I am looking forward to the Pope’s new book. He told someone that his second volume of Jesus of Nazareth is complete. I am looking forward to its publication. I enjoyed the first volume immensely.
I receive an Italian Magazine called 30 Giorni (30 days), edited by “Giulio Andreotti”, for many years, Italy’s prime minister. There are always interesting articles, generally on the right of issues. This month it contained an interview with retiring Cardinal Danneels, primate of Belgium. Here are some thoughts by his Eminence, head of his church for 30 years.
He says: For me the greatest obstacle is not the hostility of our secular society. The world has always existed in contraposition to the faith. The greatest resistance is the lack of trust in the power of God’s word. To the disciples desperate for the difficulties they encountered in their ministry St. Mark has Jesus consoling them with three parables, the one of the sower, the one about the seed that germinates by itself and the master seed parable. Jesus tried to explain to them how things work in the Kingdom of God. The seed does not sprout because you scatter more seeds or because of any mental effort or more concentration on the part of the sower. The seed is strong and germinates of its own vitality even when the sower is asleep, says Jesus.
I personally do not like to shout or make too much noise or attract attention upon me. Sure there is the method of Paul who shouted in the squares but there is also the method of Mary, which is like the stove that without saying anything warms everyone around.
More than ever before the church needs St. Augustine who says that God’s grace does all. We only need to cooperate with it. God alone acts; we need to respond. Often we become like Pelagius, we begin to think that everything depends on our strength. That we are big enough to save the world by our own effort with minimum help from God.
When Pope Paul VI (a beloved Pope of mine) visited the Seminary of Lombardy, he said: Many are waiting for dramatic gestures from the Pope, forceful interventions and spectacular decisions that would catch the attention of the world. The Pope does not consider right any line of conduct other than to put his full trust in Jesus Christ, to whose heart the well-being of the Church is closest & dearest. He will quell the tempest. Like the Apostles who had to wait for the Holy Spirit, my waiting will not be sterile or inert but vigilant and prayerful.
I could have written those great words myself. During the 60s and 70s this tendency to Pelagianism assumed political flavor. Many thought that the Kingdom of God should be understood as a social revolution. Now some of the Theology of Liberation have passed to do ecology. They are the same stale warriors but they have changed argument and weaponry.
During the 80s and 90s evangelization was viewed as an enterprise of the Church, as a result of Church protagonism in society. Now the same tendency has assumed the face of restoration. The Council created disorientation among the faithful, so now here we come, they say, to straighten everything out. They use essential things like liturgy, doctrine and Eucharistic adoration but you feel that these things are used like slogans, masquerades for a lot of egotism. We, we, we. We’ll save the Church. We’ll fix everything. We have always been tempted to do things by ourselves. It used to be Catholic Action, then Aggiornamento, now it is Restoration. We are the principal actors. We refer everything to ourselves.
It is useless to be a great preacher, if attention stops there. Showing off counts for nothing. It can be insidious if behind you people don’t see Jesus.
Maybe what the Church truly needs is the holiness of the saints. St. Paul says you can have ten thousand pedagogues but only one Father in Christ. Yes nowadays there too many pedagogues who speak in the name of Christ but are not giving their lives to Him.
Finally Eminence, tell us about Father Damien. You flew to Molokai. Father Damien is a great saint of my Archdiocese. The first in 400 years after St. John Berchmans, the Jesuit saint. In Molokai I was stunned by the beauty of nature. Everything is so perfect and gorgeous: the trees, the flowers, the sun, the sky so blue, so much blue everywhere; it was like the Garden of Eden and in this scene of breathtaking perfection lived the lepers, the most disfigured human beings on earth. The contrast was paradoxical. In that island among the best in the world lived the most disfigured wretched human beings. There are graves everywhere more than 8000. In a place where nature appears so exuberant there reigned terror & death. And here Father Damien lived his immense faith and bore unquenchable love and hope to wretched humanity. A very unique person indeed. Why did it take more than 100 years for the miracle that brought about his canonization? Well because we gave him admiration & even put a statue in Capitol Hill, but forgot to put him to work for us with our prayer.
