June 2010
Vol. XXXI, No. 6
Dear Oblates and Friends of Portsmouth,
At the start of summer, the Church places before us three principal feasts, which pertain to the divine life and God's action toward His human creation. It seems to be the Church's way of reminding us during the relaxed days of the summer months that God manifests himself in a wide variety of ways, ways that are so familiar and commonplace that we fail to realize that He continues to appear to us and communicate with us just as truly as He did when Jesus walked in our midst. Pentecost, the feast of the outpouring of the Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, is followed immediately by that of the blessed Trinity dedicated to the supreme mystery of God in his triune nature. And on the following Sunday, we commemorate the sacramental presence of Jesus in the feast of Corpus Christi, now called the Body and Blood of Christ. This feast commemorates the chief way in which Jesus continues to be present to us and the way in which we are united to the threefold God of our faith as He comes to dwell not only among us but within each one of us in the closest possible union.
When we think of God, we are forced by our human limitations to make use of analogies, which is the nearest we can come to approximating what is inexpressible. Whatever image we have of divinity is, therefore, a crude distortion of a spiritual reality. When Paul preached the Good News of Jesus to the Athenians on the Areopagus, it was not the Trinity that they objected to, but the resurrection of the body, which to them seemed irrational. When Jesus spoke to the Jews of his relationship to God as His personal Father, they denounced Him as a blasphemer, condemning Him to death for what seemed to them as an attack on their most cherished doctrine of God's unity and uniqueness. Nowadays, we tend to take the doctrine of the Trinity for granted and accept it without adverting to its incomprehensibility. Like our reception of the Eucharist, we fail to reflect on the mystery behind the doctrine. If we are to live the life of true disciples of Jesus, we have to deepen our awareness of God's Being, His presence, and His relationship to His creation. He must be more than simply the God of the philosophers and deists, the Necessary Being and the First Cause.
It took all of Jesus' ministry to clarify the spiritual nature of God and His Kingdom to His closest disciples and even at His ascension, they still were under the mistaken notion shared by their compatriots of a physical, this worldly reality, of a conqueror who would make Jerusalem a new Rome. Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Their misconceptions continued to be insular, chauvinistic, narrow and intolerant, possessed of the idea that God belonged to them as a preferred people. We too can be guilty of the same erroneous conception, even if unconsciously, we fail to realize the truth of the spirituality of God's Nature and His Kingdom God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. At Pentecost our spirits are renewed by the life-giving Holy Spirit; we are recreated, rejuvenated as we experience God's love, which, in the words of Paul, has been poured out in our hearts. This love of God for us, to which we respond, is diffused by us in our relationship with our fellow men, so fulfilling the twofold commandment of love of God and love of neighbor. But what makes this love complete is found in the giving of the Third Person of the Trinity at Pentecost, in the establishment of the Church which Jesus founded on Peter, and in the life-giving sustenance of the Eucharist celebrated on the feast of Corpus Christi. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. Only Jesus as a person in the Trinity could reveal this mystery to us; only He could lead us to accept this mystery as true; only He could continue to be present to us in the Eucharist and sustain us by incorporating us in the life of the Trinity. Love of God and neighbor is a universal teaching taught by all the higher religions. Christians, however, differ in having a greater appreciation of the nature of God and the way of our becoming one with Him in "a divine indwelling." This is fittingly expressed in the prayer of Trinity Sunday:
God, we praise you: Father all powerful, Christ Lord and Savior, Spirit of love, You
reveal yourself in the depths of our being, drawing us to share in your life and your
love. One God, three Persons, be near to the people formed in your image, close to
the world your love brings to life.
Review of John Allen's THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH
John Allen is among the most perceptive journalists reporting on matters Roman Catholic. His many years based in Rome covering the Vatican enabled him to write ALL THE KING'S MEN, an informative account of the way Church officialdom thinks and acts. In THE FUTURE CHURCH Allen gives a descriptive account of the trends that can be seen in the present and how they are likely to develop over the rest of the 21st century. What are these trends? He has narrowed them down to ten:
1) A World Church, a shift away from the traditional Northern hemisphere to the countries of the Southern hemisphere, some of them termed "Third World."
2) Evangelical Catholicism, a reaction to the rampant secularism of today in a return to traditional, orthodox expression of the faith.
3) The Emergence of Islam in which accommodation rather than confrontation will be stressed. Allen quotes Abbot Mark Serna, former abbot of Portsmouth and a veteran of Catholic Shi'ite exchange: In distinction to Muslims in the Sunni tradition, Shi'ite Muslims are very natural dialogue partners with Roman Catholics and monastics. There are many areas of mutuality: a profound contemplative and mystical tradition; veneration of saints, especially of Mary, the Mother of Jesus; notions of infallibility and authority; high emphasis on rational inquiry into matters of faith; belief and praxis; and philosophical and theological study.
4) The New Demography, which treats of the changes in population among which is the dramatic escalation in the number of the elderly, especially in "First World" countries.
5) The Role of the Laity: this will increase sharply with the continuing decline in priestly vocations and religious and the rise in the number of Catholics, necessitating a growing dependence on laymen, particularly women, to assume positions hitherto restricted to men. The hierarchy will finally realize that survival depends on sharing control with a lay apostolate who "participate in the church's mission of salvation."
6) The Biotech Revolution concerns the moral problems arising from scientific and medical progress, present now but intensifying and challenging traditional Church teaching.
7) Globalization is defined as "the union of the peoples of the world in a single, global market and society, in recognition that the whole world is kin and entitled to a just share in the goods of creation.
8) Ecology treats of the Church's concern with responsible stewardship, condemning industry's "insatiable appetite for pillaging Nature." There is a need for a greater awareness of man as part of creation rather than viewing it as if intended solely for man's selfish use with little or no concern for its care and protection.
9) Multipolarism has to do with the spread of power among several or many nations rather than a concentration vested in one or more superpowers, such as Russia and the United States. The Church will be faced with a predominantly non-Christian world, located in Asia, which will contain one third of the global population.
The final trend, 10) Pentecostalism, represents the greatest challenge facing the Catholic Church of the future. The Church in South America, once regarded as Catholic territory, is struggling against the charismatic appeal of Protestant Pentecostal sects possessed of a fervent, missionary zeal. Their strength lies in a reliance on a deliberate appeal to the emotions, fiery sermons, singing gospel songs to the accompaniment of instrumental music, and encouraging an outpouring of the Spirit manifested in gesture and sound. The same movement is rapidly gaining ground in Africa. In contrast to Europe where the losses to the Church stem from the evaporation of religious observance, the evangelical sects on these continents are looking away from the traditional and orthodox to the uninhibited charismatic practice found in "revivalism."
But despite the ominous signs in the present that seem to point to an uncertain and sometimes threatening future, Allen ends his book on a hopeful note, that new life is continually stirring, as it has throughout the Church's history, and this will carry Peter's bark in new directions. Catholicism he concludes, is enormously complex; it can lift your soul and break your heart in roughly equal measure. Faith in the Church has never meant believing it does everything right; it means never abandoning hope despite all the things it does wrong. Today, as always, there is a basis for hope, regardless of the content of our desires, if we have eyes to see - and if we are willing to accept that satisfying half a desire is better than none.
Liturgical Calendar for June
1 St. Justin, Martyr
3 St. John Lwanga & Comp.; Martyrs
5 St. Boniface, Bishop, Martyr
6 CORPUS CHRISTI
Oblate Day of Recollection
(Abbot Caedmon: Conference)
9 St. Columba of Iona, Abbot
11 SACRED HEART OF JESUS
PORTSMOUTH INSTITUE ON
CARDINAL NEWMAN: June 11 - June 13
13 SUNDAY 11 OF THE YEAR
19 St. Romuald, Abbot, Founder of Camaldoli
20 SUNDAY XII OF THE YEAR
21 St. Aloysius Gonzaga, Society of Jesus
22 SS. John Fisher and Thomas More, Martyrs
24 Nativity of St. John the Baptist
27 SUNDAY XIII OF THE YEAR
28 St. Irenaeus, Bishop, Martyr
29 SS. Peter and Paul, Apostles
