Mary, in Time and Eternity

The Assumption presents us with Mary mothering us, both in time and eternity. This is possible only because she is everywhere God is. Were that not true, she could not be on earth and in heaven. In the first reading we see Mary first of all in the eternal heavens: She is the “great sign that appears in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars”.

Then the image shifts, and we next see Mary with us on earth: “She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth”. Time and eternity intersected in her womb as she birthed Christ into our history, bringing the Father's Son into our world.  As Mother of the Church, she continues to birth us into the People of God, the Church, generation after generation, until the end of time, and into eternity. She does the in the face of all present and future dangers, all the suffering and evil we face while we journey through life towards God.

As the reading tells us: “the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth.” That child  is now every one of us born into time from the beginning of the world to its end.  Mary is the New Eve, the Mother of all the living, Mother on earth of the New Creation's beginnings and its cosmic fulfillment in the age to come.

When the Christ child “was caught up to God and his throne” where now in glory he “rules all nations with an iron rod”, “the woman herself fled into the desert where she had a place prepared  by God”.  Until the end of time, the Church remains under Christ’s and Mary’s protection as it wanders in the desert, this “valley of tears”.

Mother Mary remains with us, her children,  even as she reigns with her Son in glory.  His most precious possession, she was given to us by him before he died, when he also gave us to her. Christ told John “behold your mother”. And he told Mary: “behold your son”.  He did not also need to tell her that she is to love us as his precious gift to her. She knew the price he paid for us, and so cares for us with very love, intensity, and total devotion she poured out on him. Could she do less with the gift that cost her Son his life?

She mothers us now, we sinners,  part of the old creation groaning and struggling on the way to becoming the New Creation. Mary mothers us from both perspectives, that of the Resurrection in which she shares, and that of the Cross which she helps us carry.

She sees us from eternity and from time.  She rejoices with those of us in glory as she also helps us who are on the way.

She sees all of us in our individual, unique, lives, in our isolation and loneliness. She sees us in our timid, weak, and fearful attempts at communion with one another. She sees us growing in our identity as Church, as the Body of Christ her Son on earth. She also sees us as the New Israel, the Heavenly Jerusalem, participating in His Risen Life of Glory.

She sends us the graces we need on the way to become the New Jerusalem that her Son is transforming us into. She sees the interconnections between all our lives and destinies, as we grope to work them out, confusedly helping one another as we fall and rise on the way, and she sees our lives purified, perfected and fulfilled, as we celebrate the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb who was slain.

She walks with us in time, and she glories in the embrace of the triune God who holds time, cosmos, and his Church in his hands as we travel to him.

Mary is the living memory of the Church on earth and in glory. A mother never forgets the details of her children’s lives. Mary loves each child as the individual, unique person it is, and ponders her Son’s workings in that child’s life. She mediates his graces to each and every one of us and watches over us as we grow in the awareness of our new identity as Christ’s little ones and children of the Father.

She witnesses our many failures and falls as she mercifully inspires us to turn and return to him. She is the Mother of all grace, Mother of every yes we say to her Son, mother of our conversions and continued growth, mother of our repentance and contrition, mother of our on-going, inner purification and transformation, mother of our prayer and contemplation, mother of our spiritual life.

All of our lives, the life of every one of her children, is part of her living memory. She is the living memory of the Pilgrim Church and the Church  in glory. She is the live, divine history book, the repository and record of the all the Trinity’s actions and graces which brings her Son’s sheep into the one sheepfold of heaven. 

Mary is prototype and exemplar of all consecrated religious. Her motherly body that has birthed so many children into the kingdom is ever young and endlessly fruitful because of her consecrated viginity. Completely surrendered, body and soul, flesh and spirit, to God alone, He has used her as the infinitely fertile vessel of his Holy Spirit and the free-flowing channel of his graces to all mankind.

Jesus the Way, the Truth, and the Life: a meditation on John 14: 1- 5

This meditation comes from reading Adrienne von Speyr, and Dom Luigi Giussani. In my opinion, these two spiritual giants compliment and bring out the depth of each other's gifts. As you go through Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life, I hope you will take off in the direction the Spirit moves you, and feel inspired to add your own personal reflections. The text is long and wordy, but, I hope, worth reading slowly and responding to, not in one prolonged sitting, but in bits and pieces.

I believe all of us experience the tensions of living the human adventure and journeying towards God. The tension of being finite and hungering insatiably for the Infinite; of being limited and  yet wanting to be the measure of the Unlimited One; of feeling the urge to surrender to God and yet remain independent of him; to have his Divine Life in us, but have it on our own terms and under our own control; to possess God without giving ourselves to Him; to follow Christ, yet be in charge of the way we go. This tension comes from living in the Spirit, under the influence of Grace, in virtue of faith, hope, and charity instead living by our natural inclinations to see, feel, taste, figure out,  understand, enjoy, and digest everything we experience according to our human capacities and limits. How could we not experience this tension, when we inevitably reduce the Christ to what little we are open to receive from Him who wants to take us over completely? How could we not perceive his generous offering of self as an invasion of our freedom and autonomy. But we can't have it both ways: we can't belong to ourselves and belong to him.

(Where Christ says “you” in the singular or plural, personalize his message by speaking out your name. His revelations are to all of us, as the different, unique persons we are, and as a common family, who share all his gifts with one another.)

Jesus said to his disciples:(including all us who follow him today)  Let not your hearts be troubled.

Do not let all your worries, fears, anxieties and insecurities overcome you, nor your ideas and feelings. None of that is the measure of who you are. The measure of who you are is your relationship with me in faith, hope and love.  I am the measure of who you are. Get yourself out of the bio-dome, or ego-bubble inside which you live, that ego-bubble where you need to stay in order to feel secure, safe, and in control, that bio-dome where you imagine yourself autonomous and free. Get yourself outside of that artificial environment, that comfort zone, and into the supernatural life that flows from me to you. Live in that ever-deeper, always developing, ongoing relationship with me.)

Believe in God; believe also in me.

Put the same faith in me that you have in my Father. That is going to be difficult for you, because soon I am not going to look like my Father’s Son to you. When I am hanging on the cross, helpless, dying, and forsaken, I will look like anything but the divine Son of my Father in your eyes. Yet that will be when I am most perfectly the Son He eternally calls me to be, for I will be giving myself to Him for all of you. I will be pouring out on you all of the Life and Love the Father eternally pours into me. I will be absorbing the sin and evil of all mankind, and cleansing you of your sins. That is my mission, my purpose in life, my destiny: to give myself away, give myself in sacrifice to you, for you, in order to bring you back to the Father.

You can trust that gift I am making of myself, even though you cannot comprehend it.  You can trust me and my Father. We know what we are doing, even though you are not capable of understanding it.

In my Father’s house there are many rooms.

So many rooms, many places. As many places as there are persons, and there are so, so many of you. Here on earth, you have no place that is really yours. Whatever home you have is temporary. Your real home, the place where you finally settle down, is with me and my Father. On earth your whole life is a journey home. As long as you are here you are a person-the-way; to be a wayfarer is who you are; it is your identity on earth.  You don’t become your full self until you arrive home and are in my Father’s embrace. Here you cannot be your full self, your definitive self, because you are not with Him.  What you are on earth, who you are on earth, is a continual growing towards him, an on-going movement towards Him. That’s why wayfarer is your identity in this world. This identity gives your life meaning and purpose. Here as you journey you start discovering who you are, you develop self-awareness, in your relationship to me and my Father. How could you know yourself any other way, since you belong to us?

If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

Who you are, your personal characteristics, would get lost in the immensity of the Kingdom, if there were not a special place in my Father’s house for the unique person that each one of you is. If there were only one huge dwelling place, I would have to reduce you all to one common denominator, and level you all down to single manageable mass. But no, this is not the case. Here on earth, I have a specific purpose for each person, including you, a calling, a mission, a vocation that no one else can fulfill.  I guide you principally by my grace in the sacraments. What you do on earth is not a matter of indifference or unimportance. I call no one to exist, no one to follow me, without a purpose. Each one has a different part in my divine plan for the Kingdom.  What makes you all different on earth will continue to make you all different in heaven. Hereafter, all the differences will all fit together  into the beautiful, harmonious, glorious Kingdom of my Father, where He  is all in all. Then you will be fully yourself and finally be his child forever. This is why I have told you over and over I am going back to my Father.  I came from him by myself. But I will return to him with all of you. And my Father will accept you, because he will recognize me in all of you. You have already been sealed as mine in Baptism. In the Kingdom, you will be stamped with the final form my grace gives you. You, in all the richness of your differences, will mirror me to my Father and give him glory. I do not go back to him empty-handed.

And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may also be.

My going to the Father is part of my mission, as is my coming from the Father. This commission from him is my path, the Way that I have received from my Father. It starts and ends with Him. You see my going to him begin with the Cross, and continue in my Resurrection.  From you I go in suffering and to him I return in glory. And I take with me all who believe in me. I will be beyond your eyes with the Father, and carry you who love me to him. As the Risen Son, I am no longer limited to one place.  I am with, and in, whoever believes in me and loves me, in every place, at all times. So you do not have to be afraid because your eyes do not see me as before. When I am with the Father I am also with you in the world. I, the Unlimited One, am with you who are limited.  You are everywhere I am, because I am everywhere you are, whether you see me, or feel me, or not. I am not reducible to your senses, your emotions, or your ideas.  Always remember: I want you with me and my Father once and for all.

When the Father and I are One forever, beyond my mission, beyond any more possibility of separation caused by sin and suffering, then the final stage of your redemption will be achieved. My coming again in glory at the end of time will not be because the Father has sent me to sow the seeds of the Kingdom, but to bring you whom I have redeemed into the fullness of His Kingdom. I will come as the One who lives with the Father and dwells in him.  You will have eternal life in us. You will live in our reciprocal love. And that love will fill you with the intense, divine life of the Spirit. Your very self will be the dwelling place of our glory.

 And you know the way where I am going.

I am going to the Father. Since you know I am going there, now you know how you will get there. You know the path that leads you there because you know me. And you know there is no other Way to the Father.  So you know enough, even though you have not seen the Father for yourself. You know where I am going, you know the Father is love, you know He sent me to show you what the way of love is by walking it ahead of you. Now you know how to follow in my footsteps. My Father infinitely surpasses what your eyes can see and what your minds can imagine. So you cannot get to him without me, without the way I give you, without the Way that I am.

True, the way of love is the way of suffering. That is the path I walk, the Way I am. True also, that you will only know this way when you travel it, when you experience it. Suffering will persuade you to hesitate on the path, to refuse to go on, to stop and then go in the wrong direction. All that happens because of the pain involved in loving others and suffering for them.  Even though Baptism has set you on the right path, even though Penance and Communion will bring you back to the path again and again,  you will never reach the point where you  walk the path steadily and unhesitatingly without failure. Just because one day you are ninety does not mean you have made more progress than someone who is forty. My grace will be working in you, molding you and conforming you to me all the time, but you will not be able to measure it. Nor will you ever stop being somewhat reluctant to receive it, no matter how old you are. Your progress, growth, lies in my hands, not yours. I am impatient for you to grow and progress. But mine is the impatience of divine love which will seem like endless patience to you, endless opportunities which you fail to respond to, opportunities you perceive as challenges too surprising and unexpected to recognize and accept. In my divine impatience I will patiently keep on teaching you that you must let my love, my sacrificial self-giving, find a place in your heart now, instead of later, today instead of tomorrow!

Thomas said to him: Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?

You are like Thomas. Every person is. You want clarity. With your limited heart and mind you want to comprehend me completely. You want to know the whole way even before you start out. You can’t help trying to grasp and measure me with your human senses and abilities. That is impossible.  Even if you had physical contact with me in the flesh as the Twelve had, even if you had been in the upper room with them and could both see and touch me as Thomas did! You would never be the measure of me, just as they could not.  Like the Twelve, you have to stop being so small-minded; stop making the mistake they did.

The only path you know is one that your feet walk on.  My path is greater than that. You cannot understand my plans, my destiny, even though I have told you everything. The reason why I came into the world, the only purpose that I have, is to bring all of you back to my Father. Doing his will, giving myself away for you in love, pouring myself out in sacrificial love, that is my path back to the Father.  All that is my will; all that is my way of love.

Of course you can’t picture and grasp this path, no matter how you try. You hear what I say about the Kingdom, and you learn the truths about eternal life, but it is abstract theory to you, because all you can see is that human life always ends in the disaster of death.  In one sense, that perception is right. The life of my Father, the place where he is, the way to him, all remain totally incomprehensible to you, for they are beyond human reaching.  You need, you want, a concrete goal you can see, perhaps a marker that is a mile away. That’s the way you are. But there is no way to take the infinite, and make it quantifiable, clear, and certain. Everything you humanly know and do during your whole lifetime is only a passing moment of your already unending life in me.  That’s why you have to put your faith in me and realize I am the way to the Father, the only way, your way, and everyone else’s. Only by believing in me and following me can you become part of the Always More and Ever Greater Way that I am.

Jesus said to him: I am the way, the truth and the life.

I understand how discouraged you feel at times and how blind you usually are. I know you crave security. That’s why I am revealing my deepest secrets to you and all the others.  Even though I reveal my secrets to you, they remain mysteries, however. They can only be grasped in the dark light of faith. You cannot yet see my mysteries in all their light and clarity. Nor can you help reaching out and trying to measure to what I say by means of your limited capacity to receive. Your very lack, your neediness, is why I will infuse in you the gift of the Holy Spirit. That will enable you to get beyond yourself and operate out of the gifts of faith, hope, and love, which unite you to me. The Spirit who come from the Father, he will receive my call in you, the call to follow me back to the Father. The Spirit will get you beyond your human limitations and enable you to enter into the mystery of who, and what, I am. The Spirit will teach you what it means to believe. Then you will hold to the mystery without trying to measure it.

You will begin to understand that I am the Way:  the-way-to-the-Father. I am the only Way, and the whole Way. The whole Way is everything I am – my conception, birth, growth, manhood, work, suffering, and death. All of that is the Way that I am. So it is the way you have to travel. You do not have to see the whole way; you do not have to survey the entire journey to know you are on the right path. I give you the grace to go step by step, then more grace for the next step you are to take. That’s what it means to walk with me in the light of faith.

I am the Truth. I cannot be anything but truth, because I am always witnessing to my Father, the whole truth of who he is. I am that Truth, his Truth, the Truth that comes from him.  I only speak of what I have seen in Him. I am no empty word, no meaningless verbiage; I am the fullness of his Truth. I am not some changeable or temporary message. I am his eternal, living, always new Truth.  All other truths you know are only partial, and therefore deceptive.  Nothing else you know can exhaust nor grasp the all-embracing Truth I am.

 I am the Life. His life, I am the Life that comes from him. All the divine life he is, he pours into me. I am his Son, his very substance. His is movement-to-me, and I am movement-back –to-him. That movement-from-and-to the-Father is who I am on earth. That life is what I pour out unceasingly on the Cross; that is what I give you in every Eucharist – the self-gift of the Father to me and of me to him,  the donation we endlessly make of ourselves in the perfect communion of the Trinity. In every Eucharist I am bringing you back to the Father in the one reciprocal movement of life and love that the Three of us is.

No one comes to the Father but by me.

How do you go to the Father?  The way the Father has prepared for you: The Way that I am. By following me, by living in union with me in this life through faith, hope and love, you are on the way back to my Father. You have to walk the way that I did, by receiving from me the grace to make an offering of yourself to my Father.  When you do that, my whole life will envelop you. That is how you live in me, and at the same time go beyond me to him.  I will go with you all the Way, and I will hold you out before me to present you to the Father. You need not be afraid. He will see my life in you. So he will take you in his arms, just as he takes me.  He will love you as totally, freely, joyously as he loves me.

That is what my Mother did when she and Joseph joyfully held me up and first presented me in the temple.  She was unaware then of all that was ahead of her at the presentation. She was innocent of what she would suffer. At the end, when they took me down from the cross and placed me in her arms, she offered me to the Father again, this time in the joy of faith and yet the agony of presenting me to him as the sacrificial victim of your sins.

 I carry you the way my mother first carried me: not at all naively, but knowing fully the cost of all sin and every evil, having borne it joyously. My Mother went beyond her pain and agony at my death and offered me to the Father for you. In the same way I forget my pain, because of the joy of redeeming you and bringing you to him. You need not to be afraid to be in my arms, or in hers. You need not fear even death. Let me give you over to the Father as my Mother did with me, so that I can fill you with his life.

Bergoglio and Giussani

A few weeks ago I read an article on the CL website entitled Bergoglio and Giussani. It was by Massimo Borghesi, and explained not only why Bergoglio like Giussani so much, but also showed some of the influence Giussani has had on  then Cardinal Bergoglio's (and now Pope Francis') thought.

Cardinal Bergoglio's esteem began back in the nineties when he first started reading Giussani's works. In 2001 Bergoglio publicly offered two main reasons:  "The first, more personal, is the good that this man has done for me, for my life as a priest, in the last ten years, through my reading of his books and articles. The second reason is that I am convinced that his thought is profoundly human, and reaches even the most intimate part of human yearning. I would daresay that it is the most profound, and at the same time, most comprehensible phenomenology of nostalgia as a transcendental fact." 

 Bregoglio was explaining and deepening what had said in 1999, when he commented on The Religious Sense "For many years, Monsignor Giussani's writings have inspired my reflection...The Religious Sense is not a book for the exclusive use of those who are part of the movement, nor is it only for Christians or believers. It is a book for all men who take their own humanity seriously. I dare say that today, the question that we must primarily face is not so much the problem of God - the existence of God, the knowledge of God, but the problem of man, the knowledge of man, and finding in man himself the imprint that God left there, in order to meet him...If a man has forgotten or censored his fundamental 'whys' and the longing of his heart, the fact of speaking to him about God proves to be an abstract, esoteric discourse, or a push toward a devotion with no bearing on life. One cannot begin a discourse about God without first blowing away the ashes that suffocate the burning embers of those fundamental 'whys'. The first step is to create the sense of those questions that are hidden, buried, perhaps suffering, but that exist." 

Brogoglio found in Giussani's writings a God whose grace, ( i. e. whose  unpredictable, always new, action in man), comes first. Grace is always the source, as well as the sustenance,  follow-through, and fulfillment of  man's hunger for the Infinite. Man today doesn't see Christ as the satisfaction of his human aspirations because his religious sense has been blunted. 

 

Bregoglio continues his commentary on The Religious Sense: "...in order to interrogate ourselves when faced with signs, a extremely human capacity is necessary, the first one that we have as men and women: wonder, the capacity to be amazed, as Giussani calls it, ultimately , the heart of a child. Only wonder knows. ... The cultural opiate tends to obliterate, weaken, or kill this capacity for wonder. The beginning of any philosophy is wonder. There is a phrase of John Paul II that says that the drama of contemporary Christianity lies in the fact of putting categories and norms in place of wonder. Wonder comes before all categories. It is what brings me to search, to open myself; it is what makes my response possible, and it is neither a verbal nor a conceptual response. Because if wonder opens me as  a question, the only response is the encounter - and only in the encounter is thirst quenched." 

When Bergoglio presented  Giussani's book The Attraction of Jesus, he confirmed: "Everything in our life, today as in the time of Jesus, begins with an encounter, - an encounter with this man, the carpenter from Nazareth, a man like all others, and at the same time different. The first ones, - John, Andrew, Simon, - discovered that they were looked at in their very depths, read deep down, and a surprise was generated in them, a wonder that made them feel tied to Him, a wonder that made them feel different. ... One cannot understand this dynamic of the encounter that arouses wonder and adhesion without the "trigger" of mercy. Only those who have encountered mercy, who have been caressed by the tenderness of mercy, get on well with the Lord. ...The privileged place of he encounter is the caress of the mercy of Jesus Christ toward my sin."

In Borghesi's article, Bregolio  then cites another book by Giussani, Something that Comes Before, to explain what an unmerited gift the encounter with Christ is: "the 'something that comes before' is the encounter with Christ, even if unclear, not truly aware - as for John and Andrew, it was something astonishing, not definable by them. The thing that come first, grace, is the relationship with Christ: Christ is the grace, it is this Presence, and it is your relationship with it, your dialogue with it, your way of looking at it, thinking about it, focusing on it."

This encounter is the essential form in which Christianity has to manifest itself today! The Cardinal's understanding of this profound insight is what  influenced him to say a  some years later as Pope Francis that "The dogmatic and moral teachings of the Church are not all equivalent. The Church's pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focus in essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts us more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the Church is likely to fall as a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow." Without the encounter, the moral behavior has no foundation.  If it is Christ that attracts us first, and encountering Him comes before all else, there is no danger of falling into moralism, dogmatism, or any form of Christian fundamentalism which reduces Christ to an ideology!

Bregoglio wrote  in 2001 :"This Christianly authentic conception of morality that Giussani presents has nothing to do with the seemingly spiritual quietisms of which the shelves of today's religious markets are full. And neither does it have to do with the Pelagianism that is so popular in its various and sophisticated manifestations. Pelagianism, at bottom, is a new version of the tower of Babel. Seemingly spiritual quietisms are efforts at prayer or immanent spirituality that never go beyond themselves." 

Pelagianism and Quietism are two ways we can reduce Christ and Christianity to a this-worldly equivalent but still deceive ourselves into thinking we are  being religious and spiritual. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis continues and deepens his explanation of how and (more importantly) why we still  try today to reduce Christ to what our Ego can control and manipulate instead of losing ourselves in the wonder of who He is.  The pope says: "This worldliness can be fueled in two deeply interrelated ways. One is the attraction of Gnosticism, a purely subjective faith whose only interest is a certain experience or set of ideas and bits of information which are meant to console and enlighten, but which ultimately keep one imprisoned in his or her own thoughts and feelings. The other is the self-absorbed promethean neo-Pelagianism of those who ultimately trust in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past. A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyses and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying. In neither case is one really concerned about Jesus Christ or others. These are the manifestations of an anthropocentric immanentism. It is impossible to think that a genuinely evangelizing thrust could emerge from these adulterated forms of Christianity," (94)

 Wow! After reading that a few times and chewing on it over again, I have to conclude that Pope Francis is every bit as deep a thinker as Pope  Benedict! Praise God that in his everyday preaching, Francis knows how to say profound things in an evangelical, missionary style! 

 All quotations are from the article Bergoglio and Giussani, by Massimo Borghesi, which can be read in its entirety on the Communion and Liberation website.

 

Mary's Hidden Words

Mary spoke very little.  The silence in which she concealed herself reveals the Son’s word all the better. She lets Him speak, and yet in His Word hers is also hidden.

Mary and her Son walk side by side in such a way that there is always room for both; there is never any need for one or the other to step aside.

Because the only thing I can do is love, I turn my eyes to you sinners, and all I can think of is the birth of my Son, for which I thank you. At the same time I do not see my path or suffering, but only His future path. If it were not for your sin, I would not have had to say my fiat, and so I would have been left without Him. For His sake, then I can look away from Him and look gratefully upon you. And by doing that I can give Him wholly to you, and so, to the Father, so that the Word might be fulfilled.

He came in order to forgive as savior and judge, to give the gift of His grace, to walk the path of suffering, and to take your sins upon Himself. But I can only love, dwell in Him; and because I have received the divine Son through you sinners, on your account, I can love you in God, even as the sinners you are.

Through you I love Him, and through Him I love you.

Lumina/New Lumina,  pp.50-51    Adrienne Von Speyr,  Ignatius Press

Wit and Wisdom of Flannery O'Connor

For the fun of it, I began rereading "Mystery and Manners", by Flannery O'Connor, a book mostly about writing which is made up of different conferences, lectures and essays she wrote for different occasions, and which were collected and published by her estate after her death. I had read it back in the 1970's and underlined some statements she made because they jumped off the page at me at the time. They still do. Here are some of her observations for your enjoyment.

.....I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to a writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually it frees the story-teller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing by guaranteeing his respect for mystery....

.....Redemption is meaningless unless there is cause for it in the actual life we live, and for the last few centuries there has been operating in our culture the secular belief that there is no such cause....

{To write}...is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self knowledge is humility, and this is not a virtue conspicuous in any national character....

Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.....

...To call yourself a Georgia writer is certainly to declare a limitation, but one which, like all limitations, is a gateway to realty....

....Some people have the notion that you read the story and then climb out of it into the meaning but for the fiction writer himself, the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction....

....There may never be anything new to say, but there is always anew way to say it...

....People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them. They don't take long looks at anything because they lack the courage....

....I think it is usually some form of self-inflation that destroys the free use of a gift. This may be the pride of the reformer or of the theorist, or it may only be that simple-minded self-appreciation which uses its own sincerity as a standard of truth...

....St.Thomas called art 'reason in making'. This is a very cold and very beautiful definition, and if it is unpopular today, it is because reason has lost ground among us...

....nothing produces silence like experience...

...I have found, in short, from reading my own writing that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil, I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil...

Speyer: The Church

".....The Church does not function, after all, in the manner of a sieve,  which would sift the good from the bad, would effect a strict selection; but more like a melting pot into which everything is thrown together and makes an effort to live from God's grace. The Church is vested with grace. She lives from the grace of the living Lord, but no less from the grace of the Father, who gives her his sanction, and the grace of the Spirit, who blows through her. She is the locus of an encounter with eternity, indeed,  quite actually the locus of the beginning of life, the beginning of eternity in the midst of time. Man is drawn into this origin, shaken to the core in it and converted, enriched, and at the same time made poorer. Within it he gauges constantly anew what the Lord is, what distance separates him from sinners; he comes to feel his own powerlessness, sees also the consummate powerlessness of the Lord, which is the source of all grace, and understands that there can be no comparison between the two. And yet he knows that his existence in the Church is nothing but grace and love, and that even the feeling of his powerlessness is an instance of the Lord's grace, a gift in view of his poverty, and a sign by which the Father recognizes him."

The Countenance of the Father, Adrienne von Speyr, p.103 Ignatius Press

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Part Six: Priesthood of the Future

   Beyond Clericalism

 What is the proper sense of self a priest should have in relating to other priests and to people? He should be a disciple focused on, and lost in, Jesus Christ. The priest “creates” himself, he forms his character, and he develops his personality in response to the Christ event. This response is what it means to live as a disciple. Clericalism made and makes it easier for priests to be churchmen only, rather than disciples, easier to be official functionaries than to follow the Master, easier to go through the motions, rituals, and activities, than to go through the continuing conversion required of us as “clay vessels” in Christ’s hands.   Clericalism makes it possible to reduce the Christ event to moralism, ritualism, legalism,  dogmatism, or to an ideology like any other, instead of a lived relationship to Christ in Faith, Hope, and Love. Clericalism promotes a codependent system whereby empty forms could become a substitute for the adventure of a real spiritual life.

Since every human being is a mystery, no one can ever claim to perfectly know or understand another. The” you” I know is the result of my perceptions of you, and my perceptions of you are largely dependent upon my perceptions of myself as well as how you impact me. Inevitably I will project onto you what is not there, but simply baggage I carry because of who I am. You will do the same in your perceptions of me. Neither of us is ever in full touch with ourselves or the real human person the other is. Complicating this truth is the changing Culture we live in. At any given point of time, America has a somewhat established and yet somewhat fluid way of seeing and treating men of the cloth. Also, men of the cloth, clerics, have come to expect a certain level of treatment based on past experience and have difficulty dealing with shifts in their social standing. This fixed-fluid social reality of Clericalism is as unstable as the greater Culture it fits into, so it is highly volatile!  In addition, because American Culture is increasingly secular, Grace is a constant challenge and surprise as it brings the unforeseeable action of God into the picture. (Clericalism, of course, makes Grace unnecessary, because it enables the priest to operate out of his own ego.)

Take the situation of any priest ordained, in 1977, or in 2007. He is part of a church system and social structure that is in place but also in flux because of the influences both natural and supernatural. The Culture of the Day, the influence of Grace, all interpenetrate priest and people to varying degrees. The priest daily has to decide if Grace will shape him.  If he makes no decision, he will be a product of the Culture. Culture’s power is to cultivate, perpetuate itself and its hold on society. Culture is an ecosystem that fosters and rewards the organisms in it to take on and incarnate its values. It is never a neutral grocery store in which one can freely pick and choose from assorted options. God’s Grace, however, creates its own culture built on man’s free response to it, which flies in the face of the predominating social culture. It will always be easier for a priest or any Christian to act out of the influences of the culture around him than out of the graces that come from above.

The most any priest can do is live up to his call to be a disciple and define himself by his relationship to the Christ event. If he functions only as a churchman, he works without grace, with only his personal charm, intelligence, will power, character, etc.  In short he becomes like any professional who functions on an ego level without God. If he lives as a disciple, he puts his skills and talents as a churchman in the service of Christ.

The priest has to live from grace to grace, inspired, sustained and led by the promptings of the Spirit. The Law of the gift is the operative principle of his priestly existence. No matter what natural gifts he has, they can never accomplish what he achieves by faithful discipleship. How can a priest take himself seriously when he says “I absolve your sins?” How can he do anything but laugh at himself when he says “This is my body”? Nothing he does as a priest is the result of his natural, human capabilities. His communion with Christ, his discipleship, consists in realizing that his ‘nothingness’ is precisely what makes him Christ’s instrument. Ordination makes him the property of Jesus Christ. That is the beauty of the Sacrament. Clericalism, on the other hand, encourages the self deception that he can somehow belong to Christ and still be his own man.

  The surprise is not to find forms of Clericalism and codependency in the Church.  The surprise would be if church were free of it. That will not happen till the kingdom has come in its fullness. Grace builds on nature but cannot be superimposed on it. Clericalism prevents authentic human relationships . The infused virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity cannot plant themselves in a human nature that is not open receptive to them.  Their purpose is to open us human beings to the Christ Event. An ungraced humanity ends up being inhuman.  I am incapable of recognizing who I really am as a human being or who another is, without the help of grace. I have to be living as a fallen-but-graced self in order to relate to another in a manner that is not codependent.  To live unaware of my fallen state, or to live unaware of my need for God’s grace, is already to be in a state of wrong relationship to others, and therefore codependent.

 Are there more serious matters than Clericalism for the priest to concern himself with?  Not really. Poverty, world hunger, drugs, racism, injustice, trafficking in human beings, genocide, abortion, etc. – all  obviously destroy countless people on a daily basis. That is the real world the priest is called to bring Christ’s love to. He cannot communicate Christ’s love to anyone unless he is first living in it. Clericalism prevents him from doing what he is called to do in Christ’s plan. Remember Christ’ words about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who “…. preach but do not practice” (Matt. 23:33).  “They bind heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with their finger. (vs.34)” Certainly the point is that false piety should not be imitated.  But Our Lord is saying that it should not be winked at either. The collusion in Clericalism is the winking, the unspoken agreement that neither priest nor laity has to live the stuff that is preached, only pretend that they do. Priests are called to lead by example, not by word, and not by posturing. Artificial niceness reduces the faith to good manners and a pleasant demeanor. Courtesy and politeness can be no more than protecting one's personal space from interference and preserving one's individualism.

Once pretence is portrayed as the norm for people to live by, it becomes the “heavy burden” Christ speaks of, the one that cannot be borne.  What is so unbearable about it? The split it causes inside us who try to carry the burden by living one way and believing another. The longer the split is lived, the more ingrained and deformative it becomes.  In the short term such a psychic split prevents spiritual growth in priest and people.  In the long term, it leads to spiritual death, the “second death” that lasts forever.  (Rev.2:11 and 2O:14)  It is inevitable that either we end up living the way we believe, or we end up believing the way we live.

 Clericalism is based on the priest’s covenant with his false self: “I will pretend to be better than I am, I will project that image before all, I will lay on them my expectation that they will deal with me as if my idealized image were my real self, I will resist with all my might any attempt on the part of God or man to break through my façade, and I will build my life on this lie. To this I pledge myself.” That is a narcissist’s vow, a “Baptismal Promise” to his false self, which ultimately leads to his self destruction.  If a priest continues to shape himself on the basis of what he is not, he is acting as if what he is did not really exist. Thus he grows further and further away from his real identity as well as more and more incapable of recognizing that he is doing so. He becomes so blinded and so bound by his behavior that he falls in love with his false self and never sees that he is his own worst enemy.

      As with every human being, it is the priest’s real self that is called to be holy.  His calling is to put his humanity in the service of Christ, as Christ put his humanity in the service of all. How is the priest to do this? The way Christ calls him to do so at the Last Supper, by drinking from the cup of suffering that will result in his transformation and salvation. By eating the bread that will enable him to give himself up for the people he serves.  He is called to make of himself the victim and sacrifice he offers in the Eucharist. The priest has to become what he offers, live the sacrament he celebrates, that is what his vocation calls him to.

Why not just say that his calling is “to grow in holiness”? Certainly that is true, but it is also vague and vacuous. In our culture, holiness is the impossible dream of Don Quixote, and only possible by denying, repressing, or falsely “transcending” one’s humanity. The priest has to witness to Christ by being a man whose real human self is immersed in Christ’s gift of his divine-human self to His people.  This is the way he is to grow in holiness and lead his flock to Christ.  Any other life style makes his call to Orders a hoax.   

The priest may live his sacrifice by serving his people in many ways: by working in a poor, or rich, or ethnic parish with the various ministries that entails; by specializing as a priest teacher, high school principal/chaplain/guidance counselor, hospital chaplain, chancery official, etc... No matter what the ministry, the element of self sacrifice is an essential part. Even in retirement, the component of self sacrifice is never absent. Today it is an ironic fact of priestly life that forced retirement is imposed on some priests because they have been wrongly accused of sexual abuse of minors.  What greater sacrifice than to suffer this kind of victimization precisely because of one’s configuration to Christ by the Sacrament of Orders? It is reminiscent of John the Baptist’s plight as he awaits death in Herod’s dungeon instead of being allowed to work in the marketplace for the Messiah. What could be more sacrificial than the slow martyrdom of forsakenness and abandonment?

Brotherhood 

What should facilitate and strengthen the priest today are: 1) the brotherhood of the priesthood and the communal  nature of church life.  At present,  the individualism of American Culture as well as the anticlerical attitudes among priests and people make ministry more difficult than it has to be.

                How do we priests get beyond Clericalism?  First, recognize that it is real, it exists, and its hold is firmest when it is not recognized. One of the surest signs of addiction is denial, and Clericalism is an addictive life-style. Since addiction is complex, the cure is multifaceted.  Look at some of the main ingredients in the stew that create the climate of Clericalism in the USA: individualism, priestly formation, low morale and mutual mistrust among clergy, a lone ranger style of ministry, ignorance of one’s human nature with its innate needs for communication, and shifting social expectations. With a stew like that, how could any priest or person be so stupid as to think he could deal with the dilemma by himself?  Brotherhood is the basic, ongoing need that has to be part of priestly lives in the future in order for the present system not to perpetuate itself.

                In American culture a sense of community is no longer the foundation of society; autonomous individualism has replaced it. Our society may be communal in some places more than others, but it is so only superficially, and as a whole, a spirit of individualism predominates. In underdeveloped countries, such as the African Continent, where the individual is seen as an extension of the people, a sense of community is as natural, and tribal brotherhood is as normal as breathing. In America neither community nor a sense of brotherhood can be assumed. Education into both has to begin in the seminary with young men who are already on the road to being largely individualistic. Their formation in community and brotherhood cannot be left to their personal initiative because American males would see individualism as a positive part of their personality and be unaware of their need for brotherhood in the priesthood.

                If formation is to involve the whole person and make him capable of communion with God and man, it has to start with the actual human nature of the seminarians. As students they need to absorb the truth of Monsignor Giussani’s words, “To be good priests, you first of all, have to be men, to feel what men feel. Live the relationship with everything that becomes present. Live the truth of your humanity. Cry because you need to cry - or you are afraid, because the problem is difficult and you feel the inadequacy of your strength. Be human; live your humanity as an aspiration, as a sensitivity to problems, as a risk to face, as a faithfulness to what God makes urgent in your soul. In this way, reality will appear to your eyes in a new way.” When seminarians and priests live those words with one another, Clericalism will fade away. Living that humanely will open them to the Christ who calls them to be brothers in his priesthood.

                The seminary has available to it the firm foundation of Christian Anthropology established by John Paul the II from his writings both as a bishop in Poland and later as Pope in Rome, in which he bases the dignity of the human person on Scripture, Philosophy, and Theology.  But this treasure is largely left buried, like gold that has not yet been taken from a mine. Seminaries in this country need to build their formation programs on the riches left to the Church for the formation of generations of priests to come. ALL candidates for ordination, whether recruited from abroad or native born need to benefit from John Paul II’s teachings in order to form the brotherhood that will enable them to be priests after Christ’s own heart. A seminary or diocese that does not base their priestly formation on a well developed Christian anthropology will only continue to codependent clerical system that now exists.

Clericalism Part Three: Priestly Office and Person

 Co-dependence: The (Con)fusion of Priestly Office and Person

In the not too distant past the social and religious environment colluded to keep the priest coddled and comfortable because of his office and status.  Salary, stipends, pension plan, standard of living, medical insurance, rectory living, vacations, social standing, in short all he needed was handed to him on a silver platter with ordination. Only Grace could keep it from going to his head. Eventually he would get seduced by the arrangement and take advantage of it to some degree or another. Those who serve the greater cause live off the cause they serve. This seems to be a natural corruption of Christ’s saying that the laborer is worthy of his hire.  As the popular quotation by Lord Acton reminds us, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Nature, especially weak human nature, takes the course of least resistance.

             Office and the person fuse into one in the person of the priest. Priest and people may be aware of the distinction between the office and person in theory, but that does not mean they apply it in reality. Clericalism conditioned people to see Father as more than what he was as a person because of his office, and treat him as more. The priest was going to see himself as more than what he was because of his office and think he was more. This idealization on both sides led to the privileges and honors of Clericalism, and eventually to rage and resentment when its bankruptcy was exposed. How could the priest not think he was more than he was, when the society and culture inflated his ego balloon and puffed him up? How could the laity not feel betrayed and angry when he did not live up to their expectations? True, he the priest should have had more sense to begin with. But the red carpet treatment is heady, intoxicating, and seductive.

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All noble professions become sacred cows at one time or another. Successful doctors, lawyers, statesmen, teachers, etc. are presumed to be worthy of esteem and respect because of the profession they are in. There is naturally shock and scandal when an idolized person is shown to have clay feet. People rightly get angry when the banker or financier they thought honest is found guilty of embezzling funds. Understandably, the anger turns into rage when the perpetrator is a priest who betrays the people’s trust by sexually abusing minors. But something more is involved than the fall of an idol.

The sexual nature of the crime, the fact that a priest is the perpetrator, the betrayal of a sacred trust, the lifelong harm done to the individuals who have been abused, all these contribute to the public outrage. Yet I believe another factor also comes into play and it is all the more influential because it is the least recognized: The widely used, socially acceptable defense mechanism of Clericalism has broken down.  The spiritual Berlin Wall is blown to pieces. No insulation remains to protect people from the intrusion of the Divine. This creates a fury against the clergy. The problem is not only the sin and the crime, nor the harm it has done, but that the sin demolishes the buffer zone, the last cultural defense, between man and God.

Peguy on Grace

      "Grace is even more mysterious and more profound than beauty. Grace is even more arbitrary, more free, more sovereign, more perfectly illogical (outside the realm of logic, without reasons, beyond the scope of every calculation); it is also disturbing,  as is everything that is given gratuitously, (that which is given gratuitously is disturbing because it calls our attention to something we had not thought of, that we would never think of, that above all we would not want to think of). The powerfulness of grace.  The eternal powerfulness of the eternal Blood, of an eternal Blood, the Blood of Jesus Christ."  

quoted by Luigi Giussani, in He is if He Changes,  pp.31,32

Amazing! Wonderful! Could never have been written by the hand of man except under the inspiration of grace!

Truth That Lasts

         "The truth, as it emerges, leaves an everlasting impression. It is only when man's memory, that great faculty by which all things are embraced and explored, becomes its own undertaker, that it seems possible to hide the truth we have sensed in the event of an encounter under shovelfuls of earth (the shovelfuls of distraction).  Luigi Giussani,  He is if He Changes, p. 29        

Shovelfuls of earth, millions of distractions, suffocate the minds and hearts of  people who speak and listen, listen and speak, all the time: teachers and students, parents and children, husbands and wives, candidates and voters, bosses and employees, etc.. It is a wonderful miracle, a miracle beyond words, beyond understanding, that any truth gets communicated any time, even more so that it leave an impression that remains forever. Yet, by God's grace. it happens.

Quotation:Giussani

        "...the unknown is the most fascinating aspect of the Great Presence. The unknown maintains its provocative quality, even when, having been blessed with grace,  we dare to address the Presence in intimate terms, calling it "you.'"

Part Two: The Power of Prepositions

Prepositions are usually quiet, gentle, and unobtrusive. They slip by our eyes as easily as the breath from our mouths. That is why prepositions are a wonderful image of Grace in its many forms.  True, every once in a while, God’s Grace may illuminate us with the brilliance of a lightning bolt, or stun us like a brick striking our forehead, but in general the stirrings and promptings of grace are such gentle nudges  that we shrug them off as if they were distracting thoughts. Prepositions have that same quality of being able to light up our minds and knocking us off balance. But they do so only rarely.  If they did it all the time, they would no longer be the humble parts of speech that they are. They would morph into energetic verbs. 

 Take, for example, the prepositions “towards”, “away from”, and “against”.  Watch what happens if we emphasize them as verbs:  “I TOWARDS you”.  It is as if my whole being is impelling itself in your direction.  But the purpose is not specified. My motive could be to take you over or to unite with you. “I  AGAINST  you”.  It is as if I am opposing you with everything that is in me. “I AWAY FROM you”. I am absolutely shutting you out of my life. 

If we move on to use “through”, “with” and “in” as verbs, their pervasive power becomes even more penetrating.  “I THROUGH  you” implies that I penetrate and permeate you completely. “I WITH you” connotes a unity (perhaps even a fusion) that is an inseparable bonding. “I IN you” has the same intensity of oneness about it. Think of the force of the prepositions in the conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer: “Through Him, with Him, in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, Almighty Father, forever and ever.” A depth of meaning is contained in through, with and in.

Consider two connotations of through in relation to Christ: by way of, and during. By way of means our life here is a journey and Christ is the way through life, really the Thruway. As we get on a thruway at one end, and come out at the other, He is the only Way through to eternal Life. During means that for the entire duration of our lives on earth and in eternity where there is no duration. It is through Christ we are and endure, in Time and Eternity.  

With also carries various implications. Often “with” means nearness. It can be the nearness of associates who form a self-serving group, as the crowds that went with Our Lord because they wanted more food from him.  But it can also be the closeness of opposition, as when Christ struggles with temptation and fights with Satan during his time in the desert. In that context, with means against, and the closeness shows how far apart the antagonists are.

It is not hard to assert that “with” is the most humble of prepositions, and, because of that, the most exalted.  “With” is the preposition of the Incarnation: “Behold a virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which means ‘God-is-with-us’.” (Matthew 1:23) What could be a more simple way of naming the infinite humility in God than by saying He became one of his own creatures? What author would jump into his book, or artist into his picture? “With” is also the preposition of the Eucharist and the Church, Christ’s way of continuing his humble presence with us until the end of the world.  

Since humility is the way to glory, it is no wonder that with is meant to express our union in God’s divine Life. Our Lord says to the penitent thief, “…today you will be with me in Paradise”. (John 23:43)  The God who suffers with us in our flesh, calls us to be with Him as his new creation in heaven. Speaking of the heavenly Jerusalem, Scripture says, “Behold the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them.”  (Revelations 21:2-3) The triple with in that passage means God holds his people in the closest embrace and fills them with his very self. Those three withs encapsulate what it means for God “to be all in all”. “With” is the preposition of all the happiness, harmony, friendship,  interdependence, and fulfillment that heaven implies.

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