Author: Deacon Douglas McManaman

A Reflection on Beauty in Time

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Ever since I retired, I’ve had more time to reflect upon my years as a teacher, and my years of friendship with some of my colleagues, and my good friends. Sometimes I have to drive to a nearby town for an eye appointment, and I’ll have to drive right past the school at which I taught for the past 20 years, and when I do so, I experience a certain euphoria, all as a result of an influx of various memories. 

So much has been forgotten, so many students that have passed through my classroom, the details of so many days, etc., and although I do remember many things, I do think I’ve forgotten more than I remember. But there is a joy there that I experience when I am brought back to that place, among other places.

My good friend is a retired priest, but I often think of my last 30 years with him, visiting him when he was stationed at this or that parish, and then after I was ordained in 2008 I could give him a break from preaching. A teaching colleague started to join me on these weekend visits; he’d cook, I’d preach, and our friend would smoke cigarettes and relax. Those were great memories. And they’re gone.  

I am acutely aware that there was something beautiful in those moments, something I miss, and something I long to recover, to experience again. And I believe this is the root of tradition, which is an attempt to make the past present once again. We believe that doing something the same way, repeating an action, making it ritual, like singing happy birthday and blowing out candles, or opening presents on Christmas morning and having turkey in the evening, allows us to experience once again what we experienced in the past, which now, in the present, we long for. We long to connect to that past, to the people who perhaps are no longer with us. 

But it begins with seeing something in the past that we didn’t quite see back then, or were not explicitly aware of at the time. It seems that time strips away some of the dross of our experiences and leaves us with a memory that is purified, and something now radiates. 

I became more and more aware of this the older I got. I began to realize that this beauty that I saw when looking back, was there at the time, when it was not past, but present, but something prevented me from seeing it at the time, or appreciating it. It was buried underneath a host of baggage–perhaps stress, anxiety, preoccupation with what needs to be done at the moment, marking tests or creating exams, etc. What this means is that today, in the present moment, that element, that nugget of beauty that I will appreciate and see clearly 10 or so years from now (looking back and recalling this present moment), is here now, at this moment. 

So, the question is: Is there a way for me to become aware of it now, so that I can delight in it now, rather than 20 years from now? And so a few years ago I began to really look for it in the present, to look for this element, this beauty, that I know I will see in retrospect.

So I know that one day I’m going to look back and remember teaching Confirmation to these kids, in the church basement either at St Lawrence the Martyr, or Blessed Trinity, or Sacred Heart in Uxbridge, taking their questions, questioning them, and I’m going to miss those moments, so, now, when I am teaching these classes, I am becoming more aware of that hidden element in the here and now. Same with preaching. One day I won’t be preaching anymore, but I’ll recall those times when I was preaching at this Church or that Church, and I’ll see something, something very memorable. I visit the hospitals often, at least once a week. Someday I might be a patient at Southlake hospital, and I’ll recall the years when I’d walk the halls and visit the patients, and I know I will long for those moments again, and I am aware of that now when I am in the hospital visiting patients, walking the halls and stairwells, making my way to their rooms. It’s hard to be attuned to this when we are young, because the young mind is just not focused on the present moment, but on the future. 

And yet, the moments keep on drifting into the past. I am aware that when I discern that element in the present moment, I will often try to grasp on to it and keep it, but I can’t do it. It still drifts into the past. And it is always sad to see it drift away like that. 

And yet, for God, nothing is past. God is the eternal present. So, does that mean when we die and enter into his rest, that all those moments will be recovered in some way? That we will experience the accumulated joy of each one of those moments, in the eternal present? 

I think so. I am quite convinced that this is part of the joy of heaven. We are not to experience the fullness of that joy here, it will always escape our attempts to capture it, but it will be returned to us one hundredfold later on, in eternity. 

Existence in time is a constant dying, drifting into the non-existent past. But Christ conquered death; he rose from the dead, so existence in time is a constant dying, each moment of which will rise again, in glory. Tradition seeks to recover the past, to make it present again, like the Mass, which actually does make present the sacrifice of Calvary. But in heaven, what tradition aims to achieve will be achieved. The joy of heaven will include the joys of each present moment of our existence, and so the deaths of each moment are not permanent; we can look at each moment and instead of saying “good-bye”, we can say: “see you again soon”. 

Now, the gospel reading for the 2nd Sunday of Lent, was the Transfiguration. You know it well, so I’m not going to read it, but I have always been struck by what Peter says there: 

Rabbi, it is good that we are here!
Let us make three tents:
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

And every time I read that, I think of Father Frank Kelly, a homily that he gave way back in the early 90s, and I think it was when we came home from a retreat in New Jersey, we took a bunch of students, and we had Mass on our return. And the translation at that time was: “It is wonderful for us to be here”. That’s a better translation than what we have now.

The Greek word here is not “good” as in “It is good to be here”. The Greek word is kalon. It is kalon for us to be here. 

Aristotle used that word kalon in his Nicomachean Ethics. The word kalon is derived from kaleo, which means attractive, and it is a word used in the context of aesthetics, the study of art and the beautiful. The kalon in Aristotle is best translated as the morally beautiful. 

The gospel really should read: “It is beautiful for us to be here”, or “morally beautiful to be here”. The beauty is the moral atmosphere. This is an experience of beauty, the divine beauty. And it is an aesthetic experience that Peter, James, and John want to perpetuate. They want to keep it from drifting into the past.

Moses and Elijah, they are from the past, but they are present, in the present moment of the Transfiguration, contributing to its beauty; they represent salvation history before Christ. What is past is made present, in the here and now, through Christ. 

God the Son joined a human nature to himself. The eternal, who is Beauty Itself, has entered into time and joined himself to the matter of the universe. Now, Pope John Paul II said often, in joining a human nature, God the Son joined himself as it were to every human being. He is present to every human person. Those who have the theological virtue of faith, those who have allowed Christ the king to reign in their lives, are given the light of grace, the light of faith. They have become aware of that deep and hidden presence, the presence of God the Son within the interior of the soul. That’s the kalon that exists at every moment, within every moment, in the lives of the faithful. That element of beauty that we see when looking back at things that have past is the kalon of the divine presence, stripped of the dross that acted as a distraction at the time. Our life is transfigured in Christ, right now, but there is so much that eclipses the radiance that the present moment contains. Later on, our memories of these events unveil the kalon so that we have a minor transfiguration experience.

To find that experience in the present, underneath the current dross that clouds it, we need to learn to be present. To be present is to be in the present. And to be present is a skill. It is interesting how the two words are akin: present and presence. To be present to another is to be in the presence of another, to be aware of their presence–not just their position in space. To be in the here and now, focused on the person before us. It is easy to be focused on a great person, but being present to the lowest of the low, that’s a skill. It requires an ability to see something in that person that is well disguised. Mother Teresa always spoke of the poor as Jesus’ disguise. 

Now, the Greeks distinguish two kinds of time: chronos time and kairos time. Kairos is used over 80 times in the New Testament, and it refers to a season, such as harvest time. Chronos time is measured time, quantified into an hour, or a minute. Chronos time moves outside of us. The clock is ticking. The present moment, the now, is here instantaneously and then quickly drifts into the past, always escaping us. 

However, we can be “within time”, that is, in time. We can move in it. If we move in it, then it is always now. As an analogy: think of a spacecraft. If we are outside the spacecraft, it zooms by us. If we are inside the spacecraft, we move along with it. Kairos time is time that we are in, and so it is always present. 

But, chronos time is real, and it makes demands on us. We have an appointment and so we have to move on. Peter, James, and John got a taste of the kairos time that is in heaven, but chronos time made demands on them. The experience of the transfiguration came to an end and they had to come down from the mountain. 

Chronos time and kairos time are simultaneous. Chronos time says I have an appointment at 10 o’clock, so I have to take leave of my friends and make my way there. But when I get to the doctor’s office, I have to be present to the doctor, pay attention to him, be a presence to him and allow him to be a presence to me. But, even the trip to the doctors, the drive, or the bus ride, is not meant to be pure chronos. I must be present to the beauty of the present moment. The view outside the window, or to the people on the subway, the walk to the doctor’s office, or whatever. 

God is outside of time, not subject to the passing of time, but time exists, and God is intimately present within all that exists, as the First Cause of all that exists. God, who is Beauty Itself, is present in each moment of time.

And my students feel it. The first assignment that I give to my Niagara University students in January is to have them write out a short essay on how it is they got to where they are now, that is, how they got to teachers college. Reading their personal stories of how they got to this point is really an exhilarating experience. Their stories are so unique and so rich in content, and there is often some hero in their lives, either their parents, who came to Canada under adverse circumstances but struggled and overcame these obstacles through faith, trust in God, and hard work, or a great and unknown teacher in their lives who had a profound influence on the student as a result of the way that teacher related to her students, with great patience and perseverance, or some priest in their lives. etc. Many of them have very positive memories of their school years. Each story from each student is so different, but each one is usually so uplifting and exhilarating. And it is so easy to see the hand of divine providence in their lives, leading them to where they are now. 

Now, it is amazing how many of these prospective teachers drifted from the faith, but returned, and it was the result of memories that were gradually uncovered, a feeling like something was lost, a world, and they rediscovered it. 

The transfiguration was really a gift given to Peter, James, and John, to strengthen them for the impending trauma of Christ’s passion, and the memories we create for our students, for young people in the parish, are ordered to the same end, to strengthen them for the impending sufferings and difficulties and traumas that await them.  

It is a ministry ordered to the creation of memories. I was going over these ideas with a patient of mine at the hospital, a young lady who suffers from clinical depression. I’ve been visiting her for many years now. Certain months of the year are very difficult for her. But I was telling her about the themes of this retreat.

I did ask her if she has any memories that bring her a sense of peace, and she said she had very few if any. And of course, she suffers from depression. When I spoke of this, she was reminded of Erik Erickson, the final stage of psychosocial development, the stage of integrity vs despair. Now, it is not quite the same in her case, because the stage of despair results from the fact that one sees the choices that one has made, and the despair is the result of those bad choices. Clinical depression is not something that results from bad moral choices. It is a brain disease. But I did give her something to think about. This is what I said:

We believe that God the Son joined a human nature and entered into human suffering. In joining himself to every man, he is especially present in the depths of our suffering and darkness. We don’t suffer alone, although it may often feel that we do. But we don’t. And this lady has a special cross to bear, as do all those who suffer from clinical depression. 

And they must feel like they’ve been ripped off terribly. Others have their health, both mental and physical, they are privileged, brought up in a family that is well off, they travel and they’ve gone to university, they’re working. Life is tremendous. And here she is, this girl, in and out of mental health wards all her life. Life seems very unfair. But of course, our God is a God of justice. He balances the scales, and the divine justice has been revealed as the divine mercy. I told her that when you stand before God at the end of your life, and you see and grasp the meaning of your entire life from God’s point of view, that is, when you see your life in the light of Christ and the paschal mystery, and you reflect on the prospect of doing it all again, you will not want to change anything. She reacted to that and said she just cannot imagine that and doubts very much that she would not want anything changed. Nevertheless, that is the case, because she will see that Christ was present all along in the depths of that suffering, that her depression was a special sharing in the mental anguish of Christ that he endured throughout his life, especially on Holy Thursday night. She will see how her suffering has imprinted on her the image of the suffering Christ, and friendships are based on common qualities, and she’ll see how much her life has in common with Christ’s life, unlike the life of prosperity and privilege. She can’t see that now, but she will in eternity. But, she can begin to look now, to reflect upon her life in that light and perhaps begin to see it, begin to discover the suffering Christ in the midst of that darkness.

But the suffering involved in clinical depression is deep, but the Lord is there nonetheless. The specific cross given to such a person may involve being unable to detect the peace of his presence at any level, but he is there nevertheless, and one day this person will see it and delight in it, and see what it has done for her, how that suffering has configured her to the beautiful image of Christ crucified. And so the scales will be balanced in her favor.

A Season of Irony

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Years ago I was struck by something Gregory of Nyssa wrote in a Sermon on the Beatitudes: 

What more humble for the King of creation than to share in our poor nature? The Ruler of rulers, the Lord of lords puts on voluntarily the garb of servitude. The Judge of all things becomes a subject of governors; the Lord of creation dwells in a cave; He who holds the universe in His hands finds no place in the inn, but is cast aside into the manger of irrational beasts. The perfectly Pure accepts the filth of human nature, and after going through all our poverty passes on to the experience of death. …Life tastes death; the Judge is brought to judgement; the Lord of the life of all creatures is sentenced by the judge; the King of all heavenly powers does not push aside the hands of the executioners (Sermon 1, The Beatitudes).

Notice the irony in this. Christmas, the birth of Christ, is a season of irony. For this reason, it is a season of humour; for it is irony that makes us laugh. That’s what makes good comedians, namely, an ability to see and make explicit the irony in everyday situations. Consider the nick names kids give one another; they are often very funny because they are ironic: the tall kid is called ‘shorty’, the short one is called stretch, the weak and skinny kid is ‘hercules’, and they called me “slim”.   

If we stand back and think about the irony in the mystery of the Incarnation, it is rather funny. God, who is all powerful, immaterial, and indestructible, becomes flesh; God, who is eternal, is born in time; God, who is all powerful and independent, becomes a weak and vulnerable baby dependent upon a mother and father; God who is the judge of all is judged by a mere human being; God who is Life Itself dies on a cross. This is irony, and there is joyful humour in this. It is as if God is playing a joke on us, one serious to be sure, but a joke nonetheless–and it is serious because love is serious. 

The word ‘humor’ comes from the Latin humous, which means soil or dirt. The word ‘human’ is also derived from the same root, because we came from dust and to dust we shall return. And the word ‘humility’ has the same origin, for the humble know they are dust and ashes and they have their feet planted firmly on the ground–they do not walk high and mighty; they realize they are just flesh and blood and are everywhere prone to error. These three words (human, humility, humour) are clearly related. The more humble you are, the more human you are, and the more you are able to laugh, especially at yourself.  

This is a problem with our notion of holiness. In movies, saints are almost always depicted as overly serious, heavy, not disposed to laughter, as if laughter is offensive to God. But a truly holy person sees the irony in life in light of the divine irony, which is why truly holy people laugh a lot. Above all, they can laugh at themselves, because they take themselves lightly. I always emphasize to couples taking Marriage Prep that being able to laugh at yourself and taking yourself lightly is the key to conflict resolution–those who cannot laugh at themselves, who take themselves too seriously, will indeed have marital difficulties. 

God is joy itself, and you and I are called to enter into that joy, to enter into the divine humour. Grace gives us the eyes to see life’s irony so that we can begin to laugh with God. We cannot laugh, however, if we are afraid, and there is a great deal of fear in people’s lives. Inordinate fear can cause us to do things that only make a mess out of our lives and bring chaos to the lives of others. Human beings are limited by matter, by flesh and blood. Our abilities and our knowledge in particular are terribly limited. When we experience those limits, we typically begin to fear, because we realize there is very little that is in our control, and then we are tempted to make choices that are contrary to the limits that the moral law imposes upon us. In other words, we are tempted to sin, to take matters into our own hands. But this is where we have to trust; for the spiritual life is about learning to trust and to fear less and less. Christians have a unique advantage here, because we have the example of divine irony: God is so powerful that he can defeat the one enemy that man could not hope to defeat, namely sin and death, and he does so not through power, but weakness: the weakness of a child, the weakness of poverty, the weakness of a bad reputation (as a result of sharing table fellowship with tax collectors, sinners, and prostitutes), and the weakness of death on a cross. He rose from the dead. And he gives us his very self under the appearance of ordinary bread–more irony; God, who is extraordinary, allows himself to be consumed under the appearance of ordinary bread, in order to strengthen us, in order to dwell within us. God, who cannot be contained, allows us to contain him. So why are we afraid? “If God is for us, who can be against us (Rm 8, 31). 

Finally, the angel says to Joseph in a dream: “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. The child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit”. Why in a dream? The reason is that when we are sleeping, we are no longer in control. And if we are not in control, we cannot screw things up. We are most disposed to listen when we are not in control. And that’s why God often does speak to us in dreams. But the message in this is that we must learn to relinquish control, more and more, when we are not sleeping, but awake. The more we relinquish control and allow God to be God, the more we will see miracles. We see so few miracles because we insist on managing things ourselves, managing other people, and driving them away in the process. But the more we learn to trust him and listen in silence, the more we will hear him speak to us, and like Joseph, we will know what to do, where to go, and how to get there.

Thoughts on God as Pure Act of Being and Atheism

Deacon D. McManaman

God is pure act of existence. But what does this mean?  I can look at you and form a concept, an idea of what you are. In other words, I grasp something of your nature, i.e., you are a human kind of being, you have size and affective qualities, you have certain abilities and potentialities very similar and different from other kinds of beings. But I also apprehend that you exist, which is a different apprehension than the first (the apprehension of the kind of being you are). Your existence is intelligible, but I cannot form a concept of it–as I can form a concept of your nature, the kind of person you are. You are a certain kind of being that “has an act of existence”, but existence does not belong to your nature. Existence is an “act” that you have, while “human”, for example, is “what” you are (not what you have). The key point here is that your existence is not a concept; it is, nonetheless, intelligible. 

God is not a composite of essence and existence (as are you), rather, his essence is to exist. He does not “have” existence; rather, he is his own act of existing. And so God is intelligible, but we cannot form a concept or idea of God. And because God is pure act of existence, he is pure goodness and beauty, because goodness and beauty are properties of being. 

And so we need to be careful with confusing the worship of God with the worship of a conceptual framework. As pure act of being, God is intimately present to whatever has existence; God is more intimately present to you than you are to you. Being is the most interior aspect of a thing, and so God, who is the first existential and preservative cause of your being, is, of all that is within you, the most interior. How you relate to God, who is goodness itself and beauty itself, is not always clear to you, certainly not immediately clear. It becomes increasingly manifest in your dealings with other goods, such as human goods or human persons. 

The atheist typically rejects a conceptual framework, as opposed to God himself. Even the use of “himself” is dangerous because it brings God into a conceptual circle. This is not to say that it is false, but it can be misleading. God is in many ways “himself” and “herself” and infinitely more, while at the same time God is absolutely simple, for there is nothing simpler than “being itself”. 

And so when someone says he or she is an “atheist”, we have to ask what that means precisely. It very often does not mean that God is rejected–especially if the atheist has a degree of wisdom. It is usually a conceptual framework that is rejected, for a variety of reasons. The good news is that God is not a concept. God is intelligible, infinitely knowable, and incomprehensible. We believe he revealed himself in history, and this is where the construction of an elaborate conceptual framework begins, but this religious conceptual frame of mind, although not necessarily false, is always subject to reform and constant editing. God, however, is always infinitely larger than this religious conceptual framework. That is why openness to and dialogue with other religions and denominations is of the utmost importance. 

Fear and Primitive Reasoning

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God (Is 35, 4)

So much of what goes wrong in the world has its roots in fear. And there is so much about this world today that gives rise to fear; but this life is really about learning to depend upon God, that is, learning to fear less (fearless), and the way to do that is first to become increasingly aware that independence is relative and ultimately an illusion, and that we depend on God ultimately, and second to actually begin to rely on God. We certainly depend on one another, but ultimately everyone depends on God. And the more we surrender our lives to God, the more we learn through our own experience that God really is intimately involved in everything that happens to us and that nothing happens outside of his providential control. However, although human beings really do make a mess out of their lives when they take matters into their own hands instead of relying on God, they are still wrapped up and surrounded by God’s providence.  

My spiritual director would always say to me: “Fear is useless, what is needed is trust”. And fear is useless, at least fear without trust, because we all experience our radical limitations, but without trust we are tempted to cross those limits, that is, moral limits, and then we do things that we know to be wrong, like lying under oath, or stealing, or undermining the reputation of another, plotting to bring others down, etc. We make every effort to create an environment that is safe for ourselves, and this soon becomes a machination process in which we are willing to sideline those who get in our way. That injustice generates resentment in others, and such wounds can stay with a person all throughout his or her life. And soon everybody is carrying around a soul riddled with bullet holes, and the result is that we only think of ourselves, sort of like having a toothache–you can’t think of anything other than your own pain. 

But God does allow suffering into our lives. He does not impose it on us, but He does allow it; for suffering is the opportunity God gives us to depend on Him, to trust Him more fully, to place ourselves in His hands. When we do, we can be assured that he will act, but God does tend to “take his time”, not our time. And so, we have to be patient. That’s the problem with living in a fast-paced society–we are disposed to want things done quickly, and that just does not happen with God. The reason is that love is patient, and God is love, and he calls us to be patient: “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains” (Jm 5, 7).  Suffering and moments of darkness are symbolized here by the image of early and late rains–there is no “precious fruit of the earth” without that suffering. 

In my experience, most people, even religious people, believe that suffering, hardship, and struggles are anomalies. Religious people in particular often assume that if we have a relationship with God, all will be smooth and relatively easy, so that if suffering enters our life, that must mean that our relationship with God has somehow been broken by something we did, some sin that we committed. This is how Israel interpreted her own suffering and hardship on a national level; on an individual level, it was assumed that those who were poor, lame, deaf or blind, etc., were forsaken by God by virtue of some ancestral or personal sin. This is a primitive way of trying to make sense out of suffering. Jesus, however, challenged this in the gospel of John: “As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him’” (Jn 9, 1-3).

Unfortunately, many people still tend to think this way, because they want to make sense out of suffering, and if I can convince myself that a person is suffering because of something sinful he has done, well then I don’t feel so bad–on some level I convince myself that he deserves it. If we carefully read the book of Job, we see that Job’s friends were reasoning precisely along these lines, which is why in the end God rebuked them for this (See Jb 42, 7-9).  

We have to be very careful with this kind of reasoning, which is still rather prevalent. Some people take many sections of the Old Testament literally and believe that God does in fact destroy otherwise innocent people (i.e., Amalekite children, David’s infant son, etc.) as a punishment for the sins committed by others. We have to keep in mind that Israel, in her infancy, thought as a child does, namely, egocentrically: if something bad is happening to a child, for example, if the child is being abused by a parent, or the child’s parents are going through a separation and divorce, that child believes this is all happening because “I am bad”. It takes years for a person to escape from this mythology–and he or she may need help (a trained therapist) to overcome such harmful and subconscious beliefs, otherwise they may carry that conviction into their adult lives, feeling and believing on some level that they are deeply flawed, and without knowing why. Such people typically carry around a great deal of anger. We see precisely this kind of thinking on a national level in the Hebrew Scriptures, but Israel is a nation in history, a nation that through time grew in her understanding of God as a result of that historical relationship. The way Israel thinks about herself and God later in her history is very different from the way she thought earlier.

However, God reveals his true face in the Incarnation of the Son, that is, in the Person of Christ. God’s response to human sin was pure grace. He does not impose suffering but enters into human suffering, for he joined a human nature to himself and entered into our darkness, so that when we suffer, we may find him in the midst of that suffering. He came to sanctify our suffering and death, to inject it with his life. That is why the Old Testament must always be read in the light of the New, that is, in the light of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. 

Finally, John the Baptist, the greatest of those born of women, is suffering in the darkness of a prison cell, awaiting his execution. He does not suffer by virtue of some sin; rather, he is suffering because of his heroic virtue, that is, his decision to speak out against Herod, who after visiting his brother in Rome, seduced his wife and married her after dismissing his own wife. John rebuked Herod for this, and Herod responded by throwing him into the dungeons of the fortress of Machaerus, near the Dead Sea. In that darkness, John was tempted to doubt. Initially, he pointed out rather definitively that Jesus was the lamb of God, but in this dark and final period in prison, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus: “Are you the One who is to come, or, must we go on expecting another?” Jesus sent John’s disciples back with the evidence: the blind are given their sight, the lame are walking, lepers are being cleansed, the deaf are hearing, and the dead are being raised and the poor are receiving the good news. What Isaiah prophesied in the first reading is being fulfilled in the Person of Christ himself. And if the lame, the poor, the sick, the deaf, etc., were thought to be forsaken, abandoned, and rejected by God, then what is happening here can only be interpreted as a vindication of the poor, that the kingdom of God has come upon them in the Person of Christ. He overthrows the kingdom of darkness, and the true face of God is being revealed not a God who punishes retributively,[1] but a God who forgives and loves, who loves us so much that he will take on our sufferings, join us in our deepest darkness so that we may not suffer alone. He enters into the worst possible darkness that a person can experience: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”. He tastes the furthest extremity of God forsakenness, the depths of hell, in order to fill it with his light and love. That is the good news of our salvation. 

1. When the New Testament speaks of divine punishment, the Greek word employed is kolasis, which is best translated as “chastisement”. Timoria is the Greek word for retribution or retributive punishment, but we do not find this word in the New Testament associated with divine punishment. Kolasis, on the contrary, is a horticultural term that refers to pruning, as in pruning a plant. One prunes a plant for the good of the plant. In other words, divine punishment is ordered to the good of the “chastised” and is consistent with the divine love.

    Perfect Victory

    Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Advent
    https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_437perfectvictory.html
    Deacon Douglas McManaman

    Anyone who uses social media and follows American politics is acutely aware of how divided we have become as a nation. This division is also evident in a number of Catholic journals, especially those that allow comments. YouTube videos often bear the legend “so and so gets humiliated”, or “____________ gets schooled by __________”, or crushed, demolished, destroyed, and so on. Such videos are not about listening to the finer points of an issue in order to inch our way closer to the truth; rather, the attitude is so often “demolish the enemy”, and the enemy, needless to say, are those who disagree with us. In the end, victory leaves us with one apparent winner and one loser; the winner gloats, and the loser is humiliated and goes off with his proverbial tail between his legs. Moreover, there is a tremendous lack of civility today on social media, especially when it comes to politics. 

    However, the first reading for the 2nd Sunday of Advent provides a very different vision of what a genuine victory is. I’m referring specifically to the last section of the first reading from Isaiah (11, 6-8):  

    The wolf shall live with the lamb,
    the leopard shall lie down with the baby goat,
    the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
    and a little child shall lead them.
    The cow and the bear shall graze,
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
    The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the den of the venomous snake.

    In short, no harm shall come from those who were at one time the enemy to be feared. This reading from Isaiah is a vision of the eschatological harmony that we can look forward to. And it is an entirely different vision of victory than what we typically understand by that word. There will not be one winner standing over the defeated enemy; rather, the enemies have been changed, that is, completely transformed. In short, there will be no more enemies; for they will have ceased to be such. That’s precisely what Christ’s victory is, which is the greatest possible victory. 

    I debated a lot when I was younger, and at times those debates got very heated. Back then, I was quite convinced that I won those debates, but my opponents were equally certain they did. In formal debates, it is the audience that decides the winner. If you came to the debate favoring a particular side, but the other side changed your mind, you indicate that at the end and the one who turned more people around to their side is the winner–and there is only one winner and one loser. 

    But is it possible to have two winners? Most people would say no, but it is possible. I know that in my case, on a number of occasions in my late 50s and especially in recent years, after reflecting upon certain issues for decades, I have said to myself more than once: “Gosh, so and so was right 35 years ago when I argued with him on this issue”, and “I think that person was right 20 years ago when we debated that issue”. This has happened many times in recent years, only because I still study. And it’s a marvelous experience to be sure, not unpleasant in any way, but there’s no way of getting in contact with these people to tell them: “Hey, remember the debate we had 35 years ago. You were right all along. It just took me 35 years to see it.” 

    In this case, we have two winners. And why did it take so long? Because human knowing is very limited; human intelligence is sluggish, and we depend so much on experience (empirical data), which takes time. Certain epistemic conditions were not in place at a specific point in our personal history, but after three decades, if and when those conditions are established, we see what we could not see earlier. That’s a true victory, when two opposing parties finally see eye to eye. And again, that’s why synodal listening is so important. Pope Francis understood something of the fundamentals of a sound theory of knowledge, and Pope Leo XIV continues to emphasize this essential aspect of the Church as “listening Church”. If Christ is victorious, it can only be a perfect victory, one that in the end leaves no enemies, a victory in which the enemy is entirely transformed: “Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2, 9-11).

    The book of Revelation also envisions the same thing. The kings of the earth are depicted as opponents of God, for they side with the beast and wage war against Christ at Armageddon (Rev 16, 16), but in chapter 21, verse 24, we read: “The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and to it the kings of the earth will bring their treasure.” Christ’s victory involves the transformation of the kings of the earth, from enemies to worshippers who adore the Lamb–a perfect victory.

    And we have a role to play in this eschatological state of affairs. Christ does not usher in the kingdom of God without us. We have to do our part and work for peace. We can move this world forward or we can hold things back. It all depends on the attitude we adopt. And it begins in the ordinary ways we relate to people who do not think like we do, whether they are on the right or the left, inside the Church or on the outside. How we talk and how we listen is important. People throw around the word “truth” rather loosely, but knowledge is very hard to achieve, and “truth” is for the most part truth as we currently see it, which implies that “truth” is, for the most part, tentative. The ones who  seem to appreciate this fact are scientists who must always test their hypotheses. Outside of that circle, people tend to speak with a rhetoric of certainty. 

    In my last 20 years of teaching, close to 40% of my students were Muslim. Around 2013, I started to show the film Dancing in Jaffa–it was a Muslim girl who urged me to purchase the film and show it. The film is about a world champion ballroom dancer, Pierre Dulaine, who returns to Jaffa, Israel, where he grew up 30 years earlier, and his goal was to teach ballroom dancing to Jewish and Palestinian kids, and then to have them dance together, boy with girl, but one must be Jewish and the other Palestinian. He thought this was going to be a cakewalk, but it proved to be much more challenging than he realized–he was ready to quit on a number of occasions; many kids simply refused to dance with a Jew, or dance with a Palestinian. They just would not have it; the prejudice was deep and ingrained. But some were willing to try it, and the film has a beautiful ending, with the 11 year old Jewish and Palestinian dance couples in a competition between schools. It’s a very moving and hopeful film. 

    But it does give us a glimpse of how difficult it is to overcome deep-seated prejudice, in particular prejudice that has been picked up from parents and religious communities. And that prejudice is not only there in the Middle East, it is here too in North America. The way some Catholics still talk about Protestants and the way some Protestants still talk about Catholics, or Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, and of course the way Liberals talk about Conservatives and Conservatives talk about Liberals strongly suggests that we really have a long way to go and that we are probably many centuries away from true and lasting peace. But that is our task, and we especially are responsible for taking the lead since we claim to worship the Prince of Peace, who was victorious over sin and death not through any kind of aggression, military or otherwise, but through the divine weakness, Christ’s birth in poverty and his death on the cross.    

    A Brief Note on Marriage and Celibacy

    Deacon Douglas McManaman

    In some circles, celibacy continues to be described as “undivided love for Christ and His Church”[1]. And given peoples’ tendency to inference rather quickly, without a great deal of care, it is natural for most people to conclude that those who are not celibate can at best only hope to achieve a divided love for Christ and His Church. After all, St. Paul seems to imply as much in the seventh chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians: “Brothers and sisters: I should like you to be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But a married man is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided. An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit. A married woman, on the other hand, is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose a restraint upon you, but for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction” (32-35).

    Such an inference, however, is seriously problematic given the sixth beatitude: “Blessed are the pure in heart; they shall see God”. A pure heart (katharoi te kardia) is an unmixed heart, that is, a heart that loves undividedly, and of course this beatitude has a much larger and wider scope than would: “Blessed are the celibate”; for purity of heart is a fundamental characteristic of every genuine Christian, while celibacy is not. 

    Consider a genuinely dedicated priest or bishop, or even a sister of a congregation. The priest or bishop is often busy with administrative duties (paying bills, building churches, repairs, etc.)—not to mention various other pastoral duties–, and a Missionary of Charity, for example, is often busy with serving the needs of the poorest of the poor, i.e. making baby formula, feeding a dying man, etc. It would hardly be fitting to refer to the bishop’s love as divided between administrative work and the Lord, or a Missionary Sister’s love as divided between her love and service of the poorest of the poor and her love of the Lord. Rather, the very work they do is part and parcel of their love of God; it is the very expression of that love. The priest serves God by serving the parish in the many and varied ways this service takes shape, just as the Missionary Sister of Charity serves God when she cleans the dirty apartment of a poor woman living on her own in the Bronx (Mt 25, 31-46). And in precisely the same way, Christian married men and women are not, by virtue of their married state, leading divided lives with a divided heart; rather, their love for one another, their labor ordered to the good of the household, the sacrifices involved in raising their children and supporting one another are all part and parcel of their love of and devotion to God,  the very expression of that love. 

    Returning to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, it should be emphasized that the section quoted above is only a small portion of the entire chapter, and taken out of its larger context one easily comes away with the impression that the celibate life is genuinely religious, while the married state is not. Such an interpretation, however, would be contrary to Paul’s overall teaching on marriage. In the larger context of this chapter, we see that Paul believes we are in the last period of salvation history. He refers to his own time as a time of distress, which in apocalyptic literature, is said to precede the time of the Second Coming of Christ. Paul writes: “So this is what I think best because of the present distress: that it is a good thing for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek a separation. Are you free of a wife? Then do not look for a wife…. I tell you, brothers, the time is running out” (26-27; 29). 

    This is hardly the kind of advice we would give to young people today. What Paul says about those who are married and those who are not must be read in this context, otherwise we come away with the impression that marriage has little if anything to do with serving the Lord. 

    But Christ’s love for his Church is a conjugal love, and the love of a baptized husband for his baptized wife is that very same love, and vice versa. Marriage is a sacrament, a sacred sign that contains what it signifies, and it signifies the paschal mystery; for just as God called Abraham to leave (to be ‘set apart from’) the land of Ur and go to the land that He will lead him to, and just as God called Israel to leave Egypt behind (to be ‘set apart from’) with its pantheon of false gods, and just as Jesus leaves this world behind in order to go to the Father–that is, he consecrates himself (sets himself apart. See Jn 17, 19)—, so too in matrimony, the two are called to leave behind a world closed in upon itself; they are consecrated, that is, set apart, for they are called to leave behind their comfortable world of independence and self-sufficiency, to be given over to another, to belong completely to one another, in order to become part of something larger than their own individual selves, namely, the one flesh institution that is their marriage. The couple relinquish their individual lives; they are no longer two individuals with their own independent existence; rather, they have become one body, a symbol of the Church who is one body with Christ the Bridegroom.

    The lives of a married couple are a witness of Christ’s love for his Church and the Church’s ever expanding response to that love; they witness to that love in their sacrificial love for one another and for the children who are the fruit of that marriage–and raising children well demands a tremendously sacrificial love, especially today–in fact, given the circumstance in which couples find themselves in the 21st century, one could well argue that in some cases marriage and family life demand a far greater sacrificial disposition than does celibate life, given the increased cost of living, the housing crisis, food prices, inflation, job insecurity, time constraints, etc. In giving themselves irrevocably and exclusively to one another, without knowing what lies ahead, a young couple die to their own individual plans, they die to a life directed by their own individual wills, and in doing so, they find life; for they have become a larger reality. The heart of Christ is pure and undivided, yet the love that Christ has for us (the Church) is not in competition with his love for God the Father; rather, the two are one and the same. Matrimony as a sign of the very love that Christ has for his Bride is the ultimate meaning of marriage. In short, married love is undivided love for Christ and his Church. 

    Certain habits of thinking, however, are clearly rooted in a centuries old anthropological dualism that extends all the way back to the patristic era in which there was indeed an “embarrassment, suspicion, antipathy and abhorrence of sexuality”, an attitude that permeated hellenic culture, and of course that antipathy affected their evaluation of marriage itself.[2] I refer, of course, to the dualism that holds that the true self is the immaterial or noetic aspect of the human person, which is said to be in continual conflict with the material aspect (the body and the emotions). When such a dualism becomes a conceptual framework, other dualisms are spawned, such as a two-tiered understanding of nature and grace,[3] or the dualism of heaven versus earth (i.e., our primary purpose is to get to heaven, and not to work for justice and the emancipation of the oppressed),[4] or the dualism we’ve been discussing, that between married life versus religious (holy) life. 

    In the patristic era, marriage was allowed, but it was not encouraged. It was Jerome who said that the saving grace of marriage (or sexual intercourse) was that it produced virgins: “I praise wedlock, I praise marriage, but it is because they give me virgins. I gather the rose from the thorns, the gold from the earth, the pearl from the shell” (Letter 22, 20). Moreover, the parable of the sower was typically interpreted allegorically in a way that says a great deal about how married life was regarded at the time; the seed which fell on good soil bore fruit: some one hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold. The seed that produced one hundredfold was said to represent martyrdom, the seed that produced sixtyfold represents virginity, and finally the seed that produced thirtyfold was said to represent marriage–martyrdom was obviously the best, followed by virginity, and at the bottom of the hierarchy was married life; for martyrdom involves the sacrifice of the entire body, virginity involves the perpetual sacrifice of the sexual act, while marriage apparently involves neither, but a capitulation to the flesh.[5] 

    Although marriage is not quite regarded in such a negative light today, we still have not entirely freed ourselves from every residue of this ancient worldview, and in light of the Hebrew understanding of knowledge as experience, perhaps we will not do so until we return to the ancient custom that the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches never relinquished, namely that married men can be ordained as priests. Whatever the case may be, the belief that things will eventually work out well as long as we continue to speak as we’ve always spoken and do what we’ve always done, without any significant change in the pre-conciliar way that many have been taught to regard the world and its relationship to the kingdom of God, might very well be denial, and denial has never accomplished much beyond impeding healing and growth. 

    Notes

    1. Letter from the Holy Father Leo XIV to the Archdiocesan Major Seminary of “San Carlos y San Marcelo” in Trujillo, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of its founding, 05.11.2025).

    2. Donald F. Winslow. “Sex and Anti-sex in the Early Church Fathers” in Male and Female: Christian Approaches to Sexuality. Edited by Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse and Urban T. Holmes, III. p. 30.

    3. Peter Fransen S. J. writes: ““In the spirituality commonly met with in convents and religious writings, a distinction is drawn between the purely natural human values in our life and the “supernatural” ones. The natural values are treated as having little or no consequence unless they are sanctified by a special “good intention,” which has to be superimposed on them. The joy of watching a glorious sunset has no supernatural value unless I offer it up to God. A mother loves her children–but that is normal. A man goes to his office–but that is as it should be. If these activities and states are to have any value before God, more especially, if there is to be any “merit” in them in the sight of God, something must be added, namely, a “good intention.” A little more and these people would declare that nothing but the exceptional, the uncommon, counts for anything in God’s eyes. Hence they embrace a constrained spirituality that is not met with in the life of Christ or in the lives of most saints. 

    Of course, this is a wrong notion of the supernatural, the spiritual. The Germans have a name for it: the doctrine of the two stories. On the ground floor are the service quarters, on the top the drawing rooms. God does not deign to appear on the ground floor; He dwells only in the drawing rooms! The truth is that our divinization is also our humanization. We have been made children of God in a renovated humanity. God is pleased with our courtesy to others as much as with our prayers, with our enjoyment of nature as much as with our rejoicing in His glory, with our human friendships as much as with our faith, with our justice and loyalty as much as with our charity–so long as we act with the heart of a child of God. No special intention is required for the purpose.” The New Life of Grace. Translated from the Flemish by Georges Dupont, S. J. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1971, p. 135. Further along, he writes: “The so-called “pure nature,” that is, a human existence in which divine grace has no part to act, has never existed. The call to grace,…owes its origin to the divine presence in our actual history.” Ibid.,  p 156.

    4. Fransen writes: “Love for God is greatly threatened when the neighbor is not loved. Some “pious souls” drink avidly the cup of maudlin devotions while indulging their own sweet will, and shutting their hearts upon the neighbor. A companion of St. Ignatius, and for many years his secretary, vented one day his long experience in the government of the religious in the sarcastic remark: “Why must ‘pious’ religious be those who are the most intractable, the most wayward and self-willed men? “Piety” meets with scant sympathy on the part of many outsiders, not because these people foster an aversion to fellowmen who consecrate themselves to God, but because such a consecration seems to serve for a cloak for hardheartedness, indifference and inhumanity. In their eyes, “love for God” appears either a pretext for grim severity, or a form of escapism from real life, a flight from the simple solid human virtues, such as courtesy, tact, sincerity and honor.” Ibid., p 304

     5. Op.cit., Winslow, p. 33-34. 

    The Unique Charism of the Chaplain

    (Talk given to High School Chaplains, St. Bonaventure Church, Toronto, November 13, 2025)
    Deacon Doug McManaman

    It’s a real honor to be given this opportunity to speak to all of you this afternoon. And it’s been delightful to have spent these past few weeks thinking back over my 32 and a half years as a high school religion teacher and reflecting on the high school chaplains that have been a real support in my life. There is no doubt in my mind that the special charism of the high school chaplain is the ability to listen to people. And there is so much more to this charism than we tend to think. Most people think of listening as sitting back and not doing anything per se, something purely passive, but listening is really activity of the highest order, but most importantly, it is an activity that requires a host of conditions that only certain kinds of experience can put in place. Since we are given the charisms we need to live out the vocation that is ours, it is obvious to me that the Lord did not call me to chaplaincy in my years as a teacher, especially my early years; I didn’t have the gifts and the specific charism that are so essential for a chaplain. That charism developed slowly and came later as I was called to the diaconate, and this process of acquiring the necessary conditions in order to hear is still ongoing in my life, and will be until the very end.  

    My first teaching assignment was in the Jane and Finch area of Toronto, Regina Pacis Secondary School, which was founded by Father Gerald Fitzgerald CSSp. He envisioned a school in Jane and Finch that would serve those students who could not get accepted at the nearest Catholic high school, and I came on board in 1987. Father Fitz retired shortly thereafter, which was when they hired a Salesian priest as our school chaplain, Father Dave Sajdak SDB, and so it was at this time that I was introduced to the spirituality of St. John Bosco. When students would ask Father Dave what he actually does at the school, his answer was always: “I just hang out. That’s it. I walk around, and I talk to students, teachers, and administrators”. And of course he was a very significant presence in the school, and he was a very good listener, much better than I was at the time. When he left, Patty Ann Dennis, was hired to take his place, and she too was a great presence in the school, a very humble woman who easily recognized the students’ gifts and tapped into them, bringing out the best in them. 

    But there was one year early on after she left for another school board when I was asked to take on one period of chaplaincy. And so I did. During that year, with a period of chaplaincy, I recall spending a lot of time with a Vice Principal whose father had just died, and who was also having a very difficult time with a small group of staff who became rather bitter and cynical–because it was a very difficult school to teach in. In the heart of Jane and Finch, one needed a great deal more patience than one would need in almost any other school, and after a while, some teachers just got burned out and wanted to change that school into a school for the advanced level–but that’s not what the original mission of the school was, and so they became very cynical, cantankerous, and bitter. This Vice Principal, however, was a very good man, but with the death of his father and having to deal with a small group of cynics, he was becoming increasingly disillusioned, frustrated, and perhaps cynical himself, which is why I did spend a great deal of time in his office that year, just listening to him. But one day I said to him: “I’ve been coming down here all week, and I’ve seen this student sitting there for a couple of days now, and that student the other day. These are good kids. What’s going on?” I cannot recall the details, but let’s just say he made it clear to me that a good number of students were being sent down for the silliest reasons. And so I decided to challenge this Vice Principal, who I really liked. I said to him: “Why do you put up with this nonsense? Why don’t you challenge us at staff meetings? Why don’t you say something? You guys say nothing, you go on as if everything is okay, and you keep all this crap to yourselves”, or words to that effect. As a young and inexperienced teacher, I always wanted to challenge my administrators, and here I had the chance, because he was a friend of mine, and I could talk to him in a way that I wouldn’t talk to any other administrator–I knew there would be no repercussions. And, he could talk to me in a way that he would not speak to any other teacher, that is, he didn’t have to fear a grievance letter, of which he had plenty. 

    He told me in no uncertain terms that my neat and tidy solutions were the product of inexperience, they were not solutions at all, but imprudence rooted in a lack of data that would only result in a heap of difficulties. He helped me to see that there are many more levels for an administrator to consider, far more than a teacher has to consider: i.e., senior administration at the board level, the union, parents, police, the law, teachers, etc. When one becomes an administrator, one acquires a purview that is very different, far more complex and much larger than that of a teacher. I realized that the four walls of my classroom shielded me from appreciating the complexity of this work. I became a more grateful teacher, but it was an eye opener for me, and I became a better listener to those in administration than I had been previously and was able to offer much greater support to all my administrators in the following years. 

    I had an interesting dream that year as well. Over the years, I had dreams that were in many ways visions, as it were. Sometimes we are too busy to hear what the Lord is saying to us, but when we sleep, we just can’t interfere, so we are more disposed to listen to what God is trying to tell us. And I know when a dream is more than a dream, because I remember the details, I usually wake up in a spirit of joy, and it feels as if I just had a holiday and I have renewed strength to continue. But this was a very simple dream. I was in a huge barn, and I went to the barn door, the upper part of which was open, and I looked out onto this huge pasture, covered in manure, everywhere. I look to my left and see this beautiful stallion, and there’s a woman grabbing the hoof of this beautiful horse, like a farrier would, and cleaning the shit off of it, and she looks over at me and yells out my name and tells me to get out there and help her. So I did. 

    Now, I knew immediately upon waking that the stallion symbolizes my Vice Principal friend, and the woman, I knew, was Mary, the blessed mother. It’s a great image of Mary. She spoke to me with such familiarity, like an older sister, and she was shoveling shit with her hands. Very important. That’s how I knew my time with this Vice Principal was important. Just listen, help clean off the crap that is thrown at him every day, help him not to get discouraged.

    The following year I was back in the classroom, which is where I wanted to be, but the experience of teacher cynicism, which was a very difficult ordeal for me, took me a bit further in terms of my ability to listen to a certain sector of the school, namely administration. And that’s why I never became an administrator. Many of my friends became administrators and so I knew what they had to go through, because they would tell me. I also knew I didn’t have those gifts, and administration is a charism that St. Paul lists among the various charisms he speaks about in 1 Corinthians and Romans. 

    Another painful but significant experience I had that helped me in terms of my ability to listen to and genuinely hear a certain group of people took place in 2011. I was ordained a deacon three years by then, and as a deacon my ministry was to those who suffer from mental illness. Every week I would visit CAMH, the old Queen Street Mental Health Center downtown. I was still a teacher, however, and we had been preparing to introduce the IB program in our school and I was set to teach the Theory of Knowledge course. Well, one day while visiting the philosophy classes at St. Theresa of Lisieux Secondary School in Richmond Hill, Friday, Dec 23rd, the last day before the Christmas holidays, I began to sweat, and I was getting the shivers. I stuck it out and left immediately at the end of the day, and just got into bed. The next day it was worse. I had terrible pain in my head and neck and shoulders, and the chills were bad, so I told my wife and daughter to go on ahead to Kitchener, Ontario, and I would drive up on Christmas day. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. The pain got worse, it moved from my head to my legs and arms, and I was taking Motrin, but you can only do that for so long before it burns a hole in your stomach. On Christmas day, all I had was a can of tuna. On Boxing Day, I went to the Emergency, and the doctor thought I might have Polymyalgia Rheumatica, for which there is no known cure. I was put on prednisone and given some oxycodone for the pain. The oxycodone was too powerful for me; it felt great, but it was playing tricks with my mind so I stopped it. But I was in a deep state of despair. I was on the phone with my spiritual director every night. I didn’t think I’d be able to return to the classroom ever again. I thought it was over. I could not imagine returning; for I was experiencing a general, all around flu like condition x 10 with lots of pain in my arms and legs, like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. But the worst part was the despair.  

    However, at one point in our conversation I said to him: “I think I understand now what my patients have to go through every day, the ones who battle depression.” I was genuinely frightened, because I didn’t know how I’d be able to manage this for the rest of my life–there is no known cure. I realized I had to stop thinking long term and think “one moment at a time”, not one week at a time nor even one day at a time. But I clearly remember saying to Father Kelly: “I think I have a glimpse, a much better appreciation, of what my patients have to go through every day”. And then Father Kelly said to me: “Just keep saying the following prayer: ‘Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit. Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit’.

    Now, I knew that prayer, because it is part of the Night Prayer in the Breviary that we promised to pray on our day of ordination. The problem is when you say a prayer for years on end, it can become just words after a while. So I decided I would pray this prayer and mean it: “Into your hands, Lord I commend my spirit. If you do not want me to go back to teaching, your will be done”. 

    That night I had the best sleep. It felt as if a cool breeze had passed through my body. In the morning, the pain was still there, but the darkness was not. And eventually after a few days, the pain was beginning to subside, and I began to see a light at the end of the tunnel, and soon I was slowly weaned off the prednisone. But I had a much deeper appreciation for my patients who suffer from clinical depression. What I was experiencing was not clinical depression, they have it much worse, to be sure, but it was enough to give me a glimpse into what they have to battle every day for years on end. I was a much better chaplain to the mentally ill after that experience. “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit, the kingdom of heaven is theirs”, and it is mental sufferers who in my experience are the truly poor in spirit, who recognize their utter need for God. 

    But the Lord was not through with me yet. I’m reminded of Father Don MacLean saying to me in the sacristy one day when I was studying to be a Deacon; he said: “You never arrive. Remember that. You never arrive. Don’t ever think you’ve arrived”. As a Deacon for 17 years, I’ve seen things that I would probably not have seen without ordination, and not all of it was pretty; some of it was very ugly. I’ve known and worked with a number of very good priests over the years. When I first came back to the Church in my late teens, the priests who were the greatest influence were of course great priests, the most significant of which was Monsignor Tom Wells of the Archdiocese of Washington DC, who stopped the car and picked me up when I was hitchhiking to Nashville, TN, back in 1979. However, I have had my share of misogynistic priests, overly controlling micromanagers, insecure, arrogant, condescending, and envious priests; gossipy, petty, vindictive, male chauvinists who think women are good for little more than emptying the dishwasher, setting up tables and making coffee, setting down cookies and snacks, and other menial tasks, but not for giving talks for a parish mission or giving spiritual direction, much less preaching. Consistent with this clerical elitism–in some cases, a deep seated narcissism–, such priests, who are almost entirely indifferent to social outreach, will have a great love of liturgy and sanctuary decor, vestments, etc. These are the genuine poster boys for the clericalism that Pope Francis spoke out against so often during his papacy. I’ve had to taste that, experience that, and still do, it hasn’t disappeared, and that has been very difficult.

    But I will say this: it has also been a great blessing in many ways; a painful blessing, but a blessing nonetheless. I say this because I didn’t always understand those who had been hurt by the Church. My mother was hurt by the Church; many of the patients I visit in hospital who haven’t seen the inside of a Church in decades have been hurt by the Church. I wasn’t able to identify with them completely; I didn’t really know what they were talking about. But now I do. I know exactly where they are coming from. And I am able to hear them in a way that was not possible earlier on. And so I am in some ways thankful for these condescending exemplars of clerical elitism who really believe the Church is about them and that the focal point of the life of the parish and the liturgy is them. 

    If we read the Document for the Continental Stage of the Synod on Synodality that Pope Francis initiated, we will see that this kind of clericalism is not a local problem, but a worldwide problem. Francis is one Pope that understood the importance of listening, but it is remarkable how few clergy see its importance and still regard the parish as their own little fiefdom, to change and mold as they please. At one time in our history, not too long ago, a large percentage of priests were like that. Hence, the number of people who will simply not set foot inside a Catholic Church, except for the occasional wedding or baptism. 

    In the gospel of Luke, Simeon is described as righteous and devout, awaiting the Messiah. It was revealed to him that he would not see death before laying eyes on the Messiah. He recognized, through the Holy Spirit, that the child Mary was holding was that Messiah and that he would be a sign of contradiction. He turns to Mary and tells her that a sword will pierce your soul also. Mary and Joseph both marvelled at what was being said by Simeon. Furthermore, Simeon blesses both Mary and Joseph. And so Mary, the greatest saint, full of grace, and Joseph, the greatest saint next to her, are amazed, impressed, they marvel at what was said about the child, and both are willing to receive Simeon’s blessing. Also, Anna, a prophetess, married and widowed, a woman of prayer and fasting, came forward too and spoke about the child. And one other irony: Mary and Joseph, the richest creatures ever created by God, are poor; for they offer the offering of the poor, two turtle doves instead of a lamb, and yet they hold in their arms the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And Luke, throughout his gospel, depicts Mary as one who “ponders these things in her heart”. She listens. In other words, it’s not as if she knows everything. She learns, and marvels at what she learns through others like Simeon and Anna, the prophetess, and ponders what she hears. Mary and Joseph seem to have no idea of their status before God. Both of them allow themselves to be taught, and to be amazed; although the old law is fulfilled in her womb, Mary does not see herself as superior to the old law, nor as superior to Simeon or Anna, even though she is higher than the angels.

    This says a great deal about what true holiness is. Holiness is listening, and listening is an activity, not a passivity, and it is rooted in charity. The truly holy allow themselves to learn from everyone, and they are able to be impressed with others. The proud and envious, on the contrary, are rarely impressed with anyone or anything, unless it is related to them and glorifies them in some way. 

    Pope Francis, early in his papacy, derided the notion of a self-referential Church, focused on itself. Many in the Church were distressed by the suggestion, but his successor, Pope Leo XIV, continues to call the Church to turn outward, towards the world, to become a more listening Church. In fact, two or three weeks ago, he said: 

    We must dream of and build a more humble Church; a Church that does not stand upright like the Pharisee, triumphant and inflated with pride, but bends down to wash the feet of humanity; a Church that does not judge as the Pharisee does the tax collector, but becomes a welcoming place for all; a Church that does not close in on itself, but remains attentive to God so that it can similarly listen to everyone. Let us commit ourselves to building a Church that is entirely synodal, ministerial and attracted to Christ and therefore committed to serving the world.

    Listening is utterly central to the nature of the Church, which is a living organism that, in order to grow, must appropriate so much that is good from the environment that is outside the organism and integrate it. That is why synodal listening is so important, listening not just to clergy, but to the lay faithful, recognizing their gifts, talents, and expertise. However, not every diocese has been on board with this. There has been a great deal of indifference, in large part because very few clergy have been taught to listen and see themselves instead as the “anointed” with all the answers to life’s difficulties and peoples’ questions. But the world is vast and inconceivably complex, with a myriad of pockets of knowledge, each one a universe unto itself. The conceptual framework of one individual person and even a small bureaucracy made up of relatively like minded clerics unconvinced of the power of openness and listening to the lay faithful–not to mention those who have been hurt by the Church in many and varied ways–is far too limited to exercise any kind of effective and credible leadership today. 

    Francis thus envisions a more Marian Church, a Church that, like Mary, listens and marvels at the extraordinary gifts, talents, insights and abilities of unknown men and women who are unique and genuinely under the influence of the Holy Spirit, like Simeon and Anna in Luke. 

    Recently I asked Sue LaRosa, who was the longest serving director of the YCDSB, to do a video for my students at Niagara University. We are looking at magisterial pronouncements on the right to association, so I asked her to speak about her vision of the relationship between senior administration and the union. She says [emphasis mine]: 

    When I became Director of Education , I inherited a teacher’s strike followed by a provincial strike. Trust between the board and the union was shattered. I indicated to the Board of Trustees that “this is no way to live”. I committed to rebuilding trust and changing the culture. They didn’t discourage me, but they didn’t believe it could be done. I wasn’t totally convinced I could develop the trust level that would allow for a path  to stop the “blame game”. So, I reflected on my beliefs. I believe we are all born with unique talents and a desire to contribute to the common good. No one thrives in conflict mode. The first step was one of reassurance and deep listening –not defensiveness if this broken relationship was going to be mended. The turning point was the introduction of interest-based bargaining. Many of you may never be involved in  bargaining , but the concept of interest-based bargaining was the catalyst that restored trust. The name alone gives hope: interest based. The method is built on collaboration and mutual understanding . The board team and the teacher team trained  together. The key word here is “together”. We moved cautiously , learning together . It wasn’t a rapid shift. In this approach, everyone had equal status—whether you were the Director or a teacher. That leveled the playing field.  We were disciplined in following  the proven strategies. It wasn’t always easy . Actually, there were moments I questioned the path.  The result was  evident; we successfully negotiated five collective agreements without ever hearing the word strike again. We went from forty annual  grievances to three.

    That was, of course, a small portion of her talk, but what struck me about this is that she understood the fundamental principles of synodality and ecumenical dialogue more than 13 years before the Papacy of Pope Francis. 

    There have been three priests in my life who I can characterize as having been widely beloved. A few years ago I began to reflect specifically upon why they are so loved by so many people. As I pondered this, I came to the conclusion that the reason they are so loved is that they are genuinely interested in ordinary people. They pay attention to people. They approach you and want to know your name, what you do, where you are from, what you love, the names of your children, etc. I was talking to one of these three priests the other day. He was out of town at a funeral reception a couple of weeks ago and he went around to everyone and shook their hands, asked about them, their names, the names of their children, what they do, and so on. But when he got up to leave, a number of them asked where he was stationed, that is, where he says Mass. He’s retired, so he is not stationed anywhere. But he was struck by their desire to maintain contact with him.

    Now, I wasn’t surprised. That’s why he’s so widely loved. He’s genuinely interested in people, which is why he’s still very busy as a retired priest. My wife was reading Chesterton the other day and came across some lines that reminded her of my retired priest friend. He writes: 

    How much larger your life would be if yourself could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference, you would begin to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played and you would find yourself under a free sky in a street full of splendid strangers.

    That’s why these three priest friends of mine are so interested in other people, because they are so small in their own eyes, and so they always walk under a free sky in streets full of splendid strangers. 

    I believe this is a small scale example of how ecumenical unity works. It’s not about having a great debate. These people were moved by the fact that this priest was interested in them as persons. They encountered Christ in him. ‘Someone loves me enough to pay attention to me’. In their minds, that has to be Christ. ‘Where do you live so we can make the effort to see you again’. That’s the key to ecumenical unity.

    The more I was interested in my students’ religions, whether Islam or Sikhism, Hinduism, etc., the more they became interested in what I profess to believe. If they have Christ at some level, and if I love Christ, then I will have the eyes to discern Christ within their tradition, their literature, their great teachers. These students know from within that their religion is good, that God is among them (Emmanuel), and if they see that I am able to discern that, they know that I too must have something good that enables me to see this, and they want to know what that is, and they want to share in that. Ecumenical unity is not going to be the result of a series of Q & A sessions or a campaign of apologetics. It’s going to be a matter of mutual enrichment. ‘I see that you have something to offer me, that you can help me see the world in a way that I currently do not, that you can even help me to discover things about Christ that I would otherwise have overlooked, and vice versa.’  It’s not going to work if we insist that we have the “fullness of truth” while you others have only splinters and fragments here and there–so we don’t really need you, but you need us. No, at the heart of ecumenical dialogue is Christ. As St. Paul says: it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and if he lives in me, then I have his eyes, and I will recognize him outside of my tribe. Hence, the importance of listening, hearing, seeing. Unfortunately, tribal Catholicism is on the rise, even among young Catholics who typically confuse evangelization with apologetics. Evangelization is the proclamation of the good news, and the good news is that Christ is risen, he has conquered death, that death no longer has the final word over my life and your life, and that in joining a human nature to himself, God the Son joined himself to every man, as it were. 

    Chaplains are called to be the good news. That’s how we proclaim it: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”. In our schools, there is great diversity. Almost 40% of my students in Markham were Muslim. We had Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and more. We are not called to proselytize, but to witness to the risen life of Christ, to the joy of Easter. If it is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you, then it follows that those Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh students who love you and love what they see in you in fact love Christ without them necessarily knowing it. The good news of the risen Christ is proclaimed to them in you. That’s what is most important at this point, not that they leave their religion and join the local Catholic parish. 

    Although none of you here are clergy, you are all priests, members of the Royal Priesthood of the Faithful. Each one of us, when baptized, were anointed, with sacred chrism, priest, prophet and king, Christ’s threefold identity, and as a high school chaplain, you are rightfully exercising that priesthood. Catholics of the Latin rite are not used to hearing this, again, due in large part to the clericalism of the past centuries that sees the Church as primarily clerics: deacons, priests, bishops, cardinals and pope, with the laity at the base of the pyramid. And many have forgotten the efforts made at the Second Vatican Council to define the Church primarily as the laos, from which is derived the word laity: the people, which includes clergy. The Church is the fellowship of believers, the people of God. The hierarchy is only a small part of that larger Church, but the whole Church is a priestly people. The ministerial priesthood exists to serve the common priesthood of the faithful. It was Pius X’s mother who commented on his papal ring that people were kissing and she said to him: “You wouldn’t be wearing that ring if it wasn’t for this ring here”, pointing to her wedding ring. Marriage is a genuine priesthood. A priest is one who offers sacrifice, and the life of a married couple is a genuine self-offering. It is difficult, it is sacrificial, and life in our schools today, whether you are a chaplain, teacher or administrator, is holy work. It is difficult work, but it is holy, sacred. When we walk into a classroom, we are walking on holy ground. And chaplains are called to minister to the entire school, not just the students, but administrators and support staff.

    Finally, let me end with this. I was talking to a consecrated virgin in our parish recently; she is a wonderful woman and gives talks to seminarians at St. Peter’s in London–but not here, for a prophet is not welcome in her own town, especially if she’s a woman–, and she is on fire about synodality, and rather frustrated with the lack of it at the parish level. But I asked her what she thinks I should say to you. She said a host of things to me at that moment, but I asked her to write it down. She writes: 

    We don’t need to wait for some program about synodality to come into our parishes–like the Alpha program or a Bible study–for synodality to become a reality for us. We can start now in becoming synodal people, that is, people who intentionally encounter other parishioners, listen to them prayerfully in light of the Holy Spirit, come to appreciate their gifts, go out to the margins to encounter those who feel uncomfortable or excluded by church structures, etc. There is so much we can do now, as individuals or as informal groups of parishioners, to begin to live synodally, to be living signs of what synodality looks like. As Pope Francis said repeatedly, synodality is not just another program; it is a way of being church.

    Yes, it will be great when initiatives taken by the Archdiocese begin to filter down to our parishes in structural reforms that will facilitate shared decision-making and accountability in our parish life. But we do not need to wait for those structural changes to come down from on high. We can begin now with grassroots, relational, attitudinal changes. What we can do now is about preparing the ground, so that when the structural changes do come, we will be ready to embrace them. Let us trust that the Holy Spirit will lead us in this, because it is so much a movement of the Spirit for our time – necessary and prophetic.

    Of course, what she implies is that we should just start to do that in the school and not wait for the diocese, because you’ll probably be retired and in a long term care facility before we see anything like that. I was driving through Markham recently and saw, in big bold letters on the side of a barn, Be The Change. I laughed, because the line is such a cliche and very 70s, and yet it is true. Be that synodal Church. And that’s the unique gift brought by the chaplains that I’ve been blessed to have had in my life, the gift of synodal listening. 

    Miscellaneous Thoughts on Receiving Communion

    Deacon Douglas McManaman

    In the last little while, visiting a number of parishes, I have noticed that some parishioners–not many to be sure–will deliberately cross over onto another communion line in order to receive communion from the priest, as opposed to the extraordinary minister, a layman or laywoman. I inquired about this from one such person, and the reasoning, I found, had almost no coherence whatsoever. It seems to me that the very idea that one ought to receive communion from a priest and not a lay person is nothing more than liturgical snobbery. The entire Church received “holy communion” from a lay woman, namely Mary, Jesus’ own mother. That should settle the matter. But of course it doesn’t. 

    Consider the optics if we were to employ Kant’s principle of universalizability to this issue. A parish priest requests help to distribute holy communion from some of the faithful, who then become extraordinary ministers of communion. The rest of the congregation, however, adopts the attitude that communion should only be received from a priest, not a laywoman or layman. The extraordinary ministers would be standing there the whole time, waiting and watching everyone line up and receive from the priest. It is safe to say that this would certainly frustrate the pastor who would like to finish the Mass at a reasonable time. 

    But more to the point, is communion somehow different when it is received from the hands of a laywoman or layman? Is it less than Christ? Or, does a person receive something more, for example, a greater dignity perhaps, when he or she receives communion from a priest? If so, how does that work precisely? 

    Perhaps it is about reverence, as the person I questioned insisted it is. And so, is it the case that if I wish to show greater reverence to Christ, I should receive communion from the hand of a priest as opposed to the hand of a laywoman or layman? Again, if so, how does that work? To show reverence to Christ pleases him; to show greater reverence to Christ pleases him more. And so I approach the communion minister, I bow or make some reverential gesture, receive the host and then move on, but if I were to receive from the hand of an ordained priest, somehow Christ is more pleased with me, because I’ve shown him greater reverence? I have not yet been able to figure this out, even with the help of one who insists on receiving communion only from a priest.

    Moreover, “communion” means just that: “union”, not only with Christ, but with the entire worshipping community. Of course, there is diversity within that community and that should not be suppressed (diverse talents, experiences, angles on life, spiritualities, etc.), but liturgically some people insist on doing their own thing, and the result is that some are kneeling, most are standing, some receive on the tongue, and some–thankfully most–receive on the hand, some only from the priest, and some–thankfully most–from either a priest or layman/woman, whoever is available at the moment. Is it the case that some people have a need to separate themselves from the “commoners”? Whatever way we slice it, I can’t help but suspect that this is another instance of Phariseeism (from Aramaic perishayya, “separated ones”).

    Christ ate with sinners and tax collectors, shared meals with them, thereby entering into a profound communion with them–given the Jewish understanding of what it means to share a meal–, thereby becoming ritually unclean in the eyes of the religious leaders, which is why they despised him. Jesus was not concerned about ritual purity, as we see from the parable of the Good Samaritan, and he despised the elitist and condescending arrogance of the Pharisees, referring to them as whitewashed tombs full of the bones of the dead and every kind of filth. His attitude appears to me to be the complete opposite of the semi-elitist attitude that insists on receiving communion from an ordained priest only, as though it were “below me” to receive from an ordinary layperson, as it was below the religious leaders to share a meal with those ignorant of the Torah. 

    But I’ve been assured that this is not the sentiment. But then I am asked: Are not the priests’ hands anointed at his  Ordination? They are, but so are the hands of those who receive the anointing of the sick, and so too the heads of babies who are baptized. Confirmandi are anointed on the forehead at Confirmation. Anointing represents Christ (Gk: Christos, anointed one), and oil symbolizes strength, wealth and royalty. All of us have been anointed (in Baptism and Confirmation), and all of us share in the Royal Priesthood of the Faithful. The congregation is a congregation of priests, because Israel and the New Israel (the Church) is a “priestly people” (Exodus 19, 6). The laos (people) have been “set apart”. As our first Pope said:  “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (2 Peter 2, 9). That a baby’s head has been anointed with sacred chrism, endowing that child with a new identity, namely that of priest, prophet and king, does not in any way necessitate different behaviour on the part of others towards the baby. Some will zero in on that aspect of the ordination ceremony in which a priest’s hands are anointed and deduce that this somehow suggests that we should behave differently towards him–i.e., choose his communion line–and that doing so is “more reverent towards our Lord”. Somehow his hands add something to the significance of my receiving communion, but what exactly that is, I have no idea at this point.

    I cannot help but think that this is another symptom of the disease of clericalism that Francis so often spoke out against. He explicitly warned the laity not to put priests on pedestals, and yet how this decision to receive only from the hand of a priest is not an instance of just such a practice is beyond me.  

    Perhaps this practice of receiving communion only from an ordained priest is a subtle but real repudiation of the layperson’s sharing in the royal priesthood of the faithful. After all, the procession begins when the faithful leave their homes to go to the Church to celebrate Mass. The formal procession at the start of the Mass is merely a continuation of the procession that the people began when leaving their houses. The offertory is precisely the offering of this priestly people, an offering of their sufferings, their labor, their treasure, etc., and it takes the form of bread and wine (the parish purchases the bread and wine out of the treasury that comes from the people). The ministerial priest offers the bread and wine on behalf of this priestly people, the congregation. Christ receives that offering and changes it into himself, returning it to us, saying: “take and eat”. The priest is merely an instrument, an unworthy instrument as Pope Benedict XVI would often remind us. It is Christ who consecrates, it is Christ who is the single priest and victim. The ministerial priest is acting in persona Christi, which means that it is really Christ who is the agent who changes the offering (bread and wine) into himself–just as it is Christ, not the priest or deacon, who gives life in baptism and infuses the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity into the soul of the baptized, among other things. 

    The function of a ministerial priest is different from the function of those who belong to the common priesthood of the faithful, but it is a function that is entirely at the service of the priestly people that is the congregation. One can certainly say that the priest is “set apart” for a specific work, and that is true, but he is set apart to serve the entire people who have been set apart from the world, who have become a holy nation, a kingdom of priests. The significance of his vocation cannot be understood apart from this community. In other words, his priestly function cannot be understood except within the larger context of the priestly nature of the community. I’m reminded of Pius X, when people were kissing his papal ring, his mother said to him: “Keep in mind that you wouldn’t be wearing that ring if it were not for this ring here” (pointing to her wedding ring). The ministerial priest is “set apart” to act on behalf of the priestly congregation, which is “a people set apart”. 

    Peter himself gives us a clue to the resolution of this issue: “As Peter was about to enter, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet to worship him. But Peter helped him up. “Stand up,” he said, “I am only a man myself” (Acts 10, 26).

    Some people look upon the clergy not as lowly common servants (feet washers), but as members of the British Royal Family, as it were, and within such a mindset, one will only hear the gospel within the framework of an old monarchical ecclesiology, which keeps a person from understanding the gospel’s radical nature.  

    I’ve tried to understand this issue from various angles, but the reasoning continues to make as much sense to me as a person who believes, deep within his heart, that eating potato chips is an offence to koala bears, so instead he chooses to eat corn chips.