When a Turkish assassin seriously wounded Pope John Paul II, he almost brought to an end one of the most remarkable episcopates in the history of Christianity. Cardinal Wojtyla of Cracow was elected Pope in October 1978. He inherited a divided, demoralized church. But he was exceptionally well-qualified to take over a world religion in crisis. Vigorous and assured, a born mixer and gifted linguist, with long experience of pastoral work, church-state relations and Catholicism’s own internal machinery, he also possesses a robust philosophy of Christian humanism, which gives him inner serenity and natural authority.
THE ABOVE WORDS WERE PUBLISHED on the jacket of Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Restoration, an excellent study of the Holy Father by Paul Johnson. The blurb concludes thus: “Paul Johnson describes, step by step, how the new Pope set about imposing order, restoring morale and giving back to 700 million Catholics the security and self-confidence they were beginning to lose.” The most remarkable thing about these words is not what they actually say. Few would argue that the present Holy Father has indeed imposed order, raised morale and restored a sense of security and self-confidence to the world’s Catholics. Even the sweeping grandeur of the claim that his has been “one of the most remarkable episcopates in the history of Christianity” does not seem an overstatement. No, the remarkable thing about these words is not what they say but when they were said. They were written in 1982, less than four years after that remarkable episcopate had begun. The fact that such words could be written after such a short time is itself an astounding testimony and tribute to the immediate impact that this most indefatigable of men made upon the world.
Pope John Paul II began as he meant to go on. Since then, thanks be to God, he has gone on and on and on. Now, after more than twenty-five years as the Servant of the servants of God, it would be somewhat presumptuous, not to say impossible, to summarize the achievement of the present Holy Father within the confines of a solitary short essay. Prudence precludes such presumption, and the attempt shall not be made.
On a purely personal level, Pope John Paul II has touched my own life in ways too powerful to encapsulate in words. Like so many millions of others around the world, I have been fortunate enough to see him in the flesh on several occasions, most memorably with my wife on our honeymoon, when the Holy Father blessed our marriage. Ten years earlier, I had seen him on his own native soil in Poland at a truly memorable World Youth Day. Our tiny English contingent was lost in a sea of young people from all over the world. The noisy presence of thousands upon thousands of boisterously joyous young people from Spain, Italy and many other countries waving their nation’s flags in a sea of fervor that seemed to bear witness to Belloc’s “Europe of the Faith” stays with me as a memory of particular resonance and poignancy. The multitude of foreign visitors was reinforced by the million or so Poles, many of whom had walked hundreds of miles on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving for the deliverance of Poland from nearly half a century of communist oppression. Even more impressive were the many pilgrims from Russia and Ukraine who had walked even further to pay homage to the man who, perhaps more than any other, had helped to bring down the communist empire.
I shall conclude my own short and entirely inadequate tribute to His Holiness by returning to the place whence I began. Paul Johnson, in his book on the Holy Father, recorded that in August 1978, just before the conclave opened that would elect him Pope, Cardinal Wojtyla, as he then was, included among his devotional exercises in Rome a visit to the tomb of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer y Albas, the founder of Opus Dei. Shortly after becoming Pope, he wrote a letter to Opus Dei, dated 15 November 1978, on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, congratulating it on its work. Thereafter, Opus Dei found in the person of the Holy Father a powerful champion of its work. As early as 1982, Paul Johnson saw the significance of this partnership in faith and works:
Opus Dei appears to be the kind of instrument John Paul needs to assist him in carrying through his restoration on a permanent basis: orthodox, loyal, dedicated, superbly organized and disciplined, ubiquitous and youthful.
The Fact that Opus Dei has many enemies, has been the object of a liberal campaign in the media, and is widely presented as obscurantist and reactionary will not deter John Paul . . . One virtue he does not lack is moral courage, including the courage to stand out against the conventional wisdom. He is rightly suspicious of fashion, especially in religious matters. He detects in Opus Dei some highly unfashionable merits. That is in itself high commendation to him. (184-85)
Once again, the words written more than twenty years ago are at least as applicable today. When Pope John Paul II began his twenty-fifth year as Pontiff, he celebrated the occasion with an even greater one. He presided over the canonization of Blessed Josemaría, the founder of the “unfashionable” Opus Dei, proving once again that, though fashions come and go, the Faith remains. Thus we see the undying and imperishable unity between the Church Triumphant and the Church Militant; a saint being made by a saint in the making.
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FAITH AND THE FEMININE
AS CATHOLICS, WE SHOULD CELEBRATE the feminine. We should celebrate its beauty—which is certainly breathtaking—and also its centrality. We should celebrate the fact that the feminine is fundamental. It is at the very core of life itself, the very heart of humanity. Indeed, mystically and paradoxically, it is at the very Heart of God Himself. Thus the Church is both the Mystical Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ at one and the same time. In the mystical marriage of Christ and His Church, we see how the Bride of Christ has become one flesh with the Bridegroom. The Church is the perfect archetypal unity of masculine and feminine. She is the sacramental union of marriage; she is the marriage to which every other marriage owes its significance.
It goes without saying, of course, that none of these thoughts is original, in the sense of being originally mine. “Mine” is always a minefield of self-delusion. As Saint Augustine observed, the only thing that is truly mine is a lie. Everything else, everything other, is a gift. Thus, in this self-centered sense, the only truly original thing is sin! Such an understanding of the nature of reality animated Chesterton’s self-effacing assertion that he had spent his life diligently discovering things that other people had already discovered before him. In the case of the ecclesiology outlined above, the mystical union of masculine and feminine was expounded with timeless beauty in the wisdom of Solomon and was interpreted with almost matching beauty by Saint Bernard in his sermons on Solomon’s Song of Songs. Then, of course, there is the Gospel itself, in which Christ teaches the essential truths in terms of the Bridegroom and His Bride.
Finally, one cannot discuss the place of the feminine at the heart of reality without paying homage to the Mother of God, she who is the feminine personified and the feminine perfected. Mary’s faith and humility at the Annunciation was the final triumph of the eternal feminine over her ancient adversary. It was the triumph of her eternal fertility over her enemy’s infernal sterility. Her fiat was the annunciation of her victory carrying with it the logical and theological assumption of her coronation as Queen of Heaven.
If, however, the feminine is at the very heart of the joyful and glorious mysteries of reality, it is also the broken heart in the depths of humanity’s mysterious sorrows. The feminine is not only the core but the crux; it is the cri de coeur at the foot of the Cross. The sword that pierced the Son of Man also pierced the Immaculate Heart of His Mother. Mary, impassioned and impaled, shares her Son’s suffering. His Passion is hers also. Thus the feminine is the crux as well as the core of reality. It is crucial because it too was crucified.
Throughout the twentieth century, the feminine was crucified by feminism. Acting like a female Faust selling her soul for an illusory dream of “liberty” and “equality”, feminism stripped women of their womanhood, scourged them with the Promethean promise of promiscuity, crowned them with the thorns of contraception and laid upon them the cross of futile and infertile sexual relat
ionships, rooted in lust masquerading as love. Finally, the feminine is nailed to the cross of male lasciviousness, where she is held up as an object to be leered at, abused and ultimately scorned. Such is the legacy of woman’s “liberation”.
The feminine, hanging upon the cross of feminist crassness, thirsts. She thirsts as her Master thirsted upon His own archetypical Cross. She hungers. The feminine, famished and starved of the fertile fruits of her own natural motherhood, seeks in vain for fertility amid the sterility of the just deserts of the deserts of modernity. Eventually, she dies. Thus has feminism brought about the death of the feminine on the altar of malevolent desire.
The feminine is not vanquished, however. Following her death comes her resurrection. Following in her Master’s footsteps, she rises from the dead. Her womb, no longer a tomb of false philosophies and empty promises, brings forth new life. As faithless feminism fades, we witness with gratitude the enduring faith of the feminine.
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OUR LIFE, OUR SWEETNESS AND OUR HOPE
BEATI QUORUM TECTA SUNT PECCATA. Blessed are they whose sins are forgiven. Blessed indeed! For, and to turn from the ancient majesty of the penitential psalms to the modern medium of an Elvis Presley gospel song, “I remember my days of darkness, without sunshine or light to lead the way.” I still remember, and every time I remember, I recall once more my blessings. Thus the Trinitarian life of the soul, centered on the life-giving trinity of confession, contrition and satisfaction, leads us from the darkness of ignorance and sin to the sunshine of grace and the light of His Presence. It was not always so.
In the years before the light of Christ entered my dismal life, I groped in the gloom of my own grievances, griping at others in the miasmal myopia caused by the plank lodged obstinately in my eye. One of my biggest grievances was against the Catholic Church. She, it seemed, was to blame for so much. The ignorance of the Dark Ages, the ignominiousness of the Middle Ages and, of course, the infamy of the Inquisition. I considered myself so much smarter than those ignorant papists who still clung superstitiously to their antiquated Creed. I was so “clever” that I became embroiled in the bigoted barbarism of the politics of Northern Ireland. Thus, as a “brother” of the Orange Order, I learned that the Church of Rome was the Scarlet Woman, the Whore of Babylon and the Servant of Satan. Similarly, the Pope of Rome was not merely a foolish or evil man, he was the anti-Christ who sought to lead Christians away from Christ. I was not so much green with envy against the Church of Rome, but orange with pride. God help me! Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata.
No Pope! No Rome Rule! No Surrender! “No nuns and no priests, no rosary beads; every day is the Twelfth of July!” No! No! No! The affirmation ad nauseam of the negative. I was under the influence of the anathema anesthetic, the deranged drug that dupes and dopes the bigot and blinds and binds him to his blunder. Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata.
One result of the blindness of my bigotry was an implicit distrust of our Lady. Not that I would have dreamed of calling her “our Lady”; she was simply “Mary”. Since she was “worshiped” by the Catholics, who even used superstitious beads to pray to her, she had to be guilty by association. She was a goddess of idolatry and therefore not to be trusted. Father, forgive me, for I knew not what I did.
Beati quorum. . .
Times change and so do people. Sins are committed and yet are forgiven. It is, therefore, with all due humility that I confess my devotion to the Blessed Mother of God. In doing so, I am tempted to echo the words, and the warning, of G. K. Chesterton that anything I say on the subject of the Mother of God could be tainted by enthusiasm. In fact, and instead, I am reduced to echoing the words of T. S. Eliot: “I feel that anything I can say about such a subject is trivial. I feel so completely inferior in [her] presence—there seems really nothing to do but to point to [her] and be silent.” (Actually, Eliot said these words in honor of Dante, but they seem so apposite to my own feelings of inadequacy in the presence of the Blessed Virgin that I have tampered with the gender of the original quotation to suit my need. I am confident that neither Eliot nor Dante will take offense at such tampering.)
Since “anything I can say about such a subject is trivial”, I shall remain silent and point to others who have said what I would like to say so much better than I could ever hope to do. I shall commence, in the company of Eliot, by pointing to Dante and remaining silent. It was he, in the paradiso, who put the following sublime words onto the lips of the heavenly vision of Saint Bernard:
Thou Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,
Humble and high beyond all other creature,
The limit fixed of the eternal counsel,
Thou art the one who such nobility
To human nature gave, that its Creator
Did not disdain to make himself its creature.
Similar praise and honor to her who is “our life, our sweetness and our hope” was the inspiration for the anonymous author of the fifteenth-century “Carol” that ends with this charmingly simple, yet utterly profound, verse:
Mother and maiden
Was never none but she;
Well may such a lady
God’s mother be.
Finally, my dumb devotion finds voice in “A Hymn to the Virgin”. It dates (how appropriate an example of divine symmetry!) from the very Middle Ages that I had once spurned but which now I honor as the bearer of the light that penetrated my darkness:
Of one that is so fair and bright
Velut maris stella,
Brighter than the day is light,
Parens et puella:
I cry to thee, thou see to me,
Lady, pray thy Son for me,
Tam pia,
That I might come to thee
Maria.
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THE PRESENCE THAT CHRISTMAS PRESENTS
WHAT IS CHRISTMAS? Presumably the asking of such a question is hardly necessary in the pages of this volume, whose readers have no doubt already found their way to Bethlehem and have discovered its priceless treasure for themselves. The question is, however, not as superfluous as it seems. The billion people living under the cloak of Islam have probably never asked the question. Certainly they have never answered it correctly. Similarly, those caught in the Confucian confusion of China or those hindered by Hinduism in India have failed to ask or answer the question. It is a question to which the Buddhists remain blind, and its answer the Sikhs have not found.
These many millions who have never asked or answered the question are barely culpable. They simply cannot see because their faiths have made them blind. But what of the many millions who have asked the question but have answered it incorrectly? What of the millions of agnostic consumers who “celebrate” Christmas but have apparently rejected its meaning? Truly they are a greater cause of sorrow during this season of joy than any number of heedless Muslims, Hindus or Sikhs. They are not the blind who cannot see but the blind who will not see.
Perhaps the quest for the real Christmas could be presented to these doubting millions by asking a different question. Rather than asking what Christmas is, perhaps we should ask what it isn’t. It isn’t an annual shopping spree; it isn’t advertisement ad nauseam; it isn’t the annual office party, nor is it the hangover that follows it. It isn’t any of these perennial seasonal rituals—all of which, in any case, take place in the season of Advent before Christmas has even begun.
Does such a “negative” attitude place one in the role of an Ebenezer Scrooge, grumbling self-righteously at the desire of others to celebrate? Do sober-minded Christians wish to celebrate Christmas by spoiling the party? Certainly not. And heaven forbid! The spirit of Christmas might not be found in the ringing of a cash register, nor on television, nor in the bottom of the twelfth glass of whiskey; but it is to be found in the ringing of church bells, the singing of carols and the sharing of a bottle of the finest Scottish malt with friends. It is to be found in the giving of gifts, the faces of child
ren, red-nosed reindeer, red-nosed Santas, red-nosed carol singers, red-breasted robins and glowing fires. It is to be found in snowmen, snowballs and snowflakes; and in the holly and the ivy, the mistletoe and the wine. Yule logs, Christmas trees, colored lights, candles, plum pudding, fruit cake and a partridge in a pear tree. It is to be found in all these things . . . but all these things are not it.
“It” is something infinitely greater, infinitely larger, infinitely smaller; it is infinitely more beautiful, more bountiful, more blissful, more bashful and more bold. It is the Kiss of God on the unworthy lips of man. It is man warming himself in the physical Presence of God. It is God warming Himself in the physical womb of a woman. It is humility exalted. It is Life. It is Love. It is the love of life and the life of love. It is He. His is the Presence that Christmas presents.
Life . . . Love. . . Man. . . God. . . Man-God.
The Kiss of Life.
What is Christmas? Christmas is He—and He is worth celebrating!
May He who breathes life into Christmas bring its message of love, its warmth and its light to Everyman. May God bless us every one.
NOTES
Chapter Seven
+ Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. Back to text.
Chapter Eight
1 Fifth edition, 1964. Back to text.
2 G. K. Chesterton, The Resurrection of Rome (London, 1930), 242. Back to text.
3 Ibid., 273. Back to text.
4 Ibid., 283. Back to text.
5 Ibid., 286. Back to text.
6 Ibid., 345. Back to text.
7 G. K. Chesterton, Avowals and Denials (London: Methuen, 1934), 37. Back to text.
8 Ibid., 135. Back to text.
9 Ibid., 187. Back to text.
Literary Giants Literary Catholics Page 42
