Communio – Page 81 – …bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Cremains to be buried

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith gave an instruction, Ad resurgendum cum Christo (“To Rise With Christ”) concerning the dignity of ashes/cremains of the deceased member of the Faithful.

Ad resurgendum cum Christo (2016) is a binding Roman Curial document governing the life of the church, which was explicitly approved by the Pope with his express order. Yet, this document reveals nothing new as it is a clarification with an attempt reinforce existing canonical and liturgical (ritual) norms already in force. Until 1963, the Catholic Church prohibited cremation because of the fitting nature of keeping intact the visible unity the body, its dignity (even in death) and the theology of the resurrection of the body (see Nicene Creed) the Last Day. Likewise, the Church’s teaching desired to counter philosophical views that rejected the teaching explicitly Christian belief in bodily resurrection. The permission for cremation was put into the Code of Canon Law in 1983 for the Latin Church and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches in 1990.

For our purposes here, Ad resurgendum cum Christo reiterates the long held view that the Church is not opposed to the practice of cremation (canons 1176.3 and 1184.1 no.2 refer to burial and cremation).

Our theology is rooted in the body. It is a theology and an anthropology based in revelation and sacramentality of Christian Initiation (baptism, confirmation and Eucharist) integrating total person –body, soul, and spirit– as the subject as the center and locus of salvation in Christ Jesus.

The most eye-grabbing part of the instruction for many is the re-iteration of the prohibition on the scattering of ashes following the Mass of Christian Burial.

Ad resurgendum cum Christo teaches:

She [the church] cannot, therefore, condone attitudes or permit rites that involve erroneous ideas about death, such as considering death as the definitive annihilation of the person, or the moment of fusion with Mother Nature or the universe, or as a stage in the cycle of regeneration, or as the definitive liberation from the “prison” of the body. (no. 3)

Hence, we can understand the author meaning by “fusion with Mother Nature or the universe” as the practices people do in disposing of the ashes of the beloved: the scattering of their ashes over particular lands, mountains, or waters. The Church reminds us that it is strictly prohibited to divide the ashes among family or their reservation in a home, although culturally sensitive exceptions allowing domestic repose of cremains are left open to the local ordinary, presuming “agreement with the Episcopal Conference or Synod of Bishops of the Oriental Churches” (no. 6). Additionally, we faithful Catholics do not accept philosophies that speaks to “pantheism, naturalism, or nihilism.” It is taught that the ashes cannot be “preserved in mementos, pieces of jewelry, or other objects” (no. 7).

You ought to read the document because I bet that many will not realize that the burial of the body or deposition of the ashes in consecrated ground is matter of doctrine. Our disposition of the ashes in a sacred place keeps departed from being forgotten or their remains from being shown a lack of respect.

“The faithful departed remain part of the Church who believes “in the communion of all the faithful of Christ, those who are pilgrims on earth, the dead who are being purified, and the blessed in heaven, all together forming one Church” AND The reservation of the ashes of the departed in a sacred place ensures that they are not excluded from the prayers and remembrance of their family or the Christian community. It prevents the faithful departed from being forgotten, or their remains from being shown a lack of respect, which eventuality is possible, most especially once the immediately subsequent generation has too passed away. Also it prevents any unfitting or superstitious practices” (no. 5).

Catholics believe in the resurrection of the flesh as fundamental point of received theology and therefore, in death, the body is not incidental unimportant and nor is it trash. Ours is a personal religion holding to the point that what we do with the body matters. No person is anonymous and the burial or disposition of ashes in a way that rejects the history of a person (the name, the person, the identity of the person) is contrary to common Catholic practice and belief. Belong to the communion of saints through grace. God created each person and calls each person to Himself at the time of death.

Anyone working in a parish these days will acknowledge the difficulties in working Catholics today in the face of culture; the “unchurched” or those labelled as “nones” are rapidly becoming a problem due to a lack of education, a desire to really know and understand the teachings of Divine Revelation and the Church. The unchurched allow socio-economic-political priorities and personal mores to trump truth. Try speaking with a grieving person (or a pre-grieving person) about the church’s scriptural, doctrinal, and sacramental/ritual reasons for requiring that the corpse or cremains be present for the wake and funeral mass and that cremains be finally placed in a cemetery or columbarium… and you will see the problems at hand and vitriol heaped on a pastoral minister. I have had to try to convince daily-Mass Catholics to bury the ashes placing Mom on the mantlepiece in their living room or a closet or giving half the ashes to a friend. Not easy.

When John F. Kennedy, Jr. died with his wife in a plane accident in 1999, the burial of cremains was at sea. The cremains went into a container and dropped overboard at sea. The family and Church made the distinction between “burial at sea” and “scattering at sea.” While many say this a distinction without a difference, but there is a difference. A burial at sea has the cremains remain intact and together. With the scattering of the cremains are scattered; i.e., no container to hold human remains together. The same would apply to burial of a body at sea. The Catholic question here is the integrity of the remains.

Archbishop Peter Sartain, paraphrasing an Easter homily of Cardinal George’s in his homily at Cardinal George’s funeral Mass said: “If the earth is our mother, then the grave is our home and the world is a closed system turned in on itself. If Christ is risen from the grave and the Church is our mother, then our destiny reaches beyond space and time, beyond what can be measured and controlled.”

We all should read St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 15.

Jesus is always the center of evangelization

These days I am thinking about the work of evangelization. I am asking myself: what holds the work of evangelization together. Key points:

“Currently, Evangelization, which is always a pressing task, requires the Church to work even more assiduously throughout the world in order to ensure that all mankind may come to know Christ.”

“Jesus, the Word incarnate, is always the center of our announcement, the point of reference for our evangelizing mission and for its methodology, because He is the human face of God, Who wishes to meet all men and women so as to bring them into communion with Him, in His love.”

Benedict XVI
May 11, 2012

Early voting

Get out and vote.

Bring the divine ideal to reality

“Christ calls people to bring the divine ideal to reality. Only short-sighted people imagine that Christianity has already happened, that it took place, say, in the thirteenth century, or the fourth, or some other time. I would say that it has only made the first hesitant steps in the history of the human race. Many words of Christ are incomprehensible to us even now, because we are still Neanderthals in spirit and morals; because the arrow of the Gospels is aimed at eternity; because the history of Christianity is only beginning. What has happened already, what we now call the history of Christianity, are the first half-clumsy, unsuccessful attempts to make it a reality.”

Fr. Alexander Men

St José Sánchez del Río

“José Sánchez del Río was born on 28 March 1913 in Sahuayo, in the State of Michoacán, Mexico. At the outbreak of the so-called “Cristero War” in 1926, his brothers joined the rebel forces fighting the violent anti-Christian regime which had been established in the country. José too was enlisted. Catholicism flourished in Sahuayo and for this reason the “Cristeros” were deeply rooted in the area. Priests secretly remained in Sahuayo throughout the persecution and never abandoned the faithful, clandestinely celebrating the Eucharist and administrating the sacraments, at which young José assiduously participated.

“In those years, the first Christian martyrs were often spoken of and many young people wanted to follow in their footsteps. During a violent battle on 25 January 1928, José was captured and brought to his city of birth, where he was imprisoned in the parish church which had already been desecrated and laid waste by federalists. It was suggested that he flee in order to avoid being sentenced to death, but he refused.

“While in prison, in an effort to make José renounce his faith to save himself, he was tortured and forced to watch the hanging of another boy who had been imprisoned with him. The soles of his feet flayed, José was made to walk to the cemetery where, positioned in front of the grave prepared for him, he was shot, but not mortally, and asked again to renounce the faith. But José, with every wound inflicted, cried out: “Long live Christ the King! Long live our Lady of Guadalupe!” In the end he was shot and executed. It was 10 February 1928, and he was nearly fifteen years old. Three days before he had written to his mother: “Trust in God’s will. I die happy because I am dying next to our Lord.” In 2005, Pope Benedict XVI beatified José.

The feast day is February 10th.

Saint José Sánchez del Río’s body is incorrupt. Given that he died more than 80 years ago at the age of 14, that the mortal remains are free from any sign of decomposition is a minor but not insignificant miracle.

Pope Francis canonized del Rio today, Sunday, October 16, 2016.

May Saint José Sánchez del Río’s love of Christ the King and Our Lady of Guadalupe be a sign for us today.

Purgatorial Society

We are quickly coming to November when we pray for the Souls in Purgatory. We enter into this venerable practice of remembering our loved ones, and those who have no one to pray for them, with certainty that our prayers are lovingly heard by the Most Blessed Trinity. Let us remember the souls before God at the altar.

The form for enrollment St Gregory Purgatorial Society is noted at this link.

The annual Mass for the enrolled members in the Purgatorial Society is November 2nd; thereafter the members are remembered at the Altar on each First Friday.

St. Gregory Purgatorial Society, P. O. Box 891, New Haven, CT 06504

Arturo Sosa new Jesuit superior general

Today, under the power of the Holy Spirit, the 212 delegates of General Congregation 36 elected Jesuit Father Arturo Marcellino Sosa Abascal, 68, as the 31st Superior General of the Society of Jesus. Father Sosa is a member of the Venezuelan Jesuit Province.

Until now, Father General Sosa served as the Delegate for the Jesuit Curia Community and the Interprovincial Houses & Works in Rome. Moreover, his service included being the Father Provincial during the Chavez government, a university president, and as the coordinator of the social apostolate. Sosa earned a doctorate in Political Science.

Known as the Black Pope, Father Sosa is elected for life. However, the last two Generals resigned due to age (Nicolas and Kolvenbach) and one before that because of health (Arrupe).

Father Sosa succeeds Father Adolfo Nicolas who resigned due to age (80 years old). Since the founding of the Society of Jesus in 1540 this is the 36th time for such a gathering of Jesuit leadership in a General Congregation (GC). The GC is only called to elect a new superior general and when the General decides that there are matters of greater moment to discuss for the good of the Church and the Society. At the end of 2015, there were 16,740 Jesuits in the world.

An interesting piece of news is that several superiors general are from the Americas at this time, among others: Jesuit (Venezuela), Benedictine Abbot Primate (USA), the Benedictine Abbot President of the Subiaco Cassinese Congregation (Colombia), Franciscan (USA), Daughter of Charity (USA), Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (USA), the Legion of Christ (Mexico)… not to be toped by by Pope Francis. The Americas make a significant contribution to the life of the Church at this time in history.

AMDG.

Holy Tradition

A question on the bible and the nature of Tradition always surfaces. Many of those who follow the Protestant line dismiss the intimate connection Tradition that the Catholics and Orthodox make viz. the bible. The magisterial reformers of the 16th century (Luther, Zwingli) led Christians astray by teaching that sola scriptura was a true doctrine taught by the bible. No such thing. What we now come to understand as sacred Scripture found in the publication called The Bible was developed by the Church… the Church did NOT come out of the Bible. History teaches us this fact. History that Evangelicals refuse to admit. The Church, therefore, predates the New Testament, and the Bible. Tradition trumps Scripture. After all, who decided what the Bible would be? The Church, in Council.

In defense of biblical tradition here is but one support: “Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

Holy Tradition assists us in interpreting the words of sacred Scripture. One fact, Divine Revelation, which we accept with that faith which we owe to God alone, was completed with the death of the last Apostle, St. John. At the Council of Trent the Council Fathers taught: Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy mother Church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding. May understanding, knowledge and wisdom increase as ages and centuries roll along, and greatly and vigorously flourish, in each and all, in the individual and the whole Church: but this only in its own proper kind, that is to say, in the same doctrine, the same sense, and the same understanding. AND yet, it is also true to say that Tradition gives us a renewed sense of what we believe and hold to be True about our divinely revealed faith. Doctrine, according to the Magisterium develops but does not reject the Truth nor take up modernist teachings to explain what is revealed by the Lord. Offering an interpretation of John 16:12-13: “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth,” Joseph Ratzinger speaks of “livingness” of tradition through all the ages, and not merely at the time of the Apostles and that’s it.

In his Commentary on Vatican II’s document Dei Verbum, Joseph Ratzinger wrote:

The dynamic concept of tradition, with which the Council here develops its positive conception of traditio, was strongly attacked from two quite opposite directions. On the one hand, Cardinal Ruffini rejected it from his position of traditionally neoscholastic theology, but on the other, Cardinal Leger attacked it from an ecumenical standpoint. In spite of the sharp division in their general theological orientations, the arguments of these two Council fathers were astonishingly similar Ruffini firmly emphasized the idea of revelation being concluded with the death of the last Apostle, rejected the idea of including disciples of the Apostles among the origins of revelation, and opposed the idea of a living and growing revelation, for, in accordance with the text of Trent and Vatican I, he considered that this should be mentioned only in connection with a strong emphasis on the strict unchangeability of a revelation that had been concluded once and for all, with which he referred to an appropriate text by Vincent de Lerins, quoted at both Councils. In the concept of the schema, and especially in its emphasis on spiritual experience as a principle of the growing knowledge of revelation, he detected theological evolutionism, condemned as modernism by Pius XII. In another tone and with other reasons Cardinal Leger insisted on the same point, He found that the Schema, especially in its idea of progress, which seemed to refer not only to the knowledge of tradition, but tradition itself (Haec … Traditio … proficit), blurred the strict distinction between apostolic and post-apostolic tradition and endangered the strict transcendence of divine revelation when it was confronted with the statements and actions of the teaching office of the Church. The Cardinal was concerned that the Church should bind itself firmly to the final and unchangeable word of God, that does not grow, but can only be constantly assimilated afresh and cannot be manipulated by the Church. The Theological Commission considered the question carefully, but decided not to make any major alterations in the text. It pointed out that the clause ” … Traditio proficit” is explained by a second clause “crescit … tam rerum quam verborum perceptio“, i.e. the growth of tradition is a growth in understanding of the reality that was given at the beginning. (Commentary pp.186-187)

In another place Tradition is expounded upon in this manner by Pope John Paul II, in the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei when he about the error:

The root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition. Incomplete, because it does not take sufficiently into account the living character of Tradition, which, as the Second Vatican Council clearly taught, “comes from the apostles and progresses in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on. This comes about in various ways. It comes through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts. It comes from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience. And it comes from the preaching of those who have received, along with their right of succession in the episcopate, the sure charism of truth”.

Let me suggest reading a good and essential book: Joseph Ratzinger, God’s Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office (Ignatius Press).

Orthodox Abbot Tryphon offers this reflection on Holy Tradition which supports the proper interpretation of the Bible:

Many evangelical protestants see Holy Tradition as standing in direct contrast to Scripture, as though Tradition is always relegated to “the traditions of men”. However, there are numerous references in Holy Scripture to Holy Tradition. For example:

“Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught (Luke 1:1-4).”

It must be noted that in this instance, the oral word preceded the written word. hence becoming Holy Tradition.

In John 20:30-3, it is revealed, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book”, and in John 21:25, we read, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written”. One of my personal favorite passages regarding Holy Tradition is found in 2 Thessalonians 2:15, “So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.”

Holy Tradition is not apart from the Bible, but supports the proper interpretation of the Bible. Holy Tradition emanates from Christ Himself, and is expressed by the Apostles, the Holy Fathers, and the Church. The Fathers, in fact, are the very guardians of the Apostolic Tradition, for they, like the Apostles before them, are witnesses of a single Truth, which is the Truth of the God-man, Jesus Christ. Since Christ is one, unique, and indivisible, so also is the Church unique and indivisible. The Church is the incarnation of the incarnated God-man, Jesus Christ, and will continue through the ages, and even throughout all eternity.

St John XXIII

Almighty ever-living God,
who chose blessed John the Twenty-third to preside over your whole people
and benefit them by word and example,
keep safe, we pray, by his intercession,
the shepherds of your Church
along with the flocks entrusted to their care,
and direct them in the way of eternal salvation.

St Abraham

In the Roman Martyrology today, is the feast day of St. Abraham, patriarch and father of all believers, who is celebrated by all three of the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). “The LORD took Abram outside and said, ‘Gaze into the sky and count the stars–if you are able to count them!’ Then he said to him, ‘So will your descendants be.’” (Genesis 15:5)

As you know, the Roman Martyrology is the official list of saints recognized by the Catholic Church. Several times on this blog I have drawn our attention to various OT prophets that we commemorate as saints and now Abraham brings us closer to the reality that the Church transcends time as well walks on earth.

The Orthodox Church commemorates Father Abraham on August 21 with Isaac, and Jacob. With the help of the Orthodox we can appreciate the place of Abraham in our theology from a hymn sung on the second Sunday preceding Christmas, the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers:

Come feast-lovers, let us extol with hymns the assembly of the forefathers – Adam the first father, Enoch, Noah, and Melchizedek, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and those after the Law – Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Samuel; and with them Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the twelve Prophets, with Elijah and Elisha, and all the rest.

The author at St Sypridon Church’s web writes this that I believe is helpful for Catholics, too:

“The Church’s high esteem for the Old Testament saints is also seen in her custom of depicting the forefathers and prophets around the base of the interior central dome of a church. And by remembering these saints in her liturgical calendar, the Orthodox Church demonstrates her understanding that the Body of Christ transcends limitations of time and space. This awareness is clearly expressed at every Divine Liturgy: “And again we offer unto You this reasonable service for all those who in faith have gone before us to their rest: patriarchs, prophets, apostles, preachers, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, ascetics, and every righteous spirit made perfect in faith.”