Paul Zalonski – Page 42

Pachamama: idolatry breeds sacrilege

THE IDOLATRY AND SACRILEGE AT THE RECENT SYNOD ON THE AMAZON

I wish to speak to you about recent events in Rome, in connection with the synod—the meeting of bishops—regarding the Amazon region. This synod was summoned in order to address the challenges faced by the Church in the Amazon region, especially those that are connected with the evangelization of the indigenous peoples there. During the synod, images of Pachamama, the earth goddess of the Incas, was displayed and honoured in the Vatican gardens, carried into St. Peter’s Basilica in a canoe, and also displayed in the Church of Santa Maria in Transpontina, next to St. Peter’s. During the ceremony in the Vatican gardens, some (including at least one who was apparently a Franciscan friar) prostrated themselves before the image of the pagan goddess.

These actions so outraged many of the Catholic faithful that, a few days ago, some faithful Catholic young men went into the Church of Santa Maria in Transpontina, collected the images of Pachamama, and threw them into the Tiber river. This action was greeted with rejoicing by many Catholics.

The courageous Bishop Athanasius Schneider from Kazakhstan summed up those events in this way in an open letter:

1. “You shall have no other gods before Me,” says the Lord God, as the first of the commandments (Ex 20:3). Delivered originally to Moses and the Hebrew people, this command remains valid for all people and all times, as God tells us: “You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them” (Ex 20:4-5). Our Lord Jesus Christ kept this commandment perfectly. When offered the kingdoms of the world if only he would bow to the devil, Jesus responded, “Begone, Satan! for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve’” (Mt 4:10; Dt 6:13-14). The example of Christ therefore is of the utmost importance for all people who desire “the true God and eternal life”; as St. John the Apostle exhorts us: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 Jn 5:20-21)…

2. On October 4, 2019, on the eve of the Amazon Synod, a religious ceremony was held in the Vatican gardens, in the presence of Pope Francis and of several bishops and cardinals, which was led partly by shamans and in which symbolic objects were used; namely, a wooden sculpture of an unclothed pregnant woman. These representations are known and belong to indigenous rituals of Amazonian tribes, and specifically to the worship of the so-called Mother Earth, the Pachamama. In the following days the wooden naked female figures were also venerated in St. Peter’s Basilica in front of the Tomb of St. Peter. Pope Francis also greeted two bishops carrying the Pachamama object on their shoulders processing it into the Synod Hall where it was set in a place of honor. Pachamama statues were also put on display in the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina.

Objective sources note that the Pachamama is an object of veneration, a goddess to which some Bolivians sacrifice llamas, an earth deity worshipped by some Peruvians, rooted in pagan Incan beliefs and practices.

3. Catholics cannot accept any pagan worship, nor any syncretism [mixing of religions] between pagan beliefs and practices and those of the Catholic Church. The acts of worship of kindling a light, of bowing, of prostrating or profoundly bowing to the ground and dancing before an unclothed female statue, which represents neither Our Lady nor a canonized saint of the Church, violates the first Commandments of God: “You shall have no other gods before Me” and the explicit prohibition of God, who commands: “Beware lest you lift up your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and worship them and serve them, things which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven” (Dt 4:19), and: “You shall make for yourselves no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall you set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the Lord your God” (Lev 26:1).

The Apostles prohibited even the slightest allusions or ambiguity in regard to acts of venerating idols: “And what agreement has the temple of God with idols?” (2 Cor, 6:15-16), and “Flee from idolatry. The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that you should have fellowship with devils. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: you cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?” (1 Cor 10:16, 21-22).

St. Paul, without doubt, would say to all who actively participated in the acts of veneration of Pachamama statues, which symbolize material or creatural things, these words: “But now, after that you have known God, or rather are known by God: how turn you again to the weak and needy elements, which you desire to serve again?” (Gal 4:9). The pagans, indeed, worshipped the elements as though they were living things. And observing the syncretistic or at least highly ambiguous religious acts in the Vatican’s Garden, in St. Peter’s Basilica and in the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, St. Paul would say: “They worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever” (Rom 1:25)…

As established by the Second Council of Nicaea, the Church permits the veneration with exterior gestures of worship such as bowing, kissing and blessing, no other symbols, pictures, or statues but “the icons of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, that of our Lady the Theotokos [Mother of God], those of the venerable angels and those of all saintly people. Whenever these representations are contemplated, they will cause those who look at them to commemorate and love their prototype.”

Now it is said that those who bowed down to image of Pachamama were not literally worshiping the wooden statue but rather what it symbolizes—that is, Mother Earth. Well, that is just as unacceptable to us. The earth is God’s creation, but it is not divine. This notion that all is God and God is all is called pantheism. It is incompatible with Christian faith.

In a way, the gods and goddesses of ancient pagan mythology grew out of nature pantheism. The gods and goddesses are just personified aspects of the natural world; or else, the pagan gods are a divinization of the tribe or nation or empire. The reason for the prohibition of idols in the First Commandment is that idolatry confuses God with his created world. To confuse human beings with God’s own nature is the deception that the serpent—Satan himself—insinuated to Eve in the Garden of Eden, when he said, “you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gn 3.5).

At the synod, many expressed concern about responsible human stewardship of the natural world. So far, so good: after all, the Lord did tell Adam and Eve to tend the garden, not to abuse it (Gn 1.26). However, the earth is not divine, and we must not worship Mother Nature. To worship the earth or nature is to commit idolatry and is forbidden by the First Commandment.

There are many problems in the Amazon region: ecological damage, conflicts involving the indigenous peoples and business interests and the state, violations of human and political rights. Those require attention; and sometimes the well-being of the indigenous people has been neglected. However, the greatest need of the Amazonion peoples—as of all of us, of all human beings—is to hear and to believe the Gospel of Christ, to be baptized, and to live as his disciples. It is cruelty and injustice to leave the indigenous peoples in the darkness of paganism. If the Apostles had been content for our ancestors to worship the gods and goddesses of nature or of the tribe or the empire, none of us would be Christian today.

If you go back far enough in history, our ancestors were pagans and worshiped the sun and the moon and the stars and Mother Earth. When they became Christians, they were baptized and renounced all of that as the worship of Satan. It is God’s will that the indigenous people of the Amazon, like our own ancestors (wherever they came from and however long ago they were converted), do the same and come to worship only the living God—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

St. Patrick overthrew the idols in Ireland; St. Augustine of Canterbury did the same in Engalnd, when he came to convert the Anglo-Saxons. St. Boniface, when he evangelized Germany, chopped down the sacred oak of the god Thor and used its wood to build a cross and a church. When St. Benedict, the Father of Monks, founded his monastery at Monte Cassino, he destroyed the shrine of Apollo and the sacred grove of Venus and built shrines to St. John the Baptist and St. Martin of Tours.

Many people forget that the pagan religions were often filled with fear and superstition and sometimes with terrible practices, such as human sacrifice and infanticide and tribal warfare. That is how it was in large parts of the New World when the Spanish and Portuguese and French missionaries came.

Think of Mexico. The Aztecs thought that if they did not feed their gods with human blood, the whole cosmos would die and would be plunged into darkness and chaos. In addition, the Aztec empire demanded a huge tribute in slaves and warriors from conquered tribes so that these could be offered in sacrifice on the altars: the mythology was also the legitimation of the subjugation of conquered tribes to the Aztec emperor. The Catholic Christian conversion of the indigenous people ended all that, through the intercession of Mary, as Our Lady of Guadalupe. The demonic dominion of the Aztec gods has come to an end in the triumph of Christ and of his Mother; and this is not the defeat of the Mexican Indians but rather their triumph and new life in the Body of Christ.

That is the gift that we must preserve and hand on to the Amazonian indigenous people and to all of mankind: to bring them into the Kingdom of Christ. If the Pope or the cardinals or the bishops or the priests or the theologians have done wrong, then it is charity to say so and to pray for them the mercy of God, that they may see their error and repent of it. Let us do that today.

Bishop Schneider has composed the following Prayer of Reparation for the sacrilege and idolatry at the Amazon Synod. I ask you to pray it with me.

Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, receive through the hands of the Immaculate Mother of God and Ever Virgin Mary from our contrite heart a sincere act of reparation for the acts of worship of wooden idols and symbols, which occurred in Rome, the Eternal City and the heart of the Catholic world, during the Synod for the Amazon. Pour out in the heart of Our Holy Father Pope Francis, of the Cardinals, of the Bishops, of the priests and lay faithful, your Spirit, who will expel the darkness of their minds, so that they might recognize the impiety of such acts, which offended your Divine majesty and offer to you public and private acts of reparation.

Pour out in all members of the Church the light of the fulness and beauty of the Catholic Faith. Enkindle in them the burning zeal of bringing the salvation of Jesus Christ, true God and true man, to all men, especially to the people in the Amazon region, who still are enslaved in the service of feeble material and perishable things, as they are the deaf and mute symbols and idols of “mother earth”, to all people and especially to the people of the Amazonian tribes, who do not have the liberty of the children of God, and who do not have the unspeakable happiness to know Jesus Christ and to have in Him part in the life of your Divine nature.

Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you the one true God, besides Whom there is no other god and no salvation, have mercy on your Church. Look especially upon the tears and the contrite and humble sighs of the little ones in the Church, look upon the tears and prayers of the little children, of the adolescents, of young men and young women, of the fathers and mothers of family and also of the true Christian heroes, who in their zeal for your glory and in their love for Mother Church threw in the water the symbols of abomination which defiled her. Have mercy on us: spare us, O Lord, parce Domine, parce Domine! Have mercy on us: Kyrie eleison!

[This homily was recently preached by dear friend and faithful Benedictine monk.]

Freedom’s burden without which we aren’t fully human

A lot of our work in the School of Community (the weekly catechesis for those who follow Communion and Liberation) has much to educating our heart and mind to depth and horizon of freedom as a gift give by God for our living in grace –His inner life. Today, I came across a terrific essay on freedom that is at once liberating and daunting. A real substantial call to be in communion with the Holy Trinity. Here’s an excerpt of Ware’s essay and a link to the full article follows.

“Freedom is, indeed, a heavy burden. But as soon as we renounce our freedom, as soon as we refuse the cross of choice and conflict, we reject the Divine image within us. We become less than human. We become unmen. Likewise, if we deny others their freedom, we dehumanize them. We cease to regard them as living persons in the image of God. It is precisely here that we discern the wickedness, the grievous and shocking sinfulness of all human trafficking, of all forms of sexual exploitation and abuse. We are treating human beings in such cases not as subjects endowed with freedom, but as commodities to be manipulated as we wish. We are treating them not as persons in the image of God, but as objects. We lose all reverence in this way for the Divine image, and so we lose all sense of relationship with the other. That is why human trafficking is so disgraceful! It is a denial of the value, the freedom, of the person—a denial of the image.”

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware

The rest of His Eminence’s essay may be read here, “Restoration of the Human Icon: Divine Compassion and Human Trafficking”

The encounter that changes everything

It seems to me that we need a renewed orientation in our spiritual, intellectual and apostolic lives, a renewed orientation that exists in Christ Jesus squarely and firmly. John Paul II told the youth at Toronto:

Our personal encounter with Christ bathes life in new light, sets us on the right path, and sends us out to be his witnesses. This new way of looking at the world and at people, which comes to us from him, leads us more deeply into the mystery of faith, which is not just a collection of theoretical assertions to be accepted and approved by the mind, but an experience to be had, a truth to be lived, the salt and light of all reality (cf. Veritatis Splendor, 88).

Excerpt, Message of the Holy Father to the Youth of the World on the Occassion of the 17th World Youth Day, Toronto, 18-28 July 2002

St John Paul II –look to the Lord

Our time invites us, pushes us, obligates us to look to the Lord, and to plunge into a humble and devout meditation on the mystery of the supreme power of Christ himself.

He who was born of the Virgin Mary, the so-called son of the carpenter, the Son of the living God, as Peter confessed, came to make all of us “a kingdom of priests.”

The Second Vatican Council has reminded us of the mystery of this power, and of the fact that the mission of Christ—Priest, Teaching Prophet, King—continues in the Church. Everyone, the whole people of God has a part in this threefold mission. Perhaps in the past, we put the triple crown on the head of the Pope to express by such a symbol that the whole hierarchical order of the Church of Christ, all of Christ’s “sacred power” exercised in the Church, is nothing else but service, service that has one goal alone: that the whole People of God take part in this threefold mission of Christ, and remain always under the Lord’s power. His power comes not from the powers of this world, but from the heavenly Father and from the mystery of the Cross and of the Resurrection.

The absolute power of the Lord is even sweet and gentle. So, it answers all the depths of man; it answers his highest aspirations of intellect, of will, of heart. His power does not speak with a language of force, but it expresses itself in charity and in truth.

Homily at the beginning of the ministry of John Paul II as the Roman Pontiff, 1978
The image of the young John Paul as a student at the Angelicum, 1947

Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko

A hero of our time: Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Polish priest martyred in 1984. His liturgical memorial is today. Father Jerzy stood for the Faith and welfare of his people in the face of the Communist tyranny that wracked his country.

Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko is recognized by the faithful and by the Church spoke the truth and exposed the falsehoods (lies and deceit) of the authorities –for this he was killed. His life’s story and image is ingrained in my heart and mind. Imagine what his mother endured when she heard her son was murdered.

Many will agree that Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko is a prophet for our times.

St Luke

Today we remember the holy apostle and evangelist, Luke.

A physician by profession, Luke was schooled in Tarsus, which ranked with Athens and Alexandria as a center of learning. He was a gentile, and probably Greek by birth. In the east, Luke is regarded as an artist. Tradition preserves an account of an icon which Luke painted of the Theotokos during her lifetime. Pious belief traces to this prototype several icons, such as the one called the Vladimir Mother of God, some icons on Athos, and one in Rome.

From the many references in the letters of St Paul, we surmise that Paul and Luke were close friends and travelling companions on several missionary journeys throughout Gentile territory. Luke preserved an account of these travels in the Acts of the Apostles. The third Gospel is also his work. Luke’s Gospel relates Christ’s life and message in a manner that reflects a strong compassion for the poor and outcast, and a spirit both joyful and urbane, qualities no doubt present in his own life as a physician and follower of Christ (NS)

CT Pro-Life Conference 2019

CT Pro-Life Conference, November 2nd, 9am-3pm at St. Paul High School, 1001 Stafford Avenue, Bristol, CT. Workshops/Speakers/Advocacy 101. To register: $15 lunch included; $5 students with ID —visit www.ctfamily.org

Our Lady of the Rosary

October 7th brings us to moment when we realize that Our Lady, through the gift of the gift of the Rosary opens a new vista for meditating on Life of Christ and the gift of salvation.

From a sermon of St Bernard of Clairvaux

We should meditate on the mysteries of salvation

The child to be born of you will be called holy, the Son of God, the fountain of wisdom, the Word of the Father on high. Through you, blessed Virgin, this Word will become flesh, so that even though, as he says: I am in the Father and the Father is in me, it is still true for him to say: “I came forth from God and am here.”

In the beginning was the Word. The spring was gushing forth, yet still within himself. Indeed, the Word was with God, truly dwelling in inaccessible light. And the Lord said from the beginning: I think thoughts of peace and not of affliction. Yet your thought was locked within you, and whatever you thought, we did not know; for who knew the mind of the Lord, or who was his counsellor?

And so the idea of peace came down to do the work of peace: The Word was made flesh and even now dwells among us. It is by faith that he dwells in our hearts, in our memory, our intellect and penetrates even into our imagination. What concept could man have of God if he did not first fashion an image of him in his heart? By nature incomprehensible and inaccessible, he was invisible and unthinkable, but now he wished to be understood, to be seen and thought of.

But how, you ask, was this done? He lay in a manger and rested on a virgin’s breast, preached on a mountain, and spent the night in prayer. He hung on a cross, grew pale in death, and roamed free among the dead and ruled over those in hell. He rose again on the third day, and showed the apostles the wounds of the nails, the signs of victory; and finally in their presence he ascended to the sanctuary of heaven.

How can we not contemplate this story in truth, piety and holiness? Whatever of all this I consider, it is God I am considering; in all this he is my God. I have said it is wise to meditate on these truths, and I have thought it right to recall the abundant sweetness, given by the fruits of this priestly root; and Mary, drawing abundantly from heaven, has caused this sweetness to overflow for us.

St Bruno

Today we liturgically recall great monastic founder and reformer, St Bruno. What we admire and are grateful for in the mission of Bruno is his accent on silence and contemplation in the daily search for the face of God. Pope Benedict offers us a few ideas for meditation. Of course, Benedict few ideas help us to seek the face of the saints in turn who show us the face of God. There is much in Benedict’s meditation for our own journey in the spiritual life and the scope of good, reliable and reason theology.

Redemptoris Mater Chapel, Apostolic Palace
Friday, 6 October 2006, Feast of Saint Bruno

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I have not prepared a real Homily, only a few ideas for meditation.

As clearly appears, the mission of St Bruno, today’s saint, is, we might say, interpreted in the prayer for this day, which reminds us, despite being somewhat different in the Italian text, that his mission was silence and contemplation.

But silence and contemplation have a purpose: they serve, in the distractions of daily life, to preserve permanent union with God. This is their purpose: that union with God may always be present in our souls and may transform our entire being.

Silence and contemplation, characteristic of St Bruno, help us find this profound, continuous union with God in the distractions of every day. Silence and contemplation: speaking is the beautiful vocation of the theologian. This is his mission: in the loquacity of our day and of other times, in the plethora of words, to make the essential words heard. Through words, it means making present the Word, the Word who comes from God, the Word who is God.

Yet, since we are part of this world with all its words, how can we make the Word present in words other than through a process of purification of our thoughts, which in addition must be above all a process of purification of our words?

How can we open the world, and first of all ourselves, to the Word without entering into the silence of God from which his Word proceeds? For the purification of our words, hence, also for the purification of the words of the world, we need that silence which becomes contemplation, which introduces us into God’s silence and brings us to the point where the Word, the redeeming Word, is born.

St Thomas Aquinas, with a long tradition, says that in theology God is not the object of which we speak. This is our own normal conception.

God, in reality, is not the object but the subject of theology. The one who speaks through theology, the speaking subject, must be God himself. And our speech and thoughts must always serve to ensure that what God says, the Word of God, is listened to and finds room in the world.

Thus, once again we find ourselves invited to this process of forfeiting our own words, this process of purification so that our words may be nothing but the instrument through which God can speak, and hence, that he may truly be the subject and not the object of theology.

In this context, a beautiful phrase from the First Letter of St Peter springs to my mind. It is from verse 22 of the first chapter. The Latin goes like this: “Castificantes animas nostras in oboedentia veritatis”. Obedience to the truth must “purify” our souls and thus guide us to upright speech and upright action.

In other words, speaking in the hope of being applauded, governed by what people want to hear out of obedience to the dictatorship of current opinion, is considered to be a sort of prostitution: of words and of the soul.

The “purity” to which the Apostle Peter is referring means not submitting to these standards, not seeking applause, but rather, seeking obedience to the truth.

And I think that this is the fundamental virtue for the theologian, this discipline of obedience to the truth, which makes us, although it may be hard, collaborators of the truth, mouthpieces of truth, for it is not we who speak in today’s river of words, but it is the truth which speaks in us, who are really purified and made chaste by obedience to the truth. So it is that we can truly be harbingers of the truth.

This reminds me of St Ignatius of Antioch and something beautiful he said: “Those who have understood the Lord’s words understand his silence, for the Lord should be recognized in his silence”. The analysis of Jesus’ words reaches a certain point but lives on in our thoughts.

Only when we attain that silence of the Lord, his being with the Father from which words come, can we truly begin to grasp the depth of these words.

Jesus’ words are born in his silence on the Mountain, as Scripture tells us, in his being with the Father.

Words are born from this silence of communion with the Father, from being immersed in the Father, and only on reaching this point, on starting from this point, do we arrive at the real depth of the Word and can ourselves be authentic interpreters of the Word. The Lord invites us verbally to climb the Mountain with him and thus, in his silence, to learn anew the true meaning of words.

In saying this, we have arrived at today’s two Readings. Job had cried out to God and had even argued with God in the face of the glaring injustice with which God was treating him. He is now confronted with God’s greatness. And he understands that before the true greatness of God all our speech is nothing but poverty and we come nowhere near the greatness of his being; so he says: “I have spoken… twice, but I will proceed no further” [Jb 40: 5].

We are silent before the grandeur of God, for it dwarfs our words. This makes me think of the last weeks of St Thomas’ life. In these last weeks, he no longer wrote, he no longer spoke. His friends asked him: “Teacher, why are you no longer speaking? Why are you not writing?”. And he said: “Before what I have seen now all my words appear to me as straw”.

Fr Jean-Pierre Torrel, the great expert on St Thomas, tells us not to misconstrue these words. Straw is not nothing. Straw bears grains of wheat and this is the great value of straw. It bears the ear of wheat. And even the straw of words continues to be worthwhile since it produces wheat.

For us, however, I would say that this is a relativization of our work; yet, at the same time, it is an appreciation of our work. It is also an indication in order that our way of working, our straw, may truly bear the wheat of God’s Word.

The Gospel ends with the words: “He who hears you, hears me”. What an admonition! What an examination of conscience those words are! Is it true that those who hear me are really listening to the Lord? Let us work and pray so that it may be ever more true that those who hear us hear Christ. Amen!

Holy Guardian Angels

Today is the liturgical memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels. Do you ask your Guardian Angel to help you, to guide you, to protect you at least daily if not more than once during the day?

The following text is from a sermon of St Bernard of Clairvaux, “That they might guard you in all your ways”:

He has given his angels charge over you to guard you in all your ways. Let them thank the Lord for his mercy; his wonderful works are for the children of men. Let them give thanks and say among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them. O Lord, what is man that you have made yourself known to him, or why do you incline your heart to him? And you do incline your heart to him; you show him your care and your concern. Finally, you send your only Son and the grace of your Spirit, and promise him a vision of your countenance. And so, that nothing in heaven should be wanting in your concern for us, you send those blessed spirits to serve us, assigning them as our guardians and our teachers.

He has given his angels charge over you to guard you in all your ways. These words should fill you with respect, inspire devotion and instil confidence; respect for the presence of angels, devotion because of their loving service, and confidence because of their protection. And so the angels are here; they are at your side, they are with you, present on your behalf. They are here to protect you and to serve you. But even if it is God who has given them this charge, we must nonetheless be grateful to them for the great love with which they obey and come to help us in our great need.

So let us be devoted and grateful to such great protectors; let us return their love and honour them as much as we can and should. Yet all our love and honour must go to him, for it is from him that they receive all that makes them worthy of our love and respect.

We should then, my brothers, show our affection for the angels, for one day they will be our co-heirs just as here below they are our guardians and trustees appointed and set over us by the Father. We are God’s children although it does not seem so, because we are still but small children under guardians and trustees, and for the present little better than slaves.

Even though we are children and have a long, a very long and dangerous way to go, with such protectors what have we to fear? They who keep us in all our ways cannot be overpowered or led astray, much less lead us astray. They are loyal, prudent, powerful. Why then are we afraid? We have only to follow them, stay close to them, and we shall dwell under the protection of God’s heaven.