The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church


La Parola nelle parole.JPGOnly a few months after the 12th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church (in Italian now), Vatican Radio hosted the book launch of The Word in words: From Biblicism to the realism of the faith. Written by Monsignor Lorenzo Leuzzi, director of the Office for Pastoral Care of Universities of the vicariate of Rome, the book offers a reflection on theme of the synod, with special focus on Pope Benedict XVI’s four speeches.

“The most important thing is to help the Church rediscover the presence of the Word — to see that the Church is not the only place Scripture is to be read, but is the place where man can truly find God through Scripture in a greater experience. Because the Word is not just in the Scriptures, but the Word is present in history.”

“I’m happy to acknowledge with gratitude that there are many young people who, through the Bible, deepen their faith in God — One in Three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — because in the words of the Bible they discover the Word that is Jesus Christ, who leads us to adore God the Father, with the grace that the Holy Spirit offers us in abundance.”

 

A video clip book launch

The Italian interview by Vatican Radio with Monsignor Lorenzo Leuzzi

Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II’s Theology of the Body

This new book, Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, due to be released on April 14, discusses John Paul II’s theology of the body and the meaning of human love. This interview appeared in the April 2009 issue of Columbia magazine, the organ of communication of the Knights of Columbus. I am grateful for the opportunity to re-publish it here.

 

By the Columbia Staff

 

From 1979 to 1984, Pope John Paul II delivered 129 Wednesday audiences in which he presented a vision of the human person, created as a unity of body and soul, and the vocation of every person to love. The pope’s catechesis, which has become known as the “theology of the body,” is considered by many to be revolutionary, as it develops profound truths about man’s most basic experiences — who we are and who we were created to be.

 


Called to Love.jpgA new book about the theology of the body, which is being published this month, was co-authored by Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson and Father José Granados, assistant professor at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Titled Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II’s Theology of the Body (Doubleday), the book sheds light on the significance and implications of the pope’s insights. Columbia spoke with Supreme Knight Anderson and Father Granados about their new book.

 

Columbia: The word “theology,” for many, denotes abstract ideas about God. What, then, does Pope John Paul II mean by the phrase “theology of the body,” which may sound radical or even contradictory?

 

Father Granados: Theology does not only deal with our questions about God; it deals mainly with God’s word to us — that is, the way he talks with us and tells us about himself and his love for us. For theology, the Incarnation is central, this event in which God himself comes to meet us and becomes visible by assuming a human body. Because of the Incarnation, the body enters into the realm of theology. When the Word became flesh, God made clear to us that the body has a language able to talk about God and about the way he calls us to love him and each other.

 

Anderson: This is precisely why we wrote Called to Love — to bring theology out of the realm of “abstract ideas about God” and show just how personal the pope’s vision is for each of us. We need always to remember that John Paul II throughout his priestly ministry remained totally committed to the care of married couples and the family. The theology of the body is a key element of his pastoral approach.

 

Central to John Paul II’s insights is the concept of the communion of persons, which he sees as a reflection of the Trinity. In what way does the pope develop the traditional doctrine?

 

Father Granados: The good news of Christianity is that God is love, a communion of persons in which the Father gives himself totally to the Son in the union of the Holy Spirit. John Paul II has developed an understanding of the human person in the light of this Trinitarian love. Human love, and particularly the love of the family — between husband and wife, parent and child, brothers and sisters — is the mirror in which God’s love shines in the world, and man is able to share in it. John Paul II has taken this central theme of the tradition and has interpreted, in this light, the whole of man’s vocation and destiny.

 

Anderson: This is also an important concept for the work of the Knights of Columbus since our Order is based upon the principles of charity, unity and fraternity. We might say that this is how Father McGivney chose to speak about the reality of a “communion of persons” in a very practical way more than a century ago.

 

What might people gain from studying the theology of the body? What inspired you to write this book?

 

Father Granados: The aim of this book is to help the reader discover the great vocation to which God calls him: a vocation to love. We often live unaware of this great call to love and thus are unable to give an answer to it. Because of this, our lives risk being wasted, without attaining their fulfillment. Through this book, we would like to reawaken the reader to the great news of his existence, to the wonder of God’s original plan for him. This means that the theology of the body is not only a teaching about human sexuality, but it also contains a whole understanding of the human person and of the world. In fact, John Paul II’s aim is to give an account of the whole of reality in terms of love.

 

Anderson: For me, Called to Love was a way to deepen a discussion begun in my earlier book, A Civilization of Love, by showing how through the theology of the body John Paul II explained every person’s vocation to love. This, in turn, helps us understand better our vocation within marriage, within our family and within the world.

 

Even before becoming Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla had decades of pastoral experience and wrote on matters related to marriage and family. Why is the family so important, and what does the theology of the body teach us about the nature of human love?

 

Father Granados: According to John Paul II, the family is the place where we discover who we are. The pope speaks in this regard of the genealogy of the person. Our identity as human persons is formed in the family. The fact that we are children of our   parents, for example, is not something accidental, but constitutes a central part of our being. The same is true for a parent; it is not just that a person has a child, but that he is a father or mother. In the family, we understand that we come from another as children and are called to become spouses and parents. In other words, one’s life is defined by an original love that is first received, as a child, and then given to another in order to be fruitful.

 

Anderson: We can see from this why John Paul II believed that the family is the central place of encounter between Christianity and contemporary society. If we do not understand our lives as spouses and parents in a profoundly Christian way, it is very difficult to live a Christian life in today’s world. But John Paul II’s insight is more profound: By understanding our lives as spouses and parents as God intended, we learn how to live a Christian life in a more authentic way. This is true even for those who never marry.

 

Beginning with man’s “original experiences” in the first chapters of Genesis, the catechesis on the theology of the body is, in a way, a Scriptural commentary about human nature. What role does Christian revelation play in understanding who we are? Can we explain John Paul II’s insights in secular terms?

 

Father Granados: Modern man suffers from a crisis of identity. We need to know who we are and what our path in life is. In the book of Genesis, John Paul II saw the genetic code of our identity as human beings. For instance, the pope talks about an original solitude: Adam realizes in the garden that he is alone. This experience is interpreted in the light of man’s relationship with the Creator, the only one who fulfills our expectations and desires. This means that our identity is always constituted before the mystery of God, as creatures who come from him.

 

John Paul II then adds the experience of unity: We only know who we are and how to reach God when we encounter another person through love. Precisely because the pope starts with an analysis of human experience, the theology of the body is universal and refers not just to Christians. Every human being asks himself about the meaning of life and how to find fulfillment. The theology of the body answers these questions in terms of love.

 

The book is being released one year after Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States. How do the teachings of John Paul II relate to those of Benedict?

 

Father Granados: At the beginning of his pontificate, Benedict said that he did not want to write much, because he conceived his mission as making John Paul II’s great work better known. In fact, Benedict’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) was a continuation of John Paul II’s work on love. Like his predecessor, Benedict takes as his point of departure the way Christ reveals to man his own vocation. In Deus Caritas Est, he writes that in order to give a good definition of love, we will need to start by looking at the Crucified one (12). It is at the foot of the Cross that we learn what love is all about.

 

Anderson: This was the central pastoral vision of the Second Vatican Council. John Paul II and Benedict XVI are popes whose great mission is the renewal of the Church sought by the Council. Both popes have sought to do this by seeing in Christ the revelation of God’s love, which makes us who we are and sets before us a way of living to which we are called.

Spiritual Maternity for Priests

In early February, I mentioned the notion, the desire, perhaps even the ministry women can do for the spiritual wellbeing of priests. It is an idea that is growing in the Church and yet its importance is not being recognized by many bishops. However, Bishop Edward Slattery, bishop of Tulsa, inaugurated a work of spiritual maternity for priests in the Tulsa diocese on March 24th. The good part of this work is the on-going formation. Father Mark Kirby writes about it on his blog.

Michael J. McGivney’s Legacy


Michael Mcgivney.jpgDaily we pray for the beatification of the Venerable Father Michael J. McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus. His cause for canonization has been advanced because we are convinced he deeply contemplated the face of Christ and truly knew the Lord by entering into his sacrifice of love. In imitation of the Lord who came ‘not to be served but to serve,’ Father McGivney poured out his life, “in service to one, in service to all.” He was that priestly grain of wheat, which, like the Lord died and was buried, and then in the power of the Holy Spirit produced abundant fruit.

 

By being with his people in their need – the people of this very parish [St. Mary’s Church, New Haven, CT] – Father McGivney followed Christ; where Christ was, there was Father McGivney.

 

Our founder saw Christ in the multitudes that packed this Church each Sunday, and especially in the hardworking men whose faith he strove to bolster. He found Christ in families bereft by the death of husbands and fathers and indeed in a man condemned to die.

 

He sought the Lord in the lay leadership he raised up in the basement of this Church, men to whom he entrusted his fledgling organization conceived in the genius of holiness. In the power of the Holy Spirit, Father McGivney sought to write the law of love on the hearts of those first Knights of Columbus by creating an Order whose first and more enduring principle was charity. His love for Christ, and for his Church, and for the beloved Knights of Columbus did not diminish when be moved to Thomaston to serve as a pastor. He was merely 38 years of age when he died having poured out his life in acts of love for his people that replicated the mystery of Christ’s sacrificial love that he celebrated each day in the Mass.

 

This is an excerpt of Bishop William A. Lori’s homily from the March 29th Founders’ Day Mass, Saint Mary’s New Haven, Connecticut. Bishop Lori is the Bishop of Bridgeport and the Supreme Chaplain for the Knights.

Pope Benedict XVI’s prayer intentions, April 2009


Pope Benedict detail.jpgSaint Augustine tells us to have “but one heart and soul in God” with our voices in unison. And so pray together with the Pope for the following intentions:

 

The general intention

That the Lord may bless farmers’ work with an abundant harvest and sensitize the richer populations to the drama of hunger in the world.

 

The mission intention

That the Christians who operate in the territories where the conditions of the poor, the weak and the women and children are most tragic, may be signs of hope, thanks to their courageous testimony to the Gospel of solidarity and love.

Pope Benedict: trust in God’s initiative in responding to His call


Good Shepherd.jpgOn the occasion of the next World Day of prayer for vocations to the priesthood and to the consecrated life, which will be celebrated on 3 May 2009, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, I want to invite all the People of God to reflect on the theme: Faith in the divine initiative – the human response. The exhortation of Jesus to his disciples: “Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest” (Mt 9:38) has a constant resonance in the Church. Pray! The urgent call of the Lord stresses that prayer for vocations should be continuous and trusting. The Christian community can only really “have ever greater faith and hope in God’s providence” (Sacramentum Caritatis, 26) if it is enlivened by prayer.

 

The vocation to the priesthood and to the consecrated life constitutes a special gift of God which becomes part of the great plan of love and salvation that God has for every man and woman and for the whole of humanity. The Apostle Paul, whom we remember in a special way during this Pauline Year dedicated to the Two-thousandth anniversary of his birth, writing to the Ephesians says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Ef 1:3-4). In the universal call to holiness, of particular relevance is God’s initiative of choosing some to follow his Son Jesus Christ more closely, and to be his privileged ministers and witnesses. The divine Master personally called the Apostles “to be with him, and to be sent out to preach and have authority to cast out demons” (Mk 3:14-15); they, in turn, gathered other disciples around them as faithful collaborators in this mission. In this way, responding to the Lord’s call and docile to the movement of the Holy Spirit, over the centuries, countless ranks of priests and consecrated persons placed themselves totally at the service of the Gospel in the Church. Let us give thanks to God, because even today he continues to call together workers into his vineyard. While it is undoubtedly true that a worrisome shortage of priests is evident in some regions of the world, and that the Church encounters difficulties and obstacles along the way, we are sustained by the unshakable certitude that the one who firmly guides her in the pathways of time towards the definitive fulfilment of the Kingdom is he, the Lord, who freely chooses persons of every culture and of every age and invites them to follow him according to the mysterious plans of his merciful love.

 

Our first duty, therefore, is to keep alive in families and in parishes, in movements and in apostolic associations, in religious communities and in all the sectors of diocesan life this appeal to the divine initiative with unceasing prayer. We must pray that the whole Christian people grows in its trust in God, convinced that the “Lord of the harvest” does not cease to ask some to place their entire existence freely at his service so as to work with him more closely in the mission of salvation. What is asked of those who are called, for their part, is careful listening and prudent discernment, a generous and willing adherence to the divine plan, and a serious study of the reality that is proper to the priestly and religious vocations, so as to be able to respond responsibly and with conviction.

 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church rightly reminds us that God’s free initiative requires a free response on the part of men and women; a positive response which always presupposes acceptance of and identification with the plan that God has for everyone; a response which welcomes the Lord’s loving initiative and becomes, for the one who is called, a binding moral imperative, an offering of thanksgiving to God and a total cooperation with the plan which God carries out in history (cf. n. 2062).

 


Eucahristic table.jpgContemplating the mystery of the Eucharist, which expresses in a sublime way the free gift of the Father in the Person of his Only Begotten Son for the salvation of mankind, and the full and docile readiness of Christ to drink to the dregs the “cup” of the will of God (cf. Mt 26:39), we can more readily understand how “faith in the divine initiative” models and gives value to the “human response“. In the Eucharist, that perfect gift which brings to fulfilment the plan of love for the redemption of the world, Jesus offers himself freely for the salvation of mankind. “The Church”, my beloved predecessor John Paul II wrote, “has received the Eucharist from Christ her Lord not as a gift – however precious – among so many others, but as the gift par excellence, for it is the gift of himself, of his person in his sacred humanity, as well as the gift of his saving work” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 11).

 

It is priests who are called to perpetuate this salvific mystery from century to century until the Lord’s glorious return, for they can contemplate, precisely in the Eucharistic Christ, the eminent model of a “vocational dialogue” between the free initiative of the Father and the faithful response of Christ. In the celebration of the Eucharist it is Christ himself who acts in those whom he chooses as his ministers; he supports them so that their response develops in a dimension of trust and gratitude that removes all fear, even when they experience more acutely their own weakness (cf. Rm 8:26-28), or indeed when the experience of misunderstanding or even of persecution is most bitter (cf. Rm 8:35-39).

 

The awareness of being saved by the love of Christ, which every Mass nourishes in the faithful and especially in priests, cannot but arouse within them a trusting self-abandonment to Christ who gave his life for us. To believe in the Lord and to accept his gift, therefore, leads us to entrust ourselves to Him with thankful hearts, adhering to his plan of salvation. When this does happen, the one who is “called” voluntarily leaves everything and submits himself to the teaching of the divine Master; hence a fruitful dialogue between God and man begins, a mysterious encounter between the love of the Lord who calls and the freedom of man who responds in love, hearing the words of Jesus echoing in his soul, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide” (Jn 15:16).

 

This intertwining of love between the divine initiative and the human response is present also, in a wonderful way, in the vocation to the consecrated life. The Second Vatican Council recalls, “The evangelical counsels of chastity dedicated to God, poverty and obedience are based upon the words and examples of the Lord. They were further commanded by the apostles and Fathers of the Church, as well as by the doctors and pastors of souls. The counsels are a divine gift, which the Church received from its Lord and which it always safeguards with the help of His grace” (Lumen Gentium, 43).

 

Once more, Jesus is the model of complete and trusting adherence to the will of the Father, to whom every consecrated person must look. Attracted by him, from the very first centuries of Christianity, many men and women have left families, possessions, material riches and all that is humanly desirable in order to follow Christ generously and live the Gospel without compromise, which had become for them a school of deeply rooted holiness. Today too, many undertake this same demanding journey of evangelical perfection and realise their vocation in the profession of the evangelical counsels. The witness of these our brothers and sisters, in contemplative monasteries, religious institutes and congregations of apostolic life, reminds the people of God of “that mystery of the Kingdom of God is already at work in history, even as it awaits its full realization in heaven” (Vita Consecrata, 1).

 


Call Peter and Andrew.jpgWho can consider himself worthy to approach the priestly ministry? Who can embrace the consecrated life relying only on his or her own human powers? Once again, it is useful to reiterate that the response of men and women to the divine call, whenever they are aware that it is God who takes the initiative and brings His plan of salvation to fulfilment, is never patterned after the timid self-interest of the worthless servant who, out of fear, hid the talent entrusted to him in the ground (cf. Mt 25:14-30), but rather expresses itself in a ready adherence to the Lord’s invitation, as in the case of Peter who, trusting in the Lord’ word, did not hesitate to let down the net once more even after having toiled all night and catching nothing (cf. Lk 5:5). Without in any sense renouncing personal responsibility, the free human response to God thus becomes “co-responsibility”, responsibility in and with Christ, through the action of his Holy Spirit; it becomes communion with the One who makes it possible for us to bear much fruit (cf. Jn 15:5).

 

An emblematic human response, full of trust in God’s initiative, is the generous and unmitigated “Amen” of the Virgin of Nazareth, uttered with humble and decisive adherence to the plan of the Most High announced to her by God’s messenger (cf. Lk 1:38). Her prompt “Yes” allowed Her to become the Mother of God, the Mother of our Saviour. Mary, after this first “fiat”, had to repeat it many times, even up to the culminating moment of the crucifixion of Jesus, when “standing by the cross of Jesus” as the Evangelist John notes, she participated in the dreadful suffering of her innocent Son. And it was from the cross, that Jesus, while dying, gave her to us as Mother and entrusted us to her as sons and daughters (cf. Jn 19:26-27); she is especially the Mother of priests and consecrated persons. I want to entrust to her all those who are aware of God’s call to set out on the road of the ministerial priesthood or consecrated life.

 

Dear friends, do not become discouraged in the face of difficulties and doubts; trust in God and follow Jesus faithfully and you will be witnesses of the joy that flows from intimate union with him. Imitating the Virgin Mary whom all generations proclaim as blessed because she believed (cf. Lk 1:48), commit yourselves with every spiritual energy, to realise the heavenly Father’s plan of salvation, cultivating in your heart, like her, the ability to be astonished and to adore him who is mighty and does “great things”, for Holy is his name (cf. Lk 1:49).

 

From the Vatican, 20 January 2009

Benedictus PP. XVI