Day Nineteen: St. Athanasius

When I appeared as the guest on EWTN’s “The Journey Home,” a program featuring converts to the Catholic Faith, the episode title host Marcus Grodi and I agreed upon was “From Confusion to Clarity.” Though an encapsulation of one contemporary man’s “journey” into the Church, “From Confusion to Clarity” could also be read as the motto of that great 4th Century saint, Athanasius.

Athanasius was the great foe of the Arians (after Arius, a priest of the Alexandrian See), who believed that within the godhead, the Second Person held a subordinate role to the First, the Father. They argued that while the Father had existed from all time, there was a time when the Second Person, the Logos, had not existed. He is, therefore, not of the same substance (ousia), or being, of the Father, but a created thing; divine not by nature, but by a grace extended to Him by the Father.

Athanasius was a deacon in Alexandria when the bishop there, Alexander, was challenged by Arius for teaching what would later be confirmed as the authentic Christian faith: that the Second Person of the godhead, incarnate in Jesus Christ, fully shares in the same ousia as the Father and is therefore fully God, though distinct in His person. When Arius refused to recant his teaching, Alexander petitioned the churches of the East and West for a Council to decide the matter authoritatively. The Emperor Constantine I convened such a Council in 325 A.D., to be held in the city of Nicea, in what is now northwest Turkey. At the Council, the bishops of the Church affirmed the consubstantality of the Second Person with the First, specifically using the term homoousios, or “of the same substance.” They also anathematized the teaching of Arius.

Unfortunately, the Council’s definitive declaration hardly ended the matter, and the Arian teaching continued to spread, especially among the barbarian tribes of the East, tribes that were already beginning to encroach on the Empire, and who would within a century sweep classical civilization into history. In fact, it’s estimated that at one time there were more Arians in the “Christian” world than there were adherents of the orthodox faith. That this is no longer the case is due to the exertions of Athanasius, whose implacable opposition to Arianism became his life’s work.

After the Council of Nicea, some sought a compromise with the Arians, one that would allow both camps to continue to teach their respective theologies. Their mechanism for this compromise was the term homoiousios, or “of a similar substance.” To the orthodox, this mechanism allowed them to teach that the substance of the Logos was similar and therefore the same. To the Arians, it allowed them to teach that the substance of the Logos was similar and therefore different. Thus, although the Council of Nicea was convened with only two competing camps, in the years after the Council there were three competing camps: The orthodox, the Arians, and the compromisers.

This confusion was intolerable to Athanasius, who spent the rest of his life clarifying and defending the faith enunciated at Nicea, that the Second Person was homoousios - of the same substance - as the Father. Moreover, Athanasius extended this sharing in substantial Being to a Third Person, the Holy Spirit, the Trinitarian understanding of the godhead that is now accepted as the boundary between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. Athanasius’ formulation was confirmed at a subsequent Council, held at Alexandria in 362 A.D., and written into the Nicene Creed at the next ecumenical Council, held in Constantinople in 381 A.D. The Creed we recite today is the same Creed that emerged from Constantinople, and for this reason it is formally called the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Thus was born the doctrine of the Trinity, a term that does not appear in Scripture but which is supported by a wealth of biblical exegesis. It was also Athanasius who for the first time identified as Holy Scripture the 27 books we know as the New Testament. That canon would be officially recognized at the third Council of Carthage in 397 A.D.

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Day Eighteen: The Anthropology of the Cross

Chesterton wrote that “the Church is the natural home of the human spirit.” I think this is so because the teaching and sacramental life of the Church is so perfectly consonant with human experience in its spiritual, intellectual, psychological and social dimensions. But until lately one dimension of that experience has remained inexplicable from a frankly Christian perspective: the anthropological. It’s not that Sacred Scripture or Church teaching was missing something. On the contrary, the clues to a profound truth were there all along. The anthropological dimension of Christian truth remained undiscovered because the challenge had never been taken up in earnest by serious thinkers.

Part of the reason for this can be detected in a quote used often by Gil Bailie, and whose source I forget: “Anthropology is the study of culture by people who no longer have one.” Anthropology as a modern science was the product of the emerging post-Christian civilization, in which the abandonment of “cult” has led to an utterly unique historical phenomenon, a civilization with no beating heart, no culture. That the children of such a monstrosity were reflexively hostile to the universal truth claims of Christianity is no surprise, and so the anthropologists among them began their endeavors by merely consigning the distinctive features of the Christian faith to the bin marked “Myth.”

In response, some Christians at first uncritically embraced anthropology and other modernist quasi-sciences such as Historical Criticism and philosophical Positivism. This embrace eventually proved to be toxic, as the 20th Century decline of mainline Protestant denominations demonstrates. Other Christians viewed these sciences with horror and rejected them outright, retreating into anti-intellectual enclaves marked by an equally uncritical insistence on what they viewed as the “fundamentals” of Christianity. The opposition of anthropology and Christian faith, fueled by mutual hostility, seemed implacable.

All this began to change in the 1960s and 70s when an obscure professor of French literature, Rene Girard, began to explore the role of violence in religion. His signal discovery was that despite some powerful surface similarities, biblical tradition is anything but another expression of archaic religion and mythology. Delving into the anthropological assumptions embedded - but not necessarily clearly articulated - in the Christian story, he discovered a hermeneutic key to understanding the role of religion and violence in all human culture, as well as the way in which Christianity smashes ancient religious mechanisms that bring about social cohesion and personal “righteousness.”

I first encountered the ideas of Rene Girard through the filter of Gil Bailie. I had conducted an Internet search for commentaries on T.S. Eliot and came across a tape series of Gil’s on the “Four Quartets.” I ordered the series and was impressed, so much that I invited him to present a week on Eliot at The St. Michael Institute of Sacred Art. In preparation for that week, I read his book, “Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads.” It was a revolution in belief and practice. Bailie’s presentation of Girard’s thought was clear, compelling, and fit perfectly with my own experience of myself, as well as my Christian faith. In fact, I found in that book the answer to the one question I had wrestled with my entire life and for which I had never found a satisfactory answer, even in the expressed teaching of the Church: Why did it take the Cross?

I won’t attempt to explicate Girard’s theory here. Girard and Gil have done it far better than I could. You can read a summary here (Part I) and here (Part II). I strongly encourage every Christian to dive deeply into the work of these two men. A good place to start is the web site of Bailie’s Cornerstone Forum, which is linked on the right margin of this page. After reading Bailie, I further encourage everyone to begin reading the primary works of Girard, books like “Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World,” and “I See Satan Fall Like Lightning.” I can promise that your life and faith will be revolutionized. In fact, I believe that this body of work, dubbed the “Anthropology of the Cross,” is the single most important development in Christianity since the integration of Greek philosophy and the biblical tradition by St. Thomas Aquinas. Moreover, I believe this discovery is the key to reintroducing Christianity to postmodern Western civilization. Best of all, I have found that on a personal level the further one drills into the implications of Girardian theory, the deeper one’s appreciation grows for the truth of the historic Christian faith. As you begin this journey, “Be not afraid!” The work of Girard-Bailie is a profound escort into the anthropological heart of the Gospel, the bosom of the Church and the Mystery of Christ.

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Day Seventeen: Women Religious

A few years ago I was driving on I-95 south of Providence, RI. As is my unfortunate (and occasionally Confession-worthy) custom, I was loudly denouncing every other driver in my immediate vicinity as either an “old lady” or a “maniac” depending on their speed relative to my perfect pace. After a while I came up fast on a Chrysler K-car puttering along at about 45 mph in the right lane. In one smooth move, I consulted my driver’s side mirror, flicked the blinker and nudged my car slightly to port, the dividing line disappearing in a long yellow trail beneath my tires. As I came abreast of the K-car I exhaled disgustedly, “OLD LADY!” and looked to my right. There, behind the wheel, was an elderly nun in a blue habit with a companion, another sister, sitting alongside. On her face was the most delighted smile I have ever seen. Naturally, I felt like a heel for my intemperance.

No sooner had I put the K-car sister in my rearview mirror than I became aware of another vehicle gaining ground on me at an amazing rate of speed. It was a big car, a Crowne Victoria or a Continental, bearing down fast and giving no indication of any intent to slow down. I jerked the wheel, recovering the right lane just as the speeding demon flew by me. At that moment I yelled “MANIAC!” and turned my head to get a glimpse of the offender. To my astonishment I saw it was another nun, a young one this time, in a black habit, but wearing the same blissful smile as her elderly colleague now a half-mile to our rear. As the second sister tore up the road in front of me I had to smile. “Aren’t nuns great?” I thought.

I’ve always found women religious to be an intriguing combination of speed and inertia, action and contemplation. As Fr. Benedict Groeschel once said about Mother Angelica, the EWTN foundress: “If you want the trains to run on time, she’s your gal.” Sisters do have a way of getting things done. At the same time, unburdened by husbands or children, they are free to indulge in what is a fundamentally feminine pursuit (though one men need to cultivate): intimacy with God through prayer. Religious women are the backbone of the Church’s healthcare and education systems. They work as lawyers, professors, nurses, physicians, web developers, retreat directors, social workers, administrators and even laborers. Many communities of sisters devote their entire lives to prayer. Their work is to continually offer praise and supplication to the Father on behalf of priests, families, peace, the unborn, those in poverty, missionaries, etc. All religious women, whatever their role, give their lives to Christ and His people, expecting little in return. They should be cherished, especially since there are far fewer of them now than there were a few decades ago.

Many traditional communities of women religious communities have been decimated during the past past forty years. The so-called “Spirit of Vatican II” - code for the unwarranted demystification and secularization that swept the Church in the wake of the Council - acted like a biological weapon in many women’s congregations, radicalizing some, causing others to opt out, and leaving the rest in a state of confused frustration. Community standards fell, habits came off, vocations dried up, and there emerged the caricature of the angry, heavy-bottomed, feminist nun in a man’s haircut. For a decade or so, it seemed that the Catholic Church in America might lose its cadre of sisters altogether.

But today there is a wonderful new generation of women religious coming into their own. By and large, they are habited, joyful, and thoroughly orthodox. And just as the new generation of priests has been stamped by the personality and influence of Pope John Paul II, this generation of sisters can rightly be called JPII nuns. Some of the groups leading this revival include The Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia (the so-called “Nashville Sisters”), New York’s Sisters of Life and Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal, the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, the Capuchin Sisters of Nazareth, and Mexico’s Trinitarians of Mary, to name just a few.

My own experience with the Trinitarians of Mary and their foundress, Mother Lillie, is illustrative. I visited their compound in Tecate, Mexico, on a sunny summer day in 2000. The sisters live on “Mount Tabor,” a denuded hilltop outside of town. All the hills are treeless; the scrub pine, jelly palm and juniper stock having long ago been cut down for fuel. Shacks and shanties climb the hillsides, and streams of foul water run alongside the valley roads. The entire religious compound is surrounded by ten-foot chain-link fencing, topped with razor wire. Several armed men warily patrol the front gate. Apparently, gangs of bandits roam free in this part of Mexico, and they have a particular taste for convents. Many sisters have been robbed, killed, or worse. The monastery itself is a classical colonial villa with a central courtyard and several outlying buildings, including a perpetual adoration chapel where the community spends up to eight hours a day in prayer before the Most Blessed Sacrament.

The sisters are mostly young and Mexican. Many of them were rescued from lives of prostitution on the streets of Tijuana. When we arrived in mid-afternoon, a gaggle of sisters was singing as they prepared the evening meal. Most of the rest of the community was in the chapel, at prayer. We were received by Mother Lillie and another sister. They chatted pleasantly with us for a while, giving us the thumbnail history of the order, and a detailed sketch of their charism and a typical day. They told us about the rescued girls, and how they were raised and educated at the monastery until age eighteen, when they were given the option of staying and taking vows or leaving to return to their families. Then Mother Lillie pulled out a guitar and sang a beautiful Spanish hymn for us. We asked for her blessing, which she cheerfully gave. After that, we had a simple meal with the community before starting our journey back to San Diego.

The one word I still associate with the Trinitarians of Mary is “joy.” They radiate the joy of the Lord, of youth, of femininity, of health and mission. Theirs is not an easy life. They live under the constant threat of criminal assault. They are tough and self-reliant. They are poor, as the world counts poverty, but in their spirit they are incomparably rich. Many of them have seen and done things we can only imagine, and yet there is an uncomplicated innocence about them that is hard to forget. Like all women religious, they have been a particularly precious grace in my life.

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Day Sixteen: Theosis

“The Son of God became man, that we might become God.” These words of the great St. Athanasius, sometimes misconstrued, nevertheless point to a profound hope embedded in Sacred Scripture and transmitted by Sacred Tradition. In the presence of the Beatific Vision, we shall be made “like unto Him” (c.f. I John 3:2). The classic scriptural text for theosis is II Peter 1:4 - “(By Christ, God) hath given us most great and precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature: flying the corruption of that concupiscence which is in the world.” - but the clearest definition comes from that most clarifying of writers, C.S. Lewis:

(God) said that we were “gods” and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him-for we can prevent Him if we choose-He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Day Fifteen: “Domine, non sum dignus …”

Friday. The third Friday of Lent, and a day of fasting and abstinence. Four Fridays hence we will commemorate the crucifixion and death of our Lord. And so today I’ll offer a short reflection revolving around the words Catholics say near the end of the Mass, just before receiving Communion: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you; but only say the word and I shall be healed.”

A few years ago, I drew up new instructions for my wife to follow in the case of my untimely death. I’m not morbid in that way at all, but if it happens I want to know that certain things will be done just so. The first item on my list is this: My gravestone can be of any design you like and it can be sited in any location you choose, but whatever it looks like and wherever it is, it must prominently feature the words, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you; but only say the word and I shall be healed.”

From the time I began seriously investigating the Catholic faith, right through my formal reconciliation with the Church, and continuing to this day, these words from the Mass have been the enduring prayer of my heart. They are my capsule biography, my constant confession, my profession of faith, and my declaration of hope. In my life, I’ve probably read a billion words. I’ve probably spoken another half billion and may well have written a million or more. And then there are the innumerable words I’ve heard others speak. Of all those words, the most precious to me are these, not least because I routinely have the privilege of addressing them to my Lord himself, present on the altar under the appearance of bread and wine. They form what is in my mind the perfect prayer.

First, “Lord …” Right from the start, we acknowledge His kingship and power. ”

“I am not worthy …” In the next instant, we acknowledge who we are, especially in relation to Him. I often think of this full phrase, “Lord, I am not worthy …”, as the ultimate test of sanity. Insanity begins when we forget or can no longer apprehend the right order of things, or what we call “reality.” And the fundamental building block of reality consists of this: God is, but I am not Him.

The prayer goes on: “…worthy to receive you.” Having acknowledged that God is, but we are not Him, the gap between us now closes. In His love, He wants to give Himself to us entirely. Note that the phrase is not “worthy to be received by you,” but “worthy to receive you.” Christ doesn’t so much draw us to Himself as He draws Himself to us. He is the active suitor in this divine courtship. He is the one who proposes to give us life, though we have nothing to offer in return. He has already chosen us. All that’s left is for us to respond.

“…yet only say the word …” Here, our sense of unworthiness collapses into a trusting surrender. Our willingness to give in, our eagerness to do so, is a sign of our desire for the good things He offers. We need Him, and we know it. So he doesn’t have to ask us twice. He had us at “Come …” In John 6, Peter declared, “to whom should we go, Lord? You have the words of everlasting life!” And now, we make a similar declaration: “only say the word …”

“… and I shall be healed.” There it is: the promise. All our lives we have been aware of a deep brokenness, a “sickness unto death,” in the words of the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. We have not been aligned properly. Something has always been out of joint. We have not been our real selves, and so we have put on mask after mask, pretending to be happy, defending our sham independence. We know now that we are wounded people in need of healing and wholeness, and so we turn to the only one who can restore us, the one who made us for Himself, the one who knows and loves us more deeply than any other.

“Lord, I am not worthy to receive you; but only say the word, and I shall be healed.” The consecration has been accomplished. We kneel between earth and heaven and address Him in humility, in trust, and in hope. He waits for us on the altar, and comes to us in the hands of a priest, and He calls out, saying, “Come, all of you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”

“Domine non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum: sed tantum dic verbo et sanabitur anima mea. Amen”

Day Fourteen: Charles Spurgeon and the YMCA Pool

The great British Baptist Charles Spurgeon once wrote: “If I were a Roman Catholic, I should turn a heretic, in sheer desperation, because I would rather go to heaven than go to purgatory.” Along with Mary and the Pope, no issue divides Catholic from Protestant so much as the subject of Purgatory. That this is so is due in part to the ignorance embedded in Spurgeon’s famous quote. Purgatory, pace Spurgeon, is not an alternative to Heaven. It is Heaven’s vestibule; it is not so much a place as it is a condition, or a state of being; and the “time” spent in that state is not so much a sequence of hours and days, but rather a function of the work that remains to be done in preparation for a given soul’s final movement from vestibule to sanctuary.

Actually, my favorite everyday metaphor for Purgatory isn’t nearly so ‘churchy.’ My favorite metaphor is the pool at the YMCA. As those of us with “Y” memberships know, before you can get in the pool you must first visit the showers. Your destination is the pool, not the shower, but everyone headed for the pool must pass through the shower on their way. This is very different than if your destination is the basketball court or the weight room. No one visits the shower before playing one-on-one or hitting the Nautilus machine. Often, basketball players won’t visit the shower even after their game, preferring instead to drive home and wash up there. But everyone whose destination is the pool must stop by the showers first. It’s a rite of passage that has both symbolic value (for oneself and other swimmers), as well as actual value (for the hygienic condition of the pool itself). The shower experience may be long or brief, depending on the work to be done there, but there is no question that the one showering will wind up in the pool. Seen in this way, the shower is nothing more than a preparation for the pool, the pool’s vestibule, if you will. Just like Purgatory.

Charles Spurgeon’s error is in thinking that he is worthy to jump in the pool without a visit to the shower. He might counter that his membership in the YMCA makes him worthy to get in the pool, and he’s right. But he mistakes membership in the YMCA with the cleanliness sufficient to warrant bypassing the shower. That isn’t how it works. The pool is reserved for members, it is true, and being a private club membership is conferred upon the individual through a gracious act. But visiting the shower first is still required, because it isn’t about the member, or membership, or the even the YMCA itself. It’s about the pool and what may be permitted to enter there.

This is all code, of course, for the question of justification. Spurgeon would say that by faith in Christ, he has been declared legally righteous, and is therefore positionally worthy of Heaven. And he would be right. But legal justification is something quite different than actually becoming holy. Through forensic justification - or what Catholics call “initial justification” - the Father looks at me, sees the righteousness of Christ, and credits it to my account. Fine. But it doesn’t stop there! Regardless of my legal standing, I am still a sinful man, freighted with disordered desires (meaning I don’t want for myself what God wants for me). And even though I may confess particular sins, I remain conscious that my life is marked by vast regions of sinfulness, or the inclination to sin. And so, following initial justification, the Holy Spirit begins to purify the Christian. This is sanctification, the often life-long process of healing the sin-sickness that remains within us, and with which we cannot enter Heaven. This isn’t something we do, mind you, although we certainly cooperate to one degree or another. No, sanctification is another gracious act of a loving God, who wants us restored to full health, not just legally declared so. You’ve heard the saying, “no pain, no gain”? It originally referred to the fact that it is only through suffering that we grow in holiness. And so sanctification is a painful process, an interior scouring accomplished through suffering. When discussing sanctification, I often think of the famous quote from Aeschylus: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” Wisdom and holiness are creatures of time and suffering.

Now, most people - even Spurgeon - would agree to this point. Where we diverge is at the point of death. Spurgeon would say that in that instant, the sanctification process is abruptly ended, and the “saved” Christian enters Heaven. Whether he takes the sinfulness that remains with him, or whether it is somehow supernaturally accomplished in an instant, is not clear. In fact, most people who believe as Spurgeon does won’t even hazard a guess. The Catholic Church, by contrast, keeps right on going with the time and suffering. The Church teaches that the person who dies in a state of grace, but in whom sinfulness remains, continues the purification process until that process is complete. That purification process is what we call Purgatory, more a condition or state than a place, and certainly not a final destination. Since it is the instrument of the Holy Spirit in sanctification, we believe that Purgatory is a place of suffering. At the same time, however, we talk about the “happy souls in Purgatory.” Happy, because in spite of their discomfort, they know they are bound for Heaven. We pray for the souls in Purgatory in the same way we would pray for any Christian undergoing a trial. Indeed, we believe that the holy souls in Purgatory are already saints making their final preparation for an eternity with the Father.

The exciting thing about Purgatory is that I, Mark, will really be holy, cleansed of all the sinfulness I’ve been carrying around my whole life. And so the Mark who enters Heaven will be a sinless and perfected Mark, not just someone who has been legally declared righteous but isn’t really so. In one of his letters, St. Peter tells us that God intends to make us “partakers of the divine nature!” How could that ever be true if our sickness wasn’t truly healed, or if we were just automatons?

At the risk of stretching it beyond the breaking point, allow me to return to the pool metaphor and extend it a bit further. During His Passion, the owner of the pool - indeed the very one for Whom and in Whom the pool was made - nevertheless deigned to visit the shower before returning to it. He who had no need whatsoever for a shower nevertheless endured its humiliations and pains in order to make a way into the pool for us. That those of us destined to enjoy the pool with him should likewise pass through the shower is not only appropriate, but an incomparable privilege. And, I might add, a small price to pay at that. When you get to Heaven, ask Charles Spurgeon. He’s seen it all by now.

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world”

Day Thirteen: Lay Movements in the Church

Prior to a “shotgun start” at a golf tournament, the players are evenly distributed at every tee on the course and begin play at precisely the same time. A given player will therefore end his round on the hole (15, for instance) immediately preceding the one at which he began (16). This ensures that all the players will finish their rounds at roughly the same time, which is important because hot food, cold beer and prizes are usually waiting in the clubhouse.

A golf tournament with a shotgun start is a lot like the rich diversity of lay movements in the Catholic Church. The goal of every “player” is the same - personal sanctity - but depending on which group one belongs to, the start and the path to completion are just a bit different.

So, for instance, members of Communion and Liberation take their formation and sustenance through Schools of Community which meet in academic settings to read and discuss texts that focus on the distinctive charisms - or graces - of C&L: the wonder of the Incarnation, an enthusiasm for it and a recognition of its reasonableness; the affirmation that Jesus of Nazareth is a present event in a sign of communion; and that only in his presence can man be truer and mankind be truly more human. The goal of Communion and Liberation is to assist its members to grow in holiness.

Members of the venerable Society of St. Vincent dePaul also seek to grow in holiness, but they do so by serving the poor: collecting and distributing clothing, maintaining food pantries, seeking donations to help those less fortunate with housing or utility expenses, and so on. Like members of C&L, Vincentians meet and pray together, but the special charism of the SVDP is to provide practical assistance to the poor.

Those involved in the Confraternity of Penitents seek to grow in holiness by living a modified version of the Franciscan rule of 1221 A.D. This Rule of Life prescribes specific daily prayers and a simplified form of life centered on penance and bodily mortification. The unique charisms of the CFP include humility and simplicity.

Now, you’ll note that the goal of each of these lay ecclesial movements is the same: the sanctification of its members. But each of them take a slightly different path to achieving that goal. The C&L is a more intellectual path, while the SVDP centers on practical action. The CFP, by contrast, emphasizes personal prayer and penance. However, members of C&L certainly strive to serve the poor, while Vincentians seek humility and simplicity as highly as Penitents, who also value the intellectual formation of C&L. There is no “right way” to be found when comparing lay ecclesial movements; instead they are each expressions of the manifold “ways” in which grace can be enlivened in the lives of individual Christians. Everyone involved in these movements, to return to the golf metaphor, will complete their rounds, but they’ll play the course a bit differently than the group behind or ahead of them. And with the aid of grace, they will all end up at the Lamb’s Feast in the Heavenly Clubhouse.

A special note about one former lay ecclesial movement, now the only Personal Prelature in the Catholic Church: Opus Dei. Opus Dei was founded in 1928 by St. Josemaria Escriva, a Spanish priest. The goal of Opus Dei, like that of every extraordinary movement within the Catholic Church, is to assist members in their struggle for personal sanctity. Opus Dei’s unique focus is on ordinary life as the means - not just the context, but the means - for growing in holiness. It is predicated on the idea, later made explicit by the Second Vatican Council, that the laity have their own vocation that is every bit as vital to them and to the life of the Church as the vocation of priests and religious. It was the conviction of St. Josemaria that every baptized Christian is called to be a saint, and Opus Dei’s particular charism is the integration of the spiritual life with a person’s professional, social and family responsibilities. The members and associates of Opus Dei seek to become saints in and through the lay vocations - familial, social and professional - in which they find themselves. While some lay ecclesial movements encourage their members to withdraw from the world, Opus Dei encourages its associates to dive ever more deeply into the muck and mire of real life, and to find there the grace to become saints.

All four of these movements have touched my life, and have helped form my own unique approach to living the Christian life. Another, the Catholic Worker movement, is presently helping me to deepen my understanding of the Church’s “preferential option for the poor,” both spiritually and concretely, including politically. There are other movements, of course, including Focolare, Neo-Catechumenal Way, Regnum Christi, Cursillo, Sant’Egidio, Taize, and the Charismatic Renewal, as well as lay expressions of the Benedictine, Franciscan, and Dominican charisms. If you are looking for a way to deepen your prayer and practice beyond what may be available at your local parish, check out one or more of these movements. You are sure to discover a community or a rule that meets your need, and that will become a signal grace in your own Christian journey.

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world”

Day Twelve: Abandonment to Divine Providence

Today, I wish to highlight the work of a writer whose influence on me during these past 13 years has been immense: Jean Pierre De Caussade, author of “Abandonment to Divine Providence” also known as “The Sacrament of the Present Moment.”

Throughout my life, I was one of those people who took matters into his own hands when things were difficult. In the crucible, I would turn my face away from God and look inward, relying on my own strength and ingenuity to extricate myself from whatever troubles assailed me. For most people, I think, this pattern is counterintuitive. By their own testimony, most Christians I know turn to the Lord in times of darkness, but have difficulty keeping their eyes on him during the sunlit times. By contrast, I could always sustain my engagement with God when the bloom was on the rose, but when the petals fell and a storm threatened I would in effect ask Him to stand aside while I turned things around.

Early in my movement toward reconciliation with the Church, I encountered De Caussade and this pattern began to change. At a certain point, I began to pray for the Lord to give me some trial, some suffering, so that I could practice the virtue of abandoning my own resources and instead rest on His strength, His will, and His providence. I won’t bore you with the details, but I was in fact given such a trial on the eve of my reception into the Church, a trial that endured far longer than I thought it would. Throughout it all, I managed with the aid of grace to remain docile, faithful, and prayerful; waiting in serene confidence that this time He would extricate me from the danger I faced.

He did, of course, though not on the timetable I had expected, nor in the manner I had anticipated. And that was entirely appropriate, because as De Caussade insists, it is precisely our expectations and anticipations that are the problem. Whether in darkness or in light, our task is to merely wait upon the Lord. As De Caussade writes, “So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide and our doubts serve to reassure us.” Or, in the prescriptive words of Eliot:

… be still, and wait without hope
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
for love would be love for the wrong thing; there is yet faith
but faith and love and hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
so darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.

If we Christians can learn anything from our Buddhist friends it is precisely this: to wait upon the Lord without thought, to seek perfect detachment from our desires, our egos, our fears, even our loves. Not because these things are evil, but because they are ours, not His, and if we hold on to them, they, not He, will direct our paths. Christ calls us to a kind of spiritual suicide, a dying to self. This means leaving all our “stuff” behind, especially the “stuff” we would really rather keep, our resentments, our pride, our sense of entitlement, our prerogatives and our excuses. Jesus says, “Whosoever finds his life will lose it. But he who loses his life for my sake, shall find it.” He calls us to abandonment, so that we can be claimed; emptiness, so that we can be filled; death to self so that we can find life in Him.

During His Passion, our Lord gave us the perfect model of abandonment to divine providence. Though He knew Who He was and for what He had come, He nevertheless sweat blood at Gethsemane and begged that the cup be taken from Him. Yet, when the moment of temptation and agony passed, He gave Himself fully to the Will of the Father. He emptied Himself of everything but that Will and was obedient, even to death on the Cross. My enduring prayer is that in all things I may learn to do the same.

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Day Eleven: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition

I recently came across a Christian website that provides Bible study guides, audio programs and other resources to help Christians better understand the Scriptures. The man behind the site is a former professor at a respected, mainstream “Bible” college, the kind of seminary-lite that is popular among those who prefer practical subjects like teaching, preaching, and music ministry to a broader education in the arts, sciences and humanities. It really is a terrific site, and the author is very good, but in one of the study guides on an Old Testament book, I read the following stunner of a sentence: “Secular science is one of Satan’s ‘Goliaths’ facing us in spiritual warfare today.” Here in a nutshell, I thought, is a perfect example of what author Mark Noll has called “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.” But lest the reader think I’m being critical of our non-Catholic friends alone, think again, because sadly this kind of attitude is also the scandal of many Catholic minds. It shouldn’t be so.

Which brings me to today’s grace: The Catholic intellectual tradition. I grew up in a home in which books were prized; my brothers and I were encouraged to read widely in philosophy, politics, theology, history and science. More importantly, we were permitted to form, hold and defend positions that were sometimes at odds with the opinions and beliefs of our parents. This intellectual freedom was one of the signal “graces” of my youth. The saying “everything that’s true already belongs to Christ” was never spoken in our household, but it was assumed. And so we grew up as strangers to the fear of serious intellectual inquiry that marks many Christian homes and families.

Because of my unique background, I was better prepared than most to receive and relish the immersion in the intellectual tradition that I received in college. I attended Salve Regina University (Newport, RI), where I fell under the influence of two professors who became my guides through the centuries of Catholic thought: Sister Ann Nelson, RSM, chair of the Political Science department, and Dr. Lubomir Gleiman, chair of the department of Philosophy. What I discovered through them was an unbroken tradition of intellectual humanism that stretches back 2,000 years, a tradition which is the essential (if often unacknowledged) engine of all Western thought. I say “intellectual humanism” because in the Catholic view of things knowledge of the world necessarily enfolds the knowledge of Man in his many dimensions. And embedded in this knowledge is a greater understanding of God, Creator and Savior, who after all made Man in his image and likeness. As Pope John Paul II wrote in the introduction to his encyclical Fides et Ratio: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of the truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth - in a word, to know himself - so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”

Beyond the essential articles of Divine Revelation, which are undiscoverable by human reason, the Catholic tradition does not privilege faith over reason, but instead views both as complementary gifts of God. For instance, while the doctrine of God as a Trinity of three distinct Persons who share in one divine Nature is purely the product of Revelation - and therefore the object of faith alone - the Church holds that the very existence of God is discoverable through human reason. And while the dogma of the Immaculate Conception depends entirely on faith, the virtue of chastity is written on all human hearts in the Natural Law.

This appreciation for both faith and reason that marks the Catholic intellectual project throughout the centuries is rooted in the Church’s conviction about the essential goodness of the world and of Man, a goodness wounded but not destroyed by the Fall. Sadly, this generous, hopeful view of human nature was a casualty of the Reformation of the 16th Century. It was important for Reformers such as Luther and Calvin to falsely accuse the Catholic Church of Pelagianism, the heresy that human beings may attain to perfection without the aid of grace, a heresy condemned by the Church herself at the Council of Ephesus, 431 A.D. Nevertheless, in order to make their case the Reformers asserted the absolute depravity of human reason and, by extension, the human will. Both Luther and Calvin rejected the Catholic notion that human beings can and do rationally cooperate with grace in seeking faith and growing in holiness. Man contributes nothing, according to the Reformers, because his reason is hopelessly occluded by sin.

Ultimately, such a view is not sustainable because it is fundamentally at odds with the truth about the human person. Today, the communions that have historically taken this view have largely collapsed into one of several deracinated versions of Christianity: the rationalist, the Gnostic, or the fundamentalist.

The slow descent of many mainline Protestant denominations into rationalism illustrates this process. During the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, under the influence of Darwin, Freud, philosophical Positivism, and Christian socialism, mainline Protestant denominations found themselves with a dilemma: Many of the essential articles of the Christian faith, especially those derived from divine revelation, seemed to be at odds - often embarrassingly so - with reason and the “triumph” of science. One by one, these historic Christian doctrines were jettisoned or mythologized in favor of an approach to religion which often reduced Christian belief and practice to a set of ethical principles.

One reaction to the triumph of rationalism in the mainline denominations was fundamentalism, the re-assertion of a nascent Christian animus toward human reason, one succinctly captured by the Know-Nothing sentence “Secular science is one of Satan’s ‘Goliaths’ …” Far from being a throwback to a simpler, purer, more primitive Christianity, fundamentalism is thoroughly modern, inherently reactionary, and essentially anti-intellectual. Another, quite different reaction was the explosion of neo-Gnostic movements such as Theosophy, Christian Science, the New Age, and lately the Health-and-Wealth Gospel.

In counterpoint to the above, Catholics can boast of an intellectual heritage that is as robust today as it ever was, one sustained without sacrificing the doctrinal or moral teaching of the Church. This heritage began with St. Paul’s visit to the Aereopagus and continued right through the work of such great 20th Century minds as von Balthasar, Maritain, Lonergan, Wojtyla, Gilson, Wittgenstein and Guardini. It encompasses (in no particular order) Tertullian, Ambrose, Augustine, Basil, Aquinas, Pascal, Bonaventure, de Sales, Adelard, Peter Lombard, Thomas More, Rene Girard, de Tocqueville, Decartes, Max Scheler, Marcel, Edith Stein, Gerard Manly Hopkins, Milosz, de Lubac, Copleston, Peter Faber, Erasmus, Dante Alighieri, Leonardo Da Vinci, Francis Bacon, Cervantes, Flannery O’Connor, and on and on and on. If the most current research is true, it may even encompass the Bard himself, Shakespeare. Among scientists alone, the list of faithful Catholics is amazing: Ampere, father of electrodynamics; Lavoisier, father of modern chemistry; Becquerel, who discovered radioactivity; Laplace; Braille; Carrell; Guttenberg, inventor of the printing press; Galvani; Marconi; Volta (volt!); Albertus Magnus; Copernicus; Bacon; Muller, the founder of modern physiology; Louis Pasteur; Enrico Fermi; Madame Curie; Fleming, the inventor of penicillin; Mendel; and yes, even old Gallileo Gallilei himself, whose problem with the Church had nothing to do with science and everything to do with his interpretations of Scripture.

“Secular science is one of Satan’s ‘Goliaths’ facing us in spiritual warfare today.” No serious Catholic could have ever written that sentence, and that fact has been a tremendous grace in my life.

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Day Ten: St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe

On the Easter Vigil 1997, I chose two Confirmation names, Justin and Maximilian, for Ss. Justin Martyr and Maximilian Kolbe. St. Maximilian Kolbe was a Pole (born Raymond Kolbe) and member of the Conventual Franciscan Order. His deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially in her role as the Immaculata (or the one graced by the Immaculate Conception), led him to build a Marian renewal movement that stretched from his native Poland to Japan, where he built a “City of the Immaculate” evangelization center in 1930. St. Maximilian also pioneered the use of modern media for the purposes of evangelization. His friars published a daily newspaper with a circulation of a quarter-million and a monthly magazine with a circulation over over one million. Kolbe also began a shortwave radio ministry and planned to build a movie studio to produce Catholic films.

Unfortunately, all of this fervently fecund evangelistic work was brought to a screeching halt in September 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland and quickly occupied the entire country. Fr. Maximilian withdrew into his City of the Immaculate center near Warsaw and transformed the facility into a refugee shelter that housed up to 3,000 people, including 2,000 Jews. In May 1941 the City of the Immaculate was raided and shut down. Fr. Maximilian and four other friars were sent to the death camp at Auschwitz. Fr. Maximilian was singled out for especially harsh treatment precisely because he was a priest. In spite of the extra labor, beatings, and daily insults directed at him by the camp guards, Fr. Maximilian persisted in his vocation as a priest, routinely giving away his meager food rations and attending to the spiritual needs of his fellow prisoners. At night, Fr. Maximilian would move through the barracks, stopping at each bunk to ask, “Can I do anything for you? I am a Catholic priest.”

In late July 1941 a man from Fr. Kolbe’s barracks escaped (though he was later found dead.) In a rage, the camp commandant ordered that ten men from the barrack should be selected at random and executed. One of those chosen was Franciszek Gajowniczek, a Polish Jewish farmer and soldier who Maximilian knew to be a married man with children. Kolbe stepped out of the formation and approached the commandant. Pointing at Gajowniczek, he said “I am a Catholic priest, but this man is a husband and father. I would like to take his place.” The commandant agreed and ordered Gajowniczek back into the ranks of prisoners. Fr. Maximilian and nine others were placed in a tiny starvation bunker where they were exposed to the elements. One by one the men died of exposure, madness and malnutrition, and one by one Fr. Kolbe ministered to them, leading them in prayers and meditations on the Passion of Christ. After two weeks only four of the men remained alive, including Fr. Kolbe. Tired of waiting for them to die, on August 14, 1941, a Nazi thug injected each man with cabolic acid. Fr. Kolbe was the last to die and with a prayer on his lips he raised his arm for the executioner’s needle.

Many years later, in the canonization ceremony for Fr. Maximilian on October 12, 1982, Pope John Paul II called him a “prophet of the civilization of love,” and asked: “Does not this death - faced spontaneously, for love of man - constitute a particular fulfillment of the words of Christ? Does not this death make Maximilian particularly like unto Christ - the Model of all Martyrs - who gives his own life on the Cross for his brethren? Does not this death possess a particular and penetrating eloquence for our age? Does not this death constitute a particularly authentic witness of the Church in the modern world?”

In one of the most moving codas to the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe, the beneficiary of his loving substitution, Franciszek Gajowniczek, was present in St. Peter’s Square for the canonization. He had survived Auschwitz and returned home to find his wife alive but his two sons dead. Every year thereafter, Gajowniczek had returned to Auschwitz on August 14, the anniversary of St. Maximilian’s death. Though Jewish, he spent much of the rest of his life making public the martyrdom of the man who had literally saved him from the executioner’s needle. Franciszek Gajowniczek died in 1995 at the of 94. The man who rescued him in July 1941 now beholds the beatific vision in the company of his beloved Immaculata and his fellow saints and martyrs. Praised be God in His saints.

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”