Grace and freedom, growth into Christ

PERPETUALS COURSE, ODXEL, 2004

D’Mello Kimrold

Fernandes Simao

Hadke Sudhir

Sankul Cedrick

Teixeira Banzelao

Growth into Christ 

Spontaneity and autonomy. The drifter and the chooser. Life has brought you up to this point. Now is the moment to make the definitive choice. Existenz: deciding what to make of oneself. High choice, deliberate decision about one’s future. Without total clarity, without absolute guarantees, except faith in the one who has called, and who is faithful. 

Clear convictions. The virtue of faith. Intellectual conversion, and the supernatural virtue of faith: submission to what is greater than the human mind. But: no one can come to the Father unless he is drawn by me. Faith as gift. 

Clear convictions about God, about Jesus Christ, about the Church, about religious life. [Cyril Desbruslais describing the usual religious trajectory of his thinking young people: first they reject God; then they learn to accept God, but not Jesus Christ; then they learn to accept Jesus as man, but not as God; eventually they learn to accept Jesus as God and man, but reject the Church; the most difficult stage is for them to learn to accept Jesus Christ in the Church.]

You are about to begin the study of theology. You are not entering theology with blank minds, tabulae rasae. You are entering as men of sound faith. Your study of theology is for the purpose of being able to give an account of your faith (1 Pet 3:15). Fides quaerens intellectum: faith seeking understanding. Crede ut intelligas: believe that you might understand. 

In the four years to come, the study of theology will be your principal preoccupation. It will form therefore part of your spiritual growth, as a religious, as a candidate to the priesthood. Your commitment to study should form part of your daily examen of conscience, your fortnightly examen for the sacrament of reconciliation, your friendly chat, your spiritual direction. “For you I study…” There is no excuse for a Salesian priest candidate of today: he has to put his best energies into study. For he is called to be an educator and evangelizer. He is sent to young people, to all those who collaborate with him in the work for young people, to people of the working classes, to people as yet untouched by the gospel. This is a tall order. You will require all your resources, not least a sound study of sound theology. Otherwise you will avoid and evade the responsibility of teaching, preaching, animating, ruling. When the people of God ask for bread, you will give them stones. 

Read Pastores Dabo Vobis on the intellectual preparation for the priesthood. Read also Vita Consecrata. Read our constitutions and our other documents. We cannot even work for the poorest of the poor with empty heads. 

So let us not despise study, and the study of theology. Let us not give in to despising remarks about commitment to study. I do not hesitate to use the word sin here: you will be sinning, and sinning grievously against both God and your neighbour. You will be betraying your own word, that you will utter at your perpetual profession: to give of my best and all I have to those to whom I shall be sent. You will demoralize your companions. You will contribute to the decline of the quality of Salesian and religious and Christian life. You will be giving stones not bread to your young people. Don’t forget, Don Bosco spent, at the advice of his confessor and spiritual director, three years in the further study of theology. The usual extra years were two, but Don Bosco was given three. He never regretted this. During these three years, his vocation took concrete shape, and he learnt to be a priest. 

Clear convictions about Jesus Christ

The real challenge of RL today is that of restoring Christ to RL, and RL to Christ. This is one thing we cannot take for granted. To adhere ever more closely to JC is the very center of RL. RL is based on JC. Without JC, or with shaky convictions about JC, you are shaking the very foundations of RL. 

Is there no place for doubts? Newman: one thousand difficulties do not make a single doubt. ‘Difficulties’ occur within the horizon of faith. The two ways of asking questions, cf. the Jewish Passover ritual. Ask, by all means; inquire; be open; but from within the horizon of faith. 

Contemplating Christ from a Salesian standpoint

Is there a Salesian Christology? Yes. We salesians are sensitive to certain aspects of Christ. 

We begin by noting that the contemplation of the face of Christ must be, as it is for all religious, our first passion and concern. C 34: our highest knowledge is to know Jesus Christ, and our greatest delight is to reveal to all people the unfathomable riches of his mystery.

What does contemplating Christ mean? It means knowing him deeply, loving him more faithfully, following him more radically. Christology is not the fruit merely of knowledge, but also of love and of imitation. 

We note that in presenting Jesus to his boys and to the people, DB used to emphasize especially the mystical dimension: the inexhaustible kindness of the Master, his mercy, his willingness to forgive. In the lives that he wrote, he highlights friendship with Jesus. This is the front of the mantle, in the dream of 10 diamonds. 

In presenting Jesus to his Salesians, DB used to emphasize instead the ascetical dimension: the following and imitation of Christ in the consecrated life and through the counsels. However, we must be clear that this following and imitation is not painful renunciation but rather a free and joyful offering; not a list of things to be done, but a total consecration. This is the back of the mantle in the dream of 10 diamonds. These are the hidden thorns which no one sees, in the dream of the pergola of roses. 

We find the Salesian Christology most especially in C 11. 

Gratitude to the Father. Gratitude was one of the most outstanding sentiments in the human personality of DB. He wanted to pass this on in the highest degree to his sons. Mamma Margaret played an extremely important role in the development of this attitude in DB, especially through her strong sense of divine providence. We remember the strong things DB used to say about grumbling and discontentment among his boys. The positive side of this was the invitation to see life as gift. 

For the gift of a divine vocation given to all. DB was convinced that everyone has been given a divine vocation. He was convinced that in every situation, despite all limitations, deficiencies and sin, every individual is a child of God, an image of God, called to his friendship and to eternal life. This conviction gave rise in DB to hope. He was convinced that in every youngster there was a spark of goodness. More importantly, his life and his prayer was filled with gratitude for this gift of the divine vocation given to all. 

Predilection for the poor and the little ones. There is no need to demonstrate or belabour this. But we do need to note that this predilection stems not only from the generosity of DB’s heart, but from a God-given mission. DB’s attitude in front of Marchioness Barolo is normative in this regard: you have the money and will have no difficulty in finding priests for your institutions; but my poor youngsters have no one. The RM insists that, even though we speak today of new forms of poverty, we give first priority to those who are socially and economically poor. 

Zeal in preaching, healing, saving. Zeal in preaching: for DB this was so important, that it was his main request on the day of his first Mass. Also, he learnt early in life the need to reach out to the people, to speak their language, to be simple rather than to seek to impress. Zeal in preaching is closely connected to ‘reason’ in the trinomial reason, religion and loving kindness. Healing: those to whom we are sent are sick because they have been abandoned in various ways. Vecchi: all this has led us to rethink the concept of prevention: a first prevention, which is basic; a second prevention, which consists of preventing the ultimate ruin of those already on an evil path; a third prevention, which checks the worst of the evil consequences. Again, on the topic of healing, we must remember that Jesus’ miracles are directed towards the salvation of the whole person. DB seeks the total well-being of his youngsters. Saving: the climax is salvation. Don Rua reminds us: he took no step, said no word, took up no taswk that was not directed to the salvation of the young. Truly, the only concern of his heart was for souls. If we forget that the ultimate purpose of Salesian work is salvation, we fall into a reductionism which betrays the preventive system. 

Under the urgency of the coming kingdom. God’s kingdom is a dominion characterized not by domination but by fatherhood. We are not slaves or servants in the kingdom; we are sons and daughters. The coming of the kingdom is good news: it is a gift and work of God calling for human collaboration, not something we have to achieve on our own. Therefore urgency, but a hopefilled and joyful urgency. 

The attitude of the Good Shepherd who wins hearts by gentleness and self-giving. The Salesian spirit has its model and source in the heart of Christ (C 11). The Spirit formed in DB the heart of a father and teacher, capable of total self-giving (C 1). The heart of the Salesian spirit is pastoral charity (C 10), the charity of the Good Shepherd, who conquers hearts with meekness and self-giving (C 11). As he works for the salvation of the young, the Salesian experiences the fatherhood of God, and the divine dimension of his activity: apart from me you can do nothing (C 12). From the active presence of the Spirit we draw energy for our fidelity and strength for our hope (C 1). There will always be situations and confreres and boys that frustrate us. Remember DB’s advice: trust and pray rather than give long sermons or talks which hurt you and do no good to those who hear them. Resist the temptation to play God. Allow God to work. These are true words, not empty promises. God will form in us, as he formed in DB, hearts of fathers and teachers. 

Also: like the Lord who calls each sheep by name, DB achieved to an exceptional degree this personal knowledge of his boys. It is a question here not only of the pastoral love called agape but also of the more intimate kind of love called philia. 

Total self-giving: Jesus gave his life for his sheep. DB: for you I study, for you I work, for you I live, for you I am ready even to give my life. 

Clear convictions about religious life

Leslie D’Souza, ex-Salesian, course for rectors. Comes to meet the core team of the province. What would you like me to do? – We told him various things. – Where do you get your energy from? – I said, from God revealed in Jesus Christ and known through the Church. – Somebody else said: Being calm; composed; self-aware; etc. – Leslie: those are effects; and in that, you are no different from anyone else. What is it that makes you different? What are your specifics?

Leslie and others like him force us to get clear about certain basics. 

First, RL is more than a spirituality. It is more than an interest in life, or even a commitment to life, or to the inner dimension of reality, or to the ultimate, or to the transcendent. 

The postmodern ethos has led some to try to understand RL in a way that circumvents its specifically Christian character. 

This approach is theologically incoherent.

It is also practically self-destructive. 

The challenge of postmodernity can be negotiated in a different way: a way which affirms the specificity of Christianity, and at the same time allows RL to live in open dialogue and shared commitment with contemporaries. 

In the second place, RL is not merely a social organization founded for or around a project or a task. 

It is not merely a lifestyle.

It is a life. It is a total and unreserved gift of one’s whole being, to the exclusion of any and all other primary commitments. (In this respect it parallels marriage.)

RL as a life is based on what is specific to the Christian faith. 

So what is specific to Christianity?

The answer is the Resurrection. 

All religions originate, not in a constructed theory, but in a powerful religious experience. All religions must say something coherent and meaningful about death. 

The revelatory experience provides a framework, a vision of the whole of reality. Such a vision is not open to revision of its core commitments. One cannot be a little bit Christian or moderately Muslim, any more than one can be a little bit pregnant or relatively human. Believing is not an arbitrary choice. It is a response to what one perceives as true. 

The resurrection of Jesus is both the originating and non-negotiable experience at the heart of Christianity, which grounds the entire Christian vision of reality, and a response to the question of death. 

RL is based on the resurrection of Jesus. 

All authentic Christian life is participation in the resurrection of Jesus. The disciples claimed in fact to be the post-Easter body of Jesus in the world, the instrument of his presence in the world, just as our natural bodies are the instrument of our presence in the world. 

So: we are not merely a group of like-minded people living and working together for a better world with an occasional reference to Jesus. 

Our life is his life in the world.

Our activity is suffused with his real and living presence and power. 

Our project is his project, the Reign of God. 

We have chosen to make this the exclusive and primary commitment of our lives. 

Practical effects

1. Christian prayer is not merely an exercise in awareness, a practice of mindfulness, a centering of psychic energy, practices of ego-transcendence, or a merging with nature. It is clearly and unashamedly personal. It is a relationship with a person, a relationship which gradually becomes the center and effective motivation of our lives. 

Christian prayer is becoming who, by baptism, we already are: namely, the body of Christ, his living and active presence in the world. 

If this relationship to God in prayer is not nurtured continuously, if one is not growing in one’s identity with Christ, one may be a good person and an effective agent of positive change, but RL has no particular meaning for us. 

2. Mission and ministry. Is there any real difference between what religious do, and what non-believers or people of other faiths do? And is Christian ministry better than other such work? 

There is a difference: Christian ministry is not something we have decided to do. It is a response to a call, and it is rooted in a sending, a mission. 

This mission may give rise to a plurality of ministries. Ministry is neither a job nor a career. That is why religious may retire from a job or a career, but never from ministry. Their ministry is participation in Jesus’ transformation of the world. It is ongoing revelation among our contemporaries of who God is, what he desires, and how he is at work transforming reality.

Conclusion. None of the areas – faith, Christology, church, perpetual commitment, consecrated celibacy, community, prayer, ministry – can be handled separately. Either the whole project is deeply Christian, or the lifeform we call RL does not exist. 

The coherence of RL has to come from within. The RL can no longer be carried by habit, time-table, etc. It is religious themselves, their deep inner commitment, that have to carry the RL, and to make every aspect of it speak the reality of the divine human relationship at its heart. 

We can do this only if we believe that Jesus is indeed really alive, present, active within us and among us, and that our whole life is the medium and mediation of his presence and action in the world. 

The Process of Christian growth

We have spoken already of the contemplation of the face of Christ, and of the adherence to Christ which is the very center of RL. 

We have spoken also of the explicitly and unavoidably personal dimension of Christian prayer: Christian prayer is becoming who by baptism we already are: the body of Christ, his living, active presence in the world. 

Let us speak here of Christian prayer from another angle, that of growth into prayer, which is really growth into Christ. 

The first stage: purification

Grace and freedom. Some time or other you will come across spiritual authors (such as Carlos Valles) who tell you: stop trying too hard. You have no idea of the meaning of grace. It is not your effort that counts. It is God who works. So stop trying too hard. Let go, let God. Evasio in the philosophy of God class: if conversion is God’s work, then I am going to relax and just wait! You may even have been given such advice in the confessional: stop trying too hard. It is God’s work. Be patient. And you may have tried to be patient. But somehow, deep down there is the nagging suspicion. There must be some other way. There must be some other thing. 

Some of you might have encountered an older approach, the classic Jesuit approach, the masculine approach of agere contra: act against your inclinations, be strong, do it, put an end to all this shilly shallying, dilly dallying. Homines sunt voluntas. Will it! 

After many years of struggle with these feminine and masculine ways, I realized one day the connection: grace is already always given; God has already acted; he has already first loved us; so don’t wait, it has happened already, act. So both Bede Griffiths and Balaguer are correct. We are in a very deep sense ‘feminine’ before God. And yet we have to act. Simply because God has always already acted. He is always already acting. He never stops acting. My Father is always working, and he is working even now, says Jesus in the Gospel of John. 

So the very first thing about the purgative way, the way of purification, is to get clear about some basics. Believe that God is already acting in your life; call a spade a spade, and get to work. God is acting, and he is Love, so there is no need to get terrorized. But there is need to work and not to give up. “Has no one condemned you? Neither do i. Go and sin no more.” 

Natural and supernatural means. Our constitutions, following the tradition, speak of natural and supernatural means. The natural means are not to be neglected. Grace builds on nature, and both come from God. What are the natural means? Sufficient sleep and rest; exercise; and today, also all the helps that the human sciences can give. In a world affected by original sin, situations, histories and lives are not perfect. Each one of us will experience deep imperfection within us, deep down within us. Let us make use of whatever natural means God places on our paths. The Congregation has been abundant and generous in this regard. 

We know by now very well that, especially in the area of chastity, there is a great distinction to be drawn between objective sin and subjective responsibility. Masturbation, for example, is such a complex affair, with deep roots in one’s personal history, with a deep intertwining of psychological realities and personal responsibility. Here especially the human sciences can be of great utility: in the exploration of one’s personal history and make-up; in the building up of self-image, self-acceptance, self-esteem; etc. 

Sorrow. Let us presume however the absence or the overcoming of mitigating factors such as personal history and lack of self-esteem. Here is the normal situation, the standard situation. Perhaps this is a much neglected area. One such neglected element is that of sorrow for sins. When I hurt a friend or a parent or a companion, if I am truly sorry, I will not easily hurt them again. The same holds in our relationship with God: if I am truly sorry for my sins, if I truly detest them because they offend the infinite goodness of God, then I will with difficulty offend again. The problem is that most of the time 

Grace and Freedom, letter to Joby

Rome, Feb 22, 1993

Dear Joby,

Jose has told me about your question, and I have seen the reply he has formulated for you. I have found it easier to put down, very roughly and imperfectly, some thoughts on my own, instead of adding to what Jose has written. One of your questions is, "God knows us from the womb. He knows our future and has planned our lives. So where does sin and punishment come in?" Let me just talk about three points here: human freedom, grace, and God's plan.

Human freedom

I begin by noting that we are talking in a christian context, in a context in which we take for granted the existence of God, and the fact that God is creator. If we did not, the problem of human freedom and God's causality would not of course have arisen in the first place. 

Now in order to talk about human freedom, we need to grasp certain prior notions. The first of these is that all created beings are dependent beings. Created beings depend on the Creator not only for the origin of their existence (creation) and for the continuity of their existence (conservation), but also in their very action. This is to say: no created being can act in total independence; its every action involves dependence on the Creator. 

This might seem strange, for once a being is created, why can it not act on its own? The problem might be envisaged in the following terms: fire is able to heat water; but if the fire is in the kitchen and the water is in the well, we are not going to get boiling water even if we wait for years. What then is needed? Well, the fire and the water must be brought together; there is needed some other agent who can bring fire and water in the proper relation where the action of heating can take place.

Let us take a more general case, where no human agent is involved. The heat of the sun can melt ice; but the sun will not melt an iceberg unless either the iceberg is brought to the equator or else the sun is moved to the North Pole. 

From these two examples we might conclude that created causes need to be applied to their activity; unless they are thus applied, their natural action does not follow. In certain cases we can think of human beings as the agents that apply causes to their objects, but in the general case of the universe, which is an enormously complex set of created causes, this agent can only be God. (This is of course a terribly rapid way of arguing, but I content myself with this.)

The point we are trying to make is that created causes are not primary causes; they are always secondary causes; the primary cause is God. 

The next point is to grasp that man, like all other created causes, is also always a secondary cause; the primary cause of his actions is God. But there is a difference: for other causes are not free, while man is free. Here the question arises, if man is a secondary cause, then, just like the sun which melts the iceberg, or the fire that heats the water, given the proper conditions his actions should follow. All that we need is that some agent (God) should bring about the proper conditions (just as in the case of the sun and the fire). Is then man really free? Or is his action not like the action of the sun and the fire?

This calls for an analysis of human action; for when we think of freedom, we tend to oversimplify; we tend to think of it as merely the act of choice. Now human freedom involves at least (1) the capacity itself, which we might call the 'will'; (3) the orientation of the will, which we might call the 'willingness'; (2) the act of willing. (In addition there is the relationship of willing with knowing, but I will not enter into it here.) 

Let us take for granted that we have the capacity to perform free acts. Again, the actual act of willing should not cause difficulties. What we normally tend to overlook is the orientation of the will, the willingness. And yet this is a fact of our experience: many acts of willing accumulate into a habit, an orientation, or at least a tendency; the more I practise the guitar, the better a guitarist I become; the more I practise football, the better a footballer I become. Similarly, repeated good actions accumulate into good habits, and repeated bad actions accumulate into bad habits. Now what is to be noted is the effect of such habits: when I have become a good guitarist, I am able to play the guitar with ease and without difficulty; when I have acquired the 'habit of football', I enjoy playing football; similarly when I have acquired a good habit, I find it easy to perform good acts, and when I have acquired a bad habit, it is very easy to perform bad acts, and very difficult not to perform them. So our acts of willing are conditioned by our habits, our willingness. 

Grace and sin

We have distinguished therefore the will, the willingness, and the act of willing. Let us now bring God into the picture. We say that God is the primary cause of all our acts; are we then really free? The answer is that God is not the direct cause of our acts of willing; rather, he works upon our willingness, our habitual orientation or tendency. God is constantly moving us to will the good; and that is what we call grace. 

But, you might say, does that not in the end come to the same thing? For once we have an orientation towards the good, does not the act of willing the good follow automatically? Here we must say that it does not: from our experience we know that having a habit does not make it impossible to do something that is contrary to the habit. Having a habit of smoking does not make it impossible to give up smoking, just as having a good habit does not make it impossible to do something contrary. So even when God moves us towards the good, even when God gives us grace, we are not compelled automatically to act according to that movement. 

But this might seem suspicious, especially after all our examples about the habits of guitar-playing and football, so let us go back to those examples. Let us think, not of the moment when one has already acquired these habits, when one is already an expert guitarist or footballer, but when one is just beginning. Parallel to this, let us think, not of the moment when one has already acquired a good habit, but when one is just a beginner. There comes a moment of grace, and it can be identified when we become aware of a desire, a willingness to do the good, where before there was not even that desire. This desire is usually not very  forceful; it leaves us quite quite free; and so freely we can choose either to go along with it, or else to go against it. Let us go further: if we choose to go along with this grace, the second time it will be a little easier to do the same; and the more we choose to go along with it, the easier it becomes; even if sometimes we choose differently, we come back quite easily. This is the experience of responding to grace, accepting grace, growing in goodness. Sin remains a possibility, but the more we keep responding to grace, the more easily we pick up courage, repent of our sin, take up our journey towards God. In the limit grace becomes habitual in us; this is what theologians refer to as sanctifying grace. On the other hand, one refusal of grace leads to another, and if we are not careful, we find ourselves with a habit of sinfulness.

So our distinction between willingness and the act of willing helps us to see how God can act on us and how we still maintain our freedom. It is necessary to add here that "God wills all men to be saved" (1 Tim 2:4), and that therefore we might draw the conclusion that God gives his grace to all men. If Jesus tells us that our heavenly Father in his great love sends rain upon just and unjust alike, and makes the sun shine upon good and wicked alike (Mt 5:45), are we to imagine that he would do less with the sunshine and the rain of his love and grace? So grace is given to all men; and yet all men remain free, and so responsible for their acts. So Saddam Hussein is free and responsible for his acts, as you and I are free and responsible for our acts. So free acts of goodness are possible, and equally freely we can and do sin; and since we are free, we are responsible; and if we are responsible for our acts, the question of punishment for sin should not be so difficult to understand, though here too we usually need a purification of our ideas of punishment for sin.

Again, note that God's action on our willingness is not the only way he influences us; for the whole of the universe is in his hands; as we noted earlier, he applies all things to their actions; and so he can affect not only our willingness, but also our characters, our temperaments, the concrete situations in which we are born, in which we find ourselves; and so in a thousand ways he can act so as to lead us towards himself; and yet our strip of freedom, narrow though it is, remains intact. We might add here that there is a variation here: as Jesus says, to whom much has been given, much will be demanded. The responsibility of one who has had the opportunity to study and reflect is certainly different from one who has never had such an opportunity.

God's plan

We have been talking about how God's action of grace does not mean that man is not free. But now the question might arise, if man is free, and can do what he wants, what about the plan of God? Are we to conclude that God's plan can be destroyed by man's free acts? 

Once again here it is a question of sharpening, clarifying, correcting some of our ideas. When we think of the universe, or when we think of God's plan, the image we have is that of a clock, where every part is perfectly in place, so that if any single part is removed or disturbed, the whole clock stops working. But the universe is not like a clock, and God's plan is not a piece of machinery that will grind to a halt if someone decides not to go along with it. True, God is in control over everything; but this control does not mean that in each and every case things have to go 'according to plan'. Human beings may choose not to go along with the plan of God; but God's plan goes ahead inspite of this. 

The key to grasping this point may be the idea of statistical laws; the clock as a system does not involve statistical laws, but the universe as a whole involves not only 'classical' laws (like those of the clock) but also statistical laws. I will not go into this now; suffice to say that, when I toss a coin, the probability of getting a Heads is fifty-fifty; when I toss it ten times, it is quite possible that Heads does not occur even once; but when I toss it a hundred times, it is quite impossible that Heads does not occur even once; in fact, it is quite likely that it will occur roughly half the number of times; and if it does not, then you will begin to suspect that there is something wrong with the coin, that someone is cheating. So the greater the number of tosses, the more likely is it that the occurrence of Heads will be roughly 50% of the total number of tosses. That is a rough indication of how statistical laws operate. Now the universe involves such statistical laws, in addition to the classical laws with which we are more familiar. Classical laws are involved in the prediction of eclipses of the sun and the moon; but it is quite possible that some day there will be some cosmic collision that will disturb our solar system, and then there will be no more eclipses; but the probability of such collisions is a question of statistical laws.

At any rate, our point was that God's plan has an element of statistical law; and so the presence of sin does not disrupt that plan. Since in fact God is in control of the whole process, he is able to lead all things towards their end while still leaving human beings quite free to choose whether they want to be part of his plan or not. Such choosing to be part of God's plan is really the fundamental thing; sin is understood in its proper dimension when understood as wanting to disrupt that plan; such a view also reveals the ultimate futility of sin. Again, sin is a very real possibility; and so Jesus asks us to pray in the Our Father: Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as in heaven. This prayer of Jesus becomes utter reality, first in the Garden where he prays that the chalice of suffering be taken away from him, but then ends: not my will but yours be done; and then on the cross: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. This is the central mystery in the life of Jesus: his total obedience to the will of his Father; it is the central mystery in our lives: learning to surrender ourselves completely into the hands of God our Father. To this point we are constantly led by the Holy Spirit who is God's grace, the love of God poured into our hearts (Rom 5:5); and yet in every moment and in every place we remain free, so that St.Paul can exhort us: Work out your salvation in fear and trembling; and elsewhere: We are led by the Spirit of God; let us then walk by the Spirit. We are led, and yet we have to walk. There, in essence, is the mystery of grace and freedom.

I end by noting my dependence on a Jesuit philosopher and theologian called Bernard Lonergan. Lonergan's doctoral thesis in theology was on the grace and freedom in the thought of the famous medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. The question of grace and freedom has been, as Jose has pointed out, one of the most debated points in the history of catholic and christian theology; with Lonergan I believe that Thomas Aquinas arrived at the solution to this difficult question; with Lonergan I also believe that almost immediately Thomas' solution was 'lost' in the sense that it was not understood. Things were so bad that at a certain point the Pope had to order the theologians to stop discussing and to just believe that God gives grace without taking away our freedom. The matter remained like that until our century, when it was opened up once again. I tend to believe that Lonergan has recovered Thomas Aquinas' solution; I also believe that Lonergan has, in his independent writings, and especially in his book Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, expressed that basic solution in terms of modern science and contemporary psychology. I thought it would be honest to end with this acknowledgement to Lonergan and to Thomas, for I began by saying that I would say what I think on the matter; but really I have been saying what I have learnt from others. But that is how I believe things always are: for like the guitarist and like the footballer, we have to be beginners before we become experts. I wish you well in your own search. 

 

"Not each act of the elect but only the general result of salvation is causally certain; just as God makes certain of the perpetuity of the species by the vast number of its members, so also he makes certain of the salvation of the elect by imparting so many graces that either the predestined does not sin at all or, if hedoes, then he repents and rises again." (VB 78-79). However, from INCW 672-74, it is not certain that Lonergan would maintain precisely the same thing. It is true that providence as predestination is a question of "a statistically certain causality" (VB 141), but it does not follow that only the general result and not each act is causally certain. What is true, in other words, is that the result is assured statistically and not by controlling each act. It follows that sin is possible; it does not follow that the divine plan is disrupted by sin. [Check the IN treatment of human freedom, linked with statistics.]

"Se Dio già conosce tutto quello che faremo, allora non c'è libertà; tutto è già stato deciso da Dio." 

La risposta è che non possiamo applicare la categoria di tempo a Dio. Allora non possiamo dire, "Dio ha pensato," "Dio ha deciso," "Dio già conosce," ecc. L'esistenza di Dio non svolge come la nostra, con un passato, un presente, e un futuro; per Dio tutto è presente. E' vero che Dio conosce tutto, ma non è vero che Dio lo conosce come futuro. 

"Ma anche se per Dio tutto è presente, rimane vero che Dio è onnipotente; e allora perchè non fa qualcosa di evitare il male, per impedire il peccato?"

Bisogna distinguere vari tipi di male: male physico, male morale. Il peccato è male morale. Le risposte sono diverse per ciascun tipo. Dio non impedisce il peccato precisamente perché nella sua intenzione l'uomo è libero. Perché allora creare esseri liberi con questa capacità terribile di infliggere danni enormi a vicenda e di fare un tale macello nel mondo? Perché questo è il rischio inerente quando vuoi avere esseri liberi. E perché solo un essere libero è capace di amare. E perché Dio vuole condividere il suo amore con degli esseri capaci di sapere di esser amati, e capaci di amare a vicenda. L'amore e la libertà: non c'è uno senza l'altro: sono strettamente legati. Quando togli la libertà, non ce l'hai più la possibilità di amore; hai una schiavitù, una servitudine, una compulsione.

Dio non impedisce il male physico perché ... Bisogna chiederci, che cos'è il bene. Bisogna riconoscere che Dio crea il tutto, e che in questa ordine ci sono cause secondarie che hanno una propria azione. Il mondo non è come un orologio.

Grace and religious experience

GRACE AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Lonavla, 9 November 2005

 

All of us, it seems to me, are Pelagian by birth. At least I was. Only slowly did I discover the meaning of grace. I remember when I discovered that the spiritual life was not, after all, a matter of how much effort I made; there was grace. I remember the impact of Peter de Rosa’s book, Not I, Not I, But the Wind that Blows Through Me: the seagulls being carried by the wind. That was grace: being carried by the wind of the Spirit. 

So slowly we discover the meaning of grace. But then a new problem, so well expressed by Evasio so many years ago in Divyadaan: if God is the one who has to work, then I will continue sleeping in my meditation. He did not know it, but this was the same problem expressed by the monks of Hadremetum to St Augustine: if God gives grace, why do superiors have to be after our blood? This is the great problem of grace and freedom, and people have sinned on both sides of the spectrum. 

Only slowly, if ever, do we come to a proper synthesis of grace and freedom. It struck me so forcefully one day in Italy: we need not wait for God to act, simply because he has already acted, his grace has already been given to us. It is up to us now to act, to respond to grace, to do our part. 

 

Grace was first a commonsense scriptural category. With the reflection begun by Augustine and completed by Thomas, it became a systematic metaphysical category. Today we prefer experiential categories, and so everywhere there is talk of God-experience or of religious experience. All three ways of speaking have their own validity, though the last mentioned is of recent vintage, having gained popularity only with the Reformation and perhaps with Schleiermacher. 

 

The recent provocation for these reflections was provided by Kenny: why is it that Protestants, and especially the sects, are able to provide our youth with religious experience, and we Catholics are not? 

We could put the question to ourselves more directly: have I had a religious experience? If not, what am I doing here? 

 

I am convinced that grace – God’s love – is given to all. St Paul speaks of the love of God being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Jesus speaks of the Spirit as the wind, blowing where it will: whither it comes, where it goes, we do not know. 

 

So grace is given to all. We may or may not respond to it. If we respond, we grow in it, and it goes on to become a habitual state in us, we move into the habitual state of being in love with God. 

 

With grace, or perhaps with the transformation wrought in us by grace (fruit of the dialectic of grace and freedom), we become a new creation in Christ. We are born again into new life. We begin to live a life of faith, hope and charity. 

 

The presence of grace is evidenced by the presence of the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace… By their fruits you will know them, says Jesus. There is a whole tradition of discernment of spirits in the Church, for we have to distinguish between true and false prophets, and good and bad spirits. 

 

Religious experience is an ambiguous term. 

Often it refers to the spectacular experiences of grace rather than to the experience of grace across the board. 

Often it is identified with merely good feelings, and then such an understanding finds it difficult to make sense of the experience of pain, suffering, darkness and emptiness. Yet there is the witness of John of the Cross and of Mother Teresa. Good feelings, there is certainly place for them in prayer; but perhaps they are only lollipops, which God in his goodness gives to us when we are as yet merely babes in the spiritual life. The entire spiritual journey is far more complex than a mere set of good feelings. Good feelings alone can certainly not be the criteria of the authenticity of religious expeirnce. The experience of grace is, in fact, as large as life, as Lonergan reminds us so beautifully. 3C. 

 

                "Experience of grace, then, is as large as the Christian experi­ence of life. It is experience of man's capacity for self-transcendence, of his unrestricted openness to the intelligible, the true, the good. It is experience of a twofold frustration of that capacity: the objective frustration of life in a world distorted by sin; the subjective frustration of one's incapacity to break with one's own evil ways. It is experience of a trans­formation one did not bring about but rather underwent, as divine providence let evil take its course and vertical finality be heightened, as it let one's circumstances shift, one's disposi­tions change, new encounters occur, and -- so gently and quietly -- one's heart be touched. It is the experience of a new communi­ty, in which faith and hope and charity dissolve rationaliza­tions, break determinisms, and reconcile the estranged and the alienated, and there is reaped the harvest of the Spirit that is '... love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control' (Gal. 5:22)." [3C 32-33.]

 

Maybe we have truncated the Catholic faith and practice: individual attention, confession; deeper entry into the Eucharist; Eucharistic adoration; true pastoral love and concern and support; family visits; systematic catechism and faith formation. 

 

Religious experience comes to us in two ways: through the Spirit, and through the Son and the Church. For us Salesians, it comes to us through young people, through the poor, through our work with people, through all of life, in fact! Hopkins: there is freshness deep down things… Don Bosco is for us the father of our faith; he generates in us an experience of God. This makes perfect sense when we remember the doctrine of mediation, the role of the Church. The place of Our Lady also makes perfect sense in this light, and together with her our parents, family, friends, boys…

 

The temptation of the ephemeral and immediate. American religion. The here and now. Spiritual life is a journey. Once one has tasted the Catholic depths, there is no temptation of the sects and of new Age. It is the poverty of our theology that leads to such temptations. As De Smet used to tell me, the problem of Abhishiktananda was his Benedictine theology. The Benedictines have no theology, they only know liturgy. I have never had a crisis of faith; they all want me to have a crisis of faith, it makes for exciting reading, but I cant manufacture one! 

 

Vacillation is a sign of the counterposition. 

 

Response to Kenny:

1. William and P. Lourdes should not set the categories; but the gospels and sound Catholic tradition. But: what do the gospels and sound catholic tradition say?
2. My PG notes on RE
3. My Rome 2001 article.
4. Scola and co.
5. The rest of my preface to the Research on Catholic youth.
6. How to interiorize?
7. Lonergan…
8. are all ‘once born’ stupid? What about the saints? All twice born? Dominic Savio? Or are we subtly redefining ‘twice born’?
9. Still: how to interiorize? Personal spiritual direction, word in the ear, confession, learning to be masters of prayer – like DB. Aim: Sanctity, not twice born. IC MC RC.

TO CLAUDIUS, 28.10.2OO9:

I think you might find something in these two files too... [PG 04 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE; PG 07 NOTION OF GOD]

Grace is a metaphysical category; the experiential equivalent seems to be Religious Experience / Conversion / Being in love in an unconditional manner. The manifestation of this state: fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5,22): love, joy, peace, patience, etc. 

Keep in mind: Grace / RE as defined, and as achieved. As achieved, the data are data on a process, and that process is, in a sense, dialectical: a struggle between authenticity and unauthenticity... 

The ethical, grace and resurrection

Milbank's own summary of his argument:

1. The ethical "is only genuinely imaginable as a mutual and unending gift-exchange, construed as an absolute surrender to moral luck or absolute faith in the arrival of the divine gift, which is grace."
2. The sustaining of such an exchange "requires a notion of resurrection and faith in the reality of participation in resurrection." (121)

The complex of ideas: the ethical as gift-exchange, feast, marriage, resurrection. The first element, gift-exchange is figured by the feast or by marriage. It is appropriately combined with the second, resurrection, in terms of the heavenly banquet or the eschatological marriage of God and humanity. [And here, all the echoes of John Paul II's Theology of the Body.]

[I suspect that Milbank is doing a phenomenology of the notion of the ethical, and he finds that this notion collapses without 'total exposure' to grace and the notion resurrection and participation in resurrection. If this be true, I would think that morality would still be possible for atheists and in general for people who do not have proper and consistent notions of the ethical and who do not believe in grace and resurrection. Simply because, whatever the explicit pole of the horizon, what matters ultimately is the reality of grace given.]

Milbank is seeking to deliberately oppose a recent consensus "which would try to understand the ethical as primarily self-sacrifice for the other, without any necessary 'return' issuing from the other back to oneself." [Note the idea of return or response: Benedict XVI surprisingly stressed response as a constitutive element in love, in Deus Caritas Est and then in his Message for Lent 2007, noting that, in the bible, even God ardently desires our response, 'like a bridegroom that of his bride.' Jose' Luis Plascencia had picked up and highlighted this idea in his retreat talks to the 26th General Chapter of the Salesians of Don Bosco in 2008.] [Note also that Milbank does not discount self-sacrifice completely. What he is setting aside is the idea of the ethical as primarily or purely self-sacrifice.]

[The way Milbank is proceeding reminds me of I.M. Crombie's response to Flew, the way he invoked central ideas in Christianity, including resurrection, if I recall right. - The point is that I am trying to sort out the methodological question. Perhaps: what is philosophy and what theology? Milbank is certainly blowing up received ideas of the distinction. In a manner analogous to that of Lonergan? Or radically different?]

This consensus itself involves a complex of ideas:

1. That only an entirely self-sacrificial giving without expectation of a counter-gift distinguishes the gift from a form of self-interested contract. [I.e., gift does not involve response; such a response, or expectation of response, would destroy it as gift and turn it into a contract or exchange.] [Milbank is blowing up the idea of gift as completely disinterested, and, probably, of love and of the ethical as completely disinterested.]

2. That death, "far from being complicit with evil, is the necessary condition for the event of the ethical as such." The reasons for this are two:

2.1 Only our vulnerability, the possibility that we might die, allows us to make an appeal as needy people to our neighbour. Our vulnerability is therefore the condition for the ethical demand.

2.2 Only the capacity of the ethical subject "to respond to the needy person if necessary with his own death, guarantees his deed as truly ethical, as truly disinterested gift." (122)

3. 'God' must be reduced to "a shadowy hypostatized other," because any God who interfered to reward the disinterested giver would be damaging the purity of this disinterest and of the ethical.

4. The true nobility and purity of religious self-sacrifice [and of the ethical] is only realized in a secular realm.

This consensus involves Patocka, Derrida, and probably Levinas. The first point [pure disinterested gift] is espoused by Marion though he does not see that it leads logically to the other three. [Ciglia described Marion yesterday as a Catholic 'a modo suo.']

Discovering one is in love

"The man or woman in love discovers that he or she is in love when all spontaneous and deliberate tendencies and actions regard the beloved"
“discovers”
i.e., one becomes aware / knows what is happening
so the effects lead to the discovery
the effects: spontaneous and deliberate tendencies and actions
what is discovered?
That which makes these (tendencies and actions) possible: the conjugate form, the habit
The habit itself is a new spontaneity
Which gives rise to deliberate tendencies and actions

This is significant for the dynamic between gift and response.
One responds, one moves into the state of being in love, or perhaps one is gifted into that state, and then one discovers...
Already in Insight.

Remember that there need not be a temporal gap between grace as operative and as cooperative.

Love, agape + eros

All spontaneous and deliberate tendencies…
Lonergan is speaking here of a man or woman in love
And uses this to illustrate our love for God
This kind of love is more than agape? What I mean is that it somehow involves everything, the whole person: all spontaneous and deliberate tendencies and actions
I would imagine, also the feelings
So this is not the love where there is no particular feeling
Or else, we have to go with Benedict XVI who insists that (God’s) love is agape + eros – eros which delights in the existence of this particular, singular person: How wonderful that you are!
Is this ultimately the model of all love?
Are we, am I, called to love each brother and sister thus, with a love that reaches the particularity of the person?
The answer is yes.

"all spontaneous and deliberate tendencies"

“[A] man or woman knows that he or she is in love by making the discovery that all spontaneous and deliberate tendencies and actions regard the beloved.” [Lonergan, Insight CWL 3:720-21.]
(Just noticed the 'discovery' here...)
A habit of charity is a new spontaneity, a new set of laws.
But: deliberate tendencies?

Perhaps we need studies of the experience of love.
There is already a being in love that arises from falling in love – even before the response, which no doubt leads to a new stage in loving. But it may not be the beginning of being in love.
This being in love is not yet mutual, but “all spontaneous and deliberate tendencies and actions regard the beloved.”
What then if the Latin tag (Nihil amatum nisi cognitum) were violated?
In the human case, even if it is love at first sight, the sight precedes.
In God’s case: he is not bound by the tag.
So: we find ourselves in love (with God)?
We discover first, and only then perhaps we can decide?
What do we discover? That all spontaneous and deliberate tendencies regard the Beloved?

Read Aquinas on the habit of charity.
It is one of the grounds from which Lonergan’s thinking arises.
I am trying to understand how the habit of charity can be mutual, can be friendship.
What is mutuality?
What is friendship?

Before and afer the infusion of a mutual love (!) there are acts of consent.
But what about: no acts of charity before the infusion of the virtue? (READ!)
Surely there is natural love, besides meritorious love of God?
But, from experience, I would say that seen as process, there would be actual operative and cooperative graces, and therefore consent, before and after the infusion of sanctifying grace.
Even after, a failure to correspond can lead to the death of sanctifying grace.

To be loved is - to change?

I ask myself: are there instances where to be loved is to be changed?
Not always, perhaps: a declaration of love can be sometimes rebuffed, rejected, not accepted.
But there are instances when we have felt loved, when we have been loved into loving. The gift has become a response. And this, before any proper act of consent.
Subsequently there will be place for such acts.
This, more especially when the gift is conscious but not known. When there is an exception to the Latin tag, Nihil amatum nisi cognitum.

Hefling in conversation with Doran

Just finished reading Charles Hefling's response to Doran's use of the four-point hypothesis as the starting point of his new systematic theology. Electrifying - not only because Hefling is a masterly writer and scholar, but because of the way his text met questions which had arisen for me.

I try to note down these at random:

1. What is the implication of the fact that, of the 4 divine relations, only 3 are real, and one not?
2. Is the gift of God's love really distinct from the state of being in love with God, in Method in Theology? What of the fact that Lonergan uses them randomly and interchangeably? Did Lonergan want to distinguish them?
3. What to make of the fact that, even when he acknowledged the amalgamation in the Workshop of 1974, he did not sound apologetic - that instead, he pointed out to the need to overcome faculty psychology?

One point that I did not come across in Hefling's text is my dis-ease with the way Doran associates the state of being in love with God with the response to God's love. But on almost every other point, Hefling meets my spontaneous - therefore not studied - approbation.

Hefling in conversation with Doran: is this not really dialectic, in some sense at least? 

Charity and the response to God's love, again

I have searched several of Doran's articles (Essays 42, 39, 32 and 1, in that order) for the reasoning or exegesis behind his identification of 'the dynamic state of being in love with God' with the infused habit of charity. Perhaps the best, and maybe the first, attempt is Essay 1.

I just want to record my impressions here.

That Lonergan amalgamated SG and charity in MT: true.
But: is it gift = SG + charity?
Or: state = SG + charity?
Or are we asking a wrong question? Perhaps MT does not clearly differentiate and distinguish the gift and the state?

That Lonergan distinguished SG and charity as remote and proximate principles of acts of charity in his early Latin theology: true.
That we can identify SG with the gift, and charity with the state: possibly; provided that the gift and the state are indeed distinct in MT.

That charity = response to God's love: I am not so sure.
That charity = principle from which responses to God's love (operations or acts of love) flow: yes, and Doran in Essay 1 does talk like this, though my impression is that he does not always talk like this in his later essays. In his later essays he tends to simply identify charity with our response to God's love.

That charity = mutual love of benevolence between God and us: yes, Lonergan says this clearly, taking it from Aquinas.

My tentative conclusion:
There is a mutuality in charity which cannot be ignored.
Can we say: in charity as operative grace, there is already this mutuality? In that case, the mutuality - or response if you wish - is purely gift. We have no part in it in the sense that we are here mota and non movens.
That we can say: charity as cooperative grace, as principle of acts of love, is a response to God's love: I think so. Here we are certainly et mota et movens.

[For the Essays, see http://www.lonerganresource.com/book.php?1]

Grace and sinfulness

Sometimes I wonder how, despite the sacramental bestowal of grace, our human nature remains weak as ever. Does not Thomas say that grace is the bestowal of a habit, and should not that habit take the place of earlier, sinful habits?

Here is an amazing psychological observations from Lonergan and Aquinas. In Grace and Freedom, Lonergan notes that according to Aquinas, the supernatural virtues not merely give the possibility of a type of action, but also make it spontaneous and connatural. However, there remains the objection from experience that the infused virtues do not always seem to make right action prompt, easy and agreeable. Thomas' answer: neither acquired nor infused virtues totally eliminate the evil inclinations of passion. Still, both operate against such inclinations, though in different ways. Acquired virtues make evil tendencies less sensible. The more rarefied infused virtues may not have this effect at all, but they do break the dominion of sin over us. Nor is the persisting sensible difficulty contrary to the nature of a virtue, for as even Aristotle acknowledged, the pleasure proper to virtuous action may be, at time, no more than the absence of regret. Perhaps the more radical answer to the objection may be that readiness, ease and pleasure are the signs, the external consequences, of the virtues, such secondary effects may be covered over by other factors. (Grace and Freedom, CWL 1:49)

Nature-grace and natural-supernatural

Sean Doyle, in Synthesizing the Vedanta: The Theology of Pierre Johanns, S.J. (2006) speaks interchangeably of the nature-grace distinction and the natural-supernatural distinction.

This needs to be explored, but I think the two are not coincident. Grace may be operative in both natural and supernatural religions, for example. The natural-supernatural distinction is based on proportion: truths that are proportionate to human nature are called natural truths; truths that are beyond the proportion of human nature are called supernatural truths. This distinction was drawn by Thomas. And Thomas admitted clearly the possibility of God revealing not only supernatural but also natural truths.

Vatican II clearly admits the possibility of grace operative in non-Christian religions and even among atheists. But that hardly does away with the natural-supernatural distinction.

Still, a certain amount of confusion followed after Vatican II. Having accepted the operation of grace beyond the boundaries of the Church, theologians did away also with the natural-supernatural distinction. I am not sure that this follows. And I am not sure whether maintaining such a distinction is politically incorrect. 

Kerr on Lonergan's Grace and Freedom

In Lonergan's early work, published in English in 1971 as Grace and Freedom, Kerr finds "an as yet unsurpassed analysis of Aquinas' theory of divine transcendence and human liberty" (115).

The theorem of the supernatural

One of the things I need to get clear about in Lonergan is what he calls the theorem of the supernatural. The other day, during Nelson's homily, I thought I got a little window onto this theorem. Nelson was quoting St Paul: "What is it that we have not received?" It reminded me of Lonergan speaking about the problem faced by early Christian reflection on grace: how to distinguish grace from the fact that everything is received, everything is gift? The answer is probably a difference in proportion: nature and supernature, what is proportionate to human nature and what is not proportionate to it, what is simply beyond it. A distinction, therefore, between two orders. Not that there is or was a state of pure nature; but that we need this kind of distinction if we are to handle reflection on the Christian revelation.

Lonergan on sanctifying grace

Robert Doran gave a paper last night on sanctifying grace in an early (1951-52) text of Lonergan's. What he was saying was quite beyond me, and so, I thought, of most of the audience. I was surprised to see several, however, who seemed to have followed the whole argument: David Fleischacker, Jeremy Wilkins, Fred Lawrence, of course.

The main discussion was about Doran's use of Augustine's memoria w.r.t. the Father. Gilles Mongeau pointed out that Edmund Hill's understanding / translation of memoria was faulty. Doran agreed that he had taken it from Hill. Fred Lawrence also seemed to have registered his scepticism about using memoria in that sense for the Father. (I can't express that better right now.)

Fred seems to be concerned to preserve the Mystery, the ineffability. He said Lonergan had a healthy respect for the ineffability of God.

But all this simply means that I have to get a better grasp of Lonergan's Trinitarian theology.

I had no idea that Fred teaches just that in the theology department at BC. He also teaches political theology, theology and hermeneutics, and one other thing.

Religions and the supernatural

In my paper on Francis Xavier and the missions (Boston 2006), I pulled in an older reflection / comparison between Christianity and Islam. There was much discussion on that. I said that Islam was a religion that could easily fit into what we used to call natural or philosophical theology, because there was nothing in it that 'exceeded the natural capacity of the human mind.' In that sense, Islam was not a 'supernatural' religion.

Scholars like Pat Bryne and also Fred Lawrence, I think, were not so sure about that. They said that all religions were supernatural.

I have still to get to the bottom of that. However, I think it is a question of defining 'supernatural' very clearly.

In Regis 1962, Lonergan seems to be distinguishing supernatural acts from supernatural objects. He says, for example, that de facto, because there is need of gratia sanans, and because of the way grace is granted in this order, there will normally be supernatural acts before one reaches the reflective act of understanding (which is supernatural when it is a question of divine faith). Still, he goes on, the objects prior to that reflective act of understanding need not be supernatural. (Lecture 6, Section 3.3: Human and Divine Faith).

So maybe in one sense (as far as acts are concerned) the religions are all supernatural, while in another sense (as far as objects are concerned) they are not all supernatural.

But I need to master here the distinction between acts and objects: how can an act be supernatural, when the object is not? And what does supernatural mean in the case of the act here?

In fact, I might have misunderstood Lonergan above. He says, for example: "it is at the point of specification of the act by a supernatural object that per se, that is, in every case, one is having a supernatural act." And again: "There would be nothing supernatural quoad se, quoad substantiam, in any of the acts and, consequently, not in the praeambula."