Fr. Peter John Cameron, OP - published on 12/10/22 ALETEIA
Jesus acts to put John the Baptist face-to-face with brand new wonders existing in the world thanks to Jesus’ incarnate Presence. And then the Lord leaves it to the Baptist to do the math.
During the worst days of the Covid lockdown, I was asked to give a Zoom presentation on “Joy in a Time of Pandemic.” I was psyched about the topic because I am a big believer in joy, which proves its mettle most in times of tribulation.
I think I learned this from St. John the Baptist, one of my favorite saints. Because it was while John the Baptist endured his own grueling lockdown—confined in prison by King Herod—that he experienced one of the greatest joys of his life.
The Gospel (Mt 11:2-11) tells us that, from his dungeon cell, John “heard of the works of the Christ.” So he sent his disciples to Jesus with the burning question: Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another? Our Lord could have replied very simply: I am the one. But he didn’t. Instead, Jesus opted for an elaborate answer smacking of a riddle: Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them. Why this brainteaser response?
In fact, there is no “the” before these nouns in the Greek version of the text. Which means that Jesus is asserting that it is not merely certain afflicted individuals, but rather blindness, lameness, leprosy, deafness, and death itself that is being conquered in him. The Greek, however, does employ the word “and” five times. “The fivefold repetition of the conjunction ‘and’ gives us the feeling of an unending story” (E. Leiva-Merikakis), implying countless unmentioned sorrows—like the ones in your life—that Jesus promises to conquer as well!
Jesus wants John to be overcome with joy in his imprisonment. St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of joy as “a well-being of the spirit in response to what exists”—in other words, joy wells up in us when we recognize the good things God brings forth. Thus the motive for the Lord’s roundabout response: Jesus acts to put John face-to-face with brand new wonders existing in the world thanks to Jesus’ incarnate Presence. And then the Lord leaves it to the Baptist to do the math.
This is in keeping with the very way that John the Baptist in the desert himself heralded the coming of Jesus. He blesses the people with a new way of looking at the world … of regarding reality. “John the Baptist interrupted what people saw as a life of disconcerting drought” (L. Giussani). The papal preacher, Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, explains:
John helps the people to look past the wall of contrary appearances to make them see the Messiah hidden behind the semblance of a man like others. The Baptist in this way inaugurated the new Christian form of prophecy, which does not consist in proclaiming a future salvation, but in revealing the hidden presence of Christ in the world.
But so often we remain oblivious to that Presence, giving short shrift to joy. Joy by definition is the gladness, the satisfaction that appears when our will possesses something which leads to our genuine happiness. Joy is the response of the human heart to what it perceives as an authentic promise of life. And Christ’s Presence is just that!
And here is the wondrous thing about joy: Joy can coincide with sadness—because of the promise joy contains. But,joy cannot coexist with fear! Why do we end up becoming manipulated by fear, surrendering our life’s joy? Because we are no longer anchored by The Promise. We no longer have our gaze fixed on The Promise. As long as we are afraid, we are not looking for love. Instead, when menaced by something, we’re on the lookout for power. Keeping our eyes focused on The Promise is what Advent is all about.
The heroic opponent to Nazism, Jesuit Fr. Alfred Delp—locked in solitary confinement by his Nazi captors, tortured, his hands constantly in handcuffs—on smuggled slips of paper wrote from his cell:
The promises of God stand above us, more valid than the stars and more effective than the sun. Based on these promises, we will become healthy and free, from the center of our being. The promises have turned us around and opened life out into the infinite. Even lamentation retains the song of these promises, and distress their sound, and loneliness their confidence.
At the core of the promises stands this fact: “The desire for joy is inherently stronger than the fear of sadness” (St. Thomas Aquinas). That is why Fr. Delp insists that each person “should take joy as seriously as he takes himself. And he should believe in his heart and in his Lord God, even through darkness and distress, that he is created for joy. Such a life knows it is on the right path to perfection.” The philosopher/mystic Simone Weil observed: “Suffering is violence, joy is gentleness, but joy is the stronger.”
Keep this in mind: Joy is the only real enemy to Satan! Who understood this better than J.R.R. Tolkien who went so far as to invent an expression that attempts to capture the invincibility of joy:
I coined the word “eucatastrophe”: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears. It produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth; your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. Just as the hero of a mythical tale is on the verge of a disastrous dead end, with his demise looming before him, terrible and inevitable, the eucatastrophe happens: The good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn”—this joy is a sudden and miraculous grace. It denies universal final defeat, giving a fleeting glimpse of joy. Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
“The source of Christian joy,” wrote Pope Benedict XVI, “is the certainty of being loved by God, loved personally by our Creator, by the One who loves each one of us with a passionate and faithful love, a love greater than our infidelities and sins, a love which forgives.” How can this Love that is coming to claim us not cause a eucatastrophe in us?
“If there is an answer to death, it will make genuine joy possible” (J. Ratzinger). And there is a definitive answer to death. That’s what moves us to rejoice this Gaudete Sunday and to convince us to take our joy seriously.
Nicholas Senz - published on 12/09/22 ALETEIA
Justice and Mercy
St. Thomas notes that in every act of God, both mercy and justice are at work.
Does God have a split personality? We sometimes hear people speak of him as if he did. Indeed, a second century priest named Marcion actually proposed this was true. Marcion wrote a book called the Antitheses in which he placed side by side passages from each Testament that he found contradictory.
Many of the differences center on Marcion’s claim that the God of the Old Testament loved justice, while the God of the New Testament loved mercy. For example, he quotes Exodus 21—“an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”—and opposes it to Luke 6—“turn the other cheek.” Marcion attempts to demonstrate that “The Creator God is judicial, harsh, and mighty in war” while “the Supreme God is gentle and simply good and excellent.”
While we know there is only one God, we do sometimes still hear people speak of “The God of the Old Testament” and “The God of the New Testament,” as if they were two different beings. How do we reconcile the sometimes differing pictures we see of God?
God is perfectly simple
Jesus tells us our Father in Heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48). God would not be God if He did not contain all perfections. Any good that we can conceive of, God possesses it completely. So, God is perfectly good, perfectly loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing, and more. And since God is perfectly simple—that is, God does not have components or parts—all perfections are one in God. God’s knowledge and power are one, as are his goodness and presence.
Still, there are some goods, like justice and mercy, that we have a hard time picturing together. Justice is a good. It is the virtue of giving to others what they are owed, what they deserve. Mercy is also a good. We often think of mercy as relenting in punishment, or sparing another of the consequences of their actions.
Don’t these two conflict? If we are acting with justice toward someone who has done wrong, will we not make them pay for their deeds, as a matter of retribution? If we act with mercy toward a wrong-doer, will we not release them from their sentence early, or even forego it entirely? Mercy and justice would seem to be opposites. Yet they are both goods in their own right. How can God be both perfectly merciful and perfectly just?
What is the answer?
The answer to this question lies in the Cross, and St. Thomas Aquinas helps us to understand it.
In the Summa Theologiae (III, q. 46, a. 1, ad.3), St. Thomas affirms that God could have saved us in a way other than by the sacrifice of His Son. Though God could have restored humanity to His grace merely with a word, St. Thomas says the Cross was most fitting, because “Christ’s Passion was in keeping with both His mercy and His justice.” The Passion fits with God’s justice because “satisfaction was made for the sin of the human race.” The consequences of sin are suffering and death. By his Passion and death, Christ thus saves us from sin by taking on to Himself the consequences of our sin. Christ does not merely wave away our sins, but pays for them. The satisfaction owed for our sins is made, and thus justice is done.
The Passion also fits with God’s mercy, because “man of himself could not satisfy for the sin of all human nature,” so the Son of God Himself came to give Himself to save us. Because we owed a debt we could not pay, God paid the debt for us, thus showing us His mercy. It is akin to a judge having his own son before him in court. The judge fines his son for his offense, but then takes off his judge’s robe, comes down from the bench, and pays his son’s fine for him.
The judge is just because he demands satisfaction be made for the offense, and merciful because he makes satisfaction himself. This is a greater act than merely dismissing the offense and the fine. In the same way, God shows us his mercy by paying the debt owed for our sins, rather than leaving us indebted forever. Because God saves us not by a mere command but by an act of self-sacrifice, he acts with greater mercy. As St. Thomas says:
“God acts mercifully, not indeed by going against His justice, but by doing something more than justice; thus a man who pays another two hundred pieces of money, though owing him only one hundred, does nothing against justice, but acts liberally or mercifully. The case is the same with one who pardons an offence committed against him, for in remitting it he may be said to bestow a gift.” (ST I, q. 21, a. 3, ad. 2)
Our existence is mercy
The Cross is God’s demonstration to us that mercy is not opposed to justice. The two are not contraries. They are on the same side of the ledger. Mercy is not on the opposite side of the spectrum to justice, but rather a greater form of justice. Mercy does not lay aside justice, but surpasses it.
St. Thomas notes that in every act of God, both mercy and justice are at work. Our very existence is in a sense an act of mercy, because we are not owed existence from God. God creates us from an outpouring of his goodness—in our very being, God gives us more than what we are owed. In forgiving our sins, He does no less. Pope Francis encapsulated this truth well when he wrote,
“Mercy is the fullness of justice and the most radiant manifestation of God’s truth.” (Amoris Laetitia 311)
