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Viewpoints
from Jan. 1, 2021
ViewPoints 22 CATHOLIC NEWS HERALD
catholicnewsherald.com | January 1, 2021
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Father Blake Britton
How Christian action is distinct from mere activism
Irecently posted an article at Word on Fire titled “How Does a Christian Respond in Time of Social Crisis?” I was encouraged by the reactions and replies, but a number of readers asked if I could more clearly define and articulate the distinction between activism and Christian action, a topic that is multifaceted and perennial, stemming back to the early Church and still relevant today.
It is no secret that contemporary culture is permeated by activism. Our solution to every problem is to do something about it – to create a program, form a committee or lay out tangible steps. But we Christians must be rooted in being before doing. St. Thomas Aquinas provides us with a helpful maxim: “agere sequitur esse” (“action flows from being”), which means what we do necessarily flows from who we are. Some may think this leads to passivity, the negation of action. But it is quite the contrary! Being is the prerequisite of action. Action cannot be suitably taken without a contemplative core. Catholic living is more than just doing things; it is a process of personal conversion and formation.
Perhaps one of the most fascinating interactions in the New Testament is the conversation between Jesus and Judas Iscariot at Bethany. After “a woman” (John identifies her as Mary, the sister of Martha) anoints the feet of Christ with costly perfume, Judas turns to the Lord and asks, “Why this waste? For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor” (Matt. 26:6-13). In fact, the Gospel writers have Judas specifying the exact monetary worth of this waste (“three-hundred denarii”; see Mark 14:5 and John 12:5).
Jesus’ response seems both curt and unexpected: “Why do you trouble the woman? ... The poor will always be with you, but you will not always have Me” (Matt. 26:10-11). One would expect Jesus, a proven champion of the poor and a warrior against injustice, to commend His Apostle for being conscious of those on the peripheries. Instead, Judas is scolded for his disapproving remarks.
This passage is key to our considerations. In it, we see the Lord establishing a precedent of Christian living. Just as He used Mary to reveal the “better part” to her sister Martha in their village-home at Bethany (see Luke 10:38-42), so now He uses Mary once again, in the same town, to reveal the “better part” to His disciples and persecutors. The message is clear: to serve is right and good, but it must be preceded by sitting at the feet of Jesus. Mary recognized this; Judas did not.
When we know Christ intimately and love Him, we learn what it means to be poured out like a libation for the sake of others. This is why work must be rooted in and organically flow from our abiding with Christ. Hans Urs von Balthasar affirms this point lucidly in his book “Love Alone Is Credible”: “Prayer, both ecclesial and personal prayer ... ranks higher than all action, not in the first place as a source of psychological energy (‘refueling,’ as they say today), but as the act of worship and glorification that befits love, the act in which one makes the most fundamental attempt to answer with selflessness and of Bethany, by sitting at the feet of the Master in silence and stillness. This is why the Desert Fathers asserted that every Christian is called to be a “monk” (“monos”/”monakhos”), one who is “alone in solitude with Christ.” The Desert Fathers are not suggesting that all Christians should live in a cave or a monastery. Rather, they are highlighting the fact that all of us are all called to be one with Christ and solely dedicated to Him through contemplation and prayer. Solitude and solidarity with Christ are the prerequisites of Christian activity.
We should never think, “Jesus, this is what I would like to do for you.” Rather, in the spirit of St. Paul, we should say, “Lord,
thereby shows that one has understood the divine proclamation. It is as tragic as it is ridiculous to see Christians today giving up this fundamental priority.”
Josef Pieper echoes these sentiments emphasizing that “an activity which is meaningful in itself ... cannot be accomplished except with an attitude of receptive openness and attentive silence.” In other words, we cannot legitimately accomplish a meaningful Christian activity unless it begins with prayerful contemplation. Our first and most significant duty as Christians is not to make fiery speeches, open soup kitchens, or organize a march. Rather, every visible expression of faith should be based on a more central relationship– namely, an intimate communion with the living God.
Thus, before we ask, “What should I do?” we need to ask, “Have I truly encountered Christ? Am I praying daily and spending time in silence with the Lord? Am I participating in the sacramental life of the Church? When was the last time I went to Eucharistic Adoration or confession?” We see in these questions a consciousness informed by authentic discipleship; a longing to know the Lord and heed His voice. An obedient (from “obedire,” “to listen”) disposition toward the will of God must become our fundamental orientation.
One is molded for service, like St. Mary what would You have me do?” (Acts 22:10). This subtle paradigm shift from ego-derived activism to theo-inspired mission is key to genuine Christian action. If we do not possess the appropriate posture before the mystery of our “being-called,” discipleship quickly develops into an autonomous, human-driven initiative lacking zeal and divine direction. Our initial excitement and enthusiasm will quickly dissipate, and our duties will become tiresome, humdrum and uninspired. Soon, we will just be going through the motions.
St. Paul reprimands the Thessalonians for this very thing when he rebukes them for “acting like busy-bodies” (2 Thess. 3:11). The Greek word St. Paul uses for idle literally means “without proper order.” Some among the Thessalonians had inverted the order of Christian logic. They neglected contemplation of the Gospel, resulting in a stale activism, a busyness that produced superficial results.
How many parishes around our country are filled with busy-bodies? How many of our ministries are pervaded by a spirit of activism and functionality while lacking a substantial spiritual center rooted in contemplation of Christ? This is one of the reasons many parishes struggle to attract volunteers and minsters in their communities. Why would someone want to contribute to a parish ministry when it subscribes to the same worka-day mentality as their secular job?
Answering the call of Christ is more than becoming a social or ministerial activist. Pope Francis makes this clear in the first paragraphs of his apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium”: “The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept His offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew. ... I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting Him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day.”
Before he talks about going out to the margins or being involved in some form of ministry, the Holy Father avers the absolute necessity of a daily encounter with the living Christ. This encounter is an event to be experienced concretely and personally in the life of the Church, especially through her sacraments. For in the sacraments of the Church, the Creator seeks the creature and makes the creature His dwelling place. What better example of going out to the peripheries is there than this?
By no means am I calling for a suppression of zeal for social justice or ministry. “Whatever you do for the least of my people that you do unto me” (Matt. 25:40), and “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). These mandates of Christ remain, and will always stand as the full expression of one’s genuine encounter with the Lord. However, love of neighbor must be rooted in love of God. A dull blade pierces nothing, no matter how adamantly it is wielded. Only the blade beaten and forged in the furnace of contemplation proves effective. As St. Bonaventure so beautifully reminds us in his classic work “The Soul’s Journey Into God”:
The fire is God and His furnace is Jerusalem (the Church) and Christ enkindles it in the heart of His burning passion
May we subject the steel of our souls to this “burning passion” so that it may gild us into effective minsters. Only then can we become authentic missionary disciples and effectively redeem the culture.
FATHER BLAKE BRITTON serves in the Diocese of Orlando, Fla. This commentary first appeared on the Word on Fire blog, online at www.wordonfire.org.
The next time that you are in church, look around you. Here are Jesus’ sisters and brothers. Here is the family of Jesus. Thank about it. Better yet, pray about it. Here’s a suggested prayer:
Lord, it is incredible that You call me “brother.” You call me “sister.” You know my name. You speak my name, just as you said, “Mary,” to Mary Magdalene on that Resurrection Day. You invite me to touch You with my heart and mind, just as You invited Thomas to touch Your wounds with his finger. Then You say to each of us: “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” (John 20:29).
Give me the grace – give each of us the grace – to be
My brothers and sisters
true sisters and brothers to you. Help us to do the will of Your heavenly Father. Help us more and more to take Jesuit Father John Michalowski on the family resemblance that as Your Body on earth, others might experience Your love and come to You. Help us truly to be Your hands, Your voice and Your heart in the world. St. Augustine, in speaking about the Eucharist, has Jesus say to each of us: “I am your food, but instead of my being changed into You, it is You who will be transformed into me.” May we become whom You call us to be.
“Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
Amen.
Matt Nelson
Mary: ‘The daughter of Eve unfallen’
The biblical view of Mary is that she has been specially set apart by God in the order of grace. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, was one of the first to affirm this when she proclaimed Mary’s blessedness upon her visitation: “And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Luke 1:41-42)
This Christmas season, it is prime time for us to get reacquainted with the mother of our Lord and reflect on some of the reasons why she is considered “blessed among women.” One reason that the Virgin Mary is set apart from all other women is because of the weight of her “yes” to God’s plan – and because of God’s “yes” to her. Following her consent to bear the Christ Child in her womb, her flesh was united with the body of Christ in the most literal sense. No other woman will ever experience this kind of union with Christ, this motherwith-child communion. Clearly, by this fact alone, Mary is blessed among women.
To steal a phrase from Einstein: God does not play dice. Mary was not randomly endowed with her maternal role. Rather, from all of eternity, she was chosen by God for the task. She was favored by God to bear Him, to raise Him, to laugh with Him, to suffer with Him. The apologetic point here can be deceivingly simple: If God has honored Mary so singularly, shouldn’t we? If we are to reverence the mothers of our friends and relatives, shouldn’t we reverence the mother of our Lord?
And Mary is also our spiritual mother, because of her co-operative role in bringing into this world the Savior who would make it possible for man to be “born again.” The fathers of the Second Vatican Council put it this way: “In a wholly singular way she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope, and burning charity in the Savior’s work of restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reason she is a mother to us in the order of grace.” (“Lumen Gentium,” 61)
This spiritual motherhood is hinted at in John’s Gospel when Jesus speaks the words “Woman, behold your son” to Mary, who stands at the foot of the cross with John. “Behold your mother,” He then says to the beloved disciple (19:26-27). And as our Lord speaks these words in a literal sense to Mary and John, He speaks them in a spiritual sense to the Church throughout the ages. Thus St. Augustine would affirm: “That one woman is both mother and virgin, not in spirit only but even in body. In spirit she is mother, not of our head, who is our Savior Himself – of whom all, even she herself, are rightly called children of the Bridegroom – but plainly she is the mother of us who are His members.” (“Holy Virginity,” 6:6)
She can be the Mother of the Church because, as the Church’s Sacred Tradition holds, from the first moment of her existence Mary was endowed by God with perfect sanctity. In 1854 Pope Pius IX declared in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus: “We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which asserts that the Blessed Virgin Mary, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God, and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, was preserved free from every stain of original sin is a doctrine revealed by God.”
Pope Pius IX’s dogmatic declaration was not a 19thcentury invention pulled out of a hat. Its purpose was to affirm in an official and formal way, as all ex cathedra statements do, a long-existing tradition passed down since the age of the Apostles.
Now, it is true that St. Paul wrote in his epistle to the Romans that “all have sinned” (Rom 3:23). But on a closer reading, the reference here emerges as to personal sin – that is, sin which is done rather than inherited. (Original sin is dealt with two chapters later in Paul’s epistle.) So then, have all sinned? In general, yes. But there are exceptions – beginning with Jesus Himself!
We can count other examples, too, like infants and the severely disabled, who lack the sufficient degrees of knowledge and consent which are required to count as a “personal” offense against God. And there are other biblical exceptions. Indeed, Mary is not the first woman in the Scriptures to be conceived without sin: think of Eve, the mother of humanity, who was created free of sin – but eventually fell by disobedience. Unlike Eve, Mary did not fall.
Steeped in the writings of the early Church Fathers and drawing from their reflections on Mary, St. John Henry Newman, a convert from Anglicanism, fittingly called the mother of Jesus “the daughter of Eve unfallen.” Indeed, the earliest Church Fathers hinted at Mary’s sinlessness in their writings when they alluded to Mary, implicitly and explicitly, as the second or new Eve. St. Irenaeus, for example, writes in the second century that “the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith” (“Against Heresies,” 3:22:24).
The later Church Fathers conveyed the blessedness of Mary even more explicitly. Consider the words of St. Ephrem in the fourth century: “You alone and your Mother are more beautiful than any others, for there is no blemish in you nor any stains upon your Mother. Who of my children can compare in beauty to these?” (“Nisibene Hymns,” 27:8)
Even Martin Luther believed that Mary had received special graces from God, professing these words in a 1527 sermon: “It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul.” (“On the Day of the Conception of the Mother of God”)
Of course, this recognition began with the biblically unique greeting of the angel Gabriel: “Hail, full of grace” (Luke 1:28). He greeted Mary with a title – and an angel never speaks anything but exactly what God wants him to speak. This explains why Mary in all her humility “was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be” (Luke 1:29).
If an archangel of God greets Mary with such reverence, should we not also? Most of us already do. But a small reminder never hurts. Aside from meditating on Sacred Scripture, then, one of the best ways we can reflect on the life of the Blessed Virgin is to return to the writings of the early Christians. They were the closest in time to Mary and the disciples (indeed some of them were disciples of the disciples) and although their writings were not inspired, they serve as a kind of historical and theological extension of the New Testament, providing for us further context and commentary.
At the very least we should remember, as St. Ambrose did in his commentary on holy virginity, that Mary’s life “is like a mirror reflecting the face of chastity and the form of virtue.” We have ample reason to believe that Mary is a perfect model of obedience and humility, and so we can do no better than to reflect on her life, though but for the grace of God she would have been conceived in sin and unfit to be Christ’s mother and ours. Nobody has understood our dependence on God’s grace greater than she whose sweet voice proclaimed in the home of Elizabeth:
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.” (Luke 1:47-48)
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