The list of participants in the 1986 event was impressive. They included a who’s who of 1980s culture: Cardinal O’Connor of New York, Edward James Olmos, Yoko Ono, Bill Cosby, Barbara Streisand, Scott Baio, Billy Graham, Michael J. Fox, Kenny Rogers, Richard Dreyfuss, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and John Stamos. (The cringe-inducing promo video highlights many of these celebrities).  Of course what event in mid-80s would be complete without the participation of Michel Jackson, Tony Danza and Chewbacca the Star Wars Wookie. Even Lisa and Bart Simpson got in on it.

Although, Ronald Regan controversially blamed poverty and hunger on the ignorance and laziness of poor themselves in the weeks leading up to the event, he too joined the human chain in Washington along with other politicians, including the democratic speaker of the House Tip O’Neill.

Today, such an impressive gathering of people in our polarized and divided country, even for a feel-good sing-a-long seems impossible. It’s hard to imagine anyone or any cause that would get people who are so divided to hold hands. The brain behind the event was the Hollywood producer Ken Kragen, who helped to form the group USA for Africa to organize the We Are the World Fundraiser in 1985.

Unfortunately, the event could have been better organized. Only $20 million of $34 million raised went to charitable causes. Many critics at the time portrayed the event as little more than a celebrity stunt. Others, like Ted Kennedy, criticized the event for not including all states or regions of the country.

While there are certainly questions as to the effectiveness and cost of such events, high-profile efforts are not foreign to the Catholic social imagination. Catholics have long seen the value in public manifestations of faith and beliefs from public processions on feast days to symbolic peace events like the 1986 gathering of religious leaders in Assisi for the World Day of Prayer for Peace (incidentally, the same year as Hands). The whole idea of the Hands Across America, in fact, seems very Catholic in many ways. The act of holding hands with others is reminiscent of those parishes where people join hands during the Lord’s payer. The cheesy lyrics of the theme song of Hands, even sounds like something that Pope John Paul II could have written:

 “See these people over there?
They are my brother and sister
When they laugh I laugh
When they cry I cry
When they need me I’ll be there by their side

Symbolic events like Hands can be effective means of publicly displaying deeper commitments and concerns to one another.

But like the public displays of affection (PDA) of a young couple, public displays of solidarity (PDS) are only meaningful if they signify deeper commitments. Too often solidarity (like the romance of young love) drowns in shallow waters. PDSs can be important, but they must reflect deeper commitments to social transformation.

John Paul II captures this well in 1987 as he clarifies the true meaning of solidarity:

This then is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all. Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 38

Nearly thirty years after the Hands Across America, would a similar PDS be worth organizing today?

Done in the right way, I would say yes. Social media can help to cut down on organizing costs. Instead of going east to west, the next hands should see America in its fullest sense, by symbolically connecting people south to north from Chile to Canada. Imagine hands linked symbolically across the US-Mexican border fence. Imagine classroom curricula across the hemisphere on inter-America solidarity. Imagine little maps of the Americas on the lower corners of prime-time TV stations.

Might this challenge the way we perceive “America” and “the others” that are too easily dismissed as being far away and beyond our concerns? Educational materials developed in partnerships with NGOs, faith-based groups, cultural centers, teachers and governments could help to ensure that the public display of solidarity leads to a deeper commitment. Getting online social media outlet involved could help to show the complementary relationship between online social networking and the power of networking where people are connected by human touch.

What do you think?

Straight from her cell in the 14th century, a rare phone interview with the famed theologian and mystic!

Yesterday being Mother’s Day, one does not expect to find a sermon relating the absence of one’s father on a business trip to the ascension of Jesus, and one might be surprised to hear a letter from the Bishop which in no way mentioned women or mothers.  Yet, there I was, hearing all these exciting things on Mother’s Day….

So when I was reminded by Fr. James Martin that today, May 13th, is the feast day of Blessed Julian of Norwich, well, I just had to ask her to make a guest appearance on our blog! Being a bit of a recluse, she agreed to an over-the-phone interview but wouldn’t type the answers herself, citing something about the bad wireless reception in her cell.

DT: Blessed Julian, what an honor!  I know your time is quite precious, so let’s cut to the chase.  With Mother’s Day yesterday, many Catholics are told to look to Jesus’ Mother, Mary, as the ultimate example of motherliness in our lives, but you make a different case in your most recent book,  (A Revelation of Love–now translated into numerous languages with many critical editions!)  Could you talk about that?

JN: Gladly!  I would offer two alternative visions that may prove useful to you!  In one sense, I see and understand that the high might of the Trinity is our Father; and the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother; and the great love of the Trinity is our Lord: and all this we have and own in our natural kind and in the making of our substance.  But more than this, I see that the Second Person, who is Mother of our substance, the same most dear Person is become our Mother sensual.

DT: Wait, let me get this straight.  I’ve heard the “God our Father, God our Mother” lines…even from Pope John Paul the First.  But you’re saying Jesus is our Mother…ohhh…this is figurative, right?  Symbolic or something?

JN: Hm, not quite, but great effort, dear sir! Let me try to explain.  The Second Person of the Trinity is Mother in nature, in our substantial making, in whom we are grounded and rooted; and he (Jesus) is also our Mother in mercy in taking our sensuality.  And so our Mother works in diverse ways for us, so that our parts are held together. For in our Mother Christ we profit and increase as in mercy he reforms and restores us, while, by the power of his passion and his death and rising, he unites us to our substance….Thus in our Father, God almighty, we have our being; and in our Mother of mercy we have our reforming and restoring, and in him our parts are united and we all are made perfect human beings; and by the recompense and giving in grace of the Holy Spirit we are fulfilled!

Perhaps I am being too difficult to understand.  Our substance is our Father, God almighty, and our substance is our Mother, God of all wisdom, and our substance is in our Lord the Holy Spirit, God of all goodness; yet our substance is whole in each Person of the Trinity, which is one God.  While our sensuality is only in the Second Person, Christ Jesus, yet in him is the Father and the Holy Spirit.

DT: Okay.  But isn’t motherhood defined by changing diapers and, simply, having children?  You’re aligning motherhood and Divine Wisdom!  Are you impugning that men are strong but unwise?

JN: …

DT: We’re just going to move on….I must not understand!  It sounds like you’re redefining Motherhood completely…motherhood does not define women or men in a bodily sense…Motherhood is a kind of imparting of Divine Wisdom on those around us.  In this sense, you are a mother, despite having no biological children, right?

JN: How you gain in wisdom!  The property of true motherhood is kind love, wisdom, and knowing, and it is good–as it is, of course, directly derived from the nature of Christ. But our bodily birth is but little, low, and simple when compared to our spiritual birth!  The mother’s task is nearest, readiest, and most sure, for it is the most real truth.  This task might never, nor could it, be done by anyone other than Christ himself.  We well know that all our mothers bear us to pain and to dying.  Yet what does he do? Our own true Mother Jesus, he who is all love, bears us to joy and endless living–blessed may he be!  Thus he sustains us within himself in love and labor until the full time when he gladly suffered the sharpest throes and most grievous pains that ever were or ever shall be, and died at last.

While Christ is very truly our mother, some analogies do exist. The mother may suckle her children with her own milk, but our precious Mother Jesus, he may feed us with himself.  And he does this most courteously, with much tenderness, with the Blessed Sacrament that is our precious food of true life. And with all the sweet sacraments he sustains us with every mercy and grace.  The mother may lay the child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother Jesus, he may lead us into his blessed breast by his sweet open side and show within in part the Godhead and the joys of heaven, with spiritual certainty of endless bliss.

This fair word full of love, mother, it is so sweet and so kind–that is, so close to the nature of God–and comes from the self so that it may not in truth be said of none but Christ, and of her who is true mother of him and of all. 

DT: Oh, wow. I’m not sure we can print all of this, but these are great lines…even bringing in Mary at the end to make the traditionalists happy!

JN: What?

An inside look at Bl. Julian’s cell…courtesy of http://www.julianofnorwich.com

DT: Um…nevermind.  Anyhow, we’re almost out of time, and I want to give you some more time to talk at the end.  You’re known for lines like “all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well,” but I find this mother-imagery remarkable.  Personally, I loved rocking my children to sleep when they were but a few months old.  I care for them deeply, and I know it will cause me pain when they go through pain in life. This makes me maternal as opposed to paternal, right?  And this is a good thing?

I swear I just heard Blessed Julian’s hand smack her forehead over the phone. 

JN: Oh my gracious sir, allow me to explain one final time. Perhaps then you will understand…if not, I will still pray for you!

Often, when our failings and our wretchedness are shown to us, we are so sorely pained, so full of shame, that we scarcely know where to put ourselves.  But then our Mother wills us not to flee away, for nothing could be further from his thoughts.  For now he wants us to behave just like a child; for when a child is upset or afraid, it runs straight to its mother will its might, crying out, “My kind mother, my gracious mother, my dearest mother, have mercy on me. I have soiled myself and am so unlike you ; and I can never put it right without your special help and grace!”

And if we do not feel ourselves at ease right away, we can be sure that he uses the skills of a wise mother.  For if he sees that it will profit us more to mourn and weep awhile, this he allows with compassion and pity until the best time, all our of love. The blessed wound of our Saviour is open and rejoices to heal us; the sweet, gracious hands of our Mather reach our ready and diligent about us. For in all this working he uses the skills of a kind nurse who cares for nothing but the salvation of her child. His task is to save us, a duty he delights to fulfill.  And he would have us know it; for he wants us to love him sweetly and trust in him meekly and mightily.

Even through some earthly mother might allow a child of hers to perish, our heavenly Mother, Jesus, may never suffer us to be lost, for we are his children.  And he is almighty, all wisdom, and all love; and there is none but he.  Blessed may he be!

DT: Blessed Julian of Norwich, this…wow…this was such an honor.  I’m sure you have lots of interviews today and so many intercessory prayers to attend to…thank you so much for you time.

H/t to J. Skinner for his help with this interview. Don’t miss out of Bl. Julian’s many published volumes!  ”Revelations of Divine Love,” chapters 58-62, are especially pertinent to the interview above…not to mentioned being the first book published by a woman in the English language!

By most all accounts, the church in Boston under the leadership of Cardinal O’Malley handled the impact of the heinous acts on

Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston

Marathon Monday with grace and pastoral skill.

Three weeks after the tragic bombings and the surreal events that followed that week, in Watertown (less than a mile from my house), a public debate has begun over what to do with the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26 year old who apparently conceived and executed this criminal act against humanity.

Crowds are protesting outside the funeral home that agreed to take his body.  City officials in Cambridge, MA and across the state are refusing to allow the body to be buried there. Both candidates for US Senate in this year’s special election have chimed in and found a rare point of agreement in standing in opposition to this criminal being buried in the commonwealth. All the while, the body of a human person awaits a final resting place.

This debate is tragic and risks confirming the worst suspicions that many have about Americans. Let us be better than these criminals. Let us meet hatred and the willful destruction of human bodies with respect for life. The body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, should be buried. If no other cemetery will do it, Catholic cemeteries should rise to the occasion. (Note: all of my deceased family members in the USA are buried in the Boston area) At the very least, the Catholic community could leverage its social, political and moral capital (not to mention it’s influence in the funeral industry) to find a discreet resting place for a human body.

The burial of the dead, even the bodies of sinners, is a corporal work of mercy that is central to the Christian life of discipleship. When we bury the dead with respect we honor not the person and their evil and sinful deeds, but the God who created each and every one of us in God’s image. Even the Romans allowed suspected terrorists and murderers to be buried. The precedence that this sets is disconcerting.

Maybe the grave should be unmarked and hidden away as to not create any more conflict, but there ought to be a resting spot. The only way to overcome hated and the sacrilege of human destruction is love.

Let us, as Cardinal Sean O’Malley urged after the event become “a people of reconciliation, not revenge.” The quick and somber burial of this criminal will go a long way in putting feelings of hatred to rest and reminding the world that each and every person has human dignity.  Instead of spending our time protesting outside a funeral home, let us work proactively for healing and the creation of a culture of life around the world.

Francis’s prophetic action at the juvenile detention facility, along with his other notable actions in recent weeks, displays a different style of leadership that hopefully will establish a renewed tone for the church and it’s relationship to the world. At the core of this renewed “style” is clearly the Christian virtue of humility. If Caritas was the virtue that defined the pontificate of Benedict XVI, I suspect that humility will be the virtue to define the pontificate of the first Jesuit pope.

In contrast to popular conceptions of power, Francis reminds us of a deeper understanding of power informed by love of the God who humbled God’s self for us (Philippians 2:8) and the model of Mary whose prayer of the magnificent highlights the integrated relationship between humility, greatness, and justice (Luke 1:46-55).

While it may seem counter-intuitive, the Catholic tradition has long stressed the centrality of humility and dependency for genuine power. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, stresses that greatness or magnanimity is not opposed to humility. Indeed, true greatness, he argues, requires humility and a disposition of vulnerability to God, the other, and the self (II-II. 129.3). 

In both words and deeds Pope Francis, reminds us of a fundamental Christian perspective on power and leadership that is too often lost in ecclesiastical pageantry, consumeristic capitalism, and obsessive patriarchy: real greatness is only possible if one is humble and open to God, oneself and the other. How this  style of leadership will impact the life of the church around the world has yet to be seen.

Two Dangers With Humility

As we follow with interest Francis’s witness and teaching on humility, we must be attentive to two dangers. One, is that humility will become conflated with humiliation and self-disparagement. Far too often in Christian history, the notion of humility has been misconstrued to oppress and subjugate people and groups—particularly women and minorities as Valerie Saiving points out in her often cited 1992 essay. This, however, is an erroneous understanding of this essential Christian virtue. In What’s the Point of Being a Christian, Timothy Radcliffe, OP aptly clarifies the true meaning of humility:

Christian humility is not about feeling that one is a despicable worm. Humility is having a proper respect for oneself….It is liberation from rivalry, from the compulsion to measure myself against other people. Humility gives me a proper ambition for what I can do, freeing me from fantasies of what I am not able to do…Humility is the virtue that gives us back courage, with a realistic understanding of who we are and what we can be with the grace of God.(133)

In other words, humility, as the pope recently pointed out in discussing the sacrament of confession, is incompatible with any sense of shame. By contrast, true humility, gives us the confidence that compels us to do great things (to be magnanimous) for Christ and his kingdom. Humility, enables us, with the help of grace to be “signs and tools of life” the pope teaches. Humility and meekness, Francis preaches in another recent homily, serves as a weapon against the destructive forces of evil in the world.

Finding God in all things

A second danger is that Francis’s witness and teaching on humility will become domesticated as people seek to relegate the virtue of humility to a special caste of people within the church (religious, popes, Jesuits, priests, etc) and thus ignore the implications of this for all the baptized. In recent days, Francis himself has insisted on the centrality of humility for each and every Christian and not just a select few.

Calling forth the Church of Yes

The election of Pope Francis comes at a critical moment in the life of the church when many people would question the “greatness” and power of the church. Many are concerned the church’s loss of temporal, economic, and cultural influence in many parts of the world means a loss of power. This has caused anxiety for many as parishes and schools are closed and priests and nuns accorded less respect in some cultures. In response, the temptation is to close in on oneself and give into a prideful puritanism or sectarianism. The virtue of humility, however, suggests a different response.Instead of closing in on ourselves, the humble approach acknowledges our vulnerability and dependency with others.

This is not an easy. But with the help of grace, we can hold on to a different sense of power that is open to the reality of God and the other. Such a sense of humble power calls us, as the pope recently said, to become a church of yes:

 “may we ask the Lord that the Holy Spirit aid us always to become a community of love.  Of love for Jesus who loved us so much”; a community “of the yes which brings to fulfilment the commandments”; may this community ever have “open doors. And may it defend us from the temptation to become – perhaps – puritans, in the etymological sense of the word, searching for a para-evangelical purity, a community of ‘no’. For Jesus asks first of us love, love for him; and he asks us to remain in his love”.

What do you think? Should humility be central to all popes and all Christians or should it be just for some?
Are these actions by the pope all for show? Or do they reflect a new “style” of engagement?

Endless ink is spilt and dollars spent on international social and economic development programs precisely to eliminate the poverty and improve the condition of the poor of the world.  Benedict XVI’s last encyclical Caritas in Veritate makes development its explicit topic.  Jesus may have said, as is written in Luke 6:20, “Happy are the poor”; but in development literature, the poor are not happy.  Countries with low measures of GDP per capita also are likely to face high mortality and morbidity rates, poor measures of effective governance, low educational outcomes, and social instability.  The path to happiness, one would think according to the literature, must be paved with gold, steel, and concrete, following a “no-holds-barred” approach to rapid GDP growth at all costs.  Only then do the poor have a chance to be happy.

Or do they?  According to two alternative studies, the World Happiness Report and the Happy Planet Index, the prevailing understanding and approach to development is shifting—shifting toward what Catholic Social Teaching has called “integral human development.”  Going beyond pure quantitative metrics, these studies seeks a comprehensive view that incorporates qualitative evaluations of well-being for those in each country.  The results of the first of these two studies are not very surprising.  The World Happiness Report uses data collected from sources like the Gallup World Poll and World Values Survey, and in most rankings the usual suspects of happiest nations (Nordics, Northern European, Canada, and the Antipodes) still round out the top 10.  Costa Rica makes a surprising cameo in the echelons of some rankings, but is middling at best in others.

The Happy Planet Index, on the other hand, simplifies its metrics for clarity, even if losing some nuance.  But what it gains is a different and elegant emphasis on the importance of the ecological preservation and sustainability vis-à-vis development.   Using clear, widely accepted measures of data in a new way, one can see surprising results.

The Happy Planet uses the Gallup World Poll Data, much of the same as presented in the World Happiness Report, and then multiplies it by the UN’s Human Development Data on life expectancy.  It then divides that product by the World Wildlife Federation’s “Ecological Footprint” score to yield its measure of gross national happiness.  In the Happy Planet Index the top 10 in descending order are: Costa Rica, Vietnam, Colombia, Belize, El Salvador, Jamaica, Panama, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guatemala.

Where are the “usual suspects” of the North now?  When environmental factors are weighted against the subjective scores of the Gallup Poll and the objective UN data, we are presented with a new perspective on what sustainable development looks like and what happiness is.  One might wonder, what would St. Francis think about this measure?  What does Pope Francis think of it?

Clearly there are still significant obstacles to happiness even in the happiest countries of the Happy Planet Index.  Every one of the nations listed in the top 10 has faced challenges such as political instability, violence, and drug trafficking.  A great many persons live below the UN’s measure for absolute poverty, living on less than $2/day without access to basic human services.  At the same time, their subjective experience of life and welfare is factored into this measure, as are the brutal statistics of life and death; yet these still come out on top.  Why?

It may be that money can’t buy happiness.  In the absence of the distractions and false promises of “more,” people tend to invest in relationships more.  In the World Happiness Report the study found, “At a given level of income, people who cared more about their income were less happy with life overall, with their family life, with their friendships and with their job. Of course people who care more about money also tend to earn more, and this helps to offset the negative effect of materialism. But in this study a person considering high income essential would need twice as much income to be as happy as someone considering high income unimportant.”  Materialism warps values and goals.  Poverty brings the essential elements of integral human development into high relief.  Moreover, the same study found that there are “many other studies linking green spaces to better health, performance, and life satisfaction.”  Poverty and the environment seem to be at the heart of happiness.

At the same time we cannot forget the prophetic work of Gustavo Gutierrez, who reminds us that material poverty is “a scandalous condition.”  We cannot be seduced into idealizing “the Church of the poor” lest it come off as paternalistic towards our brothers and sisters living in so-called developing countries.  We are all living in countries in need of integral human development.  What we ought to seek as a church of the poor is spiritual poverty, “an attitude of openness to God and spiritual childhood,” and “poverty as a commitment of solidarity and protest.”

The Pope of Peace, Poverty, and the Planet, or P⁴, said at his mass of installation, “Please, I would like to ask all those who have positions of responsibility in economic, political and social life, and all men and women of goodwill: let us be “protectors” of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment. Let us not allow omens of destruction and death to accompany the advance of this world!”  We must take the words of Jesus and those of top-tier of the Happy Planet Index seriously.  Happy are the poor.  They experience well-being, objectively live long, healthy lives, and they live in and leave a good earth for their children and their children’s children.

Happy are the poor?  Yes.  Really.

Self-centeredness is based on the illusion that one’s self is the source and goal of one’s own life, a life which is at the same time more important than that of others. This illusion masks the truth that dependency resides at the very heart of reality itself. After all, we are not the source of our own life; that source lies outside of us in God. We are not our own ultimate reality; we are not the fullness of our own life and existence. Rather, God is ultimate reality and the fullness of life, God is existence itself, and it is God who has graciously given us a non-ultimate and limited share in that fullness. We are entirely dependent upon God not only for bringing us into existence, for giving us the kind of active “hereness” or “presentness” by which we stand out from nothingness, but also for continuing to sustain us in the here and now of our lives. If God ceased to creatively bear us up beyond nothingness, we would simply cease to be. As for us, so for all created things; the entire world of our experience is dependent upon one source for the very action of its existence by which there is any action at all.

In this way then, we and everything in the world of our experience are related. We are sister and brother creatures related in our dependence upon God for our very existence. For human beings, this relationship can come to a conscious awareness. We can understand that God did not simply share the fullness of existence with one creature, but rather created many kinds of things that in one way or another mirror their source in the mind of the divine artist. The human form of that mirroring is our very ability to understand the generosity of the one who conceived reality itself, the freedom to live into the fullness of that mirroring through our own (gifted) capacity for sharing out of our limited abundance. In other words, as human beings we are given the gift of being able to become more and more like God. We become like God as we share from whatever fullness we have just as God has shared with us out of God’s fullness by giving us a part in existence and a world in which to live.

Unlike God, however, our fullness is not something we simply have. Instead, our fullness – whether that of material goods, experience, maturity, love, etc., – is from the start dependent upon the God who created us and upon those others (who are also dependent on the creator) with and through whom we were cared for and nurtured as children, or who harvest our food (also a creation), or who educated us, built the homes we live in, clean offices, streets, sidewalks, and other public places, who…

Profit at any cost is thus anti-life. To pursue profit at any cost is to become unlike God. To deny my dependency on God and others by not sharing out of the fullness of what I did not create on my own in the first place is to deny the very purpose for which God gifted the human being with life, a purpose most fully revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, to give oneself to the world in the freedom that comes from conscious and prayerful submission to our total and utter dependence on God.

Heinrich Hofmann – Christ and the Rich Young Ruler

‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
   You know the commandments:
      “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery;
      You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness;
      You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.” ’
He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’
Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing;
   go, sell what you own, and give the money* to the poor,
   and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’
When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
(Mark 10:17-22; cf. Matthew 19:16-22, Luke 18:18-23)

I suspect that the story of the Rich Young Man (or Ruler) is one of the Synoptic stories most of us are familiar with. If nothing else, it is the lead-up to Jesus’ saying “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God” and “For God all things are possible.” I also suspect that the takeaway from this story for most is some version of giving away your possessions, being charitable, and living simply. Don’t let your possessions prevent you from following Jesus – from being a disciple. Sounds fair to me.

King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson

As radical as it may be, I think it’s fairly easy to imagine giving away tremendous wealth. During a 5 day silent retreat I went on during college, one of the Jesuits gave a reflection on three different couples or pairs and what their lives said about wealth. First was the former King Edward VIII of England and his wife Wallis Simpson. Following his abdication, the pair traveled the world and lived a comfortable retirement in France. They had access to extraordinary wealth and lived like celebrities with little care for using their wealth for the common good.

Second were the Bradys, the benefactors of the Jesuit retreat center we were staying in. In the 1920’s, Nicholas Brady had become tremendously successful in finance, and his and his wife’s devotion to the Jesuits led them to donate substantial grounds to the Jesuits for the founding of a new novitiate. They did wonderful things with their money, but they also retained much of their wealth and continued to live comfortable, privileged lives.

El Greco – St Francis receives the Stigmata

So in a sense, it’s not all that difficult to imagine responding to Jesus’ call to the rich young man. While the will to do so might be lacking, the logistics of what that looks like aren’t too complex. But then again, this is based on thinking about rich and poor in terms of wealth and assets. Tangible goods.

How does it change if we think about privilege? I offer myself as an example. Numerically speaking, I am not rich. Actually, I’m in debt. It bought me a masters degree, but it’s still a red line on my financial balance sheet.

But then again, I’ve never really worried about being able to pay it back. I’ve generally been confident that I would get a job that paid enough to afford to service that debt. When my beloved Alero died in December, it took a little work, but I was able to put the money together to replace it with a newer, better car. With my parents help, because I have parents who are not only wonderful but also in fairly good financial shape.

And that’s just privilege in terms of dollars. I’m also white, male, straight, Christian, able-bodied, educated, employed, and a US citizen. Like Francis, I’m a winner of the socio-economic lottery.

What do I do with that when I read these verses from the Gospel of Mark? I struggle enough to keep the commandments, but what would it mean to give up my privileges? Should I give them up? Can I give them up?

Does it mean relinquishing those privileges? I’m not really sure which among them I could actually give away (I’m pretty confident I will remain a straight white educated dude for the rest of my days).

Does it mean trying to help others get the same privileges? Even the playing field? I would think not, since we’re not all going to be straight white educated dudes (nor should we be).

Does it mean using what privileges I have to help the common good? Encourage understanding and acceptance? I can (and plan to) use my education to help others get an education, become more well-rounded persons, get decent jobs, and that seems to be a good. I can try to be in solidarity with those who do not have my privileges.

Georges Rouault – The Crucifixion

Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross.
(Phil. 2.5-8)

Again, I’m not really sure what that looks like. Just something I wrestle with. I leave off here not with an answer, but with a question: how does the Gospel sound when reconsidered in this light?

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said,
   ‘You lack one thing;
   go, give up your privileges
   and grant them to the marginalized,
   and you will be privileged in heaven;
   then come, follow me.’
When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving,
   for he was very privileged.

Like many, I’ve been excited about Pope Francis from the moment he stepped out onto the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square. Besides his off-the-cuff homilies, audiences, and Tweets, I’ve been delighted with the gestures which indicate his commitment to poverty and encountering others: paying his own hotel bill, celebrating the Holy Thursday liturgy with teenagers in a prison, stopping to embrace a disabled child after his Easter Sunday Mass. The sheer number of these events with which I filled my Facebook friends’ news feeds prompted an apology for my “all-Pope-all-the-time” posts, but I can’t deny my excitement. There’s a palpable sense that Francis means what he says when he exclaimed, “Oh, how I wish for a Church that is poor and for the poor!”

The crowd in St. Peter’s blesses Pope Francis

People have paid far less attention to Francis’s prayer life, maybe because they simply expect such behavior from a pope. His invitation to the crowd to pray for Pope-Emeritus Benedict and to bless him on the night of his election has been viewed as a gesture of collegiality, a sign of his humility, but not as a real sign for the Church to pray for him. Far fewer news outlets paid attention to Francis’s thirty minutes in prayer at St. Mary Major on the day after his election than to his phone call to stop his newspaper deliveries in Buenos Aires. Much ink has been spilled on Francis’s relationship with liturgical rubrics, but little has been written about his constant appeals for prayer for himself and others during his speeches and his Tweets. His former press secretary recounts that then-Cardinal Bergoglio used to wake up at 5 AM to spend time in prayer before beginning his day at 7 AM. There is no doubt that Pope Francis is a man deeply committed to prayer.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka, On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family, and the Church in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Image Books, 2013). References to this book are in the text.

For Francis, a necessary connection exists between his commitment to a poor Church and his commitment to a prayerful Church. One of the most interesting translations occasioned by Francis’s election has been his 2010 book of conversations with Rabbi Abraham Skorka entitled On Heaven and Earth. Among the many different topics which Rabbi Skorka and then-Cardinal Bergoglio discuss, the intrinsic relationship of poverty, prayer, and encounter gets pointed out again and again. At the heart of the future Pope Francis’s thought is an encounter which pulls believers out of themselves toward commitment to God and others, found quintessentially in prayer, but expressed necessarily through commitment to the poor.

Prayer is nothing other than the encounter of human beings with the living God. The “talking and listening” of prayer opens people to personally encountering God, who continues to draw them deeper and deeper into relationship with God’s mysterious self (13, 178). This encounter is not within the believer’s control alone (22): she must be drawn out of her self to an ever-increasing closeness and commitment to God. For Christians, this always occurs through encounter with Jesus Christ.

For then-Cardinal Bergoglio, prayer involves being shared outward with others. It is precisely when prayer becomes a lifeless ritualism or a self-justifying technique for controlling one’s life that prayer dies (51). Enacted through the power of the Holy Spirit, prayer is meant to keep us from being closed in on ourselves and becoming self-referential individuals or communities: it opens us out to God and to God’s plans. Prayer is meant to be the concrete practice which answers Pope Francis’s call in a recent Tweet: “At this time of crisis it is important not to become closed in on oneself, but rather to be open and attentive towards others.” It is not enough for prayer to comfort us or to give us what we want: it must also draw us forth from our own preconceptions and self-satisfaction to encounter with God and other people.

The commitment to encountering God leads necessarily to commitment to one’s neighbor. The future Pope Francis understands the two great commandments—calling us to love God and to love our neighbor—as tied together by the great judgment scene in Matthew 25 in which Jesus judges based on what we do to the least of these: “We cannot adore God if our spirit does not include the needy” (142), because “[f]or Christians, one’s neighbor is the person of Christ” (71). Commitment to God must lead to commitment to others. As he writes, “The religious relationship involves a commitment, not an escape. […] When the religious person stops serving, he begins to transform into a mere manager, into an NGO agent. The religious leader shares with, suffers with, and serves his brothers” (182, 183: emphasis mine). It is precisely this solidarity and commitment to encountering others personally which sets Christians apart in their service to the poor, and it is this solidarity which is learned in and prompted by the school of prayer.

The Church that is poor and for the poor is thus a prayerful Church whose encounter with the living Christ is expressed in a new and necessary way: in personal encounter and commitment to the poor. Though justice involves structural change, the future Pope points out how Christianity encourages us above all to encounter the poor person in front of us:

In Christianity, the attitude we must have toward the poor is, in its essence, that of true commitment. And [Jesus] added something else [in Matthew 25’s judgment scene]: this commitment must be person to person, in the flesh. It is not enough to mediate this commitment through institutions, which obviously help because they have a multiplying effect, but that is not enough. They do not excuse us from our obligation of establishing personal contact with the needy. (138: emphasis mine)

This commitment to personal and concrete encounter with the poor is so important to then-Cardinal Bergoglio that he twice describes how he often asks penitents in the confessional if they give alms while looking the recipient in the eye (55, 133). Interaction with the poor cannot be among one’s “social-conscience calming activities” (140). It must be charity, “a profound human generosity” which is a commitment to God and to one’s neighbor rather than solely to one’s self (56).

Even more, this commitment to the poor becomes prayer in its own way. Commitment to the poor must seek justice: as the future Pope writes, “There is something that regulates the conduct of others: justice. I believe that the one who worships God has, through that experience, a mandate of justice toward his brothers. […] Therefore, the integral religious man is called to be a just man, to bring justice to others” (28). This in turn can be a prayer, because it expresses the fundamental coherence between encountering God and encountering the poorest among us:

An act of justice that becomes concrete in helping one’s neighbor is a prayer. If not, one falls into the sin of hypocrisy, which is like schizophrenia for the soul. One can suffer these dysfunctional features if he does not take into account that the Lord is in my brother and my brother is hungry. If a person does not take care of his brother, he cannot talk with the Father about his brother, with God. (56: emphasis mine)

In other words, Christians must escape from the fatal self-imprisoning gravity of rigid moralism and strict ritualism; they must have a twofold encounter with God (in prayer) and with others, namely the poor (in charity and service), or they are hypocritical, split Christians. There is no way to divide the private life of Christians and the Church from their public activities: the sanctuary and private prayer spaces of the Church must grow to include the shared space of a life lived with the poor through personal and social commitment to their needs.

In Pope Francis’s thought and example, there can be no separating “a Church that is poor and for the poor” from a Church formed in prayer: the two are intrinsically connected. What he preaches is—in a sense—nothing extraordinary, for it is a basic truth of our faith, expressed in various ways from the images of Matthew 25 to the way Catholic Social Teaching’s preferential love for the poor cuts across political lines to the concrete love of Mother Teresa. Yet the way in which Pope Francis witnesses to this—just like the way St. Francis of Assisi once witnessed to the importance of poverty—may prove game-changing to Catholics.

Pope Francis washing feet on Holy Thursday

Francis’s call and witness to me challenges both my theological and political comfort-zones. I know that I can’t be satisfied with praying daily, going to Mass, tithing to the Church, and giving my time as an academic theologian if this is not followed by spending time with my begging brother, my homeless sister, and the hungry children of South Bend. I also cannot imagine that my liberal political commitments will substitute for personally sharing meals with those at the South Bend homeless shelter. He challenges me to go beyond my normal pre-supposed commitments to a truly Spirit-filled witness to the living Christ.

Francis calls to me, showing that—even for a training academic—a concrete commitment to Christ in the poor around us may well prove the most convincing witness to a prayerful relationship with God, just as prayer supports this commitment to encounter. Given the way much of the world views Pope Francis, this witness is already incredibly effective in him. May Pope Francis continue inspiring us and the world—challenging us to reach to those on the margins—by his commitment to prayer and to the solidarity of the Church with the poor!

Michael Rubbelke is a Ph.D. student at the University of Notre Dame. He is especially interested in the relationship of spiritual practices and saints’ lives to systematic theology.

Such were the Blessings of that State;
Their Crimes conspired to make ‘em Great;
And Virtue, who from Politicks
Had learn’d a Thousand cunning Tricks,
Was, by their happy Influence,
Made Friends with Vice: And ever since
The worst of all the Multitude
Did something for the common Good.

The Fable of the Bees

This move in the history of economics turned conventional morality upside down. But today, it is not startling to read about the “benevolence of self-interest” because we’re used to sound economic advice contradicting our consciences (“we’re at war, go shopping!”). I’m more interested in a second historical move, namely the creation of amoral economics.

In his book chapter “De-Moralized Economic Discourse,” social economist Daniel Finn explains the deliberate effort to eliminate moral language from discussion of market systems, particularly tracing the thought of Milton Friedman, James Buchanan and Friedrich Hayek. These three Nobel Prize-winning economists wed their defense of free market capitalism to economics defined as a pure, thus ‘value-free,’ science. For instance, Hayek wrote that “the demonstration of the difference between socialists and non-socialists ultimately rests on purely intellectual issues capable of a scientific resolution and not in different judgments of values.”

In contrast, Finn argues that economics – at least in relation to actual, real-life markets – doesn’t make any sense without political, social, cultural and moral context. He explains, “only when a moral judgment is joined to an empirical assessment can the competing claims about alternative economic systems be adjudicated – or even understood.” Clearly Finn does not understand that our dominant economic theories reveal what is inevitable. Questioning the economic order is like discussing the morality of gravity.

Fortunately for Pope Francis, there are non-mainstream economists. (Check out The End of Value-Free Economics and these other books.) Unfortunately, I’m not sure who’s reading them. Amartya Sen laments, “There was a time – not very long ago – when every young economist ‘knew’ in what respect the market systems had serious limitations: all the textbooks repeated the same list of ‘defects.’” Nowadays, according to a study published in The Journal of Business Ethics, the only people questioning neoclassical market orthodoxy are across campus in the humanities or other social science departments. Business schools and economics programs are serenely confident.

Of course there must be exceptions. My current Catholic university has three separate centers for business ethics (though I don’t know what goes on inside them). Nevertheless, I suggest Pope Francis might get his people to gather the chairs of economics departments in a cross-section of Catholic colleges and universities. I’m sure the conversation would be interesting, and the Pope could give some input on the ground floor, so to speak. Otherwise, I’m afraid encyclicals echoing the established wisdom of Catholic Social Teaching will just throw principles on top of an already iron clad belief in the-way-things-are that excludes moral discernment of any kind.

Heather DuBois is a doctoral student in systematic theology and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her recent move from Brooklyn to South Bend has her counting chipmunks and bunnies with delight.

In the short time he has been Servant of the Servants of God, Pope Francis has been a consistent topic of conversation between family and friends of mine.  Most of his actions and words, relayed initially via social media, news reports or magazine articles, are then carefully dissected and distributed for analysis.  It seems like some sort of guessing game where those of us who are interested are trying hard to anticipate the shape of Pope Francis’ pontificate.  I notice that my small group is not alone in doing this.

The one phrase that jumped right out and caught the imagination of most of us was his initial claim:  “Oh how I would like a Church that is poor and for the poor.”

There are many ways to read that phrase.  Some of my friends and family immediately celebrated that the Corporal and Spiritual works of Mercy, Social Justice and Catholic Social Teaching were being promoted.  Some were excited to see the reaffirmation of the beloved Saint Francis’ Lady Poverty and hoped of papal leadership measured by deep humility and holiness that would open up spaces (and hearts) in the Church.  Still others were hearing renewed calls to asceticism, prayer, poverty of spirit and an impassioned love for Christ.

I have no doubt that on some level all these things are correct.  In fact, the more he preaches and comments in public, the more his older writings and actions come to light, it is clear that Pope Francis has a strong commitment to serve the poor, to a deepened prayer life, to humility and to a constant pursuit of conversion out of love for Christ.

When I am asked, though, what I think the pope means when he says he wants a “poor church for the poor,” I hope he is thinking about his vocation and calling to the Jesuits and that he is thinking about poverty as a Jesuit does.

Jesuit Poverty

Immediately after offering this hope, I can already hear the jokes about Jesuits and poverty rising.  As Father James Martin explains in his book The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything:

The most popular joke about Jesuit poverty is this:  A first year novice is visiting a large Jesuit community during a big celebration of the feast day of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, on July 31, usually an occasion for grand dinners.  The novice spies the immense dining room, the tastefully appointed tables, the flower vases and the filet mignon ready on the table and announces, “If this is poverty, bring on chastity.”

Humor, however, is not my main goal in expressing my hope.  Instead, I am thinking of the central text of formation for all Jesuits, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.  Written in the 16th century, The Spiritual Exercises include various methods of prayer such as the examination of conscience, silent prayer, movement of the body and visualizations of biblical scenes or of holy persons.  Exercises intended to train one for a very specific purpose.  Not to have a wonderful experience of God.  Not to seek some version of holiness.  Not to fit a template, some Procrustean bed of Christianity through twisted forms of asceticism.  Not to chase some utopian dream of earthly peace and justice.  These are all shadow sides of the goal for Jesuits.  These all arise as temptations along the way, idols that can be worshiped if one’s intent is not clear.

The intent of The Exercises is, according to Ignatius, “the overcoming of self and the ordering of one’s life in such a way that no decision is made under the influence of any inordinate attachment.”  An overcoming of self.  A letting go.  A training in complete offering of one’s whole being with no attachment to anything that can stop worship of, service to and love of God.  This is Jesuit poverty that filters into the vows that Jesuits take, the rules they follow.  Jesuit poverty is a poverty of mind.  And while this is not as flashy or as well-known as other aspects of Christian vows of poverty, it is essential to living a Christian life.

It is a poverty of mind that allows for Encounter.  Letting the self be overcome, one notices The One Who Will Not Go Away.  “All actual life is encounter,” Martin Buber reminds us in his magisterial work I and Thou and in poverty of mind, when one lets go of the self that interprets and understands and controls, one encounters the Thou to which my life is directed.  The silence, solitude and stillness — poverty of mind — allows for the graced revelation of something beyond the self.

This Jesuit poverty of mind begins with the imagination.  The imagination has the ability to hold contraries together and open up space in knowledge allowing for insight and for the whole mind to be engaged in certain ways with the bible, with Christ, and with the world.  Often, when discussing the imagination, the creative moment is the focus and what is missed is the destructive one.  In imagining, one playfully and gently deconstructs what is for what could be.  There are moments, lifetimes actually, of space and silence in imagination and the genius of Ignatius is to allow one to quietly participate in the overcoming of the self.

In participating, one discovers an inversion of intention.  At the start, the one performing the spiritual activities is intending the actions and thoughts but at some point that inverts.  In other words, one starts off performing The Exercises, but is ultimately performed by them.  One does not read texts, but one is read by them.  One does not encounter but instead is encountered.  One does not imagine but is instead imagined.  It is because the one performing The Exercises meets Christ — the person where divinity and humanity, grace and nature, thinking and revelation meet.  And it is in this meeting the goal of poverty of mind is made clear.

The goal of poverty of mind, this encounter through imagination that leads to an inverted intention, is all meant to lead to the ultimate goal:  contemplation.  Contemplation in the Christian tradition is the gift of silent prayer in deep union with God.  For Ignatius and all Jesuits, though, contemplation is not understood as simply union with God in some sort of blissful ecstatic experience that reifies the self and the self’s goals of holiness and utopian joy.  Contemplation is finding God in all things, and responding to God in the world.  Contemplation is a running toward the world and not away from it toward some creation of our minds.  It is a training in continuously being poor in mind that allows us to notice that all of Reality is held in being by an immense Love and we wish to engage it in every person and place we see.  It leads to a deep humility and holiness, as well as solidarity with those who suffer injustice and material poverty  It is a total transfiguration of our minds and our lives.

And it is this type of Jesuit poverty — a poverty of mind — that I hope Pope Francis is speaking of when he dreams of a poor church for the poor.

Finding God in all things