The other news I have failed to post is the current Lenten retreat of the Holy Father and members of the Curia that started Sunday evening, in part because the retreat has been sporadically, erratically, and in general, poorly reported over the past seven years that it has taken place in this Pontificate. I will present the available news stories chronologically. The first news report about this year's retreat came in Vatican Insider and ZENIT< whose report I am using since it is more extensive - because the story had a topical lead: Benedict's renunciation, and Cardinal Ravasi's sgtriking Biblical image to evoke his coming retirement...
'Pope in retirement will be like
Moses praying on the mountain
while his people fight in the valley'
The Pope in the side room of the Redemptoris Mater Chapel, as a choir intones preliminary chants before a meditation ession.
Vatican City, February 19, 2013 (Zenit.org) - When Benedict XVI enters into retirement, he will be like Moses on the mountain in prayer, while his people fight in the valley.
This was the biblical image proposed Sunday by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, as he opened the annual Lenten retreat for the Pope and the Curia. Cardinal Ravasi was selected by the Holy Father to preach this year's spiritual exercises.
Before entering into the meditations, the cardinal spoke of the affection, gratitude and admiration of the Church for the retiring Pope.
Referring to the Old Testament episode (cf. Exodus 17), he said: "We will stay in the valley, where Amalek is, where there is dust, where there are fears, terrors, nightmares, but also hopes, where you have stayed over these eight years. Henceforth, however, we know that you will be interceding for us on the mountain."
The theme of this year's Lenten spiritual exercises is "Ars orandi, ars credendi. The face of God and the face of man in the Psalm prayers."
As the cardinal recalled, referring to Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the retreatants' mission is to "examine the conscience," to meditate and to "reject all disordered affections in oneself."
Cardinal Ravasi then mentioned the experience of Jewish writer Etty Hillesum, victim of the Nazi Holocaust (also mentioned by Benedict XVI during last Wednesday's general audience), who in her diary of Auschwitz wrote about the need to discover in herself that "very profound source," often submerged under stones and sand, in which God dwells.
Likewise, for Catholics the spiritual exercises are an occasion to "free the soul from the earth, from the mire of sin, from the sand of banality, from the nettles of chatting, which especially in these days is occupying our ears uninterruptedly," stressed the cardinal.
The spiritual exercises, continued the biblicist, imply "ascesis" (word which in Greek means in fact "exercise") and, at the same time, they can be nourished by "creativity," united of course to theological rigor.
The four key moments of the act of prayer were described by the cardinal with four verbs: 1) To breathe, 2) to think, 3) to fight, 4) to love.
In the first place prayer is breathing, it is an essential act for faith, as breathing is for life. As Cardinal Yves Congar said, breathing is prayer, while the sacraments are nutrition.
Thinking is no less an essential act in prayer, given that prayer is not just "emotion" or "instinct" but involvement in our request to God. Saint Thomas Aquinas, quoted by Cardinal Ravasi, said that "prayer is an act of reason that applies the desire of the will to Him who is not in our power but is superior to us," namely, God.
The verb to fight, noted the cardinal, makes one think of Jacob's struggle with the angel, "that centuries later Hosea interpreted as a prayer." In fact, according to the prophet, Jacob fought with the angel, "won, wept and asked for grace" (Hosea 12:5).
The fourth key verb is to love. The experience of God as love is distinctly Christian, whereas in other religions, He "is not so close to us so as to be able to be embraced." Far from being an "immobile motor," as Aristotle said, the Christian God "is not a God of whom one wishes to speak but a God to whom one wishes to speak."
It is because of this that, for the Christian "prayer must have this dimension of joyful intimacy, of conversation," always compatible with the three dimensions previously listed: to breathe, to think and to fight, said Cardinal Ravasi.
A fifth component, which in a certain sense is the cement of the four verbs of prayer, is silence. "When two people truly in love have exhausted the whole arsenal of the commonplaces of their love, repeating all the stereotyped expressions of love, if they are truly in love, they look into one another's eyes and are silent."
Therefore, prayer is not that different: it is "a silent meeting of the eyes which makes prayerful contemplation flower," stressed the biblicist.
The Spiritual Exercises for the Pope and the members of the Roman Curia will end on Saturday morning, Feb. 23. Audiences, including the Wednesday general audience, are suspended for the whole duration of the spiritual exercises.
The next two reports are from Vatican Radio, which refers to the Tuesday morning meditation and a Monday afternoon meditation. Since after the opening day evening meditation (Sunday), the enxt few days have three meditation sessions each, we are obviously missing any report on the two other Monday sessions:
Some meditations
from Day 2 and 3
February 19, 2013
History as a place of encounter with God, and the figure of the Messiah, as read through the Psalms. This was the central theme of the two meditations preached Tuesday morning, the third day of the Roman Curia’s Spiritual Exercises, led by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Emer McCarthy reports:
Moving on from his reflections on the face of God revealed to man in the cosmos, on Tuesday, he described time as the golden thread in meditations on Psalms 136 and 117. God’s theophany, in fact, takes place throughout history.
The Cardinal noted that we particularly see this in the Old Testament, 'the historical creed of Israel', in the passages where we see a faith tied to facts, the great gestures of God’s love starting with the creation to the exodus from Egypt.
Cardinal Ravasi says history reveals how we encounter God in the tangle of events, often marked by suffering, but also joy. "History is and should always be our favored place to meet our Lord, our God. Although it is a land of scandal, even if it is a land in which we often see maybe even the silence of God or apostasy of men".
Hope, he continued, is the central virtue to understanding that history is not a series of meaningless events, but as we see in the book of Job, it is controlled by "God’s overriding project”.
“We consider the Lord as an ally, a strong and loving companion on our journey through the desert … a Pastor who protects from every natural and historical danger, and the journey towards freedom”.
The cardinal said hope is the “younger sister” of faith and charity. "Through hope, we are certain that we are not at the mercy of fate, an imponderable fate. Our God is defined in Exodus 3 with the first person pronoun 'I' and the fundamental verb 'I am'. So, He is a Person who acts, who enters into events and that's why our relationship with God is a relationship of trust, dialogue, contact. Yes, our hope springs from the belief that history is not a succession of events without meaning. "
In his meditation Monday afternoon, Cardinal Ravasi spoke of the liturgy as the place of God's revelation. There are two basic dimensions: the vertical gaze towards God, and the horizontal gaze towards our brethren. He noted that it is necessary to strike a balance between these two dimensions, otherwise there is a risk of a sacramentalism, when the liturgy is seen as an ends in and of itself or of reducing the liturgy to that of a general assembly.
But above all, Cardinal Ravasi spoke of the need for a deeper engagement of the heart, so that worship does not become a merely external rite, as the prophet Isaiah notes when he says that God hates offerings and sacrifices. Loving our brothers and sisters and well as the confession of sins are, he concluded, crucial moments to cross the threshold that leads to communion with the Lord:
(Vatican Radio)
Faith as a conscious, free and passionate adhesion, as wel as man's encounter with limitation. [Interesting observation, in view of the rinuntiatio, but unfortunately, the RV reporter fails to follow up in the rest of the report how Ravasi fleshed out that observation.]
These were the themes of Wednesday morning’s meditations led by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, in the presence of Pope Benedict and the Roman Curia.
The Cardinal began with Psalm 131, a short Psalm, "a sort of symbol of a childhood spirituality" where we find the characteristics of the believer, he who "places his hope in God".
However, that Psalm opens with the opposites of faith, it speaks of “pride, haughtiness, absolute self-sufficiency, placing ourselves on a par with God - This is original sin".
Freedom is the other key word for the Christian. And in the image of the "weaned child", typical of Eastern symbolism, the psalmist celebrates a faith that is adherence and at the same time choice. A child now grown up, weaned from the mother who nourishes him, separated by an act of love and freedom:
"A faith that is adherence, consciously adhering, freely adhering, intensely and passionately adhering. Undoubtedly, not for nothing, 'like a weaned child' is repeated twice. And then the last verse is a call to all Israel, to hope, and to trust in the Lord. We should also learn from the great history of spirituality, above all we have to learn this - we who have reached perhaps a level of responsibility, dignity, even within the Church, or who hold roles of some importance and who at times are called to make decisions that affect people. Probably the temptation creeps in, slowly and subtly, to look down on others from on high".
[This certainly does not apply to Benedict XVI!.]
By remaining childlike we can nurture our faith, he continues, citing the example of St. Therese of Lisieux that teaches us how to trust and remain pure, like children:
"(Children) trustingly put their hands in the hands of adults... and this is the shame of paedophilia, because the child, out of trust, spontaneously abandons himself to the adult, to his father. Spontaneously he puts his hand in that of the other, but it is also important to discover why. He has a symbolic vision of reality - as we know - not an analytical one, so the child is able to realize certain truths. And this is why listening to them really is a lesson especially for us, because they bring us back to basics, they ask us those famous whys which we often do not know how to respond to and yet which are so important. Therefore from the human point of view it is important to find, follow, listen to this child in us, but especially from the inner clarity of the Faith, trust abd, abandonment".
“I go to him as a baby goes to his mother so that he can fill me and invade all and take me in his arms (Elisabeth of the Trinity)”, he concluded.
In the second meditation, Cardinal Ravasi focused on man as a frail creature, tested by the pain of living, distressed, man who is experiencing the limitation and the finitude of his person.
"Shadow", "breath" – we pray in Psalm 39 – we cry and ask for "the number of my days." Harsh words and of great relevance, noted the Cardinal, in a world where there is a superficial atmosphere, a sort of "narcosis which eliminates the big questions":
"Just think of the television, which is the true and great Moloch within our homes. We already know all about fashion, about what we should eat, how we should dress, choose, etc. but we no longer have a voice that shows us the path and meaning of this life, especially when it is so fragile, so miserable. That is why it is important to come back again to the great themes. Have the courage to propose great thoughts, I think one of the great problems of today's youth is that they are no longer able to find meaningful answers and so they allow themselves to drift and be swayed by contemporary society".
The Cardinal spoke of the need to have a sense of our human limitations to help in overcoming contemporary superficiality
[I miss the logical connection there, but it looks like he did not tie in this idea with Benedict's obvious example of a faith that reposes full trust in God to take care of his creatures in the face of human limitations].
Cardinal Ravasi also emphasized the need to return to "poor, simple naked prayer" and invited the believer to question the meaning of suffering", other than merely comforting the sufferer with 'second-hand and cold words'.