Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Ephphetha [Open!!!!!]



Benedict XVI:

The word "Ephphatha" as the beginning of the title of the Conference's theme, calls to mind the well-known episode in Mark's Gospel (cf. 7: 31-37) which is paradigmatic of how the Lord works for deaf people. Jesus took aside a deaf mute and, after making some symbolic gestures, raised his eyes to Heaven and said to him: ""Ephphatha', that is , "Be opened'". At that moment, the Evangelist says, the man's ears were opened, his tongue released, and he spoke plainly. Jesus' gestures are full of loving attention and express deep compassion for the man who stood before him. The Lord showed the deaf man his concrete concern, drew him aside from the confusion of the crowd, made him feel his closeness and understanding by several gestures full of meaning. He placed his fingers in his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. He then invited him to turn his interior gaze, that of his heart, together with him to the heavenly Father. Finally, he healed him and restored him to his family, to his people, and the crowd, marvelling, could only exclaim: "He has done all things well; he even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak!" (Mk 7: 37).
By his way of behaving which reveals the heavenly Father's love, Jesus does not only heal physical deafness but points out that there is another form of deafness of which humanity must be cured, indeed, from which it must be saved: it is deafness of the spirit, which raises ever higher barriers against the voice of God and that of one's neighbour, especially the cry for help of the lowliest and the suffering, and closes the human being in profound and ruinous selfishness. As I had the opportunity to say in the Homily during my Pastoral Visit to the Diocese of Viterbo last 6 September: "we can see in this "sign' Jesus' ardent desire to overcome man' s loneliness and incommunicability created by selfishness, in order to bring about a "new humanity', the humanity of listening and speech, of dialogue, of communication, of communion with God. A "good' humanity, just as all of God's Creation is good; a humanity without discrimination, without exclusion... so that the world is truly and for all a "scene of true brotherhood'" (Homily, Mass in Faul Valley, Viterbo, 6 September 2009).



What's Up Behind Facebook and WhatsApp?


The Largest Acquisition in History: Facebook  and WhatsApp: $19 billion with the proximate goal of 2 billion users. The question immediately comes to mind: what is the driving force behind this immensity of money and product? The answer is that there is no “product.” What drives the entire phenomenon is the internal need of every person to be in relation. The human person as made in the image and likeness of a reality we cannot describe within the epistemological landscape of external sensation, the divine Person of the Son of God, is the “product” that is driving this entire venture. It is taboo to attempt to say that the meaning of the prototypical Person is pure relation, because we cannot sense or imagine that. Within our cosmic experience and perception, there is no such thing as pure relation. Relation, for us, empirically, only takes place between what we call “substances,” that is “things” which appear to be “in themselves,” but which in reality correspond to our way of forming concepts as abstractions. However, we can approach reality even more directly by attending to experience which we have, not only through sensation and abstraction, but also of the self. We experience the reality of peace, joy, guilt, responsibility, freedom… And it is there that we can also experience the self – in relation. And since it is experiential, it is also being. Ask a young woman or man who is in love about who they are.

            These thoughts occur when considering the “product” of this immense empirical and financial phenomenon.

Today’s news on same (NYT, Tues. February 25, 2014:


“WhatsApp, the globally popular texting app that Facebook just acquired for a whopping $19 billion, is adding phone calls to its list of services.


At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said the voice service will be free and begin rolling out to users within the next few months.
Currently, WhatsApp offers unlimited text and voice-mail messages between users. Its service is free for the first year, then costs 99 cents annually.
We want to make sure people always have the ability to stay in touch with their friends and loved ones really affordably," Koum said in a speech at Mobile World Congress.
As reported by multiple news outlets, Koum also announced that WhatsApp now has 465 million monthly users and 330 million daily users. The latter is 15 million more than what was made public last week when Facebook announced the purchase.
Voice service will come first to Apple devices and Google's Android operating system, with Windows phones and Blackberry to follow.

The move puts WhatsApp in competition not only with other messaging apps that offer voice but chat tools such as Skype and even mobile carriers. WhatsApp's unlimited texting has already helped establish it in places where smartphones and fancy data plans are less common.
It has 40 million users in India and another 38 million in Brazil, two countries highly coveted by tech companies such as Facebook for their large populations and emerging mobile customer base. WhatsApp hasn't released figures for the United States, where it is less popular.
Last week, Facebook shocked the business world when it announced it was buying WhatsApp for up to $19 billion in cash and stock -- by far the social network's largest acquisition to date.”


Monday, February 24, 2014

Pope Francis, the Good Samaritan and the Innkeeper


Today is the day – February 24, 1947 - that Opus Dei was granted pontifical approval de iure as a Secular Institute. In fact, the figure of the Secular Institute (of which Opus Dei was the first and only one at that moment) was the juridical conceit that uncomfortably gave Opus Dei a legal place to stand in the Church where canonical religious orders of consecrated life prior to that time constituted ways of sanctification. Such a state of affairs was not acceptable to the charism received by St. Josemaria since he was given to understand by the Lord that there was a unity of vocation for laity and ministerial priests characterized by secularity whereby ordinary work was the occasion and means of identification with Jesus Christ.  Opus Dei was in fact a way of sanctity, a fullness of vocation, but in the exercise of work as ministerial priest or laymen, and with "secularity" as characteristic. The vocation was one (the same for all) because it was directed to the “I” of the person involving the whole self as gift. Everyone has an “I,” and that is what has to be given. Therefore, it did not matter whether it is male, female, layman, priest, doing this or that objectively as work. The subject – person - is the receiver and protagonist of the vocation.  
And so, there were two dimensions that had to be accounted for: 1) the oneness of vocation, and 2) the secularity insofar as work had to be the means that the “I,” or self, exercised its Christic dimension by going out of self. [This fits with Pope Francis’ insistence on overcoming every taint of “self-referentiality”].

Mind of Pope Francis as Exemplified in the Parable of the Good Samaritan:

Turning to the mind of Francis, his persistent message is the exodus of self in a radical and total way, and Baptism and work fit in in a constitutive way to go to the peripheries in the service of others. But there seems - to my mind - to be an ambiguity. And the ambiguity could be the absence of insistence on secular work, and secularity as overall "characteristic" [Cf. #15 of Christifideles Laici].
In the overall presentation of the pope’s mind, it seems that the parable of the Good Samaritan has pre-eminence and pride of place in presenting his thought. In his own words, Francis said:

       “(T)here is a half-dead man lying in the road. A priest walks by – a zealous priest wearing a cassock and on his way to say Mass. The priest looks at the man and says to himself “I will be late for Mass” and goes on his way. “He didn’t hear the voice of God.” Then a Levite passes by and perhaps he thinks “If I get involved and the man dies, then tomorrow I will have to go before the judge and give testimony… so, he too goes on his way. He too “turns away from the voice of God”…

Only the Samaritan, a sinner, someone who habitually turns away from God had the capacity “to hear God and to understand his request. Someone who wasn’t used to participating in religious rites, who didn’t lead a “moral” life, who was theologically “wrong”, because Samaritans believed that God should be adored elsewhere, not where the Lord had said. But the Samaritan understood that God was calling him and he did not turn away. He went to the man, bound up his wounds, poured on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn and took care of him. He gave up his whole evening for him.”


The pope concluded his point by pointing out that the categories and structures won out over the dignity of the wounded person: “the priest was on time for Mass and the faithful were happy; the Levite’s schedule was not upset….”  And he asked: “why did Jonah run away from God when the Lord asked him to go to Nineveh and he boarded a ship to Spain? Why did the priest turn away from God? Why did the Levite turn away from God? Because their hearts were closed, and when your heart is closed you cannot hear the voice of God. Instead the Samaritan - he said - “saw and was moved with compassion”: his heart was open, he was human, and humanity brought him close to God.”

I submit that the pope is not saying that people should leave their secular work to come to the aid of the poor. He is, rather, talking about a change of attitude in those engaged in their secular work, and he has been immense in insisting on the normality of the sacrament of Baptism as the key to sanctity of life. Baptism is the sacrament that has the Christification of the laity as its normal denouement. If lived out to the full, Baptism is the sacrament of faith that leads the person to the Cross of Christ precisely in the exercise of ordinary work.  But with the predominance of the religious vocation, extraordinary as it is, as the ordinary venue (for 1500 years) to serve the poor a la Mother Teresa, the presumption of the interpretation of the story of the Good Samaritan will go in  the direction of religious life. The interpretation of the parable has not been nuanced for 2,000 years on my understanding of it.

St. Josemaria Escriva and Alvaro del Portillo on the Innkeeper:

And so in the light of today’s anniversary of the “Decretum Laudis” of Opus Dei, I offer the words and  thought of Blessed Alvaro del Portillo and St . Josemaria Escriva that’s gives a full exegesis of the parable and removes the ambiguity by placing the service to the poor in the very execution of one’s secular professional work. So much so is this the case with the pope, that he writes, “My mission of being in the heart of the people is not just a part of my life or a badge I can take off; it is not an ‘extra’ or just another moment in life. Instead, it is something I cannot uproot from my being without destroying my very self.  I am a mission on this earth; that is the reason why I am here in this world. We have to regard ourselves as sealed, even branded, by his mission of bringing light, blessing, enlivening, raising up, healing and freeing. All around us we begin to see nurses with soul, teachers with soul, politicians with soul, people who have chosen deep down to be with others and for others. But once we separate our work from our private lives, everything turns grey and we will always be seeking recognition or asserting our needs. We stop being a people.”[1] That is, the pope clearly sees that work itself, in the secular world, is the key aleviating poverty; that work is the key to the whole social question because work is the activity whereby I make the gift of myself to the other in obedience to God. Hence, there is not conflict between the categories and institutions of work in the world which can set us apart and the self-transcendenceneed that makes us one.

Blessed Alvaro del Portillo: Letter, January 9, 1993: [Reference to the parable of the Good Samaritan]
           
“The desire to attend to, and where possible to remedy, the material needs of one’s neighbor, without neglecting one’s other obligations, like the Good Samaritan, is a distinguishing feature of the fusion of priestly soul and lay mentality. What God asks of us is, in the first place, to sanctify our daily work and the duties of our state. As you attend to those duties, God allows you to encounter the needs and sorrows of others. When that happens, a clear sign that you are carrying out your tasks with a priestly soul is that you do not pass by uncaringly; and it is no less clear a sign if you do so without abandoning the other duties you must sanctify. At this time it would not be good for you to copy what I did for many years with the first people of the Work: visiting hospitals and looking after sick people, cleaning them and bathing them. I had to give it up because it was not compatible with this other work, the task Our Lord asks of me now. And the same happens to you: when you choose to sanctify yourselves in the place where Our Lord has put you, you have to abstain from other good things which are not part of your way (Reference to a get-together with St. Josemaria on June 21, 1972).
           
God wants you to remain where you are. From that place you can carry out – you are carrying out – an immense service to the poor and needy, to all those who suffer ignorance, loneliness and sorrow (often as a result of injustice). When you seek holiness with all your strength, trying to sanctify your daily work and your family and social relations, you contribute to imbuing human society with a Christian spirit. I am not referring now only to those of you who occupy leading positions in financial, political or social circles. I am thinking of all the daughters and all the sons of our Father, who, while turning into prayer their work, their entire day – in occupations that perhaps are not very spectacular, like the work and the life of the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph – are placing Our Lord at the summit of all human activities. And then you can be sure that he will draw all things to himself and fully satisfy your hunger and thirst for righteousness.”

The Innkeeper – the key to understanding the parable in the light of the spirit of Opus Dei.
          
  “Let us mediate also on how the parable ends. To look after the wounded man the Samaritan enlisted the help of the innkeeper. How could he have managed without him? Our Father admired this man, the owner of the inn: he passed unnoticed, yet he did most of the work, acting in his professional capacity. Looking at what he did you will understand firstly, that by carrying out your work you can all do as well as he did, because every occupation offers many opportunities to help the needy, either directly or indirectly. This is certainly true of the work of a doctor, a lawyer, or a business man who does not close his eyes to people’s material needs. Even though the law may not oblige him, he knows he is under an obligation in justice and charity. But office workers, tradesmen or farmers also have many opportunities to serve others – at times, perhaps, in spite of great personal hardship. Don’t forget, as I have said before, that to carry out ordinary work faithfully, is hardship. Don’t forget, as I have said before, that to carry iout our ordinary work faithfully, is itself to practice the virtue or charity towards individuals and towards society at large.
           
“Secondly, concern for the poor and the sick should lead you, inspired by the priestly soul and lay mentality which characterize our spirit, to cooperate in or initiate social programs which aim to remedy, in a truly professional manner, these needs of mankind and many others. As a consequence of your apostolic zeal, a great variety of undertakings of this kind have already been started all over the world. The have sprung up widely different situations and environments in response to the problems of a society which needs to be made more human, more Christian! Training schools for people of limited resources, centers of formation for workers on the land, activities for the advancement of women in rural areas, dispensaries, schools in poorer districts of large cities…” it is a sea without shores, like all our apostolic work, which in all its multiplicity constitutes a great service to society. There are indeed many such initiatives, and I pray to God that they may continue to grow in number and that he bless your enterprise and your effort.
           
“My daughters and sons, I have reminded you that the sanctification of our work, with the variety of aspects shown by the Good Samaritan and the innkeeper, is the great means available to us to extend  the kingdom of Christ and to fulfill this demand of his kingly mission  - attending to persons in need – which the Holy Father [John Paul  II] refers to so often, in an attempt to awaken the sleepy consciences of many Christians. In this task the Holy Father is relying on us, who have to be salt and light, as he said to us on the day of our Father’s Beatification, when he encouraged us to be filled with ‘an enthusiastic apostolic dynamism, paying particular attention to the poor and  those in need, because he is familiar with many of the activities of that kind which the faithful of the Prelature carry out all over the world.”




[1] Pope Francis, “Joy of the Gospel” #273.

Francis and the Good Samaritan


Today is the day – February 24, 1947 - that Opus Dei was granted pontifical approval de iure as a Secular Institute. In fact, the figure of the Secular Institute (of which Opus Dei was the first and only one at that moment) was the juridical conceit that uncomfortably gave Opus Dei a legal place to stand in the Church where canonical religious orders of consecrated life prior to that time constituted ways of sanctification. Such a state of affairs was not acceptable to the charism received by St. Josemaria since he was given to understand by the Lord that there was a unity of vocation for laity and ministerial priests characterized by secularity whereby ordinary work was the occasion and means of identification with Jesus Christ.  Opus Dei was in fact a way of sanctity, a fullness of vocation, but in the exercise of work as ministerial priest or laymen. The vocation was one (the same for all) because it was directed to the “I” of the person involving the whole self as gift. Everyone has an “I,” and that is what has to be given. Therefore, it did not matter whether it is male, female, layman, priest, doing this or that objectively as work. The subject – person - is the receiver and protagonist of the vocation.  

And so, there were two dimensions that had to be accounted for: 1) the oneness of vocation, and 2) the secularity insofar as work had to be the means that the “I,” or self, exercised its Christic dimension by going out of self. [This fits with Pope Francis’ insistence on overcoming every taint of “self-referentiality”].

Mind of Pope Francis as Exemplified in the Parable of the Good Samaritan:

In the overall presentation of the pope’s mind, it seems that the parable of the Good Samaritan has pre-eminence and pride of place in presenting his thought. In his own words Francis said:

       “(T)here is a half-dead man lying in the road. A priest walks by – a zealous priest wearing a cassock and on his way to say Mass. The priest looks at the man and says to himself “I will be late for Mass” and goes on his way. “He didn’t hear the voice of God.” Then a Levite passes by and perhaps he thinks “If I get involved and the man dies, then tomorrow I will have to go before the judge and give testimony… so, he too goes on his way. He too “turns away from the voice of God”…

Only the Samaritan, a sinner, someone who habitually turns away from God had the capacity “to hear God and to understand his request. Someone who wasn’t used to participating in religious rites, who didn’t lead a “moral” life, who was theologically “wrong”, because Samaritans believed that God should be adored elsewhere, not where the Lord had said. But the Samaritan understood that God was calling him and he did not turn away. He went to the man, bound up his wounds, poured on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn and took care of him. He gave up his whole evening for him.”

The pope concluded his point by pointing out that the categories and structures won out over the dignity of the wounded person: “the priest was on time for Mass and the faithful were happy; the Levite’s schedule was not upset….”  And he asked: “why did Jonah run away from God when the Lord asked him to go to Nineveh and he boarded a ship to Spain? Why did the priest turn away from God? Why did the Levite turn away from God? Because their hearts were closed, and when your heart is closed you cannot hear the voice of God. Instead the Samaritan - he said - “saw and was moved with compassion”: his heart was open, he was human, and humanity brought him close to God.”

Now, the pope is not saying that people should leave their secular work to come to the aid of the poor. He is, rather, talking about a change of attitude in those engaged in their secular work, and he has been immense in insisting on the normality of the sacrament of Baptism as the key to sanctity of life. Baptism is the sacrament that has the Christification of the laity as its normal denouement. If lived out to the full, Baptism is the sacrament of faith that leads the person to the Cross of Christ precisely in the exercise of ordinary work.  But with the predominance of the religious vocation, extraordinary as it is, as the ordinary venue to serve the poor a la Mother Teresa, the presumption of the interpretation of the story of the Good Samaritan will be for religious life. The interpretation of the parable has not been nuanced for 2,000 years on my understanding of it.

And so in the light of today’s anniversary of the “Decretum Laudis” of Opus Dei, I offer the words and  thought of Blessed Alvaro del Portillo and St . Josemaria Escriva that’s gives a full exegesis of the parable and removes the ambiguity by placing the service to the poor in the very execution of one’s secular professional work. So much so is this the case with the pope, that he writes, “My mission of being in the heart of the people is not just a part of my life or a badge I can take off; it is not an ‘extra’ or just another moment in life. Instead, it is something I cannot uproot from my being without destroying my very self.  I am a mission on this earth; that is the reason why I am here in this world. We have to regard ourselves as sealed, even branded, by his mission of bringing light, blessing, enlivening, raising up, healing and freeing. All around us we begin to see nurses with soul, teachers with soul, politicians with soul, people who have chosen deep down to be with others and for others. But once we separate our work from our private lives, everything turns grey and we will always be seeking recognition or asserting our needs. We stop being a people.”[1]

Blessed Alvaro del Portillo: Letter, January 9, 1993: [Reference to the parable of the Good Samaritan]

            “The desire to attend to, and where possible to remedy, the material needs of one’s neighbor, without neglecting one’s other obligations, like the Good Samaritan, is a distinguishing feature of the fusion of priestly soul and lay mentality. What God asks of us is, in the first place, to sanctify our daily work and the duties of our state. As you attend to those duties, God allows you to encounter the needs and sorrows of others. When that happens, a clear sign that you are carrying out your tasks with a priestly soul is that you do not pass by uncaringly; and it is no less clear a sign if you do so without abandoning the other duties you must sanctify. At this time it would not be good for you to copy what I did for many years with the first people of the Work: visiting hospitals and looking after sick people, cleaning them and bathing them. I had to give it up because it was not compatible with this other work, the task Our Lord asks of me now. And the same happens to you: when you choose to sanctify yourselves in the place where Our Lord has put you, you have to abstain from other good things which are not part of your way (Reference to a get-together with St. Josemaria on June 21, 1972).

            God wants you to remain where you are. From that place you can carry out – you are carrying out – an immense service to the poor and needy, to all those who suffer ignorance, loneliness and sorrow (often as a result of injustice). When you seek holiness with all your strength, trying to sanctify your daily work and your family and social relations, you contribute to imbuing human society with a Christian spirit. I am not referring now only to those of you who occupy leading positions in financial, political or social circles. I am thinking of all the daughters and all the sons of our Father, who, while turning into prayer their work, their entire day – in occupations that perhaps are not very spectacular, like the work and the life of the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph – are placing Our Lord at the summit of all human activities. And then you can be sure that he will draw all things to himself and fully satisfy your hunger and thirst for righteousness.

The Innkeeper – the key to understanding the parable in the light of the spirit of Opus Dei.

            “Let us mediate also on how the parable ends. To look after the wounded man the Samaritan enlisted the help of the innkeeper. How could he have managed without him? Our Father admired this man, the owner of the inn: he passed unnoticed, yet he did most of the work, acting in his professional capacity. Looking at what he did you will understand firstly, that by carrying out your work you can all do as well as he did, because every occupation offers many opportunities to help the needy, either directly or indirectly. This is certainly true of the work of a doctor, a lawyer, or a business man who does not close his eyes to people’s material needs. Even though the law may not oblige him, he knows he is under an obligation in justice and charity. But office workers, tradesmen or farmers also have many opportunities to serve others – at times, perhaps, in spite of great personal hardship. Don’t forget, as I have said before, that to carry out ordinary work faithfully, is hardship. Don’t forget, as I have said before, that to carry iout our ordinary work faithfully, is itself to practice the virtue or charity towards individuals and towards society at large.

            “Secondly, concern for the poor and the sick should lead you, inspired by the priestly soul and lay mentality which characterize our spirit, to cooperate in or initiate social programs which aim to remedy, in a truly professional manner, these needs of mankind and many others. As a consequence of your apostolic zeal, a great variety of undertakings of this kind have already been started all over the world. The have sprung up widely different situations and environments in response to the problems of a society which needs to be made more human, more Christian! Training schools for people of limited resources, centers of formation for workers on the land, activities for the advancement of women in rural areas, dispensaries, schools in poorer districts of large cities…” it is a sea without shores, like all our apostolic work, which in all its multiplicity constitutes a great service to society. There are indeed many such initiatives, and I pray to God that they may continue to grow in number and that he bless your enterprise and your effort.

            “My daughters and sons, I have reminded you that the sanctification of our work, with the variety of aspects shown by the Good Samaritan and the innkeeper, is the great means available to us to extend  the kingdom of Christ and to fulfill this demand of his kingly mission  - attending to persons in need – which the Holy Father [John Paul  II] refers to so often, in an attempt to awaken the sleepy consciences of many Christians. In this task the Holy Father is relying on us, who have to be salt and light, as he said to us on the day of our Father’s Beatification, when he encouraged us to be filled with ‘an enthusiastic apostolic dynamism, paying particular attention to the poor and  those in need, because he is familiar with many of the activities of that kind which the faithful of the Prelature carry out all over the world.”

Bottom Line: The traditional take on  the Good Samaritan is that he (the Good Samaritan) transcends all the categories and  goes to the  peripheries. But, we are called to find Christ in the categories by transcending ourselves.





[1] Pope Francis, “Joy of the Gospel” #273.

Thursday, February 06, 2014

Redemption and Co-Redemption




Structure of the Redemptive Act:
·        
I           The Redemption act is intrinsic to man, not extrinsic because it is intrinsic to Christ. Christ has a real human nature and a real human will. Thus: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (Jn. 6, 38). Ratzinger: “Here the divine Logos is speaking, and speaking of the human will of Jesus in the mode by which he calls his will the will of the Logos.[1] With this exegesis of John 6, 38, the Council proves the unity of the subject. In Jesus there are not two ‘I’s,’ but only one. The Logos speaks of the will and human thought of Jesus using the ‘I.’ This has become his ‘I,’ has been assumed into his ‘I,’ because the human will has become fully one with the will of the Logos, and with it has become pure assent to the will of the Father.”[2]
·         That human will assumed into the divine “I” of the Logos is burdened with all sin: “he made him to be sin who knew nothing of sin, so that we might become the justice of God” (2 Cor. 5, 21).
·         The divine “I” subdues the disobedience in Himself (i.e. in His human will). As God-man, He is the Prototype of man.


·         He makes Himself Gift to the Father using the human will that is prototypical of every human will derived from Adam that was once in rebellious disobedience, and now – in Christ -  is total obedience even to death on the Cross.  


Co-Redeemption


            If Jesus Christ redeems us in His very Self, then we are co-redeemers insofar as we are Christ Himself. St. Josemaria affirms that during Mass on August 7 he heard the words: "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself" and "You are my son (Psalm 2, 7), you are Christ."   With regard to the first, Escriva commented years later that he understood Christ saying those words "not in the sense in which in which Scripture says them. I say [them] to you in the sense that you are to raise me  up in all human activities, in the sense that all over the world there should be Christians with a personal and most free dedication, that they be other Christs."
With regard to the second, he recounted later: the Lord was giving me those blows around the year 31, and I did not understand. And suddenly (de pronto), in the midst of that great bitterness, these words: 'You are my Son (Psalm 2, 7), you are Christ.' And I could only stammer: 'Abba, Pater! Abba, Pater! Abba! Abba! Abba!' Now I see it with new light, like a new discovery, just as one sees, after years have passed, that hand of God, of divine Wisdom, of the All-Powerful One. You've led me, Lord, to understand that to find the Cross is to find happiness, joy. And I see the reason with greater clarity than ever: to find the Cross is to identify oneself with Christ, to be Christ, and therefore to be a son of God.”[3]
Coverdale recounts that “on one occasion he prayed: “The Cross: it is there you find Christ, and you have to lose yourself in him! …You mustn’t say: Lord, I can’t do any more, for I’m so wretched… No! It’s not true! On the Cross, you will be Christ…”[4]
Baptism As Empowering the Image to Action: By Baptism, we are introduced into Christ (divine and human), and as He redeemed His humanity by divinizing it (by raising his human will to the giftedness of His divine “I”) so we “co-redeem” making the gift of ourselves to the Father in the service of others; in a word, by becoming “Christ Himself.”

·                     “I live; no, not I. It is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2, 20). “Because Christian conversion throws open the frontier between the ‘I’ and the Not-I,’ it can be bestowed upon one only by the ‘not-I’ and can never be achieved solely in the interiority of one’s personal decision. It has a sacramental structure. The ‘I no longer live’ does not describe a private mystical experience but rather defines the essence of baptism. What takes place is a sacramental event, hence, an event involving the Church. The passive side of becoming a Christian calls for the acting Church, in which the unity of believers as a single subject manifests itself in its bodily and historical dimensions….” And again, to understand that the Church is a single subject, the “I” of Christ, Ratzinger marshals the text from 1 Cor. 12, 12 that one would think to say: “as in an organism there are many members working in harmony, so too in the Church.” But it doesn’t. It says rather: “so it is with Christ.” “The term of the comparison is not the Church, since according to Paul, the Church is in no wise a separate subject endowed with its own subsistence. The new subject is much rather ‘Christ’ himself, and the Church is nothing but the space of this new unitary subject, which is, therefore, much more than mere social interaction.”[5]
·          
·         The Sacrifice of the Mass: If the redemptive act is the divine “I” mastering His human will and making the gift of Himself on the Cross, this act is the prototype and summation of all His acts and the meaning of all work. And it is this very same act which is the Sacrifice of the Mass. Calvary is the work of Christ, and the Mass is the prototypical meaning of work. Hence, Christian anthropology, the “priestly soul” and the anthropology of work as self-mastery, self-possession, self-gift are all the same. Ascetically at the moment of Mass, Escriva found himself often exhausted and was not able to finish.
This being gift of self to the Father for us occurs on three levels:
Teacher: Christ lives this gift of self as speaking the Word, which is Himself. Since He, Himself, as Word (Truth: perfect conformity between Himself and the Father (“I and the Father are one” [Jn. 10, 30. “My teaching is not my teaching, but that of the Father who sent me {Jn. 7, 16}]). “Jesus is ‘word’, and thus it becomes clear that his teaching is he himself…. Thus here again the concept of mere substance (= what stands in itself!) is shattered and it is made apparent how being that truly understands itself grasps at the same time that in its self-being it does not belong to itself; that is only comes to itself by moving away from itself and find its way back as relatedness to its true primordial state.”[6]
        To see this dynamically, see Francis’ “Joy of Evangelizing,” Chapter III #110 - #185. The point is to speak Christ, one must become Christ the Word. The kerygma: Christ has risen, Christ lives, Christ loves you, Christ is with you… “must ring out over and over…. (I)t is the principal proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another throughout the process of catechesis, at every level and moment.” EG #164.

Priest: As seen above in the structure of the redemptive act, Christ mediates between Himself (as One of us and all material creation [the extension of His humanity]), and the Father on the Cross, (which is the Mass). That is, Christ – the divine “I” -  mediates between Himself (His human will and total humanity and the entire material universe) and the Father for us. This is the meaning of priesthood in Christ, and as God-man, it is the central act of the universe.  And we are baptized into this priesthood (which is the redemptive act), and therefore, we are co-redeemers. Consider “priestly soul” as this mediation in everything we do, and the “lay mentality” of the freedom by mastering self.
King  - by Work:  By mastering Himself to serve us, He masters all created reality. Here is the meaning of work, as key to not only subduing the earth, but also to subduing myself and becoming “King” (Ipse Christus)  of myself This is key to the understanding of man as co-redeemer[7]:
John Paul II: “As a person, man is therefore the subject of work. As a person he works, he performs various actions belonging to the work process: independently of their objective content, these actions must all serve to realize his humanity, to fulfill the calling to be a person that is his by reason of his very humanity…
                “And so this ‘dominion’ spoken of in the biblical text being meditated upon here refers not only to the objective dimension of work but at the same time introduces us to an understanding of its subjective dimension. Understood as a process whereby man and the human race subdue the earth, work corresponds to this basic biblical concept only when throughout the process man manifests himself and confirms himself as the one who dominates.’ This dominion, in a certain sense, refers to the subjective dimension even more than to the objective one: this dimension conditions the very ethical nature of work. In fact there is no doubt that human work has an ethical value of it is own, which clearly and directly remains linked to the fact that the one who carries it out is a person, a conscious and free subject, that is to say, a subject that decides about himself.”[8]
3)   Karol Wojtyla: The Philosophical Account of Gaudium et Spes #24:  “When I am directed by an act of will toward a particular value, I myself not only determine this directing, but through it I simultaneously determine myself as well. The concept of self-determination involves more than just the concept of efficacy: I am not only the efficient cause of my acts, but through them I am also in some sense the ‘creator of myself.’ Action accompanies becoming [of me], moreover, action is organically linked to becoming. Self-determination, therefore, and not just the efficacy of the personal self, explains the reality of moral values [i.e. when you determine yourself to go out of yourself in service to another, you experience the value “good” because you are making yourself “good.”]: it explains the reality that by my actions I become ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ and that then I am also ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as a human being – as St. Thomas so eminently perceived. If we were to stop at an analysis of the will as an intentional act, acknowledging only its horizontal transcendence, then this realism of moral values, this good and evil in the human being, would be completely inexplicable.”[9]
4) Pope Francis, when asked about his experience with unemployed people, answered: “They don’t feel like they really  exist. No matter how much help they might have from their family or friends, they want to work, they want to earn their daily bread with the sweat from their own brow. The thing is, at the end of the day, work anoints a person with dignity. Dignity is not conferred by one’s ancestry, family life, or education. Dignity as such comes solely from work. We eat with what we earn, we support our families with what we earn. It doesn’t matter if it’s a little or a lot. If it’s more, all the better. We can own a fortune, but if we don’t work, our dignity plummets.”[10]

 * * * * * *

Our Need to be Redeemed: Deep Cause: sin, and the turning back on self.
Having sinned, man cannot redeem himself. As a constitutively relational being, he needs to be engendered (as the Son is engendered by the Father) into the act of self-transcendence by the divine reality of Love (Agape). “Of ourselves, we cannot come to terms with ourselves. Our I becomes acceptable to us only if it has first become acceptable to another I. We can love ourselves only if we have first been loved by someone else. The life a mother gives to her child is not just physical life; she gives total life when she takes the child’s tears and turns them into smiles. It is only when life has been accepted and is perceived as accepted that it becomes also acceptable. Man is that strange creature that needs not just physical birth but also appreciation if he is to subsist…When the initial harmony of our existence has been rejected, when that psycho-physical oneness has been ruptured by which the ‘Yes,’ it is good that you are alive’ sinks, with life itself, deep into the core of the unconscious – then birth itself is interrupted; existence itself is not completely established.”[11]
                If we are not affirmed (i.e. positively related to), we have no experience of being persons – and since God alone is “good”[12] as person(s), we do not experience being good. This is not the consciousness of “goodness,” but being “good.” Goodness is the intrinsic, essential, constitutive meaning of being. Only God is “good.” And we are “good” insofar as we image the divine Person of the Son. And that imaging is the very way in which we are made. Genesis 1, 26 says: “let us make mankind in our image and likeness.” And John Paul II writes: “God creates by the power of his word: ‘Let there be…!’ [Gen. 1, 26]. Significantly, in the creation of man this word of God is followed by these other words: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ Gen. 1, 26). Before creating man, the Creator withdraws as it were into himself, in order to seek the pattern and inspiration in the mystery of his Being, which is already here disclosed as the divine ‘We.’ From this mystery the human being comes forth by an act of creation: ‘God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him,; male and female he created them’ (Gen. 1, 27).
Pope Francis nails the problem and the task: “The Church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries… geographical but also the existential peripheries…. When the Church does not come out of herself to evangelize, she becomes self-referential and then gets sick.”[13]
The Sickness: a Church that is trapped in herself: “the biggest threat of all… ‘the gray pragmatism of the daily life of the Church, in which all appears to proceed normally, while in reality faith is wearing down and degenerating into small-mindedness.’ A tomb psychology thus develops and slowly transforms Christians into mummies in a museum. Disillusioned with reality, with the Church and with themselves, they experience a constant temptation to cling to a faint melancholy, lacking in hope, which seizes the heart like ‘the most precious of the devil’s potions’” (Bernanos, “Diary of a Country Priest”).[14]

                Profile of Modernity:  a rationalistic, objectifying, controlling, rule based individualism that warehouses the aged (mothballs in their pockets) which pervades the Western culture in which we all live, move and have our being. 
Conrad Baars, M.D.: Emotional Deprivation Disorder: Characteristics: “feelings of inferiority and inadequacy, inability to establish normal rapport with one’s peers and form lasting friendships, feelings of loneliness and insecurity, doubts about one’s self-worth and identity, fear of the adult world, and often deep depressions. Although the energetic among them are able to succeed in business or profession, they fail in their personal lives. If married, they find it impossible to relate in a spontaneous and emotionally satisfying way with spouse and children. In matters of faith, dullness prevails as their feelings cannot participate in their spiritual life. Their religious experience is neither ‘a burden that is light,’ nor ‘a yoke that is sweet.’ Their psychosexual immaturity may express itself in various ways, for instance, in masturbation, pornography, homosexuality, sexual impotence or frigidity…

Cause of EDD: an inadequate feeling of self-worth. And this is the key to it all: “The source of the feeling of self-worth is always another person – the ‘significant other’ – who can either give or withhold it. The process whereby a person receives his or her feeling of self-worth from the ‘significant other’ is for every human being a bonum fundamentale. In a very special relationship with the significant other, the person is seen and experienced by the other as good, worthwhile and lovable. The pleasure of the approving and loving other is perceived in such a manner that the person literally feels this through his or her entire being.[15][16]

Persons Related to by Affirmation: “can be said to have received the gift of themselves. They feel worthwhile, significant and lovable. They possess themselves as man or woman. They know who they are. They are certain of their identity. They love themselves unselfishly. They are open to all that is good and find joy in the same. They are able to affirm all of creation, and as affirmers of all beings are capable o f making others happy and joyful, too. They are largely other-directed. They find joy in being and doing for others. The find joy in their love relationship with their Creator. They can share and give of themselves, be a true friend to others, and feel at ease with persons of both sexes. They are capable of finding happiness in marinate of the freely chosen celibate state of life. They are free from psycho-pathological factors which hamper one’s free will and are therefore sully responsible – morally and legally – for their actions.”[17]

                But something more has to happen. We are made “in the image,” but we are not in act as image until we are related to by God’s Love, and enabled to go out of ourselves by the free act of self-giving.  At that point, we are at peace and experience ourselves as who we really are. We are able to love ourselves correctly. If we do not have this correct self-love, we will be constantly trying to prove that we are good. Regarding Unaffirmed persons, Dr. Conrad Baars writes:
“Unaffirmed persons can be said to have been born only once; their second or psychological birth never took place (or, since it is a protracted process, was never complete). They were not made to know and feel their own goodness, worth and identity. They have been thrown back upon themselves by denial on the part of significant others in their life. They are like prisoners – locked in, lonely, and self-centered – waiting for someone to come and open the door of their prison, waiting to be opened to their own goodness and that of others. No measure of success in business, profession or otherwise can adequately compensate for their feelings of inferiority, inadequacy, uncertainty and insecurity. Both the married life and the celibate life accentuate the fundamental loneliness of these persons and their inability to relate to others as equals. Their spiritual life suffers as time goes on, and their basically joyless way of life changes more and more to a state of depression until death seems the only way out.

                “Most importantly, unaffirmed persons have only one concern and need: to become affirmed, to be loved for who they are and not for what they do. They are literally driven to find someone who truly, unequivocally loves them. This is in marked contrast to affirmed individuals who look for someone with whom they can share their love, who can give love as well as receive, who can wait and are not hurried, driven, or compelled to find someone who will love them. If affirmation by a significant other is not forthcoming, many unaffirmed persons wells use their talents, intelligence and energy to try to convince themselves and the world in a variety of ways that they are worthwhile, important and significant, even though they don’t feel that they are. The most common ways of doing this are by the acquisition, display and use of material goods, wealth, power, fame, honor, status symbols, or sex.”[18]

                This psychological insight has the following metaphysical underpinnings: “morality as a value has objective meaning in and through the human being and that there is no way to apprehend this meaning apart from the categories of being and becoming: esse and  fieri. In other words, moral good is that through which the human being as a human being becomes and is good, and moral evil that through which the human being as a human being becomes and is evil. This becoming (fieri) resides in the dynamism of human action (actus humanus); it cannot be properly objectified on the basis of consciousness alone, but only on the basis of the human being as a conscious being. It follows, too, that good or evil as a property of a conscious being is itself also a being and not just a content of consciousness. This does not, however, obscure the fact that it – good or evil – is, at the same time, a content of consciousness that it is given in lived experience as a specific value, namely, moral value. Proceeding from the two different orientations in philosophy, it seems that we can arrive in the theory of morality at a complementary view of this same reality. Moral value points directly to that through which the human being as a human being is good or evil.”[19]

        The Redemption of Helen Keller by Ann Sullivan: “One day, while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my big rag doll into my lap also, spelled "d-o-l-l" and tried to make me understand that "d-o-l-l" applied to both. Earlier in the day we had had a tussle over the words "m-u-g" and "w-a-t-e-r."
 
                    “Miss Sullivan had tried to impress it upon me that "m-u-g" is mug and that "w-a-t-e-r" is water, but I persisted in confounding the two. In despair she had dropped the subject for the time, only to renew it at the first opportunity. I became impatient at her repeated attempts and, seizing the new doll, I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly delighted when I felt the fragments of the broken doll at my feet. Neither sorrow nor regret followed my passionate outburst. I had not loved the doll. In the still, dark world in which I lived there was no strong sentiment or tenderness. I felt my teacher sweep the fragments to one side of the hearth, and I had a sense of satisfaction that the cause of my discomfort was removed. She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going out into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure.
 
                    “We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.
 
                    “I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.”
 
                I maintain that it is not the “idea” of water, but her interior action of “naming” the water, such as Adam naming the animals and suddenly feeling “alone” [John Paul II’s “original solitude”[20]]. Naming the water is an act of the subject “I,” not the operation of a faculty (“intellect”) abstracting a universal idea from sense data. This action is the free moral act of self-transcendence that activates the image of God as Subject. Helen went through the act of “becoming herself” as described in Gaudium et spes #24: “man, the only earthly being God has willed for itself, finds himself by the sincere gift of himself.”
                Richard Rohr: “Naming the ‘Father Hunger:’” “…men have lost the ability to pass on the wisdom and experience of their life and who they are. All they know how to do is pass on roles, money and opinions, but not who they are. I would see that as the single greatest lack of power, dysfunction and disability in civilization today…. By ‘father hunger’ I mean the profound, but usually unconscious longing for affirmation and limits from male authority figures. The most common words people use to describe their relationships with their fathers are ‘absence,’ ‘sadness’ and ‘I don’t know him.’ Men have not been given the permission on the skills to pass on who they are to their children. We often know what makes Fathers angry, but not the deep desires and dreams of their hearts, much less their loneliness and hurt. That vacuum creates a similar emptiness in the hearts of sons and daughters. Dad is an unnamable mystery, which only calls forth fear, doubt and sometimes endless rebellion…. I do believe that father hunger is at least intrinsically involved in such diverse phenomena as military and athletic bonding, prostitution and addiction to success and power, some expressions of homosexuality, gangs and male aggression, many women’s acquiescence to sexism, and the practice today in otherwise intelligent groups of ‘killing the leader’…Men need to realize – and this is going to sound very old-fashioned – that striving for sex, prestige and possessions is, in most cases, a refusal to walk the spiritual journey. Instead of competing within themselves for wholeness and authenticity, men have allowed their souls to be projected outward in terms of their preoccupation with getting a woman and getting money, which is a source of power. Men think ‘If only I can obtain them, then I’m going to be happy.’ Men need to be told that is utterly false. They have to be convinced that this obsession with money, sex and power is going to get them nowhere in terms of the spiritual life…. Males have been excluded and we have excluded ourselves from the most important things of all: family, spirituality, emotions and feelings, personal growth and the soul. We have been cut off from the very things for which humanity was created. Women should affirm us for the right reasons, and challenge us for the right reasons.”[21]

St. Josemaria Escriva, “Father:” “Genuit filios and filias.” His mission is to engender sons and daughters as laity and priests to make the gift of self forming a communio personarum. That “communio” must be the unum of the communio priests serving laity and laity affirming priests that is the “little bit of the Church” that Opus Dei is. Without his love, and that of all the Prelates, the gift of self would not be able to take place.

John Paul II: - affirms and engenders life into priests by going to confession to them. One case is the beggar priest in Rome brought in to dinner with the Pope. After going to confession to him kneeling at the dinner table, he announced that he would be the assistant pastor in one of the churches in Rome. The other is in Krakow: “Wojtyla disciplined young priests in a distinctive way. He once had to call in an assistant pastor who had committed what the priest later recalled as a “serious misdemeanor.” In a lengthy session in his office, Wojtyla told the curate in no uncertain terms about the gravity of the offense and reprimanded him severely. The cardinal then led the young priest into his chapel so they could pray. The older man knelt so long that the curate became nervous. His train was scheduled to leave shortly to take him back to his parish. Finally, Cardinal Wojtyla stood up, looked at the young man he had just chastised, and said, ‘Would you please hear my confession now?’  Stunned, the assistant pastor went to the confessional, where Wojtyla confessed before him.”[22]

Redemption: “Before his conversion, Paul had not been a man distant from God and from his Law. On the contrary, he had been observant, with an observance faithful to the point of fanaticism. In the light of the encounter with Christ, however, he understood that with this he had sought to build up himself and his own justice, and that with all this justice he had lived for himself.
He realized that a new approach in his life was absolutely essential. And we find this new approach expressed in his words: "The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2: 20).
Paul, therefore, no longer lives for himself, for his own justice. He lives for Christ and with Christ: in giving of himself, he is no longer seeking and building himself up. This is the new justice, the new orientation given to us by the Lord, given to us by faith.
Before the Cross of Christ, the extreme expression of his self-giving, there is no one who can boast of himself, of his own self-made justice, made for himself! Elsewhere, re-echoing Jeremiah, Paul explains this thought, writing, "Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord" (I Cor 1: 31 = Jer 9: 23-24ff.); or: "Far be it from me to glory except in the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Gal 6: 14).”[23]
Jesus Descent into Hell: The Fourth Lateran Council: “He (Jesus Christ) descended into hell… but he descended with his soul.” Ratzinger: “In Jesus’ death-cry, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Mark 15, 34), the mystery of Jesus’ descent into hell is illuminated as if in a glaring flash of lightning on a dark night. We must not forget that these words of the crucified Christ are the opening lines of one of Israel’s prayers (Ps. 22 [21], 2)… In this last prayer of Jesus, as in the scene on the Mount of Olives, what appears as the innermost heart of his passion is not any physical pain but radical loneliness, complete abandonment. But in the last analysis what comes to light here is simply the abyss of loneliness of man in general, man who is alone in his innermost being. This loneliness, which is usually thickly overlaid but is nevertheless the true situation of man, is at the same time in fundamental contradiction with the nature of man, who cannot exist alone; he needs company. That is why loneliness is the region of fear, which is rooted in the exposure of a being that must exist but is pushed out into a situation which he cannot endure.”
                But Christ has risen! Let this be the background understanding of the cultural situation we are in at the present time where we are mired in a solipsistic individualism – a technological loneliness – where we speak and connect with each other through various layers of media, desperately alone and with only morality to save us. This is the target of Pope Francis who is calling us to the transcendence of sanctity and the courage of the adventure to announce the risen and ascended Christ Who is at our side: Mane nobiscum Domine! Maranatha! Let’s go!

Completion of Redemption: Ascension into Heaven
               
Ratzinger explains that the redemption of humanity takes place immediately in the assumption of the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth into the divine Person of the Son. He writes that “human nature, the humanity in which we all share, has entered into the inner life of God in a new and hitherto unheard of way.  It means that man has found an everlasting place in God. Heaven is not a place beyond the stars, but something much greater, something that requires far more audacity to assert: Heaven means that man now has a place in God… Thus Jesus himself is what we call ‘heaven;’ heaven is not a place but a person, the person of him in whom God and man are forever and, inseparably one. And we go to heaven and enter into heaven to the extent that we go to Jesus Christ and enter into him. In this sense, ‘ascension into heaven’ can be something that takes place in our everyday lives.”[24] This explains why the disciples returned to Jerusalem “with great joy.” They could not rejoice if the Ascension had been a departure from “life.” “No, in their eyes the Ascension and the Resurrection were one and the same event. This event gave them the certainty that the crucified Jesus was alive; that he had overcome death, which cuts man off from God, the Living One; and that the door to eternal life was henceforth forever open,”[25] and that His return had already begun.  Thus the kerygma: He lives!
               
Conclusion:

And this revamps the entire present understanding of eschatology as an absence of Christ now  awaiting the Second Coming,  a secularism in which God is dead. Rather Christ, resurrected and ascended, is present in each baptized person as called to be “ipse Christus,” now. Christ is present in this world right now (besides sacramentally as Eucharist) in you and me. This understanding puts us squarely into the mindset and soulset of pope Francis who is calling us out of “self-referentiality” to go to the “peripheries.” The “order” of life is Christ, the pre-existent and eternal prototype of the human person, who is present to us now, not extrinsically and externally, but intrinsically and internally as our very selves, and who we continue to become by going out of ourselves. Truth is person, the moral law is self-transcendence, the attitude is joy, the order is free and seemingly chaotic, secular and autonomous. But somehow it “works” like a gigantic rock with immense excresences balancing on a pin-point. It demands another epistemological horizon to be glimpsed, that of the subject “I” in motion, and not reducible to an orderly mechanistic and objective symmetry.
It is all coming to fulfill what Escriva heard on that 7th of August of 1931, the text of Jn. 12, 32: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself,” but not in the sense that He will draw us out of the world. Rather, it was given to Escriva to understand that the promise to Abraham would be fulfilled in that the sons and daughters of his faith would be as numerous as the stars of the heavens and the sand of the beach; that they would be obedient to death, and therefore, “other Christs, Christ Himself,” and the kingdom of God, thus, a reality. Thus the seal given to him on that 14th of February of 1943: Christ Crucified within the world.




R. Connor




[1] This sentence is the whole of the theology of redemption.
[2] J. Ratzinger, “Journey to Easter,” Crossroad (1987) 101-102.
[3] J. Coverdale, “Uncommon Faith,” Scepter (2002) 93.
[4] Ibid 94.
[5] J. Ratzinger, “The Spiritual Basis and Ecclesial Identity of Theology,” The Nature and Missiopn of Theology Ignatius (1995) 50-55.
[6] J. Ratzinger, “introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius (1990) 137.
[7] And our Father’s understanding of the Jn. 12, 32: “When I am lifted up…,” i.e. to put Christ at the summit of all human work and human doing. That is, one becomes more self as one goes out of self on the occasion of work and the effect that this has on work itself. The process of becoming more oneself = becoming more Christ, since we are made in His image and likeness. This is the import of GS #24.  
[8] John Paul II, “Laborem Exercens,” #6.
[9] K. Wojtyla “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” Person and Community Lang (1993) 191-192.
[10] Ambrogetti and Rubin, “Pope Francis, His Life in His Own Words,” Putnam (2010) 15-16.
[11] J. Ratzinger, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” Ignatius (1987) 79-80. This thought is taken from Joseph Pieper’s “Faith , Hope, Love,” Ignatius (1997) 207 et seq.
[12] “No one is good but only God,” Mk. 10, 18.
[13] Pre-conclave speech (March 12, 2013).
[14] EG #81-86.
[15] Note that John Paul II, writing to Teresa Heydel, remarked: “Everyone… lives, above all, for love. The ability to love authentically, not great intellectual capacity, constitutes the deepest part of a personality. It is no accident that the greatest commandment is to love. Authentic love leads us outside ourselves to affirming others.”  A month later, he wrote: “After many experiences and a lot of thinking, I am convinced that the (objective) starting point of love is the realization that I am needed by another. The person who objectively needs me most is also, for me, objectively, the person I most need. This is a fragment of life’s deep logic… The great achievement is always to see values that others don’t see and to affirm them. The even greater achievement is to bring out of people the values that would perish without us. In the same way, we bring our values out in ourselves” (G. Weigel, “Witness to Hope” Cliffside Books [1999] 101-102].
[16] C. Baars, “I Will Give Them a New Heart” St Pauls (2008) 12.
[17] Ibid 190.
[18] Ibid 190-191.
[19] K. Wojtyla, “The Problem of the Theory of Morality,” Person and Community Land (1993) 159.
[20] JPII, TOB Waldstein DSP (2006) #5,6,7.
[21] St. Anthony Messenger, October 1990, pp. 15-19.
[22] G. Weigel, “Witness to Hope,” Cliffside Books, (1999) 194.
[23] Benedict XVI, General Audience, Wednesday, 8 November 2006.
[24] J. Ratzinger, “Dogma and Preaching,” Franciscan Herald Press (1985) 63.
[25] Ibid