Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 49

Without Easter, We're History

Detail from "Resurrection of Christ and Women at the Tomb" (1440-42) by Fra Angelico [WikiArt.org]

Without Easter, We're History | Carl E. Olson

How different would our lives be if there had been no Redemption and no Resurrection?

• Readings for The Resurrection of the Lord, The Mass of Easter Day

“Let each of us consider how different the history of humanity would be”, wrote the French theologian Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (1877-1964) in Our Savior and His Love For Us (Herder, 1951), “and how different our lives would be if there had been no Redemption and no Resurrection.”

Consider what it would have been like if Mary Magdalene, arriving at the tomb, had found Jesus’ cold, still body just as she expected to. 

Imagine for a moment how the disciples, knowing that Jesus remained dead, would have lived the rest of their lives: broken, confused, bitter, scattered. 

The band of disciples that had followed Jesus would have dissipated; the core of the apostles would have likewise faded away. The winds of time and the dust of history would have mercilessly eroded the once promising and startling landscape promised by Jesus of Nazareth.

How different would our lives be? 

I don’t think we can even begin to fathom the answer.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Balthasar, his Christology, and the Mystery of Easter |

Balthasar, his Christology, and the Mystery of Easter | Aidan Nichols OP | Introduction to Hans Urs von Balthasar's Mysterium Paschale

Balthasar was born in Lucerne in 1905. [1] It is probably significant that he was born in that particular Swiss city, whose name is virtually synonymous with Catholicism in Swiss history. The centre of resistance to the Reformation in the sixteenth century, in the nineteenth it led the Catholic cantons in what was virtually a civil war of religion, the War of the Sonderbund (which they lost). Even today it is very much a city of churches, of religious frescoes, of bells. Balthasar is a very self-consciously Catholic author. He was educated by both Benedictines and Jesuits, and then in 1923 began a university education divided between four Universities: Munich, Vienna, Berlin — where he heard Romano Guardini, for whom a Chair of Catholic Philosophy had been created in the heartland of Prussian Protestantism [2] - and finally Zurich.

In 1929 he presented his doctoral thesis, which had as a subject the idea of the end of the world in modern German literature, from Lessing to Ernst Bloch. Judging by his citations, Balthasar continued to regard playwrights, poets and novelists as theological sources as important as the Fathers of the Schoolmen. [3] He was prodigiously well-read in the literature of half a dozen languages and has been called the most cultivated man of his age. [4] In the year he got his doctorate, he entered the Society of Jesus. His studies with the German Jesuits he described later as a time spent languishing in a desert, even though one of his teachers was the outstanding Neo-Scholastic Erich Przywara, to whom he remained devoted. [5] From the Ignatian Exercises he took the personal ideal of uncompromising faithfulness to Christ the Word in the midst of a secular world. [6] His real theological awakening, however, only happened when he was sent to the French Jesuit study house at Lyons, where he found awaiting him Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou, both later to be cardinals of the Roman church. These were the men most closely associated with the 'Nouvelle Théologie', later to be excoriated by Pope Pius XII for its patristic absorption. [7] Pius XII saw in the return to the Fathers two undesirable hidden motives. These were, firstly, the search for a lost common ground with Orthodoxy and the Reformation, and secondly, the desire for a relatively undeveloped theology which could then be presented in a myriad new masks to modern man. [8] The orientation to the Fathers, especially the Greek Fathers, which de Lubac in particular gave Balthasar did not, in fact, diminish his respect for historic Scholasticism at the level of philosophical theology. [9] His own metaphysics consist of a repristinated Scholasticism, but he combined this with an enthusiasm for the more speculative of the Fathers, admired for the depths of their theological thought as well as for their ability to re-express an inherited faith in ways their contemporaries found immediately attractive and compelling. [10]

Balthasar did not stay with the Jesuits. In 1940 they had sent him to Basle as a chaplain to the University. From across the Swiss border, Balthasar could observe the unfolding of the Third Reich, whose ideology he believed to be a distorted form of Christian apocalyptic and the fulfilment of his own youthful ideas about the rôle of the eschatology theme in the German imagination. While in Basle Balthasar also observed Adrienne von Speyr, a convert to Catholicism and a visionary who was to write an ecstatic commentary on the Fourth Gospel, and some briefer commentaries on other New Testament books, as well as theological essays of a more sober kind. [11] In 1947, the motu proprio Provida Mater Ecciesia created the possibility of 'secular institutes' within the Roman Catholic Church, and, believing that these Weltgemeinschaften of laity in vows represented the Ignatian vision in the modern world, Balthasar proposed to his superiors that he and Adrienne von Speyr together might found such an institute within the Society of Jesus. When they declined, he left the Society and in 1950 became a diocesan priest under the bishop of Chur, in eastern Switzerland. Soon Balthasar had published so much that he was able to survive on his earnings alone, and moved to Einsiedeln, not far from Lucerne, where, in the shadow of the venerable Benedictine abbey, he built up his publishing house, the Johannes Verlag, named after Adrienne von Speyr's preferred evangelist. She died in 1967, but he continued to regard her as the great inspiration of his life, humanly speaking.

In 1969 Balthasar was appointed by Pope Paul VI to the International Theological Commission, and, after that date, he was drawn increasingly into the service of the Church's teaching office. In 1984, Pope John Paul II symbolized his high regard for Balthasar by awarding him the Paul VI prize for his services to theology. These included not only the unbroken stream of his own writing, but his founding, in 1972, of the international Catholic review Communio — a critical sifting, in the light of theological tradition, of the abundant but often confusing wares made available by post-conciliar Catholicism. Balthasar died in Basle on 26 June 1988, three days before his investiture as a cardinal of the Roman church. His remains are buried in the family grave, under the cloister of Lucerne cathedral.

Balthasar's writings are formidable in number and length. Any one area of his publications would constitute a decent life's work for a lesser man. In patristics he wrote accounts of Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor. [12] In literature, he produced a major study of Bernanos [13] as well as translations of Claudel, Péguy and Calderón. In philosophy he turned his thesis into three massive tomes under the title Apokalypse der deutchen Seele, [14] from Lessing through Nietzsche to the rise of Hitler. Although a major idea of this work is the notion that the figure of Christ remained a dominant motif in German Romanticism, more significant for Balthasar's later Christology is his essay Wahrheit: Die Wahrheit der Welt, [15] in which he argues that the great forgotten theme of metaphysics is the theme of beauty.

Balthasar presents the beautiful as the 'forgotten transcendental', pulchrum, an aspect of everything and anything as important as verum, 'the true', and bonum, 'the good'. The beautiful is the radiance which something gives off simply because it is something, because it exists. A sequel to this work, intended to show the theological application of its leading idea, was not written until forty years later but Balthasar had given clear hints as to what it would contain. What corresponds theologically to beauty is God's glory. The radiance that shows itself through the communicative forms of finite being is what arouses our sense of transcendence, and so ultimately founds our theology. Thus Balthasar hit upon his key theological concept, as vital to him as ens a se to Thomists or 'radical infinity' to Scotists. In significant form and its attractive power, the Infinite discloses itself in finite expression, and this is supremely true in the biblical revelation. Thus Balthasar set out on his great trilogy: a theological aesthetics, [16] concerned with the perception of God's self-manifestation; a theological dramatics, [17] concerned with the content of this perception, namely God's action towards man; and a theological logic [18] dealing with the method, at once divine and human, whereby this action is expressed.

Balthasar insisted, however, that the manner in which theology is to be written is Christological from start to finish. He defined theology as a mediation between faith and revelation in which the Infinite, when fully expressed in the finite, i.e. made accessible as man, can only be apprehended by a convergent movement from the side of the finite, i.e. adoring, obedient faith in the God-man. Only thus can theology be Ignatian and produce 'holy worldliness', in Christian practice, testimony and self-abandonment. [19] Balthasar aimed at nothing less that a Christocentric revolution in Catholic theology. It is absolutely certain that the inspiration for this, derives, ironically for such an ultra- Catholic author, from the Protestantism of Karl Barth.



In the 1940s Balthasar was not the only person interested in theology in the University of Basle. Balthasar's book on Barth, [20] regarded by some Barthians as the best book on Barth ever written, [21] while expressing reserves on Barth's account of nature, predestination and the concept of the Church, puts Barth's Christocentricity at the top of the list of the things Catholic theology can learn from the Church Dogmatics. [22] Not repudiating the teaching of the First Vatican Council on the possibility of a natural knowledge of God, Balthasar set out nevertheless to realize in Catholicism the kind of Christocentric revolution Barth had wrought in Protestantism: to make Christ, in Pascal's words, 'the centre, towards which all things tend'. [23] Balthasar's acerbity towards the Catholic theological scene under Paul VI derived from the sense that this overdue revolution was being resisted from several quarters: from those who used philosophical or scientific concepts in a way that could not but dilute Christocentrism, building on German Idealism (Karl Rahner), evolutionism (Teilhard de Chardin) or Marxism (liberation theology), and from those who frittered away Christian energies on aspects of Church structure or tactics of pastoral practice, the characteristic post-conciliar obsessions. [24]

In his person, life, death and resurrection, Jesus Christ is the 'form of God'. As presented in the New Testament writings, the words, actions and sufferings of Jesus form an aesthetic unity, held together by the 'style' of unconditional love. Love is always beautiful, because it expresses the self- diffusiveness of being, and so is touched by being's radiance, the pulchrum. But the unconditional, gracious, sacrificial love of Jesus Christ expresses not just the mystery of being — finite being — but the mystery of the Source of being, the transcendent communion of love which we call the Trinity. [25] Thus through the Gestalt Christi, the love which God is shines through to the world. This is Balthasar's basic intuition.

The word 'intuition' is, perhaps, a fair one. Balthasar is not a New Testament scholar, not even a (largely) self-taught one like Schillebeeckx. Nor does he make, by Schillebeeckx's exigent standards, a very serious attempt to incorporate modern exegetical studies into his Christology. His somewhat negative attitude towards much — but, as Mysterium Paschale shows, by no means all — of current New Testament study follows from his belief that the identification of ever more sub-structures, redactional frameworks, 'traditions', perikopai, binary correspondences, and other methodological items in the paraphernalia of gospel criticism, tears into fragments what is an obvious unity. The New Testament is a unity because the men who wrote it had all been bowled over by the same thing, the glory of God in the face of Christ. Thus Balthasar can say, provocatively, that New Testament science is not a science at all compared with the traditional exegesis which preceded it. To be a science you must have a method adequate to your object. Only the contemplative reading of the New Testament is adequate to the glory of God in Jesus Christ. [26]

The importance of the concept of contemplation for Balthasar's approach to Christ can be seen by comparing his view of perceiving God in Christ with the notion of looking at a painting and seeing what the artist has been doing in it. [27] In Christian faith, the captivating force (the 'subjective evidence') of the artwork which is Christ takes hold of our imaginative powers; we enter into the 'painterly world' which this discloses and, entranced by what we see, come to contemplate the glory of sovereign love of God in Christ (the 'objective evidence') as manifested in the concrete events of his life, death and resurrection. [28] So entering his glory, we become absorbed by it, but this very absorption sends us out into the world in sacrificial love like that of Jesus.

This is the foundation of Balthasar's Christology, but its content is a series of meditations on the mysteries of the life of Jesus. His Christology is highly concrete and has been compared, suggestively, to the iconography of Andrei Rublev and Georges Roualt. [29] Balthasar is not especially concerned with the ontological make-up of Christ, with the hypostatic union and its implications, except insofar as these are directly involved in an account of the mysteries of the life. [30] In each major moment ('mystery') of the life, we see some aspect of the total Gestalt Christi, and through this the Gestalt Gottes itself. Although Balthasar stresses the narrative unity of these episodes, which is founded on the obedience that takes the divine Son from incarnation to passion, an obedience which translates his inner-Trinitarian being as the Logos, filial responsiveness to the Father, [31] his principal interest — nowhere more eloquently expressed than in the present work — is located very firmly in an unusual place. This place is the mystery of Christ's Descent into Hell, which Balthasar explicitly calls the centre of all Christology. [32] Because the Descent is the final point reached by the Kenosis, and the Kenosis is the supreme expression of the inner-Trinitarian love, the Christ of Holy Saturday is the consummate icon of what God is like. [33] While not relegating the Crucifixion to a mere prelude — far from it! — Balthasar sees the One who was raised at Easter as not primarily the Crucified, but rather the One who for us went down into Hell. The 'active' Passion of Good Friday is not, at any rate, complete without the 'passive' Passion of Holy Saturday which was its sequel.

Balthasar's account of the Descent is indebted to the visionary experiences of Adrienne von Speyr, and is a world away from the concept of a triumphant preaching to the just which nearly all traditional accounts of the going down to Hell come under. [34] Balthasar stresses Christ's solidarity with the dead, his passivity, his finding himself in a situation of total self-estrangement and alienation from the Father. For Balthasar, the Descent 'solves' the problem of theodicy, by showing us the conditions on which God accepted our foreknown abuse of freedom: namely, his own plan to take to himself our self-damnation in Hell. It also demonstrates the costliness of our redemption: the divine Son underwent the experience of Godlessness. Finally, it shows that the God revealed by the Redeemer is a Trinity. Only if the Spirit, as vinculum amoris between the Father and the Son, can re-relate Father and Son in their estrangement in the Descent, can the unity of the Revealed and Revealer be maintained. In this final humiliation of the forma servi, the glorious forma Dei shines forth via its lowest pitch of self-giving love.

Mysterium Paschale could not, however, be an account of the paschal mystery, the mystery of Easter, unless it moved on, following the fate of the Crucified himself, to the Father's acceptance of his sacrifice, which we call the Resurrection. Whilst not over-playing the role of the empty tomb — which is, after all, a sign, with the limitations which that word implies, Balthasar insists, in a fashion highly pertinent to a recurrent debate in England, as well as in Continental Europe, that the Father in raising the Son does not go back on the Incarnation: that is, he raises the Son into visibility, rather than returns him to the pre-incarnate condition of the invisible Word. The Resurrection appearances are not visionary experiences but personal encounters, even though the Resurrection itself cannot be adequately thought by means of any concept, any comparison.

Finally, in his account of the 'typical' significance of such diverse Resurrection witnesses as Peter, John and the women, Balthasar offers a profound interpretation of the make-up of the Church, which issued from the paschal mystery of Christ. In his portrayal of the inter-relation of the masculine and feminine elements in the community of the Crucified and Risen One — the Church of office and the Church of love, Balthasar confirms the words spoken in his funeral oration by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger:

Balthasar had a great respect for the primacy of Peter, and the hierarchical structure of the Church. But he also knew that the Church is not only that, nor is that what is deepest in the Church. [35]

What is deepest in the Church, as the concluding section of Mysterium Paschale shows, is the spouse-like responsiveness of receptivity and obedience to the Jesus Christ who, as the Church's Head, 'ever plunges anew into his own being those whom he sends out as his disciples'.

REFERENCES:

[1] Balthasar's own estimate of his life and work is in Rechenschaft (Einsiedeln 1965). The most thorough study of his theology to date is A. Moda, Hans Urs von Balthasar (Ban 1976); for his Christology see also G. Marchesi, La Cristologia di Hans Urs von Balthasar (Rome 1977).

[2] See H. U. von Balthasar, Romano Guardini. Reform aus dem Ursprung (Munich 1970): the title is significant.

[3] See especially, Herrlichkeit. Em theologische Ästhetik (Einsiedeln 1961-1969), Ill/I. Et: The Glory of God (Edinburgh and San Francisco 1983-).

[4] By H. de Lubac in 'Un testimonio di Cristo. Hans Urs von Balthasar', Humanitas 20 (1965) p. 853.

[5] H. U. von Balthasar 'Die Metaphysik Erich Pyrzwara', Schweizer Rundschau 33 (1933), pp. 488-499. Przywara convinced him of the importance of the analogy of being in theology.

[6] Balthasar has compared the 'evangelicalism' of the Exercises to that not only of Barth but of Luther. See Rechenschaft, op. cit., pp. 7-8.

[7] See R. Aubert's summary of the Nouvelle Théologie in Bilan de la théologie du vingtième siècle (Paris 1971), I. pp. 457-460.

[8] Pius XII, Humani Generis 14-17.

[9] Stressed by B. Mondin, 'Hans Urs von Balthasar e l'estetica teologica' in I grandi teologi del secolo ventesimo I (Turin 1969), pp. 268-9.

[10] De Lubac spoke of Balthasar enjoying 'una specie di connaturalità' with the Fathers; but he has never suffered from that tiresome suspension of all criticism of patristic theology which is sometimes found, not least in England. In Liturgie Cosmique: Maxime le Confesseur (Paris 1947) he points out that the Fathers stand at the beginning (only) of Christian thought, pp. 7-8.

[11] H. U. von Balthasar, Erster Blick auf Adrienne von Speyr (Einsiedeln 1967), with full bibliography.

[12] Parole et mystère chez Origène (Paris 1957); Presence et pensée. Essai sur la philosophie religieuse de Grégoire de Nysse (Paris 1942); Kosmische Liturgie. Höhe und Krise des griechischen Weltbilds bei Maximus Confessor (Freiburg 1941).

[13] Bernanos (Cologne 1954).

[14] Apokalypse der deutschen Seele (Salzburg 1937-9).

[15] Wahrheit. Wahrheit der Welt (Einsiedeln 1947).

[16] Thus Herrlichkeit, op. cit.

[17] Theodramatik (Einsiedeln 1973-6).

[18] The Theologik took up the earlier Wahrheit. Wahrheit der Welt, op. cit., re-published as Theologik I, and united it to a new work, Wahrheit Gottes. Theologik II. Both appeared at Einsiedeln in 1985. Also relevant to this project is his Das Ganze im Fragment (Einsiedeln 1963).

[19] 'Der Ort der Theologie', Verbum Caro (Einsiedeln 1960).

[20] Karl Barth. Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie (Cologne 1951).

[21] By Professor T. F. Torrance, to the present author in a private conversation.

[22] op. cit. pp. 335-372.

[23] Pensées 449 in the Lafuma numbering.

[24] See Schleifung der Bastionen (Einsiedeln 1952); Wer ist ein Christ? (Einsiedeln 1965); Cordula oder der Ernstfall (Einsiedeln 1966). The notion that, because Christian existence has its own form, which is founded on the prior form of Christ, Christian proclamation does not (strictly speaking) need philosophical or social scientific mediations, is the clearest link between Balthasar and Pope John Paul II. See, for instance, the papal address to the South American bishops at Puebla.

[25] Herrlichkeit I pp. 123-658.

[26] Einfaltungen. Auf Wegen christlicher Einigung (Munich 1969).

[27] Cf. A. Nichols OP, The Art of God Incarnate (London 1980), pp. 105-152.

[28] For an excellent analysis of Balthasar's twofold Christological 'evidence', see A. Moda, op. cit., pp. 305-410.

[29] By H. Vorgrimler, in Bilan de la Théologie du vingtième siècle, op. cit., pp. 686ff.

[30] We can say that, had Balthasar been St Thomas, he would have begun the Tertia pars of the Summa at Question 36: de manfestatione Christ nati.

[31] 'Mysterium Paschale', in Mysterium Salutis III/2 (Einsiedeln 1962), pp. 133-158.

[32] Glaubhaft ist nur Liebe (Einsiedeln 1963), p. 57.

[33] 'Mysterium Paschale', art. cit., pp. 227-255. Balthasar speaks of a 'contemplative Holy Saturday' as the centre of theology, in contra-distinction to G. W. F. Hegel's 'speculative Good Friday'.

[34] See J. Chaine, 'La Descente du Christ aux enfers', Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplément II.

[35] Translated from the French, alone accessible to me, of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 'Oraison funèbre de Hans-Urs von Balthasar', Communio XIV, 2 (March-April 1989), p. 8.

The translator is grateful to the editor of New Blackfriars for permission to re-publish, in modified form, some material originally found in that journal (66.781-2 [1985]) as 'Balthasar and his Christology'.

Excerpts from the writings of Hans Urs von Balthasar:

• Introduction | From Adrienne von Speyr's The Book of All Saints
• The Conquest of the Bride | From Heart of the World
• Jesus Is Catholic | From In The Fullness of Faith: On the Centrality of the Distinctively Catholic
• A Résumé of My Thought | From Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work
• Church Authority and the Petrine Element | From In The Fullness of Faith: On the Centrality of the Distinctively Catholic
• The Cross–For Us | From A Short Primer For Unsettled Laymen
• A Theology of Anxiety? | The Introduction to The Christian and Anxiety
• "Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary" | From Credo: Meditations on the Apostles' Creed

IgnatiusInsight.com articles about Hans Urs von Balthasar:

• Discerning What Is Christian | The Foreword to Hans Urs von Balthasar's Engagement with God | Margaret M. Turek
• Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Tarot | Stratford Caldecott
• Love Alone is Believable: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Apologetics | Fr. John R. Cihak
• Balthasar and Anxiety: Methodological and Phenomenological Considerations | Fr. John R. Cihak
• Reading von Balthasar Together: An Interview with Adam Janke | Carl E. Olson

Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P., a Dominican priest, is currently the John Paul II Memorial Visiting Lecturer, University of Oxford; has served as the Robert Randall Distinguished Professor in Christian Culture, Providence College; and is a Fellow of Greyfriars, Oxford. He has also served as the Prior of the Dominicans at St. Michael's Priory, Cambridge. Father Nichols is the author of numerous books including Looking at the Liturgy, Holy Eucharist, Hopkins: Theologian's Poet, and The Thought of Benedict XVI. His most recent book is Lovely Like Jerusalem: The Fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ and the Church.

The Cross–For Us

The Cross–For Us | Hans Urs von Balthasar | An excerpt from A Short Primer For Unsettled Laymen

Without a doubt, at the center of the New Testament there stands the Cross, which receives its interpretation from the Resurrection.

The Passion narratives are the first pieces of the Gospels that were composed as a unity. In his preaching at Corinth, Paul initially wants to know nothing but the Cross, which "destroys the wisdom of the wise and wrecks the understanding of those who understand", which "is a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles". But "the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (I Cor 1:19, 23, 25).

Whoever removes the Cross and its interpretation by the New Testament from the center, in order to replace it, for example, with the social commitment of Jesus to the oppressed as a new center, no longer stands in continuity with the apostolic faith. He does not see that God's commitment to the world is most absolute precisely at this point across a chasm.

It is certainly not surprising that the disciples were able to understand the meaning of the Cross only slowly, even after the Resurrection. The Lord himself gives a first catechetical instruction to the disciples at Emmaus by showing that this incomprehensible event is the fulfillment of what had been foretold and that the open question marks of the Old Testament find their solution only here (Lk 24:27).

Which riddles? Those of the Covenant between God and men in which the latter must necessarily fail again and again: who can be a match for God as a partner? Those of the many cultic sacrifices that in the end are still external to man while he himself cannot offer himself as a sacrifice. Those of the inscrutable meaning of suffering which can fall even, and especially, on the innocent, so that every proof that God rewards the good becomes void. Only at the outer periphery, as something that so far is completely sealed, appear the outlines of a figure in which the riddles might be solved.

This figure would be at once the completely kept and fulfilled Covenant, even far beyond Israel (Is 49:5-6), and the personified sacrifice in which at the same time the riddle of suffering, of being despised and rejected, becomes a light; for it happens as the vicarious suffering of the just for "the many" (Is 52:13-53:12). Nobody had understood the prophecy then, but in the light of the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus it became the most important key to the meaning of the apparently meaningless.

Did not Jesus himself use this key at the Last Supper in anticipation? "For you", "for the many", his Body is given up and his Blood is poured out. He himself, without a doubt, foreknew that his will to help these" people toward God who are so distant from God would at some point be taken terribly seriously, that he would suffer in their place through this distance from God, indeed this utmost darkness of God, in order to take it from them and to give them an inner share in his closeness to God. "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!" (Lk 12:50).

It stands as a dark cloud at the horizon of his active life; everything he does then-healing the sick, proclaiming the kingdom of God, driving out evil spirits by his good Spirit, forgiving sins-all of these partial engagements happen in the approach toward the one unconditional engagement.








As soon as the formula "for the many", "for you", "for us", is found, it resounds through all the writings of the New Testament; it is even present before anything is written down (cf. i Cor 15:3). Paul, Peter, John: everywhere the same light comes from the two little words.

What has happened? Light has for the first time penetrated into the closed dungeons of human and cosmic suffering and dying. Pain and death receive meaning.

Not only that, they can receive more meaning and bear more fruit than the greatest and most successful activity, a meaning not only for the one who suffers but precisely also for others, for the world as a whole. No religion had even approached this thought. [1] The great religions had mostly been ingenious methods of escaping suffering or of making it ineffective. The highest that was reached was voluntary death for the sake of justice: Socrates and his spiritualized heroism. The detached farewell discourses of the wise man in prison could be compared from afar to the wondrous farewell discourses of Christ.

But Socrates dies noble and transfigured; Christ must go out into the hellish darkness of godforsakenness, where he calls for the lost Father "with prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears" (Heb 5:7). Why are such stories handed down? Why has the image of the hero, the martyr, thus been destroyed? It was "for us", "in our place".

One can ask endlessly how it is possible to take someone's place in this way. The only thing that helps us who are perplexed is the certainty of the original Church that this man belongs to God, that "he truly was God's Son", as the centurion acknowledges under the Cross, so that finally one has to render him homage in adoration as "my Lord and my God" Jn 20:28).

Every theology that begins to blink and stutter at this point and does not want to come out with the words of the Apostle Thomas or tinkers with them will not hold to the "for us". There is no intermediary between a man who is God and an ordinary mortal, and nobody will seriously hold the opinion that a man like us, be he ever so courageous and generous in giving himself, would be able to take upon himself the sin of another, let alone the sin of all. He can suffer death in the place of someone who is condemned to death. This would be generous, and it would spare the other person death at least for a time.

But what Christ did on the Cross was in no way intended to spare us death but rather to revalue death completely. In place of the "going down into the pit" of the Old Testament, it became "being in paradise tomorrow". Instead of fearing death as the final evil and begging God for a few more years of life, as the weeping king Hezekiah does, Paul would like most of all to die immediately in order "to be with the Lord" (Phil 1:23). Together with death, life is also revalued: "If we live, we live to the Lord; if we die, we die to the Lord" (Rom 14:8).

But the issue is not only life and death but our existence before God and our being judged by him. All of us were sinners before him and worthy of condemnation. But God "made the One who knew no sin to be sin, so that we might be justified through him in God's eyes" (2 Cor 5:21).

Only God in his absolute freedom can take hold of our finite freedom from within in such a way as to give it a direction toward him, an exit to him, when it was closed in on itself. This happened in virtue of the "wonderful exchange" between Christ and us: he experiences instead of us what distance from God is, so that we may become beloved and loving children of God instead of being his "enemies" (Rom 5:10).

Certainly God has the initiative in this reconciliation: he is the one who reconciles the world to himself in Christ. But one must not play this down (as famous theologians do) by saying that God is always the reconciled God anyway and merely manifests this state in a final way through the death of Christ. It is not clear how this could be the fitting and humanly intelligible form of such a manifestation.

No, the "wonderful exchange" on the Cross is the way by which God brings about reconciliation. It can only be a mutual reconciliation because God has long since been in a covenant with us. The mere forgiveness of God would not affect us in our alienation from God. Man must be represented in the making of the new treaty of peace, the "new and eternal covenant". He is represented because we have been taken over by the man Jesus Christ. When he "signs" this treaty in advance in the name of all of us, it suffices if we add our name under his now or, at the latest, when we die.

Of course, it would be meaningless to speak of the Cross without considering the other side, the Resurrection of the Crucified. "If Christ has not risen, then our preaching is nothing and also your faith is nothing; you are still in your sins and also those who have fallen asleep . . . are lost. If we are merely people who have put their whole hope in Christ in this life, then we are the most pitiful of all men" (I Cor 15:14, 17-19).

If one does away with the fact of the Resurrection, one also does away with the Cross, for both stand and fall together, and one would then have to find a new center for the whole message of the gospel. What would come to occupy this center is at best a mild father-god who is not affected by the terrible injustice in the world, or man in his morality and hope who must take care of his own redemption: "atheism in Christianity".

Endnotes:

[1] For what is meant here is something qualitatively completely different from the voluntary or involuntary scapegoats who offered themselves or were offered (e.g., in Hellas or Rome) for the city or for the fatherland to avert some catastrophe that threatened everyone.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles:

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

Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-88) was a Swiss theologian, considered to one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century. 2005 marks the centennial celebration of his birth.

Incredibly prolific and diverse, he wrote over one hundred books and hundreds of articles. Read more about his life and work in the Author's Pages section of IgnatiusInsight.com.

The Question of Suffering, the Response of the Cross

The Question of Suffering, the Response of the Cross | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

An excerpt from God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (Ignatius Press, 2002), by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, pages 332-36, 333.

Seewald: We are used to thinking of suffering as something we try to avoid at all costs. And there is nothing that many societies get more angry about than the Christian idea that one should bear with pain, should endure suffering, should even sometimes give oneself up to it, in order thereby to overcome it. "Suffering", John Paul II believes, "is a part of the mystery of being human." Why is this?

Cardinal Ratzinger: Today what people have in view is eliminating suffering from the world. For the individual, that means avoiding pain and suffering in whatever way. Yet we must also see that it is in this very way that the world becomes very hard and very cold. Pain is part of being human. Anyone who really wanted to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before anything else, because there can be no love without suffering, because it always demands an element of self-sacrifice, because, given temperamental differences and the drama of situations, it will always bring with it renunciation and pain.

When we know that the way of love–this exodus, this going out of oneself–is the true way by which man becomes human, then we also understand that suffering is the process through which we mature. Anyone who has inwardly accepted suffering becomes more mature and more understanding of others, becomes more human. Anyone who has consistently avoided suffering does not understand other people; he becomes hard and selfish.

Love itself is a passion, something we endure. In love experience first a happiness, a general feeling of happiness.

Yet on the other hand, I am taken out of my comfortable tranquility and have to let myself be reshaped. If we say that suffering is the inner side of love, we then also understand it is so important to learn how to suffer–and why, conversely, the avoidance of suffering renders someone unfit to cope with life. He would be left with an existential emptiness, which could then only be combined with bitterness, with rejection and no longer with any inner acceptance or progress toward maturity.

Seewald: What would actually have happened if Christ had not appeared and if he had not died on the tree of the Cross? Would the world long since have come to ruin without him?

Cardinal Ratzinger: That we cannot say. Yet we can say that man would have no access to God. He would then only be able to relate to God in occasional fragmentary attempts. And, in the end, he would not know who or what God actually is.

Something of the light of God shines through in the great religions of the world, of course, and yet they remain a matter of fragments and questions. But if the question about God finds no answer, if the road to him is blocked, if there is no forgiveness, which can only come with the authority of God himself, then human life is nothing but a meaningless experiment. Thus, God himself has parted the clouds at a certain point. He has turned on the light and has shown us the way that is the truth, that makes it possible for us to live and that is life itself.

Seewald: Someone like Jesus inevitably attracts an enormous amount of attention and would be bound to offend any society. At the time of his appearance, the prophet from Nazareth was not only cheered, but also mocked and persecuted. The representatives of the established order saw in Jesus' teaching and his person a serious threat to their power, and Pharisees and high priests began to seek to take his life. At the same time, the Passion was obviously part and parcel of his message, since Christ himself began to prepare his disciples for his suffering and death. In two days, he declared at the beginning of the feast of Passover, "the Son of Man will be betrayed and crucified."

Cardinal Ratzinger: Jesus is adjusting the ideas of the disciples to the fact that the Messiah is not appearing as the Savior or the glorious powerful hero to restore the renown of Israel as a powerful state, as of old. He doesn't even call himself Messiah, but Son of Man. His way, quite to the contrary, lies in powerlessness and in suffering death, betrayed to the heathen, as he says, and brought by the heathen to the Cross. The disciples would have to learn that the kingdom of God comes into the world in that way, and in no other.

Seewald: A world-famous picture by Leonardo da Vinci, the Last Supper, shows Jesus' farewell meal in the circle of his twelve apostles. On that evening, Jesus first of all throws them all into terror and confusion by indicating that he will be the victim of betrayal. After that he founds the holy Eucharist, which from that point onward has been performed by Christians day after day for two thousand years.

"During the meal," we read in the Gospel, "Jesus took the bread and spoke the blessing; then he broke the bread, shared it with the disciples, and said: Take and eat; this is my body. Then he took the cup, spoke the thanksgiving, and passed it to the disciples with the words: Drink of this, all of you; this is my blood, the blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in remembrance of me." These are presumably the sentences that have been most often pronounced in the entire history of the world up till now. They give the impression of a sacred formula.



Cardinal Ratzinger: They are a sacred formula. In any case, these are words that entirely fail to fit into any category of what would be usual, what could be expected or premeditated. They are enormously rich in meaning and enormously profound. If you want to get to know Christ, you can get to know him best by meditating on these words, and by getting to know the context of these words, which have become a sacrament, by joining in the celebration. The institution of the Eucharist represents the sum total of what Christ Is.

Here Jesus takes up the essential threads of the Old Testament. Thereby he relies on the institution of the Old Covenant, on Sinai, on one hand, thus making clear that what was begun on Sinai is now enacted anew: The Covenant that God made with men is now truly perfected. The Last Supper is the rite of institution of the New Covenant. In giving himself over to men, he creates a community of blood between God and man.

On the other hand, some words of the prophet Jeremiah are taken up here, proclaiming the New Covenant. Both strands of the Old Testament (Law and prophets) are amalgamated to create this unity and, at the same time, shaped into a sacramental action. The Cross is already anticipated in this. For when Christ gives his Body and his Blood, gives himself, then this assumes that he is really giving up his life. In that sense, these words are the inner act of the Cross, which occurs when God transforms this external violence against him into an act of self-donation to mankind.

And something else is anticipated here, the Resurrection. You cannot give anyone dead flesh, dead body to eat. Only because he is going to rise again are his Body and his Blood new. It is no longer cannibalism but union with the living, risen Christ that is happening here.

In these few words, as we see, lies a synthesis of the history of religion—of the history of Israel's faith, as well as of Jesus' own being and work, which finally becomes a sacrament and an abiding presence. ...

Seewald: The soldiers abuse Jesus in a way we can hardly imagine. All hatred, everything bestial in man, utterly abysmal, the most horrible things men can do to one another, is obviously unloaded onto this man.

Cardinal Ratzinger: Jesus stands for all victims of brute force. In the twentieth century itself we have seen again how inventive human cruelty can be; how cruelty, in the act of destroying the image of man in others, dishonors and destroys that image in itself. The fact that the Son of God took all this upon himself in exemplary manner, as the "Lamb of God", is bound to make us shudder at the cruelty of man, on one hand, and make us think carefully about ourselves, how far we are willing to stand by as cowardly or silent onlookers, or how far we share responsibility ourselves. On the other side, it is bound to transform us and to make us rejoice in God. He has put himself on the side of the innocent and the suffering and would like to see us standing there too.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Book Excerpts:

• Author Page for Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI
• The Truth of the Resurrection | Excerpts from Introduction to Christianity | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Seeing Jesus in the Gospel of John | Excerpts from On The Way to Jesus Christ | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• God Made Visible | A Review of On The Way to Jesus Christ | Justin Nickelsen
• A Shepherd Like No Other | Excerpt from Behold, God's Son! | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• Encountering Christ in the Gospel | Excerpt from My Jesus | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• A Jesus Worth Dying For | On the Foreword to Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• 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
• Studying The Early Christians | The Introduction to We Look For the Kingdom: The Everyday Lives of the Early Christians | Carl J. Sommer
• The Everyday Lives of the Early Christians | An interview with Carl J. Sommer

The Mystery at the Center of Our Faith

The Mystery at the Center of Our Faith | Hans Urs von Balthasar | The Introduction to To the Heart of the Mystery of Redemption | Ignatius Insight

All over the world, the best young people are seeking God. They would like to discover the paths where they can meet him, where they can experience him, where they can be challenged by him. They are tired of sociological and psychological expedients, of all the banal substitutes for the truly miraculous.

In order to respond to their desire—which corresponds, moreover, to that of true Christians of all ages—let us not delay: let us be spiritual men who live and know how to hand on the extraordinary mystery that is at the center of our faith, the mystery without which all Christianity becomes trivial and, thereby, ineffective.

At the center of our faith: the Cross

"For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor 2:2): there you have Paul's plan of action. Why? Because the entire Credo of the early Church was focused on the interpretation of the appalling end of Jesus, of the Cross, as having been brought about pro nobis, for us; Paul even says: for each one of us, thus, for me.

"The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:20).

What effect can such an act of love have? Is it a manifestation of solidarity? But if I suffer from cancer, what good does it do me if someone else lets himself be stricken by the same illness in order to keep me company? In order to understand the original faith, we must certainly go beyond the simple concept of solidarity.

For the early Church, this "going beyond" was justified after the experience of the Resurrection. Far from being a private event in the history of Jesus, it is the attestation on God's part that this crucified Jesus is truly the advent of the kingdom of God, of the pardon offaults, of the justification of the sinner, of filial adoption.

Well, then, what did happen on the Cross?

The ancient Roman liturgy speaks of a sacrum commercium, or admirabile commercium, of a mysterious exchange that Saint Paul expresses by these words: "[If] one has died for all, therefore all have died" (2 Cor 5:13), which obviously means: if a single one has the competence and the authorization to die for all, that creates an objective fact that affects them all. Consequently, Paul can continue: "And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised" (2 Cor 5:15).

Four aspects of the mystery

Here we are before a mystery that is usually referred to as redemption. Let us not dwell on questions of terminology. It is clear that, if this Christian mystery is a reality, it is absolutely unique. Consequently, no concept drawn from common experience will be able to exhaust it.

This is what Saint Thomas has demonstrated superlatively in his Christology by aligning four concepts that all capture one aspect of the mystery but that all also need to be surpassed and that are all mutually complementary. Here they are, all indispensable, each by itself insufficient: merit, satisfaction, sacrifice, redemption (or atonement).



We will come back to this. Let us say briefly in advance that all have their references in Scripture, in the Fathers, and in the great theologians. Scripture seems to advocate sacrificial vocabulary (Letter to the Hebrews); the Fathers, atonement/ redemption; Saint Anselm, satisfaction; Saint Thomas, merit, while stressing the interpenetration of the four aspects.

The shortcomings are also immediately apparent:

Sacrifice comes from the Old Testament and nonbiblical religions; now Christ, at once priest and victim, transcends this stage of relations with God.

Atonement/redemption is a vivid image; but from whom would Christ be redeeming us? Not from the devil, who cannot have true rights over sinners; not from God the Father and his justice or his anger, since it is precisely the Father who in his love for the world has handed over his Son to us.

Satisfaction: in one sense, yes: for us who are incapable of reconciling ourselves with God, Christ effectively works this reconciliation, and Scripture instills in us the idea that at the Cross it was not merely a question of a symbol by which God demonstrated that he was already reconciled. But what event in this world could influence God? Change his attitude toward the world? That seems metaphysically impossible.

Finally, merit, supereminently: because, according to Anselm and Thomas, the person who suffers is divine and since he is through his Incarnation the Head of the Body of mankind. But is this merit enough to account for the exchange between Christ and us?

It thus seems that none of the concepts exhausts the mystery. And that is just what we would have to expect.

How, then, shall we proceed?

------

1. First of all, we are going to say a word about the relation in the Gospel between the earthly Jesus going to his death and the risen Christ as he appears in the faith of the early Christians.

2. It will then be necessary to confront the formidable problem—evangelical and theological at the same time—of the relation between the wrath of God (orge) and his mercy, in other words, the problem of the beloved Son handed over to sinners by God the Father.

3. Finally, a word about the theories of redemption, in particular that ofAnselm, which was the classic one until thirty years ago but nearly unanimously abandoned since.

And as a final word, we will make a very brief reflection on the possibility of proclaiming the mystery of the Cross today.

To the Heart of the Mystery of Redemption

by Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr

Preface by Henri Cardinal de Lubac | Postscript and foreword by Jacques Servais, S.J.

In the 1960's, Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar gave two conferences in Paris on the subject of redemption. One considered the perspective of Christ the Redeemer. The other gave a view of the redemption from the perspective of Mary and the Church, consenting to the sacrifice of Jesus. These two conferences are what Fr. Jacques Servais, S.J., in his foreword calls "a lantern of the Word", shedding light amidst the advancing turmoil of the postconciliar period.

These conferences were later collected by the eminent theologian Henri Cardinal de Lubac, S.J., in a single volume along with an anthology of meditations on the Passion by the mystic Adrienne von Speyr, and selected by von Balthasar.

In this new edition, prepared for the centenary of the birth of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Fr. Servais, the director of Casa Balthasar in Rome, provides an extensive postscript illuminating the text along with the original preface by de Lubac.

"I had the joy of knowing and associating with this renowned Swiss theologian. I am convinced that his theological reflections preserve their freshness and profound relevance undiminished to this day and that they incite many others to penetrate ever further into the depths of the mystery of the Faith, with such an authoritative guide leading them by the hand." -- Pope Benedict XVI

Related Ignatius Insight Articles and Book Excerpts:

• The Question of Suffering, the Response of the Cross | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• The Cross--For Us | Hans Urs von Balthasar
• Introduction | From Adrienne von Speyr's The Book of All Saints
• The Conquest of the Bride | From Heart of the World
• Jesus Is Catholic | From In The Fullness of Faith: On the Centrality of the Distinctively Catholic
• A Résumé of My Thought | From Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work
• Church Authority and the Petrine Element | From In The Fullness of Faith: On the Centrality of the Distinctively Catholic
• The Cross–For Us | From A Short Primer For Unsettled Laymen
• A Theology of Anxiety? | The Introduction to The Christian and Anxiety
• "Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary" | From Credo: Meditations on the Apostles' Creed

Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-88) was a Swiss theologian, considered to one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century. Incredibly prolific and diverse, he wrote over one hundred books and hundreds of articles. Read more about his life and work in the Author's Pages section of IgnatiusInsight.com.

The Prophetic Challenge of St. John Paul II

Pope John Paul II prays at the Hill of Crosses in Siauliai, Lithuania, in 1993. (CNS photo/Arturo Mari, L'Osserv atore Romano) (March 23, 2014)

The Prophetic Challenge of St. John Paul II | Carl E. Olson | CWR Editorial

Pope John Paul II's rich teaching is a remarkably rich and cogent whole, a mosaic that rewards repeated study and contemplation

The first time I really thought about Pope John Paul II was when I watched him being ripped to shreds.

Not literally, thankfully, although there was actual ripping involved. I was an Evangelical at the time, a year removed from Bible college and living in Portland, Oregon. One evening, in October 1992, my housemates and I tuned into “Saturday Night Live”, which was notable since I rarely watched television and I had little interest in watching Irish singer Sinead O'Connor perform. But I did watch, and therefore saw her take a photo of John Paul II and angrily rip into pieces while snarling, “Fight the real enemy!” O'Connor's act caused a furor and forever altered her then-promising career.

I had been raised in a Fundamentalist home and had spent my youth mouthing the usual anti-Catholic nonsense about Catholics worshiping Mary, worshiping a piece of bread, and worshiping the Pope. In Bible college, my views began to change, in part due to reading the poetry and fiction of Catholics (Gerard Manley Hopkins, Flannery O'Connor, no relation to Sinead) and Anglo-Catholics (C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, Charles Williams). A host of other topics and questions followed, and around the same time I watched Sinead O'Connor lash out at the pope, I was also reading books on Church history and discovering the writings of the early Church Fathers.

I then began to read some of the writings of John Paul II—and I was instantly hooked. Fight the real enemy? Turns out the enemy, for me, had been a truckload of stereotypes and misrepresentations about the Catholic Church. Among the first of John Paul II's writings I took up was Redemptoris hominis, the first of his fourteen encyclicals. The opening sentence was something that I would not have thought, growing up, a Catholic would believe or state: “The Redeemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the centre of the universe and of history.” That encyclical presented many of the key themes of his pontificate: the centrality of Christ, the Eucharist as source and summit of the Faith, a rich and challenging anthropology, the nature and mission of the Church, the importance of Christian unity and true ecumenism, and the ultimate goal of salvation: communion with the Triune God.

What I found in the thought and witness of John Paul II was a cohesive and grand vision of the meaning of creation, life, and love.

Continue reading this editorial on the CWR site.

Saying Farewell: The Funeral of John Paul II

Saying Farewell: The Funeral of John Paul II | K. V. Turley | CWR blog

Sitting on a plane bound for Rome as the funeral fast approached, and with only sketchy plans of what to do next, I knew one thing—I had to be there.

Pope John Paul II had been ill throughout 2005 and though his death was anticipated when it did come on April 2, it was still a jolt. And it was the whole world, not just the Catholic world, which appeared jolted by it. Surprisingly, British media outlets, normally no friends of the Catholic Church, were awash with praise for the late pontiff, the front cover of one left-leaning daily simply proclaiming: John Paul the Great. Perhaps, in hindsight, it shouldn’t have been so surprising; after all, greatness is greatness.

On arrival I headed to St. Peter’s, where the lying-in-state was taking place, and joined the long, snaking queue that encircled the famous church. By now, it was 6 pm local time. The queue was long and moved slowly, very slowly; it was going to be a long wait.

When you spend hours standing in a line, you become curious about the others who are doing so. In front were some young people, a school or youth group—perhaps understandably, at that age, interested only in each other. A couple stood next to me; we got talking. They too had heard the news and knew they had to come, all the way from Venezuela. My flight had taken a couple of hours from London. Their flights had taken much longer—almost a day’s journeying. Their desire to be there was moving, with the privations of the long wait seemingly of no account. Looking at them, I could only feel shame at my inward moaning about having to wait so long.

Behind us there was another distinct group.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Pope Saint John Paul II's greatest gift to the Church

Pope John Paul II greets throngs of Poles waiting for a glimpse of their native son at the monastery of Jasna Gora in Czestochowa during his 1979 trip to Poland. (CNS photo/Chris Niedenthal)

Pope Saint John Paul II's greatest gift to the Church | Joanna Bogle | CWR blog

The pontiff from Poland gave back to the Catholic Church a sense of confidence that the Church seemed to have lost in the immediate post-Vatican II years

When we got married, my husband and I arranged—rather belatedly, because we only got around to it some while after the wedding—for one of those papal blessings that come on a sort of scroll with vaguely gothic lettering and a picture of the pope and some Roman basilicas. The pope was John Paul II, and I had the scroll framed and hung it in our home. It hangs there still, our home no longer being the rented bedsit of those early days, or the Army quarters in Berlin, but the modest suburban maisonette a few miles from the Thames where we've now lived for over a quarter of a century.

I wasn't particularly excited about John Paul II in those early days. He was pope, and that was fine by me, but I'm not sure I would have listed him as one of my major heroes. Popes come and go; the important thing is that there is one—that we've got a Peter, a rock. The real issue is Jesus Christ, and trying to live as one of His disciples.

But living in Berlin gave pause for thought, with the Wall dominating life and the wretched slogans that looked so stupid and stark when we visited what was then East Berlin. I remember one such slogan that could not fail to strike the mind with its particular absurdity as it announced, on a banner across the front of the Polish Embassy on the Unter den Linden: “The Polish people are celebrating with joy the centenary of Karl Marx”. As if the whole world didn't know that the Polish people were doing nothing of the kind.

In the Berlin of the early 1980s, Communism was at once a gruesome fixture and a tired and sagging how-long-can-this-rubbish-actually-last project that felt frayed and pointless.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

The Easter Triduum: Entering into the Paschal Mystery

The Easter Triduum: Entering into the Paschal Mystery | Carl E. Olson

The liturgical year is a great and ongoing proclamation by the Church of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and a celebration of the Mystery of the Word. Through this yearly cycle, the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, "the various aspects of the one Paschal mystery unfold"(CCC 1171). The Easter Triduum holds a special place in the liturgical year because it marks the culmination of the yearly celebration in proclaiming the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Latin word triduum refers to a period of three days and has long been used to describe various three-day observances that prepared for a feast day through liturgy, prayer, and fasting. But it is most often used to describe the three days prior to the great feast of Easter: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday and the Easter Vigil. The General Norms for the Liturgical Year state that the Easter Triduum begins with the evening Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday, "reaches its high point in the Easter Vigil, and closes with evening prayer on Easter Sunday" (par 19).

Just as Sunday is the high point of the week, Easter is the high point of the year. The meaning of the great feast is revealed and anticipated throughout the Triduum, which brings the people of God into contact – through liturgy, symbol, and sacrament – with the central events of the life of Christ: the Last Supper, His trial and crucifixion, His time in the tomb, and His Resurrection from the dead. In this way, "the mystery of the Resurrection, in which Christ crushed death, permeates with its powerful energy our old time, until all is subjected to him" (CCC 1169). During these three days of contemplation and anticipation the liturgies emphasize the sacrificial death of Christ on the Cross, and the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, by which the faithful enter into the life-giving Passion of Christ and grow in hope of eternal life in Him.

Holy Thursday | The Lord's Supper

The Triduum begins with the evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, which commemorates when the Eucharist was instituted at the Last Supper by Jesus. The traditional English name for this day, "Maundy Thursday", comes from the Latin phrase Mandatum novum – "a new command" (or mandate) – which comes from Christ’s words: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another" (Jn 13:34). The Gospel reading for the liturgy is from the first part of the same chapter and depicts Jesus washing the feet of the disciples, an act of servitude (commonly done by slaves or servants in ancient cultures) and great humility.

Earlier on Holy Thursday (or earlier in the week) the bishop celebrates the Chrism Mass, which focuses on the ordained priesthood and the public renewal by priests of their promises to faithfully fulfill their office. In the evening liturgy, the priest, who is persona Christi, will wash the feet of several parishioners, oftentimes catechumens and candidates who will be entering into full communion with the Church at Easter Vigil. In this way the many connections between the Eucharist, salvation, self-sacrifice, and service to others are brought together.

These realities are further anticipated in Jesus’ remark about the approaching betrayal by Judas: "Whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed, for he is clean all over; so you are clean, but not all." The sacrificial nature of the Eucharist is brought out in the Old Testament reading, from Exodus 12, which recounts the first Passover and God’s command for the people of Israel, enslaved in Egypt, to kill a perfect lamb, eat it, and then spread its blood over the door as a sign of fidelity to the one, true God. Likewise, the reading from Paul’s epistle to the Christians in Corinth (1 Cor 11) repeats the words given by the Son of God to His apostles at the Last Supper: "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me" and "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."

Thus, in this memorial of Jesus’ last meal with His disciples, the faithful are reminded of the everlasting value of that meal, the gift of the priesthood, the grave dangers of turning away from God, the necessity of the approaching Cross, and the abiding love that the Lord has for His people.

Good Friday | Veneration of the Cross

This is the first full day of the Easter Triduum, a day commemorating the Passion, Cross, and death of Jesus Christ, and therefore a day of strict fasting. The liturgy is profoundly austere, perhaps the most simple and stark liturgy of the entire year. The liturgy of the Lord’s Passion consists of three parts: the liturgy of the Word, the veneration of the Cross, and the reception of Communion. Although Communion is given and received, this liturgy is not a Mass; this practice dates back to the earliest years of the Church and is meant to emphasize the somber, mournful character of the day. The Body of Christ that is received by the faithful on Good Friday was consecrated the prior evening at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper and, in most cases, was adored until midnight or another late hour.







The liturgy of the Word begins with silence. After a prayer, there are readings from Isaiah 52 and 53 (about the suffering Servant), Psalm 31 (a great Messianic psalm), and the epistle to the Hebrews (about Christ the new and eternal high priest). Each of these readings draws out the mystery of the suffering Messiah who conquers through death and who is revealed through what seemingly destroys Him. Then the Passion from the Gospel of John (18:1-19:42) is proclaimed, often by several different lectors reading respective parts (Jesus, the guards, Peter, Caiaphas the high priest, Pilate, the soldiers). In this reading the great drama of the Passion unfolds, with Jew and Gentile, male and female, and the powerful and the weak all revealed for who they are and how their choices to follow or deny Christ will affect their lives and the lives of others.

The simple, direct form of the Good Friday liturgy and readings brings the faithful face to face with the cross, the great scandal and paradox of Christianity. The cross is solemnly venerated after intercessory prayers are offered for the world and for all people. The deacon (or another minister) brings out the veiled cross in procession. The priest takes the cross, stands with it in front of the altar and faces the people, then uncovers the upper part of the cross, the right arm of the cross, and then the entire cross. As he unveils each part, he sings, "This is the wood of the cross." He places the cross and then venerates it; other clergy, lay ministers, and the faithful then approach and venerate the cross by touching or kissing it. In this way each person acknowledges the instrument of Christ’s death and publicly demonstrates their willingness to take up their cross and follow Christ, regardless of what trials and sufferings it might involve.

Afterward, the faithful receive Communion and then depart silently. In the Byzantine rite, Communion is not even offered on this day. At Vespers a "shroud" bearing a painting of the lifeless Christ is carried in a burial procession, and the faithful keep vigil before it through the night.

Holy Saturday and Easter Vigil | The Mother of All Vigils

The ancient Church celebrated Holy Saturday with strict fasting in preparation of the celebration of Easter. After sundown the Christians would hold an all-night vigil, which concluded with baptism and Eucharist at the break of dawn. The same idea (if not the identical timeline) is found in the Easter Vigil today, which is the high point of the Easter Triduum and is filled with an abundance of readings, symbols, ceremony, and sacraments.

The Easter Vigil, the Church states, ranks "the mother of all vigils" (General Norms, 21). Being a vigil – a time of anticipation and preparation – it takes place at night, starting after nightfall and finishing before daybreak on Easter, thus beginning and ending in darkness. It consists of four general parts: the Service of Light, the Liturgy of the Word, Christian Initiation, and Liturgy of the Eucharist.

The Service of Light begins outdoors (or in a space outside of the main sanctuary) and in darkness. A fire is lit and blessed, and then the Paschal candle, which symbolizes the light of Christ, is lit from the fire by the priest, who proclaims: "May the light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds." The biblical themes of light removing darkness and life overcoming death suffuse the entire Vigil. The Paschal candle will be placed in the sanctuary (usually by the altar) for the Easter season, then will be kept in the baptistery so that when the sacrament of baptism is administered the candles of the baptized can be lit from it.

The faithful then join in procession back to the main sanctuary. The deacon (or priest, if no deacon is present), carries the Paschal Candle, lifting it three different times and chanting: "Christ our Light!" The people respond by singing, "Thanks be to God!" Everyone’s candles are lit from the Paschal candle and the faithful return in procession into the sanctuary. Then the Exultet is sung by the deacon (or priest or cantor). This is an ancient and beautiful poetic hymn of praise to God for the light of the Paschal candle. It may be as old as Saint Ambrose (d. 397) and has been part of the Roman tradition since the ninth century. In the darkness of the church, lit only by candles, the faithful listen to the song of light and glory:

Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,
radiant in the brightness of your King!
Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!
Darkness vanishes for ever!

And, concluding:

May the Morning Star which never sets
find this flame still burning:
Christ, that Morning Star,
who came back from the dead,
and shed his peaceful light on all mankind,
your Son, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

The Liturgy of the Word follows, consisting of seven readings from the Old Testament and two from the New Testament. These readings include the story of creation (Genesis 1 and 2), Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22), the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 14 and 15), the prophet Isaiah proclaiming God’s love (Isaiah 54), Isaiah’s exhortation to seek God (Isaiah 55), a passage from Baruch about the glory of God (Baruch 3 and 4), a prophecy of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 36), Saint Paul on being baptized into Jesus Christ (Rom 6), and the Gospel of Luke about the empty tomb discovered on Easter morning (Luke 24:1-21).

These readings constitute an overview of salvation history and God’s various interventions into time and space, beginning with Creation and concluding with the angel telling Mary Magdalene and others that Jesus is no longer dead; "You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; he is not here." Through these readings "the Lord ‘beginning with Moses and all the prophets’ (Lk 24.27, 44-45) meets us once again on our journey and, opening up our minds and hearts, prepares us to share in the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup" (General Norms, 11).

Some of the readings are focused on baptism, that sacrament which brings man into saving communion with God’s divine life. Consider, for example, Saint Paul’s remarks in Romans 6: "We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life." Easter is in many ways the season of baptism, the sacrament of Christian initiation, in which those who formally lived in darkness and death are buried and baptized in Christ, emerging filled with light and life.

From the early days of the ancient Church the Easter Vigil has been the time for adult converts to be baptized and enter the Church. After the conclusion of the Liturgy of the Word, catechumens (those who have never been baptized) and candidates (those who have been baptized in a non-Catholic Christian denomination) are initiated into the Church by (respectively) baptism and confirmation. The faithful are sprinkled with holy water and renew their baptismal vows. Then all adult candidates are confirmed and general intercessions are stated. The Easter Vigil concludes with the Liturgy of the Eucharist and the reception of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Crucified and Risen Lord. For as Eastern Catholics sing hundreds of times during the Paschal season, "Christ is risen from the dead; by death He conquered death, and to those in the graves, He granted life!"

(This article was originally published in a slightly different form in the April 9, 2006, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

My Ways or Your Ways?

My Ways or Your Ways? | Fr. David Vincent Meconi, SJ | HPR

What do ISIS, the Chinese government, and many Catholics have in common? It begins like a bad joke, I know, but none of them allows Christ’s Church to carry out her mission fully.

Reading the papers these past few weeks only confirms a convergence between the Church’s enemies: ISIS takes 300 of our faithful as hostages and threatens their martyrdom unless they recant the Faith, Beijing rebels against Vatican-appointed bishops, and so many of our so-called Catholic institutions are fighting the removal of abortion coverage from their insurance policies.

In talking about these instances with a dear friend, I learned that all of this reminded her of the line from Ezekiel when the chosen people are grumbling against God: “But the house of Israel says, ‘The Lord’s way is not fair!’ Is it my way that is not fair, house of Israel? Is it not your ways that are not fair?” (Ezekiel 18:29). Who is not being fair? By definition, two contrarily-opposed parties cannot both be right. The bishop who teaches one thing, and the people who demand another cannot both be correct. Who, then, is being fair?

While the popular media are loathe to report it through this particular religious lens, a large part of ISIS’s pattern of violence is unarguably against Christians and particularly Catholics. Most recently, over 300 members of ancient Christian families in Assyria were taken hostage in Northeastern Syria. Extremist groups are slowly, systematically aiming to eradicate all who disagree with their interpretation of the Quran (including other Muslims), and the Church’s faithful are the most obvious targets. God is in no way done in these lands that deny him, and one day, these terrorists will come to see what Tertullian (Apology §50, around AD 197) meant, when he said “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.” These otherwise unknown men, women, and children will hereafter be prayed for and remembered at every Christian liturgy throughout the world as, “blessed Apostles, martyrs, and all the saints …”.

Some 3,500 miles farther to the East, the Chinese government is also helping the Church mystically grow.

Continue reading at www.HPRweb.com.