St. Josemaria Escriva experienced himself to be not only
another Christ, but Ipse Christus, Christ Himself. The experience did not
consist in having Christ within him, or of imitating Christ, or of following
Christ, or being like Christ. He
experienced being Christ, and heard the words, “you are my Son; you
are Christ.” It seems that we are talking about an ontological identity of
really becoming Christ. But this sets of an alarm that we are talking about man
becoming God, and if that is the case, how do we not fall into pantheism?
There were two audible experiences (locutions) that
he had in 1931: One was during Mass on August 7 when he heard the words: "And
I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself" and
"You are my son (Psalm 2, 7), you are Christ."
With regard to the first,
Escriva commented years later that he understood Christ saying those words "not
in the sense in which in which Scripture says them. I say [them] to
you in the sense that you are to raise me up in all human activities, in
the sense that all over the world there should be Christians with a personal
and most free dedication, that they be other Christs."
With regard to the second,
he recounted later: “the Lord was giving me those blows around the year
31, and I did not understand. And suddenly (de pronto), in the midst of that
great bitterness, these words: 'You are my Son (Psalm 2, 7), you are Christ.'
And I could only stammer: 'Abba, Pater! Abba, Pater! Abba! Abba!
Abba!' Now I see it with new light, like
a new discovery, just as one sees, after years have passed, that hand of God,
of divine Wisdom, of the All-Powerful One. You've led me, Lord, to understand that
to find the Cross is to find happiness, joy. And I see the reason with greater
clarity than ever: to find the Cross is to identify oneself with Christ, to be
Christ, and therefore to be a son of God.”
These two
locutions (charisms) with reference to Christians as "other
Christs" and himself as "my Son, you are Christ," gave
him the clarity of mind to persistently repeat throughout his life that the
vocation of every man as image of God, and not just the Christian via the
sacrament of Baptism, is to be "no ya alter Christus, sino ipse
Christus, !el mismo Cristo!" (not just another Christ, but
Christ Himself) [1]
Two authors, Burkhart and Lopez[2], add here that the novelty is
not so much that Escriva affirms that being created in the image of God, or
being baptized into Christ will bring about an identification with Christ
Himself (which is already deep in Christian Tradition), but that this
identification with Christ has an
ontological character to it, and it is accessible to all in ordinary secular life. It is not new
to say that one can have a vocation to be Christ Himself, but it is new to say that all are called to actually
become Christ Himself by living out ordinary life.[3]
And so let's note that
Escriva did not experience or hear within him that he had become like
Christ, that he was imitating Christ, that he was following Christ,
that he had identified himself with Christ, that he was sharing with
Christ, that he belonged to Christ, that he was tending toward
the fullness of the humanity of Christ, or even that he was another
Christ. Rather, these two authors commented that: “he saw and felt
that to be a son of God was “to be Christ' and therefore God the Father treated
him as he treated Christ when giving him these physical and moral pains: the
cross. It was the evident proof of his filiation, because as the Father had wanted the passion and death of
His incarnate Son for the redemption of men, so those contradictions of his
were the way to fulfill the mission which He has given him to share in the redemptive work of Christ. God the Father had not only treated him 'as
Christ' but when inviting him to embrace the cross, he said to him: 'you are
Christ' 'you are my son.'”(?)
The texts of our Father are unambiguous: “To have the Cross is to be
identified with Christ, it is to be Christ, and therefore, to be a son of God.”
In the same meditation, our Father said: “There is only one way to live
on earth: to die with Christ in order to rise with Him, until we may be able to
say with the Apostle: 'It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me' (Gal
2, 20)” Burkhart and Lopez comment: “St. Josemaria understands that
Gal. 2, 20 speaks of a presence of the life of Christ in the Christian not only
in an intentional sense (as the known is in the one who knows, and the beloved
in the one who loves) but ontologically” (my underline). Removing
any lingering ambiguity, our Father writes” “Each Christian is not simply
alter Christus; another Christ, but ipse Christus: Christ
himself!”
Burkart
and Lopez attempt to give a theological account of this ontological
identification of the human person with Christ by assuming the theology that had
been crafted in the Council of Chalcedon (451) of the one Person, two natures
and applying the notion of participation of the human nature in the divine
nature.
It
should be noted that the affirmations of St. Josemaria point to a radical ontological
identity that the Christian “is” and the presence of the Cross is the patent,
existential and experiential confirmation that, indeed, one has become “another
Christ, Christ Himself.” The two authors affirm that the identity with Christ
is ontological, and that it cannot be reduced to abstract thought or doctrine.[4]
They go on to say that we are not dealing here in St. Josemaria with a “confusion
between Christ and the Christian,” but rather with an “identification.” And the
“identification” does not mean the “disappearance of one’s own identity” but a “compenetration.”
And the only adequate analogy for this is the union between the Trinitarian Father
and the Son when Jesus says “As the living Father has sent me, and as I live
because of the Father, so he who eats me, he also shall live because of me”
(Jn. 6, 58), and “I in them and You in me” (Jn. 17, 23). But we must remember
what was heard, and what, therefore, was said by St. Josemaria: “you are my
Son; you are Christ,” and Escriva could not stop saying Abba, Abba which
is the unique language of the Ipse Christus.
The
question, then, is Christ in Escriva? Or is Escriva Christ?, and
what could we possibly mean by that?
Burkhart
and Lopez, once they reach the point of giving a theological, conceptual
explanation, slide into a more reasonable Christ is in Escriva.
And they do it in the more conventional metaphysical / terms of participation.
They
apply the Christology of Chalcedon in its Scholastic metaphysical terms of one
Person, two natures. Obviously, they want to avoid falling into an offensive
confusion of the uncreated Divinity of Christ with a created human person. They
do not want to fall into pantheism. And so they apply Neo-Scholastic Christology
and anthropology: the Humanity of Christ – the human nature – is the efficient “instrumental”cause
of grace. That is, the Humanity of Christ, in so far as it is assumed by the
divine Person of the Logos, possesses the fullness of grace (assuming grace to
be the communicator of divine Life). They then assign that the Humanity of Christ
is the instrumental (not principal) cause. They then say that Christ is
present in the human person in so far as the action of His humanity is
made present in him. That is, Christ is not in Escriva. Rather, the grace of
Christ’s humanity is in Escriva which acts in him.[5]
My complaint with this
is the following: if the human person has the profound ontological likeness to
the divine Person because created in His image and likeness, and after Christ,
baptized into His power to make the gift of Himself to death, why not apply the
anthropology of Gaudium et spes 24 that is the dynamic concretion of Gaudium et
spes 22. Why take an anthropology from
below (rational animal) as from Aristotle and Boethius and try to force a
relational Christology into it? That is, follow the Magisterium that says that
Jesus Christ is the revelation not only who God is, but who man is. That is,
Christ is not an exception to man (as
taken from below as rational animal) but his Prototype. Therefore the
anthropology has to follow the Christology. And the Christology of Chalcedon
(451) was complete and dynamized by the Christology of Constantinople III
(680-681) that says that the human will of Christ becomes the human will of the
divine Person of the Son, and that the human and the divine compenetrate in that both wills (divine
and human) are longings of the same Person for the Father. That is, the human
will is not damaged but perfected by being the will of
a divine Person.
This would mean that the
freedom of the human will of Christ consists in obeying the Father[6]
to death on the Cross. This is made in the magisterium of Gaudium et spes #24
that says, “man, the only earthly being God has willed for itself, finds itself
by the sincere gift of self.” Therefore, if man is capable of making the gift
of himself in obedience to the Will of the Father, he is capable of being
Christ Himself.
The theology of Jesus
Christ reveals that the Person of Christ is nothing in Himself. Since the
Trinity is One God, then the Persons must be subsistent Relations. Each Person
is not a “substance” or “individual” in self, but a “for” the other. It is the
Communio of the one Christian God.
Hence, the ontological content of the Son is
to be nothing in Self. Hear
Ratzinger: “The Son as Son, and in so far as he is Son,
does not proceed in any way from himself and so is completely one with the
Father; since he is nothing beside him, claims no special position of his own,
confronts the Father with nothing belonging only to him, retains no room for
his own individuality, therefore he is completely equal to the Father. The
logic is compelling: if there is nothing in which he is just he, no kind of fenced-off
private ground, then he coincides with the Father, is ‘one’ with him. It is
precisely this totality of interplay that the word ‘Son’ aims at expressing. To
John ‘Son’ means being-from-another; thus with this word he defines the being
of this man as being from another and for others, as a being that is completely
open on both sides, knows no reserved area of the mere ‘I.’ When it thus
becomes clear that the being of Jesus as Christ is a completely open being, a
being ‘from’ and ‘towards,’ that nowhere clings to itself and nowhere stands on
its own, then it is also clear at the same time that this being is pure
relation (not substantiality) and, as pure relation, pure unity. This
fundamental statement about Christ becomes, as we have seen, at the same time
the explanation of Christian existence. To John, being a Christian means being
like the Son, becoming a son; that is, not standing on one’s own and in
oneself, but living completely open in the ‘from’ and ‘towards.’ In so far as
the Christian is a ‘Christian,’ this is true of him. And certainly such
utterances will make him aware to how small an extent he is a Christian”[7]
And further, the person of the Son and His act
cannot be distinguished. Ratzinger again: “For what faith really states is
precisely that with Jesus it is not possible to distinguish office and person;
with him, this differentiation simply becomes inapplicable. The person is the office, the office is the person. The two are no longer
divisible. Here there is no private area reserved for an ‘I’ which remains in
the background behind the deeds and actions and thus at some time or other can
be4 ‘off duty;’ there is no ‘I’ separate from the work; the ‘I’ is the work and the work is the ‘I.’”[8]
And now to connect what Bl. Alvaro del
Portillo, having lived 40 years with St. Josemaria and having observed him in
his “first act” as founder of Opus Dei, wrote in the Osservatore Romano in May of 1992: “The identification of his very self with his foundational activity
implied that Mons. Escriva perfected himself as a subject – up to the point of
living the virtues to a heroic degree – in the measure in which he carried out
Opus Dei, feeling the need to second God’s plans daily.” He commented that
it was impossible to distinguish his persona from his vocation to found the
Work.
Hence, if the Person of Christ is
His action, and His Person is His teaching, then if the human person, image and
baptized, is capable of this totality of self gift over a life-time, then, with
this Christological anthropology, we are able to give a metaphysical account of
the human person approximating his Prototype.
[1]Josemaria Escriva “Christ is
Passing By,” #104
[2] Ernst Burkhart - Javier
Lopez, “Vida Cotidiana y Santidad En La Ensenagnza de San Josemaria,” Rialp,
(2011) Vol. II, 85.
[3] Ernst Burkhart - Javier
Lopez, “Vida Cotidiana y Santidad En La Ensenagnza de San Josemaria,” Rialp,
(2011) Vol. II, 85.
[4] “La
filiacion divine percibida por san Josemaria en 1931 no se agota en la doctrina
– profunda, pero quiza algo abstracta – de ser ‘hijjos en el Hijo,’ sino que es
una filiacion divine ‘en Cristo,’ una filiacion divina ‘encarnada’ y redentora.’
[5] “Que
la cause instrumental sea causa por participacion comporta que es causa no por su
ser (como la causa principal, la Divinidad) sino por su accion o ‘virtud,’ que
la Humanidad de Cristo tiene de modo indefectible. Esto implica que la
presencia de Cristo encuanto hombre en el Cristiano que recibe al gracia, no es
como la pesencia de la causa principal, la Divinidad, que inabita en el alma in
gracia, sino que es una presencia de su accion o ‘virtud.’ En este sentido se
la puede llamar ‘presencia virtual,’
entendiendo este ultimo termino como presence de la accion de Cristo o de su virtus: su ‘poder’ o ‘fuerza.’ La presencia virtual de Cristo en cuanto
Hombre in el Cristiano es una presencia verdadera y real, pero no sustancial;
es presencia del poder o del influjo de la Humanidad de Cristo, no de su
sustancia. Se trata de una presencia dinamica.
Gracias a ella puede decirse que las acciones de un hijo de Dios, surgidas de
su naturaleza elevada por la gracia de Cristo, son tambien acciones d Cristo a
traves del Cristiano como miembro suyo: vida d Cristo en el Cristiano. Y es,
ademas, una presencia permanente, que
existe mientras permanence la gracia. Burkart y Lopez …. P. 99.
[6]
See Veritatis Splendor#85.
[7] J. Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius
(1990) 134.
1 comment:
That is so good. Says it all.
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