Joy to the World Where Everything Began
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The Mystical Nativity Sandro Botticelli, 1500
Joy to the World, Where Everything Began Contents Page Joy to the World
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Psalm 98: O Sing to the Lord a New Song
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Pope Benedict XVI Where Everything began: God becomes a Child
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St. Augustine - Let the Just Rejoice
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Fr. James V. Schall - The Central Event of History
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Fulton J. Sheen Divinity is always where one least expects to find it
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Blessed John Paul II - The Gift of God
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Will Fish - For Always
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Anonymous - Making a difference
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St. Mary MacKillop Never see a Need without doing something about it
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Mother Adela Galindo The Eucharist is the Secret of the Saints
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Pope Benedict XVI Eucharist, Communion & Solidarity: Part 1
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Anonymous Geese and the Catholic Social Principle of Solidarity
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A Chairde, At the beginning of the new Liturgical Year when we prepare to celebrate the ‘the central event of History’, in the place ‘where everything began’ we also begin a new series of quarterly bulletins which will pick up upon the 2012 International Eucharist Congress theme ‘Communion with Christ and with One Another.’ In a customarily beautiful homily, the first of our readings, Pope Benedict explains why he refers to the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem as the place ‘where everything began’. The excellent Fr. Schall then in our second reading takes up Benedict’s thought and further explores our Catholic understanding of this Central Event of History. In a characteristically insightful and imaginative way Archbishop Fulton J Sheen’s short article helps us begin to understand a little something of the infinite mystery involved in the ‘Word becoming flesh’ and God’s eternal love for man. Blessed John Paul II, another great Catholic communicator then expands this theme as he reflects upon the Nativity and upon the mystery of humanity being redeemed by Jesus Christ, son of the living God. These deeply theological and spiritual articles are followed by a touching tale about a poor orphan who having just learned about God’s gift to him (and to us all) found something to offer in return. The Holy Eucharist not only attests to the historical reality that ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us’ (Jn 1: 14) but also to the ongoing reality that Jesus Christ continues to be present in His Church and will be with us ‘always until
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the end of time’ (Mt 28: 20). Celebrating and deepening our appreciation of this everlasting Communion between Christ and His Church is the rationale behind all the International Eucharistic Congresses since their commencement in Lille in 1881 and it is a theme which the IEC2012 fully embraces, ‘Communion with Christ and with One Another’. Recently canonized St. Mary of the Cross MacKillop is one of the three patron saints to the IEC2012 and there follows a brief Congress-prepared summary of her life and work. (In subsequent bulletins short profiles of the Congress’ other patron saints, Blessed Margaret Ball and St Columbanus will be included.) St Mary of the Cross had a wonderful rule for living: ‘never see a need without doing something about it.’ This is a profoundly Christian principle. Most tellingly it is a life principle which is substantially rejected by the quid pro quo logic of today’s world that almost seems to demand the promise of a material reward for doing what is right, doing what should be done. In today’s world, communion with our fellow man would appear to have been replaced by a self-serving calculus of costs and benefits: a mean and predatory ‘what’s-in-it-for-me’ perspective. In this, of course the contemporary world has a deeply conflicted, unstable and reductive view of man. On the one hand it has this tremendous cult of celebrity (so-called ‘heroes’) where it believes that some gifted individuals can realize seemingly-impossible results entirely through their own efforts and yet on the other hand it dissuades the mass of other individuals (so-called ‘zeroes’) from taking personal action because their own individual efforts appear insignificant in
Joy to the World, Where Everything Began
the face of overwhelming challenges. The short story ‘making a difference’ goes a little way towards responding to those who disparage our small daily efforts to bring some grace and truth to a world in need. The full answer to those who find it difficult to respond to the needs of their fellow man either because those needs are so great or because they anticipate no material reward for doing so is provided by Mother Adela Galindo, a young Nicaraguan nun who, inspired by Blessed John Paul II, founded her own religious order as did Sr. Mary of the Cross MacKillop before her. For Mother Adela, it is the saints who are the true heroes and the secret of the saints is the Eucharist. What is impossible for us as lowly creatures is not impossible for Him who created us and through the Eucharist makes us holy. In the words of St Thomas Aquinas ‘The actual effect of the Eucharist is the transformation of man into God.’ Pope Benedict’s extended reflection on the Eucharist, Communion and Solidarity quite comprehensively addresses the IEC2012 conference theme, ‘Communion
with Christ and with one another’. Part I is provided in this issue and Part 2 will appear the next bulletin. The full text is available on our website. Sentire cum ecclesia, thinking with the Church is a characteristically Catholic (ecclesiological) principle. Personal experience has taught me, as it has quite a few others, the error of trying to ‘go it alone’ and striving to be ‘one’s own Pope’. Quite simply it is too easy to fall into selfdeception as well as being too easy to fail in Charity towards others and in Truth towards God. The final reflection, drawn from the animal kingdom could perhaps be considered an appropriate metaphor about the value of thinking and working together in communion, in response to the love of God, with the love of God and for the love of God. Oremus pro invicem, Beannachtaí,
J F Declan Quinn
Psalm 98: O Sing to the Lord a New song 1 O sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvellous things! His right hand and his holy arm have gotten him victory. 2. The LORD has made known his victory, he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations. 3. He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.
4. Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises! 5. Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody! 6. With trumpets and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD!
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Where Everything Began by Pope Benedict XVI* Dear Brothers and Sisters, With this last Audience before the Christmas celebrations, we approach with trepidation and wonder the “place” where for us and for our salvation everything began, everything found fulfilment, where the expectations of the world and of the human heart converged with God’s presence. We can already have a foretaste of the joy awakened by the little light that is perceived, which from the grotto of Bethlehem begins to radiate in the world. In the Advent journey, which the liturgy has invited us to live, we have been prepared to receive readily and gratefully the great event of the coming of the
Russian Icon: Nativity
Saviour, to contemplate in wonder his entrance in the world. Joyful hope, characteristic of the days that precede Holy Christmas, is certainly the essential attitude of the Christian who desires to live fruitfully the renewed encounter with Him who comes to dwell in our midst: Christ Jesus, the Son of God made man. We find this disposition of the heart again, and make it our own, in those who first welcomed the coming of the Messiah: Zachariah and Elizabeth, the shepherds, the simple folk, and especially Mary and Joseph, who themselves felt the tremor, but above all the joy over the mystery of this birth. The whole of the Old Testament is one great promise, which would be realized with the coming of a powerful Saviour. The book of the Prophet Isaiah is a particular witness of this, as it speaks to us of the sufferings of history and of the whole of creation for a redemption destined to give back new energies and a new orientation to the whole world. Thus, next to the expectation of the personalities of sacred Scripture, our hope also finds space and meaning through the centuries, a hope which we are experiencing these days and which keeps us going during the whole of our life’s journey. In fact, the whole of human existence is animated by this profound sentiment, by the desire that what is most true, most beautiful and greatest, which we have perceived and intuited with our mind and heart, can come to meet us and become concrete before our eyes and raise us again. “Behold, the omnipotent Lord is coming: He will be called Emmanuel, ‘God-with-
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us’” (Entrance Antiphon, Holy Mass of Dec. 21). During these days, we repeat these words often. In the time of the liturgy, which again actualizes the Mystery, He who is coming to save us from sin and death is already at the door, He who, after Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience, embraces us again and opens to us access to true life. St. Irenaeus explains it in his treatise “Against the Heresies,” when he states: “The Son of God himself descended ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ (Romans 8:3) to condemn sin and, after having condemned it, exclude it completely from the human race. He called man to likeness with himself, he made him imitator of God, he set him on the path indicated by the Father so that he could see God, and give him as gift to the Father himself” (III, 20, 2-3).
We see some of St. Irenaeus’ favourite ideas, that God with the Child Jesus calls us to likeness with himself. We see how God is, and are thus reminded that we should be like God. That we must imitate him, God has given himself. God has given himself into our hands. We must imitate God. And finally, the idea that in this way we can see God. A central idea of St. Irenaeus: Man does not see God, he cannot see him, and so he is in darkness about the truth of himself. However man, who cannot see God, can see Jesus, and so he sees God, and begins to see the truth and thus begins to live. Hence the Saviour comes to reduce to impotence the work of evil and all that which can still keep us away from God, to restore to us the ancient splendour and primitive paternity. With his coming among us, he indicates to us and also assigns to us a task: precisely that we be like him and that we tend toward true life, to come to the vision of God in the face of Christ. St. Irenaeus affirms again: “The Word of God made his dwelling among men and made himself Son of man, to accustom man to understand God and to accustom God to dwell in man according to the will of the Father. That is why God gave us as ‘sign’ of our salvation him who, born of the Virgin, is the Emmanuel” (ibid.).
St. Irenaeus
Here also there is a very beautiful central idea of St. Irenaeus: We must accustom ourselves to perceive God. God is generally distant from our lives, from our ideas, from our action. He has come to us and we must accustom ourselves to
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be with God. And, audaciously, Irenaeus dares to say that God must also accustom himself to be with us and in us. And that God perhaps should accompany us at Christmas, we should accustom ourselves to God, just as God must accustom himself to us, to our poverty and frailty. Hence, the coming of the Lord can have no objective other than to teach us to see and love events, the world, and everything that surrounds us with the very eyes of God. The Word-become-a-child helps us to understand God’s way of acting, so that we will be capable of allowing ourselves to be transformed increasingly by his goodness and his infinite mercy. In the night of the world, we must let ourselves be amazed and illumined by this act of God, which is totally unexpected:
God becomes a Child. We must let ourselves be amazed, illumined by the Star that inundated the universe with joy. May the Child Jesus, in coming to us, not find us unprepared, busy only in making the exterior reality more beautiful and attractive. May the care we give to making our streets and homes more resplendent impel us even more to predispose our soul to encounter him who will come to visit us. Let us purify our conscience and our life of what is contrary to this coming: thoughts, words, attitudes and deeds -- impelling us to do good and to contribute to bring about in our world peace and justice for every man and thus walk toward our encounter with the Lord.
* General Audience, 22 December 2010. vatican.va.
Nativity Prayer of St. Augustine of Hippo (AD 354 – 440)
Let the just rejoice,
For their justifier is born.
Let the sick and infirm rejoice, For their saviour is born. Let the captives rejoice,
For their Redeemer is born. Let slaves rejoice,
For their Master is born. Let free men rejoice,
For their Liberator is born. Let All Christians rejoice, For Jesus Christ is born.
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Joy to the World, Where Everything Began
The Central Event of History by James V. Schall SJ* “We know that it (Birth of Christ) celebrates the central event of history; the Incarnation of the Divine Word for the redemption of humanity.” Benedict XVI, Audience, December 17, 2008
I. When casually reading some of the Holy Father’s remarks… I was struck by the phrase he used of the Nativity, he called it the “central event of history.” I underlined the passage, one that is obviously not unfamiliar to Christian thinking. John said in his Prologue, that the “Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us,” as if to say that this “central event” joined the reality of God and the reality of man in one being. Benedict added in his Epiphany homily: Christ is likewise “the ultimate destination of history.”
I had previously remarked, after reading the Pope’s book, Jesus of Nazareth, how diligently the Pope sifted through the critical evidence that purported to deny, in one way or another, that Jesus was not who or what He said that He was, namely the Son of God, born—actually born, born once in this world—at a given time and at a given place. This book, after dealing with whatever evidence is offered that Christ was not God, concluded with a rather straight-forward and obvious fact: That if the Word did become man, if Christ was born at Bethlehem under Caesar Augustus, as was in fact the case, the world is simply different because of it,
however much we are or are not ready to acknowledge the fact. It is one thing to say John Smith existed in the world. It is something of momentous importance to know that Christ, the Son of God, existed in this world. Chesterton, in The Everlasting Man, already said that ordinary Christians can look with a certain healthy scepticism at what sundry scholars tell us when they think to show us that Christ never existed, or that He never died on the Cross, or that we do not know anything of what He actually said. Modern and not so modern scholarship is filled with volumes assuring us either that what Christians hold cannot be traced back to an origin in Christ, or that Christ Himself was not what He said He was. He or His followers were either ignorant or deluded or both. Chesterton has an amusing list of the usually contradictory “reasons” given to explain why Christ could not be who He said He was.
II.
Augustine’s great City of God is often credited with the invention of “history,” in the sense of proposing a meaning to be what obviously appears to be an unintelligible jumble of human and natural events throughout time. Augustine, of course, was more aware of the jumble than most people. He was, as they say, a “realist.” The origin of his idea of history is already present in the Old and New Testaments. There the heavens and the earth are seen against a background of their beginning, middle, and end. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the
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beginning and the end. Time is real but set within eternity, not independent of it. The “middle” is occupied principally by the doings of the rational beings, angels and men. Their personal dramas are seen as a going forth and a return, or sometimes as a failure to return. It is not that the great Greek thinkers, especially Thucydides, were ignorant of history. At the beginning of his famous Peloponnesian War, Thucydides tells us that we should study his account of this great war, so that we will grasp the intelligibility of all wars when, in the future, they occur. History, with different names and details, repeats itself pretty much in the same way over and over again. Thus, when we understand one essence of things, say war, we understand them all. No one who reads Thucydides and compares his detailed account to later wars can doubt that he had a point. The abidingness of human nature over time, itself a Greek notion, is found in Scripture, even with the newness found there. History as an irreversible sequence of events caused by human acts and the reaction of human beings to natural events, none repeatable, has a different slant than that of the Greek historian. This difference is usually described as the “cyclical” and “linear” ideas of history. In the one, nothing much new happens under the sun. In the other, nothing is ever the same. Some philosophers, like Aquinas, find both understandings necessary for a complete view of reality. But certainly, the Biblical view looks back to a definite beginning, usually known as “creation”. It looks forward to an end, the judgment and the Parousia.
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However, as Chesterton said, Christians present themselves not as original thinkers but as “messengers.” That is, they do not claim to know more than the Greeks about such things in terms of a natural understanding of things. What they claim is a source of knowledge directed to their minds that better accounts for the things that are. While the Greek tradition seems to be based on a non-ending return, the Scriptural view has a beginning. Indeed, it has a beginning before the beginning, which we claim to be a beginning in time. Of the cosmos itself, in the beginning there was precisely “nothing.” And from nothing, nothing can come forth. Everything that we know, including ourselves, testifies to the fact that it did not cause itself. The nothing that was in the beginning did not one day up and decide to become something, as so many theories of origins seem to imply. Rather in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. Translated into our context here, the cosmos and its history had an origin. It was part of a plan, a plan we often call not just history, but salvation history. But when we add “salvation” we imply that there is something now that needs to be saved and, furthermore, there exists a “plan” whereby it might be saved.
III.
God is complete in Himself. This means that his inner life, the Trinitarian life, needs nothing other than itself. If there is in fact something other than God, as we know there is, we know that its existence does not supply God with something He lacked. It also means that what is not God is not the sufficient explanation of itself. Explanations already imply that reason and the kind of reason we know,
Joy to the World, Where Everything Began
our reason, does not “create” the world. It may, however, know things with its mind, mathematics, for example, that also seem to imply that mathematics works in the world. In any case, if the world does not seem to cause itself, and if God does not seem to need it, we might wonder why it exists at all. In other words, is there a reason for its existence that is not necessary and is not self-caused by the world? Here is where salvation history comes in. God did not create in the beginning a “cosmos” that was pretty much empty of intelligent beings to then look around in His mind to figure out whether He could do something with this empty world. As Aristotle said, what is first in intention is last in execution. What is last in execution is the free association of rational beings who are not God within the inner life of God. Thus, what is first in God’s intention is not the “cosmos” minus man, but first man and his purpose which indeed is God. What needs to be added to this account is that God invited man to an end that is in fact higher than human nature by itself could anticipate. Thus, when Benedict says that the Nativity is the “central event of history,” he refers to an event that, in its peculiar form of the Word becoming flesh of Mary, made it possible for this original end to be again achieved. In an event known as the Fall, this initial purpose has been rejected by the First Parents. If it is to be repaired, it has to be repaired taking into account both human freedom and the higher life to which man was called in his actual and initial creation. The immediate preparation of this event constitutes the history as it is
recorded in the Old Testament. The “end of history” remains to be achieved, but through this Incarnation, Birth, and sending of the Apostles to the nations, the means of this completion have been put in motion in the world. The presence of the Church in the world is the locus both of the proper worship of God, as it has been given to us in the Last Supper, and the drama of each person, created for eternal life within his time and place, among those with whom he lives, to decide whether or not he will accept the message that is now in the world, the message that says, basically, that the Son of God is born and in fact lived among us, was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again on the Third Day.
IV.
In his Epiphany Homily, Benedict speaks of the light that is Christ in His birth. It is first on the Holy Family, then the local shepherds. Together they are the “remnant of Israel.” Next are the Magi. The “rulers of Jerusalem” find out about the birth from these strangers. The news causes them fear, not joy. “The divine plan was mysterious.” Why? In large part because it involved and included human freedom. The Pope cites from John in confirmation of this point: “The light came into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were wicked” (3:19). The light is in the world. This is what the Pope meant in his book about the world being different because of this Birth. As Aristotle already said, we will not see the truth, the light, if our lives are disordered. We will
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reject the messenger. This acceptance or rejection constitutes the essential history of our world since this Birth of Christ, indeed, since the creation of man himself. This light is truth and it is love. “God’s love is revealed in the Person of the Incarnate Word.” This centre brings the completion of “the movement already written in the Old Covenant.” What is causing these events, these actions, to come about? “The source of this dynamism is God, One in Three Persons, who draws all things and peoples to Himself.” Already in His Trinitarian life, the Second Person stands for “universal reconciliation and recapitulation.” The manner in which this aspect of the Godhead was accomplished in the world is through the Cross. In this sense, Christ is the “ultimate destination of history.” It is through Him that the history as it was intended achieves its purpose. This purpose is that those who believe in Him actually achieve eternal life, a central theme in the Pope’s encyclical, Spe Salvi. Thus, the Incarnation, Nativity, and Epiphany point to Easter. The entire liturgical year is a recall, a reliving of “the history of salvation whose centre is the Triduum of the crucified Lord, buried, and risen.”
V.
Thus, what constitutes salvation, our personal salvation, is “made known” by the Lord through the Church. But it is only made known to each of us if we are • prepared and willing to listen to it, • then carry it out in our lives and • explain it to others as it stands.
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We do not make it up ourselves. Benedict speaks here of “the Christian paradox.” He means that God became man not as some transcendent power or in some political movement, but as a child in a given time and place, a child to whom things happened by the acts of men. “His entry into history is the crowning point of God’s revelation of Himself to Israel and to all peoples.” What “cannot” be true, namely, that God entered the world as a child, is true. In thinking of how this paradox is so, our minds become more mind. The “concealment” of God in the Child is the great “manifestation” of God in history. “The Face of the Son faithfully reveals that of the Father.” It is interesting how often the notion of the “Face” of God is present in Scripture—how we seek it, to look upon it. Why is this? It is, I think, because, in our very created being, we are constituted to realize that all that we see in the world, in those we know and love, also must eventually reveal a Face, not just an abstraction. This God is faithful, first to Israel, and through them in the Incarnation “to other peoples.” The words are now “grace and fidelity,’ “mercy and truth.” These are the standards needed by all peoples. But these things are known according to the “method,” which passes through the life of Christ as a witness. The Church in gazing at the Epiphany sees that it is a bearer of a message. This is why the word “mission” appears so often at the end of the Scripture. “Go forth, teach all nations,” as if all nations cannot be themselves if they do not hear, if they do not seek the Face.
Joy to the World, Where Everything Began
Yet, “By listening to Jesus’ words, we members of the Church cannot but become aware of the total inadequacy of our human condition, marked by sin.” Nietzsche’s scandal that “the last Christian died on the Cross,” as he put it, forgets that Christ came to save sinners who yet sin. “The Church is holy, but made up of men and women with their limitations and errors.” Christ alone was the sinless One who bore our sins. Unlike Nietzsche, He was not shocked that we sin again. But He did require nothing less than repentance, that is, His forgiveness.
VI.
Benedict finally says that Christ is the “ultimate end of history.” This latter phrase, “the end of history,” became recently an earnest philosophical effort designed to explain how nothing noble was now left for men to do in this world. It not only missed the point of this world, but also what the real end of history is. The “ultimate end of history” passes through the beginning and the centre before reaching its end. What we see also is the mystery that “will” not see, the mystery of iniquity that still obscures our end because we wish to constitute our own content to history. We want it to be less than is given to us for it to be. We do not want to receive a messenger but ourselves to formulate after our own tastes what is the message. Augustine says that there are three questions that we must ask of created being. We are the created beings who alone can and should ask ourselves such questions. Thus, it seems that the world
exists that these questions be asked by those of us who can ask them. The questions are: • “Who made it?” • “How?” and • “Why?” We all know that something is made that we did not ourselves make, ourselves being at the top of our list of beings who can know this by reflecting on our very selves. Augustine answers his own questions. • “God.” • “Through the word.” • “Because it is good.” It would be difficult to be more succinct. The goodness in the world points to that which is itself Good. And the good that God intends, from the beginning in the whole of creation, is that we each attain eternal life. This eternal life means nothing less than to be in the inner life of the Triune God. This is what the messenger is sent to tell us. This is what depends on our yea or nay that is manifest by how we live, whether in a darkness we choose for ourselves or in the light and love that arose from the Beginning, passed to the Centre in Bethlehem, and leads to the End of History.
* “The Central Event of History”, Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., Ignatius Insight, January 12, 2009.
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Divinity is always where one least expects to find it by Fulton J. Sheen* “Suppose you were saddened by the way dogs were treated, beaten by strangers, starved, and driven from the company of men. To teach mankind to love dogs, further suppose that you divested your body and put your soul into the body of a dog. That would mean that inside the organism of a dog was an intellect capable of knowing God and a will capable of loving Him. Suppose that when you took on the form and habit of a dog, you resolved never to transcend the limitations of that animal organism. Though you had a mind that could scan the finite, you
Fulton J. Sheen
would never speak, you would not utter a word but would limit yourself to a bark. Though you were an artist, you would not use a brush to create. Second, suppose you resolved to subject yourself only to the companionship of other dogs, sharing their lives just in an effort to try and help them in virtue of your superior mind. That would indeed be an act of humility and a humiliation, particularly if you died defending the animals whose nature you embraced in order to save.” In the filthiest place in the world, a stable, Purity was born. He, Who was later to be slaughtered by men acting as beasts, was born among beasts. He, Who would call Himself the ‘living Bread descended from Heaven,’ was laid in a manger, literally, a place to eat. Centuries before, the Jews had worshiped the golden calf, and the Greeks, the ass. Men bowed down before them as before God: The ox and the ass now were present to make their innocent reparation, bowing down before their God. There was no room in the inn, but there was room in the stable. The inn is the gathering place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the rendezvous of the worldly, the rallying place of the popular and the successful. But the stable is a place for the outcasts, the ignored, the forgotten. The world might have expected the Son of God to be born-if He was to be born at all - in an inn. A stable would be the last place in the world where one would have looked for Him. Divinity is always where one least expects to find it. No worldly mind would ever have suspected that He Who could make the sun warm the earth would one day have
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need of an ox and an ass to warm Him with their breath; that He Who, in the language of Scriptures, could stop the turning about of Arcturus would have His birthplace dictated by an imperial census; that He, Who clothed the fields with grass, would Himself be naked; that He, from Whose hands came planets and worlds, would one day have tiny arms that were not long enough to touch the huge heads of the cattle; that the feet which trod the everlasting hills would one day be too weak to walk; that the Eternal Word would be dumb; that Omnipotence would be wrapped in swaddling clothes; that Salvation would lie in a manger; that the bird which built the nest would be hatched therein - no one would have ever suspected that God coming to this earth would ever be so helpless. And that is precisely why so many miss Him. Divinity is always where one least expects to find it. If the artist is at home in his studio because the paintings are the creation of his own mind; if the sculptor is at home among his statues because they are the work of his own hands; and man is at home among his vines because he planted them; and if the father is at home among his children because they are his own, then surely, argues the world, He Who made the
world should be at home in it. He should come into it as an artist into his studio, and as a father into his home; but, for the Creator to come among His creatures and be ignored by them; for God to come among His own and not to be received by His own; for God to be homeless at home - that could only mean one thing to the worldly mind: the Babe could not have been God at all. And that is just why it missed Him. Divinity is always where one least expects to find it. The Son of God made man was invited to enter His own world through a back door. Exiled from the earth, He was born under the earth, in a sense, the first Cave Man in recorded history. There He shook the earth to its very foundations. Because He was born in a cave, all who wish to see Him must stoop. To stoop is the mark of humility. The proud refuse to stoop and, therefore, they miss Divinity. Those, however, who bend their egos and enter, find that they are not in a cave at all, but in a new universe where sits a Babe on His mother’s lap, with the world poised on His fingers.
* Sheen Fulton J. ‘Life of Christ’ ImageBooks/Doubleday 2008
‘Joy is a net of love by which we catch souls’ Mother Teresa
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The Gift of God
Human dignity
by Blessed John Paul II *
That divine breath is the origin of the unique dignity of every human being, of humanity’s boundless yearning for the infinite. It is to that instant of impenetrable mystery, the beginning of human life on earth, that our thoughts turn, as we contemplate the Son of God who becomes the son of man, the eternal face of God reflected in the face of a Child.
The words of the Apostle Paul - “The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:45) - sum up the mystery of humanity redeemed by Christ. A mystery hidden in God’s eternal plan; a mystery which, in a certain way, became history with the incarnation of the Eternal Word of the Father; a mystery which the Church re-lives with profound emotion each Christmas. Adam, the first “living man”, Christ, “a life-giving spirit”: the words of the Apostle help us to look more deeply, to recognise in the Child born in Bethlehem the Lamb once slain, who unveils the meaning of history (cf Rev 5:7- 9). At his Birth time and eternity met: God in man and man in God. The immortal genius of Michelangelo portrayed on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel the moment when God the Father communicated the gift of life to the first man and made him “a living being”. Between the finger of God and the finger of man stretching out to each other and almost touching, there seems to leap an invisible spark: God communicates to man a tremor of his own life, creating him in his own image and likeness.
Because of the divine spark placed within him, man is a being endowed with intelligence and freedom, and thus capable of deciding responsibly regarding himself and his own destiny. The great fresco of the Sistine Chapel continues with the scene of original sin: the serpent, wrapped round the tree, persuades our first parents to eat its forbidden fruit. The genius of art and the intensity of the Biblical symbolism are perfectly wedded in order to evoke that tragic moment, the beginning for humanity of a history of rebellion, sin and sorrow. But could God forget the work of his hands, the masterpiece of creation? We know faith’s answer: “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4-5). These words of the Apostle Paul ring out with particular eloquence as we contemplate the wondrous event of Christmas. In the newborn Child, laid in the manger, we greet the “new Adam” who became for us “a life-giving spirit”.
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The whole history of the world tends towards him, born in Bethlehem in order to restore hope to every man and woman on the face of the earth. From the manger, our gaze takes in all humanity, called to receive the grace of the “second Adam”, yet still heir to the sin of the “first Adam”. Is it not this first “No” to God, repeated in every human sin, which continues to mar the face of humanity? • Children subjected to violence, humiliated and abandoned, • women raped and exploited, • young people, adults and the elderly marginalised, • endless streams of exiles and refugees, • violence and conflict in so many parts of the world. We cannot but recall that shadows of death threaten people’s lives at every stage of life, and are especially menacing at its earliest beginning and its natural end. The temptation is becoming ever stronger to take possession of death by anticipating its arrival, as though we were masters of our own lives or the lives of others. We are faced by alarming signs of the “culture of death”, which pose a serious threat for the future. Yet however dense the darkness may appear, our hope for the triumph of the Light which appeared on that Holy Night at Bethlehem is stronger still. So much good is being done, silently, by men and women who daily live their faith, their work, their dedication to their families and to the good of society.
Encouraging too are the efforts of all those, including men and women in public life, striving to foster respect for the human rights of every person, and the growth of solidarity between peoples of different cultures, so that the debt of the poorest countries will be condoned and honourable peace agreements reached between nations engaged in tragic conflicts.
Message of Christmas To peoples in all parts of the world who are moving with courage towards the values of democracy, freedom, respect and mutual acceptance, and to all persons of good will, whatever their culture, the joyful message of Christmas is addressed: “Peace on earth to those on whom God’s favour rests” (cf Lk 2:14). You, Lord Jesus, born for us at Bethlehem, ask respect for every person, especially the small and the weak; you ask for an end to all forms of violence - to wars, oppression, and all attacks on life. O Christ, whom we look on in the arms of Mary, you are the reason for our hope. Saint Paul tells us: “The old has passed away, behold, the new has come!” (2 Cor 5:17). In you, only in you, is humanity offered the chance to become “a new creation”. Thank you, Child Jesus, for this your gift!
* Edited text of Pope John Paul II’s Christmas 2000 homily.
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For Always by Will Fish* In 1994, two Americans answered an invitation from the Russian Department of Education to teach morals and ethics (based on biblical principles) in the public schools. They were invited to teach at prisons, businesses, the fire and police departments and a large orphanage. About 100 boys and girls who had been abandoned, abused, and left in the care of a government-run program were in the orphanage. The following story is in their own words: “It was nearing the holiday season, 1994, time for our orphans to hear for the first time the traditional story of Christmas. We told them about Mary and Joseph arriving in Bethlehem. Finding no room in the inn, the couple went to a stable, where St. Nicholas
the baby Jesus was born and placed in a manger. Throughout the story, the children and orphanage staff sat in amazement as they listened. Some sat on the edges of their stools, trying to grasp every word. Completing the story, we gave the children three small pieces of cardboard to make a crude manger. Each child was given a small paper square, cut from yellow napkins I had brought with me. No coloured paper was available in the city. Following instructions, the children tore the paper and carefully laid strips in the manger for straw. Small squares of flannel (cut from a worn-out nightgown an American lady was throwing away as she left Russia) were used for the baby’s blanket. A doll-like baby was cut from tan felt we had brought from the United States. The orphans were busy assembling their manger as I walked among them to see if they needed any help. All went well until I got to one table where little Misha sat - he looked to be about 6 years old and had finished his project. As I looked at the little boy’s manger, I was startled to see not one, but two babies in the manger. Quickly, I called for the translator to ask the lad why there were two babies in the manger. Crossing his arms in front of him and looking at his completed manger scene, the child began to repeat the story very seriously. For such a young boy, who had only heard the Christmas story once, he related the happenings accurately-until he came to the part where Mary put the baby Jesus in the manger. Then Misha started to ad lib. He made up his own ending to the story as he said,
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“And when Maria laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked me if I had a place to stay. I told him I have no mamma and I have no papa, so I don’t have any place to stay. Then Jesus told me I could stay with him. But I told him I couldn’t, because I didn’t have a gift to give him like everybody else did. But I wanted to stay with Jesus so much, so I thought about what I had that maybe I could use for a gift. I thought maybe if I kept him warm, that would be a good gift. So I asked Jesus, “If I keep you warm, will that be a good enough gift?” And Jesus told me, “If you keep me warm,
that will be the best gift anybody ever gave me.” “So I got into the manger, and then Jesus looked at me and he told me I could stay with him - for always.” As little Misha finished his story, his eyes brimmed full of tears that splashed down his little cheeks. Putting his hand over his face, his head dropped to the table and his shoulders shook as he sobbed and sobbed. That little orphan had found someone who would never abandon nor abuse him, someone who would stay with him - For Always.”
* Presumed to be in the public domain.
‘Making a difference’ A man was walking along a beach, the sun was shining and off in the distance he could see a person going back and forth between the surf’s edge and the beach. Back and forth this person went. As the man approached, he could see that there were hundreds of starfish stranded on the sand as the result of the natural action of the tide. The man was stuck by the apparent futility of the task. There were far too many starfish. Many of them were sure to perish. As he approached, the person continued the task of picking up starfish one by one and throwing them into the surf. As he came up to the person, he said: “You must be crazy. There are thousands of miles of beach covered with starfish. You can’t possibly make a difference.” The person looked at the man. He then stooped down and picked up one more starfish and threw it back into the ocean. He turned back to the man and said: “It sure made a difference to that one!”
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Never see a Need without doing something about it St. Mary of the Cross MacKillop, IEC2012 Congress Patron Saint. Mary MacKillop was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1842. She was the first of eight children born to Scottish immigrants, Flora and Alexander MacKillop. Alexander, who had spent some years studying for the priesthood, was well educated but unfortunately lacked financial awareness, with the result that the family was often without a home of their own, depending on relatives and friends for support. From an early age Mary had to face many difficult situations and choices. To support her family she went to work as a clerk in a
stationary shop at the age of sixteen. She later worked as a teacher in a local school and for a time was governess for her uncle’s children in Penola, a small town in South Australia. While at Penola she met the parish priest, Fr. Julian Tenison Woods, who ministered in a parish of 22,000 sq miles travelling from one isolated settlement to another on horseback. Fr Woods was concerned about the lack of religious education for the children of the outback, many of whose parents were illiterate. At the time Mary’s family depended on her income and it was not until 1866 that Mary, inspired and encouraged by Fr. Woods and with the assistance of her two sisters, opened the first St Joseph’s School in a disused stable in Penola. The school was a great success but it soon became clear that what was needed was a religious congregation adapted to the needs and conditions of the bush. Mary generously responded to God’s call and became the foundress of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. Soon many young women came to join Mary and after intensive training by her they were sent out in twos and threes to open Catholic schools, first in the outback and then in the larger towns and cities. Mary also opened orphanages, providences to cater for the homeless and destitute, and refugees for ex-convicts and ex-prostitutes who wished to make a fresh start in life. Her motto was “Never see a need without doing something about it”.
St. Mary MacKillop
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Throughout her life Mary met with opposition from people outside the
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Church and from some within it. In 1871 Mary was wrongfully excommunicated from the Church by Bishop Shiels of Adelaide. Six months later the dying bishop regretted his decision and revoked the excommunication. In 1873 Mary was advised to go to Rome to have the Order and its Constitution officially approved. It was a long and dangerous journey and Mary depended on friends to pay her passage. While waiting for Rome’s decision Mary travelled to England, to Scotland where she met with some of her relatives, and to Ireland. Her goals were to examine educational methods and resources being used over here and to recruit members for the Sisters of St Joseph. In 1874 when she returned to Australia, accompanied by fifteen young Irish postulants, she carried with her the Vatican’s approval for the new Congregation. The Congregation expanded rapidly in Australia and soon Mary was invited to open schools in New Zealand. In 1902, while visiting New Zealand, Mary had a stroke. Years of hardship, travel and anxiety had taken their toll on this remarkable woman. She died on August 8th 1909 in the convent in North Sydney where her tomb is now enshrined and where thousands of pilgrims come to pray through her intercession. Three popes have prayed at the tomb of this humble, faith-filled woman.
the Congregation adapts to the needs of the twenty-first century. Wherever they are, the Josephites, as they are called, continue to respond to the needs of the Church and those of the people to whom they minister. Ireland is very significant in the history of the Sisters of St Joseph. Mary spent over three months here visiting Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Dungarvan, Cappoquin, Lismore, Limerick, Ennis, Gort and Loughrea. The fifteen women who accompanied Mary were soon joined by others and in 1927 a school was established at Newmarket, Co Cork. Over the next forty years several hundred young women travelled from Newmarket to Australia to join the Josephites. In recent years some forty Irish born Sisters of St Joseph have returned to their homeland to minister or to retire. In Ireland the Josephite Sisters live and work mainly in areas around Munster and Dublin. On 19th January 1995 Mary MacKillop was beatified by Pope John Paul II. On 17th October 2010 Mary was canonised by Pope Benedict XI with the title she chose at her profession. Officially she is known as St Mary of the Cross MacKillop.
Today the Sisters of St Joseph continue the work begun by their saintly foundress in Australia and New Zealand as well as Ireland, Scotland, Peru and Brazil. New challenges call for new responses as
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The Eucharist is the secret of the Saints Mother Adela Galindo* Saints are those men and woman who have had sufficient love and courage to overcome the temptations of the devil and the inclinations of their flesh, and in this manner, have grown in the stature of Christ until they are able to say like St. Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2: 20). The saints are living testimonies to the presence of Christ in the world and were formed before the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is our Lord really present – His Body, His Blood, His Soul and His Divinity, hidden beneath the appearances of bread, but real and physically present in the Consecrated Host. He lives among us to sanctify us, to transform us into His image, to free us from sin, in order to lift us up with the power of His divine life, resurrecting us from all spiritual death and sterility. He is with us • to calm the interior storms of our lower passions; • to open the blinded eyes of our souls; • to break the chains of oppression, sinful habits, and attachments to earthy things; • to elevate our human potentials towards celestial things; • to transmit to us the charity and mercy of His Heart, giving us
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generous hearts that are capable of forgiving, and even doing good, to our enemies; • to enable us, form us and forge us into His image; • to model us after Him to such an extent that the world may recognize the Face of Christ in our faces. The Eucharist is Christ Himself, the Light of the World: “I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (Jn 8, 12). He who is before the light and imbued with the light can do no other thing but illumine. “You do not light a lamp in order to place it under the table” (cf. Mt 5, 15). “As Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands, he did not know that the skin of his face had become radiant while he conversed with the Lord” (Ex 34, 29). Saint Stephan fixed his eyes on the Heavens and saw the Son of God. His face became filled with the light of Christ (Acts 6, 15). “Holiness, a message that convinces without the need for words, is the living reflection of the face of Christ” (NMI 7). Holiness is visible although this does not necessarily mean extraordinary manifestations. Many times the Lord has permitted them in the lives of saints in order externally to reveal His great inner works. The faces of many saints – such as Saint Clare of Assisi, to whom this would happen after many hours before the Blessed Sacrament – became lit, which manifested the light of Christ in their souls. Others – such as Padre Pio – would leave, wherever they would go, the fresh smell of roses, flowers that revealed the fact that
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they were the good fragrance of Christ. Others levitated to manifest that elevated holiness was in their souls – such as St. Joseph Cupertino who, at Mass during the Consecration, when contemplating the consecrated Host and the Chalice, would levitate so high that often he reached the top of the Church. Holiness is the fruit of the Eucharist because it is its fountain. Only those who are in communion with the vine – Eucharistic Jesus – can be fertile branches. Let us look at the lives of the saints, eloquent testimonies of this truth: the Eucharist is the secret of the saints. It is the school in which great souls are forged.
Cure de Ars When St. John Vianney came to the small village of Ars, someone stated with resentment, “There is nothing to do here.” The saint replied, “Well then there is much to be done.” Immediately he began to act: he would rise at 2am to be in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, spending long hours there until early in the morning when he would celebrate Holy Mass. When he was done, he would remain in prayer with his rosary in his hand and with his eyes fixed on the Eucharistic Jesus. The holiness of the Cure de Ars, holiness that was forged in those hours before the Eucharist, attracted so many men and woman that he was obligated to spend 10, 15 – up to 18 hours a day – listening to confessions. Who brought about this transformation? The power of the Eucharist.
Blessed Father Damian, Apostle of the Lepers “Were it not for the constant presence of our Divine Master in our humble chapel, I would not be able to persevere in participating in the same fate as the lepers of Molokai. The Eucharist is the bread of life that gives me strength for all of this. It is the most eloquent proof of His Love and the most powerful means to increase His charity in us. He gives Himself to us daily in order to consume our hearts with His purifying and transforming fire, so that we can then enflame others with His love.” Cure de Ars
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Mother Teresa
Saint Faustina
“In 1973, when we began the daily Holy Hour, our community began to flourish. The work which we have to do is enormous. The homes that we have for the sick and dying destitute are completely full everywhere. But from the moment in which we began to have an hour of adoration each day, the love of Jesus became more intimate in our hearts, our charity among us was more understanding and the love of the poor was full of compassion, and in this manner, our vocations doubled. The hour that we dedicate to Jesus in the Eucharist is the greatest moment of the day, it is what changes our hearts.”
She tells us in her diary,
Saint Padre Pio The life of Padre Pio revolved around the Tabernacle. The Eucharist was the centre of its gravitation. The people of Pietrelcina testified that, from childhood, he would assiduously visit Jesus in the Sacrament. As a brother, we are told that he would spend long hours in front of the Eucharist, sometimes whole nights. During the night he would experience a great fire in his chest which would consume him interiorly. If Padre Pio was not at the altar, his eyes were continually directed to the Tabernacle. The same was true of his long hours of confessions. One of his spiritual daughters who died in sanctity, while participating in a Mass celebrated by Padre Pio, saw a ray of fire come from the heart of the saint towards the Tabernacle. Jesus explained that it was the love that was constantly communicated between the heart of Padre Pio and the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.
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“Once when I was seven…before the Lord Jesus in the Monstrance, the love of God was imparted to me for the first time and filled my little heart; and the Lord gave me understanding of divine things. From that day until this, my love for the hidden God has been growing constantly to the point of closest intimacy. All the strength of my soul flows from the Blessed Sacrament” (no. 1404). Sister Crecencia, one of the sisters of her Congregation said that Sister Faustina, “lived the Mass in total recollection without seeing anything of what was going on around her. She had an immense devotion for the Blessed Sacrament. Whenever she was before the Eucharist, she would pray with
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great fervour and with a fixed and ardent gaze on Jesus. Whenever she had free time, she would rush to visit Jesus in the Sacrament.”
Saint Therese of Lisieux The centre of her life, affections and attention was the “prisoner of love” as she called the Eucharistic Jesus. So much so that she composed a beautiful poem that reveals her ardent love and total dependence on the Sacrament of Love. She opened her heart in this poem and manifested a great desire: I want to be the key of the Tabernacle in order to open the prison of the Holy Eucharist. I want to be the lamp that is consumed near the Tabernacle… I want to be the stone of the altar
Blessed John Paul II Blessed John Paul II will certainly go down in history as one of the greatest Popes of the Church. Where did his greatness – both in his holiness as well as in his fruitful pontificate – come from? “The Holy Mass is the absolute centre of my life and of each day of my life” and referring to Eucharistic Adoration in his last encyclical, as “an important daily practice” and “an inexhaustible source of holiness” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 10). Jesus, the Redeemer and Saviour of mankind, truly remains with us in the Holy Eucharist. In the Holy Eucharist Jesus gives Himself completely “for the life of the world” (Jn 6,51) – for our lives, for the life of our whole world, for our histories. The Eucharist is the sublime presence of the love of Christ. It is permanent,
so as to be a new stable in which the Eucharist may repose. I want to be a corporal in order to protect the Consecrated Host… I want to be a paten, a monstrance, a chalice” From “My Wishes Before the Tabernacle”
This was her joy. She considered it a great joy that on a particular day at the moment of Communion, a Host having fallen from the priest’s hands, she was able to receive it with her Scapular. She considered it such a privilege, like that of the Blessed Virgin, because she had held in her arms Jesus Himself.
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sanctifying, efficacious and powerful love. The world today is in need of witnesses so that it can say with joy, “God is with us, for we have seen the effects of His presence in the men and woman who have not been afraid to open their hearts generously to the Heart of Jesus, and who have allowed themselves to be transformed into living images of His love and holiness.”
* www.piercedhearts.org/mother_adela
On Wisdom I: What’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom? Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit not a vegetable; wisdom is knowing not to include it in a fruit salad.
On Wisdom II: The wisdom of the Zen master A great Zen master received a celebrated university professor who came in search of wisdom. The master served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. ‘It is overfull. No more will go in!’ ‘Like this,’ the master said, ‘you are so full of your own opinions that I can’t teach you wisdom until you first empty your cup.’
On Wisdom III: The wisdom of the Church “Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? ...No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. ... No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed.” - Pope Benedict XVI
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Eucharist, Communion and Solidarity: (Part 1) by Pope Benedict XVI* Dear friends, after preparing for your Eucharistic Congress with prayer, reflection and charitable activities under the guidance of your Pastor, Archbishop Serafino Sprovieri, the Archdiocese of Benevento decided to undertake a twofold investigation. It began an in-depth exploration of the relationship between • the deepest sacramental mystery of the Church - the Holy Eucharist - and • the Church’s most practical, down-to-earth commitment: her charitable work of sharing, reconciling and unifying. The diocese proposed this exploration the better to celebrate the sacrament and to live more fruitfully Christ’s “new commandment” that we “love one another”.
Agape, Pax, Orthodoxy, Orthopraxis Often, in the primitive Church, the Eucharist was called simply “agape”, that is, “love”, or even simply “pax”, that is “peace”. The Christians of that time thus expressed in a dramatic way the unbreakable link between the mystery of the hidden presence of God and the praxis of serving the cause of peace, of Christians being peace. For the early Christians, there was no difference
between what today is often distinguished as orthodoxy and orthopraxis, as right doctrine and right action. Indeed, when this distinction is made, there generally is a suggestion that the word orthodoxy is to be disdained: those who hold fast to right doctrine are seen as people of narrow sympathy, rigid, potentially intolerant. In the final analysis, for those holding this rather critical view of orthodoxy everything depends on “right action”, with doctrine regarded as something always open to further discussion. For those holding this view, the chief thing is the fruit doctrine produces, while the way that leads to our just action is a matter of indifference. Such a comparison would have been incomprehensible and unacceptable for those in the ancient Church, for they rightly understood the word “orthodoxy” not to mean “right doctrine” but to mean the authentic adoration and glorification of God. They were convinced that everything depended on being in the right relationship with God, on knowing what pleases him and what one can do to respond to him in the right way. For this reason, Israel loved the law: from it, they knew God’s will, they knew how to live justly and how to honour God in the right way: by acting in accord with his will, bringing order into the world, opening it to the transcendent.
Christ teaches how God is glorified, the world is made just This was the new joy Christians discovered: that now, beginning with
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Christ, they understood how God ought to be glorified and how precisely through this the world would become just. That these two things should go together - how God is glorified and how justice comes - the angels had proclaimed on the holy night: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, goodwill toward men”, they had said (Lk 2,14). God’s glory and peace on earth are inseparable. Where God is excluded, there is a breakdown of peace in the world; without God, no orthopraxis can save us. In fact, there does not exist an orthopraxis which is simply just, detached from a knowledge of what is good. The will without knowledge is blind and so action, orthopraxis, without knowledge is blind and leads to the abyss. Marxism’s great deception was to tell us that we had reflected on the world long enough, that now it was at last time to change it. But if we do not know in what direction to change it, if we do not understand its meaning and its inner purpose, then change alone becomes destruction - as we have seen and continue to see. But the inverse is also true: doctrine alone, which does not become life and action, becomes idle
chatter and so is equally empty. The truth is concrete. Knowledge and action are closely united, as are faith and life. This awareness is precisely what your theme seeks to state, “Eucharist, Communion and Solidarity”. I should like to dwell on the three key words you have chosen for your Eucharistic Congress to clarify them.
1. Eucharist “Eucharist” is today - and it is entirely right that it be so - the most common name for the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, which the Lord instituted on the night before his passion. In the early Church there were other names for this sacrament - agape and pax we have already mentioned. Along with these there were, for example, also synaxis - assembly, reunion of the many. Among Protestants this Sacrament is called “Supper”, with the intent following the lead of Luther for whom Scripture alone was valid - to return totally to the biblical origins. And, in fact, in St Paul, this sacrament is called “the Lord’s Supper”. But it is significant that
The Last Supper Leonardo DaVinci, 1498
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this title very soon disappeared, and from the second century it was used no longer. Why? Was it perhaps a moving away from the New Testament, as Luther thought, or something else? Certainly the Lord instituted his Sacrament in the context of a meal, more precisely that of the Jewish Passover supper, and so at the beginning it was also linked with a gathering for a meal. But the Lord had not ordered a repetition of the Passover supper, which constituted the framework. That was not his sacrament, his new gift. In any event, the Passover supper could only be celebrated once a year. The celebration of the Eucharist was therefore detached from the gathering for the supper to the degree that the detachment from the Law was beginning to take place, along with the passage to a Church of Jews and Gentiles, but above all, of Gentiles. The link with the supper was thus revealed as extrinsic, indeed, as the occasion for ambiguities and abuses, as Paul amply described in his First Letter to the Corinthians.
Liturgy of Word, Prayer of Thanksgiving, Words of Institution Thus the Church, assuming her own specific configuration, progressively freed the specific gift of the Lord, which was new and permanent, from the old context and gave it its own form. This took place thanks to the connection with the liturgy of the word, which has its model in the synagogue; and thanks to the fact that the Lord’s words of institution formed the culminating point of the great prayer of thanksgiving - that thanksgiving, also
derived from the synagogue traditions and so ultimately from the Lord, who clearly had rendered thanks and praise to God in the Jewish tradition. But he had emphatically enriched that prayer of thanksgiving with a unique profundity by means of the gift of his body and his blood. Through this action, the early Christians had come to understand that the essence of the event of the Last Supper was not the eating of the lamb and the other traditional dishes, but the great prayer of praise that now contained as its centre the very words of Jesus. With these words he had transformed his death into the gift of himself, in such a way that we can now render thanks for this death. Yes, only now is it possible to render thanks to God without reserve, because the most dreadful thing - the death of the Redeemer and the death of all of us - was transformed through an act of love into the gift of life.
Eucharist, Eucharistic Prayer Accordingly, the Eucharist was recognized as the essential reality of the Last Supper, what we call today the Eucharistic Prayer, which derives directly from the prayer of Jesus on the eve of his passion and is the heart of the new spiritual sacrifice, the motive for which many Fathers designated the Eucharist simply as oratio (prayer), as the “sacrifice of the word�, as a spiritual sacrifice, but which becomes also material and matter transformed: bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, the new food, which nourishes us for the resurrection, for eternal life. Thus, the whole structure of words and material
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elements becomes an anticipation of the eternal wedding feast. At the end, we shall return once more to this connection. Here it is important only to understand better why we as Catholic Christians do not call this sacrament “Supper” but “Eucharist”. The infant Church slowly gave to this sacrament its specific form, and precisely in this way, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, she clearly identified and correctly represented in signs the true essence of the sacrament, which the Lord really “instituted” on that night. Precisely by examining the process by which the Eucharistic sacrament progressively took on its form, one understands in a beautiful way the profound connection between Scripture and tradition. The Bible considered solely in the historical context does not communicate sufficiently to us the vision of what is essential. That insight only comes through the living practice of the Church who lived Scripture, grasped its deepest intention and made it accessible to us.
2. Communio The second word in the title of your Eucharistic congress - Communion has become fashionable these days. It is, in fact, one of the most profound and characteristic words of the Christian tradition. Precisely for this reason it is very important to understand it in the whole depth and breadth of its meaning. Perhaps I may make an entirely personal observation here. When with a few friends - in particular Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs
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von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, Jorge Medina - I had the idea of founding a magazine in which we intended to deepen and develop the inheritance of the Council, we looked for an appropriate name, a single word, which could fully convey the purpose of this publication. Already, in the last year of the Second Vatican Council, 1965, a review was begun, to serve as the permanent voice of the Council and its spirit, called Concilium. Hans Küng thought he had discovered an equivalence between the words ekklesia (Church) and concilium. The root of both terms was the Greek word kalein (to call) the first word, ekklesia, meaning to convoke, the second word, concilium, to summon together. Therefore both words essentially signify the same thing. From such an etymological relationship one could say the terms Church and Council were something synonymous and see the Church by her very nature as the continuing Council of God in the world. Therefore, the Church was to be conceived of in this “conciliar” sense and “actualized” in the form of a Council; and, vice versa, the Council was seen as the most intense possible realization of “Church”, namely, the Church in her highest form. In the years following the Council, for a time, I followed this concept - the Church as the permanent council of God in the world - which seemed at first glance rather enlightening. The practical consequences of this conception should not be overlooked and its attractiveness is immediate. Still, though I came to the conclusion that the vision of Hans Küng certainly contained something true and serious; I also saw that it needed considerable correction. I would very
Joy to the World, Where Everything Began
briefly like to try to summarize the result of my studies at that time. My philological and theological research into the understanding of the words “church” and “council” in ancient times showed that a council can certainly be an important, vital manifestation of the Church, but that in reality the Church is something more, that her essence goes deeper.
Koinonia lives the Word of life The council is something that the Church holds, but the Church is not a council. The Church does not exist primarily to deliberate, but to live the Word that has been given to us. I decided that the word that best expressed this fundamental concept, which conveyed the very essence of the Church itself, was koinonia - communion. Her structure, therefore, is not to be described by the term “concilial”, but rather with the word “communional”. When I proposed these ideas publicly in 1969 in my book, The New People of God, the concept of communion was not yet very widespread in public theological and ecclesial discussions. As a result my ideas on this matter were also given little consideration. These ideas, however, were decisive for me in the search for a title for the new journal, and led to our later calling the journal Communio (communion). The concept itself received wide public recognition only with the Synod of Bishops in 1985. Until then the phrase “People of God” had prevailed as the chief new concept of the Church, and was widely believed to synthesize the intentions of Vatican II itself. This belief might well have been true, if the words had been
used in the full profundity of their biblical meaning and in the broad, accurate context in which the Council had used them. When, however the main word becomes a slogan, its meaning is inevitably diminished; indeed, it is trivialised.
Synod of 1985 As a consequence, the Synod of 1985 sought a new beginning by focusing on the word “communion”, which refers first of all to the Eucharistic centre of the Church, and so again returns to the understanding of the Church as the most intimate place of the encounter between Jesus and mankind, in his act of giving himself to us. It was unavoidable that this great fundamental word of the New Testament, isolated and employed as a slogan, would also suffer diminishment, indeed, might even be trivialised. Those who speak today of an “ecclesiology of communion” generally tend to mean two things: 1 they support a “pluralist” ecclesiology, almost a “federative” sense of union, opposing what they see as a centralist conception of the Church; 2 they want to stress, in the exchanges of giving and receiving among local Churches, their culturally pluralistic forms of worship in the liturgy, in discipline and in doctrine. Even where these tendencies are not developed in detail, “communion” is nonetheless generally understood in a horizontal sense - communion is
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seen as emerging from a network of multiple communities. This conception of the communal structure of Church is barely distinguishable from the conciliar vision mentioned above. The horizontal dominates. The emphasis is on the idea of self-determination within a vast community of churches. Naturally, there is here much that is true. However, fundamentally the approach is not correct, and in this way the true depth of what the New Testament and Vatican II and also the Synod of 1985 wanted to say would be lost. To clarify the central meaning of the concept of “communio”, I would like briefly to turn to two great texts on communio from the New Testament. The first is found in I Corinthians 10,16 ff, where Paul tells us: “The chalice of blessing, which we bless, is it not a participation [“communion” in the Italian text] in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is but one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread”.
Vertical dimension in Eucharist The concept of communion is above all anchored in the holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, the reason why we still today in the language of the Church rightly designate the reception of this sacrament simply as “to communicate”. In this way, the very practical social significance of
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this sacramental event also immediately becomes evident, and this in a radical way that cannot be achieved in exclusively horizontal perspectives. Here we are told that by means of the sacrament we enter in a certain way into a communion with the blood of Jesus Christ, where blood according to the Hebrew perspective stands for “life”. Thus, what is being affirmed is a commingling of Christ’s life with our own. “Blood” in the context of the Eucharist clearly stands also for “gift”, for an existence that pours itself out, gives itself for us and to us. Thus the communion of blood is also insertion into the dynamic of this life, into this “blood poured out”. Our existence is “dynamised” in such a way that each of us can become a being for others, as we see obviously happening in the open Heart of Christ. From a certain point of view, the words over the bread are even more stunning. They tell of a “communion” with the body of Christ which Paul compares to the union of a man and a woman (cf. I Cor 6,17ff; Eph 5,26-32). Paul also expresses this from another perspective when he says: it is one and the same bread, which all of us now receive. This is true in a startling way: the “bread” - the new manna, which God gives to us - is for all the one and the same Christ.
* Cardinal Ratzinger, Bishops’ conference in Campania Italy, Sunday 2 June 2002. (Part 2 will appear in the next Bulletin).
Joy to the World, Where Everything Began
people who are heading in the same direction, have the same purpose and share the same values?
Geese and the Catholic Social Principle of Solidarity
When the lead goose gets tired, it rotates back and another goose flies point.
Have you ever wondered why flocks of geese fly in a “V” formation? Well scientists now reckon that as each bird flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the bird immediately following and that by flying in a “V” formation, the whole flock adds at least 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew on its own. Is it not also the case that people who share a common purpose, a common direction and a clear sense of community can get where they are going more quickly and easily, because they too are travelling on the thrust of one another? When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to go it alone and quickly gets back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird in front.
Is it not sensible for people to share the burden of doing the ‘heavy lifting’? Geese honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed. When we ‘honk from behind’ are we encouraging those ahead of us? Finally when a goose gets sick and falls out of the formation, two other geese fall out with that goose and follow it down to lend help and protection. They stay with the fallen goose until it is able to fly or until it dies; and only then do they launch out on their own, or with another formation to catch up with their own group. When we see our brothers and sisters in need do we care for the weak or do we take advantage of their weakness?
Is it not also the case that people should endeavour to stay in formation with those
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Thank you from Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) Each year thanks to the • Donations • Legacies and • Mass offerings of its benefactors in Ireland and around the world ACN is able to • Provide sustenance and the means of survival for approx. 20,000 Priests • Support approx. 18,000 seminarians and religious and • Distribute approx. 1.5 million catechetical books for children in 160 languages. Heartfelt thanks for all your prayers and support provided to Christ’s suffering and persecuted Church. May the Good Lord continue to bless you and your family, past and present, now and always.
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Joy to the World, Where Everything Began
Adoration of the Magi Angelico and Lippo, 1460
Communion with Christ & with One Another
Christ of St. John of the Cross Dali, 1951
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