Feast of St. Bonaventure

By gift or blessed coincidence, my turn to preside at the community Mass fell on today, the feast of our Seraphic Doctor St. Bonaventure.

I had some time to spend with him, so I returned to some texts and thought about what I might give for a homily. In the end I landed on Bonaventure's account of St. Francis descending the mountain after the experience of the stigmata:

After true love for Christ transformed the lover into his image, when the forty days were over that he spent in solitude as he had desired, and the feast of St. Michael the Archangel had also arrived, the angelic man Francis came down from the mountain, bearing with him the likeness of the crucified, depicted not on tablets of stone or on panels of wood carved by hand, but engraved on parts of his flesh by the finger of the living God. (Major Legend XIII:5)

Veronica Giuliani

This year the feast of St. Veronica Giuliani, Capuchin Poor Clare abbess and one of the great characters of our Capuchin tradition, is suppressed by the XV Sunday of Ordinary Time tomorrow.

This past week, however, was my turn taking the morning Mass at the General Curia of the Capuchin Sisters of Mother Rubatto, and the sisters asked me if I would celebrate St. Veronica's Mass today, on Saturday. It seemed a little irregular to me, but no other celebration in particular obliged today, and since I'm more flexible when I'm a guest (cf. how I once celebrated the previously unknown liturgical day of Ash Sunday) I said fine, nice idea.

(Left to my own devices I probably would have taken either the optional memorial of Nicholas Pieck and companions, the Franciscans among the Martyrs of Gorkum, or the regular memorial of Our Lady on Saturday.)

Never having read St. Veronica and feeling thus inadequate to preach about her, I brought a selection from another priest's words on her:

In particular, Veronica proved a courageous witness of the beauty and power of Divine Love which attracted her, pervaded her and inflamed her. Crucified Love was impressed within her flesh as it was in that of St Francis of Assisi, with Jesus’ stigmata. “‘My Bride’, the Crucified Christ whispers to me, ‘the penance you do for those who suffer my disgrace is dear to me’.... Then detaching one of his arms from the Cross he made a sign to me to draw near to his side... and I found myself in the arms of the Crucified One. What I felt at that point I cannot describe: I should have liked to remain for ever in his most holy side” (ibid., I, 37). This is also an image of her spiritual journey, of her interior life: to be in the embrace of the Crucified One and thus to remain in Christ's love for others.

(Pope Benedict XVI, general audience of December 15, 2010)

Receiving the Stigmata

Thomas Merton:

To live "in Christ" is to live in a mystery equal to that of the Incarnation and similar to it. (New Seeds of Contemplation, 158)

Edith Stein:

Thus a new incarnation of Christ takes place in christians, which is synonymous with a resurrection from the death on the cross. The new self carries the wounds of Christ on the body: the remembrance of the misery of sin out of which the soul was awakened to a blessed life, and a reminder of the price that had to be paid for that. The pain of yearning for the fullness of life persists until, through the door of actual physical death, entrance into the shadowless light is gained. (The Science of the Cross, trans. Josephine Koeppel, OCD)

The Risen Lord continued to bear the wounds of the Crucified Christ. In the same way, the wounds of sin remain in the redemption-in-process that is the humanity of the Christian. For better or for worse, nothing makes us who we are more than our suffering. We find ourselves as human beings in an injured state, often foiled by our own faults and sins and subjected to misery because of the sins of others. This is the mystery of the effects of original sin in the world.

God redeems us in Christ by meeting us exactly in this miserable and alienated condition: This is the mystery of Christ crucified. Though killed in his human nature, death could not contain Christ as God. Thus the Cross blazes a new path for the humanity he shares with us, a path out of the deathly misery we have insisted upon for ourselves with our sins to a new and risen life.

As we become redeemed by consenting to let our own humanity be drawn into the humanity of Christ--and this is the mystery of baptism and Holy Communion, by the way--the wounds and broken parts of ourselves remain, but in a transformed way. Though freed and redeemed, our sufferings and struggles are still the things that have made us who we are. But these wounds, previously just a source of meaninglessness and pain, have been transformed into stigmata, signs of transformed suffering that illustrate to those around us the possibility of resurrected humanity.

Thus, in a sense every Christian is a stigmatic. But it's not that we 'receive' the stigmata, for the wounds have always been there. The hurts and brokenness that were meaningless and so often a source of the desperate cycles of violence of the world that does not know God, have now been transformed into the redeemed wounds that bleed only compassion.

Lambs Among Wolves

I didn't manage a new homily this week, but I'm still pretty happy with the one I wrote three years ago. Topics include fitness for mission and receiving the stigmata. Check it out here.

David, Goliath, and the Spiritual Combat

Today in the first reading we arrive at the famous scene of David's defeat of Goliath. I didn't preach on it for the 8:30 am crowd, but maybe I'll be feeling loose and wild enough to go for it by the 7:30 pm Mass tonight. There's an allegorical interpretation in there about the battle of the Church or the individual Christian with evil, temptation, and the devil. I'm not sure that I have it all together, but I've arrived at a few points.

• Confidence matters. David went out confident and trusting in the Lord. He dismisses Saul's warnings. He knows that God wants to give him victory. He knows that it is God's fight and not his.
  
• "The Philistine held David in contempt." We should always know that evil and the devil hate us and the good we are able to do with God's help. All the "empty promises" have this contempt behind them. Keeping this in mind can help us to see through the non-being and non-sense of evil and not be distracted by the glittering wisdom of the world.
• Taunting can help. Of course it's a standard part of warfare, and thus it appears in the story. Mocking and taunting demoralize the enemy and build up the confidence of the taunter. Sometimes it can be very helpful and liberating to mock our temptations and the world, flesh, and devil behind them.
• "Am I a dog that you come against me with a staff?" says Goliath. He doesn't see and is unaware of David's real weapon, the sling and stone. It is the nature of sin, evil, and the devil to be cut off from God and thus to be unaware of grace. This is why temptations and diabolical attacks can come upon us with such confidence that we will fold up and be ruined--they can't see the power of God that is with us. Knowing this can give us a lot of confidence for the spiritual combat.
• David defeats Goliath with sling and stone. It is a small, simple, and humble weapon, but one that requires skill. It also requires preparation; David had carefully selected the stones from the Wadi beforehand. So it is with us; our weapon in the spiritual fight is our simple faith and confidence that the battle is God's rather than our own. All we have to do is let God fight and win the battle on our behalf. Nevertheless, this surrender is so delicate and contrary to our wounded nature that it takes practice and preparation beforehand if we are to make it work at the critical moment of temptation or the attack of evil. The preparation is living a sacramental life of daily prayer, and the skill of the surrender is one that we must practice at each moment of the day.
  
• To kill the Philistine is not enough. His head must be cut off. In the same way, to allow God to defeat a temptation within us is a great work of obedience and religion, but we are not done. We must also cut off the sources of temptation in ourselves. Ripping out the selfishnesses and myopias from our hearts and souls with leave some very raw and confused spots inside us, but these are the sorts of wounds that can become openings to the grace of God. They can become our stigmata. "From now on, let no one make troubles for me; for I bear the stigmata of Jesus on my body." (Galatians 6:17)
  

Proper Prefaces of St. Francis

Since I enjoyed doing this for our holy mother St. Clare, I didn't want to miss the chance to do the same for St. Francis. I know it's a couple of days early, but I'll have more Francis stuff to post for the feast day itself this weekend. Here are the proper prefaces of St. Francis as they appear in the Franciscan editions of the Missal of the Roman rite:

As the preface appears in the 1962 Missale Romano-Seraphicum:

Per ómnia saécula saeculórum.
R. Amen.
V. Dóminus vobíscum.
R. Et cum spíritu tuo.
V. Sursum corda.
R. Habémus ad Dóminum.
V. Grátias agámus Dómino Deo nostro.
R. Dignum et iustum est.

Vere dignum et iustum est, aequum et salutáre,
nos tibi simper et ubíque grátias ágere:
Dómine, sancte Pater, omnípotens aetérne Deus:

Qui venerándum Confessórem
fámulam tuam beátum Francíscum,
tua, Deus, altíssima bonitáte et cleméntia,
Sanctórum tuórum méritis et virtútibus sublimásti;
mentémque ipsíus, Sancti Spíritus operatióne,
amor ille seráphicus ardentíssime incéndit intérius:
cuiúsque corpus sacris Stigmátibus insignívit extérius,
signo crucifíxi Iesu Christi Dómini nostri.

Per quem maiestátem tuam laudant Angeli,
adórant Dominatiónes, tremunt Potestátes.
Caeli caelorúmque Virtútes, ac beáta Séraphim,
sócia exsultatióne concélebrant. Cum quibus
et nostras voces, ut admití iúbeas, deprecámur,
súpplici confessióne dicéntes:


And here is the version as it appears in the 1974 Roman-Franciscan Sacramentary:

V. The Lord be with you.
R. And also with you.
V. Lift up your hearts.
R. We lift them up to the Lord.
V. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
R. It is right to give him thanks and praise.

Father all-powerful and ever-living God,
we do well always and ev'rywhere to give you thanks.

You exalted your servant Francis
through sublime poverty and humility
to the heights of evangelical perfection.
You inflamed him with seraphic love
to exult with unspeakable joy
over all the works of your creation.
Branding him with the sacred stigmata,
you gave us the image of the crucified
Jesus Christ our Lord.

Through him the choirs of angels and all the powers of heaven
praise and worship your glory. May our voices blend with theirs
as we join in their unending hymn of praise:


Don't ask me about the "ev'rywhere." I have no idea. It's not musically necessary either.

The progression, again, is interesting. Some elements are lost in between, such as the Franciscan sense of the Holy Spirit and His holy "operation," (see the Rule, chapter X) and the juxtaposition of the Francis's burning, interior seraphic love with his exterior stigmata.

On the other hand, the 1974 preface adds some praiseworthy Franciscan elements, such as the adjective "evangelical," ("This is the life of the Friars Minor, to observe the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ..," Rule, chapter I), and the sense of Franciscan joy over creation.

Letting God Move In

One of the greatest privileges and beauties of my life as a parish priest is that I am a witness to some very intense spiritual lives.

Often their experience is very wrenching; it brings them God's joy and peace, but it also imposes on them some of the sorrow and pain of the Lord's Passion. Usually it is the former that is seen outwardly, while God (in his mercy, to protect us from vainglory) keeps the "pain of heart" and spiritual anguish secret. When I encounter people who seem to be going through this double experience, I can't help but think of St. Francis and the stigmata. Brother Thomas of Celano, Francis's first biographer, describes Francis's internal state as he is about to be imprinted with the Passion: ...tristis et laetus, et gaudium atque moeror suas in ipso alternabant vices. (First Life, 94) "Sad and joyful, with both joy and sorrow alternating by turns in himself."

When the Holy Spirit finds a soul willing to work, he puts it to work for as long as it can consent. But why does God put souls through this 'emotional rollercoaster'? For me I think it has something to do with the grace of Christmas.

When it came time for the Word of God to be born in the creation that the Father had spoken through him, "There was no room for them in the inn" as St. Luke tells us. That's the trouble with the "world" in the spiritually negative sense. There isn't an obvious and given place for God to dwell. From the sin of our first parents down to the sins, injustice, culture of death, and philosophical and practical atheisms of our own day, God has been excluded from his creation. When God wills to be incarnate among us, there is no room for him to be born, and he dies outside society, both literally and spiritually. "The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."

This is why the spiritual life can be such a wrenching, perilous journey. God is looking for homes in this world, for He delights to live among us. When God finds hearts and minds that are willing to be a home for him in this world He sets about cleaning, purifying, and hollowing them out for his own. This is not an easy process on the emotional level, as we are called to let go of more and more of our external selves, parts of our self-conscious being we mistakenly thought were our real selves.

It's rough, but it's our joy. As it was with St. Francis as he became in his body a home for our Lord's Passion, it is our joy and our sadness, our peace and our pain of heart.

Of Eucharistic Miracles and Stigmata

Ben, from whom I've learned a lot through his comments here, recently challenged me on the coherence of some of my posts. He asked, pretty astutely I think, how it is that I can be so into the stigmata of St. Francis but dismiss so-called "Eucharistic miracles" at the same time. This is a really fascinating question, and I've been thinking about it a little bit. I'm not confident that this is a complete answer, but here are some of my preliminary reflections.

There are multiple questions here. First, what is the theological relationship between stigmata and Eucharistic miracles? The phenomena are similar in some sense, but how? And how do they differ? Second, why does my gut tell me one is worthy of reverence and the other a distraction? Can I give an account of what I allege to be my intuition?

Both phenomena are a case of the usually invisible Presence of Christ becoming miraculously visible. In the stigmata the usually mystical and spiritual identification of Christ with suffering humanity becomes visible in some analogue of the wounds of the Passion appearing on the individual Christian. In a Eucharistic miracle it is alleged that the "substance of the body of Christ" or the "substance of his blood," (1) become sensible as themselves, rather than retaining the accidents of bread and wine under which they usually appear.

The great gift of the Incarnation of the Word in Jesus Christ is the identification of God with human suffering. In Christ, God descends into and identifies himself with the suffering, alienation, and pain we have brought upon ourselves and each other with our sins. In Christ, God means to save us from the inside, identifying himself with our pain so as to offer our humanity a means of escape and freedom. In his Passion, the humanity of Christ identifies with our suffering, even to the final suffering of being alienated from God: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me." By the divinity joined hypostatically to his humanity, the death he endures cannot hold him and a path through suffering and death to New Life is opened up.

This gift is available to all Christians. In Christ, God's passionate desire is to humbly identify with our suffering so as to redeem and liberate us from its power, influence, and misery. All we have to do is allow God to identify with us through faith, through prayer, and especially through the communion he gives us with his humanity in the Eucharist. To me, the stigmata marks an individual case in which a Christian has accomplished this consent to God in a way so exceptional that the identification becomes visible in his or her own flesh. So I guess to me the stigmata is a joyful and miraculous sign of heroic human consent to God's own desire to save us.

Now the Eucharist is also a humble identification of God with the physical world. By identifying himself with the bread and wine offered as the sacrifice of the Eucharist, Jesus Christ gives us both a memorial of the one sacrifice of the Cross and a means to continuously "augment" (2) the union of his humanity with ours. In the sacred species the body and blood of Christ, born of Mary, dying on the Cross, and raised up in glory are truly and really present, but retains the sensible appearance, feel, smell, and taste of bread and wine after the consecration. In a Eucharistic miracle this ordinary situation, which God has presumably ordained, seems to be suspended and the accidents of the bread and wine give way to the visible and sensible presence of the Body and Blood of Christ.

I have two basic problems with these miracles on a theological level. First, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist in the presence of the whole Christ. Each host and each sip of the Precious Blood all over the world each day is the presence not of a part of the Christ, but of the whole Christ. In trying to teach this truth, St. Thomas uses what I think is a delightful image: he says that the Eucharist is like a broken mirror, in which the whole reflection becomes visible in each little piece.(3) In a so-called Eucharistic miracle, this truth of the faith seems to be lost. What allegedly becomes sensible is a piece of the flesh of Christ or a portion of his Precious Blood. It's not the whole Christ that our faith tells us is present.

Second, it seems to me that the "hiddenness" of the revelation of Christ in the Eucharist is an essential part of its meaning. To me the humility of the Lord who is willing to become a little piece of bread is one of the most spiritually overwhelming and deep aspects of the Eucharist. But perhaps this is a Franciscan prejudice. (4)

So, as the beginning of a reflection, I guess this is why I feel like stigmata is something to be reverenced but Eucharistic miracles are a distraction, because the former represents for me a heroic consent to God's desire on the part of one human being, while the latter obscures for me both the teaching of the Church on the Eucharist and its meaning as I have come to appreciate it.

Finally, let me say by way of disclaimer that I would never want to belittle the faith of those for whom Eucharistic miracles seem to mean a lot. For me, the "by their fruits you shall know them" certainly applies, and if the worship and celebration of these phenomena produces faith and devotion to the Eucharistic on the part of the faithful who appreciate them, then I'm all for it.



1. Council of Trent, 1551, quoted by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1376.
2. Catechism, 1391.
3. Thomas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 76, a. 3.
4. "“O admirable heights and sublime lowliness! O sublime humility! O humble sublimity! That the Lord of the universe, God and the Son of God, so humbles Himself that for our salvation He hides Himself under the little form of bread! Look, brothers, at the humility of God and pour out your hearts before Him! Humble yourselves, as well, that you may be exalted by Him. Therefore, hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves so that He Who gives Himself totally to you may receive you totally” Francis of Assisi, Letter to the Entire Order.

Stigmata

Looking through past posts I realize on this feast of the Stigmata of Francis that I have written quite a bit about it; its scriptural basis in Paul's letter to the Galatians, its possible relationship to Francis's supposed medical diagnoses, even its meaning with regard to a fundamental semiotics of the Cross.

I suppose this is because the Stigmata of Francis has been a recent discovery for me. In my Franciscan formation not much was made of it; it was either ignored as something belonging to another time and sensibility, or it was dismissed as something gruesome or fantastical. But as I've grown up as a Franciscan, the Stigmata has seemed more and more important to me in my understanding of and devotion to Francis of Assisi.

It seems to me that Stigmata are the logical end of saying, as we do in every Eucharist, that we are the mystical Body of Christ. To bear on our own bodies the wounds, or "brand marks" as our Bibles usually translate the Greek stigmata, would seem to be the ordinary result of affirming the God who, in Christ crucified, identifies with our suffering and alienation and pain. Even if there is nothing miraculous to see with the physical eyes, it seems to me that any of our own suffering and pain that we allow to be caught up into the humanity of Christ becomes the sacred Stigmata.

To me it's the mystery of seeing Christ crucified in the suffering humanity God has united himself to in the mystery of the Incarnation, of seeing their wounds as the wounds of Christ.

Stigmata

Today in the Office of Readings, Paul's discussion of his stigmata comes around, and thus we have the Scriptural basis for the spiritual reality that was so real for Francis:

Henceforth let no man trouble me; for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

"Marks of Jesus" is stigmata tou Iesou.

Stigmata in Greek has the general sense of a mark, but the more technical sense of a branding mark. Thus Paul is marked as the property of, as dedicated to Jesus Christ. He is the slave of Christ, as he so often puts it. This stands in contrast to the circumcision party he was arguing with in Galatia: we ought not to seek the marks of human custom and approval, but the brand marks of Jesus Christ, those that come to us through his service.

For, me, I'm going to recall this when I am hearing this Sunday's Gospel of Luke's Beatitudes and Woes: Woe to you, when all speak well of you, for so their ancestors did the same to the false prophets.

The marks of worldly, human approval are useless. The brand marks, the limitations and sufferings we earn through the service of God in Christ, they alone count for something.

Stigmata

Because today is Sunday, the stigmata of Francis aren't celebrated this year. Nevertheless, this remains my favorite feast day in the Franciscan calendar.

Some folks like to argue about what "really" happened to Francis on that day. Some say what the brothers decided were the wounds of Christ on Francis was really leprosy. Others say the whole thing was invented by brother Elias as part of the promotion of the cult of Francis.

All of this misses the point. We'll never be able to describe precisely the great mystical experience of the Crucifed Christ that Francis had toward the end of his life. Even his early hagiographers disagree.

The point is to see God's willingness and overwhelming desire to identify God's own life with the suffering of the world. The point is not to ask whether Francis really had the stigmata, but to learn to see the wounds of Christ in every person who suffers with the meaningless of sickness, is made an orphan or homeless by war, or struggles under the searing burden of poverty.

These are the wounds of Christ. Stigmata are all around us.