The Supernatural, yet Human Gift: An Easter Message

The question of whether or not Jesus' death actually could do anything for anyone else was a key question for me seven or eight years ago, just after I had graduated from college and before I discerned my vocation to the Order of Preachers. I was having a crisis of faith, torn between atheism on the one side and the allurement of a simpler monotheistic theology on the other (like that in Judaism or Islam). At the heart of it all was the question of Jesus. Was he really divine and the savior of the world? Could one person's death actually do anything for anyone else?

To the disappointment of atheists and to the annoyance, perhaps, of Jews and Muslims and members of other faiths, Christians do not claim that faith in Jesus' divinity or in the saving power of his death is something that comes easy, as if the mystery of Jesus' life and death was something glaringly obvious and simple to understand. Indeed, it can seem down right foolish, as St. Paul declares: "For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength," (1 Cor. 1:21-25). Faith in the saving power of Jesus' death is exactly that--a matter of faith, something you come to believe and trust in because God has helped you to do so.

I can remember the Good Friday of the year I was having my crisis of faith; in particular, I remember turning to God in prayer and asking him point blank to tell me whether or not the Christian narrative was true. Was Jesus really the messiah? Was his death a saving event? The answer I received in prayer that day was a resounding "YES!" To this day I maintain that my faith in Jesus comes from the testimony of the Father that Jesus truly is the beloved Son and Messiah. I admit that a Trinitarian God is a strange concept, and that it would be easier to have a simpler monotheistic theological definition: but that is not God's reality.

The next step in my education was learning--as I have written about many times before--that Jesus is the supreme revelation of God and of humanity. His life, teachings, but especially his Crucifixion reveal the nature of God more than any other word ever could do. With all due respect, multiply the Holy Torah by a million, add thousands of Surahs to the Qur'an and you will not have, in my opinion, anything that compares to the Word Incarnate giving himself up for the redemption of the world. Nothing ever can compare to that self-gift.

It is precisely the concept of the power of self-giving, that is, self-transcending love, or the power of transcending oneself as a way of participating in the life-force of God, that helped me to understand the magnitude of the Crucifixion. If Jesus was only human, his Crucifixion would be a form of political and religious sabotage and victimization on the part of his countrymen. His offering up his death to God as expiation for sinners would be an eloquent manifestation of the great level of holiness that he had attained. How much more does that same death mean and effect since the one who died was the Word of God? How much more does it all mean, given that God was fully in control and working out his purpose despite human wickedness?

The plan of salvation history is the revelation of God and God's nature. Amazingly, Christian revelation declares that God's plan is to save the world--to save even sinners--through love. As St. Paul writes: "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God," (Romans 5:6-9).

Of course, there are two related beliefs that one must have for this Christian interpretation of salvation history to matter: 1) a belief in the reality of human sinfulness 2) and the belief that it matters that we sin. We might add to these two a third: the belief that there is divine judgement and an afterlife.

I became highly aware of my own sinfulness yesterday during the Good Friday service. While it is true that I do not violate the Ten Commandments, or any major religious or legal precept generally, that does not mean that I am not sinful; after all, Christian morality is aimed at a much higher standard. Christian morality is aimed at divinity. As Jesus said, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect," (Matt. 5:48). My sinfulness is manifested in the lack of self-transcendence in my life, the lack of generosity and love.

The story of Jesus' visit to Saints Martha and Mary of Bethany teaches us a lesson directly related to what I am talking about. Although St. Martha seems to be the one who is self-transcending in love by virtue of her service to Jesus, it is actually St. Mary whose love is self-transcending. Martha's complaints reveal that it is quite possible to be busy about many good and charitable deeds without having perfect charity. Self-transcending love is about action, to be sure, but its primary action is purely the act of love. Mary sitting with Jesus and listening to him--loving him--this reveals a much higher degree of self-transcendence. Had Martha's love been a self-transcending one, she would have seen the whole affair very differently.

I admit that I'm often much more like St. Martha in this, her moment of weakness, than I am like her sister, the glorious, but underappreciated St. Mary. I am busy about many, many things. I worry. I complain. I judge my brothers and sisters. I miss the Lord before me because I've made a lord out of my own desires. My love is little, and terribly confined to my "self," but I am quite capable of maintaining the appearance of righteousness, because I still obey the commandments--just as those hardworking Sadducees and Pharisees did in Jesus' day--but I'm missing the point. I'm not obeying the highest commandment; I'm not living up to Jesus' example or to the graces I received from the Holy Spirit in Baptism, Eucharist, prayer, etc. I am not loving enough.

Not being loving enough or not loving rightly is the cardinal sin. It is what most violates our human nature and makes us seem hideous and demonic rather than sons and daughters of God. It is the most common of sins, and so many people pass it off as simply human nature. Once you buy into the idea that it is human nature to sin, you have rejected Christianity. Sin is not human nature. Sin works against our human nature, pushes away God, and brings upon us countless internal and external evils.

Sin is, therefore, real and it matters very much. The lack of self-transcending love is at the heart of sin. Put differently, not one of us has a licence to hate anyone else. The moment you rationalize hatred, you have rejected the God who is Love (1 John 4:8), in whom there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). Christian love must be entirely radical, entirely divine in quality--only then will it be truly human love as it was intended to be. Accordingly, Jesus instructed us to love our enemies and pray for those who hate and persecute us (Matt 5:44); to reject the sword as a way of defending Christianity (Matt 26:52); to merely shake the dust off our shoes when our message is rejected (Matt 10:14); to leave the judging to God (Matt 7:1); to forgive everyone from our hearts every time we are asked for forgiveness (Matt 18:22, 35); to serve all those in most need of care (Matthew 25:31-36).

If, instead, you use Christianity to hate others, to boast against them, to persecute them and to judge them; if you ignore their needs in favor of your own--then your lack of self-transcending love will convict you. Not only do you have no faith, your example actively works against the Holy Faith. Christians work against the faith every time they sin--yes--but especially when they fail to love. There is nothing so scandalous as an unloving, ungenerous Christian. It is like the man in the parable who was forgiven his debts, only to turn around to demand payment from the one who owed him (Matt 18:23-35). If you think I exaggerate, did not St. John write "Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments. Whoever says, 'I have come to know him,' but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist; but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him: whoever says, 'I abide in him,' ought to walk just as he walked," (1 John 2:3-6).

And how did Jesus walk but in the way of self-transcending love? Because this love is self-transcending, it is big--big enough to encompass not only sinners who love him back, but also those who reject and persecute him. Thus he forgave those who put him to death (Luke 23:34).

It was by coming to understand love and how only in Christ Jesus was love ever accurately revealed that my heart was, and is, moved to cry out "My Lord and my God!" in response to his "This is my body," "This is my blood."

Perhaps it is true that it is not so hard to believe what Christianity proclaims so much as to live it. I believe that it is true that there are some people who are seemingly outside the Church that live lives of self-transcending love much closer to that of Jesus than many Christians--precisely because Christians get so caught up in the worship of Jesus that they fail to live like Jesus. It's not enough to say you have faith, St. James declared; you must allow that faith to pour out into activity (James 2:14-18). Indeed, he reminds us that "even the demons believe--and shudder," so right belief is not the sole criterion for salvation. Right action is demanded as well. The action is both simple and difficult: love.

Easier said than done, I know. On the global level I wonder if the days are gone when people can say of Christians: "Look how they love one another," (Tertullian, Apologeticum ch. 39, 7)? The Catholic Church has been rocked by scandal; the Anglican Communion at times seems on the brink of collapse; the Protestant Church is divided beyond counting, with many denominations lacking basic apostolic teaching, not to mention the priesthood and sacraments. The Orthodox Churches remain separate from each other and from their Catholic sister church. Heresies like the Jehovah's Witness and Mormon movements, along with mega churches preaching prosperity, present false gospels and people are accepting them despite St. Paul's warning (Gal. 1:8). A house divided will fall (Matt 12:25), and if it were not for Jesus' promise to preserve his Church by remaining with it always (Matt 16:18; Matt 28:20), I would think the Christian Church was going to collapse any day now. And this is only the internal drama. The history of Christian interaction with non-Christians is equally embarrassing and deplorable.

It can seem that "there is not one who does good, no, not one," (Psalm 53:3), and yet, Christ came to save sinners (Mark 2:17)--so his saving plan not only moves forward despite our sins, it has already been accomplished: in the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. His triumph was eloquently described in the second reading for Office of Readings this morning, taken from an ancient homily on Holy Saturday. "Something strange is happening..." the reading begins, and like a marvelous Shakespearean monologue the character of the Risen Christ speaks to Adam (to us all) and calls him out of hell into heaven--to the Throne of God, to the bridal chamber, and to the banquet hall, to the treasure houses of good things, to the kingdom of heaven that "has been prepared from all eternity."

The Lord's eager imperative, "Rise!" resounds in my heart. I look forward to the day when he says that to me at the Resurrection, but I hear him say it to me now. As a baptized Christian, as a daily communicant, Jesus' command "Rise!" is none other than the command "Love!" The first and last of every command; the meaning of creation; the definition of divinity and humanity--the All in All summed up in one word. Indeed, the darkness will fight against love's light, but it will not prevail (John 1:5). This is the power of transcendent love--there's absolutely no way to win against it, because even killing the person who manifests it only releases it into the world--in the space of things seen and unseen--a shock wave of grace that obliterates what is evil, transforms the sinful and saturates the already good with holiness.

When Christ offered himself for the redemption of creation while dying on the Cross, and when he actually died with that prayer in his sacred heart, he destroyed once and for all the false definition of love that had entered the world. The grace released by his testimony to transcendent love is still changing the world, converting hearts, and leading the dead to new life. May the love of God in Christ and the Spirit overwhelm us this Easter! May it lead to a new and everlasting Pentecost! May it end our wars, heal our planet, unite all people, and bring God's kingdom to fulfillment!
Br. Paul, OP

Anonymous Saints & British Catholic Emancipation 1829

“En vérité je vous le dis, parmi les enfants des femmes, il n’en a pas surgi de plus grand que Jean-Baptiste; et cependant, le plus petit dans le Royaume des Cieux est plus grand que lui.”

I was continuing my prayer with the Gospel of Matthew today in French, when I came upon this very familiar passage in which the Messiah pays this very curious compliment to St. John the Baptist--declaring him to be the greatest of the men born of women (humbling excluding himself), and yet revealing that the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than John.

I am sure that there are many ways to interpret the Lord's words on this point, but I chose to connect what Yeshua says to today's special anniversary. On this day in 1829, Catholics of the United Kingdom were granted full emancipation. This was the end of legal restrictions against them which made it basically illegal to be Catholic. Early measures had already given Catholics the right to serve in the military, and the freedom to have Mass publicly, but Emancipation completed this process, allowing, among other things, Catholics to serve in parliament. In my mind, this anniversary is for British Catholics what the Civil Rights movement is for African Americans. It is on my mind, of course, because the thesis I recently defended is about the late Georgian and early Victorian Eras (1779-1850)--the time of Catholic Emancipation.

I relate Matthew 11:11 to Catholic Emancipation, because there are so many unsung heroes and heroines of English Catholicism of this time period. Among them are the wealthy Catholic families who harbored priests on their estates and facilitated Mass for the local Catholics. Lay men like Robert Edward Petre, 9th Baron of Petre, who used his influence to push for Catholic Emancipation. And certainly holy religious and clergy like Bishop Richard Challoner (pictured above), who worked tirelessly, and undercover, to care for his Catholic brothers and sisters. (Among other things, Challoner is responsible for the retranslation of the Douay-Rheims English Bible. He wrote much more, including catechetical works and a very popular manual for spirituality.) This is not to mention the countless Catholic lay men and women of the working class and poor who remained faithful to their Catholic heritage despite so many oppressive measures placed upon them.

Perhaps it is people like these anonymous saints, the less obvious giants of Christian faith, that tower above St. John and the like, precisely because their crosses were hidden to the world. I only ponder this because of Yeshua's use of the term "least."

The message seems clear: People who are "great" on earth, may be truly "great," but the Kingdom of Heaven has different criteria for greatness. Maybe our classic art has misled us by having St. John the Baptist and the Blessed Virgin Mary always next to the Messiah King in Heaven. Perhaps the real people on his left and on his right are people we've never heard of, or those we never would suspect would be there.

Either way, I celebrated Catholic Emancipation today, and I honor those men and women who kept the faith alive. May their names be honored forever.
P~

Jane Eyre: That Other Jane

In the attic lives a woman who laughs the world to scorn. A victim of the phallocratic hegemony, a patriarchal tribe that sees her as Yeshua ben Sira saw his daughters,--"a loss" (Sirach 22:3b); "headstrong" and "impudent"(26:10-11); "an anxiety" (42:9). Bertha Mason was born to set the whole world ablaze; so she starts by burning down Thornfield Hall. Mr. Rochester is only a man, after all. But then there's Jane. That other Jane...

Last weekend, I went with two other friars and two friends to see the new Jane Eyre film by Focus Features, the same company that released Pride and Prejudice, starring Kiera Knightley, in 2005. If you watch P&P before you go and see Jane Eyre you immediately get a sense of the shift in the tone of British life from Austen's experience of the Regency Period to that of Charlotte Bronte during the Victorian Era. The Regency is lighter, happier, and more playful. A good ball with country dance music is just the trick to make these folks flirtatious. In contrast, the clothes are darker and heavier with the Victorians. Some folks look like resurrected Puritans. Religion is a favorite subject for them. The world has gotten serious. And why wouldn't it? It was changing rapidly. The American and French Revolutions had Europe on edge. War and industry, the booming of urban life and the destruction of the country living Austen knew so well--combined with a renewed interest in religious reform. The 18th Century gave birth to a rather uptight and serious child in the 19th. But hadn't Austen warned us about this in Mansfield Park?

Yet, Jane Eyre, the character, is a light in that darkness. Remarkably, despite the hideous abuses she experiences at the hands of her aunt and cousins, and later the religious tyrant of the boarding school she is exiled to, Jane Eyre triumphantly remains centered in an unshakable belief in her own innate worth. She is bold, yes; but not impudent. An anxiety to those who wish to control her, but a marvel to those who listen to her wisdom. Like Bertha, Jane struggles against the conventions that seek to destroy her spirit; but unlike Bertha, Jane fights with words.

In a glorious speech Jane declares:
"Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton? --a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! -- I have as much soul as you, -- and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; -- it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal, -- as we are!"

This strange Victorian novel, the work of a strange Victorian woman, is one of my favorite novels of all precisely because I read it as a declaration of the innate dignity of human beings, particularly women who continue to suffer from the sexism and androcentrism of men, including the voices of important men from our Christian tradition. Men like ben Sira, but also St. Paul, Tertullian, and St. Augustine who wrote things like:

"Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing." (1 Tim 2:11-15)

"Do you not realize that you are each an Eve? The curse of God on this sex of yours lives on even in our times. Guilty, you must bear its hardship. You are the devil’s gateway; you desecrated the fatal tree; you first betrayed the law of God; you softened up with your cajoling words the one against whom the devil could not prevail by force. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, Adam. You are the one who deserved death, and yet it was the Son of God who had to die." (Tertullian)

"Woman does not possess the image of God in herself, but only when taken together with the male who is her head, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned the role as helpmate, a function that pertains to her alone, then she is not the image of God. But as far as the man is concerned, he is by himself alone the image of God just as fully and completely as when he and the woman are joined together into one." (Augustine)

Both Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte are strong Christian women who defy the sexist traditions within Christianity and Western culture. Denied the pulpit, they preach through their novels by telling the stories of women. Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, Fanny Price and Anne Elliot, these are models of virtuous living and images of Christ's redeeming work. Although articulated in different ways, both Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte join Mary Wollstonecraft in vindicating the rights of women--but more than that, they join in the liberating work of Jesus Christ in whom there is no male or female, insofar as we mean superior and inferior (something St. Paul, with all due respect, ought to have pondered more).
Br. Paul, OP
*Please keep in mind that this blog posting exhibits one of my typical traits: over-statement to begin a conversation. By no means ought readers to think this represents my complete thoughts on the issues presented above.