Review for Religious - Issue 62.5 (Advent 2003)

Special Advent Issue of Volume 62 of the Review for Religious, 2003.Spirituality Review, a supplement of Review for Religious, is published at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province twice a year during Lent/Easter and Advent/Christmas seasons. Please send all correspondence to: Review for Religious; Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯Fax: 314-977-7362 See inside back cover for information on subscription rates to Review for Religious. Spirituality Review, a supplement of Review for Religious, is an interactive journal. We ask you, our readers, to give us your reactions and your suggestions. Please write to our address given above or fax: 314-977-7362 email us at review@slu.edu ¯ ~eb site: www.reviewforreligious.0rg ©2003 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material contained in this supplement issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribution, adver-tising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. S pi ituality eview REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS SUPPLEMENT Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Clare Boehmer ASC Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp Sr. Raymond Marie Gerard FSP Eugene Hensell OSB Ernest E. Larkin OCarm Louis and Angela Menard Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ ADVENT CHRISTMAS 2003 contents tracings 12 beauty Magnetic Beauty: A Gift to the Young and the Poor Robert P. Maloney CM draws our attention to how beauty is integral to spirituality and the need to communicate it to the young and the poor. Prayer and Reflection/Discussion models Joseph, Model of Spiritual Parenting Mary Catherine Carroll SSSF reflects on spiritual parenting through the examples of the biblical Josephs (portrayed in Genesis and Matthew) and the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin. Prayer and Questions 23 Mary, a Face of Advent David L. Fleming SJ invites the reader to listen imaginatively to Mary relating how God deals with her and her Advent way of responding. Canticle and Reflection 28 voices Affirming Voices Frances Smalkowski CSFN calls us to reflect on our own personal communications from God as she shares her experiences of hearing affirming divine words. Scripture and Questions Spirit’t~ality Review In his book Saving Beauty, Cardinal Carlo-Maria Martini SJ provocatively raises the question posed by one of the characters in Dostoyevsky’s novel The Idiot, " What sort of beauty will save the world?" The question is met by silence in the novel, but Martini sees in the quiet pres-ence of the hero this response: "The beauty that will save the world is the love that shares the pain." Beauty, in its many forms, presents us with tracings, but we seldom reflect that we are being led or, more importantly, where we are being led. We find beauty in a baby’s gurgling laugh, "What a beautiful baby!" We find beauty in the loping gait of deer. We find .beauty in rosy-fin-gered dawn. We find beauty in a soft rain. We find beauty in the weathered, wrinkled face of a peasant woman. We find beauty in the lithesome grace of an Olympic gymnast. We find beauty even as we keep watch for a dying patient, "What a beautiful death!" How is it that we can find beauty in so many different ways, not just on occasions of life and tracings Advent/Cbristmas 2003 Tracings youth and activity, but also on occasions of old age and suffering and death? Our key to the question of beauty is found in the memorable line of John’s Gospel: "God so loved the world that he sent his only Son." God was so in love with the world he created that he decided to be an inte-gral part of it. And so we celebrate Christmas. But his world with its human sin and rejection and injustice can take even God’s gift of Self in Jesus and put it to death, even death on a cross. We celebrate Good Friday. God’s love cannot be killed, and so in the risen Jesus we see the beauty that saves the world because God has deter-mined to share the pain. Like Augustine, we acknowl-edge God as Beauty, ever old and ever new, and a Beauty that saves the world because it is "the Love that shares the pain." Every time we glimpse beauty in our created world we touch into its saving quality. The many faces of beauty are all tracings that have the potential to lead us on to God. When we see the beautiful baby, when we drink in the sunset at sea, when we witness the dignified hand-shake in defeat, when we stand in awe at the organ donor’s gift of life in death, we see a saving beauty, a love that shares the pain. Christmas, just like Easter, is a feast of saving beauty. May all of you, our readers, have a simply beautiful Christmas! David L. Fleming SJ Spirituality Review ROBERT P. MALONEY Magnetic Beauty: A Gift to the Young and the Poor Here in Rome, every time I go to St. Peter’s Basilica, no matter what my purpose, Michel-angelo’s Pieti~ lures me to pray. My imagination often jumps into high gear there. Sometimes the Lord’s limp body lying in Mary’s arms is a poor person I know who mirrors the disfigured Christ for me. Sometimes I see in Mary a grieving woman in the evening news who lost her son in Iraq. Sometimes, in my weakest moments, the lifeless corpse warmly embraced by my loving mother is me. And sometimes, more directly, I simply sense the Virgin’s aching heart and Jesus’ self-giving love. But, whether I go to St. Peter’s to celebrate Mass, to confess my sins, or just to show a friend around the basilica, I always find myself standing before the Pietit. Its beauty is magnetic. Reflecting on this experience, I am grateful to artists, who labor so inventively to mirror Robert P. Maloney CM, superior general of the Congregation of the Mission, writes again from Via dei Capasso, 30; 00164 Roma; Italy. beauty ddvent/Cbristmas 2003 Maloney ¯ Magnetic Beauty beauty to us. Pope John Paul, in a letter addressed to artists in 1999, said, "With loving regard the Divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of his own surpassing wisdom, calling him or her to share in his creative power." The theme of beauty is decisive for the artist. St. Augustine, meditating on the universe, stated: "We cannot help loving what is beautiful.’’~ The artist sees the beauty of creation and at the heart of the human person and gives expression to the transcendent mystery that under-lies them. Poets, writers, painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, actors tell us how beautiful life really is--something we are often too distracted to notice. Of course, the beauty artists see is often hid-den, but they find it in both light and darkness, laughter and pain, life and death. Dostoyevsky once wrote, "Beauty will save the world.’’2 1 sense that few of us see things that way. Does beauty play a significant role in our spirituality? For the most part, I doubt it. In fact, many forms of spirituality are rather grim. So I offer these few thoughts on beauty and spirituality. A Word on Spirituality St. Vincent de Paul, the founder of the community I belong to, focused again and again on simplicity when he spoke of his spiritual journey. He said that it was the virtue he loved most.3 He called it his gospel.4 He pro-posed simplicity as a keystone for the spirituality of the three groups which he founded in the 17th century to serve the poor and which still exist more than 350 years later: the Ladies of Charity, the Congregation of the Mission, and the Daughters of Charity. In most of the Spirituality Review great philosophical, theological, and spiritual traditions, beauty is intimately linked with simplicity. The most beautiful things have a coherence, a unity about them, that expresses transcendent truth. The beautiful, the true, and the one are all manifestations of the depths of the mystery of God. Artists allow the mystery of creation to sink into their depths simply and silently, and transmit it to us in its beauty. They contemplate beauty in God’s person and in the human person, and express it with a creativity that reaches out restlessly toward the infinite. Shakespeare describes their gift eloquently: The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination That, if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy.s Genuine beauty echoes God’s presence. Francis of Assisi, addressing God with some forty terms of praise, repeats these: "You are beauty. You are meekness .... You are beauty. You are meekness.’’6 St. Augustine, in a contemplative moment, cries out: "Beautiful is God, the Word of God. God is beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth, beautiful in the womb, beautiful in his parents’ arms, beautiful in his miracles, beautiful in his suffer-ings, beautiful in inviting to life, beautiful in not worry-ing about death, beautiful in giving his life, and beautiful in taking it up again. God is beautiful on the cross, beau-tiful in the tomb, beautiful in heaven. Listen to God’s Advent/Christmas 2003 Maloney ¯ Magnetic Beauty song with understanding, and let not the weakness of the flesh distract your eyes from the splendor of his beauty." 7 Communal prayer must be "something beautiful for God" and attractive to the young. Paintings, statues, icons, music, poetry, drama, even just good reading are art forms that make liturgical prayer come alive. Fifteen Is there a connection between ultural poverty and: being materially poor.? years ago, during a Lenten Eucharist at a college in England, I heard a young woman, a member of the theater company, read the part of the woman at the well from John’s Gospel. Her reading was so strikingly beautiful that I remember it even now years later: "Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst" (Jn 4:15). Beauty echoes the deepest yearnings of the human heart. So too does liturgy, where, in the Catholic tradition especially, artists have always played a role in expressing the Christian community’s spirituality. A Word about Youth Today Here in Italy people often lament that the young no longer appreciate their country’s rich heritage in music and art. Yet the fault, I suspect, lies not in the young, but in our failure to transmit a love for beauty to them. Schools get caught up in more "practical" subjects. The price of tickets to a concert or an opera has rocketed up beyond youth’s range, and most seats remain locked in by season-ticket holders. Beauty breathes out spirit. It expresses souI, passion, longing for transcendence, yearning for meaning, for wholeness, for joy. How important it is for one genera- Spirituality Review tion to pass on the beauty that it contemplates to gen-erations still to come! The beauty we share with them will stir the young to wonder. It will draw them to con-template the mystery that is always actively at work in the human heart. Augustine laments how long his vision of life was fractured, how slow he was to focus on beauty: "Unceasingly I hesitated and turned away from You, the one and only; I lost myself in multiplicity.’’8 Looking back, he almost groans: "Late have I loved You, beauty so old and so new, late have I loved You!’’9 He poses this challenge to the young: "Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air .... They will all answer you: ’Here we are. Look, we’re beautiful.’" 10 A Word about the Poor The poor are often not just materially poor, but cul-turally poor as well. Artists have wonderful gifts to offer them. Recall that in previous centuries drama and opera often provided space for the poor as part of the audi-ence. Centuries-old frescos and mosaics are still fre-quently referred to as catechisms of the poor. Art will always nourish the soul. It will open the mind and heart and raise the spirit. It raises consciousness and thereby is utterly liberating. But how can the poor find readier access to the gifts of artists? I am certain that the poor will love those gifts. How can we facilitate this? When I was a boy in the sixth grade, a creative teacher took us to the music room once a week and introduced us to opera. I was only eleven years old. I still know by heart all the pieces she taught us to sing. To this day I consider that as one of the great gifts in my life. Are there similar ways in which we can share the experience of beauty with the poor? Advent/Christmas 2003 Maloney * Magnetic Beauty A few weeks ago ! joined three thousand young peo-ple from the Community of Sant’Egidio at the Easter Vigil in the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. They sang and prayed beautifully for three hours. As we left the church, someone whom I have known for years nudged me and commented: "Who said that young peo-ple have a limited attention span and always have to be doing something? If prayer is beautiful, it touches their hearts." Notes ~ St. Augustine, Confessions 14.3; On Music 6.13. 2 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot, Part 3, chap. 5. 3 SV I, 284. SV refers to the 14-volume French edition of St. Vincent de Paul’s works, edited by Pierre Coste (Paris: Gabalda, 1920-1925). 4 SV IX, 606. s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. 6 Lodi di Dio Altissimo, verses 7 and 10. 7 St. Augustine, Exposition on the Book of Psalms, 44.3, as quoted in Timothy Radcliffe OP, Sing a New Song: The Christian Vocation (Springfield, Illinois: Templegate Publishers, 1999), p. 281. 8 Confessions 2.1. 9 Confessions 10.27. ~o Sermon 241, Easter, A.D. 411. Inspiration for Prayer Macarius the Great speaks of the transfiguring and liberating beauty of the risen Lord in these terms: "The soul which has been fully illumined by the unspeakable beauty of the glory shining on the countenance of Christ overflows with the Holy Spirit... it is all eye, all light, all countenance." Spirituality Review For Personal Reflection and for Dialogue Beauty is a key to mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savor life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine would express in comparable terms: "Late have I loved you, Beauty so old and so new; late have I loved you." --John Paul II, Letter to Artists, 1999 /ldvent/Cbris~as 2003 models MARY CATHERINE CARROLL Joseph, Model of Spiritual Parenting In the film John Q, Denzel Washington plays a desperate father who forcefully takes over an emergency room and wants ultimately to take his own life and become a heart donor for his son. Even the hospital hostages admire this father’s tenacious, though misguided, love. In a less disturbing but equally admirable case, a woman was asked, "Was it difficult to decide to donate a kidney?" Her immediate response was, "No, this is my daughter." All of us, with or without children, are called to care for the next generation. Some hear the call specifically. A colleague of mine remembers, while in an apparent out-of-body experience during her daughter’s birth, looking down at the panic in the delivery room. Although happy about a new child, she was at peace regardless of the outcome. Nevertheless, a compelling voice said, "Go back and raise your daughter." Mary Catherine Carroll SSSF teaches at Sacred Heart School of Theology; P.O. Box 429; Hales Corners, Wis-consin 53130. Spirit~tality Review Erik Erikson’s seventh stage of growth, occurring in adulthood, is the choice between generativity or stagnation.! Jesus claims that this choice has significant spiritual implications: "Whoever welcomes a child such as this for my sake welcomes me" (Mk 9:36). What, then, is spiritual parenting? Are there models of this behavior? Do I recognize my own opportunities? To address these questions, we will first attend to specific examples of spiritual parenting in the biblical Josephs (Genesis 37-50 and Matthew 1-2). Second, we will reflect on the example of the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin and, third, consider the story of little Merriah. The Hebrew and Christian Josephs Catholics picture a paternal St. Joseph holding the Child Jesus with his left arm and a staff with his right. Teresa of Avila named her first convent of the Carmelite reform after the "glorious St. Joseph" and claimed that this honor was giving our Lady great pleasure.2 In 1870 Pope Pius IX proclaimed Joseph Patron of the Universal Church. Most modern pontiffs have written on the subject, John Paul II’s "Guardian of the Redeemer" being the most recent contribution.3 Although Joseph is spoken of in all of the synoptic Gospels, the instances are few. The fullest mention occurs in the infancy narrative of the Gospel of Matthew, which features midrashic parallels to the Joseph of Genesis. What, then, are these parallels? The Infancy Narratives. Most sources agree that the infancy narratives (Mr 1-2, Lk 1-2) have qualities that set them apart from the accounts of Jesus’ ministerial life. They do not have the same degree of historicity as the rest of the Gospels. They seem primarily designed to make theological statements. Raymond Brown says that there were stories about Jesus’ birth being circulated which both Matthew and Luke perceived as "having Advent/Cbrisrmas 2003 Carroll * Joseph, Model of Spiritual Parenting Christological implications" that could appropriately be prefixed to the text.4 Midrash, to be overly brief, literally means investigation/interpretation and refers to Jewish legal or theological comment about biblical texts. It strives to make an older text creatively relevant, in a clear and inspiring manner. There are two types of midrash: halakhah refers to the application of the Law to contemporary behavior, and haggadah makes edifying applications of lessons in the Pentateuch to current life.s The infancy narratives appear to belong to this second category, haggadic midrash. In Matthew the Joseph/Herod/Jesus triad is in haggadic parallel with the Joseph/Pharaoh/Moses triad. To bring this into focus, Matthew begins with an Abrahamic genealogy and includes Joseph’s marital dilemma, various dreams, the magi, and the return from Egypt as part of messianic fulfillment. In Luke, by contrast, Joseph is mentioned as Mary’s husband, but the emphasis is on Marian themes. The Hebrew Patriarch Joseph. To appreciate the Old Testament triad--Joseph as protector, Pharaoh as persecutor, and Moses as liberator--it would be well to review the story of the patriarch Joseph. As a favored son, he naively shares a dream with his brothers. "There we were, binding sheaves in the field, when suddenly my sheaf rose to an upright position, and your sheaves formed a ring around my sheaf and bowed down to it." Another dream has the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowing to Joseph. While his father--Jacob/Israelp ponders the matter, the brothers plot against the master dreamer. When a caravan of Ishmaelites destined for Egypt passes, Joseph is sold, and the impression of death by animal attack is given to his father. In Egypt Joseph becomes the trusted servant of Spirituafity Review Potiphar, but catches the eye of his wife. Joseph refuses her sexual advances by saying, "How, then, could I commit so great a wrong and thus stand condemned before God?" When there are no witnesses, Potiphar’s wife says again, "Lie with me." Joseph runs off, but she manages to grab his cloak and screams for help. She claims that Joseph has attempted to seduce her. While in jail for the false accusation, Joseph provides an accurate interpretation of two dreams and is brought before the Pharaoh to assess his dreams as well. Before sharing insights, Joseph makes it clear that he does not count. "It is God who will .... give Pharaoh a favorable answer." Joseph wins approval by forecasting the coming years of boun-ty and famine and is called a "wise and discerning man." The pharaoh gives him a gold signet ring of authority. When the famine comes, the Egyptians are directed to "go to Joseph." Jacob/Israel sends his sons to beg food, but Joseph remains disguised and tests the relationship. The unsuspecting brothers finally hear the amazing words "I am your brother Joseph .... It was really for the sake of saving lives that God sent me here ahead of you." Joseph feeds his contrite brothers, allowing the next generation to live and expand. The dying father, Jacob/Israel, calls down from God the blessings of the everlasting mountains and the delights of the eternal hills on his son, saying, "May they rest on the head of Joseph, on the brow of the prince among his Brothers." ~iHow’do the parallels between the carpenter Joseph ’~i,,dream~: ai~d d~isions and ¯ those of Joseph the, patriarch ?beco~ instructive for us ? ddvent/Chr~onas 2003 Carroll ¯ yosepb, Model of Spiritual Parenting The New Testament Joseph Although the Matthean infancy narrative focuses primarily on Jesus, the New Moses, it is instructive to look for parallels of the carpenter Joseph’s dreams and decisions with those of Joseph the patriarch. In Genesis, Joseph either has or interprets six dreams. In Matthew’s Gospel there are also six dreams, five in the infancy narrative and one at the time