Holy Thursday 2009

Perhaps the best way to approach today’s feast is to permit ourselves to be amazed at the reality of the Creator of the universe becoming man and living His divinity in a human way: “He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.”[1]

And then, conversely, to consider that the concrete humanity of Jesus of Nazareth is being lived out in a divine way. And that divine way is shown by Christ’s washing the feet of the apostles telling them: “You call me Master and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If, therefore, I the Lord and Master have washed your feet, you also ought to wash the feet of one another. For I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you also should do….Blessed shall you be if you do them” (Jn. 13, 13-18). And then, after making the startling and unfathomable announcement that “As the Father has loved me (which is the very reality of the Father as eternal dynamic engendering the Son), I also have loved you”(as a God-engendering act toward us). As divinized sons, He gives them the New Commandment: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love than this no one has that one lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do the things I command you… I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and have appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain” (Jn. 15, 13-16).

What is astounding in this is that it is a divine way of acting and being, and the acting precedes the being. We will become “other Christs” in act if we will exercise ourselves in this way. This is the meaning of ordinary Christian life. It is a divinized life. It is completely secular as free and autonomous (read: “theonomous” since we cannot live this without sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist; “without Me you can do nothing” [Jn. 15, 6]. The reality is not that I am here and Christ is there, and that He helps me. The reality is that I am in Him, and He is in me, but in such a way that I “am” Him. And this means that His way of being is completely and totally relational as Person. Whereas I am in myself and progressively become relational by choices of self-giving in the exercise of in-the-world-work, He is pure and total relation to the Father. That is why He reveals who He is radically when He takes our humanity to death on the Cross so that there is nothing more to give.

And it is this divine way of being in relation that is invisible in the secular world. It is Love, and it is invisible to the senses: “Go and tell John what 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). In fact, Love can be seen in the deeds when the observer is a loving heart that is “like” the reality that is sensibly observed. Like is known by like. Only lovers can see the God Who is Love present in the world right in front of their eyes; which again is the reality of the Kingdom of God present before their eyes in present time and space. Judas Iscariot watched Christ wash the feet of the apostles, and had his own feet washed by Christ, whereupon he went out to betray Him (cf. Jn. 13, 30). The divine Person of Jesus Christ is the Kingdom of God that is not to come eschatologically at the end of time, but is present right now: “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons then the Kingdom of God has come upon you” (Lk. 11, 20). As Jesus Christ is complete man and divine Person, He is present in the world, while always transcending the world as divine.

God feeds us with His humanity so that we can live in the mode and rhythm of His divinity. Hence, today’s feast. There was no paschal lamb at the Last Supper because Christ Himself is that lamb Whom we eat. This is the flesh of the divine Person Who is the “nuclear fission” that powers us to self-gifting: “In instituting [the Eucharist] he did not merely say: “This is my body”, “this is my blood”, but went on to add: “which is given for you”, “which is poured out for you” (Lk 22:19-20). Jesus did not simply state that what he was giving them to eat and drink was his body and his blood; he also expressed its sacrificial meaning and made sacramentally present his sacrifice which would soon be offered on the Cross for the salvation of all. “The Mass is at the same time, and inseparably, the sacrificial memorial in which the sacrifice of the Cross is perpetuated and the sacred banquet of communion with the Lord's body and blood.”[2]

New Heart:

What could the above mean except that we are called to live with a “new heart,” for which we need a “heart transplant.” Cardinal Suenens wrote: “Thus a transformation must come about, and this is the concrete translation of devotion to the Sacred Heart: we need a sort of heart transplant. It would be interesting to follow up the analogy of the surgical operation and to love God with a new heart, not with this heart of stone (for the heart of Christians is very hard!)… This is a great sin of hardness ofheart. We must plunge into the Lord’s Heart, in respondse to the prophecy: ‘I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh’ (Exek. 11, 19), a heart that is alive to all the wretchedness of mankind an dis close to men and is partiouclarly oattentive to what Leon Bloy called ‘the crime of non-love’ through forgetfulness…

So truly, O Holy Spirit,give us a new heart! A new heart to love; and I believe that this is the essential phrase – we must love God and men with the very love of God, and not only for the love of God. We are invited to this, to this transformation of heart which the Holy Spirit alone can bring about. ‘God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’ (Rom 5, 5).”[3]




[1] Gaudium et Spes #22.
[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1382.

[3] Leo Joseph Suenens, “Loving Through the Power of the Holy Spirit,” Towards a Civilization of Love Ignatius (1985) 92-93.

The Mommy Wars: Dr. Laura Schlessinger on Stay-at-Home Moms

Love her or hate her, Dr. Laura Schlessinger knows how to command an audience. Her radio show is heard on over 250 stations internationally, and she's authored 10 best-selling books. This week, she releases her 16th book, "In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms," in which she unapologetically urges mothers to remain at home instead of juggle a career and motherhood. Dr. Schlessinger, 62, recently spoke to The Wall Street Journal for a telephone interview.

The Wall Street Journal: When did you get the idea to write about this topic?

Dr. Schlessinger: Probably about 25 years ago. I'm very open about this issue because I've been on both sides of this choice. For a long time, I was a career woman and that was it. I didn't want to have a baby. But I kept feeling as if something was not there. Then one day, I was watching PBS Nova, and a one-hour program they showed on the creation of a life. I just broke down. At that time, I was 35 and had already had my tubes tied. But in that moment, I realized what was missing: this womanly part of me. So I got married, struggled a bit to get pregnant and finally made it happen after a surgery. The feeling of your baby taking nourishment from your body for the first time is amazing, and it remains the most touching moment of my life. So that was the genesis of the book -- my transition into motherhood.

WSJ: You're very insistent that mothers should stay at home as full-time moms for the sake of the child. But given our current economic crisis, is that feasible for couples who may require two salaries to make ends meet?

Dr. Schlessinger: Of course this is a huge concern right now with money issues being so tight. But what I have discerned is that people of modest means have been able to handle what's going on far better than people who are used to having a lot of stuff; it's the people who put their life's worth into products, and not people, that are probably the most shell-shocked.

One thing I've been happy as peach pie about -- because I'm all about the children and the happiness of a woman because that makes the happiness of the home -- is that nannies, day cares and babysitters are all collapsing, which is forcing moms and dads to raise their children at home. I've gotten a huge surge of mail and calls from people who didn't make the choice to be at home with their kids, but are just now realizing how wonderful and beautiful it can be. A home should be more than just a place to park yourself after a frenzied day of too much work. So even though there's less cash, people seem to be happier.

WSJ: What do you tell women who are hesitant to leave their jobs?

Dr. Schlessinger: You know how when you try to quit smoking you chew gum? You replace one thing with another because it distracts you. What I would tell these women is that they're spending too much time thinking about what they have to give up, and feeling angry about not being valued. Look at me -- I made the transition from being a powerhouse to being at home, folding laundry. What they need to do is find value elsewhere. I tell these women to look in their children's eyes. When your husband comes home, wrap your body around him at the door and look at his eyes. What people need to learn is that it's not about the drudgery of housework -- it's about being at home for all of those incredible moments that make your life more valuable than the person who replaced you at work. No one can replace mom. Kids who don't have moms suffer a lifetime.

“I have been attacked incessantly for supposed hypocrisy concerning this issue of child care; I couldn't possibly have done all the things required of my career without neglecting my son. Well, those critics are just plain wrong”

WSJ: What questions should working mothers ask themselves when deciding whether to quit their jobs and become stay-at-home mothers?

Dr. Schlessinger: The nut questions should be: Do I feel fulfilled as a woman? Do I feel like my husband's girlfriend? Do I feel like I have touched the soul of my kids? Those will help you decide.

WSJ: Where do stay-at-home dads fit into the picture?

Dr. Schlessinger: I recommend that during the first three years, the mom should be at home because all of the research shows that the person whose body you come out of and whose breast you suck at, at that stage, really needs to be the mom -- unless she's incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial. After that, flip a coin.

WSJ: At what point do you advise mothers to go back to work?

Dr. Schlessinger: The answer is never. One woman asked me the other day when I think mothers should be home, and I told her, "Whenever your kid is at home." When [my son] Deryk started kindergarten, it was from 8 to 3. So I arranged to be on the air from 11 to 2. That was it. He always had a mom. Quite frankly, my mom was one of the least warm mommies out there. Nonetheless, when I came home from school, she was always there and it made me feel safe.

WSJ: What about the women who can't choose their hours?

Dr. Schlessinger: Well, everyone's capable of it. For everything in life, you have to make a priority list. This must be done. If we truly believe in something and cherish it, we find a way to make it happen. Women go from making seven-figure salaries to staying at home, and things just start to be less important. I remember once our house burned down, and another time there was an earthquake in L.A. and I'll tell you, this family [of mine] never had so much fun. My kid was still little so we played "Sorry" and card games and laughed and giggled and told stories -- none of which costs money. Families across the nation are starting to discover that it's the smallest things in life that make you smile. You don't have to work 9 to 7. If your priority is to raise your child, it's not just a matter of making sure they don't get killed or have food to eat. The question is, "Do you want them to learn what's moral and of value from your perspective?"

WSJ: Do you think it's possible for a working mother to raise a smart, successful child?

Dr. Schlessinger: I didn't write this book about working moms. I wrote it in praise of stay-at-home moms. It's a wonderful choice, but to be absolutely truthful, having been on both sides of this mentality, my heart hurts for what these women miss and what their children miss from them. No argument, no criticism. My heart just hurts -- because when you get those pudgy arms around your neck, and being told you're someone's lullaby -- the fact that a woman would miss that is so, so sad.

WSJ: At the end of your book, you provide a list of Web sites stay-at-home moms can consult for further insight and advice. How important is this part of stay-at-home motherhood these days?

Dr. Schlessinger: I think that social networking is something that all moms who made the choice to make a house into a home should engage in, so they can find other women with similar values, arrange play dates for their children and just generally support one another. There's a particularly wonderful group called Mom's Club that consists of women helping each other out and networking all over America. They also get involved with charity work, so it's not just women sitting around having cupcakes, whining about their day. The kind of thing I would not suggest is using the Internet to put out information about your family, which is kind of dangerous these days.

by Michelle Kung at michelle.kung@wsj.com

Comparison of Same-Sex union to Inter-Racial Marriage

In persons, equal is not the same as similar.

Whites and blacks are equal as persons, and are ontologically similar.

Males and females are equal as persons, but are ontologically dissimilar.

The ontological similarity of white and black persons is their constitution as persons with body, soul, intellect and will. Any dissimilarity is accidental as historical and sociological.

The ontological dissimilarity of male and female persons is their intrinsic constitution as relation. The male person is relational self-gift as donation. The female person is relational self-gift as reception. (Consider the respect for the revealed as well as the force of the rational argumentation for relationality below )


This constitutive dissimilarity between male and female persons is the fact that they are not reducible to equality as the mental category of “animal.” Human persons are not animals performatively from birth.

Aristotle defined man as a rational animal, and hence basically an animal, with the specific difference of rationality. Freud accepts the theory of Aristotle but “challenges the idea that man is solely a rational type of animal. Neurotic and psychotic behavior are irrational in nature, and all men have at least neurotic tendencies. When an individual fails to sublimate his instincts but represses them instead, to that extent he becomes irrational. This insight is one of Freud’s major contributions. But it did not occur to him that human irrationality might be a sign that man is not basically an animal and that the idea of man being an animal is a deep source of repression, and therefore a neurosis, in Western civilization. Freud did not think to question the supposed animality of man but remained locked in the grip of the ancient definition.”[1]

How interesting! Could it be that when we deal with man, Freud should have questioned not so much the “irrationality” of what he observed, but whether we were dealing with an animal at all. The Joyces most interestingly observe the behavior of the child to be that of a rational person who has to get his bearings of the environment before he launches out into locomotion, whereas an animal is all motion from the get-go without taking any intellectual bearings at all. They propose that the observable facts of daily life lead in a quite different direction than the animality of the human. They say: “If man is basically an animal then an animal is basically a vegetable, or a plant-substance with vegetative powers for growth and reproduction. But the fact that animals grow and reproduce in common with plants does not warrant the assertion that animals are basically vegetative things or that the energy for an animal’s behavior is a plant energy. An animal’s walking, crawling, running, climbing, flying, seeing, smelling, and other acts of sensing are not expressions of a plant energy but of a new energy. This new energy assimilates or draws into itself the energy of vegetative life.

“Due to this phenomenon of assimilation, the very things that animals have in common with plants – growth and reproduction – are basically different in animals than in plants. The animal is basically a sentient creature and not basically a vegetative creature. Ina similar way, man, though he has powers in common with animals, is not basically an animal. In man, still another new energy, a mind-energy, assimilates and transforms the energy of animal life.”[2]

In the light of that, could it be that “the human body is an unfolding, a self-revealing of the within” that is the human person, and that “sexual difference in the body is an expression of sexual difference in the depths of the person’s being,”[3] and that this is an irreducible dissimilarity which would be a grounding obstacle to such a confusion as same-sex “marriage.”


State of Affairs:

This week, by one vote, the Vermont legislature overrode the governor’s veto to impose same-sex marriage on that state. It’s a breakthrough of sorts for the gay-marriage movement: the first state to impose gay marriage through the legislature, rather than the courts.

But the Vermont same-sex marriage bill was a breakthrough in another way that has received zero attention in the press: For the very first time, a legislature has formally acknowledged that gay marriage poses a serious threat to the religious liberties of Vermonters who disagree with the government’s new definition of marriage; and the gay marriage movement has permitted — if not exactly trumpeted — that legislature’s enactment of some imperfect, yet substantive, religious-liberty protections, rather than the “fake religious liberty protections” generally offered to deflect voters’ attention from the real issues at stake.
Same-sex marriage is quite different from bans on interracial marriage in one powerful respect: It asks religious Americans to surrender a core belief — not only Leviticus (disapproval of gay sexual acts), but Genesis (the idea that God himself made man as male and female and commanded men and women to come together in a special way to image the fruitfulness of God).[4]





Historical Precedent on Ban of Interracial Marriage:

When then-17-year-old Mildred Jeter and her childhood sweetheart, Richard Loving, a 23-year-old white construction worker, drove 90 miles north to marry in the District. Pretty and slender, she was known by her nickname, "Bean," and she was already pregnant with the first of their three children.

Loving later said she didn't realize that it was illegal for a black woman and a white man to wed, although her husband might have. "I think he thought [if] we were married, they couldn't bother us," she said.

Nevertheless, when they returned to Central Point, Va., between Richmond and Spotsylvania, to set up their home, someone called the law.

Caroline County Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks rousted them from their bed at 2 a.m. in July 1958 and told them the District's marriage certificate was no good in Virginia. He took them to jail and charged them with unlawful cohabitation. They pleaded guilty, and Caroline County Circuit Court Judge Leon M. Bazile sentenced them to a year's imprisonment, to be suspended if they left the state for the next 25 years.

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix," Bazile ruled.

In Washington, D.C. five years later, while visiting her mother, they were arrested again for traveling together. Loving, who had been following the 1964 civil rights legislation, wrote a letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to find out if the new law would allow the couple to travel freely. The couple was referred to the American Civil Liberties Union and assigned an attorney, Bernard S. Cohen. "It was a terrible time in America," said Cohen, who was at Loving's home when she died. "Racism was ripe and this was the last de jure vestige of racism -- there was a lot of de facto racism, but this law was . . . the last on-the-books manifestation of slavery in America."

With fellow attorney Philip J. Hirschkop, Cohen took the case to the high court. Cohen said the couple didn't understand the importance of the case to anyone other than themselves. "When I told them I thought the case was going all the way to the Supreme Court, [Richard Loving's] jaw dropped. He didn't understand why I didn't go to Judge Bazile and tell him they loved each other and they should be allowed to live where they wished," said Cohen, now a retired state delegate from Alexandria.

Resolution: On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared:

"There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. . . . There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause."

There is no parallel in the reality of things between the suppression of the legal ban on interracial marriage and demanding, in the light of that, that there be a suppression of the ban on homosexual union, and calling it “marriage.” Besides, as Maggie Gallagher comments above: “It asks religious Americans to surrender a core belief — not only Leviticus (disapproval of gay sexual acts), but Genesis (the idea that God himself made man as male and female and commanded men and women to come together in a special way to image the fruitfulness of God).”[5]


[1] Mary Rosera Joyce and Robert E. Joyce, “New Dynamics in Sexual Love,” St. John’s University Press, Collegeville, Minn. (1970) 41.
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid 46.
[4] Maggie Gallagher, “Married to Liberty?” National Review Online, April 8, 2009.

[5] Ibid

Links to Articles on Notre Dame Scandal

http://www.catholicity.com/notredame.html

Theology of Incarnation - Theology of the Cross

The Prelate in his April 2009 letter copies Benedict XVI’s remarks at the general audience on November 5, 2008: “the theology of the Cross is not a theory; it is the reality of Christian life…. Christianity is not the easy road; it is, rather, a difficult climb, but one illumined by the light of Christ and by the great Hope that is born of him…. Only in this way, through the experience of suffering, can we know life in its profundity, in its beauty, in the great hope born from Christ crucified and risen again.”

The background to this remark is the pope’s explanation as to how the two great theologies – the theology of the Incarnation and the theology of the Cross – complement each other. At root, what he is explaining is the revealed meaning of the Being of the divine Persons as self-transcending: to be = to be in relation (esse = agere), and hence this is the meaning of the being of the human person as image of the Son: Man cannot find himself except by the sincere gift of himself.[1]

The “theology of Incarnation” is the deployment of Greek metaphysics in giving an account of Christian revelation. Hence, the Council of Nicea (325) is the metaphysical statement that “the Son is one in being (ousia) with the Father” (homo-ousios). The Council of Ephesus (431) is the affirmation that Christ, indeed, has two “natures,” the divine and the human; that He is truly and fully human and that Our Lady was the Mother of God. The Council of Chalcedon (451) ratified that there are, indeed, two natures in Christ but only one Person Who is divine. The Council of Constantinople III (680-681) preferred to speak of the human nature dynamically in terms of the human will, but that the protagonist of that dynamism is not the will but the divine Person. Hence, both the human and the divine will form one “Yes” that is the “Yes” of the Person.

Benedict comments: “Theology of the Cross, on the other hand, will have nothing to do with ontology of this kind; it speaks instead of the event; it follows the testimony of the early days, when people did not yet enquire about being but about the activity of God in the cross and resurrection, an activity which conquered death and pointed to Jesus as the Lord and as the hope of humanity. The differing tendencies of these two theologies result from their respective approaches. Theology of the incarnation tends towards a static, optimistic view. The sin of man appears quite easily as a transitional stage of fairly minor importance. The decisive factor is then not that man is in a state of sin and must be saved; the aim goes far beyond any such atonement for the past and lies in making progress towards the convergence of man and God. The theology of the cross, on the other hand, leads rather to a dynamic, topical, anti-world conception of Christianity, a conception which understands Christianity only as discontinuously but constantly appearing breach in the self-confidence and self-assurance of man and of his institutions, including the Church….

“Anyone at all familiar with these two great historical forms of Christian self-comprehension will certainly not be tempted to try his hand at a simplifying synthesis. The two fundamental structural forms of ‘incarnation’ and ‘cross’ theology, reveal polarities which cannot be surmounted and combined in a neat-looking synthesis without the losss of the crucial points in each; they must remain present as polarities which mutually correct each other and only by complementing each other point towards the whole. Nevertheless, our reflections may perhaps have given us a glimpse of that unity which makes these polarities possible and prevents them from falling apart as contradictions. For we have found that the being of Christ (‘incarnation’ theology!) is actualitas, stepping beyond and out of oneself, the exodus of departure from self; it is not a being that rests in itself, but the act of being sent, of being son, of serving. Conversely, this ‘doing’ is not just ‘dong’ but ‘being;’ it reaches down into the depths of being and coincides with it. This being is exodus, transformation. So at this point a properly understood theology of being and of the incarnation must pass over into the theology of the cross and become one with it; conversely, a theology of the cross that gives its full measure must pass over into the theology of the Son and of being.”[2]

In a word, the two Christologies resonate with each other as particle and wave resonate with each other in the “new” physics. The base is the revealed nature of Person in the Trinity as intrinsic and constitutive relation, who in turn appears in St. Paul’s theology of Christ as priest (mediating between Himself and the Father). He is presented as “priest of his own existence” (Escriva) which is prototypical for us as ministers and lay faithful. Christ makes the gift of His very Self to the Father for us. (See Hebrews 9-11). As Christian anthropology resonates between finding self by sincere gift of self (GS #24), so also the two theologies resonate between Incarnation (finding self) and Cross (sincere gift of self).

[1] Gaudium et Spes #24.
[2] J. Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius (1990) 171-172.

Fr. Dick Rieman: A priest gave a mission on suffering and death. Everyone was deeply affected emotionally - and visibly – except one woman up front who smiled through the entire sermon. After wards the priest asked her why she smiled through the whole of it and was visibly unaffected. She answered: “It’s not my parish.”

First Night:

Holiness: All Called

What is astounding: that God actually became man so that man could become God: “Et Verbum caro factum est” (Jn. 1, 14). He became sin (2 Cor. 5, 21); obeyed to death, “even to death on a Cross (Philippians 2, 8), and has risen as He said (Matt 28, 6) to divinize us: “When I am raised up from the earth, I will draw all to myself” (Jn. 12, 32). Therefore, “I live; no not I, Christ lives in me” (Gal 2, 20).

Christ Lives

St. Josemaria Escriva: “Christ is alive. He is not someone who has gone, someone who existed for a time and then passed on, leaving us a wonderful example and a great memory.

“No, Christ is alive. Jesus is the Emmanuel: God with us. His resurrection shows us that God does not abandon his own. He promised he would not: Can a woman forget her baby that is still unweaned, pity no longer the son she bore in her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you (Is. 49, 14-15). And he has kept his promise. His delight is still to be with the sons of men (Prov. 8, 31).”[1]



1) “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is coming, the Almighty’” (Apocalypse 1, 8)
“I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end!” (Apocalypse 22, 13).

2) “All things have been created through and unto him, and he is before all creatures, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1, 17-19).

3) “For all things are yours… and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3, 22-23).

4) “Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish in his sight in love. He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ as his sons according to the purpose of his will” (Ephesians 1, 4-5).


Christ Calls: To Peter and Andrew while fishing: “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Mt. 4, 18).
To James and John fishermen mending their nets: “Immediately, he called them” (Mark 1, 20)
To Matthew: “He saw a man named Matthew sitting in the tex-collector’s place, and said to him, ‘Follow me’” (Mt. 9, 9).

The Rich Young Man: "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me" (mark 10, 17).

The Danger: We reduce the supernatural vocation directed to each of us in Baptism to an external moralism and religious performances.

The risen Christ is God/man: “He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin” (Gaudium et Spes #22).

Therefore, we can deal with Him.

Prayer

Ruwanda: the Genocide: The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by Hutus under the Hutu Power ideology. Estimates: the number of victims of the genocide:1,174,000 in 100 days (10,000 murdered every day, 400 every hour, 7 every minute).
Immaculée Ilibagiza: “Left to Tell”
“I spotted Kananga, a young man I’d known since childhood…. I saw Philip, a young man who’d been too shy to look anyone in the eye, but who now seemed completely at home in this group of killers… I recognized dozens of Mataba’s most prominent citizens in the mob, all of whom were in a killing frenzy, ranting and screaming for Tutsi blood. The killers leading the group pushed their way into the pastor’s house, and suddenly the chanting was coming from all directions.
‘Find them, find them, kill them all!’
“My head was spinning; I fell backward onto the ladies. I couldn’t breathe. ‘Dear God, save us…’ I whispered but couldn’t remember the words to any of my prayers. A wave of despair washed over me and I was overwhelmed by fear.
“That’s when the devil first whispered in my ear. ‘Why are you calling on God? Look at all of them out there… hundreds of them looking for you. They are legion, and you are one. You can’t possibly survive – you won’t survive. They’re inside the house, and they’re moving through the rooms. They’re close, almost here. They’re going to find you, rape you, cut you, kill you!.’
“My heart was pounding. What was this voice? I squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as I could to resist the negative thoughts. I grasped the read and white rosary my father had given me, and silently prayed with all my might: “God, in the Bible You said that You can do anything for anybody. Well, I am one of those anybodies, and I need You to do something for me now. Please, God, blind the killers when they reach the pastor’s bedroom – don’t let them find the bathroom door, and don’t let them see us! You saved Daniel in the lions’ den, God. You stopped the lions from ripping him apart… stop these killers from ripping us apart, God! Save us, like You saved Daniel!
“I prayed more intensely than I’d every prayed before, but still the negative energy racked my spirit. The voice of doubt was in my ear again as surely as if Satan himself were sitting on my shoulder. I literally felt the fear pumping through my veins, and my blood was on fire. “You’re going to die, Immaculee!” the voice taunted. You compare yourself to Daniel? How conceited you are… Daniel was pure of heart and loved by God – he was a prophet, a saint! What are you? You are nothing… you deserve suffering and pain… You deserve to die!”
“I clutched my rosary as though it were a lifeline to God. IN my mind and heart I cried out to Him for help: “Yes, I am nothing, but You are forgiving. I am human and I am weak, but please, God, giave me Your forgiveness. Forgive my trespasses… and please send these killers away before they find us!
“My temples poiunded. The dark voice was in my hdead, filling it with fearful, unspeakable images. “Dead bodies are everywhere. Mothers have seen their babies chopped in half, their fetuses ripped from their wombs… and you thnk you should be spared? Mothers prayed for God to spare their babies and He ignored them – why should He save you when innocent babies are being murdered? You are selfish, and you have no shame. Listen, Immaculee… do you hear them? The killers are outside your door – they’re here for you.”
“My head was burning, but I did hear the killers in the hall, screaming, “Kill them! Kill them all!”
“No! God love, I told the voice. He loves me and wouldn’t fill me with fear. He will not abandon me. He will not let me die cowering on a bathroom floor. He will not let me die in shame!
“I struggled to form an image of God in my mind, envisioning two pillars of brilliant white light burning brightly in front of me, like two giant legs. I wrapped my arms around the legs, like a frightened child clinging to its mother. I begged God to fill me with His light and strength, to case out the dark energy from my heart: “I’m holding on to Your legs, God, and I do not doubt that You can save me. I will not let go of You until You have sent the killers away.
The Struggle between, my prayers and the evil whispers that I was sure belonged to the devil raged in my mind. I never stopped praying… and the whispering never relented.
“In the evening, the pastor opened the door and found us all in a sort of trance. I was bathed in sweat, exhausted, clutching my rosary in both hands, and oblivious to my surroundings. I was still mouthing prayer after prayer while staring vacantly at the others. Therese was using one hand to cover her eyes and the other to hold her Bible firmly on top of her head. And young Beata was crouching on her knees, arms in front of her, hands clasped in prayer.

“The pastor called our names, but not one of us heard him. Finally, he shook us to awaken us from our stupor. I looked up at him, blinking, confused, and completely taken aback when he began laughing… “The killers left seven hours ago. I can’t believe you’re al still praying.”
“To me, those seven hours had passed in what seemed like a few minutes, yet I was utterly drained. In all my years of praying, I’d never focused so completely on God, or been so keenly aware of the presence of darkness. I’d seen evil in the eyes of the killers, and had felt evil…

* * * * * * * * *

“When the killers were out of earshot, my thoughts drifted away from God, and the negative energy rushed in. Yet whenever I prayed, I immediately felt His love around me, and the anxiety eased.
“So I resolved to pray during every waking moment, beginning as soon as my eyes opened at 4 or 5 a.m. My first prayer was always to thank God that the pastor’s home had been built so it could shelter us during the genocide. Then I thanked Him for having the architect design the house with an extra bathroom, and for prompting the pastor to buy a wardrobe of exactly the right dimensions to conceal our hiding place.
“After my warm-up devotions of thanks, I began praying my rosary. I prayed many different Catholic prayers on the red and white beads. Sometimes I prayed so intensely that I broke out in a sweat. Hours would pass… when I finished the rosary and my prayers, I’d take a ‘break’ to mediate on some of my favorite Bible passages.
“Because I felt that my faith was under attack, I spent hours contemplating two verses I’d memorized form Mark, which talked the powers of faith. First, there was this one: ‘Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them’ (Mark 11, 24)
“Then I would reflect on the other one: ‘For verily I say unto you, that whosever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever the saith” (Mark 11, 23)
Even a few minutes not spend in prayer or contemplation of God became an invitation for Satan to stab me with his double-edged knife of doubt and self-pity. Prayer became my armor, and I wrapped it tightly around my heart.”

* * * * * * * * *

“I sat stone-still on that dirty floor for hours on end, contemplating the urity of His energy while the force of His love flowed through me like a sacred river, cleansing my soul and easing my mind. Sometimes I felt as though I were floating above my body, cradled in God’s might palm, safe in His loving hand. IN my mind, I heard myself speaking in exotic languages I’d never heard before – I instinctively knew that I was praising God’s greatness and love.

“During my waking hours AI was in constant communication with God, praying and mediating for 15 to 20 hours every day. I even dreamed of Jesus and the Virgin Mary during the few hours I slept.

In the midst of the genocide, I’d found my salvation. I knew that’s my bond with God would transcend the bathroom, the war, and the holocaust… it was a bond I now knew would transcend life itself.
I lifted my heart to the Lord, and He filled it with His love and forgiveness. Being in that bathroom had become a blessing for which I’d be forever thankful. Even if my parents had perished in the bloodshed outside, I would never be an orphan. I’d been born again in the bathroom and was not the loving daughter of God, my Father.”[2]

St. Josemaria Escriva: “Towards Holiness”

“We started out with the simple and attractive vocal prayers that we learned as children, prayers we want never to abandon. Our prayer, which began so child-like and ingenuous, now opens out into a broad, smooth-flowing stream, for it follows the course of friendship with him who said: ‘I am the way.’
“Asceticism? Mysticism? It doesn’t matter what you call it. Either way, it is a gift of God’s mercy. If you try to mediate, Our Lord will not deny you his assistance. Faith and deeds of faith are what matter: deeds, because, as you have known from the beginning and as I told you clearly at the time, the Lord demands more from us each day. This is already contemplation and union. This is the way many Christians should live, each one forging ahead along his own spiritual path (there are countless paths) in the midst of the cares of the world, even though he may not even realize what is happening to him.
Such prayer and behavior do not take us away from our ordinary activities. In the midst of our noble human zeal they lead us to Our Lord. When men offer up all their cares and occupations to God they make the world divine.”

Concretely:

“What matters is not whether our mental prayer is beautiful, or whether it works, or whether it is enriched by deep thoughts and feelings, but whether it is persevering and faithful. Our first concern, if I may put that way, should be faithfulness in praying, not the quality of our prayer. The quality will come from fidelity. Time spent faithfully every day in mental prayer that is poor, arid, distracted, and relatively short is worth more, and will be infinitely more fruitful for our progress, than long, ardent spells of mental prayer from time to time, when circumstances make it easy. After that first decision to take the prayer life seriously, the first battle we must fight is the battle to be faithful to our times of mental prayer, come what may, according to a definite plan we have established. It is not an easy battle. Knowing how much is at stake, the devil wants at all costs to keep us from being faithful to mental prayer. He knows that a person who is faithful to mental prayer has escaped from him, or at least is sure of escaping in the end. HE therefore does everything he can to prevent us from being faithful.”[3]


[1] Josemaria Escriva “Christ’s Presence in Christians,” Christ is Passing By (Scepter) #102.
[2] “Left to Tell” 72-84; 107
[3] Jacques Philippe, “Time for God,” Scepter (2008) 16-17.

Palm Sunday 2009 @ Our Lady of Peace

1) CHRIST LIVES!! He was dead, and He rose.

2) The liturgical symbols make Palm Sunday a reality NOW.

3) Christ enters as King. But His Kingdom is not of this world. His kingship is love and humility. Hence, He enters on a donkey. And the palms of glorification are thrown down and trodden underfoot as images of ourselves who, like Christ, have "come not to be served, but to serve" (Matt. 20, 28). We must throw ourselves down to serve to become kings.

4) He also enters into the Temple that is overrun with "those who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold the doves. And he said to them, 'It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer'; but you have made it a den of thieves'" (Mt. 21 12-13). Could this have timely relevance?

4) Finally, Jesus said: "I have come down from heaven, not to do my own [human] will, but the will of Him who sent me" (Jn. 6, 38). The divine Person of the Son of God takes on the human will of Jesus of Nazareth as His own, loaded with all the disobedient sins of all men (2 Cor. 5, 21) and obeys to death "even to death on a Cross" (Phil. 2, 8).

What we are about to encounter in Holy Week is the finale of God taking the complete humanity of the man Jesus of Nazareth into His divine Person Who is Protagonist of every human action: "He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin" (Gaudium et spes #22).

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This week is a time of contemplation, reflection, reassessment of our lives, a time to give such a God our full attention, to let Him touch our lives with His grace. We hope this parish retreat will offer you such an opportunity. We will speak of the call to holiness as lay faithful in the middle of the world: "These world crises are crises of saints…" (TW 301), that is directed to each of you. We will address the means to fulfill that call - mental prayer, the sacraments, particularly the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. And since this vocation takes place in ordinary life and work, I hope to give emphasis to the care of small things. The format will be a homily delivered during night prayer and in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the altar.

Lastly, there will be priests available for confession during the service: Msgr Gusmer, Fr. Cirian from Holy Rosary Shrine; and myself afterwards.

UN Commission Ends with Delegations Saying No to Abortion

Kudos for Iran, Saint Lucia and the UN in general!



(NEW YORK – C-FAM) As the sun rose on the last day of negotiations at the Commission on Population and Development (CPD) at the United Nations (UN) today, delegations were still embroiled in a contentious debate over language concerning “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” which some radical NGOs and UN committees have interpreted and used to promote abortion. As UN member states came together at the closing meeting to adopt the document, delegations took the floor to define abortion out of the document.

Up until the eleventh hour, the contentious term “sexual and reproductive health and rights” remained in the draft document. Just prior to adoption, Iran took the floor to object to the phrase which has never before been included in any negotiated UN document. Iran stressed that the term remained problematic for a number of delegations and urged the Commission to revert back to previously agreed upon and carefully negotiated language from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Program of Action, which is understood not to create any right to abortion.

In an attempt to get consensus, the chairwoman from Mexico suspended the meeting and after twenty minutes, returned to the room and announced that Iran’s proposal would be accepted and that the term “sexual and reproductive health and rights” would be removed from the text. The document was then adopted by consensus.

Several delegations, however, went further and made statements to explicitly define abortion out of the CPD document and to reiterate that the document created no new rights. Comoros, Peru, Poland, Ireland, Chile, the Holy See, Malta, and Saint Lucia spoke out against the other remaining reproductive health-related terms such as “reproductive rights,” “reproductive health services” and “sexual and reproductive health” and emphasized that these could not be construed to “support, endorse or promote” abortion.

Malta’s ambassador stated that his delegation was finding it more difficult in accepting the resolutions of UN bodies like the CPD where there were consistent attempts to expand “reproductive health” to include abortion.

Saint Lucia made an explicit objection to the term “safe abortion” because the term could “give the impression that abortion was a procedure completely free of medical and psychological risks.” Saint Lucia also highlighted a provision in the CPD document which called on states where abortion was legal to “train and equip health service providers and should take such measures to ensure that such abortion is safe and accessible.” The Saint Lucian representative stressed that her delegation understood this provision did not impact the right of healthcare providers to refuse to perform or be complicit in abortions as a matter of conscience, stating, “Again, no new rights are created or acknowledged in this document, and the universal right to conscience can in no way be overridden or weakened.”

Only the representative of Norway expressed regret that the term “sexual and reproductive rights” was not accepted in the text, saying that his country had widespread access to abortion and virtually no negative effects on women.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Tolkien's Dark Lord at the UN;

Hobbit Alliance Brings Triumph of Hope

By Elizabeth LevROME, APRIL 9, 2009 (Zenit.org).-

It was an epic tale of triumph worthy of J.R.R. Tolkien. The events at the U.N. Population and Development Commission last week could have been taken straight out of his great trilogy "The Lord of the Rings."Last week, representatives from 47 countries gathered in New York for the annual meeting of the commission on population and development of the United Nations Economic and Social Council. In view of a world population projected to hit 9 billion in 2050, the commission reviews and assesses the Program of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development approved by the United Nations in 1994.Behind the optimistic façade of concern for the welfare of a burgeoning population, a darker, most sinister agenda loomed. A new language was insinuating itself amid the hopeful statements of the earlier U.N. documents. The main agenda item was "sexual and reproductive health and rights" -- the terminology under which many NGOs and U.N. committees promote abortion -- and the codification of a language that would open the door to an array of demands by homosexual activists.Like the one ring forged by Sauron in the depths of Mount Doom, this term revealed the master plan: "One Ring to rule them all" and to bring them into darkness. Changing the word 'ring' to 'agency,' the specter of the Dark Lord could be replaced by Planned Parenthood, one of the most active NGOs at the meeting.A prescient few saw the impending menace. Archbishop Celestino Migliore, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, noted that "one cannot help but get the impression that populations are seen as the hindrance to greater social and economic development." The prelate also warned that the commission "is giving priority to population control and getting the poor to accept these arrangements rather than primarily focusing upon its commitments to addressing education, basic health care, access to water, sanitation and employment."But the armies of darkness were strong and seemed invincible. China, Great Britain, Brazil, the Russian Federation, Spain and Germany could be expected to promote this language. The United States, under a new administration in thrall to the culture of death, would use all of its might to advance the reign of Planned Parenthood. All seemed lost.These international giants, the leaders in economy, development and technology, were certain that no obstacle remained to their plan.In the statement made by Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, the plan was revealed. She invoked the world financial crisis, and the subsequent difficulty in sustaining programs to improve the health and education of the world's poor. “The financial crisis was threatening to wipe out this hard-won progress." But her solution was to ensure that "greater attention is paid to population issues and more resources are devoted to women's empowerment and reproductive health, including maternal health care and family planning."Translating this to the common tongue, her proposal is to teach women that childbearing is dangerous and oppressive; therefore abortion is healthy and liberating. Even the Evil Lord of Mordor never tried to pass off his agenda of death and enslavement of the human race as something "positive" and "empowering."Obaid then reminded the commission that the Cairo conference had agreed that "every person has the right to sexual and reproductive health," and exhorted the commission "to keep the promise to ensure universal access to reproductive health by 2015."The great nations nodded and applauded, much like the ring wraiths whose will had long been bound to that of their wicked overlord. The culture of life braced itself to take another loss among the many it had already suffered.Then help came from an unexpected quarter. Iran took the floor and protested that the "right to sexual and reproductive health" could not be substituted with "sexual and reproductive health and rights."The Iranian delegate pointed out that this phrase had never been included in any negotiated U.N. document before and urged the commission to revert to previously agreed upon and carefully negotiated language from the original 1994 Program of Action, which is understood not to create any right to abortion.Immediately four Catholic countries -- Ireland, Peru, Chile and Poland -- picked up Iran's call to strike the wording. It was an unusual alliance, not unlike the dwarves and elves overcoming their differences to fight the common enemy.Although the Christian community and Iran find themselves opposed on many issues, it was a heartening vision to see the diverse nations cooperating in defense of alliance and dialogue through the culture of life.But as in Tolkien's great adventure of the fellowship of the nine, it was the smallest of all that saved the day. Like the four indomitable hobbits of Tolkien's epic, the Holy See (a tiny 104-acre state), Comoros (which I had to look up on Googlemaps -- it's in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar) Santa Lucia and Malta all joined the fellowship to break the stranglehold of the forces of evil.These four hobbit-like states, whose collective national products probably don't equal the operating budget for Planned Parenthood, spoke loudly and convincingly. Malta decried the consistent attempts by the commission to expand "reproductive health" to include abortion.The delegate from Santa Lucia saw to the heart of the proposed wording and stressed that her delegation understood that this provision did not threaten the right of health care providers to refuse to perform or be complicit in abortions as a matter of conscience.As Galadrial said to the wavering Frodo, "even the smallest person can change the course of the future."At the last moment at the close of the meeting, the ring of power was thrown back into the fires of Mount Doom from whence it came. "Sexual and reproductive health and rights" was struck from the text.In these days of imminent conscience coercion, massive government funding of abortion and other gloomy signs on the horizon, this little fellowship at the United Nations demonstrated what Tolkien's characters whisper during the darkest hours and Pope Benedict XVI exclaims from nation to nation: "There is still hope."

If God is All Good and All Powerful, Why Does He Permit Suffering?

Last Sunday (5th of Lent Year B), the Gospel (Jn. 12, 20-33), the gospel related that the Greeks wanted “to see Jesus.” The response of Christ was: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world, will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be.” There must be a mystical death whereby Christ enters into us, and we into Christ such that “I live; no not I, Christ lives in me” (Gal 2, 20). No suffering, no love, no seeing God = eternal life (Jn. 17, 3). Suffering, love and seeing/living.

************

“Where is God Now? … Where is He? He is here.”

For starters, let me quote from a piece by Thomas G. Weinandy, “Does God Suffer?”: “Jorgen Moltmann, in ‘The Crucified God,’ was the first to employ Elie Wiesel’s graphic and horrific story (which has subsequently appeared in over thirty books and articles) of a Jewish boy hung by the Nazis along with two men in the Camp at Buna (Moltmann wrongly places it in Auschwitz). It took half an hour for the youth to die and, as the men of the camp watched his torment, once asked: ‘Where is God now?’ Wiesel heard a voice within him answer: ‘Where is He? He is here. He is hanging there on the gallows.’ While Wiesel interpreted his inner voice as expressing what has now become disbelief in a loving and just God, Moltmann exploited the story to argue for a God who suffers in union with those who suffer. In the midst of the Holocaust and hundred of other contemporary occurrences of horrendous human suffering, this argument, often expressed with passionate sentiment and emotion, continues to win theological adherents. How can God be an immutable, impassible, idle, and indifferent bystander in the midst of such unspeakable suffering? If God is a loving and compassionate God, as He surely is, He must not only be aware of human suffering, but He must also Himself be an ‘active’ victim of such suffering. He, too, must suffer.”[1]

(Weinandy ends by trying to show the contrary: that God – as God – does not suffer, and cannot suffer, because if He did, He would not be God. To suffer implies a diminution in being and perfection. Hence, it is impossible from our standpoint and conceptual way of thinking that God be God and suffer. Weinandy will acquiesce that God suffers [as Christ on the Cross] in His humanity, but not in His divinity: “I have attempted briefly to argue that God is impassible and so does not suffer. In the Church’s most important public task of communicating the gospel, speaking of the God who does not suffer as we suffer may go against the cultural grain, but such is the God of Scripture and normative Christian tradition…”[2] The problem is that what Weinandy says is not true regarding the God Scripture and normative tradition. It is true only for the Greek metaphysics that is at the base of Weinandy’s and the neo-scholastic tradition.

My response to the question, Why suffering? Because God created us to have the same perfection that He is, that is Love. But God doesn’t Love. He is Love. His to be is the act of engendering the Son. He is not the Father as a Being-in-Himself and then acts to engender the Son. He is the act of engendering the Son. And the Son is the act of obeying and glorifying the Father.

As creatures, we are made of the same “stuff,” but have to achieve the act that the Divine Persons are. We are potential to what we must become. Hence, our “love” has to become His Love. And we achieve this by beginning to go out of ourselves, until it reaches the point of self-gift to death for another.

From the beginning, God gave us commands to begin to initiate the perfection of imaging Him as self-transcending. By going out of ourselves in obedience, we become “like” Him. However, the temptation of the demonic was to insinuate - not that God did not exist - but that He was holding something from us that we should have a “right” to, namely, the so-called fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The temptation was not to atheism, but to disobey the Original Covenant.

When we disobeyed, the very structure of our being as imaging God as relation was damaged. Because of sin, there was sickness (cholesterol/a-fib) and death. And suffering. Note that this is not the work of God, but the work of man as a nothingness that is introduced into the positive and beloved structure of creation. Suffering is our work as ontological disintegration of who we are as imaging a tri-relational God.

God becomes man, not to pay back an infinite debt that finite man committed against God, but to restore the ontological integrity of us as images. God became man from His own love for us.

As Ratzinger said, the opposite theological theory (from St. Anselm) has permeated the Catholic world, namely, that God became man to pay back an infinite debt to God by God Himself becoming man to pay it back. Ratzinger remarked:

“Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033-1109) had been concerned to deduce the work o Christ by a train of necessary reasons (rationibus necessaries) and thus to show irrefutably that this work had to happen in the precise way I which it in fact did. His argument may be roughly summarized like this: by man’s sin, which was aimed against God, the order of justice was infinitely damaged and God infinitely offended. Behind this is the idea that the measure of the offence is determined by the status of the offended party; if I offend a beggar the consequences are not the same as they would be if I offended a head of state. The importance of the offence varies according to the addressee. Since God is infinite the offence to him implicit in humanity’s sin is also infinitely important. The right thus damaged must be restored, because God is a God order and justice; indeed, he is justice itself. But the measure of the offence demands infinite reparation, which man is not capable of making. He can offend infinitely – his capacity extends that far – but he cannot produce an infinite reparation; what he, as a finite being, gives will always be only finite. His powers of destruction extend further than his capacity to reconstruct. Thus between all the reparations that man may attempt and the greatness of his guilt there remains an infinite gulf which he can never bridge. Any gesture of expiation can only demonstrate his powerlessness to close the infinite gulf which he himself opened up.
“Is order to be destroyed for ever, then, and man to remain eternally imprisoned in the abyss of his guilt? At this point Anselm hits on the figure of Christ. His answer runs thus: God himself removes the injustice; not (as he could) by a simple amnesty, which cannot after all overcome from inside what has happened, but by the infinite Being’s himself becoming man and then as a man – who thus belongs to the race of the offenders yet possesses the power, denied to man, of infinite reparation – making the required expiation. Thus the redemption takes place entirely through grace and at the same time entirely as restoration of the right. Anselm thought he had thereby given a compelling answer to the difficult question of `Cur Deus homo,’ the wherefore of the incarnation and the cross. His view has put a decisive stamp on the second millennium of Western Christendom, which takes it for granted that Christ had to die on the cross in order to make good the infinite offence which had been committed and in this way to restore the damaged order of things.
“Now it cannot be denied that this theory takes account of crucial biblical and human perceptions; anyone who studies it with a little patience will have no difficulty in seeing this. To that extent it will always command respect as an attempt to synthesize the individual elements in the biblical evidence in one great all0embracing system. Is not hard to see that in spite of all the philosophical and juridical terminology employed, the guiding thread remains that truth which the Bible expresses in the little word `For,’ in which it makes clear that we as men live not only directly from God but from one another, and in the last analysis from the One who lived for all. And who could fail to see that thus in the schematization of the `satisfaction’ theory the breath of the biblical idea of election remains clear, the idea that makes election not a privilege of the elected but the call to live for others? It is the call to that `For’ [to be Love which is to be Who God is] in which man confidently lets himself fall, ceases to cling to himself and ventures on the leap away from himself into the infinite, the leap through which alone he can come to himself. But even if all this is admitted it cannot be denied on the other hand that the perfectly logical divine-cum-human legal system erected by Anselm distorts the perspectives and with its rigid logic can make the image of God appear in a sinister light (my underline). We shall have to go into this in detail when we come to talk about the meaning of the cross. For the time being it will suffice to say that things immediately look different when, in place of the division of Jesus into work and person [my underline again – meaning that the Person of Jesus is Love], it becomes clear that with Jesus Christ it is not a question of a piece of work separate from himself, of a feat which God must demand because he himself is under and an obligation to the concept of order; that with him it is not a question… of having, but of being human. And how different things look further on when one picks up the Pauline key, which teaches us to understand Christ as the `last man (’έσχατος Άδάμ: 1 Cor. 15, 45) - the final man, who takes man into his future, which consists of his being not just man but one with God.”[3]

Love for Man as the Reason for the Cross

“What position is really occupied by the cross within faith in Jesus as the Christ… As we have already established, the universal Christian consciousness in this matter is extensively influenced by a much coarsened version of St. Anselm’s theology of atonement, the main lines of which we have considered in another context. To many Christians, and especially to those who only know the faith from a fair distance, it looks as if the cross is to be understood as part of a mechanism of injured and restored right. It is the form, so it seems, in which the infinitely offended righteousness of God was propitiated again by means of an infinite expiation. It thus appears to people as the expression of an attitude which insists on a precise balance between debit and credit; at the same time one gets the feeling that this balance is based on a fiction. One gives first secretly with the left hand what one takes back again ceremonially with the right. The `infinite expiation’ on which God seems to insist thus moves into a doubly sinister light. Many devotional texts actually force one to think that Christian faith in the cross visualizes a God whose unrelenting righteousness demanded a human sacrifice, the sacrifice of his own Son, sinister wrath makes the message of love incredible.

“This picture is as false as it is widespread [my emphasis]. In the Bible the cross does not appear as part of a mechanism of injured right; on the contrary, in the Bible the cross is quite the reverse: it is the expression of the radical nature of the love which gives itself completely, of the process in which one is what one does, and does what one is; it is the expression of a life that is completely being for others. To anyone who looks more closely, the scriptural theology of the cross represents a real revolution as compared with the notions of expiation and redemption entertained by non-Christian religions, though it certainly cannot be denied that in the later Christian consciousness this revolution was largely neutralized and its whole scope seldom recognized. In other world religions expiation usually means the restoration of the damaged relationship with God by means of expiatory actions on the part of men. Almost all religions center round the problem of expiation; they arise out of man’s knowledge of his guilt before God and signify the attempt to remove this feeling of guilt, to surmount the guilt through conciliatory actions offered up to God. The expiatory activity by which men hope to conciliate the divinity and to pout him in a gracious mood stands at the heart of the history of religion.

“In the New Testament the situation is almost completely reversed. It is not man who goes to God with a compensatory gift, but God who comes to man, in order to give to him. He restores disturbed right on the initiative of his own power to love, by making unjust man just again, the dead living again, through his own creative mercy. His righteousness to grace; it is active righteousness, which sets crooked man right, that is, bends him straight, makes him right. Here we stand before the twist which Christianity put into the history of religion. The New Testament does not say that men conciliate God, as we really ought to expect, since after all it is they who have failed, not God. It says on the contrary that `God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Cor. 5, 19). This is truly something new, something unheard of – the starting-point of Christian existence and the center of New Testament theology of the cross: God does not wait until the guilty come to be reconciled; he goes to meet them and reconciles them. Here we can see the true direction of the incarnation, of the cross.

“Accordingly, in the New Testament the cross appears primarily as a movement from above to below. It does not stand there as the work of expiation which mankind offers to the wrathful God, but as the expression of that foolish love of God’s which gives itself away to the point of humiliation in order thus to save man; it is his approach to us, not the other way about. With this twist in the idea of expiation, and thus in the whole axis of religion, worship too, man’s whole existence, acquires in Christianity a new direction. Worship follows in Christianity first of all in thankful acceptance of the divine deed of salvation. The essential form of Christian worship is therefore rightly called `Eucharistia,’ thanksgiving. In this form of worship human achievements are not placed before God; on the contrary, it consists in man’s letting himself be endowed with gifts; we do not glorify God by supposedly giving to him out of our resources – as if they were not his already! – but by letting ourselves be endowed with his own gifts and thus recognizing him as the only Lord. We worship him by dropping the fiction of a realm in which we could face him as independent business partners, whereas in truth we can only exist at all in him and from him. Christian sacrifice does not consist in a giving of what God would to have without us but in our becoming totally receptive and letting ourselves be completely taken over by him. Letting God act on us – that is Christian sacrifice.”[4]


Me:

Therefore, God becomes man, enters our condition of suffering and uses it to re-create us into becoming relations again. He connects suffering and love in Himself and therefore gives it a new meaning.

Since suffering is an experience of the “I” of the person, the harshness of it is always involves a consciousness of self. Since Christ took on that suffering as Love (He identified the two in Himself), that harshness can be the call to love as self-gift. Hence, suffering can rebuild mere love (as good feelings “for,” on the human level) to Love (as self-gift even to death on the divine level).

Does God Suffer as God?

The question again imposes itself on us. Did Christ suffer as God or as man? Weinandy and the neo-scholastic tradition say, “as man.” Ratzinger and the tradition of the Fathers of the Church [Origen] say “as God.” The deep reason for this second opinion is the experiential and philosophical underpinning that insists with St. Thomas that “actiones sunt suppositorum.” That is, only subjects, or person, experience. In a word, the will as an abstracted aspect of the person, does not will. It is the person who wills. As an aside, it must be said that the “parallelism” of the human and divine “natures” in Christ was overcome and rendered as “compenetration” in a single, personal “Yes” of obedience of Christ to the Father on the Cross by the understanding of St. Maximus the Confessor in the Third Council of Constantinople in 680-681. Ratzinger explains using the text of Jn. 6, 38: “I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” He says, “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 Jn. 6, 39, the Council proves the unity of the subject. In Jesus there are not two ‘I’s’ but only one. The Logos speaks of the will and human thought of Jesus using the ‘I.’ This has become his ‘I,’ has been assumed into his ‘I,’ because the human will has become fully one with the will of the Logos, and with it has become pure assent to the will of the Father.”[5]

To the question, why, if God is all good (Goodness itself) and all powerful, why does He permit suffering? The answer: to bring forth love and, with it, to restore being and Life to man. Suffer for and with love for God and others in the ordinary things of life, and you will bring Life to yourself and to the others. In his last book, John Paul II wrote: “The suffering of the Crucified God is not just one form of suffering alongside others, not just another more or less painful ordeal: it is an unequaled suffering. In sacrificing himself for us all, Christ gave a new meaning to suffering, opening up a new dimension, a new order: the order of love. It is true that suffering entered human history with original sin. Sin is that ‘sting’ (cf. 1 Cor. 15, 55-56) which inflicts pain, wounding man mortally. Yet the passion of Christ on the Cross gave a radically new meaning to suffering, transforming it from within. It introduced into human history, which is the history of sin, a blameless suffering accepted purely for love. This suffering opens the door to the hope of liberation, hope for the definitive elimination of that ‘sting,’ which is tearing humanity apart. It is this suffering which burns and consumes evil with the flame of love and draws forth even from sin a great flowering of good.”[6]

Reason for Suffering Evil: “To awaken our love”

And then, John Paul II concluded explaining the reason for the suffering of the 20th century, and I suggest it as the reason of the suffering that is beginning to befall us in this economic and human debacle. He said: “All this evil is present in the world partly so as to awaken our love, our self-gift in generous and disinterested service to those visited by suffering. In the love that pours forth from the heart of Christ, we find hope for the future of the world. Christ has redeemed the world: ‘By his wounds we are healed’ (Is. 53. 5).”

Freedom: Christ Yearned To
Keep in mind the freedom with which Christ suffered. John Henry Newman said it marvelously: “He did not come to suffer as little as He could; He did not turn away His face from the suffering; He confronted it, or, as I may say, He breasted it, that every particular portion of it might make its due impression on Him. And as men are superior to brute animals, and are affected by pain more than they, by reason of the mind within them, which gives a substance to pain, such as it cannot have in the instance of brutes; so, in like manner, our Lord felt pain of the body, with an advertence and a consciousness, and therefore with a keenness and intensity, and with a unity of perception, which none of us can possibly fathom or compass, because His soul was so absolutely in His power, so simply free from the influence of distractions, so fully directed upon the pain, so utterly surrendered, so simply subjected to the suffering. And thus He may truly be said to have suffered the whole of His passion in every moment of it.

“Recollect that our Blessed Lord was in this respect different from us, that, though He was perfect man, yet there was a power in Him greater than His soul, which ruled His soul, for He was God. The soul of other men is subjected to its own wishes, feelings, impulses, passions, perturbations; His soul was subjected simply to His Eternal and Divine Personality. Nothing happened to His soul by chance, or on a sudden; He never was taken by surprise; nothing affected Him without His willing beforehand that it should affect Him. Never did He sorrow, or fear, or desire, or rejoice in spirit, but He first willed to be {330} sorrowful, or afraid, or desirous, or joyful. When we suffer, it is because outward agents and the uncontrollable emotions of our minds bring suffering upon us. We are brought under the discipline of pain involuntarily, we suffer from it more or less acutely according to accidental circumstances, we find our patience more or less tried by it according to our state of mind, and we do our best to provide alleviations or remedies of it. We cannot anticipate beforehand how much of it will come upon us, or how far we shall be able to sustain it; nor can we say afterwards why we have felt just what we have felt, or why we did not bear the suffering better. It was otherwise with our Lord. His Divine Person was not subject, could not be exposed, to the influence of His own human affections and feelings, except so far as He chose. I repeat, when He chose to fear, He feared; when He chose to be angry, He was angry; when He chose to grieve, He was grieved. He was not open to emotion, but He opened upon Himself voluntarily the impulse by which He was moved. Consequently, when He determined to suffer the pain of His vicarious passion, whatever He did, He did, as the Wise Man says, instanter, "earnestly," with His might; He did not do it by halves; He did not turn away His mind from the suffering as we do—(how should He, who came to suffer, who could not have suffered but of His own act?) no, He did not say and unsay, do and undo; He said and He did; He said, "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God; sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast Thou fitted to Me". He took a {331} body in order that He might suffer; He became man, that He might suffer as man; and when His hour was come, that hour of Satan and of darkness, the hour when sin was to pour its full malignity upon Him, it followed that He offered Himself wholly, a holocaust, a whole burnt-offering;—as the whole of His body, stretched out upon the Cross, so the whole of His soul, His whole advertence, His whole consciousness, a mind awake, a sense acute, a living cooperation, a present, absolute intention, not a virtual permission, not a heartless submission, this did He present to His tormentors. His passion was an action; He lived most energetically, while He lay languishing, fainting, and dying. Nor did He die, except by an act of the will; for He bowed His head, in command as well as in resignation, and said, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit;" He gave the word, He surrendered His soul, He did not lose it.”[7]

A New Heart: “We need a sort of heart transplant. It would be interesting to follow up this analogy of the surgical operation and to love God with a new heart, not with this heart of stone (for the heart of Christians is very hard!). When I look at the history of Christianity, I see that Christians have certainly fallen short as regards the heart. If I look at this whole history of wars, religious wars, wherever I open the history of the Church, it can be seen that our heart has been lacking! Surely, we are now suffering from all sorts of political and social unrest because we did not register at the right time the misery of mankind, the workers’ misery at that period, or the misery of the third world today. This is a great sin of harness of heart. We must plunge into the Lord’s Heart, in response to the prophecy: ‘I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh’ (Ezek. 11, 19), a heart that is alive to all the wretched ness of mankind and is close to men and is particularly attentive to what Leon Bloy called ‘the crime of non-love’ through forgetfulness. The Lord’s words, “I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me’ (Mk. 25, 43), are crucial.
“So, truly, O Holy Spirit, give us a new heart! A new hart to love, and I believe that this is the essential phrase – we must love God and men with the very love of God, and not only for the love of God. We are invited to this, to this transformation of heart which the Holy Spirit alone can bring about. ‘God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’ (Rom 5, 5).

“Thus there are, as it were, infinite perspectives that open up, since we are invited to love with the very love with which God love himself… so that… we may love with the very love of God, in other words, with the properties of God’s love.”[8]

Finally, I want to return to Ratzinger’s insistence that, indeed, God suffers as God in Christ for us: “The suffering of Christ, then, was the unshakeable fact; but there is no such thing as a Passion without the passions: suffering presupposes the ability to suffer, the sensibility and it feeling faculty. In the patristic period it was Origen who most profoundly grasped the theme of the suffering God, and who also most straightforwardly declared that this theme cannot be reduced to the suffering humanity of Jesus, but that it colors the Christian conception of God himself (underline mine). The fact that the Father allows the Son to suffer constitutes the Father’s own Passion, and this is also the suffering of the Spirit, of whom Paul says that he sighs in us and that, in us and for us, he bears the passion of our longing for the fullness of redemption (Rom 8, 26f). And it was also Origen, moreover, who formulated the normative hermeneutic on the theme of the suffering God: whenever you hear of God’s passions and sufferings, says Origen, you must always relate these to his love. God is a sufferer only because he is first a lover; the theme of the suffering God follows from the theme of the loving God and continually points to it. The decisive step that the Christian concept of God takes beyond that of the ancients is the realization that God is love.
Us
St. Josemaria Escriva: “We have to learn to disappear, to annihilate ourselves, to forget about ourselves. For the love of men, and for the love of God, we have to burn before God like lamps flickering before the altar, consuming themselves until they are completely spent. My children, if I am bringing you along more elevated ways, it is because they are guaranteed to lead somewhere. And I want you all to practice the penance of self-renunciation. We only succeed in being totally God’s when we forget about ourselves and learn to serve others. This way is indeed a divine way, because it is based on humility. And God rewards it.
“When the soul really becomes aware of all the limitations of the human condition and surrenders itself totally to God, that is when Our Lord stretches forth his all-powerful hand and gives it – he assures it – its vocation , its holiness, its heaven of love.
“For me, love seems to mean more than heaven. They’re really the same thing, but to me love sounds better, and I lay hold of God’s love with all my strength. My children, it’s worthwhile forgetting about ourselves and instead being truly concerned about others.”[9]


[1] Thomas G. Weinandy, “Does God Suffer?” First Things November 2001, 35.
[2] Ibid 41.
[3] J. Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” op. cit. 172-174.
[4] J. Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity” Ignatius (1990) 213-215.
[5] J. Ratzinger, “Journey to Easter ,” Crossroad (1987) 101-102.
[6] John Paul II, “Memory and Identity,” Rizzoli (2005) 167.
[7] John Henry Newman, Discourses to Mixed Congregations 16. “Mental Sufferings of Our Lord in His Passion.”
[8] Leo Joseph Suenens “Loving Through the Power of the Holy Spirit,” Towards a Civilization of Love Ignatius (1985) 92-93.
[9] St. Josemaria Escriva Meditation 16, February 1964.

Bill Clinton - "Fertilizing" Embryos

CNN Larry King - Stem Cells - Part 2 - March 11, 2009 - Bill Clinton

It is most startling to hear Bill Clinton repeat over and over the phrase “fertilize embryos” when he is clearly talking about fertilizing eggs. The difference is not simply semantic but ontological since in the case of eggs we are talking about the life of the mother as a part (and a most significant part), while in the case of embryos, we are talking about the life of a person who is the embryo. In the former, we are talking about contraception or in vitro fertilization; in the latter, we are talking about an already integrated and autonomous human being who is the consequence of fertilization and who is the subject of freedom and possessor of all human rights.

Embryonic stem cells would come from the destruction of embryos who are fully integrated human beings.They would have been "created" and "harvested" for the undifferentiated cells as body parts for use by others.

So as not to consider this nit-picking and exaggeration on my part, here's a link that works for the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmh9p1rlkQk

Concept and link: Courtesy of William Orchard