Dilexi Te: A Multi-Part Fisk-Part Four

Go here to read part one of the fisk, go here to read part two and go here to read part three.

48. Many other Fathers of the Church, both Eastern and Western, have spoken about the primacy of attention to the poor in the life and mission of every Christian. From this perspective, in summary, it can be said that patristic theology was practical, aiming at a Church that was poor and for the poor, recalling that the Gospel is proclaimed correctly only when it impels us to touch the flesh of the least among us, and warning that doctrinal rigor without mercy is empty talk.

Caring for the poor yes.  A Church that was poor was not an aim of the Patristic Fathers.

Care of the sick

49. Christian compassion has manifested itself in a particular way in the care of the sick and suffering. Based on the signs present in Jesus’ public ministry — the healing of the blind, lepers and paralytics — the Church understands that caring for the sick, in whom she readily recognizes the crucified Lord, is an important part of her mission. During a plague in the city of Carthage, where he was Bishop, Saint Cyprian reminded Christians of the importance of caring for the sick: “This pestilence and plague, which seems so horrible and deadly, searches out the righteousness of each one, and examines the minds of the human race, to see whether the healthy serve the sick; whether relatives love each other with sincerity; whether masters have pity on their sick servants; whether doctors do not abandon the sick who beg for help.” [38] The Christian tradition of visiting the sick, washing their wounds, and comforting the afflicted is not simply a philanthropic endeavor, but an ecclesial action through which the members of the Church “touch the suffering flesh of Christ.” [39]

Caring for the sick has always been a concern of the Church.

50. In the sixteenth century, Saint John of God founded the Hospitaller Order that bears his name, creating model hospitals that welcomed everyone, regardless of social or economic status. His famous expression, “Do good, my brothers!” became a motto for active charity towards the sick. At the same time, Saint Camillus de Lellis founded the Order of Ministers of the Sick — the Camillians — taking on the mission of serving the sick with total dedication. His rule commands: “Each person should ask the Lord for a motherly affection for their neighbor so that we may serve them with all charity, both in soul and body, because we desire, with the grace of God, to serve all the sick with the affection that a loving mother has for her only sick child.” [40] In hospitals, on battlefields, in prisons, and on the streets, the Camillians have embodied the mercy of Christ the Physician.

Saint John of God has a fascinating biography which is well worth reading about by all Catholics.

51. Caring for the sick with maternal affection, as a mother cares for her child, many consecrated women have played an even greater role in providing healthcare to the poor. The Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, the Hospital Sisters, the Little Sisters of Divine Providence, and many other women’s congregations have become a maternal and discreet presence in hospitals, nursing homes and retirement homes. They have brought comfort, a listening ear, a presence, and above all, tenderness. They have built, often with their own hands, healthcare facilities in areas lacking medical assistance. They taught hygiene, assisted in childbirth and administered medicine with natural wisdom and deep faith. Their homes became oases of dignity where no one was excluded. The touch of compassion was the first medicine. Saint Louise de Marillac wrote to her sisters, the Daughters of Charity, reminding them that “they have been singularly blessed by God for the service of the sick poor of the hospitals.” [41]

All very true.  No praise is too high for the nursing sisters.

52. Today, this legacy continues in Catholic hospitals, healthcare facilities in remote areas, clinics operating in jungles, shelters for drug addicts and in field hospitals in war zones. The Christian presence among the sick reveals that salvation is not an abstract idea, but concrete action. In the act of healing a wound, the Church proclaims that the Kingdom of God begins among the most vulnerable. In doing so, she remains faithful to the One who said, “I was sick and you visited me” (Mt 25:36). When the Church kneels beside a leper, a malnourished child or an anonymous dying person, she fulfills her deepest vocation: to love the Lord where he is most disfigured.

It is a great pity that the “reforms” of Vatican II, at least in how they have been interpreted, have greatly reduced the number of sisters.  Too many Catholic hospitals today are Catholics in name only, and differ little from their secular counterparts.

Care of the poor in monastic life

53. Monastic life, which originated in the silence of the desert, was from the outset a witness to solidarity. Monks and nuns left everything — wealth, prestige, family — not only because they despised worldly goods — contemptus mundi — but also to encounter the poor Christ in this radical detachment. Saint Basil the Great, in his Rule, saw no contradiction between the monks’ life of prayer and contemplation and their work on behalf of the poor. For him, hospitality and care for the needy were an integral part of monastic spirituality, and monks, even after having left everything to embrace poverty, had to help the poorest with their work, because “in order to have enough to help the needy… it is clear that we must work diligently… This way of life is profitable not only for subduing the body, but also for charity towards our neighbor, so that through us God may provide enough for our weaker brothers and sisters.” [42]

The relief of the poor, in many ages and places, was almost solely undertaken by monks and nuns.  Once again it is a great pity that in the aftermath of Vatican II, their ranks have been decimated.

54. In Caesarea, where he was Bishop, he built a place known as Basiliad, which included lodgings, hospitals and schools for the poor and sick. The monk, therefore, was not only an ascetic, but also a servant. Basil thus demonstrated that to be close to God, one must be close to the poor. Concrete love was the criterion of holiness. Praying and caring, contemplating and healing, writing and welcoming: everything was an expression of the same love for Christ.

Caring for the poor is praise worthy if undertaken with the right spirit and using methods that are not counterproductive.  However, there are many ways to serve God.

55. In the West, Saint Benedict of Norcia formulated a Rule that would become the backbone of European monastic spirituality. Welcoming the poor and pilgrims occupies a prominent place in the document: “The poor and pilgrims are to be received with all care and hospitality, for it is in them that Christ is received.” [43] These were not just words: for centuries Benedictine monasteries were places of refuge for widows, abandoned children, pilgrims and beggars. For Benedict, community life was a school of charity. Manual labor not only had a practical function, but also formed the heart for service. Sharing among the monks, caring for the sick and listening to the most vulnerable prepared them to welcome Christ who comes in the person of the poor and the stranger. Today, Benedictine monastic hospitality remains a sign of a Church that opens its doors, welcomes without asking and heals without demanding anything in return.

The Benedictines have done very good work down through the centuries.  Alas their numbers have dwindled since Vatican II.  There are around 13,000 Benedictine monks, nuns and sisters now.

56. Over time, Benedictine monasteries became places for overcoming the culture of exclusion. Monks and nuns cultivated the land, produced food, prepared medicines and offered them, with simplicity, to those most in need. Their silent work was the leaven of a new civilization, where the poor were not a problem to be solved, but brothers and sisters to be welcomed. The rule of sharing, working together and helping the vulnerable established an economy of solidarity, in contrast to the logic of accumulation. The monks’ witness showed that voluntary poverty, far from being misery, is a path of freedom and communion. They did not limit themselves to helping the poor: they became their neighbors, brothers and sisters in the same Lord. In the cells and cloisters, they created a mysticism of God’s presence in the little ones.

“Culture of exclusion”.  I hope that bit of contemporary cant comes from Francis rather than Leo.  I tend to be a fan of the Benedictines, but this gives a rather romanticized view, the Benedictine monasteries and convents often reflecting the vices and virtues of their time and place.  History is as complicated as the lives of the men and women who make it.

57. In addition to providing material assistance, monasteries played a fundamental role in the cultural and spiritual formation of the humblest. In times of plague, war and famine, they were places where the needy found bread and medicine, but also dignity and a voice. It was there that orphans were educated, apprentices received training and ordinary people were taught agricultural techniques and how to read. Knowledge was shared as a gift and a responsibility. The abbot was both teacher and father, and the monastic school was a place of freedom through truth. Indeed, as John Cassian writes, the monk must be characterized by “humility of heart… which leads not to knowledge that puffs up, but to knowledge that enlightens through the fullness of charity.” [44] By forming consciences and transmitting wisdom, monks contributed to a Christian pedagogy of inclusion. Culture, marked by faith, was shared with simplicity. Knowledge, illuminated by charity, became service. Monastic life thus revealed itself as a style of holiness and a concrete way to transform society.

“but also dignity and a voice.”  Please. Europe in the Middle Ages tended to be intensely hierarchical, and the Church represented this reality.  Some poor boys and girls rose high in the Church, but this was not common.  Serfs usually needed the permission of their lords to join a monastery, and an abbot would probably have had little interest in accepting most serfs except as servants of the monastery.  However, we must not blacken the coal.  Many a poor girl and boy found refuge in monasteries and convents, were treated with kindness and given useful work to perform, along with religious instruction.  After Henry VIII suppressed the monasteries and convents in England, there is much evidence  that they were greatly missed by the poor.

58. The monastic tradition teaches us that prayer and charity, silence and service, cells and hospitals form a single spiritual fabric. The monastery is a place of listening and action, of worship and sharing. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the great Cistercian reformer, “firmly recalled the need for a sober and measured life, in the refectory as in monastic clothing and buildings, recommending the support and care of the poor.” [45] For him, compassion was not an option, but the true path of following Christ. Monastic life, therefore, if faithful to its original vocation, shows that the Church is fully the bride of the Lord only when she is also the sister of the poor. The cloister is not only a refuge from the world, but a school where one learns to serve it better. Where monks and nuns have opened their doors to the poor, the Church has revealed with humility and firmness that contemplation does not exclude mercy, but demands it as its purest fruit.

The Pope is forgetting that most Catholics live in the World, but perhaps he will write more words later that might be more pertinent to them in how to live a more Catholic life in that environment.  Some of this reminds me of a church parade for a British Army battalion during World War I, where the Anglican Chaplain preached about the period of purification needed by women after they gave birth before they could resume attendance at church.  Reading the room is often an important thing for clerics to do.

Freeing prisoners

59. Since apostolic times, the Church has seen the liberation of the oppressed as a sign of the Kingdom of God. Jesus himself proclaimed at the beginning of his public ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives” (Lk 4:18). The early Christians, even in precarious conditions, prayed for and assisted their brothers and sisters who were prisoners, as the Acts of the Apostles (cf. 12:5; 24:23) and various writings of the Fathers attest. This mission of liberation has continued throughout the centuries through concrete actions, especially when the tragedy of slavery and imprisonment has marked entire societies.

The visiting of prisoners was often, but not always, those who were imprisoned for their faith.  As for slavery, the Church came late to that fight, although it is interesting to see that slavery tends to dissolve in Christian lands over time, with Roman slavery, serfdom and other forms of involuntary servitude, vanishing, unlike in Islamic and Asian cultures where slavery would still exist, but for the West.

60. Between the late twelfth and the early thirteenth centuries, when many Christians were captured in the Mediterranean or enslaved in wars, two religious orders arose: the Order of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Captives (Trinitarians), founded by Saint John of Matha and Saint Felix of Valois, and the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy (Mercedarians), founded by Saint Peter Nolasco with the support of the Dominican Saint Raymond of Peñafort. These communities of consecrated persons were born with the specific charism of freeing Christians who had been enslaved, placing their own possessions at the disposal of the enslaved [46] and many times offering their own lives in exchange. The Trinitarians, with their motto Gloria tibi Trinitas et captivis libertas (Glory to you, O Trinity, and liberty to the captives), and the Mercedarians, who added a fourth vow [47] to the religious vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, testified that charity can be heroic. The liberation of prisoners is an expression of Trinitarian love: a God who frees not only from spiritual slavery but also from concrete oppression. The act of rescuing someone from slavery and captivity is seen as an extension of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice, whose blood is the price of our redemption (cf. 1 Cor 6:20).

Correct, although the slaves redeemed were a small fraction of those taken by Islamic slavers, a situation that persisted well into the 19th century.

61. The original spirituality of these orders was deeply rooted in contemplation of the cross. Christ is the Redeemer of prisoners par excellence, and the Church, his Body, prolongs this mystery in time. [48] Religious did not see redemption as a political or economic action, but as a quasi-liturgical act, the sacramental offering of themselves. Many gave their own bodies to replace prisoners, literally fulfilling the commandment: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” ( Jn 15:13). The tradition of these orders did not come to an end. On the contrary, it inspired new forms of action in the face of modern forms of slavery: human trafficking, forced labor, sexual exploitation and various forms of dependency. [49] Christian charity is liberating when it becomes incarnate. Likewise, the mission of the Church, when she is faithful to her Lord, is at all times to proclaim liberation. Even today, when “millions of people — children, women and men of all ages — are deprived of their freedom and forced to live in conditions akin to slavery,” [50] this legacy is carried on by these orders and other institutions and congregations working in urban peripheries, conflict zones and migration routes. When the Church bends down to break the new chains that bind the poor, she becomes a paschal sign.

Verbal slight of hand.  We move from prisoners and captives, concrete enough categories, to those forced to “live in conditions akin to slavery.”  That is a concrete enough reality in many Islamic countries for Christians and other minorities, but I doubt if that is what the Pope is referring to.

62. We cannot conclude this reflection on people deprived of their freedom without mentioning those in various prisons and detention centers. In this regard, we recall the words that Pope Francis addressed to a group of prisoners: “For me, entering a prison is always an important moment, because prison is a place of great humanity… Humanity that is tried, sometimes worn down by difficulties, guilt, judgments, misunderstandings, suffering, but at the same time full of strength, desire for forgiveness, and a desire for redemption.” [51] This desire, among other things, has also been taken up by the orders devoted to the ransom of prisoners as a preferential service to the Church. As Saint Paul proclaimed: “For freedom Christ has set us free” ( Gal 5:1). This freedom is not only interior: it manifests itself in history as love that cares for and frees us from every bond of slavery.

Some people are unjustly imprisoned, but in most western nations the imprisoned are there for serious crimes.  Francis often seemed to think that even those who had committed serious crimes did not deserve to be in prisons.  Forty three years of criminal defense leads me to differ with that conclusion.

The fisk continues with part five.