"Down" Children: Ignition Point of Humanity

As entitled "Down Children: Ignition Point of Humanity," I do not like the title given this article. However, I love the content. Voila

"Restoring Humanity to Downs Children" (Part 1)

Author Clara Lejeune-Gaymard Speaks of Her Father's Legacy

By Carrie Gress

WASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 26, 2011 (Zenit.org).- One of my father's goals was to return the humanity to the child with Down syndrome, says author Clara Lejeune-Gaymard.

In this interview with ZENIT, Lejeune-Gaymard, author of "Life is a Blessing: A Biography of Jerome Lejeune," speaks about her book about her father, the French scientist who discovered the source of Down syndrome, his life and work, recently republished in English by The National
Catholic Bioethics Center.

Part 2 of this interview will be published Friday.

Q: Your father was the renowned first geneticist of France who traveled the world explaining his numerous scientific discoveries, including the genetic source of Down syndrome. Why is his name not better known for his important work?

Lejeune-Gaymard: That's a good question.

When he made the discovery of Trisomy 21 he could have called it "Lejeune" like many scientists do when they make discoveries. But he was not that kind of man and also he wanted to do two things.

The first was that there were a lot humiliating things that were said about children with Down syndrome, such as, the mother had bad sexual behavior, or maybe their heritage was bad.

Those children where hidden, especially in France or Europe. He wanted to restore the humanity and pride of those children to their parents by saying that it is in the genetic code and it doesn't come from the family or bad behavior.

It was also the first time that it was discovered that a disease could come from the genetic code, so it really opened the door to genetic medicine and the understanding that a chromosome could be the cause of a disease.

Just six months before the discovery the professor he was working for said it was impossible that genetic code could cause any disease. So he came up with the proof of the contrary of that.

And the second thing he wanted to do was to protect the unborn.

He became quite well known in France and very well known in the scientific community because he helped to build the first academic chair in genetics in Israel and in Spain and worked with scientists in the U.S. In France, he was the one who was always a commentator in the press on genetic issues.

In 1969, the campaign started for abortion in Europe, France and the United States. And since he was against it, all the doors were closed. He was not on the radar anymore. No one would interview him any time there was a discovery.

I think in 1971, he came to the United States and he made a speech at the National Institute for Health and afterward he wrote a message to my mother and saying: "Today, I have lost my Nobel Prize." He addressed the issue of abortion, saying, "you are forming your institute of health into an institute of death." And they hated it.

Q: Your book on your father's life is a series of snapshots into your family's life that brings to light not only his scientific work, but also his deep faith. What made you decide to write about him in this style?

Lejeune-Gaymard: I was pregnant when he was sick, expecting my sixth, and during all this time I really hoped that he would be alive long enough to see my daughter. He died on the third of April and she was born on the 13th of April, so she never knew her grandfather.

Just before he died I asked him if he would allow me to write a book on him. But I was afraid he would say no because he was a very humble man, but he said: "Do what you want. If you want to testify to the life of the child with Down syndrome, you can do what you want."

I knew that I wanted to write something for my little girl. First, I wrote 30 pages and then we went on a holiday with a journalist and I told him that I was writing a book so my daughter could know her grandfather. He read it and said I should write a book.
The way I wanted to write it was not like a chronological biography, but as different portraits of a person. There is a chapter about our life in Denmark, one about him as a doctor, one as a Christian.

Each chapter is a different piece of a puzzle and at the end you have a picture of the whole person.

Q: Your father suffered much in his career because of his pro-life stance. Were his convictions informed only by his faith or also by his scientific research?

Lejeune-Gaymard: It was because he was a doctor, not because of his faith. When you are a doctor you have swear the Hippocratic Oath not to do harm, and he was always saying the respect for life had nothing to do with the faith, even though, of course, it is in the faith to respect life.

It was also why he was so hated by the pro-abortion people. It was difficult to fight him because all his arguments where scientific arguments.

He would explain that life starts at conception, but he would tell a story that was intelligible to everyone, that of Tom Thumb. It is a story for children or a legend, but it is a reality.

It is very strange that humanity has been able to tell that kind of story without knowing that it is reality, because at the time it was written there were no photos of babies in the womb.

Life starts at the very instant of conception when the genes of the mother and the genes of father join to make a new human being, a human being that is absolutely unique.

All the genetic patrimony is already there. It is like the music of Mozart on the page. The full life is really there.

At two months, the embryo has everything, the hands, the eyes, the body. It is a very tiny body, but after two months, the only thing it does is grow. And if you could take his very little finger, you could even see his fingerprint.

Newman's "Implicit Reason"

How is one to “prove” that there is another level of knowledge in us that is not conceptual but a consciousness that we simply know and are aware of. One simply knows and experiences such a consciousness, which cannot be “proven” within a lower-tiered knowing since the latter is not more evident than the first, but the reverse. "Implicit reason" is the way we know persons

John Henry Newman comes to mind when musing about this. I quote: “Reason, according to the simplest view of it, is the faculty of gaining knowledge without direct perception, or of ascertaining one thing by means of another. In this way it is able, from small beginnings, to create to itself a world of ideas, which do or do not correspond to the things themselves for which they stand, or are true or not, according as it is exercised soundly or otherwise. One fact may suffice for a whole {257} theory; one principle may create and sustain a system; one minute token is a clue to a large discovery. The mind ranges to and fro, and spreads out, and advances forward with a quickness which has become a proverb, and a subtlety and versatility which baffle investigation. It passes on from point to point, gaining one by some indication; another on a probability; then availing itself of an association; then falling back on some received law; next seizing on testimony; then committing itself to some popular impression, or some inward instinct, or some obscure memory; and thus it makes progress not unlike a clamberer on a steep cliff, who, by quick eye, prompt hand, and firm foot, ascends how he knows not himself; by personal endowments and by practice, rather than by rule, leaving no track behind him, and unable to teach another. It is not too much to say that the stepping by which great geniuses scale the mountains of truth is as unsafe and precarious to men in general, as the ascent of a skilful mountaineer up a literal crag. It is a way which they alone can take; and its justification lies in their success. And such mainly is the way in which all men, gifted or not gifted, commonly reason,—not by rule, but by an inward faculty” (#7).

I take the knowledge of Christ an example of this: Ratzinger ("Behold the Pierced One" Ignatius [1986] 25): "Since the center of the person of Jesus is prayer, it is essential to participate in his prayer if we are to know and understand him.

"Let us being here with a very general matter of epistemology. By nature, knowledge depends on a certain similarity between the knower and the known. The old axiom is that like is known by like. In matters of the mind and where persons are concerned, this means that knowledge calls for a certain degree of empathy, by which we enter, so to speak, into the person or intellectual reality concerned, become one with him or it, and thus become able to understand (intellegere = ab intus legere)."

"Brain Dead" Wife Wakes Up in Hospital

Cfr. previous postings here on Dr. Allan Shewmon

May 11, 2011

DARWIN, Australia -- A woman who was diagnosed as being brain dead has recovered three days after her husband begged doctors to put in a breathing tube before switching off a ventilator at an Australian hospital, the Northern Territory News reported Wednesday.

Gloria Cruz, 56, underwent brain surgery after a tumor was discovered when she suffered a stroke on March 7 and was rushed to the Royal Darwin Hospital in Darwin, Northern Territory.

Doctors told her husband Tani Cruz, 51, the case was “hopeless” and she would probably die within 48 hours following the surgery.

After two weeks, a breathing tube was inserted in Mrs Cruz's mouth and the ventilator was turned off. Hospital staff were stunned when she woke from her coma three days later.
When a doctor recommended that the ventilator be removed and Gloria Cruz be allowed to die, her husband told them, "I'm a Catholic -- I believe in miracles.”

“I told him that God knows how much I love her -- that I don't want her to suffer but I don't want her to leave us,” he said.

A doctor described her recovery as "a miracle."
Mrs Cruz is now alert and getting around in a wheelchair at the hospital.
"She's well on the way to recovery,” her husband said.

The Gift of Down Syndrome

My son Jonathan has a little extra. A little extra enthusiasm, a little extra innocence, a little extra charm. Oh, and did I mention an extra chromosome? The one on the 21st pair that inspires so much fear in parents-to-be.

I suppose at one time I was fearful about Down syndrome. But in 1993 when they placed the blue-blanketed bundle in my arms and I could see he looked - well, just a little different - I actually felt a sense of awe. Here will be a challenge - so many things to learn.

It helped that we already had a few "normal" children. But other things had opened my heart as well. There was Amy, a six-year-old cutiepie we babysat for now and then. Amy's dad had left shortly after her birth - just couldn't get into having a daughter with Down syndrome. On the brighter side was the dad and daughter duo I'd seen a month before riding the merry-go-round. A gleeful almond-eyes three-year-old, a father helplessly in love.There's something special here, I thought.

In this society, for a parent without one to see something positive in a child with Down syndrome requires a paradigm shift, I know. But if my counterculture years … taught me anything, it was to question prevailing attitudes. I'd really never liked the dread surrounding Down syndrome, clouding the horizon for still-waiting-for-test-results expectant parents….
As many expectant parents find when they seek out the real professionals - parents involved with Down syndrome on a daily basis -- who are in much better position to comment on the so-called "quality of life" issues. Always there is an outpouring of loving response, personal variations on Emily Kingsley's theme in her famous essay, "Welcome to Holland": So you planned to go to Italy and landed in unexpected territory. At first you're disappointed. Then you notice the windmills and the tulips - beauty you never expected to find. You discover it's not a bad place after all.

My son Jonny, now 12, is a snappy dresser and an avid movie/Broadway buff, with a repertoire including songs from Phantom of the Opera, Annie, Bye, Bye Birdie and more. He loves people of all ages, but babies make him turn to mush. He has an uncanny way with animals. He loves school, but that doesn't keep him from loving the thrill of snow days more.

At home or school or church he is the first to offer help, to comfort someone who's down, and to laugh uproariously at the punch lines. His preschool teacher named him Ambassador of Goodwill. His public school kindergarten teacher, after 30plus years of teaching, said she'd never seen children as loving and caring as Jonny's classmates. The secret, she said, was Jonny…. Jonny certainly taught the children and me to look at the heart…

Having a child with Down syndrome has helped me see there's infinitely more to life than intelligence, beauty and "perfection." It's also taught me that not everything can be measured in dollars and cents - the benefits of full-inclusion extend beyond a child with Down syndrome to his classmates, teachers, family and friends…

He's been a gift I never would have thought to ask for, bringing lessons I never knew I needed to learn. The greatest surprise is this: Our life together has been less about my helping him reach his potential than about him helping me reach mine.

Sometimes when we're in a museum or a mall, in the middle of a good laugh, I catch someone off-guard, looking uncomfortable and standoffish. I know that as long as we live some will see Jonny as having a little less. I've learned he has a little more. And so does our world because he's here.

Larry Cirignano

Gay Marriage Is Not Inevitable

By Maggie Gallagher, May 16, 2011


Can we win? The future is unknown. But let me tell you the present: This spring, we fought and won the battle against gay marriage in two of the deepest-blue states in the nation, Rhode Island and Maryland. I believe we are about to win, again, in New York. In each case we were told it was a done deal; gay marriage would be impossible to stop. It wasn't.

We are told repeatedly that these victories will be impossible to win. We keep winning them anyway. Intellectuals and writers who want to predict that this struggle is unwinnable ought to ask themselves: why am I writing this? Do you really want us to stop winning victories because you believe in the future they will become impossible? What's the point of that prediction except to sap the will to stand?

Gay marriage advocates have stopped trying to persuade their fellow citizens that gay marriage is good and have started trying to persuade them to give up. Why is the "argument from despair" so prominent? Because victory in any war happens not when one side is annihilated but when one side gives up the will to fight. The same holds true of culture wars. My question is: Why do we even ask ourselves this question?


There are deeper battles than the legal battle, and not everyone is called to do everything.
But surrendering on the legal definition of "civil marriage" is not a prelude to winning any of those other deeper battles. It is a prelude to an ever deeper surrender to the main idea now being propagated: if you believe in the message of Genesis, as repeated by Jesus—that marriage from the beginning has been the union of male and female, husbands and wives called to give themselves to each other and to their children—then you are a bad person. You are like a racist. You should be ashamed and shamed in public. You should, ideally, lose your job.

Once we decide to give up on the public fight on marriage, what's next? What's next is shaming, punishing, and economically harming those who speak up for the biblical view of marriage—as the fates of Peter Vidmar and Damian Goddard have recently illustrated. What's next is the use of government, through the public schools and other avenues, to teach that the biblical view of marriage is discredited bigotry. See "Can We Please Just Start Admitting That We Do Actually Want to Indoctrinate Kids" for evidence.

Surrendering marriage merely leads to the next fight, the fight over whether "bigots" should receive religious liberty protections—and beware: racists don't get conscience protections.

Gentlemen may cry truce, truce, but there is no truce. Those who decide to submit or withdraw or to mute themselves and their beliefs, under the heat now being generated against those who stand, will find it hard to find a principled place, later on down the very short road, on which to stand.

Being Christ-Becoming God

The Message of Opus Dei: "We are other Christs, Christ himself" [St. Josemaria Escriva "Christ's Presence in Christians" Christ is Passing By Scepter (1973) 241].

“We believe that the Word became flesh and that we receive his flesh in the Lord’s Supper. How then can we fail to believe that he really dwells within us? When he became man, he actually clothed himself in our flesh, uniting it to himself for ever. In the sacrament of his body he actually gives us his own flesh, which he has united to his divinity. This is why we are all one, because the Father is in Christ, and Christ is in us. He is in us through his flesh and we are in him. With him we form a unity which is in God.

“The manner of our indwelling in him through the sacrament of his body and blood is evident from the Lord’s own words: This world will see me no longer but you shall see me. Because I live you shall live also, for I am in my Father, you are in me, and I am in you. If it had been a question of a mere unity of will, why should he have given us this explanation of the steps by which it is achieved. He is in the Father by reason of his divine nature, we are in him by reason of his human birth, and he is in us though the mystery of the sacrament. This, surely, is what he wished us to believe; this is how he wanted us to understand the perfect unity that is achieved through our Mediator, who lives in the Father while we live in him, and who, while living in the Father lives also in us. This is how we attain to unity with the Father. Christ is, in very truth, in the Father by his eternal generation; we are, in very truth, in Christ, and he likewise is in us.

“Christ himself bore witness to the reality of this unity when he said: he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I in him. No one will be in Christ unless Christ himself has been in him; Christ will take to himself only the flesh of those who have received his flesh.

“He had already explained the mystery of this perfect unity when he said: As the living Father sent me and I draw life from the Father, so he who eats my flesh will draw life from me. We draw life from his flesh just as he draws life from the Father. Such comparisons aid our understanding, since we can grasp a point more easily when we have an analogy. And the point is that Christ is the wellspring of our life. Since we who are in the flesh have Christ dwelling in us through his flesh, we shall draw life from him in the same way as he draws life from the Father” [Office of Readings Fourth Week of Easter - Wednesday: St. Hilary, “On the Trinity,” Book 8, 13-16].

"Pure Objectivity Is An Absurd Abstraction" J. Ratzinger

From Albert Einstein:

The only real valuable thing is intuition.

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

All three of the above are important, but the last is the most. When the question of meaning is raised, it can only be answered on the level of the experience of the self, because what we mean by "mean" is the experience and consciousness of the self in which the experience of the sensible, empirical thing is embedded. Discovering "meaning" is discovering that embeddedness.

This was the key to the "new" quantum physics of the last century. Instead of treating reality as an object, Heisenberg, Einstein, Plank, DeBroglie, Dirac, etc. entered into the physical experiment as a subject among subjects. As Ratzinger said in his New York address in New York in 1988: "Pure objectivity is an absurd abstraction. It is not theuninvolved who comes to knowledge; rather, interest itself is a requirement for the possibility of coming to know" [J. Ratzinger, "Biblical Interpretation in Crisis," in The Essential Pope Benedict Harper (2007) 247].

Anniversay of Beatification of St. Josemaria Escriva 5/17/1992

Jesus Christ: "Fact" As Meaning of Scripture:

“At first, Jesus’ death on the Cross had simply been an inexplicable fact that placed his entire message and his whole figure in question. The story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Lk. 24, 13-35) presents this journeying, talking and searching together as the process by which the soul’s darkness is gradually illumined by walking with Jesus (v. 15). It becomes clear that Moses and the Prophets – ‘all the Scriptures’ – had spoken of the events of Christ’s Passion (vv. 26-27): the ‘absurd’ now yields its profound meaning. IN the apparently senseless event, the real sense of human journeying is truly opened up: meaning triumphs over the power of destruction and evil.”[1]

Escriva: "Fact" as Presence of Christ in the Secular World:

In May 1992, just after the beatification of Josemaria Escriva, Alvaro del Portillo wrote in L’Osservatore Romano: “All those who knew Josemaria Escriva perceived that his person was inseparable from the mission for which God had chosen him. Having been able to form a particularly close and profound relationship with him for 40 years reinforces in my memory this characteristic dimension of his human and spiritual physiognomy. I have seen him, so to speak, in his ‘first act’ as founder, that is to say, in the daily and continuous building of Opus Dei, and as a consequence, of the Church, as he affirmed not in vain that the Work exists solely to serve the Church.”

The vocation-mission of St. Josemaria Escriva was not to follow Christ, imitate Christ, study Christ, teach Christ or preach Christ. It was to be Christ. On August 7, 1931, after intense devotion to the Virgin accompanied by praying the (then) three parts of the rosary every day during the month of May, he heard: “’When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself’ (Jn. 12, 32); not in the sense that Scripture says it; I say it to you in the sense that you put me at the summit of all human activities, so that all over the world there be Christians with a personal and most free dedication, that they be other Christs.” And two months (October 16, 1931 later, he heard in the middle of the street, on a streetcar: “You are my son, you are Christ.”[2]

And this “being Christ” was to take place in the exercise of ordinary work and family life. It consists in making every secular act a gift of oneself. This “gift of oneself” is the meaning of being Christ. Consider Joseph Ratzinger on this: “What faith really states is precisely that with Jesus it is not possible to distinguish office and person; with him, this differentiation simply becomes inapplicable. The person is the office, the office is the person. The two are no longer divisible. Here there is no private area reserved for an ‘I’ which remains in the background behind the deeds and actions and thus at some time or other can be ‘off duty,’ here there is no ‘I’ separate from the work; the ‘I’ is the work and the work is the ‘I.’”[3]

I think it is safe to say that Opus Dei is the Church itself coming to the consciousness of the presence of Christ in the world by dint of the experience of Escriva becoming the work that he was called to do, viz, to found Opus Dei. As mentioned above, Del Portillo observed for 47 years how Escriva’s persona – like Christ - was “inseparable from the mission for which God had chosen him.” He went on: “The identification of his very self with his foundational activity implied that … Escriva perfected himself as a subject – up to the point of living the virtues to a heroic degree – in the measure in which he carried out Opus Dei, feeling the need to second God’s plans daily.”[4]

The uniqueness of the charism of Josemaria Escriva and Opus Dei is a development of the experience and consciousness of the Church about herself. Opus Dei is the Church herself becoming enriched with the experience and consciousness of being the very Person of Christ. Christ is the Head, and the Church is the Body. But the Body is the Subject – the “I” of Christ - as much as the Head. That is why Lumen Gentium #8 declares that “the sole Church of Christ which in the Creed we profess to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic… subsists in the Catholic Church.” The word “subsist” (and not “exist”) is used for a subject, a Person. “Many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside its visible confines” where they “are.” But Christ, as Subject – “I” – subsists only in the Catholic Church. Opus Dei carries within it the charism of living that subjectivity of being Christ himself by becoming self-gift on the occasion and in the execution of ordinary secular work.

Consider Ratzinger’s remarks on “subsistence” of the Church of Christ only in the Catholic Church: “Subsistere is a special case of esse. It is being in the form of a subject who has an autonomous existence. Here it is a question precisely of this. The Council wants to tell us that the Church of Jesus Christ as a concrete subject in this world can be found in the Catholic Church. This can take place only once, and the idea that the subsistit could be multiplied fails to grasp precisely the notion that is being intended. With the word subsistit, the Council wished to explain the unicity of the Catholic Church and the fact of her inability to be multiplied: the Church exists as a subject in historical reality.”[5]

It is interesting that when Escriva went to Rome to have Opus Dei approved by the Church, he was told that he was 100 years ahead of his time, and that he should come back in 100 years. But then, within 12 years the Second Vatican Council was called and within 16 it had begun. And Alvaro del Portillo was able to affirm that Vatican II “had taken up and promulgated as common doctrine for all Christians the substantial lines of the charism of Opus Dei.”[6] The Church had crossed the threshold of the ontological subject and therefore the "enrichment" of faith, which is the achievement of Vatican II. (See Wojtyla's "Sources of Renewal" Chpt. 1).

The Charism – “Gestalt” - of Opus Dei Is Fixed For All Time: Escriva received “a powerful light, a profound interior motion, a clear awareness of the divine will and he saw the nature and mission of Opus Dei in the Church and in the world. He saw… the essential nucleus of Opus Dei, in the way God had defined and planned it. That day… our Lord founded his Work… [After that] It was necessary to open up the juridical path; and necessary also to define the features and characteristics of our apostolate and our mode of government… In this work, the Holy Spirit accompanied him as a Teacher, through the big and small events of secular and Church history, and above all through the experience of the Work itself, which our Lord offered for his discernment.”[7]

The Future? This Gestalt is in our hands. If we do not live the charism of becoming Christ Himself by the gift of self in secular work, then Opus Dei literally does not really exist. It exists on the books objectively. But it would not exist as the subjective ontological reality that God has will for it, the Church and the world. It would not be Christ Passing By.

Therefore, the need to dream daringly. Perhaps we could call the protagonists of this adventure “reckless romantics” who are professionally competent with their feet on the ground “to raise the world to God and transform it from within: this is the ideal the holy founder points out to you, dear brothers and sisters, who rejoice today to see him raised to the glory of the altars.” [8]

[1] Benedict XVI, “Jesus of Nazareth” Ignatius (2011) 203.
[2] J. Coverdale, “Uncommon Faith,” Scepter (2002) 90-93.
[3] J. Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius (1990) 149.
[4] L’OR Ibid.
[5] J. Ratzinger, “The Ecclesiology of the Constitution On the Church, Vatican II, ‘Lumen Gentium.’”
[6] Cfr. Romana et Matriten., Beatificationis et Canonizationis Servi Dei Iosephmaria Escriva de Balaguer, Positio super vita et virtutibus, Summarium, no. 964.
[7] Javier Echevarria, Letter November 28, 1995
[8] John Paul II, Homily, October 6, 2002.

Fatima - The Golden Rose - Benedict and Escriva

Wednesday, May 12, 2010 and Thursday May 12, 2011.

Benedict's 10 Golden Roses to Our Lady


FATIMA, Portugal, MAY 12, 2010

Benedict XVI's first stop today upon arriving by helicopter to Fatima today was to the Chapel of Apparitions to pray and to give Our Lady a Golden Rose.
The Pope knelt before the image of Our Lady of Fatima, recalling the "invisible hand" that saved the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981 when he was shot by Alí Agca in St. Peter's Square. The assassination attempt took place on May 13, the anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady in Fatima.

Benedict XVI noted how John Paul II visited Fatima three times, attributing to the intercession of Mary the fact that the bullet wounds were not fatal. In 1982, the Polish Pope placed the bullet that shot him in the crown of the image of Our Lady.
"It is a profound consolation to know that you are crowned not only with the silver and gold of our joys and hopes, but also with the 'bullet' of our anxieties and sufferings," Benedict XVI said in his prayer.

The Holy Father also noted that he brought with him a Golden Rose "as a homage of gratitude from the Pope for the marvels that the Almighty has worked through you in the hearts of so many who come as pilgrims to this your maternal home."
The Golden Rose is a papal decoration conferred on prominent Catholic personalities; it has gone through a significant evolution.

Initially, kings and dignitaries received it, later it was conferred almost exclusively on queens and, more recently, on Our Lady. The distinction was created by Pope Leo IX in 1049.
In more recent times, after the Second Vatican Council, the papal decoration has become almost exclusively a gift from popes to Our Lady.

This was the 10th Golden Rose that the Pontiff has given to Our Lady in the more than five years of his Pontificate.

The other nine were given to the Shrine of Jasna Góra in Poland (2006), the Basilica of Aparecida in Brazil (2007), the Mariazell Basilica in Austria (2007), the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. (2008), Our Lady of Bonaria in Cagliari, Italy (2008), Our Lady of Pompeii, Italy (2008), Our Lady of Europe in Gibraltar (2009), and the "Virgen de la Cabeza" (literally, Virgin of the Head) of the Diocese of Jaen, Spain (2009), and the Shrine of Our Lady of Ta' Pinu (2010).

Escriva in the Pyrenes: Undecided to go forward or return to Madrid to do the Will of God: The Rose of Rialp.

"Casciaro saw an anxious, dejected expression on Escirva's face that he had never seen before. Escriva was arguing passionately, but quietly, with Jimenez Vargas. Botella, who was closer and could hear part of their conversation, told Casciaro that Escriva felt he should not abandon the members of the Work who were facing danger in Madrid and that he wanted to return to the capital.

"Escriva spent the night in prayer, sobbing quitely, torn between the need of freedom to carry out Opus Dei and exercise his priestly ministry and the sense that he should share the fate of the members of the Work and and his family members who were still in Madrid. Amid extreme inner turmoil, he did someting he had never done before - request an extraordinary sign to resolve his dilemma. Moved by his devotion to the Blessed Virgin, who is involked as the Mystical Rose, he asked her to give him a gilded rose if God wanted him to continiue the attempt to cross over to the other zone of Spain.

"When the others awakened the next morning and began to prepare for Mass, Escriva remainee deeply distressed. During the night, when Escriva had protested that he did not have the strength to make it through the mounains, Jimenez Vargas had told him, 'We are going to take you to the other side, dead or alive.' But this morning, neither Jimenez Vargas nor anyone else said anything. Escriva left the room alone, probably to pray in the vandalized church. When he returned, his face was radiant with joy and peace. In his hand, he held a gilded wooden rose. In 1936 when the militia sacked the church, they had torn down the carved and gilded wooden altarpiece and carried it outside to burn. The rose, which had probably formed a part of the frame of roses encircling the image of Our Lady of the Rosary, had survived. Escriva saw it as the sign he had requested.

"Escriva rarely spoke of this event. When asked about the rose, he would usually change the subject or limit himself to commenting that our Lady is the mystical rose. Del Portillo, his closest collaborator and first successor, explained why Escriva did not usually talk about this or the other extraordinary grace he received:

'First of all, out of humility, since he was the protagonist of these events, the one who received God's special graces, his "caresses," of which there have been many in the Work's history. Second, he didn't want even his children to know about these spiritual divine favors, so that we would all know and understand that we should do Opus Dei, not because of miracles, but because it is God's will' [John F. Coverdale, "UnCommon Faith," Scepter (2002) 245-246].

The Secularity of the Post-Resurrection

By this title, I mean: Why no triumphalism after the greatest event - the resurrection of the God-man - that could be experienced in the universe? Why did Christ not appear before the Sanhedrin and Jewish/Roman world showing Himself alive with the scars death, and prove His divinity and power?

Romano Guardini proposed this obvious thought in his "The Lord" Part VI, chpt. III: "Between Time and Eternity" (Gateway-Regnery [1996] 492. He wrote: "It might be asked: Why this mysterious lingering on earth after the Resurrection? Why didn't the Lord return home directly? What was happening during those forty days?" We would expect that "the hunted one, now omnipotent, would have shattered his enemies; he would have blazed from temple altars, would have covered his followers with honors, and in these and other ways, have fulfilled the longings of the oppressed. He would also have inititated the disciples into the wonderful mysteries of heaven, would have revealed the future, the beginning and end of all things" [492].

The answer? "Nothing of all this occurs. No mysteries are revealed; no one is initiated into the secrets of the unknown. Not one miracle save that of Christ's own transfigured existence and the wonderful fish-catch which is only a repetition of an earlier event. What does happen? Something completely unspectacular exquisitely still: the past is confirmed. The reality of the life that has been [the ordinary and the secular] crosses over into eternity. These are the period of that transition. And we need them for our faith" [492].

The big point is this ordinariness of life after the "evolutionary leap" (BXVI, "Jesus of Nazareth" II p. 244) of the Resurrection that is with us now. The secular world continues to be the secular world. There is no triumphalism in Christ. He reveals himself only to love, not to curiosity. He is not a resurrected corpse like Lazarus and the son of the widow of Naim. It is another dimension of existence, yet He is physical. Divinity is present in the enfleshed secular. The kingdon is the transition that takes place in the human person. How does it show? "The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who taks no offense at me!" (Lk. 7, 22-23). The reality: Christ will reveal Himself only to those whom he will be able to entrust a mission. He builds up faith in the resurrection only by personal testimony quietly and with freedom. He sends them out two by two to give testimony to the resurrected divinity within human dealings and friendship.

The large insight that awaits us here is the preaching of St. Josemaria Escriva: “There is something holy, something divine hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it” (Passionately Loving the Word October 8, 1967).It is discovered in the exercise of ordinary work where by self-mastery and self-gift, one becomes Christ passing by in the world after the Resurrection. The Christian anthropology of work is the same as the act of faith. It is act of obedience of receiving the Word by the self and investing the Word with one’s entire self (which is to work well), much as our Lady heard the Word and did it. There is no triumphalism or fireworks, but the human person is being transformed into Ipse Christus, Christ Himself. Secularity and ordinariness is increased as the human person exercises the freedom of self-mastery and self gift and therefore becomes more and more Christ "passing by" in the small secular realities. The Stone that is Christ freely and quietly fills the world (Daniel 2, 34).

Benedict XVI: "Why only to Abraham and not to the mighty of the world? Why only to Israel and not irrefutably to all the peoples of the earth?

“It is part of the mystery of God that he acts so gently, that he only gradually builds up his history within the great history of mankind, that he becomes man and so can be overlooked b y his contemporaries and by the decisive forces within history; that he suffers and dies and that, having risen again, he chooses to come to mankind only through the faith of the disciples to whom he reveals him elf; that he continues to knock gently at the doors of our hearts and slowly opens our eyes if we open our doors to him.

“And yet – is not this the truly divine way? Not to overwhelm with external power, but to give freedom to offer and elicit love. And if we really think about it, is it not what seems so small that is truly great? Does not a ray of light issue from Jesus, growing brighter across the centuries that could not come from any mere man and through which the light of God truly shines into the world? Could the apostolic preaching have found faith and built up a worldwide community unless the power to truth had been at work within it?[1]

[1] Benedict XVI, “Jesus of Nazareth” II, (2011) 276-277.

"Blessed Are You Pope John Paul II Because You Believed!" - BXVI

John Paul II is in heaven because he believed. To be in heaven is to be in Christ, and to have Christ be in them. Our Lady became holy because she received the Word into herself whereupon she was taken into the Word. Elizabeth said to Our Lady at the Visitation: "blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord" (Lk. 1, 45). John Paul II in his encyclical "Mother of the Redeemer" #12 called these words "the truth about Mary." It was also the truth of John Paul II who learned it from her to whom he gave all: "Totus Tuus" (Louis de Montfort). If you take her "into your own" as St. John did, she will do the same for you.

What saves is the act of faith, which is not simply a set of conceptual propositions but the gift of the entire self to the revealing Christ. Faith must be a lived experience whereby our Lady takes you by the hand and leads you to the Cross. She did this with John Paul II, and if you are generous, she will do this with you.



Benedict XVI: "Today [Divine Mercy Sunday, May 1, 2011] is the Second Sunday of Easter, which Blessed John Paul II entitled Divine Mercy Sunday. The date was chosen for today's celebration because, in God's providence, my predecessor died on the vigil of this feast. Today is also the first day of May, Mary's month, and the liturgical memorial of Saint Joseph the Worker. All these elements serve to enrich our prayer, they help us in our pilgrimage through time and space; but in heaven a very different celebration is taking place among the angels and saints! Even so, God is but one, and one too is Christ the Lord, who like a bridge joins earth to heaven. At this moment we feel closer than ever, sharing as it were in the liturgy of heaven.

'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe' (Jn 20:29). In today's Gospel Jesus proclaims this beatitude: the beatitude of faith. For us, it is particularly striking because we are gathered to celebrate a beatification, but even more so because today the one proclaimed blessed is a Pope, a Successor of Peter, one who was called to confirm his brethren in the faith. John Paul II is blessed because of his faith, a strong, generous and apostolic faith. We think at once of another beatitude: 'Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven' (Mt 16:17). What did our heavenly Father reveal to Simon? That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Because of this faith, Simon becomes Peter, the rock on which Jesus can build his Church. The eternal beatitude of John Paul II, which today the Church rejoices to proclaim, is wholly contained in these sayings of Jesus: 'Blessed are you, Simon' and 'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe!' It is the beatitude of faith, which John Paul II also received as a gift from God the Father for the building up of Christ's Church.

Our thoughts turn to yet another beatitude, one which appears in the Gospel before all others. It is the beatitude of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer. Mary, who had just conceived Jesus, was told by Saint Elizabeth: 'Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord' (Lk 1:45). The beatitude of faith has its model in Mary, and all of us rejoice that the beatification of John Paul II takes place on this first day of the month of Mary, beneath the maternal gaze of the one who by her faith sustained the faith of the Apostles and constantly sustains the faith of their successors, especially those called to occupy the Chair of Peter. Mary does not appear in the accounts of Christ's resurrection, yet hers is, as it were, a continual, hidden presence: she is the Mother to whom Jesus entrusted each of his disciples and the entire community. In particular we can see how Saint John and Saint Luke record the powerful, maternal presence of Mary in the passages preceding those read in today's Gospel and first reading. In the account of Jesus' death, Mary appears at the foot of the Cross (Jn 19:25), and at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles she is seen in the midst of the disciples gathered in prayer in the Upper Room (Acts 1:14).

* * * * * * *

Benedict ends:

"This was his message: man is the way of the Church, and Christ is the way of man. With this message, which is the great legacy of the Second Vatican Council and of its 'helmsman', the Servant of God Pope Paul VI, John Paul II led the People of God across the threshold of the Third Millennium, which thanks to Christ he was able to call 'the threshold of hope'. Throughout the long journey of preparation for the great Jubilee he directed Christianity once again to the future, the future of God, which transcends history while nonetheless directly affecting it. He rightly reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress. He restored to Christianity its true face as a religion of hope, to be lived in history in an 'Advent' spirit, in a personal and communitarian existence directed to Christ, the fullness of humanity and the fulfillment of all our longings for justice and peace.

"Finally, on a more personal note, I would like to thank God for the gift of having worked for many years with Blessed Pope John Paul II. I had known him earlier and had esteemed him, but for twenty-three years, beginning in 1982 after he called me to Rome to be Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I was at his side and came to revere him all the more. My own service was sustained by his spiritual depth and by the richness of his insights. His example of prayer continually impressed and edified me: he remained deeply united to God even amid the many demands of his ministry. Then too, there was his witness in suffering: the Lord gradually stripped him of everything, yet he remained ever a 'rock', as Christ desired. His profound humility, grounded in close union with Christ, enabled him to continue to lead the Church and to give to the world a message which became all the more eloquent as his physical strength declined. In this way he lived out in an extraordinary way the vocation of every priest and bishop to become completely one with Jesus, whom he daily receives and offers in the Eucharist.

"Blessed are you, beloved Pope John Paul II, because you believed! Continue, we implore you, to sustain from heaven the faith of God's people. How many time you blessed us from this very square. Holy Father, bless us again from that window. Amen."

Beatification of John Paul II - Divine Mercy Sunday 5/1/2011

May 1, 2011: First Sunday After Easter

Four Titles:

1) Divine Mercy Sunday
2) Beatification of John Paul II – died April 2, the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday @ 9.35 p.m.
3) St. Joseph the Worker
4) Month of Our Lady


Something Unprecedented:

Easter Vigil: Benedict XVI marked the distinction of Old and New Testaments and the transition from the Judaic week or work leading to the Sabbath rest, and the Christian Resurrection beginning the new action of self-gift.

Guardini wrote: “The person of Christ unprecedented and therefore measurable by no already existing norm. Christian recognition consists of realizing that all things really began with Jesus Christ; that he is his own norm – and therefore ours – for he is Truth.

“Christ’s effect upon the world can be compared with nothing in its history save its own creation: ‘In the beginning God created heaven, and earth.’ What takes place in Christ is of the same order as the original act of creation, though on a still higher level. For the beginning of the new creation is as far superior to the love which created the stars, plants, animals and men. That is what the words mean: ‘I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled?’ (Lk. 12, 49). It is the fire of new becoming; not only ‘truth’ or ‘love,’ but the incandescence of new creation.”[1]

This ontological dimension of Christ is constitutively relational. That means that to be = to be gift in Him, and, since we are made in His image and likeness, we are made to be gift. And since man has been created to subdue the earth (beginning with himself = priesthood], the “earth” must be lifted into the relational realm of giftedness. This is the meaning of work and economy.


Benedict XVI: After six days in which man in some sense participates in God’s work of creation, the Sabbath is the day of rest. But something quite unprecedented happened in the nascent Church: the place of the Sabbath, the seventh day, was taken by the first day. As the day of the liturgical assembly, it is the day for encounter with God through Jesus Christ who as the Risen Lord encountered his followers on the first day, Sunday, after they had found the tomb empty. The structure of the week is overturned. No longer does it point towards the seventh day, as the time to participate in God’s rest. It sets out from the first day as the day of encounter with the Risen Lord. This encounter happens afresh at every celebration of the Eucharist, when the Lord enters anew into the midst of his disciples and gives himself to them, allows himself, so to speak, to be touched by them, sits down at table with them. This change is utterly extraordinary, considering that the Sabbath, the seventh day seen as the day of encounter with God, is so profoundly rooted in the Old Testament. If we also bear in mind how much the movement from work towards the rest-day corresponds to a natural rhythm, the dramatic nature of this change is even more striking. This revolutionary development that occurred at the very the beginning of the Church’s history can be explained only by the fact that something utterly new happened that day. The first day of the week was the third day after Jesus’ death. It was the day when he showed himself to his disciples as the Risen Lord. In truth, this encounter had something unsettling about it. The world had changed. This man who had died was now living with a life that was no longer threatened by any death. A new form of life had been inaugurated, a new dimension of creation. The first day, according to the Genesis account, is the day on which creation begins. Now it was the day of creation in a new way, it had become the day of the new creation.

We celebrate the first day. And in so doing we celebrate God the Creator and his creation. Yes, we believe in God, the Creator of heaven and earth. And we celebrate the God who was made man, who suffered, died, was buried and rose again. We celebrate the definitive victory of the Creator and of his creation. We celebrate this day as the origin and the goal of our existence. We celebrate it because now, thanks to the risen Lord, it is definitively established that reason is stronger than unreason, truth stronger than lies, love stronger than death. We celebrate the first day because we know that the black line drawn across creation does not last forever. We celebrate it because we know that those words from the end of the creation account have now been definitively fulfilled: "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Gen 1:31). Amen.

John Paul II

2) Divine Mercy Sunday:
HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER
MASS IN ST PETER'S SQUARE FOR THE CANONIZATION OF SR MARY FAUSTINA KOWALSKA
Sunday, 30 April 2000

1. "Confitemini Domino quoniam bonus, quoniam in saeculum misericordia eius"; "Give thanks to the Lord for he is good; his steadfast love endures for ever" (Ps 118: 1). So the Church sings on the Octave of Easter, as if receiving from Christ's lips these words of the Psalm; from the lips of the risen Christ, who bears the great message of divine mercy and entrusts its ministry to the Apostles in the Upper Room: "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.... Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (Jn 20: 21-23).

Before speaking these words, Jesus shows his hands and his side. He points, that is, to the wounds of the Passion, especially the wound in his heart, the source from which flows the great wave of mercy poured out on humanity. From that heart Sr Faustina Kowalska, the blessed whom from now on we will call a saint, will see two rays of light shining from that heart and illuminating the world: "The two rays", Jesus himself explained to her one day, "represent blood and water" (Diary, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, p. 132). 2. Blood and water! We immediately think of the testimony given by the Evangelist John, who, when a solider on Calvary pierced Christ's side with his spear, sees blood and water flowing from it (cf. Jn 19: 34). Moreover, if the blood recalls the sacrifice of the Cross and the gift of the Eucharist, the water, in Johannine symbolism, represents not only Baptism but also the gift of the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 3: 5; 4: 14; 7: 37-39).
Divine Mercy reaches human beings through the heart of Christ crucified: "My daughter, say that I am love and mercy personified", Jesus will ask Sr Faustina (Diary, p. 374). Christ pours out this mercy on humanity though the sending of the Spirit who, in the Trinity, is the Person-Love. And is not mercy love's "second name" (cf. Dives in misericordia, n. 7), understood in its deepest and most tender aspect, in its ability to take upon itself the burden of any need and, especially, in its immense capacity for forgiveness?

Today my joy is truly great in presenting the life and witness of Sr Faustina Kowalska to the whole Church as a gift of God for our time. By divine Providence, the life of this humble daughter of Poland was completely linked with the history of the 20th century, the century we have just left behind. In fact, it was between the First and Second World Wars that Christ entrusted his message of mercy to her. Those who remember, who were witnesses and participants in the events of those years and the horrible sufferings they caused for millions of people, know well how necessary was the message of mercy.

Jesus told Sr Faustina: "Humanity will not find peace until it turns trustfully to divine mercy" (Diary, p. 132). Through the work of the Polish religious, this message has become linked for ever to the 20th century, the last of the second millennium and the bridge to the third. It is not a new message but can be considered a gift of special enlightenment that helps us to relive the Gospel of Easter more intensely, to offer it as a ray of light to the men and women of our time.

3. What will the years ahead bring us? What will man's future on earth be like? We are not given to know. However, it is certain that in addition to new progress there will unfortunately be no lack of painful experiences. But the light of divine mercy, which the Lord in a way wished to return to the world through Sr Faustina's charism, will illumine the way for the men and women of the third millennium.

However, as the Apostles once did, today too humanity must welcome into the upper room of history the risen Christ, who shows the wounds of his Crucifixion and repeats: Peace be with you! Humanity must let itself be touched and pervaded by the Spirit given to it by the risen Christ. It is the Spirit who heals the wounds of the heart, pulls down the barriers that separate us from God and divide us from one another, and at the same time, restores the joy of the Father's love and of fraternal unity. 4. It is important then that we accept the whole message that comes to us from the word of God on this Second Sunday of Easter, which from now on throughout the Church will be called "Divine Mercy Sunday". In the various readings, the liturgy seems to indicate the path of mercy which, while re-establishing the relationship of each person with God, also creates new relations of fraternal solidarity among human beings. Christ has taught us that "man not only receives and experiences the mercy of God, but is also called "to practise mercy' towards others: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy' (Mt 5: 7)" (Dives et misericordia, n. 14). He also showed us the many paths of mercy, which not only forgives sins but reaches out to all human needs. Jesus bent over every kind of human poverty, material and spiritual.

His message of mercy continues to reach us through his hands held out to suffering man. This is how Sr Faustina saw him and proclaimed him to people on all the continents when, hidden in her convent at £agiewniki in Kraków, she made her life a hymn to mercy: Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo.

5. Sr Faustina's canonization has a particular eloquence: by this act I intend today to pass this message on to the new millennium. I pass it on to all people, so that they will learn to know ever better the true face of God and the true face of their brethren.
In fact, love of God and love of one's brothers and sisters are inseparable, as the First Letter of John has reminded us: "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments" (5: 2). Here the Apostle reminds us of the truth of love, showing us its measure and criterion in the observance of the commandments.
It is not easy to love with a deep love, which lies in the authentic gift of self. This love can only be learned by penetrating the mystery of God's love. Looking at him, being one with his fatherly heart, we are able to look with new eyes at our brothers and sisters, with an attitude of unselfishness and solidarity, of generosity and forgiveness. All this is mercy!
To the extent that humanity penetrates the mystery of this merciful gaze, it will seem possible to fulfil the ideal we heard in today's first reading: "The community of believers were of one heart and one mind. None of them ever claimed anything as his own; rather everything was held in common" (Acts 4: 32). Here mercy gave form to human relations and community life; it constituted the basis for the sharing of goods. This led to the spiritual and corporal "works of mercy". Here mercy became a concrete way of being "neighbour" to one's neediest brothers and sisters. 6. Sr Faustina Kowalska wrote in her Diary: "I feel tremendous pain when I see the sufferings of my neighbours. All my neighbours' sufferings reverberate in my own heart; I carry their anguish in my heart in such a way that it even physically destroys me. I would like all their sorrows to fall upon me, in order to relieve my neighbour" (Diary, p. 365). This is the degree of compassion to which love leads, when it takes the love of God as its measure!

It is this love which must inspire humanity today, if it is to face the crisis of the meaning of life, the challenges of the most diverse needs and, especially, the duty to defend the dignity of every human person. Thus the message of divine mercy is also implicitly a message about the value of every human being. Each person is precious in God's eyes; Christ gave his life for each one; to everyone the Father gives his Spirit and offers intimacy.

7. This consoling message is addressed above all to those who, afflicted by a particularly harsh trial or crushed by the weight of the sins they committed, have lost all confidence in life and are tempted to give in to despair. To them the gentle face of Christ is offered; those rays from his heart touch them and shine upon them, warm them, show them the way and fill them with hope. How many souls have been consoled by the prayer "Jesus, I trust in you", which Providence intimated through Sr Faustina! This simple act of abandonment to Jesus dispels the thickest clouds and lets a ray of light penetrate every life. Jezu, ufam tobie.

8. Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo (Ps 88 [89]: 2). Let us too, the pilgrim Church, join our voice to the voice of Mary most holy, "Mother of Mercy", to the voice of this new saint who sings of mercy with all God's friends in the heavenly Jerusalem.

And you, Faustina, a gift of God to our time, a gift from the land of Poland to the whole Church, obtain for us an awareness of the depth of divine mercy; help us to have a living experience of it and to bear witness to it among our brothers and sisters. May your message of light and hope spread throughout the world, spurring sinners to conversion, calming rivalries and hatred and opening individuals and nations to the practice of brotherhood. Today, fixing our gaze with you on the face of the risen Christ, let us make our own your prayer of trusting abandonment and say with firm hope: Christ Jesus, I trust in you! Jezu, ufam tobie!

Benedict XVI



Pope Benedict XVI's homily of beatification for John Paul II

May 1, 2011:

Pope Benedict XVI personally pronounced his predecessor John Paul II Sunday to be among the blessed, one step below sainthood, in a Mass attended by more than a million in Rome.
Declaring that the angels and saints in heaven were themselves celebrating, he praised John Paul's strength, will and holiness in the following words:


"Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Six years ago we gathered in this Square to celebrate the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Our grief at his loss was deep, but even greater was our sense of an immense grace which embraced Rome and the whole world: a grace which was in some way the fruit of my beloved predecessor's entire life, and especially of his witness in suffering.

Even then we perceived the fragrance of his sanctity, and in any number of ways God's People showed their veneration for him. For this reason, with all due respect for the Church's canonical norms, I wanted his cause of beatification to move forward with reasonable haste. And now the longed-for day has come; it came quickly because this is what was pleasing to the Lord: John Paul II is blessed!

I would like to offer a cordial greeting to all of you who on this happy occasion have come in such great numbers to Rome from all over the world – cardinals, patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches, brother bishops and priests, official delegations, ambassadors and civil authorities, consecrated men and women and lay faithful, and I extend that greeting to all those who join us by radio and television.

Today is the Second Sunday of Easter, which Blessed John Paul II entitled Divine Mercy Sunday. The date was chosen for today's celebration because, in God's providence, my predecessor died on the vigil of this feast. Today is also the first day of May, Mary's month, and the liturgical memorial of Saint Joseph the Worker. All these elements serve to enrich our prayer, they help us in our pilgrimage through time and space; but in heaven a very different celebration is taking place among the angels and saints! Even so, God is but one, and one too is Christ the Lord, who like a bridge joins earth to heaven. At this moment we feel closer than ever, sharing as it were in the liturgy of heaven.

'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe' (Jn 20:29). In today's Gospel Jesus proclaims this beatitude: the beatitude of faith. For us, it is particularly striking because we are gathered to celebrate a beatification, but even more so because today the one proclaimed blessed is a Pope, a Successor of Peter, one who was called to confirm his brethren in the faith. John Paul II is blessed because of his faith, a strong, generous and apostolic faith. We think at once of another beatitude: 'Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven' (Mt 16:17). What did our heavenly Father reveal to Simon? That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Because of this faith, Simon becomes Peter, the rock on which Jesus can build his Church. The eternal beatitude of John Paul II, which today the Church rejoices to proclaim, is wholly contained in these sayings of Jesus: 'Blessed are you, Simon' and 'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe!' It is the beatitude of faith, which John Paul II also received as a gift from God the Father for the building up of Christ's Church.

Our thoughts turn to yet another beatitude, one which appears in the Gospel before all others. It is the beatitude of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer. Mary, who had just conceived Jesus, was told by Saint Elizabeth: 'Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord' (Lk 1:45). The beatitude of faith has its model in Mary, and all of us rejoice that the beatification of John Paul II takes place on this first day of the month of Mary, beneath the maternal gaze of the one who by her faith sustained the faith of the Apostles and constantly sustains the faith of their successors, especially those called to occupy the Chair of Peter. Mary does not appear in the accounts of Christ's resurrection, yet hers is, as it were, a continual, hidden presence: she is the Mother to whom Jesus entrusted each of his disciples and the entire community. In particular we can see how Saint John and Saint Luke record the powerful, maternal presence of Mary in the passages preceding those read in today's Gospel and first reading. In the account of Jesus' death, Mary appears at the foot of the Cross (Jn 19:25), and at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles she is seen in the midst of the disciples gathered in prayer in the Upper Room (Acts 1:14).

Today's second reading also speaks to us of faith. St. Peter himself, filled with spiritual enthusiasm, points out to the newly-baptized the reason for their hope and their joy. I like to think how in this passage, at the beginning of his First Letter, Peter does not use language of exhortation; instead, he states a fact. He writes: 'you rejoice', and he adds: 'you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls' (1 Pt 1:6, 8-9). All these verbs are in the indicative, because a new reality has come about in Christ's resurrection, a reality to which faith opens the door. 'This is the Lord's doing', says the Psalm (Ps 118:23), and 'it is marvelous in our eyes', the eyes of faith.

Dear brothers and sisters, today our eyes behold, in the full spiritual light of the risen Christ, the beloved and revered figure of John Paul II. Today his name is added to the host of those whom he proclaimed saints and blesseds during the almost twenty-seven years of his pontificate, thereby forcefully emphasizing the universal vocation to the heights of the Christian life, to holiness, taught by the conciliar Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. All of us, as members of the people of God – bishops, priests, deacons, laity, men and women religious – are making our pilgrim way to the heavenly homeland where the Virgin Mary has preceded us, associated as she was in a unique and perfect way to the mystery of Christ and the Church. Karol Wojtyla took part in the Second Vatican Council, first as an auxiliary Bishop and then as Archbishop of Krakow. He was fully aware that the Council's decision to devote the last chapter of its Constitution on the Church to Mary meant that the Mother of the Redeemer is held up as an image and model of holiness for every Christian and for the entire Church. This was the theological vision which Blessed John Paul II discovered as a young man and subsequently maintained and deepened throughout his life. A vision which is expressed in the scriptural image of the crucified Christ with Mary, his Mother, at his side. This icon from the Gospel of John (19:25-27) was taken up in the episcopal and later the papal coat-of-arms of Karol Wojtyla: a golden cross with the letter 'M' on the lower right and the motto 'Totus tuus', drawn from the well-known words of Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort in which Karol Wojtyla found a guiding light for his life: 'Totus tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria – I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart' (Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, 266).
In his Testament, the new Blessed wrote: 'When, on 16 October 1978, the Conclave of Cardinals chose John Paul II, the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, said to me: "The task of the new Pope will be to lead the Church into the Third Millennium"'. And the Pope added: 'I would like once again to express my gratitude to the Holy Spirit for the great gift of the Second Vatican Council, to which, together with the whole Church – and especially with the whole episcopate – I feel indebted. I am convinced that it will long be granted to the new generations to draw from the treasures that this Council of the twentieth century has lavished upon us. As a Bishop who took part in the Council from the first to the last day, I desire to entrust this great patrimony to all who are and will be called in the future to put it into practice. For my part, I thank the Eternal Shepherd, who has enabled me to serve this very great cause in the course of all the years of my Pontificate'. And what is this 'cause'? It is the same one that John Paul II presented during his first solemn Mass in Saint Peter's Square in the unforgettable words: 'Do not be afraid! Open, open wide the doors to Christ!' What the newly-elected Pope asked of everyone, he was himself the first to do: society, culture, political and economic systems he opened up to Christ, turning back with the strength of a titan – a strength which came to him from God – a tide which appeared irreversible. By his witness of faith, love and apostolic courage, accompanied by great human charisma, this exemplary son of Poland helped believers throughout the world not to be afraid to be called Christian, to belong to the Church, to speak of the Gospel. In a word: he helped us not to fear the truth, because truth is the guarantee of liberty. To put it even more succinctly: he gave us the strength to believe in Christ, because Christ is Redemptor hominis, the Redeemer of man. This was the theme of his first encyclical, and the thread which runs though all the others.

When Karol Wojtyla ascended to the throne of Peter, he brought with him a deep understanding of the difference between Marxism and Christianity, based on their respective visions of man. This was his message: man is the way of the Church, and Christ is the way of man. With this message, which is the great legacy of the Second Vatican Council and of its 'helmsman', the Servant of God Pope Paul VI, John Paul II led the People of God across the threshold of the Third Millennium, which thanks to Christ he was able to call 'the threshold of hope'. Throughout the long journey of preparation for the great Jubilee he directed Christianity once again to the future, the future of God, which transcends history while nonetheless directly affecting it. He rightly reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress. He restored to Christianity its true face as a religion of hope, to be lived in history in an 'Advent' spirit, in a personal and communitarian existence directed to Christ, the fullness of humanity and the fulfillment of all our longings for justice and peace.

Finally, on a more personal note, I would like to thank God for the gift of having worked for many years with Blessed Pope John Paul II. I had known him earlier and had esteemed him, but for twenty-three years, beginning in 1982 after he called me to Rome to be Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I was at his side and came to revere him all the more. My own service was sustained by his spiritual depth and by the richness of his insights. His example of prayer continually impressed and edified me: he remained deeply united to God even amid the many demands of his ministry. Then too, there was his witness in suffering: the Lord gradually stripped him of everything, yet he remained ever a 'rock', as Christ desired. His profound humility, grounded in close union with Christ, enabled him to continue to lead the Church and to give to the world a message which became all the more eloquent as his physical strength declined. In this way he lived out in an extraordinary way the vocation of every priest and bishop to become completely one with Jesus, whom he daily receives and offers in the Eucharist.

Blessed are you, beloved Pope John Paul II, because you believed! Continue, we implore you, to sustain from heaven the faith of God's people. How many time you blessed us from this very square. Holy Father, bless us again from that window. Amen."

The Novelty for the Third Millennium: To give and receive forgiveness as Total Self-Gift.

3) The Novelty is totality of forgiveness by the Self-gift of Christ to death on the Cross. All of the above. However, the difficulty is not being forgiven since that is the act of Christ. The problem is accepting the forgiveness. One has to actively receive the forgiveness in a free act. The act of reception involves a transformation by the act of forgiveness.

This is the explanation of Purgatory. Here is Ratzinger’s workup in his “Eschatology.”[2] “What actually saves is the full assent of faith. But in most of us, that basic option is buried under great deal of wood, hay and straw. Only with difficulty can it peer out from behind the latticework of an egoism we are powerless to pull down with our own hands. Man is the recipient of divine mercy, yet this does not exonerate him from the need to be transformed. Encounter with the Lord is this transformation. It is the fire that burns away our dross and re-forms us to be vessels of eternal joy.”

Likewise with the notion Hell as the permanence that it is because there is no reception of forgiveness. Ratzinger explains that “Heaven reposes upon freedom, and so leaves to the damned the right to will their own damnation. The specificity of Christianity is shown in this conviction of the greatness of man. Human life is fully serious…. The irrevocable takes place, and that includes irrevocable destruction.” [3]That is, we can be irrevocably destroyed because we will not to receive forgiveness from the Christ who, indeed, entered Hell to retrieve those who were there. The answer is similar to C. S. Lewis’s[4] ghost who met the angel on the plain between Heaven and Hell and refusing at first to be free of his slavery. Finally, he consents, the angel breaks the neck of the lizard, and the transformation takes place: ghost into a real man; the lizard into a great stallion which carries the man over the mountains toward the light.
4) The great insight of John Paul II has been the “gift of self.” Its first formulation was in “Love and Responsibility” (96) as spousal love, and played a central position in the formulation of the Christian anthropology. Gaudium et spes #22 and 24 where Christ as divine Person is the very meaning of the human person, and #24 is the formulation of what that looks like: “Man, the only earthly being God has willed for itself, finds himself by the sincere gift of himself.” This is the formulation of the meaning of divine Mercy, and is the epistemological key to the new trajectory of thought that has to be the defining of center of the third millennium.

[1] Romano Guardini, “The Lord,” Regnery (1955) 306.
[2] J. Ratzinger, “Eschatology,” CUA (1988) 230.
[3] Ibid. 216-217.
[4] C. S. Lewis, “The Great Divorce.”

BXVI's Beatification Homily for John Paul II

Pope Benedict XVI personally pronounced his predecessor John Paul II Sunday to be among the blessed, one step below sainthood, in a Mass attended by more than a million in Rome.
Declaring that the angels and saints in heaven were themselves celebrating, he praised John Paul's strength, will and holiness in the following words:


"Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Six years ago we gathered in this Square to celebrate the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Our grief at his loss was deep, but even greater was our sense of an immense grace which embraced Rome and the whole world: a grace which was in some way the fruit of my beloved predecessor's entire life, and especially of his witness in suffering.

Even then we perceived the fragrance of his sanctity, and in any number of ways God's People showed their veneration for him. For this reason, with all due respect for the Church's canonical norms, I wanted his cause of beatification to move forward with reasonable haste. And now the longed-for day has come; it came quickly because this is what was pleasing to the Lord: John Paul II is blessed!

I would like to offer a cordial greeting to all of you who on this happy occasion have come in such great numbers to Rome from all over the world – cardinals, patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches, brother bishops and priests, official delegations, ambassadors and civil authorities, consecrated men and women and lay faithful, and I extend that greeting to all those who join us by radio and television.

Today is the Second Sunday of Easter, which Blessed John Paul II entitled Divine Mercy Sunday. The date was chosen for today's celebration because, in God's providence, my predecessor died on the vigil of this feast. Today is also the first day of May, Mary's month, and the liturgical memorial of Saint Joseph the Worker. All these elements serve to enrich our prayer, they help us in our pilgrimage through time and space; but in heaven a very different celebration is taking place among the angels and saints! Even so, God is but one, and one too is Christ the Lord, who like a bridge joins earth to heaven. At this moment we feel closer than ever, sharing as it were in the liturgy of heaven.

'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe' (Jn 20:29). In today's Gospel Jesus proclaims this beatitude: the beatitude of faith. For us, it is particularly striking because we are gathered to celebrate a beatification, but even more so because today the one proclaimed blessed is a Pope, a Successor of Peter, one who was called to confirm his brethren in the faith. John Paul II is blessed because of his faith, a strong, generous and apostolic faith. We think at once of another beatitude: 'Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven' (Mt 16:17). What did our heavenly Father reveal to Simon? That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Because of this faith, Simon becomes Peter, the rock on which Jesus can build his Church. The eternal beatitude of John Paul II, which today the Church rejoices to proclaim, is wholly contained in these sayings of Jesus: 'Blessed are you, Simon' and 'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe!' It is the beatitude of faith, which John Paul II also received as a gift from God the Father for the building up of Christ's Church.

Our thoughts turn to yet another beatitude, one which appears in the Gospel before all others. It is the beatitude of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer. Mary, who had just conceived Jesus, was told by Saint Elizabeth: 'Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord' (Lk 1:45). The beatitude of faith has its model in Mary, and all of us rejoice that the beatification of John Paul II takes place on this first day of the month of Mary, beneath the maternal gaze of the one who by her faith sustained the faith of the Apostles and constantly sustains the faith of their successors, especially those called to occupy the Chair of Peter. Mary does not appear in the accounts of Christ's resurrection, yet hers is, as it were, a continual, hidden presence: she is the Mother to whom Jesus entrusted each of his disciples and the entire community. In particular we can see how Saint John and Saint Luke record the powerful, maternal presence of Mary in the passages preceding those read in today's Gospel and first reading. In the account of Jesus' death, Mary appears at the foot of the Cross (Jn 19:25), and at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles she is seen in the midst of the disciples gathered in prayer in the Upper Room (Acts 1:14).

Today's second reading also speaks to us of faith. St. Peter himself, filled with spiritual enthusiasm, points out to the newly-baptized the reason for their hope and their joy. I like to think how in this passage, at the beginning of his First Letter, Peter does not use language of exhortation; instead, he states a fact. He writes: 'you rejoice', and he adds: 'you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls' (1 Pt 1:6, 8-9). All these verbs are in the indicative, because a new reality has come about in Christ's resurrection, a reality to which faith opens the door. 'This is the Lord's doing', says the Psalm (Ps 118:23), and 'it is marvelous in our eyes', the eyes of faith.

Dear brothers and sisters, today our eyes behold, in the full spiritual light of the risen Christ, the beloved and revered figure of John Paul II. Today his name is added to the host of those whom he proclaimed saints and blesseds during the almost twenty-seven years of his pontificate, thereby forcefully emphasizing the universal vocation to the heights of the Christian life, to holiness, taught by the conciliar Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. All of us, as members of the people of God – bishops, priests, deacons, laity, men and women religious – are making our pilgrim way to the heavenly homeland where the Virgin Mary has preceded us, associated as she was in a unique and perfect way to the mystery of Christ and the Church. Karol Wojtyla took part in the Second Vatican Council, first as an auxiliary Bishop and then as Archbishop of Krakow. He was fully aware that the Council's decision to devote the last chapter of its Constitution on the Church to Mary meant that the Mother of the Redeemer is held up as an image and model of holiness for every Christian and for the entire Church. This was the theological vision which Blessed John Paul II discovered as a young man and subsequently maintained and deepened throughout his life. A vision which is expressed in the scriptural image of the crucified Christ with Mary, his Mother, at his side. This icon from the Gospel of John (19:25-27) was taken up in the episcopal and later the papal coat-of-arms of Karol Wojtyla: a golden cross with the letter 'M' on the lower right and the motto 'Totus tuus', drawn from the well-known words of Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort in which Karol Wojtyla found a guiding light for his life: 'Totus tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria – I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart' (Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, 266).

In his Testament, the new Blessed wrote: 'When, on 16 October 1978, the Conclave of Cardinals chose John Paul II, the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, said to me: "The task of the new Pope will be to lead the Church into the Third Millennium"'. And the Pope added: 'I would like once again to express my gratitude to the Holy Spirit for the great gift of the Second Vatican Council, to which, together with the whole Church – and especially with the whole episcopate – I feel indebted. I am convinced that it will long be granted to the new generations to draw from the treasures that this Council of the twentieth century has lavished upon us. As a Bishop who took part in the Council from the first to the last day, I desire to entrust this great patrimony to all who are and will be called in the future to put it into practice. For my part, I thank the Eternal Shepherd, who has enabled me to serve this very great cause in the course of all the years of my Pontificate'. And what is this 'cause'? It is the same one that John Paul II presented during his first solemn Mass in Saint Peter's Square in the unforgettable words: 'Do not be afraid! Open, open wide the doors to Christ!' What the newly-elected Pope asked of everyone, he was himself the first to do: society, culture, political and economic systems he opened up to Christ, turning back with the strength of a titan – a strength which came to him from God – a tide which appeared irreversible. By his witness of faith, love and apostolic courage, accompanied by great human charisma, this exemplary son of Poland helped believers throughout the world not to be afraid to be called Christian, to belong to the Church, to speak of the Gospel. In a word: he helped us not to fear the truth, because truth is the guarantee of liberty. To put it even more succinctly: he gave us the strength to believe in Christ, because Christ is Redemptor hominis, the Redeemer of man. This was the theme of his first encyclical, and the thread which runs though all the others.

When Karol Wojtyla ascended to the throne of Peter, he brought with him a deep understanding of the difference between Marxism and Christianity, based on their respective visions of man. This was his message: man is the way of the Church, and Christ is the way of man. With this message, which is the great legacy of the Second Vatican Council and of its 'helmsman', the Servant of God Pope Paul VI, John Paul II led the People of God across the threshold of the Third Millennium, which thanks to Christ he was able to call 'the threshold of hope'. Throughout the long journey of preparation for the great Jubilee he directed Christianity once again to the future, the future of God, which transcends history while nonetheless directly affecting it. He rightly reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress. He restored to Christianity its true face as a religion of hope, to be lived in history in an 'Advent' spirit, in a personal and communitarian existence directed to Christ, the fullness of humanity and the fulfillment of all our longings for justice and peace.

Finally, on a more personal note, I would like to thank God for the gift of having worked for many years with Blessed Pope John Paul II. I had known him earlier and had esteemed him, but for twenty-three years, beginning in 1982 after he called me to Rome to be Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I was at his side and came to revere him all the more. My own service was sustained by his spiritual depth and by the richness of his insights. His example of prayer continually impressed and edified me: he remained deeply united to God even amid the many demands of his ministry. Then too, there was his witness in suffering: the Lord gradually stripped him of everything, yet he remained ever a 'rock', as Christ desired. His profound humility, grounded in close union with Christ, enabled him to continue to lead the Church and to give to the world a message which became all the more eloquent as his physical strength declined. In this way he lived out in an extraordinary way the vocation of every priest and bishop to become completely one with Jesus, whom he daily receives and offers in the Eucharist.

Blessed are you, beloved Pope John Paul II, because you believed! Continue, we implore you, to sustain from heaven the faith of God's people. How many time you blessed us from this very square. Holy Father, bless us again from that window. Amen."