“The life of slumbering Christians is a sad life; it is not
a happy life. Christians must be happy with the joy of Jesus. Let us not fall
asleep!” — Pope Francis,
General Audience, April 24, 2013.
I.
To read Pope Francis, we must not be too literal. When he
talked, in a recent General Audience, of “slumbering Christians,” he was not
waging a war against “slumber parties.”
When he told us “not to fall asleep,”
he was not saying that we should never have a good night’s rest. And certainly
when he told us that we “must be happy,” he did not deny either the acquiring
of Aristotle’s virtues or the fact that we must take up our crosses and follow
Christ.
The analogy of the “slumbering Christian” refers to the Christian who
does not make active in his own life what the Church teaches about Christ’s
words and deeds. It is that vice the Greeks called acedia whereby we cannot arouse in ourselves the energy to
ask what it is all about.
Sometimes, I know, it is difficult to figure out just how to
read Pope Francis. For instance, our most frequent contact with him at a
distance is through his daily homilies in the Chapel of the Domus Sanctae
Marthae or other near-by Roman churches.
The English edition of L’Osservatore
Romano usually only gives us short
summaries of what the Holy Father said. I take this to mean that he does not
necessarily have a printed text ready to distribute ahead of time. That is not
his way.
The headline of the pope’s homily on April 25 was:
“Magnanimity and Humility.”
The column begins with this sentence: “Magnanimity
and Humility characterize the lifestyle of Christians who truly want to be
witnesses to the Gospel in farthest reaches of the earth.”
The homily itself,
however, was mostly about going forth to evangelize the nations. Jesus, at the
Ascension, did not tell the Apostles to stay in the local neighborhood as He
did while He was still among the Apostles. The Apostles, and the Church, do not
go by themselves but they are “with Jesus.” The Gospel is mainly preached with
“witness,” not “words.” Here is
where Pope Francis added that the apostles are to be missionaries in
“magnanimity and humility.”
On reading such words, one is left with some perplexity. A
whole literature is devoted to the issue of the relation of the Greek virtue of
magnanimity (Bk. 4, Aristotle, Ethics)
to the Christian understanding of humility.
Harry Jaffa’s well-known book, Thomism and Aristotelianism, is devoted to this very topic. Mary Keys deals with
it in her study on Aristotle and Aquinas.
So one would hope that the pope might say something about
these topics that do not easily fit together without some explanation. The
magnanimous man is the man with all the great natural virtues. At first he
strikes us as a very proud man, hence the perceived Christian problem with him.
This was Jaffa’s impression. And yet, he was only being honest.
Humility was
not designed to justify not speaking or acknowledging the truth, even in one’s
own case. Benedict probably would not have passed over this issue as an
intellectual problem. Francis does not think it important for most people to
worry about the complexities of philosophy. He would not deny that someone
ought to worry about them. St. Thomas actually does.
II.
What I found of particular
interest was Francis’ General
Audience of April 24. Pope Francis seems habitually to use the rhetoric
device of dividing his talks into three parts. This may be an effort to relate
the three readings of a Sunday Mass, but he is capable of bringing in his own
texts from various sources to make his point.
In this audience, before 100,000 in St. Peter’s Square, the
first point, perhaps surprisingly, had to do with the Last Judgment, the second
with the foolish virgins, and the final point with the parables of the talents.
The pope does not hesitate to refer to the devil or the Last Judgment. He
begins by telling us that the human race stands between creation and the Last
Judgment. Christ wants to draw all people to Himself. At the “end of history”
(itself a phrase of much philosophic interest), the whole of reality is to be
“consigned” to the Father.
But there is a time between the Ascension, when Christ
brought our humanity that He had assumed to the Father, and the Final Judgment.
That is the now in which we live. What is this now, this time for? It is, as it
were, “for” the final judgment. That is, it is the time which we have freely to
decide what we shall be, or better whether we choose to accept God’s gifts to
us or not. The primary gift we are offered is to participate in the inner life
of the Trinity.
But that choice is made within time and during the ordinary
life what we are given.
At this point, Francis brought up the story of the ten
virgins, the five wise and the five foolish ones. Most people, I think, feel
that the Bridegroom is a bit too harsh with the five foolish virgins whose only
fault was to forget to bring along enough oil for their lamps.
But Francis sees
it rather as a case of a refusal to use the time given to make the proper
arrangements. In other words, to make oneself worthy of the invitation is
central to the parable.
Francis explains: “The Bridegroom is the Lord, and the
time of waiting for his arrival is the time he gives to us, to all of us,
before his Final Coming with mercy and patience…” We do not know the day or hour, so it is a time to live “in
accordance with God. We are asked to be prepared, not to be “slumbering” as if
it made no difference what we did.
The pope makes the same point again by recalling the parable
of the talents. How do we “use the gifts we have?”
We are not to be concerned
that others have more or other gifts than we do. This is the parable that I
have called elsewhere “The
Capitalist Parable” (The Catholic Thing,
September 7, 2010). We are to make our talents and money productive, not just
sit on them.
The pope puts it this way: “A Christian who withdraws into
himself, who hides everything that the Lord has given him is a Christian who
is…not a Christian! He is a Christian who does not thank God for everything God
has given to him!”
III.
Pope Francis next tells us that “the expectation of the
Lord’s return is a time of action-we are in the time of action—the time in
which we should bring God’s gifts to fruition, not for ourselves, but for him,
for the Church, for others.”
We should not turn to ourselves. Francis
challenges the young before him to set out on the noble purpose of service to
others.
Finally, Francis returns to the Last Judgment. Here the
Second Coming is described. The words are familiar to everyone: When did
we see
you hungry? There is a temptation to think that we can do all this by
ourselves, the temptation of the modern state.
“Of course, we must
always have clearly in mind that we are justified, we are saved by
grace, through an act of freely-given love by God who always goes before
us; on
our own we can do nothing.” Faith is a gift, yet we must freely respond
to it.
Francis tells us that the Last Judgment should not frighten us but
“impel us to
live the present life better.”
The pope’s own faith is lively and familiar. He speaks of
ultimate things in ways that are very intelligible to us. His last words are
these: “May the Lord, at the end of our life, and at the end of history, be
able to recognize us as good and faithful servants.”
The end of our lives and
the end of history are rarely so put together.
Both ends have the same purpose,
that we be present with God according to His eternal plan that began with
creation and ends with the Final Judgment. The end is not a cessation of all
things but a completion of all things in which each being is what it is, and
each free being is what in grace or in its rejection he has chosen to be, for
himself, or for other.
In other words, in Pope Francis’ mind, the “life of the
slumbering Christian” will never do.