Dialogue on Charity, Part Two

This is the second part of my dialogue with Fr. Giussani's thoughts on charity, love, friendship, and Christ. Although each part can stand alone, it may be helpful to read this in conjunction with Part One, written on Jan 4th of this year. The Bold print is his text, the Italic print is my reflection.

b. Friendship

 Using friendship as one's point of departure and as the final goal, with all the ambiguity that this encompasses, is also incomplete. 

Ambiguity...What ambiguity? The ambiguity of making too much out of friendship? I never thought about it, but it seems true that making friendship the be all and end all of one's life ("one's point of departure and...final goal") warps friendship. It goes from beautiful to ugly, though it may keep the same name. The beauty of friendship is the love that takes friends out of themselves towards their common passion. Friendship implies an acceptance of the other as the other is, and the sharing of yourself as you are, while each goes beyond the individual self towards that which entrances them both.  But if  friendship is narcissistic, if I have to buy into your lies and delusions in order to be accepted by you, or you have to swallow mine to be my friend, then at best our so-called friendship is just an arrangement of convenience, convenient complicity, not a mutually enriching sharing of selves. Somehow, love for the true, good and beautiful, love for what is greater than we are, is integral to friendship.

Friendship is a correspondence that one may or may not find: it becomes the road to our destiny, but not the end itself. 

Correspondence...again, a word that I did not associate with friendship, but yes, it describes the way two or more genuine friends fit one another. There is a correspondence, a mutuality, a trusting, open communication that cannot be foreseen or planned. They share what they see and in doing so, each sees opens the eyes of the other a bit more. When friendship happens, it is a surprise, a mysterious, beautiful gift.  Another provocative idea: "friendship"becomes the road to our destiny".What does that mean?  I can say Christ is the "Way", or road to our destiny. So, somehow friendship means we are involved not just with each other, but with a Love and Truth that are greater than we are? In that sense, we who are friends are pulled toward a Love that is our final end. Is that what Giussani means?

2   To freely go out to others, to share a little of their life and to put in common a little of ours, enables us to discover a sublime and mysterious thing (one understands in doing it). 

Exactly what "sublime and mysterious thing" is it that we come to understand "in doing it? Maybe this is the response to what I was just asking about the "road to our destiny". It seems to be going beyond ourselves,  the freely willed, freely given, gift of ourselves in friendship, that is "sublime and mysterious", because there is nothing artificial about it, nothing coercive, or manipulative. It is given unconditionally, and it is sublimely beautiful in the reciprocation.  I think that is what Giussani means.

It is the discovery of the fact that precisely because we love them, it is not we who make them happy. Who is the reason for everything? Who made everything? God.

 

We find happiness in the gift of friendship, in the entering into it. But we didn't make it happen. God did, when we went beyond ourselves.Or perhaps more accurately: his Spirit opened us to one another so we could receive his love in our sharing, even though we thought we were in charge of the process.

So Jesus is not only He who announces to me the truest word, who explains the law of reality, He is no longer only the light of my mind: I discover that Christ is the meaning of my life. 

Again words that have so much packed into them. How does Christ explain "the law of reality"? What is "the law of reality"?  The law of the gift. I am gift. My life is gift. At every moment I am receiving the gift of my being. To enter into the reality that I am, I have to give myself away. Christ does more than illuminate and inspire me with his truth. Self gift is what I am meant to be, and the more I give myself I will find that I have more to give. Not because I am inexhaustible, but because the Divine Giver who made me replenishes what little I give of my weak limited self, and makes me capable of more giving. 

The witness of those who have experienced this value is very beautiful: "I will continue to do charitable work because of all my sufferings and all of theirs have meaning."

The value is in the giving, whether it is reciprocated or not, whether it brings immediate joy or not, whether it makes me feel fulfilled or not. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. The result is beyond our control.

Hoping in Christ, everything has meaning: Christ. 

What matters is that our going beyond ourselves, our self gift, is what conforms us to him. This means that whatever suffering we go through in loving and giving of ourselves will bring us to the fullness of joy in Christ. 

I discover this, finally, in the place where I do charitable work, precisely by means of  the final powerlessness of my love; it is the experience in which the intelligence discovers wisdom, true culture. 

The charitable work done in powerless self-gift helps us see how an environment of goodness and love is created. This "culture" isn't programmable or technologically induced, it is the fruit of love. This seems to be what the apostles did, what missionaries do, what disciple of Christ do everyday. Their self gift proclaims the One who is greater than they, and plants the seed of his presence in the world among different people. In his time, it grows into a sub-culture, then perhaps a culture, an even a civilization of love. 

Dialogue on Charity - Part One

(In reading different reflections Fr. Giussani wrote,  I sometimes dialogue with his text, as a way of getting at the truth his thoughts contain. Often this process illuminates his meaning for me, and awakens more questions. No matter what,  it always gets me thinking in a fresh, new way. The Italic print is my musing and questioning, the bold print is Fr. Giussani's reflection.)

Fr. Giussani, what is the root meaning of charity? I know Christ commands us to love God above all, and neighbors as ourselves, but what does that mean for me concretely? 

 

I am able to understand the word "charity" when I remember that the Son of God, loving us did not send us His riches (as He was able to do), and revolutionize our situation: instead He became poor like one of us. He "shared" our nothingness. We do charitable work in order to live like Christ. 

Your last sentence  makes me sit up and take notice: "We do charitable work in order to live like Christ". I know that Christ "shares our nothingness", as you put it. But I am used to thinking of charity as caring about another, or doing good to another, or fixing situations and making them better. I would never have come up with the conclusion you did, namely that in order to live like Christ we have to do charitable work. I would have concluded we have to go out and start caring for people. 

What about all the needs people have,  what about the obvious need to fix society, to make things better, to eliminate poverty and injustice? Why not start addressing all those needs, instead of living like Christ?

Consequences 1.Charity is the law of being and comes before  natural likes and dislikes, and feelings. Therefore we can "do for others" while lacking any enthusiasm. There may very well be no so-called concrete result. For us the only "concrete" attitude is attention to the person, that is, love for him. All the rest can come as a consequence: like Jesus who only after He manifested his love, performed miracles and fed the hungry. 

Again, you surprise me. I always thought of charity as the "law of doing", not as the "law of being", as you put it.  I probably think that way because we can "be" but not "love". In us humans, being and loving are not one and the same thing. But yes, in Christ being and loving are one and the same. In Him, the act of being, the act of being with us as a man, the act of being present with us in the Eucharist,  - is all an act of love. By being present with us he is loving us, even before He reaches out and does something.

 The rest of your sentence also jolts me:  " 'charity' comes before natural likes, dislikes, and feelings". That's a statement I would never have been able to formulate, and yet it makes so much sense to me once I see it written there. God's charity comes to us, and is with us and in us, even before our natural likes and dislikes, because our existence is a gift of his love, just as our sustenance is. Our lives are tangible, visible, manifestations of his love, even if we are not always capable of "feeling" that way.

 I can operate on the basis of my "natural likes and dislikes",   or my "feelings" of the moment. They are usually what move me to do, or not do, something for others. But you are saying that these natural inclinations don't matter,  my moods don't matter, because these things are not the starting point. Christ is our starting point. I am faithful to Him when I love no matter how I feel.

We must note two initial points which are not usually clear regarding our openness to others:  

          a. Meeting the needs of others: 

This is an insufficient starting point and motive. What is the real need of another? This way of viewing things is unclear, because it depends on what we believe to be others' needs. But what if that which I bring is not truly what the other needs? I do not know what the other truly needs, nor can I measure or possess it. It is a measure I do not possess,  measure that is in God. Therefore laws and systems of justice can be oppressive, if they forget or attempt to substitute for the only concrete reality that exists: the person, and love for that person.

Again, the way you formulate your thought is fresh and new: The real need of the other is something I cannot measure, because the measure is not in me but in God. What I have to do is be open and present to the person instead of imposing my ideology or system on him as a solution to his problems.

          b. Friendship 

Using friendship as one's point of departure and as the final goal of one's action, with all the ambiguity this encompasses, is also incomplete. Friendship is a correspondence that one may or may not find: it becomes the road to our destiny, but not the end in itself.

Again, a startling formulation. Friendship is not the origin of my charity, nor its goal, living like Christ is.  Being open to and present to others may or may not result in friendship. That doesn't matter, because my "success", if that is the word I should use, is not in getting others to be my friend, but live with them as Christ did.

Giussani: On Friendship

...love creates reciprocity, generates reciprocity. This, in the Mystery, is nature. The nature of Being revealed itself in Jesus of Nazareth as love in friendship, that is as love acknowledged. Thus the mirror of the Father is the Son, the infinite Word, and in the infinite mysterious perfection of this acknowledgement - in which vibrates for us the infinite mysterious beauty of the Origin of Being, of the Father (Splendor Patris) - proceeds the mysterious creative power of the Holy Spirit. Now, the "I", the human "I", made in the image and likeness of God, reflects originally the Mystery of the one and triune Being, proper to the dynamism of freedom, whose law will therefore be love, and the dynamism in which this love is lived can be nothing else but friendship. 

You or about Friendship, pp. 17-18  Luigi Giussani

Astounding. To think that friendship in its perfect from is the Trinity, and that our human friendships are a participation in the triune love!

For the Fun of It: Discussing Friendship with C.S. Lewis (Part Two)

(Please read Part One, the previous posting,  to pick up the train of thought.)

M: Sorry to break off our dialogue so abruptly last week, but I ‘m grateful for the chance to continue the discussion.  We were talking about male friendship, and the theory that homosexuality is somehow the basis of every friendship among men.  As I recall, you definitely disagreed.

CSL: “The homosexual theory…seems to me not even plausible.”

M: Yet, historically, it is a fact that some soldiers, warriors, etc. were homosexuals and friends, or homosexual friends.

CSL:  “Certain cultures at certain periods seem to have tended to the contamination. In war-like societies, it was, I think, especially likely to creep into the relation between the relation of the mature Brave and his young armor-bearer or squire. The absence of the women while you were on the warpath had, no doubt, something to do with it.”

M:  So, you believe these instances of homosexual friendships are the exception and not the rule, even though the theory would hold otherwise? How can we be sure, either way?

CSL: “ In deciding, if we think we need or can decide, where it crept in and where it did not, we must surely be guided by the evidence (when there is any) and not by any a priori theory.”

M: I suppose it depends on what you consider to be evidence. What about physical gestures of affection? Are they sufficient evidence?

CSL: “Kisses, tears, and embraces are not in themselves evidence of homosexuality. The implications would be, if nothing else, too comic. Hrothgar embracing Beowulf, Johnson embracing Boswell  (a pretty flagrantly heterosexual couple) and all those hairy old toughs of centurions in Tacitus, clinging to one another and begging for last kisses when the legion was broken up…all pansies? If you can believe that, you can believe anything.”

M: Well, today, everything has become believable. Kisses, tears and embraces between men in America today are evidence of homosexuality. I know in some countries men can still hold hands or walk arm in arm, and no one would give it a thought.  But that’s not culturally acceptable between men in the USA, unless you want to be seen as gay. Times sure have changed!

CSL: “On a broad historical view it is, of course, not the demonstrative gestures of Friendship among our ancestors but the absence of such gestures in our own society that calls for some special explanation.  We, not they, are out of step.

M:   “We not they are out of step?!!   I am surprised to read that. Can’t friendship lead into erotic love? And isn't the converse true as well: can’t Eros lead to friendship?”

CSL:  “But this, far from obliterating the distinction between the two loves, puts it in a clearer light. If one who was first in the deep and full sense your friend, is then gradually or suddenly revealed as your lover, you will certainly not want to share the Beloved’s erotic love with any third. But you will have no jealousy at all about sharing the friendship. "

M:  Hmm, share friendship but keep the erotic love to yourself….What do you see as the difference between friends and erotic lovers?

CSL:” Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends, hardly ever about their friendship. Lovers are usually face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest…Friendship is the least biological of our loves…true friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth. “

M: That makes a great deal of sense to me, but how do you explain the case of the person who is the clingy, possessive, controlling, possessive friend, or a friend who doesn’t really care about anything, or any cause,  except to collect more and more and more friends? The first case seems to contradict your premise that friendship is side by side, or, directed outward and open; the second, that moving towards a common interest greater than the friends themselves is the unifying factor.

CSL:  “…those pathetic people who simply ‘want friends’ can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else beside Friends.  Where the truthful answer to the question Do you see the same truth? would be ‘I see nothing and I don’t care about the truth; I only want a Friend’,  no Friendship can arise – though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers.”

M: I agree with your reasoning, although many people today would not. I’m not sure what kind of “Affection” would arise out of a Friendship that isn’t about anything but itself, however.

CSL: “Friendship is utterly free from Affection’s need to be needed. We are sorry that any gift or loan or night-watching should have been necessary, - and no, for heaven’s sake, let us forget all about it, and go back to the things we really want to do or talk of together. Even gratitude is no enrichment to this love. The stereotyped ‘Don’t mention it’ here perfectly expresses what we really feel.”

 

M: What about the old maxim which says, “A friend in need is a friend indeed?” how does that apply?

CSL: “The mark of a perfect friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.“

M: I have to thank you for these insights. I don'think I ever came across anyone who explained what a beautiful and noble blessing true friendship is as clearly as you did. 

CSL: Don't mention it.

For the Fun of It: Discussing Friendship with C.S Lewis (Part One)

I have been reading  The Four Loves by C.S.Lewis, and conversing with the text as I go along. The topic is Friendship. M stands for me, and CSL for the great master himself. CSL's remarks are in quotation marks, because I am getting them directly from the text. I plead guilty for placing what he says in the context of my questions and comments, but I do not think I do violence to his meaning or intent.

M: I know friendship is downplayed today, and I was wondering, was it like that in the old days too? 

CSL: "To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it."

M: So, how did this seismic shift regarding friendship take place? If it was so esteemed in the old days, why is it so unappreciated today?

CSL: "The first and most obvious answer is that few value it because few experience it."

M: How can you say that? Today more and more people have tons and tons of friends. When I get online for example, I can get connected to friends all over the world by email and/or Facebook. And even off-line, I can be talking to or texting some friend or other all day long on my cell phone. Friendship seems to be more omnipresent and appreciated than ever before. Don't we have a natural hunger for friendship which, as human beings, moves us to connect to other human beings? It seems to me that friendship is a basic, natural instinct hardwired into our make-up. Isn't friendship as natural to us as breathing and loving?

CSL: "Friendship is...the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious, and necessary. It has least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale. It is essentially between individuals; the moment two men are friends they have to some degree drawn together from the herd. 

M:  That's astounding. Are you telling me that erotic love is more basic than friendship? That Eros is more elementary than friendship? That friendship is not erotic? What about affection? Isn't affection basic to our human nature? Isn't affection also part of friendship? Doesn't Eros always enter into affection? Aren't Eros and affection always mixed together, and aren't both always a part of friendship?

CSL: "Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and without affection none of us would have been reared; but we can live and breed without Friendship. The species, biologically speaking, has no need of it." 

M: I'm not used to thinking about Eros, affection, and friendship in a way that distinguishes them so clearly from one another. But I think I see what you mean. Eros used to be enough to ensure propagation of the species. Affection used to get us through the trials of raising children.  So friendship didn't necessarily have to enter the picture. Still, I don't understand why you think most people today are not eager for friendship or open to it. The way you talk about it, I'm tempted to believe you see us moderns as closed to friendship.

 

CSL: "The pack or herd - the community- may even dislike and distrust it. Its leaders very often do. Headmasters and Head mistresses and heads of religious communities, colonels and ships captains, can feel uneasy when close and strong friendships  rise between little knots of their subjects."

M: But why? Why do moderns object to friendship whereas the Ancients valued it? Why do we set more of a store on Eros and affection, whereas the Ancients thought friendship was higher or more noble?

CSL: The "(so to call it) 'non-natural' quality in Friendship goes far to explain why it was exalted in ancient and medieval times and has come to be made light of in our own. The deepest and most permanent thought of those ages was ascetic and world-renouncing. Nature and emotion and the body were feared as dangers to our souls, or despised as degradations of our human status. Inevitably that sort of life was most prized which seemed most independent, or even defiant of mere nature.  Affection and Eros were too obviously connected with our nerves, too obviously shared with the brutes. You could feel these tugging at your guts and fluttering in your diaphragm. But in Friendship - in that luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen- you got away from all that. This alone of all the loves, seemed to raise you to the level of gods or angels."

M: That's a marvelous way to put friendship into words: "the luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen." It makes me think of the knights of the round table discussing the best way to defend Camelot, or writers discussing their craft, or even a few research scientists planning how to develop a cure for a life threatening disease. They can be cool and collected, or aroused and passionate, in their discussion, but no matter how hot and heavy the discussion becomes, the group keeps it rational and level-headed searching for the answer that will illuminate their way to a good course of action.

 You know, just saying that makes me realize that I do think we are too self-absorbed to have many real friendships today, and to sense you may be right after all, when you say the old timers were more capable of friendship than we are.  What happened after the age of friendship to produce the age of sentiment, if I can put it that way?

CSL: "Then came Romanticism and "tearful comedy" and the "return to nature' and the exaltation of sentiment; and in their train all that great wallow of emotion which, although often criticized, has lasted ever since. Finally the exaltation of instinct, the dark gods in the blood; whose hierophants may be incapable of male friendship. Under this new dispensation all that had once commanded this love now began to work against it..."

M: Excuse me. I hate to interrupt, but I have to grab my dictionary and look up that word hierophant. As a modern, I am not as literate as your generation was... Okay , got it. Please, go ahead. You were explaining how we humans began to prize feelings and instinctual drives over and above reason and intelligence, how that tendency took over our culture and today predominates in most places.

CSL: "....that outlook which values the collective above the individual necessarily disparages Friendship; it is a relation between men at their highest level of  individuality. It withdraws men from collective togetherness as surely as solitude could do; and more dangerously, for it withdraws them by two's and three's. Some forms of democratic sentiment are naturally hostile to it because it is selective and an affair of a few. To say 'These are my friends' implies 'Those are not'. For all these reasons, if a man believes as I do, that the old estimate of friendship is the correct one, he can hardly write a chapter on it except as a rehabilitation. "

M: So friends don't necessarily adopt the party-line or engage in the group-think that the current ideology may seek to blanket society with? Friendship calls us to stand apart and speak the truth to each other, even when such an activity may be unpopular?Am I understanding you correctly? Is that why men seems to have less friends than women? Because women open up and communicate what they are thinking and feeling, but men today hesitate to do that with each other? Do you think I'm right when I say men have less friends than women?

CSL: "This imposes on me at the outset a very tiresome bit of demolition. It has actually become necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual."

 

M:  Do you think men in this era are afraid of friendship because they think it  has a trace of homosexuality in it?

CSL: "The dangerous word really is here important.To say that every friendship is consciously and explicitly homosexual would be too obviously false; the wise acres take refuge in the less palpable charge that it is really - unconsciously, cryptically, in some Pickwickian sense - homosexual. And this, though it cannot be proved, can never be refuted. The fact that no positive evidence of homosexuality can be discovered in the behavior of two Friends does not disconcert the wiseacres at all: 'That', they say gravely, 'is just what we should expect.' The very lack of evidence is thus treated as evidence; the absence of smoke proves that the fire is very carefully hidden. Yes,- if it exists at all. But we must first prove its existence. Otherwise we are arguing like a man who should say 'If there were an invisible cat in that chair, the chair would look empty; but the chair does look empty; therefore there is an invisible cat in it.' "

M: I can't wait to see where you are headed with this line of thinking.  I"m looking forward to picking up your book tomorrow. 

The Four Loves,  C.S.Lewis, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanich  pp.87-91

Peter and John's love for Christ.

John 13:8 Peter said to him, "You shall never wash my feet!"

In this posting,  we are going to bounce back and forth from John to Peter, from Peter to John, seeing them both through the eyes of Thomas Aquinas in his Commentary on St. John's Gospel. There Thomas meditates on their relationship to Christ, and Christ's relationship to them. Feel free to add your own responses to Aquinas', just as I do , in italics, with mine. See what the reading tells you about Peter and John, about Aquinas, and about you and me.

Peter

1753 If you ask why Peter was the first to object, Origen replies that this was due to the intense love Peter had for Christ.The other disciples had a certain respectful awe and fear of Christ, and so complied without question to everything he did. But Peter, more aflame with love... and taking confidence from this love, refuses to comply and asks to know why: "A true friend will act as your equal and assume authority in your household." [Sirach 6:11] This is why in Scripture Peter often asks for explanations and does not hesitate to say what he thinks best. He thinks his friendship gives him a right to speak up!

1758 Peter says, You shall never wash my feet! He is saying in effect: By no means will I submit to this from my Teacher, my Lord and my God!  And although Peter said this out of zeal, it was an imprudent and disordered  zeal...His zeal was disordered for three reasons. He refused something that was beneficial and necessary...it seemed to indicate a certain disrespect for Christ by wanting to go against his plans. Finally it seemed to disparage his companions in that the others, according to Origen, yielded to Christ without an argument...Peter thinks he knows better than everybody else, even Christ! Sure, I can identify with that!

1761 Peter's words indicate his intense love for Christ. as well as an intense thick head. Before, when our Lord said to him, What I am doing you do not know now, he had intimated that it would be useful; yet Peter paid no attention to this, He doesn't listen, or he listens to the words, but doesn't let their meaning sink in  and could not be persuaded to have his feet washed. But when Our Lord warned him it would mean they would no longer be together, saying, you have no part in me, Peter offered more than just his feet, saying, Lord not my feet only, but also my hands and my head! For Peter was frightened by this answer and affected by love and fear, he offered all of himself for washing. Clement tells us in his Itinerary that Peter was so touched by the physical presence of Christ, whom he loved so intensely, that after the Ascension, when he recalled the sweetness of Christ's presence, he wept so much that his cheeks appeared to be furrowed. Nah, Clement is stretching too far to reach that conclusion. Maybe after Pentecost Peter would have felt that way, but not after the Ascension.

John

1804 John here mentions three things about himself. First, the love he had for Christ as he rested on him...Secondly he intimates his knowledge of mysteries, which were made known to him by Christ, and especially for the writing of this Gospel...Thirdly he mentions the special love Christ had for him, saying, whom Jesus loved, not exclusively but in a way above the others...I bet some of the other guys were jealous, even envious, of John's relationship. Oddly, Peter isn't.

For the present it is enough to say that John was more loved by Christ for three reasons.  First, because of the cleanliness of his purity: for he was a virgin when chose by he Lord, and always remained so: "He who loves purity of heart, and whose speech is gracious, will have the king as a friend." Secondly because of the depths of his wisdom, for he saw further into the secrets of God than others; and so he is compared to an eagle...Thirdly because of the great intensity of his love for Christ:"I love those who love me"( Prv 8:17) 

Peter

1805  Then when he says, so Simon Peter beckoned to him John mentions what led him to question Christ. ...

1806 Since everywhere in the Gospels, Peter is always presented as bold and as the first to speak out because of his fervent love, why is he now keeping silent? It does seem out of character. All of a sudden he is being discreet? Chrysostom gives three reasons for this. One is that Peter had just been reprimanded by our Lord for not allowing him to was his feet...As a result, he preferred not to bother our Lord just now. After getting slapped down, he figured he should keep his mouth shut. Another reason is that Peter did not want our Lord to reveal this openly so that others could hear it. I doubt it. Peter wouldn't give a damn about who heard what. Peter's just smart enough to recognize John's special relationship to Christ and figures he can take advantage of it. Wonder if he realizes that Christ knows what he is doing? The third reason is mystical. John signifies the contemplative life, and Peter the active life. Yes! Bingo! Beautiful! John is mysticism, contemplative knowledge through co-natural love. Peter is action, a working knowledge that lives out the knowing in active doing. This fits in perfect with Von Speyr's vision of Peter and John, Peter representing hierarchy and John representing love.

1817  A question arises here. Since Our Lord had indicated to John who the traitor was, saying it is he to whom I shall give this bread when I have dipped it, and then gave it to Judas, the disciples seem to have been exceedingly dull yeah, huhuhuhuh, ya think?! not to have understood what he just said. I answer that Our Lord said this privately to John in order not to reveal the betrayer. The reason for this being that Peter loved Christ so fiercely that had he been certain that Judas was about to betray him, he would have quickly killed him.

1818 Since John himself was one of those at the dinner, why did he say: no one at the table knew why he said this to him? Yes.., true...everyone else there would have heard. Maybe Christ whispered this to him, or said it sotto voce, so no one else could hear? Jesus tells at least John what is happening, but why tell even him? Why not say it is none of his business? I answer that it is usual for one who is good and without evil to believe that others also are without evil. Geez, Aquinas must be pretty good and without evil to think that way. I would never have come up with that conclusion. Now John was extremely good and never consider becoming a betrayer.  Thus he never suspected that another disciple would commit such a great crime. Hah! I would have started suspecting everybody, maybe  even accusing them, to divert attention away from myself.

Commentary on the Gospel of John, Thomas Aquinas

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/John 13.htm

Love: Human and Divine, Created and Creating

 Christian Smith: Love is relating to persons and things beyond the self in a way that involves the purposive action of extending and expending of oneself for the genuine good of others whether in friendship, families, communities, among strangers, or otherwise.

Mars Hill Audio Journal, vol 112, disc 1 track 2


David Schindler: Love is the basic act and order of things. Love is that which first brings each thing into existence, and that in, through, and for which, each thing continues in existence.

Mars Hill Audio Journal. vol 112 disc 1 track 3

 1.  Read both statements, not just for the idea or concept expressed, but asking that the truth they both express may grasp your heart. This means you, or I, as reader, is asking God for the grace to let what is being said penetrate us to the center of our being, our core, or heart of hearts. We are asking that our reading take place at the level of a prayer.
       
 2.The first statement sees love as a human act, something I or you do, our choice, an exercise of our free will. We are the source of the activity, the loving. We are in charge, so to speak. Love depends on our decision. To some degree, that's true. But none of us would be able to love if love were not done to us first.

3.  The first quotation would not be possible for us to enact without the second already being in place.
The second quotation sees love as what God is, or who God is, the Source and Origin of all that is. It calls to mind the Paul's words where he says in Acts "In him we live and move and have our being" (17:28). We have our being in him. We are rooted, or grounded in him. Not just that we are in his grasp like a child is in a parent's arms, but more than that, we we live and move in him, which means he lives and moves in us, much as branches live attached to a vine, or as the sap in a tree flows throughout the whole tree through all the branches. This is more than the soul, the breath of life, the soul God breathes into man.  It is grace,  the movement of the Spirit which energizes us. In him we live and move, because we have our being in him. He sustains us with or without our awareness of him, with or without our cooperation. Unlike a child who can squirm out of his parent's arms and run about, we cannot separate from him even when we deny we are in his arms.

4.The God who is the ground of our being, in whom we live and move, is present in us and through us whether we are aware of Him or not. He is closer to us than our pulse, our breath. He is much closer to us than we are to ourselves.

He, being Creative Love, is the stage on which the drama of our lives is acted out by us. We are somewhat like dancers who perform on the stage floor. We are concerned with our movements, appearance, performance and the applause we hope for, but take for granted the floor which make our dance possible.
Better yet,  God is the context, from which, and in which, we are making the choices that determine our destiny.
The second quotation brings the idea of order into love, which is something we usually do not associate with love. In God, I see love as self-giving: the Father generating the Son from all eternity by giving his own divine nature to the Son. The idea of order usually springs into my mind with the Son, the Logos. the intelligent/intelligible Mystery in whom and through whom all things are made. Surely the self gift of the Father includes the Infinite Wisdom that is in him, otherwise order would not be in the Logos. But my little pea-brain can only manage to handle one concept at a time.

Giussani on Friendship in Christ

    "The true companionship, meaning a constructive, creative factor of life, and therefore generator of beauty,  consolation, - repairing what falls down - a positive companionship in this sense can be born only from a friendship. Friendship is the virtue, the energy that constructs the companionship. This is why the Lord, wanting man to know Him, became man and this man generated a companionship. He became present here and now, in every moment of history, within a companionship. And if one claims to have a relationship with the mystery of God and leave out the companionship, and in particular, leave out the authority that guides it, one deceives oneself; it would be an illusion....

    "So what is friendship? Friendship in its minimal state, is the encounter of one person with another person whose destiny he or she desires more than his or her own life. I desire your destiny more than I desire my life.  The other reciprocates this and desires my destiny more than his or her life.  Friendship is like this, and the proof that this is true is that you'd want anyone you'd meet in the diversity of circumstances to understand this, so that everyone would embrace each other. Those who do not experience this must humbly ask the Lord and the Blessed Mother to make it understood to them, because without this, not even the relationship with God is true."

    Is It Possible to Live This Way?  Vol.1 Faith, pp.145, 146

Peter, James and John: Following Him

 Peter: Isn't it funny the way He called us?  "Follow me", He said, and the emphasis was on me! Like He was going to take us somewhere, somewhere we couldn't go on our own.

 John: Yes, but He had no doubt or question as to where He was going nor how to get there. Wherever it was, He would get us there.

James: Still, it's not really a journey, a trip, a going from one spot to another. He means it as a metaphor, right?

John: No! He definitely means it literally, as a real journey, but a life journey, a real journey through life from this world to the next.

Peter: So why didn't He make that clear from the beginning and say: Listen men, I want you all to join my group and spend your lives with me, here in the present and next in the hereafter? That's really what we're doing, living with him and moving around with him in the hope of getting to heaven, no?

John. No, it's more than joining his group and living together in order to get to heaven. What makes us a group, his group, is the following, the getting behind him, the imitating of him, the absorbing of his thoughts, his feelings, his ways,etc. A group united by following Him is what He wants us to be, not just a bunch of people on the way to heaven.

James: Is following the imitating, the learning from, catching from him what kind of persons we should be?

Peter: Maybe another way to put it is this: it's obeying him, doing what he says, not just putting it into our heads, but carrying it out, living it. That's the following He means.

John: Yes, it is both of those things. The imitating and the obeying shapes us into his followers. The following means keeping our eyes on Him, letting his words into us, letting the way He is and what He does shape us inside, change our thinking and feeling so we live more and more by his thinking and feeling, and make it our own, till we feel about one another the what He feels about us. This is the "group" aspect of following Him: his affection for us, not just individually or personally, but as a whole, as brothers.  He wants us to be more than individual persons who follow Him. He wants his feelings for us to shape us into a brotherhood. And that can only happen if we follow Him together.

 James. Why didn't He explain it to us like that in the beginning? Why did He invite us to follow him without  going into the details of what is involved? It's not fair. He should have spelled things out more.

John Why?  If He had explained everything more fully, would you have said yes?

Peter: I wouldn't have! Being with Him isn't so bad.  I like that part. But being with all of you all the time is what is hard to take.

James: I hope you don't think it is any easier for the rest of us to put up with you?! You're harder than anyone to put up with.

Peter: Why do you say that? At least I'm honest enough to say what I think! I don't keep my mouth shut and hide what I'm thinking like the rest of you.

James: Oh sure, you speak up, but you're just trying  to show us up! You want everyone to be impressed with how smart you are, but half the time what you say is really stupid!

John:  Cut it out! You two are getting off the track, arguing about how difficult it is for us to live with one another. That is the whole point of following Him: learning to live with one another because we follow Him.

Peter:What do you mean?

John: You were asking why He didn't explain in more detail  exactly what it mean for us to live in his company, to be with him day in and day out, right?

Peter: Yes.

John: Well, there is no way to explain that beforehand because it's a lived experience. It has to be lived and experienced before it can be understood and explained. Following Him means: learning how to love one another because we love Him,staying together and putting up with one another out of love for him, actually learning to see one another the way He sees us, letting our love for Him become the source of our love for one another. Because we all share the call to follow, we have to be brothers.

 James: You lost me. Why the emphasis on brotherhood?

Peter:  Me too. What has getting along with one another got to do with  following him? I can follow him even though I don't like everybody in the group.

 John: No, you can't. We can only be as close to Him as we are to one another, and as close to one another as we are to Him. Otherwise we're phony, pretending. He wants to be the bond between us. It is not a matter of acting nice and courteously with one another because He tells us we better get along, and so we do it. It is a matter of the love we have for Him overflowing into the love we have for one another. It's the same love because we share the same call. Our call is a companionship, a sharing, a brotherhood, in the same destiny.

James: Now I'm more confused than I was. What has destiny to do with it?

 Peter: That's right! And besides,  what about you and Him? You have a special relationship with Him, right? And so do I, right? And so does everyone else in the group. We are all individuals, aren't we? Our being called together doesn't do away with the fact that we are all different persons.

John: No, of course it doesn't. The call is personal, but it is also communal, a call for us separate persons to be brothers, and it's the following that makes us brothers, that shapes us in brotherhood. Following him together means that we learn to love one another so that the personal differences become the points of unity, not cause for distance and separation. Does that make sense to you two?

Peter: Let me think about it more.

James: Me too.

John: Look at it this way: Because He calls you and me, I want for you what He wants for you, and you want for me what He wants for me. He wants the same thing for all of us: union with Him, life with him, friendship with him, brotherhood. That's our destiny. It's the future, but it's the present too. We start living our destiny now, and the living of it is what makes it our destiny.The only way we achieve our destiny is by being brothers, and the only way we can be brothers is by following him. Right now we are only starting out, so we can't understand what we are supposed to be,  or the brotherhood He wants us to have, we have to grow into it step by step

James. Let me think about it.

Peter: Me too. Right now it is just words.

The Black Priests I Know

              Since my retirement, I have been living with a group of retired priests, all of them White, at the old seminary. The classrooms, dorms, study halls and refectories of the place have been reincarnated as an archdiocesan center, so the facility is now filled with many Diocesan Offices and Agencies, as well as many daily and overnight visitors who are renting its meeting places.  Since the retired priests live here all the time, we get to see each other’s family and friends who drop in to visit. I was surprised the first time one of my fellow retirees asked me “How come you know so many Black priests?”  The second and third time, however, I found myself bristling. I think it was because no one ever asked me why I had so many White people coming in to visit me, but just took those visits as normal. I probably am reading into things, or overreacting, but I was picking up a tinge of prejudice in the question.

              By the way, the term “Black” in this context means African not “African-American” or “American Black”. The Black priests are all “foreigners” who come from six different countries in Africa.  Three have returned home to Ghana, Uganda and Nigeria, and about a half a dozen, all Nigerians, are working here in the states, usually in hospital or parish ministry.  And I put “foreigners” is in quotation marks, because they stay foreigners in everyone’s minds even if they become citizens. Often it is because of accent and language use that they are tagged with that label.

               I answered my fellow retiree's question with a shrug: “It is one of the blessings God has given me”. My words cut short any more discussion, which was fine with me, because who drops by to see me is nobody else’s business.  However, there is really a second question, unspoken, behind the first, which I do want to try to answer.  It is “Why are they coming here to visit you”?  That is my topic.

The Black priests I know stop by to visit because we are friends, not Black friends as opposed to White friends, but just human-being friends. I have just made an outrageous assertion which, I believe, should astound you. Why? I believe most friendships in my experience are really utilitarian relationships of codependent persons. It works this way: I pretend I like you for yourself, while in truth I like you for me, for what I can get out of you. You return the favor by engaging in the same collusion with me. Thus we secretly agree to not be upfront by acknowledging how we are using one another, and we make believe that mutual respect and regard is the basis of our relationship. But the “friendship” ends if the usefulness ends, or if one of the persons wakes up to the self deception involved, tries to raise the relationship to another level, and the other partner refuses. What happens, you ask, if both parties agree to go beyond the utilitarian mode they are operating in? Something wonderful: they go beyond codependence to interdependence. The process involves a lot of humility, honesty, and openness, but it actually does happen. Some (not enough!) married couples I know are best friends, some single people too, including celibate priests, believe it or not! I have to admit however, that in normal life, codependent relationships are the norm and interdependence is the exception.

Another outrageous assertion: the Black priests are often better friends and brothers to me than many White priests I have known a lot longer.  Although I know the Black priests a shorter time, we connect on a deeper level. Why is that? It is a question I have asked myself, a question I began asking in 1985 when I first began to know different priests from Africa. Why am I friendly with and more of a brother to, these priests from Africa, than many of the American priests I know?

My hunch is that in America we priests tend to be Lone Rangers, at least here in the Northeast. This may be a result of our training, our life-style, the declining numbers of the clergy, shifts in morale,    problems of busyness in ministry, and so on. But it is not a complete explanation.  I think a more precise answer involves the way we North Americans understand both friendship and Church.  Friendship takes time to form, just as Church takes time to build, because both at base are relationships. We usually find time to do what we consider important, and in this country   forming friendships and building church are not high on our list of priorities.  I believe our culture denigrates “Friendship” and “Church” to the arbitrary category of “Personal Likes and Dislikes”, and thus classifies them both as undeserving of serious attention. After all, a “personal” like or dislike (such as religion or a particular human being) is just a matter of taste. Also, what we call friends in America are often no more than acquaintances.  And what we call Church can be no more than a grouping of acquaintances, a bunch of people we are more or less comfortable being under the same roof with, so long as they don’t intrude into our private space by daring to sit in our pew. 

The priests I know from Africa, (and also, by the way, the ones who come from India), are usually more open to friendship than my North American confreres.  They experience the priesthood as a real brotherhood and not a snooty Old Boys Clerical Club.  This may be a matter of Culture, meaning their particular African culture versus our North American.  My African brothers also have a deeper understanding of Church than we North Americans do. They come from a connection that is organic and not one seen as a social construct.

 I suppose social scientists could prove or disprove these two working assumptions of mine regarding Friendship and Church. All I can say is that my theory is based on concrete experience. In any case, this openness to Friendship and Church is what I like most about the Black priests I have encountered.  Both on a natural level, (and therefore supernatural), I think we are able to meet each other without the pretensions illusions, and yes, prejudicial class consciousness that are so much a part of life in America.

 Another thing I like about these men is their courage. I have thought about that word, “courage” and can find none better to describe what I see in them. I am not talking about natural courage alone, because that is often mixed with foolhardiness, ignorance, stupidity, and/or desperation.  My African brothers have as much of that natural courage as we all do. To acknowledge that is no compliment.  What I admire in them, however, is a courage born of faith.  Perhaps it would be better to call this courage a happy fortitude, or strength of heart.

 It takes only natural courage to come to this country because of all the advantages and enticements of the American Dream, but it requires strength of heart to come in spite of the many attractions. Strength of heart presupposes the maturity to face the pros and cons of coming to America, and the steadfastness of spirit to deal with all the cultural conflicts that await them, including racism.

Racial prejudice is one of our cultural conflicts, but it deserves particular mention because it is such a pervasive reality. Most African priests who come to America have experienced racial prejudice at home or in their travels. Yet the American experience is different. Why? Here as elsewhere  prejudice can hide behind and combine itself with many more disguises, such as liberal condescension, preferential treatment, sophisticated jargon, anti-Catholic sentiment,   anticlerical attitudes, radical feminism, and sexual orientation. Such mixtures make it impossible to separate the strand of racism from whatever else it is married to at the moment.  Even when the African priests recognize prejudice over here, they are in no position to confront or deal with it.  “It’s in the water”, a friend of mine says, meaning it is so basic, so much a part of the culture, that we absorb it all the time without realizing it. Prejudice is in the water we drink and the air we breathe because we are raised with an innate sense of superiority as a result of being born White Americans. (Of course we neglect to realize that we had no input as to our skin color and nationality.)

 Our American bias does not usually express itself in anything so crass as  dirty looks or hate stares, but clothes itself in a mantle of personal  superiority for the simple fact of being not-Black.  Black is perceived as the basest of colors.  Any other hue is preferable, be it yellow, tan, or a light shade of brown.  Brown black, the normal Black color, is bad, but not as bad as Blue black, the darkest color of all. In spite of good manners, political correctness of expression and conduct, which we tolerant White Americans display, the blip of our bias will sooner or later flash on the Black radar screen.

 “Cada persona es un mundo,” a Mexican friend once told me. It was a wonderful way of saying that each person is sui generis, and a Mystery. Because each person is unique, and we can never fully know anyone, so writing a few lines about each one of the Black priests as separate individuals would serve no purpose. So, instead, I am going to focus on the one Black priest whom I have more contact with than the others. He was fortunate to find employment in a nearby hospital, while all the others live and work at greater distance. I hope that by portraying him with some accuracy I can give an idea of the qualities and characters of all the others. His real first name is straight from the Old Testament, so here I will call him Elisha. There are very real differences among all the Black priests, but Elisha is a great example of what they all have in common.  What he personifies in himself is true of the others as well, to various degrees.

What stands out to me about Elisha is his meekness. He personifies meekness to the nth degree. If you saw the musical Chicago, try to remember the song and dance routine called The Cellophane Man. Elisha really is the man nobody sees, and nobody notices. He does nothing to call attention to himself. This surprised me when I first got to know him, because the other priests, (especially the Igbo  from Nigeria), were often loud and assertive. Not that they weren’t humble, they were.  But they were humble more as a requirement of working in a strange country. More than one of them said to me, “Even when we are right, over here we are wrong, just for opening our mouths.”  They are saying quite a “mouthful” with that statement. As outsiders they have no way to address an injustice, or work the system against itself or manipulate it to their advantage. They are at its mercy. It doesn’t matter if there is a work-related problem in the Pastoral Department at the hospital, or in the kitchen at the parish rectory, the Black priests have no adequate recourse. Their only hope is to keep their mouths shut, their head down, and keep going.  This requires a great deal of self control.  Elisha however, doesn’t have to restrain himself.  His meekness is simply part of his personality. The others are humble because they are smart enough to be careful in a new environment, whereas Elisha would be meek even if he were home in Nigeria. 

 His humility is sometimes a problem. An example from around 2004: a couple of us were prepping Elisha for a job interview.  It was a real effort, (heroic, on our part) to get him to look us in the face while talking to us. He was so used to looking down, avoiding other persons’ eyes, that  it never occurred to him that he would need  to be more assertive, more in your face  in order to make a good impression at a job interview.  But he was humble enough to listen to us, make himself do what we told him, and he got the job!  

Another strange fact:  Elisha’s meekness is also the source of his boldness.  I presume that sounds as weird to you to hear as it does for me to say it, (or in this case write it).  My experiences with him over ten years have made me see that Elisha’s meekness is what fuels requests for help.

Many of us human beings, no matter what our nationality or culture, would be tempted to suffer in silence than admit our needs and wants by asking for help. We see this suffering in silence as a virtue, when it can be a vice.  Our stubborn desire to be independent deprives us of the care and support others would be happy to offer us. It also puts us in the unwitting position of trying to get others to satisfy the desires and needs we are unwilling to articulate. We end up playing manipulative games in order to meet needs we refuse to admit are there. Elisha doesn’t do that. He doesn’t confuse needs with wants, doesn’t manipulate or play games. With humble awareness of his personal limitations he forthrightly asks for the help he needs. He doesn’t play the victim, doesn’t get obsequious, or fawning or flattering.  He just states his need and asks for help. If you say no, he moves on with no hard feelings. If you say yes, he is grateful and receptive. He doesn’t mind receiving, doesn’t mind asking, and he doesn’t hold it against you that you are in a position to help him.  He will also go out of his way for you if you ever need him or give him the chance to be of assistance.

Here is a more recent example of his meekness, a case that irritated me: Elisha took his car to a garage for repairs.  The next day he got a ride back to the garage to pick up his car at the time he had been told it would be ready.  But it wasn’t.   He spent the rest of the morning and afternoon sitting there!  I find that so incredible.  Why didn’t he call somebody and ask for a ride?  Even if all his friends were busy or working, one of us could have found a free moment to go get him.   I know I am unfairly judging him by how I would have acted.  I would have gone crazy with frustration if I had to sit there the whole afternoon and wait until closing to get a ride. I suppose in Elisha’s case, it may have been simply a matter of long practiced self-discipline. Whatever it was, it is a quality I do not have. I do know that to Elisha it was no big deal, just another part of living and breathing. His lack of transportation was not a big enough deal to move him to bother someone else.

  I used to think that what I saw as his meekness was an inferiority complex, but it is not. Elisha does not think that he has nothing much to offer. He is just not a self-starter. But he is fun to be with. He as a great deal to offer in terms of charm, wit, practical wisdom, humor,  book learning and common sense, as well as pastoral experience. The challenge is to get him to share it.  Share it he does, if someone takes the initiative and speaks to him first. But if you wait for Elisha to take the initiative, you will be waiting a long time. Spontaneity, opening his mouth and expressing himself, or letting you in on what is going on inside him, well, that is just not going to happen.  

Another example of this meekness of his (and also his strength of heart) is the reason why he came to the United States.  It is very simple. He would have died if he had stayed home.  He had serious health problems, and no money. In Nigeria, I am told,  serious illness plus no money equals death as sure as one plus one makes two. If you are a poor man, you die.  End of the story.  You as a “Westerner” reading this may think I have just stated an obvious, foregone conclusion. But  most Africans would know better. In fact most Africans would probably find my statement naïve in the extreme.  Why? One reason is that they do not measure wealth and poverty in terms of money alone as we do in this culture, but in terms of what has been harvested from the previous season, and, more importantly, in terms of human relations. A man is rich because he is a member of a family a clan, a tribe, a people, and not because he has a big bank account. A man is poor in the extreme if he is an outcast, cut off from and rejected by the people he belongs to. Then he really is as good as dead! Another important factor which escapes our Western consciousness: traditional medicine in many African countries is both very effective and equally inexpensive. Therefore, in the case of seventy or eighty percent of all illnesses, Western medicine is not called for.  Elisha, sad to say, had exhausted the traditional remedies which had helped him all his life, and was left with no answers.

Fortunately, his bishop had told him he could come here and work for whatever time he had left, and fortunately that turned out to be quite a lot, since he got medical care as part of the salary benefits which go with his job. Coming here added years to his life. But he did not come out of a desire to have a career, enjoy the freedom America offers, make a lot of money, etc.  He came because, very simply, he had to find someplace to go if he was going to have any chance of staying alive.  

Why is that so unusual?  Isn’t that the same situation with many desperate immigrants?  No.  Elisha wasn’t interested in staying alive only for his own sake.  He also wanted to stay alive because he had responsibilities. Back home his life was not about him; he was living for others. His death would have meant that these others would have no means of support. He owed it to them to stay alive so he could fulfill his promise to his mother to take care of them. As a youngster he promised his mom he would take care of his brother, one single person. But it was a promise he made for life. Today his brother is married and has two sons. So caring for his brother means sending money back home for his brother and sister in law, as well as paying the university tuition for his nephews. Elisha lives frugally so he can keep his loved ones alive.  True, his standard of living has improved somewhat, but much of all he earns gets sent back to Africa.

This is typical of all the other priests as well.  They love life, but they do not live for themselves. One of them has had a well dug for his village; a second stocked a local clinic with equipment and medical supplies; a third bought books, supplies and uniforms for the kids in his village school, and of course, is sending money to keep his mom and dad alive with food and medicine. I could continue with examples from the lives of the other African priests, but you get the idea.  I admire them because they live for more than themselves, for their families, their church, and their people.  They do it automatically, naturally, without giving it a second thought. And if their care for a person or project ends, they do not say, “Now I have paid my debt, leave me be.” They quietly move on to the next person or project that demands their attention, because the needs never end.

  If there is anything the African priests are not, it is rugged individualists. But I think it is their solidarity with one another that enables them to stand alone. Perhaps the best way to understand them is to say that, in general, Africans start off with a communal perspective, while we Americans start off with an individualistic point of view. They see everything in terms of the group, even themselves. Friendship is a group thing to them, not only a matter of one on one. Of course, they have particular friends they are closer to than others, but their closer friendships are open to welcome others into relationship. They enjoy   being together. It is a cause for celebration, on however small or large a scale. In America, most of us see the group as an extension of the individual. To us, the group is little more than many individuals together, an aggregate of individuals collected into a sum total.

 With the Africans, the group is basic. In fact, the individual is a manifestation of the group, an expression of the group, so he is never by himself even when he is the only person in the room. He always carries the group in his heart.  Why do they see this way? Because it is the way things are. The group is basic.  It should be a truism to say that the family group is the basic unit of society, and that the individual is an extension of the family. Yet more and more, the common attitude in America is that the family is a bunch of individuals, or a collection of separate persons. The family is not even considered as an extension as of those individuals, because unity between them is seen as accidental and superficial.

 The same attitude, unfortunately, holds true with Church. I think most Africans build their concept of Church upon the interconnectedness of the family of man, which is a perfect fit. We Americans, well, I am not sure what we build our concept of Church on.  I think it may be accurate to say Americans experience Church as a bunch of individuals who share the same taste in creedal and moral preferences. It is a kind of religious association to attend to spiritual needs. You can shop for church as you shop for any other product that you have a taste for.  It is not something you are blessed with and stuck with at the same time like your family of origin.

 We Americans probably have work to acquire a sense of community, whereas the Africans have to struggle to acquire a sense of individuality. Their sense of the family, the group, the people, is what they start out with. Why do I think this is so important? Because I think it is the one characteristic that enables them to connect with one another and with anyone else, on a human level and therefore on the spiritual level as well.  Our spiritual bond doesn’t sit on top of our humanity but flows through our humanity and vivifies it.

This human level of connection is my concluding reason for my friendship with African priests, and calls for more explanation.

At first, I was surprised and put off by their constant use of titles. They were always calling me “Father” and addressing one another that way too.  I am used to calling fellow priests by their first name. As I understand it, in their culture what a title connotes depends a great deal on the country you are in.  Usually, the priest is seen by everybody as a special person, and may be put on pedestal by the rest of society. But in Nigeria, for example, the male still enjoys more power and prestige than the female. Although things are changing, there a man is more important than a woman, and a priest is more important than a nun or religious sister. So many connotations go into the title, “Father” in that country, both positive and negative. In general, in most places “Father” is a sign of respect given to an older man, not just to an ordained priest, and the same is true of the term “Mother”. When I introduce any Black friends to my ninety six year old mother, they all call her “mum” or “momma” or “mother.”  They also address my mother’s brother and sister-in-law by the titles Uncle and Aunt. They have a respect for the elderly that is genuine, and genuinely lacking over here in our culture!

   So when I called them by their first names and tried to get them to do this with me, I explained that we Americans are somewhat democratic in our relationships, and the term “Father “ while a sign of respect is often an empty formality and a way of distancing ourselves from one another or standing on class status.  If there was anything Christ emphasized with his disciples, it was how they were to be humble brothers. After a time most of them, especially all the younger ones, were able to call me my first name, but a couple of the older generation, Elisha included, were not. It was a result of their training I suppose.  But I did get them to use my first name after the title “Father”, which I see as a partial victory. I think “brothering” one another is how Christ wants us to “father”.  They agreed, I think, because they are naturally brothers to each other on a human level, and saw that common humanity as the foundation on which relationships with all their differences and distinctions were built.  If we can’t connect as human beings, how can we connect as children of God?

Let me finish this article with a mea culpa.  I plead guilty to the fault of exaggeration and oversimplification. I am sure there are individualistic African priests, men who are self centered, egotistical, selfish, indulgent, grasping, and greedy.  Every person who leaves the womb has the same flawed human nature that the rest of us are born with. It has something (everything!) to do with original sin.  However, I do not think I am idealizing or romanticizing very good and decent qualities of Black priests out of all proportion.  They suffer from the same defects and weaknesses that afflict priests the world over.  Are there not men  in Africa who leave the priesthood, who forsake their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, who lead double lives,  or who stay in ministry for the money, or because they find it easier to stay in than to go and earn a living by the sweat of their brow?  Of course.  I am sure there are priests from Africa who are not the men of God they should be. Let me also affirm there are plenty of good and great American priests, men of prayer and dedication, men who live for Christ and His Church.  All Black priests are not perfect saints, and all American priests are not self-centered functionaries. All I want to affirm, and affirm gratefully, is that to date, the Black priests it has been my good fortune to know exemplify the brotherhood that is Christ’s priesthood at its best.