Happy New Ear! (And Nose, and Foot, and Eye)

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

G.K. Chesterton, Daily News

Reflection – This showed up on my Facebook newsfeed yesterday, and caught my eye. I have been on a bit of a Chesterton tear lately, and may just continue to be on one shortly (stay tuned to this space for further details…).

Anyhow, this struck me as a good word about New Years resolutions. Personally, I don’t do them. Can’t be bothered, and we all know that the second week of January is littered far and wide throughout the land with the failed resolutions of the first week.

But Chesterton has an awfully good point here, New Years or not. Namely, we have to commit ourselves to a program of constant change and renewal, conversion and repentance, growth and development. There is nothing more fatal to the soul and psyche than to lapse into a complacent fog, a despairing slump, to suffer not so much the dark night of the soul but the endless gloomy twilight of the mind, a condition neither of terrifying darkness nor of overpowering brilliant light, a half-measured, half-awake, half-asleep, blundering, meandering, lukewarm, careless, thoughtless, distracted, indeliberate path through life.

That is the path that will lead us to hell, more certainly than the path of conspicuous wickedness, I think. At least the energetic and enthusiastic sinner is in the battle—on the wrong side, mind you—but being in the fight there is always a chance he might get taken captive by his opponent God. As many have.

But the dozing, the dreary, the too tired to sin, too bored to repent, too lazy to think hard about things, too fearful to make any serious moral effort or commitment—this is the person who is in a dreadful spiritual situation.

And this is the one we have to watch out for. Especially as life goes on, and we have settled down to whatever vocation and commitments we have made, this abyss of mediocrity continually yawns (in more way than one) at our feet.

And so—resolutions. Be resolute! God never grows old, and the Spirit of the Lord is perpetually new, perpetually refreshed each day. We grow old, but we needn’t. I always think of Catherine Doherty, founder of Madonna House, who in her 70s began to bring forth a series of Russian words from her childhood—poustinia, sobornost, strannik, urodivoi, molchanie—that opened a whole new dimension of the MH vocation and spirituality that we poor laggards are still just unpacking some 40 years later.

We see this too in Pope Francis and yes, in Pope Emeritus Benedict, who both this past year entered uncharted territory and embraced new lives, new responsibilities, and new ways of moving with the papacy in their old age.

God is never done with any of us. The Spirit is always a-moving, always re-creating, renewing, rebirthing us. I’m not talking about things changing that cannot change—the faith God has revealed to us, or the moral law He has laid down for us—but rather that God is infinitely creative, infinitely new and wanting us to be new that way, open, growing, expanding, learning.

This is, in my view as a ‘conservative’ (although I have made it clear on this blog that I loathe all these labels), the great strength of the ‘liberal’ model—the great idea that orthodoxy and orthopraxis do not mean stagnation and complacency. Fidelity to the faith passed down by tradition and to the moral law learned at our mother’s knee does not mean that our lives are a mass of pat answers and sterile formulae.

Rather, the truth of God opens us up to a universe of perpetual mystery and wonder, perpetual expansion outward, inward, upward, into heights and depths and newness of insight and newness of action. It is the opposite of the bunker mentality and polarized camps that characterize so much of the current Catholic scene, at least in North America.

God calls us to continually grow into the universal charity and breadth of vision that He Himself enjoys. But the price of that growth is to abandon forever any complacency, any sense of having all the answers or having the whole spiritual-moral life all wrapped up in a tidy package.

So Happy New Year to you all, and Happy New Ear, New Nose, New Feet, New Soul, New You, New Me. We have nothing to fear, and everything to rejoice in, in this perpetual call to newness of life and love in 2014.

The Hidden Virtue

Pablo Ordas:

We would like to know about your working relationship, not just your relationship of friendship but that of collaboration, with Benedict XVI.  There has never been a situation like this before, and whether you are frequently in contact and if he is helping you in this work.  Many thanks.

Pope Francis:

…There is one thing that describes my relationship with Benedict: I have such great affection for him.  I have always loved him.  For me he is a man of God, a humble man, a man of prayer.  I was so happy when he was elected Pope.  Also, when he resigned, for me it was an example of greatness.  A great man.  Only a great man does this!  A man of God and a man of prayer. 

Now he is living in the Vatican, and there are those who tell me:  “How can this be?  Two Popes in the Vatican!  Doesn’t he get in your way?  Isn’t he plotting against you?”  All these sorts of things, no?  I have found a good answer for this: “It’s like having your grandfather in the house”, a wise grandfather.  When families have a grandfather at home, he is venerated, he is loved, he is listened to.  Pope Benedict is a man of great prudence.  He doesn’t interfere!  I have often told him so: “Holiness, receive guests, lead your own life, come along with us”.  He did come for the unveiling and blessing of the statue of Saint Michael. 

So, that phrase says it all.  For me it’s like having a grandfather at home: my own father.  If I have a difficulty, or something I don’t understand, I can call him on the phone: “Tell me, can I do this?”  When I went to talk with him about that big problem, Vatileaks, he told me everything with great simplicity … to be helpful.  There is something I don’t know whether you are aware of – I believe you are, but I’m not certain – when he spoke to us in his farewell address, on 28 February, he said: “In your midst is the next Pope: I promise him obedience”.   He is a great man; this is a great man!

Press Conference on plane returning for WYD Rio

Reflection – ‘Pope and Change’, read the headline in Time magazine a week or so ago. This has certainly been the secular media’s take on Popes Francis and Benedict. Pope Francis is ‘humble’ while Benedict was ‘regal’. Francis is pastoral; Benedict, stern and unyielding. Francis warm and friendly; Benedict stiff and reserved. And so forth – we all know the routine.

So it’s nice to hear Pope Francis’ take on the matter, and his opinion of Pope Benedict. They are friends, long-time coworkers, with great mutual respect and affection. Nice to know. And good to know, since the two of them are charting absolutely new territory in their relationship. There is just no template for how a retired pope and a reigning pope are supposed to interact while both living in Rome. Miss Manners has nothing to say on the matter; Emily Post neither.

I want to reflect on this matter of ‘humility’, though, since Pope Francis here uses the word to describe Benedict, and since it has been one of the words bandied about in this new papacy in the popular press. I will always remember with great merriment the headline in the (I believe) Daily Telegraph in England upon the papal election: “New Pope Famous for his Humility.” I’m quite sure Pope Francis would be equally amused at that headline. There is nothing quite as absurd as the prospect of someone being famous for being humble. Less amusing, of course, is the implication that Pope Francis is so very humble, not like that nasty old icky Pope Benedict who was so prideful and arrogant. That… is not so funny.

Now, I have absolutely no idea who is humble and who is not. Humility is, by definition, a hidden virtue. Pope Francis may indeed be the humblest man God ever put on this earth; in his own words, ‘who am I to judge?’

But… it takes a lot of humility to resign the papacy, doesn’t it? A lot of humility to say, “I can no longer do this job I have been asked to do.” Or maybe it doesn’t – that too could be a prideful act, flouting millennia of tradition.

Humility is a tricky thing. It can be a genuine and true humility to adopt a simpler liturgical style and reduce the pomp and trappings of office… or it may not be. It can be humility to simply accept and go with the traditional signs and symbols, vestures and rituals of an office… or it may not be.

Humility cannot really be measured by such outward realities. Ultimately, only God knows who is humble and who is proud, who is lowly and meek and who is haughty of heart. The ways of the human heart are tortuous and we cannot even judge our own cases.

So it is not humility, that hidden virtue, that we are to look for to evaluate the genuineness of a person. It is love, and compassion, and mercy. And I think any fair observer, looking at both of these men, will find ample evidence of these qualities, which cannot flourish in a soul unless that soul is humble before God and receptive. We have been very blessed in our popes in the past century: much love, much mercy, much humble and generous service to the Church. Let us leave off judging and critiquing these men, and get on with the task of ourselves loving and serving as we are called to do.

Conclave Thoughts

Trusting another means taking one’s stand on some one else’s intelligence and embracing as true what one has not decided for one’s self… it implies a recognition by the mind of its own limits, an acceptance of dependence, a surrender of my absolute sovereignty.

Jean Danielou, The Scandal of the Truth

Reflection - I have very little time indeed to blog today, as I prepare for a parish mission tomorrow. Anyhow, the conclave begins as I write this, and perhaps it is best to be silent and prayerful rather than chattering and nattering on about whatever.

In relation to the conclave, this quote on truth and surrender seems relevant. A bunch of men, most of whom are total strangers to me, are preparing to make a decision in Rome that will affect the whole Church in a radical fashion.

This is daunting, is it not? I certainly find it so. We pray for them. We have various levels of trust in their good judgment, based on our experience and knowledge. We have no control whatsoever in what is going to happen in the next two days.

So... we are all feeling our limits, and this is not a bad thing. We all cast them, the Church, and our own selves on the merciful love of God, or at least that is what we are called to do. And that is a very good thing indeed.

Well, I have to go say Mass now, offering the Mass for the election of the pope. Enough of my words; time for Jesus to have his way with me and with us all. Amen.

Popes Come, Popes Go

And now the second topic: the Church. We know that the First Vatican Council was interrupted because of the Franco-Prussian War, and so it remained somewhat one-sided, incomplete, because the doctrine on the primacy – defined, thanks be to God, in that historical moment for the Church, and very necessary for the period that followed – was just a single element in a broader ecclesiology, already envisaged and prepared. So we were left with a fragment. And one might say: as long as it remains a fragment, we tend towards a one-sided vision where the Church would be just the primacy.

So all along, the intention was to complete the ecclesiology of Vatican I, at a date to be determined, for the sake of a complete ecclesiology. Here too the time seemed ripe because, after the First World War, the sense of the Church was reborn in a new way. As Romano Guardini said: "The Church is starting to reawaken in people’s souls", and a Protestant bishop spoke of the "era of the Church". Above all, there was a rediscovery of the concept that Vatican I had also envisaged, namely that of the Mystical Body of Christ. People were beginning to realize that the Church is not simply an organization, something structured, juridical, institutional – it is that too – but rather an organism, a living reality that penetrates my soul, in such a way that I myself, with my own believing soul, am a building block of the Church as such. In this sense, Pius XII wrote the Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi as a step towards completing the ecclesiology of Vatican I.

Address to the Clergy of Rome, February 14, 2013

Reflection – Well, so the day has come at last. At 8 p.m. (Roman time) today, Pope Benedict will step down from the chair of Peter and retire to a life of prayer and seclusion. I find myself unable to offer some sweeping analysis of Benedict’s papacy and its long-range impact, or some grand conclusion about the meaning of his resignation and its implications for the Church.

Partly, I’m still jet-lagged, and very much taken up with my short-term assignment to Robin Hood’s Bay, UK. Mostly, though, I don’t put all that much stock in grand sweeping analyses, especially those made in the moment of the event. Time and history will give us a better sense of ‘what it all means’ than this present moment affords.

Meanwhile, by sheer coincidence I have come to the point of the address to the Roman clergy about the ecclesiology of Vatican II, and particularly about the incomplete ecclesiology of Vatican I. And this is more than slightly relevant to today’s event.

Vatican I (if you are hazy on the details) defined the dogma of papal infallibility—the pope as the final arbiter of the deposit of faith. His ministry can never be exercised in isolation from the rest of the magisterium or in conflict with the whole of the tradition of the Church, but nonetheless, there is a last word, a final authority, and it resides in the occupant of the chair of Peter.

Vatican I said so, and it is binding on Catholics to believe so. But if we leave it at that, as Vatican I was forced to by historical events, then we are indeed left with an unbalanced and undue emphasis on the office of the papacy to the exclusion of the bishops and indeed this whole deeper sense to the Mystical Body of Christ.

Yes, the Pope has a unique and vital role, and may Benedict’s successor do as good as job with it as he did and John Paul II before him. But… your bishop is also a successor to the apostles, and has a role. And… you have a role, too, you know. As do I.

It is this deep sense of the Church as bigger than one man and even bigger than one office, crucial as it may be, that we need to grasp and truly take to heart. Some of the anxiety around Benedict’s resignation betrays, I would suggest, a lingering lack of balance in the Catholic community. A certain focus on the papal office that is just slightly out of proportion.

Everyone who reads this blog knows that my love of Benedict is second to none, and my respect for Church authority and fidelity to the Church is (I hope by now) beyond question. So understand me well when I say that popes come and popes go, you know! It is Jesus who is the life of the Church, and the Holy Spirit whose abiding presence makes this life real, present, vital, effective. And God the Father who is the source and end of our life in the Church.

So, thank you Benedict. We love you, and we wish you well, and will continue to pray for you daily. Now go have a good rest and pray for us as you promised you would. And the Church goes marching on with unfaltering step and unwavering gaze at the Lord who is our life and our salvation.

Ten Thousand Places

OK - so I've given some careful thought and prayer to the new name for the blog, and its new direction.

First, since our beloved Pope Benedict has a full week left with us as our German Shepherd in his office, I will keep the original name and exclusive focus on his writings until February 28. I might mention at this point that I am actually on the road again from this Sunday onwards, heading to Madonna House in England for three weeks of ministry there. Blogging will be ongoing, but may be a bit more sporadic than my usual daily post.

On March 1, though, I will retitle the blog Ten Thousand Places. What on earth do I mean by this title? Well, my two favorite authors (besides Joseph Ratzinger and Catherine de Hueck Doherty) are C.S. Lewis and Gerard Manley Hopkins. My favorite novel of all time is Lewis' Til We Have Faces, to the point where I struggled and strained to find some play on the word 'faces' for the blog that wouldn't sound horribly cheesy, like 'Face to Face' or 'Facing Facts' or 'Face Values'. You all know that I have a terrible loathing of puns and would never stoop so low as to make one. I would lose face by doing so.

So I went searching for Hopkins quotes instead. Having considered and rejected such possibilities as 'Deep Down Things' (which sets the bar a bit too high for me, I think), 'All Things Counter, Original, Spare, Strange' (that one almost got me, I have to admit!) and 'Dayspring to the Dimness' (I would be the dimness, Christ the dayspring in that one), I then found this most lovely and beloved poem:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves -- goes itself; _myself_ it speaks and spells,
Crying _What I do is me: for that I came_.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is --
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
 

Bingo, says I. My intent is to expand the blog from Ratzinger outward to other authors, other beautiful Christians reflecting Christ in manifold ways, with my own running commentary babbling alongside them. And here we have - Christ is ten thousand places, lovely in... men's FACES.

And so this will be the new blog, beginning on March 1 - Ten Thousand Places, with the tag line of  'To the Father through the features of men's faces.' So now you know.

Whatever, Lord

With the traditional Rite of Ashes last Wednesday we entered Lent, a season of conversion and penance in preparation for Easter. The Church who is mother and teacher calls all her members to renew themselves in spirit and to turn once again with determination to God, renouncing pride and selfishness, to live in love. This Year of Faith Lent is a favourable time for rediscovering faith in God as the basic criterion for our life and for the life of the Church. This always means a struggle, a spiritual combat, because the spirit of evil is naturally opposed to our sanctification and seeks to make us stray from God’s path. For this reason the Gospel of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness is proclaimed every year on the First Sunday of Lent.

Indeed, after receiving the investiture as Messiah—Anointed—with the Holy Spirit at the baptism in the Jordan Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Spirit himself to be tempted by the devil. At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus had to unmask himself and reject the false images of the Messiah which the tempter was suggesting to him. Yet these temptations are also false images of man that threaten to ensnare our conscience, in the guise of suitable, effective and even good proposals.

The Evangelists Matthew and Luke present three temptations of Jesus that differ slightly, but only in their order. Their essential core is always the exploitation of God for our own interests, giving preference to success or to material possessions. The tempter is cunning. He does not directly impel us towards evil but rather towards a false good, making us believe that the true realities are power and everything that satisfies our primary needs. In this way God becomes secondary, he is reduced to a means; in short, he becomes unreal, he no longer counts, he disappears. Ultimately, in temptation faith is at stake because God is at stake. At the crucial moments in life but also, as can be seen at every moment, we stand at a crossroads: do we want to follow our own ego or God? Our individual interests or the true Good, to follow what is really good?

Angelus Address, February 14, 2013

Reflection – Happy Chair of St Peter! This feast day rolls around every year, and every year we are asked both to pray for the Holy Father and to give thanks for the Petrine ministry in the Church and the service of unity that it fulfills. Somehow, I am willing to bet that Catholics in general are a bit more aware of both the feast day and the papacy this particular February 22. It’s the Lent of the papacy, in a certain sense, as all eyes turn towards the Vatican to witness Benedict step down next Thursday and the cardinals gather shortly thereafter to elect a new pope.

So I’ve still been pondering this whole matter of Benedict’s resignation. I think one remarkable aspect of it is precisely what he reflects on here so beautifully. That is, the renunciation of power. ‘The true realities are power and what satisfies our needs’ – this is the way of the world. Get power and keep power. Hang on to whatever power you have until it is wrested from your hands. This happens in big ways and in small, all over the place, all the time. The power struggle, and who comes out on top. And so we have this man, certainly old and tired and perhaps sick, and carrying God-alone knows what heavy burdens of office, but nonetheless still capable of hanging on to the office, hanging on to the power.

And he is saying, ‘You know what? It’s not about power. It’s not about me. It’s about God – He is the true and only head of the Church.’ As John Paul II taught us powerfully about carrying the cross of suffering until the end, Benedict is teaching us about deep humility and self-effacement. Two different men with two different lessons to teach us.

Ultimately it is the same lesson, though. Turn to God! God is the center. God is the source. God is the Father, the one Father, the only Father. God is the One who sustains us in times of trial and empowers us to walk in fidelity to the bitter end of life. God is the One who strips us, ‘belittles’ us in the positive sense of that word, makes us very small and childlike and simple in all things.

It is God’s Church, not Benedict’s or John Paul’s or the Cardinals or yours or mine. It is God’s world, not Obama’s or Harper’s or any of the other great movers and shakers of our time. My life and your life belong to God, not ourselves. Benedict’s resignation, if we really take it to the depths of spiritual meaning, is a call to all of us to really dispossess ourselves, really detach ourselves, really dis-empower ourselves freely out of love, so that this Lent God can be a bit more all-in-all in our lives.

What that means for you and for me will vary widely depending on our circumstances. But the call is there for all of us. ‘Whatever, Lord’ – do what you will with and in me. Take everything from me or ask me to carry it all until I break—so long as you are with me ‘til the end. This is the great Lenten call our Holy Father has issued to us in this Year of Faith.

My Blog Will Go On

Christianity must always remember that it is the religion of the Logos. Christianity is faith in the Creator Spiritus, from whom comes everything that is real. Precisely this ought to give Christianity its philosophical power today, since the problem is whether the world comes from an irrational source, so that reason would be nothing but a ‘by-product’ (perhaps even a harmful by product) of the development of the world, or whether the world comes from reason, so that its criterion and its goal is reason. The Christian faith opts for this second thesis and has good arguments to back it up, even from a purely philosophical point of view, despite the fact that so many people today consider the first thesis the only ‘rational’ and modern view.

Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, 49

Reflection – ‘So, what are you going to do about the blog?’ The question has been posed to me once or twice (or a couple dozen times, but who’s counting?) the past week or so. My answer has always been, “I’m praying about it!”

You see, I didn’t start the blog precisely because Joseph Ratzinger was the bishop of Rome. I started the blog because he writes passages like the above one: luminous, penetrating, intellectually acute and yet accessible to the general reading public. I started the blog because I believe this ‘German Shepherd’ (and he will still be a shepherd—a bishop—on March 1, don’t forget) has offered the modern world insight, guidance, thoughtful reflection and a gentle presentation of the Gospel in a somewhat intellectual key, but no less the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The modern world has largely responded by sneering at him, calling him silly names, and ignoring his writings, as we have all had lamentable opportunities to see in the past week of media ‘coverage’ of the story.

So I do want, and fully intend, to continue presenting excerpts of Ratzinger’s writings ongoingly on this blog. There may be less interest in him as he retreats into the silence and seclusion of a monastery, but I believe he is a key figure in the Church’s re-presentation of the faith to the modern world, and his life work deserves and in fact needs to be made better known. I may broaden the blog out to include other writers (Catherine Doherty first among them, of course), and my own independent writing and reflection. Given that we are no longer (sob!) living with him, I will probably be looking for a new name for the blog (any suggestions gratefully accepted), but nonetheless, the blog will go on as it has.

A great central matter of Ratzinger’s contribution to modern theology is, in fact, found in the above passage. The reasonableness of the doctrine of creation, the fact that only a creation of the universe from a rational being undergirds and assures us of the ultimate reasonable quality of being, the fact that modern atheistic materialism reduces the universe to absurdity—all of this is key in Ratzinger’s entire thought.

The Regensburg address several years ago, which everyone remembers as if it were an assault on Islam, was in fact an assault on post-modernism. God as Logos, God as a Being super-eminently reasonable, logical in the best sense of the word, means that our human reason, our capacity to move towards apprehension of the truth, this fantastic human power which delivers, in a sense, the whole material universe into our hands through technological mastery—this human power in fact takes us beyond the material universe and into the very heart of God.

Reason does not merely give us scientific prowess, but opens us up for communion in love with God and one another. This is so alien to our whole understanding of reason in a positivistic technocratic world, yet it flows naturally and automatically from the Christian doctrine of creation. And this doctrine, then, and this understanding of reason, yields a whole theology and spirituality of communion, a vision of reality in which our humanity in its deepest and highest nature comes from God and is ordered towards God, and in which our whole apprehension and relationship with the created order is meant to be shaped and ordered by this God-ward orientation.

 

This is the theological vision of Joseph Ratzinger, and I fully intend to continue presenting it to the world on this blog. Now, what am I supposed to name it…?

We're All Only Human

Dear brothers and sisters, as you know I decided to resign from the ministry that the Lord had entrusted me on April 19, 2005. I did this in full freedom, for the good of the Church after having prayed at length and examined my conscience before God, well aware of the gravity of this act.

I was also well aware that I was no longer able to fulfill the Petrine Ministry with that strength that it demands. What sustains and illuminates me is the certainty that the Church belongs to Christ whose care and guidance will never be lacking. I thank you all for the love and prayer with which you have accompanied me.

I have felt, almost physically, your prayers in these days which are not easy for me, the strength which the love of the Church and your prayers brings to me. Continue to pray for me and for the future Pope, the Lord will guide us!

General Audience, February 13, 2013

Reflection – I am going to blog the whole of Pope Benedict’s general audience yesterday, which is quite an extraordinary reflection on Lent and conversion. But, of course, he began his audience with the above personal remarks, which were interrupted several times by prolonged applause from the crowd and great emotion.

I also watched a small clip of his final public Mass, also yesterday, at which Cardinal Bartone publicly thanked him, again with considerable emotion. “You have brought man to God, and God to man,” he said. There was, again, prolonged applause, and it was so very touching to see the various cardinals and bishops removing their miters in a gesture of respect, more than a few of them wiping tears from their eyes, and the Pope himself, looking very drawn and tired, but visibly moved by the outpouring of love and genuine affection.

You know, I keep trying to take my own personal reflections on this whole matter to the next level of depth, to get to the big picture, to the large-scale ramifications of this event for the Church, to the deeper theological and spiritual meanings of it for world and ecclesial history.

Can’t do it. Not yet. Maybe I’ll get there eventually. What really strikes me here, and maybe this is of great spiritual significance after all, is the enormous personal love and affection being poured out for this man, Joseph Ratzinger, our German Shepherd. His own personal love for the Church, for us, which has kept him at this difficult task these past years, and is now motivating him to do this hard controversial thing of resigning, and the love being expressed for him in so many quarters.

Yes, there are politics and wrangling and the usual negative comments from the usual suspects... but who cares about that? What I’m seeing is a whole lotta love for this quiet little man who has really tried to love and serve us with his great intellect and gift for words.

And this is rather important, actually. So often we can lose the humanity of the Church behind the trappings of office or the tug-of-war of controversy or the struggle with obedience and authority. So often people can become symbols: Ratzinger of the ‘conservative’ wing; Martini (say) of the ‘liberal’. But people are not symbols, not primarily. They are human beings, with all the human fraility and foibles, but also with human beauty and grace.

The Church is divine… but it certainly is always human, too. And this humanity is not, as we so often mean when we speak of it, simply the Church’s failures and the sins (horrific at times) of its members and leaders. It’s also a little old man in the Vatican who is sick and tired and is telling us he cannot do it any more. It’s his colleagues and co-workers in the Vatican wiping tears from their eyes as they thank him for trying so hard for so long. It’s all of us with our hearts in our throats and perhaps tears in our eyes as we take in these events and turn to each other for support, perhaps in some confusion, perhaps anxiety, perhaps hurt or even anger.

It’s all of this—all of us gathered together around this little old man—our father in Christ who is also our brother in Christ and who needs our prayers, and all of us gathered together around the college of cardinals who most definitely need our prayers, because they are only human too, and subject to the same frailties and limitations as we all are.

 

All of us human, all of us needing kindness and compassion, all of us together in this divine project called the Church, this divine mystery that comes to us in our deep humanity to draw this humanity into divinity, and the name and the path of this drawing is one thing and one thing only: it is love, which is made possible by grace, which is given to us by Jesus Christ. Amen.

A Catholic Moment

It is interesting to observe how in the New Testament the word “saints” designates Christians as a whole, and certainly not all would have qualified to be declared saints by the Church. What is meant, then, by this term? The fact that whoever had and lived the faith in Christ Risen were call to become a point of reference for all others, setting them in this way in contact with the Person and the Message of Jesus, who reveals the face of the Living God. And this holds true also for us: a Christian who lets himself be guided and gradually shaped by the faith of the Church, in spite of his weaknesses, his limitations and his difficulties, becomes like a window open to the light of the living God, receiving this light and transmitting it to the world...

Today’s widespread tendency to relegate faith to the private sphere thus, contradicts its very nature. We need the Church in order to confirm our faith and in order to experience the gifts of God: his Word, the Sacraments, the support of grace and the witness of love. Like this, our “I” can be perceived in the “we” of the Church and, at the same time, be the recipient and the protagonist of an overwhelming event: experiencing communion with God, that is the foundation of communion among men. In a world in which individualism seems to rule personal relationships, making them ever more fragile, the faith calls us to be the People of God, to be Church, bearers of the love and communion of God for all mankind (cf. Pastoral Constitution Guadium et Spes, n. 1).

General Audience, 31 October 2012

Reflection – As I said yesterday in my initial and rather shocked reaction to the news of Pope Benedict’s resignation, I think I will continue blogging as normal. The German Shepherd has shepherded us long before he came pope, and his words and wisdom will continue to be part of the Good Shepherd’s shepherding of us long after he has left the office.

Meanwhile… well, we’re all very conscious of our Church identity now, aren’t we? Nothing like a conclave to make everyone very mindful of being Catholic and this strange call to communion that comes to us accompanied by puffs of white smoke and rooms of elderly men wearing red hats.

It’s a ‘we’ time that hopefully overrides or at least gives a stiff competition to the ‘I’ focus of our normal lives. Meanwhile, the eyes of the world are, for at least a couple news cycles, very much on the Catholic Church. There is a great opportunity here, but also a great challenge.

Our non-Catholic friends and relatives may ask questions of us on Facebook. Can you answer them? Fevered media speculation and verbiage fills the airwaves and bandwidth of the chattering classes. Can you sort out what has validity from what is ill-informed nonsense? (Hint: the ratio is about 10%-90% on that score).

It is this whole business the Pope speaks of here, of a Christian being a point of reference for others directing them towards Christ, and to do that, allowing ourselves to be formed by the faith of the Church and not the passing values of the world. It is a very Catholic moment right now—lots of attention and ‘buzz’ around all of this, at least until the next squirrel distracts our ADHD media. Are we going to move through it in a Catholic way, though? That is, with a depth of faith and prayer, a knowledge of how serious all this is, but at the same time a deeper knowledge that it’s not too serious, that God is in His Church to watch over it and guide it in all events.

If I may give you all a bit of practical advice, it would be this. Ignore the mass media. They don’t know what they’re talking about, frankly, and don’t seem terribly interested in getting the story right. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CBC—all the alphabet soup of talking heads are simply not reliable sources for information, and bring an exclusively political perspective to the whole matter (it’s all they know about, the poor dears), along with their own peculiarly obsessed tunnel vision re social issues (‘maybe the NEXT Pope will approve abortion and gay marriage!’ Uh, no – that’s not going to happen.).

Ignore them all – they are untrustworthy. Rocco Palma is a knowledgeable journalist, as is John Allen (Yes, I know the link is NCR - he's still one of the best). EWTN does a reliable professional job covering this stuff, as does Salt and Light TV in Canada. Go to the people who know what they’re talking about and ignore the rest.

 

Above all, though, pray, pray, pray. This is a clarion call from God to the Church to pray for our leaders, to ask the Holy Spirit to descend on the College of Cardinals, to give peace and firmness of purpose to all the faithful, to be the saints of God our baptism and Confirmation have made us to be. Amen.

Updated to add: Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. A good day to mortify our senses and our intellects. I will not blog tomorrow. See you Thursday, God willing.

Wow - Part II

OK, so I am now out of poustinia, and of course prayed much of the last few hours for Pope Benedict and for the Church. My goodness, what a turn of events.
First... it may have come to the attention of the more discerning readers of this blog that I kind of like the Pope. I try to hide it, but it just keeps on popping out all over. It's not just respect for the office, which is high, nor is it regard for his writings and insight, which is very high indeed.
I like the man. I think he is a good and gracious man. I think if I was ever so blessed as to meet him, we would get along quite well. I have enormous personal affection for Joseph Ratzinger. So... my first reaction is still a deep filial concern for him. I hope he's OK, and I can only think that all of this must be very painful for him. My impression of him has always been that he is a shy, private man, more interested in expressing ideas and insights that sharing his own personal business with others. So please, if you haven't already done so, pray for him, eh? I have to think he needs it especially today.
Also, somewhere in the world there is a man who God has been preparing to be our next Pope. I will not enter into the fevered speculations as to who this man might be. The old saying about conclaves holds true: Go in a Pope, come out a cardinal. But we do need to hold up this man in prayer, as well, whoever he is.
Now, of course all of this leads all of us to think of Pope John Paul II and the way he moved through his own illness and death. And of course, while I haven't plunged into the Catholic social media world just yet, It occurs to me that some might be subjecting one or the other of these two men to invidious comparisons. "Well, JPII didn't resign, and look how sick he was. BXVI is a quitter." Or, "BXVI has the common sense to know when to quit - what was wrong with JPII?"
OK, everyone knock it off. We are seeing here, once again, how very different these two men are in personal style and charism, even as they were one in mind and in heart throughout their lives together.
Pope John Paul II was an actor, and lived much of his life under atheistic Communism. He understood deeply the importance of the symbolic act, and of the charismatic leader inspiring by dramatic gesture and singular deed. Communism is by definition an ideology that crushes the human person, reducing man to a faceless cog in a revolutionary machine. The power of one individual to stand up, to show forth the emptiness of the ideology, to manifest the courage and nobility of the human spirit by a grand dramatic gesture was very much part of his own personal vocation and his own personality and style.
And so, in a world where old age is despised, where euthanasia looms around the corner, where strength is worshipped and where commitment is optional, he chose to make the end of his life a grand dramatic statement of love to the end in a most public forum
Pope Benedict is not dramatic. He is a teacher, a man of ideas, a man of the word. 'John Paul made you cry; Benedict makes you think.' So said a pundit whose name escapes me right now. And... well, he's making us think today, isn't he? Making us think about the papacy, about the nature of authority, about the place of authority in the Church and the ways in which this authority can and should move in our times. About time and age and the proper discernment of our place in the world and how we are to love and serve at the different seasons of life. About many things - he is inviting us to think deeply and pray seriously about our Church and about its mission.
It's not all about the Pope, you know. It's not all on him - the mission of shepherding humanity into the kingdom and towards the King. There will be a new Pope shortly, and he will doubtless be a good and wise man - I trust the Holy Spirit. But all of us are in this together, and all of us are 'shepherds' in our proper way. The Pope has a job to do, and Pope Benedict has decided he personally can no longer do that particular job; you and I have a job to do, too, and may we take it up and take in on most zealously as long as God gives us strength to do it.

Wow

Well, I just stepped out of poustinia today to check my e-mails for urgent messages, and heard the news. Pope Benedict is going to resign at the end of the month. I am in a bit of a state of shock at the moment.
First thoughts: let us pray for our beloved Holy Father with great gratitude and solicitude. This cannot have been easy for him to discern on a personal level, and the immediate reactions/responses to it must not be easy either. He is a good and (I believe) holy man, but he is human nonetheless and needs our prayers at this time.
I think I will continue the blog. He is still a shepherd, still a bishop, still the Pope for the next few weeks too, and I began this blog because I believe his shepherding of us has been one of the great, and largely unheralded, gifts of God to His Church in the 20th century. There is still much for us to learn from this good, gentle man of God.
And... let us pray with great peace and great seriousness for the Church. This is a near-unprecedented event in Church history (that one medieval Pope resigned, whose name eludes me), and of course a conclave is always a time of great importance. Let us pray... and have great trust and confidence in God's great care of His people.
There is only one Shepherd ultimately, and all the little assistant shepherds are just that - God's assistants, his ministers, his 'silly servants', as I said a couple days ago. We are in His hands, and He is caring for all of us, Joseph Ratzinger no less than you and me, in all this.
More to say tomorrow - back to poustinia now.