Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 48

Faith, Love, and Obedience: Marks of the True Disciple

"Communion of the Apostles" (1451-52) by Fra Angelico [WikiArt.org]

Faith, Love, and Obedience: Marks of the True Disciple | Carl E. Olson | On the Readings for April 12, 2015, Second Sunday of Easter and Sunday of Divine Mercy

Readings:
• Acts 4:32-35
• Ps 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24
• 1 Jn 5:1-6
• Jn 20:19-31

What is love without faith and commitment? A lie.

And it’s a popular lie, one sprouting wildly from the thin soil of undisciplined passions, feeding on the fast food of popular culture, which so often presents love as a matter of emotions and circumstances. These feelings are gauged on a scale of faux authenticity, with the highest order of love being that representing one’s selfish choice to be “true to himself.”

For example, a famous music star explained to Oprah a few years ago that he had to leave his first wife and marry his second wife because he couldn’t live "a lie". What he meant, as he explained further, was that because he was “in love” with the second woman, so it couldn’t be right to be stuck in his first marriage.

The same approach is taken by many Catholics when it comes to certain Church teachings, most having to do with sexual morality, marriage, or life issues. “I love being Catholic,” seems to be their unspoken approach, “but I’m not always so keen on living or loving what the Church teaches.” For some people, being a Catholic is a birthright, not a call to discipleship; it becomes a matter of status, not one of taking a stand.

Today’s Gospel and Epistle were both written by St. John, the disciple “whom Jesus loved” (Jn 13:23), the lone apostle at the Crucifixion (Jn 19:25-27) who decades later spent his final years exiled on the rocky island of Patmos (Rev. 1:9). Both readings make the vital connection between faith, love, and obedience. Together, they show that the true disciple of Jesus is faithful and obedient because of his love for the Lord, while his love for Christ is rooted in a humble gratitude for the mercy and grace granted by the Holy Spirit.

Words alone do not demonstrate one’s love for God: “In this way we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments.” The strength and ability to obey the commandments of God come from the Holy Spirit and the gift of faith. Yes, we must accept it. And, yes, we must put it into practice. But all is grace, even while our freely chosen actions increase or corrode that divine gift.

The gift of divine sonship is ours through Jesus Christ and “through water and blood,” that is, through baptism and the sacrificial death on the Cross. Just as the Spirit moved over the face of the waters before creation (Gen 1:2), he moves over the waters of baptism, from which emerge the face of a new creation in Christ (cf. 2 Cor 5:17).

“The Son of God came not by water only, in order to cleanse us from our sins,” wrote St. Bede, “but also with the blood of his passion, by which he consecrates the sacrament of our baptism, giving his blood for us, redeeming us by his suffering and nourishing us with his sacraments so that we might be made fit for salvation.”

We are begotten by God through baptism, and we are nourished, as children of God, by the Eucharistic sacrifice. And all of this happens within the mystery of the Church, which “received the faith from the apostles and their disciples” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 173). As today’s Gospel reading reminds us, the Church is apostolic not because the apostles were perfect, but because they believed, they were chosen, they were ordained, and they were granted authority by the risen Lord.

Further, the founding and growth of the Church and the Kingdom are “symbolized by the blood and water which flowed from the open side of a crucified Jesus …” (Lumen Gentium, 3). Jesus loved the Church so much, he died for her; the New Adam loved his Bride so much, he died to bring her to life. Because when it comes to love, faith, and commitment, we are never asked to do something our Savior hasn’t already done perfectly—for us.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the April 19, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

After Garissa Killings, Kenyan Catholics Seek Answers, Offer Solace

People attend a memorial vigil in Nairobi, Kenya, April 7, for the 147 people killed in an attack on Garissa University College. Kenyan bishops are urging the government to step up security and for citizens to remain united after al-Shabab militants atta cked the college campus April 2. (CNS photo/Goran Tomasevic, Reuters)

After Garissa Killings, Kenyan Catholics Seek Answers, Offer Solace | Allen Ottaro | CWR

The problem of the radicalization of young people is the most challenging battle as Kenya responds to radical Islamic violence

Students of the Garissa University College in Eastern Kenya should have been sitting this week for their end of semester examinations, at the end of which they would have joined their families for holidays. Instead, close to 150 of those families will have funerals for sons and daughters who were murdered a week ago today, on Holy Thursday, by Al-Shabab gunmen who singled out Christian victims. About 80 other students are nursing gunshot wounds in hospitals in Garissa and Nairobi. Some families are yet to locate their relatives, one week after the attack.

The Kenyan government declared three days of national mourning, which culminated in a candle-lit vigil at Nairobi’s Uhuru (Freedom) park on the evening of April 7th. Hundreds of young people turned up to mourn their colleagues. They expressed shock but also made known their solidarity with the families of those killed and injured.

John Cardinal Njue, the Chairman of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB), while strongly condemning the attacks also announced that the Catholic Church would commit herself to “activate the parish networks for our Christian faithful to lend their support and prayers.” Cardinal Njue further invited priests, Church institutions, and other Christian groups to “journey with the victims and families of the terror attacks by providing them with psycho-social support at the Parish community levels”. This invitation from the Archbishop of Nairobi is, I think, very important as I suspect that once the media attention is eventually directed to other matters, the families will be left to their own devices. The support of the local communities, therefore, will be critical for each family, some of which—from the stories I have seen—were hoping that their sons and daughters would come back to help support them upon completion of their studies.

Cardinal Njue’s statement expressed hope that the Kenyan government would get to the bottom of the problem of terrorism and radicalization. A day after the attack, the Cabinet Secretary for the Interior stated that the terrorists had caught the government “by surprise”. The Garissa University attack is the latest in a series of terrorist attacks (since the Kenyan government sent troops into Somalia in October of 2011), for which the radical group Al-Shabab, with reported ties to al-Qaida, has claimed responsibility. (Ironically, Al-Shabab means “The Youth” in Arabic.)

In November 2015, 28 people were killed when a bus was ambushed by the Al-Shabab in Mandera, a town near the Kenya-Somalia border. A few days later, 36 quarry workers were shot dead in yet another attack; the Al-Shabab claimed responsibility. President Uhuru Kenyatta responded by replacing the police chief and the Cabinet Secretary for the Interior. New security laws were introduced and passed in the National Assembly during a chaotic session that ended in fisticuffs between members of the ruling coalition and the opposition. The latter felt that the government had gone overboard, using the pretext of counter-terrorism measures, by introducing laws that they considered retrogressive and infringing upon the basic freedoms of Kenyans, including the freedom of assembly.

However, the problem of the radicalization of young people is the most challenging battle.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

20% increase in number of men ordained priests; 25% born outside the U.S.

Seminarians lead a procession for Mass during the dedication of a new building at the Pontifical North American College in Rome Jan. 6. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Report: 20% increase in number of men to be ordained priests in 2015

The study from Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate indicates strong influence of parish priests and family in encouraging vocations

Yesterday the USCCB released some information about men to be ordained priests this year. On average, the report states, the men were 17 years old when they first considered the vocation of priesthood, and 71% said they were encouraged in that regard by a parish priest, "as well as friends (46 percent), parishioners (45 percent), and mothers (40 percent)." And the number of men to be ordained is up 20% from last year: "The total number of potential ordinands for the class of 2015, 595, is up from from 477 in 2014 and 497 in 2013."

Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Raleigh, North Carolina, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations, found that the data gave reason for hope but also provide areas for further growth.

“It is encouraging to see the slight increase in the number of ordinations this year in the United States,” Bishop Burbidge said. “When asked about the positive influences they encountered while discerning the call, those to be ordained responded that the support from their family, parish priest, and Catholic schools ranked very high.”

Father W. Shawn McKnight, executive director of the Secretariat, cited educational debt as a growing concern. “Over 26 percent of those ordained carried educational debt at the time they entered the seminary, averaging a little over $22,500 in educational debt at entrance to the seminary. Considering the high percentage of the men ordained already having earned an undergraduate degree, it will be important to find ways to assist in debt reduction in the future.”

The average age for this year's ordinands is 34, and eight in 10 of those who responded and participated in the information gathered by the Georgetown University-based Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) are between the ages of 25 and 39. 69% of the men are Caucasian/European American/white, with 14% being Hispanic/Latino and 10% of Asian or Pacific Islander background.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

The Reign of Gay and the RFRA: Round-up and Reflections

The Reign of Gay and the RFRA: Round-up and Reflections | Carl E. Olson  | CWR blog

A dizzying but rewarding "Carl's Cuts" tour through the madness of the past couple of weeks

• A year ago today, I posted what was probably my most controversial editorial: "Welcome to the Reign of 'Gay'". With that in mind, it seems fitting that my first "Carl's Cuts" in several months takes a look at recent controversies over the spreading Reign.

• I first read about Indiana's Senate Bill 101—aka, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)—via a sports news feed on my iPhone. The headline referenced "Indiana's anti-gay law", but the article did not explain what the law actually stated. Instead, it had quotes from sports commentators gravely uttering banalities and clichés—something, admittedly, they do constantly in their daily work—that also shed no light on the RFRA. Charles Barkley, the Round Mound of Unprofound, stated: "America's always had a racial problem. Now we have a homophobic problem. Any form of discrimination, you have to check it." Any, Chuck? Even discrimination against child molesters, KKK members, and looters? Barkley's logic here is about as sound as the defense he used to never play while starring in the NBA.

• The first dozen news articles I looked at online also managed to say little or absolutely nothing about the contents of the RFRA, and so I finally looked up the actual law and read it. At that point, having seen the approach taken by various "news outlets", I knew the usual Reign of Gay tactics were already in place:

1). Emote: The use of passion, anger, and outrage is a tried-and-true way of obscuring details and pushing people to make a knee-jerk judgment based on sentiment, not sober, sane thought.

2). Demonize: Insist the law in question is "anti-gay" and then hammer home the point that those who wrote it and voted for it are haters, pure and simple.

3). Harangue and Insult: Don't argue the actual points in question, but immediate threaten to boycott. Call people names, preferably "bigots" and "homophobes". (One Reuters blogger, to his credit, wrote, "On the LGBT side, it’s time to stop calling religious people bigots and homophobes." Good luck with that.) Talk endlessly—often in 140 grammar-challenged characters or less—about people "loving each other", an example of such being Hillary Clinton's March 26th tweet: "Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn't discriminate against ppl bc of who they love." (Personally, I find it a bit comical to be lectured on the nature of love by either Bill or Hillary Clinton.)

• President Obama, in his speech at Easter Prayer Breakfast yesterday at the White House, went off script for a moment and said:

On Easter, I do reflect on the fact that as a Christian, I am supposed to love. And I have to say that sometimes when I listen to less than loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned. But that's a topic for another day.

Goodness, whatever or whoever could he be talking about? Tis a mystery. But keep in mind that even before he famously "evolved" on the matter of "gay marriage," Obama had made it clear that any sort of opposition to the Reign of Gay would not, in the long run, be tolerated. In a 2009 address at a "LGBT Pride Month Reception" at the White House, he said:

Now this struggle, I don't need to tell you, is incredibly difficult, although I think it's important to consider the extraordinary progress that we have made.  There are unjust laws to overturn and unfair practices to stop.  And though we've made progress, there are still fellow citizens, perhaps neighbors or even family members and loved ones, who still hold fast to worn arguments and old attitudes; who fail to see your families like their families; and who would deny you the rights that most Americans take for granted.  And I know this is painful and I know it can be heartbreaking. ...

So this story, this struggle, continues today -- for even as we face extraordinary challenges as a nation, we cannot -- and will not -- put aside issues of basic equality.  (Applause.)  We seek an America in which no one feels the pain of discrimination based on who you are or who you love. ...

Now, even as we take these steps, we must recognize that real progress depends not only on the laws we change but, as I said before, on the hearts we open.  For if we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that there are good and decent people in this country who don't yet fully embrace their gay brothers and sisters -- not yet.

Not yet. Ah, the inevitability of being on the right side of history and all that clichéd nonsense. Which is not to deny, of course, that many Americans really, really like clichéd nonsense—super sized and with extra whip cream, please!

• As many conservative (that is, not mainstream) news outlets explained, in varying detail, the RFRA was very similar to the 1993 law passed by Hillary's soulmate, former President Bill Clinton.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Easter and evangelism

Detail from "Caravaggio" (1600) by Caravaggio [WikiArt.org]

Easter and evangelism | George Weigel | CWR

St. Paul’s mini-spiritual autobiography helps us understand just how radically the experience of the Risen Lord changed the first disciples’ religious worldview

Galatians 1:15-18 is not your basic witness-to-the-Resurrection text. Yet St. Paul’s mini-spiritual autobiography helps us understand just how radically the experience of the Risen Lord changed the first disciples’ religious worldview, and why an evangelical imperative was built into that experience.

Here’s the Pauline text:

“… when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him for fifteen days …”

Note the sequence: Saul of Tarsus is stunned on the Damascus road by a revelation of the risen Lord Jesus Christ; after being baptized in Damascus, the new disciple disappears into the Arabian peninsula (for how long, he doesn’t say); he then returns to Damascus; and only then does he make the pilgrimage to the founding Church in Jerusalem to confer with Peter. Thus Paul’s first encounter with another apostolic witness to the Resurrection didn’t occur for years: at least three-plus (if the “three years” in verse 18 refer to both his Damascus and Arabian sojourns), and quite probably more.

What took him so long?

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Chesterton around the Corner

Chesterton around the Corner | James Casper | IPNovels.com

By the time I graduated from Loyola High School in Minnesota, I had read almost everything G.K. Chesterton had written.

Not long after, at St. Louis University, I found myself in the office of Dr. Edward Sarmiento as he shared the story of publishing a poem in G.K.’s Weekly years before I was born. Sarmiento, Professor of Spanish, had received for his youthful efforts a check for one pound sterling signed by G.K. himself.

“You did?!”  I sputtered. I expected to see the check itself at any moment pulled from a drawer of his battered office desk.

“I cashed it, Jim.” He said it with that beautifully sad intonation and facial expression the Spanish manage so very well. “I was broke, and needed the money, but that must have disappointed Chesterton. I think he was hoping his autograph would be pay enough.”

Chesterton, among other things, was a canny businessman. Dr. Sarmiento, among other things, was a translator of St. John of the Cross’s poems.

Decades rolled by and my wife and I were at London’s Marylebone Station purchasing flowers and boarding the Chiltern train—destination: Beaconsfield, home of Chesterton. He had made this journey almost daily, traveling to and from his Fleet Street haunts to a town whose name Americans will mispronounce to the amusement of the British. For ever so many readers, his village home might remain a beacon, but it also beckons, and that is how it is pronounced.

Flowers in hand, we stood outside his homes, Overroads and Top Meadow. We wondered where the rail line and train station might have been in those days long past. The entrance to Top Meadow was wider than most. It had to be wide or he might have been trapped inside. We lingered before his grave, also that of his wife and secretary. I attempted to translate its Latin inscription all but worn away on a sadly weathered monument.

“You would think with all the people in this world so fond of themselves for revering Chesterton—some of them making money from writing about him—funds could be raised to restore this,” I muttered.

“We are hitchhikers, all of us,” said Kate.

This silenced me. We left our flowers.

An old, old man hailed us from afar as we stood in the cemetery. 

Continue reading at IPNovels.com.

The Measure of Mercy: Francis and the Extraordinary Jubilee Year

The Measure of Mercy: Francis and the Extraordinary Jubilee Year | Dr. R. Jared Staudt | Catholic World Report

The horrors of the 20th century and the pontificate of Pope St. John Paul II form the backdrop to the Holy Father's recent announcement of a Holy Year of Mercy

“See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry” (2 Cor 6:2-3).

“This is the time of mercy. It is important that the lay faithful live it and bring it into different social environments. Go forth!” – From Pope Francis’s Announcement of the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, March 13, 2015

Pope St. John Paul II has been called the pope of mercy for his support of the Divine Mercy devotion and his establishment of Divine Mercy Sunday, but Pope Francis has also been making mercy a hallmark of his papacy. Even his motto references the Lord’s mercy in calling each of us to follow Christ. The Vatican Radio in explaining the Jubilee Year described the significance of his motto:

Miserando atque eligendo. This citation is taken from the homily of Saint Bede the Venerable during which he commented on the Gospel passage of the calling of Saint Matthew: “Jesus therefore sees the tax collector, and since he sees by having mercy [miserando] and by choosing [eligendo], he says to him, ‘follow me.’”

In addition to this piece from the Vatican Radio, which sought to situate the Jubilee Year of Mercy within Francis’s teaching—noting that his first angelus addressed mercy and the theme appeared 32 times in Evangelii Gaudium (EG)—other articles have highlighted the importance of mercy within Francis’s pontificate as the “real face” of Francis’ revolutionand also within his life more broadly.

Is mercy the way in which Pope Francis wants us to read his papacy? Could his oft quoted and criticized line, “who I am to judge?” be read in terms of mercy triumphing over judgment (James 2:13)? Could it explain his criticism of an “economy of exclusion” (EG, 53) as not prioritizing mercy toward neighbor? Even the controversy of the two synods could be seen in light of mercy in his closing speech to the extraordinary synod last fall. He specifically refers to his role as Pope as uniting and reminding pastors of their need for mercy in regards to their lost sheep:

So, the duty of the Pope is that of guaranteeing the unity of the Church; it is that of reminding the faithful of their duty to faithfully follow the Gospel of Christ; it is that of reminding the pastors that their first duty is to nourish the flock – to nourish the flock – that the Lord has entrusted to them, and to seek to welcome – with fatherly care and mercy, and without false fears – the lost sheep.

Pope Francis sees this as a time of mercy and wants all of us to receive this mercy right now and to show it to others in the context of the Jubilee that he has called.

Mercy as a personal encounter with God

Pope Francis related that he had a profound experience of mercy in his teenage yearsthrough the sacrament of Confession. “After making my confession I felt something had changed. I was not the same. I had heard something like a voice, or a call.” This was the definitive moment of mercy in his life, which fuels his desire to share this mercy with others. He describes the Church as a “community [that] has an endless desire to show mercy, the fruit of its own experience of the power of the Father’s infinite mercy” (EG,24).

I also felt the Lord’s mercy very directly in my life when I was a young teen.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

New from Ignatius Press: "Tweeting with God"

Now available from Ignatius Press:

Tweeting with God: #Big Bang, prayer, Bible, sex, Crusades, sin, career

by Fr. Michel Remery

If you are curious, you ask questions - even about difficult topics. Can Catholic teaching provide answers relevant to your life today? In this book you will find 200 daring questions from young people about God, faith, prayer and morality. Fr. Michel Remery thoughtfully answers them all in Tweets of 140 characters or less, and provides expanded explanations based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Bible.

Fr. Remery shows how faith is logical, even in the 21st century! He introduces you to Jesus, shows you how to pray, and explains the sacraments. He explores some of the more difficult chapters of Church history, and helps you to discover what it means to live a good and purposeful life.

This book is ideal for:

young men and women who are curious about the Catholic faith
new Catholics and current catechumens
anyone who wants to share his faith or freshen up his knowledge of the faith
those who want to speak with others about the faith

It is lavishly illustrated with color images on every page of the book.

Fr. Michel Remery is a Dutch Catholic priest. After studying architecture at the university level, he worked for the Dutch Royal Air Force and then an engineering company in the Baltic States. Later, after finishing his theological studies in Rome, he completed a dissertation at the Pontifical Gregorian University on the relationship between liturgy and architecture. He was a member of an advisory commission for new media and youth at the Vatican Internet Service and worked with young people and university students in Leiden, Netherlands. He is currently vice secretary general of the Council of European Episcopal Conferences (CCEE).

Praise for Tweeting with God:

“Combines  the timeless teaching of our faith with the best of modern technology.”
– @cardinaldolan, Archbishop of New York

“Provides a sound, concise summary of Church teaching.”
– Most Rev. Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco

 “Important pages for helping us to become the missionary disciples that we are meant to be.”
– Most Rev. Jose Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles

“ #Fact: Tweeting with God is ingenious, timely, and attuned to the fast-paced, on-the-go, new-media dimension of the New Evangelization.”
– @PatrickMadrid, Host of "Patrick Madrid Show"

“To learn how to effectively share your faith in the digital age, let Fr. Remery be your guide. No topic is off limits. He calmly accepts all questions about God, faith, morality, and the Church, using the Twitter-verse to probe the universe.”
– @BrandonVogt, Content Director, Word on Fire Catholic Ministries

“Fr. Remery proves that employing the platform of Twitter to learn about, enthusiastically share, and fall in love with our Catholic faith can indeed have great impact on both the sender and the recipient. A must-have for anyone  who desires to share their voice in the New Evangelization.”
– Lisa Hendey, Founder, CatholicMom.com

The Case for a Mass Conversion of Men

[Graphic: us.fotolia.com | © Alex White]

The Case for a Mass Conversion of Men | Matthew James Christoff  | CWR blog

Research shows that almost 9 out of 10 Catholic men don’t participate in a Catholic activity outside of attending Mass; if men aren’t being reached in the Mass, they aren’t being reached.

Despite the fact the New Evangelization has been an ongoing emphasis by the Catholic Church for over forty years, it has failed to stem the disastrous losses of the faithful in the U.S. Since 2000, 14 million Catholics have left the faith, parish religious education participation of children has dropped by 24%, Catholic school attendance has dropped by 19%, baptisms of infants has dropped by 28%, baptism of adults has dropped by 31% and sacramental Catholic marriages have dropped by 41%. Something is desperately wrong with the Church’s approach to the New Evangelization.

Of Mass and Men

One reason the New Evangelization is faltering is because it is missing men. The New Emangelization Project has documented the serious Catholic “man-crisis” in the United States. 1 in 3 baptized Catholic men have left the faith and of those who remain, 50-60% of them are “Casual Catholics”, men who don’t know and don’t practice the faith. Of those who practice the faith, many are lukewarm, not converted to the point of conviction, a conviction in which they are prepared to make disciples for Christ and His Catholic Church. The New Evangelization has largely ignored men, with no substantial or sustained efforts to directly confront the Catholic “man-crisis”.

The Catholic “man-crisis” matters. The souls of men matter and many are being lost; for example, two thirds of Christian men are looking at porn at least monthly and the numbers are much higher for younger men. The faith of the children matter and huge numbers of young people are leaving the faith because they have followed their fathers out of the Church. Without a New Emangelization in which millions of Catholic men become newly committed to Christ and His Church, there can be no New Evangelization.

While a complex set of forces have driven the Catholic “man-crisis”, including both massive cultural changes outside the Church and serious missteps within the Church, the lack of engagement of men in the Mass is a major contributing factor: men don’t understand the Mass and well-meaning, but misinformed priests in many parishes have de-sacralized the Mass causing many men to simply “drift away.”

Why is the Mass a key driver of the Catholic “man-crisis”?

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

The Truth of the Resurrection

The Truth of the Resurrection | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger | From Introduction to Christianity 

To the Christian, faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is an expression of certainty that the saying that seems to be only a beautiful dream is in fact true: "Love is strong as death" (Song 8:6). In the Old Testament this sentence comes in the middle of praises of the power of eros. But this by no means signifies that we can simply push it aside as a lyrical exaggeration. The boundless demands oferos", its apparent exaggerations and extravagance, do in reality give expression to a basic problem, indeed the" basic problem of human existence, insofar as they reflect the nature and intrinsic paradox of love: love demands infinity, indestructibility; indeed, it is, so to speak, a call for infinity. But it is also a fact that this cry of love's cannot be satisfied, that it demands infinity but cannot grant it; that it claims eternity but in fact is included in the world of death, in its loneliness and its power of destruction. Only from this angle can one understand what "resurrection" means. It is" the greater strength of love in face of death.

At the same time it is proof of what only immortality can create: being in the other who still stands when I have fallen apart. Man is a being who himself does not live forever but is necessarily delivered up to death. For him, since he has no continuance in himself, survival, from a purely human point of view, can only become possible through his continuing to exist in another. The statements of Scripture about the connection between sin and death are to he understood from this angle. For it now becomes clear that man's attempt "to be like God", his striving for autonomy, through which he wishes to stand on his own feet alone, means his death, for he just cannot stand on his own. If man--and this is the real nature of sin--nevertheless refuses to recognize his own limits and tries to be completely self-sufficient, then precisely by adopting this attitude he delivers himself up to death.

Of course man does understand that his life alone does not endure and that he must therefore strive to exist in others, so as to remain through them and in them in the land of the living. Two ways in particular have been tried. First, living on in one's own children: that is why in primitive peoples failure to marry and childlessness are regarded as the most terrible curse; they mean hopeless destruction, final death. Conversely, the largest possible number of children offers at the same time the greatest possible chance of survival, hope of immortality, and thus the most genuine blessing that man can expect. Another way discloses itself when man discovers that in his children he only continues to exist in a very unreal way; he wants more of himself to remain. So he takes refuge in the idea of fame, which should make him really immortal if be lives on through all ages in the memory of others. But this second attempt of man's to obtain immortality for himself by existing in others fails just as badly as the first: what remains is not the self but only its echo, a mere shadow. So self-made immortality is really only a Hades, a sheol": more nonbeing than being. The inadequacy of both ways lies partly in the fact that the other person who holds my being after my death cannot carry this being itself but only its echo; and even more in the fact that even time other person to whom I have, so to speak, entrusted my continuance will not last--he, too, will perish.

This leads us to the next step. We have seen so far that man has no permanence in himself. And consequently can only continue to exist in another but that his existence in another is only shadowy and once again not final, because this other must perish, too. If this is so, then only one could truly give lasting stability: he who is, who does not come into existence and pass away again but abides in the midst of transience: the God of the living, who does not hold just the shadow and echo of my being, whose ideas are not just copies of reality. I myself am his thought, which establishes me more securely, so to speak, than I am in myself; his thought is not the posthumous shadow but the original source and strength of my being. In him I can stand as more than a shadow; in him I am truly closer to myself than I should be if I just tried to stay by myself.

Before we return from here to the Resurrection, let us try to see the same thing once again from a somewhat different side. We can start again from the dictum about love and death and say: Only where someone values love more highly than life, that is, only where someone is ready to put life second to love, for the sake of love, can love be stronger and more than death. If it is to be more than death, it must first be more than mere life. But if it could be this, not just in intention but in reality, then that would mean at the same time that the power of love had risen superior to the power of the merely biological and taken it into its service. To use Teilhard de Chardin's terminology; where that took place, the decisive complexity or "complexification" would have occurred; bios, too, would be encompassed by and incorporated in the power of love. It would cross the boundary--death--and create unity where death divides. If the power of love for another were so strong somewhere that it could keep alive not just his memory, the shadow of his "I", but that person himself, then a new stage in life would have been reached. This would mean that the realm of biological evolutions and mutations had been left behind and the leap made to a quite different plane, on which love was no longer subject to bios but made use of it. Such a final stage of "mutation" and "evolution" would itself no longer be a biological stage; it would signify the end of the sovereignty of bios, which is at the same time the sovereignty of death; it would open up the realm that the Greek Bible calls zoe, that is, definitive life, which has left behind the rule of death. The last stage of evolution needed by the world to reach its goal would then no longer be achieved within the realm of biology but by the spirit, by freedom, by love. It would no longer be evolution but decision and gift in one.

But what has all this to do, it may be asked, with faith in the Resurrection of Jesus? Well, we previously considered the question of the possible immortality of man from two sides, which now turn out to be aspects of one and. the same state of affairs. We said that, as man has no permanence in himself, his survival could. only be brought about by his living on in another. And we said, from the point of view of this "other", that only the love that takes up the beloved in itself, into its own being, could make possible this existence in the other. These two complementary aspects are mirrored again, so it seems to me, in the two New Testament ways of describing the Resurrection of the Lord: "Jesus has risen" and "God (the Father) has awakened Jesus." The two formulas meet in the fact that Jesus' total love for men, which leads him to the Cross, is perfected in totally passing beyond to the Father and therein becomes stronger than death, because in this it is at the same time total "being held" by him.

From this a further step results. We can now say that love always establishes some kind of immortality; even in its prehuman stage, it points, in the form of preservation of the species, in this direction. Indeed, this founding of immortality is not something incidental to love, not one thing that it does among others, but what really gives it its specific character. This principle can be reversed; it then signifies that immortality always" proceeds from love, never out of the autarchy of that which is sufficient to itself. We may even be bold enough to assert that this principle, properly understood, also applies even to God as he is seen by the Christian faith. God, too, is absolute permanence, as opposed to everything transitory, for the reason that he is the relation of three Persons to one another, their incorporation in the "for one another" of love, act-substance of the love that is absolute and therefore completely "relative", living only "in relation to". As we said earlier, it is not autarchy, which knows no one but itself, that is divine; what is revolutionary about the Christian view of the world and of God, we found, as opposed to those of antiquity, is that it learns to understand the "absolute" as absolute "relatedness", as relatio subsistens.



       

 

To return to our argument, love is the foundation of immortality, and immortality proceeds from love alone. This statement to which we have now worked our way also means that he who has love for all has established immortality for all. That is precisely the meaning of the biblical statement that his Resurrection is our life. The--to us--curious reasoning of St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians now becomes comprehensible: if he has risen, then we have, too, for then love is stronger than death; if he has not risen, then we have not either, for then the situation is still that death has the last word, nothing else (cf. I Cor 15:16f.). Since this is a statement of central importance, let us spell it out once again in a different way: Either love is stronger than death, or it is not. If it has become so in him, then it became so precisely as love for others. This also means, it is true, that our own love, left to itself, is not sufficient to overcome death; taken in itself it would have to remain an unanswered cry. It means that only his love, coinciding with God's own power of life and love, can be the foundation of our immortality. Nevertheless, it still remains true that the mode of our immortality will depend on our mode of loving. We shall have to return to this in the section on the Last Judgment.

A further point emerges from this discussion. Given the foregoing considerations, it goes without saying that the life of him who has risen from the dead is not once again bios, the biological form of our mortal life within history; it is zoe, new, different, definitive life; life that has stepped beyond the mortal realm of bios and history, a realm that has here been surpassed by a greater power. And in fact the Resurrection narratives of the New Testament allow us to see clearly that the life of the Risen One lies, not within the historical bios, but beyond and above it. It is also true, of course, that this new life begot itself in history and had to do so, because after all it is there for history, and the Christian message is basically nothing else than the transmission of the testimony that love has managed to break through death here and thus has transformed fundamentally the situation of all of us. Once we have realized this, it is no longer difficult to find the right kind of hermeneutics for the difficult business of expounding the biblical Resurrection narratives, that is, to acquire a clear understanding of the sense in which they must properly be understood. Obviously we cannot attempt here a detailed discussion of the questions involved, which today present themselves in a more difficult form than ever before; especially as historical and--for the most part inadequately pondered--philosophical statements are becoming more and more inextricably intertwined, and exegesis itself quite often produces its own philosophy, which is intended to appear to the layman as a supremely refined distillation of the biblical evidence. Many points of detail will here always remain open to discussion, but it is possible to recognize a fundamental dividing line between explanation that remains explanation and arbitrary adaptations [to contemporary ways of thinking].

First of all, it is quite clear that after his Resurrection Christ did not go back to his previous earthly life, as we are told the young man of Nain and Lazarus did. He rose again to definitive life, which is no longer governed by chemical and biological laws and therefore stands outside the possibility of death, in the eternity conferred by love. That is why the encounters with him are "appearances"; that is why he with whom people had sat at table two days earlier is not recognized by his best friends and, even when recognized, remains foreign: only where hegrants vision is he seen; only when he opens men's eyes and makes their hearts open up can the countenance of the eternal love that conquers death become recognizable in our mortal world, and, in that love, the new, different world, the world of him who is to come. That is also why it is so difficult, indeed absolutely impossible, for the Gospels to describe the encounter with the risen Christ; that is why they can only stammer when they speak of these meetings and seem to provide contradictory descriptions of them. In reality they are surprisingly unanimous in the dialectic of their statements, in the simultaneity of touching and not touching, or recognizing and not recognizing, of complete identity between the crucified and the risen Christ and complete transformation. People recognize the Lord and yet do not recognize him again; people touch him, and yet he is untouchable; he is the same and yet quite different. As we have said, the dialectic is always the same; it is only the stylistic means by which it is expressed that changes. 

For example, let us examine a little more closely from this point of view the Emmaus story, which we have already touched upon briefly. At first sight it looks as if we are confronted here with a completely earthly and material notion of resurrection; as if nothing remains of the mysterious and indescribable elements to be found in the Pauline accounts. It looks as if the tendency to detailed depiction, to the concreteness of legend, supported by the apologist's desire for something tangible, had completely won the upper hand and fetched the risen Lord right back into earthly history. But this impression is soon contradicted by his mysterious appearance and his no less mysterious disappearance. The notion is contradicted even more by the fact that here, too, he remains unrecognizable to the accustomed eye. He cannot be firmly grasped as he could be in the time of his earthly life; he is discovered only in the realm of faith; he sets the hearts of the two travelers aflame by his interpretation of the Scriptures and by breaking bread he opens their eyes. This is a reference to the two basic elements in early Christian worship, which consisted of the liturgy of the word (the reading and expounding of Scripture) and the eucharistic breaking of bread. In this way the evangelist makes it clear that the encounter with the risen Christ lies on a quite new plane; he tries to describe the indescribable in terms of the liturgical facts. He thereby provides both a theology of the Resurrection and a theology of the liturgy: one encounters the risen Christ in the word and in the sacrament; worship is the way in which he becomes touchable to us and, recognizable as the living Christ. And conversely, the liturgy is based on the mystery of Easter; it is to he understood as the Lords approach to us. In it he becomes our traveling companion, sets our dull hearts aflame, and opens our sealed eyes. He still walks with us, still finds us worried and downhearted, and still has the power to make us see.

Of course, all this is only half the story; to stop at this alone would mean falsifying the evidence of the New Testament. Experience of the risen Christ is something other than a meeting with a man from within our history, and it must certainly not be traced back to conversations at table and recollections that would have finally crystallized in the idea that he still lived and went about his business. Such an interpretation reduces what happened to the purely human level and robs it of its specific quality. The Resurrection narratives are something other and more than disguised liturgical scenes: they make visible the founding event on which all Christian liturgy rests. They testify to an approach that did not rise from the hearts of the disciples but came to them from outside, convinced them despitetheir doubts and made them certain that the Lord had truly risen. He who lay in the grave is no longer there; he--really he himself--lives. He who had been transposed into the other world of God showed himself powerful enough to make it palpably clear that he himself stood in their presence again, that in him the power of love had really proved itself stronger than the power of death.

Only by taking this just as seriously as what we said first does one remain faithful to the witness borne by the New Testament; only thus, too, is its seriousness in world history preserved. The comfortable attempt to spare oneself the belief in the mystery of God's mighty actions in this world and yet at the same time to have the satisfaction of remaining on the foundation of the biblical message leads nowhere; it measures up neither to the honesty of reason nor to the claims of faith. One cannot have both the Christian faith and "religion within the bounds of pure reason"; a choice is unavoidable. He who believes will see more and more clearly, it is true, how rational it is to have faith in the love that has conquered death. 

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles: 

• Seeing Jesus in the Gospel of John | Excerpts from On The Way to Jesus Christ | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• A Jesus Worth Dying For | A Review of On The Way to Jesus Christ | Justin Nickelsen
• Encountering Christ in the Gospel | Excerpt from My Jesus | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• The Divinity of Christ | Peter Kreeft
• Jesus Is Catholic | Hans Urs von Balthasar
• The Religion of Jesus | Blessed Columba Marmion | From Christ, The Ideal of the Priest
• Author Page for Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI