What is Christian Humanism?

Man and man's lofty calling are revealed in Christ through the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love. For this reason it is now fitting to reflect on this mystery. It is called for by the varied experiences of the Church and of contemporary man. It is also demanded by the pleas of many human hearts, their sufferings and hopes, their anxieties and expectations.

While it is true that every individual human being is, as I said in my encyclical Redemptor hominis, the way for the Church, at the same time the Gospel and the whole of Tradition constantly show us that we must travel this day with every individual just as Christ traced it out by revealing in Himself the Father and His love. In Jesus Christ, every path to man, as it has been assigned once and for all to the Church in the changing context of the times, is simultaneously an approach to the Father and His love. The Second Vatican Council has confirmed this truth for our time.

The more the Church's mission is centered upon man-the more it is, so to speak, anthropocentric-the more it must be confirmed and actualized theocentrically, that is to say, be directed in Jesus Christ to the Father. While the various currents of human thought both in the past and at the present have tended and still tend to separate theocentrism and anthropocentrism, and even to set them in opposition to each other, the Church, following Christ, seeks to link them up in human history, in a deep and organic way.

And this is also one of the basic principles, perhaps the most important one, of the teaching of the last Council. Since, therefore, in the present phase of the Church's history we put before ourselves as our primary task the implementation of the doctrine of the great Council, we must act upon this principle with faith, with an open mind and with all our heart.

In the encyclical already referred to, I have tried to show that the deepening and the many-faceted enrichment of the Church's consciousness resulting from the Council must open our minds and our hearts more widely to Christ. Today I wish to say that openness to Christ, who as the Redeemer of the world fully reveals man himself," can only be achieved through an ever more mature reference to the Father and His love.

Pope John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia 1

Reflection – This is very good stuff indeed from the soon to be Pope St. John Paul II. It’s a bit dense, as most of his writings are, but worth a careful reading. He begins by restating what was a major theme of his life, namely that the Church’s mission is to serve the individual human person, ‘the way of the Church in the world is the individual human person.’ That alone is worth meditating on a bit, isn’t it?

So often we can reduce Christianity to a list of dogmas and rules, or to a program of good works and catechetical initiatives, or (worst of all) to an ideology wielded as a club which debases our religion to a personal ego-project of the ideologue. But Jesus always related the Gospel to individuals, to this woman at the well or that blind man or this leper or that sinner.

Always it is a question, not of abandoning the dogmas and the rules (which we believe are of divine origin and thus not ours to change even if we wanted to), but of applying them in merciful love to the needs and situations of this person, that person. Always the concern is for the person first and how they are to hear and receive the Gospel of Christ. Christianity is deeply a humanistic religion.

Some would argue (or perhaps more accurately, feel) that this risks making Christianity a relativistic proposition, that truth is the first thing thrown on the fire kindled to warm the hands of this or that suffering individual, that somehow ‘truth’ and ‘compassionate love’ are opposed and we must choose one or the other.

This is precisely what the pope is clarifying here. Christianity is humanistic, but it is not a secular humanism. The truth of every human being, and hence the ultimate and lasting happiness of every human being is only found in relation to God the Father. He is the source and the goal of every human life, and so we cannot truly say we are loving a person unless we are striving to help them find their way to God, to the Father. We cannot say we ourselves are doing any good whatsoever in this world unless we are living out of that same relationship ourselves.

This is why it is so vital that we have the right image of God, that we see as clearly as we have light given us to see by, that God is merciful, loving, good, kindly. Because our whole life and happiness and eternal salvation rests on a conformation of ourselves to this God, his Truth and his Nature, and this is tough going for anyone, no matter what the circumstances of life hold, we need to have the deepest possible assurance that God is trustworthy and good.

He asks much of us, asks us to surrender so much of our own ideas and ways and tendencies and inclinations. He asks us to take on so much—this whole path of Jesus in the world which is a path of ceaseless sacrificial love and generosity. We have to know, and take our stand on, the fact, the sheer fact that this God loves us, that He is merciful, that He bids us to enter this most difficult path of Gospel love and fidelity and obedience from a place of love and mercy, not harshness and condemnation.

And this is the significance of the Divine Mercy Devotion and doctrine in our time.

We Are Made For This

It is "God, who is rich in mercy" whom Jesus Christ has revealed to us as Father: it is His very Son who, in Himself, has manifested Him and made Him known to us. Memorable in this regard is the moment when Philip, one of the twelve Apostles, turned to Christ and said: "Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied"; and Jesus replied: "Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me...? He who has seen me has seen the Father."

These words were spoken during the farewell discourse at the end of the paschal supper, which was followed by the events of those holy days during which confirmation was to be given once and for all of the fact that "God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ."

Following the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and paying close attention to the special needs of our times, I devoted the encyclical Redemptor hominis to the truth about man, a truth that is revealed to us in its fullness and depth in Christ. A no less important need in these critical and difficult times impels me to draw attention once again in Christ to the countenance of the "Father of mercies and God of all comfort."

We read in the Constitution Gaudium et spes: "Christ the new Adam...fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his lofty calling," and does it "in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love." The words that I have quoted are clear testimony to the fact that man cannot be manifested in the full dignity of his nature without reference - not only on the level of concepts but also in an integrally existential way - to God. Man and man's lofty calling are revealed in Christ through the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love.

Pope John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia 1

Reflection – This weekend in Rome is, of course, a very significant event, the dual canonization of Popes John XXIII and Pope John Paul II. I want to spend the next few days going through a little bit of Pope John Paul II’s second encyclical on the mercy of God, since it is also this weekend Mercy Sunday, which he instituted as such in 2000 when he canonized his beloved country-woman St. Faustina Kowalska and so brought the Divine Mercy devotion to the highest level of prominence in the Church.

I have blogged very little of anything from JPII on this blog. His writings are hard to excerpt—they run to the dense side—and I simply have never gone looking for material from him. So, time to make up for that neglect!

This opening of the encyclical, while dense, is fairly clear. His first encyclical looked on Jesus Christ as the revelation of the human person, the deepest reality of what a human being is, man revealed to himself in the revelation of Jesus the redeemer of mankind.

So now we see that Jesus reveals the human person, dignity, mission, precisely because he reveals to us the face of God the Father. There is no humanity, no human dignity, freedom, rationality, love, vocation and mission apart from our existential relationship to God. ‘You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.’ St. Augustine said it all these millennia ago, and it has never been put more concisely and better.

This means we are made for mercy. Mercy is the love of the strong for the weak, the rich for the poor, those who have for those who have not. In human affairs, any one of us may be the strong, the weak, the rich, the poor in any given circumstance—when we look at the traditional list of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy we all find ourselves on both sides of that particular ledger, both needing and called to give merciful love to one another.

But with God, His love is all mercy, always, all the time. He is infinitely strong, infinitely rich, infinitely possessing all that is. We are weak, poor, dependents on his charity. Beggars before the Lord with no claim to his largesse save our wretched condition, but His mercy is gracious upon us, and His help and care are never far from us.

The whole human condition and the meaning of everything in our lives hangs on this apprehension of our poverty met by God’s mercy. And his mercy lifting us up out of poverty, so that we have bounty to give to our brothers and sisters, but always from the treasures he has given us. It is all very much a business of mercy given, mercy received, mercy given in turn.

Everything else there is to say about being human—the moral life, the pursuit of virtue, meritorious acts—and the shadow side of our humanity which is sin and brokenness and the anguish that arises from that, all of it is conditioned by mercy, mercy, and more mercy. All of it is either a fruit of God’s mercy in our lives or is met by the healing power of God’s mercy in our lives. The whole meaning and summation of the human story is bound up in the contemplation of the Divine Mercy, and this is why the devotion has been given to us through the faithful listening heart of a little Polish nun in the 1920s and 30s in Krakow, and the great heart of a Polish man who happened to become pope and made this devotion a feast in the universal Church. So… let’s keep talking about mercy for a few days, OK?

This Week in Madonna House - April 15-23

“So, what do you do in Madonna House for Easter?” The question was asked me at the parish mission I did in Orangeville just before Holy Week. It was hard to answer in a few words – this past week in MH is one of the richest, fullest, and most varied weeks of our year, and is exceedingly beautiful to boot. So, what exactly did we do this week in MH?

First, there’s what most of us didn’t do this year for once, due to inclement weather. It’s hard to believe, since we are now in a thoroughly spring cycle of days, but just a week ago most of the MH priests trying to go to the Chrism Mass in Pembroke were stymied by snow and ice rain which virtually shut the highway down—one last blast of winter that seriously messed up our plans that day.

But Holy Week continued on regardless. That evening, we had our communal penance service, being shriven so as to enter the Triduum together washed clean by the blood of the Lamb. The next evening, we had our customary egg dying night, coloring and painting in festive liturgical symbols the hard boiled eggs that would be our fast-breaking after the Vigil on Saturday.

In all these days, the customs I am going to describe are of course surrounded by intense work—cooking, decorating, cleaning, music practices, and so forth. It is the busiest week of the year in many corners of MH.

First came Holy Thursday. The tables of the dining room, normally set up in three rows, were turned around end-to-end to create four long single tables, covered with tablecloths to create the effect of a banquet hall. A mosaic of Christ the lamb shedding his blood for us dominated the front of the room, along with a head table and ornate candelabra. This was the setting for the Supper of the Lamb, one of our most beloved customs. It is not a seder meal, exactly, but a Christian version of that

At the beginning of the meal, the candles are lit with a prayer of blessing. Then the paschal lamb, a slain lamb, roasted whole, resting on a cross-shaped frame and supported by loaves of bread, is solemnly carried into the dining hall while we sing a psalm of praise to God. It is placed at the head of the room, and an ancient homily speaking of Christ the Lamb of is read. It is processed out, and then we have a truly wonderful, joyful meal of lamb, bread, wine—the liturgical symbols blend with life seamlessly.

At the end of the meal a long portion of the Farewell discourse from John’s Gospel is read, connecting the agape of our meal, the agape of the Eucharist, and the call to love one another beautifully. After all this, of course, we have the evening liturgy, familiar to all Catholics, with the washing of feet and the solemn procession of the Eucharist to the altar of repose. All accompanied by truly gorgeous music ably led by our schola cantorum.

Good Friday is hot cross buns for breakfast (keeping within the fasting rules, of course), the use of a clacker instead of bells, and the traditional afternoon service. For supper we fast on plain boiled potatoes, and then in the evening we have the Byzantine service of the Burial of Christ, a most beautiful and beloved gift to us from our Eastern heritage. This is, essentially, a funeral service for Jesus, in which the sorrow of his passing repeatedly gives way to anticipated joy in his coming resurrection.

It is impossible to describe the beauty of this service. The heart of it are three cycles of praises of our fallen hero, modeled on pre-Christian forms of odes. ‘How can you die, O my Life, how can you be buried?.. O life-bestowing one, it is right indeed to magnify you… The most handsome of men is today laid in the tombs, all the armies of the angels were dazzled, and they glorified your burial divine… ointment bearing women came to your tomb singing a hymn of victory…’ At this latter verse, one of the priests goes around the chapel sprinkling everyone with perfume, the burial ointment of Christ (which the women did not, after all, have to use!) becoming the sweet fragrance of joy and life for us.

There is much more to the service—the prophecy of the dry bones from Ezekiel, a haunting chant where Joseph of Arimethea pleads with Pilate for the body of Christ—‘Give me that Stranger, who being a stranger, has nowhere to lay his head… Give me that Stranger, of whom his mother cried out when she saw him dead, ‘My Son, my senses are wounded, and my heart is torn, but trusting in your resurrection, I glorify you.’ There is whole funeral procession around the chapel with the epitaphion, the shroud of Christ, with the solemn Trisagion intoned in many languages. At the end, then, we all in solemn assembly one by one pass under this shroud, holding lit candles. We extinguish the candle, say ‘Glory to your long suffering O Christ our God’, and pass under. Going into the tomb with Christ, we come out the other side, now bearing the light of Christ in our mortal flesh.

Saturday brings the Vigil, which I was privileged to celebrate this year. We all know how that goes—in MH we have opted to do all the readings and take our time with them, too. After the Vigil, so around midnight or so, we have a festive collation together, where we break our Lenten fast with the previously mentioned hard boiled eggs. One person says ‘Christ is risen’ and the other replies ‘Truly he is risen’ and they smash their eggs together and eat the contents.

What else goes on? Well, we have pascha and koolitch, the traditional Russian Easter foods, the one a sweet cottage cheese paste enriched with eggs and butter and raisins, the other a special sweet bread. We have three days off, with a relaxed schedule and some leisure time together. We have much singing at the meals, people bursting out with variations of the great Easter troparion ‘Christ is risen from the dead, trampling on death by death, and on those in the tombs, lavishing life’. We have Ukranian pysanky eggs everywhere—hanging from the ceiling, laid out on every flat surface… everywhere.

Beauty, beauty, beauty everywhere. And I guess that’s what Holy Week and Easter in MH is all about—making the beauty of our faith visible in manifold customs and rites. And that’s what happened this week in our corner of the world.

It's Always About Love

Strange, isn’t it, that on this seemingly sorrowful day pain and joy meet. And this is the cross - the cross that everybody is running away from - and I include everybody! We don’t want it - we like the cross on a table - we like the cross on a wall - we don’t mind it in a church - but when we say to ourselves, “Ah, he loved me unto total emptiness, even unto hanging naked on the cross, I must do likewise” and we turn the cross around so that we know that this is the place where we should go - we break it apart! We think of something else, and yet we miss the whole thing!

Did you ever stop to think of the love with which God loves? There is a fantastic joy. Did you ever think of a saint who is not full of joy? Is there a sad saint? Well, he ain’t a saint; he is a sad sack! You just don’t think of a saint as sad. It is impossible! How can a person who practically sees God with the eyes of faith so closely be sad? How is it possible?

Good Friday is the meeting place of the Lord’s joy. Do you know why he was joyous also? He fulfilled his Father’s will! Now we go around saying that we want to fulfill God’s will because we are all ready to be emptied, but the way we say it is like this - like a little girl here in Madonna House - she said, “The Holy Spirit told me not to go to the laundry today.” “Oh,” said I, “what did he tell you to do?” She said, “He told me to sit outside and read a book!” I said, “Good! Why don’t you take that book home with you, pack your bags and go!” Uh-uh! that is not the Holy Spirit, that is telling her stuff! It is somebody else!

The will of God I know through somebody else. Very rarely, unless you are great prophets and what have you, do you personally know. And even if you do, be sure to check with your spiritual director. At all times, obedience is poverty! People want to run around doing anything - my thing! You want to love as Christ loves - do the other people’s thing! That will help you. Forget all about your thing.

God surrendered to his Father’s will unto the cross, because of love of the Father and us. What about us? Are we going to allow today the joy of beholding his total love for us, bring ourselves to the surrender which he did for us, to obey his Father’s will? For I am a sister of Jesus Christ. He said, “I am the way to the Father.” Kenosis, surrender, emptying of self, is part of the Way of Jesus Christ.

Today is a strange day.. Quite strange! A day when joy meets pain, and pain begets joy. And if we enter into the heart of that hurricane, because it is a hurricane of pain and of joy, we shall be empty too.

This is the hour... this is the day ... in which God who doesn’t speak much, but in his silence and in his agony, says, “Love me as much as I love you!” It is a solemn day. It is a day in which we can descend into the well of our heart and find out how much we love him who loved us so much.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Spiritual Reading, Good Friday, 1974

Reflection – This is the last of the Good Friday spiritual reading from Catherine, and my last blog post for a little while—I will keep the Triduum as days of silence and recollection (at least as far as social media go), and then enjoy a few days off from blogging over the Easter octave. Probably back mid-week, next week.

At any rate, this is vintage Catherine—some have argued that the early and mid 1970s were really the apex of her spiritual reflection. Her story of the young girl deciding the Holy Spirit wanted her to read a book on the lawn rather than go to the laundry is a favorite of hers. God’s will coming to us through the duty of the moment as revealed by other people and (in the case of a community like MH) obedience to one’s superiors is a basic doctrine of hers.

But it’s always about Christ, always about love, always about this intense personal awareness and desire to be one with the One who gave everything to be one with us. And that this is joy, true joy, everlasting joy. To so utterly surrender one’s own will as to have no care for anything but that Love be loved, that God be served, that the will of the Father be done on earth as it is in heaven.

It is painful, true. It is cruciform. But it is the narrow gateway into life, and it is exceedingly beautiful to pass through this gateway. Let us pray for one another this Easter Triduum that we behold the face of Love, and beholding it, receive it, and receiving it, live it in our lives. Amen.