Gulf Pine Catholic

14 Gulf Pine Catholic • January 7, 2022 The 1943 film The Song of Bernadette opens with the quote, “For those who believe in God, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe in God, no expla- nation is possible.” This line is derived from the teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and it expresses such an impor- tant theme within the story that it is reiterated near the end of the film when the character of Abbe Dominique Pey- ramale, played by Charles Bickford, speaks these words to skeptics who cannot get beyond their doubts, despite the miraculous occurrences that have taken place in their humble town of Lourdes, France. This struggle to believe in God and in his miraculous hand at work in the world around us is an enduring chal- lenge that has been faced by people from all walks of life, and it is a challenge that even the saints have faced. In the Gospels, we see the Apostles themselves struggling with doubt, with perhaps the most famous story of doubt taking place when Thomas declares that he will not believe in the Resurrection until he sees Christ with his eyes and feels Him with his hands. Christ’s response to grant Thomas the proof he seeks demonstrates the reality of God’s miraculous interventions in the world. This type of intervention is similar to what took place at Lourdes, where Saint Bernadette experienced visions of our Blessed Mother and then healing waters poured forth from a spring in the ground, where thou- sands of miracles have since taken place. But we should also remember that, after dispelling Thomas’ doubts, Christ said to him, “Have you be- lieved because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” This is the challenge that most of us are faced with for the majority of our lifetimes. Even those who en- counter the miraculous at some point in their lives must return to everyday reality where they might struggle to maintain faith in God. But we might also see this challenge as a gift because Christ is giving us the opportunity to ex- ercise faith in the same way we might exercise our brains or the muscles in our bodies. And when we exercise faith, we cultivate endurance that will prepare us to be tested. The Christophers recently produced a prayer card on faith that is a beautiful meditation on the mindset that leads us to trust more fully in the providence of God. This prayer helps us to realize that, in order to cultivate our faith, we must first open ourselves to God and to realizing how He guides us through life experiences. And by exercis- ing faith, especially in the most difficult times, we inspire others to face their own challenges and to cultivate faith within themselves. As we start into this new year of 2022, one great resolu- tion is to recommit ourselves to cultivating the faith within ourselves, our families, and our communities. When we do this, we will find a greater ability to see God at work in our lives and in the world around us, and we will need less explanation for those things that are inexplicable. This leads to wisdom and an understanding of how to cooperate with grace, even when we can’t predict the outcome. It is this way of being that will inspire others in our families and communities to let go of doubt and move closer to the joy of knowing and believing in God. Fr. Ed Dougherty, M.M., serves on The Christo- phers’Board of Directors. For a free copy of the Chris- topher News Note, GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP, write: The Christophers, 5 Hanover Square, New York, NY 10004; or e-mail: mail@christophers.org . Learning to trust in God Light One Candle Fr. Dougherty Back in the 1950s, Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, began to articu- late a vision that was largely rati- fied at the Second Vatican Council. She said that the prevailing notion of a “commandments spirituality” for the laity and a “counsels spiri- tuality” for the clergy was dysfunc- tional. She was referencing the stan- dard view of the period that the laity were called to a kind of least com- mon denominator life of obeying the ten commandments -- that is to say, avoiding the most fundamental violations of love and justice -- whereas priests and religious were called to a heroic life of fol- lowing the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Lay people were ordinary players, and the clergy were spiritual athletes. To all of this, Dorothy Day said a rather emphatic no. Every baptized person, she insisted, was summoned to heroic sanctity -- which is to say, the practice of both the commandments and the counsels. As I say, Vatican II, in its doctrine on the univer- sal call to holiness, endorsed this notion. Though the Council Fathers taught that there is a substantial differ- ence between the manner in which clergy and laity in- corporate poverty, chastity, and obedience, they clearly instructed all followers of Christ to seek real sanctity by incorporating those ideals. So, what would this look like? Let us take poverty first. Though the laity are not, at least typically, summoned to the sort of radical pov- erty adopted by, say, a Trappist monk, they are indeed supposed to practice a real detachment from the goods of the world, precisely for the sake of their mission on behalf of the world. Unless a lay person has interior freedom from an addiction to wealth, power, pleasure, rank, honor, etc., she cannot follow the will of God as she ought. Only when the woman at the well put down her water jug, only when she stopped seeking to quench her thirst from the water of the world’s pleasures, was she able to evangelize (John 4). Similarly, only when a baptized person today liberates himself from an addic- tion to money, authority, or good feelings is he ready to become the saint God wants him to be. So, poverty, in the sense of detachment, is essential to the holiness of the laity. Chastity, the second of the evangelical counsels, is also crucial to lay spirituality. To be sure, though the way that the clergy and religious practice chastity -- namely, as celibates -- is unique to them, the virtue itself is just as applicable to the laity. For chastity simply means sexual uprightness or a rightly ordered sexuality. And this implies bringing one’s sexual life under the aegis of love. As Thomas Aquinas taught, love is not a feel- ing, but rather an act of the will, more precisely, willing the good of the other. It is the ecstatic act by which we break free from the ego, whose gravitational pull wants to draw everything to itself. Like the drive to eat and to drink, sex is a passion related to life itself, which is why it is so powerful and thus so spiritually dangerous, so liable to draw everything and everybody under its con- trol. Notice how the Church’s teaching that sex belongs within the context of marriage is meant to hold off this negative tendency. In saying that our sexuality should be subordinated to unity (the radical devotion to one’s spouse) and procreation (the equally radical devotion to one’s children), the Church is endeavoring to bring our sex lives completely under the umbrella of love. A dis- ordered sexuality is a deeply destabilizing force within a person, which, in time, brings him off-kilter to love. Finally, the laity are meant to practice obedience, again not in the manner of religious, but in a manner distinctive to the lay state. This is a willingness to fol- low, not the voice of one’s own ego, but the higher voice of God, to listen ( obedire in Latin) to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. I have spoken often before of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s distinction between the ego-drama (written, produced, directed by, and starring oneself) and the theo-drama (written, produced, and directed by God). We might say that the entire point of the spiritual life is to break free of the former so as to embrace the latter. Most of us sinners, most of the time, are preoc- cupied with our own wealth, success, career plans, and personal pleasure. To obey God is to break out of those soul-killing preoccupations and hear the voice of the Shepherd. Catholics make up around twenty-five percent of our country. Imagine what would happen if, overnight, every Catholic commenced to live in radical detach- ment from the goods of the world. How dramatically politics, economics, and the culture would change for the better. Imagine what our country would be like if, today, every Catholic resolved to live chastely. We would make an enormous dent in the pornography busi- ness; human trafficking would be dramatically reduced; families would be significantly strengthened; abortions would appreciably decrease. SEE WORD ON FIRE, PAGE 15 What are the laity supposed to be? Word on Fire Bishop Barron