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Sacred Liturgy - Advent 2010 |
"The Christian Response to Secular"
Advent Homily
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa
December 12, 2010
1. Secularization and secularism
In this meditation we are concerned with the second obstacle
evangelization encounters in the modern Western world:
secularization. Stated in the motu proprio with which the Pope
instituted the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New
Evangelization is that it "is at the service of the particular
Churches, especially in those territories of Christian tradition
where the phenomenon of secularization is more obviously apparent."
Secularization is a complex and ambivalent phenomenon. It can
indicate the autonomy of earthly realities and the separation
between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Cesar and, in this
sense, not only is it not against the Gospel but finds in it one of
its profound roots; however, it can also indicate a whole ensemble
of attitudes contrary to religion and to faith; hence, the use of
the term secularism is preferred. Secularism is to secularization
what scientism is to scientific nature and rationalism to
rationality.
Being concerned with the obstacles and challenges that faith meets
with in the modern world, we refer exclusively to this negative
sense of secularization. Even thus delimited, however,
secularization presents many faces according to the fields in which
it is manifested: theology, science, ethics, biblical hermeneutics,
culture in general, daily life. In the present meditation I take the
term in its primordial meaning. Secularization, as secularism,
derives in fact from the word "saeculum," which in ordinary language
has ended up by indicating the present time ("the present eon,"
according to the Bible), as opposed to eternity (the future eon, or
"the forever and ever," of the Bible). In this sense, secularism is
a synonym of temporality, of the reduction of the real only to the
earthly dimension.
The fall of the horizon of eternity, or of eternal life, has the
effect on Christian life of sand thrown on a flame: it suffocates
it, extinguishes it. Faith in eternal life is one of the conditions
of the possibility of evangelization. "If for this life only we have
hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all," exclaims
St. Paul (1 Corinthians 15:19).
2. Rise and fall of the idea of eternity
We recall briefly the history of belief in a life after death; it
will help us to measure the novelty brought by the Gospel in this
field. In the Hebrew religion of the Old Testament this belief was
slow in coming. Only after the exile, in face of the failure of
temporal expectations, the idea gained ground of the resurrection of
the flesh and of an ultra-earthly recompense of the righteous, and
even then not all accepted it (the Sadducees, it is known, did not
share this belief).
This loudly denies the thesis of those (Feuerbach, Marx, Freud) who
explain belief in God with the desire for an eternal recompense, as
projection in the beyond of the disappointed earthly expectations.
Israel believed in God, many centuries before it believed in an
eternal recompense in the beyond! Hence, it is not the desire of an
eternal recompense that produced faith in God, but it is faith in
God that produced the belief of an ultra-earthly recompense.
The full revelation of eternal life is had, in the biblical world,
with the coming of Christ. Jesus does not base the certainty of
eternal life on the nature of man, the immortality of the soul, but
on the "power of God," who is a "not God of the dead, but of the
living" (Luke 20:27-38). After Easter, to this theological
foundation the Apostles added the Christological: the resurrection
of Christ from the dead. On it the Apostle bases faith in the
resurrection of the flesh and in eternal life: But if Christ is
preached as raised from the dead, how can some among you say there
is no resurrection of the dead? [...] But now Christ has been raised
from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1
Corinthians 15:12,20).
Witnessed even in the Greek-Roman world is an evolution in the
concept of the beyond. The oldest idea is that true life ends with
death; after that there is only a semblance of life, in a world of
shadows. A novelty is registered with the appearance of the
Orphic-Pythagorean religion. According to it, the true "I" of man is
the soul that, liberated from the prison (sema) of the body (soma),
can finally live its true life. Plato gave this discovery a
philosophic dignity, basing it on the spiritual nature, hence the
immortal, nature of the soul.[1]
However, this belief would remain largely a minority belief,
reserved to those initiated in the mysteries and to followers of
particular philosophical schools. Persisting in the masses was the
ancient conviction that true life ends with death. Noted are the
words that the emperor Hadrian addresses to himself when near death:
"Little lost and gentle soul
Companion and guest of the body,
now you hurry to ascend to
dull, arduous and stripped places,
where you will no longer have the usual amusements.
One instant yet we look at the familiar shores,
the things that we will certainly never see again."[2]
One can understand with this background the impact that the
Christian proclamation must have had of a life after death
infinitely more full and joyful than the earthly; one can also
understand why the idea and the symbols of eternal life are so
frequent in the Christian sepulchers of the catacombs.
But what has happened to the Christian idea of an eternal life for
the soul and for the body, after it triumphed over the pagan idea of
"darkness beyond death" and after it permeated all aspects of life
during the Middle age? As opposed to the present moment in which
atheism is expressed above all in the negation of the existence of a
Creator, in the 19th century this was expressed preferably in the
negation of a beyond.
Taking up Hegel's affirmation according to which "Christians waste
in heaven the energies destined for earth," Feuerbach and above all
Marx combated the belief of a life after death, under the pretext
that it alienates from the earthly commitment. To the idea of a
personal survival in God is substituted by the idea of a survival in
the species and in the society of the future.
Little by little, suspicion, forgetfulness and silence fell on the
word eternity. Materialism and consumerism did the rest in the
opulent society, making it seem inconvenient to still speak of
eternity among educated persons. All this had a clear repercussion
on the faith of believers, which became, on this point, timid and
reticent. When did we hear the last homily on eternal life? Who
dares any more to mention eternal life in front of the suffering of
an innocent child?
We continue to recite the Creed: "Et expecto resurrectionem
mortuorum et vitam venturi saeculi": "I await the resurrection of
the dead and the life of the world to come," but without giving too
much weight to these words. Kierkegaard was right when he wrote:
"The beyond has become a joke, such an uncertain need that not only
does no one respect it anymore, but no one even expects it, to the
point that we are amused even at the thought that there was a time
in which this idea transformed the whole of existence."[3]
What is the practical consequence of this eclipse of the idea of
eternity? St. Paul refers to those who do not believe in the
resurrection from the dead: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we
die" (1 Corinthians 15:32). The natural desire to live always,
distorted, becomes a desire or frenzy to live well, namely,
pleasantly, even at the expense of others, if necessary. The whole
earth becomes what Dante said of Italy of his time: "the flower-bed
that makes us so ferocious." The horizon of eternity having fallen,
human suffering seems doubly and irremediably absurd.
3. Eternity: a hope and a presence
As for scientism, speaking also of secularism, the most effective
answer does not consist in combating the contrary error, but in
making shine again before men the certainty of eternal life,
appealing to the intrinsic force the truth possesses when it is
accompanied by the testimony of life. An ancient Father wrote, "An
idea can always be opposed by another idea and an opinion by another
opinion; but what can one oppose to a life?"
We must also appeal to the correspondence of this truth with the
most profound desire, even if repressed, of the human heart. To a
friend who reproached him, almost as if his yearning for eternity
was pride or presumption, Miguel de Unamuno, who was certainly not
an apologist of the faith, answered in a letter: "I do not say that
we merit a beyond, or that logic demonstrates it; I say that we have
need of it, whether or not we merit it, and that's all. I say that
that which passes does not satisfy me, that I have thirst of
eternity, and that without it everything is indifferent to me. I
have need of it, I have need of it! Without it there is no more joy
in living and the joy of living no longer has anything to give me.
It is too easy to affirm: 'It is necessary to live, one must be
content with life.' And those that are not content with it?"[4]
It is not one who desires eternity, he added on the same occasion,
who shows that he scorns the world and life here below, but on the
contrary the one who does not desire it: "I so love life that to
lose it seems to me the worst of evils. They do not really love life
who enjoy it day after day without taking the trouble to know if
they are to lose it altogether or not." St. Augustine said the same
thing: "Cui non datur semper vivere, quid prodest bene vivere?"
(What good is it to live, if it is not given to live forever?"[5]
"Everything, except eternity, is vain to the world," sang our
poet.[6]
To the men of our time who cultivate in depth this need of eternity,
without perhaps having the courage to admit it to others or even to
themselves, we can repeat what Paul said to the Athenians: "What
therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you" (cf. Acts
17:23).
The Christian response to secularism in the sense that we understand
it here, is not based, as for Plato, on a philosophical idea -- the
immortality of the soul -- but on an event. The Enlightenment posed
the famous problem of how eternity could be attained, while one is
in time and how there can be an historical point of departure for an
eternal consciousness.[7] In other words, how one can justify the
claim of the Christian faith of promising an eternal life and of
threatening an equally eternal punishment for acts done in time.
The only valid response to this problem is that which is based on
faith in the incarnation of God. In Christ, eternity entered into
time, it manifested itself in the flesh; before him it is possible
to make a decision for eternity. It is thus that the evangelist John
speaks of eternal life: "We [...] proclaim to you the eternal life
that was with the Father and was made visible to us" (1 John 1:2).
For the believer, eternity is not, as we see, only a hope, it is
also a presence. We have this experience every time that we make a
real act of faith in Christ, because "you have eternal life, you who
believe in the name of the Son of God" (cf. 1 John 5:13); every time
we receive Communion, in which "we are given the pledge of future
glory" ("futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur"); every time we hear
the words of the Gospel which are "words of eternal life" (cf. John
6:68). Also, St. Thomas Aquinas says that "grace is the beginning of
glory."[8]
This presence of eternity in time is called the Holy Spirit. He is
described as "the first installment of our inheritance" (Ephesians
1:14; cf. 2 Corinthians 5:5), and he has been given to us, so that,
having received the first fruits, we long for the fullness.
"Christ," wrote St. Augustine, "has given us the guarantee of the
Holy Spirit with which he, who in any case cannot deceive us, wished
to render us certain of the fulfillment of his promise. What did he
promise? He promised eternal life of which the Spirit, which has
been given to us, is the guarantee."[9]
4. Who are we? From whence do we come? Where are we going?
Between the life of faith in time and eternal life there is a
relationship similar to that which exists between the life of the
embryo in the maternal womb and that of the baby, once he has come
to the light. Cabasilas wrote: "This world bears in gestation the
interior man, new, created according to God, so that he, molded and
made perfect here, is generated in that perfect world that does not
grow old. Like the embryo that, while it is in the dark and fluid
existence, nature prepares for life in the light, so is with the
saints [...]. For the embryo, however, the future life is absolutely
future; no ray of light reaches him, nothing of what is of this
life. Not so for us, from the moment that the future world is as
though poured and mixed with this present one [...] Because of this
it is already granted to saints not only to dispose and prepare
themselves for life, but to live and operate in it."[10]
There is a little story that illustrates this comparison. There were
two twins, a boy and a girl, so intelligent and precocious that,
still in the mother's womb, already spoke to one another. The girl
asked her brother: "According to you, will there be a life after
birth?" He answered: "Don't be ridiculous. What makes you think that
there is something outside of this narrow and dark space in which we
find ourselves?" The girl, gaining courage, insisted: "Perhaps a
mother exists, some one who has put us here, and who will take care
of us." And he answered: "Do you, perhaps, see a mother anywhere?
What you see is all that is." She replied: "But don't you feel at
times a pressure on the chest that increases day by day and pushes
us forward?" "To tell the truth," he answered, "it's true: I feel it
all the time." "See," concluded his sister triumphantly, "this pain
cannot be for nothing. I think it is preparing us for something
greater than this small space."
We can use this pleasant little story when we must proclaim eternal
life to persons in whom faith has been lost, but who keep the
nostalgia and perhaps expect the Church, as the girl, to help them
believe in it.
There are questions that men have not ceased to pose themselves
since the world began and the men of today are no exception: "Who
are we? From whence do we come? Where are we going?" In the
"Ecclesiastical history of the English people", the Venerable Bede
recounts how the Christian faith came to the north of England. When
the missionaries who had come from Rome arrived in Northumberland,
king Edwin convoked a council of dignitaries to decide whether they
would allow them, or not, to spread the new message. One of them
stood up and said:
"The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that
time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow
through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your
commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the
storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying
in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within,
is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair
weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark
winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a
short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are
utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains
something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be
followed."[11]
Perhaps the Christian faith will return in England and in the
European continent for the same reason for which it made its entry:
as the only one that has a sure answer to give to the great
questions of earthly life. The most propitious occasions to make
this message reach are funerals. In them people are less distracted
that in other rites of passage (Baptism, marriage), they wonder
about their own destiny. When one weeps over a deceased loved one,
one weeps also for oneself.
I once heard an interesting program of the English BBC on so-called
"secular funerals," with the live recording of the unfolding of one
of them. At one point one heard the person officiating say to those
present: "We must not be sad. To live a good, satisfying life, for
78 years (the age of the deceased woman) is something for which we
must be grateful." Grateful to whom? I wondered. Such a funeral does
no more than make more evident the total undoing of man in face of
death.
Sociologists and men of culture, called to explain the phenomenon of
secular or "humanistic" funerals, see the cause of the spread of
this practice in some countries of Northern Europe, in the fact that
religious funerals imply in those present a faith that they do not
feel they share. The proposal they advanced was: in funerals the
Church must avoid any reference to God, to eternal life, to Jesus
Christ dead and risen, and must limit its role to that of "natural
and experienced organizer of rites of passage!" In other words, be
resigned to the secularization also of death!
5. Let us go to the house of the Lord!
A renewed faith in eternity does not only serve for evangelization,
that is, for the proclamation to be done to others; it serves, even
before that, to give a new impetus to our journey towards sanctity.
The weakening of the idea of eternity acts also on believers,
diminishing in them the capacity to face suffering and the trials of
life with courage. We are no longer accustomed in front of a
difficult situation to repeat what St. Bernard and Ignatius of
Loyola used to say: "Quid hoc ad aeternitatem?" (what does this
matter compared to eternity?).
Let us think of a man with a scale in hand: one of those scales that
are held with one hand and have on one side the dish on which to put
things to be weighed and the other a graduated bar that holds the
weight or measure. If it falls down or loses the measure, all that
is put on the plate makes the bar rise and makes the scale incline
to earth. Everything has superiority, even a handful of feathers.
That is how we are when we lose the weight, the measure of all that
is eternity: earthly things and sufferings easily pull our soul
down. Everything seems too heavy, excessive. Jesus said: "And if
your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it
from you; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than
with two hands and two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire" (cf.
Matthew 18:8-9). But we, having lost sight of eternity, already find
it excessive if we are asked to close our eyes to an immoral
spectacle. Saint Paul dared to write: "For this momentary light
affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all
comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen;
for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal" (2
Corinthians 4:17-18). The weight of tribulation is light precisely
because it is momentary, that of glory is immeasurable precisely
because it is eternal. Because of this, the Apostle can say: "I
consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing
compared with the glory to be revealed for us" (Romans 8:18).
Cardinal Newman, whom we chose as special teacher in this Advent,
obliges us to add a truth that is lacking in the reflections made up
to now on eternity. He does so with the poem "The Dream of Gerontius,"
put to music by the great English composer Edgar Elgar. A real
masterpiece for the depth of thoughts, lyrical inspiration and
choral dramatization.
He describes the dream of an old man (this is what the name
Gerontius means) who feels himself close to the end and we know that
this man was Newman himself at a certain point of his life. To his
thoughts on the meaning of life, of death, on the abyss of the
nothingness into which he is being precipitated, are superimposed
the comments of the bystanders, the praying voice of the Church:
"Depart from this life, Christian soul" ("proficiscere, anima
christiana"), the contrasting voices of angels and demons that weigh
down his life and claim his soul. Particularly beautiful and
profound is the description of the moment of the passage and of the
awakening in another world:
"I went to sleep; and now I am refreshed.
A strange refreshment: for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
Of freedom, as I were at length myself
And ne'er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
Nor does one moment differ from the next.[12]
The last words that the soul speaks in the poem are those with which
he starts out serenely, even impatiently, to Purgatory:
There will I sing my absent Lord and Love:
Take me away,
That sooner I may rise, and go above,
And see Him in the truth of everlasting day."[13]
For the emperor Hadrian, death was the passage from reality to
shadows, for the Christian John Newman it was the passage from
shadows to reality, "ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem," as he
wished to have written on his tomb.
What is, then, the missing truth that ¬¬Newman obliges us not to be
silent about? That the passage from time to eternity is not straight
and equal for all. There is a judgment to face and a judgment that
can have two very different results, hell or paradise. Newman's is
an austere spirituality, even at times rigorous, as that of the
"Dies irae," but how healthy at a time inclined to take everything
lightly and as a joke, as Kierkegaard said, with the thought of
eternity!
Let us direct our thoughts then with renewed impetus towards
eternity, repeating to ourselves with the words of the poet:
everything, except the eternal, to the world is vain." In the Hebrew
Psalter there is a group of Psalms called "Psalms of the ascension,"
or "canticles of Sion." They were the Psalms that Jewish pilgrims
sang when they went out on pilgrimage towards the holy city,
Jerusalem. One of them begins thus: "I was glad when they said to
me, 'let us go to the house of the Lord!'" These Psalms of the
ascension then became the Psalms of those that, in the Church, are
journeying towards the heavenly Jerusalem; they are our Psalms.
Commenting on those initial words of the Psalm, St. Augustine said
to his faithful:
"Let us run because we will go to the house of the Lord; let us run
because this course does not exhaust; because we will arrive at an
end where there is no exhaustion. Let us run to the house of the
Lord and our soul rejoices for those who repeat these words. They
have seen the homeland before us, the Apostles saw it and have said
to us: 'Run, hurry up, follow us! We are going to the house of the
Lord!'" [14]
We have before us, in this chapel, a splendid mosaic representation
of the heavenly Jerusalem, with Mary, the Apostles and a long
procession of Eastern and Western saints. They repeat this
invitation to us silently. Let us receive it and take it with us on
this day and throughout life.
NOTES
[1] Cf. M. Pohlenz, "L'uomo greco," Florence, 1967, p. 173ss.
[2] "Animula vagula, blandula."
[3] S. Kierkegaard, "Postilla conclusiva," 4, in "Opere," edited by
C. Fabro, Florence, 1972, p. 458.
[4] Miguel de Unamuno, "Cartas inéditas de Miguel de Unamuno y Pedro
Jiménez Ilundain," ed. Hernán Benítez, Journal of the University of
Buenos Aires, Vol. 3, No. 9 (January-March 1949), pp. 135-150.
[5] St. Augustine, "Homilies on St. John," 45, 2 (PL, 35, 1720).
[6] Antonio Fogazzaro, "A Sera," in "Le poesie," Milan, Mondadori,
1935, pp. 194-197.
[7] G.E. Lessing, "Über den Beweis des Geistes und der Kraft," ed.
Lachmann, X, p.36.
[8] St. Thomas Aquinas, "Summa theological", II-IIae, q. 24, art.3,
ad 2.
[9] St. Augustine, "Sermons," 378,1 (PL, 39, 1673).
[10] N. Cabasilas, "Vita in Cristo," I,1-2, edited by U. Neri,
Turin, UTET, 1971, pp.65-67.
[11] Venerable Bede, "The Ecclesiastical History of the English
People," II, 13.
[12] "The Dream of Gerontius," John Henry Newman, 1865.
[13] Ibid.
[14] S. Agostino, Enarrationes in Psalmos 121,2 (CCL, 40, p. 1802).
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