It strikes me as something I have never seen before, yet something I have had within me for 60 years, and certainly for the last 50, the years I have been in Opus Dei. I am referring to the “Magna Charta” (“Passionately Loving the World”) of Opus Dei pronounced by St. Josemaria in 1967.
Simply to reread the opening remarks:
“We are celebrating, therefore, the most sacred and transcendent act which we, men and women, with God’s grace can carry out in this life: receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord is, in a certain sense, lilke loosening our ties with earth and time, so as to be already with God in Heaven, where Christ himself will wipe the tears from our eyes and where there will abe no more death, nor mourning, nor creis of distress, because the old world will have passed away.
“This profound and consoling truth, which theologians usually call the eschatological meaning of the Eucharist, could, however, be misunderstood. Indeed, this had happened whenever people have tried to present the Christian way of life as somehtng exclusively spiritual – or better, spiritualistic – somethin reserved ‘for pure, extraordinary people who remain aloof from the contemptible things of this world, or at most tolerate them as something that the spirit just has to live alongside, while we are on this earth.
“When people take this approach, churches become the setting par excellence of theChristian way of life. And being a Christian means going to church, taking part in sacred ceremonies, getting into an exxlesiastical mentality, in a special kind of world, considered the ante-chamber to Heaven, wheile the ordinary world follows it own separate course. IN this case, Christian teaching and the lifeof grace would pass by, brushing very lightly against the turbulent advance of human history but never coming into proper contact with it.”
Simply to reread the opening remarks:
“We are celebrating, therefore, the most sacred and transcendent act which we, men and women, with God’s grace can carry out in this life: receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord is, in a certain sense, lilke loosening our ties with earth and time, so as to be already with God in Heaven, where Christ himself will wipe the tears from our eyes and where there will abe no more death, nor mourning, nor creis of distress, because the old world will have passed away.
“This profound and consoling truth, which theologians usually call the eschatological meaning of the Eucharist, could, however, be misunderstood. Indeed, this had happened whenever people have tried to present the Christian way of life as somehtng exclusively spiritual – or better, spiritualistic – somethin reserved ‘for pure, extraordinary people who remain aloof from the contemptible things of this world, or at most tolerate them as something that the spirit just has to live alongside, while we are on this earth.
“When people take this approach, churches become the setting par excellence of theChristian way of life. And being a Christian means going to church, taking part in sacred ceremonies, getting into an exxlesiastical mentality, in a special kind of world, considered the ante-chamber to Heaven, wheile the ordinary world follows it own separate course. IN this case, Christian teaching and the lifeof grace would pass by, brushing very lightly against the turbulent advance of human history but never coming into proper contact with it.”
* * * * * * * *
Now compare this with the remarks of Joseph Ratzinger on the following:
“what is sublime in this message is precisely that the Lord was talking not just about another life, not just men’s souls, but was addressing the body, the whole man, in his embodied form, with his involvement in history and society:”
Consider the epistemological shift that is at stake in both these statements, that of Escriva and Ratzinger, and let us begin to work out what Benedict XVI is about in his pontificate!!
* * * * * * * * *
“Christian theology, which was very soon confronted by this discrepancy between expectation and fulfillment, in the course of time turned the kingdom of God into a kingdom of heaven that is beyond this mortal life; the well-being of men became a salvation of souls, which again comes to pass beyond this life, after death. But theology did not thereby provide an answer. For what is sublime in this message is precisely that the Lord was talking not just about another life, not just about men’s souls, but was addressing the body, the whole man, in his embodied form, with his involvement in history and society; that he promised the kingdom of God to the man who lives bodily with other men in this history. As marvelous as the knowledge is that has been opened up for us by biblical scholarship in our century (that is, that Christ was not just looking forward to another life, but was talking about real people), it can also disappoint and unsettle us when we look at real history, which is in truth no kingdom of God.”[1]
[1] J. Ratzinger, “What It Means To Be a Christian,” Ignatius (2006) 27-28.
[1] J. Ratzinger, “What It Means To Be a Christian,” Ignatius (2006) 27-28.
Consider the epistemological shift that is at stake in both these statements, that of Escriva and Ratzinger, and let us begin to work out what Benedict XVI is about in his pontificate!!
* * * * * * * * *
“Christian theology, which was very soon confronted by this discrepancy between expectation and fulfillment, in the course of time turned the kingdom of God into a kingdom of heaven that is beyond this mortal life; the well-being of men became a salvation of souls, which again comes to pass beyond this life, after death. But theology did not thereby provide an answer. For what is sublime in this message is precisely that the Lord was talking not just about another life, not just about men’s souls, but was addressing the body, the whole man, in his embodied form, with his involvement in history and society; that he promised the kingdom of God to the man who lives bodily with other men in this history. As marvelous as the knowledge is that has been opened up for us by biblical scholarship in our century (that is, that Christ was not just looking forward to another life, but was talking about real people), it can also disappoint and unsettle us when we look at real history, which is in truth no kingdom of God.”[1]
[1] J. Ratzinger, “What It Means To Be a Christian,” Ignatius (2006) 27-28.
[1] J. Ratzinger, “What It Means To Be a Christian,” Ignatius (2006) 27-28.
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