Franciscan at Home

Maybe it’s too much of a stretch to say that an unmarried tailor who lived with his mother is the reason communism fell in the west. Then again, maybe it’s not.

Venerable Jan Tyranowski was, in many respects, an ordinary working class bachelor. But when he was 35, a homily changed his life. “It is not difficult to become a saint,” the priest said, and Tyranowski believed him. He began reading the Carmelite mystics and praying up to four hours a day. When many of Poland’s priests were sent to death camps in 1940, one of those left behind asked Tyranowski to become more involved in youth ministry.

That’s where he met Karol Woytyla. The young man who would become pope was just a 20-year-old in youth group, but his relationship with Tyranowski changed everything. Karol had become unsure about the wisdom of putting so much emphasis on the Blessed Mother, but Tyranowski pointed him to St. Louis de Montfort, thus shaping the life and papacy of the man who would be the most Marian Pope since St. Peter. Perhaps more importantly, Tyranowski’s work with the young Woytyla (especially after Karol lost his father in 1941) greatly influenced Wotyla’s vocational discernment. A friend of St. John Paul’s from that same youth group insists that John Paul owed his priestly vocation to the single tailor.

Tyranowski died only a few months after Fr. Woytyla was ordained. He didn’t live to see his young friend consecrated bishop or elected pope. He didn’t see the work of the Polish pope break the stranglehold of communism on Poland and her neighbors. Through it all, though, St. John Paul kept a picture of his youth minister on his desk, a single man whose life changed the world.

Amid the dark shadows that have at times been cast over the face of the Church, too often obscuring for our contemporaries the clear light of Christ shining from her (see Lumen Gentium n. 1), we need to focus anew on the universal call to holiness.

¿Siquiera es posible la santidad hoy en día?

Antes de que nos casáramos, mi esposo, Curtis, y yo cada uno por su parte nos habíamos encontrado con nuestro Señor a través de unas conversiones profundas y ambos ya éramos muy comprometidos con seguir a la voluntad de Dios en nuestra vida matrimonial. Dios nos invitó a vivir nuestra fe en la arena pública a través de la pastoral universitaria donde estudiábamos, The Fellowship of Catholic University Students (La Confraternidad de Estudiantes Universitarios Católicos) (FOCUS), y de manera más íntima en nuestro propio hogar. Curtis y yo hemos estado casados desde hace más de treinta años y bendecidos con nueve hijos y cinco nietos. Dos de nuestros hijos tienen necesidades especiales: uno de nuestros hijos tiene autismo y otro tiene el Síndrome de Down. El esforzarnos por vivir nuestra fe con júbilo no siempre ha sido fácil, pero Dios sigue dándonos la gracia que necesitamos cada día para vivir según Su voluntad. A veces me desanimo y clamo a Dios preguntando si la santidad es siquiera posible. Luego me viene a la mente la Palabra de Dios, y creo que Él sigue hablando estas palabras a cada uno de nosotros en la actualidad:

“Yo soy la verdadera vid y mi Padre es el viñador. El corta todos mis sarmientos que no dan fruto; al que da fruto, lo poda para que dé más todavía. Ustedes ya están limpios por la palabra que yo les anuncié. Permanezcan en mí, como yo permanezco en ustedes. Así como el sarmiento no puede dar fruto si no permanece en la vid, tampoco ustedes, si no permanecen en mí. Yo soy la vid, ustedes los sarmientos El que permanece en mí, y yo en él, da mucho fruto, porque separados de mí, nada pueden hacer. … Si ustedes permanecen en mí y mis palabras permanecen en ustedes, pidan lo que quieran y lo obtendrán.” (Juan 15,1-5.7)

Cuando forcejamos con la pregunta de la santidad real vivida por personas ordinarias, Jesús siempre nos enseña el camino. En este pasaje, Él nos invita a permanecer en Él. Si permanecemos en Jesús, entonces daremos mucho fruto en nuestra vida y alcanzaremos la santidad. Jesús nos está diciendo que necesitamos permanecer cerca de Él si queremos ser santos en esta vida. Esto es en verdad bastante sencillo. Necesitamos conocer a Jesús, encontrarlo en la Palabra, en la oración, y en los sacramentos. Yo creo que las personas que han encontrado a Jesús personalmente, que lo han hecho el centro de su vida, y están viviendo una vida de acompañamiento con Jesús, tendrán un deseo profundo de compartir a Jesús con todos los que estén en su vida.

Jesús nos está invitando a cada uno a un encuentro más profundo, nos está pidiendo que vivamos en una relación íntima con Él para compartir con los demás esta Fe transformadora de vida. Como padres de familia, nuestra primera responsabilidad es para con nuestros hijos. Cuando aceptamos esta invitación y su gracia, aceptamos la invitación de San Pablo, “Por lo tanto, hermanos, yo los exhorto por la misericordia de Dios a ofrecerse ustedes mismos como una víctima viva, santa y agradable a Dios: éste es el culto espiritual que deben ofrecer. No tomen como modelo a este mundo. Por el contrario, transfórmense interiormente renovando su mentalidad, a fin de que puedan discernir cuál es la voluntad de Dios: lo que es bueno, lo que le agrada, lo perfecto.” (Rm 12,1-2).

On November 2, the Church commemorates the Feast of All Souls. In contrast to the Feast of All Saints the day before, the All Souls liturgy remembers all who have died, not just the saints in heaven. As such, it is a much more somber occasion. After all, many souls will never be saints in heaven: they have elected an eternity separate from the love of God and must therefore suffer the torments of hell. But even though “it is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost” (Mt 18:14), the punishment of hell is both righteous and just. In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis called the damned self-enslaved—their doors to eternity are locked from the inside. Love, even and especially God’s love, can never be forced. Thus, we ultimately do not mourn or pray for the conversion of souls in hell, for they would not want God even if they could have him.

There are those, however, that will never suffer eternal torture. They thirst painfully for God but have not yet achieved their heavenly reward. These souls have died in God’s friendship but must still be refined in the furnace of affliction (cf. Is 48:10): they must pay the temporal punishment for their sins. These are the Church Suffering, the holy souls in purgatory. It is chiefly them we remember in our prayers and in the sacrifice of the Mass on All Souls Day.

Coloring Our Faith

There is a maxim in the Church which states, “lex orandi, lex credendi.” Summarized in the Catechism, “the law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays” (par. 1124). Whether we realize it or not, vestments are part of that “concrete mode of catechesis,” which Pope St. John Paul II named as a function of sacred art. The style, the symbols, the color…these are all elements of sacred vestments which convey a subtle visual theology to all those participating in the Lord’s Supper. When it comes to Masses for those who have died, the visual prayer of the priest’s vestments can influence how we move forward in faith after the death of a loved one.

Regarding the color of sacred vestments, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal says this:

Besides the color violet, the colors white or black may be used at funeral services and at other Offices and Masses for the Dead in the Dioceses of the United States of America (#346e).

Yes, in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, black is an acceptable and legitimate liturgical color for funerals and Masses for the Dead (including All Souls).

The fifth chapter of Lumen Gentium on “the universal call to holiness” reads very much like it could have been composed by St. Francis de Sales, as it echoes what he had written around 1609 in the first pages of his Introduction to the Devout Life. What St. Francis refers to repeatedly throughout his text as “devotion” could easily be rendered “holiness” or “sanctity.” This vocation is universal; that is, there is no member of the Church, configured to Christ dead-and-risen in the waters of baptism, who is not called to sanctity. However, what precisely this sanctity will look like will vary significantly depending upon one’s particular vocation within his Body and the details of one’s life.

Formed in Spousal Love
The diocesan priest is a man configured to Christ, Head of the Body, and espoused to Christ’s Bride, the Church. As the Church is formed from the love that pours forth from the side of Christ crucified, a man who is ordained a priest must find his identity in that wounded side of Christ. The beloved disciple in the Gospel is portrayed as resting in sinu Jesu, on the breast of Jesus (Jn 13:23). The Son, who dwells eternally in sinu Patris (Jn 1:18), by his incarnate existence extends his filial life to those who are reborn in baptism. They too, through him and with him and in him, dwell in sinu Patris. But since Jesus is revealed as the way to the Father (Jn 14:6), and as the one who makes the Father known (who has literally “exegeted” the Father, Jn 1:18), they must first dwell in sinu Jesu. The third century theologian, Origen, remarked that no one can understand the Gospel unless, like the beloved disciple, he learns to recline on the Lord’s breast. Intimacy with Christ is at the heart of the life of the baptized. At ordination, the faith and witness of the baptized man takes on (quite literally) a new character. The one who was configured to Christ in baptism and sealed with the Spirit in confirmation, receives a new configuration he is, by his ordination, configured to act in persona Christi capitis, in the person of Christ as head of the Body. He is conformed to Christ in act, so to speak, configured to Christ as he gives himself for his Bride, the Church. This is why the spousal love witnessed on the Cross is the font of the Church, the source of its sacramental life (the near unanimous view of the Fathers), and the very form of the priestly life. For the priest, the side of Christ in which he rests remains forever the pierced side, as Christ’s wounds do not disappear at the resurrection but remain the eternal sacrament of his love.

In much the same way that a married couple most perfectly embodies the self-gift that defines their identity in the act of conjugal love (such that they are considered as consummating what was ratified within the Rite of Marriage), so the priest, at the altar and in offering Christ’s sacrifice in the celebration of the Mass, most perfectly embodies the self-gift that defines his identity, his espousal to Christ’s Bride, now the priest’s as well. Christ’s words, made the priest’s own (or perhaps the priest’s words, in union with Christ’s), express the priest’s spousal love for the Church. Gazing at the chalice, lifted at the consecration, it is not unusual for the priest to see himself reflected in it. In some respects, this captures the essence of his vocation: priesthood is not merely or even primarily something he does, it’s who he is. The conflict between functional and ontological understandings of the priesthood can be resolved easily if the former is always related to the latter: what the priest does (celebration of sacraments primarily, but many other pastoral tasks as well) must be rooted in and flow from who he is. His identity is determined not by these acts themselves, but by these acts as expressive of who he is by virtue of his ordination.

The matrimony of two of the baptized…is in real, essential and intrinsic relationship with the mystery of the union of Christ with the church…it participates in its nature…marriage is deeply seated and rooted therefore in the Eucharistic mystery.[1]

This spiritual vision of marriage, as articulated by Cardinal Caffara, may appear as novel or even bizarre or “cultist” to many younger members of western culture. The defining characteristic for marriage today is that it has no defining characteristic. It is open and runny and borderless. We decide what marriage is, and hence it has devolved from a sacrament to a “private love.” This “love’s” very meaning is malleable, and its connection to procreation and permanence and the divine is severed. Yet for the Catholic Church, marriage is still the primordial mystery, one which reveals God’s love for humanity. This revelation has been consistent from the beginning of the Bible all the way through to the Bridegroom, Christ, giving himself completely upon the cross for the Bride, the Church (Is 62:5; Hos 2:18-20; Jer 3:20; Ez 15:8-15; Mt 22:1-14; 9:14; 22:1-2; 25:1; Eph 5:32). Marriage reveals that God’s own love is free, faithful, forever covenanted, and always life giving. Deep within the suffering of giving and receiving one another in married love God himself is becoming known to the couple. One cannot live such free self-giving in a permanent life-giving way without glimpsing God even in traces, by those, too, who believe marriage is permanent but not a sacrament. For God’s very nature is love, and all true love seeks to freely self-donate in a permanent life-giving way.

Marriage: An Ongoing Encounter with Christ
For the committed Catholic couple, marriage’s true nature has been revealed specifically in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. And it is into this mystery of Jesus’ own spousal love that all Catholic couples are taken when they consent in Christ to love one another until the end. There is no private meaning to spousal love for Catholic couples as their love transcends themselves from its very beginning. As a sacrament, marriage is an ongoing encounter with the power of Christ’s own life and love. Each couple abides with Christ and is empowered to love through the Holy Spirit. With such a Spirit the couple loves each other with Christ’s own love (CCC 1661).

The cultural and political understanding of marriage as private love is far from this dynamic and sacred understanding of marriage as loving with Christ’s own love. Ending a more superficial and self-defining notion of marriage will only occur through one powerful reality: the witness of Catholic couples who drink deeply of the mystical vision of marriage. By “mystical” I don’t mean a marriage filled with disembodied voices, levitations, or meditative trances. Mystical marriages are grounded in the mysteries of Christ, and these mysteries are communicated most normally and powerfully at the Eucharistic Liturgy. In other words, to live a mystical marriage, which invites the culture to consider a more profound and transcendent understanding of marital love, a couple needs to receive their own marital life from the Eucharist. To have the Eucharist fuel a couple’s love for one another is to be “mystical.”

Surely one of the most beautiful, one of the most enduring, and one of the most sublime teachings of Vatican II is the universal call to holiness in Lumen Gentium, chapter 5. I have never reread this chapter without feeling an increase of my own zeal for answering this call, even as I become more aware, at the same time, of how much I fall short. Still, it is so beautiful, it makes me want to persist.

But what is holiness? I want to suggest that it is not, in the first instance, a concept abstracted from concrete holy persons and holy things, a category into which they are fitted because they conform to its defining features. For holiness, as Lumen Gentium puts it, is nothing else but “the perfection of love (caritas)” (LG 39; cf. 42),[1] and there is nothing more concrete than this perfection, for it has as its content Jesus Christ, “love divine all loves excelling / joy of heaven to earth come down” (Charles Wesley). He, “together with the Father and the Spirit, is hailed as ‘alone holy’” (LG 39). The meaning of the word “holy” comes from him who is “alone holy,” not the other way around, as if the meaning of “holy” is established independently and God is then found to qualify.

The same is true for love. The Trinity is “alone holy” because the Trinity is “an eternal exchange of love” (CCC 221) such that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). The sentence is not reversible, to “Love is God,” which would invite us to fill in the content of “love” with whatever is currently fashionable on greeting cards and then to think that God is that. Luckily, the content of what Love is, and therefore what God is, and therefore what holiness is, is filled out for us concretely in Jesus Christ, who “loved the Church as his Bride, giving himself up for her so as to sanctify her” (see Eph 5:25-26; LG 39). The sacrifice of Christ on the Cross “‘for the sins of the whole world’ (1 Jn 2:2) expresses his loving communion with the Father” (CCC 606), since he “embraces in his human heart the Father’s love for human beings,” and loves us “to the end” (Jn 13:1; CCC 609).

This love is the only love that has not even the slightest taint of self-interest. It is the love that “emptied itself” of the “form of God,” and received the “form of a servant” (Phil 2:5). There can be no self-interest in this because God already has everything, is everything, he needs or wants; so, the self-emptying is pure gift. Only such a love can be the medium of true human communion. And if that weren’t enough, the Word not only “became flesh” (Jn 1:14) but also “sin” (2 Cor 5:21), meaning that he did not take on a human nature in its unfallen condition, as he was clearly entitled to, but rather took flesh under the conditions of the Fall, subject to suffering and death. Though sinless, he entered into solidarity with sinners, accepting our lot as his lot, thereby making us his, giving us a new solidarity in his love, so that we now have a new way of saying “we” as human beings that is no longer in “Adam” only but in his love, that of the Second Adam.

Baptism incorporates us into this new “we,” into being “his.”

What is holiness? In our lead article, Dr. John Cavadini describes holiness as the Second Vatican Council did, as “the perfection of love.”[1]

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