St. Francis – eyebeleave

Holy Saturday: the logic of freedom

1864 words, 10 min read

A highlight of the Easter Triduum has for me always been Holy Saturday, when the tabernacle’s emptiness, the stripped altar and the absence of the Eucharist are all stark reminders of what a world without God’s incarnation as a fellow human would be like. It is, for me, a day for being particularly close to atheists and agnostics and for reflecting on the gift of Jesus’ friendship, whose enormity is heightened by its apparent absence.

I have, for some years now, had a feeling that there is much more to Holy Saturday than I am aware of, that Jesus’ participation in death is saying more than I am hearing. Against this background, I have come across Hans Urs von Balthasar’s “Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter”, whose 4th chapter is dedicated to Holy Saturday, and I would here like to give you a sense of the beautiful line of thought he sets out there.

Von Balthasar starts by tracing the origins of the idea of Jesus’ participation in death to the New Testament and argues for this being a consequence of redemption’s scope extending beyond the living. Jesus’ death here is a “being with” a “solidarity” with death as a human condition:

“‘[G]oing to the dead’, an expression justified, in our opinion, by I Peter 3, 19: ‘he went, poreutheis, and preached to the spirits in prison’—preached, that is, the ‘good news’ as I Peter 4, 6 adds by way of a self-evident clarification. […]

There is no difficulty about understanding this ‘going to the souls in prison’ as, first and foremost, a ‘being with’, and the ‘preaching’ in the same primary fashion as the publication of the ‘redemption’, actively suffered, and brought about by the Cross of the living Jesus—and not as a new activity, distinct from the first. For then the solidarity with the condition of the dead would be the prior condition for the work of redemption, whose effects would be deployed and exercised in the ‘realm’ of the dead, though that work itself would remain fundamentally finished (consummatum est!) on the Cross. In this sense the actively formulated term ‘preaching’ (I Peter 3, 19; in 4, 6 it is passive, evēngelisthē) should be conceived as the efficacious outworking in the world beyond of what was accomplished in the temporality of history.”

More important even than his descent and the being with the departed, is Jesus’ ascent from the dead, as a paving of the way for the resurrection of all:

“It is not the going to the dead which is important here—that is taken for granted, and identified, simply, with what it is to be genuinely dead—but rather the return from that bourn. God has not ‘left’ (or ‘abandoned’) Jesus ‘in Hades’ where he tarried; he has not let his Holy One see corruption. The accent is placed on the whence—the phrase ek nekrōn occurs some fifty times in the New Testament—a whence which implies a point of departure, namely, being with the dead. Death here is characterised by ‘pangs’, by ‘pains’ (?dines), and by its lust to seize and hold (krateisthai): but God is stronger than death. The only thing that matters is the facticity of the ‘being’ of the one who is dead in ‘death’ or—for this amounts to the same thing—in Hades, whose character is (objectively) referred to by the term ‘pains’. It is from thence that Jesus is ‘awoken’. […]

[I]n the Cross the power of Hell is already broken (down), the locked door of the grave is already burst open, yet Christ’s own laying in the tomb and his ‘being with the dead’ is still necessary, so that, on Easter Day, the common resurrection ek tōn nekrōn—with ‘Christ the first-fruits’—can follow.”

Von Balthasar then turns to the motivation for Jesus’ descent and again ascribes it to solidarity with the “unredeemed dead”, relying on St. Augustine who insists that Christ’s descent extended not only to the as-yet-unredeemed, but redemption-worthy, but also to those considered unworthy:

“The fact of being with the unredeemed dead, in the Sheol of the Old Testament, signifies a solidarity in whose absence the condition of standing for sinful man before God would not be complete. This is why Sheol must be understood in the classic Old Testament sense […]

Augustine distinguishes between a lower infernum (where the ‘rich man’ lives) and a higher (where Lazarus dwells, in the bosom of Abraham). The two are separated by a chaos magnum, yet both belong equally to Hades. That Christ descended even to the lower infernum, in order to ‘deliver from their sufferings tortured souls, that is, sinners’ (salvos facere a doloribus) Augustine regards as certain (non dubito). The grace of Christ redeemed all those who tarried there: adhuc requiro¹. […]

This ultimate solidarity is the final point and the goal of that first ‘descent’, so clearly described in the Scriptures, into a ‘lower world’.

Looking at what the Early Fathers of the Church have written about Holy Saturday, von Balthasar presents the descent into hell as a matter of logical necessity, following from the incarnation. To become fully human, Christ had to participate in death too. Without this, his incarnation would have been incomplete, as would his redemptive action:

“And so, in order to assume the entire penalty imposed upon sinners, Christ willed not only to die, but to go down, in his soul, ad infernum. As early as the Fathers of the second century, this act of sharing constituted the term and aim of the Incarnation. The ‘terrors of death’ into which Jesus himself falls are only dispelled when the Father raises him again. According to Tertullian, the Son of God adapted himself to the whole law of human death: Huic quoque legi satisfecit, forma humanae mortis apud inferos functus². The same affirmation is found in Irenaeus: Dominus legem mortuorum servavit, ut fieret primogenitus a mortuis.³ He insists on his own grounding principle, namely, that only what has been endured is healed and saved. Since above all this is a matter of penetrating into the realm of the inferi, so for Ambrosiaster in the Quaestiones ex Novo Testamento, Christ had to die so as to be capable of this step. Christ willed to be like us, says Andrew of Crete, in ‘walking amidst the shadows of death, in that place where souls had been bound with chains unbreakable’. All that only expresses the law of human death, thought through to its logical conclusion.”

Von Balthasar then draws our attention to a seemingly paradoxical aspect of Christ’s being among the dead – i.e., that is was a “solitary [being] with others” that did not come with a subjective experience:

“To the extent that the experience of death was objectively capable of containing an interior victory and thus a triumph over hostile powers, to that extent it was in no way necessary that this triumph be subjectively experienced. For precisely that would have abolished the law of solidarity. Let it not be forgotten: among the dead, there is no living communication. Here solidarity means: being solitary like, and with, the others.”

A further aspect of Christ’s being with the dead is that it is both an act of ultimate obedience and an act of the Trinity, where the self-noughting of its persons is enacted here in creation. This is also reminiscent of Slavoj Žižek’s concept of God taking into himself the gap that may otherwise be between Him and humanity:

“His being with the dead is an existence at the utmost pitch of obedience, and because the One thus obedient is the dead Christ, it constitutes the ‘obedience of a corpse’ (the phrase is Francis of Assisi’s)⁴ of a theologically unique kind. By it Christ takes the existential measure of everything that is sheerly contrary to God, of the entire object of the divine eschatological judgment, which here is grasped in that event in which it is ‘cast down’ (hormēmati blēthēsetai, Apocalypse 18, 21; John 12, 31; Matthew 22, 13). But at the same time, this happening gives the measure of the Father’s mission in all its amplitude: the ‘exploration’ of Hell is an event of the (economic) Trinity.”

Finally, von Balthasar brings his line of thought to its pinnacle, by presenting Jesus’ being among the dead as a logical consequence of his having received the power to judge from the Father and from Hell being the “supreme entailment of human liberty”. Without participating in it, and to do so as a human entails death, the transformation he brought about by his resurrection would have been incomplete.

“If the Father must be considered as the Creator of human freedom—with all its foreseeable consequences—then judgment belongs primordially to him, and thereby Hell also; and when he sends the Son into the world to save it instead of judging it, and, to equip him for this function, gives ‘all judgment to the Son’ (John 5, 22), then he must also introduce the Son made man into ‘Hell’ (as the supreme entailment of human liberty). But the Son cannot really be introduced into Hell save as a dead man, on Holy Saturday. This introducing is needful since the dead must ‘hear the voice of the Son of God’, and hearing that voice, ‘live’ (John 5, 15). The Son must ‘take in with his own eyes what in the realm of creation is imperfect, unformed, chaotic’ so as to make it pass over into his own domain as the Redeemer.”

To my mind, von Balthasar presents a beautiful insight into the events of Holy Saturday, whose coverage in Scripture is scant, by returning to a close reading of those passages, by understanding what the Early Church and the saints have written about it and by connecting it with the drama of salvation, which entails a transformation of creation as a whole. Only by being with the dead could Christ’s incarnation be complete and his redeeming power extend to the full scale of the consequences of human freedom.

¹ “I yet enquire.”
² “He also satisfied this law, enduring the form of human death in Hell.” De Anima, Chapter LIV.
³ “The Lord observed the law of the dead, that he would be the first-born from the dead.”
⁴ This is a reference to the following passage from St. Francis’ The Mirror of Perfection:

““Tell us, Father, what is perfect obedience?” To which he answered, speaking of true and perfect obedience under the figure of a corpse, “ Take a dead body and place it anywhere you please, it will not murmur at being moved, it will not change its position or cry out if you let it go. If you seat it on a throne it will not look up but down, and to clothe it in purple but makes it more pale. This is the type of perfect obedience, that asks not why he is moved, minds not where he is placed, nor insists upon being sent elsewhere. If he be promoted to office he still keeps humble, and the more he is honoured the more he counts himself unworthy.”

Antony Gormley: tools for carrying nothing

3083 words, 16 min read

Ever since my first encounter with Antony Gormley’s sculptures, I have had a sense of great affinity with his work and later, as I started reading various of his writings and interviews, also with his thought. What attracted me to his sculptures initially is not verbalizable, but reflecting on it leads me to a recognition of shared experience and of shared values. And I am thinking here of existential and ontological values first, although not to the exclusion of moral ones.

Being in the presence of one of his pieces has always given me a profound sense of incarnation – of a beyond in the here – and of communion, of a blurring of boundaries. The latter is obvious in sculptures since his Domain series (and also in Quantum Could, Hive and other, later ones) but I feel it is also there in his earlier work that, at first sight, may suggest the polar opposite – isolation, separation, individuation. Already the Three Part Lead Bodycase works, which on the face of it are solid, lead boundaries, impermeably encasing individuals, are such strong pointers to that “darkness of the body” that Gormley presents as “objectless”, that they too bring out a sense of a collective, shared place – to which each one of us has access in their own bodies, open to encounter and communion.

Instead of talking more about how I see Gormley’s work, I’d like to share some of his thoughts with you, and encourage you to go an see his sculptures next time you get a chance.

To begin with, Gormley has a concept of art that is extreme (a matter of life and death), paradoxical (useless yet vital), but at the same time profound (potentially life-changing confrontation rather than illustrative decoration):

“Art is the way that life tests and expresses itself, without which we are already dead. [… A]rt […] is useless but vital; it is through art that we communicate what it feels like to be alive.” (Art In The Time Of Global Warming, 2010)

“Art is the means by which we communicate what it feels like to be alive – in the past that was mixed up with other illustrative duties but that was still its central function that has been liberated in the art called modern. Art is not necessarily good for you or about communicating “good things”. […] Making beautiful things for everyday use is a wonderful thing to do – making life flow more easily – but art confronts life, allowing it to stop and perhaps change direction – they are completely different.” (BBC Forum Questions And Answers, 2002)

Gormley’s art is very much also about meaning and has parallels with religion: “[My] work comes from the same source as the need for religion: wanting to face existence and discover meaning. The work attempts by starting with a real body in real time to face space and eternity. The body – or rather the place that the body occupies is seen as the locus on which those forces act.” (Concerning The Religious Dimension In My Art, 1987) While rejecting the Christianity of his childhood, which he recounts as something that he was “indoctrinated” with and where he speaks about how he was told that the Devil is inside him, Gormley looks to art as the means also for preserving what is good in religion, while excluding its past errors:

“I am interested in reviving this idea of presence. Can we have presence without the God? Can we resurrect the monument without bringing the shadow of bad history? The idea of an image that is open enough to be interpreted widely, that has multiple and generative potential for meaning but is strong enough to be a focus. How do we construct such an image? In its being someone’s can it become everyone’s? It has seemed for quite a long time obvious to me that the body can represent at the present time what abstraction did at the beginning of the twentieth century. That is, the ground on which all the seeds of emancipated identity are to grow: the last frontier, the inner realm. (Space has been probed but what do we really know of the body’s darkness.) The body, not as an object of idealisation that should be forced to carry allegorical, symbolic or dramatic readings, but the body as a place. The body not as hero or as sexual object, but the body in some way as the collective subjective – the place where we all live. The place on which the pressures of society are inscribed and out of which expression, language, feeling can come.” (Still Moving, 1996)

In the same interview, Gormley emphasizes communion as a purpose of art – also a deeply Christian teleology:

“Can we use the space of art for communion? A contact not only between ourselves but between ourselves and history? In doing this can we also derive the energy necessary to believe in our part in the construction of the future? Is it possible for art to provide a space that can be regenerative? Is it possible to use the space of art to resist this restlessness, this sense of fragmentation, this sense of alienation from self and from place?”

In fact, Gormely sees art as closely tied to beliefs about the value of life and its future not only in the context of an individual but of society and humanity as a whole:

“It is necessary these days to hold on to the crucial function art has in the continuance and regulation of life. It provides us with images and acts by which we identity ourselves but so often now in an unstable way. Art can be a focus for life by reasserting in times of vicissitude the central belie[fs] of a people. In tribal cultures it is a collective act whether in dance, carving, self-decoration that reasserts the body of the people and it is from this that the individual draws his or her power. Art and the practice of non-utilitarian skills is an act of will for the future and is as critical an aspect of survival as hunting or gathering food. What has happened to this urgency expressed in a collective creativity that projects into the future and ensures the belief necessary for life? It is not that we have lost it, but the repositories of dance, dream and art are dispersed into the hands of individuals who have responsibility not simply to a single family or tribe but as points of consciousness of the whole world.” (The Impossible Self, 1988)

The desire for community and an undoing of alienation and fragmentation through art is also a strong theme in Gormley’s 2010 talk about the specific role of art in the context of Global Warming, which is highly relevant also to the upcoming UN conference on climate change that starts on Monday in Paris and deeply consonant with Pope Francis’ Laudato si’ encyclical:

“Is it possible to re-think art and take it from this finished-object status and make it into a verb, a participatory, open space, a place of transformation and the exchange of ideas and reflection on our state and status? Can we use art as a way of investigating this perilous time? Can we change from our obsession with production values? Instead of the perfection of an Asprey’s catalogue or the gloss of the desirable branded object can we accept that art has to find its own raw and direct way of existing?

[In my studio w]e create here situations and objects that can become catalysts for a form of reflexivity that allows the viewing subject not simply to be a passive consumer of an already tested experience but for the experience of art itself to be testing ground for both the model of art and the model of the human subject. We have in making art a specialisation and its exchange as a matter of high monetary worth lost its central subject – the human being. In the art of the 20th century the Duchampian breakthrough was the examination of human labour and mass production in the ‘found object’. I would like art to re-focus on the lost subject.” (Art In The Time Of Global Warming, 2010)

I particularly like that Gormley self-applies his thinking about the state of the world – to his own most immediate environment: his studio. At the same time his perspective is anything but parochial and extends to a global scale [in same text as above]:

“In facing the challenges of global climate crisis in a culture which encourages us to do more, produce more, be seen more – my initial response is paralysing fear, I want to shrink, to go into a hibernating state with minimum muscular effort and put minimal demand on any kind of fuel.

This position is not helpful but perhaps is a good place to start to rethink one’s place in the world.

[…] We can no longer assume that more is better. We have to change our cultural heroes from generals and captains of industry to meditators and mediators, from Rambo and Terminator to Ghandi and the Dalai Lama.

Our tool systems, no longer stone, having separated us from the rest of the planet and biosphere, are now what will, without this revolution, destroy both. The notion that human life was going to be improved by an empirical march of tool making that would make life stronger, longer and safer is challenged by the fall out effects of this very technology. Technology that was in some senses made to make life better has now become the problem.”

Given the above context, let’s turn to what is at the basis of Gormley’s own work as an artist, a sculptor:

“I’m interested in art’s ability to bear witness, and I start with what I know, the bit of the material world in which my consciousness is embedded: my body. And I try to present that bit of material (to myself as much as to anybody else) in a way in which its trace is registered. So my work always starts with the idea of a body at a particular moment in a particular position, fixed by a negative just like a photographic negative, except that this is a three-dimensional negative and we call it a mould. I still think of a mould as being the most magical and mysterious thing. The mould is a testament, a proof of the existence of an object or a body and, for my sculpture, the particular body that I inhabit. […]

I think of my work as instrumental. My sculptures will be seen as very boring objects if you look at them in terms of Western art history, or a kind of desire to make beautiful objects or a “picture” of reality. But if you look at them as instruments then they can become vessels, empty things that can be used for a type of thinking or a kind of feeling, then they begin to get more interesting.” (Silence And Stillness: Antony Gormley Interviewed By Enrique Juncosa, 2002)

I get a great sense of humility from Gormley’s words: a starting from one’s own body, a witnessing first to oneself, a recognition of one’s work being an empty vessel (immediately making me think of Christ’s kenotic self-emptying).

This impression is further strengthened by seeing how Gormley explains the need for starting from the body, which represents common ground and which he sees as an invitation for others to inhabit his work:

“The issue for me is that it is impossible to make art that can truly be shared without acknowledging the body as a starting point of common experience. So I have to acknowledge the body and at the same time try to find a way of not representing it, or presenting it simply as an object. This is the reason why I’m not interested in the perfect copy, in representation. We probably never did it better than Mantegna or Masaccio, and anyway, photography does it perfectly. […]

[My sculptures] are tools for carrying nothing, nothing else than emptiness, shadow, darkness, carrying the condition of embodiment. They each carry the condition we all know. All you have to do is to shut your eyes when you are awake you are in the place that the bodyforms and the bodycases carry. […]

I completely disagree with the […] proposition that the highest aspiration of art is to have a specific object that is purely itself and refers to nothing. I want people to inhabit my sculpture with their own lives, feelings, thoughts, emotions, whatever. I would like the logical and affective to be in the right balance.” (Interview With Pierre Tillet, 2008)

A final point in this thread is also that Gormley sees art as non-elitist, as a landscape open to all:

“We could say that for most of European art’s progress, it’s been about picturing. Then in Modernism it turns to interpretation and deconstruction. And now, I think, we’re into a completely new phase in which art is about providing a place where the human subject is somehow able to concentrate on his/her own being. […] The subjective experience of space-time, the condition of life, rather than being in some way the assumed background condition for refined perceptions of the object, now becomes a landscape in itself. And I think this is a new paradigm in the evolution of art.” (Interview With Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2008)

While Gormley has been extremely successful in his appreciation by the art world, there is an explicit desire in his thought to not be confined by it and to live “in the wild” instead:

“All art now has to be lost: to be an awkward interloper within life, that is its job. What Heidegger talks about in The Origin of the Work of Art, the idea that the temple is part of its landscape and the landscape part of the temple is an ideal, and we have lost it. This is a classical image of interdependence of site and object. And while I recognise this ideal, I think that sculpture does not have a home. For me, sculpture is a lost subject, an alien body that infects and interrupts the cohesion of place. The museum is just one place amongst many wherein you might find art – but not art at work but in refuge. I’m not against museums because I think they have a very important part to play in the memory of a culture. But before my work has any need to be in the museums it has to have a life, it has to have adventures in the real world. For me, art has to be part of everyday life and every one of my pieces is an attempt to look at a new context and say: how can I deal with this opportunity?” (Interview With Pierre Tillet, 2008)

Gormley then positions the scope of art even beyond inter-personal communication, between artist and viewer:

“I’m not so interested in formal validations of work, where people called artists make something called art that belongs in a gallery. It’s tiny the ecology and economy of the art world. Art is not simply human communication or a way of explaining ourselves to ourselves. I’m interested in art that speaks of our vulnerability in time, in the same way that a figure on Easter Island looks up at the sky somewhere above the horizon and is evidently not a substitute for me speaking to you. It’s not about communication between human beings; it’s about communication between human beings and deep time and deep space. This is the broader horizon that I’m interested in positioning the work against. I want to make an art that has to do with survival, that thinks about where human beings fit in the chain of being, that asks who we are, and where we’re going…well, these big, big questions.” (Silence And Stillness: Antony Gormley Interviewed By Enrique Juncosa, 2002)

On the basis of the above, it should come as no surprise that Gormley is an admirer of Teilhard de Chardin, whose concepts of a continuum between matter and spirit and of an evolution towards collective consciousness bear strong resemblance to his art:

“The Internet, for better or worse, is an objectification of Teilhard de Chardin’s idea of the communion of human mind – the noosphere, which is the third encirclement of the globe, the first being the biosphere and the second the atmosphere. With this possibility of instant communication, created by a non-space that is everywhere, the idea of place becomes very important.” (Still Moving, 1996)

“I love Teilhard de Chardin’s idea of the ‘Noosphere’; the idea that there is a deep connection between the mineral and the mental. This has everything to do with sculpture. But in some way the history of material transformation on the planet is a progress from slower, less complex forms to faster, more complex forms and that, in some way, human consciousness is a kind of atmosphere. He calls it ‘Noosphere’ – the idea of an encirclement of the entire surface of the globe by ‘mind’. I think that mind is collective; a collective subjective and one of the tasks is to make that collectivity more apparent.” (Interview With Marjetica Potrc, 1994)

To conclude, let’s look at how Gormley positions his own work in such a continuous world view, speaking about the Earth in not dissimilar ways to St. Francis’ Canticle of Brother Sun:

“Sculpture is a direct way of allowing mind to dwell in matter. It is a means of becoming aware of the connections between matter, space and time in a way that complements (but is completely different from) the connections that science has demonstrated. I firmly believe that we are part of a chain of being and that sculpture is a way of providing instruments in which our place within it can be tested, made manifest and perhaps transformed.

Where does the world begin? Of course we can make it moment by moment and most intimately in what we call the self – but world and self cannot be separated – they are continuous. Where consciousness ends and the world begins is not so easy to define. We are, after all, borrowing our bodies from the earth and is it not likely that the earth knows more of us than we of it? Nothing is ever lost.” (Present Time, 1996)

I’d also recommend a great BBC documentary about Antony Gormley that has only come out recently.

Our Sister, Mother Earth

Klimt

Pope Francis’ much anticipated encyclical on the environment, entitled “Praised Be” (“Laudato Si’”) after the opening line of St. Francis’ canticle, starts by personifying our planet, calling her our sister and mother, and lamenting the violence we have visited on her, with whom we are one, who lives in us and who sustains us:

““Laudato si’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”.¹

This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.”

Already the above, opening paragraphs of this encyclical are worth pausing over, and before even proceeding with reflecting on its remaining 183 pages, I would like to pick up on the idea that the earth ought to be thought of as another person, instead of “just” as some inanimate matter that is alien to the human race. In fact, Pope Francis decries such an attitude towards our planet later on in Laudato si’ by quoting Romano Guardini (§115):

“[T]he technological mind sees nature as an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere ‘given’, as an object of utility, as raw material to be hammered into useful shape; it views the cosmos similarly as a mere ‘space’ into which objects can be thrown with complete indifference.”

To get a sense of the origin and nature of St. Francis’ broad use of personification when addressing not only the Earth as sister and mother, but all of creation too, let us take a look at the circumstances of his writing the Canticle of Brother Sun that Pope Francis quotes. In a profound analysis of the Canticle, Ilia Delio, O.S.F. recounts the circumstances of its writing in the spring or summer of 1225 (some 6-10 months after St. Francis received the stigmata), quoting from the Legenda perugina:

“He could no longer see in the daytime the light of day, nor at night the light of the fire, but always remained in the house and in the little cell in darkness. Moreover, he had great pain in his eyes day and night so that at hight he could scarcely rest or sleep, which was very bad for him and greatly aggravated the sickness of his eyes and his other infirmities.”

St. Francis was at a low point in the midst of this suffering and he cried out to God for help: “Lord, come to my help and look on my infirmities so that I may bear them patiently.” He then heard a voice promising him eternal happiness in the kingdom of heaven, expressed via an image in which the earth transformed into gold (still in the Legenda perugina):

“Tell me brother: if anyone were to give you for your infirmities and tribulations such a great and precious treasure that, if the whole earth were pure gold, all stones were precious stones, and all water were balsam, yet you would consider all this as nothing, and these substances as earth, stones, and water in comparison with the great and precious treasure given to you, surely you would rejoice greatly?”

To this St. Francis replied:

“That would be a great treasure, Lord, and worth seeking, truly precious and greatly to be loved and desired.”

The voice then said to him:

“Therefore, brother, rejoice, and rather be glad in your infirmities and tribulations, since henceforth you are as secure as if you were already in my kingdom.”

The next morning, St. Francis awoke, wrote the Canticle of Brother Sun and sent his fellow friars out to sing it “as minstrels of the Lord.”

What seems particularly significant to me here is that the Canticle was not the result of some euphoric lyricising, but instead the response to having received consolation from God in response to St. Francis placing his trust in Him in the midst of suffering and distress.

Beyond the circumstances of its writing, it is important to note what St. Francis’ disciple, St. Bonaventure though of the motives behind Francis’ personification of the created. The following are passages Delio quotes from Bonaventure’s Legenda maior:

“When he considered the primordial source of all things, he was filled with even more abundant piety, calling creatures, no matter how small, by the name of brother or sister, because he knew they had the same source as himself.

[…]

With a feeling of unprecedented devotion he savored in each and every creature – as in so many rivulets – that Goodness which is their fountain source … and like the prophet David sweetly exhorted them to praise the Lord.”

St. Francis called the Earth sister and mother because both she and he share the one origin: God. Since we and all of creation share the one Father, we are all siblings – not only among members of the human race, but also in relation to all of creation, from the simplest forms of inanimate matter to lifeforms most similar to us: a worldview also highly consistent with that of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whom Pope Francis also refers to in Laudato Si’ (§83).

St. Francis tracing brotherhood and sisterhood with the Earth and with all of creation to a shared source in God is also very closely related to the intellectual visions of the Servant of God, Chiara Lubich, who in 1949 experienced insights into the life of the Trinity. There, Lubich saw the following image of how all creation proceeds from God:

“When God created, He created all things from nothing because He created them from Himself: from nothing signifies that they did not pre-exist because He alone pre-existed (but this way of speaking is inexact as in God there is no before and after). He drew them out from Himself because in creating them He died (of love), He died in love, He loved and therefore He created.

As the Word, who is the Idea of the Father, is God, analogously the ideas of things, that “ab aeterno” are in the word, are not abstract, but they are real: word within the Word.

The Father projects them — as with divergent rays — “outside Himself,” that is, in a different and new, created dimension, in which he gives to them “the Order that is Life and Love and Truth.” Therefore, in them there is the stamp of the Uncreated, of the Trinity.”

All of creation is a projection of the Word (words within the Word) “outside” of the Father, where these words (ideas) are the models, laws or forms of things, as Dr. Callan Slipper explains in an analysis of Lubich’s visions of creation. While all of creation is viewed in the above terms, consonant with St. Francis, Lubich also sees differences between the relationship that humans have with the Word (Jesus) and the relationship that the rest of creation has:

“At the end of time (and already now for God) the model of each pine tree, that is beneath each pine tree, will come into light and both the particular and the universal will be seen contemporaneously. Now the head is on High, and together with the other models, in the Word of God. […]

The plants that we see now, for instance the pine trees, are “members” of the model pine tree [that is, various forms of the model pine tree, Lubich explains] that is in the Word and thus destined to be Word. Here too is the mystery of the Mystical Body in nature. […]

Human beings, instead, because they are immortal, will return into the Word: son in the Son, but they will also be distinct from the Son as another son of God. Having however in themselves the whole of the Word they too will be a mirror of the Universe that is in the Word. […]

[I]n each human being [Jesus] sees the Human Being, that is Himself, the model of humanity, likewise He already sees beneath other creatures (as the pine tree for example) the Idea, the Word, that is then part (= the whole) of Himself. The human being (made in the image of God) is the whole of Himself; the plant is part of Himself (but = to Himself and it says: humanity—its God—is greater than me).”

While every created entity has its source in God, human beings each are both particular instances of a word-idea and the whole of the Word (Jesus); the rest of creation too has its source in the Word, but in a way that only partly expresses Him. Instead of suggesting superiority, the relationships between God (Word), human beings (particular instances of the whole Word) and the rest of creation (particular instances of the partial Word), place human beings in a position of containing the rest of creation (being “mirrors of the Universe”) by being instances of the Word that is their source and destination. This particular nature of humanity is also addressed in Laudato si’, where Pope Francis highlights both the need for treating all living beings responsibly and the greater dignity of the human person that is particularly, and most perversely, violated by other humans:

“At times we see an obsession with denying any pre-eminence to the human person; more zeal is shown in protecting other species than in defending the dignity which all human beings share in equal measure. Certainly, we should be concerned lest other living beings be treated irresponsibly. But we should be particularly indignant at the enormous inequalities in our midst, whereby we continue to tolerate some considering themselves more worthy than others.” (§90)

I believe that the personification of creation that St. Francis used as a means for acknowledging that all of creation has the same Father as each one of us, that Chiara Lubich’s vision of the life of the Trinity clarified with even greater nuance, and that Pope Francis placed at the basis of his call for a new culture of relating to each other and to nature is a perspective that immediately brings with it a deep sense of clarity. Thinking of nature as a sibling rather than as the “mere given” that Pope Francis criticized is a great token for investing it with a whole architecture of care and affection that other mental models would struggle to bring about. And it is a perspective that was easily accessible even to my 7 and 12 year old sons, who understood what it meant as soon as I told them about it and who immediately saw that it makes sense.

¹ Just because of its beauty, here is the original in St. Francis’ own, Umbrian words: «Laudato si’, mi’ Signore, per sora nostra matre Terra, la quale ne sustenta et governa, et produce diversi fructi con coloriti flori et herba.»

The Catechism’s Universe

After sharing sketches of how Pope Francis and Chiara Lubich have spoken about the universe, I will have take a quick look at what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says on the subject. As in the previous two cases, the terms “universe” (used 18 times), “cosmos” (6x) and “creation” (125x) are again used as synonyms, while the term “world” refers to social, cultural, economic, political realities (219x, two of which, however, synonymously with “universe”). Note also that the following overview will (with some small exceptions) follow the sequence laid out in the Catechism, since there is a clear logic to it and since that logic itself is worth paying attention to.

The Catechism’s exposition of a Catholic understanding of the universe starts from the central mystery of faith – the Trinity, where the universe is introduced as a source of clues about it and evidence for it:

“The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the “mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God.” To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation […]” (§237)

The importance of the universe is then highlighted by pointing out that it is mentioned in the very first verse of Scripture (Genesis 1:1) and that the belief in its being created by God is part of the most succinct exposition of faith – the creed:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Holy Scripture begins with these solemn words. The profession of faith takes them up when it confesses that God the Father almighty is “Creator of heaven and earth” (Apostles’ Creed), “of all that is, seen and unseen” (Nicene Creed).” (§279)

Very soon after the close bond between God and the universe is established, the good of scientific enquiry into the working of the universe is declared, as is its potential to enrich our relationship with God:

“The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers. With Solomon they can say: “It is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements… for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.”” (§283)

Creation is then presented as the start of a sequence where a relationship with God follows the creation of the universe and that culminates in His own dwelling among us:

“Creation is revealed as the first step toward [God’s] covenant [with humanity], the first and universal witness to God’s all-powerful love.” (§288)

“The glory of God consists in the realization of [the] manifestation and communication of his goodness, for which the world was created. God made us “to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace,” for “the glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man’s life is the vision of God: if God’s revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word’s manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God.” […]” (§294)

The deep rationality of the universe and God’s invitation for us to engage with it by participating in His own “being, wisdom and goodness” are presented next, alongside the affirmation of our human intellect being capable of understanding the universe (whose “measurability” is also declared):

“We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance. We believe that it proceeds from God’s free will; he wanted to make his creatures share in his being, wisdom, and goodness: “For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” Therefore the Psalmist exclaims: “O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all”; and “The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.”” (§295)

“Because God creates through wisdom, his creation is ordered: “You have arranged all things by measure and number and weight.” The universe, created in and by the eternal Word, the “image of the invisible God,” is destined for and addressed to man, himself created in the “image of God” and called to a personal relationship with God. Our human understanding, which shares in the light of the divine intellect, can understand what God tells us by means of his creation, though not without great effort and only in a spirit of humility and respect before the Creator and his work. Because creation comes forth from God’s goodness, it shares in that goodness — “And God saw that it was good… very good” — for God willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted to him. On many occasions the Church has had to defend the goodness of creation, including that of the physical world.” (§299)

The Catechism then also talks about our response to God speaking to us also through the universe, which takes on the form of us searching for Him:

“Man is in search of God. In the act of creation, God calls every being from nothingness into existence. “Crowned with glory and honor,” man is, after the angels, capable of acknowledging “how majestic is the name of the Lord in all the earth.” Even after losing through his sin his likeness to God, man remains an image of his Creator, and retains the desire for the one who calls him into existence. All religions bear witness to men’s essential search for God.” (§2566)

At the same time as creating an intelligible universe, God himself infinitely exceeds it both at the macro and micro scales and remains ineffable:

“God is infinitely greater than all his works: “You have set your glory above the heavens.” Indeed, God’s “greatness is unsearchable.” But because he is the free and sovereign Creator, the first cause of all that exists, God is present to his creatures’ inmost being: “In him we live and move and have our being.” In the words of St. Augustine, God is “higher than my highest and more inward than my innermost self.” (§300)

God’s relationship to the universe is not that of an absentee father who withdraws from his offspring. Instead, He “upholds and sustains” its being:

“With creation, God does not abandon his creatures to themselves. He not only gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being, enables them to act and brings them to their final end. Recognizing this utter dependence with respect to the Creator is a source of wisdom and freedom, of joy and confidence: “For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made; for you would not have made anything if you had hated it. How would anything have endured, if you had not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved? You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living.”” (§301)

Instead of the universe having sprung forth fully-formed, it was created “in a state of journeying,” on a journey that contains the “free action of creatures”:

“Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created “in a state of journeying” (in statu viae) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it. We call “divine providence” the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward this perfection: “By his providence God protects and governs all things which he has made, “reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and ordering all things well.” For “all are open and laid bare to his eyes,” even those things which are yet to come into existence through the free action of creatures.” (Vatican Council I, Dei Filius 1: DS 3003; cf. Wis 8:1; Heb 4:13.)” (§302)

Coming back to its relationship with the Trinity, the universe’s links to all three divine Persons are emphasized:

“God created the universe and keeps it in existence by his Word, the Son “upholding the universe by his word of power” (Heb 1:3) and by his Creator Spirit, the giver of life.” (§320)

That the Genesis account is symbolical and a hint at the universe’s inner nature is presented next:

“God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity, and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine “work,” concluded by the “rest” of the seventh day. On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation, permitting us to “recognize the inner nature, the value, and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God.”” (§337)

Then, God being the source of all that exists is underlined:

“Nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history are rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun.” (§338)

The Catechism then speaks about the universe’s beauty, which points beyond itself to the beauty of God, as the trigger for our desire to understand it, which – incidentally – is not dissimilar to how atheists like Richard Dawkins speak about awe and wonder¹:

“The beauty of the universe: The order and harmony of the created world results from the diversity of beings and from the relationships which exist among them. Man discovers them progressively as the laws of nature. They call forth the admiration of scholars. The beauty of creation reflects the infinite beauty of the Creator and ought to inspire the respect and submission of man’s intellect and will.” (§341)

Having sketched out the key features of how the universe relates to God, what it is and how our engaging with it is also an engaging with God, the intimate nature of the relationships between humans and the rest of the universe is laid out:

“There is a solidarity among all creatures arising from the fact that all have the same Creator and are all ordered to his glory: “May you be praised, O Lord, in all your creatures, especially brother sun, by whom you give us light for the day; he is beautiful, radiating great splendor, and offering us a symbol of you, the Most High…. May you be praised, my Lord, for sister water, who is very useful and humble, precious and chaste…. May you be praised, my Lord, for sister earth, our mother, who bears and feeds us, and produces the variety of fruits and dappled flowers and grasses…. Praise and bless my Lord, give thanks and serve him in all humility.” (St. Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Creatures.)” (§344)

“The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him, in a state that would be surpassed only by the glory of the new creation in Christ.” (§374)

“By the radiance of this grace all dimensions of man’s life were confirmed. As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die. The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman, and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation, comprised the state called “original justice.”” (§376)

This harmony among God, man and woman and the universe is not only there as a good in itself, but also a basis for men and women to work with God:

“The sign of man’s familiarity with God is that God places him in the garden. There he lives “to till it and keep it.” Work is not yet a burden, but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible creation.” (§378)

“Human work proceeds directly from persons created in the image of God and called to prolong the work of creation by subduing the earth, both with and for one another. Hence work is a duty: “If any one will not work, let him not eat.” Work honors the Creator’s gifts and the talents received from him. It can also be redemptive. By enduring the hardship of work in union with Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth and the one crucified on Calvary, man collaborates in a certain fashion with the Son of God in his redemptive work. He shows himself to be a disciple of Christ by carrying the cross, daily, in the work he is called to accomplish. Work can be a means of sanctification and a way of animating earthly realities with the Spirit of Christ.” (§2427)

“The primordial value of labor stems from man himself, its author and beneficiary. By means of his labor man participates in the work of creation. Work united to Christ can be redemptive.” (§2460)

The idea of God’s traces in the universe, introduced in the early paragraphs of the Catechism is picked up again and our capacity to intuit God’s actions from what is accessible through sensory perception is highlighted. The empirical here becomes a conduit for what lies beyond it (echoing St. Paul’s “At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12)) – “the universal language of creation”:

“God speaks to man through the visible creation. The material cosmos is so presented to man’s intelligence that he can read there traces of its Creator. Light and darkness, wind and fire, water and earth, the tree and its fruit speak of God and symbolize both his greatness and his nearness.” (§1147)

“Inasmuch as they are creatures, […] perceptible realities can become means of expressing the action of God who sanctifies men, and the action of men who offer worship to God. The same is true of signs and symbols taken from the social life of man: washing and anointing, breaking bread and sharing the cup can express the sanctifying presence of God and man’s gratitude toward his Creator.” (§1148)

“The practice of goodness is accompanied by spontaneous spiritual joy and moral beauty. Likewise, truth carries with it the joy and splendor of spiritual beauty. Truth is beautiful in itself. Truth in words, the rational expression of the knowledge of created and uncreated reality, is necessary to man, who is endowed with intellect. But truth can also find other complementary forms of human expression, above all when it is a matter of evoking what is beyond words: the depths of the human heart, the exaltations of the soul, the mystery of God. Even before revealing himself to man in words of truth, God reveals himself to him through the universal language of creation, the work of his Word, of his wisdom: the order and harmony of the cosmos—which both the child and the scientist discover — “from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator,” “for the author of beauty created them.”” (§2500)

God’s presence in the universe, its being a gift to us and a means by which God speaks to us and we can strive to know him, also mean that it calls for respect and care:

“Far from diminishing our concern to develop this earth, the expectancy of a new earth should spur us on, for it is here that the body of a new human family grows, foreshadowing in some way the age which is to come. That is why, although we must be careful to distinguish earthly progress clearly from the increase of the kingdom of Christ, such progress is of vital concern to the kingdom of God, insofar as it can contribute to the better ordering of human society.” (§1049)

And not only is care in order, but a just and universal access to the goods contained in the universe:

“In the beginning God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them, master them by labor, and enjoy their fruits. The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race. However, the earth is divided up among men to assure the security of their lives, endangered by poverty and threatened by violence. The appropriation of property is legitimate for guaranteeing the freedom and dignity of persons and for helping each of them to meet his basic needs and the needs of those in his charge. It should allow for a natural solidarity to develop between men.” (§2402)

“The seventh commandment enjoins respect for the integrity of creation. Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future humanity. Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives. Man’s dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation.” (§2415)

And finally, the universe – as “the great book of creation” – is also presented as helping us to meditate:

“Meditation is above all a quest. The mind seeks to understand the why and how of the Christian life, in order to adhere and respond to what the Lord is asking. The required attentiveness is difficult to sustain. We are usually helped by books, and Christians do not want for them: the Sacred Scriptures, particularly the Gospels, holy icons, liturgical texts of the day or season, writings of the spiritual fathers, works of spirituality, the great book of creation, and that of history—the page on which the “today” of God is written.” (§2705)

In summary, the Catechism presents a universe that is intimately linked with God, who is its source and who sustains it and who also speaks to us through it. This communication is in the form of God’s “traces” in the universe and in the form of an invitation to engage with it rationally (as a pointer to God’s wisdom) and through beauty (as a foretaste of the beauty of God Himself). The universe is more than just a teaser for the goodness, truth and beauty of what is to come and is a good in itself, to be developed and enjoyed by all in a just and equitable way. This is a universe that we are call to care for and think of in the context of the relationships among us and with God.

¹ “The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.” ― Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

Synod14: We aren’t the bosses of God’s mercy

Francis kids

Since the close of yesterday’s sessions of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family, several interviews with or full texts of interventions by some Synod Fathers have been published.

The first of these I’d like to share is by Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the archbishop emeritus of Brussels, who’s contribution to the Synod was a plea for greater care for the divorced and remarried:

“God is just and merciful. He can’t contradict himself. He can separate good and evil in a great straddle. We, we have difficulty because we are only poor ballet dancers for a moment in the whole of history. […]

In the first place we are invited to greatly respect our brothers and sisters, the divorced and remarried. Mercy starts where we have unconditional respect for all who want to live within the Church but can’t marry again for the Church and receive Communion. […]

It is so important to speak with them, to let them speak about the beauty of marriage and the Christian family. Beauty is so powerful! This is obviously not esthetic beauty, but beauty who is the sister of truth and goodness. According to Aristotle “beauty is truth in all its glory”. Pulchrum est splendor veri.

Among our contemporaries there is much scepticism about the truth; even goodness can discourage, but beauty disarms. Beauty heals. Archimedes said about our world today, “Give me a place to stand and I will lift the world.”

The divorced and remarried are not the only suffering children, but there are far more than we think. My appeal – in all simplicity – is: to love God’s children. Their pain and suffering is often great. They don’t immediately ask for the regulations of the Church to change. Their cry is rather one to the shepherds with their hearts in the right place, why carry the wounded lamb on their shoulders. Beauty disarms. We hold the cards: there is indeed nothing more beautiful than Christian marriage and a deeply faithful family. But we must communicate the truth to divorced and remarried people – delicately – with the words of Saint Francis in mind, which he spoke to the superiors of his small communities, “never let anyone leave you in sadness”.”

Archbishop Denis Hart, the President of the Australian Bishop’s Conference, commented on the need for a new language – a “language of love” – and underlined the Church’s concern for all who suffer:

“[The] Catechism of the Catholic Church [speaks] about people being ‘disordered’, things being ‘intrinsically evil’. You say that to a parent who has a gay son or daughter and they just cannot understand that this child whom they love and who they have nurtured – might have chosen a thing that they don’t approve of – but is to be totally rejected because of that. And I think we have to be faithful to our doctrine and our teaching and practice have to go hand in hand, but we can do so with mercy and love and help people to realize that whatever may be the challenges that our in their life, they are respected and loved by the Church. […]

There are people who are separated and divorced, there are people who are same-sex attracted, there are people who are really struggling in their marriage, and wondering how they will go. The bishops have been emphasizing that we are pastors. When our people suffer we feel for them, when our people are bereaved we cry with them, when our people are burdened with sickness we struggle with them, when people are uncertain about where they can go or are suffering terrible material poverty the Church has to be there with them. I think this is the genius of Pope Francis. The great thing that concerns us in this is Synod is our love for our people and our ability to walk with them.”

There are, however, also voices at the Synod, like that of Cardinal Raymond Burke – the current Cardinal Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura (whom Pope Francis removed from the Congregation for Bishops last year), who are opposed to a renewal of pastoral practice, e.g., saying that “[i]f homosexual relations are intrinsically disordered, which indeed they are — reason teaches us that and also our faith — then, what would it mean to grandchildren to have present at a family gathering a family member who is living [in] a disordered relationship with another person?”

There is also an important presence of members of other churches, religions and those who hold no religious beliefs at the Synod, who make important contributions. For example, the Anglican Rev. Paul Buttler, provided the following great synthesis of what the Synod is about:

“I think we actually need to reimagine family life again and help people grasp how important steadfastness, faithfulness to one another really is and offer much more support in times of difficulty. We have to be honest – the difficulties happen.”

Last night I also discovered a great blog by the Archbishop Droucher, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, where he recounts his experiences of the Synod, including a summary of his own intervention:

“What I especially wanted to say was that we should not only focus on what is negative in the world which is ours. True, there are many broken families, abandoned children, deeply wounded individuals. It is true that sexuality is often lived more as a leisure activity than as a true loving language of deep self-giving to another. It is also true that less and less couples are choosing marriage today. However, there are also positive realities in our world today. I named the commitment to equality between men and women in marriage, the refusal of all violence to children and women, the growing role of fathers in the affective life of their children, the place given to communication, mutual respect and healthy relationships. All of this is good and should be recognized and celebrated by Church leaders, creating openings for dialogue with society where the Church can proclaim its humanizing teaching on family, marriage and sexuality.”

I also liked Archbishop Droucher’s immediacy in his blog, where the follows his intervention’s summary by saying “And thus did I finish my four minutes of great nervousness (my hands were shaking) and adrenaline rush.” 🙂

Yesterday afternoon’s (8th) session was then focused on Christian education, where the French couple, Olivier and Xristilla Roussy, shared in their opening testimony that:

“Our mission as parents is above all to awaken our children to holiness. Like all of us, they too face the many temptations of the world and, with humility, we try to make them grow in freedom and generosity, to teach them the senses of discernment, decision making and perseverance. We help them develop their life project under the gaze of God. In spite of the difficult pace of modern life, we seek to be attentive to each one of them and give them plenty of time, both all together and individually.”

The notes provided about the following discussion started with:

“an invitation to the faithful to deepen their knowledge of Paul VI’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae, thus better understanding the meaning of the use of natural methods of fertility control and the non-acceptance of contraception. Union and procreation, it was said, are not separate from the conjugal act.”

The importance of appropriate marriage preparation was revisited, and – I believe, importantly – linked to the preparation for religious life:

“as its celebration seems to be increasingly reduced to the social and legal status, rather than a religious and spiritual bond. The preparatory course, it was noted, is often perceived by couples as an imposition, a task to complete without conviction, and as a result it is too brief. Since marriage is a vocation for life, preparation for it should be long and detailed, as in the case of preparation for religious life.”

The other side of the marriage preparation coin – that of the adequate preparation of priests to lead it – was addressed next:

“The Assembly went on to insist on the importance of good preparation for priests in relation to the pastoral care of marriage and the family, and remarked that homilies can be used as a special and effective moment for proclaiming the Gospel of the family to the faithful. It was commented that there is a need for formation and information, as the spiritual holiness of the priest, his creativity and his direct relationship with families are particularly appreciated by the faithful.”

This morning then saw experiences shared by couples and lay experts, who are not voting participants but “listeners” instead. Here the notes point to themes that were very much the same as during the preceding days, with an added emphasis on the need for closer collaboration between the laity and the Church’s hierarchy, also in the context of the laity’s involvement in public and secular life. The challenge of caring for the growing number of people living in solitude (irrespective of their association with the Church) was also highlighted during the following press conference. Importantly, Fr. Lombardi, also mentioned Pope Pius X’s “revolutionary” changes to the reception of the Eucharist by children as opposed to only adults as was previous practice. It was emphasized that this is a different context to the questions facing the divorced and remarried, but that there is precedent to substantial changes. The difficult effects of divorce on children were also lamented, of “ping-pong children” who are oscillating between their parents (and their new partners) and lack stability.

Fr. Manuel Dorantes, reporting on the Spanish speaking Synod Fathers’ contributions (with aplomb, I might add), quoted one of them as saying:

“Above all we must kneel before the Holy Spirit and remember that we aren’t the bosses of God’s mercy. We must remember that the mission that Jesus entrusted to his apostles, and by extension to us as their successors, is to evangelize and to heal. And this means, spreading the Good News.”

Calls for a greater involvement of lay persons, and women in particular, in ecclesiastical tribunals were also reported. Fr. Dorantes then quoted another of the Synod Fathers calling for a greater focus on children: “Brothers, I am the son of divorced parents and I, as their son, experienced the stigma of divorce directed at my parents and directed at me.”

This afternoon the Synod is hearing from “fraternal delegates” – i.e., representatives of other churches and religions, about which there will be a press conference tomorrow and on Monday, Cardinal Erdő will present the report reflecting the week’s contributions.

Francis: let’s share the joys of Muslims

A while ago now, Pope Francis wrote a, to my mind, very important message to Muslims at the end of Ramadan (on the feast of Eid al-Fitr), and, I believe, I, as a Christian, need to read it too, as if it were addressed to me personally. Aside from the gesture of Francis himself¹ sending the message “as an expression of esteem and friendship for all Muslims,” his choice of theme itself is of great importance, as is the way in which he introduces himself.

First, he ties himself closely to St. Francis, who had very close links with the Muslim world of his day and who – with Jesus and Mary – is revered also among Muslims and who, after speaking with Sheikh al-Malik al-Kamel (the Sultan of Egypt) told his followers: “[You] are not to engage in arguments or disputes, but to be subject to every human creature for God’s sake.” Then, Francis underlines a number of themes close to the hearts of Muslims: alms giving, a reverence for creation and the family:

“[W]hen the Cardinals elected me as Bishop of Rome and Universal Pastor of the Catholic Church, I chose the name of “Francis”, a very famous saint who loved God and every human being deeply, to the point of being called “universal brother”. He loved, helped and served the needy, the sick and the poor; he also cared greatly for creation. I am aware that family and social dimensions enjoy a particular prominence for Muslims during this period, and it is worth noting that there are certain parallels in each of these areas with Christian faith and practice.”

Next we arrive at the theme chosen for this year’s Ramadan message: “Promoting Mutual Respect through Education,” which Francis lays out as follows:

““Respect” means an attitude of kindness towards people for whom we have consideration and esteem. “Mutual” means that this is not a one-way process, but something shared by both sides. What we are called to respect in each person is first of all his life, his physical integrity, his dignity and the rights deriving from that dignity, his reputation, his property, his ethnic and cultural identity, his ideas and his political choices. We are therefore called to think, speak and write respectfully of the other, not only in his presence, but always and everywhere, avoiding unfair criticism or defamation.”

So far Francis’ message is universal and, I believe, applies to all human relationships and not only those between Christians and Muslims. Kindness, esteem, reciprocity, respect and refraining from gossip are all basics that prepare the ground for the “sincere and lasting friendship” that Francis speaks about later.

Then, Francis’ focus shifts to the aspect of religious belief in this context of human relationships:

“Turning to mutual respect in interreligious relations, especially between Christians and Muslims, we are called to respect the religion of the other, its teachings, its symbols, its values. Particular respect is due to religious leaders and to places of worship. How painful are attacks on one or other of these! It is clear that, when we show respect for the religion of our neighbours or when we offer them our good wishes on the occasion of a religious celebration, we simply seek to share their joy, without making reference to the content of their religious convictions.”

I believe the above is a key move by Francis, in that it explicitly calls for mutual respect of the religious expressions of others while placing the emphasis on the joy and wishing for the good of others that accompany them and that are universally human. No buy-in with regard to the content of religious expression is inferred from being kind and participating in the other’s joy. There is neither proselytizing or attempting to convert the other here nor the suggestion of syncretism.

All of the above is very consistent with what I have heard from Francis so far – we have to realize that we are all brothers and sisters before anything else can happen. In the context of speaking about the poor, his emphasis is always on “touch[ing] the flesh of Christ,” on looking into the eyes of those in need when they are being helped. Just like helping the poor is about building human relationships with them and not only about material assistance, so interreligious dialogue too – and the very essence of the Christian life – is about the exact same thing.

How is this to be achieved though? While the answer here is pretty obvious (education), it is nonetheless worth seeing how Francis puts it:

“Regarding the education of Muslim and Christian youth, we have to bring up our young people to think and speak respectfully of other religions and their followers, and to avoid ridiculing or denigrating their convictions and practices.”

It is impossible to respect and esteem caricatures – if that is how we get used to referring to others (whether they be of a different religion, or none, or of other convictions to our own) we are putting up barriers that prevent us from ever discovering what lives in the hearts and minds of our neighbors.

To conclude, Francis puts his own teaching into practice and concludes his message a follows: “Finally, I send you my prayerful good wishes, that your lives may glorify the Almighty and give joy to those around you. Happy Feast to you all!”

No pomp and circumstance, just sincere simplicity.

¹ Instead of having the message sent by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, who normally do so.