1 Peter 2:21-25 / John 10:11-16
What kind of unity binds together the sheep of Christ's flock? How is it supposed to be that all the various peoples of the world, with their diversity of language and history, of culture and perspective, of politics and priorities, can ever in any meaningful way be said to be one fold? When even within a given culture, indeed within a given nation, the faithful can seem to speak incommensurable claims about Jesus Christ and his Church, what hope does the whole Body of Christ have?
We generally imagine two kinds of unity, neither of which seems to help us here. One kind of unity is what we might call tribal unity. It is what unites people with a shared lineage or blood, shared history or experiences, shared privilege or shared discrimination. It might be as small as a family, or as large as a nation state, and may even cross national borders. Positively, it allows persons who would otherwise be total strangers find, in the bonds of common experience and identity, a real sense of fellowship. Such bonds are strong, because they tend to touch what we regards as deeply personal features of ourselves. However, for that reason, these bonds also powerfully exclude. Absent such common features or experiences, being outside the tribe means that, while one may be treated well by its members, one is never truly a member. Since the bonds are deeply personal, they cannot be acquired by intention alone, no matter how sincere. Indeed, one may find that even a lifetime of common cause does not allow for full membership in the tribe.
On the other hand, we have procedural unity. This is the unity of a corporation, of a legal entity. It is the kind of unity that is achieved by meeting the proper requirements and fulfilling the requisite obligations. It might be as small as a club or a classroom, or as large as a national labor union or an international business enterprise, or even a transnational political movement. Positively, procedural unities are potentially open to any willing to meet their requirements for membership. They are, by their nature, inclusive in a way tribal unities never can be. However, they achieve this feat only by being deprived of those deep personal bonds that make union a source of human flourishing. If people find deep bonds in a procedural or political unity, it will be apart from, even despite of, the nature of the union, and not because of it.
So, how is it that the flock of Jesus Christ binds us together?
On the one hand, it shares much of the nature of a tribal union. It is deeply personal, and depends not on legal ties, but relational ones: I am the good Shepherd: and I know Mine, and Mine know Me. Unlike the procedural unity, like the hireling, and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, the unity of Christ's flock is founded on the intimate and irrevocable union between Jesus Christ and each and every sheep, as well as of the flock as a whole. So powerful is the love between Christ and the flock that the good Shepherd giveth His life for His sheep.
Yet, as Jesus reminds his disciples, the flock of the Shepherd is not an excluding one. And other sheep I have that are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd. Indeed, all it takes to be a member is not to be part of a special people, or raised in a given culture, or inherit a particular history. Rather, what draws us and any into the flock is the desire to think and live as Jesus did. Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His steps. We were, all of us, no matter what our backgrounds, no matter what the deep tribal ties we had, as sheep going astray, and whoever enjoys the unity of Christ's flock has done so not as a personal accomplishment nor as the inheritance of his people, but through the saving exemplar of Jesus Christ, who suffered for our sake, and rose from the dead: but you are now converted to the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.
It is Jesus Christ, who suffered and died, and rose from the dead, who is the sole source of our unity. Jesus, the life and the resurrection, is alone what binds us together. He is the sole source of our lasting identity, as the sheep who know him, who hear his voice, and follow him, even as following him joins together every and all who receive the new life of Easter. This is the unity of the Church, to know one another as kin and fellow sheep in the flock of Jesus Christ, because he died and rose again on the third day for our sake, and who, who hear his voice, are willing also to die after his example, living in the hope of the resurrection.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Saturday, May 7, 2011
St Stanislaus, Bishop, Martyr
Wisdom 5:1-5 / John 15:1-7
We might like historical knowledge to be clean, clear, and, after all the right digging around has been done, the appropriate texts discovered and read, the proper sites excavated and interpreted, we might like for there to be no possible doubt as to what happened in the past, and why. Now, perhaps this is because the human desire to know is innate, and the fundamental tentative character of all knowledge of history offends against our desire to be certain. More than that, I imagine that we worry that what he have done, indeed more what we have suffered for the sake of the Gospel, will not be able to be forgotten, or even worse, misrepresented. We convince ourselves that, once people saw the relevant facts, they would know as we know that what we have suffered was neither pointless nor self-serving, but truly an irrefutable witness of the power of the risen Christ.
While we might like this, it is nonetheless not the case. We see this clearly enough in the life and death of St Stanislaus. We assert, for example, that he was slain while celebrating Mass (long before the parallel events occurred in England to St Thomas Becket) by King Boleslaus II of Poland because the saintly bishop had challenged the king for his wicked behavior. However, there are scholars who assert, and contemporary records that suggest, that Stanislaus was a traitor who had conspired with powerful men in the kingdom to have Boleslaus removed from the throne.
The same ambiguity arises in one of Stanislaus' most famous miracles. It was said that a man Peter had donated his land to the Church, but that after his death, his family denied the donation and demanded their inheritance. The king himself supported the family and demanded that Stanislaus either produce a credible witness or withdraw his claim on behalf of the Church. After three days of intense prayer, God raised Peter from the dead, and before the astonished court, he bore witness that Stanislaus' claim was true, and that the land rightly belonged to the Church.
A clear witness, you say, and undeniable. Indeed, and so it was for those who were there. However, as the story continues, Peter was asked whether he wanted to remain alive. He said he did not, and wanted to return to await his eternal reward. So, returned to the grave, we have only the legend to vouch not only for the veracity of St Stanislaus' claim, and with it his holiness, as well as the veracity of the claim that Peter rose from the dead. In short, despite the power of this irrefutable witness for those who saw it, the claim remains for us, always capable of dispute, always able to be misread and misinterpreted, able to transform the record of our holiness into a record of self-serving pretense.
It is true that Scripture promises that, on the Last Day, those who mocked the just will find that the elect had suffered not in vain, but unto glory: We fools esteemed their life madness and their end without honor; behold how they are numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the Saints. Even so, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has promised his elect in this lifetime not unmistakable proof of their sanctity, but at one and the same time, evidence of holiness in their sharing in the fruits of his Resurrection and evidence of shame in their suffering by his holy design. Every branch in Me ... that beareth fruit, He will purge it, that it may bring forth more fruit. In other words, the life of the saint will be, by divine design, as much characterized by failure, opposition, and ambiguous witness as it will be by the consistent and irrefutable growth of charity and the fruits of a life redeemed.
This is the lot of those who share in the Resurrection. Indeed, this is the very lot of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. As beyond reproach as he is at the right hand of the Father, until the Last Day, when he appears in glory, and none will be able to deny him, he will remain always able to be misunderstood and denied, his goodness transposed into something less noble, less life-giving, less divine. If such is the life of the vine, what else ought we to expect of the branches?
We might like historical knowledge to be clean, clear, and, after all the right digging around has been done, the appropriate texts discovered and read, the proper sites excavated and interpreted, we might like for there to be no possible doubt as to what happened in the past, and why. Now, perhaps this is because the human desire to know is innate, and the fundamental tentative character of all knowledge of history offends against our desire to be certain. More than that, I imagine that we worry that what he have done, indeed more what we have suffered for the sake of the Gospel, will not be able to be forgotten, or even worse, misrepresented. We convince ourselves that, once people saw the relevant facts, they would know as we know that what we have suffered was neither pointless nor self-serving, but truly an irrefutable witness of the power of the risen Christ.
While we might like this, it is nonetheless not the case. We see this clearly enough in the life and death of St Stanislaus. We assert, for example, that he was slain while celebrating Mass (long before the parallel events occurred in England to St Thomas Becket) by King Boleslaus II of Poland because the saintly bishop had challenged the king for his wicked behavior. However, there are scholars who assert, and contemporary records that suggest, that Stanislaus was a traitor who had conspired with powerful men in the kingdom to have Boleslaus removed from the throne.
The same ambiguity arises in one of Stanislaus' most famous miracles. It was said that a man Peter had donated his land to the Church, but that after his death, his family denied the donation and demanded their inheritance. The king himself supported the family and demanded that Stanislaus either produce a credible witness or withdraw his claim on behalf of the Church. After three days of intense prayer, God raised Peter from the dead, and before the astonished court, he bore witness that Stanislaus' claim was true, and that the land rightly belonged to the Church.
A clear witness, you say, and undeniable. Indeed, and so it was for those who were there. However, as the story continues, Peter was asked whether he wanted to remain alive. He said he did not, and wanted to return to await his eternal reward. So, returned to the grave, we have only the legend to vouch not only for the veracity of St Stanislaus' claim, and with it his holiness, as well as the veracity of the claim that Peter rose from the dead. In short, despite the power of this irrefutable witness for those who saw it, the claim remains for us, always capable of dispute, always able to be misread and misinterpreted, able to transform the record of our holiness into a record of self-serving pretense.
It is true that Scripture promises that, on the Last Day, those who mocked the just will find that the elect had suffered not in vain, but unto glory: We fools esteemed their life madness and their end without honor; behold how they are numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the Saints. Even so, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has promised his elect in this lifetime not unmistakable proof of their sanctity, but at one and the same time, evidence of holiness in their sharing in the fruits of his Resurrection and evidence of shame in their suffering by his holy design. Every branch in Me ... that beareth fruit, He will purge it, that it may bring forth more fruit. In other words, the life of the saint will be, by divine design, as much characterized by failure, opposition, and ambiguous witness as it will be by the consistent and irrefutable growth of charity and the fruits of a life redeemed.
This is the lot of those who share in the Resurrection. Indeed, this is the very lot of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. As beyond reproach as he is at the right hand of the Father, until the Last Day, when he appears in glory, and none will be able to deny him, he will remain always able to be misunderstood and denied, his goodness transposed into something less noble, less life-giving, less divine. If such is the life of the vine, what else ought we to expect of the branches?
Thursday, May 5, 2011
St Pius V, Pope, Confessor
1 Peter 5:1-4, 10-11 / Matthew 16:13-19
When we think about what a leader needs to keep in mind, we are generally inclined to insist on those ways that he ought to limit his use of power, how he ought to wield his authority lightly, how he ought to be more a model who inspires than an autocrat who demands. Nor are we alone in this respect. When St Peter delivered his counsel for those who would lead the Church of God, his concerns coincided with ours: feed the flock of God which is among you ... not for filthy lucre's sake, but voluntarily; neither lording it over the clergy, but being made a pattern of the flock from the heart. The image of the mercenary bishop who belittles rather than encourages his clergy is so obviously objectionable, even if worth pointing out as wrong.
What may come as a surprise is Peter's one other bit of advice for the bishop concerning the flock of God, namely that he take care of it not by constraint, but willingly, according to God. This may seem odd to us, because we, who may see ourselves as without power and authority, might have trouble imagining that anyone would need to be encouraged, cajoled, even required to make use of power. In this, we would be mistaken. One of the grave abuses of power, and one which we perhaps do not attend to nearly enough, is the failure to exercise it. Power and authority, in the Church even as in civil life, is not a necessary evil, but a good, something which enables each and every member of the community, and the community as a whole, to flourish and prosper, to make use of its gifts and talents in such a way as to promote the growth and happiness of each and of all. At least, this is so with authority rightly used. Apart from such a right exercise of rule, we, even with the best of intentions, find ourselves working at cross purposes, all striving to achieve our private good and the common good, but not in ways that work in unison, not always in ways that draw out our hidden talents or the unknown synergies that arise when we make use of what we regard as our lesser contributions. We cannot always see the ways our contributions might make good our own and others' defects. In these and countless other ways, the exercise of authority is for us a boon. When this authority is constituted by God, a share in the very kingship of Jesus Christ himself, it is in every sense of the word a grace.
This is why we rightly celebrate the gift of saintly popes such as Pius V. Like the best of leaders, he helped the Church draw forth from its treasuries the best of what it had, directing it to live not as a reactive and embattled body, threatened by schism and heresy within, and menacing conquest from without, but rather in the confident hope of a body empowered by the Spirit of the Risen Christ. It was just this hope that sustained the Church in the darkness of the sixteenth century, directing its eyes not merely to the fears and disappointments of Protestant rebellion and Ottoman conquest, but more importantly to the renewal of the life of clergy and religious, the affirmation of authentic worship and catechesis, the spread of the Gospel across the globe to peoples who had never, from the dawn of time, heard the name of Jesus. In these and countless other ways, Pius V, not by refraining from using his authority as successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ, but instead using it unapologetically according to God, directed the Church as a whole, and by God's grace its members, more firmly to that beatitude to which they had been called and for which they longed.
This is also why we must not be ashamed to use, with godly confidence, whatever authority we have been given: as superiors over our fellow religious, as parents over children, as teachers over students. Our authority has been given to us precisely to assist not only our own growth in virtue, but to direct and empower that same sanctification of our neighbor who has been put in our care. It is not be failing to use our authority, but in its right and unambiguous exercise for the sake of the Gospel that we will not only fulfill our charge, but also enable anyone subject to us to fulfill theirs as well. That is our duty, and this is our hope: And when the prince of pastors shall appear, you shall receive a never fading crown of glory.
When we think about what a leader needs to keep in mind, we are generally inclined to insist on those ways that he ought to limit his use of power, how he ought to wield his authority lightly, how he ought to be more a model who inspires than an autocrat who demands. Nor are we alone in this respect. When St Peter delivered his counsel for those who would lead the Church of God, his concerns coincided with ours: feed the flock of God which is among you ... not for filthy lucre's sake, but voluntarily; neither lording it over the clergy, but being made a pattern of the flock from the heart. The image of the mercenary bishop who belittles rather than encourages his clergy is so obviously objectionable, even if worth pointing out as wrong.
What may come as a surprise is Peter's one other bit of advice for the bishop concerning the flock of God, namely that he take care of it not by constraint, but willingly, according to God. This may seem odd to us, because we, who may see ourselves as without power and authority, might have trouble imagining that anyone would need to be encouraged, cajoled, even required to make use of power. In this, we would be mistaken. One of the grave abuses of power, and one which we perhaps do not attend to nearly enough, is the failure to exercise it. Power and authority, in the Church even as in civil life, is not a necessary evil, but a good, something which enables each and every member of the community, and the community as a whole, to flourish and prosper, to make use of its gifts and talents in such a way as to promote the growth and happiness of each and of all. At least, this is so with authority rightly used. Apart from such a right exercise of rule, we, even with the best of intentions, find ourselves working at cross purposes, all striving to achieve our private good and the common good, but not in ways that work in unison, not always in ways that draw out our hidden talents or the unknown synergies that arise when we make use of what we regard as our lesser contributions. We cannot always see the ways our contributions might make good our own and others' defects. In these and countless other ways, the exercise of authority is for us a boon. When this authority is constituted by God, a share in the very kingship of Jesus Christ himself, it is in every sense of the word a grace.
This is why we rightly celebrate the gift of saintly popes such as Pius V. Like the best of leaders, he helped the Church draw forth from its treasuries the best of what it had, directing it to live not as a reactive and embattled body, threatened by schism and heresy within, and menacing conquest from without, but rather in the confident hope of a body empowered by the Spirit of the Risen Christ. It was just this hope that sustained the Church in the darkness of the sixteenth century, directing its eyes not merely to the fears and disappointments of Protestant rebellion and Ottoman conquest, but more importantly to the renewal of the life of clergy and religious, the affirmation of authentic worship and catechesis, the spread of the Gospel across the globe to peoples who had never, from the dawn of time, heard the name of Jesus. In these and countless other ways, Pius V, not by refraining from using his authority as successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ, but instead using it unapologetically according to God, directed the Church as a whole, and by God's grace its members, more firmly to that beatitude to which they had been called and for which they longed.
This is also why we must not be ashamed to use, with godly confidence, whatever authority we have been given: as superiors over our fellow religious, as parents over children, as teachers over students. Our authority has been given to us precisely to assist not only our own growth in virtue, but to direct and empower that same sanctification of our neighbor who has been put in our care. It is not be failing to use our authority, but in its right and unambiguous exercise for the sake of the Gospel that we will not only fulfill our charge, but also enable anyone subject to us to fulfill theirs as well. That is our duty, and this is our hope: And when the prince of pastors shall appear, you shall receive a never fading crown of glory.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
St Monica, Widow
1 Timothy 5:3-10 / Luke 7:11-16
What has crying to do with the joy of Easter? Why speak this day of devoted tears? Why would we pray to God, as we bask in the light of the Resurrection, that we want to bewail our sins? After all, Lent is over and done, and the pains, sorrows, and pleading, so intense in Holy Week, have yielded to the bright joy of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.
Even so, today the Church places before us Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine. Monica was, of course, a holy and pious woman. Not without faults, to be sure. She showed a certain lack of prudence when delaying the young Augustine's baptism, for example, even if such was part of God's Providence, and in her latter years showed more than due interest in drink. All the same, she was a holy woman.
Yet, what we recall of this holy woman most of all was her life of tears, that ceaseless flow of sorrow and supplication which came from the depths of her soul as she watched her son as a youth, then as a man, depart from her Catholic faith and descend into the life of the flesh and foolish philosophies. Alone, deprived of her husband, this holy widow was the very image prescribed by Paul to Timothy, a widow indeed, and desolate, who placed her trust in God and continued in supplications night and day. She was the wife of one husband, having testimony for her good works, had brought up children, and washed if not the feet of the saints, then at least her own face with weeping for her son's conversion.
If we sometimes make the mistake in Lent of thinking that the life of penance and fasting excludes joy, we are perhaps just as mistaken when we imagine that, at least in this world, the life of Easter joy and Alleluias forbids weeping and mourning. In our Gospel, the raising of the young man to life, he share in an earthly way of the Resurrection and the Life who is the Word made flesh, is prompted not by shouts of joy, but by a mother's tears: Whom when the Lord had seen, being moved with mercy towards her, He said to her: Weep not. We find, then, the paradox of Easter joy. It is true that Jesus, risen from the dead to life eternal, counsels us not to weep, dries our tears as he dried those of the woman in Naim and of the sorrowing Magdalene. Still, it was precisely those tears, that weeping, that supplication for mercy which both moved the Lord's mercy and opened their hearts to receive the Good News of the Resurrection. Said differently, the grace of Easter ought to prompt those very tears it will then dry, ought to move us to weep so as to fill the emptiness which follows with unalloyed joy.
This, then, is why we celebrate Monica and her tears in the time of Easter rejoicing. It is so that when we have been moved by her intercession, and the power of Christ risen from the dead, to bewail our sins, we will find in our hearts thus washed and cleansed nothing by the merciful grace of the Savior.
What has crying to do with the joy of Easter? Why speak this day of devoted tears? Why would we pray to God, as we bask in the light of the Resurrection, that we want to bewail our sins? After all, Lent is over and done, and the pains, sorrows, and pleading, so intense in Holy Week, have yielded to the bright joy of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.
Even so, today the Church places before us Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine. Monica was, of course, a holy and pious woman. Not without faults, to be sure. She showed a certain lack of prudence when delaying the young Augustine's baptism, for example, even if such was part of God's Providence, and in her latter years showed more than due interest in drink. All the same, she was a holy woman.
Yet, what we recall of this holy woman most of all was her life of tears, that ceaseless flow of sorrow and supplication which came from the depths of her soul as she watched her son as a youth, then as a man, depart from her Catholic faith and descend into the life of the flesh and foolish philosophies. Alone, deprived of her husband, this holy widow was the very image prescribed by Paul to Timothy, a widow indeed, and desolate, who placed her trust in God and continued in supplications night and day. She was the wife of one husband, having testimony for her good works, had brought up children, and washed if not the feet of the saints, then at least her own face with weeping for her son's conversion.
If we sometimes make the mistake in Lent of thinking that the life of penance and fasting excludes joy, we are perhaps just as mistaken when we imagine that, at least in this world, the life of Easter joy and Alleluias forbids weeping and mourning. In our Gospel, the raising of the young man to life, he share in an earthly way of the Resurrection and the Life who is the Word made flesh, is prompted not by shouts of joy, but by a mother's tears: Whom when the Lord had seen, being moved with mercy towards her, He said to her: Weep not. We find, then, the paradox of Easter joy. It is true that Jesus, risen from the dead to life eternal, counsels us not to weep, dries our tears as he dried those of the woman in Naim and of the sorrowing Magdalene. Still, it was precisely those tears, that weeping, that supplication for mercy which both moved the Lord's mercy and opened their hearts to receive the Good News of the Resurrection. Said differently, the grace of Easter ought to prompt those very tears it will then dry, ought to move us to weep so as to fill the emptiness which follows with unalloyed joy.
This, then, is why we celebrate Monica and her tears in the time of Easter rejoicing. It is so that when we have been moved by her intercession, and the power of Christ risen from the dead, to bewail our sins, we will find in our hearts thus washed and cleansed nothing by the merciful grace of the Savior.
Monday, May 2, 2011
St Joseph the Worker
Today, those who follow the calendar of the Roman Missal of 1962 celebrate the Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker. There was so much going on of late, most importantly the Octave of octaves, of course, in celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. There was also the beatification of John Paul II, which, apart from a few posters recalling the first article of the Italian Constitution (L'Italia รจ una Repubblica democratica, fondata sul lavoro.), there was little mention in the Eternal City of labor, of workers, or much anything else of the sort. This is not a fault, of course. As I noted, we had much more profound concerns at hand.
Even so, we ought rightly to remember the workers of the world, by whose labor we live, by the sweat of whose brow we eat.
Sancte Joseph, Opifex, ora pro nobis!
Even so, we ought rightly to remember the workers of the world, by whose labor we live, by the sweat of whose brow we eat.
Sancte Joseph, Opifex, ora pro nobis!
St Athanasius, Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Church
2 Corinthians 4:5-14 / Matthew 10:23-28
Today the world echoes with the news of death and the news of life. Of death, for it has been reported that Osama bin Laden, who had masterminded the deaths of countless men and women throughout the world, African, Arabs, Americans, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, has been killed in Pakistan by the actions of the American military. Of life, because the festivities continue in honor of the eternal life and merciful intercession of Blessed John Paul II, beatified only yesterday before a crowd of over a million persons. Both events have become, sometimes strangely enough for the same people, a cause of much rejoicing.
Wherever our politics may lie, whatever we may think the just and Christian response to al-Qaeda, however we respond to the wars fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, or in general about the "War on Terror," we who are born again in Christ cannot let the ghoulish delight in the death of a man, however sinister the man and however justified the death, cast a shadow across the inexhaustible life and sovereign joy we celebrate in the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ. Ours is a message of power, yes, but a power which softens hearts, shines with mercy, and brings to life. Ours is a message of deliverance from fear, yes, but not from them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul.
The Gospel, unlike the dark words and works of al-Qaeda, but also unlike the bloodthirsty rejoicing of those who dance in the streets over the death of a wicked man, is a message for which those who are most alive, those most joyful in Christ, will gladly suffer in love. Not the destruction of our earthly persecutors, not in making our lives safe, but our conformity to Christ through our sharing in his suffering is what is the cause for Easter joy. In all things we suffer tribulation, but are not distressed; we are straightened, but are not destitute; we suffer persecution, but are not forsaken; we are cast down, but we perish not; always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies. Indeed, it is the suffering in love of the Body of Christ that is the doorway to victory of the forces arrayed against us: death, sin, and Hell. And it is the rising of Christ in his body that guarantees that those who suffer in his Body the Church will take part in his glorious rising from the grave. For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake; that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
This was the suffering love Jesus made known on the Cross and the life eternal revealed on Easter day. This was the suffering love endured by St Athanasius, who for the sake of the truth of the Gospel against heretics and the proponents of worldly peace, fled persecution from one city to another, but sustained for the whole of the Church the apostolic faith. this was the suffering love of Blessed John Paul II, whose own experience of frailty and illness never dulled his paschal confidence in the power of the Word of life.
On the lips of many today and in the days to come will be words of suffering ended, words of the death of a man, and words of rejoicing. In whose suffering, in whose death will we be rejoicing, and whose name will be on our lips?
Today the world echoes with the news of death and the news of life. Of death, for it has been reported that Osama bin Laden, who had masterminded the deaths of countless men and women throughout the world, African, Arabs, Americans, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, has been killed in Pakistan by the actions of the American military. Of life, because the festivities continue in honor of the eternal life and merciful intercession of Blessed John Paul II, beatified only yesterday before a crowd of over a million persons. Both events have become, sometimes strangely enough for the same people, a cause of much rejoicing.
Wherever our politics may lie, whatever we may think the just and Christian response to al-Qaeda, however we respond to the wars fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, or in general about the "War on Terror," we who are born again in Christ cannot let the ghoulish delight in the death of a man, however sinister the man and however justified the death, cast a shadow across the inexhaustible life and sovereign joy we celebrate in the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ. Ours is a message of power, yes, but a power which softens hearts, shines with mercy, and brings to life. Ours is a message of deliverance from fear, yes, but not from them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul.
The Gospel, unlike the dark words and works of al-Qaeda, but also unlike the bloodthirsty rejoicing of those who dance in the streets over the death of a wicked man, is a message for which those who are most alive, those most joyful in Christ, will gladly suffer in love. Not the destruction of our earthly persecutors, not in making our lives safe, but our conformity to Christ through our sharing in his suffering is what is the cause for Easter joy. In all things we suffer tribulation, but are not distressed; we are straightened, but are not destitute; we suffer persecution, but are not forsaken; we are cast down, but we perish not; always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies. Indeed, it is the suffering in love of the Body of Christ that is the doorway to victory of the forces arrayed against us: death, sin, and Hell. And it is the rising of Christ in his body that guarantees that those who suffer in his Body the Church will take part in his glorious rising from the grave. For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake; that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
This was the suffering love Jesus made known on the Cross and the life eternal revealed on Easter day. This was the suffering love endured by St Athanasius, who for the sake of the truth of the Gospel against heretics and the proponents of worldly peace, fled persecution from one city to another, but sustained for the whole of the Church the apostolic faith. this was the suffering love of Blessed John Paul II, whose own experience of frailty and illness never dulled his paschal confidence in the power of the Word of life.
On the lips of many today and in the days to come will be words of suffering ended, words of the death of a man, and words of rejoicing. In whose suffering, in whose death will we be rejoicing, and whose name will be on our lips?
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Low Sunday (Octave of Easter)
1 John 5:4-10 / John 20:19-31
Today, Karol Wojtyla, our beloved Pope John Paul II, was declared a blessed of the Church. In the presence of more than a million of the faithful gathered in Rome, and countless millions more by television, by the internet, by radio, the great pontiff of the late twentieth century, who ushered the Church from the turbulence and chaos of the 1970s, through a failed attempt on his life and his forgiveness of the would-be assassin, his struggle against and the collapse of the Communist threat to the lives of millions of Christians in Europe, through the celebration of two millennia of the Incarnation of the Word, to his painful experience of debilitating illness in the sight of the whole world, until his final moments in the light of the Divine Mercy announced through St. Maria Faustina, this outstanding man, one of the leading figures of the Church in the twentieth century, was presented to the faithful for public veneration as a holy man of God.
There are many things one might credit as a sign of his holiness and contributions to the Church, so many achievements over so many years as the Vicar of Christ and successor of St. Peter. However, above them all, what most stand out was his suffering. For John Paul II, human suffering was never an arbitrary condition, never something which just happened without any cause or reason. In the face of the suffering of others, and especially of the poor, of children, of the unborn, of the common laborer, Blessed John Paul presented a challenge to those who could use their power, their wealth, their influence, to make a difference. However, more than that, he spoke to those who endured the suffering. To them he spoke words of hope. To them, he urged his ceaseless refrain, which refrain he took as right for a vicar from the Lord himself: Be not afraid! To those who suffered, he offered not merely soporific consolations, but the firm assurance that in their suffering, in the experience of suffering for the sake of and in the context of love and faith in Jesus Christ, the Lamb once slain who lives for ever, there is no defeat, but only victory. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
Of course, John Paul did not speak of suffering as one who knew not of what he spoke. He had known the terrors of the National Socialist occupation of his beloved Poland, even as he knew, and experienced directly, the evils of Communist oppression. He knew loss in his own family from an early age, the death of his mother in childhood, of his elder brother, and at the beginning of his maturity, of his father. He knew what it was to enter forced labor, as well as what it meant to study for the priesthood in secret. While long a vigorous and athletic man, a man whose body was itself, in his moments well dubbed theatrical in the best sense of the word, a tool for the Gospel, he experienced a painful decline, made all the more obvious to see with the rise of modern communication and the spread of the internet by the time of his death.
Yet, what John Paul II knew well, what our Scriptures today remind us, is that it is not so much the public, well-known witness, the visible martyrdom that is the field of victory for the Cross and the empty Tomb, but rather the hidden, unknown, unseen, and unheralded sufferings. Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed. For those who need help, for whom the pains of daily life, the struggles of the laborer in the fields, in the mines, in the factory, in the sweatshops, God in his abundant mercy has set before our eyes the extravagant examples of faithfulness not merely in spite of, but in light of suffering as John Paul II. Even so, it is not these sufferings that are at the heart of the victory of the Cross. Rather, it is the unknown, the untold stories of faithful men and women, who suffer in their work and who suffer daily indignities for the faith, by which the victory of the Cross shines forth.
These lives of faithfulness, these lives which recapitulate in their own way the agony of the Cross and in their refusal to abandon love witness the victory over the world, are among the many other signs which Jesus did and continues to do which are not written in the Scriptures. It is by the sweat of the workers' brows, by the hunger of a mother who goes with nothing that her child might eat to live at least one more day, it is from such as these who, despite the cruel and iron mandates of the world, nonetheless do not abandon charity for their neighbor nor sweet devotion to Jesus Christ, that the victory of the Cross shines forth in dazzling beauty.
There is no situation so dark, no dilemma so heartbreaking, that Jesus, risen from the grave, cannot enter in. He can, of course, enter in with drama and undeniable presence, as he did through the locked doors for Thomas and, in the life of Blessed John Paul II, he does for us today. More than that, though, he enters through our lives through the witness of the suffering poor and the laborer whose lives, enshrouded though they be by misery, nonetheless shine forth in the splendor of the Resurrection. All of these, the public and extravagant, and the hidden and personal, happen so that they, and we, might know that over and against the most terrifying pretensions of the grave, Christ the Lord has risen, and we have nothing to fear from sorrow or tears, from the lash of the whip or nails or spears. Christ has risen from the Tomb, and in his rising, our suffering is not the end of joy, but the way to life eternal.
But these things are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Son of God: and that, believing, you may have life in His name.
Today, Karol Wojtyla, our beloved Pope John Paul II, was declared a blessed of the Church. In the presence of more than a million of the faithful gathered in Rome, and countless millions more by television, by the internet, by radio, the great pontiff of the late twentieth century, who ushered the Church from the turbulence and chaos of the 1970s, through a failed attempt on his life and his forgiveness of the would-be assassin, his struggle against and the collapse of the Communist threat to the lives of millions of Christians in Europe, through the celebration of two millennia of the Incarnation of the Word, to his painful experience of debilitating illness in the sight of the whole world, until his final moments in the light of the Divine Mercy announced through St. Maria Faustina, this outstanding man, one of the leading figures of the Church in the twentieth century, was presented to the faithful for public veneration as a holy man of God.
There are many things one might credit as a sign of his holiness and contributions to the Church, so many achievements over so many years as the Vicar of Christ and successor of St. Peter. However, above them all, what most stand out was his suffering. For John Paul II, human suffering was never an arbitrary condition, never something which just happened without any cause or reason. In the face of the suffering of others, and especially of the poor, of children, of the unborn, of the common laborer, Blessed John Paul presented a challenge to those who could use their power, their wealth, their influence, to make a difference. However, more than that, he spoke to those who endured the suffering. To them he spoke words of hope. To them, he urged his ceaseless refrain, which refrain he took as right for a vicar from the Lord himself: Be not afraid! To those who suffered, he offered not merely soporific consolations, but the firm assurance that in their suffering, in the experience of suffering for the sake of and in the context of love and faith in Jesus Christ, the Lamb once slain who lives for ever, there is no defeat, but only victory. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
Of course, John Paul did not speak of suffering as one who knew not of what he spoke. He had known the terrors of the National Socialist occupation of his beloved Poland, even as he knew, and experienced directly, the evils of Communist oppression. He knew loss in his own family from an early age, the death of his mother in childhood, of his elder brother, and at the beginning of his maturity, of his father. He knew what it was to enter forced labor, as well as what it meant to study for the priesthood in secret. While long a vigorous and athletic man, a man whose body was itself, in his moments well dubbed theatrical in the best sense of the word, a tool for the Gospel, he experienced a painful decline, made all the more obvious to see with the rise of modern communication and the spread of the internet by the time of his death.
Yet, what John Paul II knew well, what our Scriptures today remind us, is that it is not so much the public, well-known witness, the visible martyrdom that is the field of victory for the Cross and the empty Tomb, but rather the hidden, unknown, unseen, and unheralded sufferings. Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed. For those who need help, for whom the pains of daily life, the struggles of the laborer in the fields, in the mines, in the factory, in the sweatshops, God in his abundant mercy has set before our eyes the extravagant examples of faithfulness not merely in spite of, but in light of suffering as John Paul II. Even so, it is not these sufferings that are at the heart of the victory of the Cross. Rather, it is the unknown, the untold stories of faithful men and women, who suffer in their work and who suffer daily indignities for the faith, by which the victory of the Cross shines forth.
These lives of faithfulness, these lives which recapitulate in their own way the agony of the Cross and in their refusal to abandon love witness the victory over the world, are among the many other signs which Jesus did and continues to do which are not written in the Scriptures. It is by the sweat of the workers' brows, by the hunger of a mother who goes with nothing that her child might eat to live at least one more day, it is from such as these who, despite the cruel and iron mandates of the world, nonetheless do not abandon charity for their neighbor nor sweet devotion to Jesus Christ, that the victory of the Cross shines forth in dazzling beauty.
There is no situation so dark, no dilemma so heartbreaking, that Jesus, risen from the grave, cannot enter in. He can, of course, enter in with drama and undeniable presence, as he did through the locked doors for Thomas and, in the life of Blessed John Paul II, he does for us today. More than that, though, he enters through our lives through the witness of the suffering poor and the laborer whose lives, enshrouded though they be by misery, nonetheless shine forth in the splendor of the Resurrection. All of these, the public and extravagant, and the hidden and personal, happen so that they, and we, might know that over and against the most terrifying pretensions of the grave, Christ the Lord has risen, and we have nothing to fear from sorrow or tears, from the lash of the whip or nails or spears. Christ has risen from the Tomb, and in his rising, our suffering is not the end of joy, but the way to life eternal.
But these things are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Son of God: and that, believing, you may have life in His name.
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