John Paul II and The Cross -- "His constant companion"

An excerpt from John Paul II: A Character Study by Rev Raymond T Gawronski
New Oxford Review April 2010

John Paul emerged carrying the ultimate symbol of God and wounded humanity: the Crucified One. In this he proclaimed hope to all in Africa or Asia or Latin America who have known God, and long for God, and who find themselves in societies rapidly moving away from any traditional expression of the relation to God. . . . 

There was much of this largeness of soul to John Paul, something childlike in his desire to embrace everybody, with no cynical knife held behind his back. He was no fool, but he had so large and pure a soul that, to him, the sins of man - if he really could believe that men could be as wicked as they apparently were in Boston, among other places - were more like swarming mosquitoes that could simply be brushed away than products of a corrupt, cynical world.

This sweetness of soul, of his heart reaching out to all, is what touched tens of millions of people worldwide who saw in John Paul's face a man who had worked in a stone quarry, who had known his people slaughtered in countless wars, who had known what it was like to have to rely on God alone, and not on a wealthy economy or worldly prestige.

His home culture offered something of an anima naturaliter Christiana, it offered a rich nature on which grace could build. But the heart of his greatness was beyond any culture, because it came from his union, in prayer, with his Lord and the Lord's Blessed Mother. This

union in prayer -  above all else - defined his papacy. It was a union that was unmistakable, and easily seen by the masses of people who thronged to see him, to touch him, as the very Vicar of Christ. Perhaps they did not begin a program of moral conversion, in spite of the Pope's admonitions They simply loved him, and the unreachable God made accessible to them through His representative. It is for God's grace to work the many hidden miracles on the souls in which the seeds of His love were planted by the man whose constant companion, and very symbol, was the crucifix of his Lord.

Could he have ... ? Should he have ... ? These questions will always be there. No doubt John Paul was an unworthy servant of so great a Master. But then, what are we? What John Paul did do was offer the world an image of hope that grew out of that crucifix he always carried, the crucifix he always held forth to others. St. Paul says, "Be imitators of me as I am of Christ." Indeed there was something of that to the performer who certainly sat at center stage. Yet he never pointed to himself, but to the Lord, whom he encountered every dawn in prayer.


see the full article here

At work "while we sleep"

In Crossing the Threshold of Hope Pope John Paul II explores the question "Was God at work in the fall of communism?" He opens his reflections with this passage: Christ says: "My Father is at work until now, so I am at work" (Jn 5:17). At all points of history God is at work. In this there were sure signs of God's work, such as the apparition at Fatima as well as the election of Polish Pope, who survived an assasination attempt on the feast of the Fatima apparition.

God is at work through the Spirit "as Love is ceaseless creative, saving, sanctifying, and life- giving action." 

Pope John Paul II points out that Leo XIII "predicted the fall of Communism, a fall which would cost humanity and Europe dearly, since the medicine-he wrote in his encyclical of 1891-could prove more dangerous than the disease." Indeed, the weight of history and the dynamic of conscience and politics pulled down the Soviet system. So JP2 remarks -- "It would be simplistic to say that Divine Providence caused the fall of Communism. In a certain sense Communism as a system fell by itself. It fell as a consequence of its own mistakes and abuses. It proved to be a medicine more dangerous than the disease itself. It did not bring about true social reform, yet it did become a powerful threat and challenge to the entire world. But it fell by itself, because of its own inherent weakness.

In Centesimus annus JP2 spells out the internal weaknesses of the communist regime: the attack upon the rights of the workers, the control of free markets, and the suppression of religion.   It is the third one, suppression of God that he highlights in this text.

Additional Note -- Pope Benedict XVI stated in his homily on the beatification of Pope John Paul II:

Throughout the long journey of preparation for the great Jubilee he directed Christianity once again to the future, the future of God, which transcends history while nonetheless directly affecting it. He rightly reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress. He restored to Christianity its true face as a religion of hope, to be lived in history in an "Advent" spirit, in a personal and communitarian existence directed to Christ, the fullness of humanity and the fulfillment of all our longings for justice and peace.

Newman on Faith and Sight on the road to Emmaus

And He Disappeared out of Their Sight

ca. 1898 Henry Ossawa Tanner,  Smithsonian American Art Collection

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, from Parochial and Plain Sermons, VI.10 "The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church"

Now observe what was the nature of His presence in the Church after His Resurrection. It was this, that He came and went as He pleased; that material substances, such as the fastened doors, were no impediments to His coming; and that when He was present His disciples did not, as a matter of course, know Him. St. Mark says He appeared to the two disciples who were going into the country, to Emmaus, "in another form." St. Luke, who gives the account more at length, says, that while He talked with them their heart burned within them. And it is worth remarking, that the two disciples do not seem to have been conscious of this at the time, but on looking back, they recollected that as having been, which did not strike them while it was. 

. . .  their hearts seem to have been holden (if we may use the expression) as well as their eyes. They were receiving impressions, but could not realize to themselves that they were receiving them; afterwards, however, they became aware of what had been. Let us observe, too, when it was that their eyes were opened; here we are suddenly introduced to the highest and most solemn Ordinance of the Gospel, for it was when He consecrated and brake the Bread that their eyes were opened. There is evidently a stress laid on this, for presently St. Luke sums up his account of the gracious occurrence with an allusion to it in particular; "They told what things were done in the way, and how He was known of them in breaking of bread." 

For so it was ordained, that Christ should not be both seen and known at once; first He was seen, then He was known. Only by faith is He known to be present; He is not recognized by sight. When He opened His disciples' eyes, He at once vanished. He removed His visible presence, and left but a memorial of Himself. He vanished from sight that He might be present in a sacrament; and in order to connect His visible presence with His presence invisible, He for one instant manifested Himself to their open eyes; manifested Himself, if I may so speak, while He passed from His hiding-place of sight without knowledge, to that of knowledge without sight.

Or again: consider the account of His appearing to St. Mary Magdalene. While she stood at the sepulcher weeping He appeared, but she knew Him not. When He revealed Himself, He did not, indeed, at once vanish away, but He would not let her touch Him; as if, in another way, to show that His presence in His new kingdom was not to be one of sense. The two disciples were not allowed to see Him after recognizing Him, St. Mary Magdalene was not allowed to touch Him. But afterward, St. Thomas was allowed both to see and touch; he had the full evidence of sense: but observe what our Lord says to him, "Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." Faith is better than sight or touch.

. . .  We see Him not; but we are to believe that we possess Him,—that we have been brought under the virtue of His healing hand, of His life-giving breath, of the manna flowing from His lips, and of the blood issuing from His side. And hereafter, on looking back, we shall be conscious that we have been thus favored. Such is the Day of the Lord in which we find ourselves, as if in fulfillment of the words of the prophet, "The Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with Thee. And it shall come to pass in that Day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark: but it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light." [Zech. xiv. 5-7.] 

Nay, even before the end comes, Christians, on looking back on years past, will feel, at least in a degree, that Christ has been with them, though they knew it not, only believed it, at the time. They will even recollect then the burning of their hearts. 

 Nay, though they seemed not even to believe any thing at the time, yet afterward, if they have come to Him in sincerity, they will experience a sort of heavenly fragrance and savour of immortality, when they least expect it, rising upon their minds, as if in token that God has been with them, and investing all that has taken place, which before seemed to them but earthly, with beams of glory. . . .

May He enable us to make full trial of His bounty, and to obtain a full measure of blessing. "There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her and that right early ... Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge." [Ps. xlvi. 4, 5, 10, 11.]

Gaudium et spes and the Easter Truth

In order to explain true Christian humanism, Pope John Paul II would often cite a passage from Gaudium et spes, §22 -- "Only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light." It provides the key idea to his first encyclical Redeemer of Man. The Christian Humanism of Pope John Paul II is not an attempt to graft a Christian truth onto the naturalistic vision or a yoking together of disparate elements of Greek philosophy and the Bible; it is a thoroughly Christian account of human dignity. The passage speaks of Christ as one who "blazed a new trail" and "if we follow it, life and death are made holy and take on a new meaning." From the new life, " the whole man is renewed from within."

During a homily at an Easter Vigil in 1998 he explained significance of the Resurrection for this vision of human dignity :

"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Gen 1:26). "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Gen 1:27).

In this Easter Vigil, the Liturgy proclaims the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, which recalls the mystery of creation and, in particular, the creation of man. Once more our attention centres on the mystery of man, the mystery made fully manifest in Christ and through Christ.

"Fiat lux", "faciamus hominem": these words of Genesis disclose their full truth when they are passed through the crucible of the Passover of the Word (cf. Ps. 12:6). During the quiet of Holy Saturday, through the silence of the Word, they find their fullest meaning: that "light" is the new light which will never fade; that "man" is "the new man created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness" (Eph 4:24).

The new creation comes about at Easter. In the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection all is redeemed, and everything becomes once more perfectly good, according to God's original plan.

It is above all man, the prodigal son who squandered in sin the precious treasure of freedom, who regains his lost dignity. "Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram". How true and profound these words sound on Easter night! And how wonderfully timely they are for the men and women of today, so aware of their ability to control the universe, but often so confused about the true meaning of life, in which they are no longer able to recognize the signs of the Creator.

In this regard, I am reminded of certain passages of the Constitution Gaudium et Spes of the Second Vatican Council, which blend harmoniously with the marvellous symphony of the Readings of the Easter Vigil. In fact, this Council document, if carefully studied, proves to be profoundly Paschal in both its content and its guiding inspiration. In it we read:

 "Only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of him who was to come (cf. Rom 5:14), namely, Christ the Lord. Christ ... is 'the image of the invisible God' (Col 1:15). He himself is the perfect man. To the sons of Adam he restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward . . . By his incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every man. By suffering for us he not only provides us with an example for our imitation. He blazed a trail, and if we follow it, life and death are made holy and take on a new meaning. The Christian man, conformed to the likeness of that Son who is the firstborn of many brothers, receives 'the first-fruits of the Spirit' (Rom 8:23) . . . Through this Spirit who is 'the pledge of our inheritance' (Eph 1:14), the whole man is renewed from within, even to the achievement of the 'redemption of the body' (Rom 8:23): 'If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will also bring to life your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit who dwells in you' (Rom 8:21). The Christian . . . linked with the Paschal mystery and patterned on the dying Christ, will hasten forward to resurrection in the strength which comes from hope" (No. 22).

These words of the recent Council present to us once more the mystery of the vocation of every baptized person. 

[We  contemplate] the universal mystery of man in the light of Christ's Resurrection. In the beginning God created man in his own image and likeness. By the power of Christ, crucified and risen, this likeness to God, obscured by sin, has been restored and brought to its highest point. And with the ancient author we can repeat: Man, look at yourself! Recognize the dignity of your calling! Christ, victorious over death on this holy night, opens before you the gates of life and immortality.

from Homily, Holy Saturday, 11 April 1998

Blessed John Henry Newman on the Resurrection

St Mary the Virgin Church, Oxford

"Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen." Luke xxiv. 5, 6.

SUCH is the triumphant question with which the Holy Angels put to flight the sadness of the women on the morning of Christ's resurrection. "O ye of little faith," less faith than love, more dutiful than understanding, why come ye to anoint His Body on the third day? Why seek ye the Living Saviour in the tomb? The time of sorrow is run out; victory has come, according to His Word, and ye recollect it not. "He is not here, but is risen!"
These were deeds done and words spoken eighteen hundred years since; so long ago, that in the world's thought they are as though they never had been; yet they hold good to this day. Christ is to us now, just what He was in all His glorious Attributes on the morning of the Resurrection; and we are blessed in knowing it, even more than the women to whom the Angels spoke, according to His own assurance, "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." . . .

When He was risen from the dead. .  .  . the Divine Essence streamed forth on every side, and environed His Manhood, as in a cloud of glory. So transfigured was His Sacred Body, that He who had deigned to be born of a woman, and to hang upon the cross, had subtle virtue in Him, like a spirit, to pass through the closed doors to His assembled followers; while, by condescending to the trial of their senses, He showed that it was no mere spirit, but He Himself, as before, with wounded hands and pierced side, who spoke to them. He manifested Himself to them, in this His exalted state, that they might be His witnesses to the people; witnesses of those separate truths which man's reason cannot combine, that He had a real human body, that it was partaker in the properties of His Soul, and that it was inhabited by the Eternal Word. They handled Him,—they saw Him come and go, when the doors were shut,—they felt, what they could not see, but could witness even unto death, that He was "their Lord and their God;"—a triple evidence, first, of His Atonement; next of their own Resurrection unto glory; lastly, of His Divine Power to conduct them safely to it. (from Parochial and Plain Sermons, II.13, "Christ: A Quickening Spirit")

No man saw Him rise from the grave. His Angels indeed beheld it; but His earthly followers were away, and the heathen soldiers were not worthy. They saw, indeed, the great Angel, who rolled away the stone from the opening of the tomb. This was Christ's servant; but Him they saw not. He was on His way to see His own faithful and mourning followers. To these He had revealed His doctrine during His humiliation, and called them "His friends." [Matt. xiii. 11. John xv. 15.] First of all, He appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden itself where He had been buried; then to the other women who ministered unto Him; then to the two disciples travelling to Emmaus; then to all the Apostles separately; besides, to Peter and to James; and to Thomas in the presence of them all. Yet not even these, His friends, had free access to Him. He said to Mary, "Touch Me not." He came and left them according to His own pleasure. When they saw Him, they felt an awe which they had not felt during His ministry. While they doubted if it were He, "None of them," St. John says, "durst ask Him, Who art Thou? believing that it was the Lord." [John xxi. 12.] However, as kings have their days of state, on which they show themselves publicly to their subjects, so our Lord appointed a meeting of His disciples, when they might see Him. He had determined this even before His crucifixion; and the Angels reminded them of it. "He goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see Him, as He said unto you." [Mark xvi. 7.] The place of meeting was a mountain; the same (it is supposed) as that on which He had been transfigured; and the number who saw Him there was five hundred at once, if we join St. Paul's account to that in the Gospels. At length, after forty days, He was taken from them; He ascended up, "and a cloud received Him out of their sight." (from Parochial and Plain Sermons, I.23, "Christian Reverence")

We, too, though we are not witnesses of Christ's actual resurrection, are so spiritually. By a heart awake from the dead, and by affections set on heaven, we can as truly and without figure witness that Christ liveth, as they did. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself. Truth bears witness by itself to its Divine Author. He who obeys God conscientiously, and lives holily, forces all about him to believe and tremble before the unseen power of Christ. To the world indeed at large he witnesses not; for few can see him near enough to be moved by his manner of living. But to his neighbours he manifests the Truth in proportion to their knowledge of him; and some of them, through God's blessing, catch the holy flame, cherish it, and in their turn transmit it. And thus in a dark world Truth still makes way in spite of the darkness, passing from hand to hand. And thus it keeps its station in high places, acknowledged as the creed of nations, the multitude of which are ignorant, the while, on what it rests, how it came there, how it keeps its ground; and despising it, think it easy to dislodge it. But "the Lord reigneth." He is risen from the dead. (from Parochial and Plain Sermons, I.22, "Witness to the Resurrection")

These selections were found in Armel J. Coupet, O.P. A Newman Companion to the Gospels (Burns & Oates, 1966)

 

 

 

John Paul II -- "Three Nights" of the Easter Vigil

EASTER VIGIL   HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER JOHN PAUL II

Holy Saturday, 30 March 2002
 

"God said: ‘Let there be light’; and there was light" (Gen 1:3). An explosion of light, which God’s word brought forth from nothing, rent asunder the first night, the night of Creation. . . . .

In that first night, the night of Creation, is rooted the Paschal Mystery which, following the tragedy of sin, represents the restoration and the crowning of that first beginning. The divine Word called into existence all things and, in Jesus, became flesh for our salvation. And if the destiny of the first Adam was to return to the earth from which he had been made (cf. Gen 3:19), the last Adam has come down from heaven in order to return there in victory, the first-fruits of the new humanity (cf. Jn 3:13; 1 Cor 15:47).
 

Another night constitutes the fundamental event of the history of Israel: it is the wondrous Exodus from Egypt, the story of which is read each year at the solemn Easter Vigil.

"The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. The people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left" (Ex 14:21-22). The People of God was born from this "baptism" in the Red Sea, when it experienced the powerful hand of the Lord who snatched it from slavery in order to lead it to the yearned-for land of freedom, justice and peace.

This is the second night, the night of the Exodus. .  .  . "

On this most holy night", when Christ rose from the dead, you too will experience a spiritual "exodus": leave behind your former life and enter the "land of the living". This is the third night, the night of the Resurrection.
 

"Most blessed of all nights, chosen by God to see Christ rising from the dead!". 

After the tragic night of Good Friday, when "the power of darkness" (Lk 22:53) seemed to have prevailed over the One who is "the light of the world" (Jn 8:12), after the great silence of Holy Saturday, in which Christ, having completed his work on earth, found rest in the mystery of the Father and took his message of life into the pit of death, behold at last the night which precedes "the third day", on which, in accordance with the Scriptures, the Messiah would rise, as he himself had often foretold to his disciples.

"Night truly blessed, when heaven is wedded to earth and man is reconciled to God!" (Easter Proclamation). This is the night of nights, the night of faith and of hope. While all is shrouded in darkness, God – the Light – keeps watch. With him there keep watch all who hope and trust in him.

O Mary, this is truly your night! As the last lights of the Sabbath are extinguished, and the fruit of your womb rests in the earth, your heart too keeps watch! Your faith and your hope look ahead. Behind the heavy stone, they already detect the empty tomb; behind the thick veil of darkness, they glimpse the dawn of the Resurrection.

Grant, O Mother, that we too may keep watch in the silence of the night, believing and hoping in the Lord’s word. Thus shall we meet, in the fullness of light and life, Christ, the first-fruits of the risen, who reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Alleluia!

Guardini on Jesus' Death

Rouault "Christ on Cross"1938

Dear Friend:
Have you even felt the presence and persistence of sin in your life as if it were a hardened stone in your heart that would not disappear? Or have you, like Pascal, come to an awareness of your own wretchedness and come to grief over the large fractures and tears you have caused in the fabric of life and your inability to mend them? But have you also come before the cross with thanksgiving and now call this day "Good Friday"? This passage may assist you in deepening your gratitude and your resolve. It is from Romano Guardini, The Lord (Regnery, 1954) 466-68:

Mere man . . . is so much smaller than his sin against God, that he can neither contain it nor cope with it. He can commit it, but he is incapable of fully realizing what he has done. He cannot measure his act; he cannot receive it into his life and suffer it through to the end. Though he has committed it he is incapable of expiating it.  It confuses him, troubles him, leaves him desperate but helpless. God alone can 'handle' sin. Only he sees through it, weighs it, judges it with a judgment that condemns the sin but loves the sinner. A man attempting the same would break. This then the love, reestablisher of justice and willer of man's rescue known as "grace.". . .

The plunge from God towards the void which man in his revolt had begun (chute in which the creature can only despair or break) Christ undertook in love. Knowingly, voluntarily, he experienced it with all of the sensitiveness of his divinely human heart.  . . .

Jesus was really destroyed. Cut off in the flower of his age; his work stifled just when it should have taken root; his friends scattered, his honor broken. He no longer had anything, was anything: "a worm and not a man." . . . he had to touch the nadir of a personally experienced agony such as no man has ever dreamed. There the endlessly Beloved One of the Eternal Father brushed the bottom of the pit. . . . from such depths omnipotent love calls new creation into being.

Taking man and his world together, what impenetrable deception, what labyrinthian confusion, all permeating estrangement from God, granitic hardness of heart! This is the terrible load Christ on the cross was to dissolve in God and divinely assimilate into his own thought, heart, life, and agony. Ardent with suffering he was to plunge to that ultimate depth, distance, center where the sacred power which formed the world from nothing could break into a new creation!

Since the Lord's death, this has become reality, in which all things have changed. It is from here that we live --  as far as we are really alive in the sight of God.

If anyone should ask: what is certain in life and death . . . the answer is: The love of Christ. . . . Not people -- not even the best and dearest; not science, or philosophy, or art or any other product of human genius. Also not nature, which is so full of profound deception; neither time nor fate. Not even simply "God": for his wrath has been roused by sin, and how without Christ would we know what to expect from him.

Only Christ's love is certain. . . .Only through Christ do we know that God's love is forgiving. Certain is only that which manifested itself on the cross. What has been said so often and so inadequately is true: The heart of Jesus Christ is the beginning and end of all things.

Pascal on Jesus and the sleeping disciples

A section of Andrea Mantegna's "Agony in the Garden."   c. 1459

From 
Blaise Pascal 
The Mystery of Jesus 

Pensees #553 

Jesus seeks some comfort at least in His three dearest friends, and they are asleep. He prays them to bear with Him for a little, and they leave Him with entire indifference, having so little compassion that it could not prevent their sleeping even for a moment. And thus Jesus was left alone to the wrath of God.

Jesus is alone on the earth, without any one not only to feel and share His suffering, but even to know of it; He and Heaven were alone in that knowledge.

Jesus is in a garden, not of delight as the first Adam, where he lost himself and the whole human race, but in one of agony, where He saved himself and the whole human race.

He suffers this affliction and this desertion in the horror of night.

I believe that Jesus never complained but on this single occasion; but then He complained as if he could no longer bear His extreme suffering. "My soul is sorrowful, even unto death."

Jesus seeks companionship and comfort from men. This is the sole occasion in all His life, as it seems to me. But He receives it not, for His disciples are asleep. Jesus will be in agony even to the end of the world. We must not sleep during that time.

Jesus, in the midst of this universal desertion, including that of His own friends chosen to watch with Him, finding them asleep, is vexed because of the danger to which they expose, not Him, but themselves; He cautions them for their own safety and their own good, with a sincere tenderness for them during their ingratitude, and warns them that the spirit is willing and the flesh weak.

Jesus, finding them still asleep, without being restrained by any consideration for themselves or for Him, has the kindness not to waken them and leaves them in repose.

Jesus prays, uncertain of the will of His Father, and fears death; but, when He knows it, He goes forward to offer Himself to death. Eamus. Processit (John).

Jesus asked of men and was not heard.

Jesus, while His disciples slept, wrought their salvation. He has wrought that of each of the righteous while they slept, both in their nothingness before their birth, and in their sins after their birth.

He prays only once that the cup pass away, and then with submission; and twice that it come if necessary.

Jesus is weary.

Jesus, seeing all His friends asleep and all His enemies wakeful, commits Himself entirely to His Father.

Jesus does not regard in Judas his enmity, but the order of God, which He loves and admits, since He calls him friend.

from Mantegna's "Agony in the Garden."

Jesus tears Himself away from His disciples to enter into His agony; we must tear ourselves away from our nearest and dearest to imitate Him.

Jesus being in agony and in the greatest affliction, let us pray longer.

We implore the mercy of God, not that He may leave us at peace in our vices, that He may deliver us from them.

At Oxford: A new play on Pope John Paul II

THE QUALITY OF MERCY:   A PLAY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE ABOUT THE MESSAGE OF BLESSED JOHN PAUL II. 

Press Release by Leonie Caldecott:

“Through the theatre, man acquires the habit of looking for meaning at a higher and less obvious level. In theatre man attempts a kind of transcendence, endeavoring both to observe and to judge his own truth, in virtue of a transformation... by which he tries to gain clarity about himself.”  Hans Urs von Balthasar

There are many reasons for putting on a play, in Easter Week, about John Paul II.  He is going to be beatified at the end of that week, on the Feast of Divine Mercy, a mere six years after his death.  So we need to remember why he is such an important figure in the Church, a figure for whom Pope Benedict has overturned all the usual norms.  Yet as John Paul II said himself: "I can only be understood from within" (cited in Msgr Oder's book, "Why he is a Saint" p. 133).  For me, this was the cue that led to the writing of THE QUALITY OF MERCY.  I wanted to create a forum in which the man, Karol Wojtyla, could be encountered as a person - a person you might meet, say, on a hike through the mountains.  A person who could help you with the dilemmas and questions of your life.  A person who could lead you to the One in whom your life finds true meaning and richness: Jesus Christ.  In other words, a reliable guide for our times.

I have therefore portrayed the new Beatus, not so much in terms of his life story (this has been brilliantly captured in biographies such as George Weigel's, or in the film "Karol: A man who became Pope"), but rather in terms of his charism, the mystical vision at the heart of his pontificate.  In his very first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, he wrote, "God entered the history of humanity and, as a man, became an actor in that history."  As Father Peter John Cameron has pointed out, it is no coincidence that John Paul II conceived of salvation history in this way.  For as a young man, he was fascinated by the theatre, and had he not become a priest, he would certainly have become a professional actor and director.  Even as a priest, and then a bishop, he encouraged the creation of 'mystery plays'.  As a young man involved with the "Rhapsodic Theatre" in Warsaw, he wrote that "drama fulfills its social function not so much by demonstrating action, as by demonstrating it slowed down, by demonstrating the paths on which it matures in human thought and down which departs from that thought, to express itself externally."

The premise of THE QUALITY OF MERCY is based on this idea.  Where, in the slow reprise of a life well-lived might the dying actor-Pope go, in his mind?  His last words thanking young people for coming to pray for him in St Peters Square during that week made me feel that he was thinking of them in particular.  As the sands of his earthly time touched eternity, might this most pastoral of men not dream of walking, one last time, with a group of young people in the mountains, amidst the beauty of God's creation, helping them to find the beauty of truth in their own lives?  What then would he have said to them, how would he have 'accompanied' them in their own journey of faith?  And most importantly of all, how would he have helped them to understand the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ, as it touched their lives and his own, culminating in that death on the vigil of the feast of Divine Mercy, which he himself had instituted for the whole Church a few years earlier?  How would he make them feel the quality of mercy, and its transformative effect, in their own lives?

THE QUALITY OF MERCY is our attempt to use the very medium which Pope John Paul II appreciated so well, in order to express his vision of faith and his profound understanding of human experience.  It touches on all the principal themes of his teaching, from the Theology of the Body to the mystery of vocation, not in a didactic way. It uses music, vocal recordings, choral speaking, scriptural imagery and realistic drama to encompass that which he had closest to his heart:  the truth that only Love 'makes life alive'.  And only in faith does love find its true expression.  Furthermore, as he said in his Letter to Artists (1999), "unless faith becomes culture, it has not been really welcomed, full lived, humanly rethought."  And for John Paul II, theatre is the great cultural medium for this task. -- Leonie Caldecott


"In situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience... Art is by its nature a kind of appeal to the mystery. Even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption... The Church is especially... keen that in our own time there be a new alliance with artists... I appeal to you, artists of the written and spoken word, of the theatre and music... I appeal especially to you, Christian artists: I wish to remind each of you that you are invited to use your creative intuition to enter into the heart of the mystery of the Incarnate God and at the same time into the mystery of man." (Letter to Artists)

Note: Please visit the Caldecott's website/blog Beauty for Truth's Sake

"This Pascal to whom I owe everything" -- François Mauriac

François Mauriac (1885 – 1970)

François Mauriac published a book What I believe (1962). In a chapter entitled "The debt to Pascal," he said "Without him, I doubt if I would have remained faithful." He said "in a young man, the hidden powers of the flesh and the demands of reason are conjugated against Christ." Pascal showed him the viability and beauty of the faith, ironically in a way that a saint may not, because  Pascal, "despite his genius, remains one us."

But with a more interesting and profound reason he explains why Pascal is so important for each generation of Christians in the modern world. He calls Pascal's "memorial," his testimony to Christ,  a "talisman" and a "charm" to ward off the demons of modernity.  (To read the Memorial of Pascal, click here)

"The negations of the modern world had no effect on those men for whom Pascal had come (and I am one of them)." Mauriac, and others, in a generation that sought escape into drugs and madness, the subconscious and dreams, used Pascal's talisman not to escape reality but to "reach supreme reality, not to change life but to change our own, thanks to a constant surpassing of ourselves." 

If Blaise Pascal, the all too human, and frail genius, could fall to his knees and pray to Christ, and record his testimony of peace and joy, so too Mauriac, or any one of us, can and must do so. "The fire of one night of Pascal was sufficient to illuminate our entire life."

In a previous chapter, "The demon," Mauriac says "men today refuse in advance, and without any preliminary explanation, to believe that the clue to the enigma is given to us outside of the material world."  In the modern world the artists and intellectuals have too often made the refusal: "Modern man has cut off communication with God by a basic negation. He fears being surprised." Pascal undoes that negation and he is surprised by joy. Pascal is a sign -- he signifies that at the beginning of modernity the negation of God was not a function of superior intellect, scientific insight, political enlightenment or  artistic vision. It was an affair of the heart. It was human vanity, and wretchedness. It was a narrowing of vision, a corruption of the heart. At the beginning, Pascal lived his protest and left his notes for the expansion of vision, the restoration of the heart, and integrity of life.

Due to Mauriac I have a better understanding now why Pascal is so important to modern Christians (and similarly is Newman important). Many scientists and philosophers act as if their moral life or religious dispositions have no bearing on their intellectual life. And the general tenor of mind is sceptical, reductionistic and inclined towards disbelief. A Christian must always be on the defensive, apologetic in the weak sense of the word, i.e., yielding, compromising, and seeking approval. We could continually tweak the five ways of Aquinas, explain the powers of the soul, and yet face another reductionist scheme or critique of reason "proving" that our whole enterprise is quaint, wrong headed, "medieval." The Ivy League looks down upon the practice of religion and the science of metaphysics. "Why Mr. Motes, that is medieval, people just don't do that anymore" exclaims the landlady in O'Connor's Wise Blood.  "As long as I do it, I suppose people are still doing it," said Hazel (he was mortifying his flesh). As long as Pascal did it, we can do it (bend the knee in prayer and thanksgiving). So Pascal was there at the founding of the modern age, prophetically warning against the dualism of mind and heart, or rather the loss of heart to sceptical mind, and the blindness to human wretchedness; he opened up the joy of faith in the search and discovery of the "hidden God" and the relish of the beatitudes. Why be on the defensive for one's whole life and being? Pascal says "Rejoice, again I say rejoice." Confident, not on the defensive.


And he goes on the offensive. Mauriac writes  -- "because of his passionate desire to know the singularities and the contradictions in the real man, the least of his Pensees touches a sensitive spot in us, and inevitably awakens a response." His "slightest thought troubles, or harms or irritates." Thus "Pascal is still involved in our quarrels; he is alive."

Pascal's examination of heart provides the threshold to the modern age. The intellectuals or the ambitious may refuse to examine their own heart. But Pascal the prophet continues to call them out -- "you do not know your own wretchedness, or greatness." Pensees §131-- "What sort of freak then is man? How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe! Who will unravel such a tangle? This is certainly beyond scepticism and dogmatism, beyond all philosophy. Man transcends man."

But not knowing the greatness or wretchedness of man, they do not have clue to the measure of human existence. For there is only one. "He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospel." (Memorial) The truth of the heart is not mere feeling, but reflective knowledge of personal existence. The beatitudes are as hard as the wood of the cross, not a soft or pious escape.

Pascal correctly utters these lines in the Memorial -- "Certainty. Certainty. Heartfelt, joy, peace."

That is where Christians must always dwell. And then go about their business in the realm of science, philosophy, politics and the business of the world. Not on the defensive. But in confident faith, and the joy of the victory over the world. 

Pascal is accused of being a fideist. Or of having yielded to emotionalism and the exaltation of feeling.Or of Jansenism and Augustinianism. Or of many other things. But Mauriac suggests -- "This is Pascal's scandal which arouses pity in professional philosophers.  He provokes pity in them but he also shocks them. They consider his crime that of having tried to frighten us, of having taken pleasure in prolonging our anguish to reach his ends. As if this anguish was not in each of us! Pascal does not create in us our troubled conscience, even if it is true he searches for its explanation and proposes to us its remedy."

The self-examination of the heart stands before each person. If one is ready to peer into that abyss, then one may be ready for Pascal.

"Blaise Pascal came to us and held in his hands a light, a lamp of those who are waiting for the return of the Bridegroom, a fire ignited by that flame he saw, with his own eyes, during the night of November 24, 1654, between approximately ten o'clock and twelve thrity. It is that flame which still illuminates those of us who have kept the faith in the God understood by the heart." Mauriac, What I Believe, p. 105

Pascal and Percy on the Jews as a "Sign"

"Walker Percy" by Barry Moser

This image of Walker Percy was drawn by Barry Moser (see a story about him and his work at Image, found here). After the success of the Moviegoer (published 1951) Percy wrote to Carolyn Gordon "Pascal is my spiritual father." The Moviegoer is about the failure to begin the "search" as "everydayness" pulls one to the immediate. Pascal was keen on the search and he railed against the diversions that keep us from it. On the crucial role of the Jews as a sign of the divine presence in the modern world Percy did indeed learn much from his spiritual father.

It is reported that King Louis XIV of France asked Pascal to give him proof of the supernatural. Pascal answered: "Why, the Jews, your Majesty ― the Jews."

In the Pensees Pascal explains why the encounter with the Jews  "amazes me and seems worthy of attention" (L 454) or he says the Jews "attract my attention through a number of striking and singular features apparent in them," (L 451). The term singular will loom as an important part of the Percy account of the Jews.

Pascal is famous at compiling his lists, so here is the list of striking and singular features":

• They are brothers, part of a single family
• They are the oldest family/people known
• Although an ancient people, they have have preserved their tradition (other than in East Lansing MI have you met any Spartans walking around?)
• Their law is ancient, severe, perfect -- and still practiced
• Their book is the oldest, surpassing Homer and Hesiod and others
• They worship one God
• They have received the revelation of divine mystery
• They wait for the Messiah

One may quibble with the claims for "oldest" in some categories, but the conjunction of features remains "striking" and "singular."  The Jews are therefore a sign of something beyond science and universal law; they are a sign of something beyond physical and political existence. According to Pascal they are a sign of the order of the heart, the order of love and divine mystery. The Jewish religion he understands from scripture to be about the "love of God" and they were taught that "God rejected all other things." (L 453) Indeed he says "True Jews and true Christians worship a Messiah who makes them love God." (L 286)

Percy writes similarly in his essay on "Why are You a Catholic?" found in Signposts in a Strange Land (1991):

The only other sign in the world which cannot be encompassed by theory is the Jews, their unique history, their suffering and achievements, what they started (both Judaism and Christianity), and their presence in the here-and-now. The Jews are a stumbling block to theory. They cannot be subsumed under any social or political theory. Even Arnold Toynbee, whose theory of history encompassed all other people, looked foolish when he tried to encompass the Jews. The Jews are both a sign and a stumbling block. That is why they are hated by theorists like Hitler and Stalin. The Jews cannot be gotten around. The great paradox of the Western world is that even though it was in the Judeo-Christian West that modern science arose and flourished, it is Judeo-Christianity which the present-day scientific set of mind finds the most offensive among the world's religions. Judaism is offensive because it claims that God entered into a covenant with a single tribe, with it and no other.  . . . But for the self that finds itself lost in the desert of theory and consumption, there is nothing to do but set out as a pilgrim in the desert in search of a sign. In this desert, that of theory and consumption, there remains only one sign, the Jews. By "the Jews" I mean not only Israel, the exclusive people of God, hut the worldwide ecclesia instituted by one of them, God-become-man, a Jew.

Very Pascalian.  Being lost in consumption is the contemporary version of Pascal's "lost in diversion." Gambling is still part of it -- now on line or available at casinos 24/7 as the day and night dissolve into endless diversion. But we have more, much more, for Pascal's French colleague, Descartes, has triumphed with the "infinity of devices to make our life enjoyable without pain." So too, scientific theory has swallowed up the world of meaning so that Hawking and Dawkins are the popes of the meaning of existence. The presence of Jews stands at the perimeter of the mystery of God. Both Pascal and Percy hearkened to that sign and attempted to make sense of it. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not the God of the philosophers. Hawking and Dawkins are at the top of their game in the order of mind; but the heart? The order of charity? They haven't clue. Pascal had it right --

The infinite distance between body and mind symbolizes the infinitely more infinite distance between mind and charity, for charity is supernatural. All the splendor of greatness lacks luster for those engaged in pursuits of the mind. The greatness of intellectual people is not visible to kings, rich men, captains, who are all great in a carnal sense. The greatness of wisdom, which is nothing if it does not come from God, is not visible to carnal or intellectual people. They are three orders differing in kind .

Pascal and Pope John Paul II

John Paul II often quoted Gaudium et spes §22 -- Christ reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear. As I read through Pascal I found some passages that state the same basic idea. I found a connection made between Pascal and Gaudium et spes in the preparation for the special synod on Europe held in 1989. 

Today in both the East and West, one can easily notice a general desire for the goods of the spirit, a search for a response to the deep questions of human existence and a disquiet and constant yearning after the definitive goal of humanity.  .  .  . the millennia-old culture of Europe still provides a truth capable of satisfying the perennial longings of humanity.

The Church offers the one valid measure for interpreting the decisive moments of human life and undertaking evangelization in a universal manner. "This measure is Christ, the incarnate word of God; in Christ, born, dead and risen, the Church can read the true meaning, the full meaning, of the birth and death of every human being.

Pascal already noted: 'We not only know God through Jesus Christ, but we know ourselves through Jesus Christ, and only through him do we know life and death. Outside of Jesus Christ we do not know what life and death are, who God is, or who we are' (Pensees, n. 548). It is an intuition that the Second Vatican Council expressed with justly famous words. "Only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on true light.... 'Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear' (Gaudium et spes, n. 22). Instructed by Christ, the Church has the task of leading modern man to rediscover the full truth about himself." Lineamenta, Synod on Europe,  L'Osservatore Romano 8 April 1998

The marvellous abyss of love and understanding

Henry Tanner, The Resurrection of Lazarus (1896) Musee d'Orsay, Paris

The passage from scripture reporting that Jesus "groaned in the spirit and was troubled" when he approached the tomb of Lazarus recalls to my mind a deep memory from childhood. When I was about 15 I was present when someone discovered the dead body of a neighbor child, age 10, in the woods near our house. I was a friend of the dead boy's older brother. The police and medical personnel were called; they went to investigate and the draped body was brought out on a gurney; the police and the medical personnel stood around the gurney while the father was called to come from work. I sat with a few friends on the curb about 30 feet from the scene, stunned but curious. Eventually the father arrived, got out of the car and ran to gurney; after a moment or two of whispered conversation the police lifted the draped sheet for an identification of the body and I heard the father emit a groan the likes of which I have never heard before nor since. His head and shoulders collapsed in grief. I left immediately because I knew that curiosity was no longer appropriate to the situation. I was not quite sure what I had heard or witnessed, other than an unendurable sadness.

When I hear this gospel my mind plunges down to that trace of memory and I realize that there exist a bond of love that is near unspeakable. The father could not have simply said "yes, that is my son," he could only groan.  So too Jesus did more than speak about his love for Lazarus, he groaned, but his groan contained more than the unendurable sadness that betokens our human condition (sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt). His groan arises out of a "marvelouss abyss of love and understanding," saith Blessed John Cardinal Newman. Newman preached a sermon on the raising of Lazarus (found here). At the opening of the sermon Newman hits a powerful point:

why did our Lord weep at the grave of Lazarus? He knew He had power to raise him, why should He act the part of those who sorrow for the dead? In attempting any answer to this inquiry, we should ever remember that the thoughts of our Saviour's mind are far beyond our comprehension. Hardly do we enter into the feelings and meaning of men like ourselves, who are gifted with any special talent; even human philosophers or poets are obscure from the depth of their conceptions. What then must be the marvellous abyss of love and understanding in Him who, though partaker of our nature, is the Son of God?

"The marvellous abyss of love and understanding." yes that is it. That is the origin of grief. I thought of the abyss of love between that father and son on a dreadful day in 1967 in Alexandria , Virginia. I stood at the surface and witnessed its powerful depth.

Newman explains that Jesus wept first of all, "from spontaneous tenderness; from the gentleness and mercy, the encompassing loving-kindness and exuberant fostering affection of the Son of God for His own work, the race of man." But also because he saw the Father's good creation, life, "turned to evil," and "the fine gold become dim," that is he the "contrast between Adam, in the day in which he was created, innocent and immortal, and man as the devil had made him, full of the poison of sin and the breath of the grave." And then Newman goes deeper -- "Christ was come to do a deed of mercy, and it was a secret in His own breast. All the love which He felt for Lazarus was a secret from others. He was conscious to Himself He loved him; but none could tell but He how earnest that affection was."

The groan reflected something more than grief -- for "Christ's was a different contemplation; yet attended with its own peculiar emotion. I mean the feeling that He had power to raise up Lazarus. .  .  .  .our Lord and Saviour knew that, while all seemed so dreary and hopeless, in spite of the tears and laments of his friends, in spite of the corpse four days old, of the grave and the stone which was upon it, He had a spell which could overcome death, and He was about to use it. Is there any time more affecting than when you are about to break good news to a friend who has been stricken down by tidings of ill?"

Pope John Paul II picks up on this theme of the mystery of Christ's interiority and his compassion for Lazarus. He said during a general audience: "In so many of these episodes we see appearing from Jesus' words the expression of a will and a power to which he interiorly appealed and which he expressed, one might say, with the greatest naturalness. It was as though the power to give people health, healing and even to bring the dead back to life, belonged to his own mysterious condition."

Pope John Paul II notes that "we find a clear confirmation of Jesus' words, 'My Father is working still and I am working' (Jn 5:17). Moreover, it could be said that we have here an anticipated demonstration of what Jesus will say in the upper room during his Last Supper conversation with the apostles concerning his relations with the Father, and, indeed, concerning his identity in being with the Father. The Gospels show by various miracles-signs that the divine power at work in Jesus Christ extends beyond the human world and is revealed as a power of dominion also over the forces of nature." (I Say to You, Arise!  General Audience  November 18, 1987)

A power  rises out of the abyss of human love and often we do not see it or know it; grief may bring it forth; if we do come to see it, paradoxically, then it is a moment of grief, and therefore borders on weakness or despair. Also arising out of love, the groan of Jesus indicates strength and hope. In the gospel story of the raising of Lazarus that power is brought forth in a great wonder and sign indicating the power of God. "I am the Resurrection and the Life." So we return to Newman to read: "Wherever there is a heart to answer, 'Lord, I believe,' there Christ is present. There our Lord vouchsafes to stand, though unseen—whether over the bed of death or over the grave; whether we ourselves are sinking or those who are dear to us. Blessed be his name! nothing can rob us of this consolation."

The Pensées of Pascal and the Conversion of Judith Caboud

Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662 (author of Pensées)

The music of Bach roused up in the heart and soul of Judith Caboud a desire for the transcendent. But it was the writing of Pascal that brought her to the Church. Assigned to read Pascal's Pensées for her studies in Paris, she followed the argument perfectly. Judith grasped the significance of his apologetic:  "he made a link between science, or I could say pseudoscientific studies that I was doing, and the world of God and true religion."

Her own religious heritage from a Jewish childhood had not brought her to a relationship to God and she saw only a formality of religion. The beauty of culture roused up the desire for God. The various thoughts of Pascal led her to see the way to God.

I have identified the following Pensées she found important for the steps towards conversion; in the Lafuma edition (Penguin edition) they are numbers:

201: "the silence of the infinite spaces frightens me"

622: we seek diversion and we fear to be at rest or to endure silence because we come face to face with our solitude, weakness and emptiness

199: we contemplate the two infinities of the very large and the very small and see the disproportion of man in the world

200: man as a thinking reed, whose glory is to think and to confront our own death

198: we inevitably experience our own inability to find the full truth, as well as the inability to achieve goodness; thus we feel forlorn and as if abandoned on a desert island -- can one find any hope? "Has God left any trace of himself?"

She then turned to the many ruminations by Pascal on scripture and prophecy then led her to this decisive passage from Pensées about the commonality of the Jews and Christians as witnesses to the Messiah --

286: "Two kinds of men in every religion. Among the heathen those who worship animals and others who worship the one God of natural religion. Among the Jews those who were carnal and those who were spiritual, the Christians of the old law. Among the Christians the gross ones, who are Jews of the new law. The carnal Jews awaited a carnal messiah, and the gross Christians believe the Messiah has dispensed them from loving God. True Jews and True Christians worship a Messiah who makes them love God."

Just as Augustine opened the book after hearing "Tolle et lege" and he came to believe when struck by a passage, so too Judith opened Pascal's Pensées to read that passage and she experienced the joy of conversion. Grace poured into her heart. Augustine was fond of Romans 5:5: "Hope does not disappoint us, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."

In her beautiful prose she wrote:

"Millions of stars were sparkling in the cold December night and rays of ineffable light were pouring down through the darkness toward me. Unbearable emotion swelled my heart and tears came to relieve the aching; throbbing truth and something inside of me, were whispering and telling and showing me, in the gushing of sudden brightness around me: "Jesus Christ is God! Jesus Christ is God!" 

She made an act of faith.

 The following is her summary of the book, found on her web page, Hebrew Catholics:

The most striking event was that he himself, Blaise Pascal, had this huge revelation of God as being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and not the God of the philosophers and the scientists. And so I said to myself, “Gee, this guy, he was not even born a Jew, and he found that there must be something to it.” Then I was reading those Pensées by Pascal one December evening. It was already late and the stars were out. I was sitting in this little room in Paris where I was studying, and it was like something had given me a hit on the head. I really felt like something had happened. It was like beaming light that suddenly immersed my soul, and without understanding why, within a second, I said, “Jesus Christ is God.” The young man, Jean, was sitting there. He was there and saw it; he’s a witness, an eyewitness. In fact, he was tired of arguing with me on questions of religion. He could not understand what I was saying. I had fathomed in an intuitive way this mysterious link between the Old and the New Testament. Pascal’s explanation was so luminous to me. Me, I was sitting in obscurity, and all of a sudden this light went on. Pascal said, “Faithful Jews and faithful Christians both adore the Messiah, who makes them love God.” So of course, all of a sudden I wanted to accomplish what I had always secretly desired, that is, to understand what it meant to be a real Jew. And according to this great writer, it was necessary first, therefore, to become a real Christian; this is exactly what happened. In other words, just follow the dotted line. This unexpected grace was on a perfectly logical path, and I took the plunge once more, and this time, hand in hand with Jean, it led me closer to God, to Jesus Christ and His Church.

For good reason did Fr. Oakes call Pascal "the first modern Christian" (see his article here). Pascal turned the scientific mind on itself and showed the proper balance between certitude and doubt; most of all he opened the way to a renewed appreciation of both mind and heart. He was a man who was great in mind (his mathematical and scientific discoveries are monumental) and he was also great in the depth of his thought about the human condition; at the outset of an age that sought to reduce man and master nature (shades of the "Abolition of Man"), he showed true greatness of heart and love of wisdom.

The Beauty of Bach and the Conversion of Judith Caboud

In her book Judith Caboud gives the story of her conversion to the Catholic faith. (The book is entitled, Where Time Becomes Space, and the author is listed as Judith Antony). There is a summary of her book on the web here. One factor was the beauty of music, especially Bach. 

As a teenager Judith heard the music of Bach and recounts that "on hearing this sound, I burst out crying. I said, 'What is this music? I never heard such a thing in my life!' It was the second orchestra suite by Johann Sebastian Bach. [ find a short part of it here on You Tube] After that, every week it was like going to treasure island, that is, a place where I could discover marvelous things. This is why classical music became very important because it took me into another world, and this other world was one of beauty."

Judith writes: "That beautiful music of Bach was an intimation of heaven. It came from somewhere, from someone; so there was something else." (p. 26, Where Time Becomes Space)

Pope Benedict XVI said in a speech the following:

The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes, so that later, from this experience, we take the criteria for judgment and can correctly evaluate the arguments. For me an unforgettable experience was the Bach concert that Leonard Bernstein conducted in Munich after the sudden death of Karl Richter. I was sitting next to the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann. When the last note of one of the great Thomas-Kantor-Cantatas triumphantly faded away, we looked at each other spontaneously and right then we said: "Anyone who has heard this, knows that the faith is true." The music had such an extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no longer by deduction, but by the impact on our hearts, that it could not have originated from nothingness, but could only have come to be through the power of the Truth that became real in the composer's inspiration. [Message to Communion and Liberation, August 2002, Rimini, Italy, made available May 2, 2005, Zenit)

It has been reported that the precise music Pope Benedict heard was: the choral "Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden" (St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244), followed by the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major (BWV 1048), the cantata No. 140 "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme" (BWV 140) and the Magnificat in D major (BWV 243) in second part. (you tube links provided; additional parts of the Magnificat are found to the right of the screen of the first part)

Judith Cabaud traveled to France and met a young man who showed her many of the beautiful places in Paris. She said "I was not ready to see the connection between beauty and absolute reality." (p. 80)

 She continued her studies in Paris and took in much of the French culture and history; she reports that she had a mistrust of politics and feared collectivism; she thought religion was "another complicated aspect of that same collectivization that crushes the individual with a system of constraint." (p. 92) And yet she had a dream in which she saw "a white cross stood gleaming and brilliant in front of me. It was immovable and persistent. I awoke a little frightened."

It took the study of Pascal to bring Judith to see the light of faith. (To be continued)

Pope Marks Anniversary of John Paul II's Death

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 3, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI today affirmed that his predecessor was in his prayers Saturday, the sixth anniversary of the Polish Pontiff's death.

The Pope referred to Venerable John Paul II's death April 2, 2005, during his traditional address after praying the midday Angelus.

"Because of his upcoming beatification, I did not celebrate the traditional Mass of suffrage for him, but I recalled him affectionately in prayer, as I think all of you did," Benedict XVI said.

John Paul II will be beatified May 1.

Benedict XVI noted the approaching date: "While through the Lenten journey we prepare for the feast of Easter, we also draw near with joy to the day in which we will be able to venerate this great Pontiff and witness of Christ as Blessed, and entrust ourselves still more to his intercession."