“Fecit
te Deus quasi Patrem regis, et dominum universae domus eius…” (God made you as
if father of the king, and lord of his entire house).
The
Truth of Joseph: “’Joseph did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and
took his wife’ (cf. Mt. 1, 24).”[1]
“Joseph, Son of David, do not fear to
take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy
Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will
save his people from their sins’ (Mt. 1, 20-21). “In these words we find the core of
biblical truth about St. Joseph…”[2]
He
said “Yes” to the vocation. No, rather, he “did” – he lived the obedience of
faith (Dei Verbum #5) as Vatican II
has deepened the understanding of faith as the act which involves not just the
faculties of intelligence and will, but involves the whole person. In his lived
life. Joseph said “Yes” to take Mary as wife. Before there could be any coming
together (which did not take place), she is with child.
Therefore, his “Yes” connects with
her “Yes” in the Incarnation of the Word. Therefore, Joseph is “quasi patrem
regis” as she is the mother of the child who is God. Notice how this involves
us in that the engendering of the Word (the Person of the Son of God) consists
in receiving the vocation to hear the Word of God and doing it. When the woman in the crowd shouted out
“Blessed is the womb that bore thee and the breasts that gave thee suck” (Lk.
11, 27), the Lord responds: “Yeah, rather, blessed are those who hear the word
of God and do it” (Lk. 11, 28). Anyone who hears the word of God and does it,
is my brother and sister and mother (Lk. 8, 20-21[3]).
And so we have this new meaning of
motherhood, fatherhood, or engendering, that applies to Joseph as well as to
our Lady, and to us. John Paul II wrote that “one must note that the new and
different motherhood which Jesus speaks of to his disciples refers precisely to
Mary in a very special way. Is not Mary the first
of ‘those who hear the word of God and do it?’ And therefore does not the
blessing uttered by Jesus in response to the woman in the crowd refer primarily
to her. Without any doubt. Mary is worthy of blessing by the very fact that she
became the mother of Jesus according to the flesh (‘Blessed is the womb that
bore you, and the breasts that gave you suck’), but also and especially because
already at the Annunciation she accepted the word of God, because she believed
it, because she was obedient to God, and
because she ‘kept’ the word and ‘pondered it in her heart’ (Lk. 1, 38, 45; 2,
19, 51).”[4]
All of this applies to Joseph. And
to us. “’(T)he faith of Mary meets the faith of Joseph. If Elizabeth said
of the Redeemer’s Mother, ‘blessed is she who believed,’ in a certain sense
this blessedness can be referred to Joseph as well, since he responded
positively to the word of God when it was communicated to him at the decisive
moment. While it is true that Joseph did not respond to the angel’s
‘announcement’ in the same way as Mary, he ‘did
as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took his wife.’ What he did is the clearest ‘obedience of faith’ (cf. Rom. 1, 5; 16, 26; 2Cor 10, 5-6).
One can say that what Joseph did
united him in an altogether special way to the faith of Mary. He accepted as truth coming from God the very thing that she had already accepted at the Annunciation. The Council teaches: ‘The obedience of faith’ must be given to God
as he reveals himself. By this obedience of faith means man freely commits
himself entirely to God, making the ‘the full submission of his intellect and
will to God who reveals,’ and willingly assenting to the revelation given by him.’ This statement, which touches the very essence of faith, is perfectly applicable to Joseph of
Nazareth.”[5]
Hence, “Quasi patrem regis.”
I say “to us,” since the sacrament
of Baptism empowers us to radically accept the Word of God within us such that
we become the Word; i.e. to become
Christ: “I live, no, not I; Christ lives
in me” (Gal. 2, 20). What does this mean? It means that we become capable of
giving our very selves even to death in the service of the others. As the
Second Person of the Trinity is total gift of self to the Father for us, and
for us on the Cross, so also by making the gift of ourselves to the Father for
others, we actualize our imaging of the divine Persons as becoming “another
Christ,” “Christ Himself.” Note that Bergoglio speaks of the Christian
community of baptized laity in Japan that had spent two years without a priest,
and “(w)hen the missionaries returned they found them all baptized, all married
validly for the Church and all their dead had been buried in Christian fashion.
Those laymen had received only baptism, and by virtue of their baptism they had
also lived their apostolic mission.”
The apostolic mission is a sea
without shores: Insofar as we begin the process of becoming “other Christs”
– like Simon after denying Christ three times is asked “Do you love me"(agapas me), so also we are asked the
same. And here, the motto of pope Francis enters into play: Miserando atque Elegendo, which is worthwhile considering. It is taken
from the Venerable Bede and joined with Caravaggio’s painting of the
call of St. Matthew: "Vidit ergo Jesus publicanum, et quia
miserando atque eligendo vidit, ait illi, 'Sequere
me." The meaning is: Jesus saw the publican, but in seeing him he had compassion
on him and chose him. Seeing is identified with having compassion and with
choosing. I would venture
to say that Cardinal Bergoglio applies these words to himself: Jesus looked at
him, and upon seeing him had pity and chose him.
And
he calls us to a no-holds-barred apostolate. It is the apostolate of the layman in the ordinary life
of the street. As Francis wrote as Cardinal:
“ Acting as the Apostle Philip did with the eunuch to whom he
proclaimed the good news as they went along. “Look, here is water: what
prevents me from being baptized?” the eunuch asked as they passed near a
stream. “So Philip baptized him. When they were out of the water, the Spirit of
the Lord spirited Philip away and the eunuch saw him no more and went on his
way rejoicing” (Acts 8, 36-39).
The spirit of St.
Josemaria Escriva is openness like a fan: “We must open out like a fan… Open
out like a hand, with a group of souls hanging from each finger, of the easy
sort and of the difficult sort… and pulling them along! May each person be not
one but ten. And not all huddled together in a corner, like rabbits.” That is
clericalism. Baptism and Confirmation are sacraments of this zeal. These
sacraments must be lived. The consecrated life is excellent, but it is only for
a few and it is not in the center of society where Christ wants to be. He wants
to be at the center. Bergoglio wrote “Let’s call on Jesus for all we need.
Let’s ask the Father in His name, let’s ask Him to ask the Father. Like the
poor who asked everything of Him when He went through the streets and they
thronged around Him. Jesus is very keen to be with the rest of us, with all the
rest of us, with all those passing by. It’s something that interests Him first
of all. If there had been only one man or one woman in the whole world, He
would have offered His life just the same, for that one man or one woman”[6]
(emphasis mine).
Bergoglio on Clericalism
I [blogger] feel it imperative to
repeat the following remark of Bergoglio on clericalism[1]
as sin (“sinful complicity”) because it nullifies the responsible freedom and
daring of the baptized layman to bring souls to Christ. It shuts down the
layman and keeps him immature, supernaturally lazy – sinfully indolent. It is
more a sin than secularism or relativism. It is a sanctimonious shut-down:
(Bergoglio):
“As
I have said before, there is a problem: the temptation to clericalism. We
priests tend to clericalize the laity. We do not realize it, but it is as if we
infect them with our own thing. And the laity – not all but many – ask us on
their knees to clericalize them, because it is more comfortable to be an altar
boy than the protagonist of a lay path. We must not enter into that trap, it is
a sinful complicity. Neither clericalize nor ask to be clericalized. The layman
is a layman and has to live as a layman with the strength of his baptism, which
enables him to be a leaven of the love of God in society itself, to create and
sow hope, to proclaim the faith, not from a pulpit but from his everyday life.
And by carrying his daily cross as all of us do. And this is the cross of the
layman, not that of the priest. Let the priest carry the cross of the priest,
since God gave him a broad enough shoulder for this.”
*
* * * * * * * * * * *
Some priests In Buenos Aires are taking steps
to facilitate the
celebration of new baptisms and encourage them
in every way. What
is driving them?[2]
JORGE MARIO BERGOGLIO: The Conference of Latin American
Bishops held in 2007 in Aparecida reminded us to proclaim the
Gospel by
going out to find people, not sitting in the Curia or the
presbytery waiting for
people to come to us. In the third to last paragraph, the
Aparecida document
casts back thirty years and returns to the apostolic exhortation Evangelii
nuntiandi of Paul VI, which described “apostolic zeal” as “the sweet and
comforting joy of evangelizing”, of “proclaiming with joy a Good
News that
has been learned through the mercy of the Lord”. But this is
expressed not so
much by planning initiatives or exceptional events. The Evangelii nuntiandi
itself repeated that “if the Son came, it was precisely to reveal,
by His words
and His life, the ordinary paths of salvation”. It’s the ordinary
that one can
achieve in missionary fashion. And baptism is paradigmatic in
that. I think
the parish priests of Buenos Aires are acting in that spirit.
Do you think that concern to facilitate baptism
is tied to specific
and local situations, or is a criterion that
can be recommended for everyone?
BERGOGLIO: The concern to encourage in every way the
administration of baptism and the other sacraments involves the
whole
Church. If the Church follows its Lord, it comes out of itself, with
courage
and
compassion: it doesn’t remain locked in its own self. The Lord works a change
in those who are faithful to Him, makes them look up away from themselves. That
is the mission, that is witness.
16
In the handbook on baptism prepared and
distributed by the
diocese of Buenos Aires answer is given to
possible criticism from
those who say that the sacraments should not be
“a bargain offer” and
that the requirements of preparation and
readiness should be held to.
Is the criticism valid?
BERGOGLIO: There is no sellout, no exchange. The parish priests
are
observing the directions given by the bishops of the pastoral
region of
Buenos Aires, which meet all the conditions required by the Code
of Canon
Law, according to the basic criterion expressed in the last canon:
the
supreme law is the salvation of souls.
In your opinion, are the cases where baptism is
denied to
children because the parents are not in a
canonically regular marital
situation justified in some way?
BERGOGLIO: To us here that would be like closing the
doors of the
Church.
The child has no responsibility for the marital state of its parents. And then,
the baptism of children often becomes a new beginning for parents. Usually
there is a little catechesis before baptism, about an hour, then a mystagogic
catechesis during liturgy. Then, the priests and laity go to visit these
families to continue with their post-baptismal pastoral. And it often happens
that parents, who were not married in church, maybe ask to come before the
altar to celebrate the sacrament of marriage.
It sometimes happens that ministers and
pastoral workers
assume almost a proprietorial attitude as if
the decision to grant the
sacraments or not were in their hands.
BERGOGLIO: The sacraments are signs of the Lord. They
are not
performances
or the conquests of priests or bishops. In our vast country there are many
small towns or villages that are difficult to reach, where the priest arrives
once or twice a year. But popular piety feels that children should be baptized
as soon as possible, and so in those places there is always a layman or woman
known by everyone as bautizadores who baptize the children when they are born, awaiting
the arrival of the priest. When the priest comes, they bring him the children
so he can anoint them with holy oil, completing the ceremony. When I think of
it, I’m always surprised by that story of those Christian communities in Japan
that were left without a priest for more than two hundred years. When the
missionaries returned they found them
all baptized, all married validly for the Church and all their dead had been
buried in Christian fashion. Those laymen had received only baptism, and by
virtue of their baptism they had also lived their apostolic mission.
According to some people unless there is
adequate
understanding and preparation the sacramental
rite is in danger of
becoming something “magical” or mechanical. What
do you think?
BERGOGLIO: Nobody thinks that we don’t need catechesis, preparing
children for confirmation and communion. But we must always look
at our
people as they are, and see what is needed most. The
sacraments are for the life of men and women as they are. Who maybe don’t talk
all that much, but their sensus fidei captures the reality of the sacraments with more
clarity than that of many specialists.
Can you give us some incident in your pastoral
experience that
highlights this sensus fidei?
BERGOGLIO: Just a few days ago I baptized seven
children of a woman
on
her own, a poor widow, who works as a maid and she had had them from two
different men. I met her last year at the Feast of San Cayetano. She’d said:
Father, I’m in mortal sin, I have seven children and I’ve never had them baptized.
It had happened because she had no money to bring the godparents from a
distance, or to pay for the party, because she always had to work ... I
suggested we meet, to talk about it. We spoke on the phone, she came to see me,
told me that she could never find all the godparents and get them together ...
In the end I said: let’s do everything with only two godparents, representing
the others. They all came here and after a little catechesis I baptized them in
the chapel of the archbishopric. After the ceremony we had a little
refreshment. A coca cola and sandwiches. She told me: Father, I can’t believe
it, you make me feel important... I replied, but lady, where do I come in, it’s
Jesus who makes you important.
[1]
Hector Miguel Cabrejos Vidarte (Peruvian Franciscan, archbishop of Trujillo:
“The most insidious enemy [“of ‘closeness’ as suggested by the Aparecida
Conference” of 2007] is not relativism or secularism… [but] a certain harking-back
to clericalism” Closeness and Compassion Gianni Valente, 30 Days.
[2] 30 Days, “We Are Not Owners of the Gifts of the Lord”
Interview with Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio by Gianni Valente
[1]
Redemptoris Custos, John Paul II, August 15, 1989, #1.
[2] Idem
#2.
[3]
“My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”
[4]
John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater #20.
[5] Redemptoris
Custos, op. cit #4.
[6] 30
Days, Gianni Valente “Closeness and Compassion.”
[7]
Hector Miguel Cabrejos Vidarte (Peruvian Franciscan, archbishop of Trujillo:
“The most insidious enemy [“of ‘closeness’ as suggested by the Aparecida
Conference” of 2007] is not relativism or secularism… [but] a certain harking-back
to clericalism” Closeness and Compassion Gianni Valente, 30 Days.
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