The world is the greatest of all visible things, just as God is the greatest of all that is invisible. But we see that the world is, and we believe that God is. That God made the world we can believe from no one with greater certainty than from God himself, who said in the Sacred Scriptures through the words of the prophet: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
—Saint Augustine, City of God 11, 4
NICOLAS DIAT: In the midst of so many responsibilities, requests, and worries in the papal administration, how does Africa continue to be for you a spiritual rock?
ROBERT CARDINAL SARAH: I must admit that when I was called to the Roman Curia by John Paul II, in October 2001, I was not very enthusiastic. I had to leave a little country where there were only three of us bishops, and our Church remained very poor. I kept thinking about that difficult saying in the Gospel: “To every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Mt 25:29).
Worse yet, several weeks later, my first Christmas far from my country and from the Christians of Guinea was horrible. I was nostalgic, sad to be far away from my cathedral, from joyous songs and the warmth of African Christmases. At the Pontifical Urban University, on the Janiculum Hill where I was living then, I celebrated Midnight Mass for a handful of seminarians. Then, on December 25, all the young men left for their parishes or to stay with the families of friends. I was overwhelmed by the solitude. I could no longer find the salt of African fervor.
During those first months in Rome, I felt rather like an uprooted tree. Then, with time, I appreciated God’s call for me to carry out a new mission in the service of the pope. Even though I still felt homesick, the face of Bernardin Cardinal Gantin, that great servant of Africa, was constantly before my eyes. In the depths of my heart, I heard the sonorous echo of his very moving words: “All my Christian love is summed up in these simple words: God, Jesus Christ, the pope, the Blessed Virgin: supreme realities that Rome caused me to discover, love, and serve. For this too, how can I ever thank the Lord enough?” I did not forget Africa, but I was happy with the scope of my task. I know that I benefited from many graces because of the very special mission of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. Every day, I could meet with the bishops of dioceses from all over the world who came to Rome to speak to us about their missionary achievements and progress. God snatched me away from my beloved country, but I had the honor of working in the service of his entire flock.
When the health of my former prefect, Cardinal Dias, declined, I went alone to the various discussions with Benedict XVI so as to submit to him the possible episcopal appointments he had to make according to the studies and the proposals of the congregation, which were examined meticulously by the Assembly of the Ordinaria. How can I forget the richness, the simplicity, and the depth of my conversations with this great pope? It is quite clear to me that I never would have experienced such moments if I had stayed in Conakry.
From then on my attachment to my native land was doubled by an obligation to defend it against the threats looming over it because of globalization and the new global ethic promoted by the secularized West. As part of its identity, Africa is open to transcendence, to adoration, and to the glory of God. The African peoples respect human life, but they look beyond it by seeking eternity. The soul of Africa always opens toward God. Unlike a large part of the West, this continent has a fundamentally theocentric vision. Material concerns are always secondary. In this life, the African knows that he is only a sojourner.
Despite the more or less underground programs that seek to destroy its spiritual resources, the springtime of God remains for a good part of Africa. I know that Benedict XVI understood the features of the African soul profoundly when he wrote: “Africa is the depository of an immense treasure. . . [it] constitutes an immense spiritual ‘lung’ for a humanity that appears to be in a crisis of faith and hope.”1 If my land continues to suffer, it is because its springtime is continuing according to the divine plan.
Before leaving Rome to return to his native country, Benin, Cardinal Gantin said that he was like a banana tree. When this tree has yielded its fruits, people cut it down. But there is always a shoot that sprouts up; indeed, he thought that I was that new shoot. . . The cardinal was a marvelous example. He conveyed to me the greatness and nobility of his sentiments toward our continent, and I cannot forget how well he understood the depth of African sincerity with respect to the invisible. Bernard Gantin used to say: “God does not ask me for success, but for love. Now true love does not come primarily through words but through the heart. Everything else is secondary and perishable. God alone is essential and eternal. And love allows us to resemble him a little.”
And so the men and women of Africa try to resemble God a little. They see in this quest the most wonderful adventure that man can experience here below. Their eyes are not fixed on earthly realities, and I know that this spiritual search is fruitful. Because despite the wars, the poverty, the harshness of nature, God gives much to his children who seek him, and even more than what they dare to ask from him. Africa loves to lift up its eyes toward heaven, and God often sends beautiful messages to those who truly love him.
What is the finest achievement of the Church?
God alone knows! In any case, the charitable activity of the Church on behalf of the poor and the needy is extraordinary. The Church has always fought to reduce the material and spiritual poverty of the peoples. The network of the 165 branches of Caritas throughout the world, Catholic charitable structures and organizations (such as the Order of Malta) that strive to put the Gospel into practice, the Church’s commitment to education and healthcare and to the defense of the dignity of the human person, her goodwill efforts placed at the service of the poorest of the poor, are a peerless army that work to relieve sufferings. God has granted us success in our exceptional charitable work for the weakest.
If I had not benefited from the Church’s aid, I would not be with you right now. From her origins, the Spouse of Christ always chose to go to the farthest limits of the world to help people who owned nothing. The Holy Ghost Fathers in my little village were part of that remarkable tradition of priests magnetized by the breath of God to such an extent that they were capable of things that were humanly impossible.
Over the course of the centuries, God’s greatest gift is to have sent, after Christ, saints who gave their lives for the poorest of the poor. Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint John Bosco, Saint Daniel Comboni, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta thought of those who were no longer of interest to anyone. The Church’s victory is engraved on the hearts of all the poor people she has saved for generations.
Thousands of priests and religious showed a matchless tenacity, despite serious obstacles, in carrying out their missions of charity. And the greatest charity of all is to reveal God manifested in his Son on the Cross. Thanks to the example of these men and women of God, the work of evangelizing and humanizing our societies met with great success.
It is important to understand the impact of charitable activity. For Christians, the essential thing is never the material and social assistance in itself, but the fight against spiritual poverty. From this perspective, as a corollary to the immense gift that God has given her, the Church has the serious obligation never to give up.
The most beautiful action on this earth, therefore, is still to restore to men their equal dignity as children of heaven and their ability to be open to the eternal light.
Thanks to the poor, the Church’s victory is always humble and hidden, far from deceptive trappings.
What have been the Church’s defeats?
If you are referring to the Church as a society and not to her essential reality as the Mystical Body of Christ, one fatal error would be to emphasize social, economic, or, worse, political work to the detriment of evangelization. Francis’ first words, in the Sistine Chapel, a few hours after his election to the See of Peter, are especially eloquent: “We can walk as much as we want, we can build many things, but if we do not profess Jesus Christ, things go wrong. We may become a charitable NGO, but not the Church, the Bride of the Lord. When we are not walking, we stop moving. When we are not building on the stones, what happens? The same thing that happens to children on the beach when they build sandcastles: everything is swept away, there is no solidity.” When Christ is no longer proclaimed, it is therefore no longer about the Church. Because the Church is holy, apostolic, and missionary.
In his book Threshold of Hope, John Paul II wrote that “God is always on the side of the suffering.”2 How do you interpret this sentence?
When God appeared to Moses, he told him: “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them” (Ex 3:7-8).
God always sides with those who weep. In how many psalms do we read that God never abandons the poor? From a human perspective, we often have a feeling of rebellion when divine aid appears to be absent in the face of adversity. But throughout my journeys in the poorest countries of the world, I have observed that God remained much more present that we could ever have imagined. Indeed, through these trials and physical miseries, I have seen with my own eyes how God transforms the souls of the poor through obscure, humble sufferings that cleanse their wounds. In observing the poor, I too have learned to say, in poverty: My God, I am glad about all the trials I have experienced, and I thank you in advance for all the ones yet to come. I hope they will help to bandage the wounds of the world.
I am not forgetting the great saints whom God sent to die with the poor, such as Father Damien. After arriving on May 10, 1873, in Molokai, in the Hawaiian Islands, Saint Damien Josef de Veuster volunteered to be God’s presence in the midst of the lepers whom no one wanted to visit. Damien knew perfectly well that he had no chance of returning alive from such an adventure. After ten years of mission work in the midst of those unfortunate creatures, who had been corralled, like livestock waiting for the slaughterhouse, he contracted leprosy, which began to gnaw away at him, and it inevitably destroyed him. Yet he had chosen to give his all to the dying of Molokai for the love of God. He celebrated his last Mass, completely exhausted by leprosy, on March 28, 1889, a few days before being carried off to the Father of all mercies.
When I had the opportunity to converse with Mother Teresa, I saw a woman who was completely immersed in God. Her face had no special human beauty, but a simple, magnificent interior light, the reflection of a fire that can shine through only by ongoing contact with God. Within her dwelt a presence, a simplicity, and a serenity that came from Christ, whom she contemplated in the tabernacle for hours. Indeed, Mother Teresa attracted people, because a little bit of heaven had already come down into her soul. Her humility was that of the comrades and friends of God. The frailty of her voice and the power of her words were the tangible sign of a woman who was literally immersed in God.
Mother Teresa was acutely aware of God’s true tenderness for men and his loving care for the poor.
Often, to reassure ourselves, we say that God writes straight with crooked lines. . . .
Considering my own journey, I can say that nothing was simple. My life was a genuine pilgrimage from one continent to another, from one country to another, from one seminary to another, from a simple parish to the Archdiocesan See of Conakry, in complex national political circumstances, then from my dear Guinea to the Eternal City. God willed this difficult path, the better to teach me that here below men are never definitively at home.
As Christ’s disciples, we are constantly on an exodus. Christians always remain nomads, in search of God, on a difficult but rewarding pilgrimage. It is important for them to remain attentive to God’s will.
Often, like Abraham, we do not know where God is leading us. Whereas we would like a stable, perfect universe, the human path is torturous, winding, and muddy, like the one that leads to my poor village of Ourous. However, we must never forget that man is never alone. Despite the most difficult appearances, God ultimately leads us toward perfection, sanctity, and the complete fulfillment of our own vocation. A life can seem to be a tragedy, but God knows the exact meaning of everything. Our Father is carrying out a plan for each of us. He simply asks man to be docile and attentive to the messages that he ceaselessly sends us. He may subject us to insults or overwhelming slander in order to teach us gentleness and humility.
Along this path, we must not forget God’s magnificent words to Abraham: “Walk before me, my child, and be blameless” (cf. Gen 17:1). There is a hope of God in man, and a hope of man in God.
I personally am the work of God’s hope and of the hope of his collaborators, those men who assisted me in my priestly formation and my human maturation. Through them, I often heard God say to me repeatedly: “Walk before me, my child, and be blameless.”
Do you suppose that the little child from the bush that I was could have imagined for one moment that he would leave one day for Rome to become a cardinal? At the major seminary in Nancy, when I met Cardinal Tisserant for the first time, I thought I would never ever again hear one of the pope’s colleagues speak. How could my grandmother Rose have imagined what sort of life I would have? God’s mysterious ways are not without humor. The apostles who surrounded Christ were the first ones to be surprised by the vagaries of God. The Gospels are full of the unexpected. . . .
Which is your favorite evangelist?
Without any possible doubt, I like Saint John more than all the others. I think he entered so profoundly into the Heart of Jesus that he became a loving interpreter of his words. John discovered the radical character of the supporting pillar of Christ’s teaching, love even unto the gift of self. His Gospel continues magnificently in his Letters.
For me, John is the heart of the Christian message in which God reveals himself as a loving Father. John was at the foot of the Cross on that day when the Son died for love of us. He saw the pierced Heart of Jesus and the torrents of love pouring out on mankind. He contemplated the blood of the Lamb washing us of all stains. He listened to the very last Words of Jesus, and these words then were slowly engraved on his loving heart.
With the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen, John experienced extreme suffering after the death of the Son of God. They prayed with “prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears” (Heb 5:7), and turned to the Father as much as men can.
What do the prayers of monks mean to you, and even more: their choice of the contemplative life?
The monastic life is physically difficult, but it aspires to be completely immersed in the peace of God. Monks have chosen an active, silent life entirely consecrated to God. Little by little their days should become an uninterrupted prayer; in it the monk remains united with God during all his occupations. The true purpose of monastic life is to attain a more or less habitual state of prayer and penance, of liturgy and study, of manual labor and worship. As Thomas Merton wrote in The Sign of Jonas, silence and solitude, listening and meditation on the word, continually place the monk’s soul under the direct influence of the divine action.3
On this earth, monks must become the most humble, most patient laborers in their knowledge of the spiritual life.
Father Jérôme, who was a Trappist monk for almost sixty years at Sept-Fons Abbey, wrote realistic, admirable lines about the life of monks. In his Écrits monastiques, he remarked: “You do not become a monk in one day! It takes ten, thirty, sixty years. The young monk, the novice, is a bud in early spring, when the branches are still black and cold from the winter, when the fruit is still only a promise.”4
Apart from God and faith, monks are incomprehensible. We must not be afraid to say that they are useless. However, the monk knows that his vocation is mysteriously useful, because it is mysteriously efficacious for men; he recognizes that his poor existence is an imperfect participation in the life, Passion, and sorrowful death of Jesus Christ. Yet his soul must not lose sight of our Lord’s wounds.
Concealing his prayer in the great prayer of Jesus, the monk intercedes for all mankind, living and deceased, believers and unbelievers, unknown or very dear to him; not so that the wicked may become good, but so that they might have access to happiness and truth.
On October 9, 2011, in his homily during Evening Prayer at the historical Charterhouse of Serra San Bruno, where the mortal remains of the founder of the Carthusian Order are preserved, Benedict XVI spoke very fitting words about the essence of the Carthusian life and, in broader terms, about the greatness of contemplative life. For my part, I consider it one of the finest passages by the former pope: “ ‘Fugitiva relinquere et aeterna captare’: to abandon transient realities and seek to grasp that which is eternal. These words from the letter your Founder addressed to Rudolph, Provost of Rheims, contain the core of your spirituality (cf. Letter to Rudolph, no. 13): the strong desire to enter in union of life with God, abandoning everything else, everything that stands in the way of this communion, and letting oneself be grasped by the immense love of God to live this love alone. Dear brothers you have found the hidden treasure, the pearl of great value (cf. Mt 13:44-46); you have responded radically to Jesus’ invitation: ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me’ (Mt 19:21). Every monastery—male or female—is an oasis in which the deep well, from which to draw ‘living water’ to quench our deepest thirst, is constantly being dug with prayer and meditation. However, the charterhouse is a special oasis in which silence and solitude are preserved with special care, in accordance with the form of life founded by Saint Bruno and which has remained unchanged down the centuries. ‘I live in a rather faraway hermitage. . . with some religious brothers’, is the concise sentence that your Founder wrote (Letter to Rudolph ‘the Green’, no. 4). The Successor of Peter’s Visit to this historic Charterhouse is not only intended to strengthen those of you who live here but the entire Order in its mission, which is more than ever timely and meaningful in today’s world. Technical progress, especially in the area of transport and communications, has made human life more comfortable but also more keyed up, at times even frenetic. Cities are almost always noisy; silence is rarely to be found in them because there is always background noise, in some areas even at night. In recent decades, moreover, the development of the media has spread and extended a phenomenon that had already been outlined in the 1960s: virtuality risks predominating over reality. Unbeknownst to them, people are increasingly becoming immersed in a virtual dimension because of the audiovisual messages that accompany their life from morning to night. The youngest, born into this condition, seem to want to fill every empty moment with music and images, out of fear of feeling this very emptiness. This is a trend that has always existed, especially among the young and in the more developed urban contexts, but today it has reached a level such as to give rise to talk about anthropological mutation. Some people are no longer able to remain for long periods in silence and solitude. I chose to mention this socio-cultural condition because it highlights the specific charism of the Charterhouse as a precious gift for the Church and for the world, a gift that contains a deep message for our life and for the whole of humanity. I shall sum it up like this: by withdrawing into silence and solitude, human beings, so to speak, ‘expose’ themselves to reality in their nakedness, to that apparent ‘void’, which I mentioned at the outset, in order to experience instead Fullness, the presence of God, of the most real Reality that exists and that lies beyond the tangible dimension. He is a perceptible presence in every creature: in the air that we breathe, in the light that we see and that warms us, in the grass, in stones. . . . God, Creator omnium, passes through all things but is beyond them and for this very reason is the foundation of them all. The monk, in leaving everything, ‘takes a risk’, as it were: he exposes himself to solitude and silence in order to live on nothing but the essential, and precisely in living on the essential he also finds a deep communion with his brethren, with every human being. Some might think that it would suffice to come here to take this ‘leap’. But it is not like this. This vocation, like every vocation, finds an answer in an ongoing process, in a life-long search. Indeed it is not enough to withdraw to a place such as this in order to learn to be in God’s presence. Just as in marriage it is not enough to celebrate the Sacrament to become effectively one, but it is necessary to let God’s grace act and to walk together through the daily routine of conjugal life, so becoming monks requires time, practice and patience, ‘in a divine and persevering vigilance’, as Saint Bruno said, they ‘await the return of their Lord so that they might be able to open the door to him as soon as he knocks’ (Letter to Rudolph ‘the Green’, no. 4); and the beauty of every vocation in the Church consists precisely in this: giving God time to act with his Spirit and to one’s own humanity to form itself, to grow in that particular state of life according to the measure of the maturity of Christ. In Christ there is everything, fullness; we need time to make one of the dimensions of his mystery our own. We could say that this is a journey of transformation in which the mystery of Christ’s resurrection is brought about and made manifest in us, a mystery of which the word of God in the biblical Reading from the Letter to the Romans has reminded us this evening: the Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead and will give life to our mortal bodies also (cf. Rom 8:11) is the One who also brings about our configuration to Christ in accordance with each one’s vocation, a journey that unwinds from the baptismal font to death, a passing on to the Father’s house. In the world’s eyes it sometimes seems impossible to spend one’s whole life in a monastery but in fact a whole life barely suffices to enter into this union with God, into this essential and profound Reality which is Jesus Christ. This is why I have come here, dear Brothers who make up the Carthusian Community of Serra San Bruno, to tell you that the Church needs you and that you need the Church! Your place is not on the fringes: no vocation in the People of God is on the fringes. We are one body, in which every member is important and has the same dignity and is inseparable from the whole. You too, who live in voluntary isolation, are in the heart of the Church and make the pure blood of contemplation and of the love of God course through your veins. Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis [the Cross is steady while the world is turning], your motto says. The Cross of Christ is the firm point in the midst of the world’s changes and upheavals. Life in a Charterhouse shares in the stability of the Cross which is that of God, of God’s faithful love. By remaining firmly united to Christ, like the branches to the Vine, may you too, dear Carthusian Brothers, be associated with his mystery of salvation, like the Virgin Mary who stabat [stood] beneath the Cross, united with her Son in the same sacrifice of love. Thus, like Mary and with her, you too are deeply inserted in the mystery of the Church, a sacrament of union of men with God and with each other. In this you are singularly close to my ministry. May the Most Holy Mother of the Church therefore watch over us and the holy Father Bruno always bless your community from Heaven.”
Certainly, the life of a hermit may seem too rigorous, almost unsuitable in our age. But we must never forget that Bruno wanted to see God in an intimate face-to-face conversation. The founder of the Carthusians could not wait for death and eternity to respond to the urgency of his thirst. Indeed, Carthusians are impatient men.
In a letter to Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, Léon Bloy wrote: “Whatever the circumstances may be, always put the Invisible before the visible, the Supernatural before the natural; if this rule is applied to all your actions, we know that you will be equipped with strength and bathed with deep joy.” Without meaning to, the writer summed up the essence of the monk’s ambition.
Monks are shining stars that silently guide mankind toward the paths of the interior life. Their whole life, down to its minutest practical details, is centered on God. We must not be surprised that this absolute gift can produce effects that surpass mere rationality. We do not give our life to God without consequences.
Saint Benedict was obsessed with truly pleasing God. In reading biographies devoted to him, I have always been struck by his joy of living in God’s sight. He thought of solitude as a proof of love. He devised rules that allow monks to wield the weapons suited to waging the difficult combat of the interior life. His ambition was to give his monks the means to dwell in the sight of God. With the ardor of the meek, this great saint was consumed by the desire to be in God. The Order that he founded has held a very important place in Church history, even in recent times; I would not be divulging a secret if I told you that the example of the Benedictines was decisive for Joseph Ratzinger. His thirst for God alone resembles that of monks in all respects.
When I was archbishop of Conakry, for ten years I looked for sons of Saint Benedict who would agree to settle in my country. Every day I begged the Lord to grant me that grace. In 1994, I finally managed to bring some Benedictine nuns from Maumont Abbey, in the Diocese of Angoulême. Previously I had tried to enlist the good offices of the monks of Solesmes for my project. Finally, the Senegalese monastery of Keur Moussa yielded to my insistent appeals by founding a priory in Guinea. God has worked marvels, and he has exceeded my expectations.
Indeed, I considered that there is no substitute for the prayers of the monks to arouse an unceasing search for God and to foster the spiritual life of my people. Now, whenever I return to Guinea, I never fail to devote at least two days to the Benedictine monks and nuns. I love monasteries because they are God’s citadels, strongholds where we can find him more easily, walls where the Heart of Jesus tenderly keeps watch.
There, those who seek God can say with the psalmist: “Domine, dilexi habitaculum domus tuae et locum habitationis gloriae tuae. . . . Unum petii a Domino, hoc requiram: ut inhabitem in domo Domini omnibus diebus vitae meae, ut videam voluptatem Domini et visitem templum eius” (Ps 26:8; Ps 27:4) (O Lord, I love the habitation of your house, and the place where your glory dwells. . . . One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple). In monasteries we rediscover purity of heart, munditia cordis.
I am firmly convinced that the Church continues on her path thanks to the intercession, day and night, of contemplative monks and nuns. The Bride of Christ is radiant with the invisible prayer of the soldiers who have hitched their lives to the vaults of heaven.
Today, despite the collapse of many traditions in the modern world, some men continue to base their whole lives on the love of God. In his treatise De amore Dei (On the Love of God), Saint Bernard wrote poetically: “The measure with which to love God is to love without measure.”
On May 24, 2009, during his visit to Monte Cassino, Benedict XVI spoke these incomparable words about Benedict: “To live no longer for ourselves but for Christ: this is what gives full meaning to the life of those who let themselves be conquered by him. This is clearly demonstrated by the human and spiritual life of Saint Benedict. who, having abandoned all things, set out to follow Jesus Christ faithfully. Embodying the Gospel in his life, he became the pioneer of a vast movement of spiritual and cultural rebirth in the West. I would like here to mention an extraordinary event in his life related by Saint Gregory the Great, his biographer, and which is certainly well known to you. One might almost say that the holy Patriarch was also ‘carried up into Heaven’ in an indescribable mystic experience. On the night of 29 October 540, we read in the biography, while leaning out of the window, ‘his eyes fixed on the stars and rapt in divine contemplation, the Saint felt that his heart was burning. . . for him the starry firmament was like the embroidered curtain that veiled the Holy of Holies. At a certain point, his soul felt transported to the other side of the veil, to contemplate unveiled the Face of the One who dwells in inaccessible brightness’ (cf. A. I. Schuster, Storia di san Benedetto e dei suoi tempi [Milan: Ed. Abbazia di Viboldone, 1965], 11ff.). Of course, similarly to what happened for Paul after he had been taken up into Heaven, for Saint Benedict too subsequent to this extraordinary spiritual experience, a new life had to begin. Indeed, although the vision was but fleeting, the effects endured; his features themselves, the biographers say, were altered by it, his expression always remained serene and his behavior angelic, and although he lived on earth, it was obvious that his heart was already in Paradise.”
How do you understand the words of Christ: “I am with you always”?
In the first place, the presence of Jesus exists through the Church. I get the sense that we very quickly forget these words from the Gospel of Matthew: “Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18:19-20). Through the Church, Christ’s promise has been kept continually since his death.
We can perceive his presence in the sacraments, also. We are baptized in the name of Christ. Similarly, the Eucharist is the Body of Jesus, and confession fulfills the will of the Son of God to remit the sins of mankind. Finally, in the Gospels, he is the one who speaks through his apostles.
The Vatican II Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum concilium, explains as follows: “To accomplish so great a work Christ is always present in His Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations. He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass not only in the person of His minister, ‘the same now offering, through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross’, but especially in the Eucharistic species. By His power He is present in the sacraments so that when a man baptizes it is really Christ Himself who baptizes. He is present in His word since it is He Himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in the Church. He is present, lastly, when the Church prays and sings, for He promised ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them’ (Mt 18:20). Christ indeed always associates the Church with Himself in this great work where God is perfectly glorified and men are sanctified. The Church is His beloved Bride who calls to her Lord and through Him offers worship to the Eternal Father. Rightly, then, the liturgy is considered as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. In the liturgy the sanctification of the man is signified by signs perceptible to the senses and is effected in a way which corresponds with each of these signs; in the liturgy the whole public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the Head and His members. From this it follows that every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others; no other action of the Church can equal its efficacy by the same title and to the same degree” (SC 7).
Christ is also present alongside the poor and the suffering. It is impossible to forget Christ’s radical words when he spoke to his disciples about his Second Coming: “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left. Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Mt 25:31-46).
Saint John Chrysostom always vigorously takes up the defense of the poor and the unfortunate. He likes to recall that Christ never came to terms with the scandal of the wealth and luxury that were displayed before the eyes of the poor. In his Homilies on Matthew he wrote: “Do you want to honor Christ’s body? Then do not scorn him in his nakedness, nor honor him here in the church with silken garments while neglecting him outside where he is cold and naked. For he who said, ‘This is my body’, and made it so by his words, also said: ‘You saw me hungry and did not feed me’, and, ‘inasmuch as you did not do it for one of these, the least of my brothers, you did not do it for me.’ What we do here in the church requires a pure heart, not special garments; what we do outside requires great dedication. . . . Of what use is it to weigh down Christ’s table with golden cups, when he himself is dying of hunger? First, fill him when he is hungry; then use the means you have left to adorn his table. Will you have a golden cup made but not give a cup of water? What is the use of providing the table with cloths woven of gold thread, and not providing Christ himself with the clothes he needs? What profit is there in that? Tell me: If you were to see him lacking the necessary food but were to leave him in that state and merely surround his table with gold, would he be grateful to you or rather would he not be angry? What if you were to see him clad in worn-out rags and stiff from the cold, and were to forget about clothing him and instead were to set up golden columns for him, saying that you were doing it for his honor? Would he not think he was being mocked and greatly insulted?”
Saint John Chrysostom shows Christ in the poor man and has him say: “I could feed myself, but I prefer to wander about as a beggar, to hold out my hand before your door, in order to be fed by you. It is for love of you I act this way.” The archbishop of Constantinople vehemently protests against slavery and the alienation that goes with it: “What I am going to say is sad and horrible, nevertheless I must say it. Put God in the same rank as your slaves. . . . Set Christ free from hunger, need, prison and nakedness. Ah! You shudder at my words!”5 When Saint John Chrysostom speaks about Christ present among us, there is reason to be afraid! His words are blunt, harsh, and unyielding. The whole man is there in his words. He does not speak in order to hear his own voice or to beguile. He writes to instruct, to exhort, to reform, anxious to combat pagan customs and to instill the morality of the Gospel. Saint John Chrysostom is a true pastor who educates and feeds his people, explains the Sacred Scriptures and applies them to everyday life.
Finally, what is holiness?
In his First Letter to the Thessalonians, Saint Paul declares: “Brethren, we beg and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you learned from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like heathens who do not know God; that no man transgress, and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we solemnly forewarned you. For God has not called us for uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you” (1 Thess 4:1-8).
What are the ways to achieve holiness? The first is the humble acceptance of a gift from heaven. Indeed, holiness is in the first place a grace that comes from God. We must strive to accept it and to cooperate with it. In the Imitation of Christ we find this magnificent passage: “There can be no holiness, then, Lord, if you withdraw your supporting hand. No wisdom can be of any help, once you cease to guide it; no courage can support us, if you cease to keep it in being. . . . No, when you leave us, we sink and perish; when you visit us, we are raised up and restored to life. We have no sure footing, but through you we are made firm; we grow cold at heart, but you stir us once more into flame.”6
Nevertheless, I think that there is a privileged way, the way of love and charity. This always leads man to perfection; it is the surest road to holiness. This connection between charity, perfection, and holiness is very important. People therefore must advance in faith by living in charity.
Demanding as they are, the words that Jesus speaks to us are full of love. This is why he tells us: “You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). Indeed, in agreeing to be Christians, we must constantly act without thinking about petty objectives of prestige or ambition or about ends that may appear nobler, such as philanthropy or humanitarian kindness. The Christian is a person who unceasingly reflects on the ultimate and radical end of love, which Jesus Christ manifested to us by dying for us on the Cross. Hence holiness consists of living exactly as God wants us to live, by being conformed more and more to his Son, Jesus Christ. Saint Paul already warned us without mincing words when he wrote: “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And over all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body” (Col 3:12-15).
God deeply desires that we might resemble him by being saints. Charity is love, and holiness is a sublime manifestation of the ability to love. It is an identification with Christ and therefore the fulfillment of our vocation to be a son or daughter of God.
What precisely are angels?
From the Bible we know that the angels are pure spirits, messengers of God, endowed with extraordinary intelligence and bathed in God’s light. The angels truly live with God, forming around him a celestial court that never stops praising the Creator.
They are the protectors and natural guides of men. I find it particularly important to be aware of the existence of our guardian angel, who watches over us at every moment. Christ often mentions the angels, revealing to us that “there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Lk 15:10). The Son of God asks us to make sure to love children, “for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 18:10).
The example of the angels reminds men of the necessity of living a holy life, one that is honest and pure. In heaven we will be brought to live in their company, lost in the glory of God. Indeed, Christ tells the Sadducees: “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” (Lk 20:34-36).
Mankind truly needs to be assisted by these mysterious beings. I am not unaware of the fact that it may be difficult to speak about angels in a world that is set in its rationalistic, narcissistic ways.
Nonetheless, the Bible explains that in God’s eyes man is superior to the angels. God did not become incarnate in an angel. Although he selected the Archangel Gabriel to be the messenger of his Incarnation, he chose to come down to earth in human flesh. The Letter to the Hebrews declares: “ ‘What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels, you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.’ Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for every one” (Heb 2:6-9).
Man’s greatness is found in the Incarnation, and the angels who freely accepted this great mystery praise God eternally.
With his sublime sense of pedagogy, Benedict XVI explained in a homily to religious and seminarians of Bavaria (September 11, 2006): “To be with Jesus and, being sent, to go out to meet people—these two things belong together and together they are the heart of a vocation, of the priesthood. To be with him and to be sent out—the two are inseparable. Only one who is ‘with him’ comes to know him and can truly proclaim him. . . . Pope Gregory the Great, in one of his homilies, once said that God’s angels, however far afield they go on their missions, always move in God. They remain always with him.”
It is significant that in the Vatican gardens Pope Francis, together with Benedict XVI, decided to bless a statue of Saint Michael and to place the Vatican under the protection of that archangel.
Finally, I cannot forget the fine, strong words that Francis spoke in September 2014 during his morning meditation: “Satan is subtle: the first page of Genesis says so. . . He presents things as if they were good, but his intention is destruction. . . . The angels defend us: they defend man and they defend God-man, the superior man, Jesus Christ, who is the perfection of humanity, the most perfect one. [This is why] the Church honors the angels, because it is they who will be in the glory of God. . . because they defend the great hidden mystery of God, that is, that the Word came in the flesh.”
Our interview will soon come to an end. Can you tell us about your appointment by Pope Francis to head one of the most important dicasteries in the Roman Curia, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments?
Every time the successor of Peter has been so kind as to entrust to me a responsibility for the service of the Church, I have always had the sense of my shortcomings and my inadequacy.
Although I feel the all-too-heavy weight of the mission that is entrusted to me, because of my objective weaknesses, nevertheless I hear flowing from my heart an immense thanksgiving to the Lord, who as a rule chooses what is nothing in the world’s sight in order to accomplish his work.
I therefore thank the Lord who grants me the privilege of working with him and for him for the purpose of helping the people of God to enter fully into the mystery that he celebrates in the holy liturgy.
Humbly I thank the pope. I also feel genuine gratitude toward my coworkers in the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Together, with God’s help and through his active presence—for the eucharistic liturgy, Sacramentum caritatis recalls, “is essentially an actio Dei which draws us into Christ through the Holy Spirit”—we work so that the celebrations of worship and the sacraments might always be experienced in the presence of God and in wonder at his salvific action, encompassing not only the individual but the whole Church, all of society, the whole universe, in the great movement that causes mankind and the world to pass from death to life in the mystery of the Lord’s Passover. Together, we seek to make people understand that the liturgy is determined by God himself and not by men. Indeed, man cannot simply fabricate worship ex nihilo. For “we do not know with what we must serve the Lord until we arrive there” (Ex 10:26). If God does not reveal himself, man only embraces emptiness.
Joseph Ratzinger has indicated that the liturgy must show Christ, allow him to shine through in his transforming presence through the signs, the gestures, and the words that the Church has handed down to us in her rites. How do you understand this analysis?
Joseph Ratzinger tried to explain further what Sacrosanctum concilium asserts with great clarity: “The liturgy is the outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church” (SC 2). He stated that “God acts in the liturgy through Christ, and we, as the Church, can act only through him, with him, and in him.”7 In the Church, if the liturgy really is the epiphany or manifestation of Christ, the prolongation, as Saint Leo the Great puts it, of what the Lord experienced in Palestine—his birth, his preaching, his miracles, his teaching the disciples, his Passion, death, and Resurrection—then it is fundamentally a mystical and contemplative reality. But it is also a reality made up of signs, gestures and words, so as to put us in permanent contact with the redeeming work of Christ, and so that thus his transfiguring presence appears through “our lives. . . now hidden in God with Christ” (see Col 3:3).
Through the liturgy, Jesus enters into our hearts. Priests therefore must see to it that he has the first place so as to allow him to shine through; only in this way will people who look at us see Jesus. Christ must be seen through us.
In a world that constantly takes us out of ourselves, imprisoning man in sensory and material goods, sometimes totally depriving him of what is essential, the liturgy truly is the door to our union with God through our union with Jesus. It prepares us for the heavenly liturgy that will allow us to contemplate God unveiled, face to face, so as to love him without end. In the liturgy, we experience the manifestation and the operative presence of Jesus Christ, if the priest enters fully into the Paschal Mystery, which is celebrated with faith, devotion, and beauty in the Holy Eucharist.
On July 7, 2007, Benedict XVI promulgated Summorum Pontificum, the Motu proprio on the Roman liturgy previous to the reform in 1970. What is your point of view on this document?
I personally welcomed Summorum Pontificum with confidence, joy, and thanksgiving. It is, so to speak, a sign and a proof that the Church, Mater et Magister (our Mother and Teacher), is still attentive to all her children, taking into account their different sensibilities. Benedict XVI intended to promote the wealth of various spiritual expressions, provided they lead to a real, genuine ecclesial communion and a more luminous radiance of the Church’s sanctity.
I think that this beautiful Motu proprio is right in line with the will of the Council Fathers. And so we must not pretend to forget that Sacrosanctum concilium declared: “For the liturgy is made up of immutable elements divinely instituted, and of elements subject to change. These not only may but ought to be changed with the passage of time if they have suffered from the intrusion of anything out of harmony with the inner nature of the liturgy or have become unsuited to it” (SC 21).
In the letter that accompanied Summorum Pontificum, Benedict XVI wrote: “For that matter, the two Forms of the usage of the Roman Rite can be mutually enriching: new Saints and some of the new Prefaces can and should be inserted in the old Missal. . . . The celebration of the Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI will be able to demonstrate, more powerfully than has been the case hitherto, the sacrality which attracts many people to the former usage. The most sure guarantee that the Missal of Paul VI can unite parish communities and be loved by them consists in its being celebrated with great reverence in harmony with the liturgical directives. This will bring out the spiritual richness and the theological depth of this Missal.”
Probably in the celebration of Mass according to the old missal, we understood better that the Mass is an act of Christ and not of men. Similarly, its mysterious and mystagogical character is more immediately evident. Even if we participate actively in the Mass, it is not our action but Christ’s. In The Spirit of the Liturgy, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: “What does this active participation come down to? What does it mean that we have to do? Unfortunately, the word was very quickly misunderstood to mean something external, entailing a need for general activity, as if as many people as possible, as often as possible, should be visibly engaged in action. However, the word ‘participation’ refers to a principal action in which everyone has a ‘part’. And so if we want to discover the kind of doing that active participation involves, we need, first of all, to determine what this central actio is in which all the members of the community are supposed to participate. . . . By the actio of the liturgy the sources mean the Eucharistic Prayer. The real liturgical action, the true liturgical act, is the oratio. . . . This oratio—the Eucharistic Prayer, the ‘Canon’—is really more than speech; it is actio in the highest sense of the word. For what happens in it is that the human actio (as performed hitherto by the priests in the various religions of the world) steps back and makes way for the actio divina, the action of God” (171-72).
The Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum attempts to reconcile the two forms of the Roman rite and above all seeks to help us rediscover the sacrality of Holy Mass as an actio Dei and not a human act. We are touching here on an extremely important point: the problem of the widespread lack of discipline, the lack of respect and of fidelity to the rite, which can also affect even the validity of the sacraments.
Some people are alarmed about a crisis of the liturgy in the Church. Are they right?
Alas, I think that they are right to be worried and to fear the worst. . . . We observe more and more that man seeks to take the place of God. The liturgy then becomes a mere human game. If eucharistic celebrations turn into human celebrations of ourselves and places where we apply our pastoral ideologies and partisan political preferences, which have nothing to do with spiritual worship that is to be celebrated as God wills, the danger is immense. For then God disappears.
Last December [2014] Reinhard Cardinal Marx, president of the German Bishops’ Conference, said: “Throughout the world, the search for a theologically responsible and pastorally appropriate way of assisting Catholics who are divorced or divorced and civilly remarried is one of the urgent challenges for pastoral ministry to families and married couples in the context of evangelization.” What is your viewpoint on this subject, which figured among the questions at the last synod in October 2014?
I have a lot of respect for Reinhard Cardinal Marx. But this very general statement seems to me to be the expression of mere ideology that they want to impose hastily on the whole Church. In my experience, specifically after twenty-three years as archbishop of Conakry and nine years as secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the question of “Catholics who are divorced or divorced and civilly remarried” is not an urgent challenge for the Church of Africa or Asia. On the contrary, this is an obsession of some Western Churches that want to impose so-called “theologically responsible and pastorally appropriate” solutions that radically contradict the teaching of Jesus and of the Church’s Magisterium.
The primary urgent task in mission countries is to design a pastoral ministry whose sole objective is to answer the question: What does it mean to be truly Christian in the present historical and cultural situation of our globalized societies? How can we form fearless, generous Christians, zealous disciples of Jesus? For a Christian adult, faith in Christ cannot be an intuition, an emotion, or a feeling. For a Christian, the faith must become the shape, the mold of his whole life, private and public, personal and social.
Whatever the current difficulties may be, Christ’s disciples must assert the demands of faith in Christ without reticence and without compromise, in theory and in practice, because they are the demands and precepts of God.
The second urgent task is to form solid Christian families, for the Church, which is God’s family, is built on the foundation of Christian families that are sacramentally united and witnesses to this momentous mystery that Christ has given to us eternally.
The truth of the Gospel must always be lived out in the difficult crucible of involvement in social, economic, and cultural life as a whole. Faced with today’s moral crisis, in particular the crisis of marriage and the family, the Church can contribute to the search for just and constructive solutions, but she has no other option but to take part in that search by vigorously citing the unique and distinctive things that faith in Jesus Christ brings to the human enterprise. In this sense, it is not possible to imagine any conflict or tension whatsoever between magisterial teaching and pastoral practice. The idea of putting magisterial teaching in a beautiful display case while separating it from pastoral practice, which then could evolve along with circumstances, fashions, and passions, is a sort of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology.
I therefore solemnly state that the Church in Africa is staunchly opposed to any rebellion against the teaching of Jesus and of the Magisterium.
If I may make a historical reference: in the fourth century, the Church of Africa and the Council of Carthage decreed priestly celibacy. Then, in the sixteenth century, that same African Council served as the foundation on which Pope Pius IV based his arguments against pressures from the German princes, who asked him to authorize the marriage of priests. Today, too, the Church of Africa is committed in the name of the Lord Jesus to keeping unchanged the teaching of God and of the Church about the indissolubility of marriage: what God has joined, let no man put asunder.
How could a synod go back on the constant teaching that was unified and explained in greater depth by Blessed Paul VI, Saint John Paul II, and Benedict XVI?
I place my trust in the fidelity of Francis.
In January 2015, I had the honor of accompanying him during his journey to Sri Lanka and the Philippines. In Manila, his talk on the family was particularly forceful: “Let us be on guard against colonization by new ideologies. There are forms of ideological colonization which are out to destroy the family. They are not born of dreams, of prayers, of closeness to God or the mission which God gave us; they come from without, and for that reason I am saying that they are forms of colonization. Let’s not lose the freedom of the mission which God has given us, the mission of the family. Just as our peoples, at a certain moment of their history, were mature enough to say ‘no’ to all forms of political colonization, so too in our families we need to be very wise, very shrewd, very strong, in order to say ‘no’ to all attempts at an ideological colonization of our families. We need to ask Saint Joseph, the friend of the angel, to send us the inspiration to know when we can say ‘yes’ and when we have to say ‘no’. . . . I think of Blessed Paul VI. At a time when the problem of population growth was being raised, he had the courage to defend openness to life in families. He knew the difficulties that are there in every family, and so in his Encyclical he was very merciful towards particular cases, and he asked confessors to be very merciful and understanding in dealing with particular cases. But he also had a broader vision: he looked at the peoples of the earth and he saw this threat of families being destroyed for lack of children. Paul VI was courageous; he was a good pastor and he warned his flock of the wolves who were coming. From his place in heaven, may he bless this evening!”
In November 2014, on returning from a journey to Lebanon, you posed a particularly difficult question: “Why is it possible for God to allow the children who are most faithful to him to be massacred, even to make a painful offering of their lives?” How are we to understand this question?
The martyrs are the sign that God is alive and always present among us. His merciful love is manifested visibly and tangibly in Jesus Christ, who promised never to leave his Church and those who have chosen to follow him faithfully: “Behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:20). Now his presence is tangible in his persecuted disciples: “ ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ And he said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting’ ” (Acts 9:4-5). The martyrs are not only the physical presence of Jesus in a hostile world that is impervious to the Gospel; they are also man’s most radical response to God’s love. Indeed, there is no greater proof of love than to give one’s life for those whom one loves. God really gave himself for us, even unto death. It is through death that we respond truly and totally to God’s love.
In Deus caritas est, Benedict XVI wrote forcefully: “In the Old Testament, the novelty of the Bible did not consist merely in abstract notions but in God’s unpredictable and in some sense unprecedented activity. This divine activity now takes on dramatic form when, in Jesus Christ, it is God himself who goes in search of the ‘stray sheep’, a suffering and lost humanity. When Jesus speaks in his parables of the shepherd who goes after the lost sheep, of the woman who looks for the lost coin, of the father who goes to meet and embrace his prodigal son, these are no mere words: they constitute an explanation of his very being and activity. His death on the Cross is the culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form” (DCE 12).
Today again, in the cruel deaths of so many Christians who are shot, crucified, decapitated, tortured, and burned alive, this “turning of God against himself” is accomplished again for the uplifting and salvation of the world.
According to statistics published by the Pew Research Center Study in January 2014, in one-third of the 198 countries where surveys were conducted, serious persecutions against Christians were reported. Many of those who profess allegiance to Christ are being persecuted throughout the world. Many historians even say that half of all the Christian martyrs in the history of the Church were killed in the twentieth century.
But the blood of Christian martyrs speaks a different language from that of Abel (Heb 12:24). It demands neither vengeance nor punishment, but tells of forgiveness and reconciliation. The martyr is a witness to love and an example of faith for those who are open to the God of mercy and truth. This explains the unexpected success in France of the film Des hommes et des Dieux (Of Gods and Men), which tells the story of seven Cistercian monks from the monastery in Tibhirine who were massacred in March 1996.
Besides, how can we not admire the words of the last testament of Shahbaz Bhatti, a Pakistani Catholic politician who was killed because of his faith in March 2011? He wrote: “High-ranking positions in government have been offered to me, and I have been asked to put an end to my battle, but I have always refused, even at the risk of my own life. My response has always been the same. I do not want popularity, I do not want positions of power. I only want a place at the feet of Jesus. I want my life, my character, my actions to speak of me and say that I am following Jesus Christ. This desire is so strong in me that I consider myself privileged whenever—in my combative effort to help the needy, the poor, the persecuted Christians of Pakistan—Jesus should wish to accept the sacrifice of my life. I want to live for Christ, and it is for Him that I want to die.”
We get the impression that we are hearing again about the martyrdom of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, who came to Rome to suffer the worst outrages, ground up by the teeth of ferocious beasts.
Similarly, I cannot forget the faces of Shahbaz Masih, aged thirty, and of his wife Shama Bibi, who was twenty-four, who were burned alive, thrown into a kiln where bricks were being baked, on November 4, 2014, in the province of Punjab, in Pakistan, leaving three children, and while Shama was pregnant. Shahbaz Masih and Shama Bibi died in silence, as holocausts offered up to the God of Love. But the victims’ silence does not justify guilty indifference with regard to the fate of thousands of Christians who die every day. How can we ignore the sorrowful cry of the prophet Isaiah: “The righteous man perishes, and no one lays it to heart; devout men are taken away, while no one understands” (Is 57:1)?
While Christians are dying for their faith and their fidelity to Jesus, in the West, men of the Church are trying to reduce the requirements of the Gospel to a minimum.
We go so far as to exploit the mercy of God, stifling justice and truth, so as to “welcome” homosexual persons—as the Relatio post disceptationem from the last Synod on the Family in October 2014 puts it—who “have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community”. Moreover, this document goes on to say that “the question of homosexuality requires serious reflection on how to devise realistic approaches to affective growth, human development, and maturation in the Gospel, while integrating the sexual aspect.” In fact, the real scandal is not the existence of sinners, for mercy and forgiveness always exist precisely for them, but rather the confusion between good and evil caused by Catholic shepherds. If men who are consecrated to God are no longer capable of understanding the radical nature of the Gospel message and seek to anaesthetize it, we will be going the wrong way. For that is the real failure of mercy.
While hundreds of thousands of Christians are living each day filled with fear, some are trying to keep the divorced and remarried from suffering: they would feel discriminated against if they were excluded from sacramental communion. Despite their ongoing state of adultery, despite their state of life that testifies to a refusal to abide by the Word that raises up those who are sacramentally married to be the revelatory sign of Christ’s Paschal Mystery, some theologians want to grant admission to Eucharistic Communion to the divorced and remarried. The divorced and remarried took it upon themselves to transgress Christ’s command: “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Mt 19:6), and consequently they are forbidden to receive sacramental communion; to abolish this prohibition would clearly mean the denial of the indissolubility of sacramental marriage.
Aline Lizotte, a renowned theologian and director of the Karol Wojtyła Institute, correctly argues in L’Obéissance du Christ et le mystère de piété: “The truth of the conjugal union is practiced only within a marriage involving a stable union of one man and one woman, whose expressed public consent implies a radical communion of the gifts of both with a view to handing on the mystery of the person in offspring. Within Christ’s Church, other forms of sexual union, even if they include elements that enable them to resemble sacramental marriage, are, objectively speaking, obstacles to the fullness of conjugal life as it is willed by the Creator and affirmed by Christ. For a baptized person, to say that a de facto union, concubinage, or merely civil marriage can objectively be positive elements leading toward sacramental fullness is to try to rewrite the history of salvation backward!”8
Today there is a confrontation and a rebellion against God, a battle organized against Christ and his Church. How is it comprehensible that Catholic pastors should put doctrine to a vote: the law of God and the Church’s teaching on homosexuality, on divorce and remarriage, as though from now on the Word of God and the Magisterium had to be sanctioned and approved by majority vote?
Men who devise and elaborate strategies to kill God, to destroy the centuries-old doctrine and teaching of the Church, will themselves be swallowed up, carried off by their own earthly victory into the eternal fires of Gehenna.
At the next Synod on the Family, what path would we be trying to take if we separated worship, law, and ethics? In The Spirit of the Liturgy, Joseph Ratzinger already wrote: “In the ordering of the covenant on Sinai,. . . there is an essential connection between the three orders of worship, law, and ethics. Law without a foundation in morality becomes injustice. When morality and law do not originate in a God-ward perspective, they degrade man, because they rob him of his highest measure and his highest capacity, deprive him of any vision of the infinite and eternal. This seeming liberation subjects him to the dictatorship of the ruling majority, to shifting human standards, which inevitably end up doing him violence. . . . [W]orship and law cannot be completely separated from each other. God has a right to a response from man, to man himself, and where that right of God totally disappears, the order of law among men is dissolved, because there is no cornerstone to keep the whole structure together.”9
The West urgently needs to set its sights on God and the Crucified Lord, to look “on Him whom they have pierced”, to rediscover their trust in and their fidelity to the Gospel, to overcome its weariness, and to stop refusing to hear “what the Spirit says to the Churches”, even if they are African. . . .
Eternity, in three words?
Life, love, and communion.
Eternity is a great wheeling motion, exaltation forever, plunging into the life of God, into the love of God, and into God’s trinitarian communion.
Eternity is the present moment. Eternity is in the palm of your hand. Eternity is a sowing with fire, which suddenly takes root and breaks down the barriers that prevent our hearts from being a deep abyss.
Eternity is you, Lord. And we find you in love and communion: you in me and I in you and you in them and them with me for eternity.
What made it possible for Saint Augustine to write in The City of God this magnificent statement: “God does not speak, but his voice is clear; he illuminates little, but his light is pure”?
God is a silent lover and a lighthouse so bright that it remains invisible. Genuine love does not speak. Are not wordless smiles the most beautiful? God’s silence is a voice, the most profound of all.
All creation speaks of God, thanks to its marvelous silence. In the Paschal night, all our lives are born.
Our life of faith most often walks in the night. The more faith has to confront trials, the stronger it becomes. Nights of faith always end with finding the little light of God.
In the life of Saint Augustine, God was always present. In the times when he was straying, heaven might appear to have been less obvious. Nevertheless, God never ceased to watch over him, and Augustine ended up responding to a voice that was not speaking. Then he never stopped seeking him until he took his final breath. In the Confessions, the bishop of Hippo writes these extraordinary words:
Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new,
late have I loved you!
You were within me, but I was outside,
and it was there that I searched for you.
In my unloveliness I plunged
into the lovely things which you created.
You were with me, but I was not with you.
Created things kept me from you;
yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all.
You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.
You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.
You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you.
I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more.
You touched me, and I burned for your peace.
When once I shall be united to you with my whole being,
I shall at last be free of sorrow and toil.
Then my life will be alive, filled entirely with you.
When you fill someone, you relieve him of his burden,
but because I am not yet filled with you, I am a burden to myself.10
Our world is often astray, as was young Augustine.
It ardently searches without knowing where truth is found.
It searches along a thousand paths, trying to believe in eternal life.
Through many artificial paradises it searches for joy, simplicity, and beauty.
In fog and sunlight, our world is searching for its Father and its God.
For, in the human heart, one that knows him or one that is still searching for him, there is already the luminous presence of God.