Preaching conference resources available

This summer, Cecilia and I were able to attend a conference on preaching at our alma mater.  It was a very good conference, and most of the presentations have been posted on You-tube by the Institute for Church Life (search for "Notre Dame preaching conference we preach Christ crucified" for the full list).  Not all are of equal quality, of course, but here are a few among the best ones we heard:

Fr. Robert Barron

Fr. Jeremy Driscoll, OSB

Dr. John Cavadini

Bishop Ricardo Ramirez, CSB (homily)

It's Friday... what's happening out there?

Here's a bit of a round-up of a few interesting things.

Robert George of Princeton has an excellent essay on how changing the definition of marriage must in practice also entail a loss of freedom for those who uphold traditional marriage:

Since most liberals and even some conservatives, it seems, apparently have no understanding at all of the conjugal conception of marriage as a one-flesh union—not even enough of a grasp to consciously consider and reject it—they uncritically conceive marriage as sexual-romantic domestic partnership, as if it just couldn’t possibly be anything else. This is despite the fact that the conjugal conception has historically been embodied in our marriage laws, and explains their content (not just the requirement of spousal sexual complementarity, but also rules concerning consummation and annulability, norms of monogamy and sexual exclusivity, and the pledge of permanence of commitment) in ways that the sexual-romantic domestic partnership conception simply cannot. Still, having adopted the sexual-romantic domestic partnership idea, and seeing no alternative possible conception of marriage, they assume—and it is just that, an assumption, and a gratuitous one—that no actual reason exists for regarding sexual reproductive complementarity as integral to marriage. After all, two men or two women can have a romantic interest in each other, live together in a sexual partnership, care for each other, and so forth. So why can’t they be married? Those who think otherwise, having no rational basis, discriminate invidiously. By the same token, if two men or two women can be married, why can’t three or more people, irrespective of sex, in polyamorous “triads,” “quadrads,” etc.? Since no reason supports the idea of marriage as a male-female union or a partnership of two persons and not more, the motive of those insisting on these other “traditional” norms must also be a dark and irrational one.

Thus, advocates of redefinition are increasingly open in saying that they do not see these disputes about sex and marriage as honest disagreements among reasonable people of goodwill. They are, rather, battles between the forces of reason, enlightenment, and equality—those who would “expand the circle of inclusion”—on one side, and those of ignorance, bigotry, and discrimination—those who would exclude people out of “animus”—on the other. The “excluders” are to be treated just as racists are treated—since they are the equivalent of racists. Of course, we (in the United States, at least) don’t put racists in jail for expressing their opinions—we respect the First Amendment; but we don’t hesitate to stigmatize them and impose various forms of social and even civil disability upon them and their institutions. In the name of “marriage equality” and “non-discrimination,” liberty—especially religious liberty and the liberty of conscience—and genuine equality are undermined.

Note how the arguments in favor of redefinition of marriage are, at root, irrational and arbitrary; and note how that irrationality translated into intolerance of those who defend traditional marriage.  I think George is correct in his analysis.  From this he concludes that we must continue resolutely to defend marriage, "evangelizing" as it were about this.  For us as clergy or future clergy, "evangelization" is exactly the right word, since we don't separate our arguments from faith and from reason, in practice.  But the arguments from reason for what marriage really is need to be used as often as possible.

On a related note, Joe Heschmeyer (a shameless papist) at Shameless Popery  lists three arguments against atheism from Pope Benedict.  These are nice capsules of even more profound arguments, and are presented in a very accessible way - the Holy Father is an excellent teacher!  (Joe's posts aren't too shabby either.)

Lastly, here are two parts of a four part series from San Antonio, on Martha Fernandez-Sardina's talk show, featuring Martha (who spoke at our 2011 Ministries Conference) and the irrepressible Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers (who has also spoken here in the Diocese previously), about Verbum Domini.  Some great stuff coming out in these two talks; well worth a viewing.  (I can't find the first two parts, and I don't know if Martha had a different guest for those.)

PS - Please join me in praying for the repose of the souls of those killed in the theater shooting in Colorado, and for the healing and consolation of those injured, and of all family members, and for the conversion of the shooter.

Verbum Domini 5

We continue with our reading of Verbum Domini. We've been concentrating on what the Holy Father is saying about our encounter with the Word (Jesus Christ) in different ways, and our response to this encounter (namely, ongoing conversion). Paragraph 15 introduces the Holy Spirit's role in this dynamic of encounter and conversion:

In fact there can be no authentic understanding of Christian revelation apart from the activity of the Paraclete. (15)

Note the compelling summary of the Holy Spirit's activity throughout the New Testament which follows. For Christ Himself, for the disciples and Mary, for Paul and the earliest Christians, the Holy Spirit is always present and active. So too for us.

The word of God is thus expressed in human words thanks to the working of the Holy Spirit. The missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit are inseparable and constitute a single economy of salvation. (15)

This means that:

...without the efficacious working of the “Spirit of Truth” (Jn 14:16), the words of the Lord cannot be understood.... Just as the word of God comes to us in the body of Christ, in his Eucharistic body and in the body of the Scriptures, through the working of the Holy Spirit, so too it can only be truly received and understood through that same Spirit. (16)

Pope Benedict notes that this same unity also works liturgically. Firstly, we need the present action of the Holy Spirit in order to hear, receive, and respond to the proclamation of the Word in the readings and homily. From there, this unity of Spirit and Son is the very essence of "Tradition:"

Indeed, since God “so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16), the divine word, spoken in time, is bestowed and “consigned” to the Church in a definitive way, so that the proclamation of salvation can be communicated effectively in every time and place. (17)

The root of all ministry in the Church, whether priestly, diaconal, or lay, is our fidelity to the real and compelling communion of Spirit and Son in the one economy of salvation. What the Son does and commands us to do, the Spirit likewise does and supports. We cannot follow Christ coherently without the following of the Holy Spirit. (As a tangent, this is why the argument about "spiritual but not religious" is always wrong-headed; it divides the grace of the Son from the grace of the Spirit, into two separate economies of salvation.) But what has the Son commanded us to do?

Jesus Christ himself “commanded the Apostles to preach the Gospel – promised beforehand by the prophets, fulfilled in his own person and promulgated by his own lips – to all as the source of all saving truth and moral law, communicating God’s gifts to them. This was faithfully carried out; it was carried out by the Apostles who handed on, by oral preaching, by their example, by their ordinances, what they themselves had received – whether from the lips of Christ, from his way of life and his works, or by coming to know it through the prompting of the Holy Spirit...” (17, quoting Dei Verbum 7)

This "all" is all-encompassing of the life of the Church. It is the whole of Tradition. It includes the full panoply of Word, Sacrament, and Charity, and all of our charisms and states of life. Notice especially here the implication of unity of communion with the bishops as successors of the Apostles, and of course with the Successor of Peter as head of that College. Apart from that communion, there is no full and comprehensive fulfillment of Christ's command to preach, baptize, and "do this," but only bits and pieces of that single diakonia.

This communion is not the thrust of his development here, but worth our noticing more closely, certainly. This is where he wants to go from here:

Ultimately, it is the living Tradition of the Church which makes us adequately understand sacred Scripture as the word of God. (17)

And, lest we be overwhelmed by such a demanding expectation, the heart of that statement is here:

...sacred Scripture presents itself to us, in the variety of its many forms and content, as a single reality. Indeed, “through all the words of sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single word... (18)

Scripture, despite its complexity of form and content and composition, and no matter what kind of theory one uses to approach it, must always conform to this overarching truth: its meaning is always one, never plural (though that one meaning can of course have many parts, and many different applications). And that one meaning is always the person of Jesus Christ.

In short, by the work of the Holy Spirit and under the guidance of the magisterium, the Church hands on to every generation all that has been revealed in Christ. The Church lives in the certainty that her Lord, who spoke in the past, continues today to communicate his word in her living Tradition and in sacred Scripture. Indeed, the word of God is given to us in sacred Scripture as an inspired testimony to revelation; together with the Church’s living Tradition, it constitutes the supreme rule of faith... (18, citing Dei Verbum 21).

Verbum Domini 4

Our encounter with Jesus Christ is itself dynamic, a process of growth in faith and holiness. Even when there are dramatic moments of great conversion, these must be integrated into our hearts and lives. The Gospels give us this pattern, both in themselves, and (one might add) in how they are used liturgically:

Reading the Gospel accounts, we see how Jesus’ own humanity appears in all its uniqueness precisely with regard to the word of God. In his perfect humanity he does the will of the Father at all times; Jesus hears his voice and obeys it with his entire being; he knows the Father and he keeps his word (cf. Jn 8:55); he speaks to us of what the Father has told him (cf. Jn 12:50); “I have given them the words which you gave me” (Jn 17:8). Jesus thus shows that he is the divine Logos which is given to us, but at the same time the new Adam, the true man, who unfailingly does not his own will but that of the Father. He “increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man” (Lk 2:52). In a perfect way, he hears, embodies and communicates to us the word of God (cf. Lk 5:1). (12)

Just as preparatory revelation leads to the definitive revelation of Christ, so too the Gospels reveal Christ to us progressively, from His Incarnation and birth, to His preaching and miracles, to His Passion and Resurrection. This paschal mystery is the pinnacle of Christ's own mission:

Jesus’ mission is ultimately fulfilled in the paschal mystery: here we find ourselves before the “word of the cross” (1 Cor 1:18). The word is muted; it becomes mortal silence, for it has “spoken” exhaustively, holding back nothing of what it had to tell us.... In this great mystery Jesus is revealed as the word of the new and everlasting covenant: divine freedom and human freedom have definitively met in his crucified flesh... (12)

Further, just as He Himself illumines the whole of creation, just so His Passion illumines for us the whole of His life:

In the most luminous mystery of the resurrection, this silence of the word is shown in its authentic and definitive meaning. Christ, the incarnate, crucified and risen Word of God, is Lord of all things; he is the victor, the Pantocrator, and so all things are gathered up forever in him (cf. Eph 1:10). Christ is thus “the light of the world” (Jn 8:12), the light which “shines in the darkness” (Jn 1:5) and which the darkness has not overcome (cf. Jn 1:5). (12)

Since "Human salvation is the reason underlying everything" (9), Easter is the definitive statement (Word) of that meaning. The early Fathers sometimes described the significance of Easter as the "fulcrum" of all time. Pope Benedict is making a similar claim here, morally rather than chronologically:

...Christ’s victory over death took place through the creative power of the word of God. This divine power brings hope and joy: this, in a word, is the liberating content of the paschal revelation. At Easter, God reveals himself and the power of the trinitarian love which shatters the baneful powers of evil and death. (13)

Only perfect love fulfills perfectly our inherent longing for communion.

Because Easter has this overarching clarity and depth of meaning for all the rest of creation, it must be accepted as definitive revelation. Since Jesus truly is God Himself, what more of God could He reveal? What greater obedience or victory could He enact? Therefore the Church has taught since the beginning that revelation is complete ("perfected") in Christ:

Indeed, as the Fathers noted during the Synod, the “uniqueness of Christianity is manifested in the event which is Jesus Christ, the culmination of revelation, the fulfilment of God’s promises and the mediator of the encounter between man and God. He who ‘has made God known’ (Jn 1:18) is the one, definitive word given to mankind” (14; he also here cites St. Paul, Dei Verbum, and St. John of the Cross).

Very briefly, the exhortation then draws out the implications of this fact for eschatological truth (the Lord we meet after death is the same Lord we already meet and love - or not - in this life) and for private revelations (increase faith and devotion, and sometimes have a prophetic character, but don't add anything to Scripture or Tradition), before turning to the Holy Spirit's role.

Verbum Domini 3

In the first nine paragraphs, Pope Benedict has established the Word, Jesus Christ the Son of God, as the root and the meaning ("Logos") of all physical creation, spiritual reality, and salvation history. "Human salvation is the reason underlying everything." (9) This divine foundation puts the dynamic of perfect love at the center of everything; nothing can possibly exist, even sin, apart from a defining relationship with "God who Speaks."

In paragraph 10, he begins working down to the level of the individual:

Those who know God’s word also know fully the significance of each creature... those who build their lives on his word build in a truly sound and lasting way. (10)

This is of course not a novel idea for followers of Christ. The parable of the house built on rock (on The Rock) versus one built on sand will come to mind, for example. In the same way, no created thing is solid and "real" enough to be that foundation stone:

Possessions, pleasure and power show themselves sooner or later to be incapable of fulfilling the deepest yearnings of the human heart. (10)

This brings into this discussion the interior dynamic of continuing conversion and the action of grace; that is, the encounter with and desire for perfect love. As we grow in faith and holiness, we see more and more clearly how things of this world, even when they are good and even as we inevitably use them daily, cannot be the end, the "root and meaning" of our lives. We dig deeper to find and make more central the Rock which is Christ, because only perfect love fulfills perfectly the longing of our hearts. (Cue St. Augustine's famous quote from the Confessions, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord.") This longing brings us face to face with Jesus Christ:

Here the word finds expression not primarily in discourse, concepts or rules. Here we are set before the very person of Jesus. His unique and singular history is the definitive word which God speaks to humanity. We can see, then, why “being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a definitive direction” (11, citing his own Deus Caritas Est, 1).

The bits and pieces of preparatory revelation, embedded everywhere in creation (as how could they not be?), all point to the definitive revelation of God the Son, Jesus Christ. Only the darkness of sin prevents us from seeing this clearly from the beginning. The fundamental encounter is precisely "illumination:" Christ who is "lumen gentium" literally "in-lumen-ates" us, dispelling the darkness of sin from our spiritual senses. And given a taste of transcendent and perfect love, we long for more:

The constant renewal of this encounter and this awareness fills the hearts of believers with amazement at God’s initiative, which human beings, with our own reason and imagination, could never have dreamt of. (11)

Verbum Domini 2

After the introduction, the first big section of Verbum Domini is called "God Who Speaks." Pope Benedict insists pretty strongly that those foundations he's already sketched out have very important concomitants.

...we would not yet sufficiently grasp the message of the Prologue of Saint John if we stopped at the fact that God enters into loving communion with us. In reality, the Word of God, through whom “all things were made”(Jn 1:3) and who “became flesh” (Jn 1:14), is the same Word who is “in the beginning” (Jn 1:1). If we realize that this is an allusion to the beginning of the book of Genesis (cf. Gen 1:1), we find ourselves faced with a beginning which is absolute and which speaks to us of the inner life of God. The Johannine Prologue makes us realize that the Logos is truly eternal, and from eternity is himself God. (VD, 6)

The absoluteness of the beginning of all that is made, and of the utter lack of beginning of the one who makes all things, are the great truths that define our horizon as creatures. "Jesus is God" is the great truth that defines our spiritual nature. Together, this truth grounds us in a reality of tangible love and purpose:

Created in the image and likeness of the God who is love, we can thus understand ourselves only in accepting the Word and in docility to the work of the Holy Spirit. In the light of the revelation made by God’s Word, the enigma of the human condition is definitively clarified. (6)

This kind of grounding cuts through all the esoteric angst of modernity, and gives us the means to unite our ordinary human suffering to Christ's. This kind of humility frees us to love:

For us, this proclamation is a word of freedom. Scripture tells us that everything that exists does not exist by chance but is willed by God and part of his plan, at whose center is the invitation to partake, in Christ, in the divine life. (8)

All the layers of Christ's own shape and nature, from His own "real, true, and substantial presence" in the Blessed Sacrament, to the other sacraments, the Church, Scripture and Tradition, our experience and interior illumination, and all the way down to the coherent reasonableness of other creatures -- all these layers make up this invitation "to partake... in the divine life." You might notice both that this is the "concentric model" of participation from Lumen Gentium, which we discussed recently; and also that this is the reverse of St. Hilarius's "ascent" from the basic rationality of creatures to the Creator. Neither of these similarities is accidental, as the quotes in #8 from Psalms, St. Bonaventure, and Dei Verbum make plain.

Given all this, the first two sentences in #9 are a whopper:

Reality, then is born of the word, as creatura Verbi, and everything is called to serve the word. Creation is the setting in which the entire history of the love between God and his creation develops; hence human salvation is the reason underlying everything. (9)

Every creature - angels, men, animals, trees, rocks and dirt - every creature is a creature "of the Word." The whole of creation, all of time and space, is therefore "the setting... of the love between God and his creation...". But in all that immense and wondrous creation, only we humans can respond freely to this gift of love. "Hence human salvation is the reason underlying everything." The whole of salvation exists, not just for us to use, but for us to use as means of responding to divine love. Everything about us and our culture and society is therefore, at root, profoundly Biblical (= Christological). And of course, if we say that, we can't avoid saying further that:

Jesus Christ then gives mankind the new law, the law of the Gospel, which takes up and eminently fulfils the natural law, setting us free from the law of sin... (9)

Verbum Domini, Introduction

You may have noticed that the Post-Synodal Exhortation, “Verbum Domini,” on the Word of God, was published yesterday. You should all find time to read it in the coming weeks. I keep harping on the deacon as “herald of the Gospel,” (believe what you read, preach what you believe, and practice what you preach; or, in the Extraordinary Form, Receive the power of reading the Gospels in the Church, as much for the living as for the dead) and therefore on our service as being shaped in a special way by the proclamation of the Good News. Pope Benedict is giving the same message to the whole Church in this document. It needs to shape our study of Scripture, of theology, of pastoral care, of liturgy, and of preaching.

This is a quick look at the document, with my first impressions. I'll go section by section, to make it manageable. Pope Benedict starts with the basics. The Church has received the Good News from Christ, the Word of God Incarnate, and an unchanging mission to proclaim it:

…we find ourselves before the mystery of God, who has made himself known through the gift of his word. This word, which abides forever, entered into time. God spoke his eternal Word humanly; his Word “ became flesh ” (Jn 1:14). This is the good news. This is the proclamation which has come down the centuries to us today. (Verbum Domini, 1)

So the Word is at the heart of everything the Church does (“Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”), like a “wellspring”:

In this way I wish to point out certain fundamental approaches to a rediscovery of God’s word in the life of the Church as a wellspring of constant renewal. At the same time I express my hope that the word will be ever more fully at the heart of every ecclesial activity. (1)

I don’t think this point can be stressed enough.

Pope Benedict goes on to remind us that this Word is not just an object of faith, but a gift, a person, and a communion of us with Him:

Called to communion with God and among ourselves, we must proclaim this gift. From this kerygmatic standpoint, the synodal assembly was a testimony, before the Church and before the world, to the immense beauty of encountering the word of God in the communion of the Church. For this reason I encourage all the faithful to renew their personal and communal encounter with Christ, the word of life made visible, and to become his heralds, so that the gift of divine life – communion – can spread ever more fully throughout the world. Indeed, sharing in the life of God, a Trinity of love, is complete joy (cf. 1 Jn 1:4). And it is the Church’s gift and unescapable duty to communicate that joy, born of an encounter with the person of Christ, the Word of God in our midst. (2)

If we meet and know Jesus by receiving the kerygma in the Gospel, our reception of Him as gift brings “complete joy,” and a burning desire to share that complete union with others. Our love for Him needs to be infectious, the more so since it is precisely the absence of Christ which makes modern life seem so difficult to bear:

There is no greater priority than this: to enable the people of our time once more to encounter God, the God who speaks to us and shares his love so that we might have life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10). (2)

(These are still the basics.) Growing in union with Christ is our purpose as human creatures. This is why God made each of us. We can’t fulfill that end without a personal encounter with the Word.

This next move is totally characteristic of Benedict’s ministry as Holy Father. As the Church has grappled more and more concretely with the modern world over the last 125 years or so, the necessary mode of the centrality of this personal encounter with Christ the Word has become more and more clear. (In the past, the encounter was often through poverty and asceticism, for example; but only in certain contexts through the Word in Scripture directly.) The foundation of his idea of a “hermeneutic of continuity” is the unchanging nature of this encounter, now being deployed by the Church in ways both old and new, to make it more available to people in this age:

Beginning with the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII, we can say that there has been a crescendo of interventions aimed at an increased awareness of the importance of the word of God and the study of the Bible in the life of the Church, culminating in the Second Vatican Council and specifically in the promulgation of the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum. The latter represented a milestone in the Church’s history… Everyone is aware of the great impulse which the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum gave to the revival of interest in the word of God in the life of the Church… By celebrating this Synod, the Church, conscious of her continuing journey under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, felt called to further reflection on the theme of God’s word, in order to review the implementation of the Council’s directives, and to confront the new challenges which the present time sets before Christian believers. (3)

This 2008 Synod, then, and this document which is its fruit (guided by the Holy Spirit), is part of that trajectory of continuity of living faith, and of the same goal of bringing the personal encounter with Christ the Word to the front of the Church’s activities in the world, for evangelization and the salvation of souls.

This last point in the Introduction I’d like to note connects with my talk on St. Hilarius from a couple of weeks ago, at our Fall Day of Reflection. St. Hilarius used the Prologue of the Gospel of John as the foundation for his development of a Trinitarian theology, and for his spirituality as I described. Pope Benedict does the same thing here, and draws the same conclusion St. Hilary did: our whole spiritual life needs to “lean on the bosom of Christ, like St. John:”

I would like to present and develop the labours of the Synod by making constant reference to the Prologue of John’s Gospel (Jn 1:1-18), which makes known to us the basis of our life: the Word… May John, who “ saw and believed ” (cf. Jn 20:8) also help us to lean on the breast of Christ (cf. Jn 13:25), the source of the blood and water (cf. Jn 19:34) which are symbols of the Church’s sacraments.(5)