Elder Sophrony on ascetic struggle and the love of Christ

I came upon this quotation from the Greek Orthodox writer Elder Sophrony (1896-1993) on the wonderful Christ in Our Midst blog (a treasure-chest of Patristic and Orthodox spiritual wisdom and beautiful art-work). It bears repeated reading...

Inestimable are the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Every true gift is none other than a flame of love.

But for our hearts to become capable of receiving the love of Christ in its glowing manifestations we must all, every one of us, endure many trials.

People who live lives of ease atrophy spiritually and remain impervious to divinely universal, Christ-like love. They live and die without their spirit rising upward to heaven.

Gifts from on High are commensurate to our ascetic struggle. All who walk the way of Christ’s commandments are regenerated in their very following of Him – some more, some less, depending on the ardor manifested.

Through being crucified together with God the Word-made-flesh, grace descends on the believer, likening him to God made man.

This great gift also embraces in itself life-giving theology through a real dwelling in the Light of love.

H/T Christ in Our Midst

Dialogue with God, with His Word, is a Presence of Heaven

More reflections on St Jerome and Scripture by Pope Benedict XVI:

In reality, to dialogue with God, with his Word, is in a certain sense a presence of Heaven, a presence of God.

To draw near to the biblical texts, above all the New Testament, is essential for the believer, because “ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ”….

Truly “in love” with the Word of God, he asked himself: “How could one live without the knowledge of Scripture, through which one learns to know Christ himself, who is the life of believers?” (Ep. 30, 7).

I have posted a much fuller extract from this address here at Enlarging the Heart

The Word of God descends into the heart

Fr Mark at Vultus Christi has written a wonderful homily entitled St Jerome and Lectio Divina. The following is a short extract, but I heartily recommend the entire homily.

Today’s liturgy applies to Jerome a verse from the book of Joshua. “The book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it” (Jos 1:8).

“The book shall not depart out of your mouth.” This is the whole significance of meditation in the Bible - not a mental exercise, but a physical one.

The Word of God descends into the heart only after being held, and chewed, and savoured at length in the mouth.

The biblical understanding of meditation has to do with the material repetition of the text, with learning by heart by saying aloud.

Those who read the Scriptures silently deprive themselves of the fundamental experience of the Word of God: hearing it!

Pope Benedict: "What can we learn from St Jerome?"

Pope Benedict had this to say with regard to St Jerome in 2007 during a general audience (one of a series on the Church Fathers):

What can we learn from St Jerome? It seems to me, this above all; to love the Word of God in Sacred Scripture.

St Jerome said: "Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ". It is therefore important that every Christian live in contact and in personal dialogue with the Word of God given to us in Sacred Scripture.

This dialogue with Scripture must always have two dimensions: on the one hand, it must be a truly personal dialogue because God speaks with each one of us through Sacred Scripture and it has a message for each one.

We must not read Sacred Scripture as a word of the past but as the Word of God that is also addressed to us, and we must try to understand what it is that the Lord wants to tell us.

However, to avoid falling into individualism, we must bear in mind that the Word of God has been given to us precisely in order to build communion and to join forces in the truth on our journey towards God.

Thus, although it is always a personal Word, it is also a Word that builds community, that builds the Church. We must therefore read it in communion with the living Church.

The privileged place for reading and listening to the Word of God is the liturgy, in which, celebrating the Word and making Christ's Body present in the Sacrament, we actualize the Word in our lives and make it present among us.

We must never forget that the Word of God transcends time. Human opinions come and go. What is very modern today will be very antiquated tomorrow.

On the other hand, the Word of God is the Word of eternal life, it bears within it eternity and is valid for ever. By carrying the Word of God within us, we therefore carry within us eternity, eternal life.

Source: Zenit.

Like a deer that longs for springs of water...

Today is the feat of St Jerome, described by Mike Aquilina as The Great Name-Caller and Doctor Cantankerous - one of the crankiest of the Church Fathers, but also one of the greatest.

The following is a taste of a longer extract over at my other blog, Enlarging the Heart.

Like a deer that longs for springs of water...they long for the springs of the Church: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

We can find the Father described as a spring in Jeremiah: They have abandoned me, the fountain of living water, to dig themselves leaky cisterns that cannot hold water.

About the Son we read somewhere: They have forsaken the fountain of wisdom.

Finally, of the Holy Spirit: Anyone who drinks the water that I shall give will have a spring inside him, welling up to eternal life.

Here the evangelist is saying that the words of the Saviour come from the Holy Spirit. So you see it very clearly confirmed that the springs that water the Church are the mystery of the Trinity.

More here...

Advice from St Jerome

Pray without Ceasing

The Apostle bids us pray without ceasing and to saints their very slumber is a prayer. Yet we should have fixed hours for praying, so that if we happen to be engaged in some business, the time itself will remind us of our duty.

Everyone knows that the third, sixth, and ninth hours, dawn, too, and evening, are the right times. And no food should be taken until after a prayer, nor should we leave the table without rendering thanks to the Creator.

Twice or three times in the night we should rise from the bed and say over passages of Scripture which we know by heart.

Judge not...

Speak evil of no one and slander not your mother's son. "Who art thou who judgest another's servant? To his own lord he standeth or falleth."

....If you have fasted for two days, do not think yourself better than one who has not fasted. You fast and are peevish; the other eats and is pleasant.

You work off your irritability and hunger by quarreling; the other eats moderately and gives thanks to God....

Don't over-dramatise your crosses

For our salvation the Son of God became the Son of Man.... He held the world in his little hand but he was contained in a narrow manger.

I say nothing of the thirty years He lived obscure and content with his parents' poverty. He is scourged and says not a word. He is crucified and prays for his crucifiers.

...But we are annoyed if our food lacks flavor and imagine we are doing God service when we drink water with our wine.

Picture paradise

Step out, I beg you, a little from your body and picture above your eyes the reward which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man."

What will be the splendor of that day when Mary, the Lord's mother, shall come to meet you, attended by her virgin bands?

...Then shall the hundred and forty and four thousand hold their harps before the throne and before the elders and sing a new song.

And no man will know that song but the company appointed: "These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth."

Whenever the world's vain display allures you, whenever you see in the world something glorious, pass over in mind to Paradise.

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter....

From St. Jerome, Select Letters, translated by F. A. Wright, Loeb Classical Library, @ EWTN.

This cure for death, this medicine of immortality, this vesting in the robes of glory

Over on my other blog, a St Michael-related extract from Pope Benedict's 2010 Easter Vigil homily...

This Cure for Death, this Medicine of Immortality, this Vesting in the Robes of Glory

More archangelic hymnody

O Jesu Life, spring of the soul!
The Father's power and glory bright!
Thee with the Angels we extol;
From thee they draw their life and light.

Thy thousand thousand hosts are spread
Embattled o'er the azure sky;
But Michael bears thy standard dread,
And lifts the mighty Cross on high.

He in that Sign the rebel power.
Did with their Dragon Prince expel;
And hurled them from the heavens' high towers,
Down like a thunderbolt to hell.

Grant us, with Michael, still, O Lord,
Against the prince of pride to fight;
So may a crown be our reward,
Before the Lamb's pure throne of light.

To God the Father, with the Son
And Holy Paraclete, with thee,
As evermore hath been before,
Be glory through eternity.


Te splendor et virtus Patris,
Te vita, Jesu, cordium,
Ab ore qui pendent tuo,
Laudamus inter angelos.

Tibi mille densa millium
Ducum corona militat:
Sed explicat victor crucem
Michael salutis signifer.

Draconis hic dirum caput
In ima pellit tartara,
Ducemque cum rebellibus
Coelesti ab arce fulminat.

Contra ducem superbiae
Sequamur hunc nos principem,
Ut detur ex Agni throno
Nobis corona gloriae.

Deo Patri sit gloria,
Qui nos redemit Filius
Et Sanctus unxit Spiritus
Per Angelos custodiat
Amen.


Office hymn at Lauds, Feast of the Dedication of St Michael the Archangel, from the pre-Vatican 2 Breviary.

Knowledge and communion

Following on from the previous post, here's an extract from a General Audience given by Pope Benedict XVI on Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022), whom the Pope presents as one of the principal sources of the Eastern monastic tradition:

Symeon focuses his reflection on the presence of the Holy Spirit in those who are baptized and on the awareness they must have of this spiritual reality. Christian life - he stresses - is intimate and personal communion with God; divine grace illumines the believer's heart and leads him to the mystical vision of the Lord.

In this line, Symeon the New Theologian insists on the fact that true knowledge of God stems from a journey of interior purification, which begins with conversion of heart, thanks to the strength of faith and love; passes through profound repentance and sincere sorrow for one's sins; and arrives at union with Christ, source of joy and peace, invaded by the light of his presence in us.

For Symeon, such an experience of divine grace is not an exceptional gift for some mystics, but the fruit of baptism in the life of every seriously committed faithful -- a point on which to reflect, dear brothers and sisters!

This holy Eastern monk calls us all to attention to the spiritual life, to the hidden presence of God in us, to honesty of conscience and purification, to conversion of heart, so that the Holy Spirit will be present in us and guide us.

If in fact we are justly preoccupied about taking care of our physical growth, it is even more important not to neglect our interior growth, which consists in knowledge of God, in true knowledge, not only taken from books, but interior, and in communion with God, to experience his help at all times and in every circumstance.

Source: Zenit

Mind, reason, heart

Two of the themes explored by Pope Benedict in his various homilies and addresses during the course of his recent visit to the UK were (1) the correlation between faith and reason, and (2) the correlation between faith and prayer of the heart - particularly as these two motifs find expression in the thought of Bl JH Newman.

Today I came across the following short quotation from Greek Orthodox writer Metropolitan Kallistos Ware which looks at the relation betwen the intellectual faith-reason sphere and the noetic prayer-heart sphere. I suspect that Newman who have been substantially in agreement.

So long as the ascetic prays with the mind in the head, he will still be working solely with the resources of the human intellect, and on this level he will never attain to an immediate and personal encounter with God.

By the use of the brain, he will at best know about God, but will not know God. For there can be no direct knowledge of God without an exceedingly great love, and such love must come, not from the brain alone, but from the whole man - that is, from the heart.

It is necessary, then, for the ascetic to descend from the head into the heart. He is not required to abandon his intellectual powers - reason, too, is a gift of God - but is called to descend with the mind into his heart.

H/T Sowing Seeds of Orthodoxy

Hymn to the Archangels

Christ, of the angels praise and adoration,
Father and Saviour thou, of every nation,
Graciously grant us all to gain a station,
Where thou art reigning.

Angel all peaceful, to our dwellings send us,
Michael, from heaven coming to befriend us,
Breathing serenest peace may he attend us,
Grim war dispelling.

Angel of strength, who triumphed, tumults quelling,
Gabriel send us, ancient foes expelling,
Oft in these temples may he make his dwelling,
Dear unto heaven.

Angel physician, health on man bestowing,
Raphael send us from the skies all glowing,
All sickness curing, wisest counsel showing
In doubt and danger.

May the fair Mother of the Light be o'er us,
Virgin of peace, with all the angel chorus,
And may the heavenly army go before us,
Guiding and guarding.

O may the Godhead, endless bliss possessing,
Father, Son, Spirit, grant to us this blessing;
All his creation joins his praise confessing,
Now and forever.
Amen.


Christe, sanctorum decus angelorum,
Gentis humanae Sator et Redemptor,
Coelitum nobis tribuas beatas
Scandere sedes.

Angelus pacis Michael in aedes
Coelitus nostras veniat serenae
Auctor ut pacis lacrimosa in orcum
Bella releget.

Angelus fortis Gabriel, ut hostes
Pellat antiquos, et amica coelo,
Quae triumphator statuit per orbem,
Templa revisat.

Angelus nostrae medicus salutis,
Adsit e caelo Raphael, ut omnes
Sanet aegrotos, dubiosque vitae
Dirigat actus.

Virgo dux pacis, Genitrixque lucis,
Et sacer nobis chorus angelorum
Semper assistat, simul et micantis
Regia coeli.

Praestet hoc nobis Deitas beata
Patris ac Nati pariterque sancti
Spiritus, cujus resonat per omnem
Gloria mundum.
Amen.

Office hymn at Lauds, Feast of the Dedication of St Michael the Archangel, from the pre-Vatican 2 Breviary.

Pope Benedict, Newman, Mystical Theology, Orthodoxy...

Reflecting on Pope Benedict's Cofton Park homily on the occasion of Bl John Henry Newman's beatification, Ches (over at the most erudite and reflective of Catholic blogs, The Sensible Bond) ponders

lo and behold, a modern discovery in Hyde Park: silence facilitates prayer.... I wonder if this is what informed the pope's sermon during the Mass at Cofton Park which seemed to focus almost exclusively on spiritual matters. I was underwhelmed initially by what seemed a rather timid reflection on Newman's spiritual life. But perhaps the papal subtext was simply this: any fool can bang a drum of public controversy (and usual does), but fruitfulness comes first from listening to God, like Newman, More, and all the rest.

Well, I think that was definitely one of the papal subtexts, but there were several others (the Pope is too subtle a theologian to restrict himself to just one), and what follows is an attempt to pick out a few more of the expertly interwoven threads....

In his Cofton Park homily, Pope Benedict begins by situating Newman within a tradition of scholar-saints whose personal holiness bears witness to the presence and indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the People of God.

He is worthy to take his place in a long line of saints and scholars from these islands, St Bede, St Hilda, St Aelred, Blessed Duns Scotus, to name but a few. In Blessed John Henry, that tradition of gentle scholarship, deep human wisdom and profound love for the Lord has born rich fruit, as a sign of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit deep within the heart of God's people, bringing forth abundant gifts of holiness.

This indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the Church (the People of God) finds concrete expression in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the individual believer, who is called to bring his heart into communion with the divine Heart:

Cardinal Newman’s motto, cor ad cor loquitur, or "Heart speaks unto heart", gives us an insight into his understanding of the Christian life as a call to holiness, experienced as the profound desire of the human heart to enter into intimate communion with the Heart of God.

Anyone who is familiar with Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality will be struck by the vocabulary which Pope Benedict (who has a keen appreciation of Orthodoxy) employs in discussing a figure who is widely tipped as a future Doctor of the Catholic Church.

Orthodox theology and spirituality (which, arguably, are pretty much one and the same thing in Orthodoxy) place a strong emphasis on the idea that the heart rather than the intellect (in its western sense) is the place of encounter - of communion - between the human person and the divine persons.

Intriguingly, in his address at Evening Prayer in Westminster Abbey, at which a number of senior Orthodox clergy were in attendance, Benedict chose to use the Greek word for communion: koinonia. As Fr Blake rightly observes, he is a "Pope of sign and symbol".

The Pope goes on to explain that Newman understands the communion of the human heart with the Heart of God in terms of transformation into the divine likeness:

He reminds us that faithfulness to prayer gradually transforms us into the divine likeness. As he wrote in one of his many fine sermons, "A habit of prayer, the practice of turning to God and the unseen world in every season, in every place, in every emergency – prayer, I say, has what may be called a natural effect in spiritualising and elevating the soul".

Newman, like Pope Benedict, was steeped in the writings of the Church Fathers (indeed, one of the reasons for his conversion was his conviction that the Catholic Church, unlike the Church of England, had remained faithful to the theological and spiritual teaching of the Fathers), and the idea that prayer transforms us into the divine likeness by elevating and spiritualising the soul reflects the intensely patristic mind-set shared by Newman and Benedict.

Once again, the juxtaposition of the themes of communion with God, prayer of the heart and transformation into the divine likeness is reminiscent of Orthodox theology, and it is not inconceivable that Pope Benedict sees the ecumenical significance of Newman's beatification not in terms of Catholic-Anglican relations but in terms of Catholic Orthodox relations, given that Newman's theological "style" (as Hans Urs von Balthasar might put it), while remaining fully and uncompromisingly Catholic, possesses at times a distinctly Orthodox "feel".

The Pope had, in fact, explored many of these ideas the previous day in his address to young people outside Westminster Cathedral, where he begins by saying

"Heart speaks unto heart" – cor ad cor loquitur – as you know, I chose these words so dear to Cardinal Newman as the theme of my visit. In these few moments that we are together, I wish to speak to you from my own heart, and I ask you to open your hearts to what I have to say.

Benedict clearly does not share the view that theology needs to be dumbed down for a youthful audience, for he follows this opening by touching, as at Cofton, on the profoundest of themes - the heart as the centre of communion with God, communion with God as communion with a Trinity of Persons, and communion with God as transformation into the divine likeness:

I ask each of you, first and foremost, to look into your own heart. Think of all the love that your heart was made to receive, and all the love it is meant to give. After all, we were made for love. This is what the Bible means when it says that we are made in the image and likeness of God: we were made to know the God of love, the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and to find our supreme fulfilment in that divine love that knows no beginning or end.

The conclusion to Benedict's short but impact-laden address is extraordinary. First he beseeches his young audience

I ask you to look into your hearts each day to find the source of all true love. Jesus is always there, quietly waiting for us to be still with him and to hear his voice. Deep within your heart, he is calling you to spend time with him in prayer.

Anyone who is familiar with Carmelite spiritual writing will instantly recognise the mystical tradition on which Benedict is drawing here. And, so, indeed, will anyone who is familiar with Orthodox spiritual writing.

Refreshingly, Benedict is very honest about the fact that all of this requires a lot of discipline and a lot of hard work:

this kind of prayer, real prayer, requires discipline; it requires making time for moments of silence every day. Often it means waiting for the Lord to speak. Even amid the “busy-ness” and the stress of our daily lives, we need to make space for silence, because it is in silence that we find God, and in silence that we discover our true self. And in discovering our true self, we discover the particular vocation which God has given us for the building up of his Church and the redemption of our world.

Again, this could easily have come from one of the extracts on the wonderful Carmelite blog louange de sa gloire. It also echoes the emphasis on the importance of silence which (as Ches argues) was one of the key themes that emerged out of the Hyde Park vigil.

Indeed, one might say that a theology of prayer as silence, contemplation, descent into the heart, communion with the Trinitarian Persons and transformation into the divine likeness is the golden thread the connects the Hyde Park vigil, the address on the steps of Westminster Cathedral and the Crofton Park homily for Bl John Henry Newman's beatification.

The more one reads the homilies and speeches made by Pope Benedict during his recent visit to the UK, the more one discerns a number of these threads - others including redemptive suffering, the relation of faith and culture and the meaning of priesthood - each of which Benedict relates to person of Newman.

I suspect that there many more "papal subtexts" in these various homilies and addresses which we have yet to unpack....

Sickness and redemptive suffering

From the Orthodox blogosphere...

If some illness befalls you, first of all thank God for it, for the Lord God sends every illness for our salvation. Illnesses have always been one of the Lord God’s most powerful motivators towards salvation.

Without illness, many people would not have come to love God, would never have begun to pay less attention to the temporal, and would never have come to so highly value the eternal, as they do now.

Without illness many people would not refrain from vices, as they do now; by means of illness, the Lord God disposes them by force, so to speak, to leave sin and lead a life pleasing to Him.

Without illness, many people would become a cause of tears for a countless number of people or a most disastrous plague for human souls; but by means of prolonged or continual illness the All-good God denies them the opportunity to leave their houses and cause injury to others.

By means of illness, He has cut them off from contact with their neighbors; they now are harmless to their neighbors and less harmful to themselves.

So, thank the Lord God that He is not depriving you of His grace and is using one of His most powerful tools in the cause of your salvation.

from the book: How to Live a Holy Life by Met. Gregory of St Petersburg (1784-1860)

H/T The Handmaid

Pandora's box

There's an interesting piece in today's Daily Mail - an extract (not for the easily shocked) from a book by Dominic Sandbrook, which argues that the 1960s were, for most people, a very conservative decade (morally and culturally), and that the real revolution occurred in the 1970s.

He attributes the opening of this cultural Pandora's Box to a single event - the insistence by the goverment of the day that the contraceptive pill, hitherto difficult to obtain, should be made widely and easily available.

Sandbrook (who makes no mention of religion) chronicles the social consequences of this event (as he sees them), with the moral rottenness at the heart of Oxford, as depicted in Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novels, and of academia in general, as exposed in Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man), being emblematic of the United Kingdom's Gadarene descent into terminal moral decline.

I've no doubt that Sandbrook's narrative and analysis are highly controversial (and I appreciate that comment pieces in the Mail aren't everyone's cup of tea), but they certainly lend credence to the view that Humanae Vitae was, from a consequentialist point of view, a prophetic document.

(The Church's position is, of course, based on natural law ethics rather than on consequentialist ethics. There is, however, a case for saying that the consequentialist argument may carry more weight with society at large than does the natural law argument.)

Forty years ago the world (and, indeed, large sections of the Catholic Church) chose to ignore Pope Paul VI.

For all the "we must listen to what Pope Benedict has to say to us" rhetoric of certain UK politicians, I'm not convinced that, two generations later, the world is ready to think the unthinkable - that Paul VI may actually have been right.

St Edith Stein and Pope Benedict XVI

The theology of sacrifice and suffering outlined by Pope Benedict in his recent homily at Westminster Cathedral (and described in my previous post) exhibits many similarities to the thought of St Edith Stein, the Carmelite philosopher and theologian who died in Auschwitz.

Like Pope Benedict, Edith sees the formula which concludes the euchacristic prayer as central to a proper understanding of the nature of the Mass, of liturgy, and of the Church:

"Through him, with him, and in him in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, for ever and ever." With these solemn words, the priest ends the eucharistic prayer at the center of which is the mysterious event of the consecration.

Edith expounds the "through him, with him, and in him" doxology in such a way as to emphasise that "the prayer of the Church is the prayer of the ever-living Christ":

All praise of God is through, with, and in Christ. Through him, because only through Christ does humanity have access to the Father and because his existence as God-man and his work of salvation are the fullest glorification of the Father;

with him, because all authentic prayer is the fruit of union with Christ and at the same time buttresses this union, and because in honoring the Son one honors the Father and vice versa;

in him, because the praying church is Christ himself, with every individual praying member as a part of his Mystical Body, and because the Father is in the Son and the Son the reflection of the Father, who makes his majesty visible.

The dual meanings of through, with, and in clearly express the God-man’s mediation. The prayer of the church is the prayer of the ever-living Christ. Its prototype is Christ’s prayer during his human life.

By the same token, the battle of the Church is the battle of the ever-living Christ - a battle which is ongoing:

The battle between Christ and the Antichrist is not yet over. The followers of Christ have their place in this battle, and their chief weapon is the cross.

More specifically, the followers of Christ are called to accompany and assist Him along the Way of the Cross:

The Savior is not alone on the way of the cross. Not only are there adversaries around him who oppress him, but also people who succor him. The archetype of followers of the cross for all time is the Mother of God. Typical of those who submit to the suffering inflicted on them and experience his blessing by bearing it is Simon of Cyrene. Representative of those who love him and yearn to serve the Lord is Veronica.

Like Benedict, Edith sees this participation in the Cross by the faithful as redemptive - both for the one who suffers and for others. This is because, again like Benedict, she understands the suffering of the Church and of individual Christians as an action of Christ, inasmuch as the prayer and sacrifice and suffering of the Church is the prayer and sacrifice and suffering of the ever-living Christ, offered by Him perpetually to the Father in the Heavenly Liturgy:

Everyone who, in the course of time, has borne an onerous destiny in remembrance of the suffering Savior or who has freely taken up works of expiation has by doing so canceled some of the mighty load of human sin and has helped the Lord carry his burden. Or rather, Christ the head effects expiation in these members of his Mystical Body who put themselves, body and soul, at his disposal for carrying out his work of salvation.

When freely-accepted, suffering with Christ both brings about union with Him and gives expression to our existing relationship with Him:

Thus, when someone desires to suffer, it is not merely a pious reminder of the suffering of the Lord. Voluntary expiatory suffering is what truly and really unites one to the Lord intimately. When it arises, it comes from an already existing relationship with Christ.

In order to enter fully into this union of the Via Crucis, the Spirit of Christ must first dwell in us, and we must first dwell in Him as members of the Mystical Body (the Church) of which He is the Head in such a way that His life flows into us (this idea of Christ's Life flowing into the Church and into the individual believer is another theme common to Edith and to Benedict's Westminster Cathedral homily):

Only someone whose spiritual eyes have been opened to the supernatural correlations of worldly events can desire suffering in expiation, and this is only possible for people in whom the spirit of Christ dwells, who as members are given life by the Head, receive his power, his meaning, and his direction.

Edith reminds us that victory and salvation have alread been won on Calvary. However, because we are members of the Mystical Body of which He is the Head (and are thereby filled with the inflowing of His life and power), we can share with Christ in His carrying of the Cross in such a way that our sufferings become redemptive for ourselves and for others - specifically because Christ now lives in us and acts in us and by us and through us.

And so those who have a predilection for the way of the cross by no means deny that Good Friday is past and that the work of salvation has been accomplished. Only those who are saved, only children of grace, can in fact be bearers of Christ’s cross.Only in union with the divine Head does human suffering take on expiatory power.

"Through Him, with Him, and in Him" has thus become, from His side, "through them [individual Christians; the Church], with them, and in them". There comes into being a kind of interpenetration, a mutual indwelling, of the Christ in the Church, in such a way that human suffering, properly understood and grace-fully accepted, becomes not just sanctifying but sacrificial, redemptive, liturgical, eucharistic.

(The quotations from Edith Stein are extracted from Before the Face of God and At the Foot of the Cross at my Enlarging the Heart blog here, here and here.)

Pope Benedict's Westminster Cathedral Homily

From a theological point of view, the highlight of Pope Benedict's recent visit to the UK was his homily at Westminster Cathedral, in which he offered nothing less than an outline of a theology of Eucharistic sacrifice.

Christ's saving sacrifice can be seen under three aspects: the sacrifice of the Cross, the sacrifice of the Mass, and the ongoing presentation of the sacrifice of the Cross in the Heavenly Liturgy:

I would like to consider the word of God which has been proclaimed in our midst and reflect on the mystery of the Precious Blood. For that mystery leads us to see the unity between Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, the Eucharistic sacrifice which he has given to his Church, and his eternal priesthood, whereby, seated at the right hand of the Father, he makes unceasing intercession for us, the members of his mystical body.

The sacrifice of the Cross brings about the forgiveness of our sins, and also effects the flowing forth of the life of the incarnate Son into the Church where it finds liturgical expression (above all in the Mass):

The outpouring of Christ’s blood is the source of the Church’s life. St John, as we know, sees in the water and blood which flowed from our Lord’s body the wellspring of that divine life to the Hebrews draws out, we might say, the liturgical implications of this mystery.

Our own sufferings - our own crosses - themselves find liturgical expression in the Mass, and are a contunation of Christ's own Cross, which, as eternal high priest of the Heavenly Liturgy, He unites with His own sacrifice:

The Eucharistic sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ embraces in turn the mystery of our Lord’s continuing passion in the members of his Mystical Body, the Church in every age. Here the great crucifix which towers above us serves as a reminder that Christ, our eternal high priest, daily unites our own sacrifices, our own sufferings, our own needs, hopes and aspirations, to the infinite merits of his sacrifice.

Echoing the concluding words of the Eucharistic Prayer, Benedict explains that the sufferings of the Church and the sufferings of the Christian are essentially sacrificial - and, as such, liturgical - uniting us as they do with the threefold aspects of Christ's own sacrifice (the Cross, the Mass, the Heavenly Liturgy):

Through him, with him, and in him, we lift up our own bodies as a sacrifice holy and acceptable to God (cf Rom 12:1). In this sense we are caught up in his eternal oblation, completing, as St Paul says, in our flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, the Church (cf Col 1:24). In the life of the Church, in her trials and tribulations, Christ continues, in the stark phrase of Pascal, to be in agony until the end of the world

Accordingly, when united with the sacrifice of Christ suffering of the faithful (of the sick, the disabled, the bereaved, the lonely, the disadvantaged) is not only sanctifying for the individual concerned, but sanctifying and sacrificial and redemptive for others, and, indeed, for the entire Church - precisely because it is, like the sacrifice of the Mass and the sacrifice of the Heavenly Liturgy, a continuation and prolongation of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross:

the mystery of Christ’s precious blood...is also present, often hidden in the suffering of all those individual Christians who daily unite their sacrifices to those of the Lord for the sanctification of the Church and the redemption of the world. My thoughts go in a special way to all those who are spiritually united with this Eucharistic celebration, and in particular the sick, the elderly, the handicapped and those who suffer mentally and spiritually.

Benedict's message is that suffering, when accepted and understood and consecrated in the right way, is, in effect, Eucharistic, inasmuch as it both draws its power from the Mass (which itself draws its power from the outpouring of Christ life and blood of Calvary) and participates in the sacrifice of the Mass precisely as a continuation of Christ's own sufferings (there is a strong echo here of St Catherine of Siena's idea that to be a Christian is to be "another Himself" - an extension of Christ).

Benedict's Westminster Cathedral homily provides not only an outline of the Catholic doctrines of salvation, the Mass, and redemptive suffering, but also the foundations for an understanding of asceticism, prayer, mystical theology, purgatory and the transference of merits, popular devotions (epecially the Divine Mercy, the Sacred Heart, the Precious Blood, veneration of the Blessed Sacrament), and much else besides.

The Holy Father has the gift of being able to pack a great deal of profound theological reflection into a short and easily understandable homily.