Yesterday,
we received the news of the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. As the Church, we mourn his loss. If we take one look at his life, we will see
that this was a man who lived through very turbulent times and yet maintained a
strong faith, one which led him to follow God’s call to the priesthood. In the priesthood, he applied the great gift
of his intellect to serve the Church and her pastoral mission to help people to
come to know and love the true God. Much
will be said in the days ahead about the many positive contributions he made to
the life of the Church, and rightfully so.
I hope that much also will be said about his faithfulness to God
throughout his life. Certainly, he was
not perfect; but he was witness of Christian faithfulness for us all,
particularly in these last years of his life.
May he rest in peace.
One
of the things that sometimes gets lost in the discussion of his accomplishments
is the contributions that he made to the Second Vatican Council. I will not detail them here, but only note
that Benedict XVI is the last pope that we will have who was present at the
Council and so could still give a first-hand account of the proceedings
there. This, of course, is something
normal that happens over the course of time after any major event, but it is
still something worth noting as we continue to implement the teachings of the
Council in the life of the Church.
For
most of us, the Second Vatican Council represents all that we know about
ecumenical councils. As such, it would
be easy for us to think that the great Church councils were all peaceful
affairs in which bishops and other Church leaders get together to decide on
major directions that the Church should be taking to continue to spread the
Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.
Vatican
II, however, is an anomaly among the great Church councils. For the most part, ecumenical councils have
been the result of some serious conflict that has arisen in the Church; and
these usually centered on the definition of some dispute of doctrine that was
causing a split within the Church. When
bishops came together to debate these disputed doctrines, it was usually a heated
affair. For example, legend has it that
at the First Council of Nicea in 325, our beloved Saint Nicolas, bishop of
Myrna in modern-day Turkey, punched his fellow bishop Arius for his persistent
denial that Jesus is “one in being” (that is, “consubstantial”) with God the
Father. (Kind of makes you think a bit
differently about “jolly ol’ Saint Nick”, doesn’t it?)
In
431, in the city of Ephesus, an ecumenical council was held to resolve a
similarly contentious issue. This time
the antagonist was Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, and his main opponent
was Saint Cyril of Alexandria. Although
the record shows that no punches were thrown, a hotly contested debate was held
disputing Nestorius’ contention that it was heretical to call Mary the “Mother
of God”. He argued that, since God is
eternal (that is, without beginning or end), to say that God has a mother is
contradictory: because having a mother indicates that there was some sort of
birth, or beginning, to that person’s life, which with God simply cannot
be. Thus, Nestorius argued, Mary should
be called Christotokos, that is, mother of the Anointed One (meaning, the
mother of Jesus’ manhood alone), but that she should not be called Theotokos, that is, mother of God.
Saint
Cyril and his backers knew that this couldn’t be true, because they knew that
for Jesus to be able to accomplish his saving work for us he had to be both
fully human and fully divine and that there could be no separation of the two. He also knew that, in the hearts of the
faithful (i.e. the whole Church for the past four centuries), Mary had already been
honored as mother of God; and so he
knew that he couldn’t give way to Nestorius’ erroneous thinking and thus
contradict what had already been held as true for nearly four centuries.
Legend
has it that crowds of people waited outside the basilica during the last days
of the council waiting to hear what the bishops had decided the truth was about
Mary. When the bishops emerged and
definitively declared that Mary was, indeed, the Theotokos, the crowd erupted with joy that the bishops had
confirmed what they already knew in their hearts was true. It was told that the crowds carried the
bishops through the streets, along with images of Our Lady, singing songs and
praising God that Mary is, indeed, the Mother of God. (It’s a great story, no?)
///
Okay,
let’s take a moment to consider a theological definition. A heresy, in theological terms, is when
someone attempts to explain away a mystery by removing one of the truths that
makes it mysterious. In the case of
Nestorius, he tried to explain away the mystery of how Mary could be the mother
of an eternal being by excluding her motherhood from the eternal nature of
Jesus. His fault, of course, is that it
made Jesus less of what we know him to be through what he had revealed to us
when he walked among us on earth (that is, both the Son of God and the Son of
Man). Nestorius was caught up in trying
to make it all work out in his head instead of being content to dwell in the
mystery of it all.
Saint
Cyril led the charge for truth because he was unafraid to proclaim the truth
that had been revealed to us, even if it meant that it was still too mysterious
to explain. He knew what Mary herself had
taught us: that sometimes we have to be content to dwell within the mystery. Our Gospel today gives us an example.
When
the shepherds came to see the baby Jesus, they revealed to Mary and Joseph all
that they had seen and heard in the field: Angels in the air revealing the
birth of the child and singing songs glorifying God. A wild story, right? Mary, however, didn’t press the shepherds to
explain how all of that was possible, but rather, as the Gospel relate to us,
she and all there “were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds …
and Mary kept all of these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” Mary allowed herself to dwell within the
mystery of what had been revealed and there she encountered deeply the One who
had revealed it: God in her son.
We,
too, can sometimes get caught in the trap of trying to escape the mystery of it
all. When life gets difficult and we struggle
to understand where God is in the midst of our trials, we often are tempted to
explain away the mystery by denying some truth about God. We are tempted to say things like, “Well, I
guess God doesn’t really care about me” or “He must be punishing me for my
sins”. The challenge for us, however, is
to allow ourselves to dwell within the mystery of what seems to be God’s
absence—that is, to keep these things, reflecting on them in our hearts—so as
to open ourselves to encountering God’s presence there, in the unexpected: like
in a little child, born into poverty in a little town in ancient Palestine.
All
of the fruit of Pope Benedict XVI’s teachings were because he himself learned
to dwell in the mystery of God, instead of trying to explain it away. My friends, if we, too, can learn do this, we
will be similarly blessed in this new year, just beginning. /// May the peace
of God, which is beyond all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in
the knowledge and love of God and of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, so that
you may enjoy this blessing in this New Year.
Given in Spanish at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish: Carmel,
IN
January 1st, 2023
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