Sacred Heart of Jesus- Reflection for Mass of June 19, 2009

Friday, June 19, 2009

Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

World Day of Prayer for Priests

Readings: Hosea 11:1-4, 8-9; Responsorial Canticle from Isaiah 12:2-6; Ephesians 3:8-12, 14-19; John 19:31-37

Each time we gather for Mass, we celebrate the love of God that is the particular focus of today’s Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Our Father sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to save us for no other reason than that “God so loved the world.” (1) Then, out of the reciprocal love between Father and Son came the gift of the Holy Spirit as our everlasting consoler and guide. (2)

The mystery of God’s love would be overwhelming to us were it not a grace granted by the Lord. St. Paul acknowledges in his letter to the Ephesians that this divine favour had been given to him; he is not intrinsically worthy of it. (3) Frequently we can manage no more than awe for the loving presence of God by which we were created and by which we are redeemed. Made speechless, we can only revere and adore, but we are just as often expected to do no more.

Today’s first reading from Hosea begins with the phrase, “Hear the word of the Lord, O people.” (4) Much emphasis in the Hebrew Scriptures is placed on hearing the word of God. For example, the book of Deuteronomy reads: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” (5) Hearing, as suggested in both Hosea and Deuteronomy, extends beyond mere sensory perception; to hear is to listen actively to God’s call to love Him and our neighbour as we have been loved by our Lord and as a father loves his child: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” (6)

God yearns for such closeness with humankind, but the call of God recurrently has the opposite effect than that desired. In the context of the prophecy of Hosea, the more God beckons to us, the more we stubbornly turn from him. (7) However, God will not abandon us to the power of sin. God is prepared to suffer with us and for us. His “warm and tender”  compassion (8) led the Son of God to freely accept a humiliating death for us on the Cross, so that even while we are sinners and we “look upon the One whom [we] have pierced” (9) we are able to celebrate the gift of our salvation.

Both to hear the word of God and to look upon the pierced side of our crucified Saviour are movements of the heart more than of the ears or of the eyes. An attentive love that dwells in our hearts must be foremost in our relationship with God and with each other. The heart can and should be understood as a physical part of each of us- the hidden yet vital organ that circulates the full human blood supply three times per minute and whose hundred thousand beats a day are taken for granted (10)- as well as the centre of love. This dual significance of the heart is appropriate because Jesus Christ, the divine source of all love- the heart and foundation of the Church- became a physical human being like us.

In his encyclical Haurietis Aquas, on Devotion to the Sacred Heart,  Pope Pius XII asserted that, as the humanity of  Jesus is bonded  intimately with His divinity, so three forms of the same love abide in the heart of Christ.  (11) The first is divine spiritual love, between the persons of the Trinity. The second is divine-human love, God’s love for us by which  Jesus took and transforms our human nature, and the third is tangible human-to-human love, expressed in our relationship with one another. (12)

Haurietis Aquas bids us by its title to “draw waters” from the heart of Our Lord (13), the heart that for us was pierced by the soldier’s lance as Jesus hung on the Cross. From that Sacred Heart blood and water spilled forth. St. John Chrysostom wrote in his Catecheses that the blood symbolizes the Holy Eucharist, and the water our Baptism: “From these two Sacraments the Church is born.” (14)

Devotion to the Sacred Heart has acquired several historical dimensions from the contributions of the likes of Sts. Bonaventure, Gertrude, Margaret Mary Alacoque, and, more recently, from Pope Leo XIII, who consecrated the world to the Sacred Heart in 1899, Sts. Thérèse of Lisieux, Mary Faustina Kowalska, and Pio of Pietrelcina, and Popes Pius XII and John Paul II.  (15) Its exact origins are difficult to ascertain, though in the Early Church the Sacred Heart first became equated with the whole Christ, so it has been argued that in this sense the Sacred Heart may be worshipped as we are actually worshipping Christ Himself. (16)

The Sacred Heart is also linked to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the object of tomorrow’s memorial, by the Mother of God’s assent to the conception of Our Lord in her womb. This fact was  impressed upon  me a few weeks ago as I entered Rosary Chapel at Assumption Church and saw a prayer group called the “Alliance of the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary” being promoted. While indeed the hearts of Jesus and Mary are allied, so I suggest that our hearts- our Church and our Basilian community-  are also to be united with the Sacred Heart of Christ. As the image of the Sacred Heart is affixed in many homes dedicated to it, so let us welcome Christ into our inmost being.

The Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman’s episcopal motto was Cor ad cor loquitur- Heart speaks to heart. (17) May we then enter into the contemplation of the love of Christ, whose “breadth and length and height and depth… [surpass] all knowledge” but with which we are called to “be filled.” (18) The soldier pierced the Lord’s side,” said St. John Chrysostom. “He breached the wall of the sacred  Temple, and I have found the treasure and made it my own.” (19) Let us pray that we may also make this treasure of Christ’s love our own, that it may flow generously from the sacred temples that are our hearts, and that we may joyfully and lovingly radiate it to all those whom we encounter on our way. Amen.

WRS

He Set His Face- Luke 9:51-62

I. Witness to the First Spring

Spring is a time of transition, a season during which most day-to-day changes are barely perceptible. Days lengthen by mere minutes at a time and the chill of winter leaves with a struggle, but by the beginning of summer the cold and limited hours of sunlight are distant memory. I write these first lines of this article five days after the spring equinox on the Feast of the Annunciation. Today is nine months ahead of the celebration of Our Lord’s birth, which originally coincided with the Roman winter solstice festival. In  the northern hemisphere, Christmas therefore occurs near to the date of least daylight. Amid the cold and dark of winter, we recall that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (1)

Appropriately, the Annunciation is celebrated in the middle of Lent. The name of this ecclesial season is rooted in the medieval English lencten, for spring. (2) Like English, other languages have since evolved separate words for Lent and for spring. For example, in contemporary French Lent is carême while spring is printemps, literally meaning “first time.” In Spanish Lent is cuaresma, signifying forty days. In the same language spring is primavera- the first spring, from the Latin prima- for first and -vera, “of spring”, from where the word vernal stems. (3)

Nine months before the Nativity, the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, an unknown Jewish virgin, and incarnated the eternal God in her womb in the person of Jesus Christ. Thus, with the Annunciation, the light of the Son, still hidden from the light of the sun, took on our human form. At least two traditions exist as to the date of the Solemnity of the Annunciation, March 25. More obviously, this feast precedes Christmas by exactly nine months, the approximate length of a human pregnancy from conception to full term. The other possibility is that March 25 coincided with the commemoration of the death of Jesus in the early Church. (4)

Either tradition for dating the Annunciation point to a crisis. Jesus’ death was a disaster; He was not only executed as a common criminal between two thieves in a manner reserved by the Romans for their non-citizens, but more humiliating yet, Jesus was abandoned by His closest friends who fled out of fear. Moreover, the tragedy of the Cross was highly planned by the religious leaders of Israel at the time. St. Mark’s Gospel reveals that, very early in Our Lord’s public ministry, the Pharisees and Herodians, traditional enemies of one another, began to conspire to kill Him. (5) In contrast with the gradually escalating plot to put Jesus to death, nobody could have anticipated the announcement of Gabriel to Mary: “Hail, Favoured One! The Lord is with you… Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name Him Jesus.” (6)

The mystery of the Incarnation is placed within the series of crises that characterize Jesus’ earthly life. Yet God’s utterance of Himself in human flesh, the inauguration of the First Spring signalled by the Archangel Gabriel, which left Mary “greatly troubled,” (7) is rightly understood as a joyful mystery. Mary did not plan her conception of Our Saviour, nor was she capable of foreknowing the events to follow in her relationship with her Son: His birth and infancy that started in a manger in Bethlehem, the presentation of the infant Christ in the Temple to the prayerful prophetess and widow Anna and to the aged Simeon, who predicted that Jesus would be “a sign [to] be contradicted,” (8) the child Jesus lost in Jerusalem and found in dialogue with the teachers of the Temple, His Galilean ministry, death, and miraculous Resurrection and Ascension. All of these mysterious crises of the Gospel are interconnected. Some are joyful, while others are sorrowful, or glorious (9), but all arose because a woman favoured by God welcomed and pondered God’s plan to embrace our humanity (10), although Mary could not have anticipated all the consequences of her “yes.”

Most poignantly, Mary’s discipleship- her free choice to co-operate in God’s Incarnation- becomes our incentive to follow the same path. Our discipleship, initiated by our Baptism, entails our acceptance of moments of joy and of sadness, especially of those events that defy our control. Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta is a disciple of recent memory who experienced the distress of distance between herself on earth and God in Heaven. She was given little indication of God’s presence during most of her adult life, but Mother Teresa countered her suffering and aridity with even greater devotion to prayer and to small acts of love.  Two other saints of the same name also faithfully worked the harvest in the Lord’s vineyard (11), uniting themselves to the Christ who cried out from the Cross, “My God… Why have you forsaken me?” (12), such that Dominican Friar Timothy Radcliffe wonders whether it is “dangerous to be called Teresa.” (13) From her spiritual desert about three months before her death from tuberculosis, Ste. Thérèse of Lisieux wrote:

Even while I sing of the happiness of heaven, the eternal possession of God, I feel no joy; I sing only of what I want to believe. Sometimes, it is true, a tiny ray of sunlight illuminates my darkness, so the trial ceases for an instant, but then the memory of this light, instead of bringing me joy, makes my darkness deeper yet… It would seem that nothing is keeping me from taking flight [toward Heaven], for I have no great desires if not to love until I die of love. (14)

Ste. Thérèse’s namesake, St. Teresa of Ávila, was travelling astride a donkey towing a carriage of supplies destined for Burgos, a town where she hoped to establish a new monastery. In the perilous Spanish countryside, a wheel broke on the wagon. Teresa fell from her donkey and into a puddle of mud. Disgusted, she looked toward heaven and lamented to God, “It’s no wonder you have so few friends, when you treat them so badly!” (15) Fervent prayer gradually helped St. Teresa to moderate her impulsive character. Her humanity, with its weaknesses and upset carriages, became a focus of St. Teresa’s contemplation, a conversation with God with its timely moments of humour. St. Teresa of Ávila made Christ’s Incarnation her own, so much that she was able to pray in her waning years, “God, save me from somber saints.” (16) As witnessed to by the lives of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Sts. Thérèse of Lisieux and Teresa of Ávila, our Christian lives are an encounter with Christ in flesh and blood. We must therefore invite our First Spring who dwells among us into the depths of our humanity, with all its limitations, darkness, disasters, and unforeseen circumstances. Timothy Radcliffe concurs that

God comes to us as we are. Human beings only flourish by passing through successive crises. We do not simply grow, like cabbages effortlessly unfolding into their vegetable fullness. We mature by enduring little deaths and resurrections. First there is the wrenching crisis of birth, when we must lose the security of the womb if we are to see our mother face to face. Then we must be weaned from her breast, forgo the intimate nourishment of her body, so that we may sit at table and enjoy the deeper communion of conversation. We must go through the rollercoaster of puberty, the flood of hormones transforming our bodies and confusing our minds, as we settle into adolescence. The day comes when we must leave home and find our independence, so that we may love as equal adults. Finally we shall face the crisis of death and find ourselves fully at home in God, at the journey’s consummation. Becoming human is just one crisis after another, as we break through into an even greater intimacy with God and each other. (17)

Our journey- our “becoming human”- must therefore be connected to that of the fully human Christ. On Palm Sunday, we welcome Jesus into Jerusalem: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in Heaven and glory in the highest.” (18) Less than a week later, we join the mob that calls for Jesus to be crucified. Jesus is the scapegoat for our denial of God, our pride, and our failed humanity, yet He goes willingly to His death for us. Our salvation is made possible by Jesus’ free gift of His own life by which our sin and death is transformed into glory.  At Golgotha, Jesus accomplishes His redemptive mission on a Cross, but He had intended to set out for Jerusalem, where prophets went to die, long before His Passion. Almost ten full chapters of the Gospel of Luke are devoted to that travel narrative.

II. He Set His Face

According to St. Luke, the decisive voyage of Jesus and of His disciples to Jerusalem began “when the days for His being taken up were fulfilled.” (19) This section marks a sudden transition in vocabulary in Luke. The last twelve verses of Chapter 9 of the third Gospel are uniquely Lucan, although the author’s language used to relate Jesus’ departure from Galilee is rare in the Synoptic Gospels. St. John refers often to when Jesus will be “lifted up.”  (20) Jesus tells Nicodemus that He “must… be lifted up” (21) just as Moses raised a bronze serpent on a pole in the desert. While John 3:14 indicates that Jesus will die by crucifixion, the Johannine Gospel’s Greek diction and the context of this verse point toward a more profound significance: all disciples of Christ for all time are included in the salvific plan of a loving God.  Our Paschal mystery is joined to that of Jesus; as our Lord died, rose again, and ascended into Heaven, we are invited to partake in the same promise. Five times in three separate chapters, John employs the Greek verb hypsothenai, the infinitive of “to be lifted up,” or its conjugated forms. (22)

Hypsothenai, a Johannine substitution for the Septuagint rendering from the story in the Book of Numbers of Moses’ bronze serpent that was merely placed on the pole, implies that Jesus will be glorified by being “lifted up” on the Cross. Had  it been an event separate from the rest of His life and ministry and from that of His disciples, Jesus’ death would have been anything but glorious. On the contrary, Christ’s Passion was allowed for a reason- “God so loved the world” (23)- and occurred to fulfill an objective, “so that everyone who believes Him might… have eternal life.” (24) This literary motif is repeated each time St. John writes of Jesus being “lifted up.” After Jesus had predicted His death and then emphasized that He had been sent as the Father’s ambassador- “I say only what the Father taught Me” (25)- He continues: “the One who sent Me is with Me. He has not left Me alone.” (26) The same Father who is with the Son is with us. The next verse establishes God’s purpose: “Many came to believe in Him.” (27) Here, the salvation of the “many” new believers is implied. Four chapters later, John twice uses the verb hypsothenai as in 3:14. Again the universally saving aim of the Passion is reiterated: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to Myself.” (28) Only a God, our “light” who loves us so deeply as to create the world and then to take our form in it to redeem us could make the Cross intrinsically glorious. In addition we are called to participate in God’s plan to bring all people to eternal life: “Believe in the light, so that you may become children of the light.” (29)

The Lucan Gospel, in a similar call to discipleship to that in John, uses an analogous Greek word to the  Johannine hypsothenai- analempseos, usually translated as “being taken up,” but whose definition is closer to assumption into Heaven. (30) Whether one is lifted or assumed into Heaven, each of these terms connotes the extraordinary, yet still possible. Hypsothenai does not appear in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, whereas analempseos appears only once, and Elijah is the only person in the Hebrew Scriptures to have ascended to God in this way. (31) Enoch’s Heavenly reception is also unusual, but a different expression than that related to Elijah’s ‘assumption’ is used, which is reflected in Hebrew and in Greek, as well as in English: “Enoch walked with God, and he was no longer here, for God took him.” (32) This verse strongly suggests that Enoch entered Heaven body and soul, as did Elijah, but some ambiguity persists; Enoch could have been especially virtuous, and the writer of Genesis may therefore simply have meant to convey that he had enjoyed a special intimacy with God. (33)

Regardless of the language from the Biblical stories of the entry of Enoch, of Elijah, and of Jesus into Heaven, in each case God’s miraculous power is demonstrated within a wider context of Divine honour conferred upon the faithful. This fits well within the Lucan theme of discipleship that is integral to that Gospel’s journey to Jerusalem narrative. Eight chapters earlier in the same Gospel, Gabriel’s last words to Mary are that “nothing will be impossible for God.” (34) Mary, proto-disciple, is held by Catholic dogma to have been assumed body and soul into Heaven. Although the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is not reported in Scripture, this teaching is based on the Church’s apostolic tradition. (35) Jesus went similarly to His and to Our Father. Christians call this event the Ascension of the Lord to differentiate between an act of God’s own power from an act of God upon a created being, like Mary in the case of her Assumption. (36) Luke, though, makes no such distinction in terminology in 9:51. Jesus’ Ascension, linked to His Passion and His Resurrection, gives to us the gift of eternal life, thus the exceptional becomes possible; His corporeal ascent into Heaven, coupled with the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, completes the singular movement of our redemption realized by the love of Our Lord for His disciples.

Caught up as we are in God’s love, our discipleship places important responsibilities upon us. Life in Christ- our pilgrimage to Jerusalem and on to Calvary with Him- necessarily means self-sacrifice on our part on an everyday basis. Jesus had said “to all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.’” (37) The same Lucan chapter concludes with the same message. Even elements of ourselves that are inherently good, for example our familial lineages and nationalities, must be made subordinate to our faith. I am part German, part French, part Irish, and a very small part Ojibway (38)- yes, but I am firstly a Christian disciple.

That lesson is taught to two men who are especially close to the Lord, the Apostles James and John. Jesus sends “messengers ahead of [Himself]” (39) into Samaria, home of the vile people who had once interbred with the Assyrians and were hostile to the Jews. (40) Predictably, Jesus’ scouts are rejected in Samaria, but this instance signals the first major expansion of the Christian fellowship. Shortly therefter, Jesus would commission “seventy-two others” (41) who would likewise face poor reception in some of the towns that they visited. James and John react inappropriately to initial Samaritan inhospitality, although they accurately recall Elijah’s summons of Heavenly fire upon two captains of Samaria and upon their men. (42) These two Apostles are named “Boanerges” in St. Mark’s Gospel, and many “sons of thunder” (43) walk among us to the present day- well-meaning Christians whose passion is misdirected and whose mercy is lacking- but these people, myself included on occasion, resolve to continue along Christ’s way, supported by the prayers of the Church. Jesus rebukes our hardness of heart, but at the same time through forgiveness we move forward “to another village.” (44)

Anyone who aspires to discipleship in Christ must therefore be determined to bear witness to the Gospel against all obstacles, including persecution and even death. Again, Jesus shows us the way by example; Luke writes that “He set his face to go to Jerusalem.” (45) Those who had dared so far to follow this Prophet would have been unnerved by His latest itinerary, and James and John, two of Jesus’ stalwarts, had failed immediately in their retaliatory response to ill treatment in Samaria. Jesus, though, was not to be halted by the Samaritans, foreigners by blood and by creed who would generously accept the Christian way later (46), but just as His ministry had begun with His rejection in Nazareth, His hometown, it would end with His betrayal, denial, and death at the bidding of His  very own. (47) However, Our Lord assents to His destiny with full confidence in the Father who will conquer death itself on the last day.

Still more boldly, Jesus appeals to us to accompany Him to Jerusalem as a “people [who] love the LORD,” (48) in words attributed to King David. Those “who seek the face of the God of Jacob” (49) will find it- bruised, disfigured, and struggling beneath the weight of a heavy Cross. Some will bravely approach Him amid the taunts of His executioners. They will be consoled, as in the women of Jerusalem or Mary the Mother of God. Another, St. Veronica, will reach forth to wipe the Holy Face and will receive its precious image on the cloth. (50) Many will scatter from terror from our evil in most gruesome display, fixed to a tree. Alas, God transforms that tree into a source of life. Our Via Dolorosa, led by the Face of Christ, becomes our Easter joy, the answer to King David’s question: “Who is the King of Glory?” (51) Jesus, Our Saviour and “LORD of hosts is the King of Glory,” (52) His glory and now ours. Thus He is the “reason for our hope,” (53) as St. Peter instructs us.

God’s extravagant mercy makes His gift of new life to us possible, so our response of Christian discipleship should be equally demanding. To emphasize three traits of Jesus’ followers- a willingness to serve, the proclamation of the Kingdom over slavish adherence to  rituals, and the prioritization of the Word of God even above one’s family- St. Luke introduces two new literary techniques to His Gospel in the final six verses of Chapter 9: hyperbole and chiasm. A literal interpretation of this section is  therefore unsuitable. For example, by saying that “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest His head,”  (54) Jesus does not teach that one who desires to follow Him should be homeless and destitute, but that His disciples ought to be willing to go anywhere that they are sent. Verses 59  and 60 are not intended as a criticism of the Jewish custom of burying one’s deceased parents, which was considered an extension of the Commandment to honour one’s mother and father. (55) Instead, it is probably meant as a warning against spiritual death, a force greater than physical death to those held captive by religious practices, however important, that are not God-centered but are self-centered. (56) Finally, blood relationships are held in high esteem, even in consideration of Jesus’ third rejection of a prospective disciple who asks to “say farewell to his family at home.” (57) Christ turns this man away thus: “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God.” (58) Jesus’ reference is most likely to an ancient Palestinian plow, driven by unwieldy oxen whose operator kept one hand on the plow while directing the oxen with the other. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary explains, “If the plougman [looked] round, the new furrow [became] crooked.” (59) Thus, any steward of the Good News, like the ploughman, should strive for a straight furrow by looking with joy to future duties.

Luke is the only evangelist to present the teachings of 9:57-62 as a triplet of “hyperbolic proverbs.” (60) These verses are absent from Mark, and Matthew parallels only the first two potential disciple vignettes. (61) Luke’s fondness for threes is again reflected in the structure of these stories. Also, in the author’s time as well as in our own, hyperbole was used for humour and to encourage thought beyond “staid” though long-standing paradigms. (62) Most of us are familiar with the pleading of a frustrated parent or other authority: “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times!” Jesus adopts a similar hyperbolic teaching style in this passage from Luke.

The Lucan Journey to Jerusalem also follows a literary pattern known as a chiasm, which is named for the Greek letter Chi- pronounced ‘ky’- from where the letter X of the Roman alphabet derives. (63) This character forms a central cross, or its halves can be understood as mirror images of one another. Other disciplines share the same concept. For example, in chemistry two molecules whose three-dimensional structures are mirror images of one another and that cannot be superimposed are called chiral after the Greek root cheir, for hand, since human hands also mirror each other and are non-superimposable. (64)

Chiasm in Scripture is not original to Luke’s Gospel. Genesis’ account of Noah, of the flood, and of God’s promise never again to destroy His creation by such a deluge is one of the first Biblical examples of this technique’s usage. Literary chiasms are built symmetrically around a central focus- a crossing point or mirror. In Genesis, we are reminded of God’s blessing upon the righteous: “God remembered Noah.” (65) Luke’s travel narrative chiasm intersects over five verses:

Some Pharisees came to [Jesus] and said: “Go away, leave this area because Herod wants to kill you.” He replied, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and I perform healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day I accomplish my purpose. Yet I must continue on my way today, tomorrow, and the following day, for it is impossible that a prophet should die outside Jerusalem.’”

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling! Behold, your house will be abandoned. But I tell you. you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.’” (66)

Due to length, the full chiastic structures of Genesis, cited from Denis O. Lamoureux of St. Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta, and of Luke, found in Charles H. Talbert’s exegetical work, “Reading Luke: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the Third Gospel,” are included in this article’s endnotes. (67) Nevertheless, the central ‘mirror’ passage of the Lucan Journey to Jerusalem clearly indicates the goal of Jesus’ earthly life. By our Baptism we are made heirs to the  same vocation as that of the Christ.

Lord Jesus, first proclaimed as the Incarnate Word by Gabriel to Mary, You were determined to fulfill God’s plan to save us. You set out from Galilee for Jerusalem. There, You, our First Spring died for our sin, trusting in Our Father’s power to raise You to life anew. You have dispelled our chill and darkness. Now we are asked to walk with you beyond death to the everlasting Resurrection. We pray with confidence that You might give us the strength of the Holy Spirit to embrace the joys and challenges of discipleship in Your Name. Amen.

In this Easter season, let us go in the peace of Christ. Alleluia, alleluia!

WRS

Verso l’Alto- Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati

In the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy, one is never far from mountains. The district owes its name to a contraction of an Italian phrase, “ai piedi del monte”-”at the base of  the mountain.”  (1) Turin is nestled against the northern bank of the Po River, whose headwaters are in the Pian del Re on the slope of Monte Viso, 56 kilometres south of the Piedmontese capital. (2) In the shadow of the Alps, Turin has a long and storied history. Nearby, the Carthaginian army leader Hannibal invaded Roman territory in 218 B.C. (3) The Holy Shroud of Turin, which was brought to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist by the royal House of Savoy in 1578, draws devotees to the city. (4) Turin took its place as a major intellectual and political centre by the 19th century. It is the birthplace of Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, a proponent of the unification of Italy that by 1870 had resulted in the seizure of the Papal States. (5) Piedmont then gave rise to a successful automobile industry, with the foundation of the automakers Fiat and Lancia.  (6) Economic prosperity coincided with the predominance of liberal ideas in politics and in the media. Gazzetta Piemontese, a pro-republican and pro-national unification newspaper, was founded in Turin in 1867 and was bought in 1895 by Alfredo Frassati, who changed its name to La Stampa. (7)

For historical, political, and economic reasons, Turin retains its fame to the present day. Its geographical setting has also increased Turin’s standing as a world-class centre of sports- the city hosted the twentieth Olympic Winter Games in 2006 and is home to Football Clubs Torino and Juventus. (8) Turin was also home to a young man, Pier Giorgio Frassati, son of Alfredo Frassati, who was largely unknown except by his family and friends. Pier Giorgio Frassati was handsome and physically fit. He was  proficient skier, swimmer, and mountain climber who belonged to the Italian Alpine Club, and he often led groups of university students on climbing trips to nearby peaks. On June 7, 1925, a companion photographed Pier Giorgio ascending a face in the Val di Lanzo. He is shown with both feet wedged into footholds and both hands gripping the rock above, poised to pull his powerful body upward. “Al piedi del monte”- “at the base of the mountain”- he is gazing toward the heavens. On the photograph, Pier Giorgio Frassati later wrote another Italian phrase, “Verso l’alto,” which translates into English as “toward the top.” (9) That had become Pier Giorgio’s motto, and was as much about a look toward Heaven, the ultimate goal, as it was a testament to a well-developed life of prayer and to an acute sense of social responsibility. The climb during which Pier Giorgio Frassati was photographed in the Val di Lanzo was his last. He died less than a month later, but in his short life he strove for the summit both physically and spiritually and is an example for our time, particularly for youth, of a grateful response to God’s universal call to sainthood: “Verso l’alto!”

While Pier Giorgio Frassati had little personal personal celebrity, his family had become distinguished by the late nineteenth century. Pier Giorgio’s father, Alfredo, was a successful entrepreneur. At twenty-six years of age, Alfredo Frassati bought Gazzetta Piemontese, thereafter named La Stampa- “The Press”- and then became its editor-in-chief. (10) Owing in part to the regionalized political and social organization of Italy, little newsprint was read far beyond the city of its origin, and the majority of Italian newspapers were not daily but were weekly or monthly publications. La Stampa differed from this trend. Founded as a daily newspaper, it rapidly became distributed and read throughout Italy and by Italians living abroad. La Stampa was known for its informative and concise articles, and it was one of the first Italian newspapers to print correspondence from readers, an innovation that evolved into the letters-to-the-editor sections in contemporary publications. (11)

Alfredo Frassati was highly skilled in a wide array of disciplines. Prior to his entry into journalism, he had earned a law degree from the University of Turin. In 1913, his political involvement led to his appointment to the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy. At that time, he was the youngest Italian senator. (12) Remarkably, Alfredo Frassati maintained his political neutrality as editor of La Stampa in a period of heightened instability and factionalism in Italy’s government. He was a liberal republican with strong opinions, but Alfredo Frassati was prudent in expressing himself, especially in print. His political views meshed well with his approach to religion. Although he had been baptized and raised a Catholic, he had lost his faith in his youth. (13) In matters of both political and religious belief, Alfredo Frassati lived as a practical agnostic; his faith was of little importance to him. However, he was respectful in dealing with his political opponents and allies alike, and refused to author or to print in La Stampa any aricles that attacked the Catholic Church. (14)

In 1898, Alfredo Frassati married a painter, Adelaide Ametis. Their marriage was troubled almost from the start. (15) The couple had two children. Their first, Pier Giorgio, was born on Holy Saturday, April 6, 1901. A daughter, Luciana, followed on August 18, 1902. (16) Alfredo Frassati’s busy career often kept him away from his family. Pier Giorgio began to receive his primary education at home in 1907. (17) Adelaide Ametis helped with her children’s schooling, but Luciana and Pier Giorgio felt the frequent absences of their father. Pier Giorgio was under constant pressure to follow in Alfredo’s footsteps and eventually to take ownership of La Stampa. Luciana was arguably more free to discern her life’s vocation, since her parents’ expectations of her, as influenced by the culture of the time, were more relaxed than for their firstborn son. (18) From his early childhood, though, Pier Giorgio developed aptitudes and interests that increasingly differed from those of Alfredo Frassati. Pier Giorgio and Luciana also shared a deep spirituality that confounded both their parents, in particular their father.

According to Luciana Frassati, Alfredo’s incomprehension of religious matters was less of an impediment to familial harmony than Adelaide’s agitated character. While Alfredo was recognized in public and in private for his honesty, statesmanship, and moral fortitude- all qualities of a great servant of one’s country, Luciana sensed that her mother’s public displays of devotion were not replicated in her more hidden actions:

Our father’s agnosticism hurt me much less than the Ametis household’s ‘piety’. We never heard a word against the Church from him, whereas our mother’s hypercritical temperament might have created an impression of [anticlericalism]. In her own family, nothing was looked at from a really Catholic point of view. Our mother and her sister, who would not have missed Sunday Mass or days of obligation for anything, were never seen by us to visit the Blessed Sacrament or to go to Benediction. They never went to Communion or were seen to kneel and say a prayer. (19)

In fairness toward Adelaide Ametis, many of Luciana’s criticisms against her mother were for traits not uncommon in the most faithful Catholics of the early twentieth century. For example, to partake of the Eucharist regularly was novel, although people might have attended Mass on Sundays and on holy days of obligation. Pope St. Pius X, who led the Church from 1903 to 1914, was inspired by a movement toward frequent reception of Reconciliation and of the Holy Eucharist that had begun to spread within religious communities. This new sacramental appreciation in the Church met skepticism among local superiors in some Orders, who were wary of lessened reverence for the Lord’s Supper that might have resulted from too frequent reception of the Eucharist. Undaunted, Pope St. Pius X made significant liturgical reforms and gave the Church’s official sanction to daily Communion for those who wished to receive it. (20) Few laypeople were immediately affected by the changes. On the other hand, Pier Giorgio and Luciana had been taught about the value of a close relationship with Jesus Christ through the Blessed Sacrament. (21) Such devotion was almost unique outside of religious congregations at the time. Thus, the argument of Basilian Father Thomas Rosica concerning Pier Giorgio’s deep faith and influence on future generations  is all the more persuasive that “Pier Giorgio listened to the invitation of Christ: ‘Come and follow Me.’ He anticipated by at least fifty years the Church’s understanding and new direction on the role of the laity.” (22)

Nearly forty years after the death of Pier Giorgio Frassati, Blessed Pope John XXIII convoked the Second Vatican Council. Sacrosanctum Concilium, the  Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, was the first document of the Council to be promulgated. The Council’s attention to the Eucharisitic celebration led logically to its definition of the Church’s mission, as in the Decree on the Mission Activity of the Church, Ad Gentes:

The mission of the Church… is fulfilled by that activity which makes her, obeying the command of Christ and influenced by the grace and love of the Holy Spirit, fully present to all… in order that by the example of her life and by her preaching, by the Sacraments and other means of grace, she may lead [all] to the faith, the freedom, and the peace of Christ, that… there may lie open before them a firm and free road to full participation in the mystery of Christ. (23)

Apostolicam Actuositatem, Vatican II’s Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, had declared that “in the Church there is a diversity of ministry but a oneness of mission.” (24) This document then expounded on the function of different groups of laypersons. The Decree’s treatment of the role of children, “according to their ability… true living witnesses of Christ among their companions,” (25) and of youth stemmed from the example of young modern figures like Pier Giorgio Frassati, who in a special way carried Our Lord, the “Light of Nations,” (26) to the world in which they lived. Apostolicam Actuositatem includes this reflection on the vocation of young persons in the Church:

[They] exert a very important influence in modern society… Their heightened influence… demands of them a proportionate apostolic activity, but their natural qualities also fit them for this activity. As they become more conscious of their own personalities, they are impelled by a zest for life and a ready eagerness to assume their own responsibility, and they yearn to play their part in social and cultural life. If this zeal is imbued with the spirit of Christ and is inspired by obedience and love for the Church, it can be expected to be very fruitful. They should become the first to carry on the apostolate directly to other young persons, concentrating their apostolic efforts within their own circle, according to the needs of the social environment in which they live. (27)

Those words aptly describe the life of Pier Giorgio Frassati. Beginning six decades before Vatican II, Frassati, the young layman, lived the Christian vocation recognized by that Ecumenical Council as the essence of the Church’s mission. Biographer Ann Ball illustrates that even as a small child, Pier Giorgio Frassati deeply recognized the needs of others, especially of the poor. Upon learning from his mother what an orphan was, Pier Giorgio, in tears and unable to sleep, descended the stairs to where his parents were entertaining guests. He asked his mother if Jesus were an orphan. In an effort to comfort her son and to return him to bed, Adelaide Ametis told Pier Giorgio “that Jesus had two fathers, one in Heaven and one on earth.” (28)

When Pier Giorgio was just four years old, a poor woman appeared outside the Frassatis’ home with her child. Pier Giorgio realized that the child was barefoot and quickly gave the shoes and socks that he had been wearing to the destitute woman. His parents were awestruck at Pier Giorgio’s spontaneous generosity. (29) The poor were a common sight near their house, such that Adelaide and Alfredo Frassati paid progressively less attention to them over time, but Pier Giorgio could not simply ignore the plight of the disadvantaged. Once, when Alfredo had turned away a man of unkempt appearance who reeked of alcohol, an inconsolable Pier Giorgio ran to his mother, whose only recourse was to send her son after the beggar to ask him to return so that he could be given some food. (30)

A champion of the poor from a young age, Pier Giorgio Frassati was never as distinguished a student as he was a social activist. After three years of home schooling with the assistance of a Salesian priest, Pier Giorgio and Luciana were sent to a state-run school  in Turin.  (31) Both struggled through three years there. In 1913, the same year as Alfredo Frassati’s appointment to the Senate of Italy, both children failed their exams, although Pier Giorgio, the heir and firstborn son of an elite family, aroused the dissapointment of his parents more than Luciana did. (32) As a result, Pier Giorgio was transferred to a Jesuit private institution where he was educated for four years. His lack of academic success was not attributable to a lack of effort. (33) Nevertheless, Pier Giorgio continued to perform poorly in class, even under the helpful leadership of the Jesuits. In 1917, he failed a grade for a second time, and was again moved to new surroundings, the Social Institute of Turin, or Sociale, also a Jesuit school. In a letter to his friend Carlo Bellingeri, Pier Giorgio Frassati lamented the results of his exams, but looked forward to the following year during which he would simultaneously complete his last grade level and remedial courses from the previous year:

Maybe you already know that I failed. I really didn’t think about [failing] Latin. I was worried about composition and instead the opposite happened. I will go to the Sociale, where I’ll attend second year classes in hopes of taking the first year exams in February. (34)

Pier Giorgio Frassati persevered at Sociale until he received his high school certificate in 1918. (35) While his studies were not his strength, Pier Giorgio’s spiritual life flourished in his six years under Jesuit influence. He received the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the first time on June 20, 1910, at the Church of Corpus Domini, followed by his first Holy Communion at the Chapel of the Sister Helpers of the Souls in Purgatory on June 19, 1911. Four years later, on June 10, 1915, Pier Giorgio was confirmed in his home parish, Our Lady of Grace, or “La Crocetta.” (36) Alfredo and Adelaide Frassati ensured that their children received the Sacraments, but they misunderstood and discouraged the adolescent Pier Giorgio’s increasing religious activities, fearing that his proximity to the Jesuits would lead him to become a priest himself. (37) Pier Giorgio was undeterred; within a year after his move from state school to study under the Jesuits, he had joined two Catholic student groups, the Apostleship of Prayer and the Company of the Most Blessed Sacrament. (38)

After his high school graduation, Pier Giorgio Frassati enrolled in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Royal Polytechnic of Turin. (39) His goal was to become a mining engineer, for professional as well as for spiritual reasons. He desired “to serve Christ better among the miners,”  (40) whom Pier Giorgio saw as among the most unhappy workers. Pier Giorgio Frassati had long been interested in helping the poor and those engaged in wearisome or in dangerous labour. He went on to become an active member of the Young Catholic Workers while he was a university student. However, his father did not approve of his field of study. He hoped instead that his son would inherit his newspaper business, but Alfredo Frassati was afraid to approach Pier Giorgio directly, so he sent a fellow La Stampa journalist to relay his message. “With  tears in his eyes” but ready to do as his father wished, Pier Giorgio asked the emissary, “Do you think this will please Papa?” The journalist nodded, to which Pier Giorgio replied, “Well, tell him I accept.” (41)

Soon thereafter, post-World War I Italy began to descend into political turmoil. Alfredo Frassati resigned his seat in the Senate when Benito Mussolini led the Fascists to power. (42) Despite that small act of protest, Pier Giorgio’s father was appointed Italian ambassador to Germany. The family thus moved to Berlin, which put a hold on the intended transfer of La Stampa from Alfredo to Pier Giorgio Frassati. There, the Frassatis were guests of the family of theologian Karl Rahner in Freiburg, among other German elites. (43) Pier Giorgio also continued his engineering courses, albeit from a distance. He had  become involved in more faith-based assemblies in Turin, including the University Students Nocturnal Adoration Group as well as organizations with international reach such as the St. Vincent de Paul Society  and Pax Romana, in addition to the Young Catholic Workers. (44) Consequently, Pier Giorgio Frassati kept in regular contact with his peers in Turin, often travelling to Italy for meetings of the groups of which he was a member. Those conferences occasionally led to confrontations with Italy’s Fascist authorities, as during a demonstration at the Young Catholic Workers Conngress in Rome, when Pier Giorgio Frassati was arrested after another protestor’s banner fell into his hands. He used its pole to fend off blows from the police. (45) In another incident, after Alfredo Frassati had criticized the Fascists in a La Stampa editorial for the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, an oppostion politician, for which he would later need to sell the paper to  Giovanni Agnelli of the Fiat Group to protect his family (46), the Frassati home in Turin was broken into by a police squad. Pier Giorgio singlehandedly fought off the squadristi with his fists, chasing them down the street and shouting at them: “Blackguards! Cowards!” (47)

Although Pier Giorgio Frassati never hesitated to protect his family or the Church, he disliked violence. He once remarked that “it is not those who suffer violence that should fear, but those who practice it. When God is with us, we do not need to be afraid.” (48) Arguably, he was as embarrassed as the thugs who attacked his home, as the event was reported in the local newspapers. (49) Pier Giorgio preferred more pacific means of witness to the Gospel, as Dominican Brother R.F. King points out:

His first priority, in every case, was to emulate the spirit of the Beatitudes, to be poor and meek, to mourn his own sins and those of the world, to hunger and thirst for justice, to show mercy, to keep his heart pure, and to make peace wherever he could. He did not attempt to draw attention to himself, but his quiet persistence at helping the poor, at promoting peace through justice, and at encouraging his fellow students to greater devotion to God left its mark. When anti-clerical activists attacked priests and religious, he defended them with his own body. If asked to speak, he would note that the basis of all true social reform was the supernatural charity which is a gift from God. Prayer and the Sacraments formed the foundation for the… apostolic work he saw as the calling of laypeople… His brand of heroic virtue was the everyday sort of getting up each morning and holding nothing back, but giving each moment and action totally to the service of God and neighbour. (50)

Pier Giorgio especially valued service to God, to his family, and to the poor. When his fellow students asked Pier Giorgio to go with them to a pub, he would suggest that they accompany him to pray before the Blessed Sacrament prior to their night out. Pier Giorgio joined the Dominicans as a tertiary, taking the name Girolamo after Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican who preached against the moral decadence of the Borgia family and of Pope Alexander VI and who was hanged for his efforts.  (51) With his companions, Pier Giorgio created an informal group in 1924, “Tipi Loschi”, rendered in English as “the Sinister Ones”, “the Shady Characters”, or “the Riff Raff Club”, to further their work among the downtrodden. (52) Within “Tipi Loschi,” Pier Giorgio was known by the humourous nickname “Robespierre,” after the French Revolution-era insurrectionist. (53) At the time, Pier Giorgio Frassati was in love with a young woman, Laura Hidalgo. They might have married if not for the opposition of Pier Giorgio’s mother, who saw Laura’s lower social class as incompatible with that of the Frassatis. Pier Giorgio obeyed his parents, who were soon to become separated anyway. On his decision not to marry Laura Hidalgo, Pier Giorgio asked rhetorically, “Why create one family to tear apart another?” (54)

By the autumn of 1924, Luciana Frassati was preparing to wed Jan Gawronska, a Polish diplomat. (55) With the Frassati family permanently back in Turin after a stay in Berlin, Pier Giorgio returned for another year at Royal Polytechnic. The beloved grandmother of Pier Giorgio and of Luciana became terminally ill. Two months into the academic term, Pier Giorgio ’s closest friend, Marco Beltramo, was accepted into the Air Force academy after passing his entrance exams. Pier Giorgio Frassati wrote to Marco Beltramo to congratulate him, although he lamented that they would be apart until Marco’s graduation. Optimistically, Pier Giorgio concluded, “Let me remind you that in three years’ time when you finish at the academy, one of the first flights you make must have Robespierre aboard.” (56)

Pier Giorgio and Marco never flew together. As university classes ended in the spring of 1925, a strapping Pier Giorgio Frassati continued his visits to the poor of Turin. He was also an avid attendee of the theatre and opera, and a voracious reader who was able to quote entire sections from Dante. (57) He took his friends to climb in the Val di Lanzo on June 7, 1925. Then his grandmother’s health took a final downturn three weeks later. Pier Giorgio’s mother confronted him as his grandmother lay dying in the family home: “It seems… that whenever you are needed you are never there.” (58) She did not realize that Pier Giorgio had fallen three times on his way to his grandmother’s bedroom to pray at her side and had managed to pull himself ahead only by grasping the wall in the hallway. (59) Pier Giorgio was being paralyzed by poliomyelitis that claimed his life in just five days. From his deathbed, twenty-four-year-old Pier Giorgio Frassati wrote a barely-legible note to his friend Grimaldi to ensure that Converso, a poor beggar, would receive his medication. In his polio-stricken hand, Pier Giorgio instructed Grimaldi: “Here are Converso’s injections; the receipt is from Sappa [the pharmacy]. I forgot about it. Renew [the prescription] from my account.”  (60) Serene to the end, Pier Giorgio had remarked, “I believe that the day of my death will be the most beautiful day of my life.” (61)

On July 4, 1925, [death] presented itself to him. With the marvelous confidence with which we had come to associate him, he met [God]: ‘Here I am, Lord.’ Then, calmly, he closed his eyes. (62)

To his parents’ surprise, thousands lined the streets for Pier Giorgio Frassati’s funeral. Most of the congregation was made up of poor people that Pier Giorgio served until the week before his passing. (63) Marco Beltramo walked in front of his closest friend’s coffin wearing his military uniform.  (64) An Italian politician mourned the death of the Senator’s son: “The best man in the world just died.” (65) The Royal Polytechnic Institute awarded Pier Giorgio Frassati a posthumous degree in mining engineering on April 6, 2001, the hundredth anniversary of his birth. (66) Alfredo Frassati returned to the Sacraments after Pier Giorgio’s death and, through several business ventures, mostly in the energy sector, he lived until 1961, his ninety-third year. (67) Luciana Frassati, a lawyer, lived to be 105 years old, dying in October, 2007. (68) She was the mother of six children, including Wanda Gawronska, whom I was pleased to have met during Rise Up, a Catholic Christian Outreach youth conference in December, 2008, in Toronto, Canada. Luciana was a tireless worker for Pier Giorgio’s sainthood cause, which is now being promoted by Wanda Gawronska. Pier Giorgio’s body was found to be incorrupt in 1981 (69), shortly after Pope John Paul II prayed at the grave in Pollone, Italy, of the person he called “the man of the eight Beatitudes.” (70) During a ceremony in St. Peter’s Square attended by thousands of young people, Pier Giorgio Frassati was beatified on May 20, 1990. (71) When Pier Giorgio Frassati was no longer able to climb the mountains he loved, and never having flown with Marco Beltramo, God called His great servant to the greatest of summits- upward to the top, to Heaven, “Verso l’alto!”

Let us pray, in the words of Father Thomas Rosica, CSB, from the recent Rise Up conference in Toronto. (72) After each petition, the response is “Show us the way, Verso l’alto, upward to Heaven.”

Pier Giorgio, help us to strive for simple hearts, attentive to the needs of others, and friendships based on that pact that knows no earthly boundaries: union in prayer. If we do not know the road, and if we often abandon the path…

If by being superficial we have not put into our knapsack all that we need for the climb, and if we never lift up our gaze because we do not want to take the first demanding steps to set ourselves on the way…

If we lack the strength to overcome the most difficult passes, and if we have the strength but prefer to use it to turn back…

If we never pause to be nourished by the bread of eternal life, and if we do not quench our thirst from the fountain of prayer…

When we do not know how to contemplate the beauty of the gifts we have received, and when we do not know how to offer ourselves for others…

If we have committed many sins…

If we have lost hope…

Pray for us, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati. Show us the way, “Verso l’alto,” upward to Heaven and deep into the heart of God. Teach us how to be holy Saints for the Church and for the world, to give witness to the Beatitudes with our lives. Amen.

WRS

Prayer and Reconciliation- Reflection for Mass of March 6, 2009

Friday, March 6, 2009

Friday of the First Week of Lent

World Day of Prayer

Readings: Ezekiel 18:21-28, Psalm 130: 1-6, Gospel of Matthew 5:20-26

The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel once wrote that “to love someone is to say, ‘you at least will not die.’” (1) Those words encompass much of the meaning of Lent, a season during which we celebrate the absolute mercy of God. On Ash Wednesday, we were enjoined to repent from our sin and to believe in the Gospel. Lent is truly, then, a celebration filled with faith and hope in that good news of God’s love for us.

Scripture tells us that God, who breathed life into our earthly and earthbound bodies, “so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him…might have eternal life.” (2) By means of rhetorical questions, the prophet Ezekiel communicates a similar message to that of John the Evangelist: God is not pleased with “the death of the wicked,” (3) nor does He keep a tally of our sins in an effort to condemn us, but instead God goes to great lengths to persuade us to turn freely toward Him and away from evil. Our Father sent us Jesus, His Son who, after His baptism in the Jordan, spent forty Spirit-filled days fasting in the wilderness. Jesus encountered and rebuffed the deception of grandeur offered by Satan- of power that is impossible in the absence of a relationship with God.

Christ so loved us that He went on to live as one of us, to teach us, to pray for us, and to die and to rise for us. During Lent, we journey with Jesus in the desert from His baptism to His death. Our lives naturally follow the same path as the life of Christ, with the same Divine call to welcome the mystery and promise of the Resurrection. A God who calls us together to accept such a wondrous gift is not limited by any human notion of justice. Therefore, Ezekiel reminds a people still in exile that it is not the Lord’s way but the way of the house of Israel that is not fair. (4) God is more than just fair to His people; He waits for us to repent and to respond in kind to His loving mercy. Both Ezekiel, in today’s first reading, and Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, emphasize that it is never too late to break from the course that leads to our ruin.

In addition, Jesus challenges us to act in God-like justice and not only in legalistic fairness toward our neighbour. As with God forgiveness is boundless, our reconciliation with each other is never too late if we are to gain Heaven. Jesus contends that it can be achieved even at the last minute- “on the way to court.” (5) If, on the contrary, we spout insults and put-downs, or persist in harbouring deep anger and resentment, we gradually destroy life, thus Jesus warns that we are in breach of the commandment not to kill and will be liable to human and to Divine judgement, and ultimately to Gehenna, the “hell of fire.” (6)

Deror Avi, Valley of Hinnom, October 19, 2007.

Jesus speaks of Gehenna, the Jewish equivalent to hell, in reference to the Valley of Hinnom, situated outside the southwest gate of Jerusalem, also called the Dung Gate. Gehenna conjured up mental pictures of horrors that actually took place in the Valley of Hinnom- it was Jerusalem’s garbage dump in Jesus’ time. Unclean animals and waste were burned there, and lepers scavenged the refuse. Gehenna had been the site of pagan human sacrifice and the final resting place of the bodies of executed criminals. (7) Not surprisingly, Gehenna evoked fear when Jesus mentioned it. The Valley of Hinnom brought two images to my mind: the bus route past the piles of garbage burning along the freeways in Cali and frequent walks through Windsor’s Malden Park, affectionately known as “the dump.” Just as the Valley of Hinnom today is no longer the vile rubbish heap it once was, as some efforts were being taken to clean up Cali while I was there, and as Windsor’s former landfill has become a pleasant place for a walk, so God wills to bring us to reconciliation- to transform our sinful waste into something beautiful and life-giving.

View from Malden Park, Windsor, ON

Reconciliation- the restoration and building of relationship with God and with humankind- requires us to pray for one another. Today we mark the World Day of Prayer, observed by several Christian traditions on the first Friday in March, (8) to bring to mind our need to pray for an end to divisions between baptized followers of Jesus. The section on prayer in our Catechism opens with a striking definition of prayer from St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

In her autobiography, St. Thérèse wrote: “…Prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.” (9)

“Prayer is a surge of the heart…” When we pray, we recall with tremendous gratitude that, as we enter the Lord’s house to celebrate the Eucharist, God has already resolved to forgive us our sin.

“It is a simple look toward heaven…” We then acknowledge the Father’s presence and, to begin the Communion Rite, we appeal to “Our Father, who art in Heaven”, whose Kingdom we petition “to come”, and whose “will” we pray “will be done, on earth as in Heaven.”

At the climax of the Mass, we receive Jesus as a community of believers, the Body of Christ, and respond with our “cry of recognition and of love,” “Amen!”

Our prayer, our Communion, our Lent, our Mass, in a spirit of reconciliation, are greater than any infirmity or spiritual darkness. Thus we come, “embracing both trial and joy.”

We come together to celebrate before a God who is greater than sin, division, and even death itself. Our God spoke through the prophet Ezekiel to the repentant soul, “He shall surely live…” (10) So we ought to pray this for one another, that we all might come to everlasting life. For “to love someone is to say, ‘you at least will not die.’”

WRS

The Christ of the Valley- Luke 9:37-50

Mountaineering presents several challenges, especially concerning the necessity to properly acclimatize to changes in altitude before attempting to scale the world’s highest peaks. Climbers begin a regimen of repeated ascents into thinner air, and progressively longer stays at the higher level, followed by descents to a lower camp, weeks prior to reaching the summit. Persons who live in high-altitude urban centres have been studied for their adaptation to lower atmospheric pressure; these people have been found to have elevated red blood cell counts, hence more concentrated hemoglobin, which enables greater efficiency of oxygen exchange and transport in the bloodstream. (1)

Fatigue, particularly under physical exertion, may result from a rapid transition to higher elevations. By May of 2008, I had been living in Cali, Colombia, for over four months, and had become accustomed to the warm, oxygen-rich air about one thousand metres above sea level. Then, I accompanied a Basilian seminarian over five days in Bogotá, the world’s third-highest national capital city at 2 600 metres. A picturesque colonial-era district, la Candelaria, is downhill from Casa Annonay, our Community’s house in Bogotá. Therefore, I found the return climb, though only moderately steep, quite strenuous because of the altitude and, relatedly, the colder and drier climate than that of Cali. During a visit to another Basilian house in Medellín, a city spread over three mountain ranges, my experience was similar to that in Bogotá. The ascent on foot to Medellín’s monument of the crucified Christ, El Cristo, had left me both out of breath and amazed at the endurance of the seminarian with whom I had visited that city.

In my reflection on my time in Colombia posted in May of this year, I constructed a metaphor between Colombia’s mountainous terrain and our own spiritual lives. St. John of the Cross described a similar concept of spiritual topography in his untitled poem that begins with the phrase, “I went out seeking love.” In the quest to find love, St. John said that we must sink “so low, so low.” In the depths, one encounters the Lord, the experience of whose presence John of the Cross wrote, “I flew so high… that I took the prey.” (2) God, St. John implied, is both Love and lover, and while He is the sought-after prey on high, God is to be found in the lowlands, where He has come to meet us as a servant and as a human being.

St. John of the Cross’ poem highlights the paradox that is the contemplation of eternal life, which words fail to express adequately. However, St. John’s use of vivid contrast between high and low is part of tradition dating back to the early Church. Notably, all three Synoptic Gospels both precede and succeed Jesus’ Galilean ministry with references to the Palestinian landscape. The public ministry of Jesus is introduced by the proclamation of John the Baptist, who quoted from the prophet Isaiah:

A voice crying out in the desert:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight His paths.
Every valley shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth,
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ (3)

Likewise, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all conclude their Galilean ministry narratives with the passage between the Transfiguration and Jesus’ decisive turn toward Jerusalem. In all three Synoptic Gospels the relation to Israeli topography is present there, though more subtly than in the preparatory exhortation of John the Baptist. After the Transfiguration, Jesus, Peter, James, and John decended from the mountain and were met by “a large crowd.” (4) Therefore the reader is taken by Matthew, by Mark, and by Luke from a place of prayer, or of teaching in St. Matthew’s Gospel specifically, into a setting of service. Although the Matthean, Marcan, and Lucan accounts all include the descent of Jesus and of the three Apostles from the mountain following the Transfiguration, they provide different amounts of detail about and attach divergent meanings to the discussion that took place as the four men retuned to the valley below. The Gospels of Mark and of Matthew show the disciples questioning whether Elijah ought to have come again before the Anointed, as the scribes had taught according to a long-standing view in messianic Judaism. (5) While Our Lord’s Transfiguration had foreshadowed His Resurrection, that event had more importantly foretold Jesus’ death also. The disciples, though, focused on Christ’s Resurrection such that, according to Matthew and to Mark, Jesus reminded them that firstly “the Son of Man… must suffer and be treated with contempt.” (6) As with Elijah, the Jewish authorities would do “with [Jesus] whatever they pleased, as it is written.” (7)

Fear does not enable Peter, James, and John to interpret the first prediction of the Passion and the Transfiguration completely. Consequently, Jesus’ explanation of the prophecy about Elijah’s second coming is only partly understood as an allusion to the recently-executed John the Baptist. (8) The Passion of Jesus, ahead of the Resurrection, will fulfill that which had been written about both John the Baptist and Elijah. None of the Synoptic Gospel writers mention the disciples’ fear as they descended the mountain, but it is clear that the previous events had clouded their judgement and comprehension of the unfolding circumstances. God had enjoined Peter, James and John to “listen to [Jesus],” His “chosen Son,” (9) but these three most prominent Apostles were incapable of hearing the Word fully, because they were so intensely afraid of Jesus’ eventual suffering and death.

Unlike Matthew and Mark, Luke does not place the fear-driven discussion between the Apostles after the Transfiguration, but transposes this story to his post-Resurrection narrative. On the road to Emmaus, the disciples would recall Jesus’ teachings as they realized the presence of the Risen Christ among them: “Were not our hearts burning within us while He spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?” (10) Only at that point, with the purpose of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem accomplished, did the fear of the disciples begin to be transformed by Our Lord into faith and strength, just as death had been changed into life by His Passion and Resurrection.

St. Luke also tends, more than the other Gospel authors, to specify the passage of time at important junctures in Jesus’ life. For example, eight days pass between the Nativity and the circumcision and naming of Jesus. (11) Our Lord is twelve years old when He is found in the Temple (12), begins His ministry at “about thirty years of age” (13), and spends forty days in the desert, during which He is tempted by the devil. (14) The Transfiguration, Luke writes, occurs eight days after the first prediction of the Passion. (15) Then, “on the next day,” Peter, James, and John “came down the mountain” and were immersed in the multitudes of people. (16) A single day would have been little time for them to adjust to the tremendous effects of Jesus’ Transfiguration and of His prediction of His Passion. Rendered silent by the simultaneous joy and sadness of these events, the three Apostles must not only descend a physical mountain to be met by a “needy world” (17) that will not allow them to rest, but their negotiation of the mountain, in the spiritual and emotional senses, also requires proper acclimatization.

Compared to Mark and Matthew, Luke usually takes more time to relate important stages in the life of Christ, but before Jesus begins His final journey to Jerusalem that Luke spreads over almost ten full chapters, the author of the third Gospel in Canonical order tells of four separate  incidents in only fourteen verses, and he omits details found in Matthew and in Mark. (18) In an accelerated fashion uncharacteristic of Luke, Jesus’ friends are taught four critical lessons about discipleship, all of which are related to the mercy of God and to the Cross, the ultimate manifestation of that Divine mercy. (19) According to Scripture commentator Fred Craddock, discipleship depends upon our reconciliation with the Cross as a necessary part of the redemptive mission of Jesus Christ. (20) The four stories in this short section of Luke’s Gospel- the healing of the boy with an evil spirit, the second prediction of the Passion, the teaching about who is greatest in God’s Kingdom, and the foreign exorcist- involve four separate instructions about the essential features of a Christian disciple, all qualities shown to be lacking in the Twelve as they were about to set out for Jerusalem. Craddock writes:

The four subunits are really vignettes in which the disciples are revealed as lacking in power (vv. 37-43a), in understanding (vv. 43b-45), in humility, and in sympathy (vv. 49-50). No wonder Luke devotes over nine chapters to the journey to Jerusalem: preparation of the disciples, including the reader, will take time. (21)

From the perspective of a teacher of Holy Scripture, Fred Craddock incisively connects the four parts of this transitional passage of Luke’s Gospel to the reader. We are as much disciples of Jesus as those who were written about in the Gospel. This form of spirituality is somewhat common; some religious orders, for example the Jesuits, are renowned for their training of Biblical readers to picture themselves in the passage they are reading. We become in such exercises integrated into the Scriptural narrative at the same time as God’s word becomes an inseparable part of us. This method of learning the Scriptures may be enormously beneficial, although one must not approach Biblical role-play too proudly.  Temptation exists, especially for professional interpreters of the Sacred texts, to put ourselves in the position of the teacher instead of in that of the student. Therefore, Craddock warns us:

The tendency among us who share these texts with others is to assume the place of Jesus for ourselves and to place our listeners in the role of disciples. That is, we speak Jesus’ words of correction, reprimand, encouragement, and instruction to others rather than listening to them in the role of disciples. (22)

Our first lesson, then, as disciples of Jesus is to rely entirely on God in times that we experience our own powerlessness. These occasions, as in the Lucan context of the healing of the boy possessed by a demon, are unavoidable. The day after the Transfiguration, a man approached Jesus from a great crowd of people. His son was worn out by recurrent convulsions. He had been screaming and “[foaming] at the mouth.” (23) The father pleaded desperately with Jesus, “I begged your disciples to cast [the demon] out, but they could not.” (24) Jesus’ reaction to the man’s predicament probably surprised those who were present: “O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you and endure you? Bring your son here.” (25)

Luke does not specify the object of Our Lord’s exasperation, unlike Matthew, in whose Gospel the disciples are privately chided for their lack of faith. (26) In the Gospel of Mark, the father of the demoniac child is on the receiving end of Jesus’ stern admonishment, although he is not entirely faithless but admits, as we ought also, to his struggle to trust fully in God. He then asks for God’s assistance, “I do believe, help my unbelief!” (27) Luke’s phraseology is both more eloquent and no less ambiguous than that of Mark. In the Lucan Gospel, Jesus’ challenge to believe in His power is directed more at us as Christian disciples than at any of the first-hand witnesses to the healing of the sick boy. (28)

Although the three Synoptic Gospel authors essentially agree that a spirit was responsible for the child’s symptoms- the belief in demonic possession was common in first-century Palestine- discrepancies exist between the Matthean, Marcan, and Lucan accounts. Matthew, for instance, writes that the boy was a “lunatic”, while he refers to demonic possession only later. (29) This indicates that the child’s condition, probably epilepsy, was not only culturally associated with evil spirits but also with the phases of the moon. (30) The word ‘lunatic’ appears only twice in the New Testament, both times in the Gospel of Matthew. (31) An explicit challenge of the disciples’ faith- Jesus said to His followers that even faith the size of a mustard seed would have sufficed to cure the boy- is also unique to the Matthean Gospel. (32)

Mark’s depiction of the epileptic boy’s healing begins with the disciples, tired, confused, and saddened by Jesus’ first predictions of His death, surrounded by the multitudes and arguing with the scribes. (33) The placement of this episode immediately after the Transfiguration and the ensuing discussion about the meaning of rising from the dead are thematically consistent with the preceding series of events. Mark portrays the cure of the young demoniac as more of a resurrection from death than strictly a healing of one who is ill. Jesus cast out the malevolent spirit and commanded it never to return to the child. Mark describes the demon as “deaf and mute,” (34) a possible allusion to those on the verge of spiritual death who cannot hear the word of God or who are silenced by fear so deeply rooted that it disables faith. Therefore, this exorcism served also as a warning to the disciples in the early Church not to allow fear of death to dull their faith in the Resurrection.  This current runs throughout the Marcan Gospel. When the Risen Christ appears to the Eleven, some of them have still not believed “those who saw Him after He had been raised” (35) that Jesus had indeed been restored to life. Moreover, Mark is the only evangelist to observe that many of those who saw the exorcism of the demoniac child thought that “he [was] dead,” because he had become “like a corpse” before Jesus “took him by the hand, raised him, and he stood up.” (36)

Jesus also underscores the importance of prayer in driving out the demon: “This kind can only come out through prayer.” (37) Similarly, we ought to pray for the dead and for the severely ill. Our Lord’s Passion began with prayer in the Garden. We should follow Him in praying that God’s will be done over our own. (38) Our Father’s will that permitted Jesus to die on the Cross also raised Him from death. Through Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, Satan, the lord of demons, has been cast out, but our path to salvation began especially with the Son of God at prayer in Gethsemane.

St. Luke stresses the significance of prayer, too, although in this Gospel Jesus did not directly associate the exorcism of the epileptic with the need to pray, as He did as per St. Mark. Instead, according to Luke only, Jesus was at prayer during the Transfiguration itself. (39) The disciples descended from the mountain into the valley, a place of service in Luke’s Gospel. As such, Luke distinguishes himself from Mark and from Matthew by his heightened level of human concern.

Like Matthew, Luke challenges the faith of the disciples more than that of the father of the ill child. St. Luke alone adds the word “perverse” to Jesus’ criticism of His generation’s disbelief. (40) This adjective refers to Israel’s ongoing faithlessness from the Mosaic era, hence Moses’ injunction against the “fickle”, “perverse and crooked race” of Israelites in Deuteronomy. (41) The same human infidelity will result in Jesus’ death, therefore Luke’s diction in 9:41 functions as a flashback to Israel’s deliverance under Moses and, more pertinently, as a flash forward to our deliverance from our own listless faith by the power of Jesus Christ. (42)

Death is a prominent theme in the story of the healing of the epileptic in the Gospel of Luke, as it is in the Matthean and Marcan Gospels. However, as he makes the literary transition between Jesus’ Galilean ministry and His journey to Jerusalem, Luke accentuates the human nature of Our Saviour. As the ideal human being, Jesus is best shown by Luke to be the most empathetic toward humankind. Only Luke identifies, in the words of the epileptic’s father, that the boy is the man’s “only child.” (43) Jesus thus relates especially to the boy whose father pleads with Him from among the crowd of people. Our Lord, hidden by the multitudes, is once again singled out as the only Son of God the Father.

For a second time in Luke’s Gospel- the first had been the raising of the widow’s son at Nain- Jesus raises the only child of a desperate parent from death or near-death. (44) Perhaps the strongest allusion to death in the Marcan and Matthean narratives of the healing of the young demoniac is the reference, omitted by Luke, to the seizures that cause the boy to fall into fire and water. (45) Although such an interpretation is speculative, St. Luke may not have mentioned the fire and water, possibly suggestive of the afterlife, or of hell and of Heaven, respectively, in the ancient Jewish understanding of the universe, since he wrote to a Gentile audience that would have been less aware of  Hebrew cosmology of the time. (46) Nevertheless, our knowledge of “how the heavens go” (47) is subordinate to our call to love and mercy toward others, in keeping with Jesus’ teaching in His Sermon on the Plain, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (48)

In His mercy, Jesus raised the epileptic child and, in a Lucan addition to both Mark and Matthew that again highlights God’s love for humanity, He “returned [the boy] to his father.” (49) Jesus’ act brings to mind His own Resurrection, as well as our own; we also hope, because of the saving mercy of God, to be returned to Our Father in Heaven. The rising of Christ to life, then is the greatest of all miracles and the sum of all God’s great works. (50) Because of His Resurrection we, too, have a chance to be raised from death. We must, though, remain attentive to the instruction of the miracle worker instead of becoming infatuated with the works themselves, as was a temptation of the first disciples and is for every Christian to the present age.

For that reason, in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the priest welcomes the congregation and introduces the epistle reading with the exclamation, “Wisdom! Be attentive!” (51) Jesus prefaced the second prediction of His Passion similarly: “Pay attention to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.” (52) The disciples, Luke writes, failed to understand Jesus’ words, and they reacted fearfully. (53) When Jesus had spoken about His Passion and Resurrection for the first time, no explicit mention of fear nor misunderstanding on the part of the Apostles was made by St. Luke. (54) Prior to His entrance into Jerusalem, Jesus would again refer to His upcoming death, but the Twelve would show none of the fear to be expected of them considering the temporal and geographical proximity of the events of which Our Lord would speak. Luke says of the Apostles at the third Passion prediction only  that “they understood nothing… and they failed to comprehend what He said,” (55) but their fear is conveyed openly ten chapters earlier.

At the beginning of Chapter 9 of Luke’s Gospel, the twelve disciples had been sent out by Jesus. Their first attempt at work away from the physical presence of their Master had been successful, as “they went from village to village proclaiming the good news and curing diseases everywhere.” (56) Peter had been able to vocalize the Divine revelation he was given as to the identity of Jesus, the “Messiah of God,” (57) but by then the conversion process from disciples to Apostles was underway. The Twelve, perplexed by two predictions of the horrific death of the Son of Man, the first without reference to His Resurrection (58), were to be broken under the weight of their own powerlessness and lack of understanding. They could no longer bear their daily cross attentively (59); all their human wisdom was for naught. The confidence of the Twelve was shattered by the prospect of their Lord’s suffering and execution in the worst way possible. In their weakness, the Apostles looked for a scapegoat among themselves, instead of accepting their share in the humiliation of Christ. In response, Jesus placed a small child before them, a symbol of the humility expected of a Christian. (60) He then instructed us, His disciples, with a message shared by all four Gospel writers:

Whoever receives this child in My name receives Me, and whoever receives Me receives the One who sent Me. For the one who is least among all of you is the one who is the greatest. (61)

Jesus was preparing His Apostles for a time when they would face ostracism and persecution. He had already been run out of his hometown, Nazareth, for His preaching in the synagogue to which the people had reacted angrily. (62) Our Lord had entered our human exile, a world where the innkeeper had turned Him away before His birth, yet the shepherds had joyfully received their King, born in a lowly stable. (63)

Later on, Jesus took a child from the crowd and placed it among His disciples. Then a foreign exorcist came to John’s attention. This man, John argued, did not belong to those closest to Jesus, although he was able to cast out demons in Christ’s name as were the Twelve. (64) Jesus responded thus to John’s exclusivism, “Do not prevent him, for whoever is not against you is for you.” (65) St. Luke, writing to a Greek-speaking Gentile audience, again shows his inclusiveness in a time when the early Chrisitans were both dying at Roman hands and being excluded from the Jewish synagogues. St. Matthew substitutes the story of the foreign exorcist with that of the payment of the Temple tax (66), but the message is essentially the same: the disciples will come to be considered outcasts. Therefore, anyone who does the work of Christ should be actively welcomed into our community of believers. Following Fred Craddock’s paradigm for interpretation of this section of Luke’s Gospel, the last of four teachings to Jesus’ followers between His Transfiguration and journey to Jerusalem is on Christian sympathy- we ought to regard ourselves as foreigners, in the footsteps of the Redeemer who leads us forth from the manger over high and low lands to Jerusalem and to the Cross.

Lord Jesus, You called Your Apostles into the valley from the mountain on which You were transfigured. May we learn Your way of service and accept our physical, emotional, and spiritual low points so that You may raise us to the height that is the Resurrection. Through our work in Your name, may the valleys be exalted and the mountains of our pride be made low. As we celebrate Your birth among us as a human being and await Your coming in glory, grant us, Lord, Your power, understanding, humility, and sympathy as we work for the good of all Your people and promote the growth of Your Church. Amen.

God’s blessings to all in this Christmas season and a Happy 2009 to all!

WRS

A Communion of Hearts- Jean Vanier

Less than two years after L’Arche, an international community for the intellectually disabled, was founded, its members were invited to Rome for a papal audience with His Holiness Pope Paul VI. The Pontiff began his greeting thus:

Seeing you all together makes us realize that you are a small group united by love and an active will to help one another. You are a community in whose midst Jesus is happy to live. (1)

By Wednesday, April 6, 1966, the date of that Holy Week audience with the Pope, L’Arche had joined with a larger house called Val-Fleuri in Trosly-Breuil, France. Despite its small size, it had already developed a tradition of organizing pilgrimages and shorter field trips for its members. (2) More than thirty years later, the group begun by the self-effacing Jean Vanier had spread to thirty-four countries on six continents. (3) While I was serving as president of the Newman Club at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, two core members of that city’s L’Arche house were accompanied to one of our weekly meetings by two caretakers who spoke about L’Arche’s presence in Edmonton and around the world.

Following a presentation on the history of L’Arche and on the organization’s contribution to the care of the disabled, the Newman Club members gathered were invited to ask questions about the talk, but this opportunity for interaction with the speakers was different than most. One of the L’Arche core members had a gift of telling other people’s ages, so the university students of the Newman Club deligtedly put the young man’s ability to the test.

Jean Vanier, who founded L’Arche along with Dominican Father Thomas Philippe, celebrated his eightieth birthday this past September. In an interview with Globe and Mail columnist Ian Brown, himself a father of a disabled son, Vanier reflected on aging and on his own life:

The reality of my life as a human is to accept myself as I am. At the age I have. So that at the age of 80, I live as 80, and not as if I’m 40. Live and enjoy life and don’t spend my time weeping, and saying, ‘I don’t have any more power, people are not coming to see me. Don’t spend your time regretting. Spend your time living. (4)

As he ages, Vanier, widely considered to be “the world’s most significant thinker on the subject of disability,” (5) increasingly applied this same attitude to himself and to the residents of the one hundred thirty houses that make up L’Arche. The intellectually and physically challenged have many of the same necessities as Jean Vanier, a PhD-level philosopher who is among the foremost contemporary Christian humanists. Like all human beings, the disabled members of L’Arche and the octogenarian Vanier share a fundamental need to be loved. People generally fear abandonment and loneliness. Particularly in technologically-advanced societies, competition and productivity are valued almost to the point of obsession. Those deemed unfit to contribute to the rapid material advances of the world are shunned. When L’Arche was founded forty-four years ago, the disabled were crowded into bleak institutions and forgotten. Currently, 80 to 90 percent of children in North American and European nations with disabilities such as Down Syndrome and Spina Bifida are aborted. (6) Arguably, little progress has therefore been made in Western societies’ treatment of the disabled; their inhumane approach has merely shifted from marginalization to elimination of those whom Jean Vanier counts as “among the most persecuted people on earth.” (7)

Jean Vanier’s experience with the mentally disabled and his own physical limitations have taught him about the essence of being human, with all our strengths and weaknesses. Each person, whether able-bodied or not, will eventually lose independence. Precisely at that point, Vanier contends, one reaches humanness on its deepest level, yet we fear relinquishing our autonomy. However, Vanier says pondering the Biblical story of the fall of humankind, we must realize that we are not in control in the first place:

There’s a really interesting text in Genesis… which is probably the oldest book about the beginnings of humanity. At one point, Adam and Eve separate from God. And then God runs after them and says, ‘Where are you?’ He doesn’t say, ‘You’re bad!’ He just says, ‘Where are you?’ And Adam responds, ‘I was frightened because I was naked. And so I hid.’

So fear [is] due to nakedness, which leads to hiding. And what is that nakedness we fear? It’s our mortality. It’s our incapacity. It’s the realization that I’m not in total control of my life. I can go out here and fall on my neck, and you would have to bring me to the hospital, and so on. We can have all the insurance we want, but we still move to death. Whether we like it or not, we are not in control. (8)

L’Arche is a community of people who have never been in control, but the disabled core members of that organization are, in Vanier’s view, the best teachers of how to accept one’s self, of how to lead a life of compassion, of gratitude, and of peace, and of how to pray. Prayer, Vanier emphasizes, does not necessarily involve deep thought or verbal conversation; those whom he has served for forty-four years are incapable of discussing theology or philosophy, but they offer an even greater gift. “Praying,” Vanier said to Ian Brown, “is not doing…Prayer is communion and gratefulness…a way of reminding ourselves to be who we are.” (9)

St. Augustine of Hippo wrote in his Confessions of the time prior to his conversion: “I loved not as yet I loved to love… I searched about for something to love, in love with loving, and hating security, and a way not beset with snares.” (10) Later in the same work, he prayed, “Oh, let Truth, the light of my heart, not my own darkness, speak unto me! I have descended to that, and am darkened. But thence, even thence, did I love Thee.” (11) Similarly, Jean Vanier spent many years discerning the Lord’s will for him. He had a promising career in the Navy, thought about becoming a priest, then began to lecture in philosophy after earning a doctorate. Vanier, though, came to a small house in Trosly-Breuil that had fallen into disrepair. There, the thirty-six-year-old Vanier started L’Arche, where the intellectually disabled have taught him more about human nature and basic necessities than Vanier could have taught in a philosophy course. In words reminiscent of those of St. Augustine, Jean Vanier spoke of his life before L’Arche was created:

I was searching without knowing what I was searching for… I didn’t have a centre, but I found myself when I founded L’Arche. I didn’t have an answer to all the technical questions about the future of this small community. But not knowing has allowed me to take the risks to continue. (12)

While Jean Vanier serched and prayed over his vocation, who were also known to take risks for the betterment of the world, steadfastly supported their son. Georges Phileas Vanier, a native of Montréal in 1888 whose father had emigrated from Normandy, France, and whose mother was Irish, married Pauline Archer, twenty-three years old and also from Montréal, in 1921. (13) Pauline Vanier’s parents were “Charles Archer, a Québec Superior Court judge,” and Thérèse de Salaberry, descended from early eighteenth-century settlers on Québec’s seigneuries. (14) Pauline was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent in Montréal, with supplementary tutoring in English and French literature that gave her a “lively mind and insatiable curiosity.” (15) She also hoped to become a religious sister, but her plans were altered with the outbreak of World War I. Pauline was refused admission as a foot soldier, and instead accepted work as a nurse “at a military convalescent hospital, where she laboured long hours until war’s end.” (16) Her wartime activity met the disapproval of her parents.

After the war, Pauline met Georges Vanier, who had twice been awarded medals of bravery during the conflict. He had once written home from the trenches, “I sleep as ever on the fresh earth… one day we shall go back to her.” (17) Georges Vanier’s right leg was severed by a German shell, but he refused to return to Canada: “I simply cannot go back to Canada while my comrades are still in the trenches in France.” (18) Shortly after the marriage of Georges and of Pauline Vanier, Canadian Governor General Lord Julian Byng, First Viscount of Vimy, appointed the couple to Government House in Ottawa.  (19) Georges was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and sent to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1927. There, Jean Vanier, one of five children- four sons and one daughter- of Georges and Pauline Vanier, was born on September 10, 1928. (20)

Georges Vanier joined the Canadian High Commission in London in 1931, and in 1939 the Vanier family moved to Paris, where Georges had been “named minister of the Canadian Embassy.” (21) While Georges Vanier gained a reputation as an intelligent and skilled diplomat, Pauline ably ran the family home and was devoted to several social causes. Georges’ warnings of impending war, even before Adolf Hitler had ascended to power and while Germany’s economy was crippled by punitive war reparations against that country, were prophetic. As an adviser on disarmament at the League of Nations, Georges Vanier pleaded, “I ask you to open your eyes to human suffering, to direct your hearts to those who have not the strength to ask for help. Let us go to them. They have already been waiting too long.” (22) However, the world’s leaders did not listen; World War II began in August, 1939. France fell to Nazi Germany less than a year later, and the Vanier family fled Paris for Bordeaux before being shipped to England. (23) In London, the Vaniers waited out the horrific bombing of the Battle of Britain. Deborah Cowley wrote about Pauline Vanier and her family’s flight from France:

It was her escape in 1940 from wartime Paris to London with their four children…that gave Pauline a chance to show her courage and her complete trust in God. With the Germans rapidly overrunning France, Georges insisted that she and the children leave Paris in the Vanier automobile. Every road south was jammed with refugees, who were being repeatedly machine-gunned by German fighter aircraft. Suddenly, an enemy airplane crashed beside the road  just ahead of Pauline’s car. She leapt from her car and ran to the smoking wreck hoping to drag the pilot to safety. Alas, he had died in the wreck. (24)

While in London, Pauline Vanier continued her many humanitarian efforts, and Georges began to support General Charles de Gaulle’s plan to assemble a free French army to take France back from Nazi Germany. Georges Vanier’s position was panned by Canada and other Allied nations, who as yet failed to view Vichy France as merely a Nazi puppet state. Thus, the Vaniers were recalled to Canada, but were returned to Europe as the urgency of the Nazi threat and the leadership of Charles de Gaulle in the Allied resistance began to be appreciated. (25) In late 1944, Georges Vanier arrived in Paris as Canadian Ambassador to France. Pauline eventually followed him; she petitioned the Canadian Red Cross to allow her to work for them as a spokesperson, and was successful despite reluctance to open the French capital to civilians at that time, especially to women. After the war’s end, Pauline Vanier helped to resettle refugees who were returning to France. (26)

Georges and Pauline Vanier’s service to their country and to humanity ignited a similar concern in their son Jean. While World War II was still raging, Jean Vanier, at thirteen years old, asked his father’s permission to enroll as a Royal Navy Cadet in Portsmouth, England. (27) Georges gave his assent, simply but profoundly, “I trust you.” (28) His son would cite this moment later as “probably one of the two most important things that happened, because if he trusted me, then I could trust myself.” (29) Jean Vanier went on to join the Canadian Navy as an aircraft carrier officer (30), but he was still searching for a deeper purpose to his life.

He left the Navy in 1950, and subsequently befriended a Dominican priest, Fr. Thomas Philippe, who was the director of L’Eau Vive, a mostly lay academic community in Saulchoir, France, whose focus was on Christian prayer and  on the study of metaphysics. (31) Meanwhile, like his father before him, Jean Vanier contemplated whether he had a vocation to the priesthood. Fr. Thomas’ failing health forced him to appoint Jean Vanier to direct L’Eau Vive, which he would do for the next six years. During this period, Vanier was unable to advance in his studies in philosophy as long as he stayed in Saulchoir. Therefore, with the hope of becoming a priest, he entered the seminary in the Archdiocese of Québec. (32) Tension mounted between the Dominicans and Vanier, and the latter was asked by the Holy See to leave L’Eau Vive if he wanted to devote the requisite time to his seminary studies. (33) During the same period, Vanier had started his doctoral thesis at l’Institut Catholique de Paris on happiness and Aristotelian ethics, entitled “Le Bonheur: Principe et fin de la morale aristotélicienne,” which he published in 1962. (34)

Fr. Thomas Philippe’s teachings created divisions among his fellow Dominicans and also stirred controversy in Rome, thus Jean Vanier’s mentor at L’Eau Vive retreated into a Trappist monastery.  (35) Vanier and Fr. Thomas met again in Trosly-Breuil in 1962. There, Fr. Thomas had become the chaplain of a home for the mentally disabled called Val-Fleuri. The home had been founded by a physician, Dr. Préault, and Mr. Prat, whose son was intellectually challenged. (36) A second visit to Trosly-Breuil deepened Jean Vanier’s awareness of the cruelty of the dark and bleak mental institutions in France like the one he saw that housed eighty men in cramped conditions. (37)

Jean Vanier had long been gifted with a strong sense of ethics and of social justice. He had become a  well-respected instructor of moral philosophy at St. Michael’s College in Toronto, Canada, where he was hired in 1964, after completing his PhD. (38) Vanier knew by then that he was not called to be a priest, He did not see that as an obstacle, but accepted that he was being led closer to Christ. “I was forced to continue to search and to believe that life would always be stronger than death,” Vanier said in retrospect. (39) He refused to give up, and God led him decisively to Trosly-Breuil.

The modest house in that town, which in the early 1960s had neither flush toilets nor electricity, became the starting point of a revolution in the care of the disabled. (40) Two years after his first visit to Val-Fleuri, on August 5, 1964, Jean Vanier chose three men from an institution in Paris to live with him. They were Raphaël Simi, who could neither walk nor speak after a bout of meningitis, Philippe Seux, partially paralyzed by encephalitis, and a man named Dany, whose needs could not be met by Vanier and who was returned to the institution. (41) Vanier’s house, next to Val-Fleuri, was named L’Arche, after Noah’s Ark. The original wooden sign still marks the home’s entrance today. Vanier cooked, cleaned, and cared for Raphaël and for Philippe on his own at the beginning of L’Arche. (42) The home began with a sense of mission and of prayer. Vanier wrote that he and “Père Thomas…had the deep conviction that [they] had been called together by Jesus to accomplish something.” (43) Seux, Simi, and Vanier quickly established a friendship and a community. In Vanier’s words, “Our prayer was magnificent.” (44)

Back in Canada, Georges and Pauline Vanier were less convinced of their son’s latest efforts. Tony Walsh, founder of Benedict Labré House for homeless men in Montréal, urged them to fully support Jean Vanier and L’Arche. (45) Since 1959, Georges Vanier had been the Governor General of Canada, only the second Canadian-born holder of that office, succeeding Vincent Massey. (46) He and Pauline were “a perfect partnership in the service of Canada,” declared then-Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson. (47) However, Georges Vanier’s health, a concern at his appointment as Governor General, continued to decline. He was confined to a wheelchair by heart problems in his last years, but he was still an inspiring presence. The last speech by Georges Vanier was to students at the University of Montréal in 1967. By then, the separation of Québec from the rest of Canada was being more openly promoted in that province, which sometimes resulted in isolated acts of violence and of terrorism. Georges Vanier’s words were powerful:

The measure of Canadian unity has been the measure of our success… If we imagine we can go our separate ways within our country, if we exaggerate our differences or revel in contentions… we will promote our own destruction. Canada owes it to the world to remain united, for no lesson is more badly needed than the one our unity can supply: the lesson that diversity need not be the cause for conflict but, on the contrary, may need to richer and nobler living. I pray to God that we may go forward hand in hand. (48)

Within months of that address, on March 4, 1967, “George Vanier’s gallant heart, pressed to its limits for so long, quietly surrendered.” (49) After Georges’ death, Pauline lived for five years in Montréal while serving briefly as Chancellor of the University of Ottawa. She made a two-week retreat with Carmelite nuns, then decided, at seventy-three years old, to join her son Jean in Trosly-Breuil. Pauline Vanier spent the last nineteen years of her life at L’Arche. She ensured that the core members were able to worship in their own language, and ran prayer meetings in a chapel she had made in her former sitting room at the house in Trosly-Breuil. Pauline Vanier passed away in 1991, just days from her ninety-third birthday. (50)

Over the last forty-four years, Jean Vanier has overseen the rapid expansion of L’Arche around the world, encouraged and blessed by the Holy See. Until his age recently dictated otherwise, he also maintained a busy schedule including travel, interviews, speeches, and workshops. Spin-off groups have emerged from L’Arche, such as Faith and Light, founded in 1971 in Toronto by Jean Vanier and by Marie-Hélène Mathieu.  (51) Jean Vanier has authored several books and has received many awards internationally, for example the French Légion d’honneur, the Community of Christ International Peace Award, the Rabbi Gunther Plaut Humanitarian Award, the Beacon Fellowship Prize, and the Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope) Award from the Vatican. He is a Companion of the Order of Canada. (52) More importantly, L’Arche has taught Jean Vanier about the dignity of each human being, especially of those too often discarded by societies that value material productivity and competition over humanity. Jesus Christ spoke the same message two millenia ago:

The King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by My Father. Inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’… Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers and sisters of Mine, you did for Me. (53)

The words and actions of Jean Vanier echo those of the One who freely assumed our frail human nature to meet us in and to redeem us from our weakness. Jean Vanier wrote about the purpose of L’Arche:

Our community life is beautiful and intense, a source of life for everyone. People with a handicap experience a real transformation and discover confidence in themselves; they discover their capacity to make choices, and also find a certain liberty and above all their dignity as human beings… They discover a place that gives meaning to their lives and their capacity to love and live out compassion and give life to others. The essence of our communities is this ‘living with.’ We are called, certainly to serve with all our ability and to help those who are weaker to develop, but the foundation of this helping is found in friendship and the communion of hearts, which allows us all to grow. (54)

Christ’s humanity dignifies and transforms ours to be more like His. Thus, Pope Paul VI concluded his meeting with the L’Arche pilgrims during Holy Week, 1966: “God calls all of you, in spite of your difficuties, to be saints, and He reserves a special role for you in His Church… We count on you, dear sons, and we bless you.” (55)

Lord Jesus, You are happy to live among us. May we be instruments of friendship,  of compassion, of justice, and of peace, especially to those considered lowly in our world. May we serve as You served, with Jean Vanier as a living model of Your humanity. Unite us to Yourself in a true communion of hearts. We ask this in Your Name. Amen.

WRS

Basilian Anniversary and Feast of the Presentation of Mary- Reflection for Mass of November 21, 2008

Vincent Duret, Joseph Lapierre, Augustin Payan, François Polly, Pierre Tourvieille, Julien Tracol, André Fayolle, Henri Martinesche, Jean-François Pagès, Jean-Antoine Vallon…

One hundred eighty-six years ago today, these ten men gathered in Annonay, France, to elect Jean Lapierre as the first Superior General of the Association of Priests of St. Basil. We celebrate the anniversary of our foundation as a religious community on this day, and we also commemorate the Presentation of Mary, Mother of God and Patroness of our Order.

No Biblical record exists of the Presentation of Mary, but the Book of Leviticus and the Gospel of Luke contain details about Jewish rituals surrounding the presentation of a newborn child to the religious leaders. This was an occasion of great joy, of peace, and of hope. When Jesus was presented by Mary and Joseph in the Jerusalem temple, the Divine Child gave lasting hope to the aged widow and prophetess Anna and to Simeon, whose beautiful Nunc Dimittis hymn has become a part of the Church’s tradition during Night Prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours: “Lord, now you have let your servant go in peace.” (Lk.  2:29) One can imagine a similar sentiment expressed at the Presentation of Our Lady by her parents, St. Anne and St. Joachim. Little did Anne and Joachim know that their daughter would be God’s ideal instrument to bring Jesus Christ, humankind’s saving hope, into the world.

Yet this is precisely what each of us is called to do as Christians, as religious, and as Basilians. Christ dwells in each one of us; it is up to us to bear witness to His presence within us and therefore to present Him to the world. We are the temple within which the Child is shown, much to the hope and wonderment of others.

I can think of many instances when I have derived hope from Basilians and from the people we encounter. One experience stands out, though: that of my first Sunday Mass after my arrival in Cali, Colombia, last January. I attended this Mass with Fr. Wally Platt, CSB. It was held outdoors on a hot day in a very poor part of Cali in the hills overlooking the city. That Mass included the final professions of a small group of Franciscans. Unfortunately, I knew very little Spanish, having just arrived in Colombia, but a children’s choir opened with a resounding hymn to faith and hope: “La fe y la esperanza.” This is the only part of the song that I understood, but it was all I needed. The  small children had little to give- they had come from such poverty- except for their voices and their smiles. But faith and hope are their own language.

Jesus impels us to speak and to act in that language. For most of us, that can be a great challenge. Similarly, the angel in Revelation tells John in his vision to eat a scroll that will be sweet as honey in his mouth but will be bitter in his stomach after he has swallowed it. (cf. Rv. 8:9) Prophets withstood persecution while they proclaimed the sweet message that God planned to send His people a Messiah. The message itself was often received with bitterness. Not long after Jesus had entered Jerusalem, He was in the temple angrily overturning the tables of those selling worldly objects there. This was not a message the people who were desecrating the temple wanted to hear, but those who sought to kill Jesus could not find a reason to do so. Jesus was acting as a messenger, as a prophet, and as a witness to hope, therefore St. Luke wrote that the people who listened to Jesus teach were “spellbound by what they heard.” (Lk. 19:48)

We must carry on as Christian messengers of faith and hope. Our testimony begins with fidelity to prayer: Are we making our interior temple, thus the whole Church as the Body of Christ, a house of prayer, or do we make of ourselves “a den of robbers?” The message of hope that our Basilian forerunners enkindled at our foundation starts in each of us and radiates outward into the world. As St. Anne and St. Joachim presented their daughter Mary to the world- so much bright but unknown promise to behold- so we as Christians, as religious, and as Basilians are to present ourselves as carriers of a prophecy: Faith and hope, la foi et l’espérance, la fe y la esperanza. Amen.

On the Feast of your Presentation, Mary, Mother of God, pray for us. St. Basil, pray for us. All our deceased Basilian brothers who await us in Heaven, pray for us.

WRS

Transfiguration- Luke 9:23-36

Transfiguration Icon, O'Connor House, Windsor, ON

There was a certain person who, by loving Me with his whole soul, learned the things of God and inspired many by the wonders of the things he spoke…To some I speak of ordinary things, to others special things; to some I appear in signs and figures, while to others I reveal mysteries in a flood of light…For it is I alone who teach the Truth, Who search the hearts- no thoughts are hidden from Me- I, the Prime Mover of all actions, giving to everyone as I see fit.

- Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, III.43.4

The Apostles Peter, James, and John were privileged witnesses to the Transfiguration of Jesus, an extraordinary revelation of God’s presence, but more importantly this event began with Jesus in prayer. (1) Chapter 9 of Luke’s Gospel opens with the first attempt at apostolic ministry by the Twelve. Upon their return, Jesus retreated with them to Bethsaida, a small fishing village. (2) After the feeding of five thousand people, as a recurring theme in Luke Jesus is again said to have been “praying in solitude” with his disciples in the background. There, Peter is able to vocalize the revelation he had received from above, that Jesus is “the Messiah of God.” (3)

However, the Twelve grasped only part of the Lord’s message; while the Son of God had indeed come to deliver the world from death, the Son of Man had come into the world as a servant who was to suffer the consequences of our sin only to conquer it. Jesus promises a share in His victory to all who freely partake in His Passion:

If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. (4)

St. Luke is the sole synoptic Gospel writer to emphasize the “daily” commitment to participation in Christ’s suffering that is required of His disciples. (5) While this world values economic success and material accumulation, Jesus warns us that one might possess all the earthly riches possible, yet forfeit the most valuable of all- the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who are unwilling to deny themselves- who are too proud to recognize God’s primacy and supremacy- will be, as Jesus says, “ashamed of [Him] and of [His] words” when the Son of Man, who redeemed us by His Cross, appears “in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” (6) Our Lord then concluded His first clear foreshadowing of His Passion and invitation to discipleship- a daily sharing in the Cross- with another prediction that further confounded His already shaken followers:

Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God. (7)

With some significant variations, the Gospels of Matthew, of Mark, and of Luke all include this verse. To emphasize the approaching end of time and the divinity of Christ, St. Mark writes of Jesus’ forecast of the coming of the Kingdom “in power” (8), whereas St. Matthew records Jesus’ reference to Himself as “the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom,” (9) suggesting a less eschatological slant in the Matthean Gospel (10) in favour of a greater accent on the extension of the Lord’s reign over the earth through the Church.  Luke is the most ambiguous of the three synoptic Gospel authors in his allusion to God’s Kingdom that occurs between the first prediction of Christ’s Passion and the Transfiguration. Since Luke’s Gospel continues into the Acts of the Apostles, its author probably intended an allusion to Jesus’ institution and sustenance of the early Church, especially considering the time of heightened persecution of Christians during which the third Gospel was likely written. In this respect Luke would have been in closer agreement with Matthew than with Mark. Furthermore, had Luke written his Gospel after A.D. 70, which Scripture scholars Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch admit as a strong possibility, he could have been referring in particular to that year’s sacking of Jerusalem that dispersed the Jews, “[marking] a turning point in salvation history that [signalled] the expiration of the Old Covenant Kingdom and the definitive establishment of the New.” (11) This view is supported by Jesus’ earlier words to the crowds that followed Him from Capernaum: “To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, because for this purpose I was sent.” (12) On the contrary, Hahn and Mitch provide a cross-reference from Luke 9:22 to the first letter to the Thessalonians, in which St. Paul urges the Christians of Thessalonica to live lives of gratitude, of purity, and of charity, while they pray for the dead and await Christ’s Second Coming with hope:

Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from Heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore console one another with these words. (13)

Paul deals more directly with the Parousia in this and other letters than do any of the Gospel writers.  (14) Matthew ends his Gospel with Jesus’ promise to “be with [us] always, until the end of the age.” (15) This first book of the New Testament Canon most consistently portrays Jesus as “God with us.” (16) In this respect the ‘Emmanuel’ Gospel differs from that of Mark or of Luke. The latter two evangelists tend to be in closer agreement with  each other than with Matthew both in their presentation of Jesus to a largely Gentile audience as a servant who willfully submits to and redeems human suffering and defeats death itself, (17) and in the order of the events in each of the Gospels. (18) Each author’s reasons behind his inclusions or omissions are subject to speculation among scholars. St. John, whose literary style and theological development are radically different from those of the synoptic Gospel writers, implies that questions concerning the meaning of Jesus’ prediction that some disciples would live to experience the end of time ought to be of secondary importance to Our Lord’s call to discipleship. Jesus responds thus to Peter’s inquiry about “the disciple following whom [He] loved”: “What if I want him to remain until I come? What concern is it of yours? You follow me.” (19)

Less pointedly, Jesus communicates this same message just prior to the Lucan Transfiguration narrative. In the first twenty-nine verses of Chapter 9, Luke intertwines his identification of Jesus and that of His Apostles. The initial ministry of the Twelve, followed by Jesus’ first prediction of His Passion and by His Transfiguration teach us two core values of discipleship: compassion and patience. Both words derive from  the common Latin root “pati“, which means “to suffer [or] to endure.” (20) Our daily Cross is therefore put before us as the essence of discipleship, just as Jesus’ death is the precondition for our salvation.

Patience is a notably difficult virtue to practice contemporarily. We are bombarded by brief technological sound bytes and increasingly respond to a constant drive toward individual achievement. As a result, patience and the ability to engage in conversation, whether among people or with God, becomes diminished. Yet the Transfiguration is all about patience, conversation, and prayer. St. Luke most clearly emphasizes that Jesus “went up the mountain to pray,” and that He was transfigured while in the very act of prayer. (21) Nowhere does the Lucan account of the Transfiguration involve a monologue; Jesus is always in communion and in conversation with the other figures who are present.

Only Peter, John, and James were chosen from the larger crowd of disciples to climb the mountain, the usual place of prayer in Luke. (22) These three Apostles watched the Transfiguration, which showed the intimacy of the Trinity in prayer. They also exclusively saw the appearance of Moses and Elijah alongside Jesus. Questions might arise, then, as to God’s justice in singling out these three men while leaving the majority of jesus’ disciples in the valley below to grapple with the gloom of His pre-announced death. God, at times, confounds all human notions of justice. In addition, according to Luke “about eight days” pass between the first prediction of Jesus’ Passion (23), so conceivably, as they were invited up the mountain to pray, even James, John and Peter had been confused and saddened by the prospect of their Master dying at the hands of “the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes.” (24) After witnessing such a foretaste of Jesus’ victory over death as the Transfiguration, one would expect the three most prominent Apostles to have an increased understanding of the purpose of Christ’s ministry but as they descended the mountain  they were unable to speak of the events above, and their comprehension of their mission and of that of Jesus was as uncertain as before they had seen Our Lord transfigured. (25) The Apostles, like us, would come to see the justice of God only in the context of His mercy in Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection in which we are also called to participate.

Besides the analysis of God’s justice in the announcement of Jesus’ forthcoming death to all followed by the selection of only three men to observe the Transfiguration, the section between the first Passion  prediction and the ascent of the mountain abounds in symbolism, especially in references to other passages in the Bible. For example, the Lucan inclusion of a timeline in which these events took place- “about eight days” (26)- is generally accepted as foreshadowing of the period between the Passover subsequent to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and His Resurrection. Jesus rose from the dead on the day after the first Sabbath following the Passover. (27) While this is the most accepted explanation for the approximately eight-day lapse prior to the Transfiguration, there may also be a connection to the octave between the birth of a male child and his presentation to a priest to signal the completion of the mother’s purification under Jewish law. (28) Pertinently, Matthew and Mark differ from Luke on the number of days- six in the first two Gospels, which recalls the six days in which God created the world, as per Genesis (29)- and on the exactitude of the interval between the first mention of the Passion and the Transfiguration. (30) Although St. Luke frequently  refers to Jewish customs and history, his accomodation of mainly Gentile readership enables him to be more ambiguous than St. Mark and especially St. Matthew about dates and timelines. Nevertheless, all three synoptic Gospel writers agree on the presence of Peter, James, and John where Jesus was transfigured. (31) St. Hilary argues that Jesus’ choice of only three Apostles to accompany Him on the mountain is an allegorical comparison to the three sons of Noah- Shem, Ham, and Japheth- from whom the human race decended after the flood. Likewise, Peter, James, and John were to be witnesses to the spread of the Christian faith; they were to bring Christ, the salvation of humankind, to the world. (32) If, in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, our Christian initiation that echoes Jesus’ Baptism is “the mystery of the first regeneration,” then “the Transfiguration is ‘the sacrament of the second regeneration’: our own Resurrection.” (33)

From now on we share in the Lord’s Resurrection through the Spirit who acts in the sacraments of the Body of Christ. (34)

In the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist, the Body of Christ- the Church- celebrates her unity but recognizes the divisions that do exist, most sadly between the many denominations of baptized Christians. While we hope for an end to this disunity, there is also discord between fellow Catholics that must be overcome if the Church is to become an even greater example of the transfigured and risen Christ to the world. In the Eucharistic Prayer during Mass, the priest repeats Jesus’ words of consecration, drawn from the Gospels of Matthew and of Mark:

…Take this all of you and drink from it: This is the cup of My blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of Me. (35)

Luke’s mention of only three Apostles in his Transfiguration account is perhaps emblematic of similar tensions between the “you” and the “all”, or, in the diction of the Gospels, the “all” and the “many” (36), that have persisted since the time of the early Church. Dominican Friar Timothy Radcliffe proposes a solution to this problem. “With some hesitation,” Radcliffe categorizes the Church’s members as either “Kingdom Catholics” or “Communion Catholics”, grouped according to the two periodicals that attempted to explain “the agenda of the [second Vatican] Council.” (37) Radcliffe writes:

Some Catholics see our Church as primarily the People of God on pilgrimage toward the Kingdom. Others see us as primarily members of the institution of the Church, the communion of believers. Most of us find ourselves to some extent in both models but tend more toward one or [the] other understanding of the Church… As Roman Catholics, we need both sorts of identity, and… the tension between them is fruitful and dynamic.

…First of all we must look at the nature of this polarization, [which] is usually seen in terms of the division between the left and the right, between liberals and conservatives, progressives and traditionalists. This is only partially accurate. Western society, and increasingly the whole globe, is deeply marked by this polarity and because we are members of that society then it colours the way that Christians see divisions within the Church… But this sort of dichotomy is also deeply contrary to our faith, and we are called to transcend it. (38)

St. Luke declares that the Transfiguration began with prayer. The three Apostles then saw Jesus’ face “changed in appearance [while] His clothes became a dazzling white,” (39) but they understood poorly that this extraordinary manifestation of God was also a call for their conversion; the future leaders of the Church would eventually learn to transcend worldly divisions in the interest of true evangelism. In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke uses the same Greek root to describe the light that blinded Saul on the road to Damascus as the word employed to characterize Jesus’ clothes after the Transfiguration. (40) Despite his impulsiveness, Peter captures perhaps the most significant message of the Transfiguration: “Master, it is good that we are here.” (41)

Two points are evident from Peter’s words. Firstly, he comprehended in part the glorious event that he saw, which foretold the everlasting glory that would come after Jesus had accomplished his “exodus” in Jerusalem. (42) Secondly, Peter, like the other Apostles, presumably had a thorough knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures. St. Peter suggested that three tents be constructed, one each for Jesus, for Moses, and for Elijah. Luke then comments that Peter “did not know what he was saying.” (43) In a sense, the Transfiguration was, as Peter thought, a time of celebration, but he did not want the joy of the occasion to end. Thus, Peter ignored the purpose of the conversation between  Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, that Jesus’ route to triumph had to pass through His death in Jerusalem. (44) He recalled the Feast of the Tabernacles, hence his reference to the tents- in Greek “σκηνάς”, transliterated as “skenas”- that are written about in the Pentateuch. (45) In fact, three feasts are mentioned in the same chapter of Deuteronomy: the Passover, evoked by Jesus’ coming “exodus” in Jerusalem, the Feast of Weeks, which is similar to the Christian celebration of Pentecost fifty days after Easter, and the Feast of the Booths or Tabernacles. (46)

Other than his connection between the Transfiguration of Christ and the great Jewish feasts of the Old Testament, St. Luke makes two more Trinitarian references in this narrative. The first is the presence of the three Apostle Peter, James, and John, and the second, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is in the voice of the Father, in the human person of Jesus the Son, and in the cloud that symbolizes the Holy Spirit. (47) Elsewhere, St. Luke’s use of people and of numbers is connected to an important message. For example, Jesus speaks with Moses and Elijah, therefore He is the One who hears and fulfills both the law, symbolized by Moses, and the prophets, whose representative is Elijah. (48) Moreover , these “two men”, according to Fred Craddock, “[tie] the story to both the Resurrection and the Ascension,” (49) or to compare the aforementioned argument of St. Thomas Aquinas to that of St. Basil the Great, Moses and Elijah could signify the Resurrection and the second coming of Jesus Christ in glory. (50)

Much scholarship and still more speculation abound when considering a Biblical passage as pivotal as the Transfiguration. St. Luke writes that “Peter and his companions had been overcome by sleep, but becoming fully awake, they saw His glory.” (51) Thus the glory of God is attributed to Jesus, and His Godhead is affirmed by the Father: “This is My chosen Son, listen to Him.” (52) Even as the Apostles heard the voice of the Father,  they remained fearful as the cloud came over them. Peter, James, and John would be speechless about what they had seen until after the Resurrection, and some fear would linger until Jesus’ Ascension.  (53) St. Augustine comments thus on Peter’s reluctance to suffer in his service of the Lord:

Peter did not understand this when he wanted to remain with Christ on the mountain. It has been reserved for you, Peter, but for after death. For now, Jesus says, “Go down to toil on earth, to serve on earth, to be scorned and crucified on earth. Life goes down to be killed; Bread goes down to suffer hunger; the Way goes down to be exhausted on His journey; the Spring goes down to suffer thirst, and you refuse to suffer? (54)

St. Augustine’s question applies as much to Peter as to James, to John, to the other Apostles, and to all who wish to be counted as Jesus’ friends. God’s glory will be revealed to those who serve and to those who suffer. Some will accomplish greater works than others, or will suffer more than others, but Heaven is promised to all who love and who believe in Christ. Therefore we, like the three Apostles, fall silent in awe of God, and descend the mountain to continue our journey toward the Heavenly Jerusalem. (55) While the path lies in a “valley of tears,” (56) it is also a fertile land where we are called to serve God and humankind lovingly and faithfully. (57) We pray in the words of the Byzantine liturgy for the Feast of the Transfiguration:

You were transfigured on the mountain, and Your disciples, as much as they were capable of it, beheld Your glory, O Christ our God, so that when they saw You crucified they would understand that Your Passion was voluntary, and proclaim to the world that You truly are the splendor of the Father. (58)

Lord God, You revealed the luminous glory of Your Son to Peter, James, and John as they prayed on the mountain. Strengthen us in faith in times of suffering and in times of joy. May You then welcome us according to Your will from our earthly lives into the everlasting contemplation of Your glorious presence in Heaven. Amen.

WRS

Canadian Martyrs Part 3- Washed in the Blood of the Lamb

‘Huron Carol’ is performed and arranged by Heather Dale — www.HeatherDale.com (from her CD “This Endris Night”). Used with permission.

News of gruesome deaths of Jesuits in Canada failed to deter still more priests and donnés alike from recognizing Jesus’ summons to apostleship: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (110) Noël Chabanel and Gabriel Lalemant were the last two of the Canadian martyrs to answer this calling. Their path to Heaven passed through Ste.-Marie among the Hurons, overcoming daily crosses both large and small.

Encouraged by the prospect of serving with the likes of Jean de Brébeuf, Antoine Daniel, and Charles Garnier, rhetoric instructor Noël Chabanel, born in Saugues near Marseille, left the classroom for the wilderness of Huronia. Fr. Brébeuf was Chabanel’s first mentor upon his arrival in Québec on August 15, 1643. (111) Eighteen years after his first sight of New France, Brébeuf was back in Québec recovering from a broken collarbone when the ship carrying Noël Chabanel with fellow Jesuit Fathers Gabriel Druillet and Léonard Garreau docked after three months at sea.

Chabanel had been presumptuously advertised by French Jesuits as “very apt for the [Huron] language.” (112) On the contrary, Chabanel struggled in his linguistic training both in Québec and then during his first two years at Ste.-Marie. He was also repulsed by various Huron customs. (113) Brébeuf’s patient and wise teaching would thus prove exemplary. The elder Jesuit was a friend of French and Huron alike. Brébeuf had composed a hymn, to be known as the “Huron Carol”, combining Huron images of nature with the story of Christ’s Nativity. He also listed recommendations for other Jesuits who were to travel between Huronia and Québec with the Natives:

You must love these Hurons, ransomed by the blood of the Son of God, as brothers… Try to eat the food they offer you, and eat all you can, for you may not eat again for hours… Be prompt in embarking and disembarking and do not carry any water or sand into the canoe… Do not ask questions. Silence is golden. Bear with their imperfections, and you must try always to be and to appear cheerful… (114)

Jean de Brébeuf’s influence was pivotal in Chabanel’s decision to remain in the Huron missions, even while his linguistic and cultural hardships had him contemplating his return to France. Noël Chabanel relocated to Immaculate Conception Mission at Ossossane where, from 1646 to 1647, he was under the direction of Fr. Pierre Chastelain. (115) There, Chabanel met Fr. Charles Garnier in the latter’s journey toward Petun country, and took final vows before Fr. Paul Ragueneau. His greatest vow, though unofficial, was that of stability in Huronia, made on the Feast of Corpus Christi, June 20, 1647:

My Lord, Jesus Christ, who by the admirable dispositions of Divine Providence, hast willed that I should be a helper of the holy apostles of this Huron vineyard, entirely unworthy though I be, drawn by the desire to co-operate with the designs which the Holy Ghost has upon me for the conversions of these Hurons to the Faith; I, Noël Chabanel, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament of your Sacred Body and Most Precious Blood, which is the testament of God with man; I vow perpetual stability in this Huron mission, it being understood that all of this is subject to the dictates of the Superiors of the Society of Jesus, who may dispose of me as they wish. I pray then, O Lord, that you will deign to accept me as a permanent servant in this mission and that you will render me worthy of so sublime a ministry. Amen. (116)

Chabanel was recalled to Ste.-Marie after only a year at Ossossane, as Jean de Brébeuf had specifically requested the assistance of Chabanel with a growing population of Hurons who were fleeing constant Iroquois destruction of their villages. Ste.-Marie became too small for  this sudden migration of Hurons, therefore Chabanel, Chastelain, and Brébeuf also looked after nearby St. Ignace II. (117) Chabanel’s stay at St. Ignace was also short; Charles Garnier called for help with the remaining Petuns in St. Jean, whose morale was undercut by continued Iroquois attacks. (118) The uneasy peace secured in Montréal two years prior was effectively broken. Teanaostiae, or St. Joseph I, and Ste.-Marie, the largest and most strategic targets in Huronia, lay directly in the path of the Iroquois fury.

The Jesuits ended their annual retreat at Ste.-Marie on July 1, 1648. Fr. Antoine Daniel insisted upon his immediate return to Teanaostiae. (119) Three days later, Fr. Daniel began to celebrate Mass as “the war cries of [advancing] Iroquois were heard.” (120) He proceeded with the Mass, which included numerous baptisms. Daniel feared for the infants and for the sick and dying Hurons, who would be unable to escape the approaching violence. He ordered all able-bodied Hurons to flee, then went forth from the chapel to meet the Iroquois warriors, who shot Fr. Antoine Daniel with arrows and then with a musket.  (121) “He fell and died calling upon the name of Jesus.” (122) The chapel was set aflame along with all of Teanaostiae. Pagan Iroquois offered the body of Antoine Daniel in sacrifice, throwing it into the burning church. The attention paid to Fr. Daniel’s corpse by the warriors, though, allowed most of the Huron villagers of Teanaostiae to escape the carnage for Ste.-Marie or for Christian Island. (123)

Teanaostiae’s fall did not stop willing Jesuits from applying for service in Huronia. One of the last blackrobes to be sent to the Huron missions was Fr. Gabriel Lalemant, the nephew of Charles and of Jérôme. Gabriel was reputed to be physically weak, and despite his famous family heritage, he nearly was not  even permitted to sail from France to Québec. Francesco-Giuseppe Bressani, another veteran of Huronia, “referred to [Lalemant] as a man of extremely frail constitution.” (124) However, Gabriel Lalemant’s dedication overrode his lack of physical strength; he ministered in Québec and learned both the Algonkin and Huron tongues within two years. (125)

Jérôme Lalemant finally agreed to send his nephew to Ossossane for further study of the Huron language under Fr. Chaumonot. (126) To protect against the capture of Jesuits or of their Huron allies, Jérôme Lalemant organized a massive convoy of sixty canoes, two hundred fifty Hurons, and twenty-six Frenchmen, including an armed escort of twelve soldiers, and five priests: Bressani, Bonin, Daran, Greslon, and Gabriel Lalemant. These arrived in Ossossane in late August, 1648. (127)

Facing the prospect of more intense violence from the Iroquois, Jean de Brébeuf appealed to have Fr. Gabriel Lalemant sent to him at St. Ignace. Seven hundred Hurons had been killed since the sacking of Teanaostiae; Ste.-Marie and four neighbouring villages including St. Ignace and St. Louis had been transformed into refugee camps for survivors. (128) Neither these communities nor those of the Petun Nation were safe, therefore Fr. Noël Chabanel had been called to St. Jean to serve alongside Fathers Garnier and Garreau. (129)

Within one month of Fr. Lalemant’s move to St. Ignace, 1 200 Iroquois warriors overwhelmed that village’s Huron sentinels:

Early in the morning of March 16, 1649, as the light of day was breaking, they found the one weak and unprotected spot in the palisaded village and swiftly broke in an overran [it]. Five hundred Hurons, mostly older people, women, and children, were quickly subdued. Some were killed instantly, but most were taken prisoner. Only three managed to escape to warn St. Louis of this disaster and of what was to come. It was a death blow to an already staggering Huronia. (130)

Fathers Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant were both captured during the third attack on St. Ignace. They were fastened to stakes, scalped, mutilated, and burned with hatchets, firebrands, and scalding water- a “mock baptism” devised for the occasion by the Iroquois. (131) Yet the two blackrobes endured for a full day and more. Brébeuf died in the afternoon of March 16, 1649. (132) Like his confrère, Lalemant suffered silently. The one considered to be so frail clung to life overnight; his captors left him at sunset, hoping for him to survive until morning, when they could make of him a holocaust to their awakening sun god.  (133) A hatchet blow finished Fr. Gabriel Lalemant about fourteen hours after the death of Fr. Jean de Brébeuf. The latter’s courage was so renowned that the Iroquois who killed him consumed his heart to receive a portion of his fortitude. (134) As he expired, Fr. Brébeuf taught the Huron captives of St. Ignace:

My children… let us lift our eyes to Heaven at the height of our afflictions; let us remember that God is the witness of our sufferings, and will soon be our [exceedingly] great reward. Let us die in this faith, and let us hope from His goodness [for] the fulfillment of His promises. I have more pity for you than for myself, but sustain with courage the few remaining torments. They will end with our lives. The glory [that] follows them will never have an end.

‘Echon’, these said to him, ‘our spirits will be in Heaven when our bodies shall be suffering on earth. Pray to God for us, that He may show us mercy. We will invoke Him even unto death.’ (135)

Thus Echon, the Healing tree, was felled along with Fr. Gabriel Lalemant. Alarm spread across the Jesuit communities of New France. Jérôme Lalemant subsequently ordered Ste.-Marie to be abandoned and to be deliberately destroyed, and a new and safer village to be built on Christian Island. (136) Noël Chabanel, still mourning the death of his friends Brébeuf, Lalemant, and Daniel, was to lead the remaining Hurons northward. He left St. Jean on December 5, 1649. (137) Two days later, Fr. Charles Garnier, the only Jesuit left in St. Jean, was martyred as the village burned around him. Two bullets struck Garnier, who, staggering to his knees and fighting for his last breath, baptized a dying Petun and then rendered himself unto God. (138)

Noël Chabanel and his group of escapees from St. Jean were not far into their journey when the distant cries of Iroquois were heard. Most of the Hurons fled, although Louis Honareenhax remained with the main group of refugees. Fr. Chabanel’s last days were shrouded in mystery for the next year. In 1650, Fr. Paul Ragueneau, the newly-elected Jesuit Superior of New France, released that year’s Relation that included Honareenhax’s account of Chabanel’s last act of charity. Chabanel and a few Hurons had been stopped near the broken ice of the Nottawasaga River on a bitterly cold winter night. Noël Chabanel gave his coat to a freezing Huron, and then he was never seen again. (139)

Part of this story may have been true, but Fr. Ragueneau distrusted Louis Honareenhax, a well-known apostate Huron. Honareenhax, Fr. Ragueneau revealed later, “had publicly confessed and even bragged that he had killed Father Noël with a hatchet blow and thrown his body [into] the half-frozen Nottawasaga River…” (140) Fr. Noël Chabanel had been martyred on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1649. (141)

Pope Pius XI canonized the eight Canadian Martyrs, Fathers Isaac Jogues, Antoine Daniel, Charles Garnier, Jean de Brébeuf, Gabriel Lalemant, and Noël Chabanel, and donnés René Goupil and Jean de la Lande, together on June 29, 1930.  (142) Their story is one of charity and of diversity, from the brilliant teachers Brébeuf and Jogues to Goupil, the former medical student and patron Saint of anaesthetists, and to Noël Chabanel, “the silent hero of the hard trail, patron of misfits…, of the lonely , disappointed, and abandoned.” (143) Despite the bleak outlook for the Jesuit missions in New France after the dismantling of Ste.-Marie, the work of the black robes began to bear fruit soon thereafter. At Ossernenon, where Saints Isaac Jogues, René Goupil, and Jean de la Lande had been tortured and killed, Tegakouita, who took the baptismal name Kateri, derived from Catherine, was born in 1656. In 1980, Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks, became the first North American Indian ever beatified. (144)

The Second Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians was written to encourage the early Church, but its words, read on the Feast of the Canadian Martyrs, are timeless: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”  (145) The Catholic Church in North America did not die with the eight Jesuits, but instead it thrived on their example. However, some were still deeply shaken long after the loss of the great missionaries. In 1666, Jesuit Father Claude Allouez roamed the “desolate wilderness north of Lake Superior,” (146) possibly looking for Hurons dispersed into the barrens during the desperate flight of 1649. Isolated Natives had been found by explorers of the region in previous years. A lone Fr. Allouez came upon a group of Petuns there, many of whom had tears in their eyes. They explained that they were mourning the death of Father Charles Garnier, martyred in St. Jean eighteen years earlier. (147)

Our Lord promises everlasting consolation to those who give their lives for love of Him and of their neighbour:

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. (148)

† Priez pour nous

Pray for us †

WRS

Canadian Martyrs Part 2- No Reward but Paradise

Hope dawned brightly over Huronia as the Jesuit missions gained stability. Ste.-Marie, the hub of the missionary efforts in New France, had been established in 1639, (53) and the evangelism of the likes of Fathers Jean de Brébeuf, Antoine Daniel, and Charles Garnier had begun to bear fruit. With the Hurons still reeling from disease, drought, and supply shortages caused by Iroquois blockades along the St. Lawrence River, Isaac Jogues, a priest three years ordained, was sent to them. Like Fathers Brébeuf and Daniel, Jogues, born in Orléans, had been a novice in Rouen under the famous novice master Louis Lalemant. Father Jogues arrived in Québec on July 2, 1636, accompanied by Fr. du Marche.  (54) He was reputed for his quiet strength. His friend and fellow Jesuit in France, Fr. Jacques Buteaux, said of Jogues, “he was loved by ours as being most gentle and as being very observant of our way of life.” (55)

Isaac Jogues joined the late-summer leg of a Huron trade convoy from Québec, arriving in Ihonahitria on September 11, 1636. There, the young Jesuit was trained by his more experienced confrères in missionary work, Fathers Brébeuf and le Mercier. (56) Intelligent and receptive to instruction, Jogues was appointed to oversee construction of the new mission settlement of Ste.-Marie among the Hurons along with Jérôme Lalemant, the new Jesuit Superior in Huronia. Meanwhile, he had also worked alongside the influential Charles Garnier in the Tobacco Nation, where the blackrobes’ efforts nearly ended in disaster. Jérôme Lalemant wrote, “These missionaries see themselves the abomination of those whose salvation they seek, at the peril of their own lives.” (57) Jogues’ labours with Garnier were short-lived; he was asked to investigate the possibility of expansion of the missions to the Sault Nation. Jogues and Fr. Charles Raymbaut reached the link between Lakes Huron and Superior, current site of Sault Ste.-Marie, after seventeen days of canoeing. They were welcomed by a new people estimated at 2 000 individuals. (58)

Cold weather and illness that threatened Fr. Raymbaut’s life forced the early return of the two priests to Ste.-Marie in November, 1641. (59) Jean de Brébeuf had left Huronia for Québec during the same year; he was to direct the flow of supplies from there to the missions until 1644, therefore Isaac Jogues traveled with Raymbaut in the summer of 1642 to Québec, where Fr. Raymbaut was able to receive medical attention.  (60) The ever-present dangers of this journey became most acute in the early 1640s; both Huron and French supplies were intercepted more often than in previous years, and men in the canoes risked being kidnapped by Iroquois who waited along the banks of major rivers.

Jogues’ endeavour to bring a sick confrère back to Québec was exceedingly risky, yet both Fathers Isaac Jogues and Charles Raymbaut arrived, surprisingly without incident, in Québec on August 1, 1642, after six weeks of daily dawn-to-dusk canoeing. (61) There, fewer Hurons were disembarking to trade. The desperate Jogues-Raymbaut expedition highlighted the need for medicines and medical expertise to be sent into Huron villages along with food and clothing. René Goupil, a Jesuit donné who, due to deafness, had been unable to take vows in the Order but had studied medicine prior to entering the novitiate, was chosen to fill this role. (62)

The Jesuit donnés played an important part in the history of the Huron missions. Donnés- literally ‘given’ assistants- were initially employed by the Jesuits in the Order’s Province of Champagne. (63) They were laymen who vowed devotion to the Society of Jesus for six months at a time; “the commitment would be accepted on behalf of the Society, [which] would… provide for the donné’s needs until death.” (64) Most donnés were exemplary Christians. Fr. Charles Garnier characterized them thus: “Many blessings [accrue] to the Mission because of them… laymen in dress, religious in heart.” (65) Jérôme Lalemant favoured the construction of Ste.-Marie, the anchor of the missionary effort in New France, and the staffing of the new settlement with donnés as domestic workers.

Thirty-three donnés worked at Ste.-Marie during its ten-year existence. Of these, “six or seven” wished to make their vows permanent, instead of for only half a year between renewals.  (66) This modification was refused by the General of the Jesuits in Rome, Fr. Vitteleschi, but the Jesuit priests of New France recognized the essential contribution of the donnés to Huronia. A formal appeal was made to Vitteleschi by six of the Order’s priests, Jérôme Lalemant, Pijart, le Mercier, Garnier, Ragueneau, and Chastelain, to keep and to expand the employment of donnés in New France. Vitteleschi responded favourably to their request on December 25, 1644, on the conditions that the donnés not receive a salary, were not bound by vows, and that their necessities were to be provided for by the entire Society of Jesus. (67)

René Goupil was a unique donné because of his education in medicine. He practiced surgery in addition to the manual labour assigned to him at Saint-Joseph-de-Sillery, near Québec. (68) Fr. Barthélemy Vimont, the third Jesuit Superior in New France, succeeding Fr. Paul le Jeune, allowed Goupil to join Isaac Jogues, who had safely ferried a deathly ill Charles Raymbaut from Huronia to an infirmary in Québec, on his return to Ste.-Marie. (69)

Twelve heavily-loaded canoes, about forty Hurons, Fr. Jogues, and two donnés, René Goupil and Guillaume Couture, departed from Trois-Rivières on August 1, 1642, the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola.  (70) Concurrently in Québec, Huron chiefs had received a pledge of protection from the French against their Iroquois enemies. (71) French assurances mattered little; on the first evening of the trip tracks were seen leading away from the St. Lawrence River at the entrance to Lac Saint-Pierre near modern Sorel. (72) In a likely attempt to facilitate the spotting of Iroquois sentries along the riverbank, a delayed start was ordered on the second day. However, the convoy was ambushed by a party of Iroquois warriors led by five chiefs. René Goupil was captured immedately. The more savvy Isaac Jogues hid himself in dense forest. Guillaume Couture shot and killed one Iroquois chief but was seized by the other four. Jogues then surrendered himself in order to remain with his two donnés. Some of the Hurons scattered while most were taken prisoner. (73)

Couture was made to lead the brutal procession southward into Iroquois territory, in revenge for the death of the Iroquois chief. (74) The severe suffering that befell Fr. Jogues, Couture, and Goupil during that macabre march to the Iroquois village, Ossernenon, was thoroughly recorded by Isaac Jogues himself, in a biographical letter to Jérôme Lalemant in May, 1646:

Upon our arrival in the first village where we were treated with so much cruelty, [Goupil] demonstrated a patience and a gentleness simply extraordinary. Having fallen under a hailstorm of blows heaped upon us with clubs and iron rods and not being able to get up he was carried half-dead to the scaffold where we had been placed in the middle of a village. But he was in such a piteous state that he would have moved even cruelty itself to compassion. His body was livid with bruises so that one could see in his face only the [whites] of his eyes. Yet, for all that, he appeared more beautiful in the eyes of the angels as he was more disfigured and like Him of whom it is said, ‘We gazed upon Him as a leper… There was in Him neither comeliness nor beauty.’ (75)

This grisly scene was repeated in each of three villages on the path to Ossernenon. The missionaries’ fingers were broken and their fingernails burned or torn. Isaac Jogues’ left thumb was amputated with a shell or sharp stone, but the priest whose quiet fortitude had earned him the Huron name ‘Ondessonk’, or ‘Bird of prey’ (76), rejoiced that he was still able to write to his confrères using his right hand. (77) “Patience”, Jogues wrote, “was our physician.” (78)

Iroquois land followed the Hudson River valley. In the mid-seventeenth century, this territory bordered the Dutch-claimed New Amsterdam where the Hudson met the Atlantic Ocean. Both the Dutch and the Mohawk Iroquois, a federation of several clans, some favouring war and others more pacific, were divided over relations with their traditional enemies, the Catholic Hurons and the French. (79) Dutch diplomacy helped to save the lives of all but three Hurons and of the French captives at Ossernenon, though the Mohawks “refused to surrender Jogues, Goupil, and Couture.” (80) While New Amsterdam bribed the Iroquois with gifts should they have freed the three Jesuits, some Mohawks were made suspicious of Catholic rituals practiced by the French because of anti-Catholic accusations by the Dutch. Mohawk perceptions that the Jesuits brought evil spirits and natural disasters upon them through these foreign signs were therefore reportedly fueled by Dutch Protestants whose animosity toward the French Catholics had carried over from wars in Europe. (81)

On September 29, 1642, Isaac Jogues and René Goupil ventured outside Ossernenon’s fortifications to converse between themselves and to enjoy the silence not readily found inside the town.  (82) Earlier in that day, Goupil had left his cabin, where both he and Jogues were living with an Iroquois family. The elder of the household distrusted the French, and became enraged when Goupil made the sign of the Cross over a child’s head in blessing. A war party was ordered to find and to kill Goupil. (83) During their conversation and Rosary recitation outside of Ossernenon, Jogues warned Goupil of the impending threat against them. Upon their return to the village’s entrance, they were interrupted by a group of Iroquois speaking to them. One Mohawk unsheathed a hatchet and struck Goupil, who by Jogues’ account “fell face down on the ground, uttering the Holy Name of Jesus- often we had encouraged each other to conclude our speech and our life with this Holy Name.” (84)

At the blow, I turned and saw the bloodied hatchet and I knelt fully expecting a similar blow [that] would link me with my dear companion. But, since they held back, I got up and ran to the dying René who was quite near and whom they had struck twice more on the head to finish him off- but not before I had given him absolution which in our captivity I had been giving him regularly after his confession every other day. It was on the Feast of St. Michael that this angel of innocence and martyr of Jesus Christ gave his life for Him who had given him His. (85)

Fr. Isaac Jogues survived the attack on Goupil and worked as a slave to the Iroquois for another year thereafter. (86) He had attempted unsuccessfully to bury Goupil the morning after his death,  hastily weighing down the body under water to avoid capture. By the time Jogues returned with a spade from a neighbouring cabin the next day, the body had been dragged into the forest by Mohawk youth. Jogues found and then buried Goupil, whose body had been scavenged by wildlife, following snow melt the next spring. (87)

A Mohawk fishing expedition on the Hudson River began in August, 1643. (88) Passing through a Dutch village to trade, Jogues met the town’s commander, Arendt von Corlaer, who urged him to escape from the Iroquois. Von Corlaer offered Jogues shelter overnight, and Jogues prayed over his decision until dawn. Treatment of French and Huron captives at Ossernenon had improved, and Iroquois had become more open to baptism, if only on their deathbeds, and to the presence of the Jesuits. Jogues thus accepted the Dutch offer; he was hidden in a canoe while irate Mohawks searched for him. His captors turned up river as Jogues prepared to surrender himself. (89) The Dutch then set out for New Amsterdam, where Jogues enjoyed “excellent hospitality” until he boarded a Dutch ship bound for the Huguenot city of La Rochelle, France, where Jogues arrived on December 25, 1643. (90) The heart-rending account of Fr. Jogues’ brief stay in France began, according to biographer Angus MacDougall, with the Jesuit’s encounter with a merchant who brought him to Rennes.

[Jogues] presented himself at the Jesuit residence [in Rennes], asking to see the Rector. As [one] might expect, the porter, at that early hour, rather put off by his miserable and strange appearance, demurred a great deal, until finally Jogues appealed to him to say to the Rector that a poor man from Canada was asking to see him. The porter thought it wise to deliver this message. The Rector, who was vested to say Mass, came at once to see this poor person, believing him to be someone in dire need.

The Rector welcomed the stranger with kindness and… plied him with questions about the New World and about various Jesuits there. Finally, he asked him about Father Isaac Jogues; there had been some dreadful rumours. Was he alive, or had he been put to death?… Jogues quietly answered, ‘He is at liberty, and it is he, Reverend Father, who speaks to you.’ (91)

Tales of a “living martyr” (92) spread in France even while Isaac Jogues rested at the Jesuit rectory in Rennes, but the valiant blackrobe insisted upon his return to Canada despite crippled hands that made holding the host  for Consecration during the Mass impossible. Jogues applied to Pope Urban VIII for an indult to be able to celebrate Mass and to be recommissioned to New France. The Pope granted Jogues’ request without delay: “Indignum esset Christi martyrem Christi non bibere sanguinem- It is not proper that a martyr for Christ should not be able to offer Christ’s blood.” (93)

Father Isaac Jogues set foot in Québec once again in June, 1644. He was welcomed by his Jesuit brothers there, the majority of whom had believed that he was dead. For the next two years, Jogues ministered to settlers in Montréal and build constructive relations with both Iroquois and Hurons who passed through the colony. (94) Jogues lived and had nearly died for the Gospel Beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” (95) Peace between the French and Iroquois was within reach, so Jogues was sent to Ossernenon to secure an agreement with the Natives there. Negotiations were productive but brief; Isaac Jogues left Québec in May, 1646, and returned in July. (96) By September of the same year, skirmishes and Iroquois blockades of river routes and raids of French and of Huron settlements had resumed. Fr. Jogues did not hesitate when he was chosen for a second peace expedition, though he knew his life was at risk. He ended his letter to another Jesuit with this prediction, “If I am the one to be sent on this mission, I shall go but I shall not return… Farewell, dear Father. Pray that God [will] unite me to Himself inseparably.”  (97) The peace voyage led by Isaac Jogues departed Québec on September 24, 1646. “Two or three Hurons…, a Huron Iroquois,” and another donné, Jean de la Lande, accompanied Jogues, but only one Huron continued past Trois-Rivières. (98)

Little is known about the young layman from Dieppe, Jean de la Lande. This nondescript donné was not of the nobility as was Charles Garnier. Jean de Brébeuf was a skilled linguist, and Noël Chabanel, stationed at Ste.-Marie along with Brébeuf as of 1644, had been a celebrated professor of rhetoric in Toulouse. (99) Jean de la Lande, whose birthdate is uncertain, was the unsung hero of the eight Canadian martyrs. Similarly, few details exist other than in the Jesuit Relations about the deaths of Jean de la Lande and of Isaac Jogues. While peace initiatives brokered by Fr. Isaac Jogues were encouraging from a French perspective, the treaty of 1646 left the Iroquois divided. Most of the Mohawks who negotiated with the French and Hurons for the preceding two years were members of the Turtle and Wolf Clans, while the most extreme members of the Bear Clan favoured the eradication of the Hurons and continued to pillage French trading posts. (100)

In the decade following Samuel de Champlain’s death and succession by Charles de Montmagny as the first official Governor of New France, (101) the colony had become better organized politically and militarily, but only a few hundred French settlers lived in an immense territory that extended from Québec to the Ohio River and from Cape Breton to Lake Winnipeg. (102) Administration and communication were agonizingly slow. Governor de Montmagny relied heavily upon the Jesuit Relations and letters to inform himself about events, particularly  those concerning the Indians, in New France. As the Jesuits involved themselves in peace talks with the Iroquois, the Dutch of New Amsterdam watched with heightened interest; subdued Mohawks meant security for the Dutch also.

Two reliable accounts of Isaac Jogues’ and of Jean de la Lande’s last days are known. A document delivered directly to de Montmagny from an Iroquois returning to Québec and dated June 4, 1647, was corroborated by an official letter sent seven months earlier from the Governor of New Amsterdam, Wilhelm Kieft, that also reached de Montmagny in June, 1647. In addition to detailing the deaths of Jogues and of de la Lande, Kieft’s letter “fixed the blame squarely on the Bear Clan and exonerated the Turtle and Wolf Clans of all responsibility” for the murders of the two Jesuits.  (103) Jérôme Lalemant’s Relation of the following year included testimony of an Algonkin chief who had “tried in vain to save the lives of both Jogues and de la Lande” after their capture near Trois-Rivières. (104) As during the captivity of Jogues and of René Goupil, the priest and ambassador of peace was marched through several Mohawk villages, enduring excruciating torture. However, in this repetition of the horrors of four years prior, Fr. isaac Jogues did not escape the angry mobs of the Bear Clan at Ossernenon. He was tomahawked to death on October 18, 1646. Jean de la Lande, “hoping for no reward but Paradise,” received the martyr’s crown on either the same day or the next day. (105)

Jesuit donnés continued to work in New France until 1727. (106) Their virtues were extolled in the Order’s Relations and in letters. Fathers Paul le Jeune, Jean de Brébeuf, Jérôme Lalemant, and Paul Ragueneau, fourth Jesuit Superior of New France, articulated the significance of the presence of these lay assistants in the Huron missions. (107) Paul le Jeune wrote, “Our Indians speak of [the donnés] with admiration… When they see persons who do not wear our costume, practicing so exactly what we teach, they place a higher value on our faith; this may some day be a motive for them to embrace it.” (108) Paul Ragueneau thus characterized the donnés:

They assist us by their labour and industry, with a courage, a faithfulness, and a holiness that assuredly are not of earth. Consequently they look to God alone for their reward, deeming themselves only too happy to pour forth not only their sweat, but, if need be, all their blood to contribute as much as they can toward the conversion of the Indians. (109)

To be continued…

WRS