What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

I am back in full swing here, I think. I had interviews with a couple papers back home and set up a "hit" with FNC for tomorrow. Lunch brought us a sort of elicoidali with ragù followed by a little slice of beef with a green salad. Supper gave us some minestrone and, for me, more salad, but followed by gorgonzola and a pear. I am taking considerable heat and ribbing at meals by the fact that I am American. Apparently Pres. Bush is the devil and Americans are obsessed with bombs. Today I had conversations in Italian, English, French, Chinese and German and began to make some new friends, new residents, in The House. (I do not live in the American ghetto here… which means that I actually speak Italian and other tongues and understand them when spoken… inter alia... even though some people elsewhere think I don’t know anything!    o{]:¬)    ) The coffee at the nearby bar is as good as ever. Today I read Augustine, Ephrem and other Fathers. Mass, breviary, a long walk to the P.za del Popolo and a big circle back. Some writing on the blog. Here at the end, a little scotch and Braveheart.

As I turn me head, here is the view. I miss The Sabine Farm.

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with the:

5th Sorrowful Mystery: The Crucifixion

We come to the place of the Skull, Golgotha, where some traditions held Adam was buried. The New Adam is about to put to right the damage of the old Adam. This time, in defending His Bride from the serpent, the Bridegroom will be entirely faithful, even to the shedding of His Blood.

St. Ambrose of Milan (+397) connect’s Christ crucifixion and Adam’s burial:

The very place of the Cross is in the middle, as conspicuous to all. It is above the grace of Adam, as the Hebrews truly argue. (Mat 27:33; Mk 15:22; John 19:17) It was fitting that the beginning of death occured where the first fruits of our life were placed. [Exposition of the Gospel of Luke 10.114]

Since death entered by a man’s sin, in justice a man had to put it right. However, no man could possible be adequate or proportioned to bridge that gap between the human race and God. Thus, one who is both man and God had to do it.

St. Cyril of Alexandria also comments on the connection between death from Adam and life from Christ:

By becoming like us and bearing our sufferings for our sakes, Christ restores human nature to how it was in the beginning. The first man was certainly in the Paradise of delight in the beginning. The absence of suffering and of corruption exalted him. He despised the commandment given to hm and fell under a curse, condemnation and the snare of death by eating the fruit of the forbidden tree. By the very same thing, Christ restores him to his original condition. He became the fruit of the tree by enduring the precious Cross for our sakes, that He might destroy death, which by means of the tree [of Adam] had invaded the bodies of mankind. [Commentary on Luke, Homily 153]

Death is described almost like a parasite, slithering into our innards. Indeed, death is connected to the worm and the skull. We are freed from the eternity of nothingness in the grave by the humble submission of the God Man to the Cross and the tomb. Consider His condescension. The Rosary helps us redirect and fix our gaze on the face of the Crucified Christ.

St. Augustine (+430) considered the intention of the Lord in His Sacrifice:

Look at the Lord who did precisely what He commanded. After so many things the godless Jews committed against Him, repaying Him evil for good, did He not say as He hung on the Cross, "Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing?" He prayed as man, and as God with the Father, He heard the prayer. Even now He prays in us, for us and is prayed to by us. He prays in us as our High Priest. He prays for us as our Head. He is prayed to by us as our God. When He was praying as He hung on the Cross, He could see and foresee. He could see all His enemies. He could foresee that many of them would become His friends. That is why He was interceding for them all. They were raging, but He was praying. They were saying to Pilate "CRUCIFY!", but He was crying out "Father, FORGIVE!" He was hanging from the cruel nails, but He did not lose His gentleness. He was asking for pardon for those from whom He was receiving such hideous treatment. [s. 382.2]

So much is available in this short excerpt for our reflection. Think of it this way. When we are at Holy Mass, we are at the renewal of the event of this mystery: the Crucifixion, the Bloody Sacrifice raised to the Father for our salvation. We participate in this Sacrifice as the Head of the Body (the priest) and the Body of Christ (the congregation), together Christ entire and whole (as Augustine says, Christus totus). We have our roles to fulfill. Our reflection on the crucifixion through the recitation of the Rosary can help us participate more fully at Mass.

Secondly, consider how Augustine makes the distinction that Christ died for all, but that He foresaw that He would have many as His friends. Augustine is sometimes thought to be a pessimist about human nature and, indeed, he is truly pessimistic, but in a realistic way. Still, while Augustine does not say here that "all" would be His friends, neither does Christ say "few" will be His friends.

The word Augustine chose was "many", which is what we find in Scripture. This is what we find in the consecration of the Precious Blood at Mass. At the second of the two-fold consecration, the Sacrifice is enacted, by the separation of the Body and the Blood. In this moment, Holy Church expresses correctly in Scripture and in the liturgical form of the sacrament her proper understanding: Christ died for all but many, not all, will be saved. The Latin says that clearly. And we rejoice to pray that in all the vernacular translations to be issued in the future, we will say "for many" as a fuller and better explanation of the meaning of the moment.

Another thing this wonderful passage from Augustine tells us is that when we pray the Rosary and participate at Mass, nay rather, before Mass, we ought to take stock of how we may have committed wrongs against others and find forgiveness for wrong committed against us. Let’s hear more Augustine, in a sermon on St. Stephen, holds a mirror up to our souls:

But people who are reluctant to carry out the precept [of forgiveness], eager to get the reward, who don’t love their enemies but do their best to avenge themselves on them, don’t pay attention to the Lord, who would have had nobody left to praise Him if He had wanted to avenge Himself on His enemies. So when they hear this place in the Gospel, where the Lord says on the Cross, "Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing," they say to themselves, He could do that as the Son of God, as the only Son of the Father. Yes, it was flesh hanging there, but God was hidden within. As for us, though, are we to do that sort of thing? So didn’t He really mean it when He gave this order [to forgive]? Perish the thought. He certainly mean it. If you think it is asking too much of you to imitate Your Lord, look at Stephen your fellow servant.... [s. 317.2-3,6]

Again, the Rosary redirects and focuses our gaze on the face of Christ, the Priest and Victim. We can use the Rosary to prepare for Mass. Here is another mighty preacher, St. Pope Leo I (+461) on the Cross and the altar we kneel before to receive Holy Communion:

This Cross of Christ holds the mystery of its true and prophesied altar. There, through the saving Victim, a sacrifice of human nature is celebrated. There the Blood of a spotless lamb dissolved the pact of that ancient transgression. There the whole perversity of the devil’s mastery was abolished, while humanity triumphed as conqueror over boasting pride. The effect of faith was so swift that one of the two thieves crucified with Christ who believed in the Son of God entered paradise justified.

Who could explain the mystery of such a great gift? Who could describe the power of such a marvelous transformation? In a brief moment of time the guilt of a longstanding wickedness was abolished. In the middle of the harsh torments of a struggling soul, fastened to the gallows, that thief passes over to Christ, and the grace of Christ gives a crown to Him, someone who incurred punishment for his own wickedness. [s. 55.3]

How much time does it actually take to go to confession?

St. Jerome (410) in his direct and forceful way describes the Cross thusly:

That flaming flashing sword is keeping Paradise safe. No one could open the gates that Christ closed. The thief was the first to enter with Christ. His great faith received the greatest of rewards. His faith in the kingdom did not depend on seeing Christ. He did not see Him in His radiant glory or behold Him looking down from heaven. He did not see angels serving Him. To put it bluntly, he certainly did not see Christ walking about in freedom, but on a gibbet, drinking vinegar and crowned with thorns. He saw Him fastened to the Cross and heard Him begging for help, "My God, my God, why have you foresaken me?"... The Cross of Christ is the key into paradise. The Cross of Christ opened it. He has not said to you, "The kingdom of heaen has been enduring violent assault, and the violent have been seizing it by force"? (Mat 11:12) Does not the One on the Cross cause the violence? There is nothing between the Cross and paradise. The greatest of pains produces the greatest of rewards. [On Lazarus and Dives]

How we have seen some many things happen in the Church which we would rather not have seen. But Christ has permitted them. It is His Church. He permits challenges for the Church and for us. There is no glory without the Cross. Even in the Cross there is, for the Christian, hope. Here is Ephrem the Syrian:

There came to my ear
from the Scripture which had been read
a word that caused me joy
on the subject of the thief;
it gave comfort to my soul
amidst the multitude of its vices,
telling how He had compassion on the thief.
O may He bring me too
into that garden at the sound of whose name
I am overwhelmed with joy;
my mind bursts its reins
as it goes forth to contemplate Him.

[Hymn on Paradise 8.1]

In my WDTPRS articles and in this blog, I have addressed the issue of authentic inculturation.  In a nutshell, between the world and the Church there is a constant dynamic interchange.  However, for inculturation to be authentic (and avoid the destructive silliness we often see), what the Church has to give to the world must always be logiclly prior to what the world has to give.  When the Church has logical priority, she can then receive back from the world many beautiful things which make us all richer as Catholics.

In an article by Sandro Magister there is excellent analysis of the Italian Church’s Congress which took place in Verona.  He explores two great poles is the Church, which I think I am not off base in identifying as "World prior" and "Church prior" schools of the Church/Modern Word nexus.  He identifies some of the key players and provides great quotes.  

On the one hand, there are those alligned with a "Church prior" view, which includes Pope Benedict XVI himself and, in Italy especially Card. Ruini.  On the other hand in the school of Dossetti and Martini and Tettamanzi, as Magister explains, we have the "World prior" view:

The “religious choice” was synonymous with a Church that would be docile and friendly toward modernity, silently mixed together with the forces of progress, invisible like “yeast in the dough,” concentrated on the spiritual and on the primacy of the individual conscience. This was an unacceptable choice for a pope who had come from the beleaguered and combative popular Catholicism of Poland: a pope, in effect, seen as a “barbarian” by much of the Italian Catholic intellectual class at the time.

In Verona, Card. Tettamanzi (whom many thought would be elected to the See of Peter, including himself I imagine), gave a keynote address.  It was strongly redolent of what I am calling in this entry the "World prior" view.  Here is Magister (my emphasis and comments):

During the first three days in Verona, the Tettamanzi effect had stunning success. In the absence of Benedict XVI and with the silence of cardinal Ruini, the dominant words among the delegates, divided into dozens of groups for parallel discussions, were “welcoming,” “listening,” “dialogue,” “oblation”: words imbued more with passion than with analysis [brilliant phrase that!] of the epochal changes that have taken place in the world and in the Church over the past twenty years. The pope was almost completely ignored, even by the official speakers. His lecture in Regensburg was cited only once: by the rector of the Catholic University of Milan, Lorenzo Ornaghi, a dyed-in-the-wool disciple of Ruini.

That was until Benedict XVI arrived and pulverized what had held the stage until then. “L’Osservatore Romano,” on the mark for once, printed the papal address beneath a full-page headline: “To restore full citizenship to the Christian faith.” This means the public citizenship, equivalent in secular terms, of Christians capable of saying ‘no’ (and the pope omitted nothing of what he sees as obligatory for the defense of human life from conception to natural death, the family, freedom of education) but above all of saying ‘yes’ “to everything that is right, true, and pure in cultures and civilizations,” in short, “that great ‘yes’ that, in Jesus Christ, God has spoken to man and to his life.” This is, in essence – the pope said – the “cultural project” conceived and implemented for the Italian Church by cardinal Ruini.

This article is well worth reading.  Check it out.

In the meantime, scan this bit from the speech the Pope made which demolished the fuzzy-wuzzy approach (my emphasis and comments):

[...] Following Christ is never easy: it faces, instead, opposition and controversy. The Church thus remains “a sign of contradiction,” in the footsteps of its Master (cf. Luke 2:3-4), even in our time. But we do not lose heart because of this. On the contrary, we must be always ready to give an answer (apo-logia) to anyone who asks us the reason (logos) [There is one of the leitmotifs of this Pontificate – logos/reason, which reoccurs everywhere in his writings and speeches] for our hope, as we are invited to do in the first letter of Saint Peter (3:15), which you have rather opportunely chosen as the biblical guide for the unfolding of this conference. We must respond “with kindness and respect, with an upright conscience” (3:15-16), with that meek power that comes from union with Christ. [...a meek power that conquers all…]  We must do this in every area, on the level of thought and action, of personal behavior and public witness. The strong unity that was realized in the Church of the first centuries between a faith friendly toward intelligence and a practice of life characterized by reciprocal love and solicitous attention toward the poor and suffering [Cf. Deus caritas est] made possible the first great missionary expansion of Christianity in the Greco-Roman world. [And did not simply remain docile and "invisible" in the fabric of society.] This also happened later, in various cultural contexts and historical situations. This remains the king’s highway of evangelization: the Lord guides us to live this unity between truth and love in the conditions proper to our time, for the evangelization of Italy and the world today.  [The King’s Highway is like the Royal Way of the Cross… it requires risk, suffering and persecution.]

In concrete terms, in order for the experience of Christian faith and love to be welcomed, lived, and transmitted from one generation to another, a fundamental and decisive question is that of the education of the person. [...] A real education needs to reawaken the courage of definitive decisions, which today are considered a constraint that chafes at our freedom, but in reality are indispensable in order to grow and to attain something great in life, and in particular to bring love to maturity in all its beauty: and thus to bring coherence and meaning to freedom itself. From this concern for the human person and his formation come our “no’s” to weak or distorted forms of love, or to counterfeits of freedom, as also to the reduction of reason only to what is calculable and manipulable. In truth, these “no’s” are rather “yes’s” to authentic love, to the reality of man as he was created by God.

I am delighted by the reaction of those who posted comments on the entry about the good news I have gathered.  Most everyone was happy to refer the matter to prayer of praise of God and thanksgiving even before hearing any more details.

Many of us of the more conservative or traditional stripe are starving for good news.  Our hunger will sometimes provoke too much enthusiasm about small events on the one hand, and on the other a surliness about the paucity of things we perceive we can rejoice over. 

As I said in my other entry, I simply don’t want to talk too much about what I have heard about a few issues.  I think you all know the old phrase from wartime: Loose lips sink ships.   Making a big splash about something could stir the opposition and lead to our hopes being delayed or derailed.  Also, there are confidences to respect.  Still, we need to hope for good things in a way that is not expectation macerated in bitterness.  I am not trying to tease, just encourage. 

So, may I kindly ask you to join again today your petitions to a prayer of thanksgiving in advance?  Years ago, I had the opportunity on a couple occasions to say Mass for Mother Theresa’s sisters, who have a center of their activity in Rome next to the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio where I was working.  Mother was there occasionally.  I remember her saying that when we pray to God for something we should always thank Him together with the petition.  This is what I think we ought to do right now.

You readers will have various hopes pinned to my statement that I have good news.  For some people it will be A, for others it will be B or C.  What really charges some people up, might leave others a little less than impressed.  Suffice to say that I am delighted by what I heard and I will be even more delighted when it is a matter of public record.

In the last couple months I believe we are seeing His Holiness shifting into a higher gear.  You might want to go back and put together a list of things that have caught your attention in his speeches and actions in the last couple months, and then sit down and stare at it for a while, absorb it. 

This is a very active and thoughtful Pope.  He thinks deeply before he speaks and writes.  Once he has thought something through, he acts with determination.  This gives many of us reason to be very hopeful for all sorts of changes and/affirmations. 

Case in point: Think about his Regensburg Address: the Pope has thought for many years about the state of academia in Europe, the necessity of reason in dialogue, the participation of Muslims in Europe and European identity.  He thought, he spoke boldly, he did not retract anything.  His subsequent clarifications were not retractions, though you can bet that many people around him were wringing their hands and, Wormtongue-like, cooing that perhaps the Holy Father might say he was sorry and didn’t mean what he said.  Benedict did not apologize.  In contrast, on the question of Limbo, a matter that needs more study and time, Pope Benedict remained entirely silent.  He has not come to any decisions and so he did not muddy the waters with something premature.

If you are hopeful about certain pet issues, go back and look at the Pope’s writings over the years to see if he seemed determined and resolved on the basis of sound reasoning.  I think you will not be disappointed.

In the meantime, let’s offer another prayer of thanksgiving to God in advance of hearing whatever it is you consider to be good news!