(Vatican Radio) The Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society is a new interdisciplinary endeavor designed to create synergy and explore existing connections among the social sciences as these pertain to religion and the study of religion. Founded by St. Mary’s University, Twickenham , with the approval of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See, the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society brings together existing strands of research and seeks to foster new projects with partner researchers and organizations.
The Centre’s founding ethos and central conviction is rooted in the enduring vision of Catholic higher education, as enunciated in the Apostolic Constitution Ex corde Ecclesiae of Pope St. John Paul II on the nature and purpose of the Catholic university in the life of the Church and the world.
Among the external affiliates of the Centre is Vatican Radio’s Chris Altieri, who spoke with the Centre’s founder and first Director, Dr. Stephen Bullivant , about the initiative and its efforts to recover the Christian roots of our increasingly secular culture.
Click below to hear Chris Altieri’s extended conversation with Dr. Stephen Bullivant
“The vision for the Centre comes from various streams: obviously – with the name – Pope Benedict XVI visited St. Mary’s in 2010 , and did several events at St. Mary’s, and this 5 th anniversary [year] seemed like a good opportunity to remind ourselves of that honor,” he said. “More broadly,” Bullivant continued, “my own work, in theology and particularly in sociology and the social sciences, has long been impressed – long before I was a Catholic – by Pope Benedict’s – and prior to that, Joseph Ratzinger’s – engagement with secular thought – particularly his very famous dialogue with [renowned philosopher] Jurgen Habermas and his dialogue with [Italian philosopher and politician] Marcello Pera , and the call for a ‘Courtyard of the Gentiles’,” which has since become a reality through the Pontifical Council for Culture.
One of The Benedict XVI Centre’s first major initiatives is a book offering an assessment of Bl. Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical Letter, Humanae vitae , in occasion of the 50 th anniversary of the Letter’s promulgation in 1968. Humanae vitae at 50 will feature contributions from leading scholars and researchers in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, brought together to give a critical re-engagement with the Encyclical’s teaching in light of recent medical, social, cultural, and demographic realities, both within and beyond the global Catholic Church.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches , spoke on Thursday to an international conference organized by the German Episcopal Conference and the University of Munich.
The International Conference Between World Society and Regional Transformations: Christians, Christian Churches, and Religion in a Changing Middle East took place in Rome on 24-26 February. Many Catholic and Orthodox leaders from the Middle East took part in the event.
Cardinal Sandri’s address came at a roundtable entitled “A multi-confessional Christianity: Dialogue and relations between the Christian churches in Arab countries”.
The official English translation of Cardinal Sandri’s address is below:
Excellencies,
Esteemed Professors,
Reverend Fathers and Students,
I thank you for the invitation to participate in this conference. I welcome the occasion to extend through the organizers, and in particular through H.E. Archbishop Schick, my lively sentiments of gratitude for all that the German Episcopal Conference – especially by means of the Catholic aid agencies – has done and is doing to assist in the dramatic situation of our Christian brothers and, more generally, of all those suffering in the Near and Middle East, due to war, violence and persecution. This Conference represents an effort related to that of managing the emergency of refugees and asylum-seekers, and to attempts to obtain respect for corridors for humanitarian aid and relief for the hardest hit areas. All of this increases our desire that the agreements for a cease-fire discussed in recent days might be effective in the field, on pain of the complete destruction and total emptying of certain centers which have already been tried to the extreme.
1. The theme of today’s Panel asks us to reflect on the multi-confessional presence of Christians in Arab Countries. In this regard, I would like to underline certain aspects from the point of view of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, which does not have competence over all of the regions under consideration by this Conference. For example, the Countries of the Arabian Peninsula, which are under the jurisdiction of the Apostolic Vicariates of Northern Arabia and Southern Arabia (Bishop Ballin and Bishop Hinder), belong to the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. This division is an object of study and debate on account of its multiple implications for interreligious, diplomatic and political dialogue. At the same time, it characterizes the Catholic Church in the region, to the degree that a decision of the Supreme Pontiff Saint John Paul II, later confirmed by Pope Benedict XVI, limited even the competencies of the Catholic Eastern Patriarchs (for example, the Melkites should have an Exarchate which is still found in the Annuario Pontificio with its See in Kuwait). In the Orthodox sphere, a different perception of the territory is found, as is seen through the still unresolved controversy between the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Antioch regarding the appointment of a Metropolitan in Qatar. Despite these distinctions, the presence of Catholic Christians in various parts of the Persian Gulf is extraordinary (reaching, certainly, to more than one million faithful). Many come from the Philippines, from Sri Lanka, from India, carrying their own patrimony of faith. When inserted into a very different culture a difficult situation is created: in demanding work conditions, often without their family, which has remained in the motherland, they must seek to retain their roots, also with regard to cultivating their faith. It is a common experience which I hear recounted by the Pastors of the Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Churches, who together have nearly 400.000 faithful in the region.
A similar challenge is experienced in the Patriarchal Diocese of Jerusalem of the Latins. To its Vicariate for Hebrew speaking Catholics (Saint James Vicariate) is entrusted also the care of migrants, who are becoming ever more numerous. Insofar as they also have come seeking work, one could, with the passage of time, see the consolidation of an ecclesial reality which can no longer be defined merely as Arab or Hebrew speaking, but as much more diverse: in fact, Jerusalem, as Mother Church, becomes ever more a true reflection of the entire world.
If we turn our minds to Lebanon and Jordan, we see also there hundreds of thousands of refugees who have been welcomed, and each camp corresponds to different phases of the more or less recent history of the Countries concerned: there are camps for Palestinians, for Syrians and now also for the displaced persons from the Plane of Ninevah. The welcome guaranteed by the two national Caritas organizations, in addition to all of the support networks which form part of the governmental efforts, could legitimately be included in the “identity card” of these Countries: “Welcoming Country”.
I do not wish to omit a small mention also of Egypt, which I visited in January of 2013, and which I well remember not only for the Christian communities historically present, but also for the participation of young people who originated from sub-Saharan Africa, from South Sudan and Eritrea at celebrations.
2. Why this long introduction? I consider it necessary that one grasp the complexity of the realities in these territories, characterized by presences and challenges both “ancient and new”. Ancient are the roots of Christianity; more precisely, there the story of salvation has its beginnings and its full expression. Ancient are the Churches, which arose from the preaching of the Apostles: to them, we are all debtors for the Gospel. Ancient are the divisions which have developed through doctrinal controversies and also due to political factors in diverse epochs; equally ancient is the coexistence which developed with the arrival of Islam, in addition to that with the Jewish communities, which survived in the centuries before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. History has also run through not a few periods of violence, of living as a minority and sometimes of genuine persecution. In light of these complex factors, we are also confronted with new elements: the ecumenism of blood, anticipated by Saint John Paul II with the shared remembrance of martyrs during the Jubilee of 2000, was taken up again strongly by Pope Francis. It serves as a frame for truly historical events in the life of the Churches, including the non-Catholic ones, and in ecumenical relations. I think, for instance, of the Pan Orthodox Synod which will take place in Crete in June of this year, of the meetings between Pope Francis and the Patriarch Bartholomew, the great prayer for Peace in the Holy Land in the Vatican Gardens in 2014, and the recent event of the embrace in Cuba between the Holy Father and the Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill.
I would like, however, to cite two additional events: first, the presence in Rome, last April 12th, beside Pope Francis, of the three Armenian Patriarchs, Catholic and Apostolic, for the proclamation of Saint Gregory of Narek as Doctor of the Church and in order to commemorate the victims of the tragic deeds of 1915. And second, the election of the new Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, which occurred in September of 2015. This marked an historic step, namely, the return of the See to Iraq, after decades in which it had been moved to the United States of America. These facts bear witness to the reality of Churches that have set themselves in motion, which do not only go out to the existential peripheries as Pope Francis has urged us, helping the displaced and the refugees, but which seem together to recognize that their only center is Christ, in Whom all equally believe and profess as the only Lord of history and Savior of man. With His Name on their lips, 21 Christian Copts died, slaughtered on the bank of the Mediterranean just over a year ago. With His Name in their hearts, our brothers fled the Plane of Nineveh in August of 2014, and, united by all they have in common, began to collaborate on assistance projects in Erbil which transcend the distinctions between Syro-Catholic, Chaldean or Syro-Orthodox.
3. If the first part of our reflection emphasized the key word “welcome”, the second underlined the movement towards unity among the Churches and the Christian confessions. It is significant to pronounce these two key words here in Rome, in close physical proximity to the Domus Sanctae Marthae transformed by the Holy Father into a House of welcome and unity. These words are thereby recalled to the Church and to the world, and in the first place they are lived in the concrete events of each day. The very existence and collaboration between the Churches in the Middle East raise very precise questions at multiple levels. To the world of international politics: every attempt more or less veiled to break up and rearrange the institutional equilibriums in the Region on the basis of agreements of convenience for economic or strategic interests must be exposed. Christians should not be moved about by planners with their own objectives but rather recognized as citizens of equal dignity with the possibility to remain and become agents of unity and reconciliation. Only extraordinary shortsightedness fails to recognize them as leaven of societies, capable in time of causing an increased orientation towards the best aspects of democracy, rather than having to import and impose it with force from without, something of which the last decades have given us sad experience. Christians should be able to remain or to return, if they have had to flee contrary to their will: as human beings, they are worth more than any deposit, known or unknown, of petroleum, gas or arms for trafficking! At seeing the Christian presence weakened or even extinguished relative to its historic configuration, I have the impression that this will only contribute, unfortunately, to the further aggravation of the intra-confessional tensions of the Islamic world, which seemed dormant for some centuries.
A question arises also for the Churches of Europe, more so even than for those of the “New World” – the United States and Canada, or even Australia: how capable are we of thinking of ourselves as Churches genuinely in communion, having to share spaces and see an increase of jurisdictions, as may be required for an adequate pastoral assistance and a common evangelizing effort in societies that are already secularized? If a stable welcome among us has been given to tens of thousands of Syro-Catholic, Chaldean, Melkite, Armenian, and Maronite brothers (to cite only the Catholic Churches of the Middle East), how well are we providing for them by asking the respective Patriarchs for priests to be sent? And if the personal parishes, called for by the law of the Church, for the Oriental faithful become insufficient for an adequate service, are we disposed to collaborate sincerely towards the erection of structures such as Apostolic Exarchates, or do we rather run the risk of understanding ourselves as the unique custodian of the Ecclesial Institution? I think of what Aleppo used to represent: the Christian capitol of Syria, as it were, with six Catholic cathedrals and other Orthodox ones. I can imagine such a reality reproducing itself in our countries, without scandal to anyone, as long as the primacy remains with Christ, Who is the One known, announced and celebrated, although in various rites and languages.
Here I have made only some suggestions, which, together with the expert contributions of the other speakers, might give a start to our discussion. Thank you.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) The preacher of the papal household, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, gave the second Lenten sermon for the members of the Roman Curia gathered in the Redemptoris Mater chapel in the Vatican on Friday morning.
Listen to our report:
Continuing his reflections on the key documents of the Second Vatican Council, Fr Cantalamessa spoke about the meaning of the Word of God through the text of ‘Dei Verbum’.
Beginning with an exploration of how God spoke through the prophets of the Old Testament, the papal preacher went on to talk about the way the Word became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.
He focused his reflection on reading the Bible as a path to personal sanctification, especially through the practice of ‘lectio divina’, or receiving, meditating and putting the Word of God into practice in our lives.
Please find below the full text of Fr Raniero Cantalamessa’s second Lenten sermon:
Second Lenten Sermon 2016
RECEIVE WITH MEEKNESS THE IMPLANTED WORD
A Reflection on the Dogmatic Constitution Dei verbum
Let us continue our reflection on the principal documents of Vatican II. Of the four “constitutions” that were approved by it, the one on the Word of God, Dei Verbum, is the only one—along with the one on the Church, Lumen gentium—to have the qualifier “dogmatic” in its title. This can be explained by the fact that the Council intended with this text to reaffirm the dogma of the divine inspiration of Scripture and at the same time to define its relationship to tradition. In line with my intention to highlight just the spiritual and uplifting implications in the Council’s texts, I will limit myself here as well to reflections that aim at personal practice and meditation.
1. A God who speaks
The biblical God is a God who speaks. “The Mighty One, God the Lord, speaks. . . . He does not keep silence” (Ps 50:1, 3). God himself repeats countless times in the Bible, “Hear, O my people, and I will speak” (Ps 50:7). On this point the Bible presents a very clear contrast with the idols who “have mouths, but do not speak” (Ps 115:5). God uses words to communicate with human beings.
But what meaning should we give to such anthropomorphic expressions as “God said to Adam,” “thus says the Lord,” “the Lord says,” “the oracle of the Lord,” and other similar statements? We are obviously dealing with speech that is different than human speech, a speech for the ears of the heart. God speaks the way he writes! Through the prophet Jeremiah he says, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts” (Jer 31:33).
God does not have a human mouth and breath: his mouth is the prophet, and his breath is the Holy Spirit. “You will be my mouth,” he says to his prophets, or “I will put my words in your mouth.” It has the same meaning as the famous verse, “Men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet 1:21). The term “inner locutions,” which indicates direct speech from God to certain mystic souls, can also be applied, in a qualitatively different and superior way, to how God speaks to the prophets in the Bible. We cannot exclude however that in certain cases, as in the baptism and in the transfiguration of Jesus, there was also an external voice resounding miraculously.
In any case, we are dealing with speech in a real sense; the creature receives a message that can be translated into human words. God’s speaking is so vivid and real that a prophet can recall precisely the place and time in which a certain word “came upon” him: “in the year that King Uzziah died” (Is 6:1); “in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the river Chebar” (Ez 1:1); “In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month” (Hag 1:1).
God’s word is so concrete that it can be said to “fall” on Israel as if it were a stone: “The Lord has sent a word against Jacob, and it will [fall] upon Israel” (Is. 9:8). At other times the same concreteness and physicality is expressed not by the symbol of a stone that strikes but by bread that is eaten with delight: “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart” (Jer 15:16; see also Ez 3:1-3).
No human voice can reach human beings to the depth that the word of God reaches them. It “pierce[s] to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discern[s] the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12). At times God’s speech is like a powerful “thunder” that “breaks the cedars of Lebanon” (Ps 29:5). At other times it seems like “the sound of a gentle whisper” (see 1 Kgs 19:12). It knows all the tonalities of human speech.
The discourse on the nature of God’s speech changes radically at the moment in which we read in Scripture, “The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14). With the coming of Christ, God now speaks with a human voice that is audible to the ears of the body. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life . . . we proclaim also to you” (1 Jn 1:1, 3).
The Word was seen and heard! Nevertheless, what was heard was not the word of man but the word of God because the speaker is not nature but a person, and the person of Christ is the same divine Person as the Son of God. In him God no longer speaks through an intermediary, “through the prophets,” but in a person, because Christ “reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature” (Heb 1:2-3). Indirect discourse in the third person is replaced by direct discourse in the first person. It is no longer a case of “thus says the Lord!” or “the oracle of the Lord!” but “I say to you. . . .”
God’s speech, whether mediated by the prophets of the Old Testament or by the new, direct speech by Christ, after being orally transmitted was put into writing in the end, so we now have divine “Scriptures.”
Saint Augustine defines a sacrament as “a visible word” (verbum visible).[1] We can define the word as “a sacrament that is heard.” In every sacrament there is a visible sign and an invisible reality, grace. The word that we read in the Bible is, in itself, only a physical sign like the water in baptism or the bread in the Eucharist: it is a word in human vocabulary that is not different than other words. However, once faith and the illumination of the Holy Spirit enter in, we mysteriously enter into contact through these signs with the living truth and will of God, and we hear the very voice of Christ. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet writes,
“The body of Christ is just as truly present in the sacrament that we adore [the Eucharist] as the truth of Christ is in his gospel preaching. In the mystery of the Eucharist the species that we see are signs, but what is enclosed within them is the very body of Christ; in Scripture the words we hear are signs, but the thoughts that the words carry comprise the very truth of the Son of God.”[2]
The sacramentality of the Word of God is revealed in the fact that at times it works beyond the comprehension of the person who can be limited and imperfect; it works almost by itself—ex opere operato, just as we say about the sacraments. In the Church there have been and will be books that are more edifying than some books in the Bible (we only need to think of The Imitation of Christ), and yet none of them operates like the most humble of the inspired books.
I heard someone give this testimony on a television program in which I was taking part. He was a last-stage alcoholic who could not stop drinking for more than two hours; his family was on the brink of despair. He and his wife were invited to a meeting about the word of God. Someone there read a passage from Scripture. One verse in particular went through him like a ball of fire and gave him the assurance of being healed. After that, every time he was tempted to drink, he would run to open the Bible to that verse, and in rereading the words he felt strength return to him until he was completely healed. When he tried to share what that well-known verse was, his voice broke with emotion. It was the verse from the Song of Songs: “Your love is better than wine” (1:2). Scholars would have turned up their noses at this kind of application of Scripture but—like the man born blind who said to his critics, “I only know that I was blind and now I see” (see Jn 9:10ff)—that man could say, “I was dead and now I have come back to life.”
A similar thing happened to St. Augustine as well. At the height of his battle for chastity, he heard a voice say, “Tolle, lege!” (“Take and read!). Having the letters of St. Paul nearby, he opened the book with the intention of taking the first text he came across as God’s will. It was Romans 13:13ff: “Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.” He writes in his Confessions, “No further wished I to read, nor was there need to do so. Instantly, in truth, at the end of this sentence, as if before a peaceful light streaming into my heart, all the dark shadows of doubt fled away.[3]
2. Lectio divina
After these general observations on the word of God, I would like to concentrate on the word of God as the path to personal sanctification. Dei verbum says, “The force and power in the word of God is so great that it stands as the support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her sons, the food of the soul, the pure and everlasting source of spiritual life.”[4]
Starting with Guigo II the Carthusian, different methods and approaches have been proposed for lectio divina.[5] They have the disadvantage, however, of having been devised almost always in relation to monastic and contemplative life and are therefore not well suited to our time in which the personal reading of the word of God is recommended to all believers, religious and lay.
Fortunately for us, Scripture itself proposes a method of reading the Bible that is accessible to everyone. In the Letter of James (Jas 1:18-25) we read a famous text on the word of God. We can extract from it a plan for lectio divina in three successive steps or stages: receive the word, meditate on the word, and put the word into practice. Let us reflect on each of these steps.
a. Receive the Word
The first step is to hear the word: “Receive with meekness,” the apostle says, “the implanted word” (Jas 1:21). This first step encompasses all the forms and ways that a Christian comes into contact with the word of God: we hear the word in the liturgy, in Bible studies, in writings about the Bible, and—what is irreplaceable—in personal reading of the Bible. In Dei verbum, we read,
The sacred synod also earnestly and especially urges all the Christian faithful, especially Religious, to learn by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures the “excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:8). . . . They should gladly put themselves in touch with the sacred text itself, whether it be through the liturgy, rich in the divine word, or through devotional reading, or through instructions suitable for the purpose and other aids.[6]
In this phase there are two dangers to avoid. The first is to stop at this initial step and convert a personal reading of the Word of God into an impersonal reading. This is a very considerable danger especially in places of academic formation. According to Søren Kierkegaard, a person who waits to apply the word of God to his life until he has resolved all the problems connected to the text, the variants, and the divergence of scholarly opinions, will never reach any conclusion: “God’s word is given in order that you act upon it, not that you shall practice interpreting obscure passages.” It is not “the obscure passages” in the Bible that are frightening, this philosopher said, it is the clear passages! [7]
Saint James compares reading the word of God to looking at oneself in a mirror. The one who limits himself to studying the sources, the variants, and the literary genres of the Bible and does nothing more is like a person who spends time looking at the mirror—examining its shape, its material, its style, its age—without ever looking at himself in the mirror. The mirror is not fulfilling its proper function for him. Scholarly criticism of the word of God is indispensable and we can never be grateful enough to those who spend their lives smoothing out the path for an ever-increasing understanding of the sacred texts, but scholarship does not by itself exhaust the meaning of Scripture; it is necessary, but it is not sufficient.
The other danger is fundamentalism, taking everything in the Bible literally without any hermeneutical mediation. These two excesses, hypercriticism and fundamentalism, are only seemingly opposite since both share in common the defect of stopping at the letter and ignoring the Spirit.
With the parable of the sower and the seed (see Lk 8:5-15), Jesus offers assistance for each of us to discover our condition regarding receiving the word of God. He distinguishes four kinds of soil: the path’s soil, the rocky soil, the soil with thorns, and good soil. He then explains what the different types of soil symbolize: the path represents those in whom the words of God are not even implanted; the rocky soil represents those who are superficial and inconstant, who hear the word with joy but do not give the word a chance to take root; the soil with thorns represents those who let themselves be overwhelmed by the preoccupations and pleasures of life; the good soil represents those who hear the word and bear fruit through perseverance.
In reading this, we could be tempted to skip hurriedly over the first three categories, expecting to end up in the fourth category, which, despite all our limitations, we think depicts us. In reality—and here is the surprise—the good soil represents those who easily recognize themselves in each of the first three categories! They are the people who humbly recognize how many times they have listened in a distracted way, how many times they have been inconsistent about intentions they formed in hearing a word from the gospel, how many times they have let themselves be overwhelmed by activism and worldly preoccupations. These are the ones who, without knowing it, are becoming the truly good soil. May the Lord grant that we too be counted in that number!
Concerning the duty of receiving the words of God and of not letting any of them fall to the ground empty, let us listen to the exhortation that Origen, one of the greatest lovers of the word of God, gave to the Christians of his time:
You who are accustomed to take part in divine mysteries know, when you receive the body of the Lord, how to protect it with all caution and veneration lest any small part fall from it, lest anything of the consecrated gift be lost. For you believe, and correctly, that you are answerable if anything falls from there by neglect. But if you are so careful to preserve his body, and rightly so, how do you think that there is less guilt to have neglected God’s word than to have neglected his body?[8]
b. Contemplate the Word
The second step suggested by St. James consists in “fixing our gaze” on the word, in placing ourselves before that mirror for a long time, in short, in meditation and contemplation of the word. The Fathers used images of chewing and ruminating to describe this. Guigo II wrote, “Reading, as it were, puts food whole into your mouth, meditation chews it and breaks it up.”[9] According to St. Augustine, “When we listen [to God’s word], we are like the clean animal eating, and when later we call to mind what we heard, . . . we are like the animal ruminating.”[10]
People who look at themselves in the mirror of the word learn to understand “how things are”; they learn to know themselves and discover their dissimilarity to the image of God and the image of Christ. Jesus says, “I do not seek my own glory” (Jn 8:50): here is a mirror before you, and suddenly you see how far you are from Jesus if you are seeking your own glory. “Blessed are the poor in spirit”: here is a mirror once again before you, and you suddenly discover you are full of attachments and superfluous things, and above all full of yourself. “Love is patient . . .” and you realize how impatient you are, how envious, how concerned with yourself. More than “searching the Scriptures” (see Jn 5:39), the issue is letting Scripture search you. The Letter of Hebrews says,
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. (Heb 4:12-13).
In the mirror of the word, fortunately, we do not see only ourselves and our shortcomings; first of all we see God’s face, or better, we see God’s heart. St. Gregory the Great says, “What is sacred Scripture but a kind of epistle of almighty God to his creature? . . . Learn the heart of God in the word of God.”[11] Jesus’ saying, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt 12:34), is also true of God. God has spoken to us in Scripture of what fills his heart, namely, love. All the Scriptures were written with the goal that human beings would understand how much God loves them and in learning this might become enkindled with love for him.[12] The Jubilee Year of Mercy is a magnificent occasion to reread all of Scripture from this perspective as the history of God’s mercy.
c. Do the Word
Now we come to the third phase of the path proposed by the apostle James: “Be doers of the word . . . for a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing” (Jas 1:22, 25). On the other hand, “If any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like” (Jas 1:23).
Being a “doer of the word” is also what is most on Jesus’ heart: “My mother and my brethren are those who hear the word of God and do it” (Lk 8:21). Without “doing the word” everything is illusion and building on sand (see Matt 7:26). People cannot even say that they have understood the word because, as St. Gregory the Great says, the word of God is truly understood only when people begin to practice it.[13]
This third step consists, in practice, in obeying the word. The word of God, under the action of the Spirit, becomes the expression of the living will of God for me at any given moment. If we listen attentively, we will realize with surprise that there is not a day that goes by in which—in the liturgy, in the recitation of a psalm, or at other times—we do not discover a word about which we are forced to say, “This is for me! This is what I should do!”
Obedience to the word of God is obedience we can always give. Obedience to the commands of visible authorities only occurs from time to time; obedience in a serious matter might only be required three or four times in one’s whole life. However, obedience to the word of God is something we can do at every moment. It is an obedience that all can perform, subordinates and superiors. St. Ignatius of Antioch gave this wonderful advice to one of his colleagues in the episcopate: “Let nothing be done without your consent, nor do anything without God’s consent.”[14]
In practical terms, obeying the word of God means following good inspirations. Our spiritual progress depends in large part on our sensitivity to good inspirations and our readiness to respond. A word of God has suggested an idea to you, it has placed on your heart a desire for a good confession, for a reconciliation, for an act of charity; it invites you to interrupt work for a moment and address an act of love to God. Do not delay, do not let the inspiration pass by. “Timeo Iesum transeuntem” (“I’m terrified of Jesus passing by”), said St. Augustine,”[15] which is like saying, “I am terrified that his good inspiration is passing by and will not come back.”
Let us conclude with a thought from an ancient Desert Father.[16] Our mind, he said, is like a mill; the first wheat that is put into it in the morning is what we continue to grind all day. Let us hurry, therefore, to put the good wheat of the word of God into this mill the first thing in the morning. Otherwise, the devil will come and put his tares in it, and for the whole day our minds will do nothing but grind those tares. The particular word we could put in the mill of our mind for today is the one that has been chosen for the Year of Mercy: “Be merciful as your heavenly Father!”
Translated from Italian by Marsha Daigle-Williamson
[1] St. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 55-111, 80, 3, vol. 90, trans. John W. Rettig, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), p. 117.
[2] Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, “Sur la parole de Dieu,” in Oeuvres oratoires de Bossuet, vol. 3 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1927), p. 627.
[3] S. Augustine, Confessions, VIII, 29, trans. John K. Ryan (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), p. 202.
[4] Dei verbum, n. 21. Quotes from papal documents are taken from the Vatican website.
[5] See Guigo II, The Ladder of Monks: A Letter on the Contemplative Life, trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981).
[6] Dei verbum, n. 25.
[7] Søren Kierkegaard, Self-Examination / Judge Yourself, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 29.
[8] Origen, “Homily 13 on Exodus,” 3, in Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, trans. Ronald E. Heine (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), pp. 380-381.
[9] Guigo II, The Ladder of Monks, 3, p. 68.
[10] Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 46, 1, The Works of Saint Augustine, Part 3, vol. 16, trans. Maria Boulding, ed. John E. Rotelle (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), p. 325.
[11] See Gregory the Great, “Letter 31, to Theodorus,” in Epistles of Gregory the Great, vol. 12, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, trans. James Barmby, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 156.
[12] See Augustine, First Catechetical Instruction, 1, 8, vol. 2, Ancient Christian Writers (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 23.
[13] Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, 1, 10, 31, trans. Theodosia Tomkinson, 2nd ed. (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2008), pp. 200-201; see also CCL 142, p. 159.
[14] Ignatius of Antioch, “Letter to Polycarp,” 4, 1, in The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd ed., ed. and rev. trans. Michael W. Holmes (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), p. 265.
[15] Augustine, “Sermon 88,” 13, The Works of Saint Augustine, Part 3, vol. 3, trans. Edmund Hill, ed. John E. Rotelle (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1991), p. 341.
[16] See Abbot Moses in John Cassian, Conferences, “Conference One,” 18, trans. Colm Luibhéid (Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 1985), p. 52.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has met with several of the children who wrote him letters for his new book, “Dear Pope Francis,” which was presented to him during the meeting.
The young people were accompanied by the President of Caritas Internationalis, Manila Archbishop Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, and the editor-in-chief of the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SJ, who helped Pope Francis with the book.
During the encounter – involving children from Italy, the Philippines, India, Kenya, Australia, Argentina, the United States, Canada, Singapore, Ireland, Belgium, and China – the Holy Father said the questions asked for the book were some of the “most difficult” he had ever been asked.
Pope Francis then proceeded to answer more questions the children had.
Listen to the report by Charles Collins :
He said his favourite thing about being Pope was “being around people,” adding he “learned something every time” he met someone new.
He told another child that when he was young he wanted to be a butcher, since when he went to the market with his mother, the butcher’s work was fascinating and “the way he cut the meat, that was art.”
One young person caused some indecision on the part of Pope Francis by asking who was his favourite saint: “I have several saints friends, but I do not know which I admire the most,” – the Holy Father said – “but I’m a friend of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus; I am a friend of St. Ignatius; I’m a friend of St. Francis…I would say these three, perhaps, are the ones I most keep in my heart.”
He said being Pope gives him a sense of “calm,” and said that it is “a grace from God,” adding that it “feels as I am coming to the end of my life with so much peace.”
The Holy Father said when he was elected, Cardinal Hummes told him to “not worry, it is the work of the Holy Spirit,” and told him to “not forget the poor.”
When asked about his love for Jesus, Pope Francis said “I do not know if I truly love Jesus. I try to love him, but I am sure that He loves me. I’m quite certain of this.”
Pope Francis said being Pope is “both easy and difficult, as is the life of any person,” explaining “it’s easy because you have a lot of people to help you…and there are difficult moments because there are difficulties in all the work there is.”
Pope Francis was also asked about his prayer life.
“I pray in the morning when I wake up: The prayer book all priest pray, called the breviary,” he said. “I pray the Mass, then I pray the Rosary…and then in the afternoon, I take time for Eucharistic Adoration.”
The Pope encouraged the children to always carry a rosary with them, and added he also carries a Via Crucis in his pocket, because it is a reminder that Jesus also suffered and this helps him to be “more good, and less bad.”
At the end of the encounter, Pope Francis addressed the issue of “Why do children suffer?” saying it is question which causes him great pain, and he admitted he did not know the answer to the question.
“The only thing that gives me light is looking at the cross, and seeing what Jesus suffered; it is the only answer I can find,” he said.
(from Vatican Radio)…
Click to download bulletin for March 6, 2016