Review for Religious - Issue 31.2 (March 1972)

Issue 31.2 of the Review for Religious, 1972.

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spellingShingle	Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus Review for Religious - Issue 31.2 (March 1972)
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title	Review for Religious - Issue 31.2 (March 1972)
title_short	Review for Religious - Issue 31.2 (March 1972)
title_full	Review for Religious - Issue 31.2 (March 1972)
title_fullStr	Review for Religious - Issue 31.2 (March 1972)
title_full_unstemmed	Review for Religious - Issue 31.2 (March 1972)
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description	Issue 31.2 of the Review for Religious, 1972.
publisher	Saint Louis University Libraries Digitization Center
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spelling	sluoai_rfr-517 Review for Religious - Issue 31.2 (March 1972) Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus Jesuits -- Periodicals; Monasticism and religious orders -- Periodicals. Issue 31.2 of the Review for Religious, 1972. 1972-03 2012-05 PDF RfR.31.2.1972.pdf rfr-1970 BX2400 .R4 Copyright U.S. Central and Southern Province, Society of Jesus. Permission is hereby granted to copy and distribute individual articles for personal, classroom, or workshop use. Please credit Review for Religious and reference the volume, issue, and page number and cite Saint Louis University Libraries as the host of the digital collection. Saint Louis University Libraries Digitization Center text eng Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus E D ITO R R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITOR Everett A. Diederich, S.J. QUESTIONS AND AN S\V E RS ED ITO K Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Correspondence with the editor, the associate editor, and the assistant editor, as well as books for review, should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 612 Humboldt Build-ing; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, SJ.; St. Joseph’s Church; 321 Willings AHey; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106. + + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ccclcsiaslica\| approval by faculty members of the School of Divinity of St. Louis University, tile editorial offices beihg located al 612 Ilumboldt Building; 539 North (;rand Boulevard: St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Owned by tile Missonri Province Educational Ins!itute. Published biu’~onthly and copyright ~) 1972 by REVIE’W FOR RELIGIOUS. Printed in U.S.A. Second class po~tage paid at St. l.ouis, Missouri. Single copies: $1.25. Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $6.00 a year. $11.00 for two years: olher counlric~: $7.00 a year, $13.00 for two year~. Orders ~hould indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order payab\|e to REVIF, W IgOR RELIGIOLIS in U.S.A. cur-rency ollly. Pay no llloney to person~ claiming to represent REVIEW I.OR RELIGIOUS. (’hangc of address requests should include forlller address. Renewals and new ~ubscription~ should be sent to REVIEW I.OR RELIGIOUS; P.O. Box 60 70; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Manuscripts, editori-al correspondence, and books for review should be sent to REVIEW I.OR RELIGIOUS; 612 llumboldt Building; 539 North (;rand Boule-vard: St. Louis. Mixsouri 63103. Questions for alls’,vering ~;hould be sent to the address of the Ouc~tions and Answers editor. MARCH 1972 VOLUME31 NUMBER 2 ROBERT NASH, S.J: Abba, Father [ Robert Nash, S.J., directs retreats at lesuit Retreat House; Tullarnore; Offaly, l~’eland.] Throw a log of wood, sodden witfi rain, into a roaring furnace. Instantly the flames close in and join forces to expel the opposing element. According as they succeed, they communicate themselves to the dried timber, absorbing it and identifying it with themselves. There is now no longer any opposition. The block of wood yields itself, allowing itself to be permeated through and through, till it is transformed into flame, shooting off sparks in all directions and sharing its light and its warmth with every object it contacts. This illustration is elaborated on by St. John of the "Cross to describe the workings of the Spirit of God in the soul of man. "Two contraries cannot exist in the same subject," he writes. The. flame of divine love encounters hardness and aridity: it is only in the measure in which these are driven out that God can take over. They are trespassing on His property. They are buyers and sellers desecrating His temple. They are idols, each one of them set up in his own niche, and until they are thrown down to the ground and smashed, God’s reign in that kingdom can never be complete or supreme. The more thorough th.e process of purification, the more vehement Will the flame grow. The sparks which fly from it represent thezeal with which the soul is consumed to share its experience with the whole world. "When once God takes possession," writes the saint, "He does not long remain inactive." Like Christ, and with all due reservations, the enamored soul exclaims: "I have come to cast fire upon the earth and what will I but that it be enkindled?" Sanctifier To the Third Person of the Trinity is "appropriated" the task of making our souls holy. Given our free cooperation, He will thoroughly cleanse the floor of that inner temple. He will send a wind which will blow into a mighty flame the few poor coals of love smoldering on our altar. He will stir up within us a determination and a veritable craving to gather the whole world together and explain to all men that at last we have discovered the answer to the tormenting riddle of life. This is what sanctity is about and this it is which the Church bids us ask for in her official prayers to the Holy Spirit: "Enkindle in us the fire of Thy love... Thou shalt renew the face of the earth... Thou dost instruct the hearts of the faithful by the light of Thy Holy Spirit ... Through Him give us a relish for what is right... that in Him we may seek and find our consolation and our joy..." "Into the soul that is prepared," writes St. John of the Cross, "the act of love enters continually, for the spark seizes upon the dry fuel at each contact .., God makes these assaults upon the soul ... and they have the objec.t of purifying it and bringing it out of the flesh; encounters in which He penetrates the soul, deifying its 166 Review for Relig!ous, Volume 31, 1972/2 substance ... wherein the Being of God absorbs the soul above all being. These communications are impetuous and full of fervour.., and the soul has a lively taste for God." From every analogy in history an age like ours should be prolific in saints. A great outburst ’of impiety such as we are witnessing today, so far from causing any feeling of frustration or discouragement, is, rather, accepted eagerly for what it is meant to be - a challenge to declare oneself openly for Christ, plunging into the fray regardless of the price to be paid. The urge is strong, almost irresistible, to brace oneself for the effort to climb out of the dull valleys of mediocre Catholicism and scale God’s high mountains and seek His Face in intense prayer. Up here eyerything looks so different. Up here we see life in its true perspective. Up here we can measure time against the background of eternity. We can fill our lungs up here, draw in, in a long breath, deep draughts of God’s grace and come to realize that trial and suffering do not necessarily exclude joy, that there is an unsuspected vein of wealth latent in poverty, that wars and rumors of war and their consequent miseries, while piercing the soul with sorrow, do not unduly disturb its peace. Up here with Christ we pray on the mountain. Up here with Moses we stretch out arms in supplication for our brothers down below. Up here the glimpse we are granted of reality sends a thrill of optimism throughout our whole being. We go back to the fight with courage renewed, with a new fire stirring within us, scattering its sparks everywhere, inflaming others even as the Holy Spirit uses our lips and our tongue to speak to them His message. 0 Up here we learn the wisdom of St. John of the Cross: "See that thou become not of a sudden sorrowful because of the adversities that are in the world, since thou knowest not the blessings that they bring with them, being ordained in the judgments of God for the everlasting joy of the elect." God Is Love The Third Person is the Spirit of love. It is love that speeds men up that mountain where they can plunge into prayer. It is love which leads them back again, restless till once more they find themselves in the thick of the fight. It is love that guides the pen of St. John of the Cross, and it is only love that will enable us to understand, and, however tenuously, to hold on to his heavenly teaching. "He who truly loves," he writes, "is satisfied only when his whole self, all he is, all he can be, and all he can acquire is spent in the service of love, and the greater the service, the greater is his joy in giving it." Language like this is unintelligible until the light of the Holy Spirit penetrates deep. "If," says ~ Kempis, "thou reliest only upon thine own reason rather than upon the virtue which subjects to Jesus Christ, thou wilt seldom and hardly become an enlightened man. For God will have us wholly subject to Him and to transcend all reason by an inflamed love." Sanctity is no accurately measured, nicely balanced service of God. It dispenses with all weights and measures. It gives with both hands, "good measure, pressed down, shaken together and flowing over." This is the measure of the giving of God. It acts like a goad to the soul, driving it forward to compete with Him, though it is well persuaded that He is going to win every time. Vatican II reminds us that this love manifests itself in a variety of ways. God "calls some to give clear witness to the desire for a heavenly home and to keep that desire green among the human family." Tiffs is the purely contemplative vocation. To it God calls souls who night and day will devote themselves exclusively to prayer and sacrifice on behalf of the multitudes who ignore Him. Never was this vocation Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 167 more relevant. It keeps "green" the fact of God and what is due to Him. The thought of God becomes all absorbing. "If the soul," writes St. John of the Cross, "had but one single glimpse of the majesty and beauty of God, not oniy would it desire to die once in order to see Him forever - as it desires now - but it would most joyfully undergo a thousand deaths, no matter how bitter, to see Him even for a moment, and, having seen Him, would suffer as many deaths again to see Him for another moment." God, the Council adds, "summons others to dedicate themselves to the earthly service of men, and by this ministry of theirs to make ready the material of the celestial realm." These comprise the vast armies of men and women, priests, religious, and laity, who with unflagging zeal devote themselves to the works of the active apostolate. Like the contemplatives they realize that God is love, that He is known but little or not at all, that many sin. wantonly against Him..All would subscribe to the exclamation of St. John of the Cross: "0 sweetest Love of God that is so little loved! He that has found the veins of this mine has found rest." To make this discovery and reveal it to others is the vocation of all souls who are docile to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. This they all have in common. The only difference is in the means they employ to bring about this end. The influence for good is incalculable of even one single soul thus on fire, "contemplative or active," in a world famishing and starving for love and not knowing how to satisfy the pangs of its hunger. That is why no mere simmering heat of love will suffice in our day. Saints are needed, as the Council keeps repeating, and the call to sanctity goes out to all, for "all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity.., the holiness of the People of God will grow into an abundant harvest of good, as is brilliantly proved by the lives of so many saints in Church history." "The Forgotten Paraclete" So far we have allowed ourselves to indicate in broad outline only the work or" the Spirit of God, the Sanctifier. It is time now to be more specific, to examine in some detail the actual process whereby the soul is fashioned if it persevere in following the divine guidance. We should ask first of all, perhaps, why it is fitting that the task of making us holy should be appropriated to the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. Imagine, then, a young mother with her six-month-old infant lying in her arms. She sits and looks down into his face, knowing him for her very own, and regarding him with love. The infant smiles back into his mother’s eyes. He is beginning to know her too. His knowledge at present so very incomplete, will develop, and, according as it increases, it will generate love. One day she will hear it call her "Mother" for the first time, and at the sound music starts up in her heart and her eyes sparkle with joy. Now we must not press this comparison too hard, but it may help to give us a clearer idea of the .Holy Spirit in His role of Sanctifier. God the Father looks upon His Son and comprehends fully the infinite, ineffable beauty of what He sees. It is as if He was contemplating a perfect image of Himself in a mirror. But in this case the image is no mere reflection. This image is alive, is a Person, is God Himself, one in nature with the Father, possessing in infinite degree each and all of the Father’s divine attributes. Hence He is the well-beloved Son in whom the Father is pleased.’ Concurrently with the act by which Heknows this Son He goes out to Him in love 168 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 - He cannot do otherwise - and that love, like a shoreless ocean, is without limit, is all embracing, is infinite. Now consider the Second Person. In our illustration the infant returns the mother’s gaze and gradually comes to know and love her. When God the Son contemplates the face of His Father, He, in His turn, sees clearly into the fathomless depths of infinite beauty. He knows about the Father everything that is possible for a mind with infinite capacity to know. When an infinite mind grasps fully the perfections of infinite beauty it can express itself in one way’ only - in an act of infinite love. Thus Father knows Son and loves Him. Thus Son knows Father and loves Him. This mutual act passing between them, of the One for the Other, of the Other for the One, is alive, is a Person, a divine Person, the Third Person, one and the same in nature with Father and Son. He is love, the Spirit of love, the substantial, adequate expression of a love wholly divine. From a consideration of this background the mission of the Holy Spirit as Sanctifier emerges a little more clearly. The great commandment is to love God with our whole heart, with our whole soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind. Growth in love is the measure of our advance in sanctity. It is surely fitting, then, that to the Third Person should be "appropriated" a task which calls for love, yet more love, and nothing but love. So "the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us." He is "a consuming fire," and the tendency of fire is to engulf into its flames every object it reaches, transforming that object into itself. So the divine fire within us would sweep into itself all our sins, all our imperfections, shriveling them up till nothing is left except itself, love alone, love supreme, love unchallenged. The sins we have committed, even after we have repented sincerely and have been forgiven, generally leave evil tendencies in us to repeat those sins, in some such way as the receding tide deposits silt on the beach. Here again the flame of divine love is active, weakening these temptations, adding strength to our powers of resistance, till the root, though it stays with us all the time, is rendered innocuous. The Holy Spirit is our Sanctifier because He is the living flame of love which He communicates to our souls, destroying what is evil, transforming into itself whatever it encounters. The Divine Artist His work may be compared also to the task of an artist, a genius, seated and bent lovingly over the canvas on his easel, all concerned to produce a masterpiece, choosing paints and brushes carefully and applying them with exquisite pains and deliberation. The Third Person is the divine Artist. Our soul is like the canvas upon which He designs to reproduce as perfect a likeness of Christ as is possible. Again this image will be alive, for Christ has come that we may have life and have it more abundantly. The’ brushes and paints may be taken, we suggest, to represent the merits won for us by Christ by His de.ath and passion and applied to our souls by the Holy Spirit. Like all comparisons this one limps because it is far from the whole truth that the transformation effected in us is external only. In the Mass of the Baptism of Our Lord we ask "intus reformari mereamur"- this implies a fundamental change in mind and heart in our interior, a whole new set of principles governing the lives of those who take the gospel literally. We are "born again," We become "the sons of God." We are "remade," "a new creature." Because of the gift of the Holy Spirit Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 169 and His action upon us, we are priviieged now to cry out: "Abba, Father." No Jew would presume to address God as "Abba." He would consider himself failing seriously in reverence because "Abba" is expressive of much more familiarity than "Father." Both forms are full of the attitude of deep respect, but whereas "Father" lays the emphasis on formality, "Abba" prefers the easy feeling of"at-homeness," talking to Him with the artless simplicity of unaffected childhood. "Abba" might be regarded as synonymous with "Daddy." Not only does the Holy Spirit transform us into Christ but He gives us glimpses of the entrancing, captivating beauty of the Model. "John would never have recog-nized Christ," writes the late Father Thomas Merton, "if the Spirit had not revealed Him. Only the Spirit can point out Christ to us. But the instant that He does so He opens to us something of the depths of that infinite and eternal flash of recognition in which God sees and loves Himself." There are a thousand ways of showing how this "flash of recognition" makes Christ a reality, quivering with life. "Work with your eyes upon Jesus," says the French Jesuit P~re Longhaye, "on Him who is your final goal. Seek in all you study its connection with Jesus Christ. Somehow try to make all that you learn bear witness to Him. Anything else is more oi less vain curiosity. "Love Jesus Christ. Until you draw your last breath grow daily in love for His adorable Person. You must be tireless in studying and approaching, in searching and seeking and probing, for yourself and others, the inestimable riches of Jesus. Look at Him steadily till you know Him by heart, or, better still, till you are assimilated to Him, absorbed in Him. "He must be more and more the constant theme of your thoughts, the hub of your knowledge, the end which all your studies have in view. Your apostolate must have Him for its aim, Him for its message, Him for its conquering weapon. You may teach, you may be a preacher, you may write, you may give missions, you may - if God so wills it for His sole glory - become a famous person. But, whether you be famous or obscure, whether you do important work or most humble work, be known in your sphere of action as one filled with and possessed by Jesus Christ; a person who, in season, and - if that were possible - out of season, speaks unceasingly of Jesus Christ, and who speaks thus from the fullness of his heart." The Masterpiece This moving description, it seems to us, is the divine masterpiece, the design of the Holy Spirit steadily progressing. We cannot call it the finished product, because the work will never cease until the soul finally leaves the fashioning hands of the divine Artist at the moment of death. As long as the day of this life endures, so long will the soul be the object of the unremitting care and concern of the Spirit of Love. Let a human artist be as dedicated to his ideal as you will, he is compelled to interrupt his task at intervals. It is imperative that he take time off at least for sleep and food. But the Third Person stands in no need of such a break. He is always active - "iugiter," "continuously," as we say in the Benediction prayer. Such a Workman, employing such instruments, focusing all His attention ceaselessly on His task, with mind filled with infinite knowledge and infinite love directing every stroke of the brush - what else can the final result be except a masterpiece on the beauty of which the angels themselves must look with rapture? But this is not all. The Third Person is light as well as warmth. Like the pillar which guided the Israelites across the desert He moves on ahead of us sojourners in 170 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 His Pilgrim Church. No guide could be more trustworthy. He is thoroughly conversant with every mile of the road. He warns us of the pitfalls. He has words of encouragement when the way seems long and dreary and we start off again with renewed zest. He guarantees to lead us unerringly and safely into the Land of Promise. And this solicitude is for each one of us personally and individually, as if there was none other traveling except ourselves. The Church, in one of her beautiful hymns, calls the Holy Spirit "the finger of God’s right hand." Just as a teacher will point with his finger to the printed page and explain the writing to the little child, so does this Master in the school of love lay emphasis on the significance and importance of the lessons to be learned and the sound principles which flow from them for the governing of our whole lives, What a vastly different and better world we would have if rulers of nations would. take into the making of their decisions the Spirit of divine light! It is part of His office as teacher to inspire those of us whose office is to tell the Good News, to spread the gospel. "What you have to say," Christ tells us, "will be given to you when the time com6s, because it is not you who will be speaking; the Spirit of the Father will be .speaking in you. "This was verified, for example, in St. Stephen as he stood his trial before his judges: "They found they could not get the better of him because of his wisdom, and because it was the Spirit that prompted what he said. .... If we do not learn Christ interiorly," writes Father Molinari (and so to teach Christ to us is, as we saw, part of the office of the Sanctifier) "if we do not know Him as St. Paul and St. Peter and the other apostles did, we shall betray our mission, which is simply His. We shall preach ourselves and nothing more." If we complain of ineffective preaching, is the explanation to be found here? God’s children, says St. Paul, are "led" by the Spirit. They place their hand trustingly into His hand and allow Him to guide them wherever He would have them go. The supreme example of this docility is Mary, whose fiat was an expression of absolute, unqualified readiness to yield herself to God, and, without questioning, and at times without understanding why, to be molded and fashioned and used just exactly as He willed. "Without a light or guide," to quote St. John of the Cross again, "save that which in my heart burned in my side." Between God and such a soul there is all the delicacy of true love, Whether there be question of ruling the State or writing a letter, of washing a cup or making a trip to the moon, the soul enjoys an habitual serenity, and consults and takes its instructions from the Spirit within. At the same time it remains true that "the most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody... The world is covered with scars that have been left in its flesh by visionaries like these." Thus Father Merton, and he goes on to make a powerful apologia for "obedience to the judgment and guidance of another." Purity of Heart Elsewhere the same author describes the purity of heart which is essential if the Holy Spirit is to be given a free hand for the accomplishment of His designs: "Purity of heart means much more than moral or even ascetic perfection. It is the end of a long process of spiritual transformation in which the soul, perfect in charity, detached from all created things, free from the movements of inordinate passion, is able to live absorbed in God, and is penetrated from time to time with vivid intuitions of His actions, intuitions which plumb the depths of the divine mysteries, which ’grasp’ in a secret and intimate experience not only of Who He is but of what He is doing in the world. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 171 "The man who is pure of heart not only lchows God, the Absolute Being, Pure Act, but knows Him as the Father of Lights, the F~ther of Mercies, Who has so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son for its redemption. Such a man knows Him not merely by faith, not by theological speculation, but by intimate and incommunicable experience." No wonder that such a soul is a prey upon which Satan sets greedy and venomous eyes. "The devil," writes St. John of the Cross, "beholding the prosperity of such a soul, and in his great malice ~nvying all the good he sees in it, now uses all his power, and has recourse to all his devices, in order to thwart it, if possible, even in the slightest degree. He thinks it of more consequence to keep back that soul, even for an instant, from this abundance of bliss and delight, than to make others fall into many and mortal sins. Other souls have little or nothing tolose, whereas this soul has much, having gained many and great treasures; for .the loss of one grain of refined gold is greater than the loss of many of baser metals." In this essay we have aimed at no more than indicating the chapter headings in the marvelous love story. We can only mention St. Paul’s catalogue of the fruits of the Spirit - "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and self-control." What Is Wanting? The rich young man asked Christ: "What is still wanting to me?" If the Church today was t6 put that question to itself, we make bold to answer that its most urgent need is saints, and since sanctity is the perfection of love, and the Third Person is the Spirit of love, it seems fair to suggest that what is wanting is a renewal of devotion to the Holy Ghost. The hatred felt by Satan for a soul possessed by the Spirit, as described by St. John of the Cross, is indicative of its power for good. Pressing closer with our question we have to ask why is all this heavenly doctrine a sealed book to so many of us? Why is there "The Forgotten Paraclete?" When St. Paul asked the Ephesians about Him they had to admit that they had not even heard of Him. It is hard to find words which will be forceful enough to express the magnitude of this disaster. That much, at least, will be clear if we have read through the previous pages. St. Paul warns the Thessalonians not to "quench" the Spirit. This is the abominable ingratitude "of those who live in habitual mortal sin. The sensual man cannot possibly understand the life of the Spirit and His workings in the soul. It is foolishness to him. In a soul subject to grave sin the fire of God’s love which once blazed within is now reduced to a heap of dead ashes. Joy is gone, and peace, and love: "Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he compared himself to the brute beasts and became as one of them." God does not dwell in a soul subject to sin, but, rather, flees from it in horror. We can also "resist" the Holy Spirit, as Stephen told his judges they were always doing. We can clap our hands over our ears feigning deafness, refusing to listen to the pleadings and promptings of the Spirit. We can behave like children hand in hand with mother, who are stubborn, who pit their small strength against hers, trying to drag her down the street on the right when she wants to turn into the street on the left. If we continue to put up resistance like this, God’s inspirations will grow less and less. They might almost cease entirely and we find ourselves sadly estranged from the former friendship between Him and us. Finally we have the terrible power to "grieve" the Spirit of God. This, of course, is said figuratively. Suppose you have a son gifted with brilliant gifts. He goes 172 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 through the university and graduates with high honors. He enters a profession as doctor or lawyer and embarks on a career in which he can be an outstanding success. But he tires of the work. He turns to drink or drugs, becomes an alcoholic or a compulsive gambler and allows all his talents go down the drain, Of course his parents are bitterly disappointed, "grieved" by his failure to make use of his opportunities. To what heigi~ts of holiness the Spirit of God would raise us we have sketched in this paper. We can "grieve" Him by our habitual failure to correspond with the graces He offers us. We can, and we do, and this is a greater calamity for ourselves and for the Church and for the whole world than all temporal misfortunes combined. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thee, as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings - and thou wouldst not!" Noluisti. You refuse to have Me! The remedy? Our attachment to God will be in proportion to our detachment from all that is less than God. There can be no reserves in love. It does not matter much, St. Johnof the Cross tells us, whether a bird is tied with a silken string or a strong cord. In neither case can the bird fly up into the sunlight until the breach is made. Father Merton comments: "Living with other people and learning to lose ourselves in the understanding of their weakness and deficiencies can help us to become true contemplatives. For there is no better means of getting rid of the rigidity and harshness and coarseness of our ingrained egoism, which is the one unbeatable obstacle to the infused light and action of the Spirit of God." "Thaw, Thou, my coldness, which doth now obstruct Thy love, curtailing its full measure" (St. John of the Cross). SISTER MARY SERAPHIM, P.C.P.A. Reasons for Living [Sister Mary Seraphim, P.C.P.A., is a member of Sancta Clara Monastery; 4200 Market Avenue N.; Canton, Ohio 44714.] "We can justly consider that the future of humanity lies in the hands of those who are strong enough to provide coming generations with reasons for living and hoping" (Gaudium etSpes, # 31). The most optimistic document ever written about our modern world here throws down the gauntlet before the would-be leaders of our generation. Who will be the men who will shape the coming age? Those, and only those, whose vision pierces the shallowness of our materialistic society and thrusts forward into the deep potentials of the human spirit. The men who can look at their fellow men and know that they are called to grandness will be the ones who will utter the prophetic word to which hippies and addicts, the drug and drink victims, the morally hardened and the complacent, will hark. Where should we search for such men? The moon, we know, is barren of life; the past has only a faint voice unheard in the melee we generate. Those bogged down with poverty, misery, and despair have not the powers to summon to this task. We must look to the persons who, though fully au courant with contemporary problems, move with marvelous freedom along the margins of the morass. Such is what professed religious men and women should be. It is what the Church and the world expect them to be. Where the vision of religious men falters, their society falters with them. When it is strong and pure, their generation moves ahead with confidence. Disappointed Peers Those of us who have made religion a public demonstratidn of our inner ideals may well tremble at the thought of receiving such a commission from our fellows. Yet, whether we will it or no, such a responsibility does lie upon our shoulders. And where religious have fallen into disrepute among some members of our society, it may well be due to the profound disappointment which these people feel in the religious they have seen, heard, or read about. This disrepute is not the same thing as the scandal which genuine followers of the gospel have stirred up in every age. Rather it is the opposite - the baffled realization by our contemporaries that we have nothing more to give, nor to live for, than themselves. No wonder many young persons could be turned off by professional religious life and seek to live out the deep spiritual ideals of their souls in forms other than organized religious institutes. If professional religious men and women are not alive with vision and hope, then, the young people conclude, it must be because they have stifled their religious creativity withila unghristian structures. Though we may be tempted to say flatly that such a conclusion is invalid, yet we have no. one to blame but ourselves for the misleading appearance we may present to the world. 174 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 Religious have frequently in the past played a decisive role in the salvation of culture and truly human values. Consider the contribution of monks during the so-called Dark Ages. Consider also the influence which far-sighted Roman Pontiffs such as Leo XIII have wielded over the development of social institutions. Not all the contributions of religious men and women have effected immediate or seeable results but the bare fact of their having looked beyond present problems to infinite possibilities has "aerated" the atmosphere sufficiently to keep their contemporaries from stifling in the impenetrable gloom. Even one star on a dark night is infinitely better than total blackness. If religious accept the challenge and responsibility held out to them, they themselves will discover the greatest reasons for living and hoping within the framework of the vowed life. The creeping doubts which afflict some within convents and rectories will be dispelled by the vigor generated by an overmastering purpose - the purpose of providing reasons for vital life and dauntless hope to the men of our times. As alluded,to before, we cannot let ourselves become bogged down in the same morass as many of our fellows. We must stand upon firm certainty as upon a solid rock amid the relativism and cynicism of our age. How are we to avoid being caught in the pervasive "slough of despair" which permeates the world today? I suggest that it is through radical personal poverty. Poverty - High Way of Liberty Poverty alone can effectively set a person at liberty. Only the lightly clad man can travel swiftly through the threats to integrity which abound in all strata of our contemporary milieu. Do objections to this proposal immediately leap into your mind? Do you feel like shouting that all the nitty do’s and don’ts prescribed in the past in the name of "Holy Poverty" did absolutely nothing for your sense of freedom? You would most likely find yourself echoed by sincere religious from all portions of the globe. Poverty has been a much abused virtue in religious life. It has been used to justify innumerable petty regulations that had actually nothing whatsoever to do with the genuine spirit of povert3i as blessed and practiced by Christ our Lord. Poverty, gospel poverty, has an important role to play in the renewal of the Church and her apostolic life today, to say nothing of its urgency in the authentic updating of r~ligious life. Although many thinking persons see that a correct understanding and an authentic practice of this counsel is crucial~ there remains much confusion as to its purpose and place. Why be poor? Because Christ counseled it? Why did He counsel it? When we search through the Scripture to find the basis for religious life as it has developed in the Church, the only one of the three vows traditionally held to be constitutive of the religious state that is specifically prescribed by our Lord is that of poverty: "One thing is still wanting to you: sell all you have and distribute the proceeds among the poor, and you will have an investment in heaven; then come back and be my follower" (Lk 18:22): What then are we to do? Throw everything to the winds - hospitals, mother-houses, monasteries, seminaries? Even that charismatic individual, Francis of Assisi, recognized that his brothers needed a dry place to sleep at night and that they had a right to the wages earned by the labor of their hands. To delve into the real meaning of religious poverty means to delve into the deepest but most revealing aspects of the gospel. True, our Lord said of Himself that He had nowhere to lay His head; yet He did not refuse the hospitality of his friends when it was freely Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 175 offered. He enjoined His disciples to enter the home of a worthy man when they came to a village to preach the Good News and to eat gratefully what was set before them. Christ our Lord knew that, being human and living in the body, we had a need and a right to all that is necessary to sustain our bodily life. Even more, He recognized that man has need of those more intangible "goods" which are necessary to attain a truly human level of life. Moderation versus Gospel Poverty Some in the past have decided that our Lord was actually counseling "modera-tion" in the use of this world’s goods. But was that all He had in mind? Christians living in the secular city, endowed "with the priesthood of the laity, must also practice moderation in material matters. Religious, it would logically seem, must be called to something more. This "more" might be found in the saying of Christ to His missionary disciples: "Go, now; but mind: I am sending you out like lambs among a pack of wolves~ Do not burden yourselves with purse, or bag, or sandals" (Lk 10:3-4). Here the emphasis is clearly .on freedom rather than on material possessions or lack of them. The ~genuine apostle of Christ must be able to move with ease in a society chained to status symbols and hedonistic philosophies. He must be free so that no fear of loss can deter his preaching of the scandal of the Cross and. the glory of life springing from death. The wrestling which today’s apostle engages in requires that ,he have no superfluous "garments" clinging to him that might serve for a handhold for the enemy. Honesty Above All Poverty understood in this light means a certain type of irreproachability which religious must exhibit if their witness to Christ is to be accepted as genuine. Consecrated religious must live what they preach for if they dare to urge others to practices which they themselves do not strive for, their hypocrisy will be quickly unmasked by the sharp eyes of the young and it will never be forgiven them! Our holy Father Pope Paul in his recent Apostolic Exhortation to Religious made this abundantly clear when he said: "In a civilization and a world marked by a prodigious movement of almost indefinite material growth, what witness would be offered by a religious who let himself be carried away by an .uncurbed seeking for his own ease, and who considered it normal to allow himself without discernment or restraint everything that is offered him?" (# 19). He goes on to remind us that we are set. "at the pinnacle of the Christian conscience" and that our vocation demands that we remind all men that their true riches lie in this, that they are called "to share as sons in the life of the living God, the Father of all men" (ibid, # 19). In the light of the foregoing considerations we dare not consider the matter of poverty as irrelevant. There are other considerations also which highlight how crucial this subject is. Do we not hear all around us the voice of our youth crying out against the poverty and abject misery of such a large percentage of the world’s population? Can we answer them by saying we are engaged in collecting funds for the missions or in organizing Christmas "baskets for the poor" campaign? The cry of the poor has not gone unheeded by the ears of religious but has our answer always been the kind that not only relieved material misery but strove to restore lost human dignity? The need to identify with the poor is strongly felt in many quarters today, and it is an authentic response to the need before us. Yet the form that this "identifying" takes may not necessarily involve moving into a ghetto or 176 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 joining the picket’ lines. The genuine identification with the poor which will most benefit them is the identification of the heart. We must know what it is like to live frugally, but at the same time we must also experience that there is profound joyousness in looking from day to day to the hand of our Father. Our poverty ~must speak of the deep Christian virtues of hope, trust, joy. Again Pope Paul put it most succinctly when he remarked: "The [cry of the poor] calls rather for the conversion of hearts, for liberation from all temporal encumbrances. It is a call to love" (ibid, # 17). Our poverty must then be a thing of the spirit. It must be a genuine and visible expression of our real inner despoliation. Unless our witness to poverty is radiant with joyous liberty it will be neither apostolic nor salvific. Brotherhood - Fruit of Poverty The greatest and most logical fruit of genuine religious poverty is the growth of the spirit of brotherhood. A community which freely pools all its resources for the sake of the common good and for the effectiveness of its apostolate gives witness of a deep spiritual communion uniting its members. Although the various religious may be engaged in differing fields of activity, they all draw strength from their common unity. Factions always weaken apostolic effectiveness, and these factions most easily arise where claims are made for special or private sources of personal security. Things have ever served as the source of division among brothers. A true spirit and understanding of poverty places things in their correct and subordinate position in the framework of religious life. It might be claimed that just such pooling of goods fostered in the past an infantilism detrimental to full human development. No one can claim that this has not happened in some instances. But the question may be raised as to whether it was the fact of common life which was at fault or the abuse of it. We might do well to ponder these words of our Holy Father: "The legitimate desire of exercising personal responsibility will not find expression in enjoyment of one’s own income but in fraternal sharing in the common good" (ibid, # 21). He recognizes that personal responsibility is a legitimate desire but at the same time points out that it does not necessarily have to be realized in the realm of private income. One can recognize that the truly mature individual is he who can easily live without possessions of his own and still be genuinely respectful of the possessions of others. A man who has built his house in eternity need not fear that:his temporal dwelling (his human personality) will be left barren. The character of dependence inherent in all forms of poverty is not diametrically opposed to a well-developed and independent personality. If properly understood, it is positively helpful to the fostering ~of such a character. We have only to study the personality of Christ to observe that His utter and childlike dependence on the will of His Father furthered to the utmost the flowering and attractiveness of His human personality. Even when the will of His Father ran counter to seemingly necessary apostolic work, for example, the conversion of the Gentiles (I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel), Christ did not falter in its fulfillment. Poverty in religious life will at times prove to be a hindrance to following through on what may seem vital apostolates. It may even entail leaving much good work undone through lack of resources. Instead of permitting these situations to harrow us with frustration, rather let us Concentrate on being as fully effective as possible within the scope we have. Possibly the radiant example of our humble witness will raise up many more laborers for the Lord’s vineyard than another more brilliant enterprise. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 177 pope Paul says of the witness of religious life: "It is the witness of men and women capable of accepting the abnegation of poverty, and of being attracted by simplicity and humility; it is that of those who love peace, who are free from compromise and set on complete self-denial - of those who are at the same time free and obedient, spontaneous and tenacious, meek and strong in the certainty of the faith" (ibid, #31). Architects of the Future This brings us back to our first challenge - that of providing coming generations with reasons for living and for hoping. Materialism, as a hope for mankind, has been unmasked. Technology has failed to discover the "good world" and the social sciences become increasingly complex without adding light to our despairing contemporaries. We need another St. Francis, as someone observed, to set the cold world on fire again. Actually; I would venture to say, that we need many St. Francis’s if the fire of the gospel is to sweep through our modern society. In a milieu where freedom is a battle cry, we need liberated men and women to preach the magnificent and liberating news of the gospel. In an age where authenticity and personal integrity are scarcely known, we need men and women alive with conviction and unafraid to live it out in all its scope. Where will we find persons whose hands are strong enough to shape the future of humanity? We will find such persons only where liberty of spirit has triumphed over all ~the alluremen’ts of the world, the flesh, and the devil. St. John calls them God’s children. They are the truly simple ones who wander freely through the world proclaiming peace and bestowing joy wherever they go. The ideal of the genuine hippie is not far from that of the little ones of the gospel. These gentle ones have only one desire - to give. For themselves they ask for nothing but the knowledge that they are beloved of God. Poverty. is the beginning of the road to this apostolic witness, but it is not the end. The end is God Himself. Love soon overtakes the truly poor man and lifts him on eagle wings to the bosom of uncreated and overflowing Life. Poverty of spirit is a mysticism rooted in the human but which opens the human for the greatest possible inflow of the divine. If religious really began to live as the anawim of the gospel, would they perhaps be the architects of the future? JEAN GALOT, S.J. The Priesthood of Consecrated Persons [ Jean Galot, S.J., is professor of systematic theology at the Gregorian. University; Piazza della Pilotta, 4; O0187 Rome, Italy. ] What* is the relationship of consecrated persons to the general priesthood of the faithful? The question is not concerned with the ministerial priesthood that pertains to bishops and priests. Rather the concern of this article will be to indicate the relationship of religious consecration and the entirety of the life of the evangelical counsels to the priesthood common to all Christians. At a time when there is being raised the problem of~ the position of women with regard to the priesthood, the determination of this relationship should especially consider in what sense the consecrated woman is called to exercise a genuine priesthood according t.o the doctrine admitted by the Church and expressed by Vatican Council II. It must not be forgotten that there really exists a priesthood that is more fundamental than the ministerial priesthood; yet it would appear that sufficient attention has not been directed to this priesthood and its import for the consecrated life. The Universal Priesthood The constitution Lumen gentium reacted against the tendency to identify the Church with the hierarchy and the priesthood with the ministerial priesthood. The Council deliberately treated the People of God before considering the hierarchical structure; its first cbncern was to enunciate the principle of the universal priesthood that is possessed and exercised by all the members of the Church. The conciliar expressions are borrowed in large part from Scripture ~ this stemmed from a desire to express not theological speculations but the simple reality of revelation: "The Lord Jesus, highpriest taken from among men (see Heb 5: 1-5), has made his new people into a kingdom of priests for his God and Father (see Rev 1:6, 9-10). Accordingly, by the Spirit’s regeneration and unction the baptized are consecrated as a spiritual dwelling place and a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices by all their human activities as Christians and to proclaim the wonderful deeds of the One who has called them from darkness to His own marvelous light (see 1 Pt 2:4-10). This is the reason why all the disciples of Christ, as they persevere in prayer and are uhited in the praise of God .(see Acts 2:42-7), should offer themselves as living victims that are holy and pleasing to God (see Rom 12: 1), should witness to Christ throughout the ’entire surface of the globe, and should furnish those who ask for it an account of the hope for eternal life which is in them (see 1 Pt 3:15)" (Lumen gentium, no. 10). This is a translation of Father Galot’s "Le sacerdoce des personnes consacrdes" which first appeared in La vie des communaut~s religieuses, v. 29 (1971), pp. 208-21. The translation was done by R. F. Smith, S.J. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 179 The idea of a priestly people comes from the old covenant; according to Exodus (19:6), God said to His people: "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation." The Christian perspective provides a new foundation for this priestly quality of the people: The universal priesthood flows from Christ the priest. It is the Lord Christ who shares His priesthood, and this sharing is a true creation: "Of his new people he has made a kingdom of priests." This priesthood has been conferred in a collective way on the people so that at this fundamental level there can be no differentiation among those who have received the same baptism. This is what St. Paul states in his Epistle to the Galatians when he vigorously proclaims the disappearance of inequalities - and notably those which can exist between men and women: "You have all been baptized into Christ; you have put on Christ ... there is neither male nor female, for all of you have been made a single person in Christ" (3:27-8). This text, which has been frequently invoked in the question of who can enter the ministerial priesthood, is actually concerned with the baptismal priesthood. By reason of baptism the community is united in Christ without there being any superiority of men over women. As much as man, woman shares in the most fundamental priesthood of Christ. Fiarthermore, since this priesthood pertains to the people as such in accord with the unity received from Christ, it is exercised in a manner marked by a solidarity such" that each member has need of all the others. Priests need the laity, and vice versa. Similarly, in the accomplishing of the universal priestly mission man has no less a need for the collaboration of woman than the woman has for that of man. There is a mutual dependency in complementarity. The "kingdom of priests" is a whole in which every member plays his part in relation to and solidarity with his comembers. But unity does not make individual differences disappear. These latter constitute the relationship of each one to the priesthood. Paul did not intend to say that henceforth by reason of baptism there would no longer be any difference between man and woman. The difference remains, but it does not involve any inequality; man as man and woman as woman possess to the same degree and with equal intensity one and the same baptismal priesthood. Priestly Consecration and Consecrated Life ~ According to the statement of Lumen gentium, the universal priesthood is defined as a consecration for the sake of a spiritual offering. Even the manner of designating Christ is characteristic in this respect: "a high priest taken from among men" as the Epistle to the Hebrews (5:1) expresses it. The priest is a man taken from among those similar to himself and set aside to live for God. And when Christ makes of His new people a kingdom of priests, it is "for his God and his Father." Priesthood is first of all a belonging to God. This belonging or consecration is realized concretely in baptism: "By the Spirit’s regeneration and anointing the baptized are consecrated as a’spiritual dwelling place." This is a question, then, of a priesthood which is not primarily concerned with doing but with being. It is the personal being of the human person which becomes the dwelling of God, a consecrated temple. As must be evident, this existential modification involves a mystery aspect which is expressed in doctrinal discussions of the matter by the word "character." The character denotes a mark of divine ownership, of consecration, and of configuration with Christ. It is intended to influence the entirety of a Christian’s life, to produce a genuinely Christian way of living, and to make the Christian capable of 180 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 19"/212 accomplishing a mission. But before all it is a divine impress penetrating the very act of a person’s being. What should be noted in a special way’ is that it is God’s will to secure not only the activity of a human being but also the most fundamental aspect of his being itself, that is, the source of all action. Since it is an existential consecration, the priesthood so secured thus possesses a stable and perman6nt value. In order to be entirely complete, it is necessary here to say something about the sacrament of confirmation. Conferred in order to make an adult Christian into a militant in the Church, this sacrament is a reinforcement of the baptismal consecration. The holiness action of the Holy Spirit operates in it to give a stronger impulse towards the exercise of the priesthood and especially to secure a commitment of all the qualities and resources of the person to his ecclesial mission. To this fundamental consecration of baptism and of confirmation, the profession of the evangelical counsels does not add a new consecration by way of a kind of juxtaposition. To be sure, it does involve something new with commitments which were not implied in the baptismal consecration; accordingly, it constitutes, in the expression of the decree Perfectae caritatis, a "particular" consecration. But this new consecration - by its nature not sacramental but charismatic - is intended to bring to full bloom the consecration of baptism and confirmation by going beyond their demands. It tends to deepen a person’s existential belonging to the Lord and to lead to a more intense living of the universal priesthood. In the consecrated life there is involved in a more complete way not only the setting apart which characterizes the priesthood of Christ but also its fundamental orientation to the Father. The setting apart does not denote a pure and simple retreat from the midst of the world; rather it denotes a special expropriation on the part of God with regard to the person who has been chosen by Him. It should be re~alled that the constitution Lumen gentium emphasized the divine expropriation involved, in the profession of the evangelical counsels when it affirmed that the person who pledges himself to the practice of the evangelical counsels is entirely delivered up to God and is most intimately consecrated to the divine service (no. 4). By saying "delivered up" and "is consecrated" rather than "delivers himself up" and "consecrates himself," the constitution wished to emphasize the sovereign action of God who expropriates to Himself the human person. By grasping the individual so completely, this consecratory action of God extends the effectiveness of the priesthood and makes it a greater determinant of the person’s entire life and activity. For it is impossible to conceive the baptismal priesthood as an immobile reality, as incapable of development, or as having the same unalterable profundity in all those who possess it. Without a doubt it is a state, but a state that lives and that seeks to expand as much as possible. In the celibacy vowed for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, in theevangelical poverty that inaugurates a common sharing of all goods, in the life of community characterized by fraternal charity and by obedience, in activity ~ntirely dedicated to the service of the Church, the priesthood takes hold of the living forces of the individual and makes them more efficacious. It is not necessary to note that the consecrated woman is no less engaged in the priesthood than the consecrated man and that her entire existence takes on a deeper priestly value by reason of her profession; accordingly, her existence must be consciously lived as a priestly one. Review for Religiousi Volume 31, 1972/2 181 Priestly Action Priestly action is described by the Council in terms of offering and of witnessing: the offering of oneself as a spiritual sacrifice in all one’s human activities and the proclaiming of the wonderful works of God. The offering is not ritual and liturgical as it is in the ministerial priesthood but "spiritual" - it brings into reality the worship "in spirit and in truth" which Jesus spoke of, for what it wishes to entrust to God is the spirit, that is, the inmost source of man’s thought and commitment. And this offering is to be accomplished in all the human activities of the Christian, for, since the priesthood is an expropriation of the entire being, it directs or inspires the unfolding of ~all activity. No sector of human life is exempt from it. The Christian is engaged in the same activities as any other human being is, but in them he is called to exercise a genuine priesthood by the homage to the Lord of his entire activity. In it he proclaims the "mighty acts" of God, the mighty acts of the divine action which transforms an entire existence by placing it in a light and a life of a higher order. In this way professi6nal work, for example, becomes a priestly offering and is thus joined to the great work of redeeming the world.’ In an age which speaks of desacralization and secularization, this extensiveness of the universal priesthood manifests in a strong way the principle that everything in the world and in human existence is’ destined to take on a sacred character. Desacralization and secularization, to be sure, can be understood in different ways; they can legitimately express the passage from a regime in which the sacred was too exclusively ritual to a regime where the sacred enters all the domains of life. Nevertheless, it would be better to speak of a more complete sacralization: The sacred in its genuine sense according to Christianity extends to everything human without restriction and is opposed only to sin. Accordingly, nothing human escapes tile influence of the fundamental priesthood of the Christian. Similarly, nothing human escapes the influence of the consecration entailed in the profession of the evangelical counsels. This consecration, affecting as it does, the very depths of a person’s being, tends to express itself in every activity. It gives rise to the spiritual offering and confers on it a greater plenitude since in this offering is included the intimate homage of celibacy, of evangelical poverty, and of communitarian life. Every activity of the religious man and woman thereby acquires a-special priestly density. Even if on the exterior level the consecrated person is involved in an activity similar to that of lay persons, his consecration gives to this activity an intense priestly value provided that the latter is truly and sincerely lived as the great love of oners life. It does not constitute a juridical title which automatically increases the moral worth of each action; but in the measure in which it affects a person’s intimate orientation, it animates all actions with a new spirit which elevates them to a higher level in the eyes of God. In order that the exercise of the Christian priesthood in the religious life be more conscious, it is important that one’s activity be conducted with the intention of serving the Church. This intention is more easily assured when the activity itself is directly oriented towards an apostolic purpose. The consecrated person, for example, who teaches religion to children will more spontaneously regard his work as a mission in the name of the Church. But when the activity of itself does not pertain to the apostolate, an effort is required to deliberately integrate the work into the action of the Church and to place it in an ecclesial perspective. And this is the work of" a priesthood that is intended to be exercised in an immolation which seems at first glance to be far from the aims of the kingdom of God. But the 182 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 humblest actions have a sacred character and make their own contribution to the consecration of material things and to their incorporation into the kingdom. The spiritual sacrificing, one’s integral gift to the Lord Himself, is intended to transfigure - quietly and invisibly - all the activities of the consecrated life. Priestly Prayer Taking up an expression of the Acts of the Apostles, the Council describes yet another aspect of the common priesthood when it affirms that "all the disciples of Christ persevered in prayer and the praise of God" (no. 10; see Acts 2:42-7). Priesthood and prayer go together. In the measure that a person is consecrated to God and is sanctified by Him, he is called to pray because prayer is the expression of one’s relationship of intimacy with the Lord. One reality is incomprehensible: a consecrated person who would neglect to speak to Him to whom he pertains by his consecration and who would not be preoccupied with the quest of expressing his lo~,e in encounter and dialogue. When the Letter to the Hebrews attempts a definition of the priest, it recalls that the priest is in the realm o1~ "that which is movement into God" (5:1). To be movembnt into God is nothing else than a definition of prayer, for prayer is the turning unto God of one’s attention, thought, and entire being. The Epistle ~onsiders the priesthood as essentially an intercession; this is why it shows Christ exercising His priesthood in heaven by the supplication which He pours forth to the Father on our behalf (7:25). This intercession derives all its value from the redemptive sacrifice. If the gospel is examined, it is clear that during His public life Jesus showed Himself extremely desirous to live in continued, intimate contact with the Father. Frequently He went out alone into the solitude to pray; and it is clearly to be seen that even outside such times expressly reserved for prayer, His entire stance was dominated by an attention fixed on the Father and His will. All His disciples - and not only those chosen for the ministerial priesthood - are called to share this attitude of prayer. The consecrated life rightly tends to foster this attitude. The community meets together in a special intimate way in prayer, and it recognizes its mission to pray with and for the Church. The basically priestly aspect of this mission deserves to be emphasized. In contemplative communities the time reserved for prayer far surpasses that which is usually given to it in the ministerial priesthood. In this way these communities furnish the activity of priests the prayer support that is necessary for them. Such communities are exercising a more fundamental priesthood by uniting themselves to the priestly prayer of Christ. Active communities cannot devote such a considerable amount of time to prayer; nevertheless, in a more limited manner they also fulfill a mission of the praise of God and of intercession for human beings. Over and beyond communitarian prayer, the life of the evangelical counsels develops and fosters individual prayer. Even if it is not called, as the Office is, the "prayer of the Church," it nevertheless is part of the mission of the Church as is all the consecrated life. It pertains to the exercise of the priesthood of the entire People of God. The person who prays in secret thereby puts himself in communion with the entire Church in prayer. Spiritually he is not alone in his solitude because he is united with Christ and with His entire Mystical Body. It is difficult to really appreciate the full worth of this priestly office of praise Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 183 and intercession because its effects are invisible. But it is indispensable for the spiritual growth and expansion of the Church. Priestly Activities of Reconciliation and of the Eucharist The constitution Lumen gentium has shown how the sacraments bring into operation "the sacred character of the priestly community with its organic structure" (no. 11). If those who profess the evangelical counsels enter more deeply into this priestly community, it should be expected that they should be engaged in a more intense sacramental activity. We will consider here the two sacraments that are more immediately concerned with the ongoing flow of the Christian life: penance and the Eucharist. Why is it that penance involves an exercise of the baptismal priesthood on the part of the penitent? The teaching about this sacrament has clearly shown the role of what are called the acts of the penitent - confession, contrition, satisfaction. These acts pertain to the sacramental sign and, together with the priestly absolution, contribute to the efficacity of the sacrament. Hence the Christian who has recourse to the mediation of the Church in order to obtain pardon for his faults is acting sacerdotally by reason of the priestly power he has received in baptism. To be sure, he needs the ministry of the priest, but this ministry does not destroy the irreplaceable role that the penitent, whoever he may be, is called to fulfill in this sacrament. Perhaps the importance of this can be given further emphasis by addin~ that the one who comes to make accusation of his own personal faults is asking a pardon which is not limited exclusively to his own person. He wants to obtain a grace of purification that extends to the Church and to all mankind. His recourse to the sacrament thus takes on an aspect of intercession for the entire sinful community - a consideration that gives a much more vast and more apostolic meaning. A sacrament can never be a means of self-enclosure within oneself. At the present time the sacrament of penance - and it deserves to be referred to in a better way as the sacrament of reconciliation or the sacrament of pardon - is undergoing a crisis. In religious communities as in the Christian people as a whole, recourse is made to it less frequently. But this crisis furnishes a person with the occasion of asking himself about the worth of this sacrament as well as about the dispositions that it demands. It is especially desirable that it be clearly pointed out to consecrated persons the importance of their intercessory mission for the entirety of humanity "and of their contribution to the conversion of the world of sin. This mission, included as it is in the baptismal priesthood, is destined to be carried out in a more intense way by those who are resolved to follow Christ by associating themselves more intimately with His redemptive work. From the viewpoint of formal recourse to the sacrament, the previous set of conditions appeared a more favorable one; but in reality it was often less favorable from .the viewpoint of interior attitude. However frequent confession may have previously been, many consecrated persons were not conscious of performing a genuinely priestly act in union with the ministerial.priesthood of the priest. And too frequently an individualistic perspective kept them from seeing their action as an act of the Church. The fostering of the sacrament of reconciliation should be effected in the direction of the development of a priestly and ecclesial awareness. The Eucharist assumes an even greater importance. The life of the evangelical counsels promotes participation in the Eucharistic celebration which sho.uld 184 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 normally be a daily one for a community of consecrated persons. The exercise of the baptismal priesthood finds in it a remarkable flowering of itself. A person should reread the words of Lumengentium (no. 11) and apply them in a special way to the religious community. In the Eucharist ~onsecrated persons are called to renew the offering of their profession by their personal oblation. This offering, inserted into that of Christ, can truly be said to be the deepest truth of their priesthood. Priestly worship cannot consist solely or even essentially in a ritual gesture. It must reside in the offering of the person, just as this was accomplished in Jesus. In making present and in renewing His consecration, the consecrated person gives the Eucharist its full sense and’ fully exercises his baptismal priesthood. There thus appears in clearer light the necessity for the collaboration of the baptismal priesthood with the ministerial priesthood. The minister of the Eucharist exercises his power to make present the sacrifice of Christ. But the words of Consecration and their effecting of the presence of the Body and the Blood of Jesus do not: constitute the entirety of the sacrament. The purpose of the Eucharist is the incorporation of the Church and of Christians into the sacrifice of the Lord. Here it is that the priesthood of the baptized must intervene, for only the participants can make the offering of themselves. In giving himself entirely to the Lord, the consecrated person fulfills a sacerdotal role that allows the Eucharistic sacrifice to attain its objective. No less important is the effect of the communitarian assembly; through the Eucharist the priestly community is ceaselessly remade. The fruit of the sacrifice canonlybe the unity willed by Christ, and the Commfinion banquet reinvigorates mutual love. For those who profess the evangelical counsels, two aspects of this unity are specially assured by the Eucharist: The members of the same institute or of the same community are more solidly linked with each other, and at the same time they are more integrated into the unity of the People of God. It can be safely affirmed that this is a case of a primary objective of the universal priesthood coinciding with an equally primary objective of the consecrated life. The religious community, confirmed and strengthened in its unity by the Eucharistic Christ, is made more priestly, more "consecrated"; and it becomes in a profounder sense a community of the Church. Prophetic Witnessing to the Faith In its doctrinal exposition of the priesthood, the Council has put emphasis on the prophetic function. Far from wanting to enclose the priesthood within a cult perspective, the Council, in the case of the hierarchical ministry, has assigned the ¯ priesthood as its first mission teaching and preaching. Likewise the baptismal priesthood is not limited to sacramental activity: "The holy People of God also share in the prophetic function of Christ" (Lumen gentium, no. 12). What does this function mean? The Council speaks of the living witness to Christ by a life of faith and of charity, and it insists even more strongly on the role of all the faithful in the development of the faith of the Church. The term "prophetic" can be justified by the fact that in the soul of the baptized the sense of faith "is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth" - a sense that p~rmits the faithful to receive and interpret the word of God (Lumen gentium, no. 12). Each Christian is placed within the heart of the ecclesial community and is under the influence of the Holy Spirit who makes him be penetrated with the divine light and to radiate it around him. In this way each Christian contributes to Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 185 the progress of the Christian faith. For consecrated persons this prophetic function is in accord with the charismatic nature of their consecration. Consecrated life arises from charismatic inspiration. In its brief sketch of the historical development of the forms of practicing the evangelical counsels, the decree Perfectae caritatis mentions only that this develop-ment was effected "under the impelling force of the Holy Spirit" (no. 1). This impelling force is operative not only at the origins of religious institutes; it also animates in a personal way each consecrated person, for each one shares in the charism of the community into which he has been called. In this way each one is invited to live his consecration in a charismatic.way by entering into close - relationships with the Holy Spirit and by bringing himself to be welcomely docile to all His inspirations. These charismatic inspirations are not limited to the practical details of conse-crated life but embrace - and this in a notable way - the entire life of faith. The profession of the evangelical counsels tends by its nature to lead to a faith that is more enlightened and more profound - a faith that should benefit the entire Church. In the handing over of an entire life to the Lord, there is implied an adherence to Christ in which the risk that is faith is fully assumed; the consecrated person witnesses that it is fully worthwhile to give all to Him whose, present-day callings renew the callings spoken of in the gospel. Accordingly, religious or secular institutes are intended to give a particularly vital witness of faith, and this witnessing is the exercise of their baptismal priesthood. They are charged with a special responsibility for the growth of the faith of the Church, for its deepening, and for its diffusion. By welcoming the light of the Holy Spirit, they should bring themselves to a better perception of the meaning of the Christian message, to a better understanding of what they believe and especially of the One who in Himself sums up the entire "truth-to-believe." Likewise, they should share their conviction with others, strengthen the faith of those around them, and make known the true personality of Christ. Let us recall here that the gospel has particularly emphasized the importance of women in witnessing to the faith. Besides the decisive influence of the faith of Mary i~ her acquiescence to the mystery of the Incarnation and in the first public revelation of Christ at Cana, there is clear indication of the priority role of the women who had followed Jesus with regard to faith in the resurrection and its diffusion. This is only a way of saying that in a special way the consecrated woman has a mission in the strengthening and expansion of the faith. Contrary to the usages of previous times when consecration was deemed sufficient to dispense religious women from a deepened doctrinal formation, women’s communities are now called to a systematic cultivation of the faith both . by doctrinal study and by existential attitude. Their communities should constitute a milieu where the faith is expressed with greater freedom and conviction and where reaction to all the events of the world are experienced in a desire to be united in them to God and to Christ. The Living Witness of Charity Jesus has established an indissoluble bond between the love due to God and the love due to one’s neighbor. Accordingly, the baptismal priesthood which attaches a human being to God at the same time attaches him to all his brothers in Christ. This priesthood demands to be exercised in the area of charity. A holiness that would be concerned only with the relationships of an individual with the Lord would be 186 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 basically insufficient; it must extend horizontally in relationships with all men.. Moreover, Jesus conceived His own priesthood as a love for mankind closely associated with His love for the Father. As is shown in the parable of the Good Samaritan, He thereby detached Himself from the Jewish priesthood with its disinterest in the love of others. He presents Himself as the servant of all, firmly resolved to furnish that supreme service which would be the offering of His life. When He affirmed that His followers would be recognized by the sign of their mutual love, He made it understood that this love would truly be an essential characteristic of Christian life. Hence all sharing in His priesthood can only be a sharing in His charity which should leave its mark on one’s whole way of living. There is a prophetic aspect in the witnessing of charity which the Christian is called to give, for this witnessing throws a light issuing from the Holy Spirit on the communitarian destiny of mankind and on the unity of all mankind in Christ. Nevertheless, charity surpasses the prophetic function of the baptismal priesthood. It is not only the preaching of love; it is the reality of divine love pouring itself out into human hearts. Religious communities are calied to give an impressive witness of mutual love - that of communities brought together by Christ and determined to live in and of His love. This witness is a double one: that of the love within a community and that of the love given to all. There should be discerned in this a genuine exercise of the most fundamental kind of priesthood. It would be superfluous to emphasize the value of this priestly mission: The diffusion of charity is absolutely necessary for the effective establishment of the kingdom of God. The priestly mission of charity extends to an indefinite variety of aspects and of manifestations. From this point of view it would be impossible to exhaust all that is required by baptismal priesthood. Consecrated persons are especially invited by their calling to a greater discovery of the demands of love and thereby to a greater realization of their priesthood. Let us emphasize the immensity of the horizons that charity opens up to the priesthood of the consecrated woman. A priesthood that essentially consists in loving offers to the woman who follows Christ in the way of the evangelical counsels a deployment of all her resources of spirit and of heart as well as a fulfillment of her feminine personality. The most priestly woman is the one who makes the most absolute gift of herself to God and to her neighbor. She who loves to the utmost by forgetting and effacing herself and by serving others becomes by this very love more profoundly consecrated and exercises her priesthood in a more integral fashion. Conclusion The universal priesthood of Christians deserves more attention from the view-point of the flowering it contributes to the life of the evangelical counsels. The dignity given to the hierarchical priesthood has for centuries overshadowed the value of the baptismal priesthood. Yet this latter priesthood holds first place in the Church, and the consecrated life permits it to be lived with a greater profundity. Thereby both the consecrated woman and the consecrated man find in their consecration the possibility of realizing and exercising with a special intensity the unique priesthood of Christ. SISTER M. ROMANUS PENROSE, O.S.B. Virginity and the Cosmic Christ [ Sister M. Romanus Penrose, O.S.B., is a member of the Benedictine Convent of Perpetual Adoration; 8300 Morganford Road;St. Louis, Missouri 63123.] Last year when seven of us participated in the newly revised consecration of virgins ceremony at our motherhouse in St. Louis, we realized many people would question that anyone would want to give public witness to virginity at this particular time when the validity of celibacy itself is debated. We candidly discussed the possibility of our being out of it, of being anachronistic in an age and a qulture which does not consider virginity a positive value, Since the consecration meant so much to us personally, we decided to probe more deeply into our own motivations and into the mystery of consecrated virginity itself. We had no wish to. criticize the rationale, discussions, and investigations that presently urge voluntary celibacy for diocesan priests of the Western Church. At the same time we did want to bring into sharper focus the positive value which we feel is somewhat clouded by this issue. This article embodies the feelings and views of the seven of us who reaffirmed our vow of celibacy and asked the Church to accept this .reaffirmation through a solemn consecration. I would like to share these thoughts with you" as well as develop one particular aspect which l feel has special relevance for our own day. One. sister said: "The consecration speaks of faithful love in a special manner to our insecure and unfaithful age. As a consecrated virgin I want to be intent on living my role well so that the power and presence of Christ in me may in some way help everyone draw strength to be true, valiant, and really free." Another said: "The consecration seems relevant for our time which is characterized in America by meaninglessness and unhappiness. By the consecration the virgin solemnly offers that which she has lived in joyous undaunted love and proclaims unflinchingly her desire to continue living it into eternity." Still another: "Today when celibacy is so much questioned I think this ceremony is particularly relevant, indicating as it does, that the seven of us do find religious life meaningful and are able to find fulfillment in it. It is something of a climax in my religious life and indicates my complete self-surrender to Him who first called me. I belong to Him and He to me - forever !" One expressed it this way: "By the gift of celibate love, God’s gift to me and mine to Him, I have vowed, dynamically fixed my will in a living, life-giving ’Here I am,’ totally available, virginally empty, attentive and attuned to the presence of Him who asks the question, ’Where are you?’ Virginal love is love at Ks deepest level. It is my desire to respond through this consecration that I am here.., from God. I am herefor God, celebrating creation and life, and with joy and grateful praise, one with God’s beloved Son in His eternal yes to the Father’s love, alive with their Spirit... God is asking me together with every other man to share life.., to be the grain of wheat which brings forth fruit for other men. Some share life 188 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 through marriage vows and exclusive love. God disposed me psychologically to share life by religious vows in celibate love, i.e., in a deep communion of love with Him, and through that communion of warmth of trustful love and concern for all men." A final comment was: "I see consecrated virginity, if I live it with enthusiasm, as the way of achieving the great, absolute good in my life. It frees me to pursue the tone thing necessary’ - total dedication to the Lord - with the totality of my being. It enables me to say to the whole community of His people, ’I am for you.’ It enables me to say that love of God surpasses and is more satisfying than any other love and to concretize in dramatic fashion the transcendent element found in all true human love. I see consecrated virginity as a value of cosmic proportions. In a world which today acknowledges the evolutionary process as a fact, virginity constitutes a most important role in the ’building up of the earth.’ " It is the last quotation which I would particularly like to develop more precisely, for, it seems to me, it points out the crucial importance of virginity today, The current contemporary attitude toward voluntary virginity can probably be summed up in Sidney Callahan’s observation: "A compulsively coupled society, such as that which marks the contemporary American scene, degrades and despises single persons who are not sexually ’fulfilled.’ ’’~ I would like to suggest that this earthy attitude, which equates experience of genital sexuality with fulfillment, goes contrary, paradoxically, to another contem-porary attitude which emphasizes incarnational theology. In fact, if we agree with Teilhard de Chardin’s vision of the evolutionary process, we can more clearly see that voluntary celibacy even constitutes a value of cosmic proportions. He sees this whole process, which is a process of unity, as a movement of love. According to Teilhard, this movement toward unification can be found even in the lowest forms of life. As the movement progresses, the forms of love become transformed and incorporated into a more complex synthesis. (complexification). The original forms do not completely disappear with each new stage, but are transformed and elevated. In other words, ther~ is both continuity and discon-tinuity in the process. As the higher forms of life appear, this movement toward unity becomes more complex; but at the same time, unity itself becomes more evident, espgcially as seen in the later stages of evolution: in the realm of sexual passion, parental love, and social communion. The advent of man in the universe provokes a crisis because of man’s reflective power. Tfiis movement, which Teilhard calls divergence, thougi~ threatening the evolutionary process, is corrected by a countermovement of convergence that brings about a corresponding progress in consciousness. Increased consciougness, in turn, contfiins possibilities of both greater good and greater evil: It is precisely here that the theme of love emerges in all its crucial importance. For itis only love which is able to "cement" together the noosphere into a genuinely physical or organic unity and thus bring evolution to its completion, that is, to that stage of superreflection and superhumanity which is the necessary but insufficient preliminary to the Parousia.2 At this stage, Teilhard says, a universalized love is a biological necessity. This poses a problem for man, however, as it seems he can only love a rather restricted number of persons. If he tried to love everyone and the whole cosmos, he would most likely end loving nothing. The problem, which Teilhard himself raises, is also 1 Sidney Callahan, "Sex and the Single Catholic," Critic, February-March 1968, p. 50. 2Donald Gray, "Teilhard de Chardin’s Vision of Love," Thought, Winter 1967, p. 523. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 189 resolved by him when he tells us to look at the evolutionary process itself. In the earlier stages the development of consciousness is concerned primarily with the interaction between matter and spirit and tangential and radial energy. However, with man a certain independence from the material and tangential is achieved so that the movement of evolution begins to take place more and more in the order of the spiritual radial. It is as it were a spiritual molecularization which must occur and it is love (the highest form of radial energy), and of necessity a non-restrictive, nondivisive form of love, which makes such molecularization possible.3 Thus it is complexification in the 6rder of spirit rather than matter which gives rise to the highest levels of consciousness. According to Teilhard, tangential energy will disappear and only radial energy, of which love is the highest form, will remain at the Parousia. Man becomes increasingly but never totally independent of his material base as evolution advances. Such a universal love is necessary to molecularize the whole noosphere in order to achieve the Parousia, but it is also vital for the individual person who can only be brought to full personalization by involvement in the whole. Although our individualistic instincts may rebel against the drive towards the collective, they do so in vain and wrongly. In vain because no power in the world can enable us to escape from what is in itself the power of the world. And wrongly because the real nature of this impulse that is sweeping us towards a state of superorganization is such as to make us more completely personalized and human.4 Other current writers have expressed this same idea from different points of view. Perhaps they amplify the specific details of self-fulfillment: Love of one person implies love of man as such.s In contrast to symbiotic union, mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow man, which unites himwith others; love makes him overcome the sense "of isolation and separateness, yet permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.6 If we want to conceive the community as a totality, a sort of "whole," then it will have to be a "whole made up of wholes.’’7 Thus, it is through the universalization of love that we discover our own uniqueness. We cannot be fully personalized without being totalized, that is, more participative in the whole. Teilhard believes this could happen only in an evolving u~iverse where all things are organically related, where there is a solidarity antt interdependence of all things with and upon one another, In a book entitled Teilhard and Personalism, Andre Ligneul allays some of the fears that totalization leads to dehumanizing collectivism: Union personalizes through the gentle influence of internal forces of attraction, not under the pressure of external forces of coercion. This totalization differentiates what it unites, that is to say, procures for each one his optimum fulfillment and uniqueness. But only the unanimization resulting from the participation of each freedom will lead to a personal universe. The more persons are deliberately communitarian, the more collective forces will function conformably to the structure of free elements.8 31bid., pp. 524-5. 4pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 124-5. 5Erich F’romm, The Art of Loving (New York: Harper and Row, 1956), p. 59. 6Ibid., pp. 20-1. 7Robert Johann, The Meaning of Love (Westminster: Newman, 1959), p. 28. 8Andre Ligneul, Teilhard and Personalisra (New York: Paulist, 1968), p. 36. 190 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 However, how is it possible for man to achieve the epitome of universal love? Teilhard finds the answer in the personal Omega, Christ, who transcends the universe and is at the same time immanent in it. He who is both loving and lovable achieves this universal love by exerting a transforming influence over men that draws them toward the Center, Himself, at the same time that it draws them into unity with one another. In short, a whole doctrine of grace is implied in the universalizing power of Christ-Omega over human love-energy. This is a love which man on his own could never achieve. It is charity. Charity, which is a universal love, is the word of Christ in man and it implies a transcending of all the limited forms of human love which, even when they are positively good, are still divisive of the noosphere because they are not all-encompassing. Christian charity, then, completes love-energy by universalizing and supernaturalizing it.9 And so it is charity that builds up the universe. However, before we can speak about love in its fulfillment, we must see love as it is in process. Only then will we understand the vital role virginity has in the process. Teilhard sees the manifestation of the power of love coming to consciousness within us in three successive stages: "In woman (in her love for man), in society, and in the totality - through the sexual sense, through the human sense, and through the cosmic sense.’’1° He sees each of these stages of love becoming more profoundly interior, more spiritual, than the preceding one. ¯.. little by little, love begins to reveal its own proper characteristics without however being able to disengage itself clearly from the mere function of reproduction. It is only at the stage of hominization that love in its fully developed form makes its appearance. Its true power is visible only at this stage. "Hominized" love is distinguishable from every other form of lo~;e by the very fact that its warm and penetrating light has been incredibly enriched. It is now no longer a unique and periodic form of attraction bound exclusively to material reproduction, but rather it has become a limitless and thereby restless possibility for contact through spirit rather than simply through the body. Its innumerable but subtle antennae pierce to the delicately nuanced depths of the soul in such a way that its attractive power leads to a mutual growth in sensitivity and ultimately to mutual fulfillment,l 1 The quotation above indicates that love manifested physically should express and create a personal union of spirit between the couple and at the same time lead them out of themselves, cause them to transcend themselves. This is the universal, spiritual aspect of human love. This is the "change of state" within the noosphere; "and this process is a step towards the collective approach of the human to the divine.,,12 This is the ideal role sex can and ought to play in universalizing love. At the same time, we must remember, the physical expression of love and the thing expressed, though related, are not one and the same reality. And the thing expressed, that is, openness, receptivity, and self-giving to the other, is more important than the expression itself. Donald Gray points out: "While sex can provide a point of 9Donald Gray, "Teilhard de Chardin’s Vision," p. 528. 101bid., P- 530, quoting from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "Esquisse d’un universe personnel" (1936), published in his Oeuvres, v. 6, pp. 90-1. 1 llbid., P- 532, quoting from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "L’esprit de la terre" (1931), pub1l2iCshheadrl eisn hFirse iObeluev, rSes.J, .v, ." 6T, epi.l h41a.rd, Sexual Love, and Celibacy," Review for Religious, v. 26 (1967), p. 289, quoting from Claude Cuenot’s Teilhard de Chardin: A Biographical Study (Baltimore: Helicon, 1965), pp. 28-9. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 191 departure toward spiritualization and ultimately universal love, it often does not.,,i 3 This same author discusses the problem that in human sexual love causes the crisis we have already seen in the picture at the stage of reflection in the evolutionary process: In the concrete order of things sex is by no means an unambiguous reality. That this is the case becomes clear, first of all, in the fact that sexual attraction constitutes but a limited overcoming of the general repulsion which occurs with the appearance of reflection and which is concretely manifested in the tendency of each individual to close in on himself. Hence in and of itself it cannot produce that unitive energy which planetaxy molecularization requires and which only a universal love ("the cosmic sense") can provide. Secondly, there is a tendency for the couple to reenact at their own level that turning in upon themselves which is visible at the individual level. And finally there is the danger of seeking union precisely through matter, which holds qut the possibility "of union as a lure" and which leads only to separation and multiplicity, rather than through the spirit which alone leads to genuine unity by way of synthesis. I 4 I suggest that consecrated virginity, vibrantly lived, contributes a breakthrough in the divergent element described above, bringing into play the convergence necessary to usher in the Parousia. I would also pose a question: If we believe in the evolutionary process as envisaged by Teilhard and say that God’s work in this process depends on our own, is it reasonable to neglect or minimize this particular area of the process in our thinking and discussions? If we sincerely believe that man aids or hinders this movement, should we not take his responsibility in this area at least as seriously as we do his building up of the earth in other areas, such as technology, social justice, and so forth? Should we, not speak of this process in terms of total growth, and is virginity not part of it? It is true Teilhard (at least in the sources I was able to use) never explicitly said he expected to have this eschatological reality take place universally in the realm of history. However, he implies it when he talks of the future as "an entirely virginized universe,’’~s and says, "it is in this way (i.e., through a shift toward the properly spiritual tasks necessary at the later phases of the process of evolution) that virginity will tend to supplant the state of marriage.’’~6 He seems to see celibacy and the sublimated sexual sens~ (the transcendent aspect of physical union) as the way of the future: "But this is particularly true of celibacy which spiritualizes love to the utmost and in so doing overcomes the ambiguities inherent in sex.’’~ 7 It is not our purpose to suggest that everyone must become a consecrated virgin, or that there are no difficulties involved, but perhaps we can come to some conclusions. I believe in Teilhard’s thesis: Virginity is the sign that that unity which the physical unity of marriage attempts to induce can be achieved here and now without the sign - through the power of Christ. I believe, further, that virginity is not just a sign of the Parousia but is an integral and vital element in that movement which will bring it into reality. It seems logical then to conclude that not only will there be more virgins immediately preceding the Parousia, but that those who are 13 Donald Gray, "Teilhard de Chardin’s Vision," p. 534. 14Ibid., p. 533. 151bid., p. 535, quoting from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s "L’eternel feminin" (1918), published in his Ecrits du temps de la Guerre (Paris: Seuil, 1956), p. 260. 16 Ibid., p. 535, quoting from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s "Mons univers" (1918), published in his Ecrits du temps de la Guerre (Paris: Seuil, 1956), p. 2"/6. 17ibid., P- 535. 192 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 married will be living more "virginal," transcendent lives at the time of that stage of development. Today we see the mass media presenting sex as an item divorced from love. This is degrading to the person. We hear cries of protest about the validity of a life of consecrated virginity. It all makes us wonder if this is possibly a stunted area in the evolutionary process or if those who have vowed virginity are unaware of the full implications of their responsibility in this area. In an article entitled, "Teilhard, Sexual Love and Celibacy," Father Charles Freible says: Teilhard understands our Lord to have definitively authenticated celibacy as a human aspiration that had been maturing in the human soul. Consequently, in Teilhard’s eyes Christ’s celibacy must witness to the higher form of life toward which the human race as a whole is tending. In our Lord’s celibate example, then, we have in fact a twofold witness: a "here and now" or incarnational witness to the essentially spiritual foundation of all personal union, because Christ actually achieved the deepest possible personal union with both men and women without there being any passion or genital expression of His love.for them; and a "hereafter" or eschatological witness, which points to the eventual state of ultimate union of persons, both men and women, in oneness of ~eing through love, in which "there will be no marrying or giving in marriage.’’l 8 To say all of this is not to deny the ascetical aspects required by celibacy. On the other hand, it is not to say that abnegation in this area is an end in itself: However much we stress - rightly - the relevance of God’s transcendent salvation to this world, its presence in history, its transforming influence upon personal relationships and life in community, in brief, its cosmic meaning, it remains true that each of us, and the world as a whole have to pass through death to resurrection and the final Kingdom. Man does not reach his true fulfillment in this life, even in a happy Christian marriage. And it is the poor and empty, the deprived and suffering, the humanly unfulfilled who are particularly blessed, because they have, if they but recognize it, a ¢greater receptivity for God’s transcendent gift, fewer obstacles to block their acceptance of Thus, even in the virgin’s more visible witnessing of the unfulfillment which is the lot of all mankind, there are eschatological implications. Virginity implies disposses-sion, the necessary element for entering the kingdom of the anawim. The virgin says concretely in the flesh that in making oneself available to others on a more universal scaie, we become more open, receptive to the Other in whom all fulfillment is found. Those who witness to virginity in community have the special advantage of a collective witness. Hopefully, all the present-day attempts to create and foster community will put the witness of virginity into sharper focus and thus aid the process I am speaking about. It is Christian charity, universal love, that will bring about that final amorization of the universe. Virginity is to give witness to that community of love found in the Trinity and this is the love for which Jesus prayed: "... that they may be one, even as we are one’.’2 0 ... "I in them and Thou in Me, that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me and hast loved them even as Thou hast loved Me.’’2 ~ "... that the love with which Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them." What might result if the witness of consecrated virgins was so cosmic that it 18Charles Freible, S.J., "Teilhard, Sexual Love, and Celibacy," po 290. 19Charles Davis, "Empty and Poor for Christ," America, October 8 1966, p. 420. 20jn 1"/:11. 21jn 17:23. 22jn 17:26. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 193 shouted out to all loud and clear: "You are greater than you think. This love which you periodically experience as transcendent now is just a small foretaste of what is to come. Look, it is possible to live in total self-giving, in openness to others, in total free response to Love. And see: in living this life of love, we do not lose our uniqueness. Indeed, our individuality is enhanced precisely to the degree our love is universalized!" I wonder what effect this might have, particularly on the mass media, the chrrent opponents of the celibate life, and on those good Christians who wonder what this Trinitarian life is all about anyway? What might result if this witness were given not just by individuals, but in a communal way, en masse, so to speak? Perhaps all this sounds idealistic? However, idealism has always been the starting point for any practical action. I believe the time is ripe for this message. As Sidney Callahan writes, speaking to a world presently crying for freedom and equality, plagued by despair, and looking for authenticity: Those who choose dedicated celibacy live the sign of incompleteness, of fulfillment to come, of aspiration to a more complete community and perfect unity... The affirmation of hope implicit in their life choice proclaims that the world community is incomplete, that now is not enough, that the status quo will not satisfy.23 The practice of celibacy affirms that being a human being is much more important than one’s initial identity as a male or female.24 Only a great love determined to ~’ace any obstacles will be able to accomplish this work. Yet we must always keep in mind that virginity is a gift. Charles Davis implies his realization of this truth in an interview which took place shortly after his own marriage. He insists that an intense prayer life must accompany a life of consecrated virginity. ¯.. Celibacy can only be really met by a love of God that is really mystic. There has to be the kind of intimacy with God that is not simply a commitment and an endeavor to love God effectively and to meet Him in prayer, but has a mystical quality which can psychologically replace the intimacy that is found with another human being.2s Such a life of prayer and deep union with God is necessary to enable the virgin to live a fruitful life and to avoid the ever present possibility of incentration which threatens to slow up the evolutionary process: ¯ . . universal love cannot be conceived of as a work of man but rather only as a work of God in man since it is identical with that charity which is the specific characteristic of the Christian phylum. This is not to. say that Christ has not been active in the unification of the universe. from the beginning, but only that at a certain stage of evolution His activity is seen to be that of an immanent-transcendent center of divinization. In other words, it is at the later stages of evolution that the whole movement toward molecularization in the spirit is seen to be a work of grace.2 6 To summarize, voluntary virginity, vibrantly lived, constitutes a major break-through in the process of evolution which will eventually usher in the Parousia. It constitutes this breakthrough because through voluntary virginity the universaliza-tion of love - the spiritualization of love - is realized here and now in concrete form. It brings into play the divergent element necessary in each major phase of the evolutionary process. The possibility of the virgin’s closing in upon self (incentra-tion), becoming a sterile celibate, is also present in such a radical choice; however, 23Sidney Callahan, "Sex and the Single Catholic," p. 56. 241bid., p. 59. ~SCharles Davis, "Charles Davis - What Next?" National Catholic Reporter, July 10 1968, p. 26Donald Gray, "Teilhard de Chardin’s Vision," p. 531. 194 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 this possibility need not follow. A dynamic life of consecrated virginity also realizes the convergent element because it spiritualizes to the highest possible degree love ordinarily expressed physically in marriage. If lived authentically, such a virginal life expresses openness and availability in a completely human way. Some may say this is a different way: they may say virginity constitutes realized eschatology, that is, living in the here and now a life of love that achieves fulfillment without marriage or the giving in marriage. I say the elements are present in a life of consecrated virginity. It is for the joyous, available celibates to prove that this is so. ANDREE EMERY Experience in Prayer [Dr. Andrde Emery is a member of the Society of Our Lady of the Way and lives at 127 South Arden Boulevard; Los Angeles, California 90004.] Prefatory Note Recently I gave a series of conferences on friendship in religious community to our nuns. In one conference, I touched on the very rare instances in life where one experiences intuitive friendship on a very deep level instanter. The example 1 gave from my own life was the beautiful and charming woman who once, as a complete stranger, asked me to autograph a book for her. It happened at a meeting of superiors. It was six years ago, when you knew a religioqs a block away, because of what she wore. Who was this, thought I. What was she doing there? Then, someone introduced her as a superior of the Secular Institute of Our Lady of the Way. Somebody else instructed my ignorance and told me she was-bn the staff of Hacker Clinic. Others gradually nudged me into the knowledge that this woman was a very famous person, a leader in religious renewal on the profounder level, that she spent most "days off" from the Clinic giving workshops to priests, seminarians, nuns. All very interesting. But my immediate concern was that this delightfully witty woman who stood by, telling me an hilarious story about a Jesuit in a sweater who was spotted for a Communist. on an international flight and exposed by her as being a quite harmless and pious man of the cloth, while I wrote my name in a book for her, had established instant contact with the core of myself. A wave of intuitive friendship flowed between us before I knew that her name was Andrde Emery. Since then, she has given two workshops for our federation of monasteries, classes at many monasteries, individual counseling for many contemplatives. And last summer we read in our refectory the typescript of her "meditation" which follows here: The reader’s voice caught on the last sentence. There was a hush. And, without words, there rang through our refectory the same response that Edith Stein made when she first read Teresa of Avila’s autobiography: "This is the truth." It is the truth I sensed in 1965, sitting on a stair, writing in her book. - Mother Mary Francis, P,C.C., Roswell, New Mexico. Going through my old notebooks, I remembered that I promised you the outline of a meditation on prayer. Shortly before last Christmas, I was asked by a community of teaching brothers to serve on a team that would give them a three-day retreat. The theme assigned to me by the priest-retreatmaster (I was the "other" member of the team) was "discernment of spirits" as it applied to the topics that heplanned to cover. I do not think that Father expected me to have the lgnatian background necessary for a spiritual discussion. He probably assumed that, through my clinical practice, I might have something to convey on the psycho-logical level. The topics selected, or rather requested by the brothers, were "Community" and "Prayer." A week or so before the retreat, I confidently sat down to make notes on what I thought would be the main points under consideration. I hoped that I guessed Father’s general point of view correctly, but was prepared to adapt my *The text of this article was originally a letter to a friend and an adviser of the author. 196 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 conferences as I listened to him. I did not have any trouble drafting several pages on the discernment of spirits in community life. But, when it came to the subject of prayer, I found myself in a, to me, strange state of mind. I had to put pencil and typewriter to rest. The retreat was only a few days away and I was busy with patients at the clinic and with Christmas preparations at home, I had, therefore, a valid excuse for skipping research on discernment of spirits in prayer, a subject that all at once seemed to me strange and unfamiliar. To tell the truth, I did not want to fill my head with the thoughts of others. I had little desire to read. In the more than half century since I learned to read, I have read many books on prayer, spirits, and the Spirit. No doubt, some of what I have read would come to my mind as I concentrated on the subject, but I did not want to be distracted by searching for the origins and authors of my thoughts. All I wanted was time to think about the questions which suddenly became burning issues in my mind: How do I know that I am praying? that I am praying in the right spirit? that it is the Spirit who is speaking with me, to me, in me? The following is asummary of my thoughts on that wintry afternoon and on several snowy mornings up in the high desert during the retreat. I feel sure that nothing in it is original. I have read or heard these considerations somewhere some time, but I cannot tell when or where. If you can and wish to identify any, please do so. I would gratefully give credit to my source, but I have no desire to do the research. I feel that it would spoil the spontaneity and the impact of the meditation that nearly converted me, if not the Brothers to whom I gave a less personal version. Ultimately, insight is nothing more than seeing the familiar in a new relationship. 1 present these thoughts to you and to three other friends, in the hope that your comments will spur me to delve deeper into the matter, and that I might, with God’s grace finish the process that began the week before Christmas. Or rather, that God in His great goodness will consummate my conversion. While I shall be grateful if you point out whom I am unwittingly plagiarizing~ please do tell me first of all, whether or not I am on the right track in my search for the Spirit! On my part, I feel as if I would be writing, or rather living, a prose poem, the Hound of Heaven in reverse. As so many other times, I started my meditation with a favorite theme: Ever since the world was young, man has wanted to be like God. From the time he reached for the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden until now, man has pretended to be omnipotent, omniscient and deathless. Today we fancy that if not individually, if not presently, surely in the none-too-distant future man will perfect himself. He will evolve into a superior species. We will become gods. Psychologists call this the most ancient delusion of mankind. But, then, in what we fear might be an hour of truth, we look at ourselves, and we fall from the heights of pretension into the depths of despair. We shudder at the magnitude of our folly. What are we but puny organisms whose fleeting life is rightly called by the Psalmist unenduring like the withering grass. We. are tiny destructive creatures in an immense universe, rapidly grinding our beautiful little planet into devastation. Yet, this yearning to be like God persists. Could it be that this craving is not totally senseless, not completely delusional? Couldn’t we, like small particles, be Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 ¯ 197 turning toward the magnetic mass from which we originated and with which we seek to be reunited? Or to speak in St. Augustine’s terminology: How could man, created in the image of God attain rest until he found his creator, his origin, his model? All human beings wish for wholeness, either by asserting their individuality, their independence, their uniqueness, or by submerging themselves in a community, be it family, clan, nation, race, or class. Some seek it in the unattainable: in complete union with another human being. One of the great traumas of married life occurs only in happy marriages, because in unhappy unions this truth never surfaces. It happens when we discover that no matter how much we love our spouse, or both of us love each other, no matter how close a companionship we have achieved, there remains an imprenetrable wall between us. We cannot completely ingest the other, we cannot eat each other. We cannot even share our all. 1 am I, and you are ygu. We are inviolable entities and we face one another as such. We love each other, we need each other, we share whatever we can - but the barrier remains. Eventually, we get over the shock of this discovery. We accept ourselves as separate entities. But the feeling of incompleteness is not dispelled. We search the other’s countenance and cannot find our likeness. Do we, can we ever know each other completely? In our anguish we turn to God - and there, through this glass darkly, we perceive our wholeness in the Face of God. Mystics, even the great ones, make me nervous. May St. Teresa forgive me, but sometimes when I read her writings I reacted adversely: Who does she think she is? The gall of her, the unmitigated egocentrism, the narcissism! Does she really think that God has nothing else on His mind than Teresa, that she holds His undivided attention? Now, suddenly, it dawns on me that Teresa was right and I am wrong. If man’s integrity is inviolable, so is that of his creator, and any relationship between God and man is between two indivisible entities. We meet each other; God in all His immense majesty and I like a small jigsaw-puzzle piece falling into the slot where I belong. Yes, God paid undivided attention to Teresa and so does He to me. God gives Himself to each one of us completely’. Isn’t it this that is expressed so clearly in the Eucharist? Because of the meagerness of our passion, our picayune reservations, we try to reduce God to our size and attempt to fragment Him. We limit our relationship to one of His attributes, such as mercy, patience, kindness - preferably in small doses. Well, then, it is not entirely presumption that makes me feel kinship with God. We are sparks of the Eternal Light. More than that, we are sons of the Father. We have been given some of His attributes - we have intelligence, we have power, we have life - though not in the immensity and perfection of the Giver. It is not pure self-aggrandizement that we desire to s~e God face to face, that we wish to be united with Him. He is our Father. If He deigns to lift the veil from my eyes, I too - despite my resistance to mystics and mysticism - can meet Him here and now. Surely, this is prayer, communication, dialogue? Still through the glass darkly, but perhaps I will be able 198 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 to recognize my God and my Father, my love and my portion? HOW CAN I BE SURE THAT IT IS HE WHO SPEAKS? Could it be that I fear this ENCOUNTER? I spell the word with capital letters because this is the kind of meeting that marks us for a lifetime. "Numinous" is the qualifier for it. I remember when I first read this expression, I think, in a book by C. S. Lewis. It conveys an aura of an awesome, overwhelming presence that somehow manifests itself to us. Like the burning bush of Moses or the shekina of the Temple. The fear of God, the ancients called it. It forces us to our knees. We must cover our faces, close our eyes. It demands worship and sacrificial offering. BUT, HOW DO I KNOW THAT THIS PRESENCE IS GOD, THAT 1T IS HIS SPIRIT? All those little encounters that we engineer today - how ludicrous they are! As if we could say to God (or as a matter of fact to anyone): "Now reveal yourself. I want to encounter you."’ As if we could manipulate God into revealing Himself! Naturally, we can enjoy ourselves when we play, work, or pray with others (or even by ourselves). Because these are fitting; these are good things to do together. But do they generate encounter? Do they force me to perceive my neighbor as he is? In the nakedness of his very being? And do I encounter God the Spirit by clasping my neighbor’s hand? But perhaps I do. Didn’t Jesus say: "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them"? Still, I suspect that what I primarily encounter is my own magnified awareness of fellowship, zeal, consolation. It even could be that I encounter only myself and not God the Holy Spirit, the Father of all consolation. BUT HOW DO I KNOW? HOW CAN I DISTINGUISH? What about experience? We hear so much about experience today: experience here and now, religious experience, sense experience. Typically of our confusion, this talk seems to proliferate among the same young and not-so-young who seek to learn Zen, Yoga, and other Eastern techniques of meditation which endeavor to eliminate all sensory experience. Naive disciples of Eastern mysticism speak of seeking love while trying to focus on nothingness. Their gurus have no living water, no Good Shepherd, no loving Father. Their road leads to nonexistence, their goal is nirvana. Setting aside existentialism and the passing interest in Eastern meditation, we are still faced with the question: Why are we suddenly so concerned about experience, specifically sense experience? Western, citified man is in some ways deficient in sense experien.ce. Many children never have seen a cow, a horse, or a live chicken. And they have seen a tiger, an elephant, or a deer only in the zoo, if at all. Many of us have never experienced nature: finding a wooded pool, lying on a flowering meadow, seeing a sunset over the mountains or over the ocean. And to assuage this hunger for simple experience some of us go overboard. We pay large sums of money to participate in sessions which "teach" us how to run on a meadow, roll down a sandy dune, touch each other’s bodies with eyes closed. We make ourselves believe that without doing so we would not know that the meadow, the sand, the hands, the faces, or the bodies were actually there. For a small child, for a two-year-old, learning through sense experience is a must. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 199 "Table, table - hard, hard, hard. You will bruise yourself if you run into it." "Stove, stove - hot, hot, hot. You will burn your hand if you touch it." But by the time we are twenty-two, thirty~two, not to say forty- or fifty-two, we should know that the table is hard and the stove is hot, without having to touch it. Conceptual thought and symbolic, verbal communication are the great gifts that distinguish the human species from even the highest animals. By the time we are adults we should have acquired skills in them. I do know that there are meadows on which I would dearly love to run, even though I am now sitting at my desk, and that there are faces, hands, and bodies which I would dearly love to touch, but I cannot, because they are absent, dead, or unattainable. I cannot reach God through sensory experience, good and useful though it may be. Whatever the mystics meant by religious experience, they did not mean that. Because God is Spirit. They feared being misled by sensory experience as they feared being overwhelmed by feeling: "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed." If even the awesome feeling of the numinous is no proof of God’s presence, if sense experience does hot assure me that it is His voice that speaks to me, perhaps I can find Him through knowledge. Intelligence is an attribute of God. Knowledge is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Having been .given intelligence, faculties to learn, we developed into time-binding, space-binding creatures. We can know the height of the mountains in Tibet without having been there; we can know how the saber-toothed tiger looked two million years ago, although we have not encountered one. We can know who signed the Constitution of the USA, though we were not present at the signing. We can even surmise how a murderer feels, without having committed murder. Knowledge is good. Knowledge is important. If we did not know anything about God we could not love Him, we could not desire to love Him, and like the pagan mystics we could not even seek Him - except by a miracle. We are given imagination, intelligence, conceptual thought, symbolic communication- verbal, pictorial, written - to learn all that we can about the Father, about His Son, about His Holy Spirit, about His revelation. ABOUT... ABOUT... ABOUT... Again, as through the numinous, We are allowed to touch His garment. We could know God only if we were God. The quest continues. Feelings, sensory experience, even human knowledge are dead ends. I felt the flow of His power in the numinous, my senses rejoiced in the beauty of His creation, I steeped myself in the accumulated knowledge of generations recounting God’s faithfulness, His loving tender care, His salvific self-giving. But my heart is still crying out for the Spirit. HOW CAN I BE SURE THAT IT IS HE WHO IS SPEAKING TO ME? And here I rest. No, not rest - only stop for a mere moment. My body and soul ache with existence restricted by the time-space continuum. The trauma is every bit as great as when I was forced to accept the reality of separateness, the impossibility of a union that would dissolve my identity or that of another. Then I felt ejected from the womb that sheltered me and gave me a sense of belonging. Now, aware of 200 ¯ Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 my separateness, I cannot even perceive the one who bore me, created me, set me here for a purpose, for the very purpose of finding Him, reaching Him, being united with Him. I am imprisoned in the limits of carnal reality by time and space. I must try another way. He is my Father, I am His child. He gave me imagination. Let me imagine, then, that I sit at His feet and talk with Him. I speak first. Why not? Children, unless they are cowed, or afraid, babble along freely in the presence of their parents. Some of us speak more than others, even out of turn. But our Father understands, just as He understands the nonverbal expression of His children who are less facile with words. I shout: YOU ARE MY FATHER. YOU DO UNDERSTAND. And I tell Him all about the quest, up to the very dead end. What else could I say? What other language do I have? I cannot communicate in any other way. I have no other means to use. (Except perhh~s a few sighs and tears. But no wringing of hands, no despair, no feeling of futility. Just frustration and chagrin.) There was a time when I was smarter, when I thought it was not necessary to tell God anything. Why say prayers of petition or even of adoration? He knows it anyhow. Why should I tell Him? But now I am not so smart. I am a tired child; I want to talk. I want to tell Him anyhow, even if 1 know that He knows it all. And when I am all talked out, I will sit and wait. Wait for His answer. This is supposed to be a dialogue. He will have to answer. He will answer. Up to now it was I who did all the talking. It was all my feeling, my experience, the result of my learning, my language, my expression. I am not embarrassed about it. It was necessary and, possibly, even good. It had to be done. I had to do it. But it was me. All right, it was me with the help and grace of God. I could not have done it on my own, if He had not given me intelligence and the capacity and interest to read and to think. But it still was me. IT STILL IS ME. It is still I who’ am talking. WHEN WILL I STOP TALKING AND LISTEN TO GOD? He is supposed to come in the soft breeze and speak in a small voice. I listen intently. But all I hear is the roar of my own questions! What is all this upheaval for? He is not supposed to be in the storm and earthquake! And yet, idols have come crashing: sense experience, feelings, intellectualization, the curiosity that breeds human knowledge. They had to be brought down, before the gates could be opened to welcome Him. Mountains have to be leveled and valleys have to be filled to prepare the way for His coming. Silence. Peace. "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed." Believed WHAT? What must I believe without seeing, without feeling, without knowing? Questions shatter the quiet again. I am so tired. I want to cry. Quiet again. "I LOVE YOU. I DIED FOR YOU." "I shall give you the gift of love... Come into my garden, my promised bride..." I have it, I know it now! No, I don’t know it. I am certain of it. This is not knowledge, this is certitude. Knowledge acquainted me with revelation. Certitude is faith given by my God who is faithful. This is the answer I have been waiting for. The only answer. The only possible Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/2 201 answer: the unutterable, unshakeable certitude in my heart that God loves me with the limitless, unfathomable passion of the Creator, the Redeemer, the Sanctifier. Such certitude does not come from me. Neither does its content. Looking at it from the human point of view it does not make sense. Why should He love me at all? 1 am not lovable. I ar~ a sniveling, lying, boasting blunderer. I am not even pretty anymore. I could imagine that He would be kind and merciful, that City of Saint Louis (Mo.), http://www.geonames.org/4407084 http://cdm17321.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/rfr/id/517

Review for Religious - Issue 31.2 (March 1972)

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