Franciscan at Home

It is truly amazing what God can do when you focus on him. Lately, I have been reflecting on the “Smith” family, who came to our parish after beginning the RCIA process at two other parishes. When they came to our parish, I met with them to see how we could help.

I was amazed at their story and how much they desired to become Catholic! Mr. Smith shared with me how he was formally a leader in the Church of Christ and had begun to study Catholicism to prove it was wrong. His intentions may have been misdirected, yet even this was a response to God’s grace. His studies took a different turn: they led him to see how the Catholic Church was the one true Church. Once he realized this, he told his wife that he wanted to convert to Catholicism. She told him that if he converted it would “wreck” their marriage. He decided to pray and continue to study on his own, trusting that if God led him to this conclusion he would also provide a way for him to become Catholic and keep his family intact.

A Gift from the Church for the Church What does the world need at this time? And what would help every single Catholic right now? The answer is held in this beautiful gem, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The contents on each page of this “book” capture God’s profound love for us and his unwavering desire to be united with us in a relationship of love. Literally, we can find God in every paragraph! St. Paul tells us in his Letter to the Romans that we are to “be transformed by the renewal of [our] mind” (Rom 12:2). There are a vast number of excellent Catholic books that can be studied and put into practice that bring such renewal, but none compare to the richness of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This is a bold statement but is based upon the testimony by Catholics at all levels of faith: from the person in the parish with no theological background to the scholarly intellectual with years of higher-level training. This life-saving treasure is worth reading in its entirety, as a systematic and orderly presentation of the “Sacred deposit” of the Faith.[1] We have been given a most incredible gift in the Catechism. This beautiful masterpiece is an orderly presentation of the faith—revealed Truth—that slowly builds in a manner in which all the teachings draw together and make sense. That is to say, there is a growing explanation of who God is, what he has done and continues to do for us, and our response to him through our choices in daily life and our relationship with him through prayer. And the presentation of doctrine throughout is clear and succinct. Beginning with the prologue, the first heading grabs our attention: “The life of man – to know and love God.” In order for us to know and love God, we must come to “the knowledge of the truth” (1Tim 2:3-4; emphasis mine), which is necessary for salvation. So, anything that is taught regarding the Faith must be correct in order to convey the truth! We have the guarantee that the teaching in the Catechism is correct. From the Church we receive the Truth revealed by God gathered together in the Catechism—the treasure of “Good News” given by Christ to the Apostles and handed on to us. Therefore, the Catechism allows every Catholic, and the world, to know exactly “what the Church professes, celebrates, lives and prays in her daily life.”[2] In Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution introducing the text of the Catechism, the first line captures the feelings of every person who has read any part of this “authoritative exposition of the one and perennial apostolic faith”: “It is a cause for great joy that the…Catechism…is being published.” In Chapter One of the Creed, I can remember finding peace in the depths of my soul when I read the following lines because I had lived in a place where I was not hearing the truth: …God is Truth itself, whose words cannot deceive. This is why one can abandon oneself in full trust to the truth and faithfulness of his word in all things…. God is also truthful when he reveals himself – the teaching that comes from God is “true instruction.” When he sends his Son into the world it will be ‘to bear witness to the truth’: “We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, to know him who is true.” (CCC, pars. 215, 217, emphasis mine) We can rest assured that the Catechism contains the constant teaching of the Catholic Church. We can have a tremendous sense of security in knowing this is a reliable presentation of the truth. As Jesus said, “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (Jn 8:32). This truth not only brings intellectual freedom but also, even more comprehensively, provides emotional and spiritual freedom, which brings stability and peace. We don’t have to wonder; this does not involve guesswork; we don’t have to figure it out. God has revealed the truth and wants us to know and understand the truth and live it out by his grace, because it will provide personal happiness, not only now but for all eternity. The Catechism also contains a cohesive unity, in that it is composed of four interconnected parts, also called pillars: Creed, Sacraments, Life in Christ, and Prayer. What we believe in the Creed, we celebrate in the Sacraments. Our belief and celebration, in turn, shape and sustain how we live and pray. In other words, a doctrine in the Creed is directly related in some way to specific paragraphs in the sections on the Sacraments, Life in Christ, and Christian Prayer. And this is the case, back and forth, between all four pillars.

En nuestro número anterior, Dr. Kreeft exploró varios asuntos importantes que se suscitan cuando consideramos las preguntas de “¿quién?” y “¿dónde?” en cuanto se refieran a Cristo en la Eucaristía. En este artículo, el autor examina las tres preguntas finales con tal de ayudarnos a mejor comprender la enseñanza de la Iglesia sobre nuestro Señor Eucarístico.

¿Qué?
¿Qué actividad realiza Cristo en la Eucaristía? Obviamente, Él actúa sobre nosotros y dentro de nosotros en la Sagrada Comunión, tanto en nuestro cuerpo como en nuestra alma, ya que Él nos penetra en Cuerpo y Alma, no solamente para estar allí, para ser actual, sino para ser activo también en nosotros. Nos hace cosas. Nos salva de nosotros mismos, nos lava quitando nuestros pecados, nos justifica y santifica, y nos glorifica. Nos da toda gracia, nos hace, de forma gradual, lo que le hizo a María repentina y totalmente, es decir “llena de gracia”. En nuestro caso, este proceso no es completado y perfeccionado en esta vida, como lo fue para María. Pero lo que le hizo Dios, nos lo hace a nosotros. Hace – está ahora manos a la obra haciendo – una obra mucho mayor que el hacer el universo entero desde la nada: está haciendo santos de pecadores. El mundo entero es como aquella caja-más-que-mágica a la que llamamos el confesionario: Adán entra y Jesús sale. Cristo hace lo que únicamente Dios puede hacer: crea en nosotros un corazón puro. Nos está operando el corazón. Él es quien T.S. Eliot llamó “el cirujano herido”. La Sagrada Comunión es cirugía cardíaca.

Pero, ¿qué hace Cristo en la Eucaristía todo el tiempo, aun cuando no estamos recibiendo la Sagrada Comunión y cuando no estamos ofreciendo su Cuerpo y su Sangre al Padre para la salvación del mundo cuando asistimos a Misa? ¿Qué hace durante la Adoración Eucarística? ¿Qué está haciendo ahorita mismo?

Santo Tomás contesta esa pregunta con una sola palabra, una palabra maravillosa, en el himno eucarístico más perfecto que se haya escrito. El primer renglón es “Adoro Te devote, latens deitas, quae sub his figuris, vere latitas” (Devotamente te adoro, Dios escondido, oculto verdaderamente bajo estas apariencias). Aquella palabra, latitas, es la respuesta a nuestra pregunta, “¿Qué está haciendo Cristo allí?” Se está ocultando.

Ocultarse es un acto, no solo un estado estático de ser, sino una acción, una actividad, un acto libremente deseado que hace una diferencia, que cambia algo. Cuando nos ocultamos, cambiamos nuestra apariencia. Si no nos ocultáramos, estaríamos visibles; cuando nos ocultamos, hacemos algo, cambiamos algo, nos volvemos invisibles. Nos retiramos de las apariencias. Cuando dejamos de ocultarnos, no le sumamos nada a nuestro ser, sino que nos quitamos algo: nos quitamos nuestro disfraz, o nuestro escondite. Cesamos la acción de ocultarnos.

n our previous issue, Dr. Kreeft explored several important issues that arise when we consider the questions of “who” and “when” as they relate to Christ in the Eucharist. In this article, he will examine three final questions, to help us better understand the Church’s teaching concerning our Eucharistic Lord.

What?

What activity is Christ performing in the Eucharist? Obviously, he is acting on us and in us in Holy Communion, both in body and soul, since he enters us both in body and soul not just in order to be there, to be actual, but also to be active in us. He does stuff to us. He saves us from ourselves, he washes away our sins, he justifies and sanctifies us, and glorifies us. He gives us all graces, he makes us, gradually, what he made Mary suddenly and totally, namely “full of grace.” For us, this process is not completed and perfected in this life, as it was for Mary. But what God did to her, he does to us. He does—he is now at work doing—a far greater work than making the entire universe out of nothing: he is making saints out of sinners. The whole world is like that more-than-magical-box we call the confessional: Adam walks in and Jesus walks out. Christ does what only God can do: he creates in us a clean heart. He is performing heart surgery on us. He is what T.S. Eliot called “the wounded surgeon.” Holy Communion is heart surgery.

But what is Christ doing there in the Eucharist all the time, even when we are not receiving Holy Communion and when we are not offering his Body and Blood to the Father for the salvation of the world as we assist at the Mass? What is he doing there during Eucharistic adoration? And what is he doing right now?

St. Thomas answers that question in a single word, a wonderful word, in the most perfect and beautiful Eucharistic hymn ever written. The first line is “Adora te devote, latens deitas, quae sub his figuris vere latitas.” (Devoutly I adore thee, hidden deity, Who beneath these figures hideth there from me.) That word latitas is the answer to our question, “What is Christ doing there?” He is hiding.

The phrases “God from God” and “Light from Light” are used in the Nicene Creed which is recited at every Sunday Mass.

In Latin, the phrase “Light from Light” is lumen de lumine. The phrase appears in the very first section of the Creed:

"I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made."

The Symbolum Nicaenum, or Nicene Creed, was first promulgated at the Council of Nicea (325), though in an abbreviated form from what we have today. St. Athanasius (296-373), the great bishop of Alexandria, attributes the composition of the Nicene Creed to a Papal Legate called Hossius of Cordoba. The Creed is also sometimes called the Nicene-Constantinoplian Creed since it appears in the Acts of the Council of Constantinople (381). It was formally promulgated at Chalcedon in 451 and has come down to us as our present Nicene Creed.

It was at the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople that the true nature of Jesus was defended against a multitude of heresies. In particular, the words “God from God” and “Light from Light” were aimed against the Arian heresy, which denied the pre-existence of Christ. Arius (c. 250-336), a priest from Alexandria, argued that the Father alone is God in the full sense and that the Son was a being created by the Father. This idea was also called “subordinationism.” The Councils, drawing upon the traditions handed down to them from the Apostles, condemned the heresy and declared that Jesus was indeed both true God and true man. Against Arius, the Nicene Creed reasserts the principle that Jesus Christ is not made by God and so is of the created order, but is instead of the same order of being as the Father: uncreated, eternal, and timeless. The Greek word “homo-ousios” (of the same being), or in Latin “consubstantialis” and now in the English version of the Creed “consubstantial,” was used to denote the relationship of God the Father to God the Son.

Nonetheless, Arianism remained a problem for well over a century. The whole of modern day France was infected with Arianism until King Clovis married Burgundian Princess Clotilde. In 496, Clotilde, who was not an Arian, convinced Clovis that Christ really was God. When Clovis converted to this position, some 4,000 of his soldiers followed him, and as a consequence Arianism died out in the Frankish kingdom. St. Clotilde is one of a number of saintly queens who used her influence with poorly catechised husbands to change the course of history in a decidedly Christian direction.

If you have ever traveled internationally, you have undoubtedly experienced the challenge of interpreting unfamiliar signs. Deciphering these enigmatic symbols can be a funny exercise, as long as you are not desperately lost. The first time I traveled to Australia, my wife and I were regularly in stiches at the utterly unique signs. My favorite had to be the camel, wombat, and kangaroo caution sign. Seeing this sign was a clear indication that we were far from home and in very unfamiliar territory[CR1] .

The purpose of a sign is to teach the viewer something: warning, action, direction, etc. The Catholic Christian faith is filled with signs that are designed to teach, but just like unfamiliar signs in a foreign country, if someone does not clearly explain the meaning of the sign, we will remain in ignorance or left to make our best guess. Frequently, cradle Catholics do not understand the meaning of the signs that surround them and this leads to a deficient Christian life, lacking the full available richness .

When it comes to RCIA, explaining the meaning of the signs and symbols is all the more crucial. Being one who came to the Catholic Church later in life, I cannot state strongly enough how confusing are many of the actions within the liturgy to an uninitiated observer. I’ll never forget being handed the baptismal candle, when my children were baptized, and seeing the chi rho (☧) on the side of the candle. Not knowing what it was, I asked the three religious sisters present at the baptism what it meant and they didn’t know either. I now know and can give a wonderful explanation, but that is for another time.

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.

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]