Mama Maggie: the 'Mother Teresa of Cairo' inspires Coptic Christians
By Lauren Green Published April 03, 2015 FoxNews.com
The brutal beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians at the hands of ISIS terrorists shocked the world. But almost as worldview shattering was the strong faith of the victims, even in the face of certain death. Now we know where their faith may have came from. Her name is Mama Maggie. She's a Coptic Christian who, though she has never taken formal vows, is known as the Mother Teresa of Cairo. For two decades she has served the children in Egypt's slums through her organization, Stephen's Children, named after the first century Christian martyr. Seven of the men who were beheaded came out of her schools. Five of them she knew by name. In an interview on FoxNews.com’s “Spirited Debate,” the diminutive Mama Maggie said that when those young men were children growing up in her schools, she ate with them and prayed with them. "Yes,” she said, “they are my boys." The men were in Libya, looking for work to support their families in Egypt, when they were captured. As they faced death, they were said to have called on the name of Jesus. Mama Maggie explained how these simple men had such faith. "From Him, firstly, because they experienced a real touch of love." Then she pointed out the stark contrast between those who were killed and those who did the killing — and how their demeanors spoke volumes about what they believe. “If you look at the picture you find the one who is trying to kill is covering his face,” Mama Maggie said. “He's afraid to face the world with who he is. And [the 21 Copts] have their identity, their self-respect and self-esteem clear. And they are looking up knowing they are going to live forever. I think it's a huge difference." Unlike Mother Teresa, Mama Maggie came from upper-middle-class beginnings. Born Maggie Gobran, she became a professor at the American University in Cairo, a socialite and a successful businesswoman. But she gave up her career after she saw children living in abject poverty and decided to help them, said Dr. Marty Makary, co-author of a biography on Mama Maggie. "She visited a young child that was the same age and looked like her own daughter,” Makary said. “She couldn't sleep, and over months began to go back on her own and bring friends and sell some of her own things to generate money to help this child.” "When the child took her back to the child's family, Mama Maggie saw the home and eight other kids living there, she realized she got more happiness out of serving that family than she did her job and traditional wealth." Now 65 years old, Mama Maggie has served and educated some 30,000 low-income families in overwhelmingly Muslim Egypt, where Coptic Christians struggle as second-class citizens. Stephen's Children is named after St. Stephen, one of the deacons of the early Christian Church whose martyrdom was not unlike today's Copts. When he was stoned to death for his beliefs, he was said to have looked calmly toward the heavens and saying he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. As he was dying, he's said to have uttered the words, "Lord Jesus receive my spirit." "He fell to his knees and begged God not to punish his enemies for killing him." But Stephen's story didn’t end there, and perhaps the same will be said of today's Coptic martyrs someday. Among those encouraging the stoning of Stephen was Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee, who was a zealous persecutor of the early Christians. Later, Saul would encounter a risen Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus and be transformed into Christianity's chief witness and teacher — Paul, who wrote nearly half the books of the New Testament. If there turns out to have been a Paul among the Sauls of ISIS, Mama Maggie may have had a hand in it.If there turns out to have been a Paul among the Sauls of ISIS, Mama Maggie may have had a hand in it.
It is said that this procession is the largest Catholic procession in the world. According to Raúl Porras Barrenechea, it was painted by a freed Angolan slave called Pedro Dalcon , also called Benito. Later God the Father, the Blessed Virgin nd Mary Magdalene, were included in the picture. The icon is called "the Brown Christ ",(el Cristo Moreno) because its first devotees were predominantly of African descent. According to the historian Maria Rostworowski, it replaced devotion to the idol of "Lord Pachacamac" who protected the population from earth tremors.
According to the legend, the African Benito painted the image on an adobe wall of his own home. The wall had a rough surface, and Benito had no training whatsoever in painting. He died after finishing it. His neighbours were attracted to house by the sound of heavenly choirs and, on entering, found his body and the finished painting. The house became the meeting place for the "confraternity" which slaves and ex-slaves formed to give them their own space in an alien Spanish world, as well as to pray.
A few years later, on the 13th November 1655, at quarter to three in the afternoon, Lima and the port of Callao were hit with an extremely strong earthquake, and churches, mansions, as well as street after street of ordinary dwellings crashed to the ground, including the house of Benito. However, miracle of miracles, the poor, unstable adobe wall which depicted the image of Christ Crucified was standing firm and untouched, all by itself. The devotion to "Señor de los Milagros" was born.
African slaves and ex-slaves came together on a regular basis in large numbers, and they were joined by crowds of native American Indians to pray to their new Protector. It just happened that a large part of the population in this slum was made up of native Indians who had been displaced by the Spanish from Pachacamac in the south of Lima, a place where there was an enormous temple complex to the god Pachacamac who protected the population from earthquakes. The adobe wall with its painting that had stayed up when all else was flattened made "Señor de los Milagros" a good candidate to replace Pachacamac.
Perhaps now is the time to explain the place images like the "Lord of the Miracles" have in Hispanic America. When I first came out, I was a little shocked - a shock tempered with interest and a little wonder - at the place images had in the Christian lives of the common people. One day, I met a peasant who was highly articulate and intelligent, even though is formal education was poor. I took the opportunity to ask him. He paused for a moment, and then said, "When an image is blessed by the Church, it becomes a point of contact between God and ourselves." Think for a moment; we are baptised into the presence of Christ, Our Lady, the angels and the saints, united by Christ through the Holy Spirit with them in the presence of the Father. When we live in this dimension, we are intimately united to them through the Spirit, and they are all around us. Images pinpoint to us that presence and help us in our weakness to live in their company.
Peru: the festival of the Señor de los Milagros (Lord of Miracles)
The festival of the Señor de los Milagros (Lord of Miracles) is one of the most important religious phenomena of popular Catholicism in Peru. Each year the procession of the Lord of Miracles is bigger and more beautiful. Marco Simola tells the story of the festival, illustrated by beautiful photographs he took this year. [To be seen here]
In the middle of seventeenth century, Lima, which today has more than eight million citizens, had only 35,000 residents. This number increased steadily from that point onwards with the arrival of thousands of people driven by the desire for a better standard of living in the Peruvian capital.
Most of these immigrants were from the Atlantic coast of western Africa, which in these days contained Portuguese colonies. These groups consisted of tribes such as Congos, Mantengas, Bozales, Cambundas, Misangas, Mozambiques, Terranovas, Carabelíes, Lúcumos, Minas and Angolas.
The Angolas were members of brotherhoods who venerated different images, carrying out related religious acts in which they remembered their freedom and nostalgically sang the songs of their ancestors in their own languages; they also tended the sick, and gave their members a decent burial through the payment of small subscriptions by the brothers.
In 1650 the various groups of Angolas united and created a joint brotherhood in the Pachacamilla district, where indigenous people from Pachacamac had previously lived, and where stands the church and monastery of Nazarenas and the building of the brotherhood of the Señor de los Milagros (Lord of Miracles). Their life conditions were those of absolutely poverty.
In the brotherhood's house there were large mud walls; on one of these, situated in a room where the brothers used to gather daily, one of the Angolas created an image, done in tempera, of Christ on the cross.
On the afternoon of 13 of November 1655, at 2:45 in the afternoon, a terrible earthquake changed the face of Lima and Callao, destroying churches and homes, and leaving thousand of dead and homeless. The earthquake strongly affected the Pachacamilla district, and all the Angolas' houses collapsed, including that of the brotherhood; but miraculously, the wall containing the image of Christ on the cross escaped unharmed.
As a result of the earthquake, the Angolas move to another area, leaving the wall with the sacred image in a state of dereliction. Fifteen years later, Antonio León, an inhabitant of the San Sebastian parish, saw the image of the Christ on the cross painted on this wall. Even though the wall was very damp and the building that had housed it was in ruins, the Christ image was still in the same perfect condition as the first day it was painted.
Truly astonished at what he saw, Leon tidied up the place and built an altar, until he was obliged to stop work due to a strange pain that affected him. By a miracle, the pain disappeared after some days and he returned to the religious image in order to honour it with harps, cajones and musicians. According to the reports of the period, Leon was the first to take care of the place, little knowing that from that point onward intense devotion to the sacred image of the Pachacamilla Christ would start. Leon was therefore the member of the Lord of Miracles cult as we know it today.
Among the believers who made up this growing cult, coloured people were predominant. They gathered each Friday night to sing prayers to the Christ, helped by the sound of the harps, cajones and vihuelas, a sort of little guitar.
Because so many people attended these gatherings, more for the novelty than out of devotion, often official Catholic religious practices were not followed. So civil and ecclesiastic authorities forbade the gatherings and ordered that the image of the Christ and of the other saints present on the wall should be erased. This order was to be carried out in the period 6-13 September of 1671 by a group of people among whom were a representative of the local archbishop, a notary, an Indian painter and the captain of the Viceroy army, Don Pedro Balcázar, escorted by two groups of soldiers in case of trouble from the curious people who crowded the place.
The legend says that, when the painter climbed up a ladder placed against the wall, he immediately started to experience tremors and shakes in his entire body, and was obliged to climb down, helped by his companions. After a while, he tried again to climb up and erase the image, but became so fearful that he could not start the job, so he rapidly climbed down and disappeared. Another man, a soldier of Balcázar, climbed up a ladder, but immediately climbed down, saying that he saw the image become more and more beautiful, while the crown turned green. For that reason, he did not obey the order to erase the image.
Because of these strange events, people started protesting loudly and threatening the group sent to erase the image, obliging them to run away. Once the Viceroy knew what had happened and had reflected carefully on the incident, he decided to cancel the order to erase the image and granted people the right to venerate it instead.
On 14 September 1671 the first mass was celebrated in front of the crucified Christ of Pachacamilla, and from that day onward the number of devotees grew steadily. Soon the image started to be called the 'The Lord of Miracles or of Wonders'.
During October 1687 a seaquake razed the city of Callao and part of the city of Lima and destroyed the chapel built in honour of the Christ image. But by a miracle, the wall containing the image of Christ remained undamaged [again].
After this terrible event, a three-dimensional image of the painting was made in the form of a statue and was carried shoulder high through the streets of Pachacamilla district, an act that was performed each year.
The Lord of Miracles is one of the most important religious phenomena of popular Catholicism. However, although the first mass was celebrated in 1671, organized by the new brotherhood of the Lord of Miracles of the Nazarenas, it was only in 1940 that religious historians started to be interested in it, due to the number of devotes and the interest it had generated.
Each year the procession of the Lord of Miracles is bigger and more beautiful. The old litter has been replaced by a sterling silver one, which is cared for by particular staff in a dedicated room in the monastery that now stands on the site of the original painting. During the procession, male devotees organized into squads of 36 bearers carry the icon through the streets of Central Lima. They are the cargadores, or 'carriers', a brotherhood charged with transporting the heavy statue. The spiritual significance of carrying the image is so great that to enter the fellowship one must have a patron and pass through a long period of trial and spiritual apprenticeship. The procession attracts hundreds of thousands of devotees and celebrants, who crowd through the streets of the city, singing and dancing, while vendors sell spiritual trinkets and medallions, together with a wide variety of typical dishes and sweets, including Turrón de Doña Pepa, a delicious soft and sweet paste made with eggs, butter, flour, anis and fruit syrup.
The sterling silver litter that bears the statue is borne on the shoulders of believers who set out on the traditional 24-hour procession from the church of Las Nazarenas, crossing downtown Lima until it reaches the church of La Merced in Barrios Altos. Each of the 4,300 carriers bears on his shoulder a weight of 50 kg, and must walk for a period of 15 minutes to cover a distance of 80 metres.
In front of the image march the sahumadoras, a group of 244 Catholic sisters clad in the purple robes that mark devotion to the Lord of Miracles and waving incense burners. Immediately behind them walk the 'cantadoras', the 320 women singers who intone the hymns and devotional songs that accompany the procession. Many other minor figures, including penitents, musicians, vendors and peddlers, have become fixtures of the procession. Anyone interested should look out for the civilians in purple clothes, many of whom wear them as a sign of gratitude for a received miracle; some wear these clothes for up to a year.
Believers or not, no one forgets to join the procession in purple clothes. In June people start to buy or prepare the purple clothes, and normally between 700 and 950 outfits for men, women and children are sold by the little shops around the Nazarenas Church. These shops also sell religious articles such as candles of different sizes, religious images of Christ and the saints, incense, etc.
So, what does this have to do with food? Well, as to be expected, there are special foods associated with such an important religious occasion. Three of the most traditional Peruvian foods eaten at this time are turrón, anticuchos, and picarones.
No one really knows the origin of the sweet layered pastry popularly called turrón de Doña Pepa. Legend has it that was invented by the lady in a wealthy Lima family, although others claim that its origins are with a cook of African descent known as ‘ña Pepa. What is known about this unique style of turrón (since there is a similarly named dish in other Spanish-speaking countries, although all are different from one another) is that it has long been associated with the celebrations in honor of El Señor de los Milagros, when this sweet is consumed with almost religious devotion.
Anticuchos, grilled meat on a skewer, is another popular food during the month of October. According to researchers, the name comes from the Quechua word antikucho, meaning ‘Andean cut’ or ‘Andean mix’. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, these types of brochettes were made with llama or other local meats. In the 1500s, the Spanish began preparing something similar to the modern day anticucho, substituting beef for llama. Once again the influence of Africans resonates in Peruvian culinary and cultural history. The Spanish would give their African slaves the parts of the cow they wouldn’t eat themselves. This included the beef heart. The slaves took the beef heart and seasoned it heavily prior to marinating it and then grilling it in imitation of their masters. Over time, the beef heart anticuchos would become the Peruvian favorite. They are still one of the most popular street foods available in Peru, and during El Señor de los Milagros, anticucho sellers set up grills in the late afternoon, tempting passersby with the aromatic smells of seasoned grilled meats.
Finally, picarones are pumpkin fritters that are also eaten as late-afternoon street food during El Señor de los Milagros celebrations. This is another dish that has its origins in the colonial period. Some believe they are a local adaptation of Spanish buñuelos. Picarones are made of squash or pumpkin dough and sweetened with chancaca, raw cane sugar melted into a syrup. I have a post about picarones which includes a recipe for this tasty dessert.
During el mes morado, the purple month, Peruvians demonstrate their loyalty not only to their religious beliefs but also to their culinary traditions
Because of the years of dialogue after the second world war between the Catholic ressourcement theologians who were living under a cloud of Vatican suspicion in France, and the refugee Russian Orthodox theologians of the Institut Saint-Serge who were also held in a certain amount of suspicion back home in Russia for the simple fact that they lived in the West, and because Archbishop Roncalli was papal nuncio in Paris at the time, all the ingredients were present that would result in a gradual coming together of Catholic and Orthodox thought.
Both groups of theologians, quite separately from one another, were greatly troubled at the lack of influence that their respective churches had on the modern world in which they lived. Why wasn't the Gospel heard in modern industrial France; and why had the Russian Church been no match to Bolshevism in gaining the allegiance of the Russian worker. Being theologians,both groups blamed the current theology in their churches for being inadequate to support the mission of the Church in the modern world.
To their mutual surprise when they met, both had identified the same enemy, western scholastic theology as it was normally understood and taught. Both saw an appeal to Tradition as the antidote; and, even though the Catholic theologians focused mainly on western patristic tradition, like St Augustine, St Bernard and a fresh look at St Thomas Aquinas and St Bonaventure etc, while the Orthodox concentrated on the eastern patristic tradition, like the Cappadocians, St Gregory Palamas and the Hesychasts, nevertheless, they all recognised that eastern and western traditions originally formed a single complementary whole; and this gave them a lot to talk about. Moreover, de Lubac and Danielou, two of the Jesuit theologians, started making patristic texts of East and West readily available in Sources Chretiennes.
Archbishop Roncalli became Pope John XXIII and invited these French theologians out from the cold of Vatican disapproval and into his nice, warm council where they had the chance to apply
the principles of ressourcement to the Church’s problems. Their influence in the Council increased as many highly gifted theologians joined them, including Wojtyla of Crakow and Joseph Ratzinger, and they brought with
them the fruit of their grasp of the patristic theology and of their dialogue with the Orthodox. Eucharistic ecclesiology was officially endorsed in the very first document on the liturgy, and theosis or deification became
central.
For them, Tradition arises out of the theological history of eucharistic communities which have their origin in the Apostolic preaching and where the Holy Spirit and the Church act in synergy
to transform their members into the body of Christ. Thus, although all churches are identical as body of Christ so that Tradition forms a coherent whole worldwide because there is only one Holy Spirit, it arises from the
life of each local church and bears its stamp. Regional differences are inevitable both in theological formulation, in the way the liturgy is celebrated, and in pastoral concerns. Nevertheless, there is a continuous quest
for the inner coherence of all parts with the whole, a diversity in unity that reflects at all levels the life in the one Holy Spirit. The bishops who represent Catholicism in its local and regional form are enabled by communion
with Rome to share a single life as a single organism in the unity of the Holy Spirit at a universal level.
Of course, all this is theory, and the reality is more complicated. When East and West separated - there are different views as to when that was - neither side was aware of any break with the past, and, therefore, each side regarded the other as having left the Catholic Church of the Creed and came to regard its own tradition as whole and complete. This led to an impoverishment on both sides. Both sides are the body of Christ through the Eucharist which is the source of all their powers as Church. They are thus embodiments of the synergy between the Holy Spirit and the Church that is prayed for at the epiclesis and which gives their Tradition its authentic character. Each church should be able to recognise in the Tradition of the other its own authentic Catholicity; but there is one huge obstacle - the schism between them.
Whatever the position that the Bishop of Rome plays as successor of St Peter, the schism means that he has been unable to represent Tradition as held by the East because the faith experience
of the East has differed from that of the West because of different histories and different contexts. The same is true that much of western Tradition has been closed to the East. Each has held onto Catholic Tradition, but
without the insights of the other side. Both have held on to the whole because the whole is not a set of true insights but the incarnate Lord; both have held onto doctrinal truth with the aid of the Holy Spirit; but their
formulations and understanding of doctrinal truth lack the profundity and universal appeal that they would have had if there had been no schism. PAPAL PRIMACY
Let us take papal primacy as an example. Vatican I defined it so:
9. So, then, if anyone says that the Roman Pontiff has merely an office of supervision and guidance, and not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole Church, and this
not only in matters of faith and morals, but also in those which concern the discipline and government of the Church dispersed throughout the whole world; or that he has only the principal part, but not the absolute fullness,
of this supreme power; or that this power of his is not ordinary and immediate both over all and each of the Churches and over all and each of the pastors and faithful: let him be anathema.
This definition sees the Church as a society, bound together by law, with the pope as its head. Vatican II, on the other hand, had a different paradigm: the Church is a Communion in
the very trinitarian life of God, the body of Christ, in which all its powers arise from its sacramental structure: “Where the Eucharist is, there is the Church.” We have seen the “Ressourcement” theologians,
and their understanding of Tradition.
In a lecture on the ecclesiology of Vatican II, given in Graz, Austria, in 1976, Professor Joseph Ratzinger said the following:
Although it is not given to us to halt the flight of history, to change the course of centuries, we may say, nevertheless, that what was possible for a thousand years is not impossible
for Christians today...Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium. When the Patriarch Athenagoras, on July 25, 1967,...designated
[the Pope] as the successor of St. Peter, as the most esteemed among us, as one who presides in charity, this great Church leader was expressing the essential content of the doctrine of primacy as it was known in the first
millennium. Rome need not ask for more. Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would
accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox in the form she has
always had.
Source: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), page 199 THE CHIETI DECLARATION
This principle, that what was allowable in the first thousand years must be possible ever afterwards is accepted by the theologians of the Eastern Orthodox - Catholic dialogue
and is assumed in the “Chieti Declaration on Synodality and Primacy” of 2016.
This declaration shows that, by sifting through the Scriptural and Patristic evidence, Catholics and Orthodox are reading from the same script and basically have the same understanding
of the Church. It begins:
‘We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have communion [koinonia] with us; and truly our communion [koinonia] is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.’ (1Jn 1:3-4)1. Ecclesial communion arises directly from the Incarnation of the eternal Word of God, according to the goodwill (eudokia) of the Father, through the Holy Spirit. Christ, having come
on earth, founded the Church as his body (cf. 1Cor 12:12-27). The unity that exists among the Persons of the Trinity is reflected in the communion (koinonia) of the members of the Church with one another. Thus, as St Maximus
the Confessor affirmed, the Church is an ‘eikon’ of the Holy Trinity.1 At the Last Supper, Jesus Christ prayed to his Father: ‘Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as
we are one’ (Jn 17:11). This Trinitarian unity is manifested in the Holy Eucharist, wherein the Church prays to God the Father through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.2. From earliest times, the one Church existed as many local churches. The communion (koinonia) of the Holy Spirit (cf. 2Cor 13:13) was experienced both within each local church and
in the relations between them as a unity in diversity. Under the guidance of the Spirit (cf. Jn 16:13), the Church developed patterns of order and various practices in accordance with its nature as ‘a people brought
into unity from the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’
The declaration then goes on to speak of synodality and primacy:
3. Synodality is a fundamental quality of the Church as a whole. As St John Chrysostom said: ‘"Church" means both gathering [systema] and synod [synodos]’.(3) The
term comes from the word ‘council’ (synodos in Greek, concilium in Latin), which primarily denotes a gathering of bishops, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, for common deliberation and action in caring for
the Church. Broadly, it refers to the active participation of all the faithful in the life and mission of the Church.
4. The term primacy refers to being the first (primus, protos). In the Church, primacy belongs to her Head – Jesus Christ, ‘who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead;
that in all things he might have the pre-eminence [protevon]’ (Col. 1:18). Christian Tradition makes it clear that, within the synodal life of the Church at various levels, a bishop has been acknowledged as the ‘first’.
Jesus Christ associates this being ‘first’ with service (diakonia): ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all’ (Mk 9:35).
It expands on these two themes and follows their development down the centuries. Then it comes up with a theological judgement and a historical judgement which, when taken together
are a real bombshell.
The first is theological and has been repeated several times since Professor Ratzinger first made it.
7. The history of the Church in the first millennium is decisive. Despite certain temporary ruptures, Christians from East and West lived in communion during that time, and, within
that context, the essential structures of the Church were constituted. The relationship between synodality and primacy took various forms, which can give vital guidance to Orthodox and Catholics in their efforts to restore
full communion today.
The second contradicts the claim of Vatican I that papal jurisdiction was universally accepted in early Church:
15. Between the fourth and the seventh centuries, the order (taxis) of the five patriarchal sees came to be recognised, based on and sanctioned by the ecumenical councils, with the see
of Rome occupying the first place, exercising a primacy of honour (presbeia tes times), followed by the sees of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, in that specific order, according to the canonical tradition.(11)16. In the West, the primacy of the see of Rome was understood, particularly from the fourth century onwards, with reference to Peter’s role among the Apostles. The primacy of
the bishop of Rome among the bishops was gradually interpreted as a prerogative that was his because he was successor of Peter, the first of the apostles.(12) This understanding was not adopted in the East, which had a different
interpretation of the Scriptures and the Fathers on this point. Our dialogue may return to this matter in the future.19. .. Such appeals to major sees were always treated in a synodical way. Appeals to the bishop of Rome from the East expressed the communion of the Church, but the bishop of Rome did not exercise canonical authority over the churches of the East.
What can I, as a Catholic, say of these events? The Chieti Declaration has been agreed by both Catholic and Orthodox theologians and has been
published by the Vatican. Where does it leave the Vatican I definition?
One of the principles of ressourcement interpretation is that Tradition in any century is the product of the synergy between the Holy Spirit and the Church: in no particular generation or century is this more or less true. In a particular instance,
there may well be the need to interpret a particular text in the light of an earlier understanding of a truth. There is a solid reason why we should give special importance to the first milenium, as the Chieti Declaration
says: all the elements of our common heritage were there and functioning; both sides were enjoying the fullness of Catholicism in the judgement of the other; and it is important to know what they held in common.
A Catholic is not asked to accept as having been guided by the charism of infallibility the historical judgement contained in a papal definition, nor
is he asked to accept that a truth is expressed in the best possible way. What he is challenged to accept is that an important truth is being expressed, one of lasting worth to the Church, even though in the unforeseen event
of it having to be put in a wider ecumenical context it may have to be re-formulated, in the interests of the truth itself.
That, in fact is what is happening. Firstly it is being admitted that papal primacy requires episcopal synodality. Pope Francis, in the ceremony to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Synod of Bishops, said:
The world in which we live, and which we are called to love and serve, even with its contradictions, demands that the Church strengthen cooperation in all areas of her mission.
It is precisely this path of synodality which God expects of the Church of the third millennium.What the Lord is asking of us is already in some sense present in the very word “synod”. Journeying together — laity, pastors, the Bishop of Rome — is an
easy concept to put into words, but not so easy to put into practice.A synodal Church is a Church which listens, which realizes that listening “is more than simply hearing”.(12) It is a mutual listening in which everyone has something
to learn. The faithful people, the college of bishops, the Bishop of Rome: all listening to each other, and all listening to the Holy Spirit, the “Spirit of truth” (Jn 14:17), in order to know what he “says
to the Churches” (Rev 2:7).The Synod of Bishops is the point of convergence of this listening process conducted at every level of the Church’s life. The Synod process begins by listening to the people
of God, which “shares also in Christ’s prophetic office”,(13) according to a principle dear to the Church of the first millennium: “Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus tractari debet”. The Synod process
then continues by listening to the pastors. Through the Synod Fathers, the bishops act as authentic guardians, interpreters and witnesses of the faith of the whole Church, which they need to discern carefully from the changing
currents of public opinion. On the eve of last year’s Synod I stated: “For the Synod Fathers we ask the Holy Spirit first of all for the gift of listening: to listen to God, so that with him we may hear the cry
of his people; to listen to his people until we are in harmony with the will to which God calls us”.(14) The Synod process culminates in listening to the Bishop of Rome, who is called to speak as “pastor and teacher
of all Christians”,(15) not on the basis of his personal convictions but as the supreme witness to the fides totius Ecclesiae, “the guarantor of the obedience and the conformity of the Church to the will of God,
to the Gospel of Christ, and to the Tradition of the Church”.(16)
After all this and much more, Pope Francis says that synodality is a constitutive of the Church, which is what Orthodoxy has been telling us all the time:
Synodality, as a constitutive element of the Church, offers us the most appropriate interpretive framework for understanding the hierarchical ministry itself. If we understand,
as Saint John Chrysostom says, that “Church and Synod are synonymous”,(19) inasmuch as the Church is nothing other than the “journeying together” of God’s flock along the paths of history towards
the encounter with Christ the Lord, then we understand too that, within the Church, no one can be “raised up” higher than others. On the contrary, in the Church, it is necessary that each person “lower”
himself or herself, so as to serve our brothers and sisters along the way.
Finally, Pope Francis speaks of the essential difference between secular authority and Christian authority. The late Roman Empire could not exercise its authority in the West because
it lacked the power to enforce it; but Christ gave no such power to the Church. The basis of law is power. In contrast:
Let us never forget this! For the disciples of Jesus, yesterday, today and always, the only authority is the authority of service, the only power is the power of the cross. As the
Master tells us: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant,
and whoever would be first among you must be your slave” (Mt 20:25-27). It shall not be so among you: in this expression we touch the heart of the mystery of the Church, and we receive the enlightenment necessary to
understand our hierarchical service.
Orthodoxy looked at the papacy and saw earthly power and rejected it. In Christianity, “ the only authority is the authority of service, the only power is the power of the
cross.” It may look the same as civil law, use the same legal tradition, express itself in the same language; but if it is not based on ecclesial love, if it is not exercised with ecclesial love, and if ecclesial love
is not the goal, it is not the real thing.
In this article, I have tried to demonstrated how our understanding of the papacy has been enriched by dialogue with Eastern Tradition. It even explains to us how the papacy worked
in the first milenium without any dogma about the papacy and how it would work if reunion happened without their accepting the Vatican definitions. Ultimately, the papacy is about ecclesial communion: when ecclesial communion
works, when the impetus to command and to obey is ecclesial love based on mutual listening, then the papacy is not a problem. When the pope and those he opposes mount their high horses and hurl insults and excommunications
at each other from afar, no papal dogma will help. It also shows how the pope can act as pope even when there is division. Pope Francis has said that arguments about the extent of papal power are only arguments about how
many feet he can wash. If he loves the lot, no one will complain.
However, the petrine ministry is only an example. Precisely because Catholics and Orthodox participate in the same Eucharist, their versions of Tradition belong to one another.
They become distorted when they are separate and can enrich each other immeasurably when united; and this is so, even if the union we pray for never happens. Even where we disagree, we can learn positive lessons as we examine
these disagreements. These other articles continue on this theme.
Light from the Christian West: Aquinas and Eastern Orthodoxy
Marcus Plested has done some important work to try to correct the tendency among Eastern Orthodox Christians to look upon Thomas Aquinas as the arch-villein of Western theology.Plested is Vice-Principal and Academic Director for the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies at Cambridge. He is also the author of the book Orthodox Readings of Aquinas, which Andrew Louth summarized at First Things. Louth wrote:
The interest in Aquinas in the Byzantine East in the last century of the Byzantine Empire was not paralleled in the West, where Thomas’s star was already declining in the face of attacks by Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, the rise of nominalism in philosophy, and the dissolution of his rational metaphysics by the “two powers” doctrine in theology. It was only with Pope Leo XIII’s bull Aeterni Patris (1879) that Thomas’s role as the Catholic theologian, the doctor communis, became assured.… Enthusiasm for Thomas was felt throughout the intellectual world of late Byzantium… Despite the recent tendency in Orthodox circles to oppose Aquinas and Gregory Palamas, Hesychasm’s main theological defender, there is little sense of this in the fourteenth century. Prominent supporters of Palamas, such as Nicholas Cabasilas and Theophanes of Nicaea, made enthusiastic use of elements of Aquinas’s theology…. The astonishing receptivity to Aquinas among Orthodox thinkers seemed to falter in the last century. Aquinas became a cipher for the alleged failures of the West: a narrow, juridical rationalism, an overweening confidence in human understanding of God.
I have not read Orthodox Readings of Aquinas, but I have read Plested’s essay “Byzantine Readings of Aquinas” in the volume Orthodox Constructions of the West. This book was put together from the papers presented at a conference sponsored by the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University in 2010, where various scholars attempted to critique the hermetic self-definitions of Orthodoxy that emerge from a simplistic approach to East-West narratives in theological discourse. In Plested’s essay on Aquinas, he summarizes evidence he amassed from painstaking study of theological writers during the late Byzantine empire, demonstrating that Eastern thinkers were able to have a sophisticated level of critical engagement with Aquinas’ thought. Significantly, only one Byzantine writer ever spoke of Aquinas as the apotheosis of Western error in the type of way that would become commonplace for twentieth-century Orthodox writers. Here is what Plested writes considering the reception of Aquinas into Byzantine scholasticism:
The Palamite party itself betrayed no particular animosity to Western theology per se. Palamas himself was impressed by Augustine, drawing discretely on Maximos Planoudes’s translation of the De Trinitate, and making intriguing use of some Augustinian themes and concepts. As heir to a long tradition of Byzantine Scholasticism, he vigorously defended in Aristotelian terms the proper use of reasoned argumentation against the theological agnosticism of Barlaam, even going so far as to defend the Latin use of the syllogism….the supposition of methodological incompatibility between East and West is deeply flawed. The considerable enthusiasm for Aquinas across party lines–Palamite and anti-Palamite, unionist and anti-unionist–shows that the situation is far more subtle and complex than such a supposition would imply. Indeed, I know of only one Byzantine critique of Thomas that asserts methodological incompatibility in wholly unambiguous terms. …instinctive hostility to the Scholastic method is, to repeat, relatively rare on the level of sustained theological discourse. It remained perfectly possible in the Byzantine world to receive Western theology sympathetically without compromising one’s Orthodoxy….
The Byzantines who welcomes Thomas did so in a critical fashion. They were quite capable of a sophisticated mode of reception that did not necessarily lead to any form of doctrinal compromise. They also welcomes him not as an alien import from a superior culture but as one of their own, as an exceptionally able exponent of traditional Christian Aristotelianism rooted in Scripture and in the Fathers. It is by no means far-fetched to see in this reception the recognition of the common tradition of Greek East and Latin West, a Christian universalism that was certainly disintegrating but was by no means dead in the water even in the fourteenth century.
Modern theologians, Orthodox and Catholic alike, have tended to take this disintegration of Christian universalism as a given, reading back into the last years of Byzantium a theological gulf that is simply not in evidence at the time. The Byzantine reception of Thomas must prompt us to seriously reconsider the whole issue of theological incompatibility between East and West….
If we are indeed to move beyond the dialectical theologizing that has characterized Orthodox theology in the twentieth century, then the Byzantine reception of Aquinas may serve as a useful starting-point…. It means, in short, regaining the ability to recognize orthodoxy in unfamiliar garb and eschewing any hermetic and reactive form of self-definition. Eastern Orthodoxy is of little value as long as it remains merely Eastern. If Orthodoxy is to have any real purchase in the twenty-first century it is going to have to be both oriental and occidental. Light from the East indeed, but also light from the West.
Fr. Kimel has been hounding me for sometime (OK, maybe that’s not quite correct) to write a post for him here at Eclectic Orthodoxy. Sadly, all of my best ideas were going to my own blog and I was left bereft until I read a post by Fr. Kimel that began with a discussion of the Five Ways in Thomas’ Summa Theologiae. Here was an opportunity to dovetail with something Fr. Kimel has already written, but in a different way. So, today, I would like to discuss with you wonderful readers of Fr. Kimel’s blog the relationship between the Five Ways and deification.
I was first put onto the notion that there is a relationship between the Five Ways and deification by A. N. Williams in her excellent book The Ground of Union. There Williams writes:
The Five Ways thus establish both God’s aseity and his voluntary connectedness to all that exists. The Third and Fourth Ways, moreover, indicate that what God graciously shares with creation are those features of his own life that Aquinas has told and will tell us are most characteristic of divine nature: being, goodness, perfection. In seminal form, the Five Ways argue not only for God’s existence, but also the existence of a Thomistic doctrine of theosis. (p. 41)
For Williams, each of the Five Ways tells us, essentially, one of two things (perhaps sometimes both). On the one hand, God is qualitatively different from creation. He is not simply bigger and better than creation; he is utterly unique in relation to it. On the other hand, God shares his very uniqueness with creation. Put together, or so Williams argues, we see an argument for deification in Thomas Aquinas. Of course, however, we should not simply take her word for it, but investigate the question for ourselves and this is what I will humbly attempt in this post by looking at each of the Five Ways in turn.
The Five Ways, or Five Proofs for God’s Existence, come very early in the Summa Theologiae. This section can be found in ST Ia. 2, 3. It should be noted that the initial question Aquinas is answering in this section is whether or not God exists, not, whether or not the existence of God can be proven (not as we normally mean that today). That is, Aquinas is not so much interested in setting up a series of syllogisms that prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt that God exists. I mention this only because it comes up so often in debates surrounding apologetics. We must remember that the Summa was not written to convert atheists (not by itself, anyway) but to instruct.
The first of Five Ways is often called the argument from motion, though argument from change might be better. Aquinas argues that it is obvious that things move (and by move he does not simply mean locomotion, moving from one place to another, but also change, moving from one state to another, like moving from potentiality to actuality). Everything moves and everything that moves is put into motion by something outside of itself. Aquinas argues, however, that we cannot have an infinite regress. That is, we cannot say that there are an infinite number of movers going back into eternity. The reason there can’t is because if nothing starts the process then the process can never start. Think of it this way: consider the birth of an elephant. What made this elephant capable of being born is that its parents too were born, and so were their parents, and so were their parents’ parents, and so were their parents’ parents’ parents, and so on. However, if this went on into infinity then the baby elephant with which we began could never have been born, for there were no first elephants (or elephant like creatures) to serve as its greatest possible elephant ancestor. Evolutionary biology actually plays this out with the argument that all species derive from a common ancestor. There had to be a first something to crawl out of the primordial ooze to serve as the first parent to the rest of us. Similarly, God serves as the first mover, but in order to be first, he must, unlike everything else, be unmoved. Now, I’ve belabored the point here for this very reason, even the first speck to procreate in the primordial ooze came from something, it was moved, worked upon by outside forces. God is different. He is not worked upon by outside forces, he is unmoved and yet is the cause of all motion. God is qualitatively different from creation in the fact that he is not only the first mover in the series, but is himself unmoved (otherwise he could be first), that is, he is also outside of the series altogether. He is other than we are.
The Second Way is similar. Here God is described as the first, uncaused, efficient cause. I won’t go to the same pains to show why infinite regress cannot exist here as well. Rather what is necessary to understand is that this Way, like the previous, describes God as being intimately related to creation (he moves and causes it) but is also utterly distinct from creation. Traditionally, we would say that God is immanent and transcendent. The point Aquinas appears to be making is that it is God’s transcendence, his being utterly different from creation, that allows him to be immanent.
The Third Way solidifies for us that God is utterly distinct. He is the necessary being. That is, while we can imagine all sorts of things as not having existed and can thus conclude that they don’t need to exist, at one point didn’t exist, and will not always exist, in order for this to be true, there must be one who (or I suppose which) has always existed. That is, if we can imagine everything as not having existed, that means that one point nothing existed. And if nothing existed then there was nothing to bring everything into existence. Therefore, we must posit one who exists outside the possibility of not existing. This one would be utterly unique, totally different from everything else we know to exist since everything else is contingent and it is not. Not only is it not contingent, but it is the cause of all that exists. Aquinas writes, “Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity” (ST Ia. 2, 3). God is not only the necessary being, but he is the cause of all other beings.
The Fourth Way argues for God’s existence based on the fact that God is the source of created beings’ perfections. It is often called the argument from gradation for in it Aquinas argues that we say things are more or less good, or useful, beautiful. The idea of gradation implies a standard. The example Aquinas uses is fire. We call one fire hot and another hotter. Aquinas writes, “Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things” (ST Ia. 2, 3). While we now know from physics that friction, and not fire per se, is the cause of heat, Aquinas point still stands. Friction, ultimate friction, is the cause of all other frictions and it is how we denote one friction hotter than another. Aquinas then argues that there must be a maximum for all perfections, that is all ultimates, and this includes being. There must be a being who isn’t, properly speaking, a being at all, but the being, the source of all being (and thus all truth, goodness, beauty, unity, etc.). This being is God. Up to this point, with one caveat to make for the Third Way, Aquinas has been telling us that God is the utterly distinct being. God is not like a creature in creation, rather he stands outside of creation as the utterly unique one. However, now, and because of the Third and Fourth Ways we can see this more evidently in the First and Second, this utterly distinct one is the source of all that exists and shares his uniqueness with his creatures. He is not only the Unmoved and Uncaused, but the First Mover and First Efficient Cause. Not only that, but he is the Necessary Being, necessary because without him, nothing else would have being, which implies that God shares his being with everything else we believe to exist. That is, everything that has being does so by participation in the One who is Being (and yet is beyond being). He is also the source of all other perfections, goodness, truth, beauty. It is because of him that we are able to understand a good tree from a bad one, a hot fire from a hotter, a beautiful painting from an ugly one.
Finally, in the Fifth Way we get an argument from the final cause, that is the thing for which or toward which all things move. The essential idea is as follows: an acorn when it falls to the ground under the right conditions becomes an oak tree. This is not an accident. It isn’t as though it could fall to the ground and become a tiger (probably), or at least the reason it doesn’t do so is because, somewhere within the natural chain of events, it is decided that it won’t do so. The one deciding that is God. God is the one who directs all things to their final cause. Acorns into oak trees, eggs into birds (or breakfast), colts into stallions, fawns into bucks, pups into dogs, etc., etc. What Aquinas does not say directly here, but does say later in the Summa is that God is actually the final cause of all things. That is, not only is God the one directing all things to their final cause, but is, ultimately, their final cause itself (though this brings up against nature/grace debates I do not intend to invoke today).
Now, to turn us to deification. In all the Five Ways we see God described as the being who is utterly different from creation (as its Creator) and yet as the one who shares himself with creation by moving, causing, being its source, sharing his perfections, and serving as its final end. This is, in essence, a rather simplified view of deification. Deification (which in the Christian East is often defined as participation in God) can only happen because God is Uncreated and we are created. That is, a thing can only be deified if it isn’t God in the first place. So Aquinas shows us that we are not God, we are different from him because he is our mover, cause, etc., etc. This is what makes it possible for God to be close to us, to share himself with all creation in general way. And it is this that allows for humans (and to a broader extent all creation) to be deified. It is, of course, important to remember that the Five Ways only give evidence of a doctrine of theosis in Aquinas, they are not the only evidence, but I think them rather good and for this reason. When Aquinas sets out to describe God, using Aristotelian philosophy, he does so in a way that entails God as deifier. God as the one who, if he creates, does so in order to deify.
* * *
David Mosley has a PhD in theology from the University of Nottingham. His research focuses on theosis and the role it plays, and should play, in human life, particularly human creativity. He is the author of the just-published fantasy novel On the Edges of Elfland. His book Being Deified will soon be published by Fortress Press and can be pre-ordered at Amazon. David blogs at Letters to Elfland.
Pope Francis pays his homage to the remains of child-martyr José Sanchez del Rio, in Morelia's Cathedral Mexico - AP
On reading this article, I remember the men, women and children put to death for their faith, Catholics, Orthodox and Oriental Christians in the Middle East, especially the little boy of twelve who was tortured, had his fingers cut off and was then beheaded because he would not renounce Christ. - All you holy martyrs, pray for us
Postulator Recalls St. Jose Sanchez del Rio Saying ‘My Faith Is Not for Sale’
As the world faces rampant religious persecution, interview reflects on young Mexican martyr’s exemplary model of sanctity and courage.
BY DEBORAH CASTELLANO LUBOV 10/17/2016 Comment
Martha Calderon/CNA
Pope Francis canonized seven new saints Oct. 16, including José Sánchez del Río.
– Martha Calderon/CNA
Mexican child-saint José Sánchez del Río “is not only a martyr of the Christian faith, but is a martyr of the fundamental rights of the person.”
In an interview with the Register at the Vatican on Saturday, the newly proclaimed saint’s postulator, Father Fidel Gonzáles, stressed this as he spoke about St. José Sánchez del Río.
Born in 1913, José Sánchez del Río was a Mexican Cristero who was put to death by government officials because he refused to renounce his Catholic faith. During the Cristero War, the Mexican government was determined to eliminate the Christian roots of the country, in the process killing some 50,000 people.
In 2004, Pope John Paul II declared the young Mexican a martyr; in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI beatified him; and, yesterday, Oct. 16, Pope Francis proclaimed him a canonized saint.
Speaking to the Register, Father Gonzalez stressed how young José’s faith was not for sale and no one, no “offer” — not even his parents’ intervention — would convince him to negate his faith, even if it cost him his life.
The Vatican official also addressed how there are many Christian martyr saints that exist, even if they have not been formally recognized by the Church, and reflected on how important it is, in the midst of today’s world, full of ambiguities, relativism and religious persecution, to not abandon our faith, as St. José teaches us.
It’s always a little surprising to hear about saints as young as José Sánchez del Río, only 14 years old. But can a child, someone so young, really be a saint as much as an adult or an elderly person?
Of course. There is a theological sanctity that belongs to every baptized person, even if baptized even a few hours after birth, because it is a grace of the Holy Spirit. Instead, the moral holiness grows like a tree, which comes and develops from a small seed and then spreads throughout the course of a lifetime. In the specific case of St. José Sánchez del Río, we are facing a martyr of nearly age 15, but he had a clear awareness of the ideas that led him to proclaim his faith with martyrdom. I can say that he really is an exceptional figure.
Why?
First, because he showed a psychological maturity much higher than that of his own age. We could say that, psychologically, he had the maturity of someone at least 18 or 20 years old, especially as he demonstrated his firm decision to reject the many proposals that they made to free him from prison in exchange for the apostasy of his faith in Christ. But he replied with a phrase, instead, of accepting, one that the witnesses then reported, a phrase that he used speaking to his parents when they tried to free him from captivity: “My faith is not for sale,” which means: “My faith in Christ cannot be sold, even though I know that this involves torture and death.” He wrote back and said that while they tortured him, they had offered to send him to study in the United States, to admit him in the Military Academy, which at that time was a very aristocratic environment.
The martyr, for his love of the Church, was killed in odium fidei (in hatred of the faith). His death was particularly cruel.
José was tortured in inhumane ways. They even skinned the soles of his feet, repeatedly hitting him with knives to continue causing him pain. They made him walk with flayed feet — which left traces of blood everywhere — to the cemetery, the site of the shooting, where he died. In spite of all this, he remained firm in the faith, shouting, “Long live Christ the King.”
“Long live Christ the King” was the cry with which the Mexican Cristeros went down in history. What did those words mean to them?
It’s a theological expression; maybe neither St. José nor the others fully realized its meaning, its significance. For them, it was a way of proclaiming the centrality of Christ in history. We must point out that St. José did not ever stop proclaiming Christ. They said, “If you shout, ‘Death to Christ the King,’ we will spare your life.” But instead he continued: “Long live Christ the King. … Long live the Lady of Guadalupe.”
This invocation of Our Lady of Guadalupe was significant, too, as it was the first concrete manifestation of God in the history of Mexico and Latin America. José stayed faithful to the very, very end, even as they continued stabbing him and eventually shot him with the pistol.
As a specialist on the concept of sanctity, are you familiar with other martyrs like St. José?
I have been a consultant for 31 years of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and I have seen hundreds of cases of martyrdom, but never of a martyr so young. It’s a unique case, where you really see the power of divine grace. But José Sánchez del Río — this is my thesis — is not only a martyr of the Christian faith, but is a martyr of the fundamental rights of the person: the right to freedom of opinion, freedom of religion, the right to practice their religion. ... In short, he is a martyr of all the rights that were denied the totalitarian era. The 20th century is the century of totalitarian regimes, each very different from the others, but yet they all agree on setting aside God, getting rid of the foundation of human rights.
In addition to St. José, many Mexicans have paid the ultimate resistance to anti-Catholic persecution unleashed by the regime at the time of the Cristeros War. Can we can consider them all martyrs, even if they have not been proclaimed as such by the Church?
Well, we know of the many humble people who rebelled against those who wanted to eradicate the Catholic faith from Mexico and remove their right to religious freedom. I’d say that, among the some 50,000 victims of the period between 1926 and 1929, that perhaps some 300 or 400 merit being beatified for their martyrdom.
What does the martyrdom of St. José, so many years after those events, teach Catholics today?
St. José simply teaches us that the Catholic faith is not for sale, as he said himself [while] dying. This is especially true in a world like today, full of ambiguities, of relativism, of dominant cultural nihilism. The Christian faith, instead, has a solid foundation, i.e., the principle that God is the creator of all reality, and if we put it aside, then all the rights of the person lose consistency and end up at the mercy of a political power. It’s interesting, I repeat, that all ideological totalitarianisms of the 20th century have desecrated the human person, profaning God.
Register correspondent Deborah Castellano Lubov writes from Rome.
Filed under deborah lubov, faith, persecuted christians, religious persecution in mexico, saints, st. josé sánchez del río.
>
HERMITS AND MARTYRS
A CONFERENCE OF PAUL, ABBOT OF BELMONT
Earlier this afternoon I had the pleasure and the privilege, granted me by Archbishop George, of receiving the vows as a hermit of our friend and neighbour Rowena Simon. She has taken the name of Sister Mary Rita of the Blessed Sacrament. Although it was a quiet celebration in St Benedict’s Chapel, nevertheless the fact that our Archdiocese now has a professed hermit, and one who lives at Belmont and is supported spiritually by our monastic community, is of great importance and relevance to the local Church. Fr Antony, of course, is her spiritual director. It is a sign of God’s grace and mercy that he has gifted Belmont and the Archdiocese with a sister committed to the eremitical vocation, which lends richness and depth to the spiritual and religious life of the Catholic Church. Sr Mary Rita walks the path taken by many of the most illustrious saints in the history of Christendom and we give thanks to God for her prayerful and gentle presence among us. May he bless her abundantly and may her prayers for our community bring us many blessings, especially the blessing of new vocations.
It was interesting to note that the Rite of Profession of a Hermit also speaks of that way of life as a means of preferring nothing to Christ. This coincides with my experience the weekend before last, when I was in Oviedo, Asturias, for the Beatification of the great uncle of my friend, Jenaro Fueyo. On 8th October, four martyrs of the Civil War were beatified in the cathedral in a very moving celebration presided over by Cardinal Angelo Amato. They shed their blood for Christ on 21st October 1936. Bl Jenaro Fueyo Castañón was the Parish Priest of Nembra, a mining village up in the mountains about 30 miles from Oviedo. He was 72 years’ old and had been parish priest for 37. Bl Isidro Fernández Cordero, aged 42, was a coalminer and the father of 7 children. Bl Segundo Alonso González, aged 48, was also a coalminer and the father of 12. In fact, his wife had died giving birth to the last of their children. He had two brothers and a sister who were Dominicans. Bl Antonio González Alonso was only 24 years’ old. He had wanted to be a Dominican like his brother, but tuberculosis prevented that, so he was training to be a teacher. He loved writing poetry. What all four had in common was their love for God and the Church, above all for the practice of night Adoration, which they organised daily and to which people came from numerous villages round about. For this they had already been imprisoned several times by the Communists, who were intent on eradicating the Catholic faith. These four martyrs, we were told by the Cardinal, had preferred nothing to Christ and paid willingly for their faith, and especially their love for the Blessed Sacrament, by martyrdom in the most horrific and heartrending circumstances. You will be interested to learn that, on 29th October, four monks of Silos will also be beatified as martyrs. They too, in a very special way, showed that they preferred nothing to Christ.
Recently we had a short retreat-workshop in which we discussed and meditated on those aspects of our life as Benedictine monks outlined in the EBC booklet To Prefer Nothing to Christ. Of course, St Benedict wrote this phrase in Chapter 72 of the Rule on the Good Zeal of Monks. We are to prefer nothing whatever to Christ in all that we think, do or say and in every area and aspect of our lives. One of the popular phrases of theological or spiritual jargon when I was a young monk was “fundamental or preferential option.” For example, Liberation Theology spoke of the Church’s preferential option for the poor. But in the monastic tradition, where we dedicate ourselves to the search for God, it is God himself who is our fundamental or preferential option, and all other options, as it were, must find their origin and their goal in him. Hence, St Benedict concludes his Rule with this powerful sentence, “Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may he bring us all together to everlasting life.”
Now in Chapter 72, St Benedict had summed up his Rule by contrasting the “wicked zeal of bitterness which separates from God and leads to hell” with the “good zeal which separates from evil and leads to God and everlasting life.” Having already described that evil zeal in every part of the Rule, though not in the sort of entertaining detail we find in the Rule of the Master, he devotes himself to a final summing up of what this good zeal consists of, in other words that charity or perfect love of God and of our brethren, which should be the tangible proof that we are disciples of Jesus. “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.” (Jn 13:35) We are to “foster fervent love by supporting one another with the greatest patience” especially when it comes to “weaknesses of body or behaviour” and “competing in obedience to one another.” Does that strike a bell with you? Would you describe that as part of your fundamental option? Is that how you go about living each and every day in community? Then, we are told to guard against selfishness and self-centredness, never pursuing what we judge best for ourselves, but rather what is best for others. Do I put the community, my brethren, my duties first or myself and my own interests? Just think of our weekly services. If I am unable to do a particular job, refectory, cantor or reader, for example, do I make sure I advise the next person down or ask someone else to do the job for me? It’s the little things that make a community great. And do I really try to love my brethren, I mean truly love them, or am I false and just pay lip service to love like the hypocrites do? Even worse, do I simply ignore or even hate my brother?
Which brings us back to preferring nothing whatever to Christ. I cannot even begin to use that phrase as in any way a description of my life and vocation, unless I have accepted the rest of Chapter 72 and, indeed, the whole of the Rule of St Benedict, as my inspiration and guide, my rule of life, my hope and my joy. So each day, I need to seek conversion anew and pray that the Holy Spirit will conform my heart and mind to the mind and heart of God. We remember the words of St Paul, “And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.”(1Cor13:13).
There are indeed eremitical aspects to our life as Benedictine monks and we are all called to the daily martyrdom of living in community and laying down our lives for our brethren, but at the heart of our vocation lies love, charity, which will ultimately be the only proof that we truly prefer nothing to Christ.
