COMING SOON

COMING SOON

Revelation 22:12-13

'Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.' (NIVUK)

Read the verses around this Bible passage from the Internet Bible: in English, and many other languages

'Soon' is a wonderful word when you are expecting a loved one, a new baby or a gift to arrive. But it is a terrible word for those who fear an earthquake or separation from loved ones. Both joyful and dread-filled anticipation should mark believers and unbelievers as the return of Jesus Christ is declared to be 'soon'. Those who love Him will rejoice in His welcome (John 3:29), and those who despise Him will weep when He comes (Revelation 1:7). But, alas, most people have little expectation of the Second Coming. Many believers do not think Jesus will come in their lifetime and live without the priority of getting ready for Him (Romans 13:11). Unbelievers do not believe Christ's return will ever happen (2 Peter 3:3-4). That is why Revelation is 'bookended' by Jesus saying, "I am coming soon" (Revelation 3:11; 22:7, 12, 20). Unless the church has confidence that Jesus will return to reward and judge, believers will not stand firm in the heat of persecution or the divine foreshock of judgement on this sinful world. John is commanded to remember all he has seen in the visions, especially the glorious marriage procession of the Lamb and His Bride, the church (Revelation 21:1-5). All the persecutions, the plagues heralded by trumpets and the bowls of wrath are a thing of the past - as John was allowed to see God's Holy City without any blemish or people who love to sin (Revelation 21:22-27). The reward - spoken about by Old Testament prophets in Isaiah 62:11 and Jeremiah 32:19, and by Jesus (Luke 6:35), Paul (Colossians 3:24), and John (2 John 1:8) - is being accepted by the Lord of the universe and receiving His accolade for faithful, loving obedience (Luke 19:17). Jesus has the right to reward people according to what they have done (Ephesians 6:8). It is not a subtle call to get people to exhaust themselves in good works to earn their salvation – good works can never save us … we are only saved as we believe the gospel and receive God's grace (Ephesians 2:8-9). But it is a call not to throw away our confidence in Jesus (Hebrews 10:35). In times of stress and personal pain, it is easy to throw away what is precious. But the preciousness of Jesus is beyond doubt. Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, symbolise Jesus who is the Creator at the beginning and the Judge at the end of this world's history. If we stand firm to the end we will be saved – even if everybody else is against us (Matthew 10:22; 1 Corinthians 15:2). Most of us have enough difficulty doing all we should each day and relating well with others alongside us. We can be excited by good things and kind comments, and depressed by bad events and malicious talking. If we only look at the ground, we will see mud or dust; but if we look up we will see a little of the glory of a God whose creation is so much bigger than us. In the same way, believers without an eternal horizon will only live with worldly objectives and not for the Lord (Hebrews 12:1-3). When the pressure builds, how will you stand unless you are confident that the One who has called you is faithful and He will reward you (1 Thessalonians 5:24)?

God of eternity. Thank You for the eternal horizon set by the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Forgive me for the times I have lived as though this world and my little circle of life-activities is my reason for existence. Help me to see the Lord Jesus waiting to end this world's woeful corruption and bring in His Holy City. May I be motivated to faithful obedience, despite many pressures, by the reminder that He is coming soon. In His Name. Amen.

GOOD FRIDAY: THE SUN HAS SET

 

THE SUN HAS SET

The sun has set.

Our Son has walked into the night,

And that night was dark, indeed,

Made the more opaque

By one man’s treachery

That manoeuvred our sinfulness unto his death.

Our Son has walked into the night,

Laid himself down,

And now is still in death.

Sleep on, Saviour sweet!

Brave Warrior of our freedom’s battle;

Hero of our redemption’s drama.

Sleep on, dear Son and Brother.

Yesterday and today you laboured;

A splendid work, indeed,

But the weight thereof

Has laid you low

In a stone sepulchre.

Yet take your rest,

Tonight and another.

Yahweh once rested

At the close of the original creation;

Why not you

On the threshold of the new?

So sleep, sweet Prince,

And take your rest.

Tomorrow and a day will bring the dawn.

And with the dawn new life.

Then you will be King!

For our Son will rise again!

 - Fr. Mervyn Carapiet         

ANNUNCIATION

The Annunciation: A Cure for Many Modern Ills

CHRISTIAN BROWNE

Perhaps the most under-appreciated feast of the General Calendar is the one celebrated on March 25, the Solemn Feast of the Annunciation (transferred this year to March 26 since March 25 falls on a Sunday). Truly worthy of the title “First Class Feast,” for centuries it marked the first day of the year, connecting the civil calendar with the idea that, at the Incarnation, the world was born anew. Its import can be grasped easily by children when they learn that it falls exactly nine months before Christmas Day, placing the conception of the Christ Child nine months before his birth.

The lessons of this ancient feast (it was kept at Rome since at least the seventh century) are the foundations of the Christian understanding of the world. It is the culmination of God’s intervention in the life of his people, when he became Incarnate. There is an old saying: Nothing is new under the sun, save for the Incarnation.

In the West, the feast has always been kept as a principal feast of Our Lady. Thus it marks not only the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, but also the selection of Mary to be the Mother of God and her famous acceptance of this role: Ecce ancilla Dei, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.

Talk of Mary’s submission to the will of God is a common theme, and risks being reduced to a cliché, since the profundity of her act can be overlooked. It is clear from the accounts in St. Luke’s Gospel that Mary did not comprehend all that was happening to her. She does not understand Gabriel’s message or how it can be possible that she will conceive a child, but she accepts the angel’s word. At the child’s presentation in the Temple, Mary hears the proclamation of Simeon, at once joyous and foreboding, warning that her own heart will be pierced on account of her Son. The shadow of the contradictions of the Cross, at once terrible and glorious, are cast over Mary from Christ’s infancy.

The Annunciation initiates us into understanding the greatest and most basic truths of human existence. The life of man is a mysterious admixture of joy and suffering. Not even the most perfect human beings who ever lived avoided this reality. On the contrary, they were most subject to it, both in terms of the greatest of sufferings and the most exalted of glories. By the Incarnation, the fully human Jesus made himself obedient to his Father in Heaven. Just so, man is subject to the will of God and, therefore, it is not so much his rights that define him, but his duties. And his duties are encapsulated in the Great Commandments: love God and love neighbor. This is man’s purpose.

Modernity, in its dominant ideological variant, soundly rejects these revealed truths. In our society now, the ideology is most notable in the rejection of the concept of submission to duty and the acceptance of suffering. Happiness is said to lie in the complete avoidance of any burden, while the dictates of the individual will reign supreme. We have assigned to ourselves a vast panoply of “rights,” and to offend any ascribed “right” is a grievous wrong.

On March 10, 2018 in the Washington Post, a regular columnist defended the “right” of a women to terminate her pregnancy if a doctor detects signs that the child may be born with mental impairments. Indeed, what would be the point of pre-natal testing for such “defects” without the right to end the pregnancy? A mother of two children, the writer concedes that she would have aborted a child if tests had detected these sorts of issues since “that was not the child I wanted.” A difficult decision, but, who is to judge? Anyway, it’s a Constitutional right.

The Annunciation is the cure to the ideological cancer that produces such depraved sentiments. It stands as the antithesis to the self-absorption that has led many to feel tedium and purposelessness in their lives. The purpose of life is found in the discharge of our duties. For Mary, it was the ineffable mystery of becoming, literally, the Mother of God. Regardless of the majesty of her status, she achieved no worldly fame or comfort. On the contrary, she lived to watch her only child die in torment, rejected by his society and abandoned by his friends. Yet she did her duty to her Son and stood at the foot of the Cross.

The life of the ordinary Christian is patterned on the life of the Blessed Mother and her Son. For most people, the meaning of life must be found in the great and small sacrifices of daily life—for spouses, children, elderly parents, sick relatives or troubled friends. We are duty-bound to perform what acts of charity we can, observing the moral law as crowned and perfected in the teachings of Christ. Our goal is service and obedience to God, not the self-seeking promotion of our own “rights.” Taken to the extreme, as is now common, such self-seeking produces ludicrous notions, as exemplified by the inverted morality of the Post columnist’s claim that a child in the womb may be deemed flawed and summarily destroyed.

For modern ideology locates man’s purpose in his own self-righteousness. The childish refrain that says “I should be able to do whatever I want” and “You must not offend me” is only the latest version of the Serpent’s temptation, the essence of all sin: “Why should you have to obey God? Do as you wish and you, too, can be a god!” Modernity’s cheap moralism is easy to achieve, if we only adopt the right ideological outlook and assure ourselves of our own moral probity. Yet this modern pseudo-morality has no purpose other than self-justification. And because it requires no true moral discipline or actual personal sacrifice in the service of charity, it cannot supply a genuine and sustained drive able to shape our life and give it meaning.

Against the false and empty currents of the world, we look to Mary, created the new Eve at the Annunciation, the woman who accepted God’s will and with it all of the meaning of human existence—its joy, its suffering and its ultimate end in the glorious reunion with God. The Christian life is not a self-help program or a formula for worldly satisfaction. It is the acceptance of the awesome truth of man’s creation: We are made to know, and to love and to serve God in this life, and to be happy with him in the next. We are the servants of God; may it be done to us according to his word.

Editor’s note: Pictured above is “The Annunciation” painted by John William Waterhouse in 1914.

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

‘We find ourselves facing a firestorm that is apparently global about the biblical plan for sexuality, marriage, and family. How are we to act in relation to this disturbing phenomenon?’ 

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

in Gaudium et Spes and Today

I am devoting this meditation to a spiritual reflection on Gaudium et spes, the pastoral constitution on the Church in the world. Of the various social problems treated in this document —culture, economy, social justice, peace— the most relevant and problematic one concerns marriage and family. The Church devoted the last two synods of bishops to it. The majority of us present here do not live in that state of life, but we all need to know its problems to understand and help the vast majority of God’s people who do live in the marital state, especially today now that it is at the center of attacks and threats from all sides.

Gaudium et spes treats the family at great length in the Second Part (nos. 46-53). There is no need to quote statements from it because it repeats the traditional Catholic doctrine that everyone knows, except for a new emphasis on the mutual love between the spouses that is openly recognized now as a primary good in marriage alongside procreation.

In regard to marriage and family, Gaudium et spes, in its well-known way of proceeding, focuses first on the positive achievements in the modern world (“the joys and the hopes”) and only secondly on the problems and dangers (“the griefs and anxieties”).[1] I plan to follow that same method, taking into account, however, the dramatic changes that have occurred in this area in the last half century since then. I will briefly recall God’s plan for marriage and family since, as believers, we always need to start from that point, and then see what biblical revelation can offer us as a solution to current problems in this area. I am intentionally refraining from commenting on some of the specific problems discussed in the Synod of Bishops regarding which only the pope now has the right to say the last word.

1.     Marriage and family in the divine plan and in the gospel of Christ

The book of Genesis has two distinct accounts of the creation of the first human couple that go back to two different traditions: the Yahwist tradition (10^th century BC) and the later one called “Priestly” (6^th century BC). In the Priestly tradition (see Gen 1:26-28), the man and the woman are created simultaneously and not one from the other; male and female beings are linked to the image of God: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). The primary purpose for the union of the man and woman is seen as being fruitful and filling the earth.

In the Yahwist tradition, which is the most ancient (see Gen 2:18-25), the woman is taken out of the man. The creation of the two sexes is seen as a remedy for the loneliness of the man: “It is not good that the man should be alone: I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen 2:18). The unitive factor is emphasized here more than the procreative factor: “A man . . . clings to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). They are free and open about their own sexuality and that of the other: “The man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25).

I found the most convincing explanation for this divine “invention” of the distinction between the sexes in a poet, Paul Claudel:

Man is so proud! There was no other way [except inventing the sexes] to get him to understand his neighbor, to pound it into him. There was no other way to get him to understand the dependence, the necessity, and the need of another besides himself except through the existence of this being [woman] who is different from him by the very fact of her separate existence.[2]

To open oneself to the opposite sex is the first step in opening oneself to the other who is a neighbor until we reach the Other, with a capital letter, God. Marriage begins with a mark of humility: it is the recognition of dependency and thus of one’s own condition as a creature. To fall in love with a woman or a man is to make the most radical act of humility. It is to make oneself a beggar and say to the other, “I am not enough in myself; I need you too.” If, as Friedrich Schleiermacher believed, the essence of religion consists in the sentiment of dependence on God (Abhängigkeitsgefühl),[3] then we can say that human sexuality is the first school of religion.

Up to this point I have described God’s plan. The rest of the Bible cannot, however, be understood if, along with the creation story, we do not take into account the fall, especially what is said to the woman: “I will greatly multiply your pain in child-bearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Gen 3:16). The dominance of the man over the woman is part of the consequence of man’s sin, not part of God’s plan. With these words to Eve, God was announcing her predicament in advance, not endorsing it.

The Bible is a divine-human book not only because its authors are God and men but also because it describes the intertwining of the faithfulness of God with the unfaithfulness of human beings. This is clear especially when we compare God’s plan for marriage and family with its practical outworking in the history of the chosen people. Continuing in the book of Genesis, we see that the son of Cain, Lamech, violates the law of monogamy by taking two wives. Noah and his family appear to be an exception in the midst of the widespread corruption of his time. The patriarchs Abraham and Jacob have children by many wives. Moses sanctions the practice of divorce; David and Solomon maintain actual harems of women.

Beyond these examples of individual transgressions, the departure from the original ideal is visible in the basic concept that Israel had of marriage. Deviation from the ideal involves two pivotal points. The first is that marriage becomes a means and not an end. The Old Testament, on the whole, considers marriage a structure of patriarchal authority oriented primarily to the perpetuation of the clan. It is in this context that the institutions of levirate marriage (see Deut 25:5-10), of concubinage (see Gen 16), and of provisional polygamy can be understood. The ideal of a shared life between a man and a woman based on a personal and reciprocal relationship is not forgotten, but it moves into second place after the good of offspring. The second serious deviation from the ideal concerns the status of the woman: from being a companion for the man endowed with the same dignity, she appears increasingly more subordinate to the man and existing for his sake.

An important role in keeping God’s original plan for marriage alive is played by the prophets—in particular Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah—and by the Song of Songs. Adopting the union of man and woman as a symbol or reflection of the covenant between God and his people, they restore to first place the value of mutual love, faithfulness, and indissolubility that characterize God’s attitude toward Israel.

Jesus, come to “sum up” human history in himself, accomplishes this recapitulation in regard to marriage as well.

And the Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female [Gen 1:27] and said ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’? So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Matt 19:3-6)

His adversaries were operating in the narrow sphere of hypothetical casuistry (asking if it were lawful to repudiate the wife for any reason or if there needed to be a specific and serious reason). Jesus answered them by going to the heart of the issue and returning to the beginning. In his citations, Jesus refers to both accounts of the institution of marriage, taking elements from each of them, but, as we see, he emphasizes above all the communion of persons.

What comes next in Matthew’s text, the issue of divorce, also follows along the same line: he reaffirms faithfulness and the indissolubility of the marriage bond even above the good of offspring, which people had used in the past to justify polygamy, levirate marriage, and divorce.

They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away?” He said to them, “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries a divorced woman, commits adultery” (Matt 19:7-9)

The parallel text in Mark shows that even in the case of divorce men and women, according to Jesus, are placed on a level of absolute equality: “‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery’” (Mk 10:11-12).

With the words “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder,” Jesus affirms that there is divine intervention by God in every matrimonial union. The elevation of marriage to the status of a “sacrament,” that is, a sign of God’s action, does not then need to be founded only on the weak argument of Jesus’ presence at the wedding at Cana and on the text in Ephesians that speaks of marriage as a reflection of the union of Christ and the Church (see Eph 5:32). It begins explicitly with Jesus’ teaching during his earthly ministry and is also part of his reference to how things were from the beginning. John Paul II was correct when he defined marriage as “the primordial sacrament.”[4]

2.                 What the biblical teaching says to us today

This, in brief, is the doctrine of the Bible, but we cannot stop there. “Scripture,” said Gregory the Great, “grows with those who read it” (cum legentibus crescit).[5] It reveals new implications little by little that come to light because of new questions. And today new questions, or challenges, about marriage and family abound.

We find ourselves facing a firestorm that is apparently global about the biblical plan for sexuality, marriage, and family. How are we to act in relation to this disturbing phenomenon? The Council initiated a new approach that involves dialogue rather than confrontation with the world and even includes self-criticism. I believe we need to apply this very approach to the discussion about marriage and family. Applying this method of dialogue means trying to see if, behind even the most radical challenges, there is something we can receive.

The criticism of the traditional model of marriage and family that has brought us to today’s unacceptable proposals for their deconstruction began with the Enlightenment and Romanticism. For different reasons, these two movements expressed their opposition to the traditional view of marriage, understood exclusively in its objective “ends”—offspring, society, and the Church—and viewed too little in its subjective and interpersonal value. Everything was required of future spouses except that they love each other and freely choose each other. Even today, in many parts of the world there are spouses who meet and see each other for the first time on their wedding day. In contrast to that kind of model, the Enlightenment saw marriage as a pact between married people and Romanticism saw it as a communion of love between spouses.

But this criticism is in agreement with the original meaning of marriage in the Bible, not against it! The Second Vatican Council already accepted this perspective when, as I said, it recognized the mutual love and assistance between the spouses as an equally primary good of marriage. In line with Gaudium et spes, St. John Paul II said in one of his Wednesday teachings,

The human body, with its sex, and its masculinity and femininity . . . is not only a source of fruitfulness and procreation, as in the whole natural order. It includes right from the beginning the nuptial attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love, that love in which the person becomes a gift and—by means of this gift—fulfills the meaning of his being and existence.[6]

In his encyclical Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict XVI went even further, writing profound new things regarding eros in marriage and in the relationship between God and human beings. He wrote, “This close connection between eros and marriage in the Bible has practically no equivalent in extra-biblical literature.”[7] One of the most serious wrongs we do to God is to end up making everything that concerns love and sex be an area saturated with wickedness in which God should not enter and is unwanted. It is as if Satan, and not God, were the creator of the sexes and the specialist in love.

We believers, and many non-believers as well, are far from accepting the conclusions that some people draw from these premises today, for example, that any kind of eros is enough to constitute a marriage, including between people of the same sex. However, our rejection of this acquires greater strength and credibility if it is combined with a recognition of the fundamental goodness of sexuality together with a healthy self-criticism.

We cannot omit the mention of what Christians have contributed to forming the negative vision of marriage that modern western culture has rejected so vehemently. The authority of Augustine, reinforced on this point by Thomas Aquinas, ended up casting a negative light on the physical union of spouses, which was considered as the means through which original sin was transmitted and was not even free itself of “at least venial” sin. According to the Doctor of Hippo, spouses should make use of the sexual act for begetting children but should do so “with regret” (cum dolore) and only because there is no other way to provide citizens for the state and members for the Church.[8]

Another modern position that we can also accept concerns the equal dignity of the woman in marriage. As we have seen, it is at the very heart of God’s original plan and in the thinking of Christ, but it has often been disregarded over the centuries. God’s word to Eve, “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you,” has had a tragic fulfillment in history.

Among the representatives of the so-called “Gender Revolution,” their call for the equality of women has led to crazy proposals like abolishing the distinction between the sexes and replacing it with the more flexible and subjective distinction of “genders” (masculine, feminine, variable) or like freeing women from “the slavery of maternity” by arranging for newly invented ways to give birth to children. In recent months there has been a succession of news reports about men who will very soon be able to become pregnant and give birth to a child. “Adam gives birth to Eve,” they write with a smile, but this is something we should weep about. The ancients would have defined all this with the word Hubris, the arrogance of human beings before God.

Our choice of dialogue and self-criticism gives us the right to denounce these plans as “inhuman”: they are contrary not only to God’s will but also to the good of humanity. Putting them into practice on a large scale would lead to unforeseeable human and social catastrophes. Our only hope is that people’s common sense, combined with the natural “desire” for the other sex and the instinct for motherhood and fatherhood that God has inscribed in human nature, will resist these attempts to substitute ourselves for God. They are dictated more by a belated sense of guilt on the part of men than by genuine respect and love for woman herself.

3.                 An ideal to rediscover

Not less important than the duty of defending the biblical ideal of marriage and family is the duty for Christians to rediscover and live that ideal fully in such a way as to reintroduce it into the world by deeds more than by words. Early Christians changed the laws of the state about the family by their practices. We cannot consider doing the opposite and change people’s practices through the laws of the state, even though as citizens we have a duty to contribute to the state’s enactment of just laws.

Since Christ, we correctly read the account of the creation of the man and woman in light of the revelation of the Trinity. In this light the statement that “God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them” finally reveals a significance that was enigmatic and unclear before Christ. What connection can there be between being “in the image of God” and being “male and female”? The biblical God does not have sexual attributes; he is neither male nor female.

The similarity consists in this. God is love, and love requires communion and interpersonal communication. It requires an “I” and a “you.” There is no love that is not love for someone; if there is only one subject there cannot be love, just egotism and narcissism. Whenever God is conceived of only as Law or as Absolute Power, there is no need for a plurality of persons. (Power can be exercised by one person alone!) The God revealed by Jesus Christ, being love, is unique and one, but he is not solitary: he is one and triune. Unity and distinction coexist in him: unity of nature, will, and intentions, and distinction of characteristics and persons.

When two people love each other—and the strongest example is the love of a man and a woman in marriage—they reproduce something of what occurs in the Trinity. In the Trinity two persons, the Father and the Son, in loving each other produce (“breathe”) the Spirit who is the love that unites them. Someone has defined the Holy Spirit as the divine “We,” that is, not as “the third person of the Trinity” but as the first person plural.[9] It is precisely in this way that the human couple is the image of God. Husband and wife are in fact one flesh, one heart, one soul but are diverse in sex and personality. Unity and diversity are thus reconciled in the couple.

In this light we discover the profound meaning of the prophets’ message about human marriage: it is a symbol and a reflection of another love, that of God for his people. This symbolism was not meant to overload a purely earthly reality with a mystical significance. On the other hand, it is not merely symbolic but instead reveals the true face and ultimate purpose of the creation of man as male and female.

What is the reason for the sense of incompleteness and lack of fulfillment that sexual union leaves both inside and outside of marriage? Why does this impulse always fall back on itself, and why does this promise of the infinite and eternal always fall short? People try to find a remedy for this frustration, but they only increase it. Instead of changing the quality of the act, they increase its quantity, going from one partner to the next. This leads to the ruin of God’s gift of sexuality currently taking place in today’s society and culture.

Do we as Christians want to find an explanation for this devastating dysfunction once and for all? The explanation is that the sexual union is not occurring in the way and with the purpose intended by God. Its purpose was that, through this ecstasy and joining together in love, the man and the woman would be raised to desire and to obtain a certain foretaste of infinite love; they would be reminded of where they came from and where they are headed.

Sin, beginning with that of the biblical Adam and Eve, has damaged this plan. It has “profaned” the sexual act, that is, it has stripped it of its religious value. Sin has made it an act that is an end in itself, that is closed in on itself, so it is therefore “unsatisfying.” The symbol has been disconnected from the reality behind the symbol and deprived it of its intrinsic dynamism, thus crippling it. Never so much as in this case do we experience the truth of Augustine’s saying: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”[10] We were not created to live in an eternal relationship as a couple but to live in an eternal relationship with God, with the Absolute. Even Goethe’s Faust finally discovers this at the end of his long period of wandering. Thinking back to his love for Margaret, he exclaims at the end of the poetic drama, “All that is transitory / is only a symbol; / what seems unachievable / here is seen done [in heaven].”[11]

In the testimony of some couples who have experienced renewal in the Holy Spirit and live a charismatic Christian life, we find something of the original significance of the conjugal act. That can hardly be a surprise to us. Marriage is the sacrament of a reciprocal gift that spouses make to one another, and the Holy Spirit is the “gift” within the Trinity, or better, the reciprocal “self-gifting” of the Father and Son, not as a fleeting act but as a permanent state. Wherever the Holy Spirit comes, the capacity to make a gift of oneself is born or rekindled. This is how the “grace of the married state” operates.

4.                 Married and consecrated people in the Church

Even though we consecrated religious do not live in the married state, I said at the beginning that we need to understand marriage to help those who do live in that state. I will add now a further reason: we need to understand marriage to be helped by it ourselves! Speaking of marriage and virginity the apostle says, “Each has his own spiritual gift [chárisma] from God, one of one kind and one of another” (1 Cor 7:7). Married people have their charism and those who are “single for the Lord” have their charism.

Each charism, the same apostle says, is “a particular manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (see 1 Cor 12:7). Applied to the relationship between married and consecrated people in the Church, this means that the charism of celibacy and virginity is for the advantage also of married people and that the charism of marriage is also for the advantage of consecrated people. That is the intrinsic nature of a charism that is seemingly contradictory: something that is individual (“a particular manifestation of the Spirit”) is nevertheless meant for all (“for the common good”).

In the Christian community, consecrated people and married people are able to “edify one another.” Spouses are reminded by consecrated people of the primacy of God and of what is eternal; they are introduced to love for the word of God by those who can better deepen and “break open” it open for lay people. But consecrated people can also learn something from married people as well. They can learn generosity, self-forgetfulness, service to life, and often a certain “humaneness” that comes from their difficult engagement with the realities of life.

I am speaking from experience here. I belong to a religious order in which, until a few decades ago, we would get up at night to recite the office of Matins that would last about an hour. Then there came a great turning point in religious life after the Council. It seemed that the rhythm of modern life—studies for the younger monks and apostolic ministry for the priests—no longer allowed for this nightly rising that interrupted sleep, and little by little the practice was abandoned except in a few houses of formation.

When later the Lord had me come to know various young families well through my ministry, I discovered something that startled me but in a good way. These fathers and mothers had to get up not once but two or three times a night to feed a baby, or give it medicine, or rock it if it was crying, or check it for a fever. And in the morning one or both of the parents had to rush off to work at the same time after taking the baby girl or boy to the grandparents or to day-care. There was a time card to punch whether the weather was good or bad and whether their health was good or bad.

Then I said to myself, if we do not take remedial action we are in grave danger. Our religious way of life, if it is not supported by a genuine observance of the Rule and a certain rigor in our schedule and habits, is in danger of becoming a comfortable life and of leading to hardness of heart. What good parents are capable of doing for their biological children—the level of self-forgetfulness that they are capable of to provide for their children’s well-being, their studies, their happiness—must be the standard of what we should do for our children or spiritual brothers. The example we have for this is set by the apostle Paul himself who said, “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls” (2 Cor 12:15).

May the Holy Spirit, the giver of charisms, help all of us, consecrated and married, to put into practice the exhortation of the apostle Peter: “As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace . . . in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen!” (1 Pet 4:10-11).

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Translated from Italian by Marsha Daigle Williamson

[1] Gaudium et spes, n.1. Quotations from Church and papal documents are from the Vatican website.

[2] Paul Claudel, The Satin Slipper, Act 3, sc. 8; see Le soulier de satin: Édition critique, ed. Antoinette Weber-Caflisch (Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Compté, 1987), p. 227.

[3] Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, vol. 1, trans. H. R. MacKintosh and James S. Stewart (New York: T & T Clark, 1999), p. 12ff.

[4] See John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael M. Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), pp. 503-507.

[5] See Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 20, 1, 1, in Gregory the Great, trans. John Moorhead (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 49.

[6] John Paul II, “The Human Person Becomes a Gift in the Freedom of Love,” General Audience, January 16, 1980.

[7] Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, n. 11.

[8] Augustine, “Sermon 51,” 25, in Sermons (51-94) on the New Testament, Part 3, vol. 1, trans. Edmund Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine, ed. John E. Rotelle (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1991), p. 36.

[9] Heribert Mühlen, Der Heilige Geist als Person: Ich-Du-Wir [The Holy Sprit as Person: I-You-We} (Munich: Aschendorf, 1963).

[10] Augustine, Confessions, 1, 1, trans. John K. Ryan (New York: Doubleday, 1960), p. 43.

[11] Wolfgang Goethe, Faust, part 2, Act 5, in Goethe: The Collected Works, trans. Stuart Atkins (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 305.

LENT AND DESERT SPIRITUALITY

LENT AND DESERT SPIRITUALITY

Lent and the spirituality of the desert have striking parallels. Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, where the ashes made from blessing the previous year’s palm branches are placed on the heads of the believers with the accompanying words “Repent and believe the Gospel” or “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” These words highlight the utter weakness of humanity (nothingness) and the obligatory fasting provides hunger pangs that cause us to physically experience that weakness.

During Lent, in both fasting and giving up certain things, we imitate the sacrifice and temptation of Christ in the desert for 40 days. Yes, like the reading of the Desert Fathers, Lent is a journey into the desert, but the desert isn’t so much a place as a geography of the human heart.

The desert is an accurate physical representation of the human person without the grace of God: nothingness, desolation. “Apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Without the grace of God we have neither our physical existence that begins at conception nor our spiritual existence through the regeneration of Baptism and the forgiveness of sins. These are like two Big Bangs that precipitated two creations ex nihilo.

With Lent we begin at the beginning: our own nothingness is a wonderful lens through which to view life. Seeing our existence through such a prism cultivates gratitude because we realize that all we have, whether natural gifts (beauty, intelligence, certain aptitudes) or virtues born of the Spirit (prudence, temperance, fortitude), are from the hand of God.

It also cultivates humility because we know that our business acumen, mechanical inclination, fortitude, or prudence, are all gifts of God. Pride is the act of taking these back for ourselves, in acting as if we did it all ourselves.

An excellent question a person may ask is, “Don’t we play a role in the process in cooperating with the grace of God?” The answer is yes, and yet, even the ability to avail ourselves to the grace of God is rooted in grace.

This is why the Desert Fathers are so opposed to judging their neighbor. Abba Moses said, “A monk must die to his neighbor and never judge him at all, in any way whatever.”

This does not mean a person cannot judge a particular behavior as sinful (e.g., adultery, coveting, bearing false witness), but he cannot then take the common next step of looking down in self-righteousness on his neighbor. The fathers regarded this arrogance as committing a worse sin than the one committed by the person we are judging. This humility is rooted in the revelation that without the grace of God, every one of us would be walking advertisements for the full-flowering of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The desert as a geography of the human heart, in all its simplicity and stripped-down desolation, reminds us of the importance of removing all that is superfluous and extraneous from our lives. Benedicta Ward writes about the Desert Fathers: “…it was a radically simple life: a stone hut with a roof of branches, a reed mat for a bed, a sheep-skin, a lamp, a vessel for water or oil.”

Food and sleep were reduced to a minimum. It calls to mind the quote from Marcus Aurelius: “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”

Lent is an excellent time to eradicate the superfluous. You don’t need to upgrade to a new home when the one you have now meets all your needs or pursue the promotion at work when you know that higher pay and more prestige will have the deleterious tradeoff of substantially less time for marriage and family.

Sometimes we have extraneous activities that need to be streamlined. Many mothers and fathers become “Taxi Mom” and “Taxi Dad” in running their kids to multitudinous extracurricular activities, some of which are not necessary. Some practicing Catholics overlook the fact that you can be overcommitted to church activities to the point of negatively affecting important relationships.

The Fathers were also dedicated to eliminating superfluous words in their relationships. Abba Agathon lived for three years with a stone in his mouth with the goal of learning to keep silence.

St. John of the Cross believed that silence was God’s first language and the Holy Writ is replete with such citations as Proverbs 10:19: “When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.”

Who hasn’t had conversations that went on too long and deflated the human spirit or holy moments that were diminished by the tsunami of noise and chatter? Cardinal Robert Sarah has written wisely about such issues in his recent book The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise.

During Lent, in imitating Christ’s temptation in the wilderness, we imitate his relationship to the superfluous. He was silent because words were not necessary. He did not need to turn stones to bread because he lived by every word that proceeded from the mouth of God. He didn’t need the kingdoms of this world because he already was the King of Kings.

He didn’t need to throw himself down from the pinnacle of the temple and have his angels save him to prove that he was the Son of God because he was already secure in his divinity. May God grant us all the discernment during Lent to distinguish the difference between the superfluous and the necessary.