Man More Than Dust?
5th Sunday of Easter Acts 6:1-7; 1
Peter 2:4-9; John 14:1-12
By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, APRIL 18, 2008 (Zenit.org).- In the Book of Genesis one
reads
that after man sinned God said to him: “By the sweat of your brow you
shall get your bread to eat, until you return to the earth from which
you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return"
(Genesis 3:19).
Every year on Ash Wednesday the liturgy repeats these severe words
to
us: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” If it
were up to me, I would immediately remove this formula from the liturgy.
The Church now rightly allows it to be replaced with another
formula:
“Repent and believe in the Gospel.” Taken literally, without the
necessary explanations, the words of the other formula are the perfect
expression of modern scientific atheism: Man is nothing else than a
heap of atoms and, in the end, will return to being a heap of atoms.
The Book of Qoheleth (also known as Ecclesiastes), a book of the
Bible
that was written during a time of religious uncertainty in Israel,
seems to confirm this atheistic interpretation when it says: “All go to
the same place; everything was made from dust, and to the dust it shall
return. Who knows if the life-breath of the children of men goes upward
and the life-breath of beasts goes earthward?” (3:20-21).
At the end of the book, this last terrible doubt (Is there a
difference
between the end of man and beasts?) seems to be positively resolved,
because the author says, “The body returns to dust but the spirit
returns to God who gave it” (12:7).
In the last writings of the Old Testament there emerges the idea
of a
recompense for the just after death and even a resurrection of the
body, but the content of this belief is still quite vague and is not
shared by all. The Sadducees, for example, reject it.
We can evaluate the words that begin this Sunday’s Gospel against
this
background: Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be
troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s
house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have
told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and
prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself,
so that where I am you also may be.”
These words are the Christian response to the most disturbing of
human
questions. Death is not -- as it was at the beginning of the Bible and
among the pagans -- a descent into Sheol or Hades where one becomes a
worm or shadow; it is not -- as it is for certain atheist biologists --
a restitution of one’s organic material to nature for the subsequent
use of other living things; nor is death -- as it is for certain
contemporary forms of religiosity inspired by Eastern doctrines (often
poorly understood) -- a dissolution of the person into the great ocean
of universal consciousness, in the All or, according to some, the
Nothing.
It is rather a going to be with Christ in the bosom of the Father,
to
be where he is.
The veil of mystery is not removed because it cannot be removed.
Just
as color cannot be described to a person born blind or sound to a
person born deaf, so also one cannot explain what a life outside of
time and space is like to those who are still in time and space. It is
not God who wanted to keep us in darkness. He has however told us about
the essentials: Eternal life will be a full communion, soul and body,
with the risen Christ, a sharing of his glory and joy.
Benedict XVI, in his recent encyclical on hope, “Spe Salvi,”
reflects
on the nature of eternal life from an existential point of view. He
begins by acknowledging that there are people who do not in fact desire
eternal life, indeed they are afraid of it. To what end, they ask,
should a life that has shown itself to be full of problems and
sufferings be prolonged?
The reason for this fear, the Pope explains, is that these people
are
only able to imagine life as it is here below; while it is instead a
matter of a life that is free of all the limitations that we experience
in the present. “Eternal life,” the encyclical says, “would be like
plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time -- the
before and after -- no longer exists” (No. 12).
Eternity, it adds, “is not an unending succession of days in the
calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction,
in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality” (No. 12).
With these words perhaps the Pope is tacitly alluding to the work
of
his famous fellow countryman. The ideal of Goethe’s “Faust” is in fact
to achieve such a fullness of life and satisfaction that it brings him
to exclaim: “Stay, you fleeting moment! You are too beautiful!”
I believe that this is the least inadequate idea that we can form
of
eternal life: a moment that we wish will never end and that -- unlike
all the moments of happiness in this life -- will never end!
There come to my mind the words of one of the best loved songs
among
English-speaking Christians, “Amazing Grace”: “When we've been there
10,000 years, / Bright shining as the sun, / We've no less days to sing
God's praise / Than when we've first begun.”
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
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6th
Sunday of Easter Acts 8:5-8:14-17;
1 Peter 3:15-18; John
14:5-21.
Be a Paraclete for Others
By Father Raniero
Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, APRIL 25, 2008 (Zenit.org).- In the Gospel Jesus uses the
term
“paraclete” when speaking to the disciples about the Holy Spirit.
In some contexts this term means “consoler,” in others “defender,”
and
sometimes it means both. In the Old Testament God is the great consoler
of his people. This “God of consolation” (Romans 15:4), became
“incarnate” in Jesus Christ, who is named the first consoler or
Paraclete (cf. John 14:15).
The Holy Spirit, being the one who continues Christ’s work and
brings
the common work of the Trinity to completion, also had to be called
“Consoler”: “The Consoler who will remain with you forever,” as Jesus
says.
After Easter the whole Church had a living and powerful experience
of
the Spirit as consoler, defender, ally, in its internal and external
difficulties, in the persecutions, in the trials, in everyday life. In
the Acts of the Apostles we read: “The Church grew and walked in the
fear of the Lord, full of the consolation (“paraclesis”) of the Holy
Spirit” (9:31).
We must now draw a practical conclusion for our lives from this.
We
ourselves must become paracletes! If it is true that the Christian must
be “another Christ,” it is just as true that he must be “another
Paraclete.”
The Holy Spirit not only consoles us, but he also makes us capable
in
turn of consoling others. True consolation comes from God who is the
“Father of all consolation.” This consolation comes to those who are
suffering, but it does not stop with them; its final goal is reached
when those who have experienced consolation in turn console their
neighbors with the same consolation with which God has consoled them.
They must not be content to offer only platitudes (“Take heart,
don’t
worry -- you will see that everything will turn out fine!”), but to
bring the authentic “consolation that comes from the Scriptures,” which
is able to “keep hope alive” (cf. Romans 15:4). This is how we explain
the miracles wrought by a simple word or gesture, offered in a climate
of prayer, at the bedside of a sick person. It’s God who is consoling
that person through you!
In a certain sense, the Holy Spirit needs us in order to be the
Paraclete. He wants to console, defend, exhort; but he does not have a
mouth, hands, eyes to “give a body” to his consolation. Or better, he
has our hands, our eyes, our mouth.
If we stick to the letter of what Paul tells the Thessalonians --
“console each other” (1 Thessalonians 5:11) -- we must take him to be
saying: “Be paracletes to each other. If we want to selfishly keep to
ourselves the consolation that we receive from the Spirit and it does
not pass from us to others, it will quickly disappear.” This is why a
beautiful prayer, attributed to St. Francis, says: “Let me not so much
seek to be consoled as to console; or to be understood as to
understand, to be loved as to love.”
In light of what I have said it is not hard today to see who the
paracletes are around us. They are the ones who care for the terminally
ill, who care for those sick with AIDS, those who seek to alleviate the
solitude of the elderly, the volunteers who spend their time visiting
hospitals. They are the ones who dedicate themselves to children who
are victims of various types of abuse, inside and outside the home.
Let us conclude this reflection with the first verses of the
Pentecost
sequence, which invoke the Holy Spirit as the “best consoler”:
“Holy Spirit, come and shine
On our souls with beams divine,
Issuing from Thy radiance bright.
Come, O Father of the poor,
Ever bounteous of Thy store,
Come, our heart’s unfailing light.
Come, Consoler, kindest, best,
Come, our bosom’s dearest guest,
Sweet refreshment, sweet repose.
Rest in labor, coolness sweet,
Tempering the burning heat,
Truest comfort of our woes.”
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
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Gospel
Commentary for Feast of the Ascension
Why Are You Staring at the
Sky? By
Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, MAY 2, 2008- In the first reading an angel says to the disciples:
"Men of Galilee, why are you staring at the sky? This Jesus, who was
taken up from among you and assumed into heaven, shall one day return
in the same way in which you saw him go to heaven."
This is an occasion to clarify once and for all what we mean by
"heaven." Among almost all people, heaven indicates the habitation of
the divinity. Even the Bible uses this spatial language: "Glory to God
in the highest heaven and peace to men on earth."
With the advent of the scientific era, all these religious meanings
attributed to the word "heaven" are now in crisis. The heavens are the
space in which our planet and the whole solar system moves, and nothing
else. We all have heard of the remark attributed to the Soviet
astronaut after returning from his trip through the cosmos: "I traveled
through outer space a long time and didn't see God anywhere!"
It is important therefore to try to clarify what we Christians mean
when we say "Our Father who art in heaven," or when we say that someone
"went to heaven." In these cases the Bible adapts itself to the common
way of speaking (we do it today too, even in the scientific era, when
we say that the sun "rises" and "sets"). But the Bible knows well and
teaches that God is "in heaven, on earth and everywhere," that he is
the one who "created the heavens" and, if he created them, cannot be
"contained" by them. That God is "in the heavens" means that he "dwells
in inaccessible light," that he is as far beyond us "as the heavens are
above the earth."
We Christians also agree that in talking about heaven as God's dwelling
place we understand it more as a state of being than a place. When we
speak about God it would be nonsense to say that he is literally
"above" or "below," "up" or "down." We are not therefore saying that
heaven doesn't exist but only that we lack the categories with which to
adequately represent it. Suppose we ask a person who is blind from
birth to describe the different colors to us: red, green, blue. ... He
could not tell us anything since we only perceive colors through our
eyes. This is what it is like for us in regard to "heaven" and to
eternal life, which is outside space and time.
In light of what we have said, what does it mean to proclaim that Jesus
"ascended into heaven"? We find the answer in the Creed. "He ascended
into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father."
That Christ has ascended into heaven means that he "is seated at the
right hand of the Father," that is, as man too, he has entered into
God's world; that he has been constituted the Lord and head of all
things, as St. Paul says in the second reading.
In regard to us, "going to heaven" or going to "paradise" means going
and being "with Christ" (Philippians 1:23). Our heaven is the risen
Christ together with whom we shall form a "body" after our resurrection
but also, in a provisional and imperfect way, immediately after our
death. It is sometimes objected that no one has returned from heaven to
assure us that it truly exists and is not just a pious illusion. It's
not true! There is one who -- if we know how to recognize him --
returns from heaven every day in the Eucharist to assure us and to
renew his promises.
The words of the angel -- "Men of Galilee, why are you staring at the
sky?" -- also contain an implicit reproof: We should not just "stare
into the sky" and speculate about the beyond, but rather we should live
in expectation of his return, follow his mission, bring the Gospel to
the ends of the earth, improve life in this world.
He has gone to heaven but without leaving earth. He has only
disappeared from our field of vision. Indeed in the Gospel he himself
assures us: "Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the
world."
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Feast of Corpus
Christi
Deuteronomy
8:2-3,14b-16a; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58.
The Two Bodies of Christ By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, MAY 23, 2008.- In the second reading St. Paul presents the
Eucharist as a mystery of communion: ““Brothers and sisters: The cup of
blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of
Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body
of Christ?””
Communion means exchange, sharing. Now, this is the fundamental rule of
sharing: that which is mine is yours and what is yours is mine. Let’’s
try to apply this rule to Eucharistic communion. In doing so we will
see its greatness.
What do I have that is truly ““mine””? Misery, sin: This alone belongs
to me exclusively. What does Jesus have that is ““his”” if not
holiness, the perfection of all the virtues? So, communion consists in
the fact that I give Jesus my sin and my poverty, and he gives me
holiness. In this the ““admirabile commercium,”” or ““wonderful
exchange,”” as the liturgy defines it, is realized.
We know about different kinds of communion. One very intimate type of
communion is that between us and the food we eat -- it becomes flesh of
our flesh and bone of my bone. I have heard mothers say to their
children as they hugged and kissed them: ““I love you so much I could
gobble you up!””
It is true that food is not a living and intelligent person with whom
we can share thoughts and affection, but let’’s suppose for a moment
that food is itself living and intelligent: Would we not have perfect
communion in that case? But this is precisely what happens in the
communion of the Eucharist. Jesus says in the Gospel: ““I am the living
bread come down from heaven. [...] My flesh is true food. [...] Whoever
eats my flesh will have eternal life.”” Here food is not a simple
thing, but a living person. This is the most intimate of communions,
even if the most mysterious.
Look at what happens in the natural world in regard to nourishment. The
stronger vital principle assimilates the weaker one. The vegetable
assimilates the mineral; the animal assimilates the vegetable. Even in
the relationship between Christ and man this law is at work. It is
Christ who assimilates us to himself; we are transformed into him, he
is not transformed into us. A famous atheist materialist said: ““Man is
what he eats.”” Without knowing it, he gave a perfect definition of the
Eucharist. Thanks to the Eucharist, man truly becomes what he eats: the
body of Christ!
Let us read the rest of the text from St. Paul: ““Because there is one
bread, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one
bread.”” It is clear that in this second case the word ““body”” no
longer refers to the body of Christ born of Mary but refers to ““all of
us,”” it refers to that greater body of Christ that is the Church. This
means that Eucharistic communion is always communion among us. Eating
the one bread we become one body.
What follows from this? We cannot be in communion with Christ if we are
divided among ourselves, if we hate each other, if we are not ready to
be reconciled. If you have offended your brother, St. Augustine said,
if you have committed an injustice against him, and go and receive
communion as if nothing had happened, perhaps full of fervor before
Christ, then you are like a person who sees a friend coming toward him
whom he has not seen for some time. He runs to meet him, he throws his
arms around his neck and goes to kiss him. But in doing this he does
not see that he is kicking him with spikes.
Our brothers, especially the poor ones and the derelicts, are members
of Christ, they are his feet that are still on earth. In offering us
the host the priest says, ““The Body of Christ.”” We answer, ““Amen!””
We now know to whom we are saying ““Amen,”” ““Yes.”” It is not only to
Jesus, the Son of God, but to our neighbor.
On the feast of Corpus Christi I cannot hide a certain sadness. There
are certain forms of mental illness that prevent people from being able
to recognize persons who are close to them. They continue to call out
for hours: ““Where is my son? Where is my wife? Why don’’t they come?””
And maybe the son and wife are there holding their hand and saying:
““I’’m here. Don’’t you see me? I’’m with you!””
This also happens with God. Our contemporaries look for God in the
cosmos or in the atom; they debate over whether there is a God who
created the world. They continue to ask: ““Where is God?”” They do not
realize that he is with us and in fact that he became food and drink to
be united to us even more intimately.
Sadly, John the Baptist had to repeat: ““There is one among you whom
you do not know.”” The feast of Corpus Christi was born precisely to
help Christians be aware of this presence of Christ among us, to keep
alive what John Paul II called ““Eucharistic wonder.””
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
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Gospel
Commentary for 9th Sunday in Ordinary Time
The House Upon the Rock By
Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, MAY 30, 2008.- In Jesus’ time everyone knew that it was foolish
to build your house on sand at the bottom of the valley rather than on
the rock high above.
After every heavy rain a torrent of water forms almost immediately that
sweeps away everything in its path. Jesus uses this observation to
create today’s parable about the two houses that, as a parable, has two
sides.
“Thus, everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the
floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house.? But it did not
collapse; it had been set solidly on rock” (Matthew 7:24-25).
With perfect symmetry, changing only a few words, Jesus presents the
same scene negatively: “And everyone who listens to these words of mine
but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on
sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted
the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined” (Matthew
7:26-27).
Building your house on sand means placing your hopes and certainties in
unstable and unpredictable things that cannot stand the whips and
scorns of time, the reversals of fortune. Money, success and personal
health are such things. Experience shows this to us every day: All it
takes to bring everything crashing down is a trifle, a little blood
clot, the philosopher Blaise Pascal said.
Building your house on rock means, on the contrary, to stake your life
and hopes on that which “thieves cannot steal nor rust corrode,” on
that which does not pass away. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” Jesus
said, “but my words shall not pass away.”
Building your house on rock means quite simply building on God. He is
the rock. The rock is one of the Bible’s preferred symbols for God:
“Our God is an eternal rock” (Isaiah 26:4); “He is the rock, his works
are perfect” (Deuteronomy 32:4).
The house built on rock already exists; we just have to go inside! It
is the Church. Obviously it is not the one built of bricks and mortar
but that made up of “living stones,” who are the believers built upon
the cornerstone, who is Christ Jesus. The house built upon the rock is
the one about which Jesus spoke to Simon: “You are Peter and on this
rock I will build my Church” (Matthew 16:18).
To build one’s life upon rock therefore means to live in the Church,
not staying outside, forever pointing your finger at the inconsistency
and defects of the human side of the Church. Only a few souls were
saved from the great flood, those who boarded Noah’s ark; only those
who enter the Church will be saved from the deluge of time that
swallows up everything (cf. 1 Peter 3:20).
This does not mean that everyone who is outside of her will not be
saved; there is another way of belonging to the Church, “known only to
God,” the Second Vatican Council says, that regards those who without
knowing Christ, live according to the dictate of their conscience.
The theme of the word of God, which is at the center of the readings
this Sunday, and which the synod of bishops will take up in October,
suggests a practical application to me. God used words to communicate
life to us and reveal truth. We human beings often use words to kill
and hide the truth!
In the introduction to his famous “Dizionario delle opere e dei
personaggi,” Valentino Bompiani recounts the following episode. In June
1939 an international conference of editors was held in which he
participated. War was already in the air and the Nazi government proved
itself to be a master at manipulating words for the purpose of
propaganda. On the second to last day of the conference, Goebbels, who
was the Third Reich’s minister of propaganda, invited the participants
to the parliament hall. The delegates of the different countries were
asked to offer a word of greeting.
An editor from Sweden approached the podium when it was his turn and in
a grave voice spoke these words: “Lord God, I must give a speech in
German. I lack the vocabulary and the grammar and I am lost when it
comes to the gender of the nouns. I don’t know if 'friendship' is
feminine and 'hate' masculine, or if 'honor,' 'loyalty' and 'peace' are
neuter. So, Lord God, take our words and leave us our humanity. Perhaps
we will be able to understand each other and save ourselves.” There was
thunderous applause, while Goebbels, who got the point, left the hall
in a rage.
A Chinese emperor who was asked about what the most urgent thing was to
improve the world answered without hesitation: Reform words! What he
meant was: Give back to words their true meaning. He was right. There
are words that, little by little, have been completely emptied of their
original meaning and assigned a diametrically opposed meaning. Their
use can only be lethal. It is like putting a label that says
“after-dinner liqueur” on a bottle of arsenic: Someone will be poisoned.
Countries have very strict laws against those who make counterfeit
money, but none against those who use counterfeit words. What has
happened to the word “love” has not happened to any other word. A man
rapes a woman and he excuses himself by saying that he did it for love.
The expression “make love” often signifies the most vulgar act of
egoism in which each person only thinks about his or her own
gratification, ignoring the other and reducing him or her to a mere
object.
As we see, reflection on the word of God can also help us to reform and
save human words from meaninglessness.
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Gospel
Commentary for 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Crowds Without a True Shepherd By Father
Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, JUNE 13, 2008 - In this Sunday’s Gospel we have the official
presentation of the apostolic college: "The names of the 12 apostles
are these: first Simon, called Peter."
There is a clear suggestion of Peter’s primacy in the apostolic
college. In fact it does not say: "First Peter, second Andrew, third
James," as if it were just a question of a number in a series. Peter is
named as first in a stronger sense, as leader of the others, their
spokesman, the one who represents them. Jesus will specify later, also
in Matthew’s Gospel, the meaning of "first" when he will say, "You are
Peter and on this rock I will build my Church."
But it is not on the primacy of Peter that I want to reflect on now but
rather Jesus’ reason for choosing the 12 and sending them out. It is
described thus: "Jesus, seeing the crowds, felt compassion for them,
because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a
shepherd." Jesus sees the crowds, he feels compassion for them: this is
what moved him to choose the 12 and send them to preach, heal, liberate.
Here we have some valuable information. We see that the Church does not
exist for herself, for her own end or her own salvation; she exists for
others, for the world, for the people, above all for the afflicted and
oppressed. The Second Vatican Council dedicated an entire document --
"Gaudium et Spes" -- to bringing to light this being "for the world" of
the Church.
It begins with the famous words: "The joys and the hopes, the grief and
the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or
in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the grief and
anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human
fails to raise an echo in their hearts."
"Seeing the crowds, he felt compassion for them, because they were
troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd." The shepherds
of today, from the Pope to the last village priest, appear to us in
this light, as the deposit and continuation of the compassion of
Christ. The late lamented Vietnamese Cardinal, François-Xavier
Van Thuan, who spent 13 years in the communist prisons of his country,
in a meditation before the Pope and the Roman Curia said: "I dream of a
Church that is a ‘Holy Door’ that is always open, that embraces all,
full of compassion, that understands the pain and suffering of
humanity, a Church that protects, consoles and guides every nation to
the Father who loves us."
After the Master’s departure, the Church must continue his mission in
the world. Jesus says: "Come to me all who labor and burdened and I
will give you rest." It is the most human face of the Church, that
which reconciles souls and forgives them their many deficiencies and
miseries. Padre Pio da Pietrelcina wanted to call the hospital that he
founded at S. Giovanni Rotondo "House of Relief from Suffering": a
beautiful name, and it applies to the whole Church. The whole Church
must be a "house of relief from suffering." Unless we close our eyes in
a sectarian way to the enormous charity and aid work that the Church
does throughout the world for the most needy, we cannot help but see
that she is indeed a house of relief from suffering.
To those of us who live in wealthy countries the crowds that we see
about us do not appear to be "troubled and abandoned" as in Jesus’
time. But let us not deceive ourselves: Behind the carefree and opulent
façade, beneath the roofs of our cities, there is often much
weariness, solitude, confusion, and sometimes even desperation.
They do not even seem to be crowds "without shepherds," given that in
every country so many fight to be shepherds of the people, that is,
bosses, holders of power. But how many of them are disposed to put into
practice the command of Jesus to freely give what they have been given
freely?
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Have Fear But Do Not Be Afraid
Gospel
Commentary for 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, JUNE 20, 2008 - This Sunday's Gospel contains a number of ideas
but they all can be summarized in this apparently contradictory phrase:
"Have fear but do not be afraid." Jesus says: "Do not be afraid of
those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul; fear rather him
who has the power to make both the soul and the body perish in
Gehenna." We must not be afraid of, nor fear human beings; we must fear
God but not be afraid of him.
There is a difference between being afraid and fearing and I would like
to take this occasion to try to understand why this is so and in what
this difference consists. Being afraid is a manifestation of our
fundamental instinct for preservation. It is a reaction to a threat to
our life, the response to a real or perceived danger, whether this be
the greatest danger of all, death, or particular dangers that threaten
our tranquility, our physical safety, or our affective world.
With respect to whether the dangers are real or imagined, we say that
someone is "justifiably" or "unjustifiably" or "pathologically" afraid.
Like sicknesses, this worry can be acute or chronic. If it is acute, it
has to do with states determined by situations of extraordinary danger.
If I am about to be hit by a car or I begin to feel the earth quake
under my feet, this is being acutely afraid. These "scares" arise
suddenly and without warning and cease when the danger has passed,
leaving, if anything, just a bad memory. Being chronically afraid is to
be constantly in a state of preoccupation, this state grows up with us
from birth or childhood and becomes part of our being, and we end up
developing an attachment to it. We call such a state a complex or
phobia: claustrophobia, agoraphobia, and so on.
The Gospel helps to free us from all of these worries and reveals their
relative, non-absolute, nature. There is something of ours that nothing
and no one in the world can truly take away from us or damage: For
believers it is the immortal soul; for everyone it is the testimony of
their own conscience.
The fear of God is quite different from being afraid. The fear of God
must be learned: "Come, my children, listen to me," a Psalm says, "I
will teach you the fear of the Lord" (33:12); being afraid, on the
other hand, does not need to be learned at school; it overtakes us
suddenly in the face of danger; the things themselves bring about our
being afraid.
But the meaning itself of fearing God is different from being afraid.
It is a component of faith: It is born from knowledge of who God is. It
is the same sentiment that we feel before some great spectacle of
nature. It is feeling small before something that is immense; it is
stupor, marvel mixed with admiration. Beholding the miracle of the
paralytic who gets up on his feet and walks, the Gospel says, "Everyone
was in awe and praised God; filled with fear they said: ‘‘Today we have
seen wondrous things'" (Luke 5:26). Fear is here simply another name
for stupor and praise.
This sort of fear is a companion of and allied to love: It is the fear
of offending the beloved that we see in everyone who is truly in love,
even in the merely human realm. This fear is often called "the
beginning of wisdom" because it leads to making the right choices in
life. Indeed it is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit! (cf.
Isaiah 11:2).
As always, the Gospel does not only illumine our faith but it also
helps us to understand the reality of everyday life. Our time has been
called "the age of anxiety" (W.H. Auden). Anxiety, which is closely
related to being afraid, has become the sickness of the century and it
is, they say, one of the principal causes of the large number of heart
attacks. This spread of anxiety seems connected with the fact that,
compared with the past, we have many more forms of economic insurance,
life insurance, many more means of preventing illness and delaying
death.
The cause of this anxiety is the diminishing -- if not the complete
disappearance -- in our society of the holy fear of God. "No one fears
God anymore!" We say this sometimes jokingly but it contains a tragic
truth. The more that the fear of God diminishes, the more we become
afraid of our fellow men!
It is easy to understand why this is the case. Forgetting God, we place
all our confidence in the things of this world, that is, in the things
that Christ says "thieves can steal and moths consume" -- uncertain
things that can disappear from one moment to the next, that time (and
moths!) inexorably consume, things that everyone is after and which
therefore cause competition and rivalry (the famous "mimetic desire" of
which Renéé Girard speaks), things that need to be
defended with clenched teeth and, sometimes, with a gun in hand.
The decline in fear of God, rather than liberating us from worry, gets
us more entangled in worry. Look at what happens in the relationship
between children and parents in our society. Fathers no longer fear God
and children no longer fear fathers! The fear of God is reflected in
and analogous to the reverential fear of children for parents. The
Bible continually associates the two things. But does the lack of this
reverential fear for their parents make the children and young people
of today more free and self-confident? We know well that the exact
opposite is true.
The way out of the crisis is to rediscover the necessity and the beauty
of the holy fear of God. Jesus explains to us in the Gospel that we
will hear on Sunday that the constant companion of the fear of God is
confidence in God. "Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not
one of them falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge. Even
all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are
worth more than many sparrows!"
God does not want us to be afraid of him but to have confidence in him.
It is the contrary of that emperor who said: "Oderint dum metuant" --
"Let them hate me so long as they are afraid of me!" Our earthly
fathers must imitate God; they must not make us afraid of them but have
confidence in them. It is in this way that respect is nourished:
admiration, confidence, everything that falls under the name of "holy
fear."
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Gospel
Commentary for solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul
Acts
12:1-11; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18; Matthew 16:13-19
You are
Peter! By Father Raniero
Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
VATICAN CITY, JUNE 27, 2008 - Today’s Gospel is the Gospel in which the
keys are given to Peter. The Catholic tradition has always taken this
Gospel as the basis for the Pope’s authority over the entire Church.
Someone might object that there is nothing here about the papal office.
Catholic theology responds in the following way. If Peter is called the
Church’s “foundation” or “rock,” then the Church can only continue to
exist if its foundation continues to exist.
It is unthinkable that such solemn prerogatives -- “To you I give the
keys of the kingdom of heaven” -- refer only to the first 20 or 30
years of the Church’s life, and that they would cease with the
apostle’s death. Peter’s role thus continues in his successors.
Throughout the first millennium, all the Churches universally
recognized this office of Peter, even if somewhat differently in East
and West.
The problems and divisions crept up in the second millennium, which has
just concluded.
Today we Catholics admit that these problems and divisions are not
entirely the fault of the others, the so-called schismatics, first the
Eastern Churches and then the Protestants.
The primacy instituted by Christ, as all things human, has sometimes
been exercised well and at other times not so well. Gradually political
and worldly power mixed with the spiritual power and with this came
abuses.
Pope John Paul II, in his letter on ecumenism, “Ut unum sint,”
suggested the possibility of reconsidering the concrete forms in which
the Pope’s primacy is exercised in such a way as to make the concord of
all the Churches around the Pope possible again. As Catholics, we must
hope that this road of conversion to reconciliation be followed with
ever greater courage and humility, especially implementing
incrementally the collegiality called for by the Second Vatican Council.
What we cannot desire is that the ministry itself of Peter, as sign and
source of the Church’s unity, will disappear. This would deprive us of
one of the most precious gifts that Christ has given to the Church
besides going against Christ’s own will.
To think that the Church only needs the Bible and the Holy Spirit to
interpret it in order for the Church to live and spread the Gospel, is
like saying that it would have been sufficient for the founders of the
United States to write the American Constitution and show the spirit in
which it must be interpreted without providing any government for the
country. Would the United States still exist?
One thing that we can all immediately do to smooth the road toward
reconciliation between the Churches is to begin reconciling ourselves
with our Church.
“You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church”: Jesus says
my “Church,” in the singular, not my “churches.” He had thought of and
wanted only one Church, not a multiplicity of independent churches, or
worse, churches fighting among themselves.
The word “my,” as in “my Church,” is possessive. Jesus recognizes the
Church as “his”; he says “my Church” as a man would say “my bride” or
“my body.” He identifies himself with it, he is not ashamed of it.
On Jesus’ lips the word “Church” does not have any of those subtle
negative meanings that we have added to it.
There is in that expression of Christ a powerful call to all believers
to reconcile themselves with the Church. To deny the Church is like
denying your own mother. “You cannot have God for father,” St. Cyprian
said, “if you do not have the Church for your mother.”
It would be a beautiful fruit of the feast of the holy Apostles Peter
and Paul if we too were to learn to say of the Catholic Church to which
we belong that it is "my Church!"
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
* * *
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Gospel
Commentary 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Zechariah
9:9-10; Romans 8:9, 11-13; Matthew 11:25-30.
Things Revealed to the Little Ones by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM
Cap
ROME, JULY 4, 2008 - This Sunday’s Gospel, among the most intense and
profound of Gospel passages, has 3 parts: a prayer -- "I bless you,
Father" -- a declaration of Jesus about himself -- "Everything has been
given to me by my Father" -- and an invitation -- "Come to me all who
labor."
I will limit my remarks to the first element, the prayer, because it
contains a revelation of extraordinary importance: "I bless you,
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you kept these things hidden
from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to the little ones.
Yes, Father, because this was your good pleasure."
The Pauline Year has just begun and the best comment on these words of
Jesus is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians: "Consider your own calling,
brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were
powerful, not many were of noble birth.
"Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God
chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the
lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce
to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast
11 before God" (1:26-29).
Christ’s and Paul’s words shed a singular light on today’s world. It is
a situation that is repeated. The wise and the intelligent keep their
distance from faith, they often look with pity upon the crowds of
believers who pray, who believe in miracles, who crowd around Padre
Pio. Not all scholars do this, certainly, and perhaps not even the
majority of them, but undoubtedly the most influential ones do, the
ones who have the most powerful microphones, the group with the access
to the major media.
Many of them are honest and intelligent persons and their position is
more the fruit of education, environment and life experience, than of
resistance to truth. So, I am not judging individuals. I know some such
persons and I hold them in great esteem. But this should not stop us
from pointing to the heart of the problem. The closure to every
revelation from above, and thus to faith, is not caused by intelligence
but by pride, a special pride that refuses all dependence and claims an
absolute autonomy.
They entrench themselves behind the magic word "reason" but in reality
it is not the famous "pure reason" that demands it, nor is it demanded
by a "sovereign" reason. It is demanded rather by an enslaved reason,
by wings that have been clipped.
Consider what certain philosophers who cannot be accused of a lack of
intelligence and dialectical ability have said on this score. Blaise
Pascal observed: "Reason’s supreme act is in recognizing that there are
an infinite number of things that surpass it."
Soren Kierkegaard wrote: "It has always been said that science, which
seeks to understand, is not satisfied when it is claimed that this or
that thing cannot be understood. Here is the mistake.
"The opposite must be said: if human science does not want to admit
that there is something that it cannot understand, or -- to put it more
precisely -- that there is something that it can clearly ‘understand
that it cannot understand,’ then there are problems.
"Therefore it is the task of human knowledge to understand that there
are things that it cannot understand and what these are."
Those who do not admit this ability of going beyond are putting limit
on reason and humiliating it. But this is not what the believer does
since he is open to this possibility of transcending.
What I have said explains why modern thought, after Nietzsche, no
longer values "truth," but rather the "pursuit" of truth and thus
sincerity, which has replaced truth. Sometimes this attitude is taken
to be one of humility -- being content with what philosophers like
Gianni Vattimo call "weak thought" -- but this is a superficial
judgment.
So long as the person is seeking, he is the one who is the protagonist,
he is the one who sets down the rules of the game. But once truth is
found, it is truth that takes the throne and the seeker must bow before
truth and this requires -- when it is a matter of transcendent truth --
the "sacrifice of the intellect."
Jesus’ statements in John’s Gospel -- "I am the truth"; "No one comes
to the Father but through me"; "Come to me all you who labor and have
heavy burdens and I will give you rest" -- are provocations to our
contemporary culture. But these are invitations not reproofs and they
are also addressed to those who are tired of seeking and finding
nothing, to those who have gone through life knocking up against the
rock of mystery.
The psychologist C.G. Jung, in a book of his, says that all patients of
a certain age to came to him suffered from something that could be
called an "absence of humility" and could not be healed until they
acquired an attitude of respect in the face of a reality greater than
them, that is, an attitude of humility.
Jesus also repeats to the many honest intelligent and wise people of
the world of today his invitation full of love: "Come to me all you who
labor and have heavy burdens and I will give you rest and that peace
that you seek in vain in your tormented reasoning."
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
* * *
Father Raniero Cantalamessa is the Pontifical Household preacher. T
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15th
Sunday in Ordinary Time Isaiah 55:10-11; Romans 8:18-23;
Matthew 13:1-23.
A God of His Word Father Raniero
Cantalamessa
ROME, JULY 11, 2008 - The readings of this Sunday speak of the word of
God with two interlaced images: that of rain and of seed.
In the first reading, Isaiah compares the word of God with rain that
falls from heaven and does not return without watering and helping
seeds to grow. In the Gospel, Jesus speaks of the word of God as a seed
that falls on different terrains and produces fruit. The word of God is
seed because it generates life and rain that nourishes life, which
allows the seed to grow.
When speaking of the word of God we often take for granted the most
moving event of all, namely, that God speaks. The biblical God is a God
who speaks!"
"Our God comes and will not be silent," says Psalm 50; God himself
often repeats: "Listen, my people, I will speak" (Psalm 50:7). In this
the Bible sees the clearest difference from the idols that "have
mouths, but do not speak" (Psalm 115).
What meaning should we give such an anthropomorphic expression as "God
said to Adam," "thus speaks the Lord," "the Lord says," "oracle of the
Lord," and others like them? Obviously it is a way of speaking that is
different from the human, a speaking to the ears of the heart.
God speaks the way he writes! "I will place my law within them," says
the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:33). He writes on the heart and he
also makes his words resonate in the heart. He says so expressly
himself through the prophet Hosea, speaking of Israel as an unfaithful
bride: "So I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak
to her heart" (Hosea 2:16).
God does not have a human mouth or breath; the prophet is his mouth,
the Holy Spirit is his breath. "You will be my mouth," he himself says
to his prophets. He also says "I will put my word on your lips." This
is the meaning of the famous phrase "human beings moved by the Holy
Spirit spoke under the influence of God" (2 Peter 1:21). The spiritual
tradition of the Church has coined the expression "interior locutions"
for this way of speaking addressed to the mind and heart.
And yet, it is a speaking in the true sense of the term. The creature
receives a message that can be translated into human words. So alive
and real is God's speaking, that the prophet recalls with precision the
place, day and time that a certain word "came" to him. So concrete is
the word of God that it is said it "falls" upon Israel, as if it were a
stone (Isaiah 9:7). Or, as if it were bread that is eaten with
pleasure: "When I found your words, I devoured them; they became my joy
and the happiness of my heart," (Jeremiah 15:16).
No human voice comes to man with the depth with which the word of God
comes to him. "Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper
than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit,
joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the
heart" (Hebrews 4,12). At times God's speaking is a powerful thunder
that "splinters the cedars of Lebanon" (Psalm 29), at other times it
seems like the "tiny whispering sound" (1 Kings 19:12). It knows all
the tones of human speech.
This interior and spiritual nature of God's speaking changes radically
the moment that "the word became flesh." With the coming of Christ, God
also speaks with a human voice, which can be heard not only with the
ears of the soul but also of the body.
As we can see, the Bible attributes immense dignity to the word.
Attempts have not been lacking to change the solemn affirmation with
which John begins his Gospel: "In the beginning was the word."
Goethe has his Faust say: "In the beginning, there was action," and it
is interesting to see how the writer comes to this conclusion.
"I cannot give 'the word' such high value," says Faust. "Perhaps I
should understand it as 'hearing,' but can hearing be what acts and
creates everything? Hence one should say: 'In the beginning force
existed.' But no, a sudden illumination suggested the answer to me: 'In
the beginning, action existed.'"
However, these are unjustified attempts at correction. John's word or
logos has all the meanings that Goethe assigns to the rest of the
terms. As we see in the prologue, it is light, life and creative force.
God created man "in his image" precisely because he created him capable
of speaking, of communicating and of establishing relationships. He,
who has in himself from eternity one word, has created man and gifted
him with the word, in order to be, not only "image" but also "likeness"
of God (Genesis 1:26). It is not enough for man to speak, but he must
imitate God's speaking. The content and motor of God's speaking is love.
From beginning to end, the Bible is no more than a message of the love
of God for his creatures. The tones might change, from the angry to the
tender, but the essence is always and only love.
God has used the word to communicate life and truth, to instruct and
console. This poses the question: What use do we make of the word? In
his play "Closed Doors," Sartre has given us a striking image of what
human communication can become when love is lacking.
Three persons are introduced, in brief intervals, in a room. There are
no windows. The light is at its brightest and there is no possibility
to turn it off. There is suffocating heat, and there is only one seat
for each one. The door, of course, is closed. The bell is there but
does not ring. Who are these people?
They are three dead persons, a man and two women, and the place they
are in is hell. There are no mirrors, and they can only see themselves
through the words of the others, which gives them the most horrible
image of themselves, without any mercy, on the contrary, with irony and
sarcasm.
When, after a while, their souls became naked to one another and the
faults of which they were ashamed have come into the light one by one
and enjoyed by the others without mercy, one of the individuals says to
the other two: "Remember, the brimstone, the flames, the tortures with
fire. All are stupidities. There is no need of torments: Hell is the
others." Abuse of the word can transform life into a hell.
St. Paul gives Christians this golden rule in regard to words: "No foul
language should come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for
needed edification, that it may impart grace to those who hear"
(Ephesians 4, 29). The good word is the one that chooses the positive
side of an action and a person and that, even when it corrects, does
not offend. A good word is one that gives hope. A bad word is every
word said without love, to wound and humiliate one's neighbor. If a bad
word comes out of the lips, it will be necessary to retract it.
Not altogether correct are the verses of the Italian poet Metastasio:
"Word that comes from within, is no longer worth retracting; The arrow
cannot be stopped, when it has left the bow."
A word that issues from the mouth can be retracted, or at least its
negative effect can be limited, by asking for forgiveness. Hence, what
a gift it can be for our fellow men and what an improvement for the
quality of life in the heart of the family and of society!
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17th
Sunday in Ordinary Time 1 Kings 3, 5:7-12; Romans 8:28-30;
Matthew 13: 44-52.
Seek the Treasure That Awaits By Father
Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, JULY 25, 2008 - What did Jesus want to say with the two parables
of the hidden treasure and the precious pearl? More or less this: The
decisive hour of history has arrived. The Kingdom of God has come on
earth.
Specifically, it is about himself and his coming on earth. The hidden
treasure and the precious pearl are nothing other than Jesus himself.
It is as if, with these words, Jesus wished to say: Salvation has come
to you freely, by God's initiative. Make a decision, take advantage of
the opportunity, do not let it escape from you. It is the time to
decide.
What comes to my mind is the day World War II ended. In the city,
partisans and allies opened the storerooms with provisions left by the
German army when it retreated. In a flash, the news reached villages in
the country and all ran at top speed to take all those wonderful
things. Some arrived home full of blankets, others with baskets of
provisions.
I think that with these two parables Jesus wished to create such an
atmosphere. He wanted to say: Run while you have time! There is a free
treasure that awaits you, a precious pearl. Do not lose the opportunity.
Except that, in Jesus' case, what is at stake is infinitely more
serious. One's all is at stake. The Kingdom is the only thing that can
save us from the highest risk of life, which is to lose the reason why
we are in this world.
We are in a society that lives on insurance. People insure themselves
against everything. In some countries, it is a kind of mania. There is
even insurance against bad weather during vacations. Among all, the
most important and frequent insurance is that of life.
However, lets reflect for a minute. Of what use is this insurance and
against what does it insure us? Against death? Of course not. It
ensures that, in case of death, some one receives an indemnity.
The Kingdom of Heaven is also life insurance against death. "Whoever
believes in me, even though he die, shall live," said Jesus. Thus we
also understand the radical need posed by such a "deal": to sell
everything and leave it all. In other words, to be prepared, if
necessary, for any sacrifice.
However, not to pay the price of the treasure or the pearl, which, by
definition, do not have a "price," but to be worthy of them.
In each of the parables there are, in fact, two actors: an evident one,
that goes, sells and buys; and a hidden one, taken for granted. The
author taken for granted is the former proprietor who did not realize
that in his field there was a treasure and sold it cheaply to the first
bidder. It is the man or woman who had the precious pearl, did not
realize its value, and gave it to the first merchant passing by,
perhaps for a collection of false pearls.
How can we not see in this warning that is addressed to those of us who
sell our faith and Christian heritage for nothing?
However, the parable does not say "a man sold everything he had and
started to look for a hidden treasure." We know how such stories end:
One loses what one had and finds no treasure. These are stories of
dreamers, of visionaries.
No, man found a treasure and, because of this, sold all he had to buy
it. In a word, it is necessary to have found the treasure to have the
strength and joy to sell everything.
Leaving the parable to one side, we must first find Jesus, meet him in
a personal, new and convincing way. Discover him as friend and savior.
Then it will be child's play to sell everything.
It is something that will be "full of joy," as the proprietor mentioned
in the Gospel.
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Gospel
Commentary for 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time
They All Ate and Were Satisfied
By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, JULY 31, 2008 - One day Jesus was on his way to a solitary place
along the shore of the Sea of Galilee.
The Gospel of Matthew tells the story: “But when he disembarked he
found that a large crowd was waiting for him. When he disembarked and
saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, and he
cured their sick.
"When it was evening, the disciples approached him and said, ‘This is a
deserted place and it is already late; dismiss the crowds so that they
can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.’
"Jesus said to them, ‘There is no need for them to go away; give them
some food yourselves.’ But they said to him, ‘Five loaves and two fish
are all we have here.’
"Then he said, ‘Bring them here to me,’ and he ordered the crowds to
sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and
looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave
them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds.
"They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left
over -- twelve wicker baskets full. Those who ate were about five
thousand men, not counting women and children.”
It was the most joyous picnic in the history of the world!
What does this Gospel tell us? First, that Jesus was worried and “his
heart was moved with pity” for the whole man, body and soul. He
distributes the word to the soul, and to the body he offers healing and
food. You will say: So why doesn’t he still do that today? Why doesn’t
he multiply bread for the many millions who are starving on the earth?
There is a detail in this Gospel that can help us to find the answer to
these questions. Jesus does not snap his fingers and bread and fish
appear magically at will. He asked his disciples what they had; he
invited them to share what they had: five loaves of bread and two fish.
Jesus does the same today. He asks us to share the resources of the
earth. It is well known, at least in regard to food, that our earth
would be able to support more than a billion more people than presently
inhabit the earth.
So how can we accuse God of not furnishing enough bread for everyone
when every year we destroy millions of tons of food supplies -- which
we say we have “too much” of -- so as to prevent food prices from
falling? What is the solution? Better distribution, greater solidarity
and more sharing.
I know, it’s not that easy. There is the mania for weapons, there are
irresponsible government leaders who keep many people hungry. But part
of the responsibility is on the shoulders of the rich countries. We are
that anonymous person -- a boy, according to one of the evangelists --
who has five loaves of bread and two fish; it is only that we hold onto
them and are careful with them lest they be shared with everyone.
Because of the way in which it is described -- “Taking the five loaves
and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke
the loaves, and gave them to the disciples" -- the multiplication of
the loaves and fish has always made us think of the multiplication of
that other bread, which is the body of Christ.
For this reason the most antique representations of the Eucharist are
of a basket containing loaves of bread and, on the sides, two fish,
like the mosaic discovered in Tabga in Palestine, in the church erected
on the site of the multiplication of the loaves, or in the famous
fresco in the catacombs of Priscilla.
At bottom, even that which we are doing in this moment with this
commentary is a multiplication of loaves -- the loaves of bread of the
word of God. I have broken open the bread of the word and the Internet
has multiplied my words -- but many more than 5,000 men, even this
time, have eaten and are satisfied.
There remains this task: “picking up the fragments left over,” and
bringing them also to those who did not participate in the banquet. We
must be “repeaters” and witnesses of the message.
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Who Do You Say I Am? Isaiah 22:19-23;
Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20.
Gospel
Commentary for 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Father Raniero Cantalamessa,
OFM Cap
ROME, AUG. 22, 2008 - There is a practice in today’s culture and
society that can help us toward understanding this Sunday’s Gospel:
opinion polls.
These are conducted everywhere, especially in the political and
commercial spheres. One day Jesus also wanted to do an opinion poll,
but, as we shall see, for a different purpose. He did it not for
political reasons, but for educational ones.
Having arrived in Caesarea Philippi, that is, in the northernmost
region of Israel, and taking a little rest alone with the apostles,
Jesus asks them, point blank, “Who do people say that the son of man
is?”
It seems that the apostles were not expecting to be asked more than to
report what people were saying of him. They answered: "Some say John
the Baptist, others Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
But Jesus was not interested in measuring his popularity or in looking
for an index of how well he was regarded by the people. His purpose was
entirely different. So he immediately followed his first question with
a second: “Who do you say that I am?"
This second, unexpected question catches them completely off guard.
There is silence and they stand looking at each other. In the Greek it
makes it clear that all of the apostles together responded to the first
question and that only one person, namely, Simon Peter, responded to
the second question: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!”
Between the two responses there is a leap over an abyss, a
“conversion.” To answer the first question it was only necessary to
look around, to have listened to people’s opinions. But to answer the
second question, it was necessary to look inside, to listen to a
completely different voice, a voice that was not of flesh and blood but
of the Father in heaven. Peter was enlightened from on high.
It is the first clear recognition of the true identity of Jesus of
Nazareth in the Gospels. The first public act of faith in Christ in
history! Think about the wake that a big ship makes in the sea. It
widens as the ship goes forward until it is lost on the horizon. But it
begins at a single point, which is the ship itself. Faith in Jesus
Christ is like this. It is as a wake that widens as it moves through
history, and travels to “the very ends of the earth.” But it starts at
a single point. And this point is Peter’s act of faith. “You are the
Christ, the Son of the living God!”
Jesus uses another image, which implies stability rather than movement.
It is a vertical instead of a horizontal image. It is that of a rock:
“You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church.”
Jesus changes his name -- as often happens in the Bible when someone
receives an important mission -- from Simon to Cephas, or Peter --
“rock.” The true rock, the “cornerstone” is, and remains, Jesus
himself. But once he has risen and ascended into heaven, this
“cornerstone,” though present and active, is invisible. It is necessary
for a sign to represent him, a sign that makes Christ, who is the
“unshakeable foundation,” visible and efficacious in history. And this
sign is Peter and, after him, his vicar, the Pope, successor of Peter,
as head of the college of apostles.
But let us return to the idea of polling. Jesus' poll, as we saw, has
two parts, which have two distinct questions. First, “Who do people say
that I am?” And second, “Who do you say that I am?”
Jesus does not seem to value very much what the people think of him. He
wants to know what his disciples think of him. He immediately asks them
to speak for themselves. He does not let them hide behind the opinions
of others. He wants them to speak of their own opinions. Almost the
identical situation repeats itself today.
Today as well “people,” “public opinion,” has its ideas about Jesus.
Jesus is in vogue. Just look at what is going on in the world of
literature and entertainment. A year does not go by in which there does
not appear a novel or a film with its own distorted and sacriligious
vision of Christ. Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” has been the most
well-known one of late and has produced many imitators.
Then there are those who are middle-of-the-road, like the people of
Jesus’ time, who believe Jesus to be “one of the prophets.” He is
regarded as a fascinating person and placed alongside Socrates, Gandhi
and Tolstoy. I am sure that Jesus does not scorn these responses to
him, because the Bible says of him that he does not “quench the
smoldering wick and does not break the bruised reed,” that is, he
appreciates every honest effort on the part of man.
But, the truth be told, this view of Jesus does not seem quite right
even from a human point of view. Neither Gandhi nor Tolstoy ever said:
“I am the way, the truth and the life,” or “Whoever loves father and
mother more than me is not worth of me.”
With Jesus you cannot not be middle-of-the-road. Either he is what he
claims to be, or he is not a great man, but rather a great lunatic
lifted up by history. There are no half-measures. There are buildings
and structures made of steel -- I believe that the Eiffel Tower in
Paris is one -- made in such a way that if you touch a certain point or
remove a certain element, everything will come down. The edifice of the
Christian faith is like this, and this neuralgic point is the divinity
of Jesus Christ.
But let us leave aside the responses of the people and consider the
nonbelievers. Believing in the divinity of Christ is not enough; you
must also bear witness to it. Whoever knows him and does not bear
witness to this faith, indeed even hides it, is more responsible before
God that those who do not have this faith.
In a scene in Paul Claudel’s play “The Humiliated Father,” a Jewish
girl, beautiful but blind, alluding to the double meaning of light,
asks her Christian friend: “You who see, what use have you made of the
light?” It is a question that is asked of all of us who claim to be
believers.
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
* * *
Father Raniero Cantalamessa is the Pontifical Household preacher.
---------------------------------------------------------
22nd
Sunday in Ordinary Time Jeremiah 20:7-9; Romans 12:1-2;
Matthew 16:21-27.
The Language of Love
By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, AUG. 29, 2008 - In this Sunday’s Gospel we hear Jesus who says:
“Whoever wants to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross
and follow me. Because whoever wishes to save his life will lose it;
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
What does it mean to “deny" yourself? And why should you deny yourself?
We know about the indignation of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
over this the request of this Gospel.
I will begin answering these questions with an example. During the Nazi
persecution, many trains full of Jews traveled from every part of
Europe to the extermination camps. They were induced to get on the
trains by false promises of being taken to places that would be better
for them, when, in fact, they were being taken to their destruction. It
happened at some of the stops that someone who knew the truth, called
out from some hiding place to the passengers: “Get off! Run away!” Some
succeeded in doing so.
The example is a hard one, but it expresses something of our situation.
The train of life on which we are traveling is going toward death.
About this, at least, there are no doubts. Our natural “I,” being
mortal, is destined for destruction. What the Gospel is proposing to us
when it exhorts us to deny ourselves, is to get off this train and
board another one that leads to life. The train that leads to life is
faith in him who said: “Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will
live.”
Paul understood this transferring from one transport to another and he
describes it thus: “It is no longer I who lives, Christ lives in me.”
If we assume the “I” of Christ we become immortal because he, risen
from the dead, dies no more. This indicates the meaning of the words of
the Gospel that we have heard. Christ’s call for us to deny ourselves
and thus find life is not a call to abuse ourselves or reject ourselves
in a simplistic way. It is the wisest of the bold steps that we can
take in our lives.
But we must immediately make a qualification. Jesus does not ask us to
deny “what we are,” but “what we have become.” We are images of God.
Thus, we are something “very good,” as God himself said, immediately
after creating man and woman. What we must deny is not that which God
has made, but that which we ourselves have made by misusing our freedom
-- the evil tendencies, sin, all those things that have covered over
the original.
Years ago, off the coast of Calabria in southern Italy, there were
discovered two encrusted masses that vaguely resembled human bodies.
They were removed from the sea and carefully cleaned and freed. They
turned out to be bronze statues of ancient warriors. They are known
today as the Riace Warriors and are on display at the National Museum
of Magna Grecia in Reggio Calabria. They are among the most admired
sculptures of antiquity.
This example can help us understand the positive aspect of the Gospel
proposal. Spiritually, we resemble the condition of those statues
before their restoration. The beautiful image of God that we should be
is covered over by the seven layers of the seven capital sins.
Perhaps it is not a bad idea to recall what these sins are, if we have
forgotten them: pride, greed, lust, wrath, gluttony, envy and sloth.
St. Paul calls this disfigured image, “the earthly image,” in contrast
to the “heavenly image,” which is the resemblance of Christ.
“Denying ourselves,” therefore, is not a work of death, but one of
life, of beauty and of joy. It is also a learning of the language of
true love. Imagine, said the great Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, a
purely human situation. Two young people love each other. But they
belong to two different nations and speak completely different
languages. If their love is to survive and grow, one of them must learn
the language of the other. Otherwise, they will not be able to
communicate and their love will not last.
This, Kierkegaard said, is how it is with us and God. We speak the
language of the flesh, he speaks that of the spirit; we speak the
language of selfishness, he that of love.
Denying yourself is learning the language of God so that we can
communicate with him, but it is also learning the language that allows
us to communicate with each other. We will not be able to say “yes” to
the other -- beginning with our own wife or husband -- if we are not
first of all able to say “no” to ourselves.
Keeping within the context of marriage, many problems and failures with
the couple come from the fact that the man has never learned to express
love for the woman, nor she for the man. Even when it speaks of denying
ourselves, we see that the Gospel is much less distant from life than
it is sometimes believed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
23rd
Sunday in Ordinary Time Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-10;
Matthew 18:15-20.
The Duty of Fraternal
Correction By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM
Cap
ROME, SEPT. 5, 2008 - In the Gospel this Sunday we read: “Jesus said to
his disciples: ‘If your brother sins, go and admonish him privately; if
he listens to you, you have gained your brother.’”
Jesus speaks of all sins; he does not restrict the field to sins
committed against us. In this latter sort of case, it is hard to know
whether what moves us is zeal for truth or our own wounded pride. In
any case, it would be more of a self-defense than a fraternal
correction. When the sin is against us, the first duty is not
correction but forgiveness.
Why does Jesus say to admonish your brother privately? Above all, this
injunction has respect for your brother’s good name, his dignity in
view.
The worst thing would be to want to correct a husband in the presence
of his wife or a wife in the presence of her husband, a father in front
of his children, a teacher in front of pupils, or a superior in the
presence of inferiors; in other words, in the presence of those whose
esteem is important for the person in question? The situation will soon
become a public trial. It would be very difficult for the person to
accept the correction well. His dignity would be compromised.
Jesus says that the admonishment should take place privately to give
the person the chance to defend himself and explain his actions in
complete freedom. Many times what appears to an outside observer to be
a sin is not in the intention of the person who committed it. A frank
explanation clears up many misunderstandings. But this is no longer
possible when the person is publicly redressed and the incident brought
to the awareness of others.
When, for whatever reason, fraternal correction is not possible in
private, there is something that must never be done in its place, and
that is to divulge, without good reason, one’s brother’s fault, to
speak ill of him or, indeed, to calumniate him, proposing as fact
something that is not, or exaggerating the fault. “Do not speak ill of
one another,” Scripture says (James 4:11). Gossip is not something
innocent; it is ugly and reprehensible.
A woman once went to St. Philip Neri for confession, accusing herself
badmouthing people. The saint absolved her but gave her a strange
penance. He told her to go home, get a hen and come back, plucking the
bird’s feathers as she walked along the street. When she had returned
to him he said: “Now go back home and, as you go, pick up each feather
that you plucked on the way.” The woman told him that it would be
impossible since the wind had almost certainly blown them away in the
meantime. But St. Philip was prepared: “You see,” he said, “just as it
is impossible to pick up the feathers once the wind has scattered them,
it is likewise impossible to gather gossip and calumnies back up once
they have come out of our mouth.”
Returning to the theme of the correction, we should say that the good
outcome of the correction does not always depend on us; despite our
best intentions, the other may not accept the correction, he may
harden. But this can be compensated for: When we ourselves are
corrected, the good outcome does depend on us! Indeed, I could very
well be the person who “who has sinned” and the “corrector” could
easily be someone else: husband, wife, friend, confrere or father
superior.
In sum, there is not only active correction but passive correction;
there is not only the duty to correct but the duty to allow yourself to
be corrected. And it is precisely here that we can see whether someone
is mature enough to correct others. Whoever wants to correct someone
must be ready, in turn, to be corrected. When you see someone accept an
observation and you hear him or her answer with simplicity: “You are
right. Thanks for letting me know!” Doff your cap because you are in
the presence of a true man or true woman.
Christ’s teaching about fraternal correction must always be read
together with what he says on another occasion: “Why do you regard the
speck in your brother’s eye and ignore the bean in your own? How can
you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’ when
you do not see the beam that is in yours” (Luke 6:41)?
What Jesus has taught us about correction can be very useful in raising
children too. Correction is one of the parent’s fundamental duties.
“What son is not disciplined by his father?” Scripture says (Hebrews
12:7); and again: “Straighten the little plant while it is still young
if you do not want it to be permanently crooked.” Completely renouncing
every form of correction is one of the worst things that you can do to
your children and unfortunately it very common today.
You must simply take care that the correction itself does not become an
accusation or a criticism. In correcting you should just stick to
reproving the error that was committed; don’t generalize it and
reproach everything about the child and his conduct. Instead, use the
correction to point out all the good things that you see in the child
and how you expect much better from him, in such away that the
correction becomes encouragement rather than disqualification. This was
the method that St. John Bosco used with children.
It is not easy in individual cases to know whether it is better to
correct something or let it go, speak or be silent. This is why it is
important to remember the Golden Rule, valid in all cases, that St.
Paul offers in the second letter: “Owe each other nothing but the debt
of mutual love. […] Love does evil to no one.” Augustine synthesized
everything in the maxim, “Love and do what you will.”
You must make sure above all that in your heart there is a fundamental
disposition of welcome toward other persons. If you have this, then
whatever you do, whether you correct or remain silent, you will be
doing the right thing, because love “does evil to no one.”
-----------------------------------------------------------
Feast
of the Exaltation of the Cross Numbers 21:4-9; Philippians 2:6-11;
John 3:13-17.
When Faith
Prevails By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, SEPT. 12, 2008 - The suffering of the cross, its hard necessity
in life, its reality as a way of following Christ is not presented to
the faithful on Sunday, the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.
Instead the glory of the cross, the cross as a reason for boasting and
not for weeping is given pride of place.
Let us first say something about the origin of this feast. It recalls
two events, distant from each other in time. The first is Constantine’s
founding in 325 of two basilicas, one at the site of Golgotha and one
over Christ’s sepulcher. The other event, in 628, is the Christians
victory over the Persians, which led to the recovery of relics of the
cross and their triumphal return to Jerusalem. With the passing of
time, however, the feast came to take on a new meaning. It became a
joyous celebration of the mystery of the cross, which Christ
transformed from an instrument of shame and judgment to an instrument
of salvation.
The readings reflect the latter significance of the feast. The second
reading contains the celebrated hymn from St. Paul’s Letter to the
Philippians in which the cross is seen as the cause of Christ’s
“exaltation”: “He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming
in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God
greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every
name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in
heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” The Gospel too
speaks of the cross as a moment in which the Son of Man is lifted up
“so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have
eternal life.”
In history there have been two basic ways of representing the cross and
the crucified. For the sake of convenience we will call them the
“ancient” and the “modern.” The ancient way, which we can admire in the
mosaics of the old basilicas and in the crucifixes of Romanesque art,
is the festive way, full of majesty. The cross, often without a corpus,
is spangled with gems and set against a starry sky with the following
inscription below: “Salus Mundi” -- “Salvation of the World,” as one
sees in the celebrated mosaic of Ravenna.
In the wooden crucifixes of Romanesque art, this same type of
representation is expressed in the Christ who is enthroned on the cross
in royal and sacerdotal vestments, with eyes open, without a shadow of
suffering but radiating rather majesty and victory, no longer crowned
with thorns but with gems. It is the translation into visible form of
the Psalm verse “God has ruled from a tree” -- “regnavit a ligno Deus.”
Jesus speaks of his cross in these same terms: it is the moment of his
“exaltation”: “When I am exalted I will draw all to myself” (John
12:32).
The modern way of representing the cross and the crucified begins with
Gothic art. An extreme example is Matthias Grünewald’s depiction
of the crucifixion in the Isenheim altar piece. The hands and feet are
contorted around the nails like thorn bushes, the head is in agony
beneath the crown of thorns, the body full of wounds. Even the
crucifixes of Velasquez and Salvador Dalì and many others belong
to this type.
Both of these ways of depicting the cross and the crucified shed light
on true aspects of this mystery. The modern way -- dramatic, realistic,
excruciating -- represents the cross in its crude reality, in the
moment in which Christ dies upon it. It is the cross as symbol of evil,
of suffering in the world and of the tremendous reality of death. The
cross is represented here “in its causes,” so to speak, that which
produces it: hatred, wickedness, injustice, sin.
The ancient way sheds life not on the cross’ causes but on its effects;
not that which creates the cross, but that which the cross itself
creates: reconciliation, peace, glory, security, eternal life. This is
the cross that Paul defines as the “glory” or “boast” of believers. The
Sept. 14 feast is called the “exaltation” of the cross, because it
celebrates precisely this “exalted” aspect of the cross.
To the modern approach, the ancient should be united: rediscover the
glorious cross. If when we were suffering it was helpful to think of
Jesus on the cross in pain so that we could feel closer to him, it is
now necessary to think of the cross in a different way. I will explain
what I mean by an example. Suppose we have recently lost a loved one,
perhaps after months of terrible suffering. It is good not to continue
to think of her as she was then, torturing ourselves perhaps in our
heart and mind, feeding a useless sense of guilt. All of that is over,
it does not exist, it is unreal. If we continued in this way, we would
only prolong the suffering and keep it alive artificially.
There are mothers (I don’t say this to judge but to help them) who,
having accompanied a child for years in his or her Calvary, after the
Lord has called the child to himself, refuse to live differently. In
their house everything must be kept as it was when the child died;
everything must speak of the child; there are constant visits to the
cemetery. If there are other children in the family, they must adapt
themselves to this muffled climate of death, and suffer grave
psychological damage. Every display of joy in the house seems to be
disrespectful. These are the people who are most in need of discovering
the meaning of Sunday’s feast: the exaltation of the cross. It is no
longer you who carry the cross the cross that carries you; the cross
does not crush but exalts you.
We must now think of the loved one as he or she is now that “everything
is finished.” This is what those ancient artists did with Jesus. They
contemplated as he is now: risen, glorious, happy, serene, seated on
the throne itself of God, with the Father who has “wiped away every
tear from his eyes” and has given him “all power in heaven and on
earth.” He is no longer in agony and spasms of death. I do not say that
we can always command our heart and stop it from hurting over what has
happened, but it is necessary to let faith finally prevail. If you do
not do this, what use is faith?
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
* * *
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time Isaiah 55:6-9; Philippians
1:20c-27a; Matthew 20:1-16a.
You Go Into the Vineyard Too By Father
Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, SEPT. 19, 2008 - The parable about the workers sent out at
different times to work in the vineyard has always caused big problems
for readers of the Gospel. Is it right for the owner of the vineyard to
pay the same wage to those who have worked for only an hour and those
who have worked the whole day? Does this not violate the principle of
just recompense? Today workers' unions would rise up together to
denounce any owner of a company who did this.
The difficulty we are experiencing here stems from a certain
equivocation. One thinks of the problem of recompense in the abstract
and in general or in reference to eternal recompense in heaven. Seen in
this way, it would effectively contradict the principle according to
which God "will repay each one as his work deserves" (Romans 2:6). But
Jesus is talking about a specific situation, a very precise case. The
only wage that is given to everyone is the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus
has brought to the earth; it is the possibility of entering into the
messianic salvation to be a part of it. The parable begins by saying
that "the Kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn
..."
The issue is, once again, the position of the Jews and the pagans, or
the just and sinners, in relation to the salvation proclaimed by Jesus.
Even if the pagans (or sinners, publicans, prostitutes, etc.) only
decide for God on the basis of Jesus' preaching, although they were
distant (like the people who had been standing around "idle" in the
marketplace and came to the vineyard later in the day), they will not,
for this reason, have a different or lesser place in the kingdom. They
will be seated at the same table and will enjoy the fullness of the
messianic goods. Indeed, since they show that they are more ready to
accept the Gospel than the so-called just, we see the realization of
what Jesus says at the end of the parable: "The last shall be first and
the first shall be last."
Once the Kingdom is known, that is, once faith is embraced, then there
is room for diversification. Those who serve God their whole life,
bearing the most fruit with their talents, and those who give God only
the leftovers of their life and make amends with a ramshackle
confession at the end of their life, will not be treated the same.
The parable also contains a spiritual teaching of the greatest
importance: God calls everyone and everyone at every hour of the day.
Here we move from the recompense to the call itself. This is how John
Paul II used the parable in his apostolic exhortation on the vocation
and mission of lay people in the Church and in the world,
"Christifideles Laici."
"The lay members of Christ's faithful people ... form that part of the
People of God which might be likened to the laborers in the vineyard
mentioned in Matthew's Gospel ... ‘You go into the vineyard too' ...
The call is a concern not only of Pastors, clergy, and men and women
religious. The call is addressed to everyone: lay people as well are
personally called by the Lord, from whom they receive a mission on
behalf of the Church and the world" (nos. 1-2 passim).
I would like to draw your attention to an aspect that is perhaps
marginal in the parable but that is strongly felt and vital in modern
society: the problem of unemployment. The landowner asks: "Why have you
stood around idle all day?" and the workers answer: "No one has hired
us." This disconsolate reply could well be that of millions of
unemployed people today. Jesus was not unaware of this problem. If he
is able to describe the scene of the parable so well it is because he
had many times looked with compassion upon those groups of people
sitting on the ground or leaning against walls waiting to be hired.
The owner of the vineyard knows that the workers of the last hour have
the same needs as the others who were hired at the beginning of the
day; they too have children to feed. Giving everyone the same wage, the
owner of the vineyard shows that not only is he taking account of the
merit of the workers but their needs. Our capitalistic societies base
recompense on merit (often more nominal than real) and on seniority in
work, and not on the person's needs. When the young worker or
professional has the most need for his family and for a house, his pay
is the lowest, but when he is at the end of his career, when he has
less need (especially in certain social categories) he has arrived at
the stars. The parable of the workers in the vineyard invites us to
find a more just balance between the two demands of merit and need.
-------------------------------------------------------
26th
Sunday in Ordinary Time Ezekiel 18:25-28; Philippians
2:1-11; Matthew 21:28-32.
Prostitutes Will Enter the Kingdom
Before You By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, SEPT. 26, 2008 - "Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of
the people: ‘What is your opinion? A man had two sons. He came to the
first and said, "Son, go out and work in the vineyard today." He said
in reply, "I will not," but afterward changed his mind and went. The
man came to the other son and gave the same order. He said in reply,
"Yes, sir," but did not go. Which of the two did his father's will?'
They answered, ‘The first.'"
The son who says "yes" and does "no" represents those who knew God and
followed his law to a certain extent but did not accept Christ, who was
"the fulfillment of the law." The son who says "no" and does "yes"
represents those who once lived outside the law and will of God, but
then, with Christ, thought again and welcomed the Gospel.
From this Jesus draws the following conclusion before the chief priests
and elders: "Truly, I say to you, even the publicans and prostitutes
will enter the Kingdom of God before you."
No saying of Christ has been more manipulated than this. Some have
ended up creating a kind of evangelical aura about prostitutes,
idealizing them and opposing them to those with good reputations, who
are all regarded without distinction as hypocritical scribes and
Pharisees. Literature is full of "good" prostitutes. Just think of
Verdi's "La Traviata" or the meek Sonya of Dostoevsky's "Crime and
Punishment"!
But this is a terrible misunderstanding. Jesus is talking about a
limited case, as it were. "Even" the prostitutes, he wants to say, are
going to enter the Kingdom of God before you. Prostitution is seen in
all its seriousness and taken as a term of comparison to point out the
gravity of the sin of those who stubbornly reject the truth.
We do not see that, moreover, idealizing the category of prostitute, we
also idealize that of publican, which is a category that always
accompanies it in the Gospel. The publicans, who were employees of the
Roman tax collection agencies, participated in the unjust practices of
these agencies. If Jesus links prostitutes and publicans together, he
does not do this without a reason; they have both made money the most
important thing in life.
It would be tragic if such passages from the Gospel made Christians
less attentive to combating the degrading phenomenon of prostitution,
which today has assumed alarming proportions in our cities. Jesus had
too much respect for women to not suffer beforehand for that which she
will become when she is reduced to this state. What he appreciates in
the prostitute is not her way of life, but her capacity to change and
to put her ability to love in the service of the good. Mary Magdalene,
who converted and followed Jesus all the way to the cross, is an
example of this (supposing that she was a prostitute).
What Jesus intends to teach with his words here he clearly says at the
end: The publicans and prostitutes converted with John the Baptist's
preaching; the chief priests and the elders did not. The Gospel,
therefore, does not direct us to moralistic campaigns against
prostitutes, but neither does it allow us to joke about it, as if it
were nothing.
In the new form under which prostitution presents itself today, we see
that it is now able to make a person a significant amount of money and
do so without involving them in the terrible dangers to which the poor
women of previous times, who were condemned to the streets, were
subjected. This form consists in selling one's body safely through
cameras. What a woman does when she loans herself to pornography and
certain excessive forms of advertisement is to sell her body to the
eyes if not to contact. This is certainly prostitution, and it is worse
than traditional prostitution, because it is publicly imposed and does
not respect people's freedom and sentiments.
But having denounced these things as we must, we would betray the
spirit of the Gospel if we did not also speak of the hope that these
words of Christ offer to women, who, on account of various
circumstances (often out of desperation), have found themselves on the
street, for the most part victims of unscrupulous exploitation. The
Gospel is "gospel," that is, "glad tidings," news of ransom, of hope,
even for prostitutes. Indeed, perhaps it is for them first of all. This
is how Jesus wanted it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
27th
Sunday in Ordinary Time Isaiah 5:1-7; Philippians 4:6-9;
Matthew 21:33-43.
The Vineyard and the
Fruits By Father Raniero Cantalamessa,
OFM Cap
ROME, OCT. 3, 2008 - The immediate context of the parable of the
murderous tenants of the vineyard is the relationship between God and
the people of Israel. It is to Israel that God first sent the prophets
and then his own Son.
But similar to all of Jesus’ parables, this story has a certain
openness. In the relationship between God and Israel the history of
God’s relationship with the whole of humanity is traced. Jesus takes up
and continues God’s lament in Isaiah, which we heard in the first
reading. It is there that we find the key to the parable and its tone.
Why did God “plant a vineyard” and what are the "fruits" that are
expected, which God will come to look for?
Here the parable does not correspond to reality. Human beings do not
plant vineyards and dedicate themselves to its care for the love of the
vines but for their own benefit. God is different. He creates man and
enters into a covenant with him, not for his own benefit, but for man’s
benefit, out of pure love. The fruits that are expected from man are
love of God and justice toward the oppressed: all things that are for
the good of man, not God.
This parable of Jesus is terribly relevant to our Europe, and in
general to the Christian world. In this context, too, we must say that
Jesus has been “cast out of the vineyard,” thrown out of a culture that
proclaims itself post-Christian, or even anti-Christian. The words of
the vineyard tenants resound, if not in the words at least in the
deeds, of our secularized society: “Let us kill the heir and the
inheritance will be ours!”
No one wants to hear anymore about Europe’s Christian roots, of the
Christian patrimony. Secularized humanity wants to be the heir, the
master. Sartre put this terrible declaration into the mouth of one of
his characters: “There is nothing in heaven, neither good nor evil,
there is no one who can give me orders. [...] I am a man, and every man
must invent his own path.”
What I have just sketched is a “broadband” application of the parable.
But Jesus' parables almost always have a more “narrow band”
application, an application to the individual: they apply to each
individual person, not just to humanity or Christendom in general. We
are invited to ask ourselves: What fate have I prepared for Christ in
my life? How am I responding to God’s incomprehensible love for me?
Have I too, by chance, thrown him out of my house, my life; that is,
have I forgotten and ignored Christ?
I remember one day I was listening to this parable at Mass while I was
fairly distracted. Then came the words of the owner of vineyard: “They
will respect my Son.” I started, and I understood that those words were
addressed to me personally in that moment. The heavenly Father was
about to send me his Son in the sacrament of his body and blood. Did I
understand the importance of this great moment? Was I ready to welcome
him with respect, the respect that the Father expected? Those words
brought me brusquely back from my wandering thoughts.
There is a sense of regret, of delusion in the parable. It certainly is
not a story with a happy ending! But in its depths it tells us of the
incredible love that God has for his people and for every creature. It
is a love that, even through the alternating events of loss and return,
will always be victorious and have the last word.
God’s rejections are never definitive. They are pedagogical
abandonments. Even the rejection of Israel, which obliquely echoes
through Christ’s words -- “The kingdom of God will be taken away from
you and given to a people who will produce its fruit” -- is of this
sort, as is that described by Isaiah in the first reading. We have seen
that this danger also threatens Christendom, or at least large parts of
it.
St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans: “Has God rejected his
people? Of course not! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of
Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom
he foreknew. ... Did they stumble so as to fall? Of course not! But
through their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as
to make them jealous. ... For if their rejection is the reconciliation
of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?”
(Romans 11:1 passim).
On Sept. 29 our brothers celebrated the New Year with the feast of Rosh
Hashanah. I would like to take this occasion to offer my wishes for
peace and prosperity. With the Apostle Paul I ask that “peace be upon
the Israel of God.”
--------------------------------------------------------
28th
Sunday in Ordinary Time Isaiah 25:6-10a; Philippians
4:12-14.19-20; Matthew 22:1-14.
The Important and the Urgent by Father
Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, OCT. 10, 2008 - It is instructive to consider the reasons why
those who were invited to the feast described in the parable refused to
come. Matthew says that they "ignored" the invitation and "went away,
one to his farm, another to his business." Luke's Gospel is more
detailed on this point and presents the reasons for the refusal of the
invitation thus: "I have purchased a field and I must go look at it ...
"I have purchased five yoke of oxen and am on my way to see them" ...
"I have just married a woman, and therefore I cannot come" (Luke
14:18-20).
What do these different people have in common? All have something
urgent to do, something that cannot wait, that demands their immediate
attention. And what does the wedding feast represent? It indicates the
messianic goods, participation in the salvation brought by Christ, and,
therefore, the possibility of eternal life. The feast represents
something important in life, indeed, the only important thing in life.
The mistake of those who rejected the invitation is clear, then: They
have left the important for the urgent, the essential for the
contingent! This is a widespread and insidious danger, not only in the
sphere of religion but also in the purely human sphere. It is something
worth reflecting on.
First of all let us consider the religious sphere. Neglecting the
important for the urgent in our spiritual life means continually
putting off our religious duties because there is always something
urgent calling for our attention. It is Sunday and it is time to go to
Mass, but there is that visit, that work in the garden, that lunch to
prepare. Mass can wait, lunch cannot; so you put Mass off and go to
your stove.
I said that the danger of neglecting the important for the urgent is
also present in the human sphere, in everyday life, and I would also
like to reflect on this. It is of the utmost importance that a man
dedicate time to his family, be with his children, talk to them if they
are grown, play with them if they are little. But then at the last
moment there are always urgent things to deal with at the office, extra
things to do at work, and he puts it off till another time, returning
home too late and too tired to think about anything else.
It is a very important thing for a man or a woman to go every so often
to visit their aging mother of father who is living alone at home or
some care facility. For everyone it is important to visit a sick friend
to show your concern and perhaps offer them some practical help. But it
is not urgent and if you put it off, it does not appear that the world
will end and perhaps no one will notice. And you put it off.
The same is true in regard to your health, which is also something
important. The doctor sees that you need to take care of yourself, take
some time to rest, avoid stress. ... You answer, "Yes, yes, I'll
definitely do it just as soon as I'm done with that project, when I've
finished working on the house, when I've paid off all my debts. ...
Until you see that it is too late. Here is where the problem lies: You
go through life chasing after the thousand little things and never find
time for the things that truly impact human relationships and can give
joy (or deep sadness when neglected) in life. Thus, we see how the
Gospel is, indirectly, a school of life; it teaches us to establish
priorities, to attend to what is essential. In a word, to not lose the
important for the sake of the urgent as happened with those who were
invited to the wedding feast in our parable.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
29th
Sunday in Ordinary Time Isaiah 45:1, 4-6; 1 Thessalonians
1:1-5b; Matthew 22:15-21.
Profile of a Catholic Politician by
Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, OCT. 17, 2008 - This Sunday’s Gospel ends with one of those
lapidary phrases of Jesus that have left a deep mark on history and on
human language: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s , and to God what is
God’s.”
It is no longer either Caesar or God, but Caesar and God, each on his
appropriate level. It is the beginning of the separation of religion
and politics, which until then had been inseparable among all peoples
and regimes.
The Jews were used to understanding the future reign of God founded by
the Messiah as a theocracy, that is, as a government directed by God
ruling over the whole earth through his people. But now the words of
Christ reveal a kingdom of God that is in this world but that is not of
this world, that travels on a different wavelength and that, for this
reason, can coexist with every other political regime, whether it be
sacral or secular.
Here we see two qualitatively different sovereignties of God over the
world: the spiritual sovereignty that constitutes the Kingdom of God
and that is exercised directly in Christ, and the temporal and
political sovereignty that God exercises indirectly, entrusting it to
man’s free choice and the play of secondary causes.
Caesar and God, however, are not put on the same level, because Caesar
too depends on God and must answer to him. Thus “Give to Caesar what is
Caesar’s” means: “Give to Caesar what God himself wants to be given to
Caesar.” God is sovereign over all, including Caesar. We are not
divided between two loyalties; we are not forced to serve “two masters.”
The Christian is free to obey the state, but he is also free to resist
the state when it goes against God and his law. In such a case it is
not legitimate to invoke the principle about the obedience that is owed
to superiors, as war criminals often do when they are on trial. Before
obeying men, in fact, you must first obey God and your own conscience.
You cannot give your soul, which belongs to God, to Caesar.
St. Paul was the first to draw practical conclusions from this teaching
of Christ. He writes: “Let every person be subordinate to the higher
authorities, for there is no authority except from God. … Whoever
resists authority opposes the order that God has appointed. … This is
why you also pay taxes, for the authorities who are in charge of this
are ministers of God” (Romans 13:1 ff.).
Paying appropriately levied taxes is for the Christian (but also for
every honest person) a duty of justice and therefore an obligation of
conscience. Guaranteeing order, commerce and a whole series of other
services, the state gives the citizen something to which it has a right
for compensation in return, precisely to be able to continue these same
services.
The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” reminds us that tax evasion,
when it reaches certain proportions, is a mortal sin equal to every
other grave act of theft. It is stealing, not from the “state,” that is
from no one, but from the community, that is, from everyone. Naturally,
this supposes that the state is just and equitable in imposing taxes.
Christian cooperation in building a just and peaceful society does not
stop at paying taxes; it must also extend itself to the promotion of
common values such as the family, the defense of life, solidarity with
the poor, peace. There is also another sphere in which Christians must
make a contribution to politics. It does not have to do with the
content of politics so much as its methods, its style.
Christians must help to remove the poison from the climate of
contentiousness in politics, bring back greater respect, composure and
dignity to relationships between parties. Respect for one’s neighbor,
clemency, capacity for self-criticism: These are the traits that a
disciple of Christ must have in all things, even in politics.
It is undignified for a Christian to give himself over to insults,
sarcasm, brawling with his adversaries. If, as Jesus says, those who
call their brother “stupid” are in danger of Gehenna, what then must we
say about a lot of politicians?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
30th
Sunday in Ordinary Time Exodus 22:20-26; 1 Thessalonians
1:5c-10; Matthew 22:34-40.
Charity of the Heart by Father Raniero
Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, OCT. 24, 2008 - "Love your neighbor as yourself." Adding the
words "as yourself," Jesus puts us in front of a mirror before which we
cannot lie; he has given us an infallible measure for determining
whether we love our neighbor.
We know well in every circumstance what it means to love ourselves and
how we want others to treat us. Note well that Jesus does not say:
"What the other person does to you, do to him." This would be the law
of talion: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." He says rather:
as you would like others to treat you, treat them in same way (cf.
Matthew 7:12).
Jesus considered love of neighbor "his commandment," that which
summarizes the whole Law. "This is my commandment: That you love one
another as I have loved you" (John 15:12). Many identify the whole of
Christianity with the precept of love of neighbor, and they are not
completely wrong. We must try, however, to go a little beyond the
surface of things. When we speak of love of neighbor our minds turn
immediately to "works" of charity, to the things that should be done
for our neighbor: giving him to eat and drink, visiting him, in sum
helping our neighbor. But this is an effect of love, it is not yet
love. Before "beneficence" there is "benevolence," that is, before
doing good there is willing good.
Charity must be "without pretense," in other words, it must be sincere
(literally, "without hypocrisy") (Romans 12:9); you must love "from a
true heart" (1 Peter 1:22). Indeed, you can do "charitable" acts and
give alms for motives that do not have anything to do with love: to
impress, to look like a do-gooder, to earn heaven, to ease your
conscience. A great deal of the charity that we offer to Third World
countries is not directed by love but by a desire to ease our
conscience. We realize the scandalous difference between them and us
and we feel somewhat responsible for their misery. You can lack charity
even in "doing charity"!
It is clear that it would be a fatal error to oppose the heart’s love
and active charity, or to take refuge in good intentions toward others
in such a way that we use them as an excuse for a lack of active and
concrete charity on our part. If you meet a poor person, hungry and
numb with cold, St. James says, what good does it do to say "You poor
thing, go, keep warm and eat something!" when you give him nothing of
what he needs? "Children," St. John adds, "let us not love in word or
speech but in deed and truth" (1 John 3:18). It is not a matter of
devaluing external works of charity, but of making sure that they have
their basis in a genuine sentiment of love and benevolence.
This interior charity, or charity of the heart, is charity that can be
exercised by all and always, it is universal. It is not a charity that
only a few -- the rich and the healthy -- bestow, and others -- the
poor and the sick -- receive. All can give and receive. Furthermore, it
is very concrete. It is a matter of beginning to look with a new eye
upon the situations and people with which we live. What is this new
eye? It’s simple: it is the eye with which we would like God to look
upon us! The eye of mercy, of benevolence, of understanding, of mercy.
When this happens all our relationships change. As if by a miracle, all
the prejudice and hostility that kept us from loving a certain person
falls away and we begin to open up to what he is in reality: a poor
human being who suffers from his weaknesses and limits, like you, like
everyone. It is as if the mask that people and things placed over his
face has begun to slip and the person appears to us as he truly is.
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Gospel Commentary for All Souls Day, November 2
Life After
Death By Father
Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, OCT. 31, 2008 - The feast of All Saints' Day and the
commemoration of All the Faithful Departed have something in common,
and for this reason, have been placed one after the other. Both
celebrations speak to us of what's beyond. If we didn't believe in a
life after death, it would not be worth it to celebrate the feast of
the saints, and even less, to visit the cemetery. Who would we go to
visit or why would we light a candle or bring a flower?
Thus, everything in this day invites us to a wise reflection: "Teach us
to count our days," says a Psalm, "that we may gain wisdom of heart."
"We live like tree leaves in autumn" (G. Ungaretti). The tree in spring
blooms again, but with other leaves; the world will continue after us,
but with other inhabitants. Leaves don't have a second life; they
disintegrate where they fall. Does the same happen to us? That's where
the analogy ends. Jesus promised: "I am the Resurrection and the Life.
He who believes in, even if he dies, will live." This is the great
challenge of faith, not just for Christians, but also for Jews and
Muslims, for everyone who believes in a personal God.
Those who have seen the movie "Doctor Zhivago" will remember the famous
song from Lara, the sound track. The Italian version says: "I don't
know what it is, but there is a place from which we will never return
…" The song points to the meaning of the famous novel by Pasternak on
which the movie is based: Two lovers find each other, seek each other,
but they are those whom destiny (we find ourselves in the tumultuous
epoch of the Bolshevik Revolution) cruelly separates, until the final
scene when their paths cross again, but without recognizing one another.
Every time I hear the notes of this song, my faith brings me almost to
shout out inside me: Yes, there is a place from where we will never
return and from where we will not want to return. Jesus has gone to
prepare it for us, he has opened life for us with his resurrection and
he has indicated the path to follow him with the passage of the
beatitudes. A place where time will stop to make way for eternity;
where love will be full and total. Not just the love of God and for God
but also all honest and holy love lived on earth.
Faith doesn't free believers from the anguish of having to die, but it
soothes us with hope. A preface of the Mass (for All Souls' Day) says:
"If the certainty of having to die saddens us, the hope of future
immortality consoles us." In this sense, there is a moving testimony
that also comes from Russia. In 1972, in a clandestine magazine a
prayer was published that had been found in the jacket pocket of a
soldier, Aleksander Zacepa, composed just before the World War II
battle in which he would die.
It says:
Hear me, oh God! In my lifetime, I have not spoken with you even once,
but today I have the desire to celebrate. Since I was little, they have
always told me that you don't exist. And I, like an idiot, believed it.
I have never contemplated your works, but tonight I have seen from the
crater of a grenade the sky full of stars, and I have been fascinated
by their splendor. In that instant I have understood how terrible is
the deception. I don't know, oh God, if you will give me your hand, but
I say to you that you understand me …
Is it not strange that in the middle of a frightful hell, light has
appeared to me, and I have discovered you?
I have nothing more to tell you. I feel happy, because I have known
you. At midnight, we have to attack, but I am not afraid. You see us.
They have given the signal. I have to go. How good it was to be with
you! I want to tell you, and you know, that the battle will be
difficult: Perhaps this night, I will go to knock on your door. And if
up to now, I have not been your friend, when I go, will you allow me to
enter?
But, what's happening to me? I cry? My God, look at what has happened
to me. Only now, I have begun to see with clarity. My God, I go. It
will be difficult to return. How strange, now, death does not make me
afraid.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in
Rome Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12; 1 Corinthians 3:9c-11,
16-17; John 2:13-2.
The Importance of the House of
God By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, NOV. 7, 2008 (Zenit.org).- This year, in the place of the 32nd
Sunday in Ordinary Time, we celebrate the feast of the Dedication of
Lateran Basilica in Rome, the cathedral of Rome, originally dedicated
to the Savior, but then to St. John the Baptist.
What does the dedication and existence of a church, understood as a
place of worship, represent for the Christian liturgy and Christian
spirituality? We must begin with the words of John's Gospel: “The hour
is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the
Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such worshippers.”
Jesus teaches that God’s temple is primarily the human heart, which has
welcomed the Word of God. Speaking of himself and of the Father, Jesus
says: “We will come to him and make our abode in him” (John 14:23), and
Paul writes one of his communities: “Do you not know that you are God’s
temple?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). The believer, then, is the new temple of
God. But the place of God’s presence and Christ’s is also there “where
two or more are gathered in my name” (Matthew 18:20).
The Second Vatican Council calls the Christian family a “domestic
Church” (“Lumen Gentium,” 11), that is, a little temple of God,
precisely because, thanks to the sacrament of matrimony, it is, par
excellence, the place where “two or more” are gathered in my name.
So, by what right do we Christians give such importance to church
buildings if each one of us can worship God in spirit and truth in our
own heart, or in his own house? Why this obligation to go to church
every Sunday? The answer is that Jesus Christ does not save us
separately from each other; he has come to form a people, a community
of persons, in communion with him and among themselves.
What a house is for a family, a church is for the family of God. There
is no family without a house. One of the films of Italian neo-realism
that I still remember is “Il Tetto” (“The Roof”), written by Cesare
Zavattini and directed by Vittorio De Sica. In postwar Rome a poor
young man and woman fall in love and get married but do not have a
home. Under Italian law at the time, once a house had a roof, its
occupants could not be evicted. The couple hurriedly try to put a roof
on a ramshackle dwelling and when they succeed, they are overjoyed and
embrace, knowing that they have a home, a place of intimacy; they are a
family.
I have seen this story repeat itself in many places in cities, towns
and villages where there was no church and the people needed to build
one. The solidarity and enthusiasm, the joy of working together with
the priest to give the community a place of worship and a place to meet
-- they are all stories that would merit a film such as De Sica’s.
We must also consider a sad phenomenon: the massive drop in church
attendance and participation in Sunday Mass. The statistics on
religious practice should make one weep. I do not say that those who do
not go to church no longer believe; It is rather that they have
replaced the religion instituted by Christ with a “do it yourself”
religion, what in America they call “pick and choose,” like you do at
the supermarket. Everyone makes up his own idea of God, of prayer, and
he is content with it.
Thus it is forgotten that God revealed himself in Christ, that Christ
preached a Gospel, that he founded an “ekklesia,” that is, an assembly
of those called, he instituted sacraments as signs and conveyors of his
presence and salvation. Ignoring this in order to cultivate your own
image of God is to advocate total religious subjectivism. We take
ourselves as the only standard: God is reduced -- as the German
philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach said -- to a projection of our own needs
and desires; it is no longer God who creates man in his image, but man
who creates a god in his image. But it is not a god who saves!
Of course, a religion that is entirely made up of external practices
has no point; we see Jesus fighting against such a religion everywhere
in the Gospel. But there is no contradiction between a religion of
signs and sacraments and one that is intimate, personal; there is no
contradiction between ritual and spirit. The great religious geniuses
(Augustine, Pascal, Kierkegaard, our own Alessandro Manzoni) were men
of a profound and personal interiority who were at the same time
members of a community, went to church, they “practiced.”
In the “Confessions” (VIII, 2) St. Augustine recounts the great Roman
philosopher and rhetorician Victorinus’ conversion to Christianity from
paganism. Now convinced of the truth of Christianity he told the priest
Simplicianus: “You know I am already Christian.” Simplicianus answered
him: “I will not believe you until I see you in the church of Christ.”
Victorinus replied: “Is it the walls that make a Christian?” The
skirmish continued between the two. But one day Victorinus read in the
Gospel these words of Christ: “Whoever disowns me in this generation, I
will disown before my Father.” He understood that it was human respect,
fear of what his academic colleagues would say, that kept him from
going to church. He went to Simplicianus and said to him: “Let’s go to
church, I want to become a Christian.” I think that this story has
something to say to people of culture today too.
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
33rd
Sunday of Ordinary Time Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31;1
Thessalonians 5:1-6; Matthew 25:14-30.
The Age of the
Woman By Father Raniero
Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, NOV. 14, 2008 - This Sunday's Gospel is the parable of the
talents. Unfortunately, in the past the meaning of this parable has
been habitually distorted, or at least very much reduced.
Hearing talk of talents we immediately think of natural gifts of
intelligence, beauty, strength, artistic abilities. The metaphor is
used to speak about actors, singers, comedians, etc. The usage is not
completely mistaken, but it is secondary. Jesus did not intend to speak
of the obligation of developing one's natural gifts, but of developing
the gifts given by him. On the contrary, sometimes it is necessary to
curb this tendency to focus on one's own talents because this can
easily become careerism, a mania of imposing oneself on others.
The talents that Jesus is speaking about are the Word of God and faith:
in a word, the kingdom proclaimed by him. In this sense the parable of
the talents stands alongside that of the sower. The different outcomes
of the talents given correspond to the different fates of the seeds
cast on the ground by the sower -- some produce 60%, some are buried
beneath thorns or eaten by birds.
Today faith and the sacraments are the talents that we Christians have
received. The parable thus obliges us to examine our conscience: What
use are we making of these talents? Are we either like the servant who
made them bear fruit or like the one who buried them? I would compare
it to a Christmas present that one has forgotten and left unopened in a
corner.
The fruits of natural talents become irrelevant to us when we die or,
at best, pass on to those who come after us; the fruits of spiritual
talents follow us into eternal life and one day will gain us the
approval of the divine Judge: "Well done, good and faithful servant.
Since you have been faithful in small things I will give you authority
over greater things. Enter into the joy of your master."
Our human and Christian duty is not only to develop our own natural and
spiritual talents, but also to help others develop theirs. In the
contemporary world there are people whose job it is to be "talent
scouts." They are people who can pick out hidden talents -- in
painting, singing, acting, sports and so on. They help those with the
talents to cultivate them and find them sponsors. They do not do this
for free or for the love of art, but to get a percentage of the
earnings of the talented people they discovered, once they succeed.
The Gospel invites us all to be talent scouts, not for the love of gain
but to help those who are unable to begin developing their talents on
their own. Humanity owes some of its geniuses and best artists to the
altruism of the friends of these people, who believed in them and
encouraged them when no one else did. One exemplary case that comes to
mind is Theo Van Gogh, who supported his brother Vincent financially
and morally his whole life, when no one believed in him and he was
unable to sell any of his paintings. They exchanged more than 600
letters, documents of great humanity and spirituality. Without Theo Van
Gogh, we would not have the many paintings of his brother that everyone
loves and admires.
The first reading invites us to reflect on a particular talent that is
both natural and spiritual: the talent of femininity, the talent of
being a woman. This reading contains the famous praise of women that
begins with the words: "A perfect woman, who can find her?" This
praise, which is so beautiful, has one defect, which does not come from
the inspiration but from the epoch in which it was written and the
culture that it reflects. If we pay attention, we see that the praise
has entirely to do with what the woman does for the man. Its implicit
conclusion: Blessed is the man who has such a woman. She makes him nice
clothes, brings honor to his house, allows him to hold his head high
among his friends. I do not think women today would be enthusiastic
about this laud.
Putting this limitation aside, I would like to underscore the relevance
of this praise of women. Everywhere there is the demand to make more
room for women, to value the feminine genius. We do not believe that
"the eternal feminine will save us." Daily experience shows that women
can lift themselves up, but also that they can let themselves down.
They also need Christ's salvation. But it is certain that, once she is
redeemed and "liberated" by him, on the human level, from ancient
subjections, she can help to save our society from some inveterate
evils that threaten it: violence, will to power, spiritual aridity,
scorn for life, etc.
After so many ages that took their name from man -- from the ages of
"homo erectus" and "homo faber," to the age of "homo sapiens" today, we
might hope that there will finally come, for humanity, the age of
woman: the age of the heart, of tenderness, of compassion. It was
devotion to the Virgin that, in past centuries, inspired respect for
women and their idealization in literature and art. The woman of today,
too, can look to her as a model, friend and ally in defending the
dignity and the talent of being a woman.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Father Cantalamessa Evaluates Weekly Meditations
Preacher Completes Entire Liturgical Cycle
By Jesús Colina
VATICAN
CITY, NOV. 21, 2008 - There are many means for those looking for God's
will to find it through meditation on Scripture, says Capuchin Father
Raniero Cantalamessa.
Father Cantalamessa, the Pontifical
Household preacher, has written a weekly commentary for ZENIT on the
Gospel of the Sunday liturgy for three years, covering the entire
liturgical cycle. Today his last commentary appears in this dispatch.
Before
he goes, he gave ZENIT one last opportunity to learn from him. In this
interview, the preacher offers advice on how to listen for the voice of
God when reading the Word of God.
Q: The first question is that which readers also pose: What do you do to write your homilies?
Father
Cantalamessa: [Laughs] What do I do? I read the Word of God. Before
pondering on my reflections, I try to focus on the Word of God, to
discover what the message is for this particular moment in which we
find ourselves, in which I find myself, in which the Word of God
emerges.
Usually, at the beginning it is a little light that is
later confirmed little by little, consolidated, revealing a relation
with a situation or present problem. Very helpful in this regard is a
climate of prayer, of listening to the Holy Spirit, because it is he
who has inspired sacred Scripture and only he can explain it, only he
can apply it to today's world.
Q: What is your advice to
Christians who want to meditate on the Word and draw lessons for their
own lives or make useful decisions in life under the gaze of God?
Father
Cantalamessa: It depends to a degree on the state, on the duties of the
person. If it is only a question of personal use of the Word of God for
one's life, the best thing is to begin to use the Word of God that the
Church offers us through the liturgy: the Liturgy of the Hours, the
Mass, etc, because often when the Lord speaks he uses the Church's
choice, the readings of the day.
To be attentive to the readings
of the day often reveals that it is an answer to a particular problem.
A word seems to be made to measure for us to the point that one is
constrained to say: "This was written precisely for me!" Hence, one
must greatly value not the personal, but the community choice made by
the Church in the liturgy.
Then there is the personal choice,
namely, rereading the passages of Scripture that in the past have had a
certain importance for us, have spoken to us. Often the Lord speaks
through the same texts and says things that are always new and
appropriate to the situations we are living. One must appreciate those
Words of God that in the past have given us important guidelines.
Then,
there is another means happily used by the Charismatic Renewal, but not
only by it, and it is that -- after having prayed -- an act of faith is
made, opening the Bible and thinking that we will find an answer from
the Lord, or at times even decisions to be made based on the Word of
God which we understand under our eyes.
This is a means not
invented today by the Charismatic Renewal. For example, it is the means
that happened to St. Augustine, who at the crucial moment of his
conversion, had with him the Letters of St. Paul and opening them he
decided to take as the Word of God the first passage he read, it
happened to be Romans 13, where it says: "Do not be impure or
licentious," "put on the armor of light." He felt immediately upon him
while reading such a light and serenity that he understood he could
live chastely.
The same happened to St. Francis. When he still
did not know what to do, he went into a church and opened the Gospel
three times and every time he came across a passage that spoke about
the sending of the Apostles without a walking-stick or knapsack,
without money, without two tunics, and said: This is what the Lord
wants for us. But the examples are multiplied down to our days. St.
Thérèse of Lisieux did not know what to do; she opened the Letter to
the Corinthians and there found her vocation to be the heart, to be
charity.
I have had so many personal confirmations, and also
that of others who have found in the Gospel the Word of God. I never
tire of mentioning a very delightful episode. I was preaching a mission
in Australia, and on the last day a laborer -- a very simple person --
came up to me to tell me that in his family there was a big problem. He
had an 11-year-old son who was not baptized because his wife, who had
become a Jehovah's witness, did not want the baptism to take place.
Because
of this he asked me: "What should I do? If I baptize him there will be
a problem; if I don't baptize him I am not at peace because when we
married we were both Catholics." I answered him: "Let me reflect on
this tonight." The next day arrived and he said to me: "Father, I have
found the solution. Yesterday, on my way home I prayed, then I saw the
Bible opened and what emerged was the episode in which Abraham takes
his son Isaac to be immolated. And I saw that on that occasion, Abraham
did not say anything to his wife." It was a perfect discernment
because, in fact, rabbis say that Abraham said nothing to his wife
precisely to avoid his wife from impeding him from obeying God. I
myself baptized the child.
Of course, we must avoid a magical
use of Scripture, opening it to read without having prayed. This use of
Scripture can only be made when one lives in a spiritual climate of
obedience to God. One cannot play games with God, because God is not
consulted by joking; above all he is consulted when one is determined
to do that which he will make one understand.
See, there are so many means, from the public to the more personal, to guide one's life with the Word of God.
Q:
For three years we have been publishing your homilies in seven
languages and we receive thousands of messages of gratitude from
readers. What has this experience of preaching from the Internet pulpit
meant for you?
Father Cantalamessa: It was also a discovery for
me, in the sense that in the beginning I did not suppose, perhaps
neither did you suppose, that it would be so well received. Then,
traveling around the world I was also reminded that the majority of
those who did not know me personally knew me through ZENIT, through
these commentaries to the Gospel.
From the desert of Arizona to
Africa, from Asia to France: everywhere. It was for me on one hand a
happy discovery, and for you, I believe, an encouragement. Today this
is an important vehicle for the Gospel. There are many more people than
we suppose that are seeking such biblical, evangelical contents on
Internet, and who use them. It is a very concrete use, because many use
them to prepare for Mass, some priests use them to prepare their
homilies. They are not only useful for those who read them, because
many also adapt and re-propose them, and they do not do this word for
word. They are seeds that fall on so many hearts.
Q: What do you say to ZENIT readers who will miss your weekly column?
Father
Cantalamessa: I intend to publish all these commentaries in a volume,
because I have been requested to do so. In part it will be comments
published by ZENIT, but in part they will be new, or those I have done
on television. Comments in the same style, brief, of a page each, and
will be issued in a volume. In due time ZENIT's readers will come to
know them. Thus, whoever wishes to will be able to go back to these
comments. However, if you have the possibility of their being continued
by someone else, I urge readers to read and listen to the new
commentator.
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Solemnity of Christ the King Eziekiel 34:11-12, 15-17; 1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28; Matthew 25:31-46.
Before Him All Nations Will be Gathered By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME,
NOV. 21, 2008 - The Gospel of the last Sunday of the liturgical year,
the Solemnity of Christ the King, presents us with the concluding
moment of human history: Judgment Day.
Jesus says in Matthew 25:
“When the Son of man will come in glory with all his angels, he will
sit upon the throne of glory, and before him all nations will be
gathered and he will separate them one from another, as the shepherd
separates the sheep from the goats and he will set the sheep on his
right hand, but the goats on the left.”
The first message
contained in this Gospel does not have to do with the form or the
outcome of the judgment, but the fact that there will be a judgment,
that the world does not come from chance and does not end in chance.
This world begins with: “Let there be light ... Let us make man.” And
ends with: “Come, blessed of my Father ... Depart from me, accursed
ones.” At the beginning of the world and at its end there is a decision
of an intelligent mind and a sovereign will.
This beginning of
the millennium is characterized by a heated debate over evolutionism
and creationism. Reduced to its essentials, on the one side there are
those who, appealing -- not always rightly -- to Darwin, believe that
the world is a fruit of blind evolution, dominated by natural
selection, and, on the other side, those who, although they admit a
form of evolution, see God at work in the evolutionary process itself.
Some
days ago at the Vatican there was a plenary session of the Pontifical
Academy of Sciences, which treated the theme "Scientific Insight Into
the Evolution of the Universe and of Life." Distinguished scientists
from around the world participated: some believers, some not, some were
Nobel Prize recipients.
On the RAI 1 program on the Gospel that
I host I interviewed one of the scientists, Professor Francis Collins,
former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the
National Institutes of Health in the US. I asked him: “If evolution is
true, is there still room for God?” He answered: “Darwin was right in
formulating his theory according to which we descend from a common
ancestor and there have been gradual changes over long periods of time,
but this is the mechanical aspect of how life came to form this
fantastic panorama of diversity. This does not answer the question of
why there is life.”
“There are aspects of humanity,” he
continued, “that are not easily explained: Like our moral sense, the
knowledge of good and evil that sometimes leads us to make sacrifices
that are not dictated by the laws of evolution. These laws would
suggest that we preserve ourselves at all costs. This is not a proof,
but does it not perhaps indicate that God exists?”
I also asked
Collins whether he had first believed in God or in Jesus Christ. He
said: “Until the age of about 25 I was an atheist, I did not have a
religious formation, I was a scientist who reduced almost everything to
the equations and laws of physics. But as a doctor I began to meet
people who were faced with the problem of life and death, and this made
me think that my atheism was not an idea that had a basis. I began to
read texts about rational arguments for faith that I did not know.
"First
I arrived at the conviction that atheism was the least acceptable
alternative, and little by little I came to the conclusion that a God
must exist who created all of this, but I did not know about this God.
This led me to conduct research to find out what the nature of God is,
and I found it in the Bible and in the person of Jesus. After two years
of research I decided that it was not more reasonable to resist and I
became a follower of Jesus.”
A major promoter of evolutionism in
our days is the Englishman Richard Dawkins, the author of the book “The
God Delusion.” He is now promoting a public campaign to put placards on
buses in English cities that read: “There’s probably no God. Now stop
worrying and enjoy life.” If I put myself in the shoes of a parent with
a handicapped, autistic or gravely sick child, or a farm worker who has
lost his job, I wonder how such a person would react to that
announcement: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy
life!” "Probably": He doesn't even exclude the possibility that God
could exist! But if God doesn't exist, the believer loses nothing. On
the other hand, the nonbeliever loses everything.
The existence
of evil and injustice in the world is certainly a mystery and a
scandal, but without faith in a final judgment, it would be infinitely
more absurd and more tragic. For many millennia of life on earth, man
has become accustomed to everything; he has adapted to every climate,
become immune to every disease. But there is one thing that he has not
gotten used to: injustice. He continues to feel it intolerable. And it
is to this thirst for justice that the universal judgment will respond.
Not
only God will desire it, but, paradoxically, men will too, even the
wicked ones. “On the day of the universal judgment, it will not only be
the Judge who will descend from heaven,” the French poet Paul Claudel
wrote, “but the whole earth will rush to the meeting.”
The
solemnity of Christ the King, with the Gospel of the final judgment,
responds to the most universal of human hopes. It assures us that
injustice and evil will not have the last word and at the same time it
calls on us to live in such a way that justice is not a condemnation
for us, but salvation, and we can be those to whom Christ will say:
"Come, blessed of my Father, take possession of the kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world."
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
* * *
Father Raniero Cantalamessa is the Pontifical Household preacher. The readings for this Sunday are
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