. This particular shepherd in Israel led with the help of a female ewe. She was the power broker in the flock. And I will say that without a doubt, the best leaders in my life in over 35 years in education were women: the smartest and most prudent high school principal in all those years as a teacher was a woman, and the most competent Director of Education, also a woman. Misogyny, which spawns patriarchy, is really a foolish posture that has done so much to retard the development of our institutions, including the Church of course.
The next point I’d like to make has to do with the sheep who know the voice of their shepherd. There’s a wonderful YouTube Video on Cornerstone Kids that is about two minutes in length that shows a bunch of sheep grazing in a field, and three different people, one by one, approach the fence and call out to the sheep. But the sheep, as though they were deaf, don’t move–not even look up. Finally, the shepherd comes to the fence and utters the same call, and they all look up and within seconds make their way to the shepherd.
Of course, we are Christ’s sheep. All of us. We have all been anointed priest, prophet, and king at our baptism. We’ve been given the seven personal gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as unique charisms in view of our specific vocation. All the baptized share in the Royal Priesthood of the Faithful. Our deepest identity in the Person of Christ is that we are priest, prophet, and we share in Christ’s kingship, but unfortunately the faithful for the most part do not see themselves as such. And yet there is a great deal of wisdom in the ordinary faithful of which they are not even aware. John speaks of this in the second chapter of his first letter:
As for you, the anointing that you received from him remains in you, so that you do not need anyone to teach you. But his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and not false; just as it taught you, remain in him (2, 27).
I have to laugh sometimes when I join a table at our parish bible study, because a number of parishioners will say what they think in answer to a particular question, but they always end by saying something like: “I don’t know. What do I know?” I laugh because what she just said was so rich, detailed, and full of insight. They do know; they just don’t know they know. Occasionally I will have lunch with a parishioner who has never studied theology in his life, has no advanced degrees and drives a truck for a living. When he speaks, however, he exhibits tremendous spiritual and theological insight, and he too has no clue how much wisdom he has acquired over the years. All this is the result of the anointing that John speaks of in his first letter.
The faithful recognize the voice of the shepherd; some more than others, perhaps. But each one also sees the world and interprets what she hears in the readings from her own unique vantage point. Among us are parents with years of experience who know about the difficulties and challenges in raising children today, and we have teachers who understand the needs of young students, a very different world from the world of our childhood; nurses with knowledge that results from extensive experience with the sick and the suffering, psychiatrists who understand mental illness and the latest developments in treating such illness and who understand a great deal about how spirituality fits in to good mental health, etc. Each one recognizes something about the shepherd from their own unique vantage point. They know Christ in a way that I don’t, and they manifest Christ in a way that I don’t. And that’s why it is so important to listen to one another, if we are to be a community that is made up of a discipleship of equals.
Deacon Douglas McManaman
At a recent bible study, I was asked how it is that Adam prefigures Christ. I don’t believe there is a simple and single answer to this question, but diving into it opens up an interesting horizon in light of which we may be able to shed light on other important questions having to do with the role of women and perhaps the ordination of women.
Those who posed the question were puzzled that Adam could prefigure Christ; for Adam is fallen, but Christ is perfect; Adam was disobedient, while Christ was obedient; Adam was married but Christ was not, and Adam was created while Christ is the eternal Person of the Son made flesh, etc.
Jesus is the second Adam, or last Adam (Rom 5, 12-21; 1 Cor 15: 22, 44-49; Eph 1:10). All things were created “through him and for him” (Col 1, 16). The first Adam is indeed a figure of Christ. We say this because God created Adam (humanity) in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. What this means is that there are two ways to be “Adam”, a male way and a female way. It is not Adam the male who was created in the image and likeness of God while the female was in some ways secondary. Rather, Adam is both zakar (male) and neqebah (female). These two Hebrew words imply relation to one another. Hence, the human person is fundamentally relational; in other words, the one cannot be understood without the other. Zakar and neqebah imply an “existing towards one another”, for zakar (male) means “the one who has a tip” and neqebah (female) means “the one who is punctured”. The relationship of the sexes is clearly implied; for each one individually is reproductively incomplete, but together, in the act of sexual union, they become reproductively one organism.
According to the Genesis text, it is not the male (zakar) by himself who is the image (zelem/eikon) of God, nor is it the female (neqebah) by herself who is the image of God; both of them together constitute the divine icon that is Adam. And so God in His active generosity, in His effusive act of communicating the goodness of existence to creatures, is represented in the icon of male and female, joined in the one flesh union of marriage. It is important not to overstate the passive element belonging to the female in the act of sexual union. Her ovum actively “goes out” to meet the male seed, and so her role is not entirely passive. The first parents (Adam) are one body, one flesh, who prefigure Christ, who is one body with his Church.
In the second creation story, the man is put into a deep sleep and from his side, the woman is formed. This allegorical imagery foreshadows the cross on which Christ enters the sleep of death, and from his side the Church, his bride, is born–blood and water proceed from his side, symbolizing the Eucharist and baptism; for it is through baptism that one becomes joined to Christ’s Mystical Body, and of course the Eucharist is Christ’s flesh and blood. As De Lubac famously said: “The Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church.”
Christ’s existence is a relational existence. He is the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, which is a subsistent relation. And since in the flesh, he is one Person, Christ continues to exist “in relation to…” He came to redeem his bride, the Church, the New Israel. The existence of the first Adam, as we said above, is relational, for Adam includes zakar and neqebah who exist in relation to one another (who face one another). Their relationship is nuptial, and of course the relationship between God and Israel is nuptial, and the relationship between Christ and the Church is nuptial, and heaven will be an eternal wedding banquet (Mt 22, 1-14).
“Adam’s” existence is ordered to Christ, who is the fulfillment of humanity (Adam). We read in section 22 of Gaudium et Spes that “…only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light”. And so “Adam” indeed prefigures Christ, who in turn is the perfection of Adam (humanity). But “Adam” is not a man in the sense of an individual ‘male’, but ‘them’, male and female in relation to one another. The two in relation are the ‘icon’ or image of God. This is a relationship that gets disrupted or distorted as a result of the fall: “You shall have desire for your husband, but he will dominate you” (or rule over you) (Gn 3, 16). In other words, the domination and subordination of women is not part of God’s plan for creation, but is the result of sin. Male and female were created equal, “of the same stuff” (from his side). In fact, the image of woman coming from the side of the man suggests that her role is to reach down and call forth the man to what is higher, for he came from the mud of the earth, the soil, while she came from a higher place. But the history of humanity is a history of oppression, including the oppression of women.
Now, the entire Church is woman, the New Israel, the Bride of Christ, and she has been given authority, but the exercise of this authority is to be entirely unlike that of the gentiles: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt 20, 25-28).
Furthermore, the entire Church is “priest”. In the evening prayer for Thursday within the octave of Easter, the Church prays: “Almighty God, ever-living mystery of unity and Trinity, you gave life to the new Israel by birth from water and the Spirit, and made it a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a people set apart as your eternal possession. May all those you have called to walk in the splendor of the new light render you fitting service and adoration.” Each of the baptized is anointed priest, prophet, and king, and so with regard to the royal priesthood of the faithful, gender is irrelevant–certainly not an impediment. The entire Church is a “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pt 2, 9). And so the Church as a whole is a priestly people and at the same time bride and mother (female); for it is the entire congregation that offers gifts to be consecrated. The congregation are not simply passive observers, but active agents, priests offering their gifts, their labors, their sufferings and toil, their bread and wine, placed at the foot of the altar; the ministerial priest offers it on behalf of the entire congregation, of which he too is a part. Christ receives those gifts and changes them into himself, and returns them to us as our food. In consuming the Bread of Life, we become Christ, that is, all our matter becomes Christ–the cosmos becomes Christ in us.
So it seems there is no incongruity between priesthood and womanhood, for the entire Church is both woman and priest. Indeed, the priest is the icon of Christ, but Adam prefigures Christ, and Adam (zakar and neqebah) exists as the image or eikon of God who became flesh in Christ, “…a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Heb 7, 17). The original icon that Adam is includes both male and female. The Church cannot be understood except in relation to Christ, for she is his body, and thus woman cannot be understood except in relation to Christ. The woman that is the Church is the sacrament of Christ, and she participates in his priesthood.
One year during a Confirmation class in which we were talking about the sacraments, one clever young lady put up her hand and asked: “Why is it that men are able to receive all seven sacraments, but women have access to only six?” That was a brilliant way of formulating the question. I did not have time to go into a detailed explanation of the reason the Roman Church does not ordain women, for it would not do justice to the precise formulation of her question anyway. Moreover, it is increasingly difficult for me to see any genuinely compelling reason for the exclusion of women from the sacrament of Holy Orders. Perhaps the theology of sexual complementarity, focused exclusively on the sexual act itself according to the strict categories of activity and passivity, a model currently employed to maintain an all male priesthood, is really a theologically sophisticated rationalization of an outdated sexist divide.
Deacon Douglas McManaman
https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_427concisetreatiseondivinelaw(2).html
Deacon Douglas McManaman
https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_426concisetreatiseondivinelaw(1).html
Deacon Douglas McManaman
Peter, do you love me? Then feed my lambs.
Today it is very common to confuse love with sentimentality. Genuine love involves willing the good of another, and that willing may be accompanied by positive sentiments or it may not be. Good feelings towards another are really not part of the essence of genuine love. A true sign of love is the willingness to sacrifice for the other. A genuine love of Christ reaches out to others; it does not stay inside, but seeks out the lost, the wounded, the poor and the oppressed, which is precisely what we see in the life of Christ.
Another popular tendency is to confuse holiness with sanctimony. I’ve noticed that I hesitate to use the word “holiness” when teaching, because the word conjures up images of sanctimonious individuals with folded hands and a serious demeanour, but who are indifferent to social outreach.
Holiness is love, it is charity, and love seeks the lowest place, it descends to whatever level is required in order to reach the person to be loved. A priest friend asked me recently: Where can God be found? He pointed out that if we read the New Testament carefully, we see that God is found in the sewers; always in the lowest places. God the Son descended and dwelt among us, and on Holy Saturday he descended further to the utmost regions of hell’s darkness. That is what holiness is like; that is what the divine love is like. Sanctimony, however, is something different. It does not seek the lowest place, but the highest place. And piety as well is not quite the same as holiness. A person may be devotional, reciting prayers, chaplets, novenas, observing religious laws, in love with religious things, churches, basilicas, etc., but if this is genuine piety, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit, then it will bear fruit in genuine social outreach. If it is false, it will remain closed in on itself.
Genuine holiness is inclined to descend to the lowest places, to those places where most people are not willing to go; for if we love God, we love all who belong to God, and everything that God has created belongs to God. If we love God and not merely things associated with God, our fundamental desire that drives every one of our choices will be the desire to see God loved, adored, and glorified. That is what justice is according to the New Testament. Justice (justification) is the restoration of all things to their proper order, which is joyful and grateful subjection to God. The love of justice is the desire to see all things restored in Christ, who in turn has no other food than the praise, love, adoration, and glorification of God the Father.
Christ loved those who were murdering him. His passion and death were the consummation of the world’s injustice. But the most perfect rectification of that injustice is to see all of Christ’s enemies turn towards him and love him in gratitude, to finally recognize him and to praise, adore, and glorify him forever. Without that, there is no justice, but perpetual injustice and disorder; with that, however, there is the perfection of justice, the perfect victory over sin, very much like the story of St. Maria Goretti. Her murderer spent 27 years in prison, asked for forgiveness and afterward became a Capuchin brother. That’s a small scale example of Christ’s victory over evil.
And that is the universal and cosmic justice mentioned in the second reading:
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever! (Rev 5, 11ff).
What is interesting about this verse is that it says every creature, every created thing (pan ktisma), in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and in the sea, which includes not only every man and angel, but every sea creature, fish, dolphin and shark, etc., every plant, every tree, every created thing will in the end bless, honour, and glorify God forever and ever. And so the love of God includes a love and reverence for the earth and an awareness of the way each creature manifests and praises God (Dan 3, 56-82).
A genuine love of God is accompanied by the awareness that all things came to be through the Word (Logos), and so all things carry within themselves some reflection of the Word, just as every work of art has a trace of the artist in it–all creatures are inexhaustible words of the Word, and as St Paul says, every creature longs to share in the freedom of the children of God (Rom 8, 21). The entire cosmos longs for justice (redemption), which means it longs for Christ. And Christ’s resurrection is that victory over death, the perfect victory over injustice, and that victory is a process, a movement, that has begun and will in the end be achieved (Mt 13, 31-32).
A Reflection on Holy Thursday
Deacon Douglas McManaman
Also published here
What is so important about Holy Thursday night is the explicit connection between the institution of the Eucharist and a life of service, that is, the link between the sacrament and works of mercy, works of charity, which includes the commitment to social justice in all its forms. An ardent love of the Eucharist alongside relative indifference to those who suffer is a love that is essentially a farce.
Christ washes the feet of the Apostles, the dirtiest part of the body, a task reserved for slaves. The life of Christ was a descent. God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, descended and “set up his tent” among us and took the form of a slave, so it is fitting that at this time he would engage in the work of a slave, namely washing feet. All of us without exception are to descend to the level of slaves (Gk: doulou); for the only way to ascend to God is through a descent to the lowest place. God, like water, always seeks the lowest place.
I am reminded of a dream I once had early on in my career as a teacher. I was teaching in the Jane and Finch area of Toronto (a very broken neighborhood) and that year I was assigned a period of chaplaincy. The Vice Principal, a very good man, had just lost his father, and he was struggling with this loss as well as with a group of rather cantankerous staff members who were making his life miserable. One night–it must have been close to 30 years ago–I dreamt I was in a barn. I went to the barn door, the top part of which was open, and looked out. The entire pasture was covered in dung, feces, or cow manure. Over to my left was a beautiful stallion, standing deep in the manure. There was a woman next to the stallion, slightly older than I, but not by much (I was in my 30s), and she grabbed the hoof of the stallion, like a farrier, and with her hand would scoop up the dung and throw it on the ground. She kept doing that. She then looks over at me and, with a bit of consternation in her voice that I was just watching her, calls me by name and tells me to get out there and help her. And so I did.
That was the dream. When I woke up, I knew exactly what it meant. The woman, I was convinced, was Mary, Our Lady. In that dream, however, she was more like an older sister, and she spoke to me with genuine familiarity. The stallion, I knew immediately, was a symbol of that Vice Principal who was going through a very difficult period in his life, with the loss of his father and the frustrations of having to deal with a very cynical group of teachers on staff. My job was to help her tend to him, wash his feet, serve him, keep him company in his difficulties, encourage him, keep the “crap” that was being spread around from discouraging him. I am reminded of that dream every time I drive to a certain small town in Ontario, for there is a barn on the way that looks just like the one in my dream.
We receive Christ’s body in order to become what we eat–Christ. But Christ lost his status, and in first century Palestine, status was everything. He lost it because he had table fellowship with those whom the religious leaders would have nothing to do with– prostitutes, tax collectors, sinners who fail to observe the requirements of the law because they don’t know the law, etc. To share a meal is to enter into intimate communion with all those at table, in this case with those considered to be forsaken by God. Genuine love of the Eucharist will therefore translate into love of others; if not, it is not love of the Eucharist, but love of something else in some way related to the Eucharist, i.e., ambiance, candles, quiet, etc.
English poet and WWI British army chaplain G. Studdert Kennedy warned of those clergy who yearned to keep religion indoors. In 1920, Studdert Kennedy wrote:
The cry that is often raised, that we are going to secularize religion and take the clergy away from their purely “spiritual work”, is the cry of the man who dare not face the Cross. He wants to keep his Christ forever standing amid the lilies of the altar, with the sweet incense of worship rising around him, a weekly refuge from the distraught and vulgar world. He wants to lock Christ up in the Tabernacle, to keep Him in the silence of the secret place, where men must go down on their knees before they touch Him. But Christ wants to come out into the market-place, and down to the streets; He wants to eat and drink with prostitutes, to be mocked and spit upon by soldiers. He wants to call the dishonest trader from his office desk; to stand at his lathe beside the workman; and to bend with the mother over the washtub in the city of mean streets. He wants to go out into the world, that beauty and goodness and truth – beautiful things, good people, and true thought – may grow up around Him wherever He goes. You cannot keep Christ in your churches; He will break them into pieces if you try. He will make for the streets in spite of you, and go on with His own work; defying dead authorities, breaking down tyrannies, destroying shams, declaring open war against a Godless world. And wherever He goes the true Church will go with Him – the Church of those who are forgiven because they are bearing the sins of the world, and have learned how to forgive.
We are called to discover Christ in the Eucharist precisely in order that we might more readily perceive him everywhere. The Blessed Sacrament leads us, “not to a localization” (Studdert Kennedy), but to a deeper sense of the presence of God everywhere in the world, in and among the sick, the poor, the forgotten, and in and among all creation, every part of which sings the praises of God (Dan 3, 56-82).
Deacon Douglas McManaman
Holy week begins, and it is the holiest week of the year. This week brings us into the heart of the mystery of suffering. A mystery, in theology, is something that is knowable or intelligible, but it is inexhaustible. It is infinitely knowable, which means it can be understood more and more, but without end. And the reason that suffering is a mystery is that God, who is the unutterable mystery, joined a human nature to himself and in doing so entered into human suffering. He joined us in our suffering, out of love for us; for if we truly love someone, we do not allow them to suffer alone. Their suffering causes us great sorrow, and so we long to join them in their suffering. And our suffering causes God a sorrow that is greater than we can possibly conceive–for God is Love–, and this sorrow is visible in the life of Christ who is the Word of the Father, who is everything that the Father can say about himself. This divine sorrow is visible in his passion and death. Christ came to enter into human suffering so that we may always find him in the midst of our own darkness. And we do find him, if we look for him there. Even if we don’t find him there at the time of our deepest suffering, we will see him in retrospect, if we look hard enough.
I have been through some difficult times in my own life, as have you all. Many of you have endured worse than I have, but I’ve had my share of situations that were unjust and frustrating, and they gave rise to a justified anger. I had no explanation for it at the time, however, the anger was there and it was real. But one Sunday after Mass, I was approached by an older man who wanted to talk, and this was a man who suffered far more than I did, and had been carrying so much more anger than I had been carrying. I soon realized that if I had not been suffering as I was at the time and had not the wounds from which that anger arose in me, I would not have been able to listen to him, to hear him, to understand him. I would not have been able to connect with him, and he would have been left in his sorrow, to endure it by himself, because he would know at the deepest level that I was not there with him in his own suffering. But I was there with him to some extent, because I had experienced something similar. And because he was heard, because he was understood, he experienced a degree of healing. You could say my wounds helped bring him healing, even though his suffering and wounds were greater than mine.
And that’s what St. Peter meant when he wrote: “By his wounds we have been healed”. Christ’s wounds heal us. If our wounds help to heal others, it is only because they are a sharing in his wounds. He knows our suffering because he’s endured worse, and he is God, and God is not supposed to suffer. But he does. And he chose to suffer with us and in us, imparting to our suffering life-giving power. We never suffer alone, and we will discover, if we have not already, that we have never suffered alone. Suffering and even death will not have the final word over your life or my life, because Christ entered into it and he rose from the dead. At the end of our sufferings will be the fullness of eternal life, and an eternal friendship with him who loved us so much that he drew close to us.
Reflection for the 4th Sunday of Lent
Deacon Douglas McManaman
Published at Where Peter Is
We are all familiar with the parable of the prodigal son, so I would like to focus on just a few key points from this text to bring out its radical nature. The younger son, as we all know, begins to treat his father as if he were dead by demanding his share of the property that he will inherit upon his father’s death–he wants it now. When he finally comes to his senses after reducing himself to poverty, he makes plans to return to his father and formulates a proposal that he will deliver upon his return; he is going to confess his sin and declare that he is no longer worthy to be called “his son” and will ask to be treated as a hired hand.
The father sees him from a distance and immediately goes out to meet him, but the father cuts him off in mid sentence, allowing him to confess his sins, but he does not allow his son to articulate his proposal. Instead, he is restored to his original position and given the signet ring that permits him to sign cheques–a gesture of tremendous trust. Finally, they celebrate with a fatted calf: “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.” Now, the dead do not bring themselves back to life. So, who brought him back to life? Who found him? This is an important implication I will return to.
The elder son who resents all this treatment represents the attitude of the religious leaders, the Pharisees and scribes, as well as the attitude of a vast number of the faithful who still operate out of a juridical or legalistic mindset, that is, within a transactional model which says: If you will give me X, then I will give you Y in return; but if you don’t give me X, I won’t give you Y. That’s the model we understand most easily, because it is a natural business model. Unfortunately, it is a model that has been brought into the religious sphere, and that’s why the elder son just cannot understand his father’s behaviour towards the younger son who squandered his inheritance, and that’s why the scholars of the law, the religious leaders, did not understand Jesus—they were legalists. And that’s why most people tend not to understand not only this parable but other parables of the kingdom of God, like the workers in the vineyard, in which Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a landowner who goes out early and hires labourers to work all day in the vineyard for a single denarius; he returns at 9 o’clock to hire more workers, and again at noon and then at 3, and then at 5 o’clock, each time hiring more laborers. At the end of the day, he pays each worker a single denarius, the same amount whether they’ve been working all day or just since the evening, which caused great resentment among those who worked all day.
Most people struggle with these parables because they think within a juridical paradigm, a legalistic model in which a transaction is measured by fairness; hence, legal justice becomes the principal value. But the fundamental value of the gospel proclaimed by Christ’s entire life is mercy. Christ, who is God the Son, reveals the divine mercy, which transcends justice and is utterly incomprehensible. If one insists on reading the New Testament within a juridical model, one will distort the gospel, at which point it is no longer extraordinarily good news, and this will do a great deal of damage to the religious lives of the faithful, which for centuries has happened and is still happening in many places.
The good news of the gospel is the revelation of the absolute and incomprehensible mercy of God: “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost (apololos)” (Lk 19, 10). The Greek verb appolumi means ‘to destroy’, and the noun form appoleia is ‘destruction’, and so the meaning is that the Son of Man has come to seek out and save those who have destroyed their lives.
Where can God be found? We naturally believe he is found in the highest places, basilicas with ornate and breathtaking interiors-and these have their place; but the Son of Man descended to the sewers. It was this descent to the level of the swine that brought the prodigal son back to life. Our God is found in the lowest places; for Jesus had table fellowship with outcasts, the poor, the sick, sinners, tax collectors, etc. He came to liberate them from the bad news, the lie, that they were forsaken by God. Table fellowship brings about a profound intimacy between all those at the table. The very idea of the Pharisees and scribes sharing a meal with those with whom Jesus kept company was simply unthinkable; status was everything in first century Palestine, and Jesus lost that status by associating with the poor, the lame, tax collectors, sinners, etc.
Now, in this 15th chapter of Luke where we find the prodigal son, there are two other parables of the divine mercy, and they are there for a reason: we can misinterpret the prodigal son and mistakenly believe that the father showed mercy because the son first made a decision to return on his own. But that would be to miss the entire point of the parable; for the son was dead, and what is dead does not move. Hence, right before this parable are two others that are intended to make such a misreading less likely. I’m referring to the parable of the lost sheep, who wanders from the fold and is lost and cannot find his way back, unlike the prodigal son who does find his way back home. All the sheep can do is bleat, and hopefully the Shepherd will hear the bleating and find it, put it on his shoulders and take it back to the fold, which is what happened because the Shepherd actually goes out looking for the lost sheep.
However, this gets better; for if the sheep cries out, it means it is alive. But what if the one who is lost (destroyed) cannot cry out in the dark for help, or cannot get up and make his or her way back home? What if this person has turned his or her back on God completely, lives in utter darkness, and is spiritually dead? We have the parable of the lost coin: “What woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it?”
A coin is a piece of metal. It is inert, it is dead. It does not cry out nor make its way home. The mercy of God is compared this time to a woman who will search the house carefully and will not stop until she finds that lost and inert piece of matter. That’s what our God is like, compared this time to a woman because women don’t give up. More importantly, though, God does not wait for us to take the initiative and return; rather, she loves us first and goes out looking for the lost, the dead, the forsaken, those who live in darkness, and will not stop searching until she finds them.
You and I are where we are in our faith life not by virtue of anything we have done, but purely on the basis of God’s unutterable mercy. I was fortunate to have had a priest friend in my youth who would emphasize that repeatedly, but that isn’t typical. Today, there are many Catholic writers, podcasters and preachers who are moralizers, legalists, who seem to reduce the faith to a set of moral proscriptions, usually centering on issues of sexual ethics, and who think within a transactional paradigm. But as St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, we are not saved by our works: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2, 8-9). In my experience, a large percentage of the faithful have unwittingly adopted semi-Pelagianism, believing that grace has entered our lives as a result of some initial good act of the will and as a reward for that action. But our cooperation with grace is itself a grace.
Faith is the grace that allows us to trust and to hope in the divine mercy. That’s what saves. Nothing frustrated Jesus more than people’s lack of trusting faith, which leads to fear, anxiety, and the abuse of authority, which in turn generates resentment and division, all rooted in a refusal to trust divine providence. But there was nothing that pleased Jesus more than finding that trusting faith in others, such as the Syrophoenician woman or the Roman Centurion, the woman with a hemorrhage, or the blind man naked on the road. That faith is what allowed Christ to work miracles in their lives and in the lives of those for whom they were interceding. Many of us are worried about our sons or daughters who have turned their backs on God and are now apparently lost and perhaps spiritually dead. If we believe in the God that Christ revealed, we know that fear is useless; in fact, it is harmful. It can cause us to do things that only alienate us from our children. If we learn to trust in the all-powerful and all-knowing God who pursues the lost and does not stop until he finds what he’s looking for, then there is nothing for us to worry about, for he will find them and bring them to himself in ways that we cannot think of on our own.
Deacon Douglas McManaman
Struggle is a normal and necessary part of human existence, with or without the Fall of Man. After the Fall of Man (Gn 3), the struggles involved in everyday human life did not suddenly arise; rather, they simply became difficult, frustrating, and unenjoyable. The reason is that after the Fall, man, wounded by concupiscence, seeks rest without struggle. Prior to the Fall, daily struggles that are part and parcel of human existence would have been as enjoyable and exhilarating as a well played game or sport. In this light, rest and struggle are not opposites.
Creation itself, the bringing into being of all things, involves a kind of tension or a battle of sorts:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.
Water is a symbol for chaos, for it is powerful, destructive and without form, and thus creation is depicted as a bringing order out of chaos, or form and content out of what is formless and empty, or light from darkness, as a sculptor stands before a heavy slab of marble that will resist his efforts to bring form and order out of its formless posture. Like an artist who contemplates his finished work, God contemplates all He has made and “behold, it was very good”. Rest comes after the struggle, and there is no rest without it. Beauty is its fruit.
Work is holy, but work is fundamentally a struggle, a kind of emulation of God who creates: “And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” It was only as a result of the Fall that work–or what is humanly good to do–became burdensome to man: “…in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life,…In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread”.
The spiritual life is a battle, specifically a battle of love. It is only a battle against the self because it is a “battle of love”, and inordinate self-love destroys love and is the resistance that makes the spiritual life a genuine struggle. Without a spiritual life, human life is empty, for it is the spirit that brings direction (meaning) to the matter of the universe, and so human life as a whole is a battle, specifically a struggle to achieve love, which is unitive and creative, and thus it is a battle for universal fraternity (the kingdom of God). Inserting struggle into our lives is God’s way of dealing with us: “We should be grateful to the Lord our God, for putting us to the test, as he did our forefathers. Recall how he dealt with Abraham, and how he tried Isaac, and all that happened to Jacob in Syrian Mesopotamia while he was tending the flocks of Laban, his mother’s brother. Not for vengeance did the Lord put them in the crucible to try their hearts, nor has he done so with us. It is by way of admonition that he chastises those who are close to him” (Jud 8, 25-27). To chastise is to prune, which a gardener does for the good of the plant being pruned, that it may bear more fruit. And so a life without the struggle and dialectic of opposites, that is, a life of rest without arduous struggle bears very little fruit and leaves a person without a great deal of depth and light.
G. Studdert Kennedy writes:
“Love endures all things.” The word of “endure” is translated patience, and so is long-suffering, but “endures” is the patience that works and plods at things. Love is a fighter, a reformer, not content with things as they are. “Endures” means “conquers through patience,” it is that which overcomes the world. Patience that fights and wears things down until they become expressive of order and love. It stands on the rock and is patience born of faith and hope in presence of love’s very self. It has the sense of going on along a road or climbing a hill and never giving up but going steadily at it. There is the description of what love does, it ends as this life, which consists in walking on steadily, will do. There’s this much joy in it, that the road gets easier the more faithfully we keep on. The first hills of childhood seem terribly hard and so the troubles of the young are harder than those of the old because the young do not realise that the flat part will come later, it won’t be all hills. But patience is its own reward and there is never a moment when we don’t need it. The troubles of a child seem quite heart-breaking, e.g. when it tells its first lie and is ostracized by its parents who hear it crying in the next room and cannot go to it. At last we must get our feet firmly set and know that if sorrow comes we will go through it. If we keep close to Love we shall win in the end. …The world is made for love and demands it. We are toiling and working out the problem of the perfection of love and we must learn to live in unity in the human race, bearing each other’s burdens and fighting the battle of love.” The Best of Studdert Kennedy, p. 190-193.
Deacon Douglas McManaman
In the first book of Maccabees, we read: “In those days Mattathias, son of John, son of Simeon, a priest of the family of Joarib, left Jerusalem and settled in Modein” (2, 1). This kind of description is typical in the bible. The reason is that a person is fundamentally a plurality. That’s why the doctrine of the Trinity is so important, more important than a pure and rational monotheism. God is three Persons in One divine nature, not one in three. “Three” must always precede the One, and the One must be seen in relation to the three, and not within the conceptual framework of a metaphysical oneness. God is a plurality of three equal Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The Oneness of God is the Oneness of the three equal Persons: “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me” (Jn 17, 20-23).
The human person is created in the image and likeness of God; but God is a Trinity of Persons. It follows that although you and I are individual persons, one being, we are first and foremost a kind of plurality. For example, my own human existence has a place within history, and it is a historically relational existence. I am related to the past; I cannot be understood apart from the past. The human person is born from a mother, and that child has just spent his/her first nine months of life deep within her womb, nurtured and sustained by that mother, placed in her arms immediately after delivery. That child is completely and utterly dependent upon the care of the parents for many years to come, who in turn are dependent upon innumerable others. And so my existence is related to the past in that others before me have made my life possible–I inherited their matter, their proclivities, talents, I’ve been positively influenced by people in my own family and by certain people outside of my family, such as my teachers, many of whom I have forgotten, not because they were insignificant, but by virtue of the limits of memory, which in turn allows me to further depend on others; and my existence influences others who will live after I am gone, who will have been influenced by my life and my sacrifices in some way. And so “my life” is not purely mine. It is not an isolated existence, but a thoroughly relational one. It is the product of the love and labor of countless others.
Our fundamental purpose is to struggle to bring about a universal fraternity, a plurality in unity, a brotherhood that sin destroys. Vatican II points out: “Christians should cooperate, willingly and wholeheartedly, in building an international order based on genuine respect for legitimate freedom and on a brotherhood of universal friendship” (GS 88). Christ came to gather, but sin always divides.
The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by James Cone
Deacon Doug McManaman
When I read about this terrible suffering and injustice, this complete indifference to the rights of black Americans during the lynching era, the utter brutality and mind boggling hypocrisy, all I can say is that indeed they are the Christ among white Americans. Christ is them, and they are Christ, and their suffering is the deepest possible sharing in the redemptive work of Christ himself. They are suffering for their persecutors, for white Christians who don’t know Christ, who are crucifying the Christ they allegedly worship. These laugh now (at the time), but will weep later, as we read in Luke. Those who are suffering in the Person of Christ achieve the greatest honor and they have the greatest joy in the kingdom, thanks to this identification between their lives and the crucified. Their persecutors, these cruel murderers and all those who cooperate with them, are forever connected to their victims, and this is their torment. They are immersed in the specter of their utter cruelty, the ugliness of their sin, and it is an intolerable sight. But in the midst of their crucified victims, these murderers see the crucified that they think they’ve worshiped. He is there among the lynched, tortured, and burned. He is their only hope. But if he is their only hope, it means that they, their victims, are their only hope, because the identity between Christ and their victims is perfect. They forgive their persecutors, because they are victorious in the crucified one who is among them, and they have received the forgiveness of their own sins in him, so how can they deny forgiveness to those who have murdered them. In fact, their greatest desire is to share in Christ’s victory over sin and death, which they do by their sufferings and the heart of mercy, which each one possesses. They can say with Christ: “…forgive them, for they know not what they do”, and indeed, they know not what they have done. But they will, because they are forever connected to their victims, and so they will forever behold what they have done until they cannot stand the sight of their own ugliness any longer. Their victims along with Christ, who is in their midst, are waiting to be invited by these murderers to defeat their evil with the victory of Christ’s charity and forgiveness. That will be their greatest joy, because it will be their greatest victory, their unique sharing in the victory of Christ. And they wait, and wait, but they won’t wait forever, because St. Paul tells us that “every knee shall bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”. Finally, it is interesting to compare two perspectives. Today, so many have called for reparations; for they see black Americans as terribly disadvantaged by the allegedly superior whites. But in the light of a theology of the cross, in particular the theology of the cross that came out of this era, in their poetry, their music, their literature, it seems rather obvious that they have a nobility and power that is their glory. They entered into the struggle against sin and death, and they conquered, and many graces were bestowed upon America as a result of that struggle. What we are today is, in large part, the result of that victorious struggle. Black Americans stand higher, now lower. We look up to them, not them to us.
Deacon Doug McManaman
A great irony today is that Catholics, generally speaking, no longer think historically, that is, within a historical paradigm. However, all things were created through him (Christ) and for him (Christ). As Tertullian points out, the very clay in which Adam was formed was created in view of Christ; man was created in view of Christ. And so history is directed towards Christ, that is, towards “Christification”. This movement of history does not stop at the Ascension of Christ; it is not as if now, since the Ascension, history is cyclical and we are just waiting for the number of the elect to be complete, which will then be followed by the Second Coming of Christ. No, history is still linear and moving towards Christ. Everyone who has gone before us has in some way contributed to the evolution of humanity towards Christ. History is sacred. There are not two histories, one sacred and the other profane. All history is sacred history, because it is under the providence of God, directed towards the Second Coming of Christ, that is, towards the Christification of creation (Teilhard de Chardin). My own individual and personal existence has a place within this history; it is a historically relational existence. It is related to the past in that others have made my life possible–I’ve inherited proclivities, talents, I’ve been positively influenced by certain people, many of whom I have forgotten not because they were insignificant, but by virtue of the limits of memory; and my existence influences others who will live after I am gone, who will have been influenced by my life in some way. But “my life” is not purely mine; it is the product of the labor of innumerable others.
The genuinely creative work of others is holy. The evolution of medical technology and medical advancements, for example, are holy, the advanced design of automobiles and other means of transportation is holy; the creation of computers is holy; the invention of new techniques in construction and its latest products are holy, etc., because it is all ordered to the betterment of humanity, and man was created in view of Christ.
It is not as if the world is unholy, that is, the realm of the profane, while within this world is a tiny community of believers, the baptized (the Church), who alone are holy. Not at all. Sin profanes, but creation is holy from the get go, and man was created to be a priest of creation and to have that priesthood perfected and elevated by Christ. Creation comes from God, and it is sustained by God, and the Old Testament reveals the God of Israel as the God of history. The Church is much larger and wider than the Roman Catholic Church. A Roman Catholic Mass certainly does involve the changing of the substances of bread and wine into the single substance of Christ’s body and blood, that is, the Person of Christ, but that is the very image of history in its completion, for the matter of creation is destined to become Christ (Christification). The Mass is a sneak preview so to speak, a microcosmic instance of history’s destiny. The Mass is ordered towards the fulfillment of history.
Images of Christ abound throughout creation: each of the four seasons, fertility, death and growth, the sun, the stars that praise God, creatures of every sort, etc. To enjoy a sunset is a holy act; for the beauty of a sunset speaks of the beauty of God who hides himself and illuminates our lives, only to hide himself again. The light of faith, which is like the rays of that sun just before dawn, allows us to believe in the Incarnation of the Son of God; that light allows us to see creation on a much deeper level, a level that was hidden up to this point. The habit of mind that regards the natural as essentially profane is a false paradigm, a distorted and non-biblical view. In revealing Himself, God intends to reveal the deepest meaning of creation, not a new meaning. It is new to the person who does not have faith and suddenly acquires it, but with faith, one sees Christ everywhere in it, which is why Christ could speak in parables. Grace, although distinct, is not separated from nature. Grace is part of the divine plan, just as my life includes friendships that were gratuitously given. Grace is a part of human existence, because man was created in view of Christ. Grace is supra-nature, without any doubt, but supra-nature, God’s supernatural and Trinitarian existence, is to be opened up to humanity. The natural is not the supernatural, but it is ordered to the supernatural, for it is ordered to Christ, from the very beginning. The Church’s task is to reveal the true nature of things.
In the Incarnation, Christ conquered death and sin, giving all of us the capacity to rise above the struggles that belong to human existence and to conquer in him. One does not have to be explicitly aware of this in order for Christ’s Incarnation to be effective in one’s life and in the life of the world. All the progress in this world is the fruit of the Incarnation; for Christ has joined himself to every man when he joined himself to matter.
When Pius X was made the archbishop of Venice, his mother and father both looked at his ring and said: “You would not have that ring if it wasn’t for this ring”, indicating their wedding ring. It was as if to say: “We were instrumental in this. Without marriage, you wouldn’t be here, buddy.” They were the ones who provided his education that led to this. Hierarchy, sacred order, arises out of the faithful, not above the faithful. It is the fruit of marriage. The word “laity” is from laos, which is ‘of the people’. A cleric remains a part of the people, a servant of the people, never outside and above. The movement from non-cleric to cleric is not from above to the Cathedral; rather, it is from parents to the Cathedral, parents whose marriage is holy, a sharing in the paschal mystery.
Reflection on the gospel for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Times
Deacon Douglas McManaman
To be alive to God, one has to be dead to the world. This is a basic principle of the spiritual life. The less one is dead to the world, the less that person is alive to God.
One of the effects of Original Sin is disordered passions. We have an inclination to love creation in place of the Creator. But to allow the goodness and beauty of the world to move us beyond itself to the absolute goodness and beauty of God is to die to the world. This takes a lifetime. It is very much like dying to the stages of life: there’s no entering into childhood without a dying to infancy, and there is no entering into adolescence without a dying to childhood and its pleasures, and there is no adulthood without a dying to adolescence with all its illusions and fantasies. Similarly, one cannot be alive to God without dying to the world.
In today’s gospel (Mt 10, 35-45), James and John were not, at this point in their lives, dead to the world, and despite having spent time with Jesus, they were not alive to God. They were ambitious. The apostles did not understand the mission of Christ the Messiah, which is why Jesus had to foretell his Passion three times. They were expecting a Messiah who would conquer, like David, a warrior king, who would overthrow the Roman Empire and re-establish the kingdom of Israel in all its dynastic glory. And they wanted a place at Jesus’ left and right hand, a place of high honor. They were not thinking as Christ thinks, but as man thinks. We see this even in Peter, immediately after Jesus gave him the authority of the keys of the kingdom. We read:
From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
The human heart is inordinately ambitious, it seeks to preserve itself at all costs, and left to itself, it loves itself more than anyone else and encourages others to do likewise. It seeks its own honor and glory, and it can do all this in the presence of the Person of Christ without shame. Not even the mother of James and John was seeking the honor of Christ their king, only her own honor, through her sons.
What is particularly interesting is that when this gospel was actually written, James was already a martyr; he already drank from the cup of suffering that Jesus spoke of in this gospel. So there is a reason why the writer of the gospel of Mark chose to preserve the memory of this shameful event in the life of James and John. It’s a perennial temptation for all those called to serve Christ, in particular those called to be Apostles. Jesus addressed this when he criticized the scribes and Pharisees, who “love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and to be addressed as ‘Teacher’” (Mt 23, 6). Jesus explicitly exhorts us to seek the lowest place (Lk 14, 10). It is not up to us to raise ourselves up, nor even to elevate others, which we like to do, especially those who are like us in some way; it is the Lord who will do so. Our task is to seek the lowest place. Water is the most powerful force in nature, and yet water always seeks the lowest place. I’m convinced that Karl Rahner, one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, was right when he said that the greatest glories of the Church remain unknown and will only be known in eternity. There are many among us who have suffered tremendous adversity and endured through it with the greatest faith; they are completely hidden from the world and from the eyes of the visible Church.
But there are still people in this world, in the Church even, who insist on vying for the highest places of honor. What they forget is that Christ, the suffering servant of Isaiah, brought about a great reversal; the highest place is now the lowest place, and the lowest place is really the highest. The cross is the throne that Christ chose for himself, thorns his crown, and ‘Christ crucified’ is the identity he wanted for himself. Poverty, eating with tax collectors and sinners, choosing to become ritually unclean by associating with the sick and the forsaken, touching them, healing them, all of which was repugnant to the religious leaders of the time, this is what he chose for himself; unintelligible to those who have not died to the world.
And yet James and John and all the Apostles eventually came to understand. So what was it that changed them? It was the fact that they were plunged into suffering and darkness as a result of the arrest of Jesus, his trial, and his death sentence, which in their minds was proof positive that everything Jesus said and stood for was a failure. He could not have been the Messiah, the Christ, because he did not defeat the Romans, rather, the Romans defeated him, apparently so. That darkness and utter despair was a genuine experience of death for them. What happened next? He rose from the dead, he appeared to them, and on Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended upon them, giving them the fullness of the divine life, completing their death to the world, which is why they now had a courage that was unrecognizable, as we see in the Acts of the Apostles. They were entirely unconcerned about their own livelihood, unconcerned about their own lives. They were ready for martyrdom, and it was their blood and the blood of countless Christian martyrs in the first three centuries of the Church that was the seed from which sprang the life of the Church.
September 27th, 2024
Deacon Doug McManaman
Whenever I am asked to give a retreat talk to a staff of teachers, I usually have to think hard about it: “Is this something I can do or should do, etc., but when I was asked to give this faith day talk for McGivney, immediately I knew that I wanted to be here for this. There was no need to think about this for more than two seconds. Now, I don’t come to Markham often, but these past few years I have had to drive to 48 and Steeles for some eye appointments, so I would end up driving by the school. And I have to tell you that every time I’ve done so, I was left with a very real and palpable feeling of joy. I find it very interesting to think about this. I experience joy for the rest of the day. It’s an interesting phenomenon, because there is so much that I’ve forgotten, so many details–I spent my last 20 years of teaching here, and memories do fade, especially as we get older, so it’s not as if I have a collection of distinct memories that bring me joy. They are subconscious memories. There was something very beautiful about this school, the students and the staff. A whole world is opened back up to me when I drive by the school. So I am quite convinced that we did something right at this school: the staff did something right, and the students did something right. And I’d like to spend some time reflecting upon just what that might be.
I know the theme of the retreat day is hope, and one of my favorite themes to preach on at Mass is divine providence, precisely because of the hope it provides those who really think about providence, the idea that God is in complete control of all things, that every moment of our existence is within his providential hands. My former students have often told me that one of their best memories from our class is of the day I told them the story of my return to the faith. I was baptized a Catholic and went to Catholic school up until grade 3; after that, I was sent to the “Protestant” school across the street from my house in Dollard des Ormeaux, a suburb of the west Island of Montreal. We then moved to another part of Montreal, and I never went back to a Catholic school again, so I was sort of an atheist by the time I was a teenager. I did not grow up Catholic after that.
My entire life was music. Bluegrass music. I was a five string Bluegrass banjo player, I played in two Bluegrass bands before deciding to go to University. But the turning point in my life came when I decided to hitchhike to Nashville, Tennessee. Clearly I was lacking a prefrontal cortex; I had absolutely no sense of danger when I was 17 years old. Now when I drive to Cincinnati, Ohio, I take 75 south, the route I took when hitchhiking, and even with the doors locked, I still get scared going through Detroit and Columbus, Ohio; how I was able to hitchhike down south with only $150 is beyond me. The only explanation is an undeveloped prefrontal cortex.
But it was the most providential event in my entire life. I got a lift just outside of Columbus from a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C, and he drove me all the way to Kentucky. As I got into the car, after putting my backpack and banjo in the back seat, I asked him what he did for a living. He said: “I am a priest”. I thought that was interesting, and of course the last time I saw the inside of a Church was in the 3rd grade, so I used that time to question him, challenge him, question him again: How do you know God exists? Why would you take a vow of celibacy? Why do you need religion in your life, etc.
But what struck me about this priest were two things. First, he related to me as an equal. There was an eye to eye relationship; there was not an ounce of condescension, not even the slightest indication that he was superior in any way. He related to me with a kind of reverence, for lack of a better word. Secondly, his joy. He was clearly happier than I was. He’s in his mid 30s, he’s got all these responsibilities and obligations, he can’t get married, I’m young, free, I can get married, but there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s just happier than I am. And that was a mystery to me. I had a sense that he belonged to a world that I once knew as a child, and I guess I wanted back into that world. I had lost touch with it, and wanted back in. And he revealed that world to me, just by the kind of person that he was: a person of great joy, without any pretensions.
At one point, he asked me if I went to Mass, and of course I said no, and he asked if my parents went to Mass, and I said no, and he was so disappointed. I couldn’t understand it. “Why do you have to go to Mass?” I asked him. “People can pray on their own”. And he yelled out the answer: “To receive the body of Christ”.
Now I hadn’t heard those words in years, since the 3rd grade, and I knew at that moment that this was the key to entering back into that world that I once knew as a child, the world that this priest belonged to, which was a joyful world. So I decided to get back to Mass from that point on. He dropped me off on the side of the road where he had to exit; I played my banjo for him outside, took down his number and address and promised to keep in touch with him.
I made it to Nashville and joined the Rudy Meeks Band. He’s a 6 time Canadian fiddle champion, so I went all the way to Nashville to get a job in a band back in Canada.
And I did keep in touch with that priest, and I did return to my faith as I said I would. What was interesting about the rest of his trip was that when he got to the seminary in Kentucky, there was nothing for him to do. He had to get up the next morning and leave and return to Washington, D.C. there was simply nothing for him to do there. The bishop sent him to visit this seminary, but the trip was a complete waste of time. And after a while, he came to realize that the only purpose to that trip was to pick up a hitchhiker, relate to him as an equal, buy him lunch, answer his questions, and inspire him. The bishop of course didn’t know that. So it was the one time in his life that he felt that God chose him to be at a particular place at a particular time.
After touring with the Rudy Meeks band and another band, I decided to leave the music industry. I wanted to become a priest, which led me to St. Jerome’s College at the University of Waterloo; two years into philosophy, I met a woman, and I thought “Maybe I don’t want to be a priest after all.”
So I studied philosophy at Waterloo and theology at the university of Montreal, went to McGill university for teachers college, and my first 10 years of teaching were in the heart of the Jane and Finch area of Toronto. The school was Regina Pacis, and it was founded by Father Gerald Fitzgerald, of the Holy Ghost Fathers, and he wanted to establish a school for kids in Jane and Finch who could not get accepted into St. Basil’s, which only accepted the best at the time. So he handpicked his staff, those who shared the same vision of education, who were aware that this is not going to be an easy task but who were committed to it, and he made sure we had a first Friday Mass and social every month, with alcohol. And those were great years, but they were rather difficult years. Jane and Finch was and probably still is a very broken neighborhood. I spent my first ten years there. I then spent two and a half years at Chaminade College, an all boys school, and that was a very different experience. The kids were always in uniform, and their attention span was not 7 minutes, as it was in the previous school, but a full hour. It was a very easy place to teach at. But then I soon decided to switch to York Catholic, because of the driving. And my first interview was here, in 2001, with Paul Walsh, Kathleen Westmaas, and Domenic Scuglia.
I didn’t think I was going to remain at McGivney, because I wanted less driving, but I ended up here for the rest of my career. There was only one point where I tried to leave. When St. Maximilian Kolbe opened up in Aurora, I applied for the headship in Religion. Dominic Scuglia wanted me to apply for the headship, I would have been able to walk to work every day, and my friend Eugene Pivato coached me on how to answer the questions that they were going to ask.
But when I sat down for the interview, it was so interesting. My mind went completely blank. I couldn’t answer the questions. I felt like a complete idiot; I was just fumbling all over the place. When I got back to McGivney, I saw Kathleen Westmaas, who was now the principal; she was in the parking lot heading off to a meeting at the board, and she asked me: “How did the interview go?” I said it was terrible; horrible. I couldn’t answer a thing. In her Trinidadian accent, she says to me: “That’s God’s way of telling you to stay with Kathleen. Stay with Kathleen.” And of course, she was right. The headship for religion opened up a week later, and she wanted me to apply for it, so I said I would, but “I’m not giving canned answers. I’m going to answer the way I want and if they don’t like it, too bad. And I’m bringing notes in case I go blank. We make accommodations for our students, so you have to make accommodations for me”. And that interview was a breeze. And after that, they brought in the IB program, which gave me a new lease on teaching for my last 6 years. And so, screwing up that interview for Kolbe was one of the greatest blessings of my teaching career.
Teaching at McGivney was a blessing on so many fronts. One of the things I continue to reflect upon is the ecumenical aspect of this school. Prior to McGivney, it was always only Catholic students that were registered in the schools I taught at. Here, a significant percentage of Muslim students, Hindu students, some Sikh students, Buddhist, atheists, alongside Catholic kids. That was a very important experience. So many people I know, who are serious Catholics, did not have that experience or anything similar, and so when they speak about those who belong to non-Christian religions, especially Muslims, they do so not from any concrete experience, but from what they’ve deduced in their heads, on the basis of their assumptions. And what they say is not always very good, often very ignorant, very much rooted in fear and a kind of religious tribalism, an us-and-them mentality–and these are well educated people I’m referring to.
My best friend is a retired priest from the Hamilton diocese, and one of the last things he did as a pastor in Kitchener, Ontario, was to sponsor a refugee family from Syria, a Muslim family. That family fell in love with my friend, Father Don Sanvido, and to this day they treat him as one of the family. I was there for supper one day, and I saw how much the children of that family loved my friend, the joy of that family, their appreciation for all the parish and this priest in particular did for them. And I asked my friend after we left: “Notice how joyful and charitable that family is. Do you notice any difference between them and Joe’s family?” Joe is a friend of ours, a Catholic teacher with a large family, and visiting them over the years was also a joy. “Do you notice any difference in the way you are treated by Mohammed and his family and the way you are treated by Joe’s family? Any difference in the overall atmosphere?” And he said to me: “No, I don’t notice any difference”. Both homes are filled with the joy of the kingdom of God. That was an important experience for him.
I remember ordering a number of books for our library at McGivney, some Muslim authors, and I was visiting my friend one weekend–I’d often visit him, give him a break and preach for him. At the time I was reading some great Muslim and Sikh religious texts, and so I decided to test my friend, with a bit of deception. I said to him, as a test, to tell me where in the Old Testament can one find the following words:
The One who created the million species of being gives sustenance to all. The Lord is forever merciful; He takes care of all. Those who hear and believe, find the home of the self deep within. Those people, within whose hearts the Lord abides, are radiant and enlightened. Speak of Him continually and remain absorbed in His Love.
He was sure it came from one of the wisdom books, such as Sirach or Ecclesiastes. But this came from the Sikh holy book, the Sri Guru Granth Sahib. Before telling him that, I asked him to tell me which mystical theologian in Church history would have said the following:
Does anyone think that the ocean is only what appears on its surface? By observing its hue and motion, the keen eye may perceive indications of that ocean’s unfathomable depth. The Lord’s mercy and compassion are an ocean with no shore, providing endlessly varied vistas for those who sail its surface; but the greatest wonderment and fulfillment is reserved for those “creatures of the sea” for whom that mercy has become their own medium.
The Lord beckons us through a divine love and attraction that has been implanted in our hearts, a love that may be understood and felt consciously as divine by some, and only indirectly as love for His creatures or creation by others. In either case the pull of our heart draws us to those Mercy Oceans, just as our physical bodies feel drawn to a warm and gentle sea….we are of that sea, our place, our home is in the depths of that sea, not on its surface.
After I finished reading this, my friend listed the following possibilities: Meister Eckhart, one of the desert fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Gertrude, St. Hildegard. But no, it came from a modern Sufi writer Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kibbani–Sufi is the mystical branch of Islam. My friend thought it was from one of the great Catholic mystics. And you know, only prejudice could keep us from recognizing the supernatural quality of these texts.
One of the benefits of retiring is that you have time to explore things that you didn’t really have time for when teaching. And it is amazing how many buried and relatively unknown treasures there are to uncover, especially among non-Catholic thinkers. One great treasure that I stumbled upon was a Chaplain to the British army in World War I, Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, who wrote in the midst of battle, when shells were exploding all around him. Here’s something that Studdert Kennedy wrote in 1920, forty years before Vatican II will begin to move in this direction:
I do not think there is any doubt that we have grossly underrated the moral and spiritual worth of other religions, and have allowed prejudice to blind our eyes to their beauty, and to the foreshadowing of Christ which they contain. It is a tragedy that we should have allowed a spirit of almost savage exclusiveness to have blotted out for us the revelation of God contained in earth’s million myths and legends, so that Christians have regarded them almost as though they were the inventions of the evil one. It is a disaster that we should have lumped all other faiths together and called them “pagan”—dismissing them as worthless. It is disastrous because it has distorted our missionary methods and delayed the development of the world religion. It has made us seek to convert the East not merely to Christ, but to our specifically Western Christ, and to force upon other peoples not merely our experience of Him, but our ways of expressing the experience. It is disastrous, too, because it has bred in us the spirit of intolerance and contempt for others which is one of the chieftest obstacles to the union of the world.
That’s an astounding text, especially in light of the fact that it was written in 1920. There is no doubt in my mind that this text is still ahead of our time–not even Vatican II was that daring. Teaching at McGivney among so many Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, among others has been a genuine blessing, because we saw how much reverence they have for all that we believe. I recall a Muslim student going through each desk in period 1 in a room I had in that period on the 3rd floor one year, and he was removing the bibles from the desks, and stacking them neatly; he’d do this every morning, for those bibles were left in the desks by students in period 4 the previous day. This Muslim boy would shake his head and say: “Sir, these students have no respect”. And he’d place the bibles on the table at the side of the room.
Now, I’m not at all sure that leaving a bible in a desk is irreverent, but he thought so, because to do that to the Koran would be irreverent, so it was his reverence for our Scriptures that struck me. There are so many instances like these that filled my 20 years at McGivney. I remember grade 12 male students walking into period 1 looking so tired and hungry, because it was Ramadan, and they were determined to observe the fast. And that too challenged me in my final years. As you can see, I don’t have the body of a person who is good at fasting, and our Lenten fast is nothing compared to their Ramadan fast. But in my last few years, I felt guilty for my lack of effort, and so I did make a real attempt to crank it up, as a result of their example. Again, that’s just one among many. And there are the Hindu students with their openness and willingness to learn from everyone. And there’s the irony: the word Catholic is from the Greek kataholos, which means ‘on the whole’ or universal. The Hindu students have that universal openness and willingness to embrace all that is good, a truly Catholic attitude, whereas we Catholics–not you necessarily, but certainly in many parts of the world today–have become so sectarian and tribal, so closed to anything that is foreign. Consider the recent ruckus caused by the Pope’s recent remarks in Singapore regarding the great religions of the world as “paths to God”. It seems we’ve gone backwards, some of us at least.
And those twenty years at McGivney have helped me to understand more deeply Pope John XXIII’s vision of the Church at Vatican II. Many bishops at Vatican II, like the Belgium Bishop Emile-Joseph De Smedt, were breaking away from the image of the Church as a pyramid, with the Pope on the top, bishops and priests below as his intermediaries, and at the bottom of the pyramid was the laity. Such a model tends to regard the Church as primarily and principally clerical. Vatican II moved beyond that model towards a concept of the Church as an Open society–fundamentally, the people of God–a pope, a bishop, a priest, are one of the faithful, like you and me, and they’re called to temporarily serve in a certain capacity. The Church is not the hierarchy, it is much larger than that, and it is much larger than the Roman Church. Hierarchy means ‘sacred order’, not levels of perfection from the inferior to the superior. The movement of the Church is not to be centripetal, but centrifugal, outward, towards the world. In that old pyramid model, the main effort of the Church’s apostolate was to bring the other peoples into the Church. Recruitment. Fill the pews.
In 1959, John XXIII wrote in his diary: “The whole world is my family. This sense of belonging to everyone must give character and vigour to my mind, my heart and my actions. This vision, this feeling of belonging to the whole world, will give a new impulse to my constant and continual daily prayer:…” This feeling was behind a new model of the church that was developing under his leadership. As Piet Fransen S. J., pointed out, the center of human history is not the Church, but the realization of the kingdom of God in the Person of Christ. The Church does not have a monopoly on salvation. The Church is called to serve all men and women and not merely the baptized. Pope Francis is very familiar with that vision and has been trying very hard to bring the Church back to that model. The day before his papal election, when he was Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, he quoted a passage from the Book of Revelation in which Jesus stands before the door and knocks. He added: “Today Christ is knocking from inside the church and wants to get out.”
The foundation for this vision is in the Incarnation. The Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, joined a human nature to himself, and Vatican II points out that in doing so, God the Son joined himself to every human person, not just the baptised. And so, God the Son is intimately present to every man and woman in the deepest regions of the human person; sufficient grace is available to everyone, and every decision we make in our lives can be translated as either a ‘yes’ to God, in which case we move towards Him, or a ‘no’, in which case we move away. Lumen Gentium sections 15 and 16 are very clear that divine grace is available outside the visible boundaries of the Church of Rome, and that outside of those boundaries, whether among our non-Catholic brethren (Lutherans, Anglicans, Mennonites, Presbyterians, etc.), or non-Christian brethren in the religions of the world, and even among atheists, people can and do respond to the impetus of divine grace in a way that directs their lives fundamentally to God, and grace of course is the indwelling of the Holy Trinity. And so we can really say, as Kathleen Westmaas would always remind us, that this person here, this Hindu or Sikh or Muslim, is my brother, my sister, and that this is what we want our students to understand by lived experience, and those students who do understand this help us understand this more deeply. The wonderful thing about this school is that many of the non-Christian kids, after a time, come to the realization that this Hindu person who has been sitting next to me in math class for the past two years or so, or this Catholic, or this Sikh, is not the infidel that I might have been led to believe he or she was. And vice versa.
And any Catholic teacher who doubts this, who still operates out of a kind of tribal Catholicism, has to just consider the fact that if you believe what St. Paul teaches in his letter to the Galatians, that “it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me”, then in loving you and what you stand for, your students really love Christ without necessarily knowing it explicitly. That Muslim family from Syria that my friend sponsored, through the parish, that family, in loving my priest friend and receiving him into their home as their uncle, they are loving Christ without them necessarily realizing it or knowing it explicitly–because that’s all he has in his life, that’s his whole identity and all he lives for.
That’s evangelization, that’s proclaiming the good news of Christ’s resurrection, and that’s very different from proselytizing. So many Catholics today still confuse evangelization with proselytizing, with recruitment. Evangelization is witnessing to the good news that Christ is risen, that our greatest fear and the one enemy that man was helpless to defeat, has been defeated by Christ: namely death: “By dying you destroyed our death, by rising you restored our life”. And we proclaim that good news by carrying that risen life within us, by living in the joy of Easter. That’s what did it for me when I was 17 years old and hitchhiking; it wasn’t the answers to my questions that I was given by this priest, nor any kind of apologetics that brought me back. It was his joy and the eye to eye relationship he was able to establish. And that’s how we evangelize our students, by entering into their sufferings, paying attention to them, and joining our light to their darkness.
And I know that over the years, a number of Muslim parents would express to me their fears, on grade 8 Curriculum night, fears that we are going to convert their child, recruit their child to the Catholic faith. And unfortunately, we only see in others what we see in ourselves, and a large percentage of devotees in the world religions also think in terms of a closed society, that you really have to belong to “our group” if you are to be considered genuinely religious and pleasing to God. But that’s not what this school was about at all, and Muslim and Hindu parents, many of them, came to see that over the years. What impact that had on their own religious attitudes is uncertain; whether that helped any of them escape their own religious tribalism, we can only hope. But there is no doubt in my mind that the kingdom of God is among you, as Christ tells us in the gospel of Luke, and the kingdom he established is a universal covenant, an international covenant (kataholos), not a tribal family covenant, and the wonderful thing about the Church is that it is in continual reform. The Church, by its very nature, cannot remain static, although many individual Catholics are determined to keep it static, not to move and who believe the Church need not reform in any way. But the Church as a whole is always in reform–which necessarily implies that the history of the Church is rarely ever pretty. At every moment of its history, it is always a Church in need of reform.
But this is true on an individual level as well. That’s so important to recognize. Each one of us is always in need of reform. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like seeing myself in the past, either on an old VHS cassette or in old photos that remind me how stupid I was at that time. I often shake my head, saying to myself: “I can’t believe I said that to him”, or “What an idiot I was for doing that”, etc. And this is one of the best things about retirement. Two other friends of mine retired shortly after I did, and what all three of us have in common is we’ve spent the last 5 years or so reflecting on our own lives, looking back and seeing that if we had to do certain things over again, we’d do many things differently. In other words, we do regret some of the attitudes we had at one time in our lives.
Teaching theory of knowledge made this process a bit easier. To prepare students for writing their TOK essay, I decided to study the philosophy of Nicholas Rescher, from the University of Pittsburgh, one of the greatest philosophers of science in the 20th century. And I wanted to find a way to make his thought easy and accessible to the IB students, so I studied his theory of plausible reasoning. To make a long story short, let’s just say that knowledge is very hard to achieve, and much of what is in our heads is not knowledge at all, but belief (natural faith), some of it warranted, much of it unwarranted. And so Rescher was a real proponent of epistemic humility and the importance of coming to a deeper awareness of the limits of human knowing, that it is not so much truth that we possess, as it is truth as I currently see it. He does not deny the possibility of possessing truth, but he argues that it is much more difficult than most people are willing to admit.
So I got in the habit of paying very close attention to the inferences that I would make on a daily basis, particularly the mistaken inferences, and I would use those as examples in my theory of knowledge classroom. It’s hard to get adolescents to appreciate the limitations of human knowing and the tentative nature of our truth claims–we tend to be rather doctrinaire when we are young and speak with a rhetoric of absolute certainty, so I needed lots of examples for them. After a time, you get used to the fact that we are quite often wrong. But it is especially interesting discovering, in your 50s and 60s, that certain beliefs you’ve held onto for decades might not be as sure and definitive as you once thought. When I was in my 30s, things were different; 30s is young, so too 40s, so being wrong is something that doesn’t stand out that much; on the contrary, when we are young, it’s being right that tends to stand out, and it’s a good feeling being right. But when I turned 50, things changed, because I saw 50s as ‘getting up there’. Thomas More, one of my favourite saints, was executed outside the Tower of London when he was 57; I always wondered what it would be like to be in my 50s, which I saw as ‘old’. So, when I turned 50, 51, 52 etc, and I discovered that so and so was right after all, 20 years ago when he said that and when I argued against him so passionately, that had a different impact on me. I couldn’t hide from it. I would say to myself: “It took me 20 years to figure that out”, or “30 years to discover that so and so was right after all”, or “I’m 56 and I’m just learning that now”? Why did it take so long? and things like that are still happening. I’m 63 now, and I’ll be reading something written in 1885, by an unknown Protestant theologian, at least unknown to me for the past 60 years, and I’d think to myself: “This guy knew things about scripture and the Church fathers, and the nature of God, back in 1885, which I’m only learning today, through him, in 2022 or 23–and what he’s saying is still very much ahead of our time. It’s a fascinating experience. And I really do feel like a beginner all over again. It sounds counterintuitive, but it is an exhilarating experience to discover that “I’m far more ignorant than I realized”, and that there’s a brand new path to explore for the next few years. It reminds me of Physicist Richard Feymann who said that science is an ever expanding frontier of ignorance. The more we discover, the more we come to know how much more there is to know, and how much we didn’t know, but thought we knew.
And my two best friends are experiencing much the same thing. And I think that might be the key to longevity. When you feel like a beginner all over again, you feel young again, at the start of a new adventure. And that spawns hope. A continuous cycle of new hope. You kind of have something to live for again, something to achieve, something to master, and that may take 2 or 3 years, then it happens again. So life really is a learning process. And that’s what makes teaching so much fun. You learn new stuff, and try it out on the students, see what they think.
Teaching is a very noble profession. The work is holy. When we enter a classroom, we are walking on holy ground, as God said to Moses when he approached Mount Sinai. But teaching is a way of the cross, and that’s the beauty of it. We have a tendency to assume that life is not meant to be a struggle, that when things are difficult, something is wrong. A friend of mine, a principal from years ago in the Toronto board, would always identify a good say with a smooth day, and I used to challenge him on this: “A smooth day is not necessarily a good day, and a day with all sorts of headaches, frustrations, difficulties, and stress, might very well be the best day of the week, the most fruitful and effective.” He was a friend of mine so he could talk to me in a way that he would not talk to others, which is why his reply consisted of two words that I cannot repeat here. But as anyone who has studied evolutionary biology well knows, life itself is a struggle. It’s supposed to be. Marriage is a struggle; teaching is a struggle, working with young people is a struggle, working with administrators is a struggle, and vice versa. But the Second Person of the Trinity joined a human nature to himself in order to enter into that struggle and conquer it, to become victorious over it in a way that we could not; and that’s the mystery of his cross and resurrection, and our greatest gift is to be given a share in his cross and resurrection, that victory over the struggle of human existence. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus’ prayer was not “Let this cup pass from me”; that was a moment of weakness in the Son of God, interestingly enough. His prayer was “but let not my will be done, but Your will be done”. Studdert Kennedy points out that this is the real prayer of Gethsemane: “This prayer is immediately answered. The angel of God appears to comfort Him. Terror dies within his soul, hesitation disappears, and with His battle prayer upon His lips, ‘Thy will be done,’ he goes out from the garden in the majesty of manhood to bear such witness to His truth, to live in death so fine a life, that He becomes the light in darkness of every age, and the deathless hope of a dying world.”
God the Son entered into human suffering in order that we may find him there, and be given the divine life, the grace, the strength, to heroically endure. And of course he gives us his very self, his body, blood, soul and divinity under the ordinary, mundane appearance of a wafer of bread. The Eucharist is our strength, and I have to say that the greatest gift I’ve been given in my entire 32 and a half years of teaching high school was that in every school I was at, there was a school chapel with the blessed sacrament. To be able to visit first thing in the morning, and to drop by for 30 seconds many times during the day and finally at the end of the day, was easily the source of strength that kept me from burnout and despair.
The bitterness of the cross always ripens into a profound sweetness, because charity is sweet, and teaching is a work of charity, and the joy of heaven is an unimaginable sweetness and ecstasy that does not end. My spiritual director always quotes St. Augustine who said that God loves each one of us as if there is only one of us, as if you are the only being that exists to love. Each one of us has God’s undivided attention at every instant of the day. God can give us each that undivided attention because he is unlimited. No human being can come close to that–we’re too limited. But to discover that you are loved like that is to discover joy, and then life in the classroom becomes very different than what it was, because we bring that joy into the classroom every day with us, and when that happens, we will give our students a network of subconscious memories that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
I think Father Michael McGivney is really a microcosmic symbol of hope, hope for a united humanity, a universal fraternity. It’s a microcosmic instance of what this world can look like and should look like and probably will look like in the future–the very distant future, given the lessons that human beings still have yet to learn. And I believe this vision of a united fraternity is at the root of Pope John XXIII’s vision of the Church in the modern world, not a closed society rooted in fear with culture warriors in defensive posture at every corner, but an Open Church, open to the world, open to dialogue with the world, and open to change and reform. This is a vision that Pope Francis understands well.
Deacon Doug McManaman
“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off, and if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out.”
The hand, the foot, and the eye; all three are very dear to us, and to lose even one of them can make life very difficult. So, something very dear to us, it could be a job or someone we love, symbolized by the hand, by which we feed ourselves, can snare us in sin, and so we are feeding on something that is spiritually poisonous. And then the foot, something also very dear to us and so much a part of who we are, can symbolize a mentor perhaps, or an organization to which we belong, and which provides us with some direction, but can lead us into darkness and to our own eventual destruction. Finally our eyes, the most precious of the five senses, can blind us and thereby cause us to walk right into a pit. This can refer to a certain mode of thinking, a set of ideas that we might have embraced when we were young and which feels illuminating, but will in fact lead us astray.
Because they are precious and feel so much a part of who we are, they are very hard to eradicate. In fact, it is difficult to become aware of their destructive nature. So, we can say “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off”, but we don’t always see clearly what is sinful and destructive, and the reason is that very often we don’t want to see it. There’s that old expression: “There are none so blind as those who will not see”. We don’t see it because we simply don’t want to see it, which is a kind of self-deception. I’m as guilty of that as anyone in this Church. We see this even in the hierarchy, made up of human beings; just consider the history of the Church, the sinfulness and blindness of the Church reeks from the pages of history. How do we explain the blood shed, the bigotry, the Church’s tolerance and defense of slavery, or the death penalty, or the buying and selling of Church offices, and much more? There are all sorts of factors involved, from plain ignorance, weakness, to willful blindness. Try convincing a person that something is a sin who just does not want to see it. It’s not going to happen. So how do we get out of this difficulty? Sin blinds, and so although I want to eradicate sin in my life, I don’t always see what is genuinely sinful, because of ignorance or worse, my own willful blindness.
The one way out of this difficulty is to pray to want to see what God wants me to see. It’s very difficult to know what God wants me to see, just as it is difficult to know what God wants me to do in a particular situation. I remember in my final years of teaching, I said to my spiritual director: “I don’t know what I should do. I can retire, but I don’t know if God wants me to retire or to keep teaching. How do I find out?” He said: “Don’t try to figure out what God wants you to do, you’re not going to be able to know that, there’s a myriad of possible avenues you could take. Instead, pray to want to do what God wants you to do”. That’s a very different prayer: “Let me want to do what you want me to do”. If we are open and God answers that prayer, He will mold the heart, dispose it in a certain direction through grace, and we will eventually want to do what He wants us to do. It is the same thing with sin. This is important because we can be our own worst enemy, even the most religiously pious among us. Some of the most religiously devout people can go through their whole lives without ever moving past the immaturity and vices they’ve had since their younger days, whether that’s a matter of envy, or personal pride, a condescending spirit, or greed, lying, bigotry, the inordinate love of security, jealousies, abuse of authority, vindictiveness, looking at others with contempt, indifference to the poor and the suffering, etc. Piety does not guarantee that one will be freed from the snares of self-deception, and neither does ordination.
So, the way out of this darkness is to pray, asking God to help us want to see what up to this point we simply did not want to see, and to give us the courage to endure the pain of that vision. The result will certainly be painful, difficult at first, because it will be a death, and death is always painful, but it is an entering into the tomb of Christ, and the good news is that the tomb is empty. Christ rose. The result of this will be a new life, a resurrected life with a much deeper joy. We will begin to see the hell we lived in up to that point, sort of like Ebeneezer Scrooge after he woke up from his ordeal. Life on the outside did not change at all, but he changed, and the result was a joyful existence from that point onwards, as opposed to the miserable and blind existence he led before, which was spawned by his own avarice, arrogance, and lack of generosity. He acquired a sense of humor and referred to himself as a blind fool, weighed down by the chains of greed and indifference, like his partner in business, Jacob Marley. He could see it now. His eyes were restored.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen of New York used to say that heaven and hell begin here; we create that heaven or hell for ourselves, and it really boils down to love of others. The greater our refusal to exit ourselves so that we remain the center of our own lives, the more we will be weighed down in misery, in our own hell, and the sad thing is we won’t really understand that it is a miserable hell, until we are on the outside. But the more we transcend ourselves in a self-forgetting exit of self in a genuine love of others, the greater will be the joy in which we live.
Deacon Doug McManaman
I received the following objection to a comment I posted on a Catholic Forum, a comment that I posted here under the title Manufactured Outrage.
Your comment regarding bad manners when a guest in another’s house made me immediately think of the encounter at the well. Was our Lord exhibiting bad manners when he said to the Samaritan woman, “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews”? How wonderful it might be if our Pope could occasionally make such Christlike remarks! Speaking clearly (yes, and respectfully) about the challenging and unique claims that the Gospel makes to each hearer should surely be an important part of the Church’s ecumenical dialog with the people of the world?
This was one of the better and more challenging objections.
The first point that comes to mind as a possible response to your objection is that “who” is speaking makes a world of difference. It was Christ who said to the Samaritan woman at the well: “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews” (Jn 4, 22). Jesus is that salvation who is “from the Jews”, the offspring that will crush the head of the serpent (Gn 3, 15). He is the Son of God, the Word who reveals (makes known) the otherwise “Unknown God”. However, you and I and the rest of us are sinners. That’s important. There are many things that Jesus could and did say that you and I could not say, without a hell of a lot of audacity and presumption. I wouldn’t dare tell anyone to “Come, follow me”, as he did with Matthew. The specific instructions he gave the Twelve were the following: “And preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without pay, give without pay.” In other words, our proclamation is to be of the good news of the kingdom, and it is to be accompanied by deeds that prove our words. Our deeds are our words, or at least they are supposed to be, and those deeds are to be healing, that is, life giving deeds. And that’s what he said we will be judged on, not on the dogmas we adhere to (See Mt 25, 31ff). So it’s not about “You are not on the path to God, but we are, because Christ is the Truth, and we are Christians”. Many Christians are not on the path to God, and many who are not Christian are very much on the path to God.
As for being a guest in someone else’s home, he said: “As you enter the house, salute it. And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.” Singapore invited Pope Francis into their country. They received him, and Jesus said “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me”. Singapore, a country in which the majority (more than 80%) are non-Christian, received Christ, welcomed him in the very act of welcoming Francis. And so, you want Francis to respond by saying something to the effect that “Your religions are deficient”? Christ never instructed any one of his followers to say that nor anything like that–nor is this what he said to the Samaritan woman. He did say: “You are the light of the world”. What does a light do? It shines. It shines silently, without words. There’s something to that adage, perhaps falsely attributed to Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel, use words if necessary”. Singapore did not invite me to their country, but they did invite Pope Francis. They know what he stands for; he’s the vicar of Christ; his life is about Christ and nothing but. So what more does anyone want from him?
Does anyone really think he should not have said “all religions are paths to God”? And that “only our religion is a path to God”? A religion is, by its very nature, a path to God, it is an act of the virtue of justice, that is, the highest part of the virtue of justice, which is the virtue of ‘religion’ (rendering due worship to the gods, as Aristotle would say). Salvation, however, does not come through a religion, but through a Person, namely Christ, the Christ that they invited into their country when they invited Pope Francis. But to speak and act “in the name of Christ” means to speak and act in the Person of Christ, that is, in the Spirit of Christ. The Our Father, the most important prayer, does not mention the name of Christ, but the entire prayer is in the Spirit of Christ. We are not called to proselytize, but to speak and act in the Spirit of Christ. American Catholics have been far too influenced by American Evangelical Fundamentalism that insists that only those who explicitly acknowledge that “Jesus is Lord and Saviour” will be saved and that all others who do not explicitly adhere to that proposition will not be saved. We don’t believe that in the Church. A person can be living in the Spirit of Christ (in the name of Christ) without any explicit awareness of the fact. As I have said before, I do know a number of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh students of mine who I would say are holier than I am, holier in the sense of more charitable, more patient, more humble. Their holiness, I am convinced, comes from Christ, the fount of all holiness, the fount of divine grace, which is the indwelling of the Trinity. How did divine grace end up within them, outside of the sacraments? Perhaps Aquinas has an answer. In the Prima Secundae, he writes: “Now the first thing that occurs to a man to think about then, is to deliberate about himself. And if he then direct himself to the due end, he will, by means of grace, receive the remission of original sin: whereas if he does not then direct himself to the due end, and as far as he is capable of discretion at that particular age, he will sin mortally, through not doing that which is in his power to do. Accordingly thenceforward there cannot be venial sin in him without mortal, until afterwards all sin shall have been remitted to him through grace.” S. T. I-II, q. 89, a. 6.
God is not limited by the sacramental system. God saves, and He can and does save outside the visible boundaries of the Roman Church. And if others are going to want Christ, they will have to encounter a loveable and attractive Christ in us who claim to be his followers. Gandhi was the exception: “I love your Christ” he said. “It’s Christians I have a problem with”.
Francis proclaims Christ always every day, but Francis, much to the chagrin of those who would like a safer and more bourgeois Catholicism, tends to stress the social and economic repercussions of embracing the gospel and our duty to work towards a universal fraternity.
My question is: “What challenging and unique claims do you want Francis to make that he apparently is not making?”
Deacon Doug McManaman
I have often wondered how long an Archbishop of the Church–say, an Archbishop of a large American city like Philadelphia–would put up with a priest under his authority who, instead of trying to help the faithful understand their Archbishop, regularly wrote columns in the parish bulletin correcting and reprimanding his Archbishop for writing things that he happens to find “confusing”. I suspect not too long. I would also think that such a priest might be a source of scandal for the faithful. But for such an Archbishop to engage in this kind of behaviour towards the Holy Father, of all people, would in my mind constitute an ugly and reprehensible double standard.
I still have a difficult time understanding the current preoccupation with “clarity” and “precision”, in particular when it comes to pastoral-theological matters. “Francis says things that can only confuse!” Since when, I often ask myself, is the unutterable mystery of God something that we can “clarify”? Are you clear on the Trinity? Are you clear on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist? Are you clear on the mystery of divine grace? Try teaching the fundamentals of the Catholic faith to a group of Hindus and watch how confused they become. The Catholic faith is very confusing. God became man, that is, the Second Person of the Trinity became man, not the First nor the Third; Jesus is two natures, but one Person, so we can say that God died on a Cross, to redeem us from sin…. Huh? What does that mean? That’s not clear. I can’t get my head around that. And is it a bad thing that I cannot get my head around it? Or to be expected? When we are baptized, we enter the tomb of Christ. Really? Does that make sense? That’s not clear to me. Is it clear to you?
Moreover, the very fact that we have Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, among others, who are holier (more charitable, thoughtful, humble) than you and me is mysterious, given that we are baptized and receive the Eucharist regularly. How do I deal with this theological aporia? Perhaps I can deal with it very simply, precisely, without any confusion and insist that they are not really holy, because they have no grace within them, after all, they are not baptized and still have original sin. Or, I can say that this mystery is to a certain degree beyond me at this time and that any way I choose to try to explain it will remain relatively unclear and imprecise, certainly unsatisfying to the Catholic triumphalist who is comfortable neatly dividing the world into “us and them”, the chosen and the less fortunate who only wait to be formed by our peculiarly Western Christ and Western way of expressing our religious experience.
Yes, Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, but it is up to us to prove it. “In your face” Catholicism is not heroic, and shouting out verses of scripture like some street evangelist on the corner of Yonge and Dundas is hardly what Christ means by proclaiming the good news of the gospel—at least I thought so. And Pope Francis understands this well, unlike many other prominent Catholics who have been more influenced by American Evangelical Fundamentalism than they are willing to admit. We prove that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, by being Christ, by carrying in our bodies the death of Christ so that the life of Christ may be made manifest in us (2 Cor 4, 10). Christ the Word gives us himself so that we, our entire self, might become him, the Word. Evangelization is not apologetics or a short theological lecture from a microphone. It is relationship; for religion is ‘relationship’. That is the kind of evangelization that is going to bring about a universal fraternity, not Q & A, and certainly not the finger wagging/in your face/we have the fullness of truth whereas you have only splinters/ kind of Catholicism that so many would like to see from our Holy Father. If we have the fullness of truth, our non-Christian brethren will see it; they will notice that we are different, and they will want what we have. If we are no different from the self-righteous religious sectarians they are familiar with in their own traditions, they’ll remain indifferent and will continue looking for something more, but elsewhere; our clever and skilled arguments and pretentious diction will leave them unmoved.
Deacon Doug McManaman
Christ has always been the center of Pope Francis’ life and writing. Furthermore, Christ is everything that the religions of the world are searching for. As G. Studdert Kennedy points out, the Messianic passion is not limited to the Jews; we find it in all the great religions of the world. Having said that, let’s not forget that the Pope is a guest in someone else’s home. They invited him there, they received him with great joy and great love. Now, if Francis believes what St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians, namely that “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”, then in receiving Pope Francis into their home with great joy and love, they received Christ with joy and love, whether they knew that explicitly or not. When you are a guest in another’s home, you do not say things like “Our religion is better than yours”, or “You have only a sliver of the Eiffel Tower, whereas we have the whole Tower”, etc. That’s just bad manners. Evangelization is not the same as apologetics. A pope is not a traveling academic, but a father, and his life is less about abstract theological problems than it is about relationships. As Christ said: “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”
Here’s something that Studdert Kennedy wrote in 1920, 40 years before Vatican II will begin to move in this direction:
“I do not think there is any doubt that we have grossly underrated the moral and spiritual worth of other religions, and have allowed prejudice to blind our eyes to their beauty, and to the foreshadowing of Christ which they contain. It is a tragedy that we should have allowed a spirit of almost savage exclusiveness to have blotted out for us the revelation of God contained in earth’s million myths and legends, so that Christians have regarded them almost as though they were the inventions of the evil one. It is a disaster that we should have lumped all other faiths together and called them “pagan”—dismissing them as worthless. It is disastrous because it has distorted our missionary methods and delayed the development of the world religion. It has made us seek to convert the East not merely to Christ, but to our peculiarly Western Christ, and to force upon other peoples not merely our experience of Him, but our ways of expressing the experience. It is disastrous, too, because it has bred in us the spirit of intolerance and contempt for others which is one of the chieftest obstacles to the union of the world”.
Deacon Douglas McManaman
The gospel reading today (Jn 6, 53, 60-69) is a very interesting part of the Bread of Life discourse. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” The expression flesh and blood was a Jewish expression that meant the whole person. And for the Jews, to share a meal is to enter into communion with all those who are at the same table eating from the same source, the life source which is the food on the table. So what Jesus says here is really quite remarkable. Christ mysteriously gives us his entire self to eat, to consume, and all of us who are sharing in this same meal are becoming one with each other. There is a profound union that takes place between us all. When we leave this Church, we really are relatives, of the same blood, we are genuine brothers and sisters.
It is very interesting to think about the nature of the Mass as a whole. The procession of this liturgy really began with each one of you, when you left the house to come to Mass. That’s the beginning of the procession, and you were all headed to the same place, which is the altar. The formal procession at the beginning of Mass is merely a continuation of your procession, and of course it is a procession to the altar, the table of sacrifice. Our procession at the beginning, with the altar servers, represents the procession of the entire community.
At the offertory, when a family comes forward to present the gifts, the bread and wine, it is really the entire community who offers bread and wine, represented by that family, and that bread and wine is the product of your labor, and it represents all the sacrifices, the difficulties, the headaches, the work, the sweat, that you all had to carry out this past week. The bread and wine is the fruit of your labor–the money you offer each week pays for that bread and wine. So that offering symbolizes the fruit of your labor. It is brought forward, Father ___________ receives it. What does he do with it? He too offers it.
Now a priest is one who offers sacrifice. But the offertory is the sacrificial offering of the community, your offering. That means you, all of you, are priests. And we know that is true from the first letter of Peter. He says: “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” In every baptism we perform here, there is an anointing that takes place, one just after the pouring of the water, in which the baby is anointed with sacred chrism. The words are: “As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet and King, so may you live always as a member of his body.” Each one of you here who is baptized shares in Christ’s priesthood, and you exercise your priesthood during the week at work and here at Mass when you offer your suffering, sacrifices, and the fruits of your labor. You are a Royal priesthood, as Peter says. Catholics of the Latin West are not used to hearing this or seeing themselves this way–it is more emphasized in the Eastern rites.
Father __________, who is a ministerial priest and who represents this parish, takes your offering and offers it to Christ, who takes it, and changes it into himself, his own body and blood in the act of offering himself to God the Father, which is the sacrifice of the cross made present here and now, and then it is re-distributed back to us as food, a different kind of food, no longer bread and wine, but his body and blood. We consume it, and we become what we consume. We become him. We walk out of this Church as Christ figures.
St. Paul says in his letter to the Galatians: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”. You and I are taking Christ into this world, when we leave here. We have become him. And so it is not necessary to get preachy and start trying to convert or recruit others. That’s not evangelization. Our task is to just be what we have become, namely Christ, and allow ourselves to become more and more like him, and so if others who have nothing to do with the faith love what they see in you, then they love what you have become, and that means they love Christ without even knowing it.
That’s evangelization, proclaiming the good news of the risen Christ. The world out there doesn’t know explicitly that the gospel is being proclaimed to them when they meet you and come to know you, but you are that proclamation, your life, your character, the kind of person that you are. If you have become Christ and they love you, then they love Christ without them necessarily knowing it explicitly. Whether that brings them back to Mass or not is not our concern; that’s God’s problem, not ours. When we make it our problem, we tend to turn people off and turn them away, because we become pushy and obnoxious.
It’s really a great gift to be able to believe in the power of the Mass, that what we receive is really and truly Christ himself under the appearance of bread and wine, that in receiving that host, we are joining ourselves literally to the Second Person of the Trinity, his body, blood, soul and divinity. Many people don’t have that faith, as we saw in today’s gospel. The teaching was too difficult for them to accept, so they left. Imagine walking away from Christ. But what a gift that the twelve did not walk away. They had that faith. They knew he had the words of eternal life. And Christ said it: “No one can come to me unless it is granted them by my Father”. If you and I believe in the Sacrifice of the Mass, it is not as a result of our own decision, our own choice. It is because God the Father gave us the ability to believe: “No one comes to me unless the Father draw him”, he said. We’ve been drawn to Christ, not because of anything we did in our lives. It is sheer gift. We did nothing to deserve it. It was pure mercy. And it is the greatest gift we can receive from him. I remember a priest friend of mine was pulling my leg one day, I was probably about 18 years old at the time, and he said to me “I’m leaving the priesthood”. I was so shocked and disappointed. He strung me along for a minute or so, then he smiled and I knew he was just kidding around. He said to me: “Listen, priesthood is the 2nd greatest gift that God has given me”. I was relieved. But then I asked him. 2nd greatest gift? What’s the first greatest gift? And he said: “faith”. Faith is a gift. If you have it, you are not the origin of it. It was given to you by God. We could have rejected it, but if we received that gift, that free reception and cooperation is itself a grace. We might die without any money at all, destitute, poor, bankrupt, very sick, mentally ill perhaps, but if we die with the gift of faith, we are the greatest of success.
Deacon Douglas McManaman
An important objection was raised recently during a parish bible study, in the context of a discussion on the development of Church teaching and biblical interpretation. The idea was that in the face of disputes, uncertainties, and disagreements on the meaning of a particular scriptural text or Church teaching, or in the face of historical evidence that a common teaching of the Church has changed, etc., a person might well be tempted to just give it all up and dismiss the Church altogether and live life without her. This is an important point, and it is indeed a real temptation among certain kinds of people, particularly when they are challenged to grow in their understanding of the faith; for as we know, many people after Vatican II did just that, i.e., left the Church and began spending their Sundays on the golf course–all those changes were just too much for many of them.
I would like to reflect on that objection in light of some principles that might shed light on the problem. I think of my parents. They did a lot for me, a lot of good, and I have to be grateful for that. In fact, they did more good than I am fully cognizant of. However, as time went on in my life, I came to the realization that some things they believed and taught were not quite correct. There’s no getting around this for anyone. In some matters, my own mother came to that realization about herself and changed some of her views and attitudes later in life. Other things were left unchanged in her mind, but in my mind, she was mistaken about some of those things, i.e., fundamental moral matters. The overall orientation of her life, however, was on point, but it also took me years to see that her new outlook on many aspects of human life were right after all. In short, I finally came to see that although she was mistaken about some matters, she was right about other more important things that she was trying to get me to see when I was younger, but too much lacking in experience to see it at the time. But that does not change my relationship with her. It would be a serious mistake if I were to dismiss my parents and turn my back on them because I discovered they were mistaken about this or that–especially when my own life has been a series of errors, among other things.
The same is true for certain individuals who were a tremendous influence in my life. One in particular, a priest, was the reason I returned to the Church, and as a young man, I looked up to him and probably idealized him. But after a number of years, I began to see that certain theological opinions he held were not quite right, at least in my mind, and recent developments in Catholic teaching, I believe, corroborate that. But that does not change the fact that he was a major influence in my life and an important friend. For me to turn my back on him and dismiss him outright because I discovered that certain opinions he held on certain issues–which I embraced at the time as a result of a certain trust I had placed in him–turned out to be mistaken or not entirely true, would be completely unwarranted. I believe that there is something analogous here with respect to our relationship to the Church. Moreover, a similar idealization of the Church can and often does take root in certain people, which often boils down to an ecclesiological supernaturalism if you will.
The Perfection and Imperfection of the Church
The Church is Christ’s Mystical Body (1 Cor 12, 12-26). Christ is the head, while the Church is his body. The Church is also the Bride of Christ, and bride and groom are “one body” (Eph 5, 31-32). The soul of the Church is the Holy Spirit (St Augustine), and it is by virtue of this fact that the Church is truly “holy”, consecrated, sanctified, and thus capable of sanctifying. It is grace that sanctifies, and grace is the indwelling of the Trinity. And so, the Church is a means of grace, a means of holiness.
But the members of the Church, including clergy of all ranks, are human beings who suffer from the same moral and cognitive limitations that constrain humanity. We (you and I) are members of the Church insofar as we are united to her, and we are united to her through baptism, which imparts the grace of regeneration–we are a new creation (2 Cor 5, 17); we have become adopted sons/daughters of God, given the supernatural virtues as a sheer gift, as well as the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and we have been anointed priest, prophet and king in the course of the baptismal rite. However, the individual members of the pilgrim people of God have a more or less limited degree of holiness; for we are “on the way”. There are tendencies within us that are simply inconsistent with holiness; we are often imprudent, unjust, intemperate, and lacking courage. To that degree, we are unholy (Cf. Rom 7, 15-19). We are truly members of the Church insofar as we are in a state of grace, but we tarnish the face and figure of the Church to the degree that we are sinful. This includes all members of the pilgrim people of God, i.e., clergy and non-clergy alike.
We belong to this Church because we belong to Christ, but our insertion into Christ is rather imperfect. The Church is the sacrament of Christ, the visible sign of Christ that contains what it signifies (Christ), but the sinfulness of her members, like an eclipse, will block his light and warmth, leaving behind a degree of darkness and cold in the world. Hence, our sins cause harm, and they have far reaching social repercussions. That is why many people in the world find the notion of the “holiness of the Church” to be rather counterintuitive; for if we look in the direction of the Church’s humanness, we clearly see her imperfection, and we really can say that the Church has defects, because you and I really do belong to the Church and you and I really are defective.
It is a great gift and a sign of Christ’s humility that we are made a part of his body, which is holy, which has a perfect holiness insofar as the source of that holiness is perfect, namely, the Holy Spirit. And yet, it should not be overlooked that the Church is also imperfect insofar as we belong to her. We are “being perfected”, but are not yet perfect, and we are being perfected only because Christ, the principle of that perfection, is himself perfect, and the Church as his Mystical Body has the power to move us towards that eschatological perfection: “Jesus offered one sacrifice for sins and took his seat forever at the right hand of God; now he waits until his enemies are placed beneath his feet. By one offering he has forever perfected those who are being sanctified” (Heb 10:12-14). If the Church were merely human, like any other institution that is basically good, then it would not be the case that we are “being perfected”–except in a very qualified way, for no other institution can lead us to holiness. But the Church can lead us to holiness because she is holy, for she is united to Christ–if she were not, there would be no Church. United to Christ, she is united to the Holy Spirit, who ensouls her. It is on this side alone that we come up against the imperfection of the Church.
Statements of Faith, Common Doctrine, and Theological Opinion
But how does all this bear upon Church teaching? Is it possible for the Church to be mistaken on a particular teaching as our parents, for example, have been mistaken in certain particular matters? Given that most people employ the phrase “Church teaching” without precision, to encompass the entire network of Catholic teaching, I am going to argue yes, but precision and distinction are required in order to understand this realistically. There is a distinction between 1) statements of faith and what pertains to the faith; 2) common doctrine; and 3) theological opinion. Determining which teachings belong to which category can be a difficult undertaking and a person can certainly be mistaken in this, making matters all the more confusing, but let it be said at the outset that common doctrine and theological opinion are not irreversible, that is, they can and have indeed changed over the centuries. What pertains to the faith of the Church, however, is irreversible, although ever open to increasingly deeper intellectual understanding and newer formulation, to the point at which we may even come away with the realization that we barely understood this teaching at all, or certainly not as we might have thought we did. Some, however, mistakenly argue that because statements of faith and what pertains to the faith are irreversible, Church teaching as a whole is irreversible. But this merely narrows the meaning of “Church teaching” to a very limited aspect of the Church’s overall doctrinal product.
Piet Fransen S. J. writes [all emphases mine]:
Christ has entrusted his revelation and his salvation to his Church, and he has promised that he himself and his spirit would never forsake this Church. This promise does not, however, mean that the Church, as a community of actual and historical people, cannot be affected by the particular sociological, cultural and philosophical structures and tendencies of any particular age. … And because this Holy Church of God is also a Church of sinners, it is not impossible that these various influences, acting through particular historical forms and customs, should have obscured Christ’s own essential idea of the Church and brought it into danger. The Church has therefore the obligation, in every period of its history, of reflecting again on Christ’s original message, and of purifying itself from the various accretions that may have been accepted in a previous generation.” [1]
Just as a human person who is baptized and in a state of grace but at the same time cognitively limited, as we all are, will also grow throughout his or her life, moving past theologically immature notions –“When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things” (1 Cor 13, 11), – so too does the Church, founded by Christ and given the charism of infallibility, grow throughout her historical existence, putting aside inadequate formulations for the sake of those that more accurately express who and what She is and believes. On the level of common doctrine, the Church has been wrong about many things. For example, consider the question of salvation for infants who die without baptism. In section 34 of the International Theological Commission’s The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised, we read:
In the Church’s tradition, the affirmation that children who died unbaptised are deprived of the beatific vision has for a long time been “common doctrine”. This common doctrine followed upon a certain way of reconciling the received principles of revelation, but it did not possess the certitude of a statement of faith, or the same certitude as other affirmations whose rejection would entail the denial of a divinely revealed dogma or of a teaching proclaimed by a definitive act of the magisterium. [2]
Section 33 of this same document offers the following more precise and interesting points on development:
The history of theology and of magisterial teaching show in particular a development concerning the manner of understanding the universal saving will of God. The theological tradition of the past (antiquity, the Middle Ages, the beginning of modern times), in particular the Augustinian tradition, often presents what by comparison with modern theological developments would seem to be a “restrictive” conception of the universality of God’s saving will. In theological research, the perception of the divine will to save as “quantitatively” universal is relatively recent. At the level of the magisterium, this larger perception was progressively affirmed. Without trying to date it exactly, one can observe that it appeared very clearly in the 19th century, especially in the teaching of Pius IX on the possible salvation of those who, without fault on their part, were unaware of the Catholic faith: those who “lead a virtuous and just life, can, with the aid of divine light and grace, attain eternal life; for God, who understands perfectly, scrutinizes and knows the minds, souls, thoughts and habits of all, in his very great goodness and patience, will not permit anyone who is not guilty of a voluntary fault to be punished with eternal torments”. This integration and maturation in Catholic doctrine meanwhile gave rise to a renewed reflection on the possible ways of salvation for unbaptised infants. [3]
Another example of common doctrine and theological opinion is the issue of owning slaves. Actions speak louder than words, and the Church tolerated chattel slavery for centuries. It was St. Augustine’s theological opinion that Jesus Christ did not make men free from being slaves [4], and in 1639 Pope Urban VIII purchased slaves for himself from the Knights of Malta. It was Pope Leo XIII who finally got on board with the abolitionists. Christopher Kellerman, S.J., writes:
And yet it was once widely known, and still is among historians of slavery today, that the Catholic Church once embraced slavery in theory and in practice, repeatedly authorized the trade in enslaved Africans, and allowed its priests, religious and laity to keep people as enslaved chattel. The Jesuits, for example, by the historian Andrew Dial’s count, owned over 20,000 enslaved people circa 1760. The Jesuits and other slaveholding bishops, priests and religious were not disciplined for their slaveholding because they were not breaking church teaching. Slaveholding was allowed by the Catholic Church. [5]
Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, 8, offers some very important points regarding the historical process by which Church teaching develops:
This tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.
The expression employed here, namely “growth in understanding”, often implies that what we previously understood to be the case is no longer so. This we designate as ‘truth status revision’. In light of new information, p changes from T to F, or F to T. This is typically preceded by ‘reopening’: here new information leads us to become unsure of the truth-status of a proposition we had previously classed as true or false, thus, the truth status of a proposition at issue is reopened (p changes from T or F to I). [6]
The Church is a visible entity, a body, a living organism that moves through history, one that grows and develops, and it is within a particular and changing historical context that the Church always speaks, addressing the faithful in very specific situations and employing propositions that communicate what it is she asserts for the sake of the faithful and the issues that arise from within those situations. Outside of that context, it is easy to lose the precise meaning of those assertions. In other words, conciliar statements as well as encyclicals have a very limited range of meaning. A specific teaching expressed in propositions may say one thing, but in doing so the Church intends to assert something whose meaning is correctly apprehended within a very narrow historical range. In this light, we can say that the official teachers of the Church do not always grasp the scope of an idea expressed in a proposition, at a given moment in history. As an example, consider some of the statements condemned in the Syllabus of Errors in 1864; for it is indeed true, and not false as the Syllabus literally says, that “it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship” (SE, 77), and it is true, not false, that “it has been wisely decided by the law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship” (SE, 78). Religious freedom and freedom of conscience are ideas that have a much larger scope than what Pope Pius IX understood and needed in order to make certain assertions at the time. Moreover, it is true indeed, not false, that the Roman Pontiff ought to reconcile himself and come to terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization (SE, 80). Indeed, some aspects of liberal thought and modern civilization are, contrary to appearances, anti-progressive and uncivilized, but all of us must “come to terms” with modern civilization–the question here is what does it mean to “come to terms with” and be “reconciled to”? The Church cannot be “reconciled to” modern civilization in terms of capitulating to the cultural mores of the times, or relinquishing her mission to proclaim Christ and call the world to ongoing religious and moral conversion. The context in which these statements were condemned as errors is not the context of today, and so what was condemned was an understanding of terms very different from and much more circumscribed than what we currently understand by these terms.
Some will argue that the change in the Church’s teaching on usury was not a revision, but an example of a simple development. I am convinced that it is an instance of truth status revision, but a development at the same time.[7] Belgian canonist Zeger Bernhard van Espen defined usury as “Usura definitur lucrum ex mutuo exactum aut speratum” [the actual or expected profit from a loan].[8] Usury, I would argue, is an example of ‘common doctrine’. Espenius argues that usury is forbidden by natural and divine law insofar as theft is prohibited (the unlawful taking of another’s goods). It was eventually discovered that charging interest on a loan was a way to establish equitable profit. The early Church did not see this because there was no concept of time preference with respect to money, and so this is a matter of ‘issue acquisition’: new concepts needed to formulate a contention that could not previously be entertained at all are developed (p changes from U to T or F or I).[9] Specifically, ‘time preference’ refers to the basic principle that human beings typically prefer the enjoyment of a good, such as money, in the present to the enjoyment of that same good in the future. The value one places on one’s own money today is very different than the value one places on it ten years from now, and so charging interest on a loan is a way of maintaining equitable value. The simple fact of the matter is that the statement “charging interest on a loan is morally wrong or sinful” is not necessarily true. It may very well be sinful, but it may not be.
What is particularly interesting is that today, usury is still condemned by the Church; for what constitutes usury in the eyes of the Church is something far more sinister than the simple practice of charging interest on a loan, such as odious debts, irresponsible lending, avaricious dealings that in the end lead to loss of assets, hunger and death: “Although the quest for equitable profit is acceptable in economic and financial activity, recourse to usury is to be morally condemned: “Those whose usurious and avaricious dealings lead to the hunger and death of their brethren in the human family indirectly commit homicide, which is imputable to them.”[10]
An example of another common teaching that has changed is the refusal of Catholic burials for persons who took their own lives. With more data on the nature of clinical depression and the degree of responsibility of those who suffer from it, it became rather obvious that the common practice was unwarranted.
It should also be pointed out that “common doctrine” as it is used here is not the same thing as the “teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium”. The two are distinct; for in section 892 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we read: “Divine assistance is also given to the successors of the apostles, teaching in communion with the successor of Peter, and, in a particular way, to the bishop of Rome, pastor of the whole Church, when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a “definitive manner,” they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals.” The past teaching on owning slaves or children in limbo or the nature of money did not and do not lead to a better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals. Hence, fervent Catholics should really give up the intellectual gymnastics required to lessen their gravity.[11]
Concluding Thoughts
As an administrative body, the Church is no more competent than any other institution, at least not necessarily. In fact, she is very often less competent than most, because she is slow to progress; other corporations have incentives that move them to quickly seek ways to improve business, so to speak, incentives often lacking in some churches and dioceses. The charism of infallibility does not extend to administrative competence, but unfortunately that is often what many people encounter first, namely, the visible product of her administrative decisions, and this can be and has been a source of scandal and great suffering for many people—i.e., administrative decisions regarding the protection of sexually abusive priests, cooperation with abusive governments in the forced removal of indigenous children from their families in order to be placed in residential schools that showed zero reverence for their cultural heritage, encouraging the usurpation of indigenous lands (Alexander VI), or Johann Tetzel and the corruptions that spawned the Reformation, or bishops, blinded by partiality and who support clergy friends who prove to be lazy, condescending opportunists, ultimately uncommitted to their parishioners and who do little more than spend parish funds, etc. There seems to be no end to the variety of ways the administrative Church causes the faithful to suffer.[12]
To see the Church in her holiness, we need the eyes of faith; for without the light of faith, we behold only the humanness of the Church, her imperfections and sins. We need to see both. If we refuse to behold her sinfulness, we begin to live in “unreality”, and many people in the past and present have chosen to live in “unreality”-that was one of the many factors that contributed to the clerical sex abuse scandals; people simply refused to see imperfection and depravity where there was imperfection and depravity, for there was an idealization of the clergy, rooted in a bad theology which gave rise to the notion that the ordained clergy are “ontologically superior” to the laity, a “metaphysical clericalism” that unfortunately has not entirely disappeared.[13] So, when we speak of the holiness and perfection of the Church, we are not in any way referring to the holiness and perfection of the clergy. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh writes:
We know that the Church, for those who look at it from the outside, is a body of people possessed of a common faith, proclaiming the same doctrine, celebrating the same mysteries in churches like the ancient churches—bodies with bishops and clergy within a long line of apostolic succession. But this is what any outsider can see of it. We need that kind of description for people to be able to locate the Church in space, in time, in the same way we could describe the outside of a cathedral, a church, or any other place for people to be able to recognize it. But unless they enter into this place, whether it be a church or a museum, they will not ever understand what it is about. And if we enter the Church, what we discover is that the Church is a strange, living organism, simultaneously and equally human and divine. The fullness of God abides in it. And also, all that is human is in it—what is fulfilled and what is in the making, what is tragic and what is already shining with glory. [14]
The hierarchy naturally tends to conserve and thus to “conservatism” (Congar), for the sake of maintaining order and unity, but the Church ultimately cannot impede development, as Dei Verbum makes clear. But there is always a temptation, rooted in a desire for stability, security, and certainty, to treat Church teaching as though it were a finished product. In the gospel of John, Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit, which he will send, will lead the Church to the complete truth: “the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth” (16, 13). This is a leading, a moving forward; the Church grows in her self-understanding in a way that is perfectly congruent with the epistemic structural pattern of human knowing, beginning with sense perception, and thus limited by time and place and the specific questions we seek to resolve. We progress as a result of new and specific problems to solve, dialogue, new insight, error seen in retrospect, and adjustment, etc. That is why the history of science is a graveyard of discarded theories and hypotheses–the price we pay for its benefits. We see something similar in the Church, i.e., clear evidence that the Church is being guided by the Holy Spirit, but we also see that She is being “led to the complete truth”, and not that She has “arrived at the complete truth”.
There are teachings we can be quite certain of, such as irreversible statements of faith, i.e., the Church’s Christological and trinitarian formulations, fundamental moral principles, etc. The Church is not going to come out one day to declare: “Ooops! We’re sorry, but we got the Trinity wrong; Sabellius was right after all, there is no real Trinity of Persons, just three modes”, nor is the Church going to come out and declare that abortion is morally okay after all, or that the Eucharist is really nothing more than a symbol, not his actual body and blood, soul and divinity, as was always taught. The Church as a whole has the charism, exercised by the magisterium, to lead the faithful in matters that bear upon their salvation. However, the theological and moral implications of these starting points, namely articles of faith, are only gradually unpacked as new circumstances and new questions arise and make possible a better and more profound understanding of the deposit of faith entrusted to the Church. For there is no denying that it took centuries for the Church to see that specific behaviors, such as owning slaves or executing criminals, are inconsistent with the gospel and contrary to the dignity of the human person. In other words, it took centuries to understand the implications of the very principles the Church embraces in embracing Christ, at least with respect to these and other issues. It is indeed embarrassing that the Church took so long, but one benefit that should come out of this is that Catholics should be wary of tribal Catholicism and the temptation to speak with a rhetoric of certainty and thus come across as having all the answers, as if the Roman Church need not enter into dialogue with the sister Churches of East and West.[15] Faith brings us right into the heart of mystery, and mystery is intelligible but dark, and faith in the Church that Christ established remains a dark habit (John of the Cross); it is not the same as ecclesial idealization, which is akin to the parental idealization of childhood. [16]
Notes
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Intelligent Theology, Vol 1: London, DLT, 1967. pp. 40-41.
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International Theological Commission: The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised, 34. 2007. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html
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Ibid., 33.
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Daniel J. Camacho writes: “After Augustine returns to North Africa and takes up positions of Christian leadership, he continues to speak about slavery with increasing degrees of authority. In his view, enslaved Christians shouldn’t agitate for actual freedom. “That is as it should be,” Augustine says. “[Christ] has not made slaves free, but turned bad slaves into good slaves.” Augustine’s sermons stress the importance of mercy. But in response to the concern that this could be misconstrued as a lack of discipline, he preaches: “That’s not what I’m saying…and if you see your slave living badly, what other punishment will you curb him with, if not the lash? Use it: do. God allows it. In fact he is angered if you don’t. But do it in a loving rather than vindictive spirit.” Saint Augustine’s Slave Play
https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/saint-augustines-slave-play/#:~:text=%E2%80%9C%5BChrist%5D%20has%20not%20made,stress%20the%20importance%20of%20mercy. See also Margaret Mary. “Slavery in the Writings of St. Augustine.” The Classical Journal 49, no. 8 (1954): 363–69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3292914.
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Christopher J. Kellerman S. J., “Slavery and the Catholic Church: It’s time to correct the historical record”. Feb 15, 2023. America. https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2023/02/15/catholic-church-slavery-244703?gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADlfgTctyNESzXFV_N-uIZ5L8wS6w&gclid=Cj0KCQjwh7K1BhCZARIsAKOrVqHq4fuicL974W4efrHWFV1xmxkg5uRuDxiZWRurSxIFPLjB21M51CkaAmCVEALw_wcB
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See Nicholas Rescher. Empirical Inquiry. London: The Athlone Press, 1982, pp. 90-91.
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For an honest and thorough discussion of this question, see The Church and the Market, by Thomas Woods Jr. pp. 109-122.
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Orthodox Church Fathers: “Excursus on Usury”. https://orthodoxchurchfathers.com/fathers/npnf214/npnf2121.html#:~:text=The%20famous%20canonist%20Van%20Espen,divine%2C%20and%20by%20human%20law. (Aug 16, 2024).
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Op.cit., Rescher.
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Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, sec. 341.
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html#Gods%20gratuitous%20presence -
See Lumen gentium, 25.
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There are three specific ways that we can look at the humanness of the Church. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh writes: “…the Church is also human. And in many ways, not simply in one way, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ we have a vision of Man: man as he is called to be, as he truly is, a human being at one with God. Less than this, man is not a human being in the full sense of the word, according to the mind of the Scriptures. Christ is the only true man because he is the only perfect man. And perfect means fulfilled, brought to perfection. But in the Church there is also another dimension of humanity: us—imperfect, in the making. But we are imperfect in two different ways: we may be imperfect while we strive God-wards, or we may be imperfect when we turn away from God. It is not a matter of success; it is a matter of direction. Saint Ephraim of Syria says that the Church is not a body of saints, it is a crowd of repentant sinners. And by repentant we do not mean wailing sinners, but people who have turned God-wards and move God-wards, who may fall but will stand. But there is also another dimension in our humanity, which is neither the tragic dimension of sin, repentance, and struggle, nor the glorious dimension of the saints. There is a dimension that is mean, that is small, that in a way is a betrayal and a renunciation—the fig tree covered with leaves and barren. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Churchianity vs Christianity. St Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Kindle Edition, pp. 13-14.
13 “In the first chapters of the Draft the traditional picture of the Church predominates. You know the pyramid: the pope, the bishops, the priests, who preside and, when they receive the powers, who teach, sanctify, and govern; then, at the bottom, the Christian people who instead receive and somehow seem to occupy second place in the Church. We should note that hierarchical power is only something transitory. It belongs to our status on the way. In the next life, in the final state, it will no longer have a purpose, because the elect will have reached perfection, perfect unity in Christ. What remains is the People of God; what passes is the ministry of the hierarchy. In the People of God we are all joined to others and have the same basic rights and duties. We all share in the royal priesthood of the People of God. The pope is one of the faithful; bishops, priests, lay people, religious: we are all the faithful. We go to the same sacraments; we all need the forgiveness of sins, the eucharistic bread, and the Word of God; we are all heading towards the same homeland, by God’s mercy and by the power of the Holy Spirit. But as long as the People of God is on the way, Christ brings it to perfection by means of the sacred ministry of the hierarchy. All power in the Church is for ministering, for serving: a ministry of the Word, a ministry of grace, a ministry of governance. We did not come to be served but to serve. We must be careful lest in speaking about the Church we fall into a kind of hierarchism, clericalism, episcopolatry, or papolatry. What is most important is the People of God; to this People of God, to this Bride of the Word, to this living Temple of the Holy Spirit, the hierarchy must supply its humble services so that it may grow and reach perfect manhood, the fullness of Christ. Of this growing life the hierarchical Church is the good mother: Mother Church.” Bishop Emile Josef De Smedt’s Intervention at Vatican II.
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Op.cit., Anthony.
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Piet Fransen writes: “We are also profoundly conscious of the precariousness of human truth. This is all the more so with “divine truth,” since any human formulation of it necessarily falls short of the richness and fullness of the divine reality. If it is permissible to talk of infallibility in relation to man, it must first be a qualification of an activity, and not of a proposition, and that under the guidance of the infallible God. Infallibility is a property of a free person; never of a sentence, since any sentence as such, without its context, can be understood and read in many different ways. Whenever we are allowed a participatory form of infallibility, then this infallibility does not lie so much in the formulation itself but in the concrete intention, the affirmative direction, the so-called ‘significance’ of this particular formulation” (See “Unity and Confessional Statements. Historical and Theological Inquiry of R. C. Traditional Conceptions,” in Hermeneutics of the Councils and Other Studies. Collected by H.E. Mertens and F. De Graeve. Leuven University Press, 1985. P. 279-280).
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“Faith does not mean that we cease from asking questions; it means that we ask and keep on asking until the answer comes; that we seek and keep on seeking until the truth is found; that we knock and keep on knocking until the door is opened and we enter into the palace of God’s truth. It becomes more and more important as years pass by and men’s minds grow that we should prove all things, while holding fast to that which is true. Christ calls us to that courage which bids us give up the snug little homes which sloth and prejudice have built for our minds, our pet infallibilities, in which we could rest and cease to think wrapt in peaceful peace . . . We are afraid—of course we are afraid. “If that is not true,” we say, “where am I? How can I be sure of anything? If the Bible is not literally true, word for word, if the picture of God which my forefathers had is a false picture, where am I? What is there settled? Where can I live? There is nothing before me but the open sea where I must journey helpless and exposed to every wind that blows.” And that is true! The world is out on the open sea exposed to every wind. And I am out on the open sea with it, but I do not care because there is One who walks beside me and before me and behind me, and God, who caused the light to shine out of darkness, has shined into my heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We are called upon, the Church is called upon, to go out onto the open sea with Christ, leaving behind the snug homes of patent infallibilities which the guns have battered into dust, and follow Him until we find the truth. We are not in complete darkness. We are not without a Guide. Theology changes, but religion remains. To fold your hands and say, “God knows best,” to take refuge in unreal platitudes, is to cower away from the light that God, through the prayers of the saints, through the courage of the scientists, through the cunning of inventors, and through the tireless patience of the thinkers, has been giving down the ages. The task of the Church and of her children, which is peculiarly her task and peculiarly theirs, is to gather up from every corner of the world all the light that can be found, and set it blazing on this great problem of evil, in order to find the best partial solution for the children of our day, and the one which will provide the surest foundation for the complete solution which the passage of the ages, under God, will bring to light. We must seek for light in every corner of God’s universe, never forgetting it is God’s universe, and that in it we can find revelation of Himself. We must go down to life’s dirtiest and dingiest depths, and up to its fairest and most fearful heights; we must face all the facts—the facts that make us shudder and the facts that make us laugh, the beauty that makes us gasp with wonder and the ugliness that makes us shrink in horror, the good that makes us want to worship and the evil that makes us bow our heads in shame; we must look at them all, face them all, asking always, “What is God like”—the God who is Creator and Ruler of a universe like this? We must not do what we have done, invent a God and then make life to fit Him, blinding our eyes to what does not suit our purpose; creating an absolute by the negative process of subtracting all human limitations from the human being, and choosing what we want to consider limitations, and what we do not. An imaginary God may be very beautiful, but He will not stand the tears and terror, and the fires that are not quenched. We must have Truth.” Geoffrey A. Studdert Kennedy. After War, Is Faith Possible?: The Life and Message of Geoffrey “Woodbine Willie” Studdert Kennedy . Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Deacon Douglas McManaman
The Church that Christ established is a missionary Church. Each one of us is a missionary. We have been sent. In fact, the word “Mass” comes from the Latin missa, from mittere “to let go, send”. At the end of the Mass, we are sent out into the world for a specific purpose, and this happens just after “eating and drinking”, consuming the bread of life.
This Eucharist is given to us for the purpose of strengthening us for our own unique mission. Recently, I visited a 93 year old woman in the hospital; I knew her from the retirement home that I regularly visited during the pandemic. She eventually moved away to live with her daughter and family–they made a little apartment for her in their basement. This woman has 16 great grandchildren. I thought 16 grandchildren would be impressive enough, but great-grandchildren? That is rather impressive. This woman was in the hospital because her heart rate was increasing to unusually high levels and she was having breathing problems. She told me that when she first arrived at the hospital, she was ready to give up and call it quits, like Elijah in the first reading. But she was renewed once again by the love of her family; she saw how much they loved her and needed her, and her health began to improve. I came to see her and to bring her communion. Her health began to improve because she could see that there was still work for her to do: her great grandchildren needed her, her grandchildren needed her, and her own children as well.
But what did they need her for? She’s 93 years old. It’s not as if she can throw a baseball around or go out and watch her grandchildren play hockey. No, she can’t function like she used to. What they need is her. Her presence. Her very person. We think too much in terms of function. If an automobile can’t function, what is it good for? Nothing. Sell it to the junkyard for parts. Same thing for a computer, or any other utility. But a human person is not a utility. A human being is a presence. And only love discerns and recognizes personal presence, and only love experiences the need for a personal presence. To love a person for what he or she does for us is not love at all; genuine love is the love of another for that person’s sake, not for the sake of what that person can do for me in terms of function. That this person cannot function in the same way is not relevant; his or her presence is enough.
The only one who is allowed to use us is God. He uses us. He has a mission for each person. Of course, God loved each one of us into existence for our own sake, not merely as an instrument to be used. But He calls us to love, to share in the work of ushering in the kingdom of God, and we do that by allowing God to give us our place in this world, and to consume the food he puts in front of us to strengthen us for that work, which is the bread of life, the Eucharist. And the Eucharist is him. It is Christ. No longer bread and wine as it was at the beginning of Mass, but changed into his very self. And that strengthens us, because it is a presence, a personal presence, and it is the presence of a person strengthens us. The Eucharist is the Personal presence of Christ, and it is given to us to consume, so that he may dwell within us, so that our presence to others is mingled with his presence.
During the pandemic I brought communion to one lady who was a parishioner at our Church for years and years, but she could no longer get to Mass, which is why we came to her. Her reaction after receiving communion was something to see; it was like she hadn’t eaten in 24 hours and had just finished a nice meal; it was like she had put down her knife and fork and then let out a sigh of satisfaction. And this was just a communion host, not a large meal, so this was not a physical satisfaction, but a spiritual one, and she was aware of her spiritual hunger for Christ’s presence in the sacrament, which is why upon receiving communion, one could see a sense of fulfillment on her face and in her physical reaction. That is precisely where we want to get to in the spiritual life, to the point where we hunger for the Eucharist, to the point where if we were to go more than a week without communion, we’d feel it, we’d be uncomfortable. When we are on holidays in a foreign country, city, or province, the first thing we will do, if we are at that point, is look up where the nearest Church is and find out Mass times. After all, the etymology of the word ‘holiday’ is holy day. It is a day set apart for rest, and genuine rest is always a resting in God. As St. Augustine says on the first page of his Confessions: “O Lord, you made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in You”.
Deacon Douglas McManaman
The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves is found in each of the four gospels. In John, it appears in the same chapter as the bread of life discourse, and so this account of the feeding of the multitude brings together two aspects of the Christian life, namely Eucharistic devotion and devotion to the poor, the sick, and those in need. The two must go together. In history, they have often been separated.
Matthew’s version of this miracle is slightly different. We read: “When Jesus heard of it [John the Baptists’ death], he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. The crowds heard of this and followed him on foot from their towns. When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with compassion for them, and he cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples approached him and said, “This is a deserted place and it is already late; dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves” (Mt 14, 13-15).
Two things stand out in this text. First, Jesus had compassion on them. The Greek word for compassion used here is esplagchnisthe: a yearning from the bowels, from the very core of one’s being–a yearning that is “gut wrenching” as we say in English. The more we love, the more we will suffer; the less we love, the more indifferent we become to the sufferings of others. Lovelessness gradually inclines us to organize our lives in a way that removes us from the sufferings of others, so that we remain unaffected by them. But Christ was always moved with compassion, which is painful; it is a longing, like hunger pangs: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, …how many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you were unwilling!” Mt 23, 37). There is simply no love without suffering.
Now John tells us that God is love (1 Jn 4, 16). Moreover, Jesus says to Philip: “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14, 10). And so, if Jesus, at the sight of a large multitude who have nothing to eat, is moved with a gut- wrenching pity, then it follows that suffering exists in the heart of the divinity. There is suffering in God the Father, for Jesus is everything that the Father can say about himself; he is the Word who definitively reveals the heart of the Father. And so, just as there is great rejoicing in heaven, at the repentance of just one person, so too there is suffering and sorrow in the heart of the divinity. This is mysterious, and it is beyond the grasp of human reason alone, that is, completely beyond the reach of natural theology (philosophy).
The next thing to note in this text is Jesus’ response to his disciples’ suggestion to dismiss the crowds so that they can buy food for themselves. He says: “…give them some food yourselves”. This is important; for he lays this task on our shoulders. And of course, the disciples see that this is too large a task for them to carry out. At this point, Jesus shows them that in such situations, they have to rely on him. We give him the little that we have, and he multiplies it and achieves what is beyond our ability to achieve on our own. But we have to act first, that is, we have to first give him the little we have, and he’ll do the rest.
The Church has always understood herself to be a missionary Church, sent out to all nations to proclaim the good news of the kingdom, which is a mission ordered to the salvation of the human person, and which therefore includes tending to the needs of the body. Even the monasteries were involved in charitable outreach that involved feeding the hungry, and in some cases actually going out and tracking down lost and lonely souls wandering after dark and in need of emergency shelter (See Charles Montalembert. The Monks of the West: From St. Benedict to St. Bernard. London: Nimmo, 1896, p. 227). Moreover, the first hospitals in the west were the monasteries. In short, genuine love of God is inseparable from the love of neighbor.
The Eucharist is Christ, joined to the matter of this world. The humble matter of ordinary bread is changed into his very body and blood in the eternal act of offering himself to God the Father for the sake of our salvation, in order that we might become him, that his sacrificial spirit of compassion may become our own. That is why those who truly belong to Christ are moved to works of charity, to tend to the needs of the suffering. And that’s how we will be judged. Not on whether we were in agreement with certain theological propositions, nor will we be judged on our acts of piety. We will be judged on how we tended to the least of Christ’s brethren: the sick, the imprisoned, the hungry, the isolated, the lonely and forgotten.
And so, it follows that Eucharistic devotions are not ends in themselves. The tendency to make them ends seems to be a perennial problem. In 1918, British army chaplain G. Suddert Kennedy wrote:
I wonder if in our teaching about it we have not tended to make the Sacrament an end in itself rather than a means to an end, the great end of Christ-like life. It has seemed to the man in the street that we were trying to persuade him that regular and frequent attendance at this Service would of itself avail to save his soul, and secure him entry into heaven hereafter. We have failed, in fact, to connect the Sacrament with life. There is a great gulf fixed between the altar and the street, between the sacred and the secular. The man in the street feels instinctively that this is wrong. He feels that salvation depends upon character and not upon ceremonies. He has at last outgrown magic and mechanical religion. He regards it with the deepest suspicion. He may not be a good man himself, but he is quite sure that religious people ought to be good, positively and pre-eminently good. He will have nothing to do with religion which does not make character, and show itself a means to that end. He is sure that the Sacrament was made for man, and not man for the Sacrament (The Hardest Part: A Centenary Critical Edition, p. 135-136. SCM Press. Kindle Edition.
Father Louis J. Cameli makes the same point: “Eucharistic devotions cannot be ends in themselves. The history of Christian spirituality instructs us that all devotions—whatever their form—are always relative to another, higher dimension of faith. … Each time we celebrate the Eucharist, the stakes are high. With our world and our human family, we struggle before the enigma of sin constituted by both our personal failures and the world’s brokenness. We struggle before the enigma of death that seems to signal our extinction and the utter futility of our lives. When we participate in the Eucharist, when we engage and join the mystery of the one who dies and rises and is victor over sin and death, we worship with him in spirit and in truth and join in his victory” (“The bishops are right: We need a national eucharistic revival. But the current plan isn’t enough”, America Magazine, March 21, 2023).
This gospel for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary time ends with Jesus escaping from the crowd, because they wanted to “come and carry him off to make him king”, and he knew that they did not understand what it means to be Christos. For them, it meant power, a throne of glory, a turban set in gold with jewels, pageantry, exaltation and separation from suffering, etc. But for Christ, the cross is his throne, his crown is made of thorns, and his heart is pierced and wounded with compassion for the sick, the hungry, the imprisoned, and the lonely (Mt 25, 31-46).
Homily for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Deacon Doug McManaman
I’d like to focus on one point from this gospel reading, specifically the incident involving the woman who for twelve years was afflicted with hemorrhages: “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured”, she said to herself, and she did just that and was cured. Jesus said to her: “Your faith has saved you”.
This was not a faith in dogmatic statements, or an intellectual assent to certain theological propositions or dogmas. It was belief that this man could heal her, a faith that all things are possible with him. But what is particularly interesting is that Jesus felt power (Gk: dunamin: ability) had gone out from him. This means he became weaker; he was depleted to a certain extent. In other words, her healing was at Jesus’ expense. He had to become less for her to become more. This is a fundamental law or pattern of healing. If others are to become more through us, we will have to become less. And that is why this depletion, this weakening for the sake of healing the other will achieve its fullness on Good Friday, when Christ dies completely depleted and utterly abandoned: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”. This is the mystery of our redemption: Jesus, who is God, is abandoned by God. God the Son experiences complete abandonment by God the Father, and the fruit of this abandonment is the healing of all humanity, past, present and future, that is, the redemption of the human race; the forgiveness of sins: “…unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (Jn 12, 24).
There are so many images and instances of this law all around us. Think of a candle: it provides light and warmth, but it can only do so when it is lit, and when lit, the candle begins to burn, to melt and deplete, becoming smaller and smaller. The heat of the candle slowly destroys it. If the candle were to decide to preserve itself at all costs, to maintain itself, it would always look new, tall, handsome and wholesome, like the new Easter candle, but it would never give off light and warmth.
Think of a woman who carries a child for nine months and gives birth; if she does this enough times, it becomes more and more difficult for her to maintain a youthful figure. After a while, she is too busy raising her children for her to worry about her looks, at least the way she looked as a young woman. Again, to bring life to another has a cost to the self.
The vocation of teacher is also a call to bring healing and life to one’s students, but teaching is highly stressful, so much so that many people leave the profession. It’s hard for people on the outside to understand that, but every teacher knows the stress, and sufferings, the hard knocks that are a daily part of their lives. But if a teacher were to organize her own life in a way that minimizes or eliminates that suffering–which I have seen often enough over the course of my career–, she would ultimately end up not having done a great deal of good for others, like a candle that refuses to burn. And of course, it is the same with nurses and caregivers.
It is very natural for us to try to organize our lives in order to eliminate suffering, difficulties, stress, things that weaken and deplete us, and many take this road, but the fruit of this is a life that gives off very little light and warmth. Unfortunately, there are spiritualities in the Church that put this forth as a principal goal, namely, to achieve a state of continual peace of mind, and to use “peace of mind” as a criterion for determining what course of action to take–”If a course of action will not bring you peace, then it is not the will of God for you”. But that of course flies in the face of everything we know about Christ from Scripture, who said “anyone who wishes to be a follower of mine, let him take up his cross and follow me”, or, do not think I have come to bring peace, but a sword, or, when he said to Peter: “…when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go” (Jn 21, 18), or, blessed are those who are persecuted, hated, ridiculed, on my account, rejoice and be glad; or, do not take the road that is smooth, wide and easy, the road that many take, the road that leads to perdition, rather, take the narrow way that few people are attracted to.
And so, we need not be afraid of suffering, difficulties, and the stress that slowly depletes us, because these are the signs that we share in the life and death of Christ and that our life is truly life giving. At the end of our lives, we will look back at those sufferings, disappointments, and stresses and assure ourselves that if we had to do it all again, we’d change nothing. Our only regret will be that we had put too many limits on how deeply we were willing to share in Christ’s way of the cross.
https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_409shepherdsgoodandbad.html
Homily for the 4th Sunday of Easter
Deacon D. McManaman
Before the resurrection, Peter denies Christ three times and hides; after the resurrection, Peter is filled with the Holy Spirit and speaks with great courage. In Acts, chapter 4, he faces the Sanhedrin, the assembly of rulers, elders and scribes and proclaims the risen Christ, completely indifferent to the sufferings that will follow. What Peter said to the rulers was direct and he offended them, but his bold proclamation before his arrest led to the conversion of thousands. That is the true face of the Church. In the gospel of John, Jesus says:
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away – and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.
Not every shepherd in the history of the Church was willing to put his life on the line for the good of the sheep; we need not be scandalized by this. I am reminded of the Office of Readings, specifically the readings from the 24th and 25th week in Ordinary time, which typically occurs in the fall. Every day for two weeks straight, the second reading is taken from St. Augustine’s Sermon 46, entitled On Pastors. Whenever I read this, I always think to myself that it must be a very difficult two weeks for some bishops, because every day Augustine goes after those shepherds who are primarily out for themselves, who are indifferent to the poor and the suffering and who tailor their preaching so as not to upset the wealthy–and in this way fail in their prophetic mission.
On the Friday of that week, he says:
But what sort of shepherds are they who for fear of giving offense not only fail to prepare the sheep for the temptations that threaten, but even promise them worldly happiness? God himself made no such promise to this world. On the contrary, God foretold hardship upon hardship in this world until the end of time. And you want the Christian to be exempt from these troubles? Precisely because he is a Christian, he is destined to suffer more in this world. … You, Shepherd, seek what is yours and not what is Christ’s, you disregard what the Apostle says…You say instead: “If you live a holy life in Christ, all good things will be yours in abundance.
That sounds so much like the gospel of prosperity, which a number of Evangelicals preach today. Instead of serving the poor and the sick, they demand 10% of their income and insist that if they would only accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, their lives would prosper financially. It would seem that something similar was happening in the fourth century.
But this goes on for thirteen days straight in the Office of Readings. It is unrelenting. An example of a good shepherd who does not run from the wolves because he loves the sheep more than he loves himself is Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was canonized a saint in 2018 by Pope Francis. His preaching and visible solidarity with the poor was rather distressing to many of his brother bishops in El Salvador, who were playing it safe for the sake of avoiding any kind of blow back from the wealthy oligarchy. Romero said:
It is very easy to serve the word without making the world uncomfortable. A word that is very spiritual, a word with no commitment to history, a word that can be heard in any part of the world because it doesn’t belong anywhere; this kind of word doesn’t cause problems, doesn’t give rise to conflicts.
Romero also said:
Charity is above all love of neighbor. And, even though one is a bishop or a priest or has been baptized, if that person doesn’t follow the example of the Good Samaritan, if, like the bad priests of the old law, he goes a roundabout way so as to not encounter the wounded body, not touch such things, “be prudent, let’s not offend anybody, more gently,” then, brothers and sisters, we are not carrying out what God commanded: we are going a round-about way. …The Christian commitment is very serious. And, above all, our commitment as priests and bishops obliges us to go out and meet the poor wounded person on the road.
And finally, he says:
Let us pray, but not with the kind of prayer that alienates us, not with a kind of prayer that makes us avoid reality. We should never go to church as a flight from our duties on earth. Let’s go to church to get strength and clarity to return to better carry out our tasks at home, our political duties, our tasks in the organization. This is a healthy orientation to these things of earth. These are the true liberators.
The result of Romero’s fidelity to his office was that he was shot while saying mass on March 24th, 1980. It is easy to see why Pope Francis loved Romero and had him canonized–and we could quote from Pope Francis well into the next hour also, challenging his brother bishops to a greater openness and orientation to the world outside, recognizing Christ in the suffering, the poor and the oppressed.
Another interesting line in the same chapter of the gospel quoted above is the following: “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, …” The people, the faithful, know the voice of the good shepherd, the voice of Christ. They know intuitively that Catholicism is about Christ, it’s not about us, it’s not about the clergy. It’s all about Christ who identifies with the sick, the suffering, the poor and those who struggle. I’ve been very impressed by a number of people in my own parish over the years, for although their children have stopped coming to Mass for various reasons–as a result of being personally scandalized by the reports of clerical sex abuse, which got a lot of media coverage in the 80s and 90s, or the role of the Church in the residential schools, or because of a bad experience with a priest, etc.,–, these parishioners stayed the course, always coming to Mass to hear the word of God in the readings and receive Christ in the Eucharist, because one some level they were able to distinguish between the voice of the good shepherd and the voice of the hired hand. So many people mistakenly believe that Catholicism is about the Church. Catholicism is not about us–we’re all just sinners, baptized and redeemed, forgiven and always struggling. It is about Christ, the second Person of the Trinity who drew close to us by joining a human nature to himself, who suffered and died so that we might find him in the midst of our own suffering and death, and in the sufferings and poverty of others.
Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
Deacon Doug McManaman
https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_412holytrinity.5.25.2024.html
It was always a lot of fun teaching philosophy and showing students how human reason is able to demonstrate the existence of God, just through deductive reasoning alone, especially Leibniz’ proof: “If the Necessary being is possible, then it exists”. However, what human reason is able to know about God in the end is very limited; basically, there is a First cause, a Necessary being, uncreated, and there is only One. It is very abstract. With the Old Testament, however, we see that God revealed Himself to Abraham and made a covenant with him; God reveals Himself in His historical relationship with Israel. However, although the God of the Old Testament is much richer in content than the God of philosophy, He is still absolutely One.
And yet, with the coming of Christ, God is revealed as a Trinity of Persons. This is new, and it is the central mystery of the faith: that God is One, but at the same time three; not three beings, not three spirits, but three distinct Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This is incomprehensible to us, because in our experience, when we encounter three distinct persons, we encounter three distinct beings. But in God, we have three distinct Persons, but One being. God is one, but mysteriously He is an eternal community of Persons.
And it was the 2nd Person of the Trinity, God the Son, who joined himself to a human nature in order to reveal the face of God the Father, to glorify the Father, because the Son loves the Father with a perfect, eternal, and infinite divine love. The Father in turn loves the Son with an eternal, perfect, and infinite divine love. That love is a distinct Person, the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. All three Persons are distinct, and yet all dwell within one another (perichoresis).
Divine grace is nothing other than the indwelling of the Trinity. Through grace, we are brought into this eternal community of Persons. In the Eucharist, we receive Christ, who is God the Son, and so we begin to live his life, to love the Father with his love. But his love is the Holy Spirit. So, the Eucharist brings us right into the heart of the Trinity. The Trinity dwells in us, and we dwell within the Trinity, and eternal life will be a complete and perfect and eternal life within this Trinitarian community.
I know of a Deacon who ministered to prisoners, and for Mother’s Day one year he purchased a box of Mother’s Day cards for the inmates to send to their mothers, and every one of the cards was used up, taken and sent. But then Father’s Day was coming, and he did the same thing. This time, however, there was no interest in filling out a Father’s Day card and sending it off. Unresolved anger towards the fathers. The more I came to know human beings through my work as a teacher, a chaplain, and a deacon in these past 37 years, the more I came to understand how important fathers are in the emotional well-being of their children and how much human brokenness and woundedness in the world is rooted in a broken relationship with fathers. The life of Christ is a revelation of his love for his Father and the Father’s love for the Son, and that love includes us because we came from God the Father, through the Son, and Christ came to seek out what was lost, namely humanity, in order to restore us to the Father, that the Father may be known and glorified for eternity.
My first 10 years of teaching were in the Jane and Finch area of Toronto, and so we had some very difficult challenges in the classroom. There was always a gang of criminals in the school, and one day I was talking to one of them who said to me that he’s an atheist. About a month later I was given about 65 brown scapulars, and so that day I decided to tell my students the story of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Simon Stock, the meaning of the brown scapular, consecration to Mary, etc. I only had 65 scapulars, but 90 students, so I wanted to be sure to give one only to those who really wanted one. In the middle of the day, during one of my classes, two of those gang members that I mentioned were peeking through the window of my classroom door. I thought to myself: “I wonder what they want”. I went to the door and asked them: “What’s up?” The one just grunted: “Scapular”. “What?” I said. “Scapular. Scapular. We want a scapular”. “Oh”, I said. “You want a scapular”. Word got around that I had some, and they wanted one; for these things are an important part of their culture. So, I was in a bit of a dilemma. Then I remembered that he said he didn’t even believe in God. So, I said to the one: “You told me a month ago that you don’t even believe in God. So why do you want a scapular?” I’ll never forget his answer. He said “I don’t believe in God, but I believe in Mary”.
I was so confused at that moment, but something in me just said give them a scapular. But I thought about what he said for the rest of the day. And of course, it finally occurred to me: this is the genius of Catholicism. He doesn’t believe in God, but he believes in Mary. The only person in his life who really loved him was his mother; his father left him as a child, and that pain has everything to do with his anger and his criminality, and his atheism. The role of the Father is to introduce his children to the love of God the Father, to be a channel of that love, and when that goes wrong, that affects the child’s ability to relate to God the Father. But he was open to Mary.
St. Maximilian Kolbe speaks of the Holy Spirit as a kind of Motherhood in God. He refers to the Holy Spirit as the Uncreated Immaculate Conception, the uncreated love conceived by the Father and the Son. Kolbe says that the greatest desire of a mother is to see father and son united in love. This led him to say that the Holy Spirit, the uncreated Immaculate Conception, is that Motherhood in God, who is the Personified love between the Father and the Son. Mary, of course, is the created Immaculate Conception. To love the created Immaculate Conception is to begin to love the uncreated Immaculate Conception.
The life of the family is a reflection of the Trinity. Christ’s life is all about the love of the Father, the love that the Father has for us, a love that has no limits, a love revealed in the sending of God the Son into the world, to seek us out, to die for us, to redeem us by his death, and to rise from the dead as the definitive sign that he has conquered death for us, so that we might have life and have it abundantly. This life is about learning to allow ourselves to be loved like that, to be loved by the Father, who, like the woman who lost a drachma, goes searching for it and will not stop searching until she finds it—another image of God as woman. Once we begin to know that love, which, as St. Augustine said, is a love directed to us as if there is only one of us in existence to love, once we begin to taste that love, our life becomes truly wonderful, peaceful, and joyful. The mission of the father in the family is to be a channel of that love, to dispose our children to receive that love of the Father. And the task of the children of those earthly fathers is to forgive the sins of their fathers and to honor them, even while acknowledging their flaws and imperfections. Honor father and mother is the one commandment that has a promise attached to it: “…so you may live a long life”. Unforgiveness destroys, but forgiveness brings new life.
Deacon Douglas McManaman
After all these years, some people still speak about evolution and creation as though the two stand face to face on a level field, so to speak, and that the two are mutually exclusive. Many also have a tendency to think that stochastic processes and creation are incompatible and thus irreconcilable, insofar as creation is planned, while randomness appears to be unplanned. The following is an attempt to show that this is a misconception.
Evolution and creation are two ideas that belong to two different orders, if you will. Evolution belongs to the essential order while creation belongs to the existential order. Allow me to explain. We speak of the essence of a thing, and the essence describes “what” a thing is, and this includes how it acts and thus how it manifests itself, that is, how it reveals its nature (science is a study of the natures of things). For example, an organism is a living kind of thing, because it self-ambulates, and presupposing evolution we can say that organisms are the kinds of things that evolve via a process of random mutation and natural selection. We can say more about specific organisms than this, but whatever we accurately say about them along scientific lines simply allows us to understand “what” they are more deeply.
However, we can know “what a thing is” (essence) without thereby knowing “whether or not it exists” (existence). The very act of existence of a being is not included in that thing’s essence–we can know what a dinosaur is without apprehending its existence outside the mind. This is true because whatever belongs to a thing’s nature or essence belongs to it necessarily. For example, the ability to reason belongs to the essence of a human being, and so if there is a human being on the other side of this door, then we can say that he or she necessarily has the ability to reason, at least to some degree. If the act of existing belonged to the essence of a being, such as the being behind this door, then we’d have to say that this being, whatever it is, exists necessarily, and thus could not not exist, and thus would have always existed. We would then say that such a being is a “necessary being”. But if we are talking about a being whose essence is really distinct from its act of existing, then such a being need not exist and can indeed “not exist”, such as this cat, or that person, or that tree, etc. We refer to such beings as contingent (may or may not be), as opposed to necessary.
Aquinas argues that even if we suppose that the universe always existed, it would still require a creator, and the reason is that the universe is the sum of the contingent beings that make it up. In other words, every being in the universe is a contingent being, a being whose essence is really distinct from its act of existing. Furthermore, no contingent being can bring itself into being, for that would require that a being exist before it actually exists, which is absurd. And no contingent being can impart the act of existing on what simply does not exist (creation ex nihilo) because a contingent being can only act within the limited powers of its nature, and existence does not belong to the nature (essence) of a contingent being–otherwise it would not be contingent, but a necessary being (eternal and having always existed). And so it follows that only a non-contingent being, that is, a necessary being, can impart the act of existing and thus bring into being what simply does not exist.
To impart the act of existing is not the same as reproduction or generation. In order for an organism or two to reproduce or generate offspring, that organism must exist, and it must be sustained in existence–for a contingent being (i.e., an organism) cannot perpetuate its own act of existing any more than it can impart the act of existing. To perpetuate or sustain the act of existing is not the same as sustaining one’s life; I can sustain my life by eating and drinking, but in order to eat and drink, which are activities, I have to first exist and be sustained in existence. Only then can I act.
This is why creation is not to be thought of as something that occurs at the beginning of time, and thus at the beginning of a horizontal timeline. The evolutionary process began at some point on a horizontal timeline, but not creation. Creation is to be thought of vertically, not horizontally. For example, I decide to run from point A to point B, and that can be depicted horizontally. But in order for me to complete the change from point A to point B, I must first exist and be sustained in existence throughout the change, because activity presupposes being or existence, for it is always a “being” that acts. So too with evolution. In order for an organism to evolve–which tells us something of the essence of the thing–, it must first exist, and an organism is not its existence; rather, an organism “has” a received act of existing. And so evolution requires creation (essence depends on existence). An evolving organism is a contingent being that is a determinate kind of thing (essence), but one which also has a received act of existing, an act of existing that does not belong to that thing’s nature.
Finally, stochastic processes belong to the essential order, not the existential order. For example, popcorn is a certain kind of food, but think of a bag of popcorn kernels spread out on a table. It is not possible for you or me to know which kernel is going to pop first, which one second, third, etc. Their popping is going to be entirely random. However, randomness is order–it is only a disorder relative to us (epistemic disorder, not a real disorder). The reason we say this is that real disorder is unintelligible; it cannot be the object of study, but the random popping of the kernels will follow a normal frequency distribution, which is an ordered and intelligible distribution, and so although we do not know which popcorn kernel is going to pop at any one time, we do know that there is a 68% chance that it will pop within a certain time span, and a 95% chance of popping within a slightly larger time span, etc. Or, we can put it like this: 68% of the kernels will pop within this specified time frame, 95% of the kernels will pop within this wider time frame, etc.[1] If the whole bag of popcorn is nothing other than the sum of its parts and the behavior of the whole is ordered, then the parts are also ordered, but in a way that exceeds our ability to understand at this point–perhaps even forever.
And so it is perfectly coherent that God (the Necessary Being) would bring into being a universe that includes organisms that evolve as a result of stochastic processes. There is nothing disordered in this. The difficulty in conceiving this results from regarding the two orders, essence and existence, as mutually exclusive or merely on the same plane. The two orders are simultaneous, with the one depending on the other–essence depending on existence.
Notes
- If we listen to popcorn popping, we can hear the distribution, which when plotted on paper, looks like a bell curve. After a short time, one kernel will pop, then another, then two others in rapid succession, then three, four, and soon it will begin to sound like machine gun fire, and then it will slowly die down in the same way it began. The standard deviation is calculated using the following formula: √ [∑ (X1 – X)2 + (X2 – X)2 + (X3 – X)2 + ….. /n], where X stands for the mean (i.e., 73 seconds), while X1, X2, X3, etc., stand for each observed result; for example, X1 is the first popcorn kernel that popped, and this took place at the 30 second mark. So, (X1 – X)2 is (30 – 73)2 + (30 – 73)2 + (35 – 73)2 + etc.,. /173. The standard deviation is the square root of the sum of each observed result minus the mean squared, divided by the total number.
Deacon Douglas McManaman
The very notion of the development of Catholic doctrine is of course very much in discussion today and will be for a long while yet, but it seems to me that the concept itself is a bit messier than is typically depicted. To illustrate what the development of doctrine looks like, analogies from the realm of art are often employed. Here, the artist begins with a general background and proceeds towards increasingly greater detail and precision; similarly, the Church’s formulated teaching goes from the general and more certain to greater detail and precision as new questions and problems arise throughout the Church’s history.
This is certainly true as far as it goes, but this picture might in some small ways be too neat and thus not entirely true to the facts; an artist will often go back and erase or paint over parts of what he drew or painted, because as it stands, a particular part of the unfinished product will not, if left alone, help to express what the artist intends, and it is only afterwards that he recognizes the incongruity.
Our own individual self-understanding is always, for the most part, imperfect, vague and lacking precision, more or less correct, and it is in time that our self-understanding becomes more explicit and truer to what we are at our most fundamental level. This growth in self-understanding often involves discarding elements of that self-understanding that are inconsistent with our fundamental orientation–I eventually come to the realization that “this is not me”, at least not entirely so. Similarly, the Church is a living organism, and living organisms are self-correcting. This self-correction occurs in history, and it may take centuries for this living organism that is the Church to correct herself with respect to a particular matter, but this self-correcting process can and often does involve erasures of certain parts that distort and thus fail to express or articulate the Church’s deepest self-understanding, which becomes more explicit as time goes on.
For example, consider the following excerpt from the Council of Florence (15th century):
The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart “into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels”, unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock. The unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the Church’s sacraments of benefit for salvation, … and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.
There is here a clear ruling out of the further qualification of a person outside the visible borders of the Catholic Church who sheds his blood for Christ. However, let us compare this with the Second Vatican Council, section 15 of Lumen Gentium:
The Church recognizes that in many ways she is linked with those who, being baptized, are honored with the name of Christian, though they do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter. For there are many who honor Sacred Scripture, taking it as a norm of belief and a pattern of life, and who show a sincere zeal. They lovingly believe in God the Father Almighty and in Christ, the Son of God and Saviour. They are consecrated by baptism, in which they are united with Christ. They also recognize and accept other sacraments within their own Churches or ecclesiastical communities. Many of them rejoice in the episcopate, celebrate the Holy Eucharist and cultivate devotion toward the Virgin Mother of God. They also share with us in prayer and other spiritual benefits. Likewise we can say that in some real way they are joined with us in the Holy Spirit, for to them too He gives His gifts and graces whereby He is operative among them with His sanctifying power. Some indeed He has strengthened to the extent of the shedding of their blood. In all of Christ’s disciples the Spirit arouses the desire to be peacefully united, in the manner determined by Christ, as one flock under one shepherd, and He prompts them to pursue this end. Mother Church never ceases to pray, hope and work that this may come about. (LG 15)
So, although a person may not be in communion with the successor of Peter, he or she is nevertheless united to the Church by virtue of baptism, grace, prayer, love of scripture, even martyrdom, etc. The possibility of salvation is even extended to the unbaptized, to non-Christians (Jews, Muslims, and certain so called “atheists”):
Finally, those who have not yet received the Gospel are related in various ways to the people of God. In the first place we must recall the people to whom the testament and the promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh. On account of their fathers this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues. But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind. Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things, and as Saviour wills that all men be saved. Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel. She knows that it is given by Him who enlightens all men so that they may finally have life. (LG 16)
The various and subtle ways that a person can be related to the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ the Head, had not, at that point in time, dawned on the fathers of Florence; that will take another 500 years—unless of course there is buried somewhere textual evidence that shows otherwise, in which case the Florence fathers would have been the worst of communicators. It is easy to imagine that had they been given these two sections of Lumen Gentium in writing, the parchment would have ended up in the fireplace rather quickly.
This, I believe, is an example of a genuine development, which involves more than a greater attention to detail, but an erasure of sorts, a restating with parts left out, a “painting over” of a section whose formulation did not quite express the mind and heart of the Church, which was much better expressed at Vatican II. The fathers of the Council of Florence would not have recognized the value of these distinctions at the time, but the mind and heart of the Church is always much larger than the mind of an individual cleric or group of clerics, who although they possess a charism and as a whole constitute the organ of the charism of infallibility, are always limited by matter, geography and time.
Furthermore, the current self-understanding of the Church and her teachings are not solely communicated to us through conciliar texts. We all know the expression: “Actions speak louder than words”. We act on the basis of what we know and profess, and so not only do we often regret what we said in the past, which articulates what we thought was fundamental and true at the time, we also regret what we did in the past. Actions are a universal language. As Christ said: “You will know them by their fruits” (Mt 7, 16). This implies that fruits are indicative; they reveal. The Church does not sanction torture and killing as she once did (i.e., heretics), nor slavery, nor would the Church tolerate a Johann Tetzel today; a modern-day Luther would not fear for his life and would gladly visit Rome to explain himself, and Rome would listen. Every teacher knows that we teach first and foremost by our actions, because actions are words. Every person looks back on his own life and regrets what he or she said at one time or another, or how it was said, and this is true of the Church in the world. Further qualifications are a kind of erasure, that is, an instance of painting over an earlier brush stroke that was heading in the wrong direction.
Piet Fransen S.J. points out that a council is the Church in action at a given time and place in history, and that a dogma is not so much an endpoint as it is a starting point, a new beginning, and that it ought to be interpreted and reinterpreted in dialogue with the sensus fidei. Similarly, a brush stroke is not an endpoint, but a beginning. Dogmas are not free from historical evolution, and conciliar texts, like scripture, must be subject to the same kind of literary criticism, that is, the distinction between assertion and proposition is just as important for conciliar texts as it is for scripture.
In this light, it is a bit more difficult to articulate precisely what infallibility means. It is indeed a charism that belongs to the Church as a whole, and the magisterium is its organ. But, as Piet Fransen writes: “We are also profoundly conscious of the precariousness of human truth. This is all the more so with “divine truth”, since any human formulation of it necessarily falls short of the richness and fullness of the divine reality. If it is permissible to talk of infallibility in relation to man, it must first be a qualification of an activity, and not of a proposition, and that under the guidance of the infallible God. Infallibility is a property of a free person; never of a sentence, since any sentence as such, without its context, can be understood and read in many different ways. Whenever we are allowed a participatory form of infallibility, then this infallibility does not lie so much in the formulation itself but in the concrete intention, the affirmative direction, the so-called “significance” of this particular formulation” (See “Unity and Confessional Statements. Historical and Theological Inquiry of R. C. Traditional Conceptions”, in Hermeneutics of the Councils and Other Studies. Collected by H.E. Mertens and F. De Graeve. Leuven University Press, 1985. P. 279-280).
How this charism works on the ground is thus historical and dialectical, often a struggle that involves the faithful and everyone who is united in some way to the Church, and so it involves dialogue, an ability to observe the Church as a whole and listen, including those who are invisibly united and related to the Church, which in turn requires an openness to the world, a model of the Church hinted at by Pope John XXIII. This dialogue, Fransen writes, “should spread in four concentric circles over the entire world. The first dialogue is with the “members of the household of the faith” (Gal 6, 10), the members of the Church. In the second place, the dialogue with those who sincerely believe in Christ, but are still standing outside the unity of the Church. Next, the dialogue with those who believe in God but have as yet no knowledge of Christ. Finally, the dialogue with all men of goodwill, whatever their persuasion—provided they are sincere and have pity on “man and his woes”. (The New Life of Grace, translated by George Dupont, S.J. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1971, p. 187)
Many of the faithful, however, are afraid to bend, because they believe that if they bend, they will break, i.e., lose their faith, and that everything which belongs to my faith will now potentially make its way to the sewer. But this is a serious misconception. We have to allow God to bend our faith; for we believe in the gospel and through the gift of understanding we apprehend to some degree, through the light of faith that gives rise to that gift, the gospel that we embrace, but we do not apprehend it in its fullness. There are theological implications to what we choose to believe that have yet to be drawn out, and these implications, which make for a much richer understanding, may not be drawn out in our lifetime. But it cannot be denied that all our thoughts and dogmatic formulae fall short of the divine fullness, the inexhaustible mystery of God.
This question refers more to severe and never ending suffering, such as an infant born with a disability, or severe mental health issues, or the extreme tragedies of war.
Deacon Doug McManaman
This is the great question, and I deal with this all the time in my ministry to the sick, and there is no simple and straightforward answer. There are two levels on which to deal with this question: on the concrete level, and on a more abstract level. The more abstract the level of discourse, the greater the certainty we possess. As we move to the concrete level of everyday life and individual persons, the less certainty we possess.
So, when I have a person in front of me who is suffering from PTSD as a result of a tragic event (i.e., vehicle accident that ended in the death of a young child), or a person who has been battling depression all her life and has suffered terrible abuse throughout her life, and I am asked: “Why does God allow all this suffering in my life”, my answer is: “I don’t know”. And I’d be a fool to attempt to answer her question, for “Who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor?” (Is 40, 13; and quoted by Paul in Romans 11, 34). On this level, things are buried in mystery, and mystery has to be revered, not solved.
But, let’s move to a more general level. This is what we can be certain of: First, the God we worship is all-powerful, which means he can do whatever he wills–nothing limits his power. Secondly, God is Love (1 Jn 4, 7), which means he wants your greatest happiness.
If God was all-powerful, but not pure Goodness Itself (Love Itself), then God could very well bring about your greatest happiness, but he would not necessarily desire it (because God does not necessarily love you, that is, will what is absolutely the best for you). If, on the other hand, God is Love, but he is not all-powerful, then he wills your greatest happiness, but he simply does not have the power to bring it about. Parents typically know this feeling–we want the best for our children, but we are so limited in what we can do for them. However, the God we worship is both all powerful and absolute Love. This implies that whatever God chooses to allow to happen to you and to me in this life, he allows it ultimately for our greatest happiness. That is a conclusion that follows necessarily, but on a very abstract and general level.
However, why he allowed you to suffer this or that particular trauma, or why he allowed this child to be born with a severe disability, is entirely, completely, and utterly beyond my ken. I have no idea, and because I have no idea, I should not attempt an answer. But I can say that you and I will understand at some point, when we stand before God at the end of time. In fact, we can often look at our own past (retrospection) and discern something of the truth of this, for example, I often look back at my life and notice that my greatest disappointments in life have turned out to be my greatest blessings. I didn’t see that at the time, but I see it now. And so, it is important for us to remember these moments, especially during times of present day disappointments. God is all powerful and he can draw greater good out of the evils that plague us than had these evils never occurred. We know this is true in the case of our redemption. God became flesh in the Person of Christ; God the Son dwelt among us, and we crucified the Son of God. The tragedy of Good Friday was our salvation. As we hear during the singing of the Easter Vigil: “O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”
It’s just not possible for me to know all the factors involved in God’s decision to allow this or that to have happened in this or that person’s life. Human knowledge is profoundly limited. We can’t predict the future, and even trained meteorologists are unable to predict the weather beyond 7 days; the weather is a chaotic system, and so is life (a chaotic system is ordered, but too complex for us to grasp in all its details).
There is another angle from which we can look at this question, and this is more theological. Christ did not redeem us from sin through his preaching, i.e., his sermon on the Mount, nor did he redeem us through his miracles. He redeemed humanity through his suffering and death (the Paschal Mystery). The greatest gift he gives us is the gift of faith, which is the gift by which we are given the capacity to believe him, to know him, to surrender to him, to follow him, and following him is always a sharing in his “way of the cross”. So the greatest gift we can be given is to share in his saving work; we participate in his “saving of the world” through our sufferings. This is hard to explain to people–impossible to explain to those who have little or no faith. But consider the life of any saint in the history of the Church–their lives are filled with suffering, frustrations, set backs, obstacles, and in many cases, the suffering is the result of the actions of the Church–this is true of St. Padre Pio and the sufferings he underwent as a result of the clerical envy of his brother priests of the surrounding diocese of Foggia, who should have known better, or as a result of opposition from the Vatican, who were often misinformed about Padre Pio. He, like other saints, shared in the saving of souls, and he did so to a certain degree through his words and his miracles, but primarily through his sharing in the sufferings of Christ. There are people among us who suffer, and we often know nothing about it, and there is great prosperity in parts of the world, and it is very possible that this prosperity is the fruit of their sufferings, at least in part. Some priests from Africa have said to me that they believe certain African nations, torn by war and constant civil strife, have been chosen to share, in a unique way, in the redemption of the world today. To see this and embrace this requires faith, however.
The sufferings of this world are all rooted in human sin, i.e., selfishness, the desire for power, hatred, unforgiveness, anger, the inordinate desire for pleasure and ease, indifference to those who are without, individualism, indifference to injustice, etc. So we are the cause of suffering in the world, but as Mother Teresa pointed out, there are innocent sufferers. That’s what sin does, it afflicts the innocent who get swept away in the tide caused by human sin, i.e., children who suffer sexual or emotional abuse from parents or relatives, who in turn abuse because they were abused by their own relatives who suffered from stress related illnesses, and so on and so forth, children born in poverty, children caught in the crossfire, etc. Man is the source of suffering, but God is the source of redemption and healing, and God is “in history”, he acts in history, and God is in control of history’s movement, and we know from the resurrection, which is Christ’s definitive victory over death, that suffering and death do not have the final word over your life and my life. Christ was victorious over evil, sin, and death, and his victory is universal. So, although it seems that evil is victorious here and there, we know through the light of faith, that these are just moments in a larger movement and that in the end, life, grace, and the unimaginable joy of victory will be ours.
Deacon Douglas McManaman
(Originally published: October 26th, 2018 by the Oblates of Japan)
All of us, Christians and Muslims, live under the sun of the one merciful God. We both believe in one God who is the Creator of Man.… We adore God and profess total submission to him. Thus, in a true sense, we can call one another brothers and sisters in faith in the one God.Pope John Paul II.
Whenever I speak or write about our Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh brothers and sisters in the context of a talk on Catholic spirituality or quote one of the great Sufi or Jewish mystics in the course of a homily, inevitably someone from the congregation or group of listeners will afterwards pose a question or series of questions at the root of which is a presumption, namely, that these religions really have nothing to offer us that we don’t already possess. There seems to be a suggestion that quoting thinkers of other religious traditions implies relativism, the position that every religion is fundamentally the same as any other. I believe that at the heart of these claims is a knowledge problem. What follows is an attempt to explain this contention.
Generally speaking, we can discern throughout history roughly two ways of conceiving knowledge production. One way – still very much alive today – is to begin with a grand idea and then proceed to implement that idea, either on a multitude or on the society at large; in the process, all corroborating evidence is noticed, collected, and cited in support of the idea. The other way is to begin not on the level of the idea, but on the level of the facts, the data, the evidence of a problem in which we are interested, and to proceed to account for that evidence by putting forth the best or most plausible estimate.
The latter approach is messy, labor intensive, and characterized by uncertainty, because, as the very logic of this method shows, nothing more than a plausible conclusion is guaranteed – i.e., typically, there are many alternative hypotheses that at first glance can, to some extent, account for the same facts in evidence, which is why each one must be tested. This, of course, describes the basic logic of the scientific method. The former approach on the other hand is characteristic of the literary mind, the artist, the poet, etc.; the novelist is inspired by a vision of the entire plot at a glance, and it is later on that the details are filled in to give concrete expression to that idea.
It has always been interesting to witness the reaction of some of my colleagues to grand ideas introduced by school administrators who were former English, Drama, or Art teachers, ideas peddled as panaceas, grand solutions to the problems teachers have been confronting for centuries: it is typically those in the hard sciences who wonder to what extent these ideas have been tested or who will challenge the ideas by citing evidence that strongly suggests these ideas have not produced what was claimed they would inevitably produce.
We see this methodological tension between grand but untested ideas typically supported by anecdotal evidence on the one hand and a more empirical/pragmatic, evidence-first approach on the other in the lives of our religiously diversified student body. I have taught for 20 years at a school with very devout Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Catholics, Protestants, etc., and what is particularly interesting is that many of these students have come to conclusions at odds with the religious ideas (dogmas) of their parents, or uncles, grandparents, etc. The data they receive on a daily basis as members of a religiously diverse population does not corroborate the “idea” that a good number of them received from the older generation, namely “we have ‘the truth’, while they walk in darkness”. The young Muslim discovers that the devout Hindu (or Catholic, or Sikh, etc.) sitting next to her or behind her or in front of her is not the infidel, pagan, or miniature monster she was somewhat led to believe he was, and vice versa. The data simply does not support the “idea” (the dogma). And the students realize the reason for the discrepancy is “degree of exposure to information” – the students have data their parents tend not to have, because many of the latter came from religiously homogeneous backgrounds. It is simply not necessarily the case that the “others” (i.e., the non-Catholics or Catholics, depending on who you are) are living in darkness because they have not been baptized, confirmed, or do not profess the Shahada, etc.
I believe the myth of the conflict between “science and religion” perpetuated over the centuries is one of the reasons that many devoutly religious fail to appreciate the logic of the scientific method and are unaware of just how much theology depends on it – biblical hermeneutics is methodologically inductive; it is a matter of plausible reasoning. Moreover, inductive conclusions are never “money in the bank”; the truths that we are committed to and which are the result of a theological reasoning process that is investigative in nature are tentative. For the most part, we are dealing with theses having only a degree of plausibility, and one’s conclusion is only as strong as its weakest link in the chain of premises. Moreover, new data can and often does cause us to discard theses that are inconsistent with the new and more plausible data. Science is an evolutionary process (we speak of the scientific revolution), and so too is theology and philosophy.
There is no escaping our epistemic limitations. Each person is born into a specific tradition; man is a social, political, rational, linguistic, economic and religious animal, among other characteristics. At any given moment, each person understands himself and the world through a conceptual framework made up of epistemic conditions, a host of cognitive data, i.e., first principles, perceptions, deductions, uncertain inferences, ideas embodied in a particular and ever evolving language, the science of the day, cultural myths, biases and prejudices that both blind us to some things and open us up to other things, etc. And so not only is science subject to an evolutionary process, so too is our own personal “knowing” – not even the stubborn dogmatist who refuses to open himself to anything new that would threaten the stability of his comfortable worldview can put a complete stop to his own cognitive development.
So how do we explain the theological aporia that 1) Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and 2) there are Muslims, or Hindus, or Sikhs among us who are holier and wiser than I, who am a baptized Catholic? A fundamental axiom of philosophical method is: “Never simply abandon. In the face of insuperable difficulties, introduce distinctions and qualifications that enable you to save what you can of your commitments” (Nicholas Rescher). I believe John Paul II provides a possible avenue to explore this problem credibly: “When we penetrate by means of the continually and rapidly increasing experience of the human family into the mystery of Jesus Christ, we understand with greater clarity that there is at the basis of all these ways that the Church of our time must follow, in accordance with the wisdom of Pope Paul VI, one single way: it is the way that has stood the test of centuries and it is also the way of the future. Christ the Lord indicated this way especially, when, as the Council teaches, “by his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, in a certain way united himself with each man” (Redemptor Hominis, 13).
The Son of God, the Word, is present to every man, because he has united himself in a certain way to each man, and a person does not have to be a member of the visible Catholic Church to respond to that presence, which is a “redemptive presence” within the deepest nature of the human person: “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Behold, here it is!’ or There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17, 20-21). The evidence is clear to anyone who lives among faithful Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, etc., that one may respond to that redemptive presence and love that presence without being completely or even explicitly aware of who it is – as a child can love his mother without a properly scientific knowledge of who or what she is (Cf. S.T. I-II, q. 89, a.6).
At a very profound level, the devout Muslim, Sikh, Jew, and Hindu, etc., is our brother, our sister; for it is not possible to love Christ except through the power of the Holy Spirit, so if you, a Christian, live in Christ and Christ lives in you, if you carry in your body the death of Christ so that the life of Christ can be made manifest through you (2 Co 4, 10), and the devout Muslim for example likes what he or she sees in you, or better yet loves what he or she sees in you, that is, your deepest identity, then they love Christ without necessarily being aware of it – given that Christ really does live, act, and speak through you. One day I asked a good friend of mine, a priest of a nearby diocese, to tell me where in the Old Testament can one find the following words: “How can I describe the Greatness of Your Name, O Lord? If I had a hundred of thousands of stacks of paper, and if ink were never to fail me, and if my pen were able to move like the wind, and if I were to read and recite and embrace love for the Lord–even so; I could not estimate Your Value. How can I describe the Greatness of Your Name?”
My friend responded: “The book of Wisdom? One of the Psalms?” No, so I continued: “So many endure distress, deprivation and constant abuse. Even these are Your Gifts, O Great Giver! Freedom from slavery comes only by Your Will. No one else has any say in this. If some fool should presume to say that he does, he shall learn, and feel the effects of his folly. He Himself knows, He Himself gives. Few, very few are those who acknowledge this…Speak of Him continually and remain absorbed in His Love.”
He was sure it came from one of the wisdom books, such as Sirach or Ecclesiastes. Before telling him the answer, I asked him to tell me which mystical theologian in history would have said the following:
Does anyone think that the ocean is only what appears on its surface? By observing its hue and motion the keen eye may perceive indications of that ocean’s unfathomable depth. The Lord’s mercy and compassion are an ocean with no shore, providing endlessly varied vistas for those who sail its surface; but the greatest wonderment and fulfillment is reserved for those “creatures of the sea” for whom that mercy has become their own medium.
The Lord beckons us through a divine love and attraction that has been implanted in our hearts, a love that may be understood and felt consciously as divine by some, and only indirectly as love for His creatures or creation by others. In either case the pull of our heartstrings draws us to those Mercy Oceans, just as our physical bodies feel drawn to a warm and gentle sea.
By means of the revelation of the Scriptures and through the example set by prophets and saints, all human beings have been brought in contact with those oceans. For humankind at large, these revelations serve as vessels, or as “instruction manuals” for building and maintaining vessels that ply those most spacious seas, but for those who have the means to read between the lines, a great revelation emerges: that we are of that sea, that our place, our home is in the depths of that sea, not on its surface.
My friend’s list of possibilities included Meister Eckhart, one of the desert fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Gertrude, St. Hildegard of Bingen, etc. But the first piece of writing was from the Sri Guru Granth Sahib and the latter is an excerpt, with some modification of vocabulary, from modern Sufi writer Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kibbani.
Consider the image of a pyramid that is upside down. On the top and widest level represents the level of articulated religious belief (doctrine); here there is a wide range of diversity and difference. But as we approach the “mystical” level of each of these religions, the two sides gradually converge toward one another, so much so that at its deepest level it is very difficult to distinguish them on the basis of the specific religion; they all seem to be speaking the same language; in other words, there is a significant unity at this level. Hindus speak of the need to become aware of the distinction between the unchanging “I” and the passing events of our everyday lives, which they see as Maya, and the need to detach the “I” from that which is fleeting, and we encounter, in Islamic mysticism, the idea of Allah as the ocean that dissolves the individual ego, if we permit such a thing. Christian mystics speak of the death of self, the need to die to oneself in order to rise to new life, a regenerate life, and Islamic mysticism has similar ideas with only slightly different vocabulary. Buddhism speaks of the thickening of the ego and the need to drop all desire, but so too do Christian, Jewish, and Muslim mystics. Hinduism speaks of Atman at the center of the human person, and according to the Vedanta school, Atman is Brahman. But according to Islamic Sufism, Allah is both immanent and transcendent; as immanent, God is that eternal and necessary ground of all being at the very depths of the human soul, and our goal is egoistic annihilation. Kabbala speaks of God as nothingness, the fullest and purest mode of being; Buddhism speaks of the emptiness that is the fullness of Nirvana, etc.
On the most profound level of human religious existence, there is a sense in which we are all brothers/sisters; for we may be operating out of the same subterranean world, if you will, a world in which is present a Person, the Word, who gives us his undivided attention at every moment of our existence. When we begin to understand that “doctrine” (the explicit articulation of what is believed) proceeds from that deepest level of religious experience, it becomes increasingly evident that we need to carefully interpret each other’s doctrine in the light of that mystical understanding, otherwise we run the risk of misinterpreting one another. If we do not possess a mystic sense, we are sure to misinterpret one another, understanding the ‘other’ on our terms, not on their terms.
Individual human beings are continually growing in knowledge and understanding. This is because experience provides us, on an ongoing basis, with new information, and it is in the light of this new data that we re-interpret our current body of knowledge. It often happens that we discover that what we thought was absolutely and definitively true is not so after all, at least not completely. But it is very difficult to know whether our current body of knowledge suffers serious deficiencies – that tends to happen retrospectively. In other words, truth is an idealization. What we possess at any one time is often and for the most part a matter of putative truth. Our information is always incomplete, and new information has a way of changing the plausibility of our current data, causing us to make finer distinctions and to revise our estimates. As we learn from one another, we begin to see the world from a different angle, that is, within a new cognitive framework containing additional information. This angle is not necessarily any better, at least not in any absolute sense, but often we discover that much of that “different perspective” sheds light on what we already know, enabling us to distinguish where we failed to earlier, and enlarges our current body of knowledge, often refining it in some ways. The resulting hybrid is usually better.
From a statistical point of view, if the vast majority of our knowledge at any one time has undergone tremendous revision, enlargement, expansion, serious editing, etc., then it is reasonable to expect this trend to continue; in fact, there are no signs that this is slowing down. But for some reason, many people find it difficult to acknowledge the implications of what they already know implicitly. Uncertainty seems to give rise to fear, perhaps a fear of losing one’s identity. Raimon Panikkar writes:
In the West identity is established through difference. Catholics find their identity in not being Protestant or Hindu or Buddhist. But other cultures have another way of thinking about one’s identity. Identity is not based on the degree to which one is different from others. In the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity), people seek God in difference – in superiority or transcendence. Being divine means not being human. For Hindus, however, the divine mystery is in man, in what is so profound and real in him that he cannot be separated from it, and it cannot be discharged into transcendence. This is the domain of immanence, of that spiritual archetype that is called brahman. In the Hindu system, people are not afraid of losing their identity.
They can be afraid of losing what they have, but not of losing what they are.
Being afraid is always a bad sign. Christ says, “I give you peace” and “Do not be afraid.” Contemporary Christians feel surrounded and are afraid of being dissolved. But what does the gospel say? “You are the salt of the earth.” The salt has to be dissolved in order for the food to be more tasty. The leaven is there to make the bread rise. The Christian vocation is to lose oneself in others (Eruption of Truth: An Interview with Raimon Panikkar – Religion Online: https://www.religion-online.org/article/eruption-of-truth-an-interview-with-raimon-panikkar/).
The irony here – if what Panikkar says is true – is that the truly “Catholic” approach, in the sense of international or universal, is the latter. As Panikkar writes:
The whole history of Christianity is one of enrichment and renewal brought about by elements that came from outside itself. Do not Christmas and Easter, and almost all the Christian feasts, have a non-Christian origin? Would it have been possible to formulate the basic Christian doctrines without the hellenic tradition, itself pre-Christian? Doesn’t every living body exist in symbiosis with its external milieu? (Ibid.)
The authentically Catholic approach to the uncovering of truth is integrative. Nothing good is discarded, but appropriated. Catholics believe Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn 14, 16), “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2, 3). But this Scripture is very clear; it is in him that are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, not in me. My appropriation of Christ is always deficient, that is, my response to his redemptive presence in the world and within me is profoundly imperfect, and thus my knowledge of him is always deficient. But the more perfect that this appropriation becomes, the more will I be able to recognize him outside of myself, and that is why the more I will discover the treasures, that is, the truths or aspects of the Logos dispersed in the lives and the wisdom of those who truly love him and who are outside the visible contours of the Church.
https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_408reflectionmarriagebeauty.html
Deacon Douglas McManaman
I’d like to begin this reflection with an analogy. I’m an amateur artist. I love colors, and I’ve always appreciated talented artists and their work. I’m not, however, a talented artist, nor have I been formally trained. The reason I paint is that my spiritual director, in the year of my ordination, told me I should paint. I did not want to at the time, but I decided to follow his instructions–after all, he has a rather extraordinary “word of knowledge” charism. I went out to the dollar store and purchased some cheap pastels and a pad of paper and began to draw and color a picture of some houses in the neighborhood. It was not that good, of course, but I felt as though I had a two-week holiday, just after coloring for an hour. So, I kept at it. I then moved on to chalk pastels, then eventually to pastels on sandpaper, then to acrylics on canvas, and eventually iconography.
During my pastel phase, I took a workshop with Dave Becket, renowned Canadian pastel artist from Orillia, Ontario. What he would do is paint a picture in front of all of us, so we’d see the work develop and unfold before our eyes. I was rather amazed that throughout the process, at any given stage, the painting looked rough and was not all that pretty, nothing for which any special talent was required. But he kept at it, and at it, and eventually, in the end, we saw the work suddenly come together in all its beauty.
A marriage can very much be compared to the production of a work of art. A marriage is a process, not a finished product. The product can only be judged at the end, as Aristotle would say of a good life: “for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy” (NE, 1098a18). If one were asked to judge the quality of a marriage at any given time, like the work of art in progress, one might very well say that it is nothing extraordinary, that it is rough and unrefined, certainly not very pretty. We have a tendency to regard marriage within a static frame of mind, as though a marriage is a thing the quality of which one can measure, as in the rather jejune expression “joy-filled” marriage. Anyone reading this who has ever worked on a painting or a sculpture is certainly aware that it is not always a joy, but often tedious; it is work. Similarly, in a marriage, there are moments of great joy, of course, and challenging moments, darkness and struggles; but the joy is really at the end, when we contemplate the work of beauty, as God does at the end of the six days of creation, looking at everything he had made “and indeed, it was very good” (Gn 1, 31). And one only makes it to the end by staying the course, paying attention to details, persisting, refining, and doing the little things the importance of which experience reveals.
This brings me to another point to draw out from this analogy. I have two unfinished paintings in my art room. They are of two beautiful scenes of Uxbridge, Ontario during the fall season, one of a farm and large field below a beautiful sky, the other of a railway crossing in the country. Now, I also studied iconography, but interestingly enough, I do not have any unfinished icons. When writing an icon, one begins with certain prayers, and when finished, it remains unsigned and is blessed with holy oil. The icon is considered a sacramental, not merely a painting. It is a window into the saint who is depicted, a point of contact, and so it is a holy object. I had to ask myself: why don’t I have any unfinished icons, but two large unfinished paintings? I think the reason is that the purpose was different in both cases. My purpose in painting the two that remain unfinished was my own enjoyment. I wanted to capture the enjoyment of those scenes, for myself. The purpose in writing each icon I’d ever done, however, was devotion to the saint depicted, i.e., an angel, Theotokos, or Christ Pantocrator, etc. I certainly finished paintings that were not icons, both acrylics and pastels, but I don’t have them; they were painted for others, for friends and colleagues. I was able to successfully finish them, to persist through the midpoint tedium, because they were not done for me primarily, but for them.
Again, this lends itself well to highlighting an important aspect of married life. When a couple gets married and the purpose is first and foremost their own enjoyment or convenience, the marriage will almost always end in a separation and eventual divorce–like an unfinished work of art. The two simply cannot sustain it. It’s very much like doing a painting so that I may enjoy it: after a time, the labor is often just not worth it, so I stop and move on to more interesting projects. But when it is for another, when it is an icon that I am doing for the sake of satisfying a person’s desire for religious inspiration and devotion, or simply a beautiful scene outside that I want another to enjoy as I did when I saw it originally, I am able to endure and persist.
The problem is that the vast majority of people, since the early 1960s, sees marriage as primarily an arrangement, one ordered to the pleasure, convenience, and enjoyment of the individuals involved. But marriage is first and foremost about the decision to love another for the other’s sake, completely and totally in all its implications, one of which is that divorce is never an option on the table. One should know that such a decision is not going to be easy, not always a joy, but it is a work in development, a work of beauty. It is not merely a sacramental, but a sacrament, an institution brought into being by God on the basis of the intention of the two involved. It is a sacred sign in motion.
I believe a significant factor in our lack of awareness of the deeply paschal significance of marriage has been a misreading of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 7:
“Brothers and sisters: I should like you to be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But a married man is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided. An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit. A married woman, on the other hand, is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose a restraint upon you, but for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction” (32-35).
Because it is a small portion of the entire chapter, taken out of its larger context, it is very easy to misinterpret and come away with the impression that the celibate or consecrated life is genuinely religious, while the married state is not. Such an interpretation, however, would run contrary to Paul’s overall teaching on marriage. In the larger context of this chapter, we see that Paul believes we are in the last period of salvation history. He refers to his own time as a time of distress, which in apocalyptic literature, is said to precede the time of the Second Coming of Christ. Paul writes: “So this is what I think best because of the present distress: that it is a good thing for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek a separation. Are you free of a wife? Then do not look for a wife…. I tell you, brothers, the time is running out” (26-27; 29).
Today we would not advise single young people not to look for a spouse “because time is running out”, so what Paul says about those who are married and those who are not must be read in this context, otherwise we come away with the impression that marriage has nothing to do with serving the Lord. And of course, that would contradict what Paul teaches in Ephesians, where he speaks of the mystery of marriage as a sign of the love that Christ has for his Bride, the Church.
Christ’s love for his Bride is a conjugal love, and the love of a baptized husband for his baptized wife is that very same love, and vice versa. Marriage is just as religious a vocation as is the priesthood and consecrated life. Unfortunately, it has not always been understood that way by the faithful, but marriage is a sacred sign that contains what it signifies, and it signifies the paschal mystery. For just as God called Abraham to leave the land of Ur and “go to the land that I will show you” (Gn 12, 1), and just as God called Israel to leave Egypt behind with its pantheon of false gods, and just as Jesus leaves this world behind in order to go to the Father (Jn 17, 19), so too in matrimony, two people are called to leave behind a world closed in upon itself; they are consecrated, that is, set apart, for they are called to leave behind their comfortable world of independence and self-sufficiency, to be given over to another, to belong completely to one another, in order to become part of something larger than their own individual selves, namely, the one flesh institution that is their marriage. The couple relinquish their individual lives; they are no longer two individuals with their own independent existence; rather, they have become one body, a symbol of the Church, who is one body with Christ the Bridegroom.
The lives of genuinely married couples are a witness of the Church’s response to Christ’s love for his Bride; they witness that love in their sacrificial love for one another and for the children who are the fruit of that marriage–and raising children well demands a tremendously sacrificial love. In giving themselves irrevocably and exclusively to one another, without knowing what lies ahead, a young couple die to their own individual plans, they die to a life directed by their own individual wills. In doing so, they find life; for they have become a larger reality.
But when a couple enters a marriage as though this is primarily about their own enjoyment, they inevitably become disillusioned. “Christ, what have I done? What have I done?” said Lynn Johnson, of the Up series, a year after her wedding. She readily acknowledged that her husband probably said much the same thing. She was disillusioned and had to make a decision, thankfully the right one.
When a generation has lost the sense of life as having a transcendent end and has settled for a purely intramundane existence of an epicurean nature, marriage simply makes no sense. It makes far more sense to simply cohabitate and maintain a level of freedom in which one can move on rather easily when things get difficult. It is no coincidence that marriage began to decline in the late 1960s, the age of individualism, which devolved into the hedonism of the 70s and 80s, and the nihilism of the 90s. In a postmodern culture, it continues to decline. But if young people were given a proper vision of the overall work that a married couple are called to create and the heroic virtue required to achieve this end, we might eventually begin to see a reversal.
Deacon Douglas McManaman
Christ heals on the sabbath. But isn’t the sabbath rest a symbol of eternity? We are in the 6th day, the day on which God created man in the image of himself (Gn 1, 26-31). In fact, all of human history is the 6th day, and the days prior to this day (days 1 to 5) represent the evolution of the universe and the world, leading up to the 6th day. When history comes to an end, when man’s work is done, we enter into the 7th day, the sabbath rest, or God’s rest (Heb 4, 10). But Jesus says: “My Father is still working, and I also am working” (Jn 5, 16-30).
The Father is unchanging activity, and activity and rest coincide in God. He does not stop working on the sabbath, and neither does the Son. Even in eternity, of which the sabbath day is a symbol, God is unchanging activity (contemplation). He is still saviour, and his Son is saviour (Jesus: “Yahweh is salvation”), because whatever the Father does, the Son does: “The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing” (Jn 5, 19). And so, the Son heals on the sabbath. Is not this a mirror reflection of what will continue in the eternal (aionios) sabbath? The Greek word ‘aionios’ does not mean eternal in the sense of ‘never ending’, but ‘other worldly’ (not this temporal world, but where God dwells), or ‘ages of ages’. In Christ, eternity is joined to the world of matter and time.
But who needs healing on the aionios sabbath? The forsaken do. Just as in the time of Christ on earth, the sick, the lame, and the poor were regarded as forsaken by God, in the aionios sabbath, there are those who “rise to their condemnation” (Jn 5, 29), because they did not believe in the Son of Man. Are they not the object of the divine mercy? They are indeed because they are the object of his justice, and the divine justice has been revealed as mercy. Does God, who is unchanging, suddenly change after the 6th day? Divine chastisement (kolasis) must, if it be truly a chastisement, come to an end; it cannot be forever–no one prunes a plant forever, for there would be nothing left. Pruning (kolasis) takes place for the good of the plant.
Jesus came not to condemn the world, but that the world may have life through him, but some will rise to their condemnation. This condemnation is not the final word, rather, life has the final word: “I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (Jn 5, 25). Holy Saturday is the realization of this promise. Christ descended into hell, as we profess in the creed (the word ‘dead’ was changed to ‘hell’ in the Roman liturgy). What does Christ do in hell? He is himself in hell, that is, he is “Jesus” (Yahweh is salvation); he is life. He does what he sees the Father doing–he proclaims the good news of salvation, and he freed all who were imprisoned therein:
Death, unwilling to be defeated, is defeated; corruption is transformed; unconquerable passion is destroyed. While hell, diseased with excessive insatiability and never satisfied with the dead, is taught, even if against its will, that which it could not learn previously. For it not only ceases to claim those who are still to fall [in the future], but also sets free those already captured, being subjected to splendid devastation by the power of our Saviour.… Having preached to the spirits in hell, once disobedient, he came out as conqueror by resurrecting his temple like a beginning of our hope, and by showing to [our] nature the manner of the raising from the dead, and giving us along with it other blessings as well (Cyril of Alexandria, Fifth Festive Letter, 29–40 (SC 372, 284). Quoted in Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, Christ the Conqueror of Hell, p. 78).
Does God turn his back on anyone, even on those who reject him? Certainly not forever: “The Lord’s acts of mercy are not exhausted, his compassion is not spent; They are renewed each morning–great is your faithfulness… For the Lord does not reject forever (Lam 3, 22-23; 31).
https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_407dchristredemptionforteachers.html
Deacon Douglas McManaman
The word ‘redemption’ comes from the verb ‘to redeem’, as in to buy back, to repurchase at a price. In the context of the Old Testament, redemption is the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian slavery. Christ is redeemer, and this means that just as through Moses, God delivered the covenant people of Israel from Egyptian slavery, Jesus delivered humanity from the slavery of sin and its consequences, namely death. What was the means of exchange through which he bought us back? His own blood, that is, his life.
But what exactly does this mean? How does this work exactly? As a teacher, I was inclined to employ a “quantitative” or juridical model to explain this to adolescents, one that has its roots in St. Anselm. The reason is that the adolescent mind finds this easy to grasp, and making sense out of mystery is attractive to them. The basic idea is that sin creates an infinite debt, that is, a debt of infinite weight, and man, who is finite, cannot make up for a sin that is of infinite gravity or weight. Only God can do so. But God is not in debt–we are, and so it is up to man to make reparation for his sin, not God. But man cannot do so, because everything he offers is of finite value. Since man cannot make reparation, he simply cannot save himself. In short, our situation is hopeless.
God, however, provides a solution. The second Person of the Trinity joins a human nature; Jesus is fully God and fully man, two natures, one Person. As man, he can go before the Father and offer a sacrifice of reparation on our behalf; as God the Son, his offering has infinite value and can cancel our debt.
This is an attractive way of explaining Christ’s redemption, because it “makes sense” out of what is otherwise profoundly mysterious. Although some of what is said within this model has some truth, it is, however, a deficient model. It is far too juridical, and mystery really cannot be explicated using such narrow terms without serious consequences.
It is indeed the case that man is a slave to sin. Just as we inherit talents and dispositions from our parents or distant relatives, not to mention trauma undergone by relatives three or so generations back, we also inherit negative proclivities and sinful dispositions. This is what is meant by the wound of Original Sin called concupiscence–an inclination to sin and self-seeking. What this underscores among other things is man’s profoundly social nature. Original Sin is an inherited addiction, a proclivity. The first parents of the human race made a radical decision to be their own god, sufficient unto themselves (symbolized in the image of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that stands independent and tall). We are the offspring of the first parents, and we are born into a concrete and universal situation they created. We are affected by their sin. We are born into a situation characterized by the loss of interior grace; for man was originally created in a state of grace, in the state of original justice (with the gift of bodily immortality, freedom from concupiscence, and a sense of the divine rooted in grace). We are not born “deified” by grace, and so we are deprived of the light of grace. We cannot free ourselves from that proclivity to sin and self-seeking, for it is a genuine slavery, and no slave can free himself or herself–otherwise it is not slavery.
But God the Son drew close to us. He joined a human nature to himself and dwelt among us. The light entered into the darkness:
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God (Jn 3, 17-21).
We crucified the Son of God. Christ is Light from Light, true God from true God, and so the light entered into the darkness of our death, injecting it with his light and life. He destroyed our death, making it a means to eternal life. In joining himself to a human nature, God the son joined himself to every man/woman, as it were. The Word (logos) is present at the deepest level of our being. This does not mean that we all exist in a state of sanctifying grace. Rather, he is there, and he offers us sufficient grace to move towards him, to allow him into our lives, to reign over our own mind and heart. His death was an offering to God the Father on our behalf, an act of religion, and his offering is an acceptable one, since it is a perfect offering, rooted in a perfect divine love for the Father and for us, who come from God.
Some years ago my daughter, my wife and I went to Italy with a friend of ours, who is Italian. And he took us north, and south, and in the middle, and my daughter loved it, and she was focused primarily on shopping. I hated going into shops to look for purses or dresses, I just wanted to explore the narrow streets and old churches. It was hot, always watching out for pickpockets, not enough time to visit the places I wanted to visit, so for me it was a very unpleasant trip. The following year, however, I had the opportunity to go again, this time without my wife and daughter, just a priest friend of mine and a good friend who is also a teacher. His parents own an apartment in Rome, so we spent two weeks there. What I found fascinating upon reflection was that I spent so much time visiting the fashion district, Via Del Corso, clothing shops, looking for purses, etc. I was doing a lot of shopping for my daughter, to bring things back for her, and I was enjoying it. I wanted to visit the places that she loved. I started to love these places, because there was something of her that was left behind. I couldn’t care less about the Trevi Fountain or the Spanish Steps, but because she loved those places, I had a very real desire to visit them again, but only because I was looking to recapture her presence. These places were dear to her, so they became dear to me.
I think this is a useful illustration of a profound theological truth. As was said above, God the Son joined a human nature to himself (Christ is two natures, but one Person). God the Son enters into human suffering because he loves the Father, desires his glory above all, and since we belong to God, he loves us and will not allow us to suffer alone. And that is why when God the Father sees humanity, he sees his Son. He delights in the individual human person because Christ does. The Father loves us because the Son loves us. “The kingdom of heaven is among you” means that the redemptive presence of the Second Person of the Trinity permeates this world, through the power of the reconciling Spirit.
We are redeemed by the Incarnation of the Son of God, by his entire life, which of course includes his death. God sees each one of us when he beholds his Son, and so the Son’s entire life and his offering of himself in the end redeems us, buys us back from darkness to light, from alienation from God to proximity to God in him, in Christ. And all of this was pure gift, pure grace. And so a better model for understanding something of our redemption is the story of Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus.
He came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” And he came down quickly and received him with joy. When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost” (Lk 19, 1-10).
Perhaps we can look at Zacchaeus as an image of humanity. He climbs the sycamore tree, as Adam (humanity) aspires to be more than what he is by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Jesus approaches Zacchaeus, not the other way around, and tells him to descend, for the Son of God descended and took the form of a slave, becoming obedient to death, death on a cross (Phil 2, 1-11). In Christ, we descend from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and embrace our status as “children”, dependent upon God. Christ was not invited into Zacchaeus’ home; rather, he invited himself. And the result was a complete change of heart in Zacchaeus (metanoia). He was redeemed, bought back from the slavery of sin, all as a result of the approach of Christ.
Without the Incarnation, the suffering, death and resurrection of the Son of God, we would still be in our sins, still in darkness, still slaves of sin. We simply cannot save ourselves. Christ is savior. He came to save. And the gospel is a message of salvation. That is redemption.
Deacon Douglas McManaman
We are a kingdom of priests @ Where Peter Is
The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. This Word manifests itself in every creature. St. Hildegard of Bingen
I’d like to begin this reflection on the royal priesthood of the faithful with Paul’s letter to the Colossians:
He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him (1, 15-16).
It is this last line in this text that is so important. All things were created for him, in view of him, for the sake of him. What this means is that everything finds its ultimate meaning in Christ, just as the meaning of anything is discovered in its final cause, its ultimate end. Christ is the ultimate meaning of creation, and since time is a part of creation, it follows that Christ is the ultimate meaning of history.
Christ is the Second Adam who sheds light on the very existence of the First Adam and his offspring (GS 22), revealing our original vocation. And what is that original vocation? The Epiphany sets us on a course to uncover it: a star led the Magi to the Christ child. This is fitting, because the cosmos exists through Christ and for Christ. The world that God created and sustains in existence, the cosmos in its entirety, is really an epiphany (manifestation). The created world manifests the divine; it speaks of God, of his divine generosity. It praises the beauty of God through its own proper beauty, and it speaks of the mind of God through its own order, inexhaustible intelligibility, and complexity. In Psalm 19, we read:
The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament proclaims the works of his hands. Day unto day pours forth speech; night unto night whispers knowledge. There is no speech, no words; their voice is not heard; A report goes forth through all the earth, their messages, to the ends of the world. He has pitched a tent there for the sun; which comes forth like a bridegroom from his bridal chamber, and like a hero joyfully runs its course. From one end of the heavens it comes forth; its course runs through to the other; nothing escapes its heat (2-7).
In the prologue of the gospel of John, we read that the Word was made flesh and “set up his tent” among us (Greek: eskenosen, “booths”, “tabernacles”). The sun, mentioned in the psalm, is really a hierophany, a manifestation of the divine; for the ultimate meaning of the sun and its entire movement from one end of the sky to the other, is the very life of Christ the bridegroom, who made his tent among us and who is the light of the world, the true light that enlightens every person who comes into the world (1, 9). The sun is an image of the Son, the Logos, as is everything in the cosmos.
Everything in creation in some way (often hidden) announces, proclaims, speaks of the mystery of the Incarnation. Creation is language; it is full of words of the Word. More to the point, creation is a genuine liturgy, and like the liturgy of the new covenant it moves towards an end, which is communion, just as the six days of creation depict a movement towards the sabbath rest. The end of this liturgy of creation, of course, is communion with Christ.
Just as a work of art is in many ways an epiphany of the artist, revealing much about the artist, creation in all its diversity and complexity manifests and praises God. And the content of this manifestation becomes increasingly Trinitarian the closer we look. For example, light proceeds from the sun, but the light by which we see the sun cannot itself be seen. Similarly, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, the second Person of the Trinity, but the third Person, like an invisible and formal sign, directs us immediately to the Son. As Sergei Bulgakov writes: “The hypostasis of the Spirit does not have its own Face, as it were, but is only the Face of the Son in His Glory….in the light of this Glory we can discern the glorified Face of the Logos-Christ, but not the proper Face of Glory itself” (The Comforter, translated by Boris Jakim, p. 188).
But there is more. In the first story of creation in Genesis, God says to man:
“Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food” (1, 28-29).
In other words, God created the world as a banquet, to feed us. For the Jews, a meal is a source of communion with all those at table, because food is a source of life, and if we all partake of the same source from the same table, we become one life, one blood, one family. Thus, creation, which is given to man for food, is a source of communion with God.
Whatever God created, He created through the utterance of His Word, but to speak words is to communicate, and to communicate is to enter into communion. We speak in order to bring about a communion with the person we are addressing. And of course, God speaks all things into being, and so creation in all its diversity are words of the Word, uttered in order to bring about communion, in this case, communion with God.
Now a priest is one who offers sacrifice, in particular the sacrifice of thanksgiving. The word Eucharist is from the Greek eukharistia, which means “thanksgiving, gratitude”. Man’s task is to receive the food that is creation and give thanks for it, and we give thanks by blessing the giver. A blessing, however, is a benediction, and benediction, as the etymology of the word indicates, is the act of speaking well of something. God blesses each day of creation, for each day has its origin in a benediction: God said: “… Let there be …” God’s speaking is creative, effective, it brings into being, but what He brings into being blesses Him in return, that is, it speaks well of Him, as we see in the book of Daniel: “Sun and moon, bless the Lord; praise and exalt him above all forever. Stars of heaven, bless the Lord; praise and exalt him above all forever. Every shower and dew, bless the Lord; praise and exalt him above all forever. All you winds, bless the Lord…” (3, 62-65).
To bless is to receive what God gives, recognizing it for what it is, namely sheer gift. Of course, gratitude begins with such a recognition, and thanksgiving arises out of it. This recognition gives rise to a spirit of thanksgiving, or Eucharist. And since a priest is one who offers the sacrifice of thanksgiving, man was created to be a priest of creation–he was created to offer, to thank, to praise, to adore. We are to take what is given and raise it, lift it up to God, which involves a recognition of its origin. This raising up to God is benediction, blessing, a speaking well of…, and it is offered that it may become what God intended for it to become–namely, a means of communion with him.
This priestly pattern is visible at every level of creation. The lowest level of the hierarchy of being in the physical universe is the level of non-living matter, but non-living matter is food for the level above it, which consists of living things, i.e., plants, which take non-living matter and consume it, but in consuming it, plant life raises it up through the power of nutrition and transforms it into living matter (this is what happens when we water plants). But brute animals eat plants, and through the process of metabolism change plant life into living animal tissue, a higher mode of life. It does this, however, by killing it first and then raising it up. In other words, plants must be sacrificed first, that is, reduced to non-living matter, in order to be lifted up to serve something higher. Man exercises dominion over the animal kingdom, raising it up to serve human needs in a number of ways, not always for food (dogs can pull sleds, horses can pull carriages, as well as providing meat). But, when animals become food for man, the animal must first be slaughtered. And so, the communion of a meal is once again preceded and made possible through a sacrifice, a dying.
The rough details of this priesthood are there in the first two chapters of Genesis, in the command to creativity, to raise up creation to serve the needs of man, to cultivate the garden; moreover, we see it in the command to leave mother and father and cling to one another in the one flesh union of marriage. This “leaving” of mother and father receives its full significance in the paschal mystery, in Christ’s leaving of this world in order to go to the Father, as we read in the high priestly prayer of Christ (Jn 17, 1ff; Eph 5, 25-27).
Man, who is set apart (consecrated) from the rest of material creation in so far as he is created in the image and likeness of God, is to take all that he is and has become, and all that he possesses, and offer it to God, in the service of God, in a spirit of thanksgiving or Eucharist. In doing so, he offers to God the entire order of creation, which he contains within himself. Thus, man is a mediator between the cosmos and God, joining the two. In the first creation story, God is depicted as building a “house” (time, place, foundation, furnishings, etc.), but to build is to take raw materials and give them a new and elevated form, as in the creation of a house or work of art. And so, creativity has a priestly character to it. It emulates God, for the artist is speaking, communicating what he sees, and he is trying to speak well of what sees and admires. Genuine creativity is benediction, or blessing.
But the fall of man was a rejection of this priesthood. Adam chose to make himself his own god. As a result, he, including his offspring, the entire human race, gradually became deaf to the praises sung by creation; he no longer possessed the eyes and ears to understand the universe as an epiphany. And so, he no longer gave thanks. His life ceased to be Eucharistic; his life gradually ceased to be sacrificial. However, God made a covenant with Abraham, the father of Israel, in order to make her a holy nation, consecrated, that is, set apart from all others, a priestly people: “Now, if you obey me completely and keep my covenant, you will be my treasured possession among all peoples, though all the earth is mine. You will be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation” (Ex 19, 5-6).
The Word was made flesh in order to restore the world to its status as God’s kingdom (house, palace, covenanted family). Christ, who is God, is everything that the human person longs for, his kingdom is everything that the great religions of the world are seeking – namely, God become man. And what man was and is called to be is right there in the image of the Magi, priests of Persia, who begin a procession from the east, who follow the lead of a star, which leads them right to Christ, and they do homage to Christ. We were created “through him and for him”, ultimately for Christ’s priesthood, which we enter through baptism. We were created to worship, to adore, to offer; homo adorans expresses man’s deepest nature.
If we were created through him and for him, then we were created to become Christ, which is what happens in an ordinary Mass. Every day is to be a sacrifice of thanksgiving, a constant lifting up of all we have and are to God, to receive what the Lord gives us and to offer it to him in thanksgiving. This lifting up of what we have includes the lifting up of our work, our labor, which takes place throughout the six-day workweek, and this labor is a “building up”, a raising up, which includes the raising of our children, which is fundamentally a lifting up and an act of “building”. Every moment of our lives, every day of the six-day workweek, is to be an imitation of God in the act of creating, the act of blessing, and so each day is a benediction that we carry out. We bless God in the work we do; for in both creation stories, work is revealed as holy; in short, the work week is a priestly existence.
In baptism, this priestly identity, which is our deepest identity, is elevated and perfected, for we are anointed and thus made to participate in Christ’s priesthood: “He now anoints you with the chrism of salvation. As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life” (Rite of Baptism for Infants). Thus, we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own” (1 Pt 2, 9). In the book of Revelation, we read: “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, who has made us into a kingdom, priests for his God and Father, to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen” (1, 5).
On the sabbath, we begin our procession as we leave the house and make our way to the altar. At the altar, we offer our sacrifices, our daily stresses and frustrations, all our efforts and the love behind that labor, and all this is represented in the bread and wine, which are universal signs of nourishment. They are food, the fruits of our labor, the matter of the earth. What the ordained ministerial priest does is he takes what we offer, that bread and wine, which is the fruit of our labor throughout the week, lifts it up on our behalf, and Christ, who is the priest at the altar, receives that bread and wine, the matter of creation, the food of creation that we have offered to him, and changes it into himself, his own body and blood, which in turn is the eternal sacrifice that the Son offers to the Father. And that is returned to us as food, but it is no longer bread and wine, but is precisely what the matter of this world is destined to become, namely the actual food of his body and blood: “For my body is real food”, he says, and “my blood real drink” (Jn 6, 55). The Eucharist is the completion of creation, and through it we are deified, united to the sacrificial offering of the Son to the Father, drawn into the intimate life of the Trinity.
And so, the ordained priesthood is ultimately at the service of the royal priesthood of the faithful. He is indeed set apart, but this does not mean a literal ‘being taken out of the world’, that is, an escape from the world, which characterizes Clichtove’s image of the priesthood; rather, the priest is to be set apart in the depths of his charity and humility, and his willingness to follow Christ, who emptied himself and entered into human suffering. By this kenotic life, the ministerial priest calls the faithful to an ever-deeper self-understanding and appreciation of the significance of this anointing, that is, their priestly, prophetic and royal identity.
The following essay was written in 2022, as part of a book of essays on Catholic Education, by a Canadian Catholic Publisher. I had this essay removed from that collection because I did not wish to have it associated with another essay that constituted an unfair and inaccurate depiction of Catholic Education in Ontario. There are so many good Catholic teachers and administrators trying their best to bring the good news of the gospel to the students, and navigating through today’s waters is not always easy, but alarmist and hyperbolic screeds do nothing to further Catholic Education in this province.
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Latest book: Hello my friends: Here is my latest book that I wrote for teachers on teaching the parables. I hope it will be a useful resource. Order here.
Deacon D. McManaman In the first reading (Dan 7, 9-10, 13-14), Daniel sees the One who is Ancient of Days taking his throne. Of course, Ancient of Days refers to God, who has lived throughout the entire course of human history; for he is not subject to the passing of time. And his throne is […]
A Homily for the Confirmation Candidates of St. Lawrence the Martyr and Blessed Trinity Church, Toronto, Ontario, 2023
https://lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_393joyinwiderness.html
Deacon Doug McManaman
Some people refer to Confirmation as a rite of passage, as we find in Judaism (the Bar mitzva), or the ancient initiation rituals of the Indigenous peoples. A rite of passage is a passage into adulthood. I don’t know how good that comparison is, but having Confirmation at this age would easily suggest that it is. But the indigenous rite of passage was a very uncomfortable affair. The boy would be snatched from his mother, covered in paint or blood, and sent out into the wilderness for a few months, to learn to survive all on his own. Those who did not, died in the wilderness; those who survived, returned to the tribe and were given a new name; they were no longer children.
Well, our Confirmation preparation classes were hardly comparable to this. However, although we might not send you out into the wilderness, the realm of chaos, there is a sense in which God does. The society in which we live is in many ways a chaotic wilderness. It is no longer a society congenial to Catholicism, as it was in the 1950s. It’s very difficult to be a Catholic today, especially if you are a teenager.
There’s a lot of good things going on in the world today, but there are also a lot of things that are so contrary to everything we believe in. This is especially the case in the realm of morality, especially issues of sexuality, marriage, the life issues, such as abortion and euthanasia. It’s very difficult for a young teenager to make it through his or her teenage years while remaining faithful to Christ and his Church. But if you do, you are a hero in many ways. This is something that a priest from Washington D.C said to me years ago. I met him while hitchhiking to Nashville, Tennessee back in 1979, when I was 17 years old. He picked me up on the highway just outside of Columbus, Ohio and took me to Kentucky. He was such a joyful priest that I had made the decision to return to the Church that my family had left when I was in grade 3. It was his joy that really struck me. He was celibate, he couldn’t get married, burdened with all sorts of duties and responsibilities, and here I was young and free, I could get married, and yet he was clearly happier than I was. What was the key to his joy, I’d wondered. Well, I figured it out when he asked me whether I go to Church. I said no, I haven’t seen the inside of a Church since the 3rd grade. “Do your parents go to Church?” I said no, not at all. And much to my chagrin, he was so disappointed. I said why do you have to go to Church. And he yelled out the answer: “To receive the body of Christ! And you know, I hadn’t heard those words since grade 3 when I would attend Mass and hear the priest say: Take this all of you and eat of it, this is my body which will be given up for you. That whole world came back to me at that moment, and I knew that this was the way into that world that I once knew, a world I wanted back into. That was the key to his joy. The body of Christ. The Eucharist. And that is what is going to bring you stability during your teenage years ahead.
The happiest teenagers and those with the greatest mental health, according to studies in Britain, are those teenagers who practice their religion faithfully. Even my university students that I teach now, the ones who radiate joy and who show the greatest resilience and who write with such depth, are the religious ones who are quoting scripture here and there. Their lives are immersed in the Scriptures. They feed off of the word of God.
Furthermore, the holier you become, the more interesting your life becomes. I don’t know if I told you this story during one of our classes together, but my best friend is a priest of the Hamilton Diocese, and over the years I’d visit him often, stay the weekend, preach for him to give him a break. And I’m an early riser, so I went down one Saturday morning, about 5 in the morning, and I said my breviary. After the Office of Readings and the Morning prayer, I looked up and saw a large bookshelf at the other end of the living room. I noticed Butler’s four volume lives of the saints, the newest version. So, I went up and decided that I would close my eyes and pick a volume at random, open it and put my finger down, at random. Wherever my finger landed, I would read the life of that saint. So, I got some 3rd century unknown saint. Never heard of her before. It was about 3⁄4 of a page in length. When I finished reading, I felt exhilaration. It really woke me up. I thought, what an interesting life. Then I did it again, picked a volume at random. This time I got a 7th century saint, and I read about his life, completely different from the previous, and again, I could feel it in my body, it was like I drank a glass of orange juice. His life was so different from the one before, but so interesting.
And this is the lie of Hollywood. We’ve been told over and over again that goodness is boring, and evil is interesting. And it is really the other way around. Evil is terribly boring. It is empty. There’s nothing to it. It’s all the same. But goodness is so diverse, rich, and interesting.
The more you give your lives over to God, the more interesting your life will become. You will no longer know the meaning of the word boredom. Give yourself to God and He’ll take you on a journey that will be full of surprises. There will be difficulties, struggles, challenges, but He’ll provide you with the graces and the fortitude to overcome all these obstacles, and struggle is what makes life rewarding. A life without struggle is soon intolerably boring. A teaching colleague of mine won the Lotto 649 and he decided to quit, to leave teaching. Another colleague of mine met up with him years later, and he said that he looked lost, without purpose. There’s another Hollywood lie, that labour and struggle bring discontent, while rest, leisure, and an easy life is a happy life. Absolutely false. When you are doing what God is calling you to do, you are happy, joyful.
So, I encourage you to continue down this road. Be faithful to the graces that you are going to receive today in Confirmation. Don’t waste them. Cooperate with God and let Him lead you to where He wants to take you.
The following two questions were addressed to me by a local bible study group.
Why is Mary’s perpetual virginity so important to the Catholic faith?
This is a good question, and difficult to answer. What is the significance of Mary’s perpetual virginity? Sexual union is a marital act, and in marriage, the two (male and female) give themselves entirely and completely to one another. Marriage is a one flesh union, and the sexual act is expressive of that one body union. The sexual act has a twofold goodness: 1) it is an expression and celebration of marital union, and 2) it is procreative.
Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit overshadows Mary, who says: “Let it be done to me according to your word”. She offers herself, but her offering is complete and total. She gives her body, so to speak, and the result is the conception of the Son of God in her womb. So there is a kind of marriage here (something like a marriage). There is a union between Mary and the Holy Spirit, and that union results in the conception of the Messiah. Mary’s virginity expresses the fact that she belongs completely and totally (which includes her body) to God the Holy Spirit. And so, it is fitting that Mary was not “married” in the complete sense (which would involve sexual consummation). Joseph was the husband of Mary, but we really don’t have a consummated marriage here. But it is interesting because there is a sense in which the Holy Spirit is a kind of Motherhood in the heart of the Trinity (there is a feminine element in God, so to speak). The Holy Spirit is the Uncreated Immaculate Conception, while Mary is the created immaculate conception (St. Maximilian Kolbe). In fact, St. Maximilian Kolbe pointed out that if the Holy Spirit were to become flesh (as God the Son became flesh), we would see no difference between that incarnation and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary is not God, she is not divine, but she does reflect the feminine that is in God.
So Mary’s perpetual virginity has nothing to do with the false notion that sex is dirty or impure, etc. In marriage, sexual union is a sign of fidelity and complete belonging. When you belong entirely to another, it means that the self-giving was not partial, but total. So married love is undivided love. Mary’s virginity signifies that she belongs not partially, but completely and totally to God. This is not to suggest that married people cannot belong entirely to God. Matrimony is a sacrament, and it is a sign of the love that Christ has for his Bride, the Church, so it is very much a way of belonging to God completely. But Mary conceived Christ as a result of her complete and total surrender to the Holy Spirit, which is a kind of marriage; for it is a union that results in a conception. Her perpetual virginity signifies that perpetual belonging.
If God is almighty, why take 6 days (plus one day of rest) to create the world? Why not do it in one? For that matter, why does He need a day off?
The story of the 6 days of creation is not meant to be taken literally. This story does not mean that God literally created the world in 6 days and literally rested on the 7th. The story is an allegory, and an allegory is a story that contains a deeper meaning besides the literal meaning. In Hebrew, the word ‘seven’ is ‘saba’, which is derived from the root word ‘seba’, which means ‘to swear, as in swearing an oath’. To swear an oath is to enter into a covenant, and a covenant is a sacred family bond. The depiction of God creating the world in 6 days and resting on the 7th day is meant to convey the fact that creation is a covenant. God enters a covenant with humanity. Covenant means ‘family bond’, and the Hebrew word for family is be’tab, which means ‘my father’s house’. Notice that in the first story of creation, God is building a house (my father’s house). We have the creation of time (1st day), space (2nd day), a foundation, and then he furnishes the house. Creation is God’s house or family. Creation is a covenant. God ‘sevens’ a covenant, or ‘swears an oath’ (seven).
That family or covenant is shattered in Genesis 3, and the entire history of Israel is really the history of the restoration of that covenant.
But creation is not something that happens in time. God is not “producing” as we produce things like tables or houses. God creates temporal beings, brings them into being from nothing and sustains them in being. This includes bringing into being beings that can cause other things, i.e., material things that can cause other things to move, or material substances that can react with other substances, resulting in entirely new substances (sodium and chlorine, which become salt), etc. The kind of universe God has brought into being is a material universe in which things evolve, move, and develop. But a thing cannot move and develop unless it is brought into being by God and sustained in being by God. Thus, evolution presupposes creation. So, we think the universe is 13.6 billion years old, and the earth is 4.6 billion years old (or thereabouts). What we have today is the result of billions of years of evolution. The creation story, on the contrary, is an allegory that contains a deeper meaning besides the literal meaning. The deeper meaning being conveyed through the vehicle of the story is theological (about God, not about science or the facts of the universe). The truths communicated through the vehicle of the story is that God is the creator, God is one, God is outside of time and space (He is eternal and incorporeal), man exists in the image and likeness of God, creation is good, everything God creates is good, etc.
Homily for the 5th Sunday of Easter
Deacon Doug McManaman
Currently I am teaching prospective teachers at Niagara University (Toronto Campus). I taught for 32 and a half years as a classroom teacher and did not move up at all, but my friend who joined me this year to teach teachers became, early on, a vice principal, then a principal, a superintendent, and then assistant director of education. Every week we discussed what and how we were going to teach these prospective teachers. One of his suggestions was that we should have the students read the Gospel of Mark (the shortest gospel) straight through. Of course that’s a great idea; for I always insisted on this for my grade 10s; the goal was to have the students become familiar with the character of Christ; for we often hear only pieces of the gospel here and there, but to read a gospel straight through is very important; it gives us a deeper sense of Christ, his life, his personality, and his mission. So we put together an assignment for them to do that was not too demanding. Anyone can read the gospel of Mark in two sittings, but we got them to read just two or three chapters a week, and all we wanted them to do was to take informal notes on things that struck them. No need for in depth research.
That assignment was easily the most enjoyable assignment to mark. So many of them were nothing short of excellent. It was obvious that actually reading the gospel affected them significantly.
There is tremendous power in the word of God. There is tremendous power in reading the life of Christ as it is laid out in the gospels. And it needs to be powerful, because darkness also has some power. Falsehood has some power. It has the power to deceive. Christ said that the children of darkness are more shrewd than are the children of light (Lk 16, 8). That hasn’t changed. The children of light often lack shrewdness. They look to the surface of things only. If it glitters, if it sounds good, it must be good.
But how does a person get to that point where he or she can become more shrewd, less gullible, not so easily taken in by popular trends that sound good on the surface, but on closer inspection reveal a dangerous rot? The answer is to become more rooted in the truth. But, what does it mean to be rooted in the truth? Whose truth? “What is truth?” as Pontius Pilate famously asked Jesus. The irony is that the truth was standing right there in front of him, and he crucified the truth, because he was not rooted in the truth.
In our gospel today, Christ provides the answer: Thomas said to Jesus: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also.”
To be rooted in the truth is to be rooted in Christ, because it is not that he possesses the truth or knows the truth, rather, he is the truth. He is the way, the truth, and he is life itself. All life comes from the Father, through the Word, through the Son; for all things were created through him and for him. He is the source of life and truth. It’s all about Christ. It’s not about us.
This is the wonderful thing about Catholicism. So many people who have left the Church think that Catholicism is fundamentally about us. They leave the Church when they hear news of the disgraceful behavior of the clergy in the past, or they hear of sinful bishops, or corrupt popes in our history, the Residential schools, abusive nuns or clergy, etc. My friend asked me, years ago, to do an RCIA class on the history of the Church, and I remember preparing for it, going over that history, trying to condense it into an hour. I think it was a rather boring session, I’m sorry to say, but I do remember asking him: are you sure you want me to talk about the history of the Church to these candidates. It might scare them away. There’s a lot of sin in our history. Clearly, the Catholic faith is not about us. If our goal is to get people to look toward us, all they are going to be is disappointed. No, just like the icons of John the Baptist or the Blessed Virgin Mary, our hands must point away from ourselves and point to the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. It’s all about Christ. Everything speaks of Christ. Every rose speaks of his crown of thorns and his blood poured out for us, every tree speaks of his cross, which is our salvation and stability. Winter speaks of his death, spring speaks of his resurrection, the endlessness of the universe speaks of his divine infinity, the movement of the sun from sunrise to sunset speaks of Christ the bridegroom, coming from his tent, going out to meet his bride, the Church, to redeem her and prepare her for the eternal marriage banquet in heaven. It’s all about him, not us.
Many of us are like Philip; we spend our lives in the Church, we’ve had 12 years of Catholic education, and yet we turn to Jesus and say to him: “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied”. Jesus replies to us the same way he replied to Philip: “Have I been with you all this time and you still do not know me?”
The Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in the Father. To see this, we need to be rooted in the scriptures, for we need to become familiar with the personality and character of Christ. The more we are rooted in him, that is, the more we look to him, think about him, study him, look to him to guide us, spend time in silence with him, the more our eyes will be opened. The more shrewd we will become. We won’t be as easily deceived by false prophets and dangerous but trendy ideologies that are constantly popping up every few years. We’ll be able to see through the facade. If we are not rooted in the truth, who is Christ himself, if we allow ourselves to remain ignorant of his life, we’ll fall for anything that sounds good. Cardinal Collins gave a talk to Catholic trustees a few years ago, and I was struck by an image he employed; he spoke of “the meringue Jesus”, a Jesus that is made up of sweet and light meringue, the stuff you put on a lemon pie. It’s a Jesus that has no substance but is all sweet. The reason many people have the meringue Jesus in their heads instead of the real Jesus is that they don’t read scripture; they don’t pray the scriptures; they don’t contemplate the life of Christ in the reading of the gospels. But when you start to focus on Christ as he is revealed in the gospels, you see that he is not so sweet. For example, he is very offensive to the Pharisees, calling them “whitewashed tombs full of the bones of the dead”, a first century way of saying “You’re full of it”. He called them hypocrites. He spoke hard truths; for he condemned lying, fornication, adultery, murder, theft, greed of all kinds. He spoke of damnation. He even referred to certain people as pigs and dogs: Do not throw your pearls to swine, or feed holy things to dogs. He wasn’t talking about actual pigs and dogs. He knew that not everyone is genuine. There are people in this world who love evil.
But we won’t have the eyes to discern who these people are if we are naive. He said to us: be shrewd as serpents, but innocent as doves (Mt 10, 16). Many of us have the innocence part, but we lack the shrewdness. The children of darkness lack the innocence part, but they are shrewd. Immersed in Christ, we get both parts: shrewdness and innocence.
Homily for the 5th Sunday of Lent
Deacon Doug McManaman
https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_389tragedytoglory.html
This gospel reading, the raising of Lazarus, is so important, because it reveals Christ’s power over death. Only God has the power to open the grave, as we read in the first reading from Ezekiel: “Thus says the Lord God: O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them” (Ez 37, 12). Jesus opens the grave of Lazarus and has him rise from it. In other words, Jesus is God. He is divine. And this miracle announces what is to come, namely, Jesus’ own resurrection. Lazarus, although he rises from the dead, will also die again, so this is not a complete victory over death. That will take place on Easter Sunday, when Jesus rises from the dead, never to die again. And that is the good news of the gospel: the resurrection. Death has been defeated.
This is such an important point to grasp. There is so much suffering in this world, so many people whose lives are beset by a tragedy of one sort or another. And tragedy, which has many different origins, is always connected in some way with death. At the root of tragedy is often human error, or incompetence, or worse, human sinfulness and malice. Sometimes the root of tragedy is not human error or sin at all, but the course of nature. Nature’s disasters, however, often lead to human loss and death, and so they are designated as tragedies–without human loss, we would not refer to such events as tragedies.
But tragedies rooted in human error are more difficult to deal with, and these are tragedies which often are in turn rooted in human sin, such as laziness or overconfidence or arrogance–think of the sinking of the Titanic. But then there are tragedies that are simply rooted in malice, such as the senseless murder of a loved one, a life cut short. Parents can suffer such loss, the loss of a child for example. Such tragedies leave wounds that stay with them throughout their lives, and their lives are practically defined from that point onwards by that very tragedy.
But here is the point. The word gospel means ‘good news’, and the good news has gravitas. It is weighty and has real consequence. Christ’s death destroyed death. The good news is that Christ has power over death; he conquered death. If we really believe this, then it is the case that whatever tragedy has befallen us, it need not define our very existence. It no longer has the power to crush and deprive us of light and hope. We can allow it to crush our lives and redefine our entire existence, shrouding our lives in darkness, if we so choose. But because Jesus rose from the dead, and because he raised Lazarus, not to mention a twelve-year-old girl and the son of the widow, it need not do so. Death does not have the final word over our lives. Resurrection does.
All those whom we have loved and who have died, some even in the most tragic circumstances, we will see and touch them again. The resurrection was for us. The Second Person of the Trinity joined a human nature to himself, uniting himself to every human person, as it were; he died and rose in our humanity, joined to his divinity. If we live our lives in him and die in him, he will raise us up as well: “For if we have been united with Him in a death like his, we shall also be united with him in his resurrection” (Rom 6, 5).
And that is why those who have suffered a terrible tragedy as a result of the sinfulness and malice of another person are able, in time, to forgive that person, because they know, through faith, that tragedy is relative. That is what Christ’s death and resurrection has accomplished: he has reduced tragedy from the absolute to the relative. The crucifix, once a symbol of horror, has become a symbol of power, victory, and glory. Death is no longer absolute and final. And so despair is no longer absolute and final, but relative and temporary.
Those who have no faith in the resurrection of Christ, who do not live out of that faith, will be unable to rise above the tragedy that besets them, and so they are hardened and imprisoned in unforgiveness. But the power of the risen life of Christ is revealed in those who choose to believe in him and in the one who sent him, and they will not allow tragedy to imprison them in the darkness of perpetual resentment and unforgiveness. These are the people who know the risen Christ, whose lives have been illuminated by the hope of resurrection, by the good news of Christ’s victory over tragedy, sin, and death.
Deacon D. McManaman
It is always inspiring to teach a World Religions course. What becomes obvious to anyone studying the religions of the world is, first and foremost, that man is naturally a religious animal; he has always aspired to seek a relationship with his origin, the very source of his being, either God, or the gods, or both. Particularly fascinating are the myriads of creation myths of the indigenous peoples around the world, from Australia to Africa, to North America and the Amazon basin. For the indigenous, life itself is religion, that is, life is ritual. The more one becomes familiar with these myths, the more one understands the essence of ritual, that the day-to-day activities of the indigenous peoples are really an emulation of the gods of these myths. Everything they do, i.e., hunting, cooking, giving birth, basket weaving, etc., it is all sacred to the degree that it imitates the acts of the gods or ancestors whose deeds are recounted in myths and legends.
The indigenous believe that the great sky god created lesser deities, who in turn created the earth, mountains, rock formations, trees, rivers, and man, and the basic pattern of his daily life. All this took place in what the indigenous refer to as the creation period (or the dreaming), a period of time that is sacred, for it is a time that measures the very work of the gods. This sacred time is of an entirely different dimension than ordinary time. To get a better understanding of this notion of sacred time, consider C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, specifically The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When the children pass through the wardrobe, they enter a different world, the world of Narnia, and many years in Narnia amount to about a minute or two of earth time. Similarly, for the indigenous, there is earth time, which is profane time (our time), and there is sacred time in which the gods dwell, and the two are not parallel. Ritual is precisely the way that the indigenous bring sacred time into contact with profane time. In performing ritual, such as an elaborate initiation ritual—which may require an entire season to complete—, they imitate the ancestors or lesser deities, and in doing so, sacred time is made contemporary with profane time. The two different realms are in contact, all as a result of ritual. In other words, the acts of the gods are made present, in the here and now, through the ritual acts of the indigenous, and it is by virtue of this contact that they are renewed, strengthened, and made holy.
There is one feature of their myths and legends, however, that I have always found particularly striking, and this feature is found all over the world, in the myths of the Australian, African, South and North American tribes. In their myths, there is very often an account of a murdered god. It is an unjust murder of an innocent deity or ancestor, and from the body of this murdered deity will come vegetation of all kinds, i.e., beans, melons, corn, tobacco, or a certain tree from whose wood are made flutes that produce enchanting sounds, like the archetypal flute that was played by the murdered god in sacred time. To create such a flute out of the wood of this particular tree is a ritual that makes present the murdered deity. And to harvest the crops in the fall is a ritual act that includes sacrificial offerings to the deity and festivities, since it is from his sacrificed body that the fruits of the earth come to us year after year. Even the headhunting and cannibalism of certain tribes can only be understood in light of the tribes’ myths, for these acts are always offerings to the murdered god, a re-enactment of the myth carried out for the sake of the blessings that will inevitably follow upon such ritual.
What is it in the human subconscious that can account for this universal theme found in the creation myths and legends of tribes separated by oceans and thousands of miles? The Church may have an answer for that, and the clues are in the first reading from the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ:
Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was a priest of God Most High. He blessed Abram with these words: “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, the creator of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who delivered your foes into your hand.” Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
How do we explain this reading in which the ancient king of Salem and priest of God the Most High, Melchizedek, brings bread and wine to Abraham, with a blessing? Melchizedek, a pre-Israelite, prefigures the priesthood that Christ established, and of course Melchizedek knew nothing about this foreshadowing or prefiguring, nor did Abraham. And well after Abraham, at the time of the Exodus, the Passover feast was established. The Seder plate prefigures the Eucharist as well. Here the original Passover lamb is sacrificed, and it is the blood that marks the doorposts of the Israelites that is their deliverance.
To share in the Seder meal is to be part of that Exodus; for the Jews, to share a meal is to enter into communion with all who are at table, because all share in the one food, which is a source of life. When they celebrate the Passover, they believe that what is past is made present, in the here and now, and so each time the Passover is celebrated throughout the centuries, Moses is present in their midst; Jews who celebrate Passover believe they leave Egypt with all of Israel at the time of the Exodus.
In the gospel reading for that same Solemnity (Corpus Christi), the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish also prefigures the coming reality of the Eucharist. We see this prefiguring of the Eucharist not only in the New Testament, and not only in the history of Israel, which includes a small account of the pagan king Melchizedek, but it goes back further, as far back as the indigenous peoples of the world. God leaves clues throughout history, in every continent and in every people, clues about where He will be found. In the Person of Christ, myth becomes reality. All that the indigenous dreamt of, believed in and articulated is affirmed by God and is brought to reality. We (Catholics) worship a murdered God, a crucified God, and from his body come the fruit of the vine and the work of human hands, the bread of life and the cup of salvation. To partake of this thanksgiving sacrifice is to enter into him, to live in him. And just as the indigenous regard ritual as the way of making sacred time contemporary with ordinary time, a way of making it touch profane time, thereby renewing it, so too has this come to reality in the Eucharist, because to be present at an ordinary Mass is to be just as present at the foot of the cross as Mary and John were two thousand years ago. The sacrifice of Good Friday, which took place 2000 years ago, is made contemporary, that is, re-presented in the here and now. It is not this or that priest who is offering the sacrifice, it is Christ who is the priest who offers the sacrifice, and Christ is the victim, the murdered God, who is being offered. The individual priest is only acting in the Person of Christ (in persona Christi).
And Catholics believe that Christ is the new Passover lamb, whose blood frees us from the slavery of sin and death, and of whose flesh we partake, making us one with that sacrificial offering. And so to eat of this Eucharistic meal is to become one not only with every member of Christ’s mystical body, past and present, but it is to become intimately one with all the faithful of Israel, as well as the indigenous peoples who knew something of this sacrifice, however obscure that understanding might have been.
One year as I was explaining to some students that the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ, not merely a symbol of his body and blood, a girl raised her hand and said: “It can’t be. That would make us cannibals”. And of course, she had no idea the religious significance of ancient tribal cannibalism. She saw primitive man with the condescending eyes of the western world, that is, as backward and unintelligent. But it is not that we cannot be like them; rather, when we understand the significance of indigenous myth and the rituals that enact them, we begin to see that we can be like them, we are like them, and indeed they are like us. They yearned to participate in the life of the gods, that is, they yearned for the sacred to repeatedly touch their ordinary existence and make it holy and complete, as we do now. They yearned for the deification of the earth, the deification of creation. God answers man’s deepest longings and aspirations in the mystery of the Incarnation, and ultimately in the Eucharist. God reveals His mercy and humility in joining a human nature and entering into human suffering, and dying on a cross. Like every child, God loves to play hide and seek, and like a good player He hides Himself in unexpected places, under a humble disguise of one form or another. He continues to hide in our midst under the ordinary and humble appearance of a wafer of bread. After consecration, it is no longer bread, although it looks like bread, tastes and feels like bread; it is the substance of his murdered and resurrected body. The sacred has joined itself to the profane, matter is made holy, the food which is creation itself has become the Bread of Life, the bread of angels. Had we in the west paid more attention to the deeper significance of indigenous myth and allowed indigenous knowledge to open our eyes to what has always been present but hidden in our own theology, we would have become more fully cognizant of the deeper brotherhood that unites us all.
Deacon D. McManaman
As I reflect back upon the more than thirty years I spent as a teacher, I realize that out of all the school principals I had worked with over those years, only two were brave and relatively exemplary Catholic leaders. One was a man, a priest of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, the other a strong and bright Trinidadian woman. In between these two were a number of men whose leadership style emboldened the enemies of the school, i.e., drug dealing thugs, who, as a result of the timidity they witnessed, eventually gained a level of control over the fearful students of the schools.
I will never forget the day this Trinidadian principal came on the PA and instructed everyone in the school to put down their pens and to listen up very carefully. Her message was specifically addressed to the drug dealers in the school who had begun to provide free marajuana to some of the younger grade nine students, as a way of increasing their clientele. She was incensed at the news that this was happening. With great indignation in her voice, and after instructing everyone to stop what they were doing and listen, she said: “All you drug dealers out there, know this: your days are numbered at this school. I’m coming after you, and I’m your worst nightmare.” She went on for another minute or two chastising them, reiterating her foretelling. All I could think of were all the male principals I worked with in previous years and how they would react if they were to hear such an announcement; without question, every single one of them would have insisted that this woman had lost her mind, that she was a fool for initiating a battle she could not win.
But before her announcement was over, the “kingpin” of the school had been nabbed, for during it, he was out of class wandering the halls and at one point began to jump up and down crying out: “Catch me if you can! Catch me if you can!” At that very moment, a vice principal turned the corner and witnessed it all: “You’re caught”, he said. He was sent home and expelled the next day. By the end of June, every drug dealer was caught and expelled. At the end of the year, I overheard a vice principal saying to a colleague: “We don’t know how it happened, but we always found ourselves at the right place at the right time”.
I had to shake my head at this man’s dull witted remark; for it was obvious to anyone with faith how it happened. This woman loved the students enough to enter a frightening battle for them; she had the faith, the trust, and the intensity of love to take the first step in that battle, and when that happens, the Lord takes the next step and battles on our side: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (Ja 4, 8); for “the Lord is a warrior, Lord is his name” (Ex 15, 3). When a person in a leadership position steps out in faith to do what in fact he or she has an obligation to do, to protect the vulnerable and engage in the battle that life in Christ fundamentally is, the Lord joins us: “But during the watch just before dawn, the Lord looked down from a column of fiery cloud upon the Egyptian army and threw it into a panic; and he so clogged their chariot wheels that they could drive only with difficulty. With that the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from Israel, because the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.” (Ex 14, 24-25).
I remember the year my best friend, a priest of a nearby diocese, was assigned to a new parish. On his first day, a group of women introduced themselves to him, referring to themselves as “the bitches of St. Basil’s”, assuring him that “we’re here to give you a run for your money”. These were women who saw themselves as catalysts of true progress; needless to say they did not like the straightforward, back to the basics preaching of my friend. They opposed him at every turn. But my friend too was a “warrior” who loved the congregation enough to actually preach with substance and grit. I recall the Sunday he actually called the ladies out, publicly, loudly and clearly telling them: “If you don’t like it (i.e., the principles and fundamental teachings of the Church), get out!” A few days later, my friend received a call from the bishop, who insisted: “You can’t be telling them to get out”. My friend simply replied, “Well, I have been telling them to get out, and the more I do, the more people come, and the collections are steadily increasing”. In time, my friend even moved the tabernacle to the center of the Church, and just as he began to call the congregation’s attention to the change on the sanctuary, a thundering applause erupted. The ladies never returned after that, and the collections continued to increase.
What is it that accounts for the increase in Church attendance, not to mention collections? Although determining the causes and factors that explain a phenomenon like this is more complex than intuition would suggest, who can doubt that a significant factor is courageous leadership and a challenging kerygma, as opposed to the innocuous and insipid preaching they were subject to for years, a style of leadership that typically does not appeal to men?
There are many anomalies in our lives, but struggle is not one of them; on the contrary, a life without struggle would be truly anomalous. I recall one principal I worked with who typically identified a good day with a smooth day; conversely, a bad day was one beset by frustrations, conflicts, and difficulties–in short, a struggle. Most people make that identification, but a smooth day is not necessarily a good day, and a day full of frustrations, confrontations, and difficulties might very well be the best and most fruitful day of the week. Many of our leaders today typically identify good days with smooth days, and doing so causes them to regard setbacks, conflicts, uncomfortable confrontations and challenges as anomalies. When this occurs among clergy, Catholic leaders will employ strategies designed to avoid battle altogether. The result is that the Lion of Judah is slowly tamed, and preaching becomes mind numbingly innocuous. However, one cannot win a battle that one refuses to fight, and a lion tamed is not the Lion of Judah (Christ), but an imposter. Moses directed Joshua, both of whom prefigure Christ, to go to battle:
At Rephidim, Amalek came and waged war against Israel. Moses, therefore, said to Joshua, “Pick out certain men, and tomorrow go out and engage Amalek in battle. I will be standing on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.”
So Joshua did as Moses told him: he engaged Amalek in battle after Moses had climbed to the top of the hill with Aaron and Hur. As long as Moses kept his hands raised up, Israel had the better of the fight, but when he let his hands rest, Amalek had the better of the fight. Moses’ hands, however, grew tired; so they put a rock in place for him to sit on. Meanwhile Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side and one on the other, so that his hands remained steady till sunset. And Joshua mowed down Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. (Ex 17, 1-16)
Moses with raised hands prefigures the crucified, the sign under which we are always victorious. But the decision of a “king” to siesta while his army is at war makes himself vulnerable to a serious fall, as we see in king David:
At the turn of the year, the time when kings go to war, David sent out Joab along with his officers and all Israel, and they laid waste the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. David himself remained in Jerusalem. One evening David rose from his bed and strolled about on the roof of the king’s house. From the roof he saw a woman bathing; she was very beautiful… (2 Sam 11, 1-2)
The Christian is not called to a life of peace, rest, and tranquility: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man ‘against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household’” (Mt 10, 34-36. See also Eph 6, 10-12; 2 Cor 10, 3-5). Peace and tranquility are only moments of reprieve in a long war; they are gifts from God, and although we would like that state of affairs to endure perpetually, as did Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Transfiguration, the Lord assures us we don’t know what we are talking about and directs us to come down from that mountain to continue the struggle.
The decision to face conflict for the sake of the gospel is rooted in a love of God that extends to our neighbor; on the other hand, the decision to avoid all conflict is a decision to avoid battle. Immediately following these verses, Christ points out that “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”. In other words, whoever loves his own peace of mind more than the division and conflict that life in the Person of Christ inevitably brings about is not worthy of Christ, for such a love amounts to a refusal to fight under the sign of the cross: “…and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10, 38). The follower of Christ has to be willing to lose his life in battle if he is to find life: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 10, 39).
The effeminate, which includes both males and females, are characterized by an unbecoming delicacy or overrefinement. They tend to confuse an argument with a quarrel. If these people are teachers, they often discourage debate; disagreement with his/her point of view is often taken as a personal affront. The more “manly” among us, which includes strong women as well as real men, tend to enjoy a good debate. Such people appreciate the fact that the other was willing to act as an obstacle. In this light, cancel culture is fundamentally a phenomenon rooted in the increased feminization of western culture. However, the fear of being canceled is also fundamentally effeminate. It is particularly ironic to uncover this fear in the Church, for Christ was canceled; the very redemption of humanity was the result of a “cancellation”, and we are called to share in that cancellation (Jn 15, 18; Mt 10, 17-19). Catholic leaders who find themselves in the midst of a war must indeed fight with prudence and strategy, for one has to be able to discern what battles are worth our attention and which ones waste time and energy–a prudence not always exemplified in conservative Catholics; for there’s a fine line between audacity and strong leadership, but there is a difference between a prudence that has as its end the avoidance of battle and a prudence that has victory as its end. Avoiding battle for the sake of peace does not achieve peace in the end, because peace must be “made” (Mt 5, 9), and “making” is an activity, not a passivity. Those who fear being canceled to the point of rendering the kerygma of the Church palatable to the enemies of the Church essentially love their own livelihood over the spiritual and moral integrity of the vulnerable. Such fear is unbecoming of a Christian, let alone a pastor or bishop, for each one of us is called to be a peacemaker, and the harmony that peace is (pax) can only be achieved by engaging in a difficult battle that upsets those who love evil and despise everything the Church loves.
A Lenten Retreat Talk given at St. Augustine’s Seminary, March 4, 2023, to Members of the Catholic Teachers Guild of Toronto and the St. Monica Institute.
Deacon Doug McManaman
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Deacon Doug McManaman
I’d like to focus on the notion of the kingdom of God, which is so prominent in the New Testament. It is such an important notion, but it is rather difficult because it is so multifaceted. The kingdom of God is at the heart of Christ’s preaching.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mk 1, 14-15)
Jesus speaks specifically of the good news of the kingdom of God (Lk 4, 43). I’ve often asked my students in the past: “You have had about 10 years of Catholic education, and you’ve heard the words “good news”, and of course the word ‘gospel’ means good news. Tell me: what is the good news?” More often than not, they simply have no clue. I once met a Catholic nun in the U.S who was beginning to buy into the latest ideological fads, political in nature, that are typically nothing more than temporary substitutes for the authentic kerygma of the Church, and as I was arguing with her, it became rather obvious that she seemed to me to lack a basic understanding of the faith. So at one point I asked her: “What is the good news of the gospel?” She too was stuck for an answer, which is why over the years I have wondered whether or not she is still a Catholic nun. I say this to stress the point that political ideologies are not the gospel. Christ was not a political revolutionary; he did not speak of “social justice”–which is not to suggest that Christ’s teaching and his life have no social implications, they certainly do, but the cart must never be placed before the horse. Christ came to proclaim the good news; he came to establish it. He is the good news.
The good news is the establishment of the kingdom of God in him. But what does that mean exactly? Certainly this is strange language to modern ears; for we don’t speak of kingdoms, but provinces, nations, countries, and we speak of Prime Ministers and Presidents, not kings. So what does this really mean?
Consider this historically. Under king David, the nation of Israel became a kingdom that subjugates other nations. In fact, at the time of Christ, the Jews were expecting a Messiah who would restore Israel to its former status as a kingdom. They were expecting a Messiah like David, a soldier who would lead the defeat of the Romans and free Israel from Roman occupation. But that is not the kingdom Jesus came to establish. He said to Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world” (Jn 18, 36). And in the synoptic gospels, Jesus foretells his passion three times. The reason is that he is preparing his followers so that they may come to understand his true mission. He came to defeat another enemy, the one enemy that man cannot defeat; for he came to conquer sin and its offspring, which is death. The good news of the gospel is the resurrection. And if death has been conquered, sin has been conquered, because death is the effect of sin; for death entered into the world as a result of the sin of the first parents of the human race.
But ‘good news’ (gospel) and ‘kingdom of God’ are often used together in the New Testament. A king governs a kingdom, and a kingdom is an empire that subjugates other nations. Christ came to establish the kingdom of God over and against the kingdom of darkness. The kingdom of darkness is a different kingdom. Recall the story of Genesis: “God said ‘Let there be light’, and God separated the light from the darkness”. This is the creation of the angelic realm. Angels are immaterial, pure spirits, created intellectual lights, and so they are not limited by matter and subject to time as material things are, such as human persons, who are composites of spirit and matter. And angels choose instantaneously whether to serve God or rebel against God. And so, immediately after God created the light of the angelic spirits, God separated light from darkness, that is, He separated the good angels from the rebellious, the angels of darkness. And we know from a study of the fall of man in Genesis chapter 3 that the devil, the prince of darkness, draws the first parents of the human race into the current of his own rebellion. Through his inspiration, darkness enters into the world. The result of the first sin is death, concupiscence, and a loss of the life of grace and the sense of the divine. Sin and darkness spread throughout the world as history continues.
Moving right into the New Testament to the biblical story of the temptation in the wilderness, the devil tempts Jesus in the desert. In the second temptation in the gospel of Luke, we read: “Then the Devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant. The devil said to him, “I shall give to you all this power and their glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you worship me.” Jesus said to him in reply, “It is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.’” Notice what the devil says: “…the kingdoms of the world have been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish”. And in the first chapter of the gospel of John, we read that the light entered the darkness. Jesus came to free man from the kingdom of darkness. He came to defeat that kingdom, to take back what rightfully belongs to God, to free man from the dominion of Satan. In the first letter of John, we read: “Indeed, the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the devil.”
Christ came to buy back (redeem) the human race, to deliver man from the darkness of this kingdom. And so a battle ensues. This temptation in the wilderness is the first round of this battle, and the first round goes to Christ. This kingdom, the kingdom of darkness, is both a visible and an invisible kingdom. Its origin is invisible (the demonic realm); its effects are visible in human sinfulness manifest in history. This is a kingdom that was established in the beginning, not at a particular time in history, as was the Roman or Alexandrian empires. When the first parents cooperated with the evil one and chose to taste radical independence from God, for themselves and their offspring, they submitted themselves to him. They rejected their status as children dependent upon God. Christ came to undo the work of the evil one, and the work of the evil one was to draw humanity into his own sin and rebellion, with all its effects. Christ came to reverse that.
But how is Christ going to reverse that? He reverses that in his Incarnation, death, and resurrection. By his Incarnation, the Second Person of the Trinity joins his divinity to our humanity. The Son dwells among us. The signs of the impending defeat of the kingdom of darkness occur almost immediately, beginning with the overcoming of temptation in the desert, but they continue in the miracles Christ worked, in his miracles over nature (changing water into wine, the calming of the storm, etc.), in the raising of a 12 year old girl from the dead and the raising of Lazarus, which imply his power over death, and most importantly in his forgiving others of their sins, something only God can do. All these are signs that the kingdom of God is among us.
When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days, it became known that he was at home. Many gathered together so that there was no longer room for them, not even around the door, and he preached the word to them. They came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. Unable to get near Jesus because of the crowd, they opened up the roof above him. After they had broken through, they let down the mat on which the paralytic was lying. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are forgiven.”
Now some of the scribes were sitting there asking themselves, “Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming. Who but God alone can forgive sins?” Jesus immediately knew in his mind what they were thinking to themselves, so he said, “Why are you thinking such things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, pick up your mat and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth”, he said to the paralytic, “I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home.” He rose, picked up his mat at once, and went away in the sight of everyone. They were all astounded and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this.” (Mk 2, 1-12)
Christ, who is Messiah, exercises power over the kingdom of darkness; he forgives sins and cures the sick. Rise up, he says, just as he will say to Lazarus and the 12 year old girl whom he raised from the dead. Christ exercises dominion over death. But his definitive defeat of this kingdom takes place on Good Friday. By dying, he destroys death, by rising, he restores life. His blood is the price he paid for the sins of man, and the proof that they have been forgiven is his resurrection, for sin begets death, but divine grace begets life.
So what is this kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is something that cannot be adequately expressed in one answer, which is why we have a multitude of parables of the kingdom. Each one highlights one aspect of that kingdom. What we can say is that it is not of this world. Indeed, it is in this world, but it is not of this world. It is not a political kingdom. And like the kingdom of darkness, it is both visible and invisible. Its origin is invisible; its sustaining source is invisible–the Holy Spirit is invisible. But it is visible insofar as Christ is visible, and insofar as the kingdom has a grip on visible human beings, in particular the visible Church that Christ established on the twelve foundation stones of the Apostles. And, it is a kingdom that grows and develops in history. Consider the parable of the mustard seed:
He proposed another parable to them. “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’” (Mt 13, 31-32)
A very short parable, but it conveys only an aspect of that kingdom, namely, its developmental nature: the kingdom of God develops and evolves in history; it begins small, but grows, develops in time, within history.
The kingdom of God is an invisible kingdom that is here, within the confines of space and time, developing like a plant. The kingdom of God is the redemptive presence of God through the power of the reconciling Spirit. Christ said that he has overcome the world. Christ redeemed us. His presence, his influence, his life, his grace, is in the world. It has been joined to matter. The divine life, divine grace, is intimately present to a sufficient degree to each individual person, and it is up to each person to accept that grace or reject it. Those who accept his grace and cooperate with it will possess sanctifying grace, which is a supernatural quality that is indwelling and habitual, unlike sufficient grace. To be in a state of sanctifying grace does not mean one has achieved spiritual perfection. Rather, it means that one has freely opened himself to the divine nature, which now dwells within; for grace is a sharing in the divine life. This makes one a member of Christ’s Mystical Body, for the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles on Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is the very soul of the Church. Hence, the kingdom of God is present in the world, through that Mystical Body.
The king, who is Christ, is the king of the universe, but he does not reign by force. He does not compel. First and foremost, he reigns within; he reigns through the free cooperation of human persons, and so Christ reigns in his Church. But he does not yet reign in the world of which he is king. Not yet. The world will not allow him to. There is still darkness, enmity, strife, war, between the offspring of the evil one and the offspring of the woman (Gn 3, 15). And so we see history as a battle. We are at war. You are at war. It is not a war fought with conventional weaponry. It is a spiritual battle. My spiritual director would always remind teachers: “There is a war for the souls of our students”. And our responsibility as teachers is to enter into this battle and go to war for them, for their sake, to protect them from the subtle influence of darkness. And that means coming to know that faith, and above all witnessing to the joy of Christ’s resurrection, the joy of belonging to that kingdom, being under the influence of that kingdom, allowing that kingdom, that redemptive presence, to have dominion over your own life; it involves praying for our students, helping them to see the world through the eyes of faith. It is a highly dignified vocation. A very noble one. It’s no longer completely in the hands of the clergy, the religious, as it was of old, when the schools were run by the religious orders. Now, it is up to you and me to carry on that mission, to enter into that battle.
So, even now, Christ is still in the process of defeating his enemies, but he defeats his enemies in the same way that he did when he came among us 2000 years ago in Palestine: as a servant, a humble servant, through the power of the cross. He does not come in military and political power, as did the kings of history. He defeats the kingdom of darkness in “weakness”, for “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” (1 Co 1, 25). God is so powerful that he defeated the one enemy that man could not defeat, namely sin and death, and he did so by dying on a cross. The eternal Person of the Son, who is Life and Light, allowed himself to be swallowed up in death, like a mound of earth would swallow up a stick of dynamite, only to be detonated. Christ’s life fills the darkness of death with the light of life. For the rest of us, dying is loss, it is defeat, but for God, dying is victory. And our dying becomes light and victory in him.
And so the crucifix has become the most powerful sign under which we operate–that is why it is so important to have a crucifix in every room of our house, especially in each classroom, and not the resurrected figures fixed to a cross, but a crucifix; Satan recoils from the crucifix, because it is the sign of his definitive defeat.
Another parable of the kingdom that illustrates an aspect of the kingdom is the following:
“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.” (Mt 13, 33)
Yeast takes time to influence the entire loaf. The kingdom of God is in the world like yeast. A teacher is above all yeast, and a good teacher has influence. That’s the power of a teacher. Influence. It is a real tragedy to have a teacher spend over 30 years in the classroom, with a mission to witness to the good news of the kingdom, to inspire kids to enter that world of grace, truth, and joy, and to neglect that mission completely, to waste those years, by seeing his teaching profession merely as a job, to become totally preoccupied with making his life easier, doing as little as possible. The light that they could have brought into the classroom but did not, because their faith was lifeless, limp, unenlightened and ineffective. Such teachers are forgettable, for instead of bringing light into the classroom, they bring tension, darkness, and hardness.
It is the faith of the Church that it is impossible for man, outside of Christ, to establish peace and justice on earth. Man is inclined to sin. In the Psalms we read: “Unless the Lord builds the house, in vain to the builders labor” (Ps 127, 1). The fullness of the kingdom will only be achieved in the Second Coming of Christ, the Parousia. What we do in the meantime is allow Christ the King to reign in our own lives, and we influence people that way. When Christ the King reigns in our lives, we begin to love with the heart of Christ. We love with humility. We love with the love that we see from the cross, which is a love the world cannot understand, because the world only understands power and politics. It does not understand the humility of the divine love. The world admires strength, wealth, fame, youthfulness, etc. But God the Father admires His Son, who:
…though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2, 6-11)
The kingdom of God, as we said above, is an invisible kingdom, but it is visible insofar as it dwells within the hearts of visible sinful, flawed, neurotic human beings who make up Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church. Christ the king reigns in his Church, and Christ reigns in the hearts of our Protestant brethren who speak and act in his name, and he also reigns implicitly and perhaps pre-consciously in many of our Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, etc., brothers and sisters of good will, who are open to divine grace, whose decisions are moved by divine grace, even without them knowing it explicitly. These are part of the invisible Church.
There will always be conflict between the two kingdoms. We know this from the words of Christ himself who said: “If the world hates me, know that it will hate you too” (Jn 15, 18). We also know this from as far back as the book of Genesis: “I shall put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. She will crush your head, while you will bite at her heel” (3, 15). The woman is Israel, as well as the New Israel, Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, and the Blessed Mother, whose offspring is Jesus. That battle plays out in history, and we are part of it. The specific task assigned to us is to bring the light of the gospel, the commands of Christ, and the message of Christ’s forgiveness of sins to the students entrusted to us. We labor for the next 30 years or so, but in the end, the Lord will take our labors, all our works of charity, as a builder takes wood, glass, and steel, and he will make the final product. But he will usher in the fullness of the kingdom, and when that will occur, no one knows. In large part it does depend on us in that we create the conditions for his ushering in the fullness of that kingdom; we delay that coming or we hasten it by our cooperation or lack of cooperation. Moreover, eternal life with God in the fullness of the kingdom will include the resurrection of the body, our bodies, for we profess this in the Creed, and it will include the Beatific Vision, which is the vision of God as He is in Himself. To see God as He is in Himself is to possess the Supreme Good, the source of all that is Good. Everything you and I desire in this life is ultimately a desire for God, for everything we desire in this life is only a finite good which does not satisfy indefinitely, but only temporarily. The human heart was created by God and for God, and in the human heart is an infinite thirst, and only one thing in reality is infinite, and that is God Himself. The happiness of the eternal possession of God (heaven) is unimaginable. It is not in any way comparable to a Club Med vacation. Any depiction of heaven in film or media is necessarily false, for it is beyond our ability to conceive. However, the more you grow in prayer and begin to experience the joy of intimacy with God and grow in a deeper sense of the divine, you will begin to get glimpses of what the happiness of heaven really is and what it is not; for this is a very subtle joy that is indescribable.
But the joy of heaven begins now, in this life. Christ said that “the kingdom of God is within you”. Too often, Catholic teachers speak as if our mission is to build a utopia, that the kingdom of God is some sort of utopian society that we create, and so the gospel is once again reduced to politics, and what happens then is that political action takes priority, rather than the personal action of the pursuit of holiness, through prayer, confession, Eucharist, works of charity, etc., and soon the teaching of religion becomes a matter of encouraging students to political activism. The fact is social justice will naturally proceed from a life that is growing in holiness.
St. Paul tells us that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and so each one of us is called to be a sacred space, a temple that houses the presence of God. The light that will fill that temple if we are open will certainly illuminate our own life, our own interior, but as teachers, that light will illuminate the space outside of us so that others can begin to make their way through the darkness. That is the great blessing of the vocation of a Catholic teacher. The greatest joy in store for those who have sought first the kingdom of God and left all else to God’s providence will be the awareness that they’ve loved God far more than they thought they did and that the Lord has accomplished so much more, through their efforts, labors and sufferings, than they could have possibly imagined.
Deacon Doug McManaman
https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_386postmodernismctholiceducation.html
https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_385senseofsinanddivine.html
Homily for the 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Deacon Doug McManaman
Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.
Those are really great lines from the second reading. The one time that we see Jesus particularly angry in the New Testament is when he drives the money changers from the temple, overturned their tables, grabbed a chord and beat them with it; for it was the desecration of the temple that angered him above all. And now St. Paul says that you are the temple: “If anyone destroys that temple, God will destroy that person”. The parallel is the gospel text that says anyone who is a scandal to one of these little ones who believes in me, it would be better for that person to have a millstone tied around his neck and be thrown into the sea. That was the harshest thing Jesus ever said, and he seems to have said many harsh things.
A couple of weeks ago I asked a group of confirmation students in Toronto: “How many of you have a “sense of the divine” (sensus divinitatis), an interior sense of God’s presence in your lives. The majority of the 40 or so grade seven students put up their hands. I was very impressed with this, and I urged them to value that and protect it, because it may not necessarily stay with them all their lives. They can lose it, if they’re not careful, especially in their adult years. A week later I asked them: “How many of you have a sense of sin?” Again, the same majority put up their hands.
What is interesting is that the two are connected; for the only way to have a sense of sin is to have a sense of the divine. If one does not have an awareness of the personal presence of God within one’s own interior, one will not have a sense of offending him by doing something contrary to His will, which is what sin is.
It was popular in the 60s and 70s to downplay any talk of sin, both at the parish level and in the schools. It was considered unduly negative. And so the words error, mistake, or weakness, were substituted for the word sin. Instead of “…let us call to mind our sins and ask the Lord for pardon and strength”, we would sometimes hear at Mass: “…let us call to mind our frailties and ask the Lord for pardon and strength. The problem here is that frailties are not sins. We’re all frail, we’re all weak, but that is no sin.
My first 10 years of teaching were in the heart of Jane and Finch in Toronto, and I can assure you that talking about sin was the students’ favorite topic, especially those students of mine who had criminal tendencies, and there were many. Naming the disease that was keeping them in darkness was intriguing to them, and it gave them a genuine hope that there is a way out of that darkness and that one day, when they are ready, they can make their way out.
But more importantly, the good news of the gospel is precisely the revelation of the divine mercy. God’s mercy is incomprehensible. It is pure grace, pure gift. But it is not possible to know God’s mercy without a profound awareness of sin. If I have no sin, I am not in need of God’s mercy. If I am aware of my sins and am aware of how undeserving I am of God’s gifts, and if I am aware that I am addicted to certain sins and cannot free myself, and then suddenly I am told that I am forgiven of everything, that God has separated my sin from himself as far as the east is from the west (which means they will never meet), only then will I experience tremendous joy and relief. This is especially the case if I realize that I have been given the interior grace and strength to rise above those sins.
And so those people in the past who, perhaps with good intentions, worked hard to play down sin and the sense of sin in the lives of the faithful, have really only indirectly deprived the faithful from experiencing the deeper joy of the divine mercy.
Unless the message of the gospel includes the call to repentance from sin, it cannot be experienced as the good news of salvation. And of course, the first words out of Jesus’ mouth at the start of his Galilean ministry were: “Repent, and believe in the gospel.” We cannot repent if we have no awareness of sin. And life without any struggle against ourselves soon becomes boring and banal. There’s no challenge. And when the faith ceases to be a challenge, people, especially men, walk away and move on to other more challenging things.
“Gospel” means good news, and the good news is the forgiveness of our sins, the resurrection, that is, it is the good news that the new life of Christ is available for us, to fill our interior, to give us the power to rise above the darkness and to make a significant difference in this world. I’ve worked with young people for 35 years now, and they always want to make a difference in this world; the problem is we don’t have the power to endure or to be effective. We need to be empowered by Christ, and it is only when we die to ourselves and give ourselves to him and allow his divine life to penetrate deeply into us that we actually begin to achieve anything at all. All we have to do is look at the great saints, such as Pope John Paul II, a man of true guts who went to the very end, rising above the crippling effects of his Parkinson’s disease out of love for the faithful, especially the young, or Mother Teresa, who also labored to the very end of her life, or St. John Bosco who devoted his life to the young at the time of the Industrial Revolution, or St. Katherine Drexel who tirelessly served the indigenous in 16 states. The list goes on and on. These are people who made a difference in this world because they went out into the world, but they did not rely on their own strength, but on the power of Christ. But it all begins with repentance and the forgiveness of sin and the experience of the divine mercy.
Paul says that we are temples of the Holy Spirit. Each one of us is called to be a sacred space, a temple that houses the presence of God. The light that will fill that temple if we are open will certainly illuminate our own moral deficiencies and sins, but renouncing those sins with determination is the path to the joy of living with an ever increasing sense of the divine in our lives. Such a temple will then illuminate the space outside of us so that others can begin to make their way through the darkness.
Homily for the Memorial of St. John Bosco
Deacon Doug McManaman
These are fabulous readings, and they are so appropriate for this feast day of St. John Bosco. Just take that opening in the first reading:
Thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.
That’s the heart of Christ right there. He is the good shepherd who goes searching for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And if you know anything of the life of Don Bosco, you know that he too had the heart of a shepherd, the heart of Christ. Don Bosco was no “sanctuary priest”. He was not one to shelter himself in the rectory, only to come out to say Mass, and then go back in. Some young priests today choose to live out their priesthood in precisely this way, believing that all one needs to do is have a reverent liturgy with nice candles, elaborate vestments, a bit of Latin thrown in here and there, a sanctimonious countenance and nicely folded hands, and a strict observance of the rubrics, and the world will automatically be saved. Where these young men got this idea I have no clue, but that certainly was not Don Bosco’s vision of the priesthood. Like a true missionary, he went out in search of the lost, out into the streets to meet with the young and unemployed, to interact with them, to pay attention to them, to really know them.
I’ve known a lot of priests in my life, but there are three in particular who stand out, for they were widely beloved priests. The first priest was from the Archdiocese of Washington D.C., who back in 1979 picked me up hitchhiking outside of Columbus, Ohio, and who was the turning point in my life. He was a great friend from that point onwards. He witnessed our marriage, baptized our daughter, but he was murdered on June 8th, 2000. The rectory was robbed and the housekeeper found him dead the next morning, stabbed to death. I remember that day looking at the Washington Post online and seeing, on the front page, the face of Father Tom Wells. That was probably the only time the anti-Catholic Washington Post spoke positively about the Church. The headline included the caption: “Widely beloved priest…”. And he was widely loved. Going anywhere with him was always a bit of a pain, because no matter where we were, someone would know him and come up to him. The other priest friend of mine, Father Don Sanvido, is also widely loved. He’s retired, but he is still pestered by all sorts of former parishioners to do weddings, funerals, Masses, visits, etc. And the 3rd priest in my life who is also widely loved is a Salesian in this parish.
Very recently I began to reflect upon these three priests, wondering what it was that made them so widely beloved. It certainly was not any kind of theological liberalism; they are very faithful to Catholic teaching and were always willing to preach the hard and difficult truths, much more than I am. The reason they are so widely loved is that they have a genuine interest in people. When you meet them, they are genuinely interested in you. They want to know about you. They ask about you, they listen to you with great interest, about your life, what you do, how you got there, your unique gifts, and they are genuinely delighted in you. And that’s a rare quality. Not many people are like that. Many people have known you a long time, but they don’t know anything about you, because they don’t ask, and they don’t ask, because they are not interested.
But the heart of Christ is a heart that is interested in people. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, who was a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, points out that the more we pray, the more we enter the heart of God, but there in the heart of God, we discover our neighbor, who was conceived there from all eternity. At that point, we are moved to return to earth to seek out that neighbor. That’s why the more a person grows in holiness, the more interested they are in concrete individual human persons, that is, interested in their world.
And that’s why St. John Bosco was so widely loved, why he befriended countless young people and influenced the world through those young people in ways that are simply beyond our ability to conceive. He was genuinely interested in people, young people in particular.
The next portion of the readings that struck me was from the gospel:
Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones, for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.
This is the harshest thing Jesus ever said in the New Testament: it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the sea. I don’t know where people get the idea that Jesus was always nice and accepting of everyone and everything, that he’d never say an unkind or offensive word to anyone. This is what the Cardinal of Toronto refers to as the “meringue Jesus”, sweet and light, like the meringue on top of a lemon pie. Followers of the “meringue Jesus” don’t read the New Testament; if they did, they’d see that Jesus can be rather offensive at times, especially to Pharisees. In any case, what’s the issue here? The issue is scandalizing these little ones who believe in Christ. There is nothing that Jesus values more than the heart of a child, which is why he commands us to change and become as little children. That alone is the condition for entering into the kingdom of God. But the heart of a child can be corrupted by the bad influence of others.
The other day I had a Confirmation class of about 40 grade 7s. We were talking about Original Sin and I asked how many of them have a ‘sense of the divine’ (sensus divinitatis), that sense or awareness of the presence of God within your life. I wasn’t expecting many hands to go up, but many hands went up, a clear majority. There’s a remarkable innocence in these kids; they believe, they are open to the Lord, and I did tell them that they could lose that sense of the divine in their lives as they get older, that they really need to make sure they don’t lose that, but to value it, nurture it, protect it.
There are, however, adults in this world–basically the culture in which we live–who will be in the lives of these kids, perhaps their teachers, or their professors when they are old enough, or a family doctor, a next door neighbor, or even their own parents, who through their words, their demeanor, their own lack of faith and devotion, etc., might cause these little ones to stop believing, stop praying, and eventually lose that sense of the divine. This is death penalty material for Jesus. The reason is that there is nothing he values more than the heart of a child that believes in the Lord. And that’s why he commands us to change and become as little children. In the garden of Eden, after the sin of the first parents, God approaches: “When they heard the sound of the Lord God walking about in the garden … the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees”. One of the effects of Original Sin is this tendency to flee at the approach of God, which is the root of the loss of the sensus divinitatis. Man cannot tolerate the truth about himself. After the first sin, they saw that they were naked and felt shame. This is significant because children are fine with walking around naked, and they do so without shame, but the first sin was a rejection of our status as “child” dependent upon God. The first parents chose to be their own god, independent and sufficient unto themselves, and so man’s natural tendency now is towards prideful self-sufficiency.
But here, in this gospel, Christ commands us to reverse all this. We are to become as children, naked and without shame, unself-conscious like children, humble like children. Humility is a strange and interesting virtue, for so many people believe they have it; moreover, you can believe you have it, without having an ounce of it. Moreover, the truly humble will not perceive that they have it, because a virtue is a certain kind of excellence, but the truly humble do not for a minute entertain the thought that they possess such excellence. They never look at themselves in the spiritual mirror and delight in what they see; they are empty of any kind of self-satisfaction and complacency. That’s what we are called to, and the more we go down that road, the more joyful we will be, like children who are full of wonder and delight in the simplest things. So too will our lives become full of wonder, for we will begin to see the hand of God everywhere.
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Homily for the Solemnity of the Epiphany
Deacon D. McManaman
This gospel reading for this celebration of the Epiphany is the fulfillment of what we heard in the first reading, from Isaiah, 60: “Jerusalem, …Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance”. In the gospel, we read that the Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem and said to Herod: “We saw his star at its rising and we have come to do him homage.”
On the basis of these readings, I’d like to make two main points: 1) about the cosmos, and 2) about man’s original vocation
The first point on this solemnity of the Epiphany is that the world that God created, the cosmos in its entirety, is an epiphany. The word ‘epiphany’ means manifestation. The created world manifests the divine presence; it speaks of God, of his divine generosity, his benevolence. It praises the beauty and intelligence of God. Scripture makes this very clear. For example, in Psalm 19, we read:
“The heavens proclaim the glory of God
and the firmament shows forth the work of his hands.
Day unto day takes up the story
and night unto night makes known the message”.
And so, creation announces, proclaims, speaks of God’s glory.
Or consider Psalm 148:
“Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all shining stars.
Praise him, highest heavens,
you waters above the heavens.
Let them all praise the Lord’s name;
for he commanded and they were created,
Assigned them their station forever,
set an order that will never change”.
Just as a work of art is in many ways an epiphany of the artist, revealing so much about the artist, creation in all its diversity manifests and praises God.
But there is more. In the first story of Creation in the book of Genesis, God says to man:
“Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food”.
In other words, God created the world as a banquet for us, to feed us. For the Jews, a meal has much more significance than simply a means of sustaining biological life; a meal is a source of communion with all those at table, and so creation, which is given to man for food, is a source of communion with God.
My next point is that a priest is one who offers sacrifice, in particular the sacrifice of thanksgiving. The word Eucharist means ‘thanksgiving’. Man’s task is to receive the food that is creation and give thanks for them, and we give thanks by offering something in return. In other words, man was created to be a priest of creation–he was created to offer, to thank, to praise, to adore. He is to take what is given and lift it up to God, that it may become what God intended for it to become–namely, a means of communion with him.
This pattern is visible at every level of creation. The lowest level of the hierarchy of being in the physical universe is the mineral level, the level of non-living matter. Above that are living things, i.e., plants, but plant life takes non-living matter and consumes it, that is, raises it up through the power of nutrition and transforms it into living matter (this is what happens when we water plants). Non-living matter is food for living matter, and life lifts it up, so to speak. But brute animals eat plants, and through the process of metabolism change plant life into living animal tissue, a higher mode of life. It does this, however, by killing it first and then raising it up. Plants must be sacrificed first in order to be lifted up to serve something higher. But man exercises dominion over the animal kingdom, raising it up to serve human needs, in a number of ways, not always for food. Man, who contains within himself the entire hierarchy of being within himself, is to take all that he is and has become, and all that he possesses, and offer it to God, in the service of God, in a spirit of thanksgiving or Eucharist. Man is a priest of creation.
But the fall of man was a rejection of this priesthood. He chose to make himself his own god. As a result, he gradually became deaf to the praises sung by creation, he no longer possessed the eyes and ears to understand the universe as an epiphany. He no longer had the mind to see the entire cosmos as gift, as food given to him by God out of his superabundant generosity, for the sake of communion with him. And so, he no longer gave thanks. His life ceased to be Eucharistic.
However, God made a covenant with Abraham, the father of Israel, in order to make her a holy nation, a priestly kingdom (Ex 19, 6). And so, Israel is a light to the nations, a holy people, set apart from all others, a priestly people, and the first reading says:
“Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem! Your light has come,
the glory of the Lord shines upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth,
and thick clouds cover the peoples;
but upon you the LORD shines,
and over you appears his glory.
Nations shall walk by your light,
and kings by your shining radiance”.
And the Magi walk by the light of Jerusalem, and that light is a star. In other words, the Magi, these ancient non-Israelite priests of Persia, had eyes for this cosmological epiphany; their priestly existence made them able to discover the Christ child. The Lord was preparing the nations for something new. The Magi follow a star that leads them to Christ, who is the Epiphany of epiphanies, who is God in the flesh. And they have come to worship, to do him homage, to offer him gifts. They do not walk in darkness, they walk by the light of Israel.
What this announces is that the New Covenant will be an international covenant–it will extend beyond the borders of Israel to embrace the whole world. That is why Christ sent his disciples out to all nations. Christ came to restore the world to its status as God’s kingdom (house, palace, covenanted family). Christ, who is God, is everything that man hungers for, his kingdom is everything that man searches for, everything that the great religions of the world are searching for–God become man. And what man was and is called to be is right there in the image of the Magi, who do homage to Christ. We were created “through him and for him”, for Christ’s priesthood; we were created to worship, to adore, to offer. We were created to become Christ, which is what happens in an ordinary Mass. That’s our completion. That was our original vocation, that our entire life, every day, be a sacrifice of thanksgiving, a constant lifting up all we have and are to God, to receive what the Lord gives us and to offer it to him in thanksgiving, whether that be our work, our children, every moment of time in our lives. We are priests. In baptism, we were anointed priest, prophet and king; we are members of the Royal Priesthood of the Faithful. What the ordained ministerial priest does is he takes what we offer, namely bread and wine, which represent the fruit of our labor, our sacrifices, our daily stresses and frustrations, our efforts and the love behind that labor; we offer it here, at the altar, and he takes it and lifts it up on our behalf, and Christ, who is the priest at the altar, receives that bread and wine that we have offered to him and changes it into himself, his own body and blood, which in turn is the sacrifice that Christ offers to the Father. And that is returned to us as food, but it is no longer bread and wine, but the actual food of his body and blood: “for my body is real food”, he says, and “my blood real drink”. Through this exchange, we are deified, united to his sacrificial and Eucharistic offering. Like food that is metabolized, we are raised up to a higher life, a divine-human life. And now, our entire life is subordinated to God; for we are his servants, and servants follow orders. We live under his commands. That’s our fulfillment, and that’s what we were created for.
In this gospel, Herod represents all those who refuse this priesthood. To preserve his power, he sacrifices the innocents, those children called to be priests of his creation, whom he sees as a threat to his status and power, because among them is a king. He is his own god; he does not worship. He is a liar and a murderer for the sake of making his own life more convenient.
And this world is still divided accordingly. I was watching a debate on abortion recently, which was 2 hours and 20 minutes. This is unusual, because abortion is no longer debated; people won’t talk about that. But it was very interesting because the debate was very civil. And both sides were very intelligent and articulate. A young female medical student was arguing for abortion rights, while a young man was arguing against abortion, for the rights of the unborn child. But what I found interesting is that despite the brilliant arguments and points made by the young man arguing for the rights of the unborn child not to be murdered, he was not making any progress; it was like sound waves bouncing off a wall. And there was a wall that divided them, the same wall that divides the world, which Christ came to erect: “Do not think I have come to bring peace; I have come not to bring peace, but a sword of division.” (Mt 10, 34). For the young woman, the issue is all about my consent, my will, my rights, my body, my decision. In other words, my life does not belong to the Lord, it belongs to me. But for the young man, the issue was about obeying, submitting to a higher law, that is, not my will, my rights, my consent, but “Thy will be done”. Although she was very civil, not to mention bright and persistent, she was in some ways a daughter of Herod. His attitude, on the other hand, represented the priesthood of the faithful, our original vocation that was restored in Christ.
Deacon Doug McManaman Sexual morality has become a rather difficult area to approach at both the high school and university levels. It is not easy to find the most effective approach that will allow students to begin to question popular sexual mores and at least begin to appreciate, to some degree, the beauty and wisdom […]
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I have just put out a Second Edition of a short treatise I wrote 10 years ago for my students: A Treatise on the Four Cardinal Virtues. In includes 3 new appendixes, and I have expanded and updated certain chapters.
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Homily delivered to the Confirmandi of Blessed Trinity Parish, North York, Ontario. 2022 https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_371mountainoftreasure.html Deacon Doug McManaman I just want to say that I really had a great time teaching you all this year. Of course, the two candidates that really stood out were ______ and ______. I do want to say how much I […]
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D. McManaman After sending my brother an interview with Victor Davis Hanson on the situation in the Ukraine, my brother replied by saying: “So far I don’t find it anywhere near as enlightening as Mearsheimer” (Professor John Joseph Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He is an American […]
Homily for the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_368homily2.6.2022ordinarytime5.html
Homily for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Timehttp://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_367homily1.16.2022ordinarytime2.html Deacon D. McManaman “No more shall people call you ‘Forsaken, ‘ but you shall be called ‘My Delight, ‘ for the LORD delights in you.” There is no doubt that in this reading, the Lord is addressing Israel, who is His bride. However, the deeper and ultimate meaning […]
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http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_365objectificationandabortion.html Deacon D. McManaman Very often while serving at a Mass, I will look out at the congregation and reflect upon the fact that there are so many people in front of me about whom I know virtually nothing. I also know that if I were to sit down with any one of them and […]
Dcn D. McManaman And Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. This is a very revealing line of the gospel, and it tells us something of Mary’s inner life. She treasured all these things, all that the Shepherds said regarding the message told to them by the angel who appeared, and […]
Deacon D. McManaman Today is the feast of St. John, Apostle and evangelist. He is “the other” disciple mentioned in the gospel: “Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first”. What is interesting about […]
Dcn D. McManaman (Chaplain of the CTG, Toronto)
This year our pastor in Aurora assigned the pastoral team to visit the schools within the parish boundaries, and we’ve each been assigned a specific number of classes to visit, to read a scripture with the kids, and discuss it, and we do that once a month. This year we are reading and discussing one miracle a month. One thing that always impresses me about the students I visit in grade 4, 5, and 6, is the amount of faith they have, as well as the amount of understanding of what it is we have just read. That testifies to two things: the light of faith, which is a light that is rooted in the gift of faith which they received in Baptism, and it also testifies to the good work of the parents–not to mention some teachers.
In the gospel today, the teachers of the Law were astounded at Jesus’ understanding and his wisdom. Where did Jesus get his understanding? Well, there are two sources. First, there’s no doubt from this gospel that he had an understanding of his divine sonship. He said to Mary and Joseph: “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Mary didn’t quite understand what he meant, but he did. He had an understanding of his divine sonship, which is why he refers to God as ‘my Father’, which was unique in the history of Israel.
But Jesus is fully human as well. When and in what way did the divine mind of the Son intersect with Jesus’ human mind? We don’t really know the answer to that question. But if he was like us in all things but sin, then it follows that he must have experienced human constraints and limits and to some degree needed the guidance of others, like his parents. And so, the other source of his understanding and wisdom would have come from Mary and Joseph. The primary duty of the father of a Jewish household was to pass down the teachings of the Torah to his children. Jesus also got his learning from his mother, because the mother of a Jewish household has a significant role as teacher, as it says in Proverbs, chapters 1 and 6.
And what were they doing in Jerusalem? Like a faithful Jewish family, they were there for the feast of Passover, and the gospel tells us that they would go every year. The reason that Jews celebrate feasts is that history exists in the memories of people, and memories fade, unless we work to keep them alive. That is why the Lord commanded Israel to celebrate feasts throughout the year, feasts that commemorate God’s action in history. If they remember God’s action in history, they will remain grateful. If they forget, they will lose gratitude and become an irreligious people–the virtue of religion is always rooted in gratitude. All the requirements of the Torah, the rituals in all their detail, exist for the sake of reminding, keeping history alive in the memories of the Jews. The parents’ primary duty was to pass down the teachings of the Torah to their children. Everything else was secondary. Mary and Joseph fulfilled what was their primary duty, and the reaction of the teachers of the law clearly shows this.
And, of course, Catholicism comes out of Judaism, and we too have a liturgical year dotted with feasts and solemnities, and it is all geared to remembering and re-living, and entering into the mystery of Christ’s life. It is rich in content. One of the things that Father Arthur Lee began doing for weekday Mass was to provide a brief homily on the life of the particular saint whose feast it is that day. And it is always very inspiring to hear, and others have said that as well. I think the reason it is inspiring is that the saints are our older siblings, and when we hear about them, we are learning about our own family, our own family history. We get a better sense that we really do belong to a larger family that extends all the way back centuries, and we belong to a historical tradition that is much larger than our current situation in the world.
I remember the weekend I visited my friend Father Don Sanvido–which I would do quite often, to give him a break from preaching. One Saturday morning I woke up early, about 5 a.m, and so I went to his living room and prayed the breviary, and when I was done, I looked up and across the living room at the far end was a bookshelf, and I noticed the four volume set of Butler’s Lives of the saints. So I got up and walked over to it, closed my eyes, reached out and grabbed a volume, opened it up and put my finger on the page, and where my finger landed, I would read the life of that saint. I’d randomly picked a 3rd century saint that I’d never heard of before, and just read the page and a half of her life. And I remember, after reading it, feeling so inspired, built up as if I had just consumed something nutritious. I put the volume back and did it again, closed my eyes and randomly selected a volume and a page, and I got some 5th century unknown saint, and his life was so different from the previous, such a different personality, but I remember again feeling so exhilarated by his life.
If it is true that we only really know ourselves in community, especially and above all in the first and smaller community of the family, then we really do come to a deeper understanding of ourselves when we come to know the lives of the saints, because we come to a deeper understanding of our own larger family, our own siblings.
And this brings me to a final point. The students I had over the years were always interested in the diabolical, and they had all sorts of questions about exorcism, possession, the demonic, and in many ways that’s a problem. They bought into the lie of Hollywood, a lie that many in this world have bought into. The lie is that evil is interesting, but goodness is boring. Newspapers function on that lie, which is why they won’t publish stories about a school raising over 50 thousand food items for the poor at Christmas, for example, but they will publish a story about a stabbing that took place in a school. The truth is the complete reverse: goodness is profoundly interesting and inspiring, but evil is ultimately boring. Goodness has depth; evil is nauseatingly empty. But many people typically think otherwise. There’s an exorcist in the US who sometimes gives talks at universities. The lecture halls are always jam packed, not even standing room. Why? Students think evil is intriguing. If someone was there giving a talk on Scripture or the lives of some saints, the lecture hall would be virtually empty. But there’s no depth to evil, and in the end, it disappoints. Only goodness has the capacity to inspire, and when we are in touch with that historical tradition of ours that goes all the way back to the Old Testament, through the New Testament and through the centuries with the lives of the saints, we are enriched, and when we pass that on to our children, they too are enriched.
Young people love the faith, they love it when the Scriptures are explained to them without draining them of their mystery, and they love the stories of the lives of great saints. And that’s the great dignity of parenting. It’s the most important work. I used to ask students what’s the most important work, and they’d give me all sorts of answers from politician, medical doctor, police officer, court judge, etc., but of course the answer is parenting. That they don’t know that is revealing. But parenting is the most important work. And if you think about it, everything we do in the Church, from daily Mass to baptism prep, confirmation prep, marriage prep, baptisms, Confirmation, first communion, and marriages, funerals, etc., it is all ordered to the service of the family.
The readings today are joyful. They announce good news. The gospel today is the magnificat; Mary’s magnification of the Lord.
After reading the magnificat, one could ask the question: “When did God scatter the proud, and when did he bring down the powerful from their thrones and lift up the lowly? When did he send the rich away empty?” These are joyful words, for they speak of victory, but when in history did this ever happen? He certainly didn’t do that in the first century. Herod slaughtered the innocents, and the first 300 years of the Church’s existence was trial and persecution by ruthless emperors. The lowly were being killed; the mighty and the powerful remained where they were.
In many ways, this magnificat is like the first story of creation in Genesis. At the end of the creation story, after the creation of the world, God saw all that He had made and it was very good. But what did God see? I think the best interpretation of this text is that God beholds the entire order of creation, including time and history, not simply a portion at the beginning of time. And so we know that history will end in a way that is pleasing to God. He will be victorious over darkness, which entered the picture on the first day of creation, if you recall that account–God said ‘let there be light’… and he separated light from darkness.
In this magnificat of Mary, she rejoices at the coming of the Messiah, the son of David. He is king. He came to establish his kingdom, and his kingdom will have no end. He will be victorious, according to Scripture. This magnificat takes in the entire picture, it sees the completion of the Messianic age. If the Messiah has come, if she carries the Messiah in her womb, then victory is assured. But this victory is to be worked out in history. The kingdom of God has been established, and Christ reigns in the lives of the faithful. But he does not reign in the hearts of everyone. His kingdom grows not by coercion and force, but by the free assent of the individual person to allow Christ to reign, to have dominion over their lives. And we know from the parables that the kingdom of God grows gradually, larger and larger, throughout history. That kingdom is victorious, but the victory unfolds gradually, through time. In the end, God saw that it was very good. The proud of this world who govern according to their own principles will in the end be on the losing side. And so our task is to continue in the knowledge, through faith, that Christ is victorious, and not to despair, but to do our small part, and in doing so we become part of that victory in the end, and Mary’s joy that we discern in this gospel will be a reflection of our own, just as the song of Hannah in the first reading is a mirror of this joyful song of Mary in the gospel.
(to be published in Shalom Tidings, 2022)
Deacon Doug McManaman
On one of my pastoral visits to a local elementary school, a young grade 5 girl said to me that she was told by an adult in her life that, with respect to this pandemic, “God is taking a vacation”. Although there is something hopeful in the claim–insofar as vacations come to an end and the vacationer returns and takes care of outstanding business–, I certainly wouldn’t frame it like that. It is a rather dangerous claim to make, for God does not leave us alone even for an instant. In fact, we have God’s undivided attention at every instant of our existence, and children above all need to understand that. It is not possible for a limited human being to give undivided attention to more than one person at the same time, but God can give everyone His undivided attention simultaneously, because God is unlimited.
It is remarkable to consider what it means that we have God’s undivided attention at every instant of our existence; for it means He loves each one of us as if there is only one of us, that is, as if you are the only one for Him to love. It is as if everything in the universe was created ultimately for you alone, that all this exists to sustain and serve you, i.e, the atmosphere of the planet, the law of gravity and all the other laws of physics, the cycles and the order of nature, etc. In fact, if you or I really knew how much God loves us, we would die of joy. And this life is precisely about learning to be loved like that. That means allowing ourselves to be loved like that, for we tend not to allow that for ourselves because we have a very uncompromising and narrow sense of justice for ourselves and thus don’t see ourselves as deserving of that love, so we choose not to open ourselves to it. But His love for us is not a matter of justice; of course, no one deserves to be loved like that; for one cannot earn the right to be brought into being if one does not exist. And so although His love for me is not a matter of justice, it is a matter of pure gift. After all, God’s justice has been revealed, in the Person of Christ, as absolute mercy.
There is a relationship between that divine love and how we understand ourselves. A person only really knows himself to the degree that he knows how much he is loved by God, and so the more we allow ourselves to “be loved like that” (as if there is only one of us), the deeper will be our own self-understanding; for we will begin to see ourselves as He sees us. If we don’t see ourselves through His eyes, that is, as He sees us, then we are left to see ourselves as we are seen by others. The problem with this, however, is that others rarely if ever see us as we really are–especially if those in our lives do not look at us through God’s eyes–, and if they don’t see us as we really are, they do not love us as we ought to be loved. When the world looks at you, it does not see an inexhaustible mystery; rather, it sees an object, something to be valued according to its utility. But there is nothing mysterious about tools. On the other hand, when God sees you, He sees a genuine mystery, because each human person has been created in the image and likeness of God, and God is the unutterable mystery. Hence, each human person is an inexhaustible mystery whose secret lies hidden within the depths of the inexhaustible mystery of God.
We have two interiors: 1) a physical interior, and a 2) spiritual interior. A surgeon has access to our physical interior, but he does not thereby have access to our spiritual interior. No one has access to that interior except you and God. In fact, God dwells always in the deepest region of that interior. The way to begin to come to an awareness that you are known by God is to enter into that “universe within”. That is what it means to place ourselves in the presence of God. Few words are necessary within that space; it is enough to simply repeat over and over: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”. The more time we spend within that space, without distraction, the more we will come to sense that we are being watched, that we have someone’s attention. That is a very positive and enlightening experience; for we begin to see ourselves as someone worthy of attention. We begin to see ourselves as persons, rather than mere individuals. But it begins with entering into the “universe within”, and that experience makes all the difference in the world, because most of us for most of our lives have been reduced to objects, but we know ourselves to be “subjects”–persons of intrinsic worth. This “objectification” is in many ways the source of a great deal of personal anger and feelings of alienation, but as we spend more time within that interior where the Lord awaits us, the less alienated we will begin to feel and the more peaceful our life becomes.