It Is No Longer I Who Live

While I enjoy and treasure the writings of Joseph Ratzinger I find the essay of Stanislaw Grygiel on “The New Evangelization” also quite worthy of admiration.  I greatly like Ratzinger’s positive motivation for the new evangelization: “The deepest poverty is the inability of joy, the tediousness of a life deemed absurd and contradictory. This poverty is widespread today, taking many different forms. It can be found as much in societies that are materially rich as in countries that are poor. The inability of joy presupposes and produces the inability to love, it produces envy, greed, all those vices that destroy the life of individuals and of the world. This is why we need a new evangelization. If the art of living remains unknown, all else falls apart.” (Joseph Ratzinger, “The New Evangelization”, page 389).  This focus on the spiritual bankruptcy of so many societies allows for the offer of living water to a thirsty world. 

 

Grygiel reminds us, though, the “new evangelization” started in Poland, at the foot of the Cross: “Pope John Paul II first spoke of the “new evangelization under the cross of the Cistercian Abbey at Moglia” (Stanislow Grygiel, “The New Evangelization” in Discovering the Human Person, page 85).  He makes this focus of John Paul’s sermon the cornerstone of his essay; “Where the cross is raised, there is raised the sign that the place has now been reached by the Good News of Man’s salvation through Love.  Where the cross is raised, there is the sign that evangelization has begun.” (Ibid.).  Is this something new?  While evangelization is not new, the “new evangelization” is something new, it is the beginning of the post-Marxist evangelization, starting in Poland.  John Paul II, in his homily at Moglia in 1979, proclaims the new evangelization through a Catholic understanding of work, a direct challenge to Marxist communism: “The Cross cannot be separated from man's work. Christ cannot be separated from man's work.  This has been confirmed here at Nowa Huta. This has been the start of the new evangelization at the beginning of the new millennium of Christianity in Poland. We have lived this new beginning together and I took it with me from Krakow to Rome as a relic.”  (John Paul II, Homily at Moglia, Poland, 9 June 1979).

 

Grygiel takes this theme of the new evangelization as proclaiming the Gospel to those enslaved to a Marxist worldview and brings it to out through the cross at Nova Huta, a city built as a new future for Poland by the communists, a future without Christianity: “Under the cross of Nowa Huta, where the Ark Church was built and consecrated by Cardinal Wojtyla in 1977, a new people was born.  'The new cross . . . proclaimed the birth of a new church.' . . . Under this cross, people were transformed.  Their work was transformed, because under this cross their love matured to the new resurrection.  The mystery of love, of work, and of the resurrection is bound to the mystery of the cross.” (Stanislow Grygiel, “The New Evangelization” in Discovering the Human Person, page 86).  The new evangelization brings people out of their Modernist, Marxist anthropology and into a Christian anthropology, one dependent upon the Cross of Jesus Christ: “Without the scientia crucis of people who stand under the cross, society becomes a mass of individuals who may at times function intelligently, but who always act stupidly, because they lack the meaning to which the empty tomb points.  They debase themselves in their hiding places, where they seek a refuge that allows them to escape the cross.  This anthropological error, which consists in refusing to be martyrion, makes them fall prey to the conviction that life is exhausted here and now, in saeculo.  Hiding, that is fleeing from the cross and the empty tomb, they become secularized”. (Ibid., page 87).  Thus, the new evangelization brings people to the cross, through which they escape the “tediousness of a life deemed absurd and contradictory” Joseph Ratzinger, “The New Evangelization”, page 389) and their spiritual bankruptcy, becoming filled with the joy of the resurrection.

In My Father’s House There Are Many Dwelling Places

 I find the question of whether solidarity is a virtue difficult to answer.  True, John Paul II described it as such: “It is above all a question of interdependence, sensed as a system determining relationships in the contemporary world, in its economic, cultural, political and religious elements, and accepted as a moral category. When interdependence becomes recognized in this way, the correlative response as a moral and social attitude, as a "virtue," is solidarity.” (John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Section 37).  Given the definition of virtue related by Father Conners—“a stable disposition, a habit that disposes one to act in a certain way” (Lecture 7)—I can imagine it as virtue.

The fuzzy part for me is this “question of interdependence, sensed as a system determining relationships”.  In Person and Act, Bishop Wojtyla conceptualizes solidarity as part of “participation”: “The attitude of solidarity is a ‘natural’ consequence of the fact that man exists and acts together with others” (Karol Wojtyla, Person and Act (English Critical Edition), page 401).  Here the focus is on acting together, which does belie some foundational interdependence.  The critical point, I think, is that the concept of solidarity includes also the “common good” in addition to interdependence: “[Solidarity] is also the basis of the community in which the common good correctly conditions and evokes participation, and in which participation correctly serves the common good, supporting and realizing it.” (Ibid.). If we think of the “common good” as described by Pope John XXIII—“the sum total of conditions of social life which allow people, either as groups or individuals, to reach their own perfection more fully and more easily” (Father Conners, Lecture 7; cf Gaudium et Spes, Section 26)—then solidarity is an attitude of community rather than a dyadic relationship such as marriage, where one thinks of the personalistic norm.

 

I think, then, that solidarity is a virtue, one of practicing the attitude of the “common good”.  The disposition is not just the good of the other, as in charity, but rather the good of those in the “community”, those who share something in common.  Thus, it is based in the koinonia of God as Father and Creator: “However, in trying to achieve true development we must never lose sight of that dimension which is in the specific nature of man, who has been created by God in his image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26). It is a bodily and a spiritual nature, symbolized in the second creation account by the two elements: the earth, from which God forms man's body, and the breath of life which he breathes into man's nostrils (cf. Gen 2:7).” (John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Section 29).  This practice of this attitude of God as Creator is the basis for solidarity since it must incorporate the related attitude of commonality and connectiveness with other beings in the cosmos.

Solidarity is different from the virtue of charity, then, in that while their foci are similarly dyadic operationally, its domain is the larger Creation rather than the “other”—I practice charity with another individual, I practice solidarity with all of Creation.  I believe this relationship is similar for justice, as well, which is similarly dyadic.  While all three virtues are greatly interrelated, the virtue of solidarity focus on the awareness of and the respecting of the commonality of all beings through the Fatherhood of God.

The Trinitarian Vision of John Paul II as the Basis of His Sexual Ethics

 

It can be said that in the Holy Spirit the intimate life of the Triune God becomes totally gift, an exchange of mutual love between the divine Persons and that through the Holy Spirit God exists in the mode of gift. It is the Holy Spirit who is the personal expression of this self-giving, of this being-love. He is Person- Love. He is Person-Gift. (John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantum, Section 10),

One of the most attractive and convicting aspects of Christianity is the principle that God is love.  And that love is a relational love between “persons”—beings that have intellect and will.  This is a fundamental belief of Christianity, especially when applied to the relationship of the Holy Trinity.  This principle is also applied to individual human persons who are created in the image and likeness of God.  This paper presents reflections on the understanding of the Holy Trinity presented by Pope John Paul II in his writings and his application of this model of relationship to ethics of the Christian marital union.  Five meditations on the concept of “love as gift” are given, three on the love of the Trinity and two on the love in the marital union.

Love as Gift Through Creation

One of the most difficult transitions for contemporary man is from experiencing “love” simply through his subjectivity to truly loving in a relational manner. To experience emotions related to affection and arousal as intense events of subjectivity, that both enliven and energize the individual motivates one to repeat the event, is the norm.  The search for “love” becomes addictive, where one looks for the next pleasure “high” after the last “hit” fades away, whether alone through means such as pornography or through using other beings.  Love is described through the activity of “self-taking” that benefits an individual, at best combined with the illusion of relationship and care for the other.  This is the standard in a worldview that is supported by the paradigm of achieving the power to consume such events to fill one’s self, even if ephemerally. 

The offering by Christianity of love as a relationship between persons that requires effort, suffering, and perseverance is alien to such a culture, with the goal not the taking of pleasure but  the giving of one’s self to the other and receiving the other person’s self, always with the good of the other person as primary motivation.  This definition of love derives from the Christian understanding of God as revealed through Jesus Christ: “In his intimate life, God "is love,” the essential love shared by the three divine Persons: personal love is the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the Father and the Son. Therefore he ‘searches even the depths of God,’ as uncreated Love-Gift. It can be said that in the Holy Spirit the intimate life of the Triune God becomes totally gift, an exchange of mutual love between the divine Persons and that through the Holy Spirit God exists in the mode of gift. It is the Holy Spirit who is the personal expression of this self-giving, of this being-love. He is Person- Love. He is Person-Gift.” (Ibid.).  This love of the Trinity is the perfection of love, of self-gift, and the goal and source of human love.

God desires to give Himself to His creation and to man in a special way though: “God, as Christ has revealed Him, does not merely remain closely linked with the world as the Creator and the ultimate source of existence. He is also Father: He is linked to man, whom He called to existence in the visible world, by a bond still more intimate than that of creation. It is love which not only creates the good but also grants participation in the very life of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For he who loves desires to give himself.” (John Paul II, Dives et Misericordia, Section 7).  God as Father grants human persons an invitation to participate in the perfection of Trinitarian love, albeit not perfectly.  This is not something man can effect but only receive by receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit: “At the same time, the Holy Spirit, being consubstantial with the Father and the Son in divinity, is love and uncreated gift from which derives as from its source (fons vivus) all giving of gifts vis-a-vis creatures (created gift): the gift of existence to all things through creation; the gift of grace to human beings through the whole economy of salvation. As the Apostle Paul writes: ‘God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.’” (John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantum, Section 10).  Man was created by God to participate in the love of God through bearing His image and likeness: “the context of the Book of Genesis enables us to see in the creation of man the first beginning of God's salvific self-giving commensurate with the ‘image and likeness’ of himself which he has granted to man” (Ibid., Section 12).

While man did receive the Holy Spirit at his creation, allowing him to be in relationship with God “in the garden”, he then chose to reject God as “the Father who gives Himself”, instead seeking the power of the “knowledge of good and evil”: “Original sin attempts, then, to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man only with a sense of the master-slave relationship [with God].  As a result, the Lord appears jealous of His power over the world and over man; and consequently, man feels goaded to do battle against God.” (John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 228).  Man abandons the created reality of God’s image and likeness to pursue the illusion of power from the fruit of “the tree [which] was to be desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6). He rejects the plenitude of God’s gift of Himself and his capability to love is thus corrupted to one of using other beings to gain love rather than receiving what God provides.

Love as a Gift Through Redemption

With the choice of original sin man inherits the enslavement of a “self-taking” that does not satisfy—that is, not receiving the love of God for which he is created.  He is left unfulfilled and unable to choose what he requires for happiness.  Jesus comes as Messiah, anointed with the Holy Spirit, to free man so that he may choose to receive love once again from the Father, to redeem him from his “captivity” to sin by the way of a “new beginning”, a “new creation”: “Christ links the new beginning of God's salvific self-communication in the Holy Spirit with the mystery of the Redemption. It is a new beginning, first of all because between the first beginning and the whole of human history-from the original fall onwards-sin has intervened, sin which is in contradiction to the presence of the Spirit of God in creation, and which is above all in contradiction to God's salvific self- communication to man.” (John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantum, Section 13).  The Holy Spirit comes to us in the power released through the passage of Jesus through the Paschal Mystery: “The ‘departure’ of Christ through the Cross has the power of the Redemption-and this also means a new presence of the Spirit of God in creation: the new beginning of God's self-communication to man in the Holy Spirit.“ (Ibid., Section 14).  And this new presence enters into man’s subjectivity, providing the “power” that drive the process of the conversion of his heart from “self-taking” to “self-giving”: “With the sending of this Spirit ‘into our hearts," there begins the fulfillment of that for which ‘creation waits with eager longing,’ as we read in the Letter to the Romans” (Ibid.), the longing to receive the love of God.

The love of God enters into our hearts through the presence of the Holy Spirit in a way that is to change us—"It is he: the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete sent by the Risen Christ to transform us into his own risen image.” (Ibid., Section 24).  Jesus makes available this transformation at great cost, a fact to remember: “There is no sending of the Holy Spirit (after original sin) without the Cross and the Resurrection: ‘If I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you.’ There is also established a close link between the mission of the Holy Spirit and that of the Son in the Redemption. The mission of the Son, in a certain sense, finds its ‘fulfillment’ in the Redemption. The mission of the Holy Spirit ‘draws from’ the Redemption: ‘He will take what is mine and declare it to you.’” (Ibid.).  The “going away” of Jesus is a painful and protracted death followed by his Resurrection and Ascension.  The disciples of Christ also pass through the Paschal Mystery with Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit whose mission is to bring the Redemption into our hearts: “Redemption is totally carried out by the Son as the Anointed One, who came and acted in the power of the Holy Spirit, offering himself finally in sacrifice on the wood of the Cross. And this Redemption is, at the same time, constantly carried out in human hearts and minds-in the history of the world-by the Holy Spirit, who is the "other Counselor.” (Ibid.).  This gift of the Redemption enters into our hearts as we enact our own Paschal Mystery through Baptism and Confirmation as we transform into a new form of creation (the kaine ktisis of Galatians 6:15).

Love as a Gift through the Marital Union

 One of the formative experiences of Karol Wojtyla’s priesthood was his participation in ministering to youth, starting with his placement at Saint Florian’s parish in March of 1949, where he engaged the youth and young adults with the challenge of living a Catholic faith in the midst of socialist totalitarianism.  The vivacity and challenge of philosophical discussions evolved into the demands and rewards of following Catholic teachings on marriage and family over the course of years, forming a “milieu” or Srodowisko (George Weigel, Witness to Hope, page 98) of hundreds of young adults.  During this time Father Wojtyla applied his education in philosophy and moral theology to the problems and opportunities of living the sexual ethics of Catholicism under persecution in a neo-Marxist, materialist culture.\

One result of his experience is his work Love and Responsibility, where he expresses his thought that developed partially as a result of his time in Srodowisko.   Specifically, he contrasts the egocentric hedonism of utilitarianism in neo-Marxism with the personal love of Christianity: “It is quite clearly visible that with the presuppositions of utilitarianism, the subjective attitude regarding the understanding of good (good as pleasure) leads on a straight path to egoism, even if this may be not deliberate.  The only way out of this inevitable egoism is to recognize besides a purely subjective good, i.e., besides pleasure, an objective good, which can also unite persons—and then it acquires the characteristics of a common good.  This objective common good is the foundation of love, and the persons choosing this common good together at the same time subordinate themselves to it.  Thanks to this, they bind one another with the true, objective bond of love, the bond that enables them to liberate themselves from subjectivism and from egoism inherently concealed in it.  Love is a union of persons” (Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (2^nd Edition), page 22).  Christian marital love is dependent on the objective common good which each spouse chooses as superior to their own subjectivity.

He then develops the idea of the “personalistic norm”, an axiological norm demanding that “the person is a kind of good to which only love constitutes the proper and fully-mature relation.” (Ibid., page 25).  He connects this norm to the Gospel of Jesus Christ: “The commandment formulated in the Gospel demands from man love for other people, for neighbors (blizni); in its full reading, however, it demands love for persons.  For God, whom the commandment to love names in the first place, is the perfect personal Being.  The world of created persons draws its distinctness and natural superiority in relation to the world of things (non-persons) from its particular likeness to God” (Ibid., page 24).  Since it is the nature of God that through the Holy Spirit “the intimate life of the Triune God becomes totally gift” (John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantum, Section 10), this likeness to God is instantiated through the complete and total self-gift of man and woman in the marital union: “The fact that man ‘created as man and woman’ is the image of God means not only that each of them individually is like God, as a rational and free being. It also means that man and woman, created as a ‘unity of the two’ in their common humanity, are called to live in a communion of love, and in this way to mirror in the world the communion of love that is in God, through which the Three Persons love each other in the intimate mystery of the one divine life.” (John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatis, Section 7).

This total gift of self provides the foundation of marriage: “This gift of self lies at the basis of the marriage covenant, bringing to it the special dimension of love that we find in the concept of married love” (Karol Wojtyla, “The Family as a Community of Persons in Person and Community, Section 4) as well as a communio personae in which “the spouses mutually give themselves to and accept each other.” (Ibid.). The marital union through the conjugal act becomes the point of complete self-gift and reception of the other, in body and soul: “Communio as a mutual, interpersonal relationship, together with the bond arising from this relationship, must in marriage promote the kind of confirmation of the person, the kind of mutual affirmation, that is demanded by the very nature of this bond.  Consequently, anything that makes one person an object of use for the other is contrary to the nature of the marital bond [emphasis added] as a communio personarum” (Ibid.). 

This last is the difficult part of marital union, for the conjugal act lies on the knife’s edge of complete self-giving and reception of the other that is the cornerstone of the sacramentality of marriage: “A man and a woman who are united by such a very intimate community of life and calling, based on the difference of sex, may not in any way violate those profound laws that govern the union of persons and condition their true communion.  These are objective laws, deeper than the whole somatic or emotional reality, laws that have their basis and justification in very being and value of the person”. (Ibid.).  As such, the gift of love through the marital union is truly “a task” requiring constant sacrifice of subjectivity for the common good of the marriage.

Love as a Gift through Self-Emptying (Love as a Gift through Sacrifice)

Changing from the willing of one’s subjective “pleasure” to choosing the objective “common good” requires transcendence and a self-emptying.  But what is this “substance” of which one empties from one’s self?  The classic text for this description of self-emptying is from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Philippians: “Who, being in very form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8 NRSVCE).  This is an answer to the original sin where “you will be like god”, the “sin in its original reality takes place in man's will-and conscience-first of all as ‘disobedience,’ that is, as opposition of the will of man to the will of God. This original disobedience presupposes a rejection, or at least a turning away from the truth contained in the Word of God, who creates the world.” (John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantum, Section 33).  One could say that it is the emptying of the illusion of being God and accepting the truth of creaturely obedience in relationship to God.

Jesus provides the pathway out of original sin by taking on human nature and emptying himself of all willfulness, obeying the Father even when it means suffering and death, as incarnation of God’s love.  Through His self-emptying, His death on the cross, he brings human nature back into its proper relationship of loving God. This proper relationship includes man’s self-giving to God and receiving God in His Holy Spirit: “It is a new beginning, first of all because between the first beginning and the whole of human history-from the original fall onwards-sin has intervened, sin which is in contradiction to the presence of the Spirit of God in creation, and which is above all in contradiction to God's salvific self- communication to man.” (Ibid.).   Man’s reconciling with God includes the receiving of the Holy Spirit, made possible through the unfathomable love show by Jesus through his living through the Paschal Mystery: “God's kenosis, a grand and mysterious truth for the human mind, which finds it inconceivable that suffering and death can express a love which gives itself and seeks nothing in return.” (John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, Section 93).   Jesus gave himself and his life seeking nothing in return, a model for choosing the objective good over the subjective good.

While salvation has now become available to man, he is not able to fully receive the Holy Spirit in his relationship with God because of the continuation of original sin in each human person, where love is corrupted by the temptation to seek something in return.  Thus we must “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling”—love is a task, an effort on man’s part: “For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.  Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” (Romans 7:22-25, RSVCE).

I believe that each disciple of Jesus must pass through the Paschal Mystery with Him, the process of emptying himself so that he can enter more and more into the life of the Holy Trinity by becoming more and more like Jesus.  Our “Passion” is to suffer the obedience to the Father despite the loss of pleasure and the persecution of the “world”, giving witness to the “new creation” in which we love through the Holy Spirit, and seeking nothing in return—a life of joy and suffering that frees man to love God.

Love as a Gift through Chastity

Karol Wojtlya, following from Max Scheler, speaks of the “rehabilitation of chastity” from the error of the resentment of the virtue of chastity: “not only does [resentment] falsify the image of the good, but also depreciates what should merit the esteem, so that man does not have to take pains to measure up to the true good, but can ‘safely’ acknowledge as the good only what suits him, what is convenient for him.  Resentment is contained in the subjectivistic mentality: here pleasure replaces a superior value.” (Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility 2^nd Edition, page 126).  Resentment is generated through a “subjectivistic mentality” which pursues pleasure as its end, an obstacle to marital love and union since at best it seeks a quid pro quo and at worst seeks to use the other simply as a means to sexual pleasure.

Chastity, in the context of sexual ethics, is the practice of choosing the objective “common good” of marriage over the subjective good of pleasure when such a choice is required.  It is very difficult to practice since it is too easy to confuse the common good of marriage and the subjective good: “From the mere richness of affections one cannot pass judgment on the value of the reciprocal relation of persons.  The very abundance of emotional lived-experiences born on the ground of sensuality can conceal in itself a lack of true love, and even downright egoism.  For love is something different from amorous lived-experiences.  Love is formed on the basis of a thorough and fully responsible relation of a person to another person, whereas amorous lived-experiences are born spontaneously in reactions to sensuality and affectivity.” (Ibid., page 127).  It is easy to fool one’s self by imagining “amorous lived-experiences” are good simply due to the intensity of their pleasure despite a disintegration of the accompanying personal love: “The disintegration [of love] means above all an underdevelopment of the ethical [personal] essence of love. . . .for the good of love, for the sake of realizing love’s true essence both in every person and between persons, it is necessary to be freed from all those “amorous” live-experiences that do not find justification in true love, that is, in the reciprocal relation between a man and a woman based on a mature affirmation of the value of the person.” (Ibid., page 128).  Love is a task!

Love as self-gift and reception of the other rests upon this “mature affirmation of the value of the person”, upon the choosing of the good of the other.  This requires the suffering that comes from deferring or denying subjective good for the common good of affirming the value of the other since self-taking is a great temptation in “amorous lived-experiences”.  The task of chastity is to “liberate love from the attitude to use” (Ibid., page 154) to allow the conjugal act to occur without the attitude of use.  This is a redemptive suffering, however, since it frees one to “myself serve the law of God with my mind” as Saint Paul says in the Letter to the Romans.  With the virtue of chastity in practice, love is possible: “The mature virtue [of chastity] is a habit that consists in keeping constantly in balance the concupiscent power by the habitual relation to the true good (bonum honestum), which is defined by reason.” (Ibid., page 153).

Conclusion

            Karol Wojtyla, and later as John Paul II, focused on the role of self-gift as the action by man which could contribute to his happiness, as was famously incorporated into the council document Gaudium et Spes: “Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, "that all may be one. . . as we are one" (John 17:21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God's sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself [emphasis added].” (Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes, 1964).  This gift of self is the base of true relationship between persons, forming his understanding of the Holy Trinity, which is then the model for the marital union.  In addition, this self-giving requires kenosis, a self-emptying that is intrinsic to the loving relationship of the Trinity and a requirement for marital sacramentality.  The latter is an “emptying” of choosing one’s subjectivity for the purpose of choosing the common good of the marriage.  This provides an objective basis for the marriage, although at the cost of suffering deferring or sacrifice of each spouse’s subjective good.  This then becomes part of each spouse’s imitation of the Paschal Mystery and part of the working out of their own salvation through the marital union.

He Will Glorify Me

 A vibrant definition of sacrament in the Roman Catholic Church connects sacrament to the Holy Spirit: “Sacraments are "powers that comes forth" from the Body of Christ, which is ever-living and life-giving. They are actions of the Holy Spirit at work in his Body, the Church." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 1116).  This matches the thought of John Paul II “who sees in him [sic] the secret source of all ecclesial vitality, the guarantor of a possible transformation of the world, the principal of renewed human psychology” (Giacomo Cardinal Biffi, “The Action of The Holy Spirit in the Church and in the World” in John Paul II: A Panorama of His Teachings,  p. 38). 

This sacramental nature of the Church is different from the seven sacraments of the Church: “we must bear in mind that in the texts of the Council the sacramentality of the Church appears as distinct from the sacramentality that is proper, in the strict sense, to the Sacraments . . . what matters and what emerges from the analogical sense in which the word is used in the two cases is the relationship which the Church has with the power of the Holy Spirit, who alone gives life” (John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem, Section 64).  We can too easily gloss over the potency of the phrase “who alone gives life”, the essence of the Mystery of Passover (i.e., the Paschal Mystery).  The Mystery of the Passover carries the Israelites out of slavery to the gods of Egypt so that they can worship God and move into eternal life in the “promised land”.  This is not an abstract mystery: a multitude of lambs died to accomplish the start of the Passover, just as Jesus died to accomplish the start of the redemption of human nature.  This death then liberates the Holy Spirit to lead the People of God to new life, eternal life, just as Jesus’ “departure” liberates the Holy Spirit to lead the Church to eternal life through its participation in the Paschal Mystery to provide life to the “fallen” world.  The Church becomes the “sacrament” of life: “All of this happens in a sacramental way, through the power of the Holy Spirit, who, "drawing from the wealth of Christ's Redemption," constantly gives life. As the Church becomes ever more aware of this mystery, she sees herself more clearly, above all as a sacrament.” (Ibid., Section 63).

This understanding of the Church as a sacrament of life to the world continues the role of the Holy Spirit in creation of man and his moving into theosis through “the context of the Book of Genesis [which] enables us to see in the creation of man the first beginning of God's salvific self-giving commensurate with the "image and likeness" of himself which he has granted to man.”  (Ibid., Section 12).  This means “not only rationality and freedom as constitutive properties of human nature, but also, from the very beginning, the capacity of having a personal relationship with God, as "I" and "you," and therefore the capacity of having a covenant, which will take place in God's salvific communication with man.” (Ibid., Section 34).   The Church gives the world the unity of the “creation and redemption” that the Holy Spirit brings through history, a unity of hope in the realization of the universal salvation made possible by the death and resurrection of the Lamb of God: “the Holy Spirit is present and at work-he who with the breath of divine life permeates man's earthly pilgrimage and causes all creation, all history, to flow together to its ultimate end, in the infinite ocean of God” (Ibid., Section 64).

If Your Eye Is Unhealthy Your Whole Body Will Be Full Of Darkness

John Paul II uses the standard title for “the unforgiveable sin”--"blasphemy against the Holy Spirit"--in Dominum et Vivificantem when referring to “the sin against the Holy Spirit”.  Blasphemy is the opposite of worship and reverence, a denial that the Holy Spirit is God.  In Greek “blasphemia” means “literally, slow (sluggish) to call something good (that really is good)” (Strong’s Concordance, Section 988).  John Paul II recalls the saying of Pope Pius XII and connects it to blasphemy: ”Pope Pius XII had already declared that ”the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin” and this loss goes hand in hand with the "loss of the sense of God."” (John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem, Section 47).  It is this sluggishness to reverence God, whether at a Novus Ordo mass or in the midst of selfie-takers in the middle of natural splendor, that denies the redemptive and salvific power of the Holy Spirit convicting of sin. 

As if to emphasize this sin against the role of the Holy Spirit, blasphemy also means “calls what God disapproves, ‘right’ which "exchanges the truth of God for a lie"(Strong’s Concordance, Section 988).  Blasphemy, then, proclaims “…the ’anti-Word,’ that is to say the ‘anti-truth’…This "anti-truth" is possible because at the same time there is a complete falsification of the truth about who God is.” (John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem, Section 37).  The sin against the Holy Spirit thus denies the truth of God by proclaiming the opposite.

Without access to the truth, the sin against the Holy Spirit leaves the proclaimer confused as to their sin since their conscience is “darkened”: “To man, created to the image of God, the Holy Spirit gives the gift of conscience so that in this conscience the image may faithfully reflect its model, which is both Wisdom and eternal Law, the source of the moral order in man and in the world.” (Ibid., Section 36).  The conscience of the blasphemer reflects the “anti-truth”, then, and thus is unable to navigate the Natural Law and exercise his freedom: “…a turning away from God, and in a certain sense the closing up of human freedom in this regard. It also means a certain opening of this freedom-of the human mind and will-to the one who is the ‘father of lies.’” (Ibid., Section 37).  The blaspheming against the Holy Spirit opens one to the condemnation of the accuser of the brethren and closes one to the offer of a loving relationship with God, which is lost to consciousness as if it does not exist; the sinner is unable to find his way to God.  Thus, the sin against the Holy Spirit precludes God’s forgiveness and mercy since the sinner is unable to respond to the love of the Father in the darkness of his conscience.

Fools Say In Their Hearts There Is No God

 

I think that the second source of disenchantment, “voluntarist self-creation”, is the biggest “challenge” for those who are disenchanted.  To recapitulate Dr. Lemmons’ description, disenchantment is the cultural displacement of religious belief.  Two things are important about this description.  First, the displacement is cultural, a larger movement than disaffected individuals.  Second, there is a displacement of religious belief, a loss of relationship with the Creator of the larger world outside of the self and a lack of belief that religion is important for living “freely, fully, and happily” (R. Mary Hayden Lemmons, "Modes of Re-enchantment: John Paul II and the Role of Familial Love," Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies XXIX (2017): 91-114).

 

The “voluntarist self-creation” type of disenchantment “’seeks fulfillment through the definition and articulation of one’s own identity” (Ibid.), where one says “I exist because I will myself” rather than “I think therefore I am”.  And this leaves those disenchanted without recourse to relationship “…when willfulness is identified as the key to self-identity, human interactions become a test of invented identities.  That leaves no way to transcend egocentricity and bridge interpersonal differences without sacrificing one’s own identity or that of another”.  (Ibid.)  This is reminiscent of the “holodeck”, a place of virtual reality defined by the user, in the series “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.  One can live out fictional relationships of one’s own creation as long as one isolates oneself from actual relationships.  Obviously such a path requires the rejection of objective truth.

 

Is there a way back to “enchantment”, to singing God’s praises, for those who take this path?  Dr Lemmons offers paths of re-enchantment through developing religious faith, especially through “familial” engagement and it is true that healing comes through relationship, especially through covenant community.  The motivation for re-enchantment for the “voluntarist self-creator” is constricted by the nature of the disenchantment: “The willfulness that is so essential to voluntarist self-creation draws its power from human pride, the thrill of dominating and dismissing truth, and the pleasures of self-gratification.  Re-enchantment, thus, must wait until the lifestyle of self-gratification ceases to please” (Ibid.).  While misery is motivating, the self-centeredness of “self-creation” does migrate to “anger, rage, isolation, cynicism, and incipient despair” (Ibid.) that entraps the bloated will which would rather "rule in Hell rather than serve in Heaven". 

 

Given that access to the Truth is necessary for re-enchantment, this is made more difficult by the “de-Hellenization” of Western culture, in which the possibility of transcendent truth is removed from the culture, as so eloquently explained by Michael Hanby: “Philosophically speaking, de-Hellenization means the eclipse of an order of being, nature, and truth that transcends history, the triumph of time over eternity, with the corresponding reduction of nature to meaningless matter and a reduction of truth to so many social, political, or psychological “situations.” . . .Of course, as we have seen, one need not deny or refute this traditional understanding to effect a paradigm shift to a de-Hellenized Christianity. Indeed, one could even affirm or exalt it in an ideal sense. It is enough that it simply ceases to factor into our understanding of God and the world in any meaningful way. This will always involve a denial of the obvious if the Greek sense of being is true, but turning a blind eye to reality is an art at which we have become quite practiced.” (Michael Hanby, “A False Paradigm” in First Things, November 2018).

Apart From Me You Can Do Nothing

         “By living "as if God did not exist", man not only loses sight of the mystery of God, but also of the mystery of the world and the mystery of his own being.

The eclipse of the sense of God and of man inevitably leads to a practical materialism, which breeds individualism, utilitarianism and hedonism. Here too we see the permanent validity of the words of the Apostle: "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct" (Rom 1:28). The values of being are replaced by those of having. The only goal which counts is the pursuit of one's own material well-being. The so-called "quality of life" is interpreted primarily or exclusively as economic efficiency, inordinate consumerism, physical beauty and pleasure, to the neglect of the more profound dimensions-interpersonal, spiritual and religious-of existence.

In such a context suffering, an inescapable burden of human existence but also a factor of possible personal growth, is "censored", rejected as useless, indeed opposed as an evil, always and in every way to be avoided. When it cannot be avoided and the prospect of even some future well-being vanishes, then life appears to have lost all meaning and the temptation grows in man to claim the right to suppress it.

Within this same cultural climate, the body is no longer perceived as a properly personal reality, a sign and place of relations with others, with God and with the world. It is reduced to pure materiality: it is simply a complex of organs, functions and energies to be used according to the sole criteria of pleasure and efficiency. Consequently, sexuality too is depersonalized and exploited: from being the sign, place and language of love, that is, of the gift of self and acceptance of another, in all the other's richness as a person, it increasingly becomes the occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts. Thus the original import of human sexuality is distorted and falsified, and the two meanings, unitive and procreative, inherent in the very nature of the conjugal act, are artificially separated: in this way the marriage union is betrayed and its fruitfulness is subjected to the caprice of the couple. Procreation then becomes the "enemy" to be avoided in sexual activity: if it is welcomed, this is only because it expresses a desire, or indeed the intention, to have a child "at all costs", and not because it signifies the complete acceptance of the other and therefore an openness to the richness of life which the child represents.

In the materialistic perspective described so far, interpersonal relations are seriously impoverished. The first to be harmed are women, children, the sick or suffering, and the elderly. The criterion of personal dignity-which demands respect, generosity and service-is replaced by the criterion of efficiency, functionality and usefulness: others are considered not for what they "are", but for what they "have, do and produce". This is the supremacy of the strong over the weak.” (John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, Section 22-23).

 

          While there were many noteworthy sections I found Section 23 of Evangelium Vitae most haunting, perhaps because it describes our decaying “Western” culture both presciently as well as historically.  One of John Paul II’s unique positions in history is that of living under the oppression of German and Soviet socialism, an experience that provides an historical base from which to teach about “the culture of life” and “the culture of death”.  And one of his fundamental themes is the connection between “the mystery of God”, “the mystery of the world”, and “the mystery of his [man’s] own being”.  Mystery here means more than a lack of knowledge, rather the complexity and fullness  of relationships that precludes the inability to take and  fully comprehend them.  The “safe” way to handle mystery is to ignore it, to pretend it does not exist, so that one can possess the illusion of control over one’s life and avoid the inherent suffering of love present in relationships.

          Since we exist in the context of relationships this retreat from mystery deprives one of humanity and personal relationships.  The cost of focusing on personal control leads inevitably to the utilitarianism: “There are in life but two things, love and power, and no one has both” (Malcolm Muggeridge, The Infernal Grove, page 67).  The pursuit of power that leads to the use of others in utilitarianism is paradoxical since the pursuit of pleasure is expected to lead to a vigorous life of enjoyment.  However, through utilitarianism one loses the capacity for personal relationships (cf. Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, Chapter 1) and, thus, the possibility of practicing the communio personarum in which life has meaning and true pleasure.

          This loss of pleasure, and the mistaking of sensation for it, is compounded by the loss of “personal reality”, of the matrix of relationships that include physical and sexual relationships which lead to joy.  As such, the rejection of communio personarum leads to a rejection of fecundity since the addictive use and pursuit of sensation are the only end desired: “Procreation then becomes the ‘enemy’ to be avoided in sexual activity”.  This deprivation of happiness, which is the fruit of relationship, leaves a person angry and bitter at their unintended loneliness, leaving them recourse only to rage and hatred as the means to attempt relationship with others.  The good news of life is no longer available and the pursuit of power through “the culture of death” leads to the natural endpoint of depression and emptiness.