Revelation, the Person of Jesus Christ: “After God had spoken many times and in various ways through the prophets, ‘in these last days he has spoken t us by a son’ (Heb. 1, 1-2). For he sent his Son, the eternal Word who enlightens all men, to swell among men and to tell them about the inner life of God. Hence, Jesus Christ, sent as ‘a man among men, speaks the words of God’ (Jn. 3, 34), and accomplishes the saving work which the Father gave him to do. As a result, he himself…completed and perfected Revelation and confirmed it with divine guarantees. He did this by the total fact of his presence and self-manifestation… He revealed that God was with us…”[1]
The “Deposit:” “Sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church…
Interpretation: “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, ahs been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it…
“It is clear, therefore, that, in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred Tradition, sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others. Working together, each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.”[2]
Ratzinger on Conscience: An immanent ontological tendency in being of man as image of the Trinity:
“This means that the first so-called ontological level of the phenomenon conscience consists in the fact that something like an original memory of the good and true… has been implanted in us, that there is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine. From its origin, man’s being resonates with some things and clashes with others. This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the godlike constitution of our being is not a conceptually articulate knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is so to speak an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears its echo from within. He sees: That’s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.”[3]
The Maieutic Function of the Magisterium: John Henry Newman remarked: “Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into afterdinner toasts,… I shall drink – to the Pope, if you please, - still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.” Ratzinger remarks: “We can now appreciate Newman’s toast first to conscience and then to the pope. The pope cannot impose commandments on faithful Catholics because he wants to or finds it expedient. Such a modern, voluntaristic concept of authority can only distort the true theological meaning of the papacy. The true nature of the Petrine office has become so incomprehensible in the modern age no doubt because we only think of authority in terms which do not allow for bridges between subject and objects. Accordingly, everything which does not come from the subject is thought to be externally imposed. But the situation is really quite different according to the anthropology of conscience which we have tried to come to an appreciation of in these relations. The anamnesis instilled in our being needs, one might say, assistance from without so that it can become aware of itself. But this ‘from without’ is not something set in opposition to anamnesis but ordered to it. It has maieutic function, imposes nothing foreign, but brings to fruition what is proper to anamnesis, namely its interior openness to the truth….
“The true sense of teaching authority of the pope consists in his being the advocated of the Christian memory. The pope does not impose from without. Rather he elucidates the Christian memory and defends it. For this reason the toast to conscience indeed must precede the toast to the Pope because without conscience there would not be papacy. All power that the papacy has is power of conscience. It is service to the double memory upon which the faith is based and which again and again must be purified, expanded and defended against the destruction of memory which is threatened by a subjectivity forgetful of its own foundation as well as by the pressures of social and cultural conformity.”[4]
[1] Vatican II, Dei Verbum, #4.
[2]Ibid #10.
[3] J. Ratzinger, “Conscience and Truth,” Proceedings of the Tenth Bishops’ Workshop, Dallas, Texas (1991) 20.
[4] Ibid 22
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
"Name Day" of Alvaro del Portillo: 2/19/08
In 1958, as response to a query about Opus Dei, St. Josemaria Escriva simply said: “Opus Dei is a little bit of the Church.” The theologian Pedro Rodriguez remarked: “With that non-technical expression the founder doubtless meant to ignore the legal framework into which the Work was slotted at the time, in order to highlight better its essence as a ‘little bit of the Church.’ It struck me at the time (and still does) that he was pointing the way to understanding the ecclesiology of Opus Dei – getting to the very core of the question. To think and speak of Opus Dei soon sends us back to what the Church essentially is, to its saving riches. All that Opus Dei is, it is within the mystery of the Church. Consequently, to study Opus Dei on needs to have a good grasp of ecclesiology. The better we understand the Church, the better will we see how the ‘little bit’ fits in.”
What is the Church?
To fast forward to the ontological core of the Church, then-Cardinal Ratzinger remarked: “The Church is not an apparatus, nor a social institution, nor one social institution among many others. It is a person. It is a woman. It is a Mother. It is alive. A Marian understanding of the church is totally opposed to the concept of the Church as a bureaucracy or a simple organization. We cannot make the Church, we must be the Church. We are the Church, the Church is in us only to the extent that our faith more than action forges our being. Only by being Marian, can we become the Church. At its very beginning the Church was not made, but given birth. She existed in the soul of Mary from the moment she uttered her fiat. This is the most profound will of the Council: the Church should be awakened in our souls. Mary shows us the way.”[1]
Cardinal Ratzinger, in another place, pointed to the personal-sacramental character of the Church: “There are some very real grounds to fear that the Church may assume too many institutions of human law, which then become the armor of Saul making it difficult for the young David to walk. We must always ascertain if institutions which were once useful still serve a purpose. The only institutional element the Church needs is the one given to it by the Lord: the sacramental structure of the people of God, centered on the Eucharist.”[2]
The Church is a sacramental reality – again personal – of incorporation into Jesus Christ, Priest. The sacraments of Baptism and Orders. That means that the basic “structure” of the Church is the laity and the ministerial priesthood; or, since both sacraments are a participation in the one priesthood of Christ, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood.
What is Opus Dei?
That being so, it is illuminating to see that Opus Dei is this and only this, i.e. “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.” So, Opus Dei is nothing but this relationship between – that is a communio (the “communio” that is the Church) – laity and ministerial priests, who relate as Bridegroom to Bride or Christ as Head to His Body, the Church. In a word, the essence of Opus Dei is the same essence as the Church. It is not a case of holding an institutional position in the Church as “a little bit,” but as “a little bit” of the whole Church. Opus Dei is the communio of laity and priests; the Church is the communio of laity and priests.
The identity becomes starker when one considers what Benedict XVI has clarified concerning the Kingdom of God as a Person. The Church is not coextensive with the Kingdom of God but the space and the sacrament of the Kingdom of God – which is the Person of Christ. The Kingdom of God is incubated from within the Church. The Kingdom of God is a Person with the face and name of Jesus of Nazareth (Redemptoris. Missio, #18). The Kingdom of God as Person is not a structure in the world. But as the divine Person of the Logos Who has assumed the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth, He is in the world. He, as Kingdom, is among us.
Ratzinger will say that: “the Kingdom of God cannot be observed, yet, unobserved, it is among those to whom he is speaking. It stands among them – in his own person. ‘Jesus in person is the “mystery of the Kingdom, made over as gift to the disciples by God.”’ In him the future is present, God’s Kingdom at hand, but in such a way that a mere observer, concerned with recording symptoms or plotting the movements of the stars, might well overlook the fact… Let us remember that “God’s Kingdom is an event not a sphere. Jesus’ actions, words, sufferings break the power of that alienation which lies so heavily on human life. In liberating people, they establish God’s Kingdom. Jesus is that Kingdom since through him the Spirit of God acts in the world.”[3]
Now, notice the Content of the Founding of Opus Dei:
Escriva hears:
- August 7, 1931: Locution: “Et si exaltatus fuero a terra, omnia traham ad meipsum” (Ioann. 12, 32). “A voice, as always, perfect, clear:… And the precise concept: it is not in the sense in which Scripture says it; I say it to you in the sense that you put me at the summit of all human activities, so that in all the places of the world, there may be Christians with a personal and most free dedication, that they be other Christs.”
To say “Abba” from within oneself, one must be “another Christ.” Joachim Jeremias says: “No Jew would have dared to address God in this manner. Jesus did it always, in all his prayers which are handed down to us, with one single exception, the cry from the cross: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Mark 15, 34; Matt. 27, 46); here the term of address for God was prescribed by the fact that Jesus was quoting Ps. 22, 1. Jesus thus spoke with God as a child speaks with his father, simply, intimately, securely. But his invocation of God as abba is not to be understood merely psychologically, as a step toward growing apprehension of God. Rather we learn from Matt. 11, 27 that Jesus himself viewed this form of address for God as the heart of that revelation which had been granted him by the Father. In this term Abba the ultimate mystery of his mission and his authority is expressed. He, to whom the Father had granted full knowledge of God, has the messianic prerogative of addressing him with the familiar address of a son. This term abba is an ipsissima vox of Jesus and contains in nuce his message and his claim to have been sent from the Father.“The final point, and the most astonishing of all, however, has yet to be mentioned: in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus authorizes his disciples to repeat the word abba after him. He gives them a share in his sonship and empowers them, as his disciples, to speak with their heavenly Father in just such a familiar, trusting way as a child would with his father. Yes, he goes so far as to say that it is this new relationship which first opens the doors to God’s reign: ‘Truly, I say t you, unless you become like children again, you will not find entrance into the kingdom of God’ (Matt. 18, 3). Children can say ‘abba’! Only he who, through Jesus, lets himself be given the childlike trust which resides in the word abba finds his way into the kingdom of God.”[1]
Alvaro del Portillo
"(The Second Vatican Council) had assimilated and promulgated as common doctrine for all Christians the substantial lines of the charism of Opus Dei.”
What are those "substancial lines of the chasism of Opus Dei"?
1- the common priesthood of the faithful. LG #10.
2 - the universal call to sanctity. LG #39.
3 – unity of life
4 – professional work as occasion and means of personal sanctity and apostolate. LG #31.
5 – secularity as specific characteristic of the lay apostolate and the sharing of the lay faithful in the mission of the Church
6 –recognition of the personal freedom of the Christian in temporal questions
7 – Holy Mass as “center and root” of interior life
8 – configuration of the special dioceses or personal Prelatures for specific pastoral and apostolic activities.
What About Vatican II?
(1985) “I believe… that the true time of Vatican II has not yet come, that its authentic reception has not yet begun: its documents were quickly buried under a pile of superficial or frankly inexact publications. The reading of the letter of the documents will enable us to discover their true spirit. If thus rediscovered in their truth, those great texts will make it possible for us to understand just what happened and to react with a new vigor. I repeat: the Catholic who clearly and, consequently, painfully perceives the damage that has been wrought in his Church by the misinterpretations of Vatican II must find the possibility of revival in Vatican II itself. The Council is his, it does not belong to those who want to continue along a road whose results have been catastrophic. It does not belong to those, who, not by chance, don’t know just what to make of Vatican II, which they look upon as a ‘fossil of the clerical era.’” (The Ratzinger Report, Ignatius [1985] 40)
The Resolution
Vataican II is intelligible only to one who already lives it. Therefore, practice the spirit of Opus Dei and read the Council Documents – especially Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes and Dei Verbum. Communicate this to as many people as possible: The Kingdom of God is immanent and transcendent as the Person of Christ is immanent by His Humanity, and transcendent by His Person. Be Another Christ! You are that Kingdom insofar as you are "another Christ." This (you) is the coming of the Kingdom of God in time and space. Implement it by living the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by work in the street.
[1] J. Ratzinger, “The Ecclesiology of Vatican II,” L’Osservatore Romano N. 4 -23 January 2002, 7.
[2] J. Ratzinger, 30 Days, No. 5 – 1998, p. 22.
[3] J. Ratzinger, “Eschatology,” CUA (1988) 34-35.
Guardini on Christ in Our Century by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
The Introduction to the recent edition (2002) edition of "The Lord"
"Romano Guardini's book The Lord has helped more than one generation of Christians enter into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. When the book first appeared, it offered a new approach to the spiritual interpretation of Scripture for which young people in particular longed; a longing, I might add, which is being felt again in our own day.
"The First World War was everywhere experienced as the collapse of the liberal dream of ever-advancing progress engendered by reason alone. This crisis of liberalism had great consequences for the Church and theology. Every "rational Christianity" which the liberal theologians had managed to develop was affected by it. Liberal biblical interpretation, or exegesis, had actually prepared the ground for this crisis by its attempt to discover behind the "veneer of dogma" the true "historical" Jesus. Naturally, by the liberals' way of thinking, the historical Jesus could be only a mere man. The liberals thought that everything supernatural, everything pertaining to the mystery of God that surrounded Jesus, was merely the embellishment and exaggeration of believers. Only with everything supernatural removed could the true figure of Jesus finally come to view! Already by the turn of the century, however, Albert Schweitzer had established that such an attempt would result only in contradictions: such a "sanitized" Jesus would not be an actual person, but the product of a historian.
"As a student, Romano Guardini had himself experienced the drama of liberalism and its collapse, and with a few friends he set out to find a new path for theology. What came to impress him in the course of this search was the experience of the liturgy as the place of encounter with Jesus. It is above all in the liturgy that Jesus is among us, here it is that he speaks to us, here he lives.
"Guardini recognized that the liturgy is the true, living environment for the Bible and that the Bible can be properly understood only in this living context within which it first emerged. The texts of the Bible, this great book of Christ, are not to be seen as the literary products of some scribes at their desks, but rather as the words of Christ himself delivered in the celebration of Holy Mass. The scriptural texts are thoroughly imbued with the awe of divine worship resulting from the believer's interior attentiveness to the living voice of the present Lord. In the preface to his book, Guardini himself tells us of the way in which these texts have arisen: "We can only reverently pause before this or that word or act, ready to learn, adore, obey." Guardini did not view his book as theology in the strict sense of the word, but more as a kind of proclamation or preaching. Nonetheless, he did not fail to take into account the theological significance of what he had to say. Throughout The Lord Guardini struggled to come to the correct understanding of Jesus: All attempts to "cleanse" the figure of Jesus of the supernatural result in contradictions and meaningless constructions. One simply cannot strip "the Wholly Other," the mysterious, the divine from this Individual. Without this element, the very Person of Jesus himself dissolves. There simply is no psychological portrait of Jesus which can render his different features comprehensible solely from a human perspective. Repeatedly the analysis of this man takes us into that realm which is incomprehensible, "an incomprehensibility, however, full of measureless promise." The figure and mission of Jesus are "forever beyond the reach of history's most powerful ray," because "their ultimate explanations are to be found only in that impenetrable territory which he calls ‘my Father's will.'"
Guardini spoke in a similar way in 1936 in a small but invaluable book entitled The Picture of Jesus the Christ in the New Testament, the result of his characteristically methodical reflections:
"It is from such a way of thinking that the meditations arose which together make up this book. For Guardini the first step is always attentive listening to the message of the scriptural text. In this way the real contribution of exegesis to an understanding of Jesus is fully acknowledged. But in this attentiveness to the text, the listener, according to Guardini's understanding, does not make himself to be master of the Word. Rather, the listener makes himself the believing disciple who allows himself to be led and enlightened by the Word. It is precisely by repudiating a closed, merely human logic that the greatness and uniqueness of this Person becomes apparent to us. It is precisely in this way that the prison of our prejudice is broken open; it is in this way that our eyes are slowly opened, and that we come to recognize what is truly human, since we have been touched by the very humanity of God himself.
"One of Guardini's favorite expressions was, "that which is truly real will arise from the rich, varied expansiveness of our existence, of our being fully Christian, and will lead us to the One who is truly real." As we are taught by Guardini, the essence of Christianity is not an idea, not a system of thought, not a plan of action. The essence of Christianity is a Person: Jesus Christ himself. (underline mine) That which is essential is the One who is essential. To become truly real means to come to know Jesus Christ and to learn from him what it means to be human. Our time is in many respects far different from that in which Romano Guardini lived and worked. But it is as true now as in his day that the peril of the Church, indeed of humanity, consists in bleaching out the image of Jesus Christ in an attempt to shape a Jesus according to our own standards, so that we do not follow him in obedient discipleship but rather recreate him in our own image (my underline)! Yet still in our own day, salvation consists only in our becoming "truly real." And we can do that only when we discover anew the true reality of Jesus Christ and through him discover the way of an upright and just life. Guardini's book The Lord has not grown old, precisely because it still leads us to that which is essential, to that which is truly real, Jesus Christ himself. That is why this book still has a great mission today. John Cardinal Ratzinger is prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Translated by John. M. Haas.
"Romano Guardini's book The Lord has helped more than one generation of Christians enter into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. When the book first appeared, it offered a new approach to the spiritual interpretation of Scripture for which young people in particular longed; a longing, I might add, which is being felt again in our own day.
"The First World War was everywhere experienced as the collapse of the liberal dream of ever-advancing progress engendered by reason alone. This crisis of liberalism had great consequences for the Church and theology. Every "rational Christianity" which the liberal theologians had managed to develop was affected by it. Liberal biblical interpretation, or exegesis, had actually prepared the ground for this crisis by its attempt to discover behind the "veneer of dogma" the true "historical" Jesus. Naturally, by the liberals' way of thinking, the historical Jesus could be only a mere man. The liberals thought that everything supernatural, everything pertaining to the mystery of God that surrounded Jesus, was merely the embellishment and exaggeration of believers. Only with everything supernatural removed could the true figure of Jesus finally come to view! Already by the turn of the century, however, Albert Schweitzer had established that such an attempt would result only in contradictions: such a "sanitized" Jesus would not be an actual person, but the product of a historian.
"As a student, Romano Guardini had himself experienced the drama of liberalism and its collapse, and with a few friends he set out to find a new path for theology. What came to impress him in the course of this search was the experience of the liturgy as the place of encounter with Jesus. It is above all in the liturgy that Jesus is among us, here it is that he speaks to us, here he lives.
"Guardini recognized that the liturgy is the true, living environment for the Bible and that the Bible can be properly understood only in this living context within which it first emerged. The texts of the Bible, this great book of Christ, are not to be seen as the literary products of some scribes at their desks, but rather as the words of Christ himself delivered in the celebration of Holy Mass. The scriptural texts are thoroughly imbued with the awe of divine worship resulting from the believer's interior attentiveness to the living voice of the present Lord. In the preface to his book, Guardini himself tells us of the way in which these texts have arisen: "We can only reverently pause before this or that word or act, ready to learn, adore, obey." Guardini did not view his book as theology in the strict sense of the word, but more as a kind of proclamation or preaching. Nonetheless, he did not fail to take into account the theological significance of what he had to say. Throughout The Lord Guardini struggled to come to the correct understanding of Jesus: All attempts to "cleanse" the figure of Jesus of the supernatural result in contradictions and meaningless constructions. One simply cannot strip "the Wholly Other," the mysterious, the divine from this Individual. Without this element, the very Person of Jesus himself dissolves. There simply is no psychological portrait of Jesus which can render his different features comprehensible solely from a human perspective. Repeatedly the analysis of this man takes us into that realm which is incomprehensible, "an incomprehensibility, however, full of measureless promise." The figure and mission of Jesus are "forever beyond the reach of history's most powerful ray," because "their ultimate explanations are to be found only in that impenetrable territory which he calls ‘my Father's will.'"
Guardini spoke in a similar way in 1936 in a small but invaluable book entitled The Picture of Jesus the Christ in the New Testament, the result of his characteristically methodical reflections:
"Perhaps we will not even succeed in arriving at a ‘person,' but rather only at a series of sketches which stretch out beyond our range of vision. Perhaps we will experience that the Ascension was not simply a unique occurrence in the life of Jesus, but rather above all, the manner in which He is given to us: as one vanishing into heaven, into the Unconditional which is God. However, if that is the case, then these bare sketches are most precious: They are sign-posts pointing us to the ‘stepping beyond' of faith; and insofar as they go beyond our vision, in fact, precisely because they go beyond our vision, they teach us to worship."
"It is from such a way of thinking that the meditations arose which together make up this book. For Guardini the first step is always attentive listening to the message of the scriptural text. In this way the real contribution of exegesis to an understanding of Jesus is fully acknowledged. But in this attentiveness to the text, the listener, according to Guardini's understanding, does not make himself to be master of the Word. Rather, the listener makes himself the believing disciple who allows himself to be led and enlightened by the Word. It is precisely by repudiating a closed, merely human logic that the greatness and uniqueness of this Person becomes apparent to us. It is precisely in this way that the prison of our prejudice is broken open; it is in this way that our eyes are slowly opened, and that we come to recognize what is truly human, since we have been touched by the very humanity of God himself.
"One of Guardini's favorite expressions was, "that which is truly real will arise from the rich, varied expansiveness of our existence, of our being fully Christian, and will lead us to the One who is truly real." As we are taught by Guardini, the essence of Christianity is not an idea, not a system of thought, not a plan of action. The essence of Christianity is a Person: Jesus Christ himself. (underline mine) That which is essential is the One who is essential. To become truly real means to come to know Jesus Christ and to learn from him what it means to be human. Our time is in many respects far different from that in which Romano Guardini lived and worked. But it is as true now as in his day that the peril of the Church, indeed of humanity, consists in bleaching out the image of Jesus Christ in an attempt to shape a Jesus according to our own standards, so that we do not follow him in obedient discipleship but rather recreate him in our own image (my underline)! Yet still in our own day, salvation consists only in our becoming "truly real." And we can do that only when we discover anew the true reality of Jesus Christ and through him discover the way of an upright and just life. Guardini's book The Lord has not grown old, precisely because it still leads us to that which is essential, to that which is truly real, Jesus Christ himself. That is why this book still has a great mission today. John Cardinal Ratzinger is prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Translated by John. M. Haas.
Benedict XVI on the Being of Man
ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVITO PARTICIPANTS IN AN INTERACADEMIC CONFERENCE ON "THE CHANGING IDENTITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL"ORGANIZED BY THE "ACADÉMIE DES SCIENCES" OF PARIS AND BY THE PONTIFICAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
Hall of PopesMonday, 28 January 2008
Mr Chancellors, Your Excellencies, Dear Academician Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I greet you with pleasure at the end of your Colloquium, which is concluding here in Rome after taking place at the Institut de France in Paris and has focused on the theme: "The changing identity of the individual". First of all, I thank Prince Gabriel de Broglie for the tribute with which he wished to introduce our meeting. I would also like to greet the members of all the institutions under whose aegis this Colloquium has been organized: the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, the Academy of Sciences and the Catholic Institute of Paris. I rejoice that it has been possible for the first time to establish an interacademic collaboration of this kind, paving the way to ever more rewarding and extensive multidisciplinary research.
Whereas the exact, natural and human sciences have progressed prodigiously in the knowledge of man and his universe, there is a strong temptation to seek to isolate the identity of the human being and to enclose this identity in the knowledge that can derive from it. In order to avoid moving in this direction it is important to support anthropological, philosophical and theological research which allows the appearance and preservation in man of his own mystery, for no science can say who man is, where he comes from or where he is going. Anthropology thus becomes the most vital science of all. This is what John Paul II said in his Encyclical Fides et Ratio: "We face a great challenge... to move from phenomenon to foundation, a step as necessary as it is urgent. We cannot stop short at experience alone; even if experience does reveal the human being's interiority and spirituality, speculative thinking must penetrate to the spiritual core and the ground from which it rises" (n. 83). Man is always more than what is seen or perceived of him through experience. Failing to ask questions about man's being would lead inevitably to refusing to seek the objective truth about being as a whole, and hence, to no longer be able to recognize the basis on which human dignity, the dignity of every person, rests from the embryonic stage to natural death.
During your Colloquium you have recognized that the sciences, philosophy and theology can be mutually helpful for perceiving the human identity which is constantly developing. Starting with questions on the new being derived from cellular fusion and who bears a new and specific genetic patrimony, you have brought to the fore some essential elements of the mystery of man, marked by otherness: a being created by God, a being in the image of God, a being who is loved and is made to love. As a human person, man is never closed in on himself; he is always a bearer of otherness and from the very first moment of his existence interacts with other human beings, as the human sciences increasingly bring to light. How is it possible not to recall here the marvellous meditation of the Psalmist on the human being, knit together in the secret of his mother's womb and at the same time known in his identity and mystery to God alone, who loves and protects him (cf. Ps 139[138]: 1-16)?
Man is neither the result of chance nor of a bundle of convergences nor of forms of determinism nor physio-chemical interaction; he is a being who enjoys freedom, which, while taking his nature into account, transcends it and symbolizes this mystery of otherness that dwells within him. It is in this perspective that the great thinker Pascal said: "Man is infinitely more than man". This freedom which is a distinctive feature of the being called man enables him to orient his life towards an end which he can direct with his actions toward the happiness to which he is called for eternity. This freedom reveals that human existence has meaning. In the exercise of his authentic freedom, the person fulfils his vocation; it is completed and gives shape to his profound identity. It is also by putting his freedom into practice that the person exercises his own responsibility for his actions. In this sense, the special dignity of the human being is both a gift of God and the promise of a future.
Man bears within himself a specific capacity for discerning what is good and right. Affixed in him as a seal by the Creator, synderesis urges him to do good. Impelled by it, the human being is required to develop his conscience by forming and using it in order to direct his life freely based on the essential laws which are natural law and moral law. In our day, when the development of the sciences attracts and seduces with the possibilities they offer, it is more important than ever to educate the consciences of our contemporaries in order to prevent science from becoming the criterion of good and to ensure that man is respected as the centre of creation and not made the object of ideological manipulation, arbitrary decisions or the abuse of the weaker by the stronger. These are some of the dangers we have experienced in human history, especially during the 20th century.
Every scientific approach must also be a loving approach, called to be at the service of the human being and of humanity and to make its contribution to forming the identity of individuals. Indeed, as I emphasized in the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est: "Love embraces the whole of existence in each of its dimensions, including the dimension of time.... Love is indeed "ecstasy'", that is, "a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery" (n. 6). Love brings one out of oneself in order to discover and recognize the other; in opening himself to otherness it also affirms the identity of the subject, for the other reveals me to myself. This is the experience made by numerous believers throughout the Bible, beginning with Abraham. The model of love par excellence is Christ. It is in the act of giving his life for his brethren, in giving himself totally, that his profound identity is expressed and we have the key to interpreting the unfathomable mystery of his being and his mission.
As I entrust your research to the intercession of St Thomas Aquinas, whom the Church honours today and who remains "an authentic model for all who seek the truth" (Fides et Ratio, n. 78), I assure you of my prayers for you, your families and your collaborators, and I impart to you all with affection the Apostolic Blessing.
Hall of PopesMonday, 28 January 2008
Mr Chancellors, Your Excellencies, Dear Academician Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I greet you with pleasure at the end of your Colloquium, which is concluding here in Rome after taking place at the Institut de France in Paris and has focused on the theme: "The changing identity of the individual". First of all, I thank Prince Gabriel de Broglie for the tribute with which he wished to introduce our meeting. I would also like to greet the members of all the institutions under whose aegis this Colloquium has been organized: the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, the Academy of Sciences and the Catholic Institute of Paris. I rejoice that it has been possible for the first time to establish an interacademic collaboration of this kind, paving the way to ever more rewarding and extensive multidisciplinary research.
Whereas the exact, natural and human sciences have progressed prodigiously in the knowledge of man and his universe, there is a strong temptation to seek to isolate the identity of the human being and to enclose this identity in the knowledge that can derive from it. In order to avoid moving in this direction it is important to support anthropological, philosophical and theological research which allows the appearance and preservation in man of his own mystery, for no science can say who man is, where he comes from or where he is going. Anthropology thus becomes the most vital science of all. This is what John Paul II said in his Encyclical Fides et Ratio: "We face a great challenge... to move from phenomenon to foundation, a step as necessary as it is urgent. We cannot stop short at experience alone; even if experience does reveal the human being's interiority and spirituality, speculative thinking must penetrate to the spiritual core and the ground from which it rises" (n. 83). Man is always more than what is seen or perceived of him through experience. Failing to ask questions about man's being would lead inevitably to refusing to seek the objective truth about being as a whole, and hence, to no longer be able to recognize the basis on which human dignity, the dignity of every person, rests from the embryonic stage to natural death.
During your Colloquium you have recognized that the sciences, philosophy and theology can be mutually helpful for perceiving the human identity which is constantly developing. Starting with questions on the new being derived from cellular fusion and who bears a new and specific genetic patrimony, you have brought to the fore some essential elements of the mystery of man, marked by otherness: a being created by God, a being in the image of God, a being who is loved and is made to love. As a human person, man is never closed in on himself; he is always a bearer of otherness and from the very first moment of his existence interacts with other human beings, as the human sciences increasingly bring to light. How is it possible not to recall here the marvellous meditation of the Psalmist on the human being, knit together in the secret of his mother's womb and at the same time known in his identity and mystery to God alone, who loves and protects him (cf. Ps 139[138]: 1-16)?
Man is neither the result of chance nor of a bundle of convergences nor of forms of determinism nor physio-chemical interaction; he is a being who enjoys freedom, which, while taking his nature into account, transcends it and symbolizes this mystery of otherness that dwells within him. It is in this perspective that the great thinker Pascal said: "Man is infinitely more than man". This freedom which is a distinctive feature of the being called man enables him to orient his life towards an end which he can direct with his actions toward the happiness to which he is called for eternity. This freedom reveals that human existence has meaning. In the exercise of his authentic freedom, the person fulfils his vocation; it is completed and gives shape to his profound identity. It is also by putting his freedom into practice that the person exercises his own responsibility for his actions. In this sense, the special dignity of the human being is both a gift of God and the promise of a future.
Man bears within himself a specific capacity for discerning what is good and right. Affixed in him as a seal by the Creator, synderesis urges him to do good. Impelled by it, the human being is required to develop his conscience by forming and using it in order to direct his life freely based on the essential laws which are natural law and moral law. In our day, when the development of the sciences attracts and seduces with the possibilities they offer, it is more important than ever to educate the consciences of our contemporaries in order to prevent science from becoming the criterion of good and to ensure that man is respected as the centre of creation and not made the object of ideological manipulation, arbitrary decisions or the abuse of the weaker by the stronger. These are some of the dangers we have experienced in human history, especially during the 20th century.
Every scientific approach must also be a loving approach, called to be at the service of the human being and of humanity and to make its contribution to forming the identity of individuals. Indeed, as I emphasized in the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est: "Love embraces the whole of existence in each of its dimensions, including the dimension of time.... Love is indeed "ecstasy'", that is, "a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery" (n. 6). Love brings one out of oneself in order to discover and recognize the other; in opening himself to otherness it also affirms the identity of the subject, for the other reveals me to myself. This is the experience made by numerous believers throughout the Bible, beginning with Abraham. The model of love par excellence is Christ. It is in the act of giving his life for his brethren, in giving himself totally, that his profound identity is expressed and we have the key to interpreting the unfathomable mystery of his being and his mission.
As I entrust your research to the intercession of St Thomas Aquinas, whom the Church honours today and who remains "an authentic model for all who seek the truth" (Fides et Ratio, n. 78), I assure you of my prayers for you, your families and your collaborators, and I impart to you all with affection the Apostolic Blessing.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
History as Metaphysics
The Last Things: The “Eschaton:”
Death (Fear), Judgment (Guilt), Heaven (Ecstasy), Hell (Depression)
Salvation History and Eschatology
The essence of Christianity is not a concept but a Person. That Person reveals Himself to be totally “for” the Father. His very “To Be” (“I Am,” Jn. 8, 24, 28, 58) is an “Action” of relationality. He is nothing in Himself except to be “for” the Other. This is the burden of Benedict’s “Deus Charitas Est.” Such an account transcends our ability to conceptualize. We do so only by reflecting on our own act of love and the consciousness we have of it.
Benedict’s burden is to reverse the predominance of concept over action. His task is to help the Church (and the world) escape from the doldrums of a full conceptualization of dogma and creed and yet be mired in a bored acedia accompanied by sadness.
The question is raised in terms of “salvation history” and “metaphysics.” He frames salvation history in terms of a “theology of Resurrection” (which is a theology of life - Zoë [Trinitarian life] – i.e. relational] over a metaphysical Sonship of God as we have seen in Chalcedon (one divine Person with two natures in parallel). Christ rises from the dead because He has lived out His very Being “for” the Father in the action of obedience to death through His human will (“I have come down to earth not to do my will, but the will of Him who sent Me” Jn. 6, 38). The result of that living out of the constitutive relation that He is, raises the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth as the individual humanity that He has personally assumed as His own. His relational Being now totally embraces the Jesus of Nazareth, and as a result, He is not recognized by Mary Magdalene, the two on the road to Emmaus, and the seven Apostles fishing at Lake Genesareth. This is because he can be known only one who has entered into the relationality of who he is by their own self-gift.
Ratzinger says: “For if it is true that the prae of God’s action is significant for theology, that faith in an actio Dei is antecedent to all other declarations of faith, then the primacy of history over metaphysics, over all theologies of being and existence, becomes immediately obvious. It has becomes obvious also that the concept of God is removed from the realm of a mere ousia. I believe it was here that the definitive boundary between the biblical and the Greek concept of God became obfuscated, that this obfuscation was the crux of the repeated patristic attempts to combine Greek thought with biblical faith and that from this arose for Christian theology a task that is still far from being accomplished. Decisive for the Greek concept of God was the belief in God as a pure and changeless being of whom, consequently, no action could be predicated; his utter changelessness meant that he was completely self-contained and referred wholly to himself without any relationship to what was changeable. For the biblical God, on the other hand, it is precisely relationship and action that are the essential marks; creation and revelation are the two basic statements about him, and when revelation is fulfilled in the Resurrection, it is thus confirmed once again that he is not just one who is timeless but also one who is above time, whose existence is known to us only through his action.
“The prae of God’s action: this means not just the preeminence of history over metaphysics but also the rejection of a purely existential version of the gospel message – quite simply because the gospel message means the primacy of the ‘in itself’ over the ‘for me,’ because it excludes the intermingling of the ‘in itself’ with the ‘for me’ that was introduced by Luther and reached its utmost radicality in existential theology; that was eventually forced to conclude that there is no ‘in itself’ outside the ‘for me,’ so that, ultimately, the existential interpretation becomes identified with what is interpreted. T o seek another independent reality behind it was said about man, about his isn, about his search for a gracious God.
“Thus the prae of God’s action means, ultimately, that actio is antecedent to Verbum, reality to the tidings of it. IN other words, the level of reality of the revelation-event is deeper than that of the proclamation-event, which seeks to interpret God’s action in human language. Precisely this is the origin of the sacramental principle, the reason why the word of God, which is also action, must be received by man in words and signs.”
Ratzinger then moves to Eschatology: “If we were able to establish, as our fist point, that the Resurrection is an action of God, so now we must extend this statement by saying as our second point: the Resurrection is an eschatological action of God….”
Meaning? The same as the rest of the paper: Salvation history and eschatology are the same thing “if they are willing to reflect deeply on themselves and to open themselves to this reflection.”[1]
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Eschatology
What can be more exciting than the true immanentization of the Eschaton[2]? God is present in the flesh playing “hide and seek” with us. He is within reach of our experience but we have to activate that experience – the gift of self as receptivity - with our freedom. Hence, Christian experience is always Advent: “already-not yet.” God is present and calling us, but we are not yet fully Himself. As Benedict says in his “habilitation” thesis: “‘Revelation’ is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result [Scripture] 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.”[3]
“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). Ratzinger remarks: “This verse carries the above reflections to a deeper level and clarifies them in the light of the Gospel’s own inner logic. Jesus is the Kingdom, not simply by virtue of his physical presence but through the Holy Spirit’s radiant power flowing forth from him. In his Spirit-filled activity, smashing the demonic enslavement of man, the Kingdom of God becomes reality, God taking the government of this world into his own hands.”
To intensify the presence of God’s Kingdom of Christ in the present world, Ratzinger continues: “Let us remember that God’s Kingdom is an event, not a sphere. Jesus’ actions, words, sufferings break the power of that alienation[4] which lies so heavily on human life. In liberating people, they establish God’s Kingdom. Jesus is that Kingdom since through him the Spirit of God acts in the world.”
That is to say, independent of the Eucharist and Grace, the divine Person of the Logos is present as person wherever a human person has made the act of self-transcendence and become another Christ. “Only God knows God.”[5]
Keep in mind that the Eschaton continues to be among us, and that “Christian theology, which was very soon confronted by this discrepancy between expectation and fulfillment [of the Eschaton], 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 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 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 ous when we look at real history which is in truth no kingdom of God.”[6]
Eternal Life (ζωή): To-Be-Relation
The Protestant theologian Oscar Cullmann remarked: “If today one asks an average Christian, no matter whether Protestant or Catholic whether intellectually inclined or not, what the New Testament reaches about the destiny of the individual human being after death, in almost very case one will receive the answer, “’The immortality of the soul.’ In this form, this opinion is one of the greatest misunderstandings of Christianity there can be”[7]
Sacred Scripture does not explicitly speak about the immortality of the soul, but of the indivisibility of the human person, and modern science could not imagine a resurrection of the body. And yet, “the question of what… would happen to the dead person until the ‘end of time’ cannot simply be pushed aside. Luther’s idea of the ‘sleep of the soul’ certainly does not solve this problem. If there is no soul, and so no proper subject of such a ‘sleep,’ who is this person that is going to be really raised?”[8]
The Overview of Ratzinger will be: all theology must be assessed by and in Christology. The experience of Jesus Christ in oneself is the criterion of all exegesis and its “meaning.”
And I remind you of Ratzinger’s (redemptive) Christology: “Thus the Logos adopts the being of the man Jesus into his own being and speaks of it in terms of his own I; ‘For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will f him who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 380. In the Son’s obedience, where both wills become one in a single Yes to the will of the Father, communion takes place between human and divine being. The ‘wondrous exchange,’ the ‘alchemy of being,’ is realized here as a liberating and reconciling communication, which becomes a communion between Creator and creature. It is in the pain of this exchange, and only here, that that fundamental change takes place in man, the change which alone can redeem him and transform the conditions of the world. Here community is born, here the Church comes into being. The act whereby we participate in the Son’s obedience, which involves man’s genuine transformation, is also the only really effective contribution toward renewing and transforming society and the world as a whole. Only where this activity takes place is there a change for good – in the direction of the kingdom of God.”[9] Keep in mind that the Kingdom of God is the Person of Jesus Christ, and all who become “other Christs.”
Immortality is being-one-with Jesus Christ.
Biblical Data:
The Jews had not generally accepted resurrection. It nevertheless became the fundamental confession of Christians, and this because of Jesus’ resurrection as experience and communicated by witnesses. The crucial text is Jesus’ discussion with the Sadducees about the resurrection. Since they argue in fundamentalistic fashion that only the Pentateuch might be acknowledge as Scripture, and took it as the exclusive rule of faith, sola scripture, Jesus is obliged to prove his thesis on the basis of the books of Moses. He does so in a way which is both exciting and wonderfully simple. He points to the Mosaic concept of God, or more precisely to the divine self-presentation in the burning bush as reported by Moses: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ [“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are therefore entirely wrong” Mark 12, 27]. That means: those who have been called by God are themselves part of the concept of God. One would turn God into a God of the dead and thus stand the Old Testament concept of God on its head if one declared that those who belong to him who is Life are themselves dead.”[10] “What is affirmed is that God himself, and the communion he offers, are life. To belong to him, to be called by him, is to be rooted in life indestructible.”[11]
John 11, 25: “I am the resurrection and the life.” “The evangelist has found his way back to the utter simplicity of that vision in Mark 12, 27 [“But as to the dead rising, have you not read in the book of Moses about the Bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ He is no the God of the dead, but of the living. You are therefore entirely wrong”]. He has translated its theology into Christology in a systematic fashion. ‘He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.’ The bond with Jesus is, even now, resurrection. Where there is communion with him, the boundary of death is overshot here and now. It is in this perspective that we must understand the Discourse on the Eucharist in John 6. Feeding on Jesus’ word and on his flesh, that is, receiving him by both faith and sacrament, is described as being nourished with the bread of immortality. The resurrection does not appear as a distant apocalyptic event but as an occurrence which takes place in the immediate present[12] [my exaggerated emphasis]. Whenever someone enters into the ‘I’ of Christ he has entered straight away into the space of unconditional life. The evangelist does not raise the question of an intermediate state between death and resurrection, a rupture in life, precisely because Jesus is himself the resurrection. Faith, which is the contact between Jesus and myself, vouchsafes here and now the crossing of death’s frontier.
[Consider here John 17, 3: “Now this is everlasting life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ.” Notice that it is only in relationality of knowing Christ {and therefore, the Father} that we have eternal life. But to know Christ, I must be “like” Christ as we have seen in Ratzinger’s Thesis 3 of “Behold the Pierced One.”]
The entire Old Testament inheritance is thus presented in the new mode of Christological transformation. In the Old Testament, it had become clear that death is the absence of communication in the midst of life. Similarly, it had become evident that love is a promise of life. But now it becomes manifest that a love stronger than death actually exists. The borderline between Sheol[13] and life runs through our very midst , and those who are in Christ are situated on the side of life, and that everlastingly.”[14]
Is the Topic of The Immortality of the Soul the Meaning of Eternal Life?
St. Thomas established that the human soul was Aristotle’s “form” of the body. He asks in Question 89, 1 of the First Part of the Summa Theologiae whether the separate soul knows anything. His metaphysical principle is: a being is the way it acts. If the soul separated from the body is able to perform immaterial operations like knowing and willing without the body, then its being must be able to subsist independent of the body. These two positions of Thomas, the first (1)Aristotelian (the soul is the form of the matter that it organizes into “human body,” and (2) that at the same time, the soul as form is able to be the principle of immaterial activity like knowing and willing, transcend Aristotle. The conundrum is the following: “If the soul is form, then it belongs to the world of bodies, marked by coming to be and passing away again. And this in turn means that the spirit, which does not belong to the world, cannot individual or personal. Indeed, only as being neither is it immortal.”[15]
Ratzinger quotes Anton Pegis on this thomistic achievement: “From this point of view, the Thomistic doctrine of an intellectual substance as the substantial form of matter must be seen as a moment in history when an Aristotelian formula was deliberately used to express in philosophical terms a view of man that the world and tradition of Aristotelianism considered a metaphysical impossibility.” He then comments: “And so we come at last to a really tremendous idea: the human spirit is so utterly one with the body that the term ‘form’ can be used of the body and retain its proper meaning. Conversely, the form of the body is spirit, and this is what makes the human being a person.” He quotes Pegis again: “‘The soul is not two things: substance, and the form of the body. Rather, is it substance as the form of the body, just as it is the form of the body as substance … The separation of the soul from its body goes against its nature and diminishes its likeness to God, its Creator. Being in the body is not an activity, but the self-realization of the soul. The body is the visibility of the soul, because the soul is the actuality of the body.’”[16] Ratzinger continues: “What seemed philosophically impossible has thus been achieved. The apparently contradictory demands of the doctrine of creation and the Christologically transformed belief in Sheol have been met. The soul belongs to the body as ‘form,’ but that which is the form of the body is still spirit. It makes man a person and opens him to immortality.”[17]
Still the Question: How is the Human Soul Immortal as Form of the Body? By being the ontological basis of constitutive relationality of the whole “I.”
Ratzinger: “We agreed earlier that it is not a relationless being oneself that makes a human being immortal, but precisely his relatedness, or capacity for relatedness, to God. We must now add that such an opening of one’s existence is not a trimming, an addition to a being which really might subsist in an independent fashion. On he contrary, it constitutes what is deepest in man’s being. It is nothing other than what we call ‘soul.’ We could also come at the same insight from another angle and say, A being is the more itself the more it is open to all being, in its wholeness and in its Ground, and becomes thereby a ‘self,’ who is truly a person. Such openness is not a product of human achievement. It is given to man; man depends for it on Another. But it is given to man to be his very own possession. That is what is meant by creation, what Thomas means when he says that immortality belongs to man by nature. The constant background here is Thomas’ theology of creation: nature is only possible by virtue of a communication of the Creator’s, yet such communication both establishes the creature in its own right and makes it a genuine participator in the being of the One communicated.”[18]
This paragraph needs explanation. The soul - and its intellect and will is - “openness to all being.” This openness is not “trimming” as “an addition to a being” which really might subsist in an independent fashion.” Intellect and will are necessary “accidents” to body-soul “to-be-in-relation” to God. Notice again St. John’s 17, 3: “This is everlasting life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ.” Knowing and loving in such a way as to “experience” Jesus Christ by entering into His prayer (Lk. 9, 18) yields eternal life.
Knowing and willing can also turn one back on self, and in so doing enter into Tolkien’s ring of hell. But it is here where Christology and the relation of Christ to us enters into the understanding of immortality. Ratzinger comments: “An existence in which man tries to divinize himself, to be come ‘like a god’ in his autonomy, independence and self-sufficient, turns into a Sheol-existence, a being in nothingness, a shadow-life on the fringe of real living….”[19] When man sins like this, turning back by knowing and willing on himself, “What he can achieve in this regard is not the annulment of being, but lived self-contradiction, a self-negating possibility, namely ‘Sheol.’ The natural ordination towards the truth, towards God, which of itself excludes nothingness, still endures, even when it is denied or forgotten.
“And this is where the affirmations of Christology come into their own. What happened in Christ was that God overcame this self-contradiction from within – as distinct from destroying human freedom by an arbitrary act from without. The living and dying of Christ tell us that God himself descends into the pit of Sheol, that in the land of absolute ]loneliness he makes relationship possible, healing the blind and so giving life in the midst of death….Immortality is not something we achieve. Though it is a gift inherent in creation [intelligence and will] it is not something which just happens to occur in nature… Immortality rests upon a relationship in which we are given a share, but by which, in sharing it, we are claimed in turn. It points to a praxis of receiving [consider the meaning of faith as active receptivity], to that model for living which is the self-emptying of Jesus, as opposed to the vain promise of salvation contained in the words ‘Ye shall be as gods,’ the sham of total emancipation. If the human capacity for truth and for love is the place where eternal life can break forth, then eternal life can be consciously experienced in the present [here and now]. It can become the forma corporis, not in the sense of estranging us from the world, but, rather, in that of saving us from the anarchy of formlessness, shaping us into a truly human form instead.”
Conclusion: “What gives rise to man’s longing for survival? Not the isolated I, but the experience of love. Love will eternity for the beloved and therefore for itself. The Christian response to our problem is, therefore: immortality does not inhere in a human being but rests on a relation, on a relationship with what is eternal, what makes eternity meaningful. This abidingness, which gives life and can fulfill it, is truth. It is also love. Man can therefore live forever, because he is able to have a relationship with that which gives the eternal. ‘The soul’ is our term for that in us which offers a foothold of this relation. Soul is nothing other than man’s capacity for relatedness with truth, with love eternal. And in this way, we can get right the real order of priorities: the truth and love that we call ‘God’ give man eternity, and because in the spirit and soul of man matter is integrated, matter attains in him to the fulfilled completeness of the resurrection.”[20]
Is the soul the source of eternal life? Yes, but only insofar as it is the power in the human person to be in relation. Eternal life is the actual relation of truth and love in us. The soul is the capacity for that relation.
In his “Introduction…,” Ratzinger says: “Is it not then much simpler to see the distinguishing mark of man in the fact that he has as a spiritual, immortal soul? This definition is perfectly sound; but we are in fact at th9is moment engaged in the process of trying to elucidate its concrete meaning. The two definitions are not in the least contradictory; they simply express the same thing in different modes of thought. For ‘having a spiritual soul’ means precisely being willed, known and loved by God in a special way; it means being a creature called by God to an eternal dialogue and therefore capable for its own part of knowing God and replying to him. That we call in substantialist language ‘having a soul’ will be described in a more historical actual language as ‘being God’s partner in a dialogue.’ This does not mean that talk of the soul is false (as is sometimes asserted today by a one-sided and uncritical biblical approach); in one respect it is indeed even necessary in order to describe the whole of what is involved here. But on the other hand it also needs to be complemented if we are not to fall back into dualistic conception which cannot do justice to the dialogic and personalistic view of the Bible.”
“So when we say that man’s immortality is based on this dialogic relationship with God, whose love alone bestows eternity, we are not claiming a special destiny for the pious but emphasizing the essential immortality of man as man. After the foregoing reflections it is also perfectly possible t develop the idea out of the body-soul schema, whose importance, perhaps even indispensability, lies in the fact that it emphasizes this essential character of human immortality. But it must also be continually put back in the biblical perspective and corrected by it in order to remain serviceable to the view of man’s future opened up by faith. For the rest, it becomes evident once again at this point that in the last analysis one cannot make a clear distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural:’ the basic dialogue which first makes man into man moves over without a break into the dialogue of grace known as Jesus Christ. How could it be otherwise if Christ actually is the ‘second Adam,’ the real fulfillment of that infinite longing which ascends from the first Adam – from man in general?”[21]
The Human Body
“If it belongs to the very essence of the soul to be the form of the body then its ordination to matter is inescapable. The only way to destroy this ordering would be to dissolve the soul itself. What is thus emerging is an anthropological logic which shows the resurrection to be a postulatea of human existence. Secondly, the material elements from out fo which human physiology is constructed receive their character of being ‘body’ only in virtue of being organized and formed by the expressive power of soul. Distinguishing between ‘physiological unit’ and ‘bodiliness’ now becomes possible…. The individual atoms and molecules do not as such add up to the human being. The identity of the living body does not depend upon them, but upon the fact that matter is drawn into the soul’s power of expression. Just as the soul is defined in terms of matter, so the living body is wholly defined by reference to the soul. The soul builds itself a living body, a self-identical living body belongs so inseparably to the being of man, the identity of that body is defined not in terms of matter but in terms of soul.”
The overriding principle we take from Thomism is “the unity of body and soul, a unity founded on the creative act and implying at once the abiding ordination of the soul to matter and the derivation of the identity of the body not from matter but from the person, the soul [keep in mind that the soul is not the person but a constitutive part of the person. Jesus Christ is one divine Person with a human soul, intellect, will, etc.]. The physiology becomes truly ‘body’ through the heart of the personality. Bodiliness is something other than a summation of corpuscles.”[22]
Also, keep in mind, that since the person is created in the image and likeness of the Son Who is pure relation to the Father, so also, the body images God, the Son, as relation such that Ratzinger can say: “Because the body is the person become visible, and the person is an image of God, the body, taken in its full network of relationships, is also the space where the divine becomes imaged, expressed, seen.”[23]
Purgatory: To Enter into Relation
“The essential Christian understanding of Purgatory has now become clear. Purgatory is not, as Tertullian thought, some kind of supra-worldly concentration camp where man is forced to undergo punishment in a more or less arbitrary fashion. Rather is it the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints. Simply to look at people with any degree of realism at all is to grasp the necessity of such a process. It does not replace grace by works, but allows the former to achieve its full victory precisely as grace.[24] What actually saves is the full assent of faith. But in most of us, that basic option is buried under a great deal of wood, hay and straw. Only with difficulty can it peer out from behind the latticework of an egoism we are powerless to pull down with our own hands. Man is the recipient of the divine mercy, yet this does not exonerate him from the need to be transformed. Encounter with the Lord is this transformation. It is the fire that burns away our dross and re-forms us to be vessels of eternal joy. This insight would contradict the doctrine of grace only if penance were the antithesis of grace and not its form, the gift of a gracious possibility. The identification of Purgatory with the Church’s penance in Cyprian and Clement is important for drawing our attention to the fact that the root of the Christian doctrine of Purgatory is the Christological grace of penance. Purgatory follows by an inner necessity from the idea of penance, the idea of the constant readiness for reform which marks the forgiven sinner.”
Ratzinger goes on to face the problem that Purgatory seems to be extrinsic to my intimate self, my “I.” How can there be substitution or replacement for another? I take his response in the line of the love of others affirming and loving me in the Body of Christ, they give me back an identity and make me capable of making the self-gift by the receptivity of the burning love of Christ. As the Son is engendered by the others, the soul in Purgatory is engendered by those making suffrage enabling him/her to freely make the gift of self by accepting the searing and burning of the divine Love.
Ratzinger says: “Yet the being of man is not, in fact, that of a closed monad. It is related to others by love or hate, and, in these ways, has its colonies within them. My own being is present in others as guilt or as grace. We are not just ourselves; or, more correctly, we are ourselves only as being in others, with others and through others. Whether others curse us or bless us, forgive us and turn our guilt into love – this is part of our own destiny. The fact that the saints will judge means that encounter with Christ is encounter with his whole body. I come fact to face with my own guilt vis-Ã -vis the suffering members of that body as well as with the forgiving love which the body derives from Christ it Head.”[25] Ratzinger then quotes Peguy: “‘I hope in you for me.’ It is when the ‘I’ is at stake that the ‘you’ is called upon in the form of hope.’”[26]
He ends the section referring to II Maccabees 12, 42-45:
“And they found under the coats of the slain some of the donaries of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbidden to the Jews, so that all plainly saw that for this cause they were slain. Then they all blessed the just judgement of the Lord, who had discovered the things that were hidden.
“And so betaking themselves to prayers, they besought him that the sin which had been committed might be forgotten. But the most valiant Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves from sin, forasmuch as they saw before their eyes what had happened, because of the sins of those that were slain. And making a gathering, he sent twelve thousand drachmas of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection. (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead.) And because he considered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them. It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.”
Heaven
“Christian tradition uses the image of heaven, an image linked to the natural symbolic force of what is ‘high’ or ‘above,’ in order to express that definitive completion of human existence which comes about through the perfect love towards which faith tends. Such a fulfillment is not, for the Christian, some music of the future. Rather is it sheer description of what happens in the encounter with Christ, itself already present in its fundamental elements. To raise the question of ‘heaven’ is thus not to float free from earth in a balloon of enthusiastic fantasy. It is to come to know more deeply that hidden presence by whose gift we truly live, even though we ourselves continually permit it to be camouflaged, and to withdraw from us, displaced by the man objects that occupy the foreground of our lives.
“Heaven, therefore, must first and foremost be determined Christologically. It is not an extra-historical place into which one goes. Heaven’s existence depends upon the fact that Jesus Christ, as God, is man, and makes space for human existence in the existence of God himself. One is in heaven when, and to the degree, that one is in Christ. It is by being with Christ that we find the true location of our existence as human beings in God. Heaven is thus primarily a personal reality, and one that remains forever shaped by its historical origin in the paschal mystery of death and resurrection. From this Christological center, all the other elements which belong to the tradition’s concept of heaven may be inferred. And, in pride of place, from this Christological foundation there follows a theological affirmation: the glorified Christ stands in a continuous posture of self-giving to his Father. Indeed, he is that self-giving. The paschal sacrifice abides in him as an enduring presence. For this reason, heaven, as our becoming one with Christ, takes on the nature of adoration. All cult prefigures it, and in it comes to completion.
Christ is the temple of the final age;’ he is heaven, the new Jerusalem; he is the cultic space for God. The ascending movement of humanity in its union with Christ is answered by the descending movement of God’s love in its self-gift to us. And so worship, in its heavenly, perfected form, entails an immediacy between God and man which knows of no setting asunder. This is what theological tradition calls the vision of God.”[27]
The “We” of the Church: “The Christological statements made here also have their ecclesiological aspect. If heaven depends on being in Christ, then it must involve a co-being with all those who, together, constitute the body of Christ. Heaven is a stranger to isolation. It is the open society of the communion of saints, and in this way the fulfillment of all human communion.”
Rev. Robert A. Connor
[1] J. Ratzinger, “Faith and History,” Principles of Catholic Theology, Ignatius (1987) 184-190.
[2] Benedict XVI deals with a false version of the Eschaton in history (Spengler), and a true version (Toynbee): “There are two opposing diagnoses on the possible future of Europe. On the one hand, there is the thesis of Oswald Spengler, who believed that he had identified a natural law for the great moments in cultural history: first came the birth of a culture, then its gradual rise, flourishing, slow decline, aging, and death. Spengler argued his thesis with ample documentation, culled from the history of cultures, that demonstrated the law of the natural life cycle. His thesis was that the West would come to an end, and that it was rushing heedlessly toward its demise, despite every effort to stop it. Europe could of course bequeath its gifts to a new emerging culture – following the example set by previous cultures during their decline – but as a historical subject its life cycle had effectively ended.”
“Spengler’s Biologistic’ thesis attracted fierce opponents during the period between the two wars, especially in Catholic circles. Arnold Toynbee reserved harsh words for it, in arguments too readily ignored today. Toynbee emphasized the difference between technological-material progress and true progress, which he defined as spiritualization. He recognized that t the Western world was indeed undergoing a crisis, which he attributed to the abandonment of religion for the cult of technology, nationalism, and militarism. For him this crisis had a name: secularism.
“If you know the cause of an illness, you can also find a cure: the religious heritage in all its forms had to be reintroduced especially the ‘heritage of Western Christianity.’ Rather than a biologistic vision, he offers a voluntaristic one focused on the energy of creative minorities and exceptional individuals;” The Spiritual Roots of Europe: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, “Without Roots,” Basic Books (2006) 67-68.
[3] J. Ratzinger, “Milestones…” Ignatius (1997) 108. Cf. Eric Voegelin’s “The New Science of Politics,” Chicago Univ. Press (1987) 107-189.
[4] “Might evil be invincible? Is it the ultimate power of history? Because of the experience of evil, for Pope Wojtyla, the question of redemption became the essential and central question of his life and thought as a Christian. Is there a limit against which the power of evil shatters? "Yes, there is", the Pope replies in this book of his, as well as in his Encyclical on redemption.
The power that imposes a limit on evil is Divine Mercy. Violence, the display of evil, is opposed in history - as "the totally other" of God, God's own power - by Divine Mercy.
The Lamb is stronger than the dragon, we could say together with the Book of Revelation.
At the end of the book, in a retrospective review of the attack of 13 May 1981 and on the basis of the experience of his journey with God and with the world, John Paul II further deepened this answer.
What limits the force of evil, the power, in brief, which overcomes it - this is how he says it - is God's suffering, the suffering of the Son of God on the Cross: "The suffering of the Crucified God is not just one form of suffering alongside others.... 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.... The passion of Christ on the Cross gave a radically new meaning to suffering, transforming it from within.... It is this suffering which burns and consumes evil with the flame of love.... All human suffering, all pain, all infirmity contains within itself a promise of salvation;... 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.... Christ has redeemed the world: "By his wounds we are healed' (Is 53: 5)" (p. 189, ff.).
All this is not merely learned theology, but the expression of a faith lived and matured through suffering. Of course, we must do all we can to alleviate suffering and prevent the injustice that causes the suffering of the innocent. However, we must also do the utmost to ensure that people can discover the meaning of suffering and are thus able to accept their own suffering and to unite it with the suffering of Christ.
In this way, it is merged with redemptive love and consequently becomes a force against the evil in the world.
[5] Benedict XVI in Brazil, May 2007. It is gloss on the Matt. 11, 27: “No one knows the Son except the Father; nor does any one know the Father except the Son, and him to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
[6] J. Ratzinger, “What It Means To Be a Christian,” Ignatius (2006) [1965] 28-29.
[7] J. Ratzinger, “Eschatology,” CUA (1988) 104.
[8] Ibid 106.
[9] J. Ratzinger, “Behold the Pierced One,” Ignatius (1986) 92-93.
[10] Ibid 114.
[11] Ibid
[12] The continuous theme running throughout Ratzinger’s eschatology is that the Person of Jesus Christ is the Eschaton who is present here and now. He is judgment, heaven, purgatory, and his absence is hell. Eternal life is to be relational to and through him. That relationality, already begun in through grace and the sacraments of initiation, is not yet all that it is destined to be, which is the fullness of divinization.
[13] For Israel (which had not made any distinctive contribution of her own), Sheol is “a kind of un-life among the shades. As a shade, the dead man “can make an appearance in the world above, and is thus perceived as dreadful and dangerous. Nonetheless, he is essentially cut off from the land of the living, from dear life, banished into a non-communication zone where life is destroyed precisely because relationship is impossible. The full extent of Sheol’s abyss of nothingness is seen from the fact that Yahweh is not there, nor is he praised there. In relation to him too, there is a complete lack of communication in Sheol. Death is thus an unending imprisonment. It is simultaneously being and nonbeing, somehow still existence and yet no longer life;” “Eschatology” op. cit 80.
[14] J. Ratzinger, Eschatology,” op. cit. 117.
[15] Ibid 148.
[16] Ibid 149.
[17] Ibid
[18] Ibid 155.
[19] Ibid 156.
[20] Ibid 259.
[21] J. Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius (1990) 275.
[22] J. Ratzinger, “Eschatology,” op. cit 181.
[23] J. Ratzinger, “Paschal Mystery as Core and foundation of Cevotion to the Sacred Heart,” Civilization of Love Ignatius (1985) 149.
[24] What is grace? “Grace in the proper and deepest sense of the word is not some thing that comes from God; it is God. Redemption means that God, acting as God truly does, gives us nothing less than himself. The gift of God is God – he who as the Holy Spriit is communion with us.” “Hail Full of Grace,” in Mary, The Church at the Source, Ignatius (2005) 67-68. Ratzinger adds in a footnote (5) that he is referring here only to uncreated grace because he wants to underscore the relational character of grace. “As a matter of fact, the idea of created grace is indispensable, inasmuch as relation – a fortiori the God-man relation – does not leave the person who enters into it unchanged.”
[25] J. Ratzinger “Eschatology,” CUA (1988) 232.
[26] Ibid
[27] J. Ratzinger, “Eschatology,” op. cit 234.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Benedict XVI On "The 'Humanum' in its Entirety"
Papal Address to Participants in Congress on Women
"Recall the Design of God That Created the Human Being Male and Female"
VATICAN CITY, FEB. 10, 2008
Dear Brothers and Sisters!
With true pleasure I welcome all of you who are taking part in the international conference on the theme "Man and Woman: The ‘Humanum' in Its Entirety," which has been organized on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the publication of the apostolic letter "Mulieris Dignitatem." I greet Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, and I am grateful to him for being the interpreter of shared sentiments. I greet the council's secretary, Bishop Josef Clemens, and the members and the collaborators of this dicastery. In particular I greet the women, who are the great majority of those present, and who have enriched the conference's proceedings with their experience and competence.
The question on which you are reflecting has great contemporary relevance: From the second half of the 20th century until today, the movement for women's rights in the various settings of social life has generated countless reflections and debates, and it has seen the multiplication of many initiatives that the Catholic Church has followed and often accompanied with attentive interest. The male-female relationship, in its respective specificity, reciprocity and complementarity, without a doubt constitutes a central point of the "anthropological question" that is so decisive in contemporary culture. The papal interventions and documents that have touched on the emerging reality of the question of women are numerous.
I limit myself to recall those of my beloved predecessor Pope John Paul II, who, in June 1995 wrote a "Letter to Women," and in Aug. 15, 1988, exactly 20 years ago, published the apostolic letter "Mulieris Dignitatem." This text on the vocation and the dignity of women, of great theological, spiritual and cultural richness, in its turn inspired the "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World" of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
In "Mulieris Dignitatem," John Paul II wanted to delve into the fundamental anthropological truths of men and women, the equality in dignity and their unity, the rooted and profound difference between the masculine and the feminine and their vocation to reciprocity and complementarity, collaboration and communion (cf. "Mulieris Dignitatem," No. 6). This dual-unity of man and woman is based on the foundation of the dignity of every person, created in the image and likeness of God, who "created them male and female" (Genesis 1:27), as much avoiding an indistinct uniformity and flattened-out and impoverished equality as an abysmal and conflictive difference (cf. "Letter to Women," No. 8). This dual-unity carries with it, inscribed in bodies and souls, the relation with the other, love for the other, interpersonal communion that shows that "the creation of man is also marked by a certain likeness to the divine communion" ("Mulieris Dignitatem," No. 7). When, therefore, men or women pretend to be autonomous or totally self-sufficient, they risk being closed up in a self-realization that considers the overcoming of every natural, social or religious bond as a conquest of freedom, but which in fact reduces them to an oppressive solitude. To foster and support the true promotion of women and men one cannot fail to take this reality into account.
Certainly a renewed anthropological research is necessary that, on the basis of the great Christian tradition, incorporates the new advances of science and the datum of contemporary cultural sensibilities, contributing in this way to the deepened understanding not only of feminine identity but also masculine identity, which is frequently the object of partial and ideological reflections.
In the face of cultural and political currents that attempt to eliminate, or at least to obfuscate and confuse, the sexual differences written into human nature, considering them to be cultural constructions, it is necessary to recall the design of God that created the human being male and female, with a unity and at the same time an original and complementary difference. Human nature and the cultural dimension are integrated in an ample and complex process that constitutes the formation of the identity of each, where both dimensions -- the feminine and the masculine -- correspond to and complete each other.
Opening the work of the 5th General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopate last May in Brazil, I recalled how there still persists a macho mentality that ignores the novelty of Christianity, which recognizes and proclaims the equal dignity and responsibility of women with respect to men. There are certain places and cultures where women are discriminated against and undervalued just for the fact that they are women, where recourse is even had to religious arguments and family, social and cultural pressures to support the disparity between the sexes, where there is consumption of acts of violence against women, making them into objects of abuse and exploitation in advertising and in the consumer and entertainment industries. In the face of such grave and persistent phenomena the commitment of Christians appears all the more urgent, so that they become everywhere the promoters of a culture that recognizes the dignity that belongs to women in law and in reality.
God entrusts to women and to men, according to the characteristics that are proper to each, a specific vocation in the mission of the Church and in the world. I think here of the family, community of love, open to life, fundamental cell of society. In it, woman and man, thanks to the gift of maternity and paternity, together play an irreplaceable role in regard to life. From the moment of their conception, children have a right to count on a father and a mother who care for them and accompany them in their growth. The state, for its part, must sustain with adequate social policies all that which promotes the stability of matrimony, the dignity and the responsibility of the husband and wife, their rights and irreplaceable duty to educate their children. Moreover, it is necessary that it be made possible for the woman to cooperate in the building-up of society, appreciating her typical "feminine genius."
Dear brothers and sisters, I thank you once more for your visit and, while I wish you complete success in the work of the conference, I assure you of a remembrance in prayer, invoking the maternal intercession of Mary, that she help the women of our time to realize their vocation and their mission in the ecclesial and civil community. With such vows, I impart to you here present and to your loved ones a special apostolic blessing.
"Recall the Design of God That Created the Human Being Male and Female"
VATICAN CITY, FEB. 10, 2008
Dear Brothers and Sisters!
With true pleasure I welcome all of you who are taking part in the international conference on the theme "Man and Woman: The ‘Humanum' in Its Entirety," which has been organized on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the publication of the apostolic letter "Mulieris Dignitatem." I greet Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, and I am grateful to him for being the interpreter of shared sentiments. I greet the council's secretary, Bishop Josef Clemens, and the members and the collaborators of this dicastery. In particular I greet the women, who are the great majority of those present, and who have enriched the conference's proceedings with their experience and competence.
The question on which you are reflecting has great contemporary relevance: From the second half of the 20th century until today, the movement for women's rights in the various settings of social life has generated countless reflections and debates, and it has seen the multiplication of many initiatives that the Catholic Church has followed and often accompanied with attentive interest. The male-female relationship, in its respective specificity, reciprocity and complementarity, without a doubt constitutes a central point of the "anthropological question" that is so decisive in contemporary culture. The papal interventions and documents that have touched on the emerging reality of the question of women are numerous.
I limit myself to recall those of my beloved predecessor Pope John Paul II, who, in June 1995 wrote a "Letter to Women," and in Aug. 15, 1988, exactly 20 years ago, published the apostolic letter "Mulieris Dignitatem." This text on the vocation and the dignity of women, of great theological, spiritual and cultural richness, in its turn inspired the "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World" of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
In "Mulieris Dignitatem," John Paul II wanted to delve into the fundamental anthropological truths of men and women, the equality in dignity and their unity, the rooted and profound difference between the masculine and the feminine and their vocation to reciprocity and complementarity, collaboration and communion (cf. "Mulieris Dignitatem," No. 6). This dual-unity of man and woman is based on the foundation of the dignity of every person, created in the image and likeness of God, who "created them male and female" (Genesis 1:27), as much avoiding an indistinct uniformity and flattened-out and impoverished equality as an abysmal and conflictive difference (cf. "Letter to Women," No. 8). This dual-unity carries with it, inscribed in bodies and souls, the relation with the other, love for the other, interpersonal communion that shows that "the creation of man is also marked by a certain likeness to the divine communion" ("Mulieris Dignitatem," No. 7). When, therefore, men or women pretend to be autonomous or totally self-sufficient, they risk being closed up in a self-realization that considers the overcoming of every natural, social or religious bond as a conquest of freedom, but which in fact reduces them to an oppressive solitude. To foster and support the true promotion of women and men one cannot fail to take this reality into account.
Certainly a renewed anthropological research is necessary that, on the basis of the great Christian tradition, incorporates the new advances of science and the datum of contemporary cultural sensibilities, contributing in this way to the deepened understanding not only of feminine identity but also masculine identity, which is frequently the object of partial and ideological reflections.
In the face of cultural and political currents that attempt to eliminate, or at least to obfuscate and confuse, the sexual differences written into human nature, considering them to be cultural constructions, it is necessary to recall the design of God that created the human being male and female, with a unity and at the same time an original and complementary difference. Human nature and the cultural dimension are integrated in an ample and complex process that constitutes the formation of the identity of each, where both dimensions -- the feminine and the masculine -- correspond to and complete each other.
Opening the work of the 5th General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopate last May in Brazil, I recalled how there still persists a macho mentality that ignores the novelty of Christianity, which recognizes and proclaims the equal dignity and responsibility of women with respect to men. There are certain places and cultures where women are discriminated against and undervalued just for the fact that they are women, where recourse is even had to religious arguments and family, social and cultural pressures to support the disparity between the sexes, where there is consumption of acts of violence against women, making them into objects of abuse and exploitation in advertising and in the consumer and entertainment industries. In the face of such grave and persistent phenomena the commitment of Christians appears all the more urgent, so that they become everywhere the promoters of a culture that recognizes the dignity that belongs to women in law and in reality.
God entrusts to women and to men, according to the characteristics that are proper to each, a specific vocation in the mission of the Church and in the world. I think here of the family, community of love, open to life, fundamental cell of society. In it, woman and man, thanks to the gift of maternity and paternity, together play an irreplaceable role in regard to life. From the moment of their conception, children have a right to count on a father and a mother who care for them and accompany them in their growth. The state, for its part, must sustain with adequate social policies all that which promotes the stability of matrimony, the dignity and the responsibility of the husband and wife, their rights and irreplaceable duty to educate their children. Moreover, it is necessary that it be made possible for the woman to cooperate in the building-up of society, appreciating her typical "feminine genius."
Dear brothers and sisters, I thank you once more for your visit and, while I wish you complete success in the work of the conference, I assure you of a remembrance in prayer, invoking the maternal intercession of Mary, that she help the women of our time to realize their vocation and their mission in the ecclesial and civil community. With such vows, I impart to you here present and to your loved ones a special apostolic blessing.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Lent 2008
Benedict’s Message: Give alms. And the alms that you must give are yourself. The rector principle contradicting sensible perception but ensconced in human experience as spousal love reads: “You will not be allowed to keep what you have refused to give to others.”[1] The metaphysics of relation obtains here where “to be” is precisely “to-be-in-relation.” The difficulty, of course, is that we cannot “see” through visual perception that “being-is-to-in-relation” because that is the way sensations are received by us, and also the way we abstract-immaterialize reality into signs/symbols we call concepts. Therefore, reality appears, and is conceived by us, as “being-in-self,” which Hellenistic thought has bequeathed to us under the rubric of “substance.” Reality so perceived is certainly real being, but is it the way we perceive it experientially through the senses?
There is another way that we experience the real: the experience and consciousness of the self in the moral act. This is rightly called an “experience” since the self is rightly a being and not simply consciousness. Benedict has called the phenomenon “conscience” the consciousness or “anamnesis” that has resulted from the “ontological tendency” that is the self yearning in the direction of the absolute, which is the revelation of the Word.
In classic simple form, and grounding himself in Scripture, Benedict XVI offered the Church and the world the example of Bartholomew’s meeting with Jesus Christ as a paradigm of these two levels of experience and consciousness, the one objectifying, the other subjectifying:
“Philip told this Nathanael that he had found "him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph" (Jn 1: 45). As we know, Nathanael's retort was rather strongly prejudiced: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (Jn 1: 46). In its own way, this form of protestation is important for us. Indeed, it makes us see that according to Judaic expectations the Messiah could not come from such an obscure village as, precisely, Nazareth (see also Jn 7: 42).
But at the same time Nathanael's protest highlights God's freedom, which baffles our expectations by causing him to be found in the very place where we least expect him [the ordinary commonplace: the secular]. Moreover, we actually know that Jesus was not exclusively "from Nazareth" but was born in Bethlehem (cf. Mt 2: 1; Lk 2: 4) and came ultimately from Heaven, from the Father who is in Heaven.
Nathanael's reaction suggests another thought to us: in our relationship with Jesus we must not be satisfied with words alone. In his answer, Philip offers Nathanael a meaningful invitation: "Come and see!" (Jn 1: 46). Our knowledge of Jesus needs above all a first-hand experience: someone else's testimony is of course important, for normally the whole of our Christian life begins with the proclamation handed down to us by one or more witnesses.
However, we ourselves must then be personally involved in a close and deep relationship with Jesus; in a similar way, when the Samaritans had heard the testimony of their fellow citizen whom Jesus had met at Jacob's well, they wanted to talk to him directly, and after this conversation they told the woman: "It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world" (Jn 4: 42).
Returning to the scene of Nathanael's vocation, the Evangelist tells us that when Jesus sees Nathanael approaching, he exclaims: "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile!" (Jn 1: 47). This is praise reminiscent of the text of a Psalm: "Blessed is the man... in whose spirit there is no deceit" (32[31]: 2), but provokes the curiosity of Nathanael who answers in amazement: "How do you know me?" (Jn 1: 48).
Jesus' reply cannot immediately be understood. He says: "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you" (Jn 1: 48). We do not know what had happened under this fig tree. It is obvious that it had to do with a decisive moment in Nathanael's life.
His heart is moved by Jesus' words, he feels understood and he understands: "This man knows everything about me, he knows and is familiar with the road of life; I can truly trust this man". And so he answers with a clear and beautiful confession of faith: "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" (Jn 1: 49). In this confession is conveyed a first important step in the journey of attachment to Jesus.
Nathanael's words shed light on a twofold, complementary aspect of Jesus' identity: he is recognized both in his special relationship with God the Father, of whom he is the Only-begotten Son, and in his relationship with the People of Israel, of whom he is the declared King, precisely the description of the awaited Messiah. We must never lose sight of either of these two elements because if we only proclaim Jesus' heavenly dimension, we risk making him an ethereal and evanescent being; and if, on the contrary, we recognize only his concrete place in history, we end by neglecting the divine dimension that properly qualifies him.
I offer this example of the ability of Bartholomew to perceive Jesus of Nazareth as Jesus the Christ of God as the offer of Benedict XVI to us during this Lent. The goal is to be able to perceive God in His Godliness, i.e. in His Subjectivity as “I Am.” Recall that “Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” And recall that the Kingdom of Heaven is the Kingdom of God, and that the Kingdom of God is the Person of Jesus of Nazareth Who is Jesus the Christ.
Only if we give away all we have, having nothing for ourselves, nothing superfluous, not complaining if we lack the necessary, choosing the worst for ourselves, and being magnanimous with regard to the cult of the Blessed Sacrament, will we be profoundly pleasing to God and capable of recognizing His Face.
Consider the apodictic statement of John Paul II concerning the need for radical poverty in the midst of the secular world. He effectively affirms that according to Christian anthropology no one can own anything after having owned everything. In Laborem Exercens #14, he says: “property is acquired first of all through work in order that it may serve work. This concerns in a special way ownership of the means of production. Isolating these means as a separate property in order to set it up in the form of ‘capital’ [for me] in opposition to ‘labor’ – and even to practice exploitation of labor – is contrary to the very nature of these means and their possession. They cannot be possessed against labor, they cannot even by possessed for possession’s sake, because the only legitimate title to their possession – whether in the form of private ownership or in the form of public or collective ownership – is that they should serve labor, and thus, by serving labor, that they should make possible the achievement of the first principle of this order, namely, the universal destination of goods, and the right to common use of them.”
Poverty Means the Dispossession of Self as Subject
Therefore:
The Epistemology of Subject-Object
Introduction
“It is part of our situation that we are inevitably and inseparably inside the knowledge relation, from the start to the end, and so cannot step outside of ourselves to an indifferent standpoint from which to view and adjust the relations of thought and being. Thought and being are together from the beginning. All discrimination of the contribution of the one side of the relation to the other is an analysis of a concrete togetherness of thought and being in a particular department of existence. Since, moreover, all possible Objects of thought come before the mind in a relation of Subject and Object – the wildest chimeras, the grossest illusions, as well as the soberest ‘matter of fact’ – any discussion of the contribution of Subject to Object, of Object to Subject, of the proportions of subjectivity to objectivity in a particular topic, must have in view some particular sphere of actual concrete existence in which the Subject is more than the logical presupposition of knowledge in general, and the Object is viewed in relation to some actual concrete interest or pre-occupation on the part of the Subject.”[2]
Since God is the only Being that presents itself to us as a Subject (everything else is perceived as “objectified” by sense perception and the immaterial signs of concepts), the receiving subject must activate itself as subject in order to be “like” Him in order to “know” Him (since knowing is ultimately to be one in being with another).
“Throughout the whole history of modern science since the end of the sixteenth century there has been a steady critique of subjectivity, and an insistence… upon the primacy of objectivity. Scientific thinking involves a methodological abstraction from all subjective factors in its concern for strict impartiality and disinterestedness. However, when this rigorous scientific method came to be applied beyond the realms of mathematics and physics, e.g. to history by Dilthey, it soon became evident that there is no such thing as impartial science… although methodological impartiality retained its place. The really great change has come about in our own day through the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, when it became evident that the development of classical science had reached the point when there had to take place a considerable change in the whole structure of scientific consciousness. Einstein had to wrestle for some twenty years with Newtonian and Kantian conceptions of space and time before the theory of relativity could be formulated, whereas the advances in nuclear physics through the work of Maxwell and Rutherford forced physicists like Bohr through the a change in the whole structure of knowledge as it lay embedded in classical physics and mechanics. These changes revealed that modern science, far more than it ever realized, had been operating uncritically with a subjective structure of the understanding which had ineveitably limited the range of its observation and discovery. All this meant that real advances in knowledge involve fundamental changes in the structure of the mind and profound changes in the meaning of basic concepts. These facts are still having seismic effects in various branches of knowledge.
Critique of Abstract Objectivism: “Abstract objectivism comes under severe criticism, for it conceals a static subjectivity in the uncritical acceptance of fundamental categories of the understanding, which is all the more powerful in its influence upon the course of scientific development just because it is concealed. Thus, for example, A. Eddington, M. Polanyi, and von Weizsacker in their different ways, have successfully shown how the personal factor inevitably enters into scientific knowledge for the very fact of our knowing explicitly enters into what we know. It is therefore unscientific to pretend that the subjective element is eliminated when it cannot be. Scientific thinking must operate with a severely self-critical and controlled subjectivity, for we can only advance to new knowledge by rigorous re-interpretation…”[3]
Heisenberg remarks: “Every experiment is an act of violence which we impose upon nature. It must react to the violence, and the law of this reaction can be stated in formulae. Thus experimental science may be described as a planned and guided give-and-take between man and nature with a view to knowledge and power. It cannot be said to be concerned with purely objective states or merely with realities in themselves. ‘Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature, it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves, it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning.”[4]
God as Subject: God presents Himself to us as Subject in the Person of Jesus Christ. We could say that God “objectifies” Himself to us as “I Am in the Subject, Jesus Christ. We cannot know God as object unless we receive Him as Subject, i.e. to convert ourselves into Him subjectively so as to be one Being in Him.
That is the task of Lent, the conversion, the giving of alms, which is ultimately, the giving of the self. “Nowhere more than in Christian theology does knowledge involve such a profound change in the attitude of man, or such a radical break in the structure of his natural mind, or such a complete reorientation in his life. That is to say theological knowledge takes place only through a critical reconstruction of subjectivity in accordance with the nature of the object.”[5] And since the “object” is the “Subject,” if man does not become objectively Christ by the radical gift of himself, say, in alms and service to others in this Lent, he cannot know the Subject God.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Benedict XVI’s Lenten Message 2008:
"Christ made Himself poor for you" (2 Cor 8,9)
Dear Brothers and Sisters!
There is another way that we experience the real: the experience and consciousness of the self in the moral act. This is rightly called an “experience” since the self is rightly a being and not simply consciousness. Benedict has called the phenomenon “conscience” the consciousness or “anamnesis” that has resulted from the “ontological tendency” that is the self yearning in the direction of the absolute, which is the revelation of the Word.
In classic simple form, and grounding himself in Scripture, Benedict XVI offered the Church and the world the example of Bartholomew’s meeting with Jesus Christ as a paradigm of these two levels of experience and consciousness, the one objectifying, the other subjectifying:
“Philip told this Nathanael that he had found "him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph" (Jn 1: 45). As we know, Nathanael's retort was rather strongly prejudiced: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (Jn 1: 46). In its own way, this form of protestation is important for us. Indeed, it makes us see that according to Judaic expectations the Messiah could not come from such an obscure village as, precisely, Nazareth (see also Jn 7: 42).
But at the same time Nathanael's protest highlights God's freedom, which baffles our expectations by causing him to be found in the very place where we least expect him [the ordinary commonplace: the secular]. Moreover, we actually know that Jesus was not exclusively "from Nazareth" but was born in Bethlehem (cf. Mt 2: 1; Lk 2: 4) and came ultimately from Heaven, from the Father who is in Heaven.
Nathanael's reaction suggests another thought to us: in our relationship with Jesus we must not be satisfied with words alone. In his answer, Philip offers Nathanael a meaningful invitation: "Come and see!" (Jn 1: 46). Our knowledge of Jesus needs above all a first-hand experience: someone else's testimony is of course important, for normally the whole of our Christian life begins with the proclamation handed down to us by one or more witnesses.
However, we ourselves must then be personally involved in a close and deep relationship with Jesus; in a similar way, when the Samaritans had heard the testimony of their fellow citizen whom Jesus had met at Jacob's well, they wanted to talk to him directly, and after this conversation they told the woman: "It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world" (Jn 4: 42).
Returning to the scene of Nathanael's vocation, the Evangelist tells us that when Jesus sees Nathanael approaching, he exclaims: "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile!" (Jn 1: 47). This is praise reminiscent of the text of a Psalm: "Blessed is the man... in whose spirit there is no deceit" (32[31]: 2), but provokes the curiosity of Nathanael who answers in amazement: "How do you know me?" (Jn 1: 48).
Jesus' reply cannot immediately be understood. He says: "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you" (Jn 1: 48). We do not know what had happened under this fig tree. It is obvious that it had to do with a decisive moment in Nathanael's life.
His heart is moved by Jesus' words, he feels understood and he understands: "This man knows everything about me, he knows and is familiar with the road of life; I can truly trust this man". And so he answers with a clear and beautiful confession of faith: "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" (Jn 1: 49). In this confession is conveyed a first important step in the journey of attachment to Jesus.
Nathanael's words shed light on a twofold, complementary aspect of Jesus' identity: he is recognized both in his special relationship with God the Father, of whom he is the Only-begotten Son, and in his relationship with the People of Israel, of whom he is the declared King, precisely the description of the awaited Messiah. We must never lose sight of either of these two elements because if we only proclaim Jesus' heavenly dimension, we risk making him an ethereal and evanescent being; and if, on the contrary, we recognize only his concrete place in history, we end by neglecting the divine dimension that properly qualifies him.
I offer this example of the ability of Bartholomew to perceive Jesus of Nazareth as Jesus the Christ of God as the offer of Benedict XVI to us during this Lent. The goal is to be able to perceive God in His Godliness, i.e. in His Subjectivity as “I Am.” Recall that “Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” And recall that the Kingdom of Heaven is the Kingdom of God, and that the Kingdom of God is the Person of Jesus of Nazareth Who is Jesus the Christ.
Only if we give away all we have, having nothing for ourselves, nothing superfluous, not complaining if we lack the necessary, choosing the worst for ourselves, and being magnanimous with regard to the cult of the Blessed Sacrament, will we be profoundly pleasing to God and capable of recognizing His Face.
Consider the apodictic statement of John Paul II concerning the need for radical poverty in the midst of the secular world. He effectively affirms that according to Christian anthropology no one can own anything after having owned everything. In Laborem Exercens #14, he says: “property is acquired first of all through work in order that it may serve work. This concerns in a special way ownership of the means of production. Isolating these means as a separate property in order to set it up in the form of ‘capital’ [for me] in opposition to ‘labor’ – and even to practice exploitation of labor – is contrary to the very nature of these means and their possession. They cannot be possessed against labor, they cannot even by possessed for possession’s sake, because the only legitimate title to their possession – whether in the form of private ownership or in the form of public or collective ownership – is that they should serve labor, and thus, by serving labor, that they should make possible the achievement of the first principle of this order, namely, the universal destination of goods, and the right to common use of them.”
Poverty Means the Dispossession of Self as Subject
Therefore:
The Epistemology of Subject-Object
Introduction
“It is part of our situation that we are inevitably and inseparably inside the knowledge relation, from the start to the end, and so cannot step outside of ourselves to an indifferent standpoint from which to view and adjust the relations of thought and being. Thought and being are together from the beginning. All discrimination of the contribution of the one side of the relation to the other is an analysis of a concrete togetherness of thought and being in a particular department of existence. Since, moreover, all possible Objects of thought come before the mind in a relation of Subject and Object – the wildest chimeras, the grossest illusions, as well as the soberest ‘matter of fact’ – any discussion of the contribution of Subject to Object, of Object to Subject, of the proportions of subjectivity to objectivity in a particular topic, must have in view some particular sphere of actual concrete existence in which the Subject is more than the logical presupposition of knowledge in general, and the Object is viewed in relation to some actual concrete interest or pre-occupation on the part of the Subject.”[2]
Since God is the only Being that presents itself to us as a Subject (everything else is perceived as “objectified” by sense perception and the immaterial signs of concepts), the receiving subject must activate itself as subject in order to be “like” Him in order to “know” Him (since knowing is ultimately to be one in being with another).
“Throughout the whole history of modern science since the end of the sixteenth century there has been a steady critique of subjectivity, and an insistence… upon the primacy of objectivity. Scientific thinking involves a methodological abstraction from all subjective factors in its concern for strict impartiality and disinterestedness. However, when this rigorous scientific method came to be applied beyond the realms of mathematics and physics, e.g. to history by Dilthey, it soon became evident that there is no such thing as impartial science… although methodological impartiality retained its place. The really great change has come about in our own day through the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, when it became evident that the development of classical science had reached the point when there had to take place a considerable change in the whole structure of scientific consciousness. Einstein had to wrestle for some twenty years with Newtonian and Kantian conceptions of space and time before the theory of relativity could be formulated, whereas the advances in nuclear physics through the work of Maxwell and Rutherford forced physicists like Bohr through the a change in the whole structure of knowledge as it lay embedded in classical physics and mechanics. These changes revealed that modern science, far more than it ever realized, had been operating uncritically with a subjective structure of the understanding which had ineveitably limited the range of its observation and discovery. All this meant that real advances in knowledge involve fundamental changes in the structure of the mind and profound changes in the meaning of basic concepts. These facts are still having seismic effects in various branches of knowledge.
Critique of Abstract Objectivism: “Abstract objectivism comes under severe criticism, for it conceals a static subjectivity in the uncritical acceptance of fundamental categories of the understanding, which is all the more powerful in its influence upon the course of scientific development just because it is concealed. Thus, for example, A. Eddington, M. Polanyi, and von Weizsacker in their different ways, have successfully shown how the personal factor inevitably enters into scientific knowledge for the very fact of our knowing explicitly enters into what we know. It is therefore unscientific to pretend that the subjective element is eliminated when it cannot be. Scientific thinking must operate with a severely self-critical and controlled subjectivity, for we can only advance to new knowledge by rigorous re-interpretation…”[3]
Heisenberg remarks: “Every experiment is an act of violence which we impose upon nature. It must react to the violence, and the law of this reaction can be stated in formulae. Thus experimental science may be described as a planned and guided give-and-take between man and nature with a view to knowledge and power. It cannot be said to be concerned with purely objective states or merely with realities in themselves. ‘Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature, it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves, it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning.”[4]
God as Subject: God presents Himself to us as Subject in the Person of Jesus Christ. We could say that God “objectifies” Himself to us as “I Am in the Subject, Jesus Christ. We cannot know God as object unless we receive Him as Subject, i.e. to convert ourselves into Him subjectively so as to be one Being in Him.
That is the task of Lent, the conversion, the giving of alms, which is ultimately, the giving of the self. “Nowhere more than in Christian theology does knowledge involve such a profound change in the attitude of man, or such a radical break in the structure of his natural mind, or such a complete reorientation in his life. That is to say theological knowledge takes place only through a critical reconstruction of subjectivity in accordance with the nature of the object.”[5] And since the “object” is the “Subject,” if man does not become objectively Christ by the radical gift of himself, say, in alms and service to others in this Lent, he cannot know the Subject God.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Benedict XVI’s Lenten Message 2008:
"Christ made Himself poor for you" (2 Cor 8,9)
Dear Brothers and Sisters!
1. Each year, Lent offers us a providential opportunity to deepen the meaning and value of our Christian lives, and it stimulates us to rediscover the mercy of God so that we, in turn, become more merciful toward our brothers and sisters. In the Lenten period, the Church makes it her duty to propose some specific tasks that accompany the faithful concretely in this process of interior renewal: these are prayer, fasting and almsgiving. For this year's Lenten Message, I wish to spend some time reflecting on the practice of almsgiving, which represents a specific way to assist those in need and, at the same time, an exercise in self-denial to free us from attachment to worldly goods. The force of attraction to material riches and just how categorical our decision must be not to make of them an idol, Jesus confirms in a resolute way: "You cannot serve God and mammon" (Lk 16,13). Almsgiving helps us to overcome this constant temptation, teaching us to respond to our neighbor's needs and to share with others whatever we possess through divine goodness. This is the aim of the special collections in favor of the poor, which are promoted during Lent in many parts of the world. In this way, inward cleansing is accompanied by a gesture of ecclesial communion, mirroring what already took place in the early Church. In his Letters, Saint Paul speaks of this in regard to the collection for the Jerusalem community (cf. 2 Cor 8-9; Rm 15, 25-27).
2. According to the teaching of the Gospel, we are not owners but rather administrators of the goods we possess: these, then, are not to be considered as our exclusive possession, but means through which the Lord calls each one of us to act as a steward of His providence for our neighbor. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, material goods bear a social value, according to the principle of their universal destination (cf. n. 2404)
In the Gospel, Jesus explicitly admonishes the one who possesses and uses earthly riches only for self. In the face of the multitudes, who, lacking everything, suffer hunger, the words of Saint John acquire the tone of a ringing rebuke: "How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?" (1 Jn 3,17). In those countries whose population is majority Christian, the call to share is even more urgent, since their responsibility toward the many who suffer poverty and abandonment is even greater. To come to their aid is a duty of justice even prior to being an act of charity.
In the Gospel, Jesus explicitly admonishes the one who possesses and uses earthly riches only for self. In the face of the multitudes, who, lacking everything, suffer hunger, the words of Saint John acquire the tone of a ringing rebuke: "How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?" (1 Jn 3,17). In those countries whose population is majority Christian, the call to share is even more urgent, since their responsibility toward the many who suffer poverty and abandonment is even greater. To come to their aid is a duty of justice even prior to being an act of charity.
3. The Gospel highlights a typical feature of Christian almsgiving: it must be hidden: "Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing," Jesus asserts, "so that your alms may be done in secret" (Mt 6,3-4). Just a short while before, He said not to boast of one's own good works so as not to risk being deprived of the heavenly reward (cf. Mt 6,1-2). The disciple is to be concerned with God's greater glory. Jesus warns: "In this way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven" (Mt 5,16). Everything, then, must be done for God's glory and not our own. This understanding, dear brothers and sisters, must accompany every gesture of help to our neighbor, avoiding that it becomes a means to make ourselves the center of attention. If, in accomplishing a good deed, we do not have as our goal God's glory and the real well being of our brothers and sisters, looking rather for a return of personal interest or simply of applause, we place ourselves outside of the Gospel vision. In today's world of images, attentive vigilance is required, since this temptation is great. Almsgiving, according to the Gospel, is not mere philanthropy: rather it is a concrete expression of charity, a theological virtue that demands interior conversion to love of God and neighbor, in imitation of Jesus Christ, who, dying on the cross, gave His entire self for us. How could we not thank God for the many people who silently, far from the gaze of the media world, fulfill, with this spirit, generous actions in support of one's neighbor in difficulty? There is little use in giving one's personal goods to others if it leads to a heart puffed up in vainglory: for this reason, the one, who knows that God "sees in secret" and in secret will reward, does not seek human recognition for works of mercy.
4. In inviting us to consider almsgiving with a more profound gaze that transcends the purely material dimension, Scripture teaches us that there is more joy in giving than in receiving (cf. Acts 20,35). When we do things out of love, we express the truth of our being; indeed, we have been created not for ourselves but for God and our brothers and sisters (cf. 2 Cor 5,15). Every time when, for love of God, we share our goods with our neighbor in need, we discover that the fullness of life comes from love and all is returned to us as a blessing in the form of peace, inner satisfaction and joy. Our Father in heaven rewards our almsgiving with His joy. What is more: Saint Peter includes among the spiritual fruits of almsgiving the forgiveness of sins: "Charity," he writes, "covers a multitude of sins" (1 Pt 4,8). As the Lenten liturgy frequently repeats, God offers to us sinners the possibility of being forgiven. The fact of sharing with the poor what we possess disposes us to receive such a gift. In this moment, my thought turns to those who realize the weight of the evil they have committed and, precisely for this reason, feel far from God, fearful and almost incapable of turning to Him. By drawing close to others through almsgiving, we draw close to God; it can become an instrument for authentic conversion and reconciliation with Him and our brothers.
5. Almsgiving teaches us the generosity of love. Saint Joseph Benedict Cottolengo forthrightly recommends: "Never keep an account of the coins you give, since this is what I always say: if, in giving alms, the left hand is not to know what the right hand is doing, then the right hand, too, should not know what it does itself" (Detti e pensieri, Edilibri, n. 201). In this regard, all the more significant is the Gospel story of the widow who, out of her poverty, cast into the Temple treasury "all she had to live on" (Mk 12,44). Her tiny and insignificant coin becomes an eloquent symbol: this widow gives to God not out of her abundance, not so much what she has, but what she is. Her entire self.
We find this moving passage inserted in the description of the days that immediately precede Jesus' passion and death, who, as Saint Paul writes, made Himself poor to enrich us out of His poverty (cf. 2 Cor 8,9); He gave His entire self for us. Lent, also through the practice of almsgiving, inspires us to follow His example. In His school, we can learn to make of our lives a total gift; imitating Him, we are able to make ourselves available, not so much in giving a part of what we possess, but our very selves. Cannot the entire Gospel be summarized perhaps in the one commandment of love? The Lenten practice of almsgiving thus becomes a means to deepen our Christian vocation. In gratuitously offering himself, the Christian bears witness that it is love and not material richness that determines the laws of his existence. Love, then, gives almsgiving its value; it inspires various forms of giving, according to the possibilities and conditions of each person.
6. Dear brothers and sisters, Lent invites us to "train ourselves" spiritually, also through the practice of almsgiving, in order to grow in charity and recognize in the poor Christ Himself. In the Acts of the Apostles, we read that the Apostle Peter said to the cripple who was begging alms at the Temple gate: "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, walk" (Acts 3,6). In giving alms, we offer something material, a sign of the greater gift that we can impart to others through the announcement and witness of Christ, in whose name is found true life. Let this time, then, be marked by a personal and community effort of attachment to Christ in order that we may be witnesses of His love. May Mary, Mother and faithful Servant of the Lord, help believers to enter the "spiritual battle" of Lent, armed with prayer, fasting and the practice of almsgiving, so as to arrive at the celebration of the Easter Feasts, renewed in spirit. With these wishes, I willingly impart to all my Apostolic Blessing.
From the Vatican, 30 October 2007
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
[1] St. Peter Crysologus, Sermon, 43: PL 52, 320. 322.
[2] James Brown, “Subject and Object in Modern Theology,” Croall Lectures for 1953, 170 seq.
[3] Thomas F. Torrance, “Theological Science,” Oxford University Press (1978) 92-93
[4] W. Heisenberg, “Physics and Philosophy,” 80.
[5] Ibid 98.
From the Vatican, 30 October 2007
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
[1] St. Peter Crysologus, Sermon, 43: PL 52, 320. 322.
[2] James Brown, “Subject and Object in Modern Theology,” Croall Lectures for 1953, 170 seq.
[3] Thomas F. Torrance, “Theological Science,” Oxford University Press (1978) 92-93
[4] W. Heisenberg, “Physics and Philosophy,” 80.
[5] Ibid 98.
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