Saturday, April 10, 2010

Carrying the Cross

More words of wisdom from Pope Benedict. This is taken from A New Song for the Lord:

Faith is the community of the cross, and only on the cross does it become complete. The place of final nondeliverance is the place where redemption really emerges. It seems to me that we have to relearn this piety of the cross in an entirely new way. It had appeared to us as too passive, too pessimistic, sentimental -- but if we do not practice the cross, how will we be able to carry it when it is imposed on us? A friend of mine who was dependent on kidney dialysis for years and had to experience how his life was gradually slipping away from him once told me that as a child he especially loved the stations of the cross and liked to do them later in life as well. When he learned of the awful diagnosis, he was at first stunned, but then it suddenly occurred to him: What you have always prayed is now becoming serious; now you may really accompany him and be taken up into the way of the cross by him. In this way my friend regained his serenity, which radiated from him right up to the end and let the brilliance of faith shine forth for all to see. To express it with [Romano] Guardini's words: We have to relearn "what kind of liberating power lies in overcoming oneself; how suffering which is inwardly accepted transforms a person; and how all essential growth not only depends on work, but also on freely offered sacrifice."

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

'Hierarchy' means 'sacred origin'

In my last post, I quoted Cardinal Ratzinger (as he was then) from his book Salt of the Earth, in which he responds to questions from his interviewer, Peter Seewald. Here is more from the same work.

Seewald poses this question: "Why must the Church continue to operate even today with authoritarian methods and be organized according to "totalitarian" structures? ... You can't go around demanding a sense of fellowship and then operate yourself predominantly with accusations of guilt, laws, and a pointing finger." Ratzinger gives a long, thoughtful response. I won't quote the whole thing, though it is well worth reading, but only pick out the points that particularly struck me.

He starts with this word 'hierarchy', which could be translated either by 'sacred rule' or by 'sacred origin', since the Greek word arche has both meanings. Cardinal Ratzinger holds that the second translation is probably the correct one. So it is not a question of power, but of making present something whose origin is in God; it doesn't come from us. He says: "... the category that corresponds to the priesthood is not that of rule. On the contrary, the priesthood has to be a conduit and a making present of a beginning and has to make itself available for this task. When priesthood, episcopacy, and papacy are understood essentially in terms of rule, then things are truly wrong and distorted....the origin of hierarchy, in any event its true meaning, is not to construct a structure of domination but to keep something present that doesn't come from the individual. No one can forgive sins on his own initiative; no one can communicate the Holy Spirit on his own initiative; no one can transform bread into the presence of Christ or keep Him present on his own initiative. In this sense, one has to perform a service in which the Church doesn't become a self-governing business but draws her life again and again anew from her origin." He concludes: "When it [the priesthood] is lived correctly, it cannot mean finally getting one's hands on the levers of power", as one might construe from the comments of some feminists who argue for women's ordination, "but, rather, renouncing one's own life project in order to give oneself over to service." And the image the Pope uses for this priestly service is the humble gesture of Christ at the Last Supper, when He washed the feet of his disciples.

In response to the last part of Seewald's question, the pontiff has this to say: "Part of that [service] ... is to reprimand and to rebuke and, thereby, to cause problems for oneself. Augustine illustrates this in a homily in the following terms: You want to live badly; you want to perish. I, however, am not allowed to want this; I have to rebuke you, even though it displeases you. He then uses the example of the father with sleeping sickness whose son keeps waking him up, because that is the only chance of his being cured. But the father says: Let me sleep, I'm dead tired. And the son says: No, I'm not allowed to let you sleep. And that, he says, is precisely the function of a bishop. I am not permitted to let you sleep. I know that you would like to sleep, but that is precisely what I may not allow. And in this sense the Church must also raise her index finger and become irksome. But in all this it must remain perceptible that the Church is not interested in harassing people but that she herself is animated by the restless desire for the good. I must not allow you to sleep, because sleep would be deadly. And in the exercise of this authority she must also take Christ's suffering upon herself. What ... gives Christ credibility is, in fact, that he suffered. And that is also the credibility of the Church. For this reason she also becomes most credible where she has martyrs and confessors. And where things go comfortably, she loses credibility."

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Succisa virescit

This Latin phrase is found on the coat of arms of the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, founded by St. Benedict himself circa 529 A.D. It means, in literal translation, "having been cut down, it fluorishes", an apt epigram for an abbey that has been destroyed and rebuilt four times, most recently after the bombardment it suffered in the Battle of Monte Cassino in World War II. The idea is drawn, I believe, from viticulture; that's why 'succisa' is feminine, agreeing with the understood noun 'vitis', 'grapevine', a feminine word in Latin. It's a well-known fact that grapevines must be cut back drastically, even brutally, every year if they are going to produce an abundant harvest of grapes. In the famous parable from the Gospel of John, chapter 15, Jesus applies the same lesson to us: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you." It's interesting that the words translated here by 'prunes' and 'cleansed' are in the original Greek text closely related: 'kathairei' and 'katharoi'. Pruning is a form of cleansing, in that it removes superfluous and irrelevant accretions to reveal the pure form beneath. Now vines don't have feelings, but if they did, we can imagine that pruning would be a pretty painful process. We don't usually think of cleansing as painful, but if you are really dirty, so that getting clean involves hard scrubbing, it's not so enjoyable either.

I've been reading "Salt of the Earth", a book based on an interview of Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI, of course) by Peter Seewald, a German journalist, back in 1996. This is the relevant passage:

"Not long ago I mentioned in a conversation with friends that here in the area around Frascati they are preparing to prune the grapevines and that they bear fruit only if they are pruned once a year, that pruning is a condition of fruitfulness. In the light of the Gospel, of John 15, that's immediately clear to us as a parable of human existence and of the communion of the Church. If the courage to prune is lacking, only leaves still grow. Applied to the Church, there is only paper,whereas no more life is brought forth. But let's say it with the words of Christ, who tells us: At the very moment when you think you have to possess yourself and defend yourself, precisely then you ruin yourself. Because you are not built as an island whose only foundation is itself. Rather, you are built for love, and therefore for giving, for renunciation, for the pruning of yourself. Only if you give yourself, if you lose yourself, as Christ puts it, will you be able to live.

This basic option has to stand out in all its starkness. It is offered to man's freedom. But it should still really be made plain that to live by making one's own claims is a false recipe for life. The refusal of suffering and the refusal of creatureliness, hence, of being held to a standard, is ultimately the refusal of love itself, and that ruins man. For it is precisely his submitting himself to a claim and allowing himself to be pruned that enables him to mature and bear fruit."


Just imagine if we could accept in this spirit all the suffering that inevitably comes to each of us on our pilgrim way to our true homeland, receiving it even with gratitude, seeing it as the pruning of which our egos stand so much in need. 'Succidi, virescemus', cut back, we will sprout up with even greater spiritual vigour. With an attitude like that, nothing in this world could really hurt us.