Christmas 2006

“The event of Bethlehem is not a romantic little idyll; it is the universal turning point. God no longer remains separated from us by the iron curtain of his untouchable transcendence; he has stepped across the dividing line to become one of us” – Benedict XVI

The Novelty:

“In the Incarnation of the Son of God we see forged the enduring and definitive synthesis which the human mind of itself could not even have imagined: the Eternal enters time, the Whole lies hidden in the part, God takes on a human face. The truth communicated in Christ’s revelation is therefore no longer confined to a particular place or culture but is offered to every man and woman who would welcome it as the word which is the absolutely valid source of meaning for human life.”[1]

The novelty consists in the staggering realization of the presence of the Creator in His creation, of the Absolute in the contingent. Consider that if the Creator does not give Being, there is no creation. And when there is creation, He enters it as a part of it. It is the antithesis of the dictatorship of relativism. “Not infrequently it is proposed that theology should avoid the use of terms like `unicity,’ `universality,’ and `absoluteness,’ which give the impression of excessive emphasis on the significance and value of the salvific event of Jesus Christ in relation to other religions. In reality, however, such language is simply being faithful to revelation, since it represents a development of the sources of the faith themselves. From the beginning, the community of believers has recognized in Jesus a salvific value such that he alone, as Son of God made man, crucified and risen, by the mission received from the Father and in the power of the Holy Spirit, bestows revelation (cf. Mt. 11, 27) and divine life (cf. Jn. 1, 12) to all humanity and to every person. In this sense, on can and must say that Jesus Christ has a significance and a value for the human race and its history, which are unique and singular, proper to him alone, exclusive, universal, and absolute. Jesus is, in fact, the Word of God made man for the salvation of all….” Vatican II taught: “The Lord is the goal of human history, the focal point of the desires of history and civilization, the center of mankind, the joy of all hearts, and the fulfillment of all aspirations. It is he whom the Father raised from the dead, exalted and placed at his right hand, constituting him judge of the living and the dead.’ `It is precisely this uniqueness of Christ which gives him an absolute and universal significance whereby, while belonging to history, he remains history’s center and goal: `I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end’ (Rev. 22, 13).”[2]

The Relation of the Human to the Divine:

The import of this is to communicate what this means for the meaning of man and the rest of creation that is “for” man. The Council of Nicea (325) affirmed that Jesus is indeed equal to the Father as God. The Council of Ephesus (431) affirmed that Jesus was not only God but also fully man. He wasn’t God in flesh (Logos-Sarx theology) without having a human soul, human intellect and human will. The divine Person did not supplant the functions of human soul, intellect and will. What was not assumed by the Logos was not redeemed. The Council of Chalcedon (451) affirmed that indeed the full humanity of Jesus of Nazareth was present to the total divinity of the Logos in the unicity of the one divine Person. There is no human person in Jesus Christ, only the divine.

The great word that needed interpretation was: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (Jn. 6, 38).

The Problem-Mystery:

How to save the freedom of the human will of Jesus Christ from being absorbed and therefore crushed by the absolute of the His divine will? How was Christ able to be free as man if in reality He is God?

Benedict XVI remarks: “It was to this question, after two centuries of dramatic struggles which also, in many ways, bore the mark of imperial politics, that the Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) addressed itself. On the one hand, it teaches that the unity of God and man in Christ involves no amputation or reduction in any way of human nature. In conjoining himself to man, his creature, God does not violate or diminish him; in doing so, he brings him for the first time to his real fullness. On the other hand (and this is no less important), it abolishes all dualism or parallelism of the two natures, such as had always seemed necessary in order to safeguard Jesus’ human freedom In such attempts it had been forgotten that when the human will is taken up into the will of God, freedom is not destroyed; indeed, only then does genuine freedom come into its own. The Council of Constantinople analyzed the question of the two-ness and the one-ness in Christ by reference to the concrete issue of the will of Jesus. It resolutely maintains that, as man, Jesus has a human will which is not absorbed by the divine will. But this human will follows the divine will and thus becomes one will with it, not in a natural manner but along the path of freedom. The metaphysical two-ness of a human and a divine will is not abrogated, but in the realm of the person, in the realm of freedom, the fusion of both takes place, with the result that they become one will not naturally, but personally. This free unity – a form of unity created by love – is higher and more interior than a merely natural unity. It corresponds to the highest unity there is, namely, Trinitarian unity. The Council illustrates this unity by citing a dominical word handed down to us in the Gospel of John: `I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). Here it is the divine Logos who is speaking, and he speaks of the human will of the man Jesus as his will, the will of the Logos. With this exegesis of John 6, 38 the Council indicates the unity of the subject in Christ. There are not two `I’s in him, but only one. The Logos speaks in the I-form of the human will and mind of Jesus; it has become his I, has become adopted into his I, because the human will is completely one with the will of the Logos. United with the latter, it has become a pure Yes to the Father’s will.[3]

This insight here is most helpful. Benedict is saying that for two centuries (451-680/681), the Church struggled trying to find the proper conceptualization to account for the freedom of the human will before the diving will in the same Person, without losing its entitative identity as a will. That is, how was the human will able to be a will as distinct from the divine will, and yet connected to the divine will?

The answer that the theologians gave to this was: the human will must be parallel to the divine will as entitatively distinct but in conformity with it. Benedict answers differently with the insight of the relational meaning of the divine Person. The divine Person was relational as self-gift to the point that he made the human will of Jesus of Nazareth his own personal will, just as the divine willing was His very Person. In a word, instead of being “parallel,” the two wills were “compenetrated” by the relational Person of the Logos. Hence, the union of the two wills was in the Person doing the willing, not in trying to analyze the wills as if they were themselves agents of willing. It is the same Person who wills with the divine will and who wills with the human will. Since it is the same Person, the wills both say the “Yes” of Christ to the Father, now as divine, now as human. They are “compenetrated” by the one Person.

Listen to then-Josef Ratzinger: “In the manuals, the theological development after Chalcedon has ordinarily come to be little considered. The impression thus frequently remains that dogmatic Christology finishes up with a certain parallelism between the two natures of Christ. This impression has also been the cause leading to the divisions since Chalcedon. But in effect the declaration of the true humanity and the true divinity of Christ can retain its significance only when there is a clarification also of the mode of unity of the two natures, which the Council of Chalcedon has defined by the formula of the `one person’ of Christ, at that time hot yet fully examined. In fact only that unity of divinity and humanity which in Christ is not parallelism, where one stands alongside the other, but real compenetration, - compenetration between God and man – means salvation for humankind. Only thus in fact does that true `being with God’ take place, without which liberation and freedom do not exist.

“This same query returned at the third Council of Constantinople (680-681) after two centuries of dramatic struggle marked most often also by Byzantine politics. According to this Council, on the one hand: the unity between the divinity and the humanity in Christ does not in any sense imply an amputation or reduction of the humanity. If God joins himself to his creature –man/woman – he does not wound or diminish it: he brings it to its plenitude. But on the other hand (and this is no less important) there remains no trace of that dualism or parallelism of the two natures, which in the course of history was frequently judged necessary to defend the human liberty of Jesus. Such studies forgot that the assumption of the human will into the divine will does not destroy freedom, but on the contrary generates true liberty. The Council of Constantinople has analyzed concretely the problem of the two natures and one person in Christ in view of the problem of the will of Jesus. We are reminded firmly that there exists a specific will of the man Jesus that is not absorbed into the divine will. But this human will follows the divine will and thus becomes a single will with it, not, however, in a forced way but by way of freedom. The metaphysical duplicity of a human will and a divine will is not eliminated, but in the personal sphere, the area of freedom there is accomplished a fusion of the two, so that this becomes not one single natural will but one personal will. This free union – a mode of union created by love – is a union higher and more intimate than a purely natural union. It corresponds to the highest union which can exist, the union of the Trinity… The Council explains this union by a saying of the Lord given in the Gospel of John: `I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). 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. With this exegesis of John 6, 38, the Council proves the unity of the subject: In Jesus there are not two `I,’ 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.
“Maximus the Confessor, the great theologian-exegete of this second phase of the development of Christological dogma, has illustrated those references to the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, which we have already seen in the previous meditation, as the most clear expressions of the singular relationship of Jesus with God. In effect, in such prayer we can, so to speak, look into the inner life of the Word become man. We can see it in that phrase which remains the measure and model of all effective prayer: “Not what I will, but who thou wilt’ (Mk. 14, 36). The human will of Jesus enters into the will of the Son. By doing so, it receives the identity of the Son, which consists in entire subordination of the I to the Thou, in the giving and transferring of the I to the Thou: this is the mode of being of the one who is pure relations and pure act. When the `I’ gives itself to the `Thou,’ freedom originates, because the `form of God’ has been assumed.
But we can also describe this process, and describe it better, from the other side: the Logos so humbles himself that he adopts a man’s will as his own and addresses the Father with te I of this human being; he transfers his own I to this man and thus transforms human speech into the eternal Word, into his blessed `Yes,’ Father.’ By imparting his own I, his own identity, to this human being, he liberates him, redeems him, makes him God. Now we can take the real meaning of `God has become man’ in both hands, as it were: the Son transforms the anguish of a man into his own filial obedience, the speech of the servant into the Word which is the Son.
“In the unity of wills of which we have spoken is attained the greatest conceivable transformation of any person, which is at the same time the one thing ultimately desirable: divinization. Thus the prayer which enters into the prayer of Jesus, and which in the body of Christ becomes the prayer of Jesus Christ, can be defined as the `laboratory’ of freedom. Here, and in no other place occurs that profound change in a person which we need for the world to become better. Only on this road in fact does conscience attain its full rectitude and an irresistible strength. And only from this conscience can be born again that order in human affairs which corresponds to human dignity and which can defend it: an order which in every generation must be sought afresh by a vigilant human conscience, so that the Kingdom of God may come, a kingdom which God alone can build.”[4]

The Impact on us: We have been sacramentally inserted into the very Being of Jesus Christ by sacrament of Baptism whereby we die to our seeking ourselves and make the gift of ourselves. That takes place in Christ – the compenetration of the human by the divine – takes place in us. His humanization by assuming the total human nature of Jesus of Nazareth becomes divinization of that nature/will. So also, the sacramental insertion into Christ by Baptism and its act which is the self-gift of faith, divinizes us. We are destined, baptized and actualized if we permit it into becoming other Christs.

Hide and Seek:

“I am reminded here of a rabbinical tale recorded by Elie Wiesel. He tells of Jehel, a little boy, who comes running into the room of his grandfather, the famous Rabbi Baruch. Big tears are rolling down his cheeks. And he cries, `My friend has totally given up on me. He is very unfair and very mean to me.’ `Well, could you explain this a little more?’ asks the Master. `Okay,’ responds the little boy. `We were playing hide and seek. I was hiding so well that he could not find me. But then he simply gave up and went home. Isn’t that mean?’ The most exciting hiding place has lost its excitement because the other stops playing. The Master caresses the boy’s face. He himself now has tears in his eyes. And he says, `Yes, this is not nice. But look, it is the same way with God. He is in hiding, and we do not seek him. Just imagine! God is hiding, and we people do not even look for him.’ In this little story a Christian is able to find the key to the ancient mystery of Christmas. God is in hiding. He waits for his creation to set out toward him, he waits for anew and willing Yes to come about, for love to arise as a new reality out of his creation. He waits for man.”[5]

Conclusion

If we don’t experience seeking Christ in His Humanity, we will never experience Him as the Absolute God. As really man, He is hiding, drawing us after Him so that we can experience the transcendence of self-gift that He experiences in Himself as Son of the Father. Notice, Benedict talks about Herod and “all Jerusalem with him” who did not “see” Christ. “Those who did not see were all those `dressed in fine clothing’ – the refined people (Mt. 11, 8). Those who did not see were the scholars, the Bible experts, the specialists in the interpretation of Scripture, who knew exactly the correct biblical passage but nonetheless understood nothing (Mt. 2, 6). The ones who `saw’ – those were, in comparison to all these renowned people, but `ox and ass:’ the shepherds, the magi, Mary, Joseph. How could it be otherwise? In the stable, where he dwells, there you do not find the `fine’ people; there you will find, of course, ox and ass. And what about us? Are we so far away from the stable because we are much too refined and too smart for that? Do we not get all entangled in scholarly exegesis… to the extent that we have become blind and deaf to the Child himself? Do we not really all too intensely dwell in `Jerusalem,’ in a palace, withdrawn within ourselves, in our self-sufficiency, our fear of being challenged, too much so to be able to hear the voice of the angels, to set out to worship? Thus in this holy night, the faces of ox and ass are turned toward us questioningly: My people does not understand, do you recognize the voice of your Lord? When we pout the familiar figures in our crèche, we would do well to pray that God would bestow on our heart the kind of simplicity that recognizes the Lord in this Child – just like Francis in Greccio. Then this might happen also to us: everyone returned home, full of rejoicing.”

[1] John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, #12.
[2] SCDF, “Dominus Iesus,” (2000) #13.
[3] J. Ratzinger, “Behold the Pierced One,” Thesis 6 (Ignatius (1986) 38-39.
[4] Josef Ratzinger, “Journey Towards Easter,” Crossroad (1987) 88-91.
[5] J. Ratzinger, “Co-workers of the Truth” Ignatius 407.

The Defined Relation of the Human and the Divine cum Theological Interpretation

Magisterial Texts on Christology

The text of Chalcedon (451):

“Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all teach that with one accord we confess one and the same son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in human nature, truly God and the same with a rational soul and a body truly man, consubstantial with the Father according to divinity, and consubstantial with us, according to human nature, like unto us in all things except sin,; indeed born of the Father before the ages according to divine nature, but in the last days the same born of the virgin Mary, Mother of God according to human nature; for us and for our deliverance, one and the same Christ only begotten Son our Lord, acknowledged in two natures, without mingling, without change, indivisibly, undividedly, the distinction of the natures nowhere removed on account of the union but rather the peculiarity of each nature being kept, and uniting in one person and substance, not divided or separated into two persons, but one and the same son only begotten God Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as from the beginning the prophets taught about Him and the Lord Jesus Himself taught us, and the creed of our fathers has handed down to us.”


The Text of Constantinople III (680-681):

“And we proclaim equally two natural volitions or wills in him and two natural principles of action which undergo no division, no change, no partition, no confusion, in accordance with the teaching of the holy fathers. And the two natural wills not in opposition, as the impious heretics said, far from it, but his human will following, and not resisting or struggling, rather in fact subject to his divine and all powerful will. For the will of the flesh had to be moved, and yet to be subjected to the divine will, according to the most wise Athanasius. For just as his flesh is said to be and is flesh of the Word of God, so too the natural will of his flesh is said to and does belong to the Word of God, just as he says himself: I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me, calling his own will that of his flesh, since his flesh too became his own. For in the same way that his all holy and blameless animate flesh was not destroyed in being made divine but remained in its own limit and category, so his human will as well was not destroyed by being made divine, but rather was preserved, according to the theologian Gregory, who says: "For his willing, when he is considered as saviour, is not in opposition to God, being made divine in its entirety"… Therefore, protecting on all sides the "no confusion" and "no division", we announce the whole in these brief words: Believing our lord Jesus Christ, even after his incarnation, to be one of the holy Trinity and our true God, we say that he has two natures [naturas] shining forth in his one subsistence[subsistentia] in which he demonstrated the miracles and the sufferings throughout his entire providential dwelling here, not in appearance but in truth, the difference of the natures being made known in the same one subsistence in that each nature wills and performs the things that are proper to it in a communion with the other; then in accord with this reasoning we hold that two natural wills and principles of action meet in correspondence for the salvation of the human race."

The key to understanding the unity of the divine and human in Christ is to understand that there is one divine Person Who has taken the humanity of the man Jesus of Nazareth epitomized in the human will as His own. It is critical to understand that it is not the will that wills, but the person. That is, the divine Person wills with His own human will. Only this can make sense of Jn. 6, 38: “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” The divine “I” does not do His own human will, but that of the Father. The dynamic of self-mastery consists in the Person subduing the human will that has been “made to be sin” (2 Cor. 5, 21). [1] In a word, this is the radical self-gift of the Son as God-man.
Put more clearly, the relation of the divine and the human in Christ is not a parallelism of two natures bound together by the commonality of a Person as substance in itself. Rather, it is the compenetration of the divine and the human by the fact that the divine Person has taken the human will as His own and He, the divine Person, wills with the human will. The result is the “compenetration” of the two “wills,” the divine and the human because it is one and the same Person doing the willing.
And yet, the human will does not lose its autonomy and freedom, but rather has it radically enhanced by the fact that it is a divine Person living out the Trinitarian relation to the Father, now as man with a human will.


Josef Ratzinger

(“Journey Towards Easter”[2])

The Christian Meaning of “Communio”
- and its Roots –

“A brief analysis of the roots of the Christian usage of the word `communion’ can show us how the stages of development in the human spirit are directed towards Christ and how in the Lord is realized the synthesis of separate or even opposed elements in human thought.

“1. A primary origin of the Christian word communio appears to be a long way off from the religious and spiritual world, but it is precisely this profane root which has become important; we shall meet it in our last meditation, and therefore I will limit myself here to a brief reference.

“In the account of St. Peter’s call (Lk. 5, 10) we read that James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were koinonoi of Simon, that is his `partners’ in the fishing. In other words: the three constitute a `cooperative,’ they are proprietors of a small enterprise, of which Simon is the manager. `You shall be fishers of men:’ in the conference on the priesthood we shall meditate on the marvelous transformation of this cooperative of Simon’s into the `communion’ of the Church. The fishing koinonia (communion, cooperative) becomes the koinonia of the fish wrapped in mystery, Christ.

“2. The second root of the Christian word communio is to be found in the Hebrew world. In our mediation of Holy Thursday we have already shown that the chaburah of the Hebrews corresponds to the koinonia of the Greeks; this word too, indicates a cooperative, a society of common work and common values, But naturally the particular situations of Hebrew society are reflected in the word, adding specific aspects to its meaning. Essentially there are three. The Pharisees as a group already called themselves chaburah in the first century BC; the Rabbis came to be called the same by the end of the second century; and finally also the community gathered in for the Passover meal (at least ten people). In this last significance the mystery of the Church appears again. The Church is the chaburah in a very profound sense: it is the community of Jesus’ Pasch, the family that fulfills his eternal desire to eat the Pasch with us (cf. Lk. 22, 15). His Pasch is more than a meal; it is love unto death. His Pasch is therefore the participation in his own life, shared in his death for all, communicated in this anticipation of death which is realized when he says, `Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you. Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you ad for al so that sins may be forgiven.’

“Here we find in a very clear fashion what is specific of the New Testament, what is new in the `New.’ In the Old Testament also the ultimate intention of sacrifice and meal is the communion between God and his people. But the word chaburah – communion – is never used to express the relation between God and the human race; it means exclusively relations between human beings. Between God and humans there is no communion: the transcendence of the Creator is insuperable. The relationship actually existing between God and human being is not expressed by the word `communion’ but with the term ‘covenant’ (testament: berith). This terminology signifies both the superiority of God, who alone can take the initiative of forming a relationship, and the distance permanent within the relationship. For that reason some exegetes refuse to translate berith as covenant: covenant expresses a certain equality between the partners, which on the contrary does not exist in the relation between God and human beings. In conclusion, the Old Testament does not know a communion between God and the human race: the New Testament conversely is communion.

Clarifications: The Old Testament had no “communio” (which involves equality of the protagonists) but asymmetrical “covenant” that meant “testament” (which is unilateral). For example, in the Old Testament, God is completely asymmetrical to man: the law is an action by which the king binds his vassals and makes them such; grace is an action that is freely given without any preceding merit. This corresponds to the idea of God’s greatness and sovereignty which flows from the fact that He is the ontological Creator of everything. Creation from nothing is unilateral.

However, this is not fully true in that God bound Himself with Abraham. God creates symmetry between Himself and man, and thereby grounds the communio that is to come in Christ. In the "mysterious account of the making of the covenant with Abraham… the patriarch, in oriental fashion, divides the sacrificial animals into two parts. As a rule, the covenant partners pass between the divided animal halves, thereby invoking a conditional curse upon themselves: let it be to me as to these animals if I break the covenant. Abraham has a vision of a smoking oven and a blazing torch – images of theophany – passing between the animal parts. God seal the covenant by guaranteeing his faithfulness in an unmistakable symbol of death. Is it possible, then, for God to die? Can he punish himself?" (J. Ratzinger, "Many Religions - One Covenant" Ignatius [1999] 73).



“3. While the Old Testament opposes the transcendence and the uniqueness of God to pagan polytheism, and has consequently to reject the beautiful concept of communion between God and humankind, in the pagan world this concept was central to religion[RAC1] (see below). Plato speaks in his Symposion of the reciprocal communion between the gods and men and explains that this communion is the ultimate intention and the most profound content of the sacrifice, of worship. In the final analysis, he says, worship is concerned with nothing else than love’s care and cure. What a foreshadowing of the truth of Christ! Let us add that for Greek mysticism also communion between the divinity, human beings, and all relational beings, is a central concept, but the true desire of this mysticism is union, not communion, with the divinity: in the end it is identity, not relation. If Philo distances himself from the traditional Hebrew terminology and in the framework of Greek mysticism he too speaks of the koinonia between God and worshipper, we may well speak of a certain hellenization of Hebrew thought. But if in the New Testament the Church is communion, not only between persons but, by means of the mystery of death and resurrection of Jesus, it is communion with Christ, man and son of God – and therefore with the eternal love of the Trinity – this is not the result of a new thought synthesis but rather the fruit of a new reality. The one and only transcendent God of the Old Testament reveals his inmost life; he reveals that he is in himself the eternal dialogue of love. Since he is in himself relation, he is word and love and therefore can speak, listen, respond, love[RAC2] . Since he is relation, he can open himself to a relation of the creature with himself. In the Incarnation of the eternal Word is realized that communion between God and humankind that at first seemed incompatible with the transcendence of the one and only God (all the emphasis is mine).

“Plato’s affirmation that things pertaining to worship are concerned with communion between the gods and the human race and that all this belongs to the safeguarding and healing of love, now takes on a new significance. Let us note that Plato is not speaking of God but of gods, and that Greek mysticism also does not speak of God but of the divinity. [The gods in Plato are “thought synthesis:” i.e. abstractions like “divinity,” instead of “God”]. In Jesus we have something totally new: that the one and only personal God really communicates with human beings, incarnating himself in human nature. Divine nature and human nature compenetrated - `inconfuse et indivise’ – in the person of Christ. It would be absurd to want to see here a hellenization of Christianity out of a desire to return to pure Hebrew origins. To do such a thing would be simply to renounce the newness of Christianity. In reality the Incarnation is the new synthesis drawn by God himself, going beyond the limits of the Old Testament, assuming the whole heredity but bringing to it the riches of every culture: the Incarnation is reconciliation, it is communion of those once at enmity (cf. Eph. 2, 11-22), of Jews and pagans, and in the fields of thought as well. The charge of hellenization and the purist return to Hebraic origins signify a want of comprehension of the essence of Christianity.

The charge of Hellenization is absurd in the face of the reality of Jesus Christ

“4. In 1 Cor. 10, 16 ff:

[“The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation of the blood of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread’”]

we find the heart of Christianity explained by means of the word `participation’ – communion. In this passage of Scripture the central premise of our argument finally appears: the enduring origin of ecclesiastical communion is founded on Christology; Christ Incarnate is the communion between God and humankind; the essence of Christianity is fundamentally nothing other than participation in the mystery of the Incarnation, or, using a formula from St. Paul, the Church, as Church, is the body of Christ. If we accept this truth the indivisibility of Church and Eucharist, communion and community, is entirely clear. In the light of this statement the words of St. Paul concerning our problem, or better, our mystery, are explained without difficulty. `The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread’ (1 Cor. 10, 16 ff). For St. Augustine these verses formed the core of his theology, and his homilies for Easter are in fact an exegesis of these words. By eating the same bread we become what we eat. This bread – he says in his Confessions – is the food of the strong. The usual foods are less strong than the person taking them and in the last analysis this is to their purpose: they are assimilated into the organism of the one eating them. But this food is superior to the person taking it, it is the stronger, and therefore the purpose is inverted: the person becomes assimilated to Christ, becomes bread like him: `We being many are one bread, one body.’ The consequence is obvious: the Eucharist is not a dialogue for two only, a private meeting between Christ and myself: Eucharistic communion is a total transformation of my life. This communion discloses the `I’ of a person and creates a new `we.’ Communion with Christ is necessarily communication also with all `his;’ I thus become part of this new bread which he creates by the transubstantiation of earthly beings.

“Now we may see the close connection between the notion of communio and the concept of the Church the body of Christ as well as the images of Christ, the true vine, or the fig tree, symbols of the people of god. These biblical concepts demonstrate once again the dependence of the community of Christians on Christ. The community of Christians is not to be explained in purely horizontal fashion: a two-way relationship with the Lord is the condition of its existence; we can also say: the Church is relationship realized by the love of the Lord, which creates also a new relationship with us. With the fine words of Plato we can say that the Eucharist is really `love’s healing.’”[3]

I

[“Behold the Pierced One’]

Thesis 6: “The so-called Neo-Chalcedonian theology which is summed up in the Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) makes an important contribution to a proper grasp of the inner unity of biblical and dogmatic theology, of theology and religious life. Only from this standpoint does the dogma of Chalcedon (451) yield it full meaning.”

“It is common enough for the theological textbooks to pay scant attention to the theological development which followed Chalcedon. In many ways on e is left with the impression that dogmatic Christology comes to a stop with a certain parallelism of the two natures in Christ. It was this same impression that led to the divisions in the wake of Chalcedon. In fact, however, the affirmation of the true humanity and the true divinity in Christ can only retain its meaning if the mode of the unity of both is clarified. The Council defined this unity by speaking of the `one Person’ in Christ, but it was a formula which remained to be explored in its implications. For the unity of divinity and humanity in Christ which brings `salvation’ to man is not a juxtaposition but a mutual indwelling. Only in this way can there be that genuine `becoming like God,’ without which there is no liberation and no freedom.

“It was to this question, after two centuries of dramatic struggles which also, in many ways, bore the mark of imperial politics, that the Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) addressed itself. On the one hand, it teaches that the unity of God and man in Christ involves no amputation or reduction in any way of human nature. In conjoining himself to man, his creature, God does not violate or diminish him; in doing so, he brings him for the first time to his real fullness. On the other hand (and this is no less important), it abolishes all dualism or parallelism of the two natures, such as had always seemed necessary in order to safeguard Jesus’ human freedom. In such attempts it had been forgotten that when the human will is taken up into the will of God, freedom is not destroyed; indeed, only then does genuine freedom come into its own. The Council of Constantinople analyzed the question of the two-ness and the one-ness in Christ by reference to the concrete issue of the will of Jesus. It resolutely maintains that, as man, Jesus has a human will which is not absorbed by the divine will. But this human will follows the divine will and thus becomes one will with it, not in a natural manner but along the path of freedom. The metaphysical two-ness of a human and a divine will is not abrogated, but in the realm of the person, in the realm of freedom, the fusion of both takes place, with the result that they become one will not naturally, but personally. This free unity – a form of unity created by love – is higher and more interior than a merely natural unity. It corresponds to the highest unity there is, namely, Trinitarian unity. The Council illustrates this unity by citing a dominical word handed down to us in the Gospel of John: `I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). Here it is the divine Logos who is speaking, and he speaks of the human will of the man Jesus as his will, the will of the Logos. With this exegesis of John 6, 38 the Council indicates the unity of the subject in Christ. There are not two `I’s in him, but only one. The Logos speaks in the I-form of the human will and mind of Jesus; it has become his I, has become adopted into his I, because the human will is completely one with the will of the Logos. United with the latter, it has become a pure Yes to the Father’s will.[4]

Immediate Practical Application:

Secularity stands as a personalist peak between Western secularism – be it capitalist or Marxist and Islamic theocracy. The latter two are reductionist objectifications of the political reality of the human person. Concerning the former, Benedict XVI has said that we have not seen the last of Marxism[5] since we have not yet answered its fundamental question about the reality of the transcendent God. Left unanswered, it will return.

Concerning Islam, he said: “the attempt to graft on to Islamic societies what are termed western standards cut loose from their Christian foundations misunderstands the internal logic of Islam as well as the historical logic to which these western standards belong, and hence this attempt was condemned to fail in this form. The construction of society in Islam is theocratic, and therefore monist and not dualist; dualism, which is the precondition for freedom presupposes for its part the logic of the Christian thing [read; faith]. In practice this means that it is only where the duality of Church and state, of the sacral and the political authority, remains maintained in some form or another that the fundamental pre-condition exists for freedom. Where the Church itself becomes the state freedom becomes lost. But also when the Church is done away with as a public and publicly relevant authority, then too freedom is extinguished, because there the state once again claims completely for itself the justification of morality; in the profane post-Christian world it does not admittedly do this in the form of sacral authority but as an ideological authority – that means that the state becomes the party, and since there can no longer be any other authority of the same rank it once again becomes total itself. The ideological state is totalitarian; it must become ideological if it is not balanced by a free but publicly recognized authority of conscience. When this kind of duality does not exist the totalitarian system in unavoidable.

“With this the fundamental task of the Church’s political stance, as I understand it, has been defined; its aim must be to maintain this balance of a dual system as the foundation of freedom. Hence the Church must make claims and demands on public law and cannot simply retreat into the private sphere. Hence it must also take care on the other hand that Church and State remain separated and that belonging to the Church clearly retains its voluntary character.”[6]



[1] “Made to be sin” is to enter into the loneliness of sin as the rejection of the Triune God, and therefore of the others. This is Benedict’s interpretation of Jesus death cry, `My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Mark 15, 34) which is the first and only time that Jesus refers to the Father as “El” and not as “Abba.” Benedict says: “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;” “Introduction to Christianity,” op. cit 227.
[2] J. Ratzinger, “Journey Towards Easter,” Crossroad (1987).
[3] Josef Ratzinger, “Journey Towards Easter,” Crossroad, (1987) 133-137.
[4] Ratzinger comments: “The central distinction which is fundamental to the Council (and which has received scant attention up to now) was worked out by Maximus the Confessor: he distinguishes the Thelema Physikon which belongs to the naturae and thus exists separately in Christ’s godhead and manhood, from the `gnomic’ thelema `which is identical with the liberum arbitrium and pertain to the person; in Christ it can only be a single thelema, since he subsists in the divine Person’ (Beck 41). Thus `much that had earlier been regarded as Monophysite… could be taken into spiritually’ (Beck 43). Once this basic idea of Constantinople III, which is central to Neo-Chalcedonian Christology, based on Pannenberg, are futile, resting on a misunderstanding. In Theo. Berichte 2, 29, Wiederkehr speaks of the `symmetrical path of the two-natures doctrine’ under the influence of the `two wills’ decision and thinks that it resulted from the idea `of an internal Christological dialogue… between a divine and a human nature.’ Thus he can rightly object that `there is nothing of this in the Jesus of the synoptics.’ `As far as the man Jesus is concerned, his dialogue partner is the Father, not his own self in his divine nature and person.’ This assertion, which he opposes to Neo-Chalcedonism, is in fact precisely the view of Constantinople III, except that the latter works out its ontological and existential structure very much more thoroughly than Widerkehr. Pannenberg (Jesus, God and Man, 1968) formulates it thus: “`Person’ is a relational concept, and, because the relation of Jesus to the Father in his dedication to him is identical with the eternal Person of the Son of God’ (339). It seems to me, if I read him correctly, that Pannenberg too fails to see that he is thinking along sthe same lines as Constantinople III (and Maximus the Confessor). In fact he is concentrating rather on the dispute with Leontius of Byzantium. From this point of view… etc., etc.
[5] “The essential problem of our times, for Europe and for the world, is that although the fallacy of the Communist economy has been recognized, its moral and religious fallacy has not been addressed. The unresolved issue of Marxism lives on: the crumbling of man’s original uncertainties about God, himself, and the universe. The decline of a moral conscience grounded in absolute values is still our problem, and left untreated, it can lead to the self-destruction of the European conscience, which we must begin to consider as a real danger – above and beyond the decline predicted by Spengler;” Benedict XVI, “Europe and Its Discontents,” First Things, January 2006, 20.
[6] Joseph Ratzinger, “Theology and the Church’s Political Stance,” Church, Ecumenism and Politics, Crossroad (1987) 162-163.

[RAC1]For Greek pagan mysticism, there is communion as union with the gods, BUT it isn’t real. The concept is there but not the reality.
Therefore, in sum, the Jews had real covenant with the beginnings of communio. But, they weren’t able to establish an ontological communio until Christ was both God and man in Person.

[RAC2]Only with the revelation by God Himself that He is Love (Agape), the ontologically impossible now takes place. God Himself crosses the impossible vastness of the infinite difference between Creator and creature, and continuing to be Creator, becomes this individual creature. And the creature, without losing the nano-but-real existence that is given him as an autonomy, exists with the existence of the Second Divine Person. Communio between divine and human now takes place as “compenetration,” not “parallelism.” This is the prototype of all relation between divine and human: e.g. faith and reason; supernatural and natural; grace and nature; Church and State; priest and layman

Advent 2006

The meaning of “Parousia:”

“`Advent’ does not, for example, mean `expectation,’ as some may think. It is a translation of the Greek word parousia which means `presence’ or, more accurately, `arrival,’ i.e., the beginning of a presence. In antiquity the word was a technical term for the presence of a king or ruler and also of the god being worshipped, who bestows his parousia on his devotees for a time. `Advent,’ then, means a presence begun, the presence being that of God.

“Advent reminds us, therefore, of two things: first, that God’s presence in the world has already begun, that he is present though in a hidden manner; second, that his presence has only begun and is not yet full and complete, that it is in a state of development, of becoming and progressing toward its full form. His presence has already begun, and we, the faithful, are the ones thorugh whom he wishes to be present in the world.”[1]

The Figure of John the Baptist

Two Texts:

The Humility of John who knew Christ: “The next day John saw Jesus coming to him and he said, `Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, `After me there comes one who has been set above me, because he was before me.’ And I did not know him. But that he may be known to Israel, for this reason have I come baptizing with water.
“And John bore witness, saying, `I beheld the Spirit descending as a dove from heaven, and it abode upon him. And I did not know him. But he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, `He upon whom thou wilt see the Spirit descending, and abiding upon him, he it is who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God;” (John 1, 29-34).


1) John Fulminates Anticipating a Theocracy of the Messiah: “Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the desert of Judea, and saying, `Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ For this is he who was spoken of through Isaias the prophet, when he said, `The voice of one crying in the desert, `Make ready the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.’ But John himself had a garment of camel’s hair and a leathern girdle about his loins, and his food was locusts and wild honey….
“But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees, coming to his baptism, he said to them, `Brood of vipers! Who has shown you how to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruit befitting repentance, and do not think to say within yourselves, `We have Abraham for our father;’ for I say to you that God is able out of these stones to raise up children to Abraham. For even now the axe is laid at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that is not bringing forth good fruit is to be cut down and thrown into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water, for repentance. But he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to bear. He will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor, and will gather his wheat into the barn; but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire’” (Matt. 3, 1-12).

2) After charging Herod that he is not permitted to take his brother Philip’s wife for himself, Herod casts John into prison. However, while John is in prison, he hears of none of the things that he had prophesied about the ax being laid to the root of the trees. Then- Josef Ratzinger wrote: “In words of burning power John had prophesied the coming of the judge and had painted in fiery colors the great day of the Lord. He had portrayed the Messiah as the judge with the winnowing fan in his hand that would separate the chaff from the grain and throw the chaff once and for all into eternal fire. He had portrayed him as one who would case out this adulterous generation and, if need be, raise up children of Abraham from the very stones to replace the faithless people who called themselves the children of Abraham. Above all, amid the fearful ambivalence of this world where we are constantly waiting and hoping in darkness, John had expected and proclaimed a clear message: that the day would finally come when the hopeless darkness would be dispelled in which human beings wander to and fro and know hot where they are going. The ambiguity would disappear, and men would no longer have to grope their way in the endless mist but would know for certain that this and no other is God’s unequivocal claim on them, that this and no other is their situation in relation to God.”

The Trial of John’s Faith

Ratzinger then suggests John’s temptations of faith: “Meanwhile, at God’s command, John’s prophetic finger was pointing out a man. `Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’ (Jn. 1, 29). God’s presence had begun… but what a difference from what John had imagined! No fire fell from heaven to consume sinners and bear definitive witness to the just; in fact, nothing changed at all in the present world. Jesus went about preaching and doing good in the land, but the ambiguity remained. Human life continued to be a dark mystery to which people had to entrust themselves with faith and hope amid the world’s darkness.

“Clearly, it was this utterly different personality of Jesus that most tormented John during the long nights in prison: The eclipse of God continued, and the imperturbable advance of a history that was so often a slap in the face to believers. In his distress John sent messengers to the Lord: `Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?’ (Mt. 11, 3). It is a question all of us were ready to ask during the nighttime bombings of the Second World War, and are inclined to ask over and over again in all the distresses of our own lives: `Are you really he the Redeemer of the world? Are you really here now as the Redeemer? Was that really all that God had to say to us?’”[2]

The Same Trial for Our Faith

Benedict has been affirming the two tiers of Christian faith since his “habilitation” thesis in Germany in 1956. The core of his thesis consisted in disabusing the modern mind that Sacred Scripture was “revelation.” He wrote: “Such an identification [that Scripture = Revelation] would have been unthinkable in the language of the High Middle Ages. Here, `revelation’ is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result of this act. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of `revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive `revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it. These insights, gained through my reading of Bonaventure, were later on very important for me at the time of the conciliar discussion on revelation, Scripture, and tradition. Because, if Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripiture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down. And this again means that there can be no such thing as pure sola scriptura (`by Scripture alone’), because an essential element of Scripture is the Church as understanding subject, and with this the fundamental sense of tradition is already given.”[3]

Michael Schmaus, Ratzinger’s thesis director, and whom he had not consulted in his work on this mediaeval theme, saw in this thesis “a not at all faithful rendering of Bonaventure’s thought (however, to this day I still affirm the contrary) but a dangerous modernism that had to lead to the subjectivization of the concept of revelation.”[4]

In his great work “Introduction to Christianity” originally published in 1968 (after the Council), he explained in like manner: “(Credo) means that man does not regard seeing, hearing and touching as the totality of what concerns him, that he does not see the area of his world as marked off by what he can see and touch, but seeks a second mode of access to reality, a mode which he calls in fact belief, and in such a way that he finds in it the decisive enlargement of his whole view of the world. If this is so, then the little word `Credo’ contains a basic option vis-à-vis reality as such; is signifies not the observation of this or that fact but a fundamental mode of behaviour towards being, towards existence, towards one’s own sector of reality and towards reality as a whole. It signifies the deliberate view that what cannot be seen, what can in no wise move into the field of vision, is not unreal; that on the contrary what cannot be seen in fact represents true reality, the element that supports and makes possible all the rest of reality. And it signifies the view that this element which makes reality as a whole possible is also what grants man a truly human existence, what makes him possible as a human being existing in a human way. In other words, belief signifies the decision that at the very core of human existence there is a point which cannot be nourished and supported on the visible and tangible, which encounters and comes into contact with what cannot be seen and finds that it is a necessity for its own existence.

“Such an attitude is certainly to be attained only by what the language of the Bible calls `reversal,’ `con-version.’ Man’s natural center of gravity draws him to the visible, to what he can take in his hand and hold as his own. He has to turn round inwardly in order to see how badly he is neglecting his own interests by letting himself be drawn along in this way by his natural center of gravity. He must turn round to recognize how blind he is if he trusts only what he sees with his eyes. Without this change of direction, without this resistance to the natural center of gravity, there can be no belief. Indeed belief is the con-version in which man discovers that he is following an illusion if he devotes himself only to the tangible. This is at the same time the fundamental reason why belief is not demonstrable: it is an about-turn; only he who turns about is receptive to it; and because our center of gravity does ot cease to incline us in another direction it remains a turn that is new every day; only in a life-long conversion can we become aware of that it means to `I believe.’”[5]

The Trial: John’s and Ours

After John had sent the messengers with the question “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?” because he had been scandalized by the presence of the Absolute and all powerful God in the world, and nothing had changed. In a sermon preached between December 13-15 of 1964, Ratzinger remarked: “What really torments us today, what bothers us much more is the inefficacy of Christianity: after two thousand years of Christian history, we can see nothing that might be a new reality in the world; rather, we find it sunk in the same old horrors, the same despair, and the same hopes as ever. And in our own lives, too, we inevitably experience time and again how Christian reality is powerless against all the other forces that influence us and make demands on us. And if, after all our labor and efforts to live on the basis of what is Christian, we draw up the final balance sheet, then often enough the feeling comes over us that the reality has been taken away from us, dissolved, and all that remains in the end is just an appeal to the feeble light of our goodwill. And then in moments of discouragement like that, when we look back on the path we have traveled, the question forces its way into our minds: What is all this array of dogma and worship antichurch, if at the end of it all we are still thrown back onto our own poor resources? That in turn brings us back again, in the end, to the question about the gospel of the Lord: What did he actually proclaim and bring among men? We will recall that, according to Saint Mark’s account, Christ’s message can be summed up in one saying: `The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel’ (Mk. 1, 15).”

Ratzinger then explains that theology, to render some account of the discrepancy between expectation and fulfillment, “in the course of time turned the kingdom of God into a kingdom of heaven that is beyond this mortal life; the well-being of men became a salvation of souls, which again comes to pass beyond this life, after death.”
“But,” says Ratzinger, “theology did not thereby provide an answer. For what is sublime in this message is precisely that the Lord was talking not just about another life, not just about men’s souls, but was addressing the body, the whole man, in his embodied form, with his involvement in history and society; that he promised the kingdom of God to the man who lives bodily with other men in this history. As marvelous as the knowledge is that has been opened up for us by biblical scholarship in our century (that is, that Christ was not just looking forward to another life, but was talking about real people), it can also disappoint and unsettle us when we look at real history, which is in truth no kingdom of God.”

The Kingdom of God is Present But Hidden

Christ answers John: “Go and tell John what it is that you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me!” (Lk. 7, 22-23)

John Paul II commented: “Especially through His lifestyle and through His actions, Jesus revealed that love is present in the world in which we live – an effective love, a love that addresses itself to man and embraces everything that makes up his humanity. This love makes itself particularly noticed in contact with suffering, injustice and poverty – in contact with the whole historical `human condition,’ which is various ways manifests man’s limitation and frailty, both physical and moral. It is precisely the mode and sphere in which love manifests itself that in biblical language is called `mercy.’
“Christ, then, reveals God who is Father, who is `love,’ as St. John will express it in his first letter; Christ reveals God as `rich in mercy,’ as we read in St. Paul. This truth is not just the subject of a teaching: it is a reality made present to us by Christ. Making the Father present as love and mercy is, in Christ’s own consciousness, the fundamental touchstone of His mission as the Messiah; this is confirmed by the words that He uttered first in the synagogue at Nazareth and later in the presence of His disciples and of John the Baptist’s messengers.”[6]

In the 1964 homily, Ratzinger said: “Our century is making us learn anew the truth of Advent: that is, the truth that it has always been Advent and yet also still is Advent. That all mankind is one before God’s face. That al mankind stands in darkness, but, on the other hand, that all mankind is illuminated by God’s light. Yet if this is the way it is, that it has always been Advent and still is Advent, then this also means that there is no period of history of which God would be just the past, which already lies behind us and in which everything has already been done. On the contrary, for al of us God is the origin from which we come and yet still also the future toward which we are going….We cannot find God except in this exodus, in going out from the coziness of our present situation into what is hidden: the brightness of God that is coming. The image of Moses, who had to climb up the mountain and go into the cloud to find God, remains valid for all ages. God cannot be found – even in the Church – except by our climbing the mountain and entering in to the cloud of the incognito of God, who in this world is the hidden One.”[7]

[1] J. Ratzinger, “Dogma and Preaching,” Franciscan Herald Press (1985) 71-72.
[2] Ibid, 75-76.
[3] J. Ratzinger, “Milestones - Memoirs 1927-1977,” Ignatius (1998) 108-109.
[4] Ibid. 109.
[5] J. Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius (1990) 24-25.
[6] John Paul II, “Dives in Misericordia,” #3.
[7] J. Ratzinger, “What It Means to Be a Christian,” Ignatius (1965-2005) 36.

A Thumbnail Sketch of Opus Dei as Prelature (delayed from Nov. 28)

Characteristics:

1. One vocation for lay faithful, be they married or celibate, and ministerial priests. All share sacramentally in the one priesthood of Christ, be it the sacrament of Baptism or Orders. Priesthood means “mediation,” which consists in the gift of self. Each becomes “priest of his own existence” by subduing self, getting possession of self so as to be able to make the gift of the self now possessed. All make the gift of their “I” to Jesus Christ either in service to their family and the world by the exercise of their secular work, or the ministers by their service in persona Christi to the layfaithful.

Hence, there is a “radical equality” of all as being “other Christs” (as priests with “priestly soul”) with the “functional diversity” of exercising the gift of self in a plurality of objective ways. A key concept is to understand the equality on the level of the subject, and the diversity on the level of the object. Sanctity as subject can be exercised in a universality of objective states and ways.

2. Communio: This is the social reality – the ontological unum - of the constitutive relation between laity and priests whereby one cannot be who each is without the other. As “a little bit of the Church,”[1] Opus Dei is the “aboriginal relationship obtaining in the Church between christifideles – called to live out the requirements and implications of their baptism – and sacred ministers, who bring in, besides, the `ministerial’ consequences of the sacrament of Order.”[2]

3. The Father. The self gift in a communio such as family or Church is impossible without the dynamizing force of being loved. Benedict XVI said: “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.”[3]

The task of dynamizing the gift of self in Opus Dei falls to the Prelate who has been known and called from the beginning (1928), “Father.” Rodriguez remarked: “We ought to say that in Opus Dei’s institutional life and in its members’ relations with their prelate, what is decisive is neither his `jurisdiction’ nor their obedience. Rather, what truly defines Opus Dei’s prelate is his `fatherhood,’ his role as a pastor who is a father to all the prelature’s faithful. That is why in Opus Dei he is usually called, `Father.’ The prelate’s role in the life of Opus Dei deeply configures the prelature. Therefore it is important to consider it when determining the ecclesial profile of the social arrangement lived therein.”[4]

4. Secularity. “Pope Paul VI said the Church `has an authentic secular dimension, inherent to her inner nature and mission, which is deeply rooted in the mystery of the Word Incarnate, and which is realized in different forms through her members.”
The meaning of secularity is taken from the relation of the human will of Jesus Christ to His Divine Person. Then-Joseph Ratzinger remarked in his 1985 retreat to John Paul II: “The Council of Constantinople has analyzed concretely the problem of the two natures and one person in Christ in view of the problem of the will of Jesus. We are reminded firmly that there exists a specific will of the man Jesus that is not absorbed into the divine will. But this human will follows the divine will and thus becomes a single will with it, not, however, in a forced way but by way of freedom. The metaphysical duplicity of a human will and a divine will is not eliminated, but in the personal sphere, the area of freedom there is accomplished a fusion of the two, so that this becomes not one single natural will but one personal will. This free union – a mode of union created by love – is a union higher and more intimate than a purely natural union. It corresponds to the highest union which can exist, the union of the Trinity… The Council explains this union by a saying of the Lord given in the Gospel of John: `I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). 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. With this exegesis of John 6, 38, the Council proves the unity of the subject: In Jesus there are not two `I,’ 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.”[5]

The concluding point is that the human will of Jesus Christ has the Being and the autonomy of the divine Person of the Logos. It continues to be human, yet with the freedom of God to be total self-gift. Here, remember that the prototype of the human person is the divine Person of Jesus Christ (Gaudium et spes #22). Christ is the meaning of man. There is no adequate anthropology that is not Christological. We were created in view of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1, 4: "He chose us in him before the constitution of the world"). It is this freedom of self-determination given to us in view of Christ that we are able to achieve an autonomy that is not absolute, but, as they say, “theonomy” (see Veritatis Splendor #41) as relative to the relationality of being loved by God. This attitude of autonomy that is rooted in the metaphysics of an “I” that can master self, own self and give self is “secularity.”

The secularity that is “dimension” for the entire Church (including clerics and religious) is “characteristic” for the laity because it is precisely their involvement in secular work and family life that is the occasion and locus for the this gift of self that is “secularity” as well as – as we saw above – the priesthood of all the faithful (See christifideles laici #15)

For this reason, St. Josemaria Escriva always referred to “priestly soul” and “lay mentality” as the distinguishing characteristic of the spirit of Opus Dei.

[1] Pedro Rodriguez, “The Place of Opus Dei in the Church,” Opus Dei in the Church Scepter (1995) 1
[2] Ibid. 38.
[3] J. Ratzinger, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” Scepter (1987) 79-80.
[4] Pedro Rodriguez, op. cit. 56.
[5] J. Ratzinger, “Journey Towards Easter,” Crossroad, (1987) 88-89.

"Not To Make Christianity Seem Mere Morality," but Rather the Gift of Self - (to be continued)

Benedict XVI:

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 7, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI says that there can be no contradiction between defense of life and defense of values such as peace, justice and nonviolence. The Pope was referring to a debate that has been taking place for decades in sectors of the Catholic Church and of society, when he addressed the bishops of Switzerland on Nov. 9. The Holy See subsequently issued a translation of his remarks in German. The Holy Father began by saying that "what people find more difficult is the morality that the Church proclaims." "I have pondered on this -- I have been pondering on it for a long time -- and I see ever more clearly that in our age morality is, as it were, split in two," the Pontiff said. "Modern society not merely lacks morals but has 'discovered' and demands another dimension of morality, which in the Church's proclamation in recent decades, and even earlier perhaps, has not been sufficiently presented. "This dimension includes the great topics of peace, nonviolence, justice for all, concern for the poor and respect for creation. They have become an ethical whole which, precisely as a political force, has great power and for many constitutes the substitution or succession of religion." Conferring dignity Benedict XVI continued: "Instead of religion, seen as metaphysical and as something from above -- perhaps also as something individualistic -- the great moral themes come into play as the essential which then confers dignity on man and engages him. … "This morality exists and it also fascinates young people, who work for peace, for nonviolence, for justice, for the poor, for creation.

"And [they] are truly great moral themes that also belong, moreover, to the tradition of the Church." "The other part of morality, often received controversially by politics, concerns life," the Pope observed. "One aspect of it is the commitment to life from conception to death, that is, its defense against abortion, against euthanasia, against the manipulation and man's self-authorization in order to dispose of life. "People often seek to justify these interventions with the seemingly great purpose of thereby serving the future generations, and it even appears moral to take human life into one's hands and manipulate it. "However, on the other hand, the knowledge also exists that human life is a gift that demands our respect and love from the very first to its very last moments, also for the suffering, the disabled and the weak. "The morality of marriage and the family also fit into this context," Benedict XVI said. "Marriage is becoming, so to speak, ever more marginalized, so that marriage is no longer defined as a bond between a man and a woman but a bond between persons. "The awareness that sexuality, eros and marriage as a union between a man and a woman go together - 'and they become one flesh' -- this knowledge is growing weaker and weaker; every type of bond seems entirely normal -- they represent a sort of overall morality of nondiscrimination and a form of freedom due to man."There are of course many explanations for the problem of the sharp decline in the birthrate, but certainly a decisive role is also played in this by the fact that people want to enjoy life, that they have little confidence in the future and that they feel the family is no longer viable as a lasting community in which future generations may grow up." -morality. Therefore, Benedict XVI explained to the Swiss bishops, "our proclamation clashes with an awareness, as it were, contrary to\nsociety and with a sort of anti-morality based on a conception of freedom seen as the faculty to choose autonomously\nwith no pre-defined guidelines, as nondiscrimination, hence, as the approval\nof every type of possibility."

"And [they] are truly great moral themes that also belong, moreover, to the tradition of the Church." "The other part of morality, often received controversially by politics, concerns life," the Pope observed. "One aspect of it is the commitment to life from conception to death, that is, its defense against abortion, against euthanasia, against the manipulation and man's self-authorization in order to dispose of life. "People often seek to justify these interventions with the seemingly great purpose of thereby serving the future generations, and it even appears moral to take human life into one's hands and manipulate it." However, on the other hand, the knowledge also exists that human life is a gift that demands our respect and love from the very first to its very last moments, also for the suffering, the disabled and the weak. "The morality of marriage and the family also fit into this context," Benedict XVI said. "Marriage is becoming, so to speak, ever more marginalized, so that marriage is no longer defined as a bond between a man and a woman but a bond between persons. "The awareness that sexuality, eros and marriage as a union between a man and a woman go together -- 'and they become one flesh' -- this knowledge is growing weaker and weaker; every type of bond seems entirely normal -- they represent a sort of overall morality of nondiscrimination and a form of freedom due to man. "There are of course many explanations for the problem of the sharp decline in the birthrate, but certainly a decisive role is also played in this by the fact that people want to enjoy life, that they have little confidence in the future and that they feel the family is no longer viable as a lasting community in which future generations may grow up."

Therefore, Benedict XVI explained to the Swiss bishops, "our proclamation clashes with an awareness, as it were, contrary to society and with a sort of anti-morality based on a conception of freedom seen as the faculty to choose autonomously with no pre-defined guidelines, as nondiscrimination, hence, as the approval of every type of possibility."

"Thus, it autonomously establishes itself as ethically correct, but the other awareness has not disappeared," the Pope contended. "It exists, and I believe we must commit ourselves to reconnecting these two parts of morality and to making it clear that they must be inseparably united. "Only if human life from conception until death is respected, is the ethic of peace possible and credible; only then may nonviolence be expressed in every direction, only then can we truly accept creation and only then can we achieve true justice." This is the great task" the Church has before it, the Holy Father said, "not to make Christianity seem merely morality, but rather a gift in which we are given the love that sustains us and provides us with the strength we need to be able to 'lose our own life."

Pope's Homage to the Immaculate Conception "Show Youself to be Mother" (Monstra Te Esse Matrem) Vatican City, Dec. 8, 2006

Mary, Virgin Immaculate: This year we again gather with filial love at the foot of your image to renew to you the homage of the Christian community and of the city of Rome. We come in prayer, following the tradition inaugurated by preceding Popes, on the solemn day in which the liturgy celebrates your Immaculate Conception, mystery that is source of joy and hope for all the redeemed.

We greet you and invoke you with the words of the Angel: "full of grace" (Luke 1:28), the most beautiful name with which God himself called you from eternity. You are "full of grace," Mary, full of divine love from the first instance of your existence providentially predestined to be the mother of the Redeemer, and intimately associated to him in the mystery of salvation. In your Immaculate Conception shines the vocationof Christ's disciples, called to become, with his grace, saints and immaculate through love (cf. Ephesians 1:4). In you shines the dignity of every human being, who is always precious in the eyes of the creator. Whoever looks at you, all holy Mother, does not lose his serenity, no matter how sorely tried in life. Although the experience of sin is sad, as it sullies the dignity of the children of God, whoever takes recourse to you rediscovers the beauty of truth and of love, and again finds the way that leads to the Father's house. You are "full of grace," Mary, who, on accepting with your "yes" the plans of the creator, opened to us the way of salvation. Teach us to utter also our "yes" to the Lord's will. A "yes" that is united to your "yes" without reservations or shadows, a "yes" of which the Father has wished to have need to beget the new Man, Christ, the only savior of the world and of history. Give us the courage to say "no" to the deceptions of power, money, pleasure: to dishonest earnings, to corruption and hypocrisy, to egoism and violence. "No" to the evil one, deceitful prince of the world. "Yes" to Christ, who destroys the power of evil with the omnipotence of love. We know that only hearts converted to love, which is God, can build a better future for all. You are "full of grace," Mary! Your name is for all generations pledge of sure hope. Yes, because as the supreme poet Dante wrote, for us, mortals, you "are the living source of hope" (Paradise, XXXIII, 12). We take recourse again to this source, spring of your Immaculate Heart, as trusting pilgrims, to draw faith and consolation, joy and love, security and peace."

Virgin "full of grace," show yourself a tender and loving mother with the inhabitants of this your city, so that the authentic evangelical spirit will animate and orient their conduct; show yourself mother and vigilant guardian of Italy and Europe, so that from the ancient Christian roots people will be able to draw the sap to build their present and future; show yourself a provident and merciful mother to the whole world so that, respecting human dignity and rejecting every form of violence and exploitation, firm foundations will be laid for the civilization of love. Show yourself a mother especially to the neediest: the defenseless, the marginalized, and the excluded, the victims of a society that often sacrifices man for other ends and interests. Show yourself mother of all, Mary, and give us Christ, hope of the world! "Monstra te esse matrem," immaculate virgin, full of grace! Amen!

Short-Form of "Secularity" @ ND Conference on Modernity

Précis:

• Accept modernity in so far as it is the turn to the subject – “I”
  
• Purify the "I" of the Cartesian contamination of subjectivism - the "pure consciousness" of the cogito - by accounting for the experience of it as ontological agent of Christian faith
  
• Incarnate it as ontological autonomy-theonomy (self-determination/self-gift) of the "I" that is "secularity," which in turn transcends secularism (there is no God save the unencumbered self) and theocracy (Islam).
• Secularity is a subjective reality that is existential and unreduced. Secularism and theocracy are reductive ideologies that abstract from the "I" of the human person. (Hanna Arendt once remarked: "Ideology is not the naive acceptance of the visible [of the real], but the intelligent cancellation of it.")

Thesis

Secularity is a Christian Truth. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, said: “Secularity is not a mask. It is something that belongs to the very essence of our way.” His successor said: “Secularity is not simply a juridical from of clothing. It is not some external garb, an outfit adapted to an already existing body, or one of those mass-produced ready-made suits, which people have to adapt their bodies to as best they can. Nor is it a kind of claim to autonomy as regards God, who calls us to total self-giving. Neither does it take as its model the worldliness or the hedonistic ways of certain contemporary cultures.”[1]

He goes on: “(Secularity) is a profound truth of our being Christians, a dimension of our existence which forms one and the same thing with the divine vocation” in baptism… Secularity is something Christian, a Christian way of being and living. In other words, … Christian faith and morality – cannot be judged from the starting-point of a secularity defined a priori. Rather, secularity should be judged and valued – or rather, discovered – from the starting-point …[of baptism], and what the Christian faith reveals to us about man, about the world and about our destiny.”

“Secularity is… a Christian way of being and living.” To understand that we must understand how modernity is a yearning for the infinite, or perhaps better, for the absolute. The tragedy of modernity as consciousness is its bequeathing us with a dictatorship of relativism that morphs into skepticism and nihilism.

Argument

Today, Turkey is a microcosm of the global crisis. It is both secularist in constitution and theocratic in existential makeup. Politically, it is religion-neutral while de facto populated by a margin of 71 million Muslims to 130,000 Christians, 5,000 of whom are Orthodox.

Bartholomew I needed help and Benedict came to give it. However, what Benedict wants above all is the union of Orthodox and Catholics – to heal a 1000 year rift – so as to represent the Face of Christ, the one true Church of East and West - breathing with both lungs and unshattered by schism – such that Islam, which is, at root, a Christian heresy, can recognize Him and respond. The hope is that conversion will follow by both Islam and Protestantism.

Secularism and theocracy are the result of dumbing-down Christian faith to a conceptual ideology – to being an object. In the West, faith is reduced to an ideology of rules, regulations, dogmas and institutional growth while leaving the subject – the believer as person - unencumbered by Truth and Goodness as absolutes. The experience of these absolutes has not been unrecognized – or better ignored – in common experience, and if recognized these absolute values are consigned to the structure of thought itself, which by definition is not real; in the Islamic East, faith is confused with belief as an ideology of theocratic monism where church and state must be one.

Benedict XVI’s Challenge to the West: "Ought we to accept modernity in full, or in part? Is there a real contribution? Can this modern way of thinking be a contribution, or offer a contribution, or not? And if there is a contribution from the modern, critical way of thinking, in line with the Enlightenment, how can it be reconciled with the great intuitions and the great gifts of the faith”

“Or ought we, in the name of the faith, to reject modernity? You see? There always seems to be this dilemma: either we must reject the whole of the tradition, all the exegesis of the Fathers, relegate it to the library as historically unsustainable, or we must reject modernity."

His response: Accept the “I,” but not as consciousness. Purify it by showing that Christian faith is the act of the whole self as real being: self-gift.[2]

“That is, Vatican II must not be interpreted as desiring a rejection of the tradition and an adapting of the Church to modernity and so causing the Church to become empty because it loses the word of faith·"

What does “purify” the “I” mean? Restore it to reality by the double means of revelation (Ratzinger) and the philosophy of experience (Wojtyla). 1) Recover the meaning of faith in Scripture and Tradition[3] as an experiential knowing of God (and self). 2) Do a phenomenology of faith (Wojtyla with St. John of the Cross) and complement it with the Thomistic metaphysics in terms of the experience of the self as believer (self-transcending).[4]

Lorenzo Albacete of Communione and Liberazione comments on the meaning of "experience," the "I," and "truth." He says: "The verification of the correspondence between the constitutive desires of the heart and the objects encountered by the `I' is what Giussani calls experience, and this is at the heart of his thought. A posture is more real and true the more it corresponds to that objective, interior trace found at the roots of the I. This correspondence is what is called truth. An education in reason is an education on the relation between experience and truth" ("The Road of Reason" in Traces Vol. 8, NO. 9, 2006, 51).

Ratzinger:

- Revelation: “(F)aith is not a system of semi-knowledge, but an existential decision… (that) resembles more an expedition up a mountain than a quiet evening spent reading in front of the fire.”[5]
- Scriptural Paradigm: Abraham’s obedience.

- John 4: Encounter between Christ and the Samaritan Woman.

- Ratzinger's “Milestones” (108): “the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of `revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive `revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it. These insights, gained through my reading of Bonaventure, were later on very important for me at the time of the conciliar discussion on revelation, Scripture, and tradition. Because, if Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down. And this again means that there can be no such thing as pure sola scriptura (`by Scripture alone’), because an essential element of Scripture is the Church as understanding subject, and with this the fundamental sense of tradition is already given.”[6]

Wojtyla:

- The Fathers at Vatican II were not interested in this or that truth of faith, but rather, what does it mean to be a believer – a believing subject.

- VS #88: “Faith is a lived knowledge of Christ, a living remembrance of his commandments, and a truth to be lived out. A word, in any event, is not truly received until it passes into action, until it is put into practice.”

The act of faith as the ontological experience of self-gift (prayer) produces a consciousness of self as “another Christ” and upon reflection becomes conceptual as in “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16, 16). The reality that is experienced in the believer is grounded in the response to the one Absolute reality of God Himself become man. As Benedict says: “Like is known by like”[7] Only by the act of self-gift (faith) does the believer experience himself as “I” and as being (being because there is precisely “experience” at the moment of self-mastery and freedom). One can only experience the “I” of another, and therefore “know” him/her by experiencing oneself in self-determination and transferring that experience and the accruing consciousness to the other as another “I.” Only thus can we know (“intellegere = ab intus legere) a subject, and a fortiori Jesus Christ.

This likeness to the Person of Christ by living faith (prayer) produces the consciousness of self worth, freedom, rights that become political consciousness.

Theological Epistemology Becomes Political Epistemology:

The consciousness of the dignity of the self as “another Christ” and the right to exercise the freedom of self determination that is exercised in the act of Christian faith is the same consciousness as the self-evident truths that ground the secular political order of democracy.

Therefore, the consciousness of the self-evident truths of the human person as citizen is Christian faith. The first of these truths is secularity which is the freedom of religious autonomy (self-determination) before the state. Hence, the separation of Church and State as institutions is a truth founded on the Christian experience of living faith. Secularity is a Christian truth lived in the exercise of Christian faith. Christianity promotes this dualism of the person and state.[8] Wherever the person does not experience self transcendence there is monism that ultimately becomes state tyranny.

Conclusion

Secularity stands as a Christian experience, a personalist peak between Western secularism – be it capitalist or Marxist and Islamic theocracy. The latter two are reductionist objectifications of the political reality of the human person. Concerning the former, Benedict has said that we have not seen the last of Marxism[9] since we have not yet answered its fundamental question about the reality of the transcendent God. Left unanswered, it will return.

Concerning Islam, he said: “the attempt to graft on to Islamic societies what are termed western standards cut loose from their Christian foundations misunderstands the internal logic of Islam as well as the historical logic to which these western standards belong, and hence this attempt was condemned to fail in this form. The construction of society in Islam is theocratic, and therefore monist and not dualist; dualism, which is the precondition for freedom presupposes for its part the logic of the Christian thing [read; faith]. In practice this means that it is only where the duality of Church and state, of the sacral and the political authority, remains maintained in some form or another that the fundamental pre-condition exists for freedom. Where the Church itself becomes the state freedom becomes lost. But also when the Church is done away with as a public and publicly relevant authority, then too freedom is extinguished, because there the state once again claims completely for itself the justification of morality; in the profane post-Christian world it does not admittedly do this in the form of sacral authority but as an ideological authority – that means that the state becomes the party, and since there can no longer be any other authority of the same rank it once again becomes total itself. The ideological state is totalitarian; it must become ideological if it is not balanced by a free but publicly recognized authority of conscience. When this kind of duality does not exist the totalitarian system in unavoidable.

“With this the fundamental task of the Church’s political stance, as I understand it, has been defined; its aim must be to maintain this balance of a dual system as the foundation of freedom. Hence the Church must make claims and demands on public law and cannot simply retreat into the private sphere. Hence it must also take care on the other hand that Church and State remain separated”[10]

[1] Javier Echevarria, Letter, November 28, 1995, #20.
[2] “And it seems to me,” he continued, `that this was the true intention of the Second Vatican Council, to go beyond an unfruitful and overly narrow apologetic to a true synthesis with the positive elements of modernity, but at the same time, let us say, to transform modernity, to heal it of its illnesses, by means of the light and strength of the faith.
“Because it was the Council Fathers’ intention to heal and transform modernity, and not simply to succumb to it or merge with it, the interpretations which interpret the Second Vatican Council in the sense of de-sacralization or profanation are erroneous;” (The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI, `Let God’s Light Shine Forth,’ ed. Robert Moynihan, Doubleday [2005] 34-35).
“(T)the man who cleanses his heart of every created thing and every evil desire will see the image of the divine nature in the beauty of his own soul. I believe the lesson summed up by the Word in that short sentence was this: You men have within you a desire to behold the supreme Good. Now when you are told that he majesty of God is exalted above the heavens, that his glory is inexpressible, his beauty indescribable, and his nature transcendent, do not despair because you cannot behold the object of your desire. If by a diligent life of virtue you wash away the film of dirt that covers your heart, then the divine beauty will shine forth in you….
“Those who look at the sun in a mirror, even if they do not look directly at the sky, see its radiance in the reflection just as truly as do those who look directly at the sun’s orb. It is the same, says the Lord, with you. Even though you are unable to contemplate and see the inaccessible light, you will find what you seek within yourself, provided you return to the beauty and grace of that image which was originally placed in you. For God is purity; he is free from sin and a stranger to all evil. If this can be said of you, then God will surely be within you. If your mind is untainted by any evil, free from sin, and purified from all stain, then indeed are you blessed, because your sight is keen and clear. Once purified, you see things that others cannot see. When the mists of sin no longer cloud the eye of your soul, you see that blessed vision clearly in the peace and purity of your own heart. That vision is nothing else than the holiness, the purity, the simplicity and all the other glorious reflections of God’s nature, through which God himself is seen;” Gregory of Nyssa, “De Beatitudinibus:” PG 44, 1270-1271; Second reading from Saturday of the 12th Week in Ordinary Time.
[4] “God in Karol Wojtyla is not only thought but also experienced. The pope expressly opposes the limitation of the concept of experience which occurred in Empiricism; he points out that the form of experience elaborated in the natural sciences is not the only kind, but that there are also other forms which are no less real and important: moral experience, human experience, religious experience (34). But this experience is, of course, also reflected upon and verified in its rational content.” J. Ratzinger, “God in Pope John Paul II’s Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” Communio 22 (Spring, 1995) 110.
[5] J. Ratzinger, “Faith in the Future,” Franciscan Herald Press (1971) 50.
[6] J. Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977 Ignatius 107-109.
[7] J. Ratzinger, “Behold the Pierced One,” Ignatius (1986) Thesis 3.
[8] This identity of theological and political consciousness was conceptualized by Leo XIII when he placed “the whole man in his concrete and historical reality at the center of the whole social order in its two components, Church and state, whose dualism corresponds to the dualism in man himself and whose orderly relationship is the exigence of the unity of human personality… In the developed conditions of modern political society they are not the medieval sacerdotium and imperium, nor yet the Throne and Altar of the confessional state. The are sacerdotium and civis idem et christianus;” John Courtney Murray, S.J., “Contemporary Orientations of Catholic Thought on Church and State in the Light of History,” Theological Studies, Vol. X, June 1949, no. 2, 220.

[9] “The essential problem of our times, for Europe and for the world, is that although the fallacy of the Communist economy has been recognized, its moral and religious fallacy has not been addressed. The unresolved issue of Marxism lives on: the crumbling of man’s original uncertainties about God, himself, and the universe. The decline of a moral conscience grounded in absolute values is still our problem, and left untreated, it can lead to the self-destruction of the European conscience, which we must begin to consider as a real danger – above and beyond the decline predicted by Spengler;” Benedict XVI, “Europe and Its Discontents,” First Things, January 2006, 20.
[10] Joseph Ratzinger, “Theology and the Church’s Political Stance,” Church, Ecumenism and Politics, Crossroad (1987) 162-163.