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In the interview, Cardinal Burke addresses why a Catholic employer cannot, and should not be expected to, provide health care insurance that includes contraception and sterilization. He explains how this would be not only material cooperation in the sin, but also formal cooperation and for that reason there is no way to justify this implementation.

Catholic Action for Faith and Family is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization supported entirely by donations. Your TAX DEDUCTIBLE donation is very important as it enables us to produce videos such as this to present and defend the values of the Catholic Faith.

“We were very blessed to be granted this interview with Cardinal Raymond Burke who,not only details the church teaching on contraception and the moral conflict for Catholic employers who provide contraceptive services to employees, but also provides education on the role of the Church in this time of governmental interference with the right to ‘freedom of religion’,” said Thomas McKenna, President of Catholic Action for Faith and Family. Thomas and the show’s director, Jim Breen, recently returned from Rome where the interview was conducted.

“Cardinal Burke stands in solidarity with U. S. Bishops and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in defense and advocacy for Church dogma while highlighting the critical role that the Bishops must play as shepherds to their flock,” McKenna added.

Catholic Action Insight has released the following excerpts from the interview:

This comment by one of the highest ranked American Cardinals is the clearest explanation to date on the issue of an employer’s culpability when providing contraception, sterilization, and abortion inducing drug options in the insurance plans for employees. Cardinal Burke has illuminated with piercing clarity the controversial issue which has seen dissent from Church teaching on this matter among Catholic institutions and universities here in the United States. Cardinal Burke’s profound statements come at a critical time in this divisive debate over the legality and morality of forcing anyone to act against his own conscience.

Cardinal Burke issued a public statement of support for Catholics to sign the Stop the Birth Control Mandate Petition.

For more information on the entire interview and the additional times it can be seen on EWTN or to watch the full interview after it airs on EWTN please visit CatholicAction.org.

To request an interview with Thomas McKenna contact Megan Morris at 913-426-0002 or email at MeganHarmonMorrisgmailcom  (MeganHarmonMorrisgmailcom)  .

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Sponsored by an organization called Stand Up for Religious Freedom, the rallies were held in 140 locations, including the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington.

Emceed by Roger Hedgecock, the talk-radio host and the former mayor of San Diego, the afternoon included speeches from Coadjutor Bishop Cirilo Flores of the Diocese of San Diego as well as other representatives of other denominations. Bishop Flores spoke forcefully and called attention to the fact that this was an issue of religious liberty and not a singular issue of the Catholic Church. He went on to praise the faithful for standing up and encouraged them to never back down.

Thomas McKenna, president of Catholic Action for Faith and Family,also addressed the crowd on behalf of Catholics. He called attention to the fact that there were Catholic bishops present at twenty two of the rallies taking place across the country and reminded people of the importance of standing up in the public square to profess their Faith.

He highlighted the fact that this is above all a spiritual battle and closed telling everyone about a saying of the great St. Ignatius of Loyola. That “we must always work as though everything depended on us, but pray as though everything depended on God.”

Thomas McKenna, Founder and President of Catholic Action for Faith and Family, interviews Bishop Salvatore Cordileoneon the importance of marriage and what it means for society. Bishop Cordileoneserves as the Chairman of the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In the interview they discuss the fundamental principles of marriage as well as the attempts to legalize “same sex” marriage and the impact these efforts have on religious freedom and civilization.

Catholic Action for Faith and Family is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization supported entirely by donations. Your TAX DEDUCTIBLE donation is very important as it enables us to produce videos such as this to present and defend the values of the Catholic Faith.

March 12, 2012
Press inquiries to: Megan Morris 913-426-0002

New Program to Feature Bishop Salvatore Cordileone Discussing Marriage

San Diego, March 12, 2012: Catholic Action for Faith and Family announced today a new outreach program to uphold and promote the values of the Catholic Church. Thomas McKenna, Founder and President of Catholic Action for Faith and Family, will host Catholic Action Insight. This cutting edge show will air as ‘Special Programing’ on Eternal World Television Network (EWTN) worldwide and also be available on the organization’s web site www.CatholicAction.org.

The inaugural interview airs today with Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. The interview reviews and discusses the attempts to legalize “same sex” marriage and the impact of these efforts on religious freedom and civilization.

The programs will be aired at strategic and targeted times throughout the year. It will focus on bringing experts into the homes of America and abroad to address issues of great moral and social relevance in the Catholic and Christian world. The purpose and goalaims to impact viewers in a way that educates and informs. This program is a response to a culture that is hungry for the truth surrounding controversial and confusing issues of our day.

“The goal of the interviews is to provide clear, authoritative and comprehensive answers to help those who are interested in learning more about the official teachings of the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Faith. It is the hope of Catholic Action for Faith and Family that this program leads to a more comprehensive understanding of the challenges that Catholics are faced with today,” said Thomas McKenna, president of Catholic Action for Faith and Family. “Our emphasis will be placed on arming viewers with the knowledge to clarify and teach others,” he added.

The program will air today, March 12, at 6:30 ET on EWTN. It will be available permanently on the organization’s website www.CatholicAction.org.

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THE NEW EVANGELIZATION AND CANON LAW

Introduction

First of all, I wish to thank His Grace, Archbishop John J. Myers for the invitation to give one of the Gerety Lectures during the 150^th Anniversary of the Foundation of Immaculate Conception Seminary of the Archdiocese of Newark. While I am honored to make some modest contribution to the work of the Archbishop Gerety Fund for Ecclesiastical History, I am particularly pleased that my contribution is part of the celebration of the sesquicentennial of Immaculate Conception Seminary.

The theological seminary is the heart of a diocese. As Our Lord Himself made clear, from the very beginning of his public ministry, by His call of the Apostles, the life of the Church depends upon the service of worthy shepherds who act in the person of Our Lord, Head and Shepherd of the flock in every time and place. My presence with you, this evening, is meant, in a particular way, to express heartfelt congratulations to the Archdiocese of Newark, whose faithful have so steadfastly and generously supported the work of the Archdiocesan seminary, and to underline the fundamental importance of the continued support of Immaculate Conception Seminary for the life of the Church in the Archdiocese, now and in the future.

My presentation responds to the work of the Archbishop Gerety Fund for Ecclesiastical History by addressing the present situation of the Church in a totally secularized culture and the response of the Church, that is, the call to the new evangelization. After treating, in some depth, the question, especially in the teaching of the Venerable Pope John Paul II, and of the Servant of God Pope Paul VI and of Pope Benedict XVI, I give particular attention to the state of the Church’s discipline, her law, and its irreplaceable role in the work of the new evangelization. While the presentation addresses a number of particular phenomena in the recent history of the Church, it seeks to interpret those phenomena within the organic perspective of the life of the Church, handed down to us, in an unbroken line, from Saint Peter and, with him, the College of the Apostles. While the question pertains to the life of the universal Church, I trust that its application to the life of the Church in the United States of America will be sufficiently evident, in fidelity to the purpose of the Archbishop Gerety Fund for Ecclesiastical History.

The Call to the New Evangelization in the Magisterium of the Venerable John Paul II

The pontificate of the Venerable, soon to be Blessed, Pope John Paul II, may be rightly described as a tireless call to recognize the challenge for the Church to be faithful to her divine mission in a totally secularized society and to respond to the challenge by taking up the work of the new evangelization. The new evangelization means teaching the faith, celebrating the faith in the Sacraments and in their extension through prayer and devotion, and living the faith through the practice of the virtues, as if for the first time, that is, with the engagement and energy of the first disciples, of the first apostles to our native place.

In his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici, “On the Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World,” the Venerable Pope John Paul II described the contemporary situation of the Church in the world with these words:

Whole countries and nations where religion and the Christian life were formerly flourishing and capable of fostering a viable and working community of faith, are now put to a hard test, and in some cases, are even undergoing a radical transformation, as a result of a constant spreading of an indifference to religion, of secularism and atheism. This particularly concerns countries and nations of the so-called First World, in which economic well-being and consumerism, even if coexistent with a tragic situation of poverty and misery, inspires and sustains a life lived “as if God did not exist”. This indifference to religion and the practice of religion devoid of true meaning in the face of life’s very serious problems, are not less worrying and upsetting when compared with declared atheism.[1]

As the Venerable Pontiff observed, “a mending of the Christian fabric of society is urgently needed in all parts of the world.”[2] He hastened to add that, if the remedy is to be achieved, the Church herself must be evangelized anew. Fundamental to understanding the radical secularization of our culture is to understand also how much the secularization has entered into the life of the Church Herself. In the words of the Venerable Pontiff, “[b]ut for this [the mending of the Christian fabric of society] to come about what is needed is to first remake the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community itself present in these countries and nations.”[3]

Pope John Paul II, therefore, called upon the lay faithful to fulfill their particular responsibility “to testify how the Christian faith constitutes the only full valid response – consciously perceived and stated by all in varying degrees – to the problems and hopes that life poses to every person and society.”[4] Making more specific the call, he clarified that the fulfillment of the responsibility of the lay faithful requires that they “know how to overcome in themselves the separation of the Gospel from life, to take up again in their daily activities in family, work and society, an integrated approach to life that is fully brought about by the inspiration and strength of the Gospel.”[5]

Before the challenges of living the Catholic faith in our time, the Venerable John Paul II recalled to our minds the urgency of Christ’s mandate given to the first disciples and given, no less, to us today. He declared:

Certainly the command of Jesus: “Go and preach the Gospel” always maintains its vital value and its ever-pressing obligation. Nevertheless, the present situation, not only of the world but also of many parts of the Church, absolutely demands that the word of Christ receive a more ready and generous obedience. Every disciple is personally called by name; no disciple can withhold making a response: “Woe to me, if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor 9:16).[6]

The “present situation” of the world and the Church “absolutely demands that the word of Christ receive a more ready and generous obedience.” The obedience which is fundamental and essential to the new evangelization is also a virtue acquired with difficulty in a culture which exalts individualism and questions all authority, except the self. Yet, it is indispensable if the Gospel is to be taught and lived in our time. We must take example from the first disciples, from the first missionaries to our homeland, and from the hosts of saints and blessed who gave themselves completely to Christ, calling upon the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit to purify themselves of any rebellion before God’s will and to strengthen them to do God’s will in all things.

The Venerable Pope John Paul II issued the same call to the new evangelization to the faithful in the other states of life in the Church. In the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis, “On the Formation of Priests in the Circumstances of the Present Day,” writing about the spiritual gift of the priest for “the universal mission of salvation to the end of the earth,” he observed:

Today in particular, the pressing pastoral task of the new evangelization calls for the involvement of the entire People of God, and requires a new fervour, new methods and a new expression for the announcing and witnessing of the Gospel. This task demands priests who are deeply and fully immersed in the mystery of Christ and capable of embodying a new style of pastoral life, marked by a profound communion with the Pope, the Bishops and other priests, and a fruitful cooperation with the lay faithful, always respecting and fostering the different roles, charisms and ministries present within the ecclesial community.[7]

According to the teaching of Pope John Paul II, the seminarian preparing to present himself for ordination to the priesthood and for the exercise of the priestly mission, today, must be equipped for and engaged in the remaking of the fabric of the Church, in fidelity to her apostolic nature, developed in organic unity, down the Christian centuries from the Resurrection, Ascension and Descent of the Holy Spirit. Before the forces of secularization which dominate society and culture, the faithful need the spiritual ministration of priests who recognize the gravity of the situation and are prepared to address it steadfastly with apostolic zeal, with fervent prayer, especially before the Blessed Sacrament, with sound teaching, and with obedience to the Holy Father and the Bishops in communion with him.

Seminarians and priests should not be naïve about the influence of secularism and its by-product, consumerism, in their own lives. According to an ancient axiom of the Church’s discipline, “corruptio optima pessima est,” “the corruption of the best is the worst thing.” Satan and the forces of evil understand well that any influence which they can have with the shepherds of the Church will redound to their influence in the whole flock. They know the wisdom expressed in the Prophet Zechariah, “Strike the shepherd and scatter the flock.”[8] The formation of future priests and the ongoing formation of priests, therefore, must underline the essential elements of our life in Christ and, in particular, the irreplaceable office of the ordained priest in the Mystical Body of Christ.

In a similar fashion, in his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata, “On the Consecrated Life and Its Mission in the Church and in the World,” the Venerable Pope John Paul II emphasized the new evangelization as the particular form, in our time, of the universal charity which is the characteristic mark of the state of life of consecrated persons. He declared:

Today, among the possible works of charity, certainly the one which in a special way shows the world this love “to the end” is the fervent proclamation of Jesus Christ to those who do not yet know him, to those who have forgotten him, and the poor in a preferential way.[9]

Consecrated persons, because of their identification with Christ the poor, the Chaste and the Obedient, both by their consecration itself and their apostolate – including the apostolate of prayer and penance of those who are contemplative – , carry out an essential service in the Church in every age and, in a special way, in our time. They call the faithful and all persons of good will to Christ, to contemplate Christ and the Gospel virtues, to love Christ and to serve Him.

Later on in Vita Consecrata, the Venerable Pope John Paul II articulated the service to the new evangelization, given by consecrated persons, with these words:

The new evangelization, like that of all times, will be effective if it proclaims from the rooftops what it has first lived in intimacy with the Lord. It calls for strong personalities, inspired by saintly fervour. The new evangelization demands that consecrated persons have a thorough awareness of the theological significance of the challenges of our time. Those challenges must be weighed with careful joint discernment, with a view to renewing the mission. Courage in proclaiming the Lord Jesus must be accompanied by trust in Providence, which is at work in the world and which “orders everything, even human differences, for the great good of the Church.” … In every place and circumstance, consecrated persons should be zealous heralds of Jesus Christ, ready to respond with the words of the Gospel to the questions posed today by the anxieties and urgent needs of the human heart.[10]

Given the individualism and materialism characteristic of a secularized society, the faithful witness of the consecrated life to the obedience, chastity and obedience of Christ are more critically needed in our time than ever.

An extraordinary synthesis of the teaching of Pope John Paul II on the new evangelization is found in his Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, “At the Close of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000.” Before the grave situation of the world today, we are, the Venerable Pontifff reminded us, like the first disciples who, after hearing Saint Peter’s Pentecost discourse, asked him: “What must we do?”[11] Even as the first disciples faced a pagan world which had not even heard of our Lord Jesus Christ, so, we, too face a culture which is forgetful of God and often hostile to His Law written upon every human heart.

Before the great challenge of our time, Pope John Paul cautioned us that we will not save ourselves and our world by discovering “some magic formula” or by “inventing a new programme.”[12] In unmistakable terms, he declared:

No, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person, and the assurance which he gives us: I am with you.[13]

He reminded us that the programme by which we are to address effectively the great spiritual challenges of our time is, in the end, Jesus Christ alive for us in the Church. He explained:

The programme already exists: it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition, it is the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its center in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved and imitated, so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem. This is a program which does not change with shifts of times and cultures, even though it takes account of time and culture for the sake of true dialogue and effective communication.[14]

In short, the program leading to freedom and happiness is, for each of us, holiness of life, in accord with our state in life.

The Venerable Pope John Paul II, in fact, cast the entire pastoral plan for the Church in terms of holiness. He explained himself thus:

In fact, to place pastoral planning under the heading of holiness is a choice filled with consequences. It implies the conviction that, since Baptism is a true entry into the holiness of God through incorporation into Christ and the indwelling of his Spirit, it would be a contradiction to settle for a life of mediocrity, marked by a minimalist ethics and a shallow religiosity. To ask catechumens: “Do you wish to be receive Baptism?” means at the same time to ask them: “Do you wish to become holy?” It means to set before them the radical nature of the Sermon on the Mount: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).[15]

Pope John Paul II continued, making reference to the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, by reminding us that “this ideal of perfection must not be misunderstood as if it involved some kind of extraordinary existence, possible only for a few ‘uncommon heroes’ of holiness.”[16]

Pope John Paul II taught us the extraordinary nature of our ordinary life, because it is lived in Christ and, therefore, produces in us the incomparable beauty of holiness. He declared:

The ways of holiness are many, according to the vocation of each individual. I thank the Lord that in these years he has enabled me to beatify and canonize a large number of Christians, and among them many lay people who attained holiness in the most ordinary circumstances of life. The time has come to re-propose wholeheartedly to everyone this high standard of ordinary Christian living: the whole life of the Christian community and of Christian families must lead in this direction.[17]

Seeing in us the daily conversion of life by which we strive to meet the high standard of holiness, the “high standard of ordinary Christian living,” our brothers and sisters will discover the great mystery of their own ordinary life in which God daily showers upon them his ceaseless and immeasurable love, calling them to holiness of life in Christ, His only-begotten Son. Clearly, the “mending of the Christian fabric of society” can only come about by the remaking of “the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community,” beginning with the individual in his family, at home.[18]

The New Evangelization in the Magisterium of the Servant of God Pope Paul VI

To understand the nature and gravity of the call to the new evangelization it is important to note how the same call was issued in the Magisterium of the Servant of God Pope Paul VI who, in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, “On Evangelization in the World Today,” had already called for a new proclamation of the Gospel in the situation of what he called “a dechristianized society.”[19] In the years which followed the close of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, the Servant of God had witnessed the progressive secularization of society and its destructive effects within the Church.

In his homily on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, in 1972, for example, reflecting upon the situation of the Church in the world, he spoke of his sense that “through some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered into the temple of God.”[20] He spoke of a pervasive doubt, uncertainty, restlessness, dissatisfaction and dissent, and of a loss of trust in the Church and of a ready placement of our trust in the secular prophets who speak to us through the press or social movements, seeking from them the formula for a true life.[21] He noted how, also in the Church, the state of uncertainty prevailed, observing that after the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council it was believed that “a day of sunlight had dawned upon the Church,” while, in fact, “a day of clouds, storms, darkness, search and uncertainty” had arrived.[22] He commented that we seek to excavate the abysses rather than fill them.[23]

I am reminded of a comment by the wise Mother Mary Francis of the Poor Clare Colletine Monastery of Roswell, New Mexico, writing, already in 1967, about the approach to the reform of the religious form of consecrated life after the Council. She observed:

It is simply a fact that we can have too many workshops and discussions on such subjects as the formation of novices and juniors, the psychological aspects of religious life, and mental hygiene, which reduce to mere long-ringing condemnations of the past. One, of course, would be too many. We could be using this time and this energy actually forming our communities, in studying and promoting a sound psychology of religious life, and in practicing and encouraging mental hygiene. We are all surely aware that mistakes have been made in the past. We may even be willing to admit we have made a few ourselves. Let us go on from there, not hold a seminar there. Let us by all means get expert guidance in the areas just mentioned and many others, the while not letting the fact elude us that the Holy Spirit remains the Expert, the Counsellor. There may certainly be valid reasons for calmly mentioning some past errors for mutual education. A charitable sharing of blunders can be a genuine service to one another, since we all stumble often enough even when forewarned of booby-traps. However, to talk from a stump of censure will never avail anything positive.[24]

Pope Paul VI’s lament, reflected also in the observations of Mother Mary Francis, points to a rupture in the life of the Church, caused by the failure to see the organic nature of her life, receiving from Christ, faithfully down the centuries, the gift of the Holy Spirit for the evangelization of the world.

Pope Benedict XVI reflected at length upon the rupture in his first Christmas address to the Roman Curia, in December of 2005, which also marked the fortieth anniversary of the close of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. He described a struggle between two interpretations of the Council, the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture,” and the “hermeneutic of reform.”[25] Without entering into a thorough analysis of his discussion of the struggle of the two hermeneutics, which would certainly be illuminating for the subject of our reflection but which time does not permit, suffice it to say that the hermeneutic of rupture postulates “a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church” and, thereby, justifies an interpretation of the Council not based upon the texts approved by the Council Fathers but upon what is called “the true spirit of the Council,” which is discovered “in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.”[26] The result is described by Pope Benedict XVI in these words:

The nature of a Council as such is therefore basically misunderstood. In this way, it is considered as a sort of constituent that eliminates an old constitution and creates a new one. However, the Constituent Assembly needs a mandatory and then confirmation by the mandatory, in other words, the people the constitution must serve. The Fathers had no such mandate and no one had ever given them one; nor could anyone have given them one because the essential constitution of the Church comes from the Lord and was given to us so that we might attain eternal life and, starting from this perspective, be able to illuminate life in time and time itself. [27]

His analysis points to the need of a new evangelization which centers upon the gift of Christ’s life given to us, as individuals and as a community, in the Church, by which we are to live and thus to serve our neighbor.

In the years following the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, but certainly not because of the Council, the Church has witnessed, for example, an erosion of family life, of marital fidelity and the denial of procreation as the crown of marital love. She has also witnessed the betrayal of the liturgical reform ordered by the Council through a manipulation of the divine action of the liturgy to express the individual personality of the celebrant and of the congregation, and even to advance various human agenda, completely alien to the divine action of the Sacred Liturgy. Already, in 1972, Pope Paul VI had the sense that some foreign, indeed hostile element, had entered into the very sanctuaries of the Church. One understands, then, why he urged so adamantly the work of evangelization in the Church and in the world.

The New Evangelization in the Magisterium of Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI, in his 2010 Christmas Address to the College of Cardinals, the Roman Curia and the Governorate of Vatican City State, spoke clearly and strongly about the profoundly disordered moral state in which our world finds itself, today, and of its profound effect also within the Church. He spoke about the grave evils of our time, for example, the sexual abuse of minors by the clergy, the marketing of child pornography, sexual tourism, and the deadly abuse of drugs.

One also thinks of other most grievous moral evils of our time, for instance, the plague of procured abortion, the abhorrent practices of the artificial generation of human life and its destruction, at the embryonic stage of development; the so-called “mercy killing” of the very brothers and sisters who have the first title to our care, those who have grown weak through advanced years, grave illness or special needs; and the ever advancing agenda of those who want to redefine marriage and family life to include the unnatural sexual union of two persons of the same sex.

Regarding the grave evils which beset the world, in our day, Pope Benedict XVI declared that they are all signs of “the tyranny of mammon which perverts mankind” and that they result from “a fatal misunderstanding of freedom which actually undermines man’s freedom and ultimately destroys it.”[28] They are manifestations, to be sure, of a way of living, to use the words of the Venerable, soon to be Blessed, Pope John Paul II, “as if God did not exist.”[29]

They are a manifestation of sin at its root, which is pride, the pride of man who fails to recognize that all that he is and has comes from the hand of God Who has created us and has redeemed us, after the sin of our First Parents. They are a manifestation of the foolishness of seeking our freedom other than in the will of God and thus making ourselves slaves to creaturely realities. That foolishness manifests itself in a most distressing way in a culture of addictions, in which we seek our freedom and happiness in some creaturely reality and, when we do not find them there, as indeed we never can, we, in our pride, instead of turning in obedience to God, enslave ourselves more and more to the same creature, for example, alcohol, food, sexual promiscuity or pornography, until the creature destroys us.

Pope Benedict XVI’s words in his Christmas Address of last year are redolent of the powerful pastoral concern which he expressed in his homily during the Mass for the Election of the Roman Pontiff, celebrated before the conclave during which he was elected to the See of Peter. He spoke of how the “the thought of many Christians” has been tossed about, in our time, by various “ideological currents,” observing that we are witnesses to the “human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error,” about which Saint Paul wrote in his Letter to the Ephesians.[30] He noted that, in our time, those who live according to “a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church” are viewed as extremists, while relativism, that is, “letting oneself be ‘tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine’,” is extolled.[31] Regarding the source of the grave moral evils of our time, he concluded: “We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.”[32]

In his 2010 Christmas Address, reflecting on the grave evils which are destroying us as individuals and as a society, and which have generated a culture marked predominantly by violence and death, the Holy Father reminded us that, if we, with the help of God’s grace, are to overcome the grave evils of our time, “we must turn our attention to their ideological foundations.”[33] He then identified directly and unequivocally the ideology which fosters these evils: a perversion of ethos, of the moral norm, which has even entered into the thinking of some theologians in the Church.

Referring to one of the more shocking manifestations of the ideology, namely, the so-called moral position that the sexual abuse of children by adults is actually good for the children and for the adults, he declared:

It was maintained – even within the realm of Catholic theology – that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a “better than” and a “worse than”. Nothing is good or bad in itself. Everything depends on the circumstances and on the end in view. Anything can be good or also bad, depending upon purposes and circumstances. Morality is replaced by a calculus of consequences, and in the process it ceases to exist.[34]

Pope Benedict XVI describes a moral relativism, called proportionalism or consequentialism in contemporary moral theology, which has generated profound confusion and outright error regarding the most fundamental truths of the moral law.[35] It has led to a situation in which morality itself indeed “ceases to exist.” If, therefore, the irreplaceable moral order, which is the way of our freedom and happiness, is to be restored, we must address with clarity and steadfastness the error of moral relativism, proportionalism and consequentialism, which permeates our culture and has also entered, as the Holy Father reminds us, into the Church.

To confront the ideology, Pope Benedict XVI has urged us to study anew the teaching of his predecessor, the Venerable, soon to be Blessed, Pope John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, “On the Fundamentals of the Church’s Moral Teaching.” In Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “indicated with prophetic force, in the great rational tradition of Christian ethos, the essential and permanent foundations of moral action.”[36] Reminding us of the need to form our consciences, in accord with the moral teaching of the Church, our Holy Father also reminded us of “our responsibility to make these criteria [these moral foundations] audible and intelligible once more for people today as paths of true humanity, in the context of our paramount concern for mankind.”[37] In the exhortation of Pope Benedict XVI, we see the expression of the deepest pastoral charity of the Vicar of Christ on earth, charity, which like that of the Christ the Good Shepherd, knows no boundary and is unceasing.

For us, as members of the Catholic Church, we discover the true relationship between faith and reason, the true concept of ethos, of the moral norm, in Jesus Christ, in a personal relationship with Him as He comes to meet us and to make us ever more one with Him in His Mystical Body, the Church. In Jesus Christ, God the Son made man, heaven has come to earth to dispel the darkness of error and sin, and to fill our souls with the light of truth and goodness. If we live in Christ, in the union of our hearts with His Most Sacred Heart, when our brothers and sisters, lost in the unreal world of moral relativism and, therefore, tempted to despair, encounter us, they find direction for their lives and the hope for which they are looking and longing. Living in Jesus Christ, living according to the truth which He alone teaches us in His Church, we become light to dispel the confusion and error which lead to the many and so grave moral evils of our time, and to inspire a life lived in accord with the truth and, therefore, marked by freedom and happiness. The words of our Holy Father make clear the inherent dynamism of the life of the Holy Spirit within us, leading us to give witness to mystery of God’s love in our lives and so to convert our own lives more fully to Christ and to transform our world.

The State of Canon Law in the Church

I began my studies of Canon Law in September of 1980, residing at the Casa Santa Maria dell’Umiltà, the residence of the Pontifical North American College for priests doing graduate studies. At the time, the number of priests pursuing graduates studies was much less than the capacity of the residence. As a result, the Casa Santa Maria, at the time, was also the residence for priests from the United States doing a three-month sabbatical. Every fall and every spring semester, a new group of priests arrived, and the normal process of getting to know one another took place. I, who, to be honest, took up the study of Canon Law in obedience to my Bishop and not because of a deep interest in the discipline, soon learned how much the Church’s discipline was disdained by her priests, in general. When I responded to the usual question of what area of study was, the responses ranged were of the following kind: “I thought that the Church had done away with that,” and “What a waste of your time.” These responses, in fact, reflected a general attitude in the Church toward her discipline, an attitude inspired by the hermeneutic of discontinuity, by that sense that “a day of sunlight” had arrived in the Church, in contrast to the darkness of what had gone before. Institutes of the Church’s law, which, in her wisdom, she had developed down the Christian centuries were set aside without consideration of the chaos which would result.

The hermeneutic of discontinuity, which tried to highjack the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, influenced by a pervasive antinomian culture, symbolized by the Paris student riots of 1968, had a particularly devastating effect on the Church’s discipline. Father John J. Coughlin, O.F.M., in his recently published book comparing canon law with Anglo-American legal theory, treats at some length the effect of antinomianism on Church discipline. Reflecting on the long process of the revision of the Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law, he observed:

Over the course of almost three decades of revision, although theoretically still the universal law of the church, the 1917 Code fell into general disuse. It was in many instances abrogated in favor of postconciliar innovations ad experimentum. In retrospect, the ecclesial ambiance in the wake of Vatican II represented a swing of the pendulum from the preconciliar legalism toward the antinomian. While it would overstate the matter to claim that the juridical structures of the church disintegrated during the postconcilar years, it seems accurate to observe that proper function of law in the church became unbalanced. The legalism of the past had been supplanted not only by openness to the new spirit but perhaps also by the tendency to underestimate the need for a healthy ecclesial order. The culture of canon law was reduced, with the effect that law was seen as an obstacle to the manifestation of the spirit in the church.[38]

He shows, in a particular way, how the failure of knowledge and application of the canon law, which was indeed still in force, contributed significantly to the scandal of the sexual abuse of minors by the clergy in our nation.[39]

Indeed, it is often asserted that the just-mentioned scandal was caused by the absence of a proper discipline in the Church to treat such abhorrent situations. In the typical approach of the hermeneutic of discontinuity, it is assumed that the Church lacked the proper canons with which to investigate such crimes and sanction them. The truth of the matter is that the Church had dealt with such crimes in the past, as should come as a surprise to no one, and had in place a process by which to investigate accusations, with full respect for the rights of all parties involved, including the protection of potential victims during the time of the investigation; to reach a just decision regarding their truth, and to apply the appropriate sanction.

In his annual addresses to the Roman Rota, from 1969 to 1973, the Servant of God Pope Paul VI confronted the loss of respect for the irreplaceable, if also humble, service of canon law in safeguarding and fostering our life in Christ in the Church. His repeated appeals for a new appreciation of the Church’s discipline are an indication of the gravity of the situation. Confronting a general opinion that somehow the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council had repudiated the service of Canon Law, he declared:

On the contrary the Council not only does not repudiate canon law, the norm that spells out the duties and defends the rights of the members of the Church, but wishes and desires it as a consequence of the power bequeathed by Christ to his Church, as a necessity of its social and visible nature, its communitarian and hierarchical nature, as the guide of religious life and of Christian perfection, and as the juridical safeguard of liberty itself.[40]

In another address to the Roman Rota, he confronted the false dichotomy between canon law and freedom in the Church, observing that canon law is not opposed to freedom but serves “what is needed to safeguard the common good – including the basic good of exercising freedom – which only a well-ordered social order can adequately guarantee.”[41]

The years of a lack of knowledge of the Church’s discipline and even of a presumption that such discipline was no longer fitting to the nature of the Church indeed reaped gravely harmful fruits in the Church, for example, the pervasive abuse of the liturgical law of the Church, the breakdown of the discipline of priestly formation and priestly life, the loss of direction of many congregations of religious Sisters, Brothers and priests; the loss of the Catholic identity of charitable, educational and healthcare institutions bearing the name of Catholic; failure of respect for the nature of marriage and the time-proven process for judging claims of nullity of marriage in ecclesiastical tribunals. Regarding the last example, it is not simply a matter of a legalistic concern but of concern for the sanctity of marriage, the first cell of the life of the Church and society, which must be respected, above all else, in judging a cause of matrimonial nullity, which is the reason why, in the Church’s procedural discipline, marriage must always enjoy the favor of the law.[42]

A frequent manifestation of the confusion and error regarding the irreplaceable role of canon law in the life of the Church has been the claim that the Church’s discipline is, somehow, in opposition to her pastoral care of the faithful. The Venerable Pope John Paul II confronted the false opposition between Church discipline and her pastoral care in his annual address to the Roman Rota in 1990. He confronted it once again in his last annual address to the Roman Rota in 2005. Pope Benedict XVI has addressed the same false opposition in his annual addresses to the Roman Rota in 2006, 2007 and 2010. In his 2010 address, he recalled the words of the Venerable Pope John Paul II: “The judge… must always guard against the risk of misplaced compassion, which could degenerate into sentimentality, itself pastoral only in appearance.”[43] He went on to observe:

One must avoid pseudo-pastoral claims that would situate questions on a purely horizontal plane, in which what matters is to satisfy subjective requests to arrive at a declaration of nullity at any cost, so that the parties may be able to overcome, among others things, obstacles to receiving the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist. The supreme good of readmission to Eucharistic Communion after sacramental Reconciliation demands, instead, that due consideration be given to the authentic good of the individuals, inseparable from the truth of their canonical situation. It would be a false “good” and a grave lack of justice and love to pave the way for them to receive the sacraments nevertheless, and would risk causing them to live in objective contradiction to the truth of their own personal condition.[44]

Regarding the Church’s pastoral concern, Pope Benedict XVI reminded the Rotal auditors and, through them, the whole Church, “that both justice and charity postulate love for truth and essentially entail searching for truth.”[45] “In particular,” he observed, “charity makes the reference to truth even more exacting.”[46]

Canon Law in the Magisterium of Pope John Paul II

The Venerable Pope John Paul II pursued with vigor the revision of the 1917 Code of Canon Law. There was no question in his mind, as a Father of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, that the Council desired the perennial discipline of the Church be addressed to the present time. In the Apostolic Constitution Sacrae Disciplinae Leges, with which he, supreme legislator in the Church, promulgated the 1983 Code of Canon Law, he wrote:

Turning our minds today to the beginning of this long journey [of the revision of the Code of Canon Law], to that January 25, 1959 [when my predecessor of happy memory, John XXIII, announced for the first time his decision to reform the existing corpus of canonical legislation which had been promulgated on the feast of Pentecost in year 1917] and to John XXIII himself who initiated the revision of the Code, I must recognize that this Code derives from one and the same intention, the renewal of Christian living. From such an intention, in fact, the entire work of the council drew its norms and its direction.[47]

These words point to the essential service of canon law in the work of the new evangelization, the living of our life in Christ with the engagement and energy of the first disciples, the pursuing, at all times, of holiness of life.

The Venerable Pontiff described the nature of canon law, indicating its organic development from God’s first covenant with His holy people. He recalled “the distant patrimony of law contained in the books of the Old and New Testament from which is derived the whole juridical-legislative tradition of the Church, as from its first source.”[48] In particular, he reminded the Church that Christ Himself declared that he had not come to abolish the law but to bring it to completion, teaching us that is the discipline of the law which opens the way to freedom in loving God and our neighbor. He observed: “Thus the writings of the New Testament enable us to understand even better the importance of discipline and make us see better how it is more closely connected with the saving character of the evangelical message itself.”[49]

Pope John Paul II then describes the purpose of canon law, that is, the service of the faith and grace, and of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and charity. Far from hindering the living of our life in Christ, canonical discipline safeguards and fosters our Christian life. He declared:

[I]ts purpose is rather to create such an order in the ecclesial society that, while assigning the primacy to love, grace and charisms, it at the same time renders their organic development easier in the life of both the ecclesial society and the individual persons who belong to it.”[50]

As such, canon law can never be in conflict with the Church’s doctrine but is, in the words of the Venerable Pontiff, “extremely necessary for the Church.”[51] The teaching of the Church, in fact, is translated into discipline by the canonical tradition.[52] He then indicated four ways in which the Church’s discipline is a necessary complement to her doctrine, declaring:

Since the Church is organized as a social and visible structure, it must also have norms: in order that its hierarchical and organic structure be visible; in order that the exercise of the functions divinely entrusted to it, especially that of sacred power and of the administration of the sacraments, may be adequately organized; in order that the mutual relations of the faithful may be regulated according to justice based upon charity, with the rights of individuals guaranteed and well-defined; in order, finally, that common initiatives undertaken to live a Christian life ever more perfectly may be sustained, strengthened and fostered by canonical norms.[53]

Because of the essential service of canon law to the life of the Church, Pope John Paul II reminded the Church that “by their very nature canonical laws are to be observed,” and, to that end, “the wording of the norms should be accurate” and “based on solid juridical, canonical and theological foundations.”[54]

Specific Form of the New Evangelization through Canonical Discipline

From the above considerations, it should be clear that the knowledge of and respect for canonical discipline is indispensable to the response to the call to the new evangelization. There are four specific aspects of the form of the new evangelization through canonical discipline.

The first aspect is respect for the rule of law as the irreplaceable foundation for relationships and activities in the Church. In specific, we must confront the antinomian tendency of the culture, which is inimical to the organ unity of the Body of Christ. A general ignorance of canon law, which sees it as some esoteric aspect of Church life, must be overcome. At the same time, the false conflict between canon law and the pastoral nature of the Church, between truth and love, must be addressed.

Key to the form of the new evangelization through canonical discipline is the study of the sources of canonical institutes in the Sacred Scriptures and Tradition. The discipline regarding the refusal of Holy Communion to persons who persist in grave and public sin, for example, must be seen in its consistent development from the time of Saint Paul.[55] The ground of nullity of marriage, lack of sufficient discretion of judgment, must be seen in the long canonical tradition regarding the influence of mental illness on the capacity to give marriage consent.[56]

Thirdly, the study of the text of the law must respect the mind of the legislator and, therefore, avoid all formalism. The wording of Church discipline derives from solid juridical, canonical and theological foundations which can only be known by those humble enough to study them. All forms of manipulation of the law to advance particular agenda redound to the grave harm of the faithful and of the Church as the Body of Christ.

Finally, liturgical law must enjoy the primacy among canonical norms, for it safeguards the most sacred realities in the Church. It is interesting to note that in his first Encyclical Letter Redemptor Hominis, Pope John Paul II confronted the abuse of the essentially personal encounter with Christ in the Sacrament of Penance, reminding us both of the right of the penitent to such an encounter and the right of Christ Himself,[57] and that in his last Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, he addressed urgently abuses of the Church’s discipline regarding the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.[58] In Ecclesia de Eucharistia, he declared:

I consider it my duty, therefore, to appeal urgently that the liturgical norms for the celebration of the Eucharist be observed with great fidelity. These norms are a concrete expression of the authentically ecclesial nature of the Eucharist; this is their deepest meaning. Liturgy is never anyone’s private property, be it of the celebrant or of the community in which the mysteries are celebrated. The Apostle Paul had to address fiery words to the community of Corinth because of grave shortcomings in their celebration of the Eucharist resulting in divisions (schismata) and the emergence of factions (haereses) (cf. 1 Cor 11:17-34). Our time, too, calls for a renewed awareness and apprecaiton of liturgical norms as a reflection of, and a witness to, the one universal Church made present in every celebration of the Eucharist. Priests who faithfully celebrate Mass according to the liturgical norms, and communities which conform to those norms, quietly but eloquently demonstrate their love for the Church.[59]

As is always the case, knowledge and observance of canonical discipline frees us from the false impression that we must make the Sacred Liturgy interesting or stamp it with our personality, and frees us to be instruments by which Christ, the Good Shepherd, is present among His people and the action of the Sacred Liturgy bears His stamp alone.

Conclusion

It is my hope that these few reflections may help us to understand the key, indeed essential, service of canon law to the work of the new evangelization. There are, to be sure, many other fruitful avenues of reflection on the subject. It must be clear that the remaking of the Christian fabric of the Church, which is necessary for the mending of the Christian fabric of society, will have as a fundamental element a new knowledge of and respect for the laws of the Church.

I conclude with the exhortation with which the Venerable, soon to be Blessed, Pope John Paul II concluded the Apostolic Constitution Sacrae Disciplinae Leges:

I therefore exhort all the faithful to observe the proposed legislation with a sincere spirit and good will in the hope, that there may flower again in the Church a renewed discipline and that consequently the salvation of souls may be rendered ever more easy under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church.[60]

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke
Archbishop Emeritus of Saint Louis
Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura
28 March 2011 – Monday of the Third Week of Lent

BEAUTY IN THE SACRED LITURGY,
ACCORDING TO THE TEACHING OF POPE BENEDICT XVI

Introduction

First of all, I wish to thank His Grace, Archbishop Willem Jacobus Eijk, and the Dutch Association for Latin Liturgy for the invitation to celebrate the Holy Mass and to speak at the Annual General Meeting of the Association. In a special way, I wish to commend the Association for all that it is doing to promote the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy in Latin, the mother tongue of the Church, in accord with the directives of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.[1] Your dedication in the promotion of the Sacred Liturgy is especially important in today’s culture which has grown so secular and, therefore, forgetful of God and of His living presence with us in the Church, especially through the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy.

It is my hope that my words, today, will confirm the work of the Association and also offer some measure of inspiration to you in carrying forward the same work. Above all, I hope that my words will, in some manner, lead all of us to a more profound and grateful appreciation of our life in Christ in His Mystical Body, the Church. There is nothing more beautiful in the world than the life of Christ within us through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, especially in the Sacraments. I hope that our time together today will lift up our minds to contemplate the extraordinary nature of our ordinary life in the Church, informed by sound doctrine, nourished through the Sacraments and their extension in our prayer and devotion, and lived in the practice of the virtues.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is Truth, Beauty and Goodness Incarnate. Living completely and faithfully in Him, we encounter, especially through the sacred liturgy, the True, the Beautiful and the Good.

Living in Christ, we live in communion with each member of the Church, in every part of the world and in every period of time. Indeed, we participate in the Communion of Saints. Like Mary of Bethany, we, encountering the Lord living for us in the Church, wish to offer to Him our worship; we wish to give glory to Him by the very best means at our disposition.[2]

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI who is an extraordinary teacher of the faith has devoted himself, both as a theologian and as a shepherd of the flock, to teaching about the sacred liturgy, as the highest and best expression of our life in Christ. His teaching is certainly a most fitting instrument for our reflection today. In my exposition of his liturgical theology, I wish, first, to present some philosophical principles on beauty and sacred art, and then reflect on beauty in the sacred liturgy according to his teaching, with special reference to sacred music.

Philosophical Principles

In the Catholic tradition, beauty is a metaphysical and ultimately theological notion. The search of beauty has nothing to do with mere aesthetic sensibility or a flight from reason, because, from the divine perspective, beauty, together with truth and goodness, is a manifestation of being. God, the origin and sustainer of all being is truth, beauty and goodness itself. In the language of metaphysics, truth, beauty and goodness are the “transcendentals.” In other words, to the degree that any reality participates in being and ultimately in the being of God, that reality is true, beautiful and good.

In the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church we find an extraordinary declaration which summarizes the theological notion of beauty. It is especially noteworthy that the text in question is found in the section of the Compendium which treats the Eighth Commandment: “You Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Your Neighbor.” In response to question no. 526, “What relationship exists between truth, beauty and sacred art?,” the Compendium declares:

The truth is beautiful, carrying in itself the splendour of spiritual beauty. In addition to the expression of the truth in words there are other complementary expressions of the truth, most specifically in the beauty of artistic works. These are the fruit both of talents given by God and of human effort. Sacred art by being true and beautiful should evoke and glorify the mystery of God made visible in Christ, and lead to the adoration and love of God, the Creator and Savior, who is the surpassing, invisible Beauty of Truth and Love.[3]

The beauty of sacred art is always a fruit of a deeper knowledge and love of God in Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, Who is all beautiful.[4]

In the context of modern and contemporary western culture, it is precisely the transcendent dimension of beauty, as interchangeable with truth and goodness, which is contested. In the rationalist thinking which has exercised so strong an influence in contemporary western culture, beauty has been stripped of its metaphysical meaning; it has been “emancipated” from the order of being and reduced to an aesthetic experience or indeed to a matter of feeling. The disastrous consequences of this revolution are not limited to the world of art. Rather, along with the loss of beauty, we have also lost goodness and truth. The good is now determined by what pleases the individual or group in power, such that what I determine is good, according to my preference and convenience, can mean destruction for another or for the world around. At the same time, there is the pretense that the individual determines what is true for him, so that the individual determines when human life begins or what constitutes marriage and the family.

One of the most painful results of the contemporary alienation of beauty from the good and the true is an aesthetics which rejects anything beautiful as a deception and holds that only the representation of what is crude, vulgar and low corresponds to the truth. A similar aesthetics has had an effect on the sacred liturgy, as well as on sacred art and architecture. The great tradition of Catholic art, architecture, language, music and gesture in which the Church’s forms of prayer and worship have been expressed, are now often met, even within the Church, with a similar distrust and suspicion. It has not been a rare thing to hear that beauty is not an appropriate category of the Church’s worship.

In the false interpretation of the liturgical reform mandated by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, the destruction of beautiful altar pieces and statuary, for example, in some parts of the Church was justified. I need not dwell on what happened to sacred music in the post-Conciliar period. The corrosion worked by such thinking in the Church seems to be a manifestation of the perennial temptation of iconoclasm, which has beset the Church repeatedly down the Christian centuries. According to such thinking, what is ugly appeals because of its honesty and simplicity.

In an essay on beauty, written in 2002, the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger reflected on Psalm 44[45], which “describes the wedding of the King, his beauty, his virtues, his mission, and then becomes an exaltation of his bride.”[5] He goes on to explain:

[T]he Church reads this psalm as a poetic-prophetic representation of Christ’s spousal relationship with his Church. She recognizes Christ as the fairest of men, the grace poured upon his lips points to the inner beauty of his words, the glory of his proclamation. So it is not merely the external beauty of the Redeemer’s appearance that is glorified: rather, the beauty of Truth appears in him, the beauty of God himself who draws us to himself and, at the same time, captures us with the wound of Love, the holy passion (eros), that enables us to go forth together, with and in the Church his Bride, to meet the Love who calls us.[6]

It is the same Christ to Whom the Church, remembering His Passion, applies the words of Isaiah 53:2: “He had neither beauty, nor majesty, nothing to attract our eyes, no grace to make us delight in him.” In the suffering Christ, we come to know that “the beauty of truth also embraces offence, pain, and even the dark mystery of death, and that this can only be found in accepting suffering, not in ignoring it.” Hence Pope Benedict XVI speaks of a “paradoxical beauty,” which implies not a contradiction but a contrast. The totality of Christ’s beauty is revealed to us when we contemplate the disfigured image of the crucified Saviour, which shows us his “love to the end.”[7]

We, therefore, learn to contemplate the redemptive beauty of Christ, crucified and glorified, which shines forth with particular splendor in the saints and is also reflected in the works of art the faith has generated. The great masterpieces of sacred art and sacred music have the power to lift our hearts to higher things and lead us beyond ourselves to God, Who is Beauty itself. It is the Holy Father’s conviction that this encounter is “the true apology of the Christian faith.”[8]

Sacred Art and the Sacred Liturgy

For the Church, beauty is manifested most fully and perfectly in the sacred liturgy, in the sacramental encounter with the living Christ Who dwells within the Church through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Pope Benedict, during his visit to the Cistercian Abbey of Heiligenkreuz in Austria in September 2007, exhorted the priests and consecrated persons with these words:

I ask you to celebrate the sacred liturgy with your gaze fixed on God within the communion of saints, the living Church of every time and place, so that it will truly be an expression of the sublime beauty of the God who has called men and women to be his friends![9]

His words apply to all who have been brought to life in Christ and, therefore, worship God the Father “in spirit and truth.”[10]

Pope Benedict XVI emphasized beauty in the sacred liturgy in his Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis of 2007. He wrote:

This relationship between creed and worship is evidenced in a particular way by the rich theological and liturgical category of beauty. Like the rest of Christian Revelation, the liturgy is inherently linked to beauty: it is veritatis splendor. The liturgy is a radiant expression of the paschal mystery, in which Christ draws us to himself and calls us to communion. As Saint Bonaventure would say, in Jesus we contemplate beauty and splendor at their source. This is no mere aestheticism, but the concrete way in which the truth of God’s love in Christ encounters us, attracts us and delights us, enabling us to emerge from ourselves and drawing us towards our true vocation, which is love. God allows himself to be glimpsed first in creation, in the beauty and harmony of the cosmos (cf. Wis13:5; Rom 1:19-20). In the Old Testament we see many signs of the grandeur of God’s power as he manifests his glory in his wondrous deeds among the Chosen People (Ex 14; 16:10; 24:12-18; Nm 14:20-23). In the New Testament this epiphany of beauty reaches definitive fulfillment in God’s revelation in Jesus Christ: Christ is the full manifestation of the glory of God. In the glorification of the Son, the Father’s glory shines forth and is communicated (cf. Jn 1:14; 8:54; 12:28; 17:1). Yet this beauty is not simply a harmony of proportion and form; “the fairest of the sons of men” (Ps 45[44]:3) is also, mysteriously, the one “who had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Is 53:2). Jesus Christ shows us how the truth of love can transform even the dark mystery of death into the radiant light of the resurrection. Here the splendor of God’s glory surpasses all worldly beauty. The truest beauty is the love of God, who definitively revealed himself to us in the paschal mystery.[11]

In his treatise on the Sacred Liturgy, The Spirit of the Liturgy, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger addressed the incongruity of any form of art which is “completely free expression,” that is, which is without reference to the objective order of things. He declares: “No sacred art can come from an isolated subjectivity.”[12]

Sacred art at the service of the sacred liturgy is, therefore, fundamentally an expression of faith. I call to mind visiting, for the first time, a cathedral constructed during the last decade, whose architect was, in fact a non-believer. Concelebrating the Holy Mass within the cathedral, I was struck by the peculiarity of a number of the furnishings in the sanctuary. The ambo seemed especially peculiar to me. When I asked an Auxiliary Bishop from the diocese in question about the furnishings, he responded that I needed to understand that the principle of the architecture of the cathedral was asymmetry. He assured me that my reaction was justified because everything in the building is meant ultimately, in accord with the principle of asymmetry, “to throw me off.” I could only comment that it seemed strange to me to construct a temple to the God of order and harmony by employing an architecture of asymmetry.

In truth, it seems fundamentally unjust to ask an architect or artist, who does not enjoy the gift of faith, to design a Catholic church or any of its furnishings. At best, he can mechanically imitate the work of another who has the faith; at worst, his art will express something other than faith and, even, perhaps contrary to the faith. The then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:

Without faith there is no art commensurate with the liturgy. Sacred art stands beneath the imperative stated in the second epistle to the Corinthians. Gazing at the Lord, we are “changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (3:18).[13]

He then urges that the Church, recognizing that sacred art is a gift which is received and not manufactured by the artist, foster “a faith that sees.”[14]

The beauty of the liturgy is manifested concretely through material objects and bodily gestures, which man – a unity of soul and body – needs to elevate himself toward the realities of faith that transcend the visible world. This means that sacred architecture and sacred art, including sacred furnishing, vestments, vessels and linens, must be of such quality that they can express and communicate the beauty and majesty of the liturgy as the action of Christ in our midst, uniting heaven to earth. The Venerable, soon to be Blessed, Pope John Paul II, in his last Encyclical Letter, Ecclesia de Eucharistia of 2003, recalled the biblical foundation of the Church’s concern for the beauty of her divine worship, namely, the account of the anointing of Jesus at Bethany:

A woman, whom John identifies as Mary the sister of Lazarus, pours a flask of costly ointment over Jesus’ head, which provokes from the disciples – and from Judas in particular (cf. Mt 26:8; Mk 14:4; Jn 12:4) – an indignant response, as if this act, in light of the needs of the poor, represented an intolerable “waste.” But Jesus’ own reaction is completely different. While in no way detracting from the duty of charity towards the needy, for whom the disciples must always show special care – “the poor you will always have with you” (Mt 26:11; Mk 14:7; cf. Jn 12:8) – he looks towards his imminent death and burial, and sees this act of anointing as an anticipation of the honour which his body will continue to merit even after his death, indissolubly bound as it is to the mystery of his person.[15]

This story, above all, illustrates that care for the beauty of churches and for everything employed in the Sacred Liturgy is a connatural expression of love for God.

Even in a place in which the Church does not have great material resources, this should be a priority. In this regard, I refer to Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758), one of the great popes of the 18th century, who wrote these words in his Encylical Letter Annus Qui, dedicated to sacred music:

We do not intend, with these words, to insist on sumptuous or magnificent accoutrements for holy buildings, nor on rich or expensive furnishings. We are aware these are not everywhere possible. What we wish is decency and cleanliness. These can go hand in hand with poverty and can be adapted to it.[16]

The history of the Church is, in fact, rich with examples of great sacrifices made by persons of modest economic means, so that they could provide for the construction of truly beautiful churches, with sculptures in wood and marble, stained-glass windows, and vestments and linens of high quality.

“Faith that sees” is critical to the appreciation of the immense treasure of beauty, which previous generations have left us in their remarkable works of sacred art and architecture. The great cathedrals and churches all around the world are not just cultural monuments. They are, first and foremost, testimonies of the Catholic faith. The then Cardinal Ratzinger, in his masterwork, The Spirit of the Liturgy, observed:

The great cultural tradition of the faith is home to a presence of immense power. What in museums is only a monument from the past, an occasion for mere nostalgic admiration, is constantly made present in the liturgy in all its freshness.[17]

During his apostolic visit to France, Pope Benedict was inspired to a similar reflection during his Homily for Vespers on September 12, 2008, in the magnificent Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, which he described as “a living hymn of stone and light in praise of that act, unique in the annals of human history: the eternal Word of God entering our history in the fullness of time to redeem us by his self-offering in the sacrifice of the Cross.”[18] The Cathedral of Notre-Dame is truly an architectural hymn in praise of the mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation of the Son of God in the Blessed Virgin Mary. As Pope Benedict XVI recalled, it was in the same cathedral that the poet Paul Claudel (1868-1955) had a singular experience of the beauty of God, during the singing of the Magnificat of the Vespers of Christmas in 1886, which led to his conversion to the Catholic faith.[19] It must not escape us that the via pulchritudinis, the way of beauty, is a significant and irreplaceable way for the proclamation of God to a culture beset by secularism and materialism.

Sacred Music and the Beauty of the Sacred Liturgy

The then Cardinal Ratzinger places the discussion of sacred music in the Church in the context of the relationship between the Church and contemporary culture, on which we have already reflected in the consideration of philosophical principles. As I have noted in the discussion of the philosophical principles, the growing division between faith and culture, from the time of the Enlightenment, presents a particular challenge for sacred music. The then Cardinal Ratzinger notes that, notwithstanding the struggle with a growing secularism, especially “during the second half of the nineteenth century as well as at the beginning of the twentieth century,” “great things were accomplished that can be placed beside the main trend in culture at that time since they are of completely equal rank.”[20] Among those accomplishments, also reflective of the spirit of the time, was “the rediscovery and renewal of Gregorian chant and great polyphonic church music.”[21]

He notes that art itself is destroyed in a culture which has become completely secularized, for art is detached from beauty and its source in God. He observes the phenomenon of music dividing itself “into two worlds that hardly have anything to do with each other any more”: 1) “the music of the masses, which, with the label ‘pop’ or popular music, would like to portray itself as the music of the people;” and 2) “a rationally construed, artificial music with the highest technical requirements which is hardly capable of reaching out beyond a small, elite circle.”[22]

Noting that the Church must engage in a dialogue with the cultural situation, Pope Benedict XVI rightly observes that the dialogue must be true, that is, it must be two-way:

When people rightly call for a new dialogue between Church and culture today, they must not forget in the process that this dialogue must necessarily be bilateral. It cannot consist in the Church finally subjecting itself to modern culture, which has been caught up to a large extent in a process of self-doubt since it lost its religious base. Just as the Church must expose herself to the problems of our age in a radically new way, so too must culture be questioned anew about its groundlessness and its ground, and in the process be opened to a painful cure, that is, to a new reconciliation with religion since it can get is lifeblood only from there.[23]

It is evident that sacred music must play a central role in the questioning of the culture by faith, in the new evangelization of culture.

The then Cardinal Ratzinger, in fact, sees sacred music as a part of the great challenge of the Church today. He declares:

For this reason the issue of church music is really a very vital piece of a comprehnesive task for our age which requires more than mere dialogue; it requires a process of rediscovering ourselves.[24]

It, in no way, seems to be an exaggeration to believe that the service of sacred music in the worship of God, in accord with the principles set forth perennially in the Church’s teaching and discipline, indeed helps our culture to rediscover itself.

The Church, Mother and Teacher, witnesses, in our society, man’s profound hunger and thirst for God, his desire to know the ground of his being in the act of boundless and ceaseless love of God for him, the love which has reached its perfect and lasting expression in the Redemptive Incarnation of God the Son, Who is alive for us in His Mystical Body, the Church. The signs of the hunger and thirst are manifold and sometimes quite surprising. I think, for instance, of the great popularity of the compact disks of Gregorian Chant sung by the Benedictine monks of the Abbey at Silos in Spain. I recall reading how popular these CDs were among the motorcyclists of America. More than likely, these devotees of motorcycling knew little about the music to which they were listening, but it conveyed something to their souls which the rock or country music, to which they may have usually listened, did not and could not.

The Biblical Norm for Sacred Music

In addressing the important service of sacred music in worship, Pope Benedict XVI directs us to find the authoritative norm in the Sacred Scriptures, in particular, in the Book of Psalms. He observes:

A first approach to the topic [of music in worship] presents itself if we recall that the Bible contains its own hymnal: the Psalter, which was not only born from the practice of singing and playing musical instruments during worship but also contains by itself – in the practice, the live performance – essential elements of a theory of music in faith and for faith.[25]

Because of the unique function of the Psalter as a bridge between the Law and the Prophets, as well as a bridge between the Old and the New Testaments, the Psalms provide an authoritative key to an understanding of sacred music in our time. In fact, it is not by accident that the Psalms remain central to Christian worship, for Christ brings to the fullness of expression these divinely-inspired songs of King David.

The Holy Father selects a verse of Psalm 47, which Saint Jerome translated, “psallite sapienter,”as the starting point for understanding the profound teaching on sacred music, which is inherent to the Psalms as a living music offered for the worship of God and the sanctification of the singers. After a thorough study of the verse and of the meaning of “psallite,” in general, he is able to draw the following conclusions.

First, the imperative to “make a psalm wisely,” which is found throughout the Sacred Scriptures, “is the concrete version of the call to worship and glorify God which is revealed in the Bible as the most profound vocation of human beings.[26] “Making a psalm refers, first of all, to singing, but also to the use of instruments : in which, as it were, creation is made to sound.”[27] It is, in the words of the then Cardinal Ratzinger, “necessary for responding to God, who touches us precisely in the totality of our being.”[28]

Secondly, “[t]he musical imperative of the Bible is therefore not entirely unspecified but refers to a form that biblical faith gradually created for itself as the appropriate mode of its expression.”[29] Here, one sees clearly the contribution which the development of sacred music, in every time, is called to make to the culture in which the Church finds itself. Since the Redemptive Incarnation, sacred music serves the worship of God, worship through, with and in God the Son Incarnate. Regarding his second conclusion, the then Cardinal Ratzinger notes the definitive transformation of the Biblical imperative, which makes it ever new in the Church:

But the truly new, which had hitherto been merely awaited, happened only now, in the mystery of Jesus Christ. The “new song” praises his death and resurrection and hence proclaims God’s new deed to the whole world: that he himself has descended into the anguish of the human state and into the pit of death; that he embraces all of us on the cross with his stretched-out arms and, as the Risen One, takes us up to the Father across the abyss of the infinite divide separating creator and creature, which only crucified love can cross. Thus, the old song has become new and must be sung as such over and over again.[30]

It is Christ Himself, by the mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation, Who makes possible the encounter of His Mystical Body with culture in such a way that a song ever new is sung to the Father in the Church.

Thirdly, the qualifier, “sapienter,” that is wisely or with reason, means that sacred music expresses the Word spoken by God, both in creation and through the living Tradition of the Church. The form of sacred music, in other words, must be coherent with the Word of God. The then Cardinal Ratzinger observes:

There is an art form corresponding to God, who, from the beginning and in each life, is the creative Word which also gives meaning. This art form stands under the primacy of logos; that is, it integrates the diversity of the human being from the perspective of this being’s highest moral and spiritual powers, but in this way it also leads the spirit out of rationalistic and voluntaristic confinement into the symphony of creation.[31]

Put simply, sacred music must be coherent with the Word of God handed on to us in the Church.

The word, “sapienter,” is also understood to mean “with art,” in other words, sacred music demands the exercise of man’s “highest abilities,” so that his art, “according to the extent of [his] ability,” corresponds with “the complete dignity of the beautiful, the height of true ‘art’.”[32] The biblical analogue of sacred music is found in the teaching on “the construction of the sacred tabernacle” in the Book of Exodus. [33] Three elements are identified in the instruction.

First of all, “[a]rtistic creation reproduces what God has shown as model,” or, in other words, it is not the invention of man. In the words of the then Cardinal Ratzinger, “artistic creativeness in the book of Exodus is seeing together with God, participating in his creativity; it is exposing the beauty that is already waiting and concealed in creation.”[34]

Secondly, “artists are described as people to whom the Lord has given understanding and skill so that they can carry out what God has instructed them to do.”[35] The work of the artist is, therefore, a supreme act of obedience, conforming his gifts to the instruction given to him by God.

Finally, the Book of Exodus tells us that every sacred artist’s “heart was stirred.”[36] In other words, the Spirit of God is at work in the mind, heart and hand of the artist to give glory to God and to edify His sons and daughters.

The then Cardinal Ratzinger concludes his analysis with these words:

For church music this means that everything the Old Testament has to say about art – its necessity, its essence, and its dignity – is concealed in the bene cantare of the psalms.[37]

Sacred music, that is, music written for the sacred work of giving worship to God and sanctifying the faithful, by definition, must be a work which begins in obedience to God’s Word and is brought to conclusion with the help of His grace.

Conclusions for Sacred Music Today

The then Cardinal Ratzinger draws, from his study of the relationship of the Church to culture in what pertains to sacred music, three practical conclusions for today. First of all, sacred music must avoid any form of aestheticism, that is, a notion of music which excludes service of the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Cardinal Ratzinger declares regarding aestheticism:

The philosophy at work here belies the creaturely determination of the human being; it would like to elevate the human person to the level of a pure creator. But in this way it leads the human person into untruth, into contradiction with his or her own nature; untruth, however, always drifts into the disintegration of what is creative.[38]

According to the Christian understanding, however, “it belongs to the essence of human beings that they come from God’s ‘art,’ that they themselves are a part of God’s art and as perceivers can think and view God’s creative ideas with him and translate them into the visible and the audible.”[39]

The norms of sacred art and architecture, set forth in the Book of Exodus, therefore, always apply to any art at the service of the worship of God and the sanctification of the faithful. Music, for example, which does not serve the articulation of the texts of the sacred liturgy cannot be truly sacred music. Music which may have a certain integrity and beauty but which distracts from the inherently sacred action of the liturgy, drawing attention to itself alone or directing itself to human sentiments and emotions which distract from the worship of God cannot be sacred music.

Secondly, “pastoral pragmatism, which is only looking for success, is also incompatible with the mission of Church music.”[40] The then Cardinal Ratzinger specifically mentions rock music which has been introduced into the sacred liturgy through a certain pragmatic approach, noting that its “radical anthropological opposition to both faith’s image of human beings and its cultural intent has been amply and competently elucidated by others.”[41] The then Cardinal Ratzinger concludes:

Is it a pastoral success when we are capable of following the trend of mass culture and thus share in the blame for its making people immature or irresponsible? The medium of communication and the communicated message must stand in a meaningful relationship with each other…. Trivializing faith is not a new inculturation, but the denial of its culture and prostitution with the nonculture. [42]

The then Cardinal Ratzinger distinguishes ‘pop’ music from folk music which is able to provide a service to the Sacred Liturgy, if it is purified and elevated, in accord with the essential qualities of sacred music, as set forth by Pope Saint Pius X, in accord with the constant tradition of the Church, that is, the qualities of holiness, beauty and universality.[43]

Finally, the Church must embrace the challenge presented by contemporary culture with confidence and with a steadfast adherence to the faith and what it demands of us. The then Cardinal Ratzinger observed that, first of all, the conversation between the Church and the culture in the matter of sacred music will certainly be challenging, even as the dialogue with culture, in general, presents, in our time, many and difficult challenges. He reminds us, however, that we are not in the situation of the early Church which found it necessary to reduce “church music to the Psalms,” because in the intervening centuries “an infinitely larger trove of music that is really appropriate has become available.”[44] The fact of the trove of Gregorian Chant, Sacred Polyphony and worthy hymnody should give us courage in striving for the most worthy music possible in the service of the worship of God and the sanctification of the faithful.

The then Cardinal Ratzinger reminds us that the courage to address the challenge of sacred music in our time must, however, be accompanied by an asceticism, by what he called “the courage to contradict.”[45] As he clearly observes, such steadfast asceticism is the condition of the possibility of a true creativity in authoring sacred music in our time. It is the asceticism, I suggest which keeps ever before our eyes the essential qualities of sacred music, that is, holiness, beauty and universality. The then Cardinal Ratzinger encouraged us with these words:

We are sure, however, that the creative potency of faith will suffice right up to the end of time: until all of the dimensions of the human state have been traversed.[46]

Conclusion

I hope that this modest study of beauty in the sacred liturgy and specifically in sacred music, according to the teaching of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has made clear the connaturality of beauty with the sacred liturgy. Following the example of the first disciples who were attentive to the worthy celebration of the sacred liturgy, as Saint Paul, for example, gives witness in the First Letter to the Corinthians,[47] and also our ancestors in the faith, throughout the Christian centuries, who were dedicated to provide for the most worthy and most beautiful celebration of the sacred liturgy, also at the cost of great sacrifices, we must dedicate ourselves tirelessly to the reform of the reform of the sacred liturgy, in order that it may be always more perfectly the worship of God and procure always more surely the sanctification of the faithful. The constant effort to sing “with wisdom,” for example, is at the heart of the worship of God and leads to always greater holiness of life.

As the then Cardinal Ratzinger teaches us, we must take up the way of the reform of the reform with steadfastness and confident joy. If we keep before our eyes the true nature of the sacred liturgy, as worship of God and sanctification of the faithful, and the essential qualities of the art which is at the service of the sacred liturgy, that is, holiness, beauty and universality, we will continue giving faithful and efficacious witness to the Mystery of Faith, to the mystery of the living presence of the Son of God Incarnate in our midst. The way will remain always demanding as it has been throughout the entire history of the Church, especially in times of iconoclasm.

The education of children, young people and adults in the true nature of the sacred liturgy and the irreplaceable service of sacred art and specifically of sacred music in the celebration of the sacred liturgy is essential. Regarding sacred music, it is essential to cultivate the great patrimony of Gregorian Chant, of Sacred Polyphony and of worthy hymnody. The teaching of sacred music should be accompanied by the experience of its most outstanding manifestations.

In a special way, the formation of priests should include an education in the arts which are always at the service of the sacred liturgy. Seminarians, for example, ought to be introduced to sacred music which is truly at the service of the sacred liturgy. As priests they will be critically involved with sacred music both through the involvement of their own voices and through the direction which they give to ecclesial musicians. Seminarians, when they are introduced to the rich patrimony of liturgical music, will, as priests, be duly attentive to the service of sacred music in the worthy celebration of the Mystery of Faith.

Finally, I cannot conclude without noting the solemn responsibility of Bishops, as true shepherds of the flock, in communion with the Roman Pontiff, to give institutional support to the sacred arts in service of the sacred liturgy. Bishops ought to be certain that, in their jurisdiction, the norms of the Church which pertain to the sacred liturgy and the sacred arts are being followed with integrity. Moreover, it is essential that they promote the knowledge of such norms, also through institutions of education, and the respect for those who are dedicated to the service of the sacred liturgy, according to the same norms.

I close with words of Pope Benedict XVI, at the conclusion of a concert offered during his visit to the Pontifical Institute for Sacred Music at Rome, on October 13, 2007. They are words regarding sacred music, which underline for us the beauty which is connatural with the sacred liturgy:

How rich is the biblical and patristic tradition in underlining the efficaciousness of chant and of sacred music for moving hearts and elevating them to enter into, so to speak, the very intimacy of the life of God! Well aware of this, John Paul II observed that, today as always, three characteristics distinguish sacred liutrigcal music: “holiness,” “true art,” “universality,” the possibility that is of being proposed to any people or type of assembly (cf. Chirograph “Mosso dal vivo desiderio” of November 22, 2003). Exactly in view of this, ecclesiastical authority must engage itself in directing wisely the development of such a demanding genre of music, not “freezing” its treasure, but searching to insert into the heritage of the past the valid new offerings of the present, in order to achieve a synthesis worthy of the high mission reserved for it in the divine service.[48]

Thank you!

Raymond Leo Cardinale Burke
Archbishop Emeritus of Saint Louis
Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura

Epistle: 2 Cor 6:1-10
Gradual: Ps 90:11-12
Gospel: Mt 4:1-11

HOMILY

Praised be Jesus Christ, now and for ever. Amen.

At the beginning of the Lenten Season, the Church proclaims to us the inspired words of Saint Paul: “Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold now is the day of salvation.”[1] Saint Paul exhorts us not to render vain the gift of God’s grace given to us through the Sacrament of Baptism, strengthened and increased in us through the Sacrament of Confirmation, nourished by the heavenly food of Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity through the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist, and restored in us through the Sacrament of Penance. His exhortation applies to every moment of our lives but, in a special way, to the Season of Lent, during which Our Lord provides us with strong grace for the faithful and generous living of our life in Christ.

Pope Saint Leo the Great, in his Fourth Sermon for the Season of Lent, reminds us of the great importance of our annual time of prayer and penance in preparation for the celebration of the holiest days of the year, the days on which God the Son Incarnate, Our Lord Jesus Christ, accomplished our eternal salvation. Let us listen to the words of his sermon:

It is true that our devotion and reverence towards so great a mystery should be kept up during the whole year, and we ourselves should be at all times, in the eyes of God, the same as we are bound to be at the Easter solemnity. But this is an effort which only few among us have the courage to sustain. The weakness of the flesh induces us to relax our austerities; the various occupations of every-day life take up our thoughts; and thus even the virtuous find their hearts clogged by this world’s dust. Hence it is that our Lord has most providentially given us these forty days, whose holy exercises should be to us a remedy, whereby to regain our purity of soul.[2]

The days of our Lenten retreat with Our Lord are directed to the identification of the ways in which we have, even in the littlest things, compromised our life in Christ; to the penance for the remission of our sins, and to the setting forth anew on the way of Christ with minds and hearts purified and strengthened.

Lest we doubt, in any way, the strong grace of the Lenten Season for the conversion of our lives to Christ, the Church proclaims to us, today, the account of the temptations of Our Lord, as He went into the desert for forty days to prepare Himself for His public ministry. In view of the great work of our eternal salvation, which He was directly undertaking by His public ministry and which would reach its fulfillment in His Passion, Death and Resurrection, His penance is most severe, forty days and forty nights of fasting and prayer in the desert. At the same time, in order that His faithful and enduring love of us might know no boundary whatsoever, at the end of the forty days and forty nights, he permitted Satan to tempt Him in the same way that He tempts us daily. By so doing, He shows us the power of His abiding presence in our midst, in the Church, to overcome sin in our lives and to win in us the victory of eternal life.

Abbot Prosper Guéranger, commenting on today’s Gospel, reminds us that the victory of Our Lord over the temptations of Satan are the source of our hope that the sins of our past need not be the pattern of our future. Making reference to the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews,[3] regarding Christ’s high priesthood, he writes:

When the apostle speaks of the wonderful mercy shown us by our divine Saviour, who vouchsafed to make Himself like to us in all things save sin, he justly lays stress on His temptations. He, who is very God, humbled Himself even so low as this, to prove how tenderly He compassionated us. Here, then we have the Saint of saints allowing the wicked spirit to approach Him, in order that we might learn, from His example, how we are to gain victory under temptation.[4]

As we follow the example of Christ’s penance in the desert, Christ Himself accompanies us during the forty days of our Lenten observance, pouring forth from His glorious pierced side, in abundance, the grace of conversion of life.

In his Message for Lent, Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that the gift of God’s grace, given to us in Baptism, “must always be rekindled in each one of us, and Lent offers us a path like that of the catechumenate, which, for the Christians of the early Church, just as for catechumens today, is an irreplaceable school of faith and Christian life.”[5] Through our Lenten observance, with the help of Our Lord, we discover anew the great gift of His life within us and seek, through our fasting, almsgiving and prayer, to safeguard and foster our life in Him. Regarding the First Sunday of Lent, and especially the Gospel of the temptations of Our Lord in the desert, our Holy Father teaches us:

The First Sunday of the Lenten journey reveals our condition as human beings here on earth. The victorious battle against temptation, the starting point of Jesus’ mission, is an invitation to become aware of our own fragility, in order to accept the Grace that frees from sin and infuses new strength in Christ – the way, the truth and the life (cf. Ordo Initiationis Christianae Adultorum, n. 25). It is a powerful reminder that Christian faith implies, following the example of Jesus and in union with him, a battle “against the ruling forces who are masters of the darkness in the world” (Eph 6:12), in which the devil is at work and never tires – even today – of tempting whoever wishes to draw close to the Lord: Christ emerges victorious to open also our hearts to hope and guide us in overcoming the seductions of evil.[6]

The temptations with which Satan tried to beguile and ensnare Our Lord and with which he tries to make us his slaves are three, even as described in the First Epistle of Saint John:[7] “the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life.”[8]As Abbot Guéranger reminds us: “Every one of our sins comes from one of these three sources; every one of our temptations aims at making us accept the concupiscence of the flesh, or the concupiscence of the eyes, or the pride of life.”[9] For that reason, Our Lord subjected Himself to these very temptations, in order to show us and win for us the victory over sin in our lives.

Concupiscence of the flesh is “the love of sensual things, which covets whatever is agreeable to the flesh, and, when it is not curbed, draws the soul into unlawful pleasures.”[10] By our Lenten fast, we restrain the satisfaction of our earthly desires, learning, in the words of our Holy Father, “to look away from our ‘ego’, to discover Someone [Our Lord Jesus Christ] close to us and to recognize God in the face of so many brothers and sisters.”[11] Fasting disposes us to express our love of God in pure and selfless love of our neighbor.

Concupiscence of the eyes “expresses the love of the goods of the world, such as riches, and possessions; these dazzle the eye, and then seduce the heart.”[12] Our Lenten practice of almsgiving trains our heart to see the goods of this world as gifts given by God into our hands as His stewards for His glory and for the care of our brothers and sisters. In the words of our Holy Father, “[t]he practice of almsgiving is a reminder of God’s primacy and turns our attention towards others, so that we may rediscover how good our Father is, and receive his mercy.”[13]

“Pride of life is that confidence in ourselves, which leads us to be vain and presumptuous, and makes us forget that all we have, our life and every good gift, we have from God.”[14] Our Lenten prayer disposes us to the poverty of spirit by which we understand our total dependence upon God and, at the same time, are filled with confidence in His tender, all-generous, and never-failing love of us. In the words of our Holy Father, “when we pray, we find time for God, to understand that his ‘words will not pass away’ (cf. Mk 13:31), to enter into that intimate communion with Him ‘that no one shall take from you’ (Jn 16:22), opening us to the hope that does not disappoint, eternal life.”[15]

Let us pray, especially through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, under her title of Mother of Good Counsel, that our Lenten fasting, almsgiving and prayer, will draw us ever close to Our Lord Jesus Christ, alive in us from the moment of our baptism, accompanying us, with the abundant outpouring of the Holy Spirit from His glorious pierced Heart, on every step of the way of our earthly pilgrimage home to God the Father. Let us pray that our Lenten observance may be the pattern of every day of our lives, so that we may show ourselves always to be true sons and daughters of God our Father, alive in His only-begotten Son, devoted in love of Him and of all our brothers and sisters, especially of those who are in most need. So may we be ready to celebrate with deepest joy the Paschal Mystery, the dying of Christ on the Cross and His Resurrection to eternal life, so that He, seated forever at the right hand of the Father, might pour out unceasingly His life for us from His glorious pierced Heart.

Heart of Jesus, our life and resurrection, have mercy on us!
Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Good Counsel, pray for us!
Saint Joseph, Husband of Mary and Guardian of the Redeemer, pray for us!
Saint Benedict of Nursia, pray for us!

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke
Archbishop Emeritus of Saint Louis
Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura

Epistle: Is 58:9-14
Gradual: Ps 26:4
Gospel: Mk 6:27-56

HOMILY

Praised be Jesus Christ, now and for ever. Amen.

It is a source of deepest joy for me to celebrate the Holy Mass for so many members of the faithful in this important and historic church of the Archdiocese of Sydney. I am deeply grateful to His Eminence Cardinal George Pell for his warm welcome to the Archdiocese and to all who have worked so diligently in making the arrangements for today’s Solemn Pontifical Liturgy. I thank also Father John Pearce, Parish Priest, and all of the Passionist Fathers. I cannot fail to recall that it was during this month in 1888 that Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran came to the parish to celebrate solemnly the arrival of the Passionists in Marrickville.

It is providential that today’s celebration falls on the day when we keep the memory of Pope Saint Gregory the Great whose heroic pastoral charity toward the universal Church found its highest expression in his discipline of the Sacred Liturgy. As His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI reminded us, on the occasion of the promulgation of his Apostolic Letter, given motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum, his own discipline and reform of the Sacred Liturgy follows in an unbroken line the reforms of Pope Saint Gregory the Great.[1] I cannot fail to mention also the timeless treasure of sacred music for our worship of God and our growth in holiness of life, which Pope Saint Gregory so much fostered. Recalling the memory of Pope Saint Gregory, let us also ask his intercession that the reform of the Sacred Liturgy, which Pope Benedict XVI has undertaken, will be faithfully received and implemented in the universal Church, so that the action of the Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Sacraments, above all, in the Holy Eucharist, may be ever more manifest for the glory of God and the salvation of many souls.

We celebrate, today, the Holy Mass for the Saturday after Ash Wednesday. Having just entered into the Season of Lent, strong in grace for the renewal of our Catholic faith and its practice in our daily living, we recognize the great challenge which is ours, so that our forty days in the desert with Our Lord will indeed produce in us the greater holiness of life, which is for our own salvation and the salvation of the world. Because the challenge is so great, we must be alert to the temptation to discouragement, one of Satan’s most powerful tools against our growth in holiness. Holy Mother Church, through the Holy Scriptures to which we have just listened, helps us to overcome the tendency to discouragement at the very beginning of Lent and to cooperate with the strong graces of the season, so that Christ may produce the abundant fruits of His grace in our lives.

In the account from the Gospel according to Mark, the Apostles are struggling against strong winds to row the ship and bring it to port. The work is most arduous, and they are discouraged and weary. When, in the midst of their struggle, Our Lord appears to them, they are, in fact, afraid and cry out. Our Lord immediately speaks to them and calms the winds. He reassuringly tells them: “Have a good heart, it is I, fear ye not.”[2]

As we begin our Lenten observance, we are conscious of how much we need to struggle in bringing greater order and, therefore, greater love, into our relationships with God, with our world, and with one another. The work of our Lenten conversion will be arduous, but we must not be discouraged or afraid, for Our Lord is with us, accompanying us and providing to us strong graces for such conversion of mind and heart. Through our Lenten fasting, almsgiving and prayer, He calms the waters of our lives and helps us to pilot our souls safely and securely to the port which is the heavenly Church, our true and eternal home.

Abbot Prosper Guéranger, in his commentary for today’s celebration of the Sacred Liturgy, draws our attention to the connection between Our Lord’s appearance to the Apostles, urging them to be of good courage and calming the sea, and the bringing of the sick to him for healing, once the ship had reached port. If, in the struggle of our Lenten observance, we become discouraged, the saintly Abbot urges us:

Let us not fear; it is He; He prays with us, fasts with us, and does all our works of mercy with us. Was it not He that first began these forty days of expiation? Let us keep our eyes fixed on Him, and be of good heart. If we grow tired, let us go to Him, as did the poor sick ones of whom our Gospel speaks. The very touch of His garments sufficed to restore health to such as had lost it; let us go to Him, in His adorable Sacrament; and the divine life, whose germ is already within us, will develop itself, and the energy, which was beginning to droop in our hearts, will regain all its vigour.[3]

Let us resolve, at the beginning of Lent, to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus[4] and, above all, to go to Him in the Most Blessed Sacrament, throughout the days of Lent, so that our observance does not grow weak because of the difficulties we face but rather remains strong for the conversion of our lives and the transformation of our world.

In his Message for Lent, Pope Benedict XVI has called us to reflect, in particular, on the life of Christ within us, since the time of our baptism, a moment in our personal history which is the unfailing and dynamic source of energy for the entirety of our earthly pilgrimage home to God the Father. He reminds us:

Hence, Baptism is not a rite from the past, but the encounter with Christ, which informs the entire existence of the baptized, imparting divine life and calling for sincere conversion; initiated and supported by Grace, it permits the baptized to reach the adult stature of Christ.[5]

Our Holy Father invites us to consider anew how our hearts, through Baptism, have been made one with the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus from which there never ceases to flow in abundance the living waters of the Holy Spirit. The grace of Baptism, strengthened and increased in Confirmation, is the dwelling of the Holy Spirit within us, so that, we, in turn, may be “rivers of living water”[6] for our brothers and sisters, especially those in most need.

We must, therefore, never give way to discouragement in following Our Lord on the way of fasting, almsgiving and prayer, but rather recognize His dwelling with us, above all, in the Holy Mass we now celebrate, and in the Sacrament of Penance, by which He receives the confession of our sins and forgives them. We, therefore, must be courageous, be “of good heart.” Through the Holy Mass, Christ makes present for us anew the outpouring of His life for our eternal salvation; He nourishes the life of the Holy Spirit within us by feeding us with the incomparable food which is His true Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. Through the Sacrament of Penance, Christ restores the life of the Holy Spirit within us, when it has been diminished, in any way, by our sins.

In the reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, God the Father instructs us in the fundamental disposition of soul, which both enables us to recognize His presence in our midst, most especially through the great mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation, and to live more fully in His company. God the Father Who is ceaseless and immeasurable in His love of us instructs us in the humility by which we discipline our will, our thoughts and affections, according to His will. If we undertake the Lenten penance, one in heart with the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the joy and peace of Christ will fill our hearts and His light will shine forth in the world, especially in the lives of our brothers and sisters in most need. Saint Brigid of Ireland, whose memory we honor in this historic church, is a model of the union of the Christian heart with the Heart of Jesus, which brings Christ’s light to others, especially to those who are suffering.

Abbot Guéranger expresses, in a wonderful way, the reassurance and encouragement offered to us by Our Lord through the Prophet Isaiah. He writes:

If we abound in good works during this holy season, in which we have taken leave of the distracting vanities of the world, the light of grace shall rise up even in the darkness which now clouds our soul. This soul which has been so long obscured by sin and by the love of the world and self, shall become bright as the noon-day; the glory of Jesus’ Resurrection shall be ours too; and, if we are faithful to grace, the Easter of time will lead us to the Easter of eternity.[7]

The saintly Abbot continues, exhorting us to humble confidence in taking up the challenging work of our Lenten observance:

Let, us, therefore, build up the places that have been so long desolate; let us raise up the foundations, repair the fences, turn away our feet from the violation of holy observances; do not our own ways and our own will in opposition to those of our divine Master; and then He will give us everlasting rest, and fill our soul with His own brightness.[8]

Because Christ accompanies us on our Lenten pilgrimage and, indeed, our entire life pilgrimage, we are, at one and the same time, humble and confident before the mystery of His love.

Let us pray, at the beginning of Lent, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, under her title of Mother of Divine Grace, that our Lenten pilgrimage will deepen our knowledge and love of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of His living presence with us in the Church, especially in the Sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and Penance. Let us pray that, deepened in knowledge and love of our Lord, we may “be of good heart,” responding each day, with new engagement and new energy, to the strong graces of the Lenten season for the conversion of our lives and the salvation of the world.

Let us now lift up our hearts, so often doubtful and fearful and sinful, to the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus, always open to receive us and to purify and strengthen us with the gift of His immeasurable and unceasing love. In the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus we find the unfailing truth and love to dispel doubt and fear, and to overcome sin in our lives. One in heart with the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the immeasurable “rivers of living water,” which never cease to flow from His Eucharistic Heart, will flow from our hearts for the sake of our brothers and sisters, especially those in most need.

Heart of Jesus, salvation of those who trust in You, have mercy on us!
Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Divine Grace, pray for us!
Saint Joseph, Husband of Mary and Guardian of the Redeemer, pray for us!
Saint Brigid of Ireland, pray for us.

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke
Archbishop Emeritus of Saint Louis
Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura