Advent

 Posted following a suggestion from our parish priest as to one way in which we might look forward to the coming of Christ in our homes ...

Advent: a double expectation

 The two-fold expectation that is characteristic of the Advent season draws our attention to a feature of our Liturgical life as a whole. As we celebrate the Sacraments and life of prayer bestowed on the Church at Christ's first coming, that very celebration is oriented towards Christ's second coming. The Liturgy faces us from the events of one coming towards the event of a second coming; it exists in a kind of "in between". Our Liturgical prayer has a direction: it faces towards the East, that is, towards the dawn, the sign of Jesus coming.

Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, 

graciously grant peace in our days,

 that, by the help of your mercy, 

we may be always free from sin 

and safe from all distress, 

as we await the blessed hope 

and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

It is very easy at Mass to listen to the words of the Preface without really "hearing" them. Participating on line might make us more attentive, and we might then notice how the first Preface for the Advent season captures the two-fold expectation typical of the season:

For he assumed at his first coming 
the lowliness of human flesh, 

and so fulfilled the design you formed long ago, 

and opened for us the way to eternal salvation, 

that, when he comes again in glory and majesty 

and all is at last made manifest, we who watch for that day  

may inherit the great promise 

in which now we dare to hope.

".. truly the earth's culmination .."

The Meditation of the Day for Thursday of this week in Magnificat is from the writings of Fr Alfred Delp, and opens as follows (my italics added):

That God would become a Mother's son and that a woman could walk upon this earth, her body consecrated as a holy temple and tabernacle for God, is truly the earth's culmination and the fulfilment of its expectation ...

Oh, that this was granted to the earth, to bring forth such fruit! That the world was permitted to enter into the presence of God through the sheltering warmth, as well as the helpful and reliable patronage of her motherly heart!

I added the italics to draw out the closeness of the perspective of this passage to that promoted by FAITH, and exemplified in this article by Fr Nesbitt: The Christ Centred Vision of Creation: The Witness of Scripture and Tradition, and this one by Fr Stephen Boyle: The Centrality of Christ In the Plan of Creation.    

23rd December 2010

Fr Cantalamessa's Third Advent Homily

The theme of Fr Cantalamessa's third homily for the Holy Father and members of the Roman Curia was "The Christian Response to Rationalism". The full text can be found here. I am usually minded to advise "reading the whole", as any comment easily gives only a partial impression, and I would do the same in this case, too.

Once again, Fr Cantalamessa draws significantly on the thought of Blessed John Henry Newman. The first point that Fr Cantalemessa makes is that it is a usurpation of reason (Newman's phrase) when it attempts to reason about religion upon purely secular maxims, maxims that are intrinsically foreign to the nature of religion. This does not mean for Newman that we must reject the style of reason that is of our general use when we come to study matters of religion, and replace it with another and contradictory style of reason. Religion is rightly the subject of such study. But the appopriate application of that rational study reveals that, in the case of religious belief, there are other, wider factors at play too. These wider factors have a rationality of their own style, and it is the offence of rationalism to exclude these wider factors.

"... When the Gospel is said to require a rational faith, this need not mean more than that faith is accordant to right reason in the abstract, not that it results from it in the particular case." [A footnote cites the University Sermons]

Taking up Newman's thought again, Fr Cantalamessa argues that:

Rationalism cannot be combated with another rationalism, although of a contrary sign. Hence, another way must be found that does not pretend to replace the rational defense of the faith, but to accompany it, also because the recipients of the Christian proclamation are not only intellectuals, able to engage in this type of debate, but also ordinary people who are indifferent to it and more sensitive to other arguments.

This leads Fr Cantalamessa to considering how a reflection on rationalism has implications for the evangelising mission of the Church. In speaking of how the divine and the sacred impact upon us uninvited, he suggests that a recovery of the sense of the sacred - be that in the religious experience of the community of those who hold a religious belief, in the religious experience of the individual who is a mystic and receives a particular gift of encounter with God, or be that in the experience of one who recognises the sacred in the observation of the world around us. Fr Cantalamessa draws significantly on Rudolf Otto's phenomenology of the religious experience of man, translated in English with the title "The Idea of the Holy".

If this is so, the re-evangelization of the secularized world must pass also through the recovery of the sense of the sacred. The terrain of culture of rationalism -- its cause and at the same time its effect -- is the loss of the sense of the sacred; it is necessary therefore that the Church help men to re-ascend the slope and rediscover the presence and beauty of the sacred in the world. Charles Peguy said that "the terrible penury of the Sacred is the profound mark of the modern world." One notices it in every aspect of life, but in particular in art, in literature and in everyday language. For many authors, to be described as "desecrating" is no longer an offense, but a compliment.

Fr Cantalamessa argues that, in addition to what I might call the reason of intellect the field of religious belief has also a reason of witness or of testimony, the two reasons being quite open to each other and not at all contradictory. When an individual person comes to religious belief, it is generally the case that factors other than intellectual argument have been at play in their journey, and these other factors are perfectly rational.

Theologian Karl Rahner, taking up, it seems, a phrase of Raymond Pannikar, affirmed: "The Christian of tomorrow, will either be a mystic or he won't be." He intended to say that, in the future, to keep faith alive would be the testimony of persons who have a profound experience of God, more than the demonstration of his rational plausibility. Essentially, Paul VI said the same thing when he affirmed in "Evangelii Nuntiandi" (No. 4): "Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses."

And he finishes by suggesting that Christmas, being more than ever challenged in its authentic meaning by secularising and materialistic influences, provides a privileged opportunity for Christians to recognise and live out a sense of the sacred in the world.
 
Oh, and along the way Fr Cantalamessa cites Edith Stein as an example of one whose mystical experience exemplifies how vivid is their discovery of God. In later conversation with her closest friend, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, the friend at whose house she was staying when the incident referred to below occurred, Edith Stein would refer to her journey to the Catholic faith as "my secret for myself" (Secretum meum mihi) and not disclose anything more about it:

It was precisely from one of these encounters that a disciple of philosopher Husserl, a Jewess and convinced atheist, one night discovered the living God. I am speaking of Edith Stein, now St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was a guest of Christian friends and one evening when they had to go out, she stayed alone in the house and not knowing what to do, took a book from their library and began to read it. It was the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila. She went on to read it the whole night. Having come to the end, she simply exclaimed: "this is the truth!" Early in the morning she went to the city to buy a Catholic catechism and a Missal and, after having studied them, went to a neighboring church and asked the priest to baptize her.

Fr Cantalamessa's Second Advent Homily

The full text of Fr Cantalamessa's second Advent homily is now available at ZENIT. As promised, here is my further post about it.

Firstly, I think that the distinction between "secularization" and "secularism" that Fr Cantalamessa draws at the beginning of the homily is important:

Secularization is a complex and ambivalent phenomenon. It can indicate the autonomy of earthly realities and the separation between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Cesar and, in this sense, not only is it not against the Gospel but finds in it one of its profound roots; however, it can also indicate a whole ensemble of attitudes contrary to religion and to faith; hence, the use of the term secularism is preferred. Secularism is to secularization what scientism is to scientific nature and rationalism to rationality.

In other words, there is a rightful autonomy of the things of the world in relation to the things of religious faith. This can be particularly recognised in the context of the project of science, where one can say that its methods and subject matter are rightly pursued in their own right and not in a subservience to a particular religion. This does not mean that science and religious belief have no relation to each other, but that there is a rightful autonomy in that relation. One could also argue that there is a similar rightful autonomy of politics from religion, though here it is perhaps more easy to recognise that this rightful autonomy does not mean that there is no relation at all. This rightful autonomy is what Fr Cantalamessa means by the term "secularization", and he distinguishes it from "secularism" which seeks to remove all presence of religious faith from the public realm.

In this sense, secularism is a synonym of temporality, of the reduction of the real only to the earthly dimension.

This then leads Fr Cantalamessa to the most striking aspect of his homily, that is, to the view that a recovery of the sense of eternal life is important for the preaching of the Gospel to others and for the living of the Christian life by those who are already believers.

In Christ, eternity entered into time, it manifested itself in the flesh; before him it is possible to make a decision for eternity. It is thus that the evangelist John speaks of eternal life: "We [...] proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us" (1 John 1:2).

For the believer, eternity is not, as we see, only a hope, it is also a presence. We have this experience every time that we make a real act of faith in Christ, because "you have eternal life, you who believe in the name of the Son of God" (cf. 1 John 5:13); every time we receive Communion, in which "we are given the pledge of future glory" ("futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur"); every time we hear the words of the Gospel which are "words of eternal life" (cf. John 6:68). Also, St. Thomas Aquinas says that "grace is the beginning of glory."[8]

This appears counter-intuitive, as we would be tempted to think that making Christian faith more "relevant to the world" would be the road of the new evangelisation. Fr Cantalamessa's development of this theme demonstrates that it is what is truly relevant to the needs of the world today.

Fr Cantalamessa points out two implications for Christians. The passage from time to eternity involves a judgement between heaven and hell, something that he illustrates by quoting Cardinal Newman's poem "The Dream of Gerontius". And if we, today, are to direct our thoughts towards eternity it will involve us in entering in to the house of the Lord - or taking great joy in our participation in the liturgical life that takes place in our parish churches.

Evangelisation needs belief in eternity: Fr Cantalamessa's second Advent Sermon

ZENIT are carrying a report of Fr Cantalamessa's second Advent homily preached before the Holy Father and members of the Curia. The first sermon addressed the theme of scientism and science. This second addressed the theme of secularism. I will post a fuller comment when I have been able to access the full text of the sermon. Meanwhile, a couple of observations based on ZENIT's report.

Fr Cantalamessa's definition of secularism as "the reduction of the real only to the earthly dimension" gives an interesting foundation to the contemporary experience of secularism as the exclusion of religious expression and practice from public life, both social and political.

Fr Cantalamessa makes the very striking observation that "faith in eternal life is one of the conditions of the possibility of evangelization".

ZENIT's report concludes by quoting the following comment of Fr Cantalamessa on the Psalter:

In the Hebrew Psalter there is a group of Psalms called 'Psalms of the ascension,' or 'canticles of Sion.' They were the Psalms that Jewish pilgrims sang when they went out on pilgrimage toward the holy city, Jerusalem. One of them begins thus: 'I was glad when they said to me, "let us go to the house of the Lord!"' These Psalms of the ascension then became the Psalms of those that, in the Church, are journeying toward the heavenly Jerusalem; they are our Psalms.

The psalm quoted was that used at Mass on the First Sunday of Advent.

Fourth Sunday of Advent: homily on the Sacrament of Penance

I had the good fortune this evening to hear a homily devoted to the Sacrament of Penance. This was being delivered quite deliberately in advance of an Advent reconciliation service taking place during the coming week, and to which, during the notices at the end of Mass, we were all encouraged to bring a friend or neighbour. When I say this it doesn't mean that I am particularly good at going to Confession, but I did appreciate a homily that spoke rather beautifully and enthusiastically about the Sacrament.

Father started by suggesting that the entrance antiphon of the Mass - "Let the clouds rain down the Just One, and the earth bring forth a Saviour" - was an image of the Sacraments. Each Sacrament is a presence and action of God, made real through a physical form such as water for baptism and bread/wine for the Eucharist. He went on to suggest that the Sacrament of Reconciliation was a Sacrament of the Virgin Mary, since in approaching the Sacrament we need to make a particular choice to turn away from sin and obey the will of the Lord, to make a choice for lowliness. Mary, in the obedience of the Annunciation, is the model par excellence of this obedient attentiveness to the will of God. The Sacrament is also one which demands that we humble ourselves before God; and, of course, in her Magnificat the Virgin Mary shows herself as the lowly servant who recieves the favour of the Lord. The demand for lowliness that the Sacrament makes of us also indicates that it is a Sacrament of childhood.

A motif to which Father referred, and which perhaps can be used to summarise the Sacrament of Penance, was that of TLC - Tender Loving Care. He first of all described the Virgin Mary using this term. She is the subject of  a particular loving choice on the part of God. And it also applies to the Sacrament of Penance, which is a particular moment in which we recieve the loving choice of God for us.

THE most significant Advent antiphon

.... is, according to this post at Communio, which gives the full text in English translation, the Rorate Caeli. The same blog has a post on the "Greater Antiphons", used in the Liturgy of Vespers during these last days of Advent.

You can listen to the Rorate Caeli being sung in Latin here on Youtube; and a "Catholic Minute" catechesis about it here.

The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

This is the title of the third of the Masses for the Advent Season in the Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary. See my earlier posts for the Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Annunciation of the Lord and for the Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Chosen Daughter of Israel.

Father, all powerful and ever-living God,
we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

By your Holy Spirit
you inspired Elizabeth
to reveal the surpassing honour
you have given to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Mary is rightly hailed as blessed
because she believed your promise of salvation;
in her act of loving service
she is greeted as mother of the Lord
by the mother of Christ's herald.

We make our own the canticle of joy
on the lips of God's Virgin Mother,
and in her lowliness we too proclaim you greatness
in the never-ending hymn
of the whole company of angels and saints
as they cry out:

Holy, Holy ...

The Opening Prayer of the Mass is:

Lord our God,
Saviour of the human family,
you brought salvation and joy
to the home of Elizabeth
through the visit of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
the ark of the New Covenant.

We ask that, in obdience
to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
we too may bring Christ to others
and proclaim your greatness
by the praise of our lips
and the holiness of our lives.

Mary and the Annunciation of the Lord

Following on from last Saturday's post that referred to the Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, herewith some of the texts of the second of the Masses allocated to the Advent season. The Mass is entitled "Mary and the Annunciation of the Lord".

The Opening Prayer of this Mass is:

O God,
you chose that at the message of an angel
your Word should take flesh
in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Grant that we who believe that she is the Mother of God
may receive the help of her prayers.

I provide below the translation of the Preface - I do not have access to the original Latin, so the precise nuances of what is translated by "humankind" and "human" in the first sentence may (or may not) have been lost in the translation.

He came to save humankind by becoming human himself.
The Virgin Mary, receiving the angel's message in faith,
conceived by the power of the Spirit
and bore your Son in purest love.
In Christ, the eternal truth,
your promise to Israel came true.
In Christ, the hope of all peoples,
our hope was realized beyond all expectation.

As I suggested last week, the rubrical legitimacy of celebrating these Masses in parishes during Advent is a bit of a moot point. However, if your parish is one where Saturday Masses of Our Lady are regularly celebrated, I believe the situation does become analagous to that which would exist at a Marian shrine - there is a reasonable pastoral expectation of celebration of a Mass of Our Lady.

Today, of course, there is also the possibility of celebrating the memorial of Our Lady of Guadaloupe. In the Americas, this will of course take precedence.

Faith and film (2): The Gospel and the Movies

The website of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales are posting a daily .mp3 meditation for Advent. These meditations have been prepared by Fr Peter Malone, a former president of SIGNIS - the World Catholic Association for Communication. Each meditation is linked to a film.

I haven't listened to any of the meditations yet, but thought to link to the relevant web page. This seems to me to be an interesting exercise in bringing religious faith into dialogue with our contemporary culture.

The page with the .mp3 files can be found here; the meditations are posted with the most recent post at the top of the page. Move down the page to find the earlier meditations.

Hearkening to God's Voice

I could sub-title this post as "A reflection on monastic life and lay life".


First of all, Mother Maria-Michael's latest reflection at St Walburga's Abbey. This is entitled Hearken to God's Voice. Though it is is addressed firstly to her own monastic community, it nevertheless has a very ready application to the lay person engaged in the activity of the world. Our silence is not as much the literal, physical silence that pertains within the life of a monastery (though there is no reason why we should not seek such times of physical silence, perhaps in a time of prayer or Adoration). But it is still a part of our Christian life to have the attentiveness towards God that is the meaning of silence, and gives to that silence an Advent character. We are more likely to suffer the effects of a physcial iPod than a monastic one!

That reflections addressed to a monastic community have a relevance to those who live the Christian life outside of a monastery should not come as a surprise. In the 1950s, Louis Bouyer wrote a book entitled The Meaning of the Monastic Life. At the end of his first chapter, and the beginning of his second, he summarises the meaning/purpose (the French word "sens" conveys both implications together in one word) of the life of the monk as follows:

To be a monk, then, is simply to be an integral Christian. And regarded in that light, the Christian himself is simply the man restored by the Word of the Gospel to the vocation whichthe creative Word destined for him: to respond to the Word of Agape by the word of faith, in order eventually to meet God face to face....

...the monastic vocation is simply a call to the most perfect and direct realisation possible of the vocation of man in general and Christians in particular ..

I have just started reading a book which might offer some insight into this understanding of monastic life in relation to life in the lay state. Henri Nouwen is a name I have known for some time, perhaps most noticing that he spent the later part of his life as a member of a L'Arche Community in Toronto. Before then, as a rather energetic and busy academic, he took seven months out to live the life of a Trappist monk. Very unusually, a monastery accepted him to live their life for a temporary period. Henri Nouwen's notes/diary of this seven month period were published as The Genesee Diary.

After one week in the monastery, Henri Nouwen wrote the following about work, in the light of his experiences helping in the monastery's bakery and in physical labour. The italics added are mine.

I'd better start thinking a little more about my attitude toward work. If I have learned anything this week, it is that there is a contemplative way of working that is more important for me than praying, reading or singing. Most people think that you go to a monastery to pray. Well, I prayed more this week than before but also discovered that I have not learned yet to make the work of my hands into a prayer.

Now, if that isn't a thought from a monastery with a relevance to the life of the lay person, I don't know what is!

Pope Benedict's homily at Vespers

I have just read Pope Benedict's homily delivered at First Vespers for the start of the Advent season.

The Holy Father's catechetical approach reminded me of that he used in Cologne in 2005, explaining the idea of adoration by way of its Latin term "ad-oratio" and its Greek term "proskynesis".

I like to illustrate this new step urged upon us by the Last Supper by drawing out the different nuances of the word "adoration" in Greek and in Latin. The Greek word is proskynesis. It refers to the gesture of submission, the recognition of God as our true measure, supplying the norm that we choose to follow. It means that freedom is not simply about enjoying life in total autonomy, but rather about living by the measure of truth and goodness, so that we ourselves can become true and good. This gesture is necessary even if initially our yearning for freedom makes us inclined to resist it.

We can only fully accept it when we take the second step that the Last Supper proposes to us. The Latin word for adoration is ad-oratio - mouth to mouth contact, a kiss, an embrace, and hence, ultimately love. Submission becomes union, because he to whom we submit is Love. In this way submission acquires a meaning, because it does not impose anything on us from the outside, but liberates us deep within.

In his Advent homily, Pope Benedict unpacks the content of the Latin word "adventus":

Let us reflect briefly on the meaning of this word, which can be translated as "presence," "arrival," "coming." In the language of the ancient world it was a technical term used to indicate the arrival of a functionary or the visit of a king or emperor to a province. But it could also indicate the coming of the divinity, which goes out of concealment to manifest itself with power, or which is celebrated as present in worship. Christians adopted the word "advent" to express their relationship with Jesus Christ: Jesus is King, who has entered into this poor "province" called earth to visit everyone; he brings to participate in his advent those who believe in him, all those who believe in his presence in the liturgical assembly. With the word adventus an attempt was made essentially to say: God is here, he has not withdrawn from the world, he has not left us alone. Although we cannot see or touch him, as is the case with tangible realities, he is here and comes to visit us in multiple ways.

The meaning of the expression "advent" includes therefore also that of visitatio, which means simply and properly "visit"; in this case it is a visit of God: He enters my life and wants to address me.

The Holy Father's words about time complement the remarks in my post on Sunday about the meaning of the time of the Advent season by expressing an experiential dimension to that meaning:

If time is not filled by a present gifted with meaning, the waiting runs the risk of becoming unbearable; if something is expected, but at this moment there is nothing, namely, if the present is empty, every instant that passes seems exaggeratedly long, and the waiting is transformed into a weight that is too heavy because the future is totally uncertain. When, instead, time is gifted with meaning and we perceive in every instant something specific and valuable, then the joy of waiting makes the present more precious.

Do read the whole of the homily, though, so that you can appreciate the beauty and depth of Pope Benedict's words.

Advent - Longing for Christ

Mother Maria-Michael has posted a reflection - longer than the ones she normally posts - for the beginning of Advent. I am happy to commend it to you, as I was enriched through reading it this morning. The post has the title: Advent - Longing for Christ.

More by accident than by deliberate intention, I went to Mass yesterday evening - and so caught the beginning of Advent at its very beginning, so to speak. Father's homily reflected on the meaning of the word Advent - a coming, that of Christ, in the historical past and in the future that we await - and on how we might live this time of waiting for the coming of Christ.

I was most struck, though, by Father's asking this question: why is Advent four weeks long? And why is the fourth week not really a week, but a few days, depending on exactly what day of the week turns out to be 25th December? Father suggested that the answer to the first of these questions was related to a cosmological vision (no, he didn't use that wording in his homily, but it was what he was referring to) in which the length of time from the creation to the coming of Jesus in human flesh was understood to be 4 000 years.  I didn't quite catch whether this was a Bible based cosmology or a patristic cosmology, so I can't give you the footnote. Each of the four weeks of Advent is then seen as representing 1 000 years between creation and the Incarnation. Father suggested that the "short" fourth week acts as a reminder to us that we do not know the exact hour of the second coming of Christ; it reminds us of the need to "stay awake", and prompts us to use the season of Advent to renew our wakefulness before the Lord.

Clearly, knowing today what science has been able to discover about the history of the universe, we do not believe in the 4 000 years. But the idea that the time of Advent, that is, the duration of the season, has a representative meaning; that the length of Advent is a sign in the Liturgical sense; this, I think is still a useful idea. Advent is an extended season in the Liturgy; it is not just a vigil the evening before the feast.

Particularly for those of us who have an education and formation strongly influenced by contemporary science, seeing Advent as "representative time" helps to give a meaning to time itself. If Advent represents the time between the creation and the coming of Christ in Bethlehem, then time is being given a meaning in relation to the mystery of the Incarnation seen as the destiny of the physical creation. And if Advent represents the time between the Ascension and the second coming of Christ in his glory - the time in which we are at present living - then it is giving meaning to time in relation to eternity, in relation to our looking forward to eternal life with the Trinity and all the saints in heaven, when all things will be one in Christ.