Vatican, Nov. 19, 2007 (CWNews.com) – Christians should not be caught up on apocalyptic prophecies and worries about the end of the world, Pope Benedict XVI (bio – news) told an audience in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, November 18.
“Let us have no fear for the future, even when it appears dark and gloomy,” the Holy Father told his Angelus audience. He was commenting on the day’s Gospel reading from St. Luke, in which Jesus tells his disciples: “When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified, for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.”
“Let us accept Christ’s invitation to face daily events trusting in his provident love,” the Pope said.
A Christian, he continued, should have a “biblical vision of history,” and should realize that following Christ is more important than any historical events, however dramatic. Jesus, he reminded his audience, is the summit of history, “its transcendent fulfillment, is its alpha and omega, its beginning and end.”
Since the first days of the Church, some believers have been tempted by theories of an imminent end to the world. The Church, he said, has always “put the faithful on their guard against recurring expressions of Messianism.” Rather than attempting to predict future events, the Church adheres faithfully to her mission: evangelizing and sanctifying the world, living in God’s time rather than attempting to find ultimate meaning in earthly events. Pope Benedict observed that cloistered religious offer a model for living in God’s time separated from earthly concerns. Noting that November 21 is a special day marked off by the Church to remember cloistered religious, the Pontiff said that a monastery is a “spiritual oasis” provides the Christian world with “the true antidote against a nihilist mentality– which, in our time, is extending its influence ever more widely in the world.”
“Our Lady Conceived without Sin Pray for us who have recourse to thee.” “Our Lady Conceived without Sin Pray for us who have recourse to thee.”
ENCYCLICAL LETTER
SPE SALVI
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS
PRIESTS AND DEACONS
MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS
AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON CHRISTIAN HOPE
Introduction
1. “SPE SALVI facti sumus”—in hope we were saved, says Saint Paul to the Romans, and likewise to us (Rom 8:24). According to the Christian faith, “redemption”—salvation—is not simply a given. Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey. Now the question immediately arises: what sort of hope could ever justify the statement that, on the basis of that hope and simply because it exists, we are redeemed? And what sort of certainty is involved here?
Faith is Hope
2. Before turning our attention to these timely questions, we must listen a little more closely to the Bible’s testimony on hope. “Hope”, in fact, is a key word in Biblical faith—so much so that in several passages the words “faith” and “hope” seem interchangeable. Thus the Letter to the Hebrews closely links the “fullness of faith” (10:22) to “the confession of our hope without wavering” (10:23). Likewise, when the First Letter of Peter exhorts Christians to be always ready to give an answer concerning the logos—the meaning and the reason—of their hope (cf. 3:15), “hope” is equivalent to “faith”. We see how decisively the self-understanding of the early Christians was shaped by their having received the gift of a trustworthy hope, when we compare the Christian life with life prior to faith, or with the situation of the followers of other religions. Paul reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). Of course he knew they had had gods, he knew they had had a religion, but their gods had proved questionable, and no hope emerged from their contradictory myths. Notwithstanding their gods, they were “without God” and consequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future. In nihil ab nihilo quam cito recidimus (How quickly we fall back from nothing to nothing): 1 so says an epitaph of that period. In this phrase we see in no uncertain terms the point Paul was making. In the same vein he says to the Thessalonians: you must not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Th 4:13). Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well. So now we can say: Christianity was not only “good news”—the communication of a hitherto unknown content. In our language we would say: the Christian message was not only “informative” but “performative”. That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known—it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.
3. Yet at this point a question arises: in what does this hope consist which, as hope, is “redemption”? The essence of the answer is given in the phrase from the Letter to the Ephesians quoted above: the Ephesians, before their encounter with Christ, were without hope because they were “without God in the world”. To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope. We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God. The example of a saint of our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a real encounter with this God for the first time. I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her “at the Father’s right hand”. Now she had “hope” —no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was “redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God. She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope and without God in the world—without hope because without God. Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her “Paron”. On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter’s lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people. The hope born in her which had “redeemed” her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.
The concept of faith-based hope in the New Testament and the early Church
4. We have raised the question: can our encounter with the God who in Christ has shown us his face and opened his heart be for us too not just “informative” but “performative”—that is to say, can it change our lives, so that we know we are redeemed through the hope that it expresses? Before attempting to answer the question, let us return once more to the early Church. It is not difficult to realize that the experience of the African slave-girl Bakhita was also the experience of many in the period of nascent Christianity who were beaten and condemned to slavery. Christianity did not bring a message of social revolution like that of the ill-fated Spartacus, whose struggle led to so much bloodshed. Jesus was not Spartacus, he was not engaged in a fight for political liberation like Barabbas or Bar- Kochba. Jesus, who himself died on the Cross, brought something totally different: an encounter with the Lord of all lords, an encounter with the living God and thus an encounter with a hope stronger than the sufferings of slavery, a hope which therefore transformed life and the world from within. What was new here can be seen with the utmost clarity in Saint Paul’s Letter to Philemon. This is a very personal letter, which Paul wrote from prison and entrusted to the runaway slave Onesimus for his master, Philemon. Yes, Paul is sending the slave back to the master from whom he had fled, not ordering but asking: “I appeal to you for my child … whose father I have become in my imprisonment … I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart … perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother …” (Philem 10-16). Those who, as far as their civil status is concerned, stand in relation to one an other as masters and slaves, inasmuch as they are members of the one Church have become brothers and sisters—this is how Christians addressed one another. By virtue of their Baptism they had been reborn, they had been given to drink of the same Spirit and they received the Body of the Lord together, alongside one another. Even if external structures remained unaltered, this changed society from within. When the Letter to the Hebrews says that Christians here on earth do not have a permanent homeland, but seek one which lies in the future (cf. Heb 11:13-16; Phil 3:20), this does not mean for one moment that they live only for the future: present society is recognized by Christians as an exile; they belong to a new society which is the goal of their common pilgrimage and which is anticipated in the course of that pilgrimage.
5. We must add a further point of view. The First Letter to the Corinthians (1:18-31) tells us that many of the early Christians belonged to the lower social strata, and precisely for this reason were open to the experience of new hope, as we saw in the example of Bakhita. Yet from the beginning there were also conversions in the aristocratic and cultured circles, since they too were living “without hope and without God in the world”. Myth had lost its credibility; the Roman State religion had become fossilized into simple ceremony which was scrupulously carried out, but by then it was merely “political religion”. Philosophical rationalism had confined the gods within the realm of unreality. The Divine was seen in various ways in cosmic forces, but a God to whom one could pray did not exist. Paul illustrates the essential problem of the religion of that time quite accurately when he contrasts life “according to Christ” with life under the dominion of the “elemental spirits of the universe” (Col 2:8). In this regard a text by Saint Gregory Nazianzen is enlightening. He says that at the very moment when the Magi, guided by the star, adored Christ the new king, astrology came to an end, because the stars were now moving in the orbit determined by Christ.2 This scene, in fact, overturns the world-view of that time, which in a different way has become fashionable once again today. It is not the elemental spirits of the universe, the laws of matter, which ultimately govern the world and mankind, but a personal God governs the stars, that is, the universe; it is not the laws of matter and of evolution that have the final say, but reason, will, love—a Person. And if we know this Person and he knows us, then truly the inexorable power of material elements no longer has the last word; we are not slaves of the universe and of its laws, we are free. In ancient times, honest enquiring minds were aware of this. Heaven is not empty. Life is not a simple product of laws and the randomness of matter, but within everything and at the same time above everything, there is a personal will, there is a Spirit who in Jesus has revealed himself as Love.3
6. The sarcophagi of the early Christian era illustrate this concept visually—in the context of death, in the face of which the question concerning life’s meaning becomes unavoidable. The figure of Christ is interpreted on ancient sarcophagi principally by two images: the philosopher and the shepherd. Philosophy at that time was not generally seen as a difficult academic discipline, as it is today. Rather, the philosopher was someone who knew how to teach the essential art: the art of being authentically human—the art of living and dying. To be sure, it had long since been realized that many of the people who went around pretending to be philosophers, teachers of life, were just charlatans who made money through their words, while having nothing to say about real life. All the more, then, the true philosopher who really did know how to point out the path of life was highly sought after. Towards the end of the third century, on the sarcophagus of a child in Rome, we find for the first time, in the context of the resurrection of Lazarus, the figure of Christ as the true philosopher, holding the Gospel in one hand and the philosopher’s travelling staff in the other. With his staff, he conquers death; the Gospel brings the truth that itinerant philosophers had searched for in vain. In this image, which then became a common feature of sarcophagus art for a long time, we see clearly what both educated and simple people found in Christ: he tells us who man truly is and what a man must do in order to be truly human. He shows us the way, and this way is the truth. He himself is both the way and the truth, and therefore he is also the life which all of us are seeking. He also shows us the way beyond death; only someone able to do this is a true teacher of life. The same thing becomes visible in the image of the shepherd. As in the representation of the philosopher, so too through the figure of the shepherd the early Church could identify with existing models of Roman art. There the shepherd was generally an expression of the dream of a tranquil and simple life, for which the people, amid the confusion of the big cities, felt a certain longing. Now the image was read as part of a new scenario which gave it a deeper content: “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want … Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, because you are with me …” (Ps 23 [22]:1, 4). The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that passes through the valley of death; one who walks with me even on the path of final solitude, where no one can accompany me, guiding me through: he himself has walked this path, he has descended into the kingdom of death, he has conquered death, and he has returned to accompany us now and to give us the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through. The realization that there is One who even in death accompanies me, and with his “rod and his staff comforts me”, so that “I fear no evil” (cf. Ps 23 [22]:4)—this was the new “hope” that arose over the life of believers.
7. We must return once more to the New Testament. In the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews (v. 1) we find a kind of definition of faith which closely links this virtue with hope. Ever since the Reformation there has been a dispute among exegetes over the central word of this phrase, but today a way towards a common interpretation seems to be opening up once more. For the time being I shall leave this central word untranslated. The sentence therefore reads as follows: “Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen”. For the Fathers and for the theologians of the Middle Ages, it was clear that the Greek word hypostasis was to be rendered in Latin with the term substantia. The Latin translation of the text produced at the time of the early Church therefore reads: Est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium—faith is the “substance” of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen. Saint Thomas Aquinas,4 using the terminology of the philosophical tradition to which he belonged, explains it as follows: faith is a habitus, that is, a stable disposition of the spirit, through which eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not see. The concept of “substance” is therefore modified in the sense that through faith, in a tentative way, or as we might say “in embryo”—and thus according to the “substance”—there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: the whole, true life. And precisely because the thing itself is already present, this presence of what is to come also creates certainty: this “thing” which must come is not yet visible in the external world (it does not “appear”), but because of the fact that, as an initial and dynamic reality, we carry it within us, a certain perception of it has even now come into existence. To Luther, who was not particularly fond of the Letter to the Hebrews, the concept of “substance”, in the context of his view of faith, meant nothing. For this reason he understood the term hypostasis/substance not in the objective sense (of a reality present within us), but in the subjective sense, as an expression of an interior attitude, and so, naturally, he also had to understand the term argumentum as a disposition of the subject. In the twentieth century this interpretation became prevalent—at least in Germany—in Catholic exegesis too, so that the ecumenical translation into German of the New Testament, approved by the Bishops, reads as follows: Glaube aber ist: Feststehen in dem, was man erhofft, Überzeugtsein von dem, was man nicht sieht (faith is: standing firm in what one hopes, being convinced of what one does not see). This in itself is not incorrect, but it is not the meaning of the text, because the Greek term used (elenchos) does not have the subjective sense of “conviction” but the objective sense of “proof”. Rightly, therefore, recent Prot- estant exegesis has arrived at a different interpretation: “Yet there can be no question but that this classical Protestant understanding is untenable.”5 Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.
8. This explanation is further strengthened and related to daily life if we consider verse 34 of the tenth chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews, which is linked by vocabulary and content to this definition of hope-filled faith and prepares the way for it. Here the author speaks to believers who have undergone the experience of persecution and he says to them: “you had compassion on the prisoners, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property (hyparchonton—Vg. bonorum), since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession (hyparxin—Vg. substantiam) and an abiding one.” Hyparchonta refers to property, to what in earthly life constitutes the means of support, indeed the basis, the “substance” for life, what we depend upon. This “substance”, life’s normal source of security, has been taken away from Christians in the course of persecution. They have stood firm, though, because they considered this material substance to be of little account. They could abandon it because they had found a better “basis” for their existence—a basis that abides, that no one can take away. We must not overlook the link between these two types of “substance”, between means of support or material basis and the word of faith as the “basis”, the “substance” that endures. Faith gives life a new basis, a new foundation on which we can stand, one which relativizes the habitual foundation, the reliability of material income. A new freedom is created with regard to this habitual foundation of life, which only appears to be capable of providing support, although this is obviously not to deny its normal meaning. This new freedom, the awareness of the new “substance” which we have been given, is revealed not only in martyrdom, in which people resist the overbearing power of ideology and its political organs and, by their death, renew the world. Above all, it is seen in the great acts of renunciation, from the monks of ancient times to Saint Francis of Assisi and those of our contemporaries who enter modern religious Institutes and movements and leave everything for love of Christ, so as to bring to men and women the faith and love of Christ, and to help those who are suffering in body and spirit. In their case, the new “substance” has proved to be a genuine “substance”; from the hope of these people who have been touched by Christ, hope has arisen for others who were living in darkness and without hope. In their case, it has been demonstrated that this new life truly possesses and is “substance” that calls forth life for others. For us who contemplate these figures, their way of acting and living is de facto a “proof” that the things to come, the promise of Christ, are not only a reality that we await, but a real presence: he is truly the “philosopher” and the “shepherd” who shows us what life is and where it is to be found.
9. In order to understand more deeply this reflection on the two types of substance—hypostasis and hyparchonta—and on the two approaches to life expressed by these terms, we must continue with a brief consideration of two words pertinent to the discussion which can be found in the tenth chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews. I refer to the words hypomone (10:36) and hypostole (10:39). Hypo- mone is normally translated as “patience”—perseverance, constancy. Knowing how to wait, while patiently enduring trials, is necessary for the believer to be able to “receive what is promised” (10:36). In the religious context of ancient Judaism, this word was used expressly for the expectation of God which was characteristic of Israel, for their persevering faithfulness to God on the basis of the certainty of the Covenant in a world which contradicts God. Thus the word indicates a lived hope, a life based on the certainty of hope. In the New Testament this expectation of God, this standing with God, takes on a new significance: in Christ, God has revealed himself. He has already communicated to us the “substance” of things to come, and thus the expectation of God acquires a new certainty.
It is the expectation of things to come from the perspective of a present that is already given. It is a looking-forward in Christ’s presence, with Christ who is present, to the perfecting of his Body, to his definitive coming. The word hypostole, on the other hand, means shrinking back through lack of courage to speak openly and frankly a truth that may be dangerous. Hiding through a spirit of fear leads to “destruction” (Heb 10:39). “God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control”—that, by contrast, is the beautiful way in which the Second Letter to Timothy (1:7) describes the fundamental attitude of the Christian.
Eternal life – what is it?
10. We have spoken thus far of faith and hope in the New Testament and in early Christianity; yet it has always been clear that we are referring not only to the past: the entire reflection concerns living and dying in general, and therefore it also concerns us here and now. So now we must ask explicitly: is the Christian faith also for us today a life-changing and life-sustaining hope?
Is it “performative” for us—is it a message which shapes our life in a new way, or is it just “information” which, in the meantime, we have set aside and which now seems to us to have been superseded by more recent information? In the search for an answer, I would like to begin with the classical form of the dialogue with which the rite of Baptism expressed the reception of an infant into the community of believers and the infant’s rebirth in Christ. First of all the priest asked what name the parents had chosen for the child, and then he continued with the question: “What do you ask of the Church?” Answer: “Faith”. “And what does faith give you?” “Eternal life”. According to this dialogue, the parents were seeking access to the faith for their child, communion with believers, because they saw in faith the key to “eternal life”. Today as in the past, this is what being baptized, becoming Christians, is all about: it is not just an act of socialization within the community, not simply a welcome into the Church. The parents expect more for the one to be baptized: they expect that faith, which includes the corporeal nature of the Church and her sacraments, will give life to their child—eternal life. Faith is the substance of hope. But then the question arises: do we really want this—to live eternally? Perhaps many people reject the faith today simply because they do not find the prospect of eternal life attractive. What they desire is not eternal life at all, but this present life, for which faith in eternal life seems something of an impediment. To continue living for ever —endlessly—appears more like a curse than a gift. Death, admittedly, one would wish to postpone for as long as possible. But to live always, without end—this, all things considered, can only be monotonous and ultimately unbearable. This is precisely the point made, for example, by Saint Ambrose, one of the Church Fathers, in the funeral discourse for his deceased brother Satyrus: “Death was not part of nature; it became part of nature. God did not decree death from the beginning; he prescribed it as a remedy. Human life, because of sin … began to experience the burden of wretchedness in unremitting labour and unbearable sorrow. There had to be a limit to its evils; death had to restore what life had forfeited. Without the assistance of grace, immortality is more of a burden than a blessing.” 6 A little earlier, Ambrose had said: “Death is, then, no cause for mourning, for it is the cause of mankind’s salvation.” 7
11. Whatever precisely Saint Ambrose may have meant by these words, it is true that to eliminate death or to postpone it more or less indefinitely would place the earth and humanity in an impossible situation, and even for the individual would bring no benefit. Obviously there is a contradiction in our attitude, which points to an inner contradiction in our very existence. On the one hand, we do not want to die; above all, those who love us do not want us to die. Yet on the other hand, neither do we want to continue living indefinitely, nor was the earth created with that in view. So what do we really want? Our paradoxical attitude gives rise to a deeper question: what in fact is “life”? And what does “eternity” really mean? There are moments when it suddenly seems clear to us: yes, this is what true “life” is—this is what it should be like. Besides, what we call “life” in our everyday language is not real “life” at all. Saint Augustine, in the extended letter on prayer which he addressed to Proba, a wealthy Roman widow and mother of three consuls, once wrote this: ultimately we want only one thing—”the blessed life”, the life which is simply life, simply “happiness”. In the final analysis, there is nothing else that we ask for in prayer. Our journey has no other goal—it is about this alone. But then Augustine also says: looking more closely, we have no idea what we ultimately desire, what we would really like. We do not know this reality at all; even in those moments when we think we can reach out and touch it, it eludes us. “We do not know what we should pray for as we ought,” he says, quoting Saint Paul (Rom 8:26). All we know is that it is not this. Yet in not knowing, we know that this reality must exist. “There is therefore in us a certain learned ignorance (docta ignorantia), so to speak”, he writes. We do not know what we would really like; we do not know this “true life”; and yet we know that there must be something we do not know towards which we feel driven.8
12. I think that in this very precise and permanently valid way, Augustine is describing man’s essential situation, the situation that gives rise to all his contradictions and hopes. In some way we want life itself, true life, untouched even by death; yet at the same time we do not know the thing towards which we feel driven. We cannot stop reaching out for it, and yet we know that all we can experience or accomplish is not what we yearn for. This unknown “thing” is the true “hope” which drives us, and at the same time the fact that it is unknown is the cause of all forms of despair and also of all efforts, whether positive or destructive, directed towards worldly authenticity and human authenticity. The term “eternal life” is intended to give a name to this known “unknown”. Inevitably it is an inadequate term that creates confusion. “Eternal”, in fact, suggests to us the idea of something interminable, and this frightens us; “life” makes us think of the life that we know and love and do not want to lose, even though very often it brings more toil than satisfaction, so that while on the one hand we desire it, on the other hand we do not want it. To imagine ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us and in some way to sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality—this we can only attempt. It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time—the before and after—no longer exists. We can only attempt to grasp the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy. This is how Jesus expresses it in Saint John’s Gospel: “I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (16:22). We must think along these lines if we want to understand the object of Christian hope, to understand what it is that our faith, our being with Christ, leads us to expect.9
Is Christian hope individualistic?
13. In the course of their history, Christians have tried to express this “knowing without knowing” by means of figures that can be represented, and they have developed images of “Heaven” which remain far removed from what, after all, can only be known negatively, via unknowing. All these attempts at the representation of hope have given to many people, down the centuries, the incentive to live by faith and hence also to abandon their hyparchonta, the material substance for their lives. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews, in the eleventh chapter, outlined a kind of history of those who live in hope and of their journeying, a history which stretches from the time of Abel into the author’s own day. This type of hope has been subjected to an increasingly harsh critique in modern times: it is dismissed as pure individualism, a way of abandoning the world to its misery and taking refuge in a private form of eternal salvation. Henri de Lubac, in the introduction to his seminal book Catholicisme. Aspects sociaux du dogme, assembled some characteristic articulations of this viewpoint, one of which is worth quoting: “Should I have found joy? No … only my joy, and that is something wildly different … The joy of Jesus can be personal. It can belong to a single man and he is saved. He is at peace … now and always, but he is alone. The isolation of this joy does not trouble him. On the contrary: he is the chosen one! In his blessedness he passes through the battlefields with a rose in his hand.” 10
14. Against this, drawing upon the vast range of patristic theology, de Lubac was able to demonstrate that salvation has always been considered a “social” reality. Indeed, the Letter to the Hebrews speaks of a “city” (cf. 11:10, 16; 12:22; 13:14) and therefore of communal salvation. Consistently with this view, sin is understood by the Fathers as the destruction of the unity of the human race, as fragmentation and division. Babel, the place where languages were confused, the place of separation, is seen to be an expression of what sin fundamentally is. Hence “redemption” appears as the reestablishment of unity, in which we come together once more in a union that begins to take shape in the world community of believers. We need not concern ourselves here with all the texts in which the social character of hope appears. Let us concentrate on the Letter to Proba in which Augustine tries to illustrate to some degree this “known unknown” that we seek. His point of departure is simply the expression “blessed life”. Then he quotes Psalm 144 [143]:15: “Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord.” And he continues: “In order to be numbered among this people and attain to … everlasting life with God, ‘the end of the commandment is charity that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith’ (1 Tim 1:5).” 11 This real life, towards which we try to reach out again and again, is linked to a lived union with a “people”, and for each individual it can only be attained within this “we”. It presupposes that we escape from the prison of our “I”, because only in the openness of this universal subject does our gaze open out to the source of joy, to love itself—to God.
15. While this community-oriented vision of the “blessed life” is certainly directed beyond the present world, as such it also has to do with the building up of this world—in very different ways, according to the historical context and the possibilities offered or excluded thereby. At the time of Augustine, the incursions of new peoples were threatening the cohesion of the world, where hitherto there had been a certain guarantee of law and of living in a juridically ordered society; at that time, then, it was a matter of strengthening the basic foundations of this peaceful societal existence, in order to survive in a changed world. Let us now consider a more or less randomly chosen episode from the Middle Ages, that serves in many respects to illustrate what we have been saying. It was commonly thought that monasteries were places of flight from the world (contemptus mundi) and of withdrawal from responsibility for the world, in search of private salvation. Bernard of Clairvaux, who inspired a multitude of young people to enter the monasteries of his reformed Order, had quite a different perspective on this. In his view, monks perform a task for the whole Church and hence also for the world. He uses many images to illustrate the responsibility that monks have towards the entire body of the Church, and indeed towards humanity; he applies to them the words of pseudo-Rufinus: “The human race lives thanks to a few; were it not for them, the world would perish …”.12 Contemplatives—contemplantes—must become agricultural labourers—laborantes—he says. The nobility of work, which Christianity inherited from Judaism, had already been expressed in the monastic rules of Augustine and Benedict. Bernard takes up this idea again. The young noblemen who flocked to his monasteries had to engage in manual labour. In fact Bernard explicitly states that not even the monastery can restore Paradise, but he maintains that, as a place of practical and spiritual “tilling the soil”, it must prepare the new Paradise. A wild plot of forest land is rendered fertile—and in the process, the trees of pride are felled, whatever weeds may be growing inside souls are pulled up, and the ground is thereby prepared so that bread for body and soul can flourish.13 Are we not perhaps seeing once again, in the light of current history, that no positive world order can prosper where souls are overgrown?
The transformation of Christian faith-hope in the modern age
16. How could the idea have developed that Jesus’s message is narrowly individualistic and aimed only at each person singly? How did we arrive at this interpretation of the “salvation of the soul” as a flight from responsibility for the whole, and how did we come to conceive the Christian project as a selfish search for salvation which rejects the idea of serving others? In order to find an answer to this we must take a look at the foundations of the modern age. These appear with particular clarity in the thought of Francis Bacon. That a new era emerged—through the discovery of America and the new technical achievements that had made this development possible—is undeniable. But what is the basis of this new era? It is the new correlation of experiment and method that enables man to arrive at an interpretation of nature in conformity with its laws and thus finally to achieve “the triumph of art over nature” (victoria cursus artis super naturam).14 The novelty—according to Bacon’s vision—lies in a new correlation between science and praxis. This is also given a theological application: the new correlation between science and praxis would mean that the dominion over creation —given to man by God and lost through original sin—would be reestablished.15
17. Anyone who reads and reflects on these statements attentively will recognize that a disturbing step has been taken: up to that time, the recovery of what man had lost through the expulsion from Paradise was expected from faith in Jesus Christ: herein lay “redemption”. Now, this “redemption”, the restoration of the lost “Paradise” is no longer expected from faith, but from the newly discovered link between science and praxis. It is not that faith is simply denied; rather it is displaced onto another level—that of purely private and other-worldly affairs—and at the same time it becomes somehow irrelevant for the world. This programmatic vision has determined the trajectory of modern times and it also shapes the present-day crisis of faith which is essentially a crisis of Christian hope. Thus hope too, in Bacon, acquires a new form. Now it is called: faith in progress. For Bacon, it is clear that the recent spate of discoveries and inventions is just the beginning; through the interplay of science and praxis, totally new discoveries will follow, a totally new world will emerge, the kingdom of man.16 He even put forward a vision of foreseeable inventions—including the aeroplane and the submarine. As the ideology of progress developed further, joy at visible advances in human potential remained a continuing confirmation of faith in progress as such.
18. At the same time, two categories become increasingly central to the idea of progress: reason and freedom. Progress is primarily associated with the growing dominion of reason, and this reason is obviously considered to be a force of good and a force for good. Progress is the overcoming of all forms of dependency—it is progress towards perfect freedom. Likewise freedom is seen purely as a promise, in which man becomes more and more fully himself. In both concepts—freedom and reason—there is a political aspect. The kingdom of reason, in fact, is expected as the new condition of the human race once it has attained total freedom. The political conditions of such a kingdom of reason and freedom, however, appear at first sight somewhat ill defined. Reason and freedom seem to guarantee by themselves, by virtue of their intrinsic goodness, a new and perfect human community. The two key concepts of “reason” and “freedom”, however, were tacitly interpreted as being in conflict with the shackles of faith and of the Church as well as those of the political structures of the period. Both concepts therefore contain a revolutionary potential of enormous explosive force.
19. We must look briefly at the two essential stages in the political realization of this hope, because they are of great importance for the development of Christian hope, for a proper understanding of it and of the reasons for its persistence. First there is the French Revolution—an attempt to establish the rule of reason and freedom as a political reality. To begin with, the Europe of the Enlightenment looked on with fascination at these events, but then, as they developed, had cause to reflect anew on reason and freedom. A good illustration of these two phases in the reception of events in France is found in two essays by Immanuel Kant in which he reflects on what had taken place. In 1792 he wrote Der Sieg des guten Prinzips über das böse und die Gründung eines Reiches Gottes auf Erden (“The Victory of the Good over the Evil Principle and the Founding of a Kingdom of God on Earth”). In this text he says the following: “The gradual transition of ecclesiastical faith to the exclusive sovereignty of pure religious faith is the coming of the Kingdom of God.” 17 He also tells us that revolutions can accelerate this transition from ecclesiastical faith to rational faith. The “Kingdom of God” proclaimed by Jesus receives a new definition here and takes on a new mode of presence; a new “imminent expectation”, so to speak, comes into existence: the “Kingdom of God” arrives where “ecclesiastical faith” is vanquished and superseded by “religious faith”, that is to say, by simple rational faith. In 1795, in the text Das Ende aller Dinge (“The End of All Things”) a changed image appears. Now Kant considers the possibility that as well as the natural end of all things there may be another that is unnatural, a perverse end. He writes in this connection: “If Christianity should one day cease to be worthy of love … then the prevailing mode in human thought would be rejection and opposition to it; and the Antichrist … would begin his—albeit short—regime (presumably based on fear and self-interest); but then, because Christianity, though destined to be the world religion, would not in fact be favoured by destiny to become so, then, in a moral respect, this could lead to the (perverted) end of all things.” 18
20. The nineteenth century held fast to its faith in progress as the new form of human hope, and it continued to consider reason and freedom as the guiding stars to be followed along the path of hope. Nevertheless, the increasingly rapid advance of technical development and the industrialization connected with it soon gave rise to an entirely new social situation: there emerged a class of industrial workers and the so-called “industrial proletariat”, whose dreadful living conditions Friedrich Engels described alarmingly in 1845. For his readers, the conclusion is clear: this cannot continue; a change is necessary. Yet the change would shake up and overturn the entire structure of bourgeois society. After the bourgeois revolution of 1789, the time had come for a new, proletarian revolution: progress could not simply continue in small, linear steps. A revolutionary leap was needed. Karl Marx took up the rallying call, and applied his incisive language and intellect to the task of launching this major new and, as he thought, definitive step in history towards salvation—towards what Kant had described as the “Kingdom of God”. Once the truth of the hereafter had been rejected, it would then be a question of establishing the truth of the here and now. The critique of Heaven is transformed into the critique of earth, the critique of theology into the critique of politics. Progress towards the better, towards the definitively good world, no longer comes simply from science but from politics—from a scientifically conceived politics that recognizes the structure of history and society and thus points out the road towards revolution, towards all-encompassing change. With great precision, albeit with a certain onesided bias, Marx described the situation of his time, and with great analytical skill he spelled out the paths leading to revolution—and not only theoretically: by means of the Communist Party that came into being from the Communist Manifesto of 1848, he set it in motion. His promise, owing to the acuteness of his analysis and his clear indication of the means for radical change, was and still remains an endless source of fascination. Real revolution followed, in the most radical way in Russia.
21. Together with the victory of the revolution, though, Marx’s fundamental error also became evident. He showed precisely how to overthrow the existing order, but he did not say how matters should proceed thereafter. He simply presumed that with the expropriation of the ruling class, with the fall of political power and the socialization of means of production, the new Jerusalem would be realized. Then, indeed, all contradictions would be resolved, man and the world would finally sort themselves out. Then everything would be able to proceed by itself along the right path, because everything would belong to everyone and all would desire the best for one another. Thus, having accomplished the revolution, Lenin must have realized that the writings of the master gave no indication as to how to proceed. True, Marx had spoken of the interim phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a necessity which in time would automatically become redundant. This “intermediate phase” we know all too well, and we also know how it then developed, not ushering in a perfect world, but leaving behind a trail of appalling destruction. Marx not only omitted to work out how this new world would be organized—which should, of course, have been unnecessary. His silence on this matter follows logically from his chosen approach. His error lay deeper. He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man’s freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favourable economic environment.
22. Again, we find ourselves facing the question: what may we hope? A self-critique of modernity is needed in dialogue with Christianity and its concept of hope. In this dialogue Christians too, in the context of their knowledge and experience, must learn anew in what their hope truly consists, what they have to offer to the world and what they cannot offer. Flowing into this self-critique of the modern age there also has to be a self-critique of modern Christianity, which must constantly renew its self-understanding setting out from its roots. On this subject, all we can attempt here are a few brief observations. First we must ask ourselves: what does “progress” really mean; what does it promise and what does it not promise? In the nineteenth century, faith in progress was already subject to critique. In the twentieth century, Theodor W. Adorno formulated the problem of faith in progress quite drastically: he said that progress, seen accurately, is progress from the sling to the atom bomb. Now this is certainly an aspect of progress that must not be concealed. To put it another way: the ambiguity of progress becomes evident. Without doubt, it offers new possibilities for good, but it also opens up appalling possibilities for evil—possibilities that formerly did not exist. We have all witnessed the way in which progress, in the wrong hands, can become and has indeed become a terrifying progress in evil. If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man’s ethical formation, in man’s inner growth (cf. Eph 3:16; 2 Cor 4:16), then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world.
23. As far as the two great themes of “reason” and “freedom” are concerned, here we can only touch upon the issues connected with them. Yes indeed, reason is God’s great gift to man, and the victory of reason over unreason is also a goal of the Christian life. But when does reason truly triumph? When it is detached from God? When it has become blind to God? Is the reason behind action and capacity for action the whole of reason? If progress, in order to be progress, needs moral growth on the part of humanity, then the reason behind action and capacity for action is likewise urgently in need of integration through reason’s openness to the saving forces of faith, to the differentiation between good and evil. Only thus does reason become truly human. It becomes human only if it is capable of directing the will along the right path, and it is capable of this only if it looks beyond itself. Otherwise, man’s situation, in view of the imbalance between his material capacity and the lack of judgement in his heart, becomes a threat for him and for creation. Thus where freedom is concerned, we must remember that human freedom always requires a convergence of various freedoms. Yet this convergence cannot succeed unless it is determined by a common intrinsic criterion of measurement, which is the foundation and goal of our freedom. Let us put it very simply: man needs God, otherwise he remains without hope. Given the developments of the modern age, the quotation from Saint Paul with which I began (Eph 2:12) proves to be thoroughly realistic and plainly true. There is no doubt, therefore, that a “Kingdom of God” accomplished without God—a kingdom therefore of man alone—inevitably ends up as the “perverse end” of all things as described by Kant: we have seen it, and we see it over and over again. Yet neither is there any doubt that God truly enters into human affairs only when, rather than being present merely in our thinking, he himself comes towards us and speaks to us. Reason therefore needs faith if it is to be completely itself: reason and faith need one another in order to fulfil their true nature and their mission.
The true shape of Christian hope
24. Let us ask once again: what may we hope? And what may we not hope? First of all, we must acknowledge that incremental progress is possible only in the material sphere. Here, amid our growing knowledge of the structure of matter and in the light of ever more advanced inventions, we clearly see continuous progress towards an ever greater mastery of nature. Yet in the field of ethical awareness and moral decision-making, there is no similar possibility of accumulation for the simple reason that man’s freedom is always new and he must always make his decisions anew. These decisions can never simply be made for us in advance by others—if that were the case, we would no longer be free. Freedom presupposes that in fundamental decisions, every person and every generation is a new beginning. Naturally, new generations can build on the knowledge and experience of those who went before, and they can draw upon the moral treasury of the whole of humanity. But they can also reject it, because it can never be self-evident in the same way as material inventions. The moral treasury of humanity is not readily at hand like tools that we use; it is present as an appeal to freedom and a possibility for it. This, however, means that:
a) The right state of human affairs, the moral well-being of the world can never be guaranteed simply through structures alone, however good they are. Such structures are not only important, but necessary; yet they cannot and must not marginalize human freedom. Even the best structures function only when the community is animated by convictions capable of motivating people to assent freely to the social order. Freedom requires conviction; conviction does not exist on its own, but must always be gained anew by the community.
b) Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last for ever is making a false promise; he is overlooking human freedom. Freedom must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Free assent to the good never exists simply by itself. If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined—good—state of the world, man’s freedom would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all.
25. What this means is that every generation has the task of engaging anew in the arduous search for the right way to order human affairs; this task is never simply completed. Yet every generation must also make its own contribution to establishing convincing structures of freedom and of good, which can help the following generation as a guideline for the proper use of human freedom; hence, always within human limits, they provide a certain guarantee also for the future. In other words: good structures help, but of themselves they are not enough. Man can never be redeemed simply from outside. Francis Bacon and those who followed in the intellectual current of modernity that he inspired were wrong to believe that man would be redeemed through science. Such an expectation asks too much of science; this kind of hope is deceptive. Science can contribute greatly to making the world and mankind more human. Yet it can also destroy mankind and the world unless it is steered by forces that lie outside it. On the other hand, we must also acknowledge that modern Christianity, faced with the successes of science in progressively structuring the world, has to a large extent restricted its attention to the individual and his salvation. In so doing it has limited the horizon of its hope and has failed to recognize sufficiently the greatness of its task—even if it has continued to achieve great things in the formation of man and in care for the weak and the suffering.
26. It is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed by love. This applies even in terms of this present world. When someone has the experience of a great love in his life, this is a moment of “redemption” which gives a new meaning to his life. But soon he will also realize that the love bestowed upon him cannot by itself resolve the question of his life. It is a love that remains fragile. It can be destroyed by death. The human being needs unconditional love. He needs the certainty which makes him say: “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38- 39). If this absolute love exists, with its absolute certainty, then—only then—is man “redeemed”, whatever should happen to him in his particular circumstances. This is what it means to say: Jesus Christ has “redeemed” us. Through him we have become certain of God, a God who is not a remote “first cause” of the world, because his only-begotten Son has become man and of him everyone can say: “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).
27. In this sense it is true that anyone who does not know God, even though he may entertain all kinds of hopes, is ultimately without hope, without the great hope that sustains the whole of life (cf. Eph 2:12). Man’s great, true hope which holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God—God who has loved us and who continues to love us “to the end,” until all “is accomplished” (cf. Jn 13:1 and 19:30). Whoever is moved by love begins to perceive what “life” really is. He begins to perceive the meaning of the word of hope that we encountered in the Baptismal Rite: from faith I await “eternal life”—the true life which, whole and unthreatened, in all its fullness, is simply life. Jesus, who said that he had come so that we might have life and have it in its fullness, in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10), has also explained to us what “life” means: “this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). Life in its true sense is not something we have exclusively in or from ourselves: it is a relationship. And life in its totality is a relationship with him who is the source of life. If we are in relation with him who does not die, who is Life itself and Love itself, then we are in life. Then we “live”.
28. Yet now the question arises: are we not in this way falling back once again into an individualistic understanding of salvation, into hope for myself alone, which is not true hope since it forgets and overlooks others? Indeed we are not! Our relationship with God is established through communion with Jesus—we cannot achieve it alone or from our own resources alone. The relationship with Jesus, however, is a relationship with the one who gave himself as a ransom for all (cf. 1 Tim 2:6). Being in communion with Jesus Christ draws us into his “being for all”; it makes it our own way of being. He commits us to live for others, but only through communion with him does it become possible truly to be there for others, for the whole. In this regard I would like to quote the great Greek Doctor of the Church, Maximus the Confessor († 662), who begins by exhorting us to prefer nothing to the knowledge and love of God, but then quickly moves on to practicalities: “The one who loves God cannot hold on to money but rather gives it out in God’s fashion … in the same manner in accordance with the measure of justice.” 19 Love of God leads to participation in the justice and generosity of God towards others. Loving God requires an interior freedom from all possessions and all material goods: the love of God is revealed in responsibility for others.20 This same connection between love of God and responsibility for others can be seen in a striking way in the life of Saint Augustine. After his conversion to the Christian faith, he decided, together with some like-minded friends, to lead a life totally dedicated to the word of God and to things eternal. His intention was to practise a Christian version of the ideal of the contemplative life expressed in the great tradition of Greek philosophy, choosing in this way the “better part” (cf. Lk 10:42). Things turned out differently, however. While attending the Sunday liturgy at the port city of Hippo, he was called out from the assembly by the Bishop and constrained to receive ordination for the exercise of the priestly ministry in that city. Looking back on that moment, he writes in his Confessions: “Terrified by my sins and the weight of my misery, I had resolved in my heart, and meditated flight into the wilderness; but you forbade me and gave me strength, by saying: ‘Christ died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died’ (cf. 2 Cor 5:15)”.21 Christ died for all. To live for him means allowing oneself to be drawn into his being for others.
29. For Augustine this meant a totally new life. He once described his daily life in the following terms: “The turbulent have to be corrected, the faint-hearted cheered up, the weak supported; the Gospel’s opponents need to be refuted, its insidious enemies guarded against; the unlearned need to be taught, the indolent stirred up, the argumentative checked; the proud must be put in their place, the desperate set on their feet, those engaged in quarrels reconciled; the needy have to be helped, the oppressed to be liberated, the good to be encouraged, the bad to be tolerated; all must be loved.” 22 “The Gospel terrifies me” 23—producing that healthy fear which prevents us from living for ourselves alone and compels us to pass on the hope we hold in common. Amid the serious difficulties facing the Roman Empire—and also posing a serious threat to Roman Africa, which was actually destroyed at the end of Augustine’s life—this was what he set out to do: to transmit hope, the hope which came to him from faith and which, in complete contrast with his introverted temperament, enabled him to take part decisively and with all his strength in the task of building up the city. In the same chapter of the Confessions in which we have just noted the decisive reason for his commitment “for all”, he says that Christ “intercedes for us, otherwise I should despair. My weaknesses are many and grave, many and grave indeed, but more abundant still is your medicine. We might have thought that your word was far distant from union with man, and so we might have despaired of ourselves, if this Word had not become flesh and dwelt among us.” 24 On the strength of his hope, Augustine dedicated himself completely to the ordinary people and to his city—renouncing his spiritual nobility, he preached and acted in a simple way for simple people.
30. Let us summarize what has emerged so far in the course of our reflections. Day by day, man experiences many greater or lesser hopes, different in kind according to the different periods of his life. Sometimes one of these hopes may appear to be totally satisfying without any need for other hopes. Young people can have the hope of a great and fully satisfying love; the hope of a certain position in their profession, or of some success that will prove decisive for the rest of their lives. When these hopes are fulfilled, however, it becomes clear that they were not, in reality, the whole. It becomes evident that man has need of a hope that goes further. It becomes clear that only something infinite will suffice for him, something that will always be more than he can ever attain. In this regard our contemporary age has developed the hope of creating a perfect world that, thanks to scientific knowledge and to scientifically based politics, seemed to be achievable. Thus Biblical hope in the Kingdom of God has been displaced by hope in the kingdom of man, the hope of a better world which would be the real “Kingdom of God”. This seemed at last to be the great and realistic hope that man needs. It was capable of galvanizing—for a time—all man’s energies. The great objective seemed worthy of full commitment. In the course of time, however, it has become clear that this hope is constantly receding. Above all it has become apparent that this may be a hope for a future generation, but not for me.
And however much “for all” may be part of the great hope—since I cannot be happy without others or in opposition to them—it remains true that a hope that does not concern me personally is not a real hope. It has also become clear that this hope is opposed to freedom, since human affairs depend in each generation on the free decisions of those concerned. If this freedom were to be taken away, as a result of certain conditions or structures, then ultimately this world would not be good, since a world without freedom can by no means be a good world. Hence, while we must always be committed to the improvement of the world, tomorrow’s better world cannot be the proper and sufficient content of our hope. And in this regard the question always arises: when is the world “better”? What makes it good? By what standard are we to judge its goodness? What are the paths that lead to this “goodness”?
31. Let us say once again: we need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain. The fact that it comes to us as a gift is actually part of hope. God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety. His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; his Kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us. His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is “truly” life. Let us now, in the final section, develop this idea in more detail as we focus our attention on some of the “settings” in which we can learn in practice about hope and its exercise.
“Settings” for learning and practising hope
I. Prayer as a school of hope
32. A first essential setting for learning hope is prayer. When no one listens to me any more, God still listens to me. When I can no longer talk to anyone or call upon anyone, I can always talk to God. When there is no longer anyone to help me deal with a need or expectation that goes beyond the human capacity for hope, he can help me.25 When I have been plunged into complete solitude …; if I pray I am never totally alone. The late Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan, a prisoner for thirteen years, nine of them spent in solitary confinement, has left us a precious little book: Prayers of Hope. During thirteen years in jail, in a situation of seemingly utter hopelessness, the fact that he could listen and speak to God became for him an increasing power of hope, which enabled him, after his release, to become for people all over the world a witness to hope—to that great hope which does not wane even in the nights of solitude.
33. Saint Augustine, in a homily on the First Letter of John, describes very beautifully the intimate relationship between prayer and hope. He defines prayer as an exercise of desire. Man was created for greatness—for God himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched. “By delaying [his gift], God strengthens our desire; through desire he enlarges our soul and by expanding it he increases its capacity [for receiving him]”. Augustine refers to Saint Paul, who speaks of himself as straining forward to the things that are to come (cf. Phil 3:13). He then uses a very beautiful image to describe this process of enlargement and preparation of the human heart. “Suppose that God wishes to fill you with honey [a symbol of God's tenderness and goodness]; but if you are full of vinegar, where will you put the honey?” The vessel, that is your heart, must first be enlarged and then cleansed, freed from the vinegar and its taste. This requires hard work and is painful, but in this way alone do we become suited to that for which we are destined.26 Even if Augustine speaks directly only of our capacity for God, it is nevertheless clear that through this effort by which we are freed from vinegar and the taste of vinegar, not only are we made free for God, but we also become open to others. It is only by becoming children of God, that we can be with our common Father. To pray is not to step outside history and withdraw to our own private corner of happiness. When we pray properly we undergo a process of inner purification which opens us up to God and thus to our fellow human beings as well. In prayer we must learn what we can truly ask of God—what is worthy of God. We must learn that we cannot pray against others. We must learn that we cannot ask for the superficial and comfortable things that we desire at this moment—that meagre, misplaced hope that leads us away from God. We must learn to purify our desires and our hopes. We must free ourselves from the hidden lies with which we deceive ourselves. God sees through them, and when we come before God, we too are forced to recognize them. “But who can discern his errors? Clear me from hidden faults” prays the Psalmist (Ps 19:12 [18:13]). Failure to recognize my guilt, the illusion of my innocence, does not justify me and does not save me, because I am culpable for the numbness of my conscience and my incapacity to recognize the evil in me for what it is. If God does not exist, perhaps I have to seek refuge in these lies, because there is no one who can forgive me; no one who is the true criterion. Yet my encounter with God awakens my conscience in such a way that it no longer aims at self-justification, and is no longer a mere reflection of me and those of my contemporaries who shape my thinking, but it becomes a capacity for listening to the Good itself.
34. For prayer to develop this power of purification, it must on the one hand be something very personal, an encounter between my intimate self and God, the living God. On the other hand it must be constantly guided and enlightened by the great prayers of the Church and of the saints, by liturgical prayer, in which the Lord teaches us again and again how to pray properly. Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan, in his book of spiritual exercises, tells us that during his life there were long periods when he was unable to pray and that he would hold fast to the texts of the Church’s prayer: the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the prayers of the liturgy.27 Praying must always involve this intermingling of public and personal prayer. This is how we can speak to God and how God speaks to us. In this way we undergo those purifications by which we become open to God and are prepared for the service of our fellow human beings. We become capable of the great hope, and thus we become ministers of hope for others. Hope in a Christian sense is always hope for others as well. It is an active hope, in which we struggle to prevent things moving towards the “perverse end”. It is an active hope also in the sense that we keep the world open to God. Only in this way does it continue to be a truly human hope.
II. Action and suffering as settings for learning hope
35. All serious and upright human conduct is hope in action. This is so first of all in the sense that we thereby strive to realize our lesser and greater hopes, to complete this or that task which is important for our onward journey, or we work towards a brighter and more humane world so as to open doors into the future. Yet our daily efforts in pursuing our own lives and in working for the world’s future either tire us or turn into fanaticism, unless we are enlightened by the radiance of the great hope that cannot be destroyed even by small-scale failures or by a breakdown in matters of historic importance. If we cannot hope for more than is effectively attainable at any given time, or more than is promised by political or economic authorities, our lives will soon be without hope. It is important to know that I can always continue to hope, even if in my own life, or the historical period in which I am living, there seems to be nothing left to hope for. Only the great certitude of hope that my own life and history in general, despite all failures, are held firm by the indestructible power of Love, and that this gives them their meaning and importance, only this kind of hope can then give the courage to act and to persevere. Certainly we cannot “build” the Kingdom of God by our own efforts—what we build will always be the kingdom of man with all the limitations proper to our human nature. The Kingdom of God is a gift, and precisely because of this, it is great and beautiful, and constitutes the response to our hope. And we cannot—to use the classical expression—”merit” Heaven through our works. Heaven is always more than we could merit, just as being loved is never something “merited”, but always a gift. However, even when we are fully aware that Heaven far exceeds what we can merit, it will always be true that our behaviour is not indifferent before God and therefore is not indifferent for the unfolding of history. We can open ourselves and the world and allow God to enter: we can open ourselves to truth, to love, to what is good. This is what the saints did, those who, as “God’s fellow workers”, contributed to the world’s salvation (cf. 1 Cor 3:9; 1 Th 3:2). We can free our life and the world from the poisons and contaminations that could destroy the present and the future. We can uncover the sources of creation and keep them unsullied, and in this way we can make a right use of creation, which comes to us as a gift, according to its intrinsic requirements and ultimate purpose. This makes sense even if outwardly we achieve nothing or seem powerless in the face of overwhelming hostile forces. So on the one hand, our actions engender hope for us and for others; but at the same time, it is the great hope based upon God’s promises that gives us courage and directs our action in good times and bad.
36. Like action, suffering is a part of our human existence. Suffering stems partly from our finitude, and partly from the mass of sin which has accumulated over the course of history, and continues to grow unabated today. Certainly we must do whatever we can to reduce suffering: to avoid as far as possible the suffering of the innocent; to soothe pain; to give assistance in overcoming mental suffering. These are obligations both in justice and in love, and they are included among the fundamental requirements of the Christian life and every truly human life. Great progress has been made in the battle against physical pain; yet the sufferings of the innocent and mental suffering have, if anything, increased in recent decades. Indeed, we must do all we can to overcome suffering, but to banish it from the world altogether is not in our power. This is simply because we are unable to shake off our finitude and because none of us is capable of eliminating the power of evil, of sin which, as we plainly see, is a constant source of suffering. Only God is able to do this: only a God who personally enters history by making himself man and suffering within history. We know that this God exists, and hence that this power to “take away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29) is present in the world. Through faith in the existence of this power, hope for the world’s healing has emerged in history. It is, however, hope—not yet fulfilment; hope that gives us the courage to place ourselves on the side of good even in seemingly hopeless situations, aware that, as far as the external course of history is concerned, the power of sin will continue to be a terrible presence.
37. Let us return to our topic. We can try to limit suffering, to fight against it, but we cannot eliminate it. It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater. It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love. In this context, I would like to quote a passage from a letter written by the Vietnamese martyr Paul Le-Bao-Tinh († 1857) which illustrates this transformation of suffering through the power of hope springing from faith. “I, Paul, in chains for the name of Christ, wish to relate to you the trials besetting me daily, in order that you may be inflamed with love for God and join with me in his praises, for his mercy is for ever (Ps 136 [135]). The prison here is a true image of everlasting Hell: to cruel tortures of every kind—shackles, iron chains, manacles—are added hatred, vengeance, calumnies, obscene speech, quarrels, evil acts, swearing, curses, as well as anguish and grief. But the God who once freed the three children from the fiery furnace is with me always; he has delivered me from these tribulations and made them sweet, for his mercy is for ever. In the midst of these torments, which usually terrify others, I am, by the grace of God, full of joy and gladness, because I am not alone —Christ is with me … How am I to bear with the spectacle, as each day I see emperors, mandarins, and their retinue blaspheming your holy name, O Lord, who are enthroned above the Cherubim and Seraphim? (cf. Ps 80:1 [79:2]). Behold, the pagans have trodden your Cross underfoot! Where is your glory? As I see all this, I would, in the ardent love I have for you, prefer to be torn limb from limb and to die as a witness to your love. O Lord, show your power, save me, sustain me, that in my infirmity your power may be shown and may be glorified before the nations … Beloved brothers, as you hear all these things may you give endless thanks in joy to God, from whom every good proceeds; bless the Lord with me, for his mercy is for ever … I write these things to you in order that your faith and mine may be united. In the midst of this storm I cast my anchor towards the throne of God, the anchor that is the lively hope in my heart.” 28 This is a letter from “Hell”. It lays bare all the horror of a concentration camp, where to the torments inflicted by tyrants upon their victims is added the outbreak of evil in the victims themselves, such that they in turn become further instruments of their persecutors’ cruelty. This is indeed a letter from Hell, but it also reveals the truth of the Psalm text: “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I sink to the nether world, you are present there … If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall hide me, and night shall be my light’ —for you darkness itself is not dark, and night shines as the day; darkness and light are the same” (Ps 139 [138]:8-12; cf. also Ps 23 [22]:4). Christ descended into “Hell” and is therefore close to those cast into it, transforming their darkness into light. Suffering and torment is still terrible and well- nigh unbearable. Yet the star of hope has risen—the anchor of the heart reaches the very throne of God. Instead of evil being unleashed within man, the light shines victorious: suffering—without ceasing to be suffering—becomes, despite everything, a hymn of praise.
38. The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through “com-passion” is a cruel and inhuman society. Yet society cannot accept its suffering members and support them in their trials unless individuals are capable of doing so themselves; moreover, the individual cannot accept another’s suffering unless he personally is able to find meaning in suffering, a path of purification and growth in maturity, a journey of hope. Indeed, to accept the “other” who suffers, means that I take up his suffering in such a way that it becomes mine also. Because it has now become a shared suffering, though, in which another person is present, this suffering is penetrated by the light of love. The Latin word con-solatio, “consolation”, expresses this beautifully. It suggests being with the other in his solitude, so that it ceases to be solitude. Furthermore, the capacity to accept suffering for the sake of goodness, truth and justice is an essential criterion of humanity, because if my own well-being and safety are ultimately more important than truth and justice, then the power of the stronger prevails, then violence and untruth reign supreme. Truth and justice must stand above my comfort and physical well-being, or else my life itself becomes a lie. In the end, even the “yes” to love is a source of suffering, because love always requires expropriations of my “I”, in which I allow myself to be pruned and wounded. Love simply cannot exist without this painful renunciation of myself, for otherwise it becomes pure selfishness and thereby ceases to be love.
39. To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves—these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself. Yet once again the question arises: are we capable of this? Is the other important enough to warrant my becoming, on his account, a person who suffers? Does truth matter to me enough to make suffering worthwhile? Is the promise of love so great that it justifies the gift of myself? In the history of humanity, it was the Christian faith that had the particular merit of bringing forth within man a new and deeper capacity for these kinds of suffering that are decisive for his humanity. The Christian faith has shown us that truth, justice and love are not simply ideals, but enormously weighty realities. It has shown us that God —Truth and Love in person—desired to suffer for us and with us. Bernard of Clairvaux coined the marvellous expression: Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis 29—God cannot suffer, but he can suffer with. Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to suffer with man in an utterly real way—in flesh and blood—as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus’s Passion. Hence in all human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries that suffering with us; hence con-solatio is present in all suffering, the consolation of God’s compassionate love—and so the star of hope rises. Certainly, in our many different sufferings and trials we always need the lesser and greater hopes too—a kind visit, the healing of internal and external wounds, a favourable resolution of a crisis, and so on. In our lesser trials these kinds of hope may even be sufficient. But in truly great trials, where I must make a definitive decision to place the truth before my own welfare, career and possessions, I need the certitude of that true, great hope of which we have spoken here. For this too we need witnesses—martyrs—who have given themselves totally, so as to show us the way—day after day. We need them if we are to prefer goodness to comfort, even in the little choices we face each day—knowing that this is how we live life to the full. Let us say it once again: the capacity to suffer for the sake of the truth is the measure of humanity. Yet this capacity to suffer depends on the type and extent of the hope that we bear within us and build upon. The saints were able to make the great journey of human existence in the way that Christ had done before them, because they were brimming with great hope.
40. I would like to add here another brief comment with some relevance for everyday living. There used to be a form of devotion—perhaps less practised today but quite widespread not long ago—that included the idea of “offering up” the minor daily hardships that continually strike at us like irritating “jabs”, thereby giving them a meaning. Of course, there were some exaggerations and perhaps unhealthy applications of this devotion, but we need to ask ourselves whether there may not after all have been something essential and helpful contained within it. What does it mean to offer something up? Those who did so were convinced that they could insert these little annoyances into Christ’s great “com-passion” so that they somehow became part of the treasury of compassion so greatly needed by the human race. In this way, even the small inconveniences of daily life could acquire meaning and contribute to the economy of good and of human love. Maybe we should consider whether it might be judicious to revive this practice ourselves.
III. Judgement as a setting for learning and practising hope
41. At the conclusion of the central section of the Church’s great Credo—the part that recounts the mystery of Christ, from his eternal birth of the Father and his temporal birth of the Virgin Mary, through his Cross and Resurrection to the second coming—we find the phrase: “he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead”. From the earliest times, the prospect of the Judgement has influenced Christians in their daily living as a criterion by which to order their present life, as a summons to their conscience, and at the same time as hope in God’s justice. Faith in Christ has never looked merely backwards or merely upwards, but always also forwards to the hour of justice that the Lord repeatedly proclaimed. This looking ahead has given Christianity its importance for the present moment. In the arrangement of Christian sacred buildings, which were intended to make visible the historic and cosmic breadth of faith in Christ, it became customary to depict the Lord returning as a king—the symbol of hope—at the east end; while the west wall normally portrayed the Last Judgement as a symbol of our responsibility for our lives—a scene which followed and accompanied the faithful as they went out to resume their daily routine. As the iconography of the Last Judgement developed, however, more and more prominence was given to its ominous and frightening aspects, which obviously held more fascination for artists than the splendour of hope, often all too well concealed beneath the horrors.
42. In the modern era, the idea of the Last Judgement has faded into the background: Christian faith has been individualized and primarily oriented towards the salvation of the believer’s own soul, while reflection on world history is largely dominated by the idea of progress. The fundamental content of awaiting a final Judgement, however, has not disappeared: it has simply taken on a totally different form. The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is—in its origins and aims—a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world’s suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. No one and nothing can answer for centuries of suffering. No one and nothing can guarantee that the cynicism of power—whatever beguiling ideological mask it adopts—will cease to dominate the world. This is why the great thinkers of the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, were equally critical of atheism and theism. Horkheimer radically excluded the possibility of ever finding a this-worldly substitute for God, while at the same time he rejected the image of a good and just God. In an extreme radicalization of the Old Testament prohibition of images, he speaks of a “longing for the totally Other” that remains inaccessible—a cry of yearning directed at world history. Adorno also firmly upheld this total rejection of images, which naturally meant the exclusion of any “image” of a loving God. On the other hand, he also constantly emphasized this “negative” dialectic and asserted that justice —true justice—would require a world “where not only present suffering would be wiped out, but also that which is irrevocably past would be undone.” 30 This, would mean, however—to express it with positive and hence, for him, inadequate symbols—that there can be no justice without a resurrection of the dead. Yet this would have to involve “the resurrection of the flesh, something that is totally foreign to idealism and the realm of Absolute spirit.” 31
43. Christians likewise can and must constantly learn from the strict rejection of images that is contained in God’s first commandment (cf. Ex 20:4). The truth of negative theology was highlighted by the Fourth Lateran Council, which explicitly stated that however great the similarity that may be established between Creator and creature, the dissimilarity between them is always greater.32 In any case, for the believer the rejection of images cannot be carried so far that one ends up, as Horkheimer and Adorno would like, by saying “no” to both theses—theism and atheism. God has given himself an “image”: in Christ who was made man. In him who was crucified, the denial of false images of God is taken to an extreme. God now reveals his true face in the figure of the sufferer who shares man’s God-forsaken condition by taking it upon himself. This innocent sufferer has attained the certitude of hope: there is a God, and God can create justice in a way that we cannot conceive, yet we can begin to grasp it through faith. Yes, there is a resurrection of the flesh.33 There is justice.34 There is an “undoing” of past suffering, a reparation that sets things aright. For this reason, faith in the Last Judgement is first and foremost hope—the need for which was made abundantly clear in the upheavals of recent centuries. I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favour of faith in eternal life. The purely individual need for a fulfilment that is denied to us in this life, for an everlasting love that we await, is certainly an important motive for believing that man was made for eternity; but only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does the necessity for Christ’s return and for new life become fully convincing.
44. To protest against God in the name of justice is not helpful. A world without God is a world without hope (cf. Eph 2:12). Only God can create justice. And faith gives us the certainty that he does so. The image of the Last Judgement is not primarily an image of terror, but an image of hope; for us it may even be the decisive image of hope. Is it not also a frightening image? I would say: it is an image that evokes responsibility, an image, therefore, of that fear of which Saint Hilary spoke when he said that all our fear has its place in love.35 God is justice and creates justice. This is our consolation and our hope. And in his justice there is also grace. This we know by turning our gaze to the crucified and risen Christ. Both these things—justice and grace—must be seen in their correct inner relationship. Grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value. Dostoevsky, for example, was right to protest against this kind of Heaven and this kind of grace in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction, as though nothing had happened. Here I would like to quote a passage from Plato which expresses a premonition of just judgement that in many respects remains true and salutary for Christians too. Albeit using mythological images, he expresses the truth with an unambiguous clarity, saying that in the end souls will stand naked before the judge. It no longer matters what they once were in history, but only what they are in truth: “Often, when it is the king or some other monarch or potentate that he (the judge) has to deal with, he finds that there is no soundness in the soul whatever; he finds it scourged and scarred by the various acts of perjury and wrong-doing …; it is twisted and warped by lies and vanity, and nothing is straight because truth has had no part in its development. Power, luxury, pride, and debauchery have left it so full of disproportion and ugliness that when he has inspected it (he) sends it straight to prison, where on its arrival it will undergo the appropriate punishment … Sometimes, though, the eye of the judge lights on a different soul which has lived in purity and truth … then he is struck with admiration and sends him to the isles of the blessed.” 36 In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (cf. Lk 16:19-31), Jesus admonishes us through the image of a soul destroyed by arrogance and opulence, who has created an impassable chasm between himself and the poor man; the chasm of being trapped within material pleasures; the chasm of forgetting the other, of incapacity to love, which then becomes a burning and unquenchable thirst. We must note that in this parable Jesus is not referring to the final destiny after the Last Judgement, but is taking up a notion found, inter alia, in early Judaism, namely that of an intermediate state between death and resurrection, a state in which the final sentence is yet to be pronounced.
45. This early Jewish idea of an intermediate state includes the view that these souls are not simply in a sort of temporary custody but, as the parable of the rich man illustrates, are already being punished or are experiencing a provisional form of bliss. There is also the idea that this state can involve purification and healing which mature the soul for communion with God. The early Church took up these concepts, and in the Western Church they gradually developed into the doctrine of Purgatory. We do not need to examine here the complex historical paths of this development; it is enough to ask what it actually means. With death, our life-choice becomes definitive—our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell.37 On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are.38
46. Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil —much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. What happens to such individuals when they appear before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter? What else might occur? Saint Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an idea of the differing impact of God’s judgement according to each person’s particular circumstances. He does this using images which in some way try to express the invisible, without it being possible for us to conceptualize these images—simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we have any experience of it. Paul begins by saying that Christian life is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. Then Paul continues: “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:12-15). In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally have to pass through “fire” so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast.
47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ’s Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy. It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart’s time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ.39 The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace. If it were merely grace, making all earthly things cease to matter, God would still owe us an answer to the question about justice—the crucial question that we ask of history and of God. If it were merely justice, in the end it could bring only fear to us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two together—judgement and grace—that justice is firmly established: we all work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our “advocate”, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).
48. A further point must be mentioned here, because it is important for the practice of Christian hope. Early Jewish thought includes the idea that one can help the deceased in their intermediate state through prayer (see for example 2 Macc 12:38-45; first century BC). The equivalent practice was readily adopted by Christians and is common to the Eastern and Western Church. The East does not recognize the purifying and expiatory suffering of souls in the afterlife, but it does acknowledge various levels of beatitude and of suffering in the intermediate state. The souls of the departed can, however, receive “solace and refreshment” through the Eucharist, prayer and almsgiving. The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death—this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to convey to their departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude or even a request for pardon? Now a further question arises: if “Purgatory” is simply purification through fire in the encounter with the Lord, Judge and Saviour, how can a third person intervene, even if he or she is particularly close to the other? When we ask such a question, we should recall that no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other—my prayer for him—can play a small part in his purification. And for that there is no need to convert earthly time into God’s time: in the communion of souls simple terrestrial time is superseded. It is never too late to touch the heart of another, nor is it ever in vain. In this way we further clarify an important element of the Christian concept of hope. Our hope is always essentially also hope for others; only thus is it truly hope for me too.40 As Christians we should never limit ourselves to asking: how can I save myself? We should also ask: what can I do in order that others may be saved and that for them too the star of hope may rise? Then I will have done my utmost for my own personal salvation as well.
Mary, Star of Hope
49. With a hymn composed in the eighth or ninth century, thus for over a thousand years, the Church has greeted Mary, the Mother of God, as “Star of the Sea”: Ave maris stella. Human life is a journey. Towards what destination? How do we find the way? Life is like a voyage on the sea of history, often dark and stormy, a voyage in which we watch for the stars that indicate the route. The true stars of our life are the people who have lived good lives. They are lights of hope. Certainly, Jesus Christ is the true light, the sun that has risen above all the shadows of history. But to reach him we also need lights close by—people who shine with his light and so guide us along our way. Who more than Mary could be a star of hope for us? With her “yes” she opened the door of our world to God himself; she became the living Ark of the Covenant, in whom God took flesh, became one of us, and pitched his tent among us (cf. Jn 1:14).
50. So we cry to her: Holy Mary, you belonged to the humble and great souls of Israel who, like Simeon, were “looking for the consolation of Israel” (Lk 2:25) and hoping, like Anna, “for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Lk 2:38). Your life was thoroughly imbued with the sacred scriptures of Israel which spoke of hope, of the promise made to Abraham and his descendants (cf. Lk 1:55). In this way we can appreciate the holy fear that overcame you when the angel of the Lord appeared to you and told you that you would give birth to the One who was the hope of Israel, the One awaited by the world. Through you, through your “yes”, the hope of the ages became reality, entering this world and its history. You bowed low before the greatness of this task and gave your consent: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). When you hastened with holy joy across the mountains of Judea to see your cousin Elizabeth, you became the image of the Church to come, which carries the hope of the world in her womb across the mountains of history. But alongside the joy which, with your Magnificat, you proclaimed in word and song for all the centuries to hear, you also knew the dark sayings of the prophets about the suffering of the servant of God in this world. Shining over his birth in the stable at Bethlehem, there were angels in splendour who brought the good news to the shepherds, but at the same time the lowliness of God in this world was all too palpable. The old man Simeon spoke to you of the sword which would pierce your soul (cf. Lk 2:35), of the sign of contradiction that your Son would be in this world. Then, when Jesus began his public ministry, you had to step aside, so that a new family could grow, the family which it was his mission to establish and which would be made up of those who heard his word and kept it (cf. Lk 11:27f). Notwithstanding the great joy that marked the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, in the synagogue of Nazareth you must already have experienced the truth of the saying about the “sign of contradiction” (cf. Lk 4:28ff). In this way you saw the growing power of hostility and rejection which built up around Jesus until the hour of the Cross, when you had to look upon the Saviour of the world, the heir of David, the Son of God dying like a failure, exposed to mockery, between criminals. Then you received the word of Jesus: “Woman, behold, your Son!” (Jn 19:26). From the Cross you received a new mission. From the Cross you became a mother in a new way: the mother of all those who believe in your Son Jesus and wish to follow him. The sword of sorrow pierced your heart. Did hope die? Did the world remain definitively without light, and life without purpose? At that moment, deep down, you probably listened again to the word spoken by the angel in answer to your fear at the time of the Annunciation: “Do not be afraid, Mary!” (Lk 1:30). How many times had the Lord, your Son, said the same thing to his disciples: do not be afraid! In your heart, you heard this word again during the night of Golgotha. Before the hour of his betrayal he had said to his disciples: “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33). “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn 14:27). “Do not be afraid, Mary!” In that hour at Nazareth the angel had also said to you: “Of his kingdom there will be no end” (Lk 1:33). Could it have ended before it began? No, at the foot of the Cross, on the strength of Jesus’s own word, you became the mother of believers. In this faith, which even in the darkness of Holy Saturday bore the certitude of hope, you made your way towards Easter morning. The joy of the Resurrection touched your heart and united you in a new way to the disciples, destined to become the family of Jesus through faith. In this way you were in the midst of the community of believers, who in the days following the Ascension prayed with one voice for the gift of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14) and then received that gift on the day of Pentecost. The “Kingdom” of Jesus was not as might have been imagined. It began in that hour, and of this “Kingdom” there will be no end. Thus you remain in the midst of the disciples as their Mother, as the Mother of hope. Holy Mary, Mother of God, our Mother, teach us to believe, to hope, to love with you. Show us the way to his Kingdom! Star of the Sea, shine upon us and guide us on our way!
Given in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, on 30 November, the Feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle, in the year 2007, the third of my Pontificate.
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
1 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum VI, no. 26003.
2 Cf. Dogmatic Poems, V, 53-64: PG 37, 428-429.
3 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1817-1821.
4 Summa Theologiae, II-IIae, q.4, a.1.
5 H. Köster in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament VIII (1972), p.586.
6 De excessu fratris sui Satyri, II, 47: CSEL 73, 274.
7 Ibid., II, 46: CSEL 73, 273.
8 Cf. Ep. 130 Ad Probam 14, 25-15, 28: CSEL 44, 68-73.
9 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1025.
10 Jean Giono, Les vraies richesses (1936), Preface, Paris 1992, pp.18-20; quoted in Henri de Lubac, Catholicisme. Aspects sociaux du dogme, Paris 1983, p.VII.
11 Ep. 130 Ad Probam 13, 24: CSEL 44, 67.
12 Sententiae III, 118: CCL 6/2, 215.
13 Cf. ibid. III, 71: CCL 6/2, 107-108.
14 Novum Organum I, 117.
15 Cf. ibid. I, 129.
16 Cf. New Atlantis.
17 In Werke IV, ed. W. Weischedel (1956), p.777.
18 I. Kant, Das Ende aller Dinge, in Werke VI, ed. W.Weischedel (1964), p.190.
19 Chapters on charity, Centuria 1, ch. 1: PG 90, 965.
20 Cf. ibid.: PG 90, 962-966.
21 Conf. X 43, 70: CSEL 33, 279.
22 Sermo 340, 3: PL 38, 1484; cf. F. Van der Meer, Augustine the Bishop, London and New York 1961, p.268.
23 Sermo 339, 4: PL 38, 1481.
24 Conf. X 43, 69: CSEL 33, 279.
25 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2657.
26 Cf. In 1 Ioannis 4, 6: PL 35, 2008f.
27 Testimony of Hope, Boston 2000, pp.121ff.
28 The Liturgy of the Hours, Office of Readings, 24 November.
29 Sermones in Cant., Sermo 26, 5: PL 183, 906.
30 Negative Dialektik (1966), Third part, III, 11, in Gesammelte Schriften VI, Frankfurt am Main 1973, p.395.
31 Ibid., Second part, p.207.
32 DS 806.
33 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 988-1004.
34 Cf. ibid., 1040.
35 Cf. Tractatus super Psalmos, Ps 127, 1-3: CSEL 22, 628-630.
36 Gorgias 525a-526c.
37 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1033-1037.
38 Cf. ibid., 1023-1029.
39 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1030-1032.
40 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1032.
© Copyright 2007 – Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Jean Parisot de la Valette was born in 1494, joined the Convent at age twenty and was twenty-eight when together with the rest of the Order, was ousted from Rhodes. Since the day of his ordination to his death, Jean never visited his family’s estates in Toulouse, France. While still in his twenties, he had been captured and enslaved for a period of one to two years in a Turkish corsair vessel. Enslavement as an oarsman meant that one was perpetually tied naked to a bench. He would sleep, row, eat and carry out other biological matters on a woolen-lined bench. A truly harrowing experience however, Jean the French born Gascon, had a greater fate reserved for him. Released, and much later in 1557, was elected Grandmaster of the Order of the Blessed Virgin and Saint John the Baptist. At age seventy one, Jean Parisot de la Valette organized the defenses of a garrison, and was chosen by God to fight and survive the Ottoman onslaught which was unleashed against a the small Island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea. Voltaire described the Great Siege of Malta of 1565 as one of the most well known sieges in man’s entire history. The Siege of Malta witnessed the apparition of the Blessed Virgin exiting a church succoring the Catholics and fighting back the Ottoman Turks. Following the arrival of Christian forces from Spanish Sicily, a final victory occurred on the Feast of ‘Our Lady’s Nativity,’ falling on September 8 and later dedicated to ‘Our Lady of Victory.’The Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II was succeeded by his son Bajazet, who in turn was succeeded by Selim the Grim. The latter annexed Egypt, enlarged the Ottoman Empire and at the time of his death, was planning mischief upon Rhodes and subdue once and for all what he referred to as the: “Christian nest of vipers.” The Sultan died and was succeeded by his son, ‘Suleiman the Lawgiver’ or ‘Suleiman the Magnificent,’ as he would later be remembered. Like Mehmet his predecessor, Suleiman was adept in the arts of war, an exceptional statesman, a poet and a man of culture. He was considered to be the Grande Porte, Allah’s deputy on Earth, Lord of Lords of this World, Possessor of Men’s Necks, King of Believers and Unbelievers, King of Kings, Emperor of the East and West and another few hundred titles. In 1521, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam was ordained Grandmaster and employing the most able military engineers of his time fortified Rhodes as best as he could. A mysterious event recorded by the Order’s historians and evidently an ill omen, occurred to L’Isle Adam whilst travelling from France to Rhodes. Whilst sailing through the Maltese Channel, Philippe’s galley or carrack, was struck by lightening. In the incident a number of his company were killed and his sword was reduced to ashes. This was later interpreted as a portent of the future events, occurring in the Mediterranean Sea (1522-1571). On arriving in Rhodes, the Grandmaster received a letter from Constantinople or rather Istanbul, as the city came to be called following the 1453 annexation of Christianity. The letter was ‘A Letter of Victory,’ within which the Sultan boasted of his successes and victories during war, particularly emphasizing the capture of Belgrade. With this letter the Sultan introduced his intention of occupying Rhodes and would use military force, if the Order opposed him. Hostilities between the Empire and the Order thus rekindled, the armies of the Sultan, once again, grouped at Marmarice. The Ottoman force consisted of a fleet and an army, totaling 200,000 men. The siege on the Island of Rhodes began with incredible ferocity. Cannons could now fire projectiles, nine feet in circumference. Most of the brunt was born by the reconstructed tower of Saint Nicholas. On both sides casualties were numerous. The siege lasted four months, commencing in August it came to an end in December. The defenders were exhausted and the Sultan offered the Order what he called: “Honorable terms of surrendering the city.” The Knights accepted and whilst the Sultan paid tribute to their bravery and their astonishing resistance, the Order honorably departed from Rhodes. The Spanish Emperor Charles V’s opinion on the matter was that, nothing in the world was so well lost as Rhodes and that it was astounding how such a handful of men could have held out so long against an army the size the Sultan brought against them. On December 26, L’Isle Adam formerly submitted to the Ottoman offer and on the January 1, 1523, on the solemnity of Mary the Mother of God, the Order left its home, which it held for the past two hundred years. The Grand Master’s galley, “with a single banner lowered half mast, on which was painted the picture of the glorious Virgin Mary in tears, holding her dead Son in her arms, and the inscription “Afflictis tu spes unica rebus: that is: In all which afflicts us thou art our only hope,” set sail for Candia, Crete. The Sultan himself expressed the fact that he was unusually ‘sad’ at seeing depart the old man, the Grand Master. The banished Knights set sail carrying the records of their history. They also removed numerous relics of the saints including amongst other relics; the hand of Saint Anne, the relics of the True Cross, the Holy Thorn, the body of Saint Euphemia, the Right Hand of Saint John the Baptist, the Icon of Our Lady of Phileremos, the Icon of Our Lady of Eleimonitria and the Icon of Our Lady of Damascus and the key of the gates to the City of Rhodes. The Icon of Damascus depicting the Madonna and Child was earlier miraculously saved from the City of Damascus in Syria. Damascus was savagely destroyed and the inhabitants butchered by the Mongol invasions of Tamerlane during the years 1336-1405. The Icon miraculously appeared in Rhodes, disappeared and re-appeared within the Greek Chapel dedicated to ‘Our Lady of Eleimonitria.’ On leaving Rhodes the Knights placed the Icon of ‘Our Lady of Damascus’ upon the Great War Carrack called ‘Santa Maria.’Leaving Rhodes, together with L’Isle Adam, was a young Provincial named Jean Parisot de la Valette. From 1523 to 1530 the Military Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem and of Rhodes, resided in Rome and were searching for a new home. Their chance came when in Bologna, Italy; Pope Clement VII crowned Charles V of Spain as Emperor. The Emperor inherited the Maltese Archipelago within which the Knights were interested. Charles and his advisers seemed likely interested in the possibility of placing the Knights in Malta. Malta offered a good defense against the Ottoman and the North African corsairs. This move provided further protection to the Emperor’s dominions in Sicily and therefore also the Papal States. Charles V gave his consent, asking in return for a yearly nominal rent of one falcon, thus the famous ‘Maltese Falcon.’ In actual fact the Maltese Falcon is a species of Peregrine Falcon. In 1530, the Knights arrived in Malta and were initially disappointed for the barren state of the Island. One point in favor was the natural harbors it provided, which could comfortably fit the largest fleet. One of the ‘tongues’ of land or peninsulas, was in the following years transformed into the city of the Knights with fortifications, forts, a church dedicated to Saint Lawrence and a town called ‘the Birgu.’ The largest peninsula of land, was called Mount Sciberras and it was from here that the Turks would conduct most of their bombardment upon the Birgu in 1565. To protect the safety of mercantile shipping, the Knights attacked Mahdia, a port between Tunis and Tripoli in the Gulf of Gabes. It was a cove of corsairs and was taken successfully by the Knights. Dragut or Torghoud Rais, the most dangerous Barbary corsair to have ever sailed the Mediterranean Sea, an early prototype of Bin Laden who was also financed or rather conducted business with fallen-away Christian and Jewish merchants, swore to avenge himself of the fall of Mahdia. In July 1551, he sailed to Malta bent on laying waste the whole Island. To his surprise the corsair discovered that the two towns set up by the Knights were too well protected for a siege, so he moved North to lay siege to the old fortified town of Mdina. Here the miraculous intercession of Saint Agatha saved the town folk. Dragut abandoned the invasion of Malta and laid waste Gozo, Malta’s sister Island and mythical home of Calypso, taking into slavery its entire population of five thousand inhabitants. The Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, was in his declining years and was pierced with grief for having left the Knights set sail free from Rhodes in 1521/22. The lamentations and exhortations of his courtiers and the Imam, to free the captured Islamists from the slavery they endured in Malta and insulted by the capture of his favorite concubine by the Knights while she was crossing the Mediterranean on one of his ships, instigated his plans to devastate the Islands. In 1564, his war machine was being assembled. With Malta under Ottoman rule, the Sultan could well use it as a base for an audacious European attack through Italy, maybe with some luck also getting rid of the hateful religion of Catholicism altogether, by devastating Rome. But for now he had to capture Malta and rout those whom he called: “Son’s of dogs,” the Knights of the Blessed Virgin and Saint John. Through the Sicilian Viceroy Don Garcia, Philip II warned La Valette of the imminent attack, however, Don Garcia was not quick at aiding Malta, for he was to defend Sicily in case Malta fell to the Ottoman mace. Abandoned by the rest of Christendom, Jean Parisot de la Valette and his Knights marched in procession to the Chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Damascus. At the altar the Grandmaster prayed and dropped as votive offerings, his hat and sword upon its stairs. He prayed to Our Lady of Damascus and implored her help and assistance in this terrible hour of need. The defenders consisted of 540 knights and men-at-arms, 1000 Spanish foot soldiers and arquebusiers and 4000 local militia. The Islamists on the other hand set sail from Constantinople with the largest fleet the world had ever seen upon the Mediterranean Sea. The whole force of the Ottoman Empire, comprised of over two hundred ships, one hundred and thirty galleys, thirty galleasses, eleven large merchant ships and a horde of smaller vessels comprising of most of the pirates in the Mediterranean Sea. 30,000 Janissaries formed part of a 50,000 strong army (the complete retinue numbered 200,000). Mustapha Pasha was in command of the army; he had participated in the Siege of Rhodes, and won honor during the War against Hungary. Piali Pasha the son-in-law of the Sultan, was Admiral of the fleet. The Governor of Alexandria, the Governor of Algiers and an ex-Catholic Dominican brother turned corsair, Ali Fartax the most ruthless corsair in the Aegean Sea, enjoined the Sultan’s fleet. Dragut the Barbary corsair who previously was repelled by Saint Agatha, Saint Paul and Saint George in Gozo arrived late. On Friday May 18, 1565, the populace accustomed to fishing, farming and building were in awe and understandably terrorized when they witnessed the multitude of ships appearing on the horizon and surrounding their tiny Island. The Islamists landed, however Malta presented itself differently to Rhodes. Instead of one fortified city they had to target a fort at the tip of Mount Sciberras and the fortified towns of Senglea and Birgu, on two other perpendicularly jutting peninsulas. The Ottoman’s initial mistake was not to capture the old town of Mdina to the North, the town later communicated freely with Sicily and its cavalry, tirelessly attacked the Ottoman camps when such were attacking the Birgu and Fort Saint Elmo. As in previous sieges, the cannon bombardment commenced, however the target was the wrong one. The Ottomans relied on the information a captured Knight astutely supplied. In this manner the first attack was a complete failure and many fine Janissaries perished uselessly. The Knight was evidently killed. Another weakness was occurring; Mustapha Pasha and Piali Pasha were in discord, especially regarding where the Sultan’s fleet was to berth. Plans were sacrificed just to protect the fleet and strategic time was lost. Many attacks were carried out against the Fort of Saint Elmo and before the fort was taken, thousands of Janissaries and Dragut himself, were killed on Mount Sciberras. Dragut the fearful scourge of the Mediterranean coast, was according to one source, killed by friendly fire, by his own cannons. Another version of Dragut’s end describes how a cannon ball shot from the Fort of Saint Angelo, ricocheted and decapitated him. On capturing Fort Saint Elmo, Mustapha had the hearts plucked out from the bodies of the Knights, whom he decapitated and nailed to wooden crosses and set them afloat in the sea, opposite the Fort of Saint Angelo in the Grand Harbor. Following this ruthless gesture, La Valette ordered the decapitation of all his Ottoman prisoners and cannon blasted their heads onto Mount Sciberras. As in previous sieges, the bravery and exploits of the leader caused a heroic performance by all the Order’s men-at-arms. Often in the thick of sword-to-sword combat, La Valette, whose leadership was invaluable, was urged to move to the rear so that he might not be killed. In one such situation he replied: “Is it possible for me, at the age of seventy-one, to lay down my life more gloriously than in defense of our holy religion, and in the midst of my brethren and friends?” As the siege progressed, a third peninsula of land called Senglea, was seemingly conquered and had fallen to the enemy, when unexpectedly a trumpet sounded, calling for a retreat. The troops were ordered back by their officers and under-officers, as news arrived that their camps and wounded were being attacked by the cavalry from Mdina. However, the Grandmaster had an iron grip on the Maltese population for a small faction was indeed, planning to open the gates to the enemy. As a general rule such internal intrigues are always present in a siege. Finally, the Spanish Viceroy in Sicily Don Garcia’s ‘grand succor’ arrived and landed in Malta, bringing a force of 8,000 Spanish, Italian and Sicilian men. On learning about this matter the Pasha, believing that a much larger force had landed, ordered his army to abandon the Island, but on realizing his mistake he re-ordered his battle weary troops to invade the North of Malta. The new force comprised of fresh soldiers who cut through the Ottoman troops and forced them to retreat. Less than a third of the entire Ottoman army sailed back to Istanbul, the Sultan suffered his greatest defeat to date. Suleiman exclaimed: “I see now that it is only in my own hand that my sword is invincible.” The following year the Ottoman Sultan was preparing for a larger force to set sail for Malta. However, La Valette’s spies destroyed the grand arsenal of Istanbul by fire, this prevented the Sultan from undertaking another siege. The Lord of Believers and Unbelievers died of apoplexy during his invasion of Hungary, the decline of power of the Sultanate followed, accelerated by the defeat of the Islamic armada at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.The Knight Fra’ Francesco Balbi described the lifting of the siege in the following manner: “It has pleased God this year, 1565 that under the good government of the brave and devout Grandmaster Jean de la Valette, the Order should be attacked in great force by the Sultan Suleiman…. And it had equally pleased God, as most of the islanders believed, through the intervention of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that after four months of terrible hardship, that same large Turkish army was forced to abandon the island, defeated in its task. How, if not so, could then one explain the arrival of the Spanish force and the lifting of siege on September 8, the day of the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady… I do not believe that music ever consoled the human senses, as did the peal of our bells on September 8, 1565, which was the Nativity of our Lady. For the Grandmaster of the Hospital ordered them all to be rung at the very time when the call to arms was usually sounded, and for three months we had heard them sounding only the call to arms. That morning they called us to Mass, and a pontifical high Mass was sung very early, thanking the Lord our God and his Blessed Mother for the mercies that they had bestowed upon us.” The Maltese firmly believed that their Madonna had helped them achieve victory. The Dominican Michele Fontana delivered a sermon in Sicily, in which he stated that when the Turks were attacking Malta, the Catholics saw the Virgin Mary exiting the Church of the Annunciation dressed as a warrior, wearing a helmet, armor and holding a drawn sword in her right hand, flying through the air like a white cloud, killing and frightening the enemy wherever she went. The Order’s historian Bosio, states that the Islamists saw Our Lady, Saint John the Baptist, and Saint Lawrence followed by numerous angels, protecting the walls of Birgu and mistook these for Catholic reinforcements, becoming so frightened that they retired.The Great Siege of Malta commenced on May 18, 1565. It ended one hundred and fourteen days later on September 8, 1565, the solemnity of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and later also dedicated to ‘Our Lady of Victory’ in Malta and ‘Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.’ 70,000 cannon balls rained down on Maltese fortifications and houses in four months of siege. Many Catholic Knights received holy martyrdom during the Great Siege, these included La Valette’s nephew Francis de La Valette Parisot, Annibale and Rosso Strozzi, Francesco Lanfreducci, Vespasianus Malaspina the cousin of Knight Ippolito Malaspina, the Papal Fleet Admiral and cousin of Lepanto hero Mark Antonio Colonna, Asdrubale de Medici, Johannes de Pamplona, and many others. On receiving the joyous news of the victory, the Pope in Rome ordered a procession of thanksgiving to be carried out from Santa Maria Maggiore to San Giovanni in Laterano and also ordered for the cannons of Saint Angelo to perform a military salute, as occurred during the occasion of his coronation. The Romans not knowing really where Malta was, jubilantly joined in the festivities. La Valette was offered a Cardinal’s hat, which he declined as he maintained that the Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitallers must engage in military action, which is unsuitable for a cardinal. He suffered a stroke whilst hunting and died shortly afterwards. Unfortunately La Valette himself would not witness the city named after him which was financed by most of the European Monarchs after learning of this Christian victory. When the City of Valletta was built the Icon of Our Lady of Damascus was together with the Icon of Eleimonitria, placed in the Greek Catholic Church. Two hundred years later in 1798, the Icon was not included amongst the ‘Maltese Relics’ given by the last Grandmaster Von Hompesch to the Czar of Russia. The relic of Blessed Gerard of Tonque can be venerated at the church adjoining the convent of the cloistered nuns of Saint Ursola, Valletta, Malta. La Valette and the fallen Knights are buried at Saint John Co-Cathedral, Valletta, Malta the City of the Knights of the Blessed Virgin and Saint John the Baptist. Today, the miraculous Icon of Damascus can be viewed in the Greek Catholic Church in Valletta, Malta. The sword and Cardinal’s hat of La Valette can be viewed at the Oratory of Saint Joseph in Birgu, Malta, the gold sword and gem encrusted poniard at the Louvres in France, while the Icon of the Blessed Virgin of Philermos at Cetinje Museum in Montenegro. “A King is not saved by his great army,a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.The war horse is a vain hope for victory,And by its great might it cannot save”Psalm 34 16-17
‘Afflictis spes mea rebus’ ‘In my misfortune, you are my hope’
When the Knights emigrated from Cyprus to Rhodes, upon the Island, south west of the town of Trianda and upon a hill named Ialisos, they discovered the Chapel of Our Lady of Philermos. The ancient story associated with this chapel, was of a man who in his despair had ascended the hill to commit suicide at the ruins of the Phoenician temple of the sun. Our Lady appeared and with her gentle smile convinced the man otherwise and he repented. The temple ruins of the sun god were cleared and in its stead, a chapel dedicated to Our Lady was erected in remembrance of the event. Within the chapel a miraculous Icon said to have originated from Jerusalem, was placed. The Icon of Our Lady of Philermos was therefore placed upon the site which once was a solar temple. Coincidentally, the feast day dedicated to the Order’s founder, Blessed Gerard, occurs on October 13, the day commemorating the last apparition of Our Lady at Fatima and the day of the solar miracle. Our Lady replaces our despair with hope.The Icon of Our Lady of Philermos is a work claimed to be the authorship of Saint Luke and possibly originally kept in the Church and Monastery of Saint John the Baptist in Trullo, Constantinople. A magisterial bull of 1497, states that the Icon of Philermos had miraculously reached the shores of Rhodes, from Constantinople during the eight century, the times of the heretical Emperor Leo III the Iconoclast. On arriving in Rhodes, the Order found the Icon placed within a shrine in the forests upon Ialisos Hill. Miracles were attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Philermos and the population venerated her much. Documents pertaining to the year 1396, reveal that Our Lady of Philermos was invoked in times of calamity. In 1480, the vice-chancellor of the Order, Guillaume Caorsin, pointed out that the Order of Saint John attributed their victory in the siege of Rhodes, to Our Lady of Philermos. Grandmaster Fra Pierre d’Aubusson had a particular personal devotion to the Icon and prayed before the Image after each battle of 1480. As mentioned earlier, the Virgin and the saints had appeared to the invading hordes putting them to flight. A large banner, depicting the Crucifix, the Blessed Virgin and John the Baptist, was hoisted over the breached section in the walls, the site where the miraculous apparition of Our Lady occurred. The Icon of Philermos survived the destruction of Saint Mark’s Church, within which it was placed. Following this event, the Grandmaster renovated the shrine. Due to the Siege of 1480, the Icon classified as a ‘Hodegitria,’ was also considered as a miraculous Icon of the kind ‘Madonna of Victories.’
The Icon had by now become part of the Knights’ religious lives, and was not left upon Rhodes during Ottoman occupation. In 1536, Fra Aurelio Borrigello, the Prior of Pisa returned from a successful campaign against the Ottomans within the Tripolitanian waters. With great pomp he deposited the captured enemy flags, military banners and standards on the altar of Our Lady of Philermos in Saint Lawrence Church Birgu, Malta. During the Great Siege of 1565, a white dove was seen hovering above the church, on the eve of the Feast of the Assumption (15 August). Amongst the heavy bombardment of the day, this event was interpreted as a heavenly sign of victory against the Ottoman Turks. As during the siege, the Church of Saint Lawrence was gutted, for a third time the Icon miraculously survived the destruction of a church within which it was placed. Following the siege of 1565, the Feast of Our Lady of Philermos had a newly acquired title ‘the Madonna of Victories’ and a new special liturgy was instituted on May 6, 1566. This solemnity was to be celebrated ‘in perpetuity’ throughout all the Order’s churches. The new City of Valletta, founded on March 28, 1566, built on the outcrop of land which was washed with the blood of many thousand of the Order’s enemies, had as its first building, a church dedicated to Our Lady of Victories. The Icon of Philermos was placed within. During the Feast of September 8, 1565, the standard of the Hospital and the captured trophies of the siege of 1565, were paraded in the conventual church during pontifical High Mass. The gifts Philip II had presented to the Grandmaster (gold poniard and gem encrusted sword), were presented in solemn offering to the Madonna of Philermos and the Grandmaster declared that the merit for the Order’s victory, exclusively belonged to Our Lady’s miraculous intervention and protection, not to himself nor his valor. Philip II’s gifts were kept in the treasury and brought out each year for the Feast of Our Lady of Victory. Upon the sword was engraved the device ‘Plus Quam Valor Valette’ or ‘Greater than valor is La Valette.’ Within the conventual church, the Grandmaster presided over the solemn celebration from his throne and whilst chanting the Holy Gospel would hold the sword and poniard in his hands. After Holy Mass the standard of the Order, the sword and poniard together with other insignia and standards were paraded through the streets. The procession ending at the Church of Our Lady of Victories, the Grandmaster personally carried an Icon of Our Lady, representing the Icon of Philermos. The Feast was especially celebrated with great pomp on the anniversary centenaries of 1665 and 1765. An account of the 1765 anniversary reveals, how twenty four candle sticks rather than twelve were lit before the Icon of Philermos, the incense, the burning tapers and the scent of flowers entering the church from the enveloping gardens, created an atmosphere which the writer described as ‘heavenly.’
In 1602, a squadron of galleys belonging to the Hospital, raided the Ottoman fortresses of Mahometta, Lepanto and Passava. The raids acquired much grain for Malta. The captured forts’ keys were hung on the wall of the Chapel of Our Lady of Philermos; two silver plaques commemorate the event and can still be seen in the Chapel at the Co-Cathedral of Saint John in Valletta, Malta. The silver plaques placed by Grandmaster Wignacourt re-affirm the successes attributed to the heavenly intercession of Our Lady. This affirmation was evidenced by the naming of several ships and galleys belonging to the Order to Our Lady. The Order kept the relics of the Saints on public view for veneration and many a visitor described what they witnessed. In 1697, the Russian diplomat and ancestor of the famous Russian writer Tolstoy, Pyotr Tolstoy wrote: “The holy right arm of the Baptist from the elbow to the fingers, is all covered in gold…. And thus I was able to kiss that holy hand.”(1) Tolstoy couldn’t remotely imagine that the relic of Saint John, which he described, would, together with the Icon of Our Lady of Philermos, be translated to Russia. While Tolstoy said these words in Malta, his descendent would write his books in defense of the ‘god of reason,’ as opposed to the Christian God, who was now being set aside in preparation for the Russian Revolution headed by the Bolsheviks. General Napoleon Bonaparte set his eyes upon the Maltese Islands, where the Knights of Saint John lived lavishly, their monastic ways now long forgotten. The Order did not offer much resistance in defense of the Islands and Napoleon conquered it en route towards Ottoman Egypt. The reason for the Knight’s inactivity, was that the Grandmaster wished not rely on his decadent Knights, who had neither the spiritual nor the military power to oppose Napoleon. The Grandmaster reasoned that diplomacy was the solution. Apart from this fact, today the Masonic Grand Lodge of Malta, states that many Knights of the Order of Saint John were in the eighteenth century fellow Brothers of the new Order of Masonry. Therefore, one can easily understand that the annexation of the Order of Saint John from the Islands, came as a chastisement. Similarly to the Templars before them, the Knights of Saint John had now committed public apostasy. In 1798, the French occupied Malta and dispossessed the Order, the last Grandmaster to rule was Ferdinand von Hompesch (1797-1798). On Thursday June 12, 1798, on arriving in Malta upon the Orient, Napoleon was received by the Grandmaster’s carriage. The horses halted mid way towards the palace, a slight earth tremor had scared the beasts. Undeterred, Napoleon made his way on foot through the streets of Valletta. The Grandmaster refused to sign his offer, the French General then ordered all the Knights (including the French) to leave the Island. Grandmaster Hompesch requested General Bonaparte’s permission that together with his Order, he could remove the Icon of Philermos, the relic arm of Saint John the Baptist and a relic of the True Cross. Napoleon granted these concessions on the premise that precious religious objects were to be stripped off their valuable stones, silver and gold. The archives of the Order remained on the island and thankfully, were later saved from the destructive ‘sons of the revolution’ of France. On June 17, 1798, Grandmaster Hompesch left Malta and departed for Trieste, Italy. The Maltese population would later invite the Grandmaster back, however the English prevented such a move. Due to international pressure placed upon Hompesch, by the Czar of Russia and the Austrian Emperor, the Grandmaster abdicated. To the Czar in Russia, Hompesch sent a letter explaining the reasons for abdicating, and a plea for the Czar to protect Christianity. Together with the letter, he sent the Icon of Philermos and the relic arm of Saint John the Baptist. On October 12, 1799, during the reign of Emperor Paul I, the relics were removed to a Russian town of Gatchina. In this manner the Czar was illegally elected Grandmaster of the Order and was in truth never recognized by the Roman Catholic Pontiff. The Czar never became a Roman Cardinal. Grandmaster Von Hompesch left Malta much the same way, Grandmaster Isles Adam had previously left from Rhodes. The main difference though was the following: The Islamists did not deface nor destroy the works of art and belongings, which the Knights had in Rhodes, as did the ‘sons of the revolution’ in Malta. The French intended to eradicate the memory of the Order’s Catholic legacy, destroying many religious artifacts, other artifacts were ‘borrowed’ by the British. Grandmaster Hompesch died on May 12, 1805 in Montpellier, France and is buried in the Church of Saint-Eulalie. The Icon of Our Lady of Philermos therefore, passed into the Russian Imperial collections. The British signed the Treaty of Amiens of 1802, together with the French and Russians, which specifically mentioned the return of the Order to Malta, this treaty was conveniently altogether ignored. Paul I intended to bring the Order back to Malta, however, in September 1800 the British occupied Malta annexing the French. The Maltese invited Britain in and the locals assassinated Napoleon’s General Vaubois. General Napoleon Bonaparte used the Amiens excuse to start his wars against all of Europe. The Russian Emperor thus failed to bring the Order back to Malta, Our Lady of Philermos and Saint John’s relic remained under his care, the care of the Romanov family. Czar Paul I developed a devotion to Our Lady of Philermos and prayed for the intercession of Our Lady against Napoleon. Following his assassination, his son Alexander I was enthroned. Alexander skillfully defeated the Napoleonic French. This historical figure would with time develop a strong bond with Orthodox Christianity and became, as his associates pointed out, ever more ‘holy.’ To this day it is still a mystery whether his funeral was staged. In later years a solitary hermit emerged, recounting details of the Napoleonic campaign that only Alexander I could have known. Czar Alexander II was convinced that Napoleon’s defeat came through the aid of Our Lady when she was particulalry invoked through her many Russian Icons. He publically proclaimed this when he offered all the war trophies and battle banners of the Napoleonic invasion to the Basilica of Our Lady of Kazan as a sign of Our Lady’s victory.The Icon of Our Lady of Philermos remained in the possession of the Russian Romanovs till 1928. Emperor Nicholas II had a particular veneration towards the Icon and had a copy made and kept in his desk. Konstantin Voyenski, who was the former chamberlain to Nicholas II, reported this fact. Voyenski assisted the Emperor in setting up the Military Historical Society and in organizing the celebrations of 1912, dedicated to the centenary of the Russian victory over Napoleon. As the world knows too well, Emperor Nicholas II was together with his family, murdered during the Bolshevik Revolution of Russia. On October 12th of each year, the Icon of Philermos and the relic of Saint John the Baptist were carried in procession and with great pomp, to the Cathedral of Gatchina, Russia, and there exposed for public veneration. October 12 coincides with the Feast of Our Lady of the Pillar and eve to the Catholic Feast of Blessed Gerard and the last Fatima apparition of Our Lady and the miracle of the sun. Following the revolution, the Icon of Our Lady of Philermos was received as a gift by the Karageorgiovich Dynasty of Yugoslavia and in April 1941 it was translated to Saint Peter’s Monastery in Cetinje, Montenegro. Today, the Icon of Our Lady of Philermos can be viewed but not venerated, at the Cetinje Museum in Montenegro, a European region which became an independent state in 2006. Every year on June 24, a procession with a relic of Saint John the Baptist is paraded by the Maltese Bishop along the streets of Valletta and accompanied by representatives of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre and representatives of the Order of the Blessed Virgin and Saint John the Baptist. One matter is sure, Malta earned its independence in 1964 and later its EU membership and no Nation can lay claim to it. Interestingly, on September 8 1565, the solemnity of Our Lady’s Nativity, the Spanish adventurer and explorer Captain General of the Indies Fleet, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, landed in Florida and proclaimed it Spanish and Catholic territory. On that Saturday, he planted a cross and while singing the hymn ‘Te Deum Laudamus,’ kissed it, naming the new settlement St Augustine 40 years before Jamestown and 50 years before Plymouth Rock. The natives copied and imitated the explorer’s actions. The first shrine dedicated to Our Lady was erected on this very spot and dedicated to ‘Our Lady of Good Delivery.’ It is incredible that on the same day, the good Lord wrought a victory through the mostly Spanish ‘Grand Succor’ in Malta and allowed the formation of the oldest settlement in the USA through the Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez de Aviles.
The endgame
When Garry Kasparov announced his retirement from chess last week, after more than 20 years as the world’s best player, he left the sport reeling. In his first major interview since the news, he explains how he plans to take on a challenge of even greater complexity – politics in his native RussiaStephen Moss
Monday March 14, 2005
The Guardian
Our Lady of Smolensk
‘Our Lady of Smolensk,’ later referred to as a ‘Hodigitria’ or ‘Patron of the wayfarers,’ was also said to have been painted by Saint Luke and according to tradition, blessed by Our Lady who said: “My blessing will remain always with this Icon.” The Icon was initially at Antioch, then transferred to Jerusalem. During the fifth century the wife of Emperor Arcadius, Empress Eudoxia, donated the Icon as a gift to Pulcheria her sister-in-law, who carried it to Constantinople. Whilst in Constantine’s city, the Icon was placed in a church in the district of Blachernae, possibly the Church of the Holy Reliquary. In 1101, Vladimir Monomach, removed it to the Cathedral of Smolensk where it acquired the name ‘Hodigitria of Smolensk.’ In 1238, the Christian Saint Mercurius, stirred by the voice of Hodigitria of Smolensk, led his troops against a mighty Mongolian army which was under the command of the ruthless Batu. Albeit the fact that Mercurius was martyred the Mongolians were defeated. He was proclaimed a hero and a military saint; the Orthodox Church commemorates his feast on November 24. In 1398, the Icon was removed to Moscow by Sophia, the daughter of Prince Vitovtus and wife to Grand Prince Dimitry of Moscow and was placed in the Annunciation Cathedral in the Kremlin. In 1456, the original Icon was returned to Smolensk while three copies were left in Moscow, one at the Cathedral of the Annunciation and the other at the Convent of Novodevichy. Another copy was placed in the tower of the Smolensk Fortress, over the Dnieprovsky Gates. In 1802, a church was constructed in the vicinity of the fortress. The Feast of Hodigitria of Smolensk is celebrated on July 28, 1525. In 1439, the Council of Florence reunited the Western and Eastern Christian Churches, however, Russia ignored the union and in 1448 declared that the Eastern Orthodox Church is the one true Church. The Battle of Orsha occurred on September 8, 1514, pitting the Russian forces against a smaller force of Lithuanians and Poles. The result was the complete victory for the Catholic Polish and Lithuanian forces over the Russians. King Sigismund I of Poland attributed this victory to the Blessed Virgin’s intercession. From the Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, less than 30,000 troops formed the Polish-Lithuanian offensive under the command of Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski. Konyushy Ivan Chelyadnin and Prince Mikhail Golitsa commanded the Russian army consisting of 40,000 men. The Russians planned to reunite Russia with all the old Ruthenian lands and in 1512 invaded part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, today’s Ukraine and Belarus. In July 1514, a Russian force consisting of 80,000 men captured Smolensk, which was the eastern-most outpost of the Lithuanian Duchy, the Russians secured their conquest by capturing other towns in the vicinity. The Polish King Sigismund marshaled a 30,000 strong army and challenged the invaders, he freed town after town of the oppressed land. On September 7 the Polish-Lithuanian Army crossed the Dnieper River and reached their enemy at their camp between the towns of Orsha and Dubrowna on the River Krapiuna. On September 8, 1514, the Russians attacked, directing their forces against the flanks of the Polish-Lithuanian Army. The first Russian attempt failed and the forces withdrew to base. As they withdrew the Russian coordination was weak, sensing this disorganization the Lithuanian cavalry took advantage of the weakly coordinated retreat and attacked the over stretched center. The Russian cavalry charged and chased the Lithuanians and were led right into a trap. They were surrounded by Polish artillery that emerged from their hiding places in the forests. The panicked Russians retreated in disarray, the Lithuanian cavalry followed, cutting down the enemy wherever they could. According to the chronicles of the day, 30,000 Russians were killed and 3,000 captured. Nine commanders were captured, together with three hundred Russian cannon. King Sigismund attributed the Polish-Lithuanian victory to the intercession of the Blessed Mother who intervened on the universal solemnity dedicated to her Nativity. Despite this victory and Russian arrest, the town of Smolensk was not retaken until the year 1611. ***** In the late eighteen-century, Austria, Russia and Germany partitioned Polish territory between themselves. Due to the fact that Napoleon lessened Russian control over Poland, the arrival of Napoleon was deemed as favorable to the Polish cause. Despite the high casualties at the Battle of Borodino, the Russians were successful at halting Napoleon’s advance. The Russian casualties numbered in the thousands, while French casualties were much less, nonetheless, Napoleon was on the loosing side, for the Russians invoked ‘Hodigitria of Smolensk’ to come to their aid. On the Feast of Our Lady of the Snows, on August 5, 1812, the Russian forces left Smolensk and with them carried a copy of the Icon. Before the battle, the Icon was taken around the camp to bless and strengthen the moral of the troops. The original Hodigitria, together with the Iveron and Vladimir Icons, were carried in procession through the streets of Moscow and to the sick and wounded in the Lefortovsky Court. General Kutusov toured the Russian Army preceded by the Black Virgin of Smolensk. While the General read a proclamation, Orthodox priests prayed, sung and sprinkled the ranks with holy water and swung their censors and blessed and incensed the troops. The battle commenced at dawn, the French and the Russians shot their first projectiles. The French discovered that one hundred and two guns were out of range and missed their targets. French and Russian troops battled across the Kolocha Bridge, completely destroying it in the process. While Napoleon directed and viewed the proceedings and outcome, atop the Borodino Hills, the engagements spread everywhere especially at the Borodino area. The battalions and regiments fought on, attacking and counter-attacking, around 11:30 AM the French were successful at capturing the fleches and the Village of Borodino. Nonetheless, this initial French success did not last long, for the Russians intending to avenge their fresh defeat, organized a direct assault. General Yermolov took a few crosses of the Order of Saint George and threw them around the redoubt, this encouraged and inspired the charging soldiers who conquered the stronghold. Another fierce engagement occurred for the conquest of the Village of Semenovskaya. The Russians defended fiercely, however, the French gained the eventual control over this area. In a position behind Semenovskaya the Russians bravely withstood five hours of heavy French artillery. Under Napoleon’s command the Poles fought bravely against the Russians, however, on September 8 Napoleon was severely depressed and disappointed, for although the Russian casualties were high, they were still capable of replacing the fallen and still offered resistance. On the other hand Napoleon was at the end of his supplies and gained very little from all the blood shed. 40,000 Russians perished, the French suffered 30,000 dead. The Battle of Borodino left no side victorious, however the Russians successfully impeded Napoleon from destroying the Czarist Army. Albeit Napoleon’s capture of Moscow, he had to evacuate the city thirty-five days later, leaving Moscow and Russia unconquered. Our Lady was accredited for having protected the Russian Army and Nation.
Russia, Friend or Foe?
The birth of the Russian Nation occurred in war. In 1380 at the Battle of Kulikovo (Tula Oblast) Moscow removed the shackles of the Islamic Mongolian tyranny of the Golden Horde. Moscow refused to pay tribute to the Islamic Mamai, in actual fact the Muscovite leader refused to pay the ‘Jizya’ or the ‘humiliation tax,’ as mandated by the Quran, Surah 9: 29. As ally joined forces with ally, Mamai’s force en massed; they crossed the Volga River and reached the River Oka. Under the Muscovite Prince Dmitry Ivanovich, the Russian forces crossed the Oka and on September 8, the eve of the solemnity of the Nativity, they reached the battlefield. Surprisingly, the Genoese merchants aided Mamai and supplied a certain number of infantry. Nevertheless, this battle involving 200,000 warriors who fought for the control of the whole Russian territory, was through the grace of Our Lady a victory wrought for the Russian people. Seven centuries before the formation of the United Soviet Socialist Republics, Russia was born through the aid of the Heavenly Queen. In 1500, the Grand Duke of Moscow, Ivan III, built the Church of the Annunciation in the Kremlin. In this period when Moscow was referred to by the Moscovites as ‘the third Rome,’ it was severed from Papal Rome. Following the destruction of Constantinople by the Islamic forces, Moscow became the center of its own Christianity. Five centuries following the Russian victory at Kulikovo, a stone church was constructed and dedicated to Our Lady’s Nativity at the Village of Monastyrshina, the place where many Russian heroes of war were buried. A Russian hero named Dmitry Donskoy carried an Icon of the Blessed Virgin in the Battle of Kulikovo, the Icon is referred to as ‘Our Lady of the Don.’ The Donskoy Monastery was built to keep this Icon on the precise spot where a battalion of Russian forces under Boris Godunov were barricaded in a fortress and also where the field church of Sergii Radonezhsky stood. In 1593 the Cathedral of the Donskoy Monastery was constructed and consecrated to Our Lady of the Don. In 1552 Czar John IV laid siege to Kazan and was victorious against his Islamic enemies. The Czar ordered the construction of the Cathedral of ‘Our Lady of the Intercession.’ He commissioned a grand painting depicting the Virgin and Child and Saint Michael and many Russian heroes, portraying especially the capture of Kazan in the background. This painting was placed opposite the Czar’s throne, in the Cathedral dedicated to Our Lady. The victory of Kazan depicts the last battle which freed Russia from the Islamic kingdom. Now, Russia assumed the role of a Christian protector and was truly a liberator as it freed Orthodox states from Islamic rule.In 1386 Prince Jagiello of Lithuania and Queen Jadwiga of Poland were united in Holy Matrimony. In Lithuania, Queen Jadwiga introduced the devotions to Our Lady. In the fifteenth century it was common to place images of Our Lady above the city gates. In Vilnius the Carmelite Order took custody of a church nearby the ‘Auros Vartai,’ ‘the gate of dawn’ or ‘the sharp gate.’ The Carmelites were in charge of the upkeep of the painting of Our Lady above the Auros Vartai. In 1655 the Russian Army torched Vilnius, the gate and the surrounding houses were burnt, nonetheless, the Image remained intact. In 1706 the same Image survived yet another fire and a chapel was built by the Carmelites to honor ‘Our Lady of the Dawn.’ Many pilgrims visited this Image to recite the Litany of Loreto. The Litany of Loreto includes the phrases of praise; Seat of wisdom, pray for us/ Cause of our joy, pray for us/ Spiritual vessel, pray for us/ Vessel of honor, pray for us/ Singular vessel of devotion, pray for us/ Mystical rose, pray for us/ Tower of David, pray for us/ Tower of ivory, pray for us/ House of gold, pray for us/ Ark of the covenant, pray for us/ Gate of heaven, pray for us/ Morning star, pray for us/ Health of the sick, pray for us/ Refuge of sinner, pray for us/ Comforter of the afflicted, pray for us…. In 1844 the Russians chased the Carmelites from Vilnius, however, they allowed the people to visit the site of Our Lady of the Dawn, otherwise known as ‘Ostra Brama.’ In 1927 the chapel and painting were restored and the Image was crowned solemnly before the Cathedral of Vilnius. Pope Pius XI also named the Image ‘Mater Misericordiae’ or ‘Mother of Mercy.’ During World War Two and the times of communist rule, the Bishops of Vilnius allowed the Faithful to pray before the Image, the ‘Sub Tuum Praesidium’ was especially recited: “We fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God; despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin. Amen.”(1)On May 9, 1896, the Coronation of Czar Nicholas II took place. The Russian Army paraded in the streets of Moscow following the soon proclaimed Russian Imperial Majesty. As the bells of the Cathedral dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption pealed, nine shots were sounded from the guns of the Tainitskaya Tower. Together with his wife, the Czar left from Petrovsky Palace and was jubilantly greeted by the Moscovites and by the Orthodox priests, who blessed the Czar with their crosses and icons. On the way to the Kremlin, the Czar descended from his carriage and helped his mother and wife descend, before proceeding they were to keep the tradition of paying a visit to ‘Our Lady of Iver.’ The Icon was a replica of the Icon of Iver kept on Mount Athos in Greece. The Royal family later proceeded visiting the Assumption and Annunciation Cathedrals. On May 14, 1896, the Imperial regalia was ceremoniously removed from the Armory, to the Cathedral of the Assumption. Russian royal regalia consisted of; the Chain of the Order of Saint Andrew, the sword of the State, the Banner of the State, the State Seal, the Imperial Crowns and the Purple for the Czar, the Orb and the Scepter. At the entrance of the Cathedral, Palladius the Metropolitan of Saint Petersburg, offered the Royal couple the Holy Cross for them to kiss, the blessing of the Metropolitan of Kiev followed. The Monarchs performed what was referred to as the thrice-repeated worship and kissing of the Holy Icons. They subsequently ascended the dais in the Cathedral and on reaching the top, sat in their Imperial thrones. The Czar made his public confession and read prayers from the Bible. The Metropolitan blessed the Czar saying: “The blessing of the Holy Spirit be with thee. Amen.” The Czar removed his chain and the Metropolitan dressed the Czar with the Purple and with the diamond chain of the Order of Saint Andrew. The Metropolitan laid his hands on the Czar’s head and prayed over him. The Czar then received the Crown from Metropolitan Palladius and placed it upon his head. The crowning went on with prayers for the Russian people, praises to God and other ceremonies, and ended with the Russian Orthodox Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.In 1903 Czar Nicholas II declared the ‘freedom of worship’; this made it easier for the Catholic Church to operate in the region. That same year Lenin’s party was split in two parts, the hard liners of the Marxist teachings referred to as the Bolsheviks and the less stringent, called the Mensheviks. In 1903 the Russian monk Rasputin, who claimed to have received supernatural energy and powers from the Virgin Mary, settled in Saint Petersburg. In 1905 a certain Father Gapon led a peaceful protest of 20,000 Russians in the streets of St Petersburg. The government troops shot onto the crowds and the anger of the people was enkindled. From this point onwards the Revolutionaries, ceaselessly plotted to remove the Czarist government, and now had the Russian people’s support. In 1905 Czar Nicholas II, attempting to calm the situation, re-proclaimed the edict of religious toleration allowing one million Russian Roman Catholics to practice freely their religion. This newly found freedom occurred following thirty years of forced conversion to Orthodoxy. Soon the Orthodox factions expressed their anger against the conversions to Catholicism and the government once again abolished religious freedom. In 1911 the Catholic Bishops were forced to resign. Czar Nicholas II convened the Russian Duma for the first time in 1906. The First World War weakened Russia to the extent that Lenin and Trotskey (backed by certain international bankers and financiers) were ready poised to take over Russian government through their Bolshevik machinations. On March 2, 1917, Czar Nicholas II abdicated. On the same day, the ‘Enthroned Icon of the Mother of God’ was discovered. Eudokia, an elderly woman received a vision of the Mother of God who urged her to look for an icon in a church. Together with a cleric named Father Nicholas, she searched for the icon in the church cellars at Kolomskoye, on recovering the icon; Father Nicholas celebrated a service of thanksgiving and an Akathist. It was discovered that the icon was sent to Kolomskoye during the Napoleonic wars and belonged to the Ascension Convent in Moscow. The devotion soon spread and many miraculous healings occurred. During Soviet Russian times the promulgated images were confiscated and the devotion fiercely suppressed. The Russian people believed that the meaning for the discovery of the icon on the same day of the Czar’s abdication meant that the Queen of Heaven would henceforth rule Russia, seated on a throne with Her Son. In 1917 the same year Lenin and Trotsky gained power in Moscow, the Blessed Virgin appeared to the children in Fatima. Her last apparition took place on October 13, 1917, during the Russian ‘October Revolution.’ Through the three peasant children, Francesco, Jacinta and Lucia, Our Lady warned the world that a great evil was emerging from Russia and that its mistakes will be propagated throughout the whole world. At Fatima Our Lady revealed that in the end Russia will be consecrated to her Immaculate Heart and converted, peace would be granted. Czar Ivan III built monasteries and churches on Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea. Following an all night vigil at the foot of a hill on the Island of Anzer, a priest named Job received a visitation of the Blessed Virgin. The Queen instructed Job to name the hill ‘Golgotha’ and build a church and monastery dedicated to the Crucifixion, for the Queen of Prophets prophesied that the hill: “…will be whitened by the sufferings of countless multitudes.”(2)In 1923 the Communist government murdered the Solovetsky monks and transformed the Church of the Crucifixion into a hospital and the monastery into a prison. The Russian citizens who refused to relinquish their Christian Faith, were sent to Solovetsky. There, they were brutally tortured and murdered. The prisoners drew carts as mules would, the weak and dying were terminated in the hospital and their bodies stacked in the vestibule of the Church of the Crucifixion, their bodies later were rolled down Golgotha Hill. In this manner tens of thousands of Christians died at Solovetsky. In 1891, Dostoyevsky said that if an atheistic revolution, similar to the French Revolution, were to come to pass in Czarist Russia it would cost the Country “100 million heads.” In 1990 the newspaper ‘Argumenty I Fakty’ published the statistics of the total number of murders, assassinations, abductions and persecutions which resulted in death, the figure stood at 110.7 million persons. Quoting Larry Abraham in ‘Call It Conspiracy,’ the author asserts that: “The Bolshevik Revolution happened, not because of the downtrodden masses rising up against exploiting bosses as the Communists perpetuate the big lie, but because very powerful men in Europe and the United States sent Lenin in Switzerland and Trotsky in New York to Russia to organize it…. Lenin was sent through Europe-at-war on the famous “sealed train.” With him Lenin took some $5 to $6 million in gold. The whole thing was probably arranged by the German high command and Mr. Max Warburg, through another very wealthy and lifelong socialist by the name of Alexander Helphand, alias “Parvus”…. When Trotsky left New York with an American passport with his entourage of 275 revolutionaries…”(3) The White Russian General, Arsene de Goulevitch, wrote in his book Czarism and the Revolution, quoting General Alexander Nechvolodov who stated that: “In April 1917, Jacob Schiff publicly declared that it was thanks to his financial support that the revolution in Russia had succeeded.”(4) According to Gary Allen in ‘None Dare Call It Conspiracy,’ Mr. Schiff probably sank some $ 20 million for the final triumph of bolshevism in Russia. When the Bolsheviks ascended to power, they immediately abolished the Constituent Assembly of Russia and in February 1918 the Russian Church was denied the ownership of private property and all financial aid granted was interrupted. To summarize in three simple points Karl Marx’s ‘Communist Manifesto,’ the plan was to abolish private property, the family unit and all forms of religion. The world had already seen this before, Diocletan‘s edicts and the ‘Communist Manifesto,’ are both identical in scope and satanically inspired. On March 5, 1918, Moscow became the Capital City of the new Russia. Once again, similarly to the events occurring during the French Revolution, the Kabal of secret societies had succeeded at committing Regicide, and the world watched on. The reason for which the Russian people admire and venerate the Military Saint, George of Lydda, was his stand against Emperor Diocletian. Inspired by this saint the Russian Faithful persevered against the USSR, their Red Dragon.On February 13, 1917, the Freemason Alexander Kerensky stated at the Russian Duma: “There are people who assert that the Ministers are at fault. Not so. The country now realizes that the Ministers are but fleeting shadows. The country can clearly see who sends them here. To prevent a catastrophe the Tsar himself must be removed, by force if there is no other way.”(5) Following Nicholas II abdication, the Bolsheviks murdered seventeen Romanoffs and two relations, thirty-five Romanoffs escaped. Nicholas II, his wife Alexandria, their 5 children, and 4 servants, were gruesomely murdered in Ekaterinburg on July 16, 1918, by way of Lenin’s direct orders. Their martyrdom fell on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, how appropriate! In his diary Emperor Nicholas II wrote: “How long will our unfortunate Russia be tormented and divided by external and internal enemies? It seems at times that there is no strength to bear it any more, not knowing what to hope for, what to wish for? And yet there is none but God! May His Holy will be done!”(6) His wife, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna wrote in a letter: “Lord, help those who do not have room for God’s love in their hardened hearts, who see only what is bad and do not try to understand that all this will pass; it cannot be otherwise; the Savior came and showed us an example. He who follows Him on the way of love and suffering, understands all the majesty of the Kingdom of Heaven.”(7)Evidently these are the words of saintly martyrs and comparable to the early Christian martyrs such as Emperor Galerius’ wife, Queen Empress Prisca Alexandra and her daughter Princess Valeria. The Orthodox Faith has adorned the Romanoffs with the title of ‘sainthood.’ However, during the Russian Revolution the personage of the enigmatic, antichristian monk, Rasputin, was more than once sought by the Empress. This monk was the only mystic who succeeded at arresting the blood flow of her son’s hemophiliac condition. Rasputin claimed of having received supernatural powers from the Virgin Mary, however he was well known of leading an unchaste, filthy life, he was a glutton and a drunk. Such a personage can give but the worst of advice to the Russian Emperor, to whom he suggested to personally lead the army against the Red Revolutionaries. A most severe defeat ensued. A plot of assassination was quickly planned against the ‘friendly monk.’ His assassination indicated ominous powers, Rasputin survived the ingestion of the equivalent dose of poison needed to kill two elephants. The ‘monk’ also survived five gunshot wounds shot at close range. Before showing any signs of weakness, he was beaten with rods, tightly bound in ropes and thrown in an icy cold river. The following morning he was found dead, half of the knots undone and his lungs full of water, signs that he was still alive for quite a long while. On December 30, 1922, Lenin declared that Russia was now known as ‘The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.’ At the beginning of the Russian persecutions, the Patriarch Tikhon voiced his disgust at Lenin’s insight and vision for Russia. The Patriarch referred to Lenin as a ‘madman’ and invited this particular brand of madmen, to come to their senses and stop the bloody persecutions and the satanic acts, which they carried out throughout the country. The Patriarch openly condemned the Soviet Revolutionary and said that Lenin would suffer the fires of hell in the life to come and the curses of God whilst he lived. The religious of both the Orthodox and Catholic Churches were imprisoned and executed, church treasures were plundered. Lenin soon experienced incapacitating strokes and indeed the curses of God reached the mighty man, in two years he was dead.
Siberia and the ‘gulag’ camps where the places of choice for the ‘sojourn’ of the political captives. An estimated 30,000,000 people died in the USSR during Stalin’s rule. According to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in his ‘The Gulag Archipelago,’ frail old Christian women defied their torturers with the praises of Our Lord upon their lips. During these times of confinement in Siberia, many were the Christians who recited the Holy Rosary and placed their hope in Our Lady. In 1931 the Bible was declared illegal to own or publish. Leon Trotsky escaped to Mexico City and called for the removal of Joseph Stalin from power, this initiated another great purge in the USSR. 14,000,000 people were killed. On orders of Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky was murdered in 1940.
The Pokrovsky Cathedral, or the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin, was erected in 1552, commemorating the victory over Kazan. This victory occurred on the great Orthodox Feast of the Intercession of Our Lady. Initially, Ivan the Terrible built a small wooden church in the Red Square, later architects Barma and Postnik were appointed to build a stone church to replace the wooden one. The symbolic eight chapels of the Cathedral represent the eight assaults on Islamic Kazan and are dedicated to Orthodox saints upon whose feast days the Russians won victories against Kazan. Saint Basil Cathedral in the Red Square of Moscow, dedicated to ‘Our Lady of the Intercession,’ replaced the earlier church. The architects were asked whether they could build a church which was more spectacular than their recent enterprise (St Basil Cathedral). The unsuspecting architects replied in the affirmative, their eyes were pierced and never again did they behold one of their works. In 1812 Napoleon ordered his ‘enlightened’ men to blast the cathedral, the explosives and fuses were set while rain descended in torrents, the fuses were drenched and the imminent explosion was all together extinguished. During the birth of the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks looted the cathedral and shot the senior priest and melted down the bells to create ammunition and guns. During subsequent years plans were made to demolish the cathedral; certain comrades dared to remove the Cathedral of Our Lady once and for all from the Muscovite skyline. The military leader, Lazar Kaganovich, made a model replica of the Red Square and demonstrated to Joseph Stalin that the Cathedral dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, limited the military parades at the Red Square. He invited Joseph Stalin to demolish the cathedral and demonstrated his plans by removing the wooden model representing the cathedral. Following a long pause, Joseph Stalin said, “Lazar! Put it back!”(8) Nowhere on Earth has the representation of the enmity and the battle between the Woman and the Dragon be so vividly obvious and manifest as during the centuries of history of the Russian Nation.
On March 5, 1953, Joseph Stalin died in his sleep and Nikita Khrushchev and Malenkov ascended to power. Instrumental to the political change in Russia, even though this affirmation is not at large admitted, was the unquestionable influence of the late Polish Pope John Paul II, Roman Pontiff 1978-2005. Influenced early in life by Saint Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort’s book, ‘Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin,’ (the saint who opposed the French Revolution) His Holiness Pope John Paul II was a survivor of Nazi and Communist occupied Poland, he totally consecrated himself to ‘Tota Pulchra’ (All Beautiful) the Mother of God. His motto, ‘Totus Tuus’ or ‘All Yours,’ fulfils Saint Louis de Montfort’s prophesy, which postulates that the Christian saints living at the ‘end of days,’ will be ‘sicut sagittae in manu potentis’ or ‘sharp spears in the hand of Mary.’ Saint Montfort prophesied that the apostles of the latter days would outshine the saints of early Christendom for the Woman, the Queen of the Heavens and Earth, shall guide them. Surely this prophesy was fulfilled in the very person of His Holiness Pope John Paul II, who illumed mankind’s path by way of the consecration of Russia and the world, to the Blessed Virgin’s Immaculate Heart in 1984. Due to this Pope’s success, which is the evidence of Our Lady of Fatima’s power, the modern world should seriously consider the invitation of a total consecration to the two Hearts if it so desires to defeat the Dragon. In 1988 on the one-thousandth anniversary of the conversion of Ukraine and Russia to Christianity, Easter services were broadcast over Soviet television. In 1990, following the traditional Communist May Day parade in the Red Square, a Russian Orthodox monk from the monastery of Zagorsk, carried a life size crucifix seven feet tall and on reaching Lenin’s tomb he cried out: “Mikhail Sergeyevich, Christ is risen!”(9)On August 19-21, 1991, the Communist Party attempted one last time at regaining control of parliament. People gathered before the premises of the Russian Parliament and prevented the coup (organized by the last eight communist comrades) from gaining control of the premises. The helicopters were set to land on the building, however, Father Glebb Yakunin, a survivor of the Siberian communist prison camps and a devotee of Our Lady of Fatima, prayed for rain to prevent the helicopters from landing. The rain came in downpours and the helicopters did not land, the communist military faction called off their coup. “Mikhail Sergeyevich, Christ is risen!”
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII
ON FREEMASONRY
To the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and
Bishops of the Catholic World in Grace and
Communion with the Apostolic See.
The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, “through the envy of the devil,” separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God.
2. This twofold kingdom St. Augustine keenly discerned and described after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving for contrary objects; and with a subtle brevity he expressed the efficient cause of each in these words: “Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one.”(1) At every period of time each has been in conflict with the other, with a variety and multiplicity of weapons and of warfare, although not always with equal ardour and assault. At this period, however, the partisans of evil seems to be combining together, and to be struggling with united vehemence, led on or assisted by that strongly organized and widespread association called the Freemasons. No longer making any secret of their purposes, they are now boldly rising up against God Himself. They are planning the destruction of holy Church publicly and openly, and this with the set purpose of utterly despoiling the nations of Christendom, if it were possible, of the blessings obtained for us through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Lamenting these evils, We are constrained by the charity which urges Our heart to cry out often to God: “For lo, Thy enemies have made a noise; and they that hate Thee have lifted up the head. They have taken a malicious counsel against Thy people, and they have consulted against Thy saints. They have said, ‘come, and let us destroy them, so that they be not a nation.’(2)
3. At so urgent a crisis, when so fierce and so pressing an onslaught is made upon the Christian name, it is Our office to point out the danger, to mark who are the adversaries, and to the best of Our power to make head against their plans and devices, that those may not perish whose salvation is committed to Us, and that the kingdom of Jesus Christ entrusted to Our charge may not stand and remain whole, but may be enlarged by an ever-increasing growth throughout the world.
4. The Roman Pontiffs Our predecessors, in their incessant watchfulness over the safety of the Christian people, were prompt in detecting the presence and the purpose of this capital enemy immediately it sprang into the light instead of hiding as a dark conspiracy; and , moreover, they took occasion with true foresight to give, as it were on their guard, and not allow themselves to be caught by the devices and snares laid out to deceive them.
5. The first warning of the danger was given by Clement XII in the year 1738,(3) and his constitution was confirmed and renewed by Benedict XIV(4) Pius VII followed the same path;(5) and Leo XII, by his apostolic constitution, Quo Graviora,(6) put together the acts and decrees of former Pontiffs on this subject, and ratified and confirmed them forever. In the same sense spoke Pius VIII,(7) Gregory XVI,(8) and, many times over, Pius IX.(9)
6. For as soon as the constitution and the spirit of the masonic sect were clearly discovered by manifest signs of its actions, by the investigation of its causes, by publication of its laws, and of its rites and commentaries, with the addition often of the personal testimony of those who were in the secret, this apostolic see denounced the sect of the Freemasons, and publicly declared its constitution, as contrary to law and right, to be pernicious no less to Christiandom than to the State; and it forbade any one to enter the society, under the penalties which the Church is wont to inflict upon exceptionally guilty persons. The sectaries, indignant at this, thinking to elude or to weaken the force of these decrees, partly by contempt of them, and partly by calumny, accused the sovereign Pontiffs who had passed them either of exceeding the bounds of moderation in their decrees or of decreeing what was not just. This was the manner in which they endeavoured to elude the authority and the weight of the apostolic constitutions of Clement XII and Benedict XIV, as well as of Pius VII and Pius IX.(10) Yet, in the very society itself, there were to be found men who unwillingly acknowledged that the Roman Pontiffs had acted within their right, according to the Catholic doctrine and discipline. The Pontiffs received the same assent, and in strong terms, from many princes and heads of governments, who made it their business either to delate the masonic society to the apostolic see, or of their own accord by special enactments to brand it as pernicious, as, for example, in Holland, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Bavaria, Savoy, and other parts of Italy.
7. But, what is of highest importance, the course of events has demonstrated the prudence of Our predecessors. For their provident and paternal solicitude had not always and every where the result desired; and this, either because of the simulation and cunning of some who were active agents in the mischief, or else of the thoughtless levity of the rest who ought, in their own interest, to have given to the matter their diligent attention. In consequence, the sect of Freemasons grew with a rapidity beyond conception in the course of a century and a half, until it came to be able, by means of fraud or of audacity, to gain such entrance into every rank of the State as to seem to be almost its ruling power. This swift and formidable advance has brought upon the Church, upon the power of princes, upon the public well-being, precisely that grievous harm which Our predecessors had long before foreseen. Such a condition has been reached that henceforth there will be grave reason to fear, not indeed for the Church – for her foundation is much too firm to be overturned by the effort of men – but for those States in which prevails the power, either of the sect of which we are speaking or of other sects not dissimilar which lend themselves to it as disciples and subordinates.
8. For these reasons We no sooner came to the helm of the Church than We clearly saw and felt it to be Our duty to use Our authority to the very utmost against so vast an evil. We have several times already, as occasion served, attacked certain chief points of teaching which showed in a special manner the perverse influence of Masonic opinions. Thus, in Our encyclical letter, Quod Apostolici Muneris, We endeavoured to refute the monstrous doctrines of the socialists and communists; afterwards, in another beginning “Arcanum,” We took pains to defend and explain the true and genuine idea of domestic life, of which marriage is the spring and origin; and again, in that which begins ”Diuturnum,”(11) We described the ideal of political government conformed to the principles of Christian wisdom, which is marvellously in harmony, on the one hand, with the natural order of things, and, in the other, with the well-being of both sovereign princes and of nations. It is now Our intention, following the example of Our predecessors, directly to treat of the masonic society itself, of its whole teaching, of its aims, and of its manner of thinking and acting, in order to bring more and more into the light its power for evil, and to do what We can to arrest the contagion of this fatal plague.
9. There are several organized bodies which, though differing in name, in ceremonial, in form and origin, are nevertheless so bound together by community of purpose and by the similarity of their main opinions, as to make in fact one thing with the sect of the Freemasons, which is a kind of center whence they all go forth, and whither they all return. Now, these no longer show a desire to remain concealed; for they hold their meetings in the daylight and before the public eye, and publish their own newspaper organs; and yet, when thoroughly understood, they are found still to retain the nature and the habits of secret societies. There are many things like mysteries which it is the fixed rule to hide with extreme care, not only from strangers, but from very many members, also; such as their secret and final designs, the names of the chief leaders, and certain secret and inner meetings, as well as their decisions, and the ways and means of carrying them out. This is, no doubt, the object of the manifold difference among the members as to right, office, and privilege, of the received distinction of orders and grades, and of that severe discipline which is maintained.
Candidates are generally commanded to promise – nay, with a special oath, to swear – that they will never, to any person, at any time or in any way, make known the members, the passes, or the subjects discussed. Thus, with a fraudulent external appearance, and with a style of simulation which is always the same, the Freemasons, like the Manichees of old, strive, as far as possible, to conceal themselves, and to admit no witnesses but their own members. As a convenient manner of concealment, they assume the character of literary men and scholars associated for purposes of learning. They speak of their zeal for a more cultured refinement, and of their love for the poor; and they declare their one wish to be the amelioration of the condition of the masses, and to share with the largest possible number all the benefits of civil life. Were these purposes aimed at in real truth, they are by no means the whole of their object. Moreover, to be enrolled, it is necessary that the candidates promise and undertake to be thenceforward strictly obedient to their leaders and masters with the utmost submission and fidelity, and to be in readiness to do their bidding upon the slightest expression of their will; or, if disobedient, to submit to the direst penalties and death itself. As a fact, if any are judged to have betrayed the doings of the sect or to have resisted commands given, punishment is inflicted on them not infrequently, and with so much audacity and dexterity that the assassin very often escapes the detection and penalty of his crime.
10. But to simulate and wish to lie hid; to bind men like slaves in the very tightest bonds, and without giving any sufficient reason; to make use of men enslaved to the will of another for any arbitrary act ; to arm men’s right hands for bloodshed after securing impunity for the crime – all this is an enormity from which nature recoils. Wherefore, reason and truth itself make it plain that the society of which we are speaking is in antagonism with justice and natural uprightness. And this becomes still plainer, inasmuch as other arguments, also, and those very manifest, prove that it is essentially opposed to natural virtue. For, no matter how great may be men’s cleverness in concealing and their experience in lying, it is impossible to prevent the effects of any cause from showing, in some way, the intrinsic nature of the cause whence they come. “A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor a bad tree produce good fruit.”(12) Now, the masonic sect produces fruits that are pernicious and of the bitterest savour. For, from what We have above most clearly shown, that which is their ultimate purpose forces itself into view – namely, the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere naturalism.
11. What We have said, and are about to say, must be understood of the sect of the Freemasons taken generically, and in so far as it comprises the associations kindred to it and confederated with it, but not of the individual members of them. There may be persons amongst these, and not a few who, although not free from the guilt of having entangled themselves in such associations, yet are neither themselves partners in their criminal acts nor aware of the ultimate object which they are endeavoring to attain. In the same way, some of the affiliated societies, perhaps, by no means approve of the extreme conclusions which they would, if consistent, embrace as necessarily following from their common principles, did not their very foulness strike them with horror. Some of these, again, are led by circumstances of times and places either to aim at smaller things than the others usually attempt or than they themselves would wish to attempt. They are not, however, for this reason, to be reckoned as alien to the masonic federation; for the masonic federation is to be judged not so much by the things which it has done, or brought to completion, as by the sum of its pronounced opinions.
12. Now, the fundamental doctrine of the naturalists, which they sufficiently make known by their very name, is that human nature and human reason ought in all things to be mistress and guide. Laying this down, they care little for duties to God, or pervert them by erroneous and vague opinions. For they deny that anything has been taught by God; they allow no dogma of religion or truth which cannot be understood by the human intelligence, nor any teacher who ought to be believed by reason of his authority. And since it is the special and exclusive duty of the Catholic Church fully to set forth in words truths divinely received, to teach, besides other divine helps to salvation, the authority of its office, and to defend the same with perfect purity, it is against the Church that the rage and attack of the enemies are principally directed.
13. In those matters which regard religion let it be seen how the sect of the Freemasons acts, especially where it is more free to act without restraint, and then let any one judge whether in fact it does not wish to carry out the policy of the naturalists. By a long and persevering labor, they endeavor to bring about this result – namely, that the teaching office and authority of the Church may become of no account in the civil State; and for this same reason they declare to the people and contend that Church and State ought to be altogether disunited. By this means they reject from the laws and from the commonwealth the wholesome influence of the Catholic religion; and they consequently imagine that States ought to be constituted without any regard for the laws and precepts of the Church.
14. Nor do they think it enough to disregard the Church – the best of guides – unless they also injure it by their hostility. Indeed, with them it is lawful to attack with impunity the very foundations of the Catholic religion, in speech, in writing, and in teaching; and even the rights of the Church are not spared, and the offices with which it is divinely invested are not safe. The least possible liberty to manage affairs is left to the Church; and this is done by laws not apparently very hostile, but in reality framed and fitted to hinder freedom of action. Moreover, We see exceptional and onerous laws imposed upon the clergy, to the end that they may be continually diminished in number and in necessary means. We see also the remnants of the possessions of the Church fettered by the strictest conditions, and subjected to the power and arbitrary will of the administrators of the State, and the religious orders rooted up and scattered.
15. But against the apostolic see and the Roman Pontiff the contention of these enemies has been for a long time directed. The Pontiff was first, for specious reasons, thrust out from the bulwark of his liberty and of his right, the civil princedom; soon, he was unjustly driven into a condition which was unbearable because of the difficulties raised on all sides; and now the time has come when the partisans of the sects openly declare, what in secret among themselves they have for a long time plotted, that the sacred power of the Pontiffs must be abolished, and that the papacy itself, founded by divine right, must be utterly destroyed. If other proofs were wanting, this fact would be sufficiently disclosed by the testimony of men well informed, of whom some at other times, and others again recently, have declared it to be true of the Freemasons that they especially desire to assail the Church with irreconcilable hostility, and that they will never rest until they have destroyed whatever the supreme Pontiffs have established for the sake of religion.
16. If those who are admitted as members are not commanded to abjure by any form of words the Catholic doctrines, this omission, so far from being adverse to the designs of the Freemasons, is more useful for their purposes. First, in this way they easily deceive the simple-minded and the heedless, and can induce a far greater number to become members. Again, as all who offer themselves are received whatever may be their form of religion, they thereby teach the great error of this age-that a regard for religion should be held as an indifferent matter, and that all religions are alike. This manner of reasoning is calculated to bring about the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially of the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot, without great injustice, be regarded as merely equal to other religions.
17. But the naturalists go much further; for, having, in the highest things, entered upon a wholly erroneous course, they are carried headlong to extremes, either by reason of the weakness of human nature, or because God inflicts upon them the just punishment of their pride. Hence it happens that they no longer consider as certain and permanent those things which are fully understood by the natural light of reason, such as certainly are – the existence of God, the immaterial nature of the human soul, and its immortality. The sect of the Freemasons, by a similar course of error, is exposed to these same dangers; for, although in a general way they may profess the existence of God, they themselves are witnesses that they do not all maintain this truth with the full assent of the mind or with a firm conviction. Neither do they conceal that this question about God is the greatest source and cause of discords among them; in fact, it is certain that a considerable contention about this same subject has existed among them very lately. But, indeed, the sect allows great liberty to its votaries, so that to each side is given the right to defend its own opinion, either that there is a God, or that there is none; and those who obstinately contend that there is no God are as easily initiated as those who contend that God exists, though, like the pantheists, they have false notions concerning Him: all which is nothing else than taking away the reality, while retaining some absurd representation of the divine nature.
18. When this greatest fundamental truth has been overturned or weakened, it follows that those truths, also, which are known by the teaching of nature must begin to fall – namely, that all things were made by the free will of God the Creator; that the world is governed by Providence; that souls do not die; that to this life of men upon the earth there will succeed another and an everlasting life.
19. When these truths are done away with, which are as the principles of nature and important for knowledge and for practical use, it is easy to see what will become of both public and private morality. We say nothing of those more heavenly virtues, which no one can exercise or even acquire without a special gift and grace of God; of which necessarily no trace can be found in those who reject as unknown the redemption of mankind, the grace of God, the sacraments, and the happiness to be obtained in heaven. We speak now of the duties which have their origin in natural probity. That God is the Creator of the world and its provident Ruler; that the eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; that the last end of men is a destiny far above human things and beyond this sojourning upon the earth: these are the sources and these the principles of all justice and morality. If these be taken away, as the naturalists and Freemasons desire, there will immediately be no knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, or upon what principle morality is founded. And, in truth, the teaching of morality which alone finds favor with the sect of Freemasons, and in which they contend that youth should be instructed, is that which they call “civil,” and “independent,” and “free,” namely, that which does not contain any religious belief. But, how insufficient such teaching is, how wanting in soundness, and how easily moved by every impulse of passion, is sufficiently proved by its sad fruits, which have already begun to appear. For, wherever, by removing Christian education, this teaching has begun more completely to rule, there goodness and integrity of morals have begun quickly to perish, monstrous and shameful opinions have grown up, and the audacity of evil deeds has risen to a high degree. All this is commonly complained of and deplored; and not a few of those who by no means wish to do so are compelled by abundant evidence to give not infrequently the same testimony.
20. Moreover, human nature was stained by original sin, and is therefore more disposed to vice than to virtue. For a virtuous life it is absolutely necessary to restrain the disorderly movements of the soul, and to make the passions obedient to reason. In this conflict human things must very often be despised, and the greatest labors and hardships must be undergone, in order that reason may always hold its sway. But the naturalists and Freemasons, having no faith in those things which we have learned by the revelation of God, deny that our first parents sinned, and consequently think that free will is not at all weakened and inclined to evil.(13) On the contrary, exaggerating rather the power and the excellence of nature, and placing therein alone the principle and rule of justice, they cannot even imagine that there is any need at all of a constant struggle and a perfect steadfastness to overcome the violence and rule of our passions.
Wherefore we see that men are publicly tempted by the many allurements of pleasure; that there are journals and pamphlets with neither moderation nor shame; that stage-plays are remarkable for license; that designs for works of art are shamelessly sought in the laws of a so called verism; that the contrivances of a soft and delicate life are most carefully devised; and that all the blandishments of pleasure are diligently sought out by which virtue may be lulled to sleep. Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring.
21. What refers to domestic life in the teaching of the naturalists is almost all contained in the following declarations: that marriage belongs to the genus of commercial contracts, which can rightly be revoked by the will of those who made them, and that the civil rulers of the State have power over the matrimonial bond; that in the education of youth nothing is to be taught in the matter of religion as of certain and fixed opinion; and each one must be left at liberty to follow, when he comes of age, whatever he may prefer. To these things the Freemasons fully assent; and not only assent, but have long endeavoured to make them into a law and institution. For in many countries, and those nominally Catholic, it is enacted that no marriages shall be considered lawful except those contracted by the civil rite; in other places the law permits divorce; and in others every effort is used to make it lawful as soon as may be. Thus, the time is quickly coming when marriages will be turned into another kind of contract – that is into changeable and uncertain unions which fancy may join together, and which the same when changed may disunite.
With the greatest unanimity the sect of the Freemasons also endeavours to take to itself the education of youth. They think that they can easily mold to their opinions that soft and pliant age, and bend it whither they will; and that nothing can be more fitted than this to enable them to bring up the youth of the State after their own plan. Therefore, in the education and instruction of children they allow no share, either of teaching or of discipline, to the ministers of the Church; and in many places they have procured that the education of youth shall be exclusively in the hands of laymen, and that nothing which treats of the most important and most holy duties of men to God shall be introduced into the instructions on morals.
22. Then come their doctrines of politics, in which the naturalists lay down that all men have the same right, and are in every respect of equal and like condition; that each one is naturally free; that no one has the right to command another; that it is an act of violence to require men to obey any authority other than that which is obtained from themselves. According to this, therefore, all things belong to the free people; power is held by the command or permission of the people, so that, when the popular will changes, rulers may lawfully be deposed and the source of all rights and civil duties is either in the multitude or in the governing authority when this is constituted according to the latest doctrines. It is held also that the State should be without God; that in the various forms of religion there is no reason why one should have precedence of another; and that they are all to occupy the same place.
23. That these doctrines are equally acceptable to the Freemasons, and that they would wish to constitute States according to this example and model, is too well known to require proof. For some time past they have openly endeavoured to bring this about with all their strength and resources; and in this they prepare the way for not a few bolder men who are hurrying on even to worse things, in their endeavor to obtain equality and community of all goods by the destruction of every distinction of rank and property.
24. What, therefore, sect of the Freemasons is, and what course it pursues, appears sufficiently from the summary We have briefly given. Their chief dogmas are so greatly and manifestly at variance with reason that nothing can be more perverse. To wish to destroy the religion and the Church which God Himself has established, and whose perpetuity He insures by His protection, and to bring back after a lapse of eighteen centuries the manners and customs of the pagans, is signal folly and audacious impiety. Neither is it less horrible nor more tolerable that they should repudiate the benefits which Jesus Christ so mercifully obtained, not only for individuals, but also for the family and for civil society, benefits which, even according to the judgment and testimony of enemies of Christianity, are very great. In this insane and wicked endeavor we may almost see the implacable hatred and spirit of revenge with which Satan himself is inflamed against Jesus Christ. – So also the studious endeavour of the Freemasons to destroy the chief foundations of justice and honesty, and to co-operate with those who would wish, as if they were mere animals, to do what they please, tends only to the ignominious and disgraceful ruin of the human race.
The evil, too, is increased by the dangers which threaten both domestic and civil society. As We have elsewhere shown,(14) in marriage, according to the belief of almost every nation, there is something sacred and religious; and the law of God has determined that marriages shall not be dissolved. If they are deprived of their sacred character, and made dissoluble, trouble and confusion in the family will be the result, the wife being deprived of her dignity and the children left without protection as to their interests and well being.-To have in public matters no care for religion, and in the arrangement and administration of civil affairs to have no more regard for God than if He did not exist, is a rashness unknown to the very pagans; for in their heart and soul the notion of a divinity and the need of public religion were so firmly fixed that they would have thought it easier to have city without foundation than a city without God. Human society, indeed for which by nature we are formed, has been constituted by God the Author of nature; and from Him, as from their principle and source, flow in all their strength and permanence the countless benefits with which society abounds. As we are each of us admonished by the very voice of nature to worship God in piety and holiness, as the Giver unto us of life and of all that is good therein, so also and for the same reason, nations and States are bound to worship Him; and therefore it is clear that those who would absolve society from all religious duty act not only unjustly but also with ignorance and folly.
25. As men are by the will of God born for civil union and society, and as the power to rule is so necessary a bond of society that, if it be taken away, society must at once be broken up, it follows that from Him who is the Author of society has come also the authority to rule; so that whosoever rules, he is the minister of God. Wherefore, as the end and nature of human society so requires, it is right to obey the just commands of lawful authority, as it is right to obey God who ruleth all things; and it is most untrue that the people have it in their power to cast aside their obedience whensoever they please.
26. In like manner, no one doubts that all men are equal one to another, so far as regards their common origin and nature, or the last end which each one has to attain, or the rights and duties which are thence derived. But, as the abilities of all are not equal, as one differs from another in the powers of mind or body, and as there are very many dissimilarities of manner, disposition, and character, it is most repugnant to reason to endeavor to confine all within the same measure, and to extend complete equality to the institutions of civic life. Just as a perfect condition of the body results from the conjunction and composition of its various members, which, though differing in form and purpose, make, by their union and the distribution of each one to its proper place, a combination beautiful to behole, firm in strength, and necessary for use; so, in the commonwealth, there is an almost infinite dissimilarity of men, as parts of the whole. If they are to be all equal, and each is to follow his own will, the State will appear most deformed; but if, with a distinction of degrees of dignity, of pursuits and employments, all aptly conspire for the common good, they will present the image of a State both well constituted and conformable to nature.
27. Now, from the disturbing errors which We have described the greatest dangers to States are to be feared. For, the fear of God and reverence for divine laws being taken away, the authority of rulers despised, sedition permitted and approved, and the popular passions urged on to lawlessness, with no restraint save that of punishment, a change and overthrow of all things will necessarily follow. Yea, this change and overthrow is deliberately planned and put forward by many associations of communists and socialists; and to their undertakings the sect of Freemasons is not hostile, but greatly favours their designs, and holds in common with them their chief opinions. And if these men do not at once and everywhere endeavour to carry out their extreme views, it is not to be attributed to their teaching and their will, but to the virtue of that divine religion which cannot be destroyed; and also because the sounder part of men, refusing to be enslaved to secret societies, vigorously resist their insane attempts.
28. Would that all men would judge of the tree by its fruit, and would acknowledge the seed and origin of the evils which press upon us, and of the dangers that are impending! We have to deal with a deceitful and crafty enemy, who, gratifying the ears of people and of princes, has ensnared them by smooth speeches and by adulation. Ingratiating themselves with rulers under a pretense of friendship, the Freemasons have endeavoured to make them their allies and powerful helpers for the destruction of the Christian name; and that they might more strongly urge them on, they have, with determined calumny, accused the Church of invidiously contending with rulers in matters that affect their authority and sovereign power. Having, by these artifices, insured their own safety and audacity, they have begun to exercise great weight in the government of States; but nevertheless they are prepared to shake the foundations of empires, to harass the rulers of the State, to accuse, and to cast them out, as often as they appear to govern otherwise than they themselves could have wished. In like manner, they have by flattery deluded the people. Proclaiming with a loud voice liberty and public prosperity, and saying that it was owing to the Church and to sovereigns that the multitude were not drawn out of their unjust servitude and poverty, they have imposed upon the people, and, exciting them by a thirst for novelty, they have urged them to assail both the Church and the civil power. Nevertheless, the expectation of the benefits which was hoped for is greater than the reality; indeed, the common people, more oppressed than they were before, are deprived in their misery of that solace which, if things had been arranged in a Christian manner, they would have had with ease and in abundance. But, whoever strive against the order which Divine Providence has constituted pay usually the penalty of their pride, and meet with affliction and misery where they rashly hoped to find all things prosperous and in conformity with their desires.
29. The Church, if she directs men to render obedience chiefly and above all to God the sovereign Lord, is wrongly and falsely believed either to be envious of the civil power or to arrogate to herself something of the rights of sovereigns. On the contrary, she teaches that what is rightly due to the civil power must be rendered to it with a conviction and consciousness of duty. In teaching that from God Himself comes the right of ruling, she adds a great dignity to civil authority, and on small help towards obtaining the obedience and good will of the citizens. The friend of peace and sustainer of concord, she embraces all with maternal love, and, intent only upon giving help to mortal man, she teaches that to justice must be joined clemency, equity to authority, and moderation to lawgiving; that no one’s right must be violated; that order and public tranquility are to be maintained; and that the poverty of those are in need is, as far as possible, to be relieved by public and private charity. “But for this reason,” to use the words of St. Augustine, “men think, or would have it believed, that Christian teaching is not suited to the good of the State; for they wish the State to be founded not on solid virtue, but on the impunity of vice.”(15) Knowing these things, both princes and people would act with political wisdom,(16) and according to the needs of general safety, if, instead of joining with Freemasons to destroy the Church, they joined with the Church in repelling their attacks.
30 .Whatever the future may be, in this grave and widespread evil it is Our duty, venerable brethren, to endeavour to find a remedy. And because We know that Our best and firmest hope of a remedy is in the power of that divine religion which the Freemasons hate in proportion to their fear of it, We think it to be of chief importance to call that most saving power to Our aid against the common enemy. Therefore, whatsoever the Roman Pontiffs Our predecessors have decreed for the purpose of opposing the undertakings and endeavours of the masonic sect, and whatsoever they have enacted to enter or withdraw men from societies of this kind, We ratify and confirm it all by our apostolic authority: and trusting greatly to the good will of Christians, We pray and beseech each one, for the sake of his eternal salvation, to be most conscientiously careful not in the least to depart from what the apostolic see has commanded in this matter.
31. We pray and beseech you, venerable brethren, to join your efforts with Ours, and earnestly to strive for the extirpation of this foul plague, which is creeping through the veins of the body politic. You have to defend the glory of God and the salvation of your neighbour; and with the object of your strife before you, neither courage nor strength will be wanting. It will be for your prudence to judge by what means you can best overcome the difficulties and obstacles you meet with. But, as it befits the authority of Our office that We Ourselves should point out some suitable way of proceeding, We wish it to be your rule first of all to tear away the mask from Freemasonry, and to let it be seen as it really is; and by sermons and pastoral letters to instruct the people as to the artifices used by societies of this kind in seducing men and enticing them into their ranks, and as to the depravity of their opinions and the wickedness of their acts. As Our predecessors have many times repeated, let no man think that he may for any reason whatsoever join the masonic sect, if he values his Catholic name and his eternal salvation as he ought to value them. Let no one be deceived by a pretense of honesty. It may seem to some that Freemasons demand nothing that is openly contrary to religion and morality; but, as the whole principle and object of the sect lies in what is vicious and criminal, to join with these men or in any way to help them cannot be lawful.
32. Further, by assiduous teaching and exhortation, the multitude must be drawn to learn diligently the precepts of religion; for which purpose we earnestly advise that by opportune writings and sermons they be taught the elements of those sacred truths in which Christian philosophy is contained. The result of this will be that the minds of men will be made sound by instruction, and will be protected against many forms of error and inducements to wickedness, especially in the present unbounded freedom of writing and insatiable eagerness for learning.
33. Great, indeed, is the work; but in it the clergy will share your labours, if, through your care, they are fitted for it by learning and a well-turned life. This good and great work requires to be helped also by the industry of those amongst the laity in whom a love of religion and of country is joined to learning and goodness of life. By uniting the efforts of both clergy and laity, strive, venerable brethren, to make men thoroughly know and love the Church; for, the greater their knowledge and love of the Church, the more will they be turned away from clandestine societies.
34. Wherefore, not without cause do We use this occasion to state again what We have stated elsewhere, namely, that the Third Order of St. Francis, whose discipline We a little while ago prudently mitigated,(16) should be studiously promoted and sustained; for the whole object of this Order, as constituted by its founder, is to invite men to an imitation of Jesus Christ, to a love of the Church, and to the observance of all Christian virtues; and therefore it ought to be of great influence in suppressing the contagion of wicked societies. Let, therefore, this holy sodality be strengthened by a daily increase. Amongst the many benefits to be expected from it will be the great benefit of drawing the minds of men to liberty, fraternity, and equality of right; not such as the Freemasons absurdly imagine, but such as Jesus Christ obtained for the human race and St. Francis aspired to: the liberty, We mean, of sons of God, through which we may be free from slavery to Satan or to our passions, both of them most wicked masters; the fraternity whose origin is in God, the common Creator and Father of all; the equality which, founded on justice and charity, does not take away all distinctions among men, but, out of the varieties of life, of duties, and of pursuits, forms that union and that harmony which naturally tend to the benefit and dignity of society.
35. In the third place, there is a matter wisely instituted by our forefathers, but in course of time laid aside, which may now be used as a pattern and form of something similar. We mean the associations of guilds of workmen, for the protection, under the guidance of religion, both of their temporal interests and of their morality. If our ancestors, by long use and experience, felt the benefit of these guilds, our age perhaps will feel it the more by reason of the opportunity which they will give of crushing the power of the sects. Those who support themselves by the labour of their hands, besides being, by their very condition, most worthy above all others of charity and consolation, are also especially exposed to the allurements of men whose ways lie in fraud and deceit. Therefore, they ought to be helped with the greatest possible kindness, and to be invited to join associations that are good, lest they be drawn away to others that are evil. For this reason, We greatly wish, for the salvation of the people, that, under the auspices and patronage of the bishops, and at convenient times, these gilds may be generally restored. To Our great delight, sodalities of this kind and also associations of masters have in many places already been established, having, each class of them, for their object to help the honest workman, to protect and guard his children and family, and to promote in them piety, Christian knowledge, and a moral life. And in this matter We cannot omit mentioning that exemplary society, named after its founder, St. Vincent, which has deserved so well of the lower classes. Its acts and its aims are well known. Its whole object is to give relief to the poor and miserable. This it does with singular prudence and modesty; and the less it wishes to be seen, the better is it fitted for the exercise of Christian charity, and for the relief of suffering.
36. In the fourth place, in order more easily to attain what We wish, to your fidelity and watchfulness We commend in a special manner the young, as being the hope of human society. Devote the greatest part of your care to their instruction; and do not think that any precaution can be great enough in keeping them from masters and schools whence the pestilent breath of the sects is to be feared. Under your guidance, let parents, religious instructors, and priests having the cure of souls use every opportunity, in their Christian teaching, of warning their children and pupils of the infamous nature of these societies, so that they may learn in good time to beware of the various and fraudulent artifices by which their promoters are accustomed to ensnare people. And those who instruct the young in religious knowledge will act wisely if they induce all of them to resolve and to undertake never to bind themselves to any society without the knowledge of their parents, or the advice of their parish priest or director.
37. We well know, however, that our united labors will by no means suffice to pluck up these pernicious seeds from the Lord’s field, unless the Heavenly Master of the vineyard shall mercifully help us in our endeavours. We must, therefore, with great and anxious care, implore of Him the help which the greatness of the danger and of the need requires. The sect of the Freemasons shows itself insolent and proud of its success, and seems as if it would put no bounds to its pertinacity. Its followers, joined together by a wicked compact and by secret counsels, give help one to another, and excite one another to an audacity for evil things. So vehement an attack demands an equal defence-namely, that all good men should form the widest possible association of action and of prayer. We beseech them, therefore, with united hearts, to stand together and unmoved against the advancing force of the sects; and in mourning and supplication to stretch out their hands to God, praying that the Christian name may flourish and prosper, that the Church may enjoy its needed liberty, that those who have gone astray may return to a right mind, that error at length may give place to truth, and vice to virtue. Let us take our helper and intercessor the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, so that she, who from the moment of her conception overcame Satan may show her power over these evil sects, in which is revived the contumacious spirit of the demon, together with his unsubdued perfidy and deceit. Let us beseech Michael, the prince of the heavenly angels, who drove out the infernal foe; and Joseph, the spouse of the most holy Virgin, and heavenly patron of the Catholic Church; and the great Apostles, Peter and Paul, the fathers and victorious champions of the Christian faith. By their patronage, and by perseverance in united prayer, we hope that God will mercifully and opportunely succor the human race, which is encompassed by so many dangers.
38. As a pledge of heavenly gifts and of Our benevolence, We lovingly grant in the Lord, to you, venerable brethren, and to the clergy and all the people committed to your watchful care, Our apostolic benediction.
Given at St. Peter’s in Rome, the twentieth day of April, 1884, the sixth year of Our pontificate.
LEO XIII
REFERENCES:
1. De civ. Dei, 14, 28 (PL 41, 436).
2. Ps. 82:24.
3. Const. In Eminenti, April 24, 1738.
4. Const. Providas, May 18, 1751.
5. Const. Ecclesiam a Jesu Christo, Sept. 13, 1821.
6. Const. given March 13, 1825.
7. Encyc. Traditi, May 21, 1829.
8. Encyc. Mirari, Augusr 15, 1832.
9. Encyc. Qui Pluribus, Nov. 9, 1846; address Multiplices inter, Sept. 25, 1865, etc.
10. Clement XII (1730-40); Benedict XIV (1740-58); Pius VII (1800-23); Pius IX (1846-78).
11. See nos. 79, 81, 84.
12. Matt. 7:18.
13. Trid., sess. vi, De justif., c. 1. Text of the Council of Trent: “tametsi in eis (sc. Judaeis) liberum arbitrium minime extinctum esset, viribus licet attenuatum et inclinatum”.
14. See Arcanum, no. 81.
15. Epistola 137, ad Volusianum, c. v, n. 20 (PL 33 525).
16. The text here refers to the encyclical letter Auspicato Concessum (Sept. 17, 1882), in which Pope Leo XIII had recently glorified St. Francis of Assisi on the occasion of the seventh centenary of his birch. In this encyclical, the Pope had presented the Third Order of St. Francis as a Christian answer to the social problems of the times. The constitution Misericors Dei Filius (June 23, 1883) expressly recalled that the neglect in which Christian virtues are held is the main cause of the evils that threaten societies. In confirming the rule of the Third Order and adapting it to the needs of modern times, Pope Leo XIII had intended to bring back the largest possible number of souls to the practice of these virtues.
Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana
QUOD APOSTOLICI MUNERIS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII
ON SOCIALISM
* Socialism in this sense was not used to mean Christian socialism but atheist socialism.
To the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and
Bishops of the Catholic World in Grace and
Communion with the Apostolic See.
At the very beginning of Our pontificate, as the nature of Our apostolic office demanded, we hastened to point out in an encyclical letter addressed to you, venerable brethren, the deadly plague that is creeping into the very fibres of human society and leading it on to the verge of destruction; at the same time We pointed out also the most effectual remedies by which society might be restored and might escape from the very serious dangers which threaten it. But the evils which We then deplored have so rapidly increased that We are again compelled to address you, as though we heard the voice of the prophet ringing in Our ears: “Cry, cease not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet.”(1) You understand, venerable brethren, that We speak of that sect of men who, under various and almost barbarous names, are called socialists, communists, or nihilists, and who, spread over all the world, and bound together by the closest ties in a wicked confederacy, no longer seek the shelter of secret meetings, but, openly and boldly marching forth in the light of day, strive to bring to a head what they have long been planning – the overthrow of all civil society whatsoever.
Surely these are they who, as the sacred Scriptures testify, “Defile the flesh, despise dominion and blaspheme majesty.”(2) They leave nothing untouched or whole which by both human and divine laws has been wisely decreed for the health and beauty of life. They refuse obedience to the higher powers, to whom, according to the admonition of the Apostle, every soul ought to be subject, and who derive the right of governing from God; and they proclaim the absolute equality of all men in rights and duties. They debase the natural union of man and woman, which is held sacred even among barbarous peoples; and its bond, by which the family is chiefly held together, they weaken, or even deliver up to lust. Lured, in fine, by the greed of present goods, which is “the root of all evils, which some coveting have erred from the faith,”(3) they assail the right of property sanctioned by natural law; and by a scheme of horrible wickedness, while they seem desirous of caring for the needs and satisfying the desires of all men, they strive to seize and hold in common whatever has been acquired either by title of lawful inheritance, or by labor of brain and hands, or by thrift in one’s mode of life. These are the startling theories they utter in their meetings, set forth in their pamphlets, and scatter abroad in a cloud of journals and tracts. Wherefore, the revered majesty and power of kings has won such fierce hatred from their seditious people that disloyal traitors, impatient of all restraint, have more than once within a short period raised their arms in impious attempt against the lives of their own sovereigns.
2. But the boldness of these bad men, which day by day more and more threatens civil society with destruction, and strikes the souls of all with anxiety and fear, finds its cause and origin in those poisonous doctrines which, spread abroad in former times among the people, like evil seed bore in due time such fatal fruit. For you know, venerable brethren, that that most deadly war which from the sixteenth century down has been waged by innovators against the Catholic faith, and which has grown in intensity up to today, had for its object to subvert all revelation, and overthrow the supernatural order, that thus the way might be opened for the discoveries, or rather the hallucinations, of reason alone. This kind of error, which falsely usurps to itself the name of reason, as it lures and whets the natural appetite that is in man of excelling, and gives loose rein to unlawful desires of every kind, has easily penetrated not only the minds of a great multitude of men but to a wide extent civil society, also. Hence, by a new species of impiety, unheard of even among the heathen nations, states have been constituted without any count at all of God or of the order established by him; it has been given out that public authority neither derives its principles, nor its majesty, nor its power of governing from God, but rather from the multitude, which, thinking itself absolved from all divine sanction, bows only to such laws as it shall have made at its own will. The supernatural truths of faith having been assailed and cast out as though hostile to reason, the very Author and Redeemer of the human race has been slowly and little by little banished from the universities, the lyceums and gymnasia-in a word, from every public institution. In fine, the rewards and punishments of a future and eternal life having been handed over to oblivion, the ardent desire of happiness has been limited to the bounds of the present. Such doctrines as these having been scattered far and wide, so great a license of thought and action having sprung up on all sides, it is no matter for surprise that men of the lowest class, weary of their wretched home or workshop, are eager to attack the homes and fortunes of the rich; it is no matter for surprise that already there exists no sense of security either in public or private life, and that the human race should have advanced to the very verge of final dissolution.
3. But the supreme pastors of the Church, on whom the duty falls of guarding the Lord’s flock from the snares of the enemy, have striven in time to ward off the danger and provide for the safety of the faithful. For, as soon as the secret societies began to be formed, in whose bosom the seeds of the errors which we have already mentioned were even then being nourished, the Roman Pontiffs Clement XII and Benedict XIV did not fail to unmask the evil counsels of the sects, and to warn the faithful of the whole globe against the ruin which would be wrought. Later on again, when a licentious sort of liberty was attributed to man by a set of men who gloried in the name of philosophers,(4) and a new right, as they call it, against the natural and divine law began to be framed and sanctioned, Pope Pius VI, of happy memory, at once exposed in public documents the guile and falsehood of their doctrines, and at the same time foretold with apostolic foresight the ruin into which the people so miserably deceived would be dragged. But, as no adequate precaution was taken to prevent their evil teachings from leading the people more and more astray, and lest they should be allowed to escape in the public statutes of States, Popes Pius VII and Leo XII condemned by anathema the secret sects,(5) and again warned society of the danger which threatened them. Finally, all have witnessed with what solemn words and great firmness and constancy of soul our glorious predecessor, Pius IX, of happy memory, both in his allocutions and in his encyclical letters addressed to the bishops of all the world, fought now against the wicked attempts of the sects, now openly by name against the pest of socialism, which was already making headway.
4. But it is to be lamented that those to whom has been committed the guardianship of the public weal, deceived by the wiles of wicked men and terrified by their threats, have looked upon the Church with a suspicious and even hostile eye, not perceiving that the attempts of the sects would be vain if the doctrine of the Catholic Church and the authority of the Roman Pontiffs had always survived, with the honor that belongs to them, among princes and peoples. For, “the church of the living God, which is the pillar and ground of truth,”(6) hands down those doctrines and precepts whose special object is the safety and peace of society and the uprooting of the evil growth of socialism.
5. For, indeed, although the socialists, stealing the very Gospel itself with a view to deceive more easily the unwary, have been accustomed to distort it so as to suit their own purposes, nevertheless so great is the difference between their depraved teachings and the most pure doctrine of Christ that none greater could exist: “for what participation bath justice with injustice or what fellowship bath light with darkness?”(7) Their habit, as we have intimated, is always to maintain that nature has made all men equal, and that, therefore, neither honor nor respect is due to majesty, nor obedience to laws, unless, perhaps, to those sanctioned by their own good pleasure. But, on the contrary, in accordance with the teachings of the Gospel, the equality of men consists in this: that all, having inherited the same nature, are called to the same most high dignity of the sons of God, and that, as one and the same end is set before all, each one is to be judged by the same law and will receive punishment or reward according to his deserts. The inequality of rights and of power proceeds from the very Author of nature, “from whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named.”(8) But the minds of princes and their subjects are, according to Catholic doctrine and precepts, bound up one with the other in such a manner, by mutual duties and rights, that the thirst for power is restrained and the rational ground of obedience made easy, firm, and noble.
6. Assuredly, the Church wisely inculcates the apostolic precept on the mass of men: “There is no power but from God; and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist purchase to themselves damnation.” And again she admonishes those “subject by necessity” to be so “not only for wrath but also for conscience’ sake,” and to render “to all men their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.”(9) For, He who created and governs all things has, in His wise providence, appointed that the things which are lowest should attain their ends by those which are intermediate, and these again by the highest. Thus, as even in the kingdom of heaven He bath willed that the choirs of angels be distinct and some subject to others, and also in the Church has instituted various orders and a diversity of offices, so that all are not apostles or doctors or pastors,(10) so also has He appointed that there should be various orders in civil society, differing indignity, rights, and power, whereby the State, like the Church, should be one body, consisting of many members, some nobler than others, but all necessary to each other and solicitous for the common good.
7. But that rulers may use the power conceded to them to save and not to destroy, the Church of Christ seasonably warns even princes that the sentence of the Supreme Judge overhangs them, and, adopting the words of divine wisdom, calls upon all in the name of God: “Give ear, you that rule the people, and that please yourselves in multitudes of nations; for power is given you by the Lord, and strength by the Most High, who will examine your works, and search out your thoughts. . . . For a most severe judgment shall be for them that bear rule. . . . For God will not except any man’s person, neither will he stand in awe of any man’s greatness, for he bath made the little and the great; and he bath equally care of all. But a greater punishment is ready for the more mighty.”(11) And if at any time it happen that the power of the State is rashly and tyrannically wielded by princes, the teaching of the Catholic church does not allow an insurrection on private authority against them, lest public order be only the more disturbed, and lest society take greater hurt therefrom. And when affairs come to such a pass that there is no other hope of safety, she teaches that relief may be hastened by the merits of Christian patience and by earnest prayers to God. But, if the will of legislators and princes shall have sanctioned or commanded anything repugnant to the divine or natural law, the dignity and duty of the Christian name, as well as the judgment of the Apostle, urge that “God is to be obeyed rather than man.”(12)
8. Even family life itself, which is the cornerstone of all society and government, necessarily feels and experiences the salutary power of the Church, which redounds to the right ordering and preservation of every State and kingdom. For you know, venerable brethren, that the foundation of this society rests first of all in the indissoluble union of man and wife according to the necessity of natural law, and is completed in the mutual rights and duties of parents and children, masters and servants. You know also that the doctrines of socialism strive almost completely to dissolve this union; since, that stability which is imparted to it by religious wedlock being lost, it follows that the power of the father over his own children, and the duties of the children toward their parents, must be greatly weakened. But the Church, on the contrary, teaches that “marriage, honorable in all,”(13) which God himself instituted in the very beginning of the world, and made indissoluble for the propagation and preservation of the human species, has become still more binding and more holy through Christ, who raised it to the dignity of a sacrament, and chose to use it as the figure of His own union with the Church.
Wherefore, as the Apostle has it,(14) as Christ is the head of the Church, so is the man the head of the woman; and as the Church is subject to Christ, who embraces her with a most chaste and undying love, so also should wives be subject to their husbands, and be loved by them in turn with a faithful and constant affection. In like manner does the Church temper the use of parental and domestic authority, that it may tend to hold children and servants to their duty, without going beyond bounds. For, according to Catholic teaching, the authority of our heavenly Father and Lord is imparted to parents and masters, whose authority, therefore, not only takes its origin and force from Him, but also borrows its nature and character. Hence, the Apostle exhorts children to “obey their parents in the Lord, and honor their father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise”;(15) and he admonishes parents: “And you, fathers, provoke not your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord.”(16) Again, the apostle enjoins the divine precept on servants and masters, exhorting the former to be “obedient to their lords according to the flesh of Christ . . . with a good will serving, as to the Lord”; and the latter, to “forbear threatenings, knowing that the Lord of all is in heaven, and there is no respect of persons with God.”(17) If only all these matters were faithfully observed according to the divine will by all on whom they are enjoined, most assuredly every family would be a figure of the heavenly home, and the wonderful blessings there begotten would not confine themselves to the households alone, but would scatter their riches abroad through the nations.”
9. But Catholic wisdom, sustained by the precepts of natural and divine law, provides with especial care for public and private tranquility in its doctrines and teachings regarding the duty of government and the distribution of the goods which are necessary for life and use. For, while the socialists would destroy the “right” of property, alleging it to be a human invention altogether opposed to the inborn equality of man, and, claiming a community of goods, argue that poverty should not be peaceably endured, and that the property and privileges of the rich may be rightly invaded, the Church, with much greater wisdom and good sense, recognizes the inequality among men, who are born with different powers of body and mind, inequality in actual possession, also, and holds that the right of property and of ownership, which springs from nature itself, must not be touched and stands inviolate. For she knows that stealing and robbery were forbidden in so special a manner by God, the Author and Defender of right, that He would not allow man even to desire what belonged to another, and that thieves and despoilers, no less than adulterers and idolaters, are shut out from the Kingdom of Heaven. But not the less on this account does our holy Mother not neglect the care of the poor or omit to provide for their necessities; but, rather, drawing them to her with a mother’s embrace, and knowing that they bear the person of Christ Himself, who regards the smallest gift to the poor as a benefit conferred on Himself, holds them in great honor. She does all she can to help them; she provides homes and hospitals where they may be received, nourished, and cared for all the world over and watches over these. She is constantly pressing on the rich that most grave precept to give what remains to the poor; and she holds over their heads the divine sentence that unless they succor the needy they will be repaid by eternal torments. In fine, she does all she can to relieve and comfort the poor, either by holding up to them the example of Christ, “who being rich became poor for our sake,(18) or by reminding them of his own words, wherein he pronounced the poor blessed and bade them hope for the reward of eternal bliss. But who does not see that this is the best method of arranging the old struggle between the rich and poor? For, as the very evidence of facts and events shows, if this method is rejected or disregarded, one of two things must occur: either the greater portion of the human race will fall back into the vile condition of slavery which so long prevailed among the pagan nations, or human society must continue to be disturbed by constant eruptions, to be disgraced by rapine and strife, as we have had sad witness even in recent times.
10. These things being so, then, venerable brethren, as at the beginning of Our pontificate We, on whom the guidance of the whole Church now lies, pointed out a place of refuge to the peoples and the princes tossed about by the fury of the tempest, so now, moved by the extreme peril that is on them, We again lift up Our voice, and beseech them again and again for their own safety’s sake as well as that of their people to welcome and give ear to the Church which has had such wonderful influence on the public prosperity of kingdoms, and to recognize that political and religious affairs are so closely united that what is taken from the spiritual weakens the loyalty of subjects and the majesty of the government. And since they know that the Church of Christ has such power to ward off the plague of socialism as cannot be found in human laws, in the mandates of magistrates, or in the force of armies, let them restore that Church to the condition and liberty in which she may exert her healing force for the benefit of all society.
11. But you, venerable brethren, who know the origin and the drift of these gathering evils, strive with all your force of soul to implant the Catholic teaching deep in the minds of all. Strive that all may have the habit of clinging to God with filial love and revering His divinity from their tenderest years; that they may respect the majesty of princes and of laws; that they may restrain their passions and stand fast by the order which God has established in civil and domestic society. Moreover, labor hard that the children of the Catholic Church neither join nor favor in any way whatsoever this abominable sect; let them show, on the contrary, by noble deeds and right dealing in all things, how well and happily human society would hold together were each member to shine as an example of right doing and of virtue. In fine, as the recruits of socialism are especially sought among artisans and workmen, who, tired, perhaps, of labor, are more easily allured by the hope of riches and the promise of wealth, it is well to encourage societies of artisans and workmen which, constituted under the guardianship of religion, may tend to make all associates contented with their lot and move them to a quiet and peaceful life.
12. Venerable brethren, may He who is the beginning and end of every good work inspire your and Our endeavors. And, indeed, the very thought of these days, in which the anniversary of our Lord’s birth is solemnly observed, moves us to hope for speedy help. For the new life which Christ at His birth brought to a world already aging and steeped in the very depths of wickedness He bids us also to hope for, and the peace which He then announced by the angels to men He has promised to us also. For the Lord’s “hand is not shortened that he cannot save, neither is his ear heavy that he cannot hear.”(19) In these most auspicious days, then, venerable brethren, wishing all joy and happiness to you and to the faithful of your churches, We earnestly pray the Giver of all good that again “there may appear unto men the goodness and kindness of God our Saviour,”(20) who brought us out of the power of our most deadly enemy into the most noble dignity of the sons of God. And that We may the sooner and more fully gain our wish, do you, venerable brethren, join with Us in lifting up your fervent prayers to God and beg the intercession of the Blessed and Immaculate Virgin Mary, and of Joseph her spouse, and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, in whose prayers We have the greatest confidence. And in the meanwhile We impart to you, with the inmost affection of the heart, and to your clergy and faithful people, the apostolic benediction as an augury of the divine gifts.
Given at St. Peter’s, in Rome, on the twenty-eighth day of December, 1878, in the first year of Our pontificate.
LEO XIII
REFERENCES:
1. Isa. 58:1.
2. Jude 8.
3. 1 Tim. 6:10.
4. See above, p. 155, note 2.
5. On Freemasonry, Humanum genus.
6. 1 Tim. 3:15.
7. 2 Cor. 6:14.
8. Eph. 3:15.
9. Rom. 13a, 7.
10. 1 Cor. 12:28.
11. Wisd. 6:3-4, 8-9.
12. Acts 5:29.
13. Heb. 13:4.
14. Eph. S:Z3.
15. Eph.6:1-2.
16. Eph. 6:4.
17. Eph.6:5-9.
18. 2 Cor. 8:9.
19. Isa. 59:1.
20. Titus 3:4.
© Copyright 1878 – Libreria Editrice Vaticana
VATICAN
Follow the “woman dressed in the sun” against the “dragon” of materialism, says Pope
Castel Gandolfo (AsiaNews) – Love “is stronger than hatred and selfishness” even in today’s world which is ruled by “the materialist ideology of consumerism and entertainment.” It is Mary who showed us this. “Overcoming death”, she “told us: Courage, love wins in the end!” This is what Benedict XVI said in his homily during the mass celebrated in the Pontifical Parish of San Tommaso da Villanova, in Castel Gandolfo, on the occasion of the Solemnity of the Assumption.
The Pope took inspiration from the apocalyptic image of the “red dragon, the symbol of absolute selfishness, terror and violence” to describe the story of the world as an ongoing “struggle between love and selfishness;” and not only in the age of the Roman Empire or in 1900, but today as well.
“We saw the power of the red dragon realised in the great dictatorships of the last century,” Benedict XVI said. “The dictatorships of Nazism and Stalinism had a power that penetrated every corner. On the long run it seemed impossible that faith could survive such a powerful dragon who sought to devour God who had become a child, and the woman, the Church. But in this case in fact love proved stronger than hatred.”
For the Pontiff today’s dragon is found “in the materialist ideologies that say: It is absurd to think about God. It is absurd to observe God’s Commandments. It is something from a bygone era . . . . Only consumerism, selfishness and fun are worth something. That’s life.”
“Again it seems absurd, impossible to oppose this dominant mentality with all its media and propaganda power. It seems impossible to think about a God who created man, who became a child, the real would-be ruler of the world,” he said.
Benedict XVI finally spoke what Our Lady means, a woman “dressed in the sun, that is to say God.” It is indeed Mary who “overcoming death told us: Courage, love wins in the end! My life means that I am God’s handmaid; my life means giving myself to God and my fellow man as a gift. Have trust, have courage to live thus against all the dragon’s threats. Mary,” he said, “is the sign that love, goodness and God shall win.”
Our Lady also means a “woman who suffers, who must flee, giving birth in crying pain, i.e. the Church, the pilgrim Church of all ages. In all generations the Church must give birth to Christ, bring him into the world in great pain and suffering. Throughout the ages the Church has been persecuted by the dragon.”
“But,” the Pope said, “throughout the ages the Church was nourished by God, nourished with the same bread that is the Holy Eucharist. And thus in all its tribulations, in all the various situations the Church found itself throughout time in the different parts of the world, the Church wins by suffering.”
“And thus the feast day of the Immaculate,” Benedict XVI explained, “is an invitation to trust God and an invitation to imitate Mary,” who said “I am the handmaid of the Lord, I am at the disposal of the Lord.”
Hence the Pope urged us “to give our life rather than take any, setting off on the path of love, which means losing ourselves, a path which alone can let us truly find ourselves as well as find true life.”
In concluding he said: “Let us look upon Mary, the Assunta, and be encouraged in our faith and in the feast of joy: God wins. Faith, which appeared weak, is the real power of the world. Love is stronger than hatred.”
In the late morning the Pope addressed as he usually does the many faithful and pilgrims who crowd the courtyard of the Apostolic Palace for the Angelus.
He used the occasion to highlight the solidarity between “Mother and Son, closely tied in their struggle against the enemy from hell till the total victory over him.”
“As Christ’s glorious resurrection was the final sign of this victory,” he said, “so does the glorification of Mary, including in her virgin body, constitute the final confirmation of Her total solidarity with the Son in both struggle and victory.”
Finally, “Mary did not grow remote from us. We need to feel that she is mother and sister in the concrete situations of our existence,” he said.
CHINA
Henan government: destroy the sanctuary of Our Lady of Carmel in Tianjiajing
A decree defines the sanctuary and the pilgrimages which stretch back over a hundred years involving over 40 thousand faithful each year as “illegal religious activity”. Catholics promise to resist this violation of their right. Perhaps the sanctuary grounds are wanted for the construction of hotels and villas.Rome (AsiaNews) – Next July 16th pilgrims and faithful from Henan will not be allowed to go on pilgrimage to the sanctuary in Tianjiajing. The government from the province of Henan has in fact decreed that the historic sanctuary dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Carmel will be blown up with dynamite; a complete ban on Catholics organizing their annual pilgrimage; a complete ban on any religious gathering or function being celebrated in the area. A statue of the Virgin, over one hundred years old, is destined to be destroyed along with 14 stations of The Way of the Cross which punctuate the entrance to the shrine.The sanctuary of Our Lady of Mount Carmel lies in Tianjiajing (Linxian district), in the diocese of Anyang, in the reaches of a mountain which dominates majestic scenery. It was ordered built by PIME missionary Msgr. Stefano Scarsella, then apostolic vicar to northern Henan, to thank the Virgin for preserving them from the dangers of the Boxers persecution in 1900. The shrine was built in1903-1905.The elegantly styled neo-roman Church was almost completely destroyed first by the Japanese in the Second World War, then by the Red Guard in the 60’s. Since 1979, the faithful returned to celebrating their faith with solemn liturgies and pilgrimages, travelling many kilometres on foot to the sanctuary ruins and representation of the Lourdes Grotto, where still today the original Marian statue can be seen.According to AsiaNews sources, May 12th last, on the feast of Our Lady of China, the diocese of Anyang distributed leaflets on the upcoming annual pilgrimage to Tianjiajing on July 16th feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Usually the pilgrimage gathers 45-50 thousand people. Since then the Department for Religious Affairs has kept strict surveillance of all priests, forcing them to hold “discussions” to convince them not to go ahead with the pilgrimage.May 11th last the secretary general of Henan province gave a personal order to cancel the pilgrimage and spread the order to the neighbouring provinces of Hebei and Shanxi.To occupy the site and prevent any form of sit-in, the provincial government began holding military exercises in the area of the shrine on May 12, mobilizing over 700 soldiers. Still today all roads leading to the sanctuary are closed. All cars and pedestrians who pass by are stopped and searched. The provincial governor’s decision has shocked the faithful of the diocese because just this year they began rebuilding the sanctuary, offering money and hours of work, repairing the road and the stations of the Way of the Cross which lie along it. In answer on May 14th the government of Anyang city revoked the sanctuary’s permit and the permit for the pilgrimage, defining them as “illegal religious activity” and May 16th he issued a resolution which denies access to the land to Anyang Church, requisitioning the sanctuary site.
“It’s unbelievable that they have done this “, one faithful tells AsiaNews. “These local communist leaders don’t even know the central governments laws governing religious polices, they only create useless and dangerous tension”. “We will never give in “says another faithful. “We are not afraid and we will defend our legitimate rights to the very end”.
In the meantime, since the end of May a “working group” from the local government has installed itself in Tianjiajing. According to some suppositions, the local government move requisitioning the lands and abolishing the pilgrimage is due to the geographical position of the Church, on the summit, above a valley ideal for the building of a hotel or perhaps country villa of some Party member.
Faithful from the diocese of Anyang have launched an appeal through AsiaNews: “We ask all our brothers and sisters in the Lord – they say – to pray for us and spread our message to all the faithful of the world”.
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-21101?l=english
Population Control, Avoiding Responsibility
Catholic Student Union, Florida State University
By Hilary WhiteBIRMINGHAM, Alabama, August 24, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Dr. Alveda King, the niece of legendary human rights campaigner, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., told a meeting of Priests for Life, that the killing of a quarter of the black population of the US has not been from the lynch mobs of her childhood days, but from abortionists, “who plant their killing centers in minority neighborhoods and prey upon women who think they have no hope.“The great irony,” she said, “is that abortion has done what the Klan only dreamed of.”King was speaking Sunday at the unveiling of memorials at the Birmingham, Alabama church served by her late father, the Rev. A. D. Williams King. Her father served the church from 1961 to 1965, the height of the civil rights movement. King is a Pastoral Associate of Priests for Life and lived with her family at the church’s parsonage when it was bombed in retaliation for her family’s involvement with the historic movement.Christian Newswire quotes Dr. King at the ceremony: “Daddy was unswerving in his dedication to God and to the cause of justice. While the ceremonies Sunday marked a historic period from our past, it reminded me of another kind of struggle for survival African Americans face today.”Dr. King pointed out that the killing of the unborn in the US, which has taken the lives of well over 42 million American children, is overwhelmingly concentrated in the African-American community. “In the last forty-plus years,” Dr. King said, “15 million black people have been denied their most basic civil right, the right to life. Roughly one quarter of the black population is now missing.”The abortion movement’s history is inseparable from that of the eugenics movement that held the genocide of the “dysgenic races” as a central goal and for which the poor were the “enemies of the people.” In the US, abortion facilities and offices of Planned Parenthood are concentrated in poor areas where the black population is especially targeted.Margaret Sanger, the foundress of the organisation that eventually became Planned Parenthood, had as her goal the control and subjugation of the poor ethnic peoples, including blacks.
Dr. King said, “It’s time that we remember the sacrifices of men like my father and my uncle who worked and died so that our children could live.”
“It’s time to stop killing the future and keep their dream alive.”
Read the paper, “The Inherent Racism of Population Control” by Paul Jalsevac http://www.lifesite.net/waronfamily/Population_Control/Inher…
7.
General Napoleon Bonaparte was born on August 15, 1769, Feast of the Assumption. This fact would lead one to believe that in his life, Napoleon would hold the Blessed Virgin highly, however, throughout his life Napoleon did not exhibit any devotion to the Blessed Mother. On the contrary he was probably initiated in Freemasonry on June 12-19, 1798, into the Army Philadelphe Lodge, in Malta. His Masonic membership is disputed, however, as a sure fact Napoleon Bonaparte was the protector of Freemasonry and experienced at least one ‘dark’ supernatural episode, whilst visiting the ancient pyramids at Giza, Egypt. When the Duke of Orleans died, Freemasonry in France needed a Grandmaster. They invited General Bonaparte to fill this post, the General demanded: “…a memoir on the objects and principles of the association.”(1) The memoir presented explained that, since the burning at the stake of Jacques de Molay, Grandmaster of the Knights Templars, the: “… vengeance alluded to in the Elu degrees and in Kadosh was that which the Templars formerly swore to execute upon King Philip the Fair, the destroyer of the Order, and upon his successors, but this vengeance was accomplished by the accession of Napoleon to the imperial throne.”(2) Napoleon nominated his brother, the King of Spain, as Grandmaster and invited many both in the military and government officials to join the Craft. Thus, the power of Freemasonry grew much. Not that the Craft needed further power and influence, for the sect had already succeeded at bringing about the French Revolution. The French authorities had indeed already carried out their antichristian persecution of the religious houses, blaming the cleric’s unswerving loyalty to the Pope. French Kings Louis XVI and his son Louis XVII, were assassinated during the ‘Reign of Terror,’ and the Masonic pledge of vengeance upon the descendents of King Philip the Fair, against Monarchy and Religion, had been accomplished in the foulest of ways.
In 1796, the French Army crossed the Alps into Italy. The intention was to march on Rome, conquer the ancient city of the Empire and take hostage the Pope; this sounded like a perfect plan for the child of the enlightenment, the French Masonic General Bonaparte. Nevertheless, Napoleon had not considered the fine details, such as the fact that the Blessed Virgin, the protector of the Roman Pontiff and the Church of Jesus Christ, was about to pit her supernatural strength and favor before the Lord, against the earthly powers and their gods of illuminism, science, war and reason. On June 25, 1796, the picture of the ‘La Madonna del Duomo’ or ‘Blessed Virgin Queen of All Saints,’ in the Cathedral of Saint Cyriacus, Ancona, Italy, miraculously came to life. The Blessed Virgin moved her eyes and arms and wept, also changing the color of her visage. Many people including the parish priest Father Candelabri, witnessed the phenomenon. Three days earlier the Napoleonic French signed a ‘Treaty’ with the Papal representative at Bologna, authorizing the French to occupy Ancona. The painting of the Blessed Virgin repeated the miraculous movements and was studied by architects, engineers and painters. The sacred Icon was carried in solemn processions across the city, people ran to witness the prodigy, conversions occurred by the dozen and the church sacristies where full with penitents seeking and receiving the sacrament of reconciliation. The people repented of their evil deeds and sought to make amends, once again they gave their hearts to the God of the Christians and deserted the new gods of the Revolution.
On February 10, 1797, Napoleon entered Ancona, declared that the local governing body was dissolved and imposed a high ransom, confiscating all the treasures of the churches. He was made aware of the miraculous painting by the local Jacobins and immediately made up his mind to stop this lie, which he presumed was purposely circulated by the tricky clergy. He ordered the priests to bring the painting before him, to inspect it personally. Napoleon intended to destroy the Icon of the Blessed Virgin, Queen of All Saints and stop the people’s hope in such fantastical notions, which as he concluded would: “…damage the well being of the citizens.” The following day the painting was removed and taken to the General, it was placed upon a table before the Corsican. The enlightened General Bonaparte hoped to provide a logical, natural reason for the phenomenon, he said: “Dear clergy, I am surprised at your ignorance, if you were to know minimally the laws of Physics, I am referring to the laws of reflection and refraction of light, the phenomenon of the reflections on the face of the Virgin caused by candle light.” Napoleon hoped to imitate Marat’s description on the manner light passes, reflects and is refracted through soap bubbles. Indeed, the spiritual insight of such was as shallow as the soapy water Marat placed himself before being assassinated by a woman. Our Lady was now the Woman who would tackle Napoleon. Father Candelabri, whose very name denotes a deep understanding of the nature of candlelight, replied: “Permit me, General. I am Father Candelabri. I myself have seen the prodigy and there was no flickering candlelight to confuse my sight. I used a lens and saw the prodigy occurring and can confirm the event! To confirm what I am saying you can ask the lawyer Bertrando Bonaria a well known Jacobin who has also witnessed the miracle.”(3)
General Napoleon Bonaparte did not reply, his attention was drawn to the necklace of pearls, which adorned the Blessed Virgin’s neck. He said: “This shall be sold and the funds recovered will be given to charity. The funds shall be used for the wedding expenses of an orphaned girl.”(4) General Napoleon Bonaparte reached out to remove the necklace. At that very moment, Napoleon froze, both his expression and countenance shockingly changed. The people present in the room knew too well what had just transpired, General Bonaparte witnessed the miraculous prodigy. The French General sat down and on the spot decided that the painting should be burnt. If it were not for Father Candelabri who convinced him otherwise, pointing out that such a gesture would surely incite the people to revolt and pledging to keep it covered at all times, the General’s soldiers would have surely burned the Holy Icon. Thankfully, Father Candelabri saved the Image of Our Lady, which served to direct once again the people towards the light of Our Lord. It can still be venerated today at Our Lady’s church in Ancona, Italy.
In 1845, the miraculous event was canonically confirmed and Our Lady dell Duomo, was proclaimed the Patroness of Ancona. If the events at Ancona are considered incredible, then the following is definitely more so. On July 9, 1796, and continuing for many months, starting in Rome and then Frosinone, Veroli, Torrice, Cepano Urbania, Frascati, Todi and Rimini, the images of the Blessed Virgin were (if not all but most) repeating the prodigy as the painting in Ancona had done. The testimonies to these miraculous events were so numerous that on February 28, 1797, the events were declared as ‘true and factual,’ and a Feast on July 9 was instituted in remembrance of these prodigies. The Madonna del Conforto (Our Lady of Consolation) had a special Feast, which occurred on February 15 in Tuscany. The Italians were told that the French were to destroy this painting, which was so dear to them. This was one of the many acts of violence perpetrated against Tuscany; the French had destroyed churches and forced the clergy into the army. The populace arose and with their battle cry “Viva Maria!” (Hail Mary) the revolts began. During those days, in Siena a blackened statuette of the Blessed Virgin called ‘Madonna di Provenzano di Siena,’ turned luminous white before a crowd of prayerful devotees. On May 6, 1799, the revolt against the French in Arezzo was successful, also were successful the revolts in Rome and the other Italian cities. In 1799, on orders of General Bonaparte, Pope Pius VI died virtually as a prisoner in the Directory of Rome. The battle was not over.
On March 14, 1800, His Holiness Pope Pius VII was elected. Due to the potential Catholic support from the French peasantry, Napoleon decided to establish an agreement with the Pope. Notwithstanding the fact that he had no particular love for Christianity, he desired to restore the Church in France. Negotiations for an agreement were held in Paris between Napoleon’s representatives, Bernier and Talleyrand, and the Pope’s emissary, Archbishop Spina of Corinth. Following eight months of negotiations, a threatened military occupation of Rome and much bluff on Napoleon’s side, the agreement was signed on July 15, 1801. Napoleon Bonaparte recognized the Roman Catholic Faith as the religion of the majority of the French people. In return for the oath of loyalty to the French state, the clergy were to receive salaries. ‘The Concordat’ as the agreement came to be known, was considered by Pope Pius VII as a great triumph. The Concordat was ratified on August 15, 1801, Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin and Napoleon’s birthday. The many diverse factions in France reacted terribly to Bonaparte’s Concordat. The royalist Joseph de Maistre wrote: “With all my heart I wish death to the Pope in the same way and for the same reason I would desire death to my father were he to dishonor me tomorrow.”(5) However, Napoleon wanted to pacify the people. The French Council of State, the Tribunate, the Senate and the Army, all voiced their disapproval to the Concordat. The Jacobins and their Masonic allies viewed the Concordat as the final betrayal of the Revolution. With the reopening of churches for public worship, the Jacobins reasserted themselves with Voltaire’s principle to: “…wipe out the infamy of religion!” Following the Mass on Easter Day April 18, 1802, General Delmas to General Bonaparte said: “Pretty monkish mummery…. The only thing missing were the million men who died to overthrow what you are now setting up again.”(6) Due to his newly found popularity with the masses, Napoleon managed to introduce a new tax, the imposition was accepted without much fuss and the economic situation in France began to recover. Napoleon clearly understood the political benefits of being recognized as Emperor, however he could not fathom the spiritual aspect of such a position, whereby the Emperor would be guided by God and the Mother Church. Indeed, he was not capable of being an Emperor such as Charles the Great had been. For how can a child of the enlightenment, a Freemason, be God’s chosen Holy Emperor (a claim which Napoleon evidently made when writing to His Holiness Pope Pius VII)? While a true and honest conversion is done in secret, such as Emperor Constantine’s Baptism by Pope Sylvester at the Lateran Baptistry, political public conversions to Catholicism, in order to politically lead Catholics, equates to a spiritual farce and is evident political maneuvering, doomed for failure from the outset.
In 1806, Pope Pius VII was not playing ball with the French self-declared Emperor; he disregarded Napoleon’s orders and refused to submit his Church to Bonaparte’s whims. The Roman Pontiff particularly opposed the Napoleonic elected King Joseph of Naples. His Holiness refused to garrison Ancona and allowed British spies to roam unhindered, also opening Papal ports to the British Navy. Napoleon wrote angrily: “For the Pope I am Charlemagne…. I therefore expect to be treated from this point of view. I shall change nothing in appearance if they behave well; otherwise I shall reduce the Pope to be merely Bishop of Rome.”(7) Following letters to the Pope insisting that he is the Emperor and his enemies are the Papal enemies, the Pope replied: “There is no Emperor of Rome.”(8) The Napoleonic regime forced the Church in France to commit schism with Rome. The rewritten Catechism of the Catholic Church in France, read in the seventh lesson: “Why do we owe all these duties to Our Emperor? Firstly, because God…. Plentifully bestowed gifts upon our Emperor, whether for peace or for war, has made him the minister of his power and his image upon earth…”(9) The Pope remained undeterred and refused to implement the Continental Blockade in his territories. Napoleon’s next move was to order the take over of the administration in the Papal States, thereby the Pontiff responded by issuing a bill of excommunication against the ‘Emperor.’ The General ordered his troops to storm the Quirinal Palace, he attempted to force Pope Pius VII to renounce his temporal power, which the Pontiff adamantly refused. On July 5, 1808, on Napoleon’s orders, Pope Saint Pius VII was arrested and detained for three years, first at Savona Italy, then at Fontainbleau. Napoleon Bonaparte was not the first to have kept a Roman Pontiff in jail, Philip the Fair and Charles V had dared arrest Popes previous to these terrible days.
The title ‘Our Lady the Help of Catholics’ (Auxilium Catholicorum) has been adopted for veneration since the sixteenth century. On October 7, 1571, the triumphant Christian warriors returning from Lepanto, visited the Sanctuary of Loreto and saluted the Holy Virgin with the title of Our Lady Help of Catholics. Following the Battle of Lepanto, Pope Pius V had inserted this title within the litany of Loreto. In January 1814, as the Battle of Leipzig was over, Pope Pius VII was brought back to Savona and was set free on March 18, 1814, the eve of the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy, the Patroness of Savona. The return journey to Rome, was a Papal pilgrimage along many prominent Marian Shrines. The Pontiff attributed his release, as a victory owed principally to the Blessed Virgin’s intercession. He crowned the ‘Madonna del Monte’ at Cesena (Our Lady of the Mountain), the ‘Madonna della Misericordia’ at Treja (Our Lady of Mercy), the ‘Madonna della Colonna’ (Our Lady of the Pillar) and the ‘Madonna della Tempesta’ at Tolentino (Our Lady of the Storms). The picture of the Blessed Virgin in the Cathedral of Saint Cyriacus at Ancona, the Roman Pontiff crowned under the title of ‘Regina Sanctorum Omnium.’ Throughout his pilgrimage, the crowds pressed forward to view the Pontiff who withstood Napoleon. In May 24, 1814, Pope Saint Pius VII, entered Rome and in commemoration for the sufferings His Holiness and the Church had endured, the Pontiff extended the Feast of the ‘Seven Dolours of Mary’ to the Universal Church. The following year on March 22, 1815, when Murat intended to march upon the Papal States from Naples, Pope Pius had to flee to Savona. On May 10, 1815, in Savona the Pope crowned the picture of ‘Our Lady of Mercy.’ On July 7, 1815, following the Battle of Waterloo, the Roman Pontiff returned to Rome. He gave thanks to God and Our Lady and on September 15, instituted the Feast of ‘Our Lady Help of Catholics’ for May 24. On May 5, 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte died whilst exiled on the Island of Saint Helen in the South Atlantic Ocean, probably a victim of arsenic poisoning and betrayed by his own officers.
