I like to see our Catholic life as an interaction of five eventful loves, which are distinct yet co-inhere in each other in a rich flowering and flourishing: Wonder at Being in all its Truth, Beauty, Goodness; the evangelical love for the crucified, risen-ascended, Spirit-sending person of Jesus Christ; compassion and love for those who suffer physical and spiritual desolation; devotion to Truth, in all forms of human knowing including the dogmatic splendor radiating from God's revelation; and the life of prayer and worship in its personal-intimate, communal and public-liturgical dimensions.
The sense of wonder at existence in all its glory, common to all people, manifests itself especially in the artist, the poet, the philosopher. We see it in people of all types of belief and unbelief, even as its interior logic moves towards the source of all the Good, the True and the Beautiful, the very Creator!
The specific Christian genius is the personal encounter with the Jesus Christ, the absolutely unique divine-human person, as Lord, Savior, and Friend. It includes a sense of his distinctive holiness, his self-described intimacy with his Father in the Holy Spirit, his horrendous suffering for us, his victory over death-guilt-evil in all forms, and his specific love for each of us precisely in our sins. The entire Catholic life...traditions, prayers, dogmas, morality, liturgy...flow lucidly, passionately, fruitfully from this primal personal encounter.
Empathy for the poor and suffering, like the initial sense of wonder, characterizes human life in all its forms, but is given immense depth and focus in the following of Jesus who himself took on ALL the suffering and pain of the world. Additionally, the Catholic pathos is for physical, emotional and also spiritual suffering: only in the Church do we speak of "hunger for souls" by which we mean the yearning to satisfy the deepest cravings of the human heart, the desire for eternal life in unbounded, endless Beauty, Truth and Goodness.
Truth unveils itself to the inquiring human subject analogically at all levels of existence: mathematical, scientific, historical, journalistic, philosophical and more. The Church, however, is uniquely entrusted with the splendid Revelation of God in Jesus Christ in all its dogmatic consequences. Not all of us are equally equipped to ponder, grasp and articulate this reality (just as few of us grasp the deepest truths of physics or neurology), the the hierarchy is specially guided in this task.
Lastly, is the cultivation of our communion with God in personal prayer, small group wrorship, and public liturgy. Particularly in the Eucharist, this is the heart and soul of the Church; the inner form and essence of Catholicism. We experience this in the quiet solitude of our personal prayer; in the intimacy of shared prayer with family and friends; and in the exquisite, magisterial liturgy of the ancient Church. It is here that the Bridegroom makes live to his ecclesial Bride. Out of this communion flow all the social energies and cultural fruitfulness of Catholic life in its overflowing abundance.
Individuals, communities and entire historical epochs vary in the degree to which they express the five movements. But Catholic life, on earth and in heaven, is an unbounded effervescence, an overflowing eventfulness, a symphonic masterpiece of continuity/stability and serendipitous surpise!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment