The Gaze of the Baptist

We have all experienced a time, speaking to a friend or acquaintance, when our fellow converser takes his eyes off ours for a moment, glancing over our shoulder. The reason is usually nothing more than another person walking into the room or a slight disturbance calling their attention. Yet trifling as it may be, when they look, we look. It is instinctual. We follow their gaze.

This Sunday—Gaudete Sunday—we remember as we do frequently this time of year the “patron saint of Advent,” John the Baptist. Donning rose instead of camelhair we nevertheless rejoice together with the Baptist, for the Messiah is coming soon. Our hearts heed his ever pertinent proclamation to prepare the way of the Lord through penance and impatience. This Sunday, we gaze upon the Baptist, but seek him not. Our gaze awaits the Lord.  

When the Lord comes, however, there is neither tension nor confusion. As John the Evangelist writes, “The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at Jesus as he walked and said ‘Behold the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus” (Jn. 1:35). John exits the stage just moments after he enters—He must increase, I must decrease.

The disciples, gazing upon the Baptist, see his eyes dart from their own. Instinctually, they look. “Behold the Lamb of God!” John transfers their gaze as a window transfers light; we do not marvel at the window, only at the object illumined. Just like that the disciples follow Our Lord, and the Baptist departs—well done, good and faithful servant.

That is all it takes: a captivating gaze upon the Beloved. As French theologian Jean Corban writes:

The starting point is the gaze which John the Baptist directs at Jesus… It is at this point that two of John’s disciples begin to follow Jesus. Who will ever grasp the depth of this gaze of the bridegroom’s friend, a gaze so purified by expectation and so communicative of divine love that his two disciples leave him, ‘drawn’ by this man before whom their master retires into the background?

We wait for the Lord, and when he comes, we place our steadfast gaze upon him. That is all he asks. With such a gaze John the Baptist fulfilled his entire mission, the woman at the well thirsted no more, and Peter walked upon water. The Christian mission, heavy laden with crosses, is rather simple: gaze upon the Lord. Only thus will our task be easy and our burden light.

John Vianney recalled frequently witnessing a humble parishioner sitting in the pews, gazing upon the Blessed Sacrament. He uttered no words, read no devotionals. The cure of Ars inquired one day “What do you say to Our Lord in prayer?” “Nothing,” the man responded, “I look at him, and he looks at me.”

As we prepare our hearts for the coming of the Messiah, may we not grow weary or anxious with so much to do in so little time. Let us instead grow impatient for Christmas like children—like the Baptist. For our only task is to behold.

 +JMJ+

On the Feast of Blessed John Paul: Memory and Identity

In June of 1979, John Paul II made his first papal pilgrimage back to his homeland, Poland, then governed by a Soviet-controlled puppet regime. The “Polish” authorities found themselves perplexed by the dilemma. Obviously, to refuse the pope entrance to his own country would prove catastrophic for international public relations. Simultaneously, however, no one lacked knowledge of the new pontiff’s charisma with the masses and opposition to communist regimes, least of all the Polish people. In a correspondence between Edward Gierek, the Polish Party Leader, and Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet party chieftain, the latter cautioned, “Take my advice, don’t give him any reception. It will only cause trouble… Tell the pope—he’s a wise man—he can declare publicly he can’t come due to illness.” Yet after Gierek expressed the impossibility of either proposal, Brezhnev conceded, “Do as you wish. But be careful you don’t regret it later.”[1]

            Thus began John Paul’s pilgrimage to Poland—a pilgrimage in which he set the stage for a quarter-century papacy. People saw for the first time on an international stage who this man was, and how he would lead the Church into the third millennium. Volumes have been written on his role in the collapse of the Soviet Union, his emphasis on the dignity of human life, and his monumental efforts toward ecumenism. Yet it was less his deeds and more his manner which moved the hearts of so many—least of all the young. He neither scolded nor scoffed, neither romanticized nor despised. Rather, he reminded people who they are.

         Memory (anamnesis) lies at the heart of the Church. Pope Francis’ most recent encyclical calls our present culture one of “massive amnesia.” “The question of truth,” he adds, “is really a question of memory, deep memory, for it deals with something prior to ourselves and can succeed in uniting us in a way that transcends our petty and limited individual consciousness.”[2] Man possesses a primal knowledge of and orientation toward the true and the good. This is the foundation of natural law, of Paul’s indictment of the pagan Romans (Rom. 1:20), and of the Church’s (new) evangelization. Joseph Ratzinger wrote:

            This anamnesis of the Creator, which is identical with the foundations of our existence, is the reason that mission is both possible and justified. The Gospel may and indeed must be proclaimed to the pagans, because this is what they are waiting for, even if they do not know this themselves.[3]

Man is fundamentally oriented toward truth because at the dawn of his being stands Truth himself. God’s free act of creation and his subsequent announcement that “it is good” renders all creation ordered to Himself—the Good and the True. Consequently, man’s existence is neither a diminution toward nothingness nor an idealism toward the perfection of history. Man’s existence is a reditus, a return to the Creator. Man finds himself naturally oriented to turn back, to conversion, which is a turn to the depths of being, to that which is prior to himself.

        Thus, never can the philosopher or theologian posit that we live in a “post-Christian” era. “Every age is a Christian age,” the French Dominican A.G. Sertillanges wrote. Christ dwells in every age in the sacraments—Mother Church’s treasury of memory. Each Sunday we hear “Do this in memory of me,” and we remember not some distant past, but a reality present in our time. Only through memory can we rediscover our true identity and that authenticity for which all our subcultures long. Memory breeds authenticity.

         When John Paul stood before the crowds in Poland, he proclaimed in so many words, “You are not who they say you are. Let me remind you who you are!” Only through memory would the Polish people realize that they could not be defined by a recent history of political and social distress. “It is impossible to understand this city,” John Paul spoke in his famous homily in Victory Square, Warsaw:

… that undertook in 1944 an unequal battle against the aggressor, a battle in which it was abandoned by the allied powers, a battle in which it was buried under its own ruins—if it is not remembered that under those same ruins there was also the statue of Christ the Saviour with his cross that is in front of the church at Krakowskie Przedmiescie. It is impossible to understand the history of Poland from Stanislaus in Skalka to Maximilian Kolbe at Oswiecim unless we apply to them that same single fundamental criterion that is called Jesus Christ.”

To remember who we are is to remember Christ, for “The exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man.” Memory always reaches for that constant, Christ, who stands at the apex of history while the world turns (Stat crux dum volvitur orbis). In the Incarnation, God remembered his people, and thus his people remembered their God. The whole of their history leapt to the fore as they looked upon the face of their long awaited hope—“he has remembered his holy covenant.” The person of Christ refreshes anamnesis—the person of Truth persists from “generation to generation.”

        Brezhnev was right after all. John Paul did "only cause trouble"—or in the words of our current pope, “a mess.” Poland was never the same. Her son had returned, and he brought not only Peter but Christ. And when he concluded his Victory Square ho

mily with the words “Let your spirit descend and renew the face of this earth,” even the memory of the Soviet block stirred.

       John Paul II—the Great Liberator, the Great Evangelist, simply the Great? On this his feast day, I would like to posit another title to his list: The Great Reminder. John Paul understood the heart of evangelization to be the habitus of memory. He reminded the Church who she was in the tumultuous decades of the late twentieth century. He reminded her through his sermons, his travels, his forgiveness, his love. Most importantly, however, he reminded her for two hours every morning when he knelt in front of the tabernacle. “Here is your hope,” he proclaimed in silence, “Here is He for whom your hearts long.” This was how he responded to the chants of the Polish people—“We want God!”—in June of 1979. May we likewise respond to the chants of our countrymen today.

           

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[1] George Weigel, Witness to Hope (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1999), 301.

[2] Francis, Lumen Fidei, ch. 2, n. 25.

[3] Ratzinger, Values in a Time of Upheaval, 92. 

A Comment on the Comments of Francis

Pope Francis continues to make headlines. Although this time, he is taking more heat than he did for the acquisition of a 1984 Renault 4. Accused by the “right” of softening the Church’s stance on the hot-button issues of abortion and homosexuality, and misconstrued by the “left” of changing the Church’s stance on those issues, Francis is finding the papacy a hard place to please. Good thing pleasing is not his job.

            I wish to offer just a few perhaps disjointed comments on the recent interview with the Holy Father. First of all, we must remember who we’re dealing with here. No, I do not mean the Argentinian Jesuit, lover-of-the-poor (though, it cannot be denied). I mean the office behind the man—St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ on earth. My intent is not to resurrect Unam Sanctam, but rather to emphasize that it is better to be obedient and listen to our Holy Father rather than quickly and openly accuse him before the watchful eyes of modernity. Remember, obedience calls for us to follow our conscience, which is served by the Holy Father and the Magisterial teaching of the Church. Thus disobedience is warranted only if the order is utterly opposed to human reason. That being said, I realize that the Holy Father by no means spoke infallibly or even close to it. Instead, I invite all those who so sternly know “what they would do if they were in his shoes” to recall that we are not called to be in his shoes, but under his mitre.

            Second, the Holy Father was right on. The message of the Church is not one of political activism, economic freedom, or condemnation. The message of the Church is Jesus Christ, who came for the salvation of the world. This does not mean that we should abandon the fights in which we are engaged. Rather, this means that we should never forget that the kingdom of God is not of this earth, nor will it ever be. The world was not saved by a politician or an activist or a scientist, but by death and resurrection.  Christ did not bring us food or power or money. “He brought God” Pope Benedict so simply put it, “He brought God.”

            Finally, we should recall that the Church is not concerned with appearance, but with souls. Many today criticize Francis for not speaking out strongly enough against abortion or homosexuality. In a similar vein, many seventy years ago criticized Pope Pius XII for not speaking out strongly enough against Hitler. “If we speak out more,” Pius told his cardinals, “things will be worse.” What did he do instead? While many lambasted his silence, Pius worked behind the scenes to save over 800,000 Jewish people—more than all other efforts in Italy combined.  And while his reputation has been consequently smeared for decades, it is remembered with fondness by the Jewish community in Rome—the leader of which converted to Catholicism and changed his name to Eugenio in honor of Pius XII’s birth name.

            Francis, likewise, may be lambasted for his silence and criticized by many for his words as a weak representative of the Church. Although quite frankly, I’d be more interested in asking 35 years old Anna Romano her thoughts. After refusing to have an abortion, Francis called her, consoled her, and offered to baptize her baby. Perhaps this is his message in the face of word-wars. Perhaps this is his way of saying with Christ “I desire mercy…”