When I entered seminary in 2006, it was at a time when the Church in the United States was making a transition to a new set of expectations with regards to a candidate’s formation in philosophy before beginning the study of theology.  For those who already had a college degree, a time of pre-theology was required during which that necessary study of philosophy was undertaken.  For many seminaries, this involved cramming several classes in philosophy into a single year, often presented in a non-systematic way.  Seeing the problem with this, the bishops of the United States would now require that the study of philosophy would span two full years, ensuring an adequate study of this topic.  I found myself at the tail end of the one-year study of philosophy, and as a result, certain classes in that discipline were left out.  One such class that I did not have to take was Modern Philosophy.  At the time, I was grateful to not have to take the class, having heard of its reputation for being pretty difficult.  But as I read the next paragraph in Spe Salvi, my gratitude for dodging that class turned into regret, as I found myself feeling rather unequipped to appreciate the Holy Father’s reflections on the impact of modern philosophy on the topic of faith and hope.

Pope Benedict begins by asking why there has been a shift toward a “narrowly individualistic” idea of hope and a “selfish search for salvation which rejects the idea of serving others.” (Spe Salvi, 16) To begin answering that question, he turns to one of the early, key figures in modern philosophy, Francis Bacon.  Since my knowledge of this important figure in modern thought was so lacking, I decided to do a little research.  Francis Bacon has been referred to many as the father of empiricism.  A basic definition of empiricism is that it is “the philosophical theory that all knowledge comes from sensory experience. In other words, we learn and understand the world through what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.” (from Catholic Encyclopedia).

We can begin to see a problem with this type of philosophy, because it discounts or discredits anything not based on sensory experience, including faith and divine revelation, which are essential for the Christian world-view.  Recall the definition of faith given in the Letter to the Hebrews: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” (Heb. 11:1) My guess is that Fracis Bacon, and the system he promoted, would have seen this passage as foolish.  If it cannot be seen or experienced, it cannot be verified and it must not be true.  Now, given that I am lacking in my understanding of modern philosophy, perhaps my conclusion is a bit too black and white, and that the position of empiricism is a little more nuanced.  But nevertheless, I think we can begin to see how such a way of thinking can lead to trouble for a worldview rooted in faith.

In the conclusion of this paragraph, Pope Benedict notes that this way of thinking proposed by Bacon “would mean that the dominion over creation —given to man by God and lost through original sin—would be reestablished” (Spe Salvi, 16) Original sin has the effect of darkening our intellect, and thus our relationship to creation has been damaged.  Instead of relying on faith and grace to overcome this deficit, Bacon is proposing that science and progress can bring about a reestablishment of what had been lost.

What comes to mind is a term I heard many years ago, in which humanity claims a sort of “intellectual pride” over previous generations.  They did not know as much as we do now, thus their reliance on things like faith to explain what they could not understand.  But now, being more advanced, we are much smarter and better equipped to answer those questions to where faith is no longer necessary.  The more we tap into science and technology, there is no problem we cannot solve, thus eliminating just about any need for faith.  

Perhaps that is a bit of a stretch, and there is likely much more nuance to this position, but I think we can begin to see the danger of this way of thinking, and how necessary it is for us to have an adequate response to it, which, thanks be to God, the Church does.

The word “środowisko”, you’ll recall, is tricky to translate. Milieu or environment captures something of it, but community or circle add a necessary human/relational quality that certainly is part of how Fr. Karol Wojtyła used the word. It comes from the root word “środek” meaning center, and the suffix “-isko” which adds the connotation of location or context. Środowisko is something we all have, it is the relationships, activities, and outlook that locate and center us, that support and solidify us. I say we all have this, but certainly the quality of our srodowisko can vary a lot! A few questions that might help to dig into this: 

• Who do you call if you have a flat tire? 
• Does anyone else know the heaviest cross you’re carrying right now? 
• When is the last time you laughed, or danced, or played, or hiked with abandon? 
• Do you ever pray with someone else? 

Take these as simple, gentle, questions that probe the depth of the relationships and friendships that you have around you right now – a sketch of your środowisko. They’re just the questions that come to the top of my mind, certainly incomplete, probably prompted by my own experience of community. I think all of us may want more here, perhaps a lot more. Maybe you’re thinking that you don’t have anybody around you right now. Take a deep breath, God has plans for your good, your joy, and it includes providing the entire środowisko that you’ll need to become a saint (and He has a splendid środowisko that He is readying for you in eternity). AND, keep in mind the heartbroken young Karol who, it seemed, had lost everyone that he loved at twenty, or several years later as a young priest when (1st) he was reassigned from his first parish after only a few months or (2nd) when he was asked to begin doctoral studies just as all his student ministry was starting to flower – God had plans for him just as he does for you. 

Ok. That reaffirmed, let’s look at Fr. Karol Wojtyła’s life for a first step we can all take in the right direction. A few anecdotes that I think point towards a simple theme: When playing soccer as a youngster, he noticed that the Jewish boys often joined together on one team and did not have a goalie. Little Lolek did not hesitate to jump in as their keeper to balance the sides. As a seminarian, while boarding the train he saw a bedraggled girl freezing on the platform. He brought her some food and tea, carried her onto the train, and wrapped his own cloak around her. She was Edith Zierer, 13 years old, escaped from the labor camp near Czestochowa, 

starving, infested with lice, and credits Karol with saving her life. She wrote to him when he became pope and visited him at the Vatican, and they kept up a written correspondence until he died. Jerzy Ciesielski would become one of the coordinators of the many outdoor expeditions of Środowisko, was the one who taught Karol how to kayak, and was also an engineer. Fr. Wojtyła would spend hours letting the young man lecture him on mathematics and breakthroughs in engineering, perhaps not the first inclination for a want to be actor and philologist, but he never cut Jerzy’s ramblings off. (Actually, when writing an article for a Catholic magazine in 1957 about his ministry in the mountains, Fr. Karol asked Jerzy to be a co-author with him). For his entire time in Krakow, including as Bishop, whenever one of his students was expecting he gave a personal day of recollection for the mother. From Witness to Hope by George Weigel: “He always had time,” Teresa Malecka recalled. “He understood that to baptize means to come home, to be with the family, to bless the baby sleeping in the bed. We didn’t have to ask him to do this; he wanted to do it.” 

A final story (from John Paul the Great, His Five Loves by Jason Evert): During an ad limina visit to Rome, Bishop Robert Brom was surprised when Pope John Paul II looked at him and said, “I think we have met before.” Brom, certain they hadn’t, politely disagreed. The Pope persisted, and days later, his secretary, Monsignor Stanisław Dziwisz, told Brom, “Don’t argue with the Pope, he remembers when he met you.” The meeting had taken place in November 1963 (decades before), outside the Church of the Gesù in Rome. Brom, then a seminarian at the North American College during the Second Vatican Council, had briefly crossed paths with Bishop Karol Wojtyła, the auxiliary bishop of Kraków, as they entered and exited the church with their respective groups. The moment had slipped Brom’s mind, but not Wojtyła’s. When Brom asked how the Pope could remember such an encounter, Dziwisz replied, “For John Paul, to meet another person is to encounter God.” Years later, near the end of the Pope’s life, John Paul brought it up again: “How many times have we met, and when was the first time?” This time, Brom got it right. John Paul slapped his desk, smiled, and said, “Finally you remember!” 

And so the takeaway: JPII cared about everyone that he met. He had all the time in the world for them and never let the next thing take his concern away from them. What if you or I did the same? This is not a super-power, but it is something that requires grace! The fact is we don’t have enough love for everyone if we’re trying to do so under our own steam, BUT what if we began each day simply asking the Lord to love each person through us? What if God provided the love? 

It might be a step towards the środowisko God wants for you! 

Fr. Dominic 

Alleluia!  He is Risen!  One of the more beautiful parts of the liturgy on Easter morning is the proclamation of the Easter Sequence, sung right before the Gospel.  This hymn dates back roughly 1000 years, and the Church has required its use on Easter Sunday since 1570.  Suffice it to say that it has stood the test of time!

In the middle of the hymn, the attention turns to St. Mary Madgalene, who was the first witness of the Resurrection of Jesus.  The hymn asks: “Speak, Mary, declaring, what you saw, wayfaring.”  Her response follows:

The tomb of Christ, who is living,
The glory of Jesus’ resurrection;
bright angels attesting,
The shroud and napkin resting.
Yes, Christ my hope is arisen;
to Galilee he goes before you.

During this Jubilee Year, as we are invited to be pilgrims of hope, we find in St. Mary Magdalene a model for us to imitate.  Recall that she was present when Jesus died on the Cross.  But even in the sadness of that dark moment, she still possessed hope.  It was hope that brought her to the tomb early Easter morning, and when she sees the Risen Christ, she is overjoyed as her hopes are fulfilled.  We then read in John’s Gospel:

Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me,^* for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”ⁱ18Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her. (Jn 20:17-18)

Mary Magdelene, having had her hope fulfilled, now goes out to share that message of hope with others, not content to keep it to herself.  She becomes a pilgrim of hope, or in the words of Pope Francis, she becomes an “Apostle to the Apostles.”  The message of great hope that Christ is Risen begins to spread, thanks to Mary’s witness of hope.

On first hearing this hymn, people might confuse the mention of the name Mary to be that of our Blessed Mother.  And although this is not the Mary it is referring to, nevertheless we can turn to Mary, the Mother of God, on this day as well.  For she too was at the foot of the Cross when her Son died.  Although she would have suffered greater anguish than Mary Magdelene, her hope was far greater.  Therefore we can turn to her as well on this Easter morning, asking her to pray for us who look forward in hope to the Lord’s return in glory.  I share a portion of the final paragraph of Pope Benedict’s document on hope, Spe salvi, in which he reflects on Mary as a great model of hope, especially in the light of this great feast we celebrate today:

In this faith, which even in the darkness of Holy Saturday bore the certitude of hope, you made your way towards Easter morning. The joy of the Resurrection touched your heart and united you in a new way to the disciples, destined to become the family of Jesus through faith. In this way you were in the midst of the community of believers, who in the days following the Ascension prayed with one voice for the gift of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14) and then received that gift on the day of Pentecost. The “Kingdom” of Jesus was not as might have been imagined. It began in that hour, and of this “Kingdom” there will be no end. Thus you remain in the midst of the disciples as their Mother, as the Mother of hope. Holy Mary, Mother of God, our Mother, teach us to believe, to hope, to love with you. Show us the way to his Kingdom! Star of the Sea, shine upon us and guide us on our way! (SS 50)

It was a bitterly cold February day in 1941 when Karol Wojtyła returned from his labors at the Zakrzówek quarry. He walked back, as usual, with a coworker and friend Juliusz Kydryński, whose mother gave Karol some dinner to take back for him and his father. When Karol entered his father’s room at the end of their dark hallway, he found his bedridden father slumped over, and when he tried to lift him up, discovered that during that day he had died. They had nicknamed their drafty and dark apartment “the catacomb.” That evening it was heart-wrenchingly apropos. “I was not at my mother’s death, I was not at my brother’s death, I was not at my father’s death. At twenty, I had already lost all the people I loved.” The distraught son ran for a priest from St. Satanisław’s to give his father the Last Rites (they can be given when there is doubt about whether the person is dead) and all that night he stayed kneeling by his father’s side. Juliusz came to be with him, though Karol ever after said that he had never felt so alone. 

My friends, this week we have stayed with Christ as he approached His death for our sake, spending time at Jesus’ cross and tomb, watching Him win for us the grace to make us saints. It is a tremendous gift to be with Him! We will all face our share of catacombs, crosses, or calvaries too. Perhaps right now for you that is an interior place of suffering or temptation, or a loss in your family or brokenness in a relationship, or maybe it is the burdens and fears that are just part of being human. Holy Week reminds us that in every suffering we are with Our Lord. 

But there is more in the cross than that! 

The Kydryńska’s invited Karol to come live with them for a time, intense prayer continuing to pour from his heart. “He went to Mass every day, he prayed a lot in his room, and he lay prostrate” they remembered of him, practices would mark the rest of his life. We do not get to see the grace at work within him but about a year later Karol chose to enter the underground seminary (the Nazi’s still occupying Poland, and most of Europe). It was not the obvious choice for a man with many young friends, fervently engaged in theatre and acting, and wanting to finish a degree in philology, BUT it makes sense if he took that year to pray like his recently-passed father. In Crossing the Threshold of Hope, JPII recalls from his childhood: “… after my mother’s death, [my father’s] life became one of constant prayer. Sometimes I would wake up during the night and find my father on his knees, just as I would always see him kneeling in the parish church. We never spoke about a vocation to the priesthood, but his example was in a way my first seminary, a kind of domestic seminary.” 

Crosses, losses, sufferings, these do not just make us more like Jesus, they incorporate us into His saving the world! St. Paul says to the Colossians, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” Paul is not saying that carrying his cross adds something to Jesus’ or completes something Jesus neglected to do on calvary. Rather, the phrase means that Paul carrying his cross – because he has been bonded with Christ by baptism – is in fact carrying Christ’s cross, or better yet, Christ is carrying His cross through Paul. My friends, when you pick up your cross – 

whatever it is – Jesus’ perfect act of obedience, and love, and trust – the act that saved the world – happens through your heart, your hands, your will, your body. Do not underestimate your cross! 

In 1946 (the Communists now in charge) Karol was ordained a priest on All Saints day and celebrated three ‘first’ Masses the following day (as priests are allowed to do on All Souls Day). He wore black vestments, and offered one Mass for his deceased mother, one for his decesaed brother, and one for his deceased father. One might think it was a somber day. It was not. 

It is a hard truth that there is no way to Easter except by Calvary, no way to the Father except through Christ. But the thing is that resurrection is not a gift if redemption has not happened yet. Going and eating from the tree of life is a terrible eternity if the hurt and separation from the tree of knolwedge has not yet been remedied! To be alive forever, but stuck in sin, would be hell – it is hell. BUT, when we carry our cross through, with, and in Jesus, then the gift of eternal life bursts into our lives now. When Fr. Wojtyła raised the consecrated host – and whenever we receive the Eucharist while carrying our own crosses – not only are we brought back to Holy Week, and not only are our crosses transfigured into His, but the resurrection is also renewed in us. Angels decend, Christ steps into our midst, forgiveness and joy are poured forth, and we are sent out with news of the greatest come back in history. 

And we aren’t bystanders! That Good News is part of our crosses too. 

In the previous article, we confronted the critique of a hope that is predominantly individualistic, excluding a sense of being a part of a community and seeing salvation as something private.  In this next paragraph, Pope Benedict offers a few different sources which support the consistent view that our hope is necessarily social in nature.  He writes the following:

Consistently with this view, sin is understood by the Fathers as the destruction of the unity of the human race, as fragmentation and division. Babel, the place where languages were confused, the place of separation, is seen to be an expression of what sin fundamentally is. Hence “redemption” appears as the reestablishment of unity, in which we come together once more in a union that begins to take shape in the world community of believers. (SS 14)

As Christians, we must always avoid the temptation to fall into a sense of isolation, believing that this journey of faith is a solo enterprise.  From the beginning of Creation, the Lord said: “it is not good for man to be alone.” (Gen 2:18) Since God Himself is a community of persons in the Trinity, and given that we are made in His likeness, then we too are called to see our identity as necessarily social in nature.   

In the quote above, the pope mentions how sin works against the unity of the human race.  There is a danger in considering this on too universal of a level.  We should take this to heart as we consider our own individual sins.  Perhaps we think that some of our sins are really only hurting ourselves.  But every sin that we commit, no matter how private, always affects the rest of the community.  As St. Paul writes: “If one member suffers, all suffer together.” (1 Cor 12:26) With that in mind, we should be very eager to repent of our sins as quickly as possible, not just for our good, but for the good of the entire body, for our being reconciled with God affects the strength of the body.  By avoiding being reconciled to God, avoiding His mercy, perhaps under the mindset that our sins are just that, our own personal sins, then we deprive the rest of the body from flourishing and making progress toward our common goal of Eternal Life.

As we enter into Holy Week, let us be very aware of our union with our brothers and sisters throughout the world and throughout time.  We are all united in the fact that “all have sinned” (Rom 3:23), and therefore we all should feel responsible for contributing to the sufferings that Jesus underwent.  But, thanks be to God, through His Passion that He underwent for all sinners, ourselves included, He has made possible our being reunited as brothers and sisters through the grace of His Resurrection.  His victory strengthens our identity as His Chosen People, delivered from slavery, and destined for the new Promised Land that awaits us in Heaven.

I would highly encourage you to consider joining us for as much of the Pascal Triduum as you can, for immersing ourselves in these most sacred mysteries of our salvation along with our fellow pilgrims, we will be renewed in our awareness of the blessing of being members of the same body, and rejoice with the words of the Psalmist: “Blessed the People whose God is the Lord” (Ps 144:15)