Enraptured by beauty on the Feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa

August 26 is the feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa.  In 1997 Pope John Paul II summed up the importance of the shrine to the Polish people:

"Jasna Góra is the place where our Nation down the centuries has come together to bear witness to its faith and to its attachment to the community of the Church of Christ. Many times we used to come here, asking Mary for help in the struggle to preserve fidelity to God, the Cross, the Gospel, the Holy Church and her Shepherds. Here we accepted the duties of the Christian life. At the feet of Our Lady of Jasna Góra we found the strength to remain faithful to the Church, when she was persecuted, when she had to keep silent and suffer. We always said 'yes' to the Church, and this Christian attitude has been a great act of love for her. For the Church is our spiritual mother. It is thanks to her that 'we should be called children of God; and so we are' (cf 1 Jn 3:1). The Church is inscribed for ever in the history of our Nation, keeping careful watch over the destiny of her children, especially in times of humiliation, war, persecution or loss of independence." 4 June 1997, found here

 At his last visit to Jasna Gora and the Cathedral of Czestochowa before he was elected Pope (Sept 16, 1978)  Cardinal Wojtyla spoke about the threat of secularism and he challenged the communist administrators of the country who were imposing secularism upon the society and the education in Poland. He said: "Culture cannot be created by administrative means! Administrative means can only be used to destroy culture. This is very important, and this must be remembered in our times." (found in The Making of the Pope of the Millennium, ed. Adam Boniecki, MIC, 2000, p. 831). We may think this extreme statement was only aimed at communist officials. Yet ideology is only part of the danger of rule by administrators. Administrators manage an association with goals and purposes of the communal life; managers arrange external resources for the purposes of the institution or association. In other words, administration is a service to a vital and dynamic organism, or culture. It is a phenomenon of modern society, socialist and capitalist, that administrators and managers tend to usurp the very life of an institution as they divert resources, impose rules, in the name of some goal or purpose other than that to which the association was originally dedicated. MacIntyre has explained this well in After Virtue; Wojtyla saw it first hand. The communist claimed special knowledge and moral superiority to make such a usurpation. Cardinal Wojtyla had to challenge them. But when he said "this must be remembered in our time," he prophetically saw beyond the Polish communists to the problem of the Church in the Modern World.

Thus the problem of the rule of administrators must be remembered in our country today as well. Administrators take hold of our institutions in the name of efficiency or in the name of some shallow program which they sell through empty slogans. They deem themselves "leaders" and come to cajole, manipulate or bully the those who are the repository of cultural life and activity. In the Academy, for example, the initiatives for true cultural renewal must come through those encounters of faculty and students in their common pursuit of truth.

Cardinal Wojtyla encouraged the young, to parents  and  those responsible for education and culture as follows: "We must be enraptured! We must create a community of the enraptured! We must create a climate of enrapture! . . . We need this rapture, so that the lives of man, of society, of the nation may be filled with beauty. That beauty which is the foundation and the wellspring of culture." (Sept 16 1978; Ibid., p. 830.)

Secularism is fatal to culture because it can no longer hold out an enrapturing vision of the world. Marxism attempts to "immanentize the eschaton" in the future and liberalism promises individual satisfactions or a hedonistic "now." Only the holy can provide the beauty that enraptures the heart. "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee, O Lord." Neither liberal nor Marxist, the "manager"  manipulates for maintaining their own power or validating their own "competence" or "leadership." But they cannot create or sustain culture, and they often destroy it or suck its energies dry. Wojtyla saw it in the communist manager; we see it in the bureaucratic leaders of our day. Administrative control over education is fatal to education because they must always traffic with the externals of education - the numbers, the money, the PR. The true life of education remains the liberal arts core, the untrammelled pursuit of the true, the good and the beautiful. The springs of culture are indestructible, despite the secularists and the managers. "There lives the deepest freshness deep down things." In Redemptor hominis John Paul II said in man's "creative restlessness beats and pulsates what is most deeply human -- the search for truth, the insatiable need for the good, hunger for freedom, nostalgia for the beautiful, and the voice of conscience. Seeking to see man as it were with 'the eyes of Christ himself', the Church becomes more and more aware that she is the guardian of a great treasure, which she may not waste but must continually increase." §18 Christian humanism contains the seeds of a constant renewal of culture.

Marian devotion  plays an important role in the renewal of authentic culture.  John Paul II said that in Mary "there was accomplished the stupendous and complete victory of good over evil, of love over hatred, of grace over sin." Paul VI said "she is the beginning of the better world." In Fides et ratio  John Paul designated Mary a model for faith and reason, as the table of wisdom, the seat of wisdom. The Polish people make pilgrimage to Jasna Gora to seek the spring of culture: "Jasna Góra is the shrine of the Nation, the confessional and the altar. It is the place where Poles find spiritual transformation and renewal of life. May it remain so for ever." (John Paul II 1997) So too we need to be pilgrims on the way (viator), climbing the bright hill  (Jasna Góra) towards the seat of Wisdom.

The striking of a "Mighty Chord" and the Center of History

"Ever since Christ's Ascension, on earth there has been a single confident expectation" Guardini

"Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,  in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed."

Consider a few passages by John Paul II and one by Guardini:

Passage 1 -- by Blessed John Paul II From ECCLESIA DE EUCHARISTIA §20. "A significant consequence of the eschatological tension inherent in the Eucharist is also the fact that it spurs us on our journey through history and plants a seed of living hope in our daily commitment to the work before us."

Passage 2 - by Blessed John Paul II, MANE NOBISCUM DOMINE §6 "Jesus Christ stands at the centre not just of the history of the Church, but also the history of humanity. In him, all things are drawn together. How could we forget the enthusiasm with which the Second Vatican Council, quoting Pope Paul VI, proclaimed that Christ is “the goal of human history, the focal point of the desires of history and civilization, the centre of mankind, the joy of all hearts, and the fulfilment of all aspirations”?(Gaudium et spes 45) The Council's teaching gave added depth to our understanding of the nature of the Church, and gave believers a clearer insight not only into the mysteries of faith but also into earthly realities, seen in the light of Christ. In the Incarnate Word, both the mystery of God and the mystery of man are revealed.(GS 24) In him, humanity finds redemption and fulfilment."

Passage 3 - by Romano Guardini, from The rosary of Our Lady

"When the Lord lifted himself from the earth, there began the wait 'until He comes.' Ever since Christ's Ascension, on earth there has been a single confident expectation; and faith means to persevere in expectation. For him who has no faith, events take place as though their meaning lay in themselves. The ordinary and the exceptional, the high and the low, the frightful and the beautiful -- everything that makes history -- all are regarded as if each was by itself and there was nothing besides. In truth, the Lord's departure was like the striking of a mighty chord that is now suspended in the air waiting to float away and come to rest. But only with Christ's return will all things be fulfilled."

What Guardini's passage helps me to better understand is the oft asserted remark by John Paul II that Christ is at the center of history. This could be taken to mean that Christ enters history as a point on a time line -- there is life before Christ and life after Christ. Events prior provide signs and point to his coming; and events after refer back to his life and take their rise from the new possibilities he established through his teaching, death and resurrection. Or in addition, Christ is at the center of history insofar as every field of meaning, and therefore any action can be related to the life of Christ. These are no doubt true. But Guardini locates the "center of history" through "expectation." We stand between his coming many years ago in the town of Bethlehem and his coming again at the end of time. So the center of history is to be found, not by looking on a time grid, nor by finding an abstract point of reference, but concretely, existentially, simply by looking up, once and a while, to ponder Christ's Ascension into Heaven. And then perhaps looking down on the ground at cemeteries of old wherein many lie sleeping, waiting to wake at the sound of the trumpet. We can then hear the mighty chord "now suspended in the air." Then the high and low, the ordinary and the exceptional, the frightful and the beautiful, all vibrate in attunement to that mighty chord of dying and rising, and truth triumphs at last. And we can just quietly hum an alleluia or two. Or better yet exclaim with the apostle  -- "to me, to live is Jesus, and to die is gain."

Cardinal Collins on St Dominic and evangelization

Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto, Canada spoke to the Knights of Columbus on the Feast day of St. Dominic. His talk brings together some points taken up in our last few blogs on preaching and prayer, and he makes the case so clearly. Find the complete talk here. The following excerpts, with emphases added, are very illuminating.

Our mission, like that of each generation of Christians, is to make Christ known in the age in which we live, and we should celebrate the fact that the mysteries of faith are being proclaimed by word and witness to the ends of the earth. But we should not be surprised at the storms that occur when the divine wisdom of the Gospel confronts the human wisdom of this age. We can learn from the readings today, and from the example of St Dominic, whose feast we celebrate, we can learn how to engage effectively in the struggle to evangelize the world of this age, which so often is not attentive to the wisdom of the cross. . .

We proclaim the supernatural wisdom of the Gospel, which is in harmony with true human wisdom, whether it be in affirming the sanctity of life, or of marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman, faithful in love and open to the gift of life, or of other fundamental realities that are clearly evident by the light of faith and reason. But we do so in a social environment that is shaped by the false wisdom of this age that is increasingly hostile to Christian faith, and even blind to what human reason itself reveals. . . .

The false wisdom of the age is communicated with extraordinary effectiveness, through touching personal stories that convey a message of moral relativism, and through the skilful promotion of an individualism that corrodes the bonds of love, and ultimately leads to a discordant society of lonely people, without purpose and without peace. While the rulers of this age persuasively tell stories, we tend to issue documents, full of truth, but unread. Too often the unholy rhetoric of de-evangelization is more creative, more persuasive, more effective than the holy rhetoric of re-evangelization.

But in the human heart there is a yearning for truth, especially since a diet of illusion eventually robs us of inner peace, and causes misery in society. It is spiritual and intellectual junk food, delicious but incapable of sustaining life. Long ago St Augustine spoke of the deep human reality that is as true today as it was in his age: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Our mission is to offer to our age the life giving Gospel alternative to the superficially attractive wisdom of this age, and we need to do so persuasively, to get through to people, including Catholics, who are bewitched by the wisdom of this age.

On today’s feast, we look to the example of St Dominic, who in the early 13th century was sent by God to the rescue the Church at a time when it faced a challenge superficially different but fundamentally similar to the one we face today. . . .  St Dominic saw the problem clearly, and was guided by the Holy Spirit to see the solution, one which addressed not the symptoms of the problem, but its cause.

His approach of prayer, of personal and communal example, and of the effective preaching of Christ, can guide us today. First, prayer. We need to attend to the fundamentals.  As we busily design strategies to advance the new evangelization, we need to build upon the bedrock of prayer, and not just give it lip service. Prayer is not just pious icing on the cake; in many ways, it is the cake. As St Benedict says in the Prologue of his Rule: “whatever good work you begin to do, beg of Him with most earnest prayer to perfect it.” . . .

The second point that St Dominic emphasized was personal and communal example. .  .  . St Dominic insisted that the preachers live with manifest austerity and Christian integrity, obeying the invitation of the Lord in today’s Gospel to leave all behind to follow him. . . .

St Dominic and his companions gave a witness of joyful, loving orthodoxy, and so must we, if we are to proclaim the Good News effectively both to this secular society, so cynical about religion, and to those who once were practicing Catholics but have left us. An old priest at the seminary at which I studied used to say: the faith that is sad, or mad, and not glad is bad. The power of the rulers of this world will only be conquered by the example of joyful, practical love. . . .

As we celebrate this Feast of St Dominic, he guides us as we confront the challenges of these days by laying before us three keys to evangelization: prayer, personal example, and a resolve to communicate the Gospel effectively to the people of our age.

Cardinal Journet on preaching and the illumination of the heart

Available from Ignatius Press

Cardinal Journet explains the importance of the preaching of the Church (he was a member of the Order of Preachers, a friend of Jacques Maritain and Pope Paul VI).

"From the moment the Word became flesh, he established at the heart of the universe a meeting point incomparably better than that which Adam had been." (p 39)

Preaching will bring about an "illumination of the heart," -- Cardinal Journet explains that two types of actions may be considered in relation to Christ as God and man, the ascending and descending mediation of Christ. The ascending -- "those that begin with his humanity and mount upwward toward God: his prayer, adoration, offering, merit, supplication"; the descending -- "those that descend from God to man through Christ: miracles, healings, illuminations of the heart, forgiveness of sins, final resurrection of the dead."

Cardinal Journet elaborates in a profound way on the many graces that flow from Christ. Through his Kingship "he dispenses the truth, preaches the good news, and teaches with authority" (Mt 7:29) (p. 56)

Thus, "all the graces of light, flowing from Christ's divinity, are gathered in his intelligence before being poured out on all men, in order to enlighten and illumine them, both those who are near and those who are far off." Teaching by contact is essential to the spreading of the kingdom of God. "How are they to hear without a preacher?" (Rom 10:15) The apostles were sent to the ends of the earth and to the end of time. The whole Church participates in the spiritual kingship of Christ in the witness to truth.

And "as long as this world continues, the interior illuminations will not abandon the preaching of the Gospel, the exterior announcing of the good news."

The Lord desired to retain "in the midst of the many human voices carrying human messages in which error and truth are mixed, one human voice carrying a message that is divine." I am reminded of St Thomas's argument in the very opening of the Summa why we need more than philosophy. For philosophers have found the truth, but only a very few have done so, after a very long time, and mixed with many errors. Thus it was fitting for God to reveal the truth that is necessary for attaining the true purpose of human life and eternal redemption.

Journet continues: "He desired that, in such a way, the supreme, eternal, and divine salvation be proposed to men under a supremely human form, in the manner of an invitation, which could often be very gentle, sometimes threatening, but salutary." (p. 57)

The exterior announcing of the good news -- by contact -- this is why Blessed John Paul II traveled over 680,000 miles and visited 129 countries. Over 17,600,000 attended his Wednesday audiences. "One human voice carrying a message that is divine." The John Paul II Forum assists in its humble way the continuation of his voice, and his message, received from Christ, of divine mercy.

An additional thought: Blessed  John Paul II instituted the "mysteries of Light" because the "whole mystery of Christ is a mystery of light. He is the 'light of the world.'" Yet this truth "emerges in a special way during the years of his public life, when he proclaims the Gospel of the Kingdom." (On the Most Holy Rosary §21)

Faith affirms primacy of God in the intelligence . .

On the feast day of St. Dominic we should recall the statement of Blessed John Paul II on the example of St Dominic for faith:

"The first of the principles of faith affirms the absolute primacy of God in the intelligence, in the heart, in the life of man. You know how well St. Dominic responded to this requirement of faith in his religious life: 'He spoke only with God or of God.' If one does not accept this subordination, if one exalts the greatness of man to the detriment of the primacy of God, one arrives at the failure of ideologies that postulate the self-sufficiency of man and give rise to the proliferation of errors which the modern world bears the weight and of which it does not succeed in breaking the cultural and psychological yoke." L'Osservatore Romano, 5 Sept. 1983, p. 4

Faith is a gift in the order of intelligence. It is not a matter of sentiment, feeling, or wish. Maritain wrote: "The truth of Faith is the infinitely transcendent truth of the mystery of God." (Peasant of the Garonne, p. 89) Maritain cites numerous passages from scripture concerning the truth of faith as the truth of God. This torrent of passages overwhelms us in the boldness of the assertion of faith as truth. Any one of these passages are worthy of meditation on this feast day of St Dominic, whose order's motto is "Veritas." Here is Maritain's list:

1 John 5:6 The Spirit is Truth

2 John 3 In truth and love

3 John 4, 8 my children follow the truth

1 John 3:19 We are of the truth

Rom 1:18 men by their wickedness hold truth captive of injustice

2 Thessal. 2:10, 12   they who persih or are condemned  . . did not believe in truth

1 Tim 2:4 God desires all to be saved and come to knowledge of the Truth

1 Cor 13:6 joy in truth

Ephes. 4:24 holiness of truth

James 1:18 word of truth

John 14:6 I am the way, the truth . .

18:37 For this I was born . . . to bear witness to Truth

4:24 worship in Spirit and Truth

14:17 and 15:26 and 16:13 on The Spirit of Truth

17:17,19 sanctify them in Truth

8:32 the truth will make you free

1:9 the True Light

1:14 glory of the Word is "full of grace and truth"

1:17 Truth came through Jesus Christ

As a minimum Maritain points out that a Christian cannot possibly be a relativist. In addition, a Christian is committed to the possibility of Truth and philosophically refuses to be confined by modern idealism. Maritain asks "in what drawer of [Kant's] Critique [of Pure Reason] must we put the terms the assertions uttered by our Lord?" (99) Thus he says "the truth of divine revelation throws us to the heart of He who is -- and of what is, with an absolute violence which pulverizes any claim to make our mind the rule of what it knows, or to make what it knows a product of its own innate forms organizing phenomenona."

That spiritual son of St Dominic, St Thomas Aquinas, is the Apostle of Our time, because he is an apostle of Truth. Maritain explains:

The disease afflicting the modern world is in the first place a disease of the mind:  it began in the mind, it has now attacked the roots of the mind.  Is it surprising that the world should seem to us shrouded in darkness? Sioculus tuus fuerit nequam, totum corpus tuum tenebrosum erit.  (Luke 11:34 - The light of thy body is thy eye. If thy eye be single, thy whole body will be lightsome: but if it be evil, thy body also will be darksome. Take heed therefore, that the light which is in thee, be not darkness.) Just as at the moment when the original sin was committed all the harmony of the human being was shattered, because the order that insists that the reason shall be subject to God had first been violated, so at the root of all our disorders there is apparent, in the first place and above all, a rupture in the supreme ordinations of the mind.  The responsibility of philosophers in this respect is enormous.  In the sixteenth century, and more particularly in the age of Descartes, the interior hierarchies of the virtue of reason were shattered.  Philosophy abandoned theology to assert its own claim to be considered the supreme science, and, the mathematical science of the sensible world and its phenomena taking precedence at the same time over metaphysics, the human mind began to profess independence of God and being.  . . .  The revolution inaugurated by Descartes and continued by the philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which merely let loose the destructive forces for ever active in the minds of the children of Adam, is an infinitely greater historical cataclysm than the most formidable upheavals of the crust of the earth or the economy of the nations. --  Jacques Maritain, “The Apostle Of Our Time,” chap 3 of  St. Thomas Aquinas (1930) PP. 56-57

The Church and Catholic educators, and most Catholic universities, have abandoned St Thomas at the peril of faith. Marx or Heidegger, Freud or Kant, Derrida or Foucault? Well as John Paul II reminds us: "If one does not accept this subordination . . . one arrives at the failure of ideologies that postulate the self-sufficiency of man and give rise to the proliferation of errors which the modern world bears the weight and of which it does not succeed in breaking the cultural and psychological yoke." Nothing less than the primacy of God in intelligence will save and renew humanity. And we have yet to speak of the primacy of God in the heart . . . . and the primacy of God in the life of man. St. Dominic has much to teach us. He loved the Truth Incarnate.

Transfiguration and the death of Pope Paul VI

Pope Paul VI, Audience Hall, May 1976

Pope John Paul II would always mention in his homilies on the Feast of the Transfiguration the fact that his predecessor Pope Paul VI died on August 6, 1978. Here are two excerpts from homilies dating 1999 and 2000:

We, pilgrims on earth, are granted to rejoice in the company of the transfigured Lord when we immerse ourselves in the things of above through prayer and the celebration of the divine mysteries. But, like the disciples, we too must descend from Tabor into daily life where human events challenge our faith. On the mountain we saw; on the paths of life we are asked tirelessly to proclaim the Gospel which illuminates the steps of believers.

This deep spiritual conviction guided the whole ecclesial mission of my venerable Predecessor, the Servant of God Paul VI, who returned to the Father's house precisely on the Feast of the Transfiguration, 21 years ago now. In the reflection he had planned to give at the Angelus on that day, 6 August 1978, he said: 'The Transfiguration of the Lord, recalled by the liturgy of today's solemnity throws a dazzling light on our daily life, and makes us turn our mind to the immortal destiny which that fact foreshadows'. Yes! Paul VI reminds us: we are made for eternity and eternity begins at this very moment, since the Lord is among us and lives with and in his Church.  (August 6, 1999)

Today's liturgy invites us to turn our gaze to the face of the Son of God who, as the Synoptics unanimously attest, is transfigured on the mountain before Peter, James and John, while the Father's voice proclaims from the cloud:  "This is my beloved Son; listen to him" (Mk 9: 7). St Peter will recall the event with emotion, saying:  "We were eye witnesseses of his majesty" (2 Pt 1: 16).

In our era, pervaded by the so-called "image culture", the desire to be able fill one's eyes with the figure of the divine Master becomes more intense, but it is appropriate to recall his words:  "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe" (Jn 20: 29). It was precisely with his eyes of faith fixed on the adorable face of Christ, true man and true God, that the revered and unforgettable Paul VI lived. Contemplating him with burning and impassioned love, he said:  "Christ is beauty, human and divine beauty, the beauty of reality, of truth, of life" (General Audience, 13 January 1971; L'Osservatore Romano English edition, 21 January 1971, p. 12). And he added:  "The figure of Christ presents, over and above the charm of his merciful gentleness, an aspect which is grave and strong, formidable, if you like, when dealing with cowardice, hypocrisy, injustice and cruelty, but never lacking a sovereign aura of love" (General Audience, 27 January 1971; L'Osservatore Romano English edition, 4 February 1971, p. 12).

As we approach the altar with grateful hearts, praying for the blessed soul of this great Pontiff, we also wish, like him and like the disciples, to turn our gaze to the radiant face of the Son of God to be illumined by it. Let us ask God, through the intercession of Mary, Teacher of faith and contemplation, to enable us to receive within us the light that shines brightly on the face of Christ, so that we may reflect its image on everyone we meet.

(Aug 6 2000)