N.B. This is the second part of the series of talks I am posting on installment basis.
History is a very great teacher. Countless times, we have seen how the famous words of Julius Caesar “delenda est Carthago,” was applied with reference to the Church. Despots and princes alike, who hated the Church to the bone, and who have resolved to raze it to the ground, so far, have not managed to do so. Not even bad Popes, sinful Bishops, and unworthy priests as we all are, at least some of the time, over the centuries, have succeeded to destroy the Church. Nay more, when troubled times came her way, when major difficulties and challenges rose to prominence, setting the Church on the brink, as it were, God raised up women and men who rose towering above the challenge, becoming bigger than the problem, bigger than the world, bigger than life itself, and becoming not only beacon, but also bastion of hope, holiness, and solid steadfastness.
At certain times, more than others, wounds may have festered. Trials may have raged on and on, and rocked Peter’s boat to the moorings that people may have wished and prayed those same problems would simply go away. But as trials grew, grace grew all the more. As sin took hold, grace took stronger hold. As human weakness held sway, divine strength became even stronger.
The best example we have is the serious breach in the unity of the Church that took place on account of the Protestant Reformation. It was, to all accounts, an unhappy chapter in the history, not only of the Church, but also of humankind. The Church was tested to the very core – her unity, apostolicity, catholicity, and holiness lay in seeming shambles.
But we all know the rest of the story. That story is still unfolding, still taking place. From the ashes of the reformation came the new springtime of the counter reformation. If my history serves me right, the centerpiece of this reform was the priesthood – the renewed clergy – a reform that caused the institution of the seminary as the venue and font of a vision of a renewed Church.
In this second reflection, I would like to focus on ourselves as the protagonists, recipients, and architects of this ongoing vision. As priests and religious, we are at the forefront of all attempts and efforts at advancing this vision.
Let us look at ourselves. Given the anemic responses of the young people we propose to, given the many sad realities we encounter even right within our own backyards, right within our own religious houses – the lack of unity, the state of broken camaraderie and our propensity to be looking at one another’s faults and failings – and talking about them in backroom discussions, our faith in the holiness of the Church gets jaded somewhat. Given the petty politics that characterize not only our country, but also our Church, our congregation, not excluding the centuries-old mutual distrust and distance between secular and religious clergy, we are not any different from what Rolheiser (2001) suggests as people who look for God, with lighted but shattered lanterns. If it is true, as Rolheiser claims, that “we live lives of quiet agnosticism,” and that “our faith often feels like doubt,” (p. 10) we who are at the vanguard of promoting what the Church stands for, including holiness, might be on shaky ground ourselves.
But I have it on the authority of Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities) that the worst of times may, concurrently also be the best of times. Let me illustrate.
In the aftermath of the many and repeated alleged and substantiated scandals that hogged the headlines from what Fr. Richard John Neuhaus called the “Long Lent of 2002” (2002) that shook the faith of people all over the world, Dickens’ paradoxical statement came out true. Scores of scathing books filled the bookshelves, fueling the hatred for the Church, of people who only needed just a little more prodding to unleash their hatred. But alongside them were scores of brave, sincere, and honest reflections on the sad and undeniable event from both clergy and lay who rose to the occasion by helping countless people go on searching for God despite their shattered lanterns. A cursory glance at the Amazon website would be enough to convince anyone that the great news of redemption precisely is called great because the message is far greater than the reality of a fallen and sinful world – never mind if, here the sinners are precisely those who should be delivering the good news. One thinks especially of individuals, quiet and discrete professionals who should know more than anybody else the full extent of those dark days when all that people could hold on to were shattered lanterns.
Among the names that stand out is Stephen Rosetti, a priest psychiatrist who, in the words of Louis Cameli, “shifts the focus of considering today’s priesthood from problems to possibilities” referring to the former’s book “The Joy of Priesthood.” (2005) But rising higher than anyone was the solid and steadfast stalwart of priestly fidelity and holiness transcending immense challenges that we all saw in the person of Pope Wojtyla, John Paul II of happy memory. Who of us can ever forget that final wave of a blessing that was the only thing he could manage in one of his final days on earth, despite the pain brought about by his illness? Who of us can really honestly deny to ourselves and to others the great love he had for the Church and the world, and the great solicitude he showed for priests and religious? Judging by what he wrote on us priests, by what he taught about us religious, especially three monumental documents “Pastores Dabo Vobis,” “Vita Consecrata,” and “Starting Afresh from Christ,” we cannot but see just how valuable we are to him, to the Church, and ultimately, to God.
He was a man who had a ring-side view and personal knowledge of the life and struggles of priests all over the world. He, more than any other, knew by dint of personal experience, how pain and suffering of whatever kind, can either make or break anyone, depending on the eyeglasses that one wears to look at them, depending on the prism that filters the difficult reality.
All I intend to do in this second reflection is to suggest and offer a filter that we all know about – but which we all too easily forget when the going gets rough. Those of us who are, or have been, in leadership know that apart from neurotic (or self-inflicted) pain, leaders and superiors do have more than their fair share at times of what is known as existential pain. Although I am loathe personally to refer to superiors as being up there on the cross like Christ, there is some ring of truth to it. Chances are, they would tend to suffer a little more on occasion, even as they can make their subjects also suffer needlessly on account of their actuations and unwise decisions.
After 24 years as a priest, I can personally assure you, I have seen suffering from both sides of the fence, and for one who is a pastoral counselor himself, I know that a great deal of them cannot be attributable to neurotic pain. I have reached rock bottom in many ways. At the height of my pain, which I report partly in an article I wrote in Lantayan (2004) journal last year, I was not only walking around with a shattered lantern. Everything I saw was shattered and appeared like ugly protruding shards: broken dreams, broken trusts, broken relationships, broken friendships, etc.
We all have our own personal stories of brokenness. But the worst form of such brokenness, we must admit, is that which we inflict on Christ and His Body, the Church by our sinfulness. To be honest to ourselves, weren’t we treading on uncertain ground every time news of other fellow priests whose dirty linens were suddenly exposed by the prying and ever-present media? Weren’t we just a tad more curious about the juicy details and, under the guise of disgust and subtle disdain for the poor priest or fellow religious, we were really inwardly trembling that “there but for the grace of God, go I?” We could possibly be even as guilty as hell of a similar infraction or impropriety, or – in our self-mitigating language – some of us would now refer to as inappropriate behavior?
Yes … If we are to be honest to ourselves, we would just as readily admit to the pain we cause God and His Church, as to the pain others inflict on us.
But the pain that we admit to as caused by us to others, otherwise known as sin, is the same pain that is redeemed. It is the weakness that makes Christ’s strength comes out supreme. It is the brokenness that is mended by grace, that attracts the compassion of the Savior, that merited his suffering and death on the cross.
That brokenness admitted to, that pain accepted as inflicted by ourselves, that admission and confession of our weakness is what conversion is all about. It is that which we would like to set out on. It begins now. The journey is as difficult as can be. I always love to describe the process of salvation in terms of what early Christians love to think of themselves – as people on a journey, as wayfarers. They are pilgrims - people out traversing per agrum – through the rough, uncharted terrains of life on earth. But the end goal is the holy, the sublime, the divine – the sacrum!
Per agrum ad sacrum! This is what we as priests and religious need to rediscover and reappropriate right now. We need to get back to basics. We need to get right back to certain unpopular concepts … like asceticism, conversion, self-denial, and good, old, sequela Christi.
Our journey is a learning game. We can only grow in proportion to our gain in insight. And this learning takes us beyond. It is learning that transcends, that rises above so many earthly realities, not excluding pain. But above all, it transcends sinfulness – our own first of all, and that of others. Either or, it means forgiveness from God and for others.
As a therapist, one of the more common causes as far as I can tell of so much intrapersonal issues is the inability to forgive. No, I am not talking of the spats we have with each other and the way we armor ourselves in our almost daily experiences of disagreements. I am referring to a deep inability to come to terms with our past, our childhood experiences. Most of the times, the more difficult phase of the process is not really to be forgiving to an authority figure in the past. The more difficult phase is to even accept that a mother or father whom one has idealized so much in the past is the very person who needs to be forgiven, who needs to be released from the bonds of unacknowledged anger and resentment.
All it takes for the process to begin is to accept that one has been wounded in some way. All it takes is for one to name and claim the hurt, so that one could go on towards taming it, lest it lives on and on in the form of blame.
We all could learn a lesson from toddlers and small children. What you see is what you get. Children have not yet learned to be phonies and fakes. When they are sad, all of them is sad. When they are happy, all of them, too, is happy. No pretenses … no put-ons … no facades. But alas, as we grew older, we learned the vices of adults … adults who showed a poker face even when they are seething inside. We adults are experts at repressing, at pushing things down. We put on a role. And in the process, we lose soul. We lose integrity. We lose that hidden wholeness which was ours by birthright. As Palmer puts it:
We deal with the threat by developing a child’s version of the divided life, commuting daily between the public world of role and the hidden world of soul ... As we become more obsessed with succeeding or at least surviving in that world, we lose touch with our souls and disappear into our roles. The child with a harmless after-school secret becomes the masked and armored adult – at considerable cost to self, to others, and to the world at large. (p.15)
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