Feast of the Ascension 2014

Mt. 28, 16-20

“All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…., teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world.”

“All that I have commanded  you:” Notice: Christ says: “He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. But he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (Jn. 14, 21).

                The fact is that two angels (“two men… in white garments”[1]) say to them: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up to heaven?

Then they returned to Jerusalem [“with great joy”[2]] from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem…”[3]

                The question is: why with “great joy?” Ratzinger writes: “They knew that what had occurred was not a departure; if it were, they would  hardly have experience ‘great joy.’ 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.

                “For the disciples, then, the ‘ascension’ was not what we usually misinterpret it as being: the temporary absence of Christ from the world. It meant rather his new, definitive, and irrevocable presence by participation in God’s royal power. This is why Johannine theology for practical purposes identifies the Resurrection and the return of Christ (e.g., 14, 18 ff.); with the resurrection of Jesus, by reason of which he is now with his disciples forevermore, his return has already begun.”[4]

                And therefore, the cry of the early Christians was: “Maranatha” (“Come, Lord Jesus”) and not “Dies Irae” (Woe the day that the Lord will return as Judge to this vale of tears) that began after a loss of hope in the real presence of Christ in the world – which in turn was the result of the pervasively false eschatology of Joachim of Flora that proclaimed that we are in a post-Christian time, the time of the Spirit, awaiting the Second Coming. This is given lie to by the eschatological theology of Joseph Ratzinger and the charism given to St. Josemaria Escriva on October 2, 1928.

                Ratzinger reflects on the prototype of the waning hope of Christianity in the  imprisoned John the Baptist’s sending of messengers to Christ asking the question: “Are you he who is to come or should we look for another” (Mt. 11,  3-6)?[5] And Jesus responds: “God and report to John what you have heard and seen: the blind wee, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise, the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not scandalized in me.”

And the point: “This was probably the final task set the Baptist as he lay in prison: to become blessed by this unquestioning acceptance of God’s obscure will; to reach the point of asking no further for external, visible, unequivocal clarity, but, instead, of discovering God precisely in the darkness of this world and of his own life, and thus becoming profoundly blessed. In point of fact, we cannot see God as we see an apple tree or a neon sign, that is, in a purely external way that requires no interior commitment. We can see him only becoming like him, by reaching the level of reality on which God exists; in other words, by being liberated from what is anti-divine: the quest for pleasure, enjoyment, possessions, gain, or, in a word, from ourselves. In the final analysis it is usually the self that stands between us and God. We can see God only if we turn around, stop looking for him as we might look for street signs and dollar bills, and begin looking away from the visible to the invisible.”

                Notice that this exegesis demands a metaphysical anthropology of the subject which is objective reality. That is, created ontologically in the image and likeness of God, we are ontologically relational subjects. That is, as the divine Persons are pure relations and not substances in themselves (or else there would be three Gods), so also the only way John could know the divine Person of Christ is to stop paying attention to himself as transfixed on the externals of the coming Messiah (the judge with the winnowing fan in his hand separating the chaff from the grain; the one casting out this adulterous generation and, if need be raising up children of Abraham from the very stones to replace the faithless Jews), and go out of himself. The person of John as turned back on himself as the great prophet was the obstacle to recognizing Christ as the divine Messiah. Therefore, he had to go through yet another conversion himself.

                So also with the invisibility of Christ at the Ascension. Christ is not to be subjected to the objectification of our epistemology of visible image and conceptual abstraction and categorization. We will be able to know Him as He is, the pure Relation to the Father and no-substance in self, only by having Him removed from our sight and demanding the interior change that must take place in us that will make us like Him. Christ has risen, and therefore, He is present in the world at this moment. But the only way to “see” Him is to become “like” Him. That is, we must go out of ourselves “to the peripheries.”

                I think it is similar to what I anticipate Francis is doing with regard to Communion for the divorced and remarried. He is not going to change doctrine. But what is going to have to change is our understanding of what matrimony is. That is, it is a way of sanctity. It is not a mere way of morality where sex becomes “legitimate.” It is precisely the message of Escriva and Gaudium et spes #48: “The intimate partnership of married life and love has been established by the Creator and qualified by His laws, and is rooted in the conjugal covenant of irrevocable personal consent. Hence by that human act whereby spouses mutually bestow and accept each other, a relationship arises which by divine will and in the eyes of society too is a lasting one… the existence of the sasccred bond no longer depends on human decisions alone.”

                As posted previously, in 1998, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that “the Council did not break with the traditional concept of marriage, but on the contrary developed it further. When, for example, it is continually pointed out that the Council substituted the broader and theologically more profound concept of covenant for the strictly legal concept of contract, one must not forget that within covenant, the element of contract is also contained and indeed placed within a broader perspective. The fact that marriage reaches well beyond the purely juridical realm into the depths of humanity and into the mystery of the divine, has always been indicated by the word ‘sacrament’ although often it has not been pondered with the same clarity which the Council gave to these aspects… In other words, it needs to be clarified whether every marriage between two baptized persons is ipso facto a sacramental marriage. In fact, the Code [of 1983] states that only a ‘valid’ marriage between baptized persons is at the same time a sacrament (cf. CIC can. 1055, 2). Faith belongs to the essence of the sacrament; what remains to be clarified is the juridical question of what evidence of the ‘absence of faith’ would have as a consequence that the sacrament does not come into being.”

                “During the meeting with clergy in the Diocese of Aosta, which took place 25 July 2005… I invited various Bishops’ Conferences and experts to study this problem: a sacrament celebrated without faith. Whether, in fact, a moment of invalidity could be discovered here because the Sacrament was found to be lacking a fundamental dimension, I do not dare to say. I personally thought so, but from the discussions we had I realized that it is a highly complex problem and ought to be studied further. But given these people’s painful plight, it must be studied further.”[6]

The Point:

                At the Ascension, Christ disappears, but He does not leave. He stays with us but is invisible. He is present in that each one becomes Him. And it is by becoming Him that we experience Him. We become Him and experience Him by going out of ourselves in the apostolate. His Word to us was “Going, teach all nations, baptizing them….” It was for this reason that the apostles returned from Mt. Olivet to Jerusalem rejoicing.

Ratzinger-Benedict XVI on the Ascension:

"What, then, is the meaning of Christ's 'ascension into heaven'? It expresses our belief that in Christ 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.

 The basis for this assertion is the inter-penetration of humanity and divinity in the crucified and exalted man Jesus. Christ, the man who is in God and eternally one with God, is at the same time God's abiding openness to all human beings. 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.

 "Only in the light of these various connections can we understand why Luke should tell us, at the end of his Gospel, that after the Ascension the disciples returned to Jerusalem 'with great joy' (Lk. 24, 52). They knew that what had occurred was not a departure; if it were, they would hardly have experienced 'great joy.' No, in their eyes the Ascension and the Resurrection were one and the same event. This even 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 he door to eternal life was henceforth forever open.

 "For the disciples, then, the 'ascension' was not what we usually misinterpret it as being: the temporary absence of Christ from the world. It meant rather his new, definitive and irrevocable presence by participation in God's royal power. This is why Johannine theology for practical purposes identifies the Resurrection and the return of Christ (e.g., 14, 18 ff.); with the resurrection of Jesus, by reason of which he is now with his disciples forevermore, his return has already begun.

 "That Luke did not have an essentially different understanding of the situation is again clear from today's reading. In it Christ rebuffs the disciples’ question about the restoration of the Kingdom and instead tells them that they will receive the Holy Spirit and be his, Jesus,' witnesses to the ends of the earth. Therefore, they are not to remain staring into the future or to wait broodingly for the time of his return. No, they are to realize that he is ceaselessly present and even that he desires to become ever more present through their activity, inasmuch as the gift of the Spirit and the commission to bear witness, preach, and be missionaries are the way in which he is now already present. The proclamation of the Good News everywhere in the world is - we may say on the basis of this passage - the way in which, during the period between the Resurrection and the second coming, the Lord gives expression to his royal rule over all the world, as he exercises his lordship in the humble form of the word.

 "Christ exercises his power through the powerlessness of the word by which he calls human beings to faith. This fact reminds us once again of the image of the cloud, in which the hiddenness and the nearness of the Lord are combined in a unique way. John the Evangelist has conveyed this fusion in an even more drastic manner by the new meaning he has poured into the Old Testament term 'raise up' or 'exalt.' This word, which had hitherto expressed only the idea of elevation to royal dignity, also refers in John to the crucifixion in which Christ is 'lifted up' from the earth. For John, then, the mystery of Good Friday, of Easter, and of Christ's Ascension form but a single mystery. The cross has a second, mysterious dimension: it is the royal throne from which Christ exercises his kingship and draws the human race to himself and into his wide-open arms (cf. Jn. 3, 14; 8, 28; 12, 32-33). Christ's royal throne is the cross; his exaltation takes the form of what seems to the outsider the extreme of disgrace and humiliation...." (J. Ratzinger "Dogma and Preaching" Franciscan Herald Press [1985] 62-64).

---

[1] Acts 1, 11.

[2] Lk,  24, 52.

[3] Ibid 1, 11-12.

[4] J. Ratzinger “Dogma and Preaching” Franciscan Herald Press (1985) 62-65.

[5] Ibid 74-77.

[6] In 1998 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, introduced the volume: “On the Pastoral Care of the Divorced and Remarried”, published by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana in the dicastery’s series “Documenti e Studi”, 17.

Cardinal Mueller's Address to Presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious

CDF Prefect Chastizes LCWR for Honoring Dissident Theologian, Warns Against 'Conscious Evolution'

Vatican City, May 06, 2014 

I am happy to welcome once again the Presidency of the LCWR to Rome and to the Congregation. It is a happy occasion that your visit coincides with the Canonization of Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII, two great figures important for the Church in our times. I am grateful as well for the presence and participation of the Delegate for the implementation of the LCWR Doctrinal Assessment, Archbishop Peter Sartain….

First, I would like to acknowledge with gratitude the progress that has been made in the implementation of the Doctrinal Assessment….

It saddens me to learn that you have decided to give the Outstanding Leadership Award during this year’s Assembly to a theologian criticized by the Bishops of the United States because of the gravity of the doctrinal errors in that theologian’s writings. This is a decision that will be seen as a rather open provocation against the Holy See and the Doctrinal Assessment. Not only that, but it further alienates the LCWR from the Bishops as well. I realize I am speaking rather bluntly about this, but I do so out of an awareness that there is no other interpretive lens, within and outside the Church, through which the decision to confer this honor will be viewed.

It is my understanding that Archbishop Sartain was informed of the selection of the honoree only after the decision had been made. Had he been involved in the conversation as the Mandate envisions, I am confident that he would have added an important element to the discernment which then may have gone in a different direction. The decision taken by the LCWR during the ongoing implementation of the Doctrinal Assessment is indeed regrettable and demonstrates clearly the necessity of the Mandate’s provision that speakers and presenters at major programs will be subject to approval by the Delegate. I must therefore inform you that this provision is to be considered fully in force. I do understand that the selection of honorees results from a process, but this case suggests that the process is itself in need of reexamination. I also understand that plans for this year’s Assembly are already at a very advanced stage and I do not see the need to interrupt them. However, following the August Assembly, it will be the expectation of the Holy See that Archbishop Sartain have an active role in the discussion about invited speakers and honorees.

Let me address a second objection, namely that the findings of the Doctrinal Assessment are unsubstantiated. The phrase in the Doctrinal Assessment most often cited as overreaching or unsubstantiated is when it talks about religious moving beyond the Church or even beyond Jesus. Yes, this is hard language and I can imagine it sounded harsh in the ears of thousands of faithful religious. I regret that, because the last thing in the world the Congregation would want to do is call into question the eloquent, even prophetic witness of so many faithful religious women. And yet, the issues raised in the Assessment are so central and so foundational, there is no other way of discussing them except as constituting a movement away from the ecclesial center of faith in Christ Jesus the Lord.

For the last several years, the Congregation has been following with increasing concern a focalizing of attention within the LCWR around the concept of Conscious Evolution. Since Barbara Marx Hubbard addressed the Assembly on this topic two years ago, every issue of your newsletter has discussed Conscious Evolution in some way. Issues of Occasional Papers have been devoted to it. We have even seen some religious Institutes modify their directional statements to incorporate concepts and undeveloped terms from Conscious Evolution.

Again, I apologize if this seems blunt, but what I must say is too important to dress up in flowery language. The fundamental theses of Conscious Evolution are opposed to Christian Revelation and, when taken unreflectively, lead almost necessarily to fundamental errors regarding the omnipotence of God, the Incarnation of Christ, the reality of Original Sin, the necessity of salvation and the definitive nature of the salvific action of Christ in the Paschal Mystery.

My concern is whether such an intense focus on new ideas such as Conscious Evolution has robbed religious of the ability truly to sentire cum Ecclesia. To phrase it as a question, do the many religious listening to addresses on this topic or reading expositions of it even hear the divergences from the Christian faith present?

This concern is even deeper than the Doctrinal Assessment’s criticism of the LCWR for not providing a counter-point during presentations and Assemblies when speakers diverge from Church teaching. The Assessment is concerned with positive errors of doctrine seen in the light of the LCWR’s responsibility to support a vision of religious life in harmony with that of the Church and to promote a solid doctrinal basis for religious life. I am worried that the uncritical acceptance of things such as Conscious Evolution seemingly without any awareness that it offers a vision of God, the cosmos, and the human person divergent from or opposed to Revelation evidences that a de facto movement beyond the Church and sound Christian faith has already occurred.

I do not think I overstate the point when I say that the futuristic ideas advanced by the proponents of Conscious Evolution are not actually new. The Gnostic tradition is filled with similar affirmations and we have seen again and again in the history of the Church the tragic results of partaking of this bitter fruit. Conscious Evolution does not offer anything which will nourish religious life as a privileged and prophetic witness rooted in Christ revealing divine love to a wounded world. It does not present the treasure beyond price for which new generations of young women will leave all to follow Christ. The Gospel does! Selfless service to the poor and marginalized in the name of Jesus Christ does!

It is in this context that we can understand Pope Francis’ remarks to the Plenary Assembly of the International Union of Superiors General in May of 2013. What the Holy Father proposes is a vision of religious life and particularly of the role of conferences of major superiors which in many ways is a positive articulation of issues which come across as concerns in the Doctrinal Assessment. I urge you to reread the Holy Father’s remarks and to make them a point of discussion with members of your Board as well.

I have raised several points in these remarks, so I will stop here. I owe an incalculable debt to the women religious who have long been a part of my life. They were the ones who instilled in me a love for the Lord and for the Church and encouraged me to follow the vocation to which the Lord was calling me. The things I have said today are therefore born of great love…”

Francis: Clear Doctrine and Pastoral Mercy

Francis will not be prisoner to public opinion, analyst says

Vatican City, May 4, 2014 

Vatican observer Sandro Magister has said that Pope Francis’ “formidable praise” for Paul VI’s “Humanae Vitae” is key to understanding his papacy’s alternating emphases of both clear doctrine and pastoral mercy.

Sandro Magister, writing in his May 1 column at L'Espresso, noted that the renewed controversy over communion for divorced and remarried Catholics has created “formidable pressure” in public opinion that is likely to expect a change in Church teaching in 2015 or 2016.

“There was similarly massive pressure for change in the 1960s, when the Pope had to decide on the legitimacy of contraceptives, with many theologians, bishops, and cardinals siding in favor,” Magister continued. “But in 1968 Paul VI decided against, with the encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae’.”

This encyclical met with “bitter contestation” from entire groups of bishops and was disobeyed by “countless faithful,” Magister explained.

“But that today Pope Francis -- surprising here as in everything -- has said he wants to take as his own frame of reference.”

Magister cited Pope Francis’ March 5 interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera, in which the Pope noted that Paul VI urged confessors to be “very merciful and pay attention to concrete situations.” He also said Paul VI had a “prophetic” genius and had “the courage to take a stand against the majority, to defend moral discipline, to exercise a cultural restraint, to oppose present and future neo-Malthusianism.”

“The question is not that of changing doctrine, but of digging deep and making sure that pastoral care takes into account situations and what it is possible for persons to do,” Pope Francis had said.

Magister said that one “can truly expect anything” from Pope Francis, including a decision “against the majority” that reconfirms the indissolubility of marriage but is “tempered by the mercy of pastors of souls in the face of concrete situations.”

According to Magister, Pope Francis follows a pattern that “continually alternates flexibility and firmness,” evident in his response to the controversy over communion for divorced and remarried Catholics.

Magister noted that some leading German bishops had indicated that they would break with Catholic practice and give communion to the divorced and remarried.

The Pope responded by having the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s prefect, then-Archbishop Gerhard Müller, give “a stern order to halt” in an October 2013 article for the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.

At the same time, he allowed Cardinal Walter Kasper, a leading advocate of communion for remarried, divorced Catholics, to be the only speaker at the 2014 consistory. Pope Francis “sided with him, warmly praising him even after other cardinals had risen up against him,” Magister said.

In Magister’s view, the Pope “loves to reiterate his fidelity to perennial doctrine” but then “seems to detach himself from it when he acts as physician of individual souls” and responds to a world “so full of the wounded needing urgent care.”

He noted reports of Pope Francis’ phone call with a divorced and remarried Catholic in which the Pope allegedly told her to receive Holy Communion. While the actual contents of the call have been contested, such reports have the effect of creating a “driving crescendo of anticipations of change."

However, Magister suggested that the Pope could defy these expectations.

“As expert as he is in cultivating public opinion, Pope Francis is not the kind to be let himself become its prisoner.”

Class On Creation From CCC With Notes by Blogger

IV. THE MYSTERY OF CREATION

God creates by wisdom and love

295 We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom.¹⁴¹ It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance. We believe that it proceeds from God's free will; he wanted to make his creatures share in his being, wisdom and goodness: "For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created."¹⁴² Therefore the Psalmist exclaims: "O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all"; and "The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made."¹⁴³ God creates "out of nothing"

296 We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance.¹⁴⁴God creates freely "out of nothing":¹⁴⁵

If God had drawn the world from pre-existent matter, what would be so extraordinary in that? A human artisan makes from a given material whatever he wants, while God shows his power by starting from nothing to make all he wants.¹⁴⁶

297 Scripture bears witness to faith in creation "out of nothing" as a truth full of promise and hope. Thus the mother of seven sons encourages them for martyrdom:

I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws. . . Look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. Thus also mankind comes into being.¹⁴⁷

298 Since God could create everything out of nothing, he can also, through the Holy Spirit, give spiritual life to sinners by creating a pure heart in them,¹⁴⁸ and bodily life to the dead through the Resurrection. God "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist."¹⁴⁹ and since God was able to make light shine in darkness by his Word, he can also give the light of faith to those who do not yet know him.¹⁵⁰

God creates an ordered and good world

299 Because God creates through wisdom, his creation is ordered: "You have arranged all things by measure and number and weight."¹⁵¹ The universe, created in and by the eternal Word, the "image of the invisible God", is destined for and addressed to man…

Benedict XVI: “All things come from the Word, they are products of the Word. "In the beginning was the Word". In the beginning the heavens spoke. And thus reality was born of the Word, it is "creatura Verbi". All is created from the Word and all is called to serve the Word. This means that all of creation, in the end, is conceived of to create the place of encounter between God and his creature, a place where the history of love between God and his creature can develop. "Omnia serviunt tibi". The history of salvation is not a small event, on a poor planet, in the immensity of the universe. It is not a minimal thing which happens by chance on a lost planet. It is the motive for everything, the motive for creation. Everything is created so that this story can exist, the encounter between God and his creature. In this sense, salvation history, the Covenant, precedes creation. During the Hellenistic period, Judaism developed the idea that the Torah would have preceded the creation of the material world. This material world seems to have been created solely to make room for the Torah, for this Word of God that creates the answer and becomes the history of love. The mystery of Christ already is mysteriously revealed here. This is what we are told in the Letter to the Ephesians and to the Colossians: Christ is the protòtypos, the first-born of creation, the idea for which the universe was conceived. He welcomes all. We enter in the movement of the universe by uniting with Christ. One can say that, while material creation is the condition for the history of salvation, the history of the Covenant is the true cause of the cosmos. We reach the roots of being by reaching the mystery of Christ, his living word that is the aim of all creation.”^[1]

…himself created in the "image of God" and called to a personal relationship with God.¹⁵² Our human understanding, which shares in the light of the divine intellect, can understand what God tells us by means of his creation, though not without great effort and only in a spirit of humility and respect before the Creator and his work.¹⁵³ Because creation comes forth from God's goodness, it shares in that goodness - "and God saw that it was good. . . very good"¹⁵⁴- for God willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted to him. On many occasions the Church has had to defend the goodness of creation, including that of the physical world.¹⁵⁵

Me: What is meant by “good” in CCC? Veritatis Splendor: “Only God can answer the question about the good, because he is the Good. But God has already given an answer to this question: he did so by creating man and ordering him with wisdom and love to his final end, through the law which is inscribed in his heart (cf. Rom. 2, 15), the ‘natural law.’ The latter is ‘is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man at creation.’

            CCC #1955: “The ‘divine and natural’ law^[2] shows man the way to follow so as to practice the good and attain his end. The natural law states the first and essential precepts which govern the moral life. It hinges upon the desire^[3] for God and submission to him, who is the source that the other is one’s equal. Its principal precepts are expressed in the Decalogue. This law is called ‘natural,’ not in reference to the nature of irrational beings, but because reason which decrees it properly belongs to human nature:

Where then are these rules written, if not in the book of that light we call the truth? In it is written every just law; from it the law passes into the heart of the man who does justice, not that it migrates into it, but it places its imprint on it, like a seal on a ring that passes onto wax, without leaving the ring. (St. Augustine, De Trin. 14, 15, 21).

The natural law is nothing other than the light of understanding placed in us by God through it we know what we must do and what we must avoid. God has given this light or law at the creation.^[4]

God transcends creation and is present to it:

300 God is infinitely greater than all his works: “You have set your glory above the heavens.”¹⁵⁶ Indeed, God’s “greatness is unsearchable”.¹⁵⁷ But because he is the free and sovereign Creator, the first cause of all that exists, God is present to his creatures’ inmost being: “In him we live and move and have our being.” ^{Acts 17, 28} In the words of St. Augustine, God is “higher than my highest and more inward than my innermost self”. ^{St. Augustine, Conf. 3, 56, 11}

Me: Rev. Gerald B. Phelan (Co-founder of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies with Etienne Gilson at St. Michaels’s College, University of Toronto) commented that he was taught at Louvain that esse is the only act which "God gives when he creates,"^[5] and understood it to mean that "God gives esse and nothing more .... Just nothing but esse, writ small."^[6] "The act of existence (esse)," says

Phelan,

"is not a state, it is an act and not as any static definable object of conception. Esse is dynamic impulse, energy, act- the first, the most persistent and enduring of all dynamisms, all energies, all acts.^[7] In all things on earth, the act of being (esse) is the consubstantial urge of nature, a restless, striving force, carrying each being (ens) onward, from within the depths of its own reality to its full self-achievement ...”^[8]

Me: And so, in creating, God, Who (in the Thomistic metaphysic), is Ipsum Esse Subsistens, gives esse as the act of all further acts. That is, all doing (agere) comes from being (esse). And thus, God is most intimate and present all to all of His creation.

God upholds and sustains creation

301 With creation, God does not abandon his creatures to themselves. He not only gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being, enables them to act and brings them to their final end. Recognizing this utter dependence with respect to the Creator is a source of wisdom and freedom, of joy and confidence: 

“For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made; for you would not have made anything if you had hated it. How would anything have endured, if you had not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved? You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living.” ^{Wisdom 11, 24}

V. GOD CARRIES OUT HIS PLAN: DIVINE PROVIDENCE

302 Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created "in a state of journeying" (in statu viae) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it. We call "divine providence" the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward this perfection:

By his providence God protects and governs all things which he has made, "reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and ordering all things well". For "all are open and laid bare to his eyes", even those things which are yet to come into existence through the free action of creatures.^{Vat. 1, Dei Filius 1}

303 The witness of Scripture is unanimous that the solicitude of divine providence is concrete and immediate; God cares for all, from the least things to the great events of the world and its history. The sacred books powerfully affirm God's absolute sovereignty over the course of events: "Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases."¹⁶² and so it is with Christ, "who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens".¹⁶³ As the book of Proverbs states: "Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be established."¹⁶⁴

304 And so we see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, often attributing actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes. This is not a "primitive mode of speech", but a profound way of recalling God's primacy and absolute Lordship over history and the world,¹⁶⁵ and so of educating his people to trust in him. The prayer of the Psalms is the great school of this trust.^{1Psalm 22, 32, 35, 103, 138…}

305 Jesus asks for childlike abandonment to the providence of our heavenly Father who takes care of his children's smallest needs: "Therefore do not be anxious, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?". . . Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well."^{1Mt. 6, 31-33}

Providence and secondary causes

306 God is the sovereign master of his plan. But to carry it out he also makes use of his creatures' co-operation. This use is not a sign of weakness, but rather a token of almighty God's greatness and goodness. For God grants his creatures not only their existence, but also the dignity of acting on their own, of being causes and principles ^[9]for each other, and thus of co-operating in the accomplishment of his plan.

Me: The Christian anthropology of Vatican II (GS #24) is essential here. Two large principles are at work: 1) Subjects: Being created in the image of the Son, rational creatures (persons) must not only receive being [esse] but also must be related to by affirmation (love: grace) in order to have the identity of personal subjects; but also 2) Relational: having this identity and autonomy, exercise it freely by determining self to act in this way or that. Hence, Gaudium et spes #24: “Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, ‘that all may be one…as we are one’ (Jn. 17, 21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons and the unity of God’s sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only earthly creature that God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”  And so, as “the Son can do nothing of himself, but only what he sees the Father doing” (Jn. 5, 19), so also, “without me, you can do nothing” (Jn. 15, 6).

Keep in mind: the anthropology that is at play throughout here is not Greek [individual substance]but Christian [relational subject]. Christ is the meaning of man (GS #22). And Christ is Priest. Hebrews 9, 11-13: “But when Christ appeared, as high priest of the good things to come, he entered once for all through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made by hands (that is, not of this creat ion), nor again by virtue of blood of goats and calves, but by virtue of his own blood, into the Holies…” Christ mediates between Himself and the Father, Priest of His own existence. In Christ, this is autonomy. In us, it is “theonomy”^[10] because we really do it with proper causality, but not without being created and loved by Christ. We know who we are by knowing who He is. By obeying His Commandments, we fulfill ourselves in freedom^[11]. It would be “heteronomous” if we obeyed God simpily as “”Other”, but not as images.  When we freely determine ourselves according to God’s revelation of Himself and us as images of Him,

307 To human beings God even gives the power of freely sharing in his providence by entrusting them with the responsibility of "subduing" the earth and having dominion over it.^{Gen. 1, 26-28} God thus enables men to be intelligent and free causes in order to complete the work of creation, to perfect its harmony for their own good and that of their neighbors. Though often unconscious collaborators with God's will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine plan by their actions, their prayers and their sufferings.¹⁶⁹ They then fully become "God's fellow workers" and co-workers for his kingdom.^[12]

 308 The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes: "For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure."^{Phil. 2, 13} Far from diminishing the creature's dignity, this truth enhances it. Drawn from nothingness by God's power, wisdom and goodness, it can do nothing if it is cut off from its origin, for "without a Creator the creature vanishes."¹⁷² Still less can a creature attain its ultimate end without the help of God's grace.¹⁷³

Me:

 The Mission of Jesus Christ: The Kingdom of God. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mk. 1, 14-15; cf. Mt. 4, 17; Lk. 4, 43). “The proclamation and establishment of God’s kingdom are the purpose of his mission: ‘I was sent for this purpose’ (Lk. 4, 43).”^[13]

            “Christ not only proclaimed the kingdom, but in him the kingdom itself became present and was fulfilled… ‘Above all… the kingdom is made manifest in the very person of Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, who came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mk. 10, 45). The kingdom of God is not a concept, a doctrine, or a program subject to free interpretation, but it is before all else a person with the face and name of Jesus of Nazareth, the image of the invisible God.”^[14]

            Locution to our Father (8/7/31 during Mass): (The Mission of the Work – “a sea without shores”): J"And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself"   [Jn. 12, 32] and "You are my son (Psalm 2, 7), you are Christ."   He 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." ^[15]

1.  PAUL II AND THE TRUTH ABOUT FREEDOM

Providence and the scandal of evil

309 If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil.

Me:

Why evil? To reveal Love. If “good” is self-gift, then evil is “self-referential” and, as the Pope says, “sick.”

 A companion question: Why suffering? John Paul II:

 “Suffering must serve for conversion, that is, for the rebuilding of goodness in the subject, who can recognize the divine mercy in this call to repentance. The purpose of penance is to overcome evil^[16], which under different forms lies dormant in man. Its purpose is also to strengthen goodness both in man himself and in his relationships with others and especially with God.

            13. But in order to perceive the true answer to the ‘why’ of suffering, we must look to the revelation  of divine love, the ultimate source of the meaning of everything that exists. Love is also the richest source of the meaning of suffering, which always remains a mystery: we are conscious of the insufficiency and inadequacy of our explanations. Christ causes us to enter into the mystery and to discover the why of suffering, as far as we are capable of grasping the sublimity of divine love.”^[17]

310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it?^[18] With infinite power God could always create something better.¹⁷⁴ But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world "in a state of journeying" towards its ultimate perfection…

Me: “ultimate perfection” consists in becoming “Love” (Agape) = loving the enemy.

…. In God's plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.¹⁷⁵

311 Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil.¹⁷⁶ He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it:

For almighty God. . ., because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.¹⁷⁷

312 In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures: "It was not you", said Joseph to his brothers, "who sent me here, but God. . . You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive."¹⁷⁸ From the greatest moral evil ever committed - the rejection and murder of God's only Son, caused by the sins of all men - God, by his grace that "abounded all the more",¹⁷⁹ brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption. But for all that, evil never becomes a good.

313 "We know that in everything God works for good for those who love him."¹⁸⁰ The constant witness of the saints confirms this truth:

St. Catherine of Siena said to "those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them": "Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind."¹⁸¹
St. Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: "Nothing can come but that that God wills. And I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best."¹⁸²
Dame Julian of Norwich: "Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly keep me in the faith... and that at the same time I should take my stand on and earnestly believe in what our Lord shewed in this time - that 'all manner (of) thing shall be well.'"¹⁸³

314 We firmly believe that God is master of the world and of its history. But the ways of his providence are often unknown to us. Only at the end, when our partial knowledge ceases, when we see God "face to face",¹⁸⁴ will we fully know the ways by which - even through the dramas of evil and sin - God has guided his creation to that definitive sabbath rest¹⁸⁵ for which he created heaven and earth.

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[1] Benedict XVI, Keynote address, Synod on the Word of God October 6, 2008, 2.

[2] GS #89, 1: “Since, in virtue of her mission received from God, the Church preaches the Gospel to all men and dispenses the treasures of grace, she contributes to the ensuring of peace everywhere on earth and to the placing of the fraternal exchange between men on solid ground by imparting knowledge of the divine and natural law.”

[3] CCC #27: The Desire for God: The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.

[4] In the spirit of Johannine theology, Basil knows that love consists in keeping the commandments. For this reason, the spark of love which has been put into us by the Creator, means this: "We have received interiorly beforehand the capacity and disposition for observing all divine commandments ... These are not something imposed from without." Referring everything back to its simple core, Augustine adds: "We could never judge that one thing is better than another if a basic understanding of the good had not already been instilled in us."

This means that the first so-called ontological level of the phenomenon conscience consists in the fact that something like an original memory of the good and true (both are identical) has been implanted in us, that there is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine [My emphasis]. From its origin, man's being resonates with some things and clashes with others. This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the godlike constitution of our being is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is so to speak an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears its echo from within. He sees: "That's it! That is what my nature points to and seeks."

The possibility for, and right to "mission" rest on this anamnesis of the creator which is identical to the ground of our existence. The Gospel may, indeed, must be proclaimed to the pagans because they themselves are yearning for it in the hidden recesses of their souls (cf. Is 42:4). Mission is vindicated then when those addressed recognize in the encounter with the word of the Gospel that this indeed is what they have been waiting for. In this sense, Paul can say: the Gentiles are a law to themselves—not in the sense of modern liberal notions of autonomy which preclude transcendence of the subject, but in the much deeper sense that nothing belongs less to me than I myself. My own I is the site of the profoundest surpassing of self and contact with Him from whom I came and toward Whom I am going. In these sentences, Paul expresses the experience which he had as missionary to the Gentiles and which Israel may have experienced before him in dealings with the "god-fearing." Israel could have experienced among the Gentiles what the ambassadors of Jesus Christ found reconfirmed. Their proclamation answered an expectation. Their proclamation encountered an antecedent basic knowledge of the essential constants of the will of God which came to be written down in the commandments, which can be found in all cultures and which can be all the more clearly elucidated the less an overbearing cultural bias distorts this primordial knowledge. The more man lives in the "fear of the Lord"—consider the story of Cornelius (especially Acts 10:34-35)—the more concretely and clearly effective this anamnesis becomes.

[5] G.B. Phelan, "Being, Order and Knowledge," Selected Papers (Toronto: PIMS (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies) 1967), 127.

[6] Ibid., 126-27.

[7] St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, I, 4, 1, ad 3: Esse is the most perfect of all things, for it is compared to all things as that by which they are made actual; for nothing has actuality except in so far as it exists. Hence esse is that which actuates all things, even their forms. Therefore it is not compared to other things as the receiver is to the received; but rather as the received to the receiver. When therefore I speak of the esse of man, or horse, or anything else, esse is considered a formal principle, and as something received; and not as that which exists.

[8] Ibid., `The Existentialism of St. Thomas," 77.

[9]

[10] Veritatis Splendor #41-42.

[11] “If you abide in my word, you will be my disciples indeed. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

[12] 1 Cor. 3, 9: “We are God’s helpers.”

[13] John Paul II, “Mission of the Redeemer” 13.

[14] Ibid. 18.

[15] J. Coverdale, Uncommon Faith Scepter (2002) 90.

[16]“(F)or me, sin is not a stain I need to clean. What I must do is ask for forgiveness and reconcile myself to it, not go to the dry cleaner around the corner. I need to go and find Jesus, who gave His life for me. This is an idea that is quite different from sin. In other words: sin properly assumed is the privileged place of personally finding Jesus Christ our Savior, of rediscovering the deep meaning that He has for me. In short, it is the possibility to live the wonder of having been saved.”

Bergoglio is asked about “a growing indifference toward religion on the one hand, and a strong search for religion on  the other, not always through orthodox ways:

                “Exactly. There is a denial of God due to secularization, the selfish egoism of humanity. And there are a thousand ways to search for God that require one to be careful not to fall into a consumer experience or, at its extreme, a kind of ‘immanent transcendence,’ that still does not result in true piety. What happens is that it is more difficult to enter into personal contact with God, a God that waits for me and loves. The pantheism in the air, like a spray, does not last. At the end of this kind of search we need some kind of idol, and we end up adoring a tree or seeing God on a tree;” Francesca Ambrogetti and Sergio Rubin,  Pope Francis, His Life in His Own Words Putnam 2010, 120-122.

[17] John Paul II, On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering,” #12 and 13; 2/11/84

[18] I add: Mt. 5, 43-48: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and shalt hate thy enemy./ But I say to you, love our enemies… ‘be perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect.”