CHURCH & LITURGY - 1: THE ECCLESIOLOGY OF VATICAN II Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

my source

Conference of Cardinal Ratzinger at the opening of the Pastoral Congress of the Diocese of Aversa (Italy)

On the afternoon of 15 September 2001, at the invitation of Archbishop Mario Milano, His Eminence, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, opened the Pastoral Congress of the Diocese of Aversa (Italy) dedicated to a re-reading of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. This is a translation of Cardinal Ratzinger's opening lecture in Italian.

Just after the First World War, Romano Guardini coined an expression that quickly became a slogan for German Catholics: "An event of enormous importance is taking place: the Church is awakening within souls". The result of this awakening was ultimately the Second Vatican Council. Through its various documents it expressed and made part of the patrimony of the whole Church something that, during four decades full of ferment and hope (1920 to 1960), had been maturing in knowledge gained through faith. To understand Vatican II one must look back on this period and seek to discern, at least in outline, the currents and tendencies that came together in the Council. I will present the ideas that came to the fore during this period and then describe the fundamental elements of the Council's teaching on the Church.

I. The Church, the Body of Christ

1. The Image of the Mystical Body

"The Church is awakening within souls". Guardini's expression had been wisely formulated, since it finally recognized and experienced the Church as something within us—not as an institution outside us but something that lives within us.

If until that time we had thought of the Church primarily as a structure or organization, now at last we began to realize that we ourselves were the Church. The Church is much more than an organization: it is the organism of the Holy Spirit, something that is alive, that takes hold of our inmost being. This consciousness found verbal expression with the concept of the "Mystical Body of Christ", a phrase describing a new and liberating experience of the Church. At the very end of his life, in the same year the Constitution on the Church was published by the Council, Guardini wrote: the Church "is not an institution devised and built by men ... but a living reality.... It lives still throughout the course of time. Like all living realities it develops, it changes ... and yet in the very depths of its being it remains the same; its inmost nucleus is Christ.... To the extent that we look upon the Church as organization ... like an association ... we have not yet arrived at a proper understanding of it. Instead, it is a living reality and our relationship with it ought to be—life" (La Chiesa del Signore, [English translation: "The Church of the Lord"]; Morcelliana, Brescia 1967, p. 160).

Today, it is difficult to communicate the enthusiasm and joy this realization generated at the time. In the era of liberalism that preceded the First World War, the Catholic Church was looked upon as a fossilized organization, stubbornly opposed to all modern achievements. Theology had so concentrated on the question of the primacy as to make the Church appear to be essentially a centralized organization that one defended staunchly but which somehow one related to from the outside. Once again it became clear that the Church was more than this—she is something we all bring forward in faith in a living way, just as the Church brings us forward. It became clear that the Church has experienced organic growth over the centuries, and continues to grow even today. Through the Church the mystery of the Incarnation is alive today: Christ continues to move through time. If we were to ask ourselves what element present from the very beginning could still be found in Vatican II, our answer would be: the Christological definition of the Church. J.A. MöhIer, a leader in the revival of Catholic theology after the devastation of the Enlightenment, once said: a certain erroneous theology could be caricatured with the short phrase: "In the beginning Christ created the hierarchy and had thus taken adequate care of the Church until the end of time". Opposed to this concept is the fact that the Church is the Mystical Body; Christ and His act of founding are never over but always new. In the Church Christ never belongs just to the past, He is always and above all the present and the future. The Church is the presence of Christ: He is contemporary with us and we are His contemporaries. The Church lives from this: from the fact that Christ is present in our hearts and it is there that Christ forms His Church. That is why the first word of the Church is Christ, and not herself. The Church is healthy to the extent that all her attention is focused on Him. The Second Vatican Council placed this concept masterfully at the pinacle of its deliberations; the fundamental text on the Church begins with the words: Lumen gentium cum sit Christus: "since Christ is the Light of the World ... the Church is a mirror of His glory; she reflects His splendour". If we want to understand the Second Vatican Council correctly, we must always go back to this opening statement....

Next, with this point of departure, we must establish both the feature of her interiority and of her communitarian nature. The Church grows from within and moves outwards, not vice-versa. Above all, she is the sign of the most intimate communion with Christ. She is formed primarily in a life of prayer, the sacraments and the fundamental attitudes of faith, hope and love. Thus if someone should ask what must I do to become Church and to grow like the Church, the reply must be: you must become a person who lives faith, hope, and charity. What builds the Church is prayer and the communion of the sacraments; in them the prayer of the Church comes to meet us. Last summer I met a parish priest who told me that for many years there hadn't been a single vocation to the priesthood from his parish. What ought he do? We cannot manufacture vocations, it is the Lord who raises them up. Should we therefore stand by helpless? The priest decided to make a pilgrimage every year, a long and difficult pilgrimage to the Marian Shrine of Altötting to pray for vocations, and invited those who shared in this intention to join him in the pilgrimage and common prayer. Year after year the number of participants in this pilgrimage grew until finally, this year, the whole village with great joy, celebrated the first Mass in living memory said by a priest from the parish....

The Church grows from within: this is the meaning of the expression "Body of Christ". The phrase implies something more: Christ has formed a body for himself. If I want to find Him and make Him mine, I am directly called to become a humble and complete and full member of His Body, and, by becoming one of His members, becoming an organ of his Body in this world, I will be so for eternity. The idea of liberal theology that whereas Jesus on his own would be interesting, the Church would be a wretched reality, contradicts this understanding completely. Christ gives Himself only in His body, and never as a pure ideal. This means that He gives Himself, and the others, in the uninterrupted communion that endures through time and is His Body. It means that the Church is not an idea, it is a Body. The scandal of becoming flesh that Jesus' incarnation caused so many of His contemporaries, is repeated in the "scandalous character" of the Church. Jesus' statement is valid in this instance: "Blessed is he who is not scandalized in me".

The communitarian nature of the Church necessarily entails its character as "we". The Church is not somewhere apart from us, it is we who constitute the Church. No one person can say "I am the Church", but each one of us can and ought to say, "we are the Church". This "we" does not represent an isolated group, but rather a group that exists within the entire community of all Christ's members, living and dead. This is how a group can genuinely say: "we are the Church". Here is the Church, in this open "we" that breaches social and political boundaries, and the boundary between heaven and earth as well. We are the Church. This gives rise to a co-responsibility and also the possibility of collaborating personally. From this understanding there derives the right to criticize but our criticism must be above all self-criticism. Let us repeat: the Church is not "somewhere else"; nor is she "someone else". We ourselves build the Church. These ideas matured and led directly to the Council. Everything said about the common responsibility of the laity, and the legal forms that were established to facilitate the intelligent exercise of responsibility, are the result of this current of thought.

Finally, the concept of the development and therefore of the historical dynamic of the Church belongs to this theme. A body remains identical to itself over the course of its life due to the fact that in the life process it constantly renews itself. For the great English Cardinal, Newman, the idea of development was the true and proper bridge to his conversion to Catholicism. I believe that the idea of development belongs to those numerous fundamental concepts of Catholicism that are far from being adequately explored. Once again it is Vatican II to which we owe the first solemn formulation of this idea in a Magisterial document. Whoever wants to attach himself solely to the literal interpretation of the Scriptures or to the forms of the Church of the Fathers imprisons Christ in "yesterday". The result is either a wholly sterile faith that has nothing to say to our times, or the arrogant assumption of the right to skip over 2,000 years of history, consign them to the dustbin of mistakes, and try to figure out what a Christianity would look like either according to Scripture or according to Jesus. The only possible result will be an artificial creation that we ourselves have made, devoid of any consistency. Genuine identity with the beginning in Christ can only exist where there is a living continuity that has developed the beginning and preserved the beginning precisely through this development.

2. Eucharistic Ecclesiology

Let us go back and look at developments in the pre-Conciliar era. Reflection on the Mystical Body of Christ marked the first phase of the Church's interior re-discovery; it began with St Paul and led to placing in the foreground the presence of Christ and the dynamics of what is alive (in Him and us). Further research led to a fresh awareness. Above all, more than anyone else, the great French theologian Henri de Lubac in his magnificent and learned studies made it clear that in the beginning the term "corpus mysticum" referred to the Eucharist. For St Paul and the Fathers of the Church the idea of the Church as the Body of Christ was inseparably connected with the concept of the Eucharist in which the Lord is bodily present and which He gives us His Body as food. This is how a Eucharistic ecclesiology came into existence.

What do we mean today by "Eucharistic ecclesiology"? I will attempt to answer this question with a brief mention of some fundamental points. The first point is that Jesus' Last Supper could be defined as the event that founded the Church. Jesus gave His followers this Liturgy of Death and Resurrection and at the same time He gave them the Feast of Life. In the Last Supper he repeats the covenant of Sinai—or rather what at Sinai was a simple sign or prototype, that becomes now a complete reality: the communion in blood and life between God and man. Clearly the Last Supper anticipates the Cross and the Resurrection and presupposes them, otherwise it would be an empty gesture. This is why the Fathers of the Church could use a beautiful image and say that the Church was born from the pierced side of the Lord, from which flowed blood and water. When I state that the Last Supper is the beginning of the Church, I am actually saying the same thing, from another point of view. This formula means that the Eucharist binds all men together, and not just with one another, but with Christ; in this way it makes them "Church". At the same time the formula describes the fundamental constitution of the Church: the Church exists in Eucharistic communities. The Church's Mass is her constitution, because the Church is, in essence, a Mass (sent out: "missa"), a service of God, and therefore a service of man and a service for the transformation of the world.

The Mass is the Church's form, that means that through it she develops an entirely original relationship that exists nowhere else, a relationship of multiplicity and of unity. In each celebration of the Eucharist, the Lord is really present. He is risen and dies no more. He can no longer be divided into different parts. He always gives Himself completely and entirely. This is why the Council states: "This Church of Christ is truly present in all legitimate local communities of the faithful which, united with their pastors, are themselves called Churches in the New Testament. For in their locality these are the new People called by God, in the Holy Spirit and with great trust (cf. 1 Thes. 1,5).... In these communities, though frequently small and poor, or living in the diaspora, Christ is present, and in virtue of His power there is brought together one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church" (Lumen Gentium, n. 26). This means that the ecclesiology of local Churches derives from the formulation of the Eucharistic ecclesiology. This is a typical feature of Vatican II that presents the internal and sacramental foundation of the doctrine of collegiality about which we will speak later.

For a correct understanding of the Council's teaching, we must first look more closely at what exactly it said. Vatican II was aware of the concerns of both Orthodox and Protestant theology and integrated them into a more ample Catholic understanding. In Orthodox theology the idea of Eucharistic ecclesiology was first expressed by exiled Russian theologians in opposition to the pretensions of Roman centralism. They affirmed that insofar as it possesses Christ entirely, every Eucharistic community is already, in se, the Church. Consequently, external unity with other communities is not a constitutive element of the Church.

Therefore, they concluded that unity with Rome is not a constitutive element of the Church. Such a unity would be a beautiful thing since it would represent the fullness of Christ to the external world, but it is not essential since nothing would be added to the totality of Christ. The Protestant understanding of the Church was moving in the same direction. Luther could no longer recognize the Spirit of Christ in the universal Church; he directly took that Church to be an instrument of the anti-Christ. Nor could he see the Protestant State Churches of the Reformation as Churches in the proper sense of the word. They were only social, political entities necessary for specific purposes and dependent on political powers—nothing more. According to Luther the Church existed in the community. Only the assembly that listens to the Word of God in a specific place is the Church. He replaced the word "Church" with "community" (Gemeinde). Church became a negative concept.

If we go back now to the Council text certain nuances become evident. The text does not simply say, "The Church is entirely present in each community that celebrates the Eucharist", rather it states: "This Church of Christ is truly present in all legitimate local communities of the faithful which, united with their pastors, are themselves called Churches". Two elements here are of great importance: to be a Church the community must be "legitimate"; they are legitimate when they are "united with their pastors". What does this mean? In the first place, no one can make a Church by himself. A group cannot simply get together, read the New Testament and declare: "At present we are the Church because the Lord is present wherever two or three are gathered in His name". The element of "receiving" belongs essentially to the Church, just as faith comes from "hearing" and is not the result of one's decision or reflection. Faith is a converging with something I could neither imagine nor produce on my own; faith has to come to meet me. We call the structure of this encounter, a "Sacrament". It is part of the fundamental form of a sacrament that it be received and not self-administered. No one can baptize himself. No one can ordain himself. No one can forgive his own sins. Perfect repentance cannot remain something interior—of its essence it demands the form of encounter of the Sacrament. This too is a result of a sacrament's fundamental structure as an encounter [with Christ]. For this reason communion with oneself is not just an infraction of the external provisions of Canon Law, but it is an attack on the innermost nature of a sacrament. That a priest can administer this unique sacrament, and only this sacrament, to himself is part of the mysterium tremendum in which the Eucharist involves him. In the Eucharist, the priest acts "in persona Christi", in the person of Christ [the Head]; at the same time he represents Christ while remaining a sinner who lives completely by accepting Christ's Gift.

One cannot make the Church but only receive her; one receives her from where she already is, where she is really present: the sacramental community of Christ's Body moving through history. It will help us to understand this difficult concept if we add something: "legitimate communities". Christ is everywhere whole. This is the first important formulation of the Council in union with our Orthodox brothers. At the same time Christ is everywhere only one, so I can possess the one Lord only in the unity that He is, in the unity of all those who are also His Body and who through the Eucharist must evermore become it. Therefore, the reciprocal unity of all those communities who celebrate the Eucharist is not something external added to Eucharistic ecclesiology, but rather its internal condition: in unity here is the One. This is why the Council recalls the proper responsibility of communities, but excludes any self-sufficiency. The Council develops an ecclesiology in which being Catholic, namely being in communion with believers in all places and in all times, is not simply an external element of an organizational form, it represents grace coming from within and is at the same time a visible sign of the grace of the Lord who alone can create unity by breaching countless boundaries.

I. The Church, as the People of God

After the initial enthusiasm that greeted the discovery of the idea of the Body of Christ, scholars analyzed and gradually began to refine the concept and make corrections in two directions. We have already referred to the first of these corrections in the work of Henri de Lubac. He made concrete the idea of the Body of Christ by working out a Eucharistic ecclesiology and opened it in this way to concrete questions about the juridical ordering of the Church and the reciprocal relations between local Churches and the universal Church. The other form of correction began in Germany in the 1930's, where some theologians were critical of the fact that with the idea of the Mystical Body certain relationships were not clear between the visible and the invisible, law and grace, order and life. They therefore proposed the concept of "People of God", found above all in the Old Testament, as a broader description of the Church to which one could more easily apply sociological and juridical categories. While the Mystical Body of Christ would certainly remain an important "image", by itself it could not meet the request of theology to express things using "concepts".

Initially this criticism of the idea of the Body of Christ was somewhat superficial. Further study of the Body of Christ uncovered its positive content; the concept of "People of God", along with the concept of the Body of Christ, entered the ecclesiology of the Council. One wondered if the image of the Mystical Body might be too narrow a starting point to define the many forms of belonging to the Church now found in the tangle of human history. If we use the image of a body to describe "belonging" we are limited only to the form of representation as "member". Either one is or one is not a member, there are no other possibilities. One can then ask if the image of the body was too restrictive, since there manifestly existed in reality intermediate degrees of belonging. The Constitution on the Church found it helpful for this purpose to use the concept of "the People of God". It could describe the relationship of non-Catholic Christians to the Church as being "in communion" and that of non-Christians as being "ordered" to the Church where in both cases one relies on the idea of the People of God (Lumen Gentium, nn. 15, 16).

In one respect one can say that the Council introduced the concept of "the People of God" above all as an ecumenical bridge. It applies to another perspective as well: the rediscovery of the Church after the First World War that initially was a phenomenon common to both Catholics and Protestants. Certainly the liturgical movement was by no means limited to the Catholic Church. This shared character gave rise to reciprocal criticism. The idea of the Body of Christ was developed within the Catholic Church, when the Church was designated as "Christ who continues to live on earth" and so the Church was described as the incarnation of the Son that continues to the end of time. This idea provoked opposition among Protestants who saw in the teaching an intolerable identifying of the Church herself with Christ. According to Protestants the Church was in a way adoring herself and making herself infallible. Gradually, the idea struck Catholic thinkers who, even though they did not go that far, found that this understanding of the Church made her every declaration and ministerial act so definitive that it made any criticism appear to be an attack on Christ himself and simply forgot the human, at times far too human, element of the Church. The Christological distinction had to be clearly emphasized: the Church is not identical with Christ, but she stands before Him. She is a Church of sinners, ever in need of purification and renewal, ever needing to become Church. The idea of reform became a decisive element of the concept of the People of God, while it would be difficult to develop the idea of reform within the framework of the Body of Christ.

There is a third factor that favoured the idea of the "People of God". In 1939 the Evangelical exegete, Ernst Käsemann gave his monograph on the Letter to the Hebrews the title, The Pilgrim People of God. In the framework of Council discussions, this title became right away a slogan because it made something become more clearly understood in the debates on the Constitution on the Church: the Church has not yet reached her goal. Her true and proper hope still lies ahead of her. The "eschatological" import of the concept of Church became clear. The phrase conveys the unity of salvation history which comprises both Israel and the Church in her pilgrim journey. The phrase expresses the historical nature of the pilgrim Church that will not be wholly herself until the paths of time have been traversed and have blossomed in the hands of God. It describes the unity of the People of God amid the variety, as in all peoples, of different ministries and services; yet above and beyond all distinctions, all are pilgrims in the one community of the pilgrim People of God. In broad outline, if one wants to sum up what elements relating to the concept "People of God" were important for the Council, one could say that the phrase "People of God" conveyed the historical nature of the Church, described the unity of God's history with man, the internal unity of God's people that also goes beyond the frontiers of sacramental states of life. It conveys the eschatological dynamic, the provisional and fragmentary nature of the Church ever in need of renewal; and finally, it expresses the ecumenical dimension, that is the variety of ways in which communion and ordering to the Church can and do exist, even beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church.

However, commentators very soon completely handed the term "people" in the concept "People of God" to a general political interpretation. Among the proponents of liberation theology it was taken to mean "people" in the Marxist sense, in opposition to the ruling classes, or more generally, it was taken to refer to popular sovereignty at long last being applied to the Church. This led to large-scale debates on Church structures. On occasion the expression was understood in a peculiarly Western sense as "democratization" or more in the sense of the so-called Eastern "People's Republics". Gradually this "verbal fireworks" (N. Lohfink) died down either because the power games ended in exhaustion and gave way to the ordinary work of parish councils, or because solid theological research had irrefutably demonstrated the impossibility of politicizing a concept that had arisen in an entirely different context. Bochum Werner Berg provides an example of the meticulous exegesis that characterized this theological research when he affirmed: "in spite of the small number of passages that mention the 'People of God' (it is a rare expression in the Bible) one common element is immediately apparent: the expression 'People of God' describes the relationship with God, the connection with God, the link between God and those designated as the People of God, it is therefore a 'vertical relationship'. The expression does not lend itself easily to a description of the hierarchical structure of this community, especially if 'People of God' is used in "contrast" to the ministers…" If we begin with the biblical meaning of this expression it can no longer be easily understood as a cry of protest against the ministers: "We are the People of God". Josef Meyer zu Schlochtern, the Professor of Fundamental Theology at Paderborn, concludes his discussion of the concept "People of God" with an observation on Vatican II's Constitution on the Church. The document concludes by "depicting the Trinitarian structure as the foundation of the final determination of the Church…". The discussion is brought back to the essential point: the Church does not exist for herself; rather, she is God's instrument to gather mankind in Himself and to prepare for that time when "God will be all in all" (I Cor 15,28). The very concept of God was left out of all the "fireworks" surrounding this expression, thus depriving the expression of its meaning. A Church which existed only for herself would be useless. People would realize this immediately. The crisis of the Church reflected in the expression "People of God" is a "crisis of God". It derives from our abandoning the essential. All that remains is a struggle for power. This sort of thing is already abundantly present in the world—there is no need for the Church to enter this arena.

III. The Eccelesiology of Communion

Around the time of the extraordinary Synod of 1985 which attempted to make an assessment of the 20 years since the Council there was a renewed effort to synthesize the Council's ecclesiology. The synthesis involved one basic concept: the ecclesiology of communion. I was very much pleased with this new focus in ecclesiology and I endeavoured, to the extent I was able, to help work it out. First of all one must admit that the word ''communio" did not occupy a central place in the Council. All the same if properly understood it can serve as a synthesis of the essential elements of the Council's ecclesiology. All the essential elements of the Christian concept of "communio" can be found in the famous passage from the First Letter of Saint John (1,3); it is a frame of reference for the correct Christian understanding of "communio". "That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship (communio) with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing this that our joy may be complete". The point of departure of communio is clearly evident in this passage: the union with the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who comes to mankind through the proclamation of the Church. Fellowship (communio) among men is born here and merges into fellowship (communio) with the One and Triune God. One gains access to communion with God through the realization of God's communion with man—it is Christ in person. To meet Christ creates communion with Him and therefore with the Father in the Holy Spirit. This unites men with one another. The goal of all this is the fullness of joy: the Church carries in her bosom an eschatological dynamic. This expression "fullness of joy" recalls the farewell address of Jesus, His Paschal mystery and the Lord's return in the Easter apparitions which prefigure His definitive return in the new world. "You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy ... I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice ... ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full (Jn 16, 20.22.24). If this verse is compared to the invitation to prayer in St Luke (Lk 11,13) it is apparent that "joy" and the "Holy Spirit" are equivalent. Although John does not explicitly mention the Holy Spirit in his first Epistle (1,3) he is hidden within the word "joy". In this biblical context the word "communio" has a theological, Christological, soteriological and ecclesiological characteristic. It enjoys a sacramental dimension that is absolutely explicit in St Paul: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body ... " (I Cor 10,16ff.). The ecclesiology of communion at its very foundation is a Eucharistic ecclesiology. It is very close to that Eucharistic ecclesiology that Orthodox theologians so convincingly developed during the past century. In it—as we have already seen—ecclesiology becomes more concrete while remaining totally spiritual, transcendent and eschatological. In the Eucharist, Christ, present in the bread and wine and giving Himself anew, builds the Church as His Body and through His Risen Body He unites us to the one and triune God and to each other. The Eucharist celebrated in different places is universal at the same time, because there is only one Christ and only a single body of Christ. The Eucharist comprehends the priestly service of "repraesentatio Christi" as well as that network of service, the synthesis of unity and multiplicity which is expressed in the term "communio". Without any possible doubt one could say that this concept conveys a synthesis of ecclesiology which combines the discourse of the Church with the discourse of God, and to life through God and with God. This synthesis assembles all the essential intentions of Vatican II ecclesiology and connects them with one another in an appropriate fashion.

For these reasons I was both grateful and happy when the 1985 Synod placed "communio" at the centre of their study. The following years demonstrated the fact that no word is safe from misunderstanding, not even the best and most profound word. To the extent that "communio" became an easy slogan, it was devalued and distorted. As happened to the concept 'People of God', one must point to a growing horizontal understanding that abandoned the concept of God. The ecclesiology of communion was reduced to a consideration of relations between the local Church and the universal Church; this in turn was reduced to the problem of determining the area of competence of each. Naturally the egalitarian thesis once more gained ground: only full equality was possible in "communio". Here again was the exact same argument that had exercised the disciples about who was the greatest amongst them. Obviously this was something that would not be resolved within a single generation. Mark's description of the incident is the most forceful. On the road from Jerusalem Jesus spoke to His Disciples about His coming Passion for the third time. When they arrived at Capernaum He asked them what they had been talking about on the road. "They were silent" because they had been discussing who among them would be the greatest—a sort of discussion about the primacy (Mk 9, 33-37). Isn't it just the same today? The Lord is going towards His Passion, while the Church, and in her Christ, is suffering and, we on the other hand are entangled in our favorite discussion: who comes first with the power. If He were to come among us and ask what we were talking about we would blush and be silent.

This does not mean that there should be no discussion of good government and the division of responsibility in the Church. It is certainly true that there are imbalances that need correcting. We should watch for and root out an excessive Roman centralization that is always a danger. But questions of this sort ought not to distract us from the true mission of the Church: the Church should not be proclaiming herself but God. It is only to assure that this is done in the purest possible way, that there is criticism within the Church. Criticism should insure a correlation between discourse on God and common service. To sum it up, it is no accident that Jesus' words "the first shall be last and the last first" occur more than once in the Gospel tradition. They are like a mirror constantly focused on us all.

Faced with the post-1985 reduction of the concept of "communio", the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith thought it appropriate to prepare a "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion". The Letter was issued on 28 May, 1992. Today, any theologian concerned about his reputation feels obliged to criticize all documents from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Our Letter met with a storm of criticism—very few parts of the text met with approval. The phrase that provoked the most controversy was this statement: "The universal Church in her essential mystery is a reality that ontologically and temporally is prior to every particular Church" (cf. n. 9). There was a brief reference to this statement being based on the Patristic notion that the one, unique Church precedes the creation of particular Churches and gives birth to them. The Fathers were reviving a rabbinical concept that the Torah and Israel were pre-existent. Creation was conceived as providing space for the Will of God. This Will needed a people who would live for the Will of God and would make it the Light of the world. Since the Fathers were convinced of the final identity of the Church and Israel, they could not envision the Church as something accidental, only recently created; in this gathering of people under the Will of God the Fathers recognized the internal theology of creation. Beginning with Christology this image was amplified and deepened: they explained history—under the influence of the Old Testament—as a story of love between God and man. God finds and prepares a Bride for His Son—the unique Bride who is the unique Church. In the light of Genesis 2,24, where man and woman become "two in one flesh" the image of the Bride merges with the idea of the Church as the Body of Christ—an analogy derived from the Eucharistic liturgy. The unique Body of Christ is prepared; Christ and the Church will be "two in one flesh", one body and in this way "God will be everything to everyone". The ontological priority of the universal Church—the unique Church, the unique Body, the unique Bride—vis-à-vis the empirical, concrete manifestations of various, particular Churches is so obvious to me that I find it difficult to understand the objections raised against it. These objections only seem possible if one will not or cannot recognize the great Church conceived by God—possibly out of despair at her earthly shortcomings. These objections look like theological ravings. All that would remain is the empirical image of mutually related Churches and their conflicts. This would mean that the Church as a theological theme is cancelled. If one can only see the Church as a human institution, all that remains is desolation. In this case one has abandoned not only the ecclesiology of the Fathers, but the ecclesiology of the New Testament and the understanding of Israel in the Old Testament as well. It is not just the later deutero-Pauline letters and the Apocalypse that affirm the ontological priority of the universal Church to the particular Churches (reaffirmed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith). This concept can be found in the great Pauline letters: in the Letter to the Galatians, the Apostle speaks about the heavenly Jerusalem not as something great and eschatological, but as something which precedes us: "This Jerusalem is our mother" (Gal 4,26). H. Schlier comments that for St Paul, inspired by Jewish tradition, the Jerusalem above is the new aeon. For St Paul this new aeon already exists "in the Christian Church. For him the Church is the heavenly Jerusalem in her children".

Let me conclude. To understand the ecclesiology of Vatican II one cannot ignore chapters 4 to 7 of the Constitution Lumen Gentium. These chapters discuss the laity, the universal call to holiness, the religious and the eschatological orientation of the Church. In these chapters the inner goal of the Church, the most essential part of its being, comes once again to the fore: holiness, conformity to God. There must exist in the world space for God, where he can dwell freely so that the world becomes His "Kingdom". Holiness is something greater than a moral quality. It is the presence of God with men, of men with God; it is God's "tent" pitched amongst men in our midst (cf. Jn 1,14). It is a new birth—not from flesh and blood but from God (Jn 1,13). Orientation towards holiness is one and the same as eschatological orientation. Beginning with Jesus' message it is fundamental for the Church. The Church exists to become God's dwelling place in the world, to become "holiness". This is the only reason there should be any struggle in the Church—and not for precedence or for the first place. All of this is repeated and synthesized in the last chapter of the Constitution on the Church that is dedicated to the Mother of the Lord.

As everyone knows, the question of dedicating a specific document to Mary was widely debated. In any event I believe it was appropriate to insert the Marian element directly into the doctrine on the Church. In this way the point of departure for our consideration is once more apparent: the Church is not an apparatus, nor a social institution, nor one social institution among many others. It is a person. It is a woman. It is a Mother. It is alive. A Marian understanding of the Church is totally opposed to the concept of the Church as a bureaucracy or a simple organization. We cannot make the Church, we must be the Church. We are the Church, the Church is in us only to the extent that our faith more than action forges our being. Only by being Marian, can we become the Church. At its very beginning the Church was not made, but given birth. She existed in the soul of Mary from the moment she uttered her fiat. This is the most profound will of the Council: the Church should be awakened in our souls. Mary shows us the way.


VATICAN II - 50 YEARS ON - THE NEW EVANGELIZATION

THE ADDRESS OF METROPOLITAN HILARION ALFEYEV TO THE 50th EUCHARISTIC CONFERENCE IN DUBLIN 2012

THE CHURCH IS ONE by A. Khomiakov

AN ORTHODOX TEACHING ON THE CHURCH.  Are we that different?

ACADEMIC TRIP TO THE HOLY LAND from Oxford University

Dom Alex Echeandia is a monk of Pachacamac(click), Peru, and therefore a monk of Belmont, who is studying at Blackfriars, Oxford.  He is also a very good iconographer, a pupil of Sister Petra Clare (click) and, whenever he gets the chance, of Aidan Hart(click), an Orthodox iconographer of note.  Brother Alex recently returned from the Holy Land after a couple of weeks with Fr Nick King S.J. and Fr Henry Wansborough O.S.B. and a group of Oxford students.   This is his account of the pilgrimage. 

I was taken to Luton Airport, a place nearly undiscovered by civilization, no signposts on the road but plenty of people to ask. I think I stopped more than eight times to find the way to the airport terminal. I arrived three minutes before Mass began. At the airport chapel there were eight students from different colleges in Oxford and two priests as well who were about to begin the Mass.  Of course, there were some students missing because not all of us were Catholics. In the group of 14 Oxford students  some belonged to the established church. Mass began. Brother Cuthbert, a monk from St Louis in America read the first reading and I read the Psalm. Fr Henry Wansbrough read the Gospel and Fr Nicholas King was principal celebrant: it was the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul.

The time came. We all gathered together ready to fly over to the Holy Land. In the plane I sat by a Canadian student who was working on a thesis at Oxford on the hermits of the fourteenth century who were inspired by St Augustine of Hippo. We spent a good time talking  about this subject and at other times on monasticism and on French and English influence in Canada. Suddenly a voice came from the cabin saying: “Get ready, we shall soon be arriving at Tel Aviv Airport”. Of course, the voice also spoke in Hebrew. I was fascinated by the sound of the language – The only word I know in this language is “shalom” – It was, indeed, an amazing experience because it was basically the same language spoken by Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and the main figures in the Old Testament. It was a foretaste of what we were all to experience when we landed.

At the arrival we all were led to the hired minibuses that would be with us throughout the whole trip. We went right to Galilee. On the way I was amazed at the signposts on the road because they were written in three languages: Hebrew, Arabic and English.   It made up for the lack of signs in Luton.It was already dark, something like 7:00 pm in Israeli time – two hours ahead of England – when we passed by Magdala towards the Sea of Galilee. I could not see much of the town, but I had a feeling of actually immersing myself in the Scriptures, as though I were going to  meet Jesus at home.   Historically, there are two thousand years between us, but faith makes us contemporaries. We arrived at the hostel, and after dinner we all gathered by the Sea of Galilee to introduce ourselves to the group and to get know each other better. 

The water of the sea is sweet and the temperature is at this time over 33 C,too warm for a really refreshing swim. People say that there are twenty-two species of fish founded in the lake, therefore the industry of fishing is important, as much as it was in the time of Jesus. Swimming in the sea of Galilee, scenes from the gospel came through my mind. After the resurrection Peter jumped from the boat to meet the risen Christ announced by John. It was the same place, the same sea in which God made his miracles and went from one side to another.  It was the land of the Lord and our encounter with God made man on earth!

We stayed in Galilee three days. First of all we went to a ruin of Solomon’s fortress which had been a military border. Then we moved to Caesarea Philippi. Here I saw a huge rock through which seeps water from the river Jordan. Here we read the quotation of Scripture in which Jesus calls Peter “rock”. This place immediately made sense of the text and what Jesus said about Peter. Then we moved to Hermon Stream. The Banias waterfall is ten metres high and the typical vegetation includes laurel and figs. It is here where I remembered the Psalm 133 that we sing in the office: “It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion” on the goodness and pleasure of God’s people living in unity.

Then we moved to Tabgha, where the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes took place,  with the intention to celebrate Mass there, but it was closed at the time we arrived. Capernaum was our next stop. Here, I first saw the Church of Peter’s Primacy, or Mensa Christi – the Table of Christ. After seeing the shore we read  the passage in which Jesus showed himself to his disciples after the resurrection at the sea of Tiberias when they ate together on the shore, as is written in John 21:1. Capernaum was also the place where Jesus first met his first disciples – Peter, Andrew, James, John and Matthew. Then we went to see Peter’s wife’s mother’s house. All the houses were similar to one another. The roof is not as high as I thought. In fact, it would have been easy to remove the roof and to lower a sick person in front of Jesus, as we read in the Gospel. Then we went to see the remains of a first century synagogue thought to be that in which Jesus preached, which was very close to the town. There I also found some very interesting ruins of the ancient synagogue in which were depicted Jewish symbols and scenes, like, for example, the famous carriage carrying the Holy Ark of the Covenant.

Our next stop was Bethsaida, the home town of Philip, Andrew and Peter. The name beth-tsaida means "house of fishing".  Then, we went to Mount Tabor where Jesus was transfigured, the highest mountain of the area. From a distance I could appreciate its beautiful shape and I felt awe and wonder. From there one can see Nazareth, Samaria and Galilee.  I could not stay for a longer period because there was another group waiting to celebrate Mass and our time was reduced to a few minutes. I couldn’t even see the Benedictine ruins built at the time of the Crusaders. Now it belongs to the Franciscans. Apart the Basilica they have built a large monastery and a hospice.

After lunch-picnic made of pita-bread, tomatoes and other vegetables, we went to Megiddo to see a ruin of Solomon’s stables together with some buildings dated around the time of King Jeroboam II (8th century BC). We were on the “mountain of Megiddo” that is the meaning of the word “Armageddon”.  Again, this word reminded me of Rev. 16:16 where  it is the place of the battle to end all wars. Then, we went to Sepphoris, north-west of Nazareth, an archaeological legacy that shows Assyrian, Hellenistic, Judean, Babylonian, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Crusader and Arabic cultural influences. There we went to the Synagogue  of the fifth or sixth century BC. We also went to the Roman Villa in which I found the mosaic floor of the very well known "Mona Lisa of Galilee". The mosaic, for the most part, is devoted to Dionysus, god of wine, and of socializing. He is seen along with Pan and Hercules in several of the 15 panels.

After eating our traditional “picnic” with pita bread, vegetables and humus, we then went to Acre, a Crusades’ port  which was one of the best harbours of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, important as a military and commercial port.  Akko, as it was first called, is a very ancient place and was very important strategically until Herod the Great founded Caesarea in the 10BC. We all went into the great Mosque which the Muslims rulers built  n 18-19 century  over Christian ruins. In fact this area was the place where the Knights of St John used to live. We visited this fortress that seems to be all in Turkish, and I even I was invited to take a Turkish bath. We were in a hurry, otherwise I would probably would had time to experience that relaxing therapy.  We went into the fortress and the incredible and magnificent building of the Knights Hospitallers was truly amazing. The cloister, dormitory and refectory were huge.

Back in the minibus, we started on our journey to our next stop: Nazareth.  We travelled on to the city where many miracles took place. I heard that in the synagogue of Nazareth one can find the book in which Jesus learned his ABC and a bench on which he sat with other children, but I couldn’t find them. After unpacking our cases in the convent of Sisters of Nazareth, we went to the Basilica of the Annunciation. The modern massive basilica can be seen from anywhere in the town. In the front, above the gates are those words in Latin central to my faith: “The Word became flesh, he lived among us” (Jn 1:14). I was very touched by that experience of being in the place where God became man, especially because my monastery in Peru is dedicated to “The Incarnation”. I entered into that modern basilica and I focused my view in the sunken area round the Grotto of the Annunciation. In the front of the altar it is written: “Verbum caro hic factum est.” I prayed intensively for a few minutes with an image in my mind of an icon I saw some time ago. Then, from the basilica we went to the Greek Orthodox Church of St Gabriel, also known as Mary’s well; but sadly it was closed at that time. Back to the convent where we stayed, one of the sisters took us down below the ground under the convent.   We saw a sepulchre, from the first century, similar to that in which Jesus was buried. I was impressed by the size of the rock that shuts the mouth of the grave. A round flat stone, no more than 1:50 cm hight. Entering through the  hole into the chamber, we saw three tombs, excavated inside the rock to give space for one person. We couldn’t stay more than three minutes. It was the first time I have seen a first century tomb, probably as a preamble to what I was going to experience in Jerusalem.

And evening passed and morning came. We were prepared to move to Caesarea Maritima.  In the Acts of the Apostles it is mentioned that Caesarea was first introduced to Christianity when Peter baptized Cornelius the Centurion, his household, and his soldiers. Caesarea is an ancient and extraordinary place, especially for me because I was brought up on the coast of Peru. We went to the harbour built by Herod the Great about 25-13 BC. I heard that after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, Caesarea was the provincial capital of the Judaea Province. The harbour was very impressive because it is the largest artificial harbour built in the open sea. The floor mosaics again were exquisite. One of them is decorated with animals, geometric shapes, animals and trees, forming a beautiful picture. . Another mosaic depicts obedience to the authorities, and a Latin inscription calls us to remember the words of St Paul in Romans 13,3 : “Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good.” A good thought for a monk, I thought.  Then, we went to see first the hippodrome and then the remains of the Roman Theatre, the Foundations of the City wall from the Early Islamic Period (9th-11th AD .), followed by a break of relaxation in a “gelateria”, tasting a delicious ice cream, no more expensive than 20 shekels, of course. Then we went to the remains of the ancient Roman aqueduct, under which we had our usual “picnic”. Then we went swimming. I can say that the Mediterranean Sea is very clean and clear, a nice place to enjoy swimming under a blue sky and radiant sunshine.

Back in Nazareth, having thanked our Sisters of Nazareth, we moved to Fauzi Azar Inn, a guest-house near by to spent our last night in Nazareth. We went to see a first century synagogue. Then, after Mass that we joyfully celebrated everyday, followed by dinner, all gathered together for our usual discussion on the things we  had experienced during the day. We also celebrated Fr Nicholas Kings’ birthday, much to his surprise. 


And evening passed and morning came. We got up early to have a typical breakfast which I enjoyed very much, especially with fried eggs and mint.  After breakfast, we went to the Monastery of Lady Mary at Tell Istaba, near Bet She’an, in which one can appreciate the wheel of the zodiac on the floor mosaic. It combines the representation of figures of the Old Testament like Sarah and Isaac, and in the centre a large Zodiac with the names of the months written in Hebrew. Having arrived at the ancient city of Bet She’an in the Jordan Valley, Fr Henry Wansbrough and Nicholas King showed us the archaeological places like the theatre and the Roman baths and bathhouse toilets, the ruins of Silvanus Street built first by the Romans and then repaved in the Byzantine period (sixth century AD.) but then destroyed in the earthquake of 749.

We, then, went to the Greek Orthodox Monastery of St Gerasimus, which is known to being one of the oldest monasteries in Palestine.  Saint Gerasimus lived in the fifth century A.D. and was known for his austerity and prayer which he practised in a Laura as a hermit. A story tells how St Gerasimus of Jordan became a friend of a lion by removing a thorn from its paw. A cave in this monastery was known by tradition as the place where Mary, Joseph and Jesus found refuge during their flight from Herod.

The following stop was Qumran, another monastic place and a very important site for Scripture research and pre- Christian documentary. I always wanted to see the place where the community of Essenes lived, described by Josephus, especially as it is supposed to be the place where John the Baptist lived before he appeared publically.  Also it interested me because of the discovering of the well know Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947-1956.  I saw the Dead Sea for the first time on our way to Qumran. An extraordinary view of the sea which was increased by ways of claiming the mountain. At the very beginning, before we started the claiming, we could appreciate the caves inside the hills in which the scrolls were discovered by some Bedouin shepherd boys. Also we walked by the different areas, now ruins, where members of this community lived: The reservoir, the watch-tower, the cisterns, the steps leading to the ritual baths, the dining room, kitchens, a potters’ kiln, a scriptorium where they copied manuscripts and the cemetery. Having seen these magnificent ruins, we went up to the top of the mountain. It was a very demanding climb and quite exhausting one. Thank God I had a bottle of water with me. The heat was at its height:  I felt like a roast potato in an oven. From the top of the mountain, I appreciated the delightful view of the Dead Sea and the hills around. After a few minutes on top of it, we started the descent. Down in the valley, we  went to the museum site and we were able to admire some copies of the manuscripts discovered there, notably part of the Isaiah Scrolls.

In the afternoon we all went to stay in Jerusalem at “Maison d’Abraham”, which had been a Benedictine monastery. From the terrace one can admire the old city of Jerusalem, which is only a few minutes walk from the house. It was evening and personally I was exhausted after the very demanding walk up the Qumran mountain. After dinner and some clothes washing, we all went to the city for first time. I remember passing by the Old City Walls and the original steps that Jesus and his disciples used every time they went to the Temple. . 
Walking inside the Holy City, I stopped at the point when I saw a good number of Orthodox Jews wearing large circular black hats, long black coats, black trousers and hair ringlets which swung in some in front of their face, sometimes were tucked behind their ears. They were coming and going to the Western Wall built by Herod in 20 B.C. It was an admirable  and moving the way the Jews prayed  so faithfully. 

Early in the morning, on next day, I went to the Mount of Olives with the Garden of Gethsemane. There are found a good number of very old trees. We went into the Church of Gethsemane also call “the Church of all Nations” and we prayed there, looking at the rock on which it is believed that Jesus prayed. I imagined how easy it could have been for Jesus to run away from the soldiers and the Jews who wanted to arrest him. He could have easily left the place by the other side of the mountain towards his friends in Bethany, but we know the story. In this moment there I meditated on Christ suffering, not only for the crucifixion, but also for the desolation he experience staying alone, without his friends.


 As was the custom, the  next morning, we began our walk towards the city of Jerusalem by way of the pool of Bethesda. Walking through the market alongside the city, it was clear to me he differences between Jews and Arabs. You cross a line and you can  see a different style of clothes and souvenirs, among other things. Nonetheless, they try to live together here. I was in a hurry because the group needed to meet outside the market. Leaving the city wall, I looked back and I saw the main entrance of the Old City of Jerusalem, Damascus Gate, a magnificent gate built in the XVI century A.C. Beneath it and in a side remains a Roman gate, expanded by Adrian and that served as the main entrance to the city in the first century. Then, in the free time – two hours maximum – I went to see the well-known German Benedictine Abbey of the Dormition, located on top of Mount Zion, commemorating the "falling asleep of Virgin Mary. I went down to the crypt. It holds a good number of small chapels covered with beautiful mosaics.  Among the other chapels, I was very impressed by the one at the end of a long pillared hall. It shows a mosaic of Mary sitting on a throne and with the twelve apostles standing to her right and left.

Having met the group, we all went to the place I have always desired to visit: the Holy Sepulchre. The first thing that struck my mind and heart was the Stone of Anointing where Jesus was  placed after being taken down from the cross. It is located a few metres inside the main entrance. On the wall, behind and over the Stone of Anointing, there are mosaics in which are depicted scenes of Jesus after his death, three moments: Jesus being taken down from the cross, Jesus being anointed and Jesus being taken to the sepulchre. – It was very precious moment in my pilgrimage, and I was deeply moved, all the more because  I am in the process of writing the “Epitáphios Thrēnos” icon – Then, we all went up to Golgotha where Jesus was crucified. It was very crowded, and hundreds of pilgrims wanted to kiss the rock where the cross was planted which is located under the altar. Sadly, I could not stay longer there, and there wasn't the opportunity to do so later. We then were taken down, underneath the altar, to the Chapel of Adam where the Golgotha Rock is behind a window. The rock has a crack that was produced, according to tradition, as a result of the earthquake at the time of the crucifixion.

 Passing by the Holy Sepulchre  where Jesus was buried and rose from the dead, I saw that there was a very long queue waiting outside, we went to see the tomb of Nicodemus behind Jesus’ tomb door. I was waiting for the opportunity to visit the tomb of Jesus, but people from every place was arriving and filling the church. Then, we went up to St Antony's Coptic Monastery, the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem. After it, we went to see the columns remaining of what was the market in ancient times. We passed by the Jewish Quarter and then to the Israel Museum where there is a model of Herod's Temple. We went to another museum, a very impressive one but one that made me feel sad as a human being. Yad Vashem is the Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. I saw the Jewish shoes of different sizes, all in one big box taken from them before their execution, and there were childrens' toys in another room. What else can be said about it?


In the afternoon we went to Bethlehem. When I was approaching to the Palestinian border,  I stopped  by  a big wall, 8 metres tall, of concrete, constructed by State of Israel. Everyone was checked out. In a way, it was easier to cross the frontier for non-Palestinians. One of the arguments I heard was that the barrier was necessary to protect Israeli civilians from Palestinian terrorism.  Arguments against the barrier maintain that it is an illegal attempt to annex Palestinian land under the guise of security, violates international law, has the effect of undermining negotiations (by establishing new borders), and severely restricts Palestinians who live nearby, particularly their ability to travel freely and to access work in Israel. The situation is very difficult at the moment.

After having crossed the border, we went to the Church of the Nativity, considered to be the oldest continuously operating Christian church in the world. We had Mass there in the crypt beneath. There Franciscan Friars provided us with everything needed for the Eucharistic celebration. Finally, we went to buy a few souvenirs, especially cribs made of olive wood. In the shop they told us of the difficult situation they are living in at the moment and how so many people are leaving the country to find a better place to live with their families.

Coming back from Bethlehem, we went to Hezekiah’s Tunnel and the water system. The Canaanites built a huge tower over the Gihon spring, and they tunnelled a channel through  the rock to a large pool.  Then, we went back to the city of Jerusalem. A free time was given and I was able to return to the Holy Sepulchre again. I wanted to go into the cave where Jesus was buried and rose again. Good news!!! It was empty for the first time, a very few in number were waitning to go into the Holy Sepulchre. Very quickly I was able to go in and touch the place where Our Lord was buried in an atmosphere of prayer. It was 3:17 p.m. on Friday and it was empty, just as it must have been on the first Good Friday, at the very moment that Jesus was buried by his mother and disciples. I was captured by God and wanted to stay there for a very long time. However, I needed to leave, but I still retain in my mind that very moment.  I think it has marked me for life.  I went out and I continued praying for almost twenty more minutes in that holy place.

Coming back to earth, the next day the whole group went to Jericho. It was a long walk from Jerusalem. On the way we read the Good Samaritan passage. I realised that it was a very challenging decision for that good Samaritan of the parable to carry that sick person, because it really was a long, long distance, a very hot day and without inhabitants nearby. On the way, we arrived at St. George, a fifth century Orthodox Monastery. Very kindly, the monks offered us some refreshments and biscuits and a very hot tea. In was an excellent place to stay after our long walk through the desert. Some minutes later, we started again our walk towards Jericho. On the way we met a friend who accompanied us through the whole journey with his donkey. He had six brothers and sisters and was a member of the Bedouin tribe. We were invited to his home and the family offered us a glass of water, a very hot tea and  friendly company. I experienced how people can offer everything they have, just like the widow in the Temple.


We arrived at the modern Jericho. After having a usual picnic, we went up to see the Jericho wall at the archaeological site. I was able to touch that very ancient wall we read about in the Book of Joshua, of how the Israelites destroyed the wall of Jericho by walking around it with the Ark of the Covenant for seven days, on the last of which they blew trumpets of rams' horns and shouted to make the walls fall down (Joshua 6:20). The events of the account are suggested to be dated at around 1400 BC. During our return, we saw a  Greek Orthodox Monastery of  the Temptation which was located on a hill, but we could not visit it for lack of time. We had enough time for a quick  look round the city.  There I saw how two men were smoking the typical Arabic “Shisha pipe”. It is smoked through a flexible tube where water is used to cool the smoke that is produced by burning fruit-scented tobacco. I saw this also in Jerusalem.


Then, we continued our journey to Nebi Musa, an ancient Holy Muslim site located on the side of the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. It is dedicated to Prophet Moses who, according to Muslim tradition, is buried here. Inside were rooms on two floors. In the centre of the cloister there were two wells which supply water to the pilgrims. There is a mosque which was not opened to us. We left the buildings, ready to go in the minibuses. I saw a camel right in front of the vehicle. Everybody was in the bus, ready to go, and I felt a curiosity to ride one.  On the spur of the moment I asked Fr Henry to wait for me to spend a few minutes on the camel. He agreed and I was able to ride it for the first time in my life. It was a nice experience.

We went back to Jerusalem to spend the night there, before getting ready for our next expedition: Masada. The place is best known for the violence that occurred in the first century AD. One of the final events of the First Jewish–Roman War, the Siege of Masada by troops of the Roman Empire, led to the mass suicide of the rebels. We began to climb the mountain to the top. It was very exhausting, but I think that by this time we were getting used to climbing high mountains. The heat was very intense, but the view was impressive from the top. Masada was fortified by Herod the Great. In it I saw ruins,  
cisterns that were refilled by rainwater,  a synagogue, bathhouses and storehouses.


Then we descended to get ready for our next stop: Egypt. On the way to the border, an accident occurred on the minibus where the other half of the group was. The wheel and the front transmission broke on the road. Nothing could be done, especially at the time when taxis were waiting for us on the other side of the border in Egypt. Well, eight of us went first towards the border and the others waited for a little while until they found a bus to come over. The damaged minibus was left closed ready for somebody from the agency to collect it. Finally we crossed the border easily, not without crossing through at least five control points. We went to stay at a nice place by the Red Sea in Egypt. After a nice dinner, I went to lie by the shore. It was very warm there. As I was lying on the sand, I contemplated the brilliant stars.

Next morning at four o’clock we began our way to Sinai. Thank God it was not very hot at that early hour of the day. Now the climbing was not an impediment. The view was extraordinary with round rocks and on the hills on either side of us. We were all very enthusiastic as we climbed to the top. Once there, I experienced another numinous moment. It was just being on the mountain where Moses was such a long time ago. After a few minutes, we started to descend on a different path. It was easier in a way and not so steep. Nearly at the bottom of the mountain, all of us began to prepare to enter into the Monastery of St Catherine, one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world. No camera was allowed inside the church; therefore, I was more able to pray in that Orthodox Church surrounded by the icons, very ancient ones. Then, I went out to meet the others who were already looking at the bush from which God spoke to Moses. The monastery possesses important historical documents from as early as the 4th Century, the oldest almost completely preserved manuscript of the Bible. Also, the monastery library preserves the second largest collection of early codices and manuscripts in the world. It contains Greek, Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Georgian, and Syriac texts. The thing I was looking for was the icon of the Pantocrator of the Sinai. As we know, this monastery has the best collection of early icons in the world, many in “encaustic” (hot beeswax painting, to which coloured pigments are added). I asked to one Arab man who became my friend, and he said he would be please to take me to the museum. Sadly I couldn’t accept that invitation because the group that came with me was already leaving the place. It was a shame because I was really wanting to go to the museum and seen the icons I have only seen before in books. Nevertheless, I was delighted to see what I saw and experienced in that wonderful place blessed by God.


Next morning all of us were ready to go to Jordan. It was incredible because I was in three countries in one single day: Egypt, Israel and then Jordan. We arrive at Jordan; then we moved to Petra, an historical and archaeological city. A tradition says that it was here that Moses struck the rock and drew water, as it is mentioned in Exodus 17. Anyway, this place was fascinating because of the shapes and colours of the rocks that made it a dramatic entrance to this ancient city. I was astonished by the things a saw around me and can judge by myself as one of the greatest wonders ever wrought by nature and man. It is not permitted for motorized vehicles to enter the site. All of us needed to walk, although horse-drawn carriages took some people inside Petra to visit the main attractions. Some tourists hired a donkey or a camel. I personally was delighted just being be there. At the end of the road appeared in front of us “The Treasury”,   a massive façade, 30 metres wide and 43m high, carved out of the sheer, dusky pink rock-face and dwarfing everything around it. It was carved in the early 1st century as the tomb of an important king. Some of my friends reminded me that this place was the scenario for the 1989 film “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” starring Harrison Ford. We then went to see other places like the Ad-Deir Monastery (high above the site of Petra), and the place of the high sacrifice. Also some archaeologists were excavating different areas around there. What we saw was probably less that half of what they will find in the future. People were selling everything they could. It did not matter the kind of currency: pounds, euros, dollars or their own dinar. Anything offered was very welcomed, although three dollars are the equivalent to two dinars, the price of a bottle of water (1.5L).


From Petra we went back to Jerusalem in Israel to prepare everything to return to England. In that very night, I went to see for the last time the city of Jerusalem. Near the place where I stayed, there was a fight between two Arab families for a territory. They were throwing stone at each other and burning bushes around. A man  came  up to me, attracted by the noise. He    told me that if the police arrived, these two families would probably fight against the police. Well, I understood that even in the Holy City there are disputes among men. It also was seen in the way Jews and Palestinians treat each other. It shows that the earthly Jerusalem has a long way to go before it mirrors the Jerusalem in heaven. 


Finally and overall, the experience lived during these days in the Holy Land have made a tremendous impact on my life as a Christian. It has renewed my faith in the depth of my being and it has opened ways of understanding  the Scriptures, as I read, meditate and interact with God’s Word.  This experience will also help me in my future ministry as a priest in service of the Church.  I want to thank those who have been with me on my journey, for their support and company and those who made my pilgrimage possible. 

MONASTIC CONFERENCE by Abbot Paul of Belmont

Conference                                                                              20th July 2012

Brethren, on Wednesday evening, as Dom Leo and I stepped out for our evening walk before Compline, we saw on the small expanse of lawn between the Woodfield Gardens’ garages and the road two green woodpeckers feeding in the company of two wood pigeons. We stopped to watch these colourful birds. They flew up onto a tree trunk, on which we had an even better view of them, as their bright green feathers contrasted well with the bark. Then they flew off in the direction of the monastery garden. I was thrilled, for it was at least two years since I had seen green woodpeckers at Belmont. For many years there had been a pair who fed on the front lawn and I often discussed them with Fr Peter, who informed me that, although they are called woodpeckers and look like woodpeckers, they’re not actually of the same family. I also notice that we now have two badger sets at Belmont, an old one which had been rebuilt and enlarged in the ditch beyond the pavilion and a new one in our woods, just off the “monks’ walk”.

I mention these events of nature at the beginning of this conference as an example of hope and new life. I don’t know if this is the same pair of green woodpeckers or the offspring of the original pair nor do I know where the badgers have come from to rehabilitate an old set and build a new one, but I do recognise in them God’s gift to us of the wonders and beauty of creation, creatures that have much to teach us about God’s love and divine providence. They also teach us something else. Some people occasionally complain to me about the state of the woods or certain areas of our grounds that have “gone wild” and need cutting down and cleaning out. But wild life flourishes precisely where nature is allowed to go wild. Animals need undergrowth, rotting tree trunks, tall grass and wild flowers. They need space and shelter where they can live, breed and thrive and also where they can find food.

Now, while monks are not necessarily wild animals, they are, I believe, an integral part of creation, part of God’s plan for the world. They are that sector of human society which, perhaps, best reflects the interplay and interdependence there must be between the wild and the domesticated, the providential and the planned, the natural and the cultivated, the institutional and the charismatic, and I use the word charismatic in its true and original sense. I believe that monks, like woodpeckers, badgers and other animals, need space and a suitable environment in which to flourish. This means balancing and blending the providential with the planned, the natural with the cultivated and the institutional with the charismatic. You can also compare our lovely gardens and lawns, so well tended by Elwyn and his companions, with a field of wild flowers (take a look at the paddock, for example). Both are beautiful in their own way and complement each other, and both are necessary and useful. The great thing about the Gospel and the Rule of St Benedictine is that they give us that freedom of time and space in which we can best love and serve the living God as we faithfully continue each day that search for him which will ultimately lead us into the fullness of the divine mystery and our true homeland in heaven.

The Gospel, the Rule and monastic tradition do not clip our wings and put us in straightjackets but rather direct us along the path of our vocation, encouraging us to freely embrace a life of discipline and obedience, a life of charity and communion, a life that leads us to God in the company of our brethren, who are here to encourage and support us as we should encourage and support them. Although in the Rule there is a lot about correction and punishment, and some of it quite shocking to modern readers, even to monks who are used to hearing these sections read on a regular basis, nevertheless the goal is always the salvation of a soul and the saving of a vocation. The chapters on the abbot are a case in point.

In Chapter 2 the abbot is asked “to lead by a twofold teaching”, pointing out “all that is good and holy more by example than by words.” Not only is he to be “stern as a taskmaster”, but also “devoted and tender as only a father can be.” The abbot “must so accommodate and adapt himself to each one’s character and intelligence that he will not only keep the flock entrusted to his care from dwindling, but will rejoice in the increase of a good flock.” In Chapter 64 he is told that when he has to punish a monk, “he should use prudence and avoid extremes; otherwise, by rubbing too hard to remove the rust, he may break the vessel.” He must govern the monastery with discretion, “the mother of virtues, and must so arrange everything that the strong have something to yearn for and the weak nothing to run away from.”

When it comes to such things as food and drink, he is to verge on the side of generosity, especially when the monks have a lot of work on their hands and conditions are stressful. Even in Lent he is not to impose fasts or other Lenten exercises, but allow the monks of their own free will to decide how best to keep the holy season, provided they do so in consultation with him and in a spirit of obedience. The abbot, together with the prior and the cellarer of the monastery, are to make sure that everything the brethren need is provided for. Even if it’s not always possible to give what has been asked for, the cellarer “should offer a kind word in reply.” St Benedict is quite clear that, “necessary items are to be requested and given at the proper time, so that no one may be disquieted or distressed in the house of God.” So, we are not to be disquieted or distressed but at the same time we should all make a great effort not to upset our brethren in any way. We must never forget that the relationship is mutual: we have the right to be at peace and content in the monastery but we also have the duty of creating an atmosphere of peace and contentment for others.

Let us pray this evening that the good Lord in his great mercy will continue to bless our community abundantly not only with new vocations, for which we give thanks, but with holiness and a spirit of true Benedictine peace, Never forget that Pax rather than Ora et Labora is the motto of the Benedictine life and that it is our common work, in a spirit of prayer, to create with God’s help here on earth the icon of that heavenly Jerusalem which is to come. Belmont should give to each one of us, and to all who visit us, that vision of peace for which we yearn as “ we progress in this way of life and in faith, running on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.” Amen.

BLESSED FRA ANGELICO OP