Franciscan at Home

Uno de los signos de la experiencia contemporánea es un sentido muy extendido de quebrantamiento, una especie de pesadez de ser. Por lo mismo, una de las afirmaciones menos debatidas de la cristiandad es que tenemos necesidad de sanación, tanto a nivel personal como a nivel social. Los analistas sociales buscan sin cesar las causas de este descontento individual y colectivo. Mientras existan factores culturales que contribuyan a la enfermedad posmoderna, la teología cristiana siempre ha ofrecido una causa de raíz del descontento de la humanidad: el pecado original que heredamos y los pecados personales que cometemos. Si el pecado fuera el fin de la historia, la Cristiandad ofrecería un panorama bastante desolador. Según sugiere su mismo nombre, sin embargo, la Cristiandad no termina con nuestro quebrantamiento, sino que señala hacia arriba y hacia afuera a Cristo, quien vino a este mundo precisamente para salvarnos de nuestro pecado y del peso de sus efectos.

Aunque siga el debate sobre las raíces de los problemas de la humanidad, el punto central de la Buena Nueva del Evangelio es la verdad de que Jesús vino para que nosotros pudiéramos tener vida (Cf. Jn 10,10). Esta participación en la vida divina por medio de la gracia, recibida de manera especial por medio de la oración y de los sacramentos, se nos ofrece gratuitamente. La gracia es un don divino que a la vez sana nuestro quebrantamiento y nos eleva a la verdadera grandeza espiritual. Santo Tomás de Aquino escribió sobre este doble efecto de la gracia en la Summa Theologiae: “…el hombre para vivir rectamente necesita un doble auxilio de la gracia de Dios. El primero es el de un don habitual por el cual la naturaleza caída sea curada y, una vez curada, sea además elevada, de modo que pueda realizar obras meritorias para la vida eterna, superiores a las facultades de la naturaleza. El segundo es un auxilio de gracia por el cual Dios mueve a la acción. Ahora bien, el hombre que está en gracia no necesita otro auxilio de la gracia, en el sentido de un nuevo hábito infuso. Pero sí necesita un nuevo auxilio en el segundo sentido, es decir, necesita ser movido por Dios a obrar rectamente.”[1] Estos efectos curativos y transformativos de la gracia son precisamente el antídoto contra nuestros corazones rotos y nuestro mundo roto.

One of the marks of contemporary experience seems to be a widespread sense of brokenness, a sort of heaviness of being. Therefore, one of the least debated claims of Christianity is that we need healing, both personal and societal. Social analysts repeatedly look for the causes of this individual and collective discontent. While there are cultural factors that contribute to postmodern dis-ease, Christian theology has always offered a root cause for humanity’s discontent: original sin that we inherit and the personal sins that we commit. If sin were the end of the story, Christianity would indeed be rather bleak. As its name implies, however, Christianity does not stop with our brokenness but rather points us upward and outward to Christ, who came into this world precisely to save us from our sin and the weight of its effects. While debate may continue regarding the roots of humanity’s problems, central to the message of the Good News of the Gospel is the truth that Jesus came that we might have life (see Jn 10:10). This sharing in divine life by grace, received especially through prayer and the sacraments, is freely offered to us. Grace is a divine gift that both heals our brokenness and uplifts us to true spiritual greatness. Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote of this two-fold effect of grace in the Summa Theologiae: “In order to live righteously a man needs a twofold help of God—first, a habitual gift whereby corrupted human nature is healed, and after being healed is lifted up so as to work deeds meritorious of everlasting life, which exceed the capability of nature. Secondly, man needs the help of grace in order to be moved by God to act.”[1] These curative and transformative effects of grace are precisely the antidote to our broken hearts and our broken world.

Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Buddha and Confucius and Lao Tzu all gave us their minds; Christ gave us his body. They all tried to save the world from ignorance by their philosophies; Christ saved the world from sin and death and hell by his body and blood—both on the cross and in the Eucharist. Christ said, “Come unto me.” Buddha said, “Look not to me, look to my dharma, my teaching.” The others said, “I teach the truth,” but Christ said, “I AM the truth.” When we receive the Eucharist, we eat the Truth. Christ is the meaning of life. When we receive him, we receive the meaning of life into our bodies, not just into our minds.

The Gospel is a series of events, culminating in a marriage. The bridegroom, Christ, and his bride the Church (us) both come a long way to meet and marry each other. He comes from eternity to time, from heaven to earth, from spirit to matter, from perfection to a world full of sin and into lives full of sin. He brings us from absolute nothingness into being by creation and, eventually, our birth; and then into his Church, into his Body, by the sacraments, beginning with baptism, which is our second birth. These are dramatic events, good news, gospel. Since our religion is essentially the Good News, it is proper to ask the same five questions a news reporter would: who, when, what, why, and where? These are the five questions I set myself to answer in this series about our meeting with Christ in the Eucharist. We’ll address the first two questions in this issue.

The distress has been palpable. Important voices within the Church decry clericalism as the cause of the current scandal. Others point to the Church’s teaching concerning sexuality not being lived or taught with clarity.

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The catechesis of adults is one of the great catechetical challenges in this time of the New Evangelization. This is a particularly difficult and unique challenge because, as we are all keenly aware, many of the adults in our parish pews are poorly catechized and are not only in great need of authentic and systematic catechesis but are also in need of a evangelization, or a presentation of the basic Gospel message. St. John Paul II addresses this reality in Catechesi Tradendae when he refers to many adult Catholics as “quasi-catechumens.” He reminds us that adult catechesis today needs to be “directed to those who in childhood received a catechesis suited to their age but who later drifted away from all religious practice and as adults find themselves with religious knowledge of a rather childish kind. It is likewise directed to those who feel the effects of a catechesis received early in life but badly imparted or badly assimilated” (art. 44). If we are honest in our assessment, quasi-catechumens comprise perhaps 70 to 80% of the adults occupying the pews at any given Sunday Mass. To make things even more urgent, the New Evangelization requires and even demands that the lay faithful take up their particular baptismal vocation to be present and active in the ordinary places of secular culture, and to work within it like leaven to build up the kingdom of God.[i] Until the laity are able to understand and live out this crucial mission, the New Evangelization is in danger of never becoming a reality despite the extraordinary movement and promptings of the Holy Spirit in our time. St. John Paul II expresses this urgency clearly when he states, “A new state of affairs today both in the Church and in social, economic, political and cultural life, calls with a particular urgency for the action of the lay faithful. If lack of commitment is always unacceptable, the present time renders it even more so. It is not permissible for anyone to remain idle.”[ii]

There is a scene in the film Good Will Hunting where Sean (Robin Williams) and Will (Matt Damon) share a pivotal conversation on a bench overlooking a swan-filled lake. The week before, Will quickly and incisively interprets a painting that Sean had created and hung in his office.

This article opens with stories of Jan Tyranowski and Karol Wojtyla, Saints Ignatius, Peter Faber and Francis Xavier to supply us with a picture of the value of real pastoral accompaniment, wherein a more personally directed style of formation takes place, either alongside traditional classroom catechesis, or, for a season at least, instead of the classroom lecture style of formation. Pastoral accompaniment, whether formal or informal, takes place when a spiritually experienced mentor walks with a less-experienced disciple through the steps of gaining maturity. It could be called a type of spiritual life-coaching. In recent years, the Holy Spirit has been calling for a renewal of pastoral accompaniment in the Church. Pastoral accompaniment is not the same as spiritual direction, although there are similarities and overlaps. The term “spiritual friendship” or “spiritual mentoring” might be more apt to convey the sense of what the Spirit seems to be inviting the Church to develop. Accompaniment happens when one who has been practicing the spiritual life with some intentionality advises another who wants to grow in the spiritual life.