Handel: La resurrezione
Monday, April 30, 2018
The Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne and Five other German Bishops
Here is the list of names and portraits of the seven bishops (five in Bavaria) who famously opposed the German Bishops Conference in its attempt to seek inter-communion for non-Catholic Christians. These bishops sent their dubia to the Vatican and are said to have recently received a secret clarification in the negative from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. I also include a copy of the letter sent by the bishops to the CDF.
Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, Archbishop of Cologne (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Archbishop Ludwig Schick of Bamberg (Bavaria)
Bishop Konrad Zdarsa of Augsburg (Bavaria)
Bishop Gregor Maria Hanke of Eichstätt (Bavaria)
Bishop Stefan Oster of Passau (Bavaria)
Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg (Bavaria)
Bishop Wolfgang Ipolt of Görlitz (Saxony)
The Full Text of the 7 Bishops’ Letter:
“Your Eminence, my dear confreres,
In the period from February 19 to 22, 2018, the German bishops met for their Spring Plenary Assembly in Ingolstadt.
Under item IL.1 of the agenda, the Bishops were given for a so-called pastoral handout by the Ecumenical Commission entitled: "On the path of unity with Christ: Confessional marriages and joint participation in the Eucharist" for consultation and decision-making. According to the text, mixed-denominational couples, as a "practical laboratory of unity,” take place in a state in which the separated churches are on their way together towards the goal. Because of the importance of marriages between Catholic and Protestant Christians in Germany, the statement respects “the pain […of those] who share their whole lives but cannot share God's saving presence in the Eucharistic meal.” According to the joint Reformation commemoration in 2017, the handout is intended as a voluntary commitment "to provide every assistance to interdenominational marriages, to strengthen their common faith and promote the religious education of their children," offering concrete help and regulation — as declared together with the Protestant Church in Germany in an ecumenical penance and reconciliation service on 11 March 2017 in the Michaeliskirche.
According to this, an opening to Protestant Christians in denominational marriages to receive Communion via Canon 844 (4) CIC 1983 is to be made possible, since a "gravis spiritualis necessitas" [grave spiritual necessity] is adopted according to the document presented on denominational differences of marriage.
On February 20, 2018, the text presented above on non-denominational marriages and the common participation in the Eucharist was voted on in the Assembly. The document was adopted by a 2/3 majority of the German bishops. Of the 60 bishops present, 13 voted no, including at least seven diocesan bishops. Modi (amendments) may be submitted until 16 March, but they will no longer call into question the fundamental adoption of the document.
Personally, we do not consider the vote held on 20 February to be right, because we do not believe that the issue we are discussing here is a pastoral one, but a question of the faith and unity of the Church, which is not subject to a vote. So we ask you, Your Eminence, to clarify this matter.
1. Is the document presented here a "pastoral handout" — as asserted by some German bishops — and thus merely a pastoral question, or is the faith and unity of the Church fundamentally called for, rather than the determinations made here?
2. Does Article 58 of the document not relativize the faith of the Church, according to which the Church of Jesus Christ is realized in the Catholic Church (subsists) and it is therefore necessary that an Evangelical Christian who shares the Catholic faith with regard to the Eucharist should in which case also become Catholic?
3. According to nos. 283 to 293, it is not primarily the longing for Eucharistic grace that becomes the criterion for [serious spiritual] distress, but rather the common reception of Communion of spouses belonging to different confessions. In our opinion, this distress is none other than which belongs ecumenism as a whole, that is, of every Christian who seriously strives for unity. In our view, therefore, it is not an exceptional criterion.
4. Is it at all possible for a single national episcopal conference, in one particular linguistic region, to make an isolated decision concerning such a question about the faith and practice of the whole Church, without reference and integration into the universal Church?
Eminence, we have many other fundamental questions and reservations about the proposed solution contained in this document. That is why we are voting in favor of renouncing a derogation and, instead, finding a clear solution in ecumenical dialogue to the overall problem of "Eucharistic communion and ecclesial communion" which is viable for the universal Church.
We ask for your help, in the light of our doubts, as to whether the draft solution presented in this document is compatible with the faith and unity of the Church.
We ask God's blessing for you and your responsible duty in Rome and greet you warmly!
Cardinal Rainer Woelki (Cologne)
Archbishop Ludwig Schick (Bamberg)
Bishop Gregor Hanke (Eichstätt)
Bishop Konrad Zdarsa (Augsburg)
Bishop Wolfgang Ipolt (Görlitz)
Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer (Regensburg)
Bishop Stefan Oster (Passau)”
Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, Archbishop of Cologne (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Archbishop Ludwig Schick of Bamberg (Bavaria)
Bishop Konrad Zdarsa of Augsburg (Bavaria)
Bishop Gregor Maria Hanke of Eichstätt (Bavaria)
Bishop Stefan Oster of Passau (Bavaria)
Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg (Bavaria)
Bishop Wolfgang Ipolt of Görlitz (Saxony)
His Emminence Rainer Maria Cardinal Woelki
Archbishop of Cologne
His Grace Ludwig Schick
Archbishop of Bamberg
His Excellency Konrad Zdarsa
Bishop of Augsburg
His Excellency Gregor Maria Hanke
Bishop of Eichstätt
His Excellency Stefan Oster
Bishop of Passau
His Excellency Rudolf Voderholzer
Bishop of Regensburg
His Excellency Wolfgang Ipolt
Bishop of Görlitz
The Full Text of the 7 Bishops’ Letter:
“Your Eminence, my dear confreres,
In the period from February 19 to 22, 2018, the German bishops met for their Spring Plenary Assembly in Ingolstadt.
Under item IL.1 of the agenda, the Bishops were given for a so-called pastoral handout by the Ecumenical Commission entitled: "On the path of unity with Christ: Confessional marriages and joint participation in the Eucharist" for consultation and decision-making. According to the text, mixed-denominational couples, as a "practical laboratory of unity,” take place in a state in which the separated churches are on their way together towards the goal. Because of the importance of marriages between Catholic and Protestant Christians in Germany, the statement respects “the pain […of those] who share their whole lives but cannot share God's saving presence in the Eucharistic meal.” According to the joint Reformation commemoration in 2017, the handout is intended as a voluntary commitment "to provide every assistance to interdenominational marriages, to strengthen their common faith and promote the religious education of their children," offering concrete help and regulation — as declared together with the Protestant Church in Germany in an ecumenical penance and reconciliation service on 11 March 2017 in the Michaeliskirche.
According to this, an opening to Protestant Christians in denominational marriages to receive Communion via Canon 844 (4) CIC 1983 is to be made possible, since a "gravis spiritualis necessitas" [grave spiritual necessity] is adopted according to the document presented on denominational differences of marriage.
On February 20, 2018, the text presented above on non-denominational marriages and the common participation in the Eucharist was voted on in the Assembly. The document was adopted by a 2/3 majority of the German bishops. Of the 60 bishops present, 13 voted no, including at least seven diocesan bishops. Modi (amendments) may be submitted until 16 March, but they will no longer call into question the fundamental adoption of the document.
Personally, we do not consider the vote held on 20 February to be right, because we do not believe that the issue we are discussing here is a pastoral one, but a question of the faith and unity of the Church, which is not subject to a vote. So we ask you, Your Eminence, to clarify this matter.
1. Is the document presented here a "pastoral handout" — as asserted by some German bishops — and thus merely a pastoral question, or is the faith and unity of the Church fundamentally called for, rather than the determinations made here?
2. Does Article 58 of the document not relativize the faith of the Church, according to which the Church of Jesus Christ is realized in the Catholic Church (subsists) and it is therefore necessary that an Evangelical Christian who shares the Catholic faith with regard to the Eucharist should in which case also become Catholic?
3. According to nos. 283 to 293, it is not primarily the longing for Eucharistic grace that becomes the criterion for [serious spiritual] distress, but rather the common reception of Communion of spouses belonging to different confessions. In our opinion, this distress is none other than which belongs ecumenism as a whole, that is, of every Christian who seriously strives for unity. In our view, therefore, it is not an exceptional criterion.
4. Is it at all possible for a single national episcopal conference, in one particular linguistic region, to make an isolated decision concerning such a question about the faith and practice of the whole Church, without reference and integration into the universal Church?
Eminence, we have many other fundamental questions and reservations about the proposed solution contained in this document. That is why we are voting in favor of renouncing a derogation and, instead, finding a clear solution in ecumenical dialogue to the overall problem of "Eucharistic communion and ecclesial communion" which is viable for the universal Church.
We ask for your help, in the light of our doubts, as to whether the draft solution presented in this document is compatible with the faith and unity of the Church.
We ask God's blessing for you and your responsible duty in Rome and greet you warmly!
Cardinal Rainer Woelki (Cologne)
Archbishop Ludwig Schick (Bamberg)
Bishop Gregor Hanke (Eichstätt)
Bishop Konrad Zdarsa (Augsburg)
Bishop Wolfgang Ipolt (Görlitz)
Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer (Regensburg)
Bishop Stefan Oster (Passau)”
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
New Pope Emeritus Benedict Letter in Praise of Cardinal Müller
A WORD OF GREETING
by pope emeritus Benedict XVI
Eminence! Dear brother!
Your 70th birthday is drawing near, and even if I am no longer capable of writing a genuine scholarly contribution to the book that is dedicated in your honor on this occasion, I would like to participate in it with a word of greeting and of gratitude.
22 years have gone by since you gave to me, in March of 1995, your “Katholische Dogmatik für Studium und Praxis der Theologie.” It was for me an encouraging signal that even in the generation of the postconciliar theologians there should be thinkers who have the courage to strive for integrality, which means representing the faith of the Church as unity and totality. Even if detailed research is important, it is no less important that the faith of the Church appear in its inner unity and in its completeness and that therefore there should also become visible the whole simplicity of the faith, all the complex theological reflections notwithstanding. Because the sense that the Church is imposing upon us a package of incomprehensible things, which in the end are of interest only to specialists, is an obstacle of the highest order to the yes to God who speaks to us in Jesus Christ. One becomes a great theologian, in my opinion, not by dealing with refined and intricate details, but because one is able to represent the final unity and simplicity of the faith.
Your “Dogmatik” in a single volume also touched me for an autobiographical reason. Karl Rahner had presented in the first volume of his writings a plan for a renovated structure of dogmatics that he had elaborated with Hans Urs von Balthasar. Naturally this had aroused in all of us a great thirst to see this plan filled out and elaborated. The desire that arose everywhere for a Rahner-Balthasar dogmatics was also connected with an editorial operation. Erich Wewel had convinced Fr. Bernard Häring in the 1950’s to write a moral theology text in a single volume, which after its publication became a great success. After which that capable editor got the idea that something of that nature should also exist in dogmatics, and that a complete work written by the same hand would correspond to a real need. Obviously he approached Karl Rahner and asked him to write this book. But Rahner in the meantime was involved in so many efforts that he did not see how he could get away for such a large undertaking. Strangely, the editor then approached me, when I was at the beginning of my journey and was teaching dogmatic and fundamental theology in Freising. But unfortunately I too, even though I was at the beginning of my path, was engaged in many activities and did not feel capable of writing such a large work in an acceptable timeframe. So I asked if I could bring in a co-author, my friend Fr. Alois Grillmeier. To the extent possible I collaborated on the project and also met with Fr. Grillmeier a number of times for extensive consultations. But Vatican Council II was taking up all my energy at that point and imposed a thorough rethinking of the whole presentation of the traditional doctrine of the Church. When I was appointed archbishop of Munich and Freising, in 1977, it was clear that I could no longer think of such a work. So in 1995 when your book was put into my hands, I suddenly saw, in a work by a theologian of the subsequent generation, what I had wanted but had not been realized.
I was able to meet you in person when the German episcopal conference proposed you as a member of the international theological commission. There you stood out in a particular way for the richness of your expertise and for your wholly interior faithfulness to the faith of the Church. When in 2012 Cardinal Levada resigned for reasons of age from his position as prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, you appeared, after all the evaluations, as the bishop most suited to take on this task.
When I accepted this position in 1981, Archbishop Hamer - the secretary of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith at the time - explained to me that the prefect did not necessarily have to be a theologian, but a wise man, who in standing above theological questions would not need to formulate specialized judgments, but rather to understand what had to be done for the Church in a given moment. Theological expertise was to be concentrated in the secretary, the one who directs the “council,” the assembly of expert theologians who together give a correct scholarly judgment. But as in politics, the final decision cannot be made by the experts, but by the wise who have familiarity with the technical but moreover have well in view the whole life of a great community. During the years of my office I sought to meet this standard. To what extent I succeeded will be for others to judge.
In the confused times in which we live, the coexistence between technical knowledge and wisdom on what is decisive in the end seems to me particularly important. I think for example that in the liturgical reform some things would have been different if the last word had not been left to the experts, but there had also been wisdom in judging, which would have recognized the limits of the mere man of studies.
During your years in Rome, you repeatedly dedicated yourself to working not only as a scholar, but as a wise man, as a father in the Church. You defended the clear traditions of the faith, but in the spirit of Pope Francis you also sought to understand how they can be lived today.
Pope Paul VI wanted the highest positions in the curia - those of the prefect and secretary - always to be assigned for only five years, in order to protect the freedom of the pope and the mobility of curial work. In the meantime, your five-year mandate for the congregation for the faith ran out. Therefore you no longer have a specific office, but a priest, and certainly a bishop and a cardinal, is never simply in retirement. This is why you will be able to continue also in the future to serve the faith publicly, on the basis of your interior inspiration, of your priestly mission and your theological charism. We are all content that, with your great inner responsibility and the gift of the Word that has been given to you, you will continue to be present in the struggle of our time for the correct comprehension of the human being and of the Christian being. May the Lord help you in this.
Finally, I have to express again a very personal thanksgiving. As bishop of Regensburg you founded the “Institut Papst Benedikt XVI,” which - led by one of your pupils - carries out a truly exceptional work in keeping my theological work available to the public in its entirety. May the Lord repay you for your effort.
Vatican City, Monastery “Mater Ecclesiae,”
on the feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, 2017
Yours, Benedict XVI
Eminence! Dear brother!
Your 70th birthday is drawing near, and even if I am no longer capable of writing a genuine scholarly contribution to the book that is dedicated in your honor on this occasion, I would like to participate in it with a word of greeting and of gratitude.
22 years have gone by since you gave to me, in March of 1995, your “Katholische Dogmatik für Studium und Praxis der Theologie.” It was for me an encouraging signal that even in the generation of the postconciliar theologians there should be thinkers who have the courage to strive for integrality, which means representing the faith of the Church as unity and totality. Even if detailed research is important, it is no less important that the faith of the Church appear in its inner unity and in its completeness and that therefore there should also become visible the whole simplicity of the faith, all the complex theological reflections notwithstanding. Because the sense that the Church is imposing upon us a package of incomprehensible things, which in the end are of interest only to specialists, is an obstacle of the highest order to the yes to God who speaks to us in Jesus Christ. One becomes a great theologian, in my opinion, not by dealing with refined and intricate details, but because one is able to represent the final unity and simplicity of the faith.
Your “Dogmatik” in a single volume also touched me for an autobiographical reason. Karl Rahner had presented in the first volume of his writings a plan for a renovated structure of dogmatics that he had elaborated with Hans Urs von Balthasar. Naturally this had aroused in all of us a great thirst to see this plan filled out and elaborated. The desire that arose everywhere for a Rahner-Balthasar dogmatics was also connected with an editorial operation. Erich Wewel had convinced Fr. Bernard Häring in the 1950’s to write a moral theology text in a single volume, which after its publication became a great success. After which that capable editor got the idea that something of that nature should also exist in dogmatics, and that a complete work written by the same hand would correspond to a real need. Obviously he approached Karl Rahner and asked him to write this book. But Rahner in the meantime was involved in so many efforts that he did not see how he could get away for such a large undertaking. Strangely, the editor then approached me, when I was at the beginning of my journey and was teaching dogmatic and fundamental theology in Freising. But unfortunately I too, even though I was at the beginning of my path, was engaged in many activities and did not feel capable of writing such a large work in an acceptable timeframe. So I asked if I could bring in a co-author, my friend Fr. Alois Grillmeier. To the extent possible I collaborated on the project and also met with Fr. Grillmeier a number of times for extensive consultations. But Vatican Council II was taking up all my energy at that point and imposed a thorough rethinking of the whole presentation of the traditional doctrine of the Church. When I was appointed archbishop of Munich and Freising, in 1977, it was clear that I could no longer think of such a work. So in 1995 when your book was put into my hands, I suddenly saw, in a work by a theologian of the subsequent generation, what I had wanted but had not been realized.
I was able to meet you in person when the German episcopal conference proposed you as a member of the international theological commission. There you stood out in a particular way for the richness of your expertise and for your wholly interior faithfulness to the faith of the Church. When in 2012 Cardinal Levada resigned for reasons of age from his position as prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, you appeared, after all the evaluations, as the bishop most suited to take on this task.
When I accepted this position in 1981, Archbishop Hamer - the secretary of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith at the time - explained to me that the prefect did not necessarily have to be a theologian, but a wise man, who in standing above theological questions would not need to formulate specialized judgments, but rather to understand what had to be done for the Church in a given moment. Theological expertise was to be concentrated in the secretary, the one who directs the “council,” the assembly of expert theologians who together give a correct scholarly judgment. But as in politics, the final decision cannot be made by the experts, but by the wise who have familiarity with the technical but moreover have well in view the whole life of a great community. During the years of my office I sought to meet this standard. To what extent I succeeded will be for others to judge.
In the confused times in which we live, the coexistence between technical knowledge and wisdom on what is decisive in the end seems to me particularly important. I think for example that in the liturgical reform some things would have been different if the last word had not been left to the experts, but there had also been wisdom in judging, which would have recognized the limits of the mere man of studies.
During your years in Rome, you repeatedly dedicated yourself to working not only as a scholar, but as a wise man, as a father in the Church. You defended the clear traditions of the faith, but in the spirit of Pope Francis you also sought to understand how they can be lived today.
Pope Paul VI wanted the highest positions in the curia - those of the prefect and secretary - always to be assigned for only five years, in order to protect the freedom of the pope and the mobility of curial work. In the meantime, your five-year mandate for the congregation for the faith ran out. Therefore you no longer have a specific office, but a priest, and certainly a bishop and a cardinal, is never simply in retirement. This is why you will be able to continue also in the future to serve the faith publicly, on the basis of your interior inspiration, of your priestly mission and your theological charism. We are all content that, with your great inner responsibility and the gift of the Word that has been given to you, you will continue to be present in the struggle of our time for the correct comprehension of the human being and of the Christian being. May the Lord help you in this.
Finally, I have to express again a very personal thanksgiving. As bishop of Regensburg you founded the “Institut Papst Benedikt XVI,” which - led by one of your pupils - carries out a truly exceptional work in keeping my theological work available to the public in its entirety. May the Lord repay you for your effort.
Vatican City, Monastery “Mater Ecclesiae,”
on the feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, 2017
Yours, Benedict XVI
Why Pope Paul VI is a Saint: "His Name Shall be Paul!"
A Testimony to the Prophetic Vision of Pope Paul VI
Monday, April 23, 2018
Friday, April 20, 2018
Thirteenth Anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI First Homily (Mission Statement), After Mass, in Latin!
Pope Benedict XVI's Papal resignation, a direct affront to papolatry, is a prophetic act of Christian unity. What the resignation says, loud and clear, is that no mere man, even any particular Pope, is indispensable. Pope's come and go, Saint Peter remains! And every man, not just the Pope, is responsible to the Lord.
Summorum Pontificum and Anglicanorum coetibus should also be seen as part of the same tireless effort for unity under the one true God, Jesus Christ, in one Body, His Church.
Here is the relevant text from that first homily, Pope Benedict's "Mission Statement."
"With full awareness,...at the beginning of his ministry in the Church of Rome which Peter bathed in his blood, Peter's current Successor takes on as his primary task the duty to work tirelessly to rebuild the full and visible unity of all Christ's followers. This is his ambition, his impelling duty. He is aware that good intentions do not suffice for this. Concrete gestures that enter hearts and stir consciences are essential, inspiring in everyone that inner conversion that is the prerequisite for all ecumenical progress.
"Theological dialogue is necessary; the investigation of the historical reasons for the decisions made in the past is also indispensable. But what is most urgently needed is that "purification of memory", so often recalled by John Paul II, which alone can dispose souls to accept the full truth of Christ. Each one of us must come before him, the supreme Judge of every living person, and render an account to him of all we have done or have failed to do to further the great good of the full and visible unity of all his disciples."
Today is the 13th anniversary of that homily.
Monday, April 16, 2018
Dawn of "The Light to the Enlightenment," Joseph Ratzinger!
Happy Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI 91st Birthday!
An
die Freude / Ode to Joy
O
Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen und freudenvollere. Freude! Freude!
Freude,
schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium, Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum! Deine Zauber binden wieder Was die Mode streng geteilt*; Alle Menschen werden Brüder* Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt. Wem der große Wurf gelungen Eines Freundes Freund zu sein; Wer ein holdes Weib errungen Mische seinen Jubel ein! Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund! Und wer's nie gekonnt, der stehle Weinend sich aus diesem Bund! Freude trinken alle Wesen An den Brüsten der Natur; Alle Guten, alle Bösen Folgen ihrer Rosenspur. Küsse gab sie uns und Reben, Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod; Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben und der Cherub steht vor Gott. Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen Durch des Himmels prächt'gen Plan Laufet, Brüder, eure Bahn, Freudig, wie ein Held zum siegen. Seid umschlungen, Millionen! Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt! Brüder, über'm Sternenzelt Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen. Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen? Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt? Such' ihn über'm Sternenzelt! Über Sternen muß er wohnen. |
Oh friends, not
these tones!
Rather let us sing more cheerful and more joyful ones. Joy! Joy!
Joy, beautiful
spark of the gods,
Daughter from Elysium, We enter, drunk with fire, Heavenly One, thy sanctuary! Your magic binds again What convention strictly divides;* All people become brothers,* Where your gentle wing abides. Who has succeeded in the great attempt, To be a friend's friend, Whoever has won a lovely woman, Add his to the jubilation! Indeed, who calls even one soul Theirs upon this world! And whoever never managed, shall steal himself Weeping away from this union! All creatures drink of joy At nature's breast. Just and unjust Alike taste of her gift; She gave us kisses and the fruit of the vine, A tried friend to the end. [Even] the worm has been granted sensuality, And the cherub stands before God! Gladly, as His heavenly bodies fly On their courses through the heavens, Thus, brothers, you should run your race, Joyful, like a hero going to conquest. You millions, be embraced. This kiss is for all the world! Brothers, above the starry canopy There must dwell a loving Father. Do you fall in worship, you millions? World, do you know your creator? Seek him in the heavens Above the stars must He dwell. |
Sunday, April 15, 2018
"Our Moral Response to Moral Evil, the Critical Question Today" --Joseph Ratzinger
The Obligation of Bishops to Teach the Truth with Clarity
"...[T]he critical question facing us not only as church, but even as a human society, is our moral response to the pressing problem of evil in its legion forms."
"...[T]he bishop [is] a witness to the moral life of the church."
We teach what Christ teaches, what the Church believes, not our own ideas.
"To acknowledge Jesus as Lord, accepting his lordship over us, is to say not only to him, but to everyone we meet that it is he and not we, who is guiding our lives, making the ultimate decisions which count, calling the shots."
Christ will not abandon us. He is with us, our Good Shepherd. That is what the word pastor means, the one who feeds, leads and cares for the flock, and recovers the sheep when they get lost.
"In the area of moral teaching, what we teach must nourish our people. They must be able to consume, to take in what we teach. And so we have a real commitment to teach clearly in words and by our very lives... [M]ost of all, what we teach must be good for them... We must...feed the sheep. It is not an option. It is an obligation...for us an exceptionless moral norm. If we fail to do it, we are not pastors, we are not bishops. It is our very identity."
Dissent is an Intellectual Decision of Isolation.
Private dissent itself does grave spiritual damage to the dissenter who alienates himself from the body of believers.
But "[a] person who teaches [dissent] in the name of the church is taking what is basically a personal dissent and exaggerating its importance and its damage by propagating it...not simply...teach[ing] his dissent...but in the name of the church. It is odd that people who have grave misgivings about the right of the church to exist in any institutional form, seem to have no problem with the contradiction implicit in teaching in a Catholic school which, after all, is an institution. Integrity seems to me to require that the person who dissents should not, precisely because he cannot, teach in the name of the church or even give that impression."
Catholicity
The sensus fidelium (the mind of the faithful) maintains the sensus fidei. "The single most salient characteristic of the sensus fidei is its catholicity. Catholicity does not simply imply a universality of place and time, but also a continuity in the community of faith which links the contemporary church to the apostolic church, the community of the believers in Jesus of Nazareth. This continuity is a sign which is always clear: If, as St. Vincent of Lerins said in his famous dictum, a belief has been held semper, ubique et ab omnibus, then, as we can see in light of Lumen Gentium (no. 25), that teaching makes a compelling claim on my belief."
"Widespread dissent is not a proof for the [legitimacy of the position] of the dissenting theologian, but it may be his fault."
Proportionalism
"The problem with proportionalism as a moral theological method seems to me to lie principally in its exclusivity...
"When used exclusively, proportionalism ultimately rests upon a presupposition which we cannot accept... [It] implies that what is good is not really good in itself, but is merely better. If masturbation and contraception were only physical or ontic or premoral acts, that is to say, without necessary involvement of the spiritual dimension of the agent, I doubt very much whether anyone would perform them. It is because the body and soul of the person interpenetrate one another that the hypothesis of a purely physical act represents a false distinction. It is precisely because of the personal involvement, with its personal goals and its personal effects, that masturbation and contraception cannot be seen as devoid of moral content in and of themselves."
Moral acts must be judged regarding the person committing them, as person, within his responsibility to God, to others and to himself, as persons.
The Duty of Catholic Unity
"I find it curious that we can find broad consensus for ecumenical unity, that is, unity between the various denominations into which Christianity has been split. We can see the scandal, the evil, involved in the fact that the body of Christ has been divided. But should not that same fervent desire for unity between the churches also result in a renewed appreciation for unity within the Catholic Church herself?"
"What the bishop does, and in fact how he does it, either nourishes and builds up the flock or deprives it and scatters it. The notion of unity is a key one here. A flock is a flock precisely because it is unified, not everyone wandering all over the countryside on his own."
For example, the post-conciliar liturgical reform was only possible because of the ecclesial unity which supports it.
Joseph Ratzinger, "Dissent and Proportionalism in Moral Theology," Address to the Bishops' Workshop, February 9, 1984, Dallas, Texas in "Origins," March 15, 1984, Vol. 13: No. 40, 666-669.
Smart Fine Dining
Here are ways to eat economically, even at the finest restaurants.
1. Have an appetizers and drink(s) at home before going out.
2. Have no drinks at the restaurant, except, perhaps, a glass of wine. Drink the tap water.
3. Agree with your fellow diners to eat family style. That means that you will share each dish with everyone at the table. If the restaurant has an extra plate fee simply order dishes (entrées) enough for each diner, to avoid that fee. This is most effective when the menu is à la carte. Have each dish brought out separately in succession, so everything comes out hot and not all at once.
For example, if you are two diners, you may simply order two entrées, a pasta and a meat, both to be split in the kitchen and brought out separately as first dish (primo) and then second dish (secondo).
For dessert and coffee and digestif go to a coffee shop, ice-cream parlor or home.
4. Generously tip the waiter at least 20% of the bill to encourage friendly service! You should try not to be stingy, just smart. Frugal, generous and smart!
Your dining check will be less than half a normal dinner check. You will eat well and without too much excess food.
Syria Ambassador, Dr. Bashar Jaafari, to the United Nations: USA and Israel
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Monday, April 9, 2018
French
Untranslated Arabic
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Monday, April 9, 2018
The God Fetus
 |
| Fetus two cell stage. |
Annunciation Day, Incarnation Day, in the womb of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, God made Himself Man, today!
Transferred from March 25th (which this year fell on Good Friday).
N.B. "Fetus" in Latin means pregnant (syn.: gravidus, praegnans) and progeny, fruit. If you're pregnant it's a fetus! which means its a child.
Venite adoremus Deum Fetum hodie!
Quitting Facebook: Reason? Frivolous!
Click the drop-down menu on the top right of your Facebook page and select settings.
Click the General button.
Select "Manage Account"
Click "Deactivate your account"
Explain why.
Are you sure?
That's it. Now you're done. You'll end up back on Facebook's login screen. Stay away!
Select "Manage Account"
Click "Deactivate your account"
Explain why.
Are you sure?
That's it. Now you're done. You'll end up back on Facebook's login screen. Stay away!
Don't waste time with idle curiosity, a vice opposed to the virtue of study.
Facebook is frivolous.
Facebook is frivolous.
Sunday, April 1, 2018
The Anguish of an Absence
by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
30DAYS n. 3, 2006
MEDITATION 1
It is with increasing insistence that God is said to be dead today. The first time it was said, in Jean Paul, it was just a nightmarish dream: Jesus who is dead proclaims to the dead from the rooftops of the world that when he journeyed to the beyond he found nothing, no heaven, no merciful God, just infinite nothingness, the silence of the gaping void. It is still a horrible dream which is pushed to one side, wailing away in the waking hours, as a dream does, although the anguish it inflicts can never be cancelled for it was always lying in wait, sinister, in the depths of the soul.
A century later, in Nietzsche, it becomes a mortal seriousness which is expressed in a cry, shrill with terror: “God is dead! God will stay dead! And we have killed him!”. Fifty years later, it is discussed with academic detachment and preparations are made for a “theology after the death of God”, eyes search for ways to go on and men encourage each other to start preparing to take God’s place. The terrible mystery of Holy Saturday, its abyss of silence, has thus acquired a crushing reality in these days of ours. For, this is Holy Saturday: the day of God’s concealment, the day of that unprecedented paradox we express in the Creed with the words: “Descended into hell”, descended into the mystery of death. On Good Friday we still had the crucified man to look at. Holy Saturday is empty, the heavy stone of the new tomb is covering the dead man, it’s all over, the faith seems to have been definitively unmasked as fantasy. No God saved this Jesus who posed as his Son. There is no further need for concern: the wary who were somewhat hesitant, who wondered if things could have been different, were right after all. Holy Saturday: the day God was buried; is not this the day we are living now, and formidably so? Did not our century mark the start of one long Holy Saturday, the day God was absent, when even the hearts of the disciples were plunged into an icy chasm that grows wider and wider, and thus, filled with shame and anguish, they set out to go home, dark-spirited and annihilated in their desperation they head for Emmaus, without realizing that he whom they believed to be dead is in their midst? God is dead and we killed him: are we really aware that this phrase is taken almost literally from Christian tradition and that often in our viae crucis we have made something similar resound without realizing the tremendous gravity of what we said? We killed him, by enclosing him in the stale shell of routine thinking, by exiling him in a form of pity with no content of reality, lost in the gyre of devotional phrases, or of archaeological treasuries; we killed him through the ambiguity of our lives which also laid a veil of darkness over him: in fact, what else would have been able to make God more problematical in this world than the problematical nature of the faith and of the love of his faithful?
The divine darkness of this day, of this century which is increasingly becoming one long Holy Saturday, is speaking to our conscience. It is one of our concerns. But in spite of it all, it holds something of comfort for us. The death of God in Jesus Christ is at the same time the expression of his radical solidarity with us. The most obscure mystery of the faith is at the same time the clearest sign of a hope without end. And what is more: only through the failure of Holy Friday, only through the silence of death of Holy Saturday, were the disciples able to be led to an understanding of all that Jesus truly was and all that his message truly meant. God had to die for them so that he could truly live in them. The image they had formed of God, within which they had tried to hold him down, had to be destroyed so that through the rubble of the ruined house they might see the sky, him himself who remains, always, the infinitely greater. We need the silence of God to experience again the abyss of his greatness and the chasm of our nothingness which would grow wider and wider without him.
There is a Gospel scene which in an extraordinary way anticipates the silence of Holy Saturday and which again, therefore, seems to be a profile of the moment in history we are living now. Christ is asleep on a boat which, buffeted by a storm, is about to sink. The prophet Elijah had once made fun of the priests of Baal who were futilely invoking their god to send down fire on their sacrifice. He urged them to cry out louder in case their god was asleep. But is it true that God does not sleep? Does not the prophet’s scorn also fall upon the heads of the faithful of the God of Israel who are sailing with him in a boat about to sink? God sleeps while his very own are about to drown - is not this the experience of our lives? Don’t the Church, the faith, resemble a small boat about to sink, struggling futilely against the waves and the wind, and all the time God is absent? The disciples cry out in dire desperation and they shake the Lord to wake him but he is surprised at this and rebukes them for their small faith. But are things any different for us? When the storm passes we will realize just how much this small faith of ours was charged with stupidity. And yet, O Lord, we cannot help shaking you, God, you who persist in keeping your silence, in sleeping, and we cannot help crying to you: Wake up, can’t you see we are sinking? Stir yourself, don’t let the darkness of Holy Saturday last for ever, let a ray of Easter fall, even on these times of ours, accompany us when we set out in our desperation towards Emmaus so that our hearts may be enflamed by the warmth of your nearness. You who, hidden, charted the paths of Israel only to become a man in the end with men - don’t leave us in the dark, don’t let your word be lost in these days of great squandering of words. Lord, grant us your help, because without you we will sink.
Amen
MEDITATION 2
God’s concealment in this world constitutes the real mystery of Holy Saturday, the mystery already transpiring in the enigmatic words telling us that Jesus “descended into hell”. At the same time, the experience of our era has offered us a completely new approach to Holy Saturday, given God’s concealment in the world, which belongs to him and which should proclaim his name in a thousand languages, the experience of the powerlessness of God who is yet omnipotent - this is the experience and the wretchedness of our age.
But even if Holy Saturday has drawn deeply near to us in that way, even if we understand the God of Holy Saturday more than the powerful manifestation of God in thunder and lightning of which the Old Testament speaks, a question remains unresolved - that of knowing what is really meant by the mysterious phrase that Jesus “descended into hell”. Let’s be clear about it: no one is really capable of explaining it. Nor does it become clearer by saying that here “hell” is a bad translation of the Hebrew word shêol, indicating merely the whole kingdom of the dead and so the formula would originally have meant only that Jesus descended into the profundity of death, that he really did die and he shared in the abyss of our destiny of death. In fact, the question here is: what is death really and what really happens when we descend into the profundity of death? We must be mindful of the fact that death is no longer the same as it was before Christ endured it, before he accepted and penetrated it, just as life, being human, is no longer the same as it was before human nature, in Christ, was able to come in contact with - and it truly did - God’s own being. Before, death was just death, separation from the land of the living and, albeit at differing degrees of profundity, something like “hell”, the nocturnal side of living, impenetrable darkness. But now death is also life and when we pass over the glacial solitude of the threshold of death, we always meet once more with him who is life, whose desire is to become the companion of our ultimate solitude and who, in the mortal solitude of his anguish on the Mount of Olives and of his cry on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, became a partaker of our solitudes. If a child had to venture out alone through a wood on a dark night, he would be afraid even if he were to be shown a hundred times that there was nothing to fear. He is not afraid of anything specific, to which he could put a name, but in the dark he feels insecure, an orphan, he feels the sinister character of inner existence. Only a human voice could console him; only the hand of a person he loves could banish the anguish, like a bad dream. There is an anguish - the true kind nesting in the profundity of our solitudes - which cannot be overcome by reason but only by the presence of a person who loves us. This anguish, in fact, doesn’t have an object to which we could put a name. It is the terrible expression of our ultimate solitude. Who among us has not felt the awful sensation of this state of abandonment? Who would not hear the blessed, comforting miracle worked in these circumstances by an affectionate word? But wherever there is such solitude as to be inaccessible to the transforming word of love, then that is the place we call hell. And we know that not a few men of our time, so apparently optimistic, hold the view that every encounter remains superficial, that no man has access to the ultimate and true profundity of another and that, therefore, in the ultimate depths of every existence lies desperation, even hell. Jean-Paul Sartre expressed this poetically in one of his plays and at the same time he exposed the nucleus of his doctrine on man. One thing is sure: there will come a night when no word of comfort will penetrate the dark abandon, there will be a door which we must pass though in absolute solitude: the door of death. All this world’s anguish is, in the final analysis, the anguish generated by this solitude. This is why in the Old Testament, the word indicating the kingdom of the dead was identical to the word for hell: shêol. Death, in fact, is absolute solitude. But this solitude which can no longer be illumined by love, which is so profound that love can no longer reach it, is hell.
“Descended into hell” - this confession of Holy Saturday means that Christ passed through the door of solitude, that he descended into the unreachable and insuperable depth of our condition of solitude. This means, however, that also in that extreme night which no word penetrates, when we will all be like children, banished, weeping, there will be a voice that calls to us, a hand that takes our hand and leads us on. Man’s insuperable solitude was overcome from the moment He entered it. Hell was beaten from the moment love entered the region of death and the no man’s land of solitude was inhabited by him. In his profundity, man does not live by bread. In the authenticity of his being he lives by the fact that he is loved and is himself given the faculty to love. From the moment there is the presence of love in death’s sphere, then life penetrates death: life is not taken from your faithful, O Lord, but transformed, the Church prays in its funeral liturgy.
In the final analysis, no one can measure the portent of the words: “descended into hell”. But if at some time it is ours to draw near to the hour of our ultimate solitude, we will be given to understand something of the great clarity of this dark mystery. In the hopeful certainty that when the hour of extreme solitude comes we will not be alone, we can already, now, presage something of what will happen. And in the throes of our protest against the darkness of the death of God we begin to be grateful for the light that comes to us from this same darkness.
MEDITATION 3
In the Roman Breviary, the liturgy of the sacred triduum is structured with special care; in its prayers, the Church’s real desire is to transfer us, so to speak, to the reality of the Lord’s passion and, beyond the words, to the spiritual core of what happened. If we were to try to give expression to the liturgical prayers of Holy Saturday in just a few words, then we would have to speak first of all of the effect of profound peace which transpires from it. Christ has penetrated the concealment (Verborgenheit), but at the same time and in the very core of the impenetrable dark, he has penetrated the safety (Geborgenheit). Indeed, he became the ultimate safety. Now the psalmist’s words of courage have come true: and even if I wanted to hide in hell, you are there, too. As the liturgy proceeds we see more and more of the first lights of Easter shining in it, like the aurora of the dawn. While Good Friday sets before our eyes the disfigured figure of the crucified man, the liturgy of Holy Saturday reflects more the image of the cross dear to the Church of old: the cross surrounded in rays of light, the sign of death and resurrection at one and the same time.
Holy Saturday thus reminds us of an aspect of Christian pity which has been lost, perhaps with the passage of time. When in prayer we look to the cross, we often see in it just a sign of the historical passion of the Lord on Golgotha. But the origin of devotion to the cross vary: as they prayed Christians faced the East to express their hope that Christ, true sun, would rise up over history, and in this way they also expressed their faith in the Lord’s return. Firstly, the cross is directly linked to this orientation in prayer. It is represented as a banner, so to speak, which the king will raise on his coming; in the image of the cross the vanguard of the cortège has already arrived in the midst of those who pray. For ancient Christianity, then, the cross is above all the mark of hope. It implies not so much a reference to the Lord of the past as to the Lord who is about to come. Of course with the passage of time, it was impossible not to feel the intrinsic need to look back at the event that happened: against all escaping within the spiritual, against any misunderstanding of the incarnation of God, it was vital to defend the unimaginable prodigal nature of the love of God who, for love of the wretched human creature, became a man himself, and what a man! It was vital to defend the holy stupidity of the love of God who chose not to proclaim something powerful but to travel the road of powerlessness to send our dream of power to the gallows and defeat it from within.
But in all this haven’t we been a little too forgetful of the bond between cross and hope, of the oneness of the East with the direction of the cross, between the past and future in Christianity? The spirit of hope which breathes on the prayers of Holy Saturday should penetrate all our Christian state of being once more. Christianity is not just a religion of the past but, in no less a way, of the future; its faith is also hope, since Christ is not just the dead and risen one but he who is about to come.
O Lord, enlighten our souls with this mystery of hope so that we recognize the light which your cross irradiates. Grant us that as Christians we will press on towards the future, towards the encounter on the day of your coming.
MEDITATION 1
It is with increasing insistence that God is said to be dead today. The first time it was said, in Jean Paul, it was just a nightmarish dream: Jesus who is dead proclaims to the dead from the rooftops of the world that when he journeyed to the beyond he found nothing, no heaven, no merciful God, just infinite nothingness, the silence of the gaping void. It is still a horrible dream which is pushed to one side, wailing away in the waking hours, as a dream does, although the anguish it inflicts can never be cancelled for it was always lying in wait, sinister, in the depths of the soul.
A century later, in Nietzsche, it becomes a mortal seriousness which is expressed in a cry, shrill with terror: “God is dead! God will stay dead! And we have killed him!”. Fifty years later, it is discussed with academic detachment and preparations are made for a “theology after the death of God”, eyes search for ways to go on and men encourage each other to start preparing to take God’s place. The terrible mystery of Holy Saturday, its abyss of silence, has thus acquired a crushing reality in these days of ours. For, this is Holy Saturday: the day of God’s concealment, the day of that unprecedented paradox we express in the Creed with the words: “Descended into hell”, descended into the mystery of death. On Good Friday we still had the crucified man to look at. Holy Saturday is empty, the heavy stone of the new tomb is covering the dead man, it’s all over, the faith seems to have been definitively unmasked as fantasy. No God saved this Jesus who posed as his Son. There is no further need for concern: the wary who were somewhat hesitant, who wondered if things could have been different, were right after all. Holy Saturday: the day God was buried; is not this the day we are living now, and formidably so? Did not our century mark the start of one long Holy Saturday, the day God was absent, when even the hearts of the disciples were plunged into an icy chasm that grows wider and wider, and thus, filled with shame and anguish, they set out to go home, dark-spirited and annihilated in their desperation they head for Emmaus, without realizing that he whom they believed to be dead is in their midst? God is dead and we killed him: are we really aware that this phrase is taken almost literally from Christian tradition and that often in our viae crucis we have made something similar resound without realizing the tremendous gravity of what we said? We killed him, by enclosing him in the stale shell of routine thinking, by exiling him in a form of pity with no content of reality, lost in the gyre of devotional phrases, or of archaeological treasuries; we killed him through the ambiguity of our lives which also laid a veil of darkness over him: in fact, what else would have been able to make God more problematical in this world than the problematical nature of the faith and of the love of his faithful?
The divine darkness of this day, of this century which is increasingly becoming one long Holy Saturday, is speaking to our conscience. It is one of our concerns. But in spite of it all, it holds something of comfort for us. The death of God in Jesus Christ is at the same time the expression of his radical solidarity with us. The most obscure mystery of the faith is at the same time the clearest sign of a hope without end. And what is more: only through the failure of Holy Friday, only through the silence of death of Holy Saturday, were the disciples able to be led to an understanding of all that Jesus truly was and all that his message truly meant. God had to die for them so that he could truly live in them. The image they had formed of God, within which they had tried to hold him down, had to be destroyed so that through the rubble of the ruined house they might see the sky, him himself who remains, always, the infinitely greater. We need the silence of God to experience again the abyss of his greatness and the chasm of our nothingness which would grow wider and wider without him.
There is a Gospel scene which in an extraordinary way anticipates the silence of Holy Saturday and which again, therefore, seems to be a profile of the moment in history we are living now. Christ is asleep on a boat which, buffeted by a storm, is about to sink. The prophet Elijah had once made fun of the priests of Baal who were futilely invoking their god to send down fire on their sacrifice. He urged them to cry out louder in case their god was asleep. But is it true that God does not sleep? Does not the prophet’s scorn also fall upon the heads of the faithful of the God of Israel who are sailing with him in a boat about to sink? God sleeps while his very own are about to drown - is not this the experience of our lives? Don’t the Church, the faith, resemble a small boat about to sink, struggling futilely against the waves and the wind, and all the time God is absent? The disciples cry out in dire desperation and they shake the Lord to wake him but he is surprised at this and rebukes them for their small faith. But are things any different for us? When the storm passes we will realize just how much this small faith of ours was charged with stupidity. And yet, O Lord, we cannot help shaking you, God, you who persist in keeping your silence, in sleeping, and we cannot help crying to you: Wake up, can’t you see we are sinking? Stir yourself, don’t let the darkness of Holy Saturday last for ever, let a ray of Easter fall, even on these times of ours, accompany us when we set out in our desperation towards Emmaus so that our hearts may be enflamed by the warmth of your nearness. You who, hidden, charted the paths of Israel only to become a man in the end with men - don’t leave us in the dark, don’t let your word be lost in these days of great squandering of words. Lord, grant us your help, because without you we will sink.
Amen
MEDITATION 2 God’s concealment in this world constitutes the real mystery of Holy Saturday, the mystery already transpiring in the enigmatic words telling us that Jesus “descended into hell”. At the same time, the experience of our era has offered us a completely new approach to Holy Saturday, given God’s concealment in the world, which belongs to him and which should proclaim his name in a thousand languages, the experience of the powerlessness of God who is yet omnipotent - this is the experience and the wretchedness of our age.
But even if Holy Saturday has drawn deeply near to us in that way, even if we understand the God of Holy Saturday more than the powerful manifestation of God in thunder and lightning of which the Old Testament speaks, a question remains unresolved - that of knowing what is really meant by the mysterious phrase that Jesus “descended into hell”. Let’s be clear about it: no one is really capable of explaining it. Nor does it become clearer by saying that here “hell” is a bad translation of the Hebrew word shêol, indicating merely the whole kingdom of the dead and so the formula would originally have meant only that Jesus descended into the profundity of death, that he really did die and he shared in the abyss of our destiny of death. In fact, the question here is: what is death really and what really happens when we descend into the profundity of death? We must be mindful of the fact that death is no longer the same as it was before Christ endured it, before he accepted and penetrated it, just as life, being human, is no longer the same as it was before human nature, in Christ, was able to come in contact with - and it truly did - God’s own being. Before, death was just death, separation from the land of the living and, albeit at differing degrees of profundity, something like “hell”, the nocturnal side of living, impenetrable darkness. But now death is also life and when we pass over the glacial solitude of the threshold of death, we always meet once more with him who is life, whose desire is to become the companion of our ultimate solitude and who, in the mortal solitude of his anguish on the Mount of Olives and of his cry on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, became a partaker of our solitudes. If a child had to venture out alone through a wood on a dark night, he would be afraid even if he were to be shown a hundred times that there was nothing to fear. He is not afraid of anything specific, to which he could put a name, but in the dark he feels insecure, an orphan, he feels the sinister character of inner existence. Only a human voice could console him; only the hand of a person he loves could banish the anguish, like a bad dream. There is an anguish - the true kind nesting in the profundity of our solitudes - which cannot be overcome by reason but only by the presence of a person who loves us. This anguish, in fact, doesn’t have an object to which we could put a name. It is the terrible expression of our ultimate solitude. Who among us has not felt the awful sensation of this state of abandonment? Who would not hear the blessed, comforting miracle worked in these circumstances by an affectionate word? But wherever there is such solitude as to be inaccessible to the transforming word of love, then that is the place we call hell. And we know that not a few men of our time, so apparently optimistic, hold the view that every encounter remains superficial, that no man has access to the ultimate and true profundity of another and that, therefore, in the ultimate depths of every existence lies desperation, even hell. Jean-Paul Sartre expressed this poetically in one of his plays and at the same time he exposed the nucleus of his doctrine on man. One thing is sure: there will come a night when no word of comfort will penetrate the dark abandon, there will be a door which we must pass though in absolute solitude: the door of death. All this world’s anguish is, in the final analysis, the anguish generated by this solitude. This is why in the Old Testament, the word indicating the kingdom of the dead was identical to the word for hell: shêol. Death, in fact, is absolute solitude. But this solitude which can no longer be illumined by love, which is so profound that love can no longer reach it, is hell.
“Descended into hell” - this confession of Holy Saturday means that Christ passed through the door of solitude, that he descended into the unreachable and insuperable depth of our condition of solitude. This means, however, that also in that extreme night which no word penetrates, when we will all be like children, banished, weeping, there will be a voice that calls to us, a hand that takes our hand and leads us on. Man’s insuperable solitude was overcome from the moment He entered it. Hell was beaten from the moment love entered the region of death and the no man’s land of solitude was inhabited by him. In his profundity, man does not live by bread. In the authenticity of his being he lives by the fact that he is loved and is himself given the faculty to love. From the moment there is the presence of love in death’s sphere, then life penetrates death: life is not taken from your faithful, O Lord, but transformed, the Church prays in its funeral liturgy.
In the final analysis, no one can measure the portent of the words: “descended into hell”. But if at some time it is ours to draw near to the hour of our ultimate solitude, we will be given to understand something of the great clarity of this dark mystery. In the hopeful certainty that when the hour of extreme solitude comes we will not be alone, we can already, now, presage something of what will happen. And in the throes of our protest against the darkness of the death of God we begin to be grateful for the light that comes to us from this same darkness.
MEDITATION 3
In the Roman Breviary, the liturgy of the sacred triduum is structured with special care; in its prayers, the Church’s real desire is to transfer us, so to speak, to the reality of the Lord’s passion and, beyond the words, to the spiritual core of what happened. If we were to try to give expression to the liturgical prayers of Holy Saturday in just a few words, then we would have to speak first of all of the effect of profound peace which transpires from it. Christ has penetrated the concealment (Verborgenheit), but at the same time and in the very core of the impenetrable dark, he has penetrated the safety (Geborgenheit). Indeed, he became the ultimate safety. Now the psalmist’s words of courage have come true: and even if I wanted to hide in hell, you are there, too. As the liturgy proceeds we see more and more of the first lights of Easter shining in it, like the aurora of the dawn. While Good Friday sets before our eyes the disfigured figure of the crucified man, the liturgy of Holy Saturday reflects more the image of the cross dear to the Church of old: the cross surrounded in rays of light, the sign of death and resurrection at one and the same time.Holy Saturday thus reminds us of an aspect of Christian pity which has been lost, perhaps with the passage of time. When in prayer we look to the cross, we often see in it just a sign of the historical passion of the Lord on Golgotha. But the origin of devotion to the cross vary: as they prayed Christians faced the East to express their hope that Christ, true sun, would rise up over history, and in this way they also expressed their faith in the Lord’s return. Firstly, the cross is directly linked to this orientation in prayer. It is represented as a banner, so to speak, which the king will raise on his coming; in the image of the cross the vanguard of the cortège has already arrived in the midst of those who pray. For ancient Christianity, then, the cross is above all the mark of hope. It implies not so much a reference to the Lord of the past as to the Lord who is about to come. Of course with the passage of time, it was impossible not to feel the intrinsic need to look back at the event that happened: against all escaping within the spiritual, against any misunderstanding of the incarnation of God, it was vital to defend the unimaginable prodigal nature of the love of God who, for love of the wretched human creature, became a man himself, and what a man! It was vital to defend the holy stupidity of the love of God who chose not to proclaim something powerful but to travel the road of powerlessness to send our dream of power to the gallows and defeat it from within.
But in all this haven’t we been a little too forgetful of the bond between cross and hope, of the oneness of the East with the direction of the cross, between the past and future in Christianity? The spirit of hope which breathes on the prayers of Holy Saturday should penetrate all our Christian state of being once more. Christianity is not just a religion of the past but, in no less a way, of the future; its faith is also hope, since Christ is not just the dead and risen one but he who is about to come.
O Lord, enlighten our souls with this mystery of hope so that we recognize the light which your cross irradiates. Grant us that as Christians we will press on towards the future, towards the encounter on the day of your coming.
Amen .
Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, in the darkness of death You made a light shine; in the abyss of the deepest solitude the powerful protection of Your love now lives for ever; in the throes of Your concealment we now can sing the hallelujah of the saved. Grant us the humble simplicity of faith, which does not let us stray when You call us in the hours of darkness, of abandonment, when all seems difficult; grant us, at this time when a mortal struggle is being waged around You, light enough that we will not lose You; light enough for us to give to all those who still have need of it. Make the mystery of Your Easter joy shine, like the aurora of the dawn, on these days of ours; grant that we may truly be men of Easter in the midst of history’s Holy Saturday. Grant that in the course of the days of light and dark of this age we may always with happy hearts find ourselves on the pathway to Your future glory.
Amen.
Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, in the darkness of death You made a light shine; in the abyss of the deepest solitude the powerful protection of Your love now lives for ever; in the throes of Your concealment we now can sing the hallelujah of the saved. Grant us the humble simplicity of faith, which does not let us stray when You call us in the hours of darkness, of abandonment, when all seems difficult; grant us, at this time when a mortal struggle is being waged around You, light enough that we will not lose You; light enough for us to give to all those who still have need of it. Make the mystery of Your Easter joy shine, like the aurora of the dawn, on these days of ours; grant that we may truly be men of Easter in the midst of history’s Holy Saturday. Grant that in the course of the days of light and dark of this age we may always with happy hearts find ourselves on the pathway to Your future glory.
Amen.