Author: Odon De Castro

When Pope John Paul II was ill, the suggestion must have come to him to retire. And the news informed us that the Pope asked: ” Did Christ come down the cross?” “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross and we will believe.” Those words came from the Jews insulting the Crucified Son of God. The ways of God are strange. It was by staying up on the cross that we believed!

St. Gregory the Great stated: “Had He, yielding to their insults, then come down from the Cross, He would not have proved to us the power of patience. He waited for the little time left, He bore with their insults, He submitted to their mockery, He continued patient, and evoked our admiration.” Patience!!! A Pope never retires; nor should any priest or christian. . . when they are up on a cross. They must prove their patience and their Catholicity. Pope John Paul II died on the cross. If he went down we would not have admired him.

Why did Christ refuse to come down the Cross? Because it is more important to rise again from the sepulchre. More did it matter so to rise from the sepulchre than to descend from the Cross. A far greater thing was it to overcome death by rising from the sepulchre, than to preserve life by descending from the Cross.

The Jews saw that despite their insults Christ would not descend from the Cross and when they saw Him dying, they rejoiced thinking He would be forgotten. But it was by rising from the dead that He has grown in honour and come to His glory. . . and now He is remembered.

So we must not come down from our crosses. It is our only link with the Cross of Christ. There is no comfort or glory in coming down from the cross. It is by resurrecting with Christ that we shall share the glory of Christ.

There are two kinds of scandals. One is the Christian scandal where we find doctrines or teachings that could cause bewildernment in people because they are either so contrary to the fallen human nature of man or at least too difficult to understand by the ordinary mind. There is the other kind of scandal which Christ condemned wherewith the lapse, carelessness or disobedience of one soul encourage others to do the same.

Christ worked to prevent the first kind of scandal in His disciples. The disciples were going to see both the humanity and divinity of Christ. This would be filled with contradictions. They must see the paradox in Christ and be able to unite both concepts to understand the true Christ. And so when the apostles were about to witness the passion of Christ, Jesus had to show them His Transfiguration so that the passion may not be a source of scandal as an unseemly conduct of a Divinity. The inability to integrate both the humanity and Divinity of Christ had been the major cause of heresy in the Church, as shown in the case of the notification sent by then Cardinal Ratzinger to Fr. Tissa, a SriLankan priest.

Examples of the second kind of scandal would be the behaviours of certain priests and nuns toward the orthodoxy of the Pope, which is outright schism and, therefore, scandal to others; or the attempt of some women to be ordained to the priesthood… which encourages lapse of faith in some or disobedience in others. This is the scandal Christ condemned with such words as: “It is better for them to tie a mill stone around their neck..”

The purpose of the Transfiguration was to remove the scandal of the cross, (the first kind.) St. Leo the Great in his work “The purpose of the Transfiguration” states: “And so in the presence of those chosen witnesses the lord unveils His glory, and clothes with such splendour the Body which is His in common with all other men that His face shines as the sun and His garments appear white as snow. By this tranfiguration He desired to remove from the hearts of His disciples the scandal of the Cross, and then that the lowliness of his voluntary Passion might not trouble the faith of those to whom He now reveals the perfection of His hidden glory.”

The Body of Christ was given in the passion in exchange for the glory that His followers might see coming.

The cross, therefore, is a symbol of what St. Paul declared: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared to the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us. …. For you are dead; and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you also shall appear with him in glory.”

In the cross we see Christ who died for us on the cross. But at the same time, we see the Transfiguration that we shall share with Him if we die with Him. Thus the cross does not become a sad symbol but a symbol of hope.

The Cross is a sacrament so highly valued in our Church. It is a reminder that God, Himself, died for our sins. No other religion can make the same claim of having their God die for them. As such, Christians should value the thought of the cross. It is something we can boast of and treasure in our minds. It is a sacrifice that was not to be forgotten: it was not to be, it could not be. It must remain present, though past.

When Christ was crucified, this was a necessary act to appease the Divine Justice for the sins of mankind. It was sufficient to appease God for all the sins man could ever commit. After the crucifixion, Christ resurrected from the dead and ascended to heaven. Though Christ had ascended to glory the sacrifice is renewed daily and perpetuated.

Before He ascended to heaven, he promised to send the Holy Spirit. The Spirit descended upon the Church on Pentecost day. Thus was the birth of the Church or the Mystical Body of Christ. With the Church or the Mystical Body of Christ, the Son of God remained, in some manner, on earth. And His Sacrifice on the Cross continues. For there is always somewhere in the world where the Church is crucified…where His mystical Body is crucified. And the identification between Christ and the Mystical Body is so real that when St. Paul was still Saul, a persecutor of the Church, Christ appeared to him and asked him, “Why does thou persecutest Me.” Christ identified Himself with His Mystical Body! When Saul was persecuting the Church he was, in fact, persecuting Christ. And today, the world is crucifying the Church, thus still crucifying Christ. Though thou, O Christ, canst not suffer pain and death thou dost still subject thyself to indignity and persecutions.

Everyday Christ, in the Church, is still being crucified as sacramentally commemorated in the Mass. And John Henry Newman reminds us that the Crucifixion of Christ was not an event in the past. Christ’s death is ever present. It is ongoing today in the Holy Sacrifice of the mass. The mass reminds us of the past, on the ongoing sacrifice and the hope of eternal life in heaven with Christ as our priest forever.

Forty years ago, as a young priest, I would have never preached “To seek God’s kingdom first and the rests will be given you.” After all, in my order, we always worked hard to have an income. In fact, in our school, I had to hold at one time, four positions or offices to increase the income of the order. In my preaching, I had to water down the Gospel, which Pope Benedict XVI said we should never do.

Most of the religious congregations, I have noticed, are all working so hard to have enough income for their communities. So where does “Seek first the kingdom of God” come in? Where does all “the rest will be given you” come in? The text seems to infer that if you seek God’s kingdom fully, He will provide all your needs. Maybe, most religious orders are not seeking God’s kingdom fully, that’s why they have to work for an income or solicit donations.

Unfortunately, I have never seen this promise fulfilled in actuality. So why should I preach it? I wasn’t sure it was true. I have never seen any religious community, not even the strictest contemplative, free from having to work for an income for their sustenance, at least by selling Holy Cookies and the like.

In the life of St. Benedict of Nursia, which I am sure Pope Benedict is conscious of, there was an incident where the monks had to give away all their supplies to the needy. And St. Benedict told them not to worry. Assuring them there will be much food the next day. And true enough, when the procurator opened the monastery gates the next morning, ample supply of food was there waiting.

I have read many times in the lives of saints where they did not have to work to have any means of income. They simply served God with all their hearts, etc…. and everything else was given to them. Wasn’t St. Francis of Assisi another example?

In the lives of the saints and even ordinary Christian with great faith, it is noticed that those who observed the fulness of the Gospel, i.e. having the maturity of faith that Our Holy Father described, did not have to do anything to earn an income or even to solicit donations to sustain themselves. Everything just came….whatever they needed. But when they did not observe the fullness of the Gospel, the promise of the Gospel did not apply and they ended up needing to do something to sustain themselves.

“Ora et Labora” is a Benedictine motto. But the monks do not work as a means of income. They work as a means of disciplining themselves. Their sufficiency is completely in the providence of God which could come from their manual work but most of it comes from nowhere… or more exactly from the promise of the Gospel. Now I preach the Gospel without watering it down, “Seek first the kingdom of God”. . . but I sound like an economic impossibility.

It is sad that a few Jesuits had been tagged as part of the present problems of the Church. But with so many priests and even Bishops becoming part of the problem, this is really a small matter. I have been with the Jesuits for more than 10 years. I took my Clinical Psychology with them. And always had high regards for them.

The rule in the spiritual life is that holiness or salvation must be worked out within the context of a community. That’s why Christ stayed with the Holy family for 30 hidden years; that’s why the apostles lived in community; that’s why the Catholic Church is a family; that’s why the monasteries are referred to as monastic families. In fact, every religious congregation was established with community life in mind. It is no secret that the Diocesan priesthood had always been reformed by attempts to make them live with other priests in community, like the efforts of St. Phillip Neri.

St. Ignatius of Loyola did not see the need for this because of the Company’s role at it’s founding. There was a need for an order where community or family life may be dispensed with. But in Catholicism, nobody gets dispensed. He must have a substitute. And the substitute for community life was their zeal to do battle for the Church and defend the Pope. We may say that their zeal could have been the substitute for community life.

But these days, their task of fighting for the Church and being the army of the Pope seems to have been forgotten by some. And so we see the necessary substitute for community or family life had disappeared. Some found themselves lacking an essential element in seeking holiness. This made some vulnerable to experimentations that had caused them to be “notified.”

St. Ignatius, when he was on retreat in Manresa, learned from the spiritual exercises of Abbot Cisneros, the Benedictine Abbot of Montserrat, Spain. It might help the Jesuits to harken to the call of Pope Benedict XVI to go back to St. Benedict of Nursia to rediscover the foundation of their spirituality.

Pope Benedict XVI used these words to describe the re-growth of the Church. He described the Church as in need of prunning so that new young branches may grow. He, also, mentioned, that he got this motto from St. Benedict. Though I am a Benedictine monk, I don’t remember reading this motto until I opened a brochure of the famed Abbey of Montecassino in Italy. And there VOILA!! The emblem of the monastery: a picture of an oak tree broken almost up to the root and with a young sapling growing from within, with the words “Succisa Virescit.” This was one of the first monasteries St. Benedict established after he abandoned the monastery of Vicovaro where the monks tried to poison him for being too orthodox. Many of Pope Benedict XVI’s critics, if words can poison, would have done the same today. How relevant!

The motto of the Benedictine monastery of Montecassino is “Succisa Virescit.” And the emblem consists of an oak tree, devastated by a strong storm, practically uprooted, and a small sapling from within growing upwards. This very well exemplifies Pope Benedict’s mind on how to resurrect the Church. Like Monte Cassino that had been built by saints, like Saturnius, a disciple of St. Boniface, evangelizer of and founder of German monasticism, Theobald, Richerius and Frederick of Lorraine who later became Pope Stephen IX, the Church had been built by saints. And there was Desiderius, right hand friend of the Pope, who helped in the reform of the Church by Pope Gregory VII. He, also, became Pope, Victor III. Pope Benedict XVI wants to let a small sapling grow from within, a small Church with strong and mature faith, to grow up from within the old decrepid and dead trunk of the present Church.

Montecassino, like the oak tree and much like the Church today, had been devastated by the Saracens in 883, by an earthquake in 1349 and lastly by the bombardment in 1944 where the monks and countless civilians taking shelter there were killed.

Montecassino, by many historical events, may truly be a symbol of the Catholic Church, like the centuries-old oak tree, which although broken by the storm, remains green and alive again, growing from within; stronger than ever: thus “succisa virescit.”

Christianity looks at the sacrament of the present moment. A Christian must be conscious of the present moment because that is when God expresses His will… not in the past nor in the futre, generally speaking. When a culture or a civilization decays, its people engages in fantasies, Gilbert K. Chesterton noticed. And our age, with its Star Wars, Matrix and witch-craft falls under the realm of fantasy. Chesterton describes pornography as the height of fantasy and indicative of the decadence of an era… because pornography is purely in the realm of fantasy.

Any topic that falls under the category of fantasy is contrary to the very spirit of Christianity or Catholicism. Of course, there is a difference between fantasy and fairy tale. But it seems that fairy tales only existed some time ago. Modern writers find it difficult to write fairy tales because one has to be a child again to do so. We don’t see new fairy tales anymore. What we see is fantasy which is both harmful and contrary to the spirit of Catholicism that emphasizes the “sacrament of the present moment. “

This sacrament forces one to be realistic because he must see the totality of the present moment. With such an attitude he cannot deny but must face reality. He cannot day dream. When Pope Benedict mentioned the dictatorship of relativism as one of the great evils of our times, he took this from the writing of St. Paul, who mentioned, in fact, the evil signs of the coming times. Paul mentioned the refusal to accpet sound doctrine, following one’s desire (which is the dictatorship of relativism) and insatiable desire for what is new and unknown. These three defects go hand in hand. And our age of Fantasy would fall under the third.

Just as the sacrament of the present moment trains a mind to be realistic always, entertainning fantasy is a sign of neurosis.

Original sin is the state wherewith all those born of Adam And Eve are bereft of sanctifying grace. In popular language, we may say that all those born of Adam and Eve, given the choice between good and evil would most probably choose evil. Or putting it in another way more descriptive of what Adam and Eve did, given a choice between doing their own will and God’s will, they would choose their will.

This is the basis of the dictatorship of relativism the Holy Father mentioned. It was the sin of Adam and Eve and it seems to be the state of the world today… everybody is doing what they want in complete disregard of the will of God. This is a consequence of the lost of a sense of God. If God does not exist why should we do His will?

This had been the burden of mankind. All the evils in the world is because man had been acting as if there is no God. And the world is doing exactly the same thing. The United Nations is doing it, the European Union is doing it.

St. Augustine noticed this when one day he stole some figs which he eventually threw away because he wasn’t crazy about figs anyway. So he asked himself, why did I do that. And he discovered the existence of evil within man, the expression of original sin. Young Ratzinger could only see the same truth when he beheld the cruelty of the German Nazis around him. This and only this explains why the Russians, the British, the Cambodians, and the Africans are so cruel to their own kind. St. Paul complained about this when he noticed the good things he wanted to do he found he could not do; and the evil he was trying to avoid is what he ended up doing.

This original sin, the trademark of man’s fallen nature, is like a raging current towards destruction. To succumb to this tendency is easy. It is like a leaf bending to the direction of the wind or a piece of drift wood floating on a raging current. Going against this tendency is the life of the cross. The cross is the only anti-dote against the dictatorship of relativism; in fact it is the only cure for all the evils in the world.

The cross is standard image in a church, though some had been substituting the dying Christ with the resurrected Christ on the cross. It is common figure in cemeteries and, of course, it is carried during world youth days.

We must realize the important symbolism of the cross. God became man to save mankind. And he could have done it anyway other than by being crucified on the cross. But if He used another manner of redeeming mankind, He would not have been able to demonstrate His love and perfect humility. Christ described love as a man laying down his life for a friend. The laying down of one’s life takes center stage.

The life of Christ, from birth to death, is a life of suffering, or a life of carrying the cross till its summit by death on the cross. The lesson is clear. To learn how to love, one must learn how to undergo suffering as Christ underwent it. Love of God and neighbor cannot be learned in any otherway, except by taking up His cross and following Him. How we wish there were another way. But there is none. The very first command of Christ, “to deny oneself” is the beginning of the way of the cross. The crucifixion or the life of martyrdom is the apex.

The early Christians were convinced of this, that martyrdom was every Christian’s dream. It was the only way that one fulfills the entire Gospel. And when martyrdom went out of style, the monastic life, commonly referred to as white martyrdom, became the trend.

Most Christians, today, cannot see martyrdom, or death on the cross as the goal of Christianity. Of course, white martyrdom is described by St. Paul as dying to the world. This means dying to oneself or dying to one’s desire. The monks describe it as becoming as dead men, with no will of one’s own but desirous only of doing God’s will.

It is good to remind the youth what the cross means. It should inspire their idealism to the purity of Christ’s teachings. It might even fill up monasteries.

Christ took pity on the people because they looked like sheeps without a shepherd. The world can be considered like a flock of animals. Then, Christ came with the message of the Gospel. This Gospel was meant to divide the flock into sheeps and goats. Then Christ sent his apostles to gather the sheep and shepherd them to eternal life. Note that the apostles were meant, first, to preach the Gospel so as to distinguish the sheep from the goats, and then to become laborers to harvest the sheep.

Sometimes, we feel that God has not sent enough laborers and we have to pray for such laborers. This puzzles me in that I cannot imagine a God so negligent as not to sent laborers when there is a need for it. But then, there might not be a need for it because there is nothing to harvest. The state of Europe, for instance, is so deplorable that there is nothing to harvest there. So why will God send laborers?

Knowledge of the Catholic faith is what transforms a soul into a sheep. And a sheep knows its master’s voice and the master, in turn, knows his sheep.

It is amazing to see that when Pope John Paul II passed away, a few spent vigils in the Vatican in sorrow. They were like sheep without a shepherd. The rest of the world, though probably sad, really didn’t care. And then, when Cardinal Ratzinger was chosen, the same crowd rejoiced. They were glad they had a shepherd. As usual the rest of the world didn’t care. Did these sheep recognize their master’s voice and were saddened by its silence? Are these the same ones who rejoiced when they once again heard their master’s voice? The Church, the sheep looks tiny, indeed.