bible

The Feast of the Presentation

D. McManaman

The gospel reading on the Presentation is really about humility. The word humility comes from the Latin ‘humous’, which means dirt or soil. The humble are down to earth; they don’t walk high and mighty. But another English word that is derived from ‘humous’ is humour. Now what’s interesting about humour is that it hinges upon irony. You’ll notice this in the nicknames that kids give to one another. They are full of irony, which is why they are funny. The short kid is nicknamed stretch, the tall kid is given the nickname shorty, the skinny kid is nicknamed Hercules, and when I was a kid, they called me slim. 

What’s interesting about the gospel is that it is full of irony, and so it is full of humour–divine humour. St. Gregory of Nyssa calls attention to this divine irony in his sermon on the Beatitudes when he says that the judge of all creatures is subject to the judgment of mere humans, the author and sustainer of life tastes death, the all powerful is hungry for bread and dies on a cross, and so on. 

This gospel reading is also packed with irony. Jesus is presented in the temple, because the Torah says that “every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord”. Now to consecrate means to ‘make holy’. But Jesus is the fount of all holiness; he is Lord, God the Son. This is irony. So too, Mary undergoes forty days of purification, but she is purity itself, for she is the Immaculate Conception, she is ‘full of grace’, as the angel addressed her at the Annunciation. Not only that, but Mary is, according to the author of the gospel of Luke, the New Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament was the holiest object in Israel, and it contained the tablets of the commandments, manna from the desert, and the staff of Aaron the Levite priest. Mary, the New Ark of the Covenant, contains in her womb Christ the New Law, who is the Bread of Life, and who is the eschatological priest who came to offer himself for the salvation of the world. She is the holiest of God’s creatures, and Joseph is the greatest saint next to her. Nonetheless, both of them submit to the requirements of the old law. That is perfect humility.

But there is more. 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 Messiah. He recognized, through the Holy Spirit, that this child was the Messiah, and that he would be a sign of contradiction, and he turns to Mary and tells her that a sword will pierce your soul also. And 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. Moreover, 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”. 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.  

It is obvious that Mary and Joseph have no idea of their status before God, no idea of their holiness. 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 even higher than the angels.

This says a great deal about what true holiness is. Those who are genuinely holy do not know they are extraordinary; for they don’t compare themselves to others. 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. 

And rarely do they speak well of others. Although the true saint is hidden and unknown, because they don’t stand out, pseudo-saints find many subtle ways to make themselves stand out from others around them. Great saints don’t know they are saints, they don’t pontificate, they are not quick to correct others or give advice; pseudo-saints pontificate, are quick to offer correction, are quick to advise. True saints affirm others who go away from them always feeling better about themselves; but pseudo-saints do not allow others to leave them feeling better about themselves, but confused and doubtful about their worth. Genuine saints are very generous, pseudo-saints are stingy, not only with money, but with everything–they rarely praise or compliment others, unless the object of their praise somehow reflects back on them. And as genuine saints are not the least bit aware of their holiness, pseudo-saints are not the least bit aware of their pretension and hypocrisy, but see themselves as superior. 

Let me finish by saying that 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 he continues to call the Church to turn outward, towards the world, to become a more listening Church. This is why he has put so much effort into Synodality; listening to the lay faithful, recognizing their gifts, talents, and expertise. In other words, he 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 genuinely influenced by the Holy Spirit, like Simeon and Anna in this gospel. 

Suicide, Depression, and Salvation

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_420suicide.depression.salvation.html

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Soon after ordination in 2008 I began to minister to those who suffer from mental illness (mental sufferers), and over the years I have known a few who have taken their own lives, including a former student and parent of that student, as well as patients that I came to know in ministry. On a couple of occasions I found myself situated between a rock and a hard place when asked by a patient suffering from depression whether she would automatically go straight to hell if she were to take her own life. The problem, I tell them, is that if I were to say ‘yes’, I’d be telling you something that I simply do not for an instant believe and feel that I’d be lying; if I were to say ‘no’, that it is not necessarily the case that you are going to hell for taking your own life, you might receive that as permission, and I cannot grant you that permission. Interestingly enough, the few that have asked me this understood, and as far as I know, none of those took their own lives.

But I have dealt with a number of patients before in the face of whose sufferings I have honestly said to myself, with tremendous fear and trepidation: “If I had to suffer the depression they are experiencing at this moment, I sincerely don’t think I could endure it. I’m afraid I’d “do myself in”.” I perceived very clearly my own inability to go on, on my own strength. 

One of the most significant moments in my life as a deacon was Christmas, 2011. Two days before Christmas, on the last day of school before the holidays in front of a classroom of senior high school students, I began to sweat and shake. I had to leave school quickly and went straight home to bed. Soon my head and shoulders were wracked with pain and my body was shaking with chills. The pain soon made its way down to my arms and wrists, and then my back and legs. Christmas dinner for me that year was a can of tuna; on Boxing Day I had to go to the Emergency. The emergency physician thought I could have polymyalgia rheumatica, a condition that typically strikes those who are 50+ and there is no known cure. I was given prednisone and oxycodone and sent home–the oxycodone was so powerful that I was too frightened to take any more after the first day. 

I honestly believed that I would not be returning to the classroom again, that my teaching career had come to an end, for I could not imagine teaching while in such pain. More importantly, I was battling deep despair—for no medical expert had an answer, none could tell me whether a light would eventually appear at the end of this tunnel. I was on the phone with my spiritual director every night, and I remember saying to him at one point: “I think I’m beginning to appreciate what my patients, who suffer from clinical depression, have to go through every day.” The thought that I had to endure this darkness for another week, let alone for years to come, was terrifying, and so I began to train myself to think not one week at a time, or one day at a time, but one moment at a time.

Things began to change when my spiritual director casually advised me to say the following prayer: “Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit; into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit”. Of course, I knew that prayer, for it is part of the Night Prayer of the Breviary that we are required to pray daily. But when one has been saying a certain prayer for years on end, after a time it can become just words, without a great deal of thought behind them. So I decided that I would say this prayer, think of the words, and mean it. If I was no longer able to continue to teach and had to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair, then your will be done, Lord; into your hands I commend my spirit.

That night I had the best sleep I’d had in years. I woke up feeling as though a cool breeze had passed through my body. I was still in a lot of pain, but the despair and darkness were gone, and eventually I was slowly weaned off of the prednisone. It turned out that my illness was not polymyalgia rheumatica, but the medical experts to this day have no idea what it was. Nevertheless, the experience was very important for me. 

Not that I ever had the inclination to do so, but I would not pronounce judgment on anyone in the throes of clinical depression who decided to take his/her own life, and I continue to be unpleasantly surprised that a good number of the faithful are under the false impression that anyone who does so is automatically consigned to a state of eternal damnation–and worse, that there are still a number of “pastorally challenged” clergy—few in number—who believe and teach this, and refuse to conduct a funeral mass for such a person.

Traditionally, there are three conditions required for one to be in a state of sin: knowledge, free deliberation, and serious matter. Clearly, taking one’s life constitutes “serious matter”, but free deliberation is the condition in which there is a serious mitigating factor, namely clinical depression. Dr. J. Raymond DePaulo Jr., writes: 

All too many people today still hold the belief that suicide somehow represents a rash but rational act committed by otherwise healthy persons. When someone takes his or her own life, the usual reactions are of shock and bewilderment. How could she do such a thing? She never gave any sign that anything was wrong. Or, Why didn’t he call me? I knew he lost his job … he and Janet split … but why this? But suicide is not an act committed by an otherwise healthy and rational person. On the contrary, more often than not, the person who commits suicide is in the throes of a severe depression when taking his or her life. And in most cases the act is preceded by severe depression with increasing signs and symptoms of hopelessness and despair. About two-thirds of the people who take their own lives suffer from major depression or bipolar disorder. Almost everyone else who commits suicide has depression, alcohol or substance abuse, or a delusional illness like schizophrenia.1

On 9/11, a number of people jumped off of the World Trade Center to their deaths. Did they freely choose to take their own lives? They certainly did not; and those who take their own lives to escape the utter darkness, the feeling of utter hopelessness, the depression they’ve had to endure for decades, are very much like those who jump from a burning building to avoid the flames. 

There is a distinction between small ‘d’ depression and major depressive disorder, which typically features a dramatic change in mood (sadness, anxiety, apathy, numbness, either separate or in combination), a loss of vitality, energy, concentration, as well as muddled thinking, a loss of self-esteem, a sense of uselessness, profound pessimism, and suicidal impulses. In some cases, anxiety and panic disorder occur as manifestations of the depression.2 What I experienced in 2011 was not major depressive disorder (clinical depression), but something much less severe; however, it provided me with some appreciation for what those who do suffer from this debilitating illness have to endure.

The Vocation of Mental Illness

On Holy Thursday night in Gethsemane, Jesus experienced the worst mental anguish, and he called Peter, James, and John to accompany him for one hour. But they could not do so; they slept. Mental sufferers, on the other hand, do not sleep; rather, they keep Christ company in his mental distress–and he keeps them company in theirs. Friendships are typically founded upon common qualities and interests. The special gift that mental sufferers are given by Christ is precisely this common experience, which makes them special friends of Christ. Thus, it is easy for me to believe that, instead of eternal despair, they will encounter the Lord’s gratitude for keeping him company in his mental anguish throughout all those years they had to endure it. Caryll Houselander writes: 

Mental patients often live out their lives in Gethsemane, and without alleviation for the fear and conflict that they suffer–and here it is that we discover the very core of the vocation of those who serve them. …Their great need is that which Christ pleaded for in Gethsemane–compassion. He did not ask them to try to do away with his anguish or to alleviate his passion, but simply to be with him, to enter into his suffering through compassion. But this even Peter, who would so gladly have swept the passion away, could not do! ‘Then he went back to his disciples to find them asleep; and he said to Peter, had you no strength then to watch with me even for an hour?’

It is the same today. In the mental sufferer Christ asks first of all and most of all for compassion, for those who will simply be with him, who will see through the sweat of his agony to the secret of his love.3

In terms of the proclamation of hope and the good news of divine mercy, I think I can safely argue that the traditional kerygma has been rather deficient over the centuries, and so many of the faithful today have had to carry the wounds of that deficiency for decades. We speak of the unfathomable mercy of God and his unconditional love on the one hand, and on the other hand we undermine and belie the claim as we project our own limits onto God, preaching what he is able to forgive and not able to forgive, turning the justice of God, revealed in Christ as absolute mercy, into an absurdity so much beneath the worst examples of human “justice”. No doctrine can be true which makes Jesus less than God, or which makes God less than Jesus.4 Priest and poet G. Studdert Kennedy writes:

A thousand mysteries begin to clear away, if we cling persistently to that great Name of God which is given by St. John: “God is Love” –the Love that was revealed in Jesus. That is not one of His attributes; that is His very Self. Cling to that Name, and use it, in all these great passages:

            “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Love hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”

            “Love, for our sakes, in His own Body bare our sins upon the tree.” “Him that never knew sin, Love made to be sin for us.”

            Doesn’t a light begin to break through?

            I remember being called upon to visit a man who was in prison for forgery and embezzlement. He was the queerest, crookedest, hardest-hearted specimen of humanity that it has ever been my luck to strike, and I could not move him an inch nearer repentance. The only sign of softening that he showed at all, was when he asked me to go and see his mother. I went. She came down, looking worn and sleepless, and that I expected. But there was something about her which I, being young, could not understand. She was bitterly ashamed, and in my pity for her I wondered, What has she to be ashamed of? And then there came the light, and I murmured to myself: Surely she hath borne his griefs and carried his sorrows; the chastisement of his peace is upon her, and with her stripes he shall be healed, if there be any power that can heal him. He has gone astray and turned to his own way, and Love hath laid on her the iniquity of her son. The mother-heart which knew but little sin, Love hath made to feel exceeding sinful for his sake. I understood and, in a measure, the eternal mystery cleared. That love which a woman can pour out upon her son, and which makes her so entirely one with him, that his sin is her sin, his disgrace is her disgrace, his shame is her shame, is the nearest that we can get upon earth to the love of God; to what God is.

            It was that love, extended to infinity, which beat within the human heart of Christ, God Incarnate, and made Him feel to every man, every woman, and every child in all the world, as that mother felt for her son; so that our sins became His sins; our disgrace His disgrace; our shame His shame; and in His own Body He bare our sins upon the tree.5

A close priest friend of mine once preached that God can control his anger, but he cannot control his mercy. This is the God who has been revealed in the Person of Christ, the Good Shepherd who seeks the lost. He does not wait for us to seek Him out, rather, He goes in search of us and will not stop until He finds what He is looking for. This is what is so important about the parable of the lost coin. We miss the radical nature of the divine mercy when we focus solely on the parables of the Prodigal Son and the Lost Sheep, and overlook this very short parable in the fifteenth chapter of the gospel of Luke. At least the prodigal son freely chose to return home to beg for mercy; the lost sheep is alive enough to bleat in the wilderness, enabling the Shepherd to follow the sound in order to find it and bring it home. Both are alive. But a coin is a lump of inert matter; it is dead. It cannot rise up and make its way home nor cry out for mercy. It is entirely lost, hidden in the dust of a first century Palestinian floor. But God’s love is comparable to the love of a woman who lights a lamp and sweeps the house, searching carefully until she finds it. This is what God is like. St. Paul says, “While we were sinners, Christ died for us”. In other words, before we turned to him and repented, He loved us. “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins” (1 Jn 4, 10). This is the heart of the mystery of grace that so few have been able to grasp, more than likely as a result of the tendency to look at sin through a juridical lens. As Studdert Kennedy points out: “Sin did estrange man from God; but it never has, and it never could, estrange God from man. God never waits for us to come to Him, God is for ever coming to us–He is the coming God.”6 Further, he writes: “We get much nearer to the significance of the forgiveness of sins, when we think of it in terms of life, than when we think of it in terms of law. Forgiveness is always regeneration, new birth; sin is always a process of decay, rather than an act of disobedience.”7

If I am saved, I am saved personally, but not individually. It is the person, not the individual, who has been created in the image and likeness of God, who is a Trinity of Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a plurality in unity. I am saved as a plurality, a member of Christ’s Mystical Body, a member of a Brotherhood, a community in which salvation is made possible. And if I am not saved individually, it is because I am not redeemed individually, and by extension I am not condemned or lost individually. Many others share in responsibility for my state of being lost. This, I believe, is the point made by the Elder Zosima in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov:

My friends, ask God for gaiety. Be gay as children, as the birds of the sky. And let not human sin confound you in your deeds, do not be afraid that it will frustrate your task and not allow it to be accomplished, do not say: ‘Strong is sin, strong is impiety, strong is the vicious world in which men live, and we are alone and helpless, that vicious world will frustrate us and not allow us to accomplish our good deeds.’ Avoid, O children, this melancholy! There is but one salvation from it: take yourself and make yourself a respondent for all human sin. Friend, this is indeed truly so, for no sooner do you sincerely make yourself the respondent of all creatures and all things than you will immediately see that it is in reality thus and that it is you who are guilty for all creatures and all things.8  

Sin is not a private affair between me and God, or you and God, but is a public affair. My sins have repercussions that extend beyond the circle of my own private relationship with God; they adversely affect others in ways that I am currently unaware of. If one person is in hell, we are all in hell, for the “one” who is in hell is my brother, my sister to whom I am attached—to whom I am a respondent. There is nothing I can do to detach myself from him so that he suffers by himself and I am left unaffected: “… if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Mt 5, 24). I will never be saved completely as long as my brother, my sister, is in hell and has something against me (See 1 Co 15, 20-28). The love of Christ was universal in the fullest sense of the word, and we are called to love in the same way: “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (Jn 13, 34). The mother has made herself responsible (a respondent) for the sins of her son, for she looked worn and sleepless, an image of God, whose worn out and sleepless face is Christ crowned with thorns. She bore his griefs and carried his sorrows, and the chastisement of his peace is upon her, and with her stripes he shall be healed. If I choose to love as I have been loved by Christ crowned with thorns, then I will carry the sorrows of the condemned, the chastised (kolasis), and the heavenly liturgy will wait for us, in the Person of Christ, to destroy hell’s brass gates, who destroyed those gates on Holy Saturday.9 We cannot endure the suffering of our damned son or daughter, for if we belong to Christ, we are joined to their suffering (1 Co 12, 26). Mental sufferers too do not allow us to suffer alone because they do not allow Christ to suffer alone; for Christ purchased their suffering, making them co-redeemers, that is, sin-bearers. Caryll Houselander writes: 

This is a vocation in which everyone, not only the specialist, has some part because it depends on an attitude of mind and heart, which for the majority of people must mean a change of mind and heart toward the mental sufferer, who is of all suffering people the least understood. This change of heart, and with it power to help the mental sufferer, means learning to recognise Christ in the patient and to recognize the patient’s own vocation, his part in Christ’s passion and his gift to the world. For he, by his unique suffering, is taking part in the world’s redemption. 

This must never be forgotten. The mental sufferer must never be regarded as one whose life is without purpose or meaning, as a burden to his family, or as one who gives nothing to those who care for him, because he is in fact giving the redeeming suffering of Christ, on which the salvation of the world and each one of us depends.10

Some Final Thoughts

Of course, the clinically depressed are also sinners, like everyone else, but their depression is not an indication or the result of a moral failure—at least not a genuine mental illness consistent with holiness11—, and much less is it a punishment for sin— another offshoot of a juridical paradigm, which formed the background of centuries of bad preaching. Their suffering is a vocation, as is ours, which always involves sin-bearing to one degree or another, whatever that vocation is. God the Son entered into human suffering in order to redeem it and make us sharers in his redemption. Those who suffer from mental illness share in this to a somewhat greater extent than the rest of us. 

To be called to minister to them either professionally (I.e., the psychiatrist and psychiatric nurse) or non professionally is to be called to a highly noble task. It is a ministry of compassion in the true sense of that word: “to suffer with…” It is a mission of accompaniment, a call to taste their darkness, and this we do to the degree that we love them. Our task is to join the light of our hope and the joy of the risen Christ to their darkness. To the degree that we taste their darkness, they taste our joy and the hope of new life. Although we may not have the privilege of being Christ’s special friends, those called to minister to them may have the next best thing, namely the vocation to serve them who in turn accompany Christ in his mental anguish. The evolution of that branch of medical science that seeks to understand and treat clinical depression and other mental disorders is a sacred history because it is ordered to the good of man, whose existence is ordered to Christ: “For all were created through him and for him” (Col 1, 16). Those current achievements are the fruit of creative conflict, a battle rooted in the love of humanity, ordered to the overcoming of an illness that cripples so many human persons.12

Notes

1. Dr. J. Raymond DePaulo Jr., Understanding Depression: What We Know and What You Can Do About It. New Jersey: Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2002, pp. 133-134.

2. Ibid., p. 23. See also p. 51ff. 

3. Caryll Houselander. “The Care of the Mentally Ill” in The Mother of Christ. London: Sheed and Ward, 1978, p. 104.

4. G. A. Studdert Kennedy. The Wicket Gate or Plain Bread. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1935, p. 197.

5. Ibid., pp. 197-199.

6. Ibid., p. 178.

7. Ibid., p. 178-179. About twenty years later, Nicholas Berdyaev writes: “There is something servile in the interpretation of sin as crime which infringes the will of God and calls for legal proceedings on the part of God. To overcome the servile conception means movement within, movement in depth. Sin is dividedness, a state of deficiency, incompleteness, dissociation, enslavement, hatred, but it is not disobedience and not formal violation of the will of God. It is impossible and inadmissible to construct an ontology of evil. The idea of an eternal hell is, therefore, absurd and evil. Evil is but a pathway, a testing, a disruption; to fall into sin is above all else a testing of freedom. Man moves towards the light through the darkness. Dostoyevsky revealed this more profoundly than anyone.” The Divine and the Human, trans. R. M. French. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1949. p. 89. 

8. Bk 6, ch. 3 (g). translated by David McDuff. New York: Penguin Books, 2003, p. 414.

9. “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, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. p. 78. Commenting on this text, Metropolitan Hilarion writes: “Clearly, Cyril perceives the victory of Christ over hell and death as complete and definitive. For him, hell loses authority both over those who are in its power and those who are to become its prey in the future. Thus the descent into Hades, a single and unique action, is perceived as a timeless event. The raised body of Christ becomes the guarantee of universal salvation, the beginning of the way leading human nature to ultimate deification.” Ibid. Consider, as well, Fulton Sheen’s vision of the man on a cross. Upon attempting to take the nails out of his feet, the man said: “Let them be; for I cannot be taken down until every man, woman, and child come together to take me down”.

10. Op.cit., p. 96-97.

11. In this article, I have limited myself to discussing mental illness consistent with sanctity; there is, however, mental illness that is inconsistent with sanctity. See Thomas Verner Moore. Heroic Sanctity and Insanity: An Introduction to the Spiritual Life and Mental Hygiene. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1959. 

12. “It was not only of his historical passion that he spoke when he said, ‘Lay up in your hearts these words; for it shall come to pass, that the son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men’. For as long as this world lasts, and men live and love and suffer and die in it, the passion of Christ will go on, and he will suffer it in the lives of men. Because this is so, all vocations, however varied outwardly, have fundamentally the same object, the comforting of Christ, and there is none of which this more true than that of caring for the mentally ill.” Caryll Houselander, Op.cit., p. 96. 

Joining Humanity and Divinity

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_419homily12.29.2024epiphany.html

Homily for the Epiphany of the Lord
Deacon Douglas McManaman

It is fitting that we exchange gifts at Christmas, because our life in Christ is a gift exchange. He came among us precisely to exchange gifts. Jesus is God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, who joined his divinity to a human nature. In joining a human nature, he joined divinity to humanity. Vatican II pointed out that in joining a human nature, God the Son is intimately present to every man (joined himself to every man, as it were). But he does not force himself upon anyone. His Incarnation is an offer of exchange, and the exchange is: If you give me your humanity, I will give you my divinity.  

Jesus is both human and divine, and he offers us the opportunity to become both human and divine; for it was St. Athanasius who said: “God became man so that man might become god”.

Parents who have their children baptized carry out this exchange; parents offer their children on their behalf. They give to Christ the humanity of their child, and in return, Christ gives that child his divinity. The result is that the child leaves the Church a different creature than when he or she arrived. That child has been deified, divinized, filled with divine grace (theosis). That child is human, but at the same time more than human. That child shares in the divine nature, and so he or she is more than human without ceasing to be human, and as a result that child has capacities that he or she would not have without divine grace, such as the power to believe what Christ has revealed about himself (faith), the capacity to hope for eternal life, and the power to love God intimately, as an intimate friend between whom secrets are shared. None of this is possible without divine grace. And of course, the child receives the 7 personal gifts of the Holy Spirit, as seeds that will unfold as the child continues to grow in faith. And there’s no doubt in my mind that parents for the most part have no idea the good they are doing for their children and for the world in offering their children for baptism. They have a sense that this is a good thing, because they arrange for baptism, even when they are not fully practicing the faith themselves. But they don’t fully realize how much good they are doing for their children and for the world in doing so.

That is the exchange that Christ offers us. I will give you my divinity if you give me your humanity, and it is a giving that we have to renew for the rest of our lives, because we tend to drift away from him over the course of the years. We tend to get caught up in things that ultimately don’t matter; we get distracted by fear and the lures of pleasure, power, and money, and sin blinds the mind to a certain degree, which allows us to veer away even further. And if we are reflective enough, we become aware of an increasing emptiness–these things don’t fulfill us, and the reason is that we became a “son of God”, deified, divinized, sharers in the divine nature. That’s our deepest identity. In 1920, army chaplain and poet G. Studdert Kennedy wrote: 

If I am the son of God, nothing but God will satisfy my soul; no amount of comfort, no amount of ease, no amount of pleasure, will give me peace or rest. If I had the full cup of all the world’s joys held up to me, and could drain it to the dregs, I should still remain thirsty if I had not God. If the feast of all the good things of life, pleasures and powers that have been and that are, could be laid out before me and I could eat it all at one meal, I should still be hungry if I had not God. Nor would it satisfy my soul, if I could be assured of an infinite extension of this present life at its best, apart from God. If the feast of this life’s goods could last forever, yet would I start up from the table satiated but still unsatisfied, because I had not God. There is not enough in ten material worlds to satisfy a fully-developed human soul–I must have communion with God. Whatever tends to break that communion is an enemy of mine, however much it may pretend to be a friend. However stubbornly I may stick to the delusion that I can live without Him, however closely I may cling to the idol that I put up in His place, sooner or later, in this world or in the next, the idols and delusions will have to go.

There is another side to this exchange. In joining his divinity to our humanity, Christ joined the divine joy to the suffering of our humanity, and this is something we can experience as well. If I am a son of God, if Christ’s divinity is joined to my own humanity as a result of my own willing acceptance of that divinity, and if I have made some progress in the spiritual life, then I can sense the joy of that divinity in the midst of suffering, especially physical suffering. Although the suffering is horrible, whether it is a kidney stone, a painful illness, or the pain of dying of old age, at the very core of one’s being, there is joy. Not exhilaration, not exuberance, but a tiny and subtle flame of joy suffering cannot touch or extinguish, only illuminate. In my experience with dying patients, it is always those with real faith who, although they are experiencing some agony, have not lost charity, but are still full of gratitude, still thoughtful, still good natured. This is rarely the case with people who are dying. There is a clear difference between dying patients who have lived a life of faith, hope, and charity throughout their lives, and those who seemed to have refused the divine exchange.

And so there is really nothing to fear when it comes to pain and suffering, if we have given our humanity to him. At the deepest center of our nature, we will detect the divine light, which illuminates and brings a degree of warmth in the midst of that suffering, so that the suffering does not overwhelm us with fear and despair. 

Complicity

Complicity

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Recently I encountered a woman who said to me that many people have left the Church as a direct result of the news of the unmarked graves on the property of the old Kamloops Residential School in British Columbia–her husband being one of them. Of course, there is no denying that the Residential school system, at its origin, constituted a fundamental violation of the basic human rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada. In 1883, John A. MacDonald wrote: 

When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write his habits, and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. It has been strongly pressed on myself, as the head of the Department, that the Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.

Despite the fact that a number of First people had positive and memorable experiences in their Residential schools, the entire system originated in and existed under the umbrella of this utterly racist conceptual frame of mind and culturally genocidal purpose. It goes without saying that the Church should never have cooperated with the Canadian government in this. But they, along with the rest of the country, did cooperate with it.

In this light, why would I want to belong to such an organization as the Roman Catholic Church? I guess it is the same reason that I choose to belong to this country, Canada, which obviously has a very sordid history–it is not on account of this country’s sins that I wish to belong to it, but on account of the tremendous goods that this country has managed to achieve throughout its long history. In belonging to the Church, I certainly belong to an institution that has a very sordid past, but is there a nation or institution in this world that does not? Is it even possible for an individual person, a saint even, not to have a relatively sordid history? Don’t we all look back at our lives and shake our heads? 

The process of coming to belong to the Church is not in any way the same as the process of coming to belong to any other institution, such as a corporation like Pepsi or Bell Canada, or a hospital or educational institution, etc. The reason is that the object of faith is not the Church as such, but Christ. For a person to believe in Christ and to enter into his death through baptism is to become, by virtue of that baptismal immersion, a part of his Mystical Body, and that person’s eyes are still on Christ, not on his Church; for he has become that Church, a member thereof, and he is taught to say every day: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us”. The reason for this is that he remains a sinner, but one who has been “deified”, filled with divine grace, not by virtue of anything he has done, but simply by virtue of the unutterable mercy of God. His life is now a battle to overcome the effects of his wounded nature, namely, death, concupiscence, and the dulling of the mind. His life will therefore be one of continual reform, which is why the Church as a whole is in continual reform, for the Church is made up of sinful and flawed human beings whose minds are to a degree blinded by sin. There is no getting around this. And that is why the study of the history of the Church is a rather painful experience for the Catholic who has an idealized image of the Church, as a child has an idealized image of his own mother and father–the child chooses not to see what he simply does not want to see.

Those who choose to leave the Church because highly scandalous behaviour on the part of clergy or religious has been reported in the news, such as the operation of Residential schools and the abusive behaviour that took place in those institutions, or the clerical sex abuse scandals, etc., seem to believe that they have no complicity in the sins of the nation and the sins of the Church. But we were all complicit at the time–practically everyone operated within the arrogance of a Eurocentric worldview that looked down upon Indigenous culture, a worldview that kept us from appreciating its beauty and value, and we are all complicit today in the perpetuation of the injustices that First people continue to endure, such as lack of clean drinking water on the reserves among other things. And we are complicit in the injustices that Canadian young people and young families are forced to endure (i.e., housing prices and the cost of living) as a result of political and economic decisions made by an unjust and incompetent government that we put into power and kept in power. This notion of universal complicity is not a new concept, by any means. In 1923, G. Studdert Kennedy wrote:

Not long ago, a man was sentenced to ten years penal servitude for holding up a post office and shooting at a policeman. He was one of the army of unemployed in London. He had a wife and two children; he paid 8s. 3d [8 shillings, 3 pence] a week for two rooms in Whitechapel, which were so dark that the gas had to be kept burning all the time; he had fought in the army and been wounded, and he had done 10 weeks work in 18 months. He was not a good character, being weak and easily led; but in any decent community rightly ordered, he would in all probability have led quite a decent life. But in “justice“ he is to serve ten years. I am not disposed to rail at the courts – I think the sentence was inevitable for the protection of society, but purely for that reason, and not because it is just. He is suffering as much for the sin of the world, for your sin and mine, as for his own (The Wicket Gate, p. 73).

A person who leaves the Church or refuses to have anything to do with the Church because of her past sins has, at the very least, committed the fallacy of judging the past by the standards of today; to do so is to misunderstand the nature of human progress. I am what I am today because of the imperfections and mistakes of my past, and what I know today was the result of a decision to continually reflect upon my life as it was unfolding and as it unfolded. In other words, it was a result of a continued reflection upon my experiences, which are now past. All of us are expected to grow from experience, but how can a person be changed for the better unless he was in some ways worse than he is today? This means that if we are changing for the better, as we have a responsibility to do, then we can reasonably expect to experience disappointments when looking back on our lives. Individually, we cannot help but judge our own past by the standards we currently live by, but it seems we have no choice but to forgive ourselves, because the standards we hold up for ourselves today are the result of that experience and our own decision to reflect upon it, in light of moral principles we have discovered along the way–not to mention the resolution to improve. But for some reason we judge others’ histories with much less patience than we do our own; we overlook that the growing process is the same for everyone, every nation, and every institution. And of course, that does not necessarily cancel our responsibility for certain past decisions–one may still have to make reparation for a decision made long ago, perhaps a criminal decision or simply an immoral decision that left another or others profoundly hurt. But why would I walk away from the Church that Christ established— the Church that abandoned him on Holy Thursday night—, for being exactly the kind of developing organism that I have always been and cannot otherwise be?

Our Deeds Go Before Us

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Last month I was out with a few fellas from our parish men’s prayer group, and the reading our leader gave out for us to reflect upon (“The Great Project of Our Life”, Msgr. Fred Dolan ) contained a Jewish tale that, after reading it, I knew I would use at some point. A rabbi in Toronto told this story at a funeral; he said that in a kingdom long, long ago, there was a woman who had three friends. One of them she adored; they were in touch every day. As for the second friend, the two of them would get together once a month for a coffee. As for the third friend, they were rarely ever in touch. One day, however, this woman was summoned to the castle by the King. When she received that summons, she was terrified. And so she called her first friend, the one whom she adored and asked: “Can you please go with me to the castle? I’m really frightened.” The friend said, “No. Forget it, I will not go with you.” Terribly disillusioned, she turned to the second friend, filled with hope. The second friend, however, said: “I will go with you as far as the doors of the castle, but I will not take one step beyond that point.” On the verge of despair, she turned to her third friend, without expecting a great deal. To her great surprise, the third friend said: “I would be delighted to go with you. Not only will I accompany you, I will go ahead of you to prepare the way to make sure that everything is ready for you to see the King.” 

What does this mean? The first friend, the one who was adored, represents all our money. When we die, our money does us no good whatsoever; it will not even go with us to the castle. We’ve all heard the old adage that we’ll never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul trailer–we can’t take anything with us. But what about the second friend, the one who would go all the way to the gates of the castle but no further? This friend represents our family, who will be there at our side when we are on our deathbed, but they cannot go any further than that. Who, then, is this mysterious third friend, the one who will accompany us and even go ahead of us to prepare the way? That third friend is our mitzvot, which is the plural of mitzvah, which is Hebrew for our good deeds. Our deeds accompany us and even go ahead of us to prepare the way for us to meet the King of kings. 

This is a wonderful tale that illustrates what ultimately matters in this life, which is “the day to day leaving behind us a trail of mitzvot”, that is, good deeds. 

There is a real unity between love of God and love of others. The more a person loves God, the more that person loves all who belong to God, and human beings belong to God. That’s what holiness is–love of God and neighbor. Holiness is not the same as piety or devotional practices. These are certainly good, but a person can easily be pious and fervently religious without being holy, that is, without the love of God and neighbor, as Jesus implies in Matthew: Although you prophesied in my name, cast out demons in my name, worked miracles in my name, I never knew you (Mt 7, 21-23). And so, appearances can be deceiving.

Mother Teresa said very often: “Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love”. Doing small things with great love moves this world forward in ways that are beyond our purview. We cannot see the effects of those small acts of great love, but God is not subject to the passing of time, so all our deeds in time are present to God all at once, eternally. Our good deeds are the sacrifices that rise to him like the sweet smoke of incense–the incense at a liturgy is just a symbolic representation of these small acts of great love, which include our prayers. Your day to day labors, if they are carried out with great love for God and neighbor, are that pleasing incense; they are genuine acts of worship, no matter what that work is. I met a former student of mine recently while taking out the garbage–he was the garbage man who grabbed and dumped my trash can. He kept trying to justify his job, as if he was embarrassed by it. But there is nothing to be embarrassed about. That work has great dignity, and it is utterly important work, and if it is done with great love for the common good, it is holy and has eternal value. Our good deeds are like the materials that we lay at the feet of Christ, who takes those materials and builds a mansion with them, one that will be our eternal dwelling place, as Christ says in the gospel of John: “In my Father’s house, there are many mansions” (Jn 14, 2). 

English poet William Wordsworth said: The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love (From ‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798.’). And that’s the point of sacrificial offerings to God, especially the Old Testament sacrifices, to offer Him the best portion of what we have, the first fruits of the harvest or the first born of the flock. The best portion of our life is our little, nameless, and unremembered acts of kindness and love.

Thoughts on Free-Choice, Damnation, and Grace

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Human beings certainly have free-choice, for without it, we would have no sense of responsibility. But that sense of responsibility–for we do hold others responsible for their decisions–is a clear indication that we are free. However, contrary to Jean Paul Sartre, I don’t believe we are absolutely free. I’m quite convinced that our freedom is limited by a multitude of factors: ignorance, passion, unhealed memories and emotional wounds that distort our perception and understanding of things and people and that keep us from an accurate assessment of things, etc. These factors in the lives of others are for the most part invisible to us–even to ourselves. Only God, who is omniscient, knows the human heart, and so we are rightly commanded not to judge the hearts or guilt of others (Mt 7, 1-5). 

Years ago, when I held an almost absolutist notion of freedom, I had a tendency to judge, because in my mind at least, I was able to. That absolutist notion of freedom allowed me to leave out any consideration of the myriad of factors that limit human freedom and responsibility–if no such factors exist, then the sinner is completely and entirely responsible for his choices, and I am free to pronounce judgement. But those factors do exist. All we have to do is look back at our own lives to when we were younger and made very bad decisions, even sinful decisions. The point I wish to make is the following: free-choice involves options, and each option contains finite goods, some of which are not contained in the other options, which is the reason we deliberate. The object of the will is the “good”, and so the will is drawn to the finite goods contained in each of these options. If any option contained all the goods that are found in the others, there would be no choice to make–I would not deliberate but would necessarily choose that option. But I continue to deliberate because no option contains all the finite goods that are found in the others. Decision is the “cutting off” (Latin: decidere: to cut off) of the deliberation process.

Now, let’s say I know that option #3 is contrary to God’s will–it may be an act of adultery, or theft, or lying under oath, etc. What draws me to this option is not the evil as such, but the good or goods that the option contains, such as, in the case of adultery, the alleviation of loneliness, the comfort of companionship, the feeling of being loved or the feeling of being important, etc.,–let’s say this woman is saying all the right things at the right time. I know, on the other hand, that this is seriously wrong, but I just don’t believe I have the strength of will to deny my passions–probably because I haven’t had a whole lot of practice, for let’s assume I was not raised by religious parents who stressed the importance of self-denial, who never observed Lent, much less encouraged me to fast and pray, and of course I was raised in a postmodern society that encourages young people to follow our dreams and passions, etc. I would argue that in this imaginary scenario, my choice to be unfaithful was really not a choice to be unfaithful as such, it was fundamentally a choice for the finite goods contained in that option. It was a deficient option to be sure, thus an evil option, and I was aware of that, which is why the experience of guilt results from the decision. I am all too aware that it was a selfish decision, and I am responsible for it, but it was the limited goods in that option that were the motivating principles of that choice. I accepted the evil (as opposed to ‘intend’), that is, the deficiency of that option–which I was obligated not to–, but what I intended primarily in choosing that option (an option I willed) were the goods contained therein. I am indeed responsible for choosing that option, the deficiency of which I understood and in principle could have rejected–otherwise I am completely without responsibility. But how much responsibility do I have? God knows the degree of my freedom, limited as it is by a myriad of factors partially hidden from me, because God is omniscient. Although my choice was a sinful choice, was it essentially a rejection of the Supreme Good Itself (God)? I don’t think so; rather, it was a choice “for” certain goods that are congruent with my nature. That is not all, of course. I knew it was wrong in the larger scheme of things and that there were better options, but accompanied by fear, loneliness, anxiety, weakness of will, etc., I freely chose the sinful option. Did that choice amount to a decision for eternal alienation from God? Did I really look God in the face and spit? I would say not at all, even were I to feel no remorse and to have no use for religion. God knows all the many factors that contributed to my decision to leave religion behind. But it is not as if one option was simply God in all his unlimited goodness and love which I rejected–that’s impossible anyways, for the Supreme Good contains all the good contained in the entire ensemble of all possible alternatives. But it was a deficient option (evil option) that contained finite goods that I was drawn to, and the ultimate motivating principle for my being drawn to these goods is my being drawn to God, who is the Good as such, without limits. 

To continue with this phenomenology of sin, I know that I should discipline myself so that I can avoid those choices and choose in accordance with God’s will, but in this case I did not. Before I get to Confession, I am shot as a result of a robbery. Did I freely and totally reject God and choose hell? As was said above, I did freely reject the option I knew would please God, so I made a choice inconsistent with His friendship, and thus wounded my friendship with him, but did I totally and intentionally reject God in all his goodness and beauty? I don’t think so. Do I deserve the pain of purgatory? Yes I do. I need to experience the hurt that I’ve caused others (i.e., my wife, children, relatives, etc.). But do I deserve a never ending torment? I cannot for the life of me see it. Is it possible for me to refuse to repent of that sin? I would have to say yes. But did my choice amount to choosing darkness for all eternity? I don’t think so. I don’t want darkness, for there is nothing to love about darkness; for it is empty. Indeed, I am my own worst enemy when I sin, because I don’t want darkness and emptiness, but I choose a course of action that leads to darkness and emptiness. I was deluded in believing that the pleasure of adultery, or the pleasure of stolen goods, etc., was going to last forever and bring me perpetual joy, which I ultimately seek–because I pre-consciously seek God in every one of my choices. It did not last forever; rather, it left me empty. Again, there’s my ignorance. So what would motivate a person after death to persist in rebellion against God? After all, it is not as if the state after death leaves a person frozen and completely immobile; just consider the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus: “…he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.’” At the very least, the rich man is no longer completely indifferent to Lazarus. When that didn’t work, he said: “‘Then I beg you, father, send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment’” (Lk 16, 24; 27-28). After I am dead, what competing finite good exists that I choose instead of life and light? I have no idea. The illusion of pride perhaps? The fact that I have become my own god? Could anyone choose that perpetually, over the Supreme Good? No one has been able to explain that to me. Some do insist ‘there is no competing good’, one simply has to live eternally within the state of mind one is in, which is a state of darkness and emptiness, for ever and ever and ever and ever, ad infinitum. But what could a person do to deserve a retributive punishment that is unending? A fling with another woman during a difficult period of his/her life? Perhaps it was not a difficult period of a person’s life, perhaps this person is just self-centered and irreligious. Indeed, God does not owe anyone eternal life or mercy. Such a person dies his/her own worst enemy, and there is nothing anyone can do to escape the hell they put themselves in as a result of a life of sin. But what can we on the outside expect from God, according to what He has revealed about himself? We can expect mercy, because his justice was revealed as unfathomable mercy. 

There is real irony in those who, on the one hand, insist that the divine mercy is unfathomable, but on the other hand reveal themselves to be the most brutal of infernalists; for the doctrine of never ending hell makes God’s mercy quite fathomable, limited, and understandable according to our own limits. Some descriptions of hell do much worse than render the divine mercy fathomable; they render the divine justice patently absurd, i.e., Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and others like it found in the writings of some saints. We are the ones who say “I’ll never forgive that person as long as I live”, not God. He instructs us to forgive 70 x 7 (490 is the numerical value of the biblical Hebrew word “tamim” which means to “complete,” “perfect,” or “finished”; God’s forgiveness is perfect). Would God command us to forgive 70 x 7, a symbolic number that corresponds to his divine nature, which is without limit, while He Himself refuses to forgive once the blanket of death covers our eyes? I can only doubt it. A man’s sin is in his unjustified acceptance of the deficiency of his choice, and so that choice deserves kolasis (chastisement), even aionios kolasis (Mt 25, 46), a chastisement that lasts “ages of ages”. But unending? 

A number of people have raised the following objection or something similar: “There is a danger in trying to understand God’s mercy and justice through human experience; we apply limited human logic to mysteries that transcend our comprehension. God is always more.”

This is an interesting objection. Of course, it depends on what we mean by “trying to understand God’s mercy and justice through human experience”. If one means that we impose limits on God, i.e., anthropomorphism, then there is a sense in which this is true. But God became flesh, joined a human nature, precisely in order to reveal Himself, that we might understand him through our natural mode of knowing, that is, through our own human experience. Christ reveals God through his human words, through his own human experience, which he shares in common with us. He speaks a human language and reacts emotionally as well. That is precisely how we understand him, in the same way we understand anything else–you step on a thumb tack and yell out in pain; I understand you are in pain through my own past experience of pain. 

When Jesus says: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do”, I understand his words through my own experience of ignorance, which lessens responsibility, which I too have experienced—I’ve done things that I didn’t realize were worse than what I thought, but I just didn’t realize it at the time, for I lacked experience. But that is how we understand Christ, through our own experience. God revealed Himself through a human nature, that of Christ, and when it comes to the mercy and justice of God, he too speaks in a way that we can understand, because it corresponds to our own experience. We know through experience that sacrifice is the language of love. Christ sacrifices his life for us. We understand what that means through our own experience of making sacrifices. When we realize, through faith, that Jesus is God, and that God the Father gave up His only begotten Son for us, we understand this analogically, through our own experience of our love for our children. We also know, through the experience of the limits of our own love, that His love exceeds what we are capable of. Moreover, when we read about the divine justice, again, we understand this through our own experience of justice. However, when we are expected to believe that God’s justice is completely incongruent with our own in the sense that we would not impose an infinite sentence of unending suffering on another, but God would, we experience a cognitive dissonance, one that flies in the face of all we understand about justice. Such a teaching cannot be understood analogically. To insist that “God is a mystery that is beyond us” does not resolve the dissonance, but merely buries it. Justice implies that the punishment fits the crime, and a good judge must, to the best of his ability, take into consideration the intention of the person as well as what he knew and did not know or understand. A 66 year old man from Norwalk, Connecticut received a 675 year prison sentence for sexually abusing an 11 year old relative. Obviously, he cannot serve that. But let’s do a thought experiment. He can now live for 1000 years. After 675 years, he has paid his debt and ought to be released, otherwise it is an inadequate prison sentence. We seem to intuitively understand that justice demands a limit to the punishment, for there is a limit to the crime, for the criminal is limited in every way. Now, if one maintains that God imposes a punishment not of 675 years, but infinity, for a person who was let’s say not a Christian, not baptised, or who lived a very selfish and irreligious life, there is simply nothing in our experience by which we can grasp or make sense out of that, unlike every other aspect of divine revelation; for it is the only thing in divine revelation that is entirely incongruent with our own mode of knowing. Unimaginable suffering that does not end is unintelligible as a mode of justice. From our point of view, it is absurd. But the infernalist claims that from God’s point of view, it is love. Faith is assent to what is beyond reason but consistent with reason, not what is below reason and absurd. Nicholas Berdyaev writes: 

There is something servile in the interpretation of sin as crime which infringes the will of God and calls for legal proceedings on the part of God. To overcome the servile conception means movement within, movement in depth. Sin is dividedness, a state of deficiency, incompleteness, dissociation, enslavement, hatred, but it is not disobedience and not formal violation of the will of God. It is impossible and inadmissible to construct an ontology of evil. The idea of an eternal hell is, therefore, absurd and evil. Evil is but a pathway, a testing, a disruption; to fall into sin is above all else a testing of freedom. Man moves towards the light through the darkness. Dostoyevsky revealed this more profoundly than anyone (The Divine and the Human, p. 89). 

There is a real sense in which I am what I am today because of the imperfections and mistakes of my past. What I know today was the result of a decision, to be sure, a decision to continually reflect upon my life as it was unfolding and unfolded, and so it was a result of a continued reflection upon my experiences, which are now past. I and everyone else are expected to grow from experience, but how can a person change for the better unless he was in some ways worse than he is today? That is why judging the past using the standards of today is irrational, because the standards of today were the result of reflection upon what is now past; for we are here today, precisely where we are morally, as a result of that past and our decision, as a society, to reflect upon our past decisions and their repercussions. That’s how a culture changes and truly progresses. That does not necessarily cancel our responsibility for certain past decisions–one may still have to make reparation for a decision made long ago, perhaps a criminal decision or simply an immoral decision that left another or others profoundly hurt.

Finally, consider the following objection: “If we can freely choose love and goodness, then it’s also possible to freely reject them. And if someone were to persistently reject God, even in the face of His mercy, then the separation they choose may well be eternal”.

Perhaps this is correct. If someone were to persistently reject God, then God must allow that person to do so, if God is Love, for love does not compel. But this becomes very mysterious when we consider the fact that God did not allow you and me to reject Him, for while we were sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5, 8). Consider the gospel of John: “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (15, 16). My freedom was restored by grace. Moreover, it is my experience that most Catholics hold a semi-Pelagian position in that they naturally believe that grace came to us precisely because prior to the infusion of grace, we made a free choice to open ourselves to God, and so God responded. But no, this is a heretical position. “While we were sinners” means while we were slaves, and slaves are not entirely free. We were unable to merit any grace; for we were unable to do anything pleasing to God that would merit a sharing in the divine nature. Otherwise, we are not saved by grace, but by our own initial choice to say ‘yes’ to God. Grace is utterly gratuitous. You and I were saved by grace, and so our cooperation with grace was itself a grace. 

Freedom is a task to be achieved. It is not a homogeneous state that endures unchanging throughout the many changes in our lives. I was not as “free” in the past as I am today–and here I do not refer to political freedom, but moral freedom, which implies love, knowledge, and responsibility. Moreover, we often look upon the relationship between free-will and one’s ability to reject a course of action (such as the decision to form a friendship, or to marry and remain faithful to another, etc) as enjoying a positive correlation. But this may not be the case. Consider a faithfully married couple, married for 40 years. At the start of their relationship, they were more free to choose another option, for example, to pursue other relationships. And yet, they did not love one another then as they love one another now, after 40 years–their love now has been tested; it is stronger and purer. Are they more able to say to one another: “Well, there are other options for us, so let’s pursue those and open our marriage or just call it quits”? No, they are not; rather, that is far less likely to happen. And yet, their freedom is much greater than it was at the beginning. The greater the love, the greater the freedom, which in this case also means the less likely they are to freely choose to dissolve it; the less love there is, the greater the likelihood that they will dissolve it. Similarly, it is far less likely for a saintly person to reject God than it is for a not so saintly person, but the saintly person has a much greater freedom, a much deeper knowledge and certainly a greater responsibility than the not so saintly person. The paradox is that grace increases our freedom, but it also makes us less likely to reject it. Hence, St. Edith Stein writes:

All merciful love can descend upon anyone. We believe that it does. And now, should there
be souls who exclude themselves from it permanently? In principle, the possibility is not
excluded. In fact, it can become infinitely unlikely, precisely through what prevenient Grace is able
to accomplish in the soul. This Grace can only knock, and there are souls that open themselves
at even this quiet call. Others let it go unheeded. But then this Grace can worm its way into these
souls, and more and more expand itself in them. The greater the space that it occupies in such an
illegitimate way, the more unlikely it will be that the soul closes itself off. It already sees the
world now in the light of Grace…The more ground that Grace wins from that which occupied it
before, the more ground it deprives from the free acts directed against it. And, in principle, there
are no limits to this displacement. When all the impulses against the spirit of light are displaced
from the soul, then a free decision against it [the spirit of light] becomes infinitely unlikely. For
this reason, the belief in the boundlessness of God’s love and Grace, as well as the hope for universal salvation, are justified… 

This is an interesting and mysterious paradox: that grace slowly and gradually deprives a soul of the ground for the free acts directed against it, and yet such displacement in fact marks an increase in freedom, for “The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Co 3, 17). Those in darkness are slaves to sin, and they really do not understand the full implications of the choices they make. Indeed, Christ himself said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23, 34), and for the most part, we don’t know what we are doing–at least not entirely–, especially when our choices plunge us more and more deeply into darkness.

The Normality of Struggle

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Struggle is a normal and necessary part of human existence, with or without the Fall of Man. After the Fall of Man (Gn 3), the struggles involved in everyday human life did not suddenly arise; rather, they simply became difficult, frustrating, and unenjoyable. The reason is that after the Fall, man, wounded by concupiscence, seeks rest without struggle. Prior to the Fall, daily struggles that are part and parcel of human existence would have been as enjoyable and exhilarating as a well played game or sport. In this light, rest and struggle are not opposites.

Creation itself, the bringing into being of all things, involves a kind of tension or a battle of sorts: 

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.

Water is a symbol for chaos, for it is powerful, destructive and without form, and thus creation is depicted as a bringing order out of chaos, or form and content out of what is formless and empty, or light from darkness, as a sculptor stands before a heavy slab of marble that will resist his efforts to bring form and order out of its formless posture. Like an artist who contemplates his finished work, God contemplates all He has made and “behold, it was very good”. Rest comes after the struggle, and there is no rest without it. Beauty is its fruit.

Work is holy, but work is fundamentally a struggle, a kind of emulation of God who creates: “And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” It was only as a result of the Fall that work–or what is humanly good to do–became burdensome to man: “…in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life,…In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread”. 

The spiritual life is a battle, specifically a battle of love. It is only a battle against the self because it is a “battle of love”, and inordinate self-love destroys love and is the resistance that makes the spiritual life a genuine struggle. Without a spiritual life, human life is empty, for it is the spirit that brings direction (meaning) to the matter of the universe, and so human life as a whole is a battle, specifically a struggle to achieve love, which is unitive and creative, and thus it is a battle for universal fraternity (the kingdom of God). Inserting struggle into our lives is God’s way of dealing with us: “We should be grateful to the Lord our God, for putting us to the test, as he did our forefathers. Recall how he dealt with Abraham, and how he tried Isaac, and all that happened to Jacob in Syrian Mesopotamia while he was tending the flocks of Laban, his mother’s brother. Not for vengeance did the Lord put them in the crucible to try their hearts, nor has he done so with us. It is by way of admonition that he chastises those who are close to him” (Jud 8, 25-27). To chastise is to prune, which a gardener does for the good of the plant being pruned, that it may bear more fruit. And so a life without the struggle and dialectic of opposites, that is, a life of rest without arduous struggle bears very little fruit and leaves a person without a great deal of depth and light.

G. Studdert Kennedy writes: 

“Love endures all things.” The word of “endure” is translated patience, and so is long-suffering, but “endures” is the patience that works and plods at things. Love is a fighter, a reformer, not content with things as they are. “Endures” means “conquers through patience,” it is that which overcomes the world. Patience that fights and wears things down until they become expressive of order and love. It stands on the rock and is patience born of faith and hope in presence of love’s very self. It has the sense of going on along a road or climbing a hill and never giving up but going steadily at it. There is the description of what love does, it ends as this life, which consists in walking on steadily, will do. There’s this much joy in it, that the road gets easier the more faithfully we keep on. The first hills of childhood seem terribly hard and so the troubles of the young are harder than those of the old because the young do not realise that the flat part will come later, it won’t be all hills. But patience is its own reward and there is never a moment when we don’t need it. The troubles of a child seem quite heart-breaking, e.g. when it tells its first lie and is ostracized by its parents who hear it crying in the next room and cannot go to it. At last we must get our feet firmly set and know that if sorrow comes we will go through it. If we keep close to Love we shall win in the end. …The world is made for love and demands it. We are toiling and working out the problem of the perfection of love and we must learn to live in unity in the human race, bearing each other’s burdens and fighting the battle of love.” The Best of Studdert Kennedy, p. 190-193.

Harmful Dualisms

Deacon Doug McManaman

A great irony today is that Catholics, generally speaking, no longer think historically, that is, within a historical paradigm. However, all things were created through him (Christ) and for him (Christ). As Tertullian points out, the very clay in which Adam was formed was created in view of Christ; man was created in view of Christ. And so history is directed towards Christ, that is, towards “Christification”. This movement of history does not stop at the Ascension of Christ; it is not as if now, since the Ascension, history is cyclical and we are just waiting for the number of the elect to be complete, which will then be followed by the Second Coming of Christ. No, history is still linear and moving towards Christ. Everyone who has gone before us has in some way contributed to the evolution of humanity towards Christ. History is sacred. There are not two histories, one sacred and the other profane. All history is sacred history, because it is under the providence of God, directed towards the Second Coming of Christ, that is, towards the Christification of creation (Teilhard de Chardin). My own individual and personal existence has a place within this history; it is a historically relational existence. It is related to the past in that others have made my life possible–I’ve inherited proclivities, talents, I’ve been positively influenced by certain people, many of whom I have forgotten not because they were insignificant, but by virtue of the limits of memory; and my existence influences others who will live after I am gone, who will have been influenced by my life in some way. But “my life” is not purely mine; it is the product of the labor of innumerable others.

The genuinely creative work of others is holy. The evolution of medical technology and medical advancements, for example, is holy (set apart from what was ‘before’); advancements in the design of automobiles and other means of transportation is holy; the creation of computers is holy; the invention of new techniques in construction and its latest products are holy, etc., for they are all the result of creative conflict that is ordered to the betterment of humanity, and man was created in view of Christ. 

It is not as if the world is unholy (the realm of the profane) while within this world is a tiny community of believers, the baptized (the Church), who alone are holy. Not at all. It is sin that profanes, but creation is holy from the start, and man was created to be a priest of creation and to have that priesthood perfected and elevated by Christ. Creation comes from God, and it is sustained by God, and the Old Testament reveals the God of Israel as the God of history. The Church is much larger and wider than the Roman Catholic Church. A Roman Catholic Mass certainly does involve the changing of the substances of bread and wine into the single substance of Christ’s body and blood, that is, the Person of Christ, but that is the very image of history in its completion, for the matter of creation is destined to become Christ (Christification). The Mass is a sneak preview so to speak, a microcosmic instance of history’s destiny. The Mass is ordered towards the fulfillment of history. 

Images of Christ abound throughout creation: each of the four seasons, fertility, death and growth, the sun, the stars that praise God, creatures of every sort, etc. To enjoy a sunset is a holy act; for the beauty of a sunset speaks of the beauty of God who hides himself and illuminates our lives, only to hide himself again. The light of faith, which is like the rays of that sun just before dawn, allows us to believe in the Incarnation of the Son of God; that light allows us to see creation on a much deeper level, a level that was hidden up to this point. The habit of mind that regards the natural as essentially profane is a false paradigm, a distorted and non-biblical worldview. In revealing Himself, God intends to reveal the deepest meaning of creation, not a new meaning. It is new to the person who does not have faith and suddenly acquires it, but with faith, one sees Christ everywhere in it, which is why Christ could speak in parables. Grace, although distinct, is not separated from nature. Grace is part of the divine plan, just as my life includes friendships that were gratuitously given. Grace is a part of human existence, because man was created in view of Christ. Grace is supra-nature, but God’s supernatural and Trinitarian existence is to be opened up to humanity. The natural is not the supernatural, but it is ordered to the supernatural, for it is ordered to Christ, from the very beginning. The Church’s task is to reveal the true nature of things.

In the Incarnation, Christ conquered death and sin, giving all of us the capacity to rise above the struggles that belong to human existence and to conquer in him. One does not have to be explicitly aware of this in order for Christ’s Incarnation to be effective in one’s life and in the life of the world. All the progress in this world is the fruit of the Incarnation; for Christ has joined himself to every man when he joined himself to matter. 

When Pius X was made the archbishop of Venice, his mother and father both looked at his ring and said: “You would not have that ring if it wasn’t for this ring”, indicating their wedding ring. It was as if to say: “We were instrumental in this. Without marriage, you wouldn’t be here, buddy.” They were the ones who provided his education that led to this. Hierarchy, sacred order, arises out of the faithful, not above the faithful. It is the fruit of marriage. The word “laity” is from laos, which is ‘of the people’. A cleric remains a part of the people, a servant of the people, never outside and above. The movement from non-cleric to cleric is not from above to the Cathedral; rather, it is from parents to the Cathedral, parents whose marriage is holy, a sharing in the paschal mystery.