by Mark and Louise Zwick
It happened again, and as usual we had become upset and angry. An
immigrant just asked us for the upteenth time, “Marcos, usted es un
sacerdote y Luisa una monja?” (Mark, are you a priest and Louise a
nun?)
“No! No!” We say for the upteenth time. “Somos laicos.” We are lay
people. And if they insist, we say in frustration, “No! Somos laicos
tontos y estupidos.”
A priest or sister might run Casa Juan Diego better than lay people. No
matter what they say, all the good people have not left the active
ministry. As a matter of fact, priests and sisters have been
instrumental in bringing Casa Juan Diego to where it is today–and that
includes our chief shepherds.
But the point is: Lay people can and should be doing this work. Why
should anyone think that to be committed, one must be a priest or
sister? Why should it seem unusual for lay people to try to live the
Gospel?
There are deeper questions: What kind of theology is required for
Christians in the world? What can sustain us in the day to day living
of the beatitudes? Is commitment to the transformation of our world
according to the Gospel only for the few? How can theology possibly
apply in an everyday, boring job, an everyday, boring existence? Where
is the theology which can address the questions of, for example,
Generation X, on the absurdity of life?
Sanctuary Movement
Christian spirituality has taken a new direction of late. It has headed
for the sanctuary. There is much interest on the part of lay people to
be Eucharistic ministers, lectors, greeters or parish employees.
Sacristies are bulging with people wanting to be at the altar.
Some cynics denigrate this move to the sanctuary, but maybe it has a
positive side. The one hour of being on the altar is symbolic of the
other ll2 waking hours where they take the same Christ to their
communities and work sites. Possibly people are discouraged with what
they see happening in the world and in their jobs, and flee to the
sanctuary to make some sense out of life. Sometimes it is hard to
imagine how to make sense on a practical level of a job that has no
meaning and is boredom personified.
The other move to the sanctuary is initiated by those who want to be
priests. Almost everyone wants to be ordained: married men and women,
old men and women, single men and women. The only people who don’t
seem to want to be ordained are young men! We wish there were more
of them. We hear good things from young priests.
We are not sure what all this projection on to the priestly role means,
but again, it is not necessarily negative unless it becomes a fixation.
It may mean that people are looking for a deeper expression of their
faith, a deeper understanding of what it means to be a Catholic, a role
in which they can find a fulfillment which they have not yet found in
their lay state. The desire to be a priest may be a message to a person
that they are called to serve their brothers and sisters more and in a
better way.
Or it may come from the American rugged individualism. You see what
you want and go after it: the “Go getter” mentality that Peter Maurin talks
about instead of the more Latin American “go giver” mentality.
There is also an attempt to carry the rights movements into the
sanctuary. There is talk about a “right” to the priesthood, a “right”
to the Eucharist, a “right” to run the Church on the model of American
democracy. (Could you imagine the Church being run like the U.S.
government? Heaven help us all! Imagine a bishop with the recent
China connection in the White House–he would be Pope for sure.)
On the contrary, as followers of Christ, our only rights have to do with
the right to service.
When it’s all said and done, where we really belong is in washing the
feet. We must be with Jesus–with Him in the whole paschal mystery
and in the mystery of his presence in the poor (Matthew 25).
Where to Turn
The search is difficult for lay people as they seek help in making sense
out of their “worldly” existence.
They turn to Catholic publications on the far right and find they just
can’t be against immigrants because Pat Buchanan made it a policy to be
enraged with them.
They turn to the left, but find they don’t want to be enraged with
Church leadership. It just takes too much energy. They have this
sneaking suspicion that there is more.
Before Vatican II many hoped that the gathering of bishops would lead
people to a more profound spirituality and away from the “sin” mentality
that dominated, for example, in going to confession. People focused on a
list of sins in their examination of conscience instead of focusing on
the Lord, conversion and growth in holiness–at least some.
After the Council we got rid of the sin mentality and our lists, but
unfortunately, we are also totally bereft of the call to the Gospel
living and sanctity. Both went out with the bath water.
Larry Chapp, writing in Communio (Summer 1996) expresses what
happened:
“Unfortunately, this mandate of the Council (the universal call
to holiness) was swallowed up in the post-conciliar rift between
progressives who saw lay involvement in the Church as largely
a grasping after many of the old clerical prerogatives, and
conservatives who resented such moves and sought refuge in
the discarded clericalist
regime.”
Chapp emphasizes that “we must begin in earnest the task of
implementing the Central insight of the Council: that the Church,
through the various charisms and missions of her members, must
leaven the world with the presence of Christ.”
Fortunately, we still have the Vatican II documents that are so strong
on a theology for the Christian in the world and are filled with
fantastic insights. And we have the Catechism of the Catholic Church
with its profound approach to an examination of conscience, which leads
us directly to the heart of the New Testament. The Catechism
recommends, not a list of do’s and don’ts, but biblical passages such as
Matthew 5-7, Romans 12-15, I Cor. 12-13, Galatians 5, Ephesians 4-6.
Meditation on these texts will change your life!
As Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out, “Once and for all, the fatal
wound is dealt to the mentality that holds that one can be Catholic,
too, alongside one’s status as a good citizen, guaranteeing one’s own
private salvation by the keeping of some religious obligations while
otherwise leaving the concern for Christianity to the specialists, the
clergy” (Explorations in Theology, Vol. III, Creator Spirit, Ignatius
Press, 1993).
The lack of profound theological study and prayer of Christians living
in the world is a serious problem, even with those who work for the
Church, where they thought they would find spirituality and prayer.
Robert Wicks, a therapist who works with people in ministry says,
“When I started seeing persons in therapy who are engaged
in full-time ministry, I thought as a realist that I would find
out from them that prayer in silence and solitude
each day would be a rarity. Much to my surprise the situation
was even worse. Prayer for most of them–even though they
claimed that God was at the center of their lives and hopes–
was not a rarity, it was an oddity!”
The document which emerged from the Synod of Bishops on the laity,
Christifideles Laici (The Lay Members of Christ’s Faithful People)
begins with the startling question from the Gospel, addressed to all of
us, “Why do you stand here idle all day?” In Matthew 20, the people
respond, “Because no one has hired us.” The Lord tells them, “You too
go into the vineyard.” Christifideles Laici tell us, “It is not
permissible for anyone to remain idle in the midst of the pressing needs
of today’s world.”
Where can the lay person begin, when “no one has hired us” to transform
the world in Christ?” Each Christian must make a decision to proclaim
their yes to God as did the first Church member, Mother Mary.
Mary did not say, “Well, maybe,” or “Later,” as St. Augustine responded
initially until St. Monica prayed him to conversion.
The “yes” of many Catholics is limited to demanding that clerical
leaders or religious women say “yes”–and if Church leaders say yes to
Jesus, all will be OK.
What is Discipleship?
Hans Urs von Balthasar, whose theology was influenced very much
by the woman mystic and physician, Adrienne von Speyr, insists that
“no one can become a disciple of Christ who is not called to the task
by Christ himself.” He reminds us that “the great prophets of the Scriptures
receive their sense of mission when they stand alone before God and that
the “mother of the Lord is chosen in terrifying loneliness.” According
to Balthasar, God may eventually “bring those together who have a sense
of mission, “But each must have first stood alone before God,” and “each
will face God alone in death” (The Moment of Christian Witness, Ignatius
Press, 1994).
Each human being has a mission, is “sent” by God with a specific task.
Each disciple is sent, as Jesus was “sent,” and our mission or vocation
is a participation in his mission.
This is not to denigrate community. The living out of one’s vocation is
done in community. The whole work of Casa Juan Diego subsists in
community–it would be nothing without community. Casa Juan Diego is
not a committee, but a living reality.
Already in 1935, shortly after her conversion, Dorothy Day wrote in the
Catholic Worker about this working together in the Body of Christ:
“There is a general reluctance among rank and file Catholics to assume
the position of leaders in Catholic Action… It means that they have
lost the sense of what the words collectivism, personalism and
individualism mean. Without realizing it, they have gone collective and
want to work in a body, organize, go in for mass production of members
of this or the other group, and try to achieve things collectively. Or
they are individualists and think they can better conditions by looking
after themselves first and devil take the hindmost. We are urging our
readers to be neither collectivist nor individualist, but personalist.
This consciousness of oneself as a member of the Mystical Body of
Christ will lead to great things.”
Chapp, in reflecting on the mission of individual Christians, puts the
emphasis on the “responsibility of each and every human being to
respond to the kerygmatic force of the gospel and to make Christ
present to the world through engraced ethical/spiritual living.”
As Balthasar puts it, Christians can only “adequately answer God’s
universal engagement with the world in the love of Jesus Christ for them
by lending their own love, in the concretissimum of the encounter with
their brother, that universal breadth of Being which consciously or not,
explicitly or not–the metaphysical act possesses and is” (The Glory of
the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Vol.V).
Some of the Workers at Casa Juan Diego have been disturbed that some
widely published recent converts to Catholicism do not talk about
commitment to the poor or to living out the beatitudes, to giving up all
and following Jesus. Instead they seem to emphasize a romantic, even
triumphalistic vision of the Church. Much more inspiring to our Workers
is the radical vision of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in following the
Lord and serving Him in the poor as loyal members of the Church.
But many ask, how can I know the will of God for me? What is my
mission? God has not spoken to me in the burning bush, as he did to
Moses. I believe he wants to send me forth as a laborer, but how and
where? How can I become a saint?
Christifideles Laici spells out what is required in a good process of
discernment of vocation, emphasizing that it is a gradual process, with
particularly significant and decisive moments: “A receptive listening to
the Word of God and the Church, fervent and constant prayer, recourse to
a wise and loving spiritual guide, and a faithful discernment of the
gifts and talents given by God, as well as the diverse social and
historic situations in which one lives.” The document also reminds us
that the Lord will give us the grace to do what he asks of us, quoting
St. Leo the Great: “The one who confers the dignity will give the
strength.”
Interestingly enough, in many cases, this mission will be found very
close to home. Almost as, according to statistics, the majority of auto
accidents take place close to home. Opportunities for service, for the
washing of the feet present themselves frequently in the family, at
work, or in the neighborhood, with, for example, sick family members or
an ill neighbor.
Opportunities for creating a new heaven and a new earth (Dorothy Day)
present themselves in many jobs. Business executives have the
opportunity to modify laissez-faire capitalism, depending on their
personal God and not just the invisible hand of the market. They can
correct a situation in which those who give up all for Jesus are not the
Christian or Catholic economists or CEO’s, but the poor laborers in the
global market whose lives are a living death, where slavery has been
restored.
In U. S. society in 1997, it may often mean going a bit further afield
from one’s family and neighborhood as well, to search out those in need
who may not be visible in suburban neighborhoods. One must face the
question–is my upper middle class lifestyle a part of God’s call for
me? Comparing our lives to the call to Christian living by a great
saint such as St. John Chrysostom of the early Church often brings great
challenge. St. John considered the beatitudes the constitution of
Christianity, and he preached from biblical texts to change the lives of
those in his congregation, whose lives he still considered more pagan
than Christian in many ways. He is quoted in the beautiful section on
“Love for the Poor” in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Not to
enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive
them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs” (2446).
The Vatican Council has made it clear that the lay person does not live
in two worlds, one as a citizen and one as a believer: “The layman at
one and the same time a believer and a citizen of the world, has only a
single conscience, a Christian conscience; it is by this he must be
guided continually in both domains. (Apostolate of the Laity).
To Whom Shall we Go?
We were disappointed recently when one of the major medical research
directors of Houston told us in response to questions about medical
ethics that he left those questions to the priests and theologians. He
said they were the ones to decide about ethics and morality; he could
only proceed with his research. This director has professional
expertise in abundance, but we hope that, as a Catholic, he will also
study theology, in order to put together his expert knowledge in his
field with theological principles so that his daily work is not separate
from his Christian life, but rather informed by it.
The days of old where we brushed everything off with “Let’s ask Father,”
are gone. As Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World) tells us,
“Let the layman not imagine that his pastors are always such
experts, that to every problem which arises, however
complicated, they can readily give him a concrete solution,
or even that such is their mission.”
Gaudium et Spes points out that “The artificial contrast between
professional and social activity, on the one hand, and religious life,
on the other hand,” is one of “the more serious errors of our age.” Ad
Gentes reminds us that “All the members of the living Christ, into whom
they have been incorporated and to whom they have been configured are
obliged to cooperate in the extension and development of his Body, in
order to bring it as soon as possible to its perfected fullness. For
this reason, all the sons of the Church must have a vital awareness of
their responsibility vis-a-vis the totality of the world and must
cultivate in themselves a truly Catholic spirit.” And what it this
truly Catholic spirit? Ad Gentes replies: The “authentic spirit of the
Church must walk the same road which Christ walked: a road of poverty
and obedience, of service and self-sacrifice to the death.”
Martyrdom
Ultimately, whether one is a lay person or a priest, being a Christian
means being willing to surrender one’s life for Christ’s sake.
Balthasar reminds us that while Jesus Christ sent his followers out into
the world and entrusted them with a commission of universal
significance for all times, places and civilizations, he “prophesied no
other fate for his disciples and followers than his own: persecution,
failure and suffering to the point of death.” The follower of Jesus, the
one who puts Jesus first, “chooses the Cross as the place where he
will not eventually but most certainly die.”
Balthasar speaks along the same lines as did Dorothy Day, when she
said that it is only what we do in and for Christ that is of lasting value.
He emphasizes that “it is from the meeting with the dying God that a
life based on belief bears the fruit of love, that the Christian love of
one’s neighbor is rather the result or outcome of self-sacrifice, just
as God the Father made the redemption of mankind the outcome of his
forsaken Son’s self-sacrifice.”
As Peter Maurin put it,
“On the Cross of Calvary
Christ gave His life to redeem
the world.
The life of Christ was a life of
sacrifice.
We cannot imitate the sacrifice
of Christ on Calvary
by trying to get all we can.
We can only imitate the sacrifice
of Christ on Calvary
by trying to give all we can.”
Returning always to the idea that all are called to live the Gospel,
Dorothy Day and Balthasar both emphasize that it is by no means true
that only a few radically-minded Christians need to base their faith on
the death of Christ, while, as Balthasar puts it, “the majority may
remain content to let just a little of the transfiguring supernational
light illumine their natural lives. For Christians there is no question
of such an attitude” (The Moment of Christian Witness).
We must be prepared to die, as Christ did, in small or big ways.
Scripture tells us, “Unless the seed fall into the ground and die….”
Balthasar reflects on this: “The power to regain life completely is
contained in the capacity for its total self-surrender.
“The glory that manifests itself on Easter is already present in the
veiled glory of Good Friday, just as the column of God in the desert
could appear dark at one moment and shining the next.
“The truth that provides the yardstick for faith is God’s willingness to
die for the world he loves, for mankind and for me as an individual.
This love became manifest in the dark night of Christ’s crucifixion.
Every source of grace–faith, love, and hope–springs from this night.
Everything that I am, I am solely by virtue of Christ’s death, which
opens up to me the possibility of fulfillment in God. I blossom on the
grace of God who died for me. I sink my roots deep into the nourishing
soil of his flesh and blood.”
Balthasar, whose theological works sing of the glory of God, tells us
that, “In the final instance love is its own reward, which does not mean
to say that the promise of the greatest imaginable joy could ever
exclude the deepest suffering: darkness and light are correlatives in
Jesus Christ’s epiphany of love… The wounds are transfigured, the
Spirit is pentecostal and the Church is bathed in the light of Easter,
which the Word has earned for it. But all the transfiguration and
transparency of Christian existence stream from the darkness of death;
even at the crucifixion Christ ceases to be bound by the limits of
finite time, just as little as he is bound by it during his descent into
hell. Consequently, his action is not to be considered as belonging to
the past (the reenactment of his death in the Eucharist should warn us
against making this mistake).”
This passionate understanding of our faith should do something to change
our boring lives and give us the inspiration of a Dorothy Day, Peter
Maurin, Adrienne von Speyr or Hans Urs von Balthasar.
Our world has too much suffering, violence and injustice. Despair or
living for the present moment are temptations in the face of what seem
to be insurmountable problems. If we remember that God has loved and
called each one of us to a special mission in this world, we will not
despair or write off life as absurd. We will no longer stand here idle,
but will put our hands to the work.
Our daily existence can be transformed when we focus on its center,
dying and rising with the living Word of God, awaiting his return on the
day we hope and pray that He will say to us, “I was hungry and you gave
me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stranger and
you took me in.”
Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XVII, No. 3, May-June 1997.