Sunday June 11, 2017
The Novelty of Christianity
My bishop asked me to give a pre-ordination talk to the deacons based on the Apostolic Exhortation Pastores dabo vobis (I give you pastors) of St. Pope John Paul II. So I had to read it and I was thrilled by the insights into the Blessed Trinity and the encouragement to meditate what I found there.
"Every Christian identity," it says (#12) "has its source in the Blessed Trinity." "Intimate Communion with the Blessed Trinity, that is, the new life of Grace which makes us children of God, constitutes the 'novelty' of the believer. A novelty which involves his being and his acting. It constitutes the 'mystery' of Christian existence which is under the influence of the Spirit." (46)
The revelation of the Trinity is the "novelty," what is new and special, about being a Christian. The gods of other religions tended to be remote from humankind, entering into their affairs rather capriciously. In the Judeo-Christian tradition God entered into the world very actively. He did so first at Creation when he made all earthly things good and then created man and woman in his own image. Later, he called Abraham to found a people, and he loved and cared for that people even though they were often wayward and unresponsive. Finally, as the Gospel today tells us, "God loved the world so much that he gave his only son." God entered into human history very dramatically through Jesus Christ. This son, the Emmanuel - the God who is with us - was conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit and, after his life, death and resurrection, left the Spirit behind in a very special way. This Spirit dwells in us, he is the center of our being and the source of our doing.
PASTORES DABO VOBIS, which is an exhortation on the formation of priests in the circumstances of the present day, goes on to talk of the friendship with Jesus which is found in praying and meditating the scriptures.
"The first and fundamental manner of responding to the word is prayer. Prayer should lead one to know and have experience of the genuine meaning of Christian prayer as a living and personal meeting with the Father, through the only begotten Son through the action of the Spirit, a dialogue that becomes a sharing in the filial conversation between Jesus and the Father. One aspect of a Priest's mission, and certainly by no means a secondary aspect, is that he is to be a "teacher of prayer." However, the priest will be able to train others in the school of Jesus at prayer only if he himself has been trained in it and continues to receive its formation.
"A necessary training in prayer, in a context of noise and agitation like that of our society, is an education in the deep human and religious value of silence as the spiritual atmosphere vital for perceiving God's presence and for allowing oneself to be won over by it." (#47)
The document says that the first way of knowing this triune God is through his word and the first response to this word is prayer.
It defines prayer "as a living and personal meeting with the Father through the only begotten Son through the action of the Spirit, a dialogue that becomes a sharing in the filial conversation between Jesus and the Father." This echoes St. Paul's words that we do not know how to pray (Rom 8:26) but that the Spirit - the Trinity, is ever praying within us. It also echoes the words of Jesus to the disciples in Gethsemani, "You watch while I pray" (Mk 14:34). It is only God who can pray. Our prayer is just being present to the prayer of the Trinity within us. The first place of prayer is the temple of the heart (I Cor.16). We are, each of us in our hearts, temples of the Holy Spirit. That is why meditation, just being present to the Trinity at prayer, is called pure prayer.
The document goes on to say that the high point of Christian prayer is in the Eucharist which itself must lead to charity.
What the exhortation Pastores dabo vobis tells us about the Trinity can be summed up in the image of a telescope. Through scripture we first see the Word - the eyepiece of the telescope. Then we deepen this in SILENCE. "Silence is the spiritual atmosphere vital for perceiving God's presence and for allowing ones self to be won over by it" - this is the center piece of the telescope. This leads us to SACRAMENTS, sacred signs and the signs of brotherly and sisterly love - this is the wider part of the telescope looking out into the world. Scripture, Silence, and Sacrament are three places where God reveals himself. But we do not see better by looking at the telescope - we must look through it. Neither do we find God by looking at the different persons of the Blessed Trinity. Rather, we journey through Scripture into Silence into Sacrament. We journey from the Word, through the Spirit into the Father, the three are always one.
