|
Catholicism - What does
it have to Offer?
by Fr. Charlie Irvin
Reprinted with permission |
Click on these links found
in the article below
Cult,
Culture and Kingdom
Are
Catholics Un-American
Tradition of the Apostles and Church Fathers
The Bible
The Teaching Ministry of the Church and the Presence of
Peter
Catholic
Spirituality
Social Justice
Church
and Sacraments
Our Communion-The Sixth Chapter of Johns Gospel
The
Household of Faith
Good Guilt The Gift of Responsibility
The Cross
The Work
Redemptive
Suffering
The Catholic family of faith offers belief in, and the experience of,
the God of Abraham as personal; it finds God's presence in all that is
inter-personal, believing each incarnate soul is of God. God, we have
come to know, is significantly present to us not simply in things, but
personally present in other people. (Genesis 1:27; Romans 8:29-30)
CULT, CULTURE AND KINGDOM
Catholics cannot find salvation individually. We find salvation by
living in the world while belonging to God's Holy People, by living
within the Church. We believe that the Church is the Mystical Body of
Christ. The word ?cult? and the word ?culture? are interrelated words.
Therefore, the Catholic lives in an alternative culture, a
counter-culture to this world's culture; the Catholic lives in Christ's
Mystical Body in order to worship God our Father while in the world but
not of the world. (Philippians 3:20-21; Hebrews 11:13-16)
What are the indices of the culture that is ?this world's?, that we live
in but are not of?
In an intellectual world of moral relativism, we stand for perennial
values and ethical norms that lead to healthy and holistic human
behavior, with the result that people can live lives of serenity and
fulfillment even in the midst of collapse and chaos.
In a culture that values caring for self first and then for others, we
stand for being responsible and caring for others first and then for
self. Catholics attempt to live lives that witness communitarian values
as being primary; individualistic values as subordinate. (Well, that's
what the idea is, even though it isn't lived out very well!).
Among many people who tend to regard freedom as license, we hold to the
notion that freedom entails responsibility. God gives us freedom to
respond to the Good. God gives us freedom of choice in order that we
might choose to do what is decent, right and good. He doesn't give His
children freedom as a license for shallow self-aggrandizement and the
acquisition of power over others.
In a popular culture that regards faith as anti-intellectual, Catholics
stand for the notion that faith is an act of human reason. Faith is
based on thoughtful choice, not simply a nice, warm fuzzy feeling.
Because of this we have made enormous investments in schools for young
people as well as in institutions of higher education.
In a world that trivializes religion as being a sort of private hobby in
which people indulge in their subjective feelings and emotions, we
attempt to present religion as one of the deepest of human needs. It is
an adventure, a quest of the human mind, and a reasoned choice that
brings fulfillment to our human power to choose.
In a secular, civil society that tends to regard faith as
individualistic, subjective and emotional, ours is a lasting tradition
that has stood the test of time. We have watched what is voguish and
faddish come and go in their own superficiality. Ours is an ancient set
of shared beliefs that we hold in a Communion of Saints, saints both
past and present. We experience that Faith as perjuring with rock-like
stability.
In a world that is fragmented and broken, wherein any one interest group
necessarily pits itself against all others in order to gain superiority
and dominant control, we stand for family, community and the common good
in sharing the stuff of life and the things of the spirit. In a win/lose
culture we stand for a win/win way of mutual sharing and living in a
holistic communion.
In a hedonistic culture that's hung up on sex, anywhere, anytime, with
anyone or anything, that regards sex as little more than mutual
masturbation, ours is a tradition that regards sex as an act of
spiritual intimacy and communion. We see it as an act in which souls
really do unite with each other to become soul mates. But in a world
wherein people do not realize that they have souls, we must appear to be
mad. Sex and commitment? Sex and our innermost beings? The world around
us ridicules such ideas.
In a world that denies the reality of death and refuses to give serious
attention to life after death, we enter into it with Jesus Christ in
order to show others that death is but another birth, a birth into a new
and transcendent life.
Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris at an earlier time in this century,
once wrote: ?Every Christian, especially the Christian priest, must be a
witness. To be a witness consists in being a living mystery. It means to
live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not
exist.? It's exciting to live life like that.
To be Catholic is to be passionately against our culture's apathy and
indifference toward death. To be apathetic and indifferent toward death
makes one, necessarily, passive and indifferent toward life, especially
the human life that is inherent in the weakest of persons.
The Church calls us to live this life so fully that we can die in the
fullness of life and thus transcend this life by passing over into
another. How we die depends upon how we live. Therefore, living this
life is of the utmost importance. Because dying is of the utmost
importance, we must treat living as having the utmost importance.
In a culture that exalts rights of privacy and hyper-individualism, with
all of the resultant fracturing of communal bonds and the breaking apart
of communities and churches, the Catholic Church remains bonded in
unity, and (curiously!) inclusive of many diversities within its
Household of Faith. The fracturing of the Church is something she has
avoided at all costs, with a few spectacular exceptions. Priests will go
to any length to keep folks Catholic, much to the chagrin of many.
Excommunications have gone the way of the Inquisition and other past
horrors.
In a legal system that regards the Church as simply an association of
like-mined co-religionists who create and sustain their church solely
according to human politics and standards (however high-minded they may
be), we try to be that ?cloud of witnesses? testifying to the reality
that the Church was founded by God and is maintained by God. The Church
is an edifice built by God, not by Man (Genesis 11:1-9: Luke2).
In a political climate that exalts the exercise of power, the priest
comes to us with authority. Power relies on limitless dominance and
control; authority relies on inner principles and truths that come from
God. Power flows from the capricious and fickle will of all too human
men and women. All genuine authority, however, flows from God. (Matthew
16:13-20; 18:18; 21:23-27; 28:16-20; Mark 11:27-33; Luke 20:1-8)
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ARE CATHOLICS UN-AMERICAN?
Catholics are very much at home in our American Experiment. The American
Revolution grounded its revolt against the power of King George by
appealing to ?inalienable rights? with which we are endowed by our
Creator. Catholics maintain that no government, Congress or Court gives
us our rights -- only God does. The French Revolution came just thirteen
years after ours and grounded its revolt in the self-proclaimed Rights
of Man. Presently, secularist Americans are busily rewriting our
Declaration of Independence to fit the French mold, separating religion
from society and thereby removing our government from its grounding in
God, the Transcendent Source of all human rights. Should the secularists
succeed, the result will be catastrophic. Our rights would then depend
upon the fickle will of human beings and the political power which they
capriciously manipulate.
Secularists look to majority opinion polls and majority votes in order
to determine law, norms, and even truth itself. We find truth and moral
norms in the Lord of life and in the one who awaits us at the end of our
life, the Finality toward which all of life is ordered. The world finds
truth in information, facts and data. The Catholic finds it in a larger
reality -- in Wisdom. Wisdom is a reality that transcends the processing
of data and that transcends our own manipulation of facts and
information to suit our purposes. These things are all under human
control and therefore not truly objective or absolutely reliable. The
Church attempts to find truth subsisting in the One who is above and
beyond that which humans can control, in Wisdom, in the One we call our
God, our Father and our Creator.
TRADITION OF THE APOSTLES AND CHURCH FATHERS
John Henry Newman was born in London, England, in 1801, having an
English banker for a father and a mother who was the child of a French
Huguenot family. It was under her tutelage that Newman learned his
religion from the bible. Newman's intellect was keen, voracious, and
vital. When he was only sixteen and a half years old he entered Oxford
and began to engage his intellect with the keenest minds in all of
England. When he was but twenty-one years of age he was made a Fellow at
Oriel College when Oriel was at the height of its literary and
intellectual fame. It was the beginning of his reputation.
Newman is perhaps the most compelling and influential figure in the
English-speaking Church of the last one hundred and fifty years. His
name is associated with the emergence of the Catholic laity, the
founding of Universities, advances in philosophy and theology, the
thought and spirit of Vatican II, and the challenges modernity presents
to a life of faith. Before his conversion to Catholicism he became the
leader of the spiritual renewal in the Anglican Church known as the
Oxford Movement. This was a direct result of his study and love of the
Early Fathers of the Church.
Tradition is something which we Catholics revere (2 Thessalonians 2:15)
because in it we find the product of our human wrestling with that which
God has revealed to us, the God who is (among other things) Truth. And
it is in Tradition that Newman's restless mind found fulfillment and
satisfaction. It is at one and the same time both authoritative as well
as challenging, for Tradition is something that is, along with us, in an
on-going pilgrimage through human history as it tends toward our final
human destiny in God's purposeful plan. Like every other living creature
of God, Tradition mutates, its content changes shape, always adding
newer human insights into God's Revelation that is the continuing work
of the Holy Spirit deep within the nature of the Mystical Body of
Christ.
Understanding John Henry Cardinal Newman (if one can do so with any
reasonable degree of comprehension) requires an understanding of how the
human mind arrives at Truth, which immediately raises Pontius Pilate's
question: ?Truth? What is truth?? Is it a construct of one's own
individuated mental thought processes? Or is it an external and already
existing reality toward which the mind tends and only in which the mind
rests? Catholics experience that to be the case and have found that the
human intellect can attain it in what we call Tradition.
Newman observed: ?Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is
no positive truth in religion.... It is inconsistent with any
recognition of religion as true. Revealed Religion (claims Liberalism)
is not a truth, but a sentiment, a taste.... Devotion is not necessarily
founded on faith.?
There are those who hold to such notions today, regarding religion as a
matter of private sentiment, something utterly subjective, incapable of
being true in its nature, something that is merely useful in teaching
people to be respectable, polite, and ?nice?. Such indictments energized
Newman's mind, giving us as a part of our Church's treasures now, his
vigorous mind in support of the divine nature of the Church, her
mission, duty, and reason for being.
Catholicism, as Newman found, regards Truth as incarnate in God's Word
and present to us in the risen Christ who comes to encounter us in God's
Word and Sacraments. With deliberation, Newman fashioned his motto to
read: ?Cor Ad Cor Loquitur?, Heart Speaking to Heart. For the wonder of
it all is that God has given us His offer in love, His offer to love and
be loved by Him. And He has given us the even more awesome gift to
freely respond.
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THE BIBLE
God speaks to us as a Person. His Word for us has become human flesh and
blood. Christ Jesus is God's revelation of Himself to us, a revelation
that was foreshadowed in the Old Testament, a historical sharing of
Himself in Christ as recorded in the New Testament. The bible is God's
revealed word to us centered in and found in the Jesus of Nazareth who
was, by the power of the Holy Spirit, raised as the Christ of glory.
Catholics understand the bible in relation to Jesus Christ, the Holy One
who is the fullness of God's revelation to us. Actually there is but one
revelation of God, found in Jesus the Christ. That revelation comes to
us in two rivers that flow forth from the side of Christ, Sacred
Scripture and Tradition.
It is crucial, then, to understand that it is the People of God in both
Testaments that produced the bible. The bible did not produce the People
of God. The bible is the recorded history of God's coming to us in word
and in action, as well as the recorded history of our human response to
God's initiatives.
Catholics never lose touch with the central reality that God is Personal
and that God relates to us personally. It was necessary, therefore, that
God enter our human history and into our very humanity in order to speak
to us and encounter us humanly. All of God's revelation is, therefore,
centered in upon and flows from the truth that is expressed in the
Prologue to St. John's Gospel:
In the beginning was the Word:
the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things came to be,
not one thing had its being but through him.
All that came to be had life in him
and that life was the light of men,
a light that darkness could not overpower?
The Word was made flesh,
he lives among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory that is his as the only Son of the Father,
full of grace and truth.?
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THE TEACHING MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH AND THE PRESENCE OF PETER
Numerous occasions reported in the New Testament reveal Jesus
commissioning The Twelve to bind and loose, to teach, to forgive in His
name, and to reveal His Presence in this world so that people of all
nations might have the opportunity to encounter Him. His teaching
Presence, in the power of the Holy Spirit, was preeminent among his
commissioning of The Twelve. Christ's placement of Peter as the ?Chief
of the Apostles? was central. (Matthew 16:13-20; 18:18; John 20:19-23;
21:15-18)
It was paradoxical, to say the least. Vacillating and unreliable
Peter... compulsive and strong-willed, with narrow vision and only
superficial insights.... this Peter was made to be the Rock upon which
Christ's Church was to be built, the center and source of unity among
the Apostles, the only one to whom Christ individually gave the power of
the keys along with the responsibility of proclaiming to the world what
the Church believes. It is a fantastic scene to behold, and yet very
much of the Gospel.
Frequently our human minds turn to the question: ?What is authentic?
What is of
authority? What does the Church believe and teach?? In the context of
our American culture with its exaggerated individualism wherein each
person's opinion and autonomy is just as good as anyone else's, and
wherein egalitarianism has reduced us all to individuated little monads
with each person being his or her own universe, what we hold in common
has become extremely problematic.
CATHOLIC SPIRITUALITY
There is at the same time a ?Catholic Spirituality? as well as an array
of pluriform spiritualities within the Catholic ethos. Together they all
focus on Christ, The Mother of Christ, our Mother Mary, The Works
(compassion, mercy, justice and peace) of Christ, and The Communion of
Saints.
All of these spiritualities point toward the sovereign majesty of God as
well as to intimacy with God. Catholic spirituality sees that the reason
why we are born, the reason why we live life on earth, and the reason
why we die is to love God face to face. And we begin to do that in the
here and now when we discover the face of God in the many faces of those
who surround us. We find God looking at us in their eyes, loving us with
their hearts, and near to us in all whom He has created and made to be
living temples of His Holy Spirit.
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SOCIAL JUSTICE
Social justice is the recognition and balancing of individual rights in
a community of rights. For the Catholic, social justice flows from the
recognition of the dignity of each human being's nature as expression of
God and as a child of God, and who is therefore one's brother or sister.
Action for social justice is a constitutive element of living the
Gospel; God's Incarnate Word in the Mystical Body of Christ requires us
to live and act in the recognition of who each and every human being, as
a consequence of that Truth, truly is in his or her nature.
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CHURCH AND
SACRAMENTS
Catholics experience God in the Spirit-filled and resurrected Christ who
lives and moves and has His being within the Mystical Body of Christ
which we know to be comprised of all of the baptized and confirmed.
Those persons, who are the living cells of the Mystical Body of Christ,
comprise the Church. To be sure, the Church is a legal entity, a social
institution, something partially constructed and maintained by human
hands. To be sure, the Church, like each one of us, is a vessel of clay.
But it is more. It is created, formed and sustained by the Spirit of
God; it is Pentecost on-going, down through the ages of human history
communicated in the many human tongues that express God’s Word for us.
Along with other Christians, we Catholics are called to accept Jesus
Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, as the Messiah of God. But in
our Church, after we accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and
Savior, we go on to share His life in His Sacraments. The Church, as we
have come to know, is the resurrected body of Christ, the living,
Mystical Body of Christ. Living in it means living in Christ. It means
living
a life of intimacy
a life of meaning and purpose
a life in which, living in His Spirit, we join with Christ in
accomplishing His work here on earth.
The historical Jesus of Nazareth has become the risen Christ of glory
transcending all of human history. In baptism, and indeed in all of the
Sacraments, we live in Sacraments that incorporate us into the
Spirit-filled risen Humanity of Jesus Christ, victim no longer,
victorious over sin and death. I no longer live, says St. Paul, it is
Jesus Christ who lives in me. It is living in His life that I live.
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OUR COMMUNION -- The 6th Chapter of St. John’s Gospel
The summit and source of all Catholic worship is Holy Communion. The
Eucharist is that toward which all of the Sacraments of the Church are
directed. It is a Eucharist of Word joined to God’s Word incarnate in
the Spirit-filled and risen Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Catholics
find, and live in, the Mystical Body of Christ in the Eucharist. And we
find the Eucharist in the Mystical Body of Christ. The two are
co-extensive with each other. We Catholics see the face of God in the
faces of all those who surround us; we encounter God in His glory in His
humanity fully alive in Christ Jesus.
As we understand it, God did not come to us in Jesus Christ simply to
tell us that He loves us. He did that, and yet more. And God did not
come to us in Jesus Christ simply to tell us that He loves us and reveal
His will for us, telling us how we can live wholesome and happy lives.
He did that, and yet more. God came to us in Jesus Christ to tell us
that He loves us, to reveal His will for us, and to share His very own
life with us.
Our Lord taught us to pray especially in what we call the Lord’s Prayer,
asking God to give us our daily bread. Catholics find the answer to that
prayer in the Bread of Life that God our Father gives us on Christ’s
altars each and every day of the year in Holy Mass, the Bread that is
God’s life poured out for us. God has offered, we must respond, and we
do so in Thanksgiving, in Eucharist throughout the days and months of
each yearly liturgical cycle wherein the Mystery of Christ’s life is
celebrated and into which we enter via the Liturgy.
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THE HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH
Catholicism offers a communitarian life, a commonly held and shared body
of beliefs, an authoritative teaching ministry that links us with
Scripture and Tradition, the continuation of the Apostolic Office, and
the Presence of the Holy Spirit within the Mystical Body of Christ, all
of which are badly needed direct antidotes to the sicknesses which beset
our surrounding culture.
To be sure there are wide varieties of Catholics, there is a richly
variegated mix of various expressions of Catholicism. But whether we are
from the east or from the west, whether we are “liberal” or
“conservative” (if those terms mean anything any more) we hold to one
faith, one baptism, one creed, one Lord, and one God and Father of us
all. Our very diversity demands and calls down from heaven a unity that
the Holy Spirit infuses into us, we who form the many and diverse parts
of the Mystical Body of Christ. Catholics in their parishes live as
families of faith, big families rich in diversities while at the same
time bonded together in a family history that is deep, rich, pluriform,
and many splendorous with the Presence of God in His Holy Spirit.
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GOOD GUILT - THE GIFT OF RESPONSIBILITY
There is a difference between neurotic guilt and theological guilt.
Neurotic guilt is found in feelings. There are poor souls who
continually punish themselves, live in constant feelings of guilt,
condemn themselves and unceasingly tell themselves that they are ?rotten
to the core? and are no good to anyone, even to themselves. Neurotic
guilt is an emotional problem that cries out for therapy and healing.
The Catholic Church is often condemned for wanting people to live in
such personal hells, but the condemnation is totally unjustified.
Jesus Christ came to save us from our sins. He came to preach Good News
to us, not give us a whole lot of bad news about ourselves. And His
Church, following in His footsteps, likewise seeks to lift such trunks
off from peoples? backs, to enter into a Ministry of Healing and
Forgiveness. She seeks, with Christ, nothing else but a total ministry
of Reconciliation in order that we might all ?walk in the glorious
freedom of the sons and daughters of God.?
The Church wants nothing to do with neurotic guilt. She wants to rid us
of that scourge, that terrible affliction. But, in order to do so, Holy
Mother Church must confront us with the truth that we are responsible
for our choices. She needs to bring us to realize that our choices have
consequences and that our freedom of choice is a freedom given us that
we might take responsibility for our lives and for the world what we
have fashioned around us. This, as you instantly recognize, is likewise
psychological health and maturity. This is precisely the same message of
psychologists and psychiatrists, those healers who attempt to help us
bring ourselves to take responsibility for our decisions and thereby
take responsibility for our lives, thus liberating us from simply being
?helpless victims.?
Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, victim no longer. By the power of
the Holy Spirit the Jesus of Nazareth became the risen Christ of glory,
Spirit-filled and victim of sin and death no more. It is into THAT
Humanity of Christ that we are baptized. It is in THAT Spirit-filled
reality that we are confirmed. It is THAT risen flesh and blood of
Christ that we receive in Holy Communion. But, in order to arrive into
that state of grace we must first acknowledge that we have, in our
arrogance and pride, made decisions and choices quite apart from God,
quite contrary to Christ, and quite against the Counsel of the Holy
Spirit -- choices and decisions which have brought us into pain,
suffering, loss and into the mortality that flows from living alienated
from the Source of Life that is our Higher Power, alienated and
estranged from God.
Such estrangement is a reality far more profound than mere neurotic
feelings of guilt and shame. Theological guilt brings us to that point
of psychological and spiritual maturity wherein we recognize that we got
ourselves into the hell we’ve made, and, like the Prodigal Son, we can
make the necessary choices and take those decisions, that will restore
us to sanity, health, and wholesomeness (wholly-ness) in our
relationships with self, others and God. Which is to say, theological
guilt brings us to that point wherein we can once again take
responsibility for our lives and taking responsibility for what we can
be in the future. This means that, again like the Prodigal Son, we have
to stop living in our past lives. What?s done is done and we can’t go
back and change anything. God, on the other hand, beckons to us from our
future; He calls us through Penance and Reconciliation, to become what
we can be. He brings us to realize all that He dreams we can be. This is
the work of the Church because it is the Mission of Jesus, the Christ.
That freedom comes, however, at a price, namely the price we pay when we
realize that we have sinned, take responsibility for our bad choices,
and then re-commit ourselves to make good choices as we move forward
into our futures and become all we dream we can be as well as all that
God wants us to be.
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THE CROSS
The Cross, with Christ’s human body nailed on it in death, is perhaps
more than any other symbol that which identifies us in the public’s eyes
as Catholic. Ours is a Church of the suffering. Ours is a Church of
sinners. Ours is an altogether human Church. Its humanness is, at the
same time, what brings it such scandal, ridicule and scorn. Throughout
history its human members have engaged in shocking behavior. At the same
time, its human members have displayed extraordinary holiness. But be we
saint or be we sinner, we come together each Holy Thursday and Good
Friday to face the stark reality of Christ’s Cross, the one with
humanity nailed to it. From His pierced human body there flows forth
water (Baptism) and blood (Eucharist), that for which our souls thirst,
namely the love of God pouring forth from the new rock struck by the New
Moses.
Do Catholics accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior? Most
Catholics are offended by the question. Of course they do! Every time
they enter a Catholic church and every time they receive the Sacraments
of the Church they enter into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. And unless He is risen from the dead and present within us then
our lives make no sense whatsoever.
The question isn’t so much whether we accept Jesus Christ as it is
whether or not we live His life.
Human life with all of is suffering, tragedy, pain and loss is mindless
and senseless -- unless we see it through the lens of the Cross. Once we
do then we can see the Light risen from the empty tomb. For one gets
there only through the Cross.
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THE WORK
Catholicism is a public religion. It ?went public” on that first
Pentecost Sunday when the Apostles (note that Mary was with them!) were
anointed by those mysterious ?tongues of fire? and as a result went out
into the public square to make Christ’s risen presence real in the daily
world and worldly affairs that occupy the minds and absorb the energies
of men and women.
The Roman Emperors immediately attempted to suppress this threat to
their power. Theirs was a power of domination and control. For them
Might made Right. The opposite, which was and remains the message of
Jesus, was a terrifying threat to them. When the Church arrived in Rome
the Emperors did everything in their power to entomb it in the
catacombs. Nevertheless, no matter how many times the Principalities and
Powers of this world tried to suppress and entomb it, it always came
out. Like Lazarus and like Jesus Christ, the Power of God in His Church
could not be confined and imprisoned by this world’s Forces of Darkness.
World history is the history of the Catholic Church. She has been a
public Church from the beginning and remains so even unto this very
moment. This is a fact that upsets many of the Church?s enemies -- that
can?t stand the fact that they have to deal with God?s Church in the
public square, which is to say they are driven half-crazy in their
attempts to face down the Church as an institution. An institution is
something quite public, quite political, quite social in its reality,
quite annoying to those who want to keep it closeted.
Down through the ages the Work of the Church has been to be the voice of
human conscience raised up against the arbitrary and capricious
employment of governmental power over people. She has stood up to
emperors, monarchs, sovereigns, presidents, legislatures and courts,
point always to a Higher Authority that is the source as well as the
justification of any and all human power and control over other humans.
For the Church, humanistic as she is, does not see men, women and
children merely as human beings. She knows them to be Children of God
and herself. Like Mary, the Church is our earthly Mother who is duty
bound to nurture us with the milk, the Bread and Wine, as well as
enlighten us and warm our hearts with God?s Holy Fire.
Thus our Holy Mother the Church has established Religious Orders of
teachers, doctors, nurses, health care providers, orphanages, old folks
homes, hospitals and hospices, schools, colleges and universities, as
well as academies and seminaries -- all to nurture, care for, develop
and in-courage us in our weakened and broken human condition so that we
might walk tall, in dignity, and with purposefulness in the glorious and
Spirit-filled freedom of the sons and daughters of God. This is the
Mission of Christ. This is the Work of the Church. It is in this that we
work out our redemption and salvation, all of it being infused with the
Spirit of God who takes our ordinary human flesh and blood and then
consecrates it into the Body and Blood of Christ that we might return to
our heavenly Father in His Christ.
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REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING
For God did not create us in order to watch us suffer. Suffering is not
His will for us. I realize, of course, that as Catholics we have
spiritualized suffering to join our sufferings into the sufferings of
Christ so that it can be salvific and redemptive. (This, by the way, was
the basis for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King?s civil rights movement
and why it had the power to change the conscience of our entire nation).
I realize, also, that joining our sufferings into the suffering of
Christ is a noble and Christian work. St. Paul put it this way: “Now I
rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is
still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions.” (1 Colossians 24)
But I also remember when Jesus was asked why there were so many things
that were wrong in life, why there was so much evil, pain and suffering
in the world, and His response was: “An enemy hath done this.” It is our
Ancient Enemy who is at work here and in whose presence we find in the
root causes of our pain and suffering. In other words, it is not God’s
will that we should suffer. It is His will that we bring His healing and
redemptive work to bear so that the world is made whole again and pain
and suffering are eliminated. Why else should we pray that God’s kingdom
come here on earth, among us here, as it is in heaven?
In Catholic morality we hold to the self-evident truth that life itself
are our first and most basic gift from God, a gift over which we can
only exercise careful stewardship -- not domination or dominion. The
earth, the environment, our talents, our world, are gifts God has given
us, along with the gift of our very lives, to use in order to accomplish
His purposes, in order to return them to Him increased by our love and
energy. But what we do with our lives is our gift to God. And it is not
His will that we should snuff them out. Stated another way, our
intentions and purpose in exercising stewardship over His gifts to us
are of supreme moral importance.
The problem of suffering is, of course, ancient. The rebellion of Adam
and Eve takes us to its root source, and the story of the bible finds
suffering woven among its many threads. We recall, for instance, the
story of Job. Job was, as you recall, that poor, unfortunate man who
suffered to the point of despair, the devil jousting with God over Job’s
soul while claiming that he, Satan, could make Job despair and turn his
back on God. At the heartbreaking conclusion to all of Job’s horrible
suffering and loss we find Job crying out: “The Lord gave and the Lord
has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” The Book of Job
reports: “In all this Job did not sin, or did he say anything
disrespectful of God.” [Job1:22]
In our response to all that Jesus Christ taught, as well as in our
following in the way, the truth, and of life of Christ. St. Paul tells
us: “None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For it
we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so
then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” [Romans 14:7]
Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. Death, too,
is a mystery to be entered into, not a problem to be solved. And as
Christians we enter into death with Jesus who, when faced with His
horrible agony cried out “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be
taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” This is why the
Cross with Christ’s human body nailed to it in death is, perhaps more
than any other symbol, that which identifies us as Catholics. God, after
all, has become totally incarnate in our humanity -- from birth through
death. #
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