I believe God made me for a purpose - but He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.

He ultimately decides to race another event to

We should all work to discover our talents and take advantage of them, as Jesus speaks about in today’s Gospel (cf. Mt. 25:14-30). Liddell doesn’t simply recognize he is fast; he knows that he has received a gift from God. Each one of us has received many talents from God. In the Gospel, the man going on a journey entrusts his property to three servants, each one according to his ability. He praises the ones who build up his wealth, while he criticizes the one who is content to just hide his talent. We can learn a few lessons from this parable.

Achievement as a Product of Work

Achievement is a product of our work. We work intentionally, with the goal in mind. We work toward something meaningful, as St. Paul expressed in his first letter to the Corinthians:

I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing (1 Cor. 9:26).

Success in the Christian life is not measured merely by what we accomplish, but by how faithfully we put our talents to work. The idea is not to merely punch a time clock but to make sure that we are fulfilling our objectives.

God Gives Us What We Need

I ran into a fascinating question the other day. “What do athletes pray for before a game?” We talked about different possibilities. Some probably pray for victory. Others might pray to avoid injury. God doesn’t watch the game as one more fan - it is not as if the victor in the contest is the one with more fans praying for the desired outcome. We ask for what we want, and God gives us what we need, and not always in the way we might expect. We might not have the talent we would personally prefer, but we are called to bring our talents to bear in our mission of being holy and building up the Kingdom of God here on earth.

God Wants us for Himself

We are called to work for the Master, not our selfish purposes. The talents we receive are entrusted to us. We can think of them as time, talent, and treasure. These “three t’s” are elements that are given to us so that we can invest them. We do this by dedicating time to others, by developing our talents so as to serve others, and by donating from our treasure to support others. It is a good attitude to think of everything that we have as borrowed. This helps us avoid thinking that we are the center of the universe. We are here to glorify God and to fulfill his will with our lives.

All for the Good of Others

Reflecting on this parable, St. John Chrysostom said that we are called to contribute wealth, and

diligence, and protection, and all things for our neighbor’s advantage. For the talents here are each person’s ability, whether in the way of protection, or in money, or in teaching, or in whatever thing of the kind. Let no man say, I have but one talent, and can do nothing; for you can even by one approve yourself (St. John Chrysostom, “Homily 78 on Matthew”).

There are so many talents we receive, in the forms of time, talent, and treasure. It is good to pause from time to time and see if we are being good custodians or stewards of our talents. How much time do we dedicate to spreading the Good News, as opposed to how much time we spend engaging in brainrot? Accumulating riches cannot be our sole purpose in life. Even as we hopefully enjoy success, we should always be looking for ways to support the Church and those less fortunate than us.

Accountability

We will be held accountable for how we deal with the riches of this world. We want to hear Jesus say:

“Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy” (Mt. 25:23).

This can only happen if we work diligently to make our talents bear fruit. They have been entrusted to us, not given to us absolutely. Let’s take some time this week and make sure that we have a proper balance in how we are managing time, talent, and treasure. Find your talent and run with it, feeling God’s pleasure.

Accompanying people as they come into the faith, or grow deeper in the faith, it’s a question I get quite a bit. There are a lot of different factors that go into choosing the right Bible. For most people, having one Bible is enough. Running through my memory right now, I have probably 5 or 6. We can look at different translations and different presentations. The important thing to figure out is which Bible is right for you.

Catholic Bible

The first step is to make sure you are getting a Catholic Bible. Protestant Bibles have 66 books; Catholic Bibles have 73. There is a discrepancy about the canon, or official list of books to be included, but that is a question that goes beyond the scope of this article.

“So Father, should I get a King James Bible?” “No, my friend. That’s a Protestant Bible.” You want to make sure that you are getting a Catholic Bible. The translation in a Protestant Bible is going to be fine, but you don’t want to grab your Bible to look up Tobit and find out that IT’S NOT THERE! That would be tragic, so make sure to get a Catholic Bible

Study Bibles

A study Bible includes notes and introductions that help the reader approach the text of the Bible more effectively. At a popular level, nobody has done more for Catholics in the United States to fall in love with the Bible than Scott Hahn. So, when he finally finished (with a team, of course) the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, I knew that I had found my new Bible.

The biggest drawback of this Bible is that it does not feel very portable. But hey, the Jesuit missionaries carried altar stones on their backs to say Mass with the Hurons and Algonquins, so if you are tough enough, anything is portable, right?

Translations

There are three translations I would highlight for Bibles that probably work better for most people, especially if they are not ready to commit to a big study Bible.

The New American Bible reflects the translation used in Catholic liturgy in the United States. There are certainly advantages to having the Bible correspond to the Sunday readings, so that would speak strongly in favor of a New American Bible (NAB).

The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has beautiful language, perhaps the best English translation as regards the English prose. Tolkien himself contributed to the Jerusalem Bible. This Bible could definitely accompany a person a long time and through many adventures.

The Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE), is my preferred translation. The prose is straightforward, with a balance of readability and faithfulness to the original languages.

Which Version?

Ok, we must be nearly there, right? We have narrowed it down to three translations, but we still have to choose which Bible we actually want. One year at SEEK, one of the students wanted to buy a Bible and asked me for advice. I suggested the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, and one of the FOCUS missionaries quickly cut me off, saying it was not right for this student. She was right. The best Bible isn’t necessarily the most comprehensive or intellectually impressive one. It’s the one that helps the reader encounter Scripture. Although a great resource, it does not respond to the needs of every Bible reader.

We suggested she get the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension Press. Jeff Cavins came up with a way of reading the Bible so that it is not merely a conglomeration of books, but rather a key to unlocking salvation history. This is also the version used by Fr. Mike Schmitz in his Bible in a Year podcast.

I would say that for most people, I would suggest getting either the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension Press or the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible from Ignatius Press. I would give the New Jerusalem Bible honorable mention. Whichever version of the Bible you get, tolle, lege, pick up and read!

While Marxism was a scourge in Eastern Europe through the heavy-handed influence of the Soviet Union, it arrived in Latin America through the Cuban revolution in 1959. It made greater inroads in 1968 through the Medellín Conference. Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, OP, was a leading theologian who combined themes from the Second Vatican Council, Marxist thought, and pastoral theology to come up with his book, Towards a Theology of Liberation. The Latin American Bishops’ Conference (CELAM) met to discuss the Church’s needs in its home countries. Liberation theology would play a pivotal role in the way that the Latin American Church understood itself, going forward.

Rise of Marxist Reading of Theology

Throughout Latin America, priests were using revolutionary rhetoric, and sometimes even taking up arms, trying to defend the poor against the domination of the rich landowners in their countries. The “preferential option for the poor” could sometimes even spill over into violence. While the clergy in the Eastern bloc was known for resisting the government’s Marxist policies, in Latin America, priests were often the first collaborators of the revolutionaries seeking to upset the status quo.

Karol Wojtyła read the Vatican documents differently from Gustavo Gutierrez. He was deeply concerned about the Marxist influence on theological and pastoral thought in Latin America. He would take advantage of the 1979 CELAM Conference in Puebla, Mexico, to stem the tide of Marxism. Just as he was fighting Marxism by supporting the Solidarity Movement in Poland, he would face off against liberation theology several times throughout the first half of his pontificate.

At Puebla, he was able to address the bishops directly, going back to the seminal text of Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, 22.

Only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light (Gaudium et Spes, 22, quoted in Address to CELAM, 28 January 1979).

He applied the quote to the crisis of contemporary humanism. To understand the appeal of Marxism, both in its Soviet Communist manifestations in Eastern Europe and in its influence on liberation theology in Latin America, it is important to recognize that it was trying to answer a real problem. Contemporary humanism was trying to respond to the needs of humanity, but without looking at the Person of Christ. Wojtyła tried to correct that, especially in the context of Christian theology.

Contemporary civilization suffers from an inadequate understanding of the human person. While the great thinkers may be able to diagnose the problem, they are unable to propose a solution if their understanding of the meaning of the human person is faulty. For this reason, Pope St. John Paul II was able to speak profoundly to the heart of man. This is the paradox of modern atheistic humanism: humanity speaks constantly about itself while increasingly losing sight of its identity and destiny.

Purity of Doctrine

Pope John Paul II emphasized the importance of purity of doctrine to the Latin American Bishops. They could not hope to achieve their goals without being rooted deeply in the truth. It is not enough to desire a wonderful outcome. As a Church, the first priority has to be proclaiming the truth revealed by Jesus Christ.

This purity of doctrine will always be a reflection of a healthy Christology. When other ideologies are trying to reinterpret Jesus Christ to further their own agendas, the Church has to stay strong in proclaiming the Christ of the Gospels, the Christ of the Church.

It is from a solid Christology that there must come light on so many doctrinal and pastoral themes and questions that you intend to study in these coming days (Pope St. John Paul II, Address to CELAM, 28 January 1979, I.2).

By knowing and proclaiming Jesus Christ, they could help their people avoid falling into the confusion of competing sects. At the same time that they were building up a realistic image of Jesus Christ, it was important to remember the true place of the Church in the whole discourse.

Love for the Church must be composed of fidelity and trust (Pope St. John Paul II, Address to CELAM, 28 January 1979, I.2).

Renewed Vision of the Church

Pope St. John Paul II was dedicated to a renewal of ecclesiology, theology’s understanding of the Church, from his first days as Pope. His reading and meditation on the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium informed his renewed vision of the role of the Church in the modern world. Evangelizing activity unrooted in a well-founded ecclesiology risks faltering fatally.

The first reason is that evangelization is the essential mission, the distinctive vocation, and the deepest identity of the Church, which has in turn been evangelized (Pope St. John Paul II, Address to CELAM, 28 January 1979, I.7).

The Church cannot survive without evangelization. This cannot be reduced to mere proselytism. The idea is not to gain members but to share the beauty of the Gospel in such a way that others feel compelled to seek the treasure that we have found.

The mission of the Church is to bring this message to all people. The vocation of the Church is to be holy, as expressed in Lumen Gentium. The identity of the Church is to be the sacrament of salvation instituted by Christ to continue his mission in the world.

Unity Among Bishops For the Good of the People

In a time that could be characterized by varying pastoral visions, the Pope reminded the bishops of the importance of unity among themselves. A Church united is a Church that is able to preach the Gospel effectively. He recalled the great Church Father Saint Cyprian, a bishop who fought for unity in a time of great confusion in the Church of his own time.

The unity of Bishops comes not from human calculations and strategy but from on high: from serving one Lord, from being animated by one Spirit, and from loving one and the same Church (Pope St. John Paul II, Address to CELAM, 28 January 1979, II.1).

This unity would allow them to work effectively to improve also the material situation of their flock. While their primary concern would always be for the spiritual well-being of their people, they must be concerned with their material well-being.

Hence the Church’s constant preoccupation with the delicate question of property. A proof of this is the writings of the Fathers of the Church through the first thousand years of Christianity (cf. St Ambrose, De Nabuthae, c. 12, n. 53: PL 14,747). It is clearly shown by the vigorous teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas, repeated so many times. In our own times, the Church has appealed to the same principles in such far-reaching documents as the social Encyclicals of the recent Popes (Pope St. John Paul II, Address to CELAM, 28 January 1979, III.4).

The economic concerns were real, but could not justify any action whatsoever in supposed benefit of the poor.

As he closed out his discourse, Pope St. John Paul II entrusted three things especially to the bishops as they would continue their meetings: the family, priestly and religious vocations, and the youth. In any age, these seem like worthy objects of a pastor’s loving concern. John Paul II would never give into the pressures of Marxism, but this did not come from a lack of concern for the common man. Rather, his deep concern for all led him to return over and over again to Gaudium et Spes 22 and recall that only Christ can reveal to man what his life truly means.

St. Paul had already written to the Thessalonians:

If anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat (2 Thess. 3:10).

As Christians, we are called to live out work as part of our vocation. It is part of who we are. Work is how we solve problems in an organized way, and also how we collaborate with God’s creation. The Genesis story of creation shows that man is called to cooperate with God’s grand project, taking care of it, and that God has made everything for the good of man.

When we look at human history, we always find work. It is part of the creation story, and with the Fall, there is also a corruption of work. We see a history of intended enslavement and the desire to create division within society based on work.

Change With the Industrial Revolution

With the Industrial Revolution, the divide accelerated, and Karl Marx tried to understand history through categories of oppressor versus oppressed. Agrarian societies were transformed into industrial cities, built around factories. Long hours, child labor, and unmanageable wages came to be the rule. The Church was not blind to the problem, but it looked at it more from a perspective of standing up for the dignity of the human person.

Since the emergence of her Social Doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum, the Church has emphasized the protection of workers and the need to combat all forms of exploitation (Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 149).

When we look at work as a necessary evil or as merely a means to an end, we miss part of its true significance. Church Social Teaching has always appreciated work as “the essential key” to understanding how society is supposed to function. We look to St. Benedict for a spirituality of work. We see it as cooperating in God’s creation, not simply toil. When Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden, they are condemned to toil for their food. Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross redeemed man, and because of this, our activity can serve God’s glory. Benedict united prayer and work, and his monks serve as a model for all of us.

Work as a Fundamental Good

There is a tendency nowadays to demonize certain sectors of society. We can look at something like Wall Street and see it as a towering example of greed and corruption. But even there, we need missionaries and apostles. If we are in a position to move capital in such a way that drives innovation and improves the lives of others, of course we can be living in a way that is worthwhile.

Created in the image of the Creator, our own work in some way continues his, for thereby we contribute to the progress of society and the common good, put to good use the capabilities we have received, improve and beautify the world, support our families, engage in cooperative relationships and, through listening and dialogue, learn to build together something that no one could achieve alone (Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 149).

Doubtless, we want to be kind and supportive toward the poor. We have to think about the best way of doing this. While direct social assistance is often necessary and appropriate, we must be careful not to rob them of a true source of dignity. We should want to work, because it is one way that we become more similar to God our Creator.

Financial assistance to the poor may at times be necessary in emergencies, but it cannot become the sole response, since the goal is to enable each person to live with dignity through his or her own work (Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 149).

Work is a fundamental good that we want to have available to all capable members of society.

Danger of Optimizing for Efficiency

The Tower of Babel can serve as a metaphor for optimizing for efficiency.

Babel thus reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from self-affirmation, sacrifices human dignity for efficiency and aspires to reach heaven without God’s blessing (Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 7).

One of the dangers of the rise of Artificial Intelligence is precisely eliminating the need for workers. The Pope argues that we should try to make labor easier for man, not eliminate man. Looking at the Genesis account, we could see that technology should help to eliminate toil, rather than trying to eliminate work.

We have to also be careful to avoid becoming slaves of the machines. In the encyclical, Pope Leo XIV explores different ways that human workers can be put at the service of technology instead of the other way around. This can range from harvesting dangerous minerals to working on a factory line, to cleaning up ugly parts of the Internet to help protect the consumer. There is much work behind the scenes that we can easily miss if we don’t stop to reflect.

Leave a comment

When we do look for efficiency, we have to be careful to see what we are seeking. The question cannot merely be: How can we do this more efficiently? We have to also ask: What is this efficiency for? How does this efficiency affect others?

Prayer and Work in a Digital Age

Nehemiah prayed before he decided to undertake the rebuilding of Jerusalem. This was not an escape from work, but rather a way to bring God into the great project that lay before him.

In the past, perhaps the way we looked at spirituality and work was to raise our minds to God as we were tilling the earth with the plow. Now, we have no less of a need for prayer in work, although it may be more often a prayer of discernment.

We need to reflect more deeply on the meaning of our work and the consequences of our actions. Perhaps the Digital Age is pushing us towards work more than any previous period in human history. We have a fascinating opportunity to make effective use of Benedict’s motto of ora et labora. By praying and working, we are able to make our very work into a prayer that we offer up to Christ. By making sure that we prefer nothing to the love of Christ, we make sure that work is not exploiting others, but rather allowing them to flourish in their full human dignity.

Our goal as Christians is not to eliminate work, but rather to work in such a way that our human dignity is respected and cared for. Indeed, we should be witnesses in the world by giving meaning to our work because we are more in tune with what life is all about. We will not always be able to work according to our passion, but we can always put passion into our work.

Salvation Taken Seriously

Several passages in the New Testament invite us to reflect on the seriousness of our eternal salvation. As we move further through the liturgical year and as we read further through the Gospels, more apocalyptic scenes appear.

Two men will be out in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left (Mt. 24:40-41).

Similarly, today’s Gospel shows five wise virgins and five foolish virgins (cf. Mt. 25:1-13). I wouldn’t say we should positively affirm that only half of people will get into Heaven, but these Gospel passages should get us thinking. They are not intended to give us a mathematical calculation of how many people will be saved. Rather, they remind us that not everyone will be ready when the Lord comes.

Who Will Be Saved?

Too frequently, people seem to think Heaven is a slam dunk. It is almost as if you have to be a world-class depraved psycho maniac to be condemned to Hell, at least in the world’s eyes. Many people seem to think that they will somehow pass whatever test awaits them.

The truth is, we don’t know what happens to every person, but we should do everything in our power to correspond to the graces God offers us. Is it really that easy to go to Heaven, or conversely, that hard to go to Hell? We have heard that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. This refers to the many people who desire to improve their lives but never act on that desire.

Thinking back to the five wise and the five foolish virgins, it’s not about worrying which half I am in, but rather whether I am doing all I can to correspond to God’s grace in my life. Am I trimming my lamp and making sure it has enough oil, or am I allowing my spiritual life to grow cold?

Jesus wants us to give priority to him and his kingdom. We trim our lamps by having spiritual discipline. This can be as simple as making it to daily Mass a few times a week or spending 10 minutes meditating on the daily Gospel. The oil in our lamps can represent our sacramental life. By receiving the sacraments, we are filled with grace that powers our spiritual lives.

I like this way of looking at it because it makes it clear that we are saved by God’s grace, but without obfuscating our active cooperation with his free gift. On our own, we are nothing, but the good news is that we are not alone.

Leave a comment

The Coming Apocalypse

Just as the Gospel of Matthew progresses towards more apocalyptic things as the story draws closer to the Passion of Jesus, our liturgical year introduces more apocalyptic themes as we draw closer to the Solemnity of Christ the King, celebrated on the last Sunday of Ordinary Time.

God created us without asking our opinion, but he will not save us without involving our free cooperation with his grace. As St. Augustine said, “God created us without us: but he did not will to save us without us.” He wants us to cooperate with our own work of salvation.

Share

Shorter Days

One of the beautiful things about living the liturgical year in the Northern Hemisphere is that there is often a certain congruity between the seasons and the liturgical time. As we draw closer to the end of the liturgical year, the days are also getting noticeably shorter. It can feel as if the day is dying. It is a reminder to us that we should contemplate the brevity and fleeting nature of life.

The message of the five wise virgins is that we should always be ready for the coming of the King. Jesus will return gloriously and will judge the living and the dead, as we remember each time that we recite the Creed at Mass. The faith is not a series of nice reflections to help us make peace with our earthly existence. It is a way of coming into contact with the deeper reality that gives this existence meaning and purpose. Let us, therefore, keep our lamps burning by living a strong spiritual discipline and by strengthening our spiritual lives through frequent reception of the sacraments.

Christians seeking therapy to deal more effectively with mental health challenges often find another layer of skepticism. Not only does psychology fail to present a proper concept of what it means to be human; some view it as unnecessary for people who have faith. They might think that a Christian who is seeking therapy must be someone who is not living out the faith correctly.

Unity of Body and Soul

Even if you love God, you may still benefit from the support of a good therapist. The idea that therapy should be viewed as superfluous in the life of someone with faith is shortsighted. This view can reflect a kind of dualism, as though our spiritual lives are entirely separate from our embodied human experience. This is not the Christian way of looking at the world nor understanding the human experience. Reflecting on the unity of body and soul, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather one union forms a single nature (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 365).

Far from therapy and growth in spiritual life being mutually exclusive, one thing can often foster the other. Frequently, we suffer from the illusion of self-reliance. We believe or wish that we can resolve all of our problems on our own. In the area of spiritual growth, this is a lack of humility, and it normally stops the flow of grace from God into our souls. In such a case, working with a therapist might be a means to grow in humility and learn strategies that allow us to view the reality of our lives more objectively and come up with healthy strategies to deal with the variety of situations we find ourselves in.

Mediation of God’s Grace

God’s grace is by definition a free gift. He can give it whenever and however he wants. He has shown throughout history, and especially through the Incarnation, his desire to act in the world through other mediations of his grace. Jesus is the ultimate example of God’s grace coming to us through mediation.

For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and the human race, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as ransom for all (1 Tim. 2:5-6).

God could have given us a way of perfection that would happen merely through a series of reflections. As Christians, our faith is more about developing a relationship with a person than it is about achieving a certain level of perfection.

Just as therapy can help resolve difficult dealings in human relationships, personal growth that comes through working consciously on ourselves may help us in our relationship with God. Therapy doesn’t mean we should cut out prayer or the sacraments. It doesn’t take the place of spiritual direction. Spiritual practices and therapy speak to different realities within the human soul.

Psychological Suffering Does Not Imply Deficient Faith

Psychological suffering does not imply that you don’t have enough faith. It doesn’t mean that you are sinful. Mental health challenges can come from various sources, including genetic predispositions, difficult life circumstances, trauma, and thought and behavioral patterns that require professional attention.

God wants each one of us to grow to our full potential and to prepare for Heaven. We are called to be happy forever with him. Our parents and families are the first places where we are supposed to learn how to love. However, sometimes faulty situations stymie our potential for personal growth. Rather than just waving a magic wand to resolve our difficulties, God often works through human intermediaries to help us get to a place where we can truly flourish.

Needing or taking advantage of therapy is not a sign that you somehow need God less. Rather, it can be a beautiful sign that you are willing to do the work to remove the obstacles present in your life that make it harder to be fully the person he is calling you to be. You can love God and still need therapy. Therapy might even be one of the ways God shows that he loves you.

Central Document from the Second Vatican Council

Among all the documents, Gaudium et Spes always held a special place in the heart of Karol Wojtyła. The 1965 Pastoral Constitution would serve as his inspiration for how to guide the Catholic Church into the third millennium. His visit to the United States and Canada in 1969 gave him another opportunity to encounter Western society and appreciate the possibilities offered by political and religious freedom. He desired such freedom to be present in his homeland of Poland as well and would work for that through his own role as archbishop and later as Pope of the Universal Church.

Joys and Hopes

Young Father Karol had been part of the commission that worked on Gaudium et Spes. While he did not pen number 22, which would be his favorite text to quote throughout his papacy, he did propose a text to the commission. In 1964, he sent to the commission a text known as the “Polish text,” emphasizing the importance of religious freedom. This reflects a Polish understanding of the episcopate, particularly in Kraków, where he spent forty years of his life.

The Kraków episcopate had a distinct historical character in matters of religious freedom. To be the successor of St. Stanisław was to be the heir of an ancient tradition in which the bishop was the defensor populi, the “defender of the people,” and the defensor civitatis, the “defender of the city” of last resort (George Weigel, Witness to Hope, p. 189).

His love for his Polish homeland made him into a natural candidate to help rally support for Poland during the decades of Soviet domination. His experience of political persecution helped him to see the value of religious freedom, built into the structure of the Vatican II document.

In his commentary on the Second Vatican Council, he focuses at one point on redemption as a reality constantly directed towards man in the world.

The redemptive work of Jesus Christ which determines the inmost nature of the Church is in fact the work of the redemption of the world (Karol Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal, p. 69).

Linked to the Redemption

He would eventually link his entire pontificate to the mystery of the Redemption worked through the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. Rather than embracing a secular humanism, the Christian humanism proposed by Wojtyła flows from the Christian mystery itself.

The mystery of redemption, closely linked with Jesus Christ, his life, death and resurrection, is the central reality of our faith. Here Vatican II offers a great contribution to the enrichment of faith from the point of view of consciousness of redemption (Karol Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal, p. 75).

Putting man at the center comes from recognizing the centrality of Christ in his work of redemption.

This central Christian reality is presented to man in such a way that, following the expression of Gaudium et Spes, we can perceive a specific kind of anthropocentrism emerging through the Christocentrism which the Constitution reflects so clearly (Karol Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal, p. 75).

He looks first at Jesus Christ and then at the human person. This is how he discovers the infinite dignity of every human person. His personalist philosophy would contribute to the modern understanding of human dignity, particularly in the Western world.

Christian Humanism

Fully aware of the developments in modern philosophy, particularly the Marxist expression of Hegelian thought, Wojtyła recognized the limitations of an understanding of humanity detached from its transcendent vocation. Marxism has a way of celebrating “humanity” in the abstract, whereas Pope St. John Paul II was much better at celebrating each human being as a person. By placing Christ at the center, rather than man, he actually gives a greater metaphysical foundation for the need to treat humans respectfully, according to their inherent dignity.

In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come, Christ the Lord. Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling (Gaudium et Spes, 22).

Well Worth Quoting

Pope St. John Paul II would go on to quote this passage more than 200 times in his papal teaching. His reverence for the mystery of redemption led him to reflect repeatedly on the dignity of the human person. His reflections would bear fruit in his reflection on the Theology of the Body, his personalist philosophy, and his consistent support of religious freedom.

Already reading through the Vatican documents as the Cardinal Archbishop of Kraków, Wojtyła was aware of what for him was the central paragraph of the entire Council.

We seem here to have reached a key point in the Council’s thought. The revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love in Jesus Christ reveals man to man, and gives the ultimate answer to the question, “What is man?” This answer cannot be separated from the problem of man’s vocation: man confirms his identity by accepting that vocation and making it a reality (Karol Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal, p. 75).

What he recognized in 1970 as the key point would continue to shape his thought throughout his time as Universal Pastor.

Vocation and Redemption

The vocation of every man and woman in the world runs through the mystery of redemption. This is the great insight that Wojtyła discovered through his meditation on Gaudium et Spes 22. Christ does not merely serve as the face of the Father, revealing God to humanity. Rather, Christ reveals humanity to itself. We can only arrive at the true sense of what it means to be human by coming to understand the great gift that is Jesus Christ. We are all called to participate in God’s divine life offered through Jesus Christ.

This is not simply some abstract theological principle. It helps us understand the mission of the Church in the modern world. The Church defends human dignity because Christ has revealed the extraordinary vocation of every human being. We stand up for religious freedom, not because all religions have the same value, but because all humans do. The Church’s mission is inseparable from the mystery of redemption.

Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God (Mt. 5:8).

A Pure Heart is a Repentant Heart

To achieve this purity of heart, we need to turn away completely from sin. Repentance is more than regretting the consequences of our actions. We must learn to reject evil because it damages our relationship with God and prevents us from responding fully to his love. When we seek God with a pure heart, we learn to rejoice in what is good, even when we gain no personal advantage from it.

A Pure Heart is not a Divided Heart

A pure heart, a clean heart, is one that serves God with the whole heart. We can often divide our heart and our desires among several different things. We cannot serve God and simultaneously keep a part that is completely for us. God wants our whole heart, without reserving a place where we do not wish to allow him to enter. It doesn’t mean that we never struggle, but rather that we do not want to keep any part of ourselves closed to God’s grace.

A Pure Heart is Unafraid to be Tested

A pure heart is ready to be tested. I have always been fascinated by the verses of the Psalms that ask God to test us.

Probe me, God, know my heart; try me, know my thoughts (Ps. 139:23).

It sounds like a frightening proposition. Do I really want God to know me this deeply? So often, we can be ashamed of our secret thoughts and feel that we do not want God to enter into the recesses of our being and know us. We prefer to keep it a secret. And yet, it is impossible to hide anything from God. We see this from the very beginning, when Adam and Eve try to hide from God after falling into sin.

So what is the benefit of asking God to probe our hearts if he already knows everything? By inviting him in, we invite God to shine his light on what remains hidden in our hearts. We allow him to reveal our sins, purify our intentions, and heal our disordered desires. A pure heart begins with the humility to let God reveal the truth about ourselves.

A Pure Heart Guards its Desires

A clean heart desires purity. We are all prone to fall into sin, and we experience temptations that can draw us away from God. We cannot always control the thoughts or temptations that arise, but we can be careful about what type of content we feed to our imagination. We cannot always control the temptations that arise, but we make choices every day about what we willingly allow into our imagination and encourage our hearts to desire. When we guard our imagination and respond faithfully when tempted, we cooperate with God’s grace in forming a pure heart. Even our struggles become opportunities to grow in virtue.

We live in a world that teaches us to desire impure things. But the world always overpromises and underdelivers. Only by seeking Christ can our hearts be finally fulfilled.

A Pure Heart Desires to See God

Holiness is the crowning achievement of a pure heart, a chaste heart, a clean heart. What Jesus promises through this beatitude comes true. When we want to see God, we are willing to forego other pleasures that end up getting in the way. The elite athlete knows that certain foods and habits can undermine the goal toward which he or she is striving. Purity of heart is not an end in itself, but rather prepares us to see God.

If we pursue purity of heart, we are well on our way to holiness. All Saints’ Day reminds us that the number of people who have sought God with their whole hearts goes far beyond the list of saints that we know. The French author, Leon Bloy, reminds us:

The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint (Léon Bloy, “La pauvre femme”).

Like St. Thérèse, let us learn to say to God, “I choose all.” We know that we are imperfect, yet we desire to give ourselves entirely to the one who is perfect and loves us. Let us turn our eyes away from everything that draws us away from him and focus them on Christ, until the desire to see God becomes the desire that guides our lives.

They would also hand me little Jack Chick tracts. Sometimes, you might find them in public restrooms. Many of them offer a straightforward message for people who are far from God. But there are also some tracts directed at Catholics. My two favorite booklets to remember are “The Death Cookie” and “Are Roman Catholics Christians?”

Since then, I have always been interested in the topic of salvation and how we look at it differently as Catholics and Protestants. Recently, while listening to Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin, I recognized one of the typical errors we make as Catholics. Protestants might say, “We are saved by faith alone.” Catholics might respond, “We are saved by faith and works.” It does point to a fundamental difference that is often misunderstood. The problem is that it is also wrong. Catholics do not believe that we are saved by faith and works. So how do we answer when a Protestant asks us, “Are you saved?”

One Vocabulary - Two Dictionaries

Protestants and Catholics have different understandings of the working of grace in this world, especially as regards salvation. This is complicated, however, by the fact that we sometimes use the same words to mean different things. So we could say that we have one vocabulary, but two different dictionaries. This makes it easy for us to speak past one another frequently, especially when we are talking about salvation.

Initial Salvation

If we are going to use Biblical texts as the basis of our teaching on salvation, we need to distinguish between initial and ongoing salvation. Let’s jump to the passage that Protestants usually point to when they are talking about being saved “by faith alone.”

The most typical verse would be Romans 3:28.

We hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law (Rm. 3:28).

One thing to note is that while our bigger conversation is about salvation, the word Paul uses here is justification. It’s not a problem, just something to notice. The word means “to make just.” We are talking about initial justification, or initial salvation.

Paul is having a larger conversation around one of his favorite themes. One of the big questions in the primitive Church was how Jewish you had to be to be Christian. Paul was very strongly of the opinion that you did not have to hold on to all of Jewish customs as a Christian. This is what he is referring to by “works of the law.”

Now, the way we look at this initial justification might be more similar than we would imagine. The Biblical passage talks about faith, and as Catholics we would see this as the act of faith that accompanies baptism. So, we would agree with Protestants that initial justification, or initial salvation, coincides with faith, just that it is faith expressed through baptism.

Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ who offered himself on the cross as a living victim, holy and pleasing to God, and whose blood has become the instrument of atonement for the sins of all men. Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy. Its purpose is the glory of God and of Christ, and the gift of eternal life (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992).

The Catholic doctrine is very precise, placing all merit for our salvation in Jesus Christ and recognizing that our initial contact with this justification happens at baptism.

Ongoing Salvation

If we are going to look at the Biblical texts thoroughly, we cannot accept the idea of a definitive justification that comes at the moment of the initial act of faith. This is where we must depart from what our separated brothers and sisters say. Protestants following a Reformed theology understand predestination to mean that being “saved by faith alone” means that the elect will persevere to the end. This is expressed in the maxim, “once saved, always saved.” Wesleyan and Arminian traditions reject the idea that a believer’s final salvation is ultimately guaranteed.

If we look closely at the Biblical texts, we have to admit that there is a reference to salvation in the past, in the present, and in the future.

We already referenced Romans 3; now we need to jump ahead to Romans 4. Paul has established that faith is not the same as fulfilling the prescriptions of the law, particularly the ritual aspects. In Romans 4, he talks about the patriarch Abraham as an example of living by faith. Abraham did not have one definitive act of faith and then live off of that forever. Many acts of faith characterize the life of Abraham.

To one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness (Rm. 4:5).

The word for “righteousness” here is closely related to “justification” in the previous chapter. Paul describes faith as not merely intellectual assent to truth, but as trust and confidence. Beyond the initial act of faith and justification, we are in need of ongoing salvation, which can be referred to as sanctification.

Working Towards Salvation

Just like sometimes, Paul’s language suggests that we are definitively saved; in other moments, he seems to be saying that we are working towards salvation. We have already quoted two passages from Romans. A third one gives us a deeper insight into faith as it relates to salvation.

Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed (Rm. 13:11).

If we are able to grow closer to salvation, especially with regard to our faith, it shows that there is a certain growth in our faith and in our salvation, which we would probably refer to as sanctification. God is calling us to be holy, and we want to grow in holiness as we grow in our relationship to God.

In Philippians, Paul has a passage where he is talking specifically about our growth in holiness, using the image that we are called to shine as lights in the world. In this context, he exhorts us:

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12).

There would be no reason to work out our salvation in fear and trembling if it were already guaranteed forever. Because we are aware that our salvation is not guaranteed, we recognize our need to continue to respond to God’s grace made present by the sacraments in our lives.

God is at work in you, bot to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil. 2:13).

Initial salvation is not the same as final salvation, although both come from the grace of God. We cannot earn our salvation, but receive it by responding to God working in us.

As Catholics, we believe that we are saved by God’s grace through faith. This same grace enables us to persevere in faith and charity. We cannot earn salvation independently of grace. Rather, we are called to continue responding to God’s grace in our lives.

Remarkably, some more recent Protestant scholarship in Paul has led to an interpretation that is much closer to the traditional Catholic formulation of the doctrine. As we approach the Biblical texts honestly and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we come to conclusions that match what the Catholic Church has always taught. So, what do you say when someone asks you if you are saved? The answer depends on how we understand salvation and what it means to live in the grace of Christ.

Leave a comment

The “price” of our redemption is likewise a further proof of the value that God himself sets on man and of our dignity in Christ (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 20).

The Eucharist presents this mystery to us powerfully. What was bread and wine becomes the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Summit and Fullness

Rather than beginning with norms, Karol Wojtyła liked to begin with a reflection on Jesus Christ. In this paragraph of Redemptor Hominis, he will get to liturgical norms that are important to follow. However, first it is important to establish the central character of the Eucharist within Christian worship.

The entire sacramental life of the Church and of each Christian reaches its summit and fullness in the Eucharist (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 20).

This recalls the words of Vatican II referring to the Eucharist as “source and summit” of holiness within the Christian life. How is it this summit? What gives it this fullness? John Paul II examines this, as the Eucharist is the fullest expression of the presence of Jesus Christ in his Church.

By celebrating and also partaking of the Eucharist we unite ourselves with Christ on earth and in heaven who intercedes for us with the Father (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 20).

If you ever witnessed John Paul II celebrating Mass, you understand that these words were not just poetic beauty, but lived doctrine. One thing is to teach something, but another thing entirely is to live it. Pope John Paul II lived out his love for the Eucharist before writing out his doctrine. Paragraph 20 of Redemptor Hominis echoes his teaching throughout his pontificate, which often centered on the Eucharist.

Called to Newness

The Eucharist is not just one sacrament out of the seven instituted by Christ. It gives us so much grace and power and calls us to live in this world a foretaste of eternity. The Gospel does not just point to the next world, but calls us to a new existence during this earthly life. Christians are not called to simply “wait for eternity” but rather to live in a way that shows we are graced individuals.

The Eucharist is the Sacrament in which our new being is most completely expressed and in which Christ himself unceasingly and in an ever new manner “bears witness” in the Holy Spirit to our spirit (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 20).

Christ does not call us to be holy in the next life exclusively, but already in this life. Our holiness exists to the extent that we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives. The Holy Spirit descended upon Mary at the Annunciation, and she became the Mother of God. He descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost, and they became great preachers, fearless in the face of constant danger.

The Holy Spirit continues to be present in the Church, drawing us into deeper communion with Christ. Through the Eucharist, Christ’s Body and Blood nourish us and strengthen us in the life of grace. Baptism introduces us to divine life and sacramental grace, while the Eucharist builds on that life and helps us grow in holiness.

Living By the Eucharist

John Paul II asserts that “the Church lives by the Eucharist.” This is an assertion, at the same time that it serves as an exhortation for all of us. Teaching about the Eucharist should always be a focus for theologians, so the men and women engaged with the intellectual life of the Church should always see the Eucharist as a focal point. Mystics and ascetics, men and women who dedicate themselves to prayer and to penance, will always do well to make the Eucharist a focus of their time of meditation and contemplation.

Catholics have the obligation to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation. Hopefully, the motivation is never principally the obligation but becomes an inner urgency to come into contact with the Eucharistic Lord. When Catholics prepare for Mass, they are more open to receive the actual graces that come through the sacramental grace of receiving Communion.

Priests and bishops are called to have special reverence before the Eucharistic Lord. This should come out clearly in the way they celebrate Mass. Hopefully, the Mass is never rushed. The priest is not an owner of the mystery, but rather a steward to whom it has been entrusted.

Attention to Liturgical Norms

Pope John Paul II was very aware of the need to attend to liturgical norms. He knew, at the same time, that mere exhortation to follow rules was not going to convince his audience. His yearly letter to priests was always an exhortation to go deeper into the meaning of the priesthood. He reminded priests of the exalted nature of their vocation, touching the mysteries of God in a real way. A priest who approaches the Eucharist carelessly does harm to the faithful by making it seem something unimportant.

The liturgical norms help make sure that the priest and other ministers approach the altar respectfully and in a way that communicates love for the Eucharist to the faithful.

This is the source of the duty to carry out rigorously the liturgical rules (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 20).

The Pope’s call to reflection helped many priests celebrate the mysteries more reverently and with greater reflection. This self-examination echoes the words of St. Paul:

Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup (1 Cor. 11:28).

This self-examination in relation to the Eucharist introduced the importance of the other sacrament that is received frequently in Christian life, the Sacrament of Penance.

Link Between Eucharist and Penance

Paul exhorted the early Christians to test their consciences before approaching the heavenly banquet that comes down in the form of the Eucharistic celebration. To approach the Eucharist is to seek conversion.

The Christ who calls to the Eucharistic banquet is always the same Christ who exhorts us to penance and repeats his “Repent” (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 20).

Penance would be another theme of the pontificate of John Paul II. Pope St. Paul VI noticed after the Second Vatican Council a “loss of the sense of sin.” This led to a precipitous decline in the Catholic practice of the Sacrament of Penance. Some people even taught that Penance was in contradiction to the loving Communion achieved through common reception of the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

This thinking is faulty, however, because Communion in the sacrament of the Eucharist without communion that comes through common penance builds on a false hope. We are unable to become one with one another if our sinful actions have separated us from the Body of Christ. The words of the Holy Father are not meant to shame us, but they are a call to conscience that we are meant for more.

When we truly live out the Sacraments of Eucharist and Penance, we grow in our spiritual lives, a gift from the time of our Baptism. As Catholics, we should give witness to this intimate relationship and pray each day to grow in our love for Jesus Christ, expressed especially in our love for the Eucharist. When we recognize the price that has been paid, the Suffering and Death of Jesus Christ on the cross, we begin to recognize our own dignity and begin to do our best to live accordingly. The more deeply we understand what Christ has done for us, the more deeply we want to live for him.

An Unhappy Divorce

It is too easy for us to divorce our faith from our works. We can feel like if we made it to Mass, we have done God such a great favor that what we do with the rest of our lives really doesn’t matter all that much. We cannot use religious practice as a substitute for moral conversion. Christ proposes something along these lines in today’s Gospel (Mt. 22:34-40). How do we love God and neighbor above all else?

There can be a temptation to divide our faith and works into separate categories in our mind. Perhaps our faith and our philanthropy have no overlap. In the time of Jesus, one of the marks of a good rabbi was that he could give a workable way of looking at living out the faith. The 613 commandments traditionally identified in Jewish law addressed many aspects of daily life. Rabbis discussed how to best understand their relative importance. Christ found the fundamental principle that brings them together because he knew what God the Father is actually looking for in us.

God is not hoping for a bunch of rule followers. The laws he lays down for us are not there as a mere test to see if we can behave well enough. Rather, he wants to possess our hearts. We show that God possesses our hearts through our worship and through our works.

Worship

Christ calls us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind (cf. Mt. 22:37). We do this through worship, most perfectly in our participation at the Eucharistic Celebration.

The worship “in Spirit and in truth” of the New Covenant is not tied exclusively to any one place. The whole earth is sacred and entrusted to the children of men. What matters above all is that, when the faithful assemble in the same place, they are the “living stones,” gathered to be “built into a spiritual house” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1179).

When we participate actively in the celebration of the liturgy, we offer God our whole selves. We unite our hearts to Christ, the true High Priest. We join our prayers to his and engage our minds in what the Church celebrates. It is important to note that our participation does not end there. Our worship of God is not meant to be isolated from the rest of our lives, but should rather flow into our works.

Works

To love our neighbor as ourselves (cf. Mt. 22:39) poses quite the challenge. In Christian theology, we look at faith, hope, and charity as the three theological virtues, and they go together. This goes very much in line with Jesus connecting love for God and love for neighbor.

In the concept of justice as presented in the Old Testament, we have God serving as the one protecting the poor and helpless. There is an example of moneylending, but the lender is exhorted to be generous by not asking back the cloak that is being used as a guarantee for the loan.

You shall return it to him before sunset, for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body. What else has he to sleep in? If he cries out to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate (Ex. 22:25-26).

Biblical justice is not just about getting what belongs to us. Even when a person has a legitimate claim to something, exercising the claim is not always the most just or generous thing to do. Looking at Catholic Social Teaching and following the teaching of Christ in the Gospels, it seems as if solidarity is baked into the Christian concept of justice. It is not just about getting what is ours, but also taking care of those around us.

God is not calling us to compartmentalize our lives, but rather to live generously as integral people. We are called to worship God and to work for the good of those around us. What is one thing you can do this week to combine your worship and your works?

Now, perhaps it can be argued that since our history is more linearly connected to the Puritan settlers at Plymouth Rock than it is with the Spanish Conquistadors who landed at St. Augustine, Florida, we should still honor them as the first settlers. This may be, but I think it is also amazing that a Catholic Mass accompanied the first Thanksgiving that happened in territory that would eventually become part of the United States.

Leave a comment

Celebration with the Natives

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was the leader of the expedition, landing at St. Augustine on September 8, 1565, the Feast of the Birth of Mary. Along with 800 Spanish settlers, he founded the city of St. Augustine in what the Spaniards called La Florida. He invited the local indigenous Seloy tribe members to participate in a feast. They also had a celebration of the Mass, presided over by Fr. Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales. Although obviously unfamiliar with the liturgical rites, it seems that the Seloy natives participated in the service, imitating what they observed.

It is especially fitting that the celebration was capped by a Mass. The very word “Eucharist” means “Thanksgiving” in Greek, so every Eucharistic Celebration is essentially a moment of thanksgiving.

The Eucharist, the sacrament of our salvation accomplished by Christ on the cross, is also a sacrifice of praise in thanksgiving for the work of creation. In the Eucharistic sacrifice the whole of creation loved by God is presented to the Father through the death and the Resurrection of Christ. Through Christ the Church can offer the sacrifice of praise in thanksgiving for all that God has made good, beautiful, and just in creation and in humanity (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1359).

The Eucharist doesn’t merely give Christians another reason to be thankful. It teaches us the essence of thanksgiving. We receive the goodness of creation as a gift and recognize the Giver. We return the gift to the Father through Jesus Christ.

Share

The First Mass

The first Mass in what would eventually become the United States took place at what is now the Mission of Nombre de Dios, and the site is marked by a 250-foot-high cross. The Spaniards brought Christ to the territory which would eventually become the United States long before the nation was founded. It would take a while for the Catholic religion to be accepted within its confines. The growth of Spanish America happened rather independently of English America.

The Thanksgiving at St. Augustine occurred 56 years before the Puritan Pilgrim Thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation. Plymouth remains etched into the social memory of Americans. It is, however, good to remember that the celebration has deeper, and more Catholic roots as well. While the nation as a whole celebrates Thanksgiving especially once a year, on the fourth Thursday of November, Catholics celebrate thanksgiving – Eucharist – every day of the year, whenever we gather for Mass.

The Spanish influence waned significantly, especially after its loss of the colonies. There is a resurgence now, however, with the spread of Catholicism and the increased practice of the faith. As Catholics, we have a special role to help every American grow in a sense of gratitude for what we have received.

Relational Aspect of Gratitude

Thanksgiving can sometimes get a little confusing when celebrated in a purely secular way. I am always curious when I hear people talk about gratitude without naming a reference point. We are grateful “to” someone, not just in general. Yet often, popular, secular presentations of Thanksgiving have people offer thanksgiving, but without a person to whom they are offering it. Gratitude is inherently relational.

As Catholics, our thanksgiving is always linked to the Paschal sacrifice of Christ. At each Mass, we experience Christ’s one sacrifice as sacramentally present on the altar. Every act of thanksgiving reminds us of our need to give thanks to him for the great gift of redemption.

A Church for All

The Church exists for all of humanity, not merely for its visible members. Pope St. John Paul II saw the Church as interested in and concerned for all of humanity, not just those baptized as Catholics. While the Mystical Body is made up of those who have received the sacrament of Baptism, the mission of the Church is to all men and women.

The Church, then, both contains and communicates the invisible grace she signifies. It is in this analogical sense that the Church is called a “sacrament” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 775).

The Church is the universal sacrament of salvation, meant to be a witness to all humankind, not just its visible members. There is often debate in the Church about who is Catholic, who is not, and what this all means in relation to salvation. The Church does not presume to judge the eternal destiny of those outside her visible boundaries. At the same time, she proclaims that salvation comes through Jesus Christ. The sacraments he instituted are privileged means to communicate grace. Their power comes from Christ’s redemptive love.

Christ’s Redemptive Love

Jesus is rightly remembered for the power of his love. Unfortunately, this love is often presented as something merely sentimental, and the strength and power of his love becomes obscure. This is a disservice to the truth, since Christ lived out his love through his sacrifice on the Cross, not through a series of pious feelings expressed carelessly.

As Pope John Paul II writes:

Christ united himself with [the Church] in his mystery of Redemption, the Church must be strongly united with each man (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 18).

The Church does not merely exist in the world. She is called to bring the witness of Christ to the forefront in powerful ways. Through the life of grace, we are all called to communion with Jesus Christ. How exactly this communion works is a mystery, a truth of faith that surpasses our understanding. It is the way we allow Christ’s redemptive love to touch our hearts and transform us.

This mystery of Christ’s union with the soul makes him a new man (cf. Col. 3:1). Sometimes life’s experiences crush us, but God’s grace waits to rebuild us. Karol Wojtyła knew well the pain of profound loss. We remember the successes, but we don’t always remember the pain he suffered through the loss of his family. The war interrupted his studies, just as war still does for so many people today.

One of the reasons we do not appreciate the full horror of war is that we are often isolated from its effects. For some of us, the greatest pain we experience from war is paying more for gas at the pump. This does not compare with people who are afraid of their homes being blown up or losing loved ones. Karol Wojtyła suffered Nazi occupation during the Second World War. The end of the war brought but brief relief, as the Soviet Union dominated Poland until 1989. Pope John Paul II advocated so effectively against war because he had felt its consequences firsthand. Wisdom does not always flow from age and the experience of suffering, but it did in the case of this great man.

Called to Share in Christ’s Life

This means that we partake in Christ’s life. What does it mean to share in the divine life? (Cf. 2 P. 1:4). It is a hard concept. I like thinking of the image of pericoresis used in the East to describe the Trinity. We know that there is one God and three Persons. One way to imagine this is to think of the three dancers spinning around together at a very fast rate, until you could nearly not tell them apart. This does not mean that the Divine Persons are indistinguishable from one another. That would be heresy. But their union is far greater than anything we can imagine or experience. We could also think of a small child who gets caught up in a group hug with both his parents. Although certainly imperfect, these are some ways I think of participating in God’s divine life.

We share in Christ’s life when we allow the life of grace to take root in us. By penning the encyclical Redemptor Hominis, Pope John Paul II reminded the Church that the function of the Church does not consist in bingo halls and church raffles, but rather in bringing people into communion with Jesus Christ. Christ came to redeem man, not to entertain him.

We can engage in various community-building events as a way of fostering communion, but we can never let the means make us lose sight of the end. We are here to preach the name of Jesus Christ. We are called to give the world the good news that Jesus Christ came to save us from our sins.

Transforming Suffering into Apostolic Strength

Through grace, we are “newly created in Christ for the fulness of grace and truth” (cf. Eph. 2:10). We are created in Jesus Christ for good works. His union with us is a source of power. John Paul II found power in the midst of his own weakness. At the time of writing the encyclical, he was still a young Pope, vibrant and participating in sports, especially skiing and hiking. A few years later, he would suffer an assassination attempt that nearly took his life and limited his physical activities for years afterwards. Although his physical strength declined gravely, his spiritual strength never wavered.

Although the physical suffering aged him, he still found the inner strength to travel the world and to begin the marvelous papal initiative of the World Youth Day. He would meet the young people in places far and near, like Rome, Santiago, Denver, and Paris. His encounter with Christ animated each apostolic journey.

Through our relationship with Jesus Christ, we are transformed and empowered to grow in our love of God and to engage with the world effectively. This transformation does not mean that we are exempt from suffering. Nor does it mean that our spiritual life will come easily. Often, when somebody starts off in the spiritual life, he or she is blessed with many spiritual consolations. These tend to diminish with time. Likewise, physical strength and health may decline. John Paul II’s witness to hope bears this truth. Although his physical energies were spent, he became more spiritual and gave even greater evangelical witness to the world.

The life of grace that Christ offers us can grow throughout this life until reaching its completion in eternal life. Let’s look at suffering in our own life and see how we can grow in our apostolic strength. We want to evangelize the world, bringing Christ into every corner of society.

When Henry VIII demanded an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the Pope refused. Henry responded by asserting royal authority over the Church of England. In 1534, he ordered all bishops and everyone holding public office to take the Oath of Supremacy, recognizing him as the head of the Anglican Church.

Seeing the changing landscape, Thomas More, previously his Lord Chancellor and always his faithful servant, refused to take the oath. Although he loved his country, he loved God more and was martyred at the Tower of London. We are called to be good citizens of our country, but first we are called to be sons and daughters of God.

In today’s Gospel (Mt. 22:15-21), the crowd tries to get Jesus to do something seditious against the occupying government of Rome. Jesus comes up with a clever response, affirming the duty we all have to God and country, in that order.

Duties of the Government

Before affirming the duty of citizens towards the country, it is good to remember the purpose of government. Pope Leo XIII reflected on the duties of a citizen in his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae. He began by reflecting on how society does not grow out of nature seeking its own end, but to help its citizens attain their own perfection.

Nature did not form society in order that man should seek in it his last end, but in order that in it and through it he should find suitable aids whereby to attain to his own perfection (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, 2).

A government should be looking for more than mere external advantages. We cannot reduce the role of government to merely offering economic advantages. The government of a just society must be interested in the moral welfare of its citizens as well. When a society loses sight of its moral grounding, it becomes increasingly difficult for the law to maintain social order. Law can never completely take the place of ethics.

Sometimes, it can feel like the State and religion are asking for two opposed things from believers. It is impossible to serve two masters (cf. Mt. 6:24).

No better citizen is there, whether in time of peace or war, than the Christian who is mindful of his duty; but such a one should be ready to suffer all things, even death itself, rather than abandon the cause of God or of the Church (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, 7).

Pope Leo points to a principle that was carried out in its fullest expression by St. Thomas More.

Duties of the Citizen who is a Christian

Hopefully, we will not be called upon to lay down our lives to stand up for our faith. But we should perhaps reflect more on what it means to be Christian in a world that does not always agree with our values. If we are perhaps not called upon immediately to die for our beliefs, are we willing to at least suffer some discomfort?

There are many ways that we might suffer for being Christian. Perhaps we stand up for our beliefs in a situation where that is uncomfortable. Others are mocking the Church, but we stand up to defend her. Or maybe it means extra sacrifice to go to Mass on a holy day of obligation, because it is not a recognized holiday. Nevertheless, we make the sacrifice and go. It is far less than giving up our lives, but it is making sure that we give first to God what is God’s and then to Caesar what is Caesar. We might have the image of a ruler or our heroes from the past on our coins, but the image of God is impressed in each of our souls.

Standing Up for God in our Country

If we are going to be faithful citizens, we need to make sure to bring into the public square the values that we learn in our relationship with God. We recognize the value of the state, but we also recognize what we contribute by digging deep into our own intellectual treasure chest to share with the world the truth that is revealed through Jesus Christ.

Perhaps one of the greatest contributions we can make as Christians comes precisely from our awareness of human dignity. In a world that becomes increasingly polarized, we can continue to respect people we disagree with, because we know their dignity does not come from their ideas or their actions, but from the reality that they are created in the image and likeness of God.

We are called to be honest and fulfill our civic obligations. We should stand by our convictions and treat people with charity even when we disagree with them.

We can often get tied up in what the government owes us. Let us think a little more about how we can serve our country and our fellow citizens, not in spite of being Christian, but precisely because of it.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Facing Stress

We face stress all the time. Sometimes, we can come into situations where we feel afraid or anxious. How do we deal with all of this? Sometimes it can feel overwhelming. Personally, I find that sometimes when I am feeling especially lonely, or stressed, or overwhelmed, I experience the closeness of Christ in a special way. When we recognize our own limitations, we open the doors to God’s grace and he often chooses these moments to act.

A Helpful Distraction

This happened when I had my distraction about St. Teresa of Avila. She was a great mystic, a woman truly in love with God. She didn’t always live this way. She looked back at the first years of her religious life and saw a tendency to mediocrity. Around the age of 40, she recognized her need to change. She did so and started a reform movement within the Carmelite Order. Now, most Carmelites live inspired by the example and spirituality of St. Teresa of Avila.

After achieving a greater spiritual maturity, she criticized her own flightiness and superficiality from earlier years of religious life. In spite of her own failings, the Holy Spirit used her as a vessel to sanctify her Order and the Church. She is a great example of someone who received a grace that led to a great jump in holiness and closeness to God.

One of her poems has always fascinated me. I remember it best in Spanish.

Nada te turbe.

Nada te espante.

Todo se pasa.

Dios no se muda.

La paciencia todo lo alcanza.

Quien a Dios tiene nada le falta.

Solo Dios basta.

Let nothing disturb you,

Let nothing frighten you,

All things are passing away:

God never changes.

Patience obtains all things.

Whoever has God lacks nothing.

God alone suffices.

The last phrase came very firmly into my consciousness. Only God is enough. As we might suffer the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” God is still present, and he is enough. For me, it was a moment of grace.

Repeating a Refrain

As I reached the Offertory, that phrase “solo Dios basta” echoed in my soul. It made me think about how all we really need is God. He is present in every moment and sees everything that is happening in our lives. He is not some passive bystander, but rather someone who is pouring grace into our souls at every step of the way.

How can we foster these moments of grace? It helps to have regular prayer times where we truly put God first. It is only after many times praying the prayer in regularly scheduled times that it will pop spontaneously into my mind in moments when I am not expecting it. We need to make sure to feed our souls a lot of spiritual nourishment so that we can respond in the difficult moments.

Prayer has to be a constant in our lives. It is not enough to pray simply when we feel like it. Often, it can be helpful to begin with the words from someone else. Sacred Scripture holds a priority, but the saints are also masters and great teachers in prayer. If every day for a week, you take the words of St. Teresa in this prayer, I am sure you will experience more peace.

Circumstances

God speaks often through the circumstances of our lives. So, when we are suffering because things seem particularly hard, we should always look for the hand of God. He can use these circumstances to shape us. Sometimes, something as unexpected as a distraction in Mass can end up giving great spiritual fruit.

It is always possible to pray: The time of the Christian is that of the risen Christ who is with us always, no matter what tempests may arise (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2743).

Perhaps when it feels most like life is breaking you, it is actually God helping you arrive at your next breakthrough. Don’t give up. Persevere in love and pray to God.

Leave a comment

What do you think about capital punishment?

Karol Wojtyła opposed the death penalty, and this is in line with the way he looked at the human person. In his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, “On the Redeemer of Man,” he argues that everything about humanity is affected by the reality of redemption. We cannot escape the reality of personal guilt, but it can be forgiven through the sacrifice of our Savior.

No Escape from Redemption

The situation of man in the modern world is affected by redemption. It is impossible to imagine a world in which redemption has not happened. Jesus, the truly innocent one, died in the place of the guilty. In a world that often denies the capacity to be guilty, Christianity acknowledges the guilt, but also preaches mercy.

As we speak in public, it is often difficult to hold two truths together. People can commit genuinely evil acts. No person ever ceases to possess human dignity. Sometimes, we excuse the actions of those we favor while condemning others as irredeemable. Christianity avoids both errors. We condemn evil for what it is but still make an effort to love the sinner.

Against a background of the ever-increasing historical processes, which seem at the present time to have results especially within the spheres of various systems, ideological concepts of the world and regimes, Jesus Christ becomes, in a way, newly present, in spite of all his apparent absences, in spite of all the limitations of the presence and of the institutional activity of the Church (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 13).

Jesus is truly present in the world, and he is a real person, not an ideological construct. No political or social system can claim to have Jesus as the only inspiration, because he is larger than any of those categories. Just as Jesus Christ truly entered history over 2,000 years ago, his intervention in the world is real. We have a God who gets his hands dirty.

Forgiveness

Christianity is dealing with concrete man, not an abstraction. No one can accuse Karol Wojtyła of being removed from the reality he is speaking about here. Still a young Pope, he had to practice forgiveness towards Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who attempted to assassinate him in 1981. In 1983, he went to visit Ali Agca in prison and extended his heartfelt forgiveness.

Doctrine becomes real when it is lived out. If Pope John Paul II had merely preached forgiveness, but not had the gesture of forgiveness with Ali Agca, his words would have seemed hollow. As it is, however, his words carry an immense weight. He truly desired the salvation of all people, even those who wished and did him ill. His meditation on the Person of Jesus Christ always led him back to the human person.

For the Church, all ways lead to man

For the Church, all ways lead to man. The Polish Pope looked at man as:

the primary and fundamental way for the Church, the way traced out by Christ himself, the way that leads invariably through the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 14).

Christ’s coming into the world has transformed what it means to be human. It takes time for us to unpack the full meaning of the Incarnation. Perhaps there were strong arguments for the State to protect its citizens through capital punishment. However, the Christian imperative to protect human dignity and seek the conversion of sinners gives us compelling reasons to reject it today.

However, in the 21^st century, with all that we know and our technological advances, it is no longer necessary. We should not execute criminals, first because of who they are, but second, because of who we are. All human beings are created in God’s image, wounded by sin, and still loved by Christ, who desires their redemption. Who are we? We are called to imitate Christ, upholding justice, protecting the innocent, but also refusing to reduce any human being to his or her worst act.

Just because someone else has violated the dignity of human beings does not mean that we have to repeat that same mistake. Especially as Christians, we are called to have a capacity for forgiveness that is not of this world but is of the world to come.

A Society Afraid of Violence

Modern man is afraid. We shudder at the rise in mass shootings and violence. We fear for ourselves and for those close to us. At the same time, each act of violence should also serve as an examination of conscience for us as a society.

The man of today seems ever to be under threat from what he produces, that is to say from the result of the work of his hands and, even more so, of the work of his intellect and the tendencies of his will (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 15).

We should look at the increase in men and women who perpetrate such crimes and question why society is producing more violence and less peace in a world that would seem to have plenty of resources for everybody. Our technological sophistication has grown enormously, but technological progress does not mean we grow automatically in moral wisdom or respect for human dignity. The problem is that we have very little grasp of the inherent dignity of every human person. If we permit the perpetuation of a culture of death, we cannot be surprised when we see a rise in violence.

Culture of Death

Pope John Paul II spoke out frequently against what he termed a culture of death. His understanding of our absolute duty to defend life comes from his understanding of Jesus Christ as the center and goal of all history. The human story is one of a creature who has come from God, has fallen into sin, and has been redeemed by the sacrifice of a Savior.

Our lives do not belong to us absolutely. As creatures, we depend on God, and our behavior should reflect that. Not even the government can stand above the duty that we all have to defend life.

Even worse than perpetuating capital punishment, there is talk about making it into a show. This desire for vengeance is understandable, but it responds to the basest of human desires. As Christians, we are called to look toward Heaven rather than indulge our thirst for vengeance. We must resist the temptation to become like the ones who do evil to us.

Christian opposition to capital punishment reveals what we believe about the human person. No one can be reduced to the worst thing he or she has ever done. This does not diminish the horror of murder, the suffering of victims, or the state’s duty to protect the innocent. It does mean that justice must never lose sight of the dignity of every person who stands before it. Even murderers can be redeemed.

The king is hosting a wedding feast. So, we are clearly in the general context of a marriage. When he sends out the invitations, it seems like everyone has an excuse to miss the celebration. This bothers him, because he wants everyone to appreciate this wonderful moment in his son’s life. The Gospel looks at marriage especially as an image of Heaven, but we can also look at it through the lens of what human love means, and we should live it out during this earthly existence.

Revisiting Amoris Laetitia

In Rome, the Pope is hosting a discussion of Pope Francis’ post-synodal Exhortation Amoris Laetitia on its tenth anniversary. Pope Leo XIV spoke to them about the importance of marriage ministry within the Church and encouraged them to preach the fullness of the faith to all. He recognized that, when working with families, we are often dealing with fragile situations. How does the Church proclaim the truth when the people listening are fragile?

As much as it often seems that the institution of marriage is in crisis,

The desire to marry and form a family remains vibrant, especially among young people, and this is an inspiration to the Church (Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, 1).

Marriage is a topic so important in the Church that our pastors are often thinking about it. After the Synod of Bishops looked at the topic, Pope Francis published his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, “On Love in the Family.” Marriage and the family play a central role in society. At the same time, many people find themselves in difficult or even irregular situations. The problem arises: “How do we approach certain problems pastorally, wanting to hold on to the integrity of the faith while also serving these people as best as possible?”

Aware of Fragility

Amoris Laetitia is famous for trying to propose pastoral solutions to difficult situations. Some of these possible solutions are at the level of pastoral suggestions, and many cannot be applied universally. They need precisely a pastor to walk with the couple and see how they can live in grace within their particular set of circumstances. The Pope never asks pastors to water down the Gospel message. It is more about finding the way to bring the demanding nature of the Gospel to the particular situation, always acting with great pastoral charity.

Reflecting 10 years later, Pope Leo XIV noted that there is a gap between the good we desire and what we actually live. While the Church’s teaching on marriage is clear, often people do not approach the Church before they have gotten themselves into an untenable situation. If your cat comes into the house with a paw caught in a trap, you might be upset that the cat wandered into where it did not belong; but you are still going to try to help him free himself.

Pastoral Closeness

What kind of Church do people encounter when they are most fragile? Can the truth we proclaim be encountered through mercy and gentleness? We need less harshness in the Church, at the same time that we must always proclaim the truth of the Gospel. We should not measure preaching simply by how strict or lenient it sounds, but by whether it faithfully proclaims Christ and invites people to conversion. We need to move away from a tendency to judge our neighbors. We proclaim the truth without becoming judgmental or needlessly confrontational.

We should never reduce people to the sum of their mistakes, nor presume to know the full story of their lives. We should take them seriously enough to get to know them a little better so we can help them discover the freedom and grace that come from living in the truth.

The king hosting the wedding feast wants everyone to celebrate with his son. When there is initial disinterest, he widens the net. Everyone seems to be invited. The only condition is to wear the wedding garment. This sets up the drama of the man who tries to enter without wearing the wedding garment.

Call to Transformation

Putting on the wedding garment means allowing God’s grace to change us. We cannot earn the invitation to the feast; it is a pure gift. We respond to the gift by letting Christ transform the way we live and love. God invites us to Heaven, but he also tells us that there are certain requirements. We do not get to dictate the conditions. We are saved by God’s grace, not by our own achievements. Yet that grace demands a response. He invites us to cooperate, to allow Christ to transform us and teach us how to live. God uses the image of Christian marriage to prepare us for the immense joy of Heaven, which he compares in the parable to a wedding feast.

We should want Heaven more than anything on Earth. For this reason, we try to live, even our romantic lives, in a way that corresponds to the truth of the Gospel. It feels like, in this area, some people have tried to declare independence from God. Rather than recognizing that Jesus Christ teaches us what love is through his sacrifice on the cross, it would seem that we can fall into the trap of wanting to tell Jesus what it means to love. This is like waltzing into the wedding feast while failing to put on the wedding garment.

God wants us at the feast. He does not invite us because we have everything figured out, but because he wants to share his joy with us. The Church is called to be a place where people can approach Christ in their weakness and discover the grace to begin again. This depends on all of us. We should never be afraid to proclaim the truth, because the truth reveals the path to true joy that only God can give. By proclaiming the truth and following Christ humbly, we live in the hope that all can enter into the feast, clothed in the grace of Christ.

Leave a comment

I also look at this parable as an image of why Purgatory makes sense.

Why Go to the Moon?

Why go to the Moon? On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy stood before a crowd at Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas. JFK framed space exploration as the newest frontier of American achievement. For many people today, the question naturally arises: “Why go to the Moon?” Beyond the many technological advances that have accompanied the Space Program, it is also good to acknowledge that there are some things we do for their own sake. Practical utility does not ultimately determine the value of every action.

The question “Why go to the Moon?” is really a question about utility. Even an endeavor with practical purposes cannot be adequately understood in terms of utility alone. We often fall into the trap of thinking that we always need to accomplish or produce something. If there is no practical purpose, is our endeavor worthwhile? These are valid questions, but they become oppressive when we apply them to everything.

We all need time for play. We need to engage in activities for their own sake. This might be a hike, a pleasant meal with friends, or curling up with a good book. In all these cases, we are engaging in leisure. The mind needs time away from the demands of work. We need to engage in leisure, but we might find various obstacles to it in our present times.

Busyness as an Obstacle to Leisure

Busyness wears us out. We seem to be flitting from one activity to another, like a honeybee visiting flowers in the spring. The activities may be good things in themselves, but they suck the life out of us when they exceed our strength and endurance.

Leisure is not merely doing something fun instead of working. It is an intentional activity that leads to rest, truly re-creating our souls. Leisure allows us to engage reality without immediately looking for some practical outcome.

St. Thomas Aquinas recognized the soul’s need for recreation. He talks about appropriate playfulness and pleasant recreation. We are not machines designed only to work. We need activities that restore us. Josef Pieper argues that leisure is fundamentally receptive. It prepares us to engage reality, truth, beauty, and ultimately God.

Leisure does have practical benefits. It can restore mental clarity, relieve tension, and help us get back to our work with greater perspective. But these benefits are secondary. If we rest only so that we can work harder, then even our rest has become another form of work.

What Do We Mean by Leisure?

It can be hard to distinguish leisure from play, relaxation, and entertainment. What’s the difference? Entertainment is something we consume for amusement. Relaxation is a release from tension. Recreation is an activity that restores us. Play is an activity undertaken freely for its own sake. Leisure is a deeper disposition of freedom and receptivity toward reality. Leisure is not “doing nothing.” Rather, it is engaging reality without demanding a productive return from it.

Leisure also helps us to recognize our own worth. We are not merely cogs in a machine. Our value is not determined merely by our output. We should learn to play at the various stages of our life. I would caution against getting too comfortable with digital forms of entertainment as a form of leisure. Some entertainment looks like leisure but leaves us less receptive.

A person can spend hours watching Netflix, playing Mario Cart, or scrolling Instagram. The person is not working, but is not necessarily experiencing leisure. It is going to be better to look for other things that actually refresh us. So much entertainment can be exhausting. We want leisure that actually refreshes us. We want to find activities that re-create us rather than merely fill up our time.

Learning to Do Less

Pope Leo XIV met with the priests of Rome and talked to them about evaluating their pastoral work. One of his exhortations was to do less. The mandate might seem counterintuitive. Normally, the boss is asking for more productivity. He is not asking people to become less productive. He is asking them to become more focused.

Modern society pushes us to consume, achieve, and accumulate. Leisure requires freedom from compulsion. Not everything good has to become our responsibility. We want to live the virtue of Christian detachment. This does not mean that we don’t care about what is going on around us. Rather, we are deeply invested and want to go deeper, but in a way that we do not risk losing our humanity. Our identity does not depend on possessing, accomplishing, or controlling everything around us.

Hearing the Shepherd’s Voice

For the Christian, leisure ultimately brings us back to Christ. I love the image of Jesus as a shepherd. In John 10:27, Jesus speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd and affirms that “my sheep hear my voice.” Prayer is one of the deepest forms of receptivity. We stop trying to control and allow God’s presence to invade our soul. Because of this, prayer can be deeply restorative; it re-creates us.

Subscribe now

Leisure disposes us to listen. As we grow in our relationship with God, we become more discerning of the proper action we should take in life. It helps us listen to Pope Leo about how to discern our approach to work and responsibility. Pope Leo connects this balance between work, leisure, and rest to the health of families and society.

Labor policies need to promote continuity and the quality of employment, countering insecurity as a normal condition of life and encouraging realistic paths for entry into the workforce and for professional growth. Measures are needed to ensure a healthy way of living, for without a proper balance between work, leisure and rest, families are weakened and young people struggle to develop a sense of responsibility (Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 169).

Families and individuals are going to be stronger to the measure that they are able to recover from work and duty and engage in leisurely activities. When Aristotle spoke about philosophy, he noted that “wonder is the beginning of knowledge.” Leisure is one way that we are able to recover a sense of wonder. We live in a world inundated by noise and confusion. Leisure, quiet, calm, prayer, and reflection allow us to achieve balance and restore order to our worlds.

We are not merely producers; we are creatures. We receive our lives before we begin to shape them. We receive the world, other people, and ultimately God’s grace as gifts. Pieper referred to leisure principally as receptivity. Leisure teaches us to be creatures, to receive who we are from God.

Leave a comment

How do you experience leisure?

When John Paul II spoke to him about going to Cologne, he felt a deep hesitation because he would be leaving his faithful behind. He felt especially troubled for the East Germans who were under severe restrictions because of the Communist rule. Pope John Paul II looked into his eyes and said, “They will follow you. Don’t worry.” Meisner went to Cologne, and a few months later, the Berlin Wall came crashing down. Effectively, his flock was free to follow the shepherd.

John Paul II could speak with such freedom because of his deep faith and confidence in the saving power of Jesus Christ. He knew that the Church did not depend ultimately on his ability to control events. History belonged to Christ. This confidence shines forth in his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, On the Redeemer of Man.

Inheritance

For Karol Wojtyła, it’s always best to start at the beginning. He often returned to the Story of Creation because it helps us to recover a fundamental understanding of who we are and who God is. Before considering suffering, death, and sin, we need to consider God’s original plan. Even something that seems like a screw-up, like Original Sin, ultimately serves God’s glory and our good because God is good at writing straight with crooked lines. Before considering sin, suffering, or redemption, we need to remember that God created us in his image and likeness.

One way the liturgy summarizes the mystery of redemption is “O happy fault… which gained us so great a Redeemer.” The state of humanity after redemption is higher and greater than what it was before the Fall. So, even though the Fall of our first parents is the greatest tragedy of human history, it is not definitive because of the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. The central moment of human history is the Incarnation of the Son of God.

God entered the history of humanity and, as a man, became an actor in that history, one of the thousands of millions of human beings but at the same time Unique (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 1).

This is one of the great claims of Christianity. God does not save humanity from a distance, without getting his hands dirty. He enters our history and takes on human nature. Hunger, friendship, rejection, suffering and even death… none of this is strange to Jesus Christ.

God in the drama of human history

God did not wish to stay removed from the drama of human history. Rather, he enters into history to be born as a small child. He is raised as a common Jew in Palestine, before taking on his messianic mission and calling the disciples as his followers. Teaching the people about the Kingdom of God, he comes into the crosshairs of the rulers of his time and is condemned to the death of a criminal. His suffering and death on the cross become the revelation of God’s redeeming love.

Through the Incarnation, God gave human life the dimension that he intended man to have from his first beginning; he has granted that dimension definitively-in the way that is peculiar to him alone, in keeping with his eternal love and mercy, with the full freedom of God-and he has granted it also with the bounty that enables us, in considering the original sin and the whole history of the sins of humanity (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 1).

The Christian mystery and solution to the problem of evil and suffering is so profound, yet also fragmented by the anti-testimony of the Christian Church’s splintering. Our inheritance is harmed by our disunity. Christ entered history to reconcile God and man. John Paul II laments the divisions among Christians that contradict the very mystery we proclaim.

We must therefore seek unity without being discouraged at the difficulties that can appear or accumulate along that road; otherwise we would be unfaithful to the word of Christ, we would fail to accomplish his testament (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 6).

Christ’s desire to reconcile God and man is his principal mission. He also wants to reconcile us. This brings up the question: “How will we respond to the mystery of redemption?”

Share

Mystery of Redemption

For John Paul II, looking to the Mystery of Christ and Redemption was to look at his own mission as Supreme Pontiff and pastor of souls. What does it mean to shepherd a Church? It very much means to lead the entire Church towards Christ.

Our spirit is set in one direction; the only direction for our intellect, will and heart is towards Christ our Redeemer, towards Christ, the Redeemer of man (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 6).

Throughout his entire pontificate, Pope St. John Paul II looked forward to the year 2000 as a fundamental moment of history, one that could remind people of the Incarnation. Even the way we measure time is marked by the birth of Christ. John Paul II was committed to proclaiming this truth always and everywhere.

Redemption has divine and human elements, and John Paul II reminds us that man cannot live without love. The sacrifice of Christ on the cross is the greatest witness to love.

Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 10).

Understanding Christ to understand ourselves

His callback to Gaudium et Spes 22 is one of many he will make throughout his papacy. Wojtyła holds this as a central element of his thinking. This is an important aspect of Christian anthropology. We can only understand man fully to the extent that we understand Jesus Christ.

Our understanding of Jesus Christ and his unique mission to the world also calls us to be witnesses to the world in our own right.

Jesus Christ is the stable principle and fixed center of the mission that God himself has entrusted to man. We must all share in this mission and concentrate all our forces on it, since it is more necessary than ever for modern mankind (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 11).

Church’s mission related to freedom

The Church’s mission is also related to human freedom. Christ came into the world to give us true freedom: freedom from sin.

In the course of so many centuries, of so many generations, from the time of the Apostles on, is it not often Jesus Christ himself that has made an appearance at the side of people judged for the sake of the truth? (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 12).

The Church is called to proclaim the truth about God and the truth about man. The two truths often become intertwined, which is why the Church often stands up for religious freedom, even for other religions. This is not a form of doubting her own truth, but rather a reflection of how important human freedom is to what it means to be human.

Cardinal Meisner’s hesitation came from his sense of pastoral responsibility. He loved his flock. John Paul II’s vision of freedom was similarly pastoral. No one should be abandoned to slavery, be that political, ideological, or spiritual. The Church has the mission to proclaim the truth that makes freedom possible. That truth ultimately has a face: Jesus Christ.

This is why John Paul II was able to approach the modern world so confidently. He did not begin with a theory or political program, but with the person of Jesus Christ. Since Christ came to set humanity free, the Church cannot keep this truth to herself. She must proclaim it to the world.

Leave a comment

We can build for our own profit, for the good of our family, or out of some weird obsession. How are you building? In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 20, Jesus proposes the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. The owner of the vineyard goes out periodically throughout the day and hires new workers for his vineyard. At the end of the day, they all receive the same wage, and this bothers the workers who have labored all day long.

We can look at Mt. 20:1-16, the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, to understand how we should approach our work, in light of the teaching of Pope Leo XIV in his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas.

Often, we can be tempted to look less at what we are building and focus more on our own gains. We must be wary of the idolatry of profit.

Idolatry of Profit

Pope Leo XIV compares the building up of the Tower of Babel to the rebuilding of Jerusalem by Nehemiah. We know from Genesis that those building the Tower of Babel were trying to build a tower to heaven. They wanted to make a name for themselves and establish their own greatness. Their pride led to God’s punishment of the Flood. How does this tendency to put man at the center in the place of God look in today’s world? We can see this as the idolatry of profit.

In itself, profit has an important role to play in business. It is one way that we can measure the success of a business. Every business should be providing goods and services, and provide for the sustenance of its workers and their families. We see an idolatry of profit when the bottom line becomes the only criterion to judge the success of the company. Both workers and consumers are subordinated to the profits gained by the business.

More than Data and Performance

We must, then, avoid the “Babel syndrome,” namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance (Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 10).

We are more than data and performance. We have to be careful about the logic of the spreadsheet, which puts our value and worth into boxes. This opens us up to

the risk of dehumanization — of building a future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means — is an ancient and ever-new temptation that today takes on a technical guise (Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 10).

We can see this temptation even in legitimate efforts to solve real social and environmental problems. We talk about avoiding pollution, but rather than avoiding it, we simply move it. We can see this in the mining operations related to producing batteries. Often, the necessary minerals are being mined in poor countries, and the conditions for the workers are substandard. We can feel noble because we are solving a problem, but we have to be careful to make sure we are not merely creating a new problem for someone else.

We idolize profit when we make our entire being about achieving specific results, rather than taking a step back and taking in the bigger picture. Too often, we get caught up in action without reflecting on the “why” of what we are doing.

Looking at the Gospel parable, we see the men arriving at the end of the workday. Those who arrive at the end of the day receive a full day’s wage. When the workers who have withstood the heat of the day are paid the same, they feel cheated. The temptation to make profit an idol does not belong only to business. We can turn almost anything into a transaction, even our relationship with God.

Building the City of God

Instead of focusing on our recompense, we should think about how we are contributing to the project. In the encyclical, Pope Leo XIV focuses on the Israelites returning from the Babylonian Exile. They are faced with the task of rebuilding Jerusalem. At Babel, those building the tower were human beings seeking their own greatness. Nehemiah’s project is to rebuild a community that has been devastated. Nehemiah is the one who stands up and commits to the task.

Let us choose the “way of Nehemiah,” which highlights the importance of working together to make the City of God a safe place for returning exiles. Rebuilding today means recognizing that, precisely from the plurality of voices and visions which, even though they sometimes remind us of the confusion caused by the diversity of spoken languages, a bright possibility emerges (Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 10).

Nehemiah doesn’t just give the people something to do. He helps them to have something to build together. The rebuilding of Jerusalem becomes an act of restoring a people.

We live in a time that is often marked by confusion. It is hard to see where the world is going. Nevertheless, we have a great opportunity to build for unity. When we worry less about what we are getting out of a particular situation and instead try to build others up, we can participate in building the City of God.

We can be tempted to see diversity as a risk. However, we can make it into a resource when we learn to listen and dialogue. We build common ground by doing so. One of the great experiences of going on a mission trip is that we get to know a community in a situation completely different than our own. However, we see that they are more like us than we could have imagined.

Leave a comment

Choosing to Build Over Profit

When we choose to build instead of focusing merely on what we will receive, we begin to see our work differently. We begin to become the kind of workers Jesus describes in the vineyard of God: people who labor without constantly calculating their own gains. One of my favorite scenes in movie history is from the movie Field of Dreams. The protagonist, played by Kevin Costner, has built a baseball field at great personal cost and is questioning what he is getting out of it. The other gentleman asks him, “What are you asking, Ray?” He feels bad for it, but he says “What’s in it for me?” Our challenge as Christians is to stop asking what’s in it for us and just dedicate ourselves humbly to building up the Kingdom of God.

Like children building sandcastles on the beach, much of what we accomplish may be washed away, and we may never see the finished structure. But that does not mean that the building was pointless. We build because we have been invited to build by the one who has saved us. We don’t have to control the final result or calculate what we receive in return. We just have to be faithful builders.