A Response to Greg’s Response to Father Radcliffe

I am chewing on the line from Greg's response to Father Radcliffe: “To fully achieve the joy and fellowship of full membership in the Catholic Church, we likewise must accept the responsibilities that accompany that affiliation.” Points well taken that an overly indulgent approach to Church teaching risks emptying it of its life-giving challenge – but I wonder if it might help to think about the joy and fellowship of full communion (in every sense of the word) not so much as an achievement – but as a gift? Perhaps the deeper point is that an atmosphere of love may be the most hopeful path for creating an environment in which people are able to fully welcome the challenge of the truth – because in this context, it becomes an encounter with Jesus himself, who does leave one “untroubled and unafraid” – not because of any achievement of one’s own, but because he himself is love. I don’t know if you all have been following John Paul II’s recent repeated exhortations to the US Bishops that the hope for the Church’s renewal is in cultivating a “spirituality of communion” (see, e.g., Zenit.org 5/28/04). His description in Novo Millennio Ineunte n.43 is really quite striking, and I think speaks deeply to the recent debates:

"To make the Church the home and the school of communion: that is the great challenge facing us in the millennium which is now beginning, if we wish to be faithful to God's plan and respond to the world's deepest yearnings. But what does this mean in practice? Here too, our thoughts could run immediately to the action to be undertaken, but that would not be the right impulse to follow. Before making practical plans, we need to promote a spirituality of communion, making it the guiding principle of education wherever individuals and Christians are formed, wherever ministers of the altar, consecrated persons, and pastoral workers are trained, wherever families and communities are being built up. A spirituality of communion indicates above all the heart's contemplation of the mystery of the Trinity dwelling in us, and whose light we must also be able to see shining on the face of the brothers and sisters around us. A spirituality of communion also means an ability to think of our brothers and sisters in faith within the profound unity of the Mystical Body, and therefore as "those who are a part of me". This makes us able to share their joys and sufferings, to sense their desires and attend to their needs, to offer them deep and genuine friendship. A spirituality of communion implies also the ability to see what is positive in others, to welcome it and prize it as a gift from God: not only as a gift for the brother or sister who has received it directly, but also as a "gift for me". A spirituality of communion means, finally, to know how to "make room" for our brothers and sisters, bearing "each other's burdens" (Gal 6:2) and resisting the selfish temptations which constantly beset us and provoke competition, careerism, distrust and jealousy. Let us have no illusions: unless we follow this spiritual path, external structures of communion will serve very little purpose. They would become mechanisms without a soul, "masks" of communion rather than its means of expression and growth."

Perhaps the best model to follow is Mary – who gave Jesus to the world not so much through her own “achievements” as through a radical and complete openness to God’s gifts, God’s plans, God’s grace – and in this she is not only “Mirror of justice” but also “Refuge of sinners” and “Queen of love.”