Feast of the Holy Family

If the Solemnity of Christmas exalts God’s coming down from heaven to dwell among us, today’s Feast of the Holy Family honors the human context in which our Lord Jesus was born. It lauds Joseph and Mary, two normal persons who, in their attentiveness to God’s word and in their intelligent discernment, were able to cooperate totally in fulfilling God’s design.
The Gospel proposed today, Mt 2:13-15, 19-23, portrays the figure of Joseph, always in a state of discernment, always “in communication” with God “through dreams” that is, through the inner workings of his consciousness. What needs to be done now that Herod is in search for the promised Messiah, where to go next now that Herod was dead, where to settle down with his family. One very striking thing I learned meditating on this Gospel is that Joseph did not practice blind obedience. He was told to go back to Israel, to the land of Judah. But where exactly? Bethlehem? Jerusalem? Should the boy grow near the temple if he were to serve God throughout his life?
I attended the mass today at the Caravita community and the preacher supplied an insight which I found very interesting. Joseph had to discern like a normal father; he had to take stock of his life, see what work he could do in order to sustain his family. He was a carpenter and where could there be more opportunities for work but in Nazareth, his and Mary’s hometown (cf. Lk 1:26-27). He has his workshop there, he has all the community support.
Attentive listening to God’s word, yes, but also openness to the whole complex situation of life: I would like to believe that this is among the most important virtues that both Joseph and Mary passed on to Jesus in the process of his human growth.
There is one last point in the homily I heard today which left me reflecting further. Still on the theme of family, the priest briefly asked the community to pray for couples who after being “in-love” become disillusioned; they break up, part ways. He asked, “what could have gone wrong there?” Perhaps the fact that they didn’t grow enough to be loving persons. How true, I think: being “in-love” is the point of entry into a potential life-long relationship but if the relationship does not help each person to grow and become more “loving” (the ideal here is 1 Cor 13:1-13), it probably won’t last. What a goal!

The Challenge of the Creed

I attended the conference of Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, OP last night at the Centro Pro Unione here in Rome. His topic was The Challenge of Reciting the Creed Today. I braved the winter cold not so much because of my interest on the topic but to find out if Radcliffe was an engaging speaker as much as he is an excellent writer. With some of my friends, we have agreed that good authors are rarely good speakers too. And I need to admit, yes, he really is good in both. His approach is positive, practical and challenging.
What remained with me of his hour-long exposition? Three things: 1) To say, “I believe in God the father almighty, creator of heaven and earth…” means recognizing the gratuitousness of life and creation, and in response, awakening and nurturing a deep sense of gratitude for everything that is. 2) To say “I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God…” is to delight in the mystery that God chose to be human like us, and in response, to keep up the struggle of exploring and understanding the intelligibility of life and of our world, despite all the darkness surrounding us. 3) To say, “I believe in the Holy Spirit…” is to enter deeply into the meaning of our relationships and realize that the love that binds us together is the very love that flows between the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is not “an additional person” in the Trinity.
Two things that touched me: 1) the example of Fr. Shigeto Oshida, a Japanese Dominican priest and Zen master (deceased last November in Takamori). Fr. Shigeto, preached the retreat to the Bishops of Asia once and he started it by asking the bishops to go out into the field and plant rice! Yes, there was plenty of resistance, of course. But just the same he made them do it, so that they may realize that they are simply “collaborators” in the plantation of the Lord. They can start, but it is God who brings forth the harvest. 2) the Christmas greetings of a child who wrote his granddad (Radcliffe’s brother): “Granddad, I love you very much, more than I love God!” The comment of Radcliffe to this, associating it to the third part of the creed is – “I’m sure God won’t be jealous; because the “love that is more” comes from God himself – the Holy Spirit!”

Was there anything that challenged me? Radcliffe’s answer to the question that came from us—the audience: What about the last part of the Creed – “I believe in the one, holy, catholic church…?” Smilingly, he admitted that he didn’t say anything about this for the simple reason that his time was up! Anyway, he admitted that that was a tough question because many say they have no problem with God, Jesus and even the Holy Spirit. But they have problems with the institution! And sadly, he admits, our Church is getting more and more monolithic. By itself, institutions are good and necessary. But the challenge is how to keep them open, creative, not monolithic! My dictionary says “monolithic” is “massive, rigid, totally uniform!”

Spe Salvi (Saved by Hope)

Pope Benedict’s new encyclical, Spe Salvi, is a very stimulating read, not only because of its easy, engaging style but more because of the relevant questions it poses. For instance, the Pope makes us reflect, “What may we hope? And what may we not hope?” In numbers 22-30 of the document, he confronts head-on the promises of modernity – specifically the issues of progress and science.
He tries to re-define progress and re-connect it to other values such as morals and freedom. He says, “we must acknowledge that incremental progress is possible only in the material sphere. Here, amid our growing knowledge of the structure of matter and in the light of ever more advanced inventions, we clearly see continuous progress towards an ever greater mastery of nature. Yet in the field of ethical awareness and moral decision-making, there is no similar possibility of accumulation for the simple reason that man's freedom is always new and he must always make his decisions anew. (…) The moral treasury of humanity is not readily at hand like tools that we use; it is present as an appeal to freedom and a possibility for it.” (SS 24)
He challenges us to see to it, “that every generation make its own contribution to establishing convincing structures of freedom and of good, which can help the following generation as a guideline for the proper use of human freedom” (SS 25). And the Pope does not only talk to modern society; he also makes a kind of Christian self-criticism: “we must also acknowledge that modern Christianity, faced with the successes of science in progressively structuring the world, has to a large extent restricted its attention to the individual and his salvation. In so doing it has limited the horizon of its hope and has failed to recognize sufficiently the greatness of its task—even if it has continued to achieve great things in the formation of man and in care for the weak and the suffering (SS 25).

What then may we hope? The Pope simply puts it this way: “It is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed by love. This applies even in terms of this present world. When someone has the experience of a great love in his life, this is a moment of “redemption” which gives a new meaning to his life. But soon he will also realize that the love bestowed upon him cannot by itself resolve the question of his life. It is a love that remains fragile. It can be destroyed by death. The human being needs unconditional love. He needs the certainty which makes him say: “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:38- 39). If this absolute love exists, with its absolute certainty, then—only then—is man “redeemed”, whatever should happen to him in his particular circumstances."
In conclusion, the Pope beautifully summarizes this hope: “This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain. (…) God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety. His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; his Kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us. His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is “truly” life. (SS 31)

To read further, you can go to the vatican website.

Advent Saint

Today is the liturgical memorial of St. John of the Cross, an “ideal saint” for the Advent season of waiting for the longed-for Messiah. For one like me, who at times, prefers the “dark night” rather than the glare of the noonday sun, St. John of the Cross serves as a teacher: how much can one learn from “dark nights” that is, from suffering, from the purifying fire of life’s ordeals!
I hope you enjoy this poem, the first of a five-part poem of St. John of the Cross

Stanzas Of The Soul
1. One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
- ah, the sheer grace! - I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.

2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
- ah, the sheer grace! - in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.

3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.

4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
- him I knew so well -
there in a place where no one appeared.

5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.

6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.

8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.