Jubilee 2025: The Hope of the Bride

In Dom Anscar Vonier's book The Spirit and the Bride there is a short chapter entitled "The Bride's Hope". The chapter suggests that, through the living presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church, there is a perfection of hope that is intrinsic to the Church and is more than the sum total of the individual hopes of believers or local communities.

What we may truly call the official hope of the Church is an overwhelming reality; there is simply no vestige of hesitation in any acts and movements of the Church concerning her power to obtain eternal life. This is manifested before all men through the Church's way of praying. Ecclesiastical prayer is the visible sign of the Church's hope; she hopes as she prays, and she prays as she hopes.  Now of the Church's prayer there is no end; it is an unceasing stream, unfathomable in its depth, though all eyes can behold its surface. If the Church ceased to pray, her life of hope also would come to an end.... More truly than Moses on the mountain, the Bride is stretching forth her arms in supplication, and she is not in need of any supporters, as she know of no lassitude, for the power of the Spirit is in her.

If you are familiar with Edith Stein's essay "The Prayer of the Church", Anscar Vonier's chapter is a natural jumping off point to a re-reading of that essay. In English translation it is published in the Institute of Carmelite Studies collected works of Edith Stein vol. 4 The Hidden Life. The essay makes some striking comparisons between the Jewish liturgy and the Christian liturgy, reflecting Edith Stein's own lived experience, and is worth reading for those insights alone. 

... it is not a question of placing the inner prayer free of all traditional forms as "subjective" piety in contrast to the liturgy as the "objective" prayer of the Church. All authentic prayer is prayer of the Church. Through every sincere prayer something happens in the Church, and it is the Church itself that is praying therein, for it is the Holy Spirit living in the Church that intercedes for every individual soul "with sighs too deep for words". This is exactly what authentic prayer is, for "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit". What could the prayer of the Church be, if not great lovers giving themselves to God who is love!

Anscar Vonier places the expression of hope within the Church's prayer since that prayer shows an absolute confidence in the ability of the Church to gain eternal life for the persons who are the object of that prayer. A connection can be made to the words of the Jubilee prayer:

May the grace of the Jubilee reawaken in us, Pilgrims of Hope, a yearning for the treasures of heaven.

Pope Francis homily at the funeral Mass for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

 I think Pope Francis has preached a lovely homily at Pope Emeritus Benedict's funeral this morning. The full text is here, at the Vatican website: Homily of His Holiness Pope Francis. 

One can see in the homily Pope Francis practice of adopting "three words" or phrases to structure a homily. And, though Pope Francis expresses himself in a general way about the experience of one who is a pastor, he has clearly reflected on that experience in the light of the life of Pope Emeritus Benedict. 

I was particularly struck by the number of occasions on which Pope Francis referred to the hands of the Father, in one instance citing Pope Emeritus Benedict. As the funeral took place during the Christmas season, I was reminded of the image of the Christ child in the crib, lying with extended hands. That image of the extended hands of the Infant Jesus formed the motif of a meditation by St Edith Stein. I can't find the text at the moment, but can find an adaptation of it that I used for a visit to the crib during Christmas time several years ago.

A prayer for a visit to the Crib during Christmas time

[This prayer was adapted from a meditation of St Edith Stein]

Dear Jesus, your hands reach out to us as we come to the Crib.
We come like the shepherds who followed the call of the angel.
We come like the wise men who followed the star.
“Follow me” say your little hands.

May we always listen to you when you call us.
Keep us together in faith and in hope.
Dear Jesus, your open hands welcome us, and they ask us at the same time.
They ask us to be at the service of your Peace.

Open our hearts to people who are suffering.
May each of us offer signs of friendship and welcome to people who are less well off than us.
Dear Jesus, your open hands welcome us, and they ask us at the same time.
They ask us to give our lives to you.

May we choose the way in life that you want us to follow.
In the light of Christmas, may we face the problems of life today, together with people of other Churches and religions.
Mary, you are the Mother of Love.
You praised the great things done by the Lord.
You sang about how God kept his promises to the people of Israel.

Mother of Love, protect our families.
Help them to stay together.
Give them the happiness of loving and passing on life.

Who was Edith Stein?

In October 1998, St John Paul II  declared Blessed Teresa Benedicta of the Cross to be a saint.  Saint Teresa is better known as Edith Stein.  In 1999, he added her to the list of patron saints of the European continent. Her feast day is 9th August, and it is celebrated with the Liturgical rank of Feast in the dioceses of Europe. Who was St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross?  What is her importance for us today?

Edith was the youngest child in a large and talented Jewish family.  She was born on 12th October 1891.  Her family lived in the German town of Breslau, a town which is now known as Wroclaw and is part of Poland.  She rejected her Jewish faith, and describes how from the age of 15 she lived without religious faith.  Edith was amongst the first women to study at German universities.  At Gottingen she was able to study with some of the cleverest philosophers of her generation.  Her attempts to gain a permanent university post were blocked, at first because of the fact that she was a woman but later because of growing anti-Jewish feeling.

Through her studies Edith came to meet a number of people who had embraced Christian faith.  She was led first of all to an awareness of the life of religious faith amongst those around her, then to an awareness of the redemptive power of the cross in the life of a Lutheran friend who had suffered bereavement, and finally to faith in the Catholic Church.  Her conversion came about because of her absolute dedication to the truth wherever she found it.  This dedication was an aspect of her philosophical stance, but at the decisive moments in her conversion, the philosophy was incidental.  Instead, it was the series of personal encounters, culminating in her encounter with St Teresa of Avila in reading her Life, that determined her conversion.

As a lay Catholic, Edith lived out much that was later to be emphasised in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.  She lived a life of intense personal prayer, often spending hours on her knees before the Blessed Sacrament.  She developed a tremendous love of the Liturgy, through her visits to the Benedictine Abbey of Beuron - she once described returning from Beuron to her active life as being “almost like dropping from heaven to earth”.  She used the Divine Office for her prayer - decades before it became common for lay people to do so.  For many years Edith taught at St Magdalena’s, the Dominican sisters school in Speyer.  One of her students remembered her like this: “She succeeded in setting the course not only for my studies but for all my future moral aspirations. With her you sensed you were in the presence of something pure, sublime, and noble, something that elevated you and brought you to its own level”.  In a personal apostolate of like to like, she also influenced the lives of many of the trainee teachers and Dominican novices at St Magdalena’s.  Through her collaboration with Fr Erich Pryzwara, she pursued an intellectual apostolate which gained her an international reputation as a lecturer.

Edith was eventually forced out of public life in Germany because of the rise of anti-Jewish persecution under the Nazis.  In 1933 she fulfilled her goal of entering the Carmelite order as an enclosed nun.  All Edith’s active apostolate is to be seen as directed towards this step - it was  undertaken under obedience in response to the suggestions of others, a form of obedience expressed in its fullness in Edith’s life as a religious. Her life can be summed up as one of preferring the religious life.  Edith was transferred from the convent at Cologne to that at Echt in Holland as anti-Jewish persecution in Germany increased.  That was not enough to keep her safe.  In 1942, the Catholic bishops joined other Christian leaders in Holland in a protest against the deportation of Jews by the German occupying authorities, a protest that was at first not made public.  Subsequently, a pastoral letter condemning the German actions was read in all Catholic parishes.  This led the Germans to retaliate by arresting all Catholics of Jewish descent, Edith and her sister Rosa amongst them.  Edith and Rosa were deported with others to the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau where they both died immediately after arrival on 9th August 1942.

Edith’s personality combined a very warm love for others with an ability to be severely critical.  Her nephews and nieces adored her - the special aunt who appeared only rarely, no more than twice a year, with a cloud-soft voice and a gentle smile, cool and aloof.  Despite the pain caused by her conversion and entry into Carmel, her family retained a very rich love towards her which she reciprocated.  Edith could kneel for hours in prayer, without moving - and genuinely found it difficult to understand why others could not do the same.  The severe aspect of her character arose from the very high standards that Edith set for herself, rather than any antagonism towards others.  It was also expressed in her implacable opposition to the Nazis - she would have approved entirely of the action of the Dutch bishops which led to her own martyrdom.  At one of her interrogations with the German authorities, before her arrest, she replaced the expected Nazi salute with the words: “Praised be Jesus Christ!”.

Edith Stein is an example to us of the part that lay people have to play in the Church, both in her life of prayer and in her work with others in the world.  She is at the same time an example to us of the part which  religious (nuns, monks and priests) have to play in the Church.  The thread which links these together is her obedience to God’s grace, which led her from unbelief to the Catholic faith, and on to her life as a Carmelite nun.

[An appreciation of Edith Stein alongside John Henry Newman can be found here: St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.]

Fatima: sacrifices for souls

The Collects at Mass during these early days of Lent remind us very much of the character of self-denial that is a feature of this season. The recently adopted English translations appear to me to bring this out with a clarity that represents a strength of those translations.

The Collect for the Friday of the first week of Lent reads:

Grant that your faithful, O Lord, we pray, may be so conformed to the paschal observances, that the bodily discipline now solemnly begun may bear fruit in the souls of all.

In the course of the events at Fatima, a key message of the Angel whose apparitions presaged those of the Virgin Mary herself was that of offering sacrifices. At the first apparition, in Sr Lucia's account, the Angel invited the children to pray:

My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love You! I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love You!".

At the second apparition, the Angel urged the children to offer prayers and sacrifices to the Most High:

"Make of everything you can a sacrifice, and offer it to God as an act of reparation for the sins by which he is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners."

In her memories of Jacinta, Sr Lucia repeatedly tells stories of how Jacinta made little sacrifices within her daily life, and encouraged the other children in doing likewise, in the spirit of the Angel's request. So, for example, during a day in the fields with the sheep, they might have given their lunch to those they met who were poorer than themselves.

In the spirit of my earlier post marking the Fatima anniversary, my literary investigation of this theme took me next to the life of St Edith Stein. Identifying with Queen Esther, Edith made a particular offering of her life for the Jewish people, as witnessed in a letter of 31st October 1938 ....

And [I also trust] in the Lord's having accepted my life for all of them [ie here own family]. I keep having to think of Queen Esther who was taken from among her own people precisely that she might represent them before the king. I am a very poor and powerless little Esther, but the King who chose me is infinitely great and merciful. That is such a great comfort.

... and by the words that she was heard to say to her sister Rosa as they were both arrested by the Germans at the convent in Echt:

Come, Rosa, we are going for our people. 

My third step was to the story of Cassie Bernall, who died during the Columbine School shootings of 20th April 1999. Though some news reports suggest that Cassie's reported exchange with the student who shot her has in fact been mistaken for the dialogue with another student (who survived), nevertheless a key witness has remained certain of his attribution of the exchange to Cassie. Asked if she believed in God, Cassie is reported to have replied "Yes" before being shot. Cassie's mother has written the story of her daughter - a fraught and challenging teenager, who experienced a conversion to Christ - in a book She said Yes: the unlikely martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. In the book, Misty Bernall reports the words of a pastor who knew Cassie during the two years immediately before her death:

Cassie struggled like everyone struggles, but she knew what she had to do to let Christ live in her. It's called dying to yourself, and it has to be done daily. It means learning to break out of the selfish life ....It's not a negative thing, but a way of freeing yourself to live life more fully.

The world looks to Cassie's "yes" of April 20, but we need to look at the daily "yes" she said day after day, month after month, before giving that final answer....

It's not a question of doing great deeds, but of being selfless in small things. Cassie used to come with us to a ministry for crack addicts downtown. We'd eat with the guys, and play basketball, or just hang out with them. That's what it's all about..... Reaching out, being willing to make sacrifices for something bigger than your own happiness and comfort.

We come like the shepherds who followed the call of the angel ....

Fr Raniero Cantalamessa is the preacher to the Pontifical Household, and has been so for many years. One of the tasks associated with this office is that of preaching the sermons to the Holy Father and his co-workers in the Vatican during Advent. The text of his fourth sermon for Advent 2016 is at the Vatican Radio website, and is worth reading. The prayer offered below the extract from Fr Cantalamessa's homily is one that I used one Christmas with children and families in a parish several years ago.

St. Augustine distinguished between two ways of celebrating an event in salvation history: as a mystery (in sacramento) or as a simple anniversary. In the celebration of an anniversary, he said, we only need to “indicate with a religious solemnity the day of the year in which the remembrance of the event itself occurs.” In the celebration of a mystery, however, “not only is the event commemorated, but we do so in a way that its significance for us is understood and received devoutly."

Christmas is not a celebration in the category of an anniversary. (As we know, the choice of December 25 as the date was chosen for symbolic rather than historical reasons.) It is a celebration in the category of a mystery that needs to be understood in terms of its significance for us. St. Leo the Great had already highlighted the mystical significance of the “the sacrament of the Nativity of Christ” saying, “Just as we have been crucified with him in his passion, been raised with him in his resurrection, . . . so too have we been born along with him in his Nativity.”

A prayer for a visit to the Crib during Christmas time

[This prayer was adapted from a meditation of St Edith Stein]

Dear Jesus, your hands reach out to us as we come to the Crib.
We come like the shepherds who followed the call of the angel.
We come like the wise men who followed the star.
“Follow me” say your little hands.

May we always listen to you when you call us.
Keep us together in faith and in hope.
Dear Jesus, your open hands welcome us, and they ask us at the same time.
They ask us to be at the service of your Peace.

Open our hearts to people who are suffering.
May each of us offer signs of friendship and welcome to people who are less well off than us.
Dear Jesus, your open hands welcome us, and they ask us at the same time.
They ask us to give our lives to you.

May we choose the way in life that you want us to follow.
In the light of Christmas, may we face the problems of life today, together with people of other Churches and religions.
Mary, you are the Mother of Love.
You praised the great things done by the Lord.
You sang about how God kept his promises to the people of Israel.

Mother of Love, protect our families.
Help them to stay together.
Give them the happiness of loving and passing on life.
Amen.

BBC Radio 4: "The Pope's Letters"

I did not see the Panorama programme broadcast on Monday, but I have just listened to the 45 minute Radio 4 broadcast "The Pope's Letters". As I understand it, this programme contained more substantial extracts from the letters themselves - having 15 minutes more than the Panorama broadcast. The comments below relate to the radio programme - I am unable to say how much they might also apply or not apply to the television broadcast.

The programme is available to listen to at the BBC website: here. I do strongly recommend it. It is not clear how long it will be available here, but I would expect a week or a month. Hopefully it will be available as a podcast at some point for download.

I do strongly recommend the programme. It is, as I suggested at the end of my previous post about these letters, a story of a friendship. The extracts from John Paul II's letters chosen in the programme portray this friendship wonderfully and, particularly in connection with Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka's reaction to the shooting in St Peter's Square, very movingly. The programme provides a testimony to a friendship of a profoundly Christian character. Interestingly, both Ed Stourton and Carl Bernstein recognise the friendship as being one that does not fit readily into any category - in Carl Bernstein's phrase it is "sui generis". There is a model of friendship here - and, indeed, of love, in its truest sense - for both Christians and for others.

The suggestion that there was a degree of romantic engagement of Anna-Teresa towards Karol Wojytla is made in the programme by Bill and Jadwiga Smith, the executors of Anna-Teresa's estate. In the programme, and in comparison to the extracts from the letters read in the programme, this comes over as somewhat speculative on their part. Likewise speculative is some of the comment on the attitude of "the Vatican" towards Anna-Teresa's contact with Pope John Paul II. But together, these two elements make up less than two minutes of a 45 minute programme.

It would be fascinating to be able to read the discussion in the correspondence, from both sides, about Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem. This is referred to in the programme, but not cited. Their discussion is reportedly quite extensive.

The programme does full justice to the origin of the friendship between Anna-Teresa and Karol Wojtyla in their shared philosophical interests. The inter-relation of matters of philosophy and of personal life in the correspondence are apparent in the programme. Those familiar with the letters of Edith Stein to Roman Ingarden will recognise this in their correspondence, too. There is a real sense of a community of both ideas and life within the particular phenomenological school to which these writers belong.

As I say, highly recommended.

Pope John Paul II: The Secret Letters

I suspect that tonight's BBC Panorama programme will be something of a non-story. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and Wanda Poltawska (along with her husband, Andrez) were among Karol Wojtyla's closest academic collaborators. The former's English translation of The Acting Person has been criticised for presenting the thought of the original of the second Polish edition in a way that reduces the metaphysical content of the person who is the subject of action in favour of a more strongly phenomenological interpretation. The collaboration also appears to have extended to include Anna-Teresa's husband, who advised Pope John Paull II on economic matters, his area of academic expertise. Wanda Poltawska collaborated in the leadership of an institute for the family in Krakow, and afterwards in consultation with Pope John Paul II in Rome.

At heart, they are professional, academic collaborations. And that offers two points of context. It is not unusual for academics, visiting an overseas country for a conference, to stay as house guests of faculty of the academic institutions who have invited them. And the academic field that was/is phenomenology is characterised by a closeness of friendships arising from these collaborations that is very particular. As I write, I have, for example, just read the text of a letter from Edith Stein to her baptismal sponsor, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, written just after Edith's entry into Cologne Carmel. It was whilst staying at the Conrad-Martius' during a vacation that Edith read St Teresa's Life; but the close personal friendship between them began through their shared academic circle. There is nothing untoward in the thought that they would spend holidays together - Edith and her friends would go out for country walks, somewhat analogous to Karol Wojytla's camping holidays with his friends and collaborators.

To characterise or headline the correspondence as being "secret letters between Pope John Paul II and a married woman" therefore contains a suggestion that is somewhat misleading. As part of the BBC's own website coverage indicates:

Carl Bernstein, the veteran investigative journalist of Watergate fame, was the first writer to get some sense of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka's importance in John Paul's life. He interviewed her for the book His Holiness in the 1990s.

"We are talking about Saint John Paul. This is an extraordinary relationship," he says. "It's not illicit, nonetheless it's fascinating. It changes our perception of him."

The BBC website coverage ahead of the Panorama programme is here and here. It is interesting to note that Ed Stourton admits that his suggestion that Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka declared that she had fallen in love with Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II is speculation on his part, his reading into the latter's letters what might have been in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka's side of the correspondence (not seen by the BBC). According to a Guardian report, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka denied any romantic involvement with John Paul II; and a Vatican source has observed that the forthcoming programme is "more smoke than fire". Ed Stourton is very clear that nothing that he has discovered would have been a barrier to Pope John Paul II's canonisation.

I wonder whether, more than anything else, the letters will offer a model of what constitutes friendship and communion of persons for others to follow. For a generation characterised by the "relationship" that is fluid and without anything of objective permanence, a testimony of permanent friendship (and the nature of the person, and how persons enter into communion with each other, was a key concern of the particular phenomenological circle in which Karol Wojtyla, Edith Stein and the others moved) from this earlier generation might have something to offer. There might well be a PhD for someone in that particular study. The photographs accompanying the BBC coverage are perhaps interesting in this regard, too.

Vera and Edith

As Zero and I walked down Victoria Street after seeing the film Testament of Youth recently, I observed that I thought Vera Brittain had a somewhat similar personality to that of Edith Stein. They both enjoyed a certain severity of character combined with a capacity to feel very deeply. And as I made this observation, I realised that the similarity extended to them both being very determined young women, in particular with regard to their academic desires. Oh, and do see the film - it is very beautifully made and striking in its portrayal of characters and events.

I later remembered that Edith had also volunteered as a nurse during the First World War, though her experience in that regard was significantly different than that of Vera. Their motivations for volunteering, though, were quite similar - a certain restrained patriotism and a sense that they could not do otherwise when people they knew were serving in their respective armed forces. Edith, like Vera, also lost friends to the war, perhaps most notably Adolf Reinach.

Edith and Vera were contemporaries in another sense, too. They both embarked upon university studies when there were still barriers to women in academia. Edith was blocked from habilitation at Gottingen because she was a woman, prompting a strong letter on her part to the minister of education at the time. That resulted in a letter to German universities pointing out that being a woman was not a barrier to habilitation, too late to help Edith. Somewhat analogously, Vera began her studies at Oxford at a time when women could study at the university, but not actually take the degrees they earned there.

At the time when their lives were most alike, Edith shared a lack of religious belief (against the background of her Jewish family) with Vera.

By the time I had recognised these parallels between Vera and Edith, certainly as far as their younger lives were concerned, I remembered something else.

Just as Vera had written a memoir - Testament of Youth - Edith had also written a memoir - Life in a Jewish Family - though its account is cut short in 1916, a result of Edith's arrest by the Germans in August 1942. Though the motivation for writing was very different for the two, nevertheless the timescale covered and a certain similarity of experience makes them kindred texts.

So, not having read Vera Brittain's book before seeing the film, I am now engaged in a parallel reading of Testament of Youth and Life in a Jewish Family.

In Exaltatione Sanctae Crucis- UPDATED

As the Nazis imposed their terror across Europe, particularly directing it against the Jewish people, Edith Stein wrote of a cross being laid upon the Jewish people. Her request to her superiors to be allowed to offer her life in Carmel as a particular offering on the behalf of a people who she still considered as her own arose as she sensed that it was those who knew of the mystery of the cross who had a responsibility to bear it on the behalf of others.

In our own times, events in Iraq and Syria (and other parts of the world, too, Nigeria and Ukraine coming most readily to mind) demonstrate the existence of an evil that it is difficult to comprehend in the comfort of homes in the developed nations of Europe and the Americas. Indeed, a cross is placed upon many peoples, Christians and non-Christians, in our own times. In a very different way, the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa also represents a cross laid particularly upon the poorer peoples of the region.

That cross is first of all a sign of witness - and the stories of those who, threatened with death if they did not abandon their Christian faith in favour of Islam, inspire in a way that is a very particular grace for  those of us who are able to live our Christian lives in relative comfort. It was striking last Sunday to join a demonstration on Whitehall calling for a UN protected safe haven for the peoples of the Nineveh plains and to see, among the placards of a more political nature, a number of demonstrators holding up crosses. I think there is an interesting reflection to be made upon the meaning of the cross held up on such an occasion. I am also reminded of a passage from Pope John Paul II's encyclical Ut Unum Sint, where he suggests that the fullness of Christian unity is already achieved at that moment when witness to the point of death, martyrdom, is exacted of the Christian believer. There is a profound unity lived out among the different Christian denominations who share a common experience of terror in Syria and Iraq.

The cross is also a sign in favour of the dignity of the human person. It is a sign that says that suffering is not without meaning and that, whilst suffering remains in a true sense an evil that is to be overcome, it can be turned to good. It is also a sign that says that God made man in Jesus Christ, and the Church that is his mystical body on earth, stand with those who are the subjects of the mystery of evil, the mysterium iniquitatis to which I think both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI referred. In this sense, it is a sign that is offered to all peoples, whether or not they are Christians.

In his homily at Mass this morning, Father spoke of the cross as a key that opens three doors, the doors of love, of faith and of hope. In a way that was rich in a spirit of the new movements, Father suggested that the cross is the key that opens to us a door through which we can perceive God's love for us, and come to recognise just how much we are loved by Him. He then suggested that the cross is a door through which we can see what the future promises us in eternity; as we encounter the cross we are brought into touch with eternity. And finally, Father suggested that the cross enables us to see that the difficulties and pain that we meet in life have a reason and a meaning. The cross offers us love, faith and hope.

The celebration of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross on a Sunday is perhaps particularly fortuitous in 2014, offering an opportunity for all of us to recognise our call to take up the cross and to carry it on the behalf of, and in solidarity with, those upon whom, through the workings of the mysterium iniquitatis, it is laid involuntarily in our own time.

The Ark, Edith Stein and martyrdom as unity: a reflection for the canonisation of John Paul II

The canonisations of Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII tomorrow have somewhat caught up with me before I have really had time to reflect on their significance. Perhaps that's a good sign - I do have a "real life" to live.

I do not really feel that I "know" Pope John XXIII in the same way that I "know" John Paul II. I do have Meriol Trevor's life of John XXIII on my bookshelves, so I have some wherewithal to correct that.

As I have asked myself this morning what particular thoughts I feel that I take away from the ministry of Pope John Paul II, three things have come to mind. They are intensely personal, and do not represent any systematic appreciation of Pope John Paul.

 

The first thought has been my memory of a visit to the Church of the "Ark of the Lord" in Nowa Huta, Krakow, many years ago. As Archbishop of Krakow, Karol Woyjtla consecrated this Church. It was built by hand by the people, against the opposition of the Communist authorities, who had built the Nowa Huta suburb of Krakow as an "atheist" town focussed around it's giant steel works and intended to be without religious presence of any kind. The Church is designed to look like the Ark - hence the boat shape of its roof and the general shape of the building. Perhaps more fundamentally than its influence on the opposition of the Polish people to Communist rule, the Church stands as a sign of the presence of God, made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, in the midst of a God-less world. It's significance therefore abides, long after its original historical context has disappeared. Again, one can see a political dimension to much of Pope John Paul's ministry, particularly with regard to his pastoral visits to then-Communist countries. But fundamentally, should we not see that ministry - and the pastoral visits that were so much a part of it - as being a witness to the presence of God in our world, a presence here, where each individual nation and people lives?

 

The second thought that comes to me is being in St Peter's Square on 11th October 1998 for the canonisation of Edith Stein. I travelled to Rome for the canonisation after an aside remark made to me. It still comes to my mind as one of the highlights of my ecclesial experience. Something of my experience of Edith Stein is reflected in this post, just encountered as a result of a Google search. I have my own copy of the booklet for the ceremony in front of me as I post. The philosophical affinity between the two is one thing; the experience of living under persecution is another. Edith is by far and away my favourite saint. A good friend has a quite distinct way of smiling whenever I refer to her ..... Whilst the Christian message is never tied to one particular philosophical outlook, it can nevertheless find a particular expression within different philosophical frameworks. In a post-modern world, where pre-conceived frameworks are rejected as starting points, realist phenomenology appears to me to offer a potentially powerful way to open up access to reality. Would the contemporary advocacy of "gender theory", for example, really stand up to the eidetic enquiry of a realist phenomenology? Pope John Paul II's encyclicals and apostolic constitutions are resplendent with a phenomenological style.

The third thought is a short passage tucked away in the encyclical Ut Unum Sint, n.84. It occurs to me quite regularly. It goes neatly with the emphasis on the reality of the imperfect communion that exists as a result of baptism that I recall noticing in Pope Benedict's address to leaders of other Christian communities during his visit to Cologne in 2005. It indicates that, in martyrdom, there exists already in reality that unity among Christians of different denominations that is the aim of ecumenical endeavour. My emphasis added in bold:

In a theocentric vision, we Christians already have a common Martyrology. This also includes the martyrs of our own century, more numerous than one might think, and it shows how, at a profound level, God preserves communion among the baptized in the supreme demand of faith, manifested in the sacrifice of life itself. The fact that one can die for the faith shows that other demands of the faith can also be met. I have already remarked, and with deep joy, how an imperfect but real communion is preserved and is growing at many levels of ecclesial life. I now add that this communion is already perfect in what we all consider the highest point of the life of grace, martyria unto death, the truest communion possible with Christ who shed his Blood, and by that sacrifice brings near those who once were far off (cf. Eph 2:13).

While for all Christian communities the martyrs are the proof of the power of grace, they are not the only ones to bear witness to that power. Albeit in an invisible way, the communion between our Communities, even if still incomplete, is truly and solidly grounded in the full communion of the Saints—those who, at the end of a life faithful to grace, are in communion with Christ in glory. These Saints come from all the Churches and Ecclesial Communities which gave them entrance into the communion of salvation.

It is interesting that, though we are now into the second papal ministry since the death of Pope John Paul II, all three of these themes have retained their resonance through changing political and social circumstances.

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

My favourite saint.

This is the biography published on the Vatican website, to mark her canonisation.

And a piece I wrote a year ago which likens her life to that of Blessed John Henry Newman.

 "We bow down before the testimony of the life and death of Edith Stein, an outstanding daughter of Israel and at the same time a daughter of the Carmelite Order, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a personality who united within her rich life a dramatic synthesis of our century. It was the synthesis of a history full of deep wounds that are still hurting ... and also the synthesis of the full truth about man. All this came together in a single heart that remained restless and unfulfilled until it finally found rest in God." These were the words of Pope John Paul II when he beatified Edith Stein in Cologne on 1 May 1987.

Inspired by the Rule of Carmel

Saturday last was not a day for visiting anywhere in Kent - it rained, and, at least according to a road sign on our way to Faversham, the Kent County Show was closed.

Faversham houses the national shrine in England dedicated to St Jude. The parish attached to the shrine is in the care of the Carmelites, (O.Carm variety). Of interest on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel are four icons in the shrine dedicated to people inspired by the rule of the Carmelite order. They are featured at the bottom of this page. Best known among these are perhaps Blessed Titus Brandsma and St Edith Stein.

I also found it striking to look at the three windows described on the page under the heading "The stained glass in the outer shrine area". It is unusual to see a representation of God the Father such as that shown in one of the windows. Working from right to left, one sees this image in a relation to that of the Virgin Mary overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and bearing the Son and then in relation to the image of the Resurrection of Christ. Together, they offer the mystery of salvation history in a Trinitarian and Marian perspective. On the web page, only parts of the windows are shown, so I post below full images of the windows. The full images contain details not visible on the web page.

Diamond

I have been engaged in a classic piece of teachers overtime this last week - marking scripts for an examination board - and that means that I have only loosely followed the build up to this weekend's celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. It has been interesting to read some of the more personal stories about Queen Elizabeth that are told in some of the interviews with those who meet her. One example of this is Archbishop Rowan Williams' observations about the Queen's sense of humour. His characterisation of Her Majesty as friendly, able to be informal and humorous, and at the same time able to retain an appropriate dignity, is typical of these.

What I think the interviews and coverage reveal about Queen Elizabeth II is a very striking congruence (in mathematics, congruent shapes are shapes that are identical in both shape and size and can therefore be layed exactly on top of each other, whereas similar shapes are the same shape but different size so do not successfully lie on top of each other) between the office that she fulfils and she as the person who fulfils that office. Newspaper accounts of her weekly meeting with Prime Ministers, for example, indicate that those meetings involve a certain intimacy and a well informed discussion of current events. During her very successful visit to Ireland, it was not just the person of Elizabeth II or the office of Queen separately that made for success, but the unity of the person and the office. It is almost impossible to think of any other person who could have carried out that visit, as monarch and as person, in quite the way that Elizabeth did.

If one part of that congruence of person and office is to be found in the way in which Her Majesty carries out functions of state, another part of it is to be found in her relationship to the ordinary people of Britain. The warmth of public response, for example, to the pageant on the River Thames due to take place later today is made up of a respect for the office of the Queen combined with a regard for Elizabeth II as a person. The events of this Diamond Jubilee weekend manifest vividly this aspect of the congruence of person and office to be found in Queen Elizabeth II.

One of Edith Stein's phenomenological studies is one dedicated to an investigation of the ontic structure of the state. It can be seen as the last in the sequence of studies that began with her doctoral thesis on empathy, and through which the nature of the human individual and of relations between human individuals is a developing theme. One of the points that she discusses is how it is part of the nature of a state that it can be represented at times by individuals, or groups of individuals, and Edith Stein analyses this point. In most countries now this might be a prime minister or a president who comes to power in some way. It is interesting to reflect on the extent to which Queen Elizabeth II, in her office as Queen, represents in her person the British state. Clearly this representative role is shared with those who hold office in government, perhaps particularly the Prime Minister; but it is, strictly speaking, Her Majesty who hosts state visits by Heads of State from other countries. The constitutional arrangement in Britain gives the Queen a very nuanced role in this representative dimension of her office, and a reflection on it brings us back to the congruence of person and office that we have seen in Elizabeth II.

Another aspect of the ontic structure of the state discussed by Edith Stein is the nature of the different human communities that can come together within the state, and the way in which the state is a distinctive kind of community characterised by sovereignty. This discussion is rooted in a technical understanding of different types of community developed in her earlier phenomenological studies (translated into English by the terms "crowd", "community", "association"). The individuals who belong to a state form a community with a certain common life current, this community having relations to other communities both within and subsidiary to the state concerned and within other states. Edith Stein's discussion of ethnicity in regard to the nature of the state, written in the context of the increasing influence of Nazi ideology in Germany, has an application in a quite different context in Britain today. She concludes that a state does not need a specific ethnic community to exist as a state properly so called and nor does an ethnic community require a particular form of state government of its own in order that it should live successfully within a state. What is required is that the civic organisation of the state permits ethnic communities that form part of the state to live according to their own cultural strength and life (their "personality", in Edith's technical use of that term). In the context of the Diamond Jubilee, Edith's discussion brings us back to considering Queen Elizabeth's relation to the ordinary people of Britain and the extent to which she is able, by way of the congruence of her office and person, to form among them a community that can be described as a state whilst respecting entirely the wide range of other communities (within the state) to which people also belong. It is the combined regard for the office and the person that is critical to understanding what Queen Elizabeth achieves for us in this regard.

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross: Patroness of Europe

9th August is the feast of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein). It has the rank of Feast in the dioceses of Europe, since St Teresa is one of the patron saints of Europe. The UK and Ireland edition of Magnificat includes proper prayers and readings for the feast day - I suspect that only the most alert of parish clergy will realise to use them. The reading from the Book of Esther is particularly significant for the way in which St Teresa understood her own vocation. The "Meditation of the Day" is from Edith Stein's own writings on women and women's education:

The more clearly and distinctly the student understands the relation of the Creator and the creted, the facts concerning the fall of man and redemption, the deep mysteries of the divine inner life of the Trinity, the nature of Christ, the essence and the exalted calling of the Mother of God, the deeper will her union with divinity, the Redeemer, and the Queen of heaven.

One can see clearly in the lives of the saints that their advancement in personal sanctity and in a more profound insight into the truths of faith postulate and promote each other reciprocally. This is also precisely true of those saints without a scholarly education.

A good account of Edith Stein's life, and its meaning, can be found on the website of the Holy See, from the page devoted to beatifications and canonisations. The August 2011 issue of Bible Alive also has an article about Edith Stein, which reads her life alongside that of Cardinal John Henry Newman, beatified during Pope Benedict's visit to the UK last year. This article also draws on the account that Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Edith's closest friend, Godmother and philosophical colleague, gives of her life.

According to Hedwig Conrad-Martius, the essence of Edith Stein can be found in the beauty of a three-fold obedience to the real: that of the saint (the interior receptivity of the soul to the life of the Holy Spirit), that which she lived in a spirit of child-likeness (openness of personality), and that which she lived as a philosopher dedicated to the truth of things as they presented themselves to her (phenomenology). That is, obedience to the truth of things, the truth of persons and to the truth of God. This is the meaning of her life for us today.

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.

Pope Benedict XVI at Westminster Cathedral and Edith Stein

See here. I have enjoyed by fast read of this post, and will be going back to study it more fully.

St Edith Stein: A reflection for Education Sunday

EDUCATION IS ABOUT BRINGING OUR STUDENTS TO KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT IS TRUE, GOOD, BEAUTIFUL AND NOBLE

The photograph above shows Edith Stein as a student at Gottingen University (1913-1916). She moved from Breslau to Gottingen to study philosophy( in the school of phenomenology) under Edmund Husserl . This period of her life can be characterised as a “search for the truth”, and it was this sense of what phenomenology was about that drew Edith to Gottingen. Edith herself, arriving at Gottingen without any living faith of her own though she was from a Jewish family, describes her encounter with religious phenomena recognised as an area worthy of phenomenological study. She also met  people who commanded her respect and were religious believers (generally Protestant Christians). And in a particular encounter with the widow of one of here colleagues, she describes her first encounter with the power of the Cross. After reading the autobiography of St Teresa of Avila, Edith was received into the Catholic Church.

EDITH STEIN AS A MODEL OF OUR ROLE AS TEACHERS

This second photo shows Edith Stein while on the staff of the Dominican Convent in Speyer (photo taken in 1931, at the end of her time on the staff of the Convent). Edith taught there for eight years after becoming a Catholic, working with trainee teachers at the school as well as teaching the pupils; she lived an almost religious life with the nuns. These are the memories of two of Edith's students from this time:

"With very few words - just by her personality and everything which emanated from her - she set me on my way, not only in my studies but in my whole moral life. With her you felt that you were in an atmosphere of everything noble, pure and sublime which simply carried you up with it”.

“She really gave us everything. We were still very young, but none of us has forgotten the charm of her personality…Her heart stood wide open for everything noble and beautiful to take its place beside her union with God. That is how she stands before us still”.

St. Edith Stein and the Cross in "The Hidden Life"

I will always link to something about St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), but found this particularly useful, at Blog-by-the-Sea.

9th August 2009: Feast of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

In Europe, the feast of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) has the liturgical rank of "feast" - she is one of the six patron saints of Europe. Unfortunately, this is still not quite enough to enable her to "trump" a Sunday.

Blog-by-the-Sea has remembered the feast day, and has a category with a series of posts from previous years about St Teresa Benedicta. This is the post with a biography of St Teresa Benedicta.

One of my most memorable days was 11th October 1998, when I was in Saint Peter's Square for her canonisation.


Those who know me wouldn't have expected me to do anything else today other than pray an office of St Teresa Benedicta!

Lord God of our ancestors, you brought Saint Teresa Benedicta to the fullnes of the science of the cross at the hour of her martyrdom.
Fill us with that same knowledge; and, through her intercession, allow us always to seek after you, the supreme truth; and to remain faithful until death to the covenant of love ratified in the blood of your Son for the salvation of all.
Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen

Faith Matters Lecture 3: Who is Jesus?

Fr Gerald O'Collins SJ gave the third lecture in the "Faith Matters" series at Westminster Cathedral yesterday evening. The transcript of his lecture can be found here, on the website of Wesminster Diocese. This offered an opportunity for nostalgia, as I attended lectures on fundamental theology given by Fr O'Collins when I was a student in Rome (this isn't anything that special since Father taught at the Gregorian University for some 33 years so there are many a few of us who experienced his lectures at one time or another). Dr Anthony Towey, of St Mary's University College Strawberry Hill, who chaired the lecture, is also a contact from my past.

It was one of the questions at the end of the lecture that I think really focussed on what the lecture was about. This asked about how we can actually come to a genuine personal relationship with Jesus Christ today. This question is worthy of reflection in two ways: delineating exactly what the question means, and then providing a fully Catholic answer.

The "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" referred to in the question seems to me to indicate an attachment to Christ that has a spontaneity about it. By this I mean an attachment that seems to arise from within the individual concerned, and so to have a liveliness and energy about it that would not be the case for an attachment that is in some way achieved from outside (by a form of coercion or by an adaptation to surrounding culture or norms). There may be external factors that contribute to the situation of that attachment, but the core of it arises from within. It is spontaneous in perhaps three senses: the initiative is essentially internal to the individual, it is lively and energetic, and in being both of these it is also profoundly an act of freedom. In the Catholic Church, we can look with a certain envy towards Evangelical protestants to see this spontaneity; but it is also to be seen in the Church in the commitment of Catholics who participate in the life and activities of the new movements.

To introduce a Catholic answer to how this "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" can be achieved, let me try to describe a distinction made by Edith Stein in her doctoral thesis On Empathy. She distinguishes between a physical human body that is presented through sense perception (and which could be "my" body or the body of another) and the "living body", which is how my own body is presented to my consciousness, as something that is always "here" whereas other things, including other bodies, are always "there". The "living body" is therefore to be associated with the "I", the personal consciousness. In Edith's own words, the "I" or individual is:

.. a unified object inseparably joining together the conscious unity of an"I" and a physical body in such a way that each of them takes on a new character. The physical body occurs as a living body; consciousness occurs as the soul of the unified individual.

Edith Stein then continues her analysis to interpret the physical body of others (that we can percieve through the senses) as being also, for the other, a living body united with an "I" and capable of consciousness. Acts of empathy involve our ability to place ourselves, in a kind of secondary way, into the place of the physical body of the other so that we experience it as a living body, a centre of the others "I". Such acts represent inter-personal relationship. In her habilitation thesis, Edith Stein develops this idea of one-to-one personal relationship further in a study of relationships between individuals and communities. She suggests that communities have a kind of personal character, a kind of "I" of their own; they have a "spiritual sphere" with which the members of the community form a relationship. One might think of it as empathy between an individual and a community. What is interesting, though, is that the community has a "physical body" - it has physical members who can be seen, touched, heard - but it also has a kind of "living body" that cannot just be identified with the sum total of its individual physical members but in some way exists "in them" when the community undertakes activities of its life. And this "living body" has a kind of "soul" analagous to that which Edith Stein proposes for the "living body" of the individual person.

Now, where is this going in trying to answer our question about achieving a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ"? What I want to suggest is that our personal relationship with Jesus Christ is a personal relationship with his Church, the Catholic Church. Just as our empathic relations to other persons are mediated through a physical perceivable body, so with our relationship with Jesus Christ. It was first of all the physical body of Jesus, made flesh in Palestine; but it is for us now the physical body of his Church, under its aspect as a visible, tangible institution, and most fundamentally expressed in the hierarchical nature of the Church. It is the Church as institution, represented in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar by the figure of St Peter and his successors. But the physical body reveals to us a "living body", and the term "Mystical Body of Christ" applied to the Church is profoundly significant in this regard. Our empathetic relation to the Church leads us to enter into the space of this "living body", this "mystical body", which is the love of God. For von Balthasar, this aspect of the Church is represented by the figure of St John, the disciple whom Jesus loved.

The achieving of a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" is about moving from an experience of the institutional body (which is good and utterly indispensable - and what is missing for the Evangelical protestant) to an experience of the "mystical body" (which cannot be separated from the institutional body, though the Evangelical protestant undoubtedly has some experience of this through an ever abundant grace from God and through a faithfulness to Scripture).

For most Catholics, this rather lofty reflection boils down to a very practical matter. It is about coming to see Sunday Mass as the awe inspiring presence and action of the love of God (St John) through the visible and audible forms of the liturgical texts and actions (St Peter). In this context, one can talk about meeting Jesus in the Scriptures, in the witness of the community of the faithful, in the priest who is most especially "in persona Christi" at the celebration of Mass, and in reception of Holy Communion. These meetings are all expressed in the liturgical form.

All these forms of meeting with Jesus Christ need to be lived out "again", outside of the liturgy itself, so that they become part of our lives and in turn bring us back to the liturgy with the threefold spontaneity to which I referred above. We should not be surprised if a parish that has no devotional life outside of the liturgy - Scripture study or prayer groups, Eucharistic Adoration, etc - has an experience of the liturgy that is little more than formalistic.

For Hans Urs von Balthasar, the figure in the Church who joins hierarchical structure (St Peter) to charismatic love (St John) is the Mother of the Lord, the Virgin Mary. Mary is a figure who represents the whole of the Church, in both its "physical" and its "mystical" aspects. A simply pietistic Marian devotion is, I think, of limited value. I prefer the notion of a "Marian character", which should spread through every aspect of Christian life, and not be an "add-on devotion". The ecclesial nature of our relationship with Jesus Christ is in this way at once also a Marian nature.

It is very interesting to recognise features that are almost universal among the new movements in the Church, the locus in which many people are able to achieve the "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" to which the question referred: a Marian charism, Eucharistic Adoration, reflection on the Scriptures and on their application to daily living, and faithfulness to the hierarchy of the Church.