Angelo Scola - eng vers » Jesus Christ

Human pain and Redeemer’s work: an abstract taken from the traditional Redeemer Address

ufficiostampa — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:48:48 +0000

From the 2009 Redeemer Address by Patriarch Card. A. Scola

1. Personally, I was provoked to choose pain and suffering as the topic for the Redeemer Address during the Pastoral Visitation, as I met in their homes people who were seriously sick or very ill. This issue has become more urgent to me, I would say unpostponable, because of the faces, the looks and the few but radical words that were addressed to me by them and by their loved ones. In the history of the human family, it seems that the aggression of pain and suffering never stops. Like all elementary realities that are part of universal human experience (knowledge, love and so on), also pain and suffering are difficult to explain. Here, we just want to reflect a little on the immense travail of pain and suffering that mankind as a whole — but always in the flesh of individuals — has to bear. If –- as St. Augustine said – every man is, as such, a great question, at the heart of the man-question lies the question on pain and suffering.

2. “The shelves of the human pharmacy:” with this colorful expression Balthasar describes the main human attempts to face the agonized question of pain and suffering. In his analysis he examines first of all two categories that are apparently opposed, but that in reality share the same attitude of resignation: “defeatism” and “rebellion.” “Defeatism” is objectively the foundation of the temptation to commit suicide, either carried out directly or “assisted.” This is a true “surrender in front of too much suffering, thinking that in this way one can free oneself from it” (Balthasar). The second position, “rebellion,” is self-contradictory: even if it can blame, in turn, God, mankind or radical evil, in reality it boils down to rebellion for the sake of rebellion, a challenge against suffering which is extreme as it is powerless, in the delusion of keeping it quiet. Nowadays, however, there is an ever more prevalent attitude which wants to mount a frontal attack on pain and suffering in the attempt to eliminate them. It is born out of scientific and technological power which, especially in the field of medicine, seems to make man the master of his own health and life, in the conviction that pain and suffering will be defeated, even in a not too distant future. From this perspective, tragedies like those in L’Aquila or Viareggio become a stumbling stone (scandal), because they reveal starkly that we remain powerless in front of the violence of some evils. In fact, the current obsession with health, which pursues only indefinite physical well-being, clashes with the elementary human experience of being “one in soul and body” (Gaudium et Spes 14). It then becomes abstract, if not unrealistic, to talk about health (and disease)if one does not identify a center to the I, a point of connection between the psyco-physical and spiritual dimensions. Health and disease always concern all of the I.

3. In the development of history pain and suffering keep rising again from their ashes in new forms, like a tragic phoenix. So much so that man is tempted to call God to task for the existence of pain in the world. Christian tradition, but also western thought, record repeated attempts to “justify” God in this regard. In order not to attribute evil to God himself, or in order not to regard it as an original principle independent of God, the traditional doctrine has stated that God allows evil for the sake of good. It does so in order to put man to the test, to purify him or even to make the beauty of good more evident and to express the whole richness of the cosmos. But, is the thesis that God allows evil enough for a man who experiences radical evil (Kant), unjustifiable evil (Nabert), innocent evil (Fr. Gnocchi)? Jesus Christ did not elaborate any theory to explain the existence of pain and suffering in the world. He learned “obedience from what he suffered, and made perfect” (Heb 5:8-9) he carried out a work of redemption by whose power every suffering receives light. In the opus Dei of Jesus Christ, the Son made man for us by dying nailed all evil, taking it directly upon himself. Not only did he experience terrible physical suffering, but he also went through an unrepeatable experience of moral pain: abandonment by the Father. Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul uses extremely strong words: “He who had not known sin, God treated him as sin for our sake” ( 2Cor 5:21). What does this mean? It can only mean that Jesus experienced the most radical pain and suffering: the loss of Love. Sin indeed separates, destroys every relationship. We glimpse the abyss of the mysterious dialogue between the agonized question by the Son abandoned on the cross and the Father’s answer, made of silence. Now, “in the father’s silence on front of the question by the son is found the proper place of suffering.” Of every human suffering. Jesus lived this experience freely. His mission was not only the choice of God’s solidarity with suffering humanity, but also a choice made in our place. Not only with us, but for us (vicarious substitution). The suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus have the power to expiate all the sins of the world. We face the unfathomable mystery of the human sorrow of the Son of God, sorrow embraced by the human freedom of the divine Person of the Word. A few elements from experience help us understand it: for man it is impossible to accomplish worthy enterprises of any kind without a high dose of suffering; in every man’s life there is no genuine fecundity without pain; above all, a man who has committed injustice is restored to his dignity though expiation leading him back into the truth. The redeemer, by dying on the cross in our place, reveals all the fecundity of sorrow.

4. The work accomplished by the love of Christ is not confined to his individual person. It has the power to touch every human suffering in order to turn it into a work of love and hope. Human suffering, embraced by the love of the crucified one, also becomes fruitful. For those who adhere to Christ, explicitly or implicitly, the possibility of full (eternal) life is already realized. Here, in history, not only in the next life. Suffering is able to change the fortunes of personal and social history (see the little shepherds of Fatima) because it shares in the Redemption of Jesus. “Why have you abandoned me?”: a son’s question that receives as an answer the father’s silence. Not a question without answer, because also silence is an answer. Is this not the dominant experience that all of us have when we face somebody else’s suffering? To be quiet, not to know what to say. Well, such silence, in a seemingly paradoxical fashion, (as always in Christianity) brings us closer to God instead pushing us farther away.

The Redeemer did not try to erase pain through a more brilliant theory, but accomplished a work of total self-identification with suffering, shedding light on its deep meaning: collaboration to His redemption of the world. Even though speaking of expiation for the sins of the world may bother our post-modern sensitivity, we cannot deny this reality. Thus, the suffering of Christ is inclusive, that is it opens the way to other sufferings, which can expiate vicariously in union with his suffering. This awareness does not give up on the tireless effort to fight human suffering, but gives rise to a creativity which is not utopian.

5. Now I would like to let the logic of incarnation, which is proper to the Christian faith, lead me to consider our behavior in front of certain situations of extreme suffering, patients in a vegetative state and those terminally ill. They raise very delicate questions which, incidentally are being debated in parliament in these very days. Viewed in the context of the previous reflections, the experience of people tested by sickness and disability, together with the unavoidable burden of pain and suffering, sheds light also on medicine’s therapeutic action. The latter is authentic only if the intervention to alleviate suffering is offered within an integral image of the human being. It seems impossible to refute the conclusion reached by many experts that what is commonly called “vegetative state” is not a disease, but rather the most serious form of disability. Vegetative state does not require extraordinary devices to support the vital functions, but only action on the patient’s behalf to satisfy the needs he/she cannot fulfill independently any longer: hygiene, movement, nutrition (that is, food and water).

This is perhaps the most mysterious situation, very hard to diagnose, and it raises deep questions about the dignity of the human person and the mystery of our being. Care of somebody in this state means, then, simply taking care, with minimal technological content but a very intense human and nursing engagement. Even if aware of the very low likelihood of recovery, one can keep accompanying the patient, without falling into the opposite extremes of obstinacy or abandonment. According to the experts the case of so-called “terminal patients” is very different. It is precisely in this context that questions arise regarding putative therapeutic excesses and forms of euthanasia. When I was visiting some of these sick people, a question came to me: is it not us, the healthy ones, who ask for a “dignified death,” whereas those who are sick ask for a dignified life even with disease, a dignified life to the last instant, made of what characterizes man: the ability to love and to be loved? A precious and concrete example of what it means to take care of these sick people is given us by palliative treatments. The modern definition of such treatments, as given by the European Association for Palliative Care, says: “Palliative treatments respect life and regard dying as a natural process. Their goal is not to accelerate or postpone death, but rather to preserve the best possible quality of life till the end.” This definition shows great realism. It must be especially kept in mind by the care-givers, since quite a few studies have shown that requests for euthanasia or assisted suicide by terminal patients depend to a significant extent on the attitude that health workers and relatives have towards life, disease and especially the patient.

6. Among the factors that truly affect a person’s choices — both by forbidding practices and granting rights, and by helping shape a mentality –one must include a country’s laws. This why the legislator must be very careful to produce “objectively just laws.” Regarding the Dichiarazione anticipata di trattamento (DAT, a kind of living will), I feel the responsibility to invite the legislator to guarantee the essential principles that have been recalled several times by the Italian Bishops’ Conference. At the same time, the law promoting palliative treatments must be implemented as soon as possible and given all the necessary funding so that these treatments may be practiced everywhere in our country. Adequate funds must also be spent on conventional pain therapy.

7. The mystery of pain and suffering stands inexorable in front of each one of us, but its value is already kept safe in the burning core of trinitarian love. Thus, we have been given a light-filled road to face them. Under the condition that the freedom of each one of us must raise them up daily into the horizon of true love of God, of others and of oneself.

Ratzinger Realism: the lesson of the eight days of Benedict XVI in the Holy Land. An article by the Patriarch of Venice

marialauraconte — Sun, 17 May 2009 08:25:52 +0000

A lesson in realisim. Such were the eight days of Benedict XVI in the Holy Land. With intrepid courage he placed his hand on the burning contradictions of that grieving land, with the inflexible energy of one who does not give up because he knows that he can build with new bricks. He risked in the first person without worldly calculations of success or failure. His journey was a priori ‘politically incorrect’.
Whence this realism? Benedict XVI placed himself in a long line of Christian pilgrims to the holy places. He walked in the footsteps of the Son of God made flesh, who died and rose again. He trod the palpitating footprints of the suffering of the Christians who live there.
In the name of the whole of the Catholic Church he embraced the Christian communities of that strip of the Middle East, “‘lit candles’ that light up the holy places”. But this embrace – specifically because carried out in the name of he who is the Way to the Truth and Life – involved, albeit necessarily at a different level, those Jewish and Muslim brethren who live in that land, given by the father to everyone – Abraham. It is the universal claim of Christ that leads the Christian faith to comparison with every religion, with every vision of the real.
Here in synthesis is how I read the journey of Pope Benedict XVI to the Holy Land: a pilgrim out of humble, intelligent courage, he wanted to be the Pietrine protagonist of the whole of the Church. At Yad Vashem he immediately involved in his pain the “Catholic Church, committed to the teachings of Jesus and intent on imitating his love for all people”, which “feels deep compassion for the victims remembered here”. The force of his silence in that abyss of pain and his all-consuming invocation that no name of a victim of that abominable Nazi extermination should be lost did not seek to be one made by Joseph Ratzinger alone but much more powerfully one of all Christians called, beyond their limits, to fraternal solidarity with the chosen people. I have never forgotten the words which Cardinal Henri de Lubac said to me in faraway 1985: if Christianity has to acculturate, given that at our roots there is the Jewish people, then one must acculturate in the history, which is still underway, of this people.
The singular and privileged bond that unites Christianity to Judaism found a significant expression in the comment that the Pope offered on a passage from the Prophet Isaiah. For obvious reasons, the subject of security is especially felt in Israel and is continually evoked in internal debate. This is, therefore, a quintessentially political subject, perhaps the subject of this season in the Middle East, and the Holy Father chose not to withdraw from the analysis. However he did so approaching it from a very special perspective: that of Holy Scripture. In the language of the Jewish Bible, security and trust – he observed to President Peres – are strictly connected. For Scripture there is no security without trust. Could one imagine a more topical lesson? ‘His mercies are not spent’: from perhaps the most tragic book of the Bible, Jeremiah, Benedict XVI, drew his invitation to hope.
In Jordan a decisive commitment in favour of dialogue appeared evident in the words that Prince Ghazi addressed to the Pope at the al-Hussein Ibn Talal mosque. At the heart of the speech of the Prince, something that is totally surprising for we Westerners, was a cardinal value of the Middle East: that hospitality that evokes the essentially relational nature of human society.
On the raised mound around the mosques in Jerusalem, Benedict XVI took up the subject of dialogue and referred to the faith in the One Creator and to the figure of Abraham: “The Dome of the Rock draws our hearts and minds to reflect upon the mystery of creation and the faith of Abraham. Here the paths of the world’s three great monotheistic religions meet, reminding us what they share in common. Each believes in One God, creator and ruler of all. Each recognizes Abraham as a forefather, a man of faith upon whom God bestowed a special blessing”.
The Pope addressed the burning question of inter-religious dialogue through two cornerstones. Turning to the relationship between reason and religion, Benedict XVI strongly stressed the need for each to be purified by the other. Religion must allow itself to be questioned by religion so as not to fall into superstition or to be used by political power, but reason, too, must know how to open itself up to the dimension of the Absolute. A reason blind to the divine: this is the great risk that in today’s world believers are called to avert with their shared witness. Secondly, Benedict emphasised that “the particular contribution of religions to the quest for peace lies primarily in the wholehearted, united search for God. Ours is the task of proclaiming and witnessing that the Almighty is present and knowable even when he seems hidden from our sight”.
Two phrases in this speech struck me in particular because of their ability to adhere to the provocations of reality: the search for God as a condition for peace and the urgent need for personal and community witness. It is within this framework that the peremptory statement of the Holy Father at the Aida refugee camp should be placed: “Your legitimate aspirations for permanent homes, for an independent Palestinian State, remain unfulfilled…In a world where more and more borders are being opened up – to trade, to travel, to movement of peoples, to cultural exchanges – it is tragic to see walls still being erected”.
But to end what seems to have left the most impression during the whole of the itinerary of the Pope in a land which is an open nerve of mankind was his care, charged with hope, for the inhabitants of the Holy Land. “Your homeland”, and these are the words of Benedict XVI spoken during the Holy Mass at Bethlehem, “needs not only new economic and community structures, but most importantly, we might say, a new “spiritual” infrastructure, capable of galvanizing the energies of all men and women of good will in the service of education, development and the promotion of the common good. You have the human resources to build the culture of peace and mutual respect which will guarantee a better future for your children. This noble enterprise awaits you. Do not be afraid!”
The sensitive and intense face of the Pope, keeling in front of the cleft in which was driven Jesus’ cross, more than closing this pilgrimage opened up for all men of good will an effective pathway to untie the Middle Eastern knot. The simple will certainly know how to find it. Will the powerful of this world want to learn from the meek, constructive energy of Benedict XVI?

“God defines Devil from every side through the suffering love of the Innocent”. The Passion Sunday’s homily

ufficiostampa — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 17:34:26 +0000

“Each one of us, even the absent-minded, here summoned by the Eucharistic Sacrament of love, are involved in the heart of the action, becoming aware that we have an active part in this story which did not happen only long ago but it continues to happen in every instant. We are not spectators. Let us then identify ourselves, as much as possible, in an alert consciousness with Christ who undergoes the titanic clash between good and bad: ” I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard. I did not cover my face against insult and spittle” (First Reading). The Servant of Yahweh is the figure of Jesus…

Reading during the Procession Lk 19: 28-40
The Mass. Scripture Readings: Is 50:4-7; Psalm 22(21): 8-9.17-18.19-20. 23-24;
Phil 2: 6-11; Lk 22: 14-23,56

1. The Greatest Tragedy of history
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (Gospel according to St. Luke, before the procession). Jesus enters triumphantly in Jerusalem, acclaimed as the Messiah by the crowd. However, Jesus refuses to silence his disciples as some of the furious Pharisees ask him to do: “If these keep silence the stones will cry out”. He only required a donkey stating that he needed it, as a King, and as a King he has ridden over the clocks on the road.
Yet, he knows exactly what is expecting him. Having just gone through the door of the city, a short distance away from the clocks placed on his way, from the merry waving of the palm branches, from the approved acclamations, the power of evil lies in ambush. The flight and the betrayal of his friends, solitude and anguish, the cry Crucify Him!, the mockery of the leaders of the people, his dreadful dead were expecting him…
The violent and furious opposition of evil seems to have the best over the power of good. The Gospel passage which during this celebration has been given in recitative, instead of being proclaimed, is the greatest tragedy of history; every tragedy is only the echo repeated and repeated infinitively.
Each one of us, even the absent-minded, here summoned by the Eucharistic Sacrament of love, are involved in the heart of the action, becoming aware that we have an active part in this story which did not happen only long ago but it continues to happen in every instant. We are not spectators.

2. “Christ was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross”
Let us then identify ourselves, as much as possible, in an alert consciousness with Christ who undergoes the titanic clash between good and bad: ” I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard. I did not cover my face against insult and spittle” (First Reading). The Servant of Yahweh is the figure of Jesus. In the third Canticle of the Servant according to Isaiah the lament is subdued, not as in Jeremiah and in other figures of the Old Testament; therefore a positive consent to suffering is put in evidence. Not the search of suffering, which would be inhuman, but the surrendering oneself when faced with suffering. This is a revolution not only in Israel, but in all the ancient world. On which bases can this surrendering happen? Because the Servant is sure that God is on his side: “The Lord comes to my help, so that I am not untouched by the insults. So, too, I set my face like flint; I know I shall not be shamed”(Second Reading).
And the Second Reading induces us into the heart of the appalling struggle between good and bad. Though being the Son of God, “Christ did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and become as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross”(Second Reading). “I am among you as one who serves” (Gospel).
Today’s liturgy lead us to understand the authentic focus of the whole history. In this radical lowering of himself, in this becoming obedient and accepting death on a cross the greatest and total love is accomplish, as the Pope has reminded us in his encyclical letter: “His death on the Cross is the culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form” (Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, 12).

God does not answer to evil by opposing himself to evil front to front through the use of power, but defining it from every side through the suffering love of the Innocent par excellence. This is why in the course of history evil often seems to be winning, but at the end God destroys it. Jesus dissolves evil through his victorious redemption (John Paul II, Memory and Identity).

3. Drawn in his sacrificial act

Let us go further onto another step with Jesus. “I have longed to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Gospel). With the Last Supper Jesus initiates consciously and freely (every act of love is not human if it is not conscious and free) towards his Passion. At the ecclesial meeting of Verona last October the Holy Father has reminded us: “in the Last Supper he has anticipated and accepted death on the cross for our sake and therefore transforming death in his self-giving, the gift which gives us life, frees and saves….Giving himself to his disciples in the bread and the wine, his body and his blood, Jesus anticipates his death and resurrection”. During this celebration as well as in every Eucharist, we are drawn in the sacrificial act of Jesus. The victory of the Risen over evil becomes a commitment to each one of us. Our personal and communitarian struggle against evil becomes possible day after day through the active participation of the Self Total Gift accomplished by Jesus. Thinking over the Passion of Jesus with this conviction we will manage to deal with the evil experience as a trial, never as a defeat.

4. The itinerary of trial

“My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” (Responsorial Psalm); in the rending cry of the Psalmist every human suffering is acknowledged. The impotence of freeing ourselves from evil – starting with the dreadful experience of physical illness over which not even science can do anything, to the moral and spiritual which threat to destroy us – produces the experience of solitude and isolation. And when a man feels abandoned he is tempted by despair, “to plug off” that is to put an end to life. The Son of God who made himself obedient until death on the cross, drunk to the end the chalice of this fearful anguish to teach us the positive side: the hopeful abandonment in the arms of the Father.
Jesus, the Crucified Innocent has experienced personally the human itinerary of trial: from the feeling of being abandoned – first of all the terrible experience of the “Silence of God” – to the confident abandoning himself into the arms of the Father: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Gospel). This is the itinerary of Christian death – the most con-venient to man – that the Church continually proposes to every man. The Church does not propose it only through words, but through an effective witness of love which supports and encourages. This is why the Holy Father and the Pastors are tireless in recalling to everyone, but especially to the governments, the need to respect life, every life from its conception to its natural end.

5. The Dawn of Resurrection
Today, our meditation of the “Passio” would not be complete if we do not foresee the hope that pervades the whole account. The words of Jesus on the Cross: “Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing….” “Indeed, I promise you, today you will be with me in paradise…”"Father into your hands I commit my spirit” (Gospel) illuminate something about the grace he procured by his suffering. Neither death nor evil are the last words; solely resurrection and mercy are the last words. The dawn of resurrection which can already be seen in the new humanity of those who recognize Him and follow Him. “Me, but no longer me”: this is the formula of Christian existence based on Baptism, the formula of resurrection within time, the formula of the Christian “novelty” called to transform the world” (Benedict XVI, during the ecclesial meeting of Verona).

“The Lord has given me a disciple’s tongue (a better translation than ‘beginners). So that I may know how to reply to the wearied” (First Reading). The Church Mother and Teacher proclaims unceasingly and openly this fascinating vocation. Therefore, together with the affirming of the value of life, the Church upholds vigorously the sound and fecund union between a man and a woman in a family based on the sacred bond of matrimony. Every direct or indirect attempt to weaken this precious ecclesial and social cell is a wound inflicted to the whole community.

6. At the foot of the Cross, with Mary

The journey done by Saint Luke proposes again at the end, with another image, the same tragedy of the beginning: the struggle between good and bad. The two criminals hanging on the right and on the left side of Jesus represent the two alternatives given to the fallen humanity: refusing Christ (evil) or abandoning ourselves to Christ (good). This tragedy is still acted today. Let us ask Mary, the mother who has followed Him courageously until the Calvary, under the cross, to sustain us in our abandoning ourselves to Him. Let us beseech her with the incomparable words of the “Stabat Mater” with which the Church invites us to pray in these days: “I yearn to be with you under the Cross, to enjoy your companionship” Amen!