Spe Salvi as a discernment tool, part 9

We have finally arrived at Judgment as a setting for learning and practicing hope. This section varies from Pope Benedict’s normal structure; instead of leading off with a statement, he starts in on the topic of the final judgment. He states historically, “the prospect of the Judgement has influenced Christians in their daily living as a criterion by which to order their present life (#41).” Pope Benedict postulates that final judgment now “has faded into the background(#42).” This is because we are concerned with our self and not with those around us. We see ourselves disconnected with the community and with God. In fact, Pope Benedict suggests that we see God as disconnected from world events, so that we must act on our own to right the world. The result is “a world without hope has to create its own justice is a world without hope(#42).” This disconnectedness allows sin to reign in our hearts and minds and we think that God is not present in the world and not working in the world. Being disconnected then allows our imagination to leap to ideas that are unrealistic but real in our own mind. We have the audacity to think we have to provide the answer our self. We act out of our self instead of acting by God’s grace.

Pope Benedict reminds us that we have to build our life “upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ(#46).” Building our foundation on Jesus means allowing Jesus to influence and guide our lives. Often though our fear of God creates this desire to want to be unnoticed, that is we fear God seeing us. Pope Benedict states, “His gaze, the touch of His Heart heals through an undeniably painful transformation ‘as through fire.’ But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of His love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God(#47).” We have to allow God’s grace to motivate us beyond our passions. If our foundation is our fear, ultimately our own knowledge will then be selfish and we will collapse in death. If grace animates us beyond our fear, then we share in God’s wisdom, we are selfless and we are actually fully our self. Keeping the thought of the Final Judgment before God in our mind helps us to understand the reason why need to be animated by God’s grace and not by our fears. If our foundation is Jesus, then facing God after death might give us anxiety, but Grace will ultimately conquer the anxiety. If our foundation is our self, then our anxieties will conquer us and we will be alone. We must want to be with others, to be part of a community. We must want to be inspired and dependent upon others, ultimately Jesus.

This is why the Pope ends with a section on Mary. He states, “Certainly, Jesus Christ is the true light,… But to reach Him we also need lights close by-people who shine with His light and so guide us along our way(#50).” Pope Benedict points out that we should have Mary be an active part of our life. But we also need holy people in our daily life that help us to remember to be animated in God’s grace.

Spe Salvi as a discernment tool, part 8

Part II of Prayer for the encyclical is entitled Action and Suffering as Setting for Learning Hope. This is yet another thick section by Pope Benedict. His writing style is to start off with a short rather beautifully simple statement that gets built into an idea that has a sense of beauty but also a burden of complexity, that takes time to ponder. His statement this time is, “all serious and upright human conduct is hope in action (35).” This means that the practical jokes that I participate in are not hope in action. The times that I lead liturgies and preach should be instances of Hope. Pope Benedict gets to the point quickly in that even if we perceive ourselves to be in desperate situations that the love of God allows us to have the “kind of hope [that can] give the courage to act and persevere (#35).” He returns to a point that was made at the very beginning of the letter and that “salvation is not simply a given (#1).” He states, “Heaven far exceeds what we can merit, it will always be true that our behavior is not indifferent before God and therefore is not indifferent for the unfolding of history (#35).” This makes the point of action in the title of this section. He outlines two reasons that our actions are important. The first is that “our actions engender hope for us and for others (#35).” The second “is the great hope based upon God’s promises that give us courage and directs our action in good times and bad (#35).” The point here is that love of God should inspire us to act out of love with the reassurance that love will redeem us. We should not act out of what we think we deserve or should have because Heaven is not offered to us on our actions. We have access to Heaven because of God’s generous love. Our actions should imitate this; our actions should not be cause and effect, but acting on a self-sacrificing love.

The next part of this section deals with the subject of suffering. Pope Benedict states, “Suffering stems partly from our finitude, and partly from the mass of sin which has accumulated over the course of history, and continues to grow abated today (#36).” Pope Benedict points out that we cannot “shake off our finitude (#36)” or “eliminating the power of evil (#36)” that suffering will always be with us while we are on earth in this life. We can limit suffering, but we will never be able to be rid of it this side of heaven. There is a challenge in this section that we as humanity show ourselves best when we recognize truth, justice and love as “enormously weighty realities (#39)” and “not simply ideals (#39).” Realities that must be safeguarded and adopted and not as ideals which occupy the imagination, but never exist in the world. This means that we have to be self-sacrificing for that which is great than ourselves. This is again a connection to the first paragraph of the letter, in which the Pope states, “the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads toward a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey (#1).”

Pope Benedict is stating in a letter what Pope John Paul II stated with his life. Much of life is mundane, that is tasks that need to be done. Yet, we are created in God’s image and likeness and redeemed by God’s love, so our actions cannot reside simply in this world. We must cooperate with God’s grace and act as He has given us the ability. That action entails a “painful renunciation of [oneself] (#39)” so that love can exist. Our challenge is to cooperate with God and luckily God has given us the ability. It is up to us act.

Spe Salvi as a discernment tool, part 7

I think most people would like to be known as being a person of prayer. Though I think most people see it as something unattainable. A life of prayer is done by others, but not by some like myself. We allow ourselves to be disillusioned into thinking something is not possible before we even give ourselves an actual opportunity to start. This is why the next section Prayer as school of hope is so important.

As is usual for Pope Benedict, he states the simple truth that the, “first essential setting for hope is prayer (#32).” As we reflect on the statement we discover that the “how” becomes complicated. First we are reminded that prayer is never an escape from our life or this world. Prayer should not be something that we do because we want to flee our lives or present situation. Prayer is a purification process that allows us to be better present to God and others. When we pray we need to set aside our needs and ideas. I gave up soda for Lent, which has helped me to realize that some times I incorrectly think that if I just have a Diet Coke everything will be fixed. It is a momentary need that some times seems to trump many moments. This is an example of the perceived needs we have, that can be strong in the moment, but seen as being stupid in the long run. Prayer means moving beyond these momentary needs to the need of the Infinite. The problem is that these momentary needs are very active in our minds. We can be easily deceived that they these momentary needs are worthy of our time and thought. These momentary needs can be the near occasion of sin, so we must be able to admit to sin. This is why Pope Benedict states, “Failure to recognize my guilt, the illusion of my innocence, does not justify me and does not save me, because I am culpable for the numbness of my conscience and my incapacity to recognize evil in me for what it is (#33).” He quickly adds, “Yet my encounter with God awakens my conscience in such a way that it no longer aims at self-justification, and is no longer a mere reflection of me and those contemporaries who shape my thinking, but becomes a capacity for listening to the Good itself (#33).” We need to be able to resist our momentary needs, so that we can hear God.

The next point that Pope Benedict makes about prayer is the twofold nature of prayer. Prayer must have personal component and a public component. Pope Benedict states, “Praying must always involve this intermingling of public and personal prayer (#34).” We must use the forms of prayer that have and continue to exist in the Church, such as Mass, Liturgy of the Hours, rosary, novenas, etc. as well as have our own prayer forms. God speaks to us through the Church and to us as individuals, but we can only be sure of Divine revelation, when It is communicated through both forms. Pope Benedict has argued extensively that being Catholic is not an individual issue, but is a communal activity. If we do this the Pope Benedict states, “we undergo those purifications by which we become open to God and are prepared for the service of our fellow human beings. We become capable of great hope, and thus we become ministers of hope for others (#34).” This is an important statement. We can know that we are cooperating with God’s grace when we can see how God is working in us and motivating us to work with others. Sometimes I think we do not know how to assess if we are cooperating with God. The assessment is are we giving to God and working with others.

This is an important point in discernment. The answer to the question of whether I am called to the priesthood is not arrived at by one’s own volition. Both the man and the community arrive at the answer. This is why the seminary is so important. The man entering the seminary needs to be able to ask the question “am I called to the priesthood?” The answer needs to be recognized by himself and the community.

Spe Salvi as a discernment tool, part 6

One of my mother’s comments was never prayer for patience because God has already given it to you, so you will be given circumstances to help you discover what you have. I don’t know if this is true, but it sounds good. We are finally arriving at the heart of the encyclical and learning what hope is about. If you have stuck with me so far, don’t pray for patience because I will slow down further, but pray for God to push me along.

In the section The true shape of Christian Hope, we finally arrive at what has only been hinted at so far. We are shown the difference between the material and moral realm. Pope Benedict writes that the material realm offers us continuous progress as generations continue to build upon the previous generations discoveries and knowledge, but every generation must renew itself in morality because morality does not progress. We can hand the advancements of science and technology on to students who becomes professors. Morality must be rediscovered by each generation, the knowledge of morality can be passed along, but each succeeding generation has the ability and freedom to accept or reject it. We might argue that we can hand on structures that keep morality, but putting people in a structure destroys their freedom and becomes a prison. Pope Benedict states, “this means that every generation has the task of engaging in the arduous search for the right way to order human affairs; this task is never completed (#25).”

Pope Benedict next states rather simply “man is redeemed by love (#26).” While the statement is simple the argument that explains the statement is complex. He states, “When someone has the experience of a great love in his life, this is a moment of ‘redemption’, which gives new meaning to his life (#26).” How many of us can remember a moment where we knew we were loved and knew that we were needed, and this knowledge of a need satisfied generated a renewed desire to live better? When we take these many moments we probably discover them as fleetingly happiness, but when we look at the absolute love of God, we can then begin to know how love is redemptive. This is the love that allows us to hope and desire eternal life. Yet, this is not a moment of solitude, but we will discover that this life “is about relationship (#27).” This love will motivate us to be with others; this is the realization of being created in the image and likeness of God. Pope Benedict explains about being in relationship with God, “who is Life itself and Love itself, then we are in life. Then we ‘live’ (#28).” When we are in communion with Jesus we have established a relationship with God (#28). But being in relationship with Jesus demands that we are in relationship with others. Pope Benedict states, “Love of God leads to participation in the justice and generosity of God towards others. Loving God requires an interior freedom from all possessions and all material goods: the love of God is revealed in responsibility for others (#28).” An obvious example of St. Augustine is used to illustrate the above. Pope Benedict recounts the story of Augustine encountering God and wanting to retreat to a contemplative life, but is called to be a Bishop and lead the community of Hippo.

Love of God and love of neighbor are two points that are important in discernment for everyone. In a family, it is the parent’s responsibility to teach their children in the matters of faith, but as the child grows up, it is the responsibility of the child to discover and accept the gift of faith and freely cooperate with God’s grace. Parents need to understand that it is their responsibility to educate and encourage the child to grow in faith, but it is the responsibility of the child to discover and accept the gift of faith. The second point, love of neighbor, is important for discernment in that it helps us to discover concretely if we are living in hope. Love of God impels us to want to live for others. The main point for reflection is this: are we are more concerned with our belongings and ourselves than cooperating with God? This does not mean that material objects are evil, but if we are more inspired to accumulate and protect rather than to share and give, then we should ask ourselves how well are we cooperating with God’s grace. Are we really experiencing redemptive love and allowing God to work through us and responding generously to others?

Spe Salvi as a discernment tool, part 5

When I was a little kid, I used to go with my grandfather to visit his mother. Time with my grandfather was always a time of wisdom and happiness. I remember one time looking at my grandfather and stating, “I am concerned that by the time I grow up everything will have been invented.” His reply at first was laughter and then he reassured that there would always be a need for new things. He stated that we will always be making advances in technology, but he stated that human nature always remains the same. I did not understand what he meant by that until I studied philosophy in the seminary.

Pope Benedict writes that the modern age has brought about the idea that science can explain nature, which has elevated science. Which is an attempt on the part of humanity to assert dominion over creation that we had lost by being expelled from the Garden of Eden. We are now tempting to find answers in science instead of looking to God. We have fallen back to the idea that we can redeem ourselves. That given enough studies we will find the answer. Pope Benedict points to two historical events that have helped to show how this thought has taken root in the world. The first is the French Revolution, which started the process of placing freedom and reason in the political reality. The second was Karl Marx, who thought that politics would free man, so that man could share everything equally because politics would create a situation where man would “want the best” for each equally.

Pope Benedict points out the reasons why both of the historical events failed. There was no plan for after the revolution. It was as if is man would naturally want the best for each without any structures helping this to occur. And “man always remains man (#21)”, which Pope Benedict means that just as we have the ability for good we also have the ability for evil. Marx thought that economics would free man, when materialism corrupts a person. A culture in search of progress has the potential to arrive at the good and also at the evil.

Pope Benedict reminds us that, “man needs God, otherwise he remains with hope (#23).” We are reminded that God does enter into the world and engage us in conversation. So we need to know that our reason needs faith, a divine Substance, to be complete. Faith and reason need to be dependent upon each other.

This should be a valuable lessen for those who are discerning God’s call. Young men need to know that discerning is not dependent upon their own ability to reason what God needs of them, but that they need their reason inspired by faith to be able to truly hear what God has to say. That if we are not reliant upon faith in our discernment, we risk not being where God needs us to be and where we will discover the most joy.

Spe Salvi as a discernment tool, part 4

It is taking longer to move through this than I thought. I do thank you for your patience and I hope this exercise is beneficial. I know it has been for me because it has helped me to really understand what Pope Benedict is stating about the Church and the world. I remember often as I read this document what Bishop Campbell said to a Mass full of college students, he told them to remember that they were pursuing truth and for us truth is a Person.

When we begin to talk about heaven, the information that we have is known from the negative means of arguing, that is what we know about heaven is from what we know it will not be. This has historically led to a perception of an idealized life in this world. In order to attain heaven we must abandon everything of this world and live life alone. In order to be saved one has to abandon life and cut one self off. This is the perception, and yet is the perception correct?

Pope Benedict uses to people of authority to demonstrate the error in this perception. Henri de Lubac, a Jesuit priest of the last century, cites several references in the Letter to the Hebrews that show salvation is a communional action. He even showed that sin was understood by the early “Fathers as the destruction of the unity of the human race” and that salvation “appears as the reestablishment of unity.”(#14) Today we often see sin as a very private matter that should have no reflection upon the community, so we can see how this perceived reality does actually exist. The other person that the Pope uses is Bernard of Clairaux, a French Abbot and reformer of Cistercian monasteries. Many men were have perceived to flock to the monastery to escape life; but Bernard believed that the monastery “perform[ed] a task for the whole Church and hence also for the world.”(#15) Bernard considered manual labor an effective means of cultivating the soul. Manual labor allowed for the soul, so that the substance of faith that God gives us can flourish. That “no positive world order can prosper where souls are overgrown.”(#15)

Pope Benedict outlines two reasons for a man who is considering the priesthood to be in the seminary. The Church is a community and so we must realize that to hear God’s call, then we need to be a community. The seminary is not a place to escape and become a priest, but it is to be a place where a man who is called to the priesthood is to have soul properly prepared for service in God’s Church. We can probably state a number of reasons for why we should do what we want, but we should see this as disunity and potentially sinful. We should realize that listening to God unifies us with others and allows God’s grace to maximize unity.

Spe Salvi as a discernment tool, part 3

Pope Benedict asks the tough question, one that certainly needs to be asked of anyone seriously discerning God’s call. He wants to know “is the Christian faith also for us today a life changing and life sustaining hope?” Certainly the answer needs to be yes for those who are seeking out God’s call and truly want to follow it. He returns to the performative or informative idea. Does the gospel influence our actions or is simply more information that can be pushed aside by newer information.

Pope Benedict illustrates the point in two ways. The first illustration is that of parents having their infant baptized. There is a dialogue that is part of the liturgy that takes place between the parents and the priest. The priest asks two questions after receiving the name of the child from the parents. The priest is attempting to have the parents answer faith to the first question and eternal life to the second question. The parents want the child baptized, they want their child to be part of the community of the Church, but ultimately the parents want the child to be in heaven. I remember often when I was growing up my mom used to say, “don’t do anything that would prevent you from seeing me in heaven.” That line has caused me to think about my behavior and keep it aligned with the gospel. Pope Benedict demonstrating here faith at work. Not only do parent’s want their child to be happy but also they know heaven is the place where that will occur. The second illustration though is the paradox that we as humans have. That is our desire to live forever, but our seeing eternal life as a curse and/or something to fear. St. Ambrose stated this, we don’t want to die, but we don’t want to live forever. These two illustrations seem to be odds with each other. The parents want for their children seem to have been forgotten in their own life.

The answer to these points is that in baptism we receive the gift of faith. We start the formal introduction to God. In baptism we are sealed by God and claimed by God. This seal and claim come from the substance that God gives and in this situation it is the gift of faith. God’s grace is driving us to desire heaven. What is causing us fear and despair is our own thoughts, which cannot comprehend heaven, and our sins. Pope Benedict ends this section with how we should view eternal life:

It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time – the before and after – no longer exists. We can only attempt to grasp the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy. (#12)

This joy will be so complete time will not even be a thought. This is why Pope John Paul II proclaimed, “be not afraid” so loudly. It is why Pope Benedict said give everything to God because He gives back with more. Fear is part of being human, but we have been invited to heaven and we have been made ready by God’s grace given to us in the Church.