The Vine and the Branches

Federico Suarez
Original title in Spanish: "La Vid y los Sarmientos"
1992 Original by Federico Suarez 1995 translation: Four Courts Press.
This Nigerian edition is published in 1999 by Criterion Publishers Ltd., with special permission
from Four Courts Press, Limited, Kill Lane, Blackrock, County Dublin, Ireland.
Nihil Obstat: J.M. Chapuli, Censor Deputatus Imprimatur: *A. O. Okogie, Archbishop of Lagos. 11
October 1999
ISBN 978-35129-0-0

Contents
Prologue
The Resurrection
The Vine And The Branches
The Teaching Of The Apostles
The Living Bread
Let A Man Examine Himself
We Ought To Pray Always
Leaven In The Mass
Let No Man Put Asunder
The Worse Part
The Light Of The World
To Caesar What Is Caesar's
He Who Believes

PROLOGUE
If memory serves me rightly it was St Francis de Sales who said that one of the worst evils God
encounters in the world is ignorance. It is easy to grasp the truth of that statement when we remember
that it is impossible to love a person whom we do not know. Perhaps for this reason there is so little
love of God in the world.
Obviously when I speak of God I am referring to the one true, living God, to the Most Blessed Trinity
of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, God the Creator and Rewarder, infinite and eternal, who
revealed himself to us through Jesus Christ, true God and true Man. There is no other God. Either we
know him, or we don't know himhim and no other God. There may be people who have a certain
idea of the divinity, who believe in some superior being, in a god fashioned by the thought of such and
such a philosopher or inventor of such and such a religion. But I don't think we can say of these
people that they know God in the light of what he has revealed to us about himself. In other words,
they don't know God at all because what they think they know about him in no way corresponds to
what he actually is. We are sure that this Revelation, as interpreted by the infallible Magisterium of
the Church, is true, because Jesus Christ has risen from among the dead. A person who does not
believe in Revelation cannot strictly speaking be called a Christian, irrespective of how much he or
she may admire the person of Jesus.
Only when we know God can we love him and, as love is deeds not sweet words, love of God is
manifested by our doing what is good in his eyes: faithfully fulfilling his commandments'He who
has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me' (Jn 14:21)struggling to put into
practice the spirit of the Gospel, drinking in its teaching, frequenting the sacraments so that grace may
transform us into the image of Christ, serving God (and not ourselves) with the talents and qualities he
has bestowed upon us: life, intelligence, sight and the other senses, free will, etc. In a word, living for
God, because that is what love means, to live for the person one loves.
To make known, therefore, in one way or another, what the Lord has wanted to teach us through Jesus
Christ is an important task, always but more so nowadays when the doctrinal environment is so
contaminated. No effort to make known Catholic teaching will ever be too much.
The truth is, as St Gregory the Great so rightly said, 'if the Spirit does not assist the hearer, then the
word of the teacher is in vain.' Teaching must be given, but it must be imparted to each and every
individual. Openness of heart to the teaching of the Apostles is the work of grace, not the result of
discussion or controversy, because here we are concerned with believing. But such openness is
difficult where resistance is encountered. God's word can slide over us and leave us empty and
sterile, as if it had never been spoken.
May the Blessed Virgin obtain for us this grace of the Holy Spirit so that God's word, as taught
always and everywhere by the Church, may so enter into our lives that we become holy and pleasing
to the Lord.

THE RESURRECTION
Those of you who have read Chesterton's stories about Fr. Brown may remember the story about the

thief, disguised as a priest, who journeyed with Fr. Brown planning to steal from him a valuable
silver cross studded with sapphires which Fr. Brown was bringing to a Eucharistic congress.
Naturally he did not succeed in stealing it, because Fr. Brown recognized almost immediately that he
was not a priest: 'you attacked reason', he said, 'and that's bad theology.'
It is indeed bad theology. The Church has always held reason in high esteemfor it is a spark of the
divine intelligence, a quality which makes man the image and likeness of God; in fact the First
Vatican Council canonized reason by declaring, in a dogmatic statement, that man can, by applying his
natural reason in the right way, arrive at a knowledge of God's existence and of some of his attributes.
The Council did this because, in reaction against the disastrous results of rationalism, some wellintentioned people went as far as affirming that reason always went wrong and was incapable of
attaining knowledge of religious truth (forgetting that some of the early Greek philosophers did
manage to know God by using natural reason properly).
Our faith in Jesus Christ is not an irrational faith, or a mind-boggling puzzle or a blind decision of the
will with no foundation other than the will itself. We do not believe in what is technically called
'catholic faith', that is, in those things which the Church proposes to us as matters of faith, simply
because the Church proposes them. True, this is not to say that faith is a conclusion drawn from
particular premises: that would not be faith, but science. What I mean is that we have a rational basis
for giving our assent to what God has revealed to manthat is, we can apply tests to check the
truthfulness of Revelation.
Here I should like to refer to one of these tests, the most important one of all and the one which has
been attacked most persistently over the centuries, perhaps because it is the cornerstone for the
strongest arguments in support of our faith.
I refer to the resurrection of Jesus after his death and burial. To get some idea of the scale and
importance of this factI repeat: this factlet us listen to what St Paul says about it to the
Corinthians:
Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no
resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been
raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We
are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ,
whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised,
then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are
still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this
life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied' (1 Cor 15: 12-19).
As far as the event, the fact, of Jesus' resurrection is concerned: how can we know about it?
Undoubtedly through faith. This truth is one which has been guarded and passed on by the Church
without a break ever since the resurrection happened. The Church teaches us that Jesus really and
truly did rise, that is, that the same Jesus who died nailed to the cross came back to life, that his soul
returned to his body, the same body which had gone through the Passion and been buried in the
sepulchre from the Friday to the Sunday. In other words: the resurrection of Jesus Christ is an
historical fact, in the full and proper sense of the word historical. It was something which happened

in time and space; it was not a matter of his dying, and rising and leaving behind an empty tomb and
disappearing without trace never to be seen again. No. After he rose he lived on earth for some time
more; he was seen by other people, people who were able to check that it really was he because they
spoke to him and saw him eat and could see the trace of the nails in his hands and feet and of the lance
in the side of his now glorious body.
It is important to stress that we are dealing here with an historical fact, an historically proven fact.
Mohammed, for example, alleged that he received a revelation from the angel Gabriel. His statement
is historical, but is it historical that the angel Gabriel appeared to him and communicated the
revelations Mohammed said he received? Is there any way of knowing that it is?
There is not. But in the case of the resurrection there is. It is not just that there were witnesses: there
were plenty of witnesses, and there are written sources, of such quality that they stand despite all the
minute sittings done. Had such sittings been done on what we call in general 'ancient history' I fear
that we would not be so certain about many of the events that occurred before the second century A.D.
To deal with the matter in an orderly way we should focus on three points, one of which is prior to
the actual event. This prior point is the death of Jesus, and the only thing we will say about it is that
everyone agrees he died. Another point is what is generally called 'the empty tomb', that is, the
absence of Jesus' body which had been placed in a new tomb in a garden near Calvary. This is, we
might say, the first indication that something has happened. True, it is a negative indicator, but it is
also a fact: Jesus' body was not in the tomb on the Sunday morning. The stone which blocked the
entrance was there, but rolled to one side. What St Luke calls 'the linen cloths' in which the body had
been wrapped were there and St John tells us that 'the napkin, which had been on his head,' was there,
'not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself.' (John had been there first thing on the
Sunday morning and had seen it.)
On this fact of the empty tomb there is no argument either, nor any discrepancies between the
accounts, at least no major discrepancies, and therefore there is no need to go into it any further.
It is from this point onwards that we get positive testimony about Christ's resurrection. The first
person to see him was Mary Magdalen, who went running to tell 'those who had been with him, as
they mourned and wept'. How did they react to the news? By being cheered up and filled with joy?
Apparently not, for St Markwho was living in Jerusalem at the time and was also a disciple of
Jesussays: 'When they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.'
On the same Sunday, in the evening, or perhaps after nightfall while the two disciples who had gone
to Emmaus earlier on in the day were reporting on their meeting with Jesus, he himself 'stood among
them, and said to them, "Peace to you!". But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they
saw a spirit.'
This is really very significant, if you think about it: the disciples did not believe Mary Magdalene
when she told them she had seen Jesus; and when Jesus stood among the two on the road to Emmaus
they were frightened, thinking they were seeing a ghost. Their whole attitude, as we can see, was far
from being one of credulity. They were not so deluded or so subject to self-suggestion about Jesus
going to rise from the dead, that they were easily deceived by rumours or hallucinations.

On the contrary: they were so convinced that it was impossible for a dead man to rise of his own
accord that when they found him alive, in the same room as themselves, they took him for a ghost. If
you remember the Gospel you will notice that their realistic approachquite the opposite of
hallucination or readiness to believe anythinghad precedents. Jesus had foretold three times that the
Son of Man would be given over to the Gentiles and mocked and crucified, but would rise on the
third day. And each time the evangelist adds: 'they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid
to ask him.' It never entered their minds that a dead man could rise by his own power. And when
Jesus walked on the waters of the lake of Gennesaret to meet their boat, did they react with total
serenity and admit that Jesus was walking on the water like someone taking a walk in the garden? No,
they became afraid and shouted, 'It is a ghost!' Did they believe Jesus when he said to them: 'It is I,
have no fear'? They wanted to check it out; they wanted spectacular proof, for Peter said: 'If it is you,
bid me come to you on the water.' Another instance of their not taking a ghost for something real: quite
the contrary, they took something real to be a ghost.
So we can see that Jesus' disciples were not inclined to be hysterical or credulous. They were men of
the fields and the sea, full of solid common sense, with not much imagination and not at all inclined to
accept things which were outside the range of their experience, not the sort of people who could even
conceive that a dead man could rise through his own power. So much so that Jesus had to do
something to convince them that it really was he they were seeing and hearing:
'"See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and
bones as you see that I have". And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his
feet' (Lk 24:39-40).
Sufficient proof, you might think. But apparently not: 'While they still disbelieved for joy, and
wondered, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of boiled fish,
and he took it and ate it before them' (Lk 24:41-43).
Well, that did convince them ... except for one of them. Thomas was not there when Jesus showed
himself to them, and when they told him what had happened he left them in no doubt about what he
was thinking: 'Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the
nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe' (Jn 20:25). Obviously not the reaction of a
man who is ready to seize hold of any thread of evidence to be able to state under oath that a man has
raised himself from the dead. Rather he remains completely unconvinced by what he is told by the
disciples, by these good friends of his, people with whom he has been living for almost three years in
Jesus' company, people who like himself witnessed the raising of Lazarus, people whom he really
could trust. That Jesus could raise others from the dead, he did not doubt, because he had seen it
happen with his own eyes. But that his power could extend to raising himself was something quite
beyond the scope of his imagination. Once more Jesus submitted himself docilely to the proof, and,
appearing to the disciples, he forced Thomas to fulfil the conditions he had laid down for believing.
About fifty days after the resurrection, Peter spoke in public, in the middle of Jerusalem, to a huge
crowd, and said quite clearly: 'This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses' (Acts
2:32). About twenty-six years after that, St Paul, writing to the Corinthians, stated that, in accordance
with what the Scriptures had foretold, Jesus rose on the third day, and 'appeared to Cephas, then to
the twelve. Then he appeared to more than three hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still

alive ...' (1 Cor 15:5ff) and last of all he showed himself to St Paul.
This then is the explanation the disciples gave, from the day the tomb was found to be empty, why
Jesus' body was not to be found in it, and it is the explanation the Church has been teaching
uninterruptedly ever since.
From the historical point of view, the strictly historical point of view, there are three possible ways
the fact of the resurrection can be rejected: by rejecting the sources, that is, by rejecting their
authenticity, and therefore their validity; by rejecting the witnesses, which is the same as saying that
they are not truthful, either because they were mistaken or because they deliberately set out to tell
lies; and, finally, by claiming that those passages which speak of the resurrectionbe they in the
Gospels, in the Acts of the Apostles or in the letters of St Paul, St Peter and St John are
apocryphal.
The first way is really so difficult that it is practically impossible. If one denies the authenticity of the
sources, how is it possible to know anything about Jesus? For the source which states that Jesus rose
from the dead is the same source which tells us that he was born in Bethlehem. If you reject this
source and are consistent about it you end up having to deny that Jesus ever existed. This is the
Marxist approach: denying or setting aside facts which do not fit their thesis, or which undermine it.
At least, so it would seem if one goes by an article published in Pravda on 7 April 1972 in which it
says, in all seriousness: 'The Easter ideas are pernicious and reactionary: they have no historical
basis whatever. Christ never died, nor did he ever rise from the dead. He never existed.' The only
problem about this approach is that you need to demonstrate that the sources are not authentic, and up
to now no one has ever managed to do so, though very many people have tried very hard. In fact they
have not weakened the Scriptures in any way. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that Sacred
Scripture is as solid a source as any other documentary source of ancient history.
The second way, that of impugning the truthfulness of the witnesses while admitting the authenticity of
the documents which report what they have to say, has been more successful, because it is easier.
Let us take, first, what is called the 'fraud theory'. This makes out that the evangelists told a pack of
lies: it was the disciples, deceived by Jesus' death and deluded in their hopes, who stole the body and
then invented the whole story. Reimarus was the author of this 'brilliant' theory. He did not explain
(nor is it possible to explain without witnesses) how they managed to get hold of the body in spite of
the sentinels guarding the tomb, or what they did with it, or how they could all have been so stupid as
to give their lives in support of a lie of their own making, or how they managed to get so many of their
contemporaries to believe in the resurrection. Really, Reimarus explained nothing (that is, he offered
no reasonable explanation of his theory): he simply refused to admit the testimony of eye-witnesses
and, since he could not destroy it scientifically, he invented a new version without proving a single
one of his premises.
In this general area we also get the 'disappearance theory', which takes a number of forms but does
not attack the good faith of the disciples. For example, some people say that it was the Jews who
stole the bodyin which case, why did they not produce it when the disciples, on the Sunday itself,
began to say that Jesus had risen? (They would have nipped the whole Christian thing in the bud.)
Others say that Joseph of Arimathea broke the Sabbath, took the body (with the guards' permission),

and put it in a more dignified tomb, without telling even the disciples. But it is impossible to prove
that he did so. It just does not make sense. Others say that the earthquake referred to in the Gospel
buried the body even deeper. But it must have been a very odd sort of earthquake, because before
burying the body even deeper it took the trouble to take off the embalming cloths and fold the linen
napkin very neatly.
Then there is the theory of the 'apparent death', which another rationalist critic, Paulus, proposes.
Jesus, he says, did not die; he lay in the tomb in a state of deep coma, from which he emerged due to
the combined effect of favourable circumstancesthe cool atmosphere of the tomb, the effects of the
embalming, humidity after a downpour of rain, the wound made by the lance in his side. Quite so, but
what downpour is he referring to? And what embalming? For the women went to the tomb early on
the Sunday morning precisely to embalm the body, because they had been prevented from doing it on
the Friday due to the start of the Sabbath rest. And what proof is there, or what witness, or what
indication, that he was not in fact dead?
Finally, the third method adopts a very odd but completely anti-historical method. By and large it
puts, if I may use the expression, the cart before the horse. First they decide on the conclusion they
want to arrive at, and then they set about arranging things to produce that result. This method was first
used by Strauss, and this was his line of argument: the apostles had subjective visions of Jesus after
his death. But since this is not compatible with the disciples' resistance towards believing in the risen
Jesus as the Gospels showStrauss has to fix up this point, which he does in this way: in order to
have these subjective visions the disciples had to have psychological dispositions of a kind that were
impossible in the days immediately after Christ's death because they were so depressed and so he
concludes: There was no empty tomb on the third day. The empty tomb was conjured up later, to help
the Christian argument. The subjective visions began to occur when the disciples went to Galilee. The
whole business of the appearances on the third day in Jerusalem was also conjured up later. Yes, but
when? By whom? How do we know about them? How can you prove it? The Strauss-type theory has
no historical basis whatever.
The modernists of the turn of the century, very much influenced by Science and Evolution (both with
capital letters) went along the same lines but they worked out a very simple route for themselves.
They calmly invented new rules of historical criticism and by applying these rules they got the result
they wanted. All religious facts, they said, are transformed and disfigured by the faith of the believer
which elevates historical events on to a higher plane. They then apply this unproven principle, in
order to discover the real historical element in the religious fact of the resurrection. They manhandle
texts in order to cut out the inventions and disfigurements which they say faith has added to the basic
facts. But even leaving aside the unjustified principle they use as their starting point, for they simply
state without proof that what the Gospels narrate is not true (because they start from the basis that the
resurrection is impossible), the arbitrary way they reject, add on, and alter the content of historical
sources, using rules they themselves have invented for the very purpose of 'demonstrating' the
inaccuracy of the testimonies concerned, is completely invalid for checking the authenticity of any
source or whether something actually happened in history or did not happen.
The modernists in fact seem to be in the business of forgery.
To leave no stone unturned, I will mention the recent theory that Jesus did not really, historically, rise

from the dead: he rose spiritually in the faith of his disciples. But this line of argument would not
pass muster even with a fourth-year history student, so I do not think I need go into it.
St Paul argued: 'If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised'. But Christ did
rise; therefore, there is resurrection of the dead. In the passage from the letter to the Corinthians
which I quoted at the beginning, we can easily see how much importance S t Paul gave to the
resurrection: 'If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We
are even found to be misrepresenting God'. But since Christ did rise, our faith is not in vain; on the
contrary: if there ever was a faith firmly fixed to a solid foundation and, as far as possible, a
verifiable foundation, it is the Christian religion as taught by the Catholic Church, the Churchthe
only Churchfounded by Jesus Christ who is risen from the dead.
Important consequences flow from this. If you accept the resurrection of Jesus Christ then you have to
accept what he says he isthe Son of the living God, consubstantial with the Father and the Holy
Spirit. It is not surprising that people have particularly sought to undermine this truth, because if it is
destroyed then Christ is despoiled of his divinity and reduced to a mere man, and the religion he
founded becomes just one more religion, a mere human invention; wonderful but human, with no more
value than something human, and no power to exert moral authority.
In the course of her long journey to the Catholic faith, Sigrid Undset described very accurately the
attitudes of certain intellectuals of her time: 'They had given up believing in Jesus Christ, God and
man, but they continued honouring Jesus, the son of the carpenter, seeing in him the ideal man and a
model for men to copy. They could not believe in dogmas revealed truth, coming from another
world and formulated in human languagebut they believed in religious intuition and man's religious
genius'. I think that what she says holds good for our own time.
The Acts of the Apostles say that the disciples 'with great power gave their testimony to the
resurrection of Jesus.' With that same power and with joy they all gave their lives for the faith,
because they knew that they too would rise from the dead and live forever. But I am afraid that
nowadays those of us who profess to believe in Jesus Christ offer a sorry spectacleentertaining, as
we do, pseudo-redemptive theories, false religions invented by men, of the kind which, in
Chesterton's words, trot out the same tired rhetoric about greater brotherhood and a higher life.
Instead of believing to the point of laying our lives on the line, it rather looks as though what St Paul
says has come true: 'If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.'
What are all the different kinds of 'theologies of liberation' but using Jesus Christ with our sights set
only on this present life? And is this not the same as voluntarily ignoring or denying the fact of the
resurrection and therefore consciously separating ourselves from the Catholic faith? For if Christ has
not risen, our faith is in vain.
No. Our hope in the resurrection is well founded. Christ rose from the dead, and we will rise with
him ... if we stay faithful to the end. That is what the Church teaches, and that is the way it is.
In saying all this, I do not mean that a person must believe necessarilythere being no possible
alternativein the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for if that were so there would be no room for faith.
What I mean is that neither are the existence of Socrates nor the deeds of Cyrus the Great facts which
impose themselves on our minds by their own intrinsic weight and that there is as rational and

reasonable a basis for believing in the resurrection as for knowing about Socrates and Cyrus. And of
course much more than is on offer from the ideologies in fashionMarx and Freud included, people
who espouse astrology and arcane oriental religions, or the Jehovah's Witnesses. That is why every
man is constrained to adopt some attitude or other to Jesus Christ: either he believes in what Christ
said about himself, in which case he is confessing that Jesus is the Son of God, or he does not believe
it, in which case he sees our Lord as an imposter or a deluded visionary.
And given that the resurrection is a fact, given that it is something true and not a theory or an opinion,
we have to go along with all its consequences, which are formidable. Jesus is alive, there is an
eternal life after physical death, there is a resurrection of the flesh which will come about on the last
day, and those who die in Christ will live forever as distinct, individual people, each with his or her
own body joined to his or her own soul. Because only he is way, truth and life, and there is no one
else by whom we can be saved, no other who, by triumphing over death, can base our hope on an
indestructible foundation.
And if you think about it a little, you will see that what God revealed to us and what the Church
teaches us explains what the world is, what life and man are, what the meaning of creation, what the
ultimate reason and purpose of everything. And perhaps you will understand the awful position of
those who do not believe, because without faith there is no hope. What has a man or woman without
hope to live for? That, in my view, is the basic problem which confronts the so-called 'modern man'.
And his very eternal salvation depends on whether or not he manages to solve it.

THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES

Near the end of his life, only a few hours before he was to be violently separated from his disciples,
Jesus spoke to them at some considerable length and in an intimate and affectionate tone which he had
never used before. It happened during the Last Supper, when he was fully conscious that the time
allotted him was nearing its end. Then, as he taught with admonitions, promises and warnings, he told
one last parable, or to be more precise, an allegory, with which all of you, no doubt, are quite
familiar. What he said was:
'I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes
away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit. You are already
made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot
bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine,
you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from
me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the
branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in
you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you' (Jn 15: 1-7).
Although theologians may, I suppose, be able to draw from this text very profound lessons, you and I
will fix our attention on the most obvious and clear meaning of Jesus' words, but without for a
moment losing sight of the time and place in which they were spoken. Jesus had little time left, and he
realized perfectly well that as soon as he was gone the disciples would have to fend for themselves.
With his help, but by themselves, nevertheless. Thus he gave them a formula to ensure that all would
go well with them, telling them where they had to be careful and reminding them of what was really

important.
What he told them was this: that what was absolutely necessary was that they abide in him; that if they
did so they would bear fruit; that if they did not they would wither without fail because without him
they could do nothing.
It is easy to see that, when Jesus said that without him they could do nothing, he was referring to what
they, as his disciples and as Christians, might do. He was not referring to what ordinary men as men
can do, but to what they, in the future, could do, and which would have a value and an effect beyond
the merely natural, for they were no longer merely men, but Christians, with a supernature that raised
them above their ordinary human condition and that, in some way, set a seal on their actions. What
they did was not limited in worth to this fleeting life on earth, but would transcend in itself the
limitations of this mortal life.
And so, to us also, who are disciples of Jesus and Christians, he also says: 'Abide in me, and I in you
... He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do
nothing.' This, then, is what you and I, and every Christian, must do, now and at all times.
Abide in him. Indeed. But how?
I imagine he told the allegory in its present form to teach us in a very graphic way. As the branch
abides in the vine, so too we must abide in him. I suppose that, if we examine how the branch abides
in the vine and why a branch remains united to the vine, we will come to have some idea of how we
are to abide in Christ.
Thus, we must see first of all what happens between the vine and branch. At first sight it seems that
what unites the branch to the vine is a series of small canals (they are not seen from the outside since
they run through the interior of the plant). Through these canals the sap, that is to say, the life of the
vine, goes from root to branch. The branch receives food from the sap and so can live, grow and bear
fruit. The branch is strong and powerful because the food it receives not only keeps it alive but
allows it to bear fruit. To be more accurate we would have to say that, strictly speaking, it is not the
branch which bears fruit but the vine that bears fruit in and through the branch by the life it
communicates to it.
Now, as they say in mathematics, if we replace the terms, and follow the path marked out for us by the
allegory, where we have vine we can put Jesus Christ, and in place of the branches we can put
ourselves. The result we get is this: the way of abiding in Christ, the way of remaining united to him,
is to ensure that we have channels of grace running from him to us. By receiving food in a regular
way, the life of Christ will abide in us, will enable us to grow, will strengthen us, and eventually will
produce fruit in us.
When these channels are cut the sap does not reach the branch, and through lack of food it will wither
little by little until it dies. Then it is cut off, thrown in a bundle with other dead branches and burned.
If these channels are half blocked then only a very small amount of sap can pass through, an amount
which is altogether insufficient for the branch to develop normally or even to sustain itself as it is.
Lack of sap leads to its inevitable withering. The process may take longer, but bearing fruit is just not

possible.
A Christian who breaks these channels clearly does not receive grace. When the soul is not nourished
it ends up dying at the hands of mortal sin, because its reserves of energy dry up and there comes a
moment when there is hardly any need for a strong temptation to make it fall. It falls by itself because
it has not the energy to stand up straight. It dies because its life has been choked. If the channels of
grace are blocked by unwillingness, laziness, love of comfort, fear of what others might say,
inhibitions in the face of today's society, neglect or over-attention to other interests (and they are,
always, less important), then the life of the soul languishes and eventually dies. Inevitably its
fruitlessness is total. To abide in Jesus Christ is the guarantee of life; to separate from him is a way
which leads to death.
If what I have said so far is clear, then no doubt each of us will have no difficulty in drawing the right
conclusions. A living, healthy person can do many things; in fact, the world progresses or regresses
according as living, healthy persons do what is right or do what is wrong. A person who is alive, but
in poor health, can do less, cannot do it as well as a healthy person, and at times is just about able to
manage. A dead person can do nothing, because he is no longer in the body; all that remains of him is
what he has done during his lifetime.
Besides the natural life which every Christian has by the fact of being a human being, he has another
kind of life which is not natural but supernatural. This second life has its origin in the grace we were
given in Baptism. At the same time we were also given a very definite character which lasts for all
time. A Christian who possesses this life can do many things because he is spiritually healthy and
strong. If he is in the state of grace, as we say, alive, but does not nourish his soul, or only nourishes it
in a very partial way, then he is like a man in a coma, or is a paralytic or a quadriplegic. Although he
is still alive, he can do no more than simply get by, with the help of others. If he is spiritually dead, he
has no more than the appearance of being Christian, he is a corpse, and is of no use to anyone.
Accordingly, the basic question we have before us, whether we like it or not, whether we pay it the
attention we should or do not, is the matter of interior life. I know that this expression, traditional in
Christian terminology for centuries and perfectly intelligible to anyone who has once learned the
fundamental tenets of the faith he professes, is today somewhat unfamiliar. Nowadays, unfortunately,
it is necessary to say a few words about this notion because today's world is ignorant of its meaning
and because, inexplicably, there is a tendency among those whose task it is to teach the baptized to
regard it as a useless and outmoded idea from the past, a notion that has been supplanted by new
developments.
If, as I imagine, many of you watch television; if you go to the cinema from time to time and take a
good look at the characters who appear in 80% or 90% of the films; if you read the odd modern
novel, those with literary value and those which are mass-produced for our consumer society, you
will inevitably see that most of these characters are superficial, that is, they are two-dimensional
people. They lack a third dimension, depth.
In the world today it is easy to find spineless, sapless people who every time they open their mouths
to speak spout banalities. Why? Because that is all they have learned; from the way to earn money to
their preoccupation with sex. They give the impression that they have never thought. Their lives are

the mere reproduction of the utterly superficial; their topics of conversation are light in the extreme;
their horizons are desperately limited. They are accustomed to a scale of values whose apex is to
triumph through possessing money and what money can buy. And that is that. Unless, of course, in the
odd case, we find some vague humanitarian ideal which brings them to make the odd donation to
some international philanthropic fund.
Interior life is found in a person who thinks, who goes beyond the surface, who relates things one to
another. A person has interior life when there is interior activity, like using one's intellect, memory
and will. But notin the words of Priestley'to carry on a mad rush of activity, so as to sell men
items they didn't know they needed, in order to earn money and so buy, for myself, things that I don't
have the time to enjoy' [unsourced]. The interior activity I am referring to is, above all, to stop and
ask yourself the meaning of what you are doing and seeing; to inquire what life in this world is all
about; to try and get to know yourself. Interior life is about facing these fundamental questions which
confront each and every person by the mere fact of their being human.
But, in a Christian, interior life is more than that. For a Christian to have interior life means, in the
first place, to have clear and adequate knowledge of what being a Christian entails. In other words: to
know the truths of faith, that is, to know supernatural reality, and among these truths to know that
grace is the principle of supernatural life. Grace is to the Christian what the soul is to man. A
Christian has interior life not only when he is in the state of grace but when he is actively engaged in
maintaining it and making it grow, so as to be able to live in it and with it, in ever greater intensity,
accepting all the consequences of being a follower of Jesus. A Christian who does nothing to nourish
his soul spiritually does not have interior life in the sense we usually give this expression and when
used by the Church to teach the way of salvation. To sum up: to have interior life implies maintaining
whole and intact, through attention and care, the channels by which Christ communicates his life to us
grace is not something we can produce by ourselves, from our own human resources.
1 realize that, undoubtedly, there are people who argue that all this talk about interior life is
antiquated. But until proof is supplied, this argument merely shows that those who hold such an
opinion do not have interior life, do not know what it is, do not appreciate it and, even perhaps, give
evidence that the Gospel is not for them what it is for the Church. Perhaps, also, it will be said that
talk of interior life is not what really concerns many Christians; that such talk is not on target; and I
agree. But what I want you to see is that shots should not be fired where there is no target; that those
shooting ought to take good aim, because, in the heel of the hunt, what matters is not that the Church,
with her Head Jesus Christ (and he is her Head), should follow the world, but just the opposite, that
the world should follow the Church, because if it does not it will not be saved. And neither will we.
It may also be said that all this talk about interior life is boring, and it may even make people scoff if
it is not spoken of at the right moment and in the right tone of voice. But better not to speak of interior
life jokingly because such talk only reveals what the speaker is, that is, someone without interior life,
for only such people can find the topic of interior life boring.
I am not exaggerating. What is known as interior life is not boring. I would go so far as to say that it is
fascinating for it has a facet to it that does not allow it to become boring. The facet I refer to the fact
that struggle is necessary. Insofar as there is struggle there is interior life, and where there is no
struggle there is no interior life. 'It's hard! Yes. I know. But forward! No one will be rewarded

and what a reward except those who fight bravely' (Blessed Josemaria Escriva, The Way, no.
720).
I assert that struggle is necessary for there to be interior life because, although all things are
achievable, not all are easy. Or at least they are not always easy. I am always struck by the
determined attempt, made with as much cleverness as persistence, to wipe out even the slightest
reminder of original sin, so much so that each new generation has a less precise and more hazy notion
of it. The existence in a Christian of the effects of original sinnot of the sin itself, for it is cleansed
in Baptism, but its effectsis the reason why we rational creatures find it difficult to do what is well
within our nature. It is as if we had in us a weight that is dragging us down; as if we were subject to
some moral force equivalent to the physical force of gravity; as if there were some current, easily
sensed, pulling us in a direction which we know not to be right. In most cases it is not enough to know
what we ought to do, what we are obliged to do. To actually do it we need to overcome a certain
reluctance. And even when a Christian wants to abide in Christ and have life, to be successful
requires a daily struggle, which is sometimes easy and other times not at all easy; and the more
failures there are the harder it gets, just as the more frequently we win today's battle, the easier it is to
win the next day, because the repetition of acts gives rise to habits, virtues. Any athlete will tell you
the same thing.
Regarding the channels which ensure Christ's abiding in us, the Acts of the Apostles set us on the right
track. When St Luke comes to speak of the life of the first Christians, not long after the Ascension of
our Lord, he simply says: 'They devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the
breaking of bread and the prayers' (Acts 2:42). I do not mean to say that these are the only ways in
which God's grace reaches us (we have all the other sacraments, mortification and penance, the
spiritual and corporal works of mercy, etc.) but it seems to me that these are the really important
ones, the chief ones. I am sure it is not by chance that they are mentioned in a writing which, because
it is inspired, is the word of the Lord.
One cannot live without roots. The roots ground the tree in the earth from which it receives its
nourishment. Without roots the tree withers and dies, and will fall with the wind. Hollow and dry, it
becomes wood for the fire. If you open your eyes you will see men and women (especially young men
and women) who are rootless, meandering from place to place, directionless and without an
objective in life, empty inside, clinging to whatever belief, superstition or theory promises to fill their
emptiness. In recent times some have taken to calling themselves hippies, others revolutionaries, and
others are simply nameless.
A Christian who does not abide in Christ is like a tree without roots. He has not the slightest chance
of survival. A Christian without interior life is empty, as hollow as a corpse which has begun to rot.
At most, if, separated from the root, he remains standing, he is a mere caricature of a Christian. I fear
that today there are so many such caricatures in the Church that we ought to feel ashamed. These many
caricatures make the world laugh at the Churchat our Holy Mother Church which can attract or
repel, but never be the object of laughter. We come across Homer-like guffaws at the antics of some
ecclesiastics who try to accommodate the Gospel to what they presume are the latest trends in
science, at the ridiculous spectacle of Christians who abandon their interior life and put in its place
systems, theories or essays which carry with them their proper dosage of Marx or Freud so that they

can call themselves adult Christians in the world today. And I hardly dare mention those Christians
who struggle not with their hope in the resurrection of the body but with the hope of seeing a better
world 'liberated' from capitalist alienations, for these people are hardly Christian at all.
I speak not for the pleasure of hearing my own voice. The question of interior life is of the utmost
importance and you have the right to hear the truth; you have the right to be taught without deceit. Just
as physically it is impossible to live without eating, so in what has to do with eternal salvation we
can do nothing, absolutely nothing, if we do not abide in Christ, as the branch remains in the vine.
Separated from Christ there is no chance of eternal life.
I think that, in general, we Christians show little interest in having interior lifeand I refer to eternal
lifebecause I fail to see such interest around me, and it is only on this earth that we can acquire
eternal life. You all know that St Thomas Aquinas was not given to many words where few would do.
He was concise in writing and he wrote quite an amount. A sister of his once asked him what she
should do to be holy. St Thomas answered smartly: 'Want to be!' And, as we are reminded in The
Way, to want is to use the means. To want to have life, to want to abide in Christ, to want to live as a
Christian and not to put yourself out in the slightest to ensure that your soul has the necessary
nourishment is like wanting to build an edifice simply by whistling the music of the latest pop tune.
As I go into class, or pass by a theatre at the end of a lecture and find a crowd of people in the
passageway, or when I am walking along in the street, I often ask myself: how many of all these
people I see have interior life, and how many are dead inside? I cannot stop myself because that is the
most fundamental truth about them, about us. All other things, what in general can be seen, is no more
than the make-up we all wear. What men appear to be is not always what they really are.
I do not know whether many of us have taken the trouble to look at ourselves sincerely, from the
perspective of our life of faith. How could I know? But what I do know is that, if a person does it, he
will discover, firstly, that he is less sincere than he thought he was; but this ought not frighten anyone.
It happens to us all. We are always more hypocritical than we like to acknowledge. Secondly, this
discovery, if it is sincerely accepted, will bring peace; it will not cause unease. It is always nice to
stop walking on your toes and with your neck stretched out so as to appear taller than you really are.
Always wearing make-up is a bit of a nuisance. Sincerity with ourselves leads to peace, because the
truth, once it is seen and accepted, no matter what it is, gets rid of troubles and disturbances.
The problem, then, for us, and indeed for every Christian, is to see if, as Christians, we have life in us
or not, to see, that is, if we are alive or dead. Once this is seen, we can decide what we will do in the
future: whether to continue wearing a mask to hide the fact that we are corpses, or once and for all to
decide resolutely to take on the world, our own selfishness and anything which comes between us and
God and inhibits our union with Christ to take them on, even if the world begins to fall apart (relax,
it won't!). If we are really as free and as sincere as we think we are, we will know which choice to
make.

THE TEACHING OF THE APOSTLES

In the first of his letters, which some scholars say was written as a prologue to his Gospel, St John the
Apostle betrays a marked historical consciousness, due no doubt to the privilege he had of being an

eye-witness to events whose importance he perceived with extraordinary insight and whose impact he
considered decisive for the human race. He begins with these words:
'That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of lifethe life
was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which
was with the Father and was made manifest to usthat which we have seen and heard we
proclaim to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the
Father and with his Son Jesus Christ' (1 Jn 1:1-4).
What his eyes saw, what his ears heard, what his hands touched. St John is no intellectual elaborating
a scheme or postulating a theory. He is a very ordinary person, a fisherman by trade, who describes,
not a subjective experience, but real events which he saw and, what is even more important, which he
lived. Another of the evangelists, St Matthew, could write in the same vein because he too was a
disciple of Jesus and a witness of the Resurrection and of many other things besides.
St Mark, a disciple of St Peter, wrote the second Gospel. In all probability he knew Jesus and
tradition has it that the Last Supper was celebrated in his home. Be that as it may, St Mark gives us in
his Gospel the preaching of St Peter and in one of his letters the head of the Apostles reminds us: 'We
did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eye-witnesses of his majesty' (2 Pet 1:16).
St Luke, as is well known, did not know Jesus personally, but he did know the Apostles and probably
also the Blessed Virgin. His Gospel gives us the preaching of St Paul, but he also presents himself as
an accomplished historian. While he was not a witness of the events he narrates in his Gospel, he
does relate happenings about which the others are silent, but not without first taking great care to
consult trustworthy sources. He begins his Gospel telling us:
'Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been
accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning
were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all
things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent
Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been
informed' (Lk 1: 1-4).
These are the (human) authors of the Gospels: two, St Matthew and St John, were disciples of Jesus
and witnesses of the Resurrection; the third, St Mark, a Jew like the first two, knew Jesus and passed
on to us the preaching of Peter who was a disciple of the Master, a witness of his Resurrection and
his Vicar and head of the Apostles. The fourth, St Luke, was a gentile, not a Jew. He did not witness
the events he relates but he does pass on the preaching of St Paul (who in turn had received his
information, or at least some of it, from Peter and the other Apostles), and investigates at first hand
his sources who were none other than eye-witnesses of all that had occurred.
St John was the last to write. He did so near the end of the first century, some thirty years after the
other three Gospels had been written. The rise of some heresies and false interpretations moved him
to write, placing special stress on the divinity of Jesus. Unlike the other three, he does not follow a

pattern already fixed in its basic outlines and which was the nucleus of the apostolic preaching
(kerygma). He deliberately goes his own way in order to underline essential aspects of the life of
Jesus threatened by interpretations at variance with what the Apostles had taught from the very
beginning.
I have just written: what the Apostles had taught from the very beginning. This is most important.
The mission to teach was entrusted officially to the Apostles with Peter as their head. They were the
men Jesus chose, after he had spent a night in prayer, to rule the Church under the authority of Peter;
they were the witnesses chosen officially to proclaim the Resurrection. Thus, the successors of Peter
and the Apostles, that is, the Pope and the bishops in communion with him, are those who, by God's
plan, have the official mission of teaching in the Church. Theirs is a public teaching office or
Magisterium (the bishop for his diocese, the Pope for the whole Church) and this Magisterium of the
Church has as its purpose to teach the doctrine of the Apostles, that is to say, to teach what the
Apostles taught, with the same meaning they gave it, and not to deviate one iota from it.
Just as St John in his Gospel confronted erroneous interpretations of what had been taught from the
beginning, so the Church has always exercised officially, through the Pope and bishops, its duty to
watch over the teachings of Jesus so that God's Revelation may not be falsified by private authors
who can give no guarantee. What the Church is obliged to teach is what has always been seen to be in
harmony with the apostolic preaching. So much is this the case that, in the first few centuries, when a
local church had to decide whether some particular teaching or interpretation of Scripture was
correct or not, what it did was to compare it with the teaching of the apostolic churches, that is, with
the churches founded by the Apostles, and more specifically, with the teaching of the Church of Rome,
the head church.
How often has the Church been accused of curtailing what is popularly known as 'freedom of thought'.
It is an accusation which so-called free-thinkers take to as they would to a sport. But it only serves to
underline their narrowmindedness.
When someone, who is, by Baptism, a member of the Church, teaches a doctrine which does not
accord with the teaching of the Apostlesand the decision as to whether it does or does not accord
lies within the Church's competence alonewhat the Church does is ask him or her not to teach what
is false and to study the matter more deeply in the light of what they have learned. She asks him or her
to consider what has been officially taught by the Church in matters of faith and morals, under the
mandate of Christ, that is of course, if they do not wish to be separated from Christ, the Head of the
Church and from the Church herself, which is his Mystical Body. When some new philosophical
theory is put forward and poses a danger to the faith of her children, the Church informs the faithful
and puts them on their guard so that they may not fall away. The Church does not curtail the thinking of
men and women. What she does is to try and ensure, with the means available to her, that people do
not say or write nonsense, or harm others with errors, lies or falsehoods. No State in the world
allows men to be taught that we breathe through our fingers and toes, or that a child is a flower, or
that voltage is a measurement of humidity, or that Napoleon's father was Queen Elizabeth I of
England. No one is surprised that a State does not permit this type of freedom of thought. Freethinkers and unprejudiced intellectuals do not decry such 'oppression'. But enough about that.

You will recall how in the first of his temptations in the desert, when the devil suggested to Jesus that
he turn stones into bread, our Lord replied: 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceeds from the mouth of God' (Mt 3:4). And he, the Logos, is the Word of God on whom men must
live. 'Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away' (Mt 24:35). His words are
also God's words, for he is God. And when anyone teaches as the word of God what is his or her
own personal opinion, or something which is not in accord with the doctrine the Church has always
taught, you can be absolutely sure that such teaching, no matter from what angle it is looked at, is not
the word of God, but the word of men and does not nourish or save.
What the Church must teach is Revelation, and the way we human beings can attain salvation. As
ministers of God in the economy of salvation, priests cannot, must not, place their priesthood at the
service of purely human goals for the simple reason that they have been ordained for a spiritual
mission. As priests, they have no right to restrict the freedom of the faithful, indoctrinating them in
matters of a political, economic or sociological nature, where God has left each person free to form
his or her own opinion. The only restriction on this freedom is the doctrinal and moral teaching of the
Church which the believer freely accepts in faith. For priests to act otherwise entails an abuse of the
authority they have as God's ministers, an authority given them to preach the teaching of the Apostles,
the Good News, in the way the Church officially proclaims it.
Would that I might convince you of the need to read the Good News each day. What kind of a
Catholic is a person who is not immersed in, and imbued with, the Gospel or who knows little or
nothing of it, while at the same time finds time to inform himself of a thousand and one different things
which are not even worth the paper they are written on? We have absolutely no excuse for not
knowing Christ because those who knew and lived with him, who saw him risen from the dead and
loved him dearly and with a loyalty which brought them to give their lives in witnessing to the truth of
what they had heard and seen, have left us in the Gospels an account of his life on earth, such that we
can contemplate him as they did.
They did not do it immediately. At first they only preached the Good News. With the passage of time
and the growth in the number of believers, the teaching of the Apostles, whether passed on orally or
in notes jotted down, was exposed to the danger of inaccuracies, downright mistakes, make-believe
miracles and fanciful details. God, then, inspired some disciples to put in writing what the Apostles
taught. And so we come to a fundamental point, namely, inspiration.
Do not confuse it with what we might call the poet's inspiration the moment when something occurs
to him and he rushes off feverishly to write it all down so as not to lose an iota of it. Inspiration does
not mean that God dictated to the evangelist what he was to write, thus making the writer a mere
secretary, or, in modern parlance, a mere typewriter or a word processor. Divine inspiration does not
stifle (if I can use that word) the intellect and will of the writer, it does not annul or take their place.
Undoubtedly the writer serves God as his instrument but he remains a free and intelligent instrument.
What God does, and this is the essence of inspiration, is to move the will of someone to write; he
illumines their mind and assists them in the task (in their operative faculties, according to
theologians) so as to preserve them from the slightest danger of error. Thus, the evangelist is truly the
(secondary) author of the text he has written, while God is truly the principal author. The written
word is then the Word of God; these are the words which will not pass away.

You can see then that the Gospels (although I use the term Gospel, you will realize that I am referring
to all the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments) are not like any other book. It is a unique book;
in some respects it is like other books, but it is different from them and unlike them because it has
what no other book has. Behind it lies God's inspiration which guarantees, more firmly than any
personal experience can, the truth and the absolute reality of what is taught in it.
If you hear tell of a philologist who states that in the Scriptures there are only words and nothing
more, and that this word means one thing, and that word something else, you ought to believe him. In
part. Without a doubt there are words, and each one means something, but there is something else
which the philologist cannot perceive because the method he employs is not up to it. His method only
goes a certain distance and is only valid when applied to philological matters. I think it was R.
Virchow, one of the founders of pathology, who stated emphatically, and as if it were a conclusive
proof, that in all the autopsies he had ever performed he had never come across the soul at the point
of his scalpel. It is almost as stupid a statement as the one made by Gagarin who said that he had
spent three days in outer space without ever finding God. I would give good odds that Virchow did
not find a single thought or a single sound at the point of his scalpel either. And as for the things
Gagarin did not find in space, they would fill thousands of libraries. If the page I am writing on at this
very moment were analyzed by a chemist, with chemical methods, he would not find a single word, or
a single idea. He could only find what makes ink ink and paper paper. I doubt if a physiologist, using
methods proper to that science, would find anything at all. In regard to revealed realitiesand the
inspiration of the Sacred Books is one of them the proper instrument is faith, not philology or
chemistry.
If the Gospels are considered as simple writings in no way different from the other writings of men,
then we run the risk of not understanding very much, and what we do understand will more than likely
be misunderstood. One cannot judge the Gospel as one would any other book, for the simple reason
that it is unlike any other book. A person who has no faith, and who is also intellectually arrogant,
will see Jesus Christ as an itinerant preacher, as an altruist with high ideals, who in the end died for
no good reason; as a sort of visionary, with little idea of what men are really like and with no sense
of reality, who allowed himself to be crucified for an idea which some people hold in high esteem but
which is more like a fanciful dream. On the other hand, a simple straight- forward person, even one
who has no faith, will see in Christ something and someone who does his soul good and leads him on
towards faith.
You, however, as believers, cannot read the Gospel out of mere curiosity or for the sake of erudition,
or with the condescending indifference of an atheist or a pagan. A Catholic reads the Gospel with
respect and gratitude, convinced from the start that everything said there is absolutely true, because it
is the word of God who can neither deceive nor be deceived. But because we can be mistaken we
must read Sacred Scripture in Church, that is to say, according to the mind and teaching of the Church.
For this reason the Church mandates that all editions of the Bible be accompanied by relevant notes,
so as to avoid the danger of personal interpretations. It is here that one can verify by one's own
experience what only the believer can understand. I do not mean to say, and nobody ever said this,
that you will understand it all completely, otherwise St Augustine would never have made this
remark: 'Let him who can understand, understand, and let him who cannot, believe.' What I mean to
say is that the person who does not have faith cannot understand the Gospel because, unless God

gives him an actual grace, the substance of it is beyond his comprehension.

To believe, to profess faith in the teaching of the Apostles, means to make the Gospel the benchmark
for seeing what amount of truth is contained in the theories and fashions in vogue, irrespective of their
origin. It means making the Gospel the standard for assessing the worth and the validity of the norms
by which a person lives. In this respect the Church has given very clear teaching: 'We define that
every assertion opposed to the enlightened truth of faith is entirely false'(Vatican Council I). A few
years later Pope Leo XIII stated: 'Every statement contrary to revealed faith is completely false,
because truth cannot be opposed to truth.'
If a Christian is not ready for this, if he leaves to one side the teaching of the Apostles, if he adapts
his behaviour or his mind to theories opposed to what the Church teaches as revealed by God,
alleging that these new ideas or modes of behaviour are truly scientific and proper to 'modern man',
then I fear that what we have is not a Christian but a fraud and a trickster. Officially such a person is a
Christian but does not in fact profess the Christian faith in its entirety, which is the same as his saying
that, with respect to certain matters at least, the Gospel does not tell us the truth. And this in turn is
equivalent to stating that either Jesus Christ made a mistake or that what the Church has been teaching
for almost two thousand years as revealed by Christ is in fact erroneous.
One further point remains to be dealt with. The Church is infallible in her teaching when she defines
or interprets for men the Revelation she has received from God and which she is to hold as a deposit.
Whatever the Church teaches in regard to faith and morals is true and certain, and there can be no
error in it. This is itself a truth of faith and like all such truths is not totally comprehensible to human
reason, although it does not therefore cease to be reasonable, in the sense that it is not opposed to
reason but is rather fully congruent with it.
When I first read Cardinal Newman's Apologia pro vita sua' I was astounded by the open,
courageous and indeed impassioned defence he made of the infallible Magisterium of the Church, and
that he did so in a hostile environment (Victorian England of the second half of the 19th century)
where the very word 'infallible' sounded like an insult to reason. He reasons to the possibility of
infallibility by starting with a truth of faith, namely the existence of original sin, which seems to him
to be 'almost as certain as that the world exists, or as the existence of God'.
In Newman's view human history gives eloquent testimony to the existence of original sin:
"To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man,
their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits,
government, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random
achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so
faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turns out to be great
powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final
causes, the greatness and the littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the
curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of
evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading
idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so
fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's words, 'having no hope and without God in the

world',all this is a vision to dizzy and appal; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a
profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution.
What shall be said to this heart-piercing, reason-bewildering fact? I can only answer, that
either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded from His
presence."
Cardinal Newman then proceeds to look at an individual and is forced to the same conclusion,
namely, that original sin exists.
"Did I see a boy of good make and mind, with the tokens on him of a refined nature, cast upon
the world without provision, unable to say whence he came, his birth-place or his family
connexions, I should conclude that there was some mystery connected with his history, and that
he was one, of whom, from one cause or other, his parents were ashamed. Thus only should I
be able to account for the contrast between the promise and the condition of his being. And so
I argue about the world; if there be a God, since there is a God, the human race is implicated
in some terrible aboriginal calamity."
The next step in Newman's process is to examine the effect of original sin on man's intellect. He
concludes:
"I do not think I am wrong in saying that its [the intellect's] tendency is towards a simple
unbelief in matters of religion. No truth, however sacred, can stand against it, in the long run;
and hence it is that in the pagan world, when our Lord came, the last traces of the religious
knowledge of former times were all but disappearing from those portions of the world in
which the intellect had been active and had had a career."
It is extremely striking that Newman, who had so pure an intellect and so critical an insight, should
speak of the corrosive power of reason when applied to religious affairs, of its capacity to dissolve
the great revealed truths, when left to its own devices. To avoid any misunderstandings he adds:
"I have no intention at all of denying that truth is the real object of our reason, and that, if it
does not attain to truth, either the premise or the process is in fault; but I am not speaking here
of right reason, but of reason as it acts in fact and concretely in fallen man. I know that even
the unaided reason, when correctly exercised, leads to a belief in God, in the immortality of
the soul, and in a future retribution."
But it was a fact and continues to be one that reason makes mistakes, that it can err, that it can deform
the truth with an overlay of nuances and interpretations in its effort to make progress. And then what
would happen to God's Revelation, to the whole body of revealed truths, when abandoned to the
winds of personal opinion and private interpretations? How could anybody be sure that what they
believed and accepted as the word of God was really his word; and in what sense were they to
profess it? Let me quote Newman again:
"Supposing then it be the Will of the Creator to interfere in human affairs, and to make
provisions for retaining in the world a knowledge of Himself, so definite and distinct as to be
a proof against the energy of human scepticism, in such a case,I am far from saying that there

was no other way, but there is nothing to surprise the mind, if He should think fit to
introduce a power into the world, invested with the prerogative of infallibility in religious
matters. Such a provision would be a direct, immediate, active, and prompt means of
withstanding the difficulty; it would be an instrument suited to the need; and, when I find that
this is the very claim of the Catholic Church, not only do I feel no difficulty in admitting the
idea, but there is a fitness in it, which recommends it to my mind. And thus I am brought to
speak of the Church's infallibility, as a provision, adapted by the mercy of the Creator, to
preserve religion in the world, and to restrain that freedom of thought, which of course in itself
is one of the greatest of our natural gifts, and to rescue it from its own suicidal excesses."
This, then, is the reason for the infallibility of the Church insofar as she is the lawful interpreter of
Revelation: God's infinite mercy. Through this gift he preserves us in this most vital of areas from the
dangers to which the wound inflicted upon human reason by original sin could lead us. This too is the
reason why we ought to accept, as coming from God, the doctrines which the Church's Magisterium
teaches us as being revealed truths. One cannot adopt a flippant attitude towards this Magisterium
since its teachings have the guarantee of truth and certainty which no other person or institution in the
world has. In times of confusion as the ones we live in, when many speak in their own name under the
guise of being oracles of revealed truth, fidelity to the Magisterium is to stand on firm ground. In the
words of St Augustine: 'You will struggle securely, as a person who walks in the light, against the
calumnies of horrid heresies.'
In a novel about the Spanish Civil War Bernanos wrote: ' Are you able to rejuvenate the world, yes
or no? The Gospel is always young; you are the old ones.' Whoever Bernanos was addressing, his
words are applicable to us all, and most certainly to all young people, those of today and those of any
epoch, and indeed to all older people, be they intellectuals, politicians, business executives,
housewives or hairdressers. After two thousand years the Gospel retains its full fruitfulness; it has
remained intact when so many civilizations, so many theories, so many philosophies have rusted as
old things do when left forgotten in a corner, as old clothes are gradually consumed by moths. But
time, with all its power, is unable to corrode one single Gospel truth. Today, as in times gone by, the
Gospel is the only force which can rejuvenate the world for it alone possesses all the vitality of
youth. It is like a breath of pure, fresh air that can sweep away the asphyxiating atmosphere of
enfeebled ideas, old and out-of-date theories, pretentious teachings and pseudo-religious imitations
which for a very brief spell fill the environment like a cheap perfume only to leave, shortly
afterwards, the sour smell of piled up garbage.
I fail to understand how we Catholics are going to rejuvenate a world which is ever more bitter and
less human, if we are as interiorly aged and enfeebled as the world itself due to our ignorance of the
Gospel.
If we do not read it over and over again, until it has filled us and taken deep root within us, we will
have nothing to pass on to others, and our activity in the world will not go beyond the useless
complaints of any weakened person, the sterile lamentations of those who have no solution to offer, or
the fraudulent efforts to be up-to-date, thinking foolishly that in this way the world will be converted
to Christ even if it does not believe the whole Gospel truth.

THE LIVING BREAD

In recent times and under the shelter of a climate of confusion which is itself caused by a whole host
of different factors there has come to the fore an idea about the Blessed Eucharist which was already
doing the rounds about 400 years ago. The process has been helped by the mass media with its
superficial and, at times, very subjective comments. I am not sure whether it was this idea which
helped spread a new terminology or whether it was the new terminology which fomented the idea, but
the fact is that words like assembly and community gathering were very useful in misguiding a
multitude of Christians whose only theological bag and baggage was the old penny catechism. They
suddenly found themselves confronted with teaching which did not fit at all well with what they had
originally learned.
I refer to the fact that the Blessed Eucharist has come to be spoken of as an agape, a banquet of love
and unity among brethren who have come together to call to mind the Lord's Supper. Now it was not
said outrightly that the Mass was not a sacrifice; one just emphasized the notion of the Supper. The
gathering, presided over by the priest, prayed as a community and then shared the bread and wine
consecrated by the priest. Did not our Lord himself say at the Last Supper: 'Do this in memory of me?'
Well, that is what they do: they do it in his memory; they call him to mind.
You know well how such things can happen. A theologian who works well can be very precise and
nuanced in what he says and writes, as indeed he ought to be. But the vast majority of the faithful
cannot catch the nuances because they have not been educated to do so. What the faithful need is to be
taught in clear, simple and unambigous terms. And that, for the most part, will serve them well.
Little by little, through the influence of books which are readily available, the latest theological
theories and discoveries have taken root in the minds of many Christians. What this has meant
regarding the Eucharist is that it is looked on as a commemoration of the Supper, and not the
sacramental renewal of the sacrifice of the Cross; it is a memorial, a kind of reminiscence, and not
something actually happening on the altar at that moment. This idea, even if somewhat vague, exists,
has spread and has flourished in some sectors of the Church.
The freedom which sprang from Vatican Council II and which the Church allowed to be substituted
for the former ritual fixity (where every minute gesture was regulated, and where every word was
invariable) has given way to a greater breadth of formulas and gestures. The greater importance given
to the Liturgy of the Word has lead to a wider diet of Scripture and the choice of passages to be read
is dictated by the needs of the faithful. The laity were encouraged to take a more active role in the
sacred mysteries. All this is excellent but at times things have gone too far. All too often it has
degenerated into abuse of, and even disdain for, anything which smacks of discipline or regulations
emanating from Church authority.
Some few clerics, backed up by their unconditional supporters, threw themselves into what has been
called 'liturgical experiments or experiences'. Closing their eyes and using their imagination, it was
easy to remove oneself to the first century, and see oneself presiding over the assembly gathered
round the table, in the room of some private house, as the first Christians had to. There they
celebrated the Eucharistthe act of thanksgivingin whatever clothes they happened to be wearing
(the Apostles did not put on special vestments), reading some liturgical text or charismatically

improvising one (as they imagined the first Christians used do). And then, without more ado, using
ordinary bread and wine, they had their agape of love and fraternity, in memory of the Last Supper.
Doing so, they thought they were carrying out a great renewal in the Church, preparing her for the
immediate future.
It sounds wonderful, does it not? But since then, different Sacred Congregations of the Church have
had to send reminders that we have had enough of liturgical experiences and experiments; that we
should carefully and reverently gather up the particles of the Sacred Host which might have fallen
because each one of them is the Body of the Lord; that it is obligatory to wear sacred vestments; that
permission is needed before celebrating Mass in a private house, outside of a church; that Holy
Communion cannot be given in the hand without the express permission of the Holy See, etc. I must
say that these guidelines do not seem to have had much effect. I even have the impression that at times
a referee in a sports contest, who has much less authority, has been listened to with more respect.
At this juncture I should remind you that it is the Church alone who can tell what exactly Christ did
teach, what is a word of salvation because it is the word of God. It is this and not something else we
must believe if we wish to remain in Christ. And since it is also through the Blessed Eucharist that the
life of Christ reaches us, it is essential for us to know well what exactly we do believe regarding this
sacrament, what we ought to do, and how we ought do it.
The catechism of Pope St Pius X, published in 1905, spoke of the Eucharist as follows:
'The Eucharist is the sacrament in which, by the wonderful conversion of the whole substance
of bread into the Body of Christ and of the whole substance of wine into his Precious Blood, is
contained, really, truly and substantially, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ
himself, under the species of bread and wine, for our spiritual nourishment.'
This short statement outlines the truths of faith we believe regarding the Blessed Eucharist: the Real
Presence of Christ, transubstantiation and the enduring nature of the appearances of bread and wine
the Eucharistic species, as they are called.
Years ago it used happenat least sometimes that, when one had a difficulty in a matter of faith or
morals and was fearless enough to ask for clarification, an answer was given in such a way that it
amounted to our 'being clobbered with the Church'. Then something along these lines was added:
'Now that's the end of the matter. That is what the Church teaches.'
What was wrong with such behaviour is that it clarified nothing and at times was quite irritating. It
had, however, the advantage of letting one know very precisely what had to be believed, because in
many cases we were dealing with questions which were infallibly defined.
In sum, the Church teaches the mysteries of faith, and a mystery, if difficult to understand, is even
more difficult to explain. As you know, the mysteries of faith transcend the natural ability of our mind,
but the fact that they are supernatural does not entail their being opposed to reason. They are above
reason. A mystery is not an absurdity. Just because we do not understand something is no reason ipso
facto to reject it as false. If that were the case then children could reject everything and they would
never learn anything. And all of us would be continually rejecting things like the theory of relativity,

how the brain functions, etc. There are truths and facts which very few minds can take in and
understand. And all this occurs in the natural order of things.
Nowadays, an altogether different attitude is adopted. Or rather certain groups adopt a different
attitude. Instead of giving us now what the Church teaches, and thereby letting us know what we are to
believe on the authority of the Church's infallible Magisterium, we are given 'explanations' which the
least intelligible person can grasp. The data of faith are interpreted in such a way that there is no
mystery left. This happens with all, or nearly all, the content of our faith, but it happens in a very
special way with the Eucharist. Supernatural mysteries are reduced to a purely human level and
rendered useless.
The end result of this way of teaching the faith, done not by the Church but by some theological
writers, produces no novelties. More often than not they reach conclusions condemned as heretical by
the Church centuries ago. For example, there is a current of thought which carefully avoids the word
transubstantiation and highlights, no less carefully and with a vast gamut of nuances which eliminate
what is essential, the words transignification (already employed by Zwingli in the sixteenth century)
or transfinalization. It is notthey saythat in the Eucharist the whole substance of bread and wine
become the Body and Blood of Christ that runs counter to what physics, chemistry and biology
teach. No, what happens is that to bread and wine, which are ordinary food for our bodies, is given a
new meaning or signification, a new and different purpose or finality.
It is true that Jesus said: 'My flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink' (Jn 6:54). It is true that he
said: 'I am the living bread which has come down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread he will
live forever, and the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world' (Jn 6:51). It is true
that he said: 'This is my body ... this is my blood' (Mt 26:26 and 28). It is true that he said these things
and others besides but it is easy to get round such statements alleging very, very carefully: 'Yes, but
he must be understood in this way. . .' and they then proceed to give an interpretation favourable to
their own opinion, disregarding a Tradition of twenty uninterrupted centuries and the official
interpretation of an infallible Church. The more bare-faced simply speak of the need to demythologize
and undertake the task on the spot.
What these interpretations mean is that naturally the bread and wine remain, and continue to nourish
our body. The soul is nourished by the 'new' meaning and the 'new' finality which the priest has put
there by his words. The only danger is, of course, that the soul will end up becoming a bag of wind
after being fed on air; that is, on meanings, finalities, symbols and memorials which are neither real
nor contain any spiritual entity.
I find it saddening and hurtful to have to say all this, but I feel it must be said. On the one hand, you
know better than I do, that I am in danger of scandalizing no one, and, on the other hand, if no one tells
you that all this is wrong and that many teachings in vogue today are simple heresies, and does not
reiterate again and again what is the teaching of Jesus, guarded by the Church and passed on by her
faithfully and without error, then you run a mortal danger. You run the risk of contamination by error,
and of ending up separated from the Communion of Saints and therefore from Christ, because it is
absolutely impossible to be united to the Body and yet separated from the Head.
If the Eucharist is food for our souls it is not because of significations and symbolisms, even though it

may indeed have them. Rather is it because when the sacrament is 'confected' (that's the technical
word) by the words of the priest, who acts in the name and person of Christ (in persona Christi), the
bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Jesus. And thereby is represented again,
really, on the altar, in a sacramental way, the immolation of Christ on the Cross. The sacrifice of our
Redemption is made present. There is, then, 'a true and proper sacrifice', in which Christ does what
he had already done on the Cross, offering himself to the eternal Father as a most acceptable
sacrifice, as the encyclical Mediator Dei of Pope Pius XII teaches. This is the source of the
Christian's deep and lasting joy: that he holds abiding, definitive things, even if he does not hold them
definitively nor in their fullness. And we receive definitive things with and in Christ, when we
receive the Eucharist as 'the pledge of eternal life'.
The Blessed Eucharist is the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, and this sacrament is
'confected' in the Mass. The Mass is, as I have already said, but it is worthwhile repeating it, the
sacramental sacrifice of the Cross, with the same victim being immolated, namely Jesus Christ, and
the same offerer, also Jesus Christ. The priest is simply the minister who acts in the person of Christ
(in persona Christi), lending him his voice and his actions, so that our Saviour may carry out this
incredible wonder which transubstantiation is. And because it is the sacrifice of the Cross, it
'confects' the Eucharist. We faithful partake of the sacrifice by nourishing ourselves on the victim
which has been immolated for our sins. The Eucharist, 'confected' by the consecration, is consumed in
Holy Communion.
You will gather, then, that the priest is not present as one who presides over the assembly, as simply
another person among many who is given this honour, or as a superior over inferior subjects. He is
there, I repeat, in the person of Christ, by virtue of the power entrusted to him by the character of the
sacrament of Holy Orders. Thus, insofar as the priest shares in the eternal priesthood of Christ, he is
not present as just one more onlooker or participant. He is present as a mediator between God and the
faithful People of God, between God who is almighty and all-merciful and the people who are sinful
and in need of salvation. And while the priest is a man, and as man is a sinner and belongs also to the
people, yet he is present as more than one of the ordinary faithful. He is there as a priest and as such
he does not preside over an assembly looking to the people, but looking to God, mediating between
God and the people, offering with the entire Church the sacrifice of God's only Son for the salvation
of the world.
I think it worthwhile stressing this point because of the abuse of the phrase 'president of the assembly'
when referring to the priest who celebrates Mass. Such abuse causes misgivings and
misunderstandings among the faithful and indeed in the priest himself. Pope Paul VI did not use the
phrase in his Creed of the People of God when he described the ministry of priests:
'We believe that the Mass, celebrated by the priest representing the person of Christ, by virtue
of the power received through the sacrament of orders, and offered by him in the name of
Christ and the members of his Mystical Body, is the sacrifice of Calvary rendered
sacramentally present on our altars.'
The Mass, the sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist, is something more than a gathering of the faithful
round a table to share in the agape. Do not be mistaken. Luther denied the Mass was a sacrifice,
saying that it was merely the commemoration of the Last Supper (and that was not his only error

either). One cannot eat an immolated victim unless it has been sacrificed. We could not nourish our
souls by receiving the Body and Blood of Christ unless this innocent Victim had died in the sacrifice
of the Cross which is daily renewed on our altars in the Mass (although in a sacramental manner). Do
not be mistaken either about just what exactly a priest is. Treat him for what he is, in a respectful
way, as the designated and empowered instrument chosen by God to consecrate the Body and Blood
of the Lord. The priest is another Christ, independently of his failings and shortcomings.
When Jesus announced the mystery of the Eucharist in the synagogue in Capharnaum, the Jews did not
understand his words. They interpreted them in a purely material way. 'This is a hard saying', they
observed. But no, says St Augustine. It is they who are hard, he remarks. If they were not so hard they
might have glimpsed at least that what they did not understand encompassed some mystery, for Jesus'
words if taken in a material sense are just nonsense.
Nowadays there is a tendency not to accept what one cannot understand, unless, of course, it is
presented as the conclusion or discovery of some scientist, in which case the majority of people take
it on board even if they understand absolutely nothing. When such an attitude takes root in the
Christian people it usually shows itself in a sort of shame at having to make room for mysteries which
do not accord with the usual working of the laws of nature. It leads to wanting to find an explanation
which makes the mystery not only reasonable but entirely lucid. It wants to reduce mystery to the
limits of our poor intelligence. Referring to this attitude Pope Paul VI commented that the Jews of old
departed shaking their heads. Others have tried to explain Jesus' words by having recourse to a
comparison between the Gospel and the fantastic and fanciful legends and myths of pagans. Still
others, refusing to accept the Real Presence, reduce the Eucharist to a mere ritual supper, to a
symbolic presence or even more prosaically to an elevation of ordinary things to a superior
meaningful order, like any other primitive superstition.
All this may cause much pain and suffering, but we ought not find it strange. On one occasion our
Lord thanked his Father for having hidden certain things from the wise and learned and revealed them
to mere children, that is, to those who are humble. Only the humble can freely accept with simplicity
what they do not understand. Only they ask questions and are satisfied with the answers given, not
because they comprehend them fully either but because they know there are answers.
But let us go back to the catechism of Pope St Pius X. Another of the questions asked there regarding
this sacrament is: 'What must we do to receive Holy Communion worthily?' The answer is: 'To
receive Holy Communion worthily three things are needed: to be in the state of grace; to be fasting; to
know what one is receiving and to do so with reverence.'
You all know well what to be in the state of grace means so I shall not delay over it. The Church's
law regarding fasting now is that the fast should last one hour, that is, sixty minutes, except for those
who are ill. I should like to explain more at length the meaning of the third requirement, that is, that
we should know what we are about to receive and should actually receive it reverently. Whether we
do so or not helps or hinders the effect the Blessed Eucharist has on us.
Some years ago I was chaplain to a university hostel. There was a student residing thereI forget
what exactly he was studying who used to come to Mass a couple of times a week. Mass was at
eight in the morning. When giving him Holy Communion I noted that he was well dressed. I soon

observed that on the night before he was going to attend Mass he used clean and polish his shoes, take
out his Sunday best, get ready a clean shirt and a good tie. When Mass was over he used spend a few
minutes giving thanks and then rush off to his room to get into his ordinary working clothes, have a
quick breakfast and head for class.
I learned more from him than from a whole host of books about the Eucharist. I do not think he knew
an awful lot of theology, but he did know full well that in Communion he received the Body, Blood,
Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of the Virgin Mary, he who
dwelt among us, worked miracles, died and rose again.
He knew it so well that he put on his best clothes. He was conscious of what exactly was going on.
He gave the greatest possible importance to the mystery of God made man, hidden under the
appearances of bread and wine so that we might receive him and have life within us.
You have all probably seen on television, from time to time, a tennis match. Seemingly, what is called
'concentration' is very important. When spectators are savvy to this they do not shout as they might do
at a football game. Rather they keep silence so as not to distract the player. They also know enough
not to clap in the middle of a point. I realize that this may not be the best way to illustrate my point but
I think you will grasp what I mean when I say that reverence and devotion are to Holy Communion
what concentration is to tennis. It is to be in what we are doing, not to lose sight of the fact that within
a few minutes, a few seconds indeed, no less than God himself made man will be with us in the most
intimate way possible and that for some time we are going to be, as it were, living tabernacles
because Jesus will really, truly and substantially, be with us, the same Jesus who sits at the right hand
of the Father in heaven.
Undoubtedly the degree to which we benefit from Holy Communion depends on our capacity to
receive it well. If we have filled a bucket almost up to the brim with freshly made cement there is
hardly any room to put in a little more water. But if gradually we empty it of the cement with a trowel
we will have room for more and more water. Similarly with the Eucharist. Preparation to receive
Holy Communion worthily and well consists, in no small measure, in our voluntarily emptying our
souls of the useless items which clutter it up. They fill a place which ought to be filled with God's
grace. I know that what I have said is hardly 'proper' hut more than speak 'properly'and I could do
so if I really wanted towhat I am aiming at is saying something you find really useful.
The Blessed Eucharist, then, is 'confected' at the consecration of the Mass, and received in Holy
Communion. Receiving the Body and Blood of our Saviour is the most intimate form of union,
because unlike natural food which we change into our own bodies on digesting it, the spiritual food
we receive in the Eucharist changes us into him, communicating to us his own very life which is Life
indeed. As he himself said:
'He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last
day' (Jn 6:54).
Note that he did not say will have eternal life, referring to after we die physically. He said has, now,
at this moment. He who receives Holy Communion has eternal life within him, and so when he dies
physical death affects only his temporal life, not that eternal life which continues for ever. We are

reminded of this in the first preface for the dead which tells us that 'life is changed, not ended'.
Everything comes to an end, everything is undone: technology, culture, things, the world, everything.
But he, Jesus, will remain forever because he is Life, and we will remain with him, because we are
united to him, sharing his own very Life.
'I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full' (Jn 10:11); 'I am the bread of life' (Jn
6:48), 'so that a man may eat of it and not die' (Jn 6:49). I think one has not to be super-endowed with
intelligence to realize what this means. If we, who call ourselves Christians, lived up to our faith,
there would be a huge queue outside every church, and priests would just be unable to find the time
and energy to satisfy the need of the faithful to receive Communion. Or perhaps they would, because
there would be many more priests than there are today, and instead of declining little by little as they
are in many places there would be an upsurge in the number asking to become priests.
'If you only knew the gift of God ...' (Jn 4:10) our Lord said to the Samaritan woman. If we only knew
what would give us life! Do we really know it? Do we realize that we have it at arm's length? At
times I think we do not. I would go so far as to say that many of us give more time, attention and
interest to things other than receiving the greatest gift God could make us. Forced to choose, we can
always find an excuse for putting God to one side, and putting any old bagatelle which seems at that
moment more desirable in the first place. The result of it is that we have no more consistency to us
than a soap bubble; we are left bitter at the mistake we have made and the chance we have lost.
That is the way we are. To change the way we are God became man and dwelt among us. What is
more, he has remained with us to the close of the age. And this has its consequences because we just
cannot remain neutral. We cannot allege that we are lacking strength when we have the right
nourishment to hand. Neither can we allege that we did not know because we have known it almost
from the cradle.
In sum, what I wanted to say to you is that we must live up to our Christian faith more, that we must
have more depth to us, and take serious things more seriously. We need to be more reflective so as
not to waste our time and effort in meaningless or almost meaningless trifles, without ever finding
time for what is really important, really vital and indeed the greatest thing we can do in life. At times
I think we just do not care about what the playwright Anouilh judged to be most significant fact about
St Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, namely, his passion for God's honour. It seems as if,
although we have faith and admit to having it, we are not convinced that the Mass is the greatest act of
worship we can offer God, and that to partake of the Eucharist is the greatest honour we can have.
Perhaps because God makes it all so easy we do not appreciate it. And that is what I ask of you:
think, face up to this reality and decide what you want to do. And, of course, be prepared to shoulder
the consequences of your decisions and actions.

LET A MAN EXAMINE HIMSELF

A necessary condition for receiving the Blessed Eucharist fruitfully and worthily is to be in the state
of grace. If you were to ask why the Church has been teaching this for almost twenty centuries and
why she prohibits us from receiving without this requirement I will answer quite simply: food is only
for those who are alive. We do not feed the dead, do we? To do so would not only be irrational, it
would also be a waste of food. And the Body of Christ is something too precious to be thrown away,

or made the butt of a joke. If the purpose of food is to conserve life, to make growth possible and to
increase the strength of the one who eats it, then it is nonsense to give it to a corpse. And a person
who is not in the state of grace is dead, and cannot be nourished. He or she cannot grow. Strength
cannot be increased where it does not exist; life cannot be conserved where there is no life. It is
farcical to dare receive Communion when our soul is dead. It is an offence against him who gives
himself to us as living food.
All this was seen very clearly in the first century. Even then there were abuses, which St Paul
described and censured forthrightly and with sorrow. We might even say he was harsh in his
condemnation of such behaviour.
"But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together, it is not
for the better but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you assemble as a church, I hear that
there are divisions among you; and I partly believe it, for there must be factions among you in order
that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. When you meet together, it is not the Lord's
supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and
another is drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the house of
God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No,
I will not.
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night he was
betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, 'This is my body which is
for you. Do this in remembrance of me'. In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, 'This cup
is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me'. For as often
as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty
of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and
drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning eats and drinks judgment
upon himself" (1 Cor 11:17-29).
The celebration of the Eucharist after the agape or supper began (it seems) to give rise to
troublesome consequences some twenty years after the death of Jesus. St Paul was severe in the
matter and in so reacting taught us two important things.
The first is that disciplinary measures taken by the Church are never the result of pure theoretical
speculation. Or, to put it another way: first there was life; real, practical experience which gave rise
little by little to changes in the way the sacraments were administered, without ever altering their
essential nature. If in recent times the Holy See has prohibited, for example, that the Canon of the
Mass be altered, and has obliged priests to say only the four canons approved in the Roman Missal,
along with the few others which have been approved for special occasions, it is not because some
experts have, as a result of their studies, decided that this is perhaps the best way of acting, but rather
because experience has shown that tolerance of liturgical 'experimentation' has unfortunately given
rise to the weirdest kinds of improvisation. It has at times gone so far as to destroy the consecration
whose words are so changed that they are no longer what Christ said and says through his priests but
simply something 'charismatically' churned out and elaborated on the spur of the moment. And this is

far too serious a matter to be trifled with, as the agape was here and there made a mockery of in St
Paul's time.
The second thing we learn is that the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Jesus is something so
sacred, so worthy of respect, that it cannot be treated in cavalier fashion. To approach the Blessed
Eucharist unworthily is to make oneself guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord; it is to eat, we are
told, our own condemnation. And so, St Paul admonishes us: 'Let a man examine himself.' Let him see
whether he is alive and in God's grace, and if he is, then let him approach the altar to receive Holy
Communion. And if he is not, let him go to Confession, because a person who receives in the state of
mortal sin is guilty of sacrilege.
It was for this reason that the Sacrament of Penance was instituted: to raise to life those who are
spiritually dead, to restore the life of grace to those who have had the misfortune to lose it through
mortal sin. Like the other sacraments this one too is directed towards the Eucharist, save only that
Penance is singularly and more immediately ordered to it than the other sacraments.
'Let a man examine himself,' says St Paul. I believe that today people do not examine themselves
much. It is uncomfortable to have to peer into our own soul, to look openly and sincerely into our own
conscience, because there is too much there which we would prefer not to see, and well do we know
it even though we may try to persuade ourselves to the contrary. We fear finding unventilated and
dusty corners, and we are afraid to discover exactly what is there. As a point in Blessed Josemaria
Escriva's The Way says:
'You never want to get to the heart of the matter. Sometimes, through politeness. Other times,
most times, through fear of hurting yourself. Sometimes again, through fear of hurting others.
And, always, through cowardice' (no. 33).
I can say without fear of contradiction that those who most and best examine themselves, who have
lost their fear of discovering the truth, are those who go most regularly and frequently to Confession.
We can all feel a certain reluctance at having to clean and put in order a house which has been long
neglected, is dirty and full of garbage, but a clean-up in a house every fortnight or so eliminates
surprises, and does not require any special effort. It is easy to see what has become dirty or fallen
into disorder and easy also to put it right again.
It is noteworthy that in the recent past the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has reminded
priests that they ought not dissuade the faithful from frequent confession. The Congregation was
forced to do that because everyone knows how in recent times there has been a sharp fall-off in
people availing of the sacrament of Reconciliation and Penance. It has happened because the faithful
are being encouraged to abandon individual auricular confession and to substitute for it public
penitential acts and general absolutions. Present-day doctrinal confusion has affected this sacrament
as it has many other teachings of our faith. Some priests are less and less inclined to make themselves
available and sit in the confessional. The decline has been favoured by a series of theories, spread by
word of mouth and by popular writings, which are not in conformity with what the Church has always
taught. At the same time there has been a dearth of material which might explain clearly the mind of
the Church in this regard and confirm the faithful in the faith they have received.

I am not sure just how much truth there is in all these re-interpretations, questionings and inquiries of
those who say they want the ordinary faithful to be instructed and more mature in their belief. No
doubt there is some. Or better said: there is definitely some, because it is extraordinarily difficult to
express an opinion which is absolutely one hundred per cent wrong. There is a proliferation of
ambiguous terminology which allows one true meaning to be found among the many erroneous ones
possible. At first glance, and even after a second or third reading, all this monotonous literature
leaves the impression of being a cover-up of the simple truths the Church clearly teaches to the
Catholic faithful. I doubt if I have at all exaggerated in what I have just written; in fact I think I have
rather been guilty of understatement.
It is perfectly clear that priests ought not dissuade the faithful from going to Confession. The
Congregation says so, in the light of the Church's teaching over many centuries. But when some of
today's theologians want to instruct the people, and tell priests how to preach on Confession, the
ideas they throw up, in somewhat plaintive and sombre tones, are often the direct opposite of what the
Church wants taught. 'Of course, we need frequent Confession', they say and then go on to add: 'But
what is its rightful place in the overall picture of human life? How is it to be integrated into one's
Christian behaviour?' The teaching of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is quite clear, but
when one begins to askas they doabout how to integrate this sacrament into Christian living,
already the Church's teaching is beginning to be obfuscated. The real question is being ignored and
the attention of the faithful is being turned aside into areas which have little or nothing to do with the
faith.
When we read phrases like 'we have to find the real meaning and place of frequent Confession' and
then are helped to do it with a pastoral approach which highlights only the ephemeral reasons we
have when we actually go to confession, the average Catholic, who logically enough tends to accept
as teaching of the Church what is said by a priest in matters of faith and morals, comes to the
conclusion that he or she has always been doing things badly because they have been going to
Confession for all the wrong reasons. We are told not to go to Confession:
simply and solely to obtain spiritual guidance and direction. This reduces (they say) Confession to
a handy psychological therapy, and there is grave danger that the sacramental nature of Penance be
forgotten; or
to obtain forgiveness of venial sin. To want to justify the need for frequent Confession (they say)
solely as a means of obtaining pardon for venial sins is to do away with the need for Penance
altogether since these sins can always be forgiven by repentance and attrition (imperfect contrition).
Since frequent Confession already bespeaks a rather high level of interior life and a constant aversion
from sin, including venial sin, whatever venial sins there are can well be forgiven before ever going
to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and so the sacrament becomes simply redundant; or
to grow in grace. But grace (they say) can also be received in many other ways. So this is not
sufficient reason to justify or prove the need for devotional confession and should not be the primary
reason for receiving the sacrament. Grace comes to us and can be increased through many other
spiritual works.
This means that here and there it is being taught that to seek spiritual guidance, pardon for venial sins

and an increase of sanctifying grace are insufficient, flimsy and indeed illegitimate motives for
justifying frequent confession.
And so, it is then asked: 'what reason is there for frequent confession? Why is it so recommended by
the Church?'
The answer given by these new interpreters is first that the forgiveness of sins is more clearly evident
in the sacrament of Reconciliation where it is seen in a 'visible and historic' way than simply by an
act of personal repentance. Secondly, that the sacrament underlines the gratuity and supernatural
character of forgiveness. Thirdly, that it is 'an acknowledgement that our sins are cleansed only by the
power of God'.
I suppose that nearly all Christians (especially younger ones) who have no great religious formation,
or who have forgotten or never learned the catechism very well might easily come to think that they
ought not go to frequent confession unless they have overriding motives for doing so, motives which,
according to the 'experts', give meaning to this devotional act. Then, since it is difficultat least
according to these same 'experts'to find such motives, and even more difficult to understand them,
the end result is that some people do not go to confession frequently, if at all.
All that I have described above belongs not to the teaching of the Church but to the particular opinions
of theologians who have done more to disorientate than anything else in their rush to 're-interpret'
things in the light of modern thought. They have done so without any thought for fidelity to the
Church's Magisterium or for what has been taught up to now. Such opinions merit no more than
superficial attention for they are mere curios which try to teach the very opposite of what the Church
teaches, but in a skilful and clever way, of course. What is really harmful is that such theories might
be preached from the pulpit, and then we had better be on guard because before long error is spread,
received teaching is altered and confusion abounds. If harm is done to souls a grave sin of omission
or of tacit approval of evil is committed.
So, let me say the following quite clearly. Some of the reasons why the Church recommends frequent
Confession are the following: the forgiveness of sins, the increase of grace and the receiving of
spiritual guidance; exactly the same reasons why some 'experts' oppose the practice.
I shall begin with the first one. The sacrament of Reconciliation is for the forgiveness of sins, all sins,
whether mortal or venial. A deliberate venial sin is also an offence against God. A venial sin does
not lessen our state of grace (it does, however, make difficult the practice of virtue and deprives us of
many actual graces) and so it can be forgiven in other ways besides sacramental confession. But that
does not amount to a prohibition to mentioning them in confession. To accuse ourselves of these sins
in the sacrament of Penance is not absolutely necessary but the practice of doing so is described by
the catechism as 'praiseworthy and very beneficial'. Venial sin is a sin and a real offence against God.
Anyone who is a Christian and is conscious of venial sin, will humble himself, accuse himself of the
sin and confess his guilt to a priest in order to be absolved in a sacrament which was justly instituted
for such eventualities. To obtain pardon for venial sin is a perfect reason for going to confession. We
can be sure we are acting quite correctly in doing so.
The same can be said about the second point. To go to Confession frequently in order to grow in

grace is an excellent practice, one well founded on theology and on common sense. No one is so rich
interiorly as to disdain the increase of grace given by this sacrament. And besides, as you all know
well, each sacrament gives a specific sacramental grace, a grace tailored to meet the need for which
it was instituted. Penance gives a specific grace which enables us to react more vigorously in
resisting temptation, and so avoid venial sins. This kind of grace is not given by any of the other
means by which we may have our venial sins forgiven.
As regards the third reason, namely spiritual direction or guidance, this too is a good and valid
reason for going to Confession. At this juncture I must say that I fear that those who reduce spiritual
guidance to a sort of psychological or psychiatric treatment have little or no idea what spiritual
direction really is, nor possibly what psychological or psychiatric treatment is. Confession is, first
and foremost, a tribunal. But just as God is not simply a judge, neither is the priest. When taught to
exercise his ministry as a confessor, a priest was also taught to be father, teacher and doctor. He
must, therefore, try to understand, to teach and to heal. And this cannot be done merely by giving
classes or preaching to a more or less homogeneous group of people on a Sunday morning. A doctor
looks after individuals who are ill, because each one is different. A priest must do likewise, because
the needs of one person are not the same as the needs of another. Each person's problems are different
precisely because they are personal. No two people find themselves in exactly the same position.
What the priest might have to say to a school girl will not be what he will have to say to a truck
driver.
And as regards having to be understanding ... bear this in mind. The same sin viewed objectively can
be completely different in different persons, because in one case it might be quite deliberate, and the
result of malice, while in the other it might have been committed out of sheer ignorance. I just cannot
see how a priest can come to understand anyone by merely glancing at them, without their ever
opening their mouth. I just cannot for the life of me understand how one can divine the thoughts of
someone by merely looking at how they comb their hair. Besides, priests are exhorted by Vatican
Council II to help the faithful 'so that while meeting their human obligations in the ordinary conditions
of life, they do not separate their union with Christ from their ordinary life; but through the very
performance of their tasks, which are God's will for them, actually promote the growth of their union
with him' (Decree on the apostolate of lay people, no. 4). That is to say, priests are supposed to
educate and form them, individually, as disciples of the Master, as Christians.
You will tell me how and when this can be done in a given case, on a personal level. You can tell me
that this can be done outside Confession, and indeed outside the confessional. As regards the first, I
agree. As regards the second I do not. I am in total agreement with the Church's recommendation that
we confess our sins simply, clearly and with sorrow, and that afterwards we can discuss any
particular problems with which we are struggling. But not, normally, outside the confessional.
The 1983 Code of Canon Law (Canon 964) is quite explicit:
1. The proper place for hearing sacramental confessions is a church or oratory.
2. As far as the confessional is concerned, norms are to be issued by the Episcopal Conference, with
the proviso however that confessionals, which the faithful who so wish may freely use, are in an open
place, and fitted with a fixed grille between the penitent and the confessor.

3. Except for a just reason, confessions are not to be heard elsewhere than in a confessional.
It has always been the custom that the confessions of women, except in the obvious case of some lady
who is ill in bed, should be heard in a confessional. That is what the Church has laid down. Why? Out
of respect, refinement and to avoid any possible dangers for both parties, no matter how remote they
might seem. It is not that the Church is always thinking the worst. What happens is that the Church,
while ever young, is old and wise, with the experience of centuries behind her. And so, she knows
that there are apostolates which begin with a profession of faith in God the Father and end with the
resurrection of the flesh, and a soul is worth so much that it ought be looked after very carefully. Thus
the Church has established that women should go to confession from behind a grille, and if on some
occasion their confession has to be heard outside a confessional then it should be done in a open,
public way, for example, leaving the door of a room ajar, so that everyone can know what is going on
inside in the room (without overhearing, of course). I repeat, this way of acting is not done on a whim
but because the Church has much experience in these matters. Within a confessional there is almost no
danger and the sanctity of the sacrament is better preserved.
By custom the case with men is somewhat different, and any reasonable person can understand why.
A priest can hear men's confessions outside the confessional, that is to say, he is not obliged to use a
confessional but it can be very useful to do so. The reason is quite simple. Look at what can happen:
after greeting one another, the priest and penitent will spend a while in small talk about the children
and their studies; another few minutes surveying the political scene, and then discussing the weather,
and about how our environment is being polluted and then there will be a word or two about next
year's vacation and so on. In the meantime, if they are still smokers, they might have gone through a
couple of cigarettes. Three quarters of an hour have flown before they really get down to business.
Had it been done in a confessional the whole thing might have taken five, or at most ten minutes;
outside it, the whole process might take an hour or even more.
But I let you judge for yourselves whether spiritual guidance is or is not a good reason for going to
confession frequently. For my part, I must say that all this talk about things having to be seen, and
about the need to highlight the gratuitous nature of God's forgiveness, and then that God's pardon
should be seen in time and place, and all the other arguments against frequent confession leave me
cold. We wash because we get dirty, even though the dirt is not blood, or mud, or grease, or grime but
just the result of perspiration, and dust, and all the other things which pile up on the human body, and
make it feel more and more uncomfortable. The frequency with which a person washes depends on
his or her desire to be clean.
I must not omit mentioning another wee trap which is often laid these days. Today, so we are told,
'human life is lived fundamentally in a community way'. Does not, therefore, this undeniable fact push
us in the direction of having recourse to a community-based sacramental absolution? What precedes
(readings, exhortation to repentance, etc.) is aimed at 'fostering and creating a climate of house-based
liturgies: family or neighbourhood; among people with the same social background; among friends;
among those who enjoy the same recreational facilities, etc'. This, we are told once more, 'will more
easily help people to form a deep and true conscience, and bring about both social and individual
conversion'. It is a pity that the various Church documents on community-based penitential services
are not more explicit. It is difficult to know whether we are being asked to return to the past (when

there was no public confession but there was public penance) or whether we are being presented
simply with an idea that is meant to shape the future. At any rate, the keynote of community-based
penitential services contrasts dramatically with what sociologists say about the loneliness of man in
today's society and the problems people have in communicating with each other. Perhaps these
penitential services are geared to solving this type of problem by communicating one's sins to one
another in a family, social, work or recreational environment. I myself do not know, and I am not sure
anyone else does.
What I do know is that all this has nothing to do with Christ's teaching. It is a different thing
altogether. It is simply a long string of theories and mental contortions which totally and quite openly
put to one side the truths defined by the solemn Magisterium of the Church about the sacrament of
Penance. Indeed, this teaching is often mocked for not making allowance for what are termed 'the
demands of life today'. These theories are, therefore, bereft of the least guarantee. They do not have
any greater value than that of an opinion without foundation, something very akin to a falsification of
the truth. The trouble is that they are preached and do damage because some people, when faced with
a choice between what the Church teaches and what these new 'experts' teach, choose the latter. They
fall in with these newly evolved ideas, more out of ignorance than anything else I think. But then again
only they will really know why.
'Let a man examine himself.' The cleaner we are when we go to receive the Blessed Eucharist, the
greater expression we give of our faith and love, and the greater benefit we derive from receiving the
Body and Blood of the Lord. When we have no mortal sins then in our examination of conscience
venial sins will soon declare themselves. Repenting of them and with the help of sacramental grace,
our struggle will be to avoid them in the future and thereby lessen the danger of committing mortal sin.
I should like you to be clear about this. When a house is dirty, with grease and paint marks all over
the place, with the walls stripped of their plaster, broken panes of glass in the windows and
fragments of glass on the floor, doors off their hinges and garbage and rubbish everywhere, it is
difficult for anyone to notice that a picture is not hanging straight, that there are fingerprints on a
mirror, that the table is in the wrong place, that a door handle does not work properly. It is only when
the major repairs are seen to that one can begin to put a bit of order on the minor defects like a door
not closing properly, or scraps of paper lying beside the wastepaper basket rather than in it, and so
on. It is only then that they can even be seen and put right.
This is one of the great advantages of frequent confession. It makes for interior growth. We attain
refinement of conscience, sensitivity and sharpness in viewing happenings supernaturally, detecting
where interiorly we lack proportion and order, seeing where we err by defect or excess. We begin to
see what there is in our life which is not according to the mind of God, no matter how small the item
be; we recognize the underlying motives of what we do or fail to do. Anyone who has sincerely
undertaken a good examination of conscience and gone frequently to confession experiences the truth
of this point of The Way:
"That supernatural mode of contact is a truly military tactic. You carry on the warthe daily
struggles of your interior lifefar from the main walls of your fortress.
And the enemy meets you there in your small mortifications, your customary prayer, your methodical
work, your plan of life and with difficulty will he come close to the easily-scaled battlements of your

castle. And if he does come, he comes exhausted" (no. 307).

Prior examination, as a preparation for frequent confession, will enable us to see what is badly done
and an offence against God, small things perhaps but ones which are not unimportant. Neglect or
disdain of such small details is what leads straight to major catastrophes in the interior life. The soul
becomes coarse and less and less sensitive to the supernatural, like the calloused hands of a labourer.
If you want to make sure progress and always tread firm ground, you ought allow yourselves be
guided by the Magisterium of the Church. If you take at face value individualistic interpretations and
private teaching authorities, you expose yourselves to the dangers encountered by those who are
walking on quicksand. You will sink. At the end of the day only the Church has been entrusted with
the ministry of salvation; only the way she marks out offers full guarantees of being the very same
road Christ marked out for us and walked himself.

WE OUGHT TO PRAY ALWAYS

Frequently on reading the Gospel I come away with the impression that there are three items on which
Jesus places most emphasis. Perhaps 'emphasis' is not exactly the right word but these three things do
seem to me to be fundamentally important. First of all he asked for faith, and the first Christians
persevered in the teaching of the Apostles (cf Acts 2:42), in the faith they had received because they
had been born to a new life. Without faith we are still in the shadow of death. He insisted a great deal
on charity, on love, which is the key to creation and the only one of the theological virtues which will
remain. It is the point of the first commandment; everything can be reduced to love: love of God, love
of neighbour. The Blessed Eucharist is the sacrament of love, for a person has no greater love than to
lay down his life for his friend. Jesus gave his life for us, and continues to give himself to us as food
so that we might live in him. The first Christians appreciated the Eucharist and so they came together
for the breaking of bread (cf Acts 2:42).
And prayer. In one way or another the Gospel is full of calls to prayer. Sometimes it is a simple
statement, an almost throw-away remark, that Jesus went off to a lonely place and spent the night in
prayer with his Father. At other times he is teaching his disciples how to pray. If you read the opening
verses of the eleventh chapter of St Luke's Gospel carefully you will see Christ's interest in this topic
when he gives simple, almost elementary, examples so as to instruct his disciples well in this matter.
Often his miracles were a reply to petitions made to him by men and women who were sorely tried
and afflicted.
Nonetheless, in spite of Jesus' insistence, in spite too of the repeated teachings of the Church, I have
the distinct impression that the practice of prayer by which a soul can nourish itself with ease and
without any great effort is not much in vogue among many Catholics. I am not referring now to vocal
prayer, which is so excellent and so absolutely indispensable, nor to the custom we all have of saying
our prayers from time to time. But I think it wise to remind you that merely sporadic and distracted
vocal prayer, speaking to God 'hastily, without much thought, is mere noise, the rattling of tin cans',
(so says St Teresa of Avila) and in the words of the Founder of Opus Dei:
'I will tell you that, however much you work your lips, 1 do not call it prayer' (The Way no.
85).

I refer rather to mental prayer, to the conversation we have with God as with a friend, knowing him to
be present, attentive to our words, listening and replying. Replying undoubtedly, even though at times
we may not realize it because within us we lack the silence we need to hear him. The cacophony
going on inside hinders us from hearing his voice which speaks without the sound of words.
I am of the opinion that the times we live in do not help to make a Christian a prayerful man or
woman. Indeed I think that these times can be a positive impediment to prayer. Our age expends an
enormous amount of energy in dissipating our attention over a multitude of meaningless and vacuous
topics like the latest fairy-tale romance, or the latest divorce of some well-known actor or actress, or
an interview with some pop group about their future plans, or the signing by this club or that of some
footballer. And if it is not that then it is about the rumours emanating from a recent international
conference which dealt profusely with a topic about which we know little or nothing. In a word, we
are over-concerned with topics which do not affect us in the slightest, or which do not depend on us
and which we can neither improve or disimprove in the slightest. Our minds are filled to the brim
with useless information and prevent us from reflecting on what is really important. We are in such a
hurry; there is noise everywhere; artificial problems are created whose solution makes not one iota of
difference.
It leads me to think that all this is the result of a great interior vacuum, or perhaps an effective means
for keeping ourselves so occupied that we have not even the time to recognize that we are afraid of
looking into the hole in ourselves where our souls should be.
If the sacraments are channels of grace, vehicles as it were which God ordinarily uses to make us
holy, prayer is the channel man has to make known to God his needs, the vehicle by which he
communicates with his Maker. Both are means to union: by the sacraments God unites himself with
man; through prayer man unites himself to God.
Now it is not that God is unable to know what we need unless we inform him. Obviously he knows
already. Jesus himself taught us not to use many words when we pray 'for your Father knows what you
need before you ask him' (Mt 6:8). Since in our prayer we never tell Go3 anything he does not
already know, the purpose of prayer is not to inform him of our problems, difficulties or sufferings.
We do not pray because God would be deprived for want of it, as if we were doing him a favour, or
as someone deigning to grant him an instant of our time and attention. It is we who need prayer. It is
God who does us the favour by being always at our beck and call and ready to hear us whether we
are about to ask his help in some vitally important matter or wish simply to relate to him the thousand
and one uninteresting details which make up our daily round.
From one point of view prayer is an expression of our desire to receive from God whatever he
wishes to grant us. In itself it involves a humble disposition because at one and the same time it
acknowledges our weakness and his power. Prayer places us on solid ground for through it we
recognize that what we ask for is a grace and not a right. It is foolish in the extreme, and building on
quicksand, to adopt the attitude of the proud person who does not pray, who does not 'lower' himself
to ask because of his supposed self-sufficiency. The proud person prefers to 'do without' than to owe
someone a favour and be under obligation to God, even if only through gratitude.
From another point of view prayer is an expression of our confidence in the goodness of God, in his

saving will, in the love he has for us. It is a greater trust than any beggar can have when he asks an
alms, because a beggar can never be sure that his petition will be heard and answered, whereas we
know that God listens and always attends to our prayer, if it really is prayer. Jesus has given us a
guarantee: 'For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will
be opened' (Lk 11:10).
However we ought not think of prayer as a sort of mechanical technique whose result dovetails
always with the wishes of the petitioner. Our Lord did say: 'Whatever you ask in prayer, you will
receive, if you have faith' (Mt 21:22). But naturally enough this does not imply that if we ask to win
the Lotto or the football pools with faith we are guaranteed success. God ordains who will win such
prizes and who will get the football scores correct. We can never see God as a species of benevolent
and all-powerful genie who comes from Aladdin's lamp, ready to satisfy our every whim and caprice
as soon as we pronounce the magic word. On the other hand there are people who think that asking
with faith simply means being absolutely certain that what they ask for will be obtained. This may be
a very psychological way of explaining faith but it has nothing to do with the way a Christian
understands faith, nor indeed with faith itself.
All this is clear from the Gospel. On one occasion the brothers James and John went with their
mother to ask a favour of Jesus. They said to him, 'Allow us to sit one at your right hand and the other
at your left in your glory.' 'You do not know what you are asking', Jesus said to them. 'Can you drink
the cup that I must drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I must be baptized?' They
replied, 'We can.' Jesus said to them, 'The cup that I must drink you shall drink, and with the baptism
with which I must be baptized you shall be baptized, but as for seats at my right hand or my left, these
are not mine to grant; they belong to those to whom they have been allotted' [Mk 10: 35-40].
If you have read the above passage carefully you will notice that it contains two distinct facets. At the
beginning James and John are led by a spirit of initiative; daringly, and I suppose, confidently, they
ask Jesus for the two best places in his glory. But Jesus does not heed their petition. Unashamedly he
puts it to one side, although his reply is enlightening: 'You do not know what you are asking.' He then
takes the initiative and attempts to see how far these two, who had aspired so high, will go in their
willingness to give: 'Can you drink the cup that I must drink?' On receiving a steady and resolute
affirmative response he who had refused to do their will because they did not know what they were
asking grants them the power to do the will of God who always knows very well what and why he
asks.
What God wishes to grant us is real good, real when compared with the foolish items, goods and mad
things we often make the object of our petitions. I think we frequently ask without realizing what we
are asking for. Imagine for a moment the case of a very rich man who can resolve all the problems
and difficulties of a poor man who is at his wits' end; he wants to help because he likes the poor
beggar and has great love for him. So, with a friendly gesture and ready to do whatever is needed he
calls the beggar and says: 'Ask of me whatever you want.' Full of anxiety, like a drowning man
seeking a lifejacket, the beggar asks for a bag of peanuts. No doubt he will enjoy them; he will be
happy and content as long as the peanuts last and he can continue chewing away. But he will have
solved nothing. His last state will be as bad as his first. He will have wasted a golden and perhaps
unique opportunity. Moreover he will have turned his back on the goodness and kindness of the man

who had really wanted to help. In the same way a person who would give a package of razor blades
to a child to play with is either very malicious or very stupid. It is no excuse to say that the child
really wanted them, or kept begging for them.
We ought always ask God for what is best. And the best is what he wants of us and wants to give us at
any particular moment. God loves us more and better than we can love ourselves, and what he wishes
to give us is always better than what we wish to give ourselves. Thus, no doubt we will be struck by
the prayer of three peopleI myself am always deeply movedwho appear on the pages of the
Gospel: Mary's prayer at Cana in Galilee; the publican's prayer in the Temple; and the request of the
good thief on Calvary. Mary simply said: 'They have no wine', and followed it up with her words to
the servants: 'Do whatever he asks you.' She knew that whatever Jesus decided to do would be the
best solution. She explained the need and then left the matter in her Son's hands. The publican, as you
well know, beat his breast and said: 'God, be merciful to me a sinner.' Just that, and he went home
justified. And the good thief: 'Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.' And
immediately he was canonized in this life when he heard the reply: 'Truly, I say to you, this day you
will be with me in Paradise.'
You see the point, don't you? 'They have no wine.' 'Have mercy on me.' 'Remember me.' None of the
three tells Jesus what he has to do; rather they abandon themselves into his hands completely and
without reserve. They do so with such simplicity and humility that we are amazed and left wondering
whether the power of prayerat least from man's point of viewmight not reside in the
consciousness of our weakness, in the recognition of our impotence which leads us to trust totally in
the goodness and generosity of God.
Sometimes people think that to pray is to think about the angels, or the last things (death, judgement,
heaven, hell and all that); or about all those things written in meditation books. Many ordinary people,
with ordinary day-to-day concerns, people like you and me, might feel like running away from all that
because we feel unable to pray. But prayer is not necessarily like that. Such topics may help us a lot
because they place us in the presence of God, and make us aware of what has lasting value. They may
cleanse us of the almost overwhelming number of petty concerns we have, insignificant enough when
compared to what really matters, and which like the flowers of the field wither and die quickly.
I am told that from time to time department heads in the civil service have a meeting with their
respective ministers. The purpose of the meeting is to go through the affairs of the department, explain
the problems being encountered and receive advice and guidance as to how to resolve them. When the
meeting is over the department head knows what he has to do, and how to do it. Undoubtedly it is up
to him to do it, but the advice received gives him a good idea how to go about it. So, the department
head acts in unity with his minister, following definite guidelines, aware at every moment of the
minister's opinion, ready to implement it so that the business of government as a whole may prosper.
This, it seems to me, can give us an idea of how to go about our prayer. God is like the minister and
we are like department heads. Our prayer each day is like the time we take to talk things over with
our minister, things we hope to do or resolve that day. I say 'the things of that day' because the
objective of prayer is not to identify God with what we have in mind, but just the opposite. We want
to identify ourselves with what he has in mind for us. We do not pray that God may do our will, but to
ready ourselves to do his will in all things. And God's will for us is not something which only comes

on the scene from time to time, like when there is something really important looming. On the horizon
there is a will of God for us every day and at every moment of every day. From the theological point
of view it is impossible that there be a moment when God forgets us. So, if at any moment we do not
know what his will is, it is not because he does not want something from us but that, because of our
not meeting and talking with him, we have become unconcerned with his will and have fixed our
attention on what is our will.
If you begin praying and speaking with God, going over the twenty-four hours which are starting at
that very moment, you will see clearly what you have to do either by way of obligation or simply as
the result of certain circumstances. You have to go to a lecture, for example. So ask God how he
wishes you to spend that time. The answer will probably be: pay attention; take down a few notes.
You may object that the lecturer is an absolute bore and has nothing of interest to say. You may well
find that God still insists that you go and urges you to offer up the time spent as an act of penance for
the sins being committed in the world that day. Later, you have some free time. You ask God what you
are to do with it. Consult him about it. And so on and so forth. If you merely spend fifteen or twenty
minutes in daily conversation with God it is a small price to pay for the amount your life will be
enriched.
And do you know what happens then? Your soul becomes more sensitive. At the end of a few weeks
you will be surprised to find yourself, at odd moments during the day, looking at God out of the
corner of your eye and asking: 'What do you want of me now?' Funnily enough you are less and less
alone; you are more 'accompanied'; you take in more things, a whole host of things which were there
earlier but which you never saw. Life becomes richer. You discover the value of a series of
happenings which beforehand seemed trivial and unimportant. Our interior vision is sharpened and
where once we saw only vague shapes on an indifferent background, now we see clearly small and
well-defined nuances on a pattern of great variety. Our Lord has become a much more familiar figure;
we come to have a greater and more urgent awareness of being an active, intelligent and free agent in
the wonderful plan God has drawn up for man's salvation.
It is surprising how insistently Jesus speaks about prayer. He never speaks for the mere sake of
speaking; his words convey a sense of urgency.' [You] ought always to pray and never lose heart' ( Lk
18:1). His very insistence on the matter, the very fact that he reiterates his teaching constantly should
be a matter of reflection for us. Why did he speak so frequently about prayer? Because it is so
important. Granted, but why is it important? Many years ago I found the reply in the words of Blessed
Josemaria Escriva: 'In heaven there are many saints who never went to daily Mass or Communion.
But there is not one who was not a soul of prayer, of much prayer every day.' Quite true. To hear
Mass or receive Communion does not just depend on us; we need a priest and a church to go to. But
to pray we need only start. A person might hear Mass and receive Holy Communion daily and yet not
pray, thereby reducing Mass and Communion to mere custom and routine, having little or no effect on
his life; whereas as soon as we begin to pray and continue praying day after day there comes a
moment when daily Mass and Holy Communion become as essential as the air we breathe. I am not
speaking now in theological terms but in terms of what we all have realized personally.
The reasons are clear enough. When two people are in continual contact, friendship develops and as
friendship deepens so too does union, mutual affection and loyally to one another. I am referring now

to personal prayer, not to what for some years now has been termed 'community' prayer. Not that such
prayer is badhow could it be if it is prayer? Community prayer is good; there has always been a
place for it in the Church, although hitherto under a different and more accurate name, that is, public
prayer. What is not good is that under the guise of community prayer personal prayer may be
lessened, if not altogether dismissed.
The reasoning behind these new theories about mental prayer which often turn their backs on the
traditional ascetical practices of the Church is more or less as follows: prayer is very important, we
are told; it is recommended in the Gospel; and the Church constantly insists on the need for it. We
have to pray. However, we cannot allow prayer take on a selfish attitude, or become an
individualistic exercise at the margin of ecclesial action. If this were to happen the community aspect
of the Church which is so necessary today would be destroyed. We are also told that personal prayer
can give rise to delusions, to enclosing ourselves in an unreal world, and becoming unconcerned with
the world around us. Thus, we need (we are informed) to discover new modes and modalities which
will allow us to assume our commitments, all of them, including the socio-political ones, perhaps
through dialogue, exchanges of ideas in a community setting, etc. Before long prayer becomes a mere
exchange of ideas like a conversation among friends who are talking about a newspaper article or
chatting over a cup of coffee. Whatever connexion there is with the Gospel in this kind of community
prayer is sheer fantasy.
A Christian is so individualized a person that he or she is unique. We are not merely part of a whole.
Even though we are members of the Mystical Body of Christ, we are members with a soul created
directly by God to inform a particular body. Jesus did not die for mankind at large; he did not die for
an abstract notion like humanity. He died for each and every individual.
If a person is alive it is because God maintains him or her in being at every instant. If this conserving
act of God were to cease then that person would simply cease to exist. Moreover, our soul is not
simply part of a collective whole. Even when praying together with others, a Christian keeps his or
her own personality to such a degree that, if we are not part of the praying community as individual
persons, knowing what we are doing and wanting to do it, then we are hardly praying at all. Prayer is
not anonymous; we stand before God who knows us, whether we pray alone or in the company of
others.
It is in the personal prayer we have each day with God that we discover the real replies to our
questions, including the questions we find hard to put into words. It is when we are alone that close
contact with God becomes possible. Then we realize what it is God wants of us because we are in
tune with the Lord.
At times I think that the allergy and lack of interest which makes us so reluctant to have a personal
friendship with God who loves us beyond all measure results from our wishing to receive only a
satisfactory response, and not a true response. We may shy away from prayer for fear of discovering
that we have not sufficient courage to face up to the consequences of God's will. Perhaps we only
want to hear voices which approve the image we have forged of ourselves and we are frightened of
knowing God's will for us and of seeing that image broken into fragments.
A Christian who is afraid to pray is like a small child who refuses to open its eyes because it has not

yet enough courage to look reality in the face. That is sheer immaturity, inability to take on what is
true and real and a fear of the responsibility which follows on such knowledge.
Thus, as far as I can see, mental prayer is what distinguishes a man or woman from a child or an
adolescent. In today's world, if the measure of adulthood is the knowledge of one's duty and the will
to fulfil it, no matter what effort and toil are required, the sign of a mature Christian is the part prayer
plays in his or her life. In prayer we express our desire to know what God wants of us, each day, and
each moment of each day. In prayer we ask for the graces we need to fulfil God's will, clearly aware
that we need such graces if we are to overcome the weakness and reluctance of fallen human nature.
God knows well that to follow Jesus Christ loyally today in an environment filled with treachery and
betrayal is no easy matter. Without prayer there is little or no chance we will remain faithful to Christ
and to his Church.

LEAVEN IN THE MASS

'The kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till it
was all leavened' (Mt 13:33). Clearly this very brief parable does not tell us everything about the
kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is not only as this parable says, nor is it only like the
sower who went out to sow, nor like the wheat and the cockle, nor like the fishing net, nor like the
wise and foolish virgins, nor like the talents. When telling his parables Jesus was little by little
helping us understand the kingdom of heaven, showing its many facets in very graphic ways. In fact
the intellectual ability of his hearers did not allow them to form a clear, all-embracing and deep
vision of this mysterious kingdom all in one go. Nor indeed does ours.
Mgr Ronald Knox used to like to say that for the most part when Jesus spoke of the kingdom of heaven
he was referring to the Church. If this is so, then about the parable we have just read we can
immediately state the following: the action of the Church in the world is like the effect of a little bit of
leaven which is placed in some measures of meal.
Obviously enough, if for a moment we imagine a large room and place the leaven in one corner and
the measures of meal in the opposite corner, we need not expect that the meal will be leavened. Not
even a small amount of the meal will be leavened unless the leaven is placed in the mass of dough so
that it can act upon it. Likewise, if the Church were a vague spiritual entity, invisible, unperceivable,
inconceivable, with nothing in common with the world and with no contact with it, it is impossible to
see how the Church could act as a leaven in the world. However, Jesus founded his Church for men
and women, in this world, with a visible aspect to it, with very definite teachings which are
expressed in human language, with sacraments which are outward signs signifying and conferring
grace through very material elements: water, oil, bread and wine. The Church is in the world as
leaven is in the mass of dough.
And since the Church is made up of men, and not of pure spirits, it makes itself felt through the men
and women who are its members. It is Christians who, like the molecules of the leaven in the mass of
meal, come into contact with the world and act upon it until the whole world is leavened.
In general terms, then, a thoughtful consideration of the contents of this parable can give us a very

clear idea of the role Christians ought play in the world, in each and every moment of history, in each
and every one of the countries where they live. Christians are those real, individual men and women
who believe in Jesus Christ and are baptized, have a definite way of life and a real role vis-a-vis the
world. The Church gives strength and endurance to the faithful, and these, each one in his or her own
place in society, leaven the temporal affairs of the world with which they are in contact through the
power which is theirs as a result of their belonging to Christ's Church.
We Christians do not form a ghetto nor have we a ghetto mentality. If I am not mistaken this
phraseology became current in post-conciliar literature from writers who thought themselves modern.
It was used frequently, as far as I can see, to point out the (supposed) closedmindedness of the Church
to the modern world, at least in recent times and perhaps indeed since the beginning of the
Constantinian era. In their view, the Church was totally enclosed within its own old, hackneyed
formulae and traditions, indifferent to the passing of time and the changes in people's outlook and
habits. The Church was a real ghetto (they thought), marginalized in society. As a consequence, and
taking the above statement as a given fact, as if it needed no proof, in recent years there has grown up
the custom of speaking of 'the opening of the Church to the world'. At times this means that the Church
ought to be open to the various currents of modern thought. Often it means that the Gospel ought be
preached in the language of modern man. More recently it has come to mean taking on the bag and
baggage of today's world which for the most part was marxist in tone until the summary overthrow of
this ideology in central and Eastern Europe. It was thought that by adopting marxism, becoming
embroiled in it and triumphing with it, one could establish a real Utopia on earth, a worldly paradise
with a classless society.
Such views betray a deep ignorance of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, which will continue
its saving mission to the end of time; of what ought to be the true activity of Christians in the world;
and indeed of marxism itself.
Regarding the mission of the Church it suffices to say that it is the sanctification of the faithful through
the teaching of revealed truth and the administration of the sacraments. The Church cares for its own
members. As regards those who are not yet members, the task of the Church is to preach the Gospel to
them so that they might come to know Jesus Christ, invoke his name and reach salvation. Regarding
the world the Church is to give a Christian meaning to temporal affairs, to the institutions and
ordering of society, and to remind us that we do not have a lasting city here. Its role is to restore to
the whole of creation the order first established by God at the dawn of creation, an order and harmony
which were broken by original sin.
Christians, members of the Church, that is to say, those who believe in Jesus Christ, do not constitute
a group cut off from the world. From the very beginning the Christian people were aware of this fact.
Let me quote a snippet from a document which dates from the first half of the second century. It is
called the Epistle to Diognetus, and in all likelihood is Quadratus' lost Apologia to the emperor
Marcus Aurelius:
"Christians are not different from the rest of men in nationality, speech, or customs; they do not
live in states of their own, nor do they use a special language, nor adopt a peculiar way of life.
Their teaching is not the kind of thing that could be discovered by the wisdom or reflection of
mere active-minded men; indeed they are not outstanding in human learning as others are.

Whether fortune has given them a home in a Greek or foreign city, they follow the local custom
in matters of dress, food, and way of life; yet the character of culture they reveal is marvellous
and, it must be admitted, unusual."
The above text points out the two elements of the parable of the leaven in the mass of dough which are
characteristic of the Church and of Christians. On the one hand, their immersion in the world, not their
isolation from it. They are fully at home in society. On the other hand, there is something special
about them: their living and abiding by a teaching which is not the mere discovery of human wisdom
or reflection. This must be emphasized. It brings Christians to live in a way that is wonderful and
causes surprise among other people.
I ought to say that the same holds good for today's world. We do not form a ghetto. We are not leaven
wrapped up in a plastic bag and then placed in the dough, such that we retain our uprightness and
integrity while being absolutely unable to act upon the mass of meal around us because we are cut off
from it. Nor are we Christians dumped in a corner, so far away from the crowd that we cannot
influence it. It may be that in recent times some Christians have so felt their uselessness that other
people thought they were ghettoized. It may be that our little or no influence as leaven has brought
others to think and say that the Church has been immobilized, just as perhaps our bad behaviour has
led some to talk about the 'sins of the Church' or the 'sinful Church' when they should more correctly
speak of the 'sins of churchmen and women'. The Church is holy; it is the spotless bride of Christ but
each one of us is far from reflecting that holiness in a marvellous and unusual life-style. Undoubtedly
we have clouded over the holiness of the Church by adopting a way of life more in keeping with the
spirit of the world than with the spirit of the Gospel. The Church today, just as in the second century,
retains all its leavening power: the same sacraments, the same teachings. But instead of passing on
this power which can transform the world, we have allowed it to corrupt within us and be
extinguished. A powerful source of energy can change a whole city, region, or country, giving light
and heat and movement. But conductors which carry the energy are required if that power is to work
properly. It is not the source of energy which is at fault. It is still there with all its energy but not even
the smallest electric bulb will give light if it does not receive an electric current.
Enough said. As conductors of the powerful, spiritual energy which resides in the Church of Christ,
capable of transforming the world, we are signal failures. As leaven in the midst of society we seem
to be outmoded and ineffective.
As far as one can seewhat those who have their eyes open will seeis a society which was once
Christian and has now hardly even the name of being Christian. Even if it retains the name who can
say how long will it be before it loses it through inertia or lack of conviction. It is difficult to call
Christian the principles by which the men and women of today govern society. And who would dare
call Christian the morals of a permissive society? Can we call Christian laws which legalize
abortion, divorce, euthanasia, genetic manipulation and pornography? In justice I think not. Nor can
we call Christian a philosophy which contradicts the faith, or a theology which does a balancing act,
refusing to confess openly that Jesus is the Son of God made man, who really and truly rose from
among the dead. A society which takes more delight in following Freud or Marx than Christ, which
turns its back on the Ten Commandments and which believes any old fairy tale but which is not ready
to believe divine Revelation is in no way a Christian society.

I believe that never before in history has an offensive of such magnitude and with so many means at
its disposal been launched against the Church of Christ, as we are seeing in our own times. I should
add, however, that in itself this offensive does not seem to me to be all that dangerous. The danger
lies not in the offensive but in ourselves. Let me explain myself. You all know what a bully is. A little
bit of thought shows that a bully survives not by his own courage and valour but by the cowardice and
fear of others. He is strong to the extent that others are weak. He imposes his viewpoint to the extent
that he is offered no opposition or resistance, or if he does encounter them they are so timid and
fearful as to be useless and rather than deter him they make him even bolder.
In my opinion today's bully is that kind of person who insists on being called 'modern man'. We have
given him an elevated status and to please 'modern man' we are crawling along the ground on our
bellies to see if someday we will be worthy of raising ourselves to his lofty height. We have to adapt
the Gospel (we are told) to the needs of 'modern man' so that he in turn may grant Jesus Christ and his
Church the great honour of accepting some of this truth, expurgated of course as he sees fit. We have
to change the liturgy, dumping whatever need be, even centuries' old traditions which have produced
saintly people, so that 'modern man' may not be offended by it and may condescend to participate in it.
We must not mention certain dogmatic truthsfor example, original sin because they might turn
'modern man' off because he sees as unacceptable and archaic teachings which do not fit in with
modern culture. One ought not kneel down to receive Holy Communion because that wounds man's
dignity and 'modern man' does not look kindly on this posture which he considers humiliating and
improper to free persons. 'Modern man', however, is unconcerned about the spread of magic and the
occult, nor even that cult be offered to the devil (recently in San Francisco a temple was erected in
honour of Satan). Much less is he concerned with the men and women who have become human
wrecks through the abuse of drugs, or that women be prostituted and degraded on a very wide scale,
or that families and family life be destroyed, or that homosexuality be fostered. In the heel of the hunt
nature (so says 'modern man') has its rights and natural instinct ought not be gainsaid.
Still, let us reflect on all this matter a bit further. Who is this 'modern man' anyway? Well, not
anybody or anything in particular. If he is truly man at all, then he is essentially the same as GrecoRoman man, or medieval man, or nineteenth century man. If you push me I would have to aver that
'modern man' is the same as prehistoric man. He is man because he is endowed with an immortal
soul, is rational and free, and when and where he lives is of no particular relevance. What is modern
refers to merely extrinsic circumstances, purely accidental, and these pass and change so quickly that
today's 'modern man' will not be modern a few years hence, and indeed will be quite antiquated.
'Modernity' is flimsy, accidental and passing and yet we allow it dictate its laws to us. With a really
incredible inferiority complex we reverently and submissively bow down before it and worship. If a
stone were capable of feeling shame, it would be ashamed of what we humans are doing.
It is not the power and strength of 'modern man' which allows him have his way; it is our cowardice.
What counts is not the value of what he is, thinks or says, but our interior weakness. Although I have
often said what follows, let me say it again, because I think it can give us a clear idea of what is
actually happening. It is all a matter of pressure. If our inner pressure is greater than that of the world
outside we will influence the world. If it is less, the world will seep inside us and will immobilize us
Christians. After filling us with its contents the world will saturate us with its atmosphere. It does not
really matter what is the pressure of the world in which we Christians have to live, provided our

pressure is greater still. Today it seems it is not.

The contrast between our uselessness as leaven and the enormous strength and power exerted on the
world by the first Christians is awesome. A couple of quotes may bring this out.
To begin with our times. Some years ago the late Malcolm Muggeridge published a book of essays
under the title Jesus rediscovered. They were press articles and television interviews. His thesis was
that the western world was at the point of final decomposition. The writer commented on the contrast
between society today and the history of its thought and culture, and in particular its attitude to
religion. Our society (he said) calls itself Christian, but does not believe in the divinity of Jesus
Christ. It has only a very vague idea of what to be Christian really means. His outlook and tone were
pessimistic and despairing. Regarding the Catholic Church he wrote:
"I thought once that the Church of Rome would be the final bastion of the Christian religion. I
imagined it as a kind of citadel within which I would finally find myself, for the simple reason
that it was the last citadel. I no longer think so."
The reason why his hope in the Catholic Church, his last hope, was lost and dissipated was because
of what he termed 'the desperate race of Vatican Council [II] after the world'.
Now we ought not expect precise ideas about the Church from a man who was vaguely protestant,
even if he was sincere in his religion. Vatican Council II did not run after the world. A reading of its
documents is all that is needed to see that. But how could one not feel disappointed in one's hope in
the Catholic Church in the light of a wave of post-conciliar literature which is superficial,
triumphalistic, vituperative and full of disdain for all that preceded it, from Tridentine theology to the
humble piety of ordinary folk? This literature is at times replete with marxist terminology, more
suited to the 1930s. It is patronising in tone, informing us we have to 'listen to the world', engage in
prophetic denunciations, shoulder socio-political commitments, think for ourselves, bow down our
heads before the guidelines which emanate from the corridors of the modern counter-reformation,
become immersed in the horizontal communitarian dimension, confess our social sin, etc. All this is
the language of the defeated. It betrays the attitude which Maritain called 'kneeling before the world'.
Let us see how a simple Christian of the second century spoke to Marcus Aurelius, the Roman
emperor:
"It was no earthly discovery that was committed to [Christians], nor is it mortal wisdom that
they feel bound to guard so jealously, nor have they been entrusted with the dispensation of
merely human mysteries. The truth is that the Almighty Creator of the universe, the invisible
God himself, scattered from heaven among them the seed of truth and of holy thought which is
higher than man's mind, and he made it take firm root in their hearts" (Letter to Diognetus).
Here is a simple Christian who is merely a disciple of the Apostles but who, because of his Christian
faith, possesses the fullness of truth and becomes a teacher to the nations. He is so conscious of what
it means to be a Christian, of the supernatural consistency of Christianity, that he quite candidly
affirms that 'what the soul is to the body Christians are to the world'. Without Christians the world
would be dead. In his own words: '[Christians] hold the world together' (Letter to Diognetus).

I think the two quotes given above are all the explanation we need if we are to understand why the
first Christians, though few in number, were able to transform the world, and why we Christians
today who are many in number and have great resources at our disposal are looking on passively, if
not at times actively, as the Christian spirit of our forebears is being swept away by the anti-Gospel
spirit of the world.
It is not that we Christians have necessarily to go against the world. How can we go against it if it has
been created by God and redeemed by Christ, if it is the place where we dwell and where we have to
achieve our holiness and sanctification? We Christians cannot permit ourselves the luxury of being
anti-anything, because what makes us Christians, namely our faith in Christ, is something so positive
that the only negative attitude we are allowed is against something which lacks all being and solidity.
We are anti-sin, evil, error, falsehood, pride and selfishness. If a Christian ought always be an
apologist and defender of revealed truth it is because only this truth can save man and the world. And
so he or she cannot make peace with the spirit of the world as the Apostle James pointed out clearly
in the very first century of the Christian era:
'Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever
wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God' (Jas 4:4).
Because the first Christians loved the world the attitude they adopted had necessarily to be the
attitude of the Master himself, who came 'into the world, not to condemn the world but that the world
might be saved through him' (Jn 3:17). To save it he overthrew the prince of this world. So too we, if
we wish to save the world, must not give in to a worldly spirit, but must overthrow it and put in its
place the spirit of Christ.
Since no one can give what he or she does not possess, our endeavour to communicate to the world
the spirit of the Gospel will be useless unless we ourselves possess that spirit. We cannot have the
spirit of Christ if we are not one with him. We cannot be one with him unless we keep open the
channels through which God's grace reaches us: a reading of the Gospel which feeds our intellect and
nourishes us on the truth; prayer by which our will becomes more and more conformed to the will of
God until, like the saints, we become identified with it; the sacrament of Reconciliation which
cleanses us and gives us the strength to remove from our lives what offends or is displeasing to God;
the Blessed Eucharist in which Christ is given us as food for our souls.
And so we see how the external life of a Christian depends on his or her interior life. The external
life is in fact a consequence of the interior life. If it is not, if how we behave does not follow on what
we are as followers of Christ, we are radically false. If the dissociation between what we profess to
be and how we behave is deliberate, or consciously maintained, then we are no more than hypocrites
and Pharisees. This is perhaps one of the greatest evils which afflicts the Church, because of us.
When our behaviour is not in line with God's law and at the same time we profess openly our
belonging to the Church without any attempt at improving and struggling to live the faith we hold, then
we are far from being persons who love the truth and who have an upright spirit. Not only do we
harm ourselves but we cause scandal to our neighbour and place the Church in a bad light.
Being Christians we ought to be leaven in the mass of meal, leaven which is powerful enough to be
effective. We are not in society to corrupt itquite the opposite. We are there to heal it and give it

savour. What I want to say is that if we act in accordance with our faith, if we are united to Christ and
share in his life, then necessarily we influence the world. Having the spirit of Christ we will bring it
wherever we go. We will make it present in the world at large. As the spirit within us influences
temporal realities for the good we will allow them share in the Redemption, transforming them and
elevating them to the supernatural order. Thus impregnated, human activity will take on its deepest
and truest meaning which is to be at the service of men and their salvation. This is the vocation of
Christians. 'Such is the assignment to which God has called them, and they have no right to shirk it'
(Letter to Diognetus).

LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER

I am not exactly sure what was the state of marriages among the Jews at the beginning of the first
century A.D., but it seems to have been a subject for study and discussion among the Pharisees, at
least to some degree or other. Perhaps they had already perceived the perfecting of the Law which
was contained in Jesus' preaching and were using it to clarify their own ideas by comparing his
teaching with the teachings of Moses.
Then again the question I shall refer to shortly may only have been a laboratory specimen, that is, an
artificially manufactured problem, studied and discussed in great detail and put forward as an
innocent question but with the intention of tripping up our Lord in his speech and thereby having
something of which to accuse him.
And so we are told that some Pharisees came to him and tested him by asking, 'Is it lawful to divorce
one's wife for any cause?' He answered, 'Have you not read that he who made them from the
beginning made them male and female, and said "For this reason a man shall leave his father and
mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?" So they are no longer two but
one. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder' (Mt 19: 3-6).
In response to his answer the Pharisees appealed to the authorization Moses had given regarding
repudiating one's wife and so Jesus proceeded to clarify their ideas. By all accounts he made things
so difficult that even his disciples who were present and had listened to the discussion were
disconcerted and remarked: 'If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry'
(Mt 19: 10). But Jesus said to them: 'Not all men can receive this precept, but only those to whom it is
given' (Mt 19: 11).
In a word, what Jesus said was that marriage was indissoluble and that if Moses had authorized a
certificate of divorce it was because of the hardness of heart of the Jewish people and not because
marriage can be dissolved. To understand correctly this tolerance on the part of Moses (and this
applies to many other things of the Old Testament related to the moral behaviour of the people and
even of saintly individuals like King David) we must remember that the Chosen People were like
small children whom God was educating by a gradual process, increasing step by step the burden of
their obligations according as they grew in understanding and in the ability to shoulder such
obligations. Jesus, who had come to perfect the Law in the fullness of time, did away with such
tolerant attitudes because, by the grace he won for us in the Redemption, human weaknesses could no
longer be alleged as good reasons justifying the suspension or non-applicability of the whole law.
Clearly, because of the wounds of original sin, human nature continues to be weak, and in practice

tends of itself to moral disorder and chaos. But it is also clear that there is a power capable of
correcting such weakness and of putting man in a position where he can fulfil perfectly God's
commandments (always within the ambit of imperfection inherent in everything which is human). With
God's help man can abide by those guidelines which God has been so good to give us and which tell
us how to behave in accord with our human nature as it came forth good and unsullied from God's
hands. If in theory it is possible to live in a truly human way without the help of the grace won for us
by Christ, in practice it is impossible.
I am not sure if the foundations of present-day 'marriage crises' were laid by the French revolution.
For certain, one of the slogansalmost a maxim from that time onwards spread abroad by the
pompous, theatrical and lofty-sounding declarations of the eighteenth century philosophes was that of
'individual happiness'. It was a way of breaking the solid structure of the ancien regime in which the
family was more important than the individual. So deeply rooted was this teaching about the family's
importance that even an encyclopediste like Diderot could not banish it altogether. That is why he
said: 'The family is a society which serves as a basis for national society, because a people, a nation,
is nothing but an aggregate of several families.' And the principle and cement of the family is
marriage.
The notion that what is important is personal happiness, and that such happiness is the objective each
one should set himself and not the result of doing well what one ought to do, took stronger and
stronger hold on people's minds. Today we have to put up with the consequences of a such a
mentality. During Victorian times divorce was socially frowned upon but today we find a large
number of countries, whose population is Christian and whose rulers are nominally Christian, where
divorce is officially recognized. It is a real monstrosity, but if we think of the contradiction implied
in such recognition it is a still worse monstrosity than appears at first sight.
World-wide, the results are plain to see. It is not merely that marriage as such is degraded, that the
union of one man and one woman to collaborate in God's plan for bringing new human life into the
world and perpetuating the human species is trampled upon (children should be properly educated to
make their way through life and come to know God's plan and mission for them). It is that brutal
selfishness has left defenceless children without shelter and love, despoiled of what they have a right
to and damaged in an incalculable and permanent way.
Pro-divorce propagandaand it is propagandahas reached such extremes that it can only be
termed repugnant. Here and there there arises a strange and sickly compassion for Catholics who,
against the law of God and all the teachings and warnings of the Church, have been divorced and
'remarried' civilly. We are informed of the need to 'find' some solution so that those who remain in
this irregular situation and wish to receive the Blessed Eucharist may not be prevented from doing so.
A climate is created which portrays those who divorce and 'remarry', and who, quite clearly and
without hypocrisy, can be called public sinners because they are unwilling to abandon their sin, as the
unfortunate victims of a pressing needthe need to achieve individual happinessrather than as
people who have shed their commitments, duties and responsibilities.
In this context the upshot is that the Church is increasingly regarded as being responsible for a state of
affairs which is becoming more and more widespread and intractable. She is accused, often in a
devious way, of intransigence in regard to her marriage laws, of adopting too rigid a stance in the

face of marriage situations which are often heart-rending and even tragic. Often the Church is openly
accused of prolonging this evil by not taking into consideration the personal feelings and
circumstances of those involved, of stubbornly maintaining the inviolability of bonds already broken
and of hindering those involved in marriage failure from re-making their lives within Christian law
with a new attempt at marriage. Instead (we are told) such people are forced to marry without the
Church's blessing, they are deprived of the sacraments (except, of course, Penance, which is just the
one they do not want to receive), are not allowed to participate as fully-fledged members in the
liturgical worship of the Church alongside the other members and in particular are barred from
receiving Holy Communion. In a word, what is sought is that the Church change her discipline
regarding marriage giving legal and canonical recognition to irregular marital situations, that is to
say, to those living in a state of adultery. It is not those who have divorced and 're-married' civilly
who ought rectify their behaviour (again so we are told) but the Church which ought modify its stance.
This sort of 'humanitarianism' has the smell of hypocrisy about it. Even if the Church were to
authorize the dissolution of the marriage bond and joyfully proceed to legalize a new 'marriage' or
perhaps treat a second civil 'marriage' as if it were a sacrament, it would amount to mere pretence for
the simple reason that the Church lacks the power to amend the Creator's plans. The Church has been
established to teach revealed truth, not alter it. Of its very nature marriage is indissoluble, and
continues to be indissoluble when raised to the supernatural order and made a sacrament.
Accordingly, the Church cannot change the nature of things which has been decided upon by God. She
can no more change the nature of marriage than she can declare licit lying, condone the killing of
innocent people or authorize fornication. She cannot even do these things for 'pastoral' reasons, when
in today's world 'pastoral' reasons are employed as powerful weapons to justify all sorts of immoral
behaviour. Such immoral actions are beyond the competence of the Church to alter. That they are is a
matter of divine revelation. They belong to the sphere of divine law and are not a matter of
ecclesiastical discipline.
It should also be said that concern for those who seek their own individual happiness at the cost of
other people's misfortune is misplaced and perhaps even suspect. I refer to innocent spouses who
have not fallen 'in love' again and have remained faithful to the commitments they once freely
assumed. I refer to children, especially to children who are despised and thrust aside. Not long ago I
read that eighty per cent of juvenile delinquentsyoung people who have been charged with at least
one criminal offence are the products of divorced parents. Consciously or unconsciously they have
come to realize that they have been sacrificed on the altar of selfishness, that they were unloved, and
like their divorced parents, they have gone beyond the law. But with a notable difference: they were
given nothing, they were abandoned without adequate preparation for life, they were given no chance
to do anything positive for themselves before they were undone by their parents. Children are always
the first and most innocent victims of utter selfishness.
Clearly the destruction of marriage is the source of such blatant aberrations. When the union of a man
and a woman is seen only in the light of 'affective integration'something purely sentimental it is
not strange that it only lasts as long as 'love' lasts. When marriage is seen as a mere experience to
achieve 'human maturity' it is obvious that the experience will have to be repeated until such maturity
is achieved, and especially so when one does not know exactly what human maturity really is. I prefer
not even to mention one of the fashions most in vogue at the present time, that of 'personal

development' which is used as a weapon to break up marriages.

The world-wide propaganda aimed by the mass media for decades against marriage is immense. It
strikes not merely against the institution as such, but against its very nature. In recent times this
propaganda has had its echo even within broad sections of the Church and has not been countered by
an equally massive effort to defend and explain the divinely revealed truth regarding marriage which
the Church has always upheld and taught. At a point in history when the right to information is all the
rage the People of God are not informed of what they ought, and have a right, to know in matters as
fundamental as marriage. Some time ago I read of a survey carried out among teenagers which
showed that eighty per cent were in favour of divorce, in restricted circumstances, and sixty per cent
i n favour of pre-marriage sexual relations. I can only ask myself what these boys and girls were
taught at school. Whatever it was they certainly were not taught the basics and were left defenceless
when confronting life and its problems.
I say all this because marriage crises are the order of the day and are described often in superficial,
equivocal and plainly wrong ways, frequently on the basis of high-sounding and unfounded statements
put forward as dogmatic sociological or psychological teachings. We have all witnessed it. The
reporter, with his tape recorder in hand, breathlessly asks the passers-by in the street why they think
there are so many broken-down marriages. And each, on the spur of the moment, replies as best he or
she can, with no time to reflect and often from a well-spring of ignorance. Afterwards all one need do
is select the replies as one wishes to give a 'sociological' image of what one wants to hear, without it
having anything at all to do with reality. The result is usually the creation of mental confusion and
chaos.
I remember once seeing a TV program about marriage breakdown. I was so surprised that I took
down a few notes. One person said that the cause of these breakdowns was the lack of 'emotional
maturity'. Another anchored to what was termed 'sexual preparation'. A third cited economic factors,
and a fourth optimistically affirmed that the greater number of marriages in crisis was a very positive
sign because it showed that there was more 'authenticity', and less hypocrisy than in times past when,
in spite of everything, the marriage bond and the unity of the family were maintained. What really
caught my attention was that not once was the name of God mentioned; nor was there any allusion to
the sacrament. This, of course, was being left to the priest who was supposed, no doubt, to give the
'religious point of view' as if it were simply one opinion among all the others and only needed to
round off the picture.
Well, all that and much more that I have no time to dwell on is false. Marriage is a lot more serious
and a lot more dignified than all this cheap, pseudoscientific literature would have us believe. Let me
say first of all that it is the means chosen by God to perpetuate the human species. If there are persons
of the male sex and others of the female it is because God has wanted their union to bring into
existence other beings, thus making men and women co-operators in a new creation. Man and woman
are responsible for the seed which gives rise to a body, and God creates a soul. Sexuality is not for
the sake of pleasure, though there is pleasure in sexual relations, nor a means to attain emotional
maturity a meaningless expression at bestbut for the sake of procreation and it is in procreation
that marriage finds its full and just meaning.
But a child is not an animal. A child is a person, made in God's image and likeness, a person who

needs many years, much love and much care if he or she is to become a man or woman. The born (and
indeed the unborn) child has rights-important rights which he or she is unable to exercise, and so it
is the parents who, by the fact of being parents, have the duty to vindicate those rights. And children's
education, which also lasts for many years, has need of a stable family background for only in a
family is there the atmosphere and warmth so basic and essential that no boarding school, no
kindergarten and no child-minding facilities can supply.
Marriage is not something incidental in a person's life. It is a union which lasts a lifetime, until death
separates the spouses. Man and woman are joined to carry out a common undertaking, to help one
another shoulder the responsibility which lies upon them when they become parents, to share their
joys and sorrows, and to ensure that neither will ever be or feel alone. In marriage each should be a
support to the other in the fulfilment of their obligations. In this way they will journey together and on
reaching the threshold of eternity they will be able to say as Jesus did from the Cross: 'It is
accomplished' (Jn 19:30).
So, it is quite clear that getting marriedthe marriage ceremonyis not an end but a beginning.
Naturally enough, because a man and woman love each other they expect to be happy. But more than
an objective, happiness is, at the beginning, only a hope. Whether the hope is realized or not depends
on the married couple. They will be happy if one condition is fulfilled, that what brings them to get
married is really love, and not selfishness under the disguise of love. I fear that nowadays under the
word 'love' there is often hidden downright selfishness, a mere seeking of a pleasure which is purely
physiological and volatile. True love is shown in self-denial, or, if you like, in the ability to practise
self-denial. I would dare state that happiness is found in the endeavour to make one's spouse happy
and not by expecting to be made happy by one's husband or wife.
You can easily see why. A man who gets married can no longer afford the luxury of being
self-centred, because he no longer belongs to himself. He has given himself to his wife, and to the
children they may have. He has undertaken the job of watching over and providing for them. He
works and lives for them. A woman who gets married is a woman who gives herself, who commits
herself to her husband, to her children and to her home. Each ought to live for the other, for the others.
It is a most perfect way of living the charity of Christ. Happiness comes about in a marriage only to
the extent that each one gives him or herself, just as the earth gives its fruit in the measure in which the
seed is sown. A man or woman cannot reap where they have not sown.
Because marriage as the basis for the family is so serious, because it is for life, because it affects the
lives of so many other people, it is something to be taken very seriously. No one has the right to
experiment or fool around with other people's lives since every life is a precious thing. And yet I fear
that marriage is treated very frivolously.
Just look. All of you have spent quite a number of years studying, from the time you were five or six
until the time you will be twenty-two or twenty-three. Seventeen or eighteen years of learning, of
apprenticeship, before you get a degree or diploma which entitles you to teach others geography, or
mathematics, or history, or natural science, or before you can assemble electrodomestic gadgets, or
become a presenter on radio or TV. And such things do not affect your lives all that deeply. Whereas
getting married has a very decisive affect on a person's life, whether a man's or perhaps, more deeply,
a woman's. But how much time is spent by a man or woman learning what marriage is all about? I

sometimes doubt it goes beyond twenty-four hours in total, unless, of course, one counts the hours
spent reading about the intricacies of sexual relations, about which a mediocre student who has
studied a modicum of physiology knows more than enough.
Marriage is not mere biology, and a man and a woman are something more than sex. The problem is
not sexual. The problem is human. In the abstract man and woman are equal, but in practice they are
not identical in their make-up. They are different. Their way of thinking, feeling and reacting are
different. Defects, although genetically the same in all, are expressed differently in a man and in a
woman. The same can be said for virtues. And so, each tends to think unconsciously that the other
ought to react as he or she reacts. This is what gives rise to frequent misunderstandings, arguments,
and even serious quarrels and violence.
What does an engaged couple know of their duties to each other when they get married? What do they
know about the problems they will encounter? Has their courtship and engagement been used to get to
know one another deeply, in so far as that is possible. Has it allowed them to project their vision into
the future and find out if they are prepared to love this specific person, warts and all, for years to
come? Women tend to idealize things, and sometimes find themselves disagreeably surprised for not
having paid heed to important and fairly obvious factors in their partner. Men, on the other hand, often
pay too much attention to what is incidental and superficial, and then they feel let down because their
wife lacks the qualities he wants her to have and which she never had. Popular wisdom has given rise
to a saying which can aptly be applied to marriage: look before you leap. The modern world pays
little attention to popular wisdom. Many people, especially adolescents, tend to think they know very
well what they want. Only afterwards, when maturity comes with the years, do they realize how little
they knew and how badly they knew it.
It is no exaggeration to say that marriage brings serious responsibilities upon both husband and wife.
It can be heaven or it can be hell. What it is depends in no small measure on the view each spouse has
of what marriage is. It depends on the dispositions with which they receive the sacrament, and on
their a priori acceptance of the duties they assume. It depends on their understanding of the mission
they are embarking on. I am not in the least surprised that frivolity and selfishness are the factors
which most contribute today to the declining standards in family life and to marriage breakdown.
Enough said. I hope I have given you some idea of the importance of marriage. I imagine that all of
you, or at least the majority of you, will end up getting married. I hope so. But if you do not want your
life broken in pieces and do not want to cause irreparable damage and much unhappiness to other
persons whom you are obliged to cherish and love, take seriously what is serious. Do not set out
selfishly or frivolously. If you want to do good to a society which is tearing itself to pieces make your
marriage indestructible. Create a family which is Christian, united, solid, where each one lives for
the other, without being bemused by the selfishness of 'individual happiness'. Rather, be ready to
practise self-denial because nothing of really lasting value is achieved without sacrifice. Sacrifice is
the measure of one's love. Keep before your mind's eye your responsibility for the future of the
Church and for society. The responsibility lies on your shoulders.

THE WORSE PART

Many years ago, when I was at school preparing for my Leaving Certificate I heard from time to time

about Martha and Mary commentaries on that passage from the Gospel of St Luke which tells how
Jesus was entertained in a house in Bethany where he had a few friends: Martha, Mary and Lazarus.
While Martha was busy with the household chores, Mary sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he
had to say. Eventually, no doubt when Martha became annoyed at seeing her sister having such a
pleasant time while she, breathlessly, was doing all the work, she voiced her complaint to Jesus:
'Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.' But the Lord
answered her, 'Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful.
Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her' (Lk 1 :40-42).
I supposed I must have been very distracted each and every time I heard a talk on this incident
because by the time I left school I had a very clear, but totally mixed up, notion of what Christian
living was all about. I thought more or less that Christians were divided into two distinct classes:
those who had chosen the better part and those who had opted for the worse (the less good, not a bad
portion, mind you). Those who chose the better part dedicated themselves to the contemplative life,
and in my view of things this group comprised priests, monks and nuns who had elected to concern
themselves exclusively with the service of God and whose task in life was solely to achieve sanctity.
That was the way it had to be, I thought, because what else had they to do?
The second class was made up of those people who lived an active life, given over to work, business
and the affairs of each day. What they had to do was earn their living, start a family and keep
themselves and their family members in reasonable comfort. In particular I saw the men as being so
tired after a day's work and so short of time that the very idea of prayer was beyond them. And
besides after work they had to spend time with their wives, supervise the children's homework and
listen to how they had got on at school that day, separate the ones who were beginning to fight among
themselves and do a thousand other things. Time for prayer was out. How could they possibly be
contemplatives, hold onto the better portion and aspire to holiness with so many things to do?
And to make things worse there was an ongoing debate about 'states of perfection' which widened the
breach between Martha and Mary. Theologians and canon lawyers did not facilitate the aspirations a
lay Christian might have about serving God without abandoning the world, at least not in any practical
way. The lay person was convinced that, since he or she had chosen the worse part, to aspire to
holiness was like wishing to jump over the moon. Indeed it must be said that such an interpretation of
the incident between Martha and Mary came to be for all those who found the very notion of holiness
uncomfortable a wonderful argument to justify their mediocre way of life.
Thanks be to God, with the passage of time I learned a few things, not the least of which was to
realize that this way of seeing one's relationship with God was totally wrong. For example, St
Augustine says quite clearly that Martha and Mary do not symbolize two different ways of living on
this earth (the active life versus the contemplative life). Rather, he says, they are images of this life
and the next life. Martha shows us how our pilgrimage on earth is full of toil, cares and concerns.
Mary represents the repose of eternal life, contemplating and loving God, free of toil, troubles, and
worries. Mary will never lose the better part for the happiness of heaven is for ever; but Martha,
thanks be to God, will lose her portion because all the upheavals of this life pass away and eventually
there comes a moment when there will be no further upsets to diminish a happiness which is full and
overflowing with joy.

I must confess that all I am now about to say on the subject of work I learned in Opus Dei. First I was
taught that work not only did not cut a person off from God but rather that it was the normal means of
sanctification for a Christian. I think it worthwhile saying that because, as far as I can see, what we
now teach about work was found for centuries in an embryonic state and was waiting for someone to
come along and develop it, bringing out all the latent consequences and applying them to the ordinary
Christian in the world. It was done by Blessed Josemaria Escriva, the Founder of Opus Dei. His
contribution in this area is probably one of the greatest theology has received in quite some time. All
the quotes I give below are taken from his works.
But let us return to our subject. Such was the view of Martha and Maryof the better and the worse
portions that statements which Blessed Josemaria made in the 1930s and 40s to the effect that every
Christian, by the mere fact of being one, was called to holiness, and that work should be for every
Christian the instrument of his or her sanctification, caused real scandal. Now, many years after
Vatican Council II, such words scandalize no one, or at least not in the way they used to or to the
same extent.
Let us recall a couple of facts which will enable us to deepen our understanding of work and integrate
it into our Christian life.
The first is this: Jesus spent three years of his lifethe last threepreaching the kingdom of heaven.
This is what we call his public life. But what was he doing up until then?
As far as we know he was working at a trade carpentry, according to tradition. And now comes the
important point: for all the greatness of the mission entrusted to him, he only spent three years of his
earthly life at it, while the greater part of his life was spent in the peaceful, perhaps monotonous and
even obscure atmosphere of an ordinary workshop. All his life was one of toil most of it doing a
manual job. Thus, since when God himself became man he spent most of his time working, work must
have a great value in his eyes. And I do not mean merely human value. Let us not forget, then, that the
Son of God did not disdain to do human work while he lived in Nazareth. In other words: he was our
redeemer and all that he did had about it a redeeming value. He divinized work and made of it an
instrument of salvation.
So, work then does not only not separate us from God and from holiness, but becomes a way to them.
We can see this more clearly still from my second point. The Book of Genesis (cf. 2:15) tells us that
God created man and placed him in the Garden of Eden that he might cultivate it, that he might work
it. Men and women were made to work. This is evidently and most clearly the will of God. And what
is holiness but union with God, doing at each moment what he wills and as he wills it. Work
sanctifies, for in working we do his will.
Work is part and parcel of man's life on earth. It involves effort, weariness, exhaustion: signs of the
suffering and struggle which accompany human existence and which point to the reality of sin and the
need for redemption. But in itself work is not a penalty or a curse or a punishment: those who speak
of it that way have not understood Sacred Scripture properly (Christ is passing by, no. 47).
Man was made to work even before original sin. It was only after the commission of the sin, and as a
result of it, that work became toilsome and wearying. Henceforth men (and women) would eat their

bread in the sweat of their brows (cf Gen 3:19). Work now requires effort and struggle if obstacles of
every kind are to be overcome.
Now God did not make man for work, in the sense of making work the end for which he was created.
The phrase 'that he might work' refers not to man's creation but to his being settled in Eden. This is
easily seen when we take into consideration another passage from Genesis: 'God blessed them, and
God said to them: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over
the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth'"
(1:28). God made man lord of creation and placed the earth at his disposal so that it might yield him
all that he needed to achieve his final and definitive end. And the means by which he exercises his
dominion over the earth is precisely his work. Since man has a natural end which is nevertheless
subordinated to his supernatural end (the vision of God) to which he was called gratuitously from the
first instant of his creation by God, it becomes clear that human work whose immediate end is to
satisfy the material needs of man also has a close relationship with his supernatural and definitive
end. Man's time on earth is transitory (I am referring not merely to individual men but to the whole of
mankind, from the first man, Adam, to the last). Accordingly, if work, which aims at making man's life
on earth as comfortable and long-lasting as possible, and human life are considered only from this
transitory and passing point of view they lack real meaning. Without a more permanent reference,
beyond the merely natural and perishable one, man's life and his very nature would be indeed a
useless waste and clearly so too would be his work. It would be the same as working for nothing, for
no good reason.
No intelligent being acts without a purpose. When man undertakes to do something he always has
hope. He expects to achieve something, or to earn his living. It is this which drives him on. But if
everything fades, if everything perishes and if nothing is absolutely permanent then what does he gain
by all his work, effort and toil?
I think this is why marxist doctrine had such a wretched, one-dimensional and vain notion about work.
Confronted with the inevitability of death for every person and for mankind as a whole Marxist and
Hegelian statements about work are simply clever, theoretical games, devoid of all connexion with
reality. In Marx's own words: 'For socialist mm the whole history of the world is merely what man
has created through his work.' Now that is one of the many things in Marxist teaching which is
acceptable only on the condition that one does not ask the questions: why?, and how? On the basis of
certain presuppositions one can always arrive at fascinating conclusions, by a logical process of
reasoning, but one can never presume that the conclusions reached are really true. The deeds of
Superman are perfectly reasonable on the hypothesis that he possesses wonderful powers. But there is
no real Superman, and there are no such deeds.
Whether one is or is not a 'socialist man', one can always ask: how is it possible for man to be the
'creation' of 'human' work? Unless one gives some totally esoteric meaning to the term 'creation'one
at odds with the ordinary man's usual understanding of the termMarx's phrase is as much of a riddle
as the well-known question: which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
The Marxist notion of work is nothing more than an invention without foundation in reality. It is
meaningless. For what meaning can it have when we advert to the inexorable reality of death? Of all
the purposes work can have, the most rounded one for an individual is the achievement of absolute

human perfection, with a long and comfortable life, filled with material and intellectual pleasures.
But once death arrives, all that is over and done with, and the only thing remaining is the sheer effort
one has made, which is now reduced to a worthless trifle. If we sideline man's individuality and
annihilate him, as Marx wanted to do, making him into some sort of 'generic being', then the collective
or communitarian value of work, for all that it might encompass by way of solidarity and unity among
men, and for all its supposed contribution to a Utopian society without classes, well ordered and
having every imaginable well-being, is also mere worthless effort, once mankind reaches its ultimate
destination. To pretend that the earthly paradise to which Marx's 'socialist man' aspires is going to
last for ever is asking too much, even as a pure hypothesis.
Man is moved by more real and more tangible things, by truer things. Only Christian teaching (as
expounded by the Church) tells man how to understand work and to evaluate it correctly. All work is
useful for man and has meaning in the measure in which it serves man to reach the end for which he
was created by God. Work is useless, squandered and valueless if it does not help him reach God, his
last end. It is effort spent in vain; it is absolute waste. Bearing in mind that man's last end is
supernatural and that earthly life is ordered to eternal life, all work takes on a meaning only to the
extent that it aids man reach his definitive and eternal end. We should recall Pieper's remark that a
salvation which does not save us from death is no salvation at all.
A careful consideration of what I have said leads us to affirm firstly that work can have a
supernatural dimension, transcending human limitations. Secondly, the work which a Christian carries
out with a view to his or her supernatural end can enrich and perfect the doer, supernaturally as well
as humanly. And finally, insofar as work allows man to exercise the dominion granted him by God
over the whole of creation, it is the instrument with which he can impregnate all earthly realities with
the spirit of Christ, by whom the world was made and redeemed. This can be said as much of the
statesman's work as it can of the housewife's (which from the human point of view may be more
modest and humble) of the scientist's as well as the home-maker's, of the manual worker's and the
chief executive's.
It is time for us Christians to shout from the rooftops that work is a gift from God and that it makes no
sense to classify men differently, according to their occupation, as if some jobs were nobler than
others. Work, all work, bears witness to the dignity of man, to his dominion over creation, It is an
important opportunity to develop one's personality. It is a bond of union with others, the way to
support one's family, a means of aiding in the improvement of the society in which we live and in the
progress of all humanity (Christ is passing by, no 47).
Work, too, is 'our way of being in the world' and, above all, because we are Christians, our daily job
provides us with the real, consistent and valuable matter we need to live a Christian life and bring to
fruition the graces which come to us from Christ.
If we now proceed step by step we can see clearly the attitude a Christian ought have to work. But
first let me eliminate two opposing attitudes: that of the person who lives to work and that of the
person who finds no place at all in his life for work. The first of these categories (living to work) is
wrong; we should live for God. Such a person puts work in the place of the Creator and so becomes
enslaved to work as much as the alcoholic does to drink. He cannot stop. For him there is no end to
workthere is no time for family. Work becomes a drug he cannot do without, either because it helps

him forget other problems and concerns which he refuses to face up to, or because greed (a longing
for power, or success, or wealth) has taken over, or simply because he does not know when to call a
halt. With this type of person it seems there is little one can do, except help him free himself of a
monster which has taken control of him and threatens to bring down him and everything else with him.
The other attitudethe idler's hardly needs commenting on. This kind of person just does nothing,
except perhaps all he can in order not to become bored out of his mind. Whether he be rich or poor,
he is condemned by St Paul's laconic remark: 'If any one will not work, let him not eat' (2 Thes 3:10).
If poor, he will always be a burden on others; if rich, he will be no more than a 'useless luxury' (I
borrow the phrase from Simenon's Inspector Maigret). Obviously neither of these two outlooks is
Christian.
At this juncture we can sum up by saying we have learned two things: that every person ought work,
and that since work is only a means at the service of man, as soon as it ceases to be a means and
becomes an end in itself, it is of no use to man and has become an idol which man serves.
Within these two extremes there is a whole gamut of attitudes towards work. I shall refer to a couple
of them by narrating a time-honoured and much told story (fictional, I presume) which has come down
to us dressed in many garbs. The medieval version goes as follows:
"A feudal lord once lost his way in a very wooded area and became completely disoriented. Then he
heard some noises coming from far away. He went off in that direction and finally found himself in a
clearing. There he saw three men sitting in a sheltered spot hewing stone which was no doubt
destined for use in a building whose beginnings could be seen near by. He approached the nearest
worker and asked: 'What are you doing?' 'Sweating' came the reply in a certain resentful tone. He
went over to the second and asked the same question. 'I am earning my living' came the dignified
response. He went on a bit further, to where the third was and asked: 'And you, what are you doing?'
Bright-eyed and gesturing towards the building being constructed he replied: 'I am building a
cathedral.'"
All three were doing the same work; all three were cutting rock, sweating, earning their living, and
contributing to the building of the cathedral. The same work, but three different attitudes. The first
saw only the effort involved and the annoyance of being tied down, and was himself annoyed and
resentful. The second saw a bit further down the road, to the fact that he was not living off others and
that with his effort relieved them of a burden which might otherwise have fallen on their shoulders.
The third saw still further; he knew he was preparing stones to become the house of God, something
sacred and in whose sacredness the dead matter he was cutting was going to share in some way or
other.
This third attitude is the truly Christian one for 'all lawful human work, no matter how small, humble
or insignificant it seems, can always take on a transcendental meaning; it can be done for love, speak
to us of God and lead us to God' (Blessed Josemaria). What should characterize a Christian's work is
the supernatural dimension which allows it go beyond its immediate objective. A Christian ought
always work in God's presence, for work is one of the chief means by which we can glorify our
Creator. What gives work its true value, what raises it above the fleetingness of money, success or
fame, is the love of God with which it is done. In this sense, a job has more value when there is more

love in it, when the intention of the doer is more pure and more upright. Thus, in God's eyes, the
humble and unnoticed work of a cleaning lady may be worth more than mine or yours, in spite of the
fact that society at large may think it inferior and less important.
How eye-catching a job is means nothing when it comes to evaluating its real worth. Jesus' work as a
carpenter in Nazareth had but little glitter to it but was it worthless? Resplendent jobs may be done
for sordid motives and not infrequently have the worth of mere trinkets.
To work for God and in God, and to work well from the human point of view (because one can only
offer the best) is 'to sanctify one's work, to sanctify oneself in that work, and to sanctify others through
that work'. One does God's will and one does it as well as one possibly can. And although it may not
seem so, it is thus that our work becomes good, even humanly speaking. Accordingly, even though we
are always intent on doing as perfect a job and as speedily as possible, hastiness should never
influence us negatively. Things do take time, and if they are not given the time they need errors are
committed and frequently one has to begin all over again. On the other hand, since we work in God's
presence, to glorify him with a job well done, success, money and fame are never our objective; we
do not play to the gallery. If success, wealth and fame do result that is beside the point.
Working for God allows work to unite us to him, rather than distract us from him. Work thus done
takes on that third dimension; it becomes a means of real sanctification, with a value which
transcends the purely human. Work is elevated and enriched by grace, it glorifies God and benefits
his creatures.

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

When we say that man is 'king of creation' we are asserting that the world was created for man, and
not man for the world. It is man, made in the image and likeness of God, who must subdue the earth
and rule over all that moves on the face of the earth. Animals and plants find their raison d'etre in
man, for they exist to serve him. Also for man is his work and what he produces through his
productivity and ingenuity, whether these be the produce of the soil or factory-made items, works of
art, buildings or institutions by which man develops his activities and organizes civil society.
This is the way things are, not because man has so chosen but because thus have all things been
established. This ordering of creation is found at its very core, put there by God who created man
superior to other creatures. As is likewise clear, God created things this way with a purpose which
does not culminate in man himself, because man is not an end unto himself, nor in the conglomeration
of all men together, that is, in Humanity writ large, for Humanity as such is a mere abstraction. In the
words of St Paul to the Corinthians: 'All is yours; and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's' (1 Cor 3:
22-23). Creatures are for man, but within the plan established by God and in accord with the purpose
to which this order corresponds, that is to say, in accord with the supernatural destiny to which God
wanted to elevate man. To shatter that order, to break its limits, to pervert God's purpose, is to
introduce chaos.
And this is exactly what the first man did when, refusing to remain in his station, he introduced sin
into the world. Not content with being the 'king of creation', he wanted to be like God, knowing, that
is, creating, good and evil. He thought that by affirming his own will against God's he would become

the equal of God. This act, whose consequences we his descendants in the world still suffer (except
the Blessed Virgin Mary who, through her Immaculate Conception, was made exempt from them)
broke not only the harmony of the world but also man's inner harmony. Henceforth man's intellect was
infected with darkness and error, and his will lost its sovereign freedom to do what was good and
upright without succumbing to evil masquerading under the appearance of good, and without having to
make titanic efforts to choose good over evil.
Undoubtedly since then it has been very difficult for the world as a whole to progress, because the
infection introduced into human nature has so affected man that scarcely can he know what is really
good for him. It is impossible to ascertain the right road if one does not know exactly where one is
going.
God has shown mercy to men and women and redeemed them through his Son, Jesus Christ. Through
Revelation he has made himself known and has taught us once again fundamental and decisive truths:
the reality of the supernatural world, the meaning of creation, the destiny of man. Through Revelation
God has re-established friendship between himself and the human race and, what is more important,
he has reconciled us with himself to the point of making us his adopted children through faith in Jesus
Christ and through Baptism.
Original sin has been forgiven and, while the consequences of it remain with us, we are nevertheless
given the means to correct them. First of all, the gift of faith, which illumines our minds, dissipates its
darkness and gives us absolute certainty regarding the truths God has revealedthose truths which
touch the most profound and lasting realities. Secondly, grace, and all the means to obtain it: prayer,
the sacraments, and so on. Grace gives strength to our weakened wills. Through redemption man can,
if he wants to, remain not only in peace and friendship with God, but can extend redemption to
creatures, to other men and indeed to all of man's works.
The disorder brought about by man's sin went further than himself; it infected all things, without
however destroying them. God's creation is good, and all of it was made to contribute to man's
achieving his final end. But just as a bread-knife can be used to kill someone, so knowledge, human
talents, technology, and indeed all creatures can be mismanaged, deviated from their proper purpose
and used against the law of God. I am referring to man's work and artifacts, to structures and
institutions, to human laws and technical advances. So much is this the case that man can create in the
world a state of things, an ambience, institutions and structures, and in fact a whole environment
which instead of helping him achieve his final end separates him from it and leads him to perdition.
When I employ the word 'perdition' I mean it. When a traveller finds the signposts along the road so
altered that instead of showing him the way to take to reach a particular place they turn him aside
from it, and bring about such confusion and chaos that he gets nowhere, then that traveller is lost. This
very strategy, used by the Germans during the battle of the Ardennes, had the most serious
consequences for the Allied troops. The same disastrous trick is being played upon men and women
today and the result is plain as a pikestaff. They depart from the way of salvation and embark upon
roads which lead nowhere. This is the great problem we confront today. We must face it by
highlighting a particular aspect of work, done and seen in a Christian light.
We must also bear in mind that the phrase 'seen in a Christian light' is not simply one more way of

looking at human workthe Christian way as opposed to various other perspectives. The Christian
work-ethic is more than a mere opinion to be endlessly discussed and debated. Rather is it an
immediate consequence of the faith we profess as Christians.
Work, in this sense, is the activity of a Christian in and on the world, such that all things become a
means of salvation. Only thus will things truly be at the service of man, for whom, in the long run, they
were created. St Paul alludes to this when he writes to the Romans:
'The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation
was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope;
because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious
liberty of the children of God' (8:19-21).
The Apostle speaks of the subjection of creatures to the futility of sin brought about by the power of
him who oppresses them, violates and turns them from their true purpose in order to satisfy his own
selfishness and greed, using them not for the benefit of man but for the sake of amassing wealth and
ultimately placing them at the service of the devil.
This is a fact, seen in nature itself: in the atmosphere which is becoming ever more polluted; in rivers
which are contaminated and no longer fit for drinking; in the soil upon which too many demands are
made and then whose harvests are either burned or put in cold storage. Those of you who have read
Your sins and mine by Taylor Caldwell will have some idea of what I mean as we read the novelist's
description of the revenge exacted by nature when glutted with men's madness. It refuses to produce
healthy plants and in their place gives forth nauseating plants which little by little take over the whole
earth. Rightly has it been said that God always forgives, men sometimes forgive, but nature never
forgives. We have reached, or are on the point of reaching, the situation of Dr Jekyll who, in spite of
all his efforts, could barely cease to be Mr Hyde, for the creature he had made had begun to control
him.
Creation, thus oppressed, awaits the freedom of the children of God, of Christians who ought repair
the disorder and give back to creation the harmony shattered by sin. Through his work the Christian
ought to 'place Christ at the summit and in the heart of all human activity' (Blessed Josemaria
Escriva). The work of redemption ought to influence and suffuse all things, all earthly realities, all
human endeavours.
Is it possible for a person without light to act with a spirit of discernment? Jesus has told us: 'I am the
light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in the dark, but will have the light of life' (Jn
8:12). Our Saviour came so that men might see, so that they might cease to struggle in the dark, and so
that, having received a dose of light, they might make the world an inhabitable place. Unfortunately,
although 'the light shines in the darkness, the darkness did not comprehend it' (Jn 1:5). These words of
the Apostle are still valid, and will always be so. I fear there will always be darkness over the earth,
but not over all of it. A Christian, by the fact of being a Christian, must use his work to adjust the
world, to re-make it and free it from the slavery imposed upon it by the darkness. Let us remember
that Jesus said: 'You are the light of the world' (Mt 5:14). And since, by definition, a Christian is a
follower of Christ it is up to us to direct the world to its true and proper end.

I want to make this point very clear for I think it of the utmost importance, not in a general sort of way
but very particularly for all of us who continue to call ourselves Catholics. Over a century ago
Donoso Cortes, a renown Spanish humanist, asserted that society was perishing at the hands of error
because Catholic truth that Truth which Christ ishad deliberately been expunged from civil law,
from parliaments, from lecture theatres, from newspapers, from just about everywhere. That he was
quite right can be seen from the panorama of a world mightily poisoned by error and lies, to the point
where the most filthy aberrations and customs are legalized in the name of freedom, tolerance, or
human well-being.
One must acknowledge that without the light of life, without the light that is Christ, it is all but
impossible to hit the mark. Who could possibly shoot an arrow and hit the bull's-eye when doing so in
complete darkness? To prescind from, or deliberately oppose, revealed truth is to reject Christ.
Cortes himself prophesied the progressive increase of repressive measures in society to the degree
that men turned away from the light of Christ and abandoned his teaching. His prophecy has been
amply fulfilled as we can all experience.
Who bears a large portion of the guilt for this happening or, if not a large part, then at least some of
the guilt? We Catholics! At some particular moment, I do not know exactly when, we forgot that
Christians have the right and the duty to bring the teaching of Jesus to all strata of human life, to
implant the spirit of Christ everywhere, divinizing all human tasks. Instead we abandoned the world
to its fate, renouncing the struggle to infuse it with the only savour which could save it. It came about,
no doubt, because of a weakening of faith and a certain inferiority complex in the face of reason and
human knowledge. Frequently, then as now, there appeared on the scene the type of Catholic who in
the university, or the newspaper, or the parliament, or the factory floor put his faith to one side and
assumed and spread theories at variance with Catholic truth, thinking such theories to be 'scientific',
or voted in favour of laws inimical to the rights of the Church or in clear opposition to both the laws
of God and of nature, thinking it 'political' to do so. Such people were not speaking, writing, voting or
working as Catholics but simply as teachers, journalists, politicians or workers. They left their
Catholicism to one side as the worker takes off his cap on entering the work-place. They were, we
might say, 'occasional' Catholics, that is to say, on the occasion when they went to church or said the
odd prayer or two.
Such behaviour has done, and continues to do, much harm. To cut off faith from life, or better said, to
cut off life from faith, is to remove temporal realities and work itself from the influence of Christ, the
light of the world. In the absence of this light the world has come to see itself as its own end, without
any further reference to God. To promote this illusionary end even the most basic and elementary
truths have been turned upside down; gigantic structures have been set in place on the flimsy
foundation of mindless abstractions which have little or nothing to do with reality. Today it is fairly
evident how supposed Catholics give their support to, and spread, theories opposed to Catholic faith.
There are more than enough people who seek (unconsciously, I hope) to exile Christ from society, and
to change the Church into a simple instrument to further their own ideologies or support purely
temporal interests (the City of God is made subservient to the city of men). At other times they reduce
the activity of the Church to the purely spiritualist sphere, at the service of disembodied people.
In his capacity as Chancellor of the University of Navarre, the Founder of Opus Dei, Blessed

Josemaria Escriva, addressed himself to this phenomenon:

"To communicate with the Body and Blood of our Lord is, in a certain sense, like loosening
the bonds of earth and time, in order to be already with God in heaven, where Christ himself
will wipe the tears from our eyes and where there will no more death, nor mourning, nor cries
of distress, because the old world will have passed away (cf. Apoc 21:4).
This profound and consoling truth, which theologians call the eschatological significance of the
Eucharist, could, however, be misunderstood. And indeed it has been whenever men have tried to
present the Christian way of life as something exclusively spiritual, proper to pure, extraordinary
people, who remain aloof from the contemptible things of this world, or at most tolerate them as
some- thing necessarily attached to the spirit, while we live on this earth.
When things are seen in this way, churches become the setting par excellence of the Christian life.
And being a Christian means going to church, taking part in sacred ceremonies, being taken up with
ecclesiastical matters, in a kind of segregated world, which is considered to be the ante-chamber of
heaven, while the ordinary world follows its own serene path. The teaching of Christianity and the
life of grace would, in this case, brush past the turbulent march of human history, without ever really
meeting it" (Conversations with Mgr Escriva, no. 113).
Now this is not and never has been the attitude of true Christians. Quite the contrary, in fact. A
Christian's attitude to the world has not been that of leaving it behind (except in the case of religious
whose proper way of serving God and fellowmen is to renounce the world) but rather to be light
which shows the way of salvation, to be salt which gives savour and preserves from corruption.
Extraordinarily encouraging are, therefore, the words of St Augustine who points out the extent to
which he was committed to the centuries-old struggle between Christ and the powers of darkness. He
willingly recognized the efforts and the successes of the wise men of old: 'We declare that it is in no
wise contrary to the Scriptures what they have taught about the nature of things, adducing true
arguments'. But he did not limit himself solely to this nor shrug his shoulders in face of other
erroneous things which they taught for he continued by boldly asserting: 'With regard to whatever they
might have said in other writings which is contrary to the Scriptures, that is, to Catholic faith, we
believe to be false, and indeed will prove to be so with arguments.'
This is not to adopt a passive, but an active, a very active, attitude towards the world. St Augustine
sees himself as obliged by his faith in Jesus Christ and by his loyalty and fidelity to the word of God,
which does not lie or deceive, to work to unmask the error contained in any assertion contrary to the
faith, no matter what the authority of the holder or what appearance of truth it might present. He was
conscious of this being not something foreign to, or distinct from, his episcopal duties or his life of
prayer. No person is divided into water-tight compartments, each of which might house contradictory
ideas or give rise to opposing stances. A lack of coherency turns a man into a living lie or completely
destroys him.
For this reason none of us who call ourselves Christians and truly are such, can exempt ourselves
from the duty of defending, with our work, the truth of the word of God, unless, of course, we are
absolutely indifferent to its being contradicted or twisted. We must be convinced of the worth of
every effort to make known the word of God and of every attempt to defend it when it comes under

attack.
If to be a Christian is a divine calling, it is clear that this calling invites and obliges us to share in the
one mission of the Church, to be in this way a witness before our fellowmen and to bring all things to
God.
One of the ways of giving witness, one of the ways of bringing all things to God (and not the least
important one) is through one's work. All work, whether intellectual or manual (indeed manual work
must be intellectual if it is to be work at all) opens a path for men to tread. There was a time when
these paths were opened by men who believed in Jesus Christ, by men who loved the world to the
extreme of working for its salvation (and that is the greatest good one could dedicate oneself to),
throwing into the endeavour their intelligence, their time, their talents, and their efforts. These were
men and women who opposed error where it existed, who built up the City of God while constructing
an earthly city which was truly human because it was founded on truth and love of neighbour. Its
foundation was more than altruism or philanthropy; it was the new commandment of the Gospel.
Something more than mere organization, planning or technology, because it was a reflection of the
love of God.
For some centuries now men have been more interested in ideas than in the truth, more concerned
with highly developed mental labyrinths than the reality of things. These new ways were opened by
men who did not believe in Christ, or at least not in Jesus Christ, true God and true man. And for
some centuries now, we Catholics, thinking perhaps that every reform is good by the mere fact of
being new, and being a 'reform', have docilely followed these new paths while abdicating the truths
of Catholic faith, or in the best of cases have allowed them to co-exist with contradictory truths. Faith
is seen as religious truth. Set beside it are philosophic and scientific truth, even when they contradict
one another. One forgets that truth is one. The results are plain for all to see.
The circumstances which both the world and the Church have to contend with nowadays are in
themselves sufficiently clear and expressive of the chaos engendered by thought which has broken
with faith and rejected the light which might have guided it through the darkness which stalks an
intellect infected by sin. As in the times of S t Augustine, our world today is in a state of
decomposition comparable to the decomposition of the Roman Empire. Whether this world is saved
or not depends not a little on us. An opportunity is given us and we have no right to turn it down. We
cannot be indifferent to the lot of the world and its people.
Catholic teaching asks us to be sensitive to human problems, to have a sense of responsibility in
tackling them and in seeking a Christian solution to them. It is our faith which must guide us when
making judgments about events and happenings on this earth, for without such faith there is neither
perspective which allows us to grasp the meaning of these events, nor valid guidelines which show us
the relationship of any solution to the ultimate purpose of all created realities. Accordingly, the work
of a Christian, all work, should be directed towards giving a Christian meaning to society, not as
merely one solution among many, but as the solution to any and every problem, insofar as human
problems have any definitive solution on this earth.
Our role is to change the conditions of life, infusing society with a Christian meaning. Only thus will
structures, institutions, laws, literature, and even amusements have a real Christian meaning and be

truly at the service of man. This cannot be done by way of a papal encyclical or by a 'churchy'
outlook. What is needed, primarily, is a truly Catholic outlook combined with professional and
workmanlike competence. A good biologist, but one who has a materialist viewpoint, can hardly give
a Christian meaning to society; but a mediocre biologist, one who lacks competence in his or her
chosen field, no matter how great their faith or outstanding their Catholicism, will never open new
paths. We have all seen how atheism has used science, every science, badly but efficiently, from
economic theory to biology, from history to physics. And why can Christians not make use of the
sciences to make an apologia, a defence of Catholic faith, or at least of those truths revealed by God
for us men and for our salvation? They will only be able to do so to the extent that they are good
scientists, the best if possible. I think you will now well understand the rationale behind the following
two points from Blessed Josemaria's The Way. 'There is no excuse for those who could be scholars
and are not' (no. 332); and: 'If you are to serve God with your mind, to study is a grave obligation for
you' (no. 336).
If we persist in calling ourselves disciples of Christ, and what is more, if we want to continue being
followers of his, there is only one path to follow: to be consequent with our faith which teaches us
with absolute certainty that Jesus is the Truth, and that every assertion which contradicts his words is
false. Let us not limit ourselves to lamenting the inhuman situation the world has fallen into because
of its abandonment of the truth, but let us work with effort and untiringly to make that truth known.
Only if we work well, giving work a divine dimension by doing it for love of God, will our work
contribute to the salvation of the world and its people hereafter and to a more humane and caring
society here and now.
The earthly city will only be inhabitable to the extent that it is informed by the City of God. It is
inconceivable that man be respected, and much less loved, where God is denied or rejected, for man
is in the image and likeness of God or he is not man at all.

TO CAESAR WHAT IS CAESAR'S

When Jesus was tempted by the Pharisees who asked whether it was lawful to give tribute to Caesar
he gave the laconic reply: 'Render therefore to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's' (Mt
22: 21). I think this is one of the few occasions, if not the only one, when our Lord made an explicit
reference to political power and what he said was a simple recognition of a temporal sphere
endowed with an autonomy which ought to be respected.
From this we can deduce a guideline, which is perhaps negative but for all that enlightening. Nobody
can claim a right to base a particular political stance or a particular form of government on the
Gospel. When we read from time to time that Jesus was the first socialist, or a revolutionary, or that
the monarchy is of divine right we are confronted not only with an abuse but a downright falsification.
Nobody has the right to use the authority of the Gospel, of the Word of God, as a support for their
chosen option in matters where God has left men free to decide and where there are no dogmas. It is
good that this be clear from the beginning.
And it is also good for us to be clear, right from the outset, about something else: that for a Catholic,
freedom to choose a political opinion or to follow a political system is not without limits. It is most
certainly limited. But these limits can only be determined by lawful authority, not by any one

individual person but only by the Church for she is the faithful interpreter of Revelation. Only she can
hand down a sentence that such and such a political opinion or system is opposed to divine
Revelation and consequently is intrinsically evil.
To the best of my knowledge, up to the present day, the Church has only limited the freedom of
Catholics in political matters in two cases: Marxism and National Socialism. Both have been
formally and publicly condemned. I should add that when the Church makes such a judgment she does
not act capriciously but is moved by powerful and well-grounded reasons which are not political but
doctrinal and moral. Her decision is gravely binding, sometimes under pain of excommunication.
When considering Jesus' words about God and Caesar we must avoid interpreting them erroneously.
This can happen when attempting to draw a dividing line between the two sovereign powers. The
Gospel phrase must not be understood to mean that God has relegated himself voluntarily to the
celestial spheres of glory and renounced all interest in what is not supernatural. From both
philosophical and theological points of view this is simply inconceivable for if God does not
maintain all things in being, including Caesar, then the whole of creation, again including Caesar,
would simply disappear, as though it had never been. Not the slightest trace would remain. This
means, therefore, that Caesar cannot thrust God to one side, not even in the work of government.
By God and Caesar in today's world we mean the Church and the State, that is to say, two societies,
each perfect in its own way. Each has its own specific purpose, means to achieve that purpose,
independence and autonomy. The State exists to achieve the common good of the res publica, of what
is beyond the capabilities of lesser societies like the family. It cares for the common welfare so that
all men and women may reach their temporal human ends. The Church, for its part, has as its object
and specific end the salvation of mankind. She exists to provide people with the means they need to
achieve their supernatural last end. It is not the Church's mission to solve problems of the temporal
order. The State is already there to do that. Nor is it the task of the State to interfere in what comes
under the competence of the Church, curtailing what her members do and acting outside its specific
function and doing so without authority.
Both Church and State depend on God. In the case of the Church this is so clear that it warrants no
further comment. In the case of the State further reflection is required, but for the moment let us take it
as a datum. As depending on God both these societies should abide by the plans drawn up by God for
the universe, plans which regard individual men and whole societies. This plan goes by the name of
the eternal law. This law must be the standard for all government if government wishes, as it does, to
function correctly. There can be no good government which goes against the nature of things.
The question which naturally comes to mind at this juncture is: What is the nature of things which are
subject to political societies?
I should add that the reply to this question is not a theory but a teaching. In other words, it is not a
matter of discussing, demonstrating, or arguing over something. It is a matter simply of outlining what
the Church teaches in this regard. We must first know exactly what we are talking about. While it is
true that the Church stands aloof from the way political and civil society is organized (it is not her
task to do the organizing) and that she respects and defends men's lawful freedom to organize
themselves as they wish, she is not indifferent to what refers to the principles which constitute the

nature of things. She cannot be. These principles are either revealed or deducible from Revelation.
Thus she cannot simply shrug her shoulders and desist from teaching what each of the faithful should
know so as to regulate his or her behaviour accordingly. And this applies also in the area of politics
and the State.
Let us now examine a writing of St Paul. It is clear and forthright:
'Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from
God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities
resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a
terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do
what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if
you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to
execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God's
wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the
authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay all of them their dues, taxes to
whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honour
to whom honour is due' (Rom 13:1 -7).
Note well that the terms minister and servant are interchangeable. In St Paul's view the one who
wields authority is 'God's servant for your good' and 'the servant of God to execute his wrath'. People
in positions of government are above all ministers of God on behalf of men; they exercise a delegated
authority and must answer for their use of it.
Let me repeat what we are told explicitly by St Paul: 'there is no authority except from God, and those
that exist have been instituted by God' (Rom 13:1). In the words of Pope Leo XIII: 'whoever holds the
right to govern, holds it from one sole and single source, namely God, the Sovereign Ruler of all.
There is no power but from God' (Enc. Immortale Dei, 1885). The power to govern comes from God,
not from the people. This is explained in detail by Pope Leo XIII as follows:
'Man's natural instinct moves him to live in civil society, for he cannot, if dwelling apart, provide
himself with the necessary requirements of life, or procure the means of developing his mental and
moral faculties. Hence it is divinely ordained that he should lead his lifebe it family, social, or
civilwith his fellowmen, amongst whom his several wants can be adequately supplied. But as no
society can hold together unless someone be over all, directing all to strive for the common good,
every civilized community must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself,
has its source in nature and has, consequently, God for its author. Hence it follows that all public
power must proceed from God: for God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world' (Immortale
Dei).
Those with a right to govern and command have received the right from God and from none other.
This needs clarification because today's outlook tends to regard the right to govern as something
originating from the people. Thus people today find it difficult to understand the Church's teaching.
The right to govern and the choice of who will govern and rule, who will exercise the right, are two
completely different things. In line with St Paul the Church teaches that only God has authority. But

in rendering to Caesar what is Caesar'sshe adds that 'the right of sovereignty to rule is not
necessarily bound up with any special mode of government. It may take this or that form, provided
only that it be of a nature to insure the general welfare' (Enc. Immortale Dei).
A cheap but enticing political philosophy of the end of the 17 th and beginning of the 18th centuries
spoke of man in the state of nature and of a contract between individual men whereby they established
themselves in society. The starting point was a mere piece of fiction, a figment of the imagination.
Man in the state of nature, that is, man living totally alone and totally detached from all societies, is a
purely intellectual abstraction conjured up by certain 'thinkers'. Even a child knows it belongs to a
family, to a society; a small one but still a society for all that. And if we go back to the very beginning
God created man and woman in society; not man alone, nor woman alone. The whole notion of a
contract to live in society is another piece of fiction. There is absolutely no proof or trace of it
outside the imagination of those who conjure it up. Indeed research into the origin of the State tends to
prove the very opposite. What is at work here is an attempt to create a new concept of authoritya
concept which breaks the bond between God and authority and invests it in man. One example of this
was the so-called 'divine right of kings'. Kings were never kings by divine right (no more than
presidents of republics were ever such by divine right) and the Church never gave its sanction to the
expression. It arose from a corruption or ignorance of St Paul's words about authority and was
adopted by some absolute monarchs to re-enforce their authority vis--vis the Church. Gallicanism
was a doctrine at the service of a State which presumed to be all-powerful. It never succeeded
because of the French Revolution.
Very much to the point, and quite decisive in my view, is the reply given by Christ to Pilate as he sat
on the judgment seat: '"Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?"
Jesus answered him, "You would have no power over me unless it had been given to you from
above'" (Jn 19:10-11). The reference to almighty God is clear, and thus St Paul can speak of our
submitting to authority not only out of fear of punishment, but for conscience's sake. Obedience to
lawful authority is a duty of conscience, always with the proviso that the said authority is acting
within its sphere of competence.
Further words from Holy Scripture are decisive and even more to the point than St Paul's.
'Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as
supreme, or to the governors sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those
who do right. For it is God's will that by doing right you should put to silence the ignorance of
foolish men. Live as free men, yet without using your freedom as a pretext for evil; but live as
servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the emperor' (1 Pet
2:13 -17).
The emperor whom St Peter had in mind was none other than Nero. Christians were to honour and
obey him. History has not left us a picture of him as a model sovereign. He is seen almost as a
monster, both in private and public life. And yet St Peter does not judge him; the judging is left to
God. He simply saw in him an authority to be respected, honoured and obeyed, not because it was his
(Nero's) but because it was lawful authority. Still and all, neither St Peter nor St Paul obeyed when
faith and the Good News were at stake. Likewise neither did the first Christians obey the emperors'

edicts ordering them to offer sacrifice to false gods.

No human authority can command against God for it is inferior and not superior to him. No doubt you
recall what the Apostles said when the Jewish authorities ordered them to quit preaching about Jesus:
'Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge' (Acts 4:19).
All this may or may not be comfortable, may or may not be pleasing, but it is the mode of conduct to
be followed by all men and women. Faced with the lack of justice and arbitrary behaviour of the
Roman emperors the first Christians might have had recourse to the 'Molotov cocktails' of their day:
assassinations, ambushes, kidnappings, and other terrorist activities in accord with the customs and
resources of the second and third centuries. They did not. The faith they professed prohibited it, and
in their behaviour they followed above all the law of God. A Christian has always to renounce
certain things, sometimes just and noble things, if they can only be achieved through the use of unjust
means for it is never licit to do evil even to obtain the greatest imaginable good. They obeyed the law
in all things, except in what contravened the law of God. In that case they refused to obey even when
it meant their death. But they did not rebel.
As an illustration of what I am trying to say let me refer to two historical facts.
In the pagan society of the Roman empire slavery was an accepted practice. It is without doubt one of
the greatest injustices that has ever existed. It infringes justice and charity; it is anti-Gospel. Yet
nowhere in the New Testament, nowhere in the writings of the Fathers of the Church, and nowhere in
the teachings of the Church's Magisterium will we find a call to violence as a means to overthrow this
injustice. To the scandal of some, speaking of the call to faith, St Paul writes: 'Were you a slave when
called? Never mind. But if you gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. For he who was
called in the Lord as a slave is a freeman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a
slave of Christ' (1 Cor 7:21-22). We cannot fail to see St Paul's deliberate attempt not to pervert his
mission; he takes great care not to overstep the boundary line of his competencesalvation in Christ.
But it was the Church which, by changing men, brought about the abolition of slavery. What I mean is
that States eventually passed laws against slave-traders and prohibited slavery. By this time the men
in power were Christians and could see beyond the pagan mentality.
The second case comes from the 16th centurythat of Thomas More, Chancellor of England. You
know well how Henry VIII sought More's approval of his arbitrary behaviour and how More was
imprisoned when he refused to give it. Unjustly tried and condemned to be hanged, drawn and
quartered (out of clemency Henry commuted the sentence to one of simple execution) he went to his
death on a scaffold. On two different occasions More left us very enlightening remarks. In his own
defence, at the end of his trial he said: '1 wish also that almighty God may preserve and defend the
king, and give him wise counsel.' On the scaffold, minutes before his execution, he asked the
bystanders to pray for him to God and, in the words of a witness, 'urged and begged with great
earnestness that they should pray to God for the king, to give him good counsel.' He died the king's
good servant, but God's first. Take note. St Thomas More not only respected authority, but asked for
prayers for the king in whom authority was invested, even though that very authority had condemned
him to death.
Today such behaviour is inconceivable! But More was a Christian who respected authority because it

emanated from God (even when unjustly exercised) but died refusing to obey a law which
contravened God's law.
Does this imply that a Christian must always be a passive subject? Certainly not. Besides having
duties, we also have rights. If we are obliged to fulfil our duties, there are times when we can and
must exercise and demand our rights. A country belongs to all its citizens and all are obliged to be
interested in, and contribute to, the common good. But not every individual person, not every group
can decide what is good or bad, or the way government should be run, or how legislation should
affect citizens. In almost all States there is a Constitution. Citizens' political activity should respect it
and not militate against it or run parallel to it. If this were to happen St Paul's injunction to obey for
the sake of conscience would be rendered null and void.
It is for the Church ultimately to advise people what to do, and what not to do. But here too we have
to approach the question cautiously so as to avoid misunderstandings, confusion and abusive
interpretations of Church teachings. Vatican Council II stated:
'At all times and in all places the Church should have true freedom ... to pass moral judgments even in
matters relating to politics, whenever the fundamental rights of man, or the salvation of souls requires
it' (Const. On the Church in the modern world, no. 76).
Well before Vatican Council II Pope Pius XI had declared that 'if the Church saw herself forbidden to
immerse herself without reason in the arranging of earthly and merely political affairs' she ought to
intervene when the State opposes higher values which affect the eternal salvation of men and women,
when by iniquitous laws it threatens souls with eternal damnation, when it attacks the divine
constitution of the Church, when it violates the rights of God in society. However, the right of the
Church to pass moral judgment on temporal matters lies with the hierarchy in communion with the
Holy See, not with private persons.
We need now to see how these Magisterial texts are to be applied because frequently we are
confronted with value judgments on unimportant questions where a Christian is free to adopt his or
her own viewpoint, and often these judgments are issued not by the hierarchy but by clerics, and
sometimes by lay people, who have no authority and little competence.
It is a matter of a moral judgment. It is not political, or economic, or sociological, but specifically
moral. Its standard and guideline is Revelation; its purpose is to evaluate whether a given policy or
attitude is in agreement with the law of God and man's last end. The Church can and ought to make
public statements, and hand down sentences which oblige Catholics, with regard to laws and
measures adopted by the State, as for example in the case of the legalization, and therefore the
fostering, of abortion. Or when, imperilling people's eternal salvation, pornography is allowed, or the
teaching of the Catholic faith is forbidden. Or when the rights of God in society are impugned by the
legalization of divorce which purports to break the indissoluble marriage bond established by God,
leading inevitably to the decline and break-up of the family.
But the Church as suchnot to be confused with the opinion of any particular ecclesiasticis not
competent to say whether trade unions should be vertical or horizontal in structure; whether the right
to vote should be granted to heads of households only, or to all persons over the age of 25, or 21, or

18; or whether a government is acting democratically or not, since democracy is not a concept
deduced from Revelation (such a judgment would not be a moral one); or whether prison conditions
are unjust if each prison cell does not have its own colour TV set or is not painted a particular shade
of lilac and thereby contributes to the psychic instability of those incarcerated. These are not moral,
value judgments!
It is when the Church, in one country or another, is forced to make moral judgments that great battles
take place: when a State seeks to control the number of births and set up the contraceptive industry;
when the Church is forced to close her schools or forbidden to impart religious instruction; when in
the name of freedom corrupting conditions are created, and so on and so forth. When a bishop forbids
the faithful of his diocese to vote for a particular political party whose election platform includes the
legalization of divorce he is simply reminding them that they cannot, with their vote, contribute to a
policy which runs counter to the law of God. In any case, if a citizen were to vote in favour of such a
party, what would remain of his or her Catholicism?
One last point: these moral judgments emanating from Church authority have a binding character only
when the hierarchy acts within its competence and expressly wishes so to bind the faithful.
To sum up. What I have been trying to clarify is that, in the political arena, in what refers to the
government of society, Catholics have a wide margin of freedom. The limits are those defined by the
Church, clearly and officially, or where a policy obviously militates against the law of God, and here
too a Catholic is bound to obey. He or she ought obey, and obey conscientiously, the decisions of
civil authority and, rather than oppose, should collaborate with them for the common good. This is so,
not because one finds the authority congenial, or because it is democratic, but because it rests on God,
and whoever resists lawful authority resists God. Clearly a Catholic cannot be found resisting the
ordering plans of God.
I have also tried to make it plain that in politics people act because they have civic rights, not because
they are Catholics. What this means is that when engaged in political activity, like voting in a local
election or representing a constituency in parliament, a person who happens to be a Catholic acts as a
citizen under his or her own responsibility and does not act as a member of Christ's Church.
Accordingly, no one has the right to shelter political activity, whether good or bad, under the mantle
of the Church with frequent references to Church documents, papal encyclicals and addresses, and the
like. Nor should they add the adjective Catholic or indeed Christian to personal points of view where
many shades of opinion are legitimate. Christianity is a religion, not a political programme. No
follower of Christ, no true Christian, can make of Christ's religion a cover and a lever for personal
opinions or personal activity.
The opposite also holds true. If no one can invoke the Church, or a religious institute as a support for
their political opinions, neither should others attack the Church or these religious institutions when
members do well or do badly in public life. Neither the Church nor the institute as such is
responsible. Let me repeat it: when a Christian gives his opinion or undertakes some activity he does
so as a citizen who is personally responsible. Only to him, and not to the Church or the religious body
he belongs to, can the successes and failures be attributed. If the person occupies a post in the
government he is answerable to the electorate, to a party, to statute law, etc. and especially to God.
He is not answerable to the Church.

The freedom, therefore, which God, and accordingly the Church, allows is very wide. Wide enough
to embrace many different political opinions, but on the basis that one should in conscience obey
lawful authority, and that the use of means forbidden by the law of God is never licit.

HE WHO BELIEVES
At the end of St Mark's Gospel there are a few words from Jesus which, at various times in the
history of the Church, have given rise to the vexed question of the salvation of 'unbelievers'
(unbelievers here should be understood to mean 'non-Christians'). The reason I want to dwell for a
while on this matter is because in recent times numerous theological theories have been put forward
and not always with the care and rigour which the topic demands. The result has been errors that
might have deadly consequences for the faith of the ordinary common or garden Catholic.
What Jesus said was this:
'Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to the whole of creation. He who believes and
is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned' (Mk 16:15-16).
The words are quite straightforward, clear and explicit; they are so conclusive as to leave no room
for distorted interpretations. In fact, the Church has always interpreted them quite literally. From the
first centuries, in the writings of the early Fathers, their meaning came to be expressed in the saying:
'extra Ecclesiam nulla salus' outside the Church there is no salvation. Not outside any church,
mind you; outside the Church of Jesus Christ, that is to say, outside the one founded by him, and to
which he gave the deposit of
Revelation and sent the Holy Spirit to assist and encourage until the close of the agein other words,
the Catholic Church, in accord with the teachings of Vatican Council II: [Jesus] 'himself explicitly
asserted the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mk 16: 16; Jn 3: 5), and thereby affirmed at the same
time the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door. Hence they could
not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ,
would refuse either to enter it, or to remain in it' (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, no. 14).
Now if outside the Church there is no salvation, and on the basis that entrance to the Church comes
about by faith in Jesus Christ and baptism, the question arises: what happens to those who do not
believe, and therefore cannot be baptized? Do they all go to hell?
Such an attitude as this seems very harsh and indeed unjust. If a person has never heard speak of
Christ, nor of the Gospel, what chance has he of being baptized? Is it right and just to condemn a
person for not believing in someone of whom he has never heard and whose existence is completely
unknown to him?
Those are the terms in which the problem is usually couched but, as we shall see later, such a
statement of the problem is flawed. For now I think we can certainly throw some light on one
particular point. It so happened that during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII a priest in BostonFr
Feeneytaught that either a person became a Catholic or was irremediably condemned. He adopted
an absolutely literal, strict and rigorist interpretation of the phrase 'outside the Church there is no

salvation'. Thus, in his view, only Catholics could be saved, and nobody else. He convinced some
people and they formed themselves into a group which became quite adept at propagating this
teaching. After two or three patient warnings from the Holy See, and since they refused to accept the
Magisterium of the Church, they were excommunicated. So, the situation was that because this priest
and some of his followers refused to retract they were excluded from the communion of saints. It was
they who were now outside the Church for upholding the notion that only those who were formally
within the Church could be saved. We must conclude, therefore, that the phrase 'outside the Church
there is no salvation' does not mean to say that belonging to the Church, in the sense of belonging to
her formally, is absolutely necessary for salvation, to the degree of irremediable condemnation for
those who do not.
To my mind this interpretation carries with it no danger. But nowadays there are winds blowing in the
opposite direction and there abound new interpretations which are dangerous for a careless person.
They amount to being an invitation to abandon the Church, and even the entire Gospel, for the sake of
all kinds of superstitions and idolatry. These new attitudes can be summed in four basic points:
1. A person ought achieve his salvation not only in his own social environment, but also as a member
of the religion he happens to profess.
2. Besides, since these religions have been positively wanted by God, it is obvious that for a person
who has not heard the Gospel these religions are ordinary means of salvation. The Church then
becomes simply an extraordinary means.
3. If Christ died for all men, and if the saving will of God reaches the whole human race, one can
affirm that this Redemption and this saving will are effective for the vast majority of people. What this
means is that most human beings are saved through their own religion. To say the opposite would
frustrate God's plan.
4. Any other interpretation would be offensive and insulting to non-Christians, and unacceptable to
thinking Christians.
This, it should be said, is the interpretation given by the inventors of the theory of 'anonymous
Christians' in vogue now for quite some time. It is preached boldly and tenaciously, and has
influenced believers almost without their being aware of it. I broke it down into its four constituent
parts, as the old masters of theology used do, to avoid muddled explanations. To be absolutely clear,
I should say that they make bad theology, if theology at all.
When theology is really theology its starting point is Revelation, an untouchable source in the sense
that one must accept it as it is, without manipulations, or not at all. Now, the theory about 'anonymous
Christians' does not begin with revealed data but with the data of pure science or, at worse, what are
deemed to be cultural advancements of our times. Specifically, and with regard to this kind of broad
road and wide gate leading to salvation, great weight has been given to what one author described as
one of the most important and transcendental events of the 20th century, namely, our coming in contact
with the great religions of the East. The study of the principal world religions, as an integral part of
contemporary man's culture has become, we are told, a consoling reality.

Eulogies in favour of non-Christian religions and their supposed superiority tend to create in the
minds of the less well educated and of those who are somewhat unsure in the knowledge of Christ's
Revelation, an overvaluation of what is positive in these religions and a lessening of the core of
Christianity. Phrases such as 'the recognition of the marvellous wealth abounding in non-Christian
religions...' does not usually lead a person to appreciate the equal and greater wealth found in its
fullness in Christ, and therefore in the Church. When reference is made to the 'great similarities which
the study of comparative religion has discovered between religions which thought themselves
independent and antagonistic' one's spontaneous reaction is to think that, yes, indeed, they are very
similar, and to forget about the radical differences between Christianity and other religions. With his
usual incisiveness Ronald Knox remarked that the relative study of religions was the shortest route to
make people relatively religious. After studying the idea of expiation and penance as practised by
Jews, Buddhists, Confucianists and Christians it is easy to conclude that, they are all the same, except
for a few very minor differences; that one way is as good as another. Thus one reaches a sort of
syncretism, of subjective religion, in which a person does what he or she personally wants to, with
the vague desire that it should be all right since the study of comparative religion has shown all
religions to be more or less equal.
I believe, nevertheless, that phrases like 'all religions are part of an indivisible whole', meaning that
they all present the same transcendental reality in a different way is perhaps what can lead to a kind
of false ecumenism where all religions wade in together, not really knowing why, or for what reason.
As I said already, at the heart of the theory of 'anonymous Christians' one finds not Revelation, but
cultural notions in vogue today, and a certain enlightenment in writers, produced by intellectual
contact with oriental religions. These writers are often non-Christian, or vaguely Christian, in the
sense that they admire Jesus Christ, but in no way believe he is God made man. When these
'theologians' who believe in the goodness of any and every religion, in much the same way as
Rousseau believed in the unsullied goodness of human nature, begin to deduce the consequences from
their new way of seeing things, they reach all kinds of conclusions. Some are just peculiar, others
offensive; most are partially or totally false, ambiguous or equivocal. To say: 'It is God's will that
these religions be ways of salvation, independently of the special sacred history of Israel and the
Church' is merely an extravagant foolhardiness. How can they come to know that since it is nowhere
revealed by God, and in fact the very opposite is revealed. To say that we must opt for the salvation
of the vast majority of people, even those outside the Church, and to deem antiquated a person who
does not go along with that idea, is to take on one's opponent with name-calling, and not solid proofs.
Besides, when Jesus was questioned about the number of those who will be saved, he limited himself
to say that we should walk the narrow path, 'the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to
destruction, and those who enter it are many' (Mt 7:24). How can we know what Christ was unwilling
to reveal?
There are too many statements opposed to the truths revealed by Christ. There is too much credulity in
unproven theories and excessive wanderings from the teaching of the Church for us to place our trust
in optimistic opinions certified by no one, except perhaps by their own inventors. Even then we do
not know if they will have to modify their stance once they learn a little more. The endeavour to save
the vast majority of men by a re-interpretation of the Gospelbecause of what are termed 'the
demands of these modern times' and by a total suppression of all that today's world considers

unacceptable, is an absolute waste of time and energy. If the people of our time have any real interest
in eternal salvation (reading the signs of the times, I am not sure all that many have) the first thing to
be done is to put to one side one's own self-sufficiency, for nobody will find God as long as pride
prevents him or her from seeing that we are all sinners and for as long as one does catch hold of the
hand God holds out to us.
And this it seems is exactly what 'modern' men and women are unwilling to do. They want to be
saved on their own terms, not on God's terms. And so we are confronted with a tenacious and
continuous pressure to change the Gospel and adapt it to the standards of the world. Meanwhile the
world does not seem ready to renounce its outlook and adopt the Gospel's. The insistence which is
placed on the social or communitarian dimension of the Christian way of life tends, consciously or
unconsciously, to a generic or common notion of salvation, to the detriment of the individual's fate.
With it goes an attempt to elude personal responsibility and the effort to avoid being subsumed into a
'massification' of people which frees oneit does not reallyfrom giving a personal response to
God's call. This trend was deemed to be one of the worse sophisms of modern times by Pope Paul VI,
and brought him to lament bitterly: 'Why take the trouble to preach the Gospel if one religion is as
good as the next? Why upset the good faith of those who do not know the Good News if the good God
can save all without the Gospel?'
But let us return to our starting point. Jesus said: 'He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but
he who does not believe will be condemned.' If he said it, then that is the way things are. Now, of
course, we can continue asking: But why is this so? Why are those who believe and who are baptized
saved?
It is quite a legitimate question, and the reply to it falls within what a cultured Christian (and you are
all within that category) ought to know so as to make a defence of the faith. To work out the response
we must proceed in an orderly fashion.
First of all, when one wants to resolve a problem, one must determine, as precisely as possible, the
value, the scope and the content of the data involved. The most important datum here is the meaning
of 'salvation'. For almost two thousand years the Church has been teaching what Jesus revealed to us
about this matter. Salvation means eternal life in the glory of heaven, in a state of perfect happiness,
through a direct vision of God. St Paul, as a result of some sort of mystical experience wrote of it
thus: 'No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for
those who love him' (1 Cor 2:9). This was God's original plan for man. After his life on earth, and
without undergoing death, he was destined to live in eternal glory. Adam's sin brought the plan to
nought. Not only did our first parent bring evil into the world, and death, suffering, injustice,
stupidity, hatred, etc. but he also lost, for himself and his descendants, the supernatural life he had
from his creation. As a result, the human race was separated from God, and was unable to effect its
own redemption; in other words, it was unable to save itself, and was dead to supernatural life.
The other important datum of the problem is baptism itself. What exactly happens when a person is
baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit? What happens is that he or
she is given grace, supernatural life, and is thereby elevated to a level far above bare human nature.
Grace, with its cortege of infused virtues (the three theological and the four cardinal) gives us the
ability to do what we could not do before; we become adopted children of God and heirs of heaven,

sharing in the divine nature and able to live a suprahuman life.

That said, I think we can now more easily grasp the import of Christ's words. I must say that an
unbaptized person cannot be saved because he lacks the capacity. If salvation refers essentially to a
supernatural state, then obviously a person who possesses only natural faculties cannot exist in such a
climate. A fish cannot live on land as men and women do; it lacks the proper organs to live the life of
man, or of land animals. To do so it would need another nature. On the other hand, a human being
cannot live under the sea or in outer space. It goes against his nature, and when he attempts to do so it
is only because of what technology now allows us to do: great precautions are taken; special suits are
used; oxygen is supplied to create the conditions he needs to survive, and so on.
The core of all this lies in the fact that human nature, as such, does not require supernatural life. We
tend to imagine, I think, that something unjust is occurring when an infant dies soon after birth and has
not been baptized and is 'deprived' of heaven. What fault of his was it that he was not baptized? None,
obviously. But then, the following question should be asked: 'And what right had he to heaven seeing
that he is not an adopted son by the grace of God?' He is deprived of no rights. He simply lacks the
capacity to live a life superior to his own human nature, exactly in the same way as he cannot live as
a bird or a fish. Mind you, one would have to ask questions of his parents: did they simply neglect to
have the child baptized? And of the priest: did he refuse baptism in spite of the wishes of the parents
because he wanted to have a dozen or more infants to baptize before proceeding or was waiting for
some important liturgical feast-day, or just allowed five or six months go by on the pretext of
preparing the parents and god-parents better? But it is not logical to upbraid God because he did not
make a child which had no wings fly.
The widespread assumption is to think that we have a right to salvation by the mere fact of being
born; it is looked upon as something owed us and which we can only lose, justly, if we have done
something really awful and horrendous. It is no surprise that an error of that magnitude at the very
beginning of the question should cause us to misunderstand so much.
Nor it is a good idea to be so preoccupied with man that God is relegated to the shadows, or reduced
to being some kind of a subproduct of man's impossible aspirations, or made to be a rival who is on
an equal footing and on whom one can place what conditions one likes. All these pseudo-redemptive
systems for mankind (mankind, I say, which is abstract; not men and women who are real beings) will
not effect his salvation. Rather, they will contribute to his downfall. Salvation comes from above, and
comes to man along one roadthe same one road by which he can rise above his shortcomings and
limitationthe way of the Cross. It is Christ crucified who saves, crucified not for an idea, but
because of our sins. Man can accept or reject that reality. In either case, he must accept the
consequences. What he cannot do is lay down his own conditions. That is far beyond his powers.
So no person can play the innocent, unjustly treated. And still less, the victim with a right to damages.
Every person is a sinner; every person is involved in the crucifixion of Christ. No person has rights
over and above those due him because of his being created in the image and likeness of God, and of
being redeemed by Jesus Christ, the only-begotten of the Father. These rights all derive from God's
freely-given grace: the gratuitous acts of creation and Redemption. A person not called into life is
nothing, and has no rights. A dead man has no rights, for, properly speaking, he is no longer a man, but
a corpse, the remains of what was once a man. A man lacking grace and eternal life is supernaturally

dead, or supernaturally not born, and so is incapable of having rights in the supernatural order.
We have, then, on the one hand, the data of Revelation which is that he who believes and is baptized
will be saved, and he who does not will be condemned. On the other hand, we know to be erroneous
the statement (the Church teaches this quite plainly) that all those who are not Catholics, who do not
belong to the Church because they have not been baptized and do not believe what the Church teaches
because they do not know her, will most certainly not be condemned. Therefore, the logical
conclusion must be that there are people, or can be people, who can be saved without the sacrament
of baptism.
This is not, now, the case of infants. A child who dies without baptism cannot be saved (in the normal
meaning of the term), nor can it be condemned because it has committed no personal sins. Such a
child has not opted either for good or evil because it has not reached an age to be able to choose
freely. It cannot be held responsible before God. It cannot go to heaven because it lacks supernatural
life; nor can it be punished because it has no capacity to commit sin. 'The Church can only entrust
them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them' (Catechism of the Catholic
Church, no. 1261).
Clearly, an adult is not in the same situation. An adult knows what is right and what is wrong, and
supposing very hypothetical, let me addthat in a particular instance conscience could not see
clearly between the two, it still has the means to attain clear vision without too much effort. Every
man is a sinner, and a nodding glance at his own interior life will clearly show not only his state but
also his powerlessness to get out of it. It was to remedy this situation that the Son of God became
man: to save us from our sins. There are so many and such explicit passages in the Scriptures about
this that it must be quite significant: 'God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but
that the world might be saved through him' (Jn 3:17). Words of Jesus to Nicodemus. Only he can save
the world, only he can save mankind; there is no other name through which we can be saved, no
matter what people say and preach to the contrary.
This is all very clear, but we might further inquire: 'Why does one have to believe in him? Why will
one be condemned for not believing in him?' The answer lies in words Jesus spoke to the Pharisees:
'You will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he' ( Jn 8:24). When Jesus says; 'I am he' he is
laying claim to be God, as the Lord God had himself indicated to Moses when he said: 'I am who I
am' (Ex 3:13). If they did not believe he was God, and could forgive sin (only God can forgive sin)
from whom were they to obtain forgiveness?
There are other words which have been marginalized by the theoreticians behind the 'anonymous
Christians' idea.
Jesus said to his disciples: 'If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now
they have no excuse for their sin' (Jn 15:22). He came; he came for all; he spoke and he spoke for all.
So all, at some moment of their lives or other, are called upon to define themselves vis--vis Christ,
to meet with his Person, his life, his teachings, his death and resurrection or to refuse such a meeting.
To believe, or not to believe.
It can happen, of course, that some individual may never hear speak of him, and never be baptized,

without any fault of his part. The Church, therefore, teaches that in some cases sacramental baptism
may be substituted by baptism of desire or baptism of blood (this latter is the case of those who die as
martyrs before being actually baptized). The former, baptism of desire, can only be found in adults
who can desire something with full consciousness. So, the Church teaches that a person who is not
baptized because he has never come to know Christ or the Good News of the Gospel, can yet be
saved, by the 'at least implicit' desire of receiving the sacrament, with an act of perfect contrition. By
implicit desire is meant what would be awoken in that person were he or she to hear speak of Christ's
Revelation and of the need of baptism for salvation, and this entails specifically the will to direct
one's life towards the Lord.
So, of the possibility of salvation without sacramental baptism there is no doubt. It is very instructive
to listen to the opinions of the various Church writers throughout the history of the Church. In the
second century St Justin Martyr was of the opinion that Heraclitus and Socrates were in heaven. St
Thomas Aquinas held that, if among those who did not know of Revelation, there was someone who
was so good and upright as to believe in Christ once he was revealed, then God would reveal him or
at least send someone to instruct him and see to his baptism so that he might be saved.
Lactantius, an ancient ecclesiastical writer stated: 'Do not live concerned about questions you cannot
solve.' Perhaps it is fruitless to inquire whether many or few are saved, whether those in such and
such a condition are saved or not. Only God knows, and he has not judged it opportune to inform us.
St Paul himself said, even though his own conscience did not reproach him, yet not for that did he
think himself just, and that he castigated his body 'lest having preached to others I might be lost
myself' (1 Cor 9:27). If salvation does not belong exclusively to those who belong to the Church
through faith in Jesus Christ, neither is it certain that all the non-baptized, by the mere fact of not being
baptized are therefore saved.
Whether few or many, God knows, and has made no revelation to us about it. Jesus confined himself
to speaking about the narrow gate, and the broad road, observing that many took this road. We know
no more, nor can we know more. But what the Church teaches, and it is the truth, is enough to guide
us. If what others teach, no matter who they are, does not fit in with God's Revelation, we know that it
is mistaken and is, therefore, a road which does not lead to salvation. Accordingly, a person who is
prudent and interested knows perfectly well what to hold to. The imprudent and disinterested person
will not even take the trouble to study the matter in any depth at all and will surely hear these words
of the Master:
'He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I have spoken
will be his judge on the last day' (Jn 12:48).