"GRADUALISM IS ANOTHER NAME FOR LICENSE." NO, IT IS NOT! by Elizabeth Scalia (THE SYNOD AND THE FAMILY - 8)

my source:The Anchoress Daily Digest

“Gradualism is Another Word for License.” No, It’s Not.
October 15, 2014 by Elizabeth Scalia

I keep seeing these same six words all over social media:

“Gradualism is another word for license.”

Think so? Really? No possibility that it is the process of grace, working within us?

So, no grace at work, here? an atheist-turned-nun:

I was attending Mass for an entire year before I went to confession. I don’t make excuses for myself. My soul was not in the proper state to be receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, but it took time for grace to work in me in order for me to realize this. Finally, in the same way I was drawn to Jesus in the Eucharist, one day I felt an overwhelming urge to go to confession.

That’s gradualism. It gave us another religious sister.

The rest is history.

No powerful grace laboring in the step-by-step salvation of these souls?

The night I learned that the bishop had been petitioned to bar me from baptism and confirmation, and to prohibit my marriage, I called my godmother in tears. “Why are they doing this?” I wept. “It already hurts so much to leave my family and my faith…why don’t they want me to have the sacraments that they’ve had all their lives? Am I not good enough? If this is the true Church of Christ, is He saying that He doesn’t want me in it?” She reassured me, and so did my godfather, my husband, and my friends. My priest went to battle on behalf of my soul — a soul that was, even then, in mortal sin.

The truth, goodness, and beauty of the Church made me want to be a Catholic. But it was the love and patience of my friends and family that carried me into the Church.

That’s gradualism, too. Those people who were so intent on protecting the church from baptizing this sinner nearly amended the story of a soul, and the formation of a strong Catholic family, including four little kids.

Saint Augustine knew something about gradualism: “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet!”

Anecdotes? Sure. True stories are anecdotes. When has hard data been required for great conversion stories to become credible and meaningful and inspiring for others? It’s not really the Catholic way, is it? We love our saint stories, and all of them are different anecdotes:

“I heard of this one guy, Francis, a real whack job, wanted to be a Crusader; then he stripped naked and claimed God told him to rebuild a church…”

“There was this partygirl, a real intellectual, with the whole thing, the drinking, the abortion, the shacking up. She started to move along a spiritual path but it took having a baby, out of wedlock, to really bring her around…”

“There was this great English writer, Gilbert — a nominal Anglican, who wrote a masterpiece on Orthodoxy, but took another 20 years to actually come into the church…”

I’m already on record voicing my concerns about the principle of gradualism being haphazardly applied, and I meant it. The prudential judgement of a priest or bishop must be prayerfully reached. But there are a lot of hurting souls out there, who assume that if they tried to walk through the church doors, someone would be petitioning a bishop to keep them out, and someone else would be overwhelming them with law, before they’d managed to kneel down and beg for mercy.

And because they assume it to be true, they don’t even dream of ascending the steps and giving a tug on the door.

Conversion of soul is a process. As Saint Benedict of Norcia knew, conversion of manner, what we call ‘conversio‘ is also a process — one that monks and nuns and oblates work at their whole lives. Incarnation is a process.

Paul may have had his Damascus moment — and how glorious for those who make instantaneous conversions — but even the apostles only got it gradually. Thomas didn’t get it until he put his hand into Christ’s very wounds.

Let’s not be too hard on “gradualism” or disdain it as something it most definitely is not: a euphemism for “all is well; everyone keep sinning.” In truth, it is an old way of understanding how to co-operate with grace for the sake of a wary and wandering soul.

Vatican City, Oct 15, 2014 / 01:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the synod fathers' small groups continue to meet, it seems increasingly clear that the Synod of Bishops' concluding document, the 'relatio synodi', will be substantially different than the midterm relatio which was released Monday.

The relatio synodi is called to mirror the concerns and proposals raised during the small group discussions this week, in which bishops have been grouped according to language.

After the issuance of the midterm report, the synod fathers raised their concern in 41 free interventions, which highlighted the absence of the word sin, the absence of the Gospel of Family, and some perhaps naive sentences of the document which could be subject to misinterpretation.

“The issue at stake is whether the Catholic Church is going to shape the world with its teaching, the truth it reveals, or if it is going to be shaped by the world,” Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan, who is president of the Polish bishops' conference, shared with CNA Oct. 15.

Archbishop Zbignev Stankevics of Riga, the Latvian capital, echoed Archbishop Gadecki's words in an Oct. 14 interview with Vatican Radio.

“Currently, the family is under a very strong ideological attack. The main task of the synod fathers is not to make a poorly-defined opening, but to apply, once again for today’s situation, the teaching of the Church,” Archbishop Stankevics said.

He then added that “certainly, we should meet the contemporary challenges as much as is possible; but without losing our Catholic identity, and without renouncing the truth about marriage.”

The small groups are having lively discussions about the issues at stake, though Cardinal Lluis Martinez Sistach of Barcelona and Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville both downplayed the degree of this liveliness in a briefing with journalists on Wednesday.

“There is a climate of fraternity and pastoral care. All of our amendments have been voted by a unanimity of participants,” Cardinal Martinez said Oct. 15.

Archbishop Kurtz said that three suggestions have emerged from the discussion of his small group: emphasizing the positive value of Christian families; ensuring the Church's words are welcoming and heartfelt; and guaranteeing that pastoral care is rooted in the beauty of Church teaching and of scripture.

In an chat with CNA held under condition of anonymity, one synod father said that his small group has “substantially re-written the introduction of the relatio,” has “cut the quote of the ‘seeds of good’, because it was out of context and could create confusion, and has asked that we place more emphasis on the positive examples of the faithful.”

“The document was too clerical in our view,” the source maintained.

Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, underscored in a briefing with journalists that his small group “also discussed topics which had not been properly discussed in the synod hall.”

“We proposed that the processes for the declaration of nullity be free of any charge, since it must never be said that the Church is paid for a declaration of nullity: it drives the faithful to think that nullity can be obtained when it is paid for,” Archbishop Fisichella said.

The archbishop also stressed that “there is little acknowledgement of the natural methods of family planning: there is almost a form of boycott to educate about natural family planning.”

Also, the bishops of Africa raised their concern for some ‘missing hotspots’ in the synod’s midterm report.

Bishop Nicolas Djomo Lola of Tshumbe, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, listed among the missing hotspots “the attention for the children without family because of war.”

The list of proposals generated by the small groups will be given to the General Secretariat for the Synod, and then the relator of each small group will report on the outcomes of their groups.

After that, there will be a free discussion, and during the afternoon the General Secretary of the Synod, the General Rapporteur, the Special Secretary, and the committee of six will meet to collect all the interventions and draft the relatio synodi.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, a member of the committee of six, told CNA that the bishops “seem to be basically satisfied from the major outline of the midterm report,” which is “going in the right direction: it’s pastoral, it’s inviting, it’s based on our doctrine, and it is rooted in the Sacred Scriptures.”

According to Cardinal Wuerl, the synod’s final report will deal with “how to make pastoral applications, how to be inviting, how to be welcoming.”


The final report will collect all the issues at stake and will be voted on by the synod fathers, and then given to the Pope, who will decide whether or not to make it public.

Graduality at the Synod
Michael Sean Winters  |  Oct. 16, 2014 
Distinctly Catholic
Synod on the Family


All of us in the Church commentary biz are, understandably, transfixed by the Relatio that came out Monday and by some of the reactions to it. In a frenzied state, sometimes it is easiest to miss what is actually the most important, to overlook the obvious. In this case, the text’s statements about graduality or gradualness seem to be the key hermeneutic for the entire text, arguably for the entire papacy.
It is easy to miss because, at one level, it is so obvious. The self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ does not happen all at once, but in fits and starts. St. Peter, at whose tomb the synod fathers are gathered and whose successor leads the meetings, is portrayed in the Scripture as capable of deep, penetrating understandings and, the very next minute, totally misunderstanding the significance of the Master and His life. The Hebrew Scriptures are a long, slow, revelation of God’s love and mercy to His chosen people Israel, who follow the call of the covenant at one moment, then make a golden calf the next, follow Moses out of Egypt, then complain about being in the wilderness, are banished from Israel and sent into exile, only to be called back.

The law of graduality is also obvious to anyone who has ever been a pastor – or even a good friend. Teenagers ask questions and they will not be satisfied when a parent says merely, “We can’t talk about that” or “That question is out of bounds.” Even as adults, the path of discipleship is a crooked one for all but the saints - and even the saints have their moments of doubt and face the challenge of sin. We muddle along and pray that God will draw straight lines with our crooked humanity. There is nothing unduly lacking in rigor, still less saccharine, about the law of gradualism. It does not mean that our path lacks direction: Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, we begin with Him, His self-revelation is the lens through which we must judge everything in our own lives, and we will, by His grace, return to Him. But, the road has many twists and turns, some detours that might yield an unsought and even previously unknown vista of spectacular beauty, some side paths that turn out to be dead ends, sometimes the road gets narrow and there is only room for one person to pass at a time, and other times the road widens and we get to walk together. In any event, there is no avoiding the road, the path, even if we all know where it leads or accept, as accept we must, on the Church’s testimony, that our path as a Christian starts and ends with the empty tomb of Jesus Christ and the revelatory promise of salvation contained therein.

Similarly, the law of graduality says something about our relationship to the Church’s tradition. There is no denying that Pope Francis’ approach to governance of the universal Church differs from that of his two immediate predecessors. He is a pastor first and last. John Paul II brought his great philosophic sensibilities to the task. Benedict XVI was possessed of great theological vision, arguably the most penetrating post-conciliar theological vision. But, Francis is smart as a whip and he wishes to make all his philosophic and theological inclinations serve the pastoral needs of the Church, most especially the need to evangelize. I spent much of the eight years of the papacy of Benedict XVI trying to point out the beauty of Benedict’s theological vision to my friends on the left. I met with some success and some failure. I am not shy about claiming some measure of moral authority in inviting my conservative friends to do the same with Pope Francis. But, the key point is this: Pope Francis, the Synod Fathers, all of us, stand on the shoulders of giants. Still, we are called to walk.

In his interview with Catholic World Report, Cardinal Raymond Burke said this:

The document lacks a solid foundation in the Sacred Scriptures and the Magisterium. In a matter on which the Church has a very rich and clear teaching, it gives the impression of inventing a totally new, what one Synod Father called “revolutionary,”teaching on marriage and the family. It invokes repeatedly and in a confused manner principles which are not defined, for example, the law of graduality.

I was not present at the blessed event, but I am guessing that when Cardinal Burke was born, he was not clutching a copy of the Code of Canon Law. He, too, experienced the law of graduality he now denounces. He says that the law of graduality is presented in a “confused” manner, that it is not defined. Actually, I think pastors knew exactly what the law of graduality means and did not need it to be precisely defined.

That said, Cardinal Burke has a point. Life is messy and if the Church is to accompany the living, rather than withdraw into the canon law library, it must accompany the people of God – and all people – in all the messiness of our lives. Pope Francis has called for precisely this, time and again, and encouraged us all not to be intimidated by that messiness. A friend, whom I affectionately call “the fons” likes to quote Peguy on Kant: “Kant’s hands were clean because he had no hands.” That is, Kant’s devotion to his categories kept him from the realities of life.

Something similar is at work in the synod hall. The choice is not between truth and falsehood or between zeal and “moderation,” The choice is between categories and people. I am not a theologian but it is my understand that all our theological categories, all our pastoral plans and approaches, all our philosophic insights, exist to achieve the salvation of souls, and in this life, those souls are embodied souls, with often messy lives. We are the people of God and it is the Church’s pastors’ task to protect us, not from ever falling down, because human nature being what it is, we shall always fall down. The protection can come, can only come, by walking alongside humanity as we trip and fall, helping us back up to our feet. If the law of graduality is insufficiently precise for Cardinal Burke it is because human life is insufficiently precise.


A personal note. My life has been messy, very messy at times. Still, today, I am no saint. On the contentious issues of human sexuality, my thoughts betray me and my eyes still rove. Yet, I live my life as a single, chaste Christian as best I can. I did not arrive at this point because I was accompanied by pastors who said, “You are living in sin.” If they had, I would have run in the other direction. I arrived at this point because of pastors who accompanied me, encouraged me and, most importantly, provided an example of a life lived with Christian integrity. I believe the Church’s teachings on human sexuality need development. In some regards, they remain unpersuasive to me. But, the call to integrity caught me like an unseen hook, to borrow a phrase from Waugh, letting me wander to the ends of the earth and still to pull me back with a twitch upon the thread. That thread was the accompaniment of some wonderful, and wonderfully non-judgmental pastors – and, of course, the grace of God. The wanderings were many, the progress was gradual, and it came to me at a ninety degree angle. But, I have never been happier nor felt more liberated, precisely on these issues of human sexuality, than I did when I was not living in accordance with the Church’s teaching. Twenty years ago, I would not have predicted the path I have trod. Maybe even ten years ago, it seemed unlikely although, in retrospect, I can see that the path was moving in this direction. I hope every Christian soul will find that the Church’s teachings truly liberate us from every agenda, political and personal, as I have discovered, somewhat to my surprise. But, Pope Francis is absolutely correct that no one will ever find that sense of liberation apart from the accompaniment, not the hectoring, of the Church and Her pastors. 

Vatican Proposes Dramatic Shift In Attitude Towards Gays, Same Sex Couples | By Philip Pullella SYNOD AND THE FAMILY 7

Back in 1996, I was hearing the confessions of hundreds of young people in my Peruvian parish in preparation for Confirmation.   In Peru, children have their first communion at the end of their primary school and Confirmation at the end of secondary school, even though, in my parish, the preparation is done in the parish, not the school.  They were knocking at my door at all times in the weeks before Confirmation.   However, one evening, I was visited by a gaggle of homosexual youths who were not presenting themselves for Confirmation, but they wanted to go to Confession.  I will remember the first confession as long as I live.   I do not count it among my successes.   It left me speechless.   He said (in Spanish), "Mi pecado mas grande es que soy."   ( The greatest sin that I have committed is that I am.)   It floored me.   How could I respond?   I told him that God loves him, that Christ died for him, but what more could I say?   How could I give him the Gospel message in a way that took his reality into account?

What is being proposed in the Synod is what we are forced to do in practise in Peru by circumstances, even if, up till now, we haven't had the vocabulary to justify it.   We knew by instinct that, until people have a living relationship with Christ, the rules don't make sense. The Gospel comes first, the rules afterwards.   If you only know the Gospel in and through the rules, then you preach a Gospel in a form that does not reach the vast  majority of the unchurched.   It is not a question of being conservative or progressive: it is between evangelising or not evangelising.   It is this that the bishops of every hue are coming to terms with.  When the Gospel and the rules become so completely identified with each other that we cannot tell the difference between them, then man is made for the Sabbath, not the Sabbath for man. 

Differences will remain, but every pastor knows that when we see the Gospel only in terms of the rule book, even a rule book that has been formed by the Gospel, then our message cannot  do justice to the Gospel because it has become incapable of reaching every aspect and level of human life only part of which can be regulated.

I believe the Orthodox have it about right.   They make a distinction between akribeia and oikonomia.   "Akribeia" is the strict interpretation of the rules, while oikonomia is the economy of grace, the Mystery of Christ present in the Church, but also the adapting or dispensing with the rules when, owing to the complications of a given situation, their strict imposition is an obstacle to God's purpose, to his offer in Christ of unconditional love to sinners.   According to the Joint Statement of Orthodox and Catholic bishops, made in Washington in 1976, economy is specially used in the following situations:

a) The administration of penance, the arranging or managing of a penitent's reconciliation to the church;
b) The reception of those turning to the church from heresy or schism;
c) The restoration of repentant clergy and the reception of heretical or schismatic clergy as ordained.
In all these areas, however, the understanding of economy as responsible stewardship, imitating the divine economy, is maintained, excluding arbitrariness or capriciousness.

It goes on to say:

 The church of Christ is not a legalistic system whereby every prescription has identical importance, especially when ancient canons do not directly address contemporary issues. Nor can the application of economy make something invalid to be valid, or what is valid to be invalid. Because the risen Christ has entrusted to the church a stewardship of prudence and freedom to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit about today's problems of church unity, a proper understanding of economy involves the exercise of spiritual discernment.

Faced with the problems outlined in this my contribution, the liberal would simply change the rules; but the Christian rules on marriage, for example, are the expression of Catholic Tradition and much would be lost.   In the Orthodox solution, the basic rules are kept.   Economy is about their application to individuals or particular situations.   Hence, a decision on the interpretaion of a rule by the Church creates a precedent, but the Church's use of economy doesn't because it is tied to the situation.   It must be emphasised that to use economy is an ecclesial function, under the direction of the bishops, not a private decision by individuals.

If ever you are in doubt about the use of these Orthodox - Catholic discussions, think again, because the Catholic Synod is putting economy in practice.

my source: Huffington Post

(Reuters) - In a dramatic shift in tone, a Vatican document said on Monday that homosexuals had "gifts and qualities to offer" and asked if Catholicism could accept gays and recognize positive aspects of same-sex couples.

The document, prepared after a week of discussions at an assembly of 200 bishops on the family, said the Church should challenge itself to find "a fraternal space" for homosexuals without compromising Catholic doctrine on family and matrimony.

While the text did not signal any change in the Church's condemnation of homosexual acts or its opposition to gay marriage, it used language that was less judgmental and more compassionate than past Vatican statements under previous popes.

The document will be the basis for discussion for the second and final week of the assembly, known as a synod, which was called by Pope Francis and focuses on the theme of the family.

It will also serve for further reflection among Catholics around the world ahead of another, definitive synod next year.

"Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a further space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home," said the document, known by its Latin name "relatio".

"Are our communities capable of proving that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?" it asked.

John Thavis, Vatican expert and author of the bestselling 2013 book "The Vatican Diaries", called the document "an earthquake" in the Church's attitude towards gays.

"The document clearly reflects Pope Francis' desire to adopt a more merciful pastoral approach on marriage and family issues," he said.

A number of participants at the closed-door synod have said the Church should tone down its condemnatory language when referring to gay couples and avoid phrases such as "intrinsically disordered" when speaking of homosexuals.

That was the phrase used by former Pope Benedict in a document written before his election, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and head of the Vatican's doctrinal department.

EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE

The language and tone of Monday's document, read to the assembly in the presence of Pope Francis, appeared to show that the advocates of a more merciful tone toward homosexuals and Catholics in so-called "irregular situations" had prevailed.

It said that the 1.2 billion-member Church should see the development of its position on homosexuals as "an important educational challenge" for the global institution.

While the Church continued to affirm that gay unions "cannot be considered on the same footing as matrimony between man and woman", it should recognize that there could be positive aspects to relationships in same-sex couples.

"Without denying the moral problems connected to homosexual unions it has to be noted that there are cases in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners," the document said.

Pope Francis has said the Church must be more compassionate with homosexuals, saying last year: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge."

The Church teaches that while homosexual tendencies are not sinful, homosexual acts are.

The document also showed considerable opening to heterosexual couples who were married only in civil services or who were living together, mentioning "positive aspects" of such unions, especially if the couple saw them as a prelude to marriage in the Church.

While Church marriages clearly were "the ideal" for Catholics, it said, there were "constructive elements in those situations that do not yet or no longer correspond to that ideal".

Catholics used to call such cohabitation arrangements "living in sin", another phrase that bishops at the synod were urged not to use when speaking about these couples.

(Additional reporting by Tom Heneghan; Editing by Crispian Balmer)

OCTOBER 12th: OUR LADY OF APARACIDA IN BRAZIL & THE BLESSING OF AN ICON IN OUR MONASTERY (SYNOD ON THE FAMILY - 6)

July 27th, 2013, Pope Francis visited the national shrine of Brazil, one of the largest in the world.   Full coverage of that event, together with the story behind the shrine and photos, videos etc can be found at:

OUR LADY OF APARACIDA

TODAY IS THE FEASTDAY: PRAY FOR THE CHURCH AND PEOPLE OF BRAZIL 

BLESSING OF AN ICON

Icons are really a language and tell us much about the mystery or saint that they portray; and this photo shows me telling the people what the icon has to say in the light of the Sunday Gospel,  which is about the Marriage Banquet of the king's Son to which good and bad have been invited because those that had been originally invited did not want to attend.   

The icon was "written" by our brother, Dom Alex Echeandia, in preparation for his priestly ordination which will take place on Thursday, the feast of St Luke, patron saint of iconographers.   At the centre, Christ is manifested, glorified on his cross, as in the theology of St John (17,1ff).  At either side, at the level of his hands, are two angels who are collecting the blood that is flowing from his wounds; and this signifies the heavenly liturgy as depicted in the Apocalypse and in the Letter to the Hebrews.   At the foot of the cross, there is a community of monks, and one is collecting blood that flows from Christ's side.   Not depicted but included are the people that are looking at the icon with faith.   The monks and the faithful onlookers signify those who celebrate the earthly liturgy, the holy Sacrifice of the Mass.   Thus, Christ crucified unites the liturgies of heaven and earth so that we on earth can sing, "Holy, holy, holy," together with the angels and saints, and, as the Roman Canon depicts, the consecration happens when an angel takes up the earthly offerings of bread and wine and places them on the heavenly altar so that they become identified with the heavenly offering, which is Christ resurrected and ascended.  In the Mystery of faith, Christ crucified IS Christ resurrected and ascended: he is the Lamb dead but standing (Rev.5,6).

The angels, monks and faithful onlookers all share in the same Spirit which the early Church associated with the Eucharistic cup.   This followed the Jewish tradition in which the spirit of a man or animal is contained in his or its blood.   Thus, St Paul writes,

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.   For in one Spirit we were all baptised into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (I Cor. 12, 12&13)

 In Ephesians, the author tells us, "Do not get drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit (5, 18)."

St Ephrem writes:

Go with Him, as His inseparable companion, to the wedding feast of Cana, and drink of the wine of His Blessing. Let you have ever before you the Face of the Lord, and look upon His beauty, and let your earnest gaze turn nowhere away from His most sweet countenance. Go before Him into a desert place and see the wonder of His works, where He multiplied in His own Holy Hands the bread that sufficed to feed a great multitude. Go, my brother, go forward, and with all the love of your soul follow Christ wherever He may go … and lovingly behold Him as taking bread into His hands, He blesses it, and breaks it, as the outward form of His own Immaculate Body; and the chalice which He blessed as the outward form of His precious Blood, and gave to His disciples; and be you also a partaker of His sacraments,” - St. Ephrem of Syria (c. 306-73)   Also: "O Lord, we cannot go to the pool of Siloe to which you sent the blind man. But we have the chalice of Your Precious Blood, filled with life and light. The purer we are, the more we receive."   Also: "

“In your bread hides the Spirit who cannot be consumed; in your wine is the fire that cannot be swallowed. The Spirit in your bread, fire in your wine: behold a wonder heard from our lips.

“The seraph could not bring himself to touch the glowing coal with his fingers, it was Isaiah’s mouth alone that it touched; neither did the fingers grasp it nor the mouth swallow it; but the Lord has granted us to do both these things.

“The fire came down with anger to destroy sinners, but the fire of grace descends on the bread and settles in it. Instead of the fire that destroyed man, we have consumed the fire in the bread and have been invigorated”

The Eucharist is Pentecost in which by "the Spirit in your bread, fire in your wine" we become the body of Christ, we become the Church.

It was not difficult to link this with the Gospel for the 28th Sunday about the wedding feast, nor to link this with the Synod on the Family that is going on in Rome.

In the Eucharist we are already sharing in the wedding feast of the Lamb which will be fully revealed at the end of time. The Lord has already sent his messengers into the streets to invite everybody, the good and the bad, to the wedding feast.   God's love for us is not earned, it is not due to our worthiness but only to our need: the more we need him, the more he comes to us and invites us.   We are the blind, the deaf and the cripples who have been invited, not only because of our sins, but also because the Mass is packed full of angels and saints, and we can neither see nor hear them.   Icons and other images come to our aid.   Our attention is crippled because our faith is weak.  The beauty of the ceremony comes to our aid,   Nothing can separate us from the love of God expressed in Christ's total gift of himself to each and every one of us, except ourselves.

For there is a problem: there is a necessary change of heart which we cannot do by ourselves but only in synergy with the Holy Spirit.   Even the great personages of the Old Testament were permitted to divorce because this synergy between the Holy Spirit and ourselves in which the Holy Spirit enables us to share in the life of the Trinity through our humble obedience has been made possible only by the Incarnation.   As Christ said, divorce was permitted because of their hardness of heart.   This capacity depends on conversion which complements baptism:  it is the wedding garment without which our participation in the Wedding Feast is an unwelcome intrusion.

The problem that has become an issue in the Synod is not non-Christians being evangelised, but baptised people who are being evangelised.   

What happens when a person has been baptised as a Catholic lapses in adolescence, like Blessed Charles de Foucauld, marries in church to please his parents, divorces and marries again, and then converts and wishes to live an active Christian life.   To solve it, the Church has treated it as a purely legal problem, and his hardness of heart doesn't come into it.   If he marries in an Anglican church, the marriage is invalid and he is free to marry again, and it does not matter how unfaithful to his first partner he has been.   If he has had the bad luck to have married in a Catholic church, then, when he converts to Christ and wants to receive him in communion, he can't unless he breaks uo his second marriage, which usually no one wants him to do.   As he was not living a Christian life before, whether he married in a Catholic church or an Anglican one was a matter of external circumstance or chance.  Whether he can receive communion or not has nothing to do with his hardness of heart: it is simply a lottery.   There are many problems related to re-married couples where criticism of the Church's normal pastoral practice has little to do with the New Testament, however strictly you interpret Christ's words on marriage.   

However, that does not mean to say there is no problem.   Christians still need to wear their wedding garment when they participate in the nuptial feast.   For this reason, the Church is taking a long time and much prayer to solve the problems related to marriage.

I blessed the icon after the sermon at Sunday Mass.   At the beginning and at an interval during the blessing, the monks sang part of the Reproaches from Good Friday, including the Trisagion in Spanish and Greek: 

"Holy is God!   Holy and strong! Holy immortal One, have mercy on us."

 The icon was blessed with holy water, chrismated and incensed.   It will be displayed during the ordination and first Mass(-es), and is on the holy picture that will be given to those who take part as a remembrance of the great event in Br Alex's life and in the history of our community.