The Many Patron Saints of Europe

One of the things you notice living the liturgy here in Europe is that they have a lot of patron saints. Six, in fact. And so their feast days come around with some regularity:

• Cyril, monk, and Methodius, bishop, February 14
• Catherine of Siena, virgin and doctor, April 29
• Benedict, abbot, July 11
• Bridget of Sweden, founder (and mother of a saint, Catherine of Sweden), July 23
• Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, virgin and martyr (Edith Stein), August 9

Seeing that tomorrow is one of these feast days, I did a little looking around and discovered that all of this heavenly patronage is of fairly recent articulation.

Friday Ramble

Recently I was in an email thread with some friars on the 'Lent of Benediction,' one the fasts described in the Rule. It begins after Epiphany. It's called 'of benediction' because it's optional according to the Rule and those who keep it are 'blessed.'

The conversation inspired me to reread, or perhaps read properly for the first time, Paul VI's Apostolic Constitution Paenitemini (1966) on fast and abstinence. This led me also to read, I'm sure for the first time (to my shame) the United States Bishops' Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence, issued later the same year.

I admit that I was surprised and struck by this section in Paenitemini:

The time of Lent preserves its penitential character. The days of penitence to be observed under obligation throughout the Church are all Fridays and Ash Wednesday ... Their substantial observance binds gravely. (II. 1)

(my emphasis)

Some Thoughts on Indulgences

The other day at lunch we got to talking about indulgences. One of the brothers confessed that he didn't really understand the concept. It's hard enough to grasp, I suppose. Continuing to think on it, I went back and read Indulgentiarum doctrina, Paul VI's apostolic constitution on the subject following Vatican II.

An indulgence is the remission before God of the temporal punishment due sins already forgiven as far as their guilt is concerned, which the follower of Christ with the proper dispositions and under certain determined conditions acquires through the intervention of the Church which, as minister of the Redemption, authoritatively dispenses and applies the treasury of the satisfaction won by Christ and the saints. (norms, 1)

It seems to me that the practice of indulgences depends on a few things. I think of three:

First, it depends on the idea that expiation is something apart from forgiveness and pardon. Sin injures the creation, and though a sin be forgiven and absolved, God's justice demands that the injury be somehow corrected or undone. This is accomplished through acts of penance, the good use of the sufferings of this life, or the purification of purgatory thereafter. An indulgence remits this responsibility to expiate the injury we do to the universe by our sins.

Second, it depends on the very basic assertion of Christianity, which the document also makes, that the Church is "minister of the Redemption of Christ" (38) I think it's easy to have the idea that redemption and salvation is something basically transacted between the individual soul and God ("Jesus my personal savior") and that the Church exists as a more or less human institution to promote and encourage this. A Catholic ecclesiology is much deeper than that, of course. Such would assert that the Church, as the Mystical Body of Christ, is herself the mediation of the salvation God wills for the world and which we have in the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore, it pertains to the Church to minister this redemption. It is in this sense that we can understand extra ecclesiam nulla salus, 'outside the Church there is no salvation.' As the Catechism explains, this phrase "means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body." (846)

Third, the doctrine and practice of indulgences depends on a strong and spiritual sense of the communion of saints. All the baptized are in communion with each other. Or, as Indulgentiarum doctrina puts it, "[t]here reigns among men, by the hidden and benign mystery of the divine will, a supernatural solidarity." The sins of one are an injury for all, but the merits and salvation of each are also a benefit to all. From this communion or solidarity derives a certain fungibility of grace on which the idea of indulgences depends. The Church, as "minister of the Redemption of Christ" can apply the merit of one to another. This communion of saints is catholic in the sense of embracing all of time and space, and so the individual Christian, as a member of the Church, can apply an indulgence gained to one of the faithful departed. (norms, 3)

Paul VI Speaks To The Capuchins

Here in Rome today is the (obligatory) memorial of Pope Blessed Paul VI. Poking around for something to give for a homily, I landed on a talk the Pope gave to the friars at our General Chapter of 1976. Towards the end he sets out three "requirements" for the work of evangelization.

The first could be formulated thus: the priority of being over doing. Evangelization demands witness and witness supposes an experience, one that follows from a deep life of interior union with Christ, that brings the disciple into a progressive conformity with the Teacher, to a becoming like Him, for Him, and in Him, something which little by little shrines through, and then in a convincing way, even in the external forms of living and of working. An external form marked particularly by the poverty of Christ, who, though he was rich made himself poor for love of us, in order to make us rich by his poverty. (cf. 2 Cor 8:9, Matt 8:20, Perfectae caritatis 13). And this is an essential teaching, which shines from the most authentic Franciscan message, a message more current now than ever. 

The second requirement: closeness to the people. The Capuchin Order is an Order of the people, it rose up with this characteristic and will be accepted and effective in its evangelizing action if it keeps itself as people have seen it through the centuries. Hence the duty to live close to the humble classes; hence the commitment to a style of life, which, as far as it is poor, does not distance itself from them, hence the consistent exclusion of compromises against traditional austerity and simplicity of life, even regarding the external figure of a Capuchin. 

Third requirement: fidelity to the Church, to the Vicar of Christ and to the bishops. Evangelization is never a personal thing, but always and only in the name of the Church, because it is to the Church that Christ has entrusted the task of announcing the Gospel to all peoples. (cf. Matt 20:18-20, Mk 16:15-16) To keep oneself in communion of mind, of heart, and of action with the directives and instructions of ecclesial authority in the concrete circumstances in which one has been called to work, both at the level of the universal Church and also in the individual particular churches; it is innate to every apostolic work which wishes to be "for building up and not for destroying" (2 Cor 10:8) the souls that Christ entrusts to you.

The whole thing is here (in Italian).