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The full catholic truth is always a “both-and” and not an “either-or.” It is marked by a paradoxical coincidences of opposites, a convergence of complementaries. And so even in the same breath with which we have affirmed that no authentic Christian community can close itself off to the world, to those who do not know Christ, and indeed even to the darkness of a culture that has rejected him, we can also affirm that true Christian conversion requires a radical renunciation of the “world” in its pejorative sense—all that in a culture and in man resists and opposes God—and also that both the believing heart and the community of believers must be “different” from the surrounding world: the “salt of the earth and the light of the world,” a “city set on a hill,” and a “lamp on a lamp stand that gives light to all in the house” (cf. Mt 5:13-15).
Authentic evangelical witness is not only one of closeness to others, of nearness and accompaniment, but also one of the total devotion to God that lets go of all that is incompatible with his life and his beauty, truly letting the newness of his love become the criterion of all things, creating a culture and a way of living that is based not on worldly or temporal standards, but on the eternal God and on the new creation that awaits us at the end of time, which we can anticipate already now in faith, hope, and love. This includes also, therefore, the fostering of communities that create and protect our true Christian heritage, the true traditions of the faith in the midst of a wider culture that has become secularized, and indeed that foster the gratuitous experience of communion and belonging for its own sake, simply because it is beautiful, good, and true. Perhaps indeed we can say that authentic Christian life always exists in the rich tension between these two complementaries, as a harmonization of two movements that, in their fullest maturity, in some way become one and the same in the Paschal Mystery: the “descent” of Christ in loving compassion into the darkest places of the world, into the place of God’s apparent absence, so that here his redeeming Love may penetrate, heal, and renew all things, and the “ascent” of Christ into the welcoming embrace of his Father, which moves beyond the world even while gathering the world up into his heart, so that all may find eternal rest only in the innermost depth of the shared love and intimacy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We saw something similar in Benedict’s words above. These sentences in particular apply to our theme: “As a merciful Mother, Mary is the anticipated figure and everlasting portrait of the Son. Thus, we see that the image of the Sorrowful Virgin, of the Mother who shares her suffering and her love, is also a true image of the Immaculate Conception. Her heart was enlarged by being and feeling together with God.” Mary’s immaculate purity is revealed not only in her virginal purity but also in her suffering and her love, in her compassionate closeness to us.
As Benedict says: to be and to feel together with God. This is the highest and deepest blossoming of holiness, a holiness that can reach such a degree that, like Mary, one becomes a “portrait” of the Son, a revelation of his face, which is that of Love and Mercy itself. And such holiness therefore does not raise one above others, making one inaccessible or superior, but rather makes one more humble, more present, more profoundly close in authentic tenderness, receptivity, and compassion. This is yet another reason why the “Catholic ghetto” (or more apropos, the “Catholic paradise”) or the so-called “Benedict option” approach to Christian life—if too narrowly understood—is not aligned with the true breadth and depth of the spirit of the Catholica. Intentional communities are good and healthy, of course, but such community must always remain open in tenderhearted hospitality and indeed bear in itself a firm missionary impetus, a desire to reach the peripheries where dwell those who are most wounded and lost. Even believers who withdraw more strictly from the world for the sake of devotion to prayer in solitude—something acceptable in its strictest form only on the basis of a divine call—are in fact drawing near to the world, according to the contours of their authentic vocational gift of hidden solidarity-through-solitude and presence-through-prayer. Condemning the world is not a Christian attitude, but rather a corruption of such an attitude, born of either hopelessness (“it is too late to save our culture”) or of pride (“we are the chosen few, the remnant of God’s salvation”). Christians are not called to “hide away” and preserve their life and community while the world “crumbles around them.” Rather, we must walk with our brothers and sisters in all of their struggles, as Christ has done and has thus illustrated for us, sharing in the lot of the world in confident trust that God works by means of closeness, tenderness, and compassion, and that dialogue and encounter are his preferred way of acting in the world, since they reflect his own eternal life as Trinity. The attitude of Christian love is thus to care tenderly for all that makes up the world, and not to be startled even by the dramatic chiaroscuro of light and darkness that marks the journey of so many men and women of our times. This is not to be naïve about evil and its power to corrupt; but it is to believe deeply and firmly enough in the mercy of God that one can look for the light of hope and the possibility of redemption everywhere, even in the darkest place. After all, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save it” (Jn 3:17). In fact, the Father would not have sent his Son into the world if he had despised the world; and even the Son’s Ascension into heaven is not a renunciation of the beauty of creation and all that pertains to the life of man, but rather its healing and elevation into the life of God, and the promise of its ultimate redemption and salvation, its consummation in the glory of the new creation. Purity of heart and the spirit of compassion are intimately related, as are closeness to God and openness to one’s brothers and sisters. Georges Bernanos expressed this in the following way:
The eyes of Our Lady are the only real child-eyes that have ever been raised to our shame and sorrow. … they are not indulgent—for there is no indulgence without something of bitter experience—they are eyes of gentle pity, wondering sadness, and with something more in them, never yet known or expressed, something that makes her younger than sin, younger than the race from which she sprang, and though a mother, by grace, Mother of all graces, our little youngest sister. Here we witness the wonderful humility and beauty of the Immaculate, whose very purity does not distance her from us, but rather makes her able to be even closer to us, to be truly our mother and our sister. For sin separates; sin causes division. Indeed, even a “righteous” life that in the process cuts itself off from others and locks itself away in a fortress of performance and superiority thereby reveals that it has sin buried deep within it, sin unaddressed and unhealed. So it was with the Pharisees and so it can be in each one of us if we yield to such a temptation. On the other hand, love and purity unite; indeed, they even unite one with sinners, with the darkness of the world, not through actions of personal guilt but through compassionate love and loving identification. It is a small share in what was realized in supreme manner by Christ alone: for “he who knew no sin became sin for us, that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). One can always discern the contours of authentic holiness, therefore, by its traits of radical humility and its deep sensitivity to the sinfulness both within oneself and in the world, a sensitivity that is neither harshly condemnatory nor bitterly discouraged, but rather gently sorrowful and compassionately confident in God’s love and mercy ever at work, weaving itself through the fabric of the world to make all things new, to redeem, liberate, and save every lost and ailing heart. I would like to share an incredible quote from Benedict XVI, part of a homily he preached on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception in 2005, the fortieth anniversary of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. Twenty years later, his words a worth hearing anew and pondering:
This is something we should indeed learn on the day of the Immaculate Conception: the person who abandons himself totally in God’s hands does not become God’s puppet, a boring “yes man”; he does not lose his freedom. Only the person who entrusts himself totally to God finds true freedom, the great, creative immensity of the freedom of good. The person who turns to God does not become smaller but greater, for through God and with God he becomes great, he becomes divine, he becomes truly himself. The person who puts himself in God’s hands does not distance himself from others, withdrawing into his private salvation; on the contrary, it is only then that his heart truly awakens and he becomes a sensitive, hence, benevolent and open person. The closer a person is to God, the closer he is to people. We see this in Mary. The fact that she is totally with God is the reason why she is so close to human beings. For this reason she can be the Mother of every consolation and every help, a Mother whom anyone can dare to address in any kind of need in weakness and in sin, for she has understanding for everything and is for everyone the open power of creative goodness. In her, God has impressed his own image, the image of the One who follows the lost sheep even up into the mountains and among the briars and thornbushes of the sins of this world, letting himself be spiked by the crown of thorns of these sins in order to take the sheep on his shoulders and bring it home. As a merciful Mother, Mary is the anticipated figure and everlasting portrait of the Son. Thus, we see that the image of the Sorrowful Virgin, of the Mother who shares her suffering and her love, is also a true image of the Immaculate Conception. Her heart was enlarged by being and feeling together with God. In her, God’s goodness came very close to us. Mary thus stands before us as a sign of comfort, encouragement and hope. She turns to us, saying: “Have the courage to dare with God! Try it! Do not be afraid of him! Have the courage to risk with faith! Have the courage to risk with goodness! Have the courage to risk with a pure heart! Commit yourselves to God, then you will see that it is precisely by doing so that your life will become broad and light, not boring but filled with infinite surprises, for God’s infinite goodness is never depleted!” i *** NOTE *** ihttps://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2005/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20051208_anniv-vat-council.html As a little example of the radical difference between the hope born of faith and the despair born of fear and pride, let me share two contrasting news stories that I read recently. They could not be more opposed, one portraying the destructive actions born of reactionary despair, and the other portraying the radiant life and abundant joy flowing from the faith, hope, and love poured into human hearts through the Holy Spirit. The first recounts the reaction of a man in a certain American Diocese who, the leader of a “traditionalist,” Tridentine Mass community having been illegally ordained as a bishop, upon receiving a letter of excommunication from Rome (a “medicinal penalty” ordained to awaken and give a chance for conversion), told his disciples, “I have not and will not obey commands from the kangaroo court composed of heretics, schismatics, Freemasons, representatives of the most vile sinful perversions, enemies of the cross of Christ, of whom the majority of bishops—particularly in this country—no longer believe in the real presence of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ in the Eucharist.” i Let us pray for the conversion and repentance of this man and those who follow him! But now for a response. The absurdity of the above statement is obvious on many levels; let us mention only that the United States bishops have worked together to bring a country-wide renewal of Eucharistic faith and devotion in the national Eucharistic Revival, unfolding from 2022-2025. This reactionary condemnation of the living Church of Christ because of the sinfulness of some of her members is a clear indication, however “righteous” or “holy” the language used to describe it, of the despair that breeds in the depths of such hearts. This is the case also, however subtly, with the radical traditionalist movement that is trying to wage a war for the very soul of American (and perhaps also Continental) Catholicism. Again: war is born of despair.
The other example, that of true hope, is splendid. It shows the actual and vibrant movement of the Holy Spirit, not in the “walled-up” church of our own devising, not in our ideological condemnation of what does not fit into our own realm of comprehension and control, but in the living Bride and Body of Christ living still all across the face of the earth. The article describes the state of the Church in Finland, one of the most secularized nations in the world, and its profound and exponential growth, even amid profound poverty. Allow me simply to quote some words from the article: “It’s a growing Church, but it’s very poor, and filled with immigrants and refugees,” [Bishop] Goyarrola told CNA. “There are 125 different nationalities, and many different rites … Maronites, Chaldeans … It’s a richness, but also a pastoral challenge.” There are currently more than 300 unbaptized adults preparing to enter the Catholic Church in Finland… St. Henry’s Cathedral is “too small,” its pastor, Kabeza, said. “We were saying eight Masses a day, and people were still standing outside.” Because the different churches rely on one another, Goyarrola called the country a “paradise of ecumenism.” “We are very close,” the bishop said of his Lutheran and Orthodox compatriots. Last year, almost 400 Orthodox, Catholics, and Lutherans attended a Marian procession in Helsinki on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. “The Orthodox brought their icons and we brought our statues,” the bishop said. “Two choirs, one Orthodox and one Catholic, and both bishops along with several Lutheran pastors participated in the procession.” The bishop said a 160-page joint declaration on Church ministry and the Eucharist signed in 2017 between the Catholic and Lutheran churches was met with amazement by the Vatican. The growing ecumenism there “is amazing. It is a new page in the history of the Church,” he said. [Bishop Goyarolla] said the Church began to grow quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The government gave “a free hand to the churches during that time,” the bishop said. “The Catholic Church opened its doors while the rest of the churches kept theirs closed. We continued to say Masses, and our buildings were always physically open and people were coming in to pray.” According to Kabeza, “the people were looking for something because they were afraid.” ii Here is a beautiful witness to the true and living presence of Christ in his Church, the Bridegroom who says to us again and again, “Be not afraid!” and who opens wide the doors of his heart to welcome us in our need, in our fear, in our longing for a hope that lasts. Yes, he invites us to cast out into the deep waters of both communion and mission in confidence in his provident love, in the hope that does not disappoint, since it is the fruit of this very Love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. *** NOTES *** ihttps://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/268311/leader-of-schismatic-colorado-springs-group-disregards-excommunication iihttps://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/268227/finland-s-only-catholic-bishop-appeals-for-help-for-his-booming-church A true Christian life is not possible without hope. Indeed, a full human life worthy of the name is not possible without hope. Since man is a being of desire, and yet since man’s longing is not fulfilled in a single moment but only as the fruit of a lifelong journey, and indeed as a journey, he cannot find peace and constancy except by hope. The good for which we were made is possessed in hope, and only in heaven shall it truly be known and experienced to the full, and even then we shall enter more deeply into it without ceasing. “For who hopes for what he sees? But if we wait for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Rom 8:24-25). Even the good things of this earth can be attained only with hope, as the fruit of perseveringly fidelity to the gift of love that leads us through the story of life to the maturity born only over time.
This also helps us to understand that one of the greatest struggles of our age, indeed one reaching back for hundreds of years, is the loss of hope. There is a name for this. It is despair. Whether this was expressed in the loss of confidence in objective truth or in the Nietzchean will-to-power, in the two World Wars of the last century or in the abominations committed by the atheistic “humanisms” that destroyed man in their pursuit of utopian dreams, whether in the self-protective tendency of certain brands of Christian thinking (which are not truly Christian) or in the weakening of so many Western cultures and societies, in the threatened collapse of democracy and the return of war. War, after all, is a particular form of despair, and is not possible without despair. Or rather, it is born either of despair or of diabolical greed and pride. For civilizations turn to war and raise arms against one another, sacrificing the lives of their young men in pursuit of political or ideological goals, because they have despaired of the possibility of true dialogue, of authentic encounter, of a union born not of violence and force, but of respect, of justice and love. This too is why peace is not just a destination but a way; indeed war never leads to peace, but only to a temporary cessation of armed conflict. Only peace can lead to peace, and peace is born of justice, and justice born of love. Even the atheisms of our day, which claim to find fulfillment and freedom apart from God, at lasting casting off his yoke as unreal, are ultimately founded upon an existential despair (look only at someone like Sartre). Man loses the ability to look beyond the limited horizon of this world, to see beyond the material and the immediate, beyond the biological and historical dialectic, beyond the prison of the mind severed from the giftedness of reality from the outside. And so even if he presents in the place of the longing for eternal life, for heaven, what seems to be an ideology of hope (for example the utopianism of Nazism and Communism, of Hitler and Marx), not only is this ideology destined to disappointment, but it is born of hopelessness, born of the loss of the hope that makes all other hope possible. Is this not another reason why these ideologies and philosophies, which claim to be in service of the cause of man and his liberation, give rise not to happiness but to the desecration and death of the lives of countless millions? “He who commits sin is a slave to sin.” “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” “For freedom Christ has set you free; stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Jn 8:34,32; Gal 5:1) Only in the utterly gratuitous love of God, which in Christ redeems us and saves us and marks out the path to true life, do we discover the hope that our hearts need, the hope that sets us free. And it is this hope that is surging like a current at the heart of the renewal of the Church, the renewal of history, through the gift and activity of the Holy Spirit. What wonder that the ancient curse
is crushed today by the foot of a tiny child, Mary’s Son, the Beloved of the Father made flesh. Curse gives way to blessing as his hands are raised reaching out for his mother’s breast to suck and to his earthly father’s finger clinging. He is not embarrassed of our flesh, our lowliness, not afraid to soil his diaper, to cry out in neediness, unable to express himself in our language, our words, becoming truly an infant, the eternal Word of the Father in the wordless flesh, the innocent face, of the incarnate Child. So too, when the Son is grown—though a Child he remains-- he shall again cry out in neediness, soiled by our sin, though innocent, grasping for the compassion his mother’s breast can give and more, reposing in the bosom of the eternal Father, as he gives his life upon the wood, flesh made bread for all, blood outpoured as saving drink from his opened breast. Here we may come throughout the ages to nurse at the wellsprings of Mother Church, Mary-Church, Bride and Body of the divine Bridegroom and eternal Son in whom we are both adopted and espoused—sheer grace!-- listening to the silent Word who sounds more deeply than all speech and letting him be begotten in us, to be born again into the world. The can be a danger in certain quarters today of lapsing into a kind of spiritual xenophobia, an attitude born of a certain pessimism or defeatism about the state of the world and a very “ossified” conception of the spirit that the Church should maintain in her attitude toward this world. Of course, this was already an issue that the Holy Spirit addressed profoundly in the wondrous grace that was the Second Vatican Council, where he launched the Church anew upon the waves of evangelization and mission, of a culture of encounter, dialogue, and cooperation, of urging us, her children, to no longer build up bastions of self-protection in an unqualified condemnation of “modernity” and the “world,” but rather to open eyes and hearts anew to the great drama of mankind both inside and outside of the Church, so that the message of Christ could resound again to every corner of the world and make all things new.
John Paul II, having participated intimately in the Council, knew this deeply, and he also sensed and had confidence in the Spirit’s intentions, speaking of a kind of a “new springtime” that was coming upon the Church, and thus upon the world, in the third millennium. (John XXIII, who convoked the council, had already spoken of it as a kind of renewed Pentecost.) Of course we are witnessing this in countless ways, and our hearts should be open to recognizing these signs and fostering them without fear or reservation. And when we see that the world today is also still struggling with wounds and lies, with secularization or the rejection of God—indeed when we witness corruption and scandal even in the midst of the Church—let us not thereby give up our radical hope in God’s ability to renew both his Church and his world. Let us not retreat into a “Catholic ghetto” of our own making, nor cling to rigid traditionalism, nor liberal revisions of morality or theology, nor close ourselves off into communities that seek only to “protect” what they possess, rather than to open themselves wide, indeed to “go out,” to share it with all people near and far, confident that Christ is truly the Light of the nations, victorious forever in his Resurrection, which is ours as well. Yes, the way of the Spirit for the Church, as Pope Francis said, is “synodal,” that is, the way of journeying together in confidence in the Spirit’s guidance and with certainty in the abiding presence of Christ, a walking that is permeated by openness to listening to others, to each and to all, the little and the great alike, to sharing with confidence and boldness of faith, and to growing into ever deeper communion and dialogue and encounter, both inside and outside of the Church, “that all may come to believe,” and believing, to be saved (1 Tim 2:4-6). Pope Leo XIV, in his Urbi et Orbi message at the beginning of his pontificate, said it far better than I can: God loves us, God loves you all, and evil will not prevail! All of us are in God’s hands. So, let us move forward, without fear, together, hand in hand with God and with one another! We are followers of Christ. Christ goes before us. The world needs his light. Humanity needs him as the bridge that can lead us to God and his love. Help us, one and all, to build bridges through dialogue and encounter, joining together as one people, always at peace. … [You] have chosen me to be the Successor of Peter and to walk together with you as a Church, united, ever pursuing peace and justice, ever seeking to act as men and women faithful to Jesus Christ, in order to proclaim the Gospel without fear, to be missionaries. ... Together, we must look for ways to be a missionary Church, a Church that builds bridges and encourages dialogue, a Church ever open to welcoming, like this Square with its open arms, all those who are in need of our charity, our presence, our readiness to dialogue and our love. i *** NOTE *** ihttps://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/messages/urbi/documents/20250508-prima-benedizione-urbietorbi.html We see the great beauty and drama of this “meeting of yeses” in the history of God’s covenants with the chosen people of Israel, and we see its fullest expression in the dawn of the New Covenant, in the figures of Mary and Jesus. Mary stands before God in her own right, as her own unique person, and yet she also stands before him as a representative of the entire humanity, offering a perfect “yes” (made possible by the fullness of grace bestowed in the Immaculate Conception) to his own “Yes” offered to her throughout her life, and most fully in the Annunciation. Or rather, the fullest spousal mystery is inaugurated at the Aunnunciation of the angel Gabriel, and continues to unfold and mature throughout Mary’s life, climaxing as she stands at the foot of the Cross receiving the outpouring love of the Son-become-Bridegroom, and finds fullest resolution in the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, in whose midst she is at prayer, at Pentecost. Here Mary, as an individual woman, beloved daughter and precious bride and fruitful mother, also becomes the first and fullest realization of the mystery of the Church, of the Mater Ecclesia, the beauteous Catholica. And in her faith, in her “yes,” inseparably that of both Mary and the Church, we are awakened, cradled, and sustained, pronouncing our own “yes” to God from earliest beginnings to final consummation.
And so too, this “yes” of the daughter-bride, of filiation and espousal present in each one of us, melds together in inseparable unity with the deeper mystery: with the “Yes” of the Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, spoken from the first moment of his coming to be in this world to his return to the Father in the Ascension, and in every moment intervening. Indeed, the human-ecclesial “yes” melds together in unity with the deepest reality of all: with the eternal “Yes” of the beloved Son to the love of his Father, with his perfect reception and reciprocation of his gift and the consummate intimacy that is eternally fulfilled between them in the shared kiss and breath of the Holy Spirit. This is the heart of the filial and spousal mystery; this is the origin and consummation of the ecclesial-marian-individual reality of grace operative in the world, in the Church and in each one of us: it is the mystery of the Trinity, the Origin of all things and their super-eminent consummation. From here we have been born, and here we are destined to return, into the very heart of the shared love and intimacy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The term “spousal” also illuminates another dimension of love that was not mentioned above. The word spousal (or spouse) and the word response both come from the French term spose or the Latin spondere, sponsus, meaning “spoken.” Thus, if the mystery of filiation, of childhood before God the Father expresses the spirit of “infancy,” the unspoken origins of our being in God’s pure and gratuitous love, which has willed us into being before any of our own acts of deserving, and in this pure love sustains us always in existence, then the mystery of espousal expresses something that can come about only on the basis of our own response, our own reciprocal love. That “unspoken” word that we are from the mouth of God, uttered in the silence of his creative act, becomes a “spoken” word back to him in the reciprocity of our spousal love. What childhood is in seed, spousal intimacy is in mature expression. What filiation is as the primal gift that constitutes us in our very being and identity, espousal is in the full blossoming of mature love in receiving and giving and in the mutual belonging that this makes possible.
This is a beautiful mystery worthy of much pondering, even as it can only be truly understood, truly known (in the Biblical sense) through the lived-experience of prayer and holiness, of true intimacy with Christ and, in Christ, with the Father. We are children called to become spouses of Christ, and yet our espousal to Christ also introduces us anew into filial communion with the Father, a share in the Son’s own eternal filial intimacy with his Father. And thus these two realities flow into one another and coexist, our relation to Christ in intimate reciprocal love and our relationship in Christ with the Father, our sharing in his own sonship. What does this reveal? It reveals just how deep, wide, and beautiful is the “yes” both of God and of man in their meeting in reciprocal love. It reveals the true depths of the “yes” of faith that responds to the “Yes” of God’s love both in creation and in redemption, and the depths of God’s “Yes” which enables, sustains, and carries to fulfillment our own consent. This “Yes” of God is first spoken in us in our very coming-to-be in this world, in our creation, and it lives always within us as the gift of our enduring identity, which can never be lost: the identity of a beloved child of God. This is the unspoken origin of our being, and it is a reality that is super-elevated and fulfilled in grace (and only in grace) through the reality of baptism which is our adoption into the very life of the Trinity. But so too is this baptismal mystery the inchoate beginnings of our journey to the full flowering of bridehood, of spousal intimacy with the entire Trinity through union with Jesus the Bridegroom-Son through the kiss of the Holy Spirit. |
Joshua ElznerI am a humble disciple of Jesus Christ who seeks to live in prayerful intimacy with the Trinity and in loving service to all through a life devoted to prayer, compassion, and creativity. On this blog I will share the little fruits of my contemplation in the hopes of being of service to you on your own journey of faith. I hope that something I have written draws your heart closer to the One who loves you! Archives
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