The blood of the church: love
Just as the human heart must have blood to maintain life, so must the church have love to live. The metaphors are not mine but Madeleine Debrel’s, Venerable Madeleine Debrel. The blood of the church: love. She was a poet, this French mystic who poured out her life for the Parisian poor, more accurately, for the Christ whom she’d fallen in love with. And it was through her poem, The Passion of Patience, that we ‘met.’ It’s filled with searing phrases like this one: The patiences, these little pieces of passion, whose job is to kill us slowly for your glory, to kill us without our glory…
Debrel’s book, The Holiness of Ordinary People, on a par with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, deftly expunges the notion that we are exempted from lives of heroic virtue because of our laicism, lack of theology, or family obligations.
We think of missionaries as priests like Father Tom Hagan in Haiti. Or Bishop Robert Barron with his Word On Fire ministries, surely not an ordinary person like you and me. We know that when Christ ended the parable of the Good Samaritan with, “Go and do likewise,” that it was no suggestion but a command. Still, however, we make excuses.
Madeleine Debrel’s definition of a missionary should destroy all hesitation:
A missionary is
someone who prays
one who gives witness
someone who loves.
It’s Gaudete Sunday
The readings from the Christian liturgy are from Isaiah, both soaring and piercing; the prophet’s words plunge into our loveless hearts. They compel us to examine ourselves and honestly identify those persons we dislike, even hate. Whether because of their sexual identity, politics, or hatred of us Christians, we’ve no choice but to love without exclusion. Whether it is bishops or priests who disappoint us with their lack of orthodoxy, we’ve no choice but to love and forgive, that is, if we call ourselves Christians.
Wednesday’s reading from Isaiah challenges, exhorts, and consoles. The prophet reminds us that while we live, we’re on mission. And the mission is God’s, not ours.
Why, O Jacob, do you say,
and declare, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Do you not know
or have you not heard?
The LORD is the eternal God,
creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint nor grow weary,
and his knowledge is beyond scrutiny.
He gives strength to the fainting;
for the weak he makes vigor abound.
Though young men faint and grow weary,
and youths stagger and fall,
They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength,
they will soar as with eagles’ wings;
They will run and not grow weary,
walk and not grow faint.
Missionaries without boats
is the section Debrel titles her instructions to the holiness of ordinary people. Her writings anticipate Vatican ll: the massive changes in the Catholic liturgy aimed at eclipsing our objections to the Baptismal gifts of priest, prophet, and king:
- I’m not a theologian, how can I preach the Gospel?
- Latin makes no sense to me. How can I evangelize?
- I’m just an ordinary woman or man; I lack the training of priests. I cannot be expected to bring the Lord to others who don’t know him.
- I cannot travel
Debrel’s reminder that twenty-four-year-old Saint Therese of Lesieux is the Patroness of Missionaries tends to quiet our objections. Terese lived in the Martin family home until she entered the Carmelite monastery and never left its walls. Pope Pius XI canonized her 100 years ago. In May of 1925, the pope wrote Jesus’ words,”Amen, I say to you, unless ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Mat 18:2)”
Conscious of her weakness she abandoned herself entirely to God, and leaning upon Him she labored to acquire — at the cost of every sacrifice, and of an utter yet joyous abdication of her own will — the perfection she arrived at. We need not be surprised if in Thérèse was accomplished the word of Christ: “Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, he is the greater in the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Mat 18:4) In her catechism lessons she drank in the pure doctrine of Faith, from the golden book of The Imitation of Christ she learned asceticism, in the writings of St. John of the Cross she found her mystical theology. Above all, she nourished heart and soul with the inspired Word of God on which she meditated assiduously, and the Spirit of Truth taught her what He hides as a rule from the wise and prudent and reveals to the humble. Indeed, God enriched her with a quite exceptional wisdom, so that she was enabled to trace out for others a sure way of salvation.
That superabundant share of divine light and grace enkindled in Thérèse so ardent a flame of love, that she lived by it alone, rising above all created things, till in the end it consumed her; so much so that shortly before her death she could candidly avow she had never given God anything but Love.
Canonization of Saint Therese of Lisieux, the Child of Jesus
Let us resolve
To put away animosity, judgment, and unforgiveness. Instead, let us concentrate on our complete incapacity to love anything or anyone on our own; understanding and accepting only in Jesus the Christ, can we love. The miracle of the incarnation arrests all human thought if we but ponder what is happening here and allow the mystery to overshadow us. Our Christian faith, our Christian churches can live only on the blood of the church: love.
Ours is not a philosophy.
Christianity is no ideology.
Nor is it a series of practices, prayers, and devotions.
Christianity is Jesus Christ, to whom we hand ourselves over in body, soul, and spirit. As he [Joseph Ratzinger] would explain in Introduction to Christianity, what makes Christianity unique is that “the God of faith is basically defined by the category of relationship” (147). This “corrects philosophy and lets us know that love is higher than pure thought.” It lets us know that God in himself is not thought thinking itself or the ground of sufficient reason, but rather the eternal exchange of love.”
“Being baptized,” explains Ratzinger, “means assuming the name of Christ, means becoming a son with and in him… For it demands that our existence become ‘sonlike’, that we belong so totally to God that we become an ‘attribute’ of God… Baptism means, then, that we lose ourselves as a separate, independent ‘I” and find ourselves again in a new ‘I’. It is the sacrament of death and—by that fact, but also only by that fact—the sacrament of resurrection” (33). Made sons in the Son by Baptism, the believer is granted entry into “Jesus’ relationship with God” (32).
And this returns us again to the fundamental posture of Jesus Christ the Son in relation to the Father: a loving yes. “If being baptized in the name of the triune God means man’s entrance into the Son’s existence,” Ratzinger notes, “we know from what has been said that this demands an existence centred around a prayerful communion with the Father” (32). Or, “[i]f this ‘yes’ of the Lord really penetrates me so that it makes my soul reborn,” he says (as it does in baptism), “then my own ego is saturated with him, is marked by sharing in him: ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’ (Gal 2:20)” (The Yes of Jesus Christ, 102). It is from this precisely baptismal point of radical transformation and conversion, then, that a perfect eucharistic communion can be attained.
Remembering and Reflecting on Joseph Ratzinger’s Gospel of Love.
Everything that is of the Church is trembling with life. It is we who have the sad ability to stupefy it by not allowing ourselves to wash in all these small gushing streams. It is the blood of Christ that wells up everywhere. Let us not grimace at the vessel that contains it. We have better things to do.
The Holiness of Ordinary People
