Real Presence

Fr. Laurence's talk last night on the Eucharist led me, providentially, to read an article by Luigi Giussani, "Religious Awareness in Modern Man," which you can find here. On page 137 I found an interesting description of what "presence" means.

He quotes Romano Guardini: "In the experience of a great love, everything that happens becomes an event within its sphere." He gives an example: "If God is a fact among us, it is as though I had received a very important guest into my house: the house remains mine, but it is his, because everything rotates around him."

In other words, when love is present, everything experienced fits within love's embrace, takes its cue from love, orients itself according to love, and is valued and finds meaning there.

Giussani cites Jesus' "Presence" that had such a radical impact on his first followers (as related in the first chapter of the Gospel of John):

"The encounter with Jesus was for each of them an event that overturned their lives, filled it with a total demand, eliminating every empty space within them, every plan independent of him. If a God who became one of us, who came to be among us as our life's companion, did not tend to determine our every thought, plan and sentiment, if he were not understood in this all-embracing way, he would simply cease to be God."

We all know that signs and symbols help us to experience the reality of the events and things they signify. The crucifix in our home helps us experience Jesus' suffering and death; the flag, our nation's ideals. Actions and words paint pictures for us of the deeds they enact and depict.

"This is my body. This is my blood. Do this in memory of me." Jesus' words invite us into his stunning sacrifice of love, and gently exhort us to radically transform our lives as we absorb this perturbing fact. Our faithful response brings us into His orbit and eliminates the "empty space" within us, the distance that keeps us out of His presence.

So Christ in the Eucharist invites us into His embrace, His presence, His love, as He offers us Himself in a bit of bread and a sip of wine. Our best response is to enter into that presence.

The Beauty of the Moral Act

Following is a quote from the magazine, First Things, the April 2011 issue. It is written by Ross McCullough and I hope that we have an opportunity in our Christian spirituality group to discuss the full opinion piece. It is entitled The Beauty of the Ethical.



"[The moral act] has what the Greeks called karios, the right moment the perfect time - and not just the when, but what is done, and why, and where and how it is performed. It is just right.

In that sense moral behavior is a graceful thing, and the saint behaves in something like the way that Astaire danced or sugar Ray boxed or... Capablanca played chess.... There is a beauty to the moral gesture, the moral life, the moral soul; there is a quiet harmony to the parts of the act and to the priorities of the life and to the passions of the mind; and there is from all this a beauty that spreads slowly and subtly but unstoppably out across the sleeping world like the first signs of the sun."

Moral Obligation is Our Dignity

Moral obligation is not man's prison, from which he must liberate himself in order finally to be able to do what he wants. It is moral obligation that constitutes his dignity, and he does not become more free if he discards it: on the contrary, he takes a step backward, to the level of a machine, of a mere thing. If there is no longer any obligation to which he can and must respond in freedom, then there is no longer any realm of freedom at all. The recognition of morality is the real substance of human dignity; but one cannot recognize this without simultaneously experiencing it as an obligation of freedom. Morality is not man's prison but rather the divine element in him… For nature is not – as is asserted by a totalitarian scientism – some assemblage built up by chance and its rules of play but is rather a creation. A creation in which the Creator Spiritus expresses himself. This is why there are not only natural laws in the sense of physical functions: the specific natural law itself is a moral law. Creation itself teaches us how we can be human in the right way. The Christian faith, which helps us to recognize creations as creation, does not paralyze reason; it gives practical reason the life-sphere in which it can unfold. The morality that the Church teaches I s not some special burden for Christians: it is the defense of man against the attempt to abolish him. If morality – as we have seen – is not the enslavement of man but his liberation, then the Christian faith is the advance post of human freedom. -- Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)

Eye Opener

While reading The Imitation I came to the following paragraph.

"If only a man would never seek passing joys or entangle himself with worldly affairs, what a good conscience he would have. What great peace and tranquillity would be his, if he cut himself off from all empty care and thought only of things divine, things helpful to his soul, and put all his trust in God."

At first I thought this to be a rather ridiculous proposition. How could anyone live in today's modern world, raise a family, hold down a job, become educated, serve their country or be involved in any of the other myriad other facets of daily life, and still remain aloof?
Then I got in my car and heard on a talk radio show of the obscene sex education shenanigans at Northwestern University and an interview with a professional brothel employee (I'm trying to be subtle) who was extoling the safety and professionalism of the industry while the interviewers where tossing out double entendres (pardon me if I don't know the plural) and in general making it an occasion of frivolity and light-hearted fun.

I thought, "Thomas a Kempis, show me how"!
I can hear you screaming at me, "Bob, stop listening to that stuff (another subtlety). That would be a good start!
Ok, let me see what I can do.

Perhaps, Father was paraphrasing the following messages in he readings.

1 Cor 2:1-5
When I came to you, brothers and sisters,
proclaiming the mystery of God,
I did not come with sublimity of words or of wisdom.
For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you
except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling,
and my message and my proclamation
were not with persuasive words of wisdom,
but with a demonstration of Spirit and power,
so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom
but on the power of God.

from Mt. 5
Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket;
it is set on a lampstand,
where it gives light to all in the house.
Just so, your light must shine before others,
that they may see your good deeds
and glorify your heavenly Father.

Our excitement and exuberance in our faith should be demonstrated in our Christian actions to be seen by others. Thus seasoned with the salt of our actions and if hearts have eyes to see, our task will be accomplished.

Peace

Salt and Light

Trust a Catholic to focus on the negative side of the "salt and light" gospel reading today. I don't think it's sound pastoral practice to warn against being "too salty" or "too bright"! That's hardly the problem of American Catholics (or American Christians in general). It may be something you could advise to some specific person, and I've known a few at Wheaton, but it's hardly something to preach to a complacent suburban American congregation. Would Father offer this advice to a St. Francis, a St. Ignatius Loyal, or any other number of saints I could cite that we would call "overzealous"? And to put down renewel movements like Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, etc., no matter how many caveats you throw in about how great they are, is uncool. A pastor should encourage his congregation to be MORE salt, MORE light. Unfortunately, this homily just encourages the Evangelical stereotypes of Catholics as being fundamentally unserious about their faith.

Zeal should never be discouraged; complacency should never be encouraged, no matter how unintentionally done.

A Little More Hart

I have posted in the past snippets of writings by the Orthodox theologian/philosopher David Bentley Hart. Occasionally you run into written word that expresses an idea or thought that has been bouncing around in your head, but that you have not had the opportunity or the words to express it. It may be the case that you have made an attempt to verbalize an idea and then you come across that same idea as stated by someone else in a much more succinct expression. Such is the case with the following idea taken from an article in the February issue of First Things written by David Bentley Hart. The article is about the writings of the philosopher, Martin Heidegger.


Quoting the article:

Modernity, for Heidegger, is simply the time of realized nihilism, the age in which the will to power has become the ground of all our values; as a consequence it is all but impossible for humanity to dwell in the world as anything other than its master. As a cultural reality it is the perilous situation of a people that has thoroughly -- one might even say systematically -- forgotten the mystery of being, or forgotten the mystery of the difference between beings and being as such. Nihilism is a way of seeing the world that acknowledges no truth other than what the human intellect can impose on things, according to an excruciatingly limited calculus of utility, or of the barest mechanical laws of cause and effect. It is a "rationality" of the narrowest kind, so obsessed with what things are and how they might be used that it is no longer seized by wonder when it stands in the light of the dazzling truth that things are. It is a rationality that no longer knows how to hesitate before this greater mystery, or even to see that it is there, and thus is a rationality that cannot truly think.