Franciscan at Home

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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Parable of the Paper Cups

Once upon a time, there was a village called “Ville de Soif.” Ville de Soif was located along a river, which was the water source for the whole town. At various times, people came to the river to drink, using their hands. But they didn’t seem to have a way to take water with them when they left. The adults in town busied themselves with work and other activities, but stayed thirsty between their visits to the river.

The children of the village spent more time at the river. They frequently visited with an elder of the village who lived right on the riverbank, a rare adult who was not thirsty all the time. He taught the children how to make origami cups out of paper. The children were excited to have something that could hold water, but when they tried to take water home to their parents, it seemed the paper cups just weren’t strong enough to last. So the adults continued to thirst, and the children continued to get only just a little more water than their parents. It seemed the town was doomed to be chronically thirsty.

As far-fetched as this story might seem, this is exactly the situation we face in adult faith formation in the Church in the United States today. Our culture desperately thirsts for meaning, direction, value, and justice, but the distractions of daily life keep many from going to the source. For those who do come, often the children, we do our best to offer something to satisfy their thirst, but it’s never quite enough, and the “paper cups” our catechists teach them to make often don’t even reach their homes in one piece.

And so our culture continues to thirst: for meaning, for direction, for value, for justice. Our society has become increasingly polarized and unkind. We have forgotten how to dialogue with one another. Our Catholic faith offers us a roadmap for renewing our own lives and the culture around us, but we must drink freely of the living water Jesus offers us before we can share it with others.

How can we get more adults involved in forming their faith, becoming intentional disciples, and thus renewing their families, our parishes, and the world in which we live? Here are some tips for helping parents and other adults form their faith.

Many people wanting to becoming Catholic are often surprised that it can take a year or more. In my former denomination, it was very different. The way one became a Christian was, at the end of any given Church service, the pastor would ask people to bow their heads and close their eyes. He would then ask whoever wanted to receive Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior to raise their hand and then repeat a prayer after him. That was it.

Those leaders can be lauded for their desire for evangelism, but the lack of personal engagement with the one responding to Jesus leaves much to be desired. If seekers are given a little Jesus with no commitment expected, it can be like a spiritual blind date: it might work out, but you do not really know what you’re getting into. When properly run, the RCIA process is specifically designed to help lead people to a real, stable relationship with Jesus that will last. To help one understand why RCIA takes time, I will demonstrate how the RCIA process mirrors a healthy dating relationship that culminates in marriage.

Distinct Steps
Any healthy relationship moves through several stages from the first meeting to the wedding night. The same is true with coming to salvation in Jesus Christ. There are distinct steps that prepare for and allow a person to develop a genuine relationship with Jesus. Wanting to reclaim this process, which was present in the early Church but had fallen into disuse, the Second Vatican Council stated, “The catechumenate for adults, comprising several distinct steps, is to be restored” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 64). The general parallel is as follows.

“Yo he venido para que tengan vida, y para que la tengan en abundancia.” Juan 10,10

Al colaborar con Jesús en el pastoreo del rebaño en Su Nombre, ¿qué aspecto tiene la abundancia para ti? Con el paso de los años, a través del coacheo directo y al impartir talleres y retiros, hemos identificado las ocho mejores prácticas para tener una vida en abundancia como agente de pastoral.

1. Toma tu cruz y síguelo a Él.
Los tres Evangelios sinópticos incluyen este mandamiento aleccionador de parte de Nuestro Señor (ver Mateo 16, 24-26; Marcos 8,34; y Lucas 9,24). Jesús, como el mejor de los psicólogos, ofrece este consejo, no como una realidad oscura y opresora, sino como una forma para comprender cómo ser un agente de pastoral efectivo. Hay que notar que Jesús dice “toma tu cruz”. Tantas veces en nuestro apostolado, cedemos a la tentación por tomar la cruz de otra persona, pero esto no es el mandamiento de nuestro Señor amoroso. Hay una delgada línea entre ayudar a alguien y cargarle la cruz por esta persona. Debemos orar para pedir la sabiduría para distinguir esta delgada línea, para que no estemos cargando las cruces de los demás.

Además, en los libros sinópticos, hay que fijarse en lo que hace Jesús a continuación. ¡Se lleva a Pedro, Santiago y a Juan y se transfigura delante de ellos (ver Mateo 17, Marcos 9, y Lucas 9,28)! El Señor nos ordena a que tomemos nuestra cruz y que lo sigamos – ¡hacia la Transfiguración! Todas las cruces que cargamos, cuando se unen a la única Cruz de Cristo, resultarán en unas resurrecciones específicas; esa es la garantía divina cuando tomamos nuestra cruz y lo sigamos.

Para reflexionar: ¿Cuáles son tus cruces particulares? ¿Sueles responsabilizarte por las cruces de las personas que pastoreas? ¿Cómo puede Jesús ayudarte a encontrar el equilibrio?

2. Sana tus heridas mayores.
Hay dos respuestas a toda herida física, psicológica, o espiritual: resurrección o infección. Escoge sabiamente. Todo agente de pastoral tiene sus heridas – pequeñas y grandes – en su vida. Es necesario que nos dirijamos con toda intencionalidad a las heridas principales y que permitamos al Espíritu Santo a que las sane para no herir a los demás por estas heridas personales. Los agentes de pastoral que han sanado sanan (por la resurrección), y los agentes de pastoral lastimados lastiman (por infección). Jesús quiere que le dediquemos el tiempo y los recursos necesarios para considerar y sanar las heridas mayores que originaron en nuestra familia de nacimiento, nuestro pasado y nuestro presente.

Típicamente, las heridas se suscitan en el marco de relaciones inseguras, entonces la sanación se dará dentro de unas relaciones seguras. En nuestra vida, estas relaciones han sido: la dirección espiritual, el coacheo católico (y los mejores coaches se dejan enseñar), y terapia de salud mental (los mejores terapeutas están abiertos a la terapia).

No le damos entrada a quienquiera a nuestro santuario de sufrimiento. Tenemos que ejercer prudencia. Un buen lugar para comenzar a sanar heridas mayores es con un sacerdote o diácono de nuestra confianza. Si no puede, o no tiene la capacidad para hacer este viaje contigo, pregunta si conoce un buen director espiritual o terapeuta católico. Si no le pueden recomendar a uno, llama a tu oficina diocesana para el matrimonio y la familia; a menudo esta oficina tiene una lista de terapeutas que han ganado su confianza a lo largo de los años. Al pasar por el proceso de sanación, hay motivos de gran esperanza, con base en lo que leemos en Romanos 8,28: “Sabemos que para los que aman a Dios, todas las cosas cooperan para bien, esto es, para los que son llamados conforme a su propósito.”

San Pablo conocía el poder de las heridas en su vida. Conocía la vergüenza consecuencia del fervor con el que perseguía a los cristianos. Experimentó la traición, pruebas y sufrimientos extremos en su ministerio. Mas, sin embargo, tenía la fe, la osadía, y la valentía para escribir que todas las cosas cooperan para bien. En otras palabras, no son solamente las cosas buenas que hago que le sirven a Dios, sino que todas las cosas cooperan para el bien en el caso de los que aman a Dios. Esta es una garantía divina de que todas tus heridas pasadas y presentes pueden cooperar para bien.

Para reflexionar: ¿Existe algunas heridas importantes psicológicas o espirituales en tu vida que te pide el Espíritu Santo que sanes?

As you partner with Jesus to minister in his name, what does abundance look like for you? Over the years, through direct coaching and providing workshops and retreats, we have identified the following eight best practices for living abundantly as a minister.

1. Take up your cross and follow him.
All three synoptic gospels include this sobering commandment from our Lord (see Matthew 16:24-26, Mark 8:34, and Luke 9:24). Jesus, as the best psychologist, offers this advice not as a dark, oppressive reality, but as a way to understand how to be an effective minister. Note that Jesus says “take up your cross.” So many times in ministry, we are tempted to take up another person’s cross, but this is not the commandment of our loving Lord. There is a fine line between helping someone and actually carrying their cross. We must pray for wisdom to see this fine line, so that we are not carrying the crosses of others.

Furthermore, in all three synoptics, notice what Jesus does next. He takes Peter, James, and John and is transfigured before them (see Matthew 17, Mark 9, and Luke 9:28)! The Lord commands us to take up our cross and follow him—to the transfiguration! All the crosses we personally carry, when united to the one cross of Christ, will result in specific resurrections; that is a divine guarantee when we take up our cross and follow him.

For reflection: What personal crosses do you carry? Do you tend to take responsibility for the crosses of the people to whom you minister? How can Jesus help you find balance?

2. Heal your major wounds.
There are two responses to any physical, psychological, or spiritual wound: resurrection or infection. Choose wisely. Every minister has major and minor wounds in life. We need to intentionally address the major wounds and allow the Holy Spirit to heal them so we don’t hurt others with them. Healed ministers heal (through the resurrection), and hurting ministers hurt (through infection). Jesus wants us to devote the time and resources necessary to address and heal the major wounds from our family of origin, our past and present.

Typically, wounds happen in unsafe relationships, so the healing will happen in safe relationships. In our lives, these relationships have been: spiritual direction, Catholic coaching (the best coaches are coachable), and mental health therapy (the best therapists are open to therapy).

We don’t admit anyone into our sanctuary of suffering. We need to be judicious. A good place to begin to heal major wounds is with a trusted priest or deacon. If they are unable or not equipped to journey with you, ask if they know of a good spiritual director or Catholic therapist. If they do not, call your diocesan office of marriage and family; many times this office has a list of therapists who have earned trust over the years. As you go through the healing process, there is cause for great hope based on Romans 8:28 “All things work together for the good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.”

St. Paul knew the power of wounds in his life. He knew shame as a result of his previous zeal for persecuting Christians. He experienced betrayal and extreme trial and suffering in ministry. And yet, he had the faith, the audacity, and the courage to write that all things work for the good. In other words, not just the good things I do can be used by God, but all things work for the good for those who love God. This is a divine guarantee that all your past and present wounds can work for the good.

For reflection: Are there any major psychological or spiritual wounds in your life that the Holy Spirit is asking you to heal?

In the first installment of this article, I sketched how Pope St. John Paul II’s teaching on Christocentric catechesis should lead us to view our work as an opportunity for the words of Jesus to be spoken through us in such a way that people encounter him and hear his call to follow him (the sequela Christi). I also suggested that we can best serve as spokesmen for Jesus when we focus on his initial words in preaching the Gospel (the four pillars of Gospel-living: the Kingdom of God is at hand, repent, believe, and come follow me), and I then traced the path to authentic discipleship through the call to seek the Kingdom of God and to repent.

In this second installment, I continue to trace the path of discipleship through the call to believe to its culmination in the sequela Christi, wherein the true meaning of Christian discipleship emerges as the following of Jesus through union with him. Additionally, I recall some common obstacles that people face in embracing this meaning of discipleship.

Believe
Having cultivated the heart through an orientation to the Kingdom of God and a readiness to repent, Christocentric catechesis begins to hit its full stride as it comes to its next basic guidepost: the call to believe. The full theological explanation of belief is at once broad, deep, and complex, with seemingly innumerable details as to how belief unfolds in the human heart. Nonetheless, the work of Christocentric catechesis can help people cultivate greater faith by focusing on how faith means recognizing God and accepting his invitation to experience the impossible through his transforming power.

Cultivating faith begins with understanding that to believe most fundamentally means responding to Divine Revelation, taking up the dynamic begun in God’s initiative toward the human person. God reveals himself in order to invite us into a relationship with him, and believing means making the adequate response to him and to this invitation (CCC 142-143). In other words, we should never present faith as merely (or even primarily) an intellectual assent to truths proposed in an abstract form but rather as the acceptance of the interpersonal relationship that God offers us when he reveals himself.

Since God has revealed himself as Trinity, Christian faith obviously entails the recognition of the God who has revealed himself as Triune, and specifically means acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God and the Holy Spirit as the Advocate given to us. Yet, such a recognition is not possible by our natural powers and must be received as a gift from God himself. The words of Jesus to Peter tell us that not from “flesh and blood” can we recognize God and his Son but rather only when such recognition is given to us from the Father in heaven (Mt 16:17). For this reason, the first movements of faith consist of opening ourselves to the gift of faith and being ready to cooperate with the work of God that takes us beyond our natural powers. We can believe only by opening ourselves to the supernatural, anticipating the impossible.

We must open ourselves to the supernatural, not just to recognize the Triune God but also to accept his invitation, which reveals a plan equally beyond our natural powers. The plan of God expressed in Divine Revelation culminates in his offer to bring us into the Communion of the Trinity, which orientates us to heaven where this communion will be realized in its fullness but also has the immediate significance that we become his dwelling place in this life (CCC 257-260). The words of Jesus clarify that God’s revelation includes not only the promise of eternal life and also the invitation to become the dwelling place of God (Jn 14:23). These two elements of God’s plan converge in the “divinization” of man, encapsulated in our tradition by the idea that the Son of God became man so that man could become God (for example, St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, and St. Thomas Aquinas, Opusculum 57, On the Feast of Corpus Christi).

To believe, we must accept the stupendous plan of God, whereby we will enter into the Communion of the Trinity for eternity and become the dwelling place of the Trinity in this life through our own divinization; therefore, faith necessarily means opening ourselves to something that only God can accomplish. In a certain sense, this explains why we begin our Profession of Faith with the proclamation that God is almighty. However, the words of Jesus also invite us to see the vital role of our faith in unleashing the almighty power of God. As he does with the ten lepers (Lk 17:19), the woman with a hemorrhage (Mt 9:22), and the blind beggar (Lk 18:42), Jesus often attributes his miraculous healings to the faith of those healed, saying at one point that if we believe “everything is possible” (Mk 9:23). In doing this, Jesus highlights a core meaning of faith wherein the power of God awaits the “obedience” of faith (CCC 144): our yes to his will and our trust in the power that accomplishes this plan. Faith is the power to move mountains (Mt 17:20 and 21:21) because it is the power of God unleashed by our obedience to him and his plan.

Our tradition points to Abraham in the Old Testament and the Blessed Virgin Mary in the New Testament as the premier models of faith, not because they intellectually grasp obscure truths but because they exemplify obedience to the (seemingly impossible) plan of God made known to them. The Gospel accounts of the call of the Apostles likewise exemplify the obedience of faith that unleashes the power of God, as do the lives of many saints of our tradition who heard the voice of God and obeyed (for example, St. Athanasius, The Life of St. Antony, St. Gregory, The Life of St. Benedict, and St. Bonaventure, The Life of St. Francis of Assisi). Learning from these examples, we can also see that the obedience of faith extends from a trust in God to a willingness to leave off one’s former way of life and the readiness to accept the dignity that God’s plan confers on us.

Faith necessarily rests on God’s trustworthiness and requires us to “trust God in all circumstances” (CCC 227); however, faith must also embrace the radical transformation that the power of God seeks to accomplish in us and the dignity that his plan confers on us.

Opening ourselves to the power of God in faith requires a willingness to become a new creation, or in the words of Jesus to Nicodemus, to be “born again” (Jn 3:3). These words of Jesus highlight the utter newness of what comes forth from the power of God. We are not talking about a dramatic makeover or a simple upgrade, so faith takes the form of a consent to radical transformation. Yet, such a transformation remains frustrated unless we are willing to cease being what we have been in order to become the new creation that God wills us to be, and this is why the process of repentance and renunciation logically lays the foundation for answering the call to believe.

Such a radical transformation also includes embracing the magnificence of what God brings about through this radical transformation: the magnificence of being divinized, of becoming the dwelling place of God, of entering into the communion of the Trinity, and of being entrusted with the role of unleashing and manifesting the power of God. Simply put, faith requires us to accept the dignity that God bestows on us and to trust ourselves as much as God does when he entrusts his plan to our faithful obedience. To be commissioned by God with the fulfillment of such a magnificent plan speaks volumes about his trust in us, and faith requires us to view ourselves with the same high opinion in order to embrace his plan.

All of this gives us more than enough reason to ask, like our model of faith, “how can this be?” (Lk 1:34), and we should expect the same response she received: by the power of the Holy Spirit. Until we have that moment when the plan of God seems impossible, faith cannot find its proper context, and unless we become convinced that the Holy Spirit can accomplish the impossible in us, faith cannot lead us to genuine Christian discipleship. As such, Christocentric catechesis must seek to bring people to both of these pivotal moments.