Jubilee of Workers

 The days 1st-4th May are being marked as a Jubilee of Workers. As the present Labour government came to power in the UK last summer, promises made with regard to "working people" prompted a debate about exactly who were the people being referred to by that phrase "working people". Whilst that debate had a very specific political context, it nevertheless indicated a change in working lives that has taken place over time. When Pope Leo XIII first addressed "the social question" in his encyclical Rerum Novarum it was a matter of addressing the impact of industrialisation and the move away from an agricultural or artisanal experience of work. Today, in many countries, it is a question of the development of a service economy alongside a reducing manufacturing base. The delineation of who is intended by the term "worker" might now be very different than it was in the past.

Pope St John Paul II marked the ninetieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum with his encyclical Laborem Exercens, on the nature of human work. The encyclical is a wide ranging account of the nature of work understood in the light of Biblical and Catholic teaching, and of the contrary trends that face such teaching. A notable distinction is drawn between work in the subjective sense, that is, seen as the person who acts in working; and work in its objective sense, that is, the type of work that is carried out.

When dealing with human work in the fundamental dimension of its subject, that is to say, the human person doing the work, one must make at least a summary evaluation of developments during the ninety years since Rerum Novarum in relation to the subjective dimension of work. Although the subject of work is always the same, that is to say man, nevertheless wide-ranging changes take place in the objective aspect. While one can say that, by reason of its subject, work is one single thing (one and unrepeatable every time), yet when one takes into consideration its objective directions one is forced to admit that there exist many works, many different sorts of work. The development of human civilization brings continual enrichment in this field. But at the same time, one cannot fail to note that in the process of this development not only do new forms of work appear but also others disappear. Even if one accepts that on the whole this is a normal phenomenon, it must still be seen whether certain ethically and socially dangerous irregularities creep in, and to what extent.

.... the primary basis of the value of work is man himself, who is its subject. This leads immediately to a very important conclusion of an ethical nature: however true it may be that man is destined for work and called to it, in the first place work is "for man" and not man "for work". Through this conclusion one rightly comes to recognize the pre-eminence of the subjective meaning of work over the objective one. Given this way of understanding things, and presupposing that different sorts of work that people do can have greater or lesser objective value, let us try nevertheless to show that each sort is judged above all by the measure of the dignity of the subject of work, that is to say the person, the individual who carries it out. 

 Madeleine Delbrel (1904-1964) lived and worked for many years in a suburb of Paris that was dominated in political terms by the Communist party. She can perhaps be described as a social worker and activist, recognising that, though she disagreed with Communism as an idea, the people who were Communists were nevertheless her neighbours. In 1961 she gave a talk in which she compared Communist hope (in French, espoir, a word expressing a human aspiration) and Christian hope (esperance, a word expressing more precisely the theological virtue of hope). The text of the talk can be found in the collection We, the Ordinary People of the Streets; it can represent for us a conversation between Christianity and a world of work where a practical atheism and materialism exists even if it is not supported by an explicitly Communist ideology.

The word "hope" [l'espoir] is too modest to express what the Communists wish for the future. It is also too weak. The French word "hope" [l'esperance] works better, but we cannot lose from sight even for a moment that Communist hope and Christian hope are two fundamentally different and opposed things.

The word "hope" applied to the Communists designates a human hope, a hope that concerns human objects. The word "hope" applied to the hope of the Christian is a reality that comes wholly from God, to which we do not as human being have a right. It concerns a supernatural hope, a divine hope, a hope that is bathed in the very mystery of God's inner life.

Madeleine Delbrel spells out the elements of the hope of the Communist - a hope for the poor, a hope for the future, a hope by the individual Communist for all those ways in which life might be better.  She explains how this hope is expressed in a Communist understanding of an evolving world.  She suggests that the encounter with Communist hope should prompt the Christian in a conversion towards genuinely Christian hope, a thought we might take up in a slightly different way in the context of our neighbour of today.

... it is not a matter of seeing in it a sort complement or even less a corrective of Christian hope. I would rather say that it is by a sort of backlash that Communist hope leads us to reexamine our hope and to reexamine the realism of our hope.

She concludes by suggesting that Christian hope needs to be attentive to the human hope for which it is a fulfilment.

... The Lord proclaims the eternal Beatitudes by appealing to those who weep and hope to stop weeping, who hope for peace, who hope for justice, who hope to escape from the extremes of poverty. These are the people he calls to Christian hope.

Decrees of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints

I was delighted to hear that the Trappist monks of the monastery at Tibhirine have been recognised as martyrs - a step that makes possible their beatification. They are among the "18 companions" of Bishop Claverie.

Also a great delight: the recognition of the heroic virtues of Madeleine Delbrel, included in the same announcement from the Holy See but which only came to my attention today.

Text of notice at the Holy See website.

Peter: A rock who has been asked to love.

In May 1952, Madeleine Delbrel undertook a visit to Rome, spending some twelve hours in prayer at the tomb of St Peter in the Vatican Basilica. Madeleine travelled by train from Paris, spent her time in prayer, and returned by train, all in 24 hours. The circumstances of the visit are described in We, the Ordinary People of the Streets pp.77-78 and on pages 125-127 of the biography Madeleine Delbrel: A Life Beyond the Boundaries.

Madeleine's note of her visit was circulated to a few of her friends and can be found in We, the Ordinary People of the Streets pp.114-116. The following is an extract:

During the journey and also in Rome, I discovered the immense importance of bishops for the faith and the life of the Church.

"I will make you fishers of men". It seem to me, in relation to what we call authority, we tend to react either as liberals or as people with a fetish. We do not flow back to the bishops with everything we have encountered in or learned from the world.

Either we obey like a second-class soldier; or else at best we submit our requests for their signature. We do not bring back images, or sensations, etc, like eyes to the brain.

We're under the rule of authorizations rather than the rule of authority, which would mean to receive that which is "to be done", that of which we are meant to be "authors" in the work of God.....

I also thought a lot about the fact that, though St John is the "disciple Jesus loved", it was Peter that Jesus asked: "Do you love me?" and it was after his affirmations of love that Jesus gave him the flock. He also explained what it means to love: "That which you have done to the least of my brothers, you have done unto me".

It became clear to me how essential it is that people, all people, come to know that the hierarchical Church loves them. Peter - a rock who has been asked to love. I understood that all the expressions of the Church have to be penetrated through and through with love.

Madeleine Delbrel: Counting on Mercy

Magnificat for 4th November offered, as the "Meditation of the Day", an extract from the writings of Madeleine Delbrel. Magnificat published it under the title "Counting on Mercy". In the English translation of the original text it is the first paragraphs of a section entitled "Those who are unhappy". It is part of a study written by Madeleine, dated 1951, that reflects on what it means to be a missionary in the Church of her times. The resonance of the study as a whole to Pope Francis' ideas of "missionary parishes" and "missionary disciples" is striking, as is the comparison of the passage offered by Magnificat to the evangelising significance of the Year of Mercy. It is also worth recalling, as we read the following words, Madeleine's own radical choice to live among the workers of a Communist suburb of Paris.

We cannot let mercy dry up, as so often happens today. A greater awareness of the economic hardship of the masses cannot lead us to have scorn for other forms of suffering, or to lose interest in them.

Christ's mercy for the poor is one part of a mercy as vast as all the human griefs combined. It is a mercy for sinners, a mercy for the sick, a mercy for those lamenting their dead, a mercy for those in prison, a mercy for all the little ones.

Because of a reductively materialistic notion of poverty, we are often in danger of forgetting that there are people who are poor in other ways than merely economically; there are other little ones than the workers. There are those who are morally or psychologically weak. There are those who are poor in gifts, in appeal, in love. In addition to the oppressed classes are those who are "unclassifiable".

Those who are little, those who are poor, are not only in the working class. And the working class itself is not made up exhaustively of militants, militants who are already rich in hope, rich in heart, rich in intellectual formation.

It is not up to us to correct Christ's heart either - it belongs to all people and we have to give it to all people.

The personal love of Christ. He calls each one by name - he does not call a category. He knows each one of as the Father knows the Son.

As I looked up this extract in my copy of We, the Ordinary People of the Streets, my eye was caught by the following in the last but one paragraph of the preceding section:

All great human activities function as signs. Just as marriage is the most perfect sign of the union of Christ and his Church, and voluntary celibacy makes us live more fully the reality towards which this sign points, human work is a sign of the Church's toil over the world, a suffering and fruitful labour.

Can we continue to disbelieve in his disbelief?

Today's "Day by Day" meditation in Magnificat is extracted from the collection of writings of Madeleine Delbrel published in English under the title We, the ordinary people of the streets.

It has a striking relevance to the themes of Pope Francis' encyclical, Lumen Fidei - perhaps not least in the phrase I have used as the title of this post. At least, on my rapid scan reading of the encyclical this appears to be the case. The text of the meditation in Magnificat is taken from the second half of an essay entitled "The Good News" (p.171 ff in my copy of We, the ordinary people of the streets) and is a contribution to a series of discussions about parish life and evangelisation at a conference. If you can find the full text of the essay to read, it is worthwhile.

For his brothers and sisters around him, the Christian is a man who loves the things of this world as they really are, according to their true value, but he is also a person who prefers the God in whom he believes to all other things. This preference leads him to make certain choices. People see him choosing the invisible God. These choices pose a new question to the world, a question about whether there may not be something greater than the world...

The believer, even if his faith is weak, is never completely alone, never completely without help. The non-believer is one who knows loneliness in its absolute form, and inhuman loneliness. He is deprived of the relationship that most fundamentally belongs to him ....

Once we realise this profound misfortune that besets the non-believer, will be ever more dare to infer from what he says, from what he does, from what he seeks, that the Good News of the Gospel would be useless to him? Can we continue to disbelieve in his disbelief?  Or wouldn't the living God of the Gospel rather burn in us with an unbearable intensity to the extent that we did not cry his name out loud to those living in quiet desperation? If, in hearing us call upon God, they were to turn themselves around, it would be for them the beginning of the one and only good News.

Madeleine Delbrel: "Love for the Church"

Yesterday's feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica is a multi-layered feast. At one level it is the same feast as that of the dedication of any other Church, be it our own parish Church (celebrated only in the parish) or our own Diocesan Cathedral (celebrated throughout the diocese). It prompts a meditation on the nature of the Church building as a physical place of the presence of Christ in the world and on the way in which the physical building represents the communion of the faithful; both in their own way representing the place of our encounter with the Father through the Son in the Spirit. In the case of the Diocesan Cathedral it also celebrates the office of the Bishop as the centre of communion and of unity in the Diocese. The antiphons for the Liturgy of the Hours from the Common of the Dedication of a Church express all of these themes.

At a second level, the feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica celebrates the office of the Successor of St Peter, an office of communion for the whole Church made up of the local Churches/Dioceses. The "Meditation of the Day" in Magnificat was particularly interesting in this regard. It was taken from an essay entitled "Love for the Church" by Madeleine Delbrel, and published in the collection We, the Ordinary People of the Streets. [See here for my earlier posts about Madeleine Delbrel, and here for the site of the Association des Amis de Madeleine Delbrel where there is a page considering the theme of love of the Church.]The meditation was very much an excerpt, and it is worth going to the original text to read the whole. Madeleine is very clear that we love "the Christ-Church" and she does not envisage any playing off of love of Christ against love of the Church. And Madeleine's love of the Church was not without its tests, particularly when the  "worker priest" movement in France was suppressed, a movement of which she had been a firm supporter and collaborator. At that time, she undertook a visit to Rome to pray at the tomb of St Peter, and her reflection on that visit ends with these paragraphs:

I also thought a lot about the fact that, though St. John is the "disciple Jesus loved", it was Peter that Jesus asked: "Do you love me?" and it was after his affirmations of love that Jesus gave him the flock. He also explained what it means to love: "That which you have done to the least of mmy brothers, you have done unto me".

It became clear to me how essential it is that people, all people, come to know that the hierarchical Church loves them. Peter - a rock who has been asked to love. I understood that all the expressions of the Church have to be penetrated through and through with love.

This is the background to Madeleine's observation in the last paragraph of the Magnificat meditation that:

Rome, through everything else, is the love of God that has been promised to the Church for eternity.

Though some might want to read Madeleine as criticising the hierarchy of the Church when she observes that we all need to come to know that the hierarchical Church loves us, I think that is to mis-represent her. Rather she is expressing an idea that it is of the very office of the hierarchical Church that it represents the love of God in the Church. The "through everything else" indicates that Madeleine's love of the Petrine office is not just a pietism, but an attitude that takes a real account of the difficulties that can arise from the decisions of ecclesial authority and which she and her friends felt. Madeleine's example for today is that we should continue to love that office and not to adopt an attitude that attacks it.

We will be incapable of incarnating God's love in the world, we will be incapable of bringing the Gospel, which is but the manifestation of love, to the world, if we do not first accept the incarnation of this love in the Church, in the mystical Body of Jesus Christ ....

If, through the long course of history, it was necessary to adapt the liturgy, to explain it, to translate it, and if it is once again necessary to do so in our own time, it never has been and is not today a question of making the liturgy more human. It already is human, and tragically so: it is the Passion of the Son of God made man, made continually present among us....

And, in what might be considered a "strap-line" for the Constitution Gaudium et Spes:

The Church will forever aspire to the world. She doesn't need the world in order to accomplish her mission, but without the world, she would have no mission.

The Lord's Baptism and Our Own

This is the title given to the meditation in Magnificat for today. It is taken from Madeleine Delbrel's book We, the Ordinary People of the Streets. You can find a short account of Madeleine Delbrel in this earlier post.

Through his baptism, the Christian exchanged his freedom for the freedom of Christ. He is free because Christ is supremely free, but he no longer has the right to choose a state of life other than that of Christ, an action other than that of Christ, or a thinking other that that of Christ. This is the state of living faith. Faith is for him a fact, and all he can do is accept it. This state of life means being a child of God in Christ along with all his brothers and sisters who are with him in Christ. Standing before God and before the world, in God and in the world, it is together with all the others that the Christian is Christ. He is the whole Christ, the Christ-Church. This is a fact over which he has no control.....

The work of the Church is the salvation of the world; the world cannot be saved except by the Church. The Church is not the Church unless she saves. We are not the Christ-Church unless we are bringers of salvation. We are not bringers of salvation unless we are the Church. And we are not the Church unless we are the whole Church: each member belongs to the whole body. And we are not the whole Church unless we are in precisely the place meant for us in the Church, which is the same as saying that we are precisely in our place in the world, where the Church is made present through us.

This meditation prompts a couple of thoughts of my own. If our place in the world is precisely our place in the Church, then the priority of the genuinely lay activity of the lay person is going to be in the world rather than in the physical building or governing structures of the Church. And if, as Christ-Church, we represent the presence of the whole Church in our particular place in the world, then our activity in that place has an "authority" of its own. In being faithful to the teaching of the Church in their place in the world, the lay person has an authority that is a form of magisterium.

The poverty of someone on the move

During late Autumn, I found that I was not able to continue with my work on Eucharistic Adoration in my parish, and gently withdrew. One of the nearby parishes has started Adoration all day on the first Friday of the month, and so I am able to pray a holy hour there, without the demands of preparing one for others. (I have no timetabled activities on a Friday so it is often the first day of my weekend!).

Today, I used the passage below from the writings of Madeleine Delbrel as one of my meditations; it is from pp.93-96 of her book The Joy of Believing. I think it is a very good expression of that stage in evangelisation that is described as "presence in charity" - or, in Madeleine's words "passing among things and people".

For a more from Madeleine Delbrel, see here, here and here.

He had very ordinary clothes,
clothes that made no impression.
His eyes looked straight ahead
and had a limpid clarity about them
that left its impact on what they saw.
The whole street was rejuvenated by his glance
and seemed to be existing for the first time.
He carried nothing in his hands.
His flat pockets seemed to have little in them
and his two hands were open
and floated on the air around him.

Maybe he was a little mad,
but he was in himself a lesson in wisdom.
His whole work seemed to consist in going,
in passing among things and people.
He was like the personification of a parable,
like a signal of true poverty.
"For if you love only those who love you ..."
you won't need to keep going ...
they will come to you.
But if you love those who do not love you ...
you have to go to meet them at every moment.

This is the poverty of the man on the move.
......

So we will find those things interesting
that anyone else is interested in,
and we will find ourselves becoming virtuous
through kinds of heroism
that have never attracted us,
and find ourselves becoming the brethren
of people who are not like us at all.

Then those whom we meet on their journey
will stretch out their hands
avidly
for the treasure that will pour from us;
a treasure uncompromised
by our earthenware vessels,
our gaudy baskets,
our trunks or baggage,
a treasure that is simply divinity;
a treasure that will be dressed in everybody's fashion
because it will have ceased
to be dressed in our fashion.

"Pure Therese" from the writing of Madeleine Delbrel

Catching some of this recently as a daily meditation in Magnificat prompted me to re-read it in the original book (We the Ordinary People of the Streets published by Eerdmans). I was very struck by just how closely it teaches the "little way" of St Therese of Lisieux. Where for Therese herself the doctrine is lived more from the side of "contemplation" (an enclosed convent), for Madeleine Delbrel it is lived more from the side of "action" (in a poverty ridden suburb of Paris); but the proximity of their teaching is striking. Madeleine had a connection to Lisieux, as she was an advisor to the project of the Mission of France and the seminary opened at Lisieux to train worker priests for that Mission. There are many points in this passage at which one might say "that is pure Therese".

Love

We, the ordinary people of the streets, are certain we can love God as much he might desire to be loved by us.

We don't regard love as something extraordinary but as something that consumes. We believe that doing little things for God is as much a way of loving him as doing great deeds. Besides, we're not very well informed about the greatness of our acts. There are nevertheless two things we know for sure: first, whatever we do can't help but be small; and second, what­ever God does is great.

And so we go about our activities with a sense of great peace.

We know that all our work consists in not shifting about under grace; in not choosing what we would do; and that it is God who acts through us.

There is nothing difficult for God; the one who grows anxious at difficulties is the one who counts on his own capacity for action.

Because we find that love is work enough for us, we don't take the time to categorize what we are doing as either "contemplation" or "action."

We find that prayer is action and that action is prayer. It seems to us that truly loving action is filled with light.

It seems to us that a soul standing before such action is like a night that is full of expectation for the coming dawn. And when the light breaks, when God's will is clearly understood, she lives it out gently, with poise, peacefully watching her God inspiring her and at work within her. It seems to us that action is also an imploring prayer. It does not at all seem to us that action nails us down to our field of work, our apostolate, or our life.

Quite the contrary, we believe that an action perfectly carried out at the time and place it is required of us binds us to the whole Church, sends us out throughout her body, making us disposable in her.

Our feet march upon a street, but our heartbeat reverberates through the whole world. That is why our small acts, which we can't decide whether they're actio­n or contemplation, perfectly join together the love of God and the love of our neighbor.

Giving ourselves over to his will at the same time gives us over to the Church, whom the same will continuously makes our saving mother of grace.

Each docile act makes us receive God totally and give God totally, in a great freedom of spirit.

And thus life becomes a celebration.

Each tiny act is an extraordinary event, in which heaven is given to us, in which we are able to give heaven to others.

It makes no difference what we do, whether we take in hand a broom or a pen. Whether we speak or keep silent. Whether we are sewing or holding a meeting, caring for a sick person or tapping away at a typewriter.

Whatever it is, it’s just the outer shell of an amazing inner reality: the soul’s encounter, renewed at each moment, in which, at each moment, the soul grows in grace and becomes ever more beautiful for her God.

Is the doorbell ringing? Quick, open the door! It’s God coming to love us. Is someone asking us to do something? Here you are! … it’s God coming to love us. Is it time to sit down for lunch? Let’s go … it’s God coming to love us.

Madeleine Delbrel: reaching out to those at the margins of society

I came across these two passages from the writings of Madeleine Delbrel whilst reflecting on the way in which Frank Duff during his life had a kind of charism on behalf of the marginalised. An early work of the Legion of Mary was with prostitutes in Dublin, but that is not the only example of Frank Duff's mission to the poor and marginalised. An article about this can be found here. From “Poverty and the Poor” in Madeleine Delbrel The Joy of Believing pp.98-99.

Note 1964 

The poor are not only brothers and sisters to be loved in a brotherly way because they are our brothers and sisters, they are also "our lords the poor" because the poor man is Our Lord. He is the sacrament of our encounter with Christ, of our love given to Christ - there is nothing Platonic about the parable of the Last Judgement. 

So, whatever the form that poverty takes in our life, we can only be faithful to Jesus himself if the poor may come into our particular nitty gritty life situation and feel at home there, just as Christ is at home with us: that is to say if they are not given the wrong kind of "priority" (there are multiple kinds of priority but each has its own concrete expression). 

One can write reams about the poverty of Christ - drawing conclusions about what an imitation of that poverty would be like and what kind of implica­tions this might have for us. What is beyond discus­sion is that whatever our life it must, if it is to be Christian, protect a place for Christ in our flesh and blood encounters - our meetings, our welcomes, our ways of relating - to the poor. 

The poor man by reason of poverty itself often repels us (cf. Francis kissing the leper). He brings into our way of life the very contradiction that is Christ. 

It is the real presence of Christ in the poor man, when this is really believed and the poor man is known as a person, that can transform the encounter with him from a purely "social problem" into some­thing essentially and authentically Christian. 

The poor must not be someone who is tolerated and put up with but someone who is waited for and expected. The poor must not have to receive from us .orne kind of regulation staple treatment (e.g. a bowl of hot soup and a shower) "we do this as far as this," "we do that as far as ... " The poor man never owes us anything. It is we who owe him what we owe Christ. 

It is this same faith that allows us to receive Christ: through the eucharist into ourselves; through the poor into our lives. 

Who is my neighbor? - Any human being.Who are the poor? - Usually someone who, from a social point of view, is "outside": "outside" other people's lives, a prisoner, a sick person, a stranger, naked, etc.

From “The Atheistic Environment as a Situation Favourable to Our Own Conversion” in Madeleine Delbrel We, the Ordinary People of the Streets pp.265-267.

The Disappearance of God and Solitude

What can be the sorest trial for us in a Communist city is the disappear­ance of a God who had been until then for us visible and grasp able. The sign of this disappearance is a total "uselessness" of God that is vividly ex­pressed in the life of the Communists as well as in the life of the city as a whole. 

The corollary of this disappearance is the blinding epiphany of man, of his value, his power, and his collective destiny. For if the exceptional Communist milieu of Ivry - made up of national, regional, and local leaders who have all been doctrinally formed according to the level of their responsibility, as well as the basic militants entrusted with the most diverse of tasks, from the hanging of posters to administrative positions, and in­cluding the responsibilities of para-Communist movements, of educa­tional or cultural groups, or of international meetings - if this milieu is at once a demonstration of indisputable personal virtues and effective hu­man activity in full force, it seems as if we could do just as well without God. Nothing and no one seems to be any worse off for his absence. 

The moment we cease to see such a milieu as a trial, it turns into a temptation - a temptation that is all the stronger to the extent that we are gradually able to look at things that used to be for us signs of God, with the eyes of our comrades and our friends. 

And we see that these signs are necessarily opaque if you do not al­ready know in advance what they mean. 

At the same time, in spite of the deepest affections, we begin to feel that the faith, which makes us love others more and more, is making us strangers to them. It can happen, at this point, that we begin to accuse faith, either under our breath or out loud, of being foreign to this world. This is a profound suffering. If we do not see the necessary test that is here concealed under temptation, we would very easily fall to it. But if, on the other hand, we believe in the one who called us and who remains faithful to those he calls, if we ask him to teach us, then he will explain to us what we need to know in order to be living converts, what we may have forgot­ten or perhaps never really knew: that faith is a gift from God. 

As a gift from God, faith, which is foreign to the world, is given to the world. To believe is to consummate between faith and the world an eternal covenant within time. 

If faith creates people who are faithful, it is not a fidelity of blood, country, or honor, but a personal fidelity to the living God who calls and to whom the one who is called must respond freely and always with the whole heart of a free human being. 

In order to hear this call and answer it, we need solitude. Solitude ceases to be painful and becomes instead the indispensable place wherein God makes contact with us. Prayer reinforces the roots of solitude - it transforms the way we see all community in the Church - the trees that together are meant to make up the forest are individually given life by their solitary roots. We learn that in order to offer us faith God calls each of us by name, and that faith is not a privilege due to heredity or good behavior ... and that it is the grace of knowing that God gives grace, the grace of be­ing in the world committed with Christ to his mission of Redemption. 

Once we have returned to the state of conversion, we learn that faith in the Son of God and the Son of Man binds us indissolubly both to the God who grants it and to man, the man of creation, humanity as a whole. For we too are able to say "all for one and one for all." Each of us has re­ceived faith on behalf of all of us. 

The solitude into which we are driven by God brings us into con­scious solidarity with every living human being that comes into the world, with all of the nations that Christ will gather together on the last day.