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Deacon Douglas McManaman
(Originally published: October 26th, 2018 by the Oblates of Japan)

All of us, Christians and Muslims, live under the sun of the one merciful God. We both believe in one God who is the Creator of Man.… We adore God and profess total submission to him. Thus, in a true sense, we can call one another brothers and sisters in faith in the one God.
Pope John Paul II. 

Whenever I speak or write about our Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh brothers and sisters in the context of a talk on Catholic spirituality or quote one of the great Sufi or Jewish mystics in the course of a homily, inevitably someone from the congregation or group of listeners will afterwards pose a question or series of questions at the root of which is a presumption, namely, that these religions really have nothing to offer us that we don’t already possess. There seems to be a suggestion that quoting thinkers of other religious traditions implies relativism, the position that every religion is fundamentally the same as any other. I believe that at the heart of these claims is a knowledge problem. What follows is an attempt to explain this contention.

Generally speaking, we can discern throughout history roughly two ways of conceiving knowledge production. One way – still very much alive today – is to begin with a grand idea and then proceed to implement that idea, either on a multitude or on the society at large; in the process, all corroborating evidence is noticed, collected, and cited in support of the idea. The other way is to begin not on the level of the idea, but on the level of the facts, the data, the evidence of a problem in which we are interested, and to proceed to account for that evidence by putting forth the best or most plausible estimate.

The latter approach is messy, labor intensive, and characterized by uncertainty, because, as the very logic of this method shows, nothing more than a plausible conclusion is guaranteed – i.e., typically, there are many alternative hypotheses that at first glance can, to some extent, account for the same facts in evidence, which is why each one must be tested. This, of course, describes the basic logic of the scientific method. The former approach on the other hand is characteristic of the literary mind, the artist, the poet, etc.; the novelist is inspired by a vision of the entire plot at a glance, and it is later on that the details are filled in to give concrete expression to that idea.

It has always been interesting to witness the reaction of some of my colleagues to grand ideas introduced by school administrators who were former English, Drama, or Art teachers, ideas peddled as panaceas, grand solutions to the problems teachers have been confronting for centuries: it is typically those in the hard sciences who wonder to what extent these ideas have been tested or who will challenge the ideas by citing evidence that strongly suggests these ideas have not produced what was claimed they would inevitably produce.

We see this methodological tension between grand but untested ideas typically supported by anecdotal evidence on the one hand and a more empirical/pragmatic, evidence-first approach on the other in the lives of our religiously diversified student body. I have taught for 20 years at a school with very devout Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Catholics, Protestants, etc., and what is particularly interesting is that many of these students have come to conclusions at odds with the religious ideas (dogmas) of their parents, or uncles, grandparents, etc. The data they receive on a daily basis as members of a religiously diverse population does not corroborate the “idea” that a good number of them received from the older generation, namely “we have ‘the truth’, while they walk in darkness”. The young Muslim discovers that the devout Hindu (or Catholic, or Sikh, etc.) sitting next to her or behind her or in front of her is not the infidel, pagan, or miniature monster she was somewhat led to believe he was, and vice versa. The data simply does not support the “idea” (the dogma). And the students realize the reason for the discrepancy is “degree of exposure to information” – the students have data their parents tend not to have, because many of the latter came from religiously homogeneous backgrounds. It is simply not necessarily the case that the “others” (i.e., the non-Catholics or Catholics, depending on who you are) are living in darkness because they have not been baptized, confirmed, or do not profess the Shahada, etc.

I believe the myth of the conflict between “science and religion” perpetuated over the centuries is one of the reasons that many devoutly religious fail to appreciate the logic of the scientific method and are unaware of just how much theology depends on it – biblical hermeneutics is methodologically inductive; it is a matter of plausible reasoning. Moreover, inductive conclusions are never “money in the bank”; the truths that we are committed to and which are the result of a theological reasoning process that is investigative in nature are tentative. For the most part, we are dealing with theses having only a degree of plausibility, and one’s conclusion is only as strong as its weakest link in the chain of premises. Moreover, new data can and often does cause us to discard theses that are inconsistent with the new and more plausible data. Science is an evolutionary process (we speak of the scientific revolution), and so too is theology and philosophy.

There is no escaping our epistemic limitations. Each person is born into a specific tradition; man is a social, political, rational, linguistic, economic and religious animal, among other characteristics. At any given moment, each person understands himself and the world through a conceptual framework made up of epistemic conditions, a host of cognitive data, i.e., first principles, perceptions, deductions, uncertain inferences, ideas embodied in a particular and ever evolving language, the science of the day, cultural myths, biases and prejudices that both blind us to some things and open us up to other things, etc. And so not only is science subject to an evolutionary process, so too is our own personal “knowing” – not even the stubborn dogmatist who refuses to open himself to anything new that would threaten the stability of his comfortable worldview can put a complete stop to his own cognitive development.

So how do we explain the theological aporia that 1) Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and 2) there are Muslims, or Hindus, or Sikhs among us who are holier and wiser than I, who am a baptized Catholic? A fundamental axiom of philosophical method is: “Never simply abandon. In the face of insuperable difficulties, introduce distinctions and qualifications that enable you to save what you can of your commitments” (Nicholas Rescher). I believe John Paul II provides a possible avenue to explore this problem credibly: “When we penetrate by means of the continually and rapidly increasing experience of the human family into the mystery of Jesus Christ, we understand with greater clarity that there is at the basis of all these ways that the Church of our time must follow, in accordance with the wisdom of Pope Paul VI, one single way: it is the way that has stood the test of centuries and it is also the way of the future. Christ the Lord indicated this way especially, when, as the Council teaches, “by his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, in a certain way united himself with each man” (Redemptor Hominis, 13).

The Son of God, the Word, is present to every man, because he has united himself in a certain way to each man, and a person does not have to be a member of the visible Catholic Church to respond to that presence, which is a “redemptive presence” within the deepest region of the human person: “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Behold, here it is!’ or There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17, 20-21). The evidence is clear to anyone who lives among faithful Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, etc., that one may respond to that redemptive presence and love that presence without being completely or even explicitly aware of who it is – as a child can love his mother without a properly scientific knowledge of who or what she is (Cf. S.T. I-II, q. 89, a.6).

At a very profound level, the devout Muslim, Sikh, Jew, and Hindu, etc., is our brother, our sister; for it is not possible to love Christ except through the power of the Holy Spirit, so if you, a Christian, live in Christ and Christ lives in you, if you carry in your body the death of Christ so that the life of Christ can be made manifest through you (2 Co 4, 10), and the devout Muslim for example likes what he or she sees in you, or better yet loves what he or she sees in you, that is, your deepest identity, then they love Christ without necessarily being aware of it – given that Christ really does live, act, and speak through you. One day I asked a good friend of mine, a priest of a nearby diocese, to tell me where in the Old Testament can one find the following words: “How can I describe the Greatness of Your Name, O Lord? If I had a hundred of thousands of stacks of paper, and if ink were never to fail me, and if my pen were able to move like the wind, and if I were to read and recite and embrace love for the Lord–even so; I could not estimate Your Value. How can I describe the Greatness of Your Name?”

My friend responded: “The book of Wisdom? One of the Psalms?” No, so I continued: “So many endure distress, deprivation and constant abuse. Even these are Your Gifts, O Great Giver! Freedom from slavery comes only by Your Will. No one else has any say in this. If some fool should presume to say that he does, he shall learn, and feel the effects of his folly. He Himself knows, He Himself gives. Few, very few are those who acknowledge this…Speak of Him continually and remain absorbed in His Love.”

He was sure it came from one of the wisdom books, such as Sirach or Ecclesiastes. Before telling him the answer, I asked him to tell me which mystical theologian in history would have said the following:

Does anyone think that the ocean is only what appears on its surface? By observing its hue and motion the keen eye may perceive indications of that ocean’s unfathomable depth. The Lord’s mercy and compassion are an ocean with no shore, providing endlessly varied vistas for those who sail its surface; but the greatest wonderment and fulfillment is reserved for those “creatures of the sea” for whom that mercy has become their own medium.

The Lord beckons us through a divine love and attraction that has been implanted in our hearts, a love that may be understood and felt consciously as divine by some, and only indirectly as love for His creatures or creation by others. In either case the pull of our heartstrings draws us to those Mercy Oceans, just as our physical bodies feel drawn to a warm and gentle sea.

By means of the revelation of the Scriptures and through the example set by prophets and saints, all human beings have been brought in contact with those oceans. For humankind at large, these revelations serve as vessels, or as “instruction manuals” for building and maintaining vessels that ply those most spacious seas, but for those who have the means to read between the lines, a great revelation emerges: that we are of that sea, that our place, our home is in the depths of that sea, not on its surface.

My friend’s list of possibilities included Meister Eckhart, one of the desert fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Gertrude, St. Hildegard of Bingen, etc. But the first piece of writing was from the Sri Guru Granth Sahib and the latter is an excerpt, with some modification of vocabulary, from modern Sufi writer Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kibbani.

Consider the image of a pyramid that is upside down. On the top and widest level represents the level of articulated religious belief (doctrine); here there is a wide range of diversity and difference. But as we approach the “mystical” level of each of these religions, the two sides gradually converge toward one another, so much so that at its deepest level it is very difficult to distinguish them on the basis of the specific religion; they all seem to be speaking the same language; in other words, there is a significant unity at this level. Hindus speak of the need to become aware of the distinction between the unchanging “I” and the passing events of our everyday lives, which they see as Maya, and the need to detach the “I” from that which is fleeting, and we encounter, in Islamic mysticism, the idea of Allah as the ocean that dissolves the individual ego, if we permit such a thing. Christian mystics speak of the death of self, the need to die to oneself in order to rise to new life, a regenerate life, and Islamic mysticism has similar ideas with only slightly different vocabulary. Buddhism speaks of the thickening of the ego and the need to drop all desire, but so too do Christian, Jewish, and Muslim mystics. Hinduism speaks of Atman at the center of the human person, and according to the Vedanta school, Atman is Brahman. But according to Islamic Sufism, Allah is both immanent and transcendent; as immanent, God is that eternal and necessary ground of all being at the very depths of the human soul, and our goal is egoistic annihilation. Kabbala speaks of God as nothingness, the fullest and purest mode of being; Buddhism speaks of the emptiness that is the fullness of Nirvana, etc.

On the most profound level of human religious existence, there is a sense in which we are all brothers/sisters; for we may be operating out of the same subterranean world, if you will, a world in which is present a Person, the Word, who gives us his undivided attention at every moment of our existence. When we begin to understand that “doctrine” (the explicit articulation of what is believed) proceeds from that deepest level of religious experience, it becomes increasingly evident that we need to carefully interpret each other’s doctrine in the light of that mystical understanding, otherwise we run the risk of misinterpreting one another. If we do not possess a mystic sense, we are sure to misinterpret one another, understanding the ‘other’ on our terms, not on their terms.

Individual human beings are continually growing in knowledge and understanding. This is because experience provides us, on an ongoing basis, with new information, and it is in the light of this new data that we re-interpret our current body of knowledge. It often happens that we discover that what we thought was absolutely and definitively true is not so after all, at least not completely. But it is very difficult to know whether our current body of knowledge suffers serious deficiencies – that tends to happen retrospectively. In other words, truth is an idealization. What we possess at any one time is often and for the most part a matter of putative truth. Our information is always incomplete, and new information has a way of changing the plausibility of our current data, causing us to make finer distinctions and to revise our estimates. As we learn from one another, we begin to see the world from a different angle, that is, within a new cognitive framework containing additional information. This angle is not necessarily any better, at least not in any absolute sense, but often we discover that much of that “different perspective” sheds light on what we already know, enabling us to distinguish where we failed to earlier, and enlarges our current body of knowledge, often refining it in some ways. The resulting hybrid is usually better.

From a statistical point of view, if the vast majority of our knowledge at any one time has undergone tremendous revision, enlargement, expansion, serious editing, etc., then it is reasonable to expect this trend to continue; in fact, there are no signs that this is slowing down. But for some reason, many people find it difficult to acknowledge the implications of what they already know implicitly. Uncertainty seems to give rise to fear, perhaps a fear of losing one’s identity. Raimon Panikkar writes:

In the West identity is established through difference. Catholics find their identity in not being Protestant or Hindu or Buddhist. But other cultures have another way of thinking about one’s identity. Identity is not based on the degree to which one is different from others. In the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity), people seek God in difference – in superiority or transcendence. Being divine means not being human. For Hindus, however, the divine mystery is in man, in what is so profound and real in him that he cannot be separated from it, and it cannot be discharged into transcendence. This is the domain of immanence, of that spiritual archetype that is called brahman. In the Hindu system, people are not afraid of losing their identity. 

They can be afraid of losing what they have, but not of losing what they are.

Being afraid is always a bad sign. Christ says, “I give you peace” and “Do not be afraid.” Contemporary Christians feel surrounded and are afraid of being dissolved. But what does the gospel say? “You are the salt of the earth.” The salt has to be dissolved in order for the food to be more tasty. The leaven is there to make the bread rise. The Christian vocation is to lose oneself in others (Eruption of Truth: An Interview with Raimon Panikkar – Religion Online: https://www.religion-online.org/article/eruption-of-truth-an-interview-with-raimon-panikkar/).

The irony here – if what Panikkar says is true – is that the truly “Catholic” approach, in the sense of international or universal, is the latter. As Panikkar writes: 

The whole history of Christianity is one of enrichment and renewal brought about by elements that came from outside itself. Do not Christmas and Easter, and almost all the Christian feasts, have a non-Christian origin? Would it have been possible to formulate the basic Christian doctrines without the hellenic tradition, itself pre-Christian? Doesn’t every living body exist in symbiosis with its external milieu? (Ibid.) 

The authentically Catholic approach to the uncovering of truth is integrative. Nothing good is discarded, but appropriated. Catholics believe Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn 14, 16), “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2, 3). But this Scripture is very clear; it is in him that are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, not in me. My appropriation of Christ is always deficient, that is, my response to his redemptive presence in the world and within me is profoundly imperfect, and thus my knowledge of him is always deficient. But the more perfect that this appropriation becomes, the more will I be able to recognize him outside of myself, and that is why the more I will discover the treasures, that is, the truths or aspects of the Logos dispersed in the lives and the wisdom of those who truly love him and who are outside the visible contours of the Church.

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_408reflectionmarriagebeauty.html

Deacon Douglas McManaman

I’d like to begin this reflection with an analogy. I’m an amateur artist. I love colors, and I’ve always appreciated talented artists and their work. I’m not, however, a talented artist, nor have I been formally trained. The reason I paint is that my spiritual director, in the year of my ordination, told me I should paint. I did not want to at the time, but I decided to follow his instructions–after all, he has a rather extraordinary “word of knowledge” charism. I went out to the dollar store and purchased some cheap pastels and a pad of paper and began to draw and color a picture of some houses in the neighborhood. It was not that good, of course, but I felt as though I had a two-week holiday, just after coloring for an hour. So, I kept at it. I then moved on to chalk pastels, then eventually to pastels on sandpaper, then to acrylics on canvas, and eventually iconography. 

During my pastel phase, I took a workshop with Dave Becket, renowned Canadian pastel artist from Orillia, Ontario. What he would do is paint a picture in front of all of us, so we’d see the work develop and unfold before our eyes. I was rather amazed that throughout the process, at any given stage, the painting looked rough and was not all that pretty, nothing for which any special talent was required. But he kept at it, and at it, and eventually, in the end, we saw the work suddenly come together in all its beauty. 

A marriage can very much be compared to the production of a work of art. A marriage is a process, not a finished product. The product can only be judged at the end, as Aristotle would say of a good life: “for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy” (NE, 1098a18). If one were asked to judge the quality of a marriage at any given time, like the work of art in progress, one might very well say that it is nothing extraordinary, that it is rough and unrefined, certainly not very pretty. We have a tendency to regard marriage within a static frame of mind, as though a marriage is a thing the quality of which one can measure, as in the rather jejune expression “joy-filled” marriage. Anyone reading this who has ever worked on a painting or a sculpture is certainly aware that it is not always a joy, but often tedious; it is work. Similarly, in a marriage, there are moments of great joy, of course, and challenging moments, darkness and struggles; but the joy is really at the end, when we contemplate the work of beauty, as God does at the end of the six days of creation, looking at everything he had made “and indeed, it was very good” (Gn 1, 31). And one only makes it to the end by staying the course, paying attention to details, persisting, refining, and doing the little things the importance of which experience reveals.

This brings me to another point to draw out from this analogy. I have two unfinished paintings in my art room. They are of two beautiful scenes of Uxbridge, Ontario during the fall season, one of a farm and large field below a beautiful sky, the other of a railway crossing in the country. Now, I also studied iconography, but interestingly enough, I do not have any unfinished icons. When writing an icon, one begins with certain prayers, and when finished, it remains unsigned and is blessed with holy oil. The icon is considered a sacramental, not merely a painting. It is a window into the saint who is depicted, a point of contact, and so it is a holy object. I had to ask myself: why don’t I have any unfinished icons, but two large unfinished paintings? I think the reason is that the purpose was different in both cases. My purpose in painting the two that remain unfinished was my own enjoyment. I wanted to capture the enjoyment of those scenes, for myself. The purpose in writing each icon I’d ever done, however, was devotion to the saint depicted, i.e., an angel, Theotokos, or Christ Pantocrator, etc. I certainly finished paintings that were not icons, both acrylics and pastels, but I don’t have them; they were painted for others, for friends and colleagues. I was able to successfully finish them, to persist through the midpoint tedium, because they were not done for me primarily, but for them.

Again, this lends itself well to highlighting an important aspect of married life. When a couple gets married and the purpose is first and foremost their own enjoyment or convenience, the marriage will almost always end in a separation and eventual divorce–like an unfinished work of art. The two simply cannot sustain it. It’s very much like doing a painting so that I may enjoy it: after a time, the labor is often just not worth it, so I stop and move on to more interesting projects. But when it is for another, when it is an icon that I am doing for the sake of satisfying a person’s desire for religious inspiration and devotion, or simply a beautiful scene outside that I want another to enjoy as I did when I saw it originally, I am able to endure and persist. 

The problem is that the vast majority of people, since the early 1960s, sees marriage as primarily an arrangement, one ordered to the pleasure, convenience, and enjoyment of the individuals involved. But marriage is first and foremost about the decision to love another for the other’s sake, completely and totally in all its implications, one of which is that divorce is never an option on the table. One should know that such a decision is not going to be easy, not always a joy, but it is a work in development, a work of beauty. It is not merely a sacramental, but a sacrament, an institution brought into being by God on the basis of the intention of the two involved. It is a sacred sign in motion.

I believe a significant factor in our lack of awareness of the deeply paschal significance of marriage has been a misreading of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 7: 

“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).

Because it is a small portion of the entire chapter, taken out of its larger context, it is very easy to misinterpret and come away with the impression that the celibate or consecrated life is genuinely religious, while the married state is not. Such an interpretation, however, would run 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). 

Today we would not advise single young people not to look for a spouse “because time is running out”, so 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 nothing to do with serving the Lord. And of course, that would contradict what Paul teaches in Ephesians, where he speaks of the mystery of marriage as a sign of the love that Christ has for his Bride, the Church.

Christ’s love for his Bride 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 just as religious a vocation as is the priesthood and consecrated life. Unfortunately, it has not always been understood that way by the faithful, but marriage is a sacred sign that contains what it signifies, and it signifies the paschal mystery. For just as God called Abraham to leave the land of Ur and “go to the land that I will show you” (Gn 12, 1), and just as God called Israel to leave Egypt behind with its pantheon of false gods, and just as Jesus leaves this world behind in order to go to the Father (Jn 17, 19), so too in matrimony, two people 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 genuinely married couples are a witness of the Church’s response to Christ’s love for his Bride; they witness 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. 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. In doing so, they find life; for they have become a larger reality.

But when a couple enters a marriage as though this is primarily about their own enjoyment, they inevitably become disillusioned. “Christ, what have I done? What have I done?” said Lynn Johnson, of the Up series, a year after her wedding. She readily acknowledged that her husband probably said much the same thing. She was disillusioned and had to make a decision, thankfully the right one.

When a generation has lost the sense of life as having a transcendent end and has settled for a purely intramundane existence of an epicurean nature, marriage simply makes no sense. It makes far more sense to simply cohabitate and maintain a level of freedom in which one can move on rather easily when things get difficult. It is no coincidence that marriage began to decline in the late 1960s, the age of individualism, which devolved into the hedonism of the 70s and 80s, and the nihilism of the 90s. In a postmodern culture, it continues to decline. But if young people were given a proper vision of the overall work that a married couple are called to create and the heroic virtue required to achieve this end, we might eventually begin to see a reversal. 

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Christ heals on the sabbath. But isn’t the sabbath rest a symbol of eternity? We are in the 6th day, the day on which God created man in the image of himself (Gn 1, 26-31). In fact, all of human history is the 6th day, and the days prior to this day (days 1 to 5) represent the evolution of the universe and the world, leading up to the 6th day. When history comes to an end, when man’s work is done, we enter into the 7th day, the sabbath rest, or God’s rest (Heb 4, 10). But Jesus says: “My Father is still working, and I also am working” (Jn 5, 16-30). 

The Father is unchanging activity, and activity and rest coincide in God. He does not stop working on the sabbath, and neither does the Son. Even in eternity, of which the sabbath day is a symbol, God is unchanging activity (contemplation). He is still saviour, and his Son is saviour (Jesus: “Yahweh is salvation”), because whatever the Father does, the Son does: “The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing” (Jn 5, 19). And so, the Son heals on the sabbath. Is not this a mirror reflection of what will continue in the eternal (aionios) sabbath? The Greek word ‘aionios’ does not mean eternal in the sense of ‘never ending’, but ‘other worldly’ (not this temporal world, but where God dwells), or ‘ages of ages’. In Christ, eternity is joined to the world of matter and time. 

But who needs healing on the aionios sabbath? The forsaken do. Just as in the time of Christ on earth, the sick, the lame, and the poor were regarded as forsaken by God, in the aionios sabbath, there are those who “rise to their condemnation” (Jn 5, 29), because they did not believe in the Son of Man. Are they not the object of the divine mercy? They are indeed because they are the object of his justice, and the divine justice has been revealed as mercy. Does God, who is unchanging, suddenly change after the 6th day? Divine chastisement (kolasis) must, if it be truly a chastisement, come to an end; it cannot be forever–no one prunes a plant forever, for there would be nothing left. Pruning (kolasis) takes place for the good of the plant. 

Jesus came not to condemn the world, but that the world may have life through him, but some will rise to their condemnation. This condemnation is not the final word, rather, life has the final word: “I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (Jn 5, 25). Holy Saturday is the realization of this promise. Christ descended into hell, as we profess in the creed (the word ‘dead’ was changed to ‘hell’ in the Roman liturgy). What does Christ do in hell? He is himself in hell, that is, he is “Jesus” (Yahweh is salvation); he is life. He does what he sees the Father doing–he proclaims the good news of salvation, and he freed all who were imprisoned therein: 

Death, unwilling to be defeated, is defeated; corruption is transformed; unconquerable passion is destroyed. While hell, diseased with excessive insatiability and never satisfied with the dead, is taught, even if against its will, that which it could not learn previously. For it not only ceases to claim those who are still to fall [in the future], but also sets free those already captured, being subjected to splendid devastation by the power of our Saviour.… Having preached to the spirits in hell, once disobedient, he came out as conqueror by resurrecting his temple like a beginning of our hope, and by showing to [our] nature the manner of the raising from the dead, and giving us along with it other blessings as well (Cyril of Alexandria, Fifth Festive Letter, 29–40 (SC 372, 284). Quoted in Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, Christ the Conqueror of Hell, p. 78).

Does God turn his back on anyone, even on those who reject him? Certainly not forever: “The Lord’s acts of mercy are not exhausted, his compassion is not spent; They are renewed each morning–great is your faithfulness… For the Lord does not reject forever (Lam 3, 22-23; 31).

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_407dchristredemptionforteachers.html

Deacon Douglas McManaman

The word ‘redemption’ comes from the verb ‘to redeem’, as in to buy back, to repurchase at a price. In the context of the Old Testament, redemption is the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian slavery. Christ is redeemer, and this means that just as through Moses, God delivered the covenant people of Israel from Egyptian slavery, Jesus delivered humanity from the slavery of sin and its consequences, namely death. What was the means of exchange through which he bought us back? His own blood, that is, his life. 

But what exactly does this mean? How does this work exactly? As a teacher, I was inclined to employ a “quantitative” or juridical model to explain this to adolescents, one that has its roots in St. Anselm. The reason is that the adolescent mind finds this easy to grasp, and making sense out of mystery is attractive to them. The basic idea is that sin creates an infinite debt, that is, a debt of infinite weight, and man, who is finite, cannot make up for a sin that is of infinite gravity or weight. Only God can do so. But God is not in debt–we are, and so it is up to man to make reparation for his sin, not God. But man cannot do so, because everything he offers is of finite value. Since man cannot make reparation, he simply cannot save himself. In short, our situation is hopeless. 

God, however, provides a solution. The second Person of the Trinity joins a human nature; Jesus is fully God and fully man, two natures, one Person. As man, he can go before the Father and offer a sacrifice of reparation on our behalf; as God the Son, his offering has infinite value and can cancel our debt.

This is an attractive way of explaining Christ’s redemption, because it “makes sense” out of what is otherwise profoundly mysterious. Although some of what is said within this model has some truth, it is, however, a deficient model. It is far too juridical, and mystery really cannot be explicated using such narrow terms without serious consequences.

It is indeed the case that man is a slave to sin. Just as we inherit talents and dispositions from our parents or distant relatives, not to mention trauma undergone by relatives three or so generations back, we also inherit negative proclivities and sinful dispositions. This is what is meant by the wound of Original Sin called concupiscence–an inclination to sin and self-seeking. What this underscores among other things is man’s profoundly social nature. Original Sin is an inherited addiction, a proclivity. The first parents of the human race made a radical decision to be their own god, sufficient unto themselves (symbolized in the image of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that stands independent and tall). We are the offspring of the first parents, and we are born into a concrete and universal situation they created. We are affected by their sin. We are born into a situation characterized by the loss of interior grace; for man was originally created in a state of grace, in the state of original justice (with the gift of bodily immortality, freedom from concupiscence, and a sense of the divine rooted in grace). We are not born “deified” by grace, and so we are deprived of the light of grace. We cannot free ourselves from that proclivity to sin and self-seeking, for it is a genuine slavery, and no slave can free himself or herself–otherwise it is not slavery. 

But God the Son drew close to us. He joined a human nature to himself and dwelt among us. The light entered into the darkness: 

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God (Jn 3, 17-21).

We crucified the Son of God. Christ is Light from Light, true God from true God, and so the light entered into the darkness of our death, injecting it with his light and life. He destroyed our death, making it a means to eternal life. In joining himself to a human nature, God the son joined himself to every man/woman, as it were. The Word (logos) is present at the deepest level of our being. This does not mean that we all exist in a state of sanctifying grace. Rather, he is there, and he offers us sufficient grace to move towards him, to allow him into our lives, to reign over our own mind and heart. His death was an offering to God the Father on our behalf, an act of religion, and his offering is an acceptable one, since it is a perfect offering, rooted in a perfect divine love for the Father and for us, who come from God. 

Some years ago my daughter, my wife and I went to Italy with a friend of ours, who is Italian. And he took us north, and south, and in the middle, and my daughter loved it, and she was focused primarily on shopping. I hated going into shops to look for purses or dresses, I just wanted to explore the narrow streets and old churches. It was hot, always watching out for pickpockets, not enough time to visit the places I wanted to visit, so for me it was a very unpleasant trip. The following year, however, I had the opportunity to go again, this time without my wife and daughter, just a priest friend of mine and a good friend who is also a teacher. His parents own an apartment in Rome, so we spent two weeks there. What I found fascinating upon reflection was that I spent so much time visiting the fashion district, Via Del Corso, clothing shops, looking for purses, etc. I was doing a lot of shopping for my daughter, to bring things back for her, and I was enjoying it. I wanted to visit the places that she loved. I started to love these places, because there was something of her that was left behind. I couldn’t care less about the Trevi Fountain or the Spanish Steps, but because she loved those places, I had a very real desire to visit them again, but only because I was looking to recapture her presence. These places were dear to her, so they became dear to me.

I think this is a useful illustration of a profound theological truth. As was said above, God the Son joined a human nature to himself (Christ is two natures, but one Person). God the Son enters into human suffering because he loves the Father, desires his glory above all, and since we belong to God, he loves us and will not allow us to suffer alone. And that is why when God the Father sees humanity, he sees his Son. He delights in the individual human person because Christ does. The Father loves us because the Son loves us. “The kingdom of heaven is among you” means that the redemptive presence of the Second Person of the Trinity permeates this world, through the power of the reconciling Spirit. 

We are redeemed by the Incarnation of the Son of God, by his entire life, which of course includes his death. God sees each one of us when he beholds his Son, and so the Son’s entire life and his offering of himself in the end redeems us, buys us back from darkness to light, from alienation from God to proximity to God in him, in Christ. And all of this was pure gift, pure grace. And so a better model for understanding something of our redemption is the story of Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus.

He came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” And he came down quickly and received him with joy. When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost” (Lk 19, 1-10).

Perhaps we can look at Zacchaeus as an image of humanity. He climbs the sycamore tree, as Adam (humanity) aspires to be more than what he is by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Jesus approaches Zacchaeus, not the other way around, and tells him to descend, for the Son of God descended and took the form of a slave, becoming obedient to death, death on a cross (Phil 2, 1-11). In Christ, we descend from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and embrace our status as “children”, dependent upon God. Christ was not invited into Zacchaeus’ home; rather, he invited himself. And the result was a complete change of heart in Zacchaeus (metanoia). He was redeemed, bought back from the slavery of sin, all as a result of the approach of Christ.

Without the Incarnation, the suffering, death and resurrection of the Son of God, we would still be in our sins, still in darkness, still slaves of sin. We simply cannot save ourselves. Christ is savior. He came to save. And the gospel is a message of salvation. That is redemption.

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_404homily3.07.2024lent4.html