BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI

March 27, Wednesday in Holy Week

BLESSED FRANCESCO FAA DI BRUNO (Italy, 1825-1888), Soldier, Mathematician, Priest
He was one of the many sainted figures like Don Bosco who emerged in late 19th century
Turin. Son of a marquis, he was well educated and a trained officer in the Sardinian Army
around the time of Italian reunification. He caught the attention of King Vittorio Emanuele
who wanted him to tutor his two young sons. However, the King withdrew the offer because
of strong anti-Catholic feeling at that time. Francesco went to Paris to study astronomy and
mathematics, which was to be his lifelong passion. He studied with the two French scientists
who discovered the planet Neptune. Returning to Italy, he taught math at the University of
Turin but did significant charitable work on the side. Notably, he founded the Society of
St. Zita, originally to assist domestic servants and later, unwed ,others as well. He set up
a hostel for the aged and raised funds for a church to honor soldiers who died in the wars
of reunification. He obtained an age dispensation from Pius IX to study for the priesthood
and was ordained at age 51. He continued to teach but he also shared his inheritance with
the poor and set up a hostel for prostitutes. He published numerous articles on mathematical
theory for leading scientific journals and developed the Faa di Bruno mathematical formula
for the derivative of composite functions in calculus. He was beatified in 1988.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032713.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Pope Francis held his first General Audience in St. Peter's Square, with about 25,000 in attendance. He spoke on
the significance of Holy Week for Christians saying it is a time of grace that allows us to get out of ourselves
and go towards our less fortunate brothers to bring the love of Christ. He continued to speak only in Italian.
The synthesis of his catechesis in the different languages was read out by the monsignors who introduce each
language group.
[For someone who was elected in part because he represents 40% of the world's Catholics, it is strange that Pope Francis has not used Spanish at all, except for a brief remark at the end of his meeting with the international media the Saturday after his election.]

The Office of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations announced that Pope Francis will take possession of his 'cathedra'
at the Basilica of San Giovanni in laterano, the Cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, on the afternoon of Sunday, April 7.

At a news conference at noon today, the Vatican communications group presented a documentary on Pope Francis that
begins with the resignation of Benedict XVI and ends with the visit of the new Pope to the emeritus Pope in
Castel Gandolfo last Saturday.




One year ago today...
Day 2 of Benedict XVI's apostolic visit to Cuba. It started in Santiago, where he made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Charity in El Cobre, presented the image with the Golden Rose that he has given to each of the Marian shrines he has visited as Pope. His visit to Cuba came on the 400th anniversary of the finding of the miraculous image off the shore near El Cobre.

The occasion was also serendipitous because one of the Missionaries of Charity sisters, Sor Teresa Kereketa, working in Santiago. was finally able to meet the priest, then Cardinal Ratzinger, she had been assigned to pray for specially as her 'spiritual godchild' when she made her vows 20 years ago...
From Santiago, the Holy Father flew to Havana where he paid a courtesy call on President Raul Castro in the afternoon, and then met with the bishops of Cuba at the Apostolic Nunciature.

MEXICO POST-SCRIPT:
3.4 million turned out for the Pope

From El Universal on March 26:

The governor of Guanajuato state, Juan Manuel Oliva, has reported that the total number of persons who took part in the events of Pope Benedict XVI's visit reached 3.4 milluion, and that the state came off the visit with a 'clearn balance'.

"The event has given us indisputable recognition. It was an organizational success that met its goals, with satisfactory results, and a clear operational balance", Oliva said at a news conference....

The sidebar captioning the photo reads:
The gates opened, and Pope Benedict XVI came out with an enormous smile to thank the mariachi who had been singing for him outside the Colegio Miraflores.

Two years ago today....
Benedict XVI paid tribute to more than 300 Italian civilians of Rome who were massacred by the Germans at the Fosse Ardeatine in 1943 to retaliate for a partisan attack on Nazi troops.

And three years ago....
The New York Times launched its scurrilous story accusing Cardinal Ratzinger of having failed to discipline a Milwaukee priest, Fr. Lawrence Murphy, accused of committing hundreds of sex abuses against deaf children in his care in the 1960s and 1970s, and whom the diocese forced into retirement in 1972. When the diocese decided to place him on canonical trial in 1996, more than 20 years later - for supposed violations of the sacrament of confession in some of the abuses he was accused of - the CDF through its then-secretary, Mons Tarcisio Bertone, approved the canonical trial but also mentioned the priest's request to be spared the trial because the charges had been previously investigated by the police before his retirement and were found not to be sustainable, and also because he was dying. In fact he died two months after Bertone's letter to the diocese.

The hue and cry falsely raised by the Times was particularly and deliberately malicious because all this happened long before the CDF was given specific jurisdiction over sex abuses, and because the diocese never informed the CDF about the case until 24 years after the priest's retirement, and only because it wanted to try Murphy for violating the sacrament of confession. It was made even more outrageous because the facts themselves from the documents that the Times posted online clearly contradicted the narrative put forward by their news report. (The Times actually believed no one would bother to check out the documents they posted so ostentatiously to 'prove' their good faith - in a shameless act of bad faith!)

The day after they broke the Milwaukee story, the Times followed with a report from Munich alleging that Cardinal Ratzinger, as Archbishop of Munich-Freising, had known - though no proof was offered for this - that a priest from another diocese who was undergoing therapy in Munich for sexual misconduct was given a pastoral assignment not long after he got to Munich in 1981. The cardinal's Munich vicar at the time had previously stated that he alone had been responsible for making the assignment.

Despite the hue and cry over both stories, they proved to be fleeting media sensations, collapsing into dust from the weight of truth against the media attempt to slander the Holy Father.

The New York Times used documents from Vatican-baiting lawyer Jeffrey Anderson who had filed a suit on behalf of one alleged victim of Fr. Murphy, naming the Holy Father, along with Cardinals Sodano and Bertone, as responsible for Fr. Murphy's actions. Anderson withdrew the suit earlier this year, after being unable to reply to the Vatican brief disclaiming any responsibility by Vatican officials for the individual actions of diocesan priests.

2013 P.S. At the time, Fr. Lombardi did send a brief written statement to the New York Times to protest the misrepresentations made in the article, and if he did not deliver it at a news briefing as he did the defense of Pope Francis from unjust criticisms by the Argentine left last week, it cannot be because it was Lent, because we are also in Lent this time. Needless to say, we didn't hear a word from Cardinal Bertone, who was personally involved in the episode and could have issued a word of clarification. It was Cardinal William Levada, writing both as an American and a member of Benedict XVI's Curia, who presented a factual rebuttal of the charges. Both statements can be found on the Vatican's site 'Abuse of Minors: The Church's Response'.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/03/2013 22:16]

Pope Francis's first GA:
'Holy Week is a time of grace
to learn to step out of ourselves'
March 27, 2013

Pope Francis gave his first general audience Wednesday morning in St. Peter's Square to a crowd of about 25,000 faithful. His catechesis was on how best we can follow Jesus as we commemorate his Passion, Death and Resurrection.



Here is Vatican Radio's translation of the catechesis:

---

Brothers and sisters, good morning!

I am pleased to welcome you to my first general audience. With deep gratitude and veneration I am taking up the "witness" from the hands of my beloved predecessor, Benedict XVI. After Easter we will resume the catechesis on the Year of Faith. Today I would like to focus a little on Holy Week. With Palm Sunday we began this week - the center of all the liturgical year - in which we accompany Jesus in His Passion, Death and Resurrection.

But what does it mean for us to live Holy Week? What does it means to follow Jesus on his way to the Cross on Calvary and the Resurrection? In his earthly mission, Jesus walked the streets of the Holy Land; he called twelve simple people to remain with Him, to share his journey and continue His mission; He chose them among the people full of faith in the promises of God.

He spoke to everyone, without distinction, to the great and the lowly; to the rich young man and the poor widow, the powerful and the weak; He brought the mercy and forgiveness of God to all; he healed, comforted, understood, gave hope, He led all to the presence of God who is interested in every man and woman, like a good father and a good mother is interested in each child.

God did not wait for us to go to Him, but He moved towards us, without calculation, without measures. This is how God is : He is always the first, He moves towards us.

Jesus lived the daily realities of most ordinary people: He was moved by the crowd that seemed a flock without a shepherd, and He cried in front of the suffering of Martha and Mary on the death of their brother Lazarus; he called a tax collector to be His disciple and also suffered the betrayal of a friend.

In Christ, God has given us the assurance that He is with us, in our midst. "Foxes," Jesus said, "have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head" (Mt 8:20). Jesus did not have a home because His house is the people, that's us. His mission is to open all God’s doors, to be the loving presence of God.

In Holy Week we live the highest point of this journey, this loving plan that runs throughout the entire history of the relationship between God and humanity.

Jesus enters Jerusalem to take the final step, in which His whole life is summarized: He gives himself totally, He keeps nothing for Himself, not even his life. At the Last Supper, with His friends, He shares the bread and distributes the cup "for us."

The Son of God is offered to us, He consigns His Body and his Blood into our hands to be with us always, to dwell among us. And on the Mount of Olives, as in the trial before Pilate, He puts up no resistance, He gifts Himself: He is the Suffering Servant foretold by Isaiah, who stripped himself unto death (cf. Is 53:12).


Jesus does not live this love that leads to sacrifice passively or as a fatal destiny; certainly He does not hide his deep human commotion in the face of a violent death, but He entrusts Himself with full confidence to the Father. Jesus voluntarily consigned Himself to death to respond to the love of God the Father, in perfect union with His will, to demonstrate His love for us.

On the cross, Jesus "loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:20). Each of us can say, "He loved me and gave himself for me." Everyone can say "for me".

What does this mean for us? It means that this is my, your, our path. Living Holy Week following Jesus not only with the emotions of the heart, living Holy Week following Jesus means learning how to come out of ourselves - as I said on Sunday - to reach out to others, to go to the outskirts of existence, to be the first to move towards our brothers and sisters, especially those who are most distant, those who are forgotten, those who are most in need of understanding, consolation and help. There is so much need to bring the living presence of Jesus, merciful and full of love!

Living Holy Week means increasingly entering into God's logic, the logic of the Cross, which is not first of all, that of pain and death, but of love and of self-giving that brings life. It means entering into the logic of the Gospel.

Following, accompanying Christ, remaining with him requires "stepping outside" of ourselves. Stepping outside of ourselves, of a tired and routine way of living the faith, of the temptation to withdraw into pre-established patterns that end up closing our horizon to the creative action of God.

God stepped outside of Himself to come among us, He pitched His tent among us to bring the mercy of God that saves and gives hope. Even if we want to follow Him and stay with Him, we must not be content to remain in the enclosure of the ninety-nine sheep. We have to "step outside", to search for the lost sheep together with Him, the one farthest away. Remember well: to step outside of ourselves, like Jesus, like God has stepped outside of Himself in Jesus, and Jesus stepped outside of Himself for us.

Some might say to me, "But, Father, I have no time", "I have so many things to do", "it is difficult", "what can I do with my little strength?", with my sin, with so many things ? Often we settle for a few prayers, a distracted and inconsistent presence at Sunday Mass, a random act of charity, but we lack this courage to "step outside" to bring Christ.

We are a bit like St. Peter. As soon as Jesus speaks of the Passion, Death and Resurrection, of self-giving, of love for all, the Apostle takes him aside and rebukes him. What Jesus says upsets his plans, seems unacceptable, undermines the sense of security that he had built up, his idea of ​​the Messiah.

And Jesus looks at the disciples and addresses Peter with perhaps one of the strongest words of the Gospel: " Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do" (Mk 8:33).

God always thinks with mercy: do not forget this. God always thinks with mercy: our merciful Father. God thinks like a father who awaits the return of his child and goes to meet him, sees him come when he is still far away [in the parable of the prodigal son]...

What does this mean? That each and every day he went out to see if his son was coming home. This is our merciful Father. It is the sign that He was waiting for him from the terrace of his house.

God thinks like the Samaritan who does not approach the victim to commiserate with him, or look the other way, but to rescue him without asking for anything in return, without asking if he was a Jew, a pagan, a Samaritan, rich or poor: he does not ask anything.

He does not ask these things, he asks for nothing. He goes to his aid: This is how God thinks. God thinks like the shepherd who gives his life to defend and save his sheep.

Holy Week is a time of grace which the Lord gifts us to open the doors of our hearts, our lives, our parishes - what a pity, so many parishes are closed! - in our parishes, movements, associations, and to "step outside" towards others, to draw close to them so we can bring the light and joy of our faith.

Always step outside yourself! And with the love and tenderness of God, with respect and patience, knowing that we put our hands, our feet, our hearts, [into service] but then it is God who guides them and makes all our actions fruitful.

May you all live these days well following the Lord with courage, carrying within a ray of His love for all those whom we meet.

---

As I was unable to post anything yesterday, I have to make up for both Maundy Thursday and Good Friday... Thank God I am no longer under my self-imposed pressure to keep up with the Church news 24/7 in the past eight years...

March 28, MAUNDY THURSDAY



WITH THE POPE ON MAUNDY THURSDAY
March 28, 2013

Pope Francis celebrated the Chrismal Mass at St. Peter's Basilica, and in the afternoon, celebrated the Mass
of the Lord's Supper at Rome's juvenile detention center in Casal del Marmo.

A gratifying sidelight of Pope Francis's day yesterday was that once again, he placed a telephone call to Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo. As reported in today's issue of L'Osservatore Romano:

Pope's third telephone call
to Benedict XVI

March 28, 2013

Pope Francis telephoned Benedict XVI after the celebration of the Chrismal Mass at St. Peter's Basilica. On the day when all priests repeat their ordination vows, the Pope wished to express, during a long and significant conversation, his sense of fraternal communion with his predecessor.

[It was the Pope's third telephone call to Benedict XVI, in addition to the visit and lunch they shared on Saturday, March 23. God bless Pope Francis, and God bless Benedict XVI.]




As I had meant to do for this Holy Week, I am posting Benedict XVI's April 2011 catechesis on the Paschal Triduum as an excellent preparation for the culminating events of Holy Week, and is still good for today till Sunday... His catechesis on Wednesday of Holy Week in 2012 was about his apostolic visit to Mexico and Cuba which ended on March 28.



GENERAL AUDIENCE
The Paschal Triduum
Benedict XVI explains the significance
of the Holy Week liturgies
April 20, 2011



Pope Benedict XVI Wednesday dedicated his last catechesis before Easter to the Holy Week Triduum.

Today, he said, there is "a certain callousness of the soul towards the power of evil, an insensitivity to all the evil in the world: we do not want to be disturbed by these things, we want to forget, perhaps, we think, it is not important. It is not only insensitivity to evil, but also insensitivity to God”.


Here is the full catechesis:

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

We have come to the heart of Holy Week and the end of our Lenten journey. Tomorrow, we enter the Paschal Triduum, the three holy days during which the Church commemorates the Passion, death and resurrection of Jesus.

The Son of God, after having become man in obedience to the Father, becoming like us in everything except sin (cfr Heb 4.15),had accepted to fulfill God's will to the very end, to face his Passion and the Cross for our sake, in order to have us take part in his Resurrection, so that in him and through him, we may be able to live for always, comforted and at peace.

And so, I exhort you to welcome this mystery of salvation, to take part intensely in the Paschal Triduum, fulcrum of the entire liturgical year and a time of special grace for every Christian.
I invite you to meditation and prayer these days in order to draw more profoundly from this spring of grace.

To this end, in view of the imminent celebrations, every Christian is also invited to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, a moment of special adherence to the death and resurrection of Christ, in order to take part most fruitfully in Holy Easter.

Maundy Thursday is the day that recalls the institution of the Eucharist and of the priestly ministry. In the morning, each diocesan community, assembled in the cathedral around their bishop, celebrates the Chrismal Mass, in which tho sacred Chrism, the oil for catechumens and the oil for the sick, are blessed.

Starting with the Paschal Triduum and for the entire liturgical year, these oils will be used in the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, priestly and episcopal Ordinations, and Unction for the sick.

This shows how salvation, transmitted by the sacramental signs, flow directly from the Paschal Mystery of Christ. In fact, we are redeemed by his death and resurrection, and through the sacraments, we can draw from that salvific spring itself.

Also taking place during the Chrismal Mass is the renewal of priestly vows. Throughout the world, every priest renews the commitments he took on the day of his Ordination, in order to be totally consecrated to Christ in the exercise of his sacred ministry in the service of his brothers. Let us accompany our priests with our prayers.

The afternoon of Maundy Thursday is when the Paschal Triduum properly begins, with the commemoration of the Last Supper, at which Jesus instituted the Memorial to his resurrection, while fulfilling the Jewish Paschal rite.

According to tradition, each Jewish family, together at table on the feast of the Passover, eats roast lamb to recall the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. And so, in the Cenacle, aware of his imminent death, Jesus, the true Paschal Lamb, offered himself for our salvation (cfr Cor 5,7).

Pronouncing a blessing over the bread and wine, he anticipated the sacrifice on the Cross and manifested the intention of perpetuating his presence among his disciples: Under the species of bread and wine, He renders himself truly present in the Body he was to give and the Blood that he would shed.

During the Last Supper, the Apostles are constituted ministers of this sacrament of salvation. Jesus washes their feet (cfr Jn 13,1-24), asking them to love each other as he has loved them, in giving his life for them. In repeating this gesture in the liturgy, we too are called to testify factually to the love of our Redeemer.

Finally, Maundy Thursday closes with Eucharistic Adoration, to recall the agony of the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane. After leaving the Cenacle, he retired to pray, by himself, to his Father.

At that moment of profound communion, the Gospels recount that Jesus experienced great anguish, a suffering so extreme it made him sweat blood (cfr Mt 26,38). Knowing about his imminent death on the Cross, he felt great anguish at the closeness of death.

In this situation, another element of great importance to the Church is manifested. Jesus tells his disciples: "Stay here and watch". This appeal for vigilance concerns precisely this time of anguish, of menace, in which the traitor would arrive, also concerns the entire history of the Church.

It is a permanent message for all time, because the somnolence of Christ's disciples was not just a problem at that moment, but a problem for all history. The question is what does this somnolence consist of, and what constitutes the vigilance that the Lord asks us to have.

I would say that his disciples' somnolence throughout history is a certain insensibility of the soul to the power of evil, an insensibility to all the evil in the world. We do not want to be bothered by these things - we want to forget about them, and thinking that they cannot be so bad, we forget.

But it is not just our insensibility to evil. We must also be vigilant about doing good, to fight evil with the forces of good.

It is an insensibility to God - this is our true somnolence: the insensibility to the presence of God which makes us insensible to evil as well.

We do not feel God - it would disturb us to do so - and so, we likewise do not feel the power of evil, and we remain along the path most convenient to us.

The nocturnal adoration on Maundy Thursday, keeping watch with the Lord, must be the moment when we reflect on the somnolence of the disciples, of the defenders of Jesus, of the Apostles, of we ourselves, who do not see and do not want to see the power of evil. We do not wish to enter into the Lord's passion for goodness, for the presence of God in the world, for love of God and our neighbor.

Then the Lord begins to pray. The three apostles - Peter, James and John - fall asleep, but once in a while they wake up to hear the refrain of Jesus's prayer: "Not my will but yours be done".

What is this 'my will' and 'your will' that the Lord refers to? His will was "Let me not die", that he be spared the chalice of suffering - it is human will, human nature, and Christ, with the full consciousness of his being, feels life, feels the abyss of death, the terror of the void, the threat of suffering.

He, more than us with our natural aversion to death, this natural fear of death, far more than us he feels the abyss of evil. He feels, with his death, all the sufferings of mankind, He feels that all this is the chalice he has to drink from, he must make himself drink it, accepting the evils of the world, everything terrible, like the aversion to God, and all sin.

Thus we can understand how Jesus, with his human spirit, would have been terrified in the face of all these realities which he perceives in all of their cruelty. "My will would be not to drink this cup, but my will is subordinate to your will", the will of God, the will of his Father, which is also the true will of the Son.

And so, in this prayer, Jesus transforms his natural aversion against this chalice, against his mission of dying for us - he transforms his natural will into the will of God, into a Yes to God's will.

Man, as he is, is tempted to oppose the will of God, to try and follow his own will instead, to feel himself free only if he is autonomous from God - he opposes his own autonomy to the heteronomy of following the will of God.

And that is the entire tragedy of mankind. Because in truth, this autonomy is wrong, and entering into God's will is not opposing oneself, it is not a slavery that violates my will, but it is to enter into truth and love, into what is good.

Jesus draws our will upward, this will which opposes God's will, which seeks autonomy - he draws it upward towards God's will. This is the drama of our redemption: that Jesus draws our will upwards, all our aversion to God's will, as our aversion to death and sin, and unites these with the will of the Father: "Not my will but yours be done". In this transformation of our No into Yes, in this assimilation of our will into God's will, Jesus transforms mankind and he redeems us.

He invites us to enter into this movement - to leave our No and enter the Yes of the Son. I have my own will, but the Father's will is final, because it is truth and love.

There is one other element of Jesus's prayer in Gethsemane that I consider important. The three witnesses observed - as we are told in Sacred Scripture - that the Lord addressed his Father with the Hebrew and Aramaic word 'Abba', which means 'father'.

So here we look into the intimacy of Jesus, how he speaks as family, how he speaks as the Son with the Father. We see the trinitarian mystery: the Son who speaks to the Father and who redeems mankind.

One more observation: The Letter to the Hebrews gives us a profound interpretation of this prayer by the Lord, of the drama in Gethsemane. It says that the tears of Jesus, his prayer, his cries of anguish, all this was not simply a concession to the weakness of the flesh, as one might say.

But in this way he was fulfilling the function of the Supreme High priest, he who should carry the human being with all his problems and sufferings, towards the altitude of God.

The Letter to the Hebrews says: With all these cries and tears, suffering and prayer, the Lord presented our reality to God
(cfr Heb 5,7ff). It uses the Greek word 'prosferein' which is a technical term for what the Supreme High priest must do, in order to offer something, to lift his hands high.

Precisely in this drama in Gethsemane, where it would seem that the power of God was no longer present, Jesus carried out the function of the Supreme High Priest. It also tells us that this act of obedience - this transformation of the natural human will to God's will = is perfected by the priest. And here too, the technical word for ordaining priests is used. Thus Jesus truly became the Supreme High Priest of mankind, opening heaven to us and the door to the Resurrection.

If we reflect on the drama of Gethsemane, we can also see the great contrast between Jesus in his anguish and suffering, and the great philosopher Socrates who remained peaceful, undisturbed by the prospect of his death. This would seem to be the ideal.

We can admire this philosopher, but the mission of Jesus was something else. His mission was not such total indifference and freedom. His mission was to carry in him all of our sufferings, the entire human drama. And that is why his humiliation in Gethsemane is essential for the mission of God-man.

He bears in himself our sufferings, our shortcomings, and transforms them according to the will of God. In this way, he opens the gates of heaven, he opens heaven to us: the tent of the Most Holy which until then, man had closed against God - it had finally opened because of his suffering and obedience.

So these are some observations for Maundy Thursday, for our celebration of the night of Maundy Thursday.

On Good Friday, we commemorate the Passion and death of the Lord. We adore Christ crucified, we take part in his sufferings through penance and fasting.

Turning our eyes 'towards him whom they had pierced' (cfr Jn 19,37), we can draw grace from his crushed heart from which flowed blood and water as from a spring. From that heart from which flows the love of God for every man, we receive his Spirit.

And so on Good Friday, we too must accompany Jesus as he climbs Calvary. Let us allow ourselves to be led by him towards the Cross, and let us receive the offering of his immolated body.

Finally, on the night of Holy Saturday, we celebrate the solemn Easter vigil, in which the resurrection of Christ is proclaimed to us, hid definitive victory over death which calls us to be new men in him.

Participating in this Easter vigil, the central night in the whole liturgical year, we also remember our own Baptism, in which we too were buried with Christ, in order to be able to resurrect with him and take part in the heavenly banquet (cfr Ap 19,7-9).

Dear friends, we have tried to understand the state of mind in which Jesus experienced the moment of his extreme testing, in order to grasp what oriented his actions. The criterion that guided each choice Jesus made during his whole life was his firm desire to love the Father, to be one with the Father, and to be faithful to him.

This choice to correspond to the Father's love impelled him to embrace, in every single circumstance, the plan of the Father, to carry out the design of love entrusted to him to recapitulate everything in him, in order to lead back everything to him.

In celebrating the Holy Triduum, let us dispose ourselves to welcome into our lives the will of God, knowing that in his will, even if it appears hard, and against our own intentions, is our true good, the way of life.

May the Virgin Mary guide us in this itinerary, and obtain for us from her divine Son the grace of being able to give our life for the love of Jesus in the service of our brothers. Thank you.

---

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/03/2013 23:40]

I apologize for this belated posting, but I had worked on the post late last night (Friday) before going to bed, and I lost it through some unintended keystroke just as I was preparing to save it - so I had to reconstruct it all over.

Pope tells priests to 'go out
and give yourself to others'

March 28, 2013



At 9:30 a.m. on Maundy Thursday, the Holy Father Francis presided at the Chrismal Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, a liturgy that is celebrated on this day in all the cathedral churches around the world.

Conceleberating were all the cardinals and bishops present in Rome, along with some 1,600 priests and religious. During the Mass, they all renewed the vows they made at their priestly ordination.

The Holy Father then blessed the oils to be used at St. Peter's in the coming year for anointing the sick (Extreme Unction), the catechumens (for Baptism), and the Chrism (for Holy Orders).

Here is the Vatican's translation of the Pope's first homily:

---

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This morning I have the joy of celebrating my first Chrism Mass as the Bishop of Rome. I greet all of you with affection, especially you, dear priests, who, like myself, today recall the day of your ordination.

The readings and the Psalm of our Mass speak of God’s "anointed ones": the suffering Servant of Isaiah, King David and Jesus our Lord. All three have this in common: the anointing that they receive is meant in turn to anoint God’s faithful people, whose servants they are; they are anointed for the poor, for prisoners, for the oppressed…

A fine image of this "being for" others can be found in the Psalm 133: "It is like the precious oil upon the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down upon the collar of his robe" (v. 2).

The image of spreading oil, flowing down from the beard of Aaron upon the collar of his sacred robe, is an image of the priestly anointing which, through Christ, the Anointed One, reaches the ends of the earth, represented by the robe.

The sacred robes of the High Priest are rich in symbolism. One such symbol is that the names of the children of Israel were engraved on the onyx stones mounted on the shoulder-pieces of the ephod, the ancestor of our present-day chasuble: six on the stone of the right shoulder-piece and six on that of the left (cf. Ex 28:6-14). The names of the twelve tribes of Israel were also engraved on the breastplate (cf. Es 28:21).

This means that the priest celebrates by carrying on his shoulders the people entrusted to his care and bearing their names written in his heart. When we put on our simple chasuble, it might well make us feel, upon our shoulders and in our hearts, the burdens and the faces of our faithful people, our saints and martyrs who are numerous in these times.

From the beauty of all these liturgical things, which is not so much about trappings and fine fabrics than about the glory of our God resplendent in his people, alive and strengthened, we turn now to a consideration of activity, action.

The precious oil which anoints the head of Aaron does more than simply lend fragrance to his person; it overflows down to "the edges". The Lord will say this clearly: his anointing is meant for the poor, prisoners and the sick, for those who are sorrowing and alone. My dear brothers, the ointment is not intended just to make us fragrant, much less to be kept in a jar, for then it would become rancid … and the heart bitter.

A good priest can be recognized by the way his people are anointed: this is a clear proof. When our people are anointed with the oil of gladness, it is obvious: for example, when they leave Mass looking as if they have heard good news.

Our people like to hear the Gospel preached with "unction", they like it when the Gospel we preach touches their daily lives, when it runs down like the oil of Aaron to the edges of reality, when it brings light to moments of extreme darkness, to the "outskirts" where people of faith are most exposed to the onslaught of those who want to tear down their faith.

People thank us because they feel that we have prayed over the realities of their everyday lives, their troubles, their joys, their burdens and their hopes.

And when they feel that the fragrance of the Anointed One, of Christ, has come to them through us, they feel encouraged to entrust to us everything they want to bring before the Lord: "Pray for me, Father, because I have this problem", "Bless me Father", "Pray for me" – these words are the sign that the anointing has flowed down to the edges of the robe, for it has turned into a prayer of supplication, the supplication of the People of God.

When we have this relationship with God and with his people, and grace passes through us, then we are priests, mediators between God and men. What I want to emphasize is that we need constantly to stir up God’s grace and perceive in every request, even those requests that are inconvenient and at times purely material or downright banal – but only apparently so – the desire of our people to be anointed with fragrant oil, since they know that we have it.

To perceive and to sense, even as the Lord sensed the hope-filled anguish of the woman suffering from hemorrhages when she touched the hem of his garment. At that moment, Jesus, surrounded by people on every side, embodies all the beauty of Aaron vested in priestly raiment, with the oil running down upon his robes. It is a hidden beauty, one which shines forth only for those faith-filled eyes of the woman troubled with an issue of blood.

But not even the disciples – future priests – see or understand: on the "existential outskirts", they see only what is on the surface: the crowd pressing in on Jesus from all sides (cf. Lk 8:42). The Lord, on the other hand, feels the power of the divine anointing which runs down to the edge of his cloak.

We need to "go out", then, in order to experience our own anointing, its power and its redemptive efficacy: to the "outskirts" where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight, and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters.

It is not in soul-searching or constant introspection that we encounter the Lord: self-help courses can be useful in life, but to live our priestly life going from one course to another, from one method to another, leads us to become pelagians and to minimize the power of grace, which comes alive and flourishes to the extent that we, in faith, go out and give ourselves and the Gospel to others, giving what little ointment we have to those who have nothing, nothing at all.

The priest who seldom goes out of himself, who anoints little – I won’t say "not at all" because, thank God, the people take the oil from us anyway – misses out on the best of our people, on what can stir the depths of his priestly heart.

Those who do not go out of themselves, instead of being mediators, gradually become intermediaries, managers. We know the difference: the intermediary, the manager, "has already received his reward", and since he doesn’t put his own skin and his own heart on the line, he never hears a warm, heartfelt word of thanks.

This is precisely the reason for the dissatisfaction of some, who end up sad – sad priests - in some sense becoming collectors of antiques or novelties, instead of being shepherds living with "the odour of the sheep".

This I ask you: be shepherds, with the "odour of the sheep", make it real, as shepherds among your flock, fishers of men. True enough, the so-called crisis of priestly identity threatens us all and adds to the broader cultural crisis; but if we can resist its onslaught, we will be able to put out in the name of the Lord and cast our nets.

It is not a bad thing that reality itself forces us to "put out into the deep", where what we are by grace is clearly seen as pure grace, out into the deep of the contemporary world, where the only thing that counts is "unction" – not function – and the nets which overflow with fish are those cast solely in the name of the One in whom we have put our trust: Jesus.

Dear lay faithful, be close to your priests with affection and with your prayers, that they may always be shepherds according to God’s heart.

Dear priests, may God the Father renew in us the Spirit of holiness with whom we have been anointed. May he renew his Spirit in our hearts, that this anointing may spread to everyone, even to those "outskirts" where our faithful people most look for it and most appreciate it.

May our people sense that we are the Lord’s disciples; may they feel that their names are written upon our priestly vestments and that we seek no other identity; and may they receive through our words and deeds the oil of gladness which Jesus, the Anointed One, came to bring us. Amen.

---

Pope tells young detainees not
to let themselves be robbed of hope

March 28, 2013

At 5:00 pm on Maundy Thursday, Pope Francis left the Vatican to go to Rome;s Istituto Penale per Minori in Casal del Marmo, where at 5:30 p.m., he celebrated the Mass of the Lord's Supper, which begins the Paschal Triduum.



Concelebrating with in the detention center's chapel dedicated to the Merciful Father were Cardinal Agostino Vallino, the Pope's Vicar for Rome; Mons. Angelo Becciu, deputy Secretary of State for general affairs; Mons Alfred Xuereb, the Pope's secretary; Fr. Gaetano Greco, a tertiary Franciscan who is the chaplain of the institute, and a Franciscan colleague of his.

Attending the Mass were some 50 minors of various nationalities and faiths who are detained for various offenses, among them 11 females, as well as representatives of the various departments of the center.

During the Mass, Pope Francis washed the feet of 12 detainees, including two women, one of the Muslim.

Here is the Vatican translation of the Pope's brief homily before proceeding to the washing of the feet:

---

This is moving. Jesus, washing the feet of his disciples. Peter didn’t understood it at all, he refused. But Jesus explained it for him. Jesus – God – did this!

He himself explains to his disciples: "Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord – and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you" (Jn 13:12-15).

It is the Lord’s example: he is the most important, and he washes feet, because with us, what is highest must be at the service of others. This is a symbol, it is a sign, right?

Washing feet means: "I am at your service". And with us too, don’t we have to wash each other’s feet day after day? But what does this mean? That all of us must help one another. Sometimes I am angry with someone or other … but… let it go, let it go, and if he or she asks you a favour, do it.

Help one another: this is what Jesus teaches us and this what I am doing, and doing with all my heart, because it is my duty. As a priest and a bishop, I must be at your service.

But it is a duty which comes from my heart: I love it. I love this, and I love to do it because that is what the Lord has taught me to do. But you too, help one another: help one another always. One another. In this way, by helping one another, we will do some good.

Now we will perform this ceremony of washing feet, and let us think, let each one of us think: "Am I really willing, willing to serve, to help others?". Let us think about this, just this. And let us think that this sign is a caress of Jesus, which Jesus gives, because this is the real reason why Jesus came: to serve, to help us.

---

After the Mass, before returning to the Vatican, Pope Francis met with the entire 'family' of the institution at the center's gymnasium, in the presence of the Italian Minister of Justice, Madame Paola Severino; the head of her ministyr's department for juvenile justice, Caterina Chinnici; the commandant of Casal del Marmo's penitentiary police Saulo Patrizi; and the director of the Center, Liana Giambartolomei.

The detainees presented the Pope with a wooden crucifix and a wooden kneeler, both items crafted by them in the center's workshop.

During the meeting, the Pope said the following, first in response to Minister Severino's greeting, and then to a question by one of the detainees:

---

I thank the Madame Minister for her words, I thank the authorities for your welcome, and I thank you, boys and girls, for your welcome today. I am happy to be with you.

So, move forward, yes? Do not allow your hope to be robbed from you, do not allow your hope to be robbed from you! Is that understood? Then move forward, but always with hope. Thank you.

A young man asked a question:
Thank you, Father, for coming here today. I would like to know one thing: Why did you come to Casal del Marmo today? That's all I want to know.
It's a sentiment that came from my heart - I felt it. Where, I asked, are those who could perhaps help me best to be humble, to be a servant as a bishop ought to be? I thought, and I asked: "Who and were are those would appreciate a visit from me?"

I was told, "Perhaps Casal del Marmo". When they said that, I decided to come here. But it all came from the heart, only from the heart. The things of the heart cannot be explained, they just come. So thank you, yes? [I have translated in both instances the Italian particle 'eh?' as 'yes?']

The Pope's final words:
Now I take my leave from you. Thank you so much for your welcome. Pray for me, and do not let yourself be robbed of hope. Always move forward. Thank you so much.

---

So there was no Eucharistic Adoration, which is the concluding part of the Mass of the Last Supper. Of course, the chapel has no side altar to which the Blessed Sacrament can be 'repositioned' till Easter, but the Eucharist could still have been exposed at the same altar. It was a perfect teaching moment to introduce a beautiful practice to the Catholics among the detainees. But maybe the Pope felt it was too much to ask of them, that this was not part of the simple and essential message he wanted to convey on this occasion...

March 29, 2013, GOOD FRIDAY
Friday of the Passion of our Lord

The Crucifixion, from left: Giotto, 1304-1305; Masaccio, 1426; Michelangelo (sculpture), 1492; Raphael, 1502; and Van der Weyden, Entombment of Christ, 1451.[
Readings for today's liturgy:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032913.cfm

WITH THE POPE TODAY

5:00 p.m. Pope Francis presided at the
Commemoration of the Lord's Passion
Liturgy of the Word, Adoration of the Cross and Communion Rite
Rt. Peter's Basilica

9:15 p.m. The Pope joined the faithful at the Via Crucis meditations and prayers at the Colosseum.
This year, Benedict XVI asked two young people from Lebanon to prepare the meditations and prayers under the guidance of Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai, Patriarch of the Maronite Church.

The tests and illustrations may be found here:
www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/2013/documents/ns_lit_doc_20130329_via-crucis...


Pope Francis prostrates himself before the Crucifix at the afternoon commemoration of the Lord's Passion in St. Peter's Basilica. Below, Benedict XVI on Good Friday 2007:


However, the iconic papal image for Good Friday remains that of John Paul II hugging a Crucifix while watching the Via Crucis at the Colosseum in 2005 on a small monitor in his private chapel at the Apostolic Palace. All the more poignant because it was the last living image we saw of him. Less than a week later, he went home to the Father's house.



[DIM=8pt]Historical footnote about Benedict XVI: He presided at his first Holy Week liturgies as Pope only in 2006 because he was elected Pope after Easter which was March 25 in 2005. However, he was the unintended protagonist of Good Friday and Easter Sunday in 2005, because he wrote the Meditations and Prayers for the Via Crucis at the Colosseum, with his denunciation of filth in the Church, and two nights later, he presided at the Easter Vigil Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, having been designated by John Paul II, then less than a week away from death, to take his place.



Adoration of the Cross, St. Peter's Basilica, Good Friday, 2012.




VIA CRUCIS
at the Colosseum

ROME, April 6, 2012 (Translated from AGI) - Benedict XVI presided at the annual Good Friday Way of the Cross at the Roman Colosseum Friday night, which was attended by some 20,000 pilgrims and broadcast worldwide on radio and TV.

The meditations and prayers for this year's ritual were written at the Pope's request by an octogenarian couple. Danilo and Anna Maria Zanzucchi, who were collaborators of the late Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolari Movement, and who had founded within that ecclesial entity, the Famiglie Nuove (New Families) movement. Their text focused on problems of the family. preliminary to the World Meeting of Families held in Milan in June last year, with the presence of Benedict XVI.



At the end of the 14 stations, the Pope delivered a brief reflection on the family. Here is the Vatican translation of the Holy Father's remarks and concluding prayer:

---

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Once more in meditation, prayer and song, we have recalled Jesus’s journey along the way of the cross: a journey seemingly hopeless, yet one that changed human life and history, and opened the way to “new heavens and a new earth” (cf. Rev 21:1).

Especially today, Good Friday, the Church commemorates with deep spiritual union the death of the Son of God on the cross; in his cross she sees the tree of life, which blossoms in new hope.

The experience of suffering and of the cross touches all mankind; it touches the family too. How often does the journey become wearisome and difficult! Misunderstandings, conflicts, worry for the future of our children, sickness and problems of every kind. These days too, the situation of many families is made worse by the threat of unemployment and other negative effects of the economic crisis.

The Way of the Cross which we have spiritually retraced this evening invites all of us, and families in particular, to contemplate Christ crucified in order to have the strength to overcome difficulties. The cross of Christ is the supreme sign of God’s love for every man and woman, the superabundant response to every person’s need for love.

At times of trouble, when our families have to face pain and adversity, let us look to Christ’s cross. There we can find the courage and strength to press on; there we can repeat with firm hope the words of Saint Paul: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom 8:35,37).

In times of trial and tribulation, we are not alone; the family is not alone. Jesus is present with his love, he sustains them by his grace and grants the strength needed to carry on, to make sacrifices and to overcome every obstacle. And it is to this love of Christ that we must turn when human turmoil and difficulties threaten the unity of our lives and our families.

The mystery of Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection inspires us to go on in hope: times of trouble and testing, when endured with Christ, with faith in him, already contain the light of the resurrection, the new life of a world reborn, the passover of all those who believe in his word.

In that crucified Man who is the Son of God, even death itself takes on new meaning and purpose: it is redeemed and overcome, it becomes a passage to new life. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (Jn 12:24).

Let us entrust ourselves to the Mother of Christ.

May Mary, who accompanied her Son along his way of sorrows, who stood beneath the cross at the hour of his death, and who inspired the Church at its birth to live in God’s presence, lead our hearts and the hearts of every family through the vast mysterium passionis towards the mysterium paschale, towards that light which breaks forth from Christ’s resurrection and reveals the definitive victory of love, joy and life over evil, suffering and death. Amen.

---

To end this Good Friday post, please revisit the Meditations and Prayers written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger for the 2005 Via Crucis at the Colosseum.
http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/2005/documents/ns_lit_doc_20050325_via-crucis_en.html
Click on each illustration to access the meditation and prayer associated with each station.

It is remarkable that John Paul II did not call on Cardinal Ratzinger to do this in the previous 23 years since the latter came to Rome to be Prefect of the CDF. It was also providential, given what was to follow less than a month later, when Cardinal Ratzinger would become Pope himself.

---

NINTH STATION
Jesus falls for the third time

V/. Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi.
R/. Quia per sanctam crucem tuam redemisti mundum.

From the Book of Lamentations. 3:27-32
It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when he has laid it on him; let him put his mouth in the dust - there may yet be hope; let him give his cheek to the smiter, and be filled with insults. For the Lord will not cast off for ever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion, according to the abundance of his steadfast love.

MEDITATION
What can the third fall of Jesus under the Cross say to us? We have considered the fall of man in general, and the falling of many Christians away from Christ and into a godless secularism.

Should we not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church? How often is the holy sacrament of his Presence abused, how often must he enter empty and evil hearts!

How often do we celebrate only ourselves, without even realizing that he is there!

How often is his Word twisted and misused!

What little faith is present behind so many theories, so many empty words!

How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him!

How much pride, how much self-complacency!

What little respect we pay to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where he waits for us, ready to raise us up whenever we fall!

All this is present in his Passion. His betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his Body and Blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us (cf. Mt 8,25).

PRAYER
Lord, your Church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side. In your field we see more weeds than wheat. The soiled garments and face of your Church throw us into confusion.

Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again, after all our lofty words and grand gestures. Have mercy on your Church; within her too, Adam continues to fall.

When we fall, we drag you down to earth, and Satan laughs, for he hopes that you will not be able to rise from that fall; he hopes that being dragged down in the fall of your Church, you will remain prostrate and overpowered.

But you will rise again. You stood up, you arose and you can also raise us up. Save and sanctify your Church. Save and sanctify us all.

Pater noster, qui es in cælis:
sanctificetur nomen tuum;
adveniat regnum tuum;
fiat voluntas tua, sicut in cælo, et in terra.
Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie;
et dimitte nobis debita nostra,
sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris;
et ne nos inducas in tentationem;
sed libera nos a malo.

Eia mater, fons amoris,
me sentire vim doloris
fac, ut tecum lugeam.

---

No matter how many times I have read this, the stark power of truth in the simple words always overwhelms me. One journalist, looking back on the first year of Benedict XVI's Pntificate, whose anniversary was 3 days after Easter 2006 (which fell on his 79th birthday that year), says four significant interventions by Cardinal Ratzinger inearly 2005 paved the way for his election as Pope: his extemporaneous eulogy at the funeral of Don Luigi Giussani, founde rof Communione e Liberazione and his personalk friend, at the Cathedral of Milan in February; the Via Crucis meditations and prayer in March; hs funeral eulogy for John Paul II; his April 1 address to the Benedictine community in Subiaco on the crisis of faith in Europe; and his 'dictatorship of relativism' homily (it was far more than that, of course), at the Mass that immediately preceded the Conclave which went on to elect him Pope. In hindsight, it was a phenomenal and thoroughly unplanned course which can only be considered providential.

Pope calls Benedict XVI again,
lunches with priests, and other tidbits
from Fr. Lombardi's Good Friday briefing
by Salvatore Izzo
Adapted and translated from his newsbites for

March 29, 2013

Pope Francis made his third telephone call to Benedict XVI late Thursday morning, after the Chrismal Mass, as L'Osservatore Romano reports in its 3/30/13 issue:, and as earlier revealed to newsmen by Fr. Federico Lombardi at his daily news briefing on Good Friday:

"Pope Francis telephoned Benedict XVI in the late morning of Maundy Thursday after the Chrismal Mass at St. Peter's Basilica. On the day when all priests renew the vows they made at their ordination, the Pontiff wished to express his sense of priestly communion with his predecessor, in a long and significant conversation," the OR reports.[

When Fr. Lombardi informed the media about this, he described the telephone call as "very beautiful, intense and significant". [Did Pope Francis describe it to him or to someone else as such, or is Fr. Lombardi indulging in some journalistic license? The news is significant enough that the Pope once again thought of calling up his predecessor - the third time he has done so since he was elected Pope. It was not necessary to dress it up with an 'omniscient' observation. Fr. Lombardi is sounding more and more like a PR agent these days, even though he is preaching to a choir that doesn't need his help to sing hosannahs in perfect harmony and unison.]

Other items from Fr. Lombardi's briefing:
- "Yesterday (Thursday), the Pope lunched with some priests at the home of Mons. Angelo Becciu, deputy Secretary of State. Since his days as an Apostolic Nuncio, Mons. Becciu has made it a practice to invite priests of his acquaintance who are involved in various ways in pastoral or charitable activities. The Holy Father wished to join the lunch this year where there was a beautiful conversation because there were many stories to be told."

- On why the Argentine Pope has so far not made any public statements using his native language: "It has certainly been striking that a Spanish-speaking Pope did not read a synthesis of his catechesis nor of his greeting to the faithful at the General Audience. I think he did it in order not to give the impression of a preference for one language over others, reading the synthesis only in Italian, perhaps because of lack of preparation or because he was tired." Fr. Lombardi said to newsmen who asked the obvious. [Well, as a PR man, that answer certainly did not serve his 'client' well! Why does he even presume to speak for the Pope about this? Could he not have simply said, "For now it's the Holy Father's choice"? Strange as the choice is, the more reason not to try to explain it for a Pope who has no hesitations at all about speaking his mind when he chooses to.]

- About the fact that two females were among those whose feet the Pope washed at the Mass of the Lord's Supper: "The classical rule is that the washing of the feet is reserved for men, since it commemorates Jesus's gesture towards the 12 Apostles. But the pastoral practice of the Church - that is, of pastors who have 'the odor of the sheep' - also takes into account the concrete situation of the community in which the rite is performed, considering that this rite is not codified in any fundamental law.

"The community in Casal del Marmo was a special one that includes females, not just males, and the Pope wanted them to experience the spirit of service. It was a community to be addressed with simple and essential things, and the young women form part of the community. That is why there were two females, and even two Muslims.

"The Pope's action was a pastoral one - everyone was very moved, some wept, and I was told that before the feet washing, one of the young men asked to be replaced because he was too overcome with emotion."

Finally, on this issue, Fr. Lombardi explained that the Pope gave his apostolic blessing in the usual manner at the Mass - unlike the silent blessing he chose to give at his meeting with the international media the Saturday after he election, saying he did not want to offend non=Catholics and non-believers - "because all who attended the Mass in Casal del Marmo went there freely, and they had all been prepared for the liturgy that they were to attend". [And the international media didn't go to the Pope's special audience for them freely??? And did not know that the Pope, any Pope, always ends his audiences with an Apostolic Blessing??? No one in the media has ever even questioned the practice in the decades since the papal audiences have been open to news coverage! Fr. Lombardi should stop trying to speak for the Pope on the personal choices he makes! Pope Francis does not need 'nursemaiding' this way - no one can certainly say he is not sure of himself and the things he chooses to say and do.]

- About whether the Pope will give his Easter greetings in multiple languages as John Paul II and Benedict XVI did: "We do not know yet, but it is possible that the Eater greetings will be much shorter this time".

- About why Pope Francis has not intoned any prayers in any of his Masses so far: "Jesuits do not chant at Mass, and they do not like liturgical rubrics". [Again, an unfortunately worded response. Just because Jesuits 'do not like liturgical rubrics' is no reason to ignore them if you are Pope - who is a priest first before he is a Jesuit, and does not the office of the Pope override the fact of being Jesuit? Was 'obedience to the Pope' not the fourth vow that Ignatius of Loyola asked of his order? But if the Pope himself can choose when and if to be obedient to certain practices that Popes have always followed for good reason, we are up against the question of relativism based on personal preference. Fr. Lombardi is a Jesuit himself - he ought to have had the right answer for this question, not the inept one he gave.]

- On the role of Monsignor Alfred Xuereb: "He is the secretary of the Pope. At this stage, that is the case. Whether this will be a stable assignment, I do not know. But we are all very happy with him, and with his courtesy and efficiency".

Has anyone said 'cult of personality'? We have one that sprung up full-blown and instantaneous here, to the point that a news briefing by the Vatican about the Pope's activities is reduced to banalities about exterior superficialities - on Good Friday of all days! Fr. Lombardi tries his best to accommodate himself to the interests of the media, but they will always be banal and superficial - and they're already selling the persona of Pope Francis far better than the Vatican could ever hope to, anyway, if it needed to sell the persona of the Pope at all, which it doesn't.

For the media, in this case, the person himself - Jorge Mario Bergoglio who self-identifies as Bishop of Rome - is the message. Whether the Pope himself intends that or not, it has been the net effect of his actions and statements so far. The media reading is that just by being who he is, he has already revolutionized the Church.

And since Good Friday is over, I will now advance to this post Father Scalese's reflections on the Pope's decision to hold the Mass of the Lord's Supper in a detention center - I tucked it earlier into the bottom of the previous page because I did not want the issue to start off the Paschal Triduum, but Anglophone commentators like Father John Zuhlsdorf and canonist Edward Peters have since met it head on, to include the matter of washing the feet of females. It may all seem like much ado about details which 'no one could possibly object to since they have dramatic symbolism to project a more positive image of the Church", but let us hear what the objections are, because we are obviously in for many more 'details' of this kind...

Father Z's commentary on the Maundy Thursday feet washing can be found on wdtprs.com/blog/ - entries on March 29, in which he also cites canonist Ed Peters's views, and on March 30, in which he makes the startling conclusion that Pope Francis has done more in two weeks to promote Summorum Pontificum than Benedict XVI ever did, but you have to read it to get the full measure of his irony.

Relativism in the Church?
Translated from
SENZA PELI SULLA LINGUA
by Fr. Giovanni Scalese
March 24, 2013

Until a few years ago, I was involved more or less directly with the 'formation' of priests within my religious order. During which I often lamented the 'multiplicity of formations' because in practice, there seemed to be as many ways of training priests as there were formators.

Despite the existence of appropriate Constitutions, the Ratio institutionis [statement on the reasons for the establishment of a religious order], the deliberations in the Chapters-General and homegrown traditions, each novice or student was in fact trained according to the personal whims of the Father-Teacher to whom they happened to be assigned. You can imagine what consequences it has had for the unity of the Congregation!

In all the meetings among the 'formators' and of the Chapters-General, I always insisted on the need for a unity in the formatiVe process, and I must admit that this met with approval even in the Chapter meetings. But i have the impression that despite all that, the situation has remained virtually unchanged.

But what I lamented about the process of formation in my Order really constitutes a general problem that touches every aspect of Christian life and which has become widespread across the Church. Especially after Vatican II, when it seemed as if everyone believed he was authorized to do as he pleases.

Let me not be misunderstood. I am not criticizing Vatican II - I accept with conviction all the reforms it promoted some of which were subsequently realized - reforms which were made necessary by changing times.

In the years after the Council, the Popes and the dicasteries of the Roman made an enormous effort of 'aggiornamento' - bringing up to date - in all sectors of the Church, leaving room for the possibility of further adaptations to local situations, but always within the limits set by the new standards.

The problem is that such norms are often almost completely ignored by the 'base', where the common opinion is that the Council had swept away all legalisms and that the only criterion for action would now be to heed the Holy Spirit, whose urgings would seem to be identical to the personal goals of those who invoke his name! [But if only they did! Instead, they invoke a 'spirit of Vatican II' - as if the Holy Spirit had nothing to do with the Council (ditto for the 'spirit of Assisi). Why do the progrssivists invoke an amorphous undefined spirit, a secular phantasm, instead of the Holy Spirit himself? Perhaps because even they feel it would be sacrliege to invoke the Third Person in support of ideas that are not that of the Church he created at that first Pentecost.]

Why this long introduction, you might ask: What is Fr. Scalese leading to? It is the reflection that came to mind when the other day, I read the news that left me somewhat perplexed: the Pope, on Maundy Thursday, would celebrate the Mass of the Lord's Supper at the juvenile detention center of Casal del Marmo in Rome.

So how could that be a problem? Is it not a most beautiful gesture decided on by Papa Bergoglio? Isn't visiting those in prison one of the corporal works of mercy? And can the Pope not freely decide where to celebrate the evening Mass of Maundy Thursday?

I would like to start by responding to the last question, because I believe that all the rest will depend on a correct answer. It is true that the Pope can decide as he wishes - he is the supreme legislator in the Church.

But he can so decide, in fact, by legislating. If there is any law that he dislikes, he may change it. Until then, if there is an existing law, made by him or his predecessors, in my opinion, I do not think he can simply choose to ignore it.

I am not a canonist, but I do not believe the Pope can apply the principle “Princeps legibus solutus” (The sovereign is above the law). It would not be correct at all with respect to those who are held to observe a law. This, as a general principle.

In this case, it is not really about laws, but of pastoral instructions which nevertheless, in my opinion, are binding in nature. Some thirty years ago, the Ceremoniale Episcoporum was published - which I do not think was intended primarily for the diocesan liturgical masters but above all, for the bishops themselves.

I would point out that I am not referring here to the Ceremonial of 1600 (after the Council of Trent) but to that of 1984, “ex decreto Sacrosancti Œcumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum, auctoritate Ioannis Pauli PP. II promulgatum” (as decreed by the Second Vatican Council to build the sacred, and as promulgated by the authority of John Paul II).

So what does this Ceremonial manual say with regard to the rites of the Paschal Triduum?

"Bearing in mind the special dignity of these days and the great spiritual and pastoral importance of these celebrations in the life of the Church, it is supremely fitting that the Bishop, presiding in his cathedral church,` celebrates the Mass of the Lord's Supper, the liturgical acts of Good Friday recalling the Passion of the Lord, and the Easter Vigil, especially if the latter will include the celebration of the sacraments of Christian initiation" (No. 296).

Specifically, regarding Maundy Thursday, the Ceremonial manual proceeds: "The Bishop, even if he has already celebrated the Chrismal Mass in the morning, must also take to heart the celebration of the Mass of the Lord's Supper with the full participation of priests, deacons, ministers and the faithful around him" (No. 298).

These are not in any way compulsory norms, but instructions that are urgent, and from which, in my opinion one can deviate only for the most serious of reasons. According to the report, Pope Francis would only be continuing a practice he began as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, which implies that he intends to do the same thing every year as Pope.

It is clear that the problem has not emerged only now that Cardinal Bergoglio has become Pope, but that it began when he was an Archbishop. I can imagine his reason for doing so: "I already celebrated the Chrismal Mass this morning with all my clergy. This evening, the Mass of the Lord's Supper will be said in the various parishes. So who will I be celebrating with in the Cathedral? Even the seminarians will not be there because they are ordered to serve in their respective parishes. So I will go and celebrate the Mass for the sick, those in prison, and I shall also be carrying out a work of mercy".

It is a reasoning that is quite understandable, if not outright praiseworthy, but which also risks 'dismantling' in one act everything that Vatican II authoritatively stated:

"The Bishop must be considered as the high priest of his flock. In a certain way the life of the faithful in Christ derives from him and depends on him. That is why bishops are dutybound to give great importance to the liturgy of the diocese which takes place around the figure of the Bishop, principally at his 'cathedral' church (i.e., the church where he occupies the cathedra), in the belief that the Church manifests herself in a special way in the full and active participation of the People of God in the same liturgical celebrations, especially in the same Eucharist, the same prayers, the same altar at which the Bishop presides, surrounded by his priests and ministers" (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 41).

The text is reprised in the Ceremoniale which says: "Therefore the sacred celebrations presided over by the Bishop, manifest the mystery of the Church in which Christ is present, and are not just a simple matter of ceremonial... At certain times and on the most important days of the liturgical year, this full manifestation of (each) local Church is called for, to which shall be invited all the people coming from different parts of the diocese, and as much as possible, its priests"(Nos. 12-13).

"The principal manifestation of the local Church takes place when the Bishop, as the high priest of his flock, celebrates the Eucharist, most especially in his cathedral church, surrounded by his priests and ministers, with the full and active participation of the entire holy People of God. .. This Mass, which is called 'stational' [i.e., referring to a specific location, or 'station'], manifests the unity of the local Church and the diversity of the ministers around the Bishop at the sacred Eucharist. Therefore, as many faithful as possible should be invited to the Mass, the priests concelebrate with their Bishop, the deacons lend their particular service, and acolytes and readers exercise their functions" (No. 119).

"This form of the Mass shall be observed most especially at the major solemnities of the liturgical year, when the Bishop prepares the sacred Chrism and in the evening Mass of the Lord's Supper, in the celebrations of the holy founder of the local Church and the patron saint of the diocese, on the anniversary of the bishop's ordination, in the large assemblies of the Christian people, and in his pastoral visits" (No. 120).

The Vatican statement on March 21 about the decision of Pope Francis to celebrate the Mass of the Lord's Supper in a Roman detention center for minors, said, "As we all know, the Mass of the Lord/s Supper is characterized by the announcement of the commandment of love and the ritual gesture of 'washing feet'."

With this, too, the Ceremonial manual for Bishops is more complete and precise: "With this Mass, therefore, we commemorate the Eucharist, in memory of the Lord's Passover, through which the sacrifice of the New Covenant is made perennially present among us under sacramental signs. It also commemorates the institution of the priesthood, through which the mission and sacrifice of Christ are made present in the world. And finally, it commemorates the love with which the Lord loved us to the extreme of dying for us. The Bishop must concern himself with taking the opportunity to propose all these truths to his faithful through the ministry of the word, so that the faithful in their piety may penetrate more profoundly these great mysteries and may be able to live them more intensely in their actual lives". (No. 297)

The washing of the feet is certainly a significant feature in the celebration of Maundy Thursday but it would be a mistake to consider it an essential element. Indeed, it is not an obligatory rite - it is to be carried out only "when pastoral reasons make it advisable" (No. 301). Unfortunately, in recent years, and in various places, it has been loaded with meanings that far exceed its original value.

Some will say that I am making a mountain out of a liturgical molehill, some will accuse me of fussiness, if not of outright rubricism or legalism. And some will certainly liken me to the Pharisees, who accused Jesus of not observing the Law when he healed on the Sabbath. While some will protest that I am trying to tell the Pope how to be Pope.

Let them say what they want.But no one can certainly hinder me from thinking that some decisions, apparently innocuous, could have devastating consequences.

a. First of all, in ignoring existing norms in the Church = even those that may seem merely secondary - there is a risk of placing some fundamental values into question, values that Vatican II has shed light on and which it intended to become the common patrimony of the Church.

b. In the second place, the thought could be encouraged that yes, certain norms exist, but it is not that important to respect them. So if the Pope considers that it is possible to ignore them, it means they cannot be all that important. And if he can do it, why can I not do the same?

c. That, in turn, would give the impression that there are no objective and stable standards that are valid for everyone and for always, but that everything depends on personal discretion of the person who happens to be the responsible authority.

d. Finally therefore, there is the risk that relativism, so much opposed in words by today's society, does indeed become the supreme standard even within the Church.


An inopportune reflection
on Good Friday

To add to Father Scalese's argument about the inevitably slippery slope opened up by discretionary flouting of canonical rubric and eventually canon law itself - Fr. Scalese doesn't say so outright but clearly implies it is an act of arrogance rather than humility to do so ("See how much better I am!") - I take the opportunity to illustrate the dilemma I face regarding Pope Francis, a holy man the sole of whose shoes I am certainly not fit to even touch, and whose personal virtues will obviously neither be diminished nor enhanced by what anyone says or thinks about him.

But I am increasingly troubled by the very aspects of his personality - and I emphasize the word 'personality', namely Jorge Bergoglio, who has been front and center since March 13, even with the papal name of Francis - which have earned him universal accolades as the embodiment of all virtues. Especially, as the media gloatingly do, in comparison to his predecessor who was certainly never 'defined' by his external gestures nor ever seek to define himself thus. He always receded into the background in the most natural way possible, and without calling attention to his self-effacement because that would have been a contradiction of his intention. I have therefore been haunted since March 13 by the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. .

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“Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. 11The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income. But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’I tell you [Jesus says], the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18,9-14).

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Obviously, one immediately identifies a holy man like Pope Francis with the humble publican. What disturbs me is that I can just as easily find elements of his 'persona' - namely, of the Jorge Bergoglio who is now Pope Francis but who continues to be distinct from the figure of Pope - in the Pharisee.

He has been telling the world, in effect, "Look at me! I am not like the other Popes before me. I am humble and simple, I only want to serve, and serve the poor especially. So I will not be doing what the other Popes did because I am different from all of them. I will be an example who will show the world how and what a Pope [Excuse me, 'Bishop of Rome'] ought to be".

It is a presumptuousness, pardon me, that I never sensed in any of the other Popes in my lifetime, who simply became Pope with all the attendant consequences thereto, including what some derisively call 'the trappings' = and no one, not even the media, thought them any less for it. Once again, think John XXIII who was 'il Papa buono' even for the media though he gladly and obediently - and therefore, humbly - took on all the customary trappings of his unique office.

The obvious answer to what amounts to faithlessness on my part is, of course, "But what's wrong with a Pope who sets the example? Not so much for other Popes who will follow him but for the bishops and priests now?" To which I would say that the loss of faith within the Church is great indeed if bishops and priests needed the Pope to remind them by token headline-generating gestures that each of us is called on to imitate Christ. If their daily Mass, recreating the supreme sacrifice in persona Christi does not already remind them daily and call them to true imitation of Christ, nothing will - certainly not the fleeting example of self-deprivation and self-abasement by other humans like them, even if he happens to be the Pope.

Francis of Assisi himself, the alter Christus - who visited the Pope in Rome at least twice in his lifetime - never called on the Popes of his time to despoliate themselves and the Church, and live like the Franciscans did, begging for a living. As a good Catholic, he knew what function the Pope plays and that he carries out his office within and according to a tradition that had developed over centuries - more than a millennium already, in Francis's time - a tradition not tarnished but re-burnished even after a Pope like Alexander Borgia.

Nor was St. Francis made so giddy by his self-mortification to forget that there are other ways - including that of the Popes - to live Christ's Gospel.

What disturbs me further is that Cardinal Bergoglio is no naive bishop who is unaware of the overwhelmingly disproportionate media influence on global public opinion and of the attention he is generating. Where does he draw the line between genuine humility and allowing the onslaught of adulatory commentary to build up about his persona, not about Christ and the Papacy?

Even if he may think that all the attention he is getting is "all the better to spread my message", it is not the message of Christ that is being spread by all the media hullaballoo, but their 'shock and awe' over the never-ending novelties from someone who happens to be their celebrity du jour. The reporting has been all about him as a person - Jorge Bergoglio as Pope - not about the Pope as the Vicar of Christ. The effect of all the novelties is the very opposite of self-effacement, a hallmark of humility that came so naturally with Benedict XVI.

And with that, I will gladly put on sackcloth and ashes once again. and seek to make my personal amends, as the Act of Contrition says, for even thinking as I do and expressing my thoughts, especially on Good Friday.

P.S. About Pope Francis's homilies thus far, one gets the impression that Christ intended his Church only for 'the poor', i.e., the materially poor. Yes, he said in one homily (or was it his GA catechesis) that there are also those who are 'spiritually poor', but the tone of all his admonitions - and the way the media interpret them - is that he means the materially deprived. Aren't the secularized and Godless rich just as much in need of priestly attention and assistance? Not to mention all of us ordinary folk between the two extremes!

And it is most admirable that he reminds bishops and priests to do as he did and bring spiritual assistance to 'the outskirts', by just listening to them and praying for them. But he assumes, quite generously, that everyone else is like him, and would it were so! - fully prepared interiorly, with a pure and purified heart, ablaze with a genuine friendship with Jesus in daily prayer, which was the first requisite Benedict XVI asked of the clergy. Because without that, no one can be a credible witness to Christ or an effective mediator between God and man.

What about a word from the Pope to the chronic wrongdoers among men of the Church such as Cardinal Ratzinger described in the 2005 Via Crucis meditations? Is he not seen as the one who will finally clean up the Church - as if somehow his predecessor had done nothing at all about this?

The wrongdoers may be few compared to the overwhelming number of priests in the world, but they have committed evil acts, and are unfortunately the only ones who count in the eyes of the media - and therefore, of world opinion = all those who judge the Church solely on the demerits of its few scoundrels, and not on the merits of the institution that, despite structural defects that must be corrected, has not ceased to bring spiritual support as well as material aid in education, health and emergency assistance to the neediest around the world.

All the good that the Church does is carried out through human beings as fallible as those who have brought discredit to the Church but who instead do honor to her by living the Gospel as best as they can. The media ignore the countless faithful - laymen, priests, nuns and consecrated persons - who daily seek to live their lives as Christ wants his followers to do, some of them to the point of martyrdom - but who may forever be unsung except in heaven.

Christianity will always be a sign of contradiction in the world, as Jesus himself warned. Being Christian can be joyous, but Jesus never said it would be easy. There is no Christianity-lite. Anyone who thinks - as the MSM and secular public opinion do -that the Church, which is a divine institution carried on by fallible mortals, will ever be completely pristine, denies the reality of human nature after the fall. God loves us and forgives everything, but we must do our part as well, and it is not easy, but the saints have shown it can be done in true imitation of Christ.

The Church Triumphant is not on earth. We are the Church Militant - ever fighting to be true to Christ - journeying through earthly life and laden with all our human baggage, towards that Church Triumphant. Meanwhile, we pray and ask God's grace to keep us on the right path despite our daily failings.

With this post, I have caught up with the papal liturgies of Holy Week until the Easter Vigil Mass tonight...

Pope Francis says the Cross
is 'God's answer to evil'

March 29, 2013

At 9:15 p.m. on Good Friday, Pope Francis presided at the Roman Colosseum at the pious observance of the Stations of the Cross which was broadcast worldwide.

The text of the meditations and prayers used was prepared by some young Lebanese Catholics under the guidance of Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai, Patgriach of Antioch of the Maronites. The images used to illustrate the fourteen stations in the libretto for the liturgy are the work of an anonymous 19th-century Franciscan from Bethlehem.

The torches accompanying the Cross were held by two young people from the Diocese of Rome and two Lebanese youths while the Cross was carried successively by Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the Pope's Vicar for Rome; 2 Chinese seminarians; 2 Franciscans from the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land; two religious from Africa and two from Lebanon; two young people from Brazil (host of the coming WYD), two families from Italy and India, and a handicapped person from UNITALSI, the Italian association that aids sick persons.

[Pope Francis did not join the Stations himself, nor did he receive the Cross, although the media had reported earlier that he would carry the Cross on his shoulder (unlike previous Popes who merely held it aloft before them). He proceeded directly to the papal platform atop the Palatine Hill from where he followed the meditations and prayers, and later delivered brief remarks to conclude the event.]

Here is the Vatican translation of the remarks:

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Dear Brother and Sisters,

Thank you for having taken part in these moments of deep prayer. I also thank those who have accompanied us through the media, especially the sick and elderly.

I do not wish to add too many words. One word should suffice this evening, that is the Cross itself. The Cross is the word through which God has responded to evil in the world.

Sometimes it may seem as though God does not react to evil, as if he is silent. And yet, God has spoken, he has replied, and his answer is the Cross of Christ: a word which is love, mercy, forgiveness.

It also reveals a judgment, namely that God, in judging us, loves us.
Remember this: God, in judging us, loves us. If I embrace his love then I am saved, if I refuse it, then I am condemned, not by him, but my own self, because God never condemns, he only loves and saves.

Dear brothers and sisters, the word of the Cross is also the answer which Christians offer in the face of evil, the evil that continues to work in us and around us. Christians must respond to evil with good, taking the Cross upon themselves as Jesus did.

This evening we have heard the witness given by our Lebanese brothers and sisters: they composed these beautiful prayers and meditations.
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to them for this work and for the witness they offer.

We were able to see this when Pope Benedict visited Lebanon: we saw the beauty and the strong bond of communion joining Christians together in that land, and the friendship of our Muslim brothers and sisters and so many others. That occasion was a sign to the Middle East and to the whole world: a sign of hope.

We now continue this Via Crucis in our daily lives. Let us walk together along the Way of the Cross, and let us do so carrying in our hearts this word of love and forgiveness. Let us go forward waiting for the Resurrection of Jesus, who loves us so much. He is all love.

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The Pope did deliver a blessing at the end, if we go by the photograph, though it does not appear in the Vatican account. However, he also chose this time not to wear the mozzetta and stole that Benedict XVI always wore for the Via Crucis. (I have to check what Paul VI and John Paul II wore, who, respectively, revived the practice and continued it.) Perhaps, Pope Francis does not consider the Via Crucis a liturgical event, the same way he did not think his first presentation to the world was (even if the appearance of the new Pope is preceded by a processional Cross, except for his final blessing. In any case, both the 'Habemus Papam' ceremony and the Via Crucis events are posted on the Vatican webpage of the Office for Papal Liturgical Celebrations.

You will forgive me for this indulgence, which does have a spiritual dimension as it cannot fail to have with Benedict XVI. I had all but forgotten about these images that were posted in the PRF 'Pictures and Videos' section in 2006 - and my reaction to Benedict XVI's completely unexpected act of 'prostratio' before the main altar of St. Peter's on Good Friday, March 27, 2006 - his first as Pope... I had even forgotten that at the time, it took even the media by surprise, because it was a 'first in papal liturgy'. Here is the post from March 28, 2006:



BENEDICT XVI'S 'PROSTRATIO' IN 2006:
A FIRST IN PAPAL LITURGY

For those who like me who wondered about the Pope's act of prostration before the altar at
St. Peter's yesterday afternoon, at the start of the rites to mark the Passion of Christ,
I have found so far two comments in the Italian press about it:

In Corriere della Sera:
In the afternoon at St. Peter's, at the "celebration of the Passion," the Pope extended
himself face down on the floor in the act of 'prostration' - it was the first time ever
in Papal liturgy.

In Avvenire:
Completely prostrate on the floor, his face between his hands in a gesture that indicated
both meditation and participation in the suffering of the Cruficied Son of God,
Benedict XVI paid homage to that "Wood" which is the sign of suffering but also of
salvation for the whole world.

Thus, in silence and adoration, the Successor of Peter opened the celebration of the Passion
at the Vatican. In his first Good Friday as Pope, Ratzinger showed the only possible
attitude before the mystery of God who gave his own life for mankind.

Here are the videocaps taken by our good friend Paparaxvi who, along with our own Paparatzifan, was the most assiduous photo archivist of Benedict XVI in the PRF in those heady early years...






At the time, here was my reaction to our beloved Papa Bene's first Muandy Thursday and Good Friday as Pope. It is amazing how much of it resonates in the context of a new Pontificate...

PAPA AS PRIEST, PAPA AS ICON

Having missed the Maundy Thursday rites at St. Johns Lateran yesterday due to unavoidable appointments, I was glad to be able to watch the Good Friday rites today. And I was literally stunned when, in the first few minutes of the transmission, the Pope prostrated himself before the altar and remained so for...it seemed minutes.

Perhaps, in addition to being a Good Friday act of veneration, it was also a carryover from yesterday's commemoration of the institution of the priesthood at the Mass of the Lord's Supper, recapitulating in his full prostration today the full prostration that a new priest does on the day he is ordained.

In any case, the Pope's spoken and tacit messages so far this Holy Week have had to do with emphasizing that, above all, he is a priest, and in every word and action, he has been showing us how a priest should comport himself to be worthy of being in persona Christi.

How fascinating when he stripped his outer garments, a symbolic spoliation, to lead the veneration of the Cross! I did not notice during the coverage that he had also taken off his ring, but that is clear from the still pictures...

It takes a Pope, and a Pope like Benedict, to bring new meaning to old rites, to show us that ritual has a logic and that therefore it must be done right, that ritual grows out of tradition and therefore it must be respected as it has come down to us.

The great homily on priesthood that he delivered at the Mass of the Chrism yesterday was, I felt, the concrete companion piece to his Ninth Station meditation last year ("How much filth have we brought into the Church ourselves!") and was much better than any conventional 'Maundy Thursday letter to priests' could have been. [This refers to a practice by John Paul II to send such a letter on Maundy Thursday.]

I think maybe many priests - especially the 'activists' - have forgotten that above all, as the Pope said, a priest should be a man of prayer - it was great that he cited how much and how often Jesus Himself prayed!; that the best deeds will not count for much in the end, if they are not rooted in communion with God.

And who could not have been moved to tears by his citation of very appropriate words from Andrea Santoro [the Italian priest murdered by a Catholic-hating fanatic in Cyprus earlier in 2006] who lived the ideals of priesthood up to his death (he was killed in his church while in meditative prayer)!




And tonight at the Colosseum, Papa looked ageless - I don't remember any other coverage where the camera was so close to him most of the time. And the bonanza of close-ups could have been 'distracting' except that his very expression keeps you focused on the spiritual exercise.



But quite apart from the emotions awakened by the beautiful poetic meditations and prayers by Mons. Comastri, I also felt a great sense of pride and joy that our Pope appeared to be at the top of his physical form, bearing the Cross in front of him with steady hands, walking, standing, going up and down flights of steps, with ease and grace.




And the images of him in his red cape in the Roman night, speaking atop that wall to the crowd below, with the 'flaming' Cross to his right, are iconic and unforgettable.

BENEDETTO, SEI IMMENSO! DEO GRATIAS!

Holy Saturday, March 30

Greek Orthodox icons: From left, Jesus is prepared for burial, with the Magdalene, the Virgin Mary, the Apostle John and Joseph of Arimathea; other icons show Jesus's descent to Hades.
Holy Saturday is celebrated with elaborate rituals in the Orthodox Church.

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Let us return once more to the night of Holy Saturday. In the Creed we say about Christ’s journey that he “descended into hell.” What happened then?

Since we have no knowledge of the world of death, we can only imagine his triumph over death with the help of images which remain very inadequate.

Yet, inadequate as they are, they can help us to understand something of the mystery. The liturgy applies to Jesus’ descent into the night of death the words of Psalm 23[24]: “Lift up your heads, O gates; be lifted up, O ancient doors!”

The gates of death are closed, no one can return from there. There is no key for those iron doors. But Christ has the key. His Cross opens wide the gates of death, the stern doors. They are barred no longer. His Cross, his radical love, is the key that opens them. The love of the One who, though God, became man in order to die – this love has the power to open those doors. This love is stronger than death.

The Easter icons of the Oriental Church show how Christ enters the world of the dead. He is clothed with light, for God is light. “The night is bright as the day, the darkness is as light” (cf. Ps 138[139]12).

- Benedict XVI, Easter Vigil homily, 2007

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Tonight the Holy Father presides at
EASTER VIGIL MASS
21:00 St. Peter's Basilica





Of the days in the Paschal Triduum, Holy Saturday is usually the 'neglected' day. Benedict XVI has reflected a few times during his Pontificate on the significance fo Holy Saturday. Perhaps the most significant of this was his meditation upon visiting the Shroud of Turin in May 2010. Here is that reflection in full:




The Shroud of Turin:
Icon of Holy Saturday
by BENEDICT XVI
Meditation on his Visit to the Shroud
May 2, 2010

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Dear friends,

This was, for me, a much-awaited moment. I have been before the Holy Shroud on other occasions, but this time, I am living this pilgrimage and this occasion with particular intensity.

Perhaps it is because the passage of years has made me even more sensitive to the message of this extraordinary icon. Perhaps - I would say, above all - it is because I am here this time as the Successor of Peter, and I carry in my heart the entire Church, and even all of mankind.

I thank the Lord for the gift of this pilgrimage, and for the opportunity to share with you a brief meditation, the theme of which was suggested to me by the subtitle of this solemn Exposition, namely, the mystery of Holy Saturday.

One can say that the Shroud is the icon for this mystery, the icon of Holy Saturday. Indeed it is a burial cloth which wrapped the remains of a man who was crucified, corresponding in every way to what the Gospels say of Jesus, who, having been crucified at noon, expired around three in the afternoon.

When evening came, since it was Parasceve, or the eve of the solemn Paschal Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a rich and authoritative member of the Sanhedrin, courageously asked Pontius Pilate for permission to bury Jesus in a new tomb that he had ordered excavated not far from Golgotha.

Having obtained the permission, he bought a burial cloth, and after Jesus was taken down from the Cross, he wrapped him in that cloth and buried him in the sepulcher (cfr Mk 15,42-46). Thus says the Gospel of St. Mark, with whom the other evangelists concur.

Jesus remained in the tomb until the dawn of the day following the Sabbath, and the Shroud of Turin offers us the image of how his body lay in the tomb during that time - which was chronologically brief (about a day and a half), but immense, infinite, in its value and its significance.

Holy Saturday is the day when God was hidden, as one reads in an ancient homily: "What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps... God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled" (Homily on Holy Saturday, PG 43, 439).

In the Credo, we profess that Jesus Christ was "crucified under Pontius Pilate, died and was buried; he descended into hell, and on the third day, he rose again from the dead".

Dear brothers and sisters, in our time, especially for those who have experienced the past century, mankind has become particularly sensible to the mystery of Holy Saturday. Hiding God is part of contemporary man's spirit, in an existential manner, almost unconscious, like a void in the heart that has grown increasingly larger.

Towards the end of the 19th century, Nietzsche wrote: "God is dead! And it is we who killed him". This famous statement, is clearly taken almost literally from the Christian tradition - we often say it in the Via Crucis, perhaps without fully realizing what we are saying.

After the two world wars, the lagers and the gulags, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our age has become increasingly a Holy Saturday: the darkness of that day challenges all those who ask themselves about life, and it particularly challenges us believers. We too have something to do with this darkness.

Nonetheless the death of the Son of God, of Jesus of Nazareth, has an opposite aspect, totally positive, that is a source of comfort and of hope.

This makes me think of the fact that the Holy Shroud is like a 'photographic' document, with a 'negative' and a 'positive' image. Indeed, it is precisely that: the deepest myetery of the faith is at the same time the most luminous sign of unbounded hope.

Holy Saturday is a 'no man's land' between death and resurrection, but into this 'no man's land' entered someone, the Only One, who passed through it with the signs of his Passion for man: Passio Christi, passio hominis.

And the Shroud speaks to us precisely of this moment - it testifies precisely to that unique and unrepeatable interval in the history of mankind and the universe, in which God, in Jesus Christ, shared not just our dying, but also our remaining in death - it is the most radical solidarity.

In that 'time beyond time', Jesus Christ 'descended into hell'. What does this statement mean? It means that God, having made himself man, reached the point of entering man's extremest and absolute solitude, there where no ray of love enters, where total abandonment reigns without any word of comfort: the underworld.

Jesus Christ, remaining in death, went beyond the door of that ultimate solitude in order to lead even us to surpass it with him.

All of us have felt at some time the frightening sense of being abandoned, and what we most fear about death is precisely that, just as when we were children, we were afraid to be alone in the dark, and only the presence of a person who loved us could reassure us.

This is exactly what happened on Holy Saturday: the voice of God resounded in the kingdom of death. The unthinkable had occured, namely, that Love had penetrated into the bowels of Hell. Even in the extreme darkness of the most absolute human loneliness, we can hear a voice that calls us and find a hand that leads us out.

The human being lives for the fact that he is loved and he can love - and if, love has penetrated the space of death itself, then even there, life has arrived. In the hour of extreme solitude, we shall never be alone: Passio Christi, passio hominis.

This is the mystery of Holy Saturday. Precisely from the darkness of the death of the Son of God, has emerged the light of a new hope: the light of the Resurrection.

And it seems to me that, in looking at this sacred cloth with the eyes of faith, we can perceive something of that light. In effect, teh Shroud was immersed in that profound darkness, but it is at the same time luminous.

I think that if thousands upon thousands of people come to venerate it - without counting those who contemplate it in images - it is because they see in it not just darkness but also the light. Not so much the defeat of life and love, but rather victory, the victory of life over death, of love over hatred.

Yes, they see the death of Jesus, but they also see his Resurrection. In the bosom of death, life now pulses insofar as love is present.

This is the power of the Shroud: from the face of this 'man of sorrows', who carries on him the Passion of man in every time and in every place, even our passions, our sufferings, our difficulties, our sins.

“Passio Christi. Passio hominis”. From this face emanates a solemn majesty, a paradoxical lordship. This face, these hands, these feet, this chest, this whole body speaks - it is itself a word that we can hear in silence.

How does the Shroud speak? It speaks with blood, and blood is life! The Shroud is an Icon written in blood - the blood of a man who was flagellated, crowned with thorns, crucified and wounded on the left side.

The Image impressed on the Shroud is that of a dead man, but the blood speaks of his life. Every trace of blood speaks of love and life. Especially that abundant stain near his rib, made by the blood and water shed copiously from a major wound caused by the tip of a Roman lance.

That blood and water speak of life. It is like a spring that murmurs silently, and we can hear it, we can listen to it, in the silence of Holy Saturday.

Dear friends, let us always praise the Lord for his faithful and merciful love. When we leave this holy place, let us carry in our eyes the image of the Shroud, let us carry in our hearts this word of love, and let us praise God with a life full of faith, hope and charity. Thank you.

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[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/03/2013 03:34]

A parting gift from Benedict XVI:
The Shroud of Turin presented on TV
with an 'app' that will enable close
study of the state of research on what
could be Jesus's burial cloth

It is most opportune to recall Benedict XVI's reflection on the Shroud because today was a special day for those in Europe who could watch a special telecast about the Shroud which had been authorized for this Holy Saturday by Benedict XVI.

In one of his final acts before his resignation, Benedict XVI authorised this special “ostensione” – or solemn devotional exposition – of the Shroud.

The presentation was preceded by a brief video message from Pope Francis. Here is the official Vatican translation of the message:

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Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I join all of you gathered before the Holy Shroud, and I thank the Lord who, through modern technology, offers us this possibility.

Even if it takes place in this way, we do not merely “look”, but rather we venerate by a prayerful gaze. I would go further: we are in fact looked upon ourselves. This face has eyes that are closed, it is the face of one who is dead, and yet mysteriously he is watching us, and in silence he speaks to us.

How is this possible? How is it that the faithful, like you, pause before this icon of a man scourged and crucified? It is because the Man of the Shroud invites us to contemplate Jesus of Nazareth. This image, impressed upon the cloth, speaks to our heart and moves us to climb the hill of Calvary, to look upon the wood of the Cross, and to immerse ourselves in the eloquent silence of love.

Let us therefore allow ourselves to be reached by this look, which is directed not to our eyes but to our heart. In silence, let us listen to what he has to say to us from beyond death itself.

By means of the Holy Shroud, the unique and supreme Word of God comes to us: Love made man, incarnate in our history; the merciful love of God who has taken upon himself all the evil of the world to free us from its power.

This disfigured face resembles all those faces of men and women marred by a life which does not respect their dignity, by war and violence which afflict the weakest… And yet, at the same time, the face in the Shroud conveys a great peace; this tortured body expresses a sovereign majesty.

It is as if it let a restrained but powerful energy within it shine through, as if to say: have faith, do not lose hope; the power of the love of God, the power of the Risen One overcomes all things.

So, looking upon the Man of the Shroud, I make my own the prayer which Saint Francis of Assisi prayed before the Crucifix:
"Most High, glorious God, enlighten the shadows of my heart, and grant me a right faith, a certain hope and perfect charity, sense and understanding, Lord, so that I may accomplish your holy and true command. Amen."

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Turin shroud makes rare appearance on TV
amid claims that it is not a forgery
by Lizzy Davies in Rome

March 29, 2013



The Shroud of Turin was to be shown on television for the first time in 40 years on Easter Saturday as a new claim that the four-meter-long linen cloth dates from ancient times proves its enduring ability to fascinate and perplex.

In what the Vatican described as his parting gift to the Roman Catholic Church before he resigned, Benedict XVI signed off on a special 90-minute broadcast of the Shroud from Turin Cathedral and introduced in a brief preamble by his successor, Pope Francis.

"It will be a message of intense spiritual scope, charged with positivity, which will help hope never to be lost," said the archbishop of Turin, Cesare Nosiglia.

Timed to mark the 40th anniversary of the shroud's last appearance on TV – ordered by Pope Paul VI in 1973 – the unusual programme on Italian state broadcaster RAI comes as the new Pope, the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, prepares for his first Easter as head of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.

It also comes amid new claims that the piece of fabric, which many Catholics believe Jesus was buried in, does indeed date from around his lifetime. Previous tests apparently confirmed the shroud to be a clever medieval forgery.

Giulio Fanti, associate professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at Padua University, claims tests had shown that the cloth, which bears the image of a man's face and body, dates from between 280BC and 220AD.

Fanti claims that the carbon-14 dating used in a landmark study in 1988 was "not statistically reliable". That study claimed that the shroud actually dated from the Middle Ages. But the mystery of the cloth has lingered ever since.

The Vatican does not have a position on its authenticity. When he was still cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the previous Pope wrote that the shroud was "a truly mysterious image, which no human artistry was capable of producing".

Fanti's results are detailed in a new book, Il Mistero della Sindone(The Mystery of the Shroud), written by him and journalist Saverio Gaeta.

Although it is rarely displayed, Catholics and historians keen for a closer look at the shroud will be able to study it at their leisure with the help of a new app launched on Friday. Users of smartphones and tablets will be able to download the multilingual application for free and examine detailed images of the shroud courtesy of high-definition technology.


The Shroud is a 'snapshot'
of the Resurrection, author says
Interview with Saverio Gaeta
Translated from

March 30, 2013

The subject of the Shroud of Turin ('La Santa Sindone' - the Holy Shroud - as it is called in Italian) has been debated for decades but it has never gone out of mode.

Such that Saverio Gaeta, the Vatican correspondent for Famiglia Cristiana [Italy's most widely circulated weekly magazine], has just devoted to the Shroud for the third time in his career a book of 240 pages, Il mistero della Sindone, in which he presents the latest developments in scientific research on the Shroud, based on the work of Professor Giulio Fanti, professor of mechanical and thermal measures at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Padua, and his team, who claim they have definitively refuted the carbon dating of the Shroud done in 1988 that says it dates only to the Middle Ages.

In what way has Prof. Fanti's team demonstrated the inexactitudes of the study that claims the Shroud is a cloth that dates back only to the Late Middle Ages?
Through a sturdy statistical analysis of the calculations proposed by the scientists who did the Carbon-14 dating in 1988, they found that the data had been manipulated to correspond to the result they wanted to get. Besides, the sample of the Shroud that was taken for the dating only measured about 2 square centimeters, which was certainly not representative of the entire Shroud.

Are there other aspects that seem questionable about the 1988 investigation?
Yes, for instance, the fact that the Arizona laboratory that carried out the study had two Shroud fragments to test but they only used one. Why?

And what samples did you use in the new research?
Prof. Fanti did not get any new fragments, but he used fibers found in the filters when the Shroud was 'dusted' in 1968 and again in 1988 - the traceability of these samples is documented.

How were these fibers analyzed?
With two new chemical methods based on spectroscopy and a mechanical procedure, which both compared some 20 samples of fabrics from 3000 BC to our time, The average of three comparisons made independently of each other and through both methods, showed that the Shroud dates to the first half of the first century AD, around the years 30-35, namely, around the time of Christ's death.

And how was the image on the cloth produced?
Fanti hypothesized - and to a certain degree, has even demonstrated it - that the image was produced by the so-called 'corona effect', produced by the emission of a great amount of energy from the body of Christ at the moment of the Resurrection. [Ample work has been by Italian scientists on this hypothesis, including a study by Italy's center for nuclear research, which showed that an image such as that on the Shroud could only be produced by a burst of radiant energy that cannot even be replicated by the most sophisticated instruments available today. I have posted a couple of articles on this thread describing such studies.]

And was this theory verified?
Fanti did it in two ways, both by computer as well as empirically, through a scale model - since it would be impossible to do so for anything the size of the actual Shroud precisely because of the immense amount of energy that it would require.

And how do you know that the image on the Shroud is Christ and not just some dead convict?
Because in the entire history of art, from the 3rd-4th century AD onwards, from the very first frescoes and mosaics purporting to show the face of Jesus, all the depictions show his face exactly as we see it on the Shroud - despite the broken nose, the beard parted in half, and the parting on the long hair. This allows us to say that the face, as it is, was already known even in Rome from the third century onwards even when the Shroud was still in Edessa.

What do the positions of the wounds on the man of the Shroud tell us?
The wounds correspond to the description we are given in the Gospels, even if that information is scant. The Gospels simply say that Christ was flagellated, and Fanti, analyzing the image on the Shroud, counts about 370 scourge wounds. The crown of thorns is not described in the Gospel, and the iconography suggested has always been like a circle around the head, whereas the Shroud shows that it was in the form of a helmet that was forcibly thrust on the cranium. And the wounds on the wrists show that it was not the palms that were nailed to the Cross but the wrists.

Do the bloodstains on the Shroud also prove other passages in the Synoptic Gospels?
Yes, because there are different types of stains depending on whether the wound was inflicted before death (in which case it would arterial blood) or afterwards (it would then be venous), such as those stains near Christ's left rib cage, which the Gospels say was pierced after he died.

Has the DNA of the blood ever been mapped?
No, because the fabric of the Shroud had been handled so often through the centuries - manually up to the 17th century, at least - so it has accumulated a whole variety of DNA - It would be difficult to say which is that of the man in the Shroud. We do know that his blood is type AB.

One gets the impression that those who carried out the 1988 studies were definitely prejudiced against the Shroud...
Yes, that study was perhaps flawed from the start by a decided prejudice already set to postdate the Shroud to the medieval era. The fact is that the result of their investigation is mathematically wrong because of the unjustified substitution of figures which brought the dating to the period between 1260 and 1390.

What then did Prof. Fanti's team do?
The person they asked to do the principal work of dating by mechanical means found out only afterwards that the fiber he was asked to analyze was one from the Shroud. He obviously could not have been told earlier what he was working on, to avoid having any preconception. [In scientific study, this is called blinding, in which the researcher is not given any background information about the sample he is studying, so as not to influence his work in any way.]

What is the official position of the Church about the Shroud?
On this or any other relic, the Church has always moved cautiously because believing in relics or apparitions is not dogma. In this case, the freedom of the People of God is total. So there is no official position. The Popes have each had their own personal attitudes. John Paul II said that, in his opinion, the Shroud is a relic, even if he never said so in a magisterial way.

What about the fact that the last spiritual legacy left by Papa Ratzinger is the solemn exhibition of the Shroud for today, March 30?
The fact that Benedict XVI made this decision - which is something his successor cannot but share = after he had announced his decision to resign the papacy, means he wanted this special exhibition to remind the world of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. not just as the cardinal event of Christianity, but also for the life of the Church today.

Querida Teresita, deseo que pases unas
MUY FELICES PASCUAS!!!!

UN ABRAZO ENORME!!!!!





TANTI AUGURI ANCHE A TE, CARISSIMA GLORIA,
ED A TUTTI GLI AMICI DEL FORUM.

TRATO A SER FELIZ 'CON IL CUORE SPEZZATO' COMO TU
SIN LA DIARIA PROXIMIDAD VIRTUAL
DEL NUESTRO QUERIDISIMO PAPA BENEDICTO...

THANK YOU FOR YOUR FRIENDHIP AND FOR HOSTING US ON YOUR FORUM.

FELICES PASCUAS Y UN GRANDE RATZIBACIONI....

TERESA

Libretto cover: La Risurrezione di Gesu, Vincenzo Campi (1536-1591(, Collegiata di San Bartololemo Apostolo, Busseto, Italy.

The Easter Vigil Mass:
Invoking God 'to open us
to the newness that transforms'

March 30, 2013



At 8:30 p.m. Saturday, March 30, the Holy Father Francis presided at the solemn Easter Vigil at St. Peter's basilica.

The rite began at the atrium of the Basilica with the blessing of the wire and the preparation of the Easter candle, after which the Pope led the procession towards the altar with the Easter candle lit, to the chanting of the Exultet.

This was followed by theLliturgy of the Word, the Baptismal liturgy (at which the Pope baptized four adults coming Italy, Albania, Russia and the USA),= and the Eucharistic Liturgy, which was concelebrated with the cardinals present in Rome.

Here is the Vatican translation of the Pope's homily:

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ear Brothers and Sisters,

In the Gospel of this radiant night of the Easter Vigil, we first meet the women who go the tomb of Jesus with spices to anoint his body (cf. Lk 24:1-3). They go to perform an act of compassion, a traditional act of affection and love for a dear departed person, just as we would.

They had followed Jesus, they had listened to his words, they had felt understood by him in their dignity, and they had accompanied him to the very end, to Calvary and to the moment when he was taken down from the cross.

We can imagine their feelings as they make their way to the tomb: a certain sadness, sorrow that Jesus had left them, he had died, his life had come to an end. Life would now go on as before. Yet the women continued to feel love, the love for Jesus which now led them to his tomb.

But at this point, something completely new and unexpected happens, something which upsets their hearts and their plans, something which will upset their whole life: they see the stone removed from before the tomb, they draw near and they do not find the Lord’s body. It is an event which leaves them perplexed, hesitant, full of questions: “What happened?”, “What is the meaning of all this?” (cf. Lk 24:4).

Doesn’t the same thing also happen to us when something completely new occurs in our everyday life? We stop short, we don’t understand, we don’t know what to do. Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness which God brings us, the newness which God asks of us.

We are like the Apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God’s surprises; we are afraid of God’s surprises! He always surprises us!

Dear brothers and sisters, let us not be closed to the newness that God wants to bring into our lives! Are we often weary, disheartened and sad? Do we feel weighed down by our sins? Do we think that we won’t be able to cope? Let us not close our hearts, let us not lose confidence, let us never give up: there are no situations which God cannot change, there is no sin which he cannot forgive if only we open ourselves to him.

2. But let us return to the Gospel, to the women, and take one step further. They find the tomb empty, the body of Jesus is not there, something new has happened, but all this still doesn’t tell them anything certain: it raises questions; it leaves them confused, without offering an answer.

And suddenly there are two men in dazzling clothes who say: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; but has risen” (Lk 24:5-6).

What was a simple act, done surely out of love – going to the tomb – has now turned into an event, a truly life-changing event. Nothing remains as it was before, not only in the lives of those women, but also in our own lives and in the history of mankind.

Jesus is not dead, he has risen, he is alive! He does not simply return to life; rather, he is life itself, because he is the Son of God, the living God (cf. Num 14:21-28; Deut 5:26; Josh 3:10).

Jesus no longer belongs to the past, but lives in the present and is projected towards the future; he is the everlasting “today” of God. This is how the newness of God appears to the women, the disciples and all of us: as victory over sin, evil and death, over everything that crushes life and makes it seem less human.

And this is a message meant for me and for you, dear sister, dear brother. How often does Love have to tell us: Why do you look for the living among the dead? Our daily problems and worries can wrap us up in ourselves, in sadness and bitterness... and that is where death is. That is not the place to look for the One who is alive!

Let the risen Jesus enter your life, welcome him as a friend, with trust: he is life! If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward. He will receive you with open arms. If you have been indifferent, take a risk: you won’t be disappointed. If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid, trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you and he will give you the peace you are looking for and the strength to live as he would have you do.

3. There is one last little element that I would like to emphasize in the Gospel for this Easter Vigil. The women encounter the newness of God. Jesus has risen, he is alive! But faced with empty tomb and the two men in brilliant clothes, their first reaction is one of fear: “they were terrified and bowed their faced to the ground”, Saint Luke tells us – they didn’t even have courage to look.

But when they hear the message of the Resurrection, they accept it in faith. And the two men in dazzling clothes tell them something of crucial importance: “Remember what he told you when he was still in Galilee… And they remembered his words” (Lk 24:6,8).

They are asked to remember their encounter with Jesus, to remember his words, his actions, his life; and it is precisely this loving remembrance of their experience with the Master that enables the women to master their fear and to bring the message of the Resurrection to the Apostles and all the others (cf. Lk 24:9).

To remember what God has done and continues to do for me, for us, to remember the road we have travelled; this is what opens our hearts to hope for the future. May we learn to remember everything that God has done in our lives.

On this radiant night, let us invoke the intercession of the Virgin Mary, who treasured all these events in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19,51) and ask the Lord to give us a share in his Resurrection. May he open us to the newness that transforms.

May he make us men and women capable of remembering all that he has done in our own lives and in the history of our world. May he help us to feel his presence as the one who is alive and at work in our midst. And may he teach us each day not to look among the dead for the Living One. Amen.

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'Christus surrexit, spes mea' (Christ my hope is risen)

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Benedict XVI's Easter greeting card in 2012.
A stunning depiction of the Resurrection (painted 1763) by an 18th century German painter, Johann Heinrich Tischbein the elder. The caption is the test cited by the Pope from the Easter sequence in the Easter Sunday Mass, with which he started his Easter 2012 Urbi et Orbi message.

JESUS'S RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD
by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI
from JESUS OF NAZARETH, Vol. 2

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“If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:14-15).

With these words Saint Paul explains quite drastically what faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ means for the Christian message overall: it is its very foundation. The Christian faith stands or falls with the truth of the testimony that Christ is risen from the dead.

If this were taken away, it would still be possible to piece together from the Christian tradition a series of interesting ideas about God and men, about man’s being and his obligations, a kind of religious world view: but the Christian faith itself would be dead.

Jesus would be a failed religious leader, who despite his failure remains great and can cause us to reflect. But he would then remain purely human, and his authority would extend only so far as his message is of interest to us.

He would no longer be a criterion; the only criterion left would be our own judgment in selecting from his heritage what strikes us as helpful. In other words, we would be alone. Our own judgment would be the highest instance.

Only if Jesus is risen has anything really new occurred that changes the world and the situation of mankind. Then he becomes the criterion on which we can rely. For then God has truly revealed himself.

To this extent, in our quest for the figure of Jesus, the Resurrection is the crucial point. Whether Jesus merely was or whether he also is – this depends on the Resurrection. In answering yes or no to this question, we are taking a stand not simply on one event among others, but on the figure of Jesus as such.

Therefore it is necessary to listen with particular attention as the New Testament bears witness to the Resurrection. Yet first we have to acknowledge that this testimony, considered from a historical point of view, is presented to us in a particularly complex form and gives rise to many questions.

What actually happened? Clearly, for the witnesses who encountered the risen Lord, it was not easy to say. They were confronted with what for them was an entirely new reality, far beyond the limits of their experience. Much as the reality of the event overwhelmed them and impelled them to bear witness, it was still utterly unlike anything they had previously known.

Saint Mark tells us that the disciples on their way down from the mountain of the Transfiguration were puzzled by the saying of Jesus that the Son of Man would “rise from the dead”. And they asked one another what “rising from the dead” could mean (9:9-10). And indeed, what does it mean? The disciples did not know, and they could find out only through encountering the reality itself.

Anyone approaching the Resurrection accounts in the belief that he knows what rising from the dead means will inevitably misunderstand those accounts and will then dismiss them as meaningless.

Rudolf Bultmann raised an objection against Resurrection faith by arguing that even if Jesus had come back from the grave, we would have to say that “a miraculous natural event such as the resuscitation of a dead man” would not help us and would be existentially irrelevant (cf. New Testament and Mythology, p. 7).

Now it must be acknowledged that if in Jesus’s Resurrection we were dealing simply with the miracle of a resuscitated corpse, it would ultimately be of no concern to us. For it would be no more important than the resuscitation of a clinically dead person through the art of doctors. For the world as such and for our human existence, nothing would have changed.

The miracle of a resuscitated corpse would indicate that Jesus’s Resurrection was equivalent to the raising of the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17), the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:22-24, 35-43 and parallel passages), and Lazarus (John 11:1-44). After a more or less short period, these individuals returned to their former lives, and then at a later point they died definitively.

The New Testament testimonies leave us in no doubt that what happened in the “Resurrection of the Son of Man” was utterly different. Jesus’s Resurrection was about breaking out into an entirely new form of life, into a life that is no longer subject to the law of dying and becoming, but lies beyond it – a life that opens up a new dimension of human existence.

Therefore the Resurrection of Jesus is not an isolated event that we could set aside as something limited to the past, but it constitutes an “evolutionary leap” (to draw an analogy, albeit one that is easily misunderstood). In Jesus’s Resurrection a new possibility of human existence is attained that affects everyone and that opens up a future, a new kind of future, for mankind.

So Paul was absolutely right to link the resurrection of Christians and the Resurrection of Jesus inseparably together: “If the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. . . . But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:16, 20).

Christ’s Resurrection is either a universal event, or it is nothing, Paul tells us. And only if we understand it as a universal event, as the opening up of a new dimension of human existence, are we on the way toward any kind of correct understanding of the New Testament Resurrection testimony.

On this basis we can understand the unique character of this New Testament testimony. Jesus has not returned to a normal human life in this world like Lazarus and the others whom Jesus raised from the dead. He has entered upon a different life, a new life – he has entered the vast breadth of God himself, and it is from there that he reveals himself to his followers.

For the disciples, too, this was something utterly unexpected, to which they were only slowly able to adjust. Jewish faith did indeed know of a resurrection of the dead at the end of time. New life was linked to the inbreaking of a new world and thus made complete sense.

If there is a new world, then there is also a new mode of life there. But a resurrection into definitive otherness in the midst of the continuing old world was not foreseen and therefore at first made no sense. So the promise of resurrection remained initially unintelligible to the disciples.

The process of coming to Resurrection faith is analogous to what we saw in the case of the Cross. Nobody had thought of a crucified Messiah. Now the “fact” was there - and it was necessary, on the basis of that fact, to take a fresh look at Scripture. We saw in the previous chapter how Scripture yielded new insights in the light of the unexpected turn of events and how the “fact” then began to make sense.

Admittedly, the new reading of Scripture could begin only after the Resurrection, because it was only through the Resurrection that Jesus was accredited as the one sent by God. Now people had to search Scripture for both Cross and Resurrection, so as to understand them in a new way and thereby come to believe in Jesus as the Son of God.

This also presupposes that for the disciples the Resurrection was just as real as the Cross. It presupposes that they were simply overwhelmed by the reality, that, after their initial hesitation and astonishment, they could no longer ignore that reality. It is truly he. He is alive; he has spoken to us; he has allowed us to touch him, even if he no longer belongs to the realm of the tangible in the normal way.

The paradox was indescribable. He was quite different, no mere resuscitated corpse, but one living anew and forever in the power of God. And yet at the same time, while no longer belonging to our world, he was truly present there, he himself.

It was an utterly unique experience, which burst open the normal boundaries of experience and yet for the disciples was quite beyond doubt. This explains the unique character of the Resurrection accounts: they speak of something paradoxical, of something that surpasses all experience and yet is utterly real and present.

But could it really be true? Can we – as men of the modern world – put our faith in such testimony? “Enlightened” thinking would say no.

For Gerd Lüdemann, for example, it seems clear that in consequence of the “revolution in the scientific image of the world . . . the traditional concepts of Jesus’s Resurrection are to be considered outdated” (quoted in Wilckens, Theologie des Neun Testaments 1/2, pp. 119-20).

But what exactly is this “scientific image of the world”? How far can it be considered normative? Hartmut Gese in his important article “Die Frage des Weltbildes”, to which I should like to draw attention, has painstakingly described the limits of this normativity.

Naturally there can be no contradiction of clear scientific data. The Resurrection accounts certainly speak of something outside our world of experience. They speak of something new, something unprecedented – a new dimension of reality that is revealed.

What already exists is not called into question. Rather we are told that there is a further dimension, beyond what was previously known. Does that contradict science? Can there really only ever be what there has always been? Can there not be something unexpected, something unimaginable, something new?

If there really is a God, is he not able to create a new dimension of human existence, a new dimension of reality altogether? Is not creation actually waiting for this last and highest “evolutionary leap”, for the union of the finite with the infinite, for the union of man and God, for the conquest of death?

Throughout the history of the living, the origins of anything new have always been small, practically invisible, and easily overlooked. The Lord himself has told us that “heaven” in this world is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds (Matthew 13:31-32), yet contained within it are the infinite potentialities of God.

In terms of world history, Jesus’s Resurrection is improbable; it is the smallest mustard seed of history.

This reversal of proportions is one of God’s mysteries. The great – the mighty – is ultimately the small. And the tiny mustard seed is something truly great.

So it is that the Resurrection has entered the world only through certain mysterious appearances to the chosen few. And yet it was truly the new beginning for which the world was silently waiting. And for the few witnesses – precisely because they themselves could not fathom it – it was such an overwhelmingly real happening, confronting them so powerfully, that every doubt was dispelled, and they stepped forth before the world with an utterly new fearlessness in order to bear witness: Christ is truly risen.

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OUR THOUGHTS, PRAYERS AND LOVE

ARE WITH YOU ALWAYS!

SPACE RESERVED FOR EASTER MASS HOMILY, ETC.
MUST HAVE IT FOR THE RECORD.

MEANWHILE, I APOLOGIZE. I AM TAKING A BREAK FROM THE FORUM FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS. I HAVE TO COMPLETE SEVERAL REPORTS... VERY DEPRESSED NOT TO HAVE ANY NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT XVI. HOW DID HE SPEND HOLY WEEK - APART FROM SAYING HIS DAILY MASS? FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE HE BECAME A PRIEST, HE WAS UNABLE TO PARTICIPATE IN ANY HOLY WEEK LITURGIES...

P.S. From here on, I will post any items about Pope Francis, other than his daily calendar or anything he says or does that refers to Benedict XVI, in the thread THE CHURCH AND THE VATICAN. Unfortunately, I shall be unable to be as 'comprehensive' about it as I have been and will continue to be for Benedict XVI, because this forum and my participation in it were inspired and continue to be inspired only by Benedict XVI, as a personal choice. I will post items about Pope Francis in the same way that over the years, I have sought to post items about all the other Popes besides Benedict, except that there will necessarily be far more frequent posts about him than the others.


One could easily fill up a new thread these days with ASININITIES such as this one which does not need commenting upon it is so ludicrous and so obviously wrong - it takes the new Papolatry to new heights of idiocy that would embarrass Pope Francis himself! And yet it is not any worse - in intent and falsehood -than what the most eminent cardinals of the Church have been saying since March 13, 2013!

And this comes from a Catholic website! The last I checked, sycophant was not a synonym for Catholic. And the sycophancy has been rather sickening these days.

I did not see this interview at the time it came out, two days after Benedict XVI became Emeritus Pope, but it makes for great reading as usual - about Benedict XVI - from Fr. Schall, who has been Benedict XVI's greatest Jesuit admirer, as he was of John Paul II (I only started reading Fr. Schall after April 19,2005, but I know of his admiration for John Paul II from statements he has made occasionally in writing about Benedict XVI).

An anthology of everything Ft. Schall has written so far about Benedict XVI and Cardinal Ratzinger - his reflections and commentary on Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's thought - would make one of the most illuminating and literate portraits of the man and his Pontificate, and I hope Ignatius Press will see fit to do that sooner rather than later.

This interview (which also explores Fr. Schall's thinking about the life of the mind and what makes a good man) is made more interesting by the fact that it is not diluted in any way by considerations of the new Pope - either by him or perhaps, more importantly, by his interviewer (who quickly took on a 'total amnesia of opportunity' about Benedict XVI the moment there was a new Pope) - since there wasn't one yet at the time it was done...

I wish in vain that those who talk or write about Benedict XVI would do so on the basis of his merits (and demerits if any) alone, and not in comparison with the new Pope. When he became Pope and almost all the way through his Pontificate, Benedict XVI was incessantly compared unfavorably with John Paul II, and now, he is being incessantly compared - implicitly but unfavorably - to Pope Francis. And yet he is no lightweight or a 'minor figure' but someone whom objective minds believe will inevitably be a Doctor of the Church! One whose exceptional virtues and towering qualifications were always obvious to any objective observer but who, for some reason, 'published opinion' (as Georg Gaenswein felicitously re=termed so-called 'public opinion that is almost completely shaped by the dominant media mentality) always seems to shunt off as 'unworthy' of any encomium whatsoever - especially compared to his predecessor, and now, to his successor.

Even worse perhaps is the tendency of the media, including all the talking heads' in general, to write or talk as if the past eight years had not taken place at all - that, apart from the more singular and unprecedented actions and decisions that Pope Francis has taken so far with regard to his personal style, Benedict XVI had never shown what simple and humble is (without calling attention to himself at all, which is quite a feat for anyone), that he had never preached the centrality of Christ, the implicitness of the Cross in Christian life, the need for the Church to give up worldliness and an obsession with structures to the genuine practice of charity, and to pay attention to everyone who is marginalized in any way [Benedict XVI always ended his greetings at the GA and at Angelus with special thoughts for 'those who are elderly, sick, alone or in difficulty'[, etc. - as any Pope would do and has done in his capacity as primary defender of the faith who must also continually confirm his brothers in the faith...

I think 'those who are in difficulty' is a far better and inclusive way to speak of the disadvantaged (in all ways, not just materially) than the generic term 'the poor' which, the way it has been used by bleeding-heart liberals, has become condescending and meaningless because they have turned it into a convenient code word with which they beat their breasts and 'proclaim their goodness' to the world...

Helping us ‘turn around’
An interview with Father Schall
by Kathryn Jean Lopez

March 2, 2013

Fr. James V. Schall, S. J., a longtime, legendary Georgetown political-science professor took leave of his role only a few months before Pope Benedict XVI stunned the world with his news. Fr. Schall delivered his “last lecture” entitled “The Final Gladness” at Georgetown in December.

He talks with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez about the retired Pontiff and his teaching, what books might help save your soul, and future and final things.

How is retirement? Do you feel a kinship with Pope Benedict XVI because of his transition?
“Retirement” is a funny word, isn’t it? You “withdraw” from something, but retirement is not life, though it is a phase of life. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I am about six months younger than the pope, but I announced my retirement six months before he did. Actually, I gave pretty much the same reasons he did, except the “burden” of our respective offices cannot be at all compared.

When Benedict XVI talks of “retirement,” it means very little, in a way. He is a man of mind. Mind remains the same waiting to be thought, be it that of Plato, Aquinas, Samuel Johnson, or Chesterton.

Few in the world have really been willing to come to terms with the reordering of mind that this man has accomplished in his long and fruitful life. It is in this reordering that the real seeds of our future lie.

How do you think history will remember Pope Benedict XVI?
It will remember him as the greatest and most learned intellect ever to occupy the Chair of Peter. No public official in our time has been anywhere near his intellectual equal. This disparity is itself the cause of much disorder, if we grant, as we must, that truth is the essence of intellect and indeed order.

In reading Benedict, I have always been struck by how familiar he is not just with the Old and New Testaments (in their original languages) but with his constant referring to the Fathers of the Church, especially Augustine, and the intellectual popes like Gregory the Great and Leo the Great, and also Irenaeus, Basil, Maximius, Origen, Bonaventure, and I do not know them all.

He knows German philosophy well, and always cites Plato. He is at home with all the Marxist philosophers. Indeed, in Spe Salvi, he cited two of the most famous ones as witness to the logical need of a resurrection of the body. Benedict is a member of one of the French academies.

No one has really begun to do his homework on what this Pope has thought his way through. The media and most universities are, basically, hopeless. I suspect his final opera omnia in a critical German edition will equal in length that of Augustine, Aquinas, and Bonaventure.

Why is his JESUS OF NAZARETH significant?
The three volumes of this book should not put us off, either because of its length or its erudition. First, the ope wrote much of this book and published it while he was Pope but, as it were, not as Pope. That is, it is not an “official” document of the Magisterium.

What it is, rather, is an account of what the man who sits on the Chair of Peter thinks about the key question: “Just who was this Jesus of Nazareth, anyhow?” We were asked simply, about Christ: what is the evidence on which you base your acceptance of His Divinity? The book clearly and forcefully lays it out. We can take it or leave it, but not without a nagging sense that we really have not looked at the evidence.

What Benedict did was to state, in brief, his considered opinion and research. He concluded that all the evidence available to us over a 2,000-year period, including the latest scientific evidence, indicates that Jesus Christ is who He said He was. That is, He was in fact the Son of God, sent into the world by the Father for the redemption of mankind from their sins.

Benedict proceeds to examine all the evidence that this position is not true. Tome after tome has been written to try to prove that Christ never existed, that He was merely a man, that He was a political fanatic, that He was a prophet, that He was a spirit, that He was almost anything but who and what He said He was. Yet, once one’s evidence is set down, it can be examined for its coherence and logic. This examination is what Benedict has done.

If some evidence that makes sense can be shown to disprove the fact, well and good. But it has not been produced yet. In fact, the evidence tends in the direction that the Church has always said it did.

Thus, Jesus of Nazareth stands there before us. We may want to do our best to ignore it, as we do not like what it portends if it is true. But if it is true, and the evidence that it is seems to be there, then we can no longer simply go about our business as if something momentous did not happen. If the Word was made flesh and did dwell among us, we want to know it, and acknowledge that it does make a difference to our lives, to how we live and how we think.

What do you mean when you say, as you did in a recent reflection on Pope Benedict that “we are about producing a death, life, hell, and purgatory in this world considerably worse than the worst descriptions of the four last things?” In what way do we do such things?
This is but a summary of the pope’s greatest encyclical, Spe Salvi [YES, YES AND YES!], and also of his book Death and Eternal Life, among a thousand other works.

I have tried to spell it out in my book The Modern Age. Basically, the modern world is an attempt to achieve what are in effect Christian purposes, but it attempts this by rejecting the means of reason and grace that are in fact necessary to achieve them. We now propose an inner-worldly immortality as a goal of science.

This is what is behind many of the efforts to lengthen human life. We want to “save the earth” so that we can live on it as long as possible. We end up with a new hell on earth. We postpone death and deny birth. Death is both a liberation and a punishment. If we never die, we are condemned to a useless, ongoing life in this world that is meaningless. The reason we do this is that we deny our transcendent purpose. Once we do that, we have to reinvent ourselves.

This is what has happened in the modern era. One ideology or movement or explanation followed logically from the previous one when it proved untenable. We make past generations to be tools of some utopian vision down the ages in which none of us will appear.

But if we understand that each of us is himself created with a personal destiny to live with God, if we choose, we see the world put back in a place of order where it is in effect an arena wherein this ultimate choice for each one of us is played out. We do such things because logically we must, once we insist that there is no transcendent order or that our actions are themselves not judged according to a standard that we do not ourselves create. Our hearts become doubly “restless,” to use Augustine’s term, when we have only ourselves in the cosmos. It is a despair, not a hope.

Is most of what we occupy ourselves with as a culture 'unserious'?
You refer to the title of my book On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs. This title comes from Plato who said in his Laws that there is only one “serious” thing in the universe, and that is God or the Good. All else by comparison is “unserious.” That does not mean it is nothing, only that it is not the most important thing about us or the cosmos.

Likewise, your question refers to the classical notion of leisure, to the question, as I like to ask it: “What do we ‘do’ when all else is done?” As Pieper pointed out in his famous book, the Greek word for leisure, skole, is the origin of our word for school. The denial of leisure becomes the classical word for “business,” both in Greek and Latin.

Thus, the time we devote to keeping alive, to making a living, while necessary and important, is not primarily time “for its own sake.” This latter time is the time beyond business. It is in this latter time that we should be “free” to think of the highest things. Not to have such time is to be a kind of slave to this world.

Christianity added the notion that all men, whatever their worldly condition, even that of slavery, could reach the highest things through belief and works. In a sense, this is but a perfection of the Greek notion. So when we say that we are “unserious,” this is a compliment if understood correctly.

We tend to say that something “useless” or “unserious” is not worth much. But in another way, the best thing about us is that we are “useless” or “unserious” — that is we need not exist, but we do. And we exist to discover precisely what is serious, which is not ourselves or our works, but God.

In your Another Sort of Learning, you write that: “Anyone with some diligence and some good fortune can find his way to the highest things.” How?
This book arose out of an experience of my own as a young man in the Army. I was 18 years old, had done a semester in college, and had time on my hands in the barracks. I recall going into the post library one day looking over the stacks of books, only suddenly to realize that I did not know what to read. In later years, I became aware that it was quite possible to go to college, even have a doctorate, and still have read nothing of real transcendent significance.

So, I began to make lists of books, not just any books, but those that, as I like to put it, “tell the truth,” those that “turn us around.” Initially, these are not the so-called classics. As Leo Strauss said, the great writers contradict each other; reading great books is more likely to produce skeptics. So the book is a guide through books that have this effect on us.

We can be overwhelmed by erudition or scholarship, but it all may be dubious unless we have some kind of sense, of metaphysics, that enables us to judge reality. Often the beginnings of wisdom are made too complicated. Yet, I think every mind is capable of knowing, and knowing the truth.

Every person must find a guide that takes him to the truth. These guides may not live in our lifetime. The trouble with most young men and women is that that they do not know where to turn to straighten their minds out about reality. The first step is the Platonic step, the one that causes us to turn around and wonder about something we never encountered before.

Why is friendship so important?
In practice, for most of us, its presence in our lives comes close to defining our happiness or lack of it. This is the great theme we find already in Plato and Aristotle. Indeed it is doubtful if anyone has explained to us what friendship is better than these two have. All else is a commentary on them or an explanation of the same experience they explained.

In one sense, friendship is what college life is about — understanding what it is, what it means to betray it, what it means ultimately. It is the greatest of our external goods.

Yet, we must be worthy of it. A culture of self-sufficiency makes friendship almost impossible if it is combined with a theory of relativism and denial of virtue. The study of friendship is also the topic that takes us to the highest things more quickly than anything else.

Aristotle wondered if God was lonely, as he did not seem to have any friends. When Christian revelation came to address this topic, we are astonished to read that Christ says to His apostles “I no longer call you servants but friends.”

Behind this affirmation stands the Trinity, the teaching of the inner life of the Godhead as containing an otherness that makes it both social and sufficient to itself in a manner that it does not “need” the world. In fact, that is precisely the reason the world itself is not necessary, but the product of a gift and freedom.

Leaving out the Bible, what is the book that everyone needs to read?
You ask easy questions! Not everyone would list the Bible. I have a new book coming out called Reading Belloc. I love the story that someone told me. Belloc, in his old age, there in Kings Land in Sussex, read but three books: P. G. Wodehouse, The Diary of a Nobody, and his own works.

Yet, I do think that some books are more important than others, provided that, in another sense, my doubt about whether there is such a thing as an “unimportant” book is not forgotten. I am used to giving short lists of books. In talking to a student or someone by chance, you realize that he has not really read anything important in the sense of bringing him out of himself.

Books that do this best, I think, and there are others, are Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Schumacher’s A Guide for the Perplexed, Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and, of course, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Dante. Most folks need some help to begin these things. C. S. Lewis is always a good place to begin. Yet, if you ask me tomorrow, I will have some others.

Should we read the Bible? How should we read the Bible?
An advantage of being a priest is that reading some small selection of the Bible is part of his everyday routine. It is amazing how one can read it again and again and always find something that he did not see before. This is true of Plato also, of course. Indeed, reading Plato is not a bad way to learn to read the Bible.

Basically, we read the Bible to know what it teaches and says. We also read it to learn how to know and worship God. The Bible is a book addressed to our souls. It is not just a tract or treatise but an account of God’s teaching us what we need to know.

Part of what it teaches us we could figure out by ourselves, if we are lucky. But most of it is what we could not know by our own powers. Yet, it is clearly the answer for many of the most basic questions that we have about life: Why do I exist? What is my destiny? Why do we suffer? What is the purpose of existence? What about death and sin? Can we be forgiven? How ought I to live?

Why are you not an advocate of the Great Books?
As Msgr. Sokolowski of your Catholic University says, the first step in philosophy is to make “distinctions.” We should read books, great and otherwise. The so-called Great Books programs have received much attention and controversy over the question “What makes a book great?”

The Great Books programs, as I understand them, grew out of a rejection of firsthand philosophical study and examination. Philosophy was replaced by the history of philosophy. They are not the same thing, though there is absolutely nothing wrong with knowing what a famous great book contains, even if you think it idiotic or dangerous.

If you simply read through the ten or 20 “great books,” chances are you will end up a skeptic. The Great Books, as Strauss said, contradict each other. One of course must make a coherent effort to see how ideas relate to each other in different thinkers. This “seeing” is why Gilson’s Unity of Philosophic Experience or David Walsh’s Modern Philosophical Revolution are important.

But unless we have some sense that we can philosophize, and that philosophizing is not just tossing off our own nutty opinions about whatever comes into our heads, we will not be able properly to see why many of the Great Books are great, because, as Strauss also said, they contain “brilliant errors.” It takes some original philosophizing to know why and how an error can be “brilliant.”

You had websites long before the Pope started tweeting. Do you worry about the attention spans of your students? Are we ruining our minds and our ability to think and to write?
I do not worry so much about the attention spans of my students as about my own! My basic view of students is that they are always 20 years old when I see them. They can usually read and write and use all known electronic devices that do everything from taking photos to looking up baseball statistics to popping corn. The era of not knowing facts is over. Half the fun of life is gone.

But seriously (or un-seriously, as the case may be), it has been my experience that if you know and give good books to students, if you read along with them, if you are alert to the wonder in them, their minds will become alert. They will “turn around,” to use Plato’s phrase.

This is almost the only transcendent task of a college professor. He cannot “make” a student read. He can require; he can cajole; he can humor; he can urge; but ultimately it must come from within the student himself. He must wake up one morning and say to himself: “I want to know that.”

When that happens, the professor’s task is basically over. From then on, his relation with his students is a pleasure. And as Aristotle said, we must, at the risk of missing it all, experience the pleasures of simply thinking for its own sake, because what we now know is true and we know it.

Is there anything more that you wish that you could have included in your “last lecture”?
I asked one of my former students, a perceptive young lady, how long this lecture should be. She responded: “If it is anything longer than forty-five minutes, it had better be a barn-burner.” That was good advice.

The problem with most lectures and lecturers is that they are too long, not too short. Just what is exactly right is a question of prudence and insight. Students who have had me in several classes over the years know what I have to say. When one comes to his last class, he hopes that he has done what a professor should do — namely, take them to what is true, to what makes sense, to what is, as I like to put it.

“For many of us, we no longer have a vocation or sense of reality that enables us by our devotion or mediation to transcend how our politics defines us,” you wrote in Another Sort of Learning. Has that only gotten worse?
I had forgotten that sentence. But certainly it has gotten worse. This is because the political order is no longer limited to politics. With the rejection of revelation and natural law, all that is really left is politics, or, as Charles N. R. McCoy used to put it, a “substitute metaphysics.” It is an elevation of mindless action to the center of human life.

Human action is a noble thing, as Hannah Arendt said in her great book, but it cannot replace the order of leisure. This is why we have to escape from the inbuilt philosophical assumptions that are present in the culture itself, as Tracey Rowland put it.

I have always been impressed with a comment that Eric Voegelin made in Montreal in 1976 to the effect that “no one needs to participate in the aberrations of his time.”

Solzhenitzyn found in the Gulag itself a final freedom where they could no longer take anything away from him — namely his real freedom to state the truth. But they could still kill him. That is still why the deaths of Socrates and Christ stand at the heart of political philosophy. The state can take, and the democratic state seems more and more inclined to take, the direction of killing Socrates and Christ, killing anything that stands in the way of its imposing its own order on the souls of men, men too often willing to let it happen.

How can we do the work of telling the truth and waking the world up, in a world that isn’t always sure that there even is such a thing as truth?
My initial answer is: “Read Plato!” The next is: “Read Aristotle!” We have not transcended Plato and Aristotle. In fact, what we have done is carry out in our lives the trends and aberrations that they described.

The best description of the American polity today, at its core, is found in the Politics of Aristotle and the Republic of Plato when they tell us the sequence of disorder or deviations from the good. As I read them, we follow almost exactly what they saw because they understood the principles at work in a human soul that, one step at a time, rejects the good.

But I am a follower of Socrates. The reform of all social life begins in the soul of one person, and then another. [Or as Mother Teresa put it so well - and Benedict XVI reminded the German Catholics - when she was asked 'What must change in the Church?', she replied simply, You and I"!]

This is why great things always begin in small, out-of-the-way places. The picture of our society is not pretty. But if we hold to the Socratic principle that no harm can come to a good man, and that we realize that death is not the worst evil, then we shall rest content and “all will be well.”

I thought I would put in this post, but I am not yet ready to resume my 'normal' Forum activity...

The Second Sunday of Easter, eighth day of the Octave, was earlier observed as the Sunday of St. Thomas the Apostle, commemorating his contact with the Risen Christ, but it is now Divine Mercy Sunday.

April 7, Second Sunday of Easter
Divine Mercy Sunday

Divine Mercy Sunday is based on the Catholic devotion that Saint Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938) advocated from her mystic conversations with Jesus. He asked her to paint the vision of his Merciful Divinity being poured from his sacred heart and specifically asked for a feast of Divine Mercy to be established on the first Sunday after Easter so mankind would take refuge in Him. The Divine Mercy devotion was actively promoted by Pope John Paul II who, on April 30, 2000, canonized Sr. Faustina and officially designated the Sunday after Easter as the Sunday of Divine Mercy in the General Roman Calendar. A year after establishing Divine Mercy Sunday, John Paul II re-emphasized its message in the resurrection context of Easter: "Divine Mercy is the Easter gift that the Church receives from the risen Christ and offers to humanity". Providentially, he died on the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday in 2005, and was beatified on Divine Mercy Sunday last year.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/040713.cfm

AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Pope Francis led the REgina caeli prayers from the study window of the Apostolic Palace.

In the afternoon, he presided at a Mass in which he formally took possession of the Cathedral
of the Bishop of Rome, the Basilica of St John Lateran.



Here is Benedict XVI's mini-homily before the REgina caeli prayers on the first Divine Mercy Sunday of his Papacy on Aprl 23, 2006:

---

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This Sunday the Gospel of John tells us that the Risen Jesus appeared to the disciples, enclosed in the Upper Room, on the evening of the "first day of the week" (Jn 20: 19), and that he showed himself to them once again in the same place "eight days later" (Jn 20: 26). From the beginning, therefore, the Christian community began to live a weekly rhythm, marked by the meeting with the Risen Lord.

This is something that the Constitution on the Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council also emphasizes, saying: "By a tradition handed down from the Apostles, which took its origin from the very day of Christ's Resurrection, the Church celebrates the Paschal Mystery every seventh day, which day is appropriately called the Lord's Day" (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 106).

The Evangelist further recalls that on the occasion of both his appearances - the day of the Resurrection and eight days later - the Lord Jesus showed the disciples the signs of the crucifixion, clearly visible and tangible even in his glorified Body (cf. Jn 20: 20, 27).

Those sacred wounds in his hands, in his feet and in his side, are an inexhaustible source of faith, hope and love from which each one can draw, especially the souls who thirst the most for divine mercy.

In consideration of this, the Servant of God John Paul II, highlighting the spiritual experience of a humble Sister, St Faustina Kowalska, desired that the Sunday after Easter be dedicated in a special way to Divine Mercy; and Providence disposed that he would die precisely on the eve of this day in the hands of Divine Mercy.

The mystery of God's merciful love was the centre of the Pontificate of my venerable Predecessor.

Let us remember in particular his 1980 Encyclical Dives in Misericordia, and his dedication of the new Shrine of Divine Mercy in Krakow in 2002. The words he spoke on the latter occasion summed up, as it were, his Magisterium, pointing out that the cult of Divine Mercy is not a secondary devotion but an integral dimension of Christian faith and prayer.

May Mary Most Holy, Mother of the Church, whom we now address with the Regina Caeli, obtain for all Christians that they live Sunday to the full as "the Easter of the week", tasting the beauty of the encounter with the Risen Lord and drawing from the source of his merciful love to be apostles of his peace.

---

It was hard to decide how to get back in the groove after having been away from the Forum for a week, but the decision was made easy for me, because in looking back to research Benedict XVI's first Divine Mercy Sunday as Pope, I came across all of the 'first year of Benedict XVI' articles written in those days - when Easter Sunday fell on April 16, Benedict XVI's 79th birthday, and the first anniversary of his Pontificate followed three days later. I thought I would start out with John Allen since he used the Pope's Holy Week homilies as a peg for his commentary, and one can relate his observations to the recent reporting on Pope Francis's first Holy Week. (Even just a quick scan of all the B16 Year-1 articles is so heady I kept reading on and on instead of getting to what I had to do...)



THE 'BACK TO BASICS' POPE
From the PAPA RATZINGER FORUM
Posted April 22, 2006

John Allen's Word from Rome for 4/21/06 begins with a wrap-up and evaluation of Benedict's first Holy Week as Pope. He is one of the few journalists today who actually listens to the Pope's words and studies the text of his homilies and messages.

If only the other journalists who report by rote, and those partisan observers who are none too Benedict-friendly ,would only take the time to do that, they would not be asking stupid questions like "What is this Pope really like?" and "Where is he taking the Church?"]

BENEDICT'S HOLY WEEK
by John Allen Jr.

April 21, 2006

Benedict XVI was elected in mid-April, which this year meant his first anniversary coincided with Easter. Last week, he had seven high-profile occasions to present himself: the Chrism Mass and the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday, the service of the Passion of the Lord and the Via Crucis on Good Friday, the Easter vigil on Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday itself, and his Angelus address on what the Italians call Pasquetta, or the "little Easter," on Monday.

Asked endlessly during the same arc of time to comment for the global press on who the pope is and what he's doing, I was sometimes tempted to respond, "This isn't Kim Jong-Il … just listen!"

In summary form, Holy Week underscored at least four points about Benedict XVI: 1) His emphasis on the basics; 2) The centrality of love to his thought; 3) The distinction he draws between service and power; and 4) His "preferential option for Africa" with respect to the developing world.

Ticking off the topics Benedict covered during Holy Week, at first blush they seem entirely predictable -- the need for priests to be men of prayer, Jesus' washing the feet of the disciples as an act of love, the reality of evil, the link between Easter and Baptism, and so on. It's the nature of the liturgical season.

The striking thing, however, is that Benedict did not treat these subjects as a point of departure for other reflections, but rather as the very core of his concern. There was never a sense that he wanted to use the platform afforded by Holy Week to launch a message; Holy Week was the message.

In that sense, Benedict is a "back to basics" pope.

The church doesn't need new paradigms or initiatives, he believes, so much as the capacity to explain its core teachings well, and to inspire a desire to live them. Benedict's theology is never speculative, but pastoral and "kneeling."

This focus on the fundamentals is reflected in how he has approached the papacy. Statistics help tell the story: At the end of his first year, John Paul II had given 569 talks, and held 68 major public events. Benedict over his first twelve months gave 291 talks, and held 31 events. (One might profitably ask if the Church has really missed those other 278 papal speeches!)

Benedict has pared the papacy back to what he considers its core functions, and when he does take the stage, he is determined to get to the heart of the matter.

None of this, however, means Benedict is incapable of surprise.

In his homily during the Easter vigil, for example, he described the resurrection as a kind of evolutionary "leap," awakening echoes of the late French Jesuit theologian and scientist Teilhard de Chardin, whose thought indirectly influenced the document Gaudium et Spes at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and who saw physical evolution as part of a broader cosmic and spiritual process. At the time, then-Fr. Joseph Ratzinger was critical of what he saw as an overly optimistic thrust in Teilhard, and in French theology generally, but he never dismissed the core insight.

"If we may borrow the language of the theory of evolution," Benedict said, "it [the Resurrection] is the greatest 'mutation,' absolutely the most crucial leap into a totally new dimension that there has ever been in the long history of life and its development. … It is a qualitative leap … towards a new future life, towards a new world which, starting from Christ, already continuously permeates this world of ours, transforms it and draws it to itself."

One well-known theologian in Rome told me this week that he always holds his breath when Benedict XVI speaks, because he may hear something that will take him off guard -- generally in the sense of opening up a new perspective on a topic he thought he already understood.

This will not be a papacy of great innovation, but neither will it be about stagnation or "glorious repetition." Instead, it is shaping up as a case study in the "return to the sources," or ressourcement, which has always been Benedict XVI's theological and pastoral style.

In the aftermath of Benedict's election, many commentators, myself included, expected that "truth" would be the watchword of the new pope's struggle against the "Dictatorship of Relativism."

The surprise is that, if one were to select a single word to summarize Benedict's magisterium so far, it would have to be "love." Joseph Ratzinger, the erstwhile enforcer of the faith, has metamorphosed into the world's most ardent Apostle of Love.

In his six homilies and messages during Holy Week, totaling (in Italian) 6,958 words, Benedict managed to use the noun "love" 29 times, plus some form of the verb "to love" 10 times. That's one reference to love for every 178 words, meaning that it was rare for a paragraph to go by in which the pope didn't return to the theme. The word for "sin," by way of comparison, appeared only three times, the word "evil" only four times.

Pressing such numbers too far can turn into a kind of Kabbalah, but as a rough indicator of the pope's interests, they are indicative.

At the Lord's Supper on Thursday, for example, Benedict defined sin as "the refusal of love, not wanting to be loved, and not loving."

"The holiness of God is not just an incandescent power, before which we must draw back in terror," he said. "It's the power of love, and therefore a purifying and healing power."

At the Vigil Mass on Holy Saturday, Benedict described the resurrection as "an explosion of love, which broke the formerly indissoluble bond between 'dying and becoming.'"

Perhaps most tellingly, Benedict closed his message for the "Urbi et Orbi" blessing on Easter Sunday with the Latin formula Christus resurrexit, quia Deus caritas est (Christ is risen, because God is love!) Among other things, the line is an echo of Benedict's first encyclical, also on the theme of love.

Benedict returned during Holy Week to another favorite theme, which is a sharp disjunction between service and power. Priesthood, indeed any ministry in the name of Christ, must be about service, the pope insisted. Moreover, the Christian message, particularly its emphasis on the sovereignty and supremacy of God's law, sets limits to all forms of secular power.

Speaking to priests in the Chrism Mass, Benedict pressed the theme.

"Christ wants us to be instruments of service," the pope said. "If human hands represent human faculties, and, generally, the technical capacity to dispose of the world, then anointed hands must be a sign of the human person's capacity to give, of the creativity to shape the world with love."

In his Easter vigil homily, Benedict said the new life offered by Christ is "a formula of contradiction to all the ideologies of violence, and a program for opposition to corruption and to aspirations to power and possession."

As one implication, Benedict stressed that Christians cannot remain indifferent regarding injustice.

"On the Via Crucis, there is no possibility of being neutral," Benedict said. "Pilate, the skeptical intellectual, wanted to be neutral, to stay out of it; but in so doing he took a position against justice, for the sake of conformism and his career."

Typically, the pope offers a quick survey of current events in his "Urbi et Orbi" blessing on Easter, and Benedict XVI followed suit, ticking off a host of global hotspots: Darfur, the Great Lakes region in Africa, and Africa generally; Iraq; the Holy Land; Latin America; and the current nuclear crisis with Iran, though without mentioning that nation by name.

It's revealing that Benedict started with Africa, and that he mentioned more specific concerns in Africa than in any other part of the world. Over Holy Week, in fact, Benedict mentioned Africa as often as he did sin.

That builds on a track record.

Last June, Benedict announced plans for second Synod of Bishops for Africa. In a message to the clergy in Rome on May 13, he urged the priests and deacons from African not to allow their continent to be overcome by the vices exported from Europe. On May 25, at his regular weekly audience, he urged international leaders to be mindful of the material difficulties faced by the peoples of Africa, a message he's repeated on other occasions.

During the daily General Congregation meetings leading up to the conclave, several African cardinals delivered eloquent pleas for the next pope, whoever he might be, to put the suffering of their continent at the top of his pastoral agenda.

"The Pope sat through all of that," one African cardinal told me immediately after Benedict's election. "He has to know our concerns."

And how about this one from TIME's Jeff Israely, who early in Benedict XVI's Papp]acy wrote the test for a wonderful picture book entitled 'DAWN OF A NEW ERA' with photographs by the late Gianni Giansanti. But like Allen, after 2 or 3 years of being positive about Benedict, Israely soon reverted back to vicious type. The following was Israely's assessment of Year-1 of the Beendict XVI Pontificate:


The Pope's first year:
How he simplified his role
While Benedict XVI has drawn the line on doctrine,
he has streamlined his job to create a gentler, humbler papacy
By JEFF ISRAELY/ ROME

Apr. 18, 2006

Marking one year since the April 19 election of Pope Benedict XVI can make the two dominant figures from last spring — John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — already seem like ancient history. But it is a testament to both the Catholic church’s durability and continuity and the speed of the modern news cycle that the only man in white on our minds now is Pope Benedict, while images of the same Ratzinger in cardinal red appear almost odd and outdated.

For Catholicism, this is a necessary thing. The Church counts on the very earthly process of an election — aided by the grandeur of church rituals and the weight of its history — to pass on its highest powers from one man to the next with just a puff of white smoke.

The elevation of Ratzinger, who was probably the best-known cardinal ever to become Pope, has offered a particularly dramatic transformation. Our era of 24-hour information and instant analysis has no doubt helped.

Stepping into the papacy, Benedict quickly erased the stereotypes surrounding him from the quarter-century he spent overseeing orthodoxy for John Paul. Even in the first weeks, it was clear that he was not a chilly and unbending bureaucrat, but a basically gentle man with excellent listening skills and a gift with words.

He has welcomed his longtime theological nemesis Hans Küng for a long chat at the Pope's Castel Gandolfo. Benedict's first encyclical was not a finger-wagging treatise on doctrine, but a paean to Christian love.

The sometimes shy pontiff has even begun to enjoy all the adoration heaped upon him by the piazzas full of faithful. Still, Benedict has drawn the line on doctrine, pushing through a previously languishing document that bars homosexuals from entering the seminary, while encouraging Catholic politicians to condemn abortion-rights laws and gay marriage.

One could say that the substance is the same, just the style is different. Those who know him best say the man hasn’t changed; he has only changed jobs.

In fact, the papacy has allowed the once aspiring university star [????He was a 'star professor' in the German university system, even if he never sought to be! - attracting all sorts of laymen to come to his lectures because of what he said and the way he said it] to transmit his ideas with an assured public presence matured over his years in the upper ranks of the Vatican hierarchy.

And more than ever the piercing intellect of Professor Ratzinger will hold sway over the entire spectrum of Catholic Church life — its customs, policies, institutions and, naturally, the papacy itself.

The changes now on the way were being worked out well before a Benedict papacy was in the cards. In the throes of John Paul’s greatest popularity, Cardinal Ratzinger was looking for ways to rein in the papacy and its Curia, or papal court.

In his 2000 book God and the World, Ratzinger declares that the Vatican’s essential purpose is "to ensure that the Pope has sufficient freedom to carry out his ministry. Whether this could be simplified further is a question we may ask."

With the confluence of Catholic institutions in Rome and the quantity of papal writings and discourses and other responsibilities, he wonders "whether it is not all far too much." Meditating on the contemporary Pope, Ratzinger concludes: "The sheer quantity of personal contacts imposed on him by his relationship with the universal Church; the decisions that have to be made; and the necessity, amidst all this, of not losing his own contemplative footing, being rooted in prayer — all this poses an enormous dilemma."

These very practical (and spiritual) concerns of Cardinal Ratzinger are already being addressed by Pope Benedict. He halted John Paul’s practice of holding morning mass with visitors; there are fewer meetings with Church officials (apostolic nuncios visiting from around the world get a brief chat — on their feet — at the end of Wednesday general audiences); speeches are shorter; lunches tend to be restricted to his personal secretary and perhaps one or two visitors.

How far he extends this management policy into the heart of the entire Vatican bureaucracy remains to be seen, though already two Curia offices have been downsized away. It is nonetheless clear that the Pope himself — who already plans fewer encyclicals and fewer trips than his predecessor — is doing things differently, on a smaller scale.

Yet for all the apparent downsizing, we should remember that this master thinker is too smart not to appreciate the singular power of his new office or the importance of John Paul’s legacy. Benedict does not want to toss away the hard-won leap in relevance for the papacy achieved by his predecessor: for unifying and purifying the Church, for preaching to the world, and for inspiring the masses.

In this day and age, a strictly cerebral Pope, or administrator Pope, would waste much of what can be accomplished from this unique public perch. At the same time, a merely made-for-media papacy would empty the office of its sacredness.

It is a challenge that the 20th-century philosopher of modern communication theory Marshall McLuhan would comprehend. The Canadian-born writer, who coined the phrase "the medium is the message," was also a devout Catholic. In one conversation recorded by his wife, McLuhan said: "Christ came to demonstrate God's love for man and to call all men to Him through himself as Mediator, as Medium. And in so doing he became the proclamation of his Church, the message of God to man. God's medium became God's message."

A subtle clue of Benedict's approach was written last week into the Good Friday script for the Way of the Cross ceremony, an evening event at the Coliseum reintroduced by John Paul and an annual source of powerful television images and photography.


The new Pope would certainly not do away with the live coverage of the "Via Crucis," but would make one change: the actors who read the meditations along the stations would not be stars, and would not even have their faces shown on television. Benedict wanted nothing distracting the faithful from the story and meaning of the Passion.

One Vatican official who knows Benedict well, and admired John Paul, said soon after his election that Benedict "wants to simplify the papacy. Too many acts have become a simple devotion of the person of the Pope."

The new Pope’s challenge is to cut through the static interference of the modern world to connect the faithful directly to the very gospel he is preaching: to be, in other words, both messenger and message.



Of course, much of the above has been forgotten by the media, both Catholic and secular, even by Allen himself, in a mass affliction of opportunistic amnesia as they report now on Pope Francis as if he has re-invented Christianity no less by his personal style of being Pope (excuse me, Bishop of Rome)...And excuse the bitterness that I have never felt so strongly against the media than at this time....

Here is a thoughtful and rather lengthy article I found on a blog I was seeing for the first time, and whose author is a member of the US-based Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. He runs a Marian broadcast operation called airmaria.com...Here, he offers a historical and philosophical perspective on the figures of St. Francis, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis that has been totally absent from most media reporting and commentary these days.

The Franciscan papacy:
Rebuilding or demolition?
From the blog MARY VICTRIX
by Fr. Angelo Mary Geiger
April 5, 2013

The life of St. Francis is subject to much sentimental hype because of his love for creation and his identification with the poor. The saccharine images on holy cards and sculptures in gardens don’t help the matter. And Zeffirelli’s hippie-revolutionary film version of the saint is positively infuriating. Pope Francis seems to be subject to the same kind of misinterpretaion.

The media and the Catholic propagandists on the left and the right will continue to mythologize about St. Francis and Pope Francis’s selection of the name. The Pope himself has said the reason for the choice of name has to do with “peace” and “poverty.” Oh, those two words: two little threads out of which the propagandists will weave a rope to hang us all with.

Sandro Magister puts it well:

---

In the pseudo-Franciscan and pauperist mythology that in these days so many are applying to the new Pope, imagination runs to a Church that would renounce power, structures, and wealth and make itself purely spiritual.

But it is not for this that the saint of Assisi lived. In the dream of Pope Innocent III painted by Giotto, Francis is not demolishing the Church, but carrying it on his shoulders. And it is the Church of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of the bishop of Rome, at that time recently restored and decorated lavishly, but made ugly by the sins of its men, who had to be purified. It was a few followers of Francis who fell into spiritualism and heresy.

---

I confess that all I know about St. Francis and the early problems that afflicted his order have come from Benedict XVI’s various statements and catecheses over the years about the mendicant orders, St. Francis himself and his 13th-century successor St. Bonaventure, who was the subject of Joseph Ratzinger’s dissertation for his Habilitation, and precisely in the context of Bonaventure opposing the ‘spiritualist’ movement that some Franciscans had undertaken under Joachim of Fiore. I will try to compile a ‘bibliography’ of these most illuminating texts if only to place Francis of Assisi in the right perspective, as Benedict XVI sought to do during his Pontificate, i.e. to rescue him from the universal and false hagiography that completely ignores his imitation of Christ, in favor of the poster-boy from the 13th century for New Age peaceniks, enviromaniacs and pauperists.][DIM]

Rorate Caeli, as anyone familiar with the blog would expect, approves of this assessment and is critical of the Good Friday homily, given in the Holy Father’s presence, of Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, a Capuchin Franciscan. The preacher talked about evangelization and the need to get rid of accretions to the life of faith that undermine the reception of the message. He said:

---

As happens with certain old buildings. Over the centuries, to adapt to the needs of the moment, they become filled with partitions, staircases, rooms and closets. The time comes when we realize that all these adjustments no longer meet the current needs, but rather are an obstacle, so we must have the courage to knock them down and return the building to the simplicity and linearity of its origins. This was the mission that was received one day by a man who prayed before the Crucifix of San Damiano: “Go, Francis, and repair my Church” .

---

It seems to me that both Sandro Magister and Fr. Cantalamessa are reacting to extremists: Magister, to those on the left who want to use Pope Francis as an excuse to reject Tradition and traditions; Cantalamessa, to those who regard Tradition as static.

[I took a much more uncharitable view of Cantalamessa’s Good Friday homily as an execrable model of opportunism and unctuous sycophancy to the new Pope, which would be understandable per se, except that he strongly implies that Pope Francis’s predecessor had in any way wanted to keep all the unnecessary ‘incrustations', as Benedict XVI called them a number of times, and had not always advocated a return to the essentials in everything. And cultivating beauty in liturgy – in its external forms as well as its interior content - for the greater glory of God is an essential that does not conflict in any way with ‘simplicity’. As far as that goes, specifically, I do not see that Pope Francis simplified the fairly ‘elaborate’ liturgy followed by Benedict XVI for the Good Friday liturgy in its compelling central portion dedicated to the Veneration of the Cross. In fact, he even went as far as following Benedict XVI’s act of full prostration before the altar at the start of the entire liturgy – an action that when first performed by Benedict XVI in 2006 was hailed as ‘a first in papal liturgy’.

Another point I wish to make about Fr. Cantalamessa: His Good Friday homilies during Benedict XVI’s Pontificate were marked by a topical opportunism that necessarily called media attention to his homilies - usually with neuralgic controversies like The Da Vinci Code, or the so-called 'Gospel of Judas’, or citing a Jewish friend who likened the secular persecution Francis of the Church today to the anti-Jewish persecution in pre-war Nazi Germany - in a way that is so un-Franciscan for a Capuchin, precisely because he ends up calling attention to himself and the nerve-touching points he chooses to highlight rather than on the Good Friday liturgy.]

St. Francis’s love for poverty was almost immediately misinterpreted, even by his own friars, and turned into an ideology. The Order was almost suppressed in the time of St. Bonaventure because of the internal strife that resulted from this misinterpretation. But the problem was that the Franciscan charism is both radically evangelical and radically ecclesial.

St. Francis was a reformer, who wished to have for himself and his friars; “nothing of this world.” But he distinguished himself from other evangelical movements that were anti-ecclesial by his radical obedience to the See of Peter. The rebuilding engaged in by St. Francis had this dual characteristic of restoration and reform.

[ [His work was primarily preaching to the faithful and the outside world in words and in example, never preaching to the Pope himself, whose role as Universal Pastor and spiritual leader of the Church he never contested.]

I believe the real difficulty with understanding what is going on here is that St. Francis, Pope Emeritus Benedict and Pope Francis represent a more sophisticated way of thinking that will never be appreciated by the pundits who communicate principally by soundbites, blogposts and tweets. The zealots will continue to paint two-dimensional caricatures of these men on the banners they wave in our faces.

[It’s also a slavish adherence to the so-called principle that news has to be anything which generates and exacerbates conflict. So for the slaves of media primacy, it is never just enough to celebrate Pope Francis, because there is no conflict in just doing that - he must be celebrated by portraying him as the virtuous antithesis of everything Benedict XVI was, which means scrubbing out instantaneously from their consciousness anything good they may ever have thought about Benedict XVI (and in this, the Francis sycophants have been led so egregiously by the cardinals who elected Francis) – and therefore, effectively, of any good that Benedict XVI may have done. Even if, before March 13, 2013, they may have been among the most vocal in praise of the now emeritus Pope.]

St. Francis’s choice of poverty was not a judgment on any one else, but it did have an evangelical character. People complain about the expression, wrongly attributed to St. Francis, but in my view, accurately reflective of his thought and actions: ”Preach the gospel always and sometimes use words.” They say that this is an excuse not to be evangelical. But that is not the point of the expression at all.

Franciscanism is a way of life before it is an apostolate, and it is principally by the evangelical life that St. Francis and his followers rebuild the Church. Franciscans are also committed to the apostolate of the preaching of penance. But they are not committed by their charism to teaching, catechizing and theologizing, like the Dominicans, though none of that is excluded from their work.

Their apostolic calling is principally to edify their listeners by speaking briefly about “vice and virtue, punishment and glory” (Rule, c. 9), and to deliver the power of that message by their way of life.

In the Rule, St. Francis commanded the friars not to judge those who lived in luxury, but to “judge and despise themselves” (c. 2). On the other hand, St. Francis did not hesitate to preach against the vanity of the world, even to the great and mighty.

One time, when the soon to be Emperor Otto passed by Rivo Torto on the way to his coronation, St. Francis refused to go and watch him pass. And while he also urged the other friars to ignore his passing, he did send one friar to meet the cortege and ordered him to announce to Otto how vain and transitory was the glory of this world.

In other words, St. Francis defies being put into anybody’s box. He was not an ideologue. He was not a revolutionary. But he was a reformer. He was not against the establishment—certainly, never against the magisterium. He did not despise the wealthy or the structures of power. But neither did he believe that power was the answer. Nor was he blind to the problems within the Church and in the world or afraid to confront them. He preached penance to whoever would listen, no matter what their station, and no matter what it cost him.

Pope Innocent’s dream of St. Francis holding up the Lateran was neither an affirmation nor a condemnation of the magnificence of the Basilica. It was a defense of the radical message of the Gospel, handed on through the only Church Christ founded, which he built upon the Rock of Peter. The Lateran Basilica is the Pope’s cathedral.

However, as I have already pointed out, St. Francis was never against magnificence in the sacred liturgy, though he certainly was not Benedictine in what he prescribed for the friars, who, though obliged to the common recitation of the Divine Office, were not obliged to its choral recitation like the Benedictines. The provisions of St. Francis for the Liturgy had to do with the reforms of the Fourth Lateran Council, not with monastic disciplines.

There have always been marked differences in the Benedictine and Franciscan approach to liturgy. Both make the liturgy a labor of love, and a work of beauty, but the Franciscan approach has been characterized by simplicity. The fact of the matter is that through the same provisions by which St. Francis forbade the friars from having property or any permanent residence, he also limited their ability to conduct magnificent liturgies.

St. Francis, then, as a “rebuilder” took Catholic tradition and developed it, according to Pope Benedict, as “an innovation of God” in order to respond to the needs of the times and to champion conciliar reform.

Pope Emeritus Benedict

I do not think it can be stressed enough that Benedict XVI’s views, however far to the left or right they may seem to lean, are those of a thinker, teacher and pastor, not that of a change agent or zealot.

Kierkegaard considered the gaining of disciples to be “the worst of calamities,” because of the ideas and projects that will end up being promoted by well-meaning disciples in the name of the master. Those on the left will quote Benedict out of context on matters of ecumenism, religious liberty and the interpretation of scripture, while those on the right cherry-pick his writings for criticisms of Vatican II and to support their crusade to end the liturgical reform.

On the question of rebuilding the Church, Benedict XVI presents us with the same kind of problem. Ecclesiastical reform is in a sense a “project,” but Pope Benedict deplores the idea the Church being treated as a “project” rather than the locus and means of encountering the Person of Jesus Christ.

But if Father Cantalamessa is criticized for saying that there are parts of the building of the Church that need to be “knocked down,” Joseph Ratzinger has nearly the same thing in 1982 in Principles of Catholic Theology, where he frankly discusses the problems with the Council, yet continues to affirm that it should not be abandoned:

---

The task is not, therefore, to suppress the Council but to discover the real Council and to deepen its true intention in the light of the present experience. That means that there can be no return to the Syllabus, which may have marked the first stage in the confrontation with liberalism and a newly conceived Marxism but cannot be the last stage. In the long run, neither embrace nor ghetto can solve for Christians the problem of the modern world. The fact is, as Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out as early as 1952, that the “demolition of the bastions” is a long-overdue task.

---

Several things here are worthy of note in order to place his call for the “demolition of bastions” in context.

First, Benedict XVI talks about the “real Council,” an idea he reiterates in very clear terms during his last address concerning Conciliar reform, just three days after the announcement of his resignation.

Second, the distinction between the “real Council” and the “virtual Council,” corresponds to the opposition of the “hermeneutic of continuity” to the “hermeneutic of rupture,” a notion that was already in use by Ratzinger around the time that the above passage was written, but which became one of the most characteristic ideas of his whole pontificate.

Third, the “syllabus” to which he refers is the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX, which condemns the religious errors of the modern era and to which Ratzinger opposed Gaudium et Spes, the “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” and the teachings of the Second Vatican Council on religious liberty and inter-religious dialogue as a “counter-syllabus” (not “anti-syllabus,” as some incorrectly translate the term).

That Pope Benedict continued to hold to this basic position into his pontificate is clear from the famous “hermeneutic of continuity address,” in which he reaffirmed that the discontinuity between pre- and post-conciliar thought had nothing to do with principle, but with application. (Read the address to see exactly why that is the case.)

So for Ratzinger/Benedict, the reform, or rebuilding of the Church, mandated by Vatican II, clearly does involve a bit of renovation, which must begin with, to put it frankly, “demolition.”

Clearly, the position of the Church in respect to democracy and religious liberty has changed. Very clearly, Pope Benedict’s support for the removal of the walls that had prevented religious dialogue and a more participatory liturgy are principles to which he held onto until the end of his pontificate. But he never pretended that any of this is easy or simple. [Just as the Church and her Popes, echoing Christ himself, have never said being Christian would ever be easy or simple! There are many ‘ways’ of being Christian, depending on one’s circumstances – whether one is a pauper or a prince or a Pope. But each Christian must begin with himself, becoming a friend of Jesus and following his commandment of love, from which all else flows, in continuing and constant acts of conscience, knowing that man is forever in need of continuing purification which one gains by actual grace and by sacramental grace. To be Christian is nothing less than to try to be like Christ. Surely, that is not easy, but as Benedict XVI often said, the saints have shown us it is possible, In other words, ‘be saints’, as he has often exhorted young people.]

He has bewailed the “spiritual desertification” that occurred as a result of the misinterpretation of the Council, and the “disasters,” “problems” and “suffering,” that resulted from the closing of seminaries and convents and from the banalization of the liturgy. And so there is a question of removing the right walls and partitions, themselves additions, without damaging the structure and design of the Church itself.

Pope Benedict uses another metaphor that reflects the complexity of the “demolition/rebuilding problem in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy in which he compares the pre-conciliar liturgy to an ancient beautiful fresco that, though undamaged, had become covered over with additions and whitewash. For the faithful, it was “largely concealed beneath instructions for an forms of private prayer.” The Council removed and cleaned from the fresco all the build-up and revealed its true form and colors. “But since then the fresco has been endangered by climatic conditions as well as by various restorations and reconstructions.”

Like Christ speaking to St. Francis, “rebuild my Church,” Pope Benedict tells us to get to work and stop the destruction of the liturgy, not by returning it to the state of “whitewash,” but by treating the liturgy with “a new reverence” and “a new understanding of its message and reality.”

So demolition/rebuilding or cleaning/restoration is not a simple broad-brush endeavor, but a selective process that can only be accomplished by renewed reverence and the proper understanding of what the conciliar reforms set out to accomplish.

[However, to limit the sense of Benedict XVI’s ‘rebuilding’ to just the liturgy is reductive. The emphasis on liturgy is because ‘lex orandi, lex credendi’ –the way we pray and worship God reflects how we believe in him and his law. Because we live his law as he wants us to do, we are able to pray and worship him as we ought to do.]

Pope Francis

Partisans make more of the differences between Pope Benedict and Pope Francis than is warranted, just as partisans can make more of the differences between monks and mendicants, Dominicans and Franciscans, St. Thomas, the Angelic Doctor, and St. Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor, than is really justified.

All of these varieties are characterized more by what unites them than by what separates them. That is not to say that their distinguishing characteristics are unimportant. Quite the contrary, what distinguishes them has to do with charism, with the specific movements of the Holy Spirit that are not accounted for by any “antecedent rule.” Now there are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit (1 Cor 12:4).

The institutional and the charismatic will always be in tension, yet great charismatic influences are dangerous movements, because radical change easily precipitates crisis. It is easy to conceive law and grace to be in opposition. It is a very old heresy, because the interaction between God and the human free agent inherently mysterious.

The law does not save us, nor can it supplant the legitimate domain of prudence, but neither can grace and charism ever be lawless. These are not problems that black and white reactions are going to resolve or that the conventions of left vs. right, modernist vs. traditionalist are going to adequately describe.

The “calamity of discipleship” is the tendency to be reactionary. Reactionaries create black hat vs. white hat mythologies to correspond to their black and white ideologies. Then they put the appropriate hats on the hero they worship and the villain they despise, ascribing the opposing ideologies to the protagonist and antagonist. They create simple narratives that everyone repeats until all are clear on who can be trusted and who cannot.

In all of this symbolism is essential. Did he wear the cape or did he not wear the cape? What about the shoes? Whose liturgy is more magnificent? Whose is more accessible? To be sure the symbols are important. They say something significant, as I am sure both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have been deliberate in their choices of style. But we should not let the extremists define the terms of the conversation and dazzle us with sophistries about contradictions where only contraries exist.

One example of this the opposition posited between a beautiful liturgy and one that is simple. Since when is magnificence the only measure of beauty? The Cistercians simplified the Benedictine Liturgy, considering too much ornamentation in their Churches to be both contrary to poverty and to recollection. Did that make their liturgy not beautiful? Did it invalidate the older Benedictine approach? Of course not.

Franciscans took it another step. Was St. Francis condemning the monastic tradition? Certainly not. But the aesthetic that measures beauty in terms of magnificence is a school of thought and a preference of taste, not the teaching of the Church.

We have an almost unprecedented grace of having two Successors of St. Peter alive at the same time. Not only have they taken the complimentary names of Benedict and Francis, but they also symbolically represent these two schools of thought in a way that I believe is just as providential and inspired by the Holy Spirit as both Pope Emeritus Benedict and Pope Francis have claimed that this papal transition has been.

In the end there is no contradiction. The rebuilding of the Church does require a bit of demolition, as both Popes Benedict and Francis affirm. We all have to be careful not to go to the extremes and to fall into facile left/right dichotomies. We cannot retreat into old comfort zones and protect ourselves behind a forest of secondary and tertiary precepts. But neither can we imagine ourselves to be in an antinomian paradise and then blame our delusion on the Holy Spirit.

In the end the Benedict and Franciscan pontificates are in fundamental agreement. The perennial principles will never change. But as Pope Francis has said* we cannot allow “pre-established patterns” to end up “closing our horizon to the creative action of God,” or as Pope Benedict has put it, quoting the great Franciscan St. Bonaventure: “Christ’s works do not go backwards, they do not fail but progress”.

*[The entire quotation from Pope Francis, taken from the first GA he held on Wednesday of Holy Week, was this: “Following, accompanying Christ, remaining with Him requires a 'stepping outside;, a stepping beyond. Stepping outside of ourselves, of a tired and routine way of living the faith, of the temptation to withdraw into pre-established patterns that end up closing our horizon to the creative action of God”.

Obviously, he was not talking about Popes. But if we take his words in a general sense, might they not also be applied, for example, to the simple matter of wearing the mozzetta and stole - ceremonial signs of episcopal and papal ministry - as one of those pre-estyablished patterns that would ‘close off our (anyone’s) horizon to the creative action of God’? Because in this case, the horizon is Jorge Bergoglio's personal horizon, which certainly remains open to the creative action of God now that he is Pope as it was before he became Pope - whether he wears traditional accessories or not! Were previous Popes somehow less open to God’s creative action because they chose to follow ‘pre-established patterns’ which have no intrinsic demerit at all and which, in serving a symbolic purpose for the dignity of the office of Pope, not for the person who happens to be Pope, are therefore far from self-glorifying or self-indulgent?

Someone recently cited an anecdote about Pope St. Pius X who privately complained about having to ‘dress up’ as Pope but complied with tradition nonetheless out of duty and obedience. And of course, he went on to be a saint. John Paul II did not seem to care at all what he was given to wear = he wore even the lurid ‘technicolor dreamcoat’ devised for him to open the Great Jubilee with his usual good grace (as Benedict XVI would wear the atrocious spatter-dyed chasuble that the Austrian bishops gave him to wear in Mariazell back in 2007. In both cases, both Popes put up with having to wear the 'ridiculous' liturgical vestments inflicted on them - and they dhowed genuine humility in acquiescing to the dpubtless well-intended if tasteless and absurd 'stage costume' concept of liturgical wear.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/04/2014 07:36]

Monday, April 8, Second Week in Easter
SOLEMNITY OF THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE LORD
[March 25, but celebrated today because yesterday was a Sunday in Lent.]

The Annunciation by Fra Angelico, 1437; Botticelli, 1489; Raphael, 1501
'FIAT VOLUNTAS TUA!...ET VERBUM CARO FACTUS EST'
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/bible/readings/040813.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Pope Francis met with

- Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy. [He collapsed during the installation Mass of the Pope on March 24 and was hospitalized for a few days,]-

- Mons. Charles Daniel Balvo, Apostolic Nuncio to Kenya

- Mons. Héctor Rubén Aguer, Archbishop of La Plata (Argentina);

- Nikolaus Schneider, President of the Evangelical Church in Germany, his spouse and delegation.

Re-posting some 'Ratzinger readings' on Mary on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, courtesy of


First, a brief excerpt from Cardinal Ratzinger's first book about Mary, Daughter Zion. But the end notes also refer to a much longer reflection that I had not read before, excerpted from an sarlier book on Mary co-authored by Prof. Ratzinger with Hans Urs von Balthasar, written in the simple but eye-opening exegetic exposition that makes the JESUS OF NAZARETH books so compelling.


Excerpted from
DAUGHTER ZION: Meditations on the Church's Marian belief

The mystery of the annunciation to Mary is not just a mystery of silence. It is above and beyond all that a mystery of grace.

We feel compelled to ask ourselves: Why did Christ really want to be born of a virgin? It was certainly possible for him to have been born of a normal marriage. That would not have affected his divine Sonship, which was not dependent on his virgin birth and could equally well have been combined with another kind of birth.

There is no question here of a downgrading of marriage or of the marriage relationship; nor is it a question of better safeguarding the divine Sonship. Why then?

We find the answer when we open the Old Testament and see that the mystery of Mary is prepared for at every important stage in salvation history. It begins with Sarah, the mother of Isaac, who had been barren, but when she was well on in years and had lost the power of giving life, became, by the power of God, the mother of Isaac and so of the chosen people.

The process continues with Anna, the mother of Samuel, who was likewise barren, but eventually gave birth; with the mother of Samson, or again with Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptizer. The meaning of all these events is the same: that salvation comes, not from human beings and their powers, but solely from God—from an act of his grace.

(From Dogma und Verkundigung, pp. 375ff; quoted in Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year [Ignatius Press, 1992], pp. 99-100.)

The annunciation to Mary happens to a woman, in an insignificant town in half-pagan Galilee, known neither to Josephus nor the Talmud. The entire scene was "unusual for Jewish sensibilities. God reveals himself, where and to whom he wishes." Thus begins a new way, at whose center stands no longer the temple, but the simplicity of Jesus Christ. He is now the true temple, the tent of meeting.

The salutation to Mary (Lk 1:28-32) is modeled closely on Zephaniah 3: 14-17: Mary is the daughter Zion addressed there, summoned to " rejoice", in formed that the Lord is coming to her. Her fear is removed, since the Lord is in her midst to save her.

Laurentin makes the very beautiful remark on this text: "... As so often, the word of God proves to be a mustard seed.... One understands why Mary was so frightened by this message (Lk 1:29). Her fear comes not from lack of understanding nor from that small-hearted anxiety to which some would like to reduce it. It comes from the trepidation of that encounter with God, that immeasurable joy which can make the most hardened natures quake."

In the address of the angel, the underlying motif of Luke's portrait of Mary surfaces: she is in person the true Zion, toward whom hopes have yearned throughout all the devastations of history. She is the true Israel in whom Old and New Covenant, Israel and Church, are indivisibly one. She is the "people of God" bearing fruit through God's gracious power. ...

Transcending all problems, Marian devotion is the rapture of joy over the true, indestructible Israel; it is a blissful entering into the joy of the Magnificat and thereby it is the praise of him to whom the daughter Zion owes her whole self and whom she bears, the true, incorruptible, indestructible Ark of the Covenant.



Excerpted from
Mary: The Church at the Source

"From henceforth all generations will call me blessed" – these words of the Mother of Jesus handed on for us by Luke (Lk 1:48) are at once a prophecy and a charge laid upon the Church of all times.

This phrase from the Magnificat, the spirit-filled prayer of praise that Mary addresses to the living God, is thus one of the principal foundations of Christian devotion to her.

The Church invented nothing new of her own when she began to extol Mary; she did not plummet from the worship of the one God to the praise of man. The Church does what she must; she carries out the task assigned her from the beginning.

At the time Luke was writing this text, the second generation of Christianity had already arrived, and the "family" of the Jews had been joined by that of the Gentiles, who had been incorporated into the Church of Jesus Christ. The expression "all generations, all families" was beginning to be filled with historical reality.

The Evangelist would certainly not have transmitted Mary's prophecy if it had seemed to him an indifferent or obsolete item. He wished in his Gospel to record "with care" what "the eyewitnesses and ministers of the word" (Lk 1:2-3) had handed on from the beginning, in order to give the faith of Christianity, which was then striding onto the stage of world history, a reliable guide for its future course.

Mary's prophecy numbered among those elements he had "carefully" ascertained and considered important enough to transmit to posterity. This fact assumes that Mary's words were guaranteed by reality: the first two chapters of Luke's Gospel give evidence of a sphere of tradition in which the remembrance of Mary was cultivated and the Mother of the Lord was loved and praised.

They presuppose that the still somewhat naive exclamation of the unnamed woman, "blessed is the womb that bore you" (Lk 11:27), had not entirely ceased to resound but, as Jesus was more deeply understood, had likewise attained a purer form that more adequately expressed its content.

They presuppose that Elizabeth's greeting, "blessed are you among women" (Lk 1:42), which Luke characterizes as words spoken in the Holy Spirit (Lk 1:4 1), had not been a once-only episode.

The continued existence of such praise at least in one strand of early Christian tradition is the basis of Luke's infancy narrative. The recording of these words in the Gospel raises this veneration of Mary from historical fact to a commission laid upon the Church of all places and all times.

The Church neglects one of the duties enjoined upon her when she does not praise Mary. She deviates from the word of the Bible when her Marian devotion falls silent. When this happens, in fact, the Church no longer even glorifies God as she ought.

For though we do know God by means of his creation–"Ever since the creation of the world [God's] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made" (Rom 1:20) – we also know him, and know him more intimately, through the history he has shared with man. just as the history of a man's life and the relationships he has formed reveal, what kind of person he is, God shows himself in a history, in men through whom his own character can be seen.

This is so true that he can be "named" through them and identified in them: the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. Through his relation with men, through the faces of men, God has made himself accessible and has shown his face.

We cannot try to bypass these human faces in order to get to God alone, in his "pure form", as it were. This would lead us to a God of our own invention in. place of the real God; it would be an arrogant purism that regards its own ideas as more important than God's deeds.

The above cited verse of the Magnificat shows us that Mary is one of the human beings who in an altogether special way belong to the name of God, so much so, in fact, that we cannot praise him rightly if we leave her out of account.

In doing so we forget something about him that must not be forgotten. What, exactly? Our first attempt at an answer could be his maternal side, which reveals itself more purely and more directly in the Son's Mother than anywhere else. But this is, of course, much too general.

In order to praise Mary correctly and thus to glorify God correctly, we must listen to all that Scripture and tradition say concerning the Mother of the Lord and ponder it in our hearts. Thanks to the praise of "all generations" since the beginning, the abundant wealth of Mariology has become almost too vast to survey.

In this brief meditation, I would like to help the reader reflect anew on just a few of the key words Saint Luke has placed in our hands in his inexhaustibly rich infancy narrative.

Let us begin with the angel's greeting to Mary. For Luke, this is the primordial cell of Mariology that God himself wished to present to us through his messenger, the Archangel Gabriel.

Translated literally, the greeting reads thus: "Rejoice, full of grace. The Lord is with you" (Lk 1:28). "Rejoice": At first sight, this word appears to be no more than the formulaic greeting current in the Greek-speaking world, and tradition has consistently translated it as "hail".

But looked at against the background of the Old Testament, this formula of greeting takes on a more profound significance. Consider, in fact, that the same word used by Luke appears four times in the Septuagint, where in each case it is an announcement of messianic joy (Zeph 3:14; Joel 2:21; Zech 9:9; Lam 4:21).

This greeting marks the beginning of the Gospel in the strict sense; its first word is "joy", the new joy that comes from God and breaks through the world's ancient and interminable sadness. Mary is not merely greeted in some vague or indifferent way; that God greets her and, in her, greets expectant Israel and all of humanity is an invitation to rejoice from the innermost depth of our being.

The reason for our sadness is the futility of our love, the overwhelming power of finitude, death, suffering, and falsehood. We are sad because we are left alone in a contradictory world where enigmatic signals of divine goodness pierce through the cracks yet are thrown in doubt by a power of darkness that is either God's responsibility or manifests his impotence.

"Rejoice": what reason does Mary have to rejoice in such a world? The answer is: "The Lord is with you."

In order to grasp the sense of this announcement, we must return once more to the Old Testament texts upon which it is based, in particular to Zephaniah. These texts invariably contain a double promise to the personification of Israel, daughter Zion: God will come to save, and he will come to dwell in her.

The angel's dialogue with Mary reprises this promise and in so doing makes it concrete in two ways. What in the prophecy is said to daughter Zion is now directed to Mary: She is identified with daughter Zion, she is daughter Zion in person.

In a parallel manner, Jesus, whom Mary is permitted to bear, is identified with Yahweh, the living God. When Jesus comes, it is God himself who comes to dwell in her.

He is the Savior – this is the meaning of the name Jesus, which thus becomes clear from the heart of the promise. René Laurentin has shown through painstaking textual analyses how Luke has used subtle word play to deepen the theme of God's indwelling.

Even early traditions portray God as dwelling "in the womb" of Israel–in the Ark of the Covenant. This dwelling "in the womb" of Israel now becomes quite literally real in the Virgin of Nazareth.

Mary herself thus becomes the true Ark of the Covenant in Israel, so that the symbol of the Ark gathers an incredibly realistic force: God in the flesh of a human being, which flesh now becomes his dwelling place in the midst of creation.

The angel's greeting – the center of Mariology not invented by the human mind – has led us to the theological foundation of this Mariology. Mary is identified with daughter Zion, with the bridal people of God.

Everything said about the ecclesia in the Bible is true of her, and vice versa: the Church learns concretely what she is and is meant to be by looking at Mary. Mary is her mirror, the pure measure of her being, because Mary is wholly within the measure of Christ and of God, is through and through his habitation.

And what other reason could the ecclesia have for existing than to become a dwelling for God in the world? God does not deal with abstractions. He is a person, and the Church is a person. The more that each one of us becomes a person, person in the sense of a fit habitation for God, daughter Zion, the more we become one, the more we are the Church, and the more the Church is herself.

The typological identification of Mary and Zion leads us, then, into the depths. This manner of connecting the Old and New Testaments is much more than an interesting historical construction by means of which the Evangelist links promise and fulfillment and reinterprets the Old Testament in the light of what has happened in Christ.

Mary is Zion in person, which means that her life wholly embodies what is meant by "Zion". She does not construct a self-enclosed individuality whose principal concern is the originality of its own ego. She does not wish to be just this one human being who defends and protects her own ego. She does not regard life as a stock of goods of which everyone wants to get as much as possible for himself.

Her life is such that she is transparent to God, "habitable" for him. Her life is such that she is a place for God. Her life sinks her into the common measure of sacred history, so that what appears in her is, not the narrow and constricted ego of an isolated individual, but the whole, true Israel.

This "typological identification" is a spiritual reality; it is life lived out of the spirit of Sacred Scripture; it is rootedness in the faith of the Fathers and at the same time expansion into the height and breadth of the coming promises.

We understand why the Bible time and again compares the just man to the tree whose roots drink from the living waters of eternity and whose crown catches and synthesizes the light of heaven.

Let us return once more to the angel's greeting. Mary is called "full of grace". The Greek word for grace (charis) derives from the same root as the words joy and rejoice (chara, chairein). Thus, we see once more in a different form the same context to which we were led by our earlier comparison with the Old Testament.

Joy comes from grace. One who is in the state of grace can rejoice with deep-going, constant joy. By the same token, grace is joy.

What is grace? This question thrusts itself upon our text. Our religious mentality has reified this concept much too much; it regards grace as a supernatural something we carry about in our soul. And since we perceive very little of it, or nothing at all, it has gradually become irrelevant to us, an empty word belonging to Christian jargon, which seems to have lost any relationship to the lived reality of our everyday life.

In reality, grace is a relational term: it does not predicate something about an I, but something about a connection between I and Thou, between God and man.

"Full of grace" could therefore also be translated as: "You are full of the Holy Spirit; your life is intimately connected with God." Peter Lombard, the author of what was the universal theological manual for approximately three centuries during the Middle Ages, propounded the thesis that grace and love are identical but that love "is the Holy Spirit".

Grace in the proper and deepest sense of the word is not some thing that comes from God; it is God himself. Redemption means that God, acting as God truly does, gives us nothing less than himself.

The gift of God is God – he who as the Holy Spirit is communion with us. "Full of grace" therefore means, once again, that Mary is a wholly open human being, one who has opened herself entirely, one who has placed herself in God's hands boldly, limitlessly, and without fear for her own fate.

It means that she lives wholly by and in relation to God. She is a listener and a prayer, whose mind and soul are alive to the manifold ways in which the living God quietly calls to her. She is one who prays and stretches forth wholly to meet God; she is therefore a lover, who has the breadth and magnanimity of true love, but who has also its unerring powers of discernment and its readiness to suffer.

Luke has flooded this fact with the light of yet another round of motifs. In his subtle way he constructs a parallel between Abraham, the father of believers, and Mary, the mother of believers.

To be in a state of grace means: to be a believer. Faith includes steadfastness, confidence, and devotion, but also obscurity. When man's relation to God, the soul's open availability for him, is characterized as "faith", this word expresses the fact that the infinite distance between Creator and creature is not blurred in the relation of the human I to the divine Thou.

It means that the model of "partnership", which has become so dear to us, breaks down when it comes to God, because it cannot sufficiently express the majesty of God and the hiddenness of his working. It is precisely the man who has been opened up entirely into God who comes to accept God's otherness and the hiddenness of his will, which can pierce our will like a sword.

The parallel between Mary and Abraham begins in the joy of the promised son but continues apace until the dark hour when she must ascend Mount Moriah, that is, until the Crucifixion of Christ.

Yet it does not end there; it also extends to the miracle of Isaac's rescue - the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Abraham, father of faith -this title describes the unique position of the patriarch in the piety of Israel and in the faith of the Church.

But is it not wonderful that-without any revocation of the special status of Abraham – a "mother of believers" now stands at the beginning of the new people and that our faith again and again receives from her pure and high image its measure and its path?

[Excerpted from the chapter "'Hail, Full of Grace': Elements of Marian Piety According to the Bible", from Mary: The Church at the Source by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar, pp. 61-69. Footnotes have been omitted.

NB: Ignatius Press published this book early in 2012 but I have not found the date of the original publication which was in German.]