Mary

I’m with Pope Francis: silence as imitation of Christ when facing discord, hatred, division

2068 words, 11 min read

The Viganò claims have been investigated and commented on extensively,¹ as has Pope Francis’ response of silence to them. Instead of adding a voice to the already rich and plentiful landscape, I would here like to look at Pope Francis’ response to Viganò in terms of the potential that it has to serve as an example to me personally.

First, let’s take a look at what Francis said, when asked about Viganò’s allegations aboard his return flight from Ireland around ten days ago, which were published that same day, on the morning of the second day of his two-day visit there:

“I read the statement this morning. I read it and sincerely I must tell you, and all those who are interested: read it yourselves carefully and make your own judgment. I will not say a single word on this. I believe the memo speaks for itself, and you are capable enough as journalists to draw your own conclusions. This is an act of trust: when some time has passed and you have drawn conclusions, perhaps I will speak. But I ask that you use your professional maturity in doing this: it will do you good, really. That is enough for now.”

Having read the 11-page “statement” earlier that day, I immediately got Pope Francis’ refusal to engage with that vague, handwaving rant, which plainly was a coordinated attack by his ideological opponents.² If he had responded to it as if it were a serious claim, he would have given it a level of credence that it did not merit and he would have made himself part of an irrational argument (the likes of which are hard won, given the ingenuity of those who tend to weave them – see also Viganò’s repeated “yes, buts” after the initial statement, as it gave way to scrutiny³). What is also noteworthy here is Pope Francis’ invitation to the journalistic community to be the one who weighs up Viganò’s claims – a smart move that demonstrates openness, which is crucial in this context, where it has been the Church’s internal coverups that have fuelled unspeakable suffering and damage. The invitation was accepted broadly and now, just over a week later, there seems to be little doubt that Viganò’s central claims of Pope Francis being involved in a coverup are false.⁴

On Monday this week (i.e., a week after the story broke), Pope Francis then gave a homily at the Santa Marta, the Vatican guest house where he stays, that provided a glimpse into the basis on which he chose to respond to Viganò’s statement with silence. He reflected on the Gospel of the day from Luke (4:16-30), where Jesus’s return to Nazareth and preaching in its synagogue is met with opposition when he comments on a passage from the prophet Isaiah and where he identifies himself with the promises it made. There, Jesus’ response to his critics is one of silence:

“When Jesus arrived at the synagogue, he aroused curiosity. Everyone wanted to see the person they had heard was working miracles in other places. Instead of satisfying their curiosity, the Son of the Heavenly Father uses only the Word of God, an attitude that he adopts also when he wants to defeat the Devil. And it is precisely this approach of humility that leaves space for the first “word-bridge”, a word that sows the seeds of doubt, that brings about a change of atmosphere from peace to war, from amazement to fury.

They weren’t people, but a pack of wild dogs instead that drove him out of the city. They did not reason, they shouted. Jesus was silent. They took him to the brow of a mountain to throw him off it.

This passage of the Gospel ends like this: ‘But he passed through the midst of them and went away’. The dignity of Jesus: with his silence he defeats the wild pack and walks away. Because the hour had not yet arrived. The same then happens on Good Friday: the people who on Palm Sunday had cheered for Jesus and had called to him ‘Blessed are You, Son of David’, then said ’crucify him’: they had changed. The devil had sown a lie into their heart, and Jesus was silent.

This teaches us that when there is such a way of acting, of not seeing the truth, what remains is silence.

It is silence that wins, but through the Cross. The silence of Jesus. How many times do arguments about politics, sport, money flare up in families and those families end up destroyed in these discussions where we see that the devil, who wants to destroy, is there …

Silence. Say your piece and then keep quiet. Because the truth is gentle, the truth is quiet, the truth is not noisy. It is not easy, what Jesus did; but there is the dignity of the Christian who is anchored in the power of God. With people who do not have good will, with people who seek only scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even in families: silence. And prayer.

May the Lord give us the grace to discern when we must speak and when we must stay silent. This applies to every part of life: to work, at home, in society … in all of life. Thus we will be closer imitators of Jesus.”

Unsurprisingly, it turns out that keeping quiet in the face of unjustified accusations was not just some clever tactic, but part of Francis’ desire to imitate Jesus – i.e., to live as a Christian. But, let’s be quite specific here about what he did and what constitutes an imitation of Christ – silence in the face if unjust accusations, of arguments “[w]ith people who do not have good will, with people who seek only scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction.” What Francis is not saying, and what his opponents have attributed to him, is to keep quiet in the face of harm, injustice, abuse or to cover up such sins and crimes. Instead, his, and Jesus’ advice and example are about how to respond to attempts at sowing discord, hatred, opposition.

As some commentators have already pointed out, Francis’ attitude has deeper roots still, going back to a period in his life during the late 1980s when he was “exiled” from his role among the Jesuits, following false allegations that he was complicit in the Argentine dictatorship’s crimes. Writing in 1990, in an article entitled “Silence and Word”, Francis roots his response to the situation he was living in the example given my Mary, Jesus’ mother and his first and greatest disciple:

“The Gospels present Our Lady as keeping silence, meditating all things in her heart. The strongest thing about her is her silence. We contemplate the image of Mary, the Undoer of knots. Her hands are undoing a ‘mess’, a tangle that would just be made worse by anyone who’d try to fix it. What does she undo? Why does she undo it? Irenaeus of Lyons explains: “the knot of Eve’s disobedience was undone by the obedience of Mary; what the virgin Eve tied by unbelief, the Virgin Mary untied by faith”. A mess set into the thread of the life of men and of peoples, due to these two things: disobedience and incredulity. That is what Mary undoes … and she does it with the hands of obedience and faith. The mess is rigged up by us … it does not come from outside. In one way or another we all contribute to its entangling. I do not care so much about knots. I worry that we want to undo them ourselves by our own strength or ability. Sometimes, when a hive of knots becomes evident, it is already well entangled. Those who intend to undo the knots by themselves cannot, and entangle themselves even more. In addition to the knots there begins a confusion born of one’s own sufficiency: the Tower of Babel is repeated, and in the heart of each distinct language, war already nests, and -behind the war- the murderous cainism of the brother. And if we project the situation ahead and let it grow by itself, we are left with one more step: the sufficiency of the Giants who set themselves up as ‘supermen’ with their own project instead of God’s: it sets the “type” of all human pretensions of taking on the role of doers and sovereigns, and all their aspirations to turn themselves into supermen; and then, finally, the flood. All this is born of the virgin Eve, of her disobedience and her unbelief; and all this is what Mary undoes with her faith and obedience. No one is alien to this ‘mess’, “all sinned in Adam.” It is the moment in which one wants to consolidate one’s own project instead of God’s project. It is a matter of insolent curiosity, of indiscreet audacity, characteristic of all sin.”

Silence here is an expression of faith, of trust in God, a self-emptying, self-abandoning into God’s hands. Mary here is in a position to undo messes and entanglements, not because of any particular powers of her own, but of her supreme strength, which is her letting God act in her life. By turning to her, I invite God into my life and make space for him to act in me and through me, instead of placing myself at the centre and (wrongly) considering my own abilities and capacities as sufficient. Silence here is a “making space” for God. It is a taking away of oxygen from war, from selfishness and from delusion.

Later on in the same text, Francis speaks about the effects of such silence, drawing on the same Gospel passage as in his homily last Monday:

“It is an example to see how he acts in the Synagogue of Nazareth, when a great scandal is provoked and they want to throw Jesus down. Jesus forces [the devil] to ‘show himself’, ‘he lets him come’. In times of darkness and much tribulation, when the ‘messes’ and the ‘knots’ cannot be unraveled and things cannot be clarified, then we must remain silent: the meekness of silence will make us appear even weaker, and it will be the same devil who, emboldened, will manifest himself in the light, who will show his real intentions, no longer disguised as an angel of light but openly. Resist him in silence, “hold your ground” but with the attitude of Jesus himself.”

Finally, Francis returns to Mary as her to whom to rush in times of trial, suspicion, in-fighting …

“In the silence of a situation that is a cross we are only asked to protect the wheat, and not to go about tearing up little weeds. On the roof of the Domestic Chapel of the Residence of the Company in Córdoba there is an image. There the Novice Brothers are under the mantle of Mary, protected; and below is written: “Monstra te esse matrem”. In times of spiritual turbulence, when God wants to fight Him, our place is under the mantle of the Holy Mother of God. This was understood already by ancient Russian spirituality when it advised, in such circumstances, to protect oneself under the Pokrov Presviatoi Bogoroditsy (the mantle of the Blessed Mother of God). Cry out to the Mother; tell Jesus what the woman of the Gospel said: “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed”, and Mary will be present, because “[o]ne could say that the words of that unknown woman in a way brought Mary out of her hiddenness”.”

¹ As of today (7th September 2018), I think one of the clearest accounts of their veracity is Greg Daly’s at The Irish Catholic.
² It should be needless to say the following, but given the delicacy and gravity of the matter, I will say it anyway: I am here talking solely about Viganò’s statement and not about the extraordinarily grave and serious matter of sexual abuse about which it makes allegations. The former is the noise of a fly while the latter merits all attention, serious engagement, rectification and prevention. And just like a fly in a burning house, the former is to be ignored while the latter is urgently and fully to be to attended to.
³ E.g., see here and here.
⁴ See, e.g., the Guardian.

3047 words, 15 min read

[The following is based on two talks given to groups of young adults in Barcelona and London in December ’17 and January ’18 respectively.]

Today I would like to share something with you about who Mary is for me and I will try to do that in three ways: say something about who she is, tell you about my relationship with her and reflect on what this relationship has taught me about what love is and who God is.

Who is Mary?

Instead of painting a comprehensive picture, I would like to focus on three moments in Mary’s life that I believe tell us a lot about who she is: the annunciation, the ~30 years she spent living with Jesus before his public ministry and her suffering at the foot of the cross. What I hope to do here is to highlight that Mary is more than an object of piety, that she is more than meekness and compliance and that she is an example for all Christians and people of good will, whether they be women or men.

But, let’s start at the beginning, which in terms of the Gospels is Luke’s account of the annunciation, where we are drawn into an event of courage, non-conformity and selflessness and where the very nature of the universe changes categorically. Mary, a young woman is presented with a startling request: to become the mother of God. She is unmarried and pregnancy would make her a social outcast, she would be rejected by her fiancee and would bring dishonour on her family, not to mention that she can’t even get her head around how this could possibly happen since she is a virgin. Yet, she takes a leap of faith and gives her consent. And everything changes. God, the uncreated, eternal, infinite, all powerful, while retaining all of these attributes, also becomes a clump of cells in Mary’s womb. Incarnate in the created, not only finite, but infinitesimal, not only weak but highly vulnerable. Mary’s self-giving, in spite of her doubts, reservations and incomprehension is immediately rewarded in a way that makes a hundredfold look positively mean.

In a recent homily on the feast of the Annunciation last year, Pope Francis drew parallels between Mary’s response to the Annunciation and our own reality today, when he said:

“Like in the past, God continues to look for allies, continues to look for men and women capable of believing, capable of remembering, of feeling part of his people so as to cooperate with the creativity of the Spirit. God continues to pass through our neighbourhoods and our streets, he goes everywhere in search of hearts capable of listening to his invitation and of making him become flesh here and now. Paraphrasing St. Ambrose […] we can say: God continues to look for hearts like that of Mary, willing to believe even under the most extraordinary conditions.”

 The second moment to reflect on is what the Gospels are silent about. The long years during which Mary, her husband Josep and their son Jesus lived together as a family. After the initial, extraordinary, cosmic drama of Jesus’ incarnation there followed decades of what I hesitate to call “ordinary” life. It couldn’t have been! Just imagine it – Mary, the mother of God, Joseph, a just man whom God chose to teach and raise his only son, and Jesus, God made man, all living in a small town in Palestine. Working, doing household chores, getting together with friends, being good, religiously-observant first-century Jews, being frustrated and angered by social and political issues, having to budget their resources with prudence, having worries and fears, hopes and dreams. Yet those who met them, who got to know them, must have felt that there was something special here. This family drew them in, they felt welcome there, they felt the warmth of how Joseph looked at Mary, how Mary took everyone as a member of her family from the first moment and how their son, Jesus flourished as a child, grew up to be a kind and friendly youth and developed into a wise, just and loving man.

This is a period in the life of Mary that Chiara Lubich also spoke about and where she saw the Holy Family as a real model for us to imitate:

“[It must have been a] family, whose members starting with a supernatural vision, seeing Jesus in others, end with the most down-to-earth and simple expressions typical of family life. A family whose members do not have a heart of stone but a heart of flesh, like Jesus, like Mary, like Joseph. Are there among you some who are suffering because of spiritual trials? They must be understood as much as and more than a mother would. Bring them the light with a word or by example. Do not let them feel the absence of the family warmth, on the contrary, let them feel it all the more. Are there among you some who are suffering physically? Let them be treated as favourites. It is necessary to suffer with them. Try to understand them right to the depth of their pain. Are there some who are dying? Imagine yourself in their place and do for them whatever you would have done for you up to the moment of your last breath. Is one of you rejoicing over some success or for any other reason? Rejoice with him or her so that the joy is not spoilt and the soul closed in on itself, but the happiness is shared by all. Is one of you going away? Do not let him or her leave without a heart filled with a single legacy: the sense of the family, so as to take it with them wherever they go. Never put any kind of activity, either spiritual or apostolic, before the spirit of the family.”

Finally, let us consider a third picture, which is that of Mary standing at the foot of the cross. There, above her hangs the mangled, broken, twisted and damaged body of her son, her own flesh and blood. She looks at him and sees the baby she gave birth to, the little boy who learned to walk, read, do geometry, the man who never stopped being her child and who brought heaven into the midst of the world, who announced the good news of God’s love for all, who cured the sick, who revived the dead and who was then betrayed and condemned to death by his peers. Such suffering may be unimaginable to us, but it is shared today by mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and friends of those killed in natural disasters, by illnesses, in wars and out of hatred. Yet, for Mary even this unbearable burden was only part of the story. She also saw her son cry out to his Father: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” His physical and psychological torment culminated in a complete loss of that which made him who he is – his being one with the Father. Mary looked at her son lose his faith. She saw God without God. The God who changed the universe in her at the annunciation was now gone, leaving her son a mere husk of a man. What would I have done in her place? I, like the apostles, would have run and run far – seeing Jesus on the cross would have been unbearable beyond words. Yet, Mary stayed. She didn’t care about the cost to herself, what it would look like, what the consequences would be. She chose to be there with and for her son while utterly helpless in the face of his suffering. She had to stay, because it was in this moment that her son loved us most – giving everything, holding back nothing, showing us that he is there in all our suffering. And Mary’s response of silent unity with her son spoke volumes. It took courage, it ignored social disapproval and it was utterly self-less and self-giving.

Yet the question remains: why did they – Jesus in his forsakenness and Mary in her desolation – have to suffer so much? Here Chiara Lubich again proposes a key:

“How beautiful is Mary desolate in this turning of herself towards humanity to gather up the fruit of her son’s death – truly co-redeemer in this working together for the redemption of all. I see her with him running towards humanity which has become their god out of love for God! Both ready to leave everything for us. We too, like them, must leave God for human beings, must leave unity for the Jesus forsakens scattered throughout the world. Must make of unity our launch pad towards humanity. Must come, must live for sinners and not for the righteous – like him, like her.”

 What is my relationship with Mary like?

When I say that I have a close relationship with Mary, I don’t mean to suggest something esoteric, elitist or extraordinary (although the extraordinary is to be found everywhere!). What I mean is that she is someone whose presence I seek and find in my relationship with others. It is not dissimilar to me finding a shared friend in my relationship with another friend, or finding my parents in my relationship with my siblings, or my wife in my relationship with my sons. Analogously, I find Mary in all my relationships, since she is the one through whom Jesus, in whom all relationships subsist, came to us.

When I meet someone new, I see her since she is the mother of all and recognising her reminds me that this person who is new to me is at the same time my sibling, to be cared for, to be welcomed, to be treated with lightness and warmth. When I find myself mindlessly in the midst of a routine, I glimpse her and the routine recedes into the background of a conversation with her – after all, a routine shared is a routine halved :). When I am troubled, when it is unclear to me what I should do, when what happens doesn’t make sense, I find her beside me, consoling me and leading me to her son. When I see exclusion, discrimination, injustice, I recognise her among the excluded, calling me to herself, giving me courage to join her. And when I see suffering, I see her son and her by his side, with space for me to stand beside her. Useless, impotent, but present and ready to look for the little that I may be able to do.

Let me give you an example to illustrate what I am talking about here. During the last months there have been many challenging moments at work, where I saw that my colleagues were struggling with the pressures they were under. One Monday morning, when I arrived at work, I saw a young colleague looking physically unwell, as pale as a sheet, another colleague injecting panic into every conversation and a general sense of defeat and disillusionment among all who worked on a project that my brother Peter and I are leading. The previous week some technical challenges emerged and the general feeling was that they could end up making our project completely collapse, after ten years of hard work and before it brought anything to the company. This was unquestionably a moment of crisis and I knew that the expectation was for me to lead, to drive, to persuade and ultimately to win! I certainly wanted our project to succeed, no doubt, but the question that kept going around in my head was: “What would Mary do here?” I saw my colleagues like lost children at that moment, who first of all needed to be loved. And who better to learn from than their mother! Mary would surely comfort them, tell them they were special and give them a hug. I couldn’t do that literally, but I set out to go around, talking to them one by one and making sure they felt my closeness, that they felt understood and that they knew that we were in this difficult situation together. It was a day spent alongside Mary and therefore a day spent recognising Jesus in all.

What does Mary tell us about what love is and who God is?

Finally, we can also look at the above and ask what it tells us about what love is and who God is. Here there are two aspects that I would like to focus on, both of which are expressed with particular clarity in a mystical vision of Paradise that Chiara Lubich had in 1949. At that point she and her friends had spent five years of putting the Gospel into practice in their daily lives and when they went on holiday to the Dolomites, Chiara started receiving intellectual visions. Speaking about one of them some years later, she described Mary in the following way:

“On that day I understood Mary, perhaps through an intellectual vision, as I had never seen her before. And now twelve years have passed since that day, but I still have the clear impression of the unexpected “greatness” that this discovery of the Mother of God in the Bosom of the Father made on me.
As the blue of the sky contains sun and moon and stars, so Mary appeared to me, made by God so great as to contain God Himself in the Word.
I had never had such a notion of Mary, but there her divine greatness (divine by participation in the divinity of God) was impressed upon my soul in such a way that I do not know how to say it again.”

 God, who is Love, makes Mary, his creature, greater than himself to the point where she contains him. Yet, this extreme humility in turn adds to God’s greatness because it shows the measure of his love for Mary. The result is a virtuous cycle of love where my making myself small so that the other may flourish fulfils me too and makes me grow, which in turn adds to the greatness of the other person whom I love and so on. Asking here who is greater then becomes a misunderstanding, since the “greatness” that follows from love has no limit once the first step of making oneself “small” out of love is taken.

A second vision that Chiara Lubich received shows an image that sheds light on the relationships among the persons of the Trinity, Mary and all of humanity. Here I’d like to read you just one passage from it:

“The tree of humanity was […] created in the image of God.
When, in the fullness of time, it blossomed, unity was made between heaven and earth, and the Holy Spirit espoused Mary.
Therefore, there is one flower: Mary. And there is one fruit: Jesus. And Mary, though alone, is nevertheless the synthesis of the entire creation in the culminating moment of its beauty when it presents itself as spouse to its Creator.
Jesus, instead, is creation and the uncreated made one: the Marriage consummated. And he contains Mary within himself just as the fruit contains the flower. Once the flower has served its purpose, it falls and the fruit matures. Even so, if there had never been a flower, then neither would the fruit have ripened.
Just as Mary is daughter of her Son, similarly, the flower is child of the fruit which is its child.”

To get a clearer reading of this mystical and poetic text, let’s listen to what reflections it inspired in Fr. Pasquale Foresi, one of Chiara Lubich’s closest collaborators, who in 2006 wrote the following:

“God is the Father who gives himself wholly in the Son, who in turn wholly gives himself back to Him. And their mutual love – the relationship that unites them among themselves – is the Holy Spirit. Being like God then means living this same Trinitarian dynamic with Him. […]
Also to us, then, created “in the likeness” of God, must be given the possibility of giving God to God, that is, of returning to him as creatures truly capable of being like him.
This possibility took shape fully on earth, at a given moment in history, in Mary.
She is the creature who was made capable of generating in the flesh the Word, the second Person of the Trinity.
We must understand this prerogative of Mary in all its extraordinary depth, which makes it unique among all creatures.
Mary, being Mother of Jesus, is the Mother of the only human-divine Person of the Word, to whom she gives human nature, which in him unites in most profound and most perfect union – “without division” and “without confusion”, as the Council of Chalcedon affirms – with the divine one.
Mary is therefore, in the true sense, Mother of God. God has been able to bring about so much in her because of her free consent to the divine plan prepared from all eternity: “May it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38).
At the same time, Mary, because conceived of by God as the one who in herself sums up the whole creation, has opened to creation itself the possibility of generating God.
This is how with her and in her the freedom of the human person reaches its truth and its fullness.”

What stands out to me here is the level of intimacy and unity between God and us, his creation, which has its pinnacle in Mary, the person whom God singled out in his relationship with humanity and who is at the same time one of us and one with God. Through God’s relationship with Mary we see the relationship we are all called to and in which we all already share through Mary. And again it also speaks about what love is, regardless of whether you believe in God or not. The relationship we are presented with between God and Mary is one where the lover surrenders to the beloved, risks their own plans by placing them at the mercy of the beloved, but ultimately arrives at a relationship of such unity with an other, who is so dramatically different from their self, that they both become each other’s source and fulfilment.

Francis: all is from You, all is free gift

Francis latin america 15

On Monday, pope Francis returned from a week-long visit to Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay, and I would again like to share my favorite parts of that trip with you next.

As soon as Francis landed in Ecuador, he pointed to the source of light that the Church is called to reflect:

“We Christians identify Christ with the sun, and the moon with the Church; the moon does not have its own light, indeed if it hides from the sun it will be enveloped by darkness. The sun is Jesus Christ and if the Church moves away or hides from him, she will be in darkness and no longer able to offer witness. May the coming days make all of us ever more clearly aware of how close the sun is that “dawns upon us from on high”. May each of us be a true reflection of his light and his love.”

The next day, on Monday 6th July, Pope Francis went on to present Mary as the role model for every Christian in a homily about the wedding at Cana given during a mass for families:

“Let us make room for Mary, “the Mother” as the evangelist calls her. Let us journey with her now to Cana. Mary is attentive, she is attentive in the course of this wedding feast, she is concerned for the needs of the newlyweds. She is not closed in on herself, worried only about her little world. Her love makes her “outgoing” towards others. She does not seek her friends to say what is happening, to criticize the poor organization of the wedding feast. And since she is attentive, she discretely notices that the wine has run out. Wine is a sign of happiness, love and plenty. How many of our adolescents and young people sense that these is no longer any of that wine to be found in their homes? How many women, sad and lonely, wonder when love left, when it slipped away from their lives? How many elderly people feel left out of family celebrations, cast aside and longing each day for a little love, from their sons and daughters, their grandchildren, their great grandchildren? This lack of this “wine” can also be due to unemployment, illness and difficult situations which our families around the world may experience. Mary is not a “demanding” mother, nor a mother-in-law who revels in our lack of experience, our mistakes and the things we forget to do. Mary, quite simply, is a Mother! She is there, attentive and concerned.”

Francis then proceeds with elaborating on what Mary does next, after having been attentive to those around her:

“But Mary, at the very moment she perceives that there is no wine, approaches Jesus with confidence: this means that Mary prays. She goes to Jesus, she prays. She does not go to the steward, she immediately tells her Son of the newlyweds’ problem. The response she receives seems disheartening: “What does it have to do with you and me? My hour has not yet come” (v. 4). But she nonetheless places the problem in God’s hands. Her deep concern to meet the needs of others hastens Jesus’ hour. And Mary was a part of that hour, from the cradle to the cross. She was able “to turn a stable into a home for Jesus, with poor swaddling clothes and an abundance of love” (Evangelii Gaudium, 286). She accepted us as her sons and daughters when the sword pierced her heart. She teaches us to put our families in God’s hands; she teaches us to pray, to kindle the hope which shows us that our concerns are also God’s concerns. […]

And finally, Mary acts. Her words, “Do whatever he tells you” (v. 5), addressed to the attendants, are also an invitation to us to open our hearts to Jesus, who came to serve and not to be served. Service is the sign of true love. Those who love know how to serve others. We learn this especially in the family, where we become servants out of love for one another. In the heart of the family, no one is rejected; all have the same value. I remember once how my mother was asked which of her five children – we are five brothers – did she love the most. And she said: it is like the fingers on my hand, if I prick one of them, then it is as if the others are pricked also. A mother loves her children as they are. And in the family, children are loved as they are. None are rejected. “In the family we learn how to ask without demanding, to say ‘thank you’ as an expression of genuine gratitude for what we have been given, to control our aggressivity and greed, and to ask forgiveness when we have caused harm, when we quarrel, because in all families there are quarrels. The challenge is to then ask for forgiveness. These simple gestures of heartfelt courtesy help to create a culture of shared life and respect for our surroundings” (Laudato Si’, 213). The family is the nearest hospital; when a family member is ill, it is in the home that they are cared for as long as possible. The family is the first school for the young, the best home for the elderly. The family constitutes the best “social capital”. It cannot be replaced by other institutions. It needs to be helped and strengthened, lest we lose our proper sense of the services which society as a whole provides. Those services which society offers to its citizens are not a type of alms, but rather a genuine “social debt” with respect to the institution of the family, which is foundational and which contributes to the common good.”

The next day, in Quito’s Bicentennial Park, Francis reflects on Jesus’ testament:

““Father, may they be one… so that the world may believe”. This was Jesus’ prayer as he raised his eyes to heaven. This petition arose in a context of mission: “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world”. At that moment, the Lord experiences in his own flesh the worst of this world, a world he nonetheless loves dearly. Knowing full well its intrigues, its falsity and its betrayals, he does not turn away, he does not complain. We too encounter daily a world torn apart by wars and violence. It would be facile to think that division and hatred only concern struggles between countries or groups in society. Rather, they are a manifestation of that “widespread individualism” which divides us and sets us against one another (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 99), they are a manifestation of that legacy of sin lurking in the heart of human beings, which causes so much suffering in society and all of creation. But is it precisely this troubled world, with its forms of egoism, into which Jesus sends us. We must not respond with nonchalance, or complain we do not have the resources to do the job, or that the problems are too big. Instead, we must respond by taking up the cry of Jesus and accepting the grace and challenge of being builders of unity.”

Next, he presents an approach to evangelization that is built on humility and respect:

“Evangelization does not consist in proselytizing, for proselytizing is a caricature of evangelization, but rather evangelizing entails attracting by our witness those who are far off, it means humbly drawing near to those who feel distant from God in the Church, drawing near to those who feel judged and condemned outright by those who consider themselves to be perfect and pure. We are to draw near to those who are fearful or indifferent, and say to them: “The Lord, with great respect and love, is also calling you to be a part of your people” (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 113). Because our God respects us even in our lowliness and in our sinfulness. This calling of the Lord is expressed with such humility and respect in the text from the Book of Revelations: “Look, I am at the door and I am calling; do you want to open the door?” He does not use force, he does not break the lock, but instead, quite simply, he presses the doorbell, knocks gently on the door and then waits. This is our God!”

And, finally, he speaks about what the unity that Jesus asks the Father for looks like:

“Intimacy with God, in itself incomprehensible, is revealed by images which speak to us of communion, communication, self-giving and love. For that reason, the unity to which Jesus calls us is not uniformity, but rather a “multifaceted and inviting harmony” (Evangelii Gaudium, 117). The wealth of our differences, our diversity which becomes unity whenever we commemorate Holy Thursday, makes us wary of all temptations that suggest extremist proposals akin to totalitarian, ideological or sectarian schemes. The proposal offered by Jesus is a concrete one and not a notion. It is concrete: “Go and do the same” he tells that man who asked “who is my neighbor?” After having told the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus says, “Go and do the same”. Nor is this proposal of Jesus something we can fashion as we will, setting conditions, choosing who can belong and who cannot; the religiosity of the ‘elite’. Jesus prays that we will all become part of a great family in which God is our Father, in which all of us are brothers and sisters. No one is excluded; and this is not about having the same tastes, the same concerns, the same gifts. We are brothers and sisters because God created us out of love and destined us, purely of his own initiative, to be his sons and daughters (cf. Eph 1:5). We are brothers and sisters because “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying “Abba! Father!” (Gal 4:6). We are brothers and sisters because, justified by the blood of Christ Jesus (cf. Rom 5:9), we have passed from death to life and been made “coheirs” of the promise (cf. Gal 3:26-29; Rom 8:17). That is the salvation which God makes possible for us, and which the Church proclaims with joy: to be part of that “we” which leads to the divine “we”.”

During the afternoon, Pope Francis then addressed educators at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, picking up the theme of that shared “we” with God that he spoke about to families:

“Our world is a gift given to us by God so that, with him, we can make it our own. God did not will creation for himself, so he could see himself reflected in it. On the contrary: creation is a gift to be shared. It is the space that God gives us to build up with one another, to build a “we”. The world, history, all of time – this is the setting in which we build this “we” with God, with others, with the earth. This invitation is always present, more or less consciously in our life; it is always there.”

Francis then presents his model for an education that leads to open, critically-thinking and dialogue-ready people:

“My question to you, as educators, is this: Do you watch over your students, helping them to develop a critical sense, an open mind capable of caring for today’s world? A spirit capable of seeking new answers to the varied challenges that society sets before humanity today? Are you able to encourage them not to disregard the world around them, what is happening all over? Can you encourage them to do that? To make that possible, you need to take them outside the university lecture hall; their minds need to leave the classroom, their hearts must go out of the classroom. Does our life, with its uncertainties, its mysteries and its questions, find a place in the university curriculum or different academic activities? Do we enable and support a constructive debate which fosters dialogue in the pursuit of a more humane world? Dialogue, that bridge word, that word which builds bridges.”

Later that same day, Francis addressed politicians and representatives of civic authority, speaking to them about “gratuitousness”:

“Gratuitousness is a necessary requisite of justice. Who we are, and what we have, has been given to us so that we can place it at the service of others; freely we have received, freely we must give. Our task is to make it bear fruit in good works. The goods of the earth are meant for everyone, and however much someone may parade his property, which is legitimate, it has a social mortgage – always. In this way we move beyond purely economic justice, based on commerce, towards social justice, which upholds the fundamental human right to a dignified life. […] As stewards of these riches which we have received, we have an obligation towards society as a whole and towards future generations. We cannot bequeath this heritage to them without proper care for the environment, without a sense of gratuitousness born of our contemplation of the created world. […] We received this world as an inheritance from past generations, but we must also remember that we received it as a loan from our children and from future generations, to whom we will have to return it! And we will have to return it in a better off state – that is gratuitousness!”

Finally, Francis returned to the importance of dialogue, when referring to the importance of subsidiarity:

“To recognize that our choices are not necessarily the only legitimate ones is a healthy exercise in humility. In acknowledging the goodness inherent in others, even with their limitations, we see the richness present in diversity and the value of complementarity. Individuals and groups have the right to go their own way, even though they may sometimes make mistakes. In full respect for that freedom, civil society is called to help each person and social organization to take up its specific role and thus contribute to the common good. Dialogue is needed and is fundamental for arriving at the truth, which cannot be imposed, but sought with a sincere and critical spirit. In a participatory democracy, each social group, indigenous peoples, Afro-Ecuadorians, women, civic associations and those engaged in public service are all indispensable participants in that dialogue, not spectators. The walls, patios and cloisters of this city eloquently make this point: rooted in elements of Incan and Caranqui culture, beautiful in their proportions and shapes, boldly and strikingly combining different styles, the works of art produced by the “Quito school” sum up that great dialogue, with its successes and failures, which is Ecuador’s history. Today we see how beautiful it is. If the past was marked by errors and abuses – how can we deny it, even in our own lives? – we can say that the amalgamation which resulted radiates such exuberance that we can look to the future with great hope.”

Wednesday morning then saw the last event of Francis’ stay in Ecuador – a meeting with clergy, religious and seminarians, where he again returned to the importance of gratuitousness.

“Women and men religious, priests and seminarians, I ask you to retrace your steps back to the time God gratuitously chose you. You did not buy a ticket to enter the seminary, to enter consecrated life. You were not worthy. If some religious brother, priest, seminarian or nun here today thinks that they merited this, raise your hands. It is all gratuitousness. And the entire life of a religious brother and sister, priest and seminarian must walk that path, and here why not add bishops as well. It is the path that leads to gratuitousness, the path we must follow each day: “Lord, today I did this, I did this thing well, I had this difficulty, all this but … all is from you, all is free gift”. That is gratuitousness. We are those who receive God’s gratuitousness. If we forget this, then slowly we begin to see ourselves as more important: “Look at these works you are doing”, or “Look at how they made this man a bishop of such and such a place… how important”, or “this man they made a Monsignor”, and so on. With this way of thinking we gradually move away from what is fundamental, what Mary never moved away from: God’s gratuitousness. Permit me as a brother to offer you some advice: every day, perhaps night time is better, before going to sleep, look at Jesus and say to him: “All you have given me is a free gift”, and then go back to what you were doing. As a result, then, when I am asked to move or when there is some difficulty, I do not complain, because everything is free gift, I merit nothing. This is what Mary did.”

During a mass on Thursday, the second day in Bolivia, Pope Francis speaks with great clarity about how Jesus’ example of feeding a crowd with just a handful of bread and fish leads from a culture of waste and discarding to one of communion, and he does so by zooming in on three actions – taking, blessing and giving:

“What [Jesus] does can be summed up in three words. He takes a little bread and some fish, he blesses them and then gives them to his disciples to share with the crowd. And this is how the miracle takes place. It is not magic or sorcery. With these three gestures, Jesus is able to turn a mentality which discards others into a mindset of communion, a mindset of community. I would like briefly to look at each of these actions.

Taking. This is the starting-point: Jesus takes his own and their lives very seriously. He looks at them in the eye, and he knows what they are experiencing, what they are feeling. He sees in those eyes all that is present in the memory and the hearts of his people. He looks at it, he ponders it. He thinks of all the good which they can do, all the good upon which they can build. But he is not so much concerned about material objects, cultural treasures or lofty ideas. He is concerned with people. The greatest wealth of a society is measured by the lives of its people, it is gauged by its elderly, who pass on their knowledge and the memory of their people to the young. Jesus never detracts from the dignity of anyone, no matter how little they possess or seem capable of contributing. He takes everything as it comes.

Blessing. Jesus takes what is given him and blesses his heavenly Father. He knows that everything is God’s gift. So he does not treat things as “objects”, but as part of a life which is the fruit of God’s merciful love. He values them. He goes beyond mere appearances, and in this gesture of blessing and praise he asks the Father for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Blessing has this double aspect: thanksgiving and transformative power. It is a recognition that life is always a gift which, when placed in the hands of God, starts to multiply. Our Father never abandons us; he makes everything multiply.

Giving. With Jesus, there can be no “taking” which is not a “blessing”, and no blessing which is not also a “giving”. Blessing is always mission, its purpose is to share what we ourselves have received. For it is only in giving, in sharing, that we find the source of our joy and come to experience salvation. Giving makes it possible to refresh the memory of God’s holy people, who are invited to be and to bring the joy of salvation to others. The hands which Jesus lifts to bless God in heaven are the same hands which gave bread to the hungry crowd. We can imagine now how those people passed the loaves of bread and the fish from hand to hand, until they came to those farthest away. Jesus generated a kind of electrical current among his followers, as they shared what they had, made it a gift for others, and so ate their fill. Unbelievably, there were even leftovers: enough to fill seven baskets. A memory which is taken, a memory which is blessed and a memory which is given, always satisfies people’s hunger.”

Later that day, Francis met with clergy, religious and seminarians and spoke to them about the Gospel passage where the blind beggar, Bartimaeus sat on the roadside as Jesus and his disciples passed him by and cried out to them. Francis then proceeds with reflecting on the three reactions that Bartimaeus received – two from the disciples – whom Francis identifies with bishops, priests, sisters, seminarians, the committed lay faithful – and one from Jesus:

“1. “They passed by”. Some of those who passed by did not even hear his shouting. They were with Jesus, they looked at Jesus, they wanted to hear him. But they were not listening. Passing by is the response of indifference, of avoiding other people’s problems because they do not affect us. It is not my problem. We do not hear them, we do not recognize them. Deafness. Here we have the temptation to see suffering as something natural, to take injustice for granted. And yes, there are people like that: I am here with God, with my consecrated life, chosen by God for ministry and yes, it is normal that there are those who are sick, poor, suffering, and it is so normal that I no longer notice the cry for help. To become accustomed. We say to ourselves, “This is nothing unusual; this were always like this, as long as it does not affect me”. It is the response born of a blind, closed heart, a heart which has lost the ability to be touched and hence the possibility to change. How many of us followers of Christ run the risk of losing our ability to be astonished, even with the Lord? That wonder we had on the first encounter seems to diminish, and it can happen to anyone. Indeed it happened to the first Pope: “Whom shall we go to Lord? You have the words of eternal life”. And then they betray him, they deny him, the wonder fades away. It happens when we get accustomed to things. The heart is blinded. A heart used to passing by without letting itself be touched; a life which passes from one thing to the next, without ever sinking roots in the lives of the people around us, simply because it is part of the elite who follow the Lord.

We could call this “the spirituality of zapping”. It is always on the move, but it has nothing to show for it. There are people who keep up with the latest news, the most recent best sellers, but they never manage to connect with others, to strike up a relationship, to get involved, even with the Lord whom they follow, because their deafness gets worse.

You may say to me, “But those people in the Gospel were following the Master, they were busy listening to his words. They were intent on him.” I think that this is one of the most challenging things about Christian spirituality. The Evangelist John tells us, “How can you love God, whom you do not see, if you do not love your brother whom you do see?” (1 Jn 4:20). They believed that they were listening to the Master, but they also made their own interpretation, and the words of the Master are distilled by their blinded hearts. One of the great temptations we encounter on the path as we follow Jesus is to separate these two things, listening to God and listening to our brothers and sisters, both of which belong together. We need to be aware of this. The way we listen to God the Father is how we should listen to his faithful people. If we do not listen in the same way, with the same heart, then something has gone wrong.

To pass by, without hearing the pain of our people, without sinking roots in their lives and in their world, is like listening to the word of God without letting it take root and bear fruit in our hearts. Like a tree, a life without roots is a one which withers and dies.

2. The second phrase: “Be quiet”. This is the second response to Bartimaeus’ cry: “Keep quiet, don’t bother us, leave us alone, for we are praying as a community, we are in heightened state of spirituality. Don’t bother us. Unlike the first response, this one hears, acknowledges, and makes contact with the cry of another person. It recognizes that he or she is there, but reacts simply by scolding. It is the bishops, priests, sisters, popes, who point their finger threateningly. In Argentina we say of teachers who point their fingers in this way: “This is like the teacher from the time of Yrigoyen who used particularly strict methods”. And the poor faithful people of God, how often are they tested, either by the bad temper or the personal situation of a follower of Christ. It is the attitude of some leaders of God’s people; they continually scold others, hurl reproaches at them, tell them to be quiet. Please give them something to do, listen to them, tell them that Jesus loves them. “No, you can’t do that”. “Madam, take your crying child out of the church as I am preaching”. As if the cries of a child were not a sublime homily.

This is the drama of the isolated consciousness, of those disciples who think that the life of Jesus is only for those deserve it. There is an underlying contempt for the faithful people of God: “This blind man who has to interfere with everything, let him stay where he is”. They seem to believe there is only room for the “worthy”, for the “better people”, and little by little they separate themselves, become distinct, from the others. They have made their identity a badge of superiority. That identity which makes itself superior, is no longer proper to the pastor but rather to a foreman: “I made it here, now you wait in line”. Such persons no longer listen; they look, but they cannot see. Let me tell you an anecdote, something I experienced around 1975 in your Archdiocese. I had made a promise to Nuestro Señor de los Milagros to go to Salta on pilgrimage if he blessed us with 40 novices. He sent forty-one. After a concelebrated Mass – as at all important sanctuaries, there were many Masses, confessions, and you don’t stop – I was walking up with a another priest who was with me and had come with me, and a lady came up to us, almost at the top, with an image of a saint. She was a simple woman, maybe from Salta itself, or perhaps she had come from another place, as so often happens when people take a few days to reach the capital for the Feast of the Lord of Miracles. She said to the priest who was accompanying me, “Father, please bless this image”. He replied, “Lady, you were at Mass”. “Yes, Father”. “Well then, the blessing of God, the presence of God there blesses everything”. “Yes Father, Yes Father” came the reply. At that moment another priest came up, a friend of the priest that had just spoken, but they hadn’t seen each other so he says, “Oh, you’re here!”. He turned away and the woman – I do not know her name, we’ll call her the “Yes Father Lady” – looked at me and said: “Father, please bless it”. Those who always put up barriers between themselves and the people of God, push them away. They hear, but they don’t listen. They deliver a sermon, but look without seeing. The need to show that they are different has closed their heart. Their need to tell themselves, consciously or subconsciously, “I am not like that person, like those people”, not only cuts them off from the cry of their people, from their tears, but most of all from their reasons for rejoicing. Laughing with those who laugh, weeping with those who weep; all this is part of the mystery of a priestly heart and the heart of a consecrated person. Sometimes there are elite groups that are created by not listening and seeing, and we distance ourselves. […]

3. The third word: “Take heart and get up”. This is the third response. It is not so much a direct response to the cry of Bartimaeus as a reaction of people who saw how Jesus responded to the pleading of the blind beggar. In other words, those who gave no importance to the beggar, those who did not let him pass, or those who told him to be quiet… when they see Jesus’ reaction they change their attitude: “Get up, he is calling you”. In those who told him to take heart and get up, the beggar’s cry issued in a word, an invitation, a new and changed way of responding to God’s holy and faithful People.

Unlike those who simply passed by, the Gospel says that Jesus stopped and asked what was happening. “What is happening here?” “Who is making noise?” He stopped when someone cried out to him. Jesus singled him out from the nameless crowd and got involved in his life. And far from ordering him to keep quiet, he asked him, “Tell me, what do you want me to do for you?” Jesus didn’t have to show that he was different, somehow apart, and he didn’t give the beggar a sermon; he didn’t decide whether Bartimaeus was worthy or not before speaking to him. He simply asked him a question, looked at him and sought to come into his life, to share his lot. And by doing this he gradually restored the man’s lost dignity, the man who was on the side of the path and blind; Jesus included him. Far from looking down on him, Jesus was moved to identify with the man’s problems and thus to show the transforming power of mercy. There can be no compassion – and I mean compassion and not pity – without stopping. If you do not stop, you do not suffer with him, you do not have divine compassion. There is no “com-passion” that does not listen and show solidarity with the other. Compassion is not about zapping, it is not about silencing pain, it is about the logic of love, of suffering with. A logic, a way of thinking and feeling, which is not grounded in fear but in the freedom born of love and of desire to put the good of others before all else. A logic born of not being afraid to draw near to the pain of our people. Even if often this means no more than standing at their side and praying with them.

This is the logic of discipleship, it is what the Holy Spirit does with us and in us. We are witnesses of this. One day Jesus saw us on the side of the road, wallowing in our own pain and misery, our indifference. Each one knows his or her past. He did not close his ear to our cries. He stopped, drew near and asked what he could do for us. And thanks to many witnesses, who told us, “Take heart; get up”, gradually we experienced this merciful love, this transforming love, which enabled us to see the light. We are witnesses not of an ideology, of a recipe, of a particular theology. We are not witnesses of that. We are witnesses to the healing and merciful love of Jesus. We are witnesses of his working in the lives of our communities.

And this is the pedagogy of the Master, this is the pedagogy which God uses with his people. It leads us to passing from distracted zapping to the point where we can say to others: “Take heart; get up. The Master is calling you” (Mk 10:49). Not so that we can be special, not so that we can be better than others, not so that we can be God’s functionaries, but only because we are grateful witnesses to the mercy which changed us. When we live like this, there is joy and delight, and we can identify ourselves with the testimony given by the religious sister who made her own Saint Augustine’s counsel, “Sing and walk”. This is the joy that comes from witnessing to the mercy that transforms.”

In the evening of that same day, Pope Francis spoke to members of popular movements and, after emphasizing the need for structural change, presented a critique of the current profit-driven system and asked what those who suffer from it can do about it:

“Time, my brothers and sisters, seems to be running out; we are not yet tearing one another apart, but we are tearing apart our common home. Today, the scientific community realizes what the poor have long told us: harm, perhaps irreversible harm, is being done to the ecosystem. The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished. And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea – one of the first theologians of the Church – called “the dung of the devil”. An unfettered pursuit of money rules. This is the “dung of the devil”. The service of the common good is left behind. Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home, sister and mother earth.

I do not need to go on describing the evil effects of this subtle dictatorship: you are well aware of them. Nor is it enough to point to the structural causes of today’s social and environmental crisis. We are suffering from an excess of diagnosis, which at times leads us to multiply words and to revel in pessimism and negativity. Looking at the daily news we think that there is nothing to be done, except to take care of ourselves and the little circle of our family and friends.

What can I do, as collector of paper, old clothes or used metal, a recycler, about all these problems if I barely make enough money to put food on the table? What can I do as a craftsman, a street vendor, a trucker, a downtrodden worker, if I don’t even enjoy workers’ rights? What can I do, a farmwife, a native woman, a fisher who can hardly fight the domination of the big corporations? What can I do from my little home, my shanty, my hamlet, my settlement, when I daily meet with discrimination and marginalization? What can be done by those students, those young people, those activists, those missionaries who come to a neighborhood with their hearts full of hopes and dreams, but without any real solution for their problems? They can do a lot. They really can. You, the lowly, the exploited, the poor and underprivileged, can do, and are doing, a lot. I would even say that the future of humanity is in great measure in your own hands, through your ability to organize and carry out creative alternatives, through your daily efforts to ensure the three “L’s” – do you agree? – (labor, lodging, land) and through your proactive participation in the great processes of change on the national, regional and global levels. Don’t lose heart!”

Next, Francis spells out his vision of an economy that is oriented towards the common good:

“The economy should not be a mechanism for accumulating goods, but rather the proper administration of our common home. This entails a commitment to care for that home and to the fitting distribution of its goods among all. It is not only about ensuring a supply of food or “decent sustenance”. Nor, although this is already a great step forward, is it to guarantee the three “L’s” of land, lodging and labor for which you are working. A truly communitarian economy, one might say an economy of Christian inspiration, must ensure peoples’ dignity and their “general, temporal welfare and prosperity”.[1] (Pope John XXIII spoke this last phrase fifty years ago, and Jesus says in the Gospel that whoever freely offers a glass of water to one who is thirsty will be remembered in the Kingdom of Heaven.) All of this includes the three “L’s”, but also access to education, health care, new technologies, artistic and cultural manifestations, communications, sports and recreation. A just economy must create the conditions for everyone to be able to enjoy a childhood without want, to develop their talents when young, to work with full rights during their active years and to enjoy a dignified retirement as they grow older. It is an economy where human beings, in harmony with nature, structure the entire system of production and distribution in such a way that the abilities and needs of each individual find suitable expression in social life. You, and other peoples as well, sum up this desire in a simple and beautiful expression: “to live well”, which is not the same as “to have a good time”.

Such an economy is not only desirable and necessary, but also possible. It is no utopia or chimera. It is an extremely realistic prospect. We can achieve it. The available resources in our world, the fruit of the intergenerational labors of peoples and the gifts of creation, more than suffice for the integral development of “each man and the whole man”. The problem is of another kind. There exists a system with different aims. A system which, in addition to irresponsibly accelerating the pace of production, and using industrial and agricultural methods which damage Mother Earth in the name of “productivity”, continues to deny many millions of our brothers and sisters their most elementary economic, social and cultural rights. This system runs counter to the plan of Jesus, against the Good News that Jesus brought.

Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy. It is a moral obligation. For Christians, the responsibility is even greater: it is a commandment. It is about giving to the poor and to peoples what is theirs by right. The universal destination of goods is not a figure of speech found in the Church’s social teaching. It is a reality prior to private property. Property, especially when it affects natural resources, must always serve the needs of peoples. And those needs are not restricted to consumption. It is not enough to let a few drops fall whenever the poor shake a cup which never runs over by itself. Welfare programs geared to certain emergencies can only be considered temporary and incidental responses. They could never replace true inclusion, an inclusion which provides worthy, free, creative, participatory and solidary work.”

Finally, Pope Francis also took advantage of speaking about the injustice of exploitative systems to apologize for mistakes made by the Church:

“Let us say NO, then, to forms of colonialism old and new. Let us say YES to the encounter between peoples and cultures. Blessed are the peacemakers. Here I wish to bring up an important issue. Some may rightly say, “When the Pope speaks of colonialism, he overlooks certain actions of the Church”. I say this to you with regret: many grave sins were committed against the native peoples of America in the name of God. My predecessors acknowledged this, CELAM, the Council of Latin American Bishops, has said it, and I too wish to say it. Like Saint John Paul II, I ask that the Church – I repeat what he said – “kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and present sins of her sons and daughters”.[6] I would also say, and here I wish to be quite clear, as was Saint John Paul II: I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offenses of the Church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America. Together with this request for forgiveness and in order to be just, I also would like us to remember the thousands of priests and bishops who strongly opposed the logic of the sword with the power of the Cross. There was sin, a great deal of it, for which we did not ask pardon. So for this, we ask forgiveness, I ask forgiveness. But here also, where there was sin, great sin, grace abounded through the men and women who defended the rights of indigenous peoples.”

The next morning, on Friday 10th July, Pope Francis visited the Santa Cruz-Palmasola Rehabilitation Center, where he presented himself to the prisoners there as a sinner:

“You may be asking yourselves: “Who is this man standing before us?”. I would like to reply to that question with something absolutely certain about my own life. The man standing before you is a man who has experienced forgiveness. A man who was, and is, saved from his many sins. That is who I am. I don’t have much more to give you or to offer you, but I want to share with you what I do have and what I love. It is Jesus Christ, the mercy of the Father.”

Next, he shared with them the good news of Jesus’ closeness to us all on the cross:

“When Jesus becomes part of our lives, we can no longer remain imprisoned by our past. Instead, we begin look to the present, and we see it differently, with a different kind of hope. We begin to see ourselves and our lives in a different light. We are no longer stuck in the past, but capable of shedding tears and finding in them the strength to make a new start. If there are times when we experience sadness, when we’re in a bad way, when we’re depressed or have negative feelings, I ask you to look at Christ crucified. Look at his face. He sees us; in his eyes there is a place for us. We can all bring to Christ our wounds, our pain, our mistakes, our sins, and all those things which perhaps we got wrong. In the wounds of Jesus, there is a place for our own wounds. Because we are all wounded, in one way or another. And so we bring our wounds to the wounds of Jesus. Why? So that there they can be soothed, washed clean, changed and healed. He died for us, for me, so that he could stretch out us his hand and lift us up. Speak to the priests who come here, talk to them! Speak to the brothers and sisters who come, speak to them. Speak to everyone who comes here to talk to you about Jesus. Jesus wants to help you get up, always.”

The morning after arriving in Paraguay, on Saturday 11th July, Pope Francis went to visit a pediatric hospital, where he spoke to the children receiving treatment there:

“Dear children, I want to ask you a question; maybe you can help me. They tell me that you are all very intelligent, and so I want to ask you: Did Jesus ever get annoyed? … Do you remember when?

If this seems like a difficult question, let me help you. It was when they wouldn’t let the children come to him. That is the only time in the entire Gospel of Mark when we hear that he was “annoyed” (cf. Mk 10:13-15). We would say that he was really “ticked off”.

Do you get annoyed every now and then? Jesus felt that way when they wouldn’t let the children come to him. He was really mad. He loved children. Not that he didn’t like adults, but he was really happy to be with children. He enjoyed their company, he enjoyed being friends with them. But not only. He didn’t just want to have them around, he wanted something else: he wanted them to be an example. He told his disciples that “unless you become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt 18:3).”

Still that morning, Francis then celebrated mass at the Marian Shrine of Caacupé and during the homily he again spoke at length about Mary – this time focusing on the difficult moments of her life and on her being mother of the Church:

“1. The first moment: the birth of Jesus. There was no room for them. They had no house, no dwelling to receive her Son. There was no place where she could give birth. They had no family close by; they were alone. The only place available was a stall of animals. Surely she remembered the words of the angel: “Rejoice, Mary, the Lord is with you”. She might well have asked herself: “Where is he now?”.

2. The second moment: the flight to Egypt. They had to leave, to go into exile. Not only was there no room for them, no family nearby, but their lives were also in danger. They had to depart to a foreign land. They were persecuted migrants, on account of the envy and greed of the King. There too she might well have asked: “What happened to all those things promised by the angel?”.

3. The third moment: Jesus’ death on the cross. There can be no more difficult experience for a mother than to witness the death of her child. It is heartrending. We see Mary there, at the foot of the cross, like every mother, strong, faithful, staying with her child even to his death, death on the cross. There too she might well have asked: “What happened to all those things promised to me by the angel?”. Then we see her encouraging and supporting the disciples.

We contemplate her life, and we feel understood, we feel heard. We can sit down to pray with her and use a common language in the face of the countless situations we encounter each day. We can identify with many situations in her own life. We can tell her what is happening in our lives, because she understands.

Mary is the woman of faith; she is the Mother of the Church; she believed. Her life testifies that God does not deceive us, that God does not abandon his people, even in moments or situations when it might seem that he is not there. Mary was the first of her Son’s disciples and in moments of difficulty she kept alive the hope of the apostles. With probably more than one key, they were locked in the upper room, due to fear. A woman attentive to the needs of others, she could say – when it seemed like the feast and joy were at an end – “see, they have no wine” (Jn 2:3). She was the woman who went to stay with her cousin “about three months” (Lk 1:56), so that Elizabeth would not be alone as she prepared to give birth. That is our mother, so good and so kind, she who accompanies us in our lives.”

In the afternoon, Francis met with representatives of Paraguayan civil society, where he again spoke at length about dialogue, with identity and openness being its prerequisites:

“Dialogue is not easy. There exists also a “theatrical dialogue” by which I mean that we rehearse dialogue, play out the conversation, but it is subsequently all forgotten. If you do not say what you really feel when you dialogue with another person, what you think, and if you are not truly interested in what the other person is saying and adapting to their way of expressing themselves, then it is not a real dialogue but simply a painting, a work of art. Now it is true that dialogue is not easy and that there are many difficulties to be overcome, and sometimes it seems as if we are intent on only make things even harder. Dialogue must be built on something, an identity.

For example, I think about that dialogue we have in the Church, interreligious dialogue, where different representatives of religions speak to each other. We sometimes meet to speak and share our points of view, and everyone speaks on the basis of their own identity: “I’m Buddhist, I’m Evangelical. I’m Orthodox, I’m Catholic.” Each one explains their identity. They do not negotiate their identity. This means that, for there to be dialogue, that fundamental basis of identity must exist. And what is the identity of a country? – and here we are speaking about a social identity – to love the nation. The nation first, and then my business! The nation comes first! That is identity. That is the basis upon which I will dialogue. If I am to speak without that basis, without that identity, then dialogue is pointless. Moreover, dialogue presupposes and demands that we seek a culture of encounter; an encounter which acknowledges that diversity is not only good, it is necessary. Uniformity nullifies us, it makes us robots. The richness of life is in diversity. For this reason, the point of departure cannot be, “I’m going to dialogue but he’s wrong”. No, no, we must not presume that the other person is wrong. I dialogue with my identity but I’m going to listen to what the other person has to say, how I can be enriched by the other, who makes me realize my mistakes and see the contribution I can offer. It is a going out and a coming back, always with an open heart. If I presume that the other person is wrong, it’s better to go home and not dialogue, would you not agree?

Dialogue is for the common good and the common good is sought by starting from our differences, constantly leaving room for new alternatives. In other words, look for something new. When dialogue is authentic, it ends up with – allow me to use the word and to use it in a noble way – a new agreement, in which we all agree on something. Are there differences? They remain to one side, to be looked at again later. But on those things that we are agreed, we are committed and we defend them. This is one step forward. This is the culture of encounter. Dialogue is not about negotiating. Negotiating is trying to get your own slice of the cake. To see if I can get my own way. If you go with this intention, don’t dialogue, don’t waste your time. Dialogue is about seeking the common good. Discuss, think, and discover together a better solution for everybody. Many times this culture of encounter can involve conflict. To put it another way, we saw a beautiful ballet recently. Everything was coordinated and the orchestra was a veritable symphony of concordance. Everything was perfect. Everything went well. But during dialogue, it’s not always the case, for it is not a perfect ballet or a coordinated orchestra. During dialogue there is conflict. This is logical and even desirable. Because if I think in one way and you in another and we walk together, there will be conflict. But we mustn’t fear it, we mustn’t ignore it. On the contrary, we are invited to embrace conflict. If we don’t embrace conflict, saying to ourselves “this is a headache, let him go home with his ideas, and I’ll go back to mine with my ideas”, then we will never be able to dialogue. This means that we have to “face conflict head on, to resolve it and to make it a link in the chain of a new process” (Evangelii Gaudium 227).

Let us dialogue. Where there is conflict, I embrace it, I transform it, and it is a necessary element of a new process. It is a beginning that will help us greatly. “Unity is greater than conflict” (ibid., 228). Conflict exists: we have to embrace it, we have to try and resolve it as far as possible, but with the intention of achieving that unity which is not uniformity, but rather a unity in diversity. A unity which does not cancel differences, but experiences them in communion through solidarity and understanding. By trying to understand the thinking of others, their experiences, their hopes, we can see more clearly our shared aspirations. This is the basis of encounter: all of us are brothers and sisters, children of the same heavenly Father, and each of us, with our respective cultures, languages and traditions, has much to contribute to the community. Am I ready to receive this? If I am ready to receive and to dialogue with this, then I am up to the task of dialogue; but if I am not ready then it is better not to waste time. True cultures are never closed in on themselves – cultures would die if they closed in on themselves – but are called to meet other cultures and to create new realities. When we study history we find ancient cultures that no longer exist. They have died, and for many reasons. But one of them is having closed themselves in. Without this essential presupposition, without this basis of fraternity, it will be very difficult to arrive at dialogue. If someone thinks that there are persons, cultures, or situations which are second, third or fourth class… surely things will go badly, because the bare minimum, a recognition of the dignity of the other, is lacking. There are no first, second, third, fourth categories of persons: they are all of the same lineage.”

The last morning of Francis’ trip started with a visit to Bañado Norte, a poor, frequently-flooded neighborhood of the city of Asunción, where he spoke about solidarity and neighborliness:

“Faith awakens our commitment to others, faith awakens our solidarity: it is a virtue, human and Christian, which you possess and which many possess, a virtue that we must learn. The birth of Jesus changes our lives. A faith which does not draw us into solidarity is a faith which is dead, it is deceitful. “No, I am a very Catholic man; I am a very Catholic woman, and I go to Mass every Sunday”. But I ask you this, “what is going on in Bañados?”. You reply, “Oh I don’t know, I know that there are people there, but I don’t know…”. No matter how many Sunday Masses, if your heart does not reach out to others, if you do not know what is happening to your people, your faith is weak, unhealthy, or dead. It is a faith without Christ; faith without solidarity is faith without Christ, it is faith without God, faith without brothers and sisters. There is a saying, and I hope I remember it accurately. It describes the problem of faith without solidarity: “A God without people, a people without brothers and sisters, a people without Jesus”. That is faith without solidarity. And God entered into the heart of the people he chose to accompany, and he sent his Son to that same people to bring them salvation and help. He sent his Son to that people, and Jesus did not hesitate to come down, to humble himself, to abase himself, to the point of dying for each one of us, to express brotherly solidarity, a solidarity which comes from his love for the Father and from his love for us. Remember, when faith shows no solidarity, or when it is weak, sick, or dead, it is not the faith of Jesus. As I was saying to you, the first to show this solidarity was our Lord, who chose to live in our midst.”

Later that Sunday morning, Francis celebrated mass at Campo Grande, still in the city of Asunción, where he gave a homily about the Gospel passage where Jesus send out his disciples in pairs to spread the good news:

“Jesus does not send them out as men of influence, landlords, officials armed with rules and regulations. Instead, he makes them see that the Christian journey is simply about changing hearts. One’s own heart first all, and then helping to transform the hearts of others. It is about learning to live differently, under a different law, with different rules. It is about turning from the path of selfishness, conflict, division and superiority, and taking instead the path of life, generosity and love. It is about passing from a mentality which domineers, stifles and manipulates to a mentality which welcomes, accepts and cares.

These are two contrasting mentalities, two ways of approaching our life and our mission.

How many times do we see mission in terms of plans and programs. How many times do we see evangelization as involving any number of strategies, tactics, maneuvers, techniques, as if we could convert people on the basis of our own arguments. Today the Lord says to us quite clearly: in the mentality of the Gospel, you do not convince people with arguments, strategies or tactics. You convince them by simply learning how to welcome them.

The Church is a mother with an open heart. She knows how to welcome and accept, especially those in need of greater care, those in greater difficulty. The Church, as desired by Jesus, is the home of hospitality. And how much good we can do, if only we try to speak this language of hospitality, this language of receiving and welcoming. How much pain can be soothed, how much despair can be allayed in a place where we feel at home! This requires open doors, especially the doors of our heart. Welcoming the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the prisoner (Mt 25:34-37), the leper and the paralytic. Welcoming those who do not think as we do, who do not have faith or who have lost it. And sometimes, we are to blame. Welcoming the persecuted, the unemployed. Welcoming the different cultures, of which our earth is so richly blessed. Welcoming sinners, because each one of us is also a sinner.”

Before returning to Rome, Francis met with young people and spoke to them first about freedom:

“Freedom is a gift that God gives us, but we have to know how to accept it. We have to be able to have a free heart, because we all know that in the world there are so many things that bind our hearts and prevent them from being free. Exploitation, lack of means to survive, drug addiction, sadness, all those things take away our freedom. And so we can all thank Orlando for having asked for this blessing of having a free heart, a heart that can say what it thinks, that can express what it feels, and can act according to how it thinks and feels. That is a free heart!”

Then he shared a prayer for freedom with them:

“Lord Jesus,
give me a heart that is free,
that I may not be a slave to all the snares in the world.
That I may not be a slave to comfort and deception.
That I may not be a slave to the good life.
That I may not be a slave to vice.
That I may not be a slave to a false freedom,
which means doing what I want at every moment”

Finally, Pope Francis again gave an in-flight interview to the journalists who accompanied him on the trip and were returning with him to Rome. Of the 14 questions he answered, I would just like to pick out three. First, in a response to a question about criticisms of his own criticism of the global economic system, Francis shows what dialogue means for him personally:

“I heard that there were some criticisms from the United States. I heard about it, but I haven’t read [them], I haven’t had the time to study [them] well, because every criticism must be received, studied, and then dialogue must ensue. You ask me what I think. If I have not had a dialogue with those who criticize, I don’t have the right to state an opinion, isolated from dialogue, no?”

Second, when asked why he speaks so little about the middle class, Francis’ reply starts with a direct admission of having made a mistake and humbly accepts the journalist’s question as a correction:

“Thank you so much. It’s a good correction, thanks. You are right. It’s an error of mine not to think about this. I will make a comment, but not to justify myself. You’re right. I have to think a bit.

The world is polarized. The middle class becomes smaller. The polarization between the rich and the poor is big. This is true. And, perhaps this has brought me not to take account of this, no? Some nations are doing very well, but in the world in general the polarization is seen. And the number of poor is large. And why do I speak of the poor? Because they’re at the heart of the Gospel. And I always speak from the Gospel on poverty, no? It’s not that it’s sociological. Then on the middle class, there are some words that I’ve said, but a little in passing. But the common people, the simple people, the worker, that is a great value, no? But, I think you’re telling me about something I need to do. I need to do delve further into this magisterium.”

Third, his response to a question about the statue of Christ on a hammer and sickle that the Bolivian president Evo Morales gave him, and that he obviously disliked (see the photo below) is also an example of how to engage with cultural expressions that are contrary to his own tastes and preferences – note the lengths he goes to to understand what was behind this piece:

“It’s curious, I didn’t know [it], nor did I know that Fr. Espinal was a sculptor and also a poet. I learned this in these days. I saw it and for me it was a surprise. Secondly, you can qualify it in the genre of “protest art” – for example in Buenos Aires, some years ago, there was an exhibit of a good sculptor, creative, Argentine, who is now dead. It was protest art, and I recall one, it was a crucified Christ on a bomber that was falling down, no? It’s Christianity, but a criticism that, let’s say, Christianity allied with imperialism, which is the bomber. The genre that first I didn’t know, and secondly, I would qualify it as protest art, which in some cases can be offensive, in some cases. Thirdly, in this concrete case, Fr Espinal was killed in 1980. It was a time when liberation theology had many different branches. One of the branches was with Marxist analysis of reality. Fr Espinal belonged to this, this. Yes, I knew because I was in those years rector of the theology faculty and we talked a lot about it, about the different branches and who were the representatives, no? In the same year, the general of the Society (of Jesus), Fr. Arrupe, wrote a letter to the whole Society on the Marxist analysis of reality in theology. Stopping on this point saying, “it’s no good, these are different things, it’s not right, it’s not correct.” And, four years later in 1984, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published the first small volume, the first declaration on liberation theology that criticizes this. Then comes the second, which opens to a more Christian perspective. I’m simplifying, no? Let’s do the hermeneutic of that time: Espinal was an enthusiast of this Marxist analysis of the reality, but also of theology using Marxism. From this, he came up with this work. Also the poetry of Espinal was of this kind of protest. But, it was his life, it was his thought. He was a special man, with so much human geniality, who fought in good faith, no? Making a hermeneutic like this, I understand this work. For me it wasn’t an offense, but I had to do this hermeneutic, and I say it to you so that there aren’t any wrong opinions.”

Hammer sickle christ

Chiaretto: truth, freedom, unity

Chiara e Don Foresi

This morning, Don Pasquale Foresi, one of Chiara Lubich’s first companions and a co-founder of the Work of Mary, has completed his earthly journey. Don Foresi, known to his friends as Chiaretto, was a man who has given his life to God unreservedly and I am sure that there will be much written about him in the years to come. Instead of attempting to share an outline of his life here, I will focus on his thought, which shone with brilliance and where he displayed not only a love of the truth, but also great care for and familiarity with the world and the Church. Chiaretto was an extraordinary theologian and philosopher, but before all else, he was a follower of Jesus worthy of the apostles.

Chiaretto’s thoughts on prayer are something I shared here already, but since they are such a great example of his characteristic focus on the essential, let’s re-read them again:

Prayer does not consist in dedicating time during the day to meditation, or to reading some passages from Scripture or from the writings of the saints, or in thinking of God or our ourselves with the aim of some internal reform. This isn’t prayer in its essence.

Reciting the rosary or morning or evening prayers is just the same. One can do these things all day without ever having prayed even for a minute.

Prayer, to be truly such, requires above all a relationship with Jesus: to go with the spirit beyond our human condition, our worries, our prayers – no matter how nice and necessary they may be, and establishing this intimate, personal relationship with him.

In an early article in Nuova Umanità from 1979, Chiaretto embarks on an profound analysis of the first three chapters of Genesis, with the aim of examining the way woman is presented there and arriving at a conclusion of fundamental equality between her and man. Just to get a sense of his clarity of thought, take a look at the following excerpt:

“Verse 23 [of Genesis 2], which says that: “the man said: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of man this one has been taken.”” is a hymn of joy of the man who has found his partner. He discovers the same flesh, the same bones. In Hebrew “flesh” had a far vaster meaning than in our languages, because there was no word for “body”. Von Rad sees in this verse the key to explaining the creation account of Eve; this is in fact about understanding one fact: the primordial attraction between the sexes – whence comes a love as strong as death?

It seems to me that the Yahwist writer certainly explains the origin of the sexes, but his story is far more extensive and elevated than that. It is not just about a differentiation internal to the first couple, but it is the story of how all of humanity is meant to be that is being presented to us.

The deep love, (made tangible by the account of the birth of woman from a rib) between the first man and the first woman, foreshadows the love between all beings that are to be born; hatred ought not to exist, because it is against one’s own flesh; that which later will be said spiritually, “then” was true also physically.”

Many years later, in a seminal paper from 2001 entitled “Doing philosophy,” Chiaretto presents a startling picture of what is at stake when true philosophy is sought:

“[P]hilosophy implies a risk: the risk of one’s own peace of mind. Doing philosophy, in the sense I intend, is to say: I prefer to take risks, not be calm; I want to know, I want clear things up, I want to go further beyond. And this is a terrifying step, because no one helps us, because the answers that all give us the feel prefabricated, something that is meaningless because we must look for the real answer within ourselves. Only in these moments do we know what the real problem is, we feel it, even if we can not express it yet, to clarify it, to say it. It is the choice of a non-peace in the face of the appearance of peace offered by the world around us. It is a choice that involves changing all relationships with others. Because of this I would say that one aspect of this tragic situation is that almost no one will understand us. The surprise implies a break with the world around us: that surprise which is the wonder of being in the world without being in the world. One is cut off from everyone else, one is alone, naked. You say one thing and the others will understand another; they say one thing and you maybe understand the contrary. Basically, you do not receive any solution from the others, and even though you know that you have to find the solution with others, one feels alone, not in the sense of not having company but in the sense of a radical, metaphysical impossibility of “feeling oneself with someone.” It is as if one lived in another world. It’s like entering a cave, with the risk of never coming out of it again. But none of this is of interest in those moments: “what will be will be,” I can not have peace until I accept to face myself, to face the problem of my existence and of my knowing myself. We realize that we are at sea, in an abyss, in a dark universe. We have only just started to walk and we can not turn back. There is nothing left but to press ahead. This is the drama of doing authentic philosophy.”

In a follow-up paper Chiaretto then argues for knowledge being intrinsically social, even though the journey towards it starts in that dark universe of the self that artists like Antony Gormley have explored with such beauty:

“Knowledge is always born in dialogue. All knowledge is a talking with others while addressing myself. Or, more precisely, it is a dialogue with myself which others are present intrinsically and profoundly. They will perhaps be present in a confused, imperfect way, but they are there. I never know solipsistically, even when when I know “by myself.”

What happens then when I give some of my knowledge to others? The words that I formulate to express and transmit that being that I perceived, are not only mine, but come simultaneously from me and from others: this means that when I offer what I have known, those who are listening to me are already inserted in the expressions that become formulated from before.

In telling others those words-knowledge of mine, they are completely, even if unknowingly, inserted in what I am saying, precisely because they have contributed to my knowing, they have given it to me and constructed it for me at least to some extent. Those insights are already the result of some communion with them.”

And finally, let me share with you Chiaretto’s synthesis of how Mary completes God making us in His own image, which is highly consonant also with how Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the Trinity in his “Introduction to Christianity”:

“God is the Father who gives himself wholly in the Son, who in turn wholly re-gives himself to Him. And their reciprocal love for each other – the relationship that unites them among themselves – is the Holy Spirit.

Being like God means therefore to live with Him in this same Trinitarian dynamic.

We, like all creatures, are called to being by God, just like the Son by the Father, and, precisely because we are his creatures, we tend to return to him in a relationship of love. Yet, this re-giving of oneself, even when total, of the creature to God, does not yet fully expresses its capacity to be like Him. Such a way of being does not in fact reach a “re-giving” of God to God, as it is in the Trinity. There, the Father is Father because he begets the Son. In other words, being Father is determined by the relation of sonship, that is, the Son being makes the Father be the Father.

To us too, then, created “in the likeness” of God, must be given the opportunity to give God to God, that is, to return to Him as creatures truly able to be his likes.

This possibility has taken on complete form on earth, at a given moment in history, in Mary.”

There would be so much more to talk about in terms of Chiaretto’s thought, but I believe that the above give a sense of his genius, even in the crude translations provided here.

Dearest Chiaretto, thank you!

Lumen Gentium: Mary

The final chapter of Lumen Gentium,¹ the Vatican II dogmatic constitution on the Church, is dedicated in its entirety to Jesus’ mum, Mary, and to her role not only in the Church but in the whole of Jesus’ mission and the salvation he brought for all.²

The starting point here is a strong emphasis on Mary’s intimate union both with the Trinity and with humanity:

“The Virgin Mary, who at the message of the angel received the Word of God in her heart and in her body and gave Life to the world, is acknowledged and honored as being truly the Mother of God and Mother of the Redeemer. Redeemed by reason of the merits of her Son and united to Him by a close and indissoluble tie, she is […] the Mother of the Son of God, by which account she is also the beloved daughter of the Father and the temple of the Holy Spirit. [… S]he far surpasses all creatures, both in heaven and on earth. At the same time, however, because she belongs to the offspring of Adam she is one with all those who are to be saved.”

Mary’s unique position in creation is next traced back to the Tanakh, where she fulfills the “promise of victory over the serpent which was given to our first parents after their fall into sin (cf. Genesis 3:15),” and is foretold as the “Virgin who shall conceive and bear a son, whose name will be called Emmanuel” (cf. Isaiah 7:14), where “Emmanuel” (עִמָּנוּאֵל) in Hebrew means “God is with us.” As such “[s]he stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from Him.”

While Mary’s “unique holiness” is underlined repeatedly, so is her free assent to the will of God:

“Adorned from the first instant of her conception with the radiance of an entirely unique holiness, the Virgin of Nazareth is greeted, on God’s command, by an angel messenger as “full of grace”, (cf. Luke 1:28) and to the heavenly messenger she replies: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to thy word”.(287) Thus Mary, a daughter of Adam, consenting to the divine Word, became the mother of Jesus.”

Here Mary was “used by God not merely in a passive way, but as freely cooperating in the work of human salvation through faith and obedience,” which – in St. Irenaeus’ words – made her “the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race. […] The knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience; what the virgin Eve bound through her unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosened by her faith.”(St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III, 22, 4).

From His conception to His ascension to Heaven, Mary closely follows and supports Jesus, including her prompting Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding feast of Cana (cf. John 2:1-11) and her faith being tested at the foot of the cross, “grieving exceedingly with her only begotten Son, uniting herself with a maternal heart with His sacrifice.” Already at that moment, Mary took on a new role, when “she was given by […] Jesus dying on the cross as a mother to His disciple” John and thereby to the whole Church:

“She conceived, brought forth and nourished Christ. She presented Him to the Father in the temple, and was united with Him by compassion as He died on the Cross. In this singular way she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope and burning charity in the work of the Saviour in giving back supernatural life to souls. Wherefore she is our mother in the order of grace.”

She is a key presence at Pentecost too, when “by her prayers [she] implor[es] the gift of the Spirit, who had already overshadowed her in the Annunciation.” And at the end of her earthly life she is “taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen of the universe.”

Mary is therefore the model Christian and an example to follow both individually and together as Church:

“And so they turn their eyes to Mary who shines forth to the whole community […] as the model of virtues. [… M]editating on her and contemplating her in the light of the Word made man, the Church […] enters more intimately into the great mystery of the Incarnation and becomes more and more like her Spouse. For Mary, who […] unites in herself and re-echoes the greatest teachings of the faith […], calls the faithful to her Son and His sacrifice and to the love of the Father.”

This leads to emphasizing an important aspect of how Mary is seen by the Catholic Church:

“The maternal duty of Mary toward men in no wise obscures or diminishes [the] unique mediation of Christ […] For all the salvific influence of the Blessed Virgin on men originates, not from some inner necessity, but from the divine pleasure. It flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on His mediation, depends entirely on it and draws all its power from it. In no way does it impede, but rather does it foster the immediate union of the faithful with Christ. [… T]he unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in this one source.”

In other words, being a Christian is about having a personal, immediate, direct relationship with Jesus and Mary helps it rather than being an intermediary, which is also true of the saints. Another point worth noticing in the above is how Mary’s role is presented as “divine pleasure” – it is not like she had to be given a role, like her role was a necessity, but that she has a role because it pleased God to invest her with it. Much like all of creation, which was not necessary either, Mary’s elevation in the history of salvation is a gratuitous, loving act of God too.

Finally, Lumen Gentium is also clear about how superficiality and credulity are to be avoided and how the focus needs to be on a simple love for and imitation of Mary:

“Let the faithful remember moreover that true devotion consists neither in sterile or transitory affection, nor in a certain vain credulity, but proceeds from true faith, by which we are led to know the excellence of the Mother of God, and we are moved to a filial love toward our mother and to the imitation of her virtues.”

As you can see from my blog posts on Lumen Gentium, I have found it to be a source of great encouragement and joy. Encouragement, because the treasures of Christianity are presented with clarity, born on wings both of faith and reason, and joy, because throughout this great presentation of who the Church is, the focus has been on the person of Jesus and on our mission to bring his love to all in freedom.³

¹ For posts on previous chapters, see here.
² If you are not a Catholic – welcome! 🙂 To get more out of what follows, you might want to take a look at a caveat I wrote for the first of my Vatican-II-themed posts here.
³ Given how long it has taken me to make my way through Dei Verbum, Lumen Gentium and Sacrosanctum Concilium (three of the four dogmatic constitutions of Vatican II), I have to revise my plan to read all of the Council’s documents during this Year of Faith. Instead, but still with plenty of challenge, I’ll try to just cover the fourth of the Council’s constitutions – Gaudium et Spes – next.

Look at Mary, see Jesus

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Last week I visited the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles¹ and it struck me that the statue above its entrance showed something akin to an optical illusion. Already when seen from afar, the statue above the main doors of the cathedral presented a somewhat ambiguous figure – the short hair, bare arms and forward facing palms were more consonant with an adolescent Jesus, prefiguring his later crucifixion wounds, while the context (i.e., it being the Cathedral of Our Lady and “the medium [being] the message” as McLuhan put it), the moon at the figure’s feet and the placement of the belt on the robe pointed to Mary, albeit posed in a highly unusual way.

In fact, if you look at the typical silhouettes of a statue of Mary (left – where her cloak dominates the outline), the LA statue (center) and a statue of Jesus (right – where head and hands are clearly distinct from the torso) you’ll see where my ambiguity came from:

Silhouette

Even up close this ambiguity does not resolve itself:

The muscular arms as well as the scale of the hands are consistent with a young man, while the dress becomes more clearly female and the face is sufficiently androgynous to allow both for a male and a female reading. In the end I am left with a feeling akin to viewing the rabbit-duck in that I can both resolve the ambiguity in Mary’s and in Jesus’ favor.

What the sculptor Robert Graham has achieved here – at least through my eyes, is to put in bronze the key to Mary being the model Christian. Saint Louis Marie de Montfort put it as follows: “We never give more honor to Jesus than when we honor his Mother, and we honor her simply and solely to honor him all the more perfectly. We go to her only as a way leading to the goal we seek – Jesus, her Son.” And Pope Benedict XVI simply expressed it by saying that we look to Christ by “going towards Mary who shows us Jesus.” Instead of seeking fame and glory for herself, her whole life was one of self-effacing humility, a constant pointing beyond herself – to Jesus – to the point of becoming transparent.

¹ For more about the cathedral’s architecture see here.

The blue of the sky

On New Year’s Day was one of my favourite feasts of the Church calendar: that of Mary, mother of God. While the emphasis on Christmas Day is very much on God becoming man – the infinite also becoming finite, the feast of the Theotokos looks at another central aspect of the Christmas paradox.

Instead of descending to earth on a cloud or by means of some other superficial spectacle, God first sought the consent of a girl and then grew and developed inside her in the same way every human does. He joined humanity from the ground floor rather than waltzing in at the peak of its powers as a fully-grown adult. This also means that he has a mum whom he loved, respected, was concerned for and esteemed just like other children and adults relate to their mothers. He also felt her absolute love, care, commitment and devotion, just like children and adults receive from their mothers.

In an intellectual vision in 1949, Chiara Lubich received the following, particularly striking, insight about Mary’s relationship to God:

“As the blue of the sky contains sun and moon and stars, so Mary appeared to me, made by God so great as to contain God Himself in the Word.”

This image clearly expresses how great a love God has for Mary by making her contain Him as His mother (like the sky contains the sun), which in some sense shows God as being smaller than Mary. Yet, since it is God who made himself small, this self-humbling adds to his magnanimity and greatness and we see a God who is great, but whose greatness includes His making Himself small.

By having Mary be His mother, God leads us to humility by example, which is also what Jesus explicitly called us to: “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” (Matthew 19:30).

Queen of Paradise مريم

A couple of days ago I came across the following tweets, written by a Muslim:

“Mary = Maryam/Miryam. “None among women have reached perfection except Mary the Virgin” – P. Muhammad”

“Since the Quran venerates her & the Prophet Muhammad called her […] the Queen of Paradise, I do recourse to her intercession.”

As you can imagine, it stopped me in my tracks and I have been trying to find out more about where these statements fitted within Islamic teaching. While I was vaguely aware of the Qur’an considering Jesus a prophet and also mentioning Mary (and doing so more extensively even than the New Testament), what I learned over the last couple of days goes so far beyond that and I would like to share it with you.

Muslims believe that God sent the angel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad, who transmitted to him God’s words, verbatim – the Qur’an. There Mary is mentioned from the start and the Annunciation, is recounted as follows in the third chapter (Surat ‘Āli `Imrān):

“[T]he angels said, “O Mary, indeed Allah has chosen you and purified you and chosen you above the women of the worlds. O Mary, be devoutly obedient to your Lord and prostrate and bow with those who bow [in prayer].”” (Qur’an, 3:42-43)

“[T]he angels said, “O Mary, indeed Allah gives you good tidings of a word from Him, whose name will be the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary – distinguished in this world and the Hereafter and among those brought near [to Allah].
He will speak to the people in the cradle and in maturity and will be of the righteous.”
She said, “My Lord, how will I have a child when no man has touched me?” [The angel] said, “Such is Allah; He creates what He wills. When He decrees a matter, He only says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.
And He will teach him writing and wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel.
And [make him] a messenger to the Children of Israel, [who will say], ‘Indeed I have come to you with a sign from your Lord in that I design for you from clay [that which is] like the form of a bird, then I breathe into it and it becomes a bird by permission of Allah. And I cure the blind and the leper, and I give life to the dead – by permission of Allah.”” (Qur’an, 3:45-49)

The Qur’an also talks about Mary’s birth, the years leading up to the Annunciation and her life of prayer under the supervision of the prophet Zechariah in earlier verses:

“[W]hen the wife of ‘Imran [Joachim] said, “My Lord, indeed I have pledged to You what is in my womb, consecrated [for Your service], so accept this from me. Indeed, You are the Hearing, the Knowing.”
But when she delivered her, she said, “My Lord, I have delivered a female.” And Allah was most knowing of what she delivered, “And the male is not like the female. And I have named her Mary, and I seek refuge for her in You and [for] her descendants from Satan, the expelled [from the mercy of Allah].”
So her Lord accepted her with good acceptance and caused her to grow in a good manner and put her in the care of Zechariah. Every time Zechariah entered upon her in the prayer chamber, he found with her provision. He said, “O Mary, from where is this [coming] to you?” She said, “It is from Allah. Indeed, Allah provides for whom He wills without account.””(Qur’an, 3:35-37)

Later on, chapter 19 (Surat Maryam) is dedicated to Mary, which after an account of John the Baptist’s birth proceeds to re-tell the Annunciation (having the angel say to Mary: “I am only the messenger of your Lord to give you [news of] a pure boy.”) and then proceeding to the birth of Jesus:

“So she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a remote place.
And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, “Oh, I wish I had died before this and was in oblivion, forgotten.”
But he called her from below her, “Do not grieve; your Lord has provided beneath you a stream.
And shake toward you the trunk of the palm tree; it will drop upon you ripe, fresh dates.” (Qur’an, 19:22-25)

“[S]he pointed to him. They said, “How can we speak to one who is in the cradle a child?”
[Jesus] said, “Indeed, I am the servant of Allah. He has given me the Scripture and made me a prophet.
And He has made me blessed wherever I am and has enjoined upon me prayer and zakah as long as I remain alive
And [made me] dutiful to my mother, and He has not made me a wretched tyrant.
And peace is on me the day I was born and the day I will die and the day I am raised alive.”” (Qur’an, 19:29-33)

Mary is mentioned 34 times in the Qur’an (the only woman to be referred to by name) and there is a wealth of ways in which she is revered and taken as an example in Islam. What am I, a Catholic, to make of this though? Primarily, my reaction is one of joy at having discovered a previously unknown community of my Mother’s sons and daughters. There is no doubt in my mind that Muslims who look to Mary as a role model (which I didn’t know existed before) have a lot in common with me and that is unquestionably a delight. Even from the few quotes above (that barely scratch the surface and don’t even touch on exegesis), it is clear though that there are dramatic differences here both in direct contrast (e.g., the account of Jesus’ birth being at odds with its Christian understanding) and in terms of lacking parallel accounts (Mary’s youth not being recounted in the New Testament), not to mention the very different conception of Jesus as compared to the Christian one. While it would be a mistake to look for syncretism (it always is), I believe it would also be a missed opportunity to only focus on differences. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is very clear about there being goodness and truth to be found in all religions (§843) and that they all “reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men” (Nostra Aetate 2). I certainly feel enriched from having read the above passages of the Qur’an and will seek to further deepen my understanding.

Allāhu Akbar.

Happy Birthday, Maryām!

Tomorrow is the feast of Mary’s nativity – her birthday 🙂 and, to be honest, it hasn’t meant a whole lot to me up until now. I greatly appreciated the feasts of Mary’s being mother of God (that opens the calendar year), of her sorrows, of her assumption into heaven (which coincides with my parents’ wedding anniversary and my younger son’s birth), of the annunciation and of her immaculate conception, but her birthday just seemed a bit of an add-on.

Trying to understand the significance of this feast, which is only one of three birthdays the Church celebrates (the others being those of John the Baptist and Jesus), I started looking at what has been said about it so far, and I have to say that most homilies that I came across were rather disappointing. Not necessarily as such, but with regard to shedding light on celebrating Mary’s birthday, rather than other aspects of her life.

Then I found this gem:

“The present Feast is for us the beginning of feasts. Serving as boundary to the law and to prototypes, at the same time it serves as a doorway to grace and truth. “For Christ is the end of the law” (Romans 10:4), Who, having freed us from the letter (of the law), raises us to spirit.” (St. Andrew of Crete, sermon on the Nativity of the Theotokos)

Wow! Reading this was a real ‘eureka’ moment for me as it does squarely hit the nail on its head. Mary’s birth can be seen as the start of Christianity, which becomes flesh in her some years later. It is the beginning of a new way, the breaking of prototypes, the transition from rules to life. I warmly recommend the whole sermon, which opens with the above lines and which, in its joyous tone, is a great fit for tomorrow’s celebration.

Salve Regina

Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiæ,
vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.
ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevæ,
ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes
in hac lacrimarum valle.
Eia, ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos
misericordes oculos ad nos converte;
et Iesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui,
nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.
O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria.

Today is the feast of Mary, Queen of Heaven, and my first reaction was to skip this as a blog topic as monarchic themes mean nothing to me (their frequent use in theology being, to my mind, a historical aberration rather than something that tells us anything profound about God). Then I remembered the hymn Salve Regina, in its original above and in a contemporary English translation here:

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy,
our life, our sweetness, and our hope.
To you we cry, the children of Eve;
to you we send up our sighs,
mourning and weeping in this land of exile.

Turn, then, most gracious advocate,
your eyes of mercy toward us;
lead us home at last
and show us the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus:
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.

This hymn is one of the few that have emotional resonance for me both because it has been sung at important moments in my life and because it says some key things about Mary, who is the model for how to follow her son, Jesus. The hymn both sets the context of suffering and persecution that Mary was exposed to throughout her life (just think of her desolation at the foot of the cross), and that we too experience at different moments, and points to its resolution in her son. Why is it though that Mary should play this role of intercessor? Can’t we just pray to Jesus? Sure! Invoking Mary’s help in no way bypasses Jesus – in fact if you look at everything we know about her, it always points to God. Does this mean that she is in some way insubstantial? On the contrary! What I see when I look at Mary is a person fulfilled to the maximum since she perfectly followed God’s plan for her. I believe God has a plan for each one of us (a plan that always starts in the now, regardless of what we have done before) and that fulfils us, gives us joy and makes us free.