In the next paragraph of Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict looks to the early Church to see how the hope that Christ brings was more than just a theoretical, or “informative”, hope, but one that was “performative”, in that it has the ability to change our lives, both individually and as a society.

A point of reference to demonstrate this performative quality of hope can be found in St. Paul’s Letter to Philemon, the shortest of his writings in the New Testament.  As an aside, we only hear from this letter in the liturgy once in the three-year cycle of Sunday readings (23^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C) and once in the two-year cycle of Weekday readings (Thursday of the 32^nd Week in Ordinary Time – Year II).  Since it is so short, perhaps that could be a worthwhile read this week.  With that said, let us consider how the Holy Father sees this passage as so important.

The pope quotes the following words from St. Paul, speaking to Philemon about returning Philemon’s runaway slave Onesimus to him: 

“I appeal to you for my child … whose father I have become in my imprisonment … I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart … perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother …” (Philem 10-16)

In explaining St. Paul’s encouragement to Philemon to now see Onesimus no longer as a slave, but “as a beloved brother”, Pope Benedict writes the following:

Those who, as far as their civil status is concerned, stand in relation to one another as masters and slaves, inasmuch as they are members of the one Church have become brothers and sisters—this is how Christians addressed one another. By virtue of their Baptism they had been reborn, they had been given to drink of the same Spirit and they received the Body of the Lord together, alongside one another. Even if external structures remained unaltered, this changed society from within. (SS 4)

The encounter with Christ, an encounter which gives us reason for hope, is not just about the promise of eternal life only, but it also transforms how we are called to see one another through a new lens, even as we continue our pilgrimage.  We are invited to see our fellow pilgrims as brothers and sisters who strive to honor and respect one another, loving one another as is appropriate to our state in life.  Distinctions in civil status may remain, but because of the new life given through baptism, those distinctions are no longer primary.  Rather, what takes priority is living the bonds of fraternity with others, under our one Master, whose rule is always rooted in charity.  The idea of our society living this way, which is more than just a theory, but very practical, should fill us with hope in how life and society can be better.

I find this to be a timely message for our society.  Though there have always been divisions, they seem to be more pronounced now than ever before.  We can get preoccupied with some aspect of how we see others, such as their political affiliation, their nationality, their race, just to name a few.  Sadly, that can become the predominant lens through which we view them.  But the gift of grace we have received in our baptism invites us to look through the lens of faith and to see not what divides us, but what unites us as brothers and sisters in Christ.  When that is our starting point, we are far more inclined to work for the good of all, not just what will be best for ourselves.  If all Christians were to live this way, we would indeed see a society transformed!

Father Alford     

Feast Day: January 26^th 

17 years after mobs tore apart the city of Rome, Christian fighting Christian, the sides divided by why they were backing as successor to Pope Liberius, Pope Damasus I, legitimately the successor of St. Peter, had to choose a path forward for unity in the Church (and in the rapidly fraying empire). Jesus’ mission for every Holy Father was the same:

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” – Luke 22:31-32.

The world will always battle against the Kingdom of God. Just as it was up to Peter to stand firm upon Christ for the sake of all the apostles, it was up to Damasus to do so in the 3^rd century. The whole reason that blood was spilled in 366 was over the question of whether unity or truth ought to prevail. Ought we just to go with Arianism if it unites the fragments of the empire?: the bishops and their flocks, the pagans and their idols, the incoming barbarians some of whom are already Arian… Would you deny Christ – deny His divinity, deny His sonship – if it saves the world? That was the question that faced Peter, and now Damasus, and every Holy Pope. In 383, we know he had decided for Christ. That year, Damasus penned an epigraph to be chiseled above the tomb of the early martyrs St. Stephen and St. Tarcisius. We still have the stone with his poem pristinely carved into it:

“You who read, whoever you are, recognize the equal merit of the two to whom Damasus the bishop has dedicated this inscription after their rewards. The Jewish people stoned Stephen when he was instructing them on a better course, he who carried off the trophy from the enemy: the faithful deacon first laid hold of martyrdom. When a raving gang was pressing holy Tarsicius to reveal to the uninitiated the sacraments of Christ that he was carrying, he wished rather to release his spirit, struck down, than to betray the heavenly limbs to mad dogs.” – Damasus of Rome, Epigrammata 15 (ICVR IV, 11078)

Stephen, the first of the martyrs, killed as he claimed to see the heavens opened and Christ at the right hand of God. Tarcisius, carrying the Blessed Sacrament to Christians in prison, refusing to hand over the sacrament to the mob who beat him, holding fast to Christ’s Body to the end. Body, Blood, Soul, Divinity. God and man. These martyrs died defending that truth, now Pope Damasus would uphold them (other saints too) as witnesses to the whole Church of Who Christ truly is. 

One year before, he had begun the first prong of his effort to unify the Church, and it would also have nothing to do with the violence where his pontificate began. in 382, Damasus convoked a synod in Rome, calling bishops and their delegates from around the empire. Among the documents issued from that synod was a list of all the books of the Bible, a “canon” of scripture. For centuries the Church had preached and prayed with these Books, Gospels, and Letters, but some individual bishops and churches advocated for other documents to also be included, other books from the Old Testament, other gospels, letters attributed to the apostles, various teachings from the early church … (many of them now float around as “lost Gospels” and “forgotten books of the bible”). At that synod, these bishops recommended Pope Damasus the list of books that are contained to this day in every Catholic Bible, 46 books in the Old Testament (from the Septuagint which Christ quoted in the Gospels), and the 27 books of the new. This same list would only be infallibly defined by the Council of Trent over a thousand years later, it only being necessary then because the entirety of the Christian Church, East and West, would be in agreement on these books from now until the Protestant Reformation. 

But, there was a giant problem. As the Church had wrestled with defining the faith over the prior decades, again and again debates erupted over language – Greek or Latin for the creeds, Hebrew and Greek for the scriptures – who was to say what meant what, how was clarity to be won, and truth defended, if everyone was talking about the faith using different language and citing quotations from scriptures found in different codices and scripts? Providentially, amazingly, here we had a Pope – certainly no saint yet – yet with the farsightedness to tackle an enormous problem facing the Church. And we also had a brilliant scholar in attendance at that synod with all the skills needed for the enterprise. He was a Roman by birth, but had spent the prior 20 years learning Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Latin to tremendous depth and had also studied (and in many cases rubbed elbows with) the greatest theologians of the Church – Origen, Augustine, Ambrose, Evagrius, Gregory Nazianzus, Basil, and Gregory of Nyssa. These were the men who knew every thread of every heresy and the Lord had placed throughout His Church for the battle fought at that very time. Jerome was the man to make the scriptures accessible to that entire Church of the future. 

– Fr. Dominic was once again setting the stage this week. St. Paula is coming!

If you look up the phrase “take for granted”, one definition from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is as follows: “to value (something or someone) too lightly : to fail to properly notice or appreciate (someone or something that should be valued).”  Pope Benedict warns that “we who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God.” (SS, 3)  We have a real encounter with God every time we come to Mass, as He speaks to us in His Word and we receive His very being in the Eucharist.  Perhaps because we encounter God so frequently, or because we do not always have a life-altering experience of His love for us with each encounter, we can take Him for granted.

In an attempt to invite us to rediscover the gift of this encounter, the Holy Father introduces us to a modern saint who had a real encounter with God for the first time, an encounter that would change her perspective on hope radically.  The saint is the African St. Josephine Bakhita.  At a relatively early age, she was kidnapped by slave-traders and treated very harshly, which resulted in her bearing 144 scars for the rest of her life.  She was eventually sold to an Italian merchant and she found herself living in a new country.  While in Italy, she began to hear about a new kind of Master.  Pope Benedict writes the following:

Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her “at the Father’s right hand” (SS 3)

He then describes how this new awareness of a loving, personal God shifted her perspective on hope:

Now she had “hope”—no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was “redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God. (SS 3)

She would go on to be baptized and confirmed, and eventually she became a consecrated religious sister.  She then committed herself to sharing the message of the “liberation she had received through her encounter with Jesus Christ”, to spread the message of hope to as many as possible.

The next time we are at Mass, perhaps we can call to mind how we have maybe taken for granted what a gift we have in being able to encounter our loving Master so frequently and so profoundly.  Let us pray that through that weekly (or even daily) encounter, we may come to be reminded of God’s unique and personal love for us, and how that love gives us a hope that the disappointments of this world cannot shake, but which can encourage us to keep moving forward until the fulfillment of our hope is realized.

Father Alford     

As he begins to unpack the biblical meaning of hope, Pope Benedict notes how the terms “faith” and “hope” seem to be somewhat interchangeable.  Though these are in fact two separate theological virtues, they do share much in common.  He cites St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians in saying that before they came to a life of faith in Christ, they were “without hope and without God in the world.” (Eph 2:12) Faith involves assenting to all that God has revealed as truth, and that opens the door for us to have hope in the promise that what He has revealed is that we are called to be with Him in Heaven, and that He will provide all of the graces necessary for us to get there.  Much more can be said to distinguish these two virtues, but I think this brief explanation will suffice to show how interrelated they are, while remaining distinct.

The line from paragraph 2 of Spe Salvi that I would like to focus on comes later in the paragraph after the Holy Father treats on faith and hope together.  He references a line from St. Paul’s words to the Church in Thessalonica: “We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.” (1 Thes 4:13)  The pope then writes:

Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well…The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life. (SS, 2)

This is a great gift to be able to leave the future in the hands of God, trusting His fidelity, believing in His promises, so that we can attend to where He wants us here and now, and by our saying “yes” to Him each day, we know that the hope we have for the future will not disappoint (cf. Rom 5:5).  In that regard, I want to share a part of a meditation from St. John Henry Newman that I think expresses this interplay of faith and hope in a beautiful way:

Therefore I will trust Him.
Whatever, wherever I am,
I can never be thrown away.
If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him;
In perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him;
If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.
My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be
necessary causes of some great end,
which is quite beyond us.
He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life,
He may shorten it;
He knows what He is about.
He may take away my friends,
He may throw me among strangers,
He may make me feel desolate,
make my spirits sink, hide the future from me—
still He knows what He is about.…
Let me be Thy blind instrument. I ask not to see—
I ask not to know—I ask simply to be used.

St. John Henry Newman, Meditation (March 7, 1848)

Father Alford     

Feast Day: January 26^th 

337 A.D., about two decades after Constantine had allowed Christians to practice their faith throughout the Roman Empire, and a bit more than a decade after the First Council of Nicaea had articulated our belief in the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father (and the corresponding Nicaean creed), that great and complicated emperor, baptized at the very end of his life, died. The giant empire, united under him after so many centuries of being split between various emperors, rent by civil wars, and wracked by persecutions, had before it the possibility of unifying under the banner of Christ. Sadly, the coming decades would be more difficult than might have been hoped.

By 340, two of Constantine’s sons were at war with each other with Constantine II killed as he attempted to wrest Rome from Constans. Constans himself would be assassinated a decade later by the usurper Magnentius, leaving the third son, Constantius II, to wage his own civil war against that upstart, eventually gaining the entire empire for himself. He, as history had it, was Christian, but an Arian, and so it is he who exiles Athanasius for his staunch defense of Orthodox, Nicaean, Christianity, and around 355 demands Pope Liberius to appear before him and agree to a semi-arian statement (and a repudiation of his friendship with Athanasius). Theodoret records this epic conversation, the emperor of the world confronting the successor of Peter.

The Emperor: “One question only requires to be made. I wish you to enter into communion with the churches, and to send you back to Rome. Consent therefore to peace, and sign your assent, and then you shall return to Rome.”

Liberius: “I have already taken leave of the brethren who are in that city. The decrees of the Church are of greater importance than a residence in Rome.”

The Emperor: “You have three days to consider whether you will sign the document and return to Rome; if not, you must choose the place of your banishment.”

Liberius: “Neither three days nor three months can change my sentiments. Send me wherever you please.”

As history would have it, even this dramatic show down, and heroic position of Pope Liberius is clouded by the uncertainties of the following years. Constantius exiled the pope and set up his own puppet anti-pope, Felix II, but later he allowed Liberius to return – some say because the pope had finally capitulated to some of his demands – trying to have co-popes with Liberus and Felix both leading the Church… In any case, by 361, things managed to get decisively worse when Julian became the new emperor. He was the one who attempted to un-baptize himself by plunging himself in a vat of bull’s blood, and he did resume animal sacrifices, revived some of the persecutions of earlier centuries, and (begrudgingly recognizing something that Christians had done quite well) commands the pagan priests to increase their acts of charity. It is worth remembering his words here!:

“These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agapē, they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes. Whilst the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity; and by a display of false compassion have established and given effect to their pernicious errors. See their love-feasts and their tables spread for the indigent. Such practice is common among them, and causes a contempt for our gods.” – Julian, Letter to Arsacius, High Priest of Galatia (Letter 22)

But the turmoil outside of the Church was sadly just as evident within its walls (quite literally).  In 366, Damasus I and Ursinus were both elected Pope by their respective cohorts of priests and people in Rome (rifts that trace back to the conflict between Felix I and Liberius, and between the Arian and Nicaean disagreements). The gangs around them took up weapons and attacked each other, at one point 137 people were killed inside of the newly built Basilica of Sicininus (now St. Mary Major). Our records of all these events are hopelessly muddled and biased by the acrimony on each side. Those that leaned Arian, of course, side with Ursinus and defame Damasus, and vice versa. That said, the horrible scene stays before our eyes of hatred and bloodshed filling a place dedicated to the worship of Christ. Here is what one young man, baptized by Pope Liberius, and then a protégé of Pope Damasus, writes to his friend

“I was at that time in Rome, and I saw the bloodshed and the disturbance; the factions of Ursinus and Damasus were divided by mutual strife, and the churches were polluted with blood.” – St. Jerome, Letter to Heliodorus (Letter 15):

– Fr. Dominic will bring us back to St. Jerome next week. Crazy twist: the unification of the Christian world, and the conversion of the pagan world, would happen in large part because of Jerome’s efforts. And his life’s work depended on the humility and sanctity of one amazing woman, St. Paula, who we will finally encounter next week!